The beating of Rodney King and the resulting riots in South Central Los Angeles. The violent clash between Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown Heights. The boats of Haitian refugees being turned away from the Land of Opportunity. These are among the many racially-charged images that have burst across our television screens in the last year alone, images that show that for all our complacent beliefs in a melting-pot society, race is as much of a problem as ever in America. In (...) this vastly important, widely-acclaimed volume, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Ghanaian philosopher who now teaches at Harvard, explores, in his words, "the possibilities and pitfalls of an African identity in the late twentieth century." In the process he sheds new light on what it means to be an African-American, on the many preconceptions that have muddled discussions of race, Africa, and Afrocentrism since the end of the nineteenth century, and, in the end, to move beyond the idea of race. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 143-144 [Access article in PDF] Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump, editors. Aquinas's Moral Theory. Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. vi i+ 291. $49.95 Although medieval philosophy generally hasn't received much attention from Anglo-American philosophers in the last few centuries, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas has long been the exception to that rule. In one (...) sense, then, the collection of essays in Aquinas's Moral Theory fits into a long-standing and rich tradition of critical analysis and thoughtful reconstruction. In another sense, however, the book treads ground that is, if not entirely new, then at least not well worn. Most treatments of Aquinas's ethics discuss it in separation from the rest of his work. Aquinas himself, however, sees his moral theory as intrinsically tied up with other aspects of his philosophical system, such as his metaphysics and his philosophical theology. Aquinas's Moral Theory argues that fully understanding Aquinas's ethics, then, requires attention to the way in which "his interests in moral issues often flow into and inform and shape his work in other areas, just as his moral reflections are shaped and grounded by them" (3).MacDonald and Stump have drawn together a group of ten essays by respected scholars in medieval philosophy—essays written with the explicit intent of examining Aquinas's moral theory both in its own right and in light of Aquinas's broader philosophical system. Not surprisingly, the papers in the book range over a wide number of philosophical and theological topics. Moreover, they explore connections not only within Aquinas's work, but between Aquinas and Aristotle, between Aquinas and his contemporaries, and between Aquinas's thought and problems in contemporary philosophy. [End Page 143] It's useful, then, that the papers are grouped under three main headings: Moral Theory and Moral Theology, Moral Psychology and Practical Reason, and Moral Theory in Philosophy of Language and Metaphysics.Perhaps the most striking feature of this particular collection of essays is the diversity of scholarship it represents. Although the ten essays contribute to the same larger project, the individual authors use at least three distinct approaches in accomplishing that goal: for example, Anthony Kenny ("Aquinas on Aristotelian Happiness") and Mark Jordan ("Ideals of Scientia Moralis and the Invention of the Summa theologiae") examine motivations for some of the distinctive innovations in Aquinas's moral thought. By contrast, the essays by Jan Aertsen ("Thomas Aquinas on the Good: The Relation between Metaphysics and Ethics"), E. J. Ashworth ("Aquinas on Significant Utterance: Interjection, Blasphemy, Prayer"), John Boler ("Aquinas on Exceptions in Natural Law"), and Paul Spade ("Degrees of Being, Degrees of Goodness: Aquinas on Levels of Reality") seek primarily to raise or resolve difficulties within Aquinas's philosophical system. Finally, Peter King ("Aquinas on the Passions"), Scott MacDonald ("Practical Reasoning and Reasons-Explanations: Aquinas's Account of Reason's Role in Action"), Gareth Matthews ("Saint Thomas and the Principle of Double Effect"), and Eleonore Stump ("Wisdom: Will, Belief, and Moral Goodness") consider what light Aquinas has to shed on issues of particular interest to contemporary philosophers.The rich variety of viewpoints and interpretations that constitute one of the main strengths of this volume also constitutes one of its main weaknesses, however. The difference between the approaches of, say, Stump, Jordan, and Aertsen are almost dizzying. So the collection of essays doesn't yield a unified picture of Aquinas's moral theory; readers looking for an introduction to Aquinas's ethics or for a comprehensive overview of its relation to his broader metaphysical system will be disappointed. In particular, the papers in the section devoted to moral theory in philosophy of language and metaphysics raise more questions than they answer; the reader is left wondering what further consequences the provocative claims made there have for Aquinas's ethics.Still, this represents not as much a flaw in the book itself as it does a conscious call to further scholarship. As Aertsen and Spade both remark... (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The Translation Over eighty years ago Solomon Schechter published a second version of Abot de Rabbi Nathan1 ...

Abusua do funu. The matriclan loves a corpse. AKAN PROVERB My father died, as I say, while I was trying to finish this book. His funeral was an occasion for strengthening and reaffirming the ties that bind me to Ghana and “my father's house' ...

I live just off of Bell Road outside of Newburgh, Indiana, a small town of 3,000 people. A mile down the street Bell Road intersects with Telephone Road not as a modern reminder of a technology belonging to bygone days, but as testimony that this technology, now more than a century and a quarter old, is still with us. In an age that prides itself on its digital devices and in which the computer now equals the telephone as a medium (...) of communication, it is easy to forget the debt we owe to an era that industrialized the flow of information, that the light bulb, to pick a singular example, which is useful for upgrading visual information we might otherwise overlook, nonetheless remains the most prevalent of all modern day information technologies. Edison’s light bulb, of course, belongs to a different order of informational devices than the computer, but not so the telephone, not entirely anyway. Alan Turing, best known for his work on the Theory of Computation (1937), the Turing Machine (also 1937) and the Turing Test (1950), is often credited with being the father of computer science and the father of artificial intelligence. Less well-known to the casual reader but equally important is his work in computer engineering. The following lecture on the Automatic Computing Engine, or ACE, shows Turing in this different light, as a mechanist concerned with getting the greatest computational power from minimal hardware resources. Yet Turing’s work on mechanisms is often eclipsed by his thoughts on computability and his other theoretical interests. This is unfortunate for several reasons, one being that it obscures our picture of the historical trajectory of information technology, a second that it emphasizes a false dichotomy between “hardware” and “software” to which Turing himself did not ascribe but which has, nonetheless, confused researchers who study the nature of mind and intelligence for generations.. (shrink)

Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon forms of marriage have injected patrilineal values and companionate expectations into the Akan matrilineal family structure. As Anthony Appiah demonstrates, these infusions have generated severe strains in the matrikin social structures and, in extreme cases, resulted in the break up of families. In this essay, I investigate the ideological politics at play in this patrilinealization of Asante society.

(3) a. Stijn-tje-se moeder kwam ons halen (Dutch child language: 6;7.14) Stijntje-se mother came us get (Stijntje is a girl’s name) Standard adult : Stijntjes moeder kwam ons halen b. Dit is wie-se? (Dutch child language: 6;3) This is whose? Standard adult: Van wie is dit? (4) a. vader-sen hond (dialect of Helmond) father-sen dog b. wie-se stoel (dialect of Helmond) who-se chair..

In recent years there has been a renaissance of scholarly interest in Plato's Symposium, as scholars have again begun to recognize the philosophical subtlety and complexity of the dialogue. But despite the quality and quantity of the studies that have been produced few contain an extended analysis of the speech of Aristophanes; an unusual oversight given that Aristophanes' encomium is one of the highlights of the dialogue. In contrast to the plodding and technical speeches that precede it, the father (...) of Old Comedy structures his own speech around a fantastic fable in which he tells how humans, having originally taken the form of comically grotesque ‘circlemen’, assumed their present shape after being divided in two for their impious actions against the gods. This story forms the basis of his discussion of Eros, which he claims is nothing more than a desire to return to our original form. One study on which commentators continue to draw heavily for their own interpretation of Aristophanes' encomium is that of Arlene Saxonhouse. As the title of her article suggests, central to Saxonhouse's analysis is her interpretation of the Net of Hephaestus passage, in which Aristophanes suggests that, if offered the chance to be welded together with their beloveds and so become circlemen once more, all humans would leap at the opportunity, thinking that this would be all of the fortune that they could ever desire. For Saxonhouse this passage, more than any other, demonstrates that, on Aristophanes' view, our original nature is one of perfection. According to Saxonhouse, our original form is the telos of human existence and the standard by which we judge the good life, because she understands circlemen as being self-complete beings entirely free from desire and need. Put simply, to be a circleman is to be a perfect being. Eros, on this reading, as the desire for wholeness, is to be praised because it reminds us of our deficiency, and instills in us a desire to actualize our potential for perfection. But unlike Socrates' encomium, which ends with the lover realizing their potential by possessing knowledge of the divine, Saxonhouse believes that the Net of Hephaestus passage lends a tragic end to Aristophanes' speech. For Saxonhouse it is Plato's dirty trick that he turns Aristophanes into a tragedian. (shrink)

"Michael Psellos was the 'Cicero of Byzantium,' except that his interests were more wide-ranging than those of his Roman predecessor. In addition to being a politician, poet, and writer of letters, speeches, and treatises on philosophy and rhetoric, he was an innovative historian and a practical educator who interested himself in all aspects of learning, from mathematics and medicine to theurgy. Before now, only his 'Chronographia' has been at all well known. Anthony Kaldellis has done a great service in (...) making accessible a collection of texts bearing upon personal familial relationships, of which we know so little in Byzantium. His translations read well, are accurate, and reflect Psellos' literary subtlety. His commentaries are scholarly and give vital information for the better understanding of this facet of Byzantine society." —_Antony R. Littlewood, University of Western Ontario_ “Anthony Kaldellis is a skilled and gifted translator, one of the best I have ever encountered. I am very excited that we will have access to Psellos’ two important encomia of his mother and daughter in an accurate and readable translation, so that more scholars and students will be able to read these works which offer such fascinating insights into family life in eleventh-century Byzantium. This book will be an excellent lead-off volume in the Psellos series, and make scholars anxious for the subsequent volumes to appear.” —_Alice-Mary Talbot, Director, Byzantine Studies, Dumbarton Oaks_ _Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters_ makes available for the first time complete English translations from the works of Michael Psellos, a key philosopher of the Byzantine Empire. This book contains the works that Psellos wrote about his family, including a long funeral oration for his mother that features unique recollections from a childhood spent in Constantinople; a funeral oration for his young daughter Styliane, which includes a detailed description of her physical appearance and a moving account of her illness and death; a legal work pertaining to the engagement of his second, adopted, daughter; and various letters and other works that relate to the private life of this Byzantine family. (shrink)

Unreal City: a zany cartoon megalopolis where towers are built of cotton candy, facts scatter like pixie dust, and the truth is whatever you feel it to be. And it's no fantasy. It's where we live. We dwell in Unreal City. We believe in un-being. With saber-like wit, poet and professor Anthony Esolen leads readers on a tour through the ruins of their own Western world--through king-size bookstores, manicured college campuses, strobe-lit choir lofts, mechanized farms, divorce courts, drag-queen libraries, (...) and beyond. This hilarious guide to a culture gone mad with sex and self-care minces no words and spares no egos. We the people of Unreal City are no better, and certainly no smarter, than our fathers. But fear not. Sex and the Unreal City insists there's no need to settle down in the ninth circle of unreality. Esolen lights a torch and heads up the well-trod path back to our cleaner, kinder, truer homeland: earth. Along the way, the author sings the songs of masters somehow long forgotten--Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, the evangelists--and asks us to chant along. Readers of essayists like George Weigel, George Rutler, Malcom Muggeridge, and Walker Percy will enjoy this rollicking, intelligent book."--Amazon. (shrink)

A volume on nature, ingredients, causes and consequences of human happiness by father and son team of Antony and Charles Kenny.

Concepts of creation -- Life after Etna : Empedocles in prose and poetry -- Virtue and the good in Plato and Aristotle -- Aristotle's criteria for happiness -- Practical truth in Aristotle -- Aristotle's categories in the Latin fathers -- Essence and existence : Aquinas and Islamic philosophy -- Aquinas on the beginning of individual human life -- Thomas and thomism -- Aquinas in America -- Philosophy states only what everyone admits -- Cognitive scientism -- The Wittgenstein editions -- Knowledge, (...) belief, and faith -- The unity of knowledge and the diversity of Beli. (shrink)

The structure of traditional fiction is essentially linear or serial. No matter how complex a given work may be, it presents information to its reader successively, one element at a time, in a sequence determined by its author. By contrast, interactive fiction is parallel in structure or, more accurately, dendritic or tree-shaped. Not one, but several possible courses of action are open to the reader. Further, which one actually happens depends largely, though not exclusively, upon the reader’s own choices. To (...) be sure, the author is still in overall control, since it is she who has set up the particular nexus of events, but the route up the narrative tree, the actual sequence of events, is generally affected, if not completely determined, by the reader’s responses to that particular reader’s specific situation. In an adventure, the sequence of action frequently depends upon the reader’s decision to go in one geographical direction rather than another. In the eliza sample, the content of the “story” depends on such particulars as whether this reader has a brother or not, whether she fears her father, and why she has consulted the terminal. In general, the text presented to the eliza-reader depends on what that reader has already said and how the computer has interpreted and stored it, and this is generally true of interactive fiction.Further, interactive fiction is, in principle , open-ended—infinite. A conversation with eliza could go on for as long as one with Woody Allen’s psychoanalyst—in principle, forever. It has no necessary terminus. The program will go one writing texts and answers on the screen as long as the reader or player chooses to supply responses. Further, the computer can act as a metafictional narrator like John Barth or Thomas Pynchon who can create a story within a story or a story that generates another story within itself which generates another story within itself and so on, fictions dizzying and dazzling. One senses one’s essential humanity wobbling in the midst of the infinite paradoxes of existence and meaning. Anthony J. Niesz, assistant professor of German at Yale University, is the author of Dramaturgy in German Drama: From Gryphius to Goethe . He is interested in the phenomenon of the meta-theater, especially in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German drama, as well as in the literature and cultural policies of the German Democratic Republic. Norman N. Holland is Milbauer Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida. He is the author of Laughing and The I. (shrink)

'If you put me to death,' Socrates warned his Athenian judges, 'you will not easily find anyone to take my place.' So indeed it would prove, a single cup of hemlock robbing the western philosophical tradition of its founding father. Yet Socrates' influence was not so easily to be done away with. His words were lovingly recorded by his devoted disciple Plato, and his teachings have survived for twenty-seven centuries. His sense of education as self-discovery and his view of (...) philosophy as preparation for life have been the stuff of western thought at its best. So completely did Socrates embody these values, he was prepared to die in their defence. (shrink)

Sara Suleri has written recently, in Meatless Days, of being treated as an "otherness machine"-and of being heartily sick of it.20 Perhaps the predicament of the postcolonial intellectual is simply that as intellectuals-a category instituted in black Africa by colonialism-we are, indeed, always at the risk of becoming otherness machines, with the manufacture of alterity as our principal role. Our only distinction in the world of texts to which we are latecomers is that we can mediate it to our fellows. (...) This is especially true when postcolonial meets postmodern; for what the postmodern reader seems to demand of Africa is all too close to what modernism-in the form of the postimpressionists-demanded of it. The role that Africa, like the rest of the Third World, plays for Euro-American postmodernism-like its better-documented significance for modernist art-must be distinguished from the role postmodernism might play in the Third World; what that might be it is, I think, too early to tell. What happens will happen not because we pronounce on the matter in theory, but will happen out of the changing everyday practices of African cultural life.For all the while, in Africa's cultures, there are those who will not see themselves as Other. Despite the overwhelming reality of economic decline; despite unimaginable poverty; despite wars, malnutrition, disease, and political instability, African cultural productivity grows apace: popular literatures, oral narrative and poetry, dance, drama, music, and visual art all thrive. The contemporary cultural production of many African societies, and the many traditions whose evidences so vigorously remain, is an antidote to the dark vision of the postcolonial novelist. 20. Sara Suleri, Meatless Days , p. 105. Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and literature at Duke University, is the author of a number of books, including For Truth in Semantics , Necessary Questions , and In My Father's House , a collection of essays on African cultural politics. His first novel, Avenging Angel, was published in 1990. (shrink)

This chapter discusses intergenerational class mobility, which is the extent to which sons — and even daughters — follow in their father's footsteps. It asks how ‘open’ India is, and whether it is becoming more ‘open’ with greater equality of opportunity as it slowly modernises. The discussion is limited to the patterns of intergenerational mobility of men and women who are actually in paid employment.

This article summarizes my views on epistemological problems in African studies as I have expressed them previously in different contexts, mainly my book In My Father's House (1992), to which I refer the reader for further details. I start with an attempt to expose some natural errors in our thinking about the traditional-modern polarity, and thus help understand some striking and not generally appreciated similarities of the logical problem situation in modern western philosophy of science to the analysis of (...) traditional African epistemic procedures. This similarity rests upon both types of analysis dealing with procedures crucially hinging upon knowledge claims. (shrink)

Classical Trinitarians claim that Jesus—the Son of God—is truly God and that there is only one God and the Father is God, the Spirit is God, and the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct. However, if the identity statement that ‘the Son is God’ is understood in the sense of numerical identity, logical incoherence seems immanent. Yet, if the identity statement is understood according to an ‘is’ of predication then it lacks accuracy and permits polytheism. Therefore, we argue (...) that there is another sense of ‘is’ needed in trinitarian discourse that will allow the Christian to avoid logical incoherence while still fully affirming all that is meant to be affirmed in the confession ‘Jesus is God.’ We suggest a sense of ‘is’ that meets this need. (shrink)

A literary historian might very well characterize the eighties as the period when race, class, and gender became the holy trinity of literary criticism. Critical Inquiry’s contribution to this shift in critical paradigms took the form of two special issues, ”Writing and Sexual Difference,” and “‘Race,’ Writing and Difference.” In the 1990s, however, “race,” “class,” and “gender” threaten to become the regnant clichés of our critical discourse. Our object in this special issue is to help disrupt the cliché-ridden discourse of (...) identity by exploring the formation of identities and the problem of subjectivity.Scholars in a variety of disciplines have begun to address what we might call the politics of identity. Their work expands on the evolving, anti-essentialist critiques of ethnic, sexual, national, and racial identities, particularly the work of those post-structuralist theorists who have articulated concepts of difference. The calls for a “post-essentialist” reconception of notions of identity have become increasingly common. The powerful resurgence of nationalisms in Eastern Europe provides just one example of the catalysts for such theorizing.Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of Assertion and Conditionals, Truth in Semantics, and Necessary Questions, has also published a novel, Avenging Angel, and a collection of essays, In My Father’s House. His most recent contribution to Critical Inquiry was “Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?”. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is coeditor of Transition, a quarterly review, and the author of Figures in Black, The Signifying Monkey, and Loose Canons. His latest contribution to Critical Inquiry was “Critical Fanonism”. (shrink)

Modern sociology and anthropology proposed from their very beginnings a scientific study of religion. This paper discusses attempts to understand religion in this ‘scientific’ way. I start with a classical canon of anthropology and sociology of religion, in the works of E. B. Tylor, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim. Science aims to be a discourse that transcends local identities; it is deeply cosmopolitan. To offer a local metaphysics as its basis would produce a discourse that was not recognizable as a (...) contribution to the cosmopolitan conversation of the sciences. So, a science of religion cannot appeal to the entities invoked in any particular religion; hence the methodological atheism of these three founding fathers. This cosmopolitan ideal, the calling of the scientist, on the one hand, and the concern to understand the ideas of other cultures, on the other, can pull in different directions. Understanding requires us to appeal to our own concepts but not to our own truths. In the explanations, though, truth – the universal shared reality – has to matter, because the scientific story of religion has to work for people of all faiths and none, precisely because it is cosmopolitan. Not everything we call a religion will have historical Christianity's laser-like focus on ontological truth-claims. But as long as there are people making truth-claims in the name of religion, there will be the possibility of a tension between the very idea of a science of religion and some of the multifarious collections of beliefs, practices and institutions that make up what we now call ‘religions’. (shrink)

Noah Feldman’s elegant essay contains many attractive suggestions, especially in its final compelling discussions of various conceptions of Cosmopolitan Law. Less importantly for your purposes, dear Reader, than for mine, it also provides a fair and clear account of some of my own discussions of cosmopolitanism (in the course of which I have made a few suggestions that may be of relevance for the law). In this brief response, I should like to focus on clarifying one of the conceptual distinctions (...) that I have made: the distinction between the rational and the reasonable. In marking that distinction, I was returning to a contrast I had made many years ago, in In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. Reading Feldman’s response, I realize that I had been a good deal too economical in explaining what I had in mind. Clarifying my view will also help to reinforce an important distinction, which Feldman both accepts and rightly finds stressed in my own work, between the context of our cosmopolitan obligations, on the one hand, and our political obligations, on the other. That is a central theme of his essay, of course; and in clarifying my view, I hope to clarify, as well, how my “reined-in” account of cosmopolitanism might relate to some of the legal and political exigencies he explores. What distinction do I mark by using the two words “rational” and “reasonable,” words that many people would treat as synonyms? I should say, first, that I take both terms to apply both to ways of thinking about what to believe—epistemic reasoning—and to ways of thinking about what to do—practical reasoning. (I think that feelings can be reasonable and unreasonable, too, but this is a complication I shall ignore here.) At a first pass, the distinction I have in mind is between epistemic and practical procedures that are likely to be successful, given the way the world is (which I call “rational”); and procedures that a normal human being has no reason to doubt will be effective, whether or not, in fact, they are (which I call “reasonable”).. (shrink)

The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales: great literature can be read by anyone, with a little help. The eminent British philosopher Anthony O’Hear leads the way with this captivating journey through two-and-a-half millennia of books as powerful, thrilling, erotic, politically astute, and awe-inspiring as any modern bestseller. O’Hear begins with Homer, whose poems of epic struggle have made him the father of Western literature. After Greek tragedy, Plato, and Virgil’s Aeneid comes Ovid, whose encyclopedic Metamorphoses is an (...) inexhaustible source for European art and literature. Via Saint Augustine, O’Hear reaches Dante and his terrifying and sublime Divine Comedy. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Pascal, Racine, and finally Goethe complete the cast list. In each case, O’Hear patiently draws out themes, focuses on key passages, and explains why they are important. Not simply a grand work of reference, The Great Books is also a narrative history shot through with a love of literature and the author’s deeply held belief in its power to enrich and enliven everyone’s world. (shrink)

Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon forms of marriage have injected patrilineal values and companionate expectations into the Akan matrilineal family structure. As Anthony Appiah demonstrates, these infusions have generated severe strains in the matrikin social structures and, in extreme cases, resulted in the break up of families. In this essay, I investigate the ideological politics at play in this patrilinealization of Asante society.

Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon forms of marriage have injected patrilineal values and companionate expectations into the Akan matrilineal family structure. As Anthony Appiah demonstrates, these infusions have generated severe strains in the matrikin social structures and, in extreme cases, resulted in the break up of families. In this essay, I investigate the ideological politics at play in this patrilinealization of Asante society.

Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon forms of marriage have injected patrilineal values and companionate expectations into the Akan matrilineal family structure. As Anthony Appiah demonstrates, these infusions have generated severe strains in the matrikin social structures and, in extreme cases, resulted in the break up of families. In this essay, I investigate the ideological politics at play in this patrilinealization of Asante society.

Aquinas’s account of the human soul is the key to his theory of human nature. The soul’s nature as the substantial form of the human body appears at times to be in tension with its nature as immaterial intellect, however, and nowhere is this tension more evident than in Aquinas’s discussion of the ‘separated’ soul. In this paper I use the Biblical story of the rich man and Lazarus (which Aquinas took to involve actual separated souls) to highlight what I (...) will call the Two-Person Problem facing his account of human identity through death and the bodily resurrection. Aquinas claims that the rational soul is neither the human being nor the human person. When the rich man’s soul says “I am in agony,” then, what is the referent of “I?” It appears that there is a human person, ‘Dives,’ who is replaced at Dives’s death by the person ‘Dives’s soul,’ who is in turn replaced at the bodily resurrection by ‘Dives,’ whom Aquinas claims is numerically identical to the original person. But this seems hopeless as an identity-preserving account of human nature. I believe that Aquinas’s account of human nature does not, as it stands, possess the resources with which to overcome this difficulty; I conclude that reconstructing a(n otherwise) Thomistic account that involves immediate bodily resurrection, although a radical approach, is the one best suited to preserving the most essential features of Aquinas’s theory. (shrink)

There are ways in which the new tenseless theory of time is analogous to David Lewis’s modal realism. The new tenseless theory gives an indexical analysis of temporal terms such as ‘now’, while Lewis gives and indexical analysis of ‘actual’. For the new tenseless theory, all times are equally real; for Lewis, all worlds are equally real. In this paper I investigate this apparent analogy between these two theories, and ask whether a proponent of one is committed, by parity of (...) reasoning, to the other. I conclude that the analogy is merely apparent, and that independent reasons are needed to support each theory. (shrink)

Medieval philosophy is primarily associated today with university-based disputations and the authorities cited in those disputations. In their own time, however, scholastic debates were recognized as just one part of wide-ranging philosophical and theological discussions. A Hidden Wisdom breaks new ground by drawing attention to another crucial component of these conversations: the Christian contemplative tradition. The thirteenth–fifteenth centuries in particular saw a dramatic increase in the production and consumption of mystical and contemplative literature in the ‘Christian West’, by laypeople as (...) well as religious scholars, women as well as men. A Hidden Wisdom focuses on five topics of particular interest to both scholastics and contemplatives in this period—namely, self-knowledge, reason and its limits, love and the will, persons, and immortality and the afterlife. This focus centers on the (often overlooked) contributions of medieval women and demonstrates that when we reunite scholasticism with its contemplative counterpart, we gain not only a more accurate understanding of the scope of medieval Christian philosophy and theology but also an increased awareness of a deeply practical tradition that builds up as well as tears down, generates as well as deconstructs. The book’s treatment of topics and figures is meant to be representative rather than exhaustive—a tasting menu rather than a comprehensive study. The choice of topics offers a series of ‘hooks’ for philosophers to connect their own interests to issues central to medieval contemplative philosophy, while also providing medievalists in other disciplines a fresh lens through which to view these texts. (shrink)

Bare plural generic sentences pervade ordinary talk. And yet it is extremely controversial what semantics to assign to such sentences. In this paper, I achieve two tasks. First, I develop a novel classification of the various standard uses to which bare plurals may be put. This “variety data” is important—it gives rise to much of the difficulty in systematically theorizing about bare plurals. Second, I develop a novel account of bare plurals, the radical account. On this account, all bare plurals (...) fail to express propositions. The content of a bare plural has to be pragmatically “completed” by a speaker in order for her to make an assertion. At least the content of a quantifier expression has to be supplied. But sometimes, the content of a sentential operator or modal verb is also supplied. The radical account straightforwardly explains the variety data: Speakers’ communicative intentions vary wildly across different contexts. (shrink)

In current society, eating is most definitely a gendered act: that is, what we eat and how we eat it factors in both the construction and the performance of gender. Furthermore, eating is a gendered act with consequences that go far beyond whether one orders a steak or a salad for dinner. In the first half of this paper, I identify the dominant myths surrounding both female and male eating, and I show that those myths contribute in important ways to (...) cultural constructions of male and female appetites more generally speaking. In the second half, I argue that the Christian church should share feminism’s perception of these current cultural myths as fundamentally disordered, and I claim that the Christian traditions of fasting and feasting present us with a concrete means to counter those damaging conceptions and reclaim a healthy attitude toward our hunger. (shrink)