This paper examines the debate that has arisen in connection with J. L. Schellenberg's work on divine hiddenness. It singles out as especially deserving of attention Paul Moser's proposal that the debate distinguish more clearly between classical theism and Hebraic theisms. This worthwhile proposal, I argue, will be unlikely to exert its full potential influence upon the debate unless certain features of Christian incarnation belief are recognized and addressed in connection with it.

Philosophy has traditionally engaged the problem of why there is something rather than nothing as a normal causal question. Such an approach, Hunter Brown proposes in Grace and Philosophy, does not do justice to the deep wonder and astonishment that the existence of the world elicits so widely among human beings. Such wonder has often been expressed in artistic and literary ways, including especially the language of grace, which captures the striking gratuity of existence and the spontaneous, grateful response so (...) often evoked by it. Since the modern period, however, Brown argues, there has been a questionable narrowing of philosophy that privileges formal reasoning and theory over an engagement of immediate experience. Detached expertise, impersonal scholarship, and preoccupation with data have swept aside simple wonderment about the extraordinary gratuity of existence, and the remarkable ways in which such wonderment has been expressed. Against the grain of such widespread developments Grace and Philosophy proposes a perspective that maintains a place of importance in philosophy for such wonder and for the many forms in which it has manifested itself. (shrink)

Images of the human is the collective effort of thirteen philosophy professors to address the questions human beings have been asking for centuries. The book presents selections from the major works of eighteen of the best-known philosophers from ancient to modern times. Each chapter focuses on the writings of a different philosopher - from Plato to Nietzsche, Augustine to Sartre - and includes an introduction and critical comentary.

This study has two aims. First, it lays out the synchronic patterning of four constructions that express static location in Secoya (Tukanoan). Each construction licenses different semantic verb types: topological verbs, postural verbs, an existential verb, and a copula. Second, this study explores the different construals encoded by these constructions and highlights the ways speakers use them creatively to elaborate on stage-level properties adjacent to location in locative utterances. Data collected from six speakers using visual stimuli reveal that each of (...) the constructions elaborates on specific aspects of locative scenes. Responses for typical/atypical scenes, negative polarity statements, and frequency patterns show that speakers can choose conceptualizations that favor Ground geometry, Figure posture, more complex Figure dispositions, or marked perspectivizations. Similar phenomena are observed in other Amazonian languages. These results raise difficulties in identifying a basic locative construction, suggesting that Secoya may not fit squarely into any type in existing typologies of spatial expression (e.g., Ameka and Levinson 2007). Additionally, the Secoya system raises questions about the relationship between conceptual alternativity and the notion of “basicness” with respect to construal types. (shrink)

This article argues against the longstanding view that William James's "Will to Believe" defends the "adoption" of certain beliefs, especially if such beliefs give rise to favourable consequences. I contend, rather, that James is resisting the cultural propensity to call for the "abandonment" of certain beliefs or propensities to believe. A failure to recognize this feature of his position has resulted from a widespread neglect of one of the three distinguishing characteristics of options and propositions which interest him in his (...) essay: their liveness'. My analysis of liveness brings out its centrality and the impact of such centrality on James's position overall. (shrink)

Hunter Brown shows that Henry James's views of religious experience do not in fact lapse into subjectivismor fideism that critics have accused him of but occasions hardships and self-sacrifice which James describes.

The purpose of this dissertation is to defend William James's will to believe doctrine from the main lines of criticism which have been levelled against it throughout the last century. Principal among such criticisms are accusations that James fideistically advocated an intrusion of the subject into doxastic practice which opens the door to wishful thinking, and that he confused belief and hypothesis-adoption. My defense of James against such charges will be based upon analyses of two important but neglected components of (...) his position--the "liveness" of certain options and propositions, and the "strenuous mood"--and upon a contextualization of the role assigned by James to "passional nature" within the terms of reference of his work on immediate experience. (shrink)

Structured as a self-standing course in philosophy, this book presents and examines selections from the primary works of 18 of the best known philosophers from ancient to modern times. Each chapter focuses on the writings of a different philosopher--from Plato to Nietzsche, Augustine to Sartre--and includes an introduction and critical commentary by one of the professors.