What kind of experience might help to confirm and make sense of the puzzling belief in divine creation, so central to the main monotheistic religions? Anselm and Aquinas developed a philosophical understanding of 'Creation' as an asymmetrical relationship between the world and God i.e. that the world is really related to God in a relationship of total dependence but God is in no way really related to or modified by this created world. This idea of an asymmetrical relationship is the (...) key concept unifying all aspects of this book which discusses the three main inter-related questions in a philosophical discussion about God -- the question of meaning, the question of existence, and the question of co-existence.The book explores various 'ciphers' of this asymmetrical relationship in our pre-philosophical lived experience. These are experiences such as that of the relationship between our knowledge and what we know, or our sense of obligation to our vulnerable neighbour. It argues that deciphering such experiences helps to make sense of the 'asymmetrical' relation of creation and that it in turn makes sense of them. Masterson argues further that this idea of asymmetrical relationship provides insight into the main questions of philosophy of religion and is an illuminating source of critical dialogue with contemporary Anglo/American and Phenomenological approaches in philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The doyen of university presidents emeriti, Patrick (Paddy) Masterson remains one of UCD's most admired scholars and leaders twenty-five years after he was its President. A Festschrift is the crowning accolade for an academic, and the present volume is testament to the high esteem in which Paddy Masterson is regarded by his peers. It is also a token of gratitude from his Alma Mater. Outside of Ireland, he has been honoured in Portugal, Italy, the United States, and his (...) beloved France. He shares his intellect and wit by continuing to publish in philosophy and his more recent passion, fiction.. (shrink)

Strong evidence shows that exposure and engagement with the natural world not only improve human wellbeing but can also help promote environmentally friendly behaviors. Human-nature relationships are at the heart of global agendas promoted by international organizations including the World Health Organization’s “One Health” and the United Nations “Ocean Decade.” These agendas demand collaborative multisector interdisciplinary efforts at local, national, and global levels. However, while global agendas highlight global goals for a sustainable world, developing science that directly addresses these agendas (...) from design through to delivery and outputs does not come without its challenges. In this article, we present the outcomes of international meetings between researchers, stakeholders, and policymakers from the United Kingdom and Brazil. We propose a model for interdisciplinary work under such global agendas, particularly the interface between One Health and the UN Ocean Decade and identify three priority research areas closely linked to each other: human-nature connection, conservation-human behavior, and implementation strategies. We also discuss a number of recommendations for moving forward. (shrink)

David Bowie’s swansong album Blackstar occupies a unique position in its proximity to the artist’s death: just two days. It thus provides an opportunity to examine how music, nostalgia, and mortali...

Based on two workshops held February 1990 in New York and March 1990 in San Francisco. Following the presentation and discussion of three clinical case histories, psychotherapists James F. Masterson, Marian Tolpin, and Peter E. Sifneos compare and contrast developmental, self, and object relations.

In his 2016 book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, Paul Bloom argues that “if we want to be good caring people, if we want to make the world a better place, then we are better off without empathy.” I’ve specifically chosen this formulation of Bloom’s position because it gets at the issue I will most directly challenge him on - that we would, or even could, be better off without empathy. The position I will defend is that our (...) empathy plays an indispensable role in the development of our moral conscience, and an ongoing role in the cultivation of our moral concepts, that would be compromised by suppressing our empathy. On this understanding, I argue that we would generally be better served by cultivating our empathy to mitigate and overcome its shortcomings, rather than suppressing our empathy as Bloom recommends. (shrink)

THE thought of G W F Hegel, undoubtedly one of the greatest philosophers of all time, is by any standard exceptionally difficult. The great variety of interpretations which it has inspired is evidence of its inherent complexity and perhaps even ambiguity. It has frequently been impatiently dismissed as distorting the rich texture of lived reality into a phantom maze of obscure metaphysical tensions. The view is widespread that it is a barren system of abstract thought whose relationship to concrete reality (...) is quite remote and artificial. (shrink)

In examining the question "what, in the final analysis, is the ultimate meaning and value of being in general and of human existence in particular?" the author considers 3 main approaches--humanism, scientism, and theism--arguing that he personally finds theism most convincing.

A motivational system approach to avoidance behavior is presented. According to this approach, a motivational state increases the probability of relevant response patterns and establishes the appropriate or “ideal” consummatory stimuli as positive reinforcers. In the case of feeding motivation, for example, hungry rats are likely to explore and gnaw, and to learn to persist in activities correlated with the reception of consummatory stimuli produced by ingestion of palatable substances. In the case of defense motivation, fearful rats are likely to (...) flee or freeze, and to learn to persist in activities correlated with consummatory stimuli produced by flight from a dangerous place. Defense system activation is distinct from alarm reactions. The latter prepare the animal for probable noxious events, involve relatively intense negative affect and extinguish rapidly in situations where the noxious event no longer occurs. In contrast, defense system activation potentiates innate and modified defense reactions, thus preparing the animal for possible, but not necessarily probable, noxious events; it involves little or no negative affect and extinguishes very slowly when the noxious event no longer occurs. With these assumptions and the resulting model we attempt to resolve several long-standing problems in avoidance learning, including the low correlation between negative affect and avoidance performance, differential rates of extinction for avoidance performance and conditioned emotional responses, and evidence that some avoidance responses are much more easily learned than others. In addition, the model has implications for the study of parallels between appetitive and aversive motivation, sign tracking in aversive conditioning, and orientation of flight responses. Historical antecedents and alternative approaches are discussed. (shrink)

Approaching God explores the ways in which phenomenology, metaphysics and theological enquiry can throw light upon each other. This is a matter of great interest and importance to the future of philosophical theology and the philosophy of religion. What, if anything, has philosophical reflection about God to contribute to Christian theology? And if indeed philosophy plays a positive role in theological reflection—what kind of philosophy? The first-person philosophical perspective of phenomenology or the objective philosophical perspective of metaphysics? Masterson devotes (...) three chapters to, respectively, phenomenological, metaphysical, and theological approaches to God. Each are seen as animated by a first principle from which a comprehensive account of everything is said to follow—‘Human Consciousness' in the case of phenomenology; ‘Being' in the case of metaphysics; and ‘God' in the case of theology. Although philosophers and theologians such as Ricoeur, Levinas, Kearney, Caputo, and Barth are considered briefly, Approaching God essentially provides a dialogue about theological and theistic issues between the phenomenological approach of the leading French Christian phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion and the realist metaphysical approach of Aquinas. Masterson maintains that all three approaches are needed in trying to speak appropriately about God—they are irreducible but complementary. (shrink)

The article considers a particular case of Richard Kearney's characteristic hermeneutical exploration of `the possible' as an `imaginative' way of casting light upon philosophical issues. This particular case is his recent hermeneutical and phenomenological consideration of `Otherness' in the context of philosophy of religion. This consideration, strongly influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Levinas, Ricoeur and Derrida, is developed in two of his recent works Strangers, Gods and Monsters and The God Who May Be . The article examines how he (...) seeks to navigate an interpretation of divine otherness as an ethical appeal which escapes the dilemma of a God either so transcendent as to be anonymous or so immanent as to be a mere projection. It outlines how, rejecting onto-theology in favour of eschatology, Kearney envisages the divine as an ethically enabling possibility. This possibility, he claims, enables us to achieve, beyond our own intrinsic resources, an ethical order of justice and love through which the kingdom of God — the God Who May Be — is accomplished. There is a co-relativity between the divine as enabling possibility and humanity which accomplishes this possibility. It investigates the way in which Kearney seeks to legitimize, within a phenomenological frame of reference, an experiential affirmation of this conception of divine transcendence as eschatological possibility. It argues that this phenomenological consideration needs to be qualified and complemented by certain metaphysical considerations which Kearney disputes. Key Words: eschatology • ethics • God • hermeneutics • metaphysics • Otherness • phenomenology • possibility. (shrink)

To reconstruct the philosophy of St Thomas must we include, as an integral part of the system, his teaching concerning the heavenly bodies? One would hardly think so were we to judge by the attention devoted to this theme in classic expositions of Thomism such as those of Gilson and Sertillanges. However, in this study, Dr Litt argues that an historical examination of the writings of St Thomas clearly establishes that his references to the heavenly bodies are not merely incidental (...) and by way of example. In many important respects they are proposed by St Thomas as genuinely metaphysical assertions fulfilling an important and positive role in the elaboration of his philosophy. (shrink)

This article seeks to show the effect that Vitruvius’ probable social status had on the contents of the De Architectura. The education proposed for the architect, the receipt of a wage, and pleasure all shape the treatise in significant ways. The article supplements these discussions with a close reading of a section of the De Architectura hitherto neglected in the secondary literature: the cameo appearance of Aristippus in the preface to Book 6. Vitruvius arguably uses the figure of Aristippus, the (...) pleasure-loving philosopher whom Vitruvius offers to the reader as a stand-in for the architect, to focus and negotiate further the issues of status, pay, and pleasure. (shrink)