Nielsen's model presents a new isomorphic brain-mind viewpoint, according to which the sole dream generator is found in a REM-on (explicit or covert REM) mechanism. Such a model cannot explain the dreamlike activity during SWS (slow wave sleep), SO (sleep onset) and in the last period of sleep. Moreover the hypothesis contrasts with Solms's data, which show that dreaming is present also in case of destruction of the REM generator. [Nielsen; Solms].

Although many philosophers of religion have claimed support for continuing to live with paradoxes in theology from the existence of basic paradoxes in scientific theory, few have probed the validity of this claim. This monograph fills the gap. After a useful chapter surveying the current status of the wave-particle theories in physics and Bohr's principle of complementarity, Austin abstracts from the discussion the idea of complementary models and uses this to propose a "complementarist interpretation" of paradoxes in religion. This he (...) favors over the "paradox-minimizing approach" and the "sui generis interpretation" found in such writers as Bochenski and G. E. Hughes, on the one hand, and Pseudo-Dionysius and classical Indian mystics, on the other. The former approach fails to do justice to the element of mystery in religion while the latter makes too much of it. In his account of the latter, Austin relies especially on Ninian Smart's Reasons and Faiths, the theses of which are rather uncritically adopted as the key to understanding religious discourse. Regrettably, Austin has to depend on secondary sources in his treatment of Indian thought and this makes his handling of it less masterly than his discussion of contemporary physics. Likewise, the concept of "model" needs more critical scrutiny than is possible here if it is to serve a subinterest of the book in the status of theology as a "science." But generally the work is replete with qualifications and illustrations and is a welcome addition to the literature on religion and science.—C. P. S. (shrink)

Stressing the insights of the young Marx, Kamenka brings together Marxist social criticism and the meta-ethical concerns of analytic philosophy. Marx's contribution to the Hegelian concern with freedom and alienation is more distinguished than is the discussion of Marx by subsequent Marxists. Confusing conflict with contradiction, Marx never acknowledged the real contradiction between the relativism of his sociology of morals and the absolutism of his "normative-advocative" use of a "science" of history. But his emphasis on the morality of activities and (...) groups rather than of individuals deserves attention from philosophers. Amongst Marxist philosophers, Kamenka really only considers the Soviets, who assume too easily that conflicts between individual and collective norms are "dialectically" resolved. It would have been an improvement to include in this otherwise excellent monograph some account of French and Italian writers on its central themes.--C. P. S. (shrink)

Renou's Louis H. Jordan Lectures for 1951 give a concise, erudite, yet readable survey of Hinduism and Jainism. Their title is misleading since they mention modern as well as ancient developments and dwell not so much on religious as on theologico-philosophical and literary-historical issues. The work provides a good sense of European scholarship on its subject and includes more information on the various Hindu sects than do some of its counterparts. Except for the occasional, brilliant aside, it does not help (...) one to understand what it might have been like to have ever been a Hindu or a Jain.--C. P. S. (shrink)

This is a new, readable but accurate translation of a minor classic in Mahayana Buddhism. The reader is helped over the terse, abstract prose of the text by timely notes from the commentator, who yet manages to let the original author speak for himself whenever possible. Probably a Chinese Buddhist of the sixth century A.D., the author was a precursor of the Consciousness Only School. Within a few pages he gives us primary reference for such familiar Mahayana notions as the (...) identification of the Buddha-Nature with "Suchness," the inexplicable origin of differentiation in "ignorance," the distinction between absolute and relative truths, the ultimate non-duality of mind and body, and the doctrine of the Triple Body of the Buddha. A sample of the argument states that we should avoid equating the Buddha Nature with empty space if we clearly understand that "empty space" is a "delusive" concept. Free from the delusion that there are physical substances, the enlightened Mind wisely refrains from positing the existence of "space" in the first place. But then, whence is ignorance? In absolute terms, the question does not arise. In relative terms, it is too confused to admit of an answer. The resolution of the difficulty is to be found in practicing the Buddhist way of life rather than in studying any abstract set of answers.—C. P. S. (shrink)

Although the author attempts to define all his terms, his book is too full of unfamiliar categories to be of much help to the lay reader. For the Indologist, it may provide a useful catalogue of bases to be touched in a survey of Hindu theism. However, it fails to take sufficient account of Saiva Siddhanta and ignores Tantrism. In short, it is a sample of partisan Vaisnava scholarship.--C. P. S.

This is a very readable theological attack on current religious journalism about "the death of God" and its moral consequences. Rightly chiding the "radical" theologians for their tendentious use of words like "new," Hamilton wrongly equates their talk of "the secular" with support of the profane and so sometimes misses the import of their groping for new ways of thinking and acting as Christians. Seen through his eyes, much of their thought is really nineteenth century liberal humanism repackaged for the (...) suburban market. Recognizing the incoherence of the Barth-Bonhoeffer concept of religion, he nevertheless uses it when accusing Bishop Robinson, van Buren, and the rest of replacing Christianity with religion, rather than inaugurating a "religionless Christianity," as they intend. The best part of the book is an analysis of what Bonhoeffer really meant by "religionless Christianity" and other such provocative phrases. Like those he criticizes, Hamilton is quite sure that the Bible supports only his version of Christianity. His unabashed neo-orthodoxy commits him to conceiving of God as an arbitrary dictator, but it also provides him with a keen critical vantage-point, by reference to which all philosophical theologies are damned as modernizing, hypothetical, Hegelian, and un-Christian at heart. His own preference for talk of "natural piety" instead of "secular Christianity" is too sketchily presented to be assessed.--C. P. S. (shrink)

Essentially a history of religion in the twentieth century, this erudite work puts more emphasis on religion than on change and more faith in Christianity than in other traditions. Alive to the importance of the ecumenical movement and the Second Vatican Council, Edwards argues that no other religious groups in our time have the sophistication of the major Christian denominations in responding to the challenges of a scientifically based culture and an industrialized economy. He relates the major movements in modern (...) theology to a context informed by Marx and Freud, biology and technology, Eastern spirituality and Western revivalism. But he evades the challenge to revise our concept of God or demonstrate the meaningfulness of the traditional concept, with the plea that today's theologians have to be more humble than their predecessors in making dogmatic claims. From his vantage-point in England he judiciously assesses currents of thought in Europe and the United States, while showing more sensitivity to the views of British humanists than to the crises of faith and morals arising in contemporary political and social life. Despite his familiarity with the "new" morality and literary celebrations of the "death" of God, he ends with a relatively unperturbed affirmation of the biblical message concerning Jesus' death and resurrection. The result is a highly competent survey of how things stand at present for Western churchmen and theologians. The book has a few typographical and other errors, notably the placing of the last line first on page 260 and the footnote references to Sir Humphrey rather than Hamilton Gibb and to Robert rather than Richard Robinson.--C. P. S. (shrink)

Faruqi's book is more about Christian dogmatics than about ethics. Its interest stems from the fact that the author is a Muslim who knows recent Protestant thought well and is not afraid to call Karl Barth a bigot. After an interesting but unrelated introduction on methodology in the history of religions, the author settles down to some pet Muslim peeves concerning the doctrines of original sin and the divinity of Christ. Instead of the Jesus of history he presents us with (...) the Koranic Jesus, the universalizing reformer whose mission was to undo Jewish, racialist separatism. Faruqi's Sufi sympathies blind him to the real problems of historical, biblical criticism and his moralistic rationalism allows no place for significant differences amongst men in the coming great brotherhood. For him, Jesus' achievement was to develop an ethic of intent against pharisaic legalism. But this ethic needs to be supplemented by the Muslim emphasis on performance if it is to be transposed from the realm of ideals to the realities of contemporary political life. Considering the history of Christian interpretations of Islam, Faruqi is entitled to retaliate--and so he does, in an overburdened series of footnotes. He is much more tolerant of Arab expansionism than of Western imperialism, and completely insensitive to the psychological power of Judaism. Too often he substitutes derogatory labeling for constructive criticism and so fails to illumine the concepts of love, power, and justice on which any religious ethic must depend. Even so, his scholarly achievement is remarkable, and one learns more from his misunderstanding than from most of the religious apologetics being published today.--C. P. S. (shrink)

The author holds that the enduring achievement of the modern mind is the recognition of a sharp distinction between fact and value; this work is a history of that distinction. In separate sections devoted to the history of scientific method and the history of value theory, Hall covers the ground from the medieval period to the present. His conclusion strikes a pessimistic note; modernity, after distinguishing fact and value, has had marvelous success with the former but is in danger of (...) losing the latter altogether. Towards resolution of this difficulty, he suggests, with tantalizing brevity and obscurity, that though value statements may be emotive, we may perhaps regard emotion as a genuinely cognitive state somehow putting us in touch with real features of the world. While he writes with a pleasant down-to-earth directness, Hall never makes clear precisely what this basic cleavage between fact and value amounts to. And his history, though illuminating, is not always well-balanced; Kant as a value theorist, gets less space than either Locke or Machiavelli and only a third as much as Hobbes. Yet the book as a whole is stimulating, lively, and important.--A. C. P. (shrink)

This collection complements New Essays in Philosophical Theology by displaying the influence of the later Wittgenstein on contemporary philosophers of religion. The first two papers are Peter Winch's "Understanding a Primitive Society" and Norman Malcolm's "Anselm's Ontological Arguments". Distinguishing between interpretations of experience within a system of concepts and the reality expressed by the limiting concepts presupposed by such a system, Winch will not allow us to question the validity of the portrayal of reality as such and specifically attacks MacIntyre's (...) dismissal of magic. Neither Winch nor Malcolm leave room for changes in our conception of the reality expressed which might lead to radical reappraisal of the concepts used. Building on Malcolm, the editor declares theoretical speculation and scepticism to be incompatible with religious understanding. After a typically sterile debate between Atheist, Agnostic, Protestant and Catholic and a typically judicious paper by Kemp Smith on "Is Divine Existence Credible?" we come to the gem of the collection, W. H. Poteat's "Birth, Suicide and the Doctrine of Creation: An Exploration of Analogies." This and the next unravel ambiguities in our talk of the world. Then come R. F. Holland on "The Miraculous" and some vintage Collingwood on "The Devil". Phillips on moral and religious conceptions of duty and Poteat's analysis of "I Will Die" complete the series. Almost all of the essays have been previously published, but the editor has done a good job of gathering and arranging them in a meaningful sequence. Apart from Kemp Smith and Collingwood, the writers represent "Wittgensteinian Fideism" and the book suffers for lack of the criticism of this that Kai Nielsen or MacIntyre might have supplied. Its most suggestive passages are those in which linguistic and existentialist insights are married. But the marriage is still without metaphysical issue.—C. P. S. (shrink)

This monograph on Theravada and Mahayana ordination ceremonies makes up for the neglect of ritual in most readily available studies of Buddhism. Its major thesis is that the historical puzzle over Ananda's mistreatment at the first Buddhist Council may be solved by reference to the abuse of ordinands at these ceremonies. Such abasement precedes elevation to a revered status within the community and is not evidence of rejection by one or other faction, as some have supposed with regard to Ananda. (...) A minor thesis is that the ceremonies have striking parallels with mystery cults of the Near East. The defining characteristic of a "mystery religion" seems to be that it has an initiation ceremony using the imagery of rebirth. But this is too general and would allow Lévy to label almost any tradition as a "mystery" religion. Based on sound scholarship and personal experience, his opening chapters present us with the available evidence. His conclusion is less important than his mention of the moral significance of gift-giving and suffering in Buddhism. These points deserve more extensive treatment than they receive here.--C. P. S. (shrink)

Legal translation has become a principal means to unfold Chinese laws to the world in the global era and the study of it has proved to be of practical significance. Since the proper theory guidance is the key to the quality of LT translation, this paper focuses on the Skopos theory and the strategies applied in the practice of LT. A case study of LT examples from the Criminal Law of the P.R.C. has been made while briefly reviewing the Skopos (...) theory and its principles. Started with short discussion of LT, this paper probes into the applicability of the three principles of Skopos theory, including the Skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule, into the legal texts, especially into the translation of the Criminal Law of the P.R.C. and based on the study, the strategies for LT are proposed, with the hope that it can be useful for reference in other legal texts. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall be concerned to show: that Winch believes that there can be different conceptions of ‘agreement with reality’; that Wittgenstein agrees with this, but emphasizes the difficulty of understanding such conceptions; that Winch realizes this difficulty, and yet still tries to gain understanding of primitive social institutions in terms of their sense of the significance of human life, in terms of the limiting notions of birth, death and sexual relations; that such a notion of the significance (...) of human life cannot be made sense of without an understanding of the concept of agreement with reality which undergirds it; that Winch's position is internally incoherent. (shrink)

The article comparatively analyzes A.C. Danto’s and P. Ricœur’s theories of historical narration. Ricœur’s synthetic assimilation of Danto’s views is interpreted as a characteristic phenomenon of the dialogue between hermeneutics and analytical philosophy, and in a broader perspective – of contemporary European continental and Anglo-American philosophical traditions. The version of the analytical philosophy of history developed by Danto is interpreted as being formed in the course of overcoming epistemological program of logical positivism under the impact of a platform of linguistic (...) philosophy, pragmatism and neo-pragmatism as well as F. Nietzsche’s perspectivism and the ideas of existentialism. The articles examines fundamental conclusions of Danto’s “descriptive metaphysics” of history, which influence his understanding of a number of epistemological factors and ontological assumptions specific for the theory of historical narration. At the late stage of the evolution of his philosophy of history, Danto spoke of a radical challenge to his views on the part of T. Kuhn’s theory, but he did not give to it a constructive answer. Despite the significant philosophical differences, a number of Danto’s historical narration theory’s theses became acceptable for Ricœur, especially in the light of the American colleague final confession that knowledge of the past is dependent on the kind of existential presence in history specific for a human being. Taking M. Heidegger’s and H.G. Gadamer’s ideas as a basis of his approach to narration problem, Ricœur considered also important the “linguistic turn” initiated by L. Wittgenstein. Offering a positive evaluation of Danto’s analysis of history language, Ricœur simultaneously rightly criticized him for his neglect of the formal instruments of organizing of narrative – plot, intrigue, and composition that should affect the knowledge resources and testify on the unity of narration features in history and fiction as well. (shrink)

That C. P. Snow had first-hand experience both in science and writing was taken for granted in the years of controversy over ‘the two cultures’, but neither the quality of his experience nor the circumstances of his eventual adoption of a literary career was given close enough consideration. Snow's own statements on these two points are often misleading. Yet the autobiographical nature of his fiction throws significant light on the subject. An examination of the autobiographical elements in Snow's novels in (...) the light of his conception of the novel raises the question of whether his shift from science to literature was exactly the result of a genuine choice and also reveals that the two cultures dichotomy is embedded in his personal experience. (shrink)

Here, S is a sentence—or possibly a smaller or larger unit of meaningful expression for a language—that’s written by an author and c is the circumstance in which S is used. R is defined as the language conventions holding between an author and a reader (or better yet, his readership). P , probably the most important part of the equation, is the content of S or, the intended meaning of the author. We assume that the communication between an author and (...) a reader is limited only to written text. Consequently, it is not possible to ask the author about his intention for writing S; that will have to be discovered by a reader. (shrink)

Papyrus Grecs de l'Universitéde Lille. Publiés sous la direction de P. Jouguet. Tome I, Fascicule I. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1907. 4to. Pp. 66. 6 fr. 25 c.