This article examines the apocalyptic turn evident in René Girard's Battling to the End , which puts an exclamation point on what has been an increasing tendency in Girard's thought. Its general aim is to describe Girard's particular form of biblical apocalyptic. Toward that end, it unfolds Girard's arguments against other apocalyptic contenders, including Hegel and Heidegger; it opens up a space of conversation with other forms of apocalyptic thought ; and in and through Girard's affirmation of Benedict XVI, raises (...) the question of whether there is a structural symmetry between their thought, and whether both articulate a form of Augustinian apocalyptic. (shrink)

This essay examines Newman’s life-long campaign against the errors of liberal religion, particularly its “anti-holiness” principle that rejects the Christian commitment to the pursuit of sanctity. In both his Anglican and Roman Catholic writings, Newman attacked the “anti-holiness” principle’s underlying presuppositions, particularly (1) its naturalistic anthropology, (2) its “anthropocentric horizon of discourse,” (3) its rejection of ascetic discipline in religious formation, and (4) its tendency to accept uncritically what is intellectually novel.

This essay reflects on Newman’s famous analyses of natural and revealed religion and their relation in the tenth and final chapter of the Grammar of Assent. There are two lines of reflection, the first internalist, the second externalist. On the first front, the essay draws attention to how conscience plays a foundational role in Newman’s discussion of natural religion and how it helps to distinguish it from the “religion of civilization,” which Newman considers to be a rationalist substitute for the (...) real religion. If natural religion is structurally grounded in conscience, it is historically illustrated in paganism and primitive religions to the extent to which these come to light in the modern age. Crucially, natural religion has significant content that is endorsed and recalibrated in revealed religion. It uncovers God as Judge and discloses humanity both to be under judgment and hoping for reconciliation through a mediator. The second and more externalist line of reflection draws attention to how Bishop Joseph Butler’s classic Analogy of Religion (1736) provides the basic frame for Newman’s reflection on natural and revealed religion and their relation. (shrink)

This paper understands Hodgson’s Hegel and Christian Theology not only to represent the definitive expression of a distinguished Hegel scholar’s theological interpretation, but also to mark a threshold between where Hegel studies have been on the topic of the relation between religion and philosophy in Hegel’s thought and where they are going. On the threshold, Hodgson’s text faces three essential challenges with respect to its bona fides. The first challenge is whether, even if the privileged status of the Lectures on (...) the Philosophy of Religion is granted, anything like consensus has been achieved concerning the importance of narrative and Trinity, on the one hand, and its claim to truth, on the other. The second challenge concerns method, and more specifically whether the teleological model deployed by Hodgson to underwrite the importance of the Lectures is sufficiently reflective to resist the rising authority of archeological accounts which privilege Hegel’s Phenomenology and pre-Phenomenology writings. The third challenge concerns the stability of Hodgson’s interpretation which tends to mediate between the religious and the political, on the one hand, and the non-logical and the logical, on the other. This is by far the most serious concern since it pertains to Hodgson’s act of synthesis. Here it is open to question whether Hodgson has succeeded here anymore than Fackenheim a generation earlier. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the way Williams elaborates, defends, and recommends Hegel’s revision of Christianity, which makes possible a Christianity free from the defects of its pre-modern form without collapsing into atheism and humanism. The essay begins by examining the development of Williams’s case in Hegel on the Proofs and Personhood of God and in Tragedy, Recognition, and the Death of God. This examination shows that Williams uses Hegel’s critique of pre-modern Christianity to demonstrate that modernity, in which discourse, practices, (...) and forms of life are regulated by freedom and reason, means the end of orthodox theology, and uses Hegel’s logic of relations and reciprocal determination to interpret the God-world relation and the internal constitution of the divinity so that it preserves divine transcendence and independence. The second section of the essay challenges Williams’s position by showing how reciprocal determination does not just revise and qualify the asymmetrical dependence that is the lynchpin of classical theism, it completely disqualifies it, how the analysis of the Trinity involves the divinity in a complete emptying of itself into the world and its being as the world, so that Williams’s God cannot preserve even a hair’s breadth of the transcendence required for qualifying as a form of Christianity. The essay concludes from this that Williams’s appropriation of Hegel’s revised Christianity is infected with an element that destabilizes its ability to mediate between pre-modern insistence on God’s transcendence and independence and modernity’s insistence on human freedom and the universal status of its rational subjectivity, with a decisive leaning towards the humanistic posture. (shrink)

H. S. Harris’s Hegel’s Ladder opens up the epic universe of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit by constructing a text that is epic in its dimensions and self-conscious design. It aims at truth. In the first instance, this means adequacy with respect to the Phenomenology ’s epic account of humanity’s movement toward self-certain truth. In the second instance, it means correspondence to the epic design of the Phenomenology. For Harris, it is self-evident that the Phenomenology belongs to the genre of epic, (...) since it repeats in a philosophical idiom the form and content of classical Western epics. That Harris accepts, even celebrates the secondariness of his text, vis-à-vis Hegel’s best-known text, does nothing to diminish its intellectual and narrative power. Indeed, with respect to the latter, I want to claim that Hegel’s Ladder rises to the level of a powerful, original epic precisely in its ascesis. Like all powerful texts, Hegel’s Ladder intimidates. Before interpretation so exhaustive, before discernment so perspicacious, any Hegel commentator will fear that whatever he or she has to say will be parochial, redundant, opaque, and intellectually impoverished. (shrink)

L'A. étudie l'usage que Balthasar fait de la pensée grecque post-chalcédonienne. Le théologien allemand attire l'attention sur le style symphonique de la pensée grecque, sa concentration christologique et son caractère trinitaire. La première partie de ce travail est consacrée aux problèmes que soulève l'extension de l'usage de la pensée grecque post-chalcédonienne : peut-on mettre sur le même plan Maxime le Confesseur et le Pseudo-Denys ? L'A. montre ensuite que, si pour Balthasar le mérite de cette théologie tient à sa propension (...) à l'esthétique, cela n'exclut pas une doctrine christologique et trinitaire fouillée. La troisième partie est axée sur l'emploi critique que fait Balthasar de ses sources. (shrink)

One honors a book by straightforwardly recommending it to the reader’s attention. But one also honors a book by taking it seriously enough to imagine how it could have been otherwise, or perhaps better, to the extent that one celebrates its existence, one honors it by imagining a supplement. In what follows I will honor this book in both ways, although clearly the first way is primitive. For it is only by one’s attention being grabbed by a text, by one’s (...) understanding being moved, by one’s sensibilities being engaged that one is involved enough to see beyond the text as presently constituted. InHegel and the Hermetic Tradition there is plenty to grab a Hegel scholar’s attention. Just to start with there is the provocative thesis that Hegel is decisively inf luenced by the Hermetic tradition. Here the provocation is supplied less by the 'shock value' of the thesis - although it may well be shocking to many Hegel scholars - than by the sheer thoroughness - bordering on exhaustiveness - of the analysis which shows mastery of the texts of the highly variegated Hermetic tradition as well as the texts of Hegel, both unpublished and published. There is also much to move the understanding in Magee’s meticulous tracing of the symbols and constructs of Hermeticism at work in Hegel’s texts that range from his pre-Jena writings through the Phenomenology and Encyclopaedia to the Philosophy of Right. And finally there is much to engage one’s sensibilities, for the organization of the text is first class, the reading of Hegel’s texts sensitive and perspicacious, and the writing poised, even elegant. This would be a fine book for a scholar at any stage of his or her career. For a first book it is absolutely exceptional. (shrink)

What should Christian discourse look like after philosophical modernity? In one manner or another the essays in this volume seek to confront and intellectually exorcise the prevailing elements of philosophical modernity, which are inherently transgressive disfigurations and refigurations of the Christian story of creation, sin, and redemption. To enact these various forms and styles of Christian intellectual exorcism these essays make appeal to, and converse with the magisterial corpus of Cyril O'Regan. The themes of the essays center around (...) the Gnostic return in modenity, apocalyptic theology, and the question of the bounds and borders of Christian orthodoxy. Along the way diverse figures are treated such as: Hegel, Shakespeare, von Balthasar, Przywara, Ricouer, Deleuse, Merleau-Ponty, and Kristeva."--Back cover. (shrink)

Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of (...) acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The out- side world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the gov- erning laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Sev- eral lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual “filling in,” visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception. (shrink)

Discussion of J. Kevin O’Regan’s “Why Red Doesn’t Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the Feel of Consciousness” Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s13164-012-0090-7 Authors J. Kevin O’Regan, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS - Université Paris Descartes, Centre Biomédical des Saints Pères, 45 rue des Sts Pères, 75270 Paris cedex 06, France Ned Block, Departments of Philosophy, Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, 5 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA Journal Review of Philosophy and (...) Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158. (shrink)

The sensorimotor theory of perceptual consciousness offers a form of enactivism in that it stresses patterns of interaction instead of any alleged internal representations of the environment. But how does it relate to forms of enactivism stressing the continuity between life and mind? We shall distinguish sensorimotor enactivism, which stresses perceptual capacities themselves, from autopoietic enactivism, which claims an essential connection between experience and autopoietic processes or associated background capacities. We show how autopoiesis, autonomous agency, and affective dimensions of experience (...) may fit into sensorimotor enactivism, and we identify differences between this interpretation and autopoietic enactivism. By taking artificial consciousness as a case in point, we further sharpen the distinction between sensorimotor enactivism and autopoietic enactivism. We argue that sensorimotor enactivism forms a strong default position for an enactive account of perceptual consciousness. (shrink)

The catastrophe of the eye -- A new view of seeing -- Applying the new view of seeing -- The illusion of seeing everything -- Some contentious points -- Towards consciousness -- Types of consciousness -- Phenomenal consciousness, raw feel, and why they're hard -- Squeeze a sponge, drive a porsche : a sensorimotor account of feel -- Consciously experiencing a feel -- The sensorimotor approach to color -- Sensory substitution -- The localization of touch -- The phenomenality plot -- (...) Consciousness. (shrink)

The paper proposes a way of bridging the gapbetween physical processes in the brain and the ''''felt''''aspect of sensory experience. The approach is based onthe idea that experience is not generated by brainprocesses themselves, but rather is constituted by theway these brain processes enable a particular form of''''give-and-take'''' between the perceiver and theenvironment. From this starting-point we are able tocharacterize the phenomenological differences betweenthe different sensory modalities in a more principledway than has been done in the past. We are also (...) ableto approach the issues of visual awareness andconsciousness in a satisfactory way. Finally weconsider a number of testable empirical consequences,one of which is the striking prediction of thephenomenon of ''''change blindness''''. (shrink)

Observers inspected normal, high quality color displays of everyday visual scenes while their eye movements were recorded. A large display change occurred each time an eye blink occurred. Display changes could either involve "Central Interest" or "Marginal Interest" locations, as determined from descriptions obtained from independent judges in a prior pilot experiment. Visual salience, as determined by luminance, color, and position of the Central and Marginal interest changes were equalized. -/- The results obtained were very similar to those obtained in (...) prior experiments showing failure to detect changes occurring simultaneously with saccades, flicker, or “mudsplashes” in the visual scene: Many changes were very hard to detect, and Marginal Interest changes were harder to detect than Central Interest changes. -/- Analysis of eye movements showed, as expected, that the probability of detecting a change depended on the eye’s distance from the change location. However a surprising finding was that both for Central and Marginal Interest changes, evenwhen observers were directly fixating the change locations (within 1 degree),more than 40% of the time they still failed to see the changes. It seems that looking at something does not guarantee you “ see” it. (shrink)

Change-blindness occurs when large changes are missed under natural viewing conditions because they occur simultaneously with a brief visual disruption, perhaps caused by an eye movement, a flicker, a blink, or a camera cut in a film sequence. We have found that this can occur even when the disruption does not cover or obscure the changes. When a few small, high-contrast shapes are briefly spattered over a picture, like mudsplashes on a car windscreen, large changes can be made simultaneously in (...) the scene without being noticed. (shrink)

How could neural processes be associated with phenomenal consciousness? We present a way to answer this question by taking the counterintuitive stance that the sensory feel of an experience is not a thing that happens to us, but a thing we do: a skill we exercise. By additionally noting that sensory systems possess two important, objectively measurable properties, corporality and alerting capacity, we are able to explain why sensory experience possesses a sensory feel, but thinking and other mental processes do (...) not. We are additionally able to explain why different sensory feels differ in the way they do. (shrink)

Following arguments put forward in my book (Why red doesn’t sound like a bell: understanding the feel of consciousness. Oxford University Press, New York, USA, 2011), this article takes a pragmatic, scientist’s point of view about the concepts of consciousness and “feel”, pinning down what people generally mean when they talk about these concepts, and then investigating to what extent these capacities could be implemented in non-biological machines. Although the question of “feel”, or “phenomenal consciousness” as it is called by (...) some philosophers, is generally considered to be the “hard” problem of consciousness, the article shows that by taking a “sensorimotor” approach, the difficulties can be overcome. What remains to account for are the notions of so-called “access consciousness” and the self. I claim that though they are undoubtedly very difficult, these are not logically impossible to implement in robots. (shrink)