A collection of Plato's work showing the unsurpassed power of his writing, which ultimately lies in the fact that he was as much a literary as a philosophic genius.

Jonathan Edwards identified the central act of faith as ‘the cordial consent of beings to Being in general’, which is to say to God (see Holbrook, 1973, pp. 102ff). That equation, of Being, Truth and God, is rarely taken seriously in analytical circles. My argument will be that this is to neglect the real context of a great deal of past philosophy, particularly the very Cartesian arguments from which so many undergraduate courses begin. All too many students issue from such (...) courses immunized against enthusiasm, in the conceit that they have answers to all the old conundrums, which were in any case no more than verbal trickery. ‘By uttering the right words but failing to use themin propria persona, philosophy induces a kind of soporific amnesia bewitching us into forgetting our God-given task. That task is, of course, to do what Socrates did and to live as he lived' (Burrell, 1972, p. 4). Burrell's words are not wholly fair to academic philosophers, nor to the Lady Philosophy. Plenty of philosophers really mind about the truth, and want to be Socratic in pursuit of it. But the danger is a real one. If all that matters is debunking past philosophers, how does that differ from the repeated refutation of the Chaldaean Oracles or the Prophecies of Nostradamus? A pretty enough pastime for the young, but hardly serious business for adults (as Callicles remarks: Plato,Gorgias484 c 5ff). ‘If the history of philosophy is a process of ‘salvaging’ what you yourself have already thought, then why bother?’ (MacDonald Ross, 1985, p. 502). (shrink)

There has always been much controversy surrounding property rights in legal and political philosophy. Thinkers such as Plato, Locke, Kant, Hegel and Marx have all offered different views on the idea of property. This collection of essays, written by some of the most eminent scholars in the field, examines the most central issues of property theory from a variety of perspectives. The essays discuss whether property may be dissipated or used imprudently with impunity, and analyse how a person's property (...) should be distributed after death. They survey the economic landscape of intellectual property and show that Locke's celebrated justification for private property falters when it comes to copyrights and patents. They also demonstrate how important it is that institutions of property be carefully justified. The variety and originality of these essays are evidence that the theory of property is one of the most exciting areas of intellectual inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

When we speak of philosophy and therapy, or of philosophy as therapy, the usual intent is to suggest that ‘philosophizing’ is or should be a way to clarify the mind or purify the soul. While there may be little point in arguing with psychoses or deeply-embedded neuroses our more ordinary misjudgements, biases and obsessions may be alleviated, at least, by trying to ‘see things clearly and to see them whole’, by carefully identifying premises and seeing what they – rationally – (...) support, and by seeking to eliminate the residual influence of premises that we have long since, rationally, dismissed. I don't intend to argue with this account – though of course it may be as well to remember that ‘philosophizing’ may have more dangerous effects. It is not obvious that philosophical argument will always help us ‘see things straight’, and the Athenian democracy was not altogether wrong to think that some of Socrates' followers or pupils learnt quite the wrong things from him. (shrink)

I consider reasons for questioning ‘the laws of logic’, and suggest that these laws do not accord with everyday reality. Either they are rhetorical tools rather than absolute truths, or else Plato and his successors were right to think that they identify a reality distinct from the ordinary world of experience, and also from the ultimate source of reality.

An inquiry into the possibility that life?after?death be understood as waking from a shared dream into the real world. Attempts to outlaw the possibility that ?really? we are, e.g., vat?brains are shown to lead to unwelcome, anti?realist conclusions about either the world or consciousness. The unsatisfactory nature of empirically observable (Humean) causal connections suggests that real causes may be found beyond the world of our present experience. Though such a story cannot now be proved to be true, we are entitled (...) to entertain it as a serious possibility. An attempt is made to say what life is like in the ?Real World?, whether this be a spatial world like our present one or not, and what moral it holds for our present life. I suggest (like Plato) that there are many levels of waking, and that our ?Real Self should not be identified simply with our present egos. (shrink)

Resumo O autor começará por examinar a noção de participação, tal como é aplicada por Platão, primeiro à distinção gramatical entre identidade e predicação e depois às questões metafísicas acerca de sujeitos reais, sendo eles indivíduos contáveis, de um “material” subjacente, ou Formas que aparecem mais ou menos reconhecíveis na nossa experiência. Mesmo os materialistas modernos admitem uma distinção entre a realidade tal como ela “é” e tal como “aparece”. Surge então a questão, mais ainda para os modernos do que (...) para Platão, sobre a possibilidade de conhecer algo do mundo “tal como ele é” além de como “aparece”. O autor conclui, sugerindo a hipótese de um conhecimento “participativo”, de um tipo agora associado ao pensamento “right brain” em vez de “left brain”. Termina reiterando que podemos conhecer a realidade como ela é “a partir do interior”, uma vez que nela estamos inseridos. Palavras-chave: formas, matéria, participação, Plotino, predicaçãoA brief examination of the notion of participation, as it is applied by Plato first to the grammatical distinction between identity and predication, and then to metaphysical questions about the real subjects, whether these are countable individuals, an underlying “stuff”, or the Forms that appear more or less recognizably in our experience. Even modern materialists admit a distinction between the world as it appears, very variously, to us, and the world “as it is”. The question then arises, for moderns even more than for Plato, how we could hope to know anything of the world “as it is”, apart from its appearance to us and others. I conclude by gesturing toward the possibility of “participatory” knowledge, of a kind now associated with “right brain” rather than “left brain” thinking. We can know what reality is “from the inside”, since we ourselves are inside it. Keywords : Participation, predication, Forms, Matter, Plotinus. (shrink)

Maclntyre's claim that contemporary moral language is, by traditional standards, merely chaotic somewhat exaggerates our chaos, and traditional order. He accuses. Moore and his disciples in particular of using moral language merely as propaganda, failing, like other critics, to reckon with the Platonic context of Moore's argument and the reasons why Goodness is an idea that rational inquiry should not abandon. Genuine moral action is done as the right thing, that produces more that is good than any alternative. Plato's (...) model of the threefold structure of human motivation, and his image of the cave, locates moral action at a higher level than action from desire or social prejudice. We discover our real selves, distinct from our physical and social natures, in seeing what Goodness requires. This neo?Platonism is a better bet than Maclntyre allows, and an answer to the barbarian puppeteers he rightly condemns. (shrink)

This chapter reviews classical accounts of natural theology. These include accounts by Hesiod of Boeotia in the late 8th century BC, Parmenides of Elea, Empedocles of Acragas, Aristotle, Plato, and the Roman senator Boethius.

I consider reasons for questioning ‘the laws of logic’, and suggest that these laws do not accord with everyday reality. Either they are rhetorical tools rather than absolute truths, or else Plato and his successors were right to think that they identify a reality distinct from the ordinary world of experience, and also from the ultimate source of reality.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

The contributors cover a wide range of philosophical writers and texts to which the label “idealism” has been or might reasonably be attached. These include Plato, the Roman Stoics, the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, Augustinian Neoplatonism, Johannes Scottus Eriugena, the Arabic _Book of Causes_, George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, and classical German idealism. "This is a rich, subtle, thought-provoking collection on central, though neglected topics in idealism and its history, offering fresh and important insights into both familiar and less familiar major (...) figures, views, and issues. Most important, perhaps, are its presentation and assessment of non-subjective forms of idealism, as well as mind-dependence forms of idealism prior to Descartes. Contemporary philosophers have become sophisticated about various forms of realism, anti-realism and irrealism. Such discussions, among others, will benefit significantly by accepting this volume’s invitation to become more sophisticated about idealism as well. This very welcome contribution to the literature should find a broad readership." —_Kenneth R. Westphal, University of East Anglia_ "If it is true—as Hegel and his followers have claimed—that being and truth are indissociable from history, then philosophy cannot be successful if it limits itself exclusively to investigations of individual thinkers and periods. What is at stake, ultimately, is the development of Western thought as a whole. In this volume, a fine international group of scholars investigate the meaning of idealism across the ages. Without sacrificing nuance, their contributions show that a core of shared assumptions characterizes idealist philosophies. The historical dialogue which this volume advances emphasizes the relevance of ancient and medieval thinkers for the current debate, but it also challenges us to place modern representatives of idealism—such as Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel—in historical perspective." —_Philipp W. Rosemann, University of Dallas_. (shrink)

Oxford Studies vol. XIV contains five free-standing articles (on Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics), an exchange between Job van Eck and Christopher Rowe about a key passage in the Phaedo, and three lengthy review articles: Michael Wedin on David Bostock's Aristotle: Metaphysics Z and ; Gail Fine on R.J. Hankinson's The Sceptics ; and Anne Sheppard on John Dillon's Alcinous. Only the briefest sketch of the volume is possible.

William Frankena has several times discussed, in his usual cautious and judicious manner, a contrast between two types of normative ethics: an ethics of “duty” and an ethics of “virtue.” Without claiming that actual philosophers have been pure exemplars of either type, he has tried to give a clear statement of these two possible and contrasting types of theory, and to expose their problems. His final view seems to be that a complete normative theory will combine elements of both, but (...) that an ethics of “duty” in some sense is more fundamental. Plato and Aristotle seem to differ from him in being more sympathetic to a “virtue-ethics.” Leslie Stephen went so far as to claim that satisfactory principles of duty cannot even be stated and that a moral philosopher spends his time better formulating an ideal of virtue. James Martineau is another classical figure more sympathetic to “virtue-ethics.”. (shrink)

In this foundational work on the theory of linguistic and mental representation, Stephen Schiffer surveys all the leading theories of meaning and content in the philosophy of language and finds them lacking. He concludes that there can be no correct, positive philosophical theory or linguistic or mental representation and, accordingly advocates the deflationary "no-theory theory of meaning and content." Along the way he takes up functionalism, the nature of propositions and their suitability as contents, the language of thought and (...) other sententialist theories of belief, intention based semantics, and related issues in ontology. Stephen Schiffer is Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

This essay deals with property rights in body parts that can be exchanged in a market. The inquiry arises in the following context. With some exceptions, the laws of many countries permit only the donation, not the sale, of body parts. Yet for some years there has existed a shortage of body parts for transplantation and other medical uses. It might then appear that if more sales were legally permitted, the supply of body parts would increase, because people would have (...) more incentive to sell than they currently have to donate. To allow sales is to recognize property rights in body parts. To allow sales, however, makes body parts into “commodities”—that is, things that can be bought and sold in a market. And some view it as morally objectionable to treat body parts as commodities. (shrink)

Anyone who wishes to talk about angels has to respond to the mocking question, how many of them can dance on the point of a pin. The answer is: ‘just as many as they please’. Angels being immaterial intellects do not occupy space to the exclusion of any other such intellectual substance, and their being ‘on’ the point of a pin can only mean that they attend to it. The question, however, is not one that concerned our mediaeval predecessors, although (...) it seems as difficult to persuade anyone of this as it is to clear Canute of the charge of insane conceit. (shrink)

The Value of Life is an exploration of the actual and perceived importance of biological diversity for human beings and society. Stephen R. Kellert identifies ten basic values, which he describes as biologically based, inherent human tendencies that are greatly influenced and moderated by culture, learning, and experience. Drawing on 20 years of original research, he considers: the universal basis for how humans value nature differences in those values by gender, age, ethnicity, occupation, and geographic location how environment-related activities (...) affect values variation in values relating to different species how vlaues vary across cultures policy and management implications Throughout the book, Kellert argues that the preservation of biodiversity is fundamentally linked to human well-being in the largest sense as he illustrates the importance of biological diversity to the human sociocultural and psychological condition. (shrink)

Stephen Schiffer presents a groundbreaking account of meaning and belief, and shows how it can illuminate a range of crucial problems regarding language, mind, knowledge, and ontology. He introduces the new doctrine of 'pleonastic propositions' to explain what the things we mean and believe are. He discusses the relation between semantic and psychological facts, on the one hand, and physical facts, on the other; vagueness and indeterminacy; moral truth; conditionals; and the role of propositional content in information acquisition and (...) explanation. This radical new treatment of meaning will command the attention of everyone who works on fundamental questions about language, and will attract much interest from other areas of philosophy. (shrink)

What is it for marks or sounds to have meaning, and what is it for someone to mean something in producing them? Answering these and related questions, Schiffer explores communication, speech acts, convention, and the meaning of linguistic items in this reissue of a seminal work on the foundations of meaning. A new introduction takes account of recent developments and places his theory in a broader context.

"Biophilia" is the term coined by Edward O. Wilson to describe what he believes is humanity's innate affinity for the natural world. In his landmark book Biophilia, he examined how our tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes might be a biologically based need, integral to our development as individuals and as a species. That idea has caught the imagination of diverse thinkers. The Biophilia Hypothesis brings together the views of some of the most creative scientists of our time, (...) each attempting to amplify and refine the concept of biophilia. The variety of perspectives -- psychological, biological, cultural, symbolic, and aesthetic -- frame the theoretical issues by presenting empirical evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis. Numerous examples illustrate the idea that biophilia and its converse, biophobia, have a genetic component: fear, and even full-blown phobias of snakes and spiders are quick to develop with very little negative reinforcement, while more threatening modern artifacts -- knives, guns, automobiles -- rarely elicit such a response people find trees that are climbable and have a broad, umbrella-like canopy more attractive than trees without these characteristics people would rather look at water, green vegetation, or flowers than built structures of glass and concrete The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity. More important, it implies serious consequences for our well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world. Relentless environmental destruction could have a significant impact on our quality of life, not just materially but psychologically and even spiritually. (shrink)

Among philosophers of science there seems to be a general consensus that understanding represents a species of knowledge, but virtually every major epistemologist who has thought seriously about understanding has come to deny this claim. Against this prevailing tide in epistemology, I argue that understanding is, in fact, a species of knowledge: just like knowledge, for example, understanding is not transparent and can be Gettiered. I then consider how the psychological act of "grasping" that seems to be characteristic of understanding (...) differs from the sort of psychological act that often characterizes knowledge. Zagzebski's account Kvanvig's account Two problems Comanche cases Unreliable sources of information The upper-right quadrant So is understanding a species of knowledge? A false choice. (shrink)

I explore the extent to which the epistemic state of understanding is transparent to the one who understands. Against several contemporary epistemologists, I argue that it is not transparent in the way that many have claimed, drawing on results from developmental psychology, animal cognition, and other fields.

Twenty-nine philosophers from Plato to William Luijpen are represented by selections varying from three to twenty-two pages in length. The selections and their proportions are simply too idiosyncratic. Why should Stephen Strasser get twenty-two pages while Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, and Hume manage only twenty-nine total pages among the four of them? Most of the classical philosophers are represented by mere snippets; Kant is high man with fifteen pages of text—and even these are broken up into seven sections. (...) The issue is not simply number of pages: after all, Leibniz' Monadology would have fit in less space than that accorded to John Peters. This is not to denigrate Peters, who was an exceptionally good philosopher; but the beginning student should be exposed to Leibniz, Hegel, and Marx before he is exposed to Peters. Or he should at least be exposed to Smart, Feigl, or some other contemporary naturalistic viewpoint along with Peters, Teilhard de Chardin, and Merleau-Ponty. How, for example, can one begin to appreciate the task Merleau-Ponty has set for himself in philosophical psychology unless one has become familiar with the behavioristic and reductionistic positions Merleau-Ponty is defining himself over and against? The bibliographies in the first part of the book are inadequate.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Averroes on Intellect provides a detailed analysis of the Muslim philosopher Averroes 's notorious unicity thesis -- the view that there is only one separate and eternal intellect for all human beings. It focuses directly on Averroes' arguments, both from the text of Aristotle's De Anima and, more importantly, his own philosophical arguments in the Long Commentary on the De Anima. Stephen Ogden defends Averroes' interpretation of De Anima using a combination of Greek, Arabic, Latin, and contemporary sources. Yet, (...) Ogden also insists that Averroes is not merely a 'commentator' but an incisive philosopher in his own right. The author thus reconstructs and analyzes Averroes' two most significant independent philosophical arguments, the Determinate Particular Argument and the Unity Argument. Alternative ancient and medieval views are also considered throughout, especially from two important foils before and after Averroes, namely, Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas' most famous and penetrating arguments against the unicity thesis are also addressed. Finally, Ogden considers Averroes' own objections to broader metaphysical views of the soul like Avicenna's and Aquinas', which agree with him on several key points including the immateriality of the intellect and the individuation of human souls by matter, while still diverging on the number and substantial nature of the intellect. The central goal of this book is to provide readers with a single study of Averroes' most pivotal arguments on intellect, consolidating and building on recent scholarship and offering a comprehensive case for his unicity thesis in the wider context of Aristotelian epistemology and metaphysics. (shrink)

I defend the claim that understanding is the goal of explanation against various persistent criticisms, especially the criticism that understanding is not truth-connected in the appropriate way, and hence is a merely psychological state. Part of the reason why understanding has been dismissed as the goal of explanation, I suggest, is because the psychological dimension of the goal of explanation has itself been almost entirely neglected. In turn, the psychological dimension of understanding—the Aha! experience, the sense that a certain explanation (...) “feels right”, and so on—has been conspicuously overemphasized. I try to correct for both of these exaggerations. Just as the goal of explanation includes a richer psychological—including phenomenological—dimension than is generally acknowledged, so too understanding has a stronger truth connection than is generally acknowledged.Keywords: Understanding; Explanation; Philosophy of science; Epistemology. (shrink)

There are good reasons for being suspicious of the very concept of ‘a religion’, let alone a ‘world religion’. It may be useful for a hospital administrator to know a patient's ‘religion’ – as Protestant or Church of England or Catholic or Buddhist – but such labels clearly do little more than identify the most suitable chaplain, and connote groupings in the vast and confusing region of ‘religious thought and practice’ that are of very different ranks. By any rational, genealogical (...) taxonomy ‘Protestant’, ‘Anglican’, ‘Catholic’ connote species, genera or families within Christianity, which is in turn a taxon within the multivariant tradition traced back to Abraham. ‘Buddhism’ includes as many variants as would ‘Abrahamism’. Most Abrahamists, traditionally, have been theists, but it is difficult not to suspect that Marxist socialism is an atypical variant which has inherited a linear view of time, a contest between the chosen agents of justice and the doomed powers-that-be, and the prospect of a future in which ‘there shall be no more sea’. (shrink)

Dennett's Consciousness Explained presents, but does not demonstrate, a fully naturalized account of consciousness that manages to leave out the very consciousness he purports to explain. If he were correct, realism and methodological individualism would collapse, as would the very enterprise of giving reasons. The metaphors he deploys actually testify to the power of metaphoric imagination that can no more be identified with the metaphors it creates than minds can be identified with memes. That latter equation, of minds with meme?complexes, (...) rests for its meaning on the existence of real minds, which are not to be equated with the thoughts they have. (shrink)

According to ‘orthodox’ epistemology, it has recently been said, whether or not a true belief amounts to knowledge depends exclusively on truth-related factors: for example, on whether the true belief was formed in a reliable way, or was supported by good evidence, and so on. Jason Stanley refers to this as the ‘intellectualist’ component of orthodox epistemology, and Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath describe it as orthodox epistemology’s commitment to a ‘purely epistemic’ account of knowledge — that is, an account (...) of knowledge where only truth-related factors figure in whether or not a person knows. In the first part of this paper I try to clarify the intellectualist thesis and to distinguish what I take to be its two main strains. In the remainder of the paper I then take a more critical turn and argue that even if, as a matter of fact, traditional epistemology has endorsed intellectualism in both of its strains, this is a mistake on the part of the tradition. At least one way of understanding intellectualism should be rejected and its practicalist counterpart should be accepted instead. (shrink)

After reviewing Kant’s well-known criticisms of the traditional proofs of God’s existence and his preferred moral argument, this paper presents a detailedanalysis of a densely-packed theistic argument in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Humanity’s ultimate moral destiny can be fulfilled only through organized religion, for only by participating in a religious community (or “church”) can we overcome the evil in human nature. Yet we cannot conceive how such a community can even be founded without presupposing God’s existence. Viewing (...) God as the internal moral lawgiver, empowering a community of believers, is Kant’s ultimate rationale for theistic belief. (shrink)

Despite a recent surge of interest in philosophy as a way of life, it is not clear what it might mean for philosophy to guide one's life, or how a “philosophical” way of life might differ from a life guided by religion, tradition, or some other source. We argue against John Cooper that spiritual exercises figure crucially in the idea of philosophy as a way of life—not just in the ancient world but also today, at least if the idea is (...) to be viable. In order to make the case we attempt to clarify the nature of spiritual exercises, and to explore a number of fundamental questions, such as “What role does reason have in helping us to live well?” Here we distinguish between the discerning and motivational powers of reason, and argue that both elements have limitations as guides to living well. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:16~ BOOK REVIEWS There are fairly frequent typographical errors in the text; most of them harmless hut one of them reverses the meaning of the sentence- " institutionally prescribed means " for " institutionally proscribed means" (p. 279), and a couple of them are comical-" In a previous part of this discussion (pp. 000-000) ", (p. 265); see also p. 274. MICHAEL STOCK, O.P. St. Stephen Priory Dover, (...) Massachusetts Rhetoric and Praxis: The Contribution of Classical Rhetoric to Prac· tical Reasoning. Edited by JEAN DIETZ Moss. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986. Pp. 168. $24.00 (cloth). The six essays on classical rhetoric which constitute this collection were first presented at a conference entitled Classical Rhetoric and the Teaching of Freshman Composition held October 6-8, 1983, at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. In her excellent introduction, Jean Dietz Moss, the editor, indicates that the purpose of this collection of essays is " to retrieve from the classical age of rhetoric some methods of practical reasoning-methods of stimulating and ordering thought about matters of common concern-that might inform our teaching of writing today" (p. 1). This particular theme runs throughout all of the essays. Professor Moss informs us that the basis of these studies is the conviction that the act of reason has not changed since the time of the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle, even though its forms have. The reasoning process is the same for us today as it was for those of the past. Armed with this conviction, the authors of these essays attempt to recover from classical rhetoric some means which will assist in the teaching of freshman composition. In the initial essay, Professor Schoeck gives the background and history of rhetoric, thus setting the stage for the essays which follow. These essays take up in turn five classical concepts: topoi, enthymeme, kairos, aitia and telos. The first two concepts are the more familiar and are derived from Aristotle's Rhetoric; the other three, while less familiar, are discovered throughout the writings of other philosophers and rhetoricians of the classical period. Professor Hairston focuses even more sharply on the cause of the present problem in writing among students. Hairston explains that early in the twentieth century rhetoric as an academic discipline was separated from the English BOOK REVIEWS 168 departments, and then, within a brief period of time, was dropped from the curriculum altogether. In the absence of rhetoric, the teaching of writing was left entirely to literature departments, and according to Hairston, this was a serious mistake. The romantic view held by most literature departments at that time led them to deal with writing as a nonrational activity. The papers in this collection put forward the view that composing is a cognitive task and training in rhetoric can assist in its development. Schoeck reflects the attitude of all the contributors when he proposes that what is needed now is a rhetoric for our times. " One of our purposes in these essays is to insure that there will be a renewed presentation that will keep pace with contemporary literary production" (p. 38). One must applaud the effort both to improve the writing of com· positions by students and to recover a part of classical rhetoric for our day. This particular effort to recover some of the riches of the past appears to be a part of a growing trend which the reviewer heartily endorses. By and large, this collection of essays is very good. However, a teacher of composition unfamiliar with rhetoric might find its usefulness limited. Although the terminology is defined within the context of the articles, it is my judgment that the essays would be found difficult to understand by one who had little or no previous familiarity with rhetoric. The usefulness of these essays would improve exponentially for someone who came to them equipped with some knowledge of classical rhetoric. None of the articles deals directly with the problem of teaching writing or communication. The participants at the con· ference at which these essays were originally presented had the advan· tage of ongoing discussions from which they were able to develop tactics to be implemented in the... (shrink)

Although Kant had a high regard for Jesus as a moral teacher, interpreters typically assume that his philosophy disallows belief in Jesus as God. Those who regard Kant as a moral reductionist are especially likely to offer a negative construal of the densely-argued subsection of his 1793 Religion that relates directly to this issue. The recent “affirmative” trend in Kant-scholarship provides the basis for an alternative reading. First, theologians must regard Jesus as human so that belief in Jesus can empower (...) believers to become good. Second, theologians may refer to Jesus as divine by identifying his disposition as exemplifying the “archetype of perfect humanity.” Third, Judeo-Christian history poses an empirical problem that theologians can solve by interpreting Jesus’s divinity according to the schematism of analogy. While this does not constitute a robust (identifiably Christian) doctrine of Jesus’s divinity, it does provide clear guidelines for formulating such a tenet of historical faith. (shrink)

Defenders of pragmatic encroachment in epistemology (or what I call practicalism) need to address two main problems. First, the view seems to imply, absurdly, that knowledge can come and go quite easily—in particular, that it might come and go along with our variable practical interests. We can call this the stability problem. Second, there seems to be no fully satisfying way of explaining whose practical interests matter. We can call this the “whose stakes?” problem. I argue that both problems can (...) be addressed in roughly the same terms. More exactly, I argue that by first clarifying the whose stakes? problem an answer to the stability problem naturally falls out. (shrink)

What is it that makes someone wise, or one person wiser than another? I argue that wisdom consists in knowledge of how to live well, and that this knowledge of how to live well is constituted by various further kinds of knowledge. One concern for this view is that knowledge is not needed for wisdom but rather some state short of knowledge, such as having rational or justified beliefs about various topics. Another concern is that the emphasis on knowing how (...) to live well fails to do justice to the ancient tradition of ‘theoretical wisdom’. I address both of these concerns in filling out the account. (shrink)

Explanatory inquiry characteristically begins with a certain puzzlement about the world. But why do certain situations elicit our puzzlement while others leave us, in some epistemically relevant sense, cold? Moreover, what exactly is involved in the move from a state of puzzlement to a state where one's puzzlement is satisfied? In this paper I try to answer both of these questions. I also suggest ways in which our account of scientific rationality might benefit from having a better sense of the (...) kind of epistemic goal we are trying to realize, when we engage in our explanatory inquiries. Two Senses The Need for Explanation An Example Proto-understanding Conclusion CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This article offers some general criticisms of the idea that any political theory can legitimate public health interventions, and then some particular criticisms of Civic Republicanism as a political theory for public health. Civic Republicanism, I argue, legitimizes liberty-infringing public health interventions by demanding high levels of civic engagement in framing and reviewing them; to demand such engagement in pursuit of such a baseline value as health will leave insufficient civic energy for the pursuit of higher values.

Kants theories of both general moral decision-making and specifically religious conversion. It is argued that Kantian Gesinnung is volitional, referring to a personconvictionberzeugung (). This is confirmed by a detailed analysis of the 169 occurrences of Gesinnung and cognate words in Religion. It contrasts with what is suggested by translating Gesinnung as, which reinforces a tendency to interpret the notion more metaphysically, and also with Pluharattitude’, which has too strongly psychological connotations.