bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Looking for Transcendence
Authors: Sharkey Michael 
Published: July 2007

One morning, I rose from my bed and walked out to explore the world. There was much that was familiar to me and after a short time I felt the need to break new ground. I set off towards unknown regions, while my gaze left the familiar things and settled on the distant horizon. Far and fast as I walked, I could not reach that horizon, for, as I advanced, it receded, yet my journey seemed far from fruitless; it was full of discovery.I began to question the existence of the horizon, though, and I met one who had travelled much more than I, and I held him in conversation for a while. He laughed, and said that the horizon is always there, always receding as man advances. ‘Then why advance?’ I inquired, seeking a reason for my own behaviour. ‘Because there must be an end’, he said. ‘It is of the very nature of the cosmos that there must be an end to time and to space.’ This perplexed me because I could not imagine an end to time and space, but he drew on the ground and waved his hands in the air until his words settled on my understanding. Although I was annoyed to think that I was captive to time and space, I could not help but think that an infinity of time and space would be a bit of a bore.‘But what is there beyond time and space?’ I called, as he parted from me. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not-time and not-space in which all-that-is is cradled.’I began to think and reflect, and realized that I was existing. So, I began to explore my thoughts, knowing that I was exploring my own existence, and the belief came upon me that perhaps I had now found a world without limit, an existence without end.
Sex and Modern Fiction
Authors: Bergonzi Bernard 
Published: July 2007

The novel has always told us about the world, not by offering verifiable case-histories, or presenting statistical analyses of behaviour, but by showing us the typical in the individual, the general in the specific. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina might be narrowly and unsympathetically described as an account of adultery among a small restricted segment of upper-class Russian society about a hundred years ago. As crude description this is not incorrect; yet it conveys nothing whatever of the actual quality of the book. Although remote from us in time and setting, Anna Karenina is still a great and moving account of the human condition, is still valid for us here and now. Anna is both a particular woman in a particular society and a representative figure whose tragedy one can immediately apprehend and respond to. By living through her situation one understands one’s own more fully. This extension of human sympathy gives a particular importance to literary experience; in some fine words of C. S. Lewis, ‘it heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality’. It also offends the tidy-minded by emphasizing the essential messiness and complexity of the human condition. It not only shows us, but lets us feel with all our senses, the dilemmas and tensions of a nature that is both fallen and created by God, which is in Pope’s words:Created half to rise, and half to fall;Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all;Sole Judge of truth, in endless error hurled;The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
The Function of Criticism and Politics
Authors: Beisly Phil 
Published: July 2007

When I suggested that the Christian tradition is to be identified primarily with its central ‘works’—the Bible and the liturgy—and that it is something analogous to literary criticism which can most easily make available its meanings and values, I denied that Christianity can be identified with politics. That Christianity has implications which are political, in the fullest sense, needn’t be insisted on in these pages. The nature of any identity, however, is something which still needs to be queried, especially in the light of the simplification of human affairs which it invariably threatens to introduce. It isn’t merely a liberal equivocation which prompts this questioning; an active spirit of criticism demands it, if the values which are invoked aren’t, in the end, to be betrayed. Terry Eagleton’s ‘Faith and Revolution’ is a case in point, and since it is explicitly offered as a contribution to the debate about ‘the points of theoretical convergence between Christianity and Marxism’ no better example need be looked for.Eagleton is particularly concerned to examine the ‘point of divergence’ which appears once this convergence has been established, and he wants to locate the distinguishing characteristics of Christianity without opting either for ‘a merely theoretical divergence’ or for ‘some specifically “Christian” revolutionary practice’:‘How are we to steer between, on the one hand, an intellectualist reductionism which leaves faith hanging in the air above Christian historical practice, and, on the other hand, an insistence that faith must show up in a distinctive form of praxis which runs into the traditional Christian mistake of redundantly duplicating social institutions?’
Criticism and Politics: A Rejoinder
Authors: Eagleton Terry 
Published: July 2007

I share Phil Beisly’s uneasiness about aspects of my ‘Faith and Revolution’ article. In particular, he seems to me right to fasten on a serious obscurity of relationship between, on the one hand, the ‘extreme’ testing of Christian commitment I delineated, and, on the other hand, the ‘normative’ values, life-forms and practices of the Christian faith as we familiarly know it. He also raises an acute point about how the notion of the Church as intensifying ordinary revolutionary practice is to be squared with Christianity’s permanently critical stance to the world. But if the image of the Church as super-revolutionary vanguard won’t quite do, neither will the image of the Church as Cambridge literary critical seminar. Beisly and I share a belief in Christianity’s ‘critical, negative, transcending role’: the problem on which my article focused was the specificity of that Christian critical transcendence, in an historical epoch where other creeds, and Marxism above all, advance similar and serious claims.That still seems to me a reasonable question to raise: a real question, rather than one merely generated by a self-absorbed terminology. And the difficulty can’t be evaded by a simple replacement of a Marxian conceptual framework by another, equally ideological set of formulae: the hypostasized absolutes, at once generously ‘concrete’ and emptily self-definitive, of a Leavisian concern with ‘life’. That this self-enclosed Leavisian terminology is ideological seems to me self-evident. One doesn’t need to plough back far into the last decades of the nineteenth century to uncover at least some of the roots of that curious coupling of ordinary English anti-intellectual empiricism with an assertive, often contentless transcendentalism which, in part at least, characterizes the Leavisian ideology.
Fiction and Poetry in the Bible
Authors: Preston Geoffrey 
Published: July 2007

This paper assumes that there is a Bible and not just biblia, that there is a more or less recognizable corpus of revelation. It assumes the soundness of the Christian instinct which eventually said that ‘all these books and no others, all these books with all their parts’ constitute a book. Precisely which books and which parts of which books are to be included is not so important. None of the deutero-canonical (‘apocryphal’) books represents a genre of literature that is not represented in the universally accepted Bible. The whole Christian tradition has a book with an agreed beginning and an agreed end, a book that plays itself out between the Pentateuch and the Apocalypse. Exactly where the canon is fixed between those bounds is not a matter of great moment, exactly what weight Christians give to the decisions of the Synod of Jamnia.But assuming that there is a book and not simply a collection of books, all the various literary items which go to make it up have to be read within the context of the whole book whose terms are the Pentateuch and the Apocalypse. That is, they all have their context in the overall Christian myth, of the movement from creation to re-creation (Genesis to Apocalypse) or within the myth that stretches from Exodus to Apocalypse, the myth of redemption, which is situated by and also situates the creation-recreation myth. All the individual books with all their parts are misread if they are not read as held in tension by this myth. Of course they have a right to be studied as though they had not been finally included in the Book, and that is so for each part of each book even down to each saying ascribed to Jesus by a gospel-writer.
That one must speak lightly… A Study of Stevie Smith
Authors: Tatham Michael 
Published: July 2007

It is likely enough that if some Catholic controversialist of the early seventeenth century had been discussing the merits of various contemporary poets, he would have extolled Crashaw and Southwell, deplored Donne, and vacillated in his opinion of Alabaster according to whether the gentleman was imprisoned in England for the Faith or had returned to the Anglican Church and a wife after differences with the Inquisition. Blame or approval would have been a matter of ‘party’ loyalty; not of poetry. The position was honourable enough in time of adversity but one we should attempt to outgrow. Such a simplistic attitude to religious belief is almost certainly an important factor in accounting for the intellectual and emotional poverty of religious art. One has heard the remark that dismisses Sutherland because he has lapsed, as if integrity as an artist depended on Easter Communion. It is tempting to inquire how many of the great figures of the Renaissance were certifiably in a state of grace.Thus it comes about that in March 1971 we lost one of the very few religious poets of our time and it is doubtful whether anyone noticed. She herself would not have been surprised:I cannot imagine anything nicerThan to be struck by lightning and killed suddenlycrossing a field As if somebody cared.
‘Fish‐hooks in Amos’: Izaak Walton and the ‘Real Truth’
Authors: Bond M. A. 
Published: July 2007

The name of John Donne is not immediately associated with the idea of moderation and the golden mean, but that of one of his earliest and most ardent admirers, and his first biographer, most certainly is. In the description of his equable self as Piscator in The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton offers to posterity a moral ideal which reconciles the turbulent egoism of the age of the English Renaissance with the quietist values of the more mature religious sects.The nub of Walton’s argument lies in the discussion between Venator and Piscator on the First Day of The Compleat Angler. ‘And for that I shall tell you, that in ancient times a debate hath arisen, and it remains yet unresolved, whether the happiness of man in this world doth consist more in contemplation or in action?’ The battle lines are already drawn up between non-utilitarian and utilitarian points of view. On the one hand, ‘the nearer we mortals come to God by way of imitation the more happy we are. And they say, that God enjoys himself only, by a contemplation of his own infiniteness, eternity, power, and goodness, and the like.’ ‘And on the contrary, there want not men of equal authority and credit, that prefer action to be the more excellent; as namely, experiments in physick, and the application of it, both for the ease and prolongation of man’s life; by which each man is enabled to act and do good to others, either to serve his country, or do good to particular persons; and they say also, that action is doctrinal, and teaches both art and virtue, and is a maintainer of human society.’
Morality is Marxism
Authors: Turner Denys 
Published: July 2007

I have written this paper on the basis of the hunch that there is something very misleading about the relationship, as Marx sometimes describes it, between the scientific analysis of society and morality. I have the hunch, also, that many of Marx’s followers have been misled in the way one would expect them to be, given his false clues. I should say, however, that this suspicion of confusion concerns more what Marx and his followers call by the name ‘morality’ than what they offer as a method and a substance for the analysis of society. This misleading confusion is that Marx and subsequent Marxists more or less explicitly define their stance as scientists by way of contrast with the status the moralist or moral theorist is, on their view, supposed to have. I shall not discuss in any detail the various ways in which this false contrast has been made out. Rather I shall mention some guiding lines of thought which lead to it.The hypothesis which I will offer as an alternative to this contrast is simply that it would best serve both clarity and the history of moral thought if we were to agree on the following proposition: Marxism, as the science of society is, if a true science, nothing but morality and morality nothing but Marxism. Hence, the judgments about how to act which may be based on the results of that science, if true, are moral judgments. If, however, the science has produced more than trivially false results it is nothing but vice to act, or want to act on the judgments about acting which are entailed by them. The question, therefore, whether Marxism is or is not identical with morality is, to my mind, an empirical question, to be settled one way or the other by reference to the very same facts which show it to offer either crucially true or else false statements about contemporary society.
Faith and Imagination in the University
Authors: Dale Peter 
Published: July 2007

This article takes as its point of departure Roderick Strange’s interesting article ‘Faith and Theology in the University’ but it is not really intended as another contribution to the somewhat closed debate on the place of Theology in the University. That is a fairly specialized question which theologians tend to worry about when their public relations have grown particularly remote, but has little reference to anyone outside their context, and may reasonably be left to them to resolve.The problems implied in it, though, are not confined to the University context for several reasons; first, the privilege of having sufficient time to give thought to the health of one’s own religion is not the prerogative solely of dons and undergraduates; secondly, a lot of people read books which have been conceived and realized in the context of the University but are not themselves in a position to take account of what that genetic context has had to do with the making of the book; and, thirdly, the tensions between faith and reason do not confine themselves to professional theologians, but are part and parcel of every man’s consciousness.Roderick Strange’s solution to the question, ‘Should the academic theologian permit his own faith to be involved in his professional activity?’ seems to me to be based on treacherous ground in the form of Dr Ian Ramsey’s rather unsatisfactory contribution to the problems of religious language. This latter debate has not yet made any real progress I think, and will continue to be unsatisfactory so long as it remains an eclectic science taking only piecemeal ideas, now from linguistics, now from literary criticism, with the result that it does justice to neither and leaves its own problems unresolved.
Liturgical Prayer and the lgnatian Exercises
Authors: Casperz Paul 
Published: July 2007

The contemporary world is characterized by rapid and intense activity. Yet, sometimes as an understandable reaction to the feverishness of haste, at other times for the very success of activity, there are worldwide manifestations of a drive towards greater interiority.Asia today is an interesting example of the activity-interiority tension. Even apart from the too facile generalizations of comparative sociology, Asia remains the place where of set purpose interiority is passionately sought, even at the expense of activity. Yet Asia today is one of the most exciting fields of the action-conquest of reality. Asian action is therefore distinguished by its inherent reference to concomitant reflective interiority.It is against this background that the Church has to work out its corporate renewal and reform. And in summary form the theme of the present article is that a continuing interaction of liturgy and a system of interiority-seeking, such as the Ignatian Exercises, provides the ideal framework for the renewal of the Church in Asia, as indeed anywhere else.The liturgy is the most potent means of spiritual renewal for both individual Christians and for communities. This is so all over the world, but is particularly true in Asia, where the external sign and symbol have always had an important pageant value in themselves, even apart from the reality they indicate.But in order to lead to effective and drastic renewal and reform the liturgy must proceed from the deepest inner realization and acceptance of all that it implies. It is here that the Ignatian Exercises can play a powerful role in the action-reflection dialectic by leading to a greater interior preparedness for meaningful liturgy. And fortunately the Exercises seem to be gaining ground on Asian soil.
On Teaching Religion in School
Authors: Shackle Emma 
Published: July 2007

Cardinal Heenan’s pastoral letter on the importance of retaining Catholic schools even at an increased financial burden to the Catholic community has provoked these reflections on religious education.The bible or major talking point in religious education today is the Schools’ Council Working Paper 36 put out by the Project on Religious Education in Secondary Schools based on the University of Lancaster. Many teachers, including Catholic teachers, have been working on this project. The fundamental premiss of much of the thinking of this group, and of such pioneer groups such as the SHAP working party on world religions, is that an adequate understanding of religion can only be achieved in the context of learning not only about the child’s own religion (if he has one) but also about other major world faiths. The rationale for this stance varies from one apologist to another: we live in ‘one’ world; we are part of a multireligious society—these are commonplaces. A more valid reason is, perhaps, that we have now reached a stage of self-consciousness in the West such that, even those souls who are naturally religious, let alone the majority who are not, are no longer content with understanding religion only from the inside: they seek also to understand it from the outside, from the stance of the anthropologist, the sociologist, the psychologist, and the philosopher. Another important movement in a related field is that which seeks to understand how schools can best perform the task of the moral education of children.These new approaches to religious and moral education have made their impact on Catholic education as much as anywhere else. Cardinal Heenan assumes, somewhat naively, that the purpose of Catholic colleges is to produce teachers capable of teaching the Catholic religion to Catholic children in the context of a Catholic school. There are different ways of understanding this proposition as can be seen by recent disputes in the field of catechetics.
William Hazlitt: An Empiricist Radical
Authors: Eagleton Terry 
Published: July 2007

Hazlitt has had a fair amount of modern critical attention, but not enough of it has been concerned with rescuing him from the drab category of ‘minor Regency prose’ and establishing him where he belongs, as one of the most extraordinarily intelligent writers of his period. Perhaps the difficulty has been in part one of genre. One dominant definition of the English essay form, as a belletristic set- piece concerned to charm, composed of the casual meanderings of a liberal, off-beat, impressionist mind, fits a little of Hazlitt’s work accurately enough; but there seem good reasons why critics who feel comfortably at home with Lamb, Stevenson and Belloc might feel less at ease with Hazlitt’s writings as a whole. His liberalism is allied with a trenchancy which has been attacked as intemperate and bellicose; and this is perhaps one reason why a book like Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, to my mind an inferior product containing hardly a single disturbing judgment, has assumed predominance over works with a sharper edge—Political Essays, Table Talk, The Plain Speaker.Hazlitt’s trenchancy springs from his radicalism; and it is worth calling the abrasive force of that radicalism to mind, with its controlled combination of moral indictment and caustic irony. There are his comments on the Quarterly Review, for instance:The intention is to poison the sources of public opinion and of individual fame—to pervert literature, from being the natural ally of freedom and humanity, into an engine of priestcraft and despotism, and to undermine the spirit of the English constitution and the independence of the English character.
Morality is Marxism—II
Authors: Turner Denys 
Published: July 2007

The challenge which faced all Greek intellectuals alike, can be reconstructed in the form of a dilemma. Either some way of fixing a descriptive meaning for the language of moral evaluation had to be found, or, in the absence of any such method, moral and political virtue would have to be taught as a way of living well in a world where prescription was the basis of morality. In either case the fact remained that virtue would have to be taught.Those who, like Plato and Aristotle, opted for the first alternative were faced with the problem generated by their adherence to the old assumption: namely that the descriptive meaning of moral evaluation was discoverable only in terms of some social order, some polis, to be a good member of which was to be a good man. But the very fact that it was now problematic what one’s polis was, meant that the search for moral knowledge had to be seen as the proper object of some specialized form of enquiry into the question, that is, of what those social roles and relationships are, to understand which is to understand how the good man acts. Thus it is that if political virtue can be taught it also needs to be taught. It can be taught because everyone knows what the universal virtues of the political life are, and that they are virtues—for, as Thucydides had emphasized, even bad men justify their vices in the language of those virtues.
Psychoanalysis and Religion
Authors: Julien Philippe 
Published: July 2007

What will happen to him if he is psychoanalysed? Will he lose his moral and religious convictions? Will he remain faithful to his previous commitments ? Will he still be Paul, Peter or John as we knew him before? These are the questions asked by friends and relatives of the person undergoing an analysis. Whether it is the doctor, the friend, the husband or wife, the parents, the spiritual director or religious superior, everyone has the feeling that from now on the person being analysed will escape them in some way and that he will enter the domain of a secret and mysterious power of which they have not the key … and that with a bit of luck he could become a balanced individual!This desire to know ‘what it’s all about’ is all the more ardent because psychoanalysis does not fall into the usual categories of medicine. With medicine, the moralist and the believer consider that they can keep within their own domain: the doctor is concerned with curing the body and eliminating suffering; the Christian is concerned with judging moral conduct and speaking on the meaning of suffering. But with psychoanalysis, these yardsticks are of no use, so the argument goes, because the whole personality of the individual is radically questioned.This uncertainty is inevitable. Indeed, psychoanalysis will be dead on the day that it is put to the service of some institution whether it be educational, economic, political or religious. It is concerned with something else: a truth which goes beyond the analyst and the analysed.