In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Lewis E. HahnGeorge C. H. Sun, President, John Howie, Professor Emeritus, Thomas Alexander, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kenneth W. Stikkers, Professor and Chair, Randall Auxier, Professor, Robert Hahn, Professor, Joseph Wu, Professor Emeritus, Elizabeth R. Eames, Professor Emeritus, Martin Lu, Professor of Philosophy, George Kimball Plochmann, Professor Emeritus, Matt Sronkoski, Philosophy Graduate and Academic Adviser, Dave Clarke, Professor Emeritus, Eugenie Gatens-Robinson, Professor Emerita, Hans (...) H. Rudnick, Professor Emeritus, Stephen Bickham, Professor EmeritusPresident, and Don Mikula (bio)The following testimonials were offered on the occasion of a memorial gathering for Dr. Lewis E. Hahn held on February 19, 2005, and were compiled for presentation here by Sharon (Hahn) Crowell.A Tribute to Dr. Lewis E. Hahn (1908-2004) from a Global PerspectiveGeorge C. H. Sun President, Thomé H. Fang Institute, Inc., Mobile, AlabamaAmong the philosophical community in both the East and the West, no word of introduction is needed for our beloved Master, who was the recipient of numerous distinctions and honors, with titles that included "Man of the Year in Philosophy" and "Award of Lifetime Achievement." The very name "Lewis E. Hahn" itself already stands now for genuineness, dedication, and fulfillment.A great work is a dialogue with eternity; a great person is such a work. In less than thirty years he succeeded in developing Carbondale from what had been a small college town in the Midwest into the Mecca of American philosophy. His most important achievements were the Dewey Center and the Pepper Archives that he helped install at SIUC These, among other such institutions, will remain a unique contribution, a glory of American philosophy, and a monument in the history of human thought.For posterity Lewis E. Hahn will remain an object of wonder and amazement. How is it possible for one human being to have accomplished so much, so well, and in so short a span of time—less than one century—in breadth, depth, and diversity? Some one hundred years ago, by bridging the gap between the New World and the Old, William James was hailed as the great genius of international friendship among philosophical thinkers, but we now find a greater genius in Lewis E. Hahn, who succeeded in bringing together the peoples of East and West from at least four continents: Europe, Australia, America (both North and Latin America), and Asia. To my knowledge, few of his predecessors and contemporaries have been half so widely read and liberal-minded as he was, in view of the range and scope of the Library of Living Philosophers that he helped continue after the passing of its founder, Dr. Paul A. Schilpp.What type of man was Hahn, our younger generation will wonder? Only a pluralist approach can help us understand the true character of such a legendary pluralist-contextualist. In short, he was "a full personality." As I recall, while working on my dissertation with him in the 1970s, we had a brief discussion on Confucius, the sage of ancient China. "A full personality!" was his laconic assessment. Suddenly I realized, to quote the Analects: "The Master is talking about himself!" For, as the Buddhists put it, only a Buddha can understand a Buddha. Or, as William James put it, only one who has philosophy can appreciate philosophy. Many friends [End Page 1] of my generation admire him so much; Te Chen of Hong Kong calls him "a great Confucian in America." Those who regret the loss of many precious Confucian virtues in China today have now rediscovered them in the person of Lewis E. Hahn! If Nietzsche called Kant "a great Chinese in Königsberg," it is simply because he had not encountered our own Master.A paradigm of academic leadership, Dr. Hahn is simply irreplaceable—this is a tribute I personally heard in Carbondale in the late 1960s. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was a superb administrator, and he could have been the best Secretary of the State we ever had, for he possessed more in the way of philosophical wisdom than all his predecessors put together! As a great teacher, he was no less "serene, good, learned, wise, and ardent" than... (shrink)

This paper is an examination of the Christology and Pneumatology that C. S. Lewis read from the apparent prefiguring of elements of the Incarnation‐Resurrection narrative in religious myths, and also his assertion that the incarnation‐resurrection narrative operates on us both as fact and myth. After an initial examination of the term myth and mythopoeia, Lewis' writings on the myth that became reality are discussed along with examples of prefigurement. Through his understanding of natural theology and his cautious respect (...) for human imagination and in contrast to his earlier deference for the conclusions of the Victorian religionist and social anthropologist James George Frazer, Lewis came to regard these prefigurements as the work of the Holy Spirit – intimations of God's salvific action in Christ – though Lewis' orthodoxy saw human imagination as flawed through original sin. This leads us to ask three questions: first, how do these prefigured ideas come to be in these myths and how do these intimations, splintered fragments of the true light, relate to Lewis' understanding of Christ as the light of the world; second, how does the Incarnation‐Resurrection narrative act/operate on us as a myth, whether spoken or read ; and third, is there internal evidence for a mythopoeic interpretation within the Incarnation‐Resurrection narrative? Our conclusions can be illustrated by a brief examination of Lewis' own Christian myth – Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia– originally written for a Christian audience but now read by mainly non‐Christian/post‐Christian children and adults. (shrink)

Metatheoretical codifications of the sociological writings of George H. Mead, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Alfred Schutz highlight the importance of the idea of life and of a commitment to a realist perspective. The authors turn common concern with the life concept in three directions: evolutionary emergence, historical rationality, and phenomenological analysis. In spite of differences, these directions share an empirically grounded starting point in the situated individual and its environment, and end with suggestions for a universalist rationality. Preliminary (...) metatheoretical principles from these authors offer a start toward a vital realist sociology fitted to the universal conditions of social life. (shrink)

From early work of N. Goodman to recent approaches by H. Field and D. Lewis, there have been attempts to combine 2nd order languages with calculi of individuals. This paper is a contribution, containing basic definitions and distinctions and some metatheorems, to the development of a general metatheory of such theories.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beyond EngelClinical Pragmatism as the Foundation of Psychiatric PracticeDavid H. Brendel (bio)Keywordsbiopsychosocial model, pluralism, pragmatism, psychiatryFor many years now, there has been growing recognition of the powerful role of pragmatic reasoning in numerous disciplines, including bioethics, medicine, law, political science, and philosophy (Dickstein 1998; Rosenthal, Hausman, and Anderson 1999). But until recently, philosophical pragmatism was neglected by scholars exploring the clinical challenges and theoretical underpinnings of psychiatry. In his (...) noteworthy article The Biopsychosocial Model and Philosophic Pragmatism: Is George Engel a Pragmatist?, Bradley Lewis offers a significant contribution to the small but gradually increasing literature in this area. Lewis appropriately presents Engel as a major figure in twentieth-century American medicine and psychiatry, a critic and a visionary who dared to question the dominant paradigm of biomedical reductionism (Engel 1977)—a paradigm that led to important scientific advances, but also restricted the physician’s understanding of the patient as a complex individual with an inner world and interpersonal relationships. Lewis argues that medicine and psychiatry a generation after Engel’s seminal 1977 paper can be revitalized by reinterpreting Engel in the intellectual tradition of classical American pragmatism and neo-pragmatism. Placing Engel in the pragmatic tradition, Lewis suggests, could enhance the biopsychosocial model and have substantial benefits for both individual patients and society as a whole.There is no disputing Lewis’s argument that a pragmatic philosophy of medicine and psychiatry is a noble goal. In fact, in my book Healing Psychiatry: Bridging the Science/Humanism Divide (Brendel 2006), I present philosophical pragmatism as the most compelling theoretical approach to clinical psychiatry in the twenty-first century—the approach that is most likely to empower the clinician and the patient to collaboratively develop a treatment plan that heeds the multidimensional complexity of the patient’s life, recognizes the confusion and uncertainty that grows out of this complexity, and aims for a favorable therapeutic outcome. Drawing on work of the classical American pragmatists and contemporary pragmatic bioethicists, I identify four dimensions of philosophical pragmatism that provide a sound foundation for clinical work, which I call the “four ps”: (1) diagnostic formulations and treatment plans in psychiatry are practical insofar as they focus on results rather than a commitment to any particular theory; (2) they are pluralistic [End Page 311] insofar as they incorporate explanatory concepts that span the biopsychosocial spectrum; (3) they are participatory and collaborative, not imposed authoritatively by the clinician; and (4) they are provisional, open-ended, and malleable to newly acquired information and evolution of the patient’s condition.Lewis casts Engel as a philosophical pragmatist who battled the Goliath of biomedical reductionism that had come to dominate American medicine and psychiatry in the latter half of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, however, regardless of how elegantly Lewis reinterprets Engel, he cannot render him a full-blown pragmatist for the medicine and psychiatry of the twenty-first century. Lewis provides quotations to suggest that Engel valued a results-oriented clinical sensibility, for example “the value of a scientific model is measured not by whether it is right or wrong but by how useful it is” (Engel 1980). But Engel was not fully committed to clinical outcome as the supreme judge of theory in medicine and psychiatry. Lewis notes that Engel understood the biopsychosocial model as less “a matter of compassion and humanity” and more a matter of “rigorous application of the principles and practices of science”; he was a man of his time who could not fully escape the scientism of the day. Working within this scientistic world, he distinguished himself by reintroducing psychological, sociological, and humanistic concepts into clinical medicine, which had become obsessed with the power and robustness of the natural sciences but had neglected the suffering human subject and the social context of illness. Engel undoubtedly hoped the biopsychosocial model would lead to better clinical results but, unlike the classical American pragmatists and contemporary pragmatic bioethicists, he did not make a systematic case for privileging clinical outcome above strict adherence to scientific theory.In fact, Engel’s biopsychosocial model runs the risk of becoming a reified end in itself; those who unquestioningly espouse its basic tenets are in danger of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Logic Pamphlets of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Related PiecesIrving H. AnellisFrancine F. Abeles, editor. The Logic Pamphlets of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Related Pieces. The Pamphlets of Lewis Carroll, 4. New York-Charlottesville-London: Lewis Carroll Society of North America-University Press of Virginia, 2010. Pp. xx + 271. Cloth, $75.00.Until William Bartley’s rediscovery and reconstruction of Dodgson’s lost Part II of Symbolic Logic, Lewis Carroll’s reputation (...) in logic, when taken seriously, rested upon his few published articles on logical paradoxes and puzzles, while his published books, The Game of Logic and Symbolic Logic, were regarded as suitable perhaps as pedagogical tools, but dismissed otherwise as amusements, on a par with the Alice works. Richard Braithwaite asserted (“Lewis Carroll as Logician”) that “Carroll regarded formal and symbolic logic not as a corpus of systematic knowledge about valid thought nor yet as an art for teaching a person to think correctly.” He suggested that Dodgson used his pseudonym for his popular and whimsical writings, reserving his legal name only for his serious mathematical products. Philosophers practicing linguistic analysis in their assault on nonsense deriving from misuse of language meanwhile developed an interest in Carroll (e.g. George Pitcher, “Wittgenstein, Nonsense, and Lewis Carroll”). Abeles, on the contrary, stresses the seriousness of Dodgson’s pedagogical and popularizing mission (195–99).Bartley’s discovery opened the door for reevaluating Dodgson as a serious logician, and Abeles has been in the forefront of that reevaluation. Her general introduction and introductions to the main divisions of this collection of Carroll’s publications (and additional material from his Nachlass and a handful of publications of others, composed in response to Carroll’s published articles) place his serious logical work and its significance in historical perspective, providing a deeper, more sophisticated view than found in Bartley’s “Editor’s Introduction” to Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic. Abeles also offers brief introductions to the individual entries, which describe their physical characteristics and circumstances of composition.Dodgson aligned with the majority of those British logicians of his day, starting with George Boole, who understood formal logic to be Aristotelian syllogistic, and symbolic logic to be syllogistic logic expressed algebraically. His notational innovation was employing indices to terms so that, independently of the arrangement of terms, propositions could easily be read; thus, “xy0” can be read as “no x are y” or “no y are x” and “x1y0” as “all x are not y” or “no x are y”. In dealing with the classical elimination problem in the class calculus—to determine the maximum information, without duplications, obtainable from a given set of premises—Dodgson in his later work and unpublished letters anticipated several concepts of automated theorem proving.Central to both geometry and to formal logic are the rules of logical inference that establish the validity of arguments and guarantee that conclusions inferred from true [End Page 506] premises are true. The modern analytic tableaux, or tree method, is a fundamental tool in this regard, both for deriving theorems and for determining the validity or invalidity of the proofs for propositional calculus and first-order predicate calculus.Introducing his reconstruction of Part II of Symbolic Logic, Bartley noted that, along with the logic diagrams that Carroll devised, he also devised a tableau method that strongly resembled Beth’s semantic tableaux. Abeles went more deeply and convincingly into that resemblance in her earlier research. Beth’s tableaux, together with Hintikka’s model sets, were the direct ancestors of Smullyan’s analytic tableaux, which in turn are the theoretical basis for the Robinson resolution method that continues to be central to much work in programming logic.Abeles has also shown that the work in Studies in Logic by Charles Peirce and his logic students at Johns Hopkins University served as a source of inspiration for Dodgson. More critically, she demonstrated that Dodgson devised and employed the tree method for carrying out proofs of syllogisms and chains of syllogisms, or soriteses, in Part II of Symbolic Logic (see her “Lewis Carroll’s Method of Trees: Its Origins in Studies in Logic,” Modern Logic 1 [1990]: 25–34). The tree... (shrink)

There is a well-worn image and phrase for libertarianism: "atomized individualism." This hobgoblin has spread so thoroughly that even some libertarians think their philosophy unreservedly supports private persons, whatever the situation, whatever their behavior. Smith's Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism, corrects this misrepresentation with careful intellectual surveys of Hume, Smith, Hobbes, Butler, Mandeville, and Hutcheson and their respective contributions to political philosophy.

Philosophy of history before the nineteenth century was based on the classical theory of history. That theory, in justifying the purpose of historical studies, maintained that history was a storehouse of good and bad examples; was of particular use in educating statesmen, since it provided them with vicarious experience; and was a more compelling moral guide than the abstractions of philosophy. The unquestioned authority of Polybius and other ancient historians, as well as. of the definitions of history by Pseudo-Dionysius and (...) Cicero , perpetuated the exemplar theory. The rise of professional, academic historical study rendered it irrelevant; Bolingbroke was its last notable exponent. (shrink)

This article attempts to show the continuing practical relevance of hermeneutics through the example of legal interpretation. The article begins with the very concrete nature of legal hermeneutics that forms everyday legal practice – the interrelation of meaning and application – and expands at a more theoretical to show how legal hermeneutics, and hermeneutics more generally, offers what Ricoeur calls an interpretive “choice in favor of meaning.” The choice in favour of meaning underscores the restorative character of hermeneutics that legal (...) hermeneutics can epitomize. The article concludes with some of the challenges facing contemporary legal hermeneutics. (shrink)

In Oneself as Another, Ricœur famously writes of the ethical intention as “aiming at the ‘good life’ with and for others, in just institutions.” This article explores the potential meaning of “just institutions,” a theme underdeveloped in Ricœur’s work. While many have argued that institutions necessarily reify and so cannot aim toward just ends, the article draws on Ricœur’s differentiation between objectification and reification to show why this need not be the case. While reification destroys human value and meaning because (...) it reduces human activity to a thing, objectification characterizes the positive externalization of ourselves in objects—in words, deeds, structures, and institutions. Institutions such as the law are structures that can positively objectify our just aspirations, even if we must continually guard against these structures’ reified reduction. Ricœur shows us how objectification, including objectification of values in institutions, can be something not only positive but necessary in order for values to flourish. (shrink)

It is a common metaphor that the text is a window onto the world that it depicts. I want to explore this metaphor and the insights it may offer us for better understanding legal interpretation. As in the opening epigraph from James Boyd White, I shall develop the metaphor of the text as window in three ways: the text may be transparent, opaque, or translucent. My goal will be to argue that the best way to understand legal interpretation is to (...) conceive of the legal text as translucent, but along the way I will compare the merits also of considering the legal text as either transparent or opaque. (shrink)