Terry Lectures. A religious philosopher's exploration of the nature and history of the word argues that the word is initially and always sound, that it cannot be reduced to any other category, and that sound is essentially an event manifesting power and personal presence. His analysis of the development of verbal expression, from oral sources through the transfer to the visual world and to contemporary means of electronic communication, shows that the predicament of the human word is the (...) predicament of man himself. (shrink)

The philosophy of “presence” seeks to challenge current understandings of meaning and understanding. One can trace its origins back to Vico, Dilthey, and Heidegger, though its more immediate exponents include Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, and such contemporary philosophers of history as Frank Ankersmit and Eelco Runia. The theoretical paradigm of presence conveys how the past is literally with us in the present in significant and material ways: Things we cannot touch nonetheless touch us. This makes (...) class='Hi'>presence a post-linguistic or post-discursive theory that challenges current understandings of “meaning” and “interpretation.” Presence provides an overview of the concept and surveys both its weaknesses and its possible uses. In this book, Ethan Kleinberg and Ranjan Ghosh bring together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to explore the possibilities and limitations of presence from a variety of perspectives—history, sociology, literature, cultural theory, media studies, photography, memory, and political theory. The book features critical engagements with the presence paradigm within intellectual history, literary criticism, and the philosophy of history. In three original case studies, presence illuminates the relationships among photography, the past, memory, and the Other. What these diverse but overlapping essays have in common is a shared commitment to investigate the attempt to reconnect meaning with something “real” and to push the paradigm of presence beyond its current uses. The volume is thus an important intervention in the most fundamental debates within the humanities today. Contributors: Bill Ashcroft, University of New South Wales; Mark Bevir, University of California, Berkeley; Susan A. Crane, University of Arizona; Ranjan Ghosh, University of North Bengal; Suman Gupta, Open University Ethan Kleinberg, Wesleyan University; John Michael, University of Rochester; Vincent P. Pecora, University of Utah; Roger I. Simon. (shrink)

Combining the methodologies of art history, aesthetics and cultural history, this book opens up new ways of looking at the phenomenon of ruins.

The cultural politics of Catholic restoration under Mary Tudor have been as crucial to the historical legacy of Thomas More as More's image was to the regime's own historical self-presentation. Not only did the Marian period see the first reappearance in print of many of More's writings after twenty years, the overwhelming presence of More's figure and work in official Catholic discourse, especially from 1556 onwards, also generated many instances of implicit Morean echoes pervading a great variety of Marian (...) literary texts and genres. This essay analyses a number of such hidden presences of More within classical translations of the period, from John Brende's History of Quintus Curtius, which was issued almost simultaneously with the 1553 Marian edition of More's Dialogue of Comfort, to George Colvile's Boethius and Nicholas Grimald's De officiis, whose appearance coincided with the preparation of More's English Workes for print. As it emerges, such implicit echoes and allusions to More's life and writings not only reshaped the classical works themselves, both updating them and enriching them with additional cultural and political significations; above all they helped to invest the program of Marian religious restoration with the credentials of classical learning promoted by the early Tudor humanists. (shrink)

In Walter Benjamin. Presence of Mind, Failure to Comprehend Stéphane Symons offers an innovative reading of the work of German philosopher, essayist and literary critic Walter Benjamin that characterizes his writings as "neither a-theological, nor immediately theological.".

Comprises the Charles F. Deems Lectures delivered at New York University in 1968. Discusses the significance of the Holocaust, emphasizing theological issues, and its uniqueness in history. An authentic response to it - religious or secular - is a commitment to the autonomy and security of the State of Israel. Refers to Jewish midrash to explore the meaning and significance of the Holocaust and relates Jewish thinking about the Holocaust to Jewish thinking about earlier catastrophes. Jewish particularism remains a (...) scandal to modern secularism. Pt. 3 (p. 67-104), "The Commanding Voice of Auschwitz", states that the death of God occurs in the inward realm of the spirit alone and nowhere else. The imperative for Jews is not to flee being Jewish: "Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories. They are commanded to survive as Jews". (shrink)

wledge, including philosophy, theology and literature. The concept of time has deep roots in human history and is related to many complex questions, such as the nature of time, its relation to eternity and human existence. In this context, comparing the concepts of time of different authors can help to understand the diversity of views on this phenomenon and its significance in culture and history.This article examines the concepts of time and eternity in the works of two outstanding (...) authors - Origen and Dante. Both of these authors have a significant impact on the culture and spiritual heritage of the world, and their views on time and eternity attract the attention of researchers from various fields. The purpose of the article is an attempt to compare and analyze the concepts of time and eternity in the works of Origen and Dante in order to better understand their views and their influence on culture and spiritual tradition.Through the analysis and comparison of the two authors’ theological-philosophical concept of eternity, we also identify the way of participation in eternity through which man opens the way to his eternal permanence.The study of time and eternity is of constant relevance because it addresses fundamental questions about the nature of existence, the meaning of life, and the ultimate destiny of humanity. By studying the thoughts of Origen, an early Christian theologian, and Dante Alighieri, a medieval poet, we gain a deeper understanding of the evolution of these concepts and their significance in different intellectual and cultural contexts. This comparative analysis sheds light on timeless and universal aspects of time and eternity that transcend historical and cultural boundaries. (shrink)

In the 1930s, John Dewey helped lead a purge of communists from the New York City teachers union. That he justified this action politically and philosophically calls into question the claim that Deweyan pragmatism was a radically democratic philosophy. Instead, Dewey's abiding belief in the exceptionally democratic character of American life allowed him to evade genuine democracy, to normalize political engagement while aligning it with national and nationalist imperatives, and to endorse the repression of legitimate political dissent.

: The Cartesians have often been read as if they denied spatial presence to incorporeal substances, reserving it for extended things alone. This article explores whether this common interpretation is accurate, examining the cases of both created minds and the divine substance of God Himself. Through scrutiny of the relevant texts of both Descartes himself and his followers, it demonstrates that, in the divine case, this common interpretation is incorrect, and that the Cartesians did believe that God’s own substance (...) really was omnipresent in a literal sense. In the case of created minds, by contrast, the article suggests that the standard reading is probably correct after all, and that these substances were indeed excluded from the spatial world: but it also suggests that, in the hands of at least some of the Cartesians, this position caused certain philosophical tensions and potential inconsistencies within their systems. (shrink)

In Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology, Tyson L. Putthoff combines contemporary theory and sound exegesis to understand early Jewish beliefs about how the human self reacts ontologically in God s presence.".

Spiritual Theology's journey through these last decades shows an itinerary of development, the fruit of which is an ever more solid identity. This book seeks to present a perspective in that itinerary and in tune with the signs of our times: on one hand, militant secularism and, on the other, a widespread, concrete resurgence of experiences of transcendence. In this sense, the author is presenting a path of study organized around five concepts: presence, mystery, transcendence, lived experience, and transformation. (...) In effect, the inner transformation worked by the Presence of Mystery leaves a new knowing, in which the relationship with reality is renewed, since it has expanded and dilated beyond sensible perception, opening the subject up to an unlimited and real horizon of transcendence. The awareness of perceiving a 'greater reality' within reality leaves an emotional resonance that teaches a new way of feeling and reacting in the face of sensibly perceived reality. (shrink)

This article deals with the material presence of the past and the recent call in the human sciences for a " things." This renewed interest in things signals a rejection of constructivism and textualism and the longing for what is "real," where "regaining" the object is conceived as a means for re-establishing contact with reality. In the context of this turn, we might wish to reconsider the status of relics of the past and their function in mediating relations between (...) the organic and the inorganic, between people and things, and among various kinds of things themselves for reconceptualizing the study of the past. I argue that the future will depend on whether and how various scholars interested in the past manage to modify their understanding of the material remnants of the past, that is, things as well as human, animal, and plant remains. In discussing this problem I will refer to Martin Heidegger's distinction between an object and a thing, to Bruno Latour's idea of the agency of things and object-oriented democracy, and to Don Ihde's material hermeneutics. To illustrate my argument I will focus on some examples of the ambivalent status of the disappeared person in Argentina, which resists the oppositional structure of present versus absent. In this context, the disappeared body is a paradigm of the past itself, which is both continuous with the present and discontinuous from it, which simultaneously is and is not. Since there are no adequate terms to analyze the "contradictory" or anomalous status of the present-absent dichotomy, I look for them outside the binary oppositions conventionally used to conceptualize the present-absent relationship in our thinking about the past. for this purpose I employ Algirdas Julien Greimas's semiotic square. (shrink)

Expression is at once content and structure. Of late attention has shifted from the meaning of expression as content to its meaning as structure. This shift has occurred in various fields: in philosophy notably with the Heidegger of Holzwege and with the later Wittgenstein; in linguistics there is the well known work of Sapir and men like Bernstein who acknowledge a debt to Sapir; in social anthropology the investigations of Lévi-Strauss are associated with this movement; and the French structuralist school (...) in literary criticism also approaches some problems from this angle. It is not a wholly new approach and doubtless historians will reveal its antecedents; what is new, perhaps, is the shift in emphasis. Marshall McLuhan has brought this shift in emphasis to the public notice in works that are both lively and at times provocative. But McLuhan is suggestive above all and he rarely carries his suggestions through. One would hope that those following him might take up some of the suggestions and work them out more fully. The telephone, for instance, has connected distant parts of the world so that decisions made in one hemisphere can be, in a few moments, communicated to another. Conversely, since the decision of the man on the spot can be communicated to the remote chief at once, the practice of delegation of authority changes. But how much, how often, to what extent does the technology run before its reasonable implementation? Such are the precise questions that now emerge. Unfortunately, The Presence of The Word does not take us much farther towards an answer. However, besides these investigations, there is another aspect to the whole field: the very notion of content and structure. In much of the writing in this area there seems to be some confusion, and some authors, when professedly talking of structure, allow content in by the back door. This criticism has been made by Durand of Lévi-Strauss. The confusion stems from a prior failure to distinguish between expression and meaning and a consequent failure to differentiate modalities of meaning. Prior to a discussion of a distinction between structure and content on the level of expression, there is needed a clarification of the structure of meaning. No matter what science one may be referring to, one will discover that it is theory verified in instances. When this has been clarified one can go on to discuss the relation of expression to theory e.g. the structure of scientific expression. Besides scientific meaning, there is aesthetic, symbolic and interpersonal meaning and here again their structure must be analysed. One question in the analysis will be, as before, the relation of expression to meaning. The relation of expression to meaning will differ in the several modalities and the significance of a shift in the way of expression will likewise differ from mode to mode. Fr Ong does not very clearly advert to this aspect of the problem and nowhere does he treat it adequately. (shrink)

Expression is at once content and structure. Of late attention has shifted from the meaning of expression as content to its meaning as structure. This shift has occurred in various fields: in philosophy notably with the Heidegger of Holzwege and with the later Wittgenstein; in linguistics there is the well known work of Sapir and men like Bernstein who acknowledge a debt to Sapir; in social anthropology the investigations of Lévi-Strauss are associated with this movement; and the French structuralist school (...) in literary criticism also approaches some problems from this angle. It is not a wholly new approach and doubtless historians will reveal its antecedents; what is new, perhaps, is the shift in emphasis. Marshall McLuhan has brought this shift in emphasis to the public notice in works that are both lively and at times provocative. But McLuhan is suggestive above all and he rarely carries his suggestions through. One would hope that those following him might take up some of the suggestions and work them out more fully. The telephone, for instance, has connected distant parts of the world so that decisions made in one hemisphere can be, in a few moments, communicated to another. Conversely, since the decision of the man on the spot can be communicated to the remote chief at once, the practice of delegation of authority changes. But how much, how often, to what extent does the technology run before its reasonable implementation? Such are the precise questions that now emerge. Unfortunately, The Presence of The Word does not take us much farther towards an answer. However, besides these investigations, there is another aspect to the whole field: the very notion of content and structure. In much of the writing in this area there seems to be some confusion, and some authors, when professedly talking of structure, allow content in by the back door. This criticism has been made by Durand of Lévi-Strauss. The confusion stems from a prior failure to distinguish between expression and meaning and a consequent failure to differentiate modalities of meaning. Prior to a discussion of a distinction between structure and content on the level of expression, there is needed a clarification of the structure of meaning. No matter what science one may be referring to, one will discover that it is theory verified in instances. When this has been clarified one can go on to discuss the relation of expression to theory e.g. the structure of scientific expression. Besides scientific meaning, there is aesthetic, symbolic and interpersonal meaning and here again their structure must be analysed. One question in the analysis will be, as before, the relation of expression to meaning. The relation of expression to meaning will differ in the several modalities and the significance of a shift in the way of expression will likewise differ from mode to mode. Fr Ong does not very clearly advert to this aspect of the problem and nowhere does he treat it adequately. (shrink)

Aquinas’s doctrine that infused virtues accompany sanctifying grace raises many questions. We examine one: how do the infused virtues relate to the acquired virtues? More precisely, can the person with the infused virtues possess the acquired virtues? We argue for an answer consistent with and informed by Aquinas’s writings, although it goes beyond textual evidence, as any answer to this question must. There are two plausible, standard interpretations of Aquinas on this issue: the coexistence view and transformation view. After explaining (...) the views, we present plausible reasons for and against each view. The evidence suggests, we argue, that the acquired virtues are both present and absent in the Christian. We then survey Aquinas’s account of virtual presence. Finally, we argue that the case of the presence of acquired virtues in the Christian is a good candidate for virtual presence. (shrink)

Combining the methodologies of art history, aesthetics and cultural history, this book opens up new ways of looking at the phenomenon of ruins.

Ten years ago Father Ong published a scholarly book, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue which led him to raise fundamental questions about the history of the spoken word. Since that time, he has returned to this complex topic from a variety of perspectives, extending his vision over the entire development of Western Civilization. Now in this book he traces the development of the "shifting sensorium," from its oral-aural sources to the subtle take over of the visual world (...) to the new possibilities created by electronic communication. But throughout this history the "mystery" of the spoken word prevails. The spoken word is neither a sign nor a symbol, but a living presence which is at the very center of human life. The mystery of sound "is the most productive of understanding and unity, the most personally human, and in this sense closest to the divine." While Ong ranges over the entire history of man and culture, evoking and exhibiting his claims rather than arguing for them in detail, he opens up for us a fresh and exciting perspective for understanding a wide range of human phenomena.—R. J. B. (shrink)

‘For performance must precede reflection on performance and method is the fruit of that reflection’. This statement taken from the new introduction to Verbum, where it refers to Aquinas’ performance in the investigation of human understanding, may, perhaps, be taken as a key to Fr Lonergan’s work. It is worthy of some reflection.

‘For performance must precede reflection on performance and method is the fruit of that reflection’. This statement taken from the new introduction to Verbum, where it refers to Aquinas’ performance in the investigation of human understanding, may, perhaps, be taken as a key to Fr Lonergan’s work. It is worthy of some reflection.

This splendid little volume is the edited version of a series of lectures delivered at the Catholic University of America in March, 1981, by a noted authority on both Stoicism and the history of medieval philosophy. Its aim is not to track down all of the Stoic elements imbedded in the philosophic and theological literature of the Middle Ages--a vast enterprise to which scholars have yet to turn their attention--but to offer a preliminary survey that could conceivably "serve as (...) a stimulus for further research". The assembled material, and there is much of it, has been conveniently organized under the following chapter headings: "The Challenge of Materialism", "Ethical Perspectives", and "Fatalism and Freedom". In the interest of time and space, other important considerations, such as those pertaining to Stoic cognitive theory and Stoic logic, have been mostly left aside. Chapter One, which constitutes an introduction to the work as a whole, is devoted to an examination of the various sources to which the medievals were indebted for their knowledge of Stoic philosophy. The achievement is an impressive one by any standard and the reader can only admire the ease with which the author, who is so obviously in command of his subject, is able to move from one topic to another or from one author to another. (shrink)

There is a common tradition in European education going back to the Middle Ages which long played a part in providing the curriculum of schools which catered both for the wealthy and for able sons of less well-to-do families. Originally published in 1974, this volume examines the relationship between education and society in the different countries of Europe from which differences in tradition and practice emerge. The countries discussed include: France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, Poland and Sweden.

Originally published in 1972, this book is concerned with education as part of a larger social history. Chapters include: The roots of Anglican supremacy in English education The Board schools of London The use of ecclesiastical records for the history of education Topographical resources: private and secondary education from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

This little volume, using a combined approach of phenomenology, history, philosophy, and theology probes deeply into questions of belief and commitment. The book is valuable for scholars who possess the background and sensitivity to appreciate the three essays which constitute it. The first of these, "The Structure of Jewish Experience," takes up the epistemological problem of belief in a God who is present in history and who can consequently be the object of worship by modern man just as (...) he was thousands of years ago. The second essay, "The Challenge of Modern Secularity," deals with current theological issues, including the Subjectivist Reductionism, the "Death" of God, and faith as "immediacy after reflection." The third and most impassioned essay, "The Commanding Voice of Auschwitz," deals with themes which have been the preoccupation of Elie Wiesel, to whom the book is dedicated. There have not been many Jewish writers since the holocaust, who have been willing to write about their faith. Fackenheim speculates that it must be difficult to justify such faith to oneself in light of the fate of the Jews in recent history. In this book, and particularly in the last essay, the author attempts to justify such faith, and he does it intelligently and eloquently.--S. J. B. (shrink)

What is history? From Thucydides to Toynbee historians and nonhistorians alike have wondered how to answer this question. A New Philosophy of History reflects on developments over the last two decades in historical writing, not least the renewed interest in the status of narrative itself and the presence of the authorial "voice." Subjects include the problems of Grand Narrative, multiple voices and the personal presence of the historian in his text, the ambitions of the French Annales (...) school and the so-called "Grand Chronicler," and the relevance of non-literary models--museum presentations and picturings--regarding historical discourse. The range of approaches found in A New Philosophy of History ensures that this book will establish itself as required reading not only for historians, but for everyone interested in literary theory, philosophy, or cultural studies. This volume presents essays by Hans Kellner, Nancy F. Partner, Richard T. Vann, Arthur C. Danto, Linda Orr, Philippe Carrard, Ann Rigney, Allan Megill, Robert Berkhofer, Stephen Bann, and Frank Ankersmit. (shrink)

Originally published in 1971, this volume examines the relationship between the history and sociology of education. History does not stand in isolation, but has much to draw from and contribute to, other disciplines. The methods and concepts of sociology, in particular, are exerting increasing influence on historical studies, especially the history of education. Since education is considered to be part of the social system, historians and sociologists have come to survey similar fields; yet each discipline appears to (...) have its own aims and methodology. (shrink)