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Edward C. Halper One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics: Books Alpha
Philosophy in Review XXX (2010), no. 3 Edward C. Halper One and Many in Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Books Alpha- Delta. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing 2009. 535 pages US$48.00 (cloth ISBN 978-1-930972-21-6) When the present book, the long-awaited follow-up to Halper’s 1989 volume on the central books of the Metaphysics, is joined by the concluding volume on books iota-nu that we may hope to appear as promised in 2011, the three volumes together will surely constitute the most important and welcome event in Aristotle scholarship since the publication of Joseph Owens’ The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics in 1978. Indeed, Halper’s opus may be seen as a manifestation of a certain coming of age in the modern study of ancient philosophy, in which neither historicism nor an uncritical embrace of the interpretive tradition any longer prevent engaging the ancients in philosophical inquiry that both honors the historical context of ancient thought and is responsive to contemporary philosophical concerns. Not that Halper imposes contemporary concerns upon his reading of Aristotle; on the contrary, he finds that efforts to use Aristotle’s thought to address contemporary issues have tended to obscure his reasoning, and it is with Aristotle’s reasoning—his systematic argumentation—that Halper is most concerned. Halper recounts how the early 20th century projected onto Aristotle a developmental path from idealism to empiricism, whereas in the postwar era he came to be seen as a linguistic philosopher. What these hermeneutical strategies have in common, Halper discerns, is not that they set out to make Aristotle speak to contemporary concerns, but rather simply that the absence of a systematic intentionality accorded to the text leads them to seek an animating dynamic outside the text, ‘and it is natural that the connections they think of are those that are most alive and interesting to them’ (36). -
Ingolf U. Dalferth Varieties of Philosophical Theology Before and After Kant
Ingolf U. Dalferth Varieties of Philosophical Theology Before and After Kant 1. Prehistory, History, and Posthistory of Philosophical Theology Philosophical theology (PT),1 which replaced natural and rational theology after Kant, began its modern career as a distinct philosophical project, based not on faith and religion but on reason and reflection and/or nature, experience, and science. However, it has never been a monolithic endeavour, and its impact on Christian thinking has been constructive as well as critical or even destructive. Its prehistory that is sometimes mistakenly taken to be part of it includes such diverse factors as Platonist dualism, the Aristotelian pattern of causality, Stoic immanentism, Philonean personalism, Neoplatonist negative theology and Sozinian antitrinitarian- ism. From its most ancient roots the theology of the philosophers in the Western tradition was intimately bound up with the rise of reason and science in ancient Greece. When the gods ceased to be part of the furniture of the world, God (the divine) became an explanatory principle based not on the traditional mythological tales but on cosmo- logical science, astronomical speculation, and metaphysical reflection. Its idea of God involved the ideas of divine singularity (there is only one God), of divine transcendence (God is neither part nor the whole of the world) and of divine immanence (God’s active presence can be discerned in the order, regularity, and beauty of the cosmos). And even though it took a long time to grasp those differences clearly, the monotheistic difference between gods and God, the cosmological difference between God and the world, and the metaphysical difference between the transcendence and immanence of God have remained central to the intellectual enterprise of theological reflection in philosophy. -
Preliminary Conclusions in the Search of Philosophical Grounds for Contemporary Unitarian Identity
Preliminary Conclusions in the Search of Philosophical Grounds for Contemporary Unitarian Identity By Neville Buch The Unitarian denomination itself always remained small, of course, but the Harvard moralists had resigned themselves to this very early. “Our object is not to convert men to our party, but to our principles,” they declared. “Unitarians have done more…by promoting a real though gradual change for the better in the opinions of other sects, than by building up their own denomination”. [Daniel Walker Howe. The Unitarian Consciencei] Whether it be Utilitarianism or Unitarianism, [William] James argued in 1868, the philosopher’s role includes not only crystallizing the doctrine but also presenting it in the most persuasive light to the populace. [Gerald E. Myers. William James: His Life and Thought ii]. William James remark on the philosopher’s role in a letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1868 is a direct challenge to a disempowering attitude that has unfortunately prevailed in Unitarianism since the remark of James Walker in 1830 as quoted by Daniel Howe above. The disempowering attitude is unfortunate because it can be shown that its own advocacy is eroded by an apparent meaninglessness when clear preciseness is demanded. To deconstruct Walker’s statement -- what has been overlooked is that ‘our party’ and ‘our principles’ are related in an inseparable Unitarian identity. “Our party” is the Unitarian body. “Our principles” are Unitarian principles, that is, principles belonging to the Unitarian body. They are principles marked out as Unitarian because Unitarians have claimed them as their own. The philosophical reasons for this claim are not yet apparent. -
The Etienne Gilson Series 21
The Etienne Gilson Series 21 Remapping Scholasticism by MARCIA L. COLISH 3 March 2000 Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies This lecture and its publication was made possible through the generous bequest of the late Charles J. Sullivan (1914-1999) Note: the author may be contacted at: Department of History Oberlin College Oberlin OH USA 44074 ISSN 0-708-319X ISBN 0-88844-721-3 © 2000 by Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 59 Queen’s Park Crescent East Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2C4 Printed in Canada nce upon a time there were two competing story-lines for medieval intellectual history, each writing a major role for scholasticism into its script. Although these story-lines were O created independently and reflected different concerns, they sometimes overlapped and gave each other aid and comfort. Both exerted considerable influence on the way historians of medieval speculative thought conceptualized their subject in the first half of the twentieth cen- tury. Both versions of the map drawn by these two sets of cartographers illustrated what Wallace K. Ferguson later described as “the revolt of the medievalists.”1 One was confined largely to the academy and appealed to a wide variety of medievalists, while the other had a somewhat narrower draw and reflected political and confessional, as well as academic, concerns. The first was the anti-Burckhardtian effort to push Renaissance humanism, understood as combining a knowledge and love of the classics with “the discovery of the world and of man,” back into the Middle Ages. The second was inspired by the neo-Thomist revival launched by Pope Leo XIII, and was inhabited almost exclusively by Roman Catholic scholars. -
'Solved by Sacrifice' : Austin Farrer, Fideism, and The
‘SOLVED BY SACRIFICE’ : AUSTIN FARRER, FIDEISM, AND THE EVIDENCE OF FAITH Robert Carroll MacSwain A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St. Andrews 2010 Full metadata for this item is available in the St Andrews Digital Research Repository at: https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/920 This item is protected by original copyright ‘SOLVED BY SACRIFICE’: Austin Farrer, Fideism, and the Evidence of Faith Robert Carroll MacSwain A thesis submitted to the School of Divinity of the University of St Andrews in candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The saints confute the logicians, but they do not confute them by logic but by sanctity. They do not prove the real connection between the religious symbols and the everyday realities by logical demonstration, but by life. Solvitur ambulando, said someone about Zeno’s paradox, which proves the impossibility of physical motion. It is solved by walking. Solvitur immolando, says the saint, about the paradox of the logicians. It is solved by sacrifice. —Austin Farrer v ABSTRACT 1. A perennial (if controversial) concern in both theology and philosophy of religion is whether religious belief is ‘reasonable’. Austin Farrer (1904-1968) is widely thought to affirm a positive answer to this concern. Chapter One surveys three interpretations of Farrer on ‘the believer’s reasons’ and thus sets the stage for our investigation into the development of his religious epistemology. 2. The disputed question of whether Farrer became ‘a sort of fideist’ is complicated by the many definitions of fideism. -
Jean-Luc Marion's Dionysian Neoplatonism
Jean-Luc Marion’s Dionysian Neoplatonism “Jean-Luc Marion’s Dionysian Neoplatonism,” Perspectives sur le néoplatonisme, International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, Actes du colloque de 2006, édité par Martin Achard, Wayne Hankey, Jean-Marc Narbonne, Collection Zêtêsis (Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2009), 267–280. A retrieval of Neoplatonism is a powerful, widely, and significantly present, but little recognised, feature of twentieth-century French philosophy, theology, and spiritual life. 1 It begins about one hundred years ago with Henri Bergson (1859-1941) with whom also its purposes and the modifications contemporary Neoplatonism undergoes begin to show. Two major characteristics appear: it is opposed to the Western metaphysical tradition insofar as this is understood to determine modernity. It is also anti-Idealist, endeavouring to link the sensuous and corporeal immediately with an unknowable first Principle, a descendent either of the Neoplatonic One-Good or what is ineffably beyond that. This second characteristic sets the twentieth-century retrieval in opposition to that in the nineteenth-century and to the ancient and medieval Neoplatonisms generally. Jean-Luc Marion (born 1946) works within this movement where he belongs with Michel Henry (1922-2003), Emmanuel Lévinas (1906- 1995), and Henry Duméry (born 1920) for whom the relation to Neoplatonism passes by way of Phenomenology. Marion, however, not only despite, but also because of his abiding devotion to the mystical theology of Denys the Areopagite as he understands it, denies that his or Deny’s thought are Neoplatonic. I propose to exhibit some problems with this denial. My enterprize has been encouraged by Marion’s inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Chicago: “Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing.” Set under a text from Augustine, it connects the unknowability of the human to that of God in order to oppose late medieval and modern ontology and the contemporary objectification of human life. -
Ventures in Existential Theology: the Wesleyan Quadrilateral And
VENTURES IN EXISTENTIAL THEOLOGY: THE WESLEYAN QUADRILATERAL AND THE HEIDEGGERIAN LENSES OF JOHN MACQUARRIE, RUDOLF BULTMANN, PAUL TILLICH, AND KARL RAHNER by Hubert Woodson, III Bachelor of Arts in English, 2011 University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, TX Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction, 2013 University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, TX Master of Theological Studies, 2013 Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX Master of Arts in English, 2014 University of North Texas Denton, TX Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Brite Divinity School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Theology in History and Theology Fort Worth, TX May 2015 VENTURES IN EXISTENTIAL THEOLOGY: THE WESLEYAN QUADRILATERAL AND THE HEIDEGGERIAN LENSES OF JOHN MACQUARRIE, RUDOLF BULTMANN, PAUL TILLICH, AND KARL RAHNER APPROVED BY THESIS COMMITTEE: Dr. James O. Duke Thesis Director Dr. David J. Gouwens Reader Dr. Jeffrey Williams Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Dr. Joretta Marshall Dean WARNING CONCERNING COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish photocopy or reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research. If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of “fair use,” that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. -
Supplementary Anselm-Bibliography 11
SUPPLEMENTARY ANSELM-BIBLIOGRAPHY This bibliography is supplementary to the bibliographies contained in the following previous works of mine: J. Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972. _________. Anselm of Canterbury: Volume Four: Hermeneutical and Textual Problems in the Complete Treatises of St. Anselm. New York: Mellen Press, 1976. _________. A New, Interpretive Translation of St. Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion. Minneapolis: Banning Press, 1986. Abulafia, Anna S. “St Anselm and Those Outside the Church,” pp. 11-37 in David Loades and Katherine Walsh, editors, Faith and Identity: Christian Political Experience. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Adams, Marilyn M. “Saint Anselm’s Theory of Truth,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, I, 2 (1990), 353-372. _________. “Fides Quaerens Intellectum: St. Anselm’s Method in Philosophical Theology,” Faith and Philosophy, 9 (October, 1992), 409-435. _________. “Praying the Proslogion: Anselm’s Theological Method,” pp. 13-39 in Thomas D. Senor, editor, The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. _________. “Satisfying Mercy: St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo Reconsidered,” The Modern Schoolman, 72 (January/March, 1995), 91-108. _________. “Elegant Necessity, Prayerful Disputation: Method in Cur Deus Homo,” pp. 367-396 in Paul Gilbert et al., editors, Cur Deus Homo. Rome: Prontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 1999. _________. “Romancing the Good: God and the Self according to St. Anselm of Canterbury,” pp. 91-109 in Gareth B. Matthews, editor, The Augustinian Tradition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. _________. “Re-reading De Grammatico or Anselm’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, XI (2000), 83-112. -
Analysis of Justice in St. Augustine's Political Philosophy and Nigerian
International Journal of Education and Human Developments, Vol. 6 No 2; July 2020 ISSN 2415-1270 (Online), ISSN 2415-1424 (Print) Published by Center for Global Research Development Analysis of Justice in St. Augustine’s Political Philosophy and Nigerian Political System ONUCHE, Joseph PhD. Department of Philosophy Kogi State University Anyigba, Kogi State Nigeria Abstract St Augustine of Hippo (354-430CE) is the most influential Christian philosopher in western Christianity after Paul the Apostle. This paper analyses justice in Augustine‟s political philosophy as contained in His „City of God‟. It will be argued that, we could learn from his answers to bad politicking which resulted in destruction of State. His answers on various theological and philosophical issues have continued to be relevant in modern theological and philosophical debate. A lot can still be learnt from him even in the area of Church‟s response to bad governance. Augustine‟s argument is that Kingdoms (Countries, nations) without justice are robberies, as Kings (Governors) of such are robbers. This supposition is illustrated with three historical allusions namely: the encounter of Alexander the Great with a Pirate, the establishment of Roman Empire by Romulus, and the establishment of Assyrian Empire by Ninus. Contextually, Nigeria as it is today falls into this category of robberies as the British colonial masters forced this unequal union for their personal, self-seeking and self-interest, to satisfy their libido dominandi. An analysis of what Augustine meant by justice will be carried out. Philosophically, Augustine evaluated justice from Neo-Platonic background and theologically from Pauline concept of justice. -
Teleology in the Later Middle Ages
90 Chapter four Teleology in the Later Middle Ages Robert Pasnau A history of teleology might be expected to register an upward spike of enthusiasm through its middle chapters, as the heightened religious commitments of European philosophy inspired a soaring interest in finding ultimate reasons for why the world is the way it is. In fact, however, teleological explanation is one of the legacies of antiquity that received a surprisingly muted response in the Middle Ages. As we will see, there was little enthusiasm for Aristotle’s natu- ralized approach to teleology, and grave doubts over whether final causes are a legitimate kind of cause at all. The one place where reflection on ends did play a robust role in medieval philosophy was in ethics. Even here, however, the consensus of antiquity— that human beings are and ought to be ultimately motivated by their own happiness— met with growing resistance and eventually out- right rejection. Robert Pasnau, Teleology in the Later Middle Ages In: Teleology. Edited by: Jeffrey K. McDonough, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190845711.003.0006 Teleology in the Later Middle Ages 91 4.1. Final Causes in Nature Although the character of teleological explanation shifted in the Middle Ages, there was never any doubt over the fundamental assumption that nature, in some sense, acts for a purpose. Averroës, for instance, in the series of commentaries that lies at the foundation of the European re- vival of Aristotelianism, insisted that the principle that nature acts for a purpose is “maximal and fundamental” in both physics and theology.1 This is to say that, for anyone working in one of these two sciences, it should be accepted as a self- evident first principle that there is a goal at which the natural world aims. -
Epistemology in the Churches of Christ: an Analysis and Critique of Thomas B
Abilene Christian University Digital Commons @ ACU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Electronic Theses and Dissertations Summer 7-2016 Epistemology in the Churches of Christ: An Analysis and Critique of Thomas B. Warren Derek Estes Abilene Christian University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd Part of the Epistemology Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Estes, Derek, "Epistemology in the Churches of Christ: An Analysis and Critique of Thomas B. Warren" (2016). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 42. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at Digital Commons @ ACU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ ACU. ABSTRACT This thesis seeks to understand at least one prevalent religious epistemology in the Churches of Christ by exploring the work of Thomas B. Warren. To accomplish this goal, I first offer a descriptive analysis of Warren’s theory of knowledge followed by an assessment of its strong and weak points. Ultimately finding his epistemology unsatisfying, I conclude the thesis by highlighting recent developments in religious epistemology that might point the way forward in accounting for knowledge of God in a theologically and philosophically robust way. Epistemology in the Churches of Christ: An Analysis and Critique of Thomas B. Warren A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School of Theology Abilene Christian University In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements of the Degree Master of Arts In Theology By Derek Estes July 2016 To my dad, who exemplifies diligent and disciplined work satisfied with nothing short of excellence. -
Emotions in Medieval Thought
c Peter King, forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook on Emotion. EMOTIONS IN MEDIEVAL THOUGHT No single theory of the emotions dominates the whole of the Middle Ages. Instead, there are several competing accounts, and differences of opin- ion — sometimes quite dramatic — within each account. Yet there is consensus on the scope and nature of a theory of the emotions, as well as on its place in affective psychology generally. For most medieval thinkers, emotions are at once cognitively penetrable and somatic, which is to say that emotions are influenced by and vary with changes in thought and belief, and that they are also bound up, perhaps essentially, with their physiological manifesta- tions. This ‘mixed’ conception of emotions was broad enough to anchor me- dieval disagreements over details, yet rich enough to distinguish it from other parts of psychology and medicine. In particular, two kinds of phenomena, thought to be purely physiological, were not considered emotions even on this broad conception. First, what we now classify as drives or urges, for in- stance hunger and sexual arousal, were thought in the Middle Ages to be at best ‘pre-emotions’ (propassiones): mere biological motivations for action, not having any intrinsic cognitive object. Second, moods were likewise thought to be non-objectual somatic states, completely explicable as an imbalance of the bodily humours. Depression (melancholia), for example, is the pathological condition of having an excess of black bile. Medieval theories of emotions, therefore, concentrate on paradigm cases that fall under the broad concep- tion: delight, anger, distress, fear, and the like. The enterprise of constructing an adequate philosophical theory of the emotions in the Middle Ages had its counterpart in a large body of practical know-how.