Samantha Vice’s proposal on how to live in ‘this strange place’ of contemporary South Africa, includes an appeal to the concepts of shame and silence. In this paper, I use Emmanuel Levinas and Giorgio Agamben to move the discussion of shame from a moral to an existential question. The issue is not about how one should feel, but about the kind of self that whiteness in South Africa makes possible today. Shame desubjectifies. Vice’s recommendation of silence is then taken as (...) witnessing/listening, which I argue grounds the possibility of a recovery of the self. (shrink)

" Medieval Thought provides a clear and authoritative introduction to an important period in intellectual history. It studies the course of medieval intellectualisation, analysing how tension between the religious and non-religious components of medieval culture resulted in its sophisticated development. The most influential vehicle for medieval intellectualisation was philosophy. Philosophy became the mode of expression in religion, providing religious thinkers with a unifying vocabulary and means of reasoning. In turn philosophers found in religion fertile ground for metaphysical discussion. The initial (...) alliance between philosophy and religion did not, however, hold, for Christianity's necessity for theological strength through uniformity inevitably clashed with the dissenting questioning of philosophy. This book will be accessible to even those with little knowledge of Christian theology. Appendices have been included to help the reader surmount possible difficulties, and no prior knowledge of Latin is assumed. Each chapter ends with a select bibliography to direct the reader toward further study, and an additional, more comprehensive, annotated bibliography is included at the end of the book. (shrink)

Burgess, J.P. and Rosen, G. Subject with No ObjectElliott, R.Faking Nature.

Burgess, J.P. and Rosen, G. Subject with No ObjectElliott, R.Faking Nature.

One of five short texts in the publisher's "Foundations of Logic Series." Fisk presents a sentential calculus and extensions to uniform and full first-order quantification in terms of natural-deduction principles. The principles laid down are continually justified by reference to our instinctive use of language. In keeping with this approach, Fisk is concerned to base the system on an intensional implication relation which will avoid the familiar paradoxes. Unfortunately, his system S can be proved equivalent to the classical two-valued calculus. (...) This unanticipated result proceeds from principle S7, " p → q ∴ →." However, if S7 is dropped, the philosophical claims made for S hold good. By virtue of short but incisive discussions of controversial philosophical issues, e.g., existence and subjunctive conditionals, this book is a contribution as well as an introduction to philosophical thinking.—J. B. B. (shrink)