The origin and role of the state according to the Lüshi chunqiu

To study the Lüshi chunqiu (or Lü‐shih ch'un‐ch'iu. Master Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals is to enter into the tumultuous but progressive times of the Warring States period (403–221 BCE).¹ This period is commonly referred to as ‘the pre‐Qin period’ because of the fundamental changes that occurred after the Qin unification. Liishi chunqiu was probably completed, in 241 BCE, by various scholars at the estate of Lü Buwei (Lü Pu‐wei) the prime minister of Qin and tutor to the Qin child King, Zheng.² It is one of the few pre‐Qin texts that dates itself; the date, though not precise, is given in the xuyi chapter.³ A decade after the completion of the Lüshi chunqiu, King Zheng began the ensuing 9 years of fervent warfare that led to his unification of the empire in 221 BCE. Before the political unification, Lüshi chunqiu created a philosophical consolidation.⁴ The Liishi chunqiu performed an important function in the literary and political education of the young King Zheng. More importantly, it provided a philosophical understanding of and justification for a unified empire which left its mark on the young King, and subsequent Han philosophy. After the unification of the empire, King Zheng took the title Qin shihuangdi (First‐generation Emperor of Qin), and he established the insignia of water for the imperial emblems, employing concepts from Liishi chunqiu's yingtong (responding and identifying) chapter which describe the succession of dynasties according to the timely cycle of the five phases (wuxing) to justify his new dynasty.⁵     

Book Reviews

The Transcendence of the Cave. By J. N. Findlay . Pp. 224 (Muirhead Library of Philosophy), London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Humanities Press, 1967, 36s. Teilhard de Chardin. A Biography. By Robert Speaight . An Introduction to Teilhard de Chardin. By N. M. Wildiers . Translated by Hubert Hoskins . Teilhard de Chardin: A Guide to his Thought. By Émile Rideau . Translated by René Hague . The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin. By Henri de Lubac , s.j. Translated by René Hague . Science and Faith in Teilhard de Chardin. By Claude Cuénot . Evolution, Marxism and Christianity. By Various Contributors . Pantheisme, Action, Oméga. By G. Dussault , L. Gendron and A. Haguette . Teilhard and the Creation of the Soul. By Robert North . The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages. By Walter Ullmann . Renaissance and Revolution: the Remaking of European Thought. By Joseph Anthony Mazzeo . The Gods of Mexico. By C. A. Burland . Abraham and David. By Ronald Clements . ‘Yesterday’. By Floyd V. Filson . Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 1. Edited by Herbert Vorgrimler . Contributors J. A. Jungmann and Others . Translated by Lalit Adolphus , Kevin Smyth , Richard Strachan . Pp. xii, 346, New York: Herder & Herder; London: Burns & Oates, 1967, 70s. L'église et son mystère au deuxième Concile du Vatican. Histoire, texte et com- mentaire de la Constitution Lumen Gentium, tome I. By Mgr Gérard Philips . The Church. By Hans Küung . Translated by Ray and Rosaleen Ockenden . Orthodoxie et Catholicité. By Jean Meyendorff . Essai de Théologie Irénique. L'Orthodoxie et le Catholicisme. By Alexis Stawrowsky . Défense de l' Unité de l'g?lise. By Reginald Pole . Translated by Noelle -Marie Egretier . The Form of Christ in the World. A Study of Bonhoeffer's Christology. By John A. Phillips . The Canon of the Mass and Liturgical Reform. By Cipriano Vagaogini . Rev. By Stephan Hopkinson , John Foster , Ray Billington .     

Lévinas,Derrida and the Ethics and Politics of Reproduction

This essay outlines a Lévinas- and Derrida-inspired politics of reproduction, via opening the ethics of reproduction, something previous work on the topic has omitted. It does so via a reassessment of two notable publications on Lévinas and feminism, Stella Sandford’s essay in the Cambridge Companion to Lévinas (2002) and Lisa Guenther’s volume The Gift of the Other: Lévinas and the Politics of Reproduction (2006).¹1 Stella Sandford, ‘Lévinas, Feminism and the Feminine’. I particularly focus on this essay as its negative presentation of Lévinas’ potential for feminism in one of the main introductory texts on his work is an apparently definite dismissal. There is no space to undertake a full analysis of what Sandford has to say in The Metaphysics of Love: Gender and Transcendence in Levinas. There is no doubting her familiarity with Lévinas’ texts, but the way in which she reads them is highly questionable. Her basic assumption is that texts can be treated systematically and she openly rejects Derrida’s suggestion that we can find a number of different “voices” at work in Lévinas. She thus prosecutes a reading which constantly attempts to restrain the radical potential of Lévinas’ text. Indeed, when she cannot find a suitably negative reading she puts words in his mouth by finding supposed parallels with writers such as Bloy, Rav Abbahu or Ebreo, on which basis he is accordingly condemned. The stunning radicality of Lévinas’ conception of subjectivity as fecundity is overlooked. Rather than being a celebration of masculine power, it is the discovery of the powerlessness at the heart of masculinity or any other subjectivity, a dissolution of virility. Sandford wrongly states that fraternity is for Lévinas a simple universality and her treatment of it is underelaborated compared to Howard Caygill’s account of the same term in Lévinas and the Political. Sandford comes very close to recognizing that the fecundity of Totality and Infinity and the maternity of Otherwise than Being are very much two sides of the same coin. Yet again, rather than commend this move, she rejects the way of thinking at work, what I will call “metaphorical thought”, as a debiologizing. The phrase which will be so important for Guenther, “becoming like a maternal body”, is not even mentioned.View all notes Both of these are 10 or more years old years, yet have received little or no extended discussion despite a number of significant problems in their readings of Lévinas. In particular, I challenge Sandford’s insistence on a systematic rather than plurivocal reading of Lévinas on questions of gender and sexual difference. I further stress the importance of a certain thought of metaphor as a way of thinking beyond existing relations. In Guenther’s work I observe a tension between a desire to explore the potential of the metaphoric expression “like a maternal body” and a commitment to phenomenologize the act of giving birth. Arising out of the latter, I note the problematic characterization of maternity as a gift and a very Lévinasian effacement of violence from the maternal relation. The latter tendency, together with an unwillingness to question accepted doxa on the topic, is partly responsible for Guenther’s failure to proceed to the ethics of reproduction which should, in a Lévinas-inspired work, inform and be informed by any politics of reproduction.     

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS AND THE WORLD VIEW OF PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

Abstract. This paper introduces the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin from a perspective neglected until now: a view that builds on the analysis of his scientific papers. His scientific work formed part of the "modern synthesis" which laid the foundation of contemporary Darwinism. His main contributions in the field were the definition of a new branch of evolutionary sciences, geobiology; the redefinition of the term orthogenesis ; and the proposal of the "scale" phyletic tree. Using these new research concepts, Teilhard de Chardin attempted to solve, within a scientific framework, a problem fundamental for his philosophical synthesis: that of evolutionary directionality.     

Kalmár's Argument Against the Plausibility of Church's Thesis

In his famous paper, An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory, Alonzo Church (1936) identified the intuitive notion of effective calculability with the mathematically precise notion of recursiveness. This proposal, known as Church's Thesis, has been widely accepted. Only a few papers have been written against it. One of these is László Kalmár's An Argument Against the Plausibility of Church's Thesis from 1959. The aim of this paper is to present Kalmár's argument and to fill in missing details based on his general philosophical thoughts on mathematics.     

REVIEWS

The Moral Philosophy of Josiah Royce. By Peter Fuss . French Moralists. The Theory of the Passions 1585 to 1649. By Anthony Levi , S. J. Responsibility and Practical Freedom. By Moira Roberts . Lettre sur la Tolérance. By John Locke . Latin text with French translation by Raymond Polin. Force et Faiblesse de la Religion. By B. Häring c.ss.r. The Just War in St Thomas and G‘otius. By Joan Tooke . Morale Internationale, I'Humanitéà la Recherche de son Âme. By René Coste . The Making of a Mind. Letters from a Soldier-Priest, 1914–1919. By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Translated by René Hague . Hymn of the Univers. By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Translted by Simon Bartholomew . The Future of Man. By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Translated by Norman Denny . The Faith of Teilhard de Chardin. By Henri de Lubac. Translated by René Hague . Philosophische Probleme der Physik. By Wolfgang Büchel . Bernard de Fontaines, Abbé de Clairvaux. By I. Vallery-Radot. Aquinas's Search for Wisdom. By Vernon J. Bourke . L'Évangélisation des Slaves, Cyrille et Méthode. By P. Duthilleul . Personalities of the Council of Florence. By Joseph Gill , S.J. A Stand on Ecumenism: The Council's Decree. By Lorenz , Cardinal Jaeger . Translated by Hilda Graef . Marcantonio Flaminio. By Carol Maddison. St Thomas More: Utopia. Edited by Edward Surtz and J. H. Hexter. Education in Renaissance England. By Kenneth Charlton. Offenbarung und Überlieferung. By Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger. The Theology of the Resurrection. By Walter Künneth . The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition. By H. E. Tödt . Maria. Nouvelles Études sur la Sainte Vierge. Vol. VII. Sous la direction d'Hubert du Manoir, S.J.     

SYNCRETISM OR CORRELATION: TEILHARD AND TILLICH'S CONTRASTING METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY

Abstract. I revisit Paul Tillich's theological methodology and contrast his practice of correlation with the syncretistic methodological practices of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I argue that the method of correlation, as referred to in Robert John Russell's 2001 Zygon article, fails to uphold Tillich's self‐limitation of his own methodology with regard to Tillich's insistence upon the theological circle. I assert that the theological circle, as taken from Tillich's Systematic Theology I, is a central facet within his methodology and that this often‐ignored concept needs to be resuscitated if one is to remain authentically Tillichian in one's approach to the science‐and‐theology dialogue.     

Corpus Meum: Disintegrating Bodies and the Ideal of Integrity

This essay shows that Jean‐Luc Nancy's reconceptualization of corporeality in such texts as L'Intrus and Corpus can be an important ally to feminist theories of body. I introduce Nancy's ontology and argue that his rejection of the unified, integrated body of humanist discourses in favor of dis‐integrated bodies constituted by multiple alterities and his consequent reinterpretation of body as a “being‐exscribed” begin the task of thinking bodies beyond traditional dualisms and their ahistorical and rationalist frameworks. I then address three potential criticisms of Nancy's work and suggest that though there may be reasons to move cautiously in adopting the framework he provides, his work harbors resources directly beneficial to critiques of prevailing forms of gender normativity. Quel étrange moi! —Jean‐Luc Nancy, Corpus     

Constructing a scientific paper: Howell's prothrombin laboratory notebook and paper

Scientists generally record their laboratory activities and experimental results in notebooks, from which they construct scientific papers. The Johns Hopkins physiologist William Henry Howell kept a laboratory notebook from 1913 to 1914, in which he recorded experiments on the blood clotting factor prothrombin. In 1914 he published a paper using this notebook, to justify his theory of prothrombin activation. Howell's paper is reconstructed, in terms of its narrative and argument elements, from the laboratory activities and experimental results recorded in the notebook. This reconstruction reveals an intimate connection between the two texts and the process by which Howell constructed a scientific paper. The generation of scientific knowledge by Howell is then evaluated, especially in terms of theory formation and justification.     

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Louis L'Amour is one of the most prolific and popular writers of our time. He has published more than 85 novels, many of which have been made into movies for theatres or television. His first novel, Hondo, was published in 1953 and his latest in 1984, The Walking Drum.

Mr. L'Amour's interest and dedication to education, in the classical sense, is liberally evidenced through the characters of his novels. Beginning in his early books with characters who lamented the fact that they were uneducated or self-educated and growing toward the latest novel that has a genuine scholar as the main character. His latest book is not a western but takes place in medieval Europe.

It may be of value to introduce pre-adolescents and adolescents to Mr. L'Amour's works in the public school libraries. It may do more than introduce them to a gifted, action and adventure, storyteller. It could help to improve reading skills with the added possibility that they may become interested in some of the classical literature given reference in his novels. Another possibility is that they may be persuaded of the value of an education through the many references the subject in the novels.     

Robert Rollock on covenant and sacrament

Abstract

This contribution presents two, less-well-known texts from the Latin corpus of the Scottish theologian, Robert Rollock (d.1599). Rollock significantly informed the evolution of thinking on the divine covenants by virtue of his relatively unprecedented, mature doctrine of a pre-Fall ‘covenant of works’ between God and humankind. Historians of Reformed theology have long recognized Rollock’s importance in this regard, but their familiarity with his doctrine has stemmed almost entirely from Tractatus de vocatione efficaci(1597). The Scot advanced his covenant doctrine in other, earlier texts, including a brief catechism on the covenants (1596) and a series of short tracts published with his Romans commentary (1593). The tracts are particularly noteworthy since, given the popularity of Rollock’s biblical commentaries in his day, these texts were very likely read more widely than his later catechism or Tractatus; they likely served as the principal vehicle through which his covenantal ideas were disseminated. Two tracts, De foedere Dei and De sacramento, are offered here in English translation, thus affording readers access to Rollock’s earliest covenantal ideas, influential in Reformed thought.     

TEILHARD DE CHARDIN'S EVOLUTIONARY NATURAL THEOLOGY

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin develops, as is well known, a model of evolution as a convergent progression from primordial multiplicity through increasing degrees of complexity toward a final Omega point of spiritual consummation. I explore how Teilhard fuses Darwinian and Lamarckian theories of evolution in developing his own, and in particular his defense of the view that Lamarckism is fundamental to a proper understanding of evolution's human phase. Teilhard's scientific interpretation of evolution is inspired by Christian cosmological insights derived from patristic theology and contemporary Pauline scholarship and cannot be separated from them. His integration of science and theology provides the basis for a renewed evolutionary natural theology that supplants the traditional static models developed by William Paley and others. Teilhard's natural theology also provides a framework for theological ethical reflection on how humanity should act in its capacity as created co‐creator with God. In later work, he considers the implications of his evolutionary theology for the wider universe. Teilhard thus presents an invigorated natural theology grounded in evolution that confirms and completes a dynamic and teleological view of the cosmos.     

Influence of Interaction: A Study of Zhu Xi’s Reading of the Taijitu Shuo and the Tongshu

Zhu Xi, as a great leader of Neo-Confucianism, established the succession of the Way and raised Zhou Dunyi to the position of successor of Mencius. Zhu Xi drew attention to Zhou’s thought and wrote a commentary on his Taijitu Shuo 太極圖說 (Discussion of the Taiji Diagram) and Tongshu 通書 (Penetrating the Scripture of Change). During the process of annotating these two works, Zhu discussed the texts with scholars such as Li Tong, Lü Zuqian, Zhang Shi, and Lu Jiuyuan to improve his annotation. The suggestions from other scholars affected Zhu’s explanation of Zhou’s works. This essay studies the interaction between Zhu and his friends and attempts to explain how Zhu’s commentaries on the Taijitu Shuo and Tongshu were affected by other scholars’ suggestions.     

Globalization and the Soul—According to Teilhard, Friedman, and Others

Thomas L. Friedman's recent book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree , sees a religious value in globalization: "globalization emerges from below … from people's very souls and from their deepest aspirations" (1999, 338). Pierre Teilhard de Chardin made similar claims in 1920, calling globalization the "deep-rooted religious movement of our age" (Teilhard 1979, 211). He came to this awareness through his experience in World War I. There he began connecting globalization to its roots in evolution and to the mystics' desire for the "All," a desire he saw animating the work of believing and unbelieving scientists. He found confirmation of his ideas in the letters of Saint Paul, who told of God eventually filling all things. Teilhard used the vocabulary of mysticism to describe global developments in technology, industry, politics, and the environment, and the ardor of his texts has led to their being widely used for secular gatherings on global subjects.     

CULTURAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL INFLUENCES UPON SPATIAL-PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES IN WEST AFRICA1 – PART I

Influences culturelles et physiologiques sur les processus spatio-perceptifs dans L'Ouest africain. 1^re partie. — Plusieurs études ont été réalisées dans le Sierra Leone pour tester la validité de certaines hypothèses relatives aux effets d'une culture tribale et d'un trouble endocrinien (Kwashiorkor) sur le développement de la dépendance vis-à-vis du champ et L'acquisition d'aptitudes spatio-perceptives. La première partie traite de la construction d'un test de tridimensionnalité, des variables culturelles et d'une expérience d'enseignement de la tridimensionnalité. La seconde partie présentera L'étude des variables endocriniennes et L'analyse factorielle pour L'ensemble des résultats.     

Feminist Phenomenology and the Film World of Agnès Varda

Through a discussion of Agnès Varda's career from 1954 to 2008 that focuses particularly on La Pointe Courte (1954), L'Opéra‐Mouffe (1958), The Gleaners and I (2000), and The Beaches of Agnes (2008), this article considers the connections between Varda's filmmaking and her femaleness. It proposes that two aspects of Varda's cinema—her particularly perceptive portrayal of a set of geographical locations, and her visual and verbal emphasis on female embodiment—make a feminist existential‐phenomenological approach to her films particularly fruitful. Drawing both directly on the work of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty and on some recent film‐ and feminist‐theoretical texts that have employed his insights, it explores haptic imagery and feminist strategy in The Gleaners and I, the materialization of space characterizing Varda's blurring of fiction and documentary, and the dialectical relationship of people with their environment often observed in her cinema. It concludes that both Varda's female protagonists and the director herself may be said to perform feminist phenomenology in her films, in their actions, movement, and relationship to space, and in the carnality of voice and vision with which Varda's own subjectivity is registered within her film‐texts.     

Whose Metaphysics of Presence? Heidegger's Interpretation of Energeia and Dunamis in Aristotle

In the recently published 1924 course, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Martin Heidegger offers a detailed interpretation of Aristotle's definition of kinesis in the Physics. This interpretation identifies entelecheia with what is finished and present‐at‐an‐end and energeia with being‐at‐work toward this end. In arguing against this interpretation, the present paper attempts to show that Aristotle interpreted being from the perspective of praxis rather than poiesis and therefore did not identify it with static presence. The paper also challenges later variations of Heidegger's interpretation, in particular his account of dunamis in the 1931 course on Metaphysics Theta, which insists that its mode of being is presence‐at‐hand. By arguing that this reading too is untenable, the paper concludes that Aristotle's metaphysics is not a metaphysics of presence and that his texts instead point toward a possibility of metaphysics ignored by the attempts of Heidegger and others to overcome it.