Although Gregory wrote very little about this. he acknowledged that natural reason can lead us from the orderliness of the physical world to the existence of God; in this, he followed the tradition of Athanasius and other Greek fathers. Unlike Aquinas, he did not seek to present the argument a; deductive: in fact his argument is inductive, and of die same kind as - we now realize - scientists and historians use when they argue from phenomena to then explanatory (...) cause. Gregory wrote hardly anything about how one could obtain knowledge of the truths of the Christian revelation by arguments from non-question-beggining premises; but in his conversations with the Turks he showed that he believed that there are good arguments of this kind. Almost all of Gregory's writing about knowledge of God concerned how one could obtain this by direct access in prayer: this access, he held is open especially to monks, but to a considerable degree also to all Christians who follow the divine commandments. (shrink)

The fourteenth-century Greek hesychast and controversialist, Gregory Palamas, has been so successfully cast as "the other" in Western theological discourse that it can be difficult to gain a sympathetic hearing for him. In the first part of this book, Norman Russell traces the historical reception of Palamite thought in Orthodoxy and in the West, and investigates how "Palamism" was constructed in the early twentieth century by both Western and Eastern theologians (principally Martin Jugie and John Meyendorff) for polemical (...) or apologetic purposes. Russell argues that we need to go behind these ideological constructions in order to gain a true perception of the teaching of Gregory Palamas. In his recent survey of Palamite scholarship, Robert Sinkewicz noted that it is now time to raise the larger questions. The second part of the book attempts to do this, following the contours of Palamas' thinking in three areas: his relationship to tradition, his philosophy, and his theology. Russell shows that Palamite thought, when freed of misunderstanding and misrepresentation, has the potential to enrich our understanding of divine-human communion. This study contributes to the changing paradigm of scholarship on Palamas, nudging it towards the point at which Palamite thought can be used fruitfully by contemporary Western and Eastern theologians without the need to subscribe to what has been regarded as "Palamism". (shrink)

The 13th and 14th centuries represented the most productive and influential period in the history of philosophy and theology in the West. A parallel and less influential (for the West) proliferation of arguments and theories took place in the East, at the same time, as a result of the defence of the Hesychastic movement offered by St Gregory Palamas and his followers. The papers brought together in this volume discuss the importance of Palamite ideas for the understanding of (...) God in terms of divine energies, and for contemporary approaches to solving perennial problems in science, metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. Some of the contributors take a more reserved evaluation of the Palamite corpus, preferring to highlight similarities and differences between Palamas and the chief representatives of Medieval Scholasticism, such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Ockham. Other essays offer a radical re-evaluation of the Western history of philosophy and theology, preferring to bring out the reasons for Western philosophical and theological shortcomings and providing a wider critique on Western culture. Contributors to this volume include some of the top scholars on Palamite studies from the fields of philosophy, theology, aesthetics, cultural criticism, and art theory. As such, it represents a particularly useful resource for advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers in Christian theology and philosophy, Byzantine cultural studies and aesthetics. (shrink)

In what follows, I examine the views of Metropolitan Amfilohije’s views on St Gregory Palamas and Orthodoxy, primarily focusing on his PhD thesis, which was defended at the University of Athens, Faculty of Theology in 1973, and published in Thessaloniki in the same year. I claim that his views there not only show him defending Palamas, but also highlight the need for a strengthening of Palamism in Greece and abroad. Some of the problems, which he identified in (...) 1973, exist in Orthodoxy today and his suggestion that all contemporary Orthodox intellectuals should persist in the Philosophy and Theology of Palamism seems to be the only way to solve these problems, even today. (shrink)

Gregory Palamas (1296–1357) was a prominent Byzantine monk and theologian. He is best known for his writings in defence of the hesychasts, monks of Mount Athos.

The scholarly contributions gathered together in this volume discuss themes related to the cultural, social and ethical dimension of St Gregory Palamas’ works. They relate his mystical philosophy and theology to contemporary debates in metaphysics, philosophy of language, ethics, philosophy of culture, political philosophy, epistemology, and philosophy of religion and theology, among others. The book considers a variety of topics of special interest to Christian theologians, philosophers and art historians including church and state relations, similarities and differences between (...) Palamas, contemporary phenomenologists and philosophers of language, and hesychast influences on late Byzantine iconography. (shrink)

© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Scots Philosophical Association and the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] God is a collection of papers reflecting a 2012 conference on the theology and philosophy of St Gregory Palamas. The collection is avowedly Orthodox in orientation and as such assumes the acceptance of certain normative theological principles relating both to fundamental theological positions and to the interpretation of (...) class='Hi'>Palamas. These show themselves both positively and negatively: positively with regard to the pious intention of the editor and many of the contributors, and negatively with regard to the critical position taken towards Western theology and culture. For the present reader, this is not in itself a problem and has the positive virtue of candour, but it can detract from the persuasiveness of a work that... (shrink)

The theological formulation of the “eternal manifestation of the Spirit through the Son”, developed by the patriarch of Constantinople Gregory of Cyprus in the 13th century, has been the subject of numerous studies in the 20th century and played an important role in the renewal of Trinitarian Orthodox theology. The interpretations are however diverging. Most theologians see in this formulation the manifestation of the uncreated energy, which would have been formalized later by Gregory Palamas. Others understand it (...) as a hypostatic reality concerning the third Person of the Trinity. This paper contributes to the discussion by re-analyzing the main texts of Gregory of Cyprus and of Gregory Palamas on this matter. In a first step, we defend the thesis that in the thought of the Byzantine patriarch, this expression truly concerns the hypostasis of the Spirit. In a second step, we question the existence of the theme of an “eternal manifestation” of the uncreated energy in the work of Gregory Palamas. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the concepts ‘destination’, ‘revelation’, ‘foreknowledge’, ‘will’, ‘transmission’, ‘motion’, and ‘grace’, as they appear in Gregory Palamas’ treatise De opera-tionibus divinis. According to the Christian theologian, these terms correspond to specific ways of God’s manifestation, i.e. His natural and supernatural revelation. Since they illuminate God’s energies, but not His essence, they are participated by the beings of the natural world. The first two terms mainly refer to a general version of the revelation, while the (...) third contains epistemological elements as well and the fourth contains elements referring also to the divine will. The fifth term condenses the content of the afore-mentioned terms seen as an ad extra bestowment. By means of these concepts, Palamas preserves the ontological difference between the supernatural and the natural, while, at the same time, he defines the exact way of their communion, which excludes pantheism. He introduces into the divine realm the state of distinction, which, however, does not restrict its unity at all. He accepts the development of a metaphysical multitude, which is regulated by the divine uniqueness. What emerges is not a kind of Neoplatonic polytheism, but the infinite richness of the divine existence. Thus, Palamas steadily moves within the tradition founded by Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, John Damascene, and George Pachymeres, the main characteristic of which is ontological monism. This is a tradition which formulated common places as to the content, the concepts and the relevant methodology, while the distinction between negative and affirmative theology is dominant. (shrink)

In this study, focusing our attention on Gregory Palamas’ treatise under the title Περί θείας ενώσεως και διακρίσεως, we attempt to investigate, first of all, the volitional nature and the polymorphism of the divine energies and their relation to the divine essence. We also attempt to approach the divine distinction as a good “procession” and to prove, relying exclusively on the Christian thinker’s text, the inconsistencies according to his view that arise from the positions supported by Barlaam and (...) Akindynos regarding the fact that the (divine) distinction is a creature. Regarding the matter on distinction, we conclude that it is a concept with a clearly different meaning when it comes to divine matters from the meaning that it gets when it concerns the created reality. From the gnoseological point of view, we focus our attention on the fact that the created beings are a source of knowledge for the revealed divine power-energy. (shrink)

In this paper we try to give some further evidence concerning the chronology of Palamas’ treatise Contra Beccum. Taking into consideration different parameters, external and internal, we incline to think that this treatise was composed – or, at least, reworked – in 1355, approximately at the same period when Palamas published the second edition of his Logoi apodeiktikoi.

This book attempts to resolve some of the oldest and most bitter controversies between the Eastern and Western Christian churches: those concerning the doctrine of God, the nature of salvation, and theological method, all of which converge in the doctrine of deification. Deification was the dominant patristic model of salvation and remained the essential paradigm in the East but was thought to have disappeared from Western theology by the Middle Ages. A. N. Williams examines two key thinkers, each of whom (...) is championed as the authentic spokesman of his own tradition and reviled by the other side. Taking Thomas Aquinas as representative of the West and Gregory Palamas for the East, she presents fresh readings of their work that both reinterpret each thinker and show an area of commonality between them much greater than has previously been acknowledged. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite, and: The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and PalamasDavid BradshawSaint Gregory Palamas. Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite. Translated by Rein Ferweda with Introduction by Sara J. Denning-Bolle. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications/CEMERS, 1999. Pp. 108. Paper, $17.00.A. N. Williams. The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. (...) Pp. 222. Cloth, $49.95.Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) was a Byzantine monk who rose to become Archbishop of Thessalonica and a leading theologian of the Orthodox Church. He is best known for his role in the hesychast controversy. The hesychasts (from hesychia, silence) were monks of Mount Athos who claimed that through prayer and ascetic struggle they had been enabled to see God with their bodily eyes. More precisely, they claimed to see a kind of divine radiance permeating all things, including their own bodies. They insisted that this light was not a created reality but was God himself as he manifested himself to them.When the hesychasts were attacked by an Italian monk named Barlaam, Palamas rose to their defense. The challenge he faced was that of explaining how the transcendent God could be visible to human eyes. His answer was to adapt two terms long in use in other areas of theology, ousia (substance, essence) and energeia (activity, operation). He held that whereas the ousia of God is unknowable to any created intellect, the divine energeiai can be shared in by creatures, who are thereby deified. The "uncreated light" of the monks is simply the divine energeia as it had become visible to the monks through the purification of the heart achieved by prayer, asceticism, and obedience to the divine commandments. Gregory's defense of the hesychasts was endorsed by a series of synods at Constantinople, and to this day he is commemorated in Orthodox churches on the second Sunday in Lent.The importance of Palamas for the history of philosophy lies in the fact that he presents a version of Christian thought that is deeply rooted in tradition, and by most standards fully orthodox, yet owes nothing to western scholasticism. A quick comparison [End Page 586] with Aquinas reveals several points of divergence. (1) Whereas Aquinas holds that all the divine attributes and activities are identical with the divine essence, the distinctions among them being merely quoad nos, Palamas holds that the distinction between the divine ousia and energeia is not just imposed by our perspective but is truly present in God. (2) Whereas Aquinas says little about deification and explicitly reserves the vision of the divine essence to the afterlife, Palamas insists that deification is possible in this life and that the condition of those who experience it is similar (though of course not identical) to that of the blessed after the resurrection. (3) Whereas Aquinas allows that the blessed ultimately do attain a vision of the divine essence, Palamas holds that the divine ousia is intrinsically unknowable to creatures.Whether these differences are as sharp as they seem is a matter that requires careful investigation. The first of the two works under review, Palamas's Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite, is to be welcomed for the clarification it provides of Palamas's views. It is the third of his major works to be translated into English, the others being Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts and One Hundred and Fifty Chapters. I confess to finding it less engaging than the other two; it lacks the freshness and vigor of the Triads (Palamas's earliest work) and the wide-ranging systematic character of the Chapters. Nonetheless, it does provide a helpful elaboration of the ousia -energeia distinction, particularly in the argument (88-90) that such a distinction does not compromise divine simplicity.The second work, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas by A. N. Williams, is the first book-length comparison of these two pivotal figures. It is a revision of the author's doctoral dissertation, and has a certain plodding dryness characteristic of the genre; nonetheless, it is clear and well-informed, and Williams is... (shrink)

A re-issue of Gregory Bateson's classic work. It summarizes Bateson's thinking on the subject of the patterns that connect living beings to each other and to their environment.

This clear, learner-friendly text helps today's students bridge the gap between everyday culture and critical thinking. The text covers all the basics of critical thinking, beginning where students are, not where we think they should be. Its comprehensiveness allows instructors to tailor the material to their individual teaching styles, resulting in an exceptionally versatile text.

Recreative Minds develops a philosophical theory of imagination that draws upon the latest work in psychology. This theory illuminates the use of imagination in coming to terms with art, its role in enabling us to live as social beings, and the psychological consequences of disordered imagination. The authors offer a lucid exploration of a fascinating subject.

This important book provides a theory about the nature of fiction, and about the relation between the author, the reader and the fictional text. The approach is philosophical: that is to say, the author offers an account of key concepts such as fictional truth, fictional characters, and fiction itself. The book argues that the concept of fiction can be explained partly in terms of communicative intentions, partly in terms of a condition which excludes relations of counterfactual dependence between the world (...) and the text. This communicative model is then applied to the following problems: how can something be 'true in the story' without being explicitly stated in the text? In what ways does interpreting a fictional story depend upon grasping its author's intentions? Is there always a unique best interpretation of a fictional text? What is the correct semantics for fictional names? What is the nature of our emotional response to a fictional work? In answering these questions the author explores the complex interaction between author, reader, and text. This interaction requires the reader to construct a 'fictional author' - a character in the story whose personality, beliefs and emotional states must be interpreted if the reader is to grasp the meaning of the work. (shrink)

Derrida defines différance as the “interruption of Hegelian dialectics.” Although scholars have noted that Derrida pursues his critique of Hegel by means of Hegelian concepts, the way that Derrida employs specific Hegelian concepts in his critique, such as non-positionality, self-reference, and contradiction, has not been sufficiently investigated. In this essay, I reconstruct Derrida’s critique of Hegel with special focus on the Hegelian concepts of non-positionality, self-reference, and contradiction.

Philosophers have recently argued that self-fulfilling beliefs constitute an important counter-example to the widely accepted theses that we ought not and cannot believe at will. Cases of self-fulfilling belief are thought to constitute a special class where we enjoy the epistemic freedom to permissibly believe for pragmatic reasons, because whatever we choose to believe will end up true. In this paper, I argue that this view fails to distinguish between the aim of acquiring a true belief and the aim of (...) believing what is true. While one cannot usually fail to establish that one will acquire a true belief without establishing the truth of the believed proposition, in the case self-fulfilling belief the two can come apart. I argue that insofar as the aim of belief has to do with determining whether the believed proposition is true, it will be both impossible and impermissible to believe for pragmatic reasons. (shrink)

Discusses mental processes, the role of humans in nature, experience, and the connection between myth, religion, and science.

Traduit de l'italien par Marilène Raiola et Thierry Bedouelle Préface de Jean-Robert Armogathe Le premier mérite de T. Gregory est de présenter l'état actuel des recherches, sur un mode critique, illustré par des exemples. Tandis qu'un consensus s'était établi qui voyait dans les "libertines érudits" les derniers humanistes de la Renaissance, Gregory y voit les premiers représentants d'une pensée articulée des Lumières. A une Renaissance perçue comme le dernier feu du passé il oppose une interprétation nouvelle, hardie, d'ouverture (...) des temps modernes, de genèse de la raison classique. Sans doute il faut s'entendre sur les mots : cette raison-là contient bien des éléments magiques, astrologiques, alchimiques. Mais n'avons-nous pas trop souvent procédé par anachronisme et anticipé notre conception de la rationalité sur un âge où elle se constituait, à partir d'autres éléments? Gregory décrit la mise en place de cette rationalité inchoative, la genèse de la raison classique. A partir de l'introduction. (shrink)

Landini discusses the second edition of Principia Mathematica, to show Russella (TM)s intellectual relationship with Wittgenstein and Ramsey.

This text offers a reflection on the nature and significance of narrative in human communication.

In The Decline of the West Spengler puts forward a type of philosophical anthropology, an account of the structures of human experiential consciousness and a method of “physiognomic” analysis, which I argue has dimensions that can be understood as akin to existential phenomenology. Humanity, for Spengler, is witness to the creative flux of “Becoming” and constructs a world of phenomena bounded by death, underpinned by the two prime feelings of dread and longing and structured by the two forms of Destiny (...) (Time) and Direction (Space). Human existence, Spengler argues, is future-directed and open in the sense that there is a certain degree of freedom in the ways in which humanity can actualize its existential possibilities. In the course of elaborating the existential implications of this future-orientation, Spengler introduces the concept of care (Sorge), the fundamental experiential structure. (shrink)

Gregory Currie defends the view that works of fiction guide the imagination, and then considers whether fiction can also guide our beliefs. He makes a case for modesty about learning from fiction, as it is easy to be too optimistic about the psychological insights of authors, and empathy is hard to acquire while not always morally advantageous.

This paper considers the relationship between evidence and self-fulfilling beliefs. Following Grice (1971), many philosophers hold that adopting a self-fulfilling belief would involve an impermissible form of bootstrapping. I argue that such objections gets their force from a popular but problematic model of theoretical deliberation which pictures deliberation as a function, treating the deliberation’s inputs as given, fixed prior to and independently from the deliberation. Though such a picture may seem plausible, attending to the case of self-fulfilling beliefs can help (...) us see how such a function-model is inadequate for a general understanding of theoretical deliberation. Because it is unable to accommodate the possibility that the outcomes of our deliberation can sometimes be evidence for the proposition we are deliberating about, the function model is unable to account for cases where what we believe affects the truth of what is believed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Although Alasdair MacIntyre has criticized both the market economy and applied ethics, his writing has generated significant discussion within the literature of business ethics and organizational studies. In this article, I extend this conversation by proposing the use of MacIntyre’s account of the virtues to conceive of management as a domain-relative practice that requires and develops practical wisdom. I proceed in four steps. First, I explain MacIntyre’s account of the virtues in light of his definition of a “practice.” Second, I (...) examine his distinction between “practices” and “institutions.” Third, I explain what I mean by a “domain-relative practice” and defend the claim that it is helpful to conceive of management in those terms. Finally, I highlight several features of practical wisdom as a virtue developed in and integral to standards of excellence within management as a domain-relative practice. (shrink)

The Oxford Companion to the Mind is a classic. Published in 1987, to huge acclaim, it immediately took its place as the indispensable guide to the mysteries - and idiosyncracies - of the human mind. In no other book can the reader find discussions of concepts such as language, memory, and intelligence, side by side with witty definitions of common human experiences such as the 'cocktail-party' and 'halo' effects, and the least effort principle. Richard Gregory again brings his wit, (...) wisdom, and expertise to bear on this most elusive of subjects. Research into the mind and brain has moved on in bounds in recent years, and interest in the subject has never been so high. There has been a shift in focus away from Freud's concept of the unconscious onto consciousness itself. The new edition of the Companion includes three 'mini symposia' - on consciousness, brain scanning, and artificial intelligence - with contributions from a number of specialists, and encompassing a range of approaches. Cultural as well as scientific in approach, this accessible book offers authoritative descriptions and analysis. With new entries on controversial topics such as artificial life, attachment theory, caffeine, cruetly, drama, extra-terrestrial intelligence, genetics of mental illness, imagination, lying, puzzles, and twins, this highly-anticipated second edition explores the most intriguing of subjects. (shrink)

This book surveys the leading modern theories of property - Lockean, libertarian, utilitarian/law-and-economics, personhood, Kantian and human flourishing - and then applies those theories to concrete contexts in which property issues have been especially controversial. These include redistribution, the right to exclude, regulatory takings, eminent domain and intellectual property. The book highlights the Aristotelian human flourishing theory of property, providing the most comprehensive and accessible introduction to that theory to date. The book's goal is neither to cover every conceivable theory (...) nor to discuss every possible facet of the theories covered. Instead, it aims to make the major property theories comprehensible to beginners, without sacrificing accuracy or sophistication. The book will be of particular interest to students seeking an accessible introduction to contemporary theories of property, but even specialists will benefit from the book's lucid descriptions of contemporary debates. (shrink)

How do words stand for things? Taking ideas from philosophical semantics and pragmatics, this book offers a unique, detailed, and critical survey of central debates concerning linguistic reference in the twentieth century. It then uses the survey to identify and argue for a novel version of current 'two-dimensional' theories of meaning, which generalise the context-dependency of indexical expressions. The survey highlights the history of tensions between semantic and epistemic constraints on plausible theories of word meaning, from analytic philosophy and modern (...) truth-conditional semantics, to the Referentialist and Externalist revolutions in theories of meaning, to the more recent reconciliatory ambition of two-dimensionalists. It clearly introduces technical semantical notions, theses, and arguments, with easy-to-follow, step-by-step guides. Wide-ranging in its scope, yet offering an accessible route into literature that can seem complex and technical, this will be essential reading for advanced students, and academic researchers in semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language. (shrink)

What can we learn from fiction? I argue that we can learn about the consequences of a certain course of action by projecting ourselves, in imagination, into the situation of the fiction's characters.

This paper considers the relationship between evidence and self-fulfilling beliefs—beliefs whose propositional contents will be true just in case—and because—an agent believes them. Following Grice, many philosophers hold that believing such propositions would involve an impermissible form of bootstrapping. This paper argues that such objections get their force from a popular but problematic function-model of theoretical deliberation, and that attending to the case of self-fulfilling belief can help us see why such a model is mistaken. The paper shows that on (...) a revised model of theoretical deliberation our evidence will problematically underdetermine any appropriate doxastic attitude: when belief in a proposition is self-fulfilling, our evidence is insufficient to support belief, disbelief, or even suspended judgment toward that proposition. (shrink)

With Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri reinvigorated debates in political theory and radical philosophy about the cultivation of revolutionary subjectivity. Their theorization of Empire and multitude has also significantly affected the tenor of critical approaches to educational theory during the past two decades. In this article, we discuss Hardt and Negri’s contribution to what we call the biopolitical turn in educational theory, emphasizing the influence of autonomist Marxism on their work. Even more specifically, we discuss the impact of the (...) autonomist tradition on their formulation of the nature of the relationship between the multitude and Empire: that the multitude is the generative force of the social world, whereas Empire is merely an apparatus of capture. This autonomist approach reveals a set of questions regarding subjectivity, materialism, and social ontology, which we argue are ripe for engagement by educational theorists, and indicate the enduring relevance of Empire as a valuable text for educational theorists interested in matters of biopolitical production, collective opposition, and revolutionary subjectivity. (shrink)