Aquinas needs no introduction as one of the greatest minds of the middle ages. Highly influential on the development of Christian doctrine, his ideas are still of fundamental philosophical importance. This new critique of his natural law theory discusses the theory's background in Aristotle and advances new interpretations of contemporary legal issues which hark back to Aquinas.

Both critique and an appropriation of a large and diverse body of work, Home and Beyond is a major contribution to contemporary Husserl scholarship.

This chapter addresses Immanuel Kant and the potential impasse of any philosophical account of religious experience. Various attempts within phenomenology are explored to broaden the notion of givenness and evidence beyond the parameters of object-givenness. Then, the chapter deals with a phenomenology of religious experience as an irreducible sphere of human experience, and its unique style of evidence and modalisations. For Kant, experience is limited to one mode of givenness in which objects of knowledge are actively constituted with the direct (...) implication that one cannot meaningfully speak of a religious experience. The recognition of the different quality of givenness in religious experience implicated the significant matter of religious evidence. (shrink)

Anthony Parel affords a novel perspective on the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. He explores how Gandhi connected the spiritual with the temporal. As Parel points out 'being more things than one' is a good description of Gandhi and, with these words in mind, he shows how Gandhi, drawing on the Indian time-honoured theory of the purusharthas or 'the aims of life', fitted his ethical, political, aesthetic and religious ideas together. In this way Gandhi challenged the notion which prevailed in (...) Indian society that a rift existed between the secular and the spiritual, the political and the contemplative life. Parel's revealing and insightful book shows how far-reaching were the effects of Gandhi's practical philosophy on Indian thought generally and how these have survived into the present. (shrink)

The significance of consciousness in modern science is discussed by leading authorities from a variety of disciplines. Presenting a wide-ranging survey of current thinking on this important topic, the contributors address such issues as the status of different aspects of consciousness; the criteria for using the concept of consciousness and identifying instances of it; the basis of consciousness in functional brain organization; the relationship between different levels of theoretical discourse; and the functions of consciousness.

Anthony Everett gives a philosophical defence of the common-sense view that there are no such things as fictional people, places, and things. He argues that our talk and thought about such fictional objects takes place within the scope of a pretense, and that we gain little but lose much by accepting fictional realism.

Moral Emotions builds upon the philosophical theory of persons begun in _Phenomenology and Mysticism _and marks a new stage of phenomenology. Author Anthony J. Steinbock finds personhood analyzing key emotions, called moral emotions. _Moral Emotions _offers a systematic account of the moral emotions, described here as pride, shame, and guilt as emotions of self-givenness; repentance, hope, and despair as emotions of possibility; and trusting, loving, and humility as emotions of otherness. The author argues these reveal basic structures of interpersonal (...) experience. By exhibiting their own kind of cognition and evidence, the moral emotions not only help to clarify the meaning of person, they reveal novel concepts of freedom, critique, and normativity. As such, they are able to engage our contemporary social imaginaries at the impasse of modernity and postmodernity. (shrink)

_Neoliberalism and Academic Repression_ provides a theoretical examination of how the current higher education system is being shaped into a corporate-factory-industrial-complex. This timely collection challenges the neoliberal emphasis on valuation based on job readiness and outcome achievement.

Anthony J. Lisska presents a new analysis of Thomas Aquinas's theory of perception. While much work has been undertaken on Aquinas's texts, little has been devoted principally to his theory of perception and less still on a discussion of inner sense. The thesis of intentionality serves as the philosophical backdrop of this analysis while incorporating insights from Brentano and from recent scholarship. The principal thrust is on the importance of inner sense, a much-overlooked area of Aquinas's philosophy of mind, (...) with special reference to the vis cogitativa. Approaching the texts of Aquinas from contemporary analytic philosophy, Lisska suggests a modest 'innate' or 'structured' interpretation for the role of this inner sense faculty. He argues that were it not for the vis cogitativa, Aquinas would be unable to account for an awareness of the principal ontological category in his metaphysics. (shrink)

Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rzbihn Baql—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that (...) contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience. (shrink)

This paper has two motivations. First, I want to delineate structurally the dimensions of phenomenological method: not merely the static and genetic methods, but along with them I want to introduce the new ideas of generativity and generative method (Section 2). Second, because these dimensions cannot merely be treated structurally, I want to examine their dynamic interrelation, that is, the system of motivations obtaining between them. I will do this by elaborating the phenomenological concept of "leading clue" (Section 3). Finally, (...) I will conclude by addressing the relation of phenomenology to generativity (Section 4). (shrink)

Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rzbihn Baql—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that (...) contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience. (shrink)

This major new work by Anthony J. Steinbock, a leading authority in Phenomenology and Husserl Studies, explores an interrelated set of problems in Husserl's phenomenology and provides an excellent example of phenomenology in practice, demonstrating how its methods and resources shed light on philosophical problems.

Addressing the matter of attention from a phenomenological perspective as it bears on the problem of becoming aware, I draw on Edmund Husserl''s analyses and distinctions that mark his genetic phenomenology. I describe several experiential levels of affective force and modes of attentiveness, ranging from what I call dispositional orientation and passive discernment to so-called higher levels of attentiveness in cognitive interest, judicative objectivation, and conceptualization. These modes of attentiveness can be understood as motivating a still more active mode of (...) reflective attention, i.e., philosophical attentiveness, and to this extent, even it would be subject to varying influences of affection. What role, if any, does affection play in a peculiar kind of reflective attention that is phenomenological? I conclude by briefly considering phenomenological reflective attentiveness and its relation to affection. (shrink)

Gittins, Anthony J By its achievements and the transformations that would not have happened without it, Alcoholics Anonymous has always impressed me, as do the people who belong to it. And yet there is little structure, few rules, and no rush to judgment involved. It is a 'fellowship' rather than an organisation, and a society of peers rather than a clash of personalities. Its success is attributed to the sharing of experiences, the moral support of the sponsors and the (...) community, the strength and determination - rather than the weakness or the history - of its members, and the sense of hope it inspires and maintains in those who refuse to give up, one day at a time. To admit or acknowledge powerlessness over alcohol or any addiction is not to identify oneself as without all power. On the contrary, those who acknowledge weakness in one area and yet show determination succeed partly because of the power of the wider group and partly because of the power of their own personal dedication and perseverance. Members of AA know that they are only a day or a drink from disaster, and yet, curiously, this is their strength; by keeping that awareness clearly before them, they are unlikely to become arrogant or independent of a support group. (shrink)

Gittins, Anthony J It is impossible for anyone to feel the pain you feel; the most people can do is to sympathise or empathise. But because there is nothing new under the sun, all of us can at least try to 'suffer with' the sufferings of others. Our experience of the all too human failings of the church today is by no means unique: ever since the beginning, times of trauma and crisis have alternated with times of peace and (...) healing. Our challenge is to keep hope alive during times of crisis, and to learn from the past in order learn its lessons and not repeat its mistakes. In this final reflection, I offer some reasons for hope and some perspectives for the next stage of our lives if it is to be marked by faithfulness and action rather than fear and reaction. (shrink)

New opportunities for discourse about God have arisen, along with new challenges to the mainstream Catholic theology of God. In order to take advantage of these opportunities, a truly contemporary Catholic theology of God must critically appropriate three ‘events’ which have affected its approach to the subject matter: Heidegger's periodizing critique of ontotheology; the ‘contemporary’ viewed as the arena of contention between modern and postmodern claims; the presence of the Kingdom of God and the revelation of the nature of God (...) in the person and work of Jesus Christ, which alter our understandings of time and being. The present essay sketches a program for an authentically Catholic response to the issues raised by these occurrences, emphasizing the Catholic commitment to incarnation and sacramentality and the necessary effort to retrieve redemptive images of God from modernity, despite the present tendency of some postmodern theologians and philosophers to dismiss aspects of the past as unusable. (shrink)

It has been proposed that performance in the think – no think task represents a laboratory analogue of the voluntary form of memory repression. The central prediction of this repression hypothesis is that performance in the TNT task will be influenced by emotional characteristics of the material to be remembered. This prediction was tested in two experiments by asking participants to learn paired associates in which the first item was either emotionally positive or emotionally negative . The second word was (...) always emotionally neutral . Consistent with the repression hypothesis, significant memory suppression was observed in both experiments following ‘no think’ instructions for memories associated with emotionally negative material. No suppression was observed for memories associated with emotionally positive information. Implications of these findings for the relationship between performance in the TNT task and the controversial notion of memory repression are considered. (shrink)

Leading phenomenologist Tony Steinbock intervenes in contemporary discussion around the concept of the gift, providing a critical reading of the main figures on the problem of the gift and offering a new perspective on the gift, situating it in the emotional sphere, specifically in relation to loving and humility.

For the inaugural session of the Consultation on Mysticism and Politics at the 1995 convention of the College Theology Society, the consultation’s conveners, David Hammond and Kris Willumsen (both of Wheeling Jesuit College) organized a panel presentation on John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. The panelists were John Berkman (then of Sacred Heart University, now of the Catholic University of America), Anthony Godzieba (VillanovaUniversity), Paul Lakeland (Fairfield University), and William Loewe (Catholic University of America).The choice of (...) text was a fortunate one as panelists and audience members alike recognized something emphasized by previous reviewers of the book: no matter how one evaluates Milbank’s proposal, he makes a major contribution to contemporary theology by plunging theology into the thick of the contemporary debates over the status of modernity and postmodernity. In doing so, Milbank avoids employing any of the means normally used in these debates, such as the correlationmethod. Rather, his deeply reflective analysis reaches back into the Christian theological tradition in order to retrieve its Augustinian moment for the post-Nietzschean present. From his dialogue with contemporary Western culture and the social and political theories which undergird it, Milbank pointedly proposes a provocation: not only an alternative theological reading of the history and status of modernity/postmodernity, but also nothing less than a truly theological reconstruction of the contemporary.This review symposium presents the panelists’ contributions, which have been revised for this publication. (shrink)

For the inaugural session of the Consultation on Mysticism and Politics at the 1995 convention of the College Theology Society, the consultation’s conveners, David Hammond and Kris Willumsen (both of Wheeling Jesuit College) organized a panel presentation on John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. The panelists were John Berkman (then of Sacred Heart University, now of the Catholic University of America), Anthony Godzieba (VillanovaUniversity), Paul Lakeland (Fairfield University), and William Loewe (Catholic University of America).The choice of (...) text was a fortunate one as panelists and audience members alike recognized something emphasized by previous reviewers of the book: no matter how one evaluates Milbank’s proposal, he makes a major contribution to contemporary theology by plunging theology into the thick of the contemporary debates over the status of modernity and postmodernity. In doing so, Milbank avoids employing any of the means normally used in these debates, such as the correlationmethod. Rather, his deeply reflective analysis reaches back into the Christian theological tradition in order to retrieve its Augustinian moment for the post-Nietzschean present. From his dialogue with contemporary Western culture and the social and political theories which undergird it, Milbank pointedly proposes a provocation: not only an alternative theological reading of the history and status of modernity/postmodernity, but also nothing less than a truly theological reconstruction of the contemporary.This review symposium presents the panelists’ contributions, which have been revised for this publication. (shrink)

God - believers - questions -- How God became a problem in western culture -- The Christian response, I: natural theology -- The Christian response, II: theological theology -- The presence and absence of God.

Tilley argues that since religions are not summaries of bloodless beliefs but embodied communal practices, the heuristic for the justification of beliefs must shift. Although some of the lines of this shift to practical wisdom remain vague, Tilley has taken philosophy of religion in an excellent direction. Attention to these questions would sharpen his sketch: Why abandon linguistic philosophy with no attention to the help one might receive from the embodied linguistic practice of the later Wittgenstein? What grounds the wisdom (...) we seek to practice? Can community outsiders argue with insiders? Do these embodied philosophical arguments differ from theological arguments? (shrink)

Radical Orthodoxy offers insight into the relationship between Christianity and culture. But it errs in its one-sided reading of modernity, its attempt to reduce philosophy to theology, and its prescription of a pre-modern metaphysics as the only authentic theological foundation. These suggest a fear of contingency and a desire for the immediate grasp of the divine which might circumvent history’s messiness. The result is a construal of reality that is in general inimical to an authentic Catholic reading of reality. Catholic (...) theology must be more faithful to the incarnational and eschatological structure of revelation—and thus to contingency—than either it or Radical Orthodoxy has been in the past. Aquinas’ defense of philosophy and Metz’s principle of “dangerous memory” offer ways to overcome this fear and to enjoy created contingency, secure in hope for the eschatological transformation which God in Christ has promised to all persons and all epochs. (shrink)

This paper proposes a wider framework for the diagnostic and evaluative readings of Fides et Ratio. Each commentator has provided an exit from the impasse of the encyclical’s rhetoric of affirmation and denial in the form of a double reading of the text. In a wider framework, John Paul II holds up Antonio Rosmini among those whose works he considers paradigmatic for the fruitful relation between faith and reason. This displays a period of a prolonged struggle between an Augustinian and (...) a Thomist style of theology which finds expression in a Christ-versus-culture approach in Catholic theology. The reading of Fides et Ratio reveal something of a “third way” in their affirmative readings of the encyclical. (shrink)

The question of modernity has provoked a vigorous debate in the work of thinkers from Hegel to Habermas. Our own self-styled postmodern age has seen no end to this debate, which now receives a major and wide-ranging intervention from the theorist and critic Anthony J. Cascardi. Offering an historical account of the origins and transformations of the rational subject or self as it is represented in Descartes, Cervantes, Pascal, Hobbes and the Don Juan myth, he carries his argument across (...) the fields of epistemology, literature, political science, religion and psychology. The modern subject proves to be positioned within conflicting discourses, in a culture characterised by its 'detotalised totality'. Max Weber's concept of 'world disenchantment' enables Cascardi to make a searching critique of modernity's sense of its absoluteness, divorced from an archaic, 'enchanted' world. He advocates in its place a more fruitful relationship between historical analysis and theoretical speculation, offering constructive new alternatives to current orthodoxy regarding subjectivity and modernity. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the experience of hope by focusing on experiences that seem to rival hope, namely, disappointment, desperation, panic, hopelessness, and despair. I explore these issues phenomenologically by examining five kinds of experiences that counter hope (or in some instances, seem to do so): first, by noting the cases in which hope simply is not operative, then by treating the significance of both desperation and pessimism, next by examining the experience of hopelessness, and finally, by treating the (...) experience of despair. Here despair is shown to constitute the most profound challenge to hope among these experiences and to be foundational for the others, even though it is disclosed ultimately as founded in hope. (shrink)

Libertarianism is understood to be a “deontological theory of law” that purportedly applies exclusively to humans. According to some libertarians, however, “one of the greatest weaknesses of libertarian theory” is that there are no provisions outlawing the abuse and torture of animals even though this seems to be one of “the most heinous acts it is possible to do”. Moreover, a few of these libertarians go even further and claim that this legal philosophy of non-aggression should actually be extended to (...) include other animals. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile this seemingly irreconcilable situation by arguing that it is a “continuum problem” and offering a principled, libertarian compromise that resolves the animal rights debate using the non-aggression principle and private property rights. (shrink)

This article contributes to a recent debate between Barnett and Block : 711–716, 2009), Bagus and Howden : 399–406, 2009), Barnett and Block, Cachanosky and Bagus and Howden regarding the conceptual distinction between demand deposits and time deposits. It is argued that from an economic perspective there is nothing inherently fraudulent or illegitimate about deposit accounts that are available ‘on demand’, but that this relies on certain contractual provisions. Particular attention is drawn to option clauses and withdrawal clauses, which “solve” (...) the problems raised by Barnett and Block, and Bagus and Howden. Previous authors have also neglected the asset side of banks balance sheets, and this is shown to further justify the legitimacy of fractional reserve banking. (shrink)

"Renewal" is the expression Edmund Husserl used for the social, political, and ethical transformation of human culture (1922-1924). Considering the concept of renewal in the "generative" becoming of a culture, I first explain the phenomenological background in which Husserl approached the enterprise of renewal. I then describe Husserl's concept of renewal as an ethical task. Next, I take up the process of renewal as accomplishing "the best possible." Following this, I discuss the concept of critique advanced in the "Kaizo" articles. (...) My conclusion interprets Husserl's emphases on the urgency of critique and renewal in relation to the generation of a culture. (shrink)

Drawing on and developing the phenomenological work of figures such as Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, Knowing by Heart details the various feelings and feeling states that pertain to matters of the heart.

In this book, Anthony J. Parel makes the controversial argument that despite Gandhi's contributions to religion, nonviolence, civil rights, and civil disobedience, his most significant contribution was that as a political philosopher.

The contribution that a word makes to the meaning and interpretation of a sentence depends upon access to its meaning, and to general knowledge associated with the word. Evidence is presented to support the argument that accessing lexical meaning, as with general knowledge, is a graded affair. We argue that the contribution a word makes depends upon its relevance to the context, and to focus and related variables. Extensions of the argument are made to other aspects of language processing.

It is often argued that the existence of qualia -- private mental objects -- shows that physicalism is false. In this paper, I argue that to think in terms of qualia is a misleading way to develop what is in itself a valid intuition about the inability of physicalism to do justice to our conscious experience. I consider arguments by Dennett and Wittgenstein which indicate what is wrong with the notion of qualia, but which by so doing, help us to (...) locate the real problem for physicalism. This is not that there may be mental as well as physical objects of which we are aware, but that the very notion of awareness is itself resistant to physicalist treatment. In the concluding sections, I draw on Wittgenstein's positive account of sensations, to suggest a way in which the apparent chasm separating objective and subjective viewpoints might be bridged in a non-reductive fashion. (shrink)