The dominant unspoken philosophical basis of medical care in the United States is a form of Cartesian reductionism that views the body as a machine and medical professionals as technicians whose job is to repair that machine. The purpose of this paper is to advocate for an alternative philosophy of medicine based on the concept of healing relationships between clinicians and patients. This is accomplished first by exploring the ethical and philosophical work of Pellegrino and Thomasma and then by connecting (...) Martin Buber's philosophical work on the nature of relationships to an empirically derived model of the medical healing relationship. The Healing Relationship Model was developed by the authors through qualitative analysis of interviews of physicians and patients. Clinician-patient healing relationships are a special form of what Buber calls I-Thou relationships, characterized by dialog and mutuality, but a mutuality limited by the inherent asymmetry of the clinician-patient relationship. The Healing Relationship Model identifies three processes necessary for such relationships to develop and be sustained: Valuing, Appreciating Power and Abiding. We explore in detail how these processes, as well as other components of the model resonate with Buber's concepts of I-Thou and I-It relationships. The resulting combined conceptual model illuminates the wholeness underlying the dual roles of clinicians as healers and providers of technical biomedicine. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that health care should be focused on healing, with I-Thou relationships at its core. (shrink)

De-Signing Design: Cartographies of Theory and Practice throws new light on the terrain between theory and practice in transdisciplinary discourses of design and art. The collection brings together a selection of essays on spatiality, difference, cultural aesthetics, and identity in the expanded field of place-making and being.

Pleiotropy, in which one mutation causes multiple phenotypes, has traditionally been seen as a deviation from the conventional observation in which one gene affects one phenotype. Epistasis, or gene–gene interaction, has also been treated as an exception to the Mendelian one gene–one phenotype paradigm. This simplified perspective belies the pervasive complexity of biology and hinders progress toward a deeper understanding of biological systems. We assert that epistasis and pleiotropy are not isolated occurrences, but ubiquitous and inherent properties of biomolecular networks. (...) These phenomena should not be treated as exceptions, but rather as fundamental components of genetic analyses. A systems level understanding of epistasis and pleiotropy is, therefore, critical to furthering our understanding of human genetics and its contribution to common human disease. Finally, graph theory offers an intuitive and powerful set of tools with which to study the network bases of these important genetic phenomena. (shrink)

Coral bleaching has impacted reefs worldwide and the predictions of near‐annual bleaching from over two decades ago have now been realized. While technology currently provides the means to predict large‐scale bleaching, predicting reef‐scale and within‐reef patterns in real‐time for all reef users is limited. In 2020, heat stress across the Great Barrier Reef underpinned the region's third bleaching event in 5 years. Here we review the heterogeneous emergence of bleaching across Heron Island reef habitats and discuss the oceanographic drivers that (...) underpinned variable bleaching emergence. We do so as a case study to highlight how reef end‐user groups who engage with coral reefs in different ways require targeted guidance for how, and when, to alter their use of coral reefs in response to bleaching events. Our case study of coral bleaching emergence demonstrates how within‐reef scale nowcasting of coral bleaching could aid the development of accessible and equitable bleaching response strategies on coral reefs. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/N9Tgb8N-vN0. (shrink)

The main aim of this work was initially a modest one, 'to collect information as to the main facts of Hutcheson's life in Dublin prior to his appointment as Professor at Glasgow'. As the materials grew, however, and Scott's interest in Hutcheson deepened, the planned article expanded into a book that has since become the standard biography. The emphasis throughout is on the development of Hurcheson's thought in the context of an ongoing debate with his contemporaries.

In 1914, Francis E. Leupp, former commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, presented an answer to the so-called Indian Problem that some have called pluralist. This paper examines the development of Leupp’s pluralism as part of the policies and practices of the genocide of American Indians as it was carried out in the years following the US Civil War. Rather than being a singular event in the history of US-Indian relations, I argue that Leupp’s pluralism is part of the (...) settler colonial system that persists and finds present expression in contemporary liberal pluralism. I consider two examples of recent pluralist theory, those of Charles Taylor and William Galston. I conclude by arguing that what both forms of pluralism—Leupp’s and recent liberal varieties—have in common is a conception of agency that rejects the American Indian conception and conserves structural genocide as a central part of present-day society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Opera as ExperienceScott L. Pratt (bio)There is a long history of debate over what opera is. Since its more or less formal beginning in the sixteenth century as a reconstruction of ancient drama, opera as an art form has been controversial. The received understanding—emphasized by the genre's founders and in periodic efforts at reforming the standards of composition and production—is that opera is musical drama. In his book Opera (...) as Drama, Joseph Kerman reasserted this view as an antidote to what he called "flabby relativism" and in order to be able to determine a set of values that could serve as a basis for opera criticism.1 He argues that while opera is "excellently its own art form," it is one where the story serves as the central framework in terms of which the particularities of the words and music are structured.2 Given a story, the librettist and the composer work to express the narrative dramatically, using words and music to convey not only the events of the story but the emotions bound up in the story. For Kerman, in a successful opera the words express the narrative and the music enriches it by providing the emotional aspect. One can then evaluate an opera in light of the drama expressed in the relation of the narrative to the words and music. Disconnection between the words and music undermine the value of the opera, even if the words adequately express the narrative and the music adequately expresses some emotion.Philosopher Bernard Williams, in his collection On Opera, affirms Kerman's general conception of opera and adds to it two important factors. First, while the words and music are essential to the drama presented, operas are also distinct in that they are staged and not concert pieces. In this case, the details of the staging also contribute to the success of a particular opera (though the variation in staging usually falls out of discussions by [End Page 74] Kerman and Williams of particular operas). Second, Williams makes clear what is implicit in Kerman: "It is a fallacy to argue," Williams says, "that since, in a musical drama, music obviously provides the music, so the words must provide the drama."3 The drama is a product of both the words and the music in relation to the narrative whose meaning provides the frame on which these hang. Opera criticism, from this perspective, focuses on the specific ways in which the text of a given opera expresses or fails to express the drama of the story. Here, the words, since they present the story, are taken as primary. Williams quoted Calzabigi, a librettist and reformer associated with Gluck: "The music has no other function than to express what arises from the words, which are therefore neither smothered by notes nor used to lengthen the spectacle unduly, because it is ridiculous to prolong the sentence 'I love you' (for instance) with a hundred notes when nature has restricted it to three."4In contrast to Kerman's view of opera as drama, philosopher Peter Kivy, in his book Osmin's Rage, proposes a view of opera as music. Despite Kivy's claim that this notion serves as a more or less equivalent alternative to Kerman's, in fact it radically reorganizes how one thinks about opera and how one evaluates particular operas. Kivy's alternative is in part the result of a reading of the history of opera as an art form that began, in effect, as the answer to a philosophical problem: the relation of emotions to dramatic texts. The founders of opera, the Florentine Camerata, asked how, given a particular story—Antigone, Oedipus, or Orpheus, for example—does telling the story express the emotions that are central to the meaning of the story? How does telling the story go from "just the facts" to the felt meaning of tragedy? The answer for the Florentine Camerata was found in their understanding of ancient Greek tragedies, where they concluded that the problem was solved by singing the words. By singing, they argued, the Greeks were able to make the emotional content of the words accessible to the audience.5... (shrink)

At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise.

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Do You Mean, Rhetoric Is Epistemic?William D. HarpineIn 1967, Robert L. Scott (1967) advocated that "rhetoric is epistemic." This concept has enriched the work of rhetorical theorists and critics. Scott's essay is founded in a concept of argumentative justification in rhetoric, viewed as an alternative to analytic logic. Other writers, including Brummett (1976), Railsback (1983), and Cherwitz and Hikins (1986), have offered variations on (...) class='Hi'>Scott's theme. The thesis that rhetoric is epistemic has been controversial, however, and from the tone of the debate one may draw two conclusions: many rhetorical theorists feel that Scott was on to something important, and the thesis as it has been developed is flawed. Much of the dispute centers on what the thesis means. These discussions have not yet adequately clarified that issue.The philosopher's most fundamental obligation is to define terms with care. It is in precisely this respect that the rhetoric-is-epistemic theorists have fallen short. Some of the key terms in this literature include rhetoric, knowledge, certainty, and truth. In too many cases, the writers on rhetorical epistemology have not defined their key terms at all. In other cases, their definitions are inadequate or inconsistent. This essay undertakes to sort out the most important definitional problems, which center on the rhetoric-is-epistemic theorists' habit of equivocating about the meanings of "rhetoric" and "certainty." The result makes it possible to endorse the validity of Scott's essentially ethical conclusions, while dismissing a number of unnecessary complexities in the arguments made by rhetoric-as-epistemic theorists. Finally, a few alternatives that might lead to more robust foundations for the rhetoric-as-epistemic thesis are suggested.In 1978, after reviewing four distinct interpretations of the claim that rhetoric is epistemic, Leff concluded that clarification of what that claim means "deserves more disciplined treatment than it has received in the recent literature" (1978, 77). The same could still be said. After some [End Page 335] thirty years of active research and speculation on the topic, one now sees fewer publications specifically advocating that rhetoric is epistemic. The distinguished rhetorical theorist Barry Brummett (1990) has declared the thesis deceased (69-72).All the same, textbook authors treat the thesis as a given, despite their tendency to interpret it in wildly different ways. Foss, for example, puts forward a view that "in the field of communication, the idea that rhetoric creates reality is known as the notion that rhetoric is epistemic, which simply means that rhetoric creates knowledge; epistemology is the study of the origin and nature of knowledge" (1989, 122; emphasis in the original). This version of the thesis, claiming that rhetoric actually "creates reality," might be more ontological than it is epistemic.1 Herrick takes a dialectical view that "through rhetorical interaction, people come to accept some ideas as true and to reject others as false. Thus, rhetoric's epistemic function in society can be seen in some ways to be a result of its benefit of testing ideas." Herrick continues that "once an idea has been tested thoroughly by a group, community, and society, it becomes part of what these groups take to be knowledge." Herrick contrasts this with the rejected view that "knowledge is all objective in nature and comes to us by way of direct experience or education" (1997, 22). Both Herrick and Foss offer interesting theses, and both attribute their views to Scott, but their views are obviously very different. There can be no surer evidence of the failure to use terms precisely.Brummett (1990) attributes the demise of rhetoric-is-epistemic research to the failure of critics to employ the idea in rhetorical criticism. Brummett might be right to the extent that much of the rhetoric-is-epistemic literature is indeed exceptionally abstract. Specific discussions might clarify some issues. Nonetheless, some notable rhetorical critics have indeed employed a concept that rhetoric is epistemic (e.g., Scott and Klumpp 1984; Sullivan 1992). The issues remain unclear. Furthermore, rhetorical criticism per se cannot clarify the meanings of theoretical terms. More likely, one sees less and less published research about the thesis that rhetoric is epistemic precisely because the thesis has not been laid out clearly... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Do You Mean, Rhetoric Is Epistemic?William D. HarpineIn 1967, Robert L. Scott (1967) advocated that "rhetoric is epistemic." This concept has enriched the work of rhetorical theorists and critics. Scott's essay is founded in a concept of argumentative justification in rhetoric, viewed as an alternative to analytic logic. Other writers, including Brummett (1976), Railsback (1983), and Cherwitz and Hikins (1986), have offered variations on (...) class='Hi'>Scott's theme. The thesis that rhetoric is epistemic has been controversial, however, and from the tone of the debate one may draw two conclusions: many rhetorical theorists feel that Scott was on to something important, and the thesis as it has been developed is flawed. Much of the dispute centers on what the thesis means. These discussions have not yet adequately clarified that issue.The philosopher's most fundamental obligation is to define terms with care. It is in precisely this respect that the rhetoric-is-epistemic theorists have fallen short. Some of the key terms in this literature include rhetoric, knowledge, certainty, and truth. In too many cases, the writers on rhetorical epistemology have not defined their key terms at all. In other cases, their definitions are inadequate or inconsistent. This essay undertakes to sort out the most important definitional problems, which center on the rhetoric-is-epistemic theorists' habit of equivocating about the meanings of "rhetoric" and "certainty." The result makes it possible to endorse the validity of Scott's essentially ethical conclusions, while dismissing a number of unnecessary complexities in the arguments made by rhetoric-as-epistemic theorists. Finally, a few alternatives that might lead to more robust foundations for the rhetoric-as-epistemic thesis are suggested.In 1978, after reviewing four distinct interpretations of the claim that rhetoric is epistemic, Leff concluded that clarification of what that claim means "deserves more disciplined treatment than it has received in the recent literature" (1978, 77). The same could still be said. After some [End Page 335] thirty years of active research and speculation on the topic, one now sees fewer publications specifically advocating that rhetoric is epistemic. The distinguished rhetorical theorist Barry Brummett (1990) has declared the thesis deceased (69-72).All the same, textbook authors treat the thesis as a given, despite their tendency to interpret it in wildly different ways. Foss, for example, puts forward a view that "in the field of communication, the idea that rhetoric creates reality is known as the notion that rhetoric is epistemic, which simply means that rhetoric creates knowledge; epistemology is the study of the origin and nature of knowledge" (1989, 122; emphasis in the original). This version of the thesis, claiming that rhetoric actually "creates reality," might be more ontological than it is epistemic.1 Herrick takes a dialectical view that "through rhetorical interaction, people come to accept some ideas as true and to reject others as false. Thus, rhetoric's epistemic function in society can be seen in some ways to be a result of its benefit of testing ideas." Herrick continues that "once an idea has been tested thoroughly by a group, community, and society, it becomes part of what these groups take to be knowledge." Herrick contrasts this with the rejected view that "knowledge is all objective in nature and comes to us by way of direct experience or education" (1997, 22). Both Herrick and Foss offer interesting theses, and both attribute their views to Scott, but their views are obviously very different. There can be no surer evidence of the failure to use terms precisely.Brummett (1990) attributes the demise of rhetoric-is-epistemic research to the failure of critics to employ the idea in rhetorical criticism. Brummett might be right to the extent that much of the rhetoric-is-epistemic literature is indeed exceptionally abstract. Specific discussions might clarify some issues. Nonetheless, some notable rhetorical critics have indeed employed a concept that rhetoric is epistemic (e.g., Scott and Klumpp 1984; Sullivan 1992). The issues remain unclear. Furthermore, rhetorical criticism per se cannot clarify the meanings of theoretical terms. More likely, one sees less and less published research about the thesis that rhetoric is epistemic precisely because the thesis has not been laid out clearly... (shrink)

The rule of law is a necessary condition for any substantive theory of justice. If a theory sacrifices the rule of law, justice, too, is sacrificed. The connection between the necessary condition and justice is explored in the work of John Rawls, H. L. A. Hart, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Albert Camus and William Shakespeare. The conceptions of justice elaborated in each of these political thinker's works share very little more than the rule of law. Since the conceptions examined (...) are so different and the necessary condition is contained in each, I conclude that there is substantial support for the thesis. ;In order to do justice to the texts examined in this dissertation the plain language, the words on the page, must be given priority but cannot be fully determinative of the text's meaning. The immanent structure of the text, the rules of the text which give it shape and form, must also be discerned. There are no particular rules for interpretation in general, yet each text contains within it its own individual rules. The rules of the text are what allow the meanings of the text to play themselves out for different readers. Understanding the history of the text is also important for interpretation. ;Some interpretations of the theories of justice examined here have sought to change the substance of that theory through interpretation. For example, Marx's theory depends upon the law of equal commodity exchange. As shown in chapter three, if an alien supposition of distributive justice is interpreted into Marx's theory so that the surplus value which Marx claims belongs to the capitalist is redistributed, then the proposed transition to communism, which Marx analyzed and supported, will not occur. Doing justice to Marx's texts allows Marx's theory of justice to come through and be judged on its own terms. Only after that has been accomplished can it be evaluated and compared with other theories. The same association between interpretative method and substantive meaning is demonstrated for each theory. The conclusion compares interpretation in law and drama and connects doing justice to texts with justice. (shrink)

Addressing both collegiate and professional sports, the updated edition of Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport explores the ethical presuppositions of competitive athletics and their connection both to ethical theory and to concrete moral dilemmas that arise in actual athletic competition. This fourth edition has been updated with new examples, including a discussion of Spygate by the New England Patriots and recent discoveries on the use of performance enhancing drugs by top athletes. Two additional authors, Cesar R. Torres and Peter (...) F. Hager, bring to this edition a discussion of the moral issues involved in youth sports and the ethics of being a fan, as well as a fresh perspective on the theories of broad internalism and the quest for excellence. Furthermore, major criticisms of broad internalism by philosophers William J. Morgan and Scott Kretchmar add a new dimension to the discussion on the moral foundations of winning. (shrink)

The present collection brings together for the first time Rowe's most significant contributions to the philosophy of religion. This diverse but representative selection of Rowe's writings will provide students, professional scholars as well as general readers with stimulating and accessible discussions on such topics as the philosophical theology of Paul Tillich, the problem of evil, divine freedom, arguments for the existence of God, religious experience, life after death, and religious pluralism.

The conceptual framework of religion is more like the frame of a picture than the frame of a house; and what goes on within the frame is other than conceptual. This is the hypothesis motivating the analysis which follows. Given the hypothesis, the problem is to conceive what religion is - this other-than-conceptual enterprise which tends to attract conceptual frames. A possible answer is available in Wittgensteinian ‘seeing-as’. A number of philosophers of religion have recently exercised this option. The present (...) paper adds to their work by comparing a number of types of religious seeing-as with the instances of visual ambiguity drawn on by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

While central to the Christian religion, the act of faith has been notoriously difficult to define. This essay is an attempt to illuminate, with the aid of insights from cognitive science and process philosophy, what it means for a Christian to have faith, specifically in God. In doing so, the apriori and aposteriori aspects of faith are explored, along with its connections to science and empirical evidence, revelation, knowledge, doubt, morality, and additional Christian beliefs.

Can God Be Free? is a penetrating study of a central problem in philosophy of religion: can it be right to regard God as free, and as praiseworthy for being perfectly good? Allowing that he has perfect knowledge and perfect goodness, if there is a best world for God to create he would have no choice other than to create it. But if God could not do otherwise than create the best world, he created the world of necessity, not freely, (...) and we have no reason to be thankful to God for creating us, since he couldn't do otherwise. William Rowe proposes the need for some substantial revision in contemporary thinking about the nature of God. (shrink)

Background: Locke's Conception of Freedom For how can we think any one freer than to have the power to do what we will. — John Locke n his chapter on power ...

The book falls into four segments. In the first (Chapter 1), the particular conception of deity that has been predominant in western civilization—the theistic idea of God—is explicated and distinguished from several other notions of the divine. The second segment considers the major reasons that have been advanced in support of the belief that the theistic God exists. In chapters 2 through 4 the three major arguments for the existence of God are discussed, arguments which appeal to facts supposedly available (...) to any rational person, whether religious or not. Chapter 5 considers religious and mystical experience as a source and justification for theistic belief. And in Chapter 6 we examine the role that faith may play in the formation and justification of religious belief. We also consider the important issue of whether belief in God may be entirely rational quite apart from any evidence in its behalf. The third segment undertakes an examination of the problem of evil, which some have thought to provide rational grounds for atheism, the belief that the theistic God does not exist. A number of topics quite central to theistic religion are considered in the fourth segment of the book, chapters 8 through 11. These topics include miracles, the question of life after death, problems in relating the idea of divine foreknowledge to the belief in human freedom, and problems arising from the existence of diverse religions. (shrink)

Can God Be Free? is a penetrating study of a central problem in philosophy of religion: can it be right to regard God as free, and as praiseworthy for being perfectly good? Allowing that he has perfect knowledge and perfect goodness, if there is a best world for God to create he would have no choice other than to create it. But if God could not do otherwise than create the best world, he created the world of necessity, not freely, (...) and we have no reason to be thankful to God for creating us, since he couldn't do otherwise. William Rowe proposes the need for some substantial revision in contemporary thinking about the nature of God. (shrink)

Isaac Newton's Scientific Method examines Newton's argument for universal gravity and his application of it to resolve the problem of deciding between geocentric and heliocentric world systems by measuring masses of the sun and planets. William L. Harper suggests that Newton's inferences from phenomena realize an ideal of empirical success that is richer than prediction. Any theory that can achieve this rich sort of empirical success must not only be able to predict the phenomena it purports to explain, but (...) also have those phenomena accurately measure the parameters which explain them. Harper explores the ways in which Newton's method aims to turn theoretical questions into ones which can be answered empirically by measurement from phenomena, and to establish that propositions inferred from phenomena are provisionally accepted as guides to further research. This methodology, guided by its rich ideal of empirical success, supports a conception of scientific progress that does not require construing it as progress toward Laplace's ideal limit of a final theory of everything, and is not threatened by the classic argument against convergent realism. Newton's method endorses the radical theoretical transformation from his theory to Einstein's. Harper argues that it is strikingly realized in the development and application of testing frameworks for relativistic theories of gravity, and very much at work in cosmology today. (shrink)

The relationship between ethics and job satisfaction for MIS professionals is examined empirically. Five dimensions of job satisfaction are examined: (1) satisfaction with pay, (2) satisfaction with promotions, (3) satisfaction with co-workers, (4) satisfaction with supervisors and (5) satisfaction with the work itself. These dimensions of satisfaction are compared to top management's ethical stance, one's overall sense of social responsibility and an ethical optimism scale (i.e., the degree of optimism that one has concerning the positive relationship between ethics and success (...) in his/her company).Results indicate that MIS professionals are more satisfied with the various dimensions of their jobs when top management stresses ethical behavior and when they are optimistic about the relationship between ethics and success within their firms. The one exception to this is pay satisfaction which is unrelated to these constructs. One's sense of social responsibility is also relatively unrelated to job satisfaction. (shrink)

THE AIM OF THE VOLUME IS TO INTRODUCE STUDENTS TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION BY ACQUAINTING THEM WITH THE WRITINGS OF SOME OF THE THINKERS WHO HAVE MADE SUBSTANTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS IN THIS AREA. THIS NEW EDITION EXPANDS THE RANGE OF TOPICS BY INCLUDING AN ENTIRELY NEW CHAPTER ON DEATH AND IMMORTALITY AND A NEW SUBSECTION ON THE MORAL ARGUMENT. THERE IS ALSO SOME NEW MATERIAL ON WITTGENSTEIN AND FIDEISM, RELIGIOUS PLURALISM, AND FAITH AND THE NEED FOR EVIDENCE. ALMOST EVERY CHAPTER (...) HAS BEEN CHANGED BY DELETIONS OR ADDITIONS TO UPDATE THE SELECTIONS AND PROVIDE MORE MATERIAL THAT IS UNDERSTANDABLE TO BEGINNING STUDENTS. (shrink)

Thomas Reid developed an important theory of freedom and moral responsibility resting on the concept of agent-causation, by which he meant the power of a rational agent to cause or not cause a volition resulting in an action. He held that this power is limited in that occasions occur when one's emotions or other forces may preclude its exercise. John Martin Fischer has raised an objection – the not enough ‘Oomph’ objection – against any incompatibilist account of freedom and moral (...) responsibility. In this essay I argue that Fischer's not enough ‘Oomph’ objection fails to provide any reasons for rejecting Reid's incompatibilist, agent-causation account of freedom and moral responsibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mourning and SubjectivityFrom Bersani to Proust, Klein, and FreudL. Scott Lerner (bio)Near the end of his recent essay “Psychoanalysis and the Aesthetic Subject,” Leo Bersani makes an unexpected conceptual turn, briefly adopting a vocabulary of “human destiny” [174]. Jacques Derrida made a similar move in 2003 when he dropped his guard, abandoning the language of critical exposition to point out, with uncharacteristic bluntness (“de façon plus crue” [18]), (...) the relevance of autobiography—his experience as a Jewish boy in Algeria—to the development of deconstruction.1 In both instances, one senses a desire for intellectual self-exposure,2 to discover the relation of real-world experience and intellectual—critical, aesthetic, psychic—practices. For Bersani, not only the phrase but the essay as a whole signals the culmination of a decades-long inquiry into the relation of human subjectivity and a “solidarity of being” both among subjects and with the world [“Psychoanalysis” 161].If there is an affirmation of a universal human condition in Bersani’s work—and his reference to human destiny indicates that there is—then it is perhaps best defined as the inclination of human subjects to seek the annihilation of others as a prerequisite for subjectivity. In this state of affairs, where subjectivity encounters the external realm of human and nonhuman objects, Bersani has long been concerned with two chief protagonists: psychoanalysis and art. He has repeatedly shown, ever by new means, that both can be complicitous with the worst inclinations of human subjectivity, just as both can also uniquely provide the means by which human subjects may exceed their own subjectivity [161]. Psychoanalysis, in Bersani’s view, provides the language and conceptual framework to describe how and why subjects go about appropriating and annihilating objects. Psychoanalysis has been misdirected, however, toward two areas of relatively limited value: depth psychology and object relations [“Psychoanalysis” 161, 163; “Sociality” 647], while the main contribution of psychoanalysis, the discovery of the unconscious, has not been adequately exploited as a means of reconceptualizing subjects in solidarity, rather than antagonism, with objects [“Psychoanalysis” 161–64].By the same token, much of great art, literature especially, has served what Bersani calls the “culture of redemption,” promoting the misconception that experience is damaged or worthless and must be repaired via the work of art [Culture of Redemption 1]. [End Page 41] In psychoanalysis, the counterpart of the culture of redemption is located not, in fact, in the areas that Bersani devalorizes (depth psychology, object relations), but rather with the core exploration of unconscious subjectivity. The literary achievement that is paradigmatic of the culture of redemption is Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), whose theorizing narrator depicts experience, history, the real, as lost to us, damaged, fallen, and in need of repair—redemption—through art.3 The best illustration of the counterpart in psychoanalysis is the work of Melanie Klein. By portraying our relations with others as repetitions of dynamics already played out in unconscious fantasy, Kleinian theory, in Bersani’s view, similarly casts real relations as subordinate to and determined by the (unconscious) imagination. No sooner has Bersani exposed these dominant tendencies in Proust and Klein, however, than he redeems both from the sins of redemptiveness. At the periphery of each writer’s work he uncovers a radically alternative—and, implicitly, ethically superior—representation of the subject in the world. Bersani devoted a seminal essay to these two writers: “The Culture of Redemption: Marcel Proust and Melanie Klein,” reprinted as the first chapter of The Culture of Redemption (1990). In subsequent essays in this volume, he applied this same bifocal approach—consisting in condemnation of a dominant tendency and affirmation of a seemingly marginal one—to Freud, Flaubert, Melville, and others.If The Culture of Redemption thus aimed not only to expose the distortions created by the culture of redemption but also to promote an alternative vision, then the title assigned to the collection told only half the story. Three years later, Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit set out, as it were, to tell the other half. They brought together the work of three artists—a novelist and playwright, a painter, and a filmmaker... (shrink)

This paper uses Popper's treatment of probability and an epistemic constraint on probability assignments to conditionals to extend the Bayesian representation of rational belief so that revision of previously accepted evidence is allowed for. Results of this extension include an epistemic semantics for Lewis' theory of counterfactual conditionals and a representation for one kind of conceptual change.

_God and the Problem of Evil_ brings together influential essays on the question of whether the amount of seemingly pointless malice and suffering in our world counts against the rationality of belief in God, a being who is said to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good.

By taking ‘existence in reality’ to be a great-making property and ‘God’ to be the greatest possible being, Plantinga skillfully presents Anselm’s ontological argument. However, since he proves God’s existence by virtue of a premise, “God (a maximally great being) is a possible being”, that is true only if God actually exists; his argument begs the question of the existence of God.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theology and Trinitarian Theology ed. by William Storrar, Peter Casarella, and Paul Louis Metzger, and: Public Theology for a Global Society: Essays in Honor of Max L. Stackhouse ed. by Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott PaethJonathan RothchildA World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theology and Trinitarian Theology Edited by William Storrar, Peter Casarella, and (...) Paul Louis Metzger Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011. 346 pp. $35.00Public Theology for a Global Society: Essays in Honor of Max L. Stackhouse Edited by Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott Paeth Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. 264 pp. $45.00The intersections of globalization, civil society, and public theological reflection remain fluid, contested, and complicated. Two edited volumes that have shared connections to Princeton’s Center of Theological Inquiry celebrate the contributions of Max Stackhouse (Public Theology for Global Society as a festschrift and A World for All? as a dedication) toward these intersections. Public Theology for a Global Society attends to neo-Calvinist debates about public theology and its applicability to family, finance, and technology, while A World For All? explores religious beliefs and practices in their contexts, the meanings of the Trinity, and the prospects for cultural, political, and religious dialogue within civil society.In Public Theology for a Global Society, the contributors engage Stackhouse’s work in terms of its “global reach and its ecclesial concern” (ix). The essays consider five overarching themes: covenant, natural law, and human rights; social pluralism and social justice; Christian responsibility for society; economic and political realism; and Christian ethics in a global era. One of the book’s strengths is that it ambitiously probes—as Stackhouse’s own work does—the substantive interrelationships of these themes. Harold Breitenberg’s opening essay clarifies the meanings of public theology, but it does not account for recent developments, including comparative interventions that reconstruct modes of public theology.In the second section on key issues in public theology, John Witte speculates on whether Stackhouse would accept sixteenth-century Calvinist thinker Johannes Althusius’s “‘different and ‘even dangerous’” (36) theory of natural law. [End Page 205] Witte’s query, which begs comparisons vis-à-vis Catholic models of public theology frequently neglected in the book, is critically addressed by Don Browning’s essay. Browning’s theology of covenant includes a subordinate theory of natural law because “the concept of covenant cannot stand alone” (49). Other essays include reflections on covenant by Hak Joon Lee (which reconstructs Abraham Kuyper’s theory of sphere sovereignty) and Richard Mouw (which analyzes neo-Calvinist conceptions of law, covenant, and common morality). Similar to Browning’s caution to Stackhouse, Mouw censures a complete rejection of natural law (104); pace Browning’s critique, Mouw applauds Stackhouse’s insistence on the prominence of covenant in neo-Calvinist ethical and social theory. Interrogation of these disagreements by either the editors or the contributors would have strengthened the book.The book’s third section examines public theology in a global context. Differing from Stackhouse, William Schweiker charts the basic anthropological and existential components of a cosmopolitan conscience to overcome the universalist and particularist difficulties within public theology (134–38). Other thinkers appropriate interreligious dialogue as constructive models. Mark Heim contends that, in the face of massive global suffering, interreligious dialogue must promote human flourishing. Scott Paeth similarly sees dialogue as a mechanism for overcoming religiously motivated violence (166). Peter Paris, Shirley Roels, and Deirdre King Hainsworth all point to various features of technology as pathways to new articulations of public theology. In the concluding section, the contributors fittingly focus on the legacy of Stackhouse, namely, his long-standing interests in justification, justice, congregational life, and a “sobered version of Reformed theology vis-à-vis institutional responsibility and the retrieval of its theological substance” (Gabriel Fackre, 247).A World for All?, borne out of a 2005 conference in Edinburgh, approaches globalization within the modern ecumenical movement as illustrated by the affiliations of its three editors: William Storrar (ecumenical Protestant), Peter Casarella (Catholic), and Paul Metzger (Evangelical). The book examines the broader trajectories of globalization in conversation with “examples of churches around the world... playing a vital part... (shrink)