This festschrift collects a number of insightful essays by a group of accomplished Christian scholars, all of who have either worked with or studied under Hendrik Hart during his 35-year tenure as Senior Member in Systematic Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Canada.

Descriptions of body imagery and body parts are evident in expressions of Old Testament texts. Although there is no single term for ‘body’ in the Hebrew mind, the concept of ‘body’ functions in its different parts. As part of anthropomorphic descriptions of God and expressions attached to humankind, body parts have special significance, contributing to the theological dimension of texts. The poems in the Psalter are no exception. Several body parts are mentioned in Psalm 38, an individual lament song. In (...) addition to God’s hand (v. 3) and an allusion to his voice (v. 16), several body parts describe the psalmist’s condition. These include ‘flesh’ (bāšār, 3, 8), bones (‘ætsæm, 3), head (rôsh, 5), loins (kæsæl, 8), heart (lēb, 9, 11), eyes (‘yn, 11), mouth (pæh, 14, 15), and feet (rægæl, 17). In addition, allusions to the ear (14, 15) and injured body (wounds, 6) form part of the psalmist’s lamenting experience.Contribution: This presentation touches on the general meaning of these body imagery in the Old Testament and their specific function and meaning in the text of Psalm 38. A textual analysis will portray their theological significance. (shrink)

English summary: It seems that reason is less a universal principle than something inherently bound to the contexts in which it appears. These contributions to a conference held on the occasion of Christoph Schwobel's 60th birthday explore the character of reason's manifold contexts: the grounding of reason in the inner word of God 's Trinitarian life as well as the disclosure of reason and and its limits in human conversation. German description: Vernunft scheint in der Gegenwart weniger ein allgemeines Prinzip (...) als eine in Kontexte eingebundene Grosse zu sein. Die Beitrage einer Tagung anlasslich von Christoph Schwobels 60. Geburtstag, gehen der Frage nach dem Charakter dieser Kontextbindung nach: der Begrundung der Vernunft im trinitarischen Gesprach wie der Erschliessung und Problematisierung der Vernunft im menschlichen Gesprach. Mit Beitragen von V. Brummer, G. van den Brink, C. Drobe, H. J. Eckstein, D.-M. Grube, J. Halfwassen, S. Heine, F. Hermanni, E. Herms, W. Harle, W. Homolka, W. Jeanrond, R. W. Jenson, D. Kelsey, A. F. Koch, A. Kupsch, V. Leppin, P.-C. Lai, P. Lo, A. Min, J. Moltmann, M. Muhling, P. Peterson, M. Sarot, F. Schweitzer, A. Torrance, J. Webster, M. Welker, M. Wendte, M. Wisse, H. Wisskirchen und L. Zak. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Nietzsche's perspective on Darwin and Darwinism has received increased scrutiny in recent years, a reflection of the fact that scholars have sensed that the Nietzsche-Darwin connection has not been adequately assessed and that their relationship might be more significant than has been previously assumed. Renewed interest in Nietzsche's alleged naturalism has also focused attention on that scientific paradigm, which best reflects the triumph of the naturalist perspective in the modern era, namely Darwinism. But while numerous studies have pointed to (...) the overlap and shared concerns of both thinkers, no one has systematically interpreted Nietzsche's reception of Darwin as a fundamental antagonism, one that had emerged from an initial sympathy to the Darwinian approach in the early years and ended in a foundational critique. By examining Nietzsche in this way, one can appreciate Nietzsche's critique of Darwinism as one significant component of his larger assault on contemporary culture and decadence, which became his central concern in his final works. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s relationship to the literary output of his time and his later influence on it is the theme unifying the two anthologies and the monograph under review. While Nietzsche’s stature among philosophers is now secure and uncontested, his philosophical reception in the early years was delayed and overshadowed by his literary reception: enthusiastically endorsed by writers, he was disparaged as a Dichterphilosoph by academic philosophers. But by aligning Nietzsche with positions in contemporary philosophy, commentators now underappreciate Nietzsche’s literary style and (...) his desire to be seen as one of the great literary stylists and innovators. These studies redress that imbalance. They raise the larger question of what constitutes philosophy and suggest that his philosophizing breaches the divide that some place between the disciplines of philosophy and literature, particularly in an era of great academic specialization. Their goal is to show the importance of literature for Nietzsche, both in his capacity as a reader and as an author, and they approach this question from an interdisciplinary angle, combining aspects of literary science and philosophical history. (shrink)

The paper uses questionnaire responses provided by a sample of ethical investors to investigate willingness to sacrifice ethical considerations for financial reward. The paper examines the amount of financial reward necessary to cause an ethical investor to accept a switch from good ethical performance to poor ethical performance. Conjoint analysis is used to allow quantification of the utilities derived from different combinations of ethical and financial performance. Ethical investors are shown to vary in their willingness to sacrifice ethical for financial (...) performance, and hence to display more heterogeneity than the all-encompassing ‘ethical’ label implies. Because of the existence of sub-groups of ethical investors with different attitudes towards financial reward, an attempt has been made to associate observable investors’ characteristics with their level of willingness to trade-off morality for cash. One sub-group of investors in particular appears highly resistant to the idea of accepting higher financial return as compensation for poor ethical performance. This unwillingness casts doubt on Jensen and Meckling’s widely reported claim that trade-off behaviour is ubiquitous in all areas of life. (shrink)

The existence of consciousness in animals may have been overlooked. Continuity in consciousness between humans and animals is predicted by evolutionary theory. However, there are specific methodological difficulties associated with investigating such a phenomenon: it cannot be directly measured; animals, unlike humans, cannot directly tell us about their conscious experience; experiments which have made comparisons to human consciousness cannot detect consciousness of a different form; application of the law of parsimony in science has traditionally led to the conclusion that it (...) does not exist. (shrink)

The following essay is adapted from one with the same title read to the British Society for the History of Science on 20 October 1958—the anniversary, by a striking coincidence, of the birth of W. H. Young . To his memory I dedicated the talk, and now rededicate its publication, not only because I am his daughter and of all that means, but because he invented a method, the method of monotone sequences, which shows the powerfulness of inequalities as a (...) mathematical tool supremely. (shrink)

"We prove that any variety of relation algebras which contains an algebra with infinitely many elements below the identity, or which contains the full group relation algebra on some infinite group (or on arbitrarily large finite groups), must have an undecidable equational theory. Then we construct an embedding of the lattice of all subsets of the natural numbers into the lattice of varieties of relation algebras such that the variety correlated with a set [italic capital]X of natural numbers has a (...) decidable equational theory if and only if [italic capital]X is a decidable (i.e., recursive) set. Finally, we construct an example of an infinite, finitely generated, simple, representable relation algebra that has a decidable equational theory.'' -- Abstract. (shrink)

Recent study of Galileo's surviving manuscript notes on motion has revealed that by 1609 he had developed the major part of his theory of projectile motion. During the period of these theoretical advances Galileo was engaged in important related experimental investigations; this has become clear from the study of folios 114r and 116v of the manuscript on motion. This paper provides an interpretation of a manuscript not previously discussed—folio 81r. The analysis provided indicates that it is evidence of an important (...) early experiment of the series in which Galileo studied the projectile trajectory. The reconstruction of the experiment concerned reveals relationships with the enquiries suggested by folio 114r and 116v and indicates that Galileo examined the form of projectile trajectories with some care. (shrink)

The experience of newborn screening for Krabbe disease in New York State demonstrates the ethical problems that arise when screening programs are expanded in the absence of true understanding of the diseases involved. In its 5 years of testing and millions of dollars in costs, there have been very few benefits, and the testing has uncovered potential cases of late-onset disease that raise difficult ethical questions in their own right. For these reasons, we argue that Krabbe screening should only be (...) continued as a research project that includes the informed consent of parents to the testing. (shrink)

لقد خلقت المثنوية تأرجحاً ملازماً في المطارحات الفكرية والنظائر العلمية، أي صراعاً بين النازع الروحي، والعوز المادي. وتوضح لنا أن التذبذب، يميل في أغلب الأحيان إلى صدام بين الروحانية والعلمية. وهذا ما شهدناه بين الدين وفلسفة المنطق، وبين الدين ومكتشفات العلوم الطبيعية، ما جعل الفكر ينشط في توليد قضايا مختلفة في ألوانها وأجناسها وقيمها وأهدافها وطبيعة منجزاتها. وهكذا ينتهي بنا القول إلى أن المثنوية، هي فلسفة المتضاد المثنوي في منظومة القيم المُحدثة بفعل تأملات العقل النظري، والمحور الناظم لبنية النظائر المفترضة (...) في جدلية التغريب التي ساهمت في مأسسة مواريث ثقافة العماء في سائر المطارحات التي تخلّقها العقل الإبداعي. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * The gaze drifts where the stare dares not. The gaze is attentive while the stare is intent. Dériver : Equally to drift and/or to derive. —When drifting then, something must be taken along. Something must be derived from the drift. Something of oneself must always become other. Incorporating the other, incorporating oneself as other. Je est un autre , Rimbaud disait; 1 this in his last letter to Georges Izambard, a final correspondence to a former mentor and friend, from whom he was drifting away, having derived much. The drift is a control incomplete. To drift is to come closer and closer, but to always be turning away, pulling apart, pulling oneself apart. It is parabolic in the sense that it is always eluding a formerly established intent. Of all axes, it never finds room to rest. Filling new spaces, always changing places, ever escaping the Cartesian; the indubitable pinpointing of position. It is never pinned down. Love together what we will be apart. Once together, we will drift apart. Il le faut . Attention is held; it traces the path. It follows each point which traces the arc, the line, the swerve. It is not concerned with the figure being drawn, but rather the movement between one point and the next. The smallest movement. The clinamen of De Rerum Natura is the smallest of swerves, it is nothing more than the minimum — nec plus quam minimum . Michel Serres says of the clinamen , that it is an absurdity — a logical, geometrical, mechanical, physical absurdity. 'The clinamen, from here (its state of absurdity), finds refuge in subjectivity; it passes from the world to the soul, from the physical to the metaphysical, from the theory of inert bodies in freefall to the theory of the free movements of the living.' 2 So this swerve is something of the mind and something of the body, both in action, rather than a body which is merely acted upon. Swerve, however, has a connotation of suddenness. It is a movement which is made to avoid an otherwise inevitable impact. Drift, on the other hand, is the unleashing of something which is then allowed to follow a more complex series of forces. These forces now come from within as well as without. It is no longer tethered; now following tides, winds, flows or pitched slopes, now acting on its own. We are not atoms in freefall. Our attention long ago pulled us from this precipitous descent. We now live, ourselves, as one of the many forces. In the drift, as with the gaze, there is an ease. ‘Ease is the proper name of this unrepresentable space.’ It is the space nearest, the next, the neighboring space. To occupy this space requires a turn, a shift or a drift. It cannot be reached by proceeding straight ahead. ‘..the space adjacent, the empty place where each can move freely, in a semantic constellation where spatial proximity borders on opportune time (ad-agio, moving at ease) and convenience borders on the correct relation.’ 3 Intention always seeks to straighten this line, to make it less complex, to isolate the point of departure and the desired destination. It believes there can be two points and, between them, there must be a straight line. Can there be? Maybe. Must there be? Never. Straight lines may exist, but they can never be followed to the finish. After leaving this point, we will never reach that one without being buffeted at least a little — at least the least. One foot in front of the other, this is a very restrictive dance, less even than a two-step. Straight lines lead only to lost intentions, being the shortest and quickest way to get there. When attention drifts it slowly turns away from the intended target, leaving it for something which pulls the attention away. Now we are for a moment free; all at once we can pivot, now we can waltz. Drifting along the page, deriving from what is seen. Reading is seeing; the movement of the eyes as they drift. Reading in the eyes what has been seen, what has been derived from the act of reading. Reading eyes drift back and forth down the page, now and then jump back and forth, up to the top, one word, back down, quickly a few pages back, now gaze out towards the horizon. When attention drifts it is the gaze that follows. Our attention is not restricted to the path the words follow, but links them together; deriving what is to be seen, rather than read. La philosophie fait voir . ‘Thus, philosophers speak through proverbs, and demonstrate. They connect their imaginations with foreign rings, flown into famous tombs.’ 4 Now drifting off to sleep, dreams come as unintended visions. To dream is pure drift, vision without an object, gazing into the dark, reading the unknown of the night. NOTES: Arthur Rimbaud, Poésies (Paris: Bibliothéque de Cluny, 1958), 57. Michel Serres, La Naissance de la Physique (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1977), 10. Translation courtesy of R.H. Jackson. Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993), 25. Louis Aragon, Une Vague des Rêves (Paris: Editions Seghers, 2006), 10. Translation courtesy of R.H. Jackson.  . (shrink)