Enthusiastic Improvement: Mary Astell and Damaris Masham on Sociability

Many commentators have contrasted the way that sociability is theorized in the writings of Mary Astell and Damaris Masham, emphasizing the extent to which Masham is more interested in embodied, worldly existence. I argue, by contrast, that Astell's own interest in imagining a constitutively relational individual emerges once we pay attention to her use of religious texts and tropes. To explore the relevance of Astell's Christianity, I emphasize both how Astell's Christianity shapes her view of the individual's relation to society and how Masham's contrasting views can be analyzed through the lens of her charge that Astell is an “enthusiast.” In late seventeenth‐century England, “enthusiasm” was a term of abuse that, commentators have recently argued, could function polemically to dismiss those deemed either excessively social or antisocial. By accusing Astell of enthusiasm, I claim, Masham seeks to marginalize the relational self that Astell imagines and to promote a more instrumental view of social ties. I suggest some aspects of Astell's thought that may have struck contemporaries as “enthusiastic” and contrast her vision of the self with Masham's more hedonistic subject. I conclude that, although each woman differently configures the relation between self and society, they share a desire to imagine autonomy within a relational framework.     

Male Commitment to the Cult of the Virgin Mary and the Passion of Christ as a Function of Early Maternal Bonding

Carroll's claim that the origin of the Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary can be at least partly illuminated by classical Freudian theory is tested empirically. Seventy-one non-Catholic males, selected for religious commitment, evaluated independently operationalized crucifixes and representations of the Vir- gin Mary. As predicted, an operational interactive measure of early maternal care and protection, assumed indicative of repression, best predicted selecting both a suffering Christ and an erotichurturing Virgin Mary.     

An Athenaeum Curiosity: De Morgan's Reviews of Boole and Jevons

In this note we reproduce the book reviews that De Morgan wrote on Boole's and Jevons's first logical works. The most notable property of these documents is the mere fact of their existence and the absence of any reference to them in the specialized literature.     

John Knox: Gynaecocracy, ‘The Monstrous Empire of Women’

Abstract

This paper aims at providing a critical reading of John Knox's views on female monarchs, based on his writings, correspondence and interviews with contemporary queens, namely Mary of Guise and her daughter, Mary Stewart, of Scotland, and Elizabeth I, of England, highlighting Knox's religious thought and the political implications of his antigynaecocratic doctrines. From Knox's reasonings with the British queens, one can to some extent perceive his putting into practice the theories of resistance to political authority he formulated during his exile in Geneva, as expressed in the tracts and correspondence addressed to his British friends and proselytes. By the analysis of Knox's antagonistic views on the regiment of women, solidly grounded on the Holy Scriptures, namely the Old Testament, and on long-established tradition—classical, canonical and patristic—, one is made aware of his unwavering faith and indefatigable struggle for the Reformation of the Church, both in Scotland and in England.     

A.N. Prior and ‘The Nature of Logic’

Logical realism, by Arthur Norman Prior understood as the view that logic is not about language but about reality, is a consistent and strong tenet in all of Prior's philosophical work. Recent discoveries in letters from Prior to his wife, Mary Prior, and to his cousin, Hugh Teague, serve to highlight the influence of J.N. Findlay with regard to Prior's logical realism. Through the letters, we come to learn, that the title of Prior's M.A. thesis from 1937 was ‘The Nature of Logic’, that he didn't consider it good and finally, that he attributed much of the work to Findlay. It is argued here that Findlay's criticism of philosophical idealism, evident in his early writings and documented by Prior's letters, moderated Prior's views on Marxism and Karl Barth's theology, and indeed constitute the foundation of Prior's temporal realism. We are thus able to improve our knowledge on all of these aspects. Regarding Marxism, we can extend backwards the time when Prior was aware of the logical problems with Marx's dialectics from the time given by Mary in her 2003 interview with Hasle. Regarding Barth, we can see how Prior's work on ridding Barthian theology of philosophical idealism led him to investigate the importance of the ontological argument with regard to the philosophical foundation of Barthian theology. Finally, the analysis of Findlay's influence helps us better understand the nature of Prior's logical realism and appreciate (i) why Prior said that he directly and indirectly owed all he knew of logic and ethics to Findlay and (ii) why Prior called Findlay the founding father of tense-logic.     

Aristotle's Prior Analytics and Boole's Laws of Thought

Prior Analytics by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384?–?322 BCE) and Laws of Thought by the English mathematician George Boole (1815?–?1864) are the two most important surviving original logical works from before the advent of modern logic. This article has a single goal: to compare Aristotle's system with the system that Boole constructed over twenty-two centuries later intending to extend and perfect what Aristotle had started. This comparison merits an article itself. Accordingly, this article does not discuss many other historically and philosophically important aspects of Boole's book, e.g. his confused attempt to apply differential calculus to logic, his misguided effort to make his system of ‘class logic’ serve as a kind of ‘truth-functional logic’, his now almost forgotten foray into probability theory, or his blindness to the fact that a truth-functional combination of equations that follows from a given truth-functional combination of equations need not follow truth-functionally. One of the main conclusions is that Boole's contribution widened logic and changed its nature to such an extent that he fully deserves to share with Aristotle the status of being a founding figure in logic. By setting forth in clear and systematic fashion the basic methods for establishing validity and for establishing invalidity, Aristotle became the founder of logic as formal epistemology. By making the first unmistakable steps toward opening logic to the study of ‘laws of thought’—tautologies and laws such as excluded middle and non-contradiction—Boole became the founder of logic as formal ontology.

… using mathematical methods … has led to more knowledge about logic in one century than had been obtained from the death of Aristotle up to … when Boole's masterpiece was published.     

Mary Astell: Defender of the “Disembodied Mind”

This paper demonstrates how Mary Astell's version of Cartesian dualism supports her disavowal of female subordination and traditional gender roles, her rejection of Locke's notion of “thinking matter” as a major premise for rejecting his political philosophy of “social contracts” between men and women, and, finally, her claim that there is no intrinsic difference between genders in terms of ratiocination, the primary assertion that grants her the title of the first female English feminist.     

The Wonder and Spirit of Phenomenology and Theology: Rubenstein and Derrida on Heidegger's Formal Distinction of Philosophy from Theology

While Heidegger's earlier phenomenological writings inform much contemporary discourse in the continental philosophy of religion, his 1927 essay on ‘Phenomenology and Theology’ offers a largely uncontested distinction between philosophy and theology on the basis of their possibilities as sciences following ontological difference. This paper reconsiders Heidegger's distinction by invoking spirit and wonder, concepts Jacques Derrida and Mary‐Jane Rubenstein have more recently emphasized as central to thought that is open to that which ruptures metaphysical schemas. I contend Heidegger's use of ontological difference as a formal distinction between philosophy and theology distances us from the wonder, spirit, and truth (alētheia) that undoes the binaries behind which we take shelter. However, I temper this critique with the recognition that Heidegger, Derrida, and Rubenstein equally recognize an inescapable repetition of metaphysical thinking in the philosophy of religion.     

“Like a Fanciful Kind of Half Being”: Mary Wollstonecraft's Criticism of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau

The article investigates the philosophical foundations and details of Mary Wollstonecraft's criticism of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau's views on the education and nature of women. I argue that Wollstonecraft's criticism must not be understood as a constructionist critique of biological reductionism. The first section analyzes the differences between Wollstonecraft's and Rousseau's views on the possibility of a true civilization and shows how these differences connect to their respective conceptions of moral psychology. The section shows that Wollstonecraft's disagreement with Rousseau's views on women was rooted in a broad scope of philosophical disagreement. The second section focuses on Rousseau's concept of nature, and I argue that Rousseau was neither a biological determinist nor a functionalist who denied that nature had any normative significance. The section ends with a discussion of Wollstonecraft's criticism of Rousseau's application of the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The third section focuses on Wollstonecraft's critique of Rousseau's claim that there are different standards for the perfectibility of men and women. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the claim that Aristotle would have provided Wollstonecraft with the philosophical tools she needed for her criticism of Rousseau.     

“Keeping It in the Family”: Sarah Kofman Reading Nietzsche as a Jewish Woman

This article examines Sarah Kofman's interpretation of Nietzsche in light of the claim that interpretation was for her both an articulation of her identity and a mode of deconstructing the very notion of identity. Faulkner argues that Kofman's work on Nietzsche can be understood as autobiographical, in that it served to mediate a relation to her self. Faulkner examines this relation with reference to Klein's model of the child's connection to its mother. By examining Kofman's later writings on Nietzsche alongside her autobiography, this article contends that Kofman's defense of anti‐Semitism in Nietzsche serves to fend off her own ambivalence about being Jewish.     

A MINOR MATTER? THE FRANCISCAN THESIS AND PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY1

The Franciscan thesis maintains that the primary motive of the Incarnation is to glorify the triune God in the person of Jesus Christ: though Christ atones for human sins, his coming isn't relative to our need for redemption but rather has an absolute primacy. The Franciscan thesis is sometimes associated with the counterfactual claim that Christ would have come even if humans hadn't sinned. In recent work on the Franciscan thesis, an attempt is made to prove the counterfactual claim on the basis of a purely logical argument drawn from the writings of Bl. John Duns Scotus. After showing that this proof fails, I construct an axiological argument for the Franciscan thesis that disentangles it from unsubstantiated counterfactual claims while respecting the subtle interplay between natural and revealed theology. I then provide a metaphysical interpretation of the axiological argument that builds upon Scotist notions. Seen through this interpretive lens, Scotus's logical argument can be understood not as attempting to prove a counterfactual claim but as articulating Scotus's vision of what is required of any created order that is radically contingent on God's will yet perfectly glorifies its Creator. Thus understood, the Franciscan thesis challenges a powerful and influential picture in philosophical theology.     

Said Nursi's Moral Philosophy

This article tests the oft-made claim that Islam and democracy are incompatible because of the presumed authoritarianism of religious morality. The article explores the moral philosophy expressed in the early writings of Said Nursi, concluding that by acknowledging individual autonomy and free will and rejecting authoritarianism as inimical to the exercise of conscience, Nursi's moral philosophy lays the groundwork for an Islamic democracy.     

Freedom and Necessity in Marx's Account of Communism

This paper considers whether Marx's views about communism change significantly during his lifetime. According to the ‘standard story’, as Marx got older he dropped the vision of self-realization in labour that he spoke of in his early writings, and adopted a more pessimistic account of labour, where real freedom is achieved outside the working-day, in leisure. Other commentators, however, have argued that there is no pessimistic shift in Marx's thought on this matter. This paper offers a different reading of this debate. It argues that there are two visions of the good life in Marx. However, it suggests that these two visions cannot be understood in terms of a simple shift between a ‘young’ and ‘mature’ Marx. Rather, it claims that Marx moves between these two visions throughout his writings. In this way, it suggests that Marx's intellectual development on this issue is best understood as an oscillation rather than a shift. Once this interpretive claim is advanced, the paper then moves on to consider some potential causes and implications of Marx's life-long oscillation between two different conceptions of the good life.     

Subjectivity in Motion: Caribbean Women's (Dis)Articulations of Being from Fanon/Capécia to the Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands

In this essay I show that texts by early Caribbean women writers, such as the Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, reveal and resist the effects of colonial paradigms by leaving textual traces of how such paradigms can effectively be countered and overturned. I arrive at such a reading of Seacole via an analysis of Frantz Fanon's (mis)reading of Mayotte Capécia's turn‐of‐the‐century novel, Je suis martiniquaise, in light of advances in postcolonial and feminist theory. I argue that doing so can bring us to recognize the contributions that early writings by Caribbean women have made to a broader understanding of the nature of being, across differences of “race,” class, and geography. I consider how we might recover in Capécia important models that Fanon himself replicates, yet dismisses, that predate Capécia's own text and that can be located in a text like Seacole's. In the end, I come to contend that Mary Seacole's text is more than a mere record of a “free colored” woman's life in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is, to use today's postcolonial parlance, an interventionist, hybrid text that attempts to subvert dominant discourse while participating in its circuits.     

THE HOLY & WHOLLY OTHER: KIERKEGAARD ON THE ALTERITY OF GOD

In response to prevailing perceptions, I contend that Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) conceives of the wholly otherness of God via his dialectical category of the ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between the human and the divine, initially through the self's consciousness of sin and ultimately through the self's acceptance of the gift of forgiveness. Therefore, I claim that while the common designation of Kierkegaard's God as ‘Wholly Other’ may initially evoke the alterity of sin; it is not ultimately sufficient to describe the divine alterity which Kierkegaard regards as more faithfully manifest in the ‘impossible possibility’ of forgiveness. Through this reading, I finally suggest that the ‘Wholly Other’ is not ultimately representative of God in Kierkegaard's writings and might be more faithfully supplemented by the appellation of the Holy Other.     

Kierkegaard,MacIntyre and Narrative Unity—Reply to Lippitt

In a recent article in this journal, John Lippitt mounts a forceful argument against narrativist approaches to issues in personal identity and practical deliberation, with specific reference to the application of such approaches in the interpretation of Kierkegaard's writings. The present critical discussion piece addresses two points in Lippitt's argument. First, it seeks to meet Lippitt's challenge to clarify the notion of “a whole life” as this figures in narrativist positions. Second, it clarifies the sense in which narrative unity, and even selfhood, may be a matter of degree. It then uses this latter insight to sketch a defense of the claim that narrativity may indeed play a crucial role in Kierkegaard's distinction between ethical and aesthetic ways of life.     

Directions of fit and the humean theory of motivation 1

According to the Humean theory of motivation, a person can only be motivated to act by a desire together with a relevantly related belief. More specifically, a person can only be motivated to ? by a desire to ψ together with a belief that ?-ing is a means to or a way of ψ-ing. In recent writings, Michael Smith gives what has become a very influential argument in favour of the Humean claim that desire is a necessary part of motivation, and a great deal has been written about Smith's defence of this Humean claim. However, no one has yet identified the fundamental weakness of his defence. The fundamental weakness is that there is no single conception of directions of fit that does all the work Smith needs it to do throughout the various stages of his defence.     

Conceptual mastery and the knowledge argument

According to Frank Jackson’s famous knowledge argument, Mary, a brilliant neuroscientist raised in a black and white room and bestowed with complete physical knowledge, cannot know certain truths about phenomenal experience. This claim about knowledge, in turn, implies that physicalism is false. I argue that the knowledge argument founders on a dilemma. Either (i) Mary cannot know the relevant experiential truths because of trivial obstacles that have no bearing on the truth of physicalism or (ii) once the obstacles have been removed, Mary can know the relevant truths. If we give Mary the epistemological capabilities necessary to draw metaphysical conclusions about physicalism, she will, while trapped in the black and white room, be able to know every truth about phenomenal experience.