This book presents the first debate between the Anglo-Catholic movement Radical Orthodoxy and Eastern Orthodox theologians.

This paper addresses the second and third volumes of Edward Bouverie Pusey's Eirenicon, which were published as open letters to John Henry Newman. Written in the run up to the First Vatican Council in 1870, these books discuss respectively the Marian dogmas and infallibility. Like the first volume they reveal the profound difference between Pusey's Anglo-Catholicism, which was a ‘catholicism of the word’ defined by the explicit doctrinal formulations of the undivided church, and Newman's Roman Catholicism (...) with its emphasis on the doctrine of development. Compared to the first volume, which provoked significant discussion, the impact of the second and third volumes was modest primarily because the declaration of infallibility meant that ecumenical discussion no longer seemed possible. Pusey's hopes for reunion were completely dashed and he removed himself from ecumenical discussion permanently. (shrink)

Rowan Williams's theological-moral reasoning regarding the formation of personal identities in relation to gender, familial and communal ties is analysed in an article review of his book Lost Icons. This is his most sustained essay in theological social criticism, and was intended for the general public beyond academic theology. Williams exposes Christian moral reasoning on these issues to forms of secular critique whilst simultaneously using theological and historical strategies from liberal Anglo-Catholicism. His argumentation is subjected to theological and (...) social-scientific scrutiny. The article calls for closer attention to debates within secular feminism and social research concerning the formation of adult men and women in relation to the wider post-Christian society. Links are made from Williams's thought in Lost Icons to underlying patterns in his academic theological output. (shrink)

I want to argue…that to read Rossetti’s religious poetry with understanding requires a more or less conscious investment in the peculiarities of its Christian orientation, in the social and historical particulars which feed and shape the distinctive features of her work. Because John O. Waller’s relatively recent essay on Rossetti, “Christ’s Second Coming: Christina Rossetti and the Premillenarianist William Dodsworth,” focuses on some of the most important of these particulars, it seems to me one of the most useful pieces of (...) scholarship ever written on the poet. The essay locates the special ground of Rossetti’s religious poetry in that peculiar Adventist and premillenarian context which flourished for about fifty years in mid nineteenth-century culture. In point of historical fact—and it is a historical fact which has enormous significance for the aesthetic character of Rossetti’s poetry—her religious verse is intimately meshed with a number of particular, even peculiar, religious ideas.18 From the vantage of her strongest poetry, the most important of these ideas were allied to a once powerful religious movement which later—toward the end of the century—slipped to a marginal position in English culture.The whole question [of premillenarianism] was overshadowed first and last by the Tractarian Movement, Anglo-Catholicism, and the resulting Protestant reaction. And we can see in retrospect that all through the years [1820-1875] the theological future actually belonged to liberal, or Broad Church, principles. By the middle 1870s, apparently [the issues raised through the premillenarian movement] were no longer very alive.19­­In this context we may begin to understand the decline of Rossetti’s reputation after the late nineteenth century, when she was still regarded as one of the most powerful and important contemporary English poets. Her reputation was established in the 1860s and 1870s, when Adventism reached the apogee of its brief but influential career. Thereafter, the availability of religious poetry was mediated either through the Broad Church line or through the High Church and Anglo-Catholic line . The premillenarian and evangelist enthusiasm which supported Rossetti’s religious poetry had been moved to the periphery of English culture when the canon of such verse began to take shape in the modern period.To read Rossetti’s poetry, then, we have to willingly suspend not only our disbelief in her convictions and ideas but also our belief in those expectations and presuppositions about religious poetry which we have inherited from those two dominant ideological lines—Broad Church and High Church and Anglo-Catholic. Waller has drawn our attention to the general premillenarian content of her work, and I should like to follow his lead by emphasizing another crucial and even more particular doctrinal feature of her poetry. 19. Waller, “Christ’s Second Coming,” p. 477. For a general discussion of millenarianism in the early nineteenth century, see J. E. Harrison, The Second Coming, Popular Millenarianism, 1780-1850 . Jerome J. McGann is the Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of Humanities at the California Institute of Technology. His two most recent books are The Romantic Ideology. A Critical Investigation and A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism . His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Formalism, Savagery, and Care; or, The Function of Criticism Once Again” and “The Meaning of the Ancient Mariner”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:F. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists)Stephen OgdenF. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists), by Anne Samson; x & 196 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992, $45.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.If it is an overstatement to say that the waves of change currently disturbing the teaching of English in universities originated from the splash made by F. R. Leavis at Cambridge beginning in 1933, Anne Samson’s account of the theorist’s (...) influence scarcely admits it. Her chapter titles—“Leavis and the Growth of English Studies,” “English as a University Subject,” “Literary ‘Theory’ and Constituting the Canon”—indicate not only the range of issues connected with F. R. Leavis’s name but also his significant involvement in their genesis.Samson’s book portrays Leavis as the efficient cause in the establishment of university English as a critical, or more accurately a diagnostic, enterprise. At an early professional cost (he was denied faculty appointment at Cambridge for five years), Leavis helped cut English curricula free from philology, languages, and classical studies; a responsibility Samson partially excuses by connecting Leavis’s motivating principles back through Matthew Arnold to Dickens and Carlyle and even to one “Reverend H. J. Rose, a leading figure in the founding of King’s College, London... declaring in a sermon delivered in 1826 that literature teaches ‘the wisdom of men better and wiser than ourselves’ and prepares for the ‘examination of those moral and intellectual truths which are not only the worthiest exercise of our reason, but most concern our future destiny’” (p. 12).This moralism Samson sees as the central and redeeming principle in Leavis’s system. Specifically, she identifies the Condition of England debate—over the state of culture and economics in a “‘technologico-Benthamite world’” (p. 63)—as the key to Leavis’s literary criticism, his influential journal Scrutiny, and his wide-ranging reform endeavors. “Literature mattered to Leavis because he believed it to be the means, above all others, of combating the ills of a mechanised, constantly changing world and of restoring the heritage of those dispossessed by the machine” (p. 3).Professionally asserting the primacy of criticism over scholarship, then in his writings making no distinction between the literary and the social, Leavis ultimately refused any separation between literature and life. Samson carefully [End Page 360] traces this development in Leavis’s general theory in order to bring out its easily-overlooked implication for the social position of a literary academic. She quotes this crucial passage from Leavis: “The critic... is as much concerned with the health of the mind as any doctor with the health of the body. To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values... For the arts are inevitably and quite apart from any intentions of the artist an appraisal of existence” (pp. 15–16). No longer a mere scholar, or the type of irrelevant empiric Leavis so hated in the person of C. P. Snow, the Leavisite theorist is the grand physician diagnosing all society’s ills. Literary artists and their writings, so far from forming the most important part of literature, become perfectly irrelevant—“quite apart”—with the medicocritic prescribing universally “of existence.”Samson’s treatment of Leavis is analytical, though enjoyably and consistently biographical. For instance, her final, and largest, chapter shows the moralist model of the literary critic (the “judge of values”) in action by detailing the history of Leavis’s complete reversal of estimation between T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Leavis originally gave Eliot “hero-worship” (p. 162) and dismissed Lawrence as “mechanical” (p. 157). But concurrent with Eliot’s progress to Anglo-Catholicism, Leavis’s moral judgments overturned and, true to type, he increasingly censured Eliot’s writings by diagnosing problems in the man, while he grew to idolize Lawrence; ironically for “rescuing life from... inner mechanisation” (p. 169).Such inconstancy, here expressed in every word, Samson sees as an historical mark of character which places Leavis among the “Great Men of Ideas” (p. 172).Stephen OgdenSimon Fraser UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:F. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists)Stephen OgdenF. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists), by Anne Samson; x & 196 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992, $45.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.If it is an overstatement to say that the waves of change currently disturbing the teaching of English in universities originated from the splash made by F. R. Leavis at Cambridge beginning in 1933, Anne Samson’s account of the theorist’s (...) influence scarcely admits it. Her chapter titles—“Leavis and the Growth of English Studies,” “English as a University Subject,” “Literary ‘Theory’ and Constituting the Canon”—indicate not only the range of issues connected with F. R. Leavis’s name but also his significant involvement in their genesis.Samson’s book portrays Leavis as the efficient cause in the establishment of university English as a critical, or more accurately a diagnostic, enterprise. At an early professional cost (he was denied faculty appointment at Cambridge for five years), Leavis helped cut English curricula free from philology, languages, and classical studies; a responsibility Samson partially excuses by connecting Leavis’s motivating principles back through Matthew Arnold to Dickens and Carlyle and even to one “Reverend H. J. Rose, a leading figure in the founding of King’s College, London... declaring in a sermon delivered in 1826 that literature teaches ‘the wisdom of men better and wiser than ourselves’ and prepares for the ‘examination of those moral and intellectual truths which are not only the worthiest exercise of our reason, but most concern our future destiny’” (p. 12).This moralism Samson sees as the central and redeeming principle in Leavis’s system. Specifically, she identifies the Condition of England debate—over the state of culture and economics in a “‘technologico-Benthamite world’” (p. 63)—as the key to Leavis’s literary criticism, his influential journal Scrutiny, and his wide-ranging reform endeavors. “Literature mattered to Leavis because he believed it to be the means, above all others, of combating the ills of a mechanised, constantly changing world and of restoring the heritage of those dispossessed by the machine” (p. 3).Professionally asserting the primacy of criticism over scholarship, then in his writings making no distinction between the literary and the social, Leavis ultimately refused any separation between literature and life. Samson carefully [End Page 360] traces this development in Leavis’s general theory in order to bring out its easily-overlooked implication for the social position of a literary academic. She quotes this crucial passage from Leavis: “The critic... is as much concerned with the health of the mind as any doctor with the health of the body. To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values... For the arts are inevitably and quite apart from any intentions of the artist an appraisal of existence” (pp. 15–16). No longer a mere scholar, or the type of irrelevant empiric Leavis so hated in the person of C. P. Snow, the Leavisite theorist is the grand physician diagnosing all society’s ills. Literary artists and their writings, so far from forming the most important part of literature, become perfectly irrelevant—“quite apart”—with the medicocritic prescribing universally “of existence.”Samson’s treatment of Leavis is analytical, though enjoyably and consistently biographical. For instance, her final, and largest, chapter shows the moralist model of the literary critic (the “judge of values”) in action by detailing the history of Leavis’s complete reversal of estimation between T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Leavis originally gave Eliot “hero-worship” (p. 162) and dismissed Lawrence as “mechanical” (p. 157). But concurrent with Eliot’s progress to Anglo-Catholicism, Leavis’s moral judgments overturned and, true to type, he increasingly censured Eliot’s writings by diagnosing problems in the man, while he grew to idolize Lawrence; ironically for “rescuing life from... inner mechanisation” (p. 169).Such inconstancy, here expressed in every word, Samson sees as an historical mark of character which places Leavis among the “Great Men of Ideas” (p. 172).Stephen OgdenSimon Fraser UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In chapter one I will try to reconstruct a plot, or a hidden agenda, in the discussion in ethics between the beginning of the twentieth century and 1958, the year of a decisive turning point in ethics, both Anglo-Saxon and Continental, and strangely enough also the year of the beginning of the end of the Cold War, of post-Tridentine Catholicism, and perhaps something else. My hypothesis will be that there are two similar starting points for the Anglo-Saxon (...) and the Continental twentieth-century discussion, the philosophies of Henry Sidgwick and Friedrich Nietzsche, both expressions of some kind of ethical scepticism, and that a third, somewhat analogous starting-point could be found in Émile Durkheim, the proponent of the dream of the morale laïque. I will discuss how far the diagnosis formulated by Karl-Otto Apel of a kind of ‘parallel convergence' between existentialism and analytic philosophy, based on the shared division of facts and values that eventually justified two kinds of 'decisionism' is useful in making sense of the agenda of the discussion. In the second chapter I will discuss the reasons for two parallel U-turns around 1958 which brought back traditional schools of normative ethics, 'deontologism' and utilitarianism, as well as the reasons for criticism to both schools from the heterogeneous alignment of virtue ethics. In the third chapter I will discuss the remarkable phenomenon of the emergence, starting with the Sixties or the early Seventies, of ‘applied’ ethics. I examine the reasons, both theoretical and political, for the revival, the point to which applied ethics may look as a grand return of a casuistic and natural law way of thinking, or in Alan Donagan’s words a case of “reverse subversion” of the modern secular world by traditional Scholastic ways of thinking, and the difficult coexistence between general normative ethics and procedures for settling issues in a ‘reasonable’ way while dissent on issues of principle is as alive as ever. Then I try to draw a provisional moral. My suggestions are that (i) casuistry is more alive than ever; (ii) natural law thinking is more alive than ever; (iii) moral dilemmas never arise; (iv) moral dissent is treatable, with the right strategy; (v) practical philosophy does not need the same degree of exactness as the theoretical sciences but this is no obstacle to its working in practice. (shrink)

The socio-historical events and libertarian cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s shaped the Catholic mother-daughter relationship for the women in this feminist genealogical study. This study is based on interviews with 36 Anglo-Australian Catholic women – 13 sets of mothers and daughters – as well as dialogue between my mother and myself about family photographs. Women’s stories of secondary school days tell of the formation of lady-like identities circumscribed through uniform regulations, the cult of the Virgin Mary and (...) ceremonies of everyday Catholic school life. The abject maternal body resurfaces in adolescence with the flow of menstrual blood, and the heralding sexuality of young women is circumscribed through patriarchal institutions such as Catholicism. Amid their silenced and contested dialogue, although years apart, the stories between mothers and daughters in this study drew parallels. (shrink)

The two most antagonistic schools in contemporary Western philosophy are Existentialism and Logical Positivism. They have nothing in common but the name of philosophy, and even that they deny each other. There is some kind of discussion going on between even such distant schools as Pragmatism and neo-Thomism; Existentialists and Logical Positivists have nothing but sarcasms for each other. To philosophers familiar only with the Anglo-Saxon scene Existentialism must appear negligible. In the Mediterranean countries, on the other hand, where (...) philosophy is a much more popular pastime, Existentialism has an unparalleled vogue and Logical Positivism is considered a horrible aberration from the naturally speculative course of philosophy. In South America whose philosophical life we are apt to underrate Logical Positivism seems to be known to almost nobody, whereas Existentialism, mostly in its German and anti-religious shape, has become, quite paradoxically, the rallying point of “Liberalism,” liberalism, in Spanish countries, being above all anti-catholicism. Although, ironically enough, both Logical Positivism and modern Existentialism originated in German speaking countries, the split between the two goes vaguely parallel with, and may have found some ready echo in, the different cultural inheritance of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin races. Hence, the subject of this paper would seem far-fetched to those steeped in their own national tradition. There is, however, a growing consciousness of the “one world” function of philosophy, particularly with regard to Eastern and Western philosophy. Would it not be a prerequisite of this more ambitious enterprise to gain a clear conception about the most radical split in our own contemporary Western philosophy, the split between Logical Positivism and Existentialism? This paper is an attempt to establish a perspective permitting a just evaluation of the two philosophies. (shrink)

The Oxford or Tractarian Movement and later Ritualists and Anglo-Catholics schooled numerous converts in elements of the Catholic faith. Foremost among them was John Henry Cardinal Newman, one of the original founders of the Oxford Movement. Converts numbered in the hundreds and included another cardinal, Henry Edward Manning, the second Archbishop of Westminster, the religious foundress Cornelia Connelly, the priest novelist Robert Hugh Benson and later literary figures such as G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh and Mgr Ronald Knox. American historian, (...) Patrick Allitt, has argued that on both sides of the Atlantic converts dominated Catholic intellectual life between 1840 and 1960. While such 'Tractarian' converts have indeed greatly influenced Catholic life, many 'Tractarians' who never converted have also had a considerable impact on English-speaking Catholicism. C.S. Lewis is an obvious example. But there have been others, including author Charles Williams, poet T.S. Eliot and theologians John Macquarrie and Michael Ramsey. The author Dorothy L. Sayers also deserves to be counted among their number. (shrink)

Understanding Peirce requires dealing with Peirce's religious concerns, which are increasingly recognized as being as philosophically relevant as his scientific concerns. In recent times, even Peirce's regular religious practice in his Milford years has been documented (L 244), including, at least occasionally, week-day Eucharist services, which were "the hallmark of Tractarian or Anglo-Catholic parishes". -/- I have argued elsewhere that for Peirce, scientific activity is a genuine religious enterprise, perhaps even the religious activity par excellence, and that to divorce (...) religion from science is antithetical to both the scientific spirit and the genuine Peirce. In this vein, I have also held that Peirce's framework for the relations between science and religion, reason and faith, seems congenial to the Roman Catholic tradition. Perhaps the strongest conflict between Peirce's view on science and Roman Catholic faith may be epitomized in the dogma of papal infallibility, declared by the Vatican Council I and Pius IX on July of 1870, only eleven weeks before Peirce's first visit to Rome. Since the first moment, papal infallibility has been a permanent object of mockery and derision in the cultivated circles of Anglo-American intellectuals. As the late Rorty wrote, Pius's decision "was making Catholicism look ridiculous". -/- In this broad framework, the aim of my paper is to provide some context for Peirce's letter about papal infallibility, as the doctrine was presented by his former colleague George M. Searle in his 1895 book "Plain Facts for Fair Minds", which Peirce came across almost by chance. According to Peirce, there is a deep contrast between the genuine scientific attitude and the putative metaphysical notion of 'absolute truth' that was behind Searle's defense of infallibility. "I would with all my heart join the ancient church of Rome if I could. But your book," —Peirce writes to Searle (L 397) — "is an awful warning against doing so." -/- In order to explain Peirce's position, the paper is arranged into four sections: 1) a brief presentation of George M. Searle and his book Plain Facts for Fair Minds; 2) a description of Peirce's letter to Searle; 3) Peirce's fallibilism and infallibility; and 4) an attempt to guess how Searle might have responded to Peirce. I will try to collect some of Peirce's texts and to quote them extensively, since it is possible to learn a lot from the exploration of this debate. (shrink)

Latin America is not one, but many. It exists in six different regions with differing forms of Catholicism. This Catholicism had acted from a position of power. The challenge of modernity and independence movements made people anti-Church if not anti-Christian. New missionary priests from North America and Europe changed the face of Latin American Catholicism after the second world war. Yet Catholicism is not deeply rooted in Latin America and thus has had to resort to political (...) means for survival. In the pluralistic world of the future, Catholicism in Latin America will have to live with change. (shrink)

This volume explores how Catholicism began and continues to open its doors to the wider world and to other confessions in embracing ecumenism, thanks to the vision and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. It explores such themes as the twentieth century context preceding the council; parallels between Vatican II and previous councils; its distinctively pastoral character; the legacy of the council in relation to issues such as church-world dynamics, as well as to ethics, social justice, economic activity. Several (...) chapters discuss the role of women in the church before, during, and since the council. Others discern inculturation in relation to Vatican II. The book also contains a wide and original range of ecumenical considerations of the council, including by and in relation to Free Church, Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican perspectives. Finally, it considers the Council’s ongoing promise and remaining challenges with regard to ecumenical issues, including a groundbreaking essay on the future of ecumenical dialogue by Cardinal Walter Kasper. (shrink)

This article focuses on the genesis of liberal Catholicism in England from 1822 to roughly 1848, with particular reference to Cardinal Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Newman’s reflections re...

The so‐called “Kierkegaard Renaissance,” which took place in Germany during the interwar period, was not merely the province of figures such as Karl Barth and Martin Heidegger. A number of Catholic thinkers were involved as well. Indeed, after the well‐known Kierkegaard scholar Theodor Haecker converted to Catholicism in 1921, Kierkegaard's thought became a popular topic among the group of Catholic intellectuals known as the Hochland Circle, which included the priest and author Romano Guardini. Such interest, in turn, prompted French (...) theologian Yves Congar to explore the use of Kierkegaard for the renewal of the modern church. Moreover, a trio of notable Jesuit thinkers also entered the discussion: Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. In short, as this chapter will demonstrate, Kierkegaard inspired and provoked Catholic thinkers in a variety of areas, from theological anthropology and Christology to ecclesiology and the question of modernity. (shrink)

In Anglo‐American Postmodernity I call attention to recent intellectual shifts in epistemology (from foundationalism to holism), philosophy of language (from reference to use), and metaphysics (from reductionism to nonreductionism), and pursue the consequences of these changes for science, theology, and ethics. Wesley Robbins criticizes the book for making overly optimistic claims for the intellectual status of theology; Philip Clayton criticizes it for giving up the quest for general standards of rational progress. Both criticisms miss the mark in not taking (...) on the account of rationality that I have developed from resources in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. (shrink)

International migration is increasing not only in absolute terms but also as a percentage of the global population. In 2019, international migrants made up 3.5 per cent of the global population, compared to 2.8 per cent in the year 2000. Over the past two decades, a philosophical literature has emerged to investigate what justice requires with respect to these vast migrant flows. My article criticizes much of this philosophical work. Building on the work of Charles Mills, I argue that the (...) terms in which many Anglo-American philosophers presently debate migration justice neglect and even obscure consideration of the ways in which current migration flows may be shaped by Euro-American colonialism and neo-colonialism. Such exclusions produce systematic biases in much of our philosophical literature. To develop less biased understandings of migration justice, I propose that Anglo-American philosophers should revise our methods and our conceptual frameworks to enable exploring the possible extent and ethical implications of colonial and neo-colonial influence. This is one part of the much larger task of decolonizing our political philosophy. (shrink)

The doctor's use of deception in appropriate circumstances has commonly been considered a necessity of the medical art. Resistance to full and frank communication is typical of many traditionally Catholic countries, and particularly of Italy, a western country where Catholicism remains particularly influential. The Catholic teaching on truth and lies, and the problem of telling the truth to a severely ill patient is discussed. It is suggested that the contemporary Catholic model of gradually telling a terminal patient the truth, (...) which looks reasonable and feasible in theory, is rarely followed in practice, as in the majority of cases the truth is not told tout court. Problems stem from the way in which medicine is currently practiced in Italy; from the synergism between Catholicism and the medical tradition's grounded paternalism; and from the ambiguity of the term ?hope?. Catholic ethics in fact recommends that the truth must be told without destroying hope, but the Catholic meaning of ?hope? is very different from its meaning in current language. (shrink)

Since the French Revolution the relationship between the Catholic church and modernity has always been very troublesome. First I will describe how the church saw its own position with regard to modernity and how its stance evolved. In a second stage, I will then focus on how modernity `framed' Catholicism: this I will refer to as the modernity and modernization of Catholicism. The insights obtained will be used in a third part in order to get a better understanding (...) of the present and future situation of the church. I will round off with some conclusions concerning Catholic intellectuals and Catholic intellectual traditions from 1800 onwards. (shrink)

Contemporary (post-1945) liberalism functions analogously to Roman Catholicism in the decades after 1443. Both ideologies, in their respective periods, represent the hegemonic ideology of Western civilization, despite the fact that both comprise a miscellany of competing belief systems. Both ideologies are dominated by a single hegemonic power—the United States and the Renaissance papacy, respectively—which strives for doctrinal stability. All who reject official “doctrine,” however, are rendered liable to violent suppression. In this, papal Catholicism and American liberalism display an (...) ultra-conservative outlook; but they also evince a powerfully millenarian streak, as evidenced by their dual proclamations of the “end of history” and their zealous missionary responses to macro-historical events in the final decades of the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. For ideologues of both regimes, those events speak to an ultimate harmony of truth and value that only serves to entrench their own dogmatism. This, however, has dire consequences when it comes to war, as can be seen in the “crusading” character of contemporary liberal warfare. Ultimately, the Renaissance papacy proves unable to maintain its monopoly on Christian doctrine; and one has to wonder if a similar fate may befall America's perceived role as the champion of liberalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to rebuild the relationship between the Seinsfrage and Catholicism in Heidegger’s meditation and to shed light on his critique to Christianity as a philosophical necessity rooted in his broader critique of modernity in the context of the Black Notebooks. In order to reach these purposes, this contribution will be articulated in two parts: in the first one, I will rebuild Heidegger’s relationship to Catholicism and in the second one, I will focus on Black Notebooks as (...) important tools in understanding Heidegger’s critique to Catholicism, a critique that is built on three levels: historical, speculative and political. The essay will show how the Schwarze Hefte illuminate Heidegger’s attempts to answer the question of Being in an incessant tension with the coeval seven major treatises on the Seinsgeschichte, in which Christianity, metaphysics and nihilism are inextricably tied together. (shrink)

This article systematically surveys the history of Anglo-American philosophy in Taiwan since the late nineteenth century. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it argues that pragmatism remained influential given the dominance of continental philosophy in Japanese colonized Taiwan, where the universal values assumed by pragmatists were used to resist the Empire’s ideology, after WWII, immigrated Chinese scholars brought in more novelty to Taiwanese philosophy than the Vienna circle diasporas brought to their Anglo-American counterparts, in which liberal scholars’ emphasis on science (...) and democracy challenged Chiang’s dictatorship and Chinese nationalism, and analytic philosophy thrived with the advance of democratizing in the 1980s, which, in turn, diversified the philosophy in 1990s Taiwan. Accordingly, Anglo-American philosophy was never confined to the academic ivory tower but had positive impacts on Taiwan’s centennial social transformation. (shrink)

(1996). Catholicism, the peace of Westphalia, and the origins of modern international law. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 734-739.

Tianzhu Shiyi is the single most important proselytizing work of Matteo Ricci, the legendary founder of the early modern Jesuit China mission. Controversial since the early seventeenth century, it has been both praised and condemned for Ricci’s claim of a monotheistic affinity between Catholicism and Confucianism. Ricci’s gesture of friendship to Confucianism won him many Chinese friends and posthumously made him famous or notorious in Europe, but as this essay contends, it was never more than a tactical cover for (...) him during his lifetime. Since the real purpose of his cultural adaptation was his unobtrusive engagement with the ancient Chinese philosophical idea of tianren heyi, what is ultimately so instructive about Tianzhu Shiyi is the light cast on Ricci’s intricate relationship with his Chinese friends and on the ironic twists and turns of his complex legacy. (shrink)

The term postmodern is generally used to refer to current work in philosophy, literary criticism, and feminist thought inspired by Continental thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida. In this book, Nancey Murphy appropriates the term to describe emerging patterns in Anglo-American thought and to indicate their radical break from the thought patterns of Enlightened modernity.The book examines the shift from modern to postmodern in three areas: epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphysics. Murphy contends that whole clusters of (...) terms in each of these disciplines have taken on new uses in the past fifty years and that these changes have radical consequences for all areas of academia, especially in philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and ethics. (shrink)

La nature du régime idéal de société est la question la plus profonde que pose la philosophie politique. Beaucoup de théories modernes s'y méprennent car elle cherchent à placer le régime idéal dans le monde à la manière d'une utopie. Même la notion de démocratie est devenue un substitut pour le régime idéal. Traditionnellement, l'Eglise s'est tenue indifférente aux modalités constitutionnelles des divers Etats car cela ne concerne pas l'Eglise. La Révélation a servi à maintenir le politique dans sa sphère (...) propre, loin des choses qui n'appartiennent pas à César. La nature du régime idéal sert donc aussi à préciser ce qu'on est en droit d'attendre du politique et ce qui le dépasse. (shrink)

This volume explores how Catholicism began and continues to open its doors to the wider world and to other confessions in embracing ecumenism, thanks to the vision and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. It explores such themes as the twentieth century context preceding the council; parallels between Vatican II and previous councils; its distinctively pastoral character; the legacy of the council in relation to issues such as church-world dynamics, as well as to ethics, social justice, economic activity. Several (...) chapters discuss the role of women in the church before, during, and since the council. Others discern inculturation in relation to Vatican II. The book also contains a wide and original range of ecumenical considerations of the council, including by and in relation to Free Church, Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican perspectives. Finally, it considers the Council’s ongoing promise and remaining challenges with regard to ecumenical issues, including a groundbreaking essay on the future of ecumenical dialogue by Cardinal Walter Kasper. (shrink)

ABSTRACT During the middle decades of the twentieth century, American Catholic scientists experienced a sense of crisis owing to the paucity of scientific research performed either by individual Catholics or in Catholic institutions of higher learning. In 1953 the Rev. Patrick Yancey, S.J., the chairman of the biology department at a small Jesuit college and a member of the newly created National Science Board, led efforts to establish a national organization of Catholic scientists. Subsequently known as the Albertus Magnus Guild, (...) this organization attempted both to improve Catholics’ scientific performance and to refute the widely held notion among non‐Catholic Americans that Catholicism was inherently hostile to science. By reflecting on Yancey’s career as an educator and scientist and on the history of the guild, this article seeks to deepen our understanding of twentieth‐century Catholic science education and reveal the ways in which Catholic scientists approached the issues surrounding the interaction of science and religion. (shrink)

Ford, Norman M Throughout history Catholics held the commonly accepted views of the times regarding human reproduction, and these views changed as advances were made in scientific knowledge. Hence, it would be best to begin with Aristotle's views on human reproduction.

In this paper I focus on one of the fundamental democratic freedoms – freedom of conscience – and see to what extent Catholicism is compatible or consistent with it and, by extension, with democracy in civil or political institutions. I draw primarily on recent ecclesial statements on the issue, but also on the philosophical views of Jacques Maritain. First, I outline briefly the view of democracy and freedom of conscience that putatively undergirds modern democratic societies, as well as the (...) understanding of this freedom in Catholic thought. Next, I present the claim that there are some important differences in the way in which this freedom is described in Catholicism as distinct from dominant, secular democratic views. Third, I suggest that these differences, while real, do not sustain the claim of a radical difference in principle between freedom of conscience in recent Catholic thought and that found in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I conclude that not only is the Catholic approach to freedom of conscience compatible with democracy in civil institutions, but democratic government may be an important way to develop values recognized by Catholicism as fundamental. (shrink)

Glorification of students, neo-utilitarianism, secular humanism, and a crisis in confidence have all contributed to the declining influence of Catholicism on the Catholic campus.

One of the most important problems for contemporary Catholicism is its dialogue with the contemporary world. In recent years, the leaders of the Catholic Church have been speaking of this with increasing frequency. The Catholic journal La Civiltà cattolica has even written of the need to found a "theology of dialogue" . The recent papal encyclicals - "Mater et Magistra" , "Pacem in Terris" , and "Ecclesiam suam" - express the effort of the leaders of Catholicism to establish (...) more intimate contacts with the world in which the religious people of today find themselves. It is therefore no accident that this problem of dialogue was taken up in discussions at the Second Ecumenical Council and particularly at its third session held in the autumn of 1964. (shrink)