PHILOSOPHY AS EMPIRICAL EXPLORATION OF LIVING

This essay describes an approach to designing a course in philosophy as a way of life (PWOL) around a set of immersive “spiritual exercises” through which students might examine their desires, engaging students in a process of testing their own experience against philosophical theories and theories against their own experience. These are used to tie together the units of a course covering classical Western and Eastern philosophical traditions, and to supplement traditional philosophical analysis of texts and arguments with ways of exploring what it might be like to live as a Platonist, Stoic, or Confucian. The essay details several exercises, engages perspectives on PWOL from Pierre Hadot and John Cooper, and addresses the question of how to assess immersive exercises.     

On the Limits of Rights and Representation

This essay explores the degree to which public reason can sustain political liberalism's commitment to justice and pluralism without attending to the role of what Jeffrey Stout calls “cultural inheritance” in shaping and justifying political commitments. At issue is whether public reason is the best resource for guiding conversations on political matters that are enmeshed in religious commitments and moral beliefs. Unless public reason can account for cultural inheritance, and foster a deliberative context in which political actors might grapple with the relationship between overlapping political claims and comprehensive doctrines, public reason will remain narrow and inadequate in a contemporary world where epistemic diversity is increasingly at odds with political liberalism's normative model of social cooperation and public deliberation.     

Aquinas and the Natural Law

Recent decades have seen a shift away from the traditional view that Aquinas's theory of the natural law is meant to supply us with normative guidance grounded in a substantive theory of human nature. In the present essay, I argue that this is a mistake. Expanding on the suggestions of Jean Porter and Ralph McInerny, I defend a derivationist reading of ST I‐II, Q. 94, A. 2 according to which Aquinas takes our knowledge of the genuine goods of human life and their proper ordering to one another to be self‐evident only to the wise who are able to discern the truth about our God‐given human nature. I then show that this reading provides a better account of Aquinas's view than two recent alternatives: John Finnis's brand of inclinationism and Daniel Mark Nelson's virtue‐based interpretation.     

Face memory and hemispheric preference: Emotionality and extraversion

Subjects made arousing or nonarousing judgments about photographs of strangers, then had an unannounced recognition test over the photographs. Emotional orienting tasks led to better retention than nonemotional tasks. Assuming emotionality is predominantly a right-hemisphere activity, then this result is consistent with other research showing a right-hemisphere advantage in processing faces. This difference was most clear for subjects with a right-hemisphere cognitive style. Extraversion had no effect on face recognition, nor did a subject's cognitive style seem to be associated with extraversion or neuroticism scores.     

Typology,the eight-function model,and archetypal complexes

This clinical presentation shows what insights a typology-conscious analysis of clients and their families may lead to and points out what is added by applying John Beebe’s eight-function, eight-archetype model. To reflect on the inner balance between archetypal complexes in the eight-function structure that holds our psyche, the author invites clients to do a typological analysis, including an analysis of their archetypal patterns, which may, itself, provoke anxiety. This article includes a presentation of ideas and experiences sparked when confronting these complexes in clinical work. Clients are introduced to six stages of coping with stress that may allow them to be more conscious of their complexes when triggered. These stages are Faint, Freeze, Flight, Fidget, Fight, and Flow. To identify whether the stress is physiological, emotional, or intellectual, the idea of the Triune Brain is introduced. The therapeutic work may lead to redemption from opposites, which is an ethical task.     

Clinical Pragmatism in Bioethics: A Pastoral Approach

This paper addresses the integration of the philosophical school of American Pragmatism, as articulated by John Dewey and others, with the disciplines of bioethics and pastoral care. It suggests new avenues for theological reflection in the bioethical enterprise. It was first presented as the inaugural Anton. T. Boisen Lecture in Pastoral Care and Education in 2004 under the auspices of Continuum Hospice Care, New York.Curtis W. Hart, M.Div., is Director of Pastoral Care and Education, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Center and Lecturer in Public Health, Medicine and Psychiatry, Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Medical College, Cornell University. Correspondence to Curtis W. Hart, Cuh9001@nyp.org.     

Replies

John Fischer challenges me to defend my arguments regarding the badness of death; I sharpen my position, but make some concessions, discussing the possibility of postmortem harm. In response to John Deigh, I defend the account of disgust given in Hiding from Humanity, together with the research of Paul Rozin that I follow there. I discuss Patrick Devlin’s conservative position, agree that we need to object to its emphasis on solidarity, not only to its emphasis on disgust, and argue that Deigh’s statement of Devlin’s position is too kind to Devlin. In response to Henry Richardson, I summarize my reasons for thinking that the classical social contract tradition cannot handle well the problems posed by the issue of justice for people with disabilities, and that even Rawls’s position requires major modification if it is to do so. I explore differences between Richardson’s position and my own on the issues of self-respect, liberty, and primary goods.     

Re-appraising the Subject and the Social in Western Philosophy and in Contemporary Orthodox thought

The notion of a constitutive lack, which formed the ambivalent initial framework of Western metaphysics, marks the contemporary attempt to think anew the social and the subject. While metaphysics had difficulties to justify ontologically the event of sociality and was tempted to construct a closed subjectivity, post-metaphysical thought by contrast justifies often the sociality of a non-identity. The presuppositions of Orthodox-Christian theology allow us to think of subjectivity and sociality in terms of a different ontology, elaborating a new synthesis between anthropology and eschatology, within which the subject can emerge as radical sociality and natal receptivity, as free and true in its very relationality. The most profound and acute intellectual demands of our present time could then meet central notions of the Orthodox-Christian heritage and point at the perspective of a new historical encounter, which enriches both traditions by mutually engaging to each others fundamental experiences