Pure Intellect Research Articles

Personality and Affective Correlates of Openness to Experience from Big Five and HEXACO Personality Models: The Dual Nature of Big Five Openness

Openness to Experience is considered to be one of the broadest personality traits. Different operationalizations of Openness to Experience within and between personality models incorporate various features of this trait. Differences in Openness facets across inventories may lead to differences in relation to certain outcomes. Hence, the current study looked to explore the personality and affective correlates of Openness domains and facets from the Big Five and HEXACO model. The sample consisted of 540 participants who completed measures assessing Openness to Experience domains and facets from Big Five and HEXACO, schizotypy, Disintegration, need for cognition, subjective well-being, and mania. Results revealed that schizotypy and Disintegration had mostly non-significant correlations with Openness domains from both models. However, multiple facets of Openness had significant both positive and negative correlations with these constructs. In contrast to HEXACO, Openness from the Big Five model could be presented with two distinct subdomains. The Pure Openness subdomain is related to higher mania, while Pure Intellect is associated with lower schizotypy, higher well-being, and higher need for cognition. Our results suggest that measuring Openness at lower structural levels provides us with more nuanced patterns of relationships among constructs.

Kant’s Letter to Fichte, the Pure Intellect and his ‘All-Crushing’ Metaphysics: Comments on De Boer’s Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics

AbstractI raise three questions relevant to De Boer’s overall project in Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics. The first is whether Kant’s 1799 open letter to Fichte supports or threatens her contention that Kant had an abiding interest in developing a reformed metaphysics from 1781 onwards. The second is whether De Boer’s conception of the pure intellect and its place in Kant’s projected system of metaphysics captures the role of pure sensibility in the Analytic of Principles, rational physics and rational psychology. The third is whether one might accept the outline of this system as De Boer develops it while still holding that it is more accurate to characterize it as revolution rather than reform.

Nurturing Intellectual Warriors: A Nationalistic Approach

Man enjoys his intellect more than an animal enjoys its senses. Thirst for knowledge is inherent in man and no one likes to be ignorant. Knowledge alone can remove ignorance. Sir Julian Huxley, renowned biologist defines the new goal of evolution at the human level as refinement of intellect which gives fulfilment. It is easy to train and purify our impure intellect, if we know the different aspects and functions of Buddhi. The pure intellect has many characteristics such as – Alertness, Discrimination, Determination, Subtlety, Steadiness, Maturity, Vastness, Simplicity, Sharpness, and Positivity. The intense and purer the intellect (Buddhi), the greater the perfection attained. That country is great which can produce more intellectual people in different fields. Intellectual strength (buddhibalam) alone can play a vital role in a nation’s progress. We need to process our psychic energy into - creative, constructive and making for happiness and all-round welfare. This kind of development is what makes education a blessing to society. That is the goal of India in our present condition when we are developing into a constructive, developed nation.

Descartes: new thoughts on the senses

ABSTRACTDescartes analysed the mind into various faculties or powers, including pure intellect, imagination, senses, and will. This article focuses on his account of the sensory power, in relation to its Aristotelian background. Descartes accepted from the Aristotelians that the senses serve to preserve the body by detecting benefits and harms. He rejected the scholastic Aristotelian sensory ontology of resembling species, or ‘forms without matter’. For the visual sense, Descartes offered a mechanistic ontology and a partially mechanized account of sensory processes, including some previously ascribed to judgement. He did this in the context of his theory of brain signs that prompt sensations. The article contends that Descartes’s use of the sign-relation was modelled on standard discussions of non-resembling signs in commentaries on Aristotle’s De interpretatione. It follows three uses of the sign-relation: brain states that cause colour sensations; brain states that cause experiences of spatialized contents, such as shapes; and brain states that realize a ‘natural geometry’. It argues that Descartes’s natural geometry does not involve mental operations but physiological mechanisms that co-vary with the distance to seen objects. While retaining the language of sensory powers, Descartes offered a partial mechanization of those powers.

Augustine’s Theology of Preaching. By Peter T. Sanlon.

W hile the format of this book is largely given by its origins in a doctoral thesis, it is aimed primarily not at fellow academics or students (though the latter in particular may benefit from its clarity of argument and accessible prose style) but at those with a lively interest in preaching the Word of God. To judge by the preface and introduction, it is written in particular for those whose interest is informed by an evangelical protestant faith, but its merit is by no means limited to this readership. The book serves its readers by illuminating for them the ‘undergirding theological convictions which shaped Augustine’s approach to the task of preaching’ through study of his Sermones ad populum (p. xix), some 590 of which have come down to us. Chapter 1 is entitled ‘The Historical Context of Augustine’s Preaching’ and offers an extremely brief account (21 pages) of the North African ecclesial context and earlier Christian preaching. It may be helpful for newcomers to Augustine and early Christianity, but others will find it thin (Origen and his allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament is a significant omission, while the account of Ambrose’s preaching says nothing of his hermeneutical debt to Basil and through Basil to Origen). Chapter 2, ‘Pagan Oratory’, offers snapshots of major figures in the pagan oratorical tradition: Gorgias, Plato, Cicero, Quintilian, and Apuleius. Scripture is introduced as the authority which replaces for Augustine Plato’s reliance upon ‘philosophical truth’. Christ is the teacher who speaks exteriorly through Scripture and interiorly within the believer’s heart in the reception of Scripture. Sanlon holds that Augustine’s ‘immersion in scripture’ together with his reflection on the ‘inadequate anthropologies of Pelagianism and Stoicism’ (p. 44) led to a new understanding of the heart rather than the mind or pure intellect as the focus of the preacher’s ministry. The heart could be swayed by the temporal or narrative dimension of Scripture as Augustine invited listeners into the story where ‘they could be forgetful of their prior self-interpretations’ and their loves could be reordered (p. 45). For Sanlon, this means that ‘Augustine’s preaching brought an authority to bear upon listeners with an inner power which surpassed that available to secular rhetoric’.

Pursuing Wisdom: Thomistic Thoughts on Philosophy as a Way of Life

In works of impressive erudition based in ancient philosophy, Pierre Hadot (1) and John Cooper (2) have recently reasserted familiar complaint about the Scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and his neo-Thomist heirs. Scholasticism, they complain, diminished philosophy by rejecting its claim to be holistic way of life, requiring the transformation of the whole person, and reconceiving it as exercise in merely conceptual and logical maneuvering, requiring nothing more from the philosopher than the ability to compute logical relations. This arid theorizing, they claim, distinguishes Scholastic thought from ancient philosophy and from the more valuable efforts of certain, generally marginal and idiosyncratic, medieval and modern thinkers. Furthermore, they see these baleful effects of Scholasticism not as unintended consequences but as the avowed goal of its subjugation of philosophy to theology. As Hadot argues, Scholasticism surrendered philosophy as way of life to theology and retained for philosophy only arid, metaphysical discourse. Thomists and neo-Thomists have exchanged rich and vital praxis for desiccated theorizing. Hadot's carefully developed account of ancient philosophy sounds themes Cooper echoes, though with some modification, and they themes that appeal to many. Hadot argues that the ancient philosophers saw philosophy as way of life consisting in an exercise of the thought, will, and totality of one's being, the goal of which was to achieve state practically inaccessible to mankind: (3) Such existential philosophy was conducted by means of spiritual exercises, practices that are the result, not merely of thought, but of the individual's entire psychism and lead to wisdom. (4) He endorses what he views as the ancient philosophers' concept of wisdom, a way of life which brought peace of mind (ataraxia), inner freedom (autarkeia), and cosmic consciousness. (5) Consequently, for Hadot, true philosophy always gives primacy of place to the practical, valuing the theoretical only for the sake of the practical, and finds in philosophical discourse only aid to philosophical way of life. (6) Scholasticism, on Hadot's account, decisively destroyed this integral vision by spinning existential concerns off to theology and leaving philosophy with kind of conceptual engineering centered on philosophical discourse rather than philosophical practice. One can find three points of contrast here, three key aspects of philosophy as way of life that Hadot finds missing in the Scholastic approach. First, Hadot insists against the Scholastic view of philosophy as purely theoretical endeavor that philosophy is fundamentally practical activity subordinating theoretical means to practical ends. Second, genuine philosophy in the ancient mode unites affection and intellect in integration of the whole person, whereas Scholastic philosophy separates from the will pure intellect, engaged in sort of conceptual calculus irrelevant to feeling and desire. And finally, the Scholastics reduced philosophy to philosophical discourse, and then disconnected such discourse from the goal of wisdom, making it instead nothing more than propaedeutic to theology. The ancient philosophers, by contrast, held that philosophical discourse serves only to justify and strengthen the more important existential choice of way of life directed to practical wisdom. When tested against the convictions of Thomas and his Scholastic and neo-scholastic followers, these contrasts fail to compel; St. Thomas's understanding of philosophy is far more robust than such polemical sketches suggest. One can find more existential and authentically Thomistic concept of the intellectual life in the work of two of the past century's most prominent neo-scholastics, Etienne Gilson and A. G. Sertillanges, whose studies on the transformative qualities of philosophy predate Hadot's by decades. …

Animal Moments in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin and Saul Bellow’s Herzog

Animal Moments in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin and Saul Bellow’s Herzog Yulia Pushkarevskaya Naughton (bio) and Gerald David Naughton (bio) Posthumanism is often associated with more recent postmodern novelists who “problemat[ize] the traditional divisions between human and nonhuman” (Giles 2011, 164-65). It is not commonly associated with, for example, the long tradition of liberal humanists, where most critics place Saul Bellow (Smith 2013, 102), and some critics place Vladimir Nabokov (McCarthy 2009, 133)—though he is a writer who resists overt categorization. It is, however, the contention of this paper that both Bellow’s and Nabokov’s texts exhibit a consciousness about the non-separation of the human species from the animal species—a contention made all the more interesting by the two writers’ distinctly different artistic concerns and their long history of mutual, publicly acknowledged antipathy. Both Bellow and Nabokov create striking images of animals in order to, first, problematize the distinction between animals and humans, and second, create distinctly animal moments within human narratives. The essay explores such animal moments chiefly in Bellow’s Herzog and Nabokov’s Pnin, using Ralph R. Acampora’s model of “corporal compassion,” “symphysis” and mutual “bodiment,” ecophenomenological insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Paul Giles’s discussion of posthumanism. By exploring the coming together of animals and humans in these two novels, the essay also troubles the difference between humanism and posthumanism in literary representations of animality. The connections between Merleau-Ponty and Acampora have been discussed before. Acampora extends Merleau-Ponty’s interspecies consciousness, to explore the posthumanist potential of the relationship between humans and animals: Acampora “argues that while Merleau-Ponty provides clues as to how to develop a multispecies ethics, he does not acknowledge or develop as fully as he could the fact that nonhuman animals can be sources of meaning in their own right” (Willett 2014, 180). Indeed, in his discussion of modernity, Merleau-Ponty suggests a rather anthropocentric understanding of the human relationship with the animal/natural world: [End Page 119] We are once more learning to see the world around us. … We are rediscovering our interest in the space in which we are situated. Though we see it only from a limited perspective—our perspective—this space is rediscovering in every object a certain style of being that makes it a mirror of human modes of behaviour. So the way we relate to the things of the world is no longer as a pure intellect trying to master an object or space that stands before it. Rather, this relationship is an ambiguous one, between beings who are both embodied and limited and an enigmatic world of which we catch a glimpse (indeed which we haunt incessantly) but only ever from points of view that hide as much as they reveal, a world in which every object displays the human face it acquires in a human gaze. (2004, 69-70; our emphasis) Notably, Merleau-Ponty speaks of objects (and animals, in the context of his book) as “acquiring a human face” through a “human gaze,” rather than humans reflecting objects/species in a process of mutual relation. We argue that the difference between Merleau-Ponty’s and Acampora’s paradigms of animals/humans reflects the difference between the conceptualization of animals/humans in Bellow and Nabokov: animal moments in Bellow’s texts can resemble Acampora’s concept of “corporal compassion,” while in Pnin, animal moments are more in line with Merleau-Ponty’s paradigm. Yet, the concerns the two writers exhibit in their novels—exploring the nature of the relationship between humans and animals—are remarkably similar, considering the otherwise almost unbridgeable gap between them as writers and artists, as well as their rare, even for the literary world, burning hostility towards one another. Despite the fact that a writer like Martin Amis draws inspiration from both Nabokov and Bellow, calling them his “twin peaks, like two mountains” (Amis and Paz Soldán 2011), there is little likeness and certainly even less liking between the two writers. In one of his private letters, Nabokov complains that “Saul Bellow, a miserable mediocrity, should never have appeared on the jacket of a book about me” and...

Gender and imagined purity of at the turn of the 20th century: the example of B.O. Flower, reformer

Boston progressive editor Benjamin O. Flower (1858-1918) pushed for a wide range of women-friendly reforms and publicized many turn-of-the-century feminists. He saw “female purity” as the engine of progress - the moral purification women inspired was the backbone of a radical regeneration of the country that would lead to individual, social, economic, political and family transformations. This article purposes to explore this social imagination of purity, its scope and its evolution. It examines Flower’s role in the “Purity Movement,” a crusade that aimed at putting an end to prostitution – within and without marriage - and to low age of consent laws. For Flower, male immorality, urban poverty, and ignorance about sex accounted for women’s degradation. Realistic literature and journalistic exposures were therefore the necessary tools to regenerate society. This article also analyzes the ambiguous trajectory of Flower’s vision of “female purity”. He saw in Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, the embodiment and the logical outcome of his feminist struggles. However, this new movement only led to social apathy. His exhortations were also predicated upon essentialization (men as beasts or pure intellect and reforming energy, women as victims or as models of moral idealism) and the traditional postulates of Victorian culture (the centrality of home). Finally, in his last years, Flower embarked on a crusade against the “menace” Catholicism posed to women. This episode reveals the nativist potential of imagined purity as Flower tolerated nothing short of an ethereal “feminine” idealism.

MASALAH ONTOLOGI DALAM KAJIAN KEISLAMAN

Some muslim scholars offer the project of Islamization of Knowledge in order to undertake the development of Islamic studies. However, this offer was rejected by some others on the grounds that it is closely related problem of the ontological foundation of science, which is the basic assumption of the material object. As a result of Islamization science project is considered insignificant by Islamic parties offering Islamization of science. This problem might have been solved by answering the problems on the ontology in Islamic studies in order to obtain a moderate perspective. This paper discuses it by using the philosophical approach of critical rationalism (metaphysical realism), and use deductive method to do falsification test. This study found that ontology is the reality of Islamic studies in the form of text: 1) the physical reality of the text of the Quran; 2) the metaphysical reality of the Quranic texts. The value of both texts reality applied into the pure science so it is integrated with Islamic studies. Then the findings of pure intellect sciences are accepted as a source of knowledge to understand the text, so that the study of Islamic sciences will be connected to pure science.

The Good Our Field Can Hope to Do, the Harm It Should Avoid

This paper tries to achieve a balanced view of the ethical issues raised by emotion-oriented technology as it is, rather than as it might be imagined. A high proportion of applications seem ethically neutral. Uses in entertainment and allied areas do no great harm or good. Empowering professions may do either, but regulatory systems already exist. Ethically positive aspirations involve mitigating problems that already exist by supporting humans in emotion-related judgments, by replacing technology that treats people in dehumanized and/or demeaning ways, and by improving access for groups who struggle with existing interfaces. Emotion-oriented computing may also contribute to revaluing human faculties other than pure intellect. Many potential negatives apply to technology as a whole. Concerns specifically related to emotion involve creating a lie, by simulate emotions that the systems do not have, or promoting mechanistic conceptions of emotion. Intermediate issues arise where more general problems could be exacerbated-helping systems to sway human choices or encouraging humans to choose virtual worlds rather than reality. “SIIF” systems (semi-intelligent information filters) are particularly problematic. These use simplified rules to make judgments about people that are complex, and have potentially serious consequences. The picture is one of balances to recognize and negotiate, not uniform good or evil.

Sceptical Detachment or Loving Submission to the Good? Reason, Faith, and the Passions in Descartes

The paper begins by challenging a received view of Descartes as preoccupied with scepticism and setting out entirely on his own to build up everything from scratch. In reality, his procedure in the Meditations presupposes trust in the mind’s reliable powers of rational intuition. God, the source of those powers, is never fully eclipsed by the darkness of doubt. The second section establishes some common links between the approach taken by Descartes in the Meditations and the ‘faith seeking understanding’ tradition. So far from insisting on the autonomy and independence of human inquiry, Descartes sees the meditator as finding freedom in spontaneous submission to both the natural light of reason and also the supernatural light of faith. The approach to God which lies at the heart of the Meditations in some ways resembles a direct cognitive encounter as much as a formal demonstrative proof. The paper’s final section deals with Descartes’ ‘incarnational’ theodicy of the passions. Lacking the clarity and transparency of intellectual perceptions, the passions can often lead to confusion and error. Nevertheless they are part of the (divinely bestowed) endowment of our human nature, which is not a pure intellect plugged into a machine, but a genuine psycho-physical unity. The passions can serve as valued auxiliaries of reason in the search for goodness and truth.

Ibn Taymiyya’s Criticism of Aristotelian Definition

Aristotle wrote of two “points of definition”: one posited in negative and the other in positive terms. The negative formulation argues that concepts can be comprehended only through definition, while the positive point stresses the consequences of definition by focusing on the benefits to the sciences achieved through those “concepts.” Ibn Taymiyya criticizes these ideas on the grounds that definition neither necessarily leads to the revelation of the facts and truths of things and their quiddities, nor does it necessarily help in developing the sciences. We notice that his main criticism is directed at specific metaphysical elements of definition, such as genus, species, differences (differentia/ divisions), quiddity, and universality. He argues that these elements are purely mental and do not necessarily correspond to existence. Ibn Taymiyya differentiates between metaphysics and the concrete physical world for, in his opinion, not all that comes to mind necessarily corresponds to existing objects in the concrete physical world. Therefore, human knowledge should be established on concrete rules subject to experiment. He therefore refutes the logic of quiddity, which depends upon pure intellect, and calls for an experimental logic devoid of metaphysics.

Ibn Taymiyya’s Criticism of Aristotelian Definition

Aristotle wrote of two “points of definition”: one posited in negative and the other in positive terms. The negative formulation argues that concepts can be comprehended only through definition, while the positive point stresses the consequences of definition by focusing on the benefits to the sciences achieved through those “concepts.” Ibn Taymiyya criticizes these ideas on the grounds that definition neither necessarily leads to the revelation of the facts and truths of things and their quiddities, nor does it necessarily help in developing the sciences. We notice that his main criticism is directed at specific metaphysical elements of definition, such as genus, species, differences (differentia/ divisions), quiddity, and universality. He argues that these elements are purely mental and do not necessarily correspond to existence. Ibn Taymiyya differentiates between metaphysics and the concrete physical world for, in his opinion, not all that comes to mind necessarily corresponds to existing objects in the concrete physical world. Therefore, human knowledge should be established on concrete rules subject to experiment. He therefore refutes the logic of quiddity, which depends upon pure intellect, and calls for an experimental logic devoid of metaphysics.

Critical Examination of John Dewey's Position on Ethical Ideals

John Dewey's attitude in ethics is called instrumentalism, which is a kind of pragmatism. In his view, moral principles and criterions are not rules but 'general ideas' acquired through experience. These ideas are in fact instruments or devices for dealing with new situations. Dewey considers thinking as a tool for transition from a given ambiguous situation to a better one. Such a pragmatistic attitude presupposes the conditions of ensuring value judgments in the very behavior of human beings, rather than in a fixed prior authority such as divine commands or platonic ideas or pure intellect. Dewey's view, suggesting the rejection of ethical ideals, can be challenged. He holds that knowledge is relative; as a result, the society which is democratically moral loses its rational foundation.

Unwitting Redemption in Margaret Edson's Wit

Winner of 1999 Pulitzer Prize, Margaret Edson's medical drama Wit has garnered nearly unanimous acclaim. play's honors include Drama Desk, Dramatists Guild, New York Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle, Los Angeles Drama Critics, and Newsday Oppenheimer awards. Reviewers, too, have had high praise for show. Lancet critic Bertie Bregman lauds Edson for having turned her work experience in cancer research hospital into a production of uncommon emotional force that offers, along with chilling awareness of how bondage to pure intellect can desiccate life.... more of intelligence coexisting with tenderness and love. While Bregman situates play's redemptive vision in its pairing of mind and heart, American Theatre reviewer Pamela Renner claims that Wit's ... takes an unexpected form. Renner asserts that in Wit an oncology nurse's willingness to speak truth to Professor Vivian Bearing, Donne scholar dying of ovarian cancer, gives patient-protagonist the courage to make crucial decision about her (35-36). Renner thus situates redemption in honest communication. That critics describe Wit as play about redemption readily apparent. nature of that redemption, however, difficult for many of them to describe. Journalist Adrienne Martini confesses in American Theatre to having felt put on spot in conversation about subject with dramatist: According to Edson, there more to play than most of critical response has acknowledged. The play about redemption, and I'm surprised no one mentions she says, fixing her bright eyes on me. I feel as if I've been asked question in school and have no idea what answer should be. Suddenly, it easy to picture her in classroom. Grace she clarifies, is opportunity to experience God in spite of yourself, which what Dr. Bearing ultimately achieves. As for herself, Edson professes to Christian faith, but declines to elaborate about it. (22) Edson's caginess about Christianity more than promotional gimmick. In part, it reflects her appropriate reluctance to dictate Wit's meaning. It's not my place to tell people what play's about. I have to explain it, I haven't done my job, she said in telephone interview. Also at work, though, Edson's deep ambivalence about orthodox Christian faith, despite her high regard for Christ, whom she described in same interview as being in a club of one. In conversation with Betty Carter for Books and Culture, she asserted: If you're completely united with God, you don't need religion (26). Indeed, Wit's final scene depicts moment devoid of any specific religious association. In addition to its ambiguous treatment of religion, play reveals Edson's related ambivalence about life of mind. Wit's protagonist, Vivian Bearing, ultimately eschews poetry of her research subject, John Donne, for children's book titled Runaway Bunny. That choice mirrors Edson's own decision to abandon graduate studies to teach kindergarten. After studying Renaissance history at Smith College, she worked as clerk for hospital cancer and AIDS unit before writing Wit in 1991. While pursuing master's degree in literature at Georgetown University in 1992, she began teaching English as second language in Washington, D.C., public schools. In 1998 she moved to Atlanta, where she teaches five-year-olds. Few kindergarten teachers are likely to write about intricacies and implications of Donne scholarship, but Wit reflects its author's unusual personal struggle to come to terms with both academia and orthodoxy. In play Donne serves to symbolize both intellectual life and Christian faith. play's apparent rejection of Donne has prompted First Things reviewer Carol Iannone to accuse playwright of being both anti-intellectual and anti-religious. …

The Life and Thought of Siger of Brabant, Thirteenth-Century Parisian Philosopher: An Examination of His Views on the Relationship of Philosophy and Theology by Tony Dodd

666 BOOK REVIEWS prayer for things to have already happened) is in no way to diminish the praise that is due for a fine book, well-researched historically and cogently argued philosophically. Fordham University Bronx, New York JOSEPH W. KOTERSKI, S.J. The Life and Thought of Siger of Brabant, Thirteenth-Century Parisian Philosopher: An Examination of His Views on the Relationship of Philosophy and Theology. By TONY DODD. Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1998. Pp. 531. $119.95 (doth). ISBN 0-7734-8477-9. The standard full-length studiesofthe foremost thirteenth-centuryAverroist philosopher, Siger of Brabant, have been, faute de mieux, those of Pierre Mandonnet, O.P. (1898; 1908, 1911) and of le feu Chanoine Fernand van Steenberghen (1939, 1942). Now we have a new full-length study, by Professor Tony Dodd of the University of Exeter. It is practically no less flawed, unfortunately, than its predecessors. Nevertheless, it contains extensive, nearly complete bibliographies and other useful information about Siger. Dodd covers four well-chosen, specific subjects in Siger: the intellect, determinism and free will, divine providence, and the {past) eternity of the world. Before attacking those four, however, Dodd makes a number of general observations about Siger and his times. Some of these contain factual errors. For example, he mentions the "flatness of the world" as part of the medieval world view. In fact, medieval scientists knew very well, primarily from observation of lunar eclipses, that our earth is "round." He speaks of "Alexander of Hales' own Summa theologiae" as if it had been written by Alexander (it was not). In a most serious error, he confuses the Golden Age of Scholasticism (the time of Siger and Thomas Aquinas) with the baroque Scholasticism of recent centuries: he says, "All formal argument and discussion were officially undertaken in syllogistic form." The typical form of thirteenthcentury philosophico-theological writing or discourse was not the syllogism but the question (quaestio). Amore solid knowledge of the background of medieval thought might have helped Dodd in an important respect: namely, to show how and why Siger is a thoroughly medieval man. His book fails to do that, and thereby fails to give a complete portrait of Siger as philosopher. In general, Dodd's treatment of the intellect in Siger is accurate and helpful, drawing on many pertinent texts and providing good translations (with very infrequent errors; e.g., rendering a "cum clause" as causal where it must be BOOK REVIEWS 667 concessive). He provides useful information about Siger's being influenced by St. Thomas, and emphasizes, quite rightly, that Siger disagreed with Averroes on the intellect by the time he wrote what is probably his last surviving work, the Commentary on the Liberde causis. Nevertheless, on certain points Dodd's presentation distorts Siger's relation both to Aristotle and to Thomas. Not far into his treatment of Siger and the human intellect Dodd writes, "Aristotle's metaphysics ... demands that, since matter is the principle of individuation, there can ... be [only] one unique intellect if it is truly spiritual." Agrave problem: how has he failed to consider Aristotle's "separate movers"? According to Aristotle there are either more than forty or more than fifty of them (depending on how many celestial motions the astronomers will decide that there are). Of course they are distinct from each other, individuated. Yet they have no matter at all; they are pure intellect, or we may say, purely spiritual. Missing that last point leads implicitly to the conclusion that Aristotle must not have believed that individual humans have their own intellect. Averroes did believe that Aristotle actually taught that there is only one intellect, a separate being after the manner of the separate movers, for all mankind; however, this is not because of an idea that matter is indispensable for individuation, but because of his interpretation of a famous, difficult passage at the beginning of book 3, chapter 4 of Aristotle's De anima (a mysterious question on the kind of separateness of the human intellect). Dodd speculates that Siger's change of his view on the oneness of the intellect was influenced by fear of the censors. The simpler explanation is that Siger has been...

Kunst oder Wissenschaft?: Konzeptionen der Medizin in der deutschen Romantik (review)

Reviewed by: Kunst oder Wissenschaft? Konzeptionen der Medizin in der deutschen Romantik Volker Hess Urban Wiesing. Kunst oder Wissenschaft? Konzeptionen der Medizin in der deutschen Romantik. Medizin und Philosophie, no. 1. Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 1995. 365 pp. DM 80.00 (paperbound). In the history of German sciences, romantic medicine is one of the most embroiled of topics. Prior to romanticism, medical thought was seldom so noisy. The historical din echoing up to us from countless pamphlets, programs, tracts, eccentric handbooks, and programmatic statements on the future of medical science has rarely been matched in the history of medicine. Thankfully, Urban Wiesing has now isolated many of the different voices in the discordant chorus of a polyphonic age. He summarizes the historiography of the last decade, especially the German-language studies. He also draws together the different viewpoints in the broad debate about the future of medicine, analyzing the issues in terms of the central question of the day: Is medicine an art or a science? Proceeding from this question, the study treats empiricists (chap. 4), Kantians (chap. 5), and the disciples of Fichte (chap. 6) and Schelling (chap. 7) as they argued about the theoretical framework in which medicine should be practiced. Wiesing pays special attention to the work of Andreas Roeschlaub (chaps. 7 and 10), whose ideas, he argues, represent the culmination of the discussion about the relationship between medical theory and practice as it had evolved from “the rare evolution” of John Brown (p. 39). He considers Roeschlaub’s original theory as an argument in the historical debate defining the position of modern medicine. A second great asset of Wiesing’s investigation is his delineation of the principal distinctions between nomothetic sentences of medical science and singular or idiographic sentences of medical judgment. 1 He tries to recover Roeschlaub’s position, which insisted upon a special doctrine distinct from research in physiology and pathology. As opposed to the medical sciences, which were applied (anwenden) at the bedside, the so-called iatrotechnique (Jatrotechnik) could teach the rules of how medical knowledge was carried over into (ausueben) actions. In this regard Wiesing’s study is an important contribution to the theory of medical practice. [End Page 768] One of the strengths of the history of ideas is its inherent analytical potential. However, this strength also hides a deficiency in the history of ideas in general, and in the history of romanticism in particular. Listening to the voices of the past often leads us to ignore their historical origins and material circumstances—in a word, to ignore the bodies that brought forth the pure intellect. Perhaps this is an old and tired criticism, but it is important for the argument of Wiesing’s study. At the turn of the nineteenth century the debate about the art and science of medicine embodied a transition to scientific medicine that evolved in the context of far-reaching changes in social and economic conditions. At that time, the contemporary debate sought to influence bedside practice by applying philosophical precepts rather than simply grounding medicine in modern practice. Here Wiesing misses the opportunity to explain how one theoretical discourse could triumph over another, because he fails to take into consideration historical conditions and material factors. Or can it really be true that the low standard of today’s philosophy of medicine emerged from well-developed theories of medical practice? Here it may be necessary to ground the history of science in the romantic period. But this is a deficit of mainstream historiography of the romantic period, and Wiesing should not be held to account for this failing. Volker Hess Freie Universität Berlin Footnotes 1. See Wolfgang Wieland, Diagnose: Ueberlegungen zur Medizintheorie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975). Copyright © 1998 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Women mystics in medieval Europe

Women Mystics in Medieval Europe revives the exquisite mystical literature of five powerful mystics of the Middle Ages: a Benedictine abbess, a Cistercian prioress, and three Beguines. lost story of feminine Christianity is here enriched for the first time by the historical context of each woman's life and her fresh literary expression of spiritual reality. Hildegard of Bingen, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Beatrice of Nazareth, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete were acknowledged handmaidens of God's prophetic spirit. Their teaching, solidly based in theological and metaphysical culture, was even thought superior to that of the scholastic doctors of the time. Flowing Light of the Godhead, The Seven Manners of Love, and The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls, written in the vernacular, foreshadowed the works of Meister Eckhart. Ruysbroeck the Admirable, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and many other mystics. In the, clear, vigorous language of these long-suppressed works, readers of today can rediscover the primacy of love and imagination over pure intellect. Women Mystics in Medieval Europe is an important work of reference for Christians and spiritual seekers as well as an inspirational resource for those who aspire to see without an intermediary what God is.

A Comment on "Groping along"

Bob Behn's unique voice is instantly recognizable. It signals to those of us in the know that we should set aside whatever time is required, whatever other duties call, for a terrific read. We are about to encounter fresh, provocative insights that cut close to the heart of our conception of what the field of public management is about. We are about to read some marvelous stories. Finally, we are about to enjoy a colorful stylist presenting important ideas in ways nearly impossible to forget. Rather a contrast with the usual run of our professional reading! Behn's current paper, I'm pleased to say, ranks with his best. So my central message is read it. What else? Behn scarcely needs an interpreter. It may, though, be pertinent to reflect on his approach. There has, in fact, been considerable discussion of whether to publish this article. It is not obviously a work of social science. Behn's argument proceeds by example, quotation, and metaphor. His organizing concepts (e.g., groping along) are evocative rather than precise. His examples do not purport to be representative. He does not quantify. Is Behn, then, merely an entertainer? I have already made clear that I think otherwise. While engaging in the dialogue about whether this article merits JPAM publication, however, I've become sensitized to the discomfort Behn's work provokes among some members of our clan. And I have been driven to think afresh about why it strikes me so favorably. The heart of the matter, I've realized, is that I do not approach public management as a matter of pure intellect. In the lingo of Peters and Waterman, I have a bias toward action. My field happens to be teaching public management rather than doing it. But even so I have vital action needs. I aspire to convey something useful to students, who in turn aspire to leadership roles in the real world of American public management. (It was much easier when, in an earlier incarnation, my core mission was training doctoral candidates to become like me.) I would love to offer my students precise, compelling theories and foolproof prescriptions. I've made peace, though, with the fact that such theories are unavailable and that such prescriptions represent quackery.

In the Matter of Green v. Recht

Let us ask ourselves: What is significance of this historic event? answer lies in a few words, meaning of which we can barely begin to understand. words are: The last bastion has fallen. walls of city have at last been overrun. walls of city were its shelter: they kept out of city what did not belong in it. With its walls overrun, with its walls no longer serving as walls, wall-less, city has lost its power to exclude and expel what does not belong. It has dissolved into what had surrounded it. city no longer is, and we whose home it was have become homeless. We also have ceased to be as people we were. Now remember what Greek poet knew: walls of city are its laws.1 If invasion of law by sciences means that the last bastion has fallen, law and . . . announces our lawlessness, our having been thrown into anonymous mass of stateless people, displaced persons, that roam across surface of earth. How can that be? Let us first clear a few small obstacles that may stand on our way to that thought. First, what is science that has invaded law? It consists of all academic disciplines that not so long ago, in their still unbroken unity, bore name of social physics, or moral science: Economics above all, history, political science, psychology, sociology, even academic philosophy. Yes, even philosophy has lent itself to task of managing masses of mankind adrift. Let us not allow ourselves to be deceived by masks of pure intellect, or knowledge