The work aims to demonstrate that at the heart of Eriugena’s approach to Christian theology there lies a profoundly philosophical interest in the necessity of a cardinal shift in the paradigms of thinking – namely, that from the metaphysical to the dialectical one, which wins him a reputation of the ‘Hegel of the ninth century,’ as scholars in Post-Hegelian Germany called him. The prime concern of Eriugena’s discourse is to prove that the actual adoption of the salvific truth of Christ’s (...) revelation about all humans’ Sonship to God directly depends on the way the truth of God’s Oneness is consistently thought of. It is exactly the dialectic of the universal and particular which allows Eriugena both to tackle the dichotomy between being and non-being and to proceed towards raising a question how the totality of God’s being can be approached so as to let him radically reconsider a predominantly metaphysical view of creation the theological reflection traditionally relies on. According to the dialectical understanding of unity that Eriugena does adhere to, the reality of creation cannot be thought of, and therefore known, otherwise than in the way of being inseparable from the universal Principle of all. This is the Principle abandoned by nothing, unless the mind corrupted by the senses thinks otherwise and, following the metaphysical pattern of dichotomy, improperly sets the creation and its Principle apart. Restoration of the mind to the proper rational motion of recta ratio freed, as Eriugena argues, from the dictates of senses therefore becomes the way of both the epistemological breakthrough to the infinite whole and practical return from the world of finite things to living in the divine reality of creation. The work’s argument is based on the assumption of close affinity between Eriugena’s discourse and that of his Islamic contemporaries, who developed their dialectical ideas within the Mu’tazilah tradition of a philosophically disciplined approach to the truth of God’s Oneness. In particular, al-Nazzam’s engagement with Parmenides’ Periphyseon and his resistance to the danger of a dualistic interpretation of its ontology seem to provoke Eriugena’s innovative approach to Christian theology with a view to suggesting a mode of overcoming dualism as the main obstacle on the way to the Truth revealed. This vision of the meaning of Eriugena’s undertaking allows us not only to better understand the novelty of his approach to Christian theology, but also reconsider some of the key points of his discourse that seem to have become a sort of commonplace in Eriugenian studies: 1. Unlike the prevalent opinion, not the forms of the division of Nature but the modes of interpreting being and non-being are to be understood to constitute the genuine subject-matter of each book of the Periphyseon and, hence, of the five parts of his system. 2. The fourfold division of Nature is to be interpreted not as a basic structure of the system offered by Eriugena, but as a means of introducing dialectic to the body of theology by refuting Augustine’s metaphysical vision of a hierarchical model of the universe and indicating the way of resolution of the cardinally theological contradiction – God does and does not create at the same time. 3. All this gives reason to disagree with a general tendency of associating Eriugena’s work with exploration of the division of God’s Nature and to reinterpret it as an immense anti-division project to be understood as an important turn in the history of Christian thought entirely focused on the truth of God’s Oneness and human life in conformity to it. *** I affirm that this thesis is entirely my own work and has not been submitted for examination in any form elsewhere. (shrink)

The article is devoted to study of totalitarian and democratic types of rhetoric. The classical dichotomy of rhetorical influence has been discovered: monologic use of rhetoric as a verbal weapon through propaganda, demagoguery, populism, creation of the image of an enemy, division of society and dialogical use of rhetoric as consolidating communication, truth-seeking, social consent and understanding. It is shown that the trigger of democratic and totalitarian regimes is the existential of freedom. The active influence of the postmodern rhetoric (...) of the information age in its performativity in the acquisition of snack culture is determined, which significantly strengthens the manipulative strategies. Totalitarian tendencies of digital rhetoric are found in information warfare technologies, in the processes of censorship, ambivalence and negativism of information, spreading fake news, igniting conflicts in mass media. Militarization of vocabulary and spread of obscene language in ordinary communication as factors of compensatory aggression of the population, the danger of excessive information transparency of people’s private lives are noted. Democratism of the digital rhetoric is manifested in such phenomena as the direct creation of e-democracy, access of citizens to e-voting, e-services, e-petitions, overcoming digital inequality, the ability to communicate with officials and public officers live on TV and radio, in social networks. Democratic principles of rhetoric, especially in Ukraine as a state of “transitional democracy” should be supported by quality education, fostering critical thinking and activity of civil society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:146 BOOK REVIEWS the years passed since Father Garrigou-Lagrange last published his De Revelatione would have allowed Thomistic scholars to retrieve and de· velop Aquinas's theological insights in their fullness. The danger of apologetics is that it can lead one to develop a teaching only along the lines set by those challenging the traditional teaching of the Church. In this particular instance, the Catholic apologists of the antimodernist period (...) were led to overstress the epistemological dimension of the theology of Revelation, leaving unstated that for Saint Thomas the primary term of analysis in this question is the knowledge of God. The need of Revelation for Saint Thomas stems from the call to man to share in the beatific vision. A paper on the relation of finality between faith and the beatific vision would have underlined the originality and true significance of the Thomistic tradition in theology. Saint John's Priory Laredo, Texas JOSEPH D'AMECOURT, F.J. The Eternity of the World in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas and his Contemporaries. Edited by J. B. M. WISSINK. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, edited by A. ZIMMERMAN, vol. 27. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990. Pp. viii+ 100. $28.75 (paper). This volume contains six short studies by five different scholars from the Netherlands on a topic accurately indicated by its title. These studies are a product of a symposium held by the Thomas Aquinas Workgroup, a scholarly association dedicated to investigating the thesis " that Aquinas first of all has to be understood as a theologian " and to " a rediscovery of the original Aquinas and his authentic thought" (p. vii). The topic chosen for these studies is a suitable one for the aims of the Workgroup, for it is one that requires a clear dis· tinction to be made between the realms of philosophy and theology, and it is one that has generated much interest and dispute-in the Middle Ages no less than today. This small collection of studies makes a con· tribution to scholarship, although there are weaknesses in some of the studies, as I shall note. F. J. A. de Grijs (pp. 1-8) argues that Thomas's purpose in writing the De aeternitate mundi was theological rather than philosophical in that Thomas provides a meditation on the meaning of eternity. This meditation, so de Grijs argues, is not only about the temporal eternity of the world but is even more about God's eternity. It shows us how BOOK REVIEWS 147 little we grasp of God's duration, or how we do not understand it rather than how we do understand it. J. A. Aertsen (pp. 9-19) ·responds to de Grijs by arguing that the work has a philosophical character. First, Aertsen explains, the fact that Thomas begins the De aeternitate mundi with the supposition on faith that the world had a temporal beginning in the past does not of itself (as de Grijs had thought) mean that the work is theological. Rather, it simply means that all believers agree that in fact the world had a temporal beginning, but the question at issue remains a philosophical one: could the world possibly have existed eternally in the past? Second, Aertsen points out that the reasoning in the De aeternitate mundi is much like that of Thomas's Disputed Question De potentia Dei, q. 3, a. 14, which has an explicitly philosophical character. Third, Thomas has already made it clear in his Commentary on the Sentences, bk. 2, d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, that the doctrine of creation, excluding the part of the doctrine that the world had a temporal beginning, is philosophically knowable in principle and known to philosophers in fact. Since the fact of creation is philosophically knowable and can he demonstrated without prejudice to the question of eternity, it cannot he said that an eternal past existence is incompatible with creation. Hence, the question of the compatibility of being eternal and being created-the very question for the De aeternitate mundi-is regarded by Thomas as philosophical rather than as theological. Aertsen's criticisms of de Grijs are sound, yet de Grijs's central point can he saved. De Grijs... (shrink)

In a recent study of astrophysical “fine-tunings” (or “coincidences”), Robert Klee critically assesses the support that such astrophysical evidence might be thought to lend to the design argument (i.e., the argument that our universe has been designed by some deity). Klee argues that a proper assessment indicates that the universe is not as “fine-tuned” as advertised by proponents of the design arguments. We argue (i) that Klee’s assessment of the data is, to a certain extent, problematic; and (ii) even if (...) Klee’s assessment of the data is correct, it provides a necessary but not a sufficient response to the design argument. However, an adequate skeptical rejoinder to the design argument can be made by appealing to the anthropic principle. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the dynamical dark matter problem in twentieth century astrophysics from the point of view of History and Philosophy of Science. The dynamical dark matter problem describes the situation astronomers find themselves in with regard to the dynamics of large scale astrophysical systems such as galaxies and galaxy clusters: The observed motions are incompatible with the visible distribution matter given the accepted law of gravitation. This discrepancy has two classes of possible solutions: either there exists copious amounts (...) of some kind of matter that neither emits nor absorbs radiation , or the law of gravitation must be revised. ;Chapter 2 describes the physical and philosophical foundations of dynamical inferences---inferences from discrepancies between well-founded theoretical expectations and reliable observations to the characteristics of candidate solutions. Chapter 3 discusses the history of dark matter . Chapter 4 reviews the present evidence bearing on the dark matter problem. Chapter 5 evaluates the important candidate matter solutions in light of the available evidence. Chapter 6 evaluates two candidate gravitational solutions on evidential and methodological grounds, and addresses the problem of theory choice. I do not try to solve the dark matter problem, but to uncover and evaluate patterns of inference involved in evidential arguments for and against candidate solutions. ;I show that Newton's "Reasoning from Phenomena" is a good framework from which to understand what is going on in this field. I argue that "higher order" and especially non-dynamical evidence is the best hope for solving this problem in dynamics. This is so in part because of "the dark matter double bind": the very existence of the dark matter problem means that we cannot be sure of the overall matter distribution in astrophysical systems, and this in turn means that the observed motions by themselves cannot provide relative confirmation of any theory of gravitational interactions taking place at these scales. I use Newton's Rules of Reasoning to argue that we should retain General Relativity as our theory of gravity at galactic and greater scales, despite the lack of positive evidence to confirm it over its rivals at these scales. (shrink)

Historians have been divided about the origins of Leveller theories concerning natural rights, equality, and democracy. This article gives an account of the monistic natural philosophy outlined by Richard Overton in his pre-Leveller work Mans Mortalitie (1643/44) and demonstrates how his heretical conception of creation provided a metaphysical foundation for his political ideas about the liberty of the subject. Comparisons and contrasts are made with the hermetic idealism of Henry and Thomas Vaughan and the spiritual materialism of Gerrard Winstanley. (...) The most illuminating comparison amongst contemporaries, however, is found in Milton's poetic vision of the cosmos in Paradise Lost (1667). (shrink)

Returning to the Greek understanding of art to rethink its capacities, Creation and the Function of Art focuses on the relationship between techné and phusis (nature). Moving away from the theoretical Platonism which dominates contemporary understandings of art, this book instead reinvigorates Aristotelian causation. Beginning with the Greek topos and turning to insights from philosophy, pure mathematics, psychoanalysis and biology, Jason Tuckwell re-problematises techné in functional terms. This book examines the deviations at play within logical forms, the subject, (...) and upon phusis to better situate the role of the function in poiesis (art). In so doing, Tuckwell argues that art concerns a genuinely creative labour that cannot be resolved via an ontological or epistemological problem, but which instead constitutes an encounter with the problematic. As such, techné is shown to be a property of the living, of intelligence coupled to action, that not only enacts poiesis or art, but indicates a broader role for creative deviation in nature. (shrink)

After the death of Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h), one of the most significant debated topics of Muslims was the institution of caliphate. This institution caused crucial argumentations through the ages from Abu Bakr to Abd-al-Majid who was the hundreth khalifa. Some prominent issues in that regard as follows: How khalifa comes to power, who becomes khalifa, whether he is descended from Quraysh or not, which kind of traits khalifa should have, and how khalifa should behave in certain circumstances. While these arguments (...) were going on, caliphate was maintained based on the reign under some certain dynasties’ responsibilities after the Rashidun (rightly guided) Caliphs. Umayyads, Abbasids and Ottoman Dynasties were the most well-known ones of these dynasties. Throughout history, even though caliphate passed in one another’s hands among aforementioned dynasties, none of them did attempt to abolish this position. However, Turkish Muslims who became defeated with European occupation of non-western territories decided to abolish caliphate for the sake of modernization activities within the period of transition from imperialism to nation state. This decision brought about a trauma, which was much more critical than former argumentation around the position in Muslim world. Many congresses were organized in Islamic world in order to recover from this trauma. While this kind of quests were continuing, Muhammad Hamīdullah proposed “High Caliphate Council” in relation to rearrangement of caliphate in accordance with the conditions of Islamic countries. This proposal offers an applicable model to today’s modern nation states by establishing unity among them and leaving aside their conflicts and differences. This proposal offers a resolution of much-discussed matters of the position within the limits of principals. It also draws attention by showing a possibility of Islamic union in contemporary Islamic thought. Summary: The matters of who undertakes the management of societies, how rulers come to power and in what manners the rulers maintain the management have been discussed throughout history. It is seen that rulers adopted kingdom as regime before the period of the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h). There was also two-person management. The discussions about this matter were also seen around khalifas who were the rulers of Muslims after the death of Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h). Some debated issues in that regards as follows: Who becomes khalifa, how he is elected, which traits he should possess, and so on. Caliphate continued its existence despite the discussions until the first quarter of the 14th Hijra era. Abolition of caliphate was a trauma for Muslims undoubtedly. From Anatolia to Egypt and from India to the Balkans, many attempts were carried out to recover from this trauma. However, this matter was oversimplified in the conditions of that period since it became a topic which was hushed over in just congresses and conventions. One of the people who wrote on this topic, which maintains its vitality even today was Muhammad Hamīdullah. He was an important Islamic scholar, a lawyer and a historian in Indian geography. Hamīdullah did deal caliphate by indicating its history broadly. The distinctive feature of Hamīdullah from others who wrote on this topic is that he also presented a considerable offer to solve the matter. In this sense, Hamīdullah experienced the trauma in his own life as all muslims did it with the abolition of caliphate. Hence he mentioned this matter in his writings in the mood of care and dignity of a scientist and also in feeling of a heartbroken muslim. Hamīdullah made clear that the method of election of the ruler differed throughout history. Indeed, the verses of Holy Qur’ān, the applications of the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h) and the differences of Four Great Chaliphs on coming to power testified this claim. According to Hamīdullah, it is quite normal that the method of regime can vary according to the conditions of societies. He recommended acting based on timeless rules rather than the changes that vary according to conditions and places. He also stated that the regime which Islam approves is a combination of kingdom and democracy in his lines dealing with methods of regime. To him, kingdom is the method of regime of empire. Empire is the regime in which various nationalities live together with all their differences and interact with one another intensely and in which the rulers rule over wide borders. On the other hand, Islamic world lost its edges of empire, changed its regime and divided to nation states after the decline of the Ottoman Empire and Mughal Empire which were established by Muslims. On the contrary, westerners attempted to establish a head empire several times after building nation states in Europe. Some of them are UN, NATO, EU, to name but a few. In our opinion, in the transition process of Muslim rulers from empire to nation state, Hamīdullah made an offer to accomodate Islamic law in state law, Islamic politic and administrative principles in politics and administration practices, Islamic education system in education system, and principles of Islamic economics in economic decisions of government using the Prophet Muhammed’s life as a base. He also explained to Muslims that the method of regime can be changed and the essential matter is to apply Islamic management principles in such a new situation. He played a role in clearing the way for Muslims by indicating that the method of Islamic regime can be changed according to conditions but the principles of Islam are unalterable. To the writer of these lines, Hamīdullah intimates that it is not so true to stick to the form of the process in Muslim territories in which a compulsory transition from the empires or multinational social structures to the nation state structures have been experienced for the last two ages. However, the first matter to dwell on should be whether the ruler of the government behaves in accoradance with the principles of Islam or not. To Hamīdullah, the second matter is that even though Muslim countries had to enter in the process of becoming nation states, Muslims should make an effort to establish supra-state associations as required by Islam. In this respect, Hamīdullah’s proposal is “High Caliphate Council”. This council is a considerable offer presented to Muslim countries in the age when a universal caliphate is not possible and Muslims head towards a unified state form all over the world. Today, this offer recommends countries of which great majority is Muslims and in which Muslims are minority to meet on a common ground rather than conflict because of differences among them. The High Caliphate Council is an institute consists of presidents or hereditary administrators as leading and regular members and so it avoids regional competition. It is established by Muslim presidents who shares the chair alternately. Based on this, all Muslim presidents play a role altogether in this council without need to be Sunni, Shia, or from Quraysh. The High Caliphate Council is a reflection of a dream, which started a century and half a century ago but is required more today. It is also a reflection of the discourse of “Islamic Union” in Contemporary Islamic Thought. The Caliphate Council and International Islamic Legists’ Association, which is the first practical step of the council can be seen as the theory of a new world order based on the unity principle of Islam. Hamīdullah does not consider this order not only in the range of belief but also with the aim of institutionalizing ‘ijmā (consensus of Islamic legists) and qiyās(legal analogy). He stated that International Islamic Legists’ Association, which is a scientific institution could not be established beforetime by Muslims spread on three continents due to lacking of communication among them. However, thanks to today’s possibilities, the establishment of such association is easier today. Hamīdullah found dynamic solutions such these two institutions for the realization of caliphate, which is a religious necessity. He marked an era for Muslims in the period of time when they are on a quest. (shrink)

The Tannhäuser Gate. Architecture in science fiction films of the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century as a component of utopian and dystopian projections of the future. -/- The films of science fiction genre from the second half of the 20th and early 21st century contained many visions of the future, which were at the same time a reflection on the achievements and deficiencies of modern times. In 1960s, cinematographic works were dominated by optimism (...) and faith in the possibility of never-ending progress. The disappearance of political divisions between the blocs of states and the joint exploration of the cosmos was foreseen. The designers undertook cooperation with scientists, which manifested itself in showing cosmic constructions far exceeding the real technical capabilities. Starting from the 1970s, pessimism and the belief that the future will bring, above all, the intensification of negative phenomena of the present began to grow in films. Fears of the future were connected with indicating various possible defects and insoluble contradictions between them. When, therefore, some dystopian visions illustrated the threat of increase in crime, others depicted the future as saturated with state control mechanisms and the prevalence of surveillance. The fears shown on the screens were also aroused by the growth of large corporations, especially by their gaining political influence or staying outside the system of democracy. The authors of the films also presented their suspicions related to the creation of new types of weapons by corporations, the use of which might breach the current legal norms. Particular objections concerned research on biological weapons and the possible spread of lethal viruses. The development of robotics and research into artificial intelligence, which must have resulted in the appearance of androids and inevitable tensions in their relations with humans, also triggered fear. Another problem for film-makers has become hybrids that are a combination of people and electronic parts. Scriptwriters and directors likewise considered the development of genetic engineering, which led to the creation of mutant human beings. A number of film dystopias contemplated the possibility of the collapse of democratic systems and the development of authoritarian regimes in their place, often based on broad public support. This kind of dystopia also includes films presenting the consequences of contemporary hedonism and consumerism. The problem is, however, that works critical of these phenomena were themselves advertisements for attractive products. (shrink)

This research uses a survey to analyze types of benefits sought by partners in cross-sector collaborations in Spain and to test and build upon theories that indicate prior collaboration experience and partner alignment will positively affect value creation through the collaboration. Using exploratory factor analysis to operationalize a broad range of potential benefits into more specific concepts, the results of this study identify distinct factors that characterize the types of benefits sought by non-profit organizations and businesses engaged in cross-sector (...) collaborations. Findings show that prior experience and alignment positively affect each factor for value creation. Prior experience is also found to influence the type of benefits sought from cross-sector collaborations and to positively affect alignment in terms of mission and strategy. Unexpectedly, the study also finds that prior experience moderates the effect of alignment on value creation. (shrink)

CONCLUSIONThis brief survey of the assessment of the Resurrection of Jesus in contemporary Catholic Christology indicates the presence of widely varying views on the nature of the Resurrection, on the manner of its revelation, and on the role attributed to it in the overall structure of theology. While it is improbable that a unified consensus will be achieved in the near future, if ever, a few concluding remarks may serve to direct attention to some central issues which underlie the (...) variations.First, more explicit attention could profitably be directed to the correlation of the understanding of the nature of the Resurrection with the theological function attributed to it. It is not at all certain that all opinions on the nature of the Resurrection are compatible with all of its theoretically possible theological functions. Is it, for example, consistent to understand the Resurrection as inseparable from Jesus' death, while assessing the Crucifixion in negative terms and attributing to the Resurrection the function of legitimating the claims of the historical Jesus ? Authors such as Kiing and Kasper seem to have drawn eclectically on disparate sources without having adverted sufficiently to the problems involved in a synthesis of different conceptions. Thus their positions on the function of the Resurrection in Christology are reminiscent of Wolfhart Pannenberg, 74 while their descriptions of the connection of death and resurrection draw heavily and explicitly on Karl Rahner. It would seem, however, that Rahner's conception of the nature of the Resurrection is incompatible with Pannenberg's christological argumentation. 75 At the very least, more expb'cit discussion of this issue would help to dispel the appearance of inconsistencies in the viewpoints of some authors.Secondly, it would seem that the central disputed issue with regard to the theological function of the Resurrection is the question of the sufficiency of the historical Jesus as basis and criterion of Christology. This question is also central to current Protestant Christology, as the opposing views of Pannenberg and Gerhard Ebeling76 clearly indicate. Its discussion is unfortunately often impeded by the use of identical terminology for different referents: some who assert the sufficiency of the historical Jesus and most of those who deny it are inclined to abstract from Jesus' death when they refer to the historical Jesus, while others not only include the Crucifixion but even attribute to it a very prominent position in their understanding of Jesus' life. Now the question of the sufficiency of the historical Jesus in abstraction from his death is quite different from that of his sufficiency when his death is included. The charge that theologies which assert that the historical Jesus is sufficient basis and criterion of Christology are inevitably reductionist is quite telling when raised against those whose conception of the historical Jesus abstracts from his crucifixion, but it is not necessarily valid when directed against those who do not do this. An uncritical presumption of Pannenberg's problematic distinction between Jesus' actions and his double fate of crucifixion and resurrection 77 may be at the root of many problems here. In view of the fact that Jesus' death was the consequence of his public activity, assessment of his public life in abstraction from that death is scarcely possible. The views which assert the sufficiency of the historical Jesus while incorporating the Crucifixion into their understanding of the historical Jesus require and deserve more careful examination. They possess the major advantage that in such approaches Christology's basis and criterion is accessible historically, while other proposed criteria, such as Küng's ‘biblical Christ’ or Kasper's ‘earthly Jesus and the risen and exalted Christ’ presuppose the resolution of what Rahner rightly considers the first and most basic christological question, the legitimacy of the step from the historical Jesus to the christological kerygma of the early Church .This leads immediately to a final remark: The key to discussion of the Resurrection is the theological interpretation of Jesus' death. Although critical assessment of the theory of satisfaction and of the category of sacrifice pertain to this question, 78 the matter is far more complex than these aspects alone. Further systematic study, which could profitably draw on the renewed exegetical examination of the various interpretations to be found in the New Testament, 79 is urgently needed. Avoidance of isolation of Jesus' death from his public life is one major precondition for the development of a valid interpretation of it. 80 While neither a survey of existing opinions nor a constructive proposal can be offered here, it might be suggested, without advocating false glorification of the Crucifixion, 81 that a theology which evaluates Jesus' death in exclusively negative terms will ultimately prove unable to provide a well‐grounded positive christological assessment of his life. (shrink)

The Creation of Ideas in Physics: Studies for a Methodology of Theory Construction is a collection of essays by physicists, philosophers, and historians about how physical theories are developed. It includes major, new studies of Newton's methods and of the genesis of the theories of relativity. Also featured are reflective analyses of the alternatives facing contemporary theoretical physicists investigating problems in cosmology and quantum gravity. The book is rich in critical interactions among the authors. Its unusual ambition is (...) to engage thinkers in the diverse disciplines of science studies in a common quest to delineate the creative thinking responsible for major advances in physical theory. The volume explores the possibility of learning something general about what distinguishes productive from abortive directions of theoretical inquiry, something that both illuminates the nature of scientific thought and enriches the methodological prescriptions that guide research. (shrink)

In 1962 Umberto Eco published his Opera aperta. Forma e indeterminazione nelle poetiche contemporanee, in which he dealt with the televised space and its influence on the development of plot in contemporary narratives. The analysis of the aesthetic of television led him to highlight the exclusive capacity of television to transmit events in real time: Live TV.Eco affirms in particular that through the editing in Live TV, the role of choice completely changes in comparison to what happens in the (...) editing phase within the cinematographic narrative. In Live TV, choice becomes a proper composition, a form of narrative, a means of unifying in a discursive way a set of isolated images within the framework of a wider set of events taking place at the same time and intersecting one another. This impromptu narrative brings with it the use of some recursive forms, which represent an important narrative tool enabling a weaving of the narrative space. Eco identified those recursive forms in some jazz figures such as the riff, the recursive form of which allows for the creation of an organic composition full of improvisation. A few years later, the importance of figures of this kind was also noted by Deleuze-Guattari, who posited that ritornello has an important function of organizing the exterior space, or chaotic space. Based on these considerations, this paper deals with the phenomenon of repetition, recursivity, and patterns, to bring these concepts into the construction of narrative spaces. The central point of the paper is that the birth of Live TV started a phenomenon of exteriorization of the inner data of the narrative construction. This phenomenon of externalization makes possible the understanding of data through spatial terms, and one starts to use recursive formulas to navigate it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The individual-community relationship has always been one of the most fundamental topics of social sciences. In sociology, this is known as the micro-macro relationship while in economics it refers to the processes, through which, individual actions lead to macroeconomic phenomena. Based on philosophical discourse and systems theory, many sociologists even use the term "emergence" in their understanding of micro-macro relationship, which refers to collective phenomena that are created by the cooperation of individuals, but cannot be reduced to individual actions. (...) "Emergence" theories attempt to explain the nature of society as a complex system by examining how individuals and their relationships lead to the creation of integrated and macro-social phenomena such as markets, educational systems, cultural beliefs, and shared social practices. As a prelude to activity, every researcher has to answer the question from the methodological point of view, how is it possible to study the behavior of social groups and how can we gain knowledge about the laws related to social groups? Anyone who deals with humanities and social sciences or any reality and phenomenon that affects human beings, inevitably deals with the reality that is emerging. In fact, emergence occurs when one level of reality emerges radically from another level. Examples of emergent levels of reality include how the mind emerges from the body; or the way society emerges from human beings. Therefore, when there is an emerging factor, different scientific disciplines should be used, because it is inevitable to talk about social affairs, psychology and neurobiology, as well as physical and even chemical. -/- INTRODUCTION Since its beginning in the 19th century, sociology has faced the fundamental question of what a social phenomena stands for? At a glance, sociologists deal with the study of social groups, collective behavior, institutions, social structures, social networks, and social dynamics, and ultimately all such phenomena are composed of individuals. Therefore, social phenomena seem to have no independent ontological status, and in this case, sociology is ultimately about reducible individuals. Different approaches about the micro-macro relationship, using the concept of "emergence", argue that although collective phenomena are created by individuals, they cannot be reduced to individual action. The term "emergence" is used to distinguish "emergent results" from " Procedural results". Results are called Procedural that can only be calculated by adding or subtracting the causes that act together. On the contrary, they are emergent outcomes that are qualitatively novel compared to the causes from which they originate. An example of such emergent results is mental characteristics that emerge from neural processes, but are not considered among the characteristics of neural processes of components - which are their origin. Philosophical debates about emergentism and reductionism focus on the mind-brain relationship, but as many philosophers have noted, they can be generalized to apply to any hierarchical set of features. The cognitive revolution reactivated a 19th century controversy between theorists of Identity and dualism. The theorists of Identity believe in reductionist materialism and elimination of metaphysics, according to which the mind is nothing more than the biological, while the dualists believe that the mind and the brain are distinct from each other. Emergence has been considered as a third way between the theories of Identity and dualism. -/- METHODOLOGY Interdisciplinarity Is fundamentally indicated by the dominance of open systems as well as social and emerging systems at different levels. Therefore, as long as we are facing a new emergentism, there will necessarily be different fields and an interdisciplinary method. The commonality of social sciences and cognitive sciences on the issue of emergence provides the possibility of interaction and exchange of concepts between these two for deeper research. Therefore, in this research, apart from the concepts of Subvenience and downward causation, we have used multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, which are used to explain the emerging concept in cognitive sciences, including neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy. For analytical and interdisciplinary approaches, after examining the concepts of subvenience, and wildly disjunctive, Individualistic and collectivist emergentism have been reviewed. And then their adequacy is criticized and evaluated in meeting strong emergence conditions. -/- FINDINGS Philosophers of the mind have been able to define the conditions of irreducibility and downward causation, which are essential for strong emergence, by using the principle of subvenience with the help of multiple realization and wildly disjunctive principles. Therefore, by definition, emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and emergentist collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the challenges facing the two methodological approaches of individualism and collectivism leads us to three unresolved issues about the emerging phenomenon, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. Despite the differences in the stances of these two approaches regarding the aforementioned triple problems, individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and some others are irreducible due to their complexity, the determination of which, depends on the case study of the mechanism of emergence of each social characteristic. -/- CONCLUSION An emergence that is consistent with reductionism is called a weak emergence. And strong emergence includes the principle of irreducibility and downward causality. According to strong emergence, the characteristics of social phenomena have downward causal power, which cannot be reduced to the causal forces. The principle of subvenience, together with multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, can provide the conditions of irreducibility and downward causality, which are essential conditions of strong emergence. Based on the philosophical analysis of two methodological approaches, individualist and collectivist, it can be concluded that emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and reification collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the problems faced by these two approaches leads us to three unresolved issues, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. individualist emergentists acknowledge the existence of emergent social characteristics, but despite this, they believe that these characteristics are not real but merely analytical constructs that require explanation based on individuals and their mutual actions. But collectivists argue that emergentism yields a categorical ontology and supports social realism. They accept the dependence of social characteristics on individuals, but claim that social entities and structures are ontologically independent. Individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and others are irreducible due to their complexity; and the only way to recognize this is to engage in empirical studies of the mechanisms and temporal processes of "emergence" that create social characteristics. -/- NOVELTY The newness of this compact article is as follows: a) Presenting an interdisciplinary approach using the analysis of philosophy of cognitive sciences, including the philosophy of mind, neurobiology and psychology to formulate the issue of social emergence; b) Criticizing individualist and collectivist methodological approaches to the issue of social emergence and explaining the sufficiency and shortcomings of both in providing weak and strong emerging conditions; c) Explaining and categorizing the challenges facing methodological approaches in explaining the phenomenon of social emergence, in three categories: realism, downward causality, and mechanism. BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckermann, A., Flohr, H., & Kim, J. (eds.) (1992). Emergence or reduction? Essays on the prospects of nonreductive physicalism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of Naturalism. New York: Routledge. Bhaskar, R., Danermark, B. & Price, L. (2018). Interdisciplinarity and wellbeing: A critical realist general theory of interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge. Blau, P.M. (1981). Introduction: diverse views of social structure and their common denominator. In Blau, P.M. & Merton, R.K. (eds.), Continuity in Structural Inquiry (pp. 1–23). Beverly Hills: Sage. Blau, P.M. (1987). Microprocess and macrostructure. In K.S. Cook (ed.), Social Exchange Theory (pp. 83–100). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Brooks, R.A., & Maes, P. (eds). (1994). Artificial life IV; proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Coleman, J. S. (1987). Microfoundations and macrosocial behavior. In: J. C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, & Neil J. Smelser (Eds.). The Micro-Macro Link (pp. 153–73). Berkeley: University of California. Coleman, J. S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Elster, J. (1985). Making sense of Marx. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fodor, J.A. (1974). Special sciences (Or: The disunity of science as a working hypothesis). Synthese, 28(2), 97–115. Fodor, J.A. (1989). Making mind matter more. Philosophical Topics, 17, 59-79. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hempel, C.G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press. Horgan, T. (1993). From supervenience to superdupervenience: meeting the demands of a material world. Mind, 102, 555-586. Humphreys, P. (1997). How properties emerge”. Philosophy of Science, 64, 1-17. Kim, J. (1999). Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies, 95, 3–36. Kincaid, H. (1997). Individualism and the unity of science. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Lewis, D.K. (1986). The plurality of worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nigel, G., & Conte, R. (eds.) (1995). Artificial societies; The computer simulation of social life. London: UCL Press. O’Connor, T. (1994). Emergent properties. American Philosophical Quarterly, 31, 91-104. Popper, K.R. (1968). Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row. Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Emergence in sociology: contemporary philosophy of mind and some implications for sociological theory. American Journal of Sociology, 107, 551-585. Sawyer, R. K. (2004). The mechanisms of emergence. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34, 260–282. Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence: societies as complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sawyer, R.K. (2003). Nonreductive individualism: Part 2, Social causation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33, 203–224. Winch, P. (1993). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy‭ (SAMT, Trans.). Tehran, Iran: SAMT. (shrink)

With the 2015 publication of Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si', many people of faith have found themselves challenged to seek new ways of addressing serious ecological questions -- issues essential to the flourishing of all creatures and not just human beings. This volume brings together fifteen select scholars to consider pressing contemporary environmental concerns through the lens of Catholic theology. Drawing from the early church fathers and other authoritative voices in the Christian tradition, the contributors to On Earth as (...) It Is in Heaven show how ancient, creedal Christianity offers significant insights into our current ecological dilemmas and speaks powerfully about what it means for us today to care well for God's good creation. CONTRIBUTORS and TOPICS Robert Louis Wilken on honoring centipedes and toads -- and all of God's created works Christopher J. Thompson on not reducing creatures to "resources" solely to be "used" Steven A. Long on understanding the created order as a participation in the divine, eternal law Marie George on human stewardship of creation as both kingship and kinship Matthew Levering on "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth" -- a good idea? Dawn M. Nothwehr, OSF, on sustainability from a Franciscan perspective John A. Cuddeback on land use and household stewardship Faith Pawl on animal flourishing and suffering Paul M. Blowers on evolutionary theory and the promise of restoration for all creation Christopher A. Franks on Job, poverty, gratitude, and "a gentle life" Jonathan J. Sanford on how Aristotle and Maritain illuminate our obligation to care for creation Paige E. Hochschild on contemplating rather than dominating nature, building on Augustine and George Grant Chris Killheffer on how monastic sources help us rethink gluttony and its remedies David Vincent Meconi, SJ, on the wonderful, awe-filled interrelationship between creatures and their Creator Esther Mary Nickel, RSM, on the liturgy as the space in which all creation is consecrated before the cross of Christ. (shrink)

The legacies of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth remain influential for contemporary theologians, who have increasingly put them into conversation on debated questions over analogy and the knowledge of God. However, little explicit dialogue has occurred between their theologies of God. This book offers one of the first extended analyzes of this fundamental issue, asking how each theologian seeks to confess in fact and in thought God's qualitative distinctiveness in relation to creation. Wittman first examines how they understand (...) the correspondence and distinction between God's being and external acts within an overarching concern to avoid idolatry. Second, he analyzes the kind of relation God bears to creation that follows from these respective understandings. Despite many common goals, Aquinas and Barth ultimately differ on the subject matter of theological reason with consequences for their ability to uphold God's distinctiveness consistently. These mutually informative issues offer some important lessons for contemporary theology. (shrink)

In recent years, inter-medial studies have attracted increasing attention in arts theory. The notion of 'inter-mediality' presupposes that each established art - such as theatre, painting, and cinema - indicates the existence of a particular medium, which preserves its distinct features in translations from art to art and, especially, in its combinations with others in single works. Nonetheless, this field of research is presupposed already in the traditional studies of 'ekphrasis', which focus on the verbal accounts of nonverbal works of (...) art; and in Wagner's notion of Gesamtkuntswerk. This renewed interest generated new fields of research, such as (a) the likelihood of the arts reflecting common grounds; (b) the necessity of a shared metalanguage; (b) the possibility of inter-medial translation; and (d) the inter-medial coexistence within a single work of art, without hindering the reading, interpreting and experiencing abilities of receivers. In honor of Eli Rozik, Ph.D., professor emeritus, former head of the Department of Theatre Studies, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Tel Aviv University, this collection provides overviews of all these theoretical issues, and tackles the contemporary practical questions that arise from attempts to transgress the boundaries between the established disciplines of arts studies. Considering first the theoretical aspects of inter-art, inter-mediality, and nonverbal literacy, Exploring the Common Grounds of the Arts goes on to discuss by means of performance analysis; dialogues between the arts within a single work; and correspondences between visual and auditory stimuli in musical contexts. It concludes with a discussion of practical examples of inter-mediality in religious representations, official processions, and public performances. (shrink)

The article examines the situation that has developed in the contemporary age and being named differently: postmodernism, post-postmodernism, digital modernism, metamodernism, etc. It is noted that, despite the difference in naming, all the terms indicate a global crisis of culture and man. The three most important signs of this crisis are identified: degradation of a man – the predominance of his animal nature; total technicism; oblivion of national traditions, sacred things. These features are briefly explained. It is concluded that (...) the basis of these signs is the loss of human spirituality. It is stated that music has extraordinary opportunities to elevate the spiritual needs of a person. It is emphasized that these opportunities contributed to the strengthening of the impact of religious practices within various worships – shamanism, Zoroastrianism, Sufism, and others, which ensured the maintenance of the humanity of the world. It is believed that the use of spiritual-creative possibilities of music will help overcome the existing global crisis and prepare the formation of the era of culture and man, the era called a New Humanism by M. Eliade. It is argued that there are composers in Russia and in other countries today who purposefully use the spiritual-creative potential of music in their work to overcome the crisis that has arisen. We offer an interview with one of them – Russian composer Dmitry Stefanovich. In conclusion, it is noted that the following articles will continue to analyze the processes taking place in contemporary culture, and, in this regard, there will be presented stories about music and interviews with composers from Russia and other countries. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 30, Issue 1, pp 4 - 27 The _Animadversiones in Elementorum Philosophiae_ by a little known Flemish scholar G. Moranus, published in Brussels in 1655 was an early European response to Hobbes’s _De Corpore_. Although it is has been referred to by various Hobbes scholars, such as Noel Malcolm, Doug Jesseph, and Alexander Bird it has been little studied. Previous scholarship has tended to focus on the mathematical criticisms of André Tacquet which Moranus included in the form (...) of a letter in his volume. Moranus’s philosophical objections to Hobbes’s natural philosophy offer a fascinating picture of the critical reception of Hobbes’s work by a religious writer trained in the late Scholastic tradition. Moranus’s opening criticism clearly shows that he is unhappy with Hobbes’s exclusion of the divine and the immaterial from natural philosophy. He asks what authority Hobbes has for breaking with the common understanding of philosophy, as defined by Cicero ‘the knowledge of things human and divine’. He also offers natural philosophical and theological criticisms of Hobbes for overlooking the generation of things involved in the Creation. He also attacks the natural philosophical underpinning of Hobbes’s civil philosophy. In this paper I look at a number of philosophical topics which Moranus criticised in Hobbes’s work, including his mechanical psychology, his theory of imaginary space, his use of the concept of accidents, his blurring of the distinction between the human being and the animal, and his theories of motion. Moranus’s criticisms, which are a mixture of philosophical and theological objections, gives us some clear indications of what made Hobbes’ natural philosophy controversial amongst his contemporaries, and sheds new light on the early continental reception of Hobbes’s work. (shrink)

The article examines the surprising role of Rousseau in the revival of liberal and humanist thought in contemporary French political thought. The choice of Rousseau as an inspiration and source of humanism is an illuminating indication of a shift in French thought. The authors concentrate on the natural- rights republicanism of Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut and the critical humanism of Tzvetan Todorov. While these thinkers all appeal to Rousseau's definition of humanity in terms of freedom, they draw on (...) different aspects of his thought and his relationship to the philosophic tradition. Their different receptions of Rousseau reveal tensions in the humanist revival and provoke reflection on the relationships among republicanism, liberalism and humanism in contemporary France. (shrink)

Philosophers of science readily acknowledge that nonepistemic values influence the discovery and pursuit of scientific theories, but many tend to regard these influences as epistemically uninteresting. The present paper challenges this position by identifying three avenues through which nonepistemic values associated with discovery and pursuit in contemporary pollution research influence theory appraisal: (1) by guiding the choice of questions and research projects, (2) by altering experimental design, and (3) by affecting the creation and further investigation of theories or (...) hypotheses. This analysis indicates that the effects of these values are sufficiently complex and epistemically significant to merit further attention. †To contact the authors, please write to: Kevin Elliott, Department of Philosophy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208; e‐mail: [email protected] . Daniel McKaughan, Department of Philosophy, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Philosophers have gradually accepted axiology as one branch of philosophy. As a basic category belonging to axiology and philosophy, "value" is the general abstraction of concrete value formation in various fields including utility, ethics and appreciation of the beauty. The problem of value is essentially a problem of historical activities of practice in human society. The axiology based on the scientific practice view insists on the principle of unification between theory and practice, truth and value. In research of axiology, the (...) relation between subjectivity and objectivity of values is a problem that must be solved in the first place. The modern conversation of value philosophy is the academic and practical demands of the value philosophy research in China. Value evaluation is an important part of the axiology. In order to deepen the research of value philosophy and to promote the development of current value philosophy, we must have scientific mode of thinking suitable for the nature of value. It is the base of value relation, the origin of value needs, the process of value creation and actualization and the fundamental way to proving ones value as a human being. (shrink)

Historical entitlement theories of property rights, which claim that individuals can acquire moral property rights over natural resources by appropriating them, traditionally face a strong objection: it is widely implausible that a single individual can unilaterally impose duties on everyone around him and yet, apparently, this is exactly what such theories allow. In this essay, I argue that the same problem appears in all other theories of distributive justice and if this problem was a reason to reject historical entitlement theories, (...) it would also be a reason to reject all rival theories. Which means that as long, as one is committed to any theory of distributive justice at all, she, at the risk of inconsistency, cannot rely on the aforementioned objection to criticize historical entitlement theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Eric Doyle OFM: Hidden Architect of the Retrieval of the Franciscan Charism by Brenda AbbottRobert J. Karris, OFMBrenda Abbott, Eric Doyle OFM: Hidden Architect of the Retrieval of the Franciscan Charism. Durham, UK: Franciscan Publishing, 2021. Pp. vii + 388. 16 photos. £15.00. ISBN: 9781915198013.Father Eric Doyle, OFM, a member of the Province of the Immaculate Conception, UK, was born in 1938 and died in 1984. He was (...) highly talented and educated, steeped in the Franciscan tradition, a superb and humorous communicator. He was just right for his time, he was ahead of his time, and he may be just what Franciscans need today in their time as they continue to renew themselves in the spirit of St. Francis and in Franciscan Christology and spirituality.Abbott sets down her goal: "My purpose and goal in publishing this book is that something of the man and his vision will be communicated here, and that a new generation of Franciscan friars and scholars, as well as believers and unbelievers more widely, may be inspired by this vision and become aware of Doyle's enduring and precious legacy" (ii). She accomplishes her goal through an introduction, fifteen chapters which mainly delve into Doyle's Franciscan Christology and spirituality, and a conclusion. Endnotes follow each chapter. The book, which is very well-researched and written, ends with two appendices and a bibliography. Abbot has marvelously achieved her goal.The introduction is followed by: chapter 1, "Early Life: 1938–1970"; chapter 2, "The Friar"; chapter 3, "The Teacher"; chapter 4, "The Shepherd and Evangeliser"; chapter 5, "The Scholar"; chapter 6, "The Mystic"; chapter 7, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 1)"; chapter 8, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 2)"; chapter 9, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 3)"; chapter 10, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 4)"; chapter 11, "The Ecologist: Our Sister Mother Earth"; chapter 12, "The Ecumenist: Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ"; chapter 13, "The Post–Vatican II Theologian"; chapter 14, "The Prophet: A Franciscan Legacy (Part 1)"; and chapter 15, "The Prophet: A Franciscan Legacy (Part 2)."In the space allotted me, I provide three snapshots of Eric Doyle. First is the assessment of Doyle from an outside source, Bishop Thomas McMahon, who in his eulogy said: "He put profound truths in a very [End Page 249] simple way and conveyed always a sense of the numinous. … [He was] vivid, articulate, deeply learned, intensely human, hugely alive, full of mischief, unsparing of self … a contemporary Francis. His Franciscan spirituality permeated his total thinking" (174). I underscore Bishop Mc-Mahon's emphasis on St. Francis and his spirituality. I see implied here Doyle's teaching about the Absolute Primacy of Christ—that Christ is head of all creation and conqueror of sin and death, and that the reason for Christ's incarnation is not sin but love—demonstrating Doyle's retrieval of the best from the Franciscan tradition.The second snapshot points to two areas where Doyle was ahead of his time. First, he was a TV personality. Abbott dedicates pages 117–23 to Doyle as a wonderful TV presence. From 1971 to 1984 he was on four hundred programs of The Big Question. One reviewer noted: "The length, breadth and width of his discourse … is colossal … This man is an original, a non-pareil; before they made him, they broke the mould" (121). Second, in his book on Francis's Canticle of Brother Sun, first published in 1980, Doyle anticipated many of Pope Francis' teachings in Laudato Si'. As Abbott says: "Foreshadowing much of Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si', Doyle demonstrates how belief in the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of creation can help us create a better world" (270).The third snapshot is an indication of how Doyle's legacy continues in print. Doyle's St Francis and the Song of Brotherhood has been reprinted a number of times, most recently in 1997 by Franciscan Institute Publications as St. Francis and the Song of Brotherhood and Sisterhood. It has been translated into five languages: Italian, German, Portuguese, Korean, and Japanese. Under the imprint of Tau Publications is My Heart's Quest: Collected Writings of Eric Doyle, Friar Minor, Theologian, edited by Josef Raischl... (shrink)

"Deflationism" has emerged as one of the most significant developments in contemporary philosophy. It is best known as a story about truth -- roughly, that the traditional search for its underlying nature is misconceived, since there can be no such thing. However, the scope of deflationism extends well beyond that particular topic. For, in the first place, such a view of truth substantially affects what we should say about neighboring concepts such as "reality," "meaning," and "rationality." And in the (...) second place, the anti-theoretical meta-philosophy that lies behind that view -- the idea that philosophical problems are characteristically based on confusion and should therefore be dissolved rather than solved -- may fruitfully be applied throughout the subject, in epistemology, ethics, the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and so on. The essays reprinted here were written over the last twenty five years. They represent Paul Horwich's development of the deflationary perspective and demonstrate its considerable power and fertility. They concern a broad array of philosophical problems: the nature of truth, realism vs. anti-realism, the creation of meaning, epistemic rationality, the conceptual role of "ought," probabilistic models of scientific reasoning, the autonomy of art, the passage of time, and the trajectory of Wittgenstein's philosophy. They appear as originally published except for the correction of obvious mistakes, the interpolation of clarifying material, and the inclusion of new footnotes to indicate Horwich's subsequent directions of thought. (shrink)

The second law results in the growth of the entropy – in superficial interpretation this principle presumes that the sufficient energy inevitably turns into the substandard energy. Order turns into chaos over time; however, chaos also turns into order under certain circumstances. The first research objective is to establish the possible prescientific ideas about the phenomenon – some philosophical intuitions that have preceded the scientific discovery of the second law and have conformed to it in a certain sense. It is (...) essential because there are always certain bonds and continuity in the history of philosophy and science – the correct interpretation of the phenomenon becomes difficult, if not impossible, without the establishment of such bonds.Moreover, the main task is to understand what the second law is and which significance its principal corollaries have. We need to give the second law a correct interpretation that will allow making assumptions about its connection with time in the context of the initial state problem and about the possible new ways of modern physics development – in particular, the creation of the quantum theory of gravity. Two solutions to the entropy and initial state connection problem are proposed in the context of the time arrow discussion (G. Calender’s approach to solving the problem is disputed). (shrink)

Up to now, China's painting has not completely shaken off the influence of the spirit of European philosophy or a fundamental change in the way of viewing. The spirit of the unity of subject and object in ancient China philosophy influenced the formation and development of China's paintings. Since China Art Institute introduced figurative expressionism, a new art, into the contemporary art education system of China, it has shown its unique value in professional theory and practical skills. It not (...) only provides new opportunities for reforming contemporary art education in China but also adds a new development direction for contemporary oil painting art in China. This article attempts to reveal the existence and artistic concept of violence in contemporary Chinese oil painting through the description and analysis of painting images and artists' emotional expression, combined with interviews with artists. Based on the development of contemporary Chinese society, the rise of new literary and artistic trends, and the influence of western painting, this paper analyses the historical causes of violence in contemporary Chinese oil painting, and examines the value of contemporary Chinese oil painting in terms of aesthetics and sociology. Therefore, establishing cultural core values is still the indispensable spiritual power of contemporary artists' artistic creation. (shrink)

It has become almost _de rigueur_ in contemporary psychoanalysis to cite Freud's positivism-especially his commitment to an objective reality that can be accessed through memory and interpretation-as a continuing source of weakness in bringing the field into the postmodern era. But is it so simple to move beyond Freud and objectivism in general? Or is it the case that even the most astute recent theorizing aimed at this move-and guided by therapeutic sensitivity and a concern with epistemic rigor-still betrays (...) a lingering commitment to objective reality? This is the intellectually exciting and exacting question that Richard Moore poses to his reader-and to the texts of four of the most influential psychoanalytic theorists on the scene today: Donald Spence, Roy Schafer, Robert Stolorow, and Irwin Z. Hoffman. Written with concentration and grace, _The Creation of Reality in Psychoanalysis_ begins with the ambiguities in Freud's founding commitment to a recoverable, objectively verifiable reality before examining the ghost of objectivism that confounds, in surprising and unexpected ways, Spence's, Schafer's, Stolorow's, and Hoffman's recent attempts to move toward narrativist and constructivist views of the analytic encounter. Following his penetrating survey of the contributions of these four major architects of contemporary psychoanalysis, Moore provides a glimpse of what an internally consistent postmodern metapsychology would actually look like. He approaches this task by exploring how our understanding of basic analytic concepts may ultimately be reconciled with the view that the creation of reality is an intrinsic aspect of any therapeutic encounter. Elegantly conceived and beautifully argued, this book guides the reader through the labyrinth of contemporary theory while holding fast to a critical stance toward its overarching goal: the elaboration of a truly thoroughgoing constructivism that is both therapeutically consequential and intellectually defensible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Writing and Authority in Early ChinaLothar von FalkenhausenWriting and Authority in Early China. By Mark Edward Lewis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Pp. vii + 544. Hardcover $92.50. Paper $31.95.Writing and Authority in Early China is a forceful and sparklingly original work in which Mark Edward Lewis explores the role of writing and texts in the transformation of political authority during the Warring States, Qin, (...) and Western Han periods. Following in the footsteps of the author's well-received first book1 and his magisterial contribution to the Cambridge History of Ancient China,2Writing and Authority establishes Lewis as the premier Western historian of the crucial centuries surrounding the unification of China under a centrally administered empire in 221 B.C. The book's complex, comprehensive, and coherent argument is informed by a variety of Western theoretical approaches, but it principally emanates from a close reading of the full record of transmitted texts and recently excavated manuscripts on [End Page 127] bamboo or wooden slips. The inclusion of the latter class of sources, beset with treacherous problems of decipherment, is still unusual in mainstream sinological scholarship and indicates the author's supreme confidence in his philological skills. With a firm hand, undaunted by the multifarious nature of his materials, Lewis guides the reader to some fundamental themes in recent sinology, opening manifold novel perspectives along the way. Even when dealing with well-known texts, he often proposes striking reinterpretations.In his Introduction, Lewis enumerates six main functions of writing in ancient China: enforcing state authority; creating text-based communities and "public spheres"; transcending the confines of space, time, and human mortality; fashioning figures of authority in the past; standardizing specialized technical terminology; and encrypting secret meanings. In Lewis' own words, "the culminating role of writing in the period, and the key to its importance in imperial China, was the creation of parallel realities within texts that claimed to depict the entire world" (p. 4). This ultimately led to the formation of the Confucian canon as a "textual double of the polity" that could survive cataclysmic changes of regimes.In chapter 1, "Writing the State," Lewis points out that before the Warring States period Chinese writing occurred exclusively in religious contexts. After circa 500 B.C., written documents gradually came to be used in the administration of government and trade. Both in their details of formulation and in the implication that anything committed to writing was thereby supernaturally validated, these new types of documents exhibit pervasive continuity with the earlier kinds of texts used in ritual communication with the ancestral spirits. Such continuity is also reflected in the rise of religious beliefs in a netherworld governed by a bureaucratic hierarchy and administrative processes parallel to those of the world of the living. According to Lewis, "the most important modification in the shift to an administrative polity [in the Warring States] was the extension of writing to new elements of the population. The attributes of the Zhou nobility... were transferred to the common people in the administrative documents of the new state. This widening range of inscription into the state order altered the social meaning of being recorded from a sign of power to one of subjection" (p. 13).Warring States rulers were cast in the role not of the authors of texts but of the authority behind them. Administrative and legal texts were concerned, ultimately, with the proper naming of phenomena, a process that had to adapt itself continually to the changes of the times. The authority of rulers came to encompass both human society and the natural world. "Whereas local and central administration were largely created through reworking and rewriting the ritual bases of the old Zhou order by means of a rationalizing cosmology, the re-invention of rulership drew on the contemporary religious realm and what is sometimes described as shamanism to provide images of cosmic power" (p. 42). Lewis illustrates the mechanics for applying these universal principles of rulership by a comprehensive analysis of the Zhou li (or Zhou guan), emphasizing the cosmological arrangement of the ideal government described therein and the dual administrative and religious dimensions of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Metaphysics of Creation. Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles IIE.J. AshworthNorman Kretzmann. The Metaphysics of Creation. Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles II. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Pp. xiii + 483. Cloth, $65.00.Thomas Aquinas is astounding not just for the richness, complexity and timeless interest of his thought, but for the sheer bulk of his works. The challenge this bulk presents to commentators (...) has been taken up in various ways. Some people focus on Aquinas's architectonic, giving a global overview of individual works in such terms as the neo-Platonic exitus-reditus schema; others focus on the interplay of faith and reason in his works by classifying Aquinas as a theologian, or a Christian philosopher, or a philosopher-theologian; still others try to organize his thought by bringing together thematically-linked discussions from a variety of places. All three approaches tend to overlook perhaps the most striking feature of Aquinas's writings: the continuous progression of carefully-formulated, detailed arguments and sub-arguments.In the second book of his uncompleted trilogy on Summa contra gentiles, Norman Kretzmann combines the best of the first two approaches to Aquinas with an impressive and largely successful attempt to come to terms with Aquinas as an arguer. He takes an ample selection of Aquinas's own arguments in their order of appearance in SCG II; he analyzes their premisses; he shows how they function in relation to earlier and later arguments; and he criticizes their weaknesses. He does all this in an elegant, lucid prose that ensures the attentive reader an enhanced understanding of the specific topics discussed by Aquinas. [End Page 434]To understand the full import of the arguments examined, however, we need to consider what Aquinas hopes to achieve by his sequences of arguments. While granting that Aquinas is a theologian, and that he intends his Summa contra gentiles to give a full account of what Christians believe, Kretzmann argues that the first three books of SCG present a fully-developed natural theology which can serve as guide and inspiration to thinkers today. The key to understanding Aquinas here is the recognition that the philosopher, particularly the metaphysician, is, or should be, concerned with the first principles and most ultimate aspects of reality. If it turns out, as most philosophers before the twentieth century have believed, that these first principles are divine, then truths taught by revelation can be integrated with truths arrived at by reason. Moreover, once the existence and nature of God have been established, or at least rendered plausible, one can take God as a starting point for the explanation of this-worldly phenomena, from the nature of the physical world to the nature of the human person. This explanation, while buttressed by references to Biblical revelation, will nonetheless be fully natural, insofar as it relies on arguments whose premisses are those available to any rational being independently of revelation.In his earlier book, The Metaphysics of Theism (Oxford, 1997) Kretzmann examined the start of Aquinas's natural theology, the movement from things around us to God. In The Metaphysics of Creation, finished just before his death, Kretzmann takes up the emergence of things from God. The book is divided into three unequal parts. First, there is a long discussion of Aquinas's view of creation, and the precise way in which the world is dependent upon God, its first cause. Particularly notable in this section is the discussion of Aquinas's view that creation is compatible with the notion of a beginningless world. The second, very brief, section takes up Aquinas's treatment of the emergence of different species, and his willingness to reject the kind of literal reading of Genesis espoused by contemporary creationists. The third and longest section takes up the nature of the human mind or soul. What makes this section particularly interesting is its emphasis on the implications of the top-down approach. If we start with the ideas that God is a pure intellect, and that immaterial substance is possible, then the mind-body problem becomes that of explaining how intellect can ever be closely related to matter, rather that... (shrink)

The contemporary debate on justice is understandably dominated by theories and arguments addressing the problems of justice pertinent to nearly just societies, as virtually all the theorists participating in this debate live in such societies. They are obviously, and rightly so, first and foremost concerned with the philosophical problems of their own societies. Although almost all the contemporary theories of justice were formulated in the context of nearly just societies, why can we not apply them to the issues (...) and problems of radically unjust societies? The view that such a move is permissible and wise is at present no more than an unexamined assumption, an unargued view. Such an unargued view leads to the suspicion that a strong case may be made that radically unjust societies generate problems of social and political justice that should be considered in their own right. This does not imply that theories of justice developed in the context of, and aimed at, those issues current in nearly just societies should be disregarded or discarded. What is required are arguments to indicate to what extent the theoretical insights and wisdom contained in these theories can be utilized in a discussion of the social and political problems of radically unjust societies. I argue for the view that the contemporary debate on justice contains a major deficiency. In this article, I attempt to specify this major deficiency, namely that exclusive attention is given to the problems of nearly just societies while the problems of radically unjust societies are mostly ignored. The strategy will be to raise issues pertinent to radically unjust societies and note the extent to which clear and unambiguous solutions could be provided by participants in the contemporary debate on justice. (shrink)

In recent Trinitarian theology, speaking about God as ‘communio’ has seen a remarkable growth in popularity. The concept of ‘communio’ however, is used in different discussions and with different meanings. In this article three discussions are analyzed. the first concerns the form of Trinitarian theology. I argue that communio should be reserved for ‘the immanent Trinity’. It has a function to clarify speech about God’s working in the creation, rather than describe that working. The second discussion concerns a central (...) and problematic concept in Trinitarian theology, the concept of ‘person’. Based on an interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s definition of divine person as negative theology, speech about ‘persons in communion’ could help to keep in mind that speaking about persons in God is a negative-theological way of speaking. The third discussion concerns the relation with other parts of systematic theology . From that discussion, it becomes clear that ‘communio’ can be used analogically, as it does not presuppose limitations and it allows gradations. As analogical speech, speaking about God as communio escapes the danger of ideology. Thus, the word communio can rightly and properly be used to say something about God: God is communio. When it is used for creaturely communities as well, it is used in a derivative sense. Because we only know the contents of communio in this derivative way, the meaning of the word remains ‘open’ towards God when we use it to say something about God. A certain negativity remains in our speaking about God as communio. That does not mean that it is irrelevant for speaking about human communities. The concept is a warning that an absolutist priority of ‘unity’ cannot be supported by Christian faith in a God who is a communio of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is even more true for the way we live together in the church, sacrament of God’s communio. (shrink)

Reviews the book, The Metaphysical Club: A story of ideas in America by Louis Menand . In this highly entertaining and readable history, Menand examines the lives and thinking of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey, members of an informal discussion group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1872 that called itself the Metaphysical Club. Beginning with the Civil War and ending in 1919 with the Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Abrams, this insightful (...) and thought-provoking book tells a story of the creation of the ideas and values that have shaped how Americans think and how we live. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In this work we present the complex relationship between sound and color in musical creation throughout history that continues to be fruitful in current musical composition. Synesthesia in music establishes a correspondence between sound and color and has been a constant debate since the 17th century. The complex nature of sound appears from ancient Greece in the school of Pythagoras in which the number becomes the configurator of harmony. Since then, different aesthetic attempts have arisen to relate color and (...) sound that reach today's electronic procedures in contemporary music. (shrink)

Muʻtazilite thinkers put forward the first systematic ideas for the relationship of essence and attributes, one of the most fundamental and complicated issues of Islamic theology, and comprehensive explanations to the question of God’s names. Although almost all the thinkers agreed on uṣūl al-khamsa, they differed in their approach to the principle of unity (tawḥīd). ‘Abbād b. Sulaymān, who lived in the period when these approaches emerged, is a scholar who reveals his distinctive view of God’s names and attributes in (...) which heslightly differs from his contemporaries such as Abu al-Hudhayl al-‘Allāf, Mu‘ammar b. ‘Abbād al-Sulamī and Ibrāhīm b. Sayyār al-Naẓẓām from the Basran Muʻtazila, by his extreme opinions on the Muʻtazilite principle of tawḥīd. He is one of thefour principle thinkers who presented original opinions in the early Basran Muʻtazila. Also he is the only known student of Hishâm al-Fuwaṭī and constitutes the last major circle of this tradition of knowledge that ended after him. This article aims to reveal the relationship between essence and attributes, the names and attributes of God in a holistic and systematic way in the thought of ‘Abbād b. Sulaymān. Unfortunately, his works have not survived to the present day and has not received the attention he deserves. Since his views were scattered in the classic books, our study was focused primarily on these classical sources. The modern literature was not ignored, either. The relevant records, analysis and criticism were re-contextualized. According to ‘Abbād b. Sulaymān, the view that “Allah is a thing” is the same with the view that “Allah is other (ghayr)”, he draws attention to a definite distinction between Allah and human beings. In his thought about the relationship between Allah and space, he rejects the idea that God could be related to space or anything spatial in order to refrain from an anthropomorphic conception of God. In the case of visibility (ru’ya) of Allah, he radically opposes the idea of “seeing Allah with the heart,” which was adopted by the majority of the Muʻtazila. He tries to solve the issue in his own terms by avoiding the terms essence (dhāt) and nafs in the relationship between God’s essence and His attributes. He reveals a unique classification of names and thus adopts the method of analogy. He does not accept essential attributes as the majority of the Mu’tazila did. On the other hand, he tacitly accepts that Allah’s names have their own meanings in a way that they are not merely words (aqvāl). By a true comparison or perfect analogy (fī ḥaqīqati’l-qıyās), while he rejects that God is ālim, qadīr etc., he tries to ground that human beings is ālim, qadīr etc. He does not admit that God is eternally samʻi and baṣīr. Without interpreting samʻi as His knowledge or baṣīr as His power, he accepts that each name has a distinctive functionality. He rejects the assumption that God knows conditionally. Regarding the issue of whether living beings are in the knowledge of Allah before they exist, it makes a dual distinction: “a direction that can be subject to the eternal knowledge” and “the direction in which it actually came to existence”. Because of his view of non-existent and creatures, Ibn al-Rāwandī and modern resources refer the view of the eternity of objects to him. However, when the relevant records are examined, it is seen that this claim is not valid. According to ‘Abbād, Allah is capable of creating possible things that he knows, although He does not create impossible things that he knows, even though He is capable of creating them potentially (bi-al-quwwa). Allah has not created evil, neither literally nor figuratively; so much so that He created only man, not faith and unbelief. It is not possible to talk about any good that he did not create. He defends the createdness of the Qur’an (Khalq al-Qur’ān) by saying that the Qur’ān was created of accidents. About God’s names, he states that God has the names indicating His relationship to the universe. He does not accept that in eternity He is a willing agent, creator etc. However, he also does not accept the otherwise. He emphasizes that creation is reserved only for Allah. On the other hand, according to him, Allah creates without secondary causes and thus does not create things for a specific purpose. Regarding the revealed attributes (or informative attributes, khabarī), he recites these expressions only when reading of the Quran.He states that these expressions should not be used for Allah under any circumstances. He avoids naming Allah as wakīl, kafīl, laṭīf, kā’in, fard and mutakallim as he says that the name wāḥid should be used only for praising Him. (shrink)

Reviews the book, Minding the gap: Epistemology and philosophy of science in the two traditions by Christopher Norris . In this book, the author takes issue with the all-too-frequently held view that there can be no productive engagement between mainstream analytic philosophers and thinkers in the contemporary Continental tradition. The main focus here is to reveal the various concerns each of these two traditions share—concerns that have often been obscured by narrowly parochial interests and the desire to stake out (...) distinct philosophical territories. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Kant’s essay Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose differs in deep ways from standard Enlightenment views of human history. Although he agrees with many contemporaries that unsocial sociability can drive human progress, he argues that we know too little about the trends of history to offer either metaphysical defence or empirical vindication of the perfectibility of man or the inevitability of progress. However, as freely acting beings we can contribute to a better future, so have grounds for (...) committing ourselves to human progress even if we cannot guarantee or know that it will continue indefinitely. As Kant sees, it, human progress is better seen as a practical assumption—an Idea of Reason—than as a theoretical claim.Keywords: Cosmopolitanism; Historical trends; Ideas of Reason; Immanuel Kant; Philosophy of history; Optimism; Pessimism; Progress; Unsocial sociability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 489 universe enjoys as an ordered whole. What happens if the model does not present a universal order, as seems to have been the case for the last three centuries? Should we then remove the corresponding perfection from our idea of universe's perfection? Or is there some metaphysical reason for asserting that the universe is an ordered whole, regardless of any particular model? If the latter, it (...) would be interesting to have at least a sketch of how we would arrive at this position. On the whole, certainly, the book provides an invaluable overview of the Thomistic universe for anyone working on Aquinas's cosmology, metaphysics, or even ethics. Blanchette is to be commended for his clear and orderly presentation of the material, especially the many subdivisions within the chapters. The quotations of Thomistic texts are almost all in English, well translated by Banchette himself. The placing of key phrases in Latin within parentheses helps in some measure to overcome the lack of the original text in the footnotes. Finally, the book's selected bibliography as well as its indices (index of names, analytical index, and index of citations) render the book an even more useful tool. The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. DAVID M. GALLAGHER Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions. By DAVID B. BURRELL, C.S.C. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993. Pp. xi + 225. $29.95 (cloth). According to the author, this book, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions, is a comparative work designed "to illustrate the worth of explicitly tradition-directed inquiry, as well as the fruitfulness of comparative inquires in philosophical theory" (6). In addition, among other things, the author contends that, "because the pressure of comparative perspectives demands that we mine hitherto unsuspected reaches of what we have thought we know," not only the author but also the "traditional disciplines of philosophy and theology may each be enriched by the forays of such inquiry" (6). Specifically, the three traditions to which Burrell is referring are the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian; and, as the title of this book suggests, the central topics of consideration used as the basis for a comparison among these traditions are the respective notions of freedom and creation. In order to achieve his goals, Burrell places his discussion within the general context of the notion of creation, which, as he rightly observes, "is notoriously difficult to classify" (7). In so doing, he divides the work into nine chapters; which he entitles as follows: 1) "The Context: Creation"; 2) "On 490 BOOK REVIEWS Characterizing the Creator"; 3) "On Characterizing Creation"; 4) "On Characterizing the Relation: Jewish, Christian, Muslim"; 5) "God's Acting in the World God Creates"; 6) "Creatures Acting in a Created World"; 7) "On the Relations between the Two Actors"; 8) "Sin and Redemption"; 9) "The God Realized in Renewed Creation." Having placed his discussion within the general context of the notion of creation, Burrell begins his analysis by comparing and contrasting this notion in St. Thomas and Moses Maimonides vis-a-vis the necessitarianism of Aristotle as interpreted by lbn Sina. In so doing, Burrell stresses that what predominates in both Maimonides and Aquinas is a notion of God as a "free originator" of all creation not in relation to an "exegesis of the opening chapters of Genesis" but in relation "to the rest of the Bible and the subsequent tradition of Judaism and Christianity" (12). This "distillation" having been noted, Burrell then examines the distinctive features of the notion of creation as this is influenced by the "faith assertion " of the three respective religious traditions-Jewish, Christian, and Islamic. Within Judaism Burrell finds emphasis placed upon the need to interpret creation against the background of the "covenant" with Israel (19). In Aquinas and Barth he understands this activity to be interpreted against the background of the relation of the Father to His Eternal Word (19-21); and within Islam he finds the regulating theme in the conviction of God's absolute sovereignty vis-a-vis the created order. In chapter 2, Burrell goes into more precise detail regarding the specific ways in which God is characterized as a creator within the... (shrink)

This article analyses the topic of presence in modern and contemporary religious art by means of the work of two artists. Graham Sutherland’s Christ in Glory (1951-1962) will be compared to the Buddhism-inspired works of Antony Gormley. Sutherlands Christ in Glory is intended to show Christ’s presence to the involved observer: the invisible Christ can become present through interaction with Christ in Glory in the same way that Christ becomes present through prayer. Viewed in connection with other works by (...) Gormley, Land, Sea, and Air II (1982) is intended to show presence to the viewer, the body as presence. This concerns an attitude of quiet concentration and awareness in connection with the ‘elemental’ world. Theologically speaking, the difference between Christ in Glory and Gormley’s works is as follows: the Christian tradition views the human being as a creation of God. He or she lives in his or her presence only in dependence on God. For Gormley, it has to do with a presence without God the creator. The human being is present as body and awareness in a world in which everything is uncertain. There is an unmistakable difference in their views of presence, but that does not mean, as we will see, that Gormley’s work cannot be fruitful for the Christian religion. Gormley’s Sound II in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral points the involved observer to the importance of the renewal of life after baptism through meditation as an important part of Christian spirituality. (shrink)

Arguments concerning central issues of contemporary Medical Ethics often not only bear similarities, but also derive their sheer essence from notions which belong to the celebrated history of Ethics. Thus, argumentation pro euthanasia and assisted suicide which focus on the detainment of dignity and the ensuring of posthumous reputation on behalf of the moral agent is shown to echo stoic views on arête and the subordination of life to the primary human goal, namely the achievement of virtue. The progress (...) made in palliative care when seen alongside the — steadily increasing — requests for suicide, is indicative of the fact that, though pain now days can be effectively controlled, moral agents often consider the preservation of their life detrimental to the detainment of virtue or posthumous reputation. The stoic view is considered to justify elective death as a personal choice, but is deemed inadequate as well as inconsistent in the broader context of a coherent value theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Writing and Authority in Early ChinaLothar von FalkenhausenWriting and Authority in Early China. By Mark Edward Lewis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Pp. vii + 544. Hardcover $92.50. Paper $31.95.Writing and Authority in Early China is a forceful and sparklingly original work in which Mark Edward Lewis explores the role of writing and texts in the transformation of political authority during the Warring States, Qin, (...) and Western Han periods. Following in the footsteps of the author's well-received first book1 and his magisterial contribution to the Cambridge History of Ancient China,2Writing and Authority establishes Lewis as the premier Western historian of the crucial centuries surrounding the unification of China under a centrally administered empire in 221 B.C. The book's complex, comprehensive, and coherent argument is informed by a variety of Western theoretical approaches, but it principally emanates from a close reading of the full record of transmitted texts and recently excavated manuscripts on [End Page 127] bamboo or wooden slips. The inclusion of the latter class of sources, beset with treacherous problems of decipherment, is still unusual in mainstream sinological scholarship and indicates the author's supreme confidence in his philological skills. With a firm hand, undaunted by the multifarious nature of his materials, Lewis guides the reader to some fundamental themes in recent sinology, opening manifold novel perspectives along the way. Even when dealing with well-known texts, he often proposes striking reinterpretations.In his Introduction, Lewis enumerates six main functions of writing in ancient China: enforcing state authority; creating text-based communities and "public spheres"; transcending the confines of space, time, and human mortality; fashioning figures of authority in the past; standardizing specialized technical terminology; and encrypting secret meanings. In Lewis' own words, "the culminating role of writing in the period, and the key to its importance in imperial China, was the creation of parallel realities within texts that claimed to depict the entire world" (p. 4). This ultimately led to the formation of the Confucian canon as a "textual double of the polity" that could survive cataclysmic changes of regimes.In chapter 1, "Writing the State," Lewis points out that before the Warring States period Chinese writing occurred exclusively in religious contexts. After circa 500 B.C., written documents gradually came to be used in the administration of government and trade. Both in their details of formulation and in the implication that anything committed to writing was thereby supernaturally validated, these new types of documents exhibit pervasive continuity with the earlier kinds of texts used in ritual communication with the ancestral spirits. Such continuity is also reflected in the rise of religious beliefs in a netherworld governed by a bureaucratic hierarchy and administrative processes parallel to those of the world of the living. According to Lewis, "the most important modification in the shift to an administrative polity [in the Warring States] was the extension of writing to new elements of the population. The attributes of the Zhou nobility... were transferred to the common people in the administrative documents of the new state. This widening range of inscription into the state order altered the social meaning of being recorded from a sign of power to one of subjection" (p. 13).Warring States rulers were cast in the role not of the authors of texts but of the authority behind them. Administrative and legal texts were concerned, ultimately, with the proper naming of phenomena, a process that had to adapt itself continually to the changes of the times. The authority of rulers came to encompass both human society and the natural world. "Whereas local and central administration were largely created through reworking and rewriting the ritual bases of the old Zhou order by means of a rationalizing cosmology, the re-invention of rulership drew on the contemporary religious realm and what is sometimes described as shamanism to provide images of cosmic power" (p. 42). Lewis illustrates the mechanics for applying these universal principles of rulership by a comprehensive analysis of the Zhou li (or Zhou guan), emphasizing the cosmological arrangement of the ideal government described therein and the dual administrative and religious dimensions of... (shrink)

The article aims to present the study of Aristotle’s teaching on consciousness and soul conducted by the well-known contemporary scholar of ancient philosophy, Jonathan Barnes, as an example of a certain historical-philosophical style that emerged within British analytic philosophy as a whole and within the Aristotelian Society in particular during 1970-1980s. It is shown that the development of the historical-philosophical style within the Aristotelian Society at this time continues the tradition of slow reception of ideas from continental philosophy, which (...) was noted already in the early period of Society emergence and development. This is explained by certain theoretical isolation that had developed by this time in British philosophy, which had its imprint on historical-philosophical studies and is expressed in the application of conceptual analysis and the inclusion of its results into the modern philosophical context. Although Barnes considers Aristotle’s teaching on consciousness and soul through the prism of contemporary versions of physicalism and dualism, the question of what role the Aristotelian teaching plays for them remains unanswered. The author puts forward the thesis that in this case, J. Barnes’s analysis of the Aristotelian problem of consciousness and soul appears less productive than the previously developed approaches in scholasticism and phenomenology in the continental history of philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? By KATHRYN TANNER. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Pp. viii + 196. $39.95 (hardbound). In describing the role of the human will in salvation, Thomas Aquinas remarks that justification indeed requires an act of human free choice, namely one which takes place when God "infuses the gift of justifying grace in such a way that (...) he simultaneously moves the free will (liberum arbitrium) to accept the gift of grace" (Summa theologiae I-II, 113, 3, c). When they encounter this sort of remark in Aquinas-and parallel remarks can he found across the whole ecumenical tradition of Christian theology-contemporary theologians may well be puzzled by two thirig~..One is Aquinas's evident conviction that an utterly robust view of God's power and sovereignty (such that whatever God wills to happen, happens) is fully compatible with the ascription of genuine and ineradicable freedom to human beings. But perhaps even more striking is the fact that Aquinas apparently takes this compatibility, so problematic for much of modern theology, to be obvious: it occasions no visible perplexity, appeal to mystery, or lengthy explanation, but is simply invoked in passing to help deal with the theological issue under discussion. In this powerfully argued and provocative book, Kathryn Tanner undertakes to clear up both of these perplexities. She develops an original and richly textured account of how Christian thinkers could and can maintain uncompromising accounts of both divine sovereignty and creaturely independence and freedom without falling into incoherence, and she also explains how what was once obvious now so easily seems bafHing. Tanner begins by arguing that the coherence of Christian claims about God and creatures can best be displayed by an explicitly secondorder analysis which aims to lay bare the rules governing well-formed Christian discourse, rather than by constructing a first-order ontological and metaphysical account of the relationship between God and the world. The book explicitly concentrates, " not on what theologians are talking about, but on.the way they are saying it " (p. 11). Tanner undertakes this " semantic ascent," which. she articulates with considerable nuance, partly in order to proceed in a way congruent with powerful recent developments in philosophy (European as well as Anglo8 ~1 BOOK REVIEWS American) and theology, but more basically because she thinks the issue itself demands this kind of treatment. However available in their own right, accounts of the relations between God and creatures cast in first-order metaphysical language are, theologians of quite different conviction have often maintained, veiled in a certain inevitable obscurity which limits their explanatory value; one cannot " reconcile God's agency with the creature's active powers through any material explanation of the actual mechanism found in some ' causal joint ' between the two" (p. 26; Thomas's way of putting this point, as Tanner is aware, is to say that we have no modus significandi for descriptions in divinis [see p. 12]). By contrast, the rules for coherent Christian discourse about God and creatures, if we can find any, can be stated with comparative clarity and precision: they will be straightforward directives to speak in certain ways and not in others. Moreover, the problems in speaking coherently about divine power and the contingent independence of creatures are not confined to a particular scheme of firstorder theological concepts and judgments but recur across a wide range of differing schemes; correlatively, if we can isolate second-order rules for Christian discourse about God and creatures those rules " may structure very different theological schemes, schemes distinguished by their first-order claims by vocabulary, philosophical frames of reference etc." (p. 29). Tanner's project, then, is a certain kind of transcendental argument: she wants to show "how it is possible for Christians to affirm certain statements while holding on to others that seem to conflict with them" (p. 20). If rules which govern apparently conflicting statements about God and creatures in Christian discourse can in fact be isolated, and it can be shown how they are followed by Christian theologians, then, Tanner argues, the project will have succeeded; the coherence of Christian discourse about God and creatures will have been displayed... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 267-278 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Healing Deconstruction: Postmodern Thought in Buddhism and Christianity Healing Deconstruction: Postmodern Thought in Buddhism and Christianity. Edited by David Loy. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. 120 pp. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.--Karl Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach Healing Deconstruction, edited by David Loy, is a collection of (...) essays which are situated by and elaborate the intersection of radical Christian, Buddhist, and deconstructionist discourses. With the exception of "Mindfulness of the Selves" by Morny Joy, all of these essays were first presented at the Fourth International Buddhist-Christian [End Page 267] Dialogue conference in Boston in 1992. While each author addresses different aspects of problems associated with suffering, the self, language, and healing, they share certain poststructuralist sensibilities in common and, with the exception of Robert Magliola, share a commitment to developing "a more holistic praxis" (p. 2). The title of this volume is, says Loy, "intentionally ambiguous. On the one side, it emphasizes the healing possibilities of deconstruction in a field where the deconstructive turn has too often been understood reductively" and on the other, it "refers to the potential healing power of this dialogue for deconstruction itself, whose critique of logocentrism had led to a rupture within contemporary thought" (ibid.). 1 The authors both affirm "the liberating and healing potential of de-essentialized concepts and images, language, bodies and symbols" and maintain "that actually realizing this healing potential requires a move from theorizing to practice, for only that can truly deconstruct the self" (p. 10).Chief among the problems they identify as presenting barriers to developing a new way of relating to the world and a new self are dualistic thinking and the notion of the autonomous self. Each of the authors contributes to comprehending the philosophical factors that foster the creation of these barriers and what may be done philosophically to dismantle them. Moreover, Philippa Berry, Joy, and Magliola not only deploy Christian, Buddhist, deconstructionist, and feminist tactics to dismantle these barriers, they also articulate alternative modes of relating to the world.Creating new ways of relating to the world and new senses of self are clearly in order. Profit-driven global development, enforced by U.S. directed, taxpayer financed military power, is not only fostering the growth of illiteracy, homelessness, poverty, slave labor, and starvation for hundreds of millions of persons worldwide it is also threatening the biological basis of life. To make matters worse, revolutions in communication, transportation, and weapons systems have accelerated the rate at which these processes are developing around the world. The left used to say: either socialism or barbarism. Today we might say, either a way of life or death. In light of the fact that, as Joy indicates, "[r]acism, sexism, and classism still pervade our social structures in ways that damage the lives of billions of people"; it is clear that we need "a new way of relating to the world: a different sense of self" (pp. 71, 97). It is no exaggeration to claim that we must build an alternative mode of being and becoming to that which presently exists in order to ensure that all human beings are able to enjoy the rich abundance of life. The authors in Healing Deconstruction make diverse contributions to this end and provocatively stimulate our thinking about how we might best create an alternative mode of human existence.Their contributions suffer, however, from problems which are, among other things, symptomatic of the state of critical theory and politics as we begin the twenty-first century. With the triumph of global capitalism and the retrenchment of the political right, critical theory and politics, particularly in their academic manifestations, have in large measure retreated from the radical agendas that characterized political movements in the 1960s. Whereas anticolonial, civil rights, antiracist, feminist, indigenous, environmental, and working class organizations and movements sought to transform existing institutions in order to insure universal access to social, [End Page 268] political, and economic resources, most liberals and many... (shrink)

The rise of humanistic Buddhism in the early twentieth century was a direct reaction against the practice of rituals for the dead by highlighting the importance of serving and benefiting the livings in this world here and now. Nevertheless, almost one hundred years later today, rituals for the dead continue to play very important role in Humanistic Buddhism. This paper analyses the ritual theory of Master Xing Yun (星雲), one of the leading figures in contemporary Humanistic Buddhism, and examines (...) how Fo Guang Shan—founded by Xing Yu—has recreated rituals not only for the sake of the dead but also for the spiritual advancement of living human beings. I argue that (1) Humanistic Buddhism does not entirely reject rituals; (2) ritual practice in Humanistic Buddhism has maintained the idea of transcendence of Buddhism, thus actually sanctifying the secular life of Buddhists and extending the sacred space to the public arena beyond the temple walls. (shrink)