This article endeavours to contribute to the study of the influence and effect of Deuteronomy in the book of Hebrews. It investigates the possible influence of one of Deuteronomy’s key concepts on Hebrews, namely, the concept of ‘life’. The article starts off by defining the multifaceted concept of ‘life’ in Deuteronomy. This is followed up by combing through the text of Hebrews to identify traces of this concept in the words and arguments that the writer employs. The possible traces found (...) are then investigated intertextually in detail. This includes references to ‘the living God’ (Heb 3:12; 9:14; 10:31; 12:22), God’s ‘living and active’ word (Heb 4:12), ‘the new and living way’ Jesus opened through his death (Heb 10:20) and the command to ‘submit to the Father of spirits and live’ (Heb 12:9). The article concludes by synthesising the findings to discuss whether Hebrews deliberately employs Deuteronomy’s concept of life. (shrink)

In the introduction to his sermon, the writer of Hebrews suggests that God’s revelation unfolded from his so-called ‘Old Testament’ revelation to his ‘New Testament’ revelation in his Son. By doing a thorough exegesis of Hebrews 1:1–2a, the author’s view of such an unfolding revelation is confirmed. From this conclusion, certain hermeneutical implications of the unfolding of God’s revelation are drawn for believers and scholars today. Among others, it is determined that God’s revelation is progressive, that his revelation in his (...) Son is superior, climactic and final, and that God’s final revelation in his Son can only be understood within the context of his Old Testament revelation, and vice versa.Keywords: Hebrews; Hebrews 1:1-2a; unfolding; revelation; hermeneutics. (shrink)

Strive for peace with everyone? Hebrews 12:14 in perspective. What sounds like a simple exhortation in Hebrews 12:14 has caused a great deal of discussion amongst biblical scholars. Does the writer of Hebrews command his hearers to strive for peace with everyone everywhere, or is he exhorting them to strive for peace with all the members of their faith ommunity? Both interpretations have arguments for and against. The main arguments of both interpretations are the interpretation of the place of this (...) exhortation in Hebrews, the meaning of the preposition μετά + genitive and the nuance of εἰρήνη within this context. This article tries to determine to whom the writer of Hebrews is referring with πάντων in 12:14 by doing thorough exegesis of this verse, and by so doing evaluating biblical scholar’s interpretation of πάντων. From this analysis certain implications are drawn for the first hearersand believers today. (shrink)

God’s speech is a prominent theme in the book of Hebrews. A fascinating phenomenon regarding God’s speech, and one that has in my opinion not been adequately explored, is that the writer possibly implies that God created by his word, preserves creation by his word and will consummate creation by his word. This article examines whether the writer indeed had the conviction that God did, does and will do this by his word. This is done by doing grammatico-historical exegesis of (...) Hebrews 11:3, 1:3 and 12:26 and integrating the findings. In so doing, this article contributes to the study of Hebrews’ theology of God’s word. (shrink)

In this article, the background of the phrase 'and live' in Hebrews 12:9 is investigated. Although most scholars are silent on the matter, the majority of those who venture to propose a possible background vaguely refer to Proverbs 6:23b. Only a handful of scholars propose other backgrounds. This article aims to fill this lacuna. The first part of the article gives an overview of the argument of Hebrews 12:9 in its context to determine a baseline for the interpretation of the (...) phrase 'and live'. This is followed by investigating eight possible backgrounds of the phrase and weighing arguments for and against each proposal. Next, the article integrates the findings and concludes that, of all the proposed backgrounds, Deuteronomy 8:1-5 fits the best. If this is correct, the writer uses the phrase 'and live' in Hebrews 12:9 to positively exhort his hearers to live life as their heavenly Father intended it, now up to eternity, by wholeheartedly obeying his revelation in his Son. (shrink)

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA präsentieren seit ihrer Gründung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln. Das Kernstück der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijährigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Kölner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor über 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Gründungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Charakter dieser Kongresse prägt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beiträge aus allen mediävistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaften (...) sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can (...) just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA präsentieren seit ihrer Gründung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln. Das Kernstück der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijährigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Kölner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor über 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Gründungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Charakter dieser Kongresse prägt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beiträge aus allen mediävistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaften (...) sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters. (shrink)

James Sterba uses the Pauline Principle to argue that the occurrence of significant, horrendous evils is logically incompatible with the existence of a good God. The Pauline Principle states that (as a rule) one must never do evil so that good may come from it, and according to Sterba, this principle implies that God may not permit significant evils even if that permission would be necessary to secure other, greater goods. By contrast, I argue that the occurrence of significant evils (...) is logically compatible with the existence of a good God because victims of significant evils may themselves reasonably consent to their suffering. In particular, I argue that they may be able to accept their suffering if it turns out that there was no way for God to secure relevant greater goods (or prevent other, greater evils) except by way of allowing their suffering, and God also provides them with other compensating, heavenly comforts. After using this consent-based argument to address Sterba’s logical problem from evil, I briefly consider how this argument may also help address a related evidential problem from evil, which suggests that while it is possible that victims of significant evils would consent to their suffering, it is unlikely that they would do so. While I do not provide a definitive solution to this evidential problem of evil, I highlight one important example of a trade-off that God may need to make that would—along with the provision of compensating, heavenly comforts—potentially persuade victims of significant evils to consent to their suffering. Specifically, I argue that there may be a necessary trade-off that God needs to make between permitting significant evils (on the one hand) and protecting a certain, morally significant form of free will (on the other hand). (shrink)

Focusing on current efforts to persuade the public to comply with Covid-19 best practices, this essay examines what role appeals to religious reasons should (or should not) play in leaders’ attempts to secure followers’ acceptance of group policies in contexts of religious and moral pluralism. While appeals to followers’ religious commitments can be helpful in promoting desirable public health outcomes, they also raise moral concerns when made in the contexts of secular institutions with religiously diverse participants. In these contexts, leaders (...) who appeal to religious reasons as bases of justification for imposing Covid policies may seem to fail to show respect for the autonomy of those who lack the relevant religious commitments, and—especially when a leader herself rejects the religious commitments she makes reference to to persuade others—her appeals to religious reasons may seem to constitute ethically problematic exercises of manipulation. This essay draws on the resources of contemporary political philosophy to analyze and respond to these concerns and concludes that they are not sufficiently well-founded. To the contrary, it contends that there are good moral grounds for leaders to appeal to religious reasons as (partial) bases of justification for why followers should accept Covid policies. In the course of the argument, this essay also highlights how contemporary political theory can enrich discussions about the distinctions between coercion, manipulation, and leadership, and thereby give insight not only into the ethics of leadership but also—at least by the lights of central theories of leadership like that of James MacGregor Burns (1978)—into whether and how appeals to religious reasons can figure into genuine exercises of leadership, in contrast with mere instances of the wielding of social power. (shrink)

Huckleberry Finn believes that by helping Miss Watson’s slave Jim escape to freedom, he is doing something wrong. But Huck does it anyway—and many want to give him moral credit for this choice. If Huck is to be worthy of such moral esteem, however, it seems there must be some implicit way of appreciating and responding to considerations as moral reasons that does not involve explicitly believing that those considerations are moral reasons. This chapter argues that an agent like Huck (...) can implicitly appreciate a consideration as a moral reason to φ by presenting it under the light of a particular phenomenologically-mediated mode of presentation: one that presents that consideration via the light of a felt directive force “pointing” towards φ-ing—lending weight to it, or soliciting it—in a particular authoritative way. Thus, I suggest, Huck may be understood on analogy with a young jazz piano virtuoso. As she may appreciate that the G-seventh chord having been played just so constitutes an aesthetic reason for her to ease into the C-major-seventh chord just so by virtue of experiencing the former as pointing or directing her to the latter, so also, I propose, Huck may appreciate the considerations speaking in favor of helping Jim as moral reasons to help Jim by virtue of experiencing them as pointing or directing him to help Jim. The chapter also examines and rejects four alternative proposals for how to account for implicit reasons-appreciation: first, a de re account of appreciation and then three additional accounts of appreciation derived from major theories of mental representation (inferentialist, causal tracking, and functionalist theories). (shrink)

Some religious requirements seem genuinely arbitrary in the sense that there seem to be no sufficient explanation of why those requirements with those contents should pertain. This paper aims to understand exactly what it might mean for a religious requirement to be genuinely arbitrary and to discern whether and how a religious practitioner could ever be rational in obeying such a requirement. We lay out four accounts of what such arbitrariness could consist in, and show how each account provides a (...) different sort of baseline for understanding how obedience to arbitrary requirements could, in principle, be rational. (shrink)

Political liberals argue that religious citizens should exercise religious restraint: they ought, at least as a rule, not to rely directly on religious reasons in public political debates, and should instead draw only from the contents of a ‘reasonable’, secular political conception of justice. Political liberals hold that direct religious reasoners’ who fail to follow this rule fail to be ‘reasonable’ (in a technical sense) and contend that liberal polities may thus dismiss their religiously-motivated objections to otherwise justified democratic laws. (...) However, I argue that political liberals’ own principles of ‘reasonability’ forbid such a dismissal. Those principles themselves, I argue, require liberal polities to offer direct religious reasoners who are reasonable in the basic, colloquial sense of being fair-minded and reciprocitous, deep reasons—that speak to their comprehensive religious doctrines—for why they should accept and reason from a ‘reasonable’, political conception of justice. I call the position which requires such deep justification of a ‘reasonable’, political conception of justice Deep Inclusivism, and draw on the work of Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic political thinker, to help illustrate what a fair-minded, reciprocitous religious reasoner might look like. (shrink)

Neo-capitalistic approaches to value creation have sometimes developed a bad reputation in terms of sustainability and care for the environment. Yet, there are examples to the contrary emphasising a concern for sustainable capitalism. Our literature synthesis suggests that there is a lack of understanding of the sustainability mechanisms—ways of working helping companies to achieve their leadership in sustainability and maintain it over time. We contribute by addressing this deficiency and specifying four discrete mechanisms which we call the 4S model. Specifically, (...) we apply this model to the cases of two leading exponents of sustainability—Unilever and Patagonia—to explain how companies can operate as forces to change business practice and improve sustainability having regard to people, planet, and profits. (shrink)

Political liberals claim that liberal polities may legitimately dismiss the objections of ‘unreasonable’ citizens who resist political liberals’ favored principles of justice and political justification. A growing number of other political philosophers, including post-colonialist theorists, have objected to the resulting insularity of political liberalism. However, political liberals’ insularity also often prevents them from being sensitive or responsive to these critics’ complaints. In this article, I develop a more efficacious internal critique of political liberalism: I show that political liberals’ own core (...) principles of liberal legitimacy sometimes require liberal polities to engage with the objections of those who hold ‘unreasonable’, and even illiberal, views. First, I draw on the work of Sayyid Qutb, an illiberal Islamic political thinker, to argue that – contrary to what political liberals often imply – even ‘unreasonable’, illiberal citizens may be fair-minded: that is, they may be actively concerned to cooperate with others on fair and mutually endorsable terms. Second, I contend that a liberal state’s own core commitment to treating citizens as free and equal requires it to offer fair-minded illiberal citizens like Qutb deep reasons – that don’t presuppose agreement on liberal principles of justice and so can speak to them in the dialectical position they start from – for why they should accept the liberal laws with which the state coerces them to comply. By showing how political liberals’ own commitments oblige them to address even ‘unreasonable’ political perspectives, I open the door to their more robust engagement with their critics, including not only comparative political theorists but also the growing number of illiberal citizens who challenge democratic regimes. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a _(pro tanto)_ _moral duty against dogmatism_: I argue that the _social costs_ of a disagreement can give those who are party to it added moral reasons to reconsider their controversial beliefs and (so) not to be dogmatic. In Sect. 1, I motivate the idea _that_ the social costs of disagreement may give rise to reasons to reconsider our beliefs by considering intuitive examples to that effect. I suggest that some of the stock intuitions (...) that epistemologists of disagreement have depended on to make their arguments are implicitly influenced by social costs that are salient to the disagreements in their cases. In Sect. 2, I respond to a _Practical Objection_ to my argument that political philosophers might be keen to press. According to this objection, the social costs of disagreement do not give rise to a moral duty against dogmatism because we can adequately address those costs just by compromising on how we _act on_ our beliefs in the context of the disagreement. In Sect. 3, I address a contrasting objection to the moral duty against dogmatism that might be pressed by epistemologists, which I term the _Truth Objection._ This objection points out that the social costs of disagreement do nothing to affect the strength of the _evidence _for or against one’s contentious beliefs, and so complains that those who reconsider their beliefs just on account of the social costs of disagreement ‘cave in’ to social pressure in a problematic way. In the course of addressing the Truth Objection, I more carefully explain _how_ the social costs of disagreement give rise to a moral duty against dogmatism by distinguishing between ‘truth-motivated’ and ‘truth-indifferent’ reasons for inquiry. (shrink)

In his seminal Orientalism and Religion, Richard King argues that Western scholars of religion have constructed a conceptual dichotomy between “mysticism” and “rationality” that has caused them to systematically distort the claims and arguments of Eastern thinkers. While King focuses primarily on Western scholarship on the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, this essay shows that his argument can also be extended to apply to Western scholarship on al-Ghazālī, whose sympathy for Sufism and apparent rejection of Greek philosophy has often earned him (...) the reputation of being a champion of Islamic mysticism. I argue that al-Ghazālī transcends the dueling categories of ‘rationality’ and ‘mysticism’ that have been imposed on him by offering a conception of experiential knowledge that retains its roots in the ‘mystical’ Sufi tradition, even while also highlighting the rational merits of experientially-grounded modes of knowing. In particular, I argue that al-Ghazālī shows us how experiential knowledge is both important to providing motivation for rational action and also critical to underwriting persons’ genuine understanding of the evaluative properties of that which is known. (shrink)

From the author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, a hugely influential book that challenged key assertions by Niels Bohr and other founders of quantum mechanics, A Guess at the Riddle provides a major metaphysical overhaul of one of physics' most intractable problems-the quest to bridge quantum and classical physics in order to understand the nature of reality.

L’Union Européenne vit sous un régime de démocratie représentative de type fédéral dont la particularité est d’être en vigueur dans un État qui n’est pas fédéral. Les critiques qui l’accablent aujourd’hui sont en grande partie liées aux ambiguïtés et aux impasses qu’engendre l’enchevêtrement, pas toujours très clair, des pouvoirs actuellement exercés par le Parlement, la Commission et le Conseil. Une autre partie de la critique est plus tranchante : elle récuse le principe même de la construction européenne en l’accusant d’instituer (...) un déni de démocratie. Trois arguments étayent ce réquisitoire : le premier pointe la perte de souveraineté nationale ; le second le manque de représentativité des élus ; le troisième le déficit de légitimité des autorités en place. Des révisions apportées à chacun de ces trois facteurs permettraient-elles de conforter la démocratie dans le cadre européen? (shrink)

Sartre importe à l'histoire vivante de la philosophie sous plusieurs angles. Héritier de Hegel qui le hante, il conteste celui-ci dans sa conviction « totaliste ». S'il reste fidèle au dynamisme hégélien, à l'interrogation constante du vécu, il les traduit pourtant par nos langages présents.

In this article, we analyze and reject two versions of the content‐argument against animal beliefs, namely, the ontological argument from Davidson and the epistemological argument from Stich. One of the main defects of the strongest version of the argument is that it over‐intellectualizes belief ascriptions in humans and thus sets the comparative bar for belief ascriptions in animals too high. In the second part of the article, we develop a gradualist notion of belief which captures basic beliefs as well as (...) Davidsonian linguistic beliefs, and we specify the conditions under which belief ascriptions to nonlinguistic animals are justified. (shrink)

We develop a version of a direct perception account of emotion recognition on the basis of a metaphysical claim that emotions are individuated as patterns of characteristic features. On our account, emotion recognition relies on the same type of pattern recognition as is described for object recognition. The analogy allows us to distinguish two forms of directly perceiving emotions, namely perceiving an emotion in the absence of any top-down processes, and perceiving an emotion in a way that significantly involves some (...) top-down processes ; and, in addition, an inference-based evaluation of an emotion. Our model clarifies the epistemology of emotion recognition. (shrink)

In this eloquent guide to the meanings of the postmodern era, Albert Borgmann charts the options before us as we seek alternatives to the joyless and artificial culture of consumption. Borgmann connects the fundamental ideas driving his understanding of society's ills to every sphere of contemporary social life, and goes beyond the language of postmodern discourse to offer a powerfully articulated vision of what this new era, at its best, has in store. "[This] thoughtful book is the first remotely (...) realistic map out of the post modern labyrinth."—Joseph Coates, _The Chicago Tribune_ "Rather astoundingly large-minded vision of the nature of humanity, civilization and science."—_Kirkus Reviews_. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically assess different interpretations of Bohmian mechanics that are not committed to an ontology based on the wave function being an actual physical object that inhabits configuration space. More specifically, my aim is to explore the connection between the denial of configuration space realism and another interpretive debate that is specific to Bohmian mechanics: the quantum potential versus guidance approaches. Whereas defenders of the quantum potential approach to the theory claim that Bohmian mechanics is better formulated (...) as quasi-Newtonian, via the postulation of forces proportional to acceleration; advocates of the guidance approach defend the notion that the theory is essentially first-order and incorporates some concepts akin to those of Aristotelian physics. Here I analyze whether the desideratum of an interpretation of Bohmian mechanics that is both explanatorily adequate and not committed to configuration space realism favors one of these two approaches to the theory over the other. Contrary to some recent claims in the literature, I argue that the quasi-Newtonian approach based on the idea of a quantum potential does not come out the winner. (shrink)

In the recent literature on concepts, two extreme positions concerning animal minds are predominant: the one that animals possess neither concepts nor beliefs, and the one that some animals possess concepts as well as beliefs. A characteristic feature of this controversy is the lack of consensus on the criteria for possessing a concept or having a belief. Addressing this deficit, we propose a new theory of concepts which takes recent case studies of complex animal behavior into account. The main aim (...) of the paper is to present an epistemic theory of concepts and to defend a detailed theory of criteria for having concepts. The distinction between nonconceptual, conceptual, and propositional representations is inherent to this theory. Accordingly, it can be reasonably argued that some animals, e.g., grey parrots and apes, operate on conceptual representations. (shrink)

Albert Dzur proposes an approach he calls "democratic professionalism" to build bridges between specialists in domains like law, medicine, and journalism and the lay public in such a way as to enable and enhance broader public engagement ...

Holding On to Reality is a brilliant history of information, from its inception in the natural world to its role in the transformation of culture to the current Internet mania and is attendant assets and liabilities. Drawing on the history of ideas, the details of information technology, and the boundaries of the human condition, Borgmann illuminates the relationship between things and signs, between reality and information. "[Borgmann] has offered a stunningly clear definition of information in Holding On to Reality.... He (...) leaves room for little argument, unless one wants to pose the now vogue objection: I guess it depends on what you mean by nothing."—Paul Bennett, Wired "A superb anecdotal analysis of information for a hype-addled age."—New Scientist "This insightful and poetic reflection on the changing nature of information is a wonderful antidote to much of the current hype about the 'information revolution.' Borgmann reminds us that whatever the reality of our time, we need 'a balance of signs and things' in our lives."—Margaret Wertheim, LA Weekly. (shrink)