bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Problem of Plausibility
Authors: Stackhouse John G.
Published: October 2003

The problem of plausibility is the question of whether Christianity is an option one might take seriously. This chapter explores reasons for contemporary resistance to Christian proclamation. There is a pervasive resistance toward learning about other religions due to the complacency or indifference that relativism often ironically produces. Resistance to Christianity is also prevalent for a number of reasons, including widespread identity with Christianity and widespread ignorance about that very faith; public scandals of the church and its leaders as well as the pain of individuals’ experiences of disappointment and violence suffered at the hands of the church; the purported conflict of science and religion; the increasing awareness of and regard for other world religions; prevalent ahistoricism; and, finally, North America's Christian heritage, which has given many inheritors of Christian culture grounds for contempt against that particular religion. The chapter concludes hopefully, however, with the suggestion that modernity and postmodernity help foster attitudes of tolerance that would give Christianity the opportunity to make its case alongside other religious options.
Conclusion: Humble Apologetics
Authors: Stackhouse John G.
Published: October 2003

Apologetics must be reconceived as a humble, rather than arrogant or dogmatic, endeavor. As epistemologically humble believers, it follows that our conversation will be rhetorically humble, and – since God alone grants success to apologetical efforts – our speech and acts together will be spiritually humble.
“A Seer Shall the Lord My God Raise Up”: The Prophet and the Plates
Authors: Givens Terryl L.
Published: October 2003

Joseph Smith was a young seeker in an age of religious awakening. He claimed he was visited by God and Christ in response to his spiritual quest for truth as a 14 year old, but his religious career began in earnest when he asserted he was the divinely appointed translator of sacred records delivered to him by an angel of God named Moroni seven years later. Assisted – in the face of growing opposition – by family, friends, and a well‐to‐do farmer, Martin Harris, Smith produced a translation from gold plates attested by 11 witnesses using Urim and Thummim (a seer stone and/or sacred “interpreters”). The concrete tangibility of the plates and accompanying holy relics, and the alleged historicity of the history he translated, made his claims especially audacious and resistant to dismissal as a subjective religious experience.
“Plain and Precious Truths”: The Book of Mormon as New Theology, Part 2—Dialogic Revelation
Authors: Givens Terryl L.
Published: October 2003

Perhaps the Book of Mormon's most important and radical contribution is a model of revelation that is unstintingly literal and dialogic. Unlike the three main Christian varieties (revelation as history, as doctrine, and as inner experience), the Mormon version emphasizes communicated content, particularism, and egalitarian access. Unorthodox implications of the Mormon version include an anthropomorphic God and an open canon. Even admitting significant parallels with 19th‐century frontier religions and some varieties of contemporary Christianity, dialogic revelation found unusually dramatic expression and exemplification in the phenomenon of the Book of Mormon itself, thus providing a powerful “revelatory appeal.”
“A Standard Unto My People”: The Book of Mormon as Cultural Touchstone
Authors: Givens Terryl L.
Published: October 2003

Many facets of Mormon history have shaped the Church's history and identity. Unlike polygamy or pioneer migrations, the Book of Mormon will always be a constant in the faith group, and thus is a prime factor in defining Mormon culture, ethnicity, or religiosity. Assent to Smith's story of its origins is the foundation of faith in the religion itself. Since the Book of Mormon received renewed emphasis under Ezra Taft Benson in the 1980s, the scripture increasingly found a cultural vocabulary that gives cohesion and distinctness to the Mormon people. Heroes, villains, plots, motifs, and objects – from Captain Moroni to Lemuel to the stripling warriors to Rameumpton to the Liahona – provide members with a private language that shapes and defines their collective experience while helping maintain the cultural distinctness that has always been a hallmark of Mormonism.
Was There a Crisis Behind Revelation?
Authors: Duff Paul B.
Published: October 2003

Sets out the problem that gives rise to the rest of the book, the observation that the narrative world of the book of Revelation does not match what we know about the real world that Christians in western Asia Minor inhabited. The narrative world of Revelation suggests a crisis involving persecution of the churches by Rome, but historical evidence does not support this scenario. The chapter surveys recent attempts to solve this problem, including attempts to reevaluate the date of Revelation, the suggestion that the crisis was a perceived crisis, and the suggestion that the norms of apocalyptic rhetoric can account for the “crisis” depicted in the narrative. The chapter concludes by evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of these various proposals.
Setting the Stage
Authors: Duff Paul B.
Published: October 2003

The social world of the Roman Empire as well as the social world of first‐century Christianity and, specifically, urban Christianity are the focus of this chapter. Christians in this century spanned the social range but the majority were merchants and craftspersons, many of whom were freed persons (ex‐slaves). The communities of the Apocalypse were likely no exception. They were probably also constituted by merchants and craftsmen (including many freedpersons) who were intent on bettering themselves economically by accumulating wealth.
Genesis's Unity
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

Arguments against the unity of Genesis seem strong. These arguments include variation in style, language, divine names, and theological viewpoints, repetitions and doublets, and internal contradictions. However, while Hermann Gunkel read these features as reflecting the confusion of oral tradition, recent literary criticism has begun to recognize that they are expressions of deliberate literary artistry.
Abram Journeys and Sees the Land (Chaps. 12–13)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

The call of Abram (Abraham) in Genesis 12–13 is one of the great stories of all time. Against a background of death and failure, someone responds to the call to new life and to a promise that includes a form of new creation. The account of Abram's initial journeys falls into two balancing sections (12:1–13:1; and 13:2–18), with major crises or tests involving beauty and wealth respectively. Abram fails the first test; he effectively gives away his wife, Sarai, to the Egyptians to save himself. But in the second test, in the quarrel involving Lot, he puts brotherhood before wealth, and at the end, the promise from God is stronger than ever.
Sodom: Generosity‐Based Justice (18:1–19:29)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

God's wondrous life‐giving visit to Abraham and Sarah at Mamre (Genesis 18) is the counterpoint to God's fiery destruction of two cities (19:1–29). The catastrophe is attributed to God, but the terrible divine action is set in the context of God's care for life and justice – a care that exceeds even that of Sarah and Abraham – and in the context of the evil of the people of Sodom. Between the two – between generosity‐based justice and evil – Lot dithers and chooses narrowly. The scene as a whole – the destruction by fire – has some continuity with the destruction by water (the flood).
Abraham and Isaac Among the Nations (19:30–Chap. 21)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

The incestuous birth of the grandchildren of Lot (19:30–38) forms a stark contrast with the birth of Isaac, the laughter‐related child of Abraham and Sarah (21:1–7). Both these birth texts lead to accounts suggesting the integrity of the surrounding peoples: Abimelech (Genesis 20); the Egyptians (Hagar's people, 21:8–21); and Abimelech and the Philistines (21:22–34). The overall effect is to suggest that the birth of Isaac has positive implications for the fate of the surrounding peoples.
Facing Death (Chaps. 22–23)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

God's command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is probably best seen as a way of ensuring that Abraham is not idolizing his son, not idolizing the one he loves. (This is the first time Genesis uses the word “love,” 22:2). Genesis 22 is a literary unit showing Abraham's serene closeness to God as opening the way to the birth of many children. When Sarah dies (Genesis 23), Abraham is equally serene. He mourns, but he then shows extraordinary dignity, and Sarah's death opens the way to buying a field at Mamre, and finally taking possession of part of the promised land. Genesis 22 and 23 have several elements of complementarity.
Blessing and Betrothal: Jacob Deceives and Is Deceived (26:34–29:30)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

The diptych of Jacob's youth centers around blessing (Genesis 26:34–27:45) and betrothal (27:46–29:30). The two are related: blessing bestows vitality and so strengthens betrothal/marriage. There are many complementarities between the two parts of the text. Jacob substitutes himself for his older brother to gain his father's blessing (26:34–27:45), but at his own betrothal/marriage his father‐in‐law substitutes the older sister for the younger, Rachel (27:46–29:30). The link between blessing and marriage is first suggested at creation (God blesses the humans and then tells them to be fruitful and multiply; 1:28; cf. 1:22), and Jacob's early struggles with Esau have echoes of the primordial struggles of humankind around blessing and curse (Genesis 1:1–4:16). As in Genesis 24, Rebekah has a double role: she is the wife of Isaac, but she is involved in the primordial effort to achieve blessing.
The Justice of Caring
Authors: Slote Michael
Published: October 2003

The ethics of caring was originally based on the idea of a contrast between the ”feminine” focus on caring and a ”masculine” emphasis on justice. But an agent‐based ethics of caring can actually provide the means for understanding what justice (truly) is. Institutions, laws, and indeed whole societies can be politically evaluated according to whether they exhibit or reflect sufficiently caring motivation on the part of those who sustain/inhabit them.
Universal Benevolence Versus Caring
Authors: Slote Michael
Published: October 2003

It is important to decide between morality as caring (an agent‐based ethics of caring) and morality as universal benevolence. The latter has a distinctive conception of social justice that is more plausible, intuitively, than what utilitarianism says about justice, but there are reasons to think that the impartialism inherent in universal benevolence does not allow us to (so to speak) do justice to the value we place on love and loving relationships. For this and other reasons, we should prefer a virtue ethics of caring as the grounding basis for individual and political morality.
Pathways to Knowledge
Authors: Goldman Alvin I.
Published: October 2003

Explores issues ranging from introspection to social epistemology. “Internalism Exposed” pinpoints problems in the defense of internalism as an approach to epistemic justification. “A Priori Warrant and Naturalistic Epistemology” argues that naturalistic epistemology is compatible with a priori warrant, and shows how scientific research supports an innate faculty of number cognition that can generate arithmetic belief with a priori warrant. “The Unity of the Epistemic Virtues” examines the prospects for a unifying account of distinct epistemic values, such as justified belief and true belief. The next three papers consider intuitions and introspection from an epistemological perspective. One paper explains how intuitions can play the evidential role that philosophical practice assigns to it. Two papers argue that introspection plays an unavoidable but legitimate role in the science of consciousness despite being a “private” method. The final three papers deal with aspects of social epistemology. One asks how novices can justifiably choose among two or more competing experts. Another explores the possibility of an epidemiology of knowledge, of which memetics is a prominent example. The final paper provides a critical survey and guide to the diverse approaches to social epistemology.
Can Science Know When You're Conscious?
Authors: Goldman Alvin I.
Published: October 2003

Consciousness researchers commonly rely on their subjects’ verbal reports to determine their conscious states. Is this defensible in the conduct of science? Attempts might be made to rationalize the reliance on verbal reports by appealing to higher‐order thought or functionalist approaches to consciousness, but these are rejected. A third approach is defended, based on subjects’ introspective capacities. Admittedly, the reliability of introspection cannot be independently validated, but an independent validation requirement is too restrictive for an epistemologically “basic” method.
Kartābhajā
Authors: Urban Hugh B.
Published: October 2003

This last chapter presents a translation of a humorous satirical poem by the famous Bengali poet, Dāśarathī Rāy (1805–57). He was particularly well known as a master of the Pāñcālī form, which are basically songs interspersed with short hymns to various deities. He is also noteworthy for his rather raw and gritty—and very funny—depictions of the lives of the lower orders of Calcutta during the colonial era. Largely conservative in his religious views, Dāśarathī singled out the Kartābhajās (a Bengali sect devoted to Tantra in colonial Calcutta) as the very worst example of all that was wrong with the Hindu society of his day—their sexual licentiousness, idolatry, violation of caste, overturning of traditional laws of purity, chicanery, and fraud. Hence, he provides a window onto the perception of the Kartābhajās in the eyes of the upper class elites of the day.
Basic Philosophical Notions
Authors: Chittick William C.
Published: October 2003

The Muslim philosophers adopted the basic concepts of Greek philosophy as carried over into Arabic and paid little attention to terminology derived from the Koran and Hadith. Grasping their perspective necessitates understanding how they defined basic concepts such as philosophy, wisdom, virtue, deiformity, the multiplicity of worlds, levels of awareness, body and spirit, complementarity, form and matter, and substance and accident.
Modality, Structure, Ontology
Authors: Shapiro Stewart
Published: October 2003

There are a number of nominalist, or antiplatonist programmes in the philosophy of mathematics. Typically, defenders of these programmes maintain that mathematics is not about an independently existing realm of mathematical objects, but that, nevertheless, mathematical propositions have objective, nonvacuous truth conditions. This is accomplished with added ideology – typically a modal operator. I show that for the more prominent cases, there are straightforward translations between the set‐theoretic language of the realist and the nominalistic language with the added ideology. Since the translations preserve warranted belief (from each perspective), I contend that an advocate of any of the rival systems cannot claim an epistemological advantage over an advocate of any other. The treatment yields a structuralist illumination of the trade‐off between ontology and ideology.
Introduction
Authors: Grammer Elizabeth Elkin
Published: October 2003

Living in the age of revivalism and evangelicalism, many women were awakened in nineteenth‐century America to the “healing balm” of Christ. Many women were also awakened to—and eventually accepted—the “cross” of becoming itinerant preachers in an age that called women to stay at home and assume their duties as wives, mothers, and domestic servants. Grammer opens Some Wild Visions by introducing—with brief biographical summaries—the female evangelists whose autobiographies are under consideration there, by situating their lives within the context of nineteenth‐century evangelicalism, and by considering the importance of race and gender as categories of analysis in the chapters that follow. She concludes by exploring the significance of itinerancy itself for these women writers: not only is itinerancy the literal subject of their autobiographies, it is also their richly meaningful and organizing metaphor of self.
Feverish Restlessness and Mighty Movement
Authors: Grammer Elizabeth Elkin
Published: October 2003

The seven female itinerant preachers in this study made good literary use of nineteenth‐century American culture's idealization of productivity and competitive individualism, and its belief in quantification as a reliable measure of success. They present themselves in their autobiographies as fantastically productive—and extraordinarily successful—spiritual capitalists, minimizing the details of their conversion experiences to make room in their books, as did many Protestant evangelists, for their work. These “female strangers” write “masculine” stories of productivity and competitive individualism in part because they participated in—as did Protestantism, evangelicalism, and revivalism generally—an increasingly commercial world in which religion had to sell itself to consumers. They did so also as part of their campaign to understand, define, and advertise themselves (and female preaching itself) in a marketplace in which they faced considerable opposition. They resort to quantification (of miles traveled, hours worked, and converts gained) to measure, almost literally, the unorthodox life.
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Authors: Grammer Elizabeth Elkin
Published: October 2003

Fore‐grounding the intense opposition they faced (from family members, male itinerant preachers, established clergy, and Satan—who often personifies in these books a hostile patriarchal culture) was yet another useful means of self‐definition for these female autobiographers. By emphasizing their “failure” to be accepted in the world of nineteenth‐century American culture, they “succeed” in the autobiographical task of creating and preserving a self. Of course, singularity and the opposition it provoked, while assets in the making of selfhood, could also be psychologically disorienting, even for faithful female itinerants who found their “sufficiency” in God (2 Corinthians 3:5). But these rootless women had a resource that secular autobiographers and rebels lacked: As they lived and wrote their lives, the Bible afforded them a language (which they use repeatedly in their books) and hard evidence that their experiences of opposition were deeply rooted in a powerful and empowering tradition of prophecy and martyrdom. Thus the ceiling on success that they bemoan could actually be used as a safety net, a guarantee that no matter how effectively they competed in the marketplace of salvation, they could remain—by privileging persecution in their narratives—the “strangers and pilgrims” that Christian disciples are called to be.
Imagining a Place for Buddhism
Authors: Monius Anne E.
Published: October 2003

The intimate connection between religion and literature has become a commonplace assumption in the study of Christianity and Western culture, but in the study of South Asian religions, relatively little attention has been paid to the relationship. This study argues that, in early medieval South India, it was in the literary arena that religious ideals and values were publicly contested. While Tamil‐speaking South India is today celebrated for its preservation of Hindu tradition, non‐Hindu religious communities have played a significant role in shaping the religious history of the region. Among the least understood of such non‐Hindu contributions is that of the Buddhists, who are little understood because of the scarcity of remnants of Tamil‐speaking Buddhist culture. However, the two extant Buddhist texts in Tamil that are complete – a sixth‐century poetic narrative known as the Maṇimēkalai, and an eleventh‐century treatise on grammar and poetics, the Vīracōliyam – reveal a wealth of information about their textual communities and their vision of Buddhist life in a diverse and competitive religious milieu. The Maṇimēkalai, although belonging to a pan‐Indian tradition, both embodies and envisions a Buddhist community that is explicitly made local or ‘Tamil’. Four centuries later, the Vīracōliyam envisions a substantially different Buddhist world, reflecting significant transformations in the literary and religious climate of the Tamil‐speaking region. By focusing on these texts, the author sheds light on the role of literature and literary culture in the information, articulation, and evolution of religious identity and community.
Rachid Ghannouchi
Authors: Tamimi Azzam S.
Published: October 2003

By way of an analytical and critical study of the life and thought of Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the proscribed Ennahda political party in Tunisia, this book seeks to address the obstacles that hinder democratization in the Arab region.

Inasmuch as democracy is seen as a set of procedures that serve collectively to empower the people to freely elect governments and make them accountable and to make sure that basic human rights and civil liberties, the rule of law and equality before the law, and the rights of minorities are protected, then democracy is fully compatible with the Islamic value of shura.

Islam may have a problem with the philosophical underpinning of liberal democracy because of the notion of secularism.

Despite objections to democracy from certain Islamic circles, the formidable problems facing transition to democracy in the Arab Muslim region are neither religious nor cultural.

The attempt to impose secularism first by the colonial authorities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and second by postcolonial governments led to undermining civil society and doing away with the minimum protection needed for individuals and groups to be politically involved.

The modern Arab territorial state, which is the product of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the twentieth century, has by design been antidemocratic.

The world order that brought about the creation of all these artificial territorial states, and that today exerts all it can to preserve the status quo has no interest in the success of democracy anywhere in the region.
The Journey to Democracy
Authors: Tamimi Azzam S.
Published: October 2003

Convinced that staying at home was a more worthy cause than returning to Paris to pursue his postgraduate studies, Ghannouchi puts his foot on the road to Islamic political activism that lead him to a clash with the authorities during the reign of Bourguiba, landing him in prison for a period of four years.

Using different platforms, starting with the Qur’anic Preservation Society, then his own Al‐Jama’ah al‐Islaymiyah and the Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI) Ghannouchi seeks to tackle pressing issues within his country, ranging from the need to reform the education curriculum to the demands of political and economic reform.

Interacting with local forces, both Marxist and liberal, and seeking to learn lessons from the Khomeyni‐led revolution in Iran and the Islamic movement in the Sudan, he endeavors to restore respect for the pioneers of nineteenth and twentieth century Arab reformers.

In prison, Ghannouchi has an opportunity to assess the successes and failures of his movement and to document the lessons derived from the past few years.
Gendered Models of Social Relations: How Moral and Political Culture Closes Minds and Hearts
Authors: Meyers Diana Tietjens
Published: October 2003

A number of feminists amplify care ethics by urging that the relationship between a mother and a child might make a better model for conceptualizing justice than the dominant model in western societies, namely, economic man and his social contract. In Virginia Held's treatment of this proposal, the mother‐child relationship invites us to consider what values social contract theory suppresses and whom social contract theory margin alizes, surely, a salutary project. However, oscillating sentimentality and contempt are prevalent attitudes toward mothers and children, and this perverse ambivalence is enshrined in and transmitted through many striking mother‐child tropes, including mother‐child fusion, the undischargeable debt, and the Oedipus complex. Since it is not feasible to seriously consider the mother‐child relationship as a figuration of just social relations unless feminists undertake the wholesale refigura tion of the mother‐child relationship, two counterfigurations of this relationship are explored, a matrix (as proposed by Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger) and a mother and a daughter playing catch with images of each other (as proposed by Luce Irigaray). Since the image of the social contract yields an array of important and enduring political philosophies because it is such a rich figurative lode, it is altogether possible that suitably refigured, comparably rich mother‐child imagery could make equally valuable contributions to political philosophy.
Dance and Trance in the Presence of Māriyammaṉ
Authors: Younger Paul
Published: October 2003

The most basic of the festival styles seems to be the one associated with the independent Goddesses or Ammans who are thought to have special sakti (power). Mariyamman is the bestknown of this class of independent Goddesses in Tamilnadu, and her temple in Samayapuram near Tirucirapalli in the center of that state is one of the more popular of the many hundred of her temples where festivals are held. Worship of Mariyamman starts when someone takes a vow promising to worship and ward off her anger. After a few months of arduous preparations, the vow‐keepers eventually dance their way into the temple grounds while holding a fire pot or kavati or being swung on a hook and the huge crowds on the sidelines show them reverence at every step. After worship, some of the vow‐keepers go into a trance and become possessed by the Goddess so that they can perform healings and exorcisms for others in need. In Samayapuram today the tone of worship includes considerable mocking of the Brahmanical pretensions of the nearby temple of Srirankam.
A Bath for Dancing Śivaṉ In the Cold of Canada
Authors: Younger Paul
Published: October 2003

A second wave in the Hindu diaspora occurred in the second half of the twentieth century when individual professionals and others settled in Europe and North America and began to build very elaborate temples. One of the most elaborate of these temples is the Ganesh Temple of Toronto, which was built on a model laid out by the Sankaracarya of Kancipuram with separate shrines for different Vaisnava and Saiva deities within one building. The temple management has tried to emulate exactly the Indian celebration of the Vision of Grace festival for Sivan Natarajan in the month of Markali. The celebration is an elegant bath or abhiseka and includes an otuvar singer adopting the persona of the saint Manikkavacakar so that he can sing the hymns to Sivan Natarajan. While in India the tuvar singers are boys who learn from childhood and virtually all come from one caste, in Sri Lanka, where most of the Canadian worshipers are from, women are often the best‐trained singers. In the end, the Toronto festival was a compromise with an elderly male tuvar perfoming the ritual and a Sri Lankan lady doing most of the singing.
Torah in the Mouth
Authors: Jaffee Martin S.
Published: October 2003

This book is a study of the relationship of oral tradition to written sources among different Jewish groups that thrived in Palestine from the later Second Temple period into Late Antiquity. Its main concern is to track the emerging awareness, within diverse Palestinian scribal groups, of the distinction between written books and the oral traditions upon which they were based or in light of which they were interpreted. The thesis holds that during the Second Temple period in particular, diverse Jewish scribal communities –such as the composers of Jewish pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea community, and the Pharisees – certainly employed oral traditions in their literary and interpretive work. But they did not appeal to oral tradition as an authoritative source of knowledge. This was reserved for written books regarded as prophetic transmissions from antiquity. The emergence of a coherent ideology of oral tradition as a kind of revelation comparable to that of Scripture is associated with the consolidation of third century rabbinic Judaism. The book argues that the rabbinic ideology of Oral Torah – “Torah in the Mouth” – is, in great measure, a legitimation of the institution of rabbinic discipleship, which depended upon the primacy of face‐to‐face relationships, unmediated by the written word.
Social Settings of Literacy and Scribal Orality
Authors: Jaffee Martin S.
Published: October 2003

Explores the role of orality and oral‐performative tradition in the written literary activities of various scribal communities in Second Temple Judaism. It points out that true literacy was rare among Jews in this period, and was confined to various professional scribal groups associated with the Temple and its governing agencies. Even among scribal groups who created literary works, writing and literary transmission was highly oral in character. Nevertheless, these groups did not radically distinguish oral tradition from the written tradition of books claimed to stem from prophetic revelations. Rather, books were seen to stem from a kind of oral dictation from God to the prophet, as in the Testament of Levi and 4 Ezra, who functioned as a kind of scribe in transmitting the words of a divine or angelic author.
The Ideological Construction of Torah in the Mouth
Authors: Jaffee Martin S.
Published: October 2003

Traces the earliest evidence in Tannaitic texts for the idea that rabbinic halakhic tradition and other oral‐literary traditions stem from a Mosaic origin. Building upon chapter four's discussion of “halakhah to Moses from Sinai,” the chapter studies key Tannaitic terms (e.g., “essence of the Torah,” “words of the Scribes”), tracking shifts in their meaning from the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and the earliest Tannaitic collections of midrashic commentaries on the Torah. The chapter concludes that there seems to be a tendency in the Tosefta and the midrashic commentaries to bring halakhic tradition of various times into close proximity to the idea of Sinaitic revelation.
Introduction
Authors: Weiss Roslyn
Published: October 2003

The Meno assesses the worth of moral inquiry and its limits. Moral inquiry, especially in the form of Socratic elenchus, hopes to achieve the truth about moral questions, recognizing that certainty about moral questions is not possible within the “Cave.” “Platonic” themes, such as immortality of the soul and recollection, are advanced in the Meno in order to promote moral inquiry and are not intended as doctrines whose function it is to account for how any and all knowledge is acquired.
The Road to Larisa
Authors: Weiss Roslyn
Published: October 2003

Socrates reluctantly turns from his preferred question of what virtue is to Meno's preferred question of the teachability of virtue – a question that Socrates would surely never have permitted to arise if he intended the claim that “all learning is recollection” to be taken seriously. Socrates tests for the teachability of virtue by asking if virtue is knowledge on the hypothesis that anything teachable must be knowledge. Although virtue, as something good, turns out indeed to be knowledge, Socrates discounts virtue's teachability and ultimately, its status as knowledge, on the grounds that there are not teachers of it. Anytus, a democrat and politician, who is the son of Anthemion, a wealthy and good man, fails to establish that there are teachers of virtue. If virtue is not natural and is not knowledge, it can only be true opinion – unless the virtue being considered is the success that politicians enjoy by dint of the divine gift of eudoxia, good repute.
Conclusion
Authors: Weiss Roslyn
Published: October 2003

The end of the examined life is true opinion, since moral wisdom is unattainable by mere human beings. Socrates makes no claims to moral wisdom, though he is strongly committed to the moral beliefs he holds. Socratic statements in which the word “know” or “know well” appear, do not necessarily signal the presence of a knowledge claim; all people engaged in conversation use the term “know” colloquially to indicate that they or others feel confident or have the relevant worldly experience. Virtue is possible without knowledge as long as one attains both true opinions and lives by them and as long as one engages in lifelong critical self‐reflection. The Apology confirms the unattainability of moral wisdom by ordinary human beings, the value of true opinion when wisdom is out of reach, and the possibility of achieving virtue without wisdom.
Rescue for the Dead
Authors: Trumbower Jeffrey A.
Published: October 2003

This book investigates a variety of traditions in early Christianity in which various Christians sought to secure salvation after death for non‐Christians. Sometimes the dead would appear in dreams to request prayer for the dead; sometimes soon‐to‐be martyrs were thought to have special powers to rescue even the non‐Christian dead. Some Christians practiced a vicarious baptism for the dead. Others imagined Christ offering salvation to the dead during the harrowing of hell (his descent to the realm of the dead). Some Christians went so far as to posit an ultimate universal salvation for everyone who had ever lived. The book culminates with a study of Augustine, who strove to limit these practices and beliefs to prayer for the Christian dead with light sins only. In this process, western notions of purgatory began to develop as a place where baptized Christians could be purified for eternal life with God.
Posthumous Progress and Universal Salvation
Authors: Trumbower Jeffrey A.
Published: October 2003

Examines those early Christians who believed that posthumous progress for the soul was possible. For some, this belief resulted in a view that ultimately, all human beings, perhaps even all rational beings (including the devil) would be saved. The first text explored is one of the central texts of Christian Gnosticism, the Apocryphon of John, which espouses a doctrine of reincarnation for most souls until they achieve salvation. Next up are Origen of Alexandria (third century) and Gregory of Nyssa (fourth century), the two most famous exponents of universal salvation (a.k.a. “universalism”) in the early Church.
The Global Language of Human Rights
Authors: Dotan Yoav
Published: October 2003

The conventional distinction, between the dispassionate “hired gun” lawyer and the committed cause lawyer, appears not to work in the case of Israel, where there have been cases of lawyers crossing the divide between pro‐Palestinian human rights work and pro‐Israeli government work. This chapter assesses the implications for cause lawyering of such changes of allegiance, and of the extent to which it reflects the impact of globalization on the practice of human rights law.
The Politics of Imported Rights
Authors: Morag‐Levine Noga
Published: October 2003

This chapter examines the extent to which the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (I.U.E.D.), an Israeli environmental law group created on the model of the U.S.A's Natural Resources Defense Council (N.R.D.C.), has succeeded in influencing Israeli government policy on environmental issues, despite substantial difference in respect of national political sensitivities and priorities. A review of the I.U.E.D's performance illustrates how it has had to counter local perceptions of being a “U.S. import”, by shifting attention away from its global links and toward its concerns with indigenous issues.
Setting the Stage
Authors: Haynes Stephen R.
Published: October 2003

This chapter connects the history of interpretation of Genesis 9–11 with contemporary American culture. It also describes the thematic structure of Genesis 9–11 in terms of dispersion and differentiation, reviews the history of “Noah's curse” as an explanation of blackness and a justification for racial slavery, introduces the concepts of honor and order that will figure prominently in subsequent chapters, reviews the arguments of Eugene Genovese against the centrality of Noah's curse in the American proslavery argument, and explores “other chapters in the Genesis of race,” including pre‐Adamism, racialist readings of the Flood story, and pro‐apartheid interpretation of Genesis 11 in South Africa.
Unauthorized Biography
Authors: Haynes Stephen R.
Published: October 2003

This chapter reviews the history of biblical interpretation with regard to Nimrod (Ham's grandson through Cush), who is described in Genesis 10:6–12 as “a mighty hunter before the Lord.” The roots of Nimrod's traditional association with the Tower of Babel are explored, as is the evolution of Nimrod's personification of the more aggressive and rebellious dimensions of the Hamitic curse. The beginning of Nimrod's explicit racialization is located in the work of nineteenth‐century author Alexander Hislop.
Redeeming the Curse
Authors: Haynes Stephen R.
Published: October 2003

This chapter seeks a cure for the curse, a way of interpreting the story of Noah and his sons that precludes the denigration of “Hamites” or the groups with whom readers wish to associate them. Clues for a redemptive reading of Noah's curse are sought in the Hebrew canon and in the mimetic theory of literary critic René Girard, which elucidates both the scapegoating mechanism at work in Noah's family and the relationship of Genesis 9 to animal sacrifice.
Creation
Authors: Leeming David
Published: October 2003

Creation myths from several traditions – Zuni, Vedic, Christian, and Icelandic, for example – reveal several ways by which humans through the ages have attempted to identify themselves culturally in relation to what they have seen as the source of being. Ex Nihilo cosmogonies stress a central male creative sky power; earth‐centered cosmogonies see creation through the feminine metaphor of motherhood. Universalists and some scientists see a new vision of creation based on new scientific understandings. A literary example of a modernist approach to creation is Virginia Woolf's novel, To the Lighthouse.
Legacies and Transformations
Authors: Swenson Peter A.
Published: October 2003

Concludes the book with a survey of trends in the areas of collective bargaining and social policy from the 1950s through the 1990s, and examines them in light of earlier analysis, in the U.S. and Sweden. It finds, for example, that dramatic changes starting in the 1970s and 1980s in labor‐management relations (the decline in unionism and collective bargaining in the U.S. and the decentralization of bargaining in Sweden) were more influenced by international market processes in the U.S. than in Sweden. It also finds that analysis of the ongoing realignment of capitalist and labor interests helps explain the late 20th century welfare state trends.
A Rational Agent
Authors: Bittner Rüdiger
Published: October 2003

The chapter develops the main consequences the present conception of reasons for which people do things has for our status as rational agents. One is that rational agents only need an awareness of things going on around them and the ability to act in response to them, but no faculty of governing themselves. This does away with inner opposition and domination as well as with the restriction of rational agency to the human species. It also does away with activity as the core of agency: we are not masters over what we do for reasons; we do it, sensitive to what we encounter. Another consequence is that we are not, on the strength of being rational agents, subject to moral and other requirements, and that we do not therefore enjoy a special dignity: we are worldly creatures through and through.
Two Paradoxes of Evidence: Ravens and Grue
Authors: Achinstein Peter
Published: October 2003

The concept of potential evidence defined in Ch. 8 is used to solve two powerful paradoxes of evidence: the ravens paradox, attributable to Carl G. Hempel, and the grue paradox, due to Nelson Goodman. The solutions offered are contrasted with those proposed by Hempel and Goodman themselves, and reasons are given for preferring the new solutions.
Old‐Age and New‐Age Holism
Authors: Achinstein Peter
Published: October 2003

Evidential holism, espoused by Pierre Duhem and W.V. Quine, is the view that nothing can be evidence for or against an isolated hypothesis, but only for or against some group of hypotheses. The arguments of Duhem and Quine are examined and rejected. Another version of holism (”new‐age”), which requires that evidence for a hypothesis always be relativized to a set of hypotheses, is then critically evaluated using the concept of potential evidence.
Secular States in Crisis
Authors: Nasr Seyyed Vali Reza
Published: October 2003

Malaysia and Pakistan sought to address their problems through economic growth and the management of ethnic tensions. Malaysia pursued the New Economic Policy (NEP) to favor Malay bumiputras (sons of the soil), and Pakistan, under a military government, pursued aggressive economic growth. However, these strategies did not resolve ethnic tensions as in Malaysia it did not alleviate the economic problems facing Malays, and in Pakistan it favored Punjab at the cost of other provinces, especially East Pakistan. Both states continued to experience serious challenges to their authorities in the form of racial tensions in Malaysia and the Bangladesh movement in Pakistan.
Nathan the Wise and Lessing's “Ideal of Humanity”
Authors: Yasukata Toshimasa
Published: October 2003

Elucidates Lessing's ideal of humanity, the ideal that finds poetic and literary expression in Nathan the Wise. The parable of the three rings, the starting point for the plot that stands at the center of the entire work, offers a clue to Lessing's religious idea of humanity. We construe this famous parable as implying not only Lessing's attitude toward positive religions but also his view as to the meaning of the truth claim of a historical religion in this “interim” between the beginning and the end of history. It is observed that Lessing's idea of humanity as illustrated by this drama and by the parable in particular, is suffused with deep piety and a noble wisdom free of prejudice. The essence of Nathan's reason as illustrated in Act 4, Scene 7 suggests that the essential core of Lessingian reason is formed by a “believing reason” or “hearkening reason” which, fully aware of its own limitations, opens itself to the decrees of the reason‐transcending deity.
Radical Interpretation
Authors: McCarthy Timothy , McCarthy Timothy
Published: October 2003

Lays out a general framework for radical interpretation, which the ensuing chapters apply, respectively, to the theory of reference and to the philosophy of logic. McCarthy's main claim is that a relatively modest set of constitutive principles of interpretation can serve to constrain the semantic description of the language and attitudes of an idealized agent or population in such a way as to resolve the indeterminacies of interpretation that naturally present themselves. The starting points of the discussion are the constraints on interpretation suggested by Davidson and Lewis, which are found to admit many incompatible semantic descriptions of a simple extensional language, if any at all. McCarthy then investigates some obstructions to extending this argument to languages involving certain modalities, resulting in a limited remedy for Quinean indeterminacies by a partial endorsement of the (modified) constraints on interpretation suggested by the aforementioned commentators. McCarthy finally proposes a further constraint on interpretation, satisfaction of what he calls the ‘Rigidity Condition’, which is argued to resolve all cases of referential indeterminacies that are distinctively Quinean (except for those that infect the interpretation of classical mathematics).
Nietzsche's Denial of Evil
Authors: Card Claudia
Published: October 2003

This chapter contests Nietzsche's account of the origin of the concept “evil” and its meanings, questioning his claims that the weak are more dishonest than the powerful, that the powerful are unlikely to hate victims, and that hatred is what motivates judgments of evil. Nietzsche argued in his Genealogy of Morality that judgments of evil originate in the perspectives of impotent, victimized masses; he found such judgments dishonest and dangerous to human vitality. This chapter argues, on the contrary, that the concept “evil” is not rooted in the dishonest envy of the weak but originates more plausibly with those who believe themselves to be entitled to decent treatment. Nietzsche's “slave values” are also better understood as values that masters naturally apply to slaves in interacting with them than as values originated by slaves, although some slaves may internalize them.
Kant's Theory of Radical Evil
Authors: Card Claudia
Published: October 2003

According to Kant, we become radically evil when we subordinate the moral law to our own self‐interest (prudence). He holds that we never do wrong for the sake of doing wrong but only for the sake of prudence or from inclinations to more limited goods. Kant neglects the existence of evil interests and desires, and offers a narrow view of possible immoral principles, overlooking principles of national chauvinism, for example, which need not even appear to be prudent. His neglect of suffering and harm to victims results in a theoretical failure to distinguish what is wrong with evils, such as murder and mayhem, from what is wrong with ordinary transgressions, such as petty theft. Although the sources of evil remain a mystery for Kant, Christine Korsgaard's analysis of normativity and Lorna Smith Benjamin's theory of social behavior suggest an answer to Kant's mystery, namely, that our practical principles (whether good or evil) are based on our wishes to be the kind of person who would be worthy of the love or esteem of someone who is (or was) important to us (someone who may be good or evil) and that our principles can change as we abandon those wishes.
Wheat and Tares
Authors: McKanan Dan
Published: October 2003

Examines the rediscovery of imago dei theology by early nineteenth‐century liberal theologians, most especially William Ellery Channing and other Unitarians. This theology was fleshed out by such sentimental novelists as Catharine Sedgwick, Lydia Maria Child, Eliza Buckminster Lee, and Eliza Sigourney, particularly in their historical fiction on the Puritans. For these writers, Puritan violence against Native Americans and witches was rooted in a false theology that saw God's presence more in the violence of history than in the loving affections of individuals.
Epics of Ambivalence
Authors: McKanan Dan
Published: October 2003

The novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe both epitomized and compromised the tradition of radical Christian liberalism. This chapter explores Stowe's ambivalent relationship to earlier reformers and sentimental authors, and then analyzes three models of power in her antislavery novels, Uncle Tom's Cabin and Dred. Her depiction of benevolent Quakers and loving mothers builds on the classic model of sentimentality, according to which humans can achieve power simply by identifying with one another. Her Christological interpretation of Uncle Tom and Little Eva, on the other hand, suggests that sacrificial death is the ultimate source of power. And her novels also hint that God will ultimately use apocalyptic power to overthrow slavery.
On the Passivity of the Passions (2001)
Authors: Solomon Robert C.
Published: October 2003

It is commonly supposed that passions are passive, or, rather, that we are passive with regard to them. They happen to us. I argue that we are active with regard to our passions, and the notion of passivity is the product of a number of seemingly self‐evident but misleading observations and a number of wrong‐headed arguments.