Philosophy Book Chapters

Communicating the Elemental Cosmos: The Hereford Mappa Mundi, Sacred Space and the City

Renee Köhler Ryan — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 17:59:34 PDT

This philosophical contribution investigates the nature and importance of sacred space considered as an elemental microcosm. Elemental microcosm is taken to mean a three-dimensional representation of our world, composed of the elements so as to form a valuable,coherent and communicable worthy whole that mirrors those same qualities of the cosmos. When a sacred space is considered as an elemental microcosm, it can intensify and mediate significant sacred aspects inherent to the city. In this way, the false antithesis between the city and what is sacred comes to light. Following upon the modern quest to rationalize everything, including the purpose and integral meaning of the metropolis, today we are in danger of losing an affiliation with the elemental, which involves openness toward notions of transcendence and the possibility of community. While the contemporary city can seem anything but receptive to a sense of divine transcendence, this contribution discusses how the presence of sacred spaces within a city can both instantiate and re-awaken awareness of what it is to be of the elemental order, which constantly transcends itself while being at the same time as much of the living cosmos as it is of humans. Discussion begins with the contrast between two ways of thinking the human relationship to everyday spaces. The space of rationality, particularly influenced by Descartes, is so abstract that it tends to separate us from imaginative ways of understanding our place in the cosmos. On the other hand, place-theory credits so much value to the individual body and personal experience that possibilities of communication and community break down. There can be neither a city nor a robust understanding of the sacred if place-theory’s presuppositions and consequences are taken to their extreme. The median way between these two positions can be found by bringing together the most important aspects of rational thought and lived bodily experience. We proceed toward doing this in several ways. The first is via Erwin Straus’s theory, examined because it allows for both abstract and concrete modes of knowing the world. Secondly, the coordinates of medieval mapping, which integrate the particular and the universal into a cosmic view.

An Archaeological Ethics: Augustine, Desmond, and Digging Back to the Agapeic Origin

Renee Köhler Ryan — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 18:25:45 PST

This essay traces some Augustinian resonances within William Desmond's thought, particularly regarding the relation between metaxological ethos and its agapeic origin.¹ Desmond is perhaps most explicit in his invocation of Augustine in his Introduction to Desire, Dialectic and Otherness: An Essay on Origins,² a work which he there describes as 'an Augustinian odyssey, embarked on in the wake of Hegel'. Like Augustine, he says he wishes 'to do justice to the self-knowledge of desire and its openness to others, without falling into unacceptable dualism' (DD, 13-14). In effect this means that Desmond wants to steer away from a sense of the origin as static, as set apart both from us and the created order.

Friendship, Poignancy and Paradox

Sandra Lynch — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:22:15 PDT

Truth and Faith in Ethics: This addition to the St Andrews Studies series contains a wide-ranging collection of essays on all aspects of moral philosophy and its impact upon public life in the twent-first century. The book brings together ethicists from a variety of traditions interested in moral truth and its relation to religious faith. A key theme is interaction between major Catholic thinkers with philosophers from non-religious traditions. Topics include reason and religion, natural law, God and morality, anti-consequentialism, rights and virtues. [Exerpt from publisher's website retrieved from: http://www.booksonix.com/imprint/bookshop/]

Hitting the Bars with Aristotle: Dating in a Time of Uncertainty

Richard P. Hamilton — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:20:38 PDT

Hitting the Bars with Aristotle: Dating in a Time of Uncertainty

What does a man do when he suddenly finds himself single? In some ways there have never been more choices available. He can hang out in bars getting slowly smashed, Bogart style, in the hope that Ingrid Bergman might walk through the door. He can go onto the singles scene and meet other equally desperate people and maybe even hook himself a stalker. Alternatively, for those who lack social skills, or are too hideously disfigured and malodorous to go out in public, there is always the Internet. But this wealth of choices belies one fact: we live in a time of profound confusion. The old ways of being a man have gone, unlamented and unlikely to return. The SNAG (Sensitive New Age Guy) never really existed outside the imagination of women's magazine editors and nobody really trusted him anyway.

The truth is that no straight man with a modicum of decency really knows what to do. Most of us have tried to do what mothers, sisters and female friends have taught us, and be nice. We paid lots of compliments, bought gifts, meals and drinks and generally tried to offend as little as possible, in the hope perhaps that we might bore women into submission. All the time we felt a gnawing unease that the old saw was true and that women really did prefer jerks. We know that partly because we watched our mothers, sisters and female friends dating them. [From the Author]

Dating - Philosophy for Everyone: Flirting With Big Ideas

Progressing from the first flirtatious moment of eye contact to the selection of a 'mate', this enlightening book offers playful philosophical explorations of the dating game for anyone who has dated, is dating, or intends to date again. It offers amusing and enlightening philosophical insights into the dating game. It helps demystify coupling in the 21st century for those young daters just entering the fray, and those veterans returning to the game. It features contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, communications, theology, economics, health sciences, professional ethics, and engineering and applied sciences. It opens with Carrie Jenkins' ground-breaking essay, 'The Philosophy of Flirting', first published in The Philosopher's Magazine.

ISBN: 9781444330229

Respecting an Establishment of Religion

Richard Hamilton — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:46:07 PST

A striking feature of minimally well-functioning legal systems is their ability to decide cases which turn on morally contested concepts. A natural lawyer, for whom there is an intimate connection between law and morality, may view this as proof of an underlying moral consensus which obtains despite the superficial appearance of moral disagreement It is more plausible, I suggest, to view this facility in terms of the legal positivist insight that law is a mechanism for social control and regulation, which operates despite the lack of moral consensus. In the present climate, there can be few concepts more contested than that of religion. On the one hand, the barbarians are at the gate, in the form of the “new atheists,” such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris, whose increasingly raucous diatribes against religion weigh down newspaper columns and websites. On the other, messianic zanies of all persuasions seem determined to fulfil scriptural prophecies of Apocalypse. Both sides hold wildly differing views on the nature of religious belief which in turn diverge dramatically from mainstream views. Nevertheless, in the context of this chapter, I will examine a few instances, where it seems to me that the American legal system is able to work reasonably well despite the profound disagreement that bedevils American society over issues of religion and spirituality. This is all the more striking given that some of the cases involve Americans’ peculiarly infantile attitude to drugs and alcohol.

ISBN: 9781920899318

The Potentiality of Authenticity in Becoming a Teacher

Angus Brook — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:44:33 PST

This chapter arises out of the transition from a PhD thesis on Heidegger’s phenomenology to my attempts to come to terms with ‘becoming a teacher’. The chapter will contain two avenues of exploration; the first providing an interpretation of the phenomenon of education in Heideggerian terms, the second attempting to show how Heidegger’s phenomenology might be constituted as a lived experience of teaching. The general aim of this chapter, as such, is to move from a purely theoretical Heideggerian exposition of the phenomenon of education to a way of applying this exposition to the practices of teaching.

"Desire": The Language of Love in the Feminine in Heloise's Letters

Carmel Posa — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:57:07 PDT

ISBN: 9780866983952

Dying With Dignity: Questions and More Questions - The Philosophical Perspective

Philip Matthews — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:51:28 PDT

Most moral issues require slow thinking because the issues are complex and rarely amenable to black and white decision making. There is currently concern with the medical, ethical and legal issues associated with treatment options for people suffering at the end stage of their lives. The down side is that most serious thinkers are also busy people. Thus, the opportunity to take time out like this is an all too rare event.

ISBN: 978-0-646-49037-3