Parallel,additional or alternative histories of philosophy? Questions on the theory and methodology of the history of philosophy

ABSTRACT

Methodologies and theories for writing histories of philosophy are particularly relevant today due to the abounding challenges to the discipline that have emerged: e.g. the problem concerning the precise mode of the inclusion of non-Western philosophies in the history of philosophy, the response to postcolonial considerations at large, the transformative impact of new media and the question whether the history of philosophy is primarily a philosophical, rather than merely historical, enterprise. À propos the relative scarcity that is to be witnessed in explicit articulations of methodologies and theories for writing histories of philosophy, in this note I focus on certain spontaneous, rather than theoretically planned, responses that have emerged to the above challenges – in particular, Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy without any gaps – and in conclusion, as an example of methodological development, I touch on some of the problems we encounter in the case of the inclusion of Byzantine philosophy in the history of philosophy.     

WHOSE RIGHTS,AND WHAT's THE DIFFERENCE? A CRITIQUE OF BETH SINGER'S “HUMAN RIGHTS: SOME CURRENT ISSUES”

Abstract: In this article I argue against the rights‐based framework defining the abortion debate, and do so by considering the views of Beth Singer, a philosopher whose work conveys a broadly pragmatist formulation of traditional rights‐based language. Although Singer's schema presents a fruitful vantage point from which to consider the abortion question through the discourse of rights, even Singer's use of the language of rights ultimately fails adequately to address the subject. I challenge Singer's view by taking up John Dewey's concept of reflective morality, elucidated in his 1932 Ethics.     

Citizen Vermigli

Abstract

Peter Martyr Vermigli’s flight from Italy in 1542 left him divested of his Catholic religious heritage, but the same is not to be asserted for his Florentine republicanism. Vermigli has been viewed either as a republican (Bravi) or inclined to monarchism (Kingdon and Kirby) consonant with his time in England. This essay treats Vermigli’s presuppositions on what the human animal is, and what polity best suits such a creature. This essay engages Vermigli the Humanist in light of his Christian anthropology, and in particular his thinking about the ultimate end for humans created in the image and likeness of God, as well as what this likeness tell us about the human ability to reach its telos faced with the reality of the Fall.     

Peter Martyr Vermigli,history, and the Anabaptist menace

Abstract

This article demonstrates Peter Martyr Vermigli’s use of historical perspective in his exegesis in his opposition to Anabaptists, taking as a test case the subject of prophecy. By contrasting the material on prophecy found in Vermigli’s Loci communeswith his handling of a number of key Pauline passages, the essay also seeks to make a point about our understanding of the man and his genius, namely, that one fails to obtain a full sense of the latter if one restricts oneself to the Loci communes. For while Vermigli’s loci on prophecy contain mostly standard medieval fare, his expositions of Paul exhibit originality and ingenuity.     

Church discipline and excommunication

Abstract

A perspective of the Reformed conception of church discipline in the sixteenth century has highlighted two models: the disciplinarian one associated with Geneva and the magistratical one identified with Zurich. This essay argues that a simple binary distinction between the Geneva and Zurich models of church discipline is inadequate to account for the complexity and diversity of sixteenth-century Reformed theological positions, particularly as represented in the articulations of the influential reformer, Peter Martyr Vermigli.     

Differential reinforcement of lever-press durations: Effects of deprivation level and reward magnitude

Three experiments investigated the performance of rats on a task involving differential reinforcement of lever-press durations. Experiment 1, which employed a discrete-trials procedure, manipulated deprivation level between subjects and reward magnitude within subjects. The minimum lever-press duration which would result in reward was varied from .4 to 6.4 sec. It was found that low deprivation resulted in longer mean durations and less response variability at the higher criterial values than did high deprivation. The magnitude of reward was not found to affect performance. Experiment 2 manipulated reward magnitude between subjects while holding deprivation level constant, and used the same general procedures as in Experiment 1. Small reward resulted in longer mean lever-press durations and less variability in responding than did large reward at the higher criterial values. The intertrial intervals were omitted in Experiment 3 in which deprivation level was varied between subjects and reinforcement was delivered only for response durations extending between 6.0 and 7.6 sec. Low deprivation resulted in longer mean lever-press durations and less response variability than did high deprivation, but the probability of a rewarded press duration did not differ between groups. The results overall are consistent with the hypothesis that low deprivation and small reward magnitude lead to weaker goal-approach responses and, hence, to less competition with lever holding. The deprivation and reward magnitude manipulations did not appear to influence lever holding performance by affecting the ability of animals to form temporal discriminations.