政治的宗教:对汉娜·阿伦特思想的若干反思

史华慈从阿伦特的诸多著作中得出结论,认为阿伦特哲学思考的终极关怀旨在探究现代危机的社会根源,这个危机根源可以概括为源自于古代城邦的追求政治行动、公共福祉和政治自由的高贵生活的缺失。史华慈基于思想史发展脉络及其犹太人身份,批判性地指出阿伦特的愿景所具有乌托邦式的民粹主义面向,受到古典崇拜的德国浪漫主义的影响,并背离了犹太教传统。史华慈通过对阿伦特整体思想的反思,一方面捍卫着犹太人的身份,另一方面也表达出了对解决现代社会危机之路径的不同看法。     

Religion,Ethnicity, and Politics in American Philosophy: Reflections on McCumber's Time in the Ditch

McCumber does not sustain with evidence his claims about the role of McCarthyism in the triumph of analytical philosophy. A balanced history would attend to other considerations potentially relevant to that triumph, including the connection between Anglo-Protestant cultural hegemony in the United States and the styles of philosophy — especially metaphysics and normative ethics — repudiated by the analytical philosophers. The crucial transition in the professional culture of philosophy in the United States is not that from pragmatism to logical empiricism and ordinary language philosophy, but from philosophy that was engaged with Christianity to philosophy that was not.     

Reflections on Change in Science and Religion

Science and the Catholic Church are both conservative, slow-to-change institutions. However, science has institutionalized procedures that ensure that ample amounts of criticism of currently accepted theories and methodologies will always be present. This arrangement of continuous conjectures and refutation in science ensures often slow but steady change. Because supporters often think of religions as trafficking in timeless truths, criticism of church beliefs and practices (even when intended to stimulate reflection and improvement) is frequently seen as being disloyal to the institution. Because of the growing crises caused by world overpopulation, I argue that the Catholic Church's opposition to all artificial methods of birth control now lacks whatever moral force it might have had when originally promulgated. By highlighting theological perspectives that might be appropriate for the ecological realities of the 21st century, I hope the church will see the wisdom of reevaluating many of its positions in the light of rapidly approaching ecological imperatives.     

GOD EMBODIED IN,GOD BODYING FORTH THE WORLD: EMERGENCE AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

Abstract. I expand on Philip Clayton's application of emergence—in the context of a metaphysical position he calls emergent monism—to conceiving God's relationship to the world. Like Clayton, I adopt a panentheistic perspective, but in a way that I argue is consistent with classical philosophical theism and its grammatical analysis of Christian discourse about divine transcendence. In order to exploit further the analogical potential of an emergentist account of human mentality and agency, I argue that the standard panentheistic metaphor The world is the body of God should be complemented by the metaphor God is the body of the world.     

Reflections on Israel Scheffler's Philosophy of Religion

The burden of this piece is to draw together into a coherent whole the somewhat diverse strands of Israel Scheffler's thought on the philosophy of religion. Extrapolating from personal discussions with Professor Scheffler, various of his books, articles, and other unpublished materials authored and kindly provided by him, I contend that he adumbrates a post-empiricist rendering of religious belief which masterfully avoids some philosophical problems, while unwittingly giving rise to others. Committed to the view that the methodology of science – in one or other of its more acceptable guises – provides the most reliable measure of the content and structure of reality. Scheffler is bound conceptually to redefine Jewish belief in such a way that the traditional conflict between religion and science never emerges. Consistent with this end, he is concerned to divest traditional Judaism of its metaphysical garb, so that what remains are simply the matters of living to which religion ought properly on his view address itself. The Bible is thus reconceptualized as a piece of rich literature, of no real difference in logical kind to any other piece of rich literature, except that it defines uniquely, along with the Torah and other relevant Jewish literature, the history of the particular community whose perception of human values and meaningfulness forms the core of what it is to be Jewish.While I have no quibble whatsoever with Scheffler that the Bible and other religious teachings provides a profound reservoir for cognitive insight into the matters of quality living and appropriate social interaction, I argue that the divorce of religious values from the metaphysics of religion is in the end misguided. My problem with Scheffler's philosophy of religion is not so much with what he has found to be central to religion, as what he has failed to find in religion. By jettisoning its metaphysical basis, he has jettisoned what is inevitably fundamental to Judaism – namely, a resolute belief in God. This being so, an atheist could more readily adopt Scheffler's version of Judaism than could the theist – an outocme which should be problematic for both the theist and the atheist.