Philosophy Commons^™

Inciting Peace From The Inside Out, Stephen G. Adubato, Ebere Bosco Amakwe, Katherine Hinic, Sarita Maldjian, Forrest Pritchett, Jon Radwan, Nicholas Sooy, Chad Thralls

Conferences

Violence and war can be incited, and so can peace. This volume shares select addresses and responses from Seton Hall University’s 2/7/23 conference “Inciting Peace From The Inside Out.” A multi-disciplinary range of scholars each addresses how reconciliation processes grow from spiritual dynamics. Multiple religious traditions teach contemplative praxes that prioritize and nurture personal reflection oriented toward peace. Social conflicts divide, so engaging them with a partisan orientation only serves to escalate harmful rifts. In contrast, bringing personal awareness and sensitivity, spiritual balance, and holistic integral perspective to conflict can transcend divisions and work toward unity. This volume is supported …

The Framing Of Authority In The Acrl Framework On Information Literacy: Multidisciplinary Perspectives On Truth, Authority, Expertise And Belief., Lisa M. Rose-Wiles

Praxis Publications

Purpose This paper engages multidisciplinary perspectives on truth, authority, expertise and belief to unpack and better understand the underlying epistemology and implications of the ACRL frame “authority is constructed and contextual”.' Design/Methodology/Approach Following an overview of the issues confronting us in a “post-truth world”, the paper reviews critiques of the ACRL frame “authority is constructed and contextual” and examines the related concepts of truth, authority, expertise and belief from multidisciplinary perspectives. Findings While the frame acknowledges the limitations and biases of current scholarly publishing and implicitly supports social justice, it runs the danger of promoting relativism and is ambiguous regarding …

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination Of The Eternal Now” 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月） (July 1931) §1 Of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft Of 2 Jan 19); Translated By Christopher Southward; Revision And Expansion Underway, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination of the Eternal Now” (July 1931) 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月）

§1 of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft of 2 Jan 2019)

Translated from the Japanese by Christopher Southward; Revision and Expansion Underway, October 2023

A Humanist's Account: Manetti On Humanism's Impact On Morality In 15th Century Italy., Connor Kurtz, Beau Kilpatrick

Undergraduate Research Events

Abstract

Religion, art, and politics were at their peak during the Italian Renaissance. However, because of the generously allocated talent of the Italian sphere at this time it is easy to overlook the contributions of those who broke away from the Catholic concentration and kick started this humanistic era. Giannozzo Manetti, an Italian politician who in 1452 wrote De Ignate er Excellencia Hominis, a challenge to Pope Innocent III’s philosophy. The text has been translated to “On Human Worth and Excellence” and describes a deep-rooted foundation of humanism in religion. He concludes a functionality of society and religion in …

A Literary Analysis Of The Origin Of Human Embryonic Stem Cells, Its Advancements, Philosophical, Ethical, Sociocultural, And Political Aspects; An Investigation Of The Underlying Attributes That Affect One’S Views On Hesc Research To Resolve Turkey And Brazil’S Hesc Policy, Religious, And Cultural Conflicts, Haleema Shamsuddin

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are cells derived from 5-day human embryos and are self-renewing cell lines that change into any type of cell in the body, a trait called pluripotency. hESCs have almost unlimited clinical and medical research potential. Despite the great therapeutic promise of hESC research, it comes with a controversial ethical debate due to its involvement with the destruction of the human embryo. The central argument revolves around the question of whether or not these human embryos should be ascribed equal moral status to fully developed humans. This thesis aims to analyze the origin and advancements of …

Marriage, Persons, And The Body: Thomistic Intimations In Karol Wojtyła, Mark Joseph T. Calano

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

Karol Wojtyła’s understanding of marriage, persons, and the body operates within an unarticulated Thomistic presumption. While Thomas Aquinas did not explore persons, the conjugal act, and the body in the same way as Wojtyła did, correlating the two thinkers is mutually beneficial. The paper thematically looks into marriage, persons, and the body. The first part discusses the concept of marriage and the conjugal act. Based on this understanding, the person is clarified using Wojtyła’s personalism and Thomas Aquinas’s composite person. The second part demonstrates the concept of the incommunicability of persons as Wojtyła articulates it and intimates Thomas Aquinas. This …

Enchantment: A Teleology, Nathanael S. Toth

Senior Honors Theses

Despite the highly developed nature of his fictional world, Middle-earth, Tolkien never formally laid out a tabulated magic system for his fantasy creation. Nevertheless, unlike many stories by others in the fantasy genre, the magic he does include is far from just a shallow, world-building mechanism. Instead, it encapsulates the core theme of his fiction and the purposes which Ilúvatar (the God of Middle-earth) has given to the story’s many characters.

This paper will examine the nature and function of this magic from many angles: the identification of good magic with art and evil magic with domination; the delineation between …

Review Of Human Subjects Research Regulation: Perspectives On The Future, Daniel P. Maher

Philosophy Department Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Sr. Holy: A Calling From The Lord, Caitlyn Schaffer

Ask a Sister: Interview Wisdom from Catholic Women Religious

This paper includes a portion of an interview with Sr. Holy, a woman religious missionary who belongs to the congregation of Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters, where her theological beliefs are enacted by her service to others. Within the congregation of Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters, she is focused on directing the novitiate, giving spiritual direction, volunteering with the aid for women, networking with the aid for women, and taking part in a life learning center making disciples. She uses her gifts that Jesus has given her to employ her virtues in the service of others. Throughout her life she mentioned the …

Sr. Sarah Grace: The Common Good, Caleb Wright

Ask a Sister: Interview Wisdom from Catholic Women Religious

This paper includes part of an interview with Sr. Sarah Grace from January 2, 2018. She is a women religious who has worked in education for 25 years. This paper includes a portion of the interview where she shared her perspective on the common good.

Viewing Heaven: Rock Crystal, Reliquaries, And Transparency In Fourteenth-Century Aachen, Claire Kilgore

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis examines reliquaries and objects associated with medieval Christian practice in fourteenth-century Aachen. The city's cathedral and treasury contain prestigious relics, reliquaries, and liturgical items, aided by its status as the Holy Roman Empire's coronation church. During the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (r. 1349-1378), reliquaries, pilgrimage, and architecture reflect late medieval interests in vision, optics, and transparency. Two mid-fourteenth century reliquaries from the Aachen Cathedral Treasury, the Reliquary of Charlemagne and the Three-Steepled Reliquary, display relics through rock crystal windows, in contrast to the obscuring characteristics of earlier reliquaries. Not only do the two reliquaries visually …

Human Action In Philosophy And Poetry, Daniel P. Maher

Philosophy Department Faculty Works

The philosophical effort to see and say the truth about human agents and human action seems very different from the poetic effort to delight us with actors who only pretend to do what we see them do. These two modes of thinking present action differently, and I approach this difference through pedagogical considerations associated with teaching ethics in philosophy classes. Students rightly sense a difference between the philosophical appreciation of human beings as practical and the character of real human action as acted. In this paper, I argue that part of this distance can be bridged by considering the poetic …

Expanding The Debate: How Can Social Justice And Lasallian Priorities Influence The Electoral Process?, Rosemary Barbera Phd, Ernest Miller Fsc, D. Min.

Explorer Café

No abstract provided.

I Dreamed In Terms Of Novels: Dorothy Day And The Ethics Of Nineteenth-Century Literature, Katherine Thomsen Pierson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

To the extent that she is known, Dorothy Day, a twentieth-century American Catholic journalist and social reformer currently under consideration for sainthood by the Vatican, is recognized for her religious influences. Pope Francis, in his 2015 speech before the American Congress, said she was inspired by “the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.” Yet throughout her life Day was a consistent reader of secular texts and even said she “lived by” the vision of some of her favorite writers. This thesis examines Day’s secular influences—in particular Dickens’s David Copperfield and Little Dorrit—and begins to trace their …

A Balancing Act: Reading 'Amoris Laetitia', Peter Steinfels, Paige E. Hochschild, William L. Portier, Sandra A. Yocum, Dennis O'Brien

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Five religious scholars provide commentary on Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), Pope Francis's 2016 apostolic exhortation on love in the family.

Paralysis And Sexuality In Medical Literature And The 'Acts Of Peter', Meghan Henning

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This paper focuses on the story of Peter’s daughter that is found in the Berlin Coptic papyrus BG 8502.4 and is associated with the apocryphal Acts of Peter. Research on the story of Peter’s daughter has primarily focused on its interpretation of the theme of chastity, or whether the story was originally included in the Acts of Peter. In the course of these investigations, scholars have taken for granted the curious assumption of the text that paralysis renders Peter’s daughter unfit for marriage, and thus safe from Ptolemy’s unwanted advances.

This paper explores the underlying understandings of paralysis and sexuality …

How Marion Helps Us To Understand Kierkegaard’S Fear And Trembling, Mark Tazelaar

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

In the past decade, many interpretations of Fear and Trembling highlight the significance of the “eschatological”—the marvel of Abraham’s expectation that he will get Isaac back. For these interpretations, the central issue is the contrast between the knight of faith and the knight of resignation. Merold Westphal, however, contends that these interpretations lead us away from the main contrast between the hero of faith and the tragic hero. Kierkegaard scholarship is at an impasse. I argue that Marion’s phenomenology of sacrifice, together with the important idea of veritas redarguens that he appropriates from Augustine, offer insights that can resolve the …

A Member Of No Community? Theology After Wittgenstein, Brad Kallenberg

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The study of Wittgenstein has spawned a new sort of Christian theology. A growing list of theologians have discovered in Wittgenstein a therapy for conceptual confusion and tips for how to go on, not only in religious faith and practice, but also in the practice of theology as an academic discipline. This is not to say that such thinkers have succeeded in turning Wittgenstein into an instrument of apologetics or that Wittgenstein has “delivered” them from the grip of their own religious particularity. No; they have learned from Wittgenstein the skill of silence. Their theology, like Wittgenstein’s philosophy, comes to …

Practicing To Aim At Truth: Theological Engagements In Honor Of Nancey Murphy, Ryan Newson, Brad Kallenberg

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Well-meaning evangelicals unfamiliar with Nancey Murphy’s philosophical theology frequently worry that her work in philosophy of mind has the effect of depriving us of our souls. When such an objection is voiced after a speaking engagement, Murphy’s “reassurance” is predictable: “Don’t worry! There is nothing to be lost; we never had souls to begin with!”

Underneath her wry reply is a deep concern that philosophical confusion about “having a soul” is seriously undermining Christian discipleship. For example, it has become second nature for many Christians to hold that the soul is more important than the body; regardless of the state …

Ecclesial Practices, Colin M. Mcguigan, Brad Kallenberg

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

In this chapter, we first provide an overview of the place of practice in some of the most prominent recent epistemologists of religion; second, we give an account of an ordinary practice (engineering) to flesh out a general conception of the importance of practice in training cognizers for skilled perception; third, and last, we connect the results of this inquiry with renewed theological and philosophical interest in the ‘spiritual senses’ tradition. The upshot of these reflections is the conclusion that an adequate account of social practices already anticipates the possibility that ecclesial practice might contribute to an epistemic transformation capable …

Extraordinary Love In The Lives Of Lay People, Dennis M. Doyle

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The College Theology Society (CTS), initially called the Society of Catholic College Teachers of Sacred Doctrine, was founded mainly by religious and clergy in the early 1950s to support those who taught college-level theology to Catholics in non-seminary settings. Sometimes CTS, in comparison with another group, is said to be relatively more lay-oriented. What this actually means, I think, is that for the CTS, the college classroom, populated mainly by lay people, was the primary locus for carrying out the task of teaching theology.

The main goal was to promote the religious formation of Catholic lay people. Given some of …

Justice Without Solidarity? Collective Identity And The Fate Of The "Ethical" In Habermas' Recent Political Theory, Andrew J. Pierce

Presidential Seminar on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition

No abstract provided.

Americanized Catholicism? A Response To Thomas Schärtl, Dennis M. Doyle

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

I stand in fundamental agreement with what Thomas Schärtl has said in his article describing recent trends in US Catholicism. I am a lifelong Catholic and a lifelong Democrat. I felt personally distressed and discouraged by the support given to Mitt Romney and the Republicans by some leading US Catholic bishops. Most of this support may have technically passed the legal test of being nonpartisan, but undeniably it functioned in a partisan manner, as did the attacks launched on President Obama in the midst of a campaign to defend religious liberty. Schärtl’s analysis of these trends as reflecting marketing strategies …

Hauerwas On Hauerwas: Review Of 'Approaching The End: Eschatological Reflections On Church, Politics, And Life', William L. Portier

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Stanley Hauerwas has achieved singular preeminence among theologians in the United States as a public intellectual. Writing on subjects from Christian ethics to law, pacifism, bioethics, and political philosophy, he has provided bountiful fodder for academics while managing to leave footprints in the general culture-he is surely one of very few theologians ever to appear on Oprah. Any new book bearing Hauerwas' name is noteworthy, and the latest one doesn't disappoint.

Eternal Punishment As Paideia: The Ekphrasis Of Hell In The Apocalypse Of Peter And The Apocalypse Of Paul, Meghan Henning

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Much of the history of scholarship on “hell” has been devoted to tracing genetic relationships between older texts and more recent ones, typically based upon generic elements or the specific features of hell’s landscape. This paper suggests a new direction for classics and New Testament study, focusing instead on the rhetorical function of hell in antiquity. This paper argues that the ancient conventions of descriptive rhetoric were at work in the depictions of Hell that we find in the Jewish and early Christian apocalypses. It begins with a definition of these rhetorical devices by examining the Progymnasmata as well as …

Educating Early Christians Through The Rhetoric Of Hell: 'Weeping And Gnashing Of Teeth' As 'Paideia' In Matthew And The Early Church, Meghan Henning

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Meghan Henning explores the rhetorical function of the early Christian concept of hell, drawing connections to Greek and Roman systems of education, and examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Greek and Latin literature, the New Testament, early Christian apocalypses and patristic authors.

This work is a revised version of the author's Ph.D. dissertation, which was successfully defended at Emory University in 2013. It is included in the series Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament II.

She writes, "Now that this work is finished, I am delighted to have the opportunity to thank those who have generously traveled with me on this …

Here Come The Nones! Pluralism And Evangelization After Denominationalism And Americanism, William L. Portier

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This essay begins with a four-part overview of American Catholic history focused on the building and dissolution of an immigrant Catholic subculture. The final period, “Catholics and the Dynamics of Pluralism (1968-present)” leads naturally into a discussion of the demography of Catholics in the United States. Particular attention is given to the trend to disaffiliation among millennials and how best to interpret it. Pastoral and theological reflections on the demography of disaffiliation emphasize the need for the church in the United States to take on an evangelical form more suited to a pluralism that is post-denominational and post-Americanist, and how …

Assembly Required: Christ's Presence In The Pews, William L. Portier

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

When I attempt to articulate what I "get out of" going to church, I find myself increasingly emphasizing the real presence of Christ in the assembly. It has been almost 50 years since Vatican II, so it is well to recall what the council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy said in 1963 about that presence. It taught that in order to accomplish the work of salvation for which the Father sent him, Christ is always present in the church, especially in the church's liturgical celebrations.

Review Of Informed Consent, Proxy Consent, And Catholic Bioethics: For The Good Of The Subject By Grzegorz Mazur, Daniel P. Maher

Philosophy Department Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Jewish, Christian – Or What? Questions Of Self-Designation In The 'Ascension Of Isaiah', Meghan Henning, Tobias Nicklas

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The Question of the “Parting of the Ways” between Jews and Christians has become a matter of debate again: is it really appropriate to speak about two more or less coherent groups going two different ways from a certain point in history – perhaps after Paul’s mission, after the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE), or after the Bar-Kokhba War (132-135 CE)? Does the image of a tree with one root and two different trunks going into two different directions really fit what the extant sources tell us about the complexities of the past? Or shouldn’t we distinguish between …