The thought of contemporary North American theologian and ethicist Wendy Farley is an unflinching clarion call to justice and compassion. Farley invites us to discover ways of embodying the deep compassion capable of resisting pernicious distortions and traumatizing injustices that harm and dehumanize us all. This volume of essays embodies her invitation to awaken as beloved community. And when we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of struggle and despair, Farley reminds us that the powerful longing of hope, at times against (...) all evidence, refuses to give up on seeking justice and wholeness. Compassionate justice, radical hospitality, creative liberation, and deep listening emerge as more than ethical values for Farley; they are expressions of erotic faith, a praxis of faithfulness born of divine desire. These writings explore transformative perspectives and practices that have the capacity to help us recover and author our identity as the "god-bearers" we are. Erotic faith embodies the love-seeking persistence of divine faithfulness necessary to transform us from within; it meets the truth of human harm, vulnerability, and suffering by offering a complex, struggling, unscripted creativity capable of remaking us, and our world, until the beloved community is whole. (shrink)

Recent work on formal theories of truth has revived an approach, due originally to Tarski, on which syntax and truth theories are sharply distinguished—‘disentangled’—from mathematical base theories. In this paper, we defend a novel philosophical constraint on disentangled theories. We argue that these theories must be epistemically stable: they must possess an intrinsic motivation justifying no strictly stronger theory. In a disentangled setting, even if the base and the syntax theory are individually stable, they may be jointly unstable. We contend (...) that this flaw afflicts many proposals discussed in the literature; we defend a new, stable disentangled theory, double second-order arithmetic. (shrink)

I develop a novel argument against the claim that ordinals are sets. In contrast to Benacerraf’s antireductionist argument, I make no use of covert epistemic assumptions. Instead, my argument uses considerations of ontological dependence. I draw on the datum that sets depend immediately and asymmetrically on their elements and argue that this datum is incompatible with reductionism, given plausible assumptions about the dependence profile of ordinals. In addition, I show that a structurally similar argument can be made against the claim (...) that cardinals are sets. (shrink)

Ferdinand Mount has been fascinated by the great thinkers and politicians who have shaped human history over the past two millennia In this fascinating, and provocative book, he examines the proposals for a political theory from a number of widely different historical figures. Twelve key people, from the great orator and statesman of Ancient Greece (Pericles) to the inspiration of the founding of the state of Pakistan (Muhammad Iqbal) we take a colourful and rip-roaring journey through the historical figures (...) who have both inspired and provoked Mount in equal measure. The lives of men such as Jesus Christ, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Thomas Jefferson are discussed and comparisons are drawn between the various approaches each figure promoted in their works - whether philosophical, or political theories. For those wishing to be guided by Mount's choices and be swept along by his brilliantly erudite prose, this will be a particular enjoyable read. Lots of colour, humour and passion governed all these people careers and Mount brings them to life like no one else can. Praise for the international-bestselling Tears of the Rajas:- 'Mount is a skilled and fluent writer who does his subject justice' --Literary Review 'Mount relates this remarkable story with a gentle wit, a lightness of touch, a boyish enthusiasm as well as a genius for the telling pen-portrait... It is a remarkable story, and cumulatively amounts to an epic panorama of British Indian history much more substantial than the 'collection of Indian tales, a human jungle book', which Mount modestly describes as his aim in the introduction.' --William Dalrymple, The Spectator 'What [Mount] provides instead is of far greater value: a perceptive antidote to nationalistic prejudicial thinking, and an opportunity for a greater understanding of the aftereffects of British imperialism in some of the world's most troubled regions.' Sunday Times 'Although Tears of the Rajas is replete with stirring tales of adventure, it is a deeply humane book. Mount's heart is at all times with the people of India, whose lives are turned upside down by blundering attempts at modernisation.' The Times. (shrink)

Abstract“Scaling-up” is the next hurdle facing the local food movement. In order to effect broader systemic impacts, local food systems (LFS) will have to grow, and engage either more or larger consumers and producers. Encouraging the involvement of mid-sized farms looks to be an elegant solution, by broadening the accessibility of local food while providing alternative revenue streams for troubled family farms. Logistical, structural and regulatory barriers to increased scale in LFS are well known. Less is understood about the way (...) in which scale developments affect the perception and legitimacy of LFS. This value-added opportunity begs the question: Is the value that adheres to local food scalable? Many familiar with local food discourse might suggest that important pieces of added value within LFS are generated by the reconnection of producer and consumer, the direct exchange through which this occurs, and the shared goals and values that provide the basis for reconnection. However, these assertions are based on tenuous assumptions about how interactions within the direct exchange produce value, and how LFS are governed. Examination shows that existing assumptions do not properly acknowledge the hybridity, diversity, and flexibility inherent in LFS. A clear analysis of the potential of scale in LFS will depend on understanding both how value is determined within LFS, and the processes through which these systems are governed. Such an analysis shows that, while scaled-up LFS will be challenged to maintain legitimacy and an identity as “alternative”, the establishment of an open governance process—based on a “negotiation of accommodations”—is likely to enhance their viability. (shrink)

Core indexicals like ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’ sometimes appear to refer to an object, place, or time other than the speaker, location, or time of utterance. This presents well-known problems for Kaplan's view, which treats reference shifting as a violation of the character rules that give the meaning of indexicals. I propose a view according to which indexical reference is essentially a matter of the mutually-accepted perspective of interlocutors. It follows that contexts need not be ‘proper’ in Kaplan's sense, and (...) a successful convergence of perspectives is needed for indexical reference to succeed. I provide reasons for embracing these conclusions. (shrink)

In debates about the proper analysis of demonstrative expressions, ostensive gestures and speaker intentions are often seen as competing for primary importance in securing reference. Underlying some of these debates is the mistaken assumption that ostensive gestures always make the demonstrated object maximally salient to interlocutors. When we abandon this assumption and focus on an object’s mutually-recognized salience itself, rather than on how the object came to be salient, we can work towards a more promising analysis with a uniform treatment (...) of demonstrative reference whether or not there is an ostensive gesture, and whether reference is ordinary or deferred. (shrink)

Within the class of indexicals, a distinction is often made between “pure” or “automatic” indexicals on one hand, and demonstratives or “discretionary” indexicals on the other. The idea is supposed to be that certain indexicals refer automatically and invariably to a particular feature of the utterance context: ‘I’ refers to the speaker, ‘now’ to the time of utterance, ‘here’ to the place of utterance, etc. Against this view, I present cases where reference shifts from the speaker, time, or place of (...) utterance to some other object, time, or place. I consider and reject the claim that these counterexamples to the automatic indexical theory all involve non-literal uses of indexicals and argue that they cannot be explained away on the grounds that they involve conversational implicature or pretense. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A New Graduate Nurse’s StoryJill MountI was taking pre–med courses on the west coast when my mother was diagnosed with acute leukemia. I immediately finished out my classes, packed up my bags and cat and moved back to the town on the east coast where my parents lived. While my mother was fighting the leukemia, I spent many hours in her hospital room and I learned more about the (...) roles of doctors and nurses. Unlike what I had seen on television, where the doctors were always nearby and available to their patients, my mother’s doctors were seldom present. It was the nurses who spent the most time with my mother in the hospital. I wanted to care and be present for my patients like her nurses. So I decided to become a nurse. I didn’t realize that not all cancer units were like my mother’s where the nurses had time to really care for their patients.My mother’s attending doctor would visit her bedside once a day. The doctor would generally stand a few feet away from the foot of my mother’s bed and describe my mother’s latest blood counts. The doctor always seemed to keep her distance at the foot of the bed. As my mother’s series of chemotherapy treatments failed to put her in remission, the doctor would describe the next chemotherapy protocol that my mother would endure. My mother wanted desperately to live and she would keep copies of the blood counts her doctor provided her and would insist on trying the next round of chemotherapy, despite the list of grim side effects each seemed to come with. The doctor generally stayed an average of five minutes during these visits.My mother’s nurses, however, were a constant presence. I had not realized at the time that people are hospitalized primarily for nursing care. My mother was assigned several great nurses, who not only took her vital signs and administered her medications, but who seemed to care about her as a person as well. The nurses seemed to understand how difficult it was for my mother, a very independent person, not to have control over her health. To help her regain control, they provided her with guided visualizations. This was during the mid–eighties so they had her visualize her immune system as Pac–man eating all the cancer cells. My mother liked this because when she did the Pac– man visualizations, she felt she had some control directing her immune system to fight the disease.The nurses also provided my mother with emotional support. We were not a very physically affectionate family and the nurses encouraged us to give my mother hugs when she was not at risk for infections. They also gave her lots of back rubs. One of the nurses gave my mother a relaxation audiotape, which she listened to for hours, others provided her with poetry books. I believe it was partly the nurses’ physical and emotional care that enabled my mother to live as long and to fight the cancer for as long as she did. During the course of my mother’s illness, she received five rounds of chemotherapy over a period of ten months. Unfortunately her efforts to combat the cancer were unsuccessful and she died of complications of the disease and from the cumulative toxic side effects of the chemotherapy.After observing all the ways the nurses cared for my mother, I decided this was what I wanted to do and I decided to go to nursing school instead of medical school. I was able to apply my pre–med prerequisite courses to an accelerated nursing program [End Page E16] and I graduated with my bachelors in nursing after 18 months of nursing school.My nursing program emphasized the importance of viewing the patient as a whole person and not merely viewing them in terms of a particular disease or condition. Nursing school also reinforced how important nurse caring was for patients. I remember one of our exam questions focused on caring. The question was about a nurse walking into a patient’s room and finding the patient... (shrink)

Vann McGee has argued that, given certain background assumptions and an ought-implies-can thesis about norms of rationality, Bayesianism conflicts globally with computationalism due to the fact that Robinson arithmetic is essentially undecidable. I show how to sharpen McGee's result using an additional fact from recursion theory—the existence of a computable sequence of computable reals with an uncomputable limit. In conjunction with the countable additivity requirement on probabilities, such a sequence can be used to construct a specific proposition to which Bayesianism (...) requires an agent to assign uncomputable credence—yielding a local conflict with computationalism. (shrink)

This article examines the mutual imbrication of gender and class that shapes how some transgender women seek incorporation into social hierarchies in postcolonial India. Existing literature demonstrates an association between transgender and middle-class-status in the global South. Through an 18-month ethnographic study in Bangalore from 2009 through 2016 with transgender women, NGO workers and activists, as well as textual analyses of media representations, I draw on “new woman” archetypes to argue that the discourses of empowerment and respectability that impacted middle-class (...) cisgender women in late colonial, postcolonial and liberalized India also impact how trans women narrate their struggles and newfound opportunities. Trans woman identities are often juxtaposed to the identities of hijras, a recognized group of working-class male-assigned gender-nonconforming people. Instead of challenging stereotypes of gender nonconformity most evident in the marginalization of hijras, some transgender women are at pains to highlight their difference from hijras. These trans women are from working-class backgrounds. It is partly their similarities in class location that propel trans women’s efforts to distinguish themselves from hijras. They employ the figure of the disreputable hijra to contain negative stereotypes associated with gender nonconformity, thus positioning their identities in proximity with middle-class respectable womanhood. (shrink)

This paper examines the logical and metaphysical consequences of denying Leibniz's Law, the principle that if t1= t2, then φ(t1) if and only if φ(t2). Recently, Caie, Goodman, and Lederman (2020) and Bacon and Russell (2019) have proposed sophisticated logical systems permitting violations of Leibniz's Law. We show that their systems conflict with widely held, attractive principles concerning the metaphysics of individuals. Only by adopting a highly revisionary picture, on which there is no finest-grained equivalence relation, can a well-motivated metaphysics (...) for rejecting Leibniz's Law be developed. We sketch one such picture—a metaphysics of stuff. Stuff ontologies can be initially motivated through ordinary language: stuff stands to mass nouns as objects stand to count nouns. The stuff ontology we propose takes stuff to be fundamental and views the world as composed of an infinite descending hierarchy of kinds and portions of stuff. We defend the coherence of this picture and offer a model theory demonstrating that it can be consistently formalized. (shrink)

I extend theorems due to Roy Cook on third- and higher-order versions of abstraction principles and discuss the philosophical importance of results of this type. Cook demonstrated that the satisfiability of certain higher-order analogues of Hume's Principle is independent of ZFC. I show that similar analogues of Boolos's new v and Cook's own ordinal abstraction principle soap are not satisfiable at all. I argue, however, that these results do not tell significantly against the second-order versions of these principles.

SR proteins are essential for the splicing of messenger RNA precursors in vitro, where they also alter splice site selection in a concentration‐dependent manner. Although experiments involving overexpression or dominant mutations have confirmed that these proteins can influence RNA processing decisions in vivo, similar results with loss‐of‐function mutations have been lacking. Now, a system for genetic depletion of the chicken B cell line DT40 has revealed that the SR protein ASF/SF2 (alternative splicing factor/splicing factor 2) is essential for viability in (...) these cells(1). This study opens the way for a complete functional dissection of this protein, and other SR proteins, in vivo. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 103, Issue 3, Page 547-566, November 2021.

Every day, television news operations have available dozens of video news releases (VNRs), public relations handout videos designed to mimic news formats. Electronic tracking indicates some of these VNRs are used. Critics typically assail VNRs on ethical grounds, that VNRs deceive audience members into thinking they are watching news gathered by reporters, rather than a promotional pitch. Using a snowball technique, the researchers presented survey respondents with authentic-looking local television news stories; 157 respondents evaluated three stories (out of nine). Some (...) stories used station-generated footage, some network, and some VNRs. Respondents were asked their best estimation of the source. The data indicated a real likelihood VNR deception is occurring. Two of the three VNRs deceived at least half the respondents. Respondents were incorrect an average of 46% of the time when attempting to identifying VNRs, compared to 29% incorrectly identifying network video and 20% incorrectly identifying locally shot video. (shrink)

Almost a decade in the making, the radical research, meditations and experiences of Rev. David William Parry have culminated in a work that interweaves Mount Athos, the Arts, Religion, Philosophy, Theatre, Literature and Poetry in a delightfully fresh style of penmanship.

Evidence that minds are neural electromagnetic fields comes from research into how separate brain activities bind to form unified percepts and unified minds. Explanations of binding using synchrony, attention, and convergence are all problematic. But the unity of EM fields explains binding without these problems. These unified fields neatly explain correlations and divergences between synchrony, attention, convergence, and unified minds. The simplest explanation for the unity of both minds and fields is that minds are fields. Treating minds as the fields' (...) underlying, intrinsic nature has the further virtue of avoiding mind-body problems. There's also rising evidence that EM fields interact with brains. McFadden argues here that fields help shift the focus of attention by initiating synchrony in different neural networks, which boosts their own fields and thereby binds their activity. This evidence that minds are fields that bind and guide brain activities supports free will over epiphenomenalism and supervenience. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper develops and advocates a rule for assigning self-locating credences in quantum branching scenarios, called Indexed Branch-Counting. It is argued that Indexed Branch-Counting can be justified on both accuracy-theoretic grounds and on the grounds that it satisfies a requirement of exchangeability for probability assignments. Since Indexed Branch-Counting diverges from the Born Rule, this poses trouble for Everettian approaches to probability. The paper also addresses a common argument against branch-counting, namely that the rule is incoherent in light of putative (...) vagueness in the number of branches. Finally, the paper addresses a recent proposal from Simon Saunders that aims to reconcile branch-counting with the Born Rule, arguing that the proposal faces challenges. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between two different modes of cosmology: the social and the scientific. Over the twentieth century, scientific understandings of the dimensions and operations of the physical universe changed dramatically, significantly prompted by astronomical and astrophysical research undertaken at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California. Could those understandings be readily translated into social theory? Studies across a range of disciplines have intimated that the scientific cosmos might be less essential to the worlds of meaning and (...) belonging that people and communities compose around themselves than more local and relational models of an ordered whole. The article applies that proposition to the Mount Wilson Observatory itself, arguing that the observatory’s founder, George Ellery Hale, and his acolytes were deeply invested in practices of terrestrial place-making, the politics of belonging, and the cadences of civilizational time as applied to their city and its region. Moreover, they struggled to construct a philosophy integrating the cosmos they were seeking to fix at home with the contortions and careering trajectories of the universal whole. (shrink)

While evidence for the role of gap functions, particularly during development, has been mounting, it has remained largely correlative, linking structure with presumed functions. With the recent advent of functional antibodies raised to the junctional protein, however, it has become possible to study the role of gap junctions more directly. There is now considerable evidence indicating that they play a vital role in tissue pattern formation and differentiation by allowing direct cell‐to‐cell transfer of developmental signals or morphogens.

The use of head-mounted displays (HMD) for virtual reality (VR) application-based purposes including therapy, rehabilitation, and training is increasing. Despite advancements in VR technologies, many users still experience sickness symptoms. VR sickness may be influenced by technological differences within HMDs such as resolution and refresh rate, however, VR content also plays a significant role. The primary objective of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to examine the literature on HMDs that report Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) scores to determine the impact (...) of content. User factors associated with VR sickness were also examined. A systematic search was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines. Fifty-five articles met inclusion criteria, representing 3,016 participants (mean age range 19.5-80; 41% female). Findings show gaming content recorded the highest total SSQ mean 34.26 (95%CI 29.57-38.95). VR sickness profiles were also influenced by visual stimulation, locomotion and exposure times. Older samples (mean age ≥35 years) scored significantly lower total SSQ means than younger samples, however, these findings are based on a small evidence base as a limited number of studies included older users. No sex differences were found. Across all types of content, the pooled total SSQ mean was relatively high 28.00 (95%CI 24.66-31.35) compared with recommended SSQ cut-off scores. These findings are of relevance for informing future research and the application of VR in different contexts. (shrink)

The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei. John Stevens. Rider, London [and Shambhala, Boston] 1988. viii, 158 pp. £7.95.

This paper considers the emergence of Mount Athos’ monk elders in Greek society in recent decades until the current economic crisis. Their social influence has grown over these decades, especially after some of them were recognized as charismatic and gerontismos became one of the most important forms of religious discourse in contemporary Greek society. These elders were presented as a kind of cultural resistance in the service of an alternative economy of desire. This analysis suggests that they have ultimately (...) worked in the service of a series of individual or collective fantasies of power and pleasure within Greek society. The theoretical tools informing this analysis are the product of a dialog between symbolic anthropology and Lacanian theory. (shrink)

The most lucid and penetrating survey of classical Indian philosophy in the Tibetan language. Beautiful Adornment of Mount Meru by Changkya Rolpai Dorje (1717-86) is a work of doxography, presenting the distinctive philosophical tenets of the Indian Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools in a systematic manner that ascends through increasingly more subtle views. It is a Tibetan corollary to contemporary histories of philosophy. The "Mount Meru" of the title is the Buddha's teachings, and Changkya's work excels in particular in (...) its treatment of the two Mahayana Buddhist schools, the Yogacara (here called the Vijñaptimatra) and the Madhyamaka. Unlike Jamyang Shepa's (1648-1722) much longer Great Exposition of Tenets, which was one of the key sources and inspirations for Changkya, Beautiful Adornment is often praised for the clarity of its prose and its economical use of citations from Indian texts. At the same time, like Jamyang Shepa's work, Changkya's text is not simply a catalog of assertions; it skillfully examines core philosophical issues, including a number of intriguing ancillary discussions. Also like Jamyang Shepa's text, Changkya's is very much a Geluk work, drawing heavily on the works of Tsongkhapa and his disciples. The manageable size of Beautiful Adornment and, more importantly, its lucid literary style, made this work the classic source for the study of Indian thought, used by students the across Tibetan cultural sphere. In contemporary academic circles, it has also been a central source for studying the Tibetan interpretation of the classical Indian philosophical systems. (shrink)

The 2015 Nepal earthquake and subsequent avalanche at Mount Everest Base Camp is the deadliest mountaineering disaster to date. This study is novel in exploring the lived experiences of survivors and the role of mental toughness in their psychological responses to the disaster. Design: Phenomenological study. Method: Ten mountaineers, who were on expeditions during the earthquake, participated in phenomenological interviews. Data were analysed inductively and thematically, while strategies to enhance trustworthiness were also employed. Results: Seven dimensions emerged from the (...) data, which captured climbers' psychological responses to the disaster, ranging from the moments the earthquake hit to reflections on the disaster after returning home. Contrasting emotional responses were described, and suggested to depend on experience and mental toughness. Negative emotional and behavioural responses were reported in the aftermath. Some climbers reported post-traumatic stress, but also a strong desire to return to Mount Everest and continue mountaineering. Conclusions: These findings provide detailed insights into the lived experiences of climbers who survived the 2015 Nepal earthquake and Base Camp avalanche. Findings also shed light on the role of mental toughness in coping with and responding to a major natural disaster. (shrink)

In Praise of Mount Samanta by Vedeha Thera, Tr. Ann Appleby Hazlewood. Sacred Books of the Buddhists XXXVII, Pali Text Society, London 1986. xiv + 122 pp. £8.95.

Immersive virtual reality (VR) emerges as a promising research and clinical tool. However, several studies suggest that VR induced adverse symptoms and effects (VRISE) may undermine the health and safety standards, and the reliability of the scientific results. In the current literature review, the technical reasons for the adverse symptomatology are investigated to provide suggestions and technological knowledge for the implementation of VR head-mounted display (HMD) systems in cognitive neuroscience. The technological systematic literature indicated features pertinent to display, sound, motion (...) tracking, navigation, ergonomic interactions, user experience, and computer’s hardware that should be considered by the researchers. Subsequently, a meta-analysis of 44 neuroscientific or neuropsychological studies involving VR HMD systems was performed. The meta-analysis of the VR studies demonstrated that the new generation HMDs induced significantly fewer dropouts and VRISE. Importantly, the commercial versions of the new generation HMDs with ergonomic interactions had zero incidents of adverse symptomatology and dropouts. Solely, HMDs equivalent to or greater than the commercial versions of contemporary HMDs accompanied with ergonomic interactions are suitable for implementation in cognitive neuroscience. In conclusion, researchers’ technological competency, along with meticulous methods and reports pertinent to software, hardware, and VRISE, are paramount to ensure the health and safety standards and the reliability of neuroscientific results. (shrink)

In 1939, scholars associated with the pro-Nazi Thüringian German Christian movement founded a research institute dedicated to the task of removing the legacy of Judaism from Christianity. The mission of the Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life was to render Christianity acceptable within the antisemitic and militarized climate of National Socialism. This task required purging Christian theology of Jewish influence, a feature evident in the Institute's version of the New Testament titled The Message (...) of God. This publication aimed to transform the religious experience of ordinary German believers and would eventually sell over 200,000 copies. This article examines material in this text as it relates to the Sermon on the Mount and concludes that, despite the apparent incongruity between Nazi ideology and New Testament ethics, the editors of the so-called ‘Nazi Bible’ believed their task to be guided by Christian ethical principles. (shrink)

Convergences and conflicts in the dialogue between Buddhism and modern science occasionally find precedent in historical sources and encounters, some of which have set the stage for scenarios that are commonplace in the current dialogue. This paper brings recent scholarship and Tibetan sources on astronomy and geography in Tibet into conversation with the ongoing Buddhism and science dialogue. In response to a lack of context in the dialogue, the paper gives attention to how two contexts in particular, namely, the contemplative (...) and historical, inform currents in the Buddhism and science dialogue about cosmology. The paper challenges claims made that Tibetans did not encounter European science until the twentieth century and that Tibetans were unaware of scientific cosmological ideas, and therefore have not updated the Buddhist Mount Meru cosmology. To address tensions inherent in the binary discourse on science vs religion, this paper asks, does the Mount Meru cosmology represent a domain wherein Buddhism or science hold more appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution about its existence? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sermon on the Mount and Moral Theology: A Virtue Perspective by William C. Mattison IIIRebekah EklundThe Sermon on the Mount and Moral Theology: A Virtue Perspective William C. Mattison III NEW YORK: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2017. 290 pp. £75.00Undergirding this book is a principle from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: the "analogy of faith" or "the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves" (...) (241). the "truths of faith" under consideration are Matthew's sermon on the Mount (sM) and the virtue ethics of thomas aquinas. Mattison aims to restore the sM to a more prominent place in Catholic moral theology by demonstrating the convergence between the teachings of the sM and thomistic virtue ethics.In this endeavor, the book largely succeeds, even if it occasionally over-reaches—that is, the sM is always shown to be in perfect harmony with thomas's teachings on virtue ethics, in which some readers might see points of tension. For example, Mattison uses thomistic action theory to argue that the beatitudes (Mt 5:3–12) and the sM's concluding exhortations (Mt 7:13–29) both demonstrate an "intrinsic relationship" between action and eternal reward; that is, the "qualifying condition" (e.g., meekness) is itself constitutive of happiness and is thus an activity that continues in eternal life (22–25, 209, 221). Purity of heart works well in this framework, but Mattison struggles to make mourning fit. the thomistic lens determines the sense of the text: Whatever mourning is, it is an activity that must persist in heaven, limiting the options for interpretation.Mattison also aligns the seven virtues—faith, hope, love, prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude—with the seven beatitudes (following augustine's reduction of the beatitudes from eight to seven), with the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer, and with sections of the sM as a whole. these latter, broad pairings are not always easy to find. Mattison matches the beatitudes with the virtue of faith, and the six antitheses with the virtues of temperance and fortitude. the virtue of love pairs with Matthew 6:1–6, 16–18 (teachings on prayer, alms-giving, and fasting, sans the Lord's Prayer); prudence, with Matthew 6:19–34 (worry and money); justice, with Matthew 7:1–12 (judging, asking, the golden rule); and hope, with Matthew 7:13–29 (concluding warnings and exhortations).similarly, a virtue is assigned to each beatitude (47) and to each petition of the Lord's Prayer (252). In the case of the Lord's Prayer, Mattison insists on a particular order of the virtues, following aquinas's ordering (but reversing [End Page 207] temperance and fortitude). But he does not use the same order of virtues for the Beatitudes or for the broader alignments with the whole SM (the orders are completely different for all three lists), raising the question of why Aquinas's order matters for one set but not for the others.Mattison's alignments show both his indebtedness to patristic and medieval tradition and his innovation. Medieval commentators commonly matched sets of sevens (Beatitudes, virtues, vices, gifts of the Spirit), but (rather remarkably) none of them ever appears to have understood the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer as requests for the seven virtues, as Mattison does. Likewise, Mattison's alignment of the Beatitudes with the virtues follows the practice but not the substance of previous lists; his pairings match neither Ambrose's nor Aquinas's. I would have found a discussion of the differences helpful.The question is whether Mattison's alignments are fruitful or merely forced, and here readers may find the results to be mixed. Some are illuminating, such as the vice of presumption in relation to Matthew 7:21–23; others, such as the alignment of the six antitheses with the seven sacraments, "appear a bit of a 'stretch,'" as even Mattison admits (110).Overall, scholars and graduate students interested in Thomistic virtue ethics, and in the relationship between scripture and Catholic moral theology, will find much food for thought here.Rebekah EklundLoyola University MarylandCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)