SECULARIZING DEMONS: FUNDAMENTALIST NAVIGATIONS IN RELIGION AND SECULARITY

Since the turn of the millennium, theologians and secular scholars of religion have increasingly begun exploring the relationship between transhumanism and religion. However, analyses of anti‐transhumanist apocalypticisms are still rare, and those that exist are situated mainly among broader explorations of religious and secular bioconservatism. This article addresses this lack of specificity by drawing analyses of transhumanism and religion into dialogue with explorations of contemporary demonology through a close study of the beliefs of the evangelical conspiracist Thomas Horn and the anti‐transhumanist milieu around him. Exploring the milieu's multifaceted demonology of the secular world in light of genealogies of religion and secularity, the article situates Horn's demonology as one attempt to negotiate these genealogies, using what Sean McCloud terms a “‘supernatural’ hermeneutics of suspicion” that sees spiritual forces as the structural base of reality. It argues that, while fringe, milieus like Horn's illuminate broader cultural tensions and genealogical relations surrounding the place of religion in a secular(izing) world.     

Stabilizing and Changing Phenomenal Worlds: Ludwik Fleck and Thomas Kuhn on Scientific Literature

In the work of both Ludwik Fleck and Thomas Kuhn the scientific literature plays important roles for stability and change of scientific phenomenal worlds. In this article we shall introduce the analyses of scientific literature provided by Fleck and Kuhn, respectively. From this background we shall discuss the problem of how divergent thinking can emerge in a dogmatic atmosphere. We shall argue that in their accounts of the factors inducing changes of scientific phenomenal worlds Fleck and Kuhn offer substantially different approaches, and we shall discuss in which respects their approaches may be compatible. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

略论托马斯·斯坎伦的契约主义

托马斯·斯坎伦是以约翰·罗尔斯为首的平等的自由主义阵营内一位重要政治哲学家,面对《正义论》发表以后所遭受的各方面的批评,他在罗尔斯道德契约论的基础上,转变罗尔斯专注于宏观社会基本制度的学术走向,提出了一种实质性的契约主义,从微观角度来论证个人道德的本质,论证人们为什么要关注正当和不正当的问题,论证为什么正当和不正当对其它关怀和价值具有优先性。从而发展了罗尔斯道德理论的契约形式,对罗尔斯强于制度美德而疏于个人道德论证的缺陷做了有益补充,在伦理学界引起了较大反响。     

Plumbing the Depths: A Recovery of Natural Law and Natural Wisdom in the Context of Debates about Evolutionary Purpose

I argue that the theological traditions of natural law and wisdom offer helpful meeting points in discussions about evolutionary “purpose” and contingency in relation to theological purpose, and serve to form the basis for a theology of nature. Natural law offers a way of describing the ordered action of God toward complexity in a contingent world without using the language of either “design” or “progress.” The theological tradition of wisdom as implicit in the natural world, learned in the human community, and received as gift of grace offers a further means of interconnecting biological reality with spiritual experience, while retaining distinctions. Wisdom and natural law intersect inasmuch as natural law is participation in Eternal Wisdom, although the latter makes sense only from the prior perspective of faith.     

Medieval Consideration and Moral Pace

This essay examines the relationship between virtue and understandings of time through a comparative examination of two medieval Christian writers, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas. By locating temporal dimensions of virtue primarily in discussions of prudence, this essay compares Thomas's account of the virtue of counsel as preparatory to prudent judgment with Bernard's earlier account of consideration as an integrating virtue that coordinates an examination of physical surroundings and social responsibilities with an examination of one's own inner life and history of moral decisions. The essay argues that accounts of virtue ethics focusing on tradition‐specific views of the human good and practical reasoning are insufficient if they do not also examine how practical reasoning interprets and responds to religious interpretations of time that disclose the distinctive kinds of moral problems arising in each historical period.     

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.     

THOMAS AQUINAS BETWEEN JUST WAR AND PACIFISM

Some recent authors have argued that Aquinas deliberately integrated a pacifist outlook into his just war theory. Others, by contrast, have maintained that his rejection of pacifism was unequivocal. The present article attempts to set the historical record straight by an examination of Aquinas's writings on this topic. In addition to Q. 40, A. 1 of Summa theologiae II–II, the text usually cited in this connection, this article considers the biblical commentaries where Aquinas explains how the Gospel “precepts of patience,” especially Matthew 5:39, “Do not resist evil,” should be interpreted in light of the doctrine of just war. The article concludes that Aquinas formulated a two‐stage theory whereby pacifism was rejected as a suitable form of agency for the state (respublica), while it was affirmed as the appropriate response to evil for the agency of the church (ecclesia).     

Odysseans of the Twenty-First Century

In his book Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human (2005), author-journalist Joel Garreau identifies four technologies whose synergistic activity may transform humankind into a state transcending present human nature: genetic, robotic, information, and nano (GRIN) technologies. If the GRIN technologies follow Moore's Law, as information technology has done for the past four decades, Homo sapiens and human society may be unimaginably different before the middle of this century. But among scientists, futurists, and other pundits there is no agreement on the nature and ramifications of this transformation. Based on dozens of interviews, Garreau sees three possible scenarios for our species. The Heaven Scenario foresees enhanced bodies and minds in a disease-free world, perhaps even immortality; the Hell Scenario warns of losing our identity as a biological entity and perhaps the demise of liberal democracy; the Prevail Scenario predicts that we will muddle through the GRIN technology revolution basically intact, as we have prevailed during past technological upheavals. In this review, these scenarios are examined in the context of Kuhn's “normal” versus “extraordinary” science and in the context of current understanding about gene function.     

CONCEIVABILITY AND MODAL KNOWLEDGE

Abstract: This article is a discussion of Hume's maxim Nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible. First I explain this maxim and distinguish it from the principle Whatever cannot be imagined (conceived), is impossible. Next I argue that Thomas Reid's criticism of the maxim fails and that the arguments by Tamar Szábo Gendler and John Hawthorne for the claim that “it is uncontroversial that there are cases where we are misled” by the maxim are unconvincing. Finally I state the limited but real value of the maxim: it does help us, in certain cases, reliably to make up our minds. Along the way I show that Reid, his criticism of the maxim notwithstanding, actually employs it, and I furthermore argue that the principle What is inconceivable, is impossible is spurious.     

Über ein Hobbesianisches Modell

A Hobbesian Model. If ever possible the modelling of the abstract pattern of the item of a philosophical theory belongs, alas!, to its interpretation. In the case of the Hobbesian theory of the natural right and the natural laws (Lev c. XIV, XV) the mathematics of the covenant-model and of its interpretation by an model of preferences and utilities is a neglect task till now. Its performence shows certain shortcomings of the Hobbesian theory.