With contributions by scholars from different religions and specializations, this volume explores the potential of nondualism as a fundamentally unifying concept. In every case, we find that nondualism is universal in its relevance yet distinctive and original in its contribution.

Watson argues that living entities do not have intrinsic or primary rights, such as the right to existence, unless they are capable of fulfilling reciprocal duties in a self-conscious manner. I suggest that (1) Watson’s “reciprocity framework” for rights and duties is excessively anthropocentric, (2) that it is founded on the incorrect assumption that the Golden Rule refers to mutual rather than individual duties, and (3) that Watson arbitrarily equates moral rights with primary rights. Since “intrinsic” rights (...) are, in effect, assigned rights, the assignment of rights to a given entity is viewed as a function of its perceived value. Thus, in emphasizing differences between man and other living entities, Watson chooses Cartesian values in assigning rights. Conversely, the ecological and evolutionary relatedness of living things forms the basis for considering rights within the naturalist tradition. (shrink)

The significance of consciousness in modern science is discussed by leading authorities from a variety of disciplines. Presenting a wide-ranging survey of current thinking on this important topic, the contributors address such issues as the status of different aspects of consciousness; the criteria for using the concept of consciousness and identifying instances of it; the basis of consciousness in functional brain organization; the relationship between different levels of theoretical discourse; and the functions of consciousness.

Anthony Everett gives a philosophical defence of the common-sense view that there are no such things as fictional people, places, and things. He argues that our talk and thought about such fictional objects takes place within the scope of a pretense, and that we gain little but lose much by accepting fictional realism.

Both critique and an appropriation of a large and diverse body of work, Home and Beyond is a major contribution to contemporary Husserl scholarship.

The question of modernity has provoked a vigorous debate in the work of thinkers from Hegel to Habermas. Our own self-styled postmodern age has seen no end to this debate, which now receives a major and wide-ranging intervention from the theorist and critic Anthony J. Cascardi. Offering an historical account of the origins and transformations of the rational subject or self as it is represented in Descartes, Cervantes, Pascal, Hobbes and the Don Juan myth, he carries his argument across (...) the fields of epistemology, literature, political science, religion and psychology. The modern subject proves to be positioned within conflicting discourses, in a culture characterised by its 'detotalised totality'. Max Weber's concept of 'world disenchantment' enables Cascardi to make a searching critique of modernity's sense of its absoluteness, divorced from an archaic, 'enchanted' world. He advocates in its place a more fruitful relationship between historical analysis and theoretical speculation, offering constructive new alternatives to current orthodoxy regarding subjectivity and modernity. (shrink)

Moral Emotions builds upon the philosophical theory of persons begun in _Phenomenology and Mysticism _and marks a new stage of phenomenology. Author Anthony J. Steinbock finds personhood analyzing key emotions, called moral emotions. _Moral Emotions _offers a systematic account of the moral emotions, described here as pride, shame, and guilt as emotions of self-givenness; repentance, hope, and despair as emotions of possibility; and trusting, loving, and humility as emotions of otherness. The author argues these reveal basic structures of interpersonal (...) experience. By exhibiting their own kind of cognition and evidence, the moral emotions not only help to clarify the meaning of person, they reveal novel concepts of freedom, critique, and normativity. As such, they are able to engage our contemporary social imaginaries at the impasse of modernity and postmodernity. (shrink)

What is the relationship between contemporary intellectual culture and the European Enlightenment it claims to reject? In Consequences of Enlightenment, Anthony Cascardi revisits the arguments advanced in Horkheimer and Adorno's seminal work Dialectic of Enlightenment. Cascardi argues against the view that postmodern culture has rejected Enlightenment beliefs and explores instead the continuities contemporary theory shares with Kant's failed ambition to bring the project of Enlightenment to completion. He explores the link between aesthetics and politics in thinkers as diverse as (...) Habermas, Derrida, Arendt, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Wittgenstein in order to reverse the tendency to see works of art simply in terms of the worldly practices among which they are situated. (shrink)

Anthony J. Lisska presents a new analysis of Thomas Aquinas's theory of perception. While much work has been undertaken on Aquinas's texts, little has been devoted principally to his theory of perception and less still on a discussion of inner sense. The thesis of intentionality serves as the philosophical backdrop of this analysis while incorporating insights from Brentano and from recent scholarship. The principal thrust is on the importance of inner sense, a much-overlooked area of Aquinas's philosophy of mind, (...) with special reference to the vis cogitativa. Approaching the texts of Aquinas from contemporary analytic philosophy, Lisska suggests a modest 'innate' or 'structured' interpretation for the role of this inner sense faculty. He argues that were it not for the vis cogitativa, Aquinas would be unable to account for an awareness of the principal ontological category in his metaphysics. (shrink)

Aquinas needs no introduction as one of the greatest minds of the middle ages. Highly influential on the development of Christian doctrine, his ideas are still of fundamental philosophical importance. This new critique of his natural law theory discusses the theory's background in Aristotle and advances new interpretations of contemporary legal issues which hark back to Aquinas.

Max Weber’s sociological theories of secularization have vastly influenced the study of Protestant belief. _Protestant Modernity_ offers a multifaceted understanding of secularization within the broader context of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism. Anthony J. Carroll reconstructs Weber’s original writings to highlight Protestant motifs, reviews current secularization theories, and settles debates about contested meanings of secularization in this volume that will be essential reading for students and scholars of theology and the sociology of religion.

Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rzbihn Baql—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that (...) contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience. (shrink)

Providing a definitive interpretation of many ideas in Aristotle’s moral and political works has proved to be a difficult task for his commentators, both ancient and modern. The relation between the individual human good and the communal good is a particularly complex problem, especially because of its association with complicated notions of human happiness, practical wisdom, and contemplative and political virtue. This chapter considers the question of the superiority of the common good over individual happiness in light of these accompanying (...) ideas. The many conflicting explanations of these doctrines are the result of Aristotle’s method of providing only general principles and a broad outline of moral concepts. That there may never be a consensus on the exact meaning of many of Aristotle’s ideas may not be a weakness in his work but rather a strength, which he himself had envisaged, since he allows the practically wise person to determine the best course of action in order to attain human goodness. (shrink)

This paper has two motivations. First, I want to delineate structurally the dimensions of phenomenological method: not merely the static and genetic methods, but along with them I want to introduce the new ideas of generativity and generative method (Section 2). Second, because these dimensions cannot merely be treated structurally, I want to examine their dynamic interrelation, that is, the system of motivations obtaining between them. I will do this by elaborating the phenomenological concept of "leading clue" (Section 3). Finally, (...) I will conclude by addressing the relation of phenomenology to generativity (Section 4). (shrink)

Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rzbihn Baql—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that (...) contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience. (shrink)

This major new work by Anthony J. Steinbock, a leading authority in Phenomenology and Husserl Studies, explores an interrelated set of problems in Husserl's phenomenology and provides an excellent example of phenomenology in practice, demonstrating how its methods and resources shed light on philosophical problems.

Addressing the matter of attention from a phenomenological perspective as it bears on the problem of becoming aware, I draw on Edmund Husserl''s analyses and distinctions that mark his genetic phenomenology. I describe several experiential levels of affective force and modes of attentiveness, ranging from what I call dispositional orientation and passive discernment to so-called higher levels of attentiveness in cognitive interest, judicative objectivation, and conceptualization. These modes of attentiveness can be understood as motivating a still more active mode of (...) reflective attention, i.e., philosophical attentiveness, and to this extent, even it would be subject to varying influences of affection. What role, if any, does affection play in a peculiar kind of reflective attention that is phenomenological? I conclude by briefly considering phenomenological reflective attentiveness and its relation to affection. (shrink)

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics had a profound influence on generations of later philosophers, not only in the ancient era but also in the medieval period and beyond. In this book, Anthony Celano explores how medieval authors recast Aristotle's Ethics according to their own moral ideals. He argues that the moral standard for the Ethics is a human one, which is based upon the ethical tradition and the best practices of a given society. In the Middle Ages, this human standard was (...) replaced by one that is universally applicable, since its foundation is eternal immutable divine law. Celano resolves the conflicting accounts of happiness in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, demonstrates the importance of the virtue of phronesis, and shows how the medieval view of moral reasoning alters Aristotle's concept of moral wisdom. (shrink)

I argue that, despite their extensive disagreements at the level of first-order ethics, there are equally extensive agreements between Sartre and Kant at the metaethical level. Following a brief exposition of the principal metaethical similarities, I offer a defense of Sartre’s general moral theory against the more rigid first-order consequences which Kant claims to be able to assert.

I argue that, despite their extensive disagreements at the level of first-order ethics, there are equally extensive agreements between Sartre and Kant at the metaethical level. Following a brief exposition of the principal metaethical similarities, I offer a defense of Sartre’s general moral theory against the more rigid first-order consequences which Kant claims to be able to assert.

It has been proposed that performance in the think – no think task represents a laboratory analogue of the voluntary form of memory repression. The central prediction of this repression hypothesis is that performance in the TNT task will be influenced by emotional characteristics of the material to be remembered. This prediction was tested in two experiments by asking participants to learn paired associates in which the first item was either emotionally positive or emotionally negative . The second word was (...) always emotionally neutral . Consistent with the repression hypothesis, significant memory suppression was observed in both experiments following ‘no think’ instructions for memories associated with emotionally negative material. No suppression was observed for memories associated with emotionally positive information. Implications of these findings for the relationship between performance in the TNT task and the controversial notion of memory repression are considered. (shrink)

Following Aristotle's distinction between theoretical and practical rationality, Max Weber holds that beliefs about the world and actions within the world must follow procedures consistently and be appropriately formed if they are to count as rational. Here, I argue that Weber's account of theoretical and practical rationality, as disclosed through his conception of the disenchantment of the world, displays a confessional architecture consistently structured by a nineteenth century German Protestant outlook. I develop this thesis through a review of the concepts (...) of rationality and disenchantment in Weber's major works and conclude that this conceptual framework depicts a Protestant account of modernity. (shrink)

Leading phenomenologist Tony Steinbock intervenes in contemporary discussion around the concept of the gift, providing a critical reading of the main figures on the problem of the gift and offering a new perspective on the gift, situating it in the emotional sphere, specifically in relation to loving and humility.

The growing sophistication of philosophical speculation together with the increasingly contentious claims of the thirteenth-century masters of Arts and Theology is reflected in the literary career of Robert Kilwardby. As a young Parisian Arts master, Kilwardby devoted much of his energy to explaining the works of Aristotle, recently introduced into the University’s curriculum. Although particularly interested in the logical treatises, Kilwardby most likely commented upon the so-called ‘Ethica vetus et nova’, which were part of the Arts curriculum in the first (...) half of the thirteenth century. Kilwardby’s commentary, while quickly superseded by the more complicated questions on the entire Ethics, represents an extremely important transitional phase in the understanding of Aristotle’s moral philosophy. Kilwardby’s careful reading of Aristotle’s text allowed him to reject the usual religious interpretation of his contemporaries. His awareness of the limitations of moral science marks a decisive step away from the earlier reading of the Nicomachean Ethics (EN), which viewed Aristotle’s doctrine of the human good to be identical with the religious ideal of union with God. As a result, Kilwardby’s commentary on the EN demonstrated how Aristotle’s ethics could no longer be understood as a slight variant of Christian moral theology. (shrink)

Literature and philosophy have long shared an interest in questions of truth, value, and form. And yet, from ancient times to the present, they have often sharply diverged, both in their approach to these questions and in their relationship to one another. Moreover, the vast differences among individual writers, historical periods, and languages pose challenges for anyone wishing to understand the relationship between them. This Introduction provides a synthetic and original guide to this vast terrain. It uncovers the deep interests (...) that literature and philosophy share while offering a lucid account of their differences. It sheds new light on many standing debates and offers students and scholars of literary criticism, literary theory, and philosophy a chance to think freshly about questions that have preoccupied the Western tradition from its very beginnings up until the present. (shrink)

Libertarianism is understood to be a “deontological theory of law” that purportedly applies exclusively to humans. According to some libertarians, however, “one of the greatest weaknesses of libertarian theory” is that there are no provisions outlawing the abuse and torture of animals even though this seems to be one of “the most heinous acts it is possible to do”. Moreover, a few of these libertarians go even further and claim that this legal philosophy of non-aggression should actually be extended to (...) include other animals. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile this seemingly irreconcilable situation by arguing that it is a “continuum problem” and offering a principled, libertarian compromise that resolves the animal rights debate using the non-aggression principle and private property rights. (shrink)

Contemporary aesthetic theory is embedded in a culture dominated by images, and so would seem to require a reversal of Plato's critique of image-making. In adopting this stance, aesthetic theory follows in the footsteps of Nietzsche, whose own project was conceived as a reversal of Platonism. But the critique of Plato that underpins these views is based on a tradition that has misconstrued some of Plato's fundamental ideas. For this reason, the standard critique of Platonism is ineffective as a critical (...) response to the culture of images. Aesthetic theory needs instead to produce a critique of the contemporary image-world based on the view that it emerges from a transformation in the paradigm of production. Images are no longer merely a part of the world that is produced, but themselves have a crucial role in the process of production. (shrink)