When people are performing a task, it is hard to know whether they are about to make a mistake. Klaproth, Halbrügge, Krol, Vernaleken, Zander, and Russwinkel address this by recording EEG signals while people are performing a flight control task, and show that by examining the EEG signal they can determine when people failed to notice particular stimuli, which could lead to better assistive tools.

In this revision of a seminal work, O'Donovan describes the shape of a Christian moral theology which has wide implications for creation, history, knowledge, freedom, and authority--his purpose being to outline a system of theological ethics and to describe the nature of the moral response within redeemed creation: acts of surrender, obedience, and love.

Leading political theologian Oliver O'Donovan here takes a fresh look at some traditional moral arguments about war. Modern Christians differ widely on this issue. A few hold that absolute pacifism is the only viable Christian position, others subscribe in various ways to concepts of 'just war' developed out of a Western tradition that arose from the legacies of Augustine and Aquinas, while others still adopt more pragmatically realist postures. Professor O'Donovan re-examines questions of contemporary urgency including the use of (...) biological and nuclear weapons, military intervention, economic sanctions, war crimes trials and the roles of the Geneva Convention, international conventions and the UN. His enquiry opens with a challenging dedication to the new Archbishop of Canterbury and proceeds to shed new light on vital topics with which the Archbishop and others will be very directly engaged. It should be read by anyone concerned with the ethics of warfare. (shrink)

Internationally, initial teacher education has experienced shifts towards competence and school-based programmatic reforms. As a result, literature on the role of teacher educators operating within the academy suggests a sense of doom as market-based and political distrust of the academy grows. For now, initial teacher education in Ireland is largely housed within the academy. However, several governing policies have recently been published which subtly seek to marginalise the role and practices of teacher educators. Drawing on Camus’ understanding of the absurd (...) as emerging from the interaction between the longing of human beings for clarity and the universe’s indifferent and silent reply, this paper sets out to investigate possible methods that teacher educators may select in responding to an awareness of the absurd. (shrink)

The historical problem about the origins of the language of rights derives its importance from the conceptual problem: of "two fundamentally different ways of thinking about justice," which is basic? Is justice unitary or plural? This in turn opens up a problem about the moral status of human nature. A narrative of the origins of "rights" is an account of how and when a plural concept of justice comes to the fore, and will be based on the occurrence of definite (...) speech-forms—the occurrence of the plural noun in the sense of "legal properties." The history of this development is currently held to begin with the twelfth-century canonists. Later significant thresholds may be found in the fourteenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth centuries. Wolterstorff's attempt to find the implicit recognition of rights in the Scriptures depends very heavily on what he takes to be implied rather than on what is stated, and at best can establish a pre- history of rights-language. (shrink)

Oliver O'Donovan's Ethics as Theology project began withSelf, World, and Time, an "induction" into Christian ethics as ordered reflection on moral thinking within the life of faith. Volume 2, Finding and Seeking, shifted the focus to the movement of moral thought from a first consciousness of agency to the time that determines the moment of decision. In this third and final volume of his magnum opus, O'Donovan turns his attention to the forward horizon with which moral thinking must engage. (...) Moral experience, he argues, is necessarily two-directional, looking both back at responsibility and forward at aims. The Pauline triad of theological virtues (faith, love, and hope) describes a form of responsibility, and its climax in the sovereignty of love opens the way to a definitive teleology. Entering into Restoffers O'Donovan's mature reflections on questions that have engaged him throughout his career and provides a synoptic view of many of his main themes.". (shrink)

Self, World, and Time takes up the question of the form and matter of Christian ethics as an intellectual discipline. What is it about? How does Christian ethics relate to the humanities, especially philosophy, theology, and behavioral studies? How does its shape correspond to the shape of practical reason? In what way does it participate in the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Oliver O'Donovan discusses ethics with self, world, and time as foundation poles of moral reasoning, and (...) with faith, love, and hope as the virtues anchoring the moral life. Blending biblical, historico-theological, and contemporary ideas in its comprehensive survey, Self, World, and Time is an exploratory study that adds significantly to O'Donovan's previous theoretical reflections on Christian ethics. (shrink)

Representation is an essential element of political authority, together with power and judgment, the latest to be acknowledged in the Christian West, coming to recognition in the Middle Ages with the expectation of a plurality of national identities. Its initial points of reference were theological, to Israel and to the dual office of Christ as priest and king, but in modern developments it has been understood especially in terms of legal forms. Government represents an existing political identity, bound up with (...) a tradition of continuing practice and constituted by a ‘common good’ which brings together the various interests within a society. ‘Recognition’ of government involves knowing it in relation to ourselves, by affective cognition, an emphasis lost in modern theories. Success and failure in representation are on a relative scale of more or less. It depends on realistic and truthful popular self-understanding. (shrink)

Ethics is distinguished as a field of study within the realm of organised knowledge which interprets moral experience. Christian ethics assumes this interpretation into the hermeneutic framework of Christian theology in relation to a hope for the renewal and recovery of human agency. Its theme is moral thinking in general, which it understands within the framework of faith. It is dependent on philosophical ethics, but presumes and aims at more. The concepts handled by theological ethics include analytic categories coined to (...) describe the operations of moral thought itself, concepts that name qualities and performances of universal importance, and concepts belonging both to dogmatics and ethics, e.g. ‘sin’. It is concerned to describe the ‘architecture’ of life in the Spirit: World, the framework of meaning, Self, the agent, Time, the immediate future open to action. It resists pressure for theoretical economy in favour of unipolar theories. Its tasks include critical engagement with issues of policy or practice in wider discussion, engagement with particular moral dilemmas, the exploration of special fields, such as bioethics, marriage, economics, critical conceptual interaction with philosophy, interaction with biblical exegesis, exposition of texts from the tradition of theological ethics, and comparative intertraditional enquiry. (shrink)

An ancient Hebrew poem of uncertain background and fastidiously subtle formal technique is made the subject of a commentary by a fifth-century Latin bishop with no Hebrew, working with a poor Latin translation, who, moreover, dismisses the formal complexities of the composition as irrelevant to interpretation. Claiming to detect hidden depths beneath the Great Psalm’s limpid surface, Augustine uses it as an opportunity to revisit some of the favorite themes of his own later writing. Has he read the text with (...) sufficient sympathy to discover anything in it that might correspond to the poet’s intentions? Comparing his approach with Ambrose’s earlier and very different one, we notice some unexpected interpretative strengths in the earlier work. But Augustine’s attentiveness to connections between lines and stanzas and to the repetition of key vocabulary reveals a close attunement to the emotional movements of the poem. His contention that the Psalmist’s “law” is to be understood as Saint Paul’s “law of faith” is not imposed on the text, but allowed to emerge from its sequential development, and especially from its opening and closing lines. (shrink)

An ancient Hebrew poem of uncertain background and fastidiously subtle formal technique is made the subject of a commentary by a fifth-century Latin bishop with no Hebrew, working with a poor Latin translation, who, moreover, dismisses the formal complexities of the composition as irrelevant to interpretation. Claiming to detect hidden depths beneath the Great Psalm’s limpid surface, Augustine uses it as an opportunity to revisit some of the favorite themes of his own later writing. Has he read the text with (...) sufficient sympathy to discover anything in it that might correspond to the poet’s intentions? Comparing his approach with Ambrose’s earlier and very different one, we notice some unexpected interpretative strengths in the earlier work. But Augustine’s attentiveness to connections between lines and stanzas and to the repetition of key vocabulary reveals a close attunement to the emotional movements of the poem. His contention that the Psalmist’s “law” is to be understood as Saint Paul’s “law of faith” is not imposed on the text, but allowed to emerge from its sequential development, and especially from its opening and closing lines. (shrink)

The ramified legacy of Bernard Berenson’s writings within 20th century art historiography is both celebrated and maligned. In an effort to help reconcile this situation, this essay argues for the partial validity of Berenson’s peculiar version of art historical formalism by detailing its historical connections to the Pragmatist philosophy and psychology of William James and by analytically correlating Berenson’s arguments with recent work in aesthetics and the philosophy of perception. The essay examines the specific example of Berenson’s analysis of Giotto’s (...) paintings and leverages a Pragmatist interpretation of Berenson’s writings to frame Berenson’s known connections with other writers: including Adolf Hildebrand, Giovanni Morelli, and Walter Pater. In conclusion, the failure, potential, reception, and legacy of Berenson’s art historical scholarship are assessed in relation to Pragmatist ideas. Der vielfältige Einfluss von Bernard Berensons Schriften auf die Kunstgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts wird ebenso geschätzt wie verachtet. In dem Bestreben, diese Divergenzen zu berichtigen, versucht dieser Beitrag den Nachweis für die bedingte Gültigkeit von Berensons eigentümlicher Variante eines kunsthistorischen Formalismus zu erbringen, indem er einerseits seine historischen Verbindungen zur pragmatischen Philosophie und Psychologie von William James aufzeigt und indem er andererseits Berensons Argumentation ins Verhältnis zu aktuellen Debatten der wahrnehmungstheoretischen Ästhetik und Philosophie setzt. Am Beispiel von Berensons Interpretation der Gemälde Giottos führt dieser Essay eine pragmatische Analyse von Berensons Schriften durch und stellt diese ins Umfeld seiner Kontakte zu anderen Autoren: darunter Adolf Hildebrand, Giovanni Morelli und Walter Pater. Schließlich soll das Scheitern, das Potenzial, die Rezeption und das Erbe von Berensons kunsthistorischen Studien unter pragmatischen Gesichtspunkten bewertet werden. (shrink)

The Lord's Prayer is at the centre of the Sermon on the Mount in a section on restraint in religious performance. The flanking sections treat of the opposition of lower and higher law, and of simplicity of agency, themes reflected in the central section in the opposition of public and secret. The Lord's Prayer inducts the worshipper into the elementary relations of the universe: the Father, the source of intelligible governance of the universe; the community of human beings created to (...) live and act within the world; the temptation which is the final test of the enterprise of human living. (shrink)

Sin has infinite variety, but is also a unified phenomenon. As a way of displaying both these aspects, the vice-lists of the New Testament explore patterns by which sin unfolds in a sequence of diverse but connected forms. The eschatological vice-list of 2 Timothy 3 treats this as an unfolding of the sin of pride from an immanent form to a socially concrete one. Exploring this train of thought in further detail, we find room within the progress of pride for (...) the love of money and the love of war. (shrink)

An examination and defence of the concept of personality, long central to Western moral culture but now increasingly under attack. Robert Spaemann tackles urgent practical questions, such as our treatment of the severely disabled human and the moral status of intelligent non-human animals.

In this introduction I closely read Marquand’s arguments in “On Scientific Method in the Study of Art” both in relation to their sources and in relation to Marquand’s own subsequent scholarship. My thesis is that Charles Sanders Peirce’s writing is the most conspicuous and important inspiration for the essay; however I also contend that Marquand’s handwritten corrections to the surviving manuscript of the text reveal a struggle with Peirce’s ideas that can – especially in light of Marquand’s later writing – (...) be read to expose an ambivalent or potentially even critical attitude toward central aspects of Peirce’s thought. I conclude by noting that Marquand’s intellectual relationship with Peirce speaks to both the past, present, and future of art historical scholarship. (shrink)

Luke Bretherton wishes to encourage informal political activity, and asserts a contrast between two complementary and alternative ways of doing politics, formal and informal. But the tendency in his descriptions is to replace formal with informal politics, which is then in danger of being left without responsibility to the structures of political society.

This book presents selected addresses presented before the Personalist Discussion Group meetings held in conjunction with the annual meetings of The American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division. It includes the central ideas of American Personalistic Idealism developed during the twentieth century, its major criticisms, and recent developments by philosophers who are either Personalistic Idealists of sympathetic to the position.

New Blackfriars, Volume 102, Issue 1101, Page 795-814, September 2021.

The object of Theological Ethics as presented by Hans Ulrich is immediately the content of the experience of God; reflectively it is God himself turned towards us; doubly reflected on, it is the inversion of our understanding of the good or conversion. The concept of an object may be traced to the discussion of the sciences from Schleiermacher to Barth. Three questions are put to it: (i) Does it assimilate the study too much to descriptive reason, as opposed to practical (...) reason? (ii) Does it narrow the study's range of interests so as to exclude the created world? (iii) Does it result in an idealised `creaturely man', wholly determined by his end and dissociated from the empirical man who may confront us as a neighbour? (shrink)