Grounding Ethics Nondualistically: Fruit from a Synthetic Reading of John Wesley and Masao Abe

Medieval philosophical and theological commitments played a fundamental role in the construct of societal norms in Western and Central Europe. Aristotelianism dominated the intellectual landscape of the medieval period, and grounded the movement known as scholasticism whose most influential intellectual was the Dominican monk, Thomas Aquinas. It was Aquinas’ recognizably Aristotelian intellectual methodology that placed the tools of reason at the forefront of theological investigation, and medieval scholasticism emerged from this means of intellectual praxis. The result of this intellectual paradigm affected both the church and the society. The church and its theological commitments became an amalgam of theological and philosophical commitments as intellectuals worked to build a holistic system that accounted for, in toto, a comprehensively rational view of the world. As scholasticism grew, society became more stratified, and at the pinnacle of society was the church and clergy with its scholastic theology, followed by the aristocracy, and finally the marginalized hoi polloi. A significant breach in the medieval scholastic bulwark occurred when Martin Luther posted his, now famous, 95 theses on a church door in Wittenberg. Luther attacked the Aristotelian paradigm whose roots undergird theological, intellectual, and political commitments in Western and Central Europe. Luther’s view of sola scriptura challenged the Catholic Church’s institutional power, as it holds the Scriptures to be the primary source for Christian living, and calls into question the philosophical/theological constructs of the established church. Sola scriptura drove educational change, as literacy and theological training were understood to be necessary for properly equipping the laity to be able to understand scripture. Personal responsibility theologically led to revolutionary changes in the way in which individuals viewed themselves vocationally, as well as within society. Ultimately, it was theological revolution and the subsequent movement away from scholasticism that reconstituted education in Western and Central Europe. Literacy, coupled with increased educational opportunities, brought a seismic change to much of the European continent, as education became increasingly available to all.KeywordsLutherReformationScholasticism Sola scriptura LiteracyEducationThomas AquinasAristotle

One of the most important problems confronted by existentialist thought clearly appears to be the one referring to the possible contradiction between authenticity and ethics. This problem has not been sufficiently explored in philosophical literature, despite being one of the core issues proposed within existentialist thought. In the following, we, the authors of this essay, shall argue that such an argument- i.e., that existentialism fails to prove a strong link between ethics and authenticity-is misleading, since it is generally built upon two erroneous beliefs concerning existentialism: first, that existentialism fully acknowledges that an authentic decision can be taken from a disembodied position, from a purely rational, detached, unambiguous position and, second, that for existentialism the ethical and the authentic are completely independent entities. There is at least one existentialist perspective from which this argument appears to clearly fail. We shall consider Simone de Beauvoir's conception of ethics and of the authentic as being one of the existentialist views on authenticity and ethics that most clearly demonstrates why such conception of existentialist ethics and authenticity are mistaken or are at least based on a very narrow view on existentialism. Authenticity, de Beauvoir argues, cannot be achieved or pursued from a place which fails to recognize our phenomenological and existentialist true condition: our being in the world as ambiguous and incarnate subjects. Moreover, for de Beauvoir, being moral is a straightforward consequence of being authentic. Acts can be made from a disembodied perspective, but they cannot then be said to be moral or authentic from de Beauvoir's point of view. Thus, we shall argue that the argument according to which embodiment, authenticity, and ethics are not necessarily interdependent within existentialist thought succeeds only when a very limited (or even equivocal, de Beauvoir would argue) notion of authenticity and of the relationship between ethics and authenticity is at stake. One of the ways to flesh out the problem we are arguing against is by showing how an utterly unethical deed might result out of a deeply authentic action. This has been recently done in a most lucid fashion by Iddo Landau in To Kill a Mandarin1 through a thought experiment. We shall make use of Landau's argument in order to clearly explain and exemplify the general problem we attempt to show as rising from a flawed understanding of existentialist principles. The first part of this essay, thus, will summarize Landau's argument by explaining the thought experiment proposed by him and its consequences. In the second part we will deal with de Beauvoir's views on the authentic ethical subject as necessarily embodied, ambiguous, and connected to the other in order to show, finally, that disembodied, unattached, abstract actions cannot be considered authentic actions, nor, obviously, are they moral actions (this is why a truly authentic subject would not agree to kill a Mandarin). The problem presented is then solved: there is no clash between ethics and authenticity from the existentialist point of view, when the authentic subject is recognized as a necessarily basis for moral behavior, thus inevitably connecting the later to authenticity. Landau's experiment thus is misleading because it is in itself an experiment based on a conception of existentialist authenticity and ethics that is problematic on two counts: a conception which considers a disembodied, abstract subject as possibly authentic from the existentialist point of view and as capable, out of his/her own authenticity, of committing seriously immoral acts. Landau's Thought Experiment In his article To Kill a Mandarin, Landau deals with the i mplications of a thought experiment drawn from Balzac's Le Pere Goriot. The thought experiment consists of the following situation: Suppose a magician approaches you, and suggests that he will give you that thing you so much want. …

Practical Divinity: Theology in the Wesleyan Tradition. By Thomas Langford. Abingdon Press, 1983. 303 pp. $9.95.

Book Review: Practical Divinity: Theology in the Wesleyan Tradition

Intellectual Conflict in an Inquisitor. Philosophical Possibilities and Theological Commitments in the Mind of Guido Terreni

It has long been recognized that early twentieth-century Catholicism experienced a renaissance of both mysticism and the novel. In this essay, I will examine these phenomena together, and ask what sorts of aesthetic, philosophical, and theological commitments were required to translate mystical spirituality into the characteristic genre of secular, bourgeois modernity. In the past, the mystic had been portrayed in the hagiography, a form that remained enticing to Catholic aesthetic theorists like Jacques Maritain. Georg Lukács, however, disagreed, arguing that the rise of the novel made the hagiography impossible. By reading George Bernanos’s Sous le soleil de Satan and Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory alongside Maritain and Lukács, this paper shows that Catholic novelists were, paradoxically, inclined to agree with Lukács, the atheist. Mysticism could only be translated into the novel form by testing the boundaries of orthodoxy – the orthodoxies of art and those of faith.

Differences between contemporary Jews are often described as ‘‘choices in modern Jewish thought.’’ 1 Behind this term is the assumption that philosophical and theological commitments are at the heart of distinctions that separate Jews from one another. Recently, this idea has been challenged or undermined by the assertion that ‘‘the religious experience of modern Jews should concentrate far more on practice than on belief.’’ 2 Here, the emphasis is on the distinctions engendered by what Jews do, rather than by the ideas they claim to espouse. In this essay I want to suggest that alongside consideration of what a Jew believes and what a Jew does, there is a third category that distinguishes Jewish religious thinkers from one another—how and what a Jew quotes. Quotation has become the subject of significant attention in the fields of literary theory and cultural studies. 3 Scant regard, however, has been paid to the phenomenon of quotation in Jewish culture. 4 There is much work to be done in sketching a history, a phenomenology, a taxonomy and a poetics of Jewish quotation. In this article, we will concentrate on the role played by one saying—‘‘You are my witnesses’’ (Isaiah 43:12)—in the work of a number of key modern Jewish thinkers. My aim is to discuss some ways in which Jewish thinkers attempt to employ tradition to articulate, transmit and enhance a modern Jewish theology. The article will consider a number of recurrent themes in modern Jewish thought, such as the paradoxical relationship between divine power and human initiative and the role of the Jewish people after Auschwitz, and how this quotation is used by various thinkers to develop these and other themes. In so doing we may reflect on what this says about quotation and the horizon of interpretations a reading allows. The role that quotation plays in Jewish culture in general and in the formulation of modern Jewish theology in particular is significant and under-appreciated, and a consideration of this dimension yields

ABSTRACTThis article examines the life and works of Robert Blakey, author of the first English-language history of political thought. Studies of Blakey have typically concentrated on one aspect of his life, whether as an authority on field sports or as an historian of philosophy. However, some of Blakey’s lesser-known ventures, particularly his early Radical politics, his hagiographies, and his attempts to write a biography of Charlemagne, heavily influenced his more famous works. Similarly, Blakey’s upbringing in a Calvinist tradition, rooted in the Scottish School of Common Sense philosophy helps makes sense of his philosophical and theological commitments, yet has been largely ignored. This article provides a sketch of Blakey’s life, tying these disparate strands together, and explaining their influence upon, and relevance to, the first history of political philosophy.

James Michael Lee advocated a social scientific “macrotheory” for religious and Christian education from the late 1960s until his death in 2004. Lee said that theology should no longer direct methods of education. Social scientific empirical results would provide firm ground for the teaching of faith and make a way past confessional educational expressions. However, empirical data are now recognized to arise from philosophical pre-commitments, especially since Thomas Kuhn. Lee's social scientific macrotheory is not neutral but comes from his understanding of “fact,” based in turn on a commitment to immanentism and a theology of faith. The article traces stated and unstated philosophical and theological commitments that give rise to Lee's macrotheory.

analysis of the composition of bodies and arrive, in different ways, at the conclusion that there must be incorporeal simple substances everywhere in matter. I argued that it is the extension of the principles of unity argument that constitutes the actual basis for Leibniz's doctrine of the simplicity of substance, in that it is both what leads Leibniz to the doctrine and what justifies the doctrine within his metaphysics. In his new article, Donald Rutherford offers a third, quite different possibility. 2 He proposes that the theory of monads as simple substances owes most of to Leibniz's views about soul-body union and pre-established harmony. Like my own account, Rutherford's is developmental. He sees Leibniz as moving away from a theory that includes composite corporeal substances and to a theory of monads alone in order to resolve a basic tension between the idea that the soul and body together form a and the idea that their union consists in nothing more than harmony. Harmony is not sufficient for the true or per se unity required for substances, and once this is taken fully into account a choice has to be made between irreconcilable elements in Leibniz's thought. Leibniz's choice, as Rutherford sees it, is to jettison a commitment to composite, corporeal substances as per se unities: there will be only the monads. In contrast to the more narrowly focused arguments for simples addressed in Levey 2007, Rutherford stresses the holistic character of the support offered to a theory of monads on his reading. An ontology of monads is justified not primarily by a targeted proof of the existence of simple substances as such but by its being the ontology that fits best with the greater constellation of Leibniz's philosophical and theological commitments. Even more sharply in contrast to my account is Rutherford's claim that all along Leibniz recognizes the soul as a substance—and necessarily, given its immateriality, a simple substance (215). Thus the changes in Leibniz's position concerning the ontology of do not involve adopting a new category of being so much as abandoning an old one.

Journal of Kidney CareVol. 5, No. 5 EthicsEthical concepts: virtue theory and what this means for the kidney care professionalPeter EllisPeter EllisEmail: E-mail Address: [email protected]Registered Manager, Whitepost Healthcare and Independent Nursing and Educational Consultant, KentSearch for more papers by this authorPeter EllisPublished Online:29 Sep 2020https://doi.org/10.12968/jokc.2020.5.5.228AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View article References Adams RA. Theory of virtue: excellence in being for the good. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2006 Google ScholarAristotle, translated by Thompson JA. The Nicomachean ethics. London: Penguin; 1976 Google ScholarArmstrong AE. Towards a strong virtue ethics for nursing practice. Nursing Philosophy. 2006; 7(3):110–124. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-769x.2006.00268.x Google ScholarEllis P. Ethical concepts: the meaning of consequentialism. J Kid Care. 2019a; 4(5):274-–276. https://doi.org/10.12968/jokc.2019.4.5.274 Link, Google ScholarEllis P. Ethical concepts: what does best interests actually mean? J Kid Care. 2019b; 4(4):211–213. https://doi.org/10.12968/jokc.2019.4.4.211 Link, Google ScholarEllis P. Ethical concepts: duty-based theories. J Kid Care. 2020a; 5(1):30–32. https://doi.org/10.12968/jokc.2020.5.1.30 Link, Google ScholarEllis P. Understanding ethics for nursing students. 3rd edn. London: Sage; 2020b Google ScholarNikkhah Farkhani Z, Rahimnia F, Kazemi M, Shirazi A. The components of the ethical behaviour of virtuous nurses in medical teams. J Holist Nurs Midwifery. 2017; 27(2):45–55 Google Scholar FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails 2 September 2020Volume 5Issue 5ISSN (print): 2397-9534ISSN (online): 2397-9542 Metrics History Published online 29 September 2020 Published in print 2 September 2020 Information© MA Healthcare LimitedKeywordsvirtuegood lifehuman flourishingexcellencePDF download

As a lifelong Lutheran who resisted numerous attempts by Catholic acquaintances to convert, one might reasonably expect Leibniz to have followed the orthodox Lutheran line on disputed doctrinal issues, and thus held amongst other things that the doctrine of Purgatory was false. Yet there is strong evidence that Leibniz personally accepted the doctrine of Purgatory. After examining this evidence, I determine how Leibniz sought to justify his endorsement of Purgatory, and explain how his endorsement sits alongside his frequent rehearsal of familiar Protestant arguments against the doctrine. I then examine some of Leibniz’s other theological and philosophical commitments, including those on the afterlife, in order to tentatively tease out further details of the form of Purgatory that won his approval. In considering these issues, I aim to make clear the extent to which Leibniz’s philosophical thinking underpins and shapes his theological beliefs.

Looking at John Milbank’s recent turn to Fr. Sergej Bulgakov, this paper argues that the theological and philosophical commitments they share are overshadowed by a deeper difference concerning the role each assigns the church in secular culture. It turns to Milbank’s roots in Augustine’s philosophy of history, which he argues could have allowed the church to overtake the pagan (which founds the secular) were it not for his distinction between the “visible” church and its deferred (eschatological) perfection. Bulgakov also criticizes Augustine’s doctrine of the church, or so he thinks. He actually misreads Augustine, accusing the bishop of holding a doctrine of the church that Milbank would have liked him to have held. This suggests that Bulgakov would not agree with Milbank’s view that the church should “enact” God’s judgment in history by opposing itself to the secular.

The tremendous growth in nursing literature about spirituality has garnered proportionately little critique. Part of the reason may be that the broad generalizing claims typical of this literature have not been sufficiently explicated so that their particular implications for a practice discipline could be evaluated. Further, conceptualizations that attempt to encompass all possible views are difficult to challenge outside of a particular location. However, once one assumes a particular location in relation to spirituality, then the question becomes how one resolves the tension between what are essentially theological or philosophical commitments and professional commitments. In this study, we discuss the tension between these perspectives using the idea of a responsible nursing response to spiritual pluralism. We then problematize three claims about spirituality in nursing discourse based upon our location as scholars influenced by Christian theological understandings: (i) the claim that all individuals are spiritual; (ii) the claim that human spirituality can be assessed and evaluated; and (iii) the claim that spirituality is a proper domain of nursing's concern and intervention. We conclude by suggesting that the widely shared values of social justice, compassion and human dignity may well serve as a grounding for the critique of spiritual discourses in nursing across particularized positions.

As a lifelong Lutheran who resisted numerous attempts by Catholic acquaintances to convert him, one might reasonably expect Leibniz to have followed the orthodox Lutheran line on disputed doctrinal issues, and thus held amongst other things that the doctrine of purgatory was false. Yet there is strong evidence that Leibniz personally accepted the doctrine of purgatory. After examining this evidence, I determine how Leibniz sought to justify his endorsement of purgatory and explain how his endorsement sits alongside his frequent rehearsal of familiar Protestant arguments against the doctrine. I then examine some of Leibniz’s other theological and philosophical commitments, including those on the afterlife, in order to tentatively tease out further details of the form of purgatory that won his approval. In considering these issues, I aim to make clear the extent to which Leibniz’s philosophical thinking underpins and shapes his theological beliefs.