ECONOMY OF “INVISIBLE DEBT” AND ETHICS OF “RADICAL HOSPITALITY”: Toward a Paradigm Change of Hospitality from “Gift” to “Forgiveness”

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct a Christian theology of “hospitality” through a critical reading of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche as well as through an in‐depth biblical and theological reflection on the ethics of hospitality. Out of this reconstructive investigation, I propose a new Christian ethics of hospitality as a radical kind. As a new paradigm, this radical hospitality is distinguished from other types in that it is no longer conceived on the model of “gift”. The new Christian ethics of hospitality is rather reconstructed on the model of “forgiveness” by critically appropriating the concept of “invisible debt” that lies between the hosting citizens and the migrants in the senses of “you owe us your presence” and “I owe you my security and success.” While the hospitality of the gift defines the relationship between the hosting citizens and the migrants as givers and givees, the new paradigm of hospitality identifies this relationship as between creditors and debtors. In this regard, a new Christian hospitality called for unto citizens of the hosting society is a radical kind that challenges them to transcend the creditor‐debtor consciousness.     

CONSERVATION IN ABORIGINAL CHILDREN AND “GENETIC HYPOTHESIS”1

Jensen (1969) et Eysenck (1971) ont tous deux fait état d'une recherche de de Lemos (1969) pour appuyer l'hypothèse que des facteurs génétiques interviennent dans les différences intellectuelles constatées entre sujets de race noire et de race blanche. l'étude de de Lemos portait sur le développement du concept de conservation chez des enfants aborigènes. Les différences observées entre les Aborigènes de souche pure et ceux de sang mêlé (1/8 de sang européen) s'expliqueraient par le fait que ces derniers”. ont une plus grande probabilité d'hériter d'un potentiel intellectuel supérieur”. Une étude attentive de ce travail fait apparaître de sérieuses déficiences dans l'élaboration de la recherche et met en doute la validité de la comparaison entre les sous-groupes précités. Même si l'on ne tient pas compte de ces faiblesses, une nouvelle analyse des données rapportées conduit à des interprétations différentes de celles de de Lemos et Jensen et montre qu'un contact plus étroit avec les Européens, mais sur des termes d'inégalité, pourrait avoir des conséquences néfastes pour le développement intellectuel des Aborigènes. De plus, une réplique récente de l'étude de de Lemos (Dasen, 1972) ne fait apparaître, dans les résultats aux tests de conservation, aucune différence entre les Aborigènes de souche pure et ceux de sang mêlé.     

“SCIENCE,” “RELIGION,” AND “SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION” IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Many intellectuals wrote texts on the relations between Islam and science in the nineteenth‐century Ottoman Empire. These texts not only addressed the massive social and cultural changes the Empire was going through, but responded to European authors’ claims about the extent to which Islam was compatible with the modern world. Focusing on several texts written in the second half of the nineteenth century by the influential Muslim Ottoman authors Namik Kemal, Ahmed Midhat, and ?emseddin Sami, this article shows the influence of these exigencies on arguments on Islam and science. In order to represent Islam as a respectable religion in harmony with science, these intellectuals defined a “pure Islam” that was a set of basic principles that could be found in the Qur'an. Rather than an embedded way of life, Islam in these texts was an objectified, delimitable entity that could be imagined as having relations with other entities, such as science.     

MAKING IT EXPLICIT AND CLEAR: FROM “STRONG” TO “HYPER‐” INFERENTIALISM IN BRANDOM AND PEIRCE

Abstract: This article explores how Robert Brandom's original “inferentialist” philosophical framework should be positioned with respect to the classical pragmatist tradition. It is argued that Charles Peirce's original attack (in “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man” and other early papers) on the use of “intuition” in nineteenth‐century philosophy of mind is in fact a form of inferentialism, and thus an antecedent relatively unexplored by Brandom in his otherwise comprehensive and illuminating “tales of the mighty dead.” However, whereas Brandom stops short at a merely “strong” inferentialism, which admits some non‐inferential mental content (although it is parasitic on the inferential and can only be “inferentially articulated”), Peirce embraces a total, that is, “hyper‐,” inferentialism. Some consequences of this difference are explored, and Peirce's more thoroughgoing position is defended.     

PATIENT‐ANALYST “WITHNESS”: ON ANALYTIC “PRESENCING,” PASSION,AND COMPASSION IN STATES OF BREAKDOWN,DESPAIR, AND DEADNESS

This paper focuses on the analyst's “presencing” (being there) within the patient's experiential world and within the grip of the psychoanalytic process, and the ensuing deep patient–analyst interconnectedness, as a fundamental dimension of analytic work. It engenders new possibilities for extending the reach of psychoanalytic treatment to more disturbed patients. Here patient and analyst forge an emergent new entity of interconnectedness or “withness” that goes beyond the confines of their separate subjectivities and the simple summation of the two. Using a detailed clinical illustration of a difficult analysis with a severely fetishistic‐masochistic patient, the author describes the kind of knowledge, experience, and powerful effects that come into being when the analyst interconnects psychically with the patient in living through the process, and that relate specifically to the analyst's compassion.     

CONFUCIAN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS,CLIMATE ENGINEERING,AND THE “PLAYING GOD” ARGUMENT

The burgeoning literature on the ethical issues raised by climate engineering has explored various normative questions associated with the research and deployment of climate engineering, and has examined a number of responses to them. While researchers have noted the ethical issues from climate engineering are global in nature, much of the discussion proceeds predominately with ethical framework in the Anglo‐American and European traditions, which presume particular normative standpoints and understandings of human–nature relationship. The current discussion on the ethical issues, therefore, is far from being a genuine global dialogue. The aim of this article is to address the lack of intercultural exchange by exploring the ethics of climate engineering from a perspective of Confucian environmental ethics. Drawing from the existing discussion on Confucian environmental ethics and Confucian ethics of technology, I discuss what Confucian ethics can contribute to the ethical debate on climate engineering.     

FOLLOWING A TRAJECTORY: ON “TRACING A TRAJECTORY” AND “EXPLAINING AND VALUING,” BY JAMES M. GUSTAFSON

Abstract. The roots of religious faith–and the provenance of ethical thought–may be sought in the human sciences, the physical sciences, literature, religious traditions, and deep human intuitions. Gustafson's religious stance and the author's, while different on their face, in common reflect a mingling–and tangling–of skepticism, understanding, and transcendence. Let all of us hope and believe what we can.     

ON “THOMISTIC KABBALAH”

The Christian Bible was from the outset a dogmatic and Christological conception, which entailed a mystical reading of signs and events, a practise of speculation at once narratological and phenomenological. The trilogy of Olivier‐Thomas Venard OP – Thomas d'Aquin, poète théologien – is proposed as crucial to understanding how Thomas Aquinas preserves the authentic biblical character of Christian theology, proceeding along the diagonal axis of the mystagogical, an axis neither purely vertical nor purely horizontal but a blending of both at once. Here a reading of Aquinas is offered as initiating a participational ‘linguistic turn’, an alternative modernity that can heal the dissociation of the science of being from the phenomenal and hermeneutical embeddings in which human life is constituted.     

THE “NEGATIVE” AND “POSITIVE” ARGUMENTS OF MORAL MODERATES

According to Shelly Kagan, “ordinary” or “moderate” moralists must establish the existence of “options.” Kagan considers a “negative” and a “positive” argument, which he regards as the most promising means by which moral moderates might establish their position. He offers objections to both, and he concludes that the moderate position is indefensible. I argue that Kagan fails in his attempt to discredit the negative argument. I also argue that the positive argument is so implausible that Kagan's elaborate criticism of it is unnecessary. The positive argument is interesting nevertheless, because of why it cannot serve the moderate's purposes.     

INVESTIGATING THE “SCIENCE” IN “EASTERN RELIGIONS”: A METHODOLOGICAL INQUIRY

This article explores some of the understandings of “science” that are often employed in the literature on “science and Eastern religions.” These understandings crucially shape the raging debates between the avid proponents and the keen detractors of the thesis that Eastern forms of spirituality are uniquely able to subsume the sciences into their metaphysical–axiological horizons. More specifically, the author discusses some of the proposed relations between “science” and “Eastern religions” by highlighting three themes: (a) the relation between science and metaphysics, (b) the relation between science and experience, and (c) the European origins of science. The analysis of these relations requires a methodological inquiry into some of the culturally freighted valences of “science,” “metaphysics,” and “experience.”