Philosophers who would do history of philosophy must also occasionally do some philology. The meaning of the text interacts with the language in which it is spoken, and it is informed by it. One need not be a Whorfean to appreciate that there is no text without contexts, and one of the most important of these contexts is the language itself. To what extent the philologist must also become a palaeographer is a question seldom raised even among those who call (...) themselves philologists. Taking our texts not only in written form, but in printed regularity, we tend to focus on the type of expression rather than the token, treating the latter as incidental, irrelevant and uninteresting. I want here to tell a tale of a text with attention to some palaeographic dimensions, hoping to open questions about their philological and philosophical worth. The palaeography may itself be superficial or amateurish, but if the point is well taken at this level, someone more expert may be able to unfold a richer tale. (shrink)

Christian divorce is construed as letting go of past sin in repentance and seeking new life in faithfulness and forgiveness; this painful crisis is seen as a confrontation with God's judgment and as an opening up to God's grace; one is urged to maintain an awareness of temptations to continue in sin and of opportunities for reconciliation and cooperation. This view is developed through an analysis of the concepts of covenant, infidelity and adultery, as well as a comparison of civil, (...) contractual marriage and the Christian sacrament and covenant of marriage. "Practical Postscripts" discuss the issues of the nurture of children of divorced persons and remarriage. "From the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." (Mark 10:6-9). (shrink)

Much discussion has been accorded in recent years to what Willard Quine has dubbed “two dogmas of empiricism”.

1) reductionism in psychology is not a single move regarding a single conceptual issue, but is rather a complex of concerns with a network of conceptually interrelated issues. 2) reductionistic moves tend to explicitly rely upon or implicitly presuppose the use of dispositional terms. 3) dispositional terms will not serve to effect reductionistic programs because they themselves require many of the features that those programs require excising. 4) if dispositionals are not themselves logically tied to intentionals, they at least bear (...) a sufficient family resemblance to participate in logical problems similar to those of intentionals and modals. 5) if dispositionals and intentionals do not require the teleological frame from which they historically arose, then they at least require some alternative accounting, not an elimination. (shrink)

I want to deal here with the question, “What is deep structure?” But before I can begin, it seems necessary to give exposition to the question itself. As it stands, it is not a single question, but a number of different questions, each leading into quite different sorts of inquiry. To get to the question that I want to deal with, some of the others need at least passing consideration. The answers offered to these may have some bearing upon the (...) answers offered to my own. (shrink)

I want to deal here with the question, “What is deep structure?” But before I can begin, it seems necessary to give exposition to the question itself. As it stands, it is not a single question, but a number of different questions, each leading into quite different sorts of inquiry. To get to the question that I want to deal with, some of the others need at least passing consideration. The answers offered to these may have some bearing upon the (...) answers offered to my own. (shrink)

Robert Wardy's recent The Chain of Change has again brought to the fore the question of the role of Physics VII in the development of Aristotle's conception of motion. Wardy reads VII in conjunction with VIII, and argues that the former is the precursor of the latter in the development of the conception of a cosmic unmoved mover. He also claims that this account is the only one that can save us from a version of self-motion made unacceptable by Aristotle's (...) hylomorphic account developed elsewhere. This is what Wardy thinks enables him to infer that the account of motion in Physics VII leads directly into the argument about unmoved movers in Physics VIII. I want first to show why I think that Wardy's thesis about the conceptual links between VII and VIII need not hold. This disconnection of VII from its current context, taken together with the thesis of W. D. Ross and others that VII was originally a separate work, and that of the two competing versions of VII, the α-version is the preferred text, opens the way to very different philosophical conclusions from the ones that Wardy offers. (shrink)

Robert Wardy's recent The Chain of Change has again brought to the fore the question of the role of Physics VII in the development of Aristotle's conception of motion. Wardy reads VII in conjunction with VIII, and argues that the former is the precursor of the latter in the development of the conception of a cosmic unmoved mover. He also claims that this account is the only one that can save us from a version of self-motion made unacceptable by Aristotle's (...) hylomorphic account developed elsewhere. This is what Wardy thinks enables him to infer that the account of motion in Physics VII leads directly into the argument about unmoved movers in Physics VIII. I want first to show why I think that Wardy's thesis about the conceptual links between VII and VIII need not hold. This disconnection of VII from its current context, taken together with the thesis of W. D. Ross and others that VII was originally a separate work, and that of the two competing versions of VII, the α-version is the preferred text, opens the way to very different philosophical conclusions from the ones that Wardy offers. (shrink)

It was the integration of mythos, ethos and logos that determined the unity of Hellenic culture. The mythos of ways of being in the world gave determination to the ethos of ways of acting in community and the logos of accounting for what went on in the world. The primary expressions of this integration were the divine enlightenments of the poesis of interpretation which were acted out in public performance. The disintegration came with the pluralization of cultures in the Hellenistic (...) period, when there were acknowledged multiple cultures, and even as early as Plato, Isocrates and Aristotle, rhetoric and argument displaced mythos as the basis for logos and ethos. In the century gone by we have seen several anti-mythical movements that have been adversarial to cultural integration. Religious fundamentalism rejects mythos in favor of literalism. Positivism rejects mythos in favor of empiricism. Existentialism rejects mythos as “bad faith”. But, as Jaspers’ critique of Bultmann’s de-mythologicalization project made clear, each of these moves amounted to an attempt at re-mytholization of our ways of being in the world. Alasdair MacIntye early exposed how the integration of mythos, ethos and logos were rooted in performance. Later, in After Virtue, he lamented their disintegration. Berdyaev’s retreat to The New Middle Ages and Tillich’s embracing of the notion of a “broken myth” offer their resolutions, but no comprehensive plan. The Jew who continues to enact “we were together in the land of Egypt” and the Christian who “sups with the risen Lord” still ritualistically cling to a performance of a mythos in our secularized post-modern age, but find little carry-over to ethos and logos. The search for meaning remains the task of integrating mythos, ethos and logos in performance. (shrink)

The important conceptual innovation of Metaphysics 9 is not in an extension of dunamis into the ontological realm, but in establishing energeia as the primary sense of the unit of being. The career of dunamis moves from principles of contrariety requiring a hypokeimenon ; through its role in the concept of natural motion ; to different roles for active and passive ; to correlations of capacity/fulfillment with body/soul, matter/form, and inner/outer potentialities. These developments lay bases for conceiving the reality of (...) natural beings as enactments, undergirded with the potentials of their constitutional fulfillments, and opens the way in Metaphysics 12 to understanding a being of pure enactment without dunamis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 128-129 [Access article in PDF] Robert Crocker, editor. Religion, Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001. Pp. xix + 228. Cloth, $77.00. By describing the early modern period as such, we thereby avow a continuity with it that ill squares with the following, insufficiently appreciated fact. The early modern counterparts of the largely atheistic American Philosophical Association, let's (...) say, were to an even greater degree theistic, and, moreover, theism affected their description and explanation of the world in a profound way—certainly more so than it does their few theistic descendents. This is true even of authors, like Hobbes and Spinoza, who might be read as leading to later atheism. The fact of early modern theism and its centrality in early modern philosophy and science are amply demonstrated in one after another of the eleven essays of this book.An emblematic figure is Robert Boyle, who figures as a main player in three of the essays, and is at least mentioned in five of the others. Lotte Mulligan, for example, investigates the role of "right reason" in Boyle's argument that religion is illuminated and made [End Page 128] plausible by metaphorically expressed analogies with natural philosophy, and conversely. The upshot is that only the "Christian Virtuoso," endowed with right reason whereby he is inspired to notice and express these analogies, was in a position to interpret the codes expressed both in the book of revelation and in the book of nature, one being incomplete without the other.Luisa Simonutti treats Boyle's engagement with the theological and scientific work of Spinoza through Spinoza's correspondence with Oldenburg. And G. A. J. Rogers deploys the work of Boyle, as well as of Locke, Newton, and the Cambridge Platonists, against the once-standard view (vide Butterfield) that "a major feature of the seventeenth-century was a secularization of knowledge." (Given just the other papers in this volume, this may seem like shooting fish in a barrel. Even so, perhaps one or two of the shots appear to miss. Newton seems proleptically to answer Hume's skepticism about induction by invoking, not divine simplicity, but an argument to the best explanation.)These papers overlap with two others, forming the core of the book. Sarah Hutton and Robert Crocker take on Cambridge Platonism. The former deals with Ralph Cudworth's rejection of Cartesian voluntarism in favor of an intellectualism of goodness and wisdom that grounds both the providential governance of the world and its intelligibility to human inquiry. The latter deals with Henry More's doctrine of the soul's pre-existence, a prima facie unlikely doctrine, but one that is less problematic, according to More, than the orthodox alternatives (creationism and traducianism).Three other papers fall outside this core, but their topics are no less relevant. Perhaps the most undeniable connection between the natural and the supernatural is to be found in Grotius, here studied by Jacqueline Lagree. Likely the most unexpected player will be the eccentric esprit fort, Cyrano de Bergerac. His work of nearly pure fantasy, in the Rabelaisian tradition, might well have made later, more serious heterodoxies possible. James E. Force provides a nice case study in Newton's reliance on what he took to be providentially guided comets as sources for the replenishment of otherwise declining celestial motion and matter (a line which, ironically, was picked up by Hume as a premise of an argument designed to undo the argument from design). Richard H. Popkin outlines three views of Judaism in the period. There is little connection with nature, but an important one with reason via a problem that exercised Cudworth and Newton: most peoples are polytheistic despite the clear monotheism of revelation. One theory had it that Judaism was the original, pure religion, which degenerated into various forms of paganism. But this degeneracy was soon read by the English deists such that originally there was a natural religion, of which Judaism and all others were a degeneration. Transmitted to the Enlightenment by Spinoza... (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas produced a voluminous body of work on moral theory, and much of that work is on virtue, particularly the status and value of the virtues as principles of virtuous acts, and the way in which a moral life can be organized around them schematically. Thomas Osborne presents Aquinas's account of virtue in its historical, philosophical and theological contexts, to show the reader what Aquinas himself wished to teach about virtue. His discussion makes the complexities of Aquinas's (...) moral thought accessible to readers despite the differences between Thomas's texts themselves, and the distance between our background assumptions and his. The book will be valuable for scholars and students in ethics, medieval philosophy, and theology. (shrink)

A critical but sympathetic treatment of Pierre Bayle.

" Our various cultures are symbolic environments or "spiritual ecologies" within which the Human Eros can thrive. This is how we inhabit the earth. Encircling and sustaining our cultural existence is nature.

the contrast and similarity between Rist and Macintyre can be better understood if we take into account their different interpretations of the Republic, especially their 1) descriptions of the primary problem faced by Plato, 2) their interpretation of Plato’s response to the problem, and 3) their evaluation of the contemporary relevance of the problem and his response. The differences and similarities between the views of MacIntyre and Rist on the Republic reflect much larger difference and similarities on the fundamental nature (...) of moral philosophy, the problem of relativism, and the importance of God for ethics. I have illustrated these similarities and differences in the context of their understanding of the problems faced by Plato, the nature and adequacy of his response, and the relevance of the response of later philosophical ethics. (shrink)

This book argues that Plato's Charmides presents a unitary but incomplete argument intended to lead its readers to substantive philosophical insights.

Thomas Alexander shows that the primary, guiding concern of Dewey's philosophy is his theory of aesthetic experience.

Conceptions of acceptability-based moral or political justification take it that authoritative acceptability constitutes, or contributes to, validity, or justification. There is no agreement as to what bar for authoritativeness such justification may employ. The paper engages the issue in relation to (i) the level of idealization that a bar for authoritativeness, ψ, imparts to a standard of acceptability-based justification, S, and (ii) the degree of discursive purchase of the discursive standing that S accords to people when it builds ψ. I (...) argue that (i) and (ii) are interdependent: high idealization values entail low discursive purchase, while high degrees of purchase require low idealization values. I then distinguish between alethic conceptions of justification that prioritize ends that commit to high idealization values, and recognitive conceptions that favour high discursive purchase. On this basis, I argue for a moderately recognitivist constraint on idealization. To render the recognitive discursive minimum available to relevant people at the site of justification, S should set ψ low enough so that it is a genuine option for actual people to reject relevant views in ways that S recognizes as authoritative. (shrink)

This paper explores the idea of robust discursive equality on which respect-based conceptions of justificatory reciprocity often draw. I distinguish between formal and substantive discursive equality and argue that if justificatory reciprocity requires that people be accorded formally equal discursive standing, robust discursive equality should not be construed as requiring standing that is equal substantively, or in terms of its discursive purchase. Still, robust discursive equality is purchase sensitive: it does not obtain when discursive standing is impermissibly unequal in purchase. (...) I then showcase different candidate conceptions of purchase justice, and draw conclusions about the substantive commitments of justificatory reciprocity. (shrink)

Moral and political forms of constructivism accord to people strong, “constitutive” forms of discursive standing and so build on, or express, a commitment to discursive respect. The paper explores dimensions of discursive respect, i.e., depth, scope, and purchase; it addresses tenuous interdependencies between them; on this basis, it identifies limitations of the idea of discursive respect and of constructivism. The task of locating discursive respect in the normative space defined by its three dimensions is partly, and importantly, an ethical task (...) that is beyond constructivism. Interdependencies between these dimensions call into question the possibility of a plausible and coherent form of discursive respect that is deep, inclusive in scope, and rich in purchase. This does not mean that we should reject discursive respect, or constructivism, for that matter. But it suggests that the task of reconciling the dimensions of discursive respect may not allow for widely shareable results. This task needs to be addressed on non-constructivist grounds. Accordingly, we have reasons to concede that constitutive forms of discursive standing are less fundamental in the order of justification than weaker, “derivative” forms, and this is so especially if we take constitutive standing to mark an important good. (shrink)

growing up in new mexico, I was passionate about geology, specifically paleontology. It led, in one adventure, to me being arrested by monks. While on a picnic with my parents at Jemez Springs, I had followed a beautiful Permian stratum, rich with crinoids and brachiopod shells, onto private land owned by The Servants of the Paraclete, a retreat for "whiskey priests."1 I was detained while one brother admonished me, kindly, and let me go, and even let me keep my specimens. (...) But the passion for the history of the earth and natural history in general remained. I was one of those kids who came late to the idea that what was taught at school and what I found of interest had any points of intersection, but I did come to... (shrink)

The paper challenges the view that public justification sits well with emancipatory and egalitarian intuitions. I distinguish between the depth, scope and the purchase of the discursive standing that such justification allocates, and situate within this matrix Rawls’s view of public justification. A standard objection to this view is that public justification should be more inclusive in scope. This is both plausible and problematic in emancipatory and egalitarian terms. If inclusive public justification allocates discursive standing that is rich in purchase, (...) as seems desirable in emancipatory terms, it may be unable to allocate equal standing to all relevant people. And if it is to allocate equal standing, then the equality of that standing should be construed in terms that allow for unequal discursive purchase. (shrink)

This book features two old philosophical friends engaged in lively personal and intellectual conversations. Wary of any dogmatism, their dialogues explore the Big Bang and the joy of grandchildren, value theory and terrorism, God and art, metaphor and meaning, while assessing the thought of Robert S. Hartman, Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, H. Richard Niebuhr, and others.

According to Rainer Forst, (i) moral and political claims must meet a requirement of reciprocal and general acceptability (RGA) while (ii) we are under a duty in engaged discursive practice to justify such claims to others, or be able to do so, on grounds that meet RGA. The paper critically engages this view. I argue that Forst builds a key component of RGA, i.e., reciprocity of reasons, on an idea of the reasonable that undermines both (i) and (ii): if RGA (...) builds on this idea, RGA is viciously regressive and a duty of justification to meet RGA fails to be agent transparent. This negative result opens the door for alternative conceptions of reciprocity and generality. I then suggest that a more promising conception of reciprocity and generality needs to build on an idea of the reasonable that helps to reconcile the emancipatory or protective aspirations of reciprocal and general justification with its egalitarian commitments. But this requires to downgrade RGA in the order of justification and to determine on prior, substantive grounds what level of discursive influence in reciprocal and general justification relevant agents ought to have. (shrink)