Howard Robinson has argued that even if the major claims of Berkeleian idealism are mistaken, including its account of the “physical world,” “the overall endeavour of defending idealism is more plausible than it is generally believed to be”. He argues that aspects of Berkeley’s arguments for idealism, including a Berkeleian argument against naive realism, can be shown to refute the representative realist’s view of perception, and its concomitant ontology. This ontology is at least partially materialist. According to Robinson, once (...) naive realism is disposed of and the objections to RR are exposed, Berkeleian Idealism can raise its shadowy head with at least the respectability afforded the currently more fashionable Representationalism. We shall argue that Robinson’s claim cannot plausibly be sustained. His defense of Berkeleian idealism, based in part on his understanding of naive realism and his critique of Representationalism, falters. “The overall endeavour of defending idealism” is not as plausible as Robinson takes it to be. (shrink)

In a sense it would be inappropriate to speak of “Hegel’s system of philosophy,” because Hegel thought that in the strict sense there is only one system of philosophy evolving in the Western world. In Hegel’s view, although at times philosophy’s history seems to be a chaotic series of crisscrossing interpretations of meanings and values, with no consensus, there has been a teleological development and consistent progress in philosophy and philosophizing from the beginning; Hegel held that his own version of (...) “German idealism” was simply bringing to final expression the latest refinements of an ongoing, perennial system. If we take Hegel at his word, then one of the best entries into his system would be through the history of philosophy, showing how systems and schools of thought prior to Hegel led up to his system. The most important currents to focus on, however, would be in modern philosophy, in which especially intensive changes led ultimately to German idealism and Hegel’s immediate predecessors. Fortunately, Hegel lectured extensively on the history of modern philosophy and structured his lectures in such a way as to throw light on the status of the “one system” of Western philosophy at the time — the status to which Hegel felt he had been contributing and was continuing to contribute. These lectures are of interest, first of all, as a systematic chronicle of philosophical positions in the heyday of modern philosophy, from Bacon to Hegel. Second, they are interesting because Hegel’s critical comments on his predecessors clarify his own positions: for example, the dialectic method and the importance of triplicity, the relationship of philosophy to the scientific method, the necessity for avoidance of the extremes of empiricism and of idealism, the subject/object problematic, the “identity” of rationality and reality, and the technical meaning in Hegel’s philosophy of “absolute,” “infinity,” and the “idea.”. (shrink)

At first glance, "practical utopias" might appear to be a contradiction in terms. If, to be sure, most utopian proponents would love to see their schemes realized, painfully few offer the practical skills and detailed blueprints to come close to that goal or to obtain a sufficient following to achieve long-term successes, whether sustainable utopian communities or substantial political and economic transformations or even lasting takeaways from temporary world's fairs. Yet "practical utopias" can legitimately be applied to the "techno-fixes" discussed (...) here without contradiction."Techno-fixes" are avowedly practical. They are quick shortcuts to try to solve long-standing and deeply rooted economic, social... (shrink)

The Nuremberg Trials of leading National Socialists established the principle that individuals may be legally punished, even by death, for obeying the laws of their country. Is there then a higher law by which enacted valid positive laws may be judged, so that persons subject to such laws would be duty-bound to defy them? In recent years the theory of natural law has been revived by a number of philosophers and jurists, who however often disagree sharply among themselves about the (...) proper methods for defining and deriving natural law. Howard Kainz surveys the history of natural law from its foreshadowing in ancient Greece down to the most recent controversies. Natural Law both introduces the subject to newcomers and sheds fresh light on such figures as Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Veatch, McInerny, Grisez, and Finnis. (shrink)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, perhaps the most influential of all German philosophers, made one of the last great attempts to develop philosophy as an all-embracing scientific system. This system places Hegel among the “classical” philosophers — Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza — who also attempted to build grand conceptual edifices._ In this study, available for the first time in paperback, Howard P. Kainz emphasizes the uniqueness of Hegel's system by focusing on his methodology, terminology, metaphorical and paradoxical language, and his special (...) contributions to metaphysics, the philosophy of nature, philosophical anthropology, and other areas. Kainz focuses on Hegel's system as a whole and its seminal ideas, making generous use of representative texts. He gives special attention to the interrelationship between dialectical methodology and paradoxical propositions; the prevalence of metaphor in the philosophy of nature; and the close interrelationship between Christian doctrine and Hegelian speculation. A rich array of diagrams and tables further elucidates Kainz's analyses. An ideal text for the student of philosophy coming to Hegel for the first time, _G. W. F. Hegel__ provides the reader with useful insights into Hegel's work and illuminates Hegel's enduring significance in the late twentieth century. (shrink)

The publication in 1807 of Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel's _Phanomenologie des Geistes_ marked the beginning of the modern era in philosophy. Hegel's remarkable insights formed the basis for what eventually became the Existentialist movement. Yet the _Phenomenology_ remains one of the most difficult and forbidding works in the canon of philosophical literature. __Hegel's Phenomenology, Part 1: Analysis and Commentary__ by Howard P. Kainz provides a coherent and readable key to understanding Hegel. Kainz provides an accessible entry into the complexities (...) of Hegelian thought by asking a series of questions about such matters as the literary form of the _Phenomenology_, its "plot," its relation to the "system," its subject matter, the problem of objectivity, dialectical necessity, the concept of "experience," and the Hegelian concept of consciousness. Building of the work of previous commentators, and presenting the work of these commentators in a clear and unbiased manner, Kainz offers an analysis that will be helpful both to experienced Hegelian scholars and to those readers preparing to approach the large and bewildering territory of the _Phenomenology_ for the first time. (shrink)

Recently, as I have become more computer-literate, I have noticed some interesting parallels between computer mechanisms and Aquinas’ metaphysics of angelic faculties. The present essay expands on some of the analogies which Aquinas himself, though no proponent of AI theory, might have found interesting.

This book is about questions that one would hesitate to ask in certain groups, because the questioning itself would mark him or her as an outsider, or a liberal, or a conservative, or a reactionary interested in resurrecting issues which have been satisfactorily settled. But Western philosophy, jump-started by the Socratic dialogues memorialized by Plato, has traditionally concerned itself with reexamining meanings and values that many thought settled once and for all. In this book the interlocutors, who disagree about almost (...) everything, nevertheless search for areas of agreement as they continue in this Socratic tradition. (shrink)

This is a book in which Harris weaves together his work on logic, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and political philosophy - already the subject of his earlier articles and books - into a striking personal synthesis. Harris does not while away his time calculating the number of angels on the head of a pin or the types and differrentiations of “raw feels,” but addresses himself to important and challenging questions, some of them almost completely neglected by other philosophers. In what (...) follows I will discuss what I consider to be the three major contributions of this book, and end with some reservations I have about the concept of dialectic expounded there. (shrink)

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is considered by many philosophers to be one of the most difficult Western philosophical masterpieces. Its difficulty is matched by its importance not only in the development of Hegel's own thought but also by its fundamental impact on later thinkers.

The article looks into the private interpretations of the private revelations given by the Blessed Virgin Mary to the shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal during World War I at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. It mentions that these interpretations have been subjected to the changes by Catholics who changed the Magisterium of the Church. It also notes the Russian country's consecration and conversion to the Catholic Church demonstrating obedience, confession, and Holy Communion.

The publication in 1807 of Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel's __Phanomenologie des Geistes__ marked the beginning of the modern era in philosophy. Hegel's remarkable insights formed the basis for what eventually became the Existentialist movement. Yet the Phenomenology remains one of the most difficult and forbidding works in the canon of philosophical literature.

Hegel indicates toward the end of his Phenomenology of Spirit that there would be a parallelism in the categories of his later system to the various configurations of consciousness in the Phenomenology. Some general correspondences have been indicated by Otto Pöggeler and suggested by Robert Grant McRae, but I argue in this paper that there are at least four important and more specific parallels, bringing out simultaneously a similarity of content and a difference of approach and methodology in the two (...) works: 1) in the philosophical construal of “categories”; 2) in the conceptualization of a “phenomenology”; 3) in the analysis of the dialectical relationship of religion and art; and 4) in the relationship of the history of philosophy to the Absolute. (shrink)

Responding to the rash of books supporting a "new atheism" in recent years, some excellent rebuttals and refutations by Berlinski, Novak, Hart, Day, and others have also been published. The present book, however, is not a continuation of these critical salvos against the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris, but engages in a fresh reexamination of several important aspects of the "God-question," along with an exploration of the theory of the "faith-instinct"---a theory that emerges from a respectably long tradition, (...) but in recent years has been largely relegated to the sidelines in theology and philosophy. In the first chapter, scientific, metaphysical, and theological approaches are utilized and integrated in relationship to the question of God's existence. The second chapter is devoted to the "problem of evil," differentiated into the special categories often lumped into that all-too-generic term---moral evils, natural evils, suffering as an evil. Chapter 3 concerns the obvious follow-up question concerning what sort of characteristics, personal or otherwise, we can attribute to God---going beyond the question of God's mere "existence," even if and when we are intellectually convinced of this existence. In the second half of the book, the various meanings of "faith" are considered; and the apparent discrepancy of many New Testament descriptions of faith with the conventional Catholic and Protestant concepts of faith is investigated. Some "family resemblances" of supernatural faith seem to emerge. Then a monograph by Tubingen theologian Max Seckler, Instinkt und Glaubenswille ("Instinct and the Will to Believe"), which comments on thought-provoking texts concerning a "faith-instinct" in the works of Thomas Aquinas, is considered; Seckler brings out the philosophical and theological basis for this concept, as well as its reverberations for modern theology. The theory of a faith-instinct, however, leads to the question of the proper and improper, real or substitute, "objects," of the proposed instinct. Finally, if this instinct is, as hypothesized, implanted in human nature itself, for all places and all times, what is the function of the various religions in "activating" or placing obstacles to, the activation of this instinct? How are "false prophets," who may be instrumental in redirecting or misdirecting this instinct, to be recognized? Is faith bolstered or hindered by miracles---do miracles have any important relationship to faith? The book ends with a final consideration of the probable mental outlook of the atheist confronted with claims by theists of varying persuasions. (shrink)