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 2000 - 2010 |
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American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly - Full Table of ContentsVolume 83, Number 4 - 2009
ARTICLES
Michael Robinson, Truth in MetaphysicsThis essay juxtaposes Duns Scotus’s treatment of the nature of truth with the doctrine concerning truth developed by Heidegger in Being and Time. Both Scotus and Heidegger are concerned inter alia with the same phenomenon: truth as our apprehension of entities. But Scotus speaks of the truth that is in entities, whereas for Heidegger there is no truth in things, but only in their unveiledness
to Dasein. Scotus offers us a model in which there are different senses in which we can speak of truth, and in which these complement one another. Scotus could accommodate Heidegger’s crucial insights about the encounter between Dasein and the world. But Heidegger could not accept much of Scotus’s account without giving up some fundamental points of his argument.Francesca di Poppa, Abraham Cohen HerreraIn this paper, I argue that Herrera’s discussion of the emanative process in his Gate of Heaven is a plausible source for Spinoza’s concept of the attributes as developed in Ethics. While Herrera’s influence on the development of Spinoza’s thought has been discussed, I argue that previous interpretations have not captured the nature of this influence. I will first offer an overview of Herrera’s discussion of the relationship between the One and the sefirot. I will then criticize a recent discussion of Herrera’s influence on Spinoza by Giuseppa Saccaro Del Buffa, and offer a summary of my interpretation of the concept of attribute in Spinoza. Finally, I will show that Herrera’s discussion of the sefirot, the first emanations, as divine activities, rather than created things, inspired Spinoza’s concept of the
divine attributes. John D. Dadosky, Recovering Beauty in the SubjectThis paper takes Balthasar’s critique of Kierkegaard’s aesthetics as a context for recovering the notion of beauty within the subject. Balthasar believed that Kierkegaard contributed to the loss of beauty by separating the aesthetic from the ethical and religious spheres. By viewing the spheres in terms of differentiations of consciousness, Lonergan’s theory of consciousness offers an interpretation of
Kierkegaard’s stages in such a way that addresses Balthasar’s concern and retains the Danish thinker’s significant achievements. Anne Newstead, Cantor on Infinity in Nature, Number, and the Divine MindThe mathematician Georg Cantor strongly believed in the existence of actually infinite numbers and sets. Cantor’s “actualism” went against the Aristotelian tradition in metaphysics and mathematics. Under the pressures to defend his theory, his metaphysics changed from Spinozistic monism to Leibnizian voluntarist dualism. The factor motivating this change was two-fold: the desire to avoid antinomies associated with the notion of a universal collection and the desire to avoid the heresy of necessitarian pantheism. We document the changes in Cantor’s thought with reference to his main philosophical-mathematical treatise, the Grundlagen (1883) as well as with reference to his article, “Über die verschiedenen Standpunkte in bezug auf das aktuelle Unendliche” (“Concerning Various Perspectives on the Actual Infinite”) (1885). Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, Edith Stein’s Little-Known SideThis paper examines Edith Stein’s phenomenological analysis of society—a neglected side of her thought—and situates it in a two-fold context: (a) philosophical studies of society undertaken in German-speaking lands in the aftermath of the First World War, and (b) Christian concepts of surrogacy and responsibility for the other.
DISCUSSION
Christopher Tollefsen, No ProblemIs the human zygote and human embryo a human being? Such questions are biological questions (although philosophy may helpfully be drawn upon in rebutting objections and clarifying concepts). The issue of personhood is thus best kept entirely off the table when that question is being discussed. What is, or is not, possible for ontological persons, and what would, or would not, be morally
warranted for moral persons, should not play a role in the assessment of biological evidence with a view to answering the biological question. Yet this is what happens in a recent essay by Bernard Prusak (ACPQ 82:3 [Summer 2008]), an essay devoted to showing why the “problem of the embryo” will always be with us. More careful attention to developmental biology, and greater care in distinguishing scientific from metaphysical and ethical questions, would go some way towards making the problem of the embryo less intractable than Prusak believes.Bernard G. Prusak, What Was to Be DemonstratedIn his reply to my paper “The Problem with the Problem of the Embryo,” which appeared in the Summer 2008 (82:3) issue of ACPQ, Christopher Tollefsen claims that (1) I muddle matters by failing to keep distinct questions of biology from questions having to do with personhood; (2) I have the science wrong in my account of the debate over the fact that the embryo depends on “maternal donation” for its development; and (3) my so-called “counsel of pragmatism” is unlikely to lead to any progress, since, “[i]f we refuse to accept and be guided by truth when it lies before us, we are unlikely to even seek it in other, more difficult domains.” I reply to each criticism in turn, both by clarifying the argument in my paper—which Tollefsen misrepresents at one point—and by taking up, and considering in the light of my argument, his substantive claims about what biological inquiry can here reveal.
REVIEW ESSAY
Charles Bambach, Situating HeideggerDwelling in the homeland would become a signature theme for the later Heidegger, pervading his work on technology, poetry, language, art, and the meaning of thinking. This question concerning the home would come to serve as a way of posing the question about continuity within his work and its relation to the decisive shifts that helped to shape his philosophical path of thinking. This article attempts to situate Heidegger both within his own work and within the history of philosophy by looking at the topic of “homecoming.”After offering a brief sketch of how North American philosophers have read Heidegger over the last twenty years, this article offers a review of four recent books that take up the question of continuity over Heidegger’s thought path. By focusing on Heidegger’s relation to medieval philosophy, the Greeks, the problem of will, and Gelassenheit, it shows how we can find a sense of unity in Heideggerian thinking by considering it against the discourse of a “first” and an “other” beginning.
BOOK REVIEWS
Jason T. Eberl, Theological BioethicsJoseph W. Koterski, S.J., Redeeming Truth Christopher J. Malloy, Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics Edward C. Halper, Aristotle’s Gradations of Being in Metaphysics E–Z Michael Wiitala, Plato Siobhan Nash-Marshall, The Prisoner’s Philosophy Yiftach J. H. Fehige, The Case Against Perfection Andrew Tallon, Man as a Place of God Contents of Volume 83 |
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