This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

Gérard Siegwalt | : La société actuelle, dans beaucoup de pays du monde dit occidental, a à conjuguer sa sécularité avec la présence en elle de plusieurs religions, tout comme à l’inverse ces dernières doivent conjuguer à la fois leur pluralité entre elles-mêmes et en même temps avec la société séculière. La condition de possibilité pour cette mise en relation est d’un côté la distinction entre le temporel et le spirituel, de l’autre côté la référence de toutes les parties (...) prenantes au bien commun et donc à l’intérêt général. Dans la présente contribution, il en va de montrer que la société sécularisée et pluri-religieuse constitue une situation de décision et donc un défi pour tous ceux qui sont concernés par elle. C’est principalement le défi adressé à la théologie chrétienne par la société sécularisée et pluri-religieuse qui est approfondi ici, dans le sens d’éclairer la vocation chrétienne dans ladite situation. | : In many countries of the so-called Western world, society has to adjust its secularity to the presence within itself of many religions, just as these religions need in turn to adjust to the religious plurality and the secular society. Such adjustments are possible only when there is a clear distinction between the temporal and the spiritual realms, and an attention to the common good and the general interest. This paper will show that the secularized and multi-religious society challenges all those who are concerned about it and especially the Christian theologians. (shrink)

Les crises que nous vivons - écologique et climatique, économique et financière, sociale et culturelle, également ecclésiale et théologique - sont une seule et même crise: elle est d’ordre épistémologique, a par conséquent trait aux fondements porteurs de la modernité qui arrive dans cette crise à facettes multiples à sa fin. La modernité est marquée par un dualisme fondamental et, partant, par les unilatéralismes qui en résultent: l’anthropocentrisme d’un côté, le matérialisme irrespectueux de bien des manières de la matière de (...) l’autre côté. L’issue de la crise qui s’esquisse dans cette dernière elle-même dès lors que les causes en apparaissent, tient dans une approche du réel qui se fait non plus de manière méthodologiquement a-thée, mais de manière méthodologiquement théonome; par là seul le dualisme est dépassé. L’issue, c’est de considérer le réel dans ses parties et dans son tout, donc tout à la fois par la science et par la pensée; celle-ci est la reprise réflexive et critique de la science, à l’aune de tout le réel. Qu’est-ce que cela signifie-t-il, et quel défi cela représente-t-il pour la théologie, et particulièrement pour la théologie chrétienne? C’est cette question qui sera posée, c’est elle qui demande à être éclairée. (shrink)

La riche pensée de Paul Tillich sur les liens entre théologie et culture donnent matière à réflexion dans la crise des fondements qui secoue aujourd’hui le monde occidental. L’article examine également comment la distinction établie par Tillich entre « théologie de la culture » et « théologie de l’Église » est utile à notre époque pour le dialogue interreligieux, si nécessaire, ce qui n’est pas sans conséquence pour le rôle des Facultés de théologie dans notre société et nos Églises.

Face aux trois tentations majeures du catholicisme traditionnel, à savoir le particularisme absolutisé de la compréhension qu’il a de lui-même, le supranaturalisme de sa compréhension de Dieu, l’an-historisme de la théologie mystique, face ainsi à la théologie dualiste de la délimitation par rapport à ce qui n’est pas lui, le concile Vatican II représente, dans sa visée, l’ouverture au réel tel qu’il est, dans un esprit non de discrimination mais de discernement, avec la question : qu’est-ce qui dans le réel (...) est constructeur, qu’est-ce qui est destructeur? Il est mû par la conscience que Dieu est le Dieu du réel et la foi, foi au coeur du réel. Il marque l’ouverture à une théologie de la récapitulation selon laquelle toutes choses sont récapitulées par Dieu en Christ, et ainsi à une intégration critique du réel, dépassant par là l’exclusivisme du catholicisme traditionnel et accédant à l’exigence d’une théologie critique — exclusive et inclusive à la fois — de la catholicité. Over against the three major temptations of catholicism, which are the absolutized particularism of its autocomprehension, the supernaturalism of its comprehension of God, the nonhistorical character of mystical theology, then over against the dualistic conception of its distinction from what is different from itself. Council Vatican II stands for an opening to the real as it is, in a spirit not of discrimination but of discernment, with the question : what in the real is creative, what is destructive? It is motivated by the consciousness that God is the God of the real, and that faith is to be found at the heart of the real. It means the opening to a theology which recapitulates everything in Christ, that is, the opening to a critical integration of the real, according to the requirements of a critical theology of catholicity — at the same time exclusivist and inclusivist — over against the exclusivism of traditional catholicism. (shrink)

Face aux trois tentations majeures du catholicisme traditionnel, à savoir le particularisme absolutisé de la compréhension qu’il a de lui-même, le supranaturalisme de sa compréhension de Dieu, l’an-historisme de la théologie mystique, face ainsi à la théologie dualiste de la délimitation par rapport à ce qui n’est pas lui, le concile Vatican II représente, dans sa visée, l’ouverture au réel tel qu’il est, dans un esprit non de discrimination mais de discernement, avec la question : qu’est-ce qui dans le réel (...) est constructeur, qu’est-ce qui est destructeur? Il est mû par la conscience que Dieu est le Dieu du réel et la foi, foi au coeur du réel. Il marque l’ouverture à une théologie de la récapitulation selon laquelle toutes choses sont récapitulées par Dieu en Christ, et ainsi à une intégration critique du réel, dépassant par là l’exclusivisme du catholicisme traditionnel et accédant à l’exigence d’une théologie critique — exclusive et inclusive à la fois — de la catholicité. Over against the three major temptations of catholicism, which are the absolutized particularism of its autocomprehension, the supernaturalism of its comprehension of God, the nonhistorical character of mystical theology, then over against the dualistic conception of its distinction from what is different from itself. Council Vatican II stands for an opening to the real as it is, in a spirit not of discrimination but of discernment, with the question : what in the real is creative, what is destructive? It is motivated by the consciousness that God is the God of the real, and that faith is to be found at the heart of the real. It means the opening to a theology which recapitulates everything in Christ, that is, the opening to a critical integration of the real, according to the requirements of a critical theology of catholicity — at the same time exclusivist and inclusivist — over against the exclusivism of traditional catholicism. (shrink)

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed numerous weaknesses in pandemic preparedness and response, including underfunding, inadequate surveillance, and inequitable distribution of countermeasures. To overcome these weaknesses for future pandemics, WHO released a zero draft of a pandemic treaty in February, 2023, and subsequently a revised bureau's text in May, 2023. COVID-19 made clear that pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response reflect choices and value judgements. These decisions are therefore not a purely scientific or technical exercise, but are fundamentally grounded in ethics. The latest (...) treaty draft reflects these ethical considerations by including a section entitled Guiding Principles and Approaches. Most of these principles are ethical—they establish core values that undergird the treaty. Unfortunately, the treaty draft's set of principles are numerous, overlapping, and show inadequate coherence and consistency. We propose two improvements to this section of the draft pandemic treaty. First, key guiding ethical principles should be clearer and more precise than they currently are. Second, the link between ethical principles and policy implementation should be clearly established and define boundaries on acceptable interpretation, ensuring that signatories abide by these principles. (shrink)

This book presents G. A. Cohen's Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1996. Focusing on Marxism and Rawlsian liberalism, Cohen draws a connection between these thought systems and the choices that shape a person's life. In the case of Marxism, the relevant life is his own: a communist upbringing in the 1940s in Montreal, which induced a belief in a strongly socialist egalitarian doctrine. The narrative of Cohen's reckoning with that inheritance develops through a series of sophisticated (...) engagements with the central questions of social and political philosophy. In the case of Rawlsian doctrine, Cohen looks to people's lives in general. He argues that egalitarian justice is not only, as Rawlsian liberalism teaches, a matter of rules that define the structure of society, but also a matter of personal attitude and choice. Personal attitude and choice are, moreover, the stuff of which social structure itself is made. Those truths have not informed political philosophy as much as they should, and Cohen's focus on them brings political philosophy closer to moral philosophy, and to the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition, than it has recently been. (shrink)

A highly original reading of Immanuel Kant that demonstrates his interest in the social realm of human interaction.

Containing selected papers on the fundamentals and applications of Complexity Science, this multi-disciplinary book presents new approaches for resolving complex issues that cannot be resolved using conventional mathematical or software models. Complex Systems problems can occur in a variety of areas such as physical sciences and engineering, the economy, the environment, humanities and social and political sciences. Complexity Science problems, the science of open systems consisting of large numbers of diverse components engaged in rich interaction, can occur in a variety (...) of areas such as physical sciences and engineering, the economy, the environment, humanities and social and political sciences. The global behaviour of these systems emerges from the interaction of constituent components and is unpredictable but not random. The key attribute of Complex Systems is the ability to self-organise and adapt to unpredictable changes in their environment. (shrink)

A leading figure in neuroaesthetics makes the case that aesthetic experience can be meaningfully measured by the tools of neuroscience.

G.E. Moore, more than either Bertrand Russell or Ludwig Wittgenstein, was chiefly responsible for the rise of the analytic method in twentieth-century philosophy. This selection of his writings shows Moore at his very best. The classic essays are crucial to major philosophical debates that still resonate today. Amongst those included are: * A Defense of Common Sense * Certainty * Sense-Data * External and Internal Relations * Hume's Theory Explained * Is Existence a Predicate? * Proof of an External World (...) In addition, this collection also contains the key early papers in which Moore signals his break with idealism, and three important previously unpublished papers from his later work which illustrate his relationship with Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Fichte assigns ‘intellectual intuition’ a new meaning after Kant. But in 1799, his doctrine of intellectual intuition is publicly deemed indefensible by Kant and nihilistic by Jacobi. I propose to defend Fichte’s doctrine against these charges, leaving aside whether it captures what he calls the ‘spirit’ of transcendental idealism. I do so by articulating three problems that motivate Fichte’s redirection of intellectual intuition from being to acting: (1) the regress problem, which states that reflecting on empirical facts of consciousness leads (...) only to further facts and so cannot yield a first principle; (2) the rhapsody problem, which states that the categories form a haphazard set and so lack necessity unless they derive from a first principle; and (3) the nihilism problem, which states that a first principle cannot lie outside our cognition of it, lest it be the cause of our cognition and, being first, the cause of all our actions, reducing us to machines. Crucially, Fichte’s three motivating problems are in fact aspects of a single problem. Leaving any aspect unsolved spoils putative solutions to the other two. Consequently, Fichte requires a single unified solution to all three, which his doctrine of intellectual intuition provides. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII Coda Appendix Acknowledgements.

A model for the ideal state includes discussions of the nature and application of justice, the role of the philosopher in society, the goals of education, and the effects of art upon character.

This essay challenges the widely accepted principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. The author considers situations in which there are sufficient conditions for a certain choice or action to be performed by someone, So that it is impossible for the person to choose or to do otherwise, But in which these conditions do not in any way bring it about that the person chooses or acts as he (...) does. In such situations the person may well be morally responsible for what he chooses or does despite his inability to choose or to do otherwise. Finally the author considers certain suggestions for revising the principle he rejects or for replacing it with a principle of an altogether different kind. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the use of neurointerventions to reduce the risk that criminal offenders will reoffend. Commentators have raised several ethical concerns regarding this practice. One prominent concern is that, when imposed without the offender’s valid consent, neurointerventions might infringe offenders’ right to bodily integrity. While it is commonly held that we possess a moral right to bodily integrity, the extent to which this right would protect against such neurointerventions is as-yet unclear. In this paper, we will assess (...) whether, why, and how severely three forms of neurointervention might infringe the right to bodily integrity. We show that the severity of the infringement of the right to bodily integrity differs across different forms of neurointervention. Moreover, we argue that mental and behavioral effects of neurointerventions could in some cases be relevant to determining the severity of infringements of the right to bodily integrity. (shrink)

Patrice Bergeron,Fabrice Blée,Marc Dumas,Raymond Lemieux,Jean Richard,Gérard Siegwalt.

In the Vocation of Man, Fichte makes the striking claim that life is eternal, rational, our true being, and the final cause of nature in general and of death in particular. How can we make sense of this claim? I argue that the public lectures that compose the Vocation are a popular expression of Fichte’s pre-existing commitment to what I call immortalism, the view that life is the unconditioned condition of intelligibility. Casting the I as an absolutely self-active or living (...) power enables his philosophical account of both the intelligibility of objects and of what it means to die. This explains his characterization of the Wissenschaftslehre as a system in which ‘all is act, movement, and life’. In Sect. 1, I explain the context of Jacobi’s use of ‘caput mortuum’ as a term for the thing in itself. In Sects. 2 and 3, I reconstruct two immortalist arguments from Fichte’s Jena period. The first is that the I’s self-activity rules out the existence of the thing in itself and thereby vanquishes ‘death’s head’. The second is that, insofar as the I charges us with the moral perfection of nature, it is the final cause of our entire life, including its end. This is to say that the I puts our every moment into question, even our last. In Sect. 4, I use these immortalist arguments to interpret the striking claim from the Vocation. (shrink)

Philosophy of Tsong-kha-pa Blo-bzang-grags-pa's Lam rim chen mo.

Conference proceedings on Mongolian contributions to Buddhist knowledge.

This paper looks at what David Kaplan's work on indexicals can teach us about logic and the philosophy of logic, and also what Kaplan's logic (i.e. the Logic of Demonstratives) can teach us about indexicals. The lessons are i) that logical consequence is not necessary truth-preservation, ii) that that the linguistic doctrine of necessary truth (also called conventionalism about modality) fails, and iii) that there is a kind of barrier to entailment between non-context-sensitive and context-sensitive claims.

Throughout his career, Schelling assigns knowledge of the absolute first principle of philosophy to intellectual intuition. Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition raises two important questions for interpreters. First, given that his doctrine undergoes several changes before and after his identity philosophy, to what extent can he be said to “hold onto” the same “sense” of it by the 1830s, as he claims? Second, given that his doctrine of intellectual intuition restricts absolute idealism to what he calls a “science of reason”, (...) which he says cannot prove the absolute’s existence, what other doctrine does he require in order to prove this? I will answer these questions by tracing the shifts in Schelling’s doctrine of intellectual intuition from the 1790s to the 1830s and drawing out its evolving methodological role within his science of intelligibility. (shrink)

Modern science faces a series of problems that undermine confidence in its reliability. To solve these problems, we must reflect on what makes science work and what leads it astray. This book is about Science, its strengths and weaknesses. The papers that scientists write form a vast resource of evidence and theory that is doubling about every ten years, along with the number of scientists. The size of this resource makes it hard for it to be used effectively by scientists, (...) and along with this are growing concerns about its integrity and reliability. This book looks at the scientific method, as currently applied and as understood philosophically by scientists, the social structure of science, and the structure of scientific communication through journals. It includes case studies of controversies, and looks at how fields develop over time. (shrink)

The concept of facticity denotes conditions of experience whose necessity is not logical yet whose contingency is not empirical. Although often associated with Heidegger, Fichte coins ‘facticity’ in his Berlin period to refer to the conclusion of Kant’s metaphysical deduction of the categories, which he argues leaves it a contingent matter that we have the conditions of experience that we do. Such rhapsodic or factical conditions, he argues, must follow necessarily, independent of empirical givenness, from the I through a process (...) of ‘genesis.’ I reconstruct Fichte’s argument by tracing the origin of his neologism, presenting his Jena critique of Kant’s rhapsodic appeal to the forms of judgment, and illustrating the Jena period’s continuity with the Berlin period’s genetic method, while noting a methodological shift whereby Fichte directs his critique against his own doctrine of intellectual intuition in order to eliminate its ‘factical terms.’. (shrink)

Fichte argues that the conclusion of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories is correct yet lacks a crucial premise, given Kant’s admission that the metaphysical deduction locates an arbitrary origin for the categories. Fichte provides the missing premise by employing a new method: a genetic deduction of the categories from a first principle. Since Fichte claims to articulate the same view as Kant in a different, it is crucial to grasp genetic deduction in relation to the sorts of deduction that (...) Kant offers. I propose to interpret genetic deduction as the simultaneous fulfillment of two tasks: answering the question quid facti by deriving the categories from the I and answering the question quid juris by establishing our entitlement to the categories as conditions of experience. While the second task represents Fichte’s agreement with Kant’s transcendental deduction, the first reflects his correction of Kant’s metaphysical deduction. (shrink)