_After Writing_ provides a significant contribution to the growing genre of works which offers a challenge to modern and postmodern accounts of Christianity.

A fresh and unusual perspective on the literary, Catherine Pickstock argues that the mystery of things can only be unravelled through the repetitions of fiction, history, inhabited subjectivity, and revealed event.

This essay seeks to question a certain imbalance in many existing accounts of Plato's dialogues. This imbalance involves a tendency to place too much emphasis upon a dualism between matter and spirit, soul and body. Although the author by no means denies the presence of such dualistic elements, she wishes to qualify them with reference to those aspects of Plato's dialogues which appear to place a stress upon the importance of multiplicity, myth, ritual, society, history, mimesis and time. Such instances (...) of mediation, it will be argued, are just as central to an understanding of Plato's philosophy as instances where the body and/or instances of multiplicity appear to be deprioritised in favour of the soul and the unity of the intelligible realm. These issues will be explored with particular reference to Plato's examination of the nature of justice in the city and its relationship with the philosopher‐guardians exercise of phronesis. What is the relationship between dikaiosyne and phronesis? In order to answer this question, several further questions will be raised: What, for Plato, is a city? What is philosophy? And why, in the Laws, does the Athenian describe the city as “the true tragedy”? (shrink)

Radical Orthodoxy is a new wave of theological thinking that seeks to re-inject the modern world with theology. The group of theologians associated with Radical Orthodoxy are dissatisfied with conteporary theolgical responses to both modernity and postmodernity Radical Orthodoxy is a collection that aims to reclaim the world by situating its concerns and activities within a theological framework. By mapping the new theology against a range of areas where modernity has failed, these essays offer us way out of the impasses (...) that postmodernity represents. (shrink)

What is 'truth'? The question that Pilate put to Jesus was laced with dramatic irony. But at a time when what is true and what is untrue have acquired a new currency, the question remains of crucial significance. Is truth a matter of the representation of things which lack truth in themselves? Or of mere coherence? Or is truth a convenient if redundant way of indicating how one's language refers to things outside oneself? In her ambitious new book, Catherine (...) Pickstock addresses these profound questions, arguing that epistemological approaches to truth either fail argumentatively or else offer only vacuity. She advances instead a bold metaphysical and realist appraisal which overcomes the Kantian impasse of 'subjective knowing' and ban on reaching beyond supposedly finite limits. Her book contends that in the end truth cannot be separated from the transcendent reality of the thinking soul. (shrink)

_After Writing_ provides a significant contribution to the growing genre of works which offers a challenge to modern and postmodern accounts of Christianity.

For a variety of reasons, “civil society” has become a key term in modern political discourse. First, in the West, state control of the economy has gone so much out of fashion that radicals now seek to mitigate the effects of an untrammeled free market by relocating the possibility of peaceful collaboration within a domain that is neither simply that of negotiation between atomic individuals nor that of the central state. Second, in the East, there was a growing perception that (...) what totalitarianism suppressed was not so much the private life of individuals, which is in principle ineradicable, but rather…. (shrink)

This article explores an anomaly of modern music. Music has remained more obviously aligned with religious sensibility, practice and belief than other modern art-forms or cultural tendencies. To understand this phenomenon fully, it is not sufficient to see musical composition, performance and reflection as simply expressive of wider cultural and philosophical tendencies, nor as contributing to them in its own idiom. Instead, one must see musical composition and theory as itself, at least in the modern era, a prime mode of (...) philosophical reflection which possesses resources which allow it both to take to an extreme, and yet to criticize fundamental intellectual tendencies of our time. This criticism tends to take the form of a religious transcendence of the secular, despite the fact that it is in no way shielded from the most avant-garde influences. This is exhibited, I shall argue, in the Catholicism of Olivier Messiaen and his legacy, since Messiaen was arguably the central composer of the previous century and the one who has perhaps most directly influenced philosophical understanding. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis introduction gives an overview of the present volume and suggests that it is possible to speak of an emerging ‘ritual’ or ‘liturgical’ turn within theology. This turn seems able to mediate between four different dualities, and to open out new perspectives that are at once traditional and innovative.

Recently there have been strong reactions against the Enlightenment idea of the self, originating with Descartes, as a unitary “I” defined as wholly self-legislating and self-identical. It has become commonplace to stress the dialogic disposition of the self and affirm not only the social dimension of selfhood, but also its ineradicable embodiment. Of course, taken too far, such a view can reduce the self to a mere play of impersonal material forces or temporal flows; such is the “post-modern” self envisaged (...) by Gilles Deleuze, who sought to rid subjectivity of all forms of interiority, coherence, integrity and consistency. It is…. (shrink)

In this article I argue that David Kelsey's approach to theological anthropology is problematic. I argue that a narrative basis proves inadequate to establish the doctrine of the Trinity and its relationship to human beings. Similarly, a Reformed humanist starting point, together with a Reformed extrinsicist account of revelation, I argue, cannot arrive at an orthodox Christology or an account of humanity as a divine gift. By bypassing ontology in favour of narrative and positivity, Kelsey is ironically forced to deny (...) the truth of many passages of the Bible, especially the opening of Genesis, and to reject the Biblical doctrine of the image of God in humanity. (shrink)

Are the true and the good friendless, for Plato, or is friendship a mode of truth and value? This article will examine Plato’s exploration of the aporias of friendship and the broader relationship...

In Truth in Aquinas, John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock attempt to render a “radically orthodox” reading of Aquinas that rejects an autonomous realm of natural reason unaided by faith. I argue that Milbank and Pickstock’s account fails as a reading of Aquinas and is problematic as a theory of the relationship between faith and reason. After sketching Milbank and Pickstock’s understanding of the relationship between faith and reason, I examine Aquinas’s doctrines of grace and divine naming (...) in order to show how they resist Milbank and Pickstock’s attempt to do away with the distinct and autonomous category of natural reason. I then conclude by considering how Milbank and Pickstock’s failure to preserve the integrity and autonomy of natural reason ironically tends toward fideism whilesimultaneously threatening to deprive faith of its meaning. (shrink)

But in this book, Catherine Malabou proposes a more radical meaning for plasticity, one that not only adapts itself to existing circumstances, but forms a ...

Introduction: Platonic dramatology -- The political and philosophical problems. Using pre-Socratic philosophy to support political reform: the Athenian stranger ; Plato's Parmenides: Parmenides' critique of Socrates and Plato's critique of Parmenides ; Becoming Socrates ; Socrates interrogates his contemporaries about the noble and good -- Paradigms of philosophy. Socrates' positive teaching ; Timaeus-Critias: completing or challenging Socratic political philosophy? ; Socratic practice -- The trial and death of Socrates. The limits of human intelligence ; The Eleatic challenge ; The trial (...) and death of Socrates -- Conclusion: Why Plato made Socrates his hero. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Women and Ancient Greek Philosophy is an essential reference source for cutting-edge scholarship on women, gender, and philosophy in Greek antiquity. The volume features original research that crosses disciplines, offering readers an accessible guide to new methods, new sources, and new questions in the study of ancient Greek philosophy and its multiple afterlives. Comprising 40 chapters from a diverse international group of experts, the Handbook considers questions about women and gender in sources from Greek antiquity spanning (...) the period from 7th c. BCE to 2nd c. BCE, and in receptions of Greek antiquity from the Roman Imperial period, through the European Renaissance to the current day. Chapters are organized into five major sections: I. Early Greek antiquity – including Sappho, Presocratic philosophy, Sophists, and Greek tragedy – 700s–400s BCE II. Classical Greek antiquity – including Aeschines, Plato, and Xenophon – 400s–300s BCE III. Late Classical Greek to Hellenistic antiquity – including Cyrenaics, Cynics, the Hippocratic corpus, and Aristotle – 300s–200s BCE IV. Late Greek antiquity to Roman Imperial period – including Pythagorean women, Stoics, Pyrrhonian Skeptics, and late Platonists – 200s BCE to 700s CE V. Later receptions – including Shakespeare, the European Renaissance, Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. DuBois, Jane Harrison, Sarah Kofman, and Toni Morrison The Routledge Handbook of Women and Ancient Greek Philosophy is a vital resource for students and scholars in philosophy, Classics, and gender studies who want to gain a deeper understanding of philosophy’s rich past and explore sources and questions beyond the traditional canon. The volume is a valuable resource, as well, for students and scholars from history, humanities, literature, political science, religious studies, rhetorical studies, theatre, and LGBTQ and sexuality studies. (shrink)

Stoic work on ambiguity represents one of the most innovative, sophisticated and rigorous contributions to philosophy and the study of language in western antiquity. This book is both a comprehensive survey of the often difficult and scattered sources, and an attempt to locate Stoic material in the rich array of contexts, ancient and modern, which alone can guarantee full appreciation of its subtlety, scope and complexity. The comparisons and contrasts which this book constructs will intrigue not just classical scholars, and (...) philosophers, but also logicians, theoretical linguists, communication theorists and historians of grammar and of literary theory. The Stoics on Ambiguity is designed to be intelligible to readers with no Greek or Latin. (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers have argued that the capacity for perseverance or “grit” depends both on willpower and on a kind of epistemic resilience. But can a form of hopefulness in one’s future success also constitute a source of grit? I argue that substantial practical hopefulness, as a hope to bring about a desired outcome through exercises of one’s agency, can serve as a distinctive ground for the capacity for perseverance. Gritty agents’ “practical hope” centrally involves an attention-fuelled, risk-inclined weighting of (...) two competing concerns over action: when facing the decision of whether to persevere, hopeful gritty agents prioritize the aim of choosing a course of action which might go very well over that of choosing a course of action which is very likely to go fairly well. By relying on the notion of a “risk-inclined attentional pattern” as a dimension of gritty agents’ practical hope, we can explain that form of hope’s contribution to their motivation and practical rationality, especially on a risk-weighted expected utility framework. The upshot is a more pluralistic view of the sources of grit. (shrink)

Hope is often seen as at once valuable and dangerous: it can fuel our motivation in the face of challenges, but can also distract us from reality and lead us to irrationality. How can we learn to “hope well,” and what does “hoping well” involve? Contemporary philosophers disagree on such normative questions about hope and also on how to define hope as a mental state. This article explores recent philosophical debates surrounding the concept of hope and the norms governing hope. (...) It also underlies hope's significance for the philosophy of emotion and the ethics of interpersonal relations. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that friendship can constitutively require epistemic irrationality against a recent, forceful challenge, raised by proponents of moral and pragmatic encroachment. Defenders of the “encroachment strategy” argue that exemplary friends who are especially slow to believe that their friends have acted wrongly are simply sensitive to the high prudential or moral costs of falsely believing in their friends’ guilt. Drawing on psychological work on epistemic motivation (and in particular on the notion of “need for closure”), I propose (...) a different picture of what friendship requires in the doxastic realm. I argue that contrary to what the encroachment strategy suggests, exemplary friends’ belief formation ought not be guided by a concern with accuracy or error avoidance, but instead by a need to avoid a “specific closure” – namely, a need to avoid concluding in their friends’ guilt. I propose that exemplary friendship often generates a defeasible, doxastic obligation to exemplify such a need, despite its inherent corrupting effects on exemplary friends’ epistemic faculties. (shrink)

In this unconventional article, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg conduct a three-way ‘conversation’ in which they all take turns outlining how they understand the relationship among postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism. It begins with a short introduction, and then Ros, Sarah and Catherine each define the term they have become associated with. This is followed by another round in which they discuss the overlaps, similarities and disjunctures among the terms, and the article ends with how (...) each one understands the current mediated feminist landscape. (shrink)

During public health crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, resource scarcity and contagion risks may require health systems to shift—to some degree—from a usual clinical ethic, focused on the well-being of individual patients, to a public health ethic, focused on population health. Many triage policies exist that fall under the legal protections afforded by “crisis standards of care,” but they have key differences. We critically appraise one of the most fundamental differences among policies, namely the use of criteria to categorically exclude (...) certain patients from eligibility for otherwise standard medical services. We examine these categorical exclusion criteria from ethical, legal, disability, and implementation perspectives. Focusing our analysis on the most common type of exclusion criteria, which are disease-specific, we conclude that optimal policies for critical care resource allocation and the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) should not use categorical exclusions. We argue that the avoidance of categorical exclusions is often practically feasible, consistent with public health norms, and mitigates discrimination against persons with disabilities. (shrink)

Is it possible to apply a theoretical approach to ethics? The French philosopher Catherine Chalier addresses this question with an unusual combination of traditional ethics and continental philosophy. In a powerful argument for the necessity of moral reflection, Chalier counters the notion that morality can be derived from theoretical knowledge. Chalier analyzes the positions of two great moral philosophers, Kant and Levinas. While both are critical of an ethics founded on knowledge, their criticisms spring from distinctly different points of (...) view. Chalier reexamines their conclusions, pitting Levinas against (and with) Kant, to interrogate the very foundations of moral philosophy and moral imperatives. She provides a clear, systematic comparison of their positions on essential ideas such as free will, happiness, freedom, and evil. Although based on a close and elegant presentation of Kant and Levinas, Chalier's book serves as a context for the development of the author's own reflections on the question "What am I supposed to do?" and its continued importance for contemporary philosophy. (shrink)