Rather than abstracting Augustine’s exploration of time from the whole of the Confessions, as philosophers have been tempted to do, I take up his exploration in terms of what I call a ‘companioning relation’ between philosophy and theology. There is a porosity between religion/theology and philosophy in Augustine that need not be taken as a philosophical or theological deficiency. This reflection speaks of Augustine’s intentions and intuitions in terms of the theme: Wording Time. How might one word this wording, (...) and how might Augustine’s approach to time be thus illuminated? I approach the question in different stages, dealing first with theological, ontological, and psychological considerations. Then I follow the breadth of Augustine’s concerns to a sense of sacred heterogeneities that yet are deeply intimate, and to a sense of time that is in communication with what is above time. In keeping with the musical motif that runs through this reflection, I offer some thoughts on agapē as not only an agapē sonans but an agapē personans. I will sometimes be transcribing Augustine’s themes, sometimes offering variations on them, and sometimes composing improvisations in tune with Augustinian themes. (shrink)

Quid est enim tempus? s’interroge Augustin au livre xi des Confessions. Si l’éternité nous échappe par son inaccessibilité, le temps n’en est pas moins mystérieux. Toute sa substance tient de cette réalité sans étendue, inaccessible elle aussi, qu’est le présent. Et pourtant nous parlons d’un temps plus ou moins long, plus ou moins court. Or, le passé n’est plus, l’avenir n’est pas encore. Ils ne peuvent donc être ni longs ni courts. Et le présent est sans extension. Cette manière (...) d’aborder... (shrink)

“영혼의 분산(distentio animi)”으로서 시간 개념은, 시간이 그것을 측정하는 ‘영혼 안에만’ 존재한다는 진술로 인해, 많은 학자들이 아우구스티누스의 시간론을 ‘주관주의적’인 것으로 해석하도록 만들었다. 하지만 이러한 시간 규정을 제대로 이해하기 위해서는 다양한 요소들이 해명되어야 한다. 무엇보다 먼저 『고백록』 제XI권의 주된 목적은 시간에 대한 체계적인 가르침을 주기 위한 것이라기보다는 시간의 창조주가 지닌 영원성과 자비를 찬미하는 데 있음을 유념해야 한다. 또한이 ‘찬미로서의 고백’의 주체인 아우구스티누스의 영혼(“animus meus”)은 ‘자기 내면보다 더 내밀한’ 신에 의해 관통되고 신으로부터 선사된 신을 향한 사랑에 종속된 주체이면서 동시에 육체를 통해 물질세계 전체를 (...) 향해 개방된 관계적 존재이기도 하다. 한편 시간은 ‘아직 존재하지 않는 것’(미래)에서 ‘간격 없는것’(현재)을 통해 ‘이미 존재하지 않는 것’(과거)이 됨으로써만, 곧 ‘비존재(nonesse)를 지향하는’ 방식으로써만 존재하면서, 인간 영혼과 물질세계 전체를 관통하는 객관적인 보편적 창조질서로 제시된다. 하지만 물질이 시간을 소유할 수 있는 ‘내적 공간’을 결하고 있기 때문에 단지 시간에 의해 소유되는 것과는 달리, 인간 영혼은 단지 시간에 의해 소유될 뿐만 아니라 시간을 자기 안에 대상화하고 동시에 소유할 수 있는 능력도 지니고 있다. 이렇게 역설적인 방식으로써만 존재하는 시간에 대한 대상적 소유는 영혼이 지닌 ‘지향작용(intentio)’과 ‘기억(memoria)’이라는 내적 공간으로 인해 가능한데, 동일한 영혼은 지속적으로 생성하고 소멸하는 사물들의 형상적 변화 안에서 개현되는 시간을 지향하며 그것의 흔적들(affectiones)을 기억에 저장함으로써 시간을 지각하고 측정할 수 있게 되는 것이다. 따라서 시간 존재의 아포리아는 오직 기억 안에서 이뤄진 영혼의 ‘분산지향(distentio)’을 통해서만 그 해결의 실마리가 열리지만, 그 경우에도 시간 그 자체의 본성이 영혼에게 개현되는 것이 아니라 분산지향을 통해 자기를 확장하면서 그것을 측정하는 영혼의 존재 그 자체가 지닌 근본적인 시간성, 곧 무를 지향하는 산란된 존재 방식이 개현될 뿐이다. 인간 영혼이 지닌 이러한 시간적 실존은 물질세계를 통해 그리고 그것을 넘어서 신의 영원성을 지향하고 소유함으로써만 궁극적 안식을 발견하도록 창조된 그의 존재론적 소명을 의미한다. (shrink)

Five interpretations of Augustine's theory of time in Confessions XI are discussed. A distinction is made between the dimensionality, the sequentiality, and the unidirectionality of time; and various arguments are given for the thesis that Augustine regarded time as subjective in only the second and third senses. Then it is shown that for Augustine the heaven of heavens and the memory come as close as creatures can to a Godlike view of time--as extended but non-sequential .

Five interpretations of Augustine's theory of time in Confessions XI are discussed. A distinction is made between the dimensionality, the sequentiality, and the unidirectionality of time; and various arguments are given for the thesis that Augustine regarded time as subjective in only the second and third senses. Then it is shown that for Augustine the heaven of heavens and the memory come as close as creatures can to a Godlike view of time--as extended but non-sequential .

O objetivo deste artigo é examinar o conceito agostiniano de futuro tal como aparece em "Confissões", XI. Buscaremos mostrar que a noção de futuro é tanto uma parte constitutiva quanto uma expressão própria do conceito agostiniano de tempo. Vamos analisar inicialmente a reflexão agostiniana concernente à criação do mundo e à pergunta acerca do ser do tempo. Em seguida, vamos examinar o conceito de instante e sua natureza cinética. A terceira parte tratará da reflexão agostiniana sobre a medida do tempo, (...) isto é, sobre o tempo como objeto de quantificação. Finalmente, voltaremos à noção agostiniana de futuro e sua ligação com o conceito de movimento. The aim of this paper is to examine the emergence of the Augustinian concept of future in "Confessions" XI. We will argue that the notion of future is both an essential element and a specific expression of Augustine's concept of time. Firstly, we will focus on the Augustinian reflections about the creation of the world and the question whether time is a being or not. The notion of instant and its kinetic nature will be the center of our concerns in the second part of the paper. In the third part, we will examine Augustine's reflections about the measurement of time, that is, about time as object of quantification. Finally, we will be back to the notion of future and its connection with the concept of movement. (shrink)

In book XI from the Confessions—the book that famously examines the nature of time-consciousness—Augustine enacts the very essence of the questions he investigates by turning to the performance of a psalm. What he seeks to understand is how a succession of events in time—events that unfold and vanish—can at once be part of a whole, like the notes of a melody that cohere into an expressive phrase. He says:Suppose I am about to recite a psalm which I know. Before (...) I begin, my expectation is directed towards the whole. But when I have begun, the verses from it which I take into the past become the object of my memory. The life of this act of mine is stretched in two ways, into my memory because of the words I have... (shrink)

In Book XI of the Confessions Augustine claims that time has its beginning and ending in eternity. In Being and Time, Heidegger claims that death is the ultimate futural possibility for authentic human existence. These two texts, one from the fourth century, the other from the twentieth century, depict two very different perspectives on what limits the human conception of time. Can these perspectives be reconciled? Severson offers a new reading of the Confessions that affirms Augustine's religious quest (...) for understanding while taking into account the constraints of modern criticism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:INTELLIGO UT CREDAM: ST. AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS* BAPTISM INTO the Catholic Church ended Augustine's Odyssey through the intellectual and spiritual seas of late antiquity. His Confessi.ons tells us how he joined the Manicheans, became attached to astrology, imbibed Aristotle, was attracted to the Academy, learned Epicureanism, discovered the Platonists, and finally came home to Christianity.1 From the first moment he read Cicero, then, Augustine became a seeker of wisdom; (...) few of humanity's questions and concerns failed to move him. His initial conversion to Manicheanism, indeed, was prompted by its alleged ability to give a satisfactory response to the questions raised by human experience. In the same way, his initial aversion to Christianity in part arose from its alleged inability to provide such an account. Still, the nature of Augustine's ultimate conversion to Christianity is not entirely clear. He certainly indicates that a properly tutored biblical faith is the only solution to those questions and concerns which so vexed him: " credo ut intelligam," as Anselm formulated Augustine's understanding. But what is the role of philosophical reflection in this? Does reason work only within the context of faith? Is it merely the scullery maid for explicating the understanding of divine revelation? Or does Augustine say or at least show that unaided human reason has another sphere of operation? Can human reason understand *Earlier versions of this paper were read at the Twentieth International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 11, 1985, and at the University of Dallas Augustine Colloquium, November 22, 1985. I am grateful to Dr. Michael Platt for his helpful comments and suggestions. 1 All references to the Confessions are from J. Gibb and W. Montgomery, The Confessions of Augustine (Cambridge, 1927)..JAMES LEHRBERGER, O. CIST. anything about God, human beings, and the universe before the advent of faith? While Augustinian scholarship has tended to stress the way in which philosophical thought. especially Neo-Platonism, operates within Christian faith, I hope to show that Augustine conceives the " faith and reason " relation in broader terms.2 More specifically, in this paper I hope to show that the Confessions presents reason itself, without revelation, as capable of assaying the possibility of any religious claim to 2 The problem of "faith and reason," or " authority and philosophy," in Augustine's thought has a history of critical analysis reaching back to the last century. The early discussions of this question have been traced by Sister Mary Patricia Garvey, in Saint Augustine: Christian or N ea-Platonist (Milwaukee, 1939), pp. 3-40, and more briefly by J. O'Meara, in St. A.ugustine, A.gainst the Academics, "Ancient Christian Writers," XU (Baltimore, 1950), pp. 19-22. The more recent discussions have failed to produce any consensus. H. A. Wolfson, in The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, I (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 127-140, sees Augustine as illustrating the patristic "double faith" against Manichean credulity. R. Cushman, in "Faith and Reason in the Thought of St. Augustine," Church History, 19, 1950), 271-294, awards the primacy to faith on the basis of the perversity of the will. P. Courcelle, in Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1950), pp. 251-255, understands Augustine to progress from Neo-Platonism to Christianity without abandoning the former. R. Holte, in Beatitude et Sagesse: Saint Augustin et le probleme de la fin de l'homme dans la philosophie ancienne (Paris, 1962), pp. 373-386, considers the cooperation of reason and authority in Augustine's use of Christianity to confront the philosophic problems of his age. J. O'Meara, in The Young Augustine (New York, 1965), pp. 196197, admits a clarification in Augustine's thought but no basic change in his understanding of the primacy of faith over reason. R. O'Connell, in Saint Augusti.ne's Confessions: the Odyssey of a Soul (Cambridge, 1969), insists on a strong Neo-Platonic influence on Augustine's understanding of the human being as the " fallen soul." A. H. Armstrong, in " St. Augustine and Christian Platonism," Plotinian and Christian Studies (London, 1979), Ch. XI, 1-66, argues that the designation "Christian Platonist" is insufficient to characterize Augustine; the way in which Augustine takes up and transforms... (shrink)

In the Augustinian reflection on time, the analysis derives from its condition as a creature; for this reason, the time turns out to be as it is, that is, turns out to have this ontological precariousness that shares with all creation. When we asked about the time, we discover that this reality is not something that our understanding can address as when a man takes an unknown object, but this notion is revealed to us as a dimension of our being. (...) In this article, I propose an interpretation key of the Book XI of Confessions in which I show the importance of presenting the sense of temporal existence facing the eternal Creator and also I propose an interpretation of the dual dimension, positive and negative, of distentio animi. (shrink)

No es un sinsentido decir que para el obispo de Hipona como, paro los neoplatónicos, el tiempo es imagen de la eternidad. Pero esa relación tiempo-eternidad tiene para Agustín un significado particular. Agustín busca demostrar en los libros XI a XIII de las Confesiones que el libro del Génesis es el Timeo de los cristianos. A la luz de las primeras líneas del Génesis, últimos libros de las Confesiones tienen por tarea alcanzar una comprensión del origen del universo que haga (...) ver cómo lo eterno obra continuamente sobre lo temporal, de tal modo que Agustín pueda fundar su dogma de la salvación en la relación tiempo-eternidad. Aquí la autora sigue el curso de las reflexiones del libro XI de las Confesiones para señalar al final, tanto la condena agustiniana de lo temporal como la problemática del concepto de eternidad. (shrink)

No es un sinsentido decir que para el obispo de Hipona como, paro los neoplatónicos, el tiempo es imagen de la eternidad. Pero esa relación tiempo-eternidad tiene para Agustín un significado particular. Agustín busca demostrar en los libros XI a XIII de las Confesiones que el libro del Génesis es el Timeo de los cristianos. A la luz de las primeras líneas del Génesis, últimos libros de las Confesiones tienen por tarea alcanzar una comprensión del origen del universo que haga (...) ver cómo lo eterno obra continuamente sobre lo temporal, de tal modo que Agustín pueda fundar su dogma de la salvación en la relación tiempo-eternidad. Aquí la autora sigue el curso de las reflexiones del libro XI de las Confesiones para señalar al final, tanto la condena agustiniana de lo temporal como la problemática del concepto de eternidad. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Augustine’s attempted solution of the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. I focus on two distinct notions of God’s relationship to time as they relate to this problem. In Confessions XI, Augustine develops an understanding of time and foreknowledge that cIearly offers a possible solution to the foreknowledge/free will problem. I then turn to On Free Will 3.1-4, where Augustine conspicuously declines to use a solution similar to the one in the Confessions, (...) rather developing a response that demands a very different conception of foreknowledge. I subsequently argue that in On Free Will, Augustine’s argument requires that God’s foreknowledge, when considered in light of events involving human freedom, must be in a real sense dependent on the results of free choice. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Augustine’s attempted solution of the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. I focus on two distinct notions of God’s relationship to time as they relate to this problem. In Confessions XI, Augustine develops an understanding of time and foreknowledge that cIearly offers a possible solution to the foreknowledge/free will problem. I then turn to On Free Will 3.1-4, where Augustine conspicuously declines to use a solution similar to the one in the Confessions, (...) rather developing a response that demands a very different conception of foreknowledge. I subsequently argue that in On Free Will, Augustine’s argument requires that God’s foreknowledge, when considered in light of events involving human freedom, must be in a real sense dependent on the results of free choice. (shrink)

Ockham's view of time agrees with that of Aristotle (Phys. 218b 21- 219b 5) and Averroes (com. 98, 132 and 133), for whom time and movement always correspond and define one another. But the difference between Ockham and the above-mentioned philosophers was one of conception. Ockham considers time as nother facet of individual existence. Firstly, this work focuses on the determination of time reality and its definition. Secondly, It analyses the problem of the measurement of time: the circularity of time (...) and the measurement of motion had been already noticed by Augustinus; the details of Ockham's argument show dependence on Confessions XI, 21, 24; and especially 26. (shrink)

The progressive publication -along the past two decades- of the courses taught by Heidegger in his first years in teaching has allowed the reconstruction of the process of creation of Being and Time , its multiple textual references and influences. Among these, St. Augustine's thought bears a prominent place, for which reason I intend to consider its noticeable presence in some of the key concepts in the work mentioned. The first to be considered is Sorge , with which Heidegger characterises (...) the fundamental ontological constitution of human existence. His first drafts emerged from the reflection upon the famous "inquietum cor nostrum" and the cura for the vita beata from Confessions X. Based on this same text Heidegger had offered a phenomenological interpretation of temptation, which constitutes one of the first elaborations of the so-called "fall", precisely one of the structural moments of the Sorge. Explicit references or suggestive analogies between both thinkers can also be appreciated between the explanation of "tempus" as "distentio animi" in Confessions XI and the heideggerian thesis of "temporality" as the basis of the constitution of human subjectivity; the road from the search of God to the exploration of the interiority of the one who looks for Him and the way back from the question about the "being" to the question about the one who understands the "being", in other no less significant cases.La progresiva publicación a lo largo de las últimas dos décadas de los cursos dictados por Heidegger durante sus primeros años de docencia ha permitido reconstruir el proceso de gestación de Ser y Tiempo , sus múltiples referencias textuales e influencias. Entre ellas, ocupa un lugar destacado el pensamiento agustiniano, por lo cual me propongo considerar aquí su fuerte presencia en algunos de los conceptos centrales de dicha obra. El primero a tener en cuenta es el de "Sorge" con el que Heidegger caracteriza la constitución ontológica fundamental del existir humano. Sus primeros esbozos habían surgido de la reflexión en torno al célebre "inquietum cor nostrum" y a la cura por la vita beata de Confesiones X. A partir de este mismo texto Heidegger había realizado también una interpretación fenomenológica de la tentación, que constituye una de las primeras elaboraciones de la llamada "caída", precisamente uno de los momentos estructurales de la "Sorge". Referencias explícitas o sugerentes analogías entre ambos pensadores pueden apreciarse también entre la explicación de Confesiones XI del "tempus" como "distentio animi" y la tesis heideggeriana de la "temporalidad" como fundamento de la constitución de la subjetividad humana; el tránsito desde la búsqueda de Dios a la exploración de la interioridad de aquel que lo busca y el retroceso desde la pregunta por el "ser" a la pregunta por el que comprende el "ser", entre otros casos no menos significativos. (shrink)

Book XI of his Confessions contains Augustine’s celebrated ‘treatise’ on time. In reality, however, the ‘treatise’ is no such thing, but rather an integral part of a discussion of God’s creation through the Word: if God creates by speaking, as Scripture affirms, then how can God speak, given the fact that he must be thought not to be subject to time? What is a timeless word? While these are the questions that Augustine explicitly addresses in Book XI, there is (...) something very important that he does not justify at all: namely, the possibility of speaking the world into existence. My paper investigates the episteme within which such a claim can make sense. How must one conceive of the relationship between the world and words to be able to assume that the latter can ‘make’ the former? (shrink)

The issue of time within Augustine’s work requires a new look, as the problem has been seen in an almost generalized way from the perspective of Book XI of Confessions, and sufficient prominence has not been given to his reflection before this great work. The central text on time has received excessive interpretation, leaving in the background previous approaches, such as in De Musica, Book VI, where the saint addresses the issue of time in the middle of his analysis (...) of temporal and eternal rhythms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:74 HUME'S DIALOGUES ON EVIL Only two sections of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion are concerned with the topic of the benevolence of the designer of the world (Parts X and XI), and the conclusion reached is stated by Philo in an unambiguous manner: The true conclusion is, that the original source of all things is entirely indifferent to all these principles, and has no more regard to good (...) above ill than to heat above cold, or to drought above moisture, or to light above heavy. (D 212) In light of the fact that much of the Dialogues is concerned with setting out sceptical or Pyrrhonian objections to positions in natural theology which reveal our ignorance in this area, it is important for an understanding of Parts X and XI to ask whether we are meant to take Philo's conclusion seriously; that is, does Hume intend Philo's conclusion in Part XI to be a truth in natural theology? Nelson Pike answers this negatively: Philo claims that there is an 'original Source of all things' and that this source is indifferent with respect to matters of good and evil. He pretends to be inferring this conclusion from observed data. This represents a departure from Philo's much professed skepticism in the Dialogues.... I think the center of Philo's remarks in this passage must be located in their skeptical rather than their metaphysical import. Philo has proposed a hypothesis which is counter to the one offered by Cleanthes. And he claims that this hypothesis is the 'true conclusion' to be drawn from the observed data. But the point is not, I think, that Philo's new hypothesis is true, or even probable. The conclusion is, rather, that the hypothesis advanced by Cleanthes is false, or very 75 improbable. when claiming that evil in the world supports a hypothesis which is counter to the one offered by Cleanthes, I think Philo simply means to be calling attention to the fact that evil in the world provides evidence against cleanthes' theological position. It is true that at certain points in the Dialogues Philo does profess to be a sceptic (Pyrrhonian), and he often attempts to show Cleanthes that his hypothesis is false by generating an hypothesis from the available data which is as plausible as Cleanthes' hypothesis (e.g., Part IV, where they debate Cleanthes' view that God is external to the world which He has designed), or which has greater plausibility than Cleanthes' hypothesis (e.g., Parts VI and VII where Philo argues against Cleanthes' claim that the available data support the hypothesis of an intelligent designer for the world). However, whenever Philo proceeds in this manner, he makes it clear that he has no hypothesis on the matter under discussion (e.g., D 164) which he is willing to defend, and that he has proceeded in this manner, not to argue for a position — he maintains that the available data are not adequate to do so — but to argue against the position Cleanthes is defending (see, for example, D 177). In fact, at one stage in the discussion, Philo urges against embracing any religious system, because of the victory which awaits the sceptic: All religious systems, it is confessed, are subject to great and insuperable difficulties. Each disputant triumphs in his turn; while he carries on an offensive war, and exposes the absurdities, barbarities, and pernicious tenets of his antagonist. But all of them, on the whole, prepare a complete triumph for the sceptic; who tells them, that no system ought ever to be embraced with 76 regard to such subjects: For this plain reason, that no absurdity ought ever to be assented to with regard to any subject. A total suspense of judgment is here our only reasonable resource. (D 186-187) This passage, which appears toward the end of Part VIII, is reminiscent of the point Philo made in Part I, when he warned of arguments which "run wide of common life." In the case of such arguments, "the most refined scepticism comes to be upon a footing with them, and is able to oppose and counterbalance them. The one has no more weight than... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 361-363 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing, by Alfred I. Tauber; xi & 317 pp. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, $40.00. Among the marvelous qualities of Thoreau's writing is its vivid concreteness and immediacy. As befits one who spent his life seeing for himself, Thoreau (...) shares a vision of a cosmos whose significance is there to be discovered in the things themselves, if only one cultivates the desire, faith, and discipline required for seeing to the bottom of things. An ironic and happy consequence of Thoreau caring more for the company of nature than for that of his fellow man is that it ultimately made him a finer, more engaging writer with a large audience. Whereas Thoreau might have lost himself and his subject-matter (not to mention the better part of his audience) amidst the twists and turns of Kant's or Fichte's conceptual plumbing, he came to his senses instead--and avoided their abstractions and the intellectual fuss they generate. Imagine how tedious and stale his reflections on the supposed bottomlessness of Walden pond would be if he had framed them explicitly in the terms of intellectual debates revolving around skepticism and realism, phenomena and noumena, and their like. It belongs to Thoreau's enduring genius and charm that he avoided such trappings. One can rely on him for a philosophically inflected appreciation of the realms of nature and spirit, while Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Nietzsche are more reliable for philosophically incisive articulations of the first principles governing these realms.Inevitably, scholarly books like Alfred Tauber's Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing will not have the same fresh, original spirit as do their subjects. But though a scholar addresses someone's views rather than the things themselves, one nonetheless chooses whether to develop one's subject's views primarily in light of (what the scholar understands to be) the things themselves, or whether to focus on how the subject's views relate to the views of others. By claiming his book is philosophical, Tauber in effect claims that it is of the former sort, but in fact it is of the latter sort. As such, readers interested in Thoreau's Zeitgeist and contemporary influences, in past and recent assessments of his thought, as well as in some discussion of its place in contemporary intellectual currents will find Tauber's book timely and valuable. For example, prior to articulating his own view of Thoreau's relation to the science of his day, Tauber gives the reader a primer on the history of positivism. Similarly, in the course of assessing how Thoreau viewed the relation of self and nature, Tauber leads the reader through summary appraisals of (and here I give only a sampling) some relevant swatches of Kant, Fichte, and Barthes's thought. And this is not the half of it. Tauber also weaves into his argument reflections on Augustine's discussion of time in the Confessions, themes from Polanyi's Personal Knowledge and James's Principles of Psychology, as well as Goethe's interpretation of what should constitute scientific activity. So Tauber's [End Page 361] book addresses itself to Romanticism, Transcendentalism, positivism, environmentalism, postmodernism, mysticism, idealism, solipsism, and the like. Though eclectic in their material, his discussions are grounded in copious references to and an interpretation of Thoreau's own words. (One pleasure of the book for this reviewer was the opportunity to become acquainted with more of Thoreau's journal entries.) Yet the variety of the book's sources and themes contribute to some repetition as well as diffuseness in the main arguments.Tauber sees his book as "structuring [Thoreau's] project on a philosophical edifice" and thereby making possible "critical insights into certain quandaries that reach into the very mainstream of contemporary science studies" (p. ix). He argues that his approach is novel (Tauber's own background is the history and philosophy of science) because most... (shrink)

Augustine’s analysis of time in Book XI of Confessions represents for Ludwig Wittgenstein a good example of a philosophical question. In dealing with such theme, his thought undergoes relevant changes. In the Philosophical Remarks, written more than 10 years after the drafting of the Tractatus, the Austrian philosopher holds that the essence of the world can be expressed in the grammar of language. Philosophy as “custodian” of grammar can grasp the essence of the world by excluding nonsensical combinations of (...) signs. Philosopher, however, are often “tempted” to straightly describe the nature of the world, producing logical-grammatical paradoxes. An example of such a temptation is offered by the attempt to take hold of the essence of time using propositions like “only the present experience has reality.” The logical mistake hidden in this proposition lies in the bad use of the adjectival word “present” that would lose its everyday use and functional role in the language. Only comparing the term “present” with the background of other words referring to time experiences like “past,” “future,” and so on, we are able to understand the true sense of it. Engaging in a grammatical investigation into the notion of time helps us to dispel the different uses of it staving off logical muddles. Wittgenstein makes, in his lecture held at Cambridge in 1932–1933, a relevant distinction between what he calls “memory-time” and “information-time.” If the first can be understood as a now-centered system mostly expressed by indexical sentences or as an arrangement relied on memory, and therefore inadequate to give any external physical criteria for time measurements, the second clearly refers to a public chronology, implemented by clocks, calendars, diaries, and so on. Grammatical misconceptions, however occur when we are “tyrannized” by a metaphor and not able to “move outside of” it. The Austrian philosopher makes no secret of preferring a characterization of time that rejects a truth-functional interpretation. As for the notion of “game” in the Philosophical Investigations, it is impossible to have something like a common denominator shared by every sentence involving time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Crisis of Meaning in Sartor Resartus—Thomas Carlyle's Pioneering Work in Articulating and Addressing the Existential ConfrontationFrank Martelawhat i call an "existential confrontation" is the encounter with the possibility that human life is absurd: created for no purpose and devoid of any lasting value or meaning. It is "the hour of terror at the world's vast meaningless grinding" that William James (Will to Believe 173) examines, described by Todd May (...) (xi) as "the confrontation of our need for meaning with the unwillingness of the Universe to yield it to us." This confrontation with the existential void and the potential absurdity of human existence is often not just an intellectual dilemma, but felt as a deep personal crisis accompanied by melancholia, angst, nausea, or even suicidal thoughts. Young William James confessed in a letter to a friend that "all last winter" he "was on the continual verge of suicide" (quoted in Gunnarsson), writing later that "too much questioning" leads "to the edge of the slope" wherein lies "nightmare or suicidal view of life" (James, "Is Life Worth Living?" 6). Similarly, Leo Tolstoy (54) reports how his inability to identify a lasting meaning of life drove him to a "state of lunacy" where "the best I could do was to hang myself."Despite a few earlier allusions—most famously the Book of Ecclesiastes proclaiming that "all is vanity and a striving after wind," and Shakespeare's Macbeth lamenting that life is "a tale told by an idiot … signifying nothing"—the existential confrontation is predominantly a modern phenomenon (Martela, A Wonderful Life). The modern history of descriptions of existential confrontations start at the turn of the nineteenth century, and includes Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death, Leo Tolstoy's A Confession, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Camus's Outsider, Sartre's Nausea, and T. S.Eliot's The Waste Land.There are many responses that the confrontation with the existential void has generated. Sartre embraced the lack of values imposed from outside and [End Page 80] emphasized human freedom. Human beings are "cast into this world … condemned to be free" without any "luminous realm of values" providing "justification or excuse," as Sartre famously summarized in "Existentialism Is a Humanism" (29). Other responses range from Søren Kierkegaard's leap of faith and William James's will to believe to Albert Camus's happiness from absurdity.While some of the responses end up finding a new way of connecting with God and faith, and others are explicitly atheistic, embracing the "death of God," a common thread in most responses is an acknowledgment of the situatedness of human experience and an emphasis placed on human subjectivity and the opportunity to live one's life more authentically. While existentialism, broadly conceived, is often seen as the central philosophical tradition dealing with the existential void, the confrontation was very much alive in the United States as well, visible in both literature and philosophy. As already alluded, William James had an existential confrontation in his youth, writing about the topic in "Is Life Worth Living" and other essays in Will to Believe. There has also been much back-and-forth between Europe and the United States around these themes, with the influences crossing the Atlantic on many occasions. For example, William James cites Thomas Carlyle in Will to Believe, while Sartre cites William James in Nausea, when discussing themes related to the existential confrontation. Similarly, Emerson inspired Nietzsche who inspired Josiah Royce. Typically, the histories tracing the early encounters with the existential confrontation acknowledge Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, and Fyodor Dostoevsky as key nineteenth-century predecessors to Existentialism, as all faced directly the question of the meaning of life and the dreadful possibility that life might not have any meaning or value to it.However, there is a key author usually not mentioned in these histories, despite the fact that he played a pivotal role in introducing existentialist themes to the English-speaking audience, coining the phrase "meaning of life" in the English language. Thus, in writing the prehistory of Existentialism, we need to examine Thomas Carlyle and his Sartor Resartus, which has been described by literary historians as "one of... (shrink)

In order to identify the role that temporality plays for Ricœur’s view on the spiritual life, I will start my analysis from his interpretation of the Augustinian Confessions (book XI, ch. XXX). In his reading, Ricoeur makes use of the notion of extension to which he accords multiples meanings (spatial, categorical and existential) and he also points out the conceptual couple of distensio / extensio. I will bring forth Ricoeur’s misinterpretation that consists in strongly relating the discovery of this (...) conceptual couple to the distinction between the three inner dimensions of time. I will end with a discussion of Heidegger’s analysis of the Confessions and his tentative to temporalize Dasein starting from the future. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 145-147. Here I accoutred myself in my new habiliments; and, having em- ployed the same precautions as before, retired from my lodging at a time least exposed to observation. It is unnecessary to des- cribe the particulars of my new equipage; suffice it to say, that one of my cares was to discolour my complexion, and give it the dun and sallow hue which is in most instances characteristic of the tribe to which I assumed to belong; (...) and that when my metamorphosis was finished, I could not, upon the strictest ex- amination, conceive that any one could have traced out the per- son of Caleb Williams in this new disguise. William Godwin Caleb Williams (352). Giorgio Agamben. Nudities . Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. 144 pp. | 10 illustrations. | ISBN: 9780804769501 | $16.95 A. The Protective Overcoat. The most pervasive, resilient, robust, sneaky, and significant concept in all of Giorgio Agamben’s essays is that of separation. This is not the same as alienation. Separation is more nostalgic, for Agamben valorizes an ancient world in which human society and its beings were not subject to such separation. He implies that these separations are damaging to human beings, crippling them at the very level of their identities. $4.99 B. The Handsome Gloves. Giorgio Agamben’s Nudities , like Profanations before it, employs a wide range of subjects in order to establish separation as a metaphor, in much the same way that interdisciplinary scholars have adopted Michel Foucault’s concepts in order to rethink societies and texts. The longest essay from Profanations, entitled “In Praise of Profanation,” laments humankind’s inability to profane as the result of what Walter Benjamin has called “the capitalist religion.” Likewise, “Nudity” adopts a pessimistic stance on the Christian theological tradition’s perverse asphyxiation of the unclothed body. $2.50 C. The Hoop Earrings. Religion separates humans from things by procuring for itself items as “sacred,” thus taking them out of common use. In this state, human beings are unable to play with them, unable to change their use-value. They become off-limits, museified. $1,499.00 D. The Uncomfortable Shoes. Biometrics polices identity, replacing meaningful metrics of identity. It is a deplorable situation that leaves human beings in danger of, and indeed already victims of, mass persecution. $111.75 E. The Prince Albert. One could characterize Giorgio Agamben’s desire to catalogue a history of ignorance as a recognition that human beings are separated from knowledge by language. Where then is the prophet, and how shall we be saved? $49.50 + tip F. The Corset. Franz Kafka’s character of Joseph K. has put himself on trial, as in Roman trials when the Kalumniator was marked with the letter K. The torture he undergoes is meant to elicit a confession of the truth. It is possible that Giorgio Agamben perceives his role as a philosopher to be confined to self-trial, and that with every passage he flays the unclothed page with prophetic intent. $27.00 G. The Derby. Giorgio Agamben himself tries to bridge various separations through exploratory play. He is not a performative writer semantically, but his exploratory style is rooted in the play spirit. His strategy of numbering points is almost comical, yet it is not misleading. It is play, after all, not ruse. He denudes with pecks, like carrion on a tattered corpse. $11.00 H. The Trousers. Although Giorgio Agamben is elsewhere concerned with the profanation of religion’s apparatuses, in essay nine he would like to consider what is consumed during days of inoperativity, how religion governs these, and how to account for our binges and purges. Inoperativity is inextricably bound to feasting, to the festival. $24.50 I. The Stylish Belt. The only essay in Nudities to contain photographs is the essay entitled, “Nudity.” All of these photographs project human bodies. $.01 I The aim here is not to tap into an original state prior to the separation but to comprehend and neutralize the apparatus that produced this separation. (66) II The contemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his own time so as to perceive not its light but rather its darkness. (13) III We can therefore only experience nudity as a denudation and a baring, never as a form and a stable possession. (65) IV Just as genius and talent originally distinct and even opposite—are nevertheless united in the work of the poet, so the work of creation and the work of salvation, inasmuch as they represent the two powers of a single God, remain in some way secretly conjoined. (6) V In our culture, the face-body relationship is marked by a fundamental asymmetry, in that our faces remain for the most part naked, while our bodies are normally covered. (88) VI Every man initiates a slanderous trial against himself. (21) VII The glorious body is not some other body, more agile and beautiful, more luminous and spiritual; it is the body itself, at the moment when inoperativity removes the spell from it and opens it up to a new possible common use. (103) VIII As Kleist understood so well, the relationship with a zone of nonknowledge is a dance. (114) IX The deactivation of this apparatus retroactively operates, therefore, as much on nature as on grace, as much on nudity as on clothing, liberating them from their theological signature. (90) X At any rate, whether festive inoperativity precedes religion or results from the profanation of its apparatuses, what is essential here is a dimension of praxis in which simple, quotidian human activities are neither negated nor abolished but suspended and rendered inoperative in order to be exhibited, as such, in a festive manner. (112) XI This is just how much [of] the land [the] surveyor is allowed to catch a glimpse. (36). (shrink)

It follows from the temporal nature of mind—the main concern of this essay—that mind functions are not localized in brain space.“ Time is extendedness, probably of the mind itself”, concludes Saint Augustine in Book XI of his Confessions (26.33), and, in our days, this extendedness can be made visible through an oscilloscopic “line” or trace of slow potentials. These graded, additive (not all-or-none) autorhythmic and seemingly self-generating potentials are primary events recorded at synapses. Autorhythmic brain structures (Zabara, 1973) appear (...) to be the source of time frames, while a change in time frames (as reflected in the EEG) leads to synchronization and desynchronization of brain structures respectively. Synchronization forms a homogeneous time domain, such as obtained during rhythmic exercises, chanting, listening to music and mental processes that are the hallmark of religious practices (Rogers, 1973). Desynchronization of brain structures on the other hand marks a functional independence of neuronal elements with each element available for separate channels of data processing, for example, during hallucinogenic drug-induced central sympathetic arousal, that is, a waking dream state (Fischer, 1979). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:506 BOOK REVIEWS signified by bread and wine (39). Schoot sums up the concept of mysterium operative here by saying that it is "something hidden, voiced truly but inadequately, spiritually signified by the Old Testament and now fulfilled in Christ and the sacrament of the eucharist" (38). Despite the meticulous scholarship displayed in this work, students of Aquinas's theological epistemology and christology may well be struck by what seem (...) to be gratuitous harmonizations between theology and christology (the parallel between the analogy of being and the communicationem idiomatum, making the hypostatic union paradigmatic in the naming of God), the overwhelming weight given to the signification/supposition distinction, and the seeming reduction of the principles of christology to linguistic rules. In addition, the complex and often turgid style serves to obfuscate certain important questions, such as Aquinas's understanding of Christ's esse. Is Aquinas being forced into a theological mold that he himself would not recognize? Dominican School ofPhilosophy and Theology Berkeley, California EDWARD L. KRASEVAC, 0.P An Introduction to the History of Exegesis, vol. III: St. Augustine. By BERTRAND DE MARGERIE, S.J. Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1993. Pp. xi+ 169 (paper). Unfortunately, today many scholars and general readers neglect the work of the Fathers of the Church. One often hears that the writings of the Fathers have become less relevant or less important because there has been so much progress in Scripture studies and because the Fathers did not really try to find out what the inspired writer meant to say-for they relied on allegory. St. Augustine's exegesis poses a particular difficulty in terms of its reliance on allegory. Augustine was strongly influenced by the allegorical exegesis of bishop Ambrose and recounts in his Confession.5 (VI, iv, 6) how he used to hear Ambrose teaching in his sermons, as though he were most diligently teaching a rule: "The letter kills, but the spirit gives life." Father de Margerie admits that Augustine did indeed suffer from "excessive allegorism" (126), but he insists that this is no reason to give up entirely on Augustine. Instead, with keen scholarly analysis he shows that, in spite of some defects, Augustine did in fact give us some really fine work in Scripture study. Father de Margerie stresses that according to Augustine the purpose of all Scripture is to teach love: "... the plenitude and the end of the Law and of BOOK REVIEWS 507 all the sacred Scriptures is the love... of a Being which is to be enjoyed and of a being that can share that enjoyment with us" (20; from De Doctrina Christiana, I, xxv, 39). This love is taught even at the beginning of Scripture: "... on a subjective level, Moses wrote for the love of all men" (30). But how could this be? "It seems to us nowadays that Augustine failed to perceive adequately the progressive nature of the disclosure of religious truths by the God who revealed them" (30). Father de Margerie responds to this objection by pointing out that given the belief that Moses had been given a transient, "face to face vision of the Divine being... and that this experience was granted him precisely in favor of the universal Church," it makes sense to assume that "the prophet and maker of the old Law received knowledge, during this vision and through divine revelation, of how future interpretation of the Law he was issuing-like that which Jesus was to issuewould extend even to enemies the love of one's neighbor" (31). Augustine was led to this view in the light of the varied interpretations being proposed in his own time for Genesis (48). Father de Margerie admits that "Augustine himself limits the scope of his theory concerning the plurality of literal meaning to a few rather exceptional verses of scripture" (65). Augustine believed, however, that Moses had received most remarkable gifts: I cannot think that Moses Your most faithful servant was given by you lesser gifts than I should have wished and longed to have for myself if I had been born at the same time as he.... I should have wished that you would grant me such a skill in... (shrink)

One of the most debated questions surrounding Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions is the search for the structural unity of its thirteen books. In this article, based on an analysis of the of Augustine’s ecstasies in Milan and Ostia, and of the influence of Plotinian Neoplatonism and Pauline theology on Augustinian thought, we intend to offer a new interpretative hypothesis, according to which the ternary division of the Confessions (Books I-IX, Book X, Books XI-XIII) reflects the Christian conception of (...) the anagogic stages of the human soul towards divinity. (shrink)

Las Confesiones de San Agustín son una obra muy peculiar. Lectores e investigadores convienen en ello. No es fácil ‘definir’ ni comprender ese escrito. El presente estudio intenta una aproximación a su contenido mediante un examen de ciertos rasgos característicos de la obra que derivan de su propia singularidad. Y denunciamos también algunos impedimentos de comprensión y lectura. Confiemos en que esta mirada pueda ofrecer una guía inicial, pero orientadora, a la misma. Además, el estudio formal y temático revela una (...) dinámica interna, de su estructura misma, que va del relato autobiográfico a la reflexión , de lo narrativo al pensamiento. Este avance tendencial culmina al concluir el libro IX, donde la dimensión narrativa de la obra termina. Razón por la cual los libros X-XI alcanzan el vértice teorético de las Confesiones, con su investigación de la memoria y del tiempo. El presente estudio concluye con una breve exposición del problema agustiniano de la subjetividad o el yo, en la base de esos dos libros.t. Augustine’s Confessions is a very particular work. Readers and Scholarsagree upon it. Therefore, it’s ‘definition’ and understanding are not so easy. These paper tries to provide an approach to the contents of this difficult writing, by means of an examination of some main special traits, arising from the particular work’s kind. And we betray also some new difficulties for it’s reading and understanding. It is hoped that these brief look to the famous Augustinian writing could offer an initial but adviser guide to it. Moreover, the formal and thematic inquiry reveal an internal dynamics of it’s structure, which moves from the autobiographycal account to the reflection , from the story to the thinking. This aimed advance culminates at the end of the book IX, where the work’s narrative side concludes. That’s why the books X and XI reach the theoretical summit of the Confessions through their search for memory and time. Our paper ends with an exposition of the Augustinian inquiry on the human subiectivity, underlying both these books. (shrink)

L?analyse de la notion d?acédie proposée ici se découpe en trois parties. Une première partie, historique, est consacrée à l?examen de textes de législateurs du monachisme évoquant cette notion née pour qualifier la prostration de l?anachorète qui n?arrive plus à investir l?ascèse et le mode de vie solitaire qu?il s?est choisi. Une deuxième partie, esquisse d'une phénoménologie de l'acédie, est consacrée à une analyse de ses déterminations essentielles pour la sortir de son cadre historique et voir en quoi elle constitue (...) une disposition anthropologique fondamentale de l?âme humaine. Plus précisément, l?auteur examine en quoi elle est une expérience privilégiée de la structure temporelle de l?âme, dans la lignée des réflexions augustiniennes sur le temps au livre XI des Confessions et de l'analyse heideggérienne de l'ennui dans les Concepts fondamentaux de la métaphysique. Dans la dernière partie, elle suggère enfin quelques réflexions à propos de la disparition dans la pensée occidentale de cette notion décrivant une disposition fondamentale de toute âme humaine à ne rien désirer, disparition qui a entraîné aussi celle de la conception subjective du temps de la conscience intime esquissée chez Augustin et qui ne réapparaîtra que bien plus tard, chez Brentano et dans la phénoménologie husserlienne. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Benedict XVI, A Life: Volume 1, Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965 by Peter SeewaldEmil AntonBenedict XVI, A Life: Volume 1, Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965 by Peter Seewald, translated by Dinah Livingstone (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2020), xi + 500 pp.What better way to spend Pope Benedict XVI's ninety-fourth birthday than by reviewing a Ratzinger biography while having Apfelstrudel (...) and some traditional Bavarian beer?German journalist and author Peter Seewald, who in his many interviews has asked Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI a total of two thousand or more questions (ix), has written a splendid biography that surprises even someone who has already read dozens of books by and about Benedict XVI. Written in an extremely enjoyable style and divided into chapters of just the perfect length, this page-turner deserves the highest praise. It will likely take its place alongside George Weigel's famous (and equally massive) biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope.The German biography has been divided into two volumes in English (vol. 2 was just published in November of 2021). Volume 1 deals with the years 1927–1965, dominated by two historic "Twos": World War II and Vatican II. Theologically, this is the period of the progressive Ratzinger (regardless of whether he "converted" to a more conservative stance later on), or as Seewald puts it, a man formed by "liberal Bavarian Catholicism" (124).Seewald provides lots of new and interesting information about Joseph Ratzinger, both bitter and sweet. One example from the early chapters concerns the origins of Ratzinger's mother. It turns out that she was an illegitimate child and not actually from South Tyrol, contrary to what her children had thought. A local historian has discovered that Ratzinger's mother Maria was actually born in Mühlbach "in the district of Rosenheim,... in a house that specialized in helping unmarried pregnant women to give birth" (15).For the romantic, the sweetest story of the book comes when Seewald [End Page 963] pushes the reserved Pope Emeritus to reveal more about the "painful decisions" that the young Munich seminarian had to make in relation to his vocation as a celibate priest. "'Were you in love with a girl?' 'Perhaps.' 'So, yes?' 'It could be interpreted like that.' 'How long did this passionate time last? A few weeks? A few months?' 'Longer'" (219). Ratzinger was in love! Or at least it could be interpreted like that! Other heart-warming details include the revelation that Ratzinger's childhood teddy from Marktl followed him all the way to the Apostolic Palace, as well as the fact that, when his blind brother Georg (now deceased) needed a housekeeper, Benedict XVI personally organized the job interview in the Vatican gardens.A darker episode, minimized in Ratzinger's autobiographical memoirs, concerns his role in the radar crew of the German anti-aircraft forces in World War II. The future Pope was entrusted with the task of targeting British bombers. Seewald fills in the narrative: "Ratzinger delivered readings for three guns,.... The more precisely Joseph measured, the higher the hit rate. As the war demanded" (101). Years later, Ratzinger confessed that these experiences still occasionally gave him sweaty nightmares.Seewald goes on to describe the exceptional postwar context in which Ratzinger prepared for the priesthood. The future priests knew that they would soon have to hear confessions of ex-Nazis who had shot people in the war (153). Indeed, after the war, many old Nazis turned to the Church and attempted to get de-Nazification certificates. Ratzinger's parish priest even joked that one day "they will say the only Nazis were the priests" (131).As did everyone, Ratzinger also felt the effects of poverty in postwar Germany. Whenever a festive dinner had to be given for a visitor at the seminary, "we went hungry on the most meagre rations for four long weeks in order to gather the ingredients" (189). After a short period of pastoral ministry subsequent to his ordination, the stellar theologian went back to the seminary as a teacher. Barely twenty-five-years-old, he was younger... (shrink)

Augustine’s analysis of time in Book XI of Confessions represents for Ludwig Wittgenstein a good example of a philosophical question. In dealing with such theme, his thought undergoes relevant changes. In the Philosophical Remarks, written more than 10 years after the drafting of the Tractatus, the Austrian philosopher holds that the essence of the world can be expressed in the grammar of language. Philosophy as “custodian” of grammar can grasp the essence of the world by excluding nonsensical combinations of (...) signs. Philosopher, however, are often “tempted” to straightly describe the nature of the world, producing logical-grammatical paradoxes. An example of such a temptation is offered by the attempt to take hold of the essence of time using propositions like “only the present experience has reality.” The logical mistake hidden in this proposition lies in the bad use of the adjectival word “present” that would lose its everyday use and functional role in the language. Only comparing the term “present” with the background of other words referring to time experiences like “past,” “future,” and so on, we are able to understand the true sense of it. Engaging in a grammatical investigation into the notion of time helps us to dispel the different uses of it staving off logical muddles. Wittgenstein makes, in his lecture held at Cambridge in 1932–1933, a relevant distinction between what he calls “memory-time” and “information-time.” If the first can be understood as a now-centered system mostly expressed by indexical sentences or as an arrangement relied on memory, and therefore inadequate to give any external physical criteria for time measurements, the second clearly refers to a public chronology, implemented by clocks, calendars, diaries, and so on. Grammatical misconceptions, however occur when we are “tyrannized” by a metaphor and not able to “move outside of” it. The Austrian philosopher makes no secret of preferring a characterization of time that rejects a truth-functional interpretation. As for the notion of “game” in the Philosophical Investigations, it is impossible to have something like a common denominator shared by every sentence involving time. (shrink)

This collection of thirteen essays, several of which appear in print for the first time, reveals in concrete fashion Professor Grene’s intellectual evolution from positivistic criticism of Heidegger to more recent censures of empiricism as "a singularly narrow metaphysic disguised as antimetaphysical". Although most of these essays are less than ten years old, she marks her terminus a quo by including a 1938 piece, "A Note on the Philosophy of Heidegger: Confessions of a Young Positivist". In fact, a critical (...) attitude toward her former professor is one of the constants throughout this volume. At the base of her appraisal of Heidegger lies a personal revulsion at the man’s politics and a skeptical attitude toward his obscurantism and the cult which has developed around him. In Chapter VI, "Heidegger: Philosopher and Prophet", she weighs the proportion of "trickery to truth" in his earlier and later works and finds the balance moving decisively toward trickery as the years progress. By now, however, she has come to respect the Heideggerian message that human existence is radically finite—"this is the root concept of all existentialist literature, which received in Sein und Zeit its definitive philosophic expression" —and that "language is poetry, and literal language but a desiccated and residual poetry". She expands the latter theme along her own lines in Chapter XI, "The True Teachers of Mankind", by marshaling "a series of possible grounds for a defense of poetic language in the form of a transcendental argument". In effect, she adopts von Humboldt’s notion of language as "a world between minds and things" and argues that this feature is uniquely evident in poetry, concluding that "if language without this quality would not be language, then the poetic use of speech is indeed a necessary condition for the existence of language as such". Among those cited in support of her claim, Jacques Derrida merits the greatest attention. He emerges at the center of her next essay, "Life, Death, and Language: Some Thoughts on Wittgenstein and Derrida", though ultimately to be held at some distance along with the later Wittgenstein himself for offering us "Wonderland philosophies". Two essays which share the title of the collection analyze respectively the European sources of recent Anglo-American philosophy and the reception of continental philosophy in America. And the whole is introduced by reflections on the apparent inconclusiveness of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 123-124 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Textes philosophiques: conclusions philosophiques. Dissertation en deux parties sur la vision des vérités en Dieu et l'amour de la vertu. Régle du bon sens. De la liberté de l'homme Antoine Arnauld. Textes philosophiques: conclusions philosophiques. Dissertation en deux parties sur la vision des vérités en Dieu et l'amour de la vertu. Régle du bon (...) sens. De la liberté de l'homme. Épiméthée. Translated by Denis Moreau. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001. Pp. xi + 333. Cloth, FF 198.00. This collection should prove useful to anyone doing research on Antoine Arnauld, or more generally on philosophical theology in seventeenth-century France. The collection contains excellent French translations of three Latin texts, and a scholarly, if not critical, edition of a fourth text that appeared originally in French. They are accompanied by helpful [End Page 123] introductions and copious scholarly notes. A bibliography of 533 secondary works on Arnauld is provided.Studies of Arnauld's philosophy have concentrated on his polemics with Malebranche and Leibniz. Moreau suggests that Arnauld's philosophy is worth studying in its own right, and the texts he has selected provide a start for such a study. The first text, Conclusiones Philosophicae, is a set of theses composed by Arnauld for defense by one of his students in 1641, when Arnauld himself was twenty-nine years old. It is our only record of Arnauld's early philosophical thought. Moreau points out that Conclusiones anticipates themes developed by Arnauld during the rest of his long career, and that the text is also valuable as an indicator of the sort of philosophical questions being discussed in Paris at the time that Descartes wrote the Meditations. The original Latin and Moreau's French translation are given on facing pages.The second and third texts in the collection, Dissertatio Bipartita and Régles du Bon Sens, were parts of a debate within Jansenist circles near the end of Arnauld's life. Arnauld's friend, and his collaborator in the Port-Royal Logic, Pierre Nicole, had introduced into Port-Royal the speculation that every human being receives a "grace générale" that makes it possible for her to perform morally good actions. Arnauld attacked this theory in the late 1680s. Given the Augustinian assumption that an action is morally good only if it is directed to God as the agent's final end, and given that some people have never thought about God, the theory of a grace générale raised a philosophical question: How could someone who has no knowledge of God act out of the love of God? Nicole's answer was that the grace générale given to every human being brings with it a sort of implicit, confused, and imperceptible knowledge and love of God. In defense of this answer, Nicole refers to a thesis written by the Louvain theologian Gommaire Huygens, also a friend of Arnauld's, and defended by one of Huygens's students in 1688. Huygens says that anyone who has knowledge of a necessary and immutable truth sees that truth "in the first and uncreated truth, which is God," and that anyone who loves chastity or any other moral virtue, by that very fact loves "the eternal reason of chastity, which is in God." These positions seemed to support the notion that everyone might have an implicit knowledge and love of God even if some have never consciously thought about God. Arnauld attacked these claims in 1692 in his Latin Dissertatio bipartita, of which Moreau provides a French translation. Nicole was impressed and disturbed by the Dissertatio, confessing that he did not know how to respond. He asked another mutual friend of his and Arnauld's, the Benedictine François Lamy, to answer Arnauld. In reply to Lamy, Arnauld wrote... (shrink)

Las Confesiones de San Agustín son una obra muy peculiar. Lectores e investigadores convienen en ello. No es fácil ‘definir’ ni comprender ese escrito. El presente estudio intenta una aproximación a su contenido mediante un examen de ciertos rasgos característicos de la obra que derivan de su propia singularidad. Y denunciamos también algunos impedimentos de comprensión y lectura. Confiemos en que esta mirada pueda ofrecer una guía inicial, pero orientadora, a la misma. Además, el estudio formal y temático revela una (...) dinámica interna, de su estructura misma, que va del relato autobiográfico a la reflexión (consideratio), de lo narrativo al pensamiento. Este avance tendencial culmina al concluir el libro IX, donde la dimensión narrativa de la obra termina. Razón por la cual los libros X-XI alcanzan el vértice teorético de las Confesiones, con su investigación de la memoria y del tiempo. El presente estudio concluye con una breve exposición del problema agustiniano de la subjetividad o el yo, en la base de esos dos libros. (shrink)

Zhu Xi is the most important of the twelfth-century neo-Confucianists. Some consider him second only to Confucius himself in his importance to Chinese philosophy as a whole, since it is his interpretation of Confucius that has been canonical since his lifetime. This short book, modeled after the Burton Watson "Basic Writings" volumes for Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi, is an accessible, one-volume introduction to Zhu Xi's influential philosophical system designed especially for course use. In "classifying" Zhu Xi's conversations in the (...) Classified Conversations of Master Zhu, Li Jingde dedicated the first thirteen chapters to conversations explaining his general philosophical system. Readers are introduced to his metaphysics of principle (li), psychophysical stuff (qi), spiritual beings (guishen), human nature (xing), mind-heart (xin), and emotions (qing); and to his program of self-cultivation-that is, the curriculum that Confucians should follow to attain moral perfection. Gardner argues that these chapters constitute the best overview of Zhu Xi's basic philosophical teachings, and selections from them form the basis of his volume. Occasionally, they are supplemented with passages from the Collected Literary Writings of Master Zhu and from Zhu's commentaries on the Classics. (shrink)

Research based on the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF) argues that firms will actively adopt strategic actions to respond to performance that falls below aspirations, that is performance shortfalls. However, most previous studies have focused on market-related strategic actions, paying less attention to the impact of performance shortfalls on non-market-related strategic actions, especially corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate social irresponsibility (CSI). In this study, we propose that firms facing performance shortfalls are likely to reduce CSR levels and increase (...) CSI levels. In addition, we also propose that board characteristics (board size, board age and board tenure) have a significant moderating effect on the above relationship. Empirical analyses based on an unbalanced panel data of China's listed firms from 2010 to 2018 show that our arguments are largely supported. (shrink)

The idea of conducting “upstream public engagement,” using nanotechnology as a test case, has been subject to criticism for its lack of any link to the political system. Drawing on the theoretical tools provided by Habermas, this article seeks to explore such a “link”, focusing specifically on the capacity of civil society organizations to distil, raise and transmit societal concerns in an amplified form to the public spheres at the European Union level. Based on content analysis and semi-structured interviews with (...) relevant actors, this article examines the evolution of CSO approaches towards nanotechnology over the past decade and investigates whether and how upstream public engagement could contribute to more vibrant public spheres and facilitate the formation of communicative power. The answer to these questions is twofold: on the one hand, moving public engagement “upstream” enables CSOs to be better informed and to become part of the debates more quickly. A “green alliance” is taking shape, which calls for more stringent regulation on nanomaterials. On the other hand, upstream public engagement has turned out to be unsuccessful in generating substantial and sustained interest. A number of CSOs have quit this field in frustration at the tokenistic engagement and out of fatigue after the intense lobbying battle for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals. (shrink)

Eastern Learning, which is an important part of modern new learning, refers to the Western natural science and socio-political thought that was assimilated by Japan from the end of 19th century to the beginning of 20th century. From the end of Ming Dynasty to the period before and after the revolution of 1911, China’s intake of new learning went through four stages. In the first three stages, a large number of Western books translated into Chinese were also introduced into Japan, (...) which became the basic literature and language medium of Japanese Dutch studies, English Studies and later the whole foreign studies. At the beginning of the 20th century, exiles, students studying in Japan and Japanese teachers introduced Eastern Learning into China, which had a profound impact on China’s modernization process. Eastern Learning is a new learning system with East Asian characteristics constructed by China and Japan in the process of Western Learning spreading to the East. (shrink)