Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Introducing this issue’s triptych on algorithms and culture, this article argues that prevailing modes of analysis that focus on the prospects for algorithms “taking over” are no longer useful. It advocates the need for a new conceptual vocabulary, which recognizes that algorithmic and cultural reasoning processes are already enmeshed with each other. The introduction suggests a need for an enterprise of algorithmic epistemology attuned to the fine structure of the ways in which culture and code have interacted in the past (...) and continue to interact today. (shrink)

Following Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer states that the primordial way we experience the past is through forgetting rather than memory. This essay seeks to explore the various senses of forgetting as it appears in Gadamer’s thought with a particular emphasis on how forgetting and memory structure the unique temporality of the work of art. This exploration reveals that the interplay between forgetting and remembering is more complicated than mere opposition; this interplay is specifically revealed in Gadamer’s analyses of the epochal (...) transition and the transmissive event of history. In both cases, forgetting is revealed not as a lack or lacuna, but as a dynamic generating structure that elevates the work of art from its original past—constituting the immemorial dimension of the work. This essay concludes by gesturing toward the repercussions of forgetting on subjectivity and a theory of time in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. (shrink)

In religion, as in science, man has attempted to comprehend the links between himself and the world around him. Though his search was limited before the scientific revolution, it was no less meaningful nor less intense than ours is today. Every sacred building had to possess the same ‘functional’ relationship to God as a modern laboratory has to the discipline it serves. The proportions used in the building would epitomise their ideas of the god, and the geometric shapes employed in (...) the building would involve meanings every bit as profound, and stemming from as much thought, as our scientific ideas. The major difference was that they judged truth by consistency rather than by experiment. If we consider the issues involved in siting an atomic power station, and the care we would use to do so, then we may get some idea of what was involved in siting and orienting a sacred building. The way this was done was one of the most powerful tools they possessed for relating man and his world to the gods so that man could understand and where possible control the natural forces around him. In this his purpose is the same as the modern scientist's, though his premises and his methods differed. To illustrate this, I shall discuss the churches in and around the small southern Italian town of Positano. (shrink)

From Socrates to Jean Brodie, we have become accustomed to teachers serving as placeholders for transgressive and powerful desires in our cultural imaginary. Evidenced by recent scholarship on teachers in film, however, as well as by the 2006 film Notes on a Scandal, the way we ought to feel about teachers acting on their transgressive motivations, realizing the cultural fantasies that shadow desire and break from social norms, is less clear. In this article James Stillwaggon and David Jelinek (...) frame the problematic erotics of school films in terms of the fantasy of the subject presumed to know and the transgressive bliss of jouissance. Stillwaggon and Jelinek analyze Notes on a Scandal as a breakdown and reversal of the tradition of school films to which it is indebted and work from it toward an understanding of the unrecognized and often conflicted cultural commitments that shape teaching. (shrink)

__Filmed School__ examines the place that teaching holds in the public imaginary through its portrayal in cinema. From early films such as _Madchen in Uniform_ and _La Maternelle_ to contemporary images of teaching in _Notes on a Scandal_ and _History Boys_, teachers’ roles in film have been consistently contradictory, portraying teachers as both seducers and selfless heroes, social outcasts and moral models, contributing to a similarly divided popular understanding of teachers as both salvific and sinister. In this book, Stillwaggon and (...) Jelinek present these contradictory images of teaching through the concept of _transference_ – the fantastical belief in another’s knowing that founds a teacher’s authority in relation to her students and, to some degree, the public at large. Tracing the place of transference across a century of school films, each chapter demonstrates the persistence of this fantasy in one of the dreams or nightmares of teaching that recurs thematically in school films: the teacher-as-savior, seducer, signifier in a moribund discourse, and sacrificial object. Through these analyses, the authors suggest that something might be missing in our attempts to theorize education when we leave our unthought fantasies of teaching out of the picture. This book will be of key interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of educational theory, teacher education, philosophy of education, film and media studies, psychoanalysis, sociology of education, curriculum studies and cultural studies. (shrink)

Films depicting educational relationships typically emphasize personal connections between students and teachers over the educational goals that such relations facilitate. In doing so, these films raise the question of how teachers stand in relation to their institutional roles in such a way as to inspire students’ desires for knowledge. In this paper, in order to examine the influence of institutional roles in defining teacher–student relationships, we analyze “The Paper Chase,” a film in which teacher and student have no personal connection (...) but in which the drama of student desire is nonetheless clearly featured. Drawing from Plato’s erotics, in which the soul is shaped by desire for that which it lacks, and from Jacques Lacan’s theories of desire and transference, we argue that “The Paper Chase” portrays educational desire as rooted in the differential of authority between teacher and student. (shrink)

We are sceptical of concerns over the opacity of algorithmic decision tools. While transparency and explainability are certainly important desiderata in algorithmic governance, we worry that automated decision-making is being held to an unrealistically high standard, possibly owing to an unrealistically high estimate of the degree of transparency attainable from human decision-makers. In this paper, we review evidence demonstrating that much human decision-making is fraught with transparency problems, show in what respects AI fares little worse or better and argue that (...) at least some regulatory proposals for explainable AI could end up setting the bar higher than is necessary or indeed helpful. The demands of practical reason require the justification of action to be pitched at the level of practical reason. Decision tools that support or supplant practical reasoning should not be expected to aim higher than this. We cast this desideratum in terms of Daniel Dennett’s theory of the “intentional stance” and argue that since the justification of action for human purposes takes the form of intentional stance explanation, the justification of algorithmic decisions should take the same form. In practice, this means that the sorts of explanations for algorithmic decisions that are analogous to intentional stance explanations should be preferred over ones that aim at the architectural innards of a decision tool. (shrink)

John Locke's subtle and influential defense of religious toleration as argued in his seminal _Letter Concerning Toleration_ appears in this edition as introduced by one of our most distinguished political theorists and historians of political thought.

the role of John Locke's chapter on property in the Two Treatises in dispossessing the Indigenous peoples of America of their traditions territories. It discusses the argument in detail as well as the history of its uses and indigenous responses to it.

"If Catholic and Protestant ethicians were asked to name a single theologian who was qualified to write a comprehensive overview of the historical divergences of Catholic and Protestant positions on ethical questions, the bases for those divergences in fundamentally different philosophical and theological perspectives, and the possibilities for future convergences of the traditions, my guess is that James Gustafson would be the one.... This brilliant and tightly argued book... will be the most important book on moral theology to appear (...) this year."—John Coleman, National Catholic Reporter. (shrink)

As John Henry Newman reflected on 'The Idea of a University' more than a century and a half ago, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together some of the nation's most eminent thinkers on higher education to reflect on the nature and purposes of the American university today. Their mordant reflections paint a picture of the American university in crisis. This book is essential reading for thoughtful citizens, scholars, and educational policymakers.

The danger of human operators devolving responsibility to machines and failing to detect cases where they fail has been recognised for many years by industrial psychologists and engineers studying the human operators of complex machines. We call it “the control problem”, understood as the tendency of the human within a human–machine control loop to become complacent, over-reliant or unduly diffident when faced with the outputs of a reliable autonomous system. While the control problem has been investigated for some time, up (...) to this point its manifestation in machine learning contexts has not received serious attention. This paper aims to fill that gap. We argue that, except in certain special circumstances, algorithmic decision tools should not be used in high-stakes or safety-critical decisions unless the systems concerned are significantly “better than human” in the relevant domain or subdomain of decision-making. More concretely, we recommend three strategies to address the control problem, the most promising of which involves a complementary coupling between highly proficient algorithmic tools and human agents working alongside one another. We also identify six key principles which all such human–machine systems should reflect in their design. These can serve as a framework both for assessing the viability of any such human–machine system as well as guiding the design and implementation of such systems generally. (shrink)

This is a reply to Muir's charge of ignorance about the history of philosophy of education and raises the question whether philosophy of education is a pure, autonomous discipline.

From the celebrated author of American Philosophy: A Love Story and Hiking with Nietzsche, a compelling introduction to the life-affirming philosophy of William James In 1895, William James, the father of American philosophy, delivered a lecture entitled "Is Life Worth Living?" It was no theoretical question for James, who had contemplated suicide during an existential crisis as a young man a quarter century earlier. Indeed, as John Kaag writes, "James's entire philosophy, from beginning to end, (...) was geared to save a life, his life"—and that's why it just might be able to save yours, too. Sick Souls, Healthy Minds is a compelling introduction to James's life and thought that shows why the founder of pragmatism and empirical psychology—and an inspiration for Alcoholics Anonymous—can still speak so directly and profoundly to anyone struggling to make a life worth living. Kaag tells how James's experiences as one of what he called the "sick-souled," those who think that life might be meaningless, drove him to articulate an ideal of "healthy-mindedness"—an attitude toward life that is open, active, and hopeful, but also realistic about its risks. In fact, all of James's pragmatism, resting on the idea that truth should be judged by its practical consequences for our lives, is a response to, and possible antidote for, crises of meaning that threaten to undo many of us at one time or another. Along the way, Kaag also movingly describes how his own life has been endlessly enriched by James. Eloquent, inspiring, and filled with insight, Sick Souls, Healthy Minds may be the smartest and most important self-help book you'll ever read. (shrink)

James Mill (1773-1836) is today best known as Jeremy Bentham's chief disciple and John Stuart Mill's father. Yet Mill himself was a formidable and important Utilitarian thinker in his own right, who earned the respect of even those who disagreed with him. His range was enormous (historian, political philosopher, psychologist, educational theorist, and economist), repeatedly crossing the disciplinary boundaries we take for granted today. This volume presents a wide sampling of Mill's political writings and polemical essays. It begins (...) with his classic work, the Essay on Government, it also includes pieces on the protection of rights, the importance of education, the free press, the secret ballot, and government's use of punishment against those who violate the rights of fellow citizens. The collection concludes with Macauley's famous critique of the Essay, and Mill's heretofore unnoticed reply in his Fragment on Mackintosh (1835). This is the first time that such a selection of Mill's political works has appeared as one volume. (shrink)

. . . This brilliant and tightly argued book . . . will be the most important book on moral theology to appear this year."—John Coleman, National Catholic Reporter.

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Social conditions of race and class continue to combine in ways that raise systemic questions about the adequacy and legitimacy of liberal, capitalist democracy in America. More radical alternatives, however, are still generally held to be irrelevant in the American context. The following is an effort to correct this widespread misrepresentation of socialism’s relevance to America generally, and to matters of race in particular. I consider the work of C.L.R. James who, fifty years ago, developed a class-oriented, explicitly Marxist (...) theory in which the aspirations and struggles of African-Americans were given a central place, both analytically and politically. (shrink)

Bernard Williams is one of the most influential figures in ethical theory, where he has set a considerable part of the current agenda. In this collection a distinguished international team of philosophers who have been stimulated by Williams's work give responses to it. The topics covered include equality; consistency; comparisons between science and ethics; integrity; moral reasons; the moral system; and moral knowledge. Williams himself provides a substantial reply, which shows both the directions of his own thought and also his (...) present view of earlier work of his which has been extensively discussed for twenty years. This volume will be indispensable reading for all those interested in ethical theory. (shrink)

1857. After the fire of mutiny has swept through British India, young Lieutenant Victor Narraway arrives at a battered military base at Cawnpore. It is just two weeks before Christmas, but no one is able to celebrate: they have been betrayed. A soldier under arrest for dereliction of duty has killed a guard and escaped to join the rebels, taking crucial information that led to the massacre of nine men on patrol. Someone must have helped him, and medical orderly (...) class='Hi'>John Tallis is the only man unaccounted for at the time. He is now on trial for his life, and Narraway is commanded to defend him. Narraway knows that his is an impossible task. The British Army needs justice to be carried out in full, and there seems no doubt of Tallis's guilt. But Narraway cannot see any motive for his actions. Will an innocent man hang before Christmas? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A THEORY OF BASIC GOODS: STRUCTURE AND HIERARCHY* I. FTEN, PERHAPS ALWAYS, moral theory emerges from particular problems. Just how is obscure. The logic of discovery is elusive; and it is harder to explain how we have come to see matters rightly than to recognize that we do, in fact, see them rightly. What counts as a theory, moreover, calls for explication as much as does a theory's emergence. (...) When we have in mind a theory that shapes our social vision, there is a progression from a central set of propositions, keyed to a range of paradigm cases and seen as a logical structure, to a " way of thinking " widely enough embraced to have political significance, at least for a given oommunity. In this essay I want to explore some fundamental questions raised by Germain Grisez's theory of natural law ethics.1 These questions are chiefly conceptual. But neither they nor Grisez's theory should be seen in a vacuum. Rather, I would begin by suggesting that the importance of his work, its emergence in some Catholic circles, is linked with two specific moral and political problems. The first is abortion; the second is the superpowers' policy of nuclear deterrence. *I thank David Blake, Robert Gordh, Carroll Kearley, Gary Mar. Martin Woods, and Linda Zagzebski for their comments on an earlier version of this essay. 1 For the theory's fullest presentation, see Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. one, Ohristian Moral Principles, with the help of Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., Basil Cole, O.P., John Finnis, John A. Geinzer, Robert G. Kennedy, Patrick Lee, William E. May, and Russell Shaw (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983). Especially critical are chapters two through twelve. 221 JAMES G. HANINK As a point of chronology, Grisez's early study of rubortion was the context for one of the first formulations of his natural law ethics.2 But why should this have been so? And why should abortion so engage Catholic thinkers, some of whom had felt a distance from explicitly Catholic positions, that Grisez's work should become pivotal? Answers to such questions must be tentative, but they include the following considerations. In a brief period, no more than a decade, legal abortion in the West became entrenched social policy.8 It was a policy, too, supported by dominant intellectual forces. But the new policy, defended in terms of individual freedom and a right to privacy, struck many Catholicsand non-Catholics-as vicious and tragic. It was vicious in that it made expendable the weakest and most vulnerable human beings. Human rights somehow became restricted to the strong and self-sufficient. The policy was tragic in its denial of human community. We are not, however much radical individualism supposes, merely a collection of separate egos. l/Ve are, rather, a community tied to a past and pledged to a future, so pledged, in part, by the children we bear and nurture.4 For in hearing and nurturing children we carry on the love of parents who have done as much for us; and we carry ourselves into a future where we hope our own love will be thus extended. But abortion, and surely unrestricted abortion, betrays this community of trust. Still, a policy so vicious and tragic can make us look for a fresh moral vision. And, of course, to the extent that we have contributed to,a climate in which abortion could become entrenched -either by our failures to support women in need or 2 Germain Grisez, Abortion: The Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments (New York and Cleveland: Corpus Books, 1970). a A milepost, of course, was the United States Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, in 1973. Recent U.S. Government figures indicate that there are now well over a million legal abortions annually in this country. 4 For a provocative discussion of this theme, see Stanley Hauerwas's " The Moral Value of the Family " in his A Commimity of Character (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). A THEORY OF BASIC GOODS: STRUCTURE & HIERARCHY 223 by an acquiescence in our culture's individualism-the call for theoretical reconstruction is all the more urgent... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS AS A COMMENTATOR ON DE ANIMA 3.5 JAMES T. H. MARTIN St. John's University Jamaica, New York DOES ST. THOMAS AQUINAS in his commentary on De Anima 3.5 provide an acceptable gloss on Aristotle 's cryptic remarks about active mind? That is, can one accept.that what Aquinas says about active mind is what Aristotle meant but for some reason did not say? Many modern commentators, among (...) them Franz Brentano, Marcel de Corte, Paul Siwek, and Francisco Peccorino, appear to think so and present an interpretation of active mind which agrees substantially with what Aquinas says in his Sententia Libri De Anima (Sent.).1 i Senteiitia Libri De Anima, opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P.M. edita (Paris: Vrin, for the Leonine Commission, 1984). While he does criticize St. Thomas Aquinas for some statements which " seem to betray a certain lack of clarity concerning the nature of active intellect,'' Franz Brentano awards the first place among earlier commentators on Aristotle's doctrine of active mind to Aquinas : " Indeed, I am not sure whether I should not say that he correctly grasped Aristotle's entire doctrine" (The Psychology of Aristotle: In Particular His Doctrine of Active Intellect, ed. and trans. Rolf George [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977], p. 155). De Corte holds that the originality of his study consists entirely in combining " all the technical means refined by modern criticism and which the thirteenth century did not have at its disposition " with the " Thomist interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of intelligence," an interpretation with which de Corte agrees, and which he presents as a necessary correction of the errors of modern commentators, who are "more or less instilled with an unconscious Averroism which radically vitiates their power of understanding" (La doctrine de l'intelligence chez Aristote [Paris: Vrin, 1934], p. 2). Siwek notes that "many of St. Thomas's explanations of Aristotelian psychology are altogether consonant with our own explanations,'' and warns his readers against undervaluing Aquinas's views (Aristotelis Tractatus de Anima Graece et Latine, editit, versione latina auxit, commentario illustravit [Rome: Desclee & C.i, 1965], p. 30). Peccorini com621 622 JAMES T. H. MARTIN Aristotle's text is concerned with two minds, "a mind which is such as matter by becoming all things, and another which is such as an active principle by making all things" (430a14-15). What are these minds, and what do they do? The central elements of Aquinas's exegesis of De Anima 3.5 consist in his answers to these questions. He holds that these two minds are " parts or potencies of the soul " (Sent. 3.4. 126). The role of passive mind, the "mind which is such as matter," is to apprehend the intelligible object (Sent. 3.4. 101-2), while that of active mind, the mind " which is such as an active principle by making all things," is to abstract the intelligibles (Sent. 3.4. 103-4), a role which he explains in this way: Active mind makes those things intelligible in act which previously were intelligible in potency. It does this by abstracting them from matter, for in this way they are intelligible in act, as has been said. Aristotle was led to posit an active mind to exclude the opinion of Plato, who held that the natures of sensible things are separated from matter and actually intelligible. Thus for Plato it was not necessary to posit an active mind. But because Aristotle holds that the natures of sensible things are in matter and not actually intelligible, it was necessary that he posit a certain intellect to abstract them from matter and so make them actually intelligible. (Sent. 3.4 50-63) Active mind on Aquinas's reading makes the potentially intelligible forms of sensible things actually intelligible, and in this way these sensible things become objects of thought. If one accepts this role for active mind, one is forced to accept as well, I think, that active mind is part of the soul rather than something separate from the knowing human subject. Aquinas argues this point at length in his commentary on De Anima 3.5. If thinking, the action of the passive mind, is in fact... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RICOEUR, WNERGAN, AND THE 1 INTELLIGIBILITY OF COSM.lC TIME JAMES R. PAMBRUN Bt. Paul University Ottawa, Oanada Introduot:Wn HE QUESTION OF TIME ihas entered into the work f ·every major philosopher s1ince Aristotle. As Heidegger (who is 1fond oif il'eco·vering these forgotten questions) has shown, time is not merely an ar.bitrary WJay of reckoning or calculating the fleeting moments of day-to-day life; rather, it is an exipressrion of (...) our very mode of heing.1 One of the major philosophers who!has taken up this question rin our own day and has pfaced it at the center of his·continuing work in rpib.ilosophical anthropology is Pia.JUI Ricoeur. He has ·shown how the ·symbols, metaphors, and narratives of time offer orientations to reflection: they not only point to the existential romplexities of human iftfe in its personal, social, and cosmic dimensions ibut also to its fundamental intentionrulities to.ward meaning that undergird these objectifications of time. Beyond this, Ricoeur himself has set up the question of time on new foundations. In his own elaho!I'ation of this question, he ib.as identified two distinct objectifications of time: cosmic 1 "Have we not, as Heidegger says, gained access, thanks to time, to the 'original phenomenological knowledge of the inner and unified structure of transcendence'?" Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967), p. 66. Besides Heidegger's classic Being and Time, see also his Basic Problems in Phenomenology (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1982): "Dasein's basic constitution is grounded in Temporality" (p. 228). Also, The History of the Concept of Time (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1985), especially pp. 140-141. 471 47~ JAMES R. PAMBRUN time ;and the time of the human spirit. When taken together these obj.ecbifications create ia paradox or pairadoxes (he names them "aporias ") for the general :intelligibility of time. They occur when ·oosmic time oonfronts existential time. Co.smic time, wihich :identifies the relationship between a;ny two arbitrarily chosen moments in ovder to measure a specific magnitude of time, is indifferent to eristentiail time, which is based on existentially, therefo!l.'e, meaningfully-detemiined categories of past, present, 1and foture.2 Fail' from parrulyziing his thinking, howevier, these apori.:as invite Ricoeur not only to probe mo!l.'e deeply the intelli~hilities he is seeking to understand ibut also to seek &om different disciplmes a Jight which may he shed on resolving these aporias.3 In this article, I do not wish to address tihe question of the intelligibility of time '3.t the more general ihermeneuticaJ level that Ricoeur has identified for his own work. I wish ·rather to engage RicoeUT's :analysii.s o[ one s1ide of this question, namely, the meaning and mtel:l.igibility of cosmic ti.me. And f& this purpose the general :ftmmework that Ricoeur has set urp in his discussion on the phenomenology of time in the thivd volume of ihis most rrecent work, Time and Narrative, is ru:t a;pproprri.ate starting point for our o.wn study. 2 Paul Ricoeur, Temps et reoit, Tome 3 (Paris: Cerf, 198·5), pp. 30 & 31. The other volumes in this trilogy are Temps et reoit, Tome 1 (Paris: Seuil, 1983) [Eng. Time and Narrative, Vol. 1 [trans. by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer] (Chicago.and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984)]; Temps et reoit, Tome 2, La configuaration dans le 1'ecit de fiction (Paris: Seuil, 1984) [Eng. Time and Narrative, Vol. 2 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985)]; the English translation of the third volume appeared from the same publisher in 1988. For a good outline of Ricoeur's program in these three volumes see John Van den Hengel's review of Volume 2 in Eglise et TMologie 18 (1987) : 401-405. a Note, for example, the three disciplines Ricoeur engages in dialogue in his recent three-volume work Temps et recit: literary works on narrative, historiography, and phenomenology. Earlier he wrote, "Finally, by carrying the debate to the level of language, I have the feeling of encountering other currently viable philosophies on a common terrain." "Existence and Hermeneutics," in Oonfiict of Interpretations (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TRANSCENDENT MAN IN THE LIMITED CITY: THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHARLES N. R. McCOY ]AMES v. SCHALL, S.J. Georgetown University Washington, D. C. The history of political philosophy since the time of St. Thomas has been a history of successive failures to relate ethics to politics and of successive attempts to find a substitute for theology, either in politics itself... or in economics.... Men are today oppressed by false (...) theologies erected into political systems, and those who are not so oppressed are in risk of becoming so oppressed by an intellectual and moral inability to defend themselves. St. Thomas's political science will not give us the answers to problems of hydro-electric development or technological unemployment ; but it will give us the answer to the most vital of contemporary problems: how to secure the rational foundations of humane living. -Charles N. R. McCoy," St. Thomas and Political Science." 1 I IN WRITING ABOUT the small but rich corpus in political philosophy by Charles N. R. McCoy, the temptation is almost irresistible to call it, wittily, " The Real McCoy," or, more academically, a theoretic essay on the reasons for our " intellectual and moral inability to defend ourselves." The kind of being we are, no doubt, needs defense, needs an explication that justifies its unique givenness. Charles N. R. McCoy is not generally wellknown, though he has a small and (one hopes) growing number of admirers. The very cultural unlikelihood of his central theme, 1 On the Intelligibility of Political Philosophy: Essays of Charles N. R. McCoy, edited by James V. Schall, S.J. and John J. Schrems (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), p. 38. 63 64 JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J. which 1s m no sense Hegelian, that there is indeed a coherent philosophical intelligibility-a "structure "-to political philosophy, makes his work both unique, profoundly appealing, and perhaps even prophetic. McCoy was concerned to explain the transcendence of each person, each citizen, beyond the city, indeed beyond this world, without denying his exact political nature and the reasons for its limits. Man was both a political and a philosophical animal to whom more than either politics or philosophy was given. The dignity of the city was essentially revealed in its limits, in what good it could do with its own means while leaving other admitted goods untouched, in what questions it could legitimately bring up because of its experienced life, but still could not answer by itself. On reading him carefully in one's own pursuit of philosophic wisdom in an age replete with sundry mental and moral confusions, it is tempting to affirm that, at last, in political philosophy here is found a body of reflection which is indeed " the real McCoy." Here is a consistent examination of philosophic principle that accounts for the contours of the whole of the discipline in its most radical origins and clearest limits. McCoy's "reality" does not, to be sure, exist for most of the political science profession itself nor for Christian thinkers in the field of political thought. This situation is unfortunate on both counts. Political philosophy, for its part, has pursued in modern times the line of its own autonomy in rejecting the great tradition which affirmed the limited place of politics in the order of being, its position as a practical, not speculative science. Theology-itself seeking relevance in lieu of transcendence-has largely imitated this modern turn in political thought. The crisis in theology is, more than anything else, the result of a crisis in political philosophy, its evolution in modernity. Thus in a discipline in which so many of the ultimate human issues are either not confronted at all or are at best confused, in a theological environment which is itself largely infected with the theoretical deviations McCoy chronicled, this benign neglect of his work may turn out to be an advantage. McCoy's independence of these ideological movements, grounded POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHARLES N. R. MC COY 65 as it is in the philosophical tradition from which these movements systematically deviated, provides a new and fresh way of coming to terms with the meaning of political philosophy itself. In a spirit of... (shrink)

Do people have free will, or this universal belief an illusion? If free will is more than an illusion, what kind of free will do people have? How can free will influence behavior? Can free will be studied, verified, and understood scientifically? How and why might a sense of free will have evolved? These are a few of the questions this book attempts to answer. People generally act as though they believe in their own free will: they don't feel like (...) automatons, and they don't treat one another as they might treat robots. While acknowledging many constraints and influences on behavior, people nonetheless act as if they (and their neighbors) are largely in control of many if not most of the decisions they make. Belief in free will also underpins the sense that people are responsible for their actions. Psychological explanations of behavior rarely mention free will as a factor, however. Can psychological science find room for free will? How do leading psychologists conceptualize free will, and what role do they believe free will plays in shaping behavior? In recent years a number of psychologists have tried to solve one or more of the puzzles surrounding free will. This book looks both at recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to free will and at ways leading psychologists from all branches of psychology deal with the philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will and the importance of consciousness in free will. It also includes commentaries by leading philosophers on what psychologists can contribute to long-running philosophical struggles with this most distinctly human belief. These essays should be of interest not only to social scientists, but to intelligent and thoughtful readers everywhere. (shrink)

Historians of science and religion usually trace the origins of the “conflict thesis,” the notion that science and religion have been in perennial “conflict” or “warfare,” to the late nineteenth century, particularly to the narratives of New York chemist John William Draper and historian Andrew Dickson White. In this essay, I argue against that convention. Their narratives should not be read as stories to debunk, but rather as primary sources reflecting themes and changes in religious thought during the late (...) nineteenth century. I contend that Draper and White were part of a long liberal Protestant heritage that emphasized history, reason, and religious emancipation against ecclesiastical authority. As an alternative source of origins, however, I suggest that the real “conflict thesis” is to be found in the fledgling discipline of the history of science as it emerged during the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. The real origin of the “conflict thesis” is found in the very discipline that now seeks to condemn it. (shrink)