Based on an unfinished manuscript by the late philosopher Dallas Willard, this book makes the case that the 20th century saw a massive shift in Western beliefs and attitudes concerning the possibility of moral knowledge, such that knowledge of the moral life and of its conduct is no longer routinely available from the social institutions long thought to be responsible for it. In this sense, moral knowledge--as a publicly available resource for living--has disappeared. Via a detailed survey of main (...) developments in ethical theory from the late 19th through the late 20th centuries, Willard explains philosophy's role in this shift. In pointing out the shortcomings of these developments, he shows that the shift was not the result of rational argument or discovery, but largely of arational social forces--in other words, there was no good reason for moral knowledge to have disappeared. The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge is a unique contribution to the literature on the history of ethics and social morality. Its review of historical work on moral knowledge covers a wide range of thinkers including T.H Green, G.E Moore, Charles L. Stevenson, John Rawls, and Alasdair MacIntyre. But, most importantly, it concludes with a novel proposal for how we might reclaim moral knowledge that is inspired by the phenomenological approach of Knud Logstrup and Emmanuel Levinas. Edited and eventually completed by three of Willard's former graduate students, this book marks the culmination of Willard's project to find a secure basis in knowledge for the moral life. (shrink)

In response to the common assumption of perpetual moral and spiritual failure in human life, this article offers a view of personal transformation and, in particular, of the role of the human will in such formation, that clears a way forward in progressive conformity to the character of Christ. Drawing from St. Paul's understanding of the “flesh” and the human “spirit,” distinctions are made between the impulsive, the reflective, and the embodied will. It is the embodied/reflective will of the person (...) that is captured by Christ through inner transformation, such that the crucifixion of the flesh and walking by the Spirit brings about routine, easy obedience to Christ, from the inside out. (shrink)

Dallas G. Denery - Croire et savoir: Les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d'Autrecourt - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.1 119-120 Christophe Grellard. Croire et savoir: Les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d'Autrécourt. Paris: J. Vrin, 2005. Pp. 313. Paper, €38,00. Nicholas of Autrecourt has often seemed to be one of those philosophers doomed to be best known for everything but their own ideas. Famously, if inaccurately, dubbed "the (...) Medieval Hume" by one of his first modern critics, the threat or fear of skepticism has in one way or another shaped most subsequent studies of Nicholas's work. While understandable, this really is unfortunate. Nicholas himself clearly states that his philosophical goal was to avoid the skeptical consequences that he believed were latent in the writings of his scholastic peers. In this excellent new work, the first monograph-length study devoted to Nicholas's thought in nearly 60 years, Christophe Grellard goes a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Croire et savoir: Les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d’AutrécourtDallas G. Denery IIChristophe Grellard. Croire et savoir: Les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d’Autrécourt. Paris: J. Vrin, 2005. Pp. 313. Paper, €38,00.Nicholas of Autrecourt has often seemed to be one of those philosophers doomed to be best known for everything but their own ideas. Famously, if inaccurately, dubbed "the Medieval Hume" by one of his first (...) modern critics, the threat or fear of skepticism has in one way or another shaped most subsequent studies of Nicholas's work. While understandable, this really is unfortunate. Nicholas himself clearly states that his philosophical goal was to avoid the skeptical consequences that he believed were latent in the writings of his scholastic peers. In this excellent new work, the first monograph-length study devoted to Nicholas's thought in nearly 60 years, Christophe Grellard goes a long way towards recovering Nicholas's very real contributions to fourteenth-century intellectual life.Any attempt to interpret Nicholas's thought runs up against one significant problem—few of his works survive. All that remains are a fascinating and lengthy (not to mention, confusing and unfinished) work of natural philosophy, Exigit ordo, and several letters touching on issues in epistemology, cognition, and logic. As a result, even situating Nicholas's thought within the proper intellectual currents of the first decades of the fourteenth century has proven difficult. Whose work influenced him? Who were the objects of his criticism? What were his motives? Until recently, most scholars have attempted to trace the influence of William Ockham on Nicholas's thought. Drawing from recent work on the University of Paris during the fourteenth century, Grellard not only downplays Ockham's influence on Nicholas, but also Nicholas's membership in the faculty of theology. Rather, he stresses Nicholas's ongoing involvement in the arts faculty, where he continued to teach even as he studied for his degree in theology. This has two significant consequences. First, it allows Grellard to treat all of Nicholas's writings as contributions to the practice of natural philosophy. Indeed, in his compelling first chapter, Grellard contends that the initial sections of the Exigit, in which Nicholas famously condemns scholastic Aristotelianism as nothing more than an institutionalized pedagogy of error and untruth, must be read as a plea for a distinction between philosophy and theology, between speculation and faith. Even if Nicholas was not alone at the time in pushing for these distinctions (Ockham and John Buridan had argued along similar lines), Grellard demonstrates that Nicholas's approach was certainly the more radical and extreme. Second, the shift in focus from theology to arts brings with it a shift in Nicholas's most important interlocutors. To begin, Aristotle and Averroes become constant background forces in Nicholas's thought. Moreover, as the final section of Grellard's work makes clear, many of Nicholas's ideas are most usefully understood in light of writings of two other arts masters, John Buridan and Nicole Oresme, rather than in the context of debates among his contemporaries in the theology faculty. [End Page 119]These initial interpretive decisions shape the overall structure of Grellard's book, which moves, in three parts, from a deft analysis of Nicholas's theory of evidence and probability to his account of the objects of cognition and, finally, to a comparison of Nicholas's and Buridan's epistemological theories. Unlike so many prior studies that begin with Nicholas's famous critique of a fellow theologian's cognitive theories, thereby framing Nicholas's project in terms of theological debates concerning the intuitive cognition of non-existents and God's ability to cause false visions, Grellard begins with Nicholas's positive theory of knowledge. This effectively sidesteps the entire question of Nicholas's skepticism, a question Nicholas himself explicitly tried to avoid. Nicholas comes across as a philosopher keenly aware of the limits of human cognition, yet eager to develop a viable and wholly rational epistemology within those limits. Those limits, Grellard makes clear, have everything to do with appearances, with what we can rationally and legitimately infer about the world based upon what we see... (shrink)

The current work takes a phenomenological approach to investigating the role of guilt in a sample of persons diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder . The role of guilt in OCD has been frequently noted in the literature, although infrequently studied as a factor in its own right. Typically, those studying OCD have found positive correlations between questionnaire measures of guilt and self-reported symptoms of OCD. Those working with sufferers have also found that OC clients in therapy report feelings of guilt with (...) respect to their symptoms. The present work investigates, in a qualitative way, the meaning of guilt for those with OCD. The presumed role of guilt is examined descriptively, with an eye to developing a more complete understanding of the relationship between feelings of guilt and OC symptoms in a sample of sufferers. Nine participants were recruited, and were interviewed using an unstructured approach. In terms of analysis, emphasis was placed on understanding the experience of guilt and OC symptoms as both were lived by sufferers, with a focus on the personal significance of guilt for study participants. Fifteen descriptive guilt/OCD themes were derived from interviews across the nine participants. Themes revealed a variety of connections that sufferers made between feelings of guilt and symptoms of OCD. A common description of the experience was also derived. The results suggest that the role of guilt in OCD is highly interpersonal in nature, and that feelings of guilt may precede, motivate, as well as be a consequence of, OC symptoms. The role of guilt for any given sufferer may also be highly idiosyncratic. (shrink)

In light of the allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment made against Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men in recent months, this paper will examine how men might take on responsibility for themselves and a culture that enables these patterns of abuse. It will draw primarily on the work of Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Emmanuel Levinas to develop a model of responsibility that has three primary stages: taking ownership of past actions, critiquing gendered power relations, and learning how to (...) foster relationships that are “intersubjective.”. (shrink)

In Part II of Husserl’s “great last work,” as the Crisis is sometimes called, we find two passages in which he comments upon what he took to be an important and utter failure on the part of “die modernen Logistiker”—or, as Carr well translates it, “modern mathematical logicians.” At the end of subsection 36 he says.

Although treating the elderly occasion the same kinds of ethical issues as treating other patients, specific problems do arise when making decisions for persons, once competent, who no longer can express their values. I examine the problem of decisional incapacity and offer a critique of the principles, such as substituted judgment, and the instruments, such as advance directives, living wills, other instructional directives, as well as surrogate decision-makers.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking by Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. UmbelDallas J. GinglesBonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. Umbel grand rapids, mi: baker academic, 2013. 272 pp. $29.99In their new book Bonhoeffer the Assassin?, Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. (...) Umbel painstakingly reread primary texts in order to challenge the widely held belief that Dietrich Bonhoeffer participated in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Their alternative to the usual narrative of Bonhoeffer’s life holds that early in his career, long before the crisis of the Confessing Church and the rise of Nazism, Bonhoeffer made a commitment to [End Page 205] Christian pacifism that endured even through the war years and his resistance to Hitler.To argue for this alternative telling, the authors analyze Bonhoeffer’s three main “ethical” texts: the early “Barcelona lectures,” Discipleship, and finally Ethics. On their telling, while the early ethics lectures were theologically deficient, by the time that Bonhoeffer wrote Discipleship he had developed “integration,” which was “the primary theological catalyst for the ethical transition from Barcelona to Discipleship” (129). Discipleship is, they conclude, the pinnacle of Bonhoeffer’s thought, and anything that comes after it, including Ethics, cannot in any fundamental way differ from it.Alongside this diachronic analysis of Bonhoeffer’s main ethics texts, the authors emphasize two letters that Bonhoeffer wrote in 1935 and 1936. In the first, Bonhoeffer asserts that, because of his theology, he is “sometimes perceived as fanatical” (223). The second he wrote describing his “conversion experience” in 1930, in relation to the Sermon on the Mount and “Christian pacifism.” Read singly, these letters are interesting examples of Bonhoeffer’s thought and life of faith. As the authors present the argument, though, the letters comprise a unified narrative and function as an interpretive lens by which the primary texts should be understood. They think that the “fanaticism” of the first letter refers to the faith brought about in the conversion experience described in the second. The “fanaticism” letter is important because in it he asserts that, “if he were to become more ‘reasonable,’ he would have to ‘chuck [his] entire theology’” (223).Because Bonhoeffer wrote that he would have to “chuck” his theology if he made it more “reasonable,” the authors think that the theology that emerged from the conversion experience has a foundational role in his later works. Whatever Bonhoeffer wrote in Ethics, then, simply cannot disagree with the “fanaticism” that “is most fully articulated in … Discipleship” (223). Because of the importance of the “Christian pacifism” of the conversion and Discipleship, it is thus impossible—or at least highly unlikely—that Bonhoeffer participated in the assassination attempts.Bonhoeffer scholars and nonspecialists alike will find this text provocative and interesting. The conclusions, though, are finally unconvincing. For the authors, the “conversion experience” is the central key to understanding Bonhoeffer, and it is clear that they understand “Christian pacifism” to be of primary importance in the conversion, but they never tell us to what variety of Christian pacifism Bonhoeffer converted. It is very likely that Bonhoeffer’s Christian pacifism was different in kind than the Christian pacifism that the authors seem to endorse. That anachronistic reading alone renders the conclusions of the text suspect.Apart from simple historical questions, the methodology the authors use to construct their hermeneutical lens is also problematic. It is difficult to submit [End Page 206] Bonhoeffer’s entire corpus to two earlier letters that he wrote a full year apart. While readers may understand and agree that Bonhoeffer was not, in reality, an assassin (the minor claim), it will be hard to convince readers of the impassibility of his “Christian pacifism” (the major claim).Dallas J. GinglesSouthern Methodist UniversityCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

We argue for the mind’s independence from the body. We do so by making several moves. First, we analyze two popular kinds of reasons which have swayed many to adopt the independence of the mind from the body. Second, we advance an argument from the ontology of intentionality against the identity thesis, according to which the mind is identical to the brain. We try to show how intentionality is not reducible to or identical to the physical. Lastly, we argue that, (...) contrary to what many materialists contend, the concept of a mind, understood as an immaterial substance, existing independently of the body is both coherent and empirically evidenced. (shrink)

For the Society of Christian Philosophers, APA San Francisco, April 4, 2007.