Philosophers have proposed many accounts of biological function. A coarse-grained distinction can be made between backward-looking views, which emphasise historical contributions to fitness, and forward-looking views, which emphasise the current contribution to fitness or role of a biological component within some larger system. These two views are often framed as being incompatible and conflicting with one another. The emerging field of synthetic biology, which involves applying engineering principles to the design and construction of biological systems, complicates things further by adding (...) intentional design as a source of function. In the current study we explored how biology experts and novices think about function in the context of single-celled, multi-celled, and synthetic organisms. We also explored the extent to which each group were function pluralists, and if they were function pluralists, which accounts of function tended to be endorsed together. The results showed a surprising degree of similarity between experts and novices in most contexts, although certain differences were apparent. Most surprisingly, we found evidence not only of function pluralism in both groups, but pluralism between backward-looking and forward-looking accounts. We discuss these findings in the context of the philosophical debate on function and consider the practical implications for public acceptance of synthetic biology. First, we argue that philosophers of biology should re-examine the purported incompatibility between accounts of function. Second, we argue that due to the introduction of an intentional aetiology in synthetic biology, there may be an inherent conflict between the views of experts and novices when thinking about synthetic biology. (shrink)

Peace is a hallmark of human societies. However, certain ant species engage in long-term intergroup resource sharing, which is remarkably similar to peace among human groups. We discuss how individual and group payoff distributions are affected by kinship, dispersal, and age structure; the challenges of diagnosing peace; and the benefits of comparing convergent complex behaviours in disparate taxa.

Doctors’ strikes are legally permissible in the UK, with the situation differing in other countries. But are they morally permissible? Doug McConnell and Darren Mann have systematically attempted to dismiss the arguments for the moral impermissibility of doctors’ strikes and creatively attempted to provide further moral justification for them. Unfortunately for striking doctors, they fail to achieve this. Meanwhile, junior doctors’ strikes have continued in the UK through 2023 and have now extended into 2024. In this response, which focuses on (...) the UK situation and specifically junior doctors’ strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, I will demonstrate a central problem with their arguments—namely that they underplay the harms caused by prolonged doctors’ strikes by ignoring the harms to patients with cancer. This weakens their conclusion that strikes are morally permissible in terms of the conditions and thresholds they set. I then provide a psychological critique of their justification for strikes in terms of the interests of the public. It follows that invoking the controversial concept of supererogatory action is ungrounded but also absurd when you consider time-critical cancer care. If those representing striking doctors wish to maintain a modicum of moral respectability, they should mitigate for patients with cancer and negotiate reasonably and with urgency. (shrink)

Grace and Freedom in a Secular Age offers a concise exposition of key ideas - contingency, otherness, freedom, vulnerability and mutuality - that inform the work of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, especially concerning the dynamics of religious belief and religious denial in what he calls a "a secular age." The book integrates discussion of Immanuel Kant and Susan Neiman in particular and seeks to show how Taylor's work can be fruitfully engaged by theologians.

The Western Middle Ages witnessed the emergence of a wide array of economic theories of public life and the common good that emphasized the worthiness (indeed priority) of ensuring a satisfactory arrangement of economic goods primarily for the sake of meeting the physical, temporal needs of individuals from all classes and orders. The chapter surveys a plethora of texts, dating from the middle of the twelfth century up to the end of the fifteenth, that considered pragmatic issues related to how (...) the material self-interest of human beings coincided with the augmentation of public wealth within a community, and especially how governmental policies promoted or hampered the goal of personal economic improvement. Despite the diversity of and occasional discordance among these writings, all of them fundamentally agree on two interrelated points: (1) the pursuit of material self-interest, rather than conflicting with or detracting from the common good, actually supports and enhances it; (2) the responsibility of government to promote the public welfare requires paying careful attention to the protection and promotion of private advantage. (shrink)

Polyphony of Anxiety. The Interview with Stefano Micali about His Book Phenomenology of Anxiety.

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

Organized across national boundaries and with millions of supporters worldwide, transnational environmental activist groups such as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and Friends of the Earth play a central role in the way the world addresses environmental issues. This book provides the most systematic and theoretically informed study to date of the strategies these organizations use to advance global environmental protection. Based on case studies of three transnational groups, it argues that in addition to lobbying governments, activists operate within and (...) across societies to effect widespread change. They work through transnational social, economic, and cultural networks to alter corporate practices, educate vast numbers of people, pressure multilateral development banks, and shift standards of good conduct. Wapner argues that because this activity takes place outside the formal arena of inter-state politics, environmental activists practice "world civic politics"; they politicize global civil society. The theoretical import of this book is to bring the practice of world civic politics into sharp relief and generalize its significance beyond environmental affairs to explain the efforts of all NGOs in world politics. (shrink)

In his contribution, the author discusses the deep and surprising similarities between the philosophies of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche. The author argues that these stem from their shared conception of naturalism. Their naturalism is primarily an explanatory one and primarily aimed at explaining human thought and practice. In Nietzsche, this form of naturalism is expressed in his adoption of a genealogical approach to various topics, most famously that of morality. The author shows that Hume’s naturalism is similarly genealogical. The (...) author also argues that their conceptions of morality and the self are closer than popular images of the two philosophers might have it. (shrink)

This commentary highlights the scientific history of the NIH-Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and corroborates Sarpatwari’s theme of private capture of value created by the public. The commentary also identifies missteps by the Trump and Biden Administrations and offers policy recommendations: better contracts with and incentives for pharmaceutical manufacturers and a not-for-profit “public option” for pharmaceutical development.

For two and a half millennia readers of Aristotle have been struggling to understand just what sort of causation is being attributed to the Prime Unmoved Mover or PM, whether final or efficient, assuming that this supreme being could not be a material cause or even a formal cause of the entire cosmos. Fred Miller entered into this still ongoing debate with a fresh proposal, drawing on an almost incidental remark in GC 1.6.323a25-33 that was later picked up by Philoponus (...) in his commentary on Aristotle’s text. The fundamental question is whether the PM’s causal role is to be restricted to a case of final causation or is there evidence for efficient causation as well? Just how ancient this question of interpretation is can be clearly shown by the following remarks made by Simplicius in the first half of the sixth century in his Neo-Platonist commentary on Phys VIII.6.267b17-26:Simplicius goes on to argue in some detail for this dual picture, primarily because of his harmonizing approach to Plato and Aristotle, but also by referencing some very specific passages in other works—notably Cael, GC, DM—but also Met, albeit only from its first book (1361.11-1363.24). He starts out here by claiming that “[n]o one disputes that Aristotle calls god or the primary mover a final cause” but realizes that showing that the PM is an efficient cause as well needs some textual support, which he dutifully attempts to provide. We will be going over some of the same ground cited here in trying to articulate Aristotle’s conception of divine causation and in particular to decide if Fred Miller’s thoughts about the “untouched toucher” will help us in the overall endeavor to explore Λ.6-10. Since he points out (at p. 278) that the PM could hardly be a material cause or even a formal cause, his framing the issue as to whether the mode of causation here is exclusively efficient or exclusively final, or, on the other hand, both at once, seems very close to how Simplicius set up the problem. Indeed, he cites the same section of Simplicius’s commentary quoted above and finds this ancient perplexity a good jumping off point for his own attempt to shed light on a fundamental issue of interpretation, noting that if we balk at the Neo-Platonic suggestion that Aristotle’s PM “is on a par with Plato’s demiurge,” the question becomes: “in what way is the prime mover supposed to be an efficient cause?” (p. 279). Miller’s novel suggestion is that one way of dealing with this question is the thought that the PM is an “untouched toucher.” It is crucial to his picture that this suggestion is strongly tied to the prospect of finding “a way in which the unmoved mover of the cosmos could be a genuine efficient cause” (p. 287) and not I believe, as W.D. Ross may have held, an efficient cause only by being a final cause. This will become important when we explore what untouched touching would be quite generally, given the emphasis on the psychological dynamics of this sort of affective action as suggested by the everyday examples provided by both Aristotle and Philoponus. (shrink)

The lives of children who live at the intersectional nexus between childhood autism and race may be considered as “shadow stories” that have remained silenced in autism literature. We explored the experiences of racialized parents who provide care to autistic children. We drew on a theoretical framework known as DisCrit and decolonizing arts-based methodologies. Racialized parents of autistic children demonstrated resistance along various themes, including fighting the system, protecting my child, and creating cultural communities. We join black girlhood studies, critical (...) race theory, and disabled children’s childhood studies by continuing the journey of decentering Whiteness in childhood disability research. We demonstrate how disabled racialized communities engage in activism and social justice while forming powerful counter-discourses. (shrink)

Traditional Chinese commentators rightly see that understanding Zhuangzi's way with words is the presupposition for understanding Zhuangzi at all. They are not sure, however, if Zhuangzi's words are super-effective or pure nonsense. I consider Zhuangzi's experience with language, and then turn to Heidegger's word of being to see if it may throw light on Zhuangzi's way of saying. I argue that a conversation between Heidegger and Zhuangzi on language is possible, but only by expanding Heidegger's notion of Gestell (enframing) and (...) through a destruction of the dominant Confucian discourse that obscures Zhuangzi's way of saying. (shrink)

This article contends that technology has evolved into a fundamental theo‐philosophical category. Acknowledging the intricacy of technology, it advocates for an exploration of indigenous philosophies to cultivate 'response‐ability' wisdom. The concept of environmEntity is introduced as an alternative to the traditional understanding of the environment, representing a vibrant and living world. Rooted in ubuntu sensibilities, environmEntity becomes a multi‐nature locus that fosters empathy and recognises inclusive differences as expressions of the same ultimate life. By integrating the wisdom from Christ's dual (...) natures and ubuntu's relationality, the article proposes a comprehensive and empathic life wisdom to address contemporary challenges and promote a sustainable and interconnected future. (shrink)

This paper is in three parts. In the first part, I consider Maritain’s definition of freedom. He differentiates between two types of freedom: freedom of choice, which he also calls freedom from necessity, and freedom of autonomy or terminal freedom, also called freedom from constraint. The second part considers the three types of political philosophy of freedom identified by Maritain. They may respectively be called liberal individualism, statesponsored collectivism, and communal and personalist philosophy. The third political philosophy, communal and personalist, (...) is advocated by Maritain. In the third part of this paper, I raise concerns about losses of freedom that have become more evident in the last few years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I reflect upon how Maritain’s philosophy of freedom may apply in our contemporary situation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, III: Studies in Theological Style: Lay Styles. By HANS URS VON BALTHASAR. Translated by Andrew Louth, John Saward, Martin Simon, and Rowan Williams. Edited by John Riches. San Francisco : Ignatius Press, 1986. Pp. 524. In this third volume of the Ignatius Press translation of Herrlichkeit, von Balthasar examines the more significant developments within the tradition of theological aesthetics-as (...) ancient as Irenaeus-from the failure of " clerical " theology in the late medieval period down to the early twentieth century. He treats here of Dante, John of the Cross, Pascal, Hamann, Soloviev, and Peguy, finding in each of them a relatively freestanding and harmonious exploitation of themes emerging from the coincidence of free historicity and lucid rationality which is the splendor of the Christian revelation, of the forma Christi. Von Balthasar's interest in these "lay " theologians focuses upon their failure or success in providing an aesthetic resolution of the problems posed by the fact, no longer capable of being ignored or transmitted, of human solidarity. This solidarity, in sin and in redemption, challenges the very possibility of a theological aesthetics, for it requires an aesthetically satisfying integration of the divine justice and the divine mercy, of the human community as simul justus et peccator, redeemed and yet capable of damnation. This is finally the problem of reconciling divine and human freedom, and no theology which fails to face it is worthy of the name. The theologians under discussion in this volume did face it, however unsuccessfully for the most part, and their having done so constitutes their interest. Other issues provide a variable framework for the posing of this radically Christocentric question: the relation of grace and nature, the sinfulness or not of the Church, the tension between a Platonizing reading of the Pauline marital symbolism and the covenantal content of that symbolism, the debate with the Reformation's refusal of theological aesthetics, and a rationalist reduction of beauty to formal necessity. It is also notable that the aesthetic stress of these theologians upon the concrete individual tends to locate them in the Neoplatonic-Augustinian hermeneutic whose ontological expression is a universal hylemorphism, in which matter and form express the paradoxical dichotomies of being rather than its logical integration as in the Aristotelian-Thomist hermeneutic governed by the act-potency analysis. In fact the rejection of the 710 BOOK REVIEWS 711 sterility of the essentialist logic of the latter hermeneutic is a frequent,.even an insistent, theme among these theologians. Perhaps the identification of the fundamental problem of theological aesthetics as the aesthetic integration of our solidarity with the damned is most evident in the first and last authors discussed, but even in John of the Cross, whose refusal of historical content to the faith is almost Bultmannian, the emphasis upon the experiential dimension of our appropriation of the revelation is maintained, and therefore, at least by implication and in the breach, the question of the experiential or aesthetic synthesis of God's redemptive love with his justice is in issue. The theological problem which emerges with clarity in this profoundly instructive inquiry is more properly that of our human solidarity in sin and in redemption, in the first Adam and in the last. This emphasis is of course a Pauline inheritance, whose initial exploration by way of the theological aesthetics of Irenaeus is the beginning of Christian theological aesthetics, but the task of integrating the dialectic of our human solidarity, as at once in the sin and death caused by the disobedience of the first Adam, and in the redemption and resurrection worked by the obedience of the last Adam, constitutes now as then the permanent because fundamental question before any theology which would be responsive, as an aesthetics, to the "ancient beauty, forever new," whose aesthetic integration von Balthasar considers to be the single responsibility and therefore the hallmark of any adequate Christian theology. The perennial attempts to meet this responsibility have forced Christian theology to abandon the cosmological preoccupations inherited from Plato and Aristotle as the price of loyalty to the free historical context which is alone possible for theology whether it be labelled systematics or aesthetics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:178 BOOK REVIEWS The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, II: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles. By HANS URS VON BALTH.AS.AR. Translated by Andrew Louth, Francis McDonagh, and Brian McNeil, C.R.V. Edited by John Riches. San Francisco: Ignatius Press; New York: Crossroad, 1984. Pp. 362. This is the second volume of the translation of Hans Urs von Balthasar's H errlichkeit edited by Joseph Fessio and John Riches, (...) corresponding to the first part of the second volume of the original. The translation has been a joint project, and, if as a wsult it is more uneven than that of the first volume, with rare exceptions it is an accurate rendition into good English of the author's difficult German. The problems which the book presents to the reviewer do not stem from the translation, but from the subtlety of the theological viewpoint of the author himself-a viewpoint here manifest, if not in actu secundo, then in actu primo proximo, for this volume is given over to an examination of the thought of five " clerical " or "official " theologians (Irenaeus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Anselm, and Bonaventure) whom von Balthasar has chosen because they exemplify that aesthetic integration of theological insight which the author considers to offer the sole means of avoiding the dead ends of systematization, these being those logical culs-de-sac into which the clerical theologians of the medieval schools, with the exception 'of a few such as Bonaventure, were carried by their mistaken devotion to a new project, typified by Thomism and dominant by the end of the thirteenth century, of enclosing the free unity and rational integrity of the truth revealed in Christ within the transcendentally necessary structures of the sterile immanentist rationalism which von Balthasar considers to be constitutive of all systematic thought. It would doubtless be possible to read this second volume with some profit, apart from any acquaintance with the first, but it would be to miss the context in which the theologies chosen for examination become luminous. In any event, this volume, like the first, is not to be read at a sitting, or merely once: the product of a lifetime's study, The Glory of the Lord must itself be studied, and the study should follow the sequence of the work itself. Von Balthasar's literary style is highly allusive, while his thought is at once subtle and dense; the combination imposes upon the reviewer a task of interpretation which can be undertaken only with some diffidence, yet the importance of. providing some sort of prolegomenon to the easily bewildering richness of this masterwork in order that it be made more ac- BOOK REVIEWS 179 cessible to the readership for whom its author and editors intend it must warrant the risk indissociable from such interpretation. At first hand, much of the reviewer's work is already done by the author in an introductory section, which in turn states the goal of the entire enterprise, that of providing concrete historical (" dramatic ") realizations of the " form" of Christ, " the glory of the Lord," which the first volume set forth as the norm of all valid theology. The theologies which do this are " beautiful," and by being so have a factual impact upon the history and culture of the faith. Von Balthasar then explains what is meant by theological "style:" the freedom of the theologian manifesting itself in giving a particular free but obedient form to the content of the revelation, whose Form is the glory of God. The author then recites the decline of "official " or " clerical " style of theology from the end of the thirteenth century, and points to the emergence of a new "lay " style in the later medieval period, a style which was to become normative in consequence of the effective abdication by the official scholastic theology from the properly theological task of seeking to understand ever more profoundly the ecclesial tradition of the revelation in Christ, in favor of the sterile academic commentary upon St. Thomas wherein scholasticism languished until the Enlightenment, and then from the neoThomist revival in the late nineteenth century until its final defeat by biblical scholarship in the recent past... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:308 BOOK REVIEWS lronioally, the retrieval of patristic theology together with the ecumenical emphasis has blunted some of the more "traditional" (i.e., Tridentine) Catholic accents within what used to be the most distinctively Catholic of the systematic treatises-church and sacraments. For example, while Power asserts the Eucharist as a real presence and propitiatory sacrifice (Tridentine themes), he does not stress them, in order to make room for an understanding (...) of the Eucharist as active celebration and sacramental memorial (Catholic themes older than Trent which are ecumenical at the same time) ; he also does not underscore the Tridentine teaching about the sacramental character of Orders and thus does not accentuate the difference between clergy and laity. Again, instead of offering a Tridentine critique of Luther's singular understanding of the fides sacramenti, especially as it applies to the sacra· ment of penance (according to the early Luther's erstwhile debate partner, Cardinal Cajetan, Luther's view of the fides sacramenti was the only thesis of his which could not be reconciled with the Catholic faith and in effect amounted to the founding of a new church), Duffy attempts to integrate its positive aspects within a Roman Catholic sacramentology. Systematic Theology is a work permeated by Catholic themes, even if some of them would have been handled differently by other Catholic authors and though some of them are also shared by Protestant authors. The two volumes are a worthwhile and solid introduction to and summary of the present state of Catholic theology in North America, at least from the centrist-liberal perspective, and will serve their intended audience very well. Domimican House of Studies Oakland, California GREGORY RoccA, O.P. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Vol. V: The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age. By HANS URS VoN BALTHASAR. Translated by Oliver Davies, Andrew Louth, Brian McNeil C.R.V., John Saward and Rowan Williams. Edited by Brian McNeil C.R.V. and John Riches. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991. Pp. 666. This volume of the English translation of Hans Urs von Balthasar's masterpiece comprises the latter half of Herrlichkeit, Band III/I, Im Raum der Metaphysik, the first half having been published as The Glory of the Lord, Volume IV: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity. The BOOK REVIEWS 309 reader must remember that von Balthasar intends to denote by " metaphysics " the entire cultural complexus of myth, philosophy and religion, whose theological interest for von Balthasar is that it is seen to be the humanist anticipation of Glory, a grace-driven quest for God. This usage is of course unfamiliar to most students of the subject, and is one which moreover carries with it the anti-systematic presuppositions already noted in reviews of earlier volumes of The Glory of the Lord:* Von Balthasar looks upon " the realm of metaphysics " as that historical space in which the quest for human transcendence discovers that its goal is actual only in the Form of Christ, the Glory of God. The quest that is metaphysics is of itself a merely human project, and as such, is an illustration of human indigence. It is worth observing that von Balthasar's discussion of metaphysics, running to a thousand dense pages in the first (1965) edition of Band III/I: Im Raum der Metaphysik, has been considered dispensable to the unity of the Herrlichkeit by the editors of the French and Italian translations, both of which editions omit Band IH/L The English translation of its second part, here under review, makes that omission understandable, for in the first place its contribution to the whole is largely ancillary, a matter of illustration, and in the second, it is a work extraordinarily demanding of the reader-and if one may judge from the profusion of floating prepositions and consequent ambiguities in the English text, all too demanding of the translators as well. The sheer time required adequately to appreciate the prodigious learning of this massive study, and the patience required to keep its line of argument clear, are such as to defeat its purpose for most prospective readers. It is a work which, even more than the other volumes of The Glory... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Vol. VI: Theology: The Old Covenant. By HANS Uns VoN BALTHASAR. Trans. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. and Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis. Ed. John Riches. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991. Pp. 443. In this penultimate-volume of The Glory of the Lord, von Balthasar sets forth a " biblical aesthetics " in which the manner of the emergence of the Glory of God in (...) the world of man is spelled out. He proceeds by examining the bewildering variety of the manifestations of God's Glory in the Old Testament, but always as unified in their historical convergence upon Jesus, the Christ, the final and definitive presence in history of the divine Glory in whom Word and Image, Messiah and Servant, Son of Man and Son of God, are at one. This manner of proceeding is little consonant with contemporary Catholic exegesis, which prefers to regard the Old Testament as a free-standing hook, and is rather fastidious about reading it as " literally " the prologue and the Sitz im Leben of the New. For such exegetes, the literal and the historical senses are entirely distinct, because of their methodological enlistment in the historical pessimism of the Enlightenment. Balthasar, of course, is not of their camp. Balthasar's mastery of Old Testament exegesis is on a par with the effortless command of the Western philosophical, theological, and literary tradition which he has displayed in the earlier volumes of this work. While he relies heavily upon von Rad, a glance at the index shows that his knowledge of Old Testament scholarship is based upon a wide reading, upon which he levies throughout the book with practiced ease. The exegetical method implicit in his analysis is the one employed by scholars such as de Lubac, Guillet, and Ligier; its classic Augustinian understanding of the free unity of history, and of the consequently free meaning of Old Testament and the New as fulfilled in the Kingdom of God, needs no apology. The currently common supposition that the " literal " sense of Scripture is that which an Enlightened positivism will permit needs only to be recognized to be rejected. In the opening pages of the Introduction Balthasar sets the theme which will dominate the book: the rationally irresolvable dialectical 139 140 BOOK REVIEWS tension between God and all that is not God, a tension inherent in the revelation of the Glory of God. In keeping with the emphasis of his earlier volumes, Balthasar is insistent upon the radical gratuity of the revelation of the Glory of God. The revelatory manifestation of God as God, who is beyond all perception, all knowing, all communication, and yet is communicated, perceived the more surely where the more veiled, and definitively revealed on the Cross. The revelation of God's Glory is of God as the Absolutely Other, as formless, and so as in tension with all form which would mediate the revelation. This communication, this mediation, is utterly ex nihilo; it relies upon no capacity in man, upon no natural process of spiritual development, and is unrelated to, because absolutely transcendent to, all human projects. Impossible to prepare for, the manifestation is constantly new, arising out of no prior possibility in man or his world, and responding to nothing in him which might make the revelation capable of anticipation. The paradox of God's self communication of his formless Glory is then beyond all utterance, and yet is uttered, given form: the final Form is, of course, the Christ. This is the basic datum, the ground upon which all theology rests, and is pure grace, a gift beyond all expectation, incapable of being imagined. All the preparatory Old Testament images finally fail. The paradox, the self communication of God who is beyond all utterance, yet is uttered, has its resolution only in the Form, the personal unity, of Christ. The revelation always at once transcends and assimilates the concrete historical forms by which it is mediated. The pagan materials are transformed by their historical deployment in the revelatione.g., the pagan myths of creation, of divine wars and marriages, the pagan wisdom-and in their deployment, they converge, hut not within the Old... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 153 These objections to one side, one must compliment Anglin on the thoroughness with which he pursues his points. He almost always provides several arguments for the same point. So we get eight arguments for libertarianism, five for how natural evil comports with the existence of a benevolent, all-powerful God, and so on. These arguments carefully avoid the repetitiveness one might expect and rather skillfully succeed in (...) revealing a mind concerned with mapping out all the knolls and hollows on the intellectual terrain of the particular issue under consideration. Almost inevitably, any one hook's discussions of such disparate topics will vary in both quality and depth. Some parts of this hook (for example, the chapters on the existence of God and the problem of evil) should he generally accessible to the interested beginner in the philosophy of religion. Chapters 5 and 6 on the goodness of God and the problem of evil are especially well done. Anglin honestly and squarely faces the standard objections and manages to produce as complete and compelling a defense as one is likely to find anywhere in the literature. His use of the Principle of Double Effect to exonerate God from blame for creating creatures who may freely do evil was effective and innovative. Other parts of Free Will and The Christian Faith (say, the chapter defending God's foreknowledge featuring the rather paradoxical concept of "backwards causation " in which future free choices cause past foreknowledge) seem to require and presuppose a more thorough immersion in the recent scholarly literature. Some readers may find the author's use of logical notation to explicate his arguments distracting or alienating, though he takes great pains to explain the symbols he employs in the prose he uses. In addition, he is quite helpful to the reader at the start of each chapter in providing concise previews of the arguments to come. On the whole, this is a hook with occasional flashes of insight and innovation, hut with tangles and tensions in the arguments in other parts. JOSEPH M. INCANDELA Saint Mary's College Notre Dame, Indiana Quest for the Absolute: The Philosophical Vision of Joseph Marechal. By ANTHONY MATTEO. De Kalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 173. $30.00 (cloth). The Belgian Jesuit Joseph Marechal (1373-1944) is little known in North American philosophical circles. Indeed he is simply little known outside the somewhat small circle of scholars interested in the history 154 BOOK REVIEWS of twentieth century Roman Catholic theology. There Marechal's work, in particular his five volume Le Point de Depart de la Metaphysique (PDM) has a special place of honor. One need but think of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan among his intellectual heirs to recognize the impact of the thinker and of the volumes. The service of Anthony Matteo's Quest for the Absolute (QA) is to provide a clear and concise study of Marechal's thought. It makes a valuable companion to Joseph Donceel's A Marechal Reader (1970). To my knowledge, the only other full-length discussion in English is Otto Muck's The Transcendental Method (1968), a book which is nearly unreadable in its Eng· lish translation if not in its German original. Marechal was a committed and convinced Thomist, but discussing him under the rubric " transcendental method " brings home a critical conjunction between his Thomism and certain strategies more characteristic of Immanuel Kant and his followers. Instead of seeing Kant simply as undermining the objectivity of metaphysics and of natural theology, he came to believe it possible to take the Kantian "turn to the subject" and to show that it had possibilities not dreamed of by Kant himself. One early indication of Marechal's revisionary approach appeared in his notes for a 1914-1915 course on epistemology: "Kant deceives himself in recognizing, in the operations of spirit, only the pure synthesis of an empirical given. The human spirit is at once an empirical faculty and a faculty of the Absolute. This second aspect was only imperfectly grasped by the author of the Critique of Pure Reason." Thus Marechal was already on his way to answering his opening question for volume I of PDM... (shrink)