Jean-Francois Lyotard's essay `Adorno as the Devil' had argued that Theodor Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music was a `diabolic' work of `negative theology' which attributed to Schoenberg's music a secret redemptive power. However, in his later writings, such as the essays in The Inhuman, Lyotard has himself moved close to a `negative theological' position with respect to modernity, time, aesthetics and music. The paper uses the occasion of Lyotard's own theologically inspired essays on music, `God and Puppet' and (...) `Obedience', to re-evaluate the following: Adorno's claims that music transcends mere language and `reaches' for the theological; and more general claims within modern western culture on behalf of music's ability to express the inexpressible. The argument is that the music as negative theology position is not inherently metaphysical but rather that it reflects the importance of the `unsayable' to modern conceptions of reason. In resisting the `closure' of the modern narrative of reason, music, as a temporal art, has often given expression to the more radical forms of alterity present within modern forms of time. In other words, negative theology is not the discourse of the devil; it is the impossible discourse of western reason and its internal fracturing. (shrink)

A hallmark of Christian mysticism is negative theology, which refers to the school of thought that gives prominence to negation in reference to God. By denying the possibility to name God, negative theology cuts at the very root of our cognitive makeup--the human impulse to name and put things into categories--and thereby situates us "halfway between a 'no longer' and a 'not yet'" , a temporality in which "the past is negated, but...the present is not yet formulated" (...) . The affective corollary of this "no longer" and "not yet" state is the "dark night of the soul" that mystics are known to have bouts of. One particular variant of the "dark night of the soul" is awe, which will be the focus of this paper. My investigation starts with an introduction to the two primary themes of negative theology--negativity and self-reflexivity, followed by a critique of D. Keltner and J. Haidt's model of awe, which is compared with R. Otto's phenomenology of mysticism in general and religious awe in particular. In the concluding section, I examine the relevance of religious awe to contemporary life on the one hand, and to emotion research on the other. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Gregory Rocca's nuanced discussion prevents Aquinas's thought from being capsulized in familiar slogans and is an antidote to unilateralist or monochrome views about God-talk.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 417-418 [Access article in PDF] Heidi M. Ravven and Lenn E. Goodman, editors. Jewish Themes in Spinoza's Philosophy. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 290. Cloth, $78.50. Paper, $26.95.The current anthology presents an important contribution to the study of Spinoza's relation to Jewish philosophy as well as to contemporary scholarship of Spinoza's metaphysics and political (...) theory.In the opening essay, Lenn Goodman takes upon himself the ambitious task of evaluating Spinoza's positions as to several central disputes throughout the history of philosophy. In this rich and extensive essay Goodman argues that Spinoza's radical rationalism makes him pursue syntheses between traditionally opposed poles. Lee Rice's article, "Love of God in Spinoza," carefully analyzes Spinoza's concept of love and suggests the existence of three kinds of love parallel to the three kinds of knowledge. Warren Montag addresses the unresolved issue of Spinoza's relation to the Kabbalah. Montag sides with Deleuze against the association of Spinozism with the Neo-Platonic theory of emanation, arguing that unlike the Neo-Platonists and Kabbalists, Spinoza's view of God rules out any hierarchy, and does not assume a descent from primal simplicity into complexity. Edwin Curley contributes a beautiful reading of the story of Job and of Maimonides' interpretation of the story. Curley follows Maimonides' discussion of the various positions regarding the question of divine providence and his attempt to identify the speeches of the characters of the book of Job with each of these positions. Following a sensitive consideration of various attempts to [End Page 417] recover Maimonides' own rather concealed view about providence, Curley concludes that "[W]hatever you think Maimonides' final word on Job is, our examination of him certainly supports [Spinoza's] claim that [Maimonides] reads Scripture in terms of Platonic or Aristotelian speculations" (170).Warren Zev Harvey's essay addresses Spinoza's most neglected work, the Compendium of the Grammar of the Hebrew Language. Apart from providing an outline of Spinoza's work as a Hebrew grammarian ("a noun-intoxicated grammarian") and pointing out some of Spinoza's more eccentric views about the nature of the Hebrew language, Harvey makes a compelling case for the importance of the book for the study of Spinoza's metaphysics. He points out a fascinating analogy which Spinoza draws between the parts of speech: (proper) noun, adjectives, and participles, and Spinoza's key metaphysical terms: substance, attributes, and modes. (Think about the weighty implications of this analogy for Curley's interpretation of the substance-mode relation.) According to Harvey, Spinoza's claim that all Hebrew words are derived from nouns is a linguistic parallel to Spinoza's pivotal metaphysical doctrine which makes all things be in the substance (or God). Kenneth Seeskin's article discusses the views of Maimonides and Spinoza on the question of creation and God's relation to the world. Seeskin reconstructs an interesting critical dialogue between these two philosophers. According to Seeskin, both philosophers held that an effect must be similar to its cause. Maimonides' commitment to Negative Theology and to the denial of any common measure between God and finite things forced him to deny causal or explanatory relation between God and the world. What Maimonides can suggest instead is rather to prove that the emergence of the world ex nihilo and according to the divine will, is possible, and even likely given certain astronomical facts of medieval science. Thus, Maimonides would hold that "although we have grounds for believing that creation occurred, we will never be in a position to say how" (120). For Spinoza, such a view constitutes nothing but a "sanctuary of ignorance." Thus, according to Seeskin, Spinoza affirms a clear causal relation between God and the world of finite things insofar as God is said to explain the world. While I tend to agree with most aspects of this analysis, it is important to note that Spinoza also claims that "between the finite and infinite there is no relation" (Letter 54). This... (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

In this dissertation, I will examine the problem of theological fatalism in St. Augustine and, specifically, whether or not Augustine was philosophically justified in his belief that his views on divine grace and human freedom could be harmonized. As is well-known, beginning with his second response To Simplician (ca. 396) and continuing through his works against the semi-Pelagians (ca. 426-429), Augustine espoused the Pauline doctrine of all-inclusive grace: that the fallen will’s ability to accomplish the good is totally a function (...) of God’s elective grace. What, then, does the fallen will do to work out its own salvation? There is the further issue of how to reconcile Augustine’s rather extreme emphasis on grace in his later works with the more balanced picture we receive in his sermones ad populum, written throughout his forty-year preaching career. In many of these sermons, even those written during the Pelagian controversy, Augustine is careful to leave space for both divine and human initiative in the process of our justification within the totus Christus, or ‘whole Christ.’ How we can understand Augustine in his role as doctor gratiae and as preacher of human freedom will be a major inquiry of this dissertation.The most serious obstacle to moving forward on these problems has been and remains the essentialist interpretation of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology by most commentators. On their interpretation, Augustine thought that there were no real distinctions within the Trinity, with each of the three divine persons and their actions sharing in the absolute unity of the divine essence. Holding this interpretation not only does away with the distinctness of each of the persons, but also requires all of God’s different powers and attributes, including willing and foreknowing, to be coalesced into one another without distinction in the divine essence. God’s foreknowledge is thereby identified with God’s will, which necessarily leads to theological fatalism: God would have to will everything that He foreknows, and God would have to foreknow everything that He wills. Since God is omniscient, He wills everything that will happen, including the future willings of the fallen human will.It cannot be denied that there are texts in the Augustinian corpus that seem to point to a reading of the Trinity as absolutely simple. But this study will endeavor to show that there are also other largely overlooked texts in On the Trinity, the Confessions, and his Commentaries on the Literal Interpretation of Genesis (among others) that argue for various distinctions within the Trinity to make sense of the relation between Creator and creature, and the differences between the divine processions of generation/spiration, and the act of creation. These texts will be shown to parallel very closely the position of the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, which consistently uses the real distinction between God’s essential being and energetic activities (also known as the essence-energy distinction) to avoid the problem of theological fatalism. This rich theological and philosophical tradition, from the time of the fourth-century Greek Fathers to the Byzantine tradition that followed, differs less with Augustine concerning the essentials of Trinitarian theology and its practical implications for solving the problem of making human freedom and divine grace compatible than has been hitherto thought. (shrink)

Ex interiore ipso exeas. Preface. This book reconstructs the history of a still open dialectics between several ethoi, that is, shared codes of unwritten rules, moral traditions, or self-aware attempts at reforming such codes, and ethical theories discussing the nature and justification of such codes and doctrines. Its main claim is that this history neither amounts to a triumphal march of reason dispelling the mist of myth and bigotry nor to some other one-way process heading to some pre-established goal, but (...) instead to a chain of controversies where the partners’ will to win unintentionally yields a wealth of insights on human existence that has still something to teach us. -/- 1. The Hellenic moral tradition. -/- Two different traditions of morality in vi-v century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. -/- 2. Plato and the Good. -/- Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates rejoinder to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 3. Aristotle and practical philosophy. -/- Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistency in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater families, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics, is illustrated. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexes, or ‘dispositions’. Prudence, or better, practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with boùleusis or deliberation is discussed, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 4. Cynics and Stoics: ethics as therapy. -/- The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place that was given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of the science of well-being aiming, more than pleasure understood as in the popular view, the reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Roman and Imperial Moralists. -/- The chapter is dedicated to the reconstruction of a particular kind of literature, whose specific features have long been under-stressed, namely the Roman and Imperial moral literature. Cicero is treated at some length, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is given pride of place, stressing the novelty of his approach to ethics as cognitive therapy, in this case just following an already existing new wave of interest after nineteenth-century oblivion justified by alleged lack of authentic ‘philosophical’ character. -/- 6. The Hebrew moral tradition. -/- A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torah (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Levitic is stressed as the turning point when the stress on mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, starts being combined with legal tradition yielding the change in the sensibility of the Second Temple time. -/- 7. Second Temple Judaism. -/- This chapter describes the Long March leading from the post-exile Zadokite restoration to the first-century aevi vulgaris. The first topic reconstructed is the Zadokite theology of the double retribution. The second is the alternative Enochic tradition consistently rejecting the central role of the Temple, the Priesthood and worship as atonement for sins and offering as an alternative God’s unlimited mercy and preaching mercy, not sacrifice as the way of behaving requested by God. Wisdom literature, the third subject discusses, is a kind of third way, on the one hand increasingly critical towards the double retribution and ruling theology’s optimism facing the world as it is and on the other mocking at the Enochic current as a band of dreamers and visionaries. The third way consists in disenchantment facing the word as it is combined with a refusal of vain and childish hope of prizes for the righteous, suggesting instead the leading idea of right deeds for righteousness’s sake. Rabbi Hillel, Rabbi Yeshua and Philo of Alexandria are described as the three leading figures at the culminating point of such process of emergence of a new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This starting point consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, whose meaning is, arguably, more consistent than a long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine made us believe. And Christian morality, vis-à-vis allegedly legalist ‘Ancient Testament’ teachings, is less of a novelty than most early Christian writers announced. -/- 8. Talmudic moral doctrines and proto-Christian paraenesis. -/- The first three sections examine the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirke Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deot, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexes and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was "the tool by which the world was built"; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous, but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The last two sections examine first the various Christian currents and then Gnostic para-Christian or non-Christian currents as well as Manicheism. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure, purest Judaism. The last section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manicheism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. -/- 9. Christianity as “philosophy”. -/- The chapter reconstructs the stormy story of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and several rhetorical topics from the Stoic and Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua himself had been influenced by cynical preachers, is a proof of the necessity to translate the original Christian message in a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 10. Ethics in the Arabic-Islamic Philosophy. -/- The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on the retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince, had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries, a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with the disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 11. Ethics in the Jewish philosophy. -/- The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place for the first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed too a few traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Tora and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirke Avot could be translated. -/- 12. The practical philosophy revival in Latin Europe. -/- A reconstruction is carried out of a fresh start of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium rescuing a Platonic and Augustinian legacy, with Anselm and Peter Abelard. In this phase remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions, gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of a full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. -/- 13. Scholastic practical philosophy: Thomas Aquinas. -/- Aquinas’s ethics is theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to the repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave pure nature incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too ambitious, and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Prima Secundae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas was able to solve the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from the knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethics, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of the death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not the Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is no way an ethical ‘absolutism’, as both the traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularists tend to believe, but rather an ethic of prudential judgment on the individual case. Exceptions to this approach – or better the result of logical fallacies – are provided by the thesis of the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of so-called intrinsically evil acts, a thesis that would simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences that Thomas did not live long enough to draw. -/- 14. Scholastic practical philosophy: John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. A reconstruction is carried out of the ethical doctrines by both most authoritative Franciscan doctors. Their continuity with Aquinas is vindicated against prejudice carried by centuries of polemics within the Catholic Church and tendentious disparaging of both as forerunners of execrable Reformation. Besides aspects of continuity, also the important novelties are illustrated, first John’s abandonment of Aquinas’s and Augustine’s eudemonism, asserting righteousness for righteousness’s sake, and then William’s explicit defence of the philosopher’s virtues, that is, natural morality, and his solution to the dilemma of God’s omnipotence and the universal validity of natural law extending to God himself. -/- 15. Aristotelianism interpreted by the Magistri Artium. -/- A reconstruction of the until recently forgotten ethical doctrines by the Parisian Magistri Artium, falsely depicted as ‘Averroists’ and either deprecated as heretics or mistaken for predecessors of modern secularism. In fact, they illustrate a view of ‘natural’ virtue as may be understood by human reason without the assistance by Revelation. -/- Etiamsi daremus Deum non esse. Intermediate considerations. Three considerations may be suggested by the story told in the book. The first one is that intellectual histories have been mounted in the past with the same state of mind as one may mount a war chariot. Such constructions are not very helpful as tools for understanding the past. Wars waged in the past have left the field obstructed by ruins not easy to remove even by those historians who have animated by an impartial academic motivation. They have been influenced too by consequences of past emphasis on some authors and damnatio capitis suffered by others, by stratifications left on sources by secondary literature and translations, by allotment of originally close sources to different literary genres, by the monopolization of religious texts by churches with full cooperation by secular scholars who still fear contamination. The second one is that aware or unaware ethnocentrism has carried various calamities to our comprehension of the past. Their last vestiges have surfaced again in the semi-scholarly discussion on the idea of Europe occasioned by the debate on a project of a European Constitution. Mention of Europe’s Christian roots has been the clumsiest move. Proclamations of such roots were so obvious in what they affirmed as they were totally off-path concerning what they omitted, namely that he modern European moral tradition included legacies from Middle-Eastern wisdom, Hellenic philosophy, Roman Imperial legal literature, and, besides, a Jewish legacy in turn incorporating other more ancient Middle-Eastern legacies and which has been partly conveyed by Christianity. And the Islamic-Arabic philosophy too, in so far it made the Nicomachean Ethics available to Latin Christian scholars, is one more of Europe’s roots. The third is that religious traditionalists and secularist fundamentalists have gone hand in hand for a couple of centuries in either extolling or deprecating the allegedly Modern idea of Ethics without God, first formulated by Hugo Grotius with the claim that natural law would still be valid ‘etiamsi daremus – quod sine summo scelere dari potest – Deum non esse’. The facts are, firstly, that this is not an irreligious claim and Grotius was just a pious and meek Christian and, secondly, that it is not a ‘modern’ claim but rather one more formulation of the claim that there is a natural morality, independent of divine revelation, a claim shared by Moshe ben Maimon, Aquinas and William of Ockham. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PLATO'S PARMENIDES AND ST. THOMAS'S ANALYSIS OF GOD AS ONE AND TRINITY SHERWIN KLEIN Fairleigh Dickinson University Hackensack, New Jersey IN HIS CRITICISM of the Neopfatonic interpretation of the Parmenides, Cornford says, "The fanguage throughout is as dry and prosaic as a textbook on algebra; there is little here to suggest that the One has any religious significance as there is in the other case to suggest that x, (...) y, and z are a trinity of unknown gods." 1 I agree with Cornfo11d that the Neopl1 atoniJc interpreta.tion is very speculative and seriously flawed. Nonethe1ess, the "negative theology" these interpreters attribute to Plato is instruic1tive. More than this, it can be shown that opinions like Cornford's are, to say the least, unimaginative. I intend to est1 ablish, in the first and main part of this artide, the logical agreement between the PJatonic and Thomistic analyses of an absoJuteiy simple unity. The argument at Parmenides 137b-142a, Blato's analysis of the absoluteJy one, prov ]des a basis for determining what God, as an absolutdy simple unity, is not. By applying this 'argument in the Parmenides to St. Thomas's discussion of God as one, I shaill show that what appears to be " as dry and prosai:c as a textbook on algebra " has, contrary to Cornfo11d, " religious significance." In the second part of this article, I shall use the arguments at Parmenides 157b-159b and 159b-160b to determine what can 1 Plato and Parmenides: Parmenides' Way of Truth and Plato's Parmenides, trans. with introduction and commentary by Francis MacDonald Cornford (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939), p. 131. 229 230 SHERWIN KLEIN be predicated of God, if St. Thomas's analysis of the Trinity is to aoco:rd with the articles of faith (God as an abso1utely simple unity as weU as a Trinity). Once again, we shall see the ":religious significance" of Plato's analysis and the irony of Cornfo11d's suggestion about the meaninglessness of applying Plato's analysis to " a trinity of unknown gods." I We should first he clear about how St. Thomas uses the term "one" as applied to God. In Q. n, A. 1 of the Prima Pars (The Unity of God),2 he distinguishes between one as "the negation of division" and one as "the principle of number." The first sense, which he calls the transcendental sense, applies to God; in this sense the one is opposed to the many as the undivided is :to the divided. Human beings cannot know what God is, but we can determine what God is not, e.g., not-many, the transcendental sense of being absolutely simple. (The human intdlect can only know the composite or tha,t which pertains to the composite; it cannot know that which is abso1ut ~ly sample or undivided.) St. Thomas says, "He is supremely undivided inasmuch as He is divided neither actually nor potentially by any mode of division; since He is altogether simple." 3 If we :compare the analysis of God as absolutely one or simple with the first hypothesis of the one in the Parmen~des, i.e., if the one is one, what can be predicated of it, then we shall notice an important similarity. If the one is simply one, none of the categories which can determine the nature of the one are predicable of it. Similarly, God as absolutely one or simple cannot be understood in,a positive manner (His nature is incomprehensible). However, He can be understood negatively. And what we can say negatively about God parallels 2 References are to the Summa Theologica in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aqu-Ynas, ed. Anton C. Pegis, vol. I (New York: Random House, 1945). a ST, I, q. 11, a. 4, c.; Pegis, p. 90. PLATO AND AQUINAS 231 Plato's determination of what is not predicable of the one as simple. To show what God is not, we must negate what does not apply to Him; this reveals the simplicity of God. If the one is one (in St. Thomas's transcendenta.l sense of "one " as simple ), says Plato, it cannot be many and, therefor:e, cannot have... (shrink)

""This book contains a careful, thorough, and where necessary skeptical as regards doubtful evidence (especially in the case of Plato and the Old Academy) of the beginnings in European thought of the negative or apophatic way of thinking and its relations to more positive or kataphatic ways of thinking about God. One of its greatest strengths, perhaps the greatest, is that the author makes clear that none of the persons concerned, Hellenic, Jewish or Christian, was engaged in the (...) pursuit of a philosophical abstraction, or the heaping of rhetorical superlatives on God. They were rather concerned to present the origin of the universe as an intimately present living reality which infinitely transcends our thought and speech. This, combined with careful attention to the varieties of negative theology and its relations with positive, and the particular difficulties experienced by the members of the various traditions involved, makes the book the best introduction to the negative theology available."" -A. H. Armstrong, Emeritus Professor of Greek, University of Liverpool, England. Emeritus Professor of Classics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Senior Fellow of the British Academy. Irish academic Deirdre Carabine has lived and taught in Uganda for more than twenty years. She has recently been founder Vice-Chancellor at the Virtual University of Uganda (VUU), the first fully online university in Sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to that she set up International Health Sciences University in Kampala. She has taught at Queen's Belfast, University College Dublin, and Uganda Martyrs University. Currently, she is Director of Programmes at VUU. She attended the Queen's University of Belfast where she graduated with a PhD in philosophy, and University College Dublin where, as one of the first Newman Scholars, she gained a second PhD in Classics. She is also author of John Scottus Eriugena in the Great Medieval Thinkers Series (2000). (shrink)

Anthropomorphism, or the attribution of human properties to nonhuman entities, is often posited as an explanation for the origin and nature of God concepts, but it remains unclear which human properties we tend to attribute to God and under what conditions. In three studies, participants decided whether two types of human properties—psychological properties and physiological properties—could or could not be attributed to God. In Study 1, participants made significantly more psychological attributions than physiological attributions, and the frequency of those attributions (...) was correlated both with participants’ religiosity and with their attribution of abstract, theological properties. In Study 2 and Study 3, participants not only showed the same preference for psychological properties but were also significantly faster, more consistent, and more confident when attributing psychological properties to God than when attributing physiological properties. And when denying properties to God, they showed the reverse pattern—that is, they were slower, less consistent, and less confident when denying psychological properties than when denying physiological properties. These patterns were observed both in a predominantly Christian population and a predominantly Hindu population. Overall, we argue that God is conceptualized not as a person in general but as an agent in particular, attributed a mind by default but attributed a body only upon further consideration. (shrink)

This article examines the influential analogical schemas of David Burrell and John Milbank. While Milbank emphasises that analogy must be understood as primarily an ontological doctrine, much of Burrell’s work focuses on semantic rather than ontological issues. Milbank has strongly criticised one of Burrell’s early books for construing Aquinas too much in terms of the agnosticism of Kant. It is demonstrated, however, that Burrell is increasingly led in his reading of Aquinas to acknowledge the necessity of a similitude of participation (...) between creatures and God. Analysis of the disagreement between Burrell and Milbank shows one of the reasons why the via analogia matters. We need not privilege the apophatic over the cataphatic, nor the cataphatic over the apophatic. The way of analogy transcends this unpalatable either/or. As relying on the proper exercises, on practical know‐how, analogy allows theology a powerful pedagogical tool to govern God‐talk, while yet affirming the continual revelation and discovery of something ever‐greater. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN RES SIGNIFICATA AND MODUS SIGNIFICANDI IN AQIDNAS'S THEOLOGICAL EPISTEMOLOGY GREGORY RoccA, O.P. Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology Berkeley, California ST. THOMAS AQUINAS often refers to the distinction between res significata and modus significandi. He asserls that, whie the :absolute and analogical predicates of positive theology may be pveditcated of God with regard to their RS,1 they mrust,be denied of God with regard to their (...) MS.2 The distinotion, then, is an imporlant element in his 1 For brevity's sake I will refer to res significata, by RS and to modus significand.i by MS; I will also speak of the res/modus distinction. The following abbreviations for Aquinas's works will be used: BDH=Flropositio in librum Boethii De hebdomadibus (Marietti ed., 1954); DA=the disputed question De anima (ed. J. H. Robb [Toronto: PIMS, 1968]) ; DDN=Flropositi super librum Dionysii De divinis nominibus (Marietti ed., 1950); DP=De potentia (Marietti ed., 1949); DSS=De substantiis separatis (Leonine Commission, vol. 40, 1969); DV=De veritate (Leonine Co=ission, vol. 22, 197276 ); Herm.=Sententia libri Peri hermeneias (Marietti ed., 1955); John= Leotura super Johannem (Marietti ed., 1952); Meta.=Sententia libri Metaphysioorum (Marietti ed., 1950); Phys.=Sententia libri Physioorum (Marietti ed., 1965) ; Quod. = Quaestiones quodlibetales (Marietti ed., 1956) ; BOG= Summa contra gentiles (Marietti ed., vols. 2-3, 1961) ; SDO=Eropositio super librum De causis (Marietti ed., 1955) ; SS=Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (Paris: Lethielleuro, 1929, 1933, 1947); ST=Summa theologiae (Alba/ Rome: Editiones Paulinae, 1962). The English translations are my own. For Thomas's positive theology of the divine names, see Gregory Rocca, "Analogy as Judgment and Faith in God's Incomprehensibility: A Study in the Theological Epistemology of Thomas Aquinas" (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1989) 540-615. 2 A characteristic text: "In every name predicated by us [of God], imperfection is found with respect to the name's mode of signifying [MS], 173 174 GREGORY ROCCA, O.P. theological epistemology and onomatofogy.3 For some, however, the distinction wou1d ultimately lead us back to the univocist camp of Duns Scotus,4 for they see it as hiding within itself 1 a latent core of univocity. One writes that the predication involved in 1anafogy of attribution is both univocal and equivocail: " It is univocal, insofar as it ai1ways denotes the siame proprietas rei; it is equivoca,J since, through a differrent modus significandi, it •connotes ' a different existentiail mode of the denoted proprieta.'J." 5 Another writes, in simil.ar fashion, that "the :same property is signifi·ed, hut the way in which the property inheres in the subject is different." a Another contends tha;t the idis:tinJCtion between RS and MS is a" bogus distinction between what words realily mean and what they mean to us." 7 If the res/niodus distinction is an imwhich does not belong to God, though the thing signified [RS'] is suitable to God in some eminent manner " (SOG l.30.277) ; the same sentiment is found in many other texts such as SS L35.LL ad2 and ST l.13.3. Thomas often explains the saying of Pseudo-Dionysius, that negations about God are true while affirmations are vague, by claiming that affirmations are true as regards their RS but not as regards their MS (SS l.22.l.2. adl; l.4.2.l. ad2; SOG l.30.277; DP 7.5 ad2; ST l.13.12. adl; SDO 6.161). a Hampus Lyttkens, however, thinks the distinction plays no essential role in Thomas's theory of the divine names (" Die Bedeutung der Gottesprltdikate bei Thomas von Aquin," N eue Zeitschrift fur systematisahe Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 6 [1964] 277-80). Klaus Muller claims the application of the res/modus distinction to the divine names " says really nothing at all" (Thomas van Aquins Theorie und Praxis der Analogie. Der Streit um das rechte Vorurteil und die Ana,lyse einer aufsohlussreichen Diskrepanz in der "Summa theologiae ", Regensburger Studien zur Theologie 29 [Frankfurt am Main/Bern/NY: Peter Lang, 1983] 100). 4 See Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon, HJ77) 78-80. s Jan Pinborg, Logik und Semantik im Mittelalter: liJin uberblick, Afterword by... (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This article argues for an interpretation of doctrine 7 of universal faith in Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise—that God pardons the sins of those who repent—that renders it true in the terms set by Spinoza's Ethics. Though categorized in the Ethics as a vice, repentance nevertheless has a positive political function as the lesser of two evils, supplanting the greater evils of unrepentant pride and shamelessness. The philosopher can understand God's pardon as the natural advantage conferred by repentance itself insofar as (...) it supplants those greater evils. This pardon arises through the laws of Nature (God's mercy and grace), which are equally responsible for that very repentance. The philosophical truth of the doctrines of universal faith ensures that freedom of philosophizing can be granted without harm to the peace or piety of the Republic and cannot be denied without destroying the same. (shrink)

This thesis presents a case for theological compatibilism, the view that divine foreknowledge and human freedom are compatible. My attempt to support theological compatibilism is based chiefly upon two arguments, which appear in the second and third chapters of this thesis. While these arguments differ, they are united in one respect: each argument relies heavily upon the doctrine of divine sustenance, which is the doctrine that God is causally responsible for the continual existence of the universe. In chapter II, I (...) employ the doctrine of divine sustenance as an assumption that, when conjoined with a modified characterization of the necessity of the past, forces a common argument against theological compatibilism to generate an absurd conclusion. This approach constitutes a negative argument for theological compatibilism: if the modifications to accidental necessity and the assumptions regarding sustenance are appropriate, then some principle underlying a traditional argument against theological compatibilism must be rejected in order to avoid absurdity. In chapter III, I use the notion of divine sustenance in a positive argument for the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. In that chapter, I contend that theological models that deny foreknowledge or divine sustenance lack the resources to explain the existence of human persons making free decisions. However, I argue that at least one theological model that includes foreknowledge, when conjoined with the doctrine of divine sustenance, provides adequate explanatory grounds for the existence of persons in their free decision-making. This implies that if human persons are free, their freedom is compatible with divine foreknowledge and divine sustenance, which also supports the theological compatibilist's position. Although my discussion results in some unresolved difficulties regarding divine freedom, which I discuss in the final chapter, the arguments in the second and third chapters nevertheless yield the conclusion that proper consideration of divine sustenance corroborates theological compatibilism. The theological compatibilist, then, may cogently employ the doctrine of divine sustenance to defend the coherency of his or her own position and to criticize the plausibility of opposing views. (shrink)

In Plato's Parmenides we find on the one hand that the One is denied every property , and on the other hand that the One is attributed every property . In the course of the history of Platonism , these assertions - probably meant by Plato as ontological statements of an entirely formal nature - were repeatedly made the starting points of metaphysical speculations. In the Mystical Theology of the Pseudo-Dionysius they became principles of Christian mysticism and negative theology. (...) I shall show that the two assertions can each be interpreted within the ontological framework of ancient and medieval logic in such a manner that it becomes true, and I shall make plausible that they were understood, with regard to their logical core, by pagan and Christian Platonic metaphysicians just as is indicated by that interpretation. The mentioned ontological framework is basically the Boolean algebra of first-order properties. The main points of the interpretation are on the one hand the identification of the One with the maximal element of the algebra of properties, and on the other hand two alternative intuitively prominent mereological definitions of ontic predication. (shrink)

Samuel Clarke was by far the most gifted and influential Newtonian philosopher of his generation, and A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, which constituted the 1704 Boyle Lectures, was one of the most important works of the first half of the eighteenth century, generating a great deal of controversy about the relation between space and God, the nature of divine necessary existence, the adequacy of the Cosmological Argument, agent causation, and the immateriality of the soul. Together (...) with the other texts presented in this edition, it also provides the best introduction to Clarke's philosophical views, which, in addition to their intrinsic interest, are historically important for the light they shed both on the philosophical positions within the Newtonian circle and on the exchange between Clarke and Leibniz, the most famous philosophical controversy of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

The paper discusses al-Kindī's response to doctrines held by contemporary theologians of the Mu‘tazilite school: divine attributes, creation, and freedom. In the first section it is argued that, despite his broadly negative theology, al-Kindī recognizes a special kind of “essential” positive attribute belonging to God. The second section argues that al-Kindī agreed with the Mu‘tazila in holding that something may not yet exist but still be an object of God's knowledge and power. Also it presents a new (...) parallel between al-Kindī and John Philoponus. The third section gives an interpretation of al-Kindī as a compatibilist, in other words as holding that humans may be free even though their actions are necessitated. In all three cases, it is argued, al-Kindī is close to the Mu‘tazilite point of view, though he departs from them in the arguments he gives for that point of view. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to elucidate a problematic feature of Newton's metaphysics of absolute space. Specifically, I argue that Newton's theory has the untenable consequence that God depends on space for His existence and is therefore not an independent entity. I argue for this conclusion in stages. First, I show that Newton believed that space was an entity and that God and space were ontologically distinct entities. Part of this involves arguing that Newton denies that space is a (...) divine attribute. I then show that Newton endorsed a principle according to which the existence of space is a necessary condition for the existence of any other entity. Following this, I discuss the ways in which this makes God depend on space for His existence and the reasons why this is unacceptable for traditional conceptions of God. Specifically, I show that it is incompatible with the orthodox position that God be entirely independent and self-determining. Finally, I offer two considerations which, I hope, make the problem seem less serious than it first appears. The first consideration has to do with Newton's polemical context and the second has to do with the nature of his theological thought. (shrink)

The theme of this dissertation is to trace a development of defining freedom in the western tradition. It projects to have Luther and Kierkegaard as the central figures to delineate an understanding of freedom, called the Platonic-Augustinean-Lutheran-Kierkegaadian concept of freedom. The author penetrates into these two fundamental elements in this tradition: man by nature pursues good and good must be attributed to God's grace . Logically, these two elements by appearance are not compatible. However, historically, in Augustine's thought, they entered (...) into and then are able to coexist in one system. Their incompatibility and coexistence created a dynamic underlying the development of defining freedom. Influenced by Augustine, Luther followed this dynamic and found that he must deny human freedom . He then resorted to God's grace in promise and claimed that faith endorses righteousness and that a Christian is possessed of freedom in grace. Propelled by this same dynamic, Kierkegaard challenged the modern concept of freedom as self-determination in rationality and provided a profound analysis of human existence in the light of redemption. Kierkegaard's analysis reveals an existential paradox in which man freely chooses unfreedom. Logically, his existential analysis starts with the concept of eternal possibility and infers that freedom is to hold fast to possibility through possibility's giving out itself . The dynamic constituted of the Platonic principle and the concept of redemption allows Kierkegaard to define a powerful concept of freedom and to deconstruct the modern concept of freedom. ;There are two tasks in this dissertation. The first one is to offer a historical and philosophical demonstration of the dynamic, in which the Platonic principle and the concept of redemption proceed from the confrontation, through the combination and the separation, and at last to the unification. The other task is to defend a position that freedom understood in terms of possibility requires possibility's giving out itself In this defense, the essay treats the concept of redemption as a philosophical meditation, rather than a theological reflection. (shrink)

This article examines A.J. Heschel’s “Theology of pathos” in light of the critique Eliezer Berkovits raised against it. Heschel’s theology of pathos is the notion of God as the “most moved mover”, who cares deeply for humans, and thus highly influencing their prophetic motivation for human-social improvement. Berkovits, expressing the negative-transcendent theology of Maimonides, assessed that Heschel’s theology of pathos is not systematic, is anthropomorphic, and reflects a foreign Christian influence. However, when checking Berkovits’s own views as a thinker, (...) it turns out that he formulated some immanent theological notions that were overlapping those of Heschel, for example in attributing God the personal trait of caring. Surprisingly, most Heschel’s scholars did not consider this point. This riddle addressed here in two ways: (1) Psychological and Social, on which I understand Berkovits’s critique as a way of coping with his own religious perplexities, and in a wider sense, it is asserted that trans-denominational critique may be a discursive opportunity for mutual corrigibility. (2) Theological, since Heschel and Berkovits indeed faced a similar theological challenge, of rejecting any description of God as anthropomorphism. I thus offer a constructive theological argument for providing a justification to the immanent theologies of both Heschel and Berkovits. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 26, Issue 1, pp 118 - 147 This paper challenges the widespread emphasis on the absence of God in post- Holocaust historiography, theology, and art by suggesting that Barnett Newman’s _Stations of the Cross_ may have been conceived under the theological category of the apophatic rather than the aesthetic category of the sublime. This paper focuses on the “anti-realist” position of Newman and other artists for whom the Holocaust necessitated a renewed aniconic tendency in Jewish aesthetics. His (...) work, I suggest, holds out a tension between absolute absence and redemptive presence that at once resists and affirms a negative aesthetic of God’s solidarity with suffering. (shrink)

Kant’s turn to the subject has changed the epistemological conditions for theology. Four intellectual backgrounds of objections are examined: an Aristotelian and Thomistic teleological order of nature (1); Augustinianism based on original sin in which human agency is completely attributed to God’s grace (2); a Hegelian critique of the deontological conception of an “unconditional ought” which also puts Kant’s postulate of the existence of God into question (3); the combination in Radical Orthodoxy of a postmodern critique of the subject, (...) an Augustinian view of human nature, and a monistic understanding of the Trinity (4). Their different diagnoses why Kant’s work constitutes a cul-de-sac are contrasted with theological positions that welcome it as a watershed: its move from ontology to human subjectivity; from a biologically transmitted inescapable sin to a freedom for good and evil; from a strict reciprocity to an unlimited scope of ethics that is faced with the question of meaning; and from condemning the secular as “heretical” to defining it as the genuine space of the free human counterparts created by God, according to Duns Scotus’s late medieval theology which anticipates Kant’s concept of autonomy. The standard by which theologies are judged is how they do justice to the New Testament’s message of salvation by Jesus Christ. The Conclusion argues that Kant’s turn to freedom in its unconditionality and finitude has opened up a thought form in which the truth of the Gospel finds more adequate categories of understanding than in those of earlier eras. (shrink)

Beginning with Berkeley and Leibniz, philosophers have been puzzled by the close yet ambivalent association in Newton's ontology between God and absolute space and time. The 1962 publication of Newton's highly philosophical manuscript De Gravitatione has enriched our understanding of his subtle, sometimes cryptic, remarks on the divine underpinnings of space and time in better-known published works. But it has certainly not produced a scholarly consensus about Newton's exact position. In fact, three distinct lines of interpretation have emerged: Independence: space (...) and time are not essentially related to God. Causation: space and time are caused by God. Assimilation: space and time are attributes of God. This paper defends the third interpretation against the first two by drawing out the under-appreciated influence of Descartes' metaphysics on Newton's ‘physico-theology’. (shrink)

The project of articulating a theological ethics on the basis of liturgical anthropology is bound to fail if the necessary consequence is that one has to quit the forum of critical modern rationality. The risk of Engelhardt's approach is to limit rationality to a narrow vision of reason. Sin is not to be understood as the negation of human holiness, but as the negation of divine holiness. The only way to renew theological ethics is to understand sin as the anthropological (...) and ethical expression of the biblical message of the justification by faith only. Sin is therefore a secondary category, which can only by interpreted in light of the positive manifestation of liberation, justification, and grace. The central issue of Christian ethics is not ritual purity or morality, but experience, confession and recognition of our own injustice in our dealing with God and men. (shrink)

The theological foundations of Ghazali's causal theory are fully expressed in the chapter on the attribute of divine power in his al-Iqtiād fi al-I'tiqād. The basic doctrine which he proclaims and argues for is that divine power, an attribute additional to the divine essence, is one and pervasive. It does not consist of a multiplicity of powers that produce a multiplicity of effects, but is a unitary direct cause of each and every created existent. In a defense of the doctrine (...) of kasb, Ghazali argues that power in all animate creatures is created directly by God and that there is created with it the object of power, normally, but erroneously regarded as its effect: the object of power is in fact directly created by God. It exists with the created power, but not by it. In his critique of the Mu'tazilite theory of the generated act he again denies that created power has any causal efficacy and denies that inanimate things have any causal efficacy. What one normally regards as the effects of inanimate causes are in reality their concomitants, directly caused by divine power. The discussion of kasb, the longest in the chapter, includes Ghazali's spirited defense of it against possible objections. The defense, however, as will be shown, is not immune against criticism. At the same time, the discussion of kasb, central as it is, has to be understood in the context of the chapter as a whole, whose intricate arguments remain integrated and unified. Hence a brief exposition of the chapter's arguments will first be given, followed by a critical comment on some aspects of Ghazali's defense of kasb. This is then followed by an annotated translation of the entire chapter, a chapter so very basic for the study of Ghazali's position on causality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:God’s Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering. Vol. 1 of Divine Vulnerability and Creation (Princeton Theological Monograph Series, 100)Raymond Kemp AndersonGod’s Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering. Vol. 1 of Divine Vulnerability and Creation (Princeton Theological Monograph Series, 100) Jeff B. Pool Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009. 358 pp. $38.00One should not be put off by a negative-sounding title. (...) Jeff Pool’s exhaustive study could as well be titled more positively as “God’s Passion” for the “passio” root-meaning linked to our concept of suffering describes in large part what [End Page 224] he is about. But we must reluctantly concede that Pool’s treatment barely glimmers where we might expect to find light-hearted joy in the passion-resurrection and eschatological promise that he does acknowledge is at the heart of the Christian gospel.In his effort to follow methodological strictures consonant with his Chicago schooling with Langdon Gilkey and others, Pool is at pains to keep his academic back to the wall. So the first part of this two-part volume simply rehearses the enormous plurality of “Christian attestations” to the theme of divine suffering (and patripassianism). Attestations of every stripe rub shoulders here and seem to acquire almost equal footing. Yet by calling his topic a “symbol,” Pool does not mean to question the believed ontological actuality of “divine suffering.” In his view, this suffering is not just a symbol but describes for Christian faith an actuality that corners into the meaning and purpose of our very existence. So, as it turns out, he offers us much more than a history-of-religions compilation of diverse “attestations”; he is intent on reworking a tenable systematic theology and theological ethic as these intersect with his theme.Pool’s criteria for ranking some “attestations” over others remain obscure, and we might think him to be arguing rationalistically from personal preferences, until finally (217 pages into his text) he slips in what he calls “an additional epistemological interlude” that divulges what apparently has been an underlying hermeneutic basis all along: his own Messianic secret, as it were, a Christological-revelational criterion and final norm based on the apostolic tradition.Pool’s proclivity for rational analysis may become self-deceptive. At points he does include disclaimers, explaining that his “analyses” of living realities are only mental abstractions describing aspects of personal wholes that in fact cannot be split apart. Yet he forgets himself here, I think, and attempts to subject both divine and human personhood to scholastic “analysis.” For example, his descriptive categories of different “human capacities to love” (along the lines of Nygren’s three loves) become so reified in his “analysis” that he begins to refer to them as if they were schizoid entities that modify, block, and limit each other in our psyche and even in God’s (as if we could strap down the mystery of holistic love and dissect it). Nevertheless, theologians may find Pool’s analytic endeavors quite challenging.This book is definitely not for your introductory ethics course. Pool’s language is labored and presupposes a wide command of the field. His treatment is original, in some respects idiosyncratic, and intentionally revisionist. Written in a neoscholastic vein, this study will give you far more about God’s suffering than you thought anyone ever wanted or needed to know. Yet it promises you a substantial theological workout, offering something provocative and worth considering on nearly every page. Its greatest strength is its perceptive bibliographical annotations, both in the text and in the wealth of footnotes that compose between a third and half of the book. The bibliography [End Page 225] itself, however, which masses together more than a thousand titles, may be too exhaustive to provide much selective guidance.Raymond Kemp AndersonWilson CollegeCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss a family of arguments that show the inconsistency of the concept of omniscience, which is one of the central attributes of the theistic God. We introduce three member of this family: Grim’s Divine Liar Paradox, Milne’s Paradox and our own Divine Curry. They can be seen as theological counterparts of well-known semantic paradoxes. We argue that the very simple dialetheist response to these paradoxes doesn’t work well and then introduce our own response based on (...) a framework that we call Logic of Impossible Truths. LIT is a non-dialetheist paraconsistent logic designed to represent divine ominiscience and to preserve the transparency of the truth predicate and which semantics rests on the concept of situation. Since some rules of classical logic are not valid in LIT, we are in a position to block the derivation of the paradoxes. Thus, LIT offers a way out of the dilemma of accepting that there are true contradictions or giving up the idea that there is an all-powerful, omniscient and perfectly good being. (shrink)

Deux des derniers textes philosophiques d'Antoine Arnauld (Dissertatio bipartita…, 1692; Règles du bon sens…, 1693) sont dirigés contre les défenseurs de la « vision en Dieu » des idées ou vérités éternelles. En commentant les textes de Thomas d'Aquin consacrés à la notion de vérité, Arnauld critique Platon, saint Augustin et Jansénius, puis semble adopter une position proche de Descartes sur le statut des vérités éternelles. D'autres textes confirment qu'Arnauld est sans doute le seul des grands post-cartésiens à avoir accepté (...) la thèse dite de la « création des vérités éternelles », et à avoir refusé à la fois l'univocité de la connaissance entre l'homme et Dieu et l'univocité de l'être. Cette fidélité à Descartes donne une place particulière à Arnauld dans l'histoire du cartésianisme, et amène à une question: ne peut-on chercher dans son œuvre une authentique « théologie cartésienne »? Two of Antoine Arnauld's last philosophical texts (Dissertatio bipartita…, 1692; Règles du bon sens…, 1693) are directed against the defenders of the « vision in God » of ideas or eternal truths. Commenting upon Thomas Aquinas' texts about thruth, Arnauld criticizes Platon, Augustine and Jansenius, and seems to adopt a position close to Descartes' about the status of eternal truths. Other texts confirm that Arnauld is probably the only one among the great post-cartesians to accept the thesis called « creation of eternal truths », and to refuse both the univocity of knowledge between God and man, and the univocity of being. This loyalty to Descartes places Arnauld in very specific position in the history of cartesianism, and leads to the following query: can we not find in his work an authentic « cartesian theology »? (shrink)

Contents include: Foreword Editor's Preface Introduction by the Editor Preface Introduction BOOK ONE: The Objective Problem Concerning the Truth of Christianity Introductory Remarks Chapter I: The Historical Point of View 1. The Holy Scriptures 2. The Church 3. The Proof of the Centuries for the Truth of Christianity Chapter II: The Speculative Point of View BOOK TWO: The Subjective Problem, The Relation of the Subject to the Truth of Christianity, The Problem of Becoming a Christian PART ONE: Something About Lessing (...) Chapter I: An Expression of Gratitude Chapter II: Theses Possibly or Actually Attributable to Lessing 1. The subjective existing thinker has regard to the dialectics of the process of communication 2. The existing subjective thinker is in his existential relation to the truth as negative as he is positive; he has a much humor as he has essential pathos; and he is constantly in process of becoming, i.e. he is always striving 3. Lessing has said that accidental historical truths can never serve as proofs for eternal truths of the reason; and that the transition by which it is proposed to base an eternal truth upon historical testimony is a leap 4. Lessing has said that, if God held all truth in His right hand, and in His left the lifelong pursuit of it, he would choose the left hand A. A logical system is possible B. An existential system is possible PART TWO: How the Subjectivity of the Individual Must be Qualified in Order that the Problem May Exist for Him Chapter I: The Task of Becoming Subjective. The conclusion that would be forced upon ethics if the attainment of subjectivity were not the highest task confronting a human being—Considerations left out of account in connection with the closer understanding of this—Examples of thinking directed towards becoming subjective Chapter II: The Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth is Subjectivity Appendix. A Glance at the Contemporary Effort in Danish Literature Chapter III: Real or Ethical Subjectivity—The Subjective Thinker 1. Existence and Reality 2. Possibility as higher than Reality—Reality as higher than Possibility—Poetic and Intellectual Ideality—Ethical Ideality 3. The Simultaneity of the Individual Factors of Subjectivity in the Existing Subject—The Constrast between this Simultaneity and the Speculative Process 4. The Subjective Thinker—his Task, his Form, his Style Chapter IV: The Problem of the Fragments: How can an Eternal Happiness be based upon Historical Knowledge? Section I. For Orientation in the Plan of the Fragments 1. That the point of departure was taken in the pagan consciousness, and why 2. The importance of a preliminary agreement concerning what Christianity is, before there can be any question of mediating between Christianity and speculative thought. The absence of such an agreement favors the proposal of medication, while at the same time making any mediation illusory; the presence of such an agreement precludes mediation 3. The problem of the Fragments viewed as a problem, introductory not to Christianity, but to becoming a Christian Section II. The Problem Itself. The eternal happiness of the individual is decided in time through the relationship to something historical, which is furthermore of such a character as to oinclude in its composition that which by virtue of its essence cannot become historical, and must therefore become such by virtue of the absurd A. Existential Pathos 1. The Initial Expression for Existential Pathos: the absolute direction (respect) toward the absolute telos, expressed in action through the transformation of the individual's existence Aesthetic Pathos—The deceptiveness of the principle of mediation—The medieval monastic movement—The simultaneous maintenance of an absolute relationship to the absolute telos and a relative relationship to the relative ends 2. The Essential Expression for Existential pathos: Suffering—Fortune and misforutne as the expression for an aesthetic view of life, in constradistinction to suffering as the expression of a religious view (illustrated by reference to the religious discourse)—The Reality of suffering (humor)—The reality of suffering in the last instance as evidence for the possession by the existing individual of a relationship to an eternal happiness—The illusion of religiosity—The category of Anfechtung—The primary ground and significance of the religious suffering: The dying away from the life of immediacy while still remaining in the finite—An edifying divertisement—Humor as an incognito for religiosity 3. The Decisive Expression for existential pathos: Guilt—That the investigation goes backward instead of forward—The eternal recollection of guilt is the highest expression for the relation between the consciousness of guilt and an eternal happiness—Lower expressions for the consciousness of guilt, and corresponding forms of satisfaction—Self-imposted penance—Humor—The religiosity of hidden inwardness Intermediate Clause between A and B B. The Dilectical 1. The dialectical contradiction which constitutes the breach: to expect an eternal happiness in time through a relationship to something else in time 2. The dialectical constradiction that an eternal happiness is based upon something historical 3. The dialectical contradiction that the historical fact here in question is not a simple historical fact, but is constituted by that which only against its nature can become historical, hence by virtue of the absurd Appendix to B. The retroactive effect of the dialectical upon the pathetic, and the factor simultaneously present in the pathos (a) The consciousness of sin (b) The possibililty of offense (c) The smart of sympathy Chapter V. Conclusion. About Childish Christianity Appendix. For an Understanding with the Reader First and Last Declaration Notes Index Originally published in 1941. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 26, Issue 1, pp 118 - 147 This paper challenges the widespread emphasis on the absence of God in post- Holocaust historiography, theology, and art by suggesting that Barnett Newman’s _Stations of the Cross_ may have been conceived under the theological category of the apophatic rather than the aesthetic category of the sublime. This paper focuses on the “anti-realist” position of Newman and other artists for whom the Holocaust necessitated a renewed aniconic tendency in Jewish aesthetics. His (...) work, I suggest, holds out a tension between absolute absence and redemptive presence that at once resists and affirms a negative aesthetic of God’s solidarity with suffering. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.2 (2003) 135-141 [Access article in PDF] On Delusions of Sense:A Response to Coetzee and Sass Rupert Read Keywords schizophrenia, Wittgenstein, Schreber, Faulkner, Benjy, grammar, madness, Cogito The great writings on and of severe mental affliction—those for instance of Schreber, 'Renee', Donna Williams, Artaud, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country, Kafka's "Description of a struggle," and even (I (...) would add) key parts of The Lord of the Rings—present us with something deeply enigmatic. They have, we might say, a strong grammar, a grammar—a mode of hanging together, and (in this case) of linguistically seeming to make a sense that is not our sense and that we cannot make sense of—... they have a grammar all of their own, and all of its own, a grammar that resists and rejects interpretation even as it sometimes seems to offer interpretations. 1It was Wittgenstein's view that to make mental illness unpuzzling was a mistake, or (better, perhaps) a mythologically problematic move. Wittgenstein's aim in his philosophizing was to understand what was enigmatic when it could be understood without unwisely turning it into something altogether unpuzzling... and then to acknowledge that there are some things that may remain forever puzzling, without committing oneself to the metaphysically disastrous claim that the reason they are endlessly puzzling is that they lie outside the boundaries of human life, language, or reason, as though we could peek outside those alleged boundaries to see what was there, but never truly say anything about it.There simply may be places where our understanding—phenomenological understanding, understanding of what it is like—gives out, and not because it is (or we are) merely human. For instance, perhaps one cannot capture some mental illness by intellection alone, or even perhaps at all. Perhaps the best understanding one can have of mental illness is purely negative (in a sense at least as strong as that involved in negative theology, wherein God is only defined by what it is not).Louis Sass (2003) writes I am not sure whether or not Read would accept that a philosophical position can be understandable despite its containing deep, internal logical tensions (perhaps he would not). If such understanding is possible, however, it does seem to open the way for a similar understanding of conditions like that of Schreber. (p. 127) Unfortunately, however, it is indeed not possible—that is, this notion is merely a fantasy—by my lights. Philosophical positions, all of which turn out to contain such inexorable tensions, cannot be understood: they are mirages. Solipsism, as a position, is not any better (or worse) off [End Page 135] than (say) (Metaphysical) Realism. They are both mirages, just different aspects of the same nothing. 2 Considered as positions, they are in the end literally—when one understands their logic—one and the same nothing. Wittgenstein already made this quite clear in his Tractatus. Perhaps in contrast to Sass, there is then nothing special about solipsism: it is just one mode of presentation rather than another of the illusion that there can be philosophical positions.Sass claims that in saying this kind of thing I am committed to ruling out that some mental illness can be understood or can even exist, on abstract intellectual grounds. I am not. I am simply wishing to leave open the possibility that there may be things that some people utter or seem to experience which intellection gives us little or no assistance with. If Sass wishes to deny this, then I suggest that it is he and not I who is the absolutist intellectualist here, in insisting that rewriting something deeply strange in a weaker grammar is furthering our grasp of it.My suggestion concerning Faulkner's presentation of Benjy, in my original paper, was that it is a mythological mistake to think that Faulkner provides us with the tools for giving an unpuzzling rendition of what had perhaps appeared to be "another country," inaccessible to us. Rather, Faulkner's representation... (shrink)

God Never ChangesOr does he? God has been getting a makeover of late, a "reinvention" that has incited debate and troubled scholars and laypeople alike. Modern theological sectors as diverse as radical feminism and the new “open theism” movement are attacking the classical Christian view of God and vigorously promoting their own images of Divinity.God Under Fire refutes the claim that major attributes of the God of historic Christianity are false and outdated. This book responds to some increasingly popular (...) alternate theologies and the ways in which they cast classical Christian theism in a negative light. Featuring an impressive cast of world-class biblical scholars, philosophers, and apologists, God Under Fire begins by addressing the question, “Should the God of Historic Christianity Be Replaced?” From there, it explores issues as old as time and as new as the inquest into the “openness of God.” How, for instance, does God risk, relate, emote, and change? Does he do these things, and if so, why? These and other questions are investigated with clarity, bringing serious scholarship into popular reach.Above all, this collection of essays focuses on the nature of God as presented in the Scriptures and as Christians have believed for centuries. God Under Fire builds a solid and appealing case for the God of classical Christian theism, who in recent years—as through the centuries—has been the God under fire. (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)

Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism have a different position in the ancient philosophy tradition. The reason for this is the eclectical structure of Pythagoreanism which has syncretized from Orphism, Indian and Egyptian religions with philosophy. Orphism of these religions is especially important for affecting Pythagoreanism the most and giving to the ancient Greek religion a mystical content. Orphism which is a mystery cult is based on Orpheus, the poet, who sometimes is identified with Pythagoras in philosophy and the history of religions. Orpheus, (...) was attributed divine character by virtue of his beautiful voice and hymns in the ancient history, has brought many religious and philosophic elements such as reincarnation and unity with God to the Greek religion. The way of life and creeds of Orphism based on asceticism and wisdom, first affected Italian philosophy starting from Pythagoras and, later influenced both philosophy and the other religions such as Judaism and Christianity through Plato. The reason for this was the Orphism’s stronger theological structure than the Greek religion had. Thus, philosophy, the Miletus philosophers tried to purify from the Homeric religion, has regained some spirituality through Orphism and Pythagoras. Pythagoras, a philosopher and a religious leader, accepted students to his philosophy school by initiation in Crotone. In this way, Pythagoreanism gained the quality of both a school of philosophy and a community of mystery. In this school, Pythagoras constituted a strong natural philosophy based on the idea of arkhe consisting of numbers, and the system of mathematics and music. At the same time, for he was a religious leader, Pythagoras used his school both to teach philosophy and to celebrate the teletaic mystery rituals of Orphism. According to the Pythagoreans, as a master, Pythagoras has united with the spirit of Dionysos and has privileged to rise to the World-Soul of God. Due to this union, it has been believed that Pythagoras received revelations from Dionysos and knew the secrets of God’s spirit. Similarly, Pythagoras’ students of philosophy also joined these rituals. They, on the one hand, witnessed to the divine union of Pythagoras, on the other hand, experienced the communication with the subordinate gods, called daemons, allied to Dionysos. Through these mystical rituals in Pythagorean school, it was believed that the philosophical knowledge was not only a reasoning, but also a divine wisdom obtained from the divine word. Therefore, Pythagoreanism accepted that philosophy is from God and it is a way of life which rises the human to the divine level. According to Pythagoras philosophy, thinking about God is equal to dealing with natural philosophy. Because Pythagoreanism, that has a pantheistic belief in God, has acknowledged God and nature as the same. Additionally, the natural philosophy of the school was established on the Monad idea which has been accepted as the World-Soul. For Pythagoreanism, Monad is not a number, but it is the ONE as the source of all numbers and a theological principle. The ONE, which symbolizes God and the cosmic unity, brings into existence the life by limiting the chaos caused by the TWO. Similarly, the TWO, not a number but a principle, has been used in a positive sense in Anaximander and was called apeiron, meant “infiniteness”. But, for Pythagoras, infiniteness was a negative circumstance. For this reason, the TWO/Apeiron has been accepted as a female being which corresponds to limitless absence and evil. By Monad’s confinement the Apeiron had been passed into the cosmos, the cosmic harmony had been balanced and a spheric being had emerged. This is “unity” which corresponds with both the World Soul Monad and the nature in the Pythagorean philosophy. This study will discuss the notion of Monad which is known as the World-Soul and God in Pythagorean philosophy, from a perspective of the history of religions. In this context, the sources and knowledge of history of philosophy will be used by methods of the history of religions. Starting from Orphism, Monad will be discussed within similar mythical elements. Thus, the origin of the Pythagorean philosophy in ancient religions will be determined and the theological infrastructure will be shown. (shrink)

The theological foundations of Ghazali's causal theory are fully expressed in the chapter on the attribute of divine power in his al-Iqtiṣād fi al-I'tiqād. The basic doctrine which he proclaims and argues for is that divine power, an attribute additional to the divine essence, is one and pervasive. It does not consist of a multiplicity of powers that produce a multiplicity of effects, but is a unitary direct cause of each and every created existent. In a defense of the doctrine (...) of kasb, Ghazali argues that power in all animate creatures is created directly by God and that there is created with it the object of power, normally, but erroneously regarded as its effect: the object of power is in fact directly created by God. It exists with the created power, but not by it. In his critique of the Mu'tazilite theory of the generated act he again denies that created power has any causal efficacy and denies that inanimate things have any causal efficacy. What one normally regards as the effects of inanimate causes are in reality their concomitants, directly caused by divine power. The discussion of kasb, the longest in the chapter, includes Ghazali's spirited defense of it against possible objections. The defense, however, as will be shown, is not immune against criticism. At the same time, the discussion of kasb, central as it is, has to be understood in the context of the chapter as a whole, whose intricate arguments remain integrated and unified. Hence a brief exposition of the chapter's arguments will first be given, followed by a critical comment on some aspects of Ghazali's defense of kasb. This is then followed by an annotated translation of the entire chapter, a chapter so very basic for the study of Ghazali's position on causality. Les fondements théologiques de la théorie de la causalité chez Ghazali trouvent leur pleine expression dans le chapitre de son al-Iqtiṣād fī al-i'tiqād, portant sur l'attribut de la puissance divine. La doctrine fondamentale qu'il proclame et en faveur de laquelle il plaide, c'est que la puissance divine, attribut qui s'ajoute à l'essence divine, est une et partout présente. Elle ne consiste pas en une multiplicité de pouvoirs produisant une multiplicité d'effets, mais elle est la cause unitaire et immédiate de chaque existant créé. Défendant la doctrine du kasb, Ghazali fait valoir que le pouvoir présent chez les créatures animées est créé directement par Dieu et que se trouve créé, en même temps que ce pouvoir, l'objet sur lequel il s'exerce, objet considéré ordinairement quoique de façon erronée, comme l'effet de ce pouvoir. L'objet de ce pouvoir est, en fait, directement créé par Dieu. Il existe avec le pouvoir cr´, mais non par lui. Dans sa critique de la théorie mu'tazilite de l'acte engendré, Ghazali dénie ā nouveau au pouvoir créé toute efficace causale et refuse de considérer que les réalités inanimées aient une quelconque efficace causale. Ce que l'on considère habituellement comme les effets des causes inanimées sont en réalité leurs concomitants, directement causés par la puissance divine. Dans la discussion du kasb, qui occupe la plus large place dans ce chapitre de l' Iqtiṣād, Ghazali présente une défense passionnée de cette doctrine contre les objections qui pourraient lui être opposées. Cependant, cette défense, comme on le montrera, n'est pas a l'abri de toute critique. Dans le même temps, la discussion du kasb, centrale comme elle est, doit être comprise dans le contexte de ce chapitre pris comme un tout et dont les arguments complexes demeurent intégrés et unifiés. Aussi exposera-t-on d'abord brièvement ces arguments, avant de proposer un commentaire critique de certains aspects de la défense par Ghazali du kasb. Cet exposé et ces remarques critiques sont suivis d'une traduction annotée de l'mtégralité de ce chapitre, si fondamental pour l'étude de la position de Ghazali concernant la causalité. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:706 BOOK REVIEWS struments of redemption for others. Mary is the primary exemplar of receiving her Son's redeeming love in freedom and of wholeheartedly mediating his graces to all he has redeemed. The final essay, "Mary and Modernity," is most timely for American Christians and ecumenists. It is a very worthwhile attempt to compare and contrast the secular triad of virtues, liberty, equality, and fraternity with the Christian triad (...) of theological virtues, faith, hope, and love, especially as they are exemplified in Mary. Although this approach perceives Mary more as a " sign of contradiction " to our secularistic culture, she will help us to avoid the extremes of confusing true freedom with licence, genuine equality with egalitarianism, and authentic fraternity with collectivism by helping inspire in us the really liberating values of her Son's Gospel. Everyone can benefit immensely from the intelligent reading of this book. Mt. St. Mary's Seminary Emmitsburg, Maryland FREDERICK M. JELLY, O.P. Dieu et l'etre d'apres Thomas d'Aquin et Hegel. By EMILIO BRITO. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991. Pp. 422. 245 francs. Sprung from premature fears of post-modernity or from an ignorant nostalgia for a monoform Catholicism which never existed, universal dismissals of " modernity " still appear occasionally in Catholic j ournals. They recall,the neo-scholastic te:xitbooks prior to Vatican II in whose pages the " moderni " (among whom were numbered not only "Kantiani" but "Hegeliani ") were dismissed by authors who, having read a few pages, were incapable of grasping the basic directions of philosophy from Herder to Heidegger. Emilio Brito, S.J., however, follows in the line of the French and German Jesuits: through this century they have sustained a varied dialogue, in philosophy and theology, between Thomas Aquinas and the important figures of modern philosophy. His two works on Hegel's Christology, and a third large study of God and creation in Schelling are now followed by this comparative work. The theology of Aquinas and the philosophy of Hegel are like two galaxies. Do they move past each other at a distance, or do they move through each other guarding a proper identity with similar forces and shared motifs? Brito has chosen one theme within these two vast realms of thought: his topic (and the book's title can mislead) is God; 'being' BOOK REVIEWS 707 is present as a stimulus to our reflection about God. After an introduction on recent interpretations of Hegel, particularly by Catholics, pages which should be read by all interested in contemporary theology, there are three sections: " the knowledge and naming of God," " the divine substance and the cycle of its attributes," and " the operations of absolute spirit." The chapters in each of the three areas present Aquinas's and then Hegel's thought, and sometimes a section of further comparison. At the end of the work Brito offers a conclusion ("God's Goodness") and a postlude ("God's Beauty"). Finally there is a "Resume." According to Brito, Aquinas's thought is clear (his Aristotelian logic is readily understandable), and his emphasis lies with the divine transcendence. Despite the process-format of the Summa theologiae and the traces of history in the headship of Christ, the diversity of sacraments, and the theologies of faith and natural law, his modest description of movement in God and in God's world of beings stands in contrast to the unleashed and unresolved development penetrating Hegel's Geist. The concluding " Resume " of nine pages is particularly valuable as it brings together the author's synthetic insights into Aquinas and Hegel (one might hope that at least it would appear in translation). The following excerpt displays its balance and clarity. The God of the Summa tends to stay back from mediation, letting itself exist in a certain exteriority, while the Hegelian absolute " raises out" the determinations it posits only by also absorbing them negatively. In the same vein, the Hegelian parousia of the negative abolishes absolutely the distance maintained by the inexpressible in language. In an opposite direction, the originating positivity of the God of Thomas grounds the irreducible presence of a reality represented in discourse. If he is a stranger to this approach and more... (shrink)

Two fundamentally different conceptions of unity can be found in the philosophical tradition. My thesis is that both of them go back to one text, Plato's Parmenides. Plato argues that if the One is posed as unity (the first hypothesis), the One is unthinkable and unnamable. If the One is posed as being (the second hypothesis), we think a plurality. Plotinus explicitly relates his conception of unity to the Parmenides. The One is the origin of the second hypostasis that is (...) marked by the connection of unity and plurality. The One itself is Apollo, a name that is explained as a polla, that is, the ‘not-many’, is indistinct and beyond being. Characteristic of Neoplatonic thought, for which the term ‘henology’ has been introduced, is the absolute transcendence of the One. According to E. Gilson (Being and Some Philosophers) Neoplatonism is incompatible with ‘the mental universe of Christian thinkers’ on account of its thesis that the One transcends being. Yet two henological moments strongly influenced Christian tradition. The first is the idea of ‘negative theology’. It is perceptible in Nicolaus of Cues, who considers ‘Unity’ the most appropriate name for God. The second moment is the spiritual, mystical idea of ‘the union with the One’ (cf. Master Eckhart). More substantial than Gilson's criticism is the position of Levinas who reproaches classical philosophy with the elimination of plurality. The question is whether unity can be conceived in such a way that the plurality of things is saved. The second conception of unity was developed by Aristotle in his Metaphysics (IV, 2). In a critical reaction to the second hypothesis of the Parmenides he argues that ‘being’ and ‘one’ are identical in reality, but differ conceptually. ‘One’ expresses the undividedness (indivisio) of that which is. What deserves attention is that unity does not deny plurality, but division. Aristotle's exposition became the startingpoint of the 13th century doctrine of the transcendentia. Characteristic of this conception of the one is the transcendentality : the one is a property belonging to every being. The importance of this view is twofold. First, the metaphysical one is clearly distinguished from the mathematical one, that belongs to the category of quantity. Second, from the transcendentality follows that ‘one’ has an analogous character. There is no uniformity in unity. The transcendental one determines being in itself. Is not another type of unity required, that is relational in nature ? Some Dutch philosophers have recently developed a new conception of unity, namely, ‘unity as intersubjectivity’. This conception has a theological root : Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity. The modern view of unity as an intersubjective unity of a plurality can be understood as a completion of the transcendental conception of the one. The transcendent conception of the One and the transcendental conception have common traits. Thinking of the one is always a transcending movement. Moreover, it implies the task of a union, for it deals with a unity that is not yet, but must be. (shrink)

Scepticism and negative theology are best understood not as theoretical positions, but rather as forms of philosophical practice that performatively undermine our knowledge claims or our seeming understanding of God. In particular, I am arguing that both scepticism and negative theology invoke the failure of the attempt to understand the absolute, be it God or the notion of absolute objectivity. However, with reference to L. A. Paul’s notion of epistemically transformative experience, I am arguing that we still understand (...) something about the absolute through the experience of failing to think it. This, of course, is a non-propositional form of understanding, and I am arguing that there is something about the finitude of the human condition that can only be understood through a transformative philosophical experience with respect to the absolute. (shrink)

This essay introduces central features of classical Hindu reflection on the existence and nature of God by examining arguments presented in the Nyāyamañjarī of Jayanta Bhatta (9th century CE), and the Nyāyasiddhāñjana of Vedānta Deśika (14th century CE). Jayanta represents the Nyāya school of Hindu logic and philosophical theology, which argued that God’s existence could be known by a form of the cosmological argument. Vedānta Deśika represents the Vedånta theological tradition, which denied that God’s existencecould be known by (...) reason, gave primacy to the revelatory texts known as the Upanisads, and firmly subordinated theological reasoning to the acceptance of revelation. Jayanta and Deśika are respected representatives of their traditions whose clear, systematic positions illumine traditional Hindu understandings of “God” and the traditional Hindu debates about God’s existence and nature. Attention to their positions highlights striking common features shared by Hindu and Christian theologies, and offers a substantial basis for comparative reflection on the Christian understanding of God’s existence and nature, and the roles of reason and revelation in knowledge of God. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 329 I find Farley's theory of tragic existence and divine compassion distressing and depressing. To sufferers, it says: "C'est la vie!" Put more learnedly, "created perfection is fragile, tragically structured.. •. And yet, without creation, divine eros remains merely potential, inarticulate. The fragility of creation and the nonabsolute power of God culminate in the tragedy and rupture of history" (p. 124). Thank God, I can now have (...) God,to blame. Of course, God is trying to repair the damage, but even God's efforts are ultimately vain since "absolute evil " will ever play havoc with history and since God himself is responsible for suffering. Furthermore, since the author does not offer any extensive discussion of the suffering and death of God.on the cross (she dismisses the idea: "The compassionate God is... to he distinguished from the benevolent but impotent deity who ' suffers with ' the world" [p. 112]), nor of the resurrection of Jesus as divine vindication of innocent suffering, nor of hope for a life beyond,· her tragic vision sheds no real light on the problem of suffering nor can it pro-.vide impetus for the struggle against evil or hope for victims-especially when demons whisper that life is futile, suffering meaningless, and the cosmos void. The book is repetitive (suffering: pp. 23-24, 30-31, 51-59, 115-119; tragic vision: pp. 31-37, 78-79, 98-99, 106-110, 124-125; compassion: pp. 37-39, 79-81, 92-94, 110-114, 114-119, 126-128). It is oracular ("theologians have been uncomfortable about directly attributing love to God " [p. 96], self-contradictory (it speaks of God's " aseity " and divine " relationship " in the same breath [p. 105]), and misleading in its use of sources (e.g. its appeal to Thomas for its peculiar understanding of analogical language about God [pp. 101-103]). Mercifully, the hook is brief. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. PETER c. PHAN Time, Freedom, and the Common Good. By CHARLES M. SHEROVER. New York: State University of New York Press, 1989. Pp. xiii+ 314. $59.50 (cloth) ; $19.95 (paper). Guided by the insights of traditional political philosophy and contemporary phenomenology and animated by 'the spirit of Tocqueville, Sherover's book is an attempt " to secure the foundations of a public philosophy adequate for our time" (p. xii). Like Tqcqueville, Sherover is preoccupied with the " universal appeal of freedom," with its com- 330 BOOK REVIEWS plications, its paradoxes, and especially its possibilities. Sherover faults liberalism for its simplistic conception of freedom and its " superficial view of the nature of human existence" (p. 8). In an attempt to find a more adequate account of human experience, Sherover appeals to three existential categories: sociality, temporality, and freedom. The project of the book, which moves from the establishment and articulation of these categories to :their practical application, is ambitious. Yet the argument is lucid and persuasive. Following Aristotle, Sherover argues for the primacy of the social in human life. He effectively argues not only that moral norms and linguistic practices are socially rooted phenomena, but also that " social membership is prior... to any notion of differentiating individuality " (p. 20). Social atomism is but a theoretical abstraction, and individualism is as incoherent as a private language. Sherover points out that the defense ·of the social nature of human existence has at least one negative result: it undermines political theories that are rooted in a radically individualistic conception of human nature. Yet the emphasis on sociality does play a positive role in Sherover's essay: it serves as an initial justification of the relevance of the idea of the common good to political discourse. The existential category of sociality surfaces, for instance, in Sherover's cogent account of rights, wherein he argues that particular rights should not be seen as innate and absolute. The claim that rights are innate renders unintelligible the prevalent notion of "newly dis· covered" rights (p. 79). Instead, particular rights are socially recog· nized, justifiable claims which cannot he isolated from the social and political context in which they are recognized and exercised. Particular r.ights come into being over time and in intimate connection with con· crete... (shrink)

This essay addresses the questions of whether the givenness of God is something possible, intelligible—and, if so, what such givenness might involve. In the interest of situating these questions in historical context, I first summarize Kant’s, Hegel’s, and Habermas’s respective accounts of the relationship between belief in God and philosophical knowledge. I then further situate critical philosophy’s appropriation of God by way of a discussion of how some of this appropriation’s fiercest critics—existentialists such as Sartre, Shestov, and Kierkegaard—object to its (...) gambit of using God to serve moral and cultural goals even as it denies God’s actual existence. Though this objection is a salient one, it leaves something to be desired. For although the existentialists may demonstrate what is misguided about the philosophers’ God, they do not have anything especially compelling to say about whether or how God can be given experientially. I address this aporia by exploiting what I take to be a happy intersection between the phenomenological conception of the saturated phenomenon and two moods—agape love and ecstatic joy—the mystical tradition frequently attributes to the nature of divine givenness. I argue that, when mystical experience is situated within the framework of saturated phenomena rather than within the Kantian enclosures of phenomenality, two intriguing possibilities emerge. First, it seems plausible that the religious experience of the mystic can, in principle, involve the very givenness of God that Kant and his heirs denied to be possible. Second, though phenomenology has yet to provide a complete positive portrait of the religious life, the mystical tradition emerges as a legitimate, invaluable source with which such a phenomenological portrait might begin. (shrink)

It is not without a certain emotion that one opens this book devoted to the memory of a great scholar of medieval thought who worked and lived in the certainty that there cannot be a conflict between the Christian faith and science. In a significant essay, Benedict M. Ashley defends the idea of the philosophy of nature as continuous or identical with natural science. Ashley does allow, however, for so many divergences between philosophy of nature and natural science due to (...) later developments in science that this identification must be qualified. Steven E. Baldner points out some of the contradictions of Hartshorne's atomism: Hartshorne denies change and real causality. Anthony J. Celano recalls that Robert Kilwardby was very much aware that happiness as described by Aristotle is quite different from the beatitude promised by the Christian faith. The order of the divine entitative attributes in the Summa theologiae I, qq. 3-11 has baffled many a commentator. Lawrence Dewan connects it with some texts of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Jeremiah Hackett studies Roger Bacon's Moralis philosophia. Dealing with Luther's attitude toward St. Thomas, Denis R. Tanz accepts Erasmus's verdict that the weight given to Thomas in theology was an important factor in propelling Luther out of the Roman Catholic orbit. This opinion, however, confounds appearances with the real reason for leaving, namely, estrangement from several central positions of Catholic doctrine. It is a tribute to the Catholicity of Thomas that after 1519 Luther came to identify the Pope, the Church and all scholastic doctors with the Thomists and said that the Church had become the synagogue of the papists and the Thomists: Thomas had been made the arbiter of heresy. Mark F. Johnson stresses the sapiential character of the sacra doctrina. Mark D. Jordan wrestles with the question why Thomas wrote his Aristotelian commentaries. Arguing in the line of Owens's interpretation he reduces their importance with regard to Thomas's own positions. Jordan seems to think that Thomas's philosophy cannot be formulated without his theology, an explanation which is hardly satisfactory. Armand Maurer submits some reflections on St. Thomas's notion of presence. The question to what extent Albert the Great contributed to Aquinas's treatises of the morality of human acts and of natural law is examined by Ernest J. McCullough. Walter H. Principe points out how, according to Aquinas, food is assimilated into the veritas humanae naturae. Eric A. Reitan retraces Weisheipl's analysis of Aristotle's Physics and of St. Thomas' Commentary: the axiom, "whatever is moved, is moved by another" can be understood only within the context of the general science of nature. In his Liber de causis et processu universitatis Albert came to hold the same position as Thomas on the demonstrability of creation and of its beginning in time. Two final articles concern the difficulties underlying Aristotle's arguments in Physics 7 and 8, and Aquinas and Newton on causality: William Wallace connects Newton's universal gravitation with the axiom that nothing acts on itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Metaphysics between Experience and Transcendence: Thomas Aquinas on Metaphysics as a Science by Rudi A. te VeldeO.P. Philip-Neri ReeseVELDE, Rudi A. te. Metaphysics between Experience and Transcendence: Thomas Aquinas on Metaphysics as a Science. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2021. vii + 246 pp. 38,00€In the opening chapter of Metaphysics 4, Aristotle states not only that there is a science of being as being and its per se properties but (...) also that it is the task of the metaphysician to investigate the principles and causes of such being. Does this mean that metaphysics comes in two parts—namely, an ontology that investigates being and its properties, followed by a theology that investigates the first principle of being? Or does it mean that the very investigation into being and its properties involves an investigation into the first principle of being—that is, that ontology in some sense is theology? The central purpose of Rudi A. te Velde's newest book is to show that, at least for Thomas Aquinas and those who would follow him, the answer is emphatically the latter: Thomistic metaphysics is essentially the resolutio, or tracing-back, of common being (ens commune) to divine being (ens divinum). This process of resolution situates Aquinas's metaphysics "between experience and transcendence." Unlike natural philosophy, metaphysics is not focused on reality as it is given to us in and through sensory experience. Unlike Christian theology, metaphysics is not focused on God as revealed to us in and through supernatural faith. Rather, it is focused on what both of these—experience and transcendence—presuppose, namely, the fundamental truth that all of reality comes from, and points back to, God as its principle and source. For te Velde, Aquinas's metaphysics is etiology or, as he puts it, "the science of presuppositions."Chapter 1 offers the reader a synoptic view of the basic outlines and contours of Aquinas's metaphysics, both positively and negatively. Positively, te Velde points out that Aquinas understands metaphysics to be an Aristotelian science, that is, a discipline unified around its subject. For the properties of a subject are what we aim to demonstrate when we engage in Aristotelian science, and its principles are what we appeal to when doing so. Negatively, te Velde contrasts Aquinas's view of metaphysics with that of his contemporary, Siger of Brabant, and that of our contemporary, John Haldane. Unlike the former, Aquinas's metaphysics takes common being, which is participated and created (and so does not include God), as its subject. Unlike the latter, Aquinas's [End Page 162] metaphysics is unified by the intelligibility of being in light of its principles.In chapters 2 through 5, te Velde focuses in on particular themes that are of central importance to Aquinas's account of metaphysics. Chapter 2 examines the role of separatio in distinguishing metaphysics from physics and mathematics. Where physics considers things that require matter both to be and to be understood, and mathematics considers things that require matter to be but not to be understood, metaphysics considers things that require matter neither to be nor to be understood. It does so by means of a judgment of separation—a judgment that something (for example, substance, form, and so on) can be without matter. Chapter 3 turns to the topic of resolutio, wherein the mind moves "from the concrete particular to its intelligible ground." Aquinas's metaphysics is marked by a twofold resolution: one in which being and its attributes are grasped as the intrinsic principles of all things, and a second in which God and separate substances are grasped as the extrinsic principles of all things. Chapter 4 then investigates the notion of transcendentality, which arises in the first of those two resolutive processes—for insofar as being and its attributes are common to all things, they are not limited to just one of the ten categories (that is, they are transcendental). Nevertheless, the way in which predicates like "one," "true," and "good" cut across the categories that divide common being is different from the way that they cut across the divide between God and creatures. This difference ushers in chapter 5's discussion... (shrink)

continent. 2.3 (2012): 218–223 Vijay Prashad. Arab Spring, Libyan Winter . Oakland: AK Press. 2012. 271pp, pbk. $14.95 ISBN-13: 978-1849351126. Nearly a decade ago, I sat in a class entitled, quite simply, “Corporations,” taught by Vijay Prashad at Trinity College. Over the course of the semester, I was amazed at the extent of Prashad’s knowledge, and the complexity and erudition of his style. He has since authored a number of classic books that have gained recognition throughout the world. The Darker (...) Nations , a peoples’ history of the Third World, sent defibrillating shockwaves through an academic world that had almost forgotten the epic scope and historic dignity of the non-aligned movement and post-colonial struggles. In his recent, award-winning work, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter , Prashad delves into his capacious knowledge of the Third World to excavate the discourses and narratives surrounding the upheavals of 2011. “Revolutions have no specific timetable,” states Prashad in the opening line of this exciting and provocative look at contemporary events. Instantly, an atmosphere of suspense emerges. The reader is alerted to the problem of history. Does the making of history then involve a suspension of historical time, or is it a continuous narrative structure into which events must eventually be integrated? Arab Spring, Libyan Winter shows that the answer to the question, “How is history made?” lies just as easily in the asking. The first half of the book works through the events that transpired to bring about the explosive popular uprisings of Arab Spring: Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. But the events are not put together in a cohesive, chronological fashion. Using an uncommonly gripping style more akin to the folk-story motif of the djeli than to traditionally Orientalist academia, Prashad suspends a given situation, points out its components, and traces back the characters and genealogies that define each link before resuming a narrative. Every moment is an end to itself, and an origin of something different. Thus, the making of history becomes the suspension of its own progress, it’s catastrophic 'stability,' in a process of differentiation through inclusion. Empirically, one might suggest that history is a condition of time, and by extension, of the subject, but history is also an eminent producer of the Subject and her concept of time through memory and narrative. Hence, history is often overdetermined by a dominant narrative of the sovereign. The apparently chaotic composition of Prashad’s historicity is, then, an interstitial morphology of resistance. It illustrates that the time to act for the revolutionary lies in the gaps within the dominant historical realities. It points out the sorties of signifiers constituting nothing in the obliterated ruins of history. Through such illuminations, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter breaks through “the surface of history” to elaborate revolution’s snapping synapses, exploding interruptions and breaches, connecting flows. Messianic Politics It is tempting to think, 'History is either singular, or it is diffuse. It is either one coherent factual narrative, or it is comprised of the aletheia of the multitude.' Yet the reader finds Prashad examining the structure of history on multiple levels. For Prashad, world history is shaped by geographically defined political movements, such as communism or national liberation, with historical agents like the working class for the former and the nationalist militant for the latter. Religion, however, is another matter: “Religion has an unshakable eschatology which a post-utopian secular politics lacks.” Within the telos of religion, there appears on the horizon the image of Benjamin’s thoughts on messianic time—time as “a small fissure in the continuous catastrophe,” a break with history, may contain an ultimate redemption of the human beyond the political power struggle. Succoring the split between geo-political and utopian-religious (messianic) time in the context of Arab Spring, Prashad indicates that the base of “the deep desire and commitment to some form of democracy” is forged by the affinity between eschatological Islamist politics with the People. To think about the Subject of messianic time in the context of the lack of a “coherent timetable” for emancipatory politics, it is perhaps best to return to the modern tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose prefigurative blending of liberation theology and emancipatory politics became most important during his works of 1963, the climactic year of “The Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the March on Washington, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. In “The Letter,” King states the point bluntly: Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant ‘Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” The timing of rebellious action must not be a part of history. It must change history. The kairos appears spontaneous and untimely in its convulsive, shocking presence, yet it is, deeper still, a path, a longue durée , forged through diligent and rigorous praxis. King put a finer point on the path of historic liberation in his declaration in his 1963 speech at Western Michigan University: “[T]ime is neutral.... Somewhere along the way we must see that time will never solve the problem alone but that we must help time. Somewhere we must see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels on inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. Without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social stagnation. We must always help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.” Time, then, exists in “the neutral,” while action must turn to the kairos , not only of taking time, but taking the right time. By turning our relation to time into kairos , we move time from its context within history to a duration between histories—the longue dure?e of Messianic time. The implementation of neutrality in this context suggests a broad space of time to extend through the valley of positive and negative. In Roland Barthes’s lectures from 1978, the neutral takes place in this minimal distance of non-conflict that exists outside of two extremes. It is, in the words of Maurice Blanchot, “the non-general, the non-generic, as well as the non-specific.” For Blanchot, the neutrality of time permeates life as death, impassive and beyond control; such is the neutrality of messianic time, which permeates the charge of history, changing the "I" into the "one." The neutrality of time therefore implicates history in a case against extremism, showing that the work of the radical is not to tend to any particular side, but to have the time to navigate through the terrible terrain of history by altering its course, its patterns and rhythms of movement, connection, sociality. Hence, one does not simply “make history,” one alters the course of history in accordance to “the right time.” The historical path toward emerging power is transmitted as a gesture to the outside of history, against history; a gesture as simple as reaching out. Thus a counterhistory, to use Foucault’s term, is brought forward as the guide of time past a point of no return, a Rubicon, the point where the normal path of history falls to the past. The subject, who must be the only true agent of history, facilitates time through helpfulness, and both the Subject and her history become decentered in relation to one another. Yet history negates the neutrality of time. As Barthes discloses, although the neutral is the “thought and practice of the nonconflictual, it is nevertheless bound to assertion, to conflict, in order to make itself heard.” Engaged with history, time is charged with a destiny, and becomes an opposition. As Prashad insists, “For Arab lands, the events of early 2011 were not the inauguration of a new history, but the continuation of an unfinished struggle that is a hundred years old.” The emergence of the Subject during Arab Spring did not conceive of a new history, but changed the path of history toward a different destiny. “Historical grievances combined with inflationary pressures now met with the subjective sense that victory might be at hand—this was not simply a protest to scream into the wind, but a protest to actually remove autocrats from their positions of authority. The facts of resistance had given way to the expectation of revolutionary change.” The negativity of this charge toward “revolutionary destiny” rendered control, as a positive force, seriously lacking. The lack of control lies in the problem that the Subject is not totally detemporalized or timeless, but untimely in her presence. The Subject is untimely, because her work is visionary, and it is only through such visionary work that the Rubicon can be crossed. Still, the crossing of this border is haunted by anxiety over an impending disaster that lays in wait. It is only through the form of what Benjamin calls divine violence, captivated not with the justice of the means, but the ends—the transformation of history—that a revelation of history’s traumatic foundations can be liberated, and patterns and rhythms of time developed throughout obscured traditions awakened. In this situation, the Subject appears to be outside of right, but setting the state to rights. Because her position is correct, in-so-far as the rebelling subject rebels due to a lack of recognition, her representation appears outside of the norm, which is mistaken as right. Therefore, such visionary work must be carried out through obscured traditions, underground, away from the surveillance of empire. Explaining his method from the start along the lines of Marx’s metaphor of the mole, Prashad insists, “It is the burrowing that is essential, not simply the emergence onto the surface of history.” Arab Spring, Libyan Winter is a book on uncharted networks of time, spread out over the 252 pages like an elaborate spider’s web of passages intertwining with and overwhelming the machinery of the state. Although untimely, Arab Spring was not a flash in the pan, or a Facebook or Twitter revolution. Prashad notes that the government’s suspension of these tools led to further radicalism by furthering communications through face-to-face encounters. In existential terms, Arab Spring might be thought of as a revolution of Being over techne , an uprising of the unchartable, infinite potential of the Other. The name of this Other is found in Chance. The faith of the revolution lies in the proper decentering of the subject, its giving to the Other of time, for only with respect to time does history actually appear on the horizon of the subject, rather than as an imposition. This time of historical agency appears as a moment when anything can happen—a revolutionary truth event where everything comes into question while being realized in its Otherness as a community of the people begins anew in the streets amidst discourse, friendship, reconfigurations of hegemony, and a becoming of a constituent power. Throwing a wrench into the gears of the “cobwebbed tradition” of Orientalism, the decentering of history in Arab Spring, Libyan Winter is a defining quality of its impassioned revolutionary cry. But perhaps the most paradigmatic points of the book emerge from the unexpected voices. To make the connection between the particular manifestations of revolutionary demands to the general historic terms of revolution, Prashad quotes an anonymous young Egyptian in Tahrir Square, who reminds us, “[T]he French Revolution took a very long time so the people could eventually get their rights.” Far from timelessness, the historicization of Arab Spring must exist precisely within the most uncanny appearance of time, as something that does not appear to come from the natural state of time as we know it, but in arriving has completely transformed the way that we understand time. Strange Monsters Revolution is never as simple as a revolt from below against a rusting structure of elites trying to remain in power. As with the French Revolution, Arab Spring consisted of complex familial ties, outside interests, and religious factions fighting alongside, often in awkward juxtaposition to, liberals, working class parties, farmers, and students. It is perhaps because of this historically difficult and incongruous composition that the Arabic word for revolution is thawra , referring to the image of the bull, or thawr , which has religious significance as a pagan deity for the Ancient Semitic tribes and Cartheginians. If Daniel Guérin was correct in saying, “Anarchism and Marxism drink from the same spring,” then it is quite a different oasis that drove the thirsty beast of revolution through what Prashad calls, “the Libyan labyrinth.” Recalling Bataille’s Acéphale, the intestinal labyrinth gains significance as the mode of metabolism and rumination in which, “(the Acephale) has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words, as a monster.” Unraveling the discourse of the revolution, the flows of power and hegemony—from Qaddafi’s nationalist coup in 1969 to the wars with Chad from 1978 to 1987, the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s to, finally, the War on Terror—we find that the metabolic process of Libyan Winter ends in the production of oil. In a process of what Prashad calls “involution,” Qaddafi’s bellicose policies, along with his attempts to nationalize Islam together with oil, mutated the source of his power, turning his house against itself. Already a divided nation, with its two major cities on opposite geographic sides of the country, Libya became split between two opposed political powers—liberal reformists and staunch nationalists—as Qaddafi’s political disengagement manifested through what can only be described in psychoanalytic terms as a recursive passage a l’act (mysteriously calling Wikipedia “Kleenex,” declaring that opponents drank hallucinogens with their instant coffee, and so on). Prashad declares, “The mercurial style that Qaddafi adopted was not about his personality alone, but also a leader’s natural response to a system that relied upon power brokers whose own loyalty… did not have any ideological commitment to the system.” As in the case of other nations during Arab Spring, the true expression of revolt was an outward exposition of what had inwardly been happening in microcosmic societies throughout the realm—from indigenous tribes to political parties, for a century, the people, partly motivated by (and in resistance to) economic impositions of development, had been changing the traditional social compositions and participating in what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls, “the relative autonomy of the movement from the leaders.” It was this empowerment of political reconfigurations taking place under the context of new democratic assemblages that shocked the elites and evoked such a powerful response. Unlike Qaddafi’s awkward policy choices and rants, real acts of power from the West were clear and decisive. Prashad sets the stages of war and diplomacy, far removed from the deserts, mountains, and cities that forged the backdrop of popular politics. Taking place under the now-classic architecture of the “four pillars” of US interests—oil, the War on Terror, Israel, and the circumvention of Iranian hegemony—we find elites rubbing elbows in “Heliopolist cocktail parties and hushed conferences in Kasr al-Ittihadiya” as well as the Concorde-Lafayette hotel in Paris, which provides the setting for a meeting of anti-Qaddafi figures consolidating their power. These scenes are buttressed with the careful portraiture of key historical actors. As Prashad brings the stage of history to life, we find the diplomats and liberals like Frank Wisner, whose career has brought him from Enron in the late 1990s to the Obama Administration, under the aegis of which he was meeting with Mubarak about military support during Arab Spring. We spy the provocateurs, for instance, gauche cavalier , Bernard Henri-Levy, who telephones Sarkozy from Benghazi about the need for more NATO air strikes. We follow the rebel military establishment as it suffers mysterious deaths and even more mysterious assents (like that of apparent CIA cohort, Khalifa Hifter). In each of these intriguing characters, we find different representations of the security state biopolitique: an oil-injected reification that drives Arab Spring from the resentment of rising food prices to the brink of implosion in Libyan Winter. Reminiscent of the scenes of Cold War soirées represented in old Bond films, the aristocratic fight for oil against democracy that was Libyan Winter presents a harsh truth that the new global crisis is simply the continuation of the old history: the global exploitation of capitalism waged against the imagination of the people. As Benjamin laments, “The labyrinth is the right path for the person who always arrives early enough at his destination. This destination is the marketplace.” Yet, “(t)he labyrinth is the habitat of… a humanity (a class) which does not want to know where its destiny is taking it.” Thus, the labyrinth leads, like the desert, only further into itself. As Blanchot explains, “The desert is even less certain than the world; it is never anything but the approach to the desert.” Only the visionary can take time out of the involution toward oblivion. It is here, in this approach to and escape from history, that we find ourselves within Benjamin’s Golgotha, Blanchot’s desert: A space of indeterminate uncertainty where we become familiar only with our own exile. Blanchot writes, “For the moderated and moderate man, the room, the desert, and the world are strictly determined places. For the man of the desert and the labyrinth, devoted to the error of a journey necessarily a little longer than his life, the same space will be truly infinite, even if he knows that it is not, all the more so since he knows it.” The desert, as allegory, provides an eschatology, a mortality in the destiny of Arab Spring. But any allegory of nature might lead to a labyrinthine eschatology (for example, in Bachelard, the forest presents "a limitless world"); the prescience of the untimely is always an uncanny acceptance of the infinite within the finite—the outside of what is understood. Transgenerational and occupied with the image of the future, the untimely makes otherness its home as it proceeds toward liberation. In the work of helping time navigate this dangerous passage of history, Prashad illustrates that the more violent break with history may have occurred in the peaceable struggles of Tahrir Square, and not in the military clashes of Qaddafi with his former Generals who defected to the CIA and NATO countries. It might be possible to suggest, then, that in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, the historical subject of the people was drawn together in a Dionysian dance of different rhythms in the marvelous realm of the ancients, while we fear that the case of Libya suggests an Apollonian future where time, itself, may lay dying under the machinic hand of history. The properly Nietzschean inversion would follow: time is dead, for history has killed it. Yet, if time is dead, struck down in Golgotha, exposed in the desert, mauled by the thawra , it is only in the present sense that it is rendered impossible outside of the context into which the untimely has thrown us. Thus, if history becomes an art of revolution, life as being-towards-death (death as the provocation of the neutrality of time) becomes what Benjamin calls “the allegory of resurrection” through the glorious ruins of history. Prashad ends his work with a rousing finale: “The time of the impossible has presented itself. In Egypt, where the appetite for the possibilities of the future are greatest, the people continue to assert themselves into Tahrir Square and other places, pushing to reinvigorate a Revolution that must not die… For them the slogan is simple: Down with the Present. Long live the Future. May it be so.&rdquo. (shrink)

It is not without a certain emotion that one opens this book devoted to the memory of a great scholar of medieval thought who worked and lived in the certainty that there cannot be a conflict between the Christian faith and science. In a significant essay, Benedict M. Ashley defends the idea of the philosophy of nature as continuous or identical with natural science. Ashley does allow, however, for so many divergences between philosophy of nature and natural science due to (...) later developments in science that this identification must be qualified. Steven E. Baldner points out some of the contradictions of Hartshorne's atomism: Hartshorne denies change and real causality. Anthony J. Celano recalls that Robert Kilwardby was very much aware that happiness as described by Aristotle is quite different from the beatitude promised by the Christian faith. The order of the divine entitative attributes in the Summa theologiae I, qq. 3-11 has baffled many a commentator. Lawrence Dewan connects it with some texts of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Jeremiah Hackett studies Roger Bacon's Moralis philosophia. Dealing with Luther's attitude toward St. Thomas, Denis R. Tanz accepts Erasmus's verdict that the weight given to Thomas in theology was an important factor in propelling Luther out of the Roman Catholic orbit. This opinion, however, confounds appearances with the real reason for leaving, namely, estrangement from several central positions of Catholic doctrine. It is a tribute to the Catholicity of Thomas that after 1519 Luther came to identify the Pope, the Church and all scholastic doctors with the Thomists and said that the Church had become the synagogue of the papists and the Thomists: Thomas had been made the arbiter of heresy. Mark F. Johnson stresses the sapiential character of the sacra doctrina. Mark D. Jordan wrestles with the question why Thomas wrote his Aristotelian commentaries. Arguing in the line of Owens's interpretation he reduces their importance with regard to Thomas's own positions. Jordan seems to think that Thomas's philosophy cannot be formulated without his theology, an explanation which is hardly satisfactory. Armand Maurer submits some reflections on St. Thomas's notion of presence. The question to what extent Albert the Great contributed to Aquinas's treatises of the morality of human acts and of natural law is examined by Ernest J. McCullough. Walter H. Principe points out how, according to Aquinas, food is assimilated into the veritas humanae naturae. Eric A. Reitan retraces Weisheipl's analysis of Aristotle's Physics and of St. Thomas' Commentary: the axiom, "whatever is moved, is moved by another" can be understood only within the context of the general science of nature. In his Liber de causis et processu universitatis Albert came to hold the same position as Thomas on the demonstrability of creation and of its beginning in time. Two final articles concern the difficulties underlying Aristotle's arguments in Physics 7 and 8, and Aquinas and Newton on causality: William Wallace connects Newton's universal gravitation with the axiom that nothing acts on itself. (shrink)

Julian N. Hartt once observed that Calvin so accentuates divine causation that he denies all secondary agency. A strong statement of God's omnipotence commits Calvin to the position that divine causation is the only connection that has any foundation in reality. And this claim, Hartt noted, places Calvin dangerously close to Spinozism. I have no stake in any analysis that attempts to indicate affinities between Calvin and the Dutch rationalist whom he predates by several generations. But, as Hartt suggested and (...) as I will demonstrate, a persuasive case can be made for Calvin's commitment to a thoroughgoing causal determinism that has God at the helm directing every event. Now one should note at the outset that Calvin has solid theological reasons for stressing the role of God's all-determining will in the course of events. As a Reformation theologian, he is a persistent defender of the utter gratuitousness of grace, thereby denying that the moral, spiritual, and epistemological chasm separating the human and the divine can in any way be reconciled by human being. Yet, for Calvin, grace possesses an omnicompetence – even faith is the gift of grace – which, when examined within the total context of his thought, reveals the radical dependence of the entire created order upon the will of God. (shrink)

There are different meanings of the word “God” that have been used by philosophers throughout the history of philosophy, such as theism, pantheism, panentheism, deism, and etc. The subject of this paper is the concept of “God” in Plato’s philosophy. Considering Plato’s different treatises that have the most theological material, it can be said that he has not meant a single concept of this word. In The Republic, given the characteristics that have been attributed to God, like simplicity, transcendental, it (...) seems that his conception of God is close to theism. In Phaedo, since Plato does not give any role to the gods, it seems that we are encountered a Plato without God. In Timaeus, we encounter two candidates, Demiurge and the world’s soul. Some philosophers consider Demiurge as a myth and the world’s soul as Plato’s God. According to this view, Plato can be regarded as the source of inspiration for the Pannanteists. In contrast, some other believe that the world’s soul here is a myth and Demiurge is Plato’s God. This viewpoint is closer to ​​theism. In the Laws, since Plato mentions some attributes to God, such as three absolutes, the origin of moral obligation, and etc. His conception here is very close to theism. On the other hand, the “first self-moved Mover” presents a panentheistic conception of God. His various treatises also provide evidence in favor of the unknown God of the Negative Theology. Thus, there are various conceptions of God in Plato’s philosophy. (shrink)

Some of the most well known figures in three main cultures, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, defend negative theology. They believe that God doesn’t have any positive attribute and that no positive knowledge of Him is possible. Others, who are in majority, are anxious of agnosticism. Maimonides the great Jewish philosopher tries to relive this anxiety. He proposes negative knowledge arguing that in terms of negation we become closer to some knowledge of Him, though His nature still (...) remains out of access. In this way he tries to avoid agnosticism and at the same time justify the extreme differences among believers in knowledge of Him. But it seems that, if we rely on reason alone, Maimonides' arguments are not convincing. This paper tries to criticize his examples and arguments. It seems clear that any negative knowledge should be based on a kind of positive one. No one by mere negation can receive any understanding of Him especially when the realm of negation expands upon the predicate of being too. In that case if someone like Maimonides insists to preserve his faith on God he should seek ways other than reason, like fideism or Gnosticism. And as a philosopher he cannot hold his position anymore. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:694 BOOK REVIEWS Exercises in the Work of HUvB," Antonio Sicari writes on "Theology and Holiness," and Georges Chantraine writes on the relationship of "Exegesis and Contemplation." Missing from Henrici's account of Balthasar's philosophical presup· positions, as well as from the other contributions, are further sugges· tions for exploring possible relationships with some of the current con· cerns in North America like the hermeneutical debates or those surrounding other (...) methodological issues. Much work is still needed in this area, especially a more thorough encounter between the position of Balthasar and those of Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, and Paul Ricoeur, to name but a few of the dominant figures in North American theological circles. Schindler's volume is highly to be praised as an invaluable introduction to the work of one of the giants of our century. Let us hope that more such studies will be forthcoming. Concordia University Montreal, Quebec CHRISTOPHE PoTWOROWSKI The Anthropological Character of Theology: Conditioning Theological Understanding. By DAVID A. PAILIN. New York: Cambridge Uni· versity Press, 1990. Pp. 300. $54.95 (cloth). That the discipline of theology is an activity of human beings whereby even in the most pronounced theologies of revelation the " creaturely form" of theology is acknowledged is not a matter of dispute. What is debated is the extent to which this Barthian rendering of the anthropological moment of theology " conditions " our theological understanding. It is in the interests of sorting this out that David Pailin, Reader in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Manchester in England, devotes this volume. The result is a rather systematic study in which the author explores the various angles where one can register theology's human dimension-from basic theistic claims to doctrinal formulations-while simultaneously justifying the integrity of theological inquiry in philosophical perspective. Indeed, throughout, it is the hand of a philosopher of religion that is at work, synthesizing and categorizing the contemporary theological landscape and carving out the true subject matter of theology, namely, that which is "ontologically, valuatively and rationally ultimate" (p. 4). The book is best read with an eye to each of these poles. On the one hand, the ostensible project is to examine, evaluate, and clearly affirm the human character of the theological enterprise. Simply BOOK REVIEWS 695 acknowledging the theological identification of human being, ergo the theologian, as a creature addressed by the divine word is inadequate. Even if this should require the practitioner to engage in a " laborious movement from one partial human insight to another" (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I, 1, p. 14), it does not give due recognition to the formative influence exercised by the theologian's fallible and culturally specific situation in life. These include language, conceptual perspective, metaphysical commitments, social location, and religious experience. On the other hand, Pailin is mindful that attention to theology's anthropological character and his methodological accentuation of it is in danger of yielding to the reductionist charge that religion is a complex of human projection and anthropomorphic description. In response Pailin consistently argues the case for the justifiability of religious belief, theistic claims, and theological predication. In this respect his work is not only descriptive of what theologians are doing but it attempts a revisionary intervention in the realms of philosophical and systematic theology. Classical theistic renditions of the divine attributes are subjected to critical scrutiny, e.g., divine impassibility and its relationship to divine love, and traditional interpretations of Christian doctrines are relativized by their cultural context, e.g., Anselm's theory of atonement. His own constructive subtext betrays a clear preference for neo-classical process theology and its conceptualization of God's relationship to the world and history. The key issue that governs Pailin's view of the integrity and limits of theological understanding revolves around the relationship between formal and material predication. What we mean by God and what we say about God are inextricably bound up with our speculative efforts to understand the nature of ultimate reality. The theologian and the metaphysician are in pursuit of similar quests with the proviso that the farmer's judgments are ensconced within a religious perspective. This does not exempt theological judgments from being rationally... (shrink)