The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare two concepts which tend to be treated as synonymous, and to show the difference between them: these are critical thinking and logical culture. Firstly, we try to show that these cannot be considered identical or strictly equivalent: i.e. that the concept of logical culture includes more than just critical thinking skills. Secondly, we try to show that Christian philosophers, when arguing about philosophical matters and teaching philosophy to students, should not (...) focus only on critical thinking skills, but rather also consider logical culture. This, as we argue, may help to improve debate both within and outside of Christian philosophy. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to reflect on the proper way for Christians to do philosophy, in respect of which I have been inspired by a phrase attributed to Cardinal Newman: “We do not need Christian philosophy. We need Christians making good philosophy.” This sentence can appear controversial, but I believe it is not, if its content is made explicit in an appropriate way. To better develop what I understand Newman to be proposing here, I have added another category (...) to his statement, with the consequence that my own text falls into three sections: 1) on Christian philosophy; 2) on Christian philosophers; 3) on Christians who do philosophy. This is the scheme that we will use to position ourselves as regards the complex issue of the relationship between philosophy and Christianity. (shrink)

The philosophical history of metaphysics of mind can be narrowed into two problems: Mind and body causation and issues of the self or persons. Due to the rise of the scientific revolution the nature of mental states and its possessors has been reduced to brain and cognitive functioning or eliminated instead of the ontological basic substance of a soul. The other criticism of soul identity or substance dualism is the problem of mental causation. In The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism (...) (2018), Jaegwon Kim argues against the intelligibility of Cartesian dualism and further extends that argument to any form of substance dualism by raising the question of mental causation or the traditional mind-body problem. His main attack comes from the essence of mind and the causal closure of the physical, together these provide an argument against the non-physical view of persons. The question, “can mental events cause physical events?” Is a problem for the dualist which he calls “the pairing problem.” Since causation requires a spatiotemporal relation between two bodies, and mind and body are distinct substances or properties, there’s no cause-and-effect pairing relation between minds and physical objects or bodies. Thus, according to Kim, the essence of an immaterial thinking substance, such as a soul, is unintelligible and should be rejected since it fails to answer the pairing problem. However, Kim has a misunderstanding of substance dualist views of the independent ontological status of a substantial self or soul. Further, Kim’s challenge does not take into account a causal powers ontology in which primitive is the free agentive causal subject. I’ll argue that a soul, though embodied, is a non-material primitive substance that has basic faculties to exemplify mental properties. One of the faculties of the soul is the instantiation of active agency. Further, the postulation of Gods existence, having a metaphysical internal structure and powers, is grounds for the existence of a soul with its own metaphysical, unified structure in which the dispositional properties of consciousness are located and exemplified. I conclude that mental causation is a coherent notion especially in light of the active powers of agent causation. Thus, Kim’s problem of mental causation becomes no problem at all. (shrink)

From the initiative of the Institute of Philosophy of the Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow there was a debate last May that centred on a book by young author Filip Borek from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who is also a member of the board of the Polish Phenomenological Association. His book consists of a phenomenological interpretation of Vom Wesen der Wahrheit [On the Essence of Truth], an important work in which Heidegger explores (...) the essential connection between truth as correctness and freedom. In attendance were the following guests: Maria Gołębiewska (Polish Academy of Sciences), Paweł Korobczak (University of Wrocław), Daniel R. Sobota (Polish Academy of Sciences) and Jacek Surzyn (Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow), as well as the author himself. The debate was led by Magdalena Kozak (Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow). (shrink)

Analytic theology is a thriving research program at the intersection of theology and analytic philosophy. Prior to Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea’s launch of “analytic theology” in 2009, the discipline functioned under the moniker “philosophical theology.” Considerable ink has been spilled on what is analytic theology in the past decade, and most recently by William Wood (2021). Some theologians (e.g., Abraham 2009) have argued that it is systematic theology while others (e.g., Coakley 2013) have been content to remain in a (...) family resemblance class rooted in philosophical theology. At the same time, analytic theology has welcomed Christian philosophers (e.g., Beall 2021) who have migrated into Christian doctrine via philosophy of religion. These philosophers are not systematic theologians, but, rather, philosophical theologians. This essay analyzes the relation between analytic theology, philosophical theology, and philosophy by examining their starting points and how they perceive and access truth, and then proposes a spectrum to graph their overlapping zones of research. I conclude that philosophical theology stands at the heart of the disciplines and thus remains an appropriate term for analytic theologians and Christian philosophers working somewhere in the vicinity of Jerusalem. (shrink)

This article presents the views of Paolo Valori (1919–2003), a little known philosopher and Italian Jesuit who was one of the first scholars in Italy to deal with Husserl’s thought. Valori belonged to the so-called “second wave” of Italian phenomenology. His critical analysis of Maurice Blondel’s views, and his reflections on contemporary philosophy, led him to the conclusion that a dialogue between Christian philosophy and contemporary thought is called for. One aspect of this dialogue may be the opening up of (...) Christian philosophy to the search for truth in the human sciences, and to various tendencies in philosophy and theology. Such an opening can be called “the search for truth everywhere.” The article presents the sources of Valori’s views and his understanding of interdisciplinary dialogue. This analysis is supplemented by a presentation of his concept of truth, and the text ends with an example of the practical application of this approach within his conception of phenomenological ethics. (shrink)

Philosophy has always been parasitic on other bodies of knowledge, especially religious thought. Greek philosophy in Italy emerged as a purification of Orphic religious traditions. Orphic votaries adopted various disciplines in the attempt to become divine, which led Pythagoras and Empedocles to define philosophy as a path to divinity. According to Plato and Aristotle, the goal of philosophy is to become “as much like a god as is humanly possible.” Classical Greek philosophy is not the study of the divine but (...) the project of becoming divine, a project which it shares with Christianity. Greek philosophy and Christianity have different paths to the divine, but they share a common aspiratio. (shrink)

The dispute between naturalism and anti-naturalism has been underway almost since the very beginnings of philosophy. Christian thinkers, by proclaiming that God as Creator transcends the reality He has created, and that human beings as persons transcend the material world, have entered this dispute on the anti-naturalist side. The contemporary dominance in culture of the naturalistic paradigm requires Christian philosophy to reflect on naturalism in the broadest sense (in its various forms), together with its conditions and consequences, and to rethink (...) its relationship to this philosophical tradition. Naturalism rejects the possibility of something existing, being known, or being explained that is separate from the material reality given in empirical cognition. Along with this, it denies human beings transcendence with respect to the natural or social world. In its contemporary iteration, this tradition appeals to the solutions and methods of domain-specific forms of scientific inquiry, relying on them for its own authority. For Christian philosophy, naturalism represents a powerful challenge. It is possible to see in it a threat to Christian philosophy, but it is also possible to discern in it an opportunity for a more critical evaluation of Christian philosophy’s previous solutions, and an opportunity to develop new ones. There is a need for a better understanding of naturalism itself, as well as of what the various domain-specific sciences (including the natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities and, currently, neuroscientific research in particular) have to say about the world and about human beings. Systematic and historico-philosophical questions equally still call for debate – in relation to the centuries-old dispute between naturalism and anti-naturalism, as well as the changing place of Christian thought within it. In our own time, one can witness diverse attempts by Christian thinkers both to critically discuss naturalistic positions and to implement naturalistic approaches or solutions within Christian thought itself. Certainly, the latter cannot ignore the fact that naturalism allows philosophy to maintain cognitive contact with domain-specific forms of scientific inquiry. The organizers plan to conduct this conference in hybrid mode, combining both online and onsite elements. This model will allow all interested persons to participate, while also offering those wishing to actually come to Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow the possibility of doing so. (shrink)

In this essay, I evaluate the extent to which some currents in classical Christian mysticism might count as properly ‘Christian’ against the rules of faith and theological methodology of thinkers like Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Justin Martyr. I begin by expounding this methodology as it relates to non-Christian philosophical traditions, and from there explore the rules these thinkers offer, suggesting that the beating heart of these rules is not a string of propositions to affirm so much as it is a commitment (...) to a certain rendition of biblical narrative grammar. After exploring this grammar, I turn to a brief discussion of the foundations of Christian mysticism and the thought of Evagrius Ponticus. The aim here is to illustrate the theoretical foundations of much Christian mysticism, as well as to provide a test case to evaluate how far some prominent elements of this discourse might, or might not, cohere with the biblical narrative grammar elucidated above. I argue that there is ample room to question the legitimacy of Evagrius’s claim to properly Christian theorizing, and suggest this has serious implications for future Christian work in the philosophy of mysticism. (shrink)

We would like to begin a series of translations of outstanding articles [published previously in FP], mainly by Jesuit philosophers. Our first choice is a paper by Franciszek Bargieł, an eminent scholar of Jesuit philosophy who taught and lectured in philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Society of Jesus in Kraków/Cracow for many years. This article, published in the journal “Forum Philosophicum,” vol. 2, 1997 (245–54), was originally written and published in Latin and has been translated from that (...) language. (shrink)

This is the opening talk of the conference Christian Philosophy and Its Challenges organised by Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow on 20-22 September 2022 in Poland. The talk was given by Richard Swinburne, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford, and was later edited into this openning essay of the issue dedicated to Christian Philosophy.

I show how those with Kantian habits of mind—those committed to maintaining certain kinds of universality in ethics—can still get involved in the project of securing the distinctiveness of Christian ethics by highlighting parts of his moral philosophy that are amenable to this project. I first describe the interaction among James Gustafson, Stanley Hauerwas, and Samuel Wells surrounding the issue of the distinctiveness of Christian ethics, to explain why Kant is generally understood as the opponent of this project in this (...) discourse. Then I lay out his discussions of how his moral argument for postulating divine existence can have beneficial moral-psychological results, and of how we can find moral satisfaction, the sense of pleasure in our moral strivings, as two elements in his moral philosophy that can be turned into a distinctively Christian ethics with revisions that should be allowed within the broad confines of Kantian moral philosophy. I also point out that his own answer to the question of moral satisfaction is already distinctively Christian, in that it is inspired by the Christian tenets of the imputation of righteousness and the assurance of salvation. (shrink)