Fulfilling the Promise of the New Life

The question "What is Levinas Doing" is a very appropriate one, given the way he works and writes, and I think Prof. Bergo's paper does a very useful service in pointing out similarities, differences and relations between certain aspects of Levinas' thought, on the one hand, and aspects of work by Merleau-Ponty, Freud and Lacan on the other. They all share a common problem: the problem of how to go "beyond" what we might call explicit conceptualization under thematization to grasp a reality of some sort that cannot be grasped by 'mere' conceptualization.

This paper is Dr. Willard's response to Paul E. Oppenheimer and Edward N. Zalta's unique and highly elegant reconstruction of an Anselmian argument for the existence of the greatest conceivable being (or God, for short). Presented at the APA Pacific Division Meetings, Los Angeles, CA., March 29, 1990.

[Abstract: I have only tried to deepen our understanding of the issues surrounding the secular assumptions of much current psychology by doing four things: One, pointing out how the drive toward secularism or naturalism in psychological method is supported upon much broader assumptions about cognitive authority in our intellectual culture; Two, explaining a concept of knowledge that does not start from biases about possible subject matters or methods; Three, discussing some ways in which a "hermeneutical" approach in psychological method needs to be strengthened; Four, clarifying some ways in which misunderstandings and ambiguities of "objective" and "subjective" can lead to confusions about the possibilities of a psychological method that does not assume secularism. My intent is to be supportive of the intellectual thrusts developed in the papers.]

In a certain traditional and obvious sense, the human being is a substance, with observable properties and deeper-lying characteristics (properties and dispositions). That is, it has properties but is not a property, endures through time and space, and stands in causal relations.

Among its properties are the intentional ones: the flood of 'ofnesses' and 'aboutnesses' that qualify it on its way through the world. These directly qualify its experiences, the conscious events essentially interwoven into its life. They are 'quasi-relational' properties which are directly and distinctly identifiable in terms of what they are of or about, and are so in a way that does not rest on theories about them or their 'objects'. (Of course any deeper understanding of them is another matter.) The most basic levels of human competence rest upon this pre-theoretic capacity to identify what our experiences are experiences of, and the first level of "phenomenological" work...

I have not set myself the task of telling you what Phenomenology is. Rather, I would like to try to think with you in the phenomenological manner. To talk about phenomenology is the most useless thing in the world so long as that is lacking which alone can give any talk concrete fullness and intuitiveness: the phenomenological way of seeing and the phenomenological attitude. For the essential point is this, that phenomenology is not a matter of a system of philosophical propositions and truths - a system of propositions in which all who call themselves "Phenomenologists" must believe, and which I could here prove to you - but rather it is a method of philosophizing which is required by the problems of philosophy: one which is very different from the manner of viewing and verifying in life, and which is even more different from the way in which one does...

This paper revisits the effort to put moral knowledge on a secular and scientific basis by the analysis of “conduct.” Starting from the works of Herbert Spencer in the 1870’s, mutating through the works of T. H. Green and F. H. Bradley, and terminating in the works of John Dewey, “Conduct Theory” attempted to build ethical understanding on the analysis of the elements and contexts of human “conduct.” We try to give an impression of what analyses and results of Conduct Theory were like by looking briefly at Spencer and Dewey, and we suggest that contemporary ethical theorists might benefit from a critical scrutiny of their work, along with others in this line of thought.

On Ash Wednesday of 2004, “The Passion of the Christ” opened in theaters. It set the stage for a powerful Lenten season as Christians and non-Christians alike were inundated with images of Christ’s suffering and naturally drawn into discussions of the events surrounding the crucifixion. Dallas was invited to speak into this cultural phenomenon as a contributor to a collection of essays published as Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy: The Cross, the Questions, the Controversy. The book would be Volume 10 in a series of books about culture and philosophy.

In this essay, Mel Gibson’s 2004 film, “The Passion of the Christ,” is the foundation for a discussion of what was really going on in the spiritual realm during the trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The Trinity was in complete control of each event on the road to the cross; nothing came as a surprise or shock. In fact, these were all necessary components of their plan to redeem the human race.

The worth of A. D. Woozley's well-known book, Theory of Knowledge, is seriously compromised by an error which runs through the entire work. The error is of such a fundamental nature, and of such import for epistemology, that his very statement of the nature of epistemology presupposes it.

The title is meant to emphasize the immense loss of status I take logic to have undergone in recent decades, and to suggest something about its causes. The loss is most obvious in the context of higher education, where almost no post-secondary institutions now have effectual general requirements in standard formal logic, as that was easily understood thirty or more years ago. Courses in so-called 'critical thinking' are, with rare and noble exceptions, only a further illustration of the point, for many of them, if not most, say nothing at all about logical form and formal logic, and proceed as if thought and discourse could be critically understood and appraised in total ignorance of their formal aspects.