Twentieth-century Philosophy Research Articles

Pojęcie ramy w ujęciu filozoficznym – rola czasu i pamięci w ludzkiej egzystencji

In The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner writes: “Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops, does time come to life.” The following words relate to the role of memory frames in human life. They also begin the analysis of the ideas of twentieth and twenty-first century philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur and David Farrell Krell. Even though there is a strict reference to the Modernist thinkers, the author goes slightly deeper, reminding earlier concepts of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Protagoras. The second part of the article has been devoted to the notions connected with time frames and memory such as experiencing of the passage of time, reminding, forgetting, forgiving as well as postmemory.

Latest Developments of Existentialism

In this paper, Pareyson provides an analysis of the existential features of the philosophies of Jaspers and Heidegger, that he considers as the two greatest philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. In Jaspers, Pareyson identifies the idea that truth is both singular and one, meaning that it can be grasped only through a personal interpretation and never in absolute terms. This implies that truth and person are inseparably tied to each other and that existence carries transcendence in itself: just as truth transcends our personal knowledge of it, Being itself transcends our personal existence. Moreover, Pareyson sees Heidegger as the initiator of an existential ontology that poses a fundamental relation between the human being and Being itself; hence, the philosophical discourse on human existence inevitably turns into a discourse on Being. Therefore, Heidegger finally manages to overcome traditional metaphysics and its forgetfulness of the question of Being itself, by giving such question a central role within philosophical reflection. In conclusion, Pareyson maintains that Jaspers and Heidegger are able to make the voice of Being been heard, in contrast with the humanist and nihilist tendencies of twentieth century philosophy.

War and Vision on New Terms

War and Vision on New Terms Patricia Hayes (bio) ARCHIVES OF THE INSENSIBLE: OF WAR, PHOTOPOLITICS, AND DEAD MEMORY BY ALLEN FELDMAN Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015 Archives of the Insensible is a potent collection of discrete and dense chapters that are both closely interrelated and individually very expansive. A number of crucial issues are threaded across its parts and philosophical deliberations. At first, some of these may be familiar from Allen Feldman’s earlier work on formations of violence, the logics of counterinsurgency, and violence and vision (1991; 1994; 1997). But this book takes these meditations into new metaphysical, ethnographic, and aesthetic terrains to address recent wars “on terror” and interweaves them with histories of slavery, race and speciation. Put very minimally, Archives of the Insensible explores different truth regimes. The book is an “itinerary of different trials,” with each chapter “a crime scene.” Here, counteractuality is the “founding principle and submedial structure of the war on terror” (80), where subjects “are made and unmade through rights as a mode of political design” (81). The book considers how the (mainly US) state produces a series of “violent materialisations at site-specific political installations.” The often compacted argument cleaves to a mode of writing that Feldman terms bifrontal. Here political philosophy draws on “ethnographic and social historical specificities,” and these in their turn “ethnographize” political philosophy through “micrological deconstructive description” (22). One of the implications of this mode of writing—which includes many neologisms and (to this reader) less familiar classical Greek terms—is that it is often impossible to transcribe or render in any other [End Page 169] terms that would convey the import with any justice, which is why this essay is burdened with many strategic quotations from the text. Another implication is that the writing is highly wrought, resulting in considerable difficulty or opacity, for which Feldman is already justly renowned and which poses a legitimate challenge to expand one’s vocabulary. Essentially, he uses a sovereign mastery of language against those cheating sovereignties who have attempted and often succeeded in making their own workings inscrutable, this at the vast expense of subject peoples and races. There are occasions, however, in the play of language when an excess of suggestiveness somewhat mis-fires or becomes opaque, where the reader may really doubt herself or himself, and I shall return to this later. But just to be clear: there can be no doubt of the profundity and significance of the political and philosophical-archaeological journey Feldman takes the reader in Archives of the Insensible, moving (often in the same chapter) from the different ages of thought from Greek antiquity through recalibrations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy to the contemporary political ordering of violence in a truly prodigal sequence of taut postulations. My own particular interests in this book stem from its radical approach to political visibilities and invisibilities; its sustained, historically nuanced critique of what used to be called counterinsurgency warfare; and its focus (in two chapters) on a South African theater for these questions. My comments, then, are necessarily limited: this book is grander than what I might say here. The book is divided into three parts, designated as “Desisting Sovereignties,” “Amputating Archives,” and “Committing Anthropology,” respectively. Each part comprises two or three chapters, structured into substantial sections. The Introduction speaks of “enigmatic dispersals” and states the problem of how factuality is sheared off from actuality in order to “render war just.” Furthermore, there is a “determination of sovereignty as indeterminate and always in self-altering motion” (1). The first chapter in Part I breaks down the transcribed exchanges between one prisoner, Ashraf Salim, and his assigned tribunal judge at Guantanamo to examine how the prisoner-subject is made. Parallels are suggested between Kafka’s The Trial and the Guantanamo prisoner standing before the “infinite regress of the law,” an “illusory depth of field” (49). The state’s promise of law is a “non-deliverable.” There is in fact no depth, “only the act of making a [End Page 170] border.” Given that it was impossible for Salim to access the information he needed for his own trial, Feldman cites Denbeaux’s notion of “No...

The Pursuit of an Authentic Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Everyday by David Egan

Reviewed by: The Pursuit of an Authentic Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Everyday by David Egan Lee Braver David Egan. The Pursuit of an Authentic Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Everyday. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xii + 256. Cloth, $75.00. The odyssey of twentieth-century philosophy has produced a number of ventures to find a way between the Scylla of continental and Charybdis of analytic philosophy. The pairing of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, arguably the greatest figures of each tradition, has been a particularly strong siren song to many on this quest, who have approached it from different angles. Egan uses Heidegger's explicit discussion of authenticity in his early work to bring out a similar idea implicit in Wittgenstein's later. Given their many parallels, Egan reasons, chances are good that an idea so central to the former could be found in the latter, were one to look at it in the right way. Thus, Egan uses Being and Time to enter previously inaccessible regions in Philosophical Investigations, to find hermeneutic plunder therein. Part 1 establishes the preliminary thesis, that the two share philosophical views, in particular on the topic of philosophical views. Both distinguish between talking about facts (ontic assertions about beings, science) and talking about how we talk about facts (ontological descriptions of the being of beings, grammatical investigations). Problems arise when philosophers engaged in the latter think they are doing the former. Rather than bringing us new, esoteric knowledge or changing our views, authentic philosophy describes and reminds. In keeping with this view of philosophy, both reject all transcendent perspectives—represented by McDowell's sideways-on view—emphasizing instead our communal attunement as what grounds our ability to converse about the world and traverse about in the world. While this ground is itself groundless—external foundations for our speech and practices could only be found and founded externally—this groundlessness is only worrisome from the same incoherent perspective, as Egan discusses in part 2. Both therefore reject equally foundationalism and standard reactions to foundationalism rejected: anxiety for Heidegger, skepticism for Wittgenstein. These apparently opposing views agree on the transcendent view common to both because required by both, and that is what Heidegger and Wittgenstein are seeking to escape. Instead of looking down upon ourselves and our relationship to the world from the outside, either in hope or despair, the proper response is to fully inhabit the inside, doing so in such a way that it no longer is seen as an inside, for sides make no sense if crossing does not either. Without sides, neither is there a sideways-on perspective, nor sides to take up concerning traditional philosophical arguments such as realism versus antirealism (of course, some of us see antirealism as itself this rejection of sides rather than one of them). Authenticity means recognizing the everyday as our home, the source and arena of philosophical thought that cannot slough it off to transcend into a sublime beyond. It makes no sense to say that we are trapped in an underground cave if there is no aboveground escape to supply the contrast, nor can shadows on the wall be disparaged without originals to be shadows of. This is what knowledge is; realizing this is wisdom. And this is what Egan finds in Wittgenstein's quest to return words to their everyday usage. After a journey through the bizarre, spellbound realm of philosophy, words must [End Page 828] come back home to their jobs and families. Not because these are the only meanings they can have, but because the uses philosophers put them to are not genuine, coherent possibilities; they are monsters. Philosophers do not realize this because we have been blinded and bewitched by pictures, so Wittgenstein assembles reminders of what we already know to dispel them and lead words home. Egan's part 3 finds Wittgenstein outdoing Heidegger at doing less. Heidegger's formal indications avoid ontic factual discourse, but with the misleading vocabulary of things hidden, which he discovers and informs us of. Wittgenstein is more consistent because his questions, imaginary scenarios, and dialogues dismantle philosophical pseudo-problems and -solutions while remaining immanent, introducing no new insights, for those could only come...

“Today, when the Times Are too Late…”: Theodore Metochites on the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Speech Communication Process

This paper suggests a translation from the Byzantine Greek and an interpretation of two passages from Theodore Metochites’ (ca. 1270–1332) works addressing the strength and weakness of our word and the communication based on it. The third translated passage is taken from Ps.-Lucian’s Encomium to Demosthenes, which interprets one of Metochites’ texts. Using examples and reasoning, the megas logothete demonstrated the highs and lows, the strength and weakness of our speech acts (in the meaning of John Searle’s and other modern theories). If Demosthenes’ word was like “hammered” and in this form formed a formidable threat to Philip of Macedonia, despite he defeated the Hellenes at Cheronea, the first third of the fourteenth century Byzantines, intellectuals in particular, were totally unable to make themselves understand each other. To put it another way, there were great difficulties with bringing specific information, feelings or emotions to another person, or, in short, with making clear to someone else all the propositions of the one’s discursive intellect, notwithstanding the fact that one can both explain and mentally represent to him-/herself the matter of reflection. However, one is forceless to turn the above-said into clear-cut utterances. Such a communication crisis within the Byzantine society on the eve of the Hesychasm controversy evidently turned out to be a verge of the general civilization crisis. In this regard, Metochites’ works made a contribution into the overcoming of the crisis, as he constantly summoned to a dialogue between generations of not only his contemporaries, but also of their predecessors and descendants. Discussing the reciprocal unity of word and image/icon, Metochites expressed the Byzantine culture’s in-depth archetypes, particularly its centuries-long creative principle of iconicity in its approach to the Umwelt. This paper suggests parallels to Metochites’ ideas in the Byzantine hagiography of the eighth and fourteenth century (Stephen the Deacon, Theoktistos the Stoudite) and some pieces of reflection to sound in tune with Metochites, which originate from the works of great twentieth-century philosophers Friar Florenskii and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Middleware\u2019s Message: the Financial Technics of Codata

In this paper, I will argue for the relevance of certain distinctive features of messaging systems, namely those in which data (a) can be sent and received asynchronously, (b) can be sent to multiple simultaneous recipients and (c) is received as a “potentially infinite” flow of unpredictable events. I will describe the social technology of the stock ticker, a telegraphic device introduced at the New York Stock Exchange in the 1860s, with reference to early twentieth century philosophers of synchronous experience (Bergson), simultaneous sign interpretations (Mead and Peirce), and flows of discrete events (Bachelard). Then, I will show how the ticker’s data flows developed into the 1990s-era technologies of message queues and message brokers, which distinguished themselves through their asynchronous implementation of ticker-like message feeds sent between otherwise incompatible computers and terminals. These latter systems’ characteristic “publish/subscribe” communication pattern was one in which conceptually centralized (if logically distributed) flows of messages would be “published,” and for which “subscribers” would be spontaneously notified when events of interest occurred. This paradigm—common to the so-called “message-oriented middleware” systems of the late 1990s—would re-emerge in different asynchronous distributed system contexts over the following decades, from “push media” to Twitter to the Internet of Things.

How Theology Shaped Twentieth-Century Philosophy by Frank B. Farrell

How Theology Shaped Twentieth-Century Philosophy by Frank B. Farrell

The Roots of Carlos Vaz Ferreira’s Philosophy

Carlos Vaz Ferreira (1872–1958) was Uruguay’s leading twentieth-century philosopher. He worked on social and political philosophy, moral philosophy, aesthetics, and feminism. Considered to be one of Latin America’s most original thinkers, Vaz Ferreira’s philosophy was nonetheless responsive to and, in some cases, influenced by the work of a number of other figures. This article explores Vaz Ferreira’s roots in the thought of Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Dr. Gregorio Marañón, Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, Harald Höffding, Hugo Münsterberg, Wilhelm Dilthey, Miguel de Unamuno, John Stuart Mill, William James, José Enrique Rodó, and Henri Bergson. His feminist philosophy was influenced by his sister, María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, Dr. Paulina Luisi, and other suffragists. I seek to distinguish among the influences Vaz Ferreira ultimately rejected, those he could not escape, those he adapted, and those he most favored as he developed his unique philosophy of freedom.

The Transcendent Pharisee, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik: Israel and the Poverty of Politics

[Figure: see text] Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, community leader, philosopher, and rabbi, was one of the most important voices in twentieth-century Jewish life, especially after the Holocaust. As scion of the “Brisk” family of Talmudic learning and founder of the new movement of American Modern Orthodox Judaism, Soloveitchik occupied a unique position. While embodying the principles of traditional orthodox Judaism, he also advocated strongly—eliciting much opposition from traditionalists—a full engagement with the modern world. Soloveitchik’s works of the 1940s, the most famous of which was Halakhic Man or “Legal Man,” provided philosophical justifications for Jewish practice and study by turning to traditions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy and the history of science (he wrote his thesis on the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen at the University of Berlin). Within the Jewish world, Soloveitchik is associated with perspectives emerging from Jewish law—including his advocacy of epistemological pluralism and individual agency. But in a series of newly published works from the 1950s, Soloveitchik turns away from the priority of law to the ethical realm. In political writings, inflected by ethical concerns, he advocates for the State of Israel against the vehement rejectionism of traditional orthodoxy (including his family members). But Soloveitchik’s politics always have a theological basis, and as such, he resists the nationalist enthusiasm of many contemporaries, never fully embracing Israel as a contemporary nation-state. For him, the state of laws may be necessary, but his theological commitments, and his unexpected antinomian turn, shows him advocating a community based upon ethics—and not state laws or sanctions. This article shows the extent to which the halakhic man, the Pharisee par excellence, was transformed by ethics, and how that transformation shaped his view of politics and Israel.

The Notion of Love in the Early Twentieth-Century Russian Philosophical Tradition

This article presents the central paradigms of the understanding of love by early twentieth-century Russian philosophers. It shows that interpreting the meaning of erotic love as a way of overcoming death, as proposed by Vladimir Solovyov, largely determined not only the metaphysical inquiries, but also the personal life strategies of those who contributed to Russian Silver-Age culture. The author argues that familiarity with the autobiographies of philosophers and their lives is important for better understanding of the Russian philosophical tradition and appreciation of how this tradition was shaped by love-as-suffering, love-as-service, and love-as-friendship.

Imaginatively Grounded Figures: Dancing with Castoriadis

This paper argues that twentieth-century philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis’ innovative concept of imagination is closely related to his treatments of dance. More specifically, it revolves around his concept of “figure,” which thereby suggests a productive partnership with my own philosophy of dance, which I call “Figuration.” The first and second sections below review the interpretations of Castoriadis’ imagination in the two book manuscripts on him in English, Jeff Klooger’s Psyche, Society Autonomy (which supplements Castoriadis with Fichte) and Suzi Adams’ Castoriadis’ Ontology (which supplements him with hermeneutics). My final section defends Castoriadis against these two critical supplements through a close reading of his magnum opus, The Imaginary Institution of Society. There I re-choreograph Castoriadis’ use of the Freudian concept of “leaning on” (Anlehnung, from the Greek anaclisis) as “bending back” (anaclasis, following Klooger’s misspelling of anaclisis). In short, the imagination is like a dancer, bending back to nature understood as “the region which resists” (to varying degrees) the social.

Hans Reichenbach's and C.I. Lewis's Kantian philosophies of science

Recent work in the history of philosophy of science details the Kantianism of philosophers often thought opposed to one another, e.g., Hans Reichenbach, C.I. Lewis, Rudolf Carnap, and Thomas Kuhn. Historians of philosophy of science in the last two decades have been particularly interested in the Kantianism of Reichenbach, Carnap, and Kuhn, and more recently, of Lewis. While recent historical work focuses on recovering the threatened-to-be-forgotten Kantian themes of early twentieth-century philosophy of science, we should not elide the differences between the Kantian strands running throughout this work. In this paper, I disentangle a few of these strands in the work of Reichenbach and Lewis focusing especially on their theories of relativized, constitutive a priori principles in empirical knowledge. In particular, I highlight three related differences between Reichenbach and Lewis concerning their motivations in analyzing scientific knowledge and scientific practice, their differing conceptions of constitutivity, and their relativization of constitutive a priori principles. In light of these differences, I argue Lewis's Kantianism is more similar to Kuhn's Kantianism than Reichenbach's, and so might be of more contemporary relevance to social and practice-based approaches to the philosophy of science.

Inevitability and Eternity

In The Road to Unfreedom, Timothy Snyder examines the prospects for Europe and America in light of what he describes as efforts by Russia to exert its influence in democratic processes. Snyder also explains the significance of a little known twentieth-century philosopher and ideologue, Ivan Ilyin, for present-day Russian politics. Paweł Machcewicz shares Snyder’s concerns.

Theodore de Laguna’s discovery of the deflationary view of truth

ABSTRACTTheodore de Laguna develops and argues for a deflationary view of truth well before the publication of what many have taken to be its source, or at least its inspiration, namely Frank P. Ramsey’s paper ‘Facts and Propositions’. I outline de Laguna’s view of truth and the arguments he offers for it; I also discuss its role in the history of twentieth-century philosophy. My outline and discussion serve as an introduction to de Laguna’s ‘A Nominalistic Interpretation of Truth’, a paper he originally wrote in English but which has hitherto only been published in French.

Социокультурные аспекты урбанизации в философии XX века

Социокультурные аспекты урбанизации в философии XX века

Novelty in Twentieth-Century French and Process Philosophy

This article explores the thesis that novelty is central to a wide and diverse range of French philosophers in the twentieth century. Often these philosophers are seen on different sides of philosophic divides, but novelty brings them together. I will explore some of the fruitful areas for dialogue between French and process philosophy, particularly around the theme of novelty.

Metaphilosophy: History and Perspectives

In this paper I discuss a prehistory of the recent metaphilosophical research and provide an overview of its most important areas. I review the ways of understanding of philosophy by the authors of the Early Modernity and contemporary continental philosophers and outline a trajectory of metaphilosophical discussions in analytic philosophy of 20th century. I try to show that the recent surge of metaphilosophy research in it could be explained by a search for a new identity of analytic philosophy after wide disappointment in the “linguistic turn,” as well as after criticism of Quine and his followers of various aspects of the common method of conceptual analysis, and expansion of the field of inquiry. I argue that contemporary analytic philosophy is much closer to the classical and modern tradition than to the early analytic philosophy. And the most important question for contemporary metaphilosophers seems to be a question about possible substitutes of an old-fashioned conceptual analysis. Some authors propose to get rid of armchair methods at all and follow experimental line of research. This, however, could be destructive to the philosophy as a separate discipline. That’s why it is important to pay utmost attention to those philosophers who try to save armchair philosophy. As Timothy Williamson is one of the most interesting authors working in this vein, I asses his role in the recent metaphilosophical research. I give a brief review of his book “Doing Philosophy” (2018) and draw attention to the fact that its main ideas are briefly expressed in his paper “Armchair Philosophy”, published in this issue of the journal. I claim that the importance of Timothy Williamson’s work is best explained by its role in realizing that philosophers now have to make a hard choice between dissolving philosophical methodology in methods of experimental sciences and trying to find way of justification of armchair philosophy.

Epistemology of experience in E. Husserl's phenomenology and J. Dewey's instrumentalism

The themes present in the philosophy of E. Husserl and J. Dewey could hardly lie outside the interest of considering the major contribution both made to Twentieth–century philosophy and intellectual culture. Comparison of their philosophical positions is carried out, as a rule, on the basis of contrasting transcendentalism and empiricism. Unlike the established tradition, the authors of the article draw attention to the substantial commonality of phenomenology and instrumentalism, thematically conditioned by the founders of these teachings working out the problems of the existential nature of human experience, its horizontal structure and semantic context of the life world. Analysis of the epistemological reflection of the concept of "experience" in the teachings of Husserl and Dewey allowed to show, that their positions do not exclude, but complement each other. The paper is devoted to the 160 th Anniversary of John Dewey's Birth (1859-1952), that would be widely celebrated not only in USA and Europe but in Russia, Japan, China and Latin America.

Scepticism, Truth and Religious Belief in the Thought of John Henry Newman: A Contribution to Contemporary Debate by Daniel John Pratt Morris-Chapman

Reviewed by: Scepticism, Truth and Religious Belief in the Thought of John Henry Newman: A Contribution to Contemporary Debate by Daniel John Pratt Morris-Chapman John T. Ford, C.S.C. Scepticism, Truth and Religious Belief in the Thought of John Henry Newman: A Contribution to Contemporary Debate BY DANIEL JOHN PRATT MORRIS-CHAPMAN Dissertation at the University of Bristol. August 2014. Pages xxviii + 346 pages. Although there is abundant literature on John Henry Newman's numerous contributions to theology, spirituality, education, literature and history, Daniel Morris-Chapman is justified in claiming that "Newman's philosophical legacy has been underestimated" (viii). To remedy such minimization, this dissertation undertakes a five-step vindication of Newman's achievements as a philosopher. Morris-Chapman examines philosophical receptions of Newman beginning with his contemporaries and continuing to the present. Not only did British and American philosophers discuss and critique Newman's philosophical writings in the nineteenth century (19), but—surprisingly, given the unecumenical tenor of the times—"soon after its publication (1870) the Grammar of Assent was required reading for students studying in the philosophy department at Harvard" (36). Nonetheless, "Newman's rejection of evidentialist approaches to religious belief isolated his thought from many of his contemporaries" who wanted a scientific [End Page 121] approach to religion (59). Subsequently, however, the "turn to the subject" in twentieth-century philosophy prompted renewed interest in the personalist dimension of Newman's philosophical thought.1 As for Newman's recent influence, Morris-Chapman's second chapter points out that "Newman shares a number of philosophical connections" with two twenty-first century philosophers, Roderick Chisholm (1916–1999) and William Abraham (b. 1947) (115). This connection seems substantiated in regard to the influence of Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus (c.160–c.210) as well as the shared opposition to John Locke; however, one might well debate the extent to which Newman was "shaped by the Thomistic tradition" (98–110). Additionally, the claim that "Newman's conception of liberalism and Chisholm and Abraham's understanding of epistemological Methodism amount to the same thing" (93) is questionable; at most the latter might be construed as a subset of the former. The third chapter is a selective examination of Newman's writings in relation to the "particularist tradition" (that human knowledge begins with particular examples). This treatment is quite cogent regarding Newman's acceptance of the Aristotelian principle that different disciplines require different kinds of proof and also his rejection of Locke's view that only demonstrative types of proof are legitimate. Less satisfactory is the brief engagement (156–68) with Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine—a treatment that fails to notice, much less to appreciate, the implications of Newman's shift in terminology from "tests" in the 1845 edition to "notes" in the 1878 edition.2 The fourth chapter considers select aspects of Newman's Grammar of Assent. On the one hand, Morris-Chapman should be commended for pointing out Newman's evident influence on such philosophers, as Désiré-Joseph Mercier (1851–1926).3 On the other hand, much of this chapter is a rather obtuse discussion devoted to advancing the claim that Newman was "an epistemological particularist" and refuting the position of Marty Miller Maddox, who characterized Newman as an "epistemological methodist" (69).4 What is needed and [End Page 122] unfortunately lacking as a preliminary to this discussion is a succinct synopsis of the Grammar's salient features. Without such an overview, the discussion of the different types of assent, the three kinds of inference, and the nature and function of the illative sense, is confusing and sometimes questionable. The fifth, and final, chapter attempts to illustrate Newman's on-going contribution to the philosophy of religion by showing how William Abraham draws upon various aspects of Newman's philosophy, particularly the illative sense, as a way of Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation.5 This discussion, which fails to acknowledge the various "ideas" of revelation that were implicitly employed by Newman and seemingly also by Abraham, would have been immensely aided by a discerning use of Avery Dulles's Models of Revelation.6 In sum, on the plus side, this dissertation has made...

Value Realism and Moral Psychology: A Comparative Analysis of Iris Murdoch and Fyodor Dostoevsky

How can metaphysics be a guide to morals? For twentieth-century philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, this was the central question of philosophy, and I argue that her answers to it converge with those of nineteenth-century writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. For both thinkers, a transcendent evaluative reality places moral demands on their characters, defines the general terms of their moral consciousness, and influences their experience of the presence or absence of moral coherence in a way that shatters self-consoling myths and opens their imaginations toward the possibility of goodness. Ultimately, both connect transcendent value realism to immanent evaluative consciousness in surprisingly congruent ways.