The Modernist Fallacy: philosophy as art's undoing [1]

ABSTRACT The essay is concerned with the widely held view that contemporary fine art is obscurantist, shallow and unrewarding of attention. It is argued that the opposition between common opinion and the advocates of modernism rests upon a philosophical disagreement about the nature and value of art. An account of aesthetic experience is then presented and illustrated by reference to Raphael's The School of Athens. This account shows the reasoning implicit in modernism to rest upon a fallacy relating to the possible forms of explanation. The essay concludes by endorsing Augustine's claim that culcural intelligibility rests not on abstract reasoning but on shared affections. This sets a requirement for artists to return to making work that engages the interests of their fellow citizens.     

Parental Autonomy

ABSTRACT We argue that in societies like our own the prevailing view that parents have both special responsibilities for and special rights over their children fails to give a proper understanding of the autonomy both of parents and of children. It is our claim that there is a logical priority of the separable interests of a child over the autonomy of its parents in the fulfilment of their special responsibilities for and the exercise of their special rights over their children. However, we believe that in acknowledging the child as a distinct locus of interests appropriate weight can still be given to parental autonomy. In particular, since raising a child is a long-term commitment which plays a central role in the life-plans of many adults it will be a legitimate exercise of an adult's autonomy strongly to influence the future of any children involved in such a plan. Such influence will be quite separate from paternalistic concern for those children. But the logical priority of the child's interests will at the same time show why parents are not entitled to behave proprietorially toward their children, even when paternalistic concern is called for.     

The Duty to Aid Nonhuman Animals in Dire Need

abstract   Most moral philosophers accept that we have obligations to provide at least some aid and assistance to distant strangers in dire need. Philosophers who extend rights and obligations to nonhuman animals, however, have been less than explicit about whether we have any positive duties to free-roaming or 'wild' animals. I argue our obligations to free-roaming nonhuman animals in dire need are essentially no different to those we have to severely cognitively impaired distant strangers. I address three objections to the view that we have positive duties to free-roaming nonhuman animals, and respond to the predation objection to animal rights.     

BEYOND THE SUBLIME: THE AESTHETICS OF THE ANALOGY OF BEING (PART TWO)

This essay, the second half of a larger work, offers a constructive proposal for a theological aesthetics based upon a theological ontology of the analogia entis. The doctrine of the analogia entis, as articulated most famously by Erich Przywara, S. J., has been the subject of much criticism; however, the essay attempts to defend the doctrine, specifically, against the criticisms of Karl Barth and Martin Heidegger. The essay then offers a précis of Przywara's actual doctrine—beyond typical characterizations of it—with a view to the possibility it offers for a theological aesthetics and, specifically, for a genuinely theological account of the relationship between the beautiful and the sublime.