With few exceptions, the field of Eastern Christian studies has primarily been concerned with historical-critical analysis, hermeneutics, and sociology. For the most part it has not attempted to bring Eastern Christian philosophy into serious engagement with contemporary thought. This volume seeks to redress the matter by bringing the Eastern Christian tradition into a meaningful dialogue with contemporary philosophy. It boasts a diverse group of scholars―specialists in ancient philosophy, analytic philosophy, and continental philosophy―who engage with (...) a wide range of pressing issues. Among other things, it addresses such topics as contemporary atheism, the metaphysics of action, religious epistemology, the philosophy of language, bioethics, the philosophy of race, and human rights. In so doing, it aims to introduce contemporary readers to unique perspectives and novel arguments often overlooked by mainstream anglophone philosophy. (shrink)

Nagarjuna and Quantum physics. Eastern and Western Modes of Thought. Summary. The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Emptiness’. The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That (...) nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. Reality is without foundation. Or: Reality has the wide open space as foundation. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realised that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalisation. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalisation might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. -/-. (shrink)

In a previous paper, I addressed the question: Will there be races in heaven? (Placencia, 2021 ). There I argued that the answer to that question depends on one’s view of heaven and one’s account of race. After sorting out these concepts, I defended the conclusion that racial identity, but not race, is compatible with the mainstream Christian account of the afterlife. However, I left open the question of whether deflationary realist races (what I will refer to as minimalist (...) races in this chapter) are compatible with the Christian view of the afterlife. Here, I revisit this question from an Eastern Christian perspective. This tradition has a robust theology of bodies in the afterlife that can guide us toward a more substantive answer -- namely, there will be (minimalist) races in heaven. (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was (...) Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva), we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna (kumarajiva) with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.]. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt a reading of Heidegger’s interpretations of St. Paul’s Epistles in light of the distinction between Eastern and Western thought. To this end, I suggest that Heidegger’s recourse to the Paulinic texts represents his endeavor to gain access to the original structures of life by circumventing the metaphysical framework of Greek (Plato’s and Aristotle’s) thought. Thus, I argue that by doing this, Heidegger actually approaches the Eastern way of thinking, i.e. a non-metaphysical alternative. In (...) order to better understand what defines Eastern thought, I discuss in some detail Zizioulas’s interpretations of temporality in Eastern Christianity. Along the lines of this different understanding of temporality, the proximity of Heideggerian thought can be seen. Finally, I show that the importance of my argument lies in that it can open a possible research path for what Heidegger in his latter works calls “the other beginning.”. (shrink)

I argue that St. Augustine of Hippo was the first in the history of Christian spirituality who expressed a key tendency of Christian mysticism, which implies a gradual intellectual ascent of the human soul to God, consisting of the three main stages: external, internal, and supernal. In this ascent a Christian mystic proceeds from the knowledge of external beings to self-knowledge, and from his inner self to direct mystical contemplation of God. Similar doctrines may be found in (...) the writings of the Greek Fathers. Although there are many similarities in the overall doctrine and in particular details between them, it does not imply the direct impact of Augustine’s theological thought on the Greek Fathers but rather the influence of the Neoplatonic philosophy on both Western and Eastern Christianity, in particular, of Plotinus’ theory of intellectual cognition. (shrink)

Nagarjuna and Quantum physics Eastern and Western Modes of Thought Christian Thomas Kohl -/- Nagarjuna (2nd century) is known in the history of Buddhism by the keyword sunyata. This word is translated into English by the term emptiness. The translation and the traditional interpretations give the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty, illusionary, not real or not existing. Many questions could be asked at this point. What is the assertion made by this interpretation? Is it that (...) nothing can be found or, that there is nothing or, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute what evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things which arise? I submit two moves to provide an answer to these queries. The first move refutes the traditional translation and interpretation. The second move is to transcribes sunyata by rendering “dependence” in line with Nagarjuna’s writings. His central view could be called “interdependence of things”. Nagarjuna was not looking for an object to be declared as fundamental reality. His fundamental reality of this world is not an immaterial or material object. It is a relation between objects including sentient beings and its main exponent: human beings. This is a relational and non-foundational view of reality which considers reality as dynamics within a wide open space. ENGLISH AND CHINESE . (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying (...) the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. -/- 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.] -/- « Wenn du gerade das, wodurch auch immer du gefesselt bist, erkennst, wirst du zur Freiheit gelangen. Wenn du diesen speziellen Pfad verwirklichst, gelangst du in einem Leben zur Buddhaschaft. Deswegen verhält es sich folgendermaßen : Wenn plötzlich die Geistesregung « Begierde » enststeht, dann betrachte, ohne ihr zu folgen, direkt ihre Essenz und verweile in dieser Betrachtung, ohne Ablenkungen zuzulassen. Auf diese Weise reinigt Begierde sich selbst, ohne aufgegeben zu werden, da sie ohne Grundlage und Ursprung entsteht. Das wird « Befreiung in sich selbst », « unterscheidende ursprüngliche Weisheit » oder Buddha Amitabha » genannt ». Jigden Sumgön, Licht, das die Dunkelheit durchbricht, Otter Verlag, München 2006, Seite 47, 48 . (shrink)

What are the metaphysical foundations of Buddhism and modern science? Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between (...) things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. (shrink)

Joshua Matthan Brown contrasts the concept of God assumed by most analytic philosophers, what he refers to as theistic personalism, with that of the apophatic conception of God endorsed by Eastern Christian thinkers. He maintains that the most powerful and economical response to contemporary arguments for atheism is to reject theistic personalism and adopt apophatic theism. Apophatic theists believe there is a lot we cannot say about God, taking the divine nature to be completely ineffable. Brown develops a (...) coherent account of divine ineffability and provides reasons for adopting this oft misunderstood view. Importantly, he draws upon apophatic theology, and its commitment to divine ineffability, to proffer an undercutting defeater for virtually every contemporary argument for the nonexistence of God. Along the way he anticipates and responds to several significant objections. (shrink)

The journey of Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras and his stay in Florence at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries has been celebrated as an event that decisively shaped the course of European humanism. The later return of Enlightenment humanism to Ottoman lands in the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries can be described as the return of Chrysoloras. This return is generally known in a fragmentary form as a regional phenomenon: the story of Greek, Arab, Turkish and Jewish nationalisms (...) and of the Ottoman reforms. It is also framed historically as the evolution from a traditional and theological society to new forms of epistemic, literary, civic and national communities, while often leaving aside failures and later contradictory transformations. The present essay offers an integrative study of modern humanism in late Ottoman and post-Ottoman contexts. The migration of Enlightenment humanism to the Middle East raised a wide range of expectations, projecting a new national or imperial organization within a harmonious diplomatic relationship with Christian Europe and the Americas. Yet, the more the revivalist and reformist projects evolved, the more they involved ethnic and religious conflicts and colonial intervention. This article illuminates the rise and fall of humanism in Middle Eastern contexts. (shrink)

hroughout medieval Christianity, religious works of art emerged to illustrate the teachings of the Bible for the largely illiterate population. What, then, is the significance of the psychoactive mushrooms hiding in plain sight in the artwork and icons of many European and Middle-Eastern churches? Does Christianity have a psychedelic history? -/- Providing stunning visual evidence from their anthropological journey throughout Europe and the Middle East, including visits to Roslyn Chapel and Chartres Cathedral, authors Julie and Jerry Brown document the (...) role of visionary plants in Christianity. They retrace the pioneering research of R. Gordon Wasson, the famous “sacred mushroom seeker,” on psychedelics in ancient Greece and India, and among the present-day reindeer herders of Siberia and the Mazatecs of Mexico. Challenging Wasson’s legacy, the authors reveal his secret relationship with the Vatican that led to Wasson’s refusal to pursue his hallucinogen theory into the hallowed halls of Christianity. -/- Examining the Bible and the Gnostic Gospels, the authors provide scriptural support to show that sacred mushrooms were the inspiration for Jesus’ revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven and that he was initiated into these mystical practices in Egypt during the Missing Years. They contend that the Trees of Knowledge and of Immortality in Eden were sacred mushrooms. -/- Uncovering the role played by visionary plants in the origins of Judeo-Christianity, the authors invite us to rethink what we know about the life of Jesus and to consider a controversial theory that challenges us to explore these sacred pathways to the divine. (shrink)

Victoria Harrison’s _Eastern Philosophy of Religion_ is a short book which seeks to guide scholars who are unfamiliar with some of the basic philosophical discourses original to Jainism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. The ‘Eastern,’ in the title of Harrison’s book refers to the philosophic-religious ideas peculiar to these philosophical traditions. I explore the contents of this book as a scholar committed to facilitating intellectual exchanges between philosophers of religion in the African traditions and the ones mentioned earlier. This (...) is because some of these ideas she explores parallel some reflections which hitherto, I assumed to be original to African philosophy of religion. Specifically, I outline how the discourses on personhood, immortality and Jaina perspectival pluralism share similarities and can be more appreciated when assessed from an African perspective. Based on this conviction, I call to divest philosophy of religion away from Christian-and eurocentric assumptions so that it can attain a truly global character. (shrink)

Panentheism is the position that the world is in some sense ‘in’ God, and God ‘in’ the world, without the world being identical to God. Thus, it tries, like what I call mainstream theism and against pan- theism, to protect the transcendence of God, while giving greater emphasis to his immanence in creation than the former. I aim to explicate an approach that I call Orthodox Panentheism. The word ‘orthodox’ is to be read in two ways. First, the picture is (...) derived from the writings of some of the most important figures in Eastern Christian thought, so that it is Orthodox in the ‘big “O” sense’. Second, I hope to show that it is a legitimate Christian picture of the God–world relation which is both distinctive and worthy of being called ‘panentheism’ – an orthodox panentheism in the ‘little “o” sense’. (shrink)

Cardinal Bessarion (1408–1472), in the second chapter of the first book of his influential work In calumniatorem Platonis, attempted to reply to Georgios Trapezuntios’ (1396–1474) criticism against Plato in the Comparatio Philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis. Bessarion investigates why the Athenian philosopher maintained, in several dialogues, that the sacred truths should not be communicated to the general public and argued in favor of the value of oral transmission of knowledge, largely based on his theory about the cognitive processes. Recently, Fr. Bessarion (...) Kouotsis has argued that Cardinal Bessarion’s reasoning draws primarily on the “Disciplina Arcani”, i.e., the rule of secrecy, which was an established practice of the Early Christian Church, aimed at protecting and preserving the core elements of the religion from outsiders. While I find Kouotsis’ approach interesting and thought-provoking—for instance, the idea that Bessarion’s argumentation was likely influenced by Eastern Christian views on the rule of secrecy—I intend, first of all, to discuss why Bessarion did not explicitly mention it. Moreover, I would like to argue that Bessarion’s good knowledge of the long Platonic tradition and Eastern mysticism, encompassing both pagan and Christian elements, should also be considered a significant source. Furthermore, I would like to question Kouotsis’ implicit argument that Bessarion’s views were dominated by his training in Orthodox theology and discuss the possibility that Pletho’s (1355–1454) teaching was the obvious influence for Bessarion’s defense of secrecy. After all, we should bear in mind that Anastos has already pointed out Pletho’s reverence for the rule of secrecy. Finally, I would like to support that Bessarion, in the specific text, focused predominantly on the epistemological and cognitive aspects of oral teaching, resorting to the rule of secrecy only to enhance his views. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of the divine light in the mystical works of St Symeon the New Theologian in the context of the Eastern Christian ascetical tradition. The author focuses on the passages referring to the divine light in the works of Evagrios Pontikos, St Isaac the Syrian, St Maximus the Confessor, and in the Makarian corpus. As is shown in the present contribution, none of these authors created a fully-developed theory of the vision of the (...) divine light. Being close to these writers in many ideas, St Symeon was generally independent of any of them in his treatment of the theme of vision of light, always basing himself primarily upon his own experience. (shrink)

This article first defines the absolute discourse, then discusses its possibility in theology, as well as the relationships between language, thought, and reality as they derive from the spirituality and life of the Eastern Church. Theology must face several problems—including the paradox of transcendence, the violence of metaphysics, onto-theology, and the duplicity of language itself—, but the Revelation of the Absolute itself legitimizes the theological discourse. By using both affirmations and negations, theology reveals an iconic structure of discourse that (...) opens itself towards life and spirituality. The conclusion is that, in the absolute discourse of theology, words, even ineffable ones, are insufficient without life. (shrink)

This paper hopes to contribute to the contemporary East-West and Buddhist-Christian dialogues through a comparative examination of how ethics is founded upon the notion of emptiness and its analogues in the thought of two Japanese thinkers, Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990) of the Kyoto School of Philosophy, Watsuji Tetsuro (1889-1960), and the Russian Christian existentialist Ni-kolai Berdyaev (1874-1948). By comparing and contrasting Nishitani's notion of double-negation (from the standpoint of being to the standpoint of nihility and to the standpoint of (...) emptiness) and how it forms a basis for an ethics of circuminsessional interpenetration, with Watsuji's notion of the double-negation of the individual and society in ethics, and with Berdyaev's double-negation in his three forms of ethics (ethics of law, ethics of redemption, ethics of creativeness) we shall examine the structural similarities and points of non-exclusion of "Eastern" Buddhist philosophy and "Western" Christian philosophy. (shrink)

The confessional work of the Church has been from the very beginning a foundation and basis for the Divine Truth. Starting from this real necessity, the Apologetic Theology claims some important research directions, grounded on the Holy Scripture and the Holy Tradition. Given this historical and doctrinal context, we can highlight the next support coordinates of the Christian Apologetics background: “the truth of God’s existence, the reality of the supernatural world and man’s immortality. All of this are, as we (...) can say, the Christian specific starting from the first ages. The truths about the divine origin of Christianism are to be found here, on the dignity of this revealed doctrine, on the divine-human character of his Founder, on the importance and necessity of Christian Church for the religious and morale life of human kind”. . Apologetics and (or) Fundamental Theology The reason why the Church must justify her teaching in the context of her missionary activity does not rise up from inner necessity. It does more from external misconceptions. In this context we can define the main concern of apologetics as a theological discipline. On the other hand, one can discover almost the same meaning in Fundamental Theology. However, as a difference between them, Fundamental Theology is interested in the direction and bears informative message, since “it aims at basic religious principles systematic presentation, both external and internal, as well as their justification before the scientific-theological conscience of believers. Thereafter, Christianity can be considered the only true religion”. On the other hand, one can claim that the name of “Apologetics” rises up from the necessity that the Christian arguments must be scientifically enforced and illustrated externally. Therefore, the mission of Christian Apologetics is to reject the anti-Christian objections through the power of the theological arguments in dialogue with philosophy, culture or science. In fact, even the object of Apologetics is "the scientific ground of Christian truths" with the purpose to "offer the Truth, reject error, and eradicate lies." In order to achieve its goal, Christian Apologetics offers us a positive method, which consists in "a logical and direct development of a certain thesis, in clarifying a certain truth, by revealing its content and the outcomes deriving from it". Therefore, we have a very dynamic field through which this discipline comes and supports the active life of the Church. Moreover, the method of the Apologetics as a theological subject is based on a conceptual struggle, very active starting with the very first centuries of the Early Church. Due to its energetic character, Fundamental Theology won its most important place among Christian doctrines. “Through struggle, Fundamental Theology imposed itself as a theological subject and became individualised. Through struggle and only through struggle, Fundamental Theology must exist and strengthen the positions of Christianity”. In its theologically mission, Christian Apologetics identifies and also prevents the alteration of the doctrinal truth. In this concern, it has the responsibility to enforce of believers’ moral conscience in their spiritual process of development. As a subject, one can say that the mission of Apologetics is “rational, objective and represents a very important basis for the Christian truths of faith”. Therefore, one can notice that the most important aspect of our subject is to enforce the Christian faith and experience through proper knowledge of the fundamental principles of the doctrine. This is the reason why we also mention Apologetics together with Fundamental Theology. However, we must highlight a few important details regarding the sensible difference between both of the denominations. Therefore, historically speaking, “they both arise from those who personally share Christian faith and act within the believing community and in its service. They both aim to respond to objections raised by critics and to offer a trustworthy account of main beliefs about matters as the existence of a personal God, the divine self-revelation in Jesus Christ, and the nature of faith”. On the other hand, we can identify almost three important differences between Apologetics and Fundamental Theology. “First, a Christian apologist can simply address a question: does the existence of horrendous evil in our world rule out the existence of almighty and all-loving God? or has science caused faith in God to be demoted in the past? … Second, good Apologetics has typically a sharply defined audience: Apologetics can seek, for example, to alert non-believers to the weakness of the case currently being against God and religion. But Fundamental Theology addresses to a wider range of readers … Third, polemics (in the good sense of this word and not as mindless ranting) belong to the exercise of Apologetics … The tone of fundamental theologians, even when rebutting objections to Christian faith, is or should be more expository and less polemically inclined to illustrate defects in opposing positions”. Moreover, we must mention that Apologetics can be considered as a particular subject. Although, it is similar in terms of content with Dogmatic and Philosophy through its method, our subject has its own research direction. Therefore, if Dogmatic is defined by an expositive and imperative character, Apologetics is demonstrative and constraining. In other words, dogmatic rationality, which has a subsidiary role, in Apologetics becomes primordial. In this case, “the faith truths become truths also for the rationality and moreover, the eternal truths of the Divine Reason become constraining for the human reason, too. Truths of natural religion, which are in fact the object of the Philosophy of Religion, are conditioned in Apologetics by the Absolute Truth completed in the Christian faith”. In all its theological and external interaction perspectives, Apologetics holds the main role to “expose, defend and justify with rational meanings the general truths of religion”. It is necessary to clear up one aspect: as subject, Apologetics is different from Apology. On the one hand, one can speak about the general research background and, on the other hand, one can describe a singular part of theological approach. Therefore, these two “theological sisters” are different depending on the type of approach. However, Apology is older than Apologetics. Among the first Christian apologists, we mention: Saint Justin the Martyr and Philosopher, Tatian, Athenagoras or Tertullien. In its current meaning, Apologetics is of a western theological origin, having its beginning in Middle Ages. Even so, its blooming age is the 18th century, when the Western Catholic Church replied to the materialist and atheistic philosophy. In the Eastern Church this type of confession had a more profound theological overview, in a theonomic perspective. “In the light of the Holy Scripture, the eastern theological thinking always shows priority to the divine Revelation in spite of the philosophical human systems and places the Creator - Logos at the basis of all creation, in the light of biblical thoughts”. -/- II. “Rational-spiritual Apologetics” Reverend Professor Dumitru Popescu, one of the most important Romanian theologians, develops the concept of “Rational-spiritual Apologetics”. In his theological approach, he illustrates the fact that one of the most essential part of the Church’s confessional work are the relations between rational arguments and spiritual purpose of the Christian life. In this case, we can identify two possibilities of argumentation: rational and spiritual, each of them in connection with the knowledge of God. This is in fact, the Orthodox specificity of the Apologetics, as theological subject, in contrast with the principles of western scholastic. Therefore, the most important argument, which Dumitru Popescu brings up in the support of his thesis, belongs to Saint Maximus the Confessor’s theology: “The Scripture provide a double knowledge of the divine things. One is relative and consists in its rationality and meanings, without the direct feeling of God. Through it we are guided in this life. The other one is in a true sense true and consists in leaving experience of divine grace, outside rationality and meanings, having the complete experience of God. Through it we will receive in the future life the deification”. On the other hand, we can understand that the purpose of human rationality is not to replace the spiritual perspective, since human mind does not own the divine mystery. In this case, rationality can be useful in discovering and demonstrating the existence of God from natural realities to a point where we must assume a spiritual understanding. Consequently, in the context of human deification, the orthodox theology cannot conceive the gnoseological process in rational terms. Therefore, Rev. Dumitru Popescu carries out a dual argumentation: 1. since God is not a solitary power, but descends and interacts with man providentially (through His divine grace and energies); 2. because the created world doesn’t have an independent rationality through which man can receive the possibility to reach God. Therefore, Father Professor Dumitru Popescu concludes that “the deification process is here, on the earth, a foretaste of immortality, which springs from the personal meeting of man with God”. One of the most recent Romanian Apologetics academically approach is the book of professor Adrian Lemeni: “Truth and Demonstration”. Except his very complex analysis on the interaction between theology and science, Professor Lemeni goes further and perfects Dumitru Popescu’s theological view, on the “Rational-spiritual” character of Orthodox Apologetics. Therefore, he offers a very important example, starting from Saint Gregory Palamas’ theological view. In his work “the authority of Patristic gnoseology” is illustrated, which is offered by the “Eternal Truth, God’s Word, incarnated in the Person of Jesus Christ”. “The authority of patristic gnoseology” – notes down Adrian Lemeni – “is expressed along the process for searching the truth of knowledge illustrated by deeds and life. In his debate with Varlaam from Calabria, Saint Gregory Palamas insists on the power of persuasion which arises from the Church’s Tradition, biblical and patristic fundamentally. In an ultra-confident argument, based on the autonomic logical power, we believe that one word has power over another. But Saint Gregory Palamas shows that the truth is based and validated through spiritual and ecclesiastical experience. Truth is validated by the words and deeds of the Holy Fathers, in direct connection with apostolic Tradition. Any argument can be fought against by another argument. Nevertheless, the apologetic concession based on the deeds of the saints is unbookable. This is the thesis which Saint Gregory Palamas develops in complete harmony with the patristic gnoseological Tradition”. Therefore, we can consider that the position of the subject of Apologetics (of Fundamental Theology) is one of interactions. It has connections with all domains external to Theology. In this case, we can consider it sets up a dialogue or debate with philosophy, culture or science. Starting from the historical argument, this interaction between theology and other sciences has existed from the very first Christian century. Therefore, we have an apologetic literary genre starting with the first patristic writings. Including the Early Church, we can identify three important stages in terms of historical apologetics development: 1. The Christian apologists struggle age with Judaism and paganism; 2. From the issue of Islam to the Middle Eve; 3. From the period of the Renaissance of Western sciences to the present day. (shrink)

Comparative philosophical studies can seek to fit some Eastern patterns of thought into the general philosophical framework, or, on the contrary, to improve understanding of Western ones through the view "from abroad". I try to hit both marks by means of establishing, firstly, the parallels between Indian versions of theodicy and the Hellenic and Christian ones, then by defining to which of five types of Western theodicy the Advaita-Vedanta and Nyaya versions belong and, thirdly, by considering the meaning (...) of the fact that some varieties of Western theodicy, like the explanation of evil by free will and divine dispensation aiming at the improvement of man, have Indian counterparts while others lack them. Some considerations concerning the remainders of primordial monotheisms ("an argument from theodicy") under the thick layers of other religious world-outlooks are also offered to the reader at the end of the article. (shrink)

This paper examines the significance of Epicureanism for Nietzsche’s critique of Christian monotheism and his subsequent attempt to reanimate a kind of this-worldly, affirmative religiosity of immanence. After a brief overview of the pivotal role that Epicurus’ thought plays in the death of God, I focus on Epicurus’ own residual conception of the gods and the ways in which Nietzsche strategically retrieves it and puts it use in his writing. Nietzsche juxtaposes the distant, serene, indifferent Epicurean gods with the (...) omniscient, intrusive, jealous and needy God of middle-Eastern monotheisms. One might say that they constitute a ‘halfway house’ of sorts between Christianity and Nietzsche’s new Dionysian religion of the earth. But they also figure prominently in his own conflicted desire to intervene in the aleatory course of natural history and legislate the the future of humanity: Nietzsche finds he cannot simply look down with “the mocking and aloof eyes” of an Epicurean god upon the degeneration and diminution of the human being under Christian ascetic regimes of cultivation. Ultimately, Nietzsche fails to achieve the divine temperament of the Epicurean gods (looking down from afar on human ignorance, desire and suffering with a noble pathos of distance). Forthcoming 2022. (shrink)

An ongoing challenge within all approaches to ethical decision making is reducing the degree of doubt about what action is right, good, or at least better in a given situation. The process of moral discernment within Christian thought is no exception; however, different Christian communities tend to understand moral doubt and moral certainty differently, to pursue different ways of allaying doubt, and to expect—and accept—different degrees of moral certainty. Drawing especially from Aristotelian virtue theory, selected teachings from the (...) Eastern Orthodox tradition on humility, and recent discussions of the ‘grace of self-doubt,’ I sketch an account of virtuous moral doubt as a mean between the extremes of excessive and deficient moral doubt. My hope is doing so will help to make space and provide the framework for an ecumenical understanding of doubt’s proper role in moral discernment. (shrink)

The ‘seeds’ Thoughts proposed by YU Youngmo and HAM Sukhun may each be summed up by propositions expressed in “People are a May-fly seed” and “Seeds embody the eternal sense”. They used “seed” to refer to humans or people on the one hand and placed the notion of seed in the holistic context of the Eastern Asian tradition on the other. Then, I seek to connect the anthropological notion and the holistic notion via cheng(誠) or integration. Zhungyong-The Doctrine of (...) the Mean, one of 4 Confucian texts, says that the ultimate integration(至誠) is to reflect the total nature of objects involved (盡性) so that it will show that self realization and all other realizations are one and not two(成己成物) and it will ultimately reach the stage of holiness(聖). Important elements of cheng intentionality can be read out of the two thinker’s various conceptual aspects. YU’s interpretation of history to be internalistic, his view of Hangul(Korean written language) as a revelational medium, his hermeneutics of Christian God as the emptiness cannot be understood on the dichotomous model of human-nature. HAM’s seed holism, his beliefs that humans’s minds are the heavenly mind and that all things under the heaven should come to be unified are best to be understood on the model of cheng intentionality of integration. (shrink)

The Seed Thoughts proposed by YU Youngmo and HAM Sukhun may each be summed up by propositions expressed in “People are a May-fly seed” and “Seeds embody the eternal meaning”. They used “seed” to refer to humans or people on the one hand and placed the notion of seed in the holistic context of the Eastern Asian tradition on the other. Then, I seek to connect the anthropological notion and the holistic notion via cheng(誠) or integration. 『The Doctrine of (...) the Mean』says that any ultimate integration(至誠) reflects the total nature of objects involved(盡性) by showing that self realization and all other realizations are one and not two(成己成物) and by arriving at the stage of holiness (聖). Then, I may be allowed to say that cheng is a mind or a power not only of humans but also of all other things. Important elements of cheng intentionality can be read out of the two thinker’s various conceptual aspects. YU’s interpretation of history to be internalistic, his view of Hangul(Korean written language) as a revealational medium, his hermeneutics of Christian God as the Vacuum cannot be understood on the dichotomous model of human-nature. HAM’s seed holism, his beliefs that humans’s minds are the heavenly mind and that all things under the heaven should come to be unified are best to be understood on the model of cheng intentionality of integration. (shrink)

In this essay, I use a thought experiment to illustrate the human predicament if determinism is true, then draw the implications of this result for human rationality. This paper was read at the Eastern Division of the Society for Christian Philosophers at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts in 2009.

This research examines the most important historical, political, economic, social, cultural, and religious factors before, during, and after the reign of Communism in Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 2021 and their effect on the extreme increase in atheism and decrease in Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism, in the present-day Czech Republic. It devotes special attention to the role of the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii) and the changing policies of the Holy See vis-à-vis this Church, examining these policies' impact on the continuing (...) decline of Roman Catholicism in the Czech Republic after the collapse of Communism. The article also deals with Pope Pius XII's Secret Mandates of 1948-1950, the Second Vatican Council, and the Holy See's Ostpolitik. Scholars, who previously relied only on the views of the Czechs, blame the unprecedented drop in Christianity, the near-total destruction of the Catholic Church, and the rise in atheism on the Czechoslovak communist government's four decades of totalitarianism. Although the increase in atheism and decrease in Christianity were substantial during the era of Communism from 1948 to 1989, our data indicate that the decline in Christianity, particularly the historically predominating Roman Catholicism, did not commence with the 1948 communist coup d’état but traces its origins to the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the conclusion of WWI and the establishment of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1918. What's more, this research shows that the most significant and unprecedented steep deterioration of the Christian Faith, namely Roman Catholicism, did not occur during the era of Communism but only after the Czechoslovak communist government collapsed in 1989. This massive decay did not happen even during the most extraordinary communist persecution of the Catholic Church during the era of Stalinism in Czechoslovakia. This research further finds that the Holy See's ill-advised policies and systematic, sustained, and prevalent failures in leadership, guidance, and teachings are responsible for the near destruction of the Roman Catholic Church and especially the end destruction of the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii), in the Czech and Slovak Republics after the fall of Communism. These failures furthermore contributed to the Czech Republic, the historical lands of Bohemia and Moravia that once were in the center of Christendom, degenerating into the most atheist country in Europe and the world today. (shrink)

This article is to explore whether the achievement of moral character is the ultimate goal of higher education from a cross cultural approach. To discuss this study logically, three major research questions are addressed. First, what are the concepts of moral, ethics, and character? Second, what is the achievement of moral character from the Eastern and the Western perspectives? Third, what is the role of higher education for the achievement of moral character? To defend these research questions, the author (...) uses a descriptive content analysis method, with a cross cultural approach. In order to explore the questions, the researcher in this study sets several limitations. Moral character is generally limited to the ancient Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christianity as well as to the classical Chinese thought and religion. Specifically, the study is mainly focused on not only Plato's "Republic" and Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics," but Confucius' "Analects" and Mencius' "Scripture (The Works of Mengzi)." Additionally, this paper also adjusts the lenses on moral theories, especially moral character, cardinal virtues, social harmony, and the common good. Lastly, higher education is focused on the lenses of Canada and South Korea. The significance of this study is to provide basic theories and valuable resources about moral and character education for educational theorists and practitioners, finding the theories of moral and ethics in the Eastern and the Western thoughts and religions. (shrink)

Divus Augustus Pater. The cult of divine Augustus under the rule of the Julio-Claudian dynasty -/- Summary The cult of divine Augustus was one of the most important phenomena of ideological nature under the rule of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The crucial point of its development was the apotheosis conducted on 17 September 14 AD. The new cult was derived greatly from numerous borrowings from the rites of various gods of the Roman Pantheon. As divus, Augustus received a separate priest, a (...) private priestess, and a college of priests. The first flamen Augustalis became Germanicus. The holder of this title enjoyed many privileges. It seems unlikely, however, that flamen Augustalis controlled the entire cult of divine Augustus. This was the role of the emperor as both the supreme priest and the inheritor of political power. Sodales Augustales also had special cult functions. This religious fraternity had a mixed private-state character just like many of the institutions of the early principate. It was a cult college of gens Iulia and, most of all, of Augustus. From its beginning it enjoyed high prestige. The members of this religious fraternity were recruited among the Senate elite and the family of the emperor. Sacerdos divi Augusti occupies a different place in the priesthood established to worship Augustus. This female priesthood, despite its humble cult and political role, is of great interest to scholars. In spite of discerning investigations by researchers, there seem to have been only two priestesses in the Julio-Claudian dynasty – Julia Augusta, the widow of the creator of the principate, and Antonia Augusta. There is even no certainty that the latter had preformed the function at all. Augustus, as a god, was given a separate temple under a Senate decree. However, the construction work went slowly ahead. Therefore, divus Augustus was initially worshipped in other places of worship. At first, it was the temple of Mars Ultor. He was also worshipped in the sacrarium on the Palatine. One encounters certain difficulties when trying to identify the places of Augustus’ worship in Rome. Ultimately, there seem to have been two sacraria in the capital of the Empire. There is no certainty, however, whether yet another temple was located next to the templum novum divi Augusti on the Palatine. In trying to analyse the phenomenon of the divinity of the Roman emperors, and Augustus in particular, it is necessary to refer to the genesis of Emperor worship. Within the framework of official religion it is important to distinguish such elements as genius and numen. Although the consecratio act conducted by the Senate meant the crossing of the boundary between the human Augustus and the divine Augustus, it is important to remember that Augustus had prepared his apotheosis for a long time and already enjoyed divine honours during his lifetime. Certain elements of Augustus worship developed under his rule continued to exist for some time after the death of the creator of the principate. Augustus divinity was guarded by the law of maiestas. At the beginning of the rule of Tiberius it mostly protected divus Augustus himself. Gradually, despite some opposition, the law began to serve the ruling emperor. There is little certainty of how many cases were brought under the crimen laesae maiestatis against those who insulted the divine Augustus. The issue of trials for offending the law of maiestas is accounted for one-sidedly by ancient historians, which complicates the work of contemporary researchers. There is, however, no denying that for Tiberius (Augustus’ successor) the trials on the charge of maiestas turned out to be a trap. The cult of divus Augustus was approved throughout the Empire. Nevertheless, some weaker voices of opposition could be heard. These were present in the Senate circles cherishing the memory of the last defenders of the Republic, as well as among some ethnic and religious communities. The latter included Judaism and emerging Christianity. The political consequences of Augustus’ deification were very serious. He significantly contributed to the ruling of the Julio-Claudian dynasty for over 50 years. The main reason for that was the fact that in the Rome of that time the tradition of power succession was not yet well-grounded. Directly after the principate creator’s death, his consecratio took place – he was assigned priests and many godly honours and a temple was erected in his honour. These actions obviously took place under Augustus’ successor Tiberius who, during his rule, constantly tried to emulate the divine predecessor and referred to his decrees on numerous occasions. Tiberius was the emperor who contributed to the cult of his adoptive father to the greatest extent. However, one cannot fail to notice that his actions were somehow ambiguous. It has to be remembered that, in addition to his sincere respect for the divine Augustus, Tiberius also tried to use the authority of the creator of the principate to strengthen his power. This is exemplified by the motto imprinted on coins: DIVVS AVGVSTVS PATER. Caligula took a different approach to the Augustan cult. When assuming power after Tiberius, he was in a different position. The 20-year rule by Augustus’ successor greatly contributed to the strengthening of the idea of the principate ’s stability in the minds of the Romans. This allowed Caligula to pay less heed to the Senate aristocracy, as well as other institutional elements of the Republic. Under these circumstances, the cult of Augustus underwent modifications. Divus Augustus still remained at the heart of the religious propaganda of the Roman state and gens Iulia, but also other members of the family of the young Emperor received a number of honours drawing them closer to the world of gods. Drusilla, for that matter, was made a diva. By this, the idea of domus Augusta received a new confirmation. Caligula himself did not cease to participate in, and support, the rites performed to worship his divine grandfather. The available sources lead us to believe that Augustus constituted for the young princeps a role model and a character to which he often compared himself with. For Claudius, the use of the cult of divine Augustus was important as a tool to strengthen political power. But due to the fact that his personal links with divus Augustus were rather weak, Claudius focused on the cult of his grandmother Livia, Augustus’ wife. He also emphasised the function of sacerdos divi Augusti which his mother Antonia Augusta was to fulfil. Claudius faced the task of the ‘reconstruction’ of the cult of Augustus which had deteriorated, especially during the second part of Caligula’s rule. Claudius took a different direction in imitating Augustus than his two predecessors. Augustus’ model was very capacious, allowing him to find examples which could be adjusted to fit his own political goals and personality. Claudius avoided the stiffness characteristic of Tiberius and, at the same time, respected Augustus’ traditions which he Caligula inadvertently abused. Claudius’ attitude to Augustus is not quite clear. Undoubtedly he kept alive the memory of the first princeps, however, there is a lack of testimony about the new honours conferred on divine Augustus during the rule of this Emperor. Almost all of them concentrate around the person of Claudius or his family. There are, however, no honours conferred on the creator of the principate. This type of attitude caused the cult of divine Augustus to be eclipsed by the cult of the ruling Emperor. Nero, the last representative of the Julio-Claudian dynasty descended, unlike Claudius, directly from the line of Augustus. The new emperor deified his predecessor by using the model of Augustus’ apotheosis. In the first part of his rule he drew greatly from the Augustus model of exercising power. Nero ’s ideological platform seems to be the richest in comparison with other emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The tradition of links with divus Augustus was, however, only one of many different elements. With time, the tradition appeared to play a still smaller role. The departure from the Augustus model took place on many levels. Some of the steps were very radical, whereas others were less significant. The most serious was the elimination of the members of gens Iulia and gens Claudia, and those who could prove their kinship with both the houses. The devastation in Nero ’s closest family put an end to the concept of domus Augusta. Formally, the Emperor did not renounce the divine creator of the principate but, in practice, the idea of the new domus Augusta no longer aimed at presenting Augustus’ descendants united in a single family. Nero was now alone and any creation of ideological concepts of power under those circumstances had to be based around him. These actions ended in disaster. By giving up the Augustan model, Nero lost the support of the army and, as a result, lost power. Apart from the worship of the state religion in the capital, divus Augustus was the subject of a provincial and municipal cult. Here, the worship of divine Augustus was often a continuation, sometimes in an extended form, of the honours Augustus had been granted during his lifetime. In the cult of divus Augustus, in the provinces one can observe a mutual interweaving of elements copied from the capital model and local traditions. The beginning of the provincial cult of Augustus dates back to the rule of Tiberius. The crucial point for the establishment of the provincial cult in the West was the request of the citizens of Hispania Tarraconensis to build a temple for divine Augustus. It is important to emphasise here that he was appointed on a local initiative. In the East, the genesis of the provincial cult is related to the functioning of koinon. In comparison with the western regions, the cult here was characterised not only by longer history but also an extensive system of priesthood and rich ritual. The intensity of development of municipal and private cult in the West depended on the level of social and economic development of the regions. It assumed the most complex forms in the provinces with well-developed city life – generally in the eastern provinces. Whereas the cult of divine Augustus in the western municipal provinces was similar in character to the cult of the principate’s creator in Italy. The greatest testimony to the cult’s development comes from relatively strongly romanised and, at the same time, the wealthiest regions which had been part of the Empire for a long time. These included the mainly proconsular Africa, Spain and Narbonese Gaul. The sources coming from these regions constitute not only an illustration of the development of the cult of divine Augustus and members of domus Augusta, but are also a sign of the processes of romanisation of great numbers of city populations. It is necessary to note that outside Rome we do not encounter an isolated cult of divine Augustus. Whenever we deal with information concerning temples or rituals dedicated to the deified creator of the principate, other members of the family are also worshipped. In fact, during the whole rule of the Julio-Claudian dynasty we actually deal with the cult of divine Augustus in close association with the worship of domus Augusta – domus divina. (shrink)

Regarding the connection between the Qur'an and the New Testament, we noted that Jesus Christ is often presented in the pages of the Qur'an as a moral model, along with his mother Mary. The events of the life of "Qur'an Jesus" are marked by marginal Christianity of the Monophysitism and by the Christian apocrypha circulating in the time of Muhammad in the Eastern space. The Qur'anic images of the figure of Jesus Christ present Him in His dignity as (...) the Messiah, the Prophet, the Divine Sign, and the Word of God. The Qur'anic exegesis proposes variants that diminish the image of Jesus in the Qur'an, reducing him to a mere Prophet, despite obvious Qur'anic texts that state otherwise. The Qur'an does nothing but reforms the Christian morality and change the sense to other meanings assessed by Muhammad and the Caliphs of Islam as suitable for the social life of Muslim communities. References to the Biblical Jesus Christ in the text of the Qur'an are generally divided into four main themes, which are discussed in detail in this article: Birth and Childhood; Teaching and Miracles; Nature and Status before God (Allah); The Death and the Resurrection. (shrink)

Asaf Halet Çelebi, who is a poet interested in Eastern religions. This is due to reach the family atmosphere, the love to know different languages and mysticism. What makes him different aspects of Turkish literature, the history of religions is the masterful use of motifs in his poems. Religions, mythology, mysticism and music information about the poet, his poetry reflects this versatility. Sound in poetry, harmony, knowledge, symbols, and images of compliance on this issue reveals the talent of the (...) poet. He uses motifs in poetry from Ancient Egypt, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam traditions. This is particularly highlighted in poems motifs identified with religious traditions. In this context, the Tafnit, Bodhisattva, Sidharta, Mâra, Torah, Abraham, Solomon, the Church of Christ, the Trinity concepts are the motives of the history of religions of the poet's poems aesthetic and depth to you to use. Çelebi focuses more on Buddhism. For this reason, he wrote a work called According to Pali texts Budha Gotama. Here he focuses on the Buddha's life story and some Buddhist texts. This study entrated on the religious motifs of a poet who is a historian of religions. In this context, priority has been given to the poetry found associated with religious motifs. In this article, it is tried to explain what these motifs in his poems mean in terms of the history of religions. -/- . (shrink)

Regarding the connection between the Qur'an and the New Testament, we noted that Jesus Christ is often presented in the pages of the Qur'an as a moral model, along with his mother Mary. The events of the life of "Qur'an Jesus" are marked by marginal Christianity of the Monophysitism and by the Christian apocrypha circulating in the time of Muhammad in the Eastern space. The Qur'anic images of the figure of Jesus Christ present Him in His dignity as (...) the Messiah, the Prophet, the Divine Sign, and the Word of God. The Qur'anic exegesis proposes variants that diminish the image of Jesus in the Qur'an, reducing him to a mere Prophet, despite obvious Qur'anic texts that state otherwise. The Qur'an does nothing but reforms the Christian morality and change the sense to other meanings assessed by Muhammad and the Caliphs of Islam as suitable for the social life of Muslim communities. References to the Biblical Jesus Christ in the text of the Qur'an are generally divided into four main themes, which are discussed in detail in this article: Birth and Childhood; Teaching and Miracles; Nature and Status before God (Allah); The Death and the Resurrection. (shrink)

The ancient names of Assam were Kamrupa and Pragjyotisa, which had been inhabited by the Kirata or Mongoloid people before the Aryan culture could spread its influence over the North Eastern part of India. Before the advent of the Aryan civilization, the Austric-Mongolian and Dravidian culture was the prevalent culture of the people of this area. According to some scholar, the Aryans advent in North East India was occurrence of the pre-Buddhist period. The period of the Brahmins was followed (...) by the Buddhist period, so far as the cultural history of India is concerned. In comparatively, ancient inscriptions of Assam, we find that, the high caste Aryans like Brahmans, Shatriyas and Kalitas entered into Assam and began to settle here even during the Pre-Christian era. The mention of Kamrupa and Devoka in the Allahabad pillar inscription of the Gupta king Samudragupta has an important bearing on the Aryanisation of North East India. In the domain of political system, it is all probable that the ancient Assam populated by the non-Khmer group of the Austric and the Tibeto-Burman people was in tribal state of society. Narakasura and Bhagadutta, the legendary kings of Assam were probably the first monarchical rulers and they were in all probability the Aryanised or Hunduised Mongoloid persons. In other words, the tribal political system of Assam was changed into monarchical system by the influence of the Aryan culture. (shrink)

Easter is the most important solemnity (just before Christmas) of the Church. It is the first of the five cardinal feasts of the Catholic liturgical year. Easter commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ laid down by the Bible, the third day after his passion. The solemnity begins on Easter Sunday, which for Catholics mark the end of fasting of Lent, and lasts for eight days (Easter week, or week or radiant, or week of eight Sundays). Many customs dating back to (...) ancient times designed to accommodate the return of spring attached themselves to Easter. The egg is the symbol of germination occurs in early spring. Similarly, the hare is an ancient symbol which has always represented fertility. The custom of the Easter egg was found among Coptic Christians from the late fifth century, it is perhaps in memory of ardent eggs (ova ignita) with which the martyrs were tortured or red egg laid by an imperial hen the day of the birth of Alexander Severus in 208 BC. The tradition of offering eggs in spring dates back to antiquity: the Persians, the Egyptians offered, as a lucky, decorated hen eggs as renewal sign. The rabbit once symbolizing fertility and renewal (like spring), it was in Upper Germany where was born the tradition (Osterhase) before it spreads in the Germanic countries. Subsequently, this tradition is exported to the United States by German immigrants in the eighteenth century. CONTENTS: Easter - Date history - Religious celebrations - - Catholic Church - - Orthodox and Eastern Churches - - Evangelical Church - Popular festivals and traditions - Easter eggs - Easter eggs - - Symbolic - - History - - - The red eggs - - - Painted eggs, pissanka and precious eggs - - - Chocolate eggs - - Games and traditions - - - Egg hunting - - - Egg rolling - - - Egg battles - Ash Wednesday - Paschal Triduum - Easter Water - - Picking the Easter Water - - Properties of Easter Water - - - Physical properties - - - Spiritual or magical properties - - Washing in Water Easter - Paschal candle - - Rite of fire at Easter - - Using the paschal candle - Easter Monday - - Liturgical and religious significance - - Folk customs for Easter Monday - Easter Bunny - - Origin - - Alternatives - Osterbrunnen Easter food - Pastiera - - Origins - - - Mythical origin - - - Other origins - - Tradition - - Features . (shrink)

The Louvre Museum is the largest of the world's art museums by its exhibition surface. These represent the Western art of the Middle Ages in 1848, those of the ancient civilizations that preceded and influenced it (Oriental, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman), and the arts of early Christians and Islam. At the origin of the Louvre existed a castle, built by King Philip Augustus in 1190, and occupying the southwest quarter of the current Cour Carrée. In 1594, Henri IV decided (...) to unite the palace of the Louvre with the palace of the Tuileries built by Catherine de Medicis. The Cour Carrée was built by the architects Lemercier and then Le Vau, under the reign of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. The Department of Paintings currently has about 7,500 paintings (of which 3,400 are exposed), covering a period that goes from the Middle Ages to 1848 (date of the beginning of the Second Republic). By including the deposits, the collection is, with 12,660 works, the largest collection of ancient paintings in the world. With rare exceptions, the works after 1848 were transferred to the Musée d'Orsay when it was created in 1986. CONTENTS: Louvre Museum - Variety of exhibited works - The Royal Palace - The collections - - Eastern antiquities - - Arts of Islam - - Egyptian Antiquities - - Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities - - Paintings - - - French school - - - Northern Schools (Flanders, Netherlands, Germany) - - - Italian School - - - Other schools Painting - Definitions - Painting genres - - The landscape - - Still life Paintings - FRANCOIS BOUCHER - - Vulcan presenting arms to Venus for Aeneas - RAPHAEL - - Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione - RUBENS - - Helena Fourment with children - LOUIS DAVID - - Madame Récamier - REMBRANDT - - Portrait of Heindrickje Stoffels - VELAZQUEZ - - Portrait of the Infanta Margarita - SIMONE MEMMI - - Jesus Christ walking on Calvary - JAN STEEN - - The Bad Company - HANS HOLBEIN - - Erasmus - CORREGGIO - - Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine - LANCRET - - Conversation - JAN VAN DER MEER (VERMEER) - - The Lacemaker - VAN DYCK - - Charles I at the Hunt - FRANÇOIS CLOUET - - Elisabeth of Austria (1554-1592), Wife of Charles IX and Queen of France (1570 - 1574) - DELACROIX - - The Barque of Dante - EL GRECO - - Saint Louis, King of France, and a page - REMBRANDT - - Pilgrims at Emmaus (The Supper at Emmaus) - GERARD DAVID - - Marriage at Cana - RAPHAEL - - Portrait of Dona Isabel de Requesens, Vice-Queen of Naples - RUBENS - - La Kermesse (The Village Fête, or Noce de village) - FRANS HALS - - The Gypsy Girl - DECAMPS - - The Sonneurs - HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER - - Anne of Cleves - P. PRUD’HON - - Psyche transported to Heaven - PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE - - Portrait of Richelieu - LANCRET - - The Autumn - L. DAVID - - Madame Seriziat - COROT - - Recollection of Mortefontaine - LEONARDO DA VINCI - - La belle ferronnière - CORREGGIO - - Venus and Cupid with a Satyr - WATTEAU - - Pilgrimage to Cythera (The Embarkation for Cythera) - NICOLAS POUSSIN - - The Inspiration of the Poet - PRUD’HON - - The Empress Josephine (1763-1814) - FRAGONARD - - The Bathers - H. RIGAUD - - Louis XIV (1638–1715) - TERBURG - - The Concert - LEOPOLD ROBERT - - The Pilgrimage to the Madonna of the Arch - LARGILLIERE - - Family Portrait - MANTEGNA - - Parnassus - MEMLING - - The Virgin and Child between St James and St Dominic - FRAGONARD - - The Music Lesson - JEAN VAN EYCK - - The Virgin of chancellor Rolin - PAOLO VERONESE - - Susannah and the Elders - FRANÇOIS BOUCHER - - Diana leaving her bath - GÉRICAULT - - The Raft of the Medusa - MURILLO - - Assumption of the Virgin - CLAUDE GELLEE (LORRAIN) - - Ulysses returning Chryseis to her father (Marine, setting sun) - INGRES - - Madame Riviere - E. MURILLO - - The Young Beggar - GREUZE - - The Broken Pitcher - PIETER DE HOOCH - - Card players in an opulent interior - POUSSIN - - Et in Arcadia ego - QUENTIN MATSYS - - The moneylender and his wife - ANDREA SOLARIO - - Madonna with the Green Cushion - TITIEN - - Woman with a Mirror - DAVID TENIERS (the Younger) - - The Works of Mercy - LEONARDO DA VINCI - - Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) - Armand Dayot . (shrink)

As the title suggests, this collection addresses the very topical subject matter of environmental ethics by bringing together a host of unique voices. In the editor’s words, ‘[t]he essays collected here represent a joint effort in dealing with this problem [of global environmental conservation and protection]. All contributors to this volume agree that what we urgently need now is global awareness of the environmental crisis we are facing’ (9). While a thread of consensus weaves throughout, what is more striking is (...) the diverse and colorful tapestry of approaches these essays yield on a single theme. The first four essays articulate the ethical injunction to conserve and protect the natural environment in terms of various axiological and methodological commitments: normative, biocentric, aesthetic and empirical. In the final five essays, the thematic emphasis shifts ever so slightly. A plurality of perspectives on environmental conservation and protection emerges from different theological commitments, at times reflecting and at other times transcending individual—Christian/Western, Islamic/Middle Eastern, Buddhist/Eastern, and (in the final two essays) Daoist/Eastern—cultures. (shrink)

This paper argues that decision theory presupposes free will. Although decision theorists seldom acknowledge this, the way decision theory represents, explains, or rationalizes choice behaviour acquires its intended interpretation only under the assumption that decision-makers are agents capable of making free choices between alternative possibilities. Without that assumption, both normative and descriptive decision theory, including the revealed-preference paradigm, would have to be reinterpreted in implausible ways. The hypothesis that decision-makers have free will is therefore explanatorily indispensable for decision theory. If (...) we regard explanatory indispensability as an indicator of reality in science, decision theorists should embrace the idea of free will. (shrink)

In order to reason in a non-trivializing way with contradictions, para- consistent logics reject some classically valid inferences. As a way of re- covering some of these inferences, Graham Priest ([Priest, 1991]) proposed to nonmonotonically strengthen the Logic of Paradox by allowing the se- lection of “less inconsistent” models via a comparison of their respective inconsistent parts. This move recaptures a good portion of classical logic in that it does not block, e.g., disjunctive syllogism, unless it is applied to contradictory (...) assumptions. In Priest’s approach the inconsistent parts of models are compared in an extensional way by considering their inconsis- tent objects. This distinguishes his system from the standard format of (inconsistency-)adaptive logics pioneered by Diderik Batens, according to which (atomic) contradictions validated in models form the basis of their comparison. A well-known problem for Priest’s extensional approach is its lack of the Strong Reassurance property, i.e., for specific settings there may be infinitely descending chains of less and less inconsistent models, thus never reaching a minimally inconsistent model. In this paper, we demonstrate that Strong Reassurance holds for the extensional approach under a cardinality-based comparison of the incon- sistent parts of models. Furthermore, we introduce and investigate the metatheory of the class of first-order nonmonotonic inconsistency-tolerant construct over the extensional or quantitative comparisons of their respec- tive models. Core model-theoretic properties for these logics, such as the Löwenheim-Skolem theorems, along with other nonmonotonic properties, are further studied. (shrink)

This is an edited transcript of a conversation to be included in the collection "Conversations on Rational Choice". The conversation was conducted in Munich on 7 and 9 February 2016.

The aim of this exploratory paper is to review an under-appreciated parallel between group agency and artificial intelligence. As both phenomena involve non-human goal-directed agents that can make a difference to the social world, they raise some similar moral and regulatory challenges, which require us to rethink some of our anthropocentric moral assumptions. Are humans always responsible for those entities’ actions, or could the entities bear responsibility themselves? Could the entities engage in normative reasoning? Could they even have rights and (...) a moral status? I will tentatively defend the (increasingly widely held) view that, under certain conditions, artificial intelligent systems, like corporate entities, might qualify as responsible moral agents and as holders of limited rights and legal personhood. I will further suggest that regulators should permit the use of autonomous artificial systems in high-stakes settings only if they are engineered to function as moral (not just intentional) agents and/or there is some liability-transfer arrangement in place. I will finally raise the possibility that if artificial systems ever became phenomenally conscious, there might be a case for extending a stronger moral status to them, but argue that, as of now, this remains very hypothetical. (shrink)

Suppose that the members of a group each hold a rational set of judgments on some interconnected questions, and imagine that the group itself has to form a collective, rational set of judgments on those questions. How should it go about dealing with this task? We argue that the question raised is subject to a difficulty that has recently been noticed in discussion of the doctrinal paradox in jurisprudence. And we show that there is a general impossibility theorem that that (...) difficulty illustrates. Our paper describes this impossibility result and provides an exploration of its significance. The result naturally invites comparison with Kenneth Arrow's famous theorem (Arrow, 1963 and 1984; Sen, 1970) and we elaborate that comparison in a companion paper (List and Pettit, 2002). The paper is in four sections. The first section documents the need for various groups to aggregate its members' judgments; the second presents the discursive paradox; the third gives an informal statement of the more general impossibility result; the formal proof is presented in an appendix. The fourth section, finally, discusses some escape routes from that impossibility. (shrink)

Longtermists claim that what we ought to do is mainly determined by how our actions might affect the very long-run future. A natural objection to longtermism is that these effects may be nearly impossible to predict — perhaps so close to impossible that, despite the astronomical importance of the far future, the expected value of our present actions is mainly determined by near-term considerations. This paper aims to precisify and evaluate one version of this epistemic objection to longtermism. To that (...) end, I develop two simple models for comparing ‘longtermist’ and ‘neartermist’ interventions, incorporating the idea that it is harder to make a predictable difference to the further future. These models yield mixed conclusions: if we simply aim to maximize expected value, and don’t mind premising our choices on minuscule probabilities of astronomical payoffs, the case for longtermism looks robust. But on some prima facie plausible empirical worldviews, the expectational superiority of longtermist interventions depends heavily on these ‘Pascalian’ probabilities. So the case for longtermism may depend either on plausible but non-obvious empirical claims or on a tolerance for Pascalian fanaticism. (shrink)

Bell inequalities are usually derived by assuming locality and realism, and therefore violations of the Bell-CHSH inequality are usually taken to imply violations of either locality or realism, or both. But, after reviewing an oversight by Bell, in the Corollary below we derive the Bell-CHSH inequality by assuming only that Bob can measure along vectors b and b' simultaneously while Alice measures along either a or a', and likewise Alice can measure along vectors a and a' simultaneously while Bob measures (...) along either b or b', without assuming locality. The violations of the Bell-CHSH inequality therefore only mean impossibility of measuring along b and b' simultaneously. (shrink)

This paper generalises the classical Condorcet jury theorem from majority voting over two options to plurality voting over multiple options. The paper further discusses the debate between epistemic and procedural democracy and situates its formal results in that debate. The paper finally compares a number of different social choice procedures for many-option choices in terms of their epistemic merits. An appendix explores the implications of some of the present mathematical results for the question of how probable majority cycles (as in (...) Condorcet's paradox) are in large electorates. (shrink)

Donald Davidson established causalism, i.e. the view that reasons are causes and that action explanation is causal explanation, as the dominant view within contemporary action theory. According to his “master argument”, we must distinguish between reasons the agent merely has and reasons she has and which actually explain what she did, and the only, or at any rate the best, way to make the distinction is by saying that the reasons for which an agent acts are causes of her action. (...) “Davidson's challenge” to non‐causalists is to come up with an alternative, more convincing, way of drawing the distinction. In this paper, I argue that G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright offer such an alternative. Moreover, I argue that Davidson's own account of interpretation makes no use of his causalist claim. (shrink)

This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first-personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ (...) first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature appears to leave a central aspect of scientific practice unmotivated: If the world’s fundamental structure is exhausted by the actual distribution of non-modal properties and the laws of nature are merely efficient summaries of this distribution, then why does science posit laws that cover a wide range of non-actual circumstances? In this paper, we develop a new version of the Humean best systems account of laws based on the idea that laws need to organize (...) information in a way that maximizes their cognitive usefulness for creature like us. We argue that this account motivates scientific practice because the laws’ applicability to non-actual circumstances falls right out of their cognitive usefulness. (shrink)

This introduction concerns the place that Indian philosophical literature should occupy in the history of philosophy, and the challenge of championing pre-modern modes of inquiry in an era when philosophy, at least in the anglophone world and its satellites, has in large measure become a highly specialized and technical discipline conceived on the model of the sciences. This challenge is particularly acute when philosophical figures and texts that are historically and culturally distant from us are engaged not only exegetically but (...) also with a view to recruiting their topics and arguments for contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

I point out a sign mistake in the GHZ variant of Bell's theorem, invalidating the GHZ's claim that the premisses of the EPR argument are inconsistent for systems of more than two particles in entangled quantum states.