KAGAWA'S COSMIC PURPOSE AND MODERNIZATION IN JAPAN

Kagawa Tyohiko (1888–1960), who was a well known Christian leader and social reformer, is re‐evaluated from the perspective of a public philosophy, and as an example of the possibilities for collaboration and conflict between science and the religious humanities in East Asia. His last book, Cosmic Purpose, which appears to be a kind of natural theology, is analyzed from the perspective of the hidden topic of human evil. By considering Kagawa's deep religious sensibility and conscience, the book can be interpreted to reflect on the wrong directionality selected by modern Japan's leaders that resulted in the tragic war.     

Constructing bridges and systemic connections: In brief dynamic therapy

The author outlines how the conceptual framework which underpins cyclical psychodynamics, a branch of relational psychoanalysis, provides an opportunity for a coherent integration of constructivist CBT principles and techniques and family systems theory within a model of brief dynamic therapy. Drawing upon Wachtel’s articulation of a more flexible notion of the internal world and one in which current interpersonal patterns are seen to shape the psyche and internal conflicts, the author goes on to identify ways in which attending to a client’s behaviour and the ways in which affective experience is expressed interpersonally can open the way to an integration of therapeutic features from constructivist CBT and family systems theory. The contribution that coaching a client in the ways in which they behave interpersonally in the context of both family and workplace relationships can make to therapeutic effectiveness is explored. These themes are illustrated with a case study.     

EXTINCTION,NATURAL EVIL,AND THE COSMIC CROSS

Did the God of the Bible create a Darwinian world in which violence and suffering (disvalue) are the means by which the good (value) is realized? This is Christopher Southgate's insightful and dramatic formulation of the theodicy problem. In addressing this problem, the Exeter theologian rightly invokes the Theology of the Cross in its second manifestation, that is, we learn from the cross of Jesus Christ that God is present to nonhuman as well as human victims of predation and extinction. God co‐suffers with creatures in their despair, abandonment, physical suffering, and death. What I will add with more force than Southgate is this: the Easter resurrection is a prolepsis of the eschatological new creation, and it is God's new creation which retroactively determines past creation. Although this does not eliminate the theodicy question, it lessens its moral sting.     

Is systemic thinking really extraneous to common sense?

Systemic therapists assume, but have not yet proved that ordinary people: (i) normally do not use triadic thinking and (ii) are able, thanks to therapists' interviewing techniques, to construct triadic explanations. To test these assumptions this study analyses the explanations provided by 400 undergraduates of an unexpected piece of behaviour framed in four stimulus situations where the breadth of the observation field was manipulated. The results show that triadic explanations are unusual and increase with the widening of the field of observation from the monad to the triad. It is the ‘enigmatic’ triadic situation – adding a puzzling discrepancy between the actors' forms of behaviour – that elicits more triadic explanations. This suggests that therapists should explore with clients the contradictions disclosed by the widening of the field of observation and support reframings actively co‐constructed with them instead of ‘pre‐packaged’ ones.     

Hypercitizenship and the Management of Genetic Diversity: Sociology of Law and the Key Systemic Bifurcation Between the Ring Singularity and the Neofeudal Age

This article is essentially theoretical and is focused on the allocative function of the legal systems to attract/reject different capitals according to their procedures to shape norms and laws. This function of the legal systems is pivotal in our times as humankind is facing a systemic and evolutionary bifurcation between the heideggerian Gegnet of a strategic, high speed convergence (i.e., Singularity) among robotics, informatics, nanotechnologies, and genetics (RINGs)—which will reshape human life in terms of its life quality styles and standards especially regarding health and environment matters, and the so called Neofeudal Scenario (NS) supported by those for whom the Industrial Model failed and the only way to save humankind and its environment would be a kind return to a Medieval life style based on a slow pace of life and austerity. This article provides an overview of the most important and recent international references regarding the two alternatives of bifurcation and describes a potential paradigm shift inside the systemic approach to reframe the conceptual map of global change through a systemic epistemology of the sociology of law.     

Moral Evil,Freedom and the Goodness of God: Why Kant Abandoned Theodicy

Kant proclaimed that all theodicies must fail in ‘On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy’, but it is mysterious why he did so since he had developed a theodicy of his own during the critical period. In this paper, I offer an explanation of why Kant thought theodicies necessarily fail. In his theodicy, as well as in some of his works in ethics, Kant explained moral evil as resulting from unavoidable limitations in human beings. God could not create finite beings without such limitations and so could not have created humans that were not prone to committing immoral acts. However, the work of Carl Christian Eberhard Schmid showed Kant that given his own beliefs about freedom and the nature of responsibility one could not account for moral evil in this way without tacitly denying that human beings were responsible for their actions. This result is significant not only because it explains an otherwise puzzling shift in Kant's philosophy of religion, but also because it shows that the theodicy essay provides powerful evidence that Kant's thinking about moral evil and freedom underwent fundamental shifts between early works such as the Groundwork and later works like the Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason.     

A RANDOMNESS‐BASED THEODICY FOR EVOLUTIONARY EVILS

We develop and knit together several theodicies in order to find a more complete picture of why certain forms of (nonhuman) animal suffering might be permitted by a perfect being. We focus on an especially potent form of the problem of evil, which arises from considering why a perfectly good, wise, and powerful God might use evolutionary mechanisms that predictably result in so much animal suffering and loss of life. There are many existing theodicies on the market, and although they offer helpful resources, we combine and further develop several proposals to produce a composite theodicy that avoids certain shortcomings of the individual theodicies. An important element of our project is locating a role for randomness in cosmic and biological evolution. In particular, we show how randomness might enhance or enable certain goods, including everlasting goods, at the risk of temporary evils.