Far from being unwelcome or impossible in a mathematical setting, indeterminacy in various forms can be seen as playing an important role in driving mathematical research forward by providing “sources of newness” in the sense of Hutter and Farías :434–449, 2017). I argue here that mathematical coincidences, phenomena recently under discussion in the philosophy of mathematics, are usefully seen as inducers of indeterminacy and as put to work in guiding mathematical research. I suggest that to call a pair of mathematical (...) facts a coincidence is roughly to suggest that the investigation of connections between these facts isn’t worthwhile. To say of this pair, “That’s no coincidence!” is to suggest just the opposite. I further argue that this perspective on mathematical coincidence, which pays special attention to what mathematical coincidences do, may provide us with a better view of what mathematical coincidences are than extant accounts. I close by reflecting on how understanding mathematical coincidences as generating indeterminacy accords with a conception of mathematical research as ultimately aiming to reduce indeterminacy and complexity to triviality as proposed in Rota Indiscrete thoughts, Birkhäuser, 1997). (shrink)

I first offer a broad taxonomy of models of divine omnipresence in the Christian tradition, both past and present. I then examine the recent model proposed by Hud Hudson (2009, 2014) and Alexander Pruss (2013)—ubiquitous entension—and flag a worry with their account that stems from predominant analyses of the concept of ‘material object’. I then attempt to show that ubiquitous entension has a rich Latin medieval precedent in the work of Augusine and Anselm. I argue that the model of omnipresence (...) explicated by Augustine and Anselm has the resources to avoid the noted worry by offering an alternative account of the divide between the immaterial and the material. I conclude by considering a few alternative analyses of ‘material object’ that make conceptual room for a contemporary Christian theist to follow suite in thinking that at least some immaterial entities are literally spatially located when relating to the denizens of spacetime. (shrink)

The Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus quoted an ancient Greek proverb, “Absent while present.” This paper argues that social technology, which makes us present to those absent, also makes us absent to those present. That is, technology connects our attentions to our virtual community of friends but in doing so it disconnects our attentions from those about us. Because we are finite beings, who dwell wherever our attentions reside, there is a real conflict between the connectivity of social technology and bodily communion (...) with those about us. The interpersonal presence afforded by social technology is a presence purchased at a price: the absence of the body. What social technology is incapable of achieving is bodily presence, and bodily presence is needed for intimacy and friendship. (shrink)

The "ethics of imagination" or the "ethics of fantasy" encompasses the various ways in which we can morally evaluate the imagination. This topic covers a range of different kinds of imagination: (1) fantasizing, (2) engaging with fictions, and (3) dreaming. The clearest, live ethical question concerns the moral value of taking pleasure in undeserved suffering, whether willfully imagined, represented, or dreamed. Much of this entry concerns general theoretical considerations and how they relate to the ethics of fantasy. In the final (...) sections I walk through the three types of imagination and point out some of the open questions concerning each type. (shrink)

It is well-known that the early Heidegger offers important reflec­tions on the Christian experience of life in his accounts of Saint Paul and Saint Augustine. Yet, what is the systematic meaning of Heidegger’s phenomenology of religion? This essay aims to discuss this question by connecting themes from Die Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens to Heidegger’s attempt to provide his own version of phenomenology in Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung. Heidegger’s position with respect to Husserl’s phenomenology becomes clearer, I argue, when his (...) problematization of the onto-theological structures he discerns at the heart of the philosophers he discusses, such as Descartes and Augustine, is taken into account and when it is shown how the phenomenology of religion exceeds the boundaries of a phenomenology that studies consciousness alone. In fact, the explication of the (purified) Christian experience of life and the concep­tion of God at stake in this experience allows Heidegger to articulate a form of phenomenology purified from onto-theological tendencies. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between music and ecofeminist theology and investigates how music and sound can advance the development of ecofeminist thought. On a physical level, the act of breathing connects humankind with the earth’s atmosphere and the element of air produces music and sound. On a theological level, traditional church teachings about the power and danger of music have reflected similar warnings about women and nature. Ecofeminist theologian Sally McFague made a persuasive case for metaphorical theology that supported (...) the arts being included in theological development. Religious Studies scholar Heidi Epstein engaged McFague’s metaphorical theology to develop a feminist theology of music and featured female composers including Hildegard of Bingen. I propose that metaphorical theology and music can also connect through the development of sonic metaphors. Sonic metaphors are created with pitch, rhythm, and sound. While most metaphors rely on the eyes to process written text and visual art, sonic metaphors are processed through the ears and offer different pathways for cognition. Sonic metaphors have been underutilized in theology and they offer potential for exploring theological concepts that can be challenging to comprehend through textual or visual means. These metaphors are particularly applicable for developing ecofeminist theology because sound and music can connect our bodies with nature in illuminating ways. I include examples from my own musical background, and I offer suggestions for non-musicians and ecofeminist theologians who want to incorporate sonic metaphors into their own creative theological reflection. (shrink)

Philosophy, by and large, tends to dwell on what might be called the woeful nature of reality—finitude, suffering, loss, death, and the like. While these topics are no doubt worthy of philosophical concern, undue focus on them tends to obscure other facets of our experience and of reality, giving philosophy a temperament that could justifiably be called melancholic. Without besmirching the value of such inquiry, this paper suggests that philosophers have largely ignored the experience of joy and, consequently, missed its (...) distinctive contributions to our understanding of the meaningfulness of life and the goodness of being. Traditional accounts of the problem of evil are rooted in what John D. Caputo calls “strong theology,” which tends to construe evil as a problem to which God should supply the answer or solution. However, if we call into question traditional accounts of omnipotence, evil ceases to be a problem, and we become free to engage it as part of what Gabriel Marcel calls “the mystery of being.” Thus liberated, we are free to assess more clearly phenomena missed by melancholic accounts of being, among them the experience of joy, attested to in diverse forms of philosophy, literature, memoir, and elsewhere. (shrink)

The New Rhetoric identifies the self-deliberator as one of three main types of audience. But such a turn toward the self is at odds with studies of contemporary argumentation, particularly social argumentation. Argumentation takes place “out there”, modifying the environments in which audiences operate. Equally interesting is the use of self-deliberation as a rhetorical strategy. Arguing with oneself, especially when that self is distanced in some way from the individual involved, employs self-deliberation beyond the ends that Perelman assigned to it. (...) In this paper, my goal is to explore the nature of the self-deliberator as an audience and self-deliberation as a rhetorical strategy employed in argumentation. (shrink)

Most modern writers accept that a privation theory of evil should explicitly account for the evil of pain. But pains are quintessentially real. The evil of pain does not seem to lie in an absence of good. Though many directly take on the challenges this raises, the metaphysics and axiology of their answers is often obscure. In this paper I try to straighten things out. By clarifying and categorizing the possible types of privation views, I explore the ways in which (...) privationists about evil are—or should or could be—privationists about pain’s evil. (shrink)

In this paper, which is situated in the broad stream of the confluence between analytic philosophy and phenomenology, I shall attempt to articulate the relation between self-consciousness and time consciousness. I shall show that the primary meaning of time entails a self-conscious being, and that time and change are related, but in an analogous way. Different forms of life—with concomitant different forms of self-consciousness—are qualitatively different in their capability of experiencing the flow of time. In making this claim, I shall (...) discuss Husserl’s distinction between pre-reflective or tacit self-awareness (inner-consciousness) and reflective self-consciousness (inner perception), and I shall show that this view is similar to Augustine’s distinction between nosse and cogitare and Aquinas’ distinc­tion between ”habitual” and “actual” self-knowledge. It will also be intimated that simultaneity is associated with empathy. (shrink)

In 1994 Elizabeth Stuart addressed the situation of the lesbian and gay community with regard to its relationship with Church, Community and with Feminism. Since writing the 1994 paper she has engaged in more reflection on the nature of desire in the light of the tragedy of human relating. If desire cannot have its telos, its fulfilment in human relating which is fragile and mortal and yet can enable us temporarily to create room in ourselves for others, then it must (...) point beyond itself and have its end beyond us in God. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the connection between certain metaphysical views of time and emotional attitudes concerning one’s own death and mortality. I argue that one metaphysical view of time, B-theory, offers consolation to mortals in the face of death relative to commonsense and another metaphysical view of time, A-theory. Consolation comes from three places. First, B-theory implies that time does not really pass, and as a result one has less reason to worry about one’s time growing short. Second, B-theory (...) entails that there is a real sense in which one’s death does not result in one’s annihilation, and this fact can temper feelings of existential distress. Third, B-theory has the consequence that the benefits one has lost have concrete existence, and this fact can mitigate the emotional significance of the losses of death. (shrink)

The bulk of the literature on the relationship between art and morality is principally concerned with an aesthetic question: Do moral flaws with works of art constitute aesthetic flaws?1 Much less attention has been paid to the ways in which artworks can be morally flawed. There are at least three promising contenders that concern aesthetic education: Artworks can be morally flawed by endorsing immorality, corrupting audiences, and encouraging responses that are bad to have. When it comes to works of fiction, (...) the third suggestion requires what Allan Hazlett calls response moralism—the position that audience reactions to artworks can be morally bad.2 Here, I will put aside issues of aesthetic.. (shrink)

This article examines the experiences of pilgrims walking to the shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. It argues that walking is a social practice operating at the nexus between body and self. Pilgrims do not generally regard walking as a spiritual practice at the journey's outset. They do, however, develop a deep awareness of the multiple effects of walking as they progress along the route. Pilgrims report a variety of techniques in relation to their walking including using (...) rhythm, `being' in the moment and narrating. Various social borders also establish a space for self-reflection that is both individualistic as well as marked by wider social meanings. Walking is thus simultaneously a bodily, social and spiritual practice. (shrink)

The claim that God is perfectly beautiful has played a key role within the history of a number of religious traditions. However, this view has received surprisingly little attention from philosophers of religion in recent decades. In this article I aim to remedy this neglect by addressing some key philosophical issues surrounding the doctrine of divine beauty. I begin by considering how best to explicate the claim that God is perfectly beautiful before moving on to ask what consequences accepting this (...) claim will have for our broader theorizing in philosophy. (shrink)

The author of Hebrews writes that Jesus Christ was “tempted as we are, yet without sin”. Many Christians take the sinlessness of Jesus to imply that he was perfectly virtuous. Yet, susceptibility to the experience of at least some temptations, plausibly including those Jesus experienced, seems incompatible with the possession of perfect virtue. In an attempt to resolve this tension, I argue here that there are good reasons for believing that Jesus, while perfectly sinless, was not fully virtuous at the (...) time of his temptations, but that he grew in virtue through overcoming temptation. If this is right, then Jesus Christ is an exemplar of character formation who is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses” in an important way that Christians have largely overlooked. (shrink)

Patients who experience difficulty making medical decisions are often referred to as “ambivalent.” However, the current lack of attention to the nuances between a cluster of phenomena that resemble...

In this essay I offer a new interpretation of Kant’s discussion of “the old formula of the schools” in the Critique of Practical Reason – “nihil appetimus, nisi sub ratione boni; nihil aversamur, n...

ABSTRACTIn the Timaeus, Plato explicitly defines time as “the moving image of eternity”. This proposition affirms actually that time reflects the eternal that embodies the rational and lawful principle – namely the logos of proportionality – in the motion and change of visible objects in the universe. In other words,time determines the principle that every mutable being must follow to participate in the rational and nomological order of existence; the absolute logos which is given by God is hence intrinsic to (...) time. This idea of time is echoed by the theories of Augustine and Husserl. Both philosophers inherited some of Plato’s metaphysical views, and each of them developed a distinctive theory of the relations between Being, time, and the absolute logos. This paper attempts to compare their theories and to defend the following claim: Augustine fo-cuses on the immutable representation of time which is regarded as the image or reflection of God’s absolute logos, and explains temporal phenome... (shrink)

On the one hand, Confucianism and Christianity advocate universal love for all humans on the ultimate basis of particular love for parents or for God respectively. On the other hand, they have to sacrifice the former for the latter in cases of conflict since they give top priority merely to the latter. In order to overcome this paradox in theory and realize the ideal of universal love in practice, they should transform their particularistic frameworks into universalistic ones and assign a (...) supreme position to their ideas of universal love for all humans, which imply in a potential way a modern, humanistic principle ‘respect the deserved rights of every human being’. (shrink)

This article seeks to elaborate the step of epistemological affirmation that exists within every movement of learning. My epistemological method is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics in contrast to empirical or rationalist traditions. I argue that any movement of learning is based upon an entry into a hermeneutical circle: one is thrown into, or leaps into, an interpretation which in some sense has to be temporarily affirmed or adopted in order to be either absorbed and integrated, or overcome and rejected. I (...) illustrate this process through a retrieval of the concept of submission in pedagogy, particularly with reference to submission in Eastern traditions, as well as pre-modern Christian thought. These other traditions are introduced to contrast with the modern liberal Western perspective in which the role of submission has been almost entirely lost. (shrink)

In much of Christian thought humans are taken to have an ultimate end, understood as the highest attainable good. Christians also anticipate “the life everlasting.” Together these ideas generate a paradox. If the end can be reached in a finite amount of time, some longer-lasting state will be better still, so the purported end is not the highest good after all. But if the end is to possess some good forever, then it will never be reached. So it seems an (...) everlasting being cannot have an ultimate end—a conclusion that apparently makes human life pointless. How can the paradox be solved? (shrink)

This article explores the responses to nihilism offered by Jean-Luc Marion and Martin Heidegger. In particular, this paper offers a response to Steven DeLay’s ‘The vanity of authenticity’; DeLay’s text argues for the superiority of Marion’s response to nihilism through his notion of vanity and, further, argues that this supposed defeat of Heidegger by Marion lays the foundation for the theological turn in philosophy. This paper will instead suggest that Marion has not in fact surpassed Heidegger, that his concept of (...) vanity does not represent a meaningful innovation, and that his answer to nihilism/vanity through love is more similar to Heidegger’s response than either DeLay or Marion acknowledges. DeLay’s reading focuses on Heidegger’s Being and Time, but uses this reading to dismiss Heidegger’s work in its entirety. This paper will, instead, focus on Heidegger’s later work, which is ignored by both Marion and DeLay, offering particular attention to the shift in Heidegger’s response to nihilism as he increases his engagement with the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and introduces the concept Gelassenheit, which generally replaces the terminology of authenticity after the 1940s. (shrink)

This article explores the necessary requirements for effective teacher facilitation of community of philosophical inquiry sessions among children, and suggests that the first and most important prerequisite is the capacity to listen to children, which in turn is based on a critical and reflective interrogation of one’s own philosophy of childhood —the set of beliefs and assumptions about children and childhood which adults tend to project onto real children. It argues that the most effective way to explore these assumptions is (...) in community of philosophical inquiry, where we encounter the same concepts—nature, person, good and evil, innocence, etc.—which underlie more general philosophical inquiry. It then describes the work of the American educator Patricia Carini, who developed the Descriptive Review Process as a phenomenological approach to understanding the children with whom one is in relation, and identifies the Descriptive Review Process as another form of the practice of philosophy of childhood which, together with the regular practice of POC-CPI among teachers, offers us a grounded, integrated methodology for schools dedicated to adult-child dialogue and to school as a site for cultural reconstruction. (shrink)

As we speak about time in the context of everyday life, we have no problem with what we mean by time. We take time as given. Different kinds of theories of development rely on the ordinary concept of time. Time is a sequence of instants, and we are moving along from the past to the future, from birth to death. Moving in time also means development. It does not take into account how a human being is in the time. It (...) flattens our view of human life and cannot describe our manifold being. According to theories of development, if a child does not behave in a certain instant as the theories expect, there must be a problem with that child or she has not developed as well as others. Heidegger uses terms like time-space, temporality and ecstases of time. The question of time is of the same kind as the question of Being. We are in the world and in time in the same way. We all have experience of time, how it sometimes goes quickly and sometimes very slowly. Time is not experienced as moments one after another. It is time-space. Time-space means that time has three dimensions and it consists of the ecstatical opening up of the future, the past and the present. In this article, I will open up the question how the traditional understanding of time and the ecstatic understanding of time understand children differently. What does it mean that little children live exclusively in the present? (shrink)

While one of the arguments against religious belief relates to its apparent irrationality, it can be shown phenomenologically that there is a different kind of rationality at work in religious knowledge, undermining the sharp distinction between sacred and secular that enables theology to be marginalised as irrational. Approaching Christianity through the category of revelation, that is, as a way of living and believing that draws not only on founding narratives of revelation but on the ongoing ‘experience’ of transcendence in unveiling (...) truth, I seek to examine how the possibility of truth itself can inspire hatred and so open onto violence. ‘Religious’ violence typically emerges from a hatred directed at otherness. Hatred of what truth reveals is a powerful motivation for violence, but it cannot be shown that this is specifically religious. Nevertheless, otherness is characterised by an excess that resists objectification and may be revelatory of truth. Violence may be religious precisely to the extent that it is directed against the otherness before which each person stands accused. (shrink)

In two rarely discussed passages – from unpublished notes on the Principles of Philosophy and a 1647 letter to Chanut – Descartes argues that the question of the infinite extension of space is importantly different from the infinity of time. In both passages, he is anxious to block the application of his well-known argument for the indefinite extension of space to time, in order to avoid the theologically problematic implication that the world has no beginning. Descartes concedes that we always (...) imagine an earlier time in which God might have created the world if he had wanted, but insists that this imaginary earlier existence of the world is not connected to its actual duration in the way that the indefinite extension of space is connected to the actual extension of the world. This paper considers whether Descartes’s metaphysics can sustain this asymmetrical attitude towards infinite space vs. time. I first consider Descartes’s relation to the ‘imaginary’ space/time tradition that extended from the late scholastics through Gassendi and More. I next examine carefully Descartes’s main argument for the indefinite extension of space and explain why it does not apply to time. Most crucially, since duration is merely conceptually distinct from enduring substance, the end or beginning of the world entails the end or beginning of real time. In contrast, extension does not depend on any enduring substance besides itself. (shrink)

Transhumanism is an ideology that embraces the use of various forms of biotechnology to enhance human beings toward the emergence of a “posthuman” kind. In this article, I contrast some of the foundational tenets of Transhumanism with those of Christianity, primarily focusing on their respective anthropologies—that is, their diverse understandings of whether there is an essential nature shared by all human persons and, if so, whether certain features of human nature may be intentionally altered in ways that contribute toward how (...) each views human flourishing. A central point of difference concerns Transhumanists’ aim of attaining “substrate independence” for the human mind, such that one’s consciousness could be uploaded into a cybernetic environment. Christian anthropology, on the other hand, considers embodiment, with its characteristics of vulnerability and finitude, to be an essential feature of human nature—hence, Christians’ belief in bodily resurrection. Despite Christianity and Transhumanism having fundamental differences, I contend that Christians may support moderate forms of enhancement oriented toward supporting our flourishing as living, sentient, social, and rational animals. (shrink)

Some metaphysicians believe that existence debates are easily resolved by trivial inferences from Moorean premises. This paper considers how the introduction of negative Moorean facts—negative existentials that command Moorean certainty—complicates this picture. In particular, it shows how such facts, when combined with certain plausible metaontological principles, generate a puzzle that commits the proponents of this method to a contradiction.

This paper is an exploration of the Thomistic vice of despair, one of two vices opposed to the theological virtue of hope. Aquinas's conception of despair as a vice, and a theological vice in particular, distances him from contemporary use of the term "despair" to describe an emotional state. His account nonetheless yields a compelling psychological portrait of moral degeneration, which I explain via despair's link to its "root," the capital vice of sloth. Cases in which sloth and its offspring (...) vices progress into full-fledged despair raise intersecting issues about whether and how despair might be remediable. I conclude by considering puzzles regarding despair's disordered effects on the intellect and will and weighing three possible means of remedying it. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider how the theological virtue of hope might be practiced. I will first explain Thomas Aquinas’s account of this virtue, including its structural relation to the passion of hope, its opposing vices, and its relationship to the friendship of charity. Then, using narrative and character analysis from the film The Shawshank Redemption, I examine a range of hopeful and proto-hopeful practices concerning both the goods one hopes for and the power one relies on to attain those (...) goods. In particular, I show how the film’s picture of the role friends and friendship play in catalyzing hope is a compelling metaphor for Christian hope’s reliance on God. (shrink)

Crisis occupies an ambiguous place in the writings of Hannah Arendt. Not only does crisis undermine categories of judgment, but in doing so it eliminates prejudices as well, forcing us to judge without them. Although Arendt never had an opportunity to fully develop her understanding of judgment, we know that she considered it to be ‘the most political of man’s mental abilities,’ and her writings on education reflect this. In her essay, ‘The Crisis in Education’ she draws a connection between (...) judgment and crisis, linking it to the work of the classroom. It is this relationship, between crisis and judgment, that I examine. In doing so, I turn to two figures central to Arendt’s work – Immanuel Kant and Adolf Eichmann – each of whom embody opposing aspects of what it means to judge, epitomized by a conceptual tension between example and cliché. (shrink)

According to the Standard Model account of religion, religious concepts tend to conform to “minimally counterintuitive” schemas. Laypeople may, to varying degrees, verbally endorse the abstract doctrines taught by professional theologians. But, outside the Sunday school exam room, the implicit representations that tend to guide people’s everyday thinking, feeling, and behavior are about minimally counterintuitive entities. According to the Standard Model, these implicit representations are the essential thing to be explained by the cognitive science of religion. It is argued here (...) that this theoretical orientation of mainstream CSR misses a whole dimension of religiosity—the acceptance of certain religious authorities, that is, the acceptance of other people’s superior expertise. Average believers tend to accept the authority of religious experts who espouse highly counterintuitive ideas that they understand in a distorted form, if at all.... (shrink)

Meursault, the protagonist of Camus' The Stranger, is unable to grieve, a fact that ultimately leads to his condemnation and execution. Given the emotional distresses involved in grief, should we envy Camus or pity him? I defend the latter conclusion. As St. Augustine seemed to dimly recognize, the pains of grief are integral to the process of bereavement, a process that both motivates and provides a distinctive opportunity to attain the good of self-knowledge.

Abstract. The modern concept of the inner self containing a private inner world has ancient philosophical and religious roots. These begin with Plato's intelligible world of ideas. In Plotinus, the intelligible world becomes the inner world of the divine Mind and its ideas, which the soul sees by turning “into the inside.” Augustine made the inner world into something merely human, not a world of divine ideas, so that the soul seeking for God must turn in, then up: entering into (...) itself and then looking above itself at the intelligible light of God. In modernity, “ideas” become the immediate object of every act of mental perception, the essential inner objects of the mind's eye. Locke makes the inner space inescapably private, excluding the divine inner light. Postmodern attempts to reconceive the relation of mind and world, rejecting the modern conception of a private inner self, will need to deal with lingering Platonist intuitions about the immediacy of the mind's vision. (shrink)

St. Paul says that same-sex sexual acts are “contrary to nature.” Plainly this is intended as a condemnation, but beyond that its meaning is obscure. In particular, we are given no general account of what it means to be contrary to nature, including what other acts might fit this description. This article attempts to provide such an account. It relies for this purpose on the biblical and classical sources of this idiom as well as its subsequent use within the Greek (...) patristic tradition. It argues that the core meaning of “contrary to nature” is that of violating the integrity of structure and function of the human body. The article further contrasts this biblical and Greek patristic understanding with that of the “sin against nature” developed in the West during the Middle Ages. It argues that they are different in important ways and that a recovery of the biblical and Greek patristic view can help restore the concept of the unnatural to its proper place within Christian ethics. (shrink)

A book review of R. Paul Thompson's "A Remarkable Journey: The Story of Evolution.

This paper presents the concept of ‘religious certainty’ I have developed by drawing inspiration from Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘certainty’. After describing the particular traits of religious certainty, this paper addresses two difficulties derived from this concept. On the one hand, it explains why religious certainty functions as such even though all its consequences are far from being absolutely clear; on the other hand, it clarifies why, unlike the rest of certainties, the loss of religious certainty does not result in the (...) collapse of the world-picture made up of all certainties. Subsequently, it analyzes to what extent the teacher can teach religious certainty by acting as a facilitator for its acquisition–if desired—particularly bearing in mind that religious certainty cannot be attained at will. These basic teaching guidelines have several advantages. First, they make it possible to know the nature of religious certainty even better. Second, and most importantly, the fact of having adopted the perspective of a teacher who tries inculcating a religious certainty contributes to detecting and preventing forms of indoctrination that, arguably, might go unnoticed even when attempting to properly present religious certainty—or rather, this way of being religious—in current schools to foster understanding thereof. (shrink)

We can locate the problematic of time within three philosophical questions, which respectively designate three central areas of philosophical reflection and contemplation. These are: 1) The ontological question, i.e. 'what is being?' 2) The epistemological question, i.e. 'what can we know with certainty?' 3) The existential question, i.e. 'what is the meaning of existence?' These three questions, which are philosophical, but also scientific and political, as they underline the political and moral question of truth and justice, arise from the phenomenon (...) of time, the irreversible constant flow of phenomena that undermines every claim to absolute knowledge. The purpose of this essay is to illuminate the importance of time for philosophical thought and, more generally, for human social and psychical life, in the context of the ontology of Cornelius Castoriadis. Castoriadis, who asserted that " being is time – and not in the horizon of time " , correlated history to society and being to temporality within the social-historical stratum, the ontological plane created by human existence, where " existence is signification ". Time is interpreted as the creation and destruction of forms in a magmatic, layered with a non-regular stratification, reality, where the social-historical manifests as the creation of collective human activity, in the manner of social imaginary significations. This notion of temporality is accompanied by a profound criticism of traditional rationalistic philosophy, to which Castoriadis assigns the name 'ensemblistic/identitary', that highlights the necessity of a new, magmatic ontology, based on the primacy of time. (shrink)

There is a philosophical tradition of arguing against presentism, the thesis that only presently existing things exist, on the basis of its incompatibility with fundamental physics. I grant that presentism is incompatible with special and general relativity, but argue that presentism is not incompatible with quantum gravity, because there are some theories of quantum gravity that utilize a fixed foliation of spacetime. I reply to various objections to this defense of presentism, and point out a flaw in Gödel's modal argument (...) for the ideality of time. This paper provides an interesting case study of the interplay between physics and philosophy. (shrink)

In this chapter I explore what painful art can tell us about the nature and importance of human welfare. My goal is not so much to defend a new solution to the paradox of tragedy, as it is to explore the implications of the kinds of solutions that I find attractive. Both nonhedonic compensatory theories and constitutive theories explain why people seek out painful art, but they have troublesome implications. On some narrow theories of well-being, they imply that painful art (...) is bad for us. Accordingly, we may rightly wonder if it rational for people to watch melodramas or to listen to love songs. One might think that we should generally avoid unpleasant works of art. This implication flirts with absurdity. I show how it can be avoided by making a distinction between well-being and worth. (shrink)

Is it ever bad to take pleasure in the suffering of fictional characters? I think so. I attempt to show when and why. I begin with two powerful objections to my view: (1) engaging with fiction is akin to morally unproblematic autonomous fantasy, and (2) since no one is harmed, it is morally unproblematic. I reply to the objections and defend a Moorean view on the issue: It is intrinsically bad to enjoy evil, actual (past, present, or future) and merely (...) imagined. In support, I offer four examples. Then I argue against Moore's claim that it is equally bad to delight in fictional suffering as it is to enjoy actual suffering. Finally, I argue that even though it is bad to enjoy imagined suffering, the power of fiction is often mitigating. The moral problems are more often with the works of fiction than with the audience. (shrink)

Within Christian philosophical and systematic theology, God is understood as possessing Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Omnipresence, among (or as an extension of) other attributes such as Immensity and Eternality. However, it is also commonplace in theology and theistic philosophy to posit God as experiencing sequential reality. That is, experiencing time with us rather than possessing Omnitemporality. Curiously, there is agreement among theists that God is outside of matter and space, yet there are objections from both determinists and indeterminists to the idea (...) that God is outside of the domain of time as we experience it. Within this paper, given the understanding of God’s Omni-attributes, I suggest that it is reasonable to doubt that something as immense as God may be subject to, or fully existent within, a temporal manifold; with that in mind, I attempt to create a rudimentary form of Eternalist Compatibilism. I hope to establish this by suggesting that from the human perspective, within time and space, there does exist a real and qualitatively different present tense (A-theory/ Endurantism) as well as libertarian free will, while from outside of the dimension of time (as we know and experience it) God considers all moments as Eternally Present (B-theory/Worm Perdurantism) exercising his Divine Providence deterministically. Therefore, within Christian philosophical theology, it is reasonable to suggest that Persons of the Trinity may experience sequential time alongside humankind (Incarnation, Pentecost, etc.) while the Father remains transcendently outside of time and space. In light of this, I contend that the friction over sovereignty and foreknowledge may be illusory and rather represents two sides of the same but complex reality; in other words, a type of Eternalist Relativity. (shrink)

How does an engagement with religious traditions (broadly construed) illuminate and complicate the task of thinking through the ethics of eating? In this introduction, we survey some of the many food ethical issues that arise within various religious traditions and also consider some ethical positions that such traditions take on food. To say the least, we do not attempt to address all the ethical issues concerning food that arise in religious contexts, nor do we attempt to cover every tradition’s take (...) on food. We look at just a few traditions and a few interesting writings on food ethics and religion: What do they say about the ethics of eating? Why do they say these things? Here we use the terms “food ethics” and “religion” ecumenically as big tents under which many importantly different sorts of things may be grouped. Among the wide range of food ethical issues we consider in this chapter, for example, are religious views about the ethics of keeping, hurting, and killing animals, killing plants, dominion over creation, wastefulness, purity, blessing, atonement, and the connection between food and character. We realize, moreover, that it might be a stretch to label some of the views engaged by selected readings in this chapter as “religious” on a stringent understanding of that term; Lisa Kemmerer’s “Indigenous Traditions,” for instance, addresses some views that are recognizably spiritual but perhaps not religious in a strict sense. We hope that our ecumenical usage of the term can bring these important traditions to bear on the discussion without reducing them to something they are not. (shrink)

Those of us who are sympathetic to Kantian ethics usually are so because we regard it as an ethics of autonomy, based on rational self-esteem and respect for the human capacity to direct one’s own life according to rational principles. Kantian ethical theory is grounded on the idea that the moral law is binding on me only because it is a law proceeding from my own will. The ground of a law of autonomy lies in the very will which is (...) to be subject to the law, and this leaves no room for any issue about why this will should obey the law. The idea of autonomy also identifies the authority of the law with the value constituting the content of the law, in that it bases the law on our esteem for the dignity of rational nature in ourselves, which makes every rational being an end in itself. (shrink)