Les travaux du Comité public de suivi Le comité a été créé le 12 avril 2016. À cette occasion, il a annoncé le dépôt d’un rapport de suivi à l’occasion du premier anniversaire du dépôt du rapport de la Commission Charbonneau. Dans les derniers mois, le comité s’est penché sur les initiatives répondant aux recommandations de la Commission, en étudiant les informations rendues publiques sur ce sujet. Aidé d’une équipe...

The large-scale and intensive collection and analysis of digital data (commonly called “Big Data”) has become a common, popular, and consensual research method for the social sciences, as the automation of data collection, mathematization of analysis, and digital objectification reinforce both its efficiency and truth-value. This article opens with a critical review of the literature on data collection and analysis, and summarizes current ethical discussions focusing on these technologies. A semiotic model of data production and circulation is then introduced to (...) problematize the view that digital data has ceased to stand for a formalization method (a possible kind of representation among others), and effectively “becomes the world itself” (a direct presentation of the world outperforming all other modes of representation). Following Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics and pragmaticist philosophy, we characterize digitalization as a hypersymbolic semiotic process, and we highlight the naturalization of meaning, the illusion of iconicity, and rhetorical efficiency on which data’s truth value relies within the context of its large-scale, profit-driven, and results-oriented research uses. This outlines some epistemological and ethical implications of data’s visualization, use, and authority, and indicates avenues for critical semiotics of contemporary data science and analysis. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre claims in his 1945 lecture ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ that there are two kinds of existentialism: that of Christians like Karl Jaspers, and atheistic like Martin Heidegger. Sartre's ‘spiritual master’ Heidegger had no problem with Sartre defining him as an atheist, but he had serious problems with Sartre's concept of humanism and existentialism. Heidegger claims that the essence of humanism lies in the essence of the human being. After the Enlightenment, the Western concept of man has been (...) presented in education in the form of Kantian humanistic essentialism. At least in the Finnish educational system, Kantian humanism is almost an official ideological background of all national curriculums. Is such a kind of essentialism and metaphysics plausible in our modern or postmodern times? We examine the Sartre-Heidegger controversy on humanism and the concept of man in education using Freire's humanism and Gelassenheit education as exemplars. (shrink)

As we speak about time in the context of everyday life, we have no problem with what we mean by time. We take time as given. Different kinds of theories of development rely on the ordinary concept of time. Time is a sequence of instants, and we are moving along from the past to the future, from birth to death. Moving in time also means development. It does not take into account how a human being is in the time. It (...) flattens our view of human life and cannot describe our manifold being. According to theories of development, if a child does not behave in a certain instant as the theories expect, there must be a problem with that child or she has not developed as well as others. Heidegger uses terms like time-space, temporality and ecstases of time. The question of time is of the same kind as the question of Being. We are in the world and in time in the same way. We all have experience of time, how it sometimes goes quickly and sometimes very slowly. Time is not experienced as moments one after another. It is time-space. Time-space means that time has three dimensions and it consists of the ecstatical opening up of the future, the past and the present. In this article, I will open up the question how the traditional understanding of time and the ecstatic understanding of time understand children differently. What does it mean that little children live exclusively in the present? (shrink)

Jean‐Paul Sartre claims in his 1945 lecture ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ that there are two kinds of existentialism: that of Christians like Karl Jaspers, and atheistic like Martin Heidegger. Sartre's ‘spiritual master’ Heidegger had no problem with Sartre defining him as an atheist, but he had serious problems with Sartre's concept of humanism and existentialism. Heidegger claims that the essence of humanism lies in the essence of the human being. After the Enlightenment, the Western concept of man has been (...) presented in education in the form of Kantian humanistic essentialism. At least in the Finnish educational system, Kantian humanism is almost an official ideological background of all national curriculums. Is such a kind of essentialism and metaphysics plausible in our modern or postmodern times? We examine the Sartre‐Heidegger controversy on humanism and the concept of man in education using Freire's humanism and Gelassenheit education as exemplars. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

The problem of academic dishonesty is as old as it is widespread – dating back millennia and perpetrated by the majority of students. Attempts to promote academic integrity, by comparison, are relatively new and rare – stretching back only a few hundred years and implemented by a small fraction of schools and universities. However, the past decade has seen an increase in efforts among universities to promote academic integrity among students, particularly through the use of online courses or tutorials. Previous (...) research has found this type of instruction to be effective in increasing students’ knowledge of academic integrity and reducing their engagement in academic dishonesty. The present study contributes to this literature with a natural experiment on the effects of the Academic Integrity Course (AIC) at The University of Auckland, which became mandatory for all students in 2015. In 2012, a convenience sample of students (n= 780) had been asked to complete a survey on their perceptions of the University’s academic integrity polices and their engagement in several forms of academic dishonesty over the past year. In 2017, the same procedures and survey were used to collect data from second sample of students (n= 608). After establishing measurement invariance across the two samples on all latent factors, analysis of variance revealed mixed support for the studies hypotheses. Unexpectedly, students who completed the AIC (i.e., the 2017 sample) reported: (1) significantly lower (not higher) levels of understanding, support, and effectiveness with respect to the University’s academic integrity policies; (2) statistically equivalent (not higher) levels of peer disapproval of academic misconduct, and; (3) significantly higher (not lower) levels of peer engagement in academic misconduct. However, results related to participants’ personal engagement in academic misconduct offered partial support for hypotheses – those who completed the AIC reported significantly lower rates of engagement on three of the eight behaviors included in the study. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed as well as possible future directions for research. (shrink)

This book traces the development of theories of the self and personal identity from the ancient Greeks to the present day. From Plato and Aristotle to Freud and Foucault, Raymond Martin and John Barresi explore the works of a wide range of thinkers and reveal the larger intellectual trends, controversies, and ideas that have revolutionized the way we think about ourselves. The authors open with ancient Greece, where the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and the materialistic atomists laid the groundwork (...) for future theories. They then discuss the ideas of the church fathers and medieval and Renaissance philosophers, including St. Paul, Philo, Augustine, Aquinas, and Montaigne. In their coverage of the emergence of a new mechanistic conception of nature in the seventeenth century, Martin and Barresi note a shift away from religious and purely philosophical notions of self and personal identity to more scientific and social conceptions, a trend that has continued to the present day. They explore modern philosophy and psychology, including the origins of different traditions within each discipline, and explain both the theoretical relevance of feminism and gender and ethnic studies and also the ways that Derrida and other recent thinkers have challenged the very idea that a unified self or personal identity even exists. Martin and Barresi cover a number of issues broached by philosophers and psychologists, such as the existence of a fixed and unchanging self and whether the concept of the soul has a use outside of religious contexts. They address the question of whether notions of the soul and the self are still viable in today's world. Together, they reveal the fascinating ways in which great thinkers have grappled with these and other questions and the astounding impact their ideas have had on the development of self-understanding in the west. (shrink)

This book shows otherwise. John Martin rehabilitates Neoplatonism, founded by Plotinus and brought into Christianity by St. Augustine.

This paper examines Gerhard Krüger's interpretation of Plato in light of Martin Heidegger's Destruktion of the Greeks and critique of Platonism. I argue that Krüger's new reading of Plato should be understood as a critique of Heidegger's understanding of Platonism, and thereby as a broader critique of Heidegger's thoughts on Western metaphysics and the history of Being (Seinsgeschichte). The force and originality of Krüger's response to Heidegger consist in the fact that Krüger's Plato anticipates Heidegger's critique of Platonism. Krüger (...) thus contends that Plato (1) does not allow the understanding of truth as correctness (Übereinstimmung) to supplant the understanding of truth as disclosedness (Unverborgenheit), (2) understands and displays philosophy's dependence upon prereflexive attunements (Stimmungen); (3) appreciates the intricate relation between Being and temporality. In sum, Krüger's Plato is not guilty of Seinsvergessenheit, and rather opens up new ways for an authentic meditation on Being and on the human way toward an understanding of Being. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Philosophical Tale.

Many classic philosophical debates converge on the twin questions ‘What is man?’ and ‘What is his place in nature?’, in the sense that taking up a position in those debates normally commits one to a certain range of answers to these questions. Such answers typically lie near the centre of one's web of belief, deeply entrenched in the structure of one's concepts, and thus remain remarkably resistant to the standard techniques of confirmation and refutation.

In this paper I add a new twist to Colyvan's version of the Petrograd paradox.

The Phenomenology of Religious Life presents the text of Heidegger’s important 1920–21 lectures on religion. The volume consists of the famous lecture course Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion, a course on Augustine and Neoplatonism, and notes for a course on The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism that was never delivered. Heidegger’s engagements with Aristotle, St. Paul, Augustine, and Luther give readers a sense of what phenomenology would come to mean in the mature expression of his thought. Heidegger reveals an (...) impressive display of theological knowledge, protecting Christian life experience from Greek philosophy and defending Paul against Nietzsche. (shrink)

Publisher's description: The Phenomenology of Religious Life presents the text of Heidegger's important 1920621 lectures on religion. First published in 1995 as volume 60 of the Gesamtausgabe, the work reveals a young Heidegger searching for the striking language that eventually formed the mature expression of his thought. The volume consists of the famous lecture course "Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion," a course on "Augustine and Neoplatonism," and notes for a course on "The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism" that was (...) never delivered. Heidegger's engagements with Aristotle, St. Paul, Augustine, and Luther give readers a sense of what phenomenology would come to mean in his later works. Here, Heidegger reveals an impressive display of theological knowledge, protecting Christian life experience from Greek philosophy and defending Paul against Nietzsche. The appearance of this first English translation marks a significant event in Heidegger scholarship and affords a unique look into his phenomenology. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIm vorliegenden Artikel wird das von historischer Seite wenig erforschte Ereignis der Magdalenenflut von 1342 unter Einbeziehung administrativer Überlieferung, vor allem aus Urkunden und Rechnungsbüchern, und durch Heranziehung naturwissenschaftlicher Proxydaten, insbesondere aus Baumring-Niederschlagsrekonstruktionen, neu ausgeleuchtet. So gelingt es nicht nur, einen wesentlich differenzierteren Verlauf einer insgesamt zweijährigen Hochwasserkatastrophe mit peaks im Februar und Juli 1342, aber auch im Juli 1343 zu gewinnen, sondern auch mehrmonatige Trockenphasen im März bis Juni 1342 erstmals zu fassen, die den (auch in Schriftquellen nachgewiesenen) Erosionseffekt (...) der Starkregenfälle im Juli 1342 besser erklären als bislang. Dabei wird klar, dass 1342/43 ein multifaktorieller compound event vorliegt, der erst durch die Koinzidenz natürlicher Extremereignisse mit sozio-ökonomischen Faktoren zur Katastrophe führt. Die bewusste Ausweitung des Quellenspektrums lässt beispielsweise erstmals eine überregionale Teuerung bei Lebensmitteln im Nachklang der Flutereignisse feststellen, die aber wesentlich im zufälligen Auftreten des Hochwassers noch vor der Getreideernte begründet liegt. Der Fokus des Beitrags liegt auf infrastrukturellen Anpassungsmaßnahmen, etwa veränderten Brückendesigns (am Bsp. der Balduinbrücke in Koblenz) und großer Wasserbaumaßnahmen (am Beispiel des Donaudurchstichs von Oberalteich), oder normativen Reaktionen wie den Würzburger Polizeisätzen 1342/43 und der Errichtung von Deichbaugemeinschaften am Niederrhein, die zumindest als indirekte Reaktionen auf die Hochwasserereignisse verstanden werden müssen. Diese technisch-normativen Adaptionsvorgänge können einerseits im Luhmann’schen Sinn als Umweltbeobachtungen zweiter Ordnung verstanden werden, andererseits erläutern sie die Bedeutung von natürlichen Extremereignissen als Taktgeber für vormoderne Infrastrukturentwicklung aufgrund ihrer als kritisch erlebten, ungenügenden Ausgestaltung oder gar ihres völligen Fehlens. Nordalpin sehen wir nach 1342/43 im Bereich des Hochwasserschutzes zaghafte Anfänge obrigkeitlicher Daseinsvorsorge jenseits lokaler Zuständigkeiten. (shrink)

This small volume from Claudia Hauer results from an interesting and important intersection of her professional experiences. Trained in Classics, Hauer has spent most of her career at St. John’s Co...

This small volume from Claudia Hauer results from an interesting and important intersection of her professional experiences. Trained in Classics, Hauer has spent most of her career at St. John’s Co...

Presents a penetrating study of Eliot's Four Quartets. Begins with an account of the intellectual and personal context for Eliot's mature work, explaining how his influences shaped his mind, then discusses Eliot's own personal circumstances and the contemporary relevance of his work a half century after it appeared, offering comparisons with Samuel Beckett. A central motif of analysis of "Burnt Norton" is Augustine's discussion of time in relation to subjective memory. Other literary references brought to bear on the Four Quartets (...) include work by Yeats, Milton, and St. John of the Cross, as well as the Bible and the Bhagavad-Gita. Warner is a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

‘There is a kind of eloquence’, maintained St Augustine,which is manifestly inspired by God. Biblical writers have spoken with this kind of eloquence. … ‘On the other hand’ they have uttered some passages with a beneficial and salutary obscurity, to exercise and, in a sense, to polish the minds of their readers, to break down aversions and spur on the zeal of those who are anxious to learn, as well as to conceal the meaning from the minds of the impious.

Cuando se leen los relatos que los grandes santos hacen de su experiencia de Dios, encontramos expresiones que rompen las reglas de la lógica lingüística, prueba de que hay experiencias que no son fáciles de describir y transmitir. San Agustín, en el contexto de una de las más célebres páginas de sus Confesiones, esa en la que exclama: “Tarde te amé, hermosura tan antigua y siempre nueva”, dice, por una parte, que Dios está “dentro” de él, para añadir a renglón (...) seguido que las cosas están dentro de Dios, pues si no estuvieran en él, no serían . En San Pablo encontramos expresiones similares: por una parte, se puede leer en sus cartas que “Cristo vive en mí” , y por otra, el autor de los Hechos de los Apóstoles pone en su boca que “en Dios vivimos, nos movemos y somos” . Este doble modo de concebir la relación de Dios con la realidad creada, con el cosmos y con el ser humano, resulta paradójico y es una provocación para el pensamiento.¿Dios está en la realidad, se hace presente en ella de algún modo, o es más bien la realidad la que está en Dios? Posiblemente no hay contradicción entre ambas imágenes, sino complementariedad. Tomás de Aquino, como veremos, afirma las dos cosas. Dios es de una naturaleza tal que, por una parte puede hacerse presente en la realidad mundana y humana y, por otra, llevar dentro de sí estas mismas realidades. ¿Hay alguna analogía, alguna imagen que pueda servir para describir una naturaleza así y ayudarnos a comprender mejor el ser divino? En definitiva, ¿qué significa “estar en” o “dentro de” las criaturas por parte de Dios y en o dentro de Dios por parte de las criaturas? ¿Se trata de simples imágenes o estas imágenes son modelos que tienen alguna correspondencia con la realidad?When you read the accounts that the great saints do of their experience of God, you find expressions that break the rules of linguistic logic, what proves that there are experiences not easy to describe and transmit. St Augustine in the context of one of the most known pages of his Confessions, where he exclaims: “Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new”, says that God is inside him and adds immediately after that things are inside God, since if things were not in him they wouldn’t exist. We find similar expressions in St Paul: On the one hand, one can read in one of his letters: “Christ lives in me”, on the other hand, the author of the Acts of the Apostles puts in his mouth: “in God we live and move and have our being” . This double way of understanding God’s relation to created things, the cosmos and human beings, is paradoxical and becomes a provocation to reason.Is God inside reality, is he present in it someway, or is rather reality which is in God? Possibly there is not contradiction between the two images, but they complement each other. Thomas Aquinas, as we’ll see later, states the two. God is such a nature, that, on the one hand, he can be present in wordly and human reality, on the other hand, he can contain inside himself these realities. Is there any analogy, any image able to describe a nature like this that could help us to understand better his divine being? In short, what does it mean to be in or inside the creatures in relation to God and to be in or inside God in relation to creatures? Is it about simple images or these images are models with some relation to reality? (shrink)

Tomás de Aquino comienza su síntesis teológica definitiva preguntándose por la legitimidad y necesidad de la teología. Inmediatamente después se plantea la pregunta por sus contenidos: ¿de qué trata la ciencia teológica? Si la teología es la ciencia de la Revelación y su fundamento está en la revelación que Dios en Cristo hace de sí mismo, parece que su contenido tiene que ser Dios mismo. Un contenido que solo es cognoscible si Dios se da a conocer, porque el ser humano, (...) con sus fuerzas, con su sola razón, solo puede alcanzarle de forma limitada y parcial, en suma, solo puede saber de su existencia, pero no de sus designios, de sus intenciones y mucho menos de su naturaleza.Para Sto. Tomás es claro que Dios es el sujeto, el contenido de la Teología. Esta ciencia es un “tratado sobre Dios”. Ahora bien, Tomás de Aquino es consciente de una dificultad: si el fundamento de la Teología es la Sagrada Escritura, que es el lugar en el que se contiene la Revelación de Dios, resulta que “en la Sagrada Escritura se trata de muchas cosas además de Dios, como son las criaturas y los actos humanos”. Tomás de Aquino resuelve la dificultad argumentando que Dios es el sujeto de la teología no exactamente por ser su único contenido o por ser el único sujeto del que trata esta ciencia, sino porque todo lo que ella trata “lo hace teniendo como punto de mira a Dios, bien porque se trata de Dios mismo, bien porque se trata de algo referido a él como principio y como fin”.Thomas Aquinas begins his definitive theological synthesis asking for legitimacy and need of theology. Immediately he asks for the contents: what is theological science about? If theology is the science of Revelation, and its foundation is the revelation that God makes of himself in Christ, it seems that its content must be God himself1. A content that can only be known, if God shows himself, because a human being, with its strength and its sole mind, only can get him in a limited and partial way, in short, it can only know of his existence, but not his plans, his intentions, and even less, his nature.For St Thomas it is clear that God is the subject, the content of theology. This science is a “treatise about God”. However, Thomas Aquinas is conscious of a difficulty: If Sacred Scripture that is the place where God’s revelation is contained, is the foundation of theology, “it turns out that Sacred Scripture deals with many more things besides God, that is, creatures and human acts”. Thomas Aquinas will solve this difficulty arguing that God is the subject of theology not because he is exactly the only content or subject of this science, but because all it deals with, “is done with reference to God himself either because it is about God or about something referred to God as beginning and end”. (shrink)

Sacrifice, solidarity, and social decadence were essential themes not only for Patočka's philosophical work, but also for his personal life. In the "Varna Lectures" sacrifice is characterized uniquely as the privation of a clear telos, as counter-escapist, and as sutured to a comportment of finite life that is non-causal and non-purposive. In his Heretical Essays a similar hope is expressed to extract meaningfulness from use-value, and to deploy a Socratic and Christian "Care for the Soul" that can counteract the decadences (...) of our age. These interests and developments of the practice and notion of sacrifice point to Patočka's double-hereticism, both of the post-industrial age of technological advancement, and of what had become the unthought-through of the Christian tradition. In both senses, his theory of sacrifice is not unlike that of St. Paul, who saw the necessity of counter-acting the decadence and pompousness of the Corinthians by calling them to become "scum of the earth." This helps reveal how sacrifice presumes, in general, an operative notion of waste, and this paper seeks to lend further understanding to the relation between solidarity and sacrifice by developing, from out of Patočka's own work, precisely how waste figures prominently in such a relation. Waste may be refused by merit of being deemed to have no value; waste can mark a layer of expenditure of using "something up" in a way that overlooks its societal surplus; and waste could depict whatever is, like a wasteland, uncultivable and barren. Waste then is employed in the essay as a heuristic tool for understanding how the normalization of the relation between solidarity and sacrifice is in need of being inverted, and how this inversion has consequences also for how solidarity can be considered in relation to atonement. (shrink)

The abbey of Conques and its dominant church dedicated to St Foy are today one of the most prominent examples of the harmonic relationship between medieval sacred architecture and nature. This article considers the medieval landscape of Conques from an environmental-historical perspective by analyzing early medieval writings about the abbey. It focuses on early descriptions, which often contain literary, hagiographical topoi depicting ideal, symbolic, or imagined landscapes - sometimes, however, also partially reflecting reality. These descriptions serve, with caution, to investigate (...) the local environment, its transformation, and its effect on the early history of the monastery. In addition, the article delves into the eleventh-century Liber miraculorum sanctae Fidis to investigate strategies that the monastic community used to control St Foy’s estates not only close to the abbey but also in the wider region. Analysis reveals the environment conditions, their impact on the history, and ways in which the monastic community sacralized the landscape through real processions and miracle stories to control it. (shrink)

Excerpt from Forschungen Uber die Lateinischen Aristoteles-Ubersetzungen des XIII Jahrhunderts Den XVIl. Band dieser, Beitrage kann ich nicht l1inausgehen lassen, ohne dem Verfasser der Abhandlung uber, Zeit und Ewigkeit nach Thomas von Aquino, welche den Band beginnt, meinem lieben Schuler Dr. Friedrich Josef Beemelmans, ein Wort des Gedenkens nachzurufen Zu Beginn des Weltkan1pfs voll Begeisterung mit dem Bayerischen InfanterieLeibregiment zur Verteidigung des Vaterlandes hinausgezogen, tapfer bewahrt im Kampf, an dem er, von einer Verwundung notdurftig geheilt, alsbald wieder teilnahn 1, starb (...) er am 29. September 1914 bei Flaucourt unweit Peronne den Hel(lentod fur das Vaterland. Viele Hoffnungen sanken Init ihm dahin: fur die Wissenschaft, in der es ihn aulzer zur Philosophie, die er am Institut catholique zu Paris und in Munchen gepflegt hatte, besonders Zur Mathen1atik l1inzog, welcher er als Geisteserbe seines verstorbenen Vaters der als Ministerialrat im Ministerium von ElsasLotliriiigeii insbesondere die technischen Angelegenheiten ver waltete eine besondere Vorliebe entgegenbrachte und die er in Verbindung mit der Philosophie zu seiner Lebens a11fgabe Inachen wollte, sowie fur seine tiefgepruftc, treu sorgende Mutter, eine Schwester des fruheren grolzbritannischen Botschafters in St. Petersburg, Sir Arthtir Nicolson, die an allen seinen Bestrebungen den tatigsten Anteil nahm und der er jederzeit der liebevollste Sohn war. Aber auch die "Beitrage" selbst haben in Inanclien Beziehungen die durch den Krieg geschaffenen Schwierigkeiten zu verspuren gehabt, wie man auch aus dem Vorwort Martin Grabn1anns zu seinen, Forschungen uber die lateinischen Aristoteles ubersetzungen des Xlll. Jahrhunderts" (Heft 5 - 6) ersehen kann. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.". (shrink)

This essay examines the recurrence of New Age typologies in different ages and different cultures. The archetype is defined as the revolutionary idealist who is intellectual, declassé, an experimenter and a seeker after truth. The essay then proceeds to compare and contrast key intellectual and spiritual figures to establish the extent to which they conform to the archetype: Percy Shelley and Otto Gross, Mahatma Gandhi and St. Francis of Assisi. It concludes with an examination of the career and ideas of (...) John Middleton Murry and argues the case for him to be seen as a New Age archetype — the New Age man of letters. (shrink)

A profound, original, and accessible book that argues that a faith not in God or eternal life, but in the finite, temporal life we lead here on earth is one that gives that life far greater depth of meaning. A manifesto for a truly secular faith that speaks eloquently to both believers and agnostics alike. The philosopher and critic Martin Hägglund believes that we need a new way of thinking about faith. In contrast to the traditional religious faith in (...) eternity, he proposes a secular faith in the value of living in time. He argues that the concept of an eternal heaven actually renders our mortal life meaningless since it assumes that our ultimate aims should be to escape it. Engaging writers and thinkers as diverse as C. S. Lewis, Kierkegaard, St. Augustine, Nietzsche, Martin Luther, and even Karl Ove Knausgaard, Hägglund provides not only a critique of religious ideals, but also a positive, alternative understanding of the beliefs and values that can motivate us to live lives of meaning in the here and now. (shrink)

Es mi homenaje a Melchor Cano, el teólogo dominico que teologizó siempre con autoridad. Siguió en esto y en su estilo humanístico a su venerado Maestro, Francisco de Vitoria. Trato de la época anterior a su profesorado salmantino. Lo mío es el pedestal sobre el que se apoyará su apoteosis, que estará en: la cátedra de Prima de Teología de Salamanca, el concilio de Trento, el asesoramiento como consejero de Felipe II, los Lugares Teológicos. Lo mío es, pues, el lugar (...) que lo vio nacer, la formación salmantina como dominico, la coronación de su formación teológica y primer profesorado en el Colegio de San Gregorio de Valladolid, y su irradiación desde la cátedra principal de teología en la universidad de Alcalá. It is my homage to Melchior Cano, the Dominican theologian who always taught theology with authority. He followed his venerate master Francisco de Vitoria. I am talking of the previous time to his teaching at Salamanca. My intention is to show the pedestal on which his apotheosis will stand: the theological chair of Prima at Salamanca, the Council of Trent, the advice as Philip II’ counselor, the theological places as well as the place where he was born, his education in Salamanca, as a Dominican, the culmination of his theological education, his first teaching at St. Gregory’s college at Valladolid and his irradiation from the main theological chair at Alcala University. (shrink)

In a 2020 article published in volume 9, number 1 of [Filosofia Theoretica]_, _Martin F. Asiegbu and Anthony Chinaemerem Ajah questioned the continued relevance of Afro-communalism. They argued that nothing about communalism makes it African. They also demonstrated how the brand of communalism presented as ‘African’, is too reductive, emphasizes conformism and therefore is against the individual and counter-productive for entire societies in Africa. For the above reasons, they summed that communalism with ‘Afro-’ is irrelevant and needs to end. In (...) a 2021 article published in the same journal in response to the initial submission by Asiegbu and Ajah, Enweh held that their take on Afro-communalism was too harsh. He marshalled out five “issues and difficulties” regarding their critique of the concept. Although Enweh’s critique is a worthwhile invitation to a conversation, which clarifies and complements, his proposal for an interpretative rehabilitation of Afro-communalism in the 21 st century is surely wrongheaded. To respond to Enweh, a review of his critique of Asiegbu and Ajah will foreground the attempt to clarify some parts of Asiegbu and Ajah’s initial position. We will assess Enweh’s arguments in terms of the relevance of the rehabilitation he suggested and question the meaning of what Enweh termed the “amity of ethnic nationalities.” We will argue that Enweh was unable to provide sufficient grounds to show that Asiegbu and Ajah’s critique of Afro-communalism was “uninformed… [and] harsh.” We will also demonstrate that his critique of their views was indefensible just as he was unable to explain what he meant by the alternative model he claimed to introduce in the discussion. (shrink)

These comments of Walt Whitman may surprise some, as he is not usually considered a Hegelian of any stripe. But then, this entire collection of essays on Hegel and American literature comes as something of a surprise, given the current state of literary theory. It turns out that Whitman’s attention to Hegel was both fitful and oracular. He had read only the selections printed in Frederic Hedge’s compendium, Prose Writers of Germany, i.e., short excerpts from the Philosophy of History and (...) the essay, “Who Thinksly?”. Nor can Hegel plausibly be said to have greatly influenced other writers or critics, despite Cowan’s claim in the introduction; the St Louis Hegelians never dominated the intellectual life of the late nineteenth century. (shrink)