Secular Thinking Research Articles

The Catholic Church in the Philippine Public Sphere

Whether religion has a place in the public sphere is a complex issue. Many thinkers believed that the rationalization process of modernity would result in secularization and banish religion into the private sphere. Religion has not only survived; it has even taken an active role in the political affairs of the state. This has been the case in countries like the Philippines where the publicity and activism of the Catholic hierarchy in the political public sphere of the country have been sustained and to some extent dominant. Said publicity and activism are carried out in the name of religion and the pursuit of a religious mandate accordingly. Although the reactions to such public involvement have not always been the same, these varying reactions still make sense in light of some theoretical understanding about the specifically political role of religion in the modern society. The aim of this paper is to make a modest contribution to such understanding by reflecting on the place and function of religion in the public sphere. It trains a special focus on the Philippine experience and employs mainly the view of Jurgen Habermas, an “agnostic and secular thinker” but one who has written extensively on the public sphere and recently revised his stance from thinking that religion will be overtaken by the rationalization of society to admitting that religion has something important to contribute in the public sphere.

Sisters in Law—Using Maqāṣid al-Shari‛ah to Advance the Conversation between Islamic and Secular Legal Thinking

The conversation between Islamic and secular scholars of law has been going on for a long time. Publications in European languages are flooding the market on almost any conceivable topic related to Islam. Yet, there is still little evidence of a proper dialogue, but merely of an exchange of monologues. Both sides are wary of engaging in open-ended discussion. For the Muslims, the divine origins of their religion, and consequently their attitude to the foundations of law-making, would seem non-negotiable; any addition based on secular thinking is likely to be viewed as forbidden innovation and watering-down of Islam and, in extreme cases, as an attack on the very identity of Islam. The secularists will consider some core Muslim teachings as being in breach of the fundamental freedoms for which people in the ‘West’ have fought for generations and with great sacrifice. This article advocates the use of the maqāṣid al-shari‛ah as a tool for advancing the debate.

The Political Thought of Mirzā Aqā Khān Kermāni, The Father of Persian National Liberalism

The second half of the nineteenth century is one of the most important periods for the evolution of political thought in Persia. Notable intellectuals started to develop a critical perception of the social, economic and political issues, giving life to a new current of thought which became known as the constitutionalist movement of Iran. Mirzā Aqā Khān Kermāni (1853-1896) is one of the most important thinkers of this time who, in numerous books and articles, puts forward constitutionalist and nationalist ideas for the first time in Iranian contemporary history. This article will examine his political thought, highlighting how Kermāni, after being in contact with the liberal and constitutional ideas of western thinkers and also after a new revision of his own Persian history and philosophy, was able to work out a new way of thinking which contributed to creating the ideological basis for a modern concept of Nationalism in Iran and for the first attempt at secularization of Iranian society. This article shows how the Iranian constitutional revolution of 1906 (mashrūṭeh) was in fact partially the fruit of ideas of this first generation of secular thinkers such as Kermāni, who were able to spread a new civil concept of the state which separated religion from politics, by introducing the rule of law and limiting the absolute power of the monarch.

What Lies between the Religious and the Secular?: Education beyond the Human

The current age is characterised by many as secular, and a source of such a characterisation can be found in the Nietzschean claim that thoughts about there being some ultimate reality have to be jettisoned, and human existence and the world need to be embraced as they are. That claim is renewed by some secular thinkers who insist that education has to be reconceived in ways congenial to the new age. It is argued that central to their logic is the dichotomy between the religious and the secular or the otherworldly and the earthly, and that this dichotomy is simplistic as well as problematic. As an alternative to the ‘two worlds’ view, the ‘two aspects’ view is suggested, with an interpretation of reality that the noumenon––the non-human––has to be taken in the negative sense. Against secularising the domain of education, it is indicated that there still remains a place for education to occupy between the two poles of religiousness and secularity.

Understanding Death beyond Religion in the Thought of John Shelby Spong

The liberal Episcopal bishop of Newark (New Jersey), John Shelby Spong (b. 1931), is convinced that religion cannot be seen as a proper tool to discuss the issues of human existence and neither is it an adequate instrument to fathom the reality of death as part of man’s being in the world. Thus, his thought is an attempt to move beyond theology into some sort of secular thinking which avoids theology in particular and religion in general. Such convictions stem from his belief that man’s most fundamental attitude to death—which is characterized by fear—is the result of religion, because to this very age death has been shaped by various religious views. Consequently, in order for man to regain a natural approach to death as part of his own existence, he must put aside religious persuasions and, in doing so, adopt a perspective that allows him to embrace death fearlessly. Religion cannot simply be erased, which means that it has to be studied in order for man to move beyond it; having done so, man should be able to elevate himself above religion which offers him the chance to seek the truth within his own humanity. The externality of religion, therefore, should be excluded from man’s quest for meaning; when this happens, death becomes internal, inherent to man’s most intimate existence and also the most fundamental aspect of truth. In other words, traditional religion must turn itself into some sort of lay (specifically secular) philosophy which only retains religious language and imagery to explain that religion is not needed for man’s contemporary approach to death. Fear of death can be dealt with successfully if aging and death are seen in the light of meaningful relationships which are able to transform the finitude of life in the eternity of existence as reflected in the memories of those who survive the deceased.

What Theology Can Bring to the Table

Several years ago, a philosopher friend asked me about what, if anything, Christian theology might contribute materially to philosophical thought. My friend doubted that theology could actually contribute anything of real significance to a wider contemporary intellectual conversation, especially with respect to understanding the human phenomenon. He thought that he had stumped me with his challenge. With theologians like Augustine, Calvin, and Kierkegaard in the back of my mind, I replied that the Christian doctrine of sin contributes a necessary reality principle for thinking about all things human, something of real value even for philosophers. In marked contrast to naturalistic views of humanity—whether of philosophical or scientific origin—a Christian way of thinking about the nature of human nature assumes factors like self-interest, self-sabotage, jealousy, woundedness, hatred, violence, contradiction, irrationality, and absurdity in human life and history. Held together with a profound appreciation for the beauty, order, and complexity of human existence in its individual and collective dimensions, the Christian doctrine of sin can provide a portrait of our species that takes into account all the facts of human life, not just those things that make us look good, free, and capable. It always strikes me as a bit odd that the problem as to why human self-understanding presents such perpetual fascination and perplexing challenge—the fact of which, upon due reflection, may be telling in and of itself—rarely seems to help secular or naturalistic thinkers come to a realistically complex view of what it means to be human. While I still stand by the response I gave to my friend the philosopher, I would today offer an additional line of argument concerning what Christian theology can contribute to thought more broadly. Today, I would add that differentiated unity is the norm of personhood. Arising from reflection on the concept of imago Dei seen in the light of the distinctive Christian teaching about God as Trinity, theologians can offer a profound corrective to the modern or Enlightenment anthropology of the isolated subject for whom relationships are secondary and optional. In this view, a person is a dynamic activity of simultaneous delimitation from and integral connection with other persons. In teaching UCLA professor of psychiatry Daniel Siegel’s second edition of The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are this past spring, I was struck by one of his key insights:

Contested Identities: Secularism and Economic Development in the Contemporary World

Today secularism contends with two major belief systems: religious faith and faith in nation, nationalism. There is a potential inconsistency between secularism - exemplified by empiricism, an absence of unquestioning belief in dogma, commitment to open critical debate - and one or both of the belief systems. At the individual level, a person's identity may be torn between commitment to secular thinking and faith in country and/or faith in religious dogma. Employing concepts from identity economics, this paper argues that there are important economic implications to the potential conflict between secular identity and identification with an overriding belief in a religious dogma or the ideology espoused by one's nation. To be sure when secularism is weakly developed in a society identity conflict is muted. But this comes at a cost. Which societies are most likely to bear these costs? Two types of societies are especially vulnerable: countries with compromised nationalism exemplified by an absence of responsible state rule and minimal adherence to a code of national law; and countries where nationalism is defined in terms of belief in one particular religion enjoying a virtual monopoly over religious thought. Having established this, the paper goes on to access the penalty paid for not being secular, demonstrating that flaccidity in innovation is one of its chief hallmarks. An important corollary of the argument is that the rate of convergence for a developing country towards high levels of per capita income enjoyed by the advanced countries - toward levels enjoyed by the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe and Japan - is profoundly shaped by the average level of secularism prevailing nationwide in that land.

Witchcraft, Envy, Development, and Christian Mission in Africa

This article elaborates on the relationship between witchcraft and envy. It points out how much of tradition in parts of Africa is oriented to avoiding envy and suggests that countering the fear of envy is vital to community development on the continent. Tackling envy, being a theological task, points to the central role of mission that has too often allowed such vital objectives to be clouded by secular thinking.

Faith-Based Organizational Communication and its Implications for Member Identity

This study demonstrates inherent tensions in the organizational communication practices of churches and links to members' individual and organizational identities. Ethnographic data from a large Baptist church revealed three competing speech codes which comprised the discourse of church meetings: keep the faith (emphasizes R/S values and spiritual disciplines such as prayer), secular thinking (stresses business concerns/trends and lauds codified standards/goals for decision-making), and business as usual (underscores mechanistic routines). This study offers insight into how these codes are negotiated by pastors, staff, and congregational leaders through processes described as code jumping, compartmentalizing, and trumping. Finally, this study advances practical understandings of the role that interaction in formal meetings (i.e., a situated activity) has in shaping the identities of pastors and non-pastors.

Teaching and Learning Science in Hungary, 1867–1945: Schools, Personalities, Influences

The article provides an overview of the development of teaching science in Hungary during both the time of the dual monarchy and the newly established independent Hungary after 1920. The integration of Hungary into the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1867–1918) strengthened the effect of German speaking European science, the results of which were quickly channelled into the Hungarian school system at all levels. The Hungarian Academy as well as the University of Budapest (today Eotvos Lorand University) played a leading role in the „nationalization” of European science in the educational system. Scientific developments in Hungary strengthened the position of rational and secular thinking in a highly religious society and contributed to the erosion of the mental power of the church tradition, particularly that of the Roman Catholic Church. Toward World War I, influenced by the Protestant Churches, the Jewish tradition, and agnosticism, the public picture of science became more international, occasionally ready to consider challenges of the accepted world view, and sometimes less dogmatic. Leading Hungarian figures with an international reputation who played a decisive role in making science part of Hungarian thinking included the physicists Baron Lorand Eotvos and Sandor Mikola, the mathematicians Laszlo Racz and George Polya as well as a host of others in related fields. Emigration, mostly Jewish, after World War I, contributed to the curtailment of efforts to teach science effectively as some of the best people left Hungary for, mostly, Germany, Britain, and the United States. However, the interwar school system, the Hungarian version of the German Gymnasium, continued to disseminate scientific thought in Hungarian education. Much of the information was foreign and appeared simply in translation—but an impressive array of indigeneous scientific results paved the way to a larger educated middle class then in the making.

Dean Replies to Zbaraschuk

Dean Replies to Zbaraschuk William D. Dean (bio) Michael Zbaraschuk’s recent article, “Not Radical Enough: William Dean’s Problems with God and History,”1 deserves a published response, because it applies not only to my work but to that of many other philosophical theologians, some of whom read this journal. Before discussing the larger issues, I must attend to an item of scholarly housekeeping. Although Zbaraschuk draws narrowly, i.e., from only two of my books—History Making History (1988) and The Religious Critic in American Culture (1994)—he applies his arguments indiscriminately to my work as a totality, omitting most crucially the score of articles and the book written between 1994 and the present. Of course, there is nothing wrong with an analysis of a narrow range of someone’s writings—unless, as Zbaraschuk’s does, it presents itself as an analysis of the full range of those writings. This problem is compounded by the fact that, during the years Zbaraschuk ignores, especially the later years, I was publishing some of the same arguments and revisions he faults me for never having made. Zbaraschuk does insert one piece of additional evidence, a paper I delivered in 1999 at the American Academy of Religion. Stunningly, he calls this my “latest effort” and opines that only “time will tell if this is a minor hiccup or the beginnings of a new direction in [my] work” (37, 50), never bothering to investigate the later publications that would have answered his question. Furthermore, he has selected for detailed analysis a never published paper—never published because I myself regarded it as unpublishable, exploratory, and speculative. Despite the above, Zbaraschuk deserves credit for challenging one aspect of my work—and, by implication, that of other philosophical theologians, especially during the period when some of us sailed under deconstructionist, neopragmatist, historicist, and other postmodern flags. I failed, he charges, to speak in a distinctively theological voice, one that moves beyond metaphysics and morality; or, in his terms, I failed to demonstrate how my theological ideas “provide a religiously satisfying doctrine” (34). Although this is a protest [End Page 259] raised specifically about books I wrote sixteen and more years ago, it is one that applies too well to too much written by me and others since then, even in this post-postmodern era. Zbaraschuk should be credited for raising this fundamental protest. Zbaraschuk reminds us that a theologian’s task is to offer ideas that are sui generis, ideas that secular thinkers, as secular thinkers, will never and can never arrive at. It is theologians’ provision of such distinctly theological ideas that makes them more than derivative secular thinkers. Further, Zbaraschuk fairly questions whether the two scrutinized books steer clear of the same secular ditch at the bottom of which I find so many neopragmatist and deconstructionist “theologies” (34–35). Finally, however, though appreciating Zbaraschuk’s insistence that theological ideas ought to help produce “religiously satisfying doctrines,” I must ask, Which religious doctrines? Here I come to the heart of my objection to Zbaraschuk’s article. He repeatedly begs the question, first quietly inserting a premise about what God is, then counting as “religiously satisfying” only those doctrines that speak of his premised God. His argument “works” because it smuggles in a premise that is his, not mine, and then faults my ideas for failing to promote doctrines that follow from his premise, not mine. He might better have challenged the God I presuppose. He acknowledges the theological importance of historical context, but never, to my knowledge, explains why the God I presuppose is wrong for our common historical context. Specifically, Zbaraschuk presupposes, first, that God is a more or less fixed objective entity, simply located in historical space and time but not composed of historical interactions, and, second, that God is purely good. For Zbaraschuk, theological ideas that promote doctrines about such a God will be religiously satisfactory and, therefore, good theological ideas. I presuppose a historicist God that is not a fixed, locatable entity but is a historical force, composed in and of historical interaction, and, second, a God that, given this context, cannot be unambiguously good. Such a God, I argue...

Macbeth and the Tragedy of Sin

But those who commit sin are the enemies of their own lives. TOBIT 12:10 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE MAY HAVE BEEN A CLOSET CATHOLIC. Several scholars have recently revived this old claim using some of the following circumstantial (and controversial) evidence: (1) Shake-speare's first biographer, an Anglican, said that Shakespeare dyed a Papyst; (2) Shakespeare's father signed a last will and testament pledging allegiance to the Roman faith; (3) a Roman Catholic priest married Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway; (4) the Elizabethan government identified Shakespeare's daughter Susanna as a recusant; (5) Shakespeare worked as a tutor for a prominent recusant family; (6) Shakespeare's grammar school employed three Catholic teachers; (7) Shakespeare had prominent recusant friends; (8) Shakespeare bought a London property that had tunnels for hiding Catholics; (9) Shakespeare's mother came from a recusant family. (1) Yes, and her name was Mary. In fact, Shakespeare's religious affiliation will probably never be known for certain, but his religious beliefs are not quite so opaque. They exist right before the reader's eyes in the plain sense of texts that didn't have to be disguised because his age, though riven to the point of war by bitter sectarian divisions, was, in comparison to our own secular thinking, generally Christian. When Reformed theology differed from Roman Catholic tradition, Shakespeare was unafraid to mention the contentious traditional view (for example, in Hamlet, the Catholic belief in purgatory and sacramentals such as holy water throughout the corpus), but in general he emerges as a not very disguised Christian author in the tradition of Dante and Chaucer, recognizable to both Augustinians who emphasize the corruption of the will and Thomists who emphasize the freedom of grace. As a result, for today's secular West, he can be read easily as the modest orthodox champion of a confident religious position making a serious counter-proposal to a deeply rooted nihilist weltanschauung. Examples abound throughout his plays, but perhaps the clearest is Shakespeare's classic treatment of sin in Macbeth. Sin, not crime, is the subject of Macbeth. Crime is the transgression of human law, which is itself, to some modern readers, the arbitrary manipulation of the empowered to maintain power; thus, crime is a mere power struggle. On the other hand, sin is the upsetting of the natural and divine order, which are rational and good. Crime has only gambits, mistakes, and regrets. Sin is identified by trepidation and guilt, which involve respect for the divine and the right. Macbeth's adversaries do not prosecute and sentence him for high crimes and misdemeanors; he is hunted down and killed as a sinful blight on the body politic. The first crime is complete early in the second act, but the sinfulness of that one crime alone lingers as a momentous issue until the end of the play. Unless one accepts sin as perversion of reality, the soul as the battleground of good and evil, and society as a correlative and consequence of that personal war, Macbeth the usurper will seem wimpish and distracted even before the murder of Duncan, and Macbeth the play will lose interest with the disappearance of the Weird Sisters and Lady Macbeth (as it does for many secular readers). Unless one accepts sin as the obstacle to human fulfillment, Macbeth seems a fearful and clumsy risk taker who looks behind and ahead way too often and who talks and thinks way too much. In other words, for modern secularized readers untrained or uninterested in Christian categories, Macbeth's guilt is a fatal aesthetic impediment, while for Shakespeare it forms the center of dramatic gravity, slowing and yet also driving the rising and especially the falling action as Macbeth hesitates to kill Duncan, then kills both Duncan and Banquo impetuously and recklessly, and later sees daggers, ghosts, and visions of the future. Such readers rarely pause to ask themselves why Macbeth himself pauses or why he acts terribly after pausing so little and in defiance of the conclusions of those pauses. …

Eliezer Schweid on the Religious Dimension of a Secular Jewish Renewal

One of the most significant cultural trends in Israeli society is the resurgence of interest in Jewish texts among circles of secular Jews. The return of secular Jews to the Jewish bookshelf began in the mid-1970s as part of the cultural reconfiguration that followed the Yom Kippur War. It has accelerated, however, in the last fifteen years, particularly since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, producing numerous initiatives and institutions involving joint secular–religious study of Jewish texts and independent secular engagement with traditional sources. It has grown to the extent that it has been characterized as a fourth stream within the cultural and social constellation of Israeli society. The educational and cultural efforts of this movement are directed at counteracting the increasing alienation of segments of the secular Zionist population to Jewish sources and the growing divide between religious and secular Zionists, as each camp is increasingly identified with a conflicting political position. The secular educators, ideologues, and thinkers leading this cultural renaissance aver that a robust secular Zionism must be grounded in a renewed interest in Jewish cultural creativity and repairing religious-secular relations necessitates fostering a shared cultural language. On the one hand, this cultural-educational phenomenon has its roots in conventional Zionist assumptions: cultural Zionism since Ahad Haam has advocated secular engagement with the Jewish textual tradition and the forging of ties with religious Zionists. But, on the other hand, it breaks with classical patterns of secular Zionism. Unlike most previous manifestations of cultural Zionism, the current secular cultural renaissance attends to the religious dimensions of the tradition and not just its national and cultural aspects. The innovative aspects of the secular return to the Jewish tradition has generated a host of educational and cultural dilemmas: What are the proper educational methods and hermeneutical strategies that can generate interest and commitment toward the Jewish tradition among

Secularism Minus Exclusion: Developing a Religious-Friendly Idea of Public Reason

����� ��� Religion enters the public sphere by all sorts of routes and in all sorts of ways from questions of the Islamic head-scarf to tax exempt status to the language on our currency. This essay looks at one dimension only of the broad debate over the legacy and future of secularism. My topic is the appeal to religious reasons in public debates to justify policy preferences and state legislation. It used to be, not so long ago, that the academic debate about the place of religious reasons in the public sphere could neatly be divided into exclusivists and inclusivists. 1 The former argued for the exclusion of religion from public debate and politics and the latter for the inclusion of such considerations. Furthermore, exclusivists were for the most part secular philosophers advocating secularism, while inclusivists were religious thinkers criticizing contemporary understandings of secularism. The picture is no longer so neat and tidy. First, secular liberal philosophy has developed a more nuanced, varied and critical attitude toward secularism, brought on in large measure by responding to criticism from religious quarters. To be a secular thinker leaves open the question of what form of secularism one endorses. Second, many if not most defenders of public reason no longer draw the line between public and nonpublic reason along strictly religious/ secular lines. Religion, as we will see, still poses some particular problems for the liberal public sphere but for the most part these problems are no longer dealt with by prescribing radical forms of god-ectomy. Finally, a number of secular philosophers argue not simply that one cannot and ought not exclude religious arguments from public debate but that religion can, has been, and will continue to be a positive force in the public sphere.

The Reception of English Puritan Literature in Germany

This is the first study to demonstrate the impact of Puritan literature on the development of German language and literature in the seventeenth century and beyond. It crosses the boundaries of theology, literature, and the English and German traditions to show that eighteenth-century secular thinking on introspection, psychology and subjectivity has its roots in vocabulary used in Germany as early as 1665 through the translation of figures such as Daniel Dyke and Richard Baxter. The book concludes with insights on John Bunyan, whose works inspired writers of the 'Geniegeneration' such as Lenz, Wieland, Moritz and Jung Stilling.

Imperial Ideology and Political Thought in Byzantium, 1204–1330 by Dimiter Angelov (review)

REVIEWS 175 Dimiter Angelov, Imperial Ideology and Political Thought in Byzantium, 1204–1330 (New York: Cambridge University Press 2007) xvii + 453 pp., maps. This book is a study of imperial ideology and political thought in Byzantium after the Latin conquest of the city of Constantinople, New Rome, in the year 1204. The author approaches the manner in which Byzantine political imagination responded to the trauma of the loss of Constantinople and to the post-1204 realities by looking at the dichotomy imperial ideology vs. political thought. He explores the correspondence, tensions, and rifts between official ideology of kingship, on the one hand, and ideas of imperial governance formulated at a semi-official or independent level, on the other, during this period of unparalleled political and financial crisis facing Byzantium, a period when the empire lost extensive territory, international prestige, and wealth. The book is about state ideology as well as the opinions and perspectives of individual Byzantine authors. The methodology employed by the author is both literary and historical. He uses exclusively written texts, and pictorial representations of the emperor only occasionally when they complement the written sources. The political ideas are also set in a historical context in order to allow the reader to form a comprehensive understanding. The empire’s political history in the thirteenth and the early fourteenth century presented at the outset is intended to familiarize the reader with this concrete historical context. The three most important states formed in the wake of the fall of Constantinople in the imperial territories that eluded Latin conquest were Nicaea and Trebizond in Asia Minor and Epiros in the Balkans. Of these splinter states, the empire of Nicaea (1204–1261) was the most successful. The founder of the Nicaean empire was Theodore I Laskaris (1205–1221), who had married the daughter of Emperor Alexios III Angelos (1195–1203). His successor and sonin -law, the emperor John III Vatatzes (1221–1254) reconquered large territories in the Balkans, including the important city of Thessaloniki in 1246. Following the reign of his son and successor Theodore Laskaris II (1254–1258), Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259–1282), a general who usurped power from the Laskarid dynasty, recaptured Constantinople. Nonetheless, the empire of the Palaiologoi never managed to reunite fully the pieces of the fragmented Byzantine empire, and soon after 1300 almost the whole of Asia Minor was lost to the Turks. The reconstituted imperial office after 1204 was a historical and symbolic bridge to the empire of the twelfth century, and in the ideological response to the events of 1204 both signs of continuity and change are apparent. Angelov’s study has a more comprehensive scope that previous more limited studies of imperial ideology, as it focuses on official ideology and the richer field of political ideas on kingship, including both secular and ecclesiastical thought. Accordingly, he divides the discussion into three sections: part I, “Official ideology,” deals with the ideas of propagandists and panegyrists; part II, “The secular thinkers,” focuses on political theories of governance outside the official context; and part III, “The ecclesiastics,” examines the constitutional ideas of churchmen. The study focuses on some hitherto little known political authors, such as Theodore II Laskaris and Thomas Magistros, as well as some better known but not sufficiently explored ones. The time span (1204–1330) was chosen by the author because it makes possible to compare and contrast two REVIEWS 176 distinct periods after 1204, the Nicaean empire and the empire of the early Palaiologoi. The end of the period under study is meaningful, being marked by changes in the political and intellectual life of the empire, as the long reign of Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos ended in 1328, and with it the First Civil War (1321–1328), and the city of Nicaea fell into the hands of the Ottoman Turks, in 1331. The investigation refers on occasion to developments after 1330 in the later Palaiologean period, especially with regard to ecclesiastical thought. In the Introduction, the author explains the complexity of the concept of “political thought” in Byzantium, as scholars have traditionally argued that the Byzantines lacked propensity for political theorizing and fell short of developing a discipline of political thought. Angelov’s...

The Educational Crisis in the United States

Dr. Donald A. Doyle, who was a charter member of the SCSS, first President of the SCSS New York Metropolitan Chapter, and former school administrator and political science professor, wrote this personal assessment about current American education in light of the teaching of the Church before his death in 2005. The CSSR proudly presents it here as his last published writing. The Church is first and foremost a teacher. Consequently her views on education have been important and influential throughout history. Indeed, the Magisterium or official teaching authority of the Church has anticipated the educational crisis that is widespread in America today. The Church has always defined education as the multifaceted development of individuals, spiritually, morally, aesthetically, physically, psychologically and intellectually. The Church distinguishes between the affective and the cognitive domain in education. In addition, she recognizes that there are many agencies of education in society such as the Church herself, the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, sports programs, organizations, social groups, after school clubs and the family. Contemporary secular thinking is at variance with this view. Dr. Robert Hutchins, the famed President of the University of Chicago, referred to the educationist notion that the school should teach the whole child as the most meaningless, anti-intellectual concept in educational discussion. The view that the school is the primary educational agency in society is one major reason why the public schools over the last several decades have expanded their responsibilities into so many nonacademic areas. The Church looks on the school as one of many agencies in society, but one that must always be a complement to and never in opposition to the primary educational agency, i.e., the family—with parents having the final say in the role of their education of their children. This brings us to the role of the state in the educational activity. The modern educator would clearly give primary responsibility for the education of youth to the state, whereas the Church maintains that the parents have this fundamental natural right. From the Catholic position, the state’s task is to protect and defend this natural right or, as the Declaration on Christian Education from the Second Vatican

A Communitarian Perspective on Sex and Sexuality

Both religious and liberal secular thinking offer comprehensive approaches to considering the place of the sexual drive in our personal lives and communities. What has communitarian thinking to off...

The choosy reaper

Our increased understanding of the biology of ageing has revived prospects for radical anti‐ageing medicine. Ethicists have often tried to argue against these endeavours, but with little success. Their arguments, which appeal to the natural order, are either circular or self‐defeating. Invoking the invariance of the human condition cuts no ice as rational argument and often turns into an avowedly irrational appeal to the ‘yuk reaction’ that exotic technologies evoke. Does that mean that anti‐mortality technologies are ethically innocuous? Not if we consider the reality of unequal death in today's world, in which differences in longevity highlight the gap between the haves and the have‐nots. Even in affluent societies, in which the basics of food, shelter and medicine are widely available, the grim reaper is very much class conscious. Without returning to the concern for equality that was once the hallmark of the Enlightenment, radical life extension may well add to these existing inequalities, and create more resentment and strife in the future. Many aspects of current biomedical research, especially in the more avant‐garde areas of neuroscience and stem‐cell research, are united under the alluring label ‘regenerative medicine’. These developments fuel legitimate hopes for new treatments of degenerative diseases, which, in an age of increasing longevity, represent the main focal point for prevailing anxieties about ill health and the frailties of old age. But regenerative medicine is often taken more literally to mean rejuvenation—a genuine turning back of the clock—which leads to more florid speculations about massive increases in human lifespan. These futuristic views are often criticized by scientists as daydreams that owe more to science fiction than to a sober appraisal of predictable advances. But they are taken more seriously by a different category of opponents, namely those who condemn these prospects on ethical grounds. For many conservative critics, …

From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (review)

Reviewed by: From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category Max Rosenkrantz Thomas Dixon . From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. x + 287. Cloth, $60.00 Thomas Dixon's From Passions to Emotions defends a provocative set of theses. (1) The concept of "emotion" is of relatively recent vintage, having been designed by secular Scottish writers in the first half of the nineteenth century. (2) That concept embraces a range of phenomena that earlier Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas understood in terms of a manifold of concepts such as "appetites," "passions," "affections," and "sentiments." (3) The concept of "emotion" is too crude an instrument for understanding human psychology. Further, (4) today the secular conceptual framework has completely displaced the religious one. This has nothing to do with the former's greater proximity to the truth, as is shown by the persistence of cogent Christian theories in the second half of the nineteenth century, the period of secularism's triumph; and (5) The opposition between reason and emotion arises only when theorists begin to think of "emotions" rather than "appetites," "passions," "affections," and "sentiments." Christian writers did not see the passions as simply the enemies of reason. The basis for Dixon's argument is his interpretation of nineteenth-century psychological theory in the English speaking world. Specifically he argues that the concept of "emotion" was invented by the Scottish thinker Thomas Brown (1778-1820). Brown's innovation was then appropriated and developed by Spencer, Darwin, and William James. The foil for this story is the Christian tradition represented most compellingly by Augustine and Aquinas and carried on by a host of lesser nineteenth-century figures. In my judgment, the story thus told cannot bear the weight Dixon places upon it. The centerpiece of Dixon's argument is his claim that Brown "invents" (109) the emotions and thereby initiates a conceptual revolution in western thought. While Dixon may be right in asserting that Brown is the first to use the word 'emotion' in a systematic fashion, this achievement is merely terminological. Brown deploys the term to develop a mechanistic account of human nature, one in which the springs of action are located not in the will and reason, but in the emotions. Replace 'emotion' in the preceding sentence with 'passion' and one gets a concise characterization of Hobbes's view. Dixon is aware that Brown and others work within a Hobbesian framework (250) but does not attend to that framework. Thus his claims for the significance of the developments he describes fail to convince. The real innovation in psychological theory—as in so much else—took place in the seventeenth century. Just as Dixon overestimates the importance and originality of the Scottish writers he discusses, so too he overestimates the intellectual importance of Augustine and Aquinas. His presentation of their views (26-62) is accurate, but he does not note that they take over the Platonic-Aristotelian view of the soul according to which reason can and should penetrate, educate and direct the passions. Thus the guiding thought that structures the work—the nineteenth century witnesses an ultimately successful revolt against Christian psychology—must be rejected. The revolt is against ancient, pre-Christian modes of thought and is undertaken and largely won in the seventeenth century. The events Dixon describes are skirmishes in that larger campaign. The rest of the theses Dixon defends can be dispatched with more quickly. The idea that the modern concept of "emotion" is insufficiently subtle is averted to frequently, but never adequately defended. At no point does Dixon demonstrate, or even claim to demonstrate, that Christian thinkers recognized something secular thinkers miss. Roughly the same can be said for his claims about the persistence of Christian psychology in the nineteenth century. What Dixon means is not just that such thinkers exist, but that their thought remains vibrant. Again I see no argument for such a verdict. Finally, there is the matter of the opposition between reason and passion. To his credit Dixon rejects the view according to which almost all Western thought is hostile to the passions. As he shows, this...