Seeing Wittgenstein Anew is the first collection to examine Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks on the concept of aspect-seeing. These essays show that aspect-seeing was not simply one more topic of investigation in Wittgenstein’s later writings, but, rather, that it was a pervasive and guiding concept in his efforts to turn philosophy’s attention to the actual conditions of our common life in language. Arranged in sections that highlight the pertinence of the aspect-seeing remarks to aesthetic and moral perception, self-knowledge, mind and consciousness, (...) linguistic agreement, philosophical therapy, and “seeing connections,” the sixteen essays, which were specially commissioned for this volume, demonstrate the unity of not only Philosophical Investigations but also Wittgenstein’s later thought as a whole. They open up novel paths across familiar fields of thought: the objectivity of interpretation, the fixity of the past, the acquisition of language, and the nature of human consciousness. Significantly, they exemplify how continuing consideration of the interrelated phenomena and concepts surrounding aspect-seeing might produce a fruitful way of doing philosophy. The volume includes a concordance for the unnumbered remarks in the various editions of Philosophical Investigations, including the latest (4th) edition. (The front matter is posted here. The introduction - "Seeing Aspects in Wittgenstein" - appears below under "Published articles."). (shrink)

This is the introduction to Seeing Wittgenstein Anew, eds. William Day & Victor J. Krebs (Cambridge UP, 2010), a collection of essays on Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on aspect-seeing. Section 1: Why Seeing Aspects Now?; Section 2: The Importance of Seeing Aspects; Section 3: The Essays. (The front matter to Seeing Wittgenstein Anew appears above under "Books.").

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Reasonable Belief: Why God and Faith Make Sense by William GreenwayVictor AndersonA Reasonable Belief: Why God and Faith Make Sense William Greenway LOUISVILLE, KY: WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2015. 170 PP. $30.00This book offers an apology for the reasonableness of Christian belief in the God of love and the gift of God in Jesus, agape, against its secular detractors from early modern philosophy to the (...) late twentieth century. Intentionally apologetic in tone, the argument moves from old-school Evangelical kinds of defenses that characterized early 1970s apologetic revivals by thinkers like Josh McDowell and his "evidences demanding a verdict" or Francis Schaeffer's The God Who Is There and Escape from Reason. Greenway, however, incrementally shifts from defense language to affirmation of the face, agape, and the gift. He discloses a philosophical spirituality embodied in Christian belief in the ethical realities of freedom, obligations, justice, and love.The book illustrates how these spiritual realities feed back into Christian substantive beliefs through expositions of scripture and doctrine, especially the parables and life of Jesus. Greenway brings insightful readings of Emmanuel Lévinas and Jean-Luc Marion to bear on these sources. What begins as a strictly philosophical defense of Christian belief movingly invites readers to travel from apologetics, evidences, and warrants to the spiritual sphere where Christians and non-Christians alike may reasonably affirm the priority of agape love. "Agape names the reality of our having been seized in and by love for others," Greenway argues (xiii).This book insightfully and passionately presents the complexities of faith and life in the world of face-to-face human encounters and our planetary ecological and environmental interactions with nonhuman others. Greenway's relational phenomenology provides an ethical pattern for human-to-human reception of divine agape, the gift, which is available to all in our moral struggles with a pluralism of faiths, even as Christians seek to demonstrate the ethical demands of agape, love, which, according to Greenway, is the spiritual essence of the Gospel.Part I, "The Secular Condition" (chapters 1–4), is classically apologetic in tone, mapping the philosophical skeptical terrain where reason and science rob Christian belief in God of any noetic validity. The Cartesian and Darwinian revolutions hold center in the production of the "secular" dismissal of reasonable belief in God, spiritual realities, and what ethical powers they bear on human face-to-face encounters with God. Part II, "The Essence of Reasonable Christianity" (chapters 5–9), draws on the French phenomenology of [End Page 194] Lévinas and Marion to restore, Greenway argues, a "spiritually attuned rationality, an awakened rationality that facilitates the unfolding of a philosophical spirituality" that considers "classic teachings of Jesus in light of this restored rationality, expecting that dimensions of Jesus' spiritual genius will shine forth with renewed brilliance" (xiii). Greenway contends that these renewed spiritual insights, informed by agape, the gift, yield spiritual understanding and appreciation of formidable Christian belief schemes: original sin, the fall, good, evil, grace, forgiveness, koinonia, salvation, faith, eternal life, and resurrection (xiii).Greenway describes his goal as a constructive philosophical spirituality. "The essence of this philosophical spirituality," Greenway argues, "is continuous with the essence of Christian spirituality," when articulated in an explicitly (although non-exclusivist) Christian voice and in accord with "common public standards of what is good and reasonable" (xiii). He concludes, "love is not something we create or do, but awakening and surrendering to that love in and by which we have been seized" (xiii). A Reasonable Belief offers a rigorous and creative engagement of modern and contemporary continental philosophy and science with Christian love ethics that seeks to restore its centrality in our postmodern moment.Victor AndersonVanderbilt UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

As a senior physicist colleague and our friend, Robert N. Boyd, wrote in a journal (JCFA, Vol. 1,. 2, 2022), Our universe is but one page in a large book [4]. For example, things and Beings can travel between Universes, intentionally or unintentionally. In this short remark, we revisit and offer short remark to Neil’s ideas and trying to connect them with geometrization of musical chords as presented by D. Tymoczko and others, then to Escher staircase and then to Jacob’s (...) ladder which seems to point to possibility to interpret Jacob’s vision as described in the ancient book of Genesis as inter dimensional or heavenly staircase, e.g. an inter dimensional bridge between heaven and earth (see also classic book: Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach). Jacob’s vision of angels going down to earth from that staircase has been depicted for instance in William Blake art etc. In our communication with others via physics literature and discussions etc, we came to several conclusions as follows: Firstly, possibility of quantum wormhole effect to mirror particle universe, which sometimes it is termed non-orientable wormhole. While such mirror particles effect have been more than 50 years predicted with the so-called parity violation (cf. Lee & Yang, 1950s), and that is called symmetry breaking. Secondly, a series of extended experiments on laser irradiated cold water may suggest possible transition from a phase of water to be at least partially fourth phase of water, which may be composed of crystalline water (see e.g. Gerald Pollack, and also Harold Aspden on liquid crystalline). If we can imagine laser cooling effect can be done in protracted time, then we can achieve a physical representation of Aspden’s liquid crystalline. Therefore, in subsequent article (Part II) we outlined simple model of such an effect of tunneling via quantum liquid crystalline Universe, which may likely be modeled with iced-water. It is interesting to remark here that certain experiments by Stockholm University scientists have shown that X-ray triggered water can exhibit properties just like liquid crystal (cf. PRL, 2020). That is why we consider it possible that there can be quantum phase transition where liquid water (comprised of iced cubes and water) can exhibit effects such as tunneling in quantum liquid crystalline Universe. Last but not least, we admit that what we outlined here is just an initial phase; and if you wish, perhaps we can call such experiments as “wormhole-at-lab” experiments (abbreviated: WHALE). (shrink)

The present article was partly inspired by G. Pollack’s book, and also Dadoloff, Saxena & Jensen (2010). As a senior physicist colleague and our friend, Robert N. Boyd, wrote in a journal (JCFA, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2022), for example, things and Beings can travel between Universes, intentionally or unintentionally [4]. In this short remark, we revisit and offer short remark to Neil Boyd’s ideas and trying to connect them with geometry of musical chords as presented by D. Tymoczko and (...) others, then to Escherian staircase and then to Jacob’s ladder which seems to pointto possibility to interpret Jacob’s vision as described in the ancient book of Genesis as interdimensional staircase, e.g. an interdimensional bridge between heaven and earth (cf. classic book: Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach). Jacob’s vision of angels going down to earth from that staircase has been depicted for instance in William Blake art etc. In our communication with others via physics literature and discussions etc, we came to several conclusions as follows: Firstly, possibility of wormhole effect to mirror particle universe, which sometimes it is termed non-orientable wormhole. While such mirror particles effect have been more than 50 years predicted with the so-called parity violation (cf. Lee & Yang, 1950s), and that is called symmetry breaking. Secondly, a series of extended experiments on laser irradiated cold water may suggest possible transition from a phase of water to be at least partially fourth phase of water, which may be composed of crystalline water (see e.g. Gerald Pollack, and also Harold Aspden on liquid crystalline). If we can imagine laser cooling effect can be done in protracted time, then we can achieve a physical representation of Aspden‘s liquid crystalline. Therefore, in this article we outline a series of simple experiments of laser irradiated iced-water along with beryl and selenite crystals in order to see possibility of such a quantum tunneling via quantum liquid crystalline Universe hypothesis, which may likely be modeled with iced-water. It is interesting to remark here that certain experiments by Stockholm University scientists have shown that X-ray triggered water can exhibit properties just like liquid crystal (cf. PRL, 2020). That is why we consider it possible that there can be quantum phase transition where liquid water (comprised of iced cubes and water) can exhibit effects such as tunneling in quantum liquid crystalline Universe. Last but not least, we admit that what we outlined here is just aninitial phase; and if you wish, perhaps we can call such experiments as “wormhole-at-lab” experiments (abbreviated: WHALE). (shrink)

Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus. By Jodi Magness. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2011. Pp. xv + 335, illus. $25.

Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination. By William Fitzgerald, 129 pp. £12.95/$18.95 cloth; £35.00/$49.95 paper. The End of the Past: Ancient Rome and the Modern West. By Aldo Schiavone. Translated by Margery J. Schneider, viii +278 pp. £30.95/$45.00 cloth.

Steven Heine’s latest book on the history of kōans, Like Cats and Dogs: Contesting the Mu Kōan in Zen Buddhism, is his second monograph dedicated to a single kōan case record. The author’s first such offering, Shifting Shape, Shaping Text: Philosophy and Folklore in the Fox Kōan, focused on the second case record of the thirteenth-century Gateless Gate collection. Published at the end of the 1990s the text was a response, in many ways, to the two authors who dominated the (...) field of Zen studies during that decade, Bernard Faure and William Bodiford, particularly in regard to the historical relation between monastic Chan/Zen and popular forms of supernatural belief and practice... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Reasonable Belief: Why God and Faith Make Sense by William GreenwayVictor AndersonA Reasonable Belief: Why God and Faith Make Sense William Greenway LOUISVILLE, KY: WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2015. 170 PP. $30.00This book offers an apology for the reasonableness of Christian belief in the God of love and the gift of God in Jesus, agape, against its secular detractors from early modern philosophy to the (...) late twentieth century. Intentionally apologetic in tone, the argument moves from old-school Evangelical kinds of defenses that characterized early 1970s apologetic revivals by thinkers like Josh McDowell and his "evidences demanding a verdict" or Francis Schaeffer's The God Who Is There and Escape from Reason. Greenway, however, incrementally shifts from defense language to affirmation of the face, agape, and the gift. He discloses a philosophical spirituality embodied in Christian belief in the ethical realities of freedom, obligations, justice, and love.The book illustrates how these spiritual realities feed back into Christian substantive beliefs through expositions of scripture and doctrine, especially the parables and life of Jesus. Greenway brings insightful readings of Emmanuel Lévinas and Jean-Luc Marion to bear on these sources. What begins as a strictly philosophical defense of Christian belief movingly invites readers to travel from apologetics, evidences, and warrants to the spiritual sphere where Christians and non-Christians alike may reasonably affirm the priority of agape love. "Agape names the reality of our having been seized in and by love for others," Greenway argues (xiii).This book insightfully and passionately presents the complexities of faith and life in the world of face-to-face human encounters and our planetary ecological and environmental interactions with nonhuman others. Greenway's relational phenomenology provides an ethical pattern for human-to-human reception of divine agape, the gift, which is available to all in our moral struggles with a pluralism of faiths, even as Christians seek to demonstrate the ethical demands of agape, love, which, according to Greenway, is the spiritual essence of the Gospel.Part I, "The Secular Condition" (chapters 1–4), is classically apologetic in tone, mapping the philosophical skeptical terrain where reason and science rob Christian belief in God of any noetic validity. The Cartesian and Darwinian revolutions hold center in the production of the "secular" dismissal of reasonable belief in God, spiritual realities, and what ethical powers they bear on human face-to-face encounters with God. Part II, "The Essence of Reasonable Christianity" (chapters 5–9), draws on the French phenomenology of [End Page 194] Lévinas and Marion to restore, Greenway argues, a "spiritually attuned rationality, an awakened rationality that facilitates the unfolding of a philosophical spirituality" that considers "classic teachings of Jesus in light of this restored rationality, expecting that dimensions of Jesus' spiritual genius will shine forth with renewed brilliance" (xiii). Greenway contends that these renewed spiritual insights, informed by agape, the gift, yield spiritual understanding and appreciation of formidable Christian belief schemes: original sin, the fall, good, evil, grace, forgiveness, koinonia, salvation, faith, eternal life, and resurrection (xiii).Greenway describes his goal as a constructive philosophical spirituality. "The essence of this philosophical spirituality," Greenway argues, "is continuous with the essence of Christian spirituality," when articulated in an explicitly (although non-exclusivist) Christian voice and in accord with "common public standards of what is good and reasonable" (xiii). He concludes, "love is not something we create or do, but awakening and surrendering to that love in and by which we have been seized" (xiii). A Reasonable Belief offers a rigorous and creative engagement of modern and contemporary continental philosophy and science with Christian love ethics that seeks to restore its centrality in our postmodern moment.Victor AndersonVanderbilt UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Claudius Marius Victor , a rhetor of Marseilles , composed in the first half of the fifth century a metrical paraphrase of Genesis from the creation of the world up to the destruction of Sodom. The work, which amounts to something over 2,000 lines and is supposedly unfinished, is entitled Alethia, seasoned with occasional discussion of philosophic or other matter, and written with the expressed hope of improving the minds of the young. The text depends on a single ninth-century (...) Paris manuscript , which contains errors that are numerous but in general rudimentary and susceptible of convincing emendation. The first serious edition—for the edition of J. de Gagny , though it offered many useful emendations, was too full of licentious alterations, excisions, and additions, to rank as such—was that of G. Morel . The next editor, G. Fabricius , in spite of his awareness of Morel's edition, did little more than reproduce the depraved text of Gagny. (shrink)

My study of Mary Shelley and father includes her husband because Percy Shelley’s obsessions with patriarchy, with “ ‘GOD, AND KIND, AND LAW,’ ” influenced profoundly Mary’s* art and life. Percy’s idealizations of father in The Revolt of Islam and Prince Athanase indicated ways or resolving familial antagonisms which Mary adopted and developed her later fiction. Percy’s relationship with Frankenstein is still more intricate. Recognizing that her husband’s obsessions with father and self-creation were contributing to the deterioration of their marriage, (...) Mary represents these obsessions in Victor Frankenstein—partly to vent in art the anger which would have further damaged the marriage, and party to show Percy before it was too late the errors of his ways. It was too late. Percy responded to Frankenstein in Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci with a reaffirmation of sonship which has been largely unrecognized by scholars.Father looms so large for both Mary and Percy Shelley that no one critical approach can account for him fully. At their most idealistic—and thus most traditional—the Shelleys encourage a critical methodology which integrates the traditional disciplines of biographical and close textual analyses. By taking this approach to Mary’s later fiction and to Percy’s The Revolt of Islam, I can not only confirm the prominence of father for the Shelleys but also establish the ideal against which their most subversive and important art was created. Reading this indirect, overdetermined art in light of the negative Oedipus will help answer important questions about Frankenstein, Prometheus Unbound, and The Cenci and will, I hop, add to our understanding of the vexed role of father in the Romantic period and in subsequent generations whose children we are. William Veeder, professor of English at the University of Chicago, has published books on Yeats, Henry James, and Victorian feminism. His Mary Shelley and “Frankenstein”: The Fate of Androgyny will appear in December 1985. The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction, coedited with Susan M. Griffin, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Centenary, a collection of new essays on Stevenson’s novel, are also forthcoming . He is currently at work on The Serpent’s Tale: Anglo-American Gothic Fiction, 1885-1914. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Dialogic Interpretation of Hume's Dialogues William Lad Sessions For all ofits prominence in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of religion, Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion continues to provoke divergent readings, especially as regards its author's intentions and beliefs. Most writers today, following Norman Kemp Smith's masterful analysis, accept some version ofwhat I will call "the standard interpretation": Hume aimed to discredit religion—natural and revealed religion alike, but especially the (...) "experimental theism" represented by Cleanthes' so-called "design argument." Hence, the sceptic "Philo represents Hume's views onreligiousbelief,"even though Cleanthes (occasionally) and Demea(rarely) also speakfor Hume.1 But a significant minority have given divergentinterpretations: some have held that Pamphilus, the narrator of the Dialogues, is Hume;2 some have given credence to Hume's remark in a letter that "I make Cleanthes the Hero of the Dialogue";3 others think that none of the characters represent Hume, at least not consistently, either because the characters represent types, not individuals,4 or because none are "wholly consistent, completely clear-headed, and unmuddled throughout,"5 or because "it is the whole of the dialogue which represents Hume."6 One interpreter has even gone so far as to declare that "I shall take it that Hume in the Dialogues is any speaker who appears tobe makingagood philosophical point,"7 whichis tantamount to identifying Hume with any self-assured philosophical reader of the Dialogues] My chief purpose in this essay is not to take issue with these interpretations, nor to propose a novel interpretation of the text—though I will do both—but rather to promote a different kind of interpretation altogether: what I will call a "dialogic" interpretation, since it views the literary form as contributory and indeed essential to the philosophical message.8 Still, the particular dialogic interpretation I propose may be of interest. On it, the Dialogues are not chiefly a diatribe against theism, much less a polemic against all (theistic or Christian) religion. Rather, the book at its most searching level is a careful rational examination of"true" vs. "false" religion, with the virtues ofthe former commended even as the vices ofthe latter are condemned. In short, Hume gives us an eighteenth century discussion ofreligiousfaith in relation to human Volume XVII Number 1 15 WILLIAM LAD SESSIONS reason, a discussion wherein reason is not automatically the enemy of faith (in all its guises). More specifically, Philo's and Cleanthes' apparent disagreements on the results and utility ofnatural theology mask a more fundamental and considerably more important harmony in their views concerning "the proper office ofreligion."9 Contrary to the standardinterpretation, they fundamentally agree on the nature and value of natural piety, which is the other component of natural religion besides natural theology.10 In the end, then, Pamphilus is not wrong to judge that Cleanthes' principles "approach still nearer to the truth" than Philo's, and not merely for reasons of filial piety (he is, after all, Cleanthes' house-guest, his loyal student, and his "adopted son"). No doubt Philo does tend to "win" his skirmishes in natural theology with Cleanthes (not to mention those with Demea!), but though Philo triumphs tactically, Cleanthes is the victor in the wider war for Pamphilus' heart and mind: critical scepticism may be a useful safeguard for careful thinkers against the "superstition" endemic to "false" and harmful piety, butitsutilityislimited; Philo's prophylaxisis muchless effective than Cleanthes' empirical theism at the vitally important task of inculcating and nurturing "true" natural piety in a young person such as Pamphilus. However, before supporting this controversial view of the Dialogues, I need to make clearer the nature, limits and value of a dialogic interpretation, by way of contrast with the more common approaches. I. Standard Hermenéutica Most philosophical interpretations of the Dialogues share several assumptions—or perhaps one should say "presumptions." First, they all focus on the propositions, beliefs, and arguments expressed by characters in the Dialogues—their claims, assertions, speculations, suggestions, rejections, replies, reasons, rebuttals, and the like—and they seek to extract from the discussion those expressed or implied beliefs and arguments which current interpreters believe most worthy of continuing philosophical adherence, development, demolition, or at least discussion. Literary... (shrink)

To show how the case of Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein brings light to the ethical and moral issues raised in Institutional Review Board protocols, we nest an imaginary IRB proposal dated August 1790 by Victor Frankenstein within a discussion of the importance and function of the IRB. Considering the world of science as would have appeared in 1790 when Victor was a student at Ingolstadt, we offer a schematic overview of a fecund moment when advances in comparative (...) anatomy, medical experimentation and theories of life involving animalcules and animal electricity sparked intensive debates about the basic principles of life and the relationship between body and soul. Constructing an IRB application based upon myriad speculations circulating up to 1790, we imagine how Victor would have drawn upon his contemporaries’ scientific work to justify the feasibility of his project, as well as how he might have outlined the ethical implications of his plan to animate life from “dead” tissues. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor failed to consider his creature’s autonomy, vulnerability, and welfare. In this IRB proposal, we show Victor facing those issues of justice and emphasize how the novel can be an important component in courses or workshops on research ethics. Had Victor Frankenstein had to submit an IRB proposal tragedy may have been averted, for he would have been compelled to consider the consequences of his experiment and acknowledge, if not fulfill, his concomitant responsibilities to the creature that he abandoned and left to fend for itself. (shrink)

In recent analytic literature on the Trinity we have seen a variety of "social" models of the Trinity. By contrast there are few "non-­‐social" models. One prominent "non-­‐social" view is Brian Leftow's "Latin Trinity." I argue that the name of Leftow's model is not sufficiently descriptive in light of diverse models within Latin speaking theology. Next, I develop a new "non-­‐social" model that is inspired by Richard of St. Victor's description of a person in conjunction with my appropriating insights (...) about indexicals from David Kaplan and John Perry. I point out that the copula in tokens of statements like, "I am the Father," is an ambiguous term and when used by a certain divine person a different proposition is affirmed. Central to this model is the claim that the copula bears the "is of identity" and the "is of numerical sameness without identity." Further, I show that Leftow's model employs two concepts of "person," a Lockean one and a Boethian one, and mine employs Richard of St. Victor's. I describe Leftow's model as a "hard non-­‐social" model and mine as a "soft non-­‐social" model that is nearer to some social models. I conclude that Leftow's model is not the lone candidate among "non-­‐social" models and that the variety of "non-­‐social" models has yet to be exhausted. (shrink)

Introduction: -/- It is likely that Boethius (480-524ce) inaugurates, in Latin Christian theology, the consideration of personhood as such. In the Treatise Against Eutyches and Nestorius Boethius gives a well-known definition of personhood according to genus and difference(s): a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Personhood is predicated only of individual rational substances. This chapter situates Boethius in relation to significant Christian theologians before and after him, and the way in which his definition of personhood is a (...) particular answer to the question, “Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, but is one what?” Among Greek (and Syriac) speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘hypostasis’. Among Latin speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘persona’. It is Boethius’s definition of ‘persona’ that inaugurates personhood as such in Latin speaking theology. Although the Greek and Syriac theologians that I survey come close to a concept of personhood as a distinct category, they do not have such a concept and did not need it for their theological purposes. I show that Rusticus the Deacon is an early witness to this Latin theological invention, and also show that for later Latin theologians, the rationality condition for personhood does very little metaphysical work for their Trinitarian theology or Christology. -/- Further, this chapter surveys Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians’ answers to the question, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are one God, but each is one what?” The same replies as above are typically given by Christian theologians. These two theological questions frame the discussion about personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) and put a boundary around what a satisfying account of personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) would be. -/- In contemporary philosophy, there is a lot of attention paid to the rationality condition for personhood. But if we look at the text in which Boethius defines a person, we do not find any precise criteria for it. In other texts, he says that a rational being is one compatible with (capable of) thought and free choice of the will. What we find is that detailed discussion of personhood shows up in theological questions about the Trinity and Incarnation, but not in e.g., applied ethics. The intrusion of personhood into contemporary applied ethics with a focus on detailed and disputed criteria for rationality as a condition for personhood seems to be a modern development. From a Patristic and Medieval Christian theology point of view, trying to find just the right detailed criteria for rationality in order to define personhood is a wild goose chase. This chapter makes clear another contribution that Christian theology had for personhood. Given the theological issues at play in developing a notion of personhood, Christian theologians came to posit that e.g., an individual human is a person contingently (i.e. not essentially), but God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each a person essentially. The contingency for created persons is not based on whether e.g., an individual human has conscious acts (as might be the case for John Locke) but on the possibility of a divine person’s assuming e.g., an individual human nature. -/- This sampling of Christian intellectual history spans over one thousand years. I make no claim of being exhaustive. The chapter consists of six sections, where each section covers significant historical conversation partners who together represent the sorts of things that Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians where concerned with in theorizing about ‘persona’ or ‘hypostasis’. -/- 1. Origen of Alexandria and the Cappadocians: Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa 2. Miaphysites: Severus of Antioch, John Philoponus, and Peter of Callinicum 3. Boethius and Rusticus the Deacon: Rationality, Subsistence, and the Invention of Personhood 4. Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Leontius of Byzantium 5. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (I): Gilbert of Poitiers, Richard of St. Victor, William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ware 6. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham . (shrink)

In this article we define a logical system called Hybrid Partial Type Theory ( $\mathcal {HPTT}$ ). The system is obtained by combining William Farmer’s partial type theory with a strong form of hybrid logic. William Farmer’s system is a version of Church’s theory of types which allows terms to be non-denoting; hybrid logic is a version of modal logic in which it is possible to name worlds and evaluate expressions with respect to particular worlds. We motivate this (...) combination of ideas in the introduction, and devote the rest of the article to defining, axiomatising, and proving a completeness result for $\mathcal {HPTT}$. (shrink)

En el presente artículo nos proponemos realizar una comparación de la posición de D’Agostino con la de otro de los representantes del convencionalismo: William Morgan. A D’Agostino nos referiremos en el primer apartado y a Morgan en el segundo. Nos preguntaremos si Morgan, además de inscribir sus tesis dentro del convencionalismo, participa al mismo tiempo de la concepción internalista del deporte. Aunque uno y otro autor son convencionalistas, existen matices muy distintos entre sus posiciones que caben ser resaltadas, a (...) fin de clarificar su proximidad con otras teorías filosófico-deportivas. In this paper we propose a comparison of the position of D’Agostino with other rpresentatives of convention: Wilüam Morgan. We refer to D’Agostino’s position in the first section and in the second section to Morgan ’s. We ask whether Morgan, moreover of register his thesis within the Conventionalism, participaos also of the internaüst conception of sport. Although both authors are conventionalists, there are many different shades that fit between their positions be highüghted, in order to clarify its proximity to other phihsophical theories of port. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Constructive Criticism: The Human Sciences in the Age of TheoryWilliam BywaterConstructive Criticism: The Human Sciences in the Age of Theory, by Martin Kreiswirth and Thomas Carmichael; 223 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995, $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.This book contains twelve essays based on papers presented at “The Human Sciences in the Age of Theory” conference sponsored by the Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism at (...) the University of Western Ontario and held at the University in 1993. Versions of six of the essays are published elsewhere.In After Virtue Alasdair MacIntyre offers the choice of Nietzsche or Aristotle. Authors in these essays offer a far greater variety. For Christopher Norris it’s Nietzsche or (late) Foucault, for Tilottama Rajan its Nietzsche and Lacan or Hegel, for Martin Kreiswirth and Gary Wihl (in separate essays) its Nietzsche or narrative, and for L. M. Findlay its Nietzsche or Ricoeur and narrative. This range of options reveals the extent to which these authors are attempting to escape the cul-de-sac created by the skeptical and nihilistic dimensions of Nietzsche which appear in deconstruction and postmodernism. “Constructive criticism” is an apt title for these essays. As a group they struggle to offer a way of understanding the complexities involved in resisting dominating discourses, while not giving in to despair or skepticism or nihilism.Diane Elam observes that “the age of theory begins when theories fail, when no single theoretical discourse is possible any longer.” The variety of alternatives to Nietzsche listed above is one manifestation of the truth of Elam’s claim. A second is the fact that none of these authors proposes wholesale adoption of the thinker who is being contrasted with Nietzsche. Each is selecting certain specific dimensions of the thinker’s position to be used to maintain contact with the complexity which they sense in the world around them.A third and more profound recognition is that these authors are not proposing their choices in the same spirit as MacIntyre [End Page 268] proposed his. The meaning of “either/or” is shifting. MacIntyre’s opposition between Nietzsche and Aristotle opposes two systems the latter of which represents a way to keep safe from the danger of moral chaos contained in the former. MacIntyre’s either/or contains this sense of opposition which is also a sense of salvation, of protection from having to grapple with things that are confusing, messy, dangerous. In the age of theory when theoretical discourse becomes impossible we can no longer be protected. “Either/or” shifts polarity. It no longer means my position will trump yours: it now means “either closed theoretical discourse or complexity and multiplicity.” The authors in Constructive Criticism choose complexity and multiplicity because to choose closed theoretical discourse is to choose insensitivity to all sorts of injustice.Heterogeneity is the watchword of all the authors in this volume and many of them see narrative as the mode of access to multiplicity. Kreiswirth argues that the meaningfulness of narrative depends on overdetermination and “complex accumulations and conjunctions of desire.” Little narratives, not master ones, are best able to show complexity. Findlay urges the use of metaphor to keep us in a place between the center and the margin. Wihl uses Rorty, Kundera and Nussbaum to underline “the moral significance of detailed, richly descriptive vocabularies” in contrast to the ascetic language of philosophy which does not permit the irony required for “perspicuity in the areas of ethical conflict and competing social agendas.” However, Victor Li is not at all happy about Rorty (or Habermas) both of whom, in criticizing others, appeal to “modernity’s own totalizing view of itself” instead of possessing, as they should, a sense of “the complex cultural logic of the in-between, of cultural hybridity and exchange.”However, there are two authors who—happily, I must say—make it clear that they do not want to throw theory out with the bath water. They are willing, it seems, to take the risk of both preserving what they do (theory) and maintaining a sense of the complexity of competing social agendas, overdetermination and cultural “hybridity.” John Fekete advocates both “utopia (radical... (shrink)

Exchanges in the nineteenth century between Sir William Hamilton, James Frederick Ferrier and the French philosopher Victor Cousin are crucial to understanding contemporary efforts to preserve the continuity of the Scottish philosophical tradition on the part of those alive to new themes emanating from Kant and philosophy in Germany. Ferrier's strategy aimed at re-invigorating Descartes and Berkeley by drawing on elements in Adam Smith's social philosophy. But the promising steps taken in this direction in Ferrier's essays on consciousness (...) were seriously undermined, in Cousin's view, by the aprioristic character of his Institutes, in which he abandoned the careful empirical method characteristic of Scottish philosophy as practiced by Reid. (shrink)

مداخلة مترجمة عن الفرنسية للفيلسوف الفرنسي جيل دولوز.

Humans are moral creatures. Among all life on Earth, we alone experience rich moral emotions, follow complex rules governing how we treat one another, and engage in moral dialogue. But how did human morality evolve? And can humans become morally evolved? -/- In A Better Ape, Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell draw on the latest research in the biological and social sciences to explain the key role that morality has played in human evolution. They explore the moral traits that (...) humans share with chimpanzees; how a more complex moral mind enabled Homo sapiens to arise and out-compete other human species; and the place of morality alongside historic revolutions in technology and social organization. Throughout the book, Kumar and Campbell argue that morality co-evolved with intelligence and complex sociality. Morality prevents societal collapse and enables complex knowledge. -/- After unearthing the ancient origins of human morality, Kumar and Campbell use evolutionary theory to deliver profound insights about how to advance moral progress and resist moral regress, such as reducing animal suffering on industrial farms; capitalizing on the recent revolution in gay rights to foster a nascent revolution in transgender rights; opposing intersectional inequality that impacts women and people of color in lower socioeconomic classes; and addressing major problems of global inequality, especially impending crises of injustice caused by anthropogenic climate change. Understanding how we evolved--and how we continue to evolve--can help us become a better ape. (shrink)

Die Musik hat im Schaffen des Philosophen Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) unbestritten einen hohen Stellenwert. Den Grundstein für die lebenslange Beschäftigung mit ihr legte er in seinem frühen Hauptwerk "Geist der Utopie", das 1918 in einer ersten und 1923 in einer stark überarbeiteten Fassung erschien. Reinke Schwinning kommentiert Schlüsselpassagen des zentralen, 150 Seiten starken Kapitels dieser Schrift: Blochs "Philosophie der Musik." Methodisch spürt der Autor den geistigen wie musikalischen Kontexten nach, die den Text umlagern. So deckt er intellektuelle Verbindungen zu Richard (...) Wagner, Hans Pfitzner, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant und anderen auf. Ausserdem erläutert er Blochs musikalische Bezüge, die sich auf die 'grossen Namen' beschränken: auf Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler oder Bruckner. Schliesslich fördert Schwinnings Kommentar die strukturelle und logische Stringenz von Blochs "Philosophie der Musik" zu Tage, die sich hinter dessen expressionistisch-komplexer Sprache verbirgt. (shrink)

Hamilton's reputation as a philosopher was early established by an article "On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned" which appeared in The Edinburgh Review for 1820. It was mainly a critique of Victor Cousin's "absolutism" and was reprinted in Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, a volume which also included his "Philosophy of Perception" plus two philosophical appendices added to later editions. He edited Thomas Reid's Philosophical Works, and his editorial footnotes and long Dissertations at the end are crucial sources of (...) his own philosophical thought. After his death his university lectures on metaphysics and logic were collected and published by H. L. Mansel and John Veitch. They were never prepared for publication by the author but are nevertheless important sources. They mesh well with Discussions and Notes and Dissertations, though the latter work shows certain changes in his thinking, including his increasing worry that Reid was not a natural realist. (shrink)