The aim of this paper is to analyze the idea of general resurrection of the dead at the end of times in the synoptic Gospels. We intend to clarify whether this concept can be interpreted as a transposition of the parallel belief contained in some intertestamental writings, or if the singularity of the religious experience expressed in the synoptic Gospels establishes an inexorable moment of discontinuity with the previous apocalyptic framework, making it impossible to understand this doctrine on (...) the sole basis of its Jewish precedents. In order to accomplish our goal, we shall first study the general resurrection of the dead in the Q source, the references to this notion in the gospel of Mark, and its meaning in both Matthew and Luke. We will exclude from our treatment all the topics related with the resurrection of Jesus, and we will be focused on the explicit mentions of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead as such. Since implicit beliefs are always difficult to assess, especially in the context of eschatological ideas, in which vagueness and absence of a systematic effort of exposition often prevail, we will not allude to other synoptic passages which have been regarded as potential expressions of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead at the end of times. (shrink)

Noting that the doctrine of the general resurrection attracted renewed attention after the Reformation, and after the atomist revival led to the displacement of traditional hylomorphism by alternative matter theories, this article surveys the ways in which the resurrection was discussed by leading natural philosophers in seventeenth‐century England. These include discussion of how bodily resurrection might be possible, what resurrected bodies will be like; as well as the nature of living conditions after the resurrection. It (...) is indicated that the resurrection seems to have played a much less prominent place in the writings of natural philosophers than the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and other issues of natural theology. Reasons for this lack of prominence are tentatively offered, chiefly focusing on its unsuitability for combatting the perceived atheism of the time. It is hoped that this preliminary survey might inspire others to extend the survey, especially to cover Continental philosophers. (shrink)

I have argued that the central Christian doctrine of general resurrection (with particular reference to the Pauline corpus) can and should be understood in a scientifically and philosophically informed context, and have proposed a personalist-phenomenological model of general resurrection as a personally continuous transformative re-embodiment by the grace of God within an interpretative framework that respects the methods and findings of science while rejecting scientism and associated physicalist metaphysical claims. I have considered and rejected the re-assembly (...) model of resurrection on theological, philosophical and scientific grounds. (shrink)

G. E. Moore famously offered a strikingly straightforward response to the radical sceptic which simply consisted of the claim that one could know, on the basis of one's knowledge that one has hands, that there exists an external world. In general, the Moorean response to scepticism maintains that we can know the denials of sceptical hypotheses on the basis of our knowledge of everyday propositions. In the recent literature two proposals have been put forward to try to accommodate, to (...) varying extents, this Moorean thesis. On the one hand, there are those who endorse an externalist version of contextualism, such as Keith DeRose, who have claimed that there must be some contexts in which Moore is right. More radically still, Ernest Sosa has expanded on this externalist thesis by arguing that, contra DeRose's contextualism, Moore may be right in all contexts. In this paper I evaluate these claims and argue that, suitably modified, one can resurrect the main elements of the Moorean anti-sceptical thesis. (shrink)

The article defends the doctrine that Linnaean taxa, including species, have essences that are, at least partly, underlying intrinsic, mostly genetic, properties. The consensus among philosophers of biology is that such essentialism is deeply wrong, indeed incompatible with Darwinism. I argue that biological generalizations about the morphology, physiology, and behavior of species require structural explanations that must advert to these essential properties. The objection that, according to current “species concepts,” species are relational is rejected. These concepts are primarily concerned with (...) what it is for a kind to be a species and throw little light on the essentialist issue of what it is for an organism to be a member of a particular kind. Finally, the article argues that this essentialism can accommodate features of Darwinism associated with variation and change. (shrink)

This article focuses on two questions about the doctrine of the resurrection, questions that will occur to most philosophers and theologians interested in identity in general, and in personal identity in particular. The first question is: how? How could a body that at the end of this life was frail and feeble be the very same body as a resurrection body, a body which will not be frail or feeble, but will instead be glorified? Moreover, how could (...) a body that has passed out of existence – perhaps as a result of decay or cremation – come back into existence on the Day of Resurrection? The second question is: why? Why would anyone want a resurrection of the body? And even if the resurrection delivers something that we want – maybe one's current body has some sentimental value and so having it back would be nice – we might still wonder why any religion would give the doctrine a central place, as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all do. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen’s short piece on the possibility of resurrection via simulacrum from 1978 has been regularly condemned for its overall implausibility. However, this paper argues that van Inwagen’s thesis has been unfairly criticized and remains a live and salutary option. It begins by summarizing the metaphysics of the simulacrum theory of the resurrection alongside the motivation for such a theory. Next, it challenges the four main criticisms against the van Inwagen styled simulacrum model. First, it argues that (...) while van Inwagen’s model may appear unnecessary or irrelevant for those that reject his metaphysics of human persons, an account like his is necessary for those that desire to maintain the traditional metaphysics of resurrection (e.g., the resurrection of the “self-same” body). Second, it argues that his model does not implicate God in mass deception or irreverence for the dead. Third, it rejects the idea that van Inwagen’s model is analogous to the implausibility of young earth creationism and its required claims like dinosaur bones being given the appearance of age. Fourth, it argues that his model is not metaphysically impossible for scenarios where someone is simultaneously killed and destroyed, such as in nuclear blasts. (shrink)

The concept of the resurrection of the body (or of the dead) is most easily explained by laying out the ways in which it differs from the most important competing picture of the survival of death, the Platonic picture. It can be plausibly argued that the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead presupposes some form of dualism. The resurrection life, as the post‐resurrection stories of Jesus show, is a physical life, the life of an organism. (...) A belief in a general resurrection of the dead is one of many Judeo‐Christian elements that have been incorporated into Islam. Some who accept the doctrine of resurrection deny the existence of a separable, immaterial soul. Those human beings who refuse salvation will, after the general resurrection, be thrust into a condition that the New Testament describes by a mixture of three images: exclusion, pain, and refuse. (shrink)

The idea that some biological characteristics are innate, while controversial, is widespread in many academic disciplines. Neither philosophy nor science has outgrown the need to talk about traits, which, for a variety of reasons, appear to be inherent in biological populations. Philosophical claims of this nature are to be found in theories of moral sense, rational capacities, the way in which perception structures experience and so on. Scientific claims about innate traits are to be found in the study of animal (...) behaviour and most famously in the relatively recent rise of nativism in cognitive science. In this tradition, Noam Chomsky and his heirs argue that much of our capacity to decipher verbal information is innate. David Marr defends a similar position with respect to the interpretation of visual information. (shrink)

Stephen Davis's detailed assessment of the doctrine of the general resurrection suggests that it is the claim that those who have died will persist into a subsequent, embodied life by means of a divine miracle. The dualist's account of resurrection depends on the possibility that the identity of a person over time is preserved by the persistence of a simple immaterial substance with no necessary connection to a particular physical or psychological career. This chapter argues that the (...) seemingly preposterous simulacrum model fails to offer animalists such as van Inwagen an account of the metaphysical possibility of resurrection. Thus the constitution view of persons is unsuccessful in offering the materialist an account of how an individual might die and yet appear again at the Resurrection. However, while dualist accounts ground personal identity in the persistence of a simple immaterial substance (a soul), the uninformativeness of the constitution view has a different and problematic source. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: The cluster theory of names is generally thought to have been to have been utterly discredited by the objections raised against it by Kripke in Naming and Necessity. In this paper, I develop a new version of the cluster theory in which the role played by clusters of associated descriptions is occupied by teams of cognitive relations. And I argue that these teams of relations find a home in an account of the meanings of expressions in epistemic sentence frames, (...) and in a more general theory of the reference of proper names. RÉSUMÉ: La théorie des faisceaux de noms est généralement considérée sans fondement depuis les objections soulevées par Kripke dans Naming and Necessity. Nous proposons une nouvelle version de la théorie des faisceaux dans laquelle le rôle joué par les faisceaux de descriptions associées est pris en charge par des équipes de relations cognitives. Ces équipes de relations trouvent leur place au sein de l’explication de la signification des expressions dans le cadre de phrases épistémologiques et, plus généralement, dans celui d’une théorie de la référence des noms propres. (shrink)

Many objects in the world have functions. Typewriters are for typing. Can-openers are for opening cans. Lawnmowers are for cutting grass. That is what these things are for. Every day around the world people attribute functions to objects. Some of the objects with functions are organs or parts of living organisms. Hearts are for pumping blood. Eyes are for seeing. Countless works in biology explain the “Form, Function, and Evolution of... ” everything from bee dances to elephant tusks to pandas’ (...) ‘thumbs’. Many scientific explanations, in areas as diverse as psychology, sociology, economics, medical research, and neuroscience, rest on appeals to the function and/or malfunction of things or systems. They talk of how humans and other organisms or their parts work, what their functions are, why they are present, and how different situations will affect them and how they will react. Philosophers, going back to Aristotle, used to make generous use of functions in describing objects, organisms, their interactions, and even as the basis of ethics and metaphysics. And yet, since the Enlightenment, talk of the function of natural objects, teleological function, began to be viewed with suspicion, as the mechanical model of the world replaced the old Aristotelian model. From a religious standpoint, it used to be easy to see how objects in the natural world could have natural functions, for God was said to instill functions by design throughout Creation. But philosophers became increasingly reluctant to invoke God to solve every difficult philosophical problem, and became unwilling to indulge in such religious explanations of teleology. (shrink)

Budziszewski offers, in these pages, the sense of a lively mind engaging a serious question: he would resist that movement in modern philosophy which has sought to discredit the socalled naturalistic fallacy and ethical naturalism--the movement which has sought to deny that we can find, in human nature, the standards that mark a distinctly human good, and which furnish the grounds for our judgments about right and wrong. Budziszewski would restore an older understanding, in which "human nature" supplied "the rule (...) and measure for human life.". (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to strike a blow for the relevance of the debasing demon originally summoned by Jonathan Schaffer. I do so by, first, defending this skeptical hypothesis against critics and, second, by noting important similarities between the workings of this demon and implicit bias. Along the way, I elucidate the structure of this skeptical argument by comparing it to other better-known skeptical arguments. I also clarify the kinds of access the debasing skeptical scenario, as well as (...) some of the replies, operate with. Apart from being interesting in its own right as a different skeptical challenge, the debasing demon raises important issues regarding bias, as I will show by using an example from epistemic decolonialization. (shrink)

David Gordon attempts to achieve two goals in this book, only one of which is ever stated. He explicitly sets out to show why three analytical Marxists, C. A. Cohen, Jon Elster, and John Roemer, fail to rehabilitate Marx's economic theories--despite the attempt made to compensate for their predictive and conceptual limitations. Gordon stresses the fact that there are too many structural flaws in Marx's view of capitalism to make it work on the basis of mere tinkering. Significantly, his subjects (...) have recognized this disparity between basic Marxist beliefs--for instance, the labor theory of value and the growing pauperization and exploitation of the working class in a capitalist economy--to try to hold to the substance of Marx's economics. Thus they claim to be bringing up to date the master through rigorous analysis--whence the term "analytical Marxism." This particular designation is also meant to distinguish its bearers from those "soft Marxists" who, like Herbert Marcuse, relegate Marxism to a form of social and cultural criticism. Analytical Marxists maintain that their Marx produced scientific truth, in the manner of Newton and Einstein, not simply a moral outcry or a political protest. (shrink)

This is the 1965 Saint Augustine Lecture, the seventh in the annual series. It would have been difficult to find someone more knowledgeable on Augustine's thought than M. Marrou, and the result is something of a synoptic view of Augustine's thought through the unifying perspective of his theology of embodiment. The whole of this very short book is executed with such scholarly ease and impressiveness that Marrou's conclusion after only twenty nine pages that Augustine is the precursor of modern personalism (...) seems in need of no more justification.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The author of the paper starts by calling our attention to problems that make it necessary to rethink philosophy and puts her finger on one common factor at the origin of these problems. This is what she calls “the loss of the object of knowledge” in epistemology.After she shows how the object of knowledge is lost in two prevailing epistemologies of the twentieth century—in pragmatism and logical empiricism—and the consequences of this loss for our lives, she gives examples of rethinking (...) certain philosophical questions. These are the questions of what knowledge is and problems of norms related to the lack of distinction between epistemological kinds of norms. This rethinking also implies the necessity of rethinking philosophical education. (shrink)

This article leverages the theme of friendship in Oliver O’Donovan's Entering into Rest as a locus of comparison between his earlier Resurrection and Moral Order and the Ethics as Theology trilogy. It does so by using demonstrable methodological differences between the two moral-theological projects to illumine a fundamental theological coherence. The article pursues this task in five sections. The first expounds O’Donovan's reflection on friendship in Entering into Rest. The second articulates the triadic approach adopted in these reflections. The (...) third examines a similar triad articulated by O’Donovan in Resurrection and Moral Order. The fourth uses this triadic connection to demonstrate theological coherence between Resurrection and Moral Order and the Ethics as Theology trilogy. The fifth concludes by raising a critical query about the arbitrariness of the triadic methodology employed by O’Donovan. The article’s conclusion considers more generally—in light of O’Donovan's pursuit of ethics as theology—the inherent contingency and incompleteness of theological ethics. (shrink)

Joseph LaPorte in an article on `Kind and Rigidity'(Philosophical Studies, Volume 97) resurrects an oldsolution to the problem of how to understand the rigidityof kind terms and other general terms. Despite LaPorte'sarguments to the contrary, his solution trivializes thenotion of rigidity when applied to general terms. Hisarguments do lead to an important insight however. Thenotions of rigidity and non-rigidity do not usefullyapply at all to kind or other general terms. Extendingthe notion of rigidity from singular terms such (...) as propernames to general terms such as natural kind terms is amistake. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a philosophical clarification of the statement "faith in the resurrection of Christ saves men from sin", using some of the main arguments and hypotheses of my recent book, ’The Ways of Salvation (Les Voies du salut’, Paris 2010). I begin with some remarks on the theme of salvation in contemporary language and philosophy. I then sketch a conceptual analysis of the concept of salvation, first in its general sense, then in its specifically Christian (...) one. Finally, I offer a hypothesis on the ’modus operandi’ of salvation, or at least of one aspect of salvation as understood by Christianity. (shrink)

In his critical commentary on my earlier essay, "The Evidential Value of Miracles," Evan Fales explores a series of general methodological issues in sympathy with David Hume and sets forth three arguments against the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which it was not the purpose of my essay to defend but which I nevertheless affirmed. In response, I first address each of Fales’s critical asides and interpretive comments, and then respond to his claim that there are (...) three independently decisive arguments against the historicity of the resurrection. Our exchange is part of a larger book symposium on miracles. (shrink)

This article uses participant objectivation in sociology and philosophy as two knowledge fields to provide a reflexive comparison of their synced field effect in historical circumstances. Drawing on the philosopher and historian of science Gaston Bachelard, I theorize fielded knowledge as a social relation that combines the prior presence of folk knowledge with a socioanalytic exchange between field and folk that includes positions of either defense, replacement or critique. A comparison of post-Wittgenstein Anglophone philosophy and post-sixties American sociology describes their (...) mutual confrontation with folk psychology as an “epistemological obstacle” that generates a remarkable concern with action as a position-taking on the folk relation. A reflexive objectivation of folk knowledge is therefore necessary for a revised understanding of action that correlates with the distinction of sociology’s knowledge capital and how it fares as an explanatory resource in competitive circumstances. The article concludes by leveraging the synced field effect even further to make a recommendation that sociologists can increase the distinction of their knowledge capital by producing discourse that can recognize, legitimate and officialize experiences that otherwise remain obscure, nameless or impossible within the bounded universe of folk psychology. (shrink)

Late moderns, either explicitly or implicitly, tend to maintain a sharp dichotomy between body and soul, reflecting a prevalent ambivalence toward embodiment more generally. This article recovers a more biblical understanding of humans as embodied creatures with a psychosomatic unity of body and soul; human beings are simultaneously and inseparably embodied souls and ensouled bodies. This recovering helps to improve both the provision and reception of medical and pastoral care, particularly at the end of life. Particular attention is directed to (...) the works of St. Paul, Jeremy Taylor, and Beth Felker Jones. (shrink)

Analytical philosophy abounds in tours de force [[sic]], but these are usually directed against other genres of philosophy, particularly the brand which passes under the various titles of "speculative," "systematic," or "substantive" philosophy. What distinguishes Fain's tour de force is that he turns the cutting edge of analytical philosophy on itself and, in so doing, seeks to revalidate speculative philosophy on analytical grounds. The main attack is against the stereotypes of a dichotomy between history and the philosophy of history, of (...) analytical philosophy presented as the true basis of philosophy of history, and of speculative philosophy of history as some kind of pseudo-discipline which is neither philosophy nor history. At the same time, the author rejects the standard division of philosophy of history into analytical and speculative approaches. His positive arguments center around the crucial role of narration in history. It is not the historical facts which give intelligibility to history, but the story-line or plot which combines them into a coherent narrative. Narration is counterposed to the analytical philosopher's emphasis on descriptive explanation of the facts. Fain argues that narration not only does not preclude consideration of history as a science, but that science itself often requires narration for purposes of intelligibility. He downgrades the importance of the debate which has raged for the last three decades over the nature of historical explanation. Absorption with the pros and cons of the covering law model of historical explanation has tended to preempt the whole field of philosophy of history and to obscure other more basic issues such as the relationship of history to science. On the other hand, Fain could not resist the temptation to append an epilogue on Hempel's covering law model, thus denying in practice what he proclaimed in principle. The examples of speculative philosophy are drawn mainly from the works of Hegel, Marx, and Collingwood. They are expounded and criticized within the context of Fain's definition of philosophy of history as "the formulation and the critique of criteria of intelligibility of historical concepts." Although he finds shortcomings in the story-lines of all three from the standpoint of intelligibility, the author concludes with a call for historians and philosophers to debate the story-line that a history of mankind should adopt. The bibliography is informative and selective.--H. B. (shrink)

Giorgio Tagliacozzo is the pied piper of Vico studies in the English-speaking world; and the line behind him--including the likes of Isaiah Berlin, Ernesto Grassi, Hayden White, Donald Verene, Michael Mooney, and the present reviewer--has grown spectacularly in the past three decades of Vichian scholarship and proselytizing. Here Tagliacozzo offers not only a chronicle of this enterprise since 1944 but also a history and summary of his larger, personal vision of the Vichian vision of the structure of learning. This vision (...) of a "tree of knowledge" is depicted by an accompanying wallchart, with commentary, which represents both a taxonomy of preand post-Vichian disciplines and a portrayal of their evolution and the attendant "modifications of the human mind.". (shrink)

Le général André Bach dans une réflexion sur l’« horizon de mort dans la violence de guerre » part d’une approche anthropologique du phénomène de violence et de la peur (quasiment biologique) qu’il engendre en soulignant les difficultés des sociétés occidentales à penser la mort. C’est l’État qui donne à la guerre un sens politique et sacré et qui crée les catégories fonctionnelles de la guerre (les concepts de paix et de guerre ne sont pas en eux-mêmes opérationnels). Dans le (...) cadre d’une réflexion clausewitzienne sur la montée aux extrêmes, l’« extrême » pour le soldat est toujours sa propre mort (plus que celle de l’ennemi). Les notions de barbarisation et humanisation ne peuvent en ce sens rendre compte de la violence et de la peur radicales présentes dans toute guerre où le rôle du commandement est toujours de mettre en œuvre un degré de violence supérieur à celui de l’adversaire, sans aucune considération de « proportionnalité » de cette violence. La mise à distance technique ne diminue pas la violence mais l’augmente à proportion de l’éloignement de la peur. Seul le politique peut et doit mettre des limites à cette violence militaire par nature illimitée. La modernisation des armes ne relève jamais d’une humanisation du combat mais d’une recherche d’une violence plus efficace. L’entraînement du soldat en temps de paix n’est jamais entraînement à la violence mais apprentissage de savoir-faire et effort de constitution d’un groupe soudé, doté d’un bon moral. L’ordre et la formation tentent de limiter la sauvagerie mais il existe une constitution endogène de comportements propres au soldat, que la hiérarchie tente de canaliser dans une symbolique guerrière fondée sur le sentiment de l’honneur (destiné à compenser la peur d’être une proie vouée à mourir et à faire préférer la lutte au coude à coude sur l’instinct de conservation). Le couple violence/honneur fait que l’armée dépourvue de contrat social n’est pas soluble dans le politique (aujourd’hui dans les écoles militaires on ne parle plus d’« honneur » mais d’« éthique »…, mais pour dire la même chose). La conscription fut une rupture de la logique endogène de l’armée et introduisit une brèche dans ce système archaïque. Mais religion (au Moyen Âge) ou logique démocratique (de nos jours) s’avèrent surtout des « béquilles idéologiques » qui, en définitive, sont souvent plus efficaces pour accroître la barbarisation que pour l’éviter (exemple de la colonisation algérienne où une armée de paix, fonctionnarisée et rigoureusement canalisée, appartenant à une génération n’ayant jamais connu de violence de guerre, développe des massacres de masse). (shrink)