Daphne Hampson argues that Christianity is neither true nor ethical and that we can no longer credit the particular intervention in history which Christian revelation requires. Moreover, she says, by referring to past history Christianity distorts human relationships in the present.

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 100 Heft: 2 Seiten: 235-239.

Moral virtue is, for Aristotle, famously acquired through the practice of virtuous actions. But how should we understand the activity of Aristotle’s moral learner, and how does her activity result in the acquisition of virtue? I argue that by understanding Aristotle’s learner as engaged in the emulative imitation of a virtuous agent, we can best account for her development. Such activity crucially involves the adoption of the virtuous agent’s perspective, from which I argue the learner is positioned so as to (...) appreciate the value of virtuous action—its fineness—and what it would be to act finely herself. (shrink)

A clear introduction to the major works of Kierkegaard that highlights the Lutheran framework of his thought, the book combines exposition of the texts within their philosophical, theological, and historical context with an engaging critical dialogue that brings Kierkegaard into debate with twenty-first century thought.

In Nicomachean Ethics 2.4 Aristotle raises a puzzle about moral habituation. Scholars take the puzzle to concern how a learner could perform virtuous actions, given the assumption that virtue is prior to virtuous action. I argue, instead, that Aristotle is concerned to defend the necessity of practice, given the assumption that virtue is reducible to virtuous action.

Moral virtue is, for Aristotle, a state to which an agent’s motivation is central. For anyone interested in Aristotle’s account of moral development this invites reflection on two questions: how is it that virtuous motivational dispositions are established? And what contribution do the moral learner’s existing motivational states make to the success of her habituation? I argue that views which demand that the learner act with virtuous motives if she is to acquire virtuous dispositions misconstrue the nature and structure of (...) the habituation process, but also obscure Aristotle’s crucial insight that the very practice of virtuous actions affords a certain discovery and can be transformative of an agent’s motivational states. Drawing attention, in Aristotle’s account, to an asymmetry between the agential perspective and the observation of others, I consider what the agential perspective affords the learner, and offer a novel interpretation of the role a learner’s existing motives play in her habituation. (shrink)

By conceptualizing woman as the problem, we repeat rather than deconstruct or analyze the social relations that construct or represent us as a problem in the first place. If the problem is defined in this way, woman remains in her traditional position : the 'guilty one', the deviant, the other. It is more productive and accurate to locate both men and women as characters within a larger context: the relations of gender. From this feminist perspective men and women are both (...) prisoners of gender, although in highly differentiated but interrelated ways.1. (shrink)

How do we learn to be good? Aristotle’s answer will be familiar to any student of Greek philosophy: we become good—or virtuous—by doing virtuous actions. But ho.

Ancient Greek thought saw the birth, in so-called Western philosophy, of the study now known as moral psychology. In its broadest sense, moral psychology encompasses the study of those aspects of human psychology relevant to our moral lives—desire, emotion, ethical knowledge, practical moral reasoning, and moral imagination—and their role in apprehending or responding to sources of value. This volume draws together contributions from leading international scholars in ancient philosophy, exploring central issues in the moral psychology of Plato, Aristotle, and the (...) Hellenistic schools. Through a series of papers and responses, these contributions challenge and develop interpretations of ancient views on topics from Socratic intellectualism to the nature of appetitive desires, from the role of pleasure and pain in virtue, to our capacities for memory, anticipation and choice, and their role in a flourishing human life. (shrink)

That character virtue is produced, according to Aristotle, through a process of moral habituation is a familiar feature of his ethics. And yet our feeling of familiarity with the notions of habit and habituation can engender a like feeling of familiarity with the process Aristotle describes, and encourage us to conceive of this process in an overly narrow way. In this chapter, I examine Aristotle’s notion of ethos and ethismos (habit, habituation) in the Nicomachean Ethics to better understand what Aristotle (...) means to convey when he claims that character virtue ‘arises from habit’. I argue that to characterise habituation as ‘non-rational’ is misleading, particularly when this characterisation forecloses questions about what kinds of activity may be involved in the process of habituation, and what kind of states can be produced as a result. Habituation, I argue, is not characterised as a non-rational process, but a process that involves action and activity. This allows that the process of habituation may be understood in a relatively broad way and as potentially involving a range of activities which engage and develop a variety of psychological capacities. It also raises interesting questions about what a learner’s activity affords and how this contributes to her successful habituation. (shrink)

This article engages the conversation between Sarah Coakley, Daphne Hampson, and Aristotle Papanikolaou on the appropriateness of kenosis as a theological trope for women and deeply oppressed and vulnerable others. It affirms Coakley's and Papanikolaou's stance, which maintains that kenosis is a necessary or at least distinctively valuable category in Christian theology for understanding the transformation and redemption of all persons. The paper expands on Papanikolaou's analysis of the kenosis involved in the healing and recovery of personhood, arguing (...) that the “emptying of fear” reaches the fullness of self‐giving love in the scandalous act of forgiveness. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Professor Margaret Archer discusses a variety of aspects of her work, academic career and influences, beginning with the role the study of education systems played in...

MARGARET LYNN SCHABAS (Toronto, 1954) is professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and served as the head of the Philosophy Department from 2004-2009. She has held professoriate positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at York University, and has also taught as a visiting professor at Michigan State University, University of Colorado-Boulder, Harvard, CalTech, the Sorbonne, and the École Normale de Cachan. As the recipient of several fellowships, she has enjoyed visiting terms at Stanford, (...) Duke, MIT, Cambridge, the LSE, and the MPI-Berlin. In addition to her doctorate in the history and philosophy of science and technology (Toronto 1983), she holds a bachelor of science in music (oboe) and the philosophy of science (Indiana 1976), a master’s degree in the history and philosophy of science (Indiana 1977), and a master’s degree in economics (Michigan1985). -/- She has published four books and over forty articles or book chapters in science studies. Some of the journals in which her articles can be found are Isis, Monist, History of Political Economy, Public Affairs Quarterly, Daedaelus, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science. Her first book, A world ruled by number (1990) examines the emergence of mathematical economics in the second half of the nineteenth century. Her second book, The natural origins of economics (2005), traces the transformation of economics from a natural to a social science. She also has two co-edited collections, Oeconomies in the age of Newton (2003), with Neil De Marchi, and David Hume’s political economy (2008), with Carl Wennerlind. She is currently writing a monograph on Hume’s economics, as well as articles on the history and philosophy of bioeconomics. She is currently president of the History of Economics Society. -/- EJPE interviewed Margaret Schabas at the University of British Columbia in March 2013. In this interview, she recounts her earliest foray into the history and philosophy of economics, the conceptual trade between economics and natural science, and her most recent undertaking: the history and philosophy of bioeconomics. (shrink)

Religion has in the past, it may be truefully admitted, done more than its share of fostering the spirit of ‘we’ over against ‘they’. Economic and political factors have unfortunately, throughout history, clogged the channels of communication between men of one faith and those of another. The most unhappy aspect of the relation between religion and society has been the way in which the former has fostered the distinction between the insider and the outsider. Typical of this is the fact (...) that most religious communities have a word which describes the religious outsider and the word is never a flattering one. That there should be religious diversity in the first place should occasion no surprise. Diversification is the order of things in the biological realm and we would not expect to find a sudden departure from this, that is, a move towards convergence, in the sphere of religion. But unless diversification is matched with understanding and with communication we face the future at our peril. It is for this reason that the question of inter-religious communication, the ground of its possibility, can be regarded not only as the most pressing of problems for the student of comparative religion but as a matter of pressing urgency for all. (shrink)

Excerpt from Early Philosophical Works: Translated and Edited by Margaret Jourdain A Complete survey of the life and works of Diderot - whom Voltaire called Pantophile - is not attempted here, for the list of the topics he handled would be a very long one, including as it does various departments of art and science and speculation. The Letter on the Blind (the most interesting of his early works), however, shows him in two lights - as a free-thinker and (...) as one of the long succession of thinkers who prepared the way for the theory of; evolution. The agitation caused by Diderot and his circle about the theory of transformism, it has been said, must have largely contributed to awaken the attention of Erasmus Darwin in England and Lamarck in France to the necessity of throwing more positive light on that great issue. 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)

In close collaboration with the late Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp pioneered the theory and practice of 'the community of philosophical inquiry' (CPI) as a way of practicing 'Philosophy for Children' and prepared thousands of philosophers and teachers throughout the world in this practice. In Community of Inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp represents a long-awaited and much-needed anthology of Sharp's insightful and influential scholarship, bringing her enduring legacy to new generations of academics, postgraduate students and researchers in the (...) fields of education, philosophy, philosophy of education, Philosophy for Children and philosophy of childhood. Sharp developed a unique perspective on the interdependence of education, philosophy, personhood and community that remains influential in many parts of the world. This perspective was shaped not only by Sharp's work in philosophy and education, but also by her avid studies in literature, feminism, aesthetic theory and ecumenical spirituality. Containing valuable contributions from senior figures in the fields in which Sharp produced her most focused scholarship, the chapters in this book present a critical overview of how Sharp's ideas relate to education, philosophy of education, and the Philosophy for Children movement as a whole. The historical and philosophical nature of this collection means that it will be a vital resource for philosophers and educators. It should also be of great interest to teacher educators and those involved in the study of pragmatism and feminism, as well as the history of education across the globe, particularly in the United States of America. (shrink)

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had an enormous influence on twentieth-century philosophy even though only one of his works, the famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was published in his lifetime. Beyond this publication the impact of his thought was mainly conveyed to a small circle of students through his lectures at Cambridge University. Fortunately, many of his ideas have survived in both the dictations that were subsequently published, and the notes taken by his students, among them Alice Ambrose and the late Margaret Macdonald, (...) from 1932 to 1935. These notes, now edited by Professor Ambrose, are here published, and they shed much light on Wittgenstein's philosophical development. Among the topics considered are the meaning of a word and its relation to common usage, rules of grammar and their relation to fact, the grammar of first person statements, language games, and the nature of philosophy. This volume is indispensable to any serious discussion of Wittgenstein's work. (shrink)