One would be hard pressed to deny the ordinary man's trust in the moral deliverances of his conscience. Joseph Butler put the case for the infallibility of conscience, when he remarked: ‘Had it strength, as it had right; had it power, as it had manifest authority; it would absolutely govern the world’ . I think it obvious, in retrospect, that Butler underestimated its ‘strength’ and ‘power’, while overextending its ‘right’ and ‘authority’. Perhaps it is too rash a claim to maintain (...) that conscience serves as an inadequate guide in our moral deliberations, but, to be sure, it can hardly be defended as a sufficient guide to moral conduct. (shrink)

In theology, by W.L. Rowe.--Divine foreknowledge and human freedom, by A. Kenny.--Some puzzles concerning omnipotence, by G.I. Mavrodes.--The paradox of the stone, by C.W. Savage.--Creation ex nihilo, by J. Donnelly.--The miraculous, by R.F. Holland.--On miracles, by P.J. Dietl.--The tacit structure of religious knowing, by J.H. Gill.--On the observability of the self, by R.M. Chisholm.--Re-examining Kierkegaard's "Teleological suspension of the ethical," by J. Donnelly.

This standard work in thanatology is updated with ten essays new to the second edition, and features a new introduction by Donnelly. The collection addresses certain basic issues inherent in a philosophy of death.

There has been a noticeable thanatological turn in philosophy since the mid-1970s, and this study in analytic metaphysics is a splendid tribute to death as the muse of philosophy.

There is a growing appreciation amongst philosophers for the contribution of John Henry Newman to mainstream Anglo-American natural theology, and this book is a welcome addition to the available literature. Ferreira explores the relationship between faith and reason, and the sort of epistemic warrants behind the alleged rational commitment to religious belief.

Kierkegaard and his various pseudonymous authors' maieutic, poetic, prolix, ironic, enigmatic, desultory, highly personal writing styles do not lend themselves well to standard philosophical scrutiny--at least as adjudged by somewhat mainstream Anglo-American criteria. Often herculean, hermeneutical effort is required to just comprehend Kierkegaard, because argument forms in his writings are not transparent, awaiting only the test of counterexamples or inference-rules. Nonetheless, ratiocination is present, however opaquely, opening up the scholarly danger of what Kierkegaard called the reader's grasping with his right (...) hand what is held in the author's left hand. (shrink)

This book is a tour de force in intellectual history. Kirmmse has brilliantly unearthed and synthesized the diverse social, political, ethical, and religious background of nineteenth-century Denmark from the onset of agrarian reforms to the shift from absolute monarchy to constitutional government. Kirmmse provides interesting chapters on such Golden Age cultural figures as Oehlenschlager, Mynster, Heiberg, Martensen, Grundtvig, Clausen, and others, and the romantic, Hegelian, elitist, populist themes and tensions elicited from their respective views. My brief review cannot possibly do (...) justice to the elaborate historical detail and interpretation found in Kirmmse's book. (shrink)