In the historical situation out of which Paul wrote, his kerygma offers the people of God, now reconstituted through Jesus Christ, a world-consciousness and calls them to a world-mission to bring about the obedience of faith among all nations.

On the whole, the church of Matthew is characterized more by the portrait of the disciple community provided in the Sermon on the Mount than by charismatic activity itself. Nevertheless, the center for Matthew is neither charismatic action nor ethical concern, but Jesus Christ.

A provocative, insightful explanation for why it is that belief—not religion—keeps us in a perilous state of willful ignorance In The Religious Case Against Belief , James Carse identifies the twenty-first century’s most forbidding villain: belief. In distinguishing religions from belief systems, Carse works to reveal how belief—with its restriction on thought and encouragement of hostility—has corrupted religion and spawned violence the world over. Galileo, Martin Luther, Abraham Lincoln, and Jesus Christ—using their stories Carse creates his own brand (...) of parable and establishes a new vocabulary with which to study conflict in the modern world. The Religious Case Against Belief introduces three kinds of ignorance: ordinary ignorance (a mundane lack of knowledge, such as ignorance of tomorrow’s weather or the reason why your stove is malfunctioning), willful ignorance (an intentional avoidance of accessible knowledge), and finally higher ignorance (a learned understanding that no matter how many truths we may accumulate, our knowledge falls infinitely short of the truth). While ordinary ignorance is common to all people, Carse associates the strongest manifestation of willful ignorance with the most fervent (and dangerous) of believers. He points to the historic conflict between Martin Luther and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V both to reveal this seemingly religious collision as a clash of belief and to identify belief ’s inherently destructive characteristics. From Luther to the contemporary Christian right, we learn that believers construct identity by erecting boundaries and by fostering aggression between the believer and the other. This is why belief systems choose—at great cost—to remain locked in bloody conflict rather than to engage in dialogue, recognizing the great deal they have in common. This is willful ignorance. In fierce contrast to willful ignorance, higher ignorance is an acquired state enhanced by religion. Those traveling the path to higher ignorance recognize faith teachings (such as the Bible) as poetry intended to promote contemplation, interpretation, and a sense of wonder. For evidence of religion’s deeply embedded rejection of singular truth and its acceptance of diverse dialogue, Carse looks to the many faces of Jesus presented in the books of the Bible and elsewhere. Uncontaminated by belief systems, religion rejects the imagined boundaries that falsely divide people and ideas, working to expand horizons. The Religious Case Against Belief exposes a world in which religion and belief have become erroneously (and terrifyingly) conflated. In strengthening their association with powerful belief systems, religions have departed from their essential purpose as agencies of higher ignorance. Carse uses his wideranging understanding of religion to find a viable and vital path away from what he calls the Age of Faith II and toward open-ended global dialogue. Far from abstract philosophical musing, The Religious Case Against Belief is required reading for our age. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY OUTLINES THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIOUS VIRTUE ethics and positive psychology—a field that has grown exponentially since its inauguration in 1998 by Martin Seligman, then president of the American Psychological Association. This essay shows how positive psychology, through its comprehensive classification of human virtues in Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, opens the possibility of dialogue between empirical psychology and religious virtue ethics; considers some internal and external challenges to positive psychology's approach; and examines one of (...) positive psychology's virtues, the virtue of humanity, and indicates how a Thomistic religious virtue ethics presents a more compelling account of this virtue. The conclusion provides a brief answer to the question, Is positive psychology friend or foe? (shrink)

Mr. F. is a fifty‐year‐old father of two school‐aged daughters. Six years ago, he received a double lung transplant because he was suffering from interstitial lung disease, a fatal illness that causes suffocation by progressive scarring of the lungs. He is now experiencing chronic rejection of the transplant and is being considered to receive another. Without it, he is expected to survive only a year and a half. With it, his prognosis will improve, but the numbers are still not good. (...) Three years after his lung transplant, Mr. F. stopped attending his office visits. For a period of sixteen months he went without the studies and attention essential to posttransplant care. He stopped performing the required daily self‐monitoring of his lung function about eight months after his transplant, but he has maintained a regular exercise regimen. While lost to follow‐up, he continued to take his immunosuppressant medications, but he stopped taking medicine to control his high blood pressure because of its expense. (shrink)

Subjects and Simulations presents essays focused on suffering and sublimity, representation and subjectivity, and the relation of truth and appearance through engagement with the legacies of Jean Baudrillard and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe.

Second-person relations are relations between individuals knowingly engaged in interaction with one another. These are the social contexts within which it is appropriate for one to think of and address another as ‘you’. This dissertation explores the practical consequences for agents of relating to others in this fashion. A critical analysis is offered of Stephen Darwall’s theory of moral obligations in terms of demands that can be addressed from the perspective of a second-person. On the basis of the criticisms raised, (...) a broader conception of ‘second-personal reasons’ is advanced according to which there are a variety of species of practical reasons that are essentially grounded in second-person relations between agents, besides moral obligations. A paradigm case of such a species is the reasons that are presented in requests, and one chapter of this work is devoted to explaining this power people often grant to others: to intentionally create new, discretionary reasons for them. Drawing from several historical antecedents – particularly Martin Buber, Simone Weil and Emmanuel Levinas – the analysis of second-personal reasons is extended to include a discussion of the proper object of agapic love, and a discussion of the possible significance that face-to-face encounters may have for moral epistemology. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is one of James Prescott Joule’s scientific contributions: the laws of heat production by electric currents in conductors. In 1841, the 22 years old Joule published a paper with the title “On the heat evolved by metallic conductors of electricity, and in the cells of a battery during electrolysis” where he presented an experimental study of that phenomenon and proposed two laws that were allegedly supported by his trials. On closer inspection, both his laboratory (...) work and his inferences can be challenged. The emphasis of this article is an attempt to understand Joule’s experimental undertaking, its highpoints and shortcomings, by a detailed analysis of this specific episode and by studying the precedents of his work and subsequent advancements. It is possible to point out several serious deficiencies of that investigation, and Joule’s contemporaries, such as Edmond Becquerel and Heinrich Lenz, did criticize some of his flaws and undertook new experiments to provide a sound basis for those laws. Besides providing a historical examination of that specific episode, this article uses this case study to tackle some features of the nature of science that may contribute to scientific education. (shrink)

I address the problem of reconciling environmental holism with the intrinsic value of individual beings. Drawing upon Madhyamaka Buddhism, the later philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and deep ecology, I present a distinctly holistic conception of nature that, nevertheless, retains a commitment to the intrinsic worth of individual beings. I conclude with an examination of the practical implications of this “thing-centered holism” for environmental ethics.

Bedouin Ethnobotany: Plant Concepts and Uses in a Desert Pastoral World. By James P. Mandaville. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011. Pp. xv + 397. $55.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Limits of Self-ConstitutionJames Phillips, MD (bio)I am in general agreement with the authors that a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic approach is a good response to simple pruning procedures. That said, however, I do have questions about how they develop their argument.I was surprised at the very notion of pruning, and quite surprised that it is as popular as the authors suggest. The idea that Pete should deal with his (...) inappropriate outbursts by erasing or pruning that aspect of his personality seems so ridiculous that it beggars belief. It leaves one wondering whether Pete, or anyone agreeing with this argument, is credulous enough to think you can just prune away an undesirable part of yourself.The authors write:Importantly, this expulsion is often thought to be a good thing not simply because the undesirable elements are morally wanting but because in some important sense, they are not really a part of the agent proper. This point many seem extravagantly wishful, but is intuitively plausible.Really, “intuitively plausible” that personality traits are not part of the agent? I can understand that the agent may not grasp his or her involvement in the undesirable trait, but to argue that the trait is in reality not part of agent is a very odd claim on the part of the authors.When the authors write that “It would be difficult to exaggerate the prominence of the pruning view of agential self-constitution in philosophy,” they are strongly connecting the notions of pruning and self-constitution. I am aware that self-constitution is a major theme for philosophers like Korsgaard. The authors strongly embrace this principle in drawing out their arguments.In a footnote to their article the authors claim that various notions of a “true self” imply a pruned self. For Winnicott, an originator of the “true self,” this note of pruning does not hold. Winnicott contrasts the true self, a sense of self based on spontaneous authentic experience and a feeling of being alive, with a false self, a defensive veneer without the vivacity of the true self. The notion of pruning simply does not belong in this discussion.What the authors and their supporting philosophers leave out are two limitations to self-constitution. For the first, let me invoke another philosopher, Martin Heidegger, and his notion of “thrownness”—Geworfenheit. We are “thrown” into the world in the particular circumstances of our birth. We do not self-constitute our beginnings; we are plunged into them. The question then becomes what we make of these beginnings. [End Page 209] If they are undesirable, we can brood over them, or we can attempt to overcome them. And as we all know, if the beginnings are bad enough, we may not be able to overcome them.The second limitation to self-constitution resides in the “self.” Does the individual constitute him or her self, or is it more a matter of the self developing out of dialogic relationship of self and other? Here I invoke another philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, who has addressed this issue from a number of perspectives. At a deictic level, the “I” or the self is a shifter that takes on a different meaning depending on its context. At the level of pragmatics, the individual is engaged in illocutionary speech that is addressed to another person, implying, in simple terms, that we live in dialogue. Still more pertinent to this discussion, Ricoeur notes that self-knowledge is not straightforward: “the self does not immediately know itself, but only knows itself indirectly by way of the detour through the cultural signs of all sorts that make us say that action is symbolically mediated” (Ricoeur, 2016, p. 240). And finally, Ricoeur argues for the priority of alterity over reflexivity. “Pushing further yet the primacy of alterity over reflexivity, some will emphasize the dependence of personal identities on identifications with... heroes, emblematic characters, models and teachers” (p. 248). To clarify this statement, Ricoeur is contrasting self-constitution through reflection with a self-other relationship in which the self needs the other to constitute itself—and, of course, he is making a case for the latter.Although I am questioning the authors’ concepts of... (shrink)

Two dogmas of empiricism, by W. V. Quine.--In defense of a dogma, by H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson.--The analytic and the synthetic: an untenable dualism, by M. G. White.--Synonymity, by B. Mates.--The meaning of a word, by J. L. Austin.--Meaning and synonymy in natural languages, by R. Carnap.--Analytic-synthetic, by J. Bennett.--On "analytic," by R. M. Martin.--Selected bibliography (p. [188]-196).

Introduction -- "Mediating estrangement: a theory for diplomacy," review of International Studies (April, l987), 13, pp. 91-110 -- "Arms, hostages and the importance of shredding in earnest: reading the national security culture," Social Text (Spring, 1989), 22, pp. 79-91 -- "The (s)pace of international relations: simulation, surveillance and speed," International Studies Quarterly (September 1990), pp. 295-310 -- "Narco-terrorism at home and abroad," Radical America (December 1991), vol. 23, nos. 2-3, pp. 21-26 -- "The terrorist discourse: signs, states, and systems of (...) global political violence," World Security: Trends and Challenges at Century's End, ed. M. Klare and D. Thomas, St. Martin's Press (1991), pp. 237-265. -- "S/N: international theory, balkanisation, and the new world order," Millennium Journal for International Studies (Winter 1991), vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 485-506 -- "Cyberwar, videogames, and the Gulf War syndrome," Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed and War (Cambridge, Ma and Oxford, UK, 1992), pp. 173-202 -- "Act IV: fathers (and sons), mother courage (and her children), and the dog, the cave, and the beef," in Global Voices: Dialogues in International Relations, ed. James N. Rosenau (Boulder, Co and Oxford, Uk: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 83-96 -- "The value of security: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche and Baudrillard," in the Political Subject of Violence, ed. G.M. Dillon and David Campbell, Manchester University Press (1993), pp. 94-113 -- "The C.I.A., Hollywood, and sovereign conspiracies," Queen's Quarterly (Summer 1993), vol. 100, no. 2, pp. 329-347 -- "Great men, monumental history, and not-so-grand theory: a meta-review of Henry Kissinger's diplomacy," Forum review article, Mershon International Studies Review (april 1995), vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 173-180 -- "Post-theory: the eternal return of ethics in international relations," New Thinking in International Relations Theory, eds. Michael Doyle and John Ikenberry (New York: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 55-75 -- "Cyber-deterrence," Wired (September 1994), 2.09., p. 116 (plus 7 pages) -- "Global swarming, virtual security, and Bosnia," the Washington Quarterly (Summer 1996), vol. 19, n0. 3., pp. 45- 56 -- "The simulation triangle," 21c (issue 24, 1997), pp. 19-25 -- "Virtuous war and hollywood," the Nation (3 april 2000), pp. 41-44 -- "Virtuous war/virtual theory," International Affairs (fall, 2000), pp. 771-788 -- "Hedley Bull and the case for a post-classical approach," International Relations at LSE: a History of 75 Years (London: Millennium Publishing Group, 2003), pp. 61-87. "the illusion of a grand strategy, op-ed," the New york Times, may 25, 2001 -- "In terrorem: before and after 9/11," Worlds in Collision, eds. Ken Booth and Tim Dunne (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 101-116 -- "The question of information technology in international relations," Millennium Journal of International Studies (vol. 32, no. 3, 2003), pp. 441-456 -- "The illusion of a grand strategy," op-ed, the New York Times, may 25, 2001. (shrink)

William Sidney Allen, 1918B2004 George Wishart Anderson, 1913B2002 Albinia Catherine de la Mare, 1932B2001 John Stanton Flemming, 1941B2003 Patrick Gardiner James William Harris, 1940B2004 John Gilbert Hurst, 1927B2003 Casimir Lewy, 1919B1991 George Donald Alastair MacDougall, 1912B2004 Henry Colin Gray Matthew, 1941B1999 Edward Miller, 1915B2000 Michio Morishima, 1923B2004 William Brian Reddaway, 1913B2002 Marjorie Ethel Reeves, 1905B2003 Charles Martin Robertson, 1911B2004 Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 1937B2004 Arnold Joseph Taylor, 1911B2002 Kathleen Mary Tillotson, 1906B2001 Glanmor Williams, 1920-2005.

Nineteen obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the British Academy: W S Allen; George Anderson; A C de la Mare; John Flemming; James Harris; John Hurst; Casimir Lewy; Donald MacDougall; Colin Matthew; Edward Miller; Michio Morishima; Brian Reddaway; Marjorie Reeves; C Martin Robertson; Conrad Russell, and Arnold Taylor.

Using yet untapped resources from moral and political philosophy, this book seeks to answer the question of whether an all good God who is presumed to be all powerful is logically compatible with the degree and amount of moral and natural evil that exists in our world. It is widely held by theists and atheists alike that it may be logically impossible for an all good, all powerful God to create a world with moral agents like ourselves that does not (...) also have at least some moral evil in it. James P. Sterba focuses on the further question of whether God is logically compatible with the degree and amount of moral and natural evil that exists in our world. The negative answer he provides marks a new stage in the age-old debate about God's existence. (shrink)

Drawing on and inspired by Paul Taylor’s Respect for Nature, I develop a view which I call “biocentric pluralism,” which, I claim, avoids the major criticisms that have been directed at Taylor’s account. In addition, I show that biocentric pluralism has certain advantages over biocentric utilitarianism and concentric circle theories.

This book combines the two most common approaches used to introduce students or general readers to ethics: the historical and the applied. Using these approaches, Sterba examines traditional ethical theories and disagreements, exploring Aristotelian, Kantian, and utilitarian ethics, as well as their contemporary defenders. But rather than focusing on formal aspects of these views, Sterba applies the best practical arguments from each of these perspectives to a variety of moral problems, such as sexual harassment, affirmative action, and international terrorism and (...) the second Iraqi war. (shrink)

"In this revisionist study, Young denies that Adams was a reactionary critic of democracy and instead contends that he was an idealistic, though often disappointed, advocate of representative government. Young focuses on Adams's belief that capitalist industrial development during the Gilded Age had debased American ideals and then turns to a careful study of Adams's famous contrast of the unity of medieval society with the fragmentation of modern technological society."--BOOK JACKET.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kenneth Burke on Dialectical-Rhetorical TranscendenceJames P. ZappenKenneth Burke's concept of rhetoric is complex and elusive, increasingly so as it becomes intertwined and infused with dialectic in the long third part of A Rhetoric of Motives and in some essays published shortly thereafter (1951; 1955; 1969b [1950], 183–333).1 The connection between Burke's rhetoric and dialectic is well established (Brummett 1995; Crusius 1986; 1999, 120–21; Wess 1996, 136–216; Wolin 2001, 143–204), (...) and his concept of rhetoric as identification is widely recognized for its broadening of the traditional view of rhetoric as persuasion to include identification as a means of inducing cooperation and building communities (Crusius 1999, 120–21; Hauser 1986, 120–37; Henderson 1988, 33–34). Timothy W. Crusius establishes the fundamental relationship between A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives as dialectical and rhetorical counterparts and explains both the strengths and the limitations of identification as a means of inducing cooperation (1986). According to Crusius, dialectic explores the substance of a person or thing—all that "supports or 'substands'" it—from multiple and shifting perspectives, viewing human action dramatistically as act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose (24–28). Rhetoric complements dialectic and its multiple dramatistic perspectives by promoting "identification" and "cooperation," building "a community, a sense of oneness amid diversity of conflicting interests and values" (28–30). As Crusius and others observe, [End Page 279] however, identification as a means of inducing cooperation is inherently limited since any identification necessarily also entails a division: "Every 'us' requires a 'them'" (29; Biesecker 1997, 47–49; Wolin 2001, 177–78). Thus, for example, while Christianity provides a powerful instance of identification, it also provides an equally powerful illustration of its division from other peoples—"Satan and his counter-kingdom," "the Turk infidel," and "the pagan hordes of Asia" (28–29). For Burke, these divisions were largely political (George and Selzer 2007, 16–57, 110–32; Lentricchia 1983, 21–38). For us, they are differences of gender, culture, and economic and social class (Condit 1992), compounded by political, economic, and religious differences on a global scale. By this account, the first two parts of the Rhetoric offer at best a partial solution to the problem. The third part challenges and mystifies and in itself seems to offer little more than a utopian vision without purpose or outcome (Crusius 1999, 120–21; Wess 1996, 211–16; Wolin 2001, 201–3).2 Situated within the broader context of Burke's work, however, the third part seems rather to offer a bold and creative solution to the problem by merging dialectic and rhetoric with dialogue and poetic myth in a dialectical-rhetorical transcendence—a concept that merits a place alongside identification as a major contribution to rhetorical theory (1969b, 197–208, 221–33).3Burke's concept of dialectical-rhetorical transcendence developed over the course of more than twenty years, from the mid 1930s to the mid 1950s and beyond. Its sources are partly Hegelian and Marxist but increasingly Platonic,4 as Burke comes to perceive the Hegelian and Marxist concepts of history as part of the problem of competing ideologies and his version of Platonic transcendence as the solution—a solution that leads, on the one hand, toward "pure persuasion" and "ultimate identification" and, on the other, toward the pragmatics of a new rhetoric and a revolutionary program of lifelong education (1951; 1955; 1969b, 267–94, 328–33; Biesecker 1997, 43–47; Lee 2004; Wess 1996, 203–5, 211–16; Wolin 2001, 201–3). In the midst of the political divisiveness of the 1930s, Burke glimpsed in Hegel and even Marx the possibility of bridging conflicting ideologies via transcendence, but he turned to Plato in the Grammar and again in the Rhetoric to explain the processes by which opposing ideas and ideologies might merge in transcendent visions or myths that encompass what he perceived to be partial and partisan points of view. In the Grammar, his solution is dialectical—a merger of opposing ideas at higher levels of generalization through a process of linguistic abstraction and transformation that respects a diversity of individual interests, even as it seeks to transcend them in larger [End... (shrink)

Thousands of texts discuss Egytpain cosmology and cosmogony. James Allen has selected sixteen to translate and discuss in order to shed light on one of the questions that clearly preoccupied ancient intellectuals; the origins of the world.

We investigate the notion of relevance as it pertains to ‘commonsense’, subjunctive conditionals. Relevance is taken here as a relation between a property (such as having a broken wing) and a conditional (such as birds typically fly). Specifically, we explore a notion of ‘causative’ relevance, distinct from ‘evidential’ relevance found, for example, in probabilistic approaches. A series of postulates characterising a minimal, parsimonious concept of relevance is developed. Along the way we argue that no purely logical account of relevance (even (...) at the metalevel) is possible. Finally, and with minimal restrictions, an explicit definition that agrees with the postulates is given. (shrink)

In this unique work, James P. Sterba argues that traditional ethics has yet to confront the three significant challenges posed by environmentalism, feminism, and multiculturalism. He maintains that while traditional ethics has been quite successful at dealing with the problems it faces, it has not addressed the possibility that its solutions to these problems are biased in favor of humans, men, and Western culture. In Three Challenges to Ethics: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Multiculturalism, Sterba examines each of these challenges. In (...) the case of environmentalism, he argues that traditional ethics must incorporate conflict resolution principles that favor nonhumans over humans in a significant range of cases. In terms of feminism, he maintains that traditional ethics should rule out gendered family structures and implement an ideal of androgyny. In regard to multiculturalism, he contends that traditional ethics must endorse an ethics that is secular in character and that can survive an extensive comparative evaluation of both Western and non-Western moral ideals and cultures. The only textbook devoted to this topic, Three Challenges to Ethics is an engaging text for introductory courses in ethics and moral problems and is also interesting and provocative reading for scholars and general readers. (shrink)