In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President, and the conservative revolution emerged. Who provoked this revolution? Author Shadia Drury provides a fascinating answer to the question, as she looks at the work of Leo Strauss, a German Jewish emigre and scholar, who was one of the most influential individuals in the conservative movement. Among his disciples are Chief Justice Clarence Thomas and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

Alexandre Kojve (1902-1968) was Hegel's most famous interpreter, reading Hegel through the eyes of Marx and Heidegger simultaneously. The result was a wild if not hypnotic mlange of ideas. In this book, Drury reveals the nature of Kojve's Hegelianism and the extraordinary influence it has had on French postmodernists on the left (Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, and Michel Foucault) and American postmodernists on the right (Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, and Francis Fukuyama). According to Drury, Kojve followed Hegel in (...) thinking that reason has triumphed in the course of history, but it is a cold, soulless, instrumental, and uninspired rationalism that has conquered and disenchanted the world. Drury maintains that Kojve's conception of modernity as the fateful triumph of this arid rationality is the cornerstone of postmodern thought. Kojve's picture of the world gives birth to a dark romanticism that manifests itself in a profound nostalgia for what reason has banished - myth, madness, disorder, spontaneity, instinct, passion, and virility. In Drury's view, these ideas romanticize the gratuitous violence and irrationalism that characterize the postmodern world. (shrink)

This book poses a radical challenge to the legend of Socrates bequeathed by Plato and echoed by scholars through the ages: that Socrates was an innocent sage convicted and sentenced to death by the democratic mob, merely for merely questioning the political and religious ideas of his time. This legend conceals an enigma: How could a sage who was pious and good be so closely associated with the treasonous Alcibiades, who betrayed Athens in the Peloponnesian war? How could Critias and (...) Charmides, who launched a reign of terror in Athens after her defeat, have been among his students and closest associates? The book makes the case for the prosecution, denouncing the religion of Socrates for inciting a radical politics of absolutism and monism that continues to plague Western civilization. It is time to recognize that Socrates was no liberator of the mind, but quite the contrary-he was the architect of a frightful authoritarianism, which continues to manifest itself, not only in Islamic terror, but also in liberal foreign policy. Defending Homer and the tragic poets, the book concludes that the West has imbibed from the wrong Greeks. (shrink)

Let me begin by giving preliminary definition to the two kinds of contingency named in my title, although I shall argue that the distinction between them gets too complicated to sustain in the long run. Cosmological contingency is the contingency of things within the world upon other things within the world, plus perhaps their own spontaneous creativity. Ontological contingency is the contingency of everything in the world that is determinate in any way upon an ontological ground. That ontological ground cannot (...) itself be determinate, and you can recollect Plotinus's One, Thomas Aquinas's Pure Act of To Be, Brahman without qualities, or the Ultimate of Non-Being in Zhou Dunyi's philosophy for sample conceptions of... (shrink)

Psychoanalysis, with Freud as its founder, has vehemently denied the value of religious belief. In this radical book, Neville Symington makes the case that both traditional religion and psychoanalysis are failing because they exist apart and do not incorporate each other's value. Religion needs psychoanalysis so that it can become relevant to people's emotional lives and their most intimate relationships. Psychoanalysis needs religion so that it can contain those core spiritual values which give life meaning. But for a fertile relationship (...) both will need to relinquish excess baggage in the form of creeds, dogma and rituals which only serve to obscure the deeper values which both are attempting to express. The controversial conclusion of this fascinating study is that psychoanalysis is a spirituality-in-the-world, or a mature religion, and inseparable from acts of virtue. (shrink)

The second volume in a trilogy advancing a systematic philosophical theology, this book explores the realities of human existence articulated by religion. Religion, writes Robert Cummings Neville, articulates existential predicaments and provides venues for ecstatic fulfillment. Like its companion volumes treating ultimacy and religion, Existence advances a systematic philosophical theology to address first-order questions found in the array of Axial Age religions. Issues arising in the major religious traditions are explored through a complex array of philosophical approaches. This second volume (...) shows religion to be the engagement of ultimate realities common to all human beings. Neville finds five problematics relative to ultimate boundary conditions of the human world: the contingency of existence, living under obligation, the quest for wholeness, engagement with others, and the meaning or value in life. Common to all human beings and hence “religion,” the engagement with realities is also historically and culturally bound, becoming simultaneously socially constructed “religions.” Readers will find Neville’s philosophical theology both bold and enlightening, running counter to dominant intellectual trends while richly informed by a long and fruitful engagement with theology, philosophy, and religion, East and West. (shrink)

Promoting multiculturalism through renewed East-West and Confucian-Christian dialogue, Neville (philosophy, religion, and theology, Boston U.) fosters the idea ...

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States for his first term and the conservative revolution that was slowly developing in the United States finally emerged in full-throated roar. Who provoked the conservative revolution? Shadia Drury provides a fascinating answer to the question as she looks at the work of Leo Strauss, a seemingly reclusive German Jewish emigré and scholar, who was one of the most influential individuals in the conservative movement, a man widely seen as (...) the godfather of the Republican party’s failed “Contract With America.” Among his students were individuals such as Alan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind. Strauss influenced the work of Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb and William Kristol, as well as Chief Justice Clarence Thomas and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Drury delves deeply into Strauss’s work at the University of Chicago where he taught his students that, if they truly loved America, they must save her from her fateful enchantment with liberalism. Leo Strauss and the American Right is a fascinating piece of work that anyone interested in understanding our current political situation will want to read. (shrink)

Examines indirect learning, suggestion, trance, psychodrama, relaxation, autogenics, bio-feedback, visualization, intuition, mind-control and meditation as approaches and techniques which can contribute to teaching and learning.

The paper attempts to show what kant means by his claim that "the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good" in section 59 of the "critique of judgment". part i explicates his notion of symbolism in general and includes a subsidiary explication of his notion of analogy. part ii deals with some special problems which arise when he seeks to apply that general notion of symbolism to the particular province of the beautiful. the conclusions drawn are that kant means (...) the following: that in the very act of appreciating a beautiful object and making judgments of taste thereon, we have some awareness of ourselves as free, supersensible beings, which awareness is analogous to our awareness of ourselves as free moral agents; that "any" beautiful object can, in this sense, serve as a symbolic presentation of the morally good; but that the symbolic relationship between beauty and moral goodness does not constitute an argument for morality or for the actuality of human freedom, for it rather presupposes our awareness of such, nor should it simply be conflated with the beauty of nature bridging the noumenal and the phenomenal aspects of ourselves, which is a further issue. (shrink)

As pressures on the service economy from globalisation increase, new techniques may be appropriate for designing service systems. This paper examines the tradition of service quality and argues that its unique characteristics, such as the joint production of offerings by operators and customers, could benefit from the techniques of human factors. The interaction between human factors and quality is reviewed and four issues are extracted that should be directly applicable to service encounters. These are interface design, the understanding of error (...) causation, a design for operator well-being and human/automation function allocation. A framework is proposed for considering technology explicitly in the design of service systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gothicism and Early Modern Historical EthnographyKristoffer NevilleGothicism: Problems and PossibilitiesEarly-modern Gothicism, or self-identification with the Gothic peoples described by classical authors, has usually been considered a Scandinavian, and particularly Swedish, affair. Particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Swedish court and universities insisted militantly that the kingdom was the Gothic homeland, and this has fostered an assumption that Gothicism represents a kind of embryonic nationalism. This interpretation was (...) almost inevitable given the circumstances of modern interest in the phenomenon. Scandinavian scholars were the first to pick up the Gothic thread in the earlier twentieth century, and Swedes in particular have dominated the literature on Gothicism. At least in the early years, this may be [End Page 213] related to a general trend to interpret the past in terms of a relatively inflexible, modern concept of nation. These earlier studies accordingly relied largely on the same, mostly Swedish, sources. Later work has generally not expanded the framework of the discourse, however.1 A number of important early modern texts that show the much broader appeal of Gothicism are not accounted for in the standard narrative of the rise of the phenomenon in the early modern period. I will show that the Scandinavian interpretation has been allowed to overshadow a much broader Gothic tradition that encompassed a broad part of Europe, including the German lands and Spain. Gothicism has thus been reduced to just one aspect of its original scope, and the scholarly nuances and historical jockeying that shaped the narrative have largely been lost. This reduction has had consequences not only for the familiar version of the story, largely derived from Swedish texts, but also for our understanding of history writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.The Gothicism debate may be unique in its breadth and in the intensity of interest that it elicited. It is also remarkable for the variety of approaches to historical writing that scholars applied as each tried to develop a more impregnable argument than the last. Linguistic, geographical, archaeological, antiquarian, and textual methods intersected freely, inviting shifting and overlapping versions of the Gothic narrative that sometimes trace the linguistic legacy of the tribe, sometimes the ethnic legacy, and sometimes bind the two together. All of these narratives were basically concerned with the antiquity of the Goths and their legacy in early modern Europe. The implications of this were different for various regions and rulers, but most wanted to claim for themselves the strength, prestige, and antiquity of the tribe that toppled the Roman Empire, thus enhancing their own often dubious historical legitimacy. [End Page 214]This debate often took a polemical character, particularly in the political sphere, where there were fierce disputes over which region was the true homeland of the tribe, and thus which area (or people or ruling dynasty) could claim the greatest honor from their exploits and claim to be their most direct descendants. But there was also a very clear corollary to this contentious discourse. As scholars from across a wide area produced mountains of evidence pointing to the Gothic origins of their own regions, it became possible to think of Gothic origins not only in terms of difference—which kingdom, dynasty, or geographic region could claim the greatest antiquity and eminence—but also in terms of shared history and common identity across political, geographical, and linguistic boundaries. In general, the polemic was restricted to the origins of the Goths. Many writers seem to have accepted that the Gothic lands cumulatively formed a sort of historical unity that was lost through later political divisions, but which could still be traced through other means. Particularly in the Holy Roman Empire—a largely political boundary encompassing many smaller states ruled by famously fractious princes of different confessions and languages—the more conceptual notion of deep-seated Gothic origins opened the way for a different alignment of identity both within and without the boundaries of the Empire, and especially with Scandinavia, which contributed such rich arguments to the debate.There are several significant problems in a study of the early-modern view of the Goths beyond the historiographical ones outlined above. They were widely associated with other tribes... (shrink)

First published in Switzerland in 1935 and now available for the first time in English translation, _Heritage of Our Times_ is a bold work of cultural criticism by a major twentieth-century German philosopher. Recalling work by Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School, Ernst Bloch's study of everyday life and politics during the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is a brilliant historical analysis of the cultural conditions leading to German fascism. A half-century later, Bloch's prescient meditations on culture and politics still (...) retain their explosive power and are certain to provoke controversy and discussion among cultural critics, philosophers, social theorists, and historians. In their Introduction, the translators contextualize the book within the political and intellectual tendencies of the period and Bloch's other work. (shrink)

The papers in this book have been written over a period of fifteen years and tackle various subjects within psychoanalysis.

translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul KnightThe Principle of Hope is one of the great works of the human spirit. It is a critical history of the utopian vision and a profound exploration of the possible reality of utopia. Even as the world has rejected the doctrine on which Bloch sought to base his utopia, his work still challenges us to think more insightfully about our own visions of a better world.The Principle of Hope is published in three (...) volumes: Volume 1 lays the foundations of the philosophy of process and introduces the idea of the Not-Yet-Conscious - the anticipatory element that Bloch sees as central to human thought. It also contains a remarkable account of the aesthetic interpretations of utopian "wishful images" in fairy tales, popular fiction, travel, theater, dance, and the cinema.Volume 2 presents "the outlines of a better world." It examines the utopian systems that progressive thinkers have developed in the fields of medicine, painting, opera, poetry, and ultimately, philosophy. It is nothing less than an encyclopedic account of utopian thought from the Greeks to the present.Volume 3 offers a prescription for ways in which humans can reach their proper "homeland," where social justice is coupled with an openness to change and to the future. (shrink)

The chief problematic for contemporary systematic metaphysics is to develop categories for understanding the world as having value at the same time that it is explicable by science. Western philosophical thinking, with major exceptions, has tracked science by understanding the world to be factual but not intrinsically valuable. Chinese philosophy in all periods has understood human beings to be embedded within society which in turn is embedded within nature, all of which bear values of appropriate types. Themes in Chinese philosophy (...) contribute to this problematic of systematic metaphysics in important ways, explored in this article. (shrink)

Having distinguished the primary philosophers of religion, those whose philosophies of “Everything” entail something about religion, from those who study only or mainly religion, this article discusses the necessary comparative base for the future of the field. It distinguishes the approach that begins with the subject matter from the approach that sticks with a home tradition to which comparison adds new material, arguing for the former. The religions of West Asia, South Asia, and East Asia are discussed, noting the naturalistic (...) form of the last. The fundamental comparative category for philosophy of religion is the Ultimate, of which I give my own version. This version also requires categories defining determinate things, their togetherness of various sorts, and their essential and conditional components. To be plausible, this theory needs to be associated positively and negatively with the main religious traditions and with our relation to nature and society. Religious lives need to be scaled from the primitive and literalistic all the way to the philosophical. Philosophy of religion or philosophical theology of all sorts is fallible and needs to prepare for the next step. (shrink)

Is it possible for the churches to take a joint stand on human dignity, even though they hold different positions in certain ethical questions? This study paper by the (Roman-Catholic) German Bishops' Conference and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany, which is available in English for the first time, explores new paths in the ecumenical handling of ethical questions. Using the methodology of "differentiated consensus", the authors outline the theological similarities of the churches' teaching of anthropology, whilst still doing (...) justice to their differences in the ethical assessment of individual issues of human conduct. In this way, Catholics and Lutherans adopt a common position and make a theologically responsible contribution to ethical judgement. (shrink)

Using the work of pragmatists Peirce andWhitehead in particular to ground his philosophy of religion, Neville surveys a wide swath of twentieth-century theology ...

In this startling book, Drury overturns the long-standing reputation of Thomas Aquinas as the most moderate and rational exponent of the Christian faith. She reveals Aquinas to be one of the most zealous Dominicans or Hounds of the Lord—an ardent defender of papal supremacy, the Inquisition, and the persecution of Jews. Despite her unstinting criticism, Drury sets out to retrieve the rationalism and naturalism that Aquinas failed to reconcile with his faith.

Written by an experienced author with a strong background in both History and Earth Sciences, this text explores the philosophic implications of the dramatic ...