This paper examines Heidegger’s account of the proper relation between philosophy and theology, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s critique thereof. Part I outlines Heidegger’s proposal for this relationship in his lecture “Phenomenology and Theology,” where he suggests that philosophy might aid theology by means of ‘formal indication.’ In that context Heidegger never articulates what formal indication is, so Part II exposits this obscure notion by looking at its treatment in Heidegger’s early lecture courses, as well as its roots in Husserl. (...) Part III presents Bonhoeffer’s theological response, which challenges Heidegger’s attempt to maintain a neutral ontology that remains unaffected by both sin and faith. (shrink)

Provides the summaries of fourteen books released between 1993 and 1995. Some of the book topics are focused on morality, ethics, and moral philosophies. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Reviews the book, Learning from Asian philosophy by Joel J. Kupperman . In this excellent and tremendously informative book, Kupperman adopts a significantly different tack by showing that many important Eastern texts ought not be considered merely examples of “wisdom literature,” but rather are genuinely significant philosophical texts, structured with carefully thought-out and insightful arguments. Throughout his well-written and accessible treatment, the author takes great pains to demonstrate the many substantive ways in which contemporary philosophers might employ Asian thinking (...) as they grapple with some of the most pressing intellectual questions of our day. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Minding the gap: Epistemology and philosophy of science in the two traditions by Christopher Norris . In this book, the author takes issue with the all-too-frequently held view that there can be no productive engagement between mainstream analytic philosophers and thinkers in the contemporary Continental tradition. The main focus here is to reveal the various concerns each of these two traditions share—concerns that have often been obscured by narrowly parochial interests and the desire to stake out (...) distinct philosophical territories. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, The Oxford history of Western philosophy edited by Anthony Kenny . Written by a team of some of the most distinguished scholars, this authoritative and finely detailed compendium traces the history of Western philosophy from its earliest beginnings among the Presocratics to the current era. This paperback volume should no doubt be a welcome addition to the reference library of all theoretical/philosophical psychologists. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Reviews the book, The dream of reason: A history of philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance by Anthony Gottlieb . Seldom in the history of histories—particularly histories of philosophy—have there been authors capable of producing accessible, entertaining, insightful, and accurate treatments of their subject matter. An unfailingly pleasant read, Gottlieb’s history shows how many of philosophy’s most revolutionary breakthroughs have consistently been co-opted by other branches of learning, leading to the unfortunate illusion that philosophers never make (...) any progress. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The Review was founded in 1961 to bring an existential and phenomenological approach to the understanding of human experience. With a primary focus on the psychotherapeutic endeavor, the Review publishes original essays and first translations from the fields of literature and philosophy, as well as from psychology and psychiatry proper. The Review has published essays by nearly every major figure in the world, including Viktor Frankl, Eugene Gendlin, Jacques Lacan, R.D. Laing, RolloMay, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacob Needleman, Carl Rogers, and (...) Jean-Paul Sartre. In addition to continuing to publish original essays on a wide variety of general topics, in recent years the Review has published a series of special issues devoted to major figures in the field of existential psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Merleau-Ponty, interiority and exteriority, psychic life and the world by Dorothea Olkowski and James Morley . This book is a brief but informative and thoughtful anthology brings together the work of a number of contemporary scholars in philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and comparative literature to demonstrate how Merleau-Ponty's understanding of the psyche and the material world has not only tremendous implications for philosophy, but also for the natural and social sciences. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Reviews the book, Animal models of human psychology: Critique of science, ethics, and policy by Kenneth J. Shapiro . The principle focus of most of this text is on the present-day use of animals in psychological research. In particular, Shapiro examines contemporary animal models of eating disorders, showing how psychology came to rely so heavily on animal models in the first place and how prevalent scientific attitudes about the use of animals in the laboratory have taken shape over the past (...) several decades. In addition, he traces the recent rise of the animal rights movement and highlights the several philosophies upon which it is based. Drawing upon certain historical and empirical analyses, as well as certain themes in contemporary sociology of knowledge, Shapiro attempts to navigate his reader through the twin minefields of impassioned rhetoric and insufficiently examined conceptual commitment to a better understanding of the core issues surrounding the role of animals in scientific psychological investigation. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Appropriating Heidegger by James E. Faulconer and Mark A. Wrathall . In this book, the authors bring together representatives of many different approaches to Heidegger’ philosophy and provide the opportunity for an examination of not only a variety of readings of Heidegger’s work, but also a variety of visions about the nature of philosophical inquiry itself. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Reviews the book, Critical issues in psychotherapy: Translating new ideas into practice edited by Brent D. Slife, Richard N. Williams, and Sally H. Barlow . Bridging the often enormous gap between theory and practice in psychotherapy, this volume seeks to examine a variety of models of psychotherapy in the light of recent advances in theoretical psychology, philosophy of science, and critical thinking. The book is organized around numerous issues of fundamental importance to contemporary psychotherapy, including chapters addressing the problems (...) of empirically validated therapies, individualism, spirituality, multiculturalism, biological reductionism, managed care, freewill/determinism, eclecticism, feminism, and diagnostics. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Martin Buber: The hidden dialogue by Dan Avnon . In this exciting and instructive volume, the author carefully examines the main themes and thrusts of Martin Buber's radical philosophy of dialogue. In recent years it has become increasingly clear that Buber's vision of the basic nature of human existence is not only profound in its intellectual scope and sophistication, but also deeply disturbing in its moral and ethical implications. This fine book, however, seeks to redress this (...) unfortunate shortcoming in the literature—and, all things considered, does a more than adequate job of it. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Mystery of mysteries: Is evolution a social construction? by Michael Ruse . Beginning with such seminal figures as Erasmus and Charles Darwin and Julian Huxley, and considering closely such contemporary thinkers as Richard Dawkins, E. O. Wilson, Stephen J. Gould, and Richard Lewontin, Ruse sets out to explore the roles that metaphor and social context have played in the development of evolutionary theory from the 18th century to the present day. Framed within the context of the antithetical (...) visions of Popperian and Kuhnian philosophies of science, and the “science wars” that their thinking has induced, Ruse contemplates the delicate interplay of cultural values and the intellectual machinery of scientific inquiry. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Neurophilosophy of free will: From libertarian illusions to a concept of natural autonomy by Henrik Walter and C. Klohr . In this book, Henrik Walter applies the methodology of neurophilosophy to one of philosophy’s central challenges and enduring questions: the notion of free will. The author argues that free will is an illusion if we mean by it that under identical conditions we would be able to do or decide otherwise, while simultaneously acting only for reasons (...) and being the true originators of our actions. In place of this problematic version of free will, Walter offers what he calls “natural autonomy,” that is, self-determination unaided by supernatural powers that could exist even in an entirely determined universe. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, The body by Donn Welton . Over the last century, the nature and meaning of human embodiment has emerged as one of the more significant areas of philosophical and psychological inquiry. From at least the time of Edmund Husserl, many thinkers in the Continental tradition have striven to re-conceptualize the body and its relationship to self and other in such a way as to avoid the pitfalls of more traditional, reductionistic attempts that view the body solely in (...) physical or biological terms. In this helpful volume, part of Blackwell’s Readings in Continental Philosophy series, Welton has brought together for the first time many of the foundational twentieth-century writings on the concept of embodiment. This book provides not only a cluster of theories articulated by philosophers seeking to move beyond the inherent limitations and contradictions of Modern philosophy, but also new appropriations and insights from psychoanalysis, social history, literary theory, and gender theory. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

De Marchi and Lorenzetti :253-261, 2016) have recently argued that in fields where the journal impact factor is not calculated, such as in the humanities, it is key to find other indicators that would allow the relevant community to assess the quality of scholarly journals and the research outputs that are published in them. The authors' suggestion is that information concerning the journal's rejection rate and the number of subscriptions sold is important and should be used for such assessment. The (...) question addressed by the authors is very important, yet their proposed solutions are problematic. Here I point to some of these problems and illustrate them by considering as a case in point the field of philosophy. Specifically, here I argue for four main claims. First, even assuming that IF provides a reliable indicator of the quality of journals for the assessment of research outputs, De Marchi and Lorenzetti have failed to validate their suggested indicators and proxies. Second, it has not been clarified why, in absence of IF, other journal-based metrics that are currently available should not be used. Third, the relationship between IF and rejection rate is more complex than the authors suggest. Fourth, accepting the number of sold subscriptions as a proxy would result in discrimination against open access journals. The upshot of my analysis is that the question of how to assess journals and research outputs in the humanities is still far from resolved. (shrink)

On the concept of Avidyā in Indic philosophy.

La théorie des treillis apparaît dans le contexte des mathématiques états-uniennes des années 1930. En 1940, elle se matérialise sous la forme d’une monographie, qui permet sa circulation. Dans le dernier chapitre du deuxième tome de La Philosophie de l’algèbre, Jules Vuillemin la présente comme une « algèbre générale » dont le but est l’étude logique des théories scientifiques. L’article porte sur cette circulation de la théorie des treillis qui sera étudiée selon deux axes. D’une part, en étant diffusée par (...) l’intermédiaire d’un traité, la théorie prend une forme spécifique qu’il s’agira de détailler. D’autre part, la réception de Vuillemin dépend de ses intérêts propres, auxquels nous nous intéresserons. (shrink)

Ancient text on logic in Indic philosophy.

At the center of the literature on conditionals lies the division between indicative and subjunctive conditionals, and Ernest Adams’ famous minimal pair: If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, someone else did. If Oswald hadn’t shot Kennedy, someone else would have. While a lot of attention is paid to figuring out what these different kinds of conditionals mean, significantly less attention has been paid to the question of why their grammatical differences give rise to their semantic differences. In this paper, I articulate (...) and defend an answer to this question that illuminates and unifies the meanings of both kinds of conditionals. The basic idea is that epistemic and metaphysical possibilities differ with respect to their interaction with time, such that there can be present epistemic possibilities with different pasts, while present metaphysical possibilities share the same past. The interpretation of conditionals is subject to a pragmatic constraint that rules out interpretations in which their consequents are directly settled by information used to build their domains. The past + future morphology on subjunctives, but not indicatives, is what allows them to receive a metaphysical interpretation in light of this pragmatic constraint. The resulting theory predicts several surprising features of indicatives and subjunctives, which I argue are correct. (shrink)

Study on being with the reference of Indic philosophy and modern perspective.

Theism in Indic philosophy from the point of view of Christianity.

Concept of time (kāla) in Indic philosophy.

Compilation of basic text of six systems of Indian philosophy.

We sometimes have reasons to perform actions due to what they would communicate. Those who have discussed such reasons have understood what an action ‘communicates’ as what it conventionally expresses. Brennan and Jaworski argue that when a convention ensures that expressing the appropriate thing would be costly, we should change or flout the convention. I argue that what really matters is often what attitudes we indicate rather than conventionally express, using social science to show that indicating our attitudes is often (...) unavoidably costly, and sometimes worth the cost. I use this account to defend communicative arguments for egalitarian distributive policies. (shrink)

A number of different kinds of negation and negation of negation are developed in Indian thought, from ancient religious texts to classical philosophy. The paper explores the Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya, Jaina and Buddhist theorizing on the various forms and permutations of negation, denial, nullity, nothing and nothingness, or emptiness. The main thesis argued for is that in the broad Indic tradition, negation cannot be viewed as a mere classical operator turning the true into the false, nor reduced to the (...) mainstream Boolean dichotomy: 1 versus 0. Special attention is given to how contradiction is handled in Jaina and Buddhist logic. (shrink)

Contributed articles on the concept of doctrines of Karma (action) in Indic philosophy with reference to Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sanskrit literature.

Contributed articles on relevence of Indic philosophy in modern period; commemorative volumes.

Study on the concept of perception in Indic philosophy.

Historiography in the context of Indic philosophy and mythology.

An Introduction to Tantric Philosophy: The Paramārthasāra of Abhinavagupta with the Commentary of Yogarāja. Translated by Lyne Bansat-Boudon and Kamaleshadatta Tripathi. Introduction, notes, critically revised Sanskrit text, appendix, indices by Lyne Bansat-Boudon. Routledge Studies in Tantric Traditions, vol. 3. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 462 + xiv. $150.

Selected articles on religion in India, Vedic literature, and Indic philosophy.

On Omniscience, the theory of knowledge based on Indic philosophy.

Collection of research papers on various aspects of Indic philosophy and depiction of fundamentals of philosophy in classical Sanskrit literary works.

Articles on comparative philosophy; includes articles on Indic philosophy.

This article responds to a critical research challenge in Medieval philosophy scholarship regarding the internal periodisation of the register. By arguing the case for ‘post-scholasticism’ as an internal period indicator (1349–1464, the era between the deaths of William of Ockham and Nicholas of Cusa), defined as ‘the transformation of high scholasticism on the basis of a selective departure thereof’, the article specifies a predisposition in the majority of introductions to and commentaries in Medieval philosophy to proceed straight from (...) 1349 to 1464, understating 115 years of pertinent Medieval philosophical discourse. It is argued that in the modern account of Medieval philosophy, this understatement is manifested in either a predating of Renaissance philosophy to close the gap between 1349 and 1464 as far as possible or in proceeding straight from 1349 to Renaissance philosophy. The article presents five unique philosophical themes from this delicate period, indicating that ‘post-scholasticism’ was indeed a productive period in late Medieval philosophy, which should not be bypassed as an inconsequential entrance to Renaissance philosophy. The period 1349–1464 should accordingly be appreciated for its idiosyncratic contributions to the history of ideas in the late-14th and early-15th centuries, with reference to the political intensification of the via moderna, the pivotal separation of philosophy and theology and the resulting independence of the natural sciences, in res critique of institutions, transforming pragmatics and the rise of philosophical materialism. Contribution: This article contributes to methodological development in Medieval philosophy by responding to a critical research challenge regarding the internal periodisation of the later Middle Ages. Arguing the case for ‘post-scholasticism’ as an internal period indicator (1349 to 1464 in Medieval philosophy, the article presents unique philosophical themes from the period, indicating that it was a productive stage in late Medieval philosophy which should not be bypassed as an inconsequential entrance to Renaissance philosophy. (shrink)

Figuring prominently in their decisions regarding which theories to pursue are scientists' appeals to the promise or lack of promise of those theories. Yet philosophy of science has had little to say about how one is to assess theory promise. This essay identifies several indices that might be consulted to determine whether or not a theory is promising and worthy of pursuit. Various historical examples of appeals to such indices are introduced.

Comparative study of inference in logic in Indic philosophy.

Coward (religious studies, U. of Calgary) explores the similarities and differences between the language theories of modern French philosopher Jacques Derrida and several traditional Indian schools of thought.

This is a handbook article about indicative conditionals.