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1. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
About Our Contributors
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2. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Jane Duran Murdoch’s Morality: An Ontological Analysis
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This paper argues that Murdoch’s views possess a structured ontology. As some of her critics note, her philosophical stance is one that must be gleaned from close readings of both her novels and her more straightforward essays. Given the complexities of her novels, the addition of her other work makes for a challenging task, but one that the reader can use. Murdoch’s work is valuable for the range of moral options it displays.
3. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Joshua R. Brotherton Post-Gödelian Ontological Argumentation for God’s Existence: A Phenomenological-Existential Perspective
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The so-called ontological argument has a complex and controverted history, rising to particular prominence in contemporary analytic philosophy. Against this backdrop I will present a non-analytic interpretation of ontological argumentation for God’s existence by attempting to fuse Anselmian and Gödelian perspectives. I defend ontological argumentation in a number of slightly variant forms as neither a priori nor a posteriori, but ab actu exercito. Kantian and especially Thomistic critiques are confronted in the course of explaining how ontological argumentation may be logically valid without depending on or yielding to subjectivist epistemologies. Hence, post-Gödelian ontological argumentation ought to be acceptable to realists.
4. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Ignacio De Ribera-Martin External Figure (Schêma) and Homonymy in Aristotle
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According to Aristotle’s homonymy principle, when we use a common name to refer to wholes and parts that lack the capacity to carry out the function (ergon) signified by the name, we are using the name in a homonymous way. For example, pictures and statues of a man, or a dead eye, are called “man” and “eye” only homonymously because they cannot carry out their proper function, i.e., to live and to see. This principle serves well Aristotle’s purposes in natural philosophy, for it avoids a reduction of the essence of living bodies and their parts to their material composition and shape. This principle, however, leaves unexplained why we still use those names in common language, despite their homonymy. Using Aristotle’s own comments on homonymy, I will examine the role played by external figure (schêma), for it explains why such homonyms are not accidental. In fact, they are correct forms of linguistic usage in non-philosophical contexts.
5. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Andrés Tutor Isaiah Berlin on Positive Freedom
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The aim of this article is to provide a critical examination of Berlin’s treatment of positive freedom by offering a review of his standard arguments against this concept. Throughout his essays and particularly in “Two Concepts of Liberty” Berlin connects the idea of positive freedom with such notions as monism, rationalism, and determinism. Each of these connections will be discussed separately. I will argue that most of Berlin’s arguments against positive liberty are somehow flawed. Although Berlin valued positive freedom as one of the ultimate ends of life, his critical view of the concept should be tempered and contextualized since it was mostly based not on logical or conceptual grounds but on historical and interpretative considerations.
6. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Brian Kemple The Consolation of a Christian
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If the desire to see God in Himself belongs to human nature, but the attainment of that vision can be affected only by supernatural grace, how is it that this desire remaining unfulfilled is not a frustration of the nature? How is it that nature is aiming at a good in vain, at an object that it cannot achieve? Even though the elicited natural desire to see God is not fulfilled in this life, and even though there is no demonstrative proof that can be provided by natural reason alone of its being fulfilled after death, the natural human desire is nevertheless not frustrated by a natural deficiency. Rather than being contrary to human nature, this lack of fulfillment exists because of that nature, inasmuch as every human is by nature a limited intellector of being.
7. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Roberto Di Ceglie Preambles of Faith and Modern Accounts of Aquinas’s Thought
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Modern philosophical accounts of faith and reason have often been characterized by the idea that faith in God should be epistemically grounded in the belief that God exists. This idea only partially characterizes the Christian view of faith, at least if we consider Aquinas’s thought, which has often been taken as an exemplary way of handling the relationship between faith and reason. I argue that, even though evidence for God’s existence plays a significant role in Aquinas’s reflections, this is only part of his view of the relation between faith and reason. Unlike many modern interpreters of his works, Aquinas sees not only the role played by reason in arguing for faith, but also the autonomy of faith—the fact that faith stands by itself—and the influence that it can exert on the use of reason, including his discussion of the preambles of faith.
book reviews
8. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Glenn B. Siniscalchi Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know. By Michael Ruse
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9. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism. By Paul van Tongeren
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10. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Adam Tamas Tuboly Building the General Relativity and Gravitation Community during the Cold War. By Roberto Lalli
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11. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Peter N. Bwanali, S.J. Political Illiberalism: A Defense of Freedom. By Peter L. P. Simpson
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12. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Books Received
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13. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 4
Index for Volume 58
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14. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 3
About Our Contributors
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15. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 3
Gene Fendt Socrates as the Mimesis of Piety in Republic
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The absence of any discussion of the virtue of piety in Plato’s Republic has been much remarked, but there are textual clues by which to recognize its importance for Plato’s construction and for the book’s intended effect. This dialogue is Socrates’s repetition, on the day after the first festival of Bendis, of a liturgical action that he undertook—at his own expense, at the “vote” of his “city”—on the previous day. Socrates’s activity in repeating it the next day is an “ethological” mimesis of properly pious liturgy. In the course of that liturgy we find that piety is specifically discussed, but in a (mimetic) mirror, and darkly (in its absence). The mirror of piety is the laws about stories of the gods. The absence is in the (missing) discussion of the best city, that is, one above aristocracy.
16. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 3
Weijia Wang Three Necessities in Kant’s Theory of Taste: Necessary Universality, Necessary Judgment, and Necessary Free Harmony
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This paper argues that the structural obscurity in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment reflects his tacit employment of three correlated but distinct notions: necessity considered as the universal validity of the judgment of taste; necessity considered as a feature of the judgment itself; and necessity considered as a feature of the mental free harmony that obtains in judging certain forms with taste. These distinctions have not been sufficiently recognized by commentators so far. Clarification of these three notions can shed new light on the structure of the first part of Kant’s third Critique as well as on debates over the plausibility of his claims regarding taste.
17. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 3
Vlastimil Vohánka Material Value-Ethics: Evaluating the Thought of Josef Seifert and John F. Crosby
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Josef Seifert and John F. Crosby are the two main proponents of applied material value-ethics. Both reject all forms of suicide and abortion. Seifert also explicitly rejects euthanasia, torture, destructive stem-cell research, genetic enhancement, in vitro fertilization, and contraception. Crosby explicitly rejects spousal in vitro fertilization and spousal contraception. In this essay I examine whether their case should be regarded as convincing. Against Seifert, and possibly also against Crosby, I show why it definitely should not.
18. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 3
Tim Black Action and Luck in the Kierkegaardian Ethical Project
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To see the ethical as a space that is immune to luck, it seems that we must see it as a space that is utterly inner, locked away inside the cabinet of consciousness. If, on the other hand, we wish to see the space of the ethical as extending into the world, it seems that we must see it as being vulnerable to luck. Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms steer us through this dilemma by extending the space of the ethical into the world while also inoculating it against luck. For Kierkegaard, an action is a single thing with two aspects, one under which it is seen in terms of movements of the will, and another under which it is seen in terms of movements in the world. Given the structure of the Kierkegaardian ethical project, these movements are immune to luck since they can always achieve their ethical aims: they can always count as doing what one’s ideal self would do.
19. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 3
Andrew Israelsen Imperatives of Right: The Essential Ambiguity in Kant’s Rechtslehre
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The relationship between Kant’s “Doctrine of Right” and his broader moral philosophy is a fraught one, with some readers insisting that the two domains are mutually supporting parts of a cohesive practical philosophy and others arguing for their conceptual and legislative independence. In this paper I investigate the reasons for this disparity and argue that both main interpretive camps are mistaken, for Kant’s Rechtslehre can neither be reconciled to his moral philosophy nor stand on its own. I argue that this failure results from Kant’s confused attempt to define the sphere of right as one that functions independently of (yet analogously to) the moral domain through the construction of non-moral yet categorical imperatives. The result is a fundamental tension in Kant’s text that can only be solved through either collapsing juridical duties into broad moral duties or denying any categorical status to duties of right.
20. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 58 > Issue: 3
Christopher James Wolfe, Jonathan Polce, S.J. A Response to John Rawls’s Critique of Loyola on the Human Good
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In this paper we shall consider whether John Rawls’s treatment of Ignatius of Loyola is a fair one. Rawls claims in A Theory of Justice that Catholic theology (and Ignatius’s theology in particular) aims at a “dominant end” of serving God that overrides other moral considerations. Rawls argues that dominant end views lead to a disfigured self and a disregard for justice. We do not question Rawls on the normative issue of whether dominant end conceptions are untenable, but rather on his factual claim that Ignatian spirituality and Catholic theology in general presupposes a dominant end view as he defines it. The Loyola whom Rawls attacks in Theory of Justice is a straw-man. Ignatian spirituality and Catholic theology in general embraces something closer to an inclusive end view, since it argues that several different ways of virtuous living can lead to happiness.