How do rational minds make contact with the world? The empiricist tradition sees a gap between mind and world, and takes sensory experience, fallible as it is, to provide our only bridge across that gap. In its crudest form, for example, the traditional idea is that our minds consult an inner realm of sensory experience, which provides us with evidence about the nature of external reality. Notoriously, however, it turns out to be far from clear that there is any viable (...) conception of experience which allows it to do the job. The original problem is to show that thought is rationally constrained by external reality. If sensory experience is to provide the solution--in particular, if it is to provide the answer to sceptical challenges--it must therefore meet two criteria. First, it must itself be `receptive'--i.e., appropriately constrained by external reality. Second, it must be the kind of thing that can enter into a logical or rational relationship with belief--it must already be `conceptual,' in other words. In arguing against the idea that anything could serve both roles, Wilfred Sellars termed this conception of experience "the Myth of the Given.". (shrink)

“What is the nature of the beings that we are?” is perhaps the most difficult question. The difficulty lies in our being a natural animal in a normative environment. In harmony with John McDowell’s conception of a naturalism of second nature, this paper claims that we should not rest satisfied with the predominant scientific picture in which the seeming rift between our animality and our rationality is to be resolved by detailed studies of empirically knowable facts about (...) our animal modes of existence. Instead, appreciating the sui generis character of a distinctive mode of human engagement with the world is a necessary clearing of the ground and an essential first step toward addressing meticulously the above difficult question on human nature. The paper suggests that the human sciences in general and education studies in particular should start off not with disclosed first-natural facts but with a sensitivity to second-natural backgrounds that set the stage for the first-natural facts. (shrink)

J.L. Mackie insists that ordinary evaluative thought presents itself as a matter of sensitivity to aspects of the world. And this phenomenological thesis seems correct. When one or another variety of philosophical non-cognitivism claims to capture the truth about what the experience of value is like, or (in a familiar surrogate for phenomenology) about what we mean by our evaluative language, the claim is never based on careful attention to the lived character of evaluative thought or discourse. The idea is, (...) rather, that the very concept of the cognitive or factual rules out the possibility of an undiluted representation of how things are, enjoying, nevertheless, the internal relation to 'attitudes' or the will that would be needed to count as evaluative. On this view the phenomenology of value would involve a mere incoherence, if it were as Mackie says--a possibility that then tends (naturally enough) not to be so much as entertained. But, as Mackie sees, there is no satisfactory justification for supposing that the factual is, by definition, attitudinatively and motivationally neutral. This clears away the only obstacle to accepting his phenomenological claim; and the upshot is that non-cognitivism must offer to correct the phenomenology of value, rather than give an account of it. -/- In Machie's view the correction is called for. In this paper I want to suggest that he attributes an unmerited plausibility to this thesis, by giving a false picture of what one is committed to if one resists it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment by Frederick C. BeiserJohn W. YoltonFrederick C. Beiser. The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xi + 332. Cloth, $39.50.Beiser characterizes the methodology of his study as historical and philosophical: historical in placing texts in their own context and in uncovering the intentions (...) of their authors; philosophical in reconstructing and appraising arguments (ix). Both methods are necessary for good historical work. The second is often practiced without the first, to the detriment of philosophy and its history. “A philosopher who reconstructs arguments without the aid of history indulges in mere guesswork and anachronism, measuring the standards of philosophical relevance and importance by the concerns of his own age” (x). Equally, understanding the arguments and ideas of, e.g., seventeenth-century writers, “also involves testing their truth: seeing how they cohere with one another, what their consequences are, whether they follow from the evidence adduced for them, and if they reply to the objections made against them” (x). This splendid study of the role of reason in seventeenth-century religion, science, and philosophy is a fine example of careful textual-historical scholarship with rigorous philosophical analysis.The goal of his study is to tell “the story of how rationalism, in the very specific sense of the sovereignty of reason, arose in seventeenth-century England” (5). Starting with an introduction which discusses such topics as “The Paradox of the English Enlightenment,” “Rationalism in the English Church,” “The Enlightenment and the New Sciences,” Beiser proceeds to detailed presentations and discussions of “The Protestant Challenge” (Chap. 1); Richard Hookers’s defense of reason (Chap. 2); the views of the Great Tew Circle, e.g., Falkland, Chillingworth, Hammond, Hales (Chap. 3); the Cambridge Platonists (Chap. 4); the nature of Enthusiasm (Chap. 5); John Toland and Deism (Chap. 6); and ethical rationalism (Chap. 7).Many of the topics covered have been the subjects of other books and articles. What marks Beiser’s account is the freshness of his approach, the many new insights and suggestions about the tensions between the holders of traditional doctrines and newer challenges. Beiser’s writing is clear, and the issues are carefully presented and analyzed. One of the central themes is the mistake of equating “rationalism with the critique or rejection of religion” (15), of identifying enlightenment with secularization (14). The appeals to reason often emerge from within orthodox religion, whose defenders were trying to cope with their own internal tensions. “Once we consider the Cambridge Platonists’ early reaction to predestination, it becomes clear that it was not Hobbes but Calvin who first posed the danger of atheism for them. For it was Calvin’s theology, and not Hobbes’s materialism, that inspired the fear of God that [End Page 138] they regarded as the source of atheism. In the eyes of the Cambridge Platonists, Hobbes’s materialism was only a false remedy for that fear...” (147). A similar point is made later: “the foundations of a rational theology” in Whichcote “did not arise from any need to combat a creeping Hobbesianism. Rather, it grew up from the inner struggles and torments of the Protestant soul” (165).Equally significant is Beiser’s analysis of enthusiasm, the appeals to divine inspiration rather than to reason or evidence: “We should be aware of accepting the contemporary caricature of the enthusiasts, which portrayed them as zealous and ignorant anti–intellectuals with no cogent or coherent philosophical position of their own” (187). His analysis of the enthusiasts stresses the epistemological nature of their position, rather than the usual theological, ethical, or political dimensions (193). He insists that “enthusiasm is essentially a philosophical concept. Historically, it arose as a response to the problem of the sources and criteria of religious knowledge” (187). The search for criteria is a pervasive feature of Beiser’s study: Luther’s and Calvin’s efforts to draw the boundary between faith and reason (24); Richard Hooker’s failure to “provide an epistemological foundation for his theory of natural law” (67); the need for a criterion to distinguish genuine from false revelation... (shrink)

Michael Bonnett has long attempted to rehabilitate the concept of nature, thereby challenging us to reconsider its profound implications for diverse educational issues. Castigating both ‘postmodern’ and ‘scientistic’ accounts of nature for failing to appreciate that nature is at once transcendent and normative, Bonnett proposes his phenomenology-inspired view of nature as the ‘self-arising’, which is bound up with the notion of ‘our experience of nature’. Despite its enormous strengths, however, Bonnett’s argument might obscure the ways in which the real (...) issue involved in nature is addressed: the issue of our nature, which enables our experience of nature in the first place. In this paper, after reviewing Bonnett’s view of nature and considering his criticism of Richard Rorty’s assault on the reality of nature, I will try to show how the Aristotelian notion of second nature that John McDowell has reanimated can supplement Bonnett’s project and render plausible the idea that the naturalness of our sensibility is unique to human beings; through this approach, the issue of human nature can be located in discussions of nature at large and, connectedly, brought again within the scope of the philosophical study of education in the present-day intellectual climate that increasingly marginalises non-scientific, intellectual endeavours. I will also briefly reflect on the relevance of the notion of second nature to Stephen Boulter’s recently proposed idea of ‘education from a biological point of view’. (shrink)

The central thesis of this article is that the notion of second nature that John McDowell has reanimated has something of ethical and educational importance, thereby possibly extending the borders of the philosophy of education. The argument to this conclusion is the subject of serious consideration and criticism. The aim of this article is therefore to clarify the educational implications of the conception of second nature by responding to the three likely objections: (1) the charge (...) of idealism, (2) the charge of anthropocentrism, and (3) the charge of triviality. Through critical discussions of these criticisms, it is made explicit that second nature, from the outset, illuminates every sphere of the lives of human beings. A lively appreciation of this leads to the conclusion that the issue of how we develop our world of meaning with the conception of second nature should come under the scope of serious philosophical discourse on education. (shrink)

Enquiries into the meanings of words and the nature of things are first distinguished, and two different senses of ‘concept’ identified: a first sense in which ‘concept’ is attached to empirical facts, and a second sense in which a concept marks a purely logical space. The concept of education, in the second sense, is seen to be inevitable for human beings, and already carries certain values with it.

In philosophy, it is almost a platitude to argue that fact and value intertwine. However, in empirically oriented educational research, it is not. Hence, there is some affinity between logical positivism, which is no longer tenable in philosophy, and empirically based contemporary educational research in terms of assumptions each makes about “the given.” In this essay, Koichiro Misawa casts light on how fact and value intertwine by invoking the notion of “second nature” that John McDowell has (...) reanimated. This will in turn prompt us to see the relation between nature and nurture, as well as between mind and world, quite differently and to discern two senses of “the given”: one is illusory; the other educational. Misawa concludes that the philosophy of education should and can take the lead in forming rigorous interdisciplinary studies of the human future with a certain sensitivity to the tight and complex interweaving between the empirical and the conceptual, or between the factual and the normative. (shrink)

The concept of second nature has a long and complex history, having been widely employed by several philosophers and even scientists. In recent times, the most famous thinker who has employed the concept of second nature, and has actually grounded his philosophical program precisely on this notion, is probably John McDowell. However, it is also possible to find some occurrences of the concept of second nature, “zweite Natur”, in Nietzsche’s writings, both published and unpublished. In this (...) contribution I will develop a discussion of this important topic, the nature of the human being, in Nietzsche and McDowell, and attempt to establish a comparison between them on the basis of this concept. It is the guiding idea of this article that McDowell’s “Naturalism of Second Nature”, though representing one of the most original and indeed ambitious philosophical programs today, actually suffers from some problems in defining the peculiar nature of the human being, and that referring to some of Nietzsche’s ideas on this topic may be of help in order to broaden and strengthen McDowell’s own philosophical perspective. There is almost no reference to Nietzsche in McDowell’s several philosophical works, notwithstanding his great interest in, and his careful attention to, other authors belonging to the tradition of modern German philosophy, and nobody has inquired yet into the potential Nietzsche/McDowell relationship. The paper will trace the development of certain philosophical-anthropological insights from 19th- and 20th-century German thought up to the present age, and provide an original and relevant contribution both to the specific field of Nietzsche studies and to the more general domain of inquiries into contemporary philosophical problems. Comparing the ideas of Nietzsche/ McDowell on the question concerning the nature of the human being relationship is intriguing from a philosophical point of view and may lead to a better understanding of this subject and disclose new perspectives in this field. There is a lot of philosophical insight to be gained in comparing these two figures. (shrink)

Enquiries into the meanings of words and the nature of things are first distinguished, and two different senses of ‘concept’ identified: a first sense in which ‘concept’ is attached to empirical facts, and a second sense in which a concept marks a purely logical space. The concept of education, in the second sense, is seen to be inevitable for human beings, and already carries certain values with it.

This paper advances a continuing line of research investigating the potential of web-based educative curriculum materials (ECMs) to facilitate teachers’ development of professional teaching knowledge (PTK). Our ECMs consisted of online lesson plans scaffolded with embedded digital resources to promote teacher understanding of a particular wise-practice pedagogy: problem-based historical inquiry (PBHI). Our research question was: Can a 2nd generation of web-based ECMs encourage social studies teachers’ development of PTK for PBHI? Participants reacted positively to several educative scaffolds, especially videocases (...) of experts modeling historical thinking. Evidence suggested that multiple experiences with planning and implementing instruction with our ECMs helped teachers recognize value in some of the materials’ underpinning concepts (e.g., scaffolding and inquiry-based instruction). However, planning instruction individually, the novelty of planning resources enhanced with digital resources, and certain contextual features of schooling such as inadequate focused time for planning seemed to frustrate the ECMs potential to promote teacher-learning. Here we suggest that ECMs function less effectively as stand-alone supports; however, employed in more formal contexts that feature collaboration, they may be able to provide valuable support for teachers’ professional development. (shrink)

1. Presumably the point of, say, inculcating a moral outlook lies in a concern with how people live. It may seem that the very idea of a moral outlook makes room for, and requires, the existence of moral theory, conceived as a discipline which seeks to formulate acceptable principles of conduct. It is then natural to think of ethics as a branch of philosophy related to moral theory, so conceived, rather as the philosophy of science is related to science. On (...) this view, the primary topic of ethics is the concept of right conduct, and the nature and justification of principles of behaviour. If there is a place for an interest in the concept of virtue, it is a secondary place. Virtue is a disposition to behave rightly; the nature of virtue is explained, as it were, from the outside in. (shrink)

This is the 2011 Aquinas Lecture delivered by John McDowell on February 27, 2011 at Marquette University. A central theme in much of Professor McDowell's work is the harmful effect, in modern philosophy and in the modern reception of pre-modern philosophy, of a conception of nature that reflects an understanding, in itself perfectly correct, of the proper goals of the natural sciences. He has argued that we can free ourselves from the characteristic sorts of philosophical anxiety by recalling the (...) possibility of a less restrictive conception of what it takes for something to be natural. (shrink)

Originally published in 1966, this volume reappraises the educational philosophy of Comenius. Until recently the attention given to Comenius and his work concentrated on a narrow interpretation of his pedagogy which played down his pansophic theory. In the second half of the nineteenth century Germany led the way in pedagogical study and Comenius was widely accepted as having laid the foundations of a science of education. The emergence of education as an academic subject in England and the USA (...) led to a considerable interest in the history of educational ideas and Comenius’ work. (shrink)

David Bakhurst's 2011 book ‘The Formation of Reason’ explores the philosophy of John McDowell in general and the Aristotelian notion of second nature more specifically, topics to which philosophers of education have not yet given adequate attention. The book's widespread appeal led to the symposium ‘Second Nature, Bildung and McDowell: David Bakhurst's The Formation of Reason’, which appeared in the first issue of the 50th anniversary volume of the Journal of Philosophy of Education in 2016. Despite its (...) obvious educational relevance, whether and how Bakhurst's McDowellian line of philosophical argument shapes the domain of educational enquiry or discourse remains up for debate. The rich contributions of Sebastian Rödl, Paul Standish and Jan Derry help us confront this issue. Proceeding with an analysis that is partly explanatory and partly critical of the central aspects of their respective views, I try to show that the basic attraction of the McDowellian/Bakhurstian line of argument concerning educational thinking is that it enables us to address education in the proper context of the natural and the social. In other words, their depiction of a human being as a natural animal in a normative world allows us not to be perturbed either by the natural-scientific conception of the natural or by the social constructivist thinking of the social, both of which have occasionally distorted how education is addressed and therefore impoverished our understanding of education itself. I conclude with a brief word on the significance of continuing and advancing the conversation initiated by the symposium by noting two viable examples of future work. (shrink)

I suggest that intentions for the future become intentions in action when the time for acting comes. The image of intentions as a kind of continuant helpfully accommodates progress in an action; a persisting intention in action changes its shape in respect of how much of what is intended lies behind it and how much is still in prospect. Specific motor intentions in the course of, for instance, crossing a street are shapes successively taken by a persisting intention in action. (...) I argue against the idea that an intention in action relates de re to the action it is in. Finally, adapting Brian O’Shaughnessy’s dual aspect conception of the will, I propose that when one intentionally engages in bodily action, the action’s intentional character is an aspect of something that is also bodily through and through. The result stands in contrast with familiar philosophical pictures of the relation between mind and body. (shrink)

This paper is the second of a multi-part examination of the creation of the Babylonian mathematical lunar theories known as Systems A and B. Part I (Britton 2007) addressed the development of the empirical elements needed to separate the effects of lunar and solar anomaly on the intervals between syzygies. This was accomplished in the construction of the System A lunar theory by an unknown author, almost certainly in the city of Babylon and probably early in the 4th century (...) B.C. The present paper focuses mainly on System A and the likely process of its construction. The first three sections are largely descriptive – first of the basic concepts which underlie the theory; then of the component schemes comprising the theory; and finally of two distinctive texts which suggest how the theory was constructed. The crux of the paper is Sect. 4, which describes how the theory seems likely to have been constructed. Here the crucial insight in separating the effects of lunar and solar anomaly appears to have been recognizing that – of all the measurable intervals bounded by eclipses – only 235 months exhibits a variation due solely to lunar anomaly, and that by means of an elegant mathematical model the amplitudes of 223 and 12 months could be deduced from its amplitude. The rest of the section describes the likely details of the derivation of the Φ ~ Λ scheme, and the extension of the methodology to the other components of the theory. It concludes with a demonstration that Φ and its dependent schemes were anchored through the Φ ~ W scheme to the syzygy on –403 Aug 18 (GN 7391) which concluded the shortest 6-month interval in the first 24 saros cycles since –746 (and in fact in the 900 years separating Nabonassar and Ptolemy). The next three sections address a number of largely technical details and amplifications of the theory, beginning with the schemes describing the variation of lunar velocity (column F) in Sect. 5. Section 6 addresses issues concerning the interpretation of Φ and the so-call Saros Text (BM 36705), while Sect. 7 discusses System B’s corresponding treatment of the effects of lunar anomaly, illustrating both its derivative nature and mathematically less rigorous structure. Section 8 examines the accuracy of the two theories, showing that the System A theory was both remarkably accurate and superior to System B. The final section offers some brief remarks on the power and elegance of the mathematical treatment of the problem by the author of System A. (shrink)

In 1947 America’s premier philosopher, educator, and public intellectual John Dewey purportedly lost his last manuscript on modern philosophy in the back of a taxicab. Now, sixty-five years later, Dewey’s fresh and unpretentious take on the history and theory of knowledge is finally available. Editor Phillip Deen has taken on the task of editing Dewey’s unfinished work, carefully compiling the fragments and multiple drafts of each chapter that he discovered in the folders of the Dewey Papers at the Special (...) Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He has used Dewey’s last known outline for the manuscript, aiming to create a finished product that faithfully represents Dewey’s original intent. An introduction and editor’s notes by Deen and a foreword by Larry A. Hickman, director of the Center for Dewey Studies, frame this previously lost work. In Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, Dewey argues that modern philosophy is anything but; instead, it retains the baggage of outdated and misguided philosophical traditions and dualisms carried forward from Greek and medieval traditions. Drawing on cultural anthropology, Dewey moves past the philosophical themes of the past, instead proposing a functional model of humanity as emotional, inquiring, purposive organisms embedded in a natural and cultural environment. Dewey begins by tracing the problematic history of philosophy, demonstrating how, from the time of the Greeks to the Empiricists and Rationalists, the subject has been mired in the search for immutable absolutes outside human experience and has relied on dualisms between mind and body, theory and practice, and the material and the ideal, ultimately dividing humanity from nature. The result, he posits, is the epistemological problem of how it is possible to have knowledge at all. In the second half of the volume, Dewey roots philosophy in the conflicting beliefs and cultural tensions of the human condition, maintaining that these issues are much more pertinent to philosophy and knowledge than the sharp dichotomies of the past and abstract questions of the body and mind. Ultimately, Dewey argues that the mind is not separate from the world, criticizes the denigration of practice in the name of theory, addresses the dualism between matter and ideals, and questions why the human and the natural were ever separated in philosophy. The result is a deeper understanding of the relationship among the scientific, the moral, and the aesthetic. More than just historically significant in its rediscovery, Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy provides an intriguing critique of the history of modern thought and a positive account of John Dewey’s naturalized theory of knowing. This volume marks a significant contribution to the history of American thought and finally resolves one of the mysteries of pragmatic philosophy. (shrink)

In my Mind and World I appeal to second nature, which, according to Hans-Peter Kr ger, plays a central role in Plessner's philosophical anthropology. But I think this convergence is less significant than Kr ger suggests.This note differentaties my purpose-to disarm the temptation to think perceptual experience, natural as it is, could not figure in what Sellars called “the space of reasons”-from Plessner's, which is to disarm the temptation to hope for an ahistorical insight into what is properly authoritative (...) over the shape of our lives. (shrink)

Can we make sense of the dogma of Parmenides' poem, that only being is? The prospect that Parmenides presents a perplexity, rather than a solution, forms the central hypothesis of this dissertation. Plato's Socrates seems to have understood this, and we, too, may fear our failure to fathom Parmenides' words and understand his meaning. Every attempt to penetrate Parmenides' thinking becomes unwittingly entangled in an impossible dilemma of trying to account for itself within the austere singularity of being, in seeming (...) defiance of the goddess' injunction against saying or thinking what is not. Thinking requires non-being to individuate or recognize itself, but even the minimal duality needed to acknowledge oneself is most emphatically denied. Parmenides' dogma, however, no less than his reasoning, has proven always attractive, despite its clear implication that everything we do is illusion. The goddess' distinction between Aletheia and Doxa, and her arguments, exacerbate this problem, although these two parts are commonly seen as the kernel of Parmenides' thought. Parmenides' proem grounds this fundamental split in a third and allows us to glimpse the poem's more aporetic structure. Parmenides' thinking is first approached through what his poem says and implies about itself. Its impossibility in light of its own argument points toward self-awareness and a discovery of the ineradicable duality of thinking. A second approach begins with the poem's ancient title, Peri Phuseos, and examines several pre-Parmenidean uses of the word phusis that show enigmatic implications from its first appearance. Scholars suggesting a prototypical concept of nature in early uses of phusis seem to gild the lily. Plato appears as a third locus for inquiry about Parmenides' thinking, and the intersection of Socrates and Parmenides is traced across the dialogues. The structure of Parmenides' poem appears knowingly imitated by Plato frequently, which bears significantly on his representations of Socrates' life and philosophic education. Socrates' caution about whether he understood Parmenides parallels a caution expressed as his "second sailing." Socrates' turn to speeches shows his concern with discovering intention, which perhaps animates his fear of awesome Parmenides but also suggests him to be Socrates' inchoate precursor concerning soul. (shrink)

CONCLUSIONThis brief survey of the assessment of the Resurrection of Jesus in contemporary Catholic Christology indicates the presence of widely varying views on the nature of the Resurrection, on the manner of its revelation, and on the role attributed to it in the overall structure of theology. While it is improbable that a unified consensus will be achieved in the near future, if ever, a few concluding remarks may serve to direct attention to some central issues which underlie the variations.First, (...) more explicit attention could profitably be directed to the correlation of the understanding of the nature of the Resurrection with the theological function attributed to it. It is not at all certain that all opinions on the nature of the Resurrection are compatible with all of its theoretically possible theological functions. Is it, for example, consistent to understand the Resurrection as inseparable from Jesus' death, while assessing the Crucifixion in negative terms and attributing to the Resurrection the function of legitimating the claims of the historical Jesus ? Authors such as Kiing and Kasper seem to have drawn eclectically on disparate sources without having adverted sufficiently to the problems involved in a synthesis of different conceptions. Thus their positions on the function of the Resurrection in Christology are reminiscent of Wolfhart Pannenberg, 74 while their descriptions of the connection of death and resurrection draw heavily and explicitly on Karl Rahner. It would seem, however, that Rahner's conception of the nature of the Resurrection is incompatible with Pannenberg's christological argumentation. 75 At the very least, more expb'cit discussion of this issue would help to dispel the appearance of inconsistencies in the viewpoints of some authors.Secondly, it would seem that the central disputed issue with regard to the theological function of the Resurrection is the question of the sufficiency of the historical Jesus as basis and criterion of Christology. This question is also central to current Protestant Christology, as the opposing views of Pannenberg and Gerhard Ebeling76 clearly indicate. Its discussion is unfortunately often impeded by the use of identical terminology for different referents: some who assert the sufficiency of the historical Jesus and most of those who deny it are inclined to abstract from Jesus' death when they refer to the historical Jesus, while others not only include the Crucifixion but even attribute to it a very prominent position in their understanding of Jesus' life. Now the question of the sufficiency of the historical Jesus in abstraction from his death is quite different from that of his sufficiency when his death is included. The charge that theologies which assert that the historical Jesus is sufficient basis and criterion of Christology are inevitably reductionist is quite telling when raised against those whose conception of the historical Jesus abstracts from his crucifixion, but it is not necessarily valid when directed against those who do not do this. An uncritical presumption of Pannenberg's problematic distinction between Jesus' actions and his double fate of crucifixion and resurrection 77 may be at the root of many problems here. In view of the fact that Jesus' death was the consequence of his public activity, assessment of his public life in abstraction from that death is scarcely possible. The views which assert the sufficiency of the historical Jesus while incorporating the Crucifixion into their understanding of the historical Jesus require and deserve more careful examination. They possess the major advantage that in such approaches Christology's basis and criterion is accessible historically, while other proposed criteria, such as Küng's ‘biblical Christ’ or Kasper's ‘earthly Jesus and the risen and exalted Christ’ presuppose the resolution of what Rahner rightly considers the first and most basic christological question, the legitimacy of the step from the historical Jesus to the christological kerygma of the early Church .This leads immediately to a final remark: The key to discussion of the Resurrection is the theological interpretation of Jesus' death. Although critical assessment of the theory of satisfaction and of the category of sacrifice pertain to this question, 78 the matter is far more complex than these aspects alone. Further systematic study, which could profitably draw on the renewed exegetical examination of the various interpretations to be found in the New Testament, 79 is urgently needed. Avoidance of isolation of Jesus' death from his public life is one major precondition for the development of a valid interpretation of it. 80 While neither a survey of existing opinions nor a constructive proposal can be offered here, it might be suggested, without advocating false glorification of the Crucifixion, 81 that a theology which evaluates Jesus' death in exclusively negative terms will ultimately prove unable to provide a well‐grounded positive christological assessment of his life. (shrink)

Preface The status of sovereignty as a highly ambiguous concept is well established. Pointing out or deploring, the ambiguity of the idea has itself become a recurring motif in the literature on sovereignty. As the legal theorist and international lawyer Alf Ross put it, “there is hardly any domain in which the obscurity and confusion is as great as here.” 1 The concept of sovereignty is often seen as a downright obstacle to fruitful conceptual analysis, carried over from its proper (...) setting in history to “plague and befog contemporary thought.” 2 . . . So contested is the concept that, rather than pursuing the contestation, many political theorists think we should give up so protean a notion. Granting that the debate on the relevance of sovereignty frustratingly oscillates between claims that it will either continue to exist or that it is about to disappear, forgetting it altogether, and thereby escaping this seemingly endless argument, can easily appear as the most urgent task for political theory . The following argument makes a case that the “urgent task” is not the abandonment of the concept of sovereignty, but an understanding of its essential philosophical nature as an integrated and evolving expression of practical reason. Sovereignty is neither ambiguous nor obscure once its fundamental presuppositions are laid bare and its many philosophical and historical manifestations shown to be the product, in actuality, of a single, dialectally dynamic but integrated set of metaphysical elements. This is the first of three arguments describing the evolution of international law as a manifestation of practical reason through an application of philosophical method to the source , locus , and scope of the concept of sovereignty. It moves from a dialectic balance favoring utility to a balance dominated by legal right to a dialectic of duty to humanity and nature. All three arguments are meant to be a contribution to the new field of International Legal Philosophy as defined by Phillip Allott. 4 This field combines a sensitivity to legal practice with an effort to understand the underlying philosophical determinants of empirical choice and behavior. One purpose of international legal philosophy is to “remove” from the minds of those who study the law what Diderot defined as “the sophism of the ephemeral,” and what Allott calls “the disempowering idea that what xii Preface happens to exist now is inevitable and permanent.” 5 A core imperative is to “reunderstand what it is to be a thinking being” 6 and to rediscover the dialectic between the private and the public as it determines, and is redetermined by, legal practice. This requires a “revolution in the human mind” 7 so that we may transcend the current dependence on positivist methods and empirical fact as an end-in-itself, and try to understand the underlying and more constant and essential ideas and inherent dialectics that constitute the substructure or “metaphysics” of international law. I will approach this “revolution” with the use of R. G. Collingwood’s philosophical method 8 and the philosophy of David Hume, applied to international law as an expression of practical reason. The goal of philosophical method is the construction of a comprehensive policy argument (CPA) for a public policy or legal issue. In addition to the conventional use of empirical models and their logic of investigation in the study of policy and law, CPA requires that an underlying philosophical logic of concepts be deciphered to identify the ideas within the issue, and their definition, overlap, and systematic interdependence. Philosophical method is a means with which to interpret and understand competing systematic and complete conceptual logics, existing at the core of an issue and pertinent to policy change. Philosophical method is therefore not meant to be a replacement for the empirical investigation of a policy or legal issue, or the use of scientific method in social studies. Rather, it is a complimentary and prerequisite method that seeks to transcend the limitations of positivism and present a more complete understanding of the philosophical presuppositions of positivist ideas like power, interest, or strategic rationality. Philosophical method is meant to be used with the facts of the policy or legal issue to match an illuminating logic of concepts with a pertinent logic of investigation . Within the CPA, the use of philosophical method and the metaphysics of a policy or legal issue is assumed to be critical to the full understanding of the overlapping concepts, dialectics, and scale of forms that determine, and are determined by, the empirical context of the policy or legal topic. Specifically, instead of utilizing bits and pieces of various theoretical arguments to address narrowly focused empirical questions, as positivism prescribes, I will address the evolution of international law as practical reason in three phases. Each will be approached through a single integrated logic of philosophical concepts from a particular philosopher (i.e., David Hume, G. W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant). This philosophically holistic approach to the law is based on the assumption that only through the use of a single integrated argument in legal analysis can sovereignty, or any concept, be understood as a truly systematic and logical whole. A complete philosophical paradigm has a dialectic integrity and systematic logic that can more adequately describe the evolving essence of a concept like sovereignty. This approach also has the advantage of generating a number of distinct holistic descriptions of the law through the application of different philosophical systems, one at a time, to its factual structure. 9 Positivism does not seek Preface xiii holism, and rejects the idea that “theory” has such a characteristic. The essential or comprehensive substructure of any idea is therefore ignored in a method that recommends the observation of empirical problems through the use of whatever hodgepodge of theoretical elements is seen fit to frame its superstructure. This failure to deal with metaphysics has retarded both an essential understanding of international law as a species of legal system, and any holistic and dialectical conceptualization of its inherent concepts, like sovereignty. A second positivist convention expects modern theorists to create new theory rather than to refine and apply that of existing philosophy. This predisposition is driven by the positivist goal of discovery that ignores refinement as a possible purpose of philosophical analysis. Collingwood argues that philosophy must take that set of ideas already known and utilize existing systematic philosophical arguments to refine them so that they evolve closer to their essence as concepts. Considering this imperative, the idea of sovereignty can be assumed to have had valid usage for hundreds of years, over which time, the concept has evolved to mean different things, each a refinement of the definition that preceded it. Transcending positivism means that the scholar’s search is not for “new” material, but to decipher the metaphysical essence of a concept as it has been made manifest over time and context. These manifestations are rooted, and refined from, the known terms of that concept’s inherent idea(s). Rather than depending exclusively on positivism and its conventions, my work utilizes, in addition to Collingwood, the intact philosophical systems of Hume, Hegel, and Kant to trace the refinement of international law as a product of human practical reason. These paradigms, or integrated systems of logical concepts, will be applied to legal practice individually, so that each CPA can be deciphered separately. This provides a set of integrated and logically intact paradigms for the evolutionary stages of practical reason in international law. Because each argument is applied systematically, a deeper understanding of the source, locus, and scope in the development of law in general, and international law in particular, is possible where it is not with the application of various disconnected components of many theories. Each CPA based on Hume, Hegel, or Kant can then be used to describe a distinct context that its logic of concepts best illuminates; specifically, the (1) genesis, (2) contemporary dilemmas, and (3) future of the international legal system. By widening the perspective of international lawyers and policymakers, they can more easily perceive the dialectic of ideas that has created, and is refined by, the legal practice in which they participate. We also move toward Allott’s goal of “human self-perfecting.” 10 And, in addition, by providing a more complete knowledge of the origins of legal practice and its evolution, we illuminate the practical possibilities for what we might “choose to be” 11 in the future. To achieve this, the essential metaphysical elements of state sovereignty and its inherent evolutionary scale of forms will be deciphered and described. This will transform what appears to be a multitude of definitions and xiv Preface practical realizations of the concept of sovereignty into a set of interdependent manifestations of a single substructure, made of a single set of dialectic elements. The interpretation of international law through practical reason sorts and integrates a diverse and discordant literature and defines state sovereignty as a single concept evolving on a scale of forms that allows it to exhibit diverse character traits, all arising from different combinations of common and essential metaphysical elements. This approach, compared to positivist methods and legal realism, allows one to transcend current agreement that sovereignty is, at best, a narrowly focused set of empirical characteristics or, at worst, “organized hypocrisy.” 12 This method also encourages the scholar and practitioner to understand the predispositions and pitfalls of the concept of sovereignty, as well as its potential future paths, more effectively. The use of philosophical method to create policy paradigms out of preexisting philosophical systems and apply these to international law will be called Philosophical-Policy & Legal Design . This approach allows the use of preexisting and complete philosophical arguments that provide an adequate logic of concepts to chart the evolution of the idea of sovereignty along its scale of forms. An examination of the source of practical reason in human social convention with the employment of a philosophical-policy drawn from Hume’s logic of concepts about human nature will demonstrate this new approach. Why Hume? Because, up to now, without an adequate substructure we have arguments, like Brunne é’ s and Troope’s, 13 that may correctly identify international law as an “interactional” system, but cannot present any argument as to why it is, where this empirical reality comes from, or what its implications are for the future. Comparatively, Hume provides a logic of philosophical concepts that answers these concerns. First, he fulfills the requirements for a fuller understanding of the origin and evolution of law from social convention and the dependence of social convention on the human imperative for society. Second, he offers a more adequate delineation of the overlapping concepts of the law in terms of the ideas and institutions that deal with norms and justice (e.g., principle, process, practice, rule, power, interest). Third, he provides a fundamental understanding of the essential dialectics at the core of a conceptualization of the law with both unconscious and conscious human participation (i.e., passion. (shrink)

Since the time of Aristotle's students, interpreters have considered Prior Analytics to be a treatise about deductive reasoning, more generally, about methods of determining the validity and invalidity of premise-conclusion arguments. People studied Prior Analytics in order to learn more about deductive reasoning and to improve their own reasoning skills. These interpreters understood Aristotle to be focusing on two epistemic processes: first, the process of establishing knowledge that a conclusion follows necessarily from a set of premises (that is, on the (...) epistemic process of extracting information implicit in explicitly given information) and, second, the process of establishing knowledge that a conclusion does not follow. Despite the overwhelming tendency to interpret the syllogistic as formal epistemology, it was not until the early 1970s that it occurred to anyone to think that Aristotle may have developed a theory of deductive reasoning with a well worked-out system of deductions comparable in rigor and precision with systems such as propositional logic or equational logic familiar from mathematical logic. When modern logicians in the 1920s and 1930s first turned their attention to the problem of understanding Aristotle's contribution to logic in modern terms, they were guided both by the Frege-Russell conception of logic as formal ontology and at the same time by a desire to protect Aristotle from possible charges of psychologism. They thought they saw Aristotle applying the informal axiomatic method to formal ontology, not as making the first steps into formal epistemology. They did not notice Aristotle's description of deductive reasoning. Ironically, the formal axiomatic method (in which one explicitly presents not merely the substantive axioms but also the deductive processes used to derive theorems from the axioms) is incipient in Aristotle's presentation. Partly in opposition to the axiomatic, ontically-oriented approach to Aristotle's logic and partly as a result of attempting to increase the degree of fit between interpretation and text, logicians in the 1970s working independently came to remarkably similar conclusions to the effect that Aristotle indeed had produced the first system of formal deductions. They concluded that Aristotle had analyzed the process of deduction and that his achievement included a semantically complete system of natural deductions including both direct and indirect deductions. Where the interpretations of the 1920s and 1930s attribute to Aristotle a system of propositions organized deductively, the interpretations of the 1970s attribute to Aristotle a system of deductions, or extended deductive discourses, organized epistemically. The logicians of the 1920s and 1930s take Aristotle to be deducing laws of logic from axiomatic origins; the logicians of the 1970s take Aristotle to be describing the process of deduction and in particular to be describing deductions themselves, both those deductions that are proofs based on axiomatic premises and those deductions that, though deductively cogent, do not establish the truth of the conclusion but only that the conclusion is implied by the premise-set. Thus, two very different and opposed interpretations had emerged, interestingly both products of modern logicians equipped with the theoretical apparatus of mathematical logic. The issue at stake between these two interpretations is the historical question of Aristotle's place in the history of logic and of his orientation in philosophy of logic. This paper affirms Aristotle's place as the founder of logic taken as formal epistemology, including the study of deductive reasoning. A by-product of this study of Aristotle's accomplishments in logic is a clarification of a distinction implicit in discourses among logicians--that between logic as formal ontology and logic as formal epistemology. (shrink)

Emotions, Values, and the Law brings together ten of John Deigh's essays written over the past fifteen years. In the first five essays, Deigh ask questions about the nature of emotions and the relation of evaluative judgment to the intentionality of emotions, and critically examines the cognitivist theories of emotion that have dominated philosophy and psychology over the past thirty years. A central criticism of these theories is that they do not satisfactorily account for the emotions of babies or (...) animals other than human beings. Drawing on this criticism, Deigh develops an alternative theory of the intentionality of emotions on which the education of emotions explains how human emotions, which innately contain no evaluative thought, come to have evaluative judgments as their principal cognitive component. The second group of five essays challenge the idea of the voluntary as essential to understanding moral responsibility, moral commitment, political obligation, and other moral and political phenomena that have traditionally been thought to depend on people's will. Each of these studies focuses on a different aspect of our common moral and political life and shows, contrary to conventional opinion, that it does not depend on voluntary action or the exercise of a will constituted solely by rational thought. Together, the essays in this collection represent an effort to shift our understanding of the phenomena traditionally studied in moral and political philosophy from that of their being products of reason and will, operating independently of feeling and sentiment to that of their being manifestations of the work of emotion. (shrink)

1971. Discourse Grammars and the Structure of Mathematical Reasoning II: The Nature of a Correct Theory of Proof and Its Value, Journal of Structural Learning 3, #2, 1–16. REPRINTED 1976. Structural Learning II Issues and Approaches, ed. J. Scandura, Gordon & Breach Science Publishers, New York, MR56#15263. -/- This is the second of a series of three articles dealing with application of linguistics and logic to the study of mathematical reasoning, especially in the setting of a concern for improvement (...) of mathematical education. The present article presupposes the previous one. Herein we develop our ideas of the purposes of a theory of proof and the criterion of success to be applied to such theories. In addition we speculate at length concerning the specific kinds of uses to which a successful theory of proof may be put vis-a-vis improvement of various aspects of mathematical education. The final article will deal with the construction of such a theory. The 1st is the 1971. Discourse Grammars and the Structure of Mathematical Reasoning I: Mathematical Reasoning and Stratification of Language, Journal of Structural Learning 3, #1, 55–74. https://www.academia.edu/s/fb081b1886?source=link . (shrink)

Abstract John McDowell argues for minimal empiricism via using the notion of second nature of human beings. I should like to invite him to discuss Helmuth Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology in order to elaborate a more substantial conception of second nature. McDowell seems to think that it is adequate for his more epistemological aim to remind us of second nature as though it were to be taken for granted. But I think, following Plessner, that this right reminder (...) needs a therapeutic elaboration in Kant's sense of propaedeutics. What had been called our second nature found itself being questioned in order to limit the range of ways of treating the self we can authorize. (shrink)

John McDowell argues for minimal empiricism via using the notion of second nature of human beings. I should like to invite him to discuss Helmuth Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology in order to elaborate a more substantial conception of second nature. McDowell seems to think that it is adequate for his more epistemological aim to remind us of second nature as though it were to be taken for granted. But I think, following Plessner, that this right reminder needs (...) a therapeutic elaboration in Kant's sense of propaedeutics. What had been called our second nature found itself being questioned in order to limit the range of ways of treating the self we can authorize. (shrink)

Donald M. MacKinnon has been one of the most important and influential of post-war British theologians and religious philosophers. Generally eclectic, frequently allusive, usually intellectually generous, persistently richly challenging and always astonishingly erudite, he had a significant impact on the development and subsequent theological work of the likes of Rowan Williams, Nicholas Lash, David Ford and John Milbank. A younger generation largely emerging from Cambridge, but with influence elsewhere, has more recently brought MacKinnon's normally occasionalist writing to a larger (...) audience worldwide where it is beginning to receive noteworthy attention. In this collection several of MacKinnon's most outstanding papers not yet published in book format is collected together with an Editorial Introduction by a former student of one of MacKinnon's own students. They range from his reflections on theology as educational, the nature of moral reasoning, considerations of ecclesial practice, dogmatics and hope. Here is another reminder of MacKinnon's intellectual brilliance. (shrink)

Solon is our only primary source for the intellectual context of archaic Athenian political thought. Dike is central to that context. The primary question of dike is the degree of abstraction it denotes. To Solon dike is neither an abstract principle with metaphysical proportions, nor merely the concrete procedures of dispute mediation.Solon understands Dike in a polis that is ordered by the thoughts and actions of particular human beings, not by divine dispensations. This re-alignment of political authority from vertical authoritarianism (...) to horizontal citizen relationships is directly related to the views of nature found in the Milesian philosophers. Solon's dike is immanent from the thoughts and actions of the citizens; it is not a divine power pushing down on the polis.Solon's dike has three distinct functions. First, it is the inevitable result of unjust thoughts and actions; this is ‘natural dike’. Second, dike is a process of dispute mediation; this is ‘procedural dike’. Third, dike is a nascent ordering principle in the polis, found in one passage in Solon as distinct from the consequent retribution. Dike is an archaic concept standing for a comprehensive inevitability in the interactions of the citizens. (shrink)

Solon is our only primary source for the intellectual context of archaic Athenian political thought. Dike is central to that context. The primary question of dike is the degree of abstraction it denotes. To Solon dike is neither an abstract principle with metaphysical proportions, nor merely the concrete procedures of dispute mediation. Solon understands Dike in a polis that is ordered by the thoughts and actions of particular human beings, not by divine dispensations. This re-alignment of political authority from vertical (...) authoritarianism to horizontal citizen relationships is directly related to the views of nature found in the Milesian philosophers. Solon’s dike is immanent from the thoughts and actions of the citizens; it is not a divine power pushing down on the polis. Solon’s dike has three distinct functions. First, it is the inevitable result of unjust thoughts and actions; this is ‘natural dike’. Second, dike is a process of dispute mediation; this is ‘procedural dike’. Third, dike is a nascent ordering principle in the polis, found in one passage in Solon as distinct from the consequent retribution. Dike is an archaic concept standing for a comprehensive inevitability in the interactions of the citizens. (shrink)

Propose le concept de seconde nature, selon lequel l'être humain engage ses capacités naturelles dans la connaissance, la moralité, la perception et le langage.

The foundations of research ethics are riven with fault lines emanating from a fear that if research is too closely connected to weighty social purposes an imperative to advance the common good through research will justify abrogating the rights and welfare of study participants. The result is an impoverished conception of the nature of research, an incomplete focus on actors who bear important moral responsibilities, and a system of ethics and oversight highly attuned to the dangers of research but largely (...) silent about threats of ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable medical practices and health systems. -/- In For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics, Alex John London defends a conception of the common good that grounds a moral imperative with two requirements. The first is to promote research that generates the information necessary to enable key social institutions to effectively, efficiently, and equitably safeguard the basic interests of individuals. The second is to ensure that research is organized as a voluntary scheme of social cooperation that respects its various contributors' moral claims to be treated as free and equal. Connecting research to the goals of a just social order grounds a framework for assessing and managing research risk that reconciles these requirements and justifies key oversight practices in non-paternalistic terms. Reconceiving research ethics as resolving coordination problems and providing credible assurance that these requirements are being met expands the issues and actors that fall within the purview of the field and provides the foundation for a more unified and coherent approach to domestic and international research. -/- This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. (shrink)

We begin by examining the widespread scepticism about the value of empirical educational research that is found within sections of the philosophy of education community. We argue that this scepticism, in its strongest form, is incoherent as it suggests that there are no educational facts susceptible of discovery. On the other hand, if there are such facts, then commonsense is not an adequate way of accessing them, due to its own contested and variable nature. We go on to (...) examine the claim that teaching is a moral enterprise whose successful pursuit demands the grasp of moral concepts and their implications. We show that while this is the case, it is a necessary, not a sufficient condition for successful teaching, which also requires a grasp of facts that are relevant to effective teaching and learning. Finally we examine some protocols for educational research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment by Frederick C. BeiserJohn W. YoltonFrederick C. Beiser. The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xi + 332. Cloth, $39.50.Beiser characterizes the methodology of his study as historical and philosophical: historical in placing texts in their own context and in uncovering the intentions (...) of their authors; philosophical in reconstructing and appraising arguments (ix). Both methods are necessary for good historical work. The second is often practiced without the first, to the detriment of philosophy and its history. “A philosopher who reconstructs arguments without the aid of history indulges in mere guesswork and anachronism, measuring the standards of philosophical relevance and importance by the concerns of his own age” (x). Equally, understanding the arguments and ideas of, e.g., seventeenth-century writers, “also involves testing their truth: seeing how they cohere with one another, what their consequences are, whether they follow from the evidence adduced for them, and if they reply to the objections made against them” (x). This splendid study of the role of reason in seventeenth-century religion, science, and philosophy is a fine example of careful textual-historical scholarship with rigorous philosophical analysis.The goal of his study is to tell “the story of how rationalism, in the very specific sense of the sovereignty of reason, arose in seventeenth-century England” (5). Starting with an introduction which discusses such topics as “The Paradox of the English Enlightenment,” “Rationalism in the English Church,” “The Enlightenment and the New Sciences,” Beiser proceeds to detailed presentations and discussions of “The Protestant Challenge” (Chap. 1); Richard Hookers’s defense of reason (Chap. 2); the views of the Great Tew Circle, e.g., Falkland, Chillingworth, Hammond, Hales (Chap. 3); the Cambridge Platonists (Chap. 4); the nature of Enthusiasm (Chap. 5); John Toland and Deism (Chap. 6); and ethical rationalism (Chap. 7).Many of the topics covered have been the subjects of other books and articles. What marks Beiser’s account is the freshness of his approach, the many new insights and suggestions about the tensions between the holders of traditional doctrines and newer challenges. Beiser’s writing is clear, and the issues are carefully presented and analyzed. One of the central themes is the mistake of equating “rationalism with the critique or rejection of religion” (15), of identifying enlightenment with secularization (14). The appeals to reason often emerge from within orthodox religion, whose defenders were trying to cope with their own internal tensions. “Once we consider the Cambridge Platonists’ early reaction to predestination, it becomes clear that it was not Hobbes but Calvin who first posed the danger of atheism for them. For it was Calvin’s theology, and not Hobbes’s materialism, that inspired the fear of God that [End Page 138] they regarded as the source of atheism. In the eyes of the Cambridge Platonists, Hobbes’s materialism was only a false remedy for that fear...” (147). A similar point is made later: “the foundations of a rational theology” in Whichcote “did not arise from any need to combat a creeping Hobbesianism. Rather, it grew up from the inner struggles and torments of the Protestant soul” (165).Equally significant is Beiser’s analysis of enthusiasm, the appeals to divine inspiration rather than to reason or evidence: “We should be aware of accepting the contemporary caricature of the enthusiasts, which portrayed them as zealous and ignorant anti–intellectuals with no cogent or coherent philosophical position of their own” (187). His analysis of the enthusiasts stresses the epistemological nature of their position, rather than the usual theological, ethical, or political dimensions (193). He insists that “enthusiasm is essentially a philosophical concept. Historically, it arose as a response to the problem of the sources and criteria of religious knowledge” (187). The search for criteria is a pervasive feature of Beiser’s study: Luther’s and Calvin’s efforts to draw the boundary between faith and reason (24); Richard Hooker’s failure to “provide an epistemological foundation for his theory of natural law” (67); the need for a criterion to distinguish genuine from false revelation... (shrink)

This article examines the notorious mid-nineteenth-century American trial of Amelia Norman, who was acquitted - very much against the weight of the evidence - of attempting to kill the man who seduced her. In particular, we explore the role in the trial and its aftermath of the affective energies and cultural expectations set in motion by best-selling American sentimental novels like Hannah Foster's "The Coquette" and Susanna Rowson's "Charlotte Temple." In Norman's case, once newspapers, defense lawyers, and reformers such as (...) Lydia Maria Child recast the defendant as a sentimental heroine, the trial became about seduction, not attempted murder. The sentimental emplotment of Norman's life marshaled a powerful set of emotional responses and moral judgments on her behalf. For example, Norman claimed insanity. And since sentimental heroines are supposed to go mad when they are seduced and abandoned, the jury was prepared to interpret her symptoms according to her lawyers' very strategy for establishing her innocence. Ultimately, however, Norman embodied the plight of the sentimental heroine at the same time that she contested her fictional counterpart's fate. In this way, her trial spectacularized the disparity which the sentimental novel conjures up and displaces but never resolves. Going further, the common law theory of coverture, which severely limited the legal personhood of married women, has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Cases like Norman's remind us that unmarried women were also subject to draconian constraints on their legal personhood. The tort of seduction is a key example. Legal historians trace the development of the seduction tort from its common-law origins, when men's property interest in women's bodies formed the basis of the cause of action, to 1851, when Field Code authors (including Norman's lawyer, David Graham) persuaded several states to grant seduced women standing to bring their own cause of action. Consequently, courts were forced to reckon with the seduced woman as a moral agent capable of consenting to sex. As trials like Norman's demonstrate, sentimental novels helped lay the groundwork for this shift in the law by elucidating a subjectivity for the seduced woman. Yet the doctrinal implications of Norman's precedent-setting trial had a second, more ambiguous strain. Other women facing similar charges used the same legal strategy to gain acquittals in a substantial number of cases. Indeed, Norman's sentimental strategy proved so powerful that men on trial for killing their wives' seducers appropriated it to bring their own stories before juries and to reinforce male sexual norms through the so-called honor defense. In the end, then, Norman's trial fostered legal reform, but it also suggested - as Lydia Maria Child's fictionalization of the case in "Rosenglory" recognized - that only sustained and multifaceted efforts to change cultural as well as legal norms could improve the sexual status of women. In addition to its legal, literary, and historical insights that it provides, we also intend this article to contribute to debates on the nature of scholarship in law and literature. Scholars such as Wai Chee Dimock have argued for a focus on the historical and historically shifting relations between law and literature - a view we endorse. Where we differ from Dimock is in our diversion of attention away from abstract ideas of law laid out by treatise writers and philosophers in favor of law experienced and manipulated by individuals. So, too, we are interested less in representations of concepts such as justice in legal and literary texts than we are in the ways in which literature (broadly conceived) can create provisional and fragile opportunities for concrete instantiations of justice and even generate legal change (for good or ill). We would argue that to the extent legal change motivates rather than simply mirrors cultural change, it needs literature to be effective. This project, then, responds to Gregg Crane's call for attention to the complex and slippery historical interactions of law and literature that shape and are shaped by an ever changing cultural idiom of justice. The extended story of Amelia Norman, in short, not only constitutes a case study in the inescapable interaction between the overlapping and interdependent discourses of law and literature, but also reveals the literary and legal consequences of that interaction. (shrink)

Studies of education and careers in science, technology, engineering, and math commonly use a pipeline metaphor to conceptualize forward movement and persistence. However, the “STEM pipeline” carries implicit assumptions regarding length, contents, and perceived purpose. Using the National Survey of College Graduates, we empirically measure each of these dimensions. First, we show that a majority of STEM workers report skills training throughout their careers, suggesting no clear demarcation between education and work. Second, we show that using on-the-job expertise (...) requirements paints a very different portrait of the STEM workforce—and persistence in it. Third, we show that STEM-educated workers are well-prepared for but dissatisfied with non-STEM jobs, complicating our understanding of leaving. Collectively, these results recommend expanded conceptions of STEM education and careers and contribute to studies of science and engineering workforce transitions and diversity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Importance of What Psychiatrists Care AboutJohn M. Talmadge (bio)Keywordspost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), psychotherapy, Frankfurt, veteransChristopher Bailey's account of his conversation with Colin, an unhappy man who feels regret about the absence of heroism in his own life, is both poignant and evocative. The emptiness that Colin feels illustrates aspects of the human condition central to definitions of psychotherapy for the past century or so. In this brief commentary, (...) I have three observations. First, the life of the therapist intertwines, however briefly, with the life of the patient. The light brought by the therapist may be like a candle, beacon, or flashbulb. Regardless of the therapist's strategic decisions and elected action, the patient may still end up in the dark. Second, I believe that this vignette illustrates the value of Professor Harry Frankfurt's ideas as expressed in his essay, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person.” And third, the tortuous journeys of psychotherapy may frighten and excite even the most temperate, contemplative clinician. In this third realm, where therapists create strategies for conversations about life, I also want to mention the work of Otto Rank.We have only a glimpse of Colin's life, but Dr. Bailey raises an issue of universal importance in helping others. The concept of moral heroism dates from the stoics, but the twentieth century merged psychology, theology, and philosophy in addressing the importance of significance, self-affirmation, and anxiety.Colin feels as though he has missed an opportunity for heroism, and Dr. Bailey is trying to help him feel better. Setting aside the technical problems imposed by a clinical setting, let us stipulate that there are two distinct aspects of psychiatric care: one is medical, formal, and biological; and the other is interactive, personal, and philosophical. With regard to the former, the psychiatrist is uniquely qualified to assist with medication, refinement of diagnosis, and remediation of illness. Regarding the latter, the psychotherapist may see the patient as an object, treated behaviorally, which is not necessarily bad or wrong, and solutions may be fairly procedural and simple. Dr. Bailey, however, sees Colin's problem as somewhat deeper than that, and I agree.Having a theory of human nature is one thing, but being in a relationship with another person requires action as well as contemplation. Like the parable of the two monks meeting in the forest, one turns to the other and says, “I’m lost.” The other monk replies, “I am also lost!” After a moment, the first says, “I don’t know the way out, but I know some ways that don’t lead out.” The second monk thinks for a moment and adds, “Me too. Perhaps we can find the way out together.” [End Page 241]When Harry Frankfurt (1988) first wrote about the importance of what we care about, he observed that conscious beings (as opposed to young children, who have not fully developed the capacity for self-reflection) exhibit conflicts of will. The concept of the person, he says, includes more than the nature of our knowing (epistemology) and the matter of our behavior (ethics). Those who are uniquely human have the capacity to consider and understand what they really care about, what matters most. In an elegant lecture series he sums this up as “taking ourselves seriously, and getting it right.” His work is valuable, not only for his keen insights and observations, but also because his thought is so accessible to those of us who are not trained philosophers.Frankfurt rightly points out that philosophy has largely neglected the study of personality, leaving that to the psychologists and social scientists. He never ventures into the world of diagnosis and treatment, and rightly so; he defines his interests narrowly and effectively, assuming for the sake of his arguments that he is describing someone not burdened by mental disease or defect. At the same time, he engages head-on the complexity of life and personal will. He offers a way to think about human will, but he does not say what we should necessarily do, nor for that matter when we should intervene, when it comes to the will of... (shrink)

Compiled in the second century B.C.E, the _Huainanzi_ clarifies a crucial period in the development of Chinese conceptions of the cosmos, human nature, and the social order. Outlining "all that a modern monarch needs to know," the text emphasizes rigorous self-cultivation and mental discipline, attributing successful rule to a balance of broad knowledge, diligent application, and penetrating wisdom. In 2010, the editors of this volume completed the first complete English-language translation of the _Huainanzi_, opening exciting new pathways in the (...) study of philosophy, Asian studies, political science, and Asian literature. This abridgement contains essential selections from each of the _Huainanzi_'s twenty-one chapters and adds a new introduction and chapter descriptions. The text represents a remarkable synthesis of Daoist classics, such as the _Laozi_ and the _Zhuangzi_; works associated with the Confucian tradition, such as the _Changes_, the _Odes_, and the _Documents_; and a range of other foundational philosophical and literary works, from the _Mozi_ to the _Hanfeizi_. The abridgement preserves the _Huainanzi_'s special rhetorical features, such as its parallel prose, verse, and unique compositional techniques. For decades, Western scholars overlooked the _Huainanzi'_s sophisticated structure, creative content, and rich historical value, yet all that changed with the translation of the full text. Designed for classroom use and general readers, _The Essential Huainanzi_ continues to increase awareness of this brilliant work and change our understanding of early Chinese history. (shrink)

Gifford Pinchot was a noted forestry expert, a conservationist, and governor of Pennsylvania. Rachel Carson, celebrated for her groundbreaking books that raised awareness of the negative human impact on the natural environment, was born, raised, and educated in Pennsylvania. Although these Pennsylvanians are both environmentalists, they approached the natural environment very differently and embody two main positions in contemporary environmental ethics. After situating their environmental legacies among contemporary environmental ethics, this paper then discusses implications of the irreconcilability of their positions (...) on environmental progress; the concept of environmental legacy; and the importance of reflecting on the lives of environmentalists like Pinchot and Carson. (shrink)

This article develops the new concept of environing media against the case of Mexico’s complex history over the past five centuries. To do this, it stakes out a theoretical development consisting in a shift in understanding from media as content-delivery systems to data processors, combining it with a processual understanding of environment as an ongoing and historical process of environing. In addition, the article discusses examples of indigenous media, an area that has so far received very little attention. The Aztec (...) empire was as dependent on media forms as the Spanish colonizers who replaced it, and there are numerous cases of knowledges and practices surviving in hybrid forms, for example as part of maps. For much of its history, the field of media studies has been biased toward questions of (1) ideological or attitudinal influence caused by (2) modern or emergent technologies. This article goes in another direction by thinking about media as (1) environing and (2) residual. Media are agencies of civilizational and environmental order. The rise of digital media in recent decades has reinforced the fundamental logistical role of media as agencies that arrange, catalog, organize, network, and index people, places, and things. Our understanding of media as fundamental constituents of organization joins the recent interest in infrastructures. Calendars, clocks, towers, names, addresses, maps, registers, arms, and money are all infrastructural media. Such media become second nature, morphing biorhythms and altering ecosystems. Today’s planetary digital infrastructure builds upon the long legacy of resource management via databases. We argue for a longer genealogy of the nature shaping logistical role of media that is so evident today. In this article, we refine and exemplify these claims via a case study of some environing media in Mexico, a country with a deep and rich media history. (shrink)

Philosophy is the science of the science; it is the analysis of the assumptions underlying empirical inquiry. Given that these assumptions cannot possibly be examined or even identified on the basis of empirical data, it follows that philosophy is a non-empirical discipline. And given that our linguistic and cultural practices cannot possibly be examined or even identified except on the basis of empirical data, it follows that philosophical questions are not linguistic questions and do not otherwise concern our conventions or (...) our cultural practices. This entails that philosophical truths are not tautologous or otherwise trivial. It also entails that empiricism is false and, therefore, that Platonism is correct. Given a clear understanding of why Platonism is correct and of what this implies, a number of shibboleths of contemporary analytic philosophy are speedily demolished and are no less speedily replaced with independently corroborated and intuitively plausible alternatives. New answers are given to age-old questions concerning scientific explanation, causal and logical dependence, linguistic meaning, personal identity, the structure of the psyche, and the nature of personal responsibility. Existing answers to these question are thoroughly considered and duly extended, modified, or replaced. Every technical term is defined; every philosophy-specific concept is explained; and the positions defended are consistent with commonsense, so far as their being consistent with the relevant data allows them to be. Therefore, this book is intelligible to philosophically minded laymen. At the same time, it is appropriate for advanced scholars, given that it defends original viewpoints and given also that, even though it discusses old viewpoints, it does so in new ways. Because it is clearly written, it is intelligible to neophytes; but it is not an introductory text and it is not a textbook. There are two appendices: the first, a thorough exposition of the rudiments of formal logic, along with the conceptual underpinnings of that discipline; the second, a definition and analytic discussion of each technical term that occurs in the text. Most of the chapters are followed by study-questions and by practice tests. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Demarcation Project John Losee Demarcation, Ideas and Impressions David Hume sought to exclude certain concepts from the domain of empirically significant discourse. He was critical of talk about "substances" that bear qualities, "forces" that cause motions, "powers" that produce effects, "necessary connections" that determine sequences of events, "extension without matter" and "time independent of succession or change in any real existence."1 Hume proposed a demarcation ofideas, (...) a demarcation intended to exclude these notions. The demarcation project, if successful, would exclude Locke's notion of "substance" as well as Newton's notions of "Absolute Space" and "Absolute Time." Some interpreters have taken the demarcation project to be the centrepiece of Hume's philosophy. Others have seen it to be an incidental aspect of Hume's search for an empirical theory of human nature. I believe that David Pears was correct to insist that an acceptable account ofHume's philosophy include both the "destructive emphasis" and the "constructive emphasis."2 Hume's demarcation project is based on a presumed relation, or relations, between ideas and impressions. Hume made the following claims about "simple ideas," those ideas that "admit of no distinction nor separation" (T 2): 1)every simple idea in its first appearance is derived from some impression (Derivability Principle); 2)every simple idea in its first appearance copies some impression (Copy Principle); 3)every simple idea represents some impression (Representation Principle); 4)simple ideas and impressions resemble one another; 5)simple ideas correspond to impressions; 6)every simple idea is borroVd from some impression; Volume XVII Number 2 51 JOHN LOSEE 7)for every simple idea there is some temporally antecedent impression; and 8)impressions cause simple ideas. Primafacie, these claims are empirical claims about the genesis of our ideas. But within Hume's demarcation project these claims also function as criteria for membership in the class of simple ideas. Those ideas that satisfy the criteria constitute raw material from which complex ideas are formulated. Complex ideas are constructed from simple ideas. However, they are not copies of simple ideas. Aparticular complex idea is empirically significant provided that, 1) it is derivable from simple ideas; and 2) each of those simple ideas is derivable from impressions. The Case of the Missing Shade ofBlue Tensions arise within the demarcation project in part because Hume employs nonequivalent criteria—Derivability Principle, Copy Principle, Representation Principle—as if they were equivalent. The tension is acute in the case of the missing shade ofblue. The "missing shade" is an idea formulated by a person with extensive experience of colours, but no prior exposure to the shade in question. If this idea is a simple idea, then it is false that every simple idea copies some antecedent impression. Why did Hume cite—in both Treatise and Inquiry—this apparently destructive exception? Bernard Rollin has suggested that Hume may have cited the missing-shade-of-blue example as a rhetorical device toprotecthis dichotomous divisionofpropositionsinto those that are analytic a priori and those that are synthetic a posteriori (including the Derivabihty Principle).11 John O. Nelson agreed that Hume is concerned to emphasize the contingent, empirical status of the Derivabihty Principle.12 Nelson suggested that Hume sought tomake two points. The first pointis that an exception to the Derivability Principle is empirically possible. The second point is that thought-experiments like the missing-shade example are inadequate to establish conclusions about matters offact. To entertain such thought-experiments is to lapse into hypothetical speculation, a violation ofthe "experimental method ofreasoning."13 Perhaps it was for this reason that Hume dismissed the missing-shade case as unimportant. Hume urged that this case is "so particular and singular" thatit provides nogoodreason to abandon the Copy Principle (T 6). 52Hume Studies HUME'S DEMARCATION PROJECT D. M. Johnson has developed a hypothesis to explain why Hume believed that this exceptional case is not damaging to his demarcation project. According to Johnson, Hume may have believed that for a person to reconstruct a shade he never saw before, he must have developed an appropriately detailed Tiabitual spectrum'—i.e., an ordered set oftendencies and expectations concerning colours, built up as a result oflong experience with thingshavingthese colours—whichhe then employs... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Foundation of Ethical Theory in the ClinicJohn Collins Harvey (bio)William Osler has had a very profound and lasting effect on American medical education and medical practice. He set the pattern, still followed today, for the clinical training of medical students at the patient’s bedside and in the clinical laboratory. In such settings Osler was able to demonstrate to his pupils the principles, ethics, and standards of medical practice (...) that he espoused and thought fundamental to the profession of medicine. His monumental text book, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, first published in 1892, transformed the medical profession and remained a standard text for more than four decades (Leon 1995, p. 13). Renowned medical historians, such as Pedro Laín Entralgo, Henry Sigerist, and Richard Shyrock, recognize him as the greatest clinician that North America has ever produced.Osler, who had observed bedside teaching in his post-graduate studies, recognized that this method had much to offer in the instruction of medical students. Opportunity to introduce this method of teaching into the medical school curriculum came in 1888 when he was called to serve as Professor of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at the newly established Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital. Bedside teaching proved to be very successful especially in demonstrating to students the standards and ethics of medical practice that he espoused.Osler’s teaching method was immediately adopted by many of the university medical schools in the United States, including Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford, all of whom appreciated the success of the Hopkins medical educational experiment. Graduates of the Hopkins Medical School quickly became a major source of faculty in medical schools in the United States. Many of Osler’s immediate pupils became outstanding clinicians and leaders in American academic medicine and served as faculty members at Hopkins or in established or newly founded schools. Osler’s disciples taught students in the wards the “art” of medicine according to his principles, ethics, and standards. The second and third generation faculty members, who were trained by Osler’s immediate pupils, continue to this day to teach the “art” by employing this method of teaching. Consequently, the practice of medicine in the United States continues to be influenced by the ethics held by Osler. To find [End Page 343] the theories behind Osler’s teaching, we must look at Osler’s background, education, and writings.The Religio Medici: Background For Osler’S Medical EthicsOsler received a very solid traditional classical education at the small, excellent Anglican secondary school in Weston, Ontario run by the Reverend James Johnson, with whom Osler developed a life long friendship. Johnson’s avocation was natural science. He first aroused Osler’s interest in nature and science. Osler was taught Scripture well at Weston. He committed much of the Bible to memory and often quoted it in his speeches. He also studied both Greek and Latin, and was exposed to the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and other classical authors, particularly the stoics.While a student at Weston, Osler first came to know Sir Thomas Browne’s remarkable text Religio Medici (The Religion of the Physician), which was to become a lifelong favorite. In his first address as the new Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford in 1905, which was given to the Guy’s Hospital Physical Society, he vigorously recommended the Religio Medici to the students.The Religio is a deeply reflective personal inquiry into the paradoxical nature of one man as a microcosm of all men (Browne 1940, pp. 40, 53–54, 61–62). Browne participated in the Baconian program for the advancement of knowledge and the rise of “science.” As a defense of the physician’s faith, the Religio shows how neatly the scientist and the Christian united in the single figure of the inspired reader of God’s two books, nature and Scripture, can defend an attitude that is both scientific and yet reverent. The central theme in the first and much longer part of the Religio is the relation between faith and reason. The second part of the Religio is about charity: Man’s love of God and his neighbors, commanded as... (shrink)

Rights are commonly linked to responsibilities. One commonly hears remarks about the rights and responsibilities of teachers, parents, students, etc. This linking together of the two is the topic of this paper. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first section I distinguish three accounts of the relation between rights and esponsibilities any of which we could have in mind when linking the two together, and I single out the third account for further study. Unlike the other two, (...) it seems to offer fresh material for the theory of rights. In the second section I develop this material. I explicate the general relation between rights and responsibilities as this third account represents it, and I specify the grounds for attributing such a relation to them. My aim here is to elucidate a conception of rights that certain legal and political rights can be taken to exemplify and that has been ignored or obscured in recent work in the theory of rights. In the last two sections I turn my attention to human rights. I argue in Section III that Locke's theory of natural rights can be interpreted as upholding the conception of rights elucidated in the preceding section, and I consider and criticize in Section IV an account of the relation between certain human rights and responsibilities that comes from Joel Feinberg's distinction between mandatory and discretionary rights. The arguments of these two sections are meant to strengthen the case for making room in the theory of rights for the conception elucidated in Section II. (shrink)

Bishop Robert Grosseteste and Lincoln Cathedral provides a much-needed and in-depth investigation of Grosseteste’s relationship to the medieval cathedral at Lincoln and the surrounding city. The architecture and topography of Lincoln Cathedral are examined in their cultural contexts, in relation to scholastic philosophy, science and cosmology, and medieval ideas about light and geometry, as highlighted in the writings of Robert Grosseteste - bishop of Lincoln Cathedral. At the same time the architecture of the cathedral is considered in relation to the (...) roles of the clergy and masons; the policies of the bishop; matters of governance, worship and education; ecclesiastical hierarchy, church liturgy, politics and processionals. Investigations include parallel studies of Salisbury Cathedral and Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel at Aachen, highlighting important connections in regard to ceremonial itineraries and political/religious hierarchies. Finally, the book explores Grosseteste’s ideas in the broader context of medieval and Renaissance cosmologies, optics/perspective, natural philosophy and experimental science. The contributors to this volume make an important contribution to our current understanding of the relation between architecture, theology, politics and society during the Middle Ages, and how religious spaces were conceived and experienced. (shrink)

This essay review connects Joe L. Kincheloe's Critical Constructivism on epistemological analysis to the conceptual and sociopolitical challenges of new media in educational contexts. New media is a domain of educational research that has taken ubiquitous directions in recent scholarship. From cyber-bullying to digital rights management to the development of new literacies and the Orwellian nature of plagiarism watchdog sites like Turnitin.com, teachers are wary of tapping new media resources or ?vehicles? to enhance their more traditional instructional strategies (...) and have little impetus to develop what may be called critical digital literacy skills for themselves or their students. In 12 efficacious points, Joe L. Kincheloe's Critical Constructivism: A Primer ushers readers through complex processes of teaching and learning, knowledge construction, and cognition, as well as necessary examinations of the social, historical, and cultural contexts in which the knower and known are situated. The key understandings of critical constructivism are further explored in this review by evaluating its pedagogical applications and possibilities for teachers and learners confronting the challenges of navigating the vehicles (Web sites, online gaming, any form of online community/social environment ad, use of personal digital communication devices, ad infinitum) of new media in and beyond the classroom for the purposes of gaining what may be termed as critical digital literacy. Kincheloe's primer offers teachers, students and researchers an accessible epistemological manual equipped with definitions of concepts and terms emboldened and spotlighted throughout the text, in addition to its convenient glossary compiled in the back of the text. At face value, teachers, preservice teachers, and teacher educators are provided with a practical heuristic for crossing the great divide from the abstract domains of pedagogical theory to the inviting shores of teacher and learner cognition and practice. (shrink)

For now, the best way to select a child's genes is to select a potential child who has those genes, using genetic testing and either selective abortion, sperm and egg donors, or selecting embryos for implantation. Some people even wish to select against genes that are only mildly undesirable, or to select for superior genes. I call this selection drift– the standard for acceptable children is creeping upwards. The President's Council on Bioethics and others have raised the parental love objection: (...) Just as we should love existing children unconditionally, so we should unconditionally accept whatever child we get in the natural course of things. If we set conditions on which child we get, we are setting conditions on our love for whatever child we get. Although this objection was prompted by selection drift, it also seems to cover selecting against genes for severe impairments. I argue that selection drift is not inconsistent with the ideal of unconditional parental love and, moreover, that the latter actually implies that we should practise selection drift – in other words, we should try to select potential children with the best genetic endowments. My endowment argument for the second claim works from an analogy between arranging an endowment prior to conception to fund a future child's education, and arranging a genetic endowment by selecting a potential child who already has it, where in both cases the child would not have existed without the endowment. I conclude with some programmatic remarks about the nonidentity problem. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 562-564 [Access article in PDF] Louis E. Loeb. Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 280. Cloth, $42.50. As is well known, in the last year of his life, Hume repudiated his Treatise of Human Nature in an Advertisement that he had placed at the front of the volume of his writings containing (...) his mature philosophical works. He asked that only the two Enquiries and other later philosophical writings be regarded as the source of "his philosophical sentiments and principles." But not leaving it at that, he admitted that there were "negligences in his... reasoning" and in his manner of expressing himself in the Treatise. More than twenty years earlier, Hume had admitted that publishing the Treatise in its imperfect state in his youth constituted "a very great Mistake in Conduct." But he did not have sufficient foresight to see that the admission he made in his old age constituted at least as bad an indiscretion of the same kind. Acknowledging mistakes in reasoning and in expression for a philosopher [End Page 562] is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Two bulls in fact: the philosopher and the "reconstructive" historian of philosophy. The former is given ample work in correcting the older philosopher's mistakes; the latter in devising an interpretation of a text that apparently leaves itself open to many. Hence the immense popularity that Hume's Treatise of Human Nature has enjoyed in the two and a half centuries since he asked that it be disregarded. Who cares about "his philosophical sentiments and principles" anyway?Louis Loeb's study of epistemology in Hume's Treatise is both an exercise in "reconstructive history of philosophy" and a philosophical emendation of Hume's (reconstructed) "philosophical system." The first task is pursued in the first five chapters of the book; the second in the last two. "Reconstructive history" as practiced by Loeb does not try to provide "a balanced commentary" but rather "an illuminating and fruitful interpretive perspective" (viii) on what a philosopher has written. Loeb's perspective on Hume's epistemology is derived from details of Hume's psychology of the imagination developed mainly in sections 9-13 of part 3 of book 1, details which Hume himself considered "unnecessary" to the exposition of his mature epistemology in the first Enquiry. Loeb's philosophical emendations derive from his claim that Hume made certain mistakes which led him to despair of the success of his project and settle for sceptical conclusions in part 4. In the last two chapters of the book Loeb seeks to save Hume from his own sceptical conclusions.Loeb regards his account as a development and correction of the kind of naturalistic interpretation of Hume's epistemology that was originally developed by Norman Kemp Smith (21). A naturalistic theory of justification, according to Loeb, is one that grounds beliefs that one already considers to be justified in the psychological mechanisms that generate them. Whereas Kemp Smith argued that justification depends on the "irresistibility" or "inevitability" of the beliefs, Loeb holds that justification depends upon what he calls the "stability" of the belief generating mechanisms. A belief forming mechanism is stable just in case it produces a consistent set of beliefs that will stand up even under "reflection." For example, in part 3 of book 1 (81, 159, 238), Hume presents beliefs based on cause and effect as stable in this sense, and contrasts them with "unphilosophical" belief forming mechanisms such as indoctrination (education). Unlike the former, the latter mechanism generates beliefs that "are frequently contrary... to themselves in different times and places and is never on that account recognized by philosophers" (Treatise117). Furthermore, we have a positive motivation to accept stable mechanisms in that they produce ease or relief from psychological tension. Loeb links this goal both with the ancient Pyrrhonian quest for ataraxia (6-9) and with Hume's moral theory, where he seeks a general point of view as a relief from... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Report on the Tenth European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies Conference:History as a Challenge to Buddhism and ChristianityJohn O’Grady, Elizabeth J. Harris, and Jonathan A. SeitzThe Tenth Conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies (ENBCS) brought together between sixty and seventy people at the Oude Abdij, Drongen, Belgium, between 27 June and 1 July 2013, to examine the theme “History as a Challenge to Buddhism and Christianity.” (...) It was a collaborative effort between the ENBCS and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The 2011 ENBCS conference had focused on whether hope was a relevant concept for Buddhists and Christians. The choice of history as a theme complemented this. It also resonated with a research concern of both KU Leuven and the Network.Five key themes were chosen for examination: the traditional Christian and Buddhist conceptions of history; Jesus and the Buddha: fact and fiction; Buddhist and Christian historiography; dangerous memory in Christianity and Buddhism; and permitting historical consciousness in Buddhism and Christianity. Each was approached from a Buddhist and a Christian perspective. An opening lecture addressed the theme “Modern Historical Consciousness and the Challenge to Religion.” In addition, eighteen research papers on Buddhist-Christian relations were given in parallel sessions on Friday evening and Saturday morning. These covered topics as various as the writings of Edmund Pezet (Pierre Gillet), Paul Knitter’s understanding of Buddhist-Christian double belonging (Achim Riggert), Keiji Nishitani and the death of God (Jonatan Navarro Estrada), the encounter of Zen Buddhism and Christianity in the works of D. T. Suzuki (Mariusz Rucki), Buddhist-Christian encounters by Han Yong Woon (Seung Chul Kim), and “Liberating the Conflict from ‘History’ in Sri Lanka” (Jude Lal Fernando).Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Münster, Germany), in the opening lecture, discussed [End Page 189] seven challenges that modern historical consciousness was posing to religion: the challenge of falsification (when historical evidence, for example, showed some doctrines cherished by believers were not taught by the founder), the challenge of uncertainty or methodological doubt, the challenge of methodological naturalism (should a natural explanation be considered more probable than a supernatural one?), the challenge of the distance between past and present, the challenge of change (religions are not static), the challenge of demystification, and the challenge of relativity (the writing of history is perspectival, conditioned by context). He stressed that it would be a blessing to religion if these challenges were faced and, throughout the conference, encouraged other speakers to face them.The first theme was tackled by Mark Blum (Berkeley, USA) from a Buddhist perspective and Jan-Olav Henriksen (Norwegian School of Theology) from a Christian perspective. In a magisterial historical and geographical survey of the Buddhist tradition, Blum first noted that no one had unearthed a traditional notion of Buddhist history in the early texts. The theme of decline and reformation had been taken from Indian cosmology, but with a Buddhist twist and the conviction that it was pointless to talk about beginnings. And in the growth of the Mahāyāna tradition, a dehistoricization of the Buddha had occurred in the belief that the Buddha’s dharma-body was his only “real” body.Henriksen argued that Christian salvation history had its origin in the narrative of the Fall, an event for which there was no historical evidence, and developed into a history of God’s call (election) to all people that they should be brought together in community. It was a history that was linked with the divine logos, a force that Christian theology has seen as deeply interwoven into creation from the beginning of time and that was made human in Jesus.Terrence Merrigan (KU Leuven, Belgium), giving a Christian perspective on the second theme, distinguished three quests or attempts to reach the historical Jesus. The first, from 1774 to 1906, sought to uncover the Jesus that had been obscured by dogma. It imploded with the realization that separating “core” from “myth” was impossible, and conditioned a reactive “no-quest” in the first half of the twentieth century. A “new quest” arose in the 1950s, initiated by Käsemann’s reaction to the theologies of Barth and Bultmann. A further quest that appealed to archaeology and the... (shrink)