El artículo estudia cómo la fenomenología puede contribuir al quehacer teológico. A tal fin, el prof. Gilbert comienza por identificar los inicios de la fenomenología. Seguidamente, presenta lo que él denomina fenomenología “descriptiva”, marcada por las ciencias humanas, que sirvió para reconocer las características esenciales de la religión. Pero la fenomenología puede dar un paso más, ya estrictamente filosófico, para elaborar un modo de fenomenología “especulativa”. Finalmente, el artículo indica las aportaciones de esta esta fenomenológica al desarrollo de la teología, (...) estudiando las propuestas de Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion y Emmanuel Falque. (shrink)

This work contains three essays which were delivered at a Symposium in 1966 at the Free University in Brussels, convened to pay homage to Martin Buber. The first essay, by Gabriel Marcel, attempts to edify the reader on Buber's philosophical anthropology, his philosophy of dialogue, political philosophy, and his philosophy of religion. There are frequent comparisons between Marcel's point of view and Buber's. The essay is particularly strong where Marcel analyzes Buber's notion of the "we." His perceptive examination of this (...) subject points up the affinity between his own and the Jewish philosopher's thought. The essay by Emmanuel Levinas, "La Pensée de Martin Buber et le Judaïsme Contemporain," sketches current Jewish thought and finds that it was Buber who gave it direction. Levinas provides also an account of the enormous work which Buber did in establishing Hassidism as an important stage in Hebraic thought. The last essay, by André Lacocque, deals with Protestant theology and the possible application of Buber's ideas to it. There is an extended comparison between the views of Kierkegaard and those of Buber on man's relationship with God and the author concludes that Buber's point of view is more compatible with modern Christianity than was Kierkegaard's.--S. J. B. (shrink)

Büchi, J. R. The monadic second order theory of [omega symbol]₁.--Büchi, J. R. and Siefkes, D. Axiomatization of the monadic second order theory of [omega symbol]₁.

This paper examines critically the reconstruction of the ‘Sherlock Holmes sense of deduction’ proposed jointly by M.B. Hintikka and J. Hintikka in the 1980s, and its successor, the interrogative model of inquiry developed by J. Hintikka and his collaborators in the 1990s. The Hintikkas’ model explicitly used game theory in order to formalize a naturalistic approach to inquiry, but the imi abandoned both the game-theoretic formalism, and the naturalistic approach. It is argued that the latter better supports the claim that (...) the imi provides a ‘logic of discovery’, and safeguards its empirical adequacy. Technical changes necessary to this interpretation are presented, and examples are discussed, both formal and informal, that are better analyzed when these changes are in place. The informal examples are borrowed from Conan Doyle’s The Case of Silver Blaze, a favorite of M.B. and J. Hintikka. (shrink)

We examine a special case of inquiry games and give an account of the informational import of asking questions. We focus on yes-or-no questions, which always carry information about the questioner's strategy, but never about the state of Nature, and show how strategic information reduces uncertainty through inferences about other players' goals and strategies. This uncertainty cannot always be captured by information structures of classical game theory. We conclude by discussing the connection with Gricean pragmatics and contextual constraints on interpretation.Send (...) article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.HOW CAN QUESTIONS BE INFORMATIVE BEFORE THEY ARE ANSWERED? STRATEGIC INFORMATION IN INTERROGATIVE GAMESVolume 9, Issue 2Emmanuel J. Genot and Justine JacotDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.8Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. HOW CAN QUESTIONS BE INFORMATIVE BEFORE THEY ARE ANSWERED? STRATEGIC INFORMATION IN INTERROGATIVE GAMESVolume 9, Issue 2Emmanuel J. Genot and Justine JacotDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.8Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. HOW CAN QUESTIONS BE INFORMATIVE BEFORE THEY ARE ANSWERED? STRATEGIC INFORMATION IN INTERROGATIVE GAMESVolume 9, Issue 2Emmanuel J. Genot and Justine JacotDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.8Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

: A popular belief is that the process whereby search engines tailor their search results to individual users, so-called personalization, leads to filter bubbles in the sense of ideologically segregated search results that would tend to reinforce the user’s prior view. Since filter bubbles are thought to be detrimental to society, there have been calls for further legal regulation of search engines beyond the so-called Right to be Forgotten Act. However, the scientific evidence for the filter bubble hypothesis is surprisingly (...) limited. Previous studies of personalization have focused on the extent to which different users get different results lists without taking the content on the webpages into account. Such methods are unsuitable for detecting filter bubbles as such. In this paper, we propose a methodology that takes content differences between webpages into account. In particular, the method involves studying the extent to which users with strong opposing views on an issue receive search results that are correlated content-wise with their personal view. Will users of with strong prior opinion that X is true on average have a larger share of search results that are in favor of X than users with a strong prior opinion that X is false? We illustrate our methodology at work, but also the non-trivial challenges it faces, by a small-scale study of the extent to which Google Search leads to ideological segregation on the issue of man-made climate change. (shrink)

Anyone interested in the relationship between culture and the intellectual life, has no doubt turned to the works of Christopher Dawson. This collection of ten essays from a recent conference at Oxford acts as an excellent commentary on Dawson’s main academic concerns: recovering history as a philosophical-theological category, and the reintegration of the disciplines so as to provide future generations with an understanding of culture in the truest sense of the term. As John Morrill points out in his introductory essay, (...) Dawson’s “passionate commitment to metahistory and his proclamation of the deeply moral purpose of the historian” —although out of favor in some academic circles—marks his as a unique voice in the search for truth. Dawson’s daughter, Christina Scott, offers the reader some otherwise inaccessible insights into her father’s life, especially regarding his early interest in Augustine’s De civitate Dei and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. Aidan Nichols, OP provides a bigger picture. His essay, “Christopher Dawson’s Catholic Setting,” highlights the “theology of culture” affecting all parts of English life during the earlier part of this century: the literature, art, architecture, and philosophy that brought “a Catholic sensibility to bear on cultural life”. The Chelsea set, a vibrantly orthodox Catholic salon to which Dawson belonged, centered their thought around the Neo-Thomism of Gilson and Maritain, the literature of Fumet and Julian Green, as well as the social thought of Emmanuel Mounier. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

Children who experience well-being are engaging more confidently and positively with their caregiver and peers, which helps them to profit more from available learning opportunities and support current and later life outcomes. The goodness-of-fit theory suggests that children’s well-being might be a result of the interplay between their temperament and the environment. However, there is a lack of studies that examined the association between children’s temperament and well-being in early childhood education and care, and whether this association is affected by (...) ECEC process quality. Using a multilevel random coefficient approach, this study examines the association between toddlers’ temperament and well-being in Norwegian ECEC and investigates whether process quality moderates this association. Results reveal an association between temperament and well-being. Staff-child conflict moderates the association between shyness and well-being, and between activity and well-being. Moreover, high emotional behavioral support moderates the association between activity and well-being. Extra attention should be paid by the staff to these children’s needs. (shrink)

Christian Emden’s book is a contribution to the current debates in the English-language literature over Nietzsche’s “naturalism.” Emden regards this subject as “crucial to any understanding of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical thought”, claiming that the “central task of Nietzsche’s philosophical project” is to “translate humanity back into nature,” as Nietzsche himself puts it in BGE 230. However, Emden does not undertake to demonstrate this thesis as such. Rather, he aims to interpret Nietzsche’s naturalism in terms of the “problem of normativity”, that (...) of how the sources of normativity can be understood without appealing to a normative standard independent of us as natural beings.... (shrink)

Qui connaît aujourd'hui le philosophe français Emmanuel Mounier et sa révolution personnaliste? Les pages de cet ouvrage lui rendent hommage et donnent le goût de découvrir son extraordinaire aventure en faveur de l'homme. Visionnaire et engagé, sa brève et intense existence (1905-1950) fut consacrée à remettre la Personne au centre de la pensée et de l'agir dans une crise historique sans précédent. L'écriture vive et sensible d'Emannuel Pic et l'étonnante recherche graphique de Fred Bourguignon accompagnent le fondateur de la revue (...) Esprit dans la contemplation et la traversée d'un surprenant mur blanc. "J'ai souhaité à travers ce bref récit rendre aimable Emmanuel Mounier à une nouvelle génération d'hommes et de femmes confrontés à des questions anthropologiques inédites. Pour y parvenir, je n'ai pas voulu faire une nouvelle étude biographique car d'autres l'ont fait de merveilleuses manières avant moi (Domenach, Lurol). Il s'agit davantage d'un récit où défilent les moments clés de la vie du philosophe personnaliste et la progression de sa pensée sur la personne. Ainsi progressivement émerge sa vision de la personne en relation à travers les multiples visages qui l'ont poussé à se libérer et à s'engager contre tout ce qui peut réduire et contraindre la sublime vocation des êtres humains à expérimenter de vraies communions. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the work of Emmanuel Levinas and René Girard and argues that both of them have as their central problem the phenomenon of human violence and both try to address this problem from their own religious tradition, Jewish for Levinas, Christian for Girard. They both pursue the concept of nonviolence to an extreme point in what each calls saintliness or holiness and both can be considered religious prophets of this extreme version of nonviolence.

Phelosophy; identification; Lévinas, Emmanuel.

In this article E. Falque offers an original reading of the Augustinian epithet “I am a weight to myself” (oneri mihi sum, conf. 10.28). The question for Falque is not to determine whether Augustine belongs to the history of metaphysics (as is J.-L. Marión’s interest), but to determine what Augustine’s “weight of life” does to phenomenology in the backlash (‘le choc en retour’), or the after theafter, of metaphysics. Specifically, foliowing M. Heidegger, Falque finds the “weight of life” particularly relevant (...) to frame the post-metaphysical experience of memory and the question of pain. Overall, the infamous Augustinian “restless heart” finquietum, conf. 1.1) ineludes, through the “weight of life”, an unquenchable dynamic which is the divine action in human beings. The “weight of life” is such in the finitude of human existence that there always remains restlessness in rest. Thus, Falque recovers the restlessness of rest through an analysis of the backlash of the “weight of life” in the after the after of metaphysics. (shrink)

J.L. Austin is regarded as having an especially acute ear for fine distinctions of meaning overlooked by other philosophers. Austin employs an informal experimental approach to gathering evidence in support of these fine distinctions in meaning, an approach that has become a standard technique for investigating meaning in both philosophy and linguistics. In this paper, we subject Austin's methods to formal experimental investigation. His methods produce mixed results: We find support for his most famous distinction, drawn on the basis of (...) his `donkey stories', that `mistake' and `accident' apply to different cases, but not for some of his other attempts to distinguish the meaning of philosophically significant terms (such as `intentionally' and `deliberately'). We critically examine the methodology of informal experiments employed in ordinary language philosophy and much of contemporary philosophy of language and linguistics, and discuss the role that experimenter bias can play in influencing judgments about informal and formal linguistic experiments. (shrink)

This paper dwells on the debate on the question of what is/are responsible for African underdevelopment and, by extension, what will influence African development. The debate currently dwells on how much of development is human and how much is environmental, extraneous and beyond human control. Joseph Agbakoba thinks that development involves both nature and human agency, acknowledges the effect of nature, equally sees philosophy as a critique of worldview and ideology, and African philosophy as saddled with the critique of the (...) African worldview and ideology, which he sees as malfunctioning in the context of the modern African civic society imported from Europe and needs certain adjustments. In other words, he sees development in Africa as not beyond human control. J. Obi Oguejiofor attempts to refute Agbakoba’s claim that worldview has anything to do with the African predicament, and concludes that the African predicament is as a result of geography, biogeography and history, but his advancement of these factors as being solely responsible for the African predicament completely ignores the human agency in development and lands him in determinism raising the question of the very relevance of African philosophy to African development. Conceptual analysis informs the dominant method of the paper. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Évangile et Providence: Une théologie de l’action de Dieu by Emmanuel DurandMichael J. Dodds, O.P.Évangile et Providence: Une théologie de l’action de Dieu. By Emmanuel Durand. Paris: Cerf, 2014. Pp. 345. €35.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-2-204-10201-8.Emmanuel Durand offers a refreshing perspective on the question of divine action, so much discussed in recent years in the dialogue between theology and science. While not neglecting the fruit of that discussion, his (...) framing of the question under the headings of “Gospel” and “Providence” opens a new vista that is evident in his opening question: “What theology of Providence is needed today for the Gospel of salvation?” (7).Although contemporary theology readily affirms the biblical proclamation of God’s universal offer of salvation, its account of God’s salvific action on behalf of each person has become “uncertain and problematic.” Discussions of divine “kenosis, self-limitation, retreat, and powerlessness” have led many to the conviction God’s action must somehow be “limited” (8). The result is the paradox of a limited God attempting to offer universal salvation. The remedy lies in the recovery of a correct understanding of “the sovereignty of God”—the God who acts not only in the “intimacy of human hearts” but also in and through the “happy and unhappy contingencies” of human life (8-9).Durand begins by placing the question of divine action in the context of contemporary theology and culture, considering first the relationship between divine and human action, then the question of God’s action in history, and finally the understanding of divine action that has surfaced in the dialogue between theology and science (chap. 1). His next task is to clarify the notion of “action” itself. This entails an account of analogy (chap. 2). The discussion then turns to the “creative reappropriation” (10) of three classical theologies of divine providence, those of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and John Henry Newman. This involves a careful consideration of the Confessions of Augustine, the Summa contra gentiles of Aquinas, and the sermons of Newman (chaps. 3-5).The flip side of the question of divine action is of course the problem of evil and why a God who is capable of overcoming evil does not do so. Durand proposes not to “resolve” (résoudre) such problems here, but simply to help us “press” (serrer) them (11) as a preparation for listening to what revelation may say of them (chap. 6). The question of evil serves as the background for the discussion of Scripture that follows, where aspects of the books of Wisdom, Luke, and John are considered (chap. 7). Durand concludes with a [End Page 133] constructive proposal for understanding Providence in the world as we find it today, afflicted with evil (chap. 8).Durand begins his book with a discussion of the widespread opinion in contemporary philosophy and theology that divine and human action are somehow opposed to or in competition with each other. He traces this notion to Sartre, arguing that it now seems to pervade our culture despite the efforts of theologians such as Sertillanges to refute it. God’s action in the world is thought to diminish as humanity matures historically. The sovereign God gives place to the suffering God, who can act only through the actions of humans. The contemporary notion of history itself poses problems for divine action. It is difficult to affirm God’s saving and directing action in history, when history itself has lost its direction: “The loss of confidence in the intelligibility of history also jeopardizes the representation of God as sovereign, cause, author, director or guarantor of history” (29). Finally, the ability of science to explain natural events has led some to the conviction that there is simply no room for God to act in the world without interfering with the order of scientific laws. Durand presents a fine summary and critique of the responses to this dilemma that have surfaced in the ongoing dialogue between theologians and scientists, especially under the auspices of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley (31-60).Durand... (shrink)

In Prophetic Politics, Philip J. Harold offers an original interpretation of the political dimension of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought.

Les normes au sens le plus large sont issues des interactions entre les individus et sont interprétées au sein de ces interactions, même si la complexité des interactions tient aussi à l'intervention des institutions et des Etats. Il s'agit de partir du micronormatif pour aller vers le macronormatif (notamment les lois et les traités) et non l'inverse, de manière à rendre compte de phénomènes comme la responsabilité sociale des entreprises, le droit souple et la prise en compte de l'éthique pour (...) prendre des décisions (au plan national et international, en matière environnementale et médicale, etc.). Le constat de départ est qu'une masse colossale de normes de toute origine s'applique à des individus, personnes physiques ou morales, qui à leur tour participent de l'élaboration de normes. L'inflation et la diversification des normes engendrent notamment une crise du droit (en quête d'identité), mais aussi une crise des institutions et des professions judiciaires. Une façon de rendre compte de ces crises consiste à établir une sorte de cartographie des interactionnismes au regard des normes. Emergent ainsi des interactionnismes philosophiques, sociologiques, anthropologiques, psychologiques, éthiques ou juridiques. Les différents interactionnismes peuvent apparaître critiquables au regard des normes (notamment en raison de leur caractère descriptif et non institutionnel) et il serait fort utile de dégager des voies alternatives. L'introduction met en place cette problématique (E Picavet et E Jeuland). Après une recherche théorique et pratique menée par des juristes (E Jeuland et L Champain), un sociologue des professions (F Champy) nous permet de penser l'évolution des professions judiciaires entre statut et adaptation. Une philosophe spécialisée dans l'interactionnisme (C Bonicco) ainsi qu'une psychanalyste (H Tessier) s'interrogent sur les normes implicites, non dites et les rapports de domination sous-jacents aux interactions. Un philosophe spécialisé dans la justice climatique et le nucléaire ouvre un nouveau champ de réflexion particulièrement nécessaire aujourd'hui en incluant la nature au sein des interactions humaines (F P Piguet). Deux ingénieurs nous présentent une approche des interactionnismes et de l'innovation technologique (J F Omhover et C Bouchard) qui n'est pas sans lien avec la nature et le droit. Un anthropologue estime que le droit tel qu'il est connu depuis deux ou trois siècles dans une version très étatique est en plein bouleversement et revient à des formes microjuridiques (Etienne le Roy). Un juriste essaie enfin de faire la synthèse des articulations entre les normes et les interactions (J Moret-Bailly). Il en ressort une présentation transdisciplinaire des différents versants du problème de la relation entre les normes et les individus. (shrink)

L'oeuvre du philosophe Paul Gilbert, jésuite belge professeur de métaphysique depuis vingt-cinq ans à l'Université Grégorienne, est considérable et mérite d'être mieux connue. Après avoir étudié les écrits de saint Anselme (Dire l'ineffable, 1984), Paul Gilbert a questionné la métaphysique classique, sous l'influence de la philosophie réflexive (La Simplicité du principe, 1994). Il a ensuite souligné les chances offertes à la réflexion fondamentale par l'analogie, thème classique mais oublié (La Patience d'être, 1996, et Sapere e sperare, 2003). Plus récemment, il (...) a abordé la question de la violence, ce mal- être si commun (Violence et compassion, 2009). En 1997 déjà, son travail a été récompensé du prix Cardinal Mercier de l'U.C.Louvain-la-Neuve. Durant de nombreuses années, Paul Gilbert a été professeur invité à l'Institut catholique de Paris. A l'occasion de son éméritat dans cette institution, un colloque y a été organisé. Dans leurs communications, S. Bonanni, Ph. Capelle-Dumont, S. D'Agostino, E. Gabellieri, J. de Gramont, 1. Malaguti, R. Repole et E. Tourpe reprennent et développent l'élaboration de la pensée de Paul Gilbert. Ce dernier fait écho à chacune d'elles et, dans un exposé final, retrace son propre itinéraire intellectuel. (shrink)

This chapter, ‘Friendship and the Moral Life in Iris Murdoch’s Novels’ revisits the subject of sexual relationships, not from the problematic perspective brought to them in Anne Rowe’s earlier chapter, but in a positive light. In his analysis of the educational potential of friendship and sexuality Robert Baker contends that sexual intimacy teaches Murdoch’s characters not only about themselves and their own identity but also about the reality of the other person. It thus acts as a force for learning to (...) attend to the world outside the self which is the desideratum of Murdoch’s moral pilgrimage. He surveys the apparent acceptance by Murdoch scholars that such moral development is necessarily a solitary and lonely endeavour before juxtaposing that impression—given prominence in the M and D scenario Murdoch creates in The Sovereignty of Good (1970)—with the relationships she portrays in her novels. Close readings of the friendship of Tom MacCaffrey and Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor in The Philosopher’s Pupil (1983) and of Harvey Blackett’s relationship with Sefton Anderson in The Green Knight support Baker’s contention that physical affection can be a guide to the good. Borrowing an image from the latter novel he claims that in her fiction ‘Murdoch represents the moral life not as a lonely pilgrimage toward reality, but as a passeggiata with others in which one gives way to a movement larger than and beyond oneself’ (177), a viable interpretation which reads the passeggiata with an interestingly different slant from other current critics such as Rebecca Moden, who regards it as Murdoch’s ‘metaphor for the nature of human existence’ and ‘a troubling image of the impoverished quality of human consciousness in the late twentieth century’. (shrink)

The main aim of this political philosophy study is to analyze the two fundamental ideas developed by Jean Monnet, namely, the idea of a federally united Europe and its sovereignty. This analysis is combined with an attempt to capture at least some of the essential assumptions of his philosophical ideas and their evolution. The source materials on which the article is based are primarily Monnet’s Memories, his notes and official memoranda, the correspondence from the war and postwar period and the (...) speeches he gave as the President of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952-1955. They were supplemented with Memorandum of Aristide Briand, the speech of Winston Churchill in Zurich, Convention for European Economic Cooperation and Erinnerungen 1945-1953 by Konrad Adenauer. When it comes to literature, the author referred to the extensive bibliography on the subject contained in Suwerenność by Jacek Czaputowicz. The study uses the method of multidisciplinary analysis of sources and their historical, political and philosophical interpretation. The research conducted allows us to speak of certain philosophical assumptions in Monnet’s thinking about a united Europe and its future. Among the main components of his understanding we can enumerate: necessity, change, specific strength, development in stages and incompleteness which is essentially characteristic to nature. The carried out analysis also allows us to formulate the hypothesis about Monnet’s philosophy of life and action, which can be understood as a certain phenomenology of the community in its becoming, and to situate it, at least partially, within the framework of the phenomenology of Europe as formulated by Erich Przywara in this treatise Idee Europe. (shrink)

This article evaluates Emmanuel Levinas's novel "ethical metaphysics" of interpersonal relations from a religious perspective. Levinas presents a unique version of agape ethics that can be evaluated in terms of a number of the dilemmas that have traditionally attended Christian discussions of neighbor-love. Because Levinas's analysis makes our responsibility for other persons depend on their eschatological significance, it has the same problems that hamper all theories of neighbor-love that lack a sufficient role for reciprocity.

Recent discussions in the philosophy of religion, ethics, and personal political philosophy have been deeply marked by the influence of two philosophers who are often thought to be in opposition to each other, Søren Kierkegaard and Emmanuel Levinas. Devoted expressly to the relationship between Levinas and Kierkegaard, this volume sets forth a more rigorous comparison and sustained engagement between them. Established and newer scholars representing varied philosophical traditions bring these two thinkers into dialogue in 12 sparkling essays. They consider similarities (...) and differences in how each elaborated a unique philosophy of religion, and they present themes such as time, obligation, love, politics, God, transcendence, and subjectivity. This conversation between neighbors is certain to inspire further inquiry and ignite philosophical debate. (shrink)

Much philosophical attention has been devoted to “The Land Ethic,” especially by Anglo-American philosophers, but little has been paid to A Sand County Almanac as a whole. Read through the lens of continental philosophy, A Sand County Almanac promulgates an evolutionary-ecological world view and effects a personal self- and a species-specific Self-transformation in its audience. It’s author, Aldo Leopold, realizes these aims through descriptive reflection that has something in common with phenomenology-although Leopold was by no stretch of the imagination a (...) phenomenologist. Consideration of human-animal intersubjectivity, thematized in A Sand County Almanac, brings to light the moral problem of hunting and killing animal subjects. Leopold does not confront that problem, but it is confronted and resolved by Jose Ortega y Gassett, Henry Beston, and Paul Shepard in terms of an appropriate human relationship with wild-animal Others. Comparison with the genuinely Other-based Leopold-Ortega-Beston-Shepard wild-animal ethic shows the purportedly Other-based humanand possibly animal ethic of Emmanuel Levinas actually to be Same-based after all. (shrink)

At present, there is an enormous gulf between the visibility of evil and the paucity of our intellectual resources for coming to grips with it. We have been flooded with images of death camps, terrorist attacks and horrendous human suffering. Yet when we ask what we mean by radical evil and how we are to account for it, we seem to be at a loss for proper responses. Bernstein seeks to discover what we can learn about the meaning of evil (...) and human responsibility. He turns to philosophers such as Kant, who coined the expression 'radical evil', as well as to Hegel and Schelling. He also examines more recent explorations of evil, namely the thinking of Freud and Nietzsche on the moral psychology of evil. Finally, he looks at the way in which three post-Holocaust thinkers - Emmanuel Levinas, Hans Jonas, and Hannah Arendt - have sought to come to grips with evil "after Auschwitz." Bernstein's primary concern throughout this challenging book is to enrich and deepen our understanding of evil in the contemporary world, and to emphasize the vigilance and personal responsibility required for combating it. Radical Evil will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy, social and political theory, and religious studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jesus the World-Protector:Eighteenth-Century Gelukpa Historians View Christianity1Michael J. SweetThe assumption that religion was so seamlessly woven into non-Western and preindustrial cultures that it was not even distinguished as a separate entity, let alone regarded as an object for study, has been a commonplace among Western scholars of religion for some decades.2 From this point of view, which can be broadly characterized as postmodernist and postcolonialist, the concept of religion (...) "is not a native category... it is a category imposed from outside... it is the other... colonialists who are solely responsible for the content of the term."3 This is a somewhat reductionistic and Eurocentric perspective that ignores the universal human capacity to empathically understand other belief systems.One counterexample to this school of thought is found in the works of three eighteenth-century religious historians, all of whom were learned monks in the Gelukpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism: Gombojab (Mgon po Skyabs, late seventeenth century–after 1766),4 Sumba Khembo (Sum pa Mkhan po Yes shes dpal 'byor, 1704–1776), and Tuken (Thu'u Bkwan Blo bzang Chos kyi Nyi ma, 1737– 1802), authors of The History of Buddhism in China, The Auspicious Wish-Fulfilling Tree,5 and The Crystal Mirror,6 respectively. These scholars had clear conceptions of their own and other religious systems (Tib.: chos lugs), and compared to earlier Tibetan accounts they present relatively tolerant evaluations of other religious philosophies—for example, Chinese Buddhism, Daoism, and the Literati Tradition (Ru jiao, "Confucianism")—while asserting the superiority of the Gelukpa form of Tibetan Buddhism.7As a case in point, we will see how they describe and evaluate Christianity, a religion that was quite foreign to them and that they appear to have understood only imperfectly. Earlier Tibetan Buddhist religious histories, of which the best-known are the Blue Annals of 'Gos Lotsawa and Bu ston's "History of the Dharma," are immensely valuable sources, but they are more parochial in their range of interest than those of the eighteenth-century Tibeto-Mongol scholars.8 For the earlier historians Indo-Tibetan Buddhism was the only religious system worth serious consideration, and Chinese Buddhism, Indian non-Buddhist religious philosophies, Bon, [End Page 173] and Islam were dealt with in a polemical or (especially in the case of Islam) a frankly hostile fashion. Something changed in the eighteenth century that produced works closer to modern comparative religion than to medieval heresiography.A major motive for this shift was surely the triumph of the Manchu Qing dynasty, which by the mid-eighteenth century had incorporated Tibet and Mongolia definitively into its sphere. Thus, the horizon of the Tibeto-Mongol intelligentsia widened to include the vast Manchu empire, whose leadership in its turn was becoming increasingly aware of other Asian societies and of the European colonial powers. I believe it is significant that Sumba Khembo, Tuken, and Gombojab were all of Mongol ethnicity, the first two from Amdo and the last from Mongolia; they were able to combine an encyclopedic mastery of Tibetan Buddhist texts and ritual with the greater objectivity available to people stemming from the geographical and cultural periphery of that tradition. All three of them were exposed to the cosmopolitan world of imperial Beijing, where they had ample opportunity to meet followers of non-Buddhist religions of a wide range of ethnicities.9By the mid-eighteenth century there were four Catholic churches in Beijing, serving thousands of Chinese Christian converts. Dozens of European priests were employed by the imperial court as well.10 The prevailing syncretic view of the three major Chinese religious philosophies (sanjiao)—Buddhism, Daoism, and the Literati Tradition—as being mutually complementary,11 prevailed in the capital. This is the view that is approvingly cited by Tuken: "there are three great traditions (lugs srol) which clarify the ultimate nature of things, the Literati Tradition, Daoism, and Buddhism."12In turning to these scholars' treatment of Christianity, we find the earliest notice of this religion in Gombojab's History of Buddhism in China,13 written around the mid-1730s.14 Gombojab renders the name of Jesus in its traditional Chinese form of Yesu; he is called the World... (shrink)

In this essay I offer a reading of Fear and Trembling that responds to critiques of Kierkegaardian ethics as being, as Brand Blanshard claims, “morally nihilistic,” as Emmanuel Levinas contends, ethically violent, and, as Alasdair MacIntyre charges, simply irrational. I argue that by focusing on Isaac's singularity as the very condition for Abraham's “ordeal,” the book presents a story about responsible subjectivity. Rather than standing in competition with the relation to God, the relation to other people is, thus, inscribed into (...) this very relation. Fear and Trembling, I contend, advocates a bidirectional responsibility that is constitutive of subjectivity itself and, as such, actually resonates with certain aspects of Levinasian ethics. I conclude by suggesting that Abraham's ordeal is not due to the conflict between a nonreligious duty and the duty to God, but instead reflects a tension that is internal to the life of faith itself. (shrink)

This article sketches the broad outlines of Matthew's ironic portrayal of children, examining first the 'lower level' of the narrative and then the 'upper level' of the narrative. When viewed from the 'lower level' of Matthew's narrative, the everyday circumstances of children reflect the nurture of their parents as well as significant challenges: debilitating physical conditions, serious illnesses, military violence and premature childhood death. In addition, children occupy the lowest rung on the 1st-century Mediterranean social ladder, a status they share (...) with slaves. But on the 'upper level' of his narrative, from the 'God's-eye' perspective, Matthew turns everyday reality for children on its head in ironic fashion. Emmanuel, the 'God who is with us', appears as a 'child' who has just 'been born' and who exhibits all the powerlessness and vulnerability of such a 'child'. In a violent showdown between 'King Herod' and the one 'who has been born king of the Jews', it is Herod, the powerful ruler, who dies, while the vulnerable 'child' ends up safely in Nazareth. Throughout his ministry, Jesus heals children along with adults. To the apparent chagrin of his disciples, Jesus lays hands on children in an act of blessing. He commends the messianic praises of children, in contrast to the outrage of the Jewish leadership. Moreover, Jesus proclaims that it is 'to such as these [children] that the kingdom of heaven belongs'. (shrink)

Terraforming is a process of planetary engineering by which the extant environment of a planetary body is transformed into an environment capable of supporting human inhabitants. The question I would like to consider in this paper is whether there is any reason to believe that the terraforming of another planet—for instance, the terraforming of Mars—is morally problematic. Topics related to the human exploration of space are not often discussed in philosophical circles. Nevertheless, there exists a growing body of philosophical literature (...) dedicated to sorting out the moral implications of the use of resources from (and in) space. Most of this literature is produced as environmental philosophy. Questions of .. (shrink)

Steven Vogel’s Thinking like a Mall, which continues themes developed in his previous work Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory, is clearly intended to provok...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A RETURN TO THE SUBJECT: THE THEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHARLES TAYLOR'S SOURCES OF THE SELF JAMES J. BUCKLEY Loyola College Baltimore, Maryland ECENT THEOLOGIANS have widely argued (or pve-. sumed) that modernity's 1turn to the subject creates deep p11ohlems for imagining, thinking about, or enacting who we m'e. These theologians do not aJwaJ"s agree on what constitutes "modernity." And they ra11e!ly agree on the 'alternative to " the turn (...) to the :subject.'' That is, some theologians airgue or presume that the turn from the subject ought to he baiekwa:rid, retrieving our sou11ces prior to what Vatican II and others c:a:lrl "the modeTn world;" others argue o'l.' presume tha:t the turn ought be forwavd to "post-modernity," either accommodating ourseh11es to the decentered selves of the post-modern secular avant garde or proclaiming the strange, new wo1'1d of the Bible. Hut neo-Augustinians and Thomists, liberation theologians and pragmatists, Wittgensrteinians and Barthians all roughly agree (in spite of deep disagx,eements) that we need to turn from the subject;1 Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity is a massivie challenge to these presumptions and argument1s.2 It is, we might s'ay, a call to re-turn to the :subjeict-;hut quwlified this time by a gl'e3.1ter sense of this subject 'is historiml context in the Enlightenment and Romantioism 1 For a summary of critiques of different turns to the subject, see David H. Kelsey, "Human Being," in Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks, ed. Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King, Second Edition (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985 [Firnt Edition, 1982]), Chapter 6. 2 Charles Taylor Sources of the Sdf: The Making of the JJiodern Identity (Harvard University Press, 1989), referred to in the body of this essay by page numbers in parentheses. 497 498 JAMES J. BUCKLEY a1s weU.as this subject's constant ternptaition to undermine the very world it mak!es. A rea1der's response to the book wilil depend not only on how one rea1ds Taylor (e.g., does he under- or over-qualify his ca11 to return to Lhe subject?) but also on where the reader finds heriseilf on the tlieological spectrum. However, the fact that T.aylor',s book has been greeted with critical enthusiasm by both theologiical 'agnostics and contempomry Augustinians and Thomists suggests tha1t it is a book whose power and scope will resonabe with very different sort1s of men and women.3 My aim here is not to summarize or 1 assess the riches of this book. Soumes of the Self is a book of such clarity, power, and 1scope that lit will takce some 1 time for rea;ders (or, ak least, this reader) fo absorb it a;nd to respond :to Taylor adequateJy. My aim is much more modest, nameJy, to pursue some of the connections between Tayl:or's proposal and theology. These connections vv:i.11 suggest some chores Taylor has discoveil'ed or crea;ted for theoilogians. I rea:lize that I risk doing an injustice to a book by a philosopher, not a theologian. Tayfor is candid about hls own theologica1l convictions, while not pretending fully to ddend or evcen fully expl~ca:te those convictions. Nonetihe1ess, I wiill show tha:t his theses challenge n1any of us in ways tha:t justify a foous on theo1ogica,l isisues.Je objecition to. Tayloi; rightly speaks of the "anti-humanism of much evange[ieail rie~ ligion today," bu:t I be1ievie he is mistaken when he fails to 1.2 He carefully distinguishes neo-Nietzscheans like Lyotard, Derrida, and even Foucault, from Nietzsche himself, who had a kind of "saving inconsistency " (489) in his simultaneous affirmation and denial of a " sense of the magnificent, of the categorically affi.rmable, of the infinitely worthy of love " (453). ON CHARLES TAYLOR 509 qualify lthis "murch" and also when he caMs "figures like Cardina1l Ra:tzinger" anti-humanistic (318). He!thinks that abortion debrutes a're not so murch deep disagreements as they are exceptionail disagreements that only provie h0:w suhs1tantial our agreements are (515). But Taylor... (shrink)

This essay responds to the machine question in the affirmative, arguing that artifacts, like robots, AI, and other autonomous systems, can no longer be legitimately excluded from moral consideration. The demonstration of this thesis proceeds in four parts or movements. The first and second parts approach the subject by investigating the two constitutive components of the ethical relationship—moral agency and patiency. In the process, they each demonstrate failure. This occurs not because the machine is somehow unable to achieve what is (...) considered necessary and sufficient to be a moral agent or patient but because the characterization of agency and patiency already fail to accommodate others. The third and fourth parts respond to this problem by considering two recent alternatives—the all-encompassing ontocentric approach of Luciano Floridi’s information ethics and Emmanuel Levinas’s eccentric ethics of otherness. Both alternatives, despite considerable promise to reconfigure the scope of moral thinking by addressing previously excluded others, like the machine, also fail but for other reasons. Consequently, the essay concludes not by accommodating the alterity of the machine to the requirements of moral philosophy but by questioning the systemic limitations of moral reasoning, requiring not just an extension of rights to machines, but a thorough examination of the way moral standing has been configured in the first place. (shrink)

When people engage in conversation, they tailor their utterances to their conversational partners, whether these partners are other humans or computational systems. This tailoring, or adaptation to the partner takes place in all facets of human language use, and is based on a mental model or a user model of the conversational partner. Such adaptation has been shown to improve listeners' comprehension, their satisfaction with an interactive system, the efficiency with which they execute conversational tasks, and the likelihood of achieving (...) higher level goals such as changing the listener's beliefs and attitudes. We focus on one aspect of adaptation, namely the tailoring of the content of dialogue system utterances for the higher level processes of persuasion, argumentation and advice-giving. Our hypothesis is that algorithms that adapt content for these processes, according to a user model, will improve the usability, efficiency, and effectiveness of dialogue systems. We describe a multimodal dialogue system and algorithms for adaptive content selection based on multi-attribute decision theory. We demonstrate experimentally the improved efficacy of system responses through the use of user models to both tailor the content of system utterances and to manipulate their conciseness. (shrink)