History of Philosophy Commons^™

Aristotle's Analytic Tools, Mary Mulhern

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle developed analytic tools to deal with conceptual difficulties that were important in his time. Some of these tools are his explicit analysis of homonymy, his eightfold classification of subjects and predicates and its elaboration into the predicaments and predicables, his syntactical analysis of ordinary language sentences, and his construction of a formal language for deductive and demonstrative syllogistic. Some of these conceptual difficulties are traceable to theories of Ideas, in which definitory predicates were not distinguished from non-definitory ones, as for instance in Hypothesis V of the Parmenides, where it is argued that the (non-existent) one is not equal …

Studying Mathematics For The Sake Of The Good, Andrew Payne

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In the Republic, Socrates describes the good as the end of all human action: “Every soul pursues the good and does what it does for its sake. It divines that the good is something but it is perplexed and cannot adequately grasp what it is or acquire the sort of stable beliefs it has about other things, and so it misses the benefits, if any, that even those other things may give.” I wish to examine how humans act for the sake of the good in the sections of the Republic following this passage. Human action is oriented toward the …

Never Mind Grendel! Can Beowulf Conquer The 21st-Century Guilt Trip?, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

The writer casts doubt on whether the emasculated Beowulf put forward by J. R. R. Tolkien and in the recent movie version of the story transcends and nullifies the heroic original. He suggests that both Beowulfs may be necessary.

Sagp Newsletter 2007/8.1 (December), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Includes the SAGP Programs with the Eastern Division (December 28, 2007) in Baltimore, with the American Philological Association (January 4, 2008) in Chicago, with the Pacific Division (March 2008) in Pasadena, and with the Central Division (April 2008) in Chicago.

Looking Up From The Gutter: Pop-Culture And Philosophy, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

No abstract provided.

Review: Exploring Protestant Traditions: An Invitation To Hospitality, James A. Borland

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Sagp/Ssips 2007 Abstract Collection, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

This is a collection of abstracts from the 2007 SAGP/SSIPS conference, in alphabetical order by name of author.

How To Survive The Apocalypse, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

The article presents a guide on how people with skepticism and critical thinking can survive the Rapture and Armageddon. According to the Book of Revelations, the Lord will return to the earth to separate the good and the bad. When the Great Tribulation comes, people have no more time for repentance. The impostor strategy is one way to avoid the Tribulation.

The Old And New Man In Ephesians 4:17-24, Lance T. Beauchamp

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Dinosaurs On The Ark: Natural History And The New Evangelical Museum, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

This article examines the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Featured at the museum is a replica of Noah's Ark. The author notes that there is some fudging going on to fit all the supposedly transported animals in such a small vessel. According to the museum, the Grand Canyon was not millions of years in the making but appeared after the flood. The evangelical museum is an offshoot of the Answers in Genesis ministry. Ken A. Ham is the director of the museum as well as the head of the ministry. He says that the notion of evolution has done more harm …

Aristotle On Mathematical Existence, Phil Corkum

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Do mathematical objects exist in some realm inaccessible to our senses? It may be tempting to deny this. For one thing, how we could come to know mathematical truths, if such knowledge must arise from causal interaction with non-empirical objects? However, denying that mathematical objects exist altogether has unsettling consequences. If you deny the existence of mathematical objects, then you must reject all claims that commit you to such objects, which means rejecting much of mathematics as it is standardly understood. For, as David Papineau (1990) vividly puts it, it is doublethink to deny that mathematical objects exist but to …

On The (In)Consistency Of Aristotle's Philosophy Of Time, Tiberiu Popa

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle’s mind-dependence theory of time is considerably more than an eccentric afterthought formulated in a short passage, as many believe; rather, it is firmly anchored in Physics IV, especially in Ch. 11. A number of formulations that may seem purely epistemic or propaedeutic in nature do in fact have ontological significance, pointing to the fact that time’s existence hinges crucially on our capacity to perceive change. Aristotle seems to be echoed in crucial respects by contemporary theories of time, notably by A. Grünbaum’s.

Socrates's Great Escape: Philosophy And Politics In The Crito, Matthew King

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Many contemporary students of Plato hold that the arguments Socrates gives the personified Laws in the Crito do not represent Socrates’s own views, but rather work on assumptions to which Crito adheres, but Socrates does not. But if the Laws’ arguments are not Socrates’s own, then we seem to be left with a bewildering problem: why would Plato provide us with arguments that Socrates does not believe in, for a conclusion which Socrates evidently does believe in? After all, Socrates does remain in prison to face his execution; evidently, he believes that that is what he ought to do. This …

The Tension Between Altruistic Character And Self-Serving Possession In A Classical Socio-Political Ethic, Jeremy S. Neill

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Much of the Nicomachean Ethics treats egocentrism as an ineffectual and pernicious social vice out of which humans ought to be habituated. In the Politics self-centeredness is almost universally portrayed as a useful and enduring constituent of human psychology. The system of private property described in the Politics can hardly be a necessary social institution when Aristotle claims in the Ethics that the habituation process is capable of permanently fixing our attention upon public and altruistic fiscal ventures. This interpretive discrepancy between the two texts demonstrates that Aristotle’s defense of private property is ineffectual in its attempt to preserve the …

The Philosophical Approach To God: A New Thomistic Perspective, 2nd Edition, W. Norris Clarke, S.J.

Philosophy & Theory

This book is a revised and expanded edition of three lectures delivered by the author at Wake Forest University in 1979. Long out of print, in its new edition it should be a valuable resource for scholars and teachers of the philosophy of religion.

The first two lectures, after a critique of the incompleteness of St. Thomas Aquinas’s famous Five Ways of arguing for the existence of God, explore lesser-known resources of Aquinas’s philosophical ascent of the mind to God: the unrestricted dynamism of the human spirit as it reaches toward the fullness of being, and the strictly metaphysical ascent …

Review: 'Challenging Liberalism: Feminism As Political Critique', Rebecca Whisnant

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In Challenging Liberalism: Feminism as Political Critique, Lisa Schwartzman brings her sharp interpretive and critical perspective to bear on the vexed relationship between feminism and liberal political philosophy. Noting (as have others before her) that the latter's central values -- such as autonomy, individual rights, and equality -- are both indispensable to and sometimes problematic for feminism, Schwartzman argues that these values must be reinterpreted in light of the insights gained from an alternative, non-liberal, and specifically feminist philosophical methodology. In this book, she explains why such an alternative methodology is needed, outlines some of its distinctive features, and …

Sagp Newsletter 2006/7.2, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Programs of the Society with the Pacific Division, April 7, 2007, in San Francisco, and with the Central Division, April 20, 2007, in Chicago.

Reports Relating To The Fifty-Eighth Annual Meeting Of The Society, James A. Borland

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Memorials 2007, James A. Borland

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Review: Shepherds After My Own Heart: Pastoral Traditions And Leadership In The Bible, Donald L. Fowler

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Review: Biblical Faith And Other Religions: An Evangelical Assessment, Michael S. Jones

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Transgressive Sanctity: The Abrek In Chechen Culture, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

The ancient tradition of the abrek (bandit) was developed into a political institution during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century by Chechen and other Muslim peoples of the Caucasus as a strategy for dealing with the overwhelming military force of Russia's imperial army. During the Soviet period, the abrek became a locus for oppositional politics and arguably influenced the representations of violence and anti-colonial resistance during the recent Chechen Wars. This article is one of the first works of English-language scholarship to historicize this institution. It also marks the beginning of a book project entitled A …

Corégulation Et Responsabilité Sociale Des Entreprises, Gregory Lewkowicz, Ludovic Hennebel

Gregory Lewkowicz

This paper analyses the evolution of corporate social responsibility from an empirical and a theoretical point of view. After having described the framework of a theory of coregulation, the authors scrutinize the main regulatory instruments used in the context of corporate social responsibility. They demonstrate that the evolution of corporate social responsaibility delineates a new regulatory logic peculiar to a globalizing legal world. The paper concludes stating that this logic could be a paradigm for the study of an emerging global law.

[Introduction To] Inventing Leadership: The Challenge Of Democracy, J. Thomas Wren

Bookshelf

The tension between ruler and ruled in democratic societies has never been satisfactorily resolved, and the competing interpretations of this relationship lie at the bottom of much modern political discourse. In this fascinating book, Thomas Wren clarifies and elevates the debates over leadership by identifying the fundamental premises and assumptions that underlie past and present understandings.

Global Feminist Ethics: Feminist Ethics And Social Theory, Rebecca Whisnant, Peggy Desautels

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This volume contains four sections, the first of which examines some of the special moral concerns that arise from assigning distinct activities and responsibilities to women and men respectively. It is difficult to argue against the view that women and not men are the birth-givers. But it is also true that death rates tied to pregnancy and birth-giving are unacceptably high in developing countries. Are women better off giving birth in hospitals with attending physicians (often male) or in homes with attending midwives (usually female)? Which approach should be "exported" to the developing world?

In the first chapter, "Exporting Childbirth," …

Resembling Nothing: Image And Being In Plato, Yancy Hughes Dominick

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

A crucial application of Plato’s views on the use of images in philosophy occurs through the use of the image relationship as an image for the relation of forms and particulars. The relation of a picture to the object it depicts, or that between a reflection and what it reflects, can be seen as analogous to the relation of a particular to the form in which it participates. Although the attack on the image model as analogous to the relation of forms and particulars in the Parmenides threatens to undermine any reliance on that model, this essay will present a …

Vico’S New Science Of Interpretation: Beyond Philosophical Hermeneutics And The Hermeneutics Of Suspicion, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The article situates Vico's hermeneutical science of history between a hermeneutics of suspicion (Ricoeur, Habermas, Freud) and a redemptive hermeneutics (Gadamer, Benjamin). It discusses Vico's early writings and his ambivalent trajectory from Cartesian rationalism to counter-enlightenment historicist and critic of natural law reasoning. The complexity of Vico's thinking belies some of the popular treatments of his thought developed by Isaiah Berlin and others.

On The Intellectual Sources Of Laïcité: Rousseau, Constant, And The Debates About A National Religion, Helena Rosenblatt

Publications and Research

That French Protestants gave strong support to laïcité is by now well established. In recent work, Patrick Cabanel has even made a compelling case for the Protestant sources of laïcité, placing particular emphasis on the Protestant entourage of Jules Ferry (1832-1893) and stressing the inspiration provided by the pro-Protestant intellectual, Edgar Quinet (1803-1875.)

This article suggests that we look even earlier in time for the intellectual sources of laïcité. Seminal ideas can be found in the writings of two liberal Protestants, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Benjamin Constant (1767-1830.) Rousseau is usually counted among the opponents, and not the …

Adolf Reinach’S Contribution To The Early Phenomenological Movement, Kimberly Jaray

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Adolf Reinach made significant contributions to the early phenomenological movement with his work on states of affairs, the ontological categorization of the a priori, and a realist interpretation of essences, yet today his name and contributions go largely unrecognized. To make matters worse, the few who have contributed to Reinach scholarship have seriously misinterpreted central features of his thought. This thesis seeks to rectify this situation by offering an historical account of the origin and development of some of Reinach’s key notions and of their significance to the development of phenomenology in the early twentieth century. This thesis is …

Holy Toyland, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

No abstract provided.