Though Aristotle is universally acknowledged as having a mighty influence on the history of philosophy, large parts of his writings are often thought to be interesting to nobody except the historian. This includes those treatises known as the theoretical works (preeminently the Metaphysics, Physics, De Anima, and Posterior Analytics). However, the contributions in this book show that these old treatises are still profound resources for philosophical inquiry. Not only do they inform us about the origins of our ideas, but equally (...) they express insights that always stand in need of reinterpretation, and thus challenge our understanding. That challenge to understanding - and ultimately the desire for self-understanding, the desire to know what stands at the source of thinking itself - this was at the heart of the Greek ideal of philosophy, and some would say that this is still the task of the discipline. The essays included here cover a wide range of topics, including Aristotle's treatment of non-contradiction, the tension between his conceptions of knowledge and being, the complexity of the term 'potency,' and the relation between psychology and physics. (shrink)

This article reviews Bryan Lueck’s book Obligation and the Fact of Sense. In this quite original book, Lueck considers what he argues are the failures of various modern ethical theories to decisively identify the ground of obligation, and proposes a new account of obligation in light of those failures. The book traces the concept of obligation through its history in early modern thought up to Kant’s idea that the ground of obligation is the so-called fact of reason, that we simply (...) find ourselves bound by the moral law. Lueck’s own account begins from this point, but he recasts Kant’s idea of the fact of reason as the fact of sense, drawing on figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Serres, and Nancy. Ultimately, however, he argues that only a very deflationary version of obligation can be defended, as the failures of the early modern ethicists prove not to be accidental, but to emerge from the very phenomenon of obligation. (shrink)

A surprising feature of Aristotle’s thought is the fact that he does not offer a single, extended account of truth. He makes passing references to the meaning of truth in various texts, and his comments at times seem hard to reconcile. A preponderance of these comments occur in the Metaphysics, where he seems to adopt two quite different models for thinking about truth: truth is on the one hand a kind of touching or contact, and on the other a matter (...) of joining or dividing subjects and predicates correctly. This paper proposes a reading that reconciles these two models with one another, one that assigns to each model its appropriate place in what Aristotle thinks of as the process of inquiry, a process exemplified by the text of the Metaphysics itself. (shrink)

A surprising feature of Aristotle’s thought is the fact that he does not offer a single, extended account of truth. He makes passing references to the meaning of truth in various texts, and his comments at times seem hard to reconcile. A preponderance of these comments occur in the Metaphysics, where he seems to adopt two quite different models for thinking about truth: truth is on the one hand a kind of touching or contact, and on the other a matter (...) of joining or dividing subjects and predicates correctly. This paper proposes a reading that reconciles these two models with one another, one that assigns to each model its appropriate place in what Aristotle thinks of as the process of inquiry, a process exemplified by the text of the Metaphysics itself. (shrink)

If, as the title of this book suggests, the state of Tractatus commentary has at times recently resembled something close to a state of war, then it has most of all resembled a war of attrition. Against this background, Roger White's "Throwing the Baby Out with the Ladder" makes for refreshing reading. To be sure, White repeats some of the familiar misconceptions of what resolute readers do or must claim that have marred the debate over the adequacies or inadequacies of (...) such an approach to the Tractatus (TLP). But he also introduces some novel and interesting lines of criticism that merit serious attention. Foremost among the latter is White's treatment (in Section III of his paper) of three engaging examples that he sees as making trouble for resolute readers, and for their opposition to the standard idea that the lesson of the Tractatrrs could consist in its communicating, and our grasping, ineffable insights by way of its nonsense-sentences. (shrink)

One of the contemporary results of Germany’s memorial conundrum is the rise of its “counter-monuments”: brazen, painfully self-conscious memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premises of their being. On the former site of Hamburg’s greatest synagogue, at Bornplatz, Margrit Kahl has assembled an intricate mosaic tracing the complex lines of the synagogue’s roof construction: a palimpsest for a building and community that no longer exist. Norbert Radermacher bathes a guilty landscape in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood with the inscribed light of (...) its past. Alfred Hrdlicka began a monument in Hamburg to counter—and thereby neutralize—an indestructible Nazi monument nearby. In a suburb of Hamburg, Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz have erected a black pillar against fascism and for peace designed to disappear altogether over time. The very heart of Berlin, former site of the gestapo headquarters, remains a great, gaping wound as politicians, artists, and various committees forever debate the most appropriate memorial for this site.4 4. The long-burning debate surrounding projected memorials, to the Gestapo-Gelände in particular, continues to exemplify both the German memorial conundrum and the state’s painstaking attempts to articulate it. For an excellent documentation of the process, see Topographie des Terrors: Gestapo, SS und Reichssicherheitshauptamt auf dem “Prinz-Albrecht-Gelände,” ed. Reinhard Rürup . For a shorter account, see James E. Young, “The Topography of German Memory,” The Journal of Art 1 : 30. James E. Young is assistant professor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation and The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning in Europe, Israel, and America , from which this essay is drawn. He is also the curator of “The Art of Memory,” an exhibition at the Jewish Museum of New York. (shrink)

Developments in Buddhist Thought: Canadian Contributions to Buddhist Studies. Ed. Roy C. Amore. Wilfrid Laurier Press, Waterloo, Canada 1979. 194pp. Can. $7.00 paperback.

(revisions posted 12/5/2006) to appear in Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology, ed. by Sanford Goldberg (to be published by Oxford in 2006 or 2007) Michael McKinsey formulated an argument that raises a puzzle about the relation between externalism about content and our introspective awareness of content. The puzzle goes like this: it seems like I can know the contents of my thoughts by introspection alone; but philosophical reflection tells me that the contents of those thoughts are externalist, and (...) so I couldn. (shrink)

Athens or Jerusalem? By Tertullian.--Philosophy the handmaid of theology, by Clement of Alexandria.--Faith in search of understanding, by St. Augustine.--Revelation and analogy, by St. Thomas Aquinas.--The mystic way, by M. Eckhart.--The darkened intellect, by J. Calvin.--The reasons of the heart, by B. Pascal.--Faith, reason, and enthusiasm, by J. Locke.--Miracles and the skeptic, by D. Hume.--The limits of reason, by I. Kant.--Truth and subjectivity, by S. Kierkegaard.--In justification of faith, by W. James.--Religion as poetry, by G. Santayana.--Faith and symbols, by (...) P. Tillich.--Three parables on falsification, by A. Flew, R. M. Hare, and B. Mitchell.--For further reading (p. 233-235). (shrink)

I provide a history of research on G×E in this article, showing that there have actually been two distinct concepts of G×E since the very origins of this research. R. A. Fisher introduced what I call the biometric concept of G×E, or G×EB, while Lancelot Hogben introduced what I call the developmental concept of G×E, or G×ED. Much of the subsequent history of research on G×E has largely consisted in the separate legacies of these separate concepts, along with the (sometimes (...) acrimonious) disputes that have arisen time and again when employers of each have argued over the appropriate way to conceptualize the phenomenon. With this history in place, I then consider more recent attempts to distinguish between different concepts of G×E, paying particular attention to the commonly made distinction between “statistical interaction” and “interactionism,” and also Michael Rutter’s distinction between “statistical interaction” and “the biological concept of interaction.” I argue that the history of the separate legacies of G×EB and G×ED better supports Rutter’s analysis of the situation, and that this analysis best paves the way for an integrative relationship between the various scientists investigating the place of G×E in the etiology of complex traits. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Peacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Praxis ed. by Robert J. Schreiter, R. Scott Appleby, Gerard F. PowersJames W. McCarty IIIPeacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Praxis Edited by Robert J. Schreiter, R. Scott Appleby, and Gerard F. Powers Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010. 480pp. $27.00Peacebuilding results from a four-year research project sponsored by the Catholic Peacebuilding Network. A wide-ranging and interdisciplinary set of fifteen essays, Peacebuilding not only brings (...) to the fore the unique ways that Roman Catholic theology and practice has contributed to the global work of peacebuilding, but it also makes the case that the Catholic Church needs to develop a more robust theology of peacebuilding to complement and strengthen traditional Catholic approaches to the ethics of war and peace. The two most bold proposals along these lines are Daniel Philpott’s call for a papal encyclical on peacebuilding (92, 120) and Maryann Cusimano Love’s proposal of “just peace” criteria for guiding peacebuilding work in a fashion similar to the way “just war” criteria have guided the conduct of war (82, 425–27).Peacebuilding is organized into two main sections. The first documents and theorizes the work of Catholic actors and organizations in peacebuilding work. In one of the most helpful essays in this section, John Paul Lederach describes how the “ubiquitous presence” of the Catholic Church in a society is, in fact, one of the most unique contributions the Church has to make to global peacebuilding. Lederach uses the phrase “ubiquitous presence” to describe the unique role Catholic “actors” play within the “pyramid approach” to peacebuilding that he develops elsewhere (see Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Peacebuilding [New York: Oxford University Press, 2005], 79). Because of its hierarchical structure, the Catholic Church—especially in Catholic-majority countries—has the potential to cultivate peacebuilding allies among different sectors of a society: the elite, “midlevel” actors, and at the grassroots level. Many other peacebuilding actors—politicians, civil society activists, and the historic peace churches, for instance—do not have such a ubiquitous presence. While Lederach has previously emphasized the importance of midlevel actors in peacebuilding, in this essay he argues that the “ubiquitous presence” of the Catholic Church [End Page 213] in a society provides a basis for making connections for peacebuilding work among a range of sectors within a society. Several of the other contributors to this book draw on this observation and demonstrate its usefulness to a variety of settings. In my estimation, this is the most important contribution of the volume.The second section consists of six essays that both expand upon existing Catholic moral theology and make the case that Catholic theology needs to develop a more robust theology of peacebuilding. Here we find a range of arguments—from Robert Schreiter’s proposal for a practical theology of reconciliation and Peter Phan’s outline of a fourfold Catholic understanding of interreligious dialogue to Kenneth Himes’s discussion of the ways peacebuilding theory challenges and complements contemporary Catholic social teaching. Himes, in particular, claims that the current acceptance of a Catholic “presumption against war” requires a more robust Catholic approach to conflict transformation; in making his case, he draws on resonances between contemporary peacebuilding theory and recent reflections on jus post bellum (justice after war) as a new category of just war thinking.As in nearly every edited collection, the quality of the essays in Peacebuilding varies. I found the essays in the first section to be the most stimulating. Not only do they highlight the peacebuilding work the Catholic Church is currently doing around the world, they also ground their proposals for how we should understand and do peacebuilding from a Catholic perspective in relevant historical examples.Indeed, the varied nature of the essays in Peacebuilding is precisely what makes it a valuable resource for both researchers and teachers of peacebuilding. On the one hand, it includes essays that break new ground and move forward our understanding of the unique nature of Catholic peacebuilding. On the other, it includes essays that introduce the topic of peacebuilding to students of religion and ethics. This book, then, serves as an excellent resource for a range... (shrink)