In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TROELTSCH'S TREATMENT OF THE THOMIST SYNTHESIS IN THE SOCIAL TEACHING AS A SIGNAL OF HIS VIEW OF A NEW CULTURAL SYNTHESIS * WENDELL s. DIETRICH Brown University Providence, Rhode Island WITH RESPECT TO the new Western cultural synthesis he envisages in the final phase of his authorship, Ernst Troeltsch counts the medieval Thomist synthesis both as a formal model and a source of content. That is the principal (...) contention of this essay. Or to look at the matter from the perspective of successive phases of Troeltsch's authorship, Troeltsch 's treatment of the Thomist synthesis in The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches 1 provides a signal of his subsequent view of a new cultural synthesis. In arguing that case, I propose to focus first on Troeltsch's exposition of the Thomist synthesis in The Social Teaching, taking into account as well that running commentary which Troeltsch simultaneously presents on the magisterially sponsored repristination of the Thomist synthesis in late nineteenth century neoThomism. That task completed, I will lay out briefly my under- *An earlier version of this paper was contributed as a presentation at the Nineteenth Century Theology Working Group, AAR Annual Meeting, 1991. I would also like to express my gratitude to the participants in my Brown University graduate seminar on Troeltsch's The Social Teaching, 1989-90: Vaughn Allen, David Aune, James Gubbins, Mark Hadley, and Richard Wright. They aided me immeasurably in clarifying my mind. 1 Ernst Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, Gesammelte Schriften Band 1 (Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1965). Hereafter cited as Die Soziallehren. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon, 2 vols. (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931). Hereafter cited as The Social Teaching. 381 382 WENDELL S. DIETRICH standing of Troeltsch's conception of a new contemporary cultural synthesis, especially the version of that conception worked out in Der Historismus und seine Probleme.2 Furnished with this grasp of what Troeltsch means by a new cultural synthesis, I will assay an appraisal of how the treatment of the Thomist synthesis in The Social Teaching is a signal of things to come and an appraisal of the limited but genuine ways in which Troeltsch counts classic Thomism and neo-Thomism as formal model and source of content for his new cultural synthesis. But before the main thesis can be plausibly defended a major objection must be dealt with head on. On the face of it, it is highly improbable that Troeltsch should count the medieval Thomist synthesis as either a formal model or a source of content for a present-day Western cultural synthesis. After all, the medieval cultural synthesis articulated conceptually by Thomas is the culmination and classic statement of the " unitary conception of truth ", a conception Troeltsch repudiates in the name of modern historical consciousness and the awareness of a plurality of truths. On behalf of the Western medieval church, Thomas asserts that Christian truth is unitary, that the magisterium authoritatively teaches it, and that the truths of reason and revelation are one in a hierarchically ordered synthesis. Troeltsch rejects such claims. A comparable issue is at stake in the case of Troeltsch's appraisal of the magisterially sponsored revival of neo-Thomism in the nineteenth century. Troeltsch is very much aware of the disputes between the neo-Thomists and the Roman Catholic Modernists. He is positively attracted to the work of Alfred Loisy as a major representative of the Modernists and registers substantial agreement between Loisy and himself in their common espousal of "the modern historical conception of truth ".8 2 Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme, Gesmnmelte Schriften, Band 3 (Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1961). Hereinafter cited as Der Historismus. 3 For a detailed analysis of Troeltsch's appraisal of the dispute between Loisy and Harnack over the "essence of Christianity", see Wendell S. Dietrich, "Loisy and the Liberal Protestants," Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 14 (1985) : 303-311. TREATMENT (ff THE THOMIST SYNTHESIS 383 I. Troeltsch on the Thomist synthesis But despite rejection of a unitary conception of truth, Troeltsch does count the medieval Thomist synthesis both as a formal model and as a source of content for a contemporary cultural... (shrink)

In his [1], David Berlinski explores, among other things, both what could be called a “sophisticated” and a “basic” analogy between languages and the genetic code. The basic analogy stems from the observation that the relationship between English and “Morse” appears to be formally similar to the relationship between DNA and protein. That is, just as sentences of the English language can be encoded into Morse, sequences of bases within strands of DNA are “transcribed” into polypeptides. To some, this “basic” (...) analogy. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human (...) history. (shrink)

The Rejected Body argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, discussions of bodily life, and criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine. Among the topics it addresses are who should be identified as disabled; whether disability is biomedical, social or both; what causes disability and what could 'cure' it; and whether scientific efforts to eliminate disabling physical conditions are morally justified. (...) class='Hi'>Wendell provides a remarkable look at how cultural attitudes towards the body contribute to the stigma of disability and to widespread unwillingness to accept and provide for the body's inevitable weakness. (shrink)

Simone Weil recognized that there is a problem reconciling the Iove of God/Good with the Iove of neighbor, and she probabIy believed that she never successfully resoIved it. A quotation from her ‘New York Notebook’ sets the probIem niceIy:OnIy God is the good, therefore, onIy He is a worthy object of care, solicitude, anxiety, longing, and efforts of thought. OnIy He is a worthy object of all those movements of the souI which are reIated to some vaIue.From this and other (...) quotes, I construct various arguments showing that one cannot consistently both Iove God and one’s neighbor. The buIk of the paper is taken up with a critical consideration of these arguments. The upshot of this is that there is no pIausibIe way to reject all of these arguments; hence one must tentativeIy conclude that the Iove of God/Good is irreconciIabIe with the Iove of neighbor in Weil’s philosophy. (shrink)

____The Rejected Body__ argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, discussions of bodily life, and criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine. Among the topics it addresses are who should be identified as disabled; whether disability is biomedical, social or both; what causes disability and what could 'cure' it; and whether scientific efforts to eliminate disabling physical conditions are morally justified. (...) class='Hi'>Wendell provides a remarkable look at how cultural attitudes towards the body contribute to the stigma of disability and to widespread unwillingness to accept and provide for the body's inevitable weakness. (shrink)

O’Donohue has identified 37 criticisms of the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (Ethics Code), although many of his criticisms go far beyond what is found written in the APA Ethics Code, to include the process of adjudicating ethics complaints by the American Psychological Association Ethics Committee, and the process by which the Ethics Code was developed. The authors claim that a major shortcoming of O’Donohue’s article is that he adopted an unrealistically expansive role for (...) the Ethics Code that was not clearly linked to furthering the goals of the ethics code revision. (shrink)

The article focuses on the temporal and epistemic economy connected to the transatlantic travels of the categorical triad of ‘race-class-gender’. It looks at conditions and forces that have fuelled the dynamics of the discourse on differences and inequality among women and analyses feminist discourse and its aporias as a particular environment for the travels of theories. Furthermore, it follows the changes the triad of ‘race-class-gender’ undergoes on its transatlantic route from the United States to a German-speaking context and it outlines (...) the theoretical challenges connected to an intersectional perspective that aims to overcome a theoretical stagnation that itself finds symptomatic expression in the ritual citing of ‘race-class-gender’. (shrink)

Comparative pride—that is, pride in how one compares to others in some respect—is often thought to be warranted. In this paper, I argue that this common position is mistaken. The paper begins with an analysis of how things seem when a person feels pride. Pride, I claim, presents some aspect of the self with which one identifies as being worthy. Moreover, in some cases, it presents this aspect of the self as something one is responsible for. I then go on (...) to argue that when the focus of one's pride is comparative, things are never as pride makes them seem. The core problem is that if the performance in which one takes pride is really valuable, the fact that it is superior to the performance of others does nothing to contribute to that value. I conclude with a discussion of why so many are inclined to validate comparative pride and a response to those who claim that comparisons are essential to pride because they must be used to set standards of excellence. (shrink)

We sometimes must choose between options that are neither better than, worse than, nor equally good as one another. An analysis of such cases reveals that how much reason there is to choose any particular option can depend on how good the alternatives are. This suggests the existence of a previously unrecognized class of practical reasons – reasons that arise from how the value of an option compares to the values of the alternatives. Several implications of these comparative value-based reasons (...) are discussed – namely, that one option’s being ‘rationally preferable to’ an alternative is a context-dependent relation; that the precise comparability of two options’ values can come apart from the precise comparability of the reasons for choosing them; and that, even when the values of an agent’s alternatives fail to be precisely comparable, practical reason will always be able to determine that the choice of at least one option is justified. (shrink)

Envy of others' material possessions is a potent motivator of consumerism. This makes it a prudentially and morally hazardous emotional response. After outlining these hazards, I present an analysis of the emotion of envy. Envy, I argue, presents things in the following way: the envier lacks some good that her rival possesses; this difference between them is bad for the envier; this difference reflects poorly on the envier's worth; and this difference is undeserved. I then discuss the conditions under which (...) these presentations can be satisfied by differences in material possessions. My conclusion is that no difference in material possessions can simultaneously be all the ways envy presents it as being. Consequently, economic envy is systematically irrational: it is never a warranted response to the distribution of material wealth. Recognising this bolsters the prudential and moral case for reducing the degree to which we feel it and for resisting the inclinations it gives rise to when we do. (shrink)

We need a feminist theory of disability, both because 16 percent of women are disabled, and because the oppression of disabled people is closely linked to the cultural oppression of the body. Disability is not a biological given; like gender, it is socially constructed from biologically reality. Our culture idealizes the body and demands that we control it. Thus, although most people will be disabled at some time in their lives, the disabled are made "the other," who symbolize failure of (...) control and the threat of pain, limitation, dependency, and death. If disabled people and their knowledge were fully integrated into society, everyone's relation to her/his real body would be liberated. (shrink)

Various causal factors have been offered to explain the motives behind the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacs on 9/11 and at various other times and places throughout the world. Quite often the reasons or purposes are said to include political, economic, religious and ethnic factors. Often historical factors, such as colonialism and neo-colonialism, as well as nationalism, poverty, class divisions and modernization, are included. But some scholars and political figures, quite inconsistently at times, assert that there is no discernable purpose or purposes (...) in these attacks. It is argued, for example, that the sheer magnitude of the death and carnage in the 9/11 attacks suggests no rational purpose in the minds of the perpetrators. The implication is that the Al-Qaeda attacks are allegedly purely irrational. In contrast, I argue that there are flaws and inconsistencies with this No Purpose Theory, and that oil, moreover, shouldn’t be omitted (as it often is) from any plausible broad explanation of the complex mix of causal factors. Needless to say, to suggest that Al-Qaeda had reasons is not to suggest that the reasons were necessarily good or morally justifiable. Then again, among these reasons it is necessary to sort out the goals from the violent tactics so as to discover why, in particular, many Arabs and Muslims sympathize with some of the goals.This whole issue is important because, among other things, if the No Purpose Theory is assumed to be accurate, it would, at least for the problem at hand, eliminate from serious consideration in one fell swoop literally all of the other possible factors (political, religious, economic, etc.). This would be so in spite of the initial reasonableness of the notion that many of these factors have at least some weight or other. But if, contrary to what the No Purpose Theory says, items such as oil are shown to be actually causally important, and are consequently on the table for more extended and open discussion, then there at least would be a better opportunity for more successfully tackling these problems and ameliorating the risk of future terrorist attacks. At least so I will argue. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of NIH guidelines for the care and protection of laboratory animals. It exposes four serious deficiencies in these guidelines: (1) failure to make it dear that the mere pursuit of knowledge does not justify using animals; (2) failure to give any guidance concerning what constitutes human benefit or well-being; (3) failure to countenance trade-offs between human benefit or well-being and animal well-being; (4) failure to clearly specify what constitutes keeping animals in an ‘environment appropriate to (...) the species and its life history.’ It concludes with the suggestion that the construction and revision of these guidelines is too important to be left to the professionals. Keywords: animals, benefit, NIH, research, trade-offs, well-being CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Simone Weil recognized that there is a problem reconciling the Iove of God/Good with the Iove of neighbor, and she probabIy believed that she never successfully resoIved it. A quotation from her ‘New York Notebook’ sets the probIem niceIy:OnIy God is the good, therefore, onIy He is a worthy object of care, solicitude, anxiety, longing, and efforts of thought. OnIy He is a worthy object of all those movements of the souI which are reIated to some vaIue.From this and other (...) quotes, I construct various arguments showing that one cannot consistently both Iove God and one’s neighbor. The buIk of the paper is taken up with a critical consideration of these arguments. The upshot of this is that there is no pIausibIe way to reject all of these arguments; hence one must tentativeIy conclude that the Iove of God/Good is irreconciIabIe with the Iove of neighbor in Weil’s philosophy. (shrink)

Who was responsible for the murder of Sennacherib? This question fascinated Assyriologists for most of the twentieth century, until a new interpretation of an obscure, fragmentary letter convinced many that a disenfranchised elder son of Sennacherib, Urad-Mullissu, had hatched the conspiracy. Since the publication of this text in 1980 by Simo Parpola, near consensus has developed about these events. In this paper I reexamine the issue and revive the theory that Esarhaddon, Sennacherib’s son and successor, may have been behind the (...) assassination, rather than his elder brother. I do not question the coherence of Parpola’s interpretation, but I suggest that the field may place undue confidence in a single broken, decontextualized letter. More importantly, the evidence implicating Esarhaddon is ample. I extend six arguments that point toward Esarhaddon’s guilt, most of which are derived from Esarhaddon’s own account of events in his famous Nineveh A inscription. I do not propose that we can establish Esarhaddon’s guilt conclusively at this remove, but I conclude that the weight of this evidence equals, if not surpasses, that which points to a plot concocted by Urad-Mullissu. (shrink)

By "theory" we mean a special project in literary criticism: the attempt to govern interpretations of particular texts by appealing to an account of interpretation in general. The term is sometimes applied to literary subjects with no direct bearing on the interpretation of individual works, such as narratology, stylistics, and prosody. Despite their generality, however, these subjects seem to us essentially empirical, and our argument against theory will not apply to them.Contemporary theory has taken two forms. Some theorists have sought (...) to ground the reading of literary texts in methods designed to guarantee the objectivity and validity of interpretations. Others, impressed by the inability of such procedures to produce agreement among interpreters, have translated that failure into an alternative mode of theory that denies the possibility of correct interpretation. Our aim here is not to choose between these two alternatives but rather to show that both rest on a single mistake, a mistake that is central to the notion of theory per se. The object of our critique is not a particular way of doing theory but the idea of doing theory at all.Theory attempts to solve—or to celebrate the impossibility of solving—a set of familiar problems: the function of authorial intention, the status of literary language, the role of interpretive assumptions, and so on. We will not attempt to solve these problems, nor will we be concerned with tracing their history or surveying the range of arguments they have stimulated. In our view, the mistake on which all critical theory rests has been to imagine that these problems are real. In fact, we will claim such problems only seem real--and theory itself only seems possible or relevant—when theorists fail to recognize the fundamental inseparability of the elements involved.The clearest example of the tendency to generate theoretical problems by splitting apart terms that are in fact inseparable is the persistent debate over the relation between authorial intention and the meaning texts. Some theorists have claimed that valid interpretations can only be obtained through an appeal to authorial intentions. This assumption is shared by theorists who, denying the possibility of recovering authorial intentions, also deny the possibility of valid interpretations. But once it is seen that the meaning of a text is simply identical to the author's intended meaning, the project of grounding meaning in intention becomes incoherent. Since the project itself is incoherent, it can neither succeed nor fail, hence both theoretical attitudes toward intention are irrelevant. The mistake made by theorists has been to imagine the possibility or desirability of moving from one term to a second term , when actually the two terms are the same. One can neither succeed nor fail in deriving one term from the other, since to have one is already to have them both.In the following two sections we will try to show in detail how theoretical accounts of intention always go wrong. In the fourth section we will undertake a similar analysis of an influential account of the role interpretive assumptions or beliefs play in the practice of literary criticism. The issues of belief and intention are, we think, central to the theoretical enterprise; our discussion of them is thus directed not only against specific theoretical arguments but against theory in general. Our examples are meant to represent the central mechanism of all theoretical arguments, and our treatment of them is meant to indicate that all such arguments will fail and fail in the same way. If we are right, then the whole enterprise of critical theory is misguided and should be abandoned. (shrink)

Does the decision to relax by taking a drive rather than by taking a walk cause harm? In particular, do the additional carbon emissions caused by such a decision make anyone worse off? Recently several philosophers have argued that the answer is no, and on this basis have gone on to claim that act-consequentialism cannot provide a moral reason for individuals to voluntarily reduce their emissions. The reasoning typically consists of two steps. First, the effect of individual emissions on the (...) weather is miniscule: the planet’s meteorological system is so large, and the size of individual emissions so tiny, that whatever impact an individual emission has on the weather must be vanishingly small. Second, vanishingly small impacts aren’t morally relevant because no one could possibly tell the difference between such an impact occurring and it not occurring. In this paper, we show why both steps are mistaken, and hence why act-consequentialism implies that each of us has an individual obligation to do what we can to stop damaging the climate, including by refraining from, or perhaps by purchasing offsets against, our own individual luxury carbon emissions. (shrink)

Wendell T. Bush presents a detailed analysis of Avenarius's philosophy, focusing on the standpoint of pure experience. This work from the 1900s offers a deep dive into philosophical concepts and their implications. Bush's meticulous research and interpretation provide a comprehensive understanding of Avenarius's contributions to philosophy. The book stands as a testament to the profound impact of philosophical thought on human understanding.

RESUMO Neste artigo, argumento que o compromisso de Hume com objetos independentes da mente está baseado em dois tipos de realismo ou sistema de realidades: (a) um realismo ingênuo baseado em uma crença vulgar injustificada que identifica percepções e objetos, e (b) um realismo representacional ou sistema filosófico de dupla existência. Em primeiro lugar, enfatizo que a questão filosófica “Se existem ou não corpos” não pode ser considerada um caso completo de ceticismo não mitigado, porque Hume aceita um ceticismo mitigado (...) compatível com o realismo vulgar e representacional. Além disso, argumento que, enquanto a crença vulgar nos corpos está baseada em um assentimento injustificado, a teoria da dupla-existência está baseada tanto em um assentimento injustificado quanto em um assentimento racionalmente justificado (que corrige o primeiro). Considerando todos esses pontos, concluo que o ceticismo mitigado de Hume permite e exige uma crença ou suposição de existências contínuas e distintas, e que isso deve, na prática, assumir formas vulgares e filosóficas em diferentes momentos. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Hegel’s account of the category of life in the Science of Logic provides ontological grounds for the recognition of living species along with their various ecosystems as the proper objects of ethical regard for environmental ethics. I will begin by enumerating some of the salient problems that have arisen in the more well known theoretical attempts to articulate human duties to nonhuman beings. Then after a brief discussion of Hegel’s methodology and the justification (...) for turning to his ontological account, I will explicate Hegel’s ontology of life with a view toward these problems and issues, presenting my argument as to why that account is relevant to environmental ethics and deriving from it a normative framework that implies a duty to preserve species, habitats, and biological diversity. Finally, I will suggest how the Hegelian account presented here might circumvent the shortcomings of the previously discussed theories while accommodating some of their concerns and provide solutions for some of the problems to which they call attention. (shrink)

According to most contemporary theorists, free riding on the cooperative contributions of others is unfair. At the same time, obligations to contribute to cooperative schemes can compel conformity with conventional practices, and can do so to a degree that poses a real threat to individuality. This paper exposes this tension between fairness and individuality, and proposes a way to resolve it. The resolution depends on an alternative approach to understanding fairness—one that appeals to the relational goods fairness is meant to (...) maintain. In particular, norms of fairness protect against the interactions within a relationship becoming disrespectful. Many instances of free riding are indeed disrespectful and hence unfair. But this is not always so: one can choose to live a lifestyle that fails to return the benefits their community provides without disrespecting one's fellows. It is thus possible to free ride without being unfair, and so duties of fairness need not add to those already formidable forces that threaten to extinguish valuable individuality. (shrink)

Interweaves Hegelian dialectic and the middle voice to develop a holistic account of life and nature, and the ethical orientation of human beings with respect to them.

This paper begins with a description of common grading practices at universities in the U.S., and analyzes the unfairness, injustice, and harm they produce. It then proposes a solution to these problems in the form of an alternative grading system: institutions should adopt a grading system that assesses students’ performance relative to the performance of their peers. That is, institutions should abolish the practice of attempting to assign grades that correspond to an absolute standard of intrinsic merit. Instead, our evaluation (...) should simply communicate how the quality of a student’s work compares to the work submitted by other students in the class. (shrink)

Introduction: image ethics -- Harnessing the visual: from illustration to ekphrasis -- From visible to invisible: Spenser's Aprill and messianic ethics -- Looking for ethics in Spenser's Faerie queene -- "To look, but with another's eyes": translating vision in A midsummer night's dream -- The ethics of temporality in Measure for measure -- "Ocular proof" and the dangers of the perceptual faith -- "Disliken the truth of your own seeming": visual and ethical truth in The winter's tale.

"In this clearly written and accessible book, (Wendell) Harris sets out to expose the inadequacies of current methods and trends in literary criticism.... The book's greatest strength is its lucid presentation of critical works, which are then shown to be compromised by fallacies and flaws".-- CHOICE.

This article develops and defends an account of prudential value that is inspired by ideas found in Thoreau’s Walden. The core claim is that prudential value consists in responding appropriately to those things that make the world better, and avoiding those things that make it worse. The core argument is that this is our aim in so far as we are evaluative creatures, and that our evaluative nature is essential to us in the context of inquiring into our good. I (...) also illustrate how the account can be developed to inform an intuitively plausible theory of well-being, and conclude by discussing its virtues relative to some contemporary alternatives. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in general, comprehensive models of human cognition. Such models aim to explain higher-order cognitive faculties, such as deliberation and planning. Given a computational representation, the validity of these models can be tested in computer simulations such as software agents or embodied robots. The push to implement computational models of this kind has created the field of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Moral decision making is arguably one of the most challenging tasks for computational (...) approaches to higher-order cognition. The need for increasingly autonomous artificial agents to factor moral considerations into their choices and actions has given rise to another new field of inquiry variously known as Machine Morality, Machine Ethics, Roboethics, or Friendly AI. In this study, we discuss how LIDA, an AGI model of human cognition, can be adapted to model both affective and rational features of moral decision making. Using the LIDA model, we will demonstrate how moral decisions can be made in many domains using the same mechanisms that enable general decision making. Comprehensive models of human cognition typically aim for compatibility with recent research in the cognitive and neural sciences. Global workspace theory, proposed by the neuropsychologist Bernard Baars (1988), is a highly regarded model of human cognition that is currently being computationally instantiated in several software implementations. LIDA (Franklin, Baars, Ramamurthy, & Ventura, 2005) is one such computational implementation. LIDA is both a set of computational tools and an underlying model of human cognition, which provides mechanisms that are capable of explaining how an agent’s selection of its next action arises from bottom-up collection of sensory data and top-down processes for making sense of its current situation. We will describe how the LIDA model helps integrate emotions into the human decision-making process, and we will elucidate a process whereby an agent can work through an ethical problem to reach a solution that takes account of ethically relevant factors. (shrink)