Membaca buku yang terbit dalam Brills Series in Church History ini mempesona. Buku ini begitu menarik karena menggariskan perjalanan intelektual dan teologis Gereja Katolik sejak Revolusi Prancis (1789-95) dan kekalahan Napoleon (1815) sampai ke tahun 2013, tahun Paus Benedikt XVI mengundurkan diri. Padahal 200 tahun itu adalah tahun-tahun terwujudnya modernitas. Maka buku ini memaparkan dan menganalisa bagaimana Gereja Katolik dan teologinya menghadapi modernitas. Di atas hanya 220 halaman para penulis memperkenalkan pembaca secara ketat, tetapi jelas dan rinci, dengan perkembangan amat (...) dramatis teologi Katolik, dengan peranselalu peran kuncipara Paus, para teolog dan aliran-aliran teologi Katolik utama. Suatu perjalanan yang mulai dengan penolakan total Gereja terhadap modernitas, melalui tu-nas-tunas pembaruan sesudah perang dunia pertama yang akhirnya bermuara dalam pembukaan diri Gereja terhadap cita-cita manusia masa kini dalam Konsili Vatikan II (1962-65), namun pembukaan mana justru membawa Gereja ke dalam suatu krisis baru. Modernitas yang dibahas dalam buku ini mulai dengan revolusi intelektual yang namanya pencerahan dengan segala macam kejutan: Rasionalisme, liberalisme dan sekularisme sebagai ideologi politik baru. Nasionalisme sebagai kekuatan politik amat dahsyat. Restorasi monarki-monarki sesudah kekalahan Napoleon, gerakan-gerakan populis-nasionalisseperti Risorgimento yang akan mempersatukan Italia, dengan sekaligus menghapus Negara Kepausan yang sudah berumur seribu tahun. Dua perang dunia di abad ke-20 yang mengubah wajah Eropa dan akhirnya membongkar kolonialisme dan imperialisme Eropa. Munculnya ideologi-ideologi sekuler keras seperti komunisme dan fasisme. Perang dingin dan anarki sesudah perang dingin selesai. Para penulis berhasil menempatkan Gereja dalam pusaran global itu. Mereka menunjukkan bagaimana Gereja di bawah Paus Gregor XVI (1831-46), di bawah syok Revolusi Prancis, mengambil sikap konfrontatif total terhadap modernitas, menolak tuntutan demokrasi, kebebasan beragama dan perpisahan antara Gereja dan Negara. Konsili Vatikan I (1869-70) di mana penolakan itu memuncak dibahas secara rinci dengan latar belakangnya dan keanekaan aliran teologis yang sebenarnya kompleks, dan bagaimana Gereja Katolik mendefinisikan diri sebagai Gereja Kepausan. Kita mengikuti bagaimana Gereja kemudian mau mengamankan diri dari tantangan pemikiran filsafat modern dengan menetapkan neo-skolastik sebagai filsafat dan teologi resmi Gereja, bagaimana obsesi anti-modernisme mencapai puncaknya di bawah Paus Pius X (1903-14). Kita membaca tentang ultramontanisme, gerakan Oxford, perhimpunan ekstrem kanan Prancis Action Catholique (yang akhirnya dibubarkan oleh Paus Pius XI [1922-1939]), dan juga tentang Sodalitium Pianum (Persaudaraan Pius), suatu jaringan rahasia yang memata-matai para dosen teologi dan filsafat, yang kalau dicurigai ketularan modernisme dilaporkan ke Roma, lalu dipecat (ada sekitar lima puluh dosen yang disingkirkan sebagai terjangkit modernisme). Kita menyaksikan gerakan-gerakan pembaruan yang muncul sesudah PD I seperti gerakan liturgis, gerakan biblis, gerakan ekumenis, para imam buruh dan nouvelle theologie (teologi baru, yang meski 1949 dilarang oleh Paus Pius XII (1939-58) namun akan memberi dorongan-dorongan kunci pada pembaruan Gereja dalam Konsili Vatikan II).... Gambaran Gereja 2013 pada permulaan Kepausan Fransiskus dalam buku ini berkesan ambivalen. Sebenarnya pimpinanPaus, para Uskupmendasarkan diri pada paham Gereja Konsili Vatikan II. Tetapi reformasi struktur pemerintahan Gereja tetap macet. Tentang banyak masalah rincikeluarga berencana, selibat wajib, kemungkinan pe-nahbisan perempuan menjadi imam, desentralisasi kekuasaan, peng-angkatan uskup atau peresmian teks-teks liturgi bagi Gereja lokal, misalnya terdapat perbedaan-perbedaan pandangan serius antara banyak teolog Katolik dengan Vatikan. Padahal Gereja adalah komunitas ber-iman yang dibangun atas keyakinan bahwa Gereja adalah ruang di mana kita bertemu dengan, dan dibimbing oleh, Yesus Kristus. Kekuasaan yang dipegang oleh Paus semata-mata harus demi menunjang panggilan Gereja itu. Kalau dalam umat terjadi kesan bahwa pimpinan Gereja memakai kekuasaan yang ada di tangannya untuk mempertahankan struktur-struktur kekuasaan yang tidak lagi dapat dilegitimasi atas dasar Injil, kredibilitas Gereja sendiri bisa mengalami kemerosotan. Barangkali keengganan Vatikan untuk mengadakan reformasi nyata bukan karena Vatikan masih, untuk sebagian, terperangkap oleh gambaran Gereja Vatikan I, sebagaimana disindir dalam buku ini, melainkanmengikuti kritik ideologi Karl Marxkarena Vatikan, seperti setiap aparat, seakan-akan dengan sendirinya mati-matian mau mempertahankan kekuasaan. Apakah Paus Fransiskus yang telah membawa angin baru ke dalam Vatikan akan membawa perubahan? (Franz Magnis-Suseno, Program Pascasarjana, Sekolah Tinggi Filsafat Driyarkara, Jakarta). (shrink)

Cultural Writing. This classic of alternative art theory is available again in this second edition. Dick Higgins was co-founder of Happenings and later Fluxus. He was active in music, studying with John Cage and Henry Cowell and is the author of many books of poetry including Buster Keaton Enters Into Paradise (Left Hand) and Book About Love And Death (Something Else), also available from SPD. From his early (1964) essay on Intermedia, which gave the term to the language, (...) up through the his influential essay on the concept of an allusive referential, the impulse of his work was to describe rather than to prescribe. These essays continue to offer tools which may be useful in developing theories and opinions for the next generation of artists, writers and critics. A Dialectic Of Centuries is book to work within the new century. (shrink)

This article examines the definitions of place or location (topos) and as a consequence, space, in Byzantine philosophy, from Maximos the Confessor to Photios. These philosophers draw, on one hand, on the Aristotelian, Platonic, and Neoplatonic sources, and on the other hand, on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Firstly, Maximos the Confessor sets out a novel definition in which place is conceptually inseparable from time, is needed for substances to exist, and in which place is the boundary between the created and uncreated. (...) In Anastasios of Sinai’s writing, God is the archetypical place for all things and is likewise necessary for substances. John of Damascus, in contrast, extends Aristotle’s definition of place in the Physics in new directions, by investigating the place of angels, which is determined by their incorporeal limits. Finally, Photios produces a systematic and astute account of how the properties of the containing and contained bodies come together to make places. The article concludes with an evaluation of these theories, and briefly considers their relationship to theories of place and location in modern physics. (shrink)

The goal of tranquility through non-Assertion, Advocated by sextus empiricus, Is examined and his method criticized. His understanding of non-Assertion is compared with that of seng-Chao (383-414) and chi-Tsang (549-623). Zen buddhism shares the quest for tranquility, But offers more than sextus did to help us attain it, And avoids the excessively metaphysical thought of these two chinese buddhists. Wittgenstein, Whose goal was that philosophical problems completely disappear, And austin, Who rejected many standard western dichotomies, Offer a method superior to (...) that of sextus, Or to that of chi-Tsang and seng-Chao, But an ideal short of the tranquility sought by all the rest. The thought that zen buddhism and ordinary language philosophy may be looking in the same direction is supported by appealing to john canfield's article "wittgenstein and zen" and his analysis of "understanding without thought.". (shrink)

Excerpt from The Principle of Synthetic Unity in Berkeley and Kant This little volume was prepared as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan. By the advice of Dr. John Dewey I have undertaken to interpret the Metaphysical Notes of Berkeley's Commonplace Book, and as far as possible discover the Principle of Unity which occasionally manifests itself in Berkeley's works and which formed a basis for a Treatise on the Will which Berkeley (...) contemplated but never produced. I wish to express my indebtedness to Dr. Dewey for his assistance in the selection of collateral reading and for his suggestions in the development of the thesis. No literature could be secured bearing upon the interpretation of the Notes, hence the Notes have been classified and such as bear upon the theme under discussion have been used. Often the phraseology has been preserved but where that could not be done the thought has been expressed in phraseology as nearly Berkeleian as the author could select so as to preserve the unity that runs through the Notes. This principle of unity found in Berkely has been compared and contrasted with the Unity of Kant. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has argued that rock and roll happens from the neck down. In this contribution to The Rolling Stones and Philosophy, edited by Luke Dick and George Reisch, I draw on neuroscience to argue that, in the parlance of John Stuart Mill, rock and roll is both a higher and a lower pleasure.

It can be hard to see where money fits in the world. Money seems both real and imaginary, since it has obvious causal powers, but is also, just as obviously, something humans have just made up. Recent philosophical accounts of money have declared it to be real, but for very different reasons. John Searle and Francesco Guala disagree over whether money is just whatever acts like money, or just whatever people believe to be money. In developing their accounts of (...) institutions as a part of social reality, each uses money as a paradigm institution, but they disagree on how institutions exist. Searle argues that the institution of money belongs to an ontological level separate from the physical world, held up by the collective intentions of a group, while Guala claims that money is a part of the ordinary physical world and is just whatever performs a “money-like function” in a group, regardless of what that group believes about it. Here, we argue that any purely functional account like Guala’s will be unable to capture the distinctive phenomenon of money, since monetary transactions are defined by the attitudes transactors hold toward them. Money will be obscured or misidentified if defined functionally. As we go on to show by examining recent work by Smit et al., belief in money does not require taking on all of Searle’s ontological commitments, but money and mental contents will stand or fall together. (shrink)

Moving beyond the traditional, and unproductive, rivalry between the fields of motivation and cognition, this book integrates the two domains to shed new light ...

This book is a selection of papers from a conference which took place at the University of Keele in July 1982. The conference was an extraordinarily enjoyable one, and we would like to take this opportunity of thanking all participants for helping to make it so. The conference was intended to allow scholars working on different aspects of symbolic behaviour to compare findings, to look for common ground, and to identify differences between the various areas. We hope that it was (...) successful in these aims: the assiduous reader may judge for himself. Several themes emerged during the course of the conference. Some of these were: 1. There is a distinction to be made between those symbol systems which attempt, more or less directly, to represent a state of affairs in the world (e. g. language, drawing, map and navigational skill) and those in which the representational function is complemented, if not overshadowed, by properties of the symbol system itself, and the systematic inter-relations that symbols can have to one another (e. g. music, mathematics). The distinction is not absolute, for the nature of all symbolic skills is, in part, a function of the structure of the symbolic system employed. Nonetheless, this distinction helps us to understand some common acquisition difficulties, such as that experienced in mathematics, where mental manipulation of symbols can go awry if a child assumes too close a correspondence between mathematical symbols and the world they represent. 2. (shrink)

Pursuing the Forms: Equality and Excellence in Plato's Republic and Symposium -- Equality and Excellence in the Education of Cyrus -- Splendid Equality in the Nicomachean Ethics: Munificence -- How Excellence Bows to Equality in Aristotle's Politics -- First Among Equals: Philosophers, Statesmen, and Citizens in Spinoza's Democracy -- Excellence and Equality in Fénelon's Telemachus -- The Seductive Danger of Equality and Excellence: The Moderating Wisdom of Montesquieu's Science of Ovidian Metamorphosis -- Equality and Excellence in Rousseau's Emile, Book III (...) -- Hegel's Evaluation of Liberalism: Equality of Rights without Human Excellence -- Democracy, Nobility, and Freedom: The Political and Moral Aesthetics of Tocqueville -- Does Kierkegaard Have a Concept of Excellence? -- Nietzsche: The Indignity of Equality -- The Good and the Excellent: John Rawls's Egalitarian Liberalism. (shrink)

Nathan Ballantyne argues that the knockdown status of certain non-philosophical arguments can be transferred to arguments for substantive philosophical conclusions. Thus, if there are knockdown non-philosophical arguments, there are knockdown philosophical arguments. I show that Ballantyne’s argument is unsound, since arguments that are knockdown in non-philosophical contexts may become question-begging when used to argue for philosophical conclusions.

Os mais importantes paradoxos de decisáo social, ou seja, de votaçáo sáo apresentados. A apresentaçáo indica tanto a origem dos paradoxos discutidos quanto uma breve discussáo das mais importantes tentativas de os resolver. Sáo considerados paradoxos em que a regra de votaçáo preve ruma igualdade de peso entre os eleitores, bem como paradoxos com regras altemativas de votaçáo. A democracia tem se firmado entre a grande maioria dos povos como a maneira mais justa de organizaçáo social e , especialmente em (...) se tratando da esco lha das autoridades de uma democracia representativa, em quase axiomático 0 uso da regra da igualdade de peso de cada eleitor, embora outras regras tambem sejam usadas em clubes, instituições finançeiras e outros bastante conhecido, porem que tanto o proprio conceito de democracia quanto a referida a regra de escolh sáo isentas de problemas e, em especial, geram certos paradoxos. Assim passa-se em revista aqui alguns dos mais importantesparadoxos eleitorais, sem a pretensáo de resoIve-los", mas com o intuito de ampliar a discussao critica e portanto, fortalecer praticas politicas desejaveis. (shrink)

The new field of quantitative health risk assessment owes its emergence much more to the 'market pull' of demand from societal decision-making processes than to dramatic advances in our ability to make the desired predictions. This paper discusses problems and opportunities in the current practice of quantitative risk estimation under three broad headings: Basic (Technical) Assessment Methodology, and Methods for Assessing Uncertainty; Conception of the Problem for Analysis, and Ways of Expressing Results; and Defining Appropriate Roles for Expert Analysts in (...) Social Decision Processes. Finally, borrowing from work of McMullin, the paper offers some criteria for judging risk assessment theories other than the generally unavailable 'goodness-of-fit' procedures. (shrink)

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobb’s case has given rise to confusion in the medical community, mostly concerning the specific definition of an abortion and what procedures are acceptable. Catholic bioethics has a long history of examining the ethical issues surrounding procedures used in vital conflict situations and other instances where direct or indirect abortion may be the preferred treatment. This article lays out the important points and ethical dimensions surrounding some of the most common pregnancy related interventions and (...) provides guidance to physicians seeking to treat both patients in a manner that acknowledges their value as human beings. (shrink)

The purpose of the book is to attempt to ascertain the views of President Barack Obama related to the field of education. This is done by first studying his own personal education and then following his spoken and written comments as a social worker, college professor, and as a state and federal legislator. In addition, there is an analysis of the positions he has taken during his political campaigns. Following this, there is a description of the actions he has taken (...) thus far in the field of education during his presidency. Using this background the author seeks to suggest his likely initiatives in education during the remainder of his presidency. (shrink)

Logical consistency demands that Mercier and Sperber's (M&S's) argumentative theory of reasoning apply to their own reasoning in the target article. Although they hint that their argument applies to professional reasoners such as scientists and philosophers, they do not develop this idea. In this commentary, I discuss the applicability of argumentative theory to science and philosophy, emphasizing the perils of moral reasoning.

The two pillars of Ian C. Jarvie’s thought have been Karl Popper and Ernest Gellner. Gellner went against Popper’s anti-historicism by seeking to give rationalism social groundings. What had once seemed convincing no longer impresses nearly as much. Gellner’s measure of optimism has been replaced by social tendencies that suggest generalized anxiety.