English summary: The objective of this volume is to change the image of Hegel as a philosopher of the Prussian state, as one who, concerned only about his career, spoke in praise of the king of Wurttemberg, and as an author who, under the influence of the Carlsbad Decrees, completely changed his philosophy of right. In addition to historical studies, the volume presents a number of predominantly systematic works in order to shed light on the history of the development of (...) Hegels philosophy of right as a whole. German description: Der Band stellt sich die Aufgabe, das Bild Hegels als des 'Preussischen Staatsphilosophen', des karrierebedachten Lobredners des wurttembergischen Konigs und als eines Autors, der unter dem Einfluss der Karlsbader Beschlusse seine Rechtsphilosophie grundsatzlich umkonzipierte, entscheidend zu korrigieren. - Der Band prasentiert neben historischen Untersuchungen eine Reihe uberwiegend systematischer Arbeiten, um so die Entwicklungsgeschichte der Rechtsphilosophie Hegels im Ganzen erhellen zu konnen. - Mit Beitragen von G. Planty-Bonjour, J. D'Hondt, E. Fleischmann, Z. A. Pelczynski, N. Waszek, H. Kimmerle, Ch. Jamme, H.-Ch. Lucas, W. Jaeschke, R. Grawert, O. Poggeler, W. Bonsiepen, L. Siep, G. Lubbe-Wolff, A. Peperzak und K. R. Meist. (shrink)

It is well known that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right initiated, when it first appeared, a dispute about his philosophy in general that has not abated to the present day. The initial grounds for this dispute included: Hegel’s often virulent attacks, in the Philosophy of Right, on contemporaries such as Fries, Hugo, and von Haller; the question of his political stance within Prussia, which was then rapidly developing into a reactionary, authoritarian state; in other words, the question of Hegel’s political accommodation, (...) the question of his attitude to natural law, and so on. For a long time, therefore, the philosophical dispute was shaped by the political interests of the day. The struggle against Hegel’s philosophical system as a whole even resorted to personal defamation of the philosopher, so that, by revealing personal weakness, his system and the influential school of followers he had attracted could be discredited. Likewise, the diverse attempts at an adequate assessment of the historical influence of Hegel’s philosophy have come to a head. The two main questions, also deriving their inspiration from differing interpretations of the Philosophy of Right, are: How legitimate are the various Marxist references to Hegel as either the forerunner of Marxism or its principal opponent? How legitimate is the accusation that Hegel, by developing a totalitarian theory of the state, prepared the ground for twentieth century fascism, especially National Socialism? As previous research has pointed out, an adequate assessment of such relations will have to deal very carefully with Hegel’s position in his own day. For example, apart from his attitude to the situation in Prussia, his attitude to the most important event of the age, the French Revolution, must be examined. Furthermore, comparative perspectives must be established, so that the distinctive shape of Hegel’s philosophy of right can be seen clearly, against the background of the European constitutional debates of the day. In the last analysis, however, the essence of the disagreement still stems from the problem of the proper political classification of Hegel’s philosophy of right. (shrink)

Hegel’s mature system, because of its division into three parts, makes particularly high demands on the argumentative powers when it comes to the demonstration of the necessity of the links between the respective parts of the system. It is a well known fact that the transition from/of logic to natural philosophy is a very critical point in the system, and was already subjected to particular criticism by Schelling as being a weak point in the system. For Hegel, however, the transition (...) from natural philosophy to the philosophy of spirit is also such a critical seam or hinge in his system. The three versions of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences provide documentary evidence of his continuous work on the relevant passages. Hegel’s own handwritten notes and drafts, and also the students’ manuscripts of his lectures on “subjective spirit”, provide interpreters with additional information and thus give them more profound insights into Hegel’s efforts to achieve conceptual precision in this area, as well as into an abundance of empirical material that Hegel gathered and subsequently incorporated from contemporary science as it developed. (shrink)

As a consequence of the successful 1984 meeting of these two research groups at Bochum - the proceedings of which have been published as Hegels Rechtsphilosophie im Zusammenhang der europäischen Verfassungsgeschichte, edited by Hans-Christian Lucas and Otto Pöggeler - this conference constituted a further step toward continuous cooperation between French and German Hegel scholars. It was held in Poitiers on December 3–5, 1986, at the CRDHM, which, since its founding in 1970 by Jacques D’Hondt, its first (...) director, has coordinated the translation of Hegel into French and published its Bulletin to provide information about all aspects of Hegel and Marx research. The conference was excellently organized by its host, Guy Planty-Bonjour, and by Hans-Christian Lucas and Otto Pöggeler on the German side, with funding from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and from the University of Poitiers. During the three full days of the meeting, about ten scholars from each side had a splendid opportunity to discuss not only the twelve papers presented, but also numerous other aspects of their work. (shrink)

Historically, the productive aspect of the aesthetic experience can be described as a process during which aesthetic practice freed itself step by step from restrictions imposed on productive activity in both the classical and the biblical tradition. If one understands this process as the realization of the idea of creative man, it is principally art which actualizes this idea.1 First, when the poietic capacity is still one and undivided, it asserts itself subliminally; later, in the competition between technical and artistic (...) creation, it explicitly claims to be a production of a special kind. It is in that history of the concepts labor and work that the restrictions become most palpable.2 In the Greek tradition, all producing remains subordinate to practical action . As the activity of slaves who are rigorously excluded from the exercise of the virtues, poiesis occupies the lowest rank in social life. In the Christian tradition, handiwork is cursed, which means that man is meant to maintain himself only by toiling against a resistant nature ; salvation can only be found beyond his activity in this world. But in both the classical and the Christian conceptual fields relating to labor, we already encounter ambivalent definitions which could introduce and justify an upward revaluation of man's labor.1. See Hans Blumenberg, "'Nachahmung der Natur': Zur Vorgeschichte des schöpferischen Menschen," Studium Generale 10 : 266-83, still unexcelled. I also base my discussion on Jürgen Mittelstrass, Neuzeit und Aufklärung; Studien zur Entstehung der neuzeitlichen Wissenchaft und Philosophie , and to the results of two seminars at Constance held jointly and to which I owe essential insights.2. See Werner Conze, "Arbeit," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historiches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Conze, Otto Brunner, and Reinhart Koselleck, 4 vols. , 1:154-215, and Walther Bienert, Die Arbeit nach der Lehre der Bibel ; an abbreviated version appears in Bienert's "Arbeit," Die Religion in Gescheichte und Gegenwart .Hans Robert Jauss is professor of literary criticism and Romance philology at the University of Constance. He is the author of many books and articles, including two works forthcoming in English, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception and Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, from which the present essay is taken. Michael Shaw has translated many works, among them Max Horkheimer's Dawn and Decline. (shrink)

Luca M. Possati, Jean Grondin, Paul Ricoeur ; Aurore Dumont, François Dosse et Catherine Goldenstein, Paul Ricoeur: penser la mémoire ; Paul-Gabriel Sandu, Gert-Jan van der Heiden, The Truth of Language. Heidegger, Ricoeur and Derrida on Disclosure and Displacement ; Paul Marinescu, Marc-Antoine Vallée, Gadamer et Ricoeur. La conception herméneutiquedu langage ; Witold Płotka, Saulius Geniusas, Th e Origins of the Horizon in Husserl’s Phenomenology ; Delia Popa, Annabelle Dufourcq, La dimension imaginaire du réel dans la philosophie de Husserl ; (...) Maria GyemantDenis Seron, Ce que voir veut dire. Essai sur la perception ; Christian Ferencz-Flatz, Hans Friesen, Christian Lotz, Jakob Meier, Markus Wolf, Ding und Verdinglichung. Technik- und Sozialphilosophie nach Heidegger und der Kritischen Th eorie ; Bogdan MincăLarisa Cercel, John Stanley, Unterwegs zu einer hermeneutischen Übersetzungswissenschaft. Radegundis Stolze zu ihrem 60. Geburtstag ; Denisa Butnaru Johann Michel, Sociologie du soi. Essai d’herméneutique appliquée ; Ovidiu Stanciu, Jan Patočka, Aristote, ses devanciers, ses successeurs. Trad. fr. Erika Abrams ; Mădălina Diaconu, Emmanuel Alloa, Das durchscheinende Bild. Konturen einer medialen, Phänomenologie. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Paradox of Disability: Responses to Jean Vanier and L’Arche Communities from Theology and the Sciences ed. by Hans S. ReindersAdam ClarkThe Paradox of Disability: Responses to Jean Vanier and L’Arche Communities from Theology and the Sciences Edited by Hans S. Reinders Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. 191pp. $18.00Jean Vanier introduces this collection of essays with a concise articulation of the themes that define L’Arche communities: (...) those with impairments “cry out” for loving service, yet love involves the receptivity by which those without obvious impairments learn to claim their own good amid a vulnerability that [End Page 205] appears to be its negation. Subsequent essays expand upon these themes, drawing on a range of theological and social-scientific perspectives. Most could serve as introductions for undergraduate or graduate classes. The volume also invites disability scholars to examine whether and how this “Vanier school” has succeeded in its attempt to reimagine and serve both those with and those without obvious impairments.For Vanier’s “school,” such reimagining entails perceiving those with impairments as “teachers.” Executing this, however, is difficult. Xavier Le Pichon, for example, argues that “the disabled” help us recover positive views of dependency in “childhood innocence” and “aged suffering” (since they embody both stages). Focusing on the suffering that human beings experience before death, he claims that paleo-anthropological evidence suggests that societies evolved as their care of the disabled taught them to accept suffering. His argument, however, risks strongly identifying persons with their impairments, thus reinforcing the social construction of “disability” as a marginalizing category in discourse and policy.Moreover, this difficulty is not limited to associations with disvalue. Hans Reinders draws on Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Ulrich in a comparison of the severely disabled to the “teachers” of Matthew 6: the birds and lilies. The disabled, he argues, embody a positive image of “humanity” characterized by dependence on God and a lack of competition with others. Such an image of grace “frees” one from a political economy that drives toward rational mastery of self and world. Yet, do the severely impaired always experience and manifest such dependence? If not, are they not being used to create a “human” image for others in which they, in fact, do not appear?Kevin Reimer’s essay contains similar difficulties. For him, the instructive values are “trust” and “gracious openness.” Citing studies that demonstrate how these values sustain communities—even absent rational agreement—he argues that they should replace rationality as the chief marker of moral maturity (as exemplified, e.g., in Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development). Like Reinders, Reimer clearly wants those with cognitive impairments to be appreciated as teachers of values that displace the rationalist ones that deprecate them. However, like Reinder’s argument, this easily slides toward defining “humanity” under a certain ideal form, thereby still implicitly devaluing those who do not embody that ideal form. Also, one finds here the danger of romanticizing that is often identified with Vanier: one only sees the form and not the real person.William Gaventa and Brian Brock, however, provide a counterresponse, the first pivotal turn in the book. Gaventa argues that the discovery of another’s value as “teacher” occurs only when one has already acknowledged her as a person (104). In other words, any “form” taught must come only after one has encountered a “person,” which is understood as a complete image of human [End Page 206] value. Here Vanier’s argument for mutual receptivity becomes a fundamental anthropology that grounds an ethic. Love must serve both persons—the teacher with impairments and the learning respondent—along distinct lines of practical action (107). In addition, Gaventa argues that persons need sources of support that are both familial and private, on the one hand, and institutional and public, on the other—thus transcending the usual splits between conservatives and liberals.Brock develops a similar anthropological ethic drawing on Martin Luther. Being human together simply means “becoming neighbors” through the absolute (Christological) imputation of personal value. Brock criticizes practices that negate this neighborly bond. In particular, he rejects the view, often endorsed by genetic counselors, that bearing potentially impaired... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics ed. by Christian Scharen and Anna Marie VigenJohn KiessEthnography as Christian Theology and Ethics Edited by Christian Scharen and Anna Marie Vigen New York: Continuum, 2011. 304 pp. $29.95Over the past decade, an increasing number of Christian theologians and ethicists have turned to ethnographic methodologies in order to attend more closely to the complexities of lived faith (...) and the bodily character of theological knowledge. For those wishing to get a glimpse of what this looks like in practice, what its implications might be for theology and ethics, and how one might set off and do it oneself, this book is an excellent introduction.Editors Christian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen organize the book into three parts. The first part orients readers to the use of ethnography in cultural anthropology and reviews the recent “ethnographic turn” in Christian theology and ethics. This is followed by a brief survey of theological critiques of social science and a defense of ethnography against these critiques. Scharen and Vigen argue that the use of ethnography, far from compromising the integrity of theology, has the potential to renew and enrich the discipline through the incorporation of long-overlooked forms of local wisdom. As a method attuned to practical, often noncognitive forms of knowledge, ethnography can help scholars move away from an exclusive focus on texts to a deeper consideration of the theological and ethical claims “embedded and embodied” in the lives and practices of everyday communities (xxii). [End Page 190]Naturally, the best argument for such an approach is exemplification. The second part of the book presents an impressive collection of ethnographic work from contexts as diverse as Chicago, Atlanta, Oregon, Chiapas, Nairobi, and Gulu. Contributors employ ethnography to compare pastoral leadership in two African American churches, track grassroots dissent on the issue of contraception among women living with HIV/AIDS, and reimagine the debate on physician-assisted suicide from the perspective of the poor and disabled. Particularly effective are Vicini’s exploration of the liturgical response of local churches to the legacy of violence in Chiapas and Whitmore’s critical examination of his own place as a white researcher in Northern Uganda, which makes hauntingly transparent the ethical complexities of the research process itself.The final part of the book offers a more practical how-to guide for those looking to do ethnography, covering such issues as institutional review board approval, interview methodology, and accountability to research subjects. This part, like the rest of the book, will be a gift for graduate students facing down a dissertation proposal or scholars contemplating the use of ethnography in their work. Admirably reflexive, vigilantly attentive to issues of power and privilege, and articulate about the ways that research can be a form of discipleship, one can only hope this book will succeed in its aim of encouraging other scholars to “go and do likewise.”Those who have already incorporated ethnographic techniques in their scholarship or who are looking for a fuller articulation of the relation between ethnography, ethics, and theology may find themselves less satisfied with the book. Its treatment of existing options (virtue ethics, Catholic social ethics) and thinkers (David Ford, Stanley Hauerwas, and John Milbank) is thin, and a number of key figures in the broader story of the ethnographic turn in theology (Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Hans Frei) are conspicuously missing. Their absence is felt particularly strongly in the unanswered questions the volume provokes, including how to account for God’s difference when appeals to experience become primary (Barth), and how to avoid positivism when appeals to the “reality” of the church become the point of departure for ecclesiology (Bonhoeffer).Such provocations, however, are reminders that we are still at the very early stages of the ethnographic turn in Christian theology and ethics. If this volume is any indication, the future of this exciting intersection of thought and practice looks very promising indeed. [End Page 191]John KiessLoyola University MarylandCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This thought-provoking book discusses the concept of progress in economics and investigates whether any advance has been made in its different spheres of research. The authors look back at the history, successes and failures of their respective fields and thoroughly examine the notion of progress from an epistemological and methodological perspective. The idea of progress is particularly significant as the authors regard it as an essentially contested concept which can be defined in many ways – theoretically or empirically; locally or (...) globally; or as encouraging or impeding the existence of other research traditions. The authors discuss the idea that for progress to make any sense there must be an accumulation of knowledge built up over time rather than the replacement of ideas by each successive generation. Accordingly, they are not concerned with estimating the price of progress, reminiscing in the past, or assessing what has been lost. Instead they apply the complex mechanisms and machinery of the discipline to sub-fields such as normative economics, monetary economics, trade and location theory, Austrian economics and classical economics to critically assess whether progress has been made in these areas of research. -/- Bringing together authoritative and wide-ranging contributions by leading scholars, this book will challenge and engage those interested in philosophy, economic methodology and the history of economic thought. It will also appeal to economists in general who are interested in the advancement of their profession. (shrink)

The first edition of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline appeared in 1817, followed by a second, much enlarged edition in 1827, and a third, somewhat less expanded edition in 1830. For this review it will first be necessary to recount the complex publishing history of these editions, a history which is perhaps not familiar to all readers of The Owl. After Hegel’s death his students prepared two editions of his Werke. The second of these editions was the (...) basis of the Sämtliche Werke: Jubiläumsausgabe, which appeared in 1927-40 under the editorship of Hermann Glockner. The 1817 Encyclopedia was first reprinted as volume 6 of the Jubiläumsausgabe. The first of the above books here under review contains the first published translation into English of the entire 1817 Encyclopedia, as well as the first published English translation of Hegel’s 1828 review, “Solger’s Posthumous Writings and Correspondence,” both of which are preceded in this book by a reprint of A. V. Miller’s 1977 translation of the famous Preface to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807. Since 1968, under the general editorship of Otto Pöggeler and Friedhelm Nicolin, individual volumes of the excellent Gesammelte Werke have been published by Felix Meiner Verlag. Their edition of the 1817 Encyclopedia, edited by Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Hans-Christian Lucas, is still under preparation, but their first German re-edition of the 1827 Encyclopedia, also edited by Bonsiepen and Lucas, appeared as volume 19 in 1989. No translation into English of this second edition has ever appeared. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World by Grace Y. Kao, and: Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction ed. by John Witte, Frank S. AlexanderZachary R. CaloGrounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World Grace Y. Kao Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011. 239pp. $28.45Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction Edited By John Witte and Frank S. Alexander New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 390pp. $29.38Grace Kao’s Grounding Human (...) Rights in a Pluralistic World and Christianity and Human Rights, edited by John Witte and Frank Alexander, both contribute to the growing and sophisticated literature addressing the relationship between religious traditions and human rights. Kao’s book opens by asking whether “the very idea of human rights [must] be premised upon a religious or metaphysical idea in order to be conceptually intelligible, sufficiently protected, or practically stable over time” (4). Kao proposes that this question has generally been answered in one of two ways: a “maximalist” response that identifies religion as a necessary foundation for human rights, and a “minimalist” response that rejects this turn to religion. A significant portion of the book is devoted to assessing representatives of these two approaches. Chapter 2 includes a discussion of maximalist thinkers Michael Perry, Max Stackhouse, Hans Küng, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Chapters 3 through 5 consider different forms of minimalism, including that found in the work of John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum.Kao’s organization of the debate into maximalism and minimalism imposes a useful typology over a diverse range of thought while also establishing interesting points of contact and contestation among various thinkers. At the same time, because the analysis occurs at a rather high level of abstraction, it will be most useful to those already familiar with the texts and thinkers discussed. This is not a text for those seeking a summary introduction. Those less familiar will still profit from the book, but perhaps more from the opening and closing chapters than those discussed here. [End Page 187]Following the discussion of maximalism and minimalism, the final chapter of Kao’s book presents a model for moving beyond the “extremes” of these two dominant approaches (8). At its most basic, human rights, Kao argues, must be grounded in a nonreligious moral realism. This “straddling” of the “minimalist-maximalist divide” is, in certain respects, a creative and bold proposal for reshaping debate about religion and human rights. It defends the universality of human rights as being necessarily grounded in objective values but does not narrowly locate these values in religious sources. Yet, while offering some intriguing insights, the themes of this final chapter never quite come together to form a comprehensive theory. Kao’s proposal is more a selective appropriation of insights from others than a totalizing alternative.Because Kao does not fully develop her model, it is difficult to assess the particular rights claims that follow from its premises. This is evident, for instance, in Kao’s discussion of the so-called marginal cases, where it remains unclear what specific principles and methods have been employed to develop normative positions (160–61). This disconnect between theory and application limits the book’s ability to have an impact on core disputes within human rights. The most significant fault lines within the contemporary human rights debate involve the content and expanse of human rights more than their theoretical grounding, and human rights language often serves as a way to legitimize preferred political goods. Kao not only needs to defend her approach to grounding human rights but also to establish how this particular grounding informs the norms of human rights.Witte and Alexander’s edited volume, Christianity and Human Rights, addresses the relationship between religion and human rights from a quite different perspective. Whereas Kao critically assesses religion’s role as a foundation for human rights, the essays in Witte and Alexander’s book largely explore the meaning of human rights from within a Christian framework. The book does not entirely bypass questions about the warranting role of religion as such, but its concern is not to justify the role of Christianity within human rights but to develop “the budding new human rights hermeneutic of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 689 present the spirit of Catholic Christianity to contemporary man in such a way that it [Catholic Christianity, not contemporary man!] appears credible in itself and its historical development..." (emph. mine). Clearly, de Lubac's entire theology is an effort to say the opposite of what the mistranslation regrettably says. Page 46: "his articles, however, which from 1972 [typographical correction: 1942] on prepared for his works on modern (...) atheism (1944/1945)..." On pages 80 and 115, the word "mysterial" is introduced; it should be "mystical." On page 94-95, "the strict rejection of all reduction of God's living consciousness [correction: the living consciousness of God] to logical categories" is misleading because Balthasar is referring to man's living consciousness of God. Page 101: " We experience what a true theology [correction: theologian] is for de Lubac..." On the same page there are two typographical errors, adding a parenthesis and omitting quotation marks. Abbe Monchanin's De l'esthetique a la mystique (From Aesthetics to Mysticism) is mistranslated as From Asceticism to Mysticism on page 102. This 1991 edition translates Henri de Lubac's name for the first and only time as " Henry de Lubac" on page 118. Michael Waldstein's and Susan Clement's translations are fine and readable. The Catholic Universtiy of America Washington, D.C. MARK D. NAPACK Hans Urs von Balthasar. His Life and Work. Edited by DAVID L. SCHINDLER. San Francisco: Communio Books/Ignatius Press, 1991. Pp. 305. This is an important contribution to English-language scholarship on the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. As such it marks a nice complement to the volume edited by John Riches, The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986). Schindler's volume is a slightly edited translation of Hans Urs von Balthasar: Gestalt und Werke, edited by Karl Lehmann and Walter Kasper (Cologne: Communio, 1989). Most of the articles appeared in one or more of the many editions of Communio International Catholic Review, the periodical founded by Balthasar. The richness of the volume lies not only in the quality of individual selections but in the range of material that is covered. Many areas of Balthasar's life and work have remained little known, especially in the English-speaking world, until the appearance of this volume. The pur- 690 BOOK REVIEWS pose of the book, according to Schindler's preface, is "to help display [Balthasar's] vision and the character and range of his service to the Church and to culture" (p. xiii). There are several essays in the volume which shed new light on Balthasar's life, as well as on his philosophical position. Peter Henrici's lengthy biographical sketch is the most complete such contribution available until now, even though he calls it "preliminary and inadequate " (p. 7). It is extremely useful, in conjunction with Balthasar's own autobiographical statements, to situate the written work in the context of a large mission in the Church. It is also helpful in clarifying the relationship between Balthasar and the Jesuit order: his entry into the Society of Jesus, his studies, his departure from the Jesuits, and the attempted reconciliation with them shortly before his death. The extent of his health problems, also, only underlines the value of his literary production. Many details concerning the meeting with Adrienne von Speyr and the founding of the secular institute ]ohannesgemeinschaft are also provided. Throughout these activities and the writings that surround them, "the issue is the Church in the world, not a radiating of the Church's holiness into the profane world, but the leavening of the world from within in order to make visible God's glory which still shines in this world" (p. 24). Henrici has another essay in the collection on the philosophy of Balthasar. This is a little explored area of Balthasar's writings and Henrici's contribution is especially valuable. By clarifying Balthasar's position in relation to key figures in the history of philosophy, it provides many significant hints to facilitate the integration of Balthasar's theology within the academic milieu. Balthasar reflected on the possibilities of an encounter between Catholic theology and modern thought. By the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS new appreciation of his thought. The differences between thirteenth-century and Renaissance humanism complicate the problem, but a more accurate and sensitive understanding of Aquinas's thought is by no means impossible. It is high time that Protestants put the old division behind them, high time they reclaim this part of their heritage-and they can rightly claim Aquinas as part of their heritage, since he did live and work (...) in the context of a still undivided Christendom. He is one of the teachers we can ill afford to do without as we attempt to meet the challenges of our own day (p. 174).' Whether Professor Vos achieves this objective can only be judged by those to whom the work is primarily addressed. Many of the misperceptions pointed out can be traced to misuse of St. Thomas's works in the era when he was the mandated author for Roman Catholic studies in philosophy and theology. Those who value the genuine thought of St. Thomas and regret the continuation of these misrepresentations by so-called Catholic traditionalists will welcome the contribution made by this book. THOMAS c. O'BRIEN Chambersburg, Pennsylvania Christian Dogmatics. By CARL BRAATEN (editor), GERHARD 0. FORDE, PHILIP J. HEFNER, ROBERT \V. JENSEN (editor) HANS SCHWARZ, and PAUL R. SPONHEIM. Two Volumes. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984, xxii + 569 (Vol. 1) and xvii+ 621 (Vol. 2). Recent years have seen the proliferation among American Protestants of a seemingly odd genre: group dogmatics. For whatever reason, the present generation of' systematic theologians has not produced a dogmatics or systematic theology text that the theology teachers of' America seem to be happy with. So, a variety of' groups have banded together to divide all theology into so many parts,and as a team produce a usable theology text. The best known of' these group texts is Christian Theology: An Introduction to its Traditions and Tasks, edited by Peter G. Hodgson and Robert H. King (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), but there have also been Methodist and Conservative Evangelical versions. Christian Dogmatics is the latest example of' the genre, and an ambitious one. While the authors are all teachers at American Lutheran seminaries, their audience is the entire Christian Church. Their goal is to produce a " complete dogmatics " which will serve as " a textbook in theological instruction and a resource for those who practice the arts of ministry." (!,xvii-xviii). The volumes are organized in twelve loci, where a locus is " a point at which the historic teachings and theological investigations of BOOK REVIEWS 153 the church are brought into focus" (I, xix) : Prolegomena to Christian Dogmatics (Braaten, 78 pp.), The Triune God (Jenson, 114 pp.), The Knowledge of God (Sponheim, 76 pp.), The Creation (Hefner, 94 pp.), Sin and Evil (Sponheim, 104 pp.), The Person of Jesus Christ (Braaten, 104 pp.), The Work of Christ (Forde, 100 pp.), The Holy Spirit (Jenson, 78 pp.), The Church (Hefner, 70 pp.), The Means of Grace (Schwarz and Jenson, 142 pp.), Christian Life (Forde, 80 pp), and Eschatology (Schwarz, 116 pp.). Each locus consists of 4 to 7 chapters, each chapter beginning with a few summarizing sentences. The authors sometimes organize the loci "systematically" (e.g., the knowledge of God is organized according to questions that parallel Aristotle's four causes); more often the author's combine the systematic and the historical, moving through Seriptures and tradition and modernity as well as providing a conceptual frame for their topic. A lengthy index of names and subjects in volume two (II,591-621) helps the reader track the overlap between these loci. A variety of threads tie the disparate contributions together. The six authors share a common outlook on contemporary theology, which might be called a theological version of "the radical middle." Decisive for this outlook is the conviction that there is a doctrinal core to the faith which it is the central task of dogmatics to explicate (I,5). Although the problems and conceptualities of the modern world are addressed throughout the text, they are not allowed to set the interpretative agenda. In keeping their eyes fixed on this interpretative task, the authors avoid both the left and right. Liberation theology, process... (shrink)

While Aby Warburg, in his younger years, advocated a completely rational, mathematical understanding of the world, he lost confidence in this scientific ideal later on. This article proposes that this crucial shift in perspective, redefining Warburg’s opinions about empiricism, rationality and thus cultural evolution as a whole, took place very early on, namely in the summer of 1890. The present article studies, for the first time, an unpublished student essay by Warburg on probability theory. While discussing stochastic and the possibility (...) of mathematical prediction of future events, Warburg’s belief in the infallible exactitude of numerical sciences got first cracks. (shrink)

In the first writings of his Jena period, Hegel defends the conception of an original identity through which subjectivity is "suspended". The present article aims to expound this conception as a contribution to the theory of intentionality which focusses on the unity of conceptual and sensuous (or motivational) elements as a condition of the intentionality of perception and action. In a first step, it is argued that in his early writings, by "philosophy of subjectivity" Hegel understands positions which separate the (...) conceptual and the sensuous elements of perception and action, conceiving at the same time the subject as a distanced controller of sensibility. Thus, the hegelian critique of the philosophy of subjectivity is directed against such a conception of intentionality and its subject. In a second step, the hegelian alternative to this picture is exposed - the conception of an indissoluble unity of thinking and sensibility as being fundamental to perception and action. Finally, the picture of self-consciousness which arises in the Phenomenology of Spirit is analyzed as an implication of the conception of intentionality adopted in the earlier writings. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The contributions in this volume focus on the Bayesian interpretation of natural languages, which is widely used in areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and computational linguistics. This is the first volume to take up topics in Bayesian Natural Language Interpretation and make proposals based on information theory, probability theory, and related fields. The methodologies offered here extend to the target semantic and pragmatic analyses of computational natural language interpretation. Bayesian approaches to natural language semantics and pragmatics are based on (...) methods from signal processing and the causal Bayesian models pioneered by especially Pearl. In signal processing, the Bayesian method finds the most probable interpretation by finding the one that maximizes the product of the prior probability and the likelihood of the interpretation. It thus stresses the importance of a production model for interpretation as in Grice’s contributions to pragmatics or in interpretation by abduction. (shrink)

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference in Meran in October 2015 on intercultural aesthetics with the addition of some external contributions. Two general papers on the topic concerned (Ram Adhar Mall, Giusi Strumiello) are followed by contributions on music (H.-C. Günther on Mahler and on Busoni, Yoon Young Serena Kim on Yun Isang), Indian and Chinese art (Ram Adhar Mall, Harro von Senger, Gabriele Kiesewetter), urban planning (Thilo Hilpert) and film (Udo Steinbach). The contributions on art and urban (...) planning are amply illustrated. The appendix contains colour reproductions of an exhibition of watercolours by the Chinese artist Hong Yi with an introduction to the artist's work and detailed explanations of the painting by Gabriele Kiesewetter. (shrink)

"In den Jahren nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg wurde im Jenaer Zeiss-Werk im Auftrag des Deutschen Museums in München das Projektionsplanetarium als immersives Modell des Universums entwickelt. In ihm hallte eine lange Geschichte von Himmelsgloben, Armillarsphären, Astrolabien und mechanischen Planetarien nach, die seit der Antike als astronomische Demonstrationsobjekte gedient hatten. Erstmals aber fand sich diese Aufgabe nun mit einer Simulation des raum-zeitlichen In-der-Welt-Seins des Menschen verbunden. In the years following the First World War, commissioned by the German Museum in Munich, the (...) projection planetarium was developed as an immersive model of the universe at the Zeiss plant in Jena. In it, a long history of celestial globes, armillary spheres, astrolabes, and mechanical planetaria resonated, which had served as astronomical demonstration objects since ancient times. For the first time, however, this task was associated with a simulation of man’s spaciotemporal being-in-the-world. ". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture eds. by Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, and Mark G. ToulouseMichael R. Fisher Jr.The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, and Mark G. Toulouse LOUISVILLE: WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2016. 250 pp. $25.00The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture is notable for (...) interested readers of religion and contemporary popular culture. The authors expand scholarly understandings of religion and the sacred, but [End Page 194] more important, the spaces where they appear in society by providing analysis of the religious nature of six aspects of American culture. These "meaning-making" aspects of popular culture function as "altars of worship." They are the body and sex, big business, entertainment, politics, sports, and science and technology. How religious devotion and worship are manifest in everyday life of Americans is fully examined. This book offers an alternative entry to classical secularization debates that have garnered the attention of religious scholars across fields of study. Resisting polarized battle lines in which secularization debates have positioned the death of religion on one hand, and its resilience in industrialized societies on the other hand, this book considers the idiosyncratic nature of secularization by foregrounding historical, national, and local differences that exist in various contexts.The authors argue that "religion is important to Americans. But the religion we practice is often not the religion we confess" (1, emphasis in the original). According to them, Americans basically believe in a serviceable, friendly "God" who meets their every desire and need. In contemporary American culture, the objects that are deemed to fulfill Americans' desires and passions become their God(s) and thus their religion(s). They support their argument by citing studies by the Pew Research Center on "America's Changing Religious Landscape" and "'Nones' on the Rise," which indicate a decrease in religious affiliation among adults and a notable tension between Americans' professed religious beliefs and their actual religious practices. Given these trends, they contend that Americans discover and produce religious meaning in places outside traditional or conventional sacred spaces. Consequently, they confess, Americans have "laid our fair share, if not our all" (186) on the six altars of American popular culture. Thus, though studies indicate a trending decline in traditional religious affiliations, for the authors, this does not "sound the death knell of religion" (185). Religion, they insist, exists in different shapes and practices.In The Religious Experience of Mankind (1969), the religious historian Ninian Smart offers a seven-dimensional scheme for the interpretation of religion: doctrinal, mythological, ethical, ritual, experiential, institutional, and material. This scheme is adopted in the book as a framing device for interpreting the religious nature of popular culture. The sevenfold scheme is paralleled in each of the six chapters dedicated to a particular altar. Making their case, the authors draw on and weave thinkers from across disciplines and over time as critical interlocutors—from Friedrich Nietzsche, Rudolf Otto, Paul Tillich, and Robert Bella to Cornel West, Audre Lord, and bell hooks, among many others—in examining the religious significance of popular culture.Although a truly engaging and provocative book, The Altars Where We Worship is not without challenges. Some readers may find certain categories of analysis underdeveloped. For example, what makes big business or politics sites of popular culture? This line of inquiry may raise questions for readers about what constitutes popular culture in general. Such challenges, however, do not [End Page 195] detract from the overall accomplishments and contributions this book offers the study of religion in the United States.Michael R. Fisher Jr.Vanderbilt UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 68J The Theology of Henri de Lubac: An Overview. By HANS URS VON BALTHASAR. Translated by Joseph Fessio, S. J., Michael M. Waldstein (Preface), and Susan Clements (Conclusion). San Fran· cisco: Ignatius Press/Communio, 1991. Pp. 127. $9.95 (paper). Except for the preface and conclusion, Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Theology of Henri de Lubac first appeared as the long essay, "Henri de Lubac-L'oeuvre organique d'une (...) vie," in Nouvelle Revue Theologique 97 (1975), 897-913 and 98 (1976), 33-59, and translated by Joseph Fessio, S.J., as "The Achievement of Henri de Luhac" in Thought 51 (1976), 7-49. The preface was added soon after for the German edition, Henri de Lubac: Sein organisches Lebenswerk (Frei· burg im Breisgau: Johannes Verlag, 1976). The conclusion was added for Balthasar's and Jesuit Georges Chantraine's Le Cardinal de Lubac: L'Homme et son oeuvre (Paris: Ed. Lethielleux, 1983). While de Lubac denied " a true, personal philosophical or theo· logical synthesis " in the multiplicity of his oeuvre, he did believe that there could he found " a pattern that constitutes its unity " (de Luhac on p. 10). A more systematic work had been planned with Bruno de Solages, Peres Congar, Chenu, and others. In de Luhac's words, " the lightning bolt of Humani Generis killed the project" (p. 11). We can only wonder at what might have been. At the center of de Lubac's thought is a spiritual perception of "the essence of Christian mysticism" (p. 11). A hook on this subject was planned hut never completed; its fundamental importance was indicated by de Luhac in 1956: "I believe my hook on mysticism has inspired me for a long time in everything I work on; in its light I make my judgments and gain the criteria for ordering my thoughts and ideas" (p. 11). The purpose of Balthasar's little book is to trace these "great spiritual options of the master" (p. 26). Balthasar wrote his preface after he had received from de Luhac the manuscript that would he published as his Memoire sur l'occasion de mes ecrits (1989; ET: At the Service of the Church (1993]). Accord· ing to Balthasar, this "meandering" text has great value in display· ing the organic unity of de Luhac's writings in the contexts which occasioned them-" as well as the legendary condemnations and banish· ments prepared for him by his order and by the Church" (p. 9). De Luhac adopted the " fundamental elan " (p. 13) of Blondel, Marechal, and Rousselot. They enabled de Lubac to see in Thomas Aquinas " the paradox of the spiritual creature that is ordained beyond itself by the innermost reality of its nature to a goal that is unreachable for it and that can only he given as a gift of grace " (p. 13). Balthasar is unambiguous in his belief in the correctness of their interpretation. 684 BOOK REVIEWS Blondel, Marechal, and de Lubac were " martyrs for truth " (p. 13). De Lubac " exposed himself to the attacks of a tutiorist scholastic theology, armed with nothing but the historical and theological truth" (p. 13). Of the three, de Lubac was the most persecuted. The conflict with scholasticism is presented in all its sharpness. One must go back to Thomas himself, over the commentatorial tradition of John of St. Thomas and Cajetan, whose work represents, in the words of Gilson, " a successful ' corruptorium Sanctae Thomae.'... Thomas has been castrated by it" (p. 14). Gilson's "unqualified assent" to de Lubac's Thomistic conclusions means much to Balthasar, because it is "the assent of the greatest authority in the field of the history of phi· losophy" (p. 15). Upon reading Sumaturel (1946), Gilson wrote to de Lubac that the difference between the scholastic and the humanist theologians, like de Lubac, in part lies in the way they understand propositions. The scholastics " understand only univocal propositions and those that seem to be univocal. The former [humanist theologiansJ, by contrast, are more interested in the truth that the proposition attempts to formulate and that partly escapes it" (p. 14). In their incomprehension and fear of analogy, the scholastics are represented as hankering after a security that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 127 les Paiens de leurs t6nebres,... de les fortifier de telle sorte contre les pr~jugez & contre les erreurs populaires qu'ils fussent incapables d'y tomber. Again, we learn that Bayle says "we do not know if a substance is by nature spiritual or corporeal, nor if the soul is immortal" with references to "Pyrrhon, B" and "Charron, O" (p. 112). Whatever Professor Mason means about substance, it (...) is not contained as far as I can see in "Pyrrhon, B"; and the point in "Charron, O" is that there is no irrefutable proof of the immortality of the soul. 2Professor Mason is following Voltaire's example more thanBayle's when he attributes to an author implications or attitudes not clearly expressed in the original. This is not to say that his conclusions are totally invalidated; on the contrary, they stand up despite his unreliability on Bayle, for his principal concern is Voltaire's reactions to the Scholar of Rotterdam. Apart from these reservations, it is good to have so important and so complicated a subject so compactly documented. CRAm B. BRVS~ Columbia University Das medizinische Weltbild des Paracelsus. Seine Zusammenhiinge mit Neuplatonismus und Gnosis. By Waiter Pagel. (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1962. "Kosmosophie", Forschungen und Texte zur Geschichte des Weltbildes, der Naturphilosophie, der Mystik und des Spiritualismus vom Sp~tmittelalter bis zur Romantik, ed. by K. Goldammer, Vol. I. Pp. xvi ~- 160. DM 24.) The new monograph series "Kosmosophie" couId not have been introduced more excellently than by Walter Pagel's work on Paracelsus which supplements and extends his earlier study Paracelsus, An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel & New York: 1958). The new series is devoted to studies in the history of science, exploring the old traditions of a "sophic" understanding of the cosmos which always existed side by side with a "logical" one, i.e., the heritage from ancient mysticism, gnosticism, alchemy, and metaphysical speculation which so "disgracefully" characterizes the beginnings of modern science. In this book, Pagel tries to locate the great physician and philosopher Theophrastus of Hohenheim called Paracelsus (1493-1541) within the history of science at that turning point between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and to understand him on the basis of the specific relationship of inheriting and modifying the traditions of neoplatonie and gnostic thought in his writings. After an introductory chapter about Paracelsus's position in the history of medicine and in contemporary times, the author investigates the neoplatonic and gnostic sources and presuppositions for the medical-physical world-view of Paracelsus. It should have been pointed out more clearly in this chapter, however, that the study of gnosticism and its effect upon the thinking of the later Hellenism is still in its beginning stages. He describes, then, Paracelsus's world of ideas as it is to be seen in the light of these neoplatonic and gnostic traditions: the doctrines of the invisible spiritual world, the astral powers, the astral body, dualism of sex, the two kinds of fire, the Logoi, the elements, primordial matter, etc. In each case, possible connections with the Hermetic writings, alchemy, gnosticism, neoplatonism, and their transmission through mysticism, cabbala, and the neoplatonic philosophers of the Renaissance (especially Marsilius Ficinus) as well as through St. Augustine have been discussed. Here are a few other distressing misrepresentations of what Bayle has to say: p. 30, on Jews; p. 30, n. 6, on the inspiration of scripture; p. 31, n. 2, on the same subject; p. 37, on miracles; p. 61, n. 1, on man's dominion over animals; p. 92, n. 4, on Christian and natural morality; p. 137, n. 4, on moral and speculative dogmas. Page 92, n. 9, refers to several pages in which Bayle's concluding remark flatly contradicts Professor Mason's interpretation. Spot checks in Moland have turned up no misrepresentations of Voltaire's thought, which is generally less qualified than Bayle's. 128 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The result is that this Hellenistic-Middle Age syncretism has had a far-reaching influence upon Paracelsus's thought. Because he was in no way a systematic philosopher, his writings are full of contradictions, developments, unitarian and dualistic tendencies, theistic... (shrink)

A volunteer effort by Artificial Intelligence researchers has shown it can deliver significant research outcomes rapidly to help tackle COVID-19. Within two months, CLAIRE’s self-organising volunteers delivered the World’s first comprehensive curated repository of COVID-19-related datasets useful for drug-repurposing, drafted review papers on the role CT/x-ray scan analysis and robotics could play, and progressed research in other areas. Given the pace required and nature of voluntary efforts, the teams faced a number of challenges. These offer insights in how better to (...) prepare for future volunteer scientific efforts and large scale, data-dependent AI collaborations in general. We offer seven recommendations on how to best leverage such efforts and collaborations in the context of managing future crises. (shrink)

Edited by two leading scholars of the history of early modern skepticism, this volume collects thirteen essays from a variety of North and South American as well as European authors. Following the groundbreaking work of Richard H. Popkin and others such as Richard A. Watson, José Maia Neto, and James Force, much has been made about skepticism in relation to early modern natural sciences and to religion. Curiously little, however, addresses skepticism and early modern politics. This volume works to fill (...) that lacuna and takes another step along the path on which Laursen embarked in his The Politics of Skepticism and in the cascade of publications following it. The volume adds complexity and scope, too... (shrink)

The paper by Hans-Christian Lucas on “The ‘Sovereign Ingratitude’ of Spirit toward Nature” in The Owl of Minerva, 23, 2 : 131-150, is of special interest, if only because, as Lucas says, the transition from nature to spirit is as important for Hegel as is the much criticized transition from the logic to nature. Moreover, the section on anthropology in the Geistesphilosophie is unique, difficult, and much neglected by commentators. My own interest in it dates back (...) longer than I can remember, but Lucas does not seem to be aware of my paper on the subject. He, however, has had access to more recent texts than were at that time at my disposal, from which he cites helpful passages. On these sources I am not in a position to comment, but I should like here to address afresh some of the points bearing on complaints Lucas makes against Hegel’s lack of argument and failure to demonstrate the links between the stages of the dialectic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Love and Christian Ethics: Tradition, Theory, and Society eds. by Frederick V. Simmons and Brian C. SorrelsMichael Le ChevallierLove and Christian Ethics: Tradition, Theory, and Society Edited by Frederick V. Simmons and Brian C. Sorrels WASHINGTON, DC: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. 400 pp. $119.00 / $39.95Fredrick Simmons and Brian Sorrels present an impressive, cohesive volume of essays by twenty-two leading scholars who engage different facets of (...) love and theological ethics. although dedicated to gene outka—thus setting the broad theme and establishing his work as a privileged point of reference throughout the volume—Love and Christian Ethics should not be confused with a Festschrift. it accomplishes far more in intellectual diversity and depth, making a significant contribution to scholarship.The volume is organized into three sections: tradition, theory, and society. across the first section, the authors address love within major sources and figures, treating scripture, greek philosophy, augustine, aquinas, Kant, and Kierkegaard. Far from a textbook presentation, each essay marks out its own argument regarding the place of love in the respective subject. The second section is devoted to major theoretical questions raised within scholarship on love and ethics, addressing topics like the relation of eudaimonism to love (a running thread that emerges in the book), forgiveness, friendship, and evolution. The final section moves into the field of practice, application, and society, including an essay critically engaging implicit presentations of love found in the law, another treating love and international development, and one poignant essay by Mark D. Jordan calling for a moratorium on strong pronouncements in sexual ethics until ethicists can cultivate a loving knowledge of sex. This final section also includes reflections on love in the Jewish and Muslim traditions. Simmons's introduction and William Werpehowksi's afterword provide useful bookends. although no single thesis blandly governs this volume as a whole—incorporating complementary, divergent, and competing positions—in constructing this volume, Simmons and Sorrels argue that love is not eclipsed in Christian ethics but has a rich and variegated tradition. Werpehowski appraises [End Page 210] the volume as a whole, identifying key threads that emerge, like relations of love to eudaimonism and the theme of neighbor love.The volume is admirable in its breadth and depth. It offers a robust encounter with major figures and questions, providing historical recovery as well as critical and constructive engagement. That said, depth can work against breadth, with essays like Oliver O'Donovan's demanding a familiarity with Augustine Confessions that will send the reader back to his or her bookcases. Missing too are other notable figures and topics, such as the Protestant Reformers, Christian mystics, and feminist ethicists. Nevertheless, these gaps do not diminish the volume as a whole. I found myself again and again excited by the insights offered by the contributors, unsettling easy assumptions regarding the relation between eudaimonia and love, illustrating the depths of accounts of friendship for thinking about polity and mediating institutions, and cautioning against overconfidence in sexual ethics as its boundaries destabilize.Love and Christian Ethics would benefit scholars, teachers, and students alike. Its broad engagement with contemporary scholarship on love makes it a useful starting point for any researcher dipping or diving into this field. Introducing professors to key and sometimes obscured questions within figures and topics, it can round out lectures and help introduce students to the growing edge of scholarship on love. It would serve as a useful reference for any upper division or graduate course engaging with this significant, but often ignored, theme in Christian ethics.Rare is it to find a book that embodies the very theme it presents. These essays on love are a scholarly gift of the best sort—one not diminished but enhanced in its sharing.Michael Le ChevallierUniversity of ChicagoCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Witness of the Body: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Martyrdom ed. by Michael L. Budde and Karen ScottElizabeth Sweeny BlockWitness of the Body: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Martyrdom Edited by Michael L. Budde and Karen Scott Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011. 238 pp. $22.00In Michael L. Budde’s introduction to this volume, he asserts its twofold purpose: to identify criteria for distinguishing (...) authentic Christian martyrdom from inauthentic and to return martyrdom to a more central place in Christian life. This collection of essays—some of which were presented as part of a lecture series at DePaul University during the 2006–7 academic year—aspires to reconsider and redefine martyrdom in order to remove both the “freak-show element” and the “heroic exceptionality” associated with martyrdom in modern culture (viii). The goal of the volume, which is part of the Eerdmans Ekklesia Series, is to resituate martyrdom within the everyday life of the church, and the majority of the essays argue for the ongoing significance of a revised martyrdom for this distinctive community. These eleven essays are as much about martyrs themselves as they are about how martyrdom is perceived, received, and remembered. The interdisciplinary volume [End Page 211] is successful in encouraging a broader understanding of martyrdom, one that may not necessarily include death, and in drawing attention to the ongoing need for memorializing Christian martyrs to inspire commitment and transformation.The volume is divided into four parts representing both chronological and substantive distinctions. Part 1, “Martyrdom as the Church’s Witness,” introduces the problem of isolating the requirements of martyrdom and defining who fits into this category, a challenge addressed throughout the volume. Part 2, “Martyrdom Builds the Church,” discusses positive elements of martyrdom, especially with respect to the value of women’s bodies, drawing on both the early female martyrs in general and Joan of Arc in particular. Part 3, “Martyrdom Destroys the Church,” recounts some of the most difficult aspects of modern martyrdom, calling for a more accurate history and recognition of the emergence of a new kind of martyrdom in which one’s loyalty is to country, not faith. Part 4, “Martyrdom and the Future Church,” calls attention to the need to continue celebrating the memory of martyrs and describes the contemporary Christian martyr as a peacemaker not seeking martyrdom in the traditional sense of the word.What stands out as a theme across a number of the essays, and what I judge to be a valuable contribution to Christian ethics, is an emphasis on the way martyrs live(d), suggesting that what can and should be emulated by Christians today is a commitment to action on behalf of conversion and transformation. Tripp York’s essay rightly argues that martyrdom need not be viewed as merely reactionary, as a way of life in opposition to something, but as transformative and “for the sake of the world” (37). Michael Budde makes a similar assertion that martyrdom is better defined as deep loyalty than as treason, thereby suggesting that this kind of loyalty to Christ ought not to be limited to the special calling of a few but seen as the commitment of all Christians. Stephen Fowl’s essay conveys the meaning of the title of this volume, identifying martyrdom as part of the larger practice of “believers’ witness of the body to God’s drama of salvation” (44). He argues that in life or death, one can magnify Christ, and one’s bodily actions and responses can reflect one’s character and commitments. Emmanuel Katongole provides powerful recognition of the ways in which Christian martyrs “keep the church from sleeping” (193) and “embody the mundane gestures and practice of peaceableness in their everyday living” (199). This volume succeeds in shifting the focus from martyrdom in the traditional sense—being put to death because of one’s faith—to the ways Christians today remember, respond to, and emulate the lives and actions of martyrs. [End Page 212]Elizabeth Sweeny BlockUniversity of ChicagoCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue ed. by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph WhiteFrederick Christian BauerschmidtThomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue. Edited by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013. Pp. viii + 304. $36.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8028-6976-0.The essays collected in Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue are the fruit of (...) a conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2011. As presented in this volume, they form five pairs, one each by a Catholic and a Protestant theologian, focused on the topics of (1) the being of God, (2) the Trinity, (3) Christology, (4) grace and justification, and (5) election, providence, and natural law. Thomas Joseph White provides a lengthy introduction, and Bruce McCormack concludes with a brief epilogue. All of the essays at least touch on both Barth and Thomas, though in varying degrees. It must be noted that, with the exception of the essays by White and Wawrykow, the Catholic interlocutors generally engage Barth less deeply than the Protestant interlocutors engage Thomas. Why this might be the case is a point to which I will return.Under the topic of the being of God, Robert Jenson begins with a brief, reflective essay focusing on the radical implications of Barth’s account of God’s “being” or “reality” as “event,” “I,” and “decision” (Ereignis, ich, Entscheidung), and on the content of God’s essence as “the loving One.” Jenson argues that if we follow Barth’s trajectory, we arrive at the paradoxical view that “God’s being is an implosion of freedom, so sheerly contingent that it is not contingent on anything and so is the one necessity. And it is an explosion of love, so sheerly a commitment to the other that it is freedom” (51). Thomas gets only a brief mention, though presumably he stands as the conventional account of God’s being that provides the background against which the true radicalism of Barth’s account can appear. Richard Schenk offers a Catholic counterpoint, engaging not so much with Barth himself as with Jenson and other post-Barthian thinkers such as Ebeling. His essay responds to Jenson’s paradoxes of imploding freedom and exploding love by educing from Thomas’s writings “a theodicy-capable theology of the cross” (57) that operates within a commitment to God’s impassibility as traditionally understood. Implicit in Schenk’s argument is the wager that a God who is, qua [End Page 301] God, beyond all suffering is a richer resource of hope for suffering humanity than is a God who suffers with us in his divinity.Under the topic of the Trinity, Guy Mansini’s essay launches something of a preemptive strike on Bruce McCormack, who, in a widely discussed essay (“Grace and Being,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, 92-110) and in subsequent writings, has developed Barth’s notion of Christ’s obedience on the Cross as the manifestation in time of his “intra-trinitarian obedience” to the Father in order to argue against traditional notions of divine being and in favor of something like the view Jenson sketches in his essay. Mansini draws on the patristic and monastic traditions as well as Thomas to explore the humility and obedience of Christ, arguing that obedience can only be a virtue of a created will: “’To obey,’ like ‘to be caused’ or ‘to be moved,’ belongs exclusively to the created order” (82). Thus, Christ is humble and obedient qua human, not qua divine, and therefore one cannot sensibly speak of an intra-trinitarian obedience but only of the obedience of Christ’s human will to the one divine will that is common to the Father, Son, and Spirit. McCormack’s essay, which follows, seeks to show that the position he has developed by way of Barth’s theology can also be grounded in Thomas’s theology of the relation of divine processions and missions, at least as this has been interpreted by Matthew Levering. McCormack reads Thomas with notable ecumenical generosity, seeing in Thomas’s view that the... (shrink)

Ever since the first meeting of the proponents of the emerging Logical Empiricism in 1923, there existed philosophical differences as well as personal rivalries between the groups in Berlin and Vienna, headed by Hans Reichenbach and Moritz Schlick, respectively. Early theoretical tensions between Schlick and Reichenbach were caused by Reichenbach’s Kantian roots, who himself regarded the Vienna Circle as a sort of anti-realist “positivist school”—as he described it in his Experience and Prediction. One result of this divergence was Schlick’s (...) preference of Carnap over Reichenbach for a position at the University of Vienna, and his decision not to serve as a co-editor with Reichenbach for the journal Erkenntnis that they jointly established in 1930. A second split rooted in different views on induction and probability, which culminated in the Hans Reichenbach’s refusal to serve as an invited author on probability within the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science series ed. by Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris and Otto Neurath from 1938 onwards. In this regard it is remarkable that also Richard von Mises, who was the second leading figure of Logical Empiricism in Turkish exile, criticized the theory of probability put forward by his former Berlin colleague. In this paper I analyse this controversial exchange, drawing on the relevant correspondence and asking whether these philosophical differences were a typical feature of the pluralism inherent in Logical Empiricism in general. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Christianity, Democracy, and the Shadow of Constantine eds. by George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle PapanikolaouMyles Werntz and Logsdon SeminaryChristianity, Democracy, and the Shadow of Constantine Edited by George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou new york: fordham university press, 2017. 304 pp. $125.00 / $35.00Since the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, one of the new rapprochements that has emerged is between the worlds of Eastern Orthodoxy and that (...) of Protestants and Catholics. In this set of constructive essays, contributors from each of these veins of Christianity explore the relationship between Christianity and democracy from their vantage point. Drawing together political theologians, ethicists, and historical theologians, the volume creates an encounter between "East" and "West" that addresses some critical questions facing the whole of Christianity.The first section of essays details the post-Communist situation for Orthodox churches and how they wrestle with traditions of human rights. These essays set the scene broadly for the second set of essays, which bring together Protestant and Catholic political thought together with their Orthodox counterparts. In this section, essays from Luke Bretherton on consociational democracy, Eric Gregory on Augustine and the Good Samaritan, and Nathaniel Wood on Russian visions of theosis in a liberal world make for compelling and informative contributions. The third section—a historical set of essays—explores the actual influence of Constantine's theopolitical vision in the East and West. Contributions from luminaries such as Timothy D. Barnes and J. Bryan Hehir elucidate some of the effects of a theopolitical synthesis in various historical epochs. Barnes's essay on what did and did not occur in Constantinople is of particular note here. The final section, a single essay by Stanley Hauerwas, "How (Not) to Be a Political Theologian," is a vintage essay reflecting on legacies of "Constantinian" thinking in American Christianity.The most prominent strengths of the volume are twofold. First, it brings into focus one of the critical challenges facing Christianity globally: political representation. Presently, the globe is engulfed in any number of challenges to popular sovereignty, whether conceived of in terms of revolution or tyranny. As such, democracy—while imperfect and theologically problematic in many respects—is the de facto form of governance standing between these extremes. Christian traditions of all persuasions have reasons to be suspicious of even the best of these alternatives, making this set of essays all the more pressing. Second, it contributes in a practical way to the ecumenical labors taking place in synods and councils across the world. While the World Council of Churches has undertaken some of the common moral issues affecting various Protestant [End Page 202] communions, cooperation among Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic communions remains ad hoc. Volumes such as this contribute to the practical work of more highly publicized doctrinal discussions.As with most edited volumes, the vast theme of the book tends to be cumbersome; linking together Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox sources around democracy and liberalism creates a wide-ranging but at times unfocused conversation. The quality of the essays themselves is quite uniformly good—a rarity among edited volumes!—but such a wide range of topics and contributors makes for a set of essays that is more indicative of future discussions than definitive. In short, the volume illuminates and provocatively indicates future directions without being a definitive statement on democracy and Christianity, opening new doors for future work.Myles WerntzHardin-Simmons UniversityLogsdon SeminaryHardin-Simmons UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The paper by Hans-Christian Lucas on “The ‘Sovereign Ingratitude’ of Spirit toward Nature” in The Owl of Minerva, 23, 2 : 131-150, is of special interest, if only because, as Lucas says, the transition from nature to spirit is as important for Hegel as is the much criticized transition from the logic to nature. Moreover, the section on anthropology in the Geistesphilosophie is unique, difficult, and much neglected by commentators. My own interest in it dates back (...) longer than I can remember, but Lucas does not seem to be aware of my paper on the subject. He, however, has had access to more recent texts than were at that time at my disposal, from which he cites helpful passages. On these sources I am not in a position to comment, but I should like here to address afresh some of the points bearing on complaints Lucas makes against Hegel’s lack of argument and failure to demonstrate the links between the stages of the dialectic. (shrink)

Ever since the first meeting of the proponents of the emerging Logical Empiricism in 1923, there existed philosophical differences as well as personal rivalries between the groups in Berlin and Vienna, headed by Hans Reichenbach and Moritz Schlick, respectively. Early theoretical tensions between Schlick and Reichenbach were caused by Reichenbach's (neo) Kantian roots (esp. his version of the relativized a priori), who himself regarded the Vienna Circle as a sort of anti-realist "positivist school"—as he described it in his Experience (...) and Prediction (1938). One result of this divergence was Schlick's preference of Carnap over Reichenbach for a position at the University of Vienna (in 1926), and his decision not to serve as a co-editor with Reichenbach for the journal Erkenntnis that they jointly established in 1930 (which was then co-edited by Carnap and Reichenbach from 1930 to 1938). A second split rooted in different views on induction and probability, which culminated in the Hans Reichenbach's refusal to serve as an invited author on probability within the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science series ed. by Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris and Otto Neurath from 1938 onwards. In this regard it is remarkable that also Richard von Mises, who was the second leading figure of Logical Empiricism in Turkish exile, criticized the theory of probability put forward by his former Berlin colleague. In this paper I analyse this controversial exchange, drawing on the relevant correspondence and asking whether these (meta) philosophical differences were a typical feature of the pluralism inherent in Logical Empiricism in general. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Asian American Christian Ethics: Voices, Methods, Issues eds. by Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup AhnAlex MikulichAsian American Christian Ethics: Voices, Methods, Issues Edited by Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup Ahn WACO, TX: BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015. 355 PP. $44.95This volume opens new horizons in Christian ethics. Editors Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup Ahn suggest two ways of conceptualizing Asian American Christian ethics. They describe (...) the first as "agency- or advocacy-centered" and the second as "bringing Western and Asian philosophical, theological, and cultural traditions together in critical dialogue and for selective retrieval for Asian American Christian ethics" (11). While the contributors to this book rightfully develop agency and advocacy-centered approaches within complex histories of colonialism and oppression, they also emulate Michael Walzer's "connected critic" who is not naïvely or uncritically "neutral" or dispassionate. The contributors appropriately use co-critical approaches that make possible "new and creative 'traditioning'" that does not uncritically reinscribe some "purer" Asian past or "undefiled by Western contact" (15).Nearly every chapter unpacks the deeply problematic term "Asian American" that was originally employed by activists who sought a new identity as "self-determining subjects rather than as 'oriental objects' in the United States" (4). But the term obfuscates multiple diversities within richly divergent national, geographical, colonial, and cultural histories and traditions.Hoon Choi explores the complexity of gender and sexual identities through a richly textured intersectional approach, examines how these identities become intertwined in double and triple binds, and reinterprets Christ as the fullness of humanity against Western hegemony and Eastern sexism. Choi's vibrant reinterpretation of Jesus Christ is complemented by a wise and compassionate pastoral approach.Sharon M. Tan calls for a reinterpretation both of Christian and Asian traditions of marriage, family, and parenting that will "entail a bicultural approach to life" and "creative new ways of retelling their stories and imagining their futures" (42). Tan underscores the difficulty of describing a Pan-Asian approach to marriage, family, and parenting by exploring the complexities of "Tiger Mothers," multigenerational households, the "special case of refugees," transnational families, and biculturality and adaptation.Hannah Ka deconstructs a wide range of Christian approaches to environmental ethics and reinterprets Sallie McFague's Body of God ecological theology through a distinctive Asian American approach. Drawing on beautiful and challenging stories from her own family as well as Confucian and Taoist [End Page 215] thought, Ka suggests a reinterpretation both of existential and functional indebtedness between human beings and all living things. She contends that "humans cannot survive even a day without … all other inorganic and organic existents on earth, while [other existents] can flourish without humans. The life of the human species is not merely interdependent with, but utterly indebted to, all the other existents on earth, rendering humans more vulnerable than others" (221).These are only a few examples of how this volume exemplifies clear, cogent, and constructive Christian ethics. Chapters by Ilsup Ahn ("Virtue Ethics"), Keun-Joo Christine Pae ("Peace and War"), Christina A. Astorga ("Wealth and Prosperity"), Ki Joo (KC) Choi ("Racial Identity and Solidarity"), SueJeanne Koh ("Health Care"), Hak Joon Lee ("Immigration"), Irene Oh ("Education and Labor"), and Jonathan Tran ("Cosmetic Surgery") all expand the horizons of contemporary ethics. I highly recommend this text for scholars to engage new horizons of Christian ethics and to use for a wide variety of upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in Christian ethics as well as constructive and pastoral theology.Alex MikulichLoyola University New OrleansCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Spatial neglect is a disorder of space-related behaviour. It is characterized by failure to explore the side of space contralateral to a brain lesion, or to react or respond to stimuli or subjects located on this side. Research on spatial neglect and related disorders has developed rapidly inrecent years. These advances have been made as a result of neuropsychological studies of patients with brain damage, behavioural studies of animal models, as well as through functional neurophysiological experiments and functional neuroimaging.The Cognitive (...) and Neural Bases of Spatial Neglect provides an overview of this wide-ranging field of scientific endeavour, providing a cohesive synthesis of the most recent observations and results. As well as being a fascinating clinical phenomenon, the study of spatial neglect helps us tounderstand normal mechanisms of directing and maintaining spatial attention and is relevant to the contemporary search for the cerebral correlates of conscious experience, voluntary action and the nature of personal identity itself.The book is divided into seven sections covering the anatomical and neurophysiological bases of the disorder, frameworks of neglect, perceptual and motor factors, the relation to attention, the cognitive processes involved, and strategies for rehabilitation.Chapters have been written by a team of the leading international experts in this field.This will be essential reading for neuropsychologists, neurologists, neurophysiologists, cognitive neuroscientists and psychologists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women, Ethics, and Inequality in US Healthcare: “To Count among the Living” by Aana Marie Vigen, and: New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views ed. by Mary E. Hunt and Diann L. NeuKelly Denton-BorhaugWomen, Ethics, and Inequality in US Healthcare: “To Count among the Living” By Aana Marie Vigen NEW YORK: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2011. 304 PP. $31.11New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views Edited by Mary E. Hunt (...) and Diann L. Neu WOODSTOCK, VT: SKYLIGHT PATHS, 2010. 384 PP. $24.99In this age of the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision, which declared that corporation owners’ religious commitments could provide a basis for denial of their employees’ critical reproductive health insurance benefits (with particular impact on the lives of women), ethical investigation of medical sociology, theology, and the realities of women’s lives is more important than ever. Originally released in 2006, Aana Marie Vigen’s Women, Ethics, and Inequality in US Healthcare makes important headway through these complex waters. And for this volume in the Palgrave Macmillan Series on Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice, editors Dwight N. Hopkins [End Page 202] and Linda E. Thomas set forth the goal to “pioneer conceptual work and boundary-pushing effort engaging Black Religion or Womanist thought, and social justice” (xiv).Rereleased in paperback in 2011 with a new preface, Vigen’s updated health statistics reveal how racial-ethnic minorities “continue to be overrepresented among the ranks of the uninsured and/or of those living in poverty” (xliii). Her project is to better understand what enables and perpetuates this inequitable distribution and oppression, and to suggest methods of redress and reform. But in order to accomplish any of this, society in general and especially those with socioeconomic power—including administrative leaders in health care, medical providers, and ethicists—need to listen much more deeply to the stories of those who are most vulnerable and are being most negatively affected by current health care systems and practices. For Vigen, this meant a decision to focus on in-depth interviews with eight black and Latina women with breast cancer, in addition to six health care providers.With this method, Vigen pursues a very ambitious goal to, as she puts it, “begin a conversation among several distinct dialogue partners: medical sociology, biomedical ethics, ethnography, theology, and feminist social ethics” (5). She uses a “reflexive” practice, striving for openness to the new insights and ideas that emerged from this creative, multidisciplinary encounter. However, even before launching her interviews, her analysis of the process to seek approval from the Institutional Research Board illustrates the “clash of cultures” she would encounter, as she writes, “one cannot take for granted that others will share the view that women of color are able to speak truth in their own right and out of their own experiences—without comparison to others—about human personhood, dignity, and adequate healthcare quality” (107). It is to Vigen’s credit that she remained undeterred; if anything, the struggle she encountered with powerful leaders helped to confirm and focus the value of this work: not to tell every story, “but to tell a few with care and attention to detail” (108).Vigen’s ethnographical method makes it possible for her to illuminate and address not only stark inequities but also much subtler dynamics of racism combined with socioeconomic discrimination. Along the way, she illustrates a wide variety of experiences of oppression. In contrast to the experience of white patients, these female patients of color tended to be sent to the accounting/financing office before being allowed to see the doctor (144). Though white patients may express strong emotions in medical settings, some women of color felt pressured to reassure white doctors that they could be rational and not overly emotional (141). Socioeconomic and racial discrimination often reinforced one another in these settings. Perhaps most alarming, Vigen notes, the white care providers she interviewed seemed to be very unconscious of [End Page 203] their own racial identity and its role in medical care encounters (165). Her final chapter concludes with a series of immensely practical ethical mandates that would help alter these oppressive patterns. Clergy, students of ethics, and anyone... (shrink)

In today’s academia, scholars are compelled to be productive. The result is an overabundance of publications that often are formulaic follow-ups to the debates du jour. The essays included in this collection are a fortunate exception to this rule—they are original and make refreshingly bold claims. The articles are devoted to the reception of Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics in the Middle Ages and show the vitality of the cluster of scholars known as the “Copenhagen School of Medieval Philosophy.” Even though (...) the school does not identify as “neo-scholastic”, many of its members accept the idea that scholastic interpretations are relevant to our understanding of Aristotle’s thought. Undoubtedly, this is a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Visionary Approach: Lynn A. De Silva and The Prospects for Buddhist-Christian Encounter ed. by Elizabeth J. Harris and Perry Schmidt-LeukelLeo D. LefebureA VISIONARY APPROACH: LYNN A. DE SILVA AND THE PROSPECTS FOR BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN ENCOUNTER. Edited by Elizabeth J. Harris and Perry Schmidt-Leukel. Sankt Ottilien: EOS, 2021. 390 pp.This volume presents essays exploring the legacy of Lynn A. de Silva (1919–1982), a Methodist pastor and biblical (...) scholar in Sri Lanka who was an important pioneer of Buddhist-Christian studies. Most of the chapters are based on presentations at the conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies that met at the Benedictine Archabbey of St. Ottilien in 2019. Some of the authors, including Wesley Ariarajah, Aloysius Pieris, and Shantha de Silva (youngest son of Lynn de Silva), knew de Silva personally and offer warm tributes to his memory. Other authors work for institutions that carry on the types of projects that de Silva pioneered: Marshal Fernando is the Director of the Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue, which de Silva founded and directed from 1962–1982; Indunil J. Kodithuwakku Kankanamalage, who is from Sri Lanka, serves as the Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; and Peniel Rajkumar leads the Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation Programme of the World Council of Churches.Some authors examine how de Silva developed and modified his understanding of the relationship between Buddhist and Christian perspectives. In his early work in the 1960s, de Silva responded to Buddhist misunderstandings of Christian faith and practice. In the 1970s, he explored how Buddhist teachings could be related to biblical and Christian perspectives in ways that could enhance Christian faith. Toward the end of his life de Silva pondered the degree to which Buddhist and Christian perspectives could be relativized and harmonized.Benedictine Abbot Petrus Hohensteiger traces the development of de Silva's responses to Buddhist belief in reincarnation. De Silva came to reject traditional Protestant Christian eschatology that teaches that a single lifetime will be followed by eternal heaven or hell; but he also rejected Theravada belief in rebirth. Instead, while remaining a Protestant Christian, he developed a belief in purgatory that allowed for self-purification and growth in sanctity after death. De Silva interpreted Buddhist belief in rebirth and Christian belief in resurrection as symbolic pointers toward a single, shared truth of self-negating, self-emptying love.Andreas Nehring focuses on de Silva's study of Buddhism as a popular religion combining Buddhist perspectives with folk religious practices. Drawing on the critical hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur, Nehring emphasizes the ways in which de Silva's [End Page 403] sympathetic attention to folk Buddhism can shift the dialogue between Buddhists and Christians in positive ways. Gudrun Löwner explores how de Silva turned to visual art and aesthetics to promote mutual understanding between Buddhists and Christians. Amos Yong reflects on de Silva's pneumatological anthropology in conversation with Theravada Buddhists, mentioning the shared effort to find an alternative to eternalism or nihilism. While noting many points of convergence, Yong finds an important difference from Theravada anthropology in de Silva's eschatological interpretation of the corporate and resurrected Spiritual Body of the Apostle Paul.Kurt Gakuro Krammer reflects on how Buddhist-Christian dialogue can change one's understanding of the human being. Observing that most European Buddhists have thus far avoided dialogue, he proposes that de Silva can offer a helpful model of dialogical understanding but also poses the pointed question of whether dialogue has any soteriological impact, such as upon efforts toward social action. This volume is a very important contribution that will be of interest to all persons involved in Buddhist-Christian dialogue.Leo D. LefebureGeorgetown UniversityCopyright © 2022 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 303 philosophical, artistic) forms as a vivid protest "from within." If, on the contemporary scene, religion wants to actualize itself and the Church "to answer the question implied in man's very existence" (p. 49), then theology has to use the material of an "existential analysis" of the various cultural realms, confronting this material "with the answer implied in the Christian message" (p. 49). Part II gives (...) so to say instances of such a theological appreciation of cultural expressions. Successively passed in review are: religious "language" (signs and symbols), artistic "style," existential philosophy, psychoanalysis, science, morality, and education. Though each essay is illuminating, those on Existential Philosophy: its historical meaning (1944) and The Theological Significance o/Existentialism and Psychoanalysis (1955) may be called brilliant. Part III contains comparisons of theological thought in Germany and America (in which the author gives some personal reminiscences), and of religion in America and Russia, together with An Evaluation o/Martin Buber (1948). The book concludes with Part IV: Communicating the Christian Message: a Question to Christian Ministers and Teachers (1952), which appears to be relevant to Christians in general. It may be said that it has been a privilege for America to have received among the intellectual refugees of the "catastrophe" of 1933 this powerful German thinker, just as it must have bcen a privilege for Dr. Tillich to be able to elaborate his thought in a country where it received such great response in thoughtful circles. One recognizes behind this thinking the essential continental problems of the relation between philosophy of religion and theology, between religion and culture, between personal existence and industrial society: questions becoming American problems as well. In all his work, the role of religion is positively appreciated, and an appeal is made to a religious "courage to be," reminding man in his estranged life situation of his essential nature and his final destiny. It is not with the deus est esse, neither the certitudo ex se ipsis, nor the ultimate concern, nor the unconditional, that we should like to voice here some questions with regard to the author's views. Rather it is with two seemingly minor questions. Accepting his circumscription of religion as "the dimension of depth," we would be interested to see if within or beside a Theology o] culture, a Theology o] religion would also be possible, having as its subject religious expressions under and outside the authority of the Gospel. A second question arises from the author's statement: "Self is good, self-affirmation is good, self-acceptance is good, but selfishness is bad because it prevents both self-affirmation and self-acceptance" (p. 145). Although this phrase may have its particular context in Moralisms and Morality (1955), I personally wonder if the deflated Self does not risk becoming the essential prison of industrial society, in which, unfortunately, there is no Nirwana.... JACQUES WAA_RDENB URG University o[ California, Los Angeles BOOK NOTES John A. Mourant, ed., Introduction to the Philosophy oI Saint Augustine. Selected Readings and Commentaries. University Park, Pa., Pennsylvania State University Press [1964]. Pp. ix + 366. $7.50. This is an excellent introduction to the philosophy of Augustine as well as to the general Romanizing of the Platonic tradition. Professor Mourant's thirty pages of Introduction (supplemented appropriately by the great "Prayer" in which the Saint explains the world to his Creator), the bibliographical references, and the critical comments, all provide a concise exposition of the varioua ways in which Augustine attempted to organize his faith into a system of thought. The selections from the treatises, sermons, and letters are well arranged and contain several new translations into English by competent scholars. Both the editor's exposition and Augustine's own efforts to face the basic issues created by the meeting of diverse systems of doctrine and language enable the student to become aware of the amazing range of Christian philosophy created by a man who was both a busy bishop and an inquisitive truth-seeker. The reader can follow Augustine himself in dealing with his problems, instead of being confronted with the literature and context of modernization or of apologetics. 304 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Since this volume is evidently and... (shrink)

In this analysis we discuss the change in criteria for triage of patients during three different phases of a pandemic like COVID-19, seen from the critical care point of view. Availability of critical care beds has become a hot topic, and in many countries, we have seen a huge increase in the provision of temporary intensive care bed capacity. However, there is a limit where the hospitals may run out of resources to provide critical care, which is heavily dependent on (...) trained staff, just-in-time supply chains for clinical consumables and drugs and advanced equipment. In the first phase, we can still do clinical prioritisation and decision-making as usual, based on the need for intensive care and prognostication: what are the odds for a good result with regard to survival and quality of life. In the next, the resources are mostly available, but the system is stressed by many patients arriving over a short time period and auxiliary beds in different places in the hospital being used. We may have to abandon admittance of patients with doubtful prognosis. In the last phase, usual medical triage and priority setting may not be sufficient to decrease inflow and there may not be enough intensive care unit beds available. In this phase different criteria must be applied using a utilitarian approach for triage. We argue that this is an important transition where society, and not physicians, must provide guidance to support triage that is no longer based on medical priorities alone. (shrink)

Die Beitrage dieses Bandes verdeutlichen die Rolle Spinozas als Denkfigur, als Anreger und als Anstoss - bis hin zum Feindbild - in der deutschen Geistesgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts, indem sie die divergenten Aspekte seiner Rezeptions- und Wirkungsgeschichte ergrunden.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 375 7he Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Edited by JAMES F. CHILDRESS and J mrn MACQUARRIE. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1986. Pp. xvii + 678. $29.95. This is a second, revised edition of The Dictionary of Christian Ethics, prepared by John Macquarrie and published in 1967. This new edition follows Macquarrie's conception of a dictionary, but expands it. It includes several subject areas, basic ethical (...) concepts, biblical ethics, theological ethics, philosophical ethics, non-Cbistian ethics; psychological, 8ociological, political, and other relevant concepts; and articles on substantial issues such as war and abortion. The criterion for selection, as stated by the editor, was the importance of the topic for Christian ethical reflection. The aim was to indicate both what is agr.eed upon and what is controversial. About 40% of the entries from the first edition have been included. These are generally updated so as to include recent developments. The selection of subjects, the way in which they are treated and the list of contributors, reflect the ecumenical character of contemporary Christian ethics. The dictionary includes a host of valuable contributions. Readers who consults the work will no doubt evaluate the entries in terms of their particular purposes. This reviewer found most useful the entries which expla~ned particular basic concepts, for example Autonomy; those dealing with schools of thought, for example, Platonic Ethics, Marxist Ethics, or the contribution of particular traditions, for example, Jewish Ethics, Puritan Ethics, Official Roman Catholic Social Teaching, Eastern Orthodox Christian Ethics, and the many entries dealing with Biomedical Ethics and peace issues. 'rhere are a number of articles on topics which are most important, but for which it is often difficult to find a succinct and comprehensive treatment; such are the contributions on "Embodiment," and " Feminist Ethics." There are a number of useful entries on urg.ent contemporary questions such as Energy and Environmental Ethics. Practical questions such as the care of the aged and the ethics of counseling are also addressed. Each article has a short bibliography appended. Numerous cross-references to other relevant entries are most helpful in providing complementary information. There is a thorough index of names. The dictionary is not conceived as a compendium of the accepted or " official " ethical teachings of churches or religious traditions. Mention could be made, however, of the entry on " Official Roman Catholic Social Teaching." '¥here such teachings exist, they am usually indicated. There are some cases where the churches and/or traditions clearly differ. The approach which is most helpful to ethical debate is to acknowledge such differences clearly, with an appropriate statement of the relevant teaching. The editor himself (James F. Childress), in his own contributions, fol- 376 BOOK REVIEWS lows this p1'0cedure. Some Roman Catholic readers may find the articles on Abortion and Contraception, while excellent in other ways, less satisfactory in this respect. The general focus seems intended to be " middle of the road "; more conservative or radical groups may find their views insufficiently represented. No doubt some of the positions presented would be disputed by Christian ethicists. But the treatment of difficult points is balanced and fair. There are, unfortunately, some inaccuracies. The following examples deserve mention. In the article on Nullity, the Roman Catholic annulment is wrongly equated with papal dissolution of the marriage bond. In the article on Virtue, it is said that St. Thomas held that along with the infused supernatural virtues there are "infused natural virtues." St. Thomas spoke ratht>r of infused theological virtues and infused moral virtues (I. II, Q.63, 3.) In the article on deterrence, it is stated that the strategy of "mutual assured destruction ", dating from the 1960s, still provides the framework of American deterrence strategy. This point would be challenged by some representat.ives of the military, who claim that M.A.D. has not been policy for some years. The same article interprets the U.S. Bishops' Pastoral Letter, The Challenge of Peace. as basing its (conditional) acceptance of nuclear deterrence on the distinction between threatening to do an immoral aet without intending to do it, and threat coupled with the intent. That is, deterrence is aceepted as a "bluff." This is not a correct reading... (shrink)

People judge positive information to be more alike than negative information. This good-bad asymmetry in similarity was argued to constitute a true property of the information ecology (Alves, H., Koch, A., & Unkelbach, C. (2017). Why good is more alike than bad: Processing implications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21, 69–79). Alternatively, the asymmetry may constitute a processing outcome itself, namely an influence of phasic affect on information processing. Because no research has yet tested whether phasic affect influences perceived similarity among (...) stimuli, we conducted 5 Experiments that also tested whether phasic affect can account for the higher judged similarity among positive compared to negative stimuli. In three experiments, we affectively charged pictures of different Pokemon by pairing them with monetary gains and losses (Exp. 1a, 1b) as well as positive and negative trait words (Exp. 2); yet, the evaluative charge did not differentially influence perceived similarity among the Pokemon. Experiment 3 replicated the basic similarity asymmetry among positive and negative words, and found that it was unaffected by externally induced phasic affect. Experiment 4 showed that phasic affect had no influence on perceived similarity of non-evaluative words either. We conclude that albeit a weak influence of phasic affect on perceived similarity of stimuli cannot be ruled out entirely, it can most likely not account for the typically medium to large sized asymmetry in similarity among positive and negative stimuli. (shrink)

BackgroundClustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats-associated technology may allow for efficient and highly targeted gene editing in single-cell embryos. This possibility brings human germline editing into the focus of ethical and legal debates again.Main bodyAgainst this background, we explore essential ethical and legal questions of interventions into the human germline by means of CRISPR-Cas: How should issues of risk and uncertainty be handled? What responsibilities arise regarding future generations? Under which conditions can germline editing measures be therapeutically legitimized? For this (...) purpose, we refer to a scenario anticipating potential further development in CRISPR-Cas technology implying improved accuracy and exclusion of germline transmission to future generations. We show that, if certain concepts regarding germline editing are clarified, under such conditions a categorical prohibition of one-generation germline editing of single-cell embryos appears not to be ethically or legally justifiable.ConclusionThese findings are important prerequisites for the international debate on the ethical and legal justification of germline interventions in the human embryo as well as for the harmonization of international legal standards. (shrink)