A moral vision for the presidential election

The essay celebrates the “Mirror of Princes” writing of political philosophy that appeared in Augustine's City of God, the history of Western political philosophy and in the political thought of ancient China. It upholds the tradition of the good ruler while noting the ambiguities of morality in politics. It notes the political power of the American president in the current global context. While emphasizing the need for the good ruler to love the people he serves it focuses on the need for reform in health care, education, and race relations.     

Arendt,Augustine And Evil

The publication of Hannah Arendt's doctoral these Love and Saint Augustine forces reappraisal of the view that Arendt's concept of evil originates in her experience of totalitarianism and coverage of the Eichmann trial. Augustine's account of the original nature of evil in the contexts of ontology, society and divine providence in fact provides the basis for Arendt's analysis of the banality of evil in the individual, the social, and the political spheres. Augustine's internal and external mental triads moreover contribute to Arendt's own thinking‐willing‐judging triad and allow a clearer understanding of its dynamics. The fact that Arendt's analysis derives much of its power from her appropriation of Augustinian theological concepts suggests a need for the increased diffusion of theological concepts in political thought.     

Is Neo‐Republicanism Bad for Women?

The republican revival in political philosophy, political theory, and legal theory has produced an impressive range of novel interpretations of the historical figures of the republican tradition. It has also given rise to a variety of contemporary neo‐republican theories that build on its historical themes. Although there have been some feminist discussions of its historical representatives, neo‐republicanism has not generated a great deal of enthusiasm among feminists. The present paper examines Phillip Pettit's theory of freedom as nondomination in order to assess its potential usefulness for those with feminist goals. It defends Pettit's account of interpersonal domination from certain feminist objections, but argues that his account of state domination needs to be amended if it is fully to protect the interests of women and other groups.     

The Politics of Pears: Augustine on the Ethics of Privative Versus Eucharist Communities

In my essay, I interpret Augustine's Confessions as a political text that portrays Augustine's attempt to find a true community. This search includes a critique of various defective communities that cannot provide the public good necessary for a true public. To show this, I focus on Augustine's account of the pear theft as an example par excellence of a privative community. I examine the story as an account of an inexplicable act of willing against the good that unmakes the will. I then argue that the supposed resolution—that Augustine was willing the good of community—in fact exacerbates the inexplicability of the pear theft. In feasting on iniquity, this community un-makes itself. I conclude by showing how the pear thieves represent a perverted imitation of the eucharistic community, which does not steal but shares the Good and so shares its goods.     

The Diremption of Love: Gillian Rose on Agency,Mortality, and Hegelian Feminism

Gillian Rose (1947–1995) was an influential though idiosyncratic British philosopher whose work helped introduce the Frankfurt School's critical theory and renew interest in Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Jewish thought in Anglo‐American philosophy. After years of relative oblivion, her life and thought have recently received new attention in philosophy, sociology, and theology. However, her work's critical Hegelian contribution to feminist philosophy still remains unexplored. This article seeks to reassess the place and the meaning of feminism and gender identity in Rose's work by addressing both her philosophical writings and her personal memoir, written in the months preceding her untimely death. It argues that although Rose's overall work was not developed in a feminist context, her philosophy, and in particular her ethical‐political notion of diremption, is valuable for developing a critical feminist philosophy that overcomes the binaries of law and morality, inclusion and exclusion, power and powerlessness—and focuses on the meaning of love as negotiating, rather than mediating, these oppositions.     

The Work of the Trinity and the Knowledge of God in Augustine's De Trinitate

This article seeks to set forth the contribution that book 8 of Augustine's De Trinitate makes to our understanding of Augustine's way of knowing and the structure of the De Trinitate. With regards to Augustine's way of knowing, I argue that, in contrast to the results to which the epistemological Christocentrism of Barthian theology can lead, Augustine is able to present an account of the knowledge of God that remains faithful to the witness of Scripture by building his account around the work of each person of the Trinity. With regards to the structure of the De Trinitate, I propose that Augustine's concern in De Trinitate 8 with vain mental images shows that the search for the true image of God in the second half of the De Trinitate is motivated by a concern for the way in which the imagination responds to teaching about the Trinity.     

The Archimedean point and eccentricity: Hannah Arendt's philosophy of Science and technology

In this contribution I discuss Hannah Arendt's philosophy of culture in three rounds. First I give an account of my view on Hannah Arendt's main work The Human Condition. In this frame of reference I distance myself from the importance attached to Hannah Arendt as a political philosopher and hold a warm plea for her as a philosopher of culture (I and II). Second I pay attention to her view on science and technology in their cultural meaning, expressed in the last chapter of The Human Condition. This part consists in a summary of her thoughts as I read them (III, IV, and V). After these two rounds I make some critical remarks on Hannah Arendt's interpretation of science and technology. The viewpoint of ‘eccentricity’ will be discussed as a frame of reference for her philosophy of culture (VI).     

RETHINKING THE CHRISTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF REINHOLD NIEBUHR'S CHRISTIAN REALISM

While Reinhold Niebuhr's realist political philosophy continues to find advocates in many quarters on account of its explanatory power, his Christian ideals have had difficulty gaining purchase in the material world. The tension between particular political interests and universal moral ideals threatens not only to undermine Niebuhr's efforts to preserve the ethical quality of politics but also his grounds for hope. The source of this problem can be traced to a weakness in the Christological foundations of Niebuhr's Christian realism—specifically to his intentional severing of classical Christology from politics in his appropriation of Augustine's realism. After examining the reasons for this rejection of classical reflections about Jesus, this article explains how the Christology of Niebuhr's favorite early Christian realist, Augustine, makes possible a theological reasoning that expands the social imagination, and promotes a deeply principled and hopeful material transformation, while not forfeiting its critical and explanatory capacity.     

‘We shall be like him,for we shall see him’: Augustine's De Trinitate and the Purification of the Mind

Contemporary re‐examinations of Augustine's De Trinitate have made the case for the coherence and consistency of the work based on the material content of its trinitarian theology. I propose that Augustine's understanding of De Trinitate's function also ties the work together as a whole. Rather than just talking about purification, De Trinitate attempts to participate in and correspond to God's economically grounded, eschatological purification of humanity. By undertaking a close reading of Book 1, followed by a brief overview of Books 2–15, I make the case that reading De Trinitate as a participation in purification holds all 15 books together.     

THE POLITICAL NATURE OF DOCTRINE: A CRITIQUE OF LINDBECK IN LIGHT OF RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

This article argues that the power of religion to shape experience presupposes the mobilization of religious identity through social opposition. This thesis is developed through a critique of George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine. The article first examines Lindbeck's thesis that religion shapes experience in light of Talal Asad's critique of Geertz's concept of religion. It argues that in order to understand how ‘religion’ shapes experience we must look outside the immanent sphere of cultural‐religious meaning that Lindbeck, following Geertz, identifies with ‘religion’. Religious authority ultimately derives from the recognition of a social group. Next, looking at the nature of doctrine in light of Kathryn Tanner's thesis that Christian identity is essentially relational, it argues that church doctrines function to mobilize group identity through social opposition. In this respect they resemble the mobilizing slogans of political discourse more than, as Lindbeck's theory proposes, the grammatical rules governing Wittgensteinian language games.     

J. S. Mill on Coolie Labour and Voluntary Slavery

This article discusses John Stuart Mill's voluntary slavery argument in On Liberty. The author shows that standard interpretations of the argument rely on the assumption that part of Mill's objection to voluntary slavery is the permanent nature of the decision. However, in correspondence, Mill also objects to voluntary ‘coolie’ labour contracts, which he regards as a form of slavery. This produces difficulties for standard interpretations of the voluntary slavery argument. Finally, the author provides a revised interpretation of Mill's argument to solve this problem.     

Trinity and Apologetics In the Theology of St. Augustine

This article examines Trinitarian themes in St. Augustine's City of God and in his On the Trinity. It argues that the scope and intention of the latter work can be clarified to some extent by noticing the apologetic commitments entailed in the exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity in the former. It argues against the tendency of some recent scholarship to restrict the intelligibility of the On the Trinity to converted Christians, even as it also defends the irreducibility of the doctrine of the Trinity, in Augustine's thinking, to any doctrine of pagan learning. Without prejudice to recent scholarly clarifications of the polemical origins of some of the arguments in the On the Trinity, the article argues (in effect) that the work is more than the sum of its polemical parts, and is intentionally addressed by Augustine to a wide readership, deliberately unspecified in identity except insofar as they are united as “human beings who are seeking God.” Just as ancient apologetics, including Augustine's, was addressed to a variety of people, pagan and Christian, in various states of conviction and conversion, so the On the Trinity is meant to address many types of readers, at various levels of conversion and understanding, hoping to bring all of them closer to—or to confirm and deepen their participation in—the true worship of the one true God, without which, Augustine believes, no one can ultimately find the God they seek.     

Reply to Reynolds

Abstract

How should we read Foucault's claims, in his late work, for the relevance of ‘aesthetic criteria’ to politics? What is Foucault's implicit understanding of the nature of aesthetics and the autonomy of the aesthetic sphere? Would an ethics which gave a place to the aesthetic legitimize a politics of manipulation, brutality and aggression ‐ in short, a ‘fascist’ politics ‐ as some of Foucault's critics argue? In this paper, I examine key accounts of the fascist ‘aestheticization of politics’ ‐ from Walter Benjamin's classic essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936), to Philippe Lacoue‐Labarthe's work on the relation between Heidegger's philosophy and the fascist theme of politics as the plastic art of the state. Through a discussion of Foucault's late work, the paper demonstrates the connection between Foucault's turn to ancient Greek ethical practices and his call for a contemporary renewal of the idea of ethics as an art of living. The aim of the paper is to show in what ways the ethico‐political position which is presented in Foucault's late work, far from contributing to a fascist politics, in fact provides ways of thinking about the relationship between the aesthetic and the political which avoid both mindless radicalism and totalitarian narcissism. In doing so, the key question is, ‘What's aesthetic about Foucault's “aesthetics of existence"?’     

Slavoj Žižek,the Death Drive,and Zombies: A Theological Account

In this article, I discuss the question of the hybridity of the religious and the secular through the example of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj ?i?ek and his psychoanalytically inspired notion of the undead. The undead is ?i?ek's rendering of the Freudian death drive, and as the undead is instantiated in the popular culture cliché of the zombies, we need to look no further than to George A. Romero's classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead from 1968. Thus, this article proceeds in three steps: first, I trace the concept of the death drive from Freud to ?i?ek, supplemented, for their theological importance, by two contemporary philosophers, Jonathan Lear and Eric Santner. Second, I discuss the zombie in contemporary popular culture, with a focus on Romero's movies, and whether such cinematic representations can function as a kind of cultural critique. In conclusion, I return to the question of theology by showing what ?i?ek means by theology and contrasting as well as comparing his philosophy to Augustine's anthropology. Despite ?i?ek's atheistic confession and his dismissal of all pre‐modern philosophy and theology, I show that Augustine's anthropology is structurally similar to ?i?ek's, thus suggesting that the relationship is more complex than ?i?ek allows. Both are united in rejecting any superficial and transparent understanding of self, and become, consequently, an example of the ambiguous relationship between religion and secularity in contemporary times.     

TIME AND PLACE FOR PHILOSOPHY

Abstract: Writing in continuous gratitude to Gary Matthews's wonderful project of rescuing childhood from its disregard, not to say banishment, in professional philosophy, I relate here certain moments in his considerations of early childhood to moments in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, which opens with a scene of childhood from Augustine's Confessions, and also to moments in later stages of childhood (as Matthews also significantly indicates) and, beyond that, to adolescent crises and to what I have called philosophy as “the education of grown‐ups.” I raise the issue of whether we are to see the “odd” questions of early childhood as proto‐science, which will eventually graduate into better science, or as proto‐philosophy, which will be continuously elaborated in philosophical investigation. This raises the question of whether philosophy is to be regarded, early or late, as inseparable from science or, as the later Wittgenstein urges, autonomous with respect to science's glamorous advances.     

The composition of R. G. Collingwood's The New Leviathan

Collingwood's The New Leviathan is a difficult text. It comprises philosophy, political theory, political opinion and history in what is sometimes an uneasy amalgam. Despite its being the culmination of thirty years of work in ethics and political theory, the final text was clearly affected by the adverse circumstances under which it was written, these largely being Collingwood's illness which increasingly affected his ability to work as the writing of The New Leviathan progressed. This paper seeks to disentangle the composition of the book thereby shedding light on its distinctive character as the last substantial piece of philosophical work published in Collingwood's lifetime.     

Beginning,ending and remembering

Wittgenstein famously opens his Philosophical Investigations with a quotation in which Augustine recounts how he acquired language. Instead of going into the widely discussed question of how Wittgenstein relates to Augustine's picture of language, this article inquires into what else might be at stake in invoking Confessions at the very beginning of his work. At the very least, such a gesture seems to suggest that Wittgenstein wants to inscribe himself into the Augustinian legacy. More specifically, this article argues that Philosophical Investigations centres on three problems that Wittgenstein has inherited from Augustine – namely what one might call the problem of beginning, the problem of ending and finally the problem of memory. The problem of beginning not only points to the local problem of how to start writing confessional philosophy, but also what authorizes such philosophy in the first place. The problem of ending concerns the direction of such philosophy and the problematic stance of its goal, while the problem of memory turns on the task of progressing from beginning to ending.     

Confessions from the Classroom Teaching with Augustinian Eyes

Through an analysis of Augustine's Confessions, this essay aims to identify the sources, tenets, and implications of the theological anthropology that grounds the author's pedagogy. The author describes classroom dynamics and teaching strategies in terms of the concepts of creation, sin, and redemption found in the Confessions. In relation to Augustine's doctrine of creation, the author argues that a theological anthropology that posits an ineradicable relationship of the human person to God justifies optimism about student response to the study of theology. It also supports a sacramental understanding of the effectiveness of the teacher. In relation to Augustine's theology of sin, the author reflects on the effects of pride on both teacher and student. The section on redemption acknowledges that although the teacher cannot eradicate sin in the classroom, he or she can counter such effects through the responsible and sensitive exercise of authority. Throughout the essay, the virtues of humility and gratitude in the classroom are highlighted, and concrete pedagogical issues are examined in a theological light.     

Figuring the Porous Self: St. Augustine and the Phenomenology of Temporality

This article examines the phenomenological structures of the homo temporalis filtered through Augustine's illuminating, if unsystematic, insights on temporality and the imago Dei. It situates such a phenomenological interpretation of the Augustinian self in view of current interpretations that polarize or split the Augustinian self into an either/or scheme—either an “interior” self or an “exterior” self. Given this imbalance, the article suggests that a phenomenological evaluation of Augustine brings to light how interior and exterior spheres are deeply integrated. The article elaborates this position by contending that the self's temporal streaming within the exterior world‐horizon is inescapable because it reflects basic constituents of a self created by God which is nevertheless capable of contemplating a God who transcends time. This seeming paradox is resolved by recourse to what is described as the “double entry” of the self. The temporal streaming of the self in the world‐horizon (entry one) is porous to the eternal inwardly (entry two); the eternal entry is thus interior and analyzable in terms of a non‐reflective self‐awareness on display in Augustine's De Trinitate; and finally Augustine's understanding of the temporality of faith indicates how the self of faith can be lived in light of Heidegger's emphasis on the future and Husserl's emphasis on the past.