Review

Book reviewed in this article:
Jean Porter, Natural and Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition for Christian Ethics     

绝对与人类自由--谢林《自由论》探析

本文集中探讨谢林的《自由论》及其在西方哲学史上的意义,作者在指出这部著作不足的同时,充分肯定谢林对自由及与之相关问题的发问,并认为这是近现代西方哲学对人类自身命运的一次重要思考。     

Variants of the basic calculus of constructions

In this paper, a number of different versions of the basic calculus of constructions that have appeared in the literature are compared and the exact relationships between them are determined. The biggest differences between versions are those between the original version of Coquand and the version in early papers on the subject by Seldin. None of these results is very deep, but it seems useful to collect them in one place.     

“Playing God? Yes!” Religion in the Light of Technology

If we appeal to God when our technology (including medicine) fails, we assume a " God of the gaps." It is religiously preferable to appreciate technological competence. Our successes challenge, however, religious convictions. Modifying words and images is not enough, as technology affects theology more deeply. This is illustrated by the history of chemistry. Chemistry has been perceived as wanting to transform and purify reality rather than to understand the created order. Thus, unlike biology and physics, chemistry did not provide a fertile basis for natural theologies. It is argued that an active, transformative role of humans is appropriate in biblically inspired religions and called for in the light of imperfections and evil in the world. When the expression "playing God" is used dismissively, as if we trespass upon God–given territory, a theologically problematical association of God and the given order is assumed. A different view of the human calling can be articulated by drawing upon the Christian heritage and by developing an antinatural religious naturalism.     

Theory construction and existential description in Schelling’s treatise on freedom

Despite considerable recent attention, important features of Schelling’s famous work, the 1809 treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom, remain under-explored. One of these is the methodological dualism which Schelling advocates at the very start of the text. Schelling aims to weld together into a coherent position a first-person phenomenology of freedom and an explanation achieved by locating freedom within a conceptual system articulating the basic structure of the world. Most interpretations of the Freiheitsschrift, however, concentrate on only one of these approaches, thus foreshortening their understanding of Schelling’s enterprise. The article explores this tendency towards one-sidedness by considering two sophisticated recent interpretations of the work, taking opposite tacks. One, by Markus Gabriel, focuses on the distinctive, self-reflexive metaphysics which Schelling proposes, while the other, by Sebastian Gardner, claims that Schelling’s ontology is extrapolated entirely from his account of our moral consciousness, a procedure pioneered by Kant. The article argues that neither of these interpretations can do full justice to Schelling’s project. Furthermore, although the Freiheitsschrift is not entirely successful, and hence points towards later developments in Schelling’s thinking, its treatment of freedom is superior to the ‘soft naturalism’ pioneered by Peter Strawson, and currently influential across various philosophical traditions.     

Ibn ʿArabī (1165–1240) and Rūmī (1207–1273) on the Question of Evil: Discontinuities in Sufi Metaphysics

This article compares and contrasts Ibn ?Arabī’s and Rūmī’s accounts of evil. Ibn ?Arabī explains the existence of evil as a consequence of both metaphysical necessity and God’s volitional act. Evil is the inevitable ‘shadow’ of existence implied by the Infinity of God, and God’s mercy existentiates the possibilities ‘hidden’ in the Infinite, allowing this metaphysical necessity to emerge. In contrast to Ibn ?Arabī’s necessitarian-cum-volitional theodicy, Rūmī presents an almost exclusively volitional theodicy. He traces the roots of evil to the Divine Will. To preserve God’s moral perfection, he frequently points to the positive compensating functions of the existence of evil in the world. Ibn ?Arabī’s theodicy enables him to accentuate the necessity of evil in order to save the act of will, and hence God’s perfection, from being directly related to the emergence of evil. Rūmī’s volitional theodicy, however, relates the Divine Will directly to evil, and subsequently attempts to preserve the purity of the Divine intention by accentuating all the positive compensations.     

荀子的经济制度伦理思想及其现代价值

当前学界对于荀子经济制度伦理思想的研究十分少见。荀子的经济制度及其制度伦理蕴涵源于人性恶的道德起源论,义利辩证统一的义利观、“欲”、“物”“相持而长”的可持续发展观和朴素的分配正义观念是其经济制度伦理思想的主体内涵,它对于当前我国的伦理经济和市场经济体制建设主要在“义利两有”、“以义制利”的制度伦理导向可以促进“经济人”和“道德人”的有效统一,保障市场经济秩序的稳定和谐与可持续性发展,以及树立分配正义观念,促进制度创新,提高制度运作效率等方面有一定的启示意义。     

Some differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s conceptions of transcendental philosophy

This article compares the differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s conceptions of the “transcendental.” It argues that, for Kant, the term “transcendental” stands for what is otherwise called “metaphysical,” i.e. non-empirical knowledge. As opposed to his predecessors, who had believed that such non-empirical knowledge was possible for meta-physical, i.e. transcendent objects, Kant’s contribution was to show how there can be non-empirical (a priori) knowledge not about transcendent objects, but about the necessary conditions for the experience of natural, non-transcendent objects. Hence the transcendental for Kant ends up connoting a philosophy that claims to show how subjective forms of intuition and thinking have objective validity for all objects as appearances. By contrast, Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy takes a different set of problems for its starting point. His quest is to avoid the uncertainty of empirical knowledge about all kinds of objects that present themselves to us as something other than, something transcendent to, consciousness. Transcendental or reliable knowledge is made possible through the phenomenological reduction that focuses strictly on consciousness as immediately self-given to itself—reflection upon “pure” consciousness. The contents of such consciousness are not the same for everyone and at every time, so they are not necessary and invariant in the way that Kant’s pure forms of subjectivity are. Since Husserl however also claims that the all objects, as intentional objects, are constituted in and for consciousness, an investigation into the structures of pure subjectivity can also be called “transcendental” in a further sense of showing the genesis of our knowledge of objects that are transcendent to consciousness. Moreover, since Husserl’s philosophical interest is precisely upon the structures of that consciousness, he also concentrates on necessary conditions for the constitution of these objects in his philosophical work. Hence, there ends up being a great deal of overlap between his own transcendental project and Kant’s in spite of the differences in what each of them means by the term “transcendental.”

THE SUPERNATURAL AS LANGUAGE GAME

Abstract. For many in the Anglo‐American tradition of language analysis, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great progenitor of twentieth‐century philosophy of language, showed conclusively that theological terms lack any referent in reality and therefore represent a discourse that can do no more than manifest the existential attitudes that speakers take toward reality as a whole. To think that such terms represent more is to be bewitched by the use of language. Is it possible, however, that theological language references a fundamental human drive? In this article I reexamine the dyad of nature and supernature from the perspective of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Perhaps surprisingly, Wittgenstein's thought on the subject offers much more than his famous, terse aphorism at the conclusion of his first masterwork, the Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus ([1921] 1961, 74, §7): “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” Furthermore, the basic Tractarian drive to determine the relationship between language and reality, which is redirected but not extinguished in Wittgenstein's second, divergent, opus, the Philosophical Investigations ([1953] 1967), may be the place for a renewed examination of what the supernatural means in human discourse. Does talk of God give expression to the fundamental transcendence of human knowledge? Is it a language game we can eschew?     

The Economy of the Gift: Paul Ricoeur's Significance for Theological Ethics

Paul Ricoeur's understanding of the relations of faith, love, and hope suggests a unique approach to theological ethics, one that holds fresh promise for bringing together considerations of the good (teleology) and the right (deontology) around the notion of an “economy of the gift.” The economy of the gift articulates Ricoeur's distinctively dialectical understanding of the relation of the human and the divine, and the resulting dialectical moral relation of the self and the other. Despite our fallen condition, Ricoeur suggests, we are called by the divine to embrace the radical possibility of the reconciliation of human goods under the requirement of accountability to human diversity and otherness.