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“Catholic Social Teaching in Practice: Exploring Practical Wisdom and the Virtues Tradition” by Andrew M. Yuengert
No full textReview of
Andrew M. Yuengert, Catholic Social Teaching in Practice: Exploring Practical Wisdom and the Virtues Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), xvii + 334, ISBN 978-1009261470. £8
The Invisible ‘And’
Full text linkBasing itself on Kristie Dotson’s outline and critique of the assumptions necessary to justify the avoidance of intersectional questions, this paper will develop an additional line of criticism separate to the one Dotson provides. In doing so, I will construct the meta-philosophical concept of the “invisible ‘And’ ” to reconciliate the failure of the disaggregation assumption with the seemingly prominent existence of singular gender investigations in feminist theory. The “invisible ‘And’ ” is my claim that professedly “gender-only” (singular) inquiries are in reality “gender-and” (intersectional) ones, a fact which remain hidden due to the propensity of dominant social perspectives to falsely pass as neutral and subsequently fail to be mentioned
The Moral Character of Mental Illness
Full text linkThis paper offers a reimagination of Thomas Szasz’s claim that mental illness is a myth. His idea that mental illness actually constitutes moral problems is expanded upon with a novel moral framework that makes the claim easier to grasp and advocate for. The argumentative strategy used is intended to bypass the major extant debate about the scientific validity or natural kind status of mental illnesses. Szasz’s selective elimination of mental but not physical illnesses is vindicated via an epistemic reduction of the mental features to moral features, which does not parallelly obtain for physical features. This solution is optimised to address the criticisms of R.E. Kendell, arguably Szasz’s foremost critic
Autocracy, Iran and Religious Transformation in Syria
Full text linkThe institutionalization, oversight, and regulation of religion and religious leaders in Syria is not new, rather it has been an ongoing part of the autocratic regimes’ attempts to control the powerful religious realm. But mere regulation, in the form of a mix of co-optation, accommodation and restriction, is no longer enough to achieve this aim in light of the legitimacy crisis of the Bashar al-Asad regime since 2011 and the ensuing Iranian intervention in the country since 2013. These shifts in the political context have prompted the regime and its allies to provoke an historic and symbolic rupture in the country’s religious realm, in an attempt to create and embed new forces and centers of authority and power, to reformulate problems, and to dilute the legacy and feelings of historical entitlement of Syria’s majority, with the ultimate aim of shoring up the regime.
Keywords: Autocracy, Iran, Bashar al-Asad, Ulama, Sunni Isla
‘Fearish’ Moods: A Non-Intentional Theory
Full text linkAre moods directed at objects? Many philosophers have answered ‘yes’: moods areabout things like events or people – their intentional objects. One intentionalistview of moods – which takes them as directed at their objects – is put forward byCarolyn Price, in her “Affect Without Object: Moods and Objectless Emotions”,where she claims that an apprehensive mood is about how likely it is that a threat willoccur. In this essay, I will develop some of Price’s insights and use them to give a non-intentionalist account of moods. In Section 1, I first characterise moods and contrastthem with emotions. Next, in Section 2, I outline Price’s intentionalist theory ofmoods and raise two problems with it. Her theory of moods does not sufficientlyaccount for how they function and mischaracterises their motivational aspect. Then,in Section 3, I propose a new way of thinking about moods by drawing on a theory ofcolour-blindness. Byrne and Hilbert’s ‘alien view’ treats the colours that colour-blindpeople see as less determinate and fine-grained than the ones that people with regularvision see. After drawing the relevant parallels in the case of moods and emotions, Ishow how moods, on this account, are pre-intentional, rather than non-intentionalmental states and I finish, in Section 4, by addressing some objections to this view.I conclude that the mood of a subject should not be thought of as belonging tothe same class as (intentional) emotions, since moods are pre-intentional states thatstructure the space of possible mental states in virtue of determining how likely it isthat we experience some intentional state
Gospel plausibility and Community Organising: A missionary endeavour
Full text linkHow does Christianity make sense to those on the margins of the church and to those within? How can those of us who proclaim the Gospel week by week explicate it in such a way that it is not only comprehensible, but plausible to the inquirer? This article introduces Community Organising (CO) as but one way forward for a church that is now suffering an existential crisis in a culture that has become largely indifferent to its claims. It will argue that the gospel becomes more plausible when encountered within the context of community engagement. It does so by laying out a description of CO, providing a theological rationale, and sharing the results of interviews conducted with those practising CO in their communities
"Interreligious Studies: An Introduction" by Rachel S. Mikva
No full textReview ofRachel S. Mikva, Interreligious Studies: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. xi + 356, ISBN 978-1108826600. £26.9
The post-modern condition of Scottish society
No full textThis paper was originally published in The Future of the Kirk: The proceedings of the conference held at the University of Aberdeen on 16 September 1996, ed. D. A. S. Fergusson and D. W. D. Shaw; Theology in Scotland Occasional Paper no. 2 (St Andrews: St Mary’s College, 1997), 11–20.
The paper examines (1) what we mean by the term \u27post-modern\u27 and how we should interpret it and the major changes which are such a feature of the world we live in; (2) how and why Scotland was neglected as an object of analytical study (especially by sociologists); and (3) what the post-modern condition of Scotland might look like
For an Anthropology of Liberation: How does one watch and how does one write across existential borderlands?
Full text linkIn his “Existential Manifesto” anthropologist Albert Piette defines "autography" as “a journal of existence,” a “text by oneself on oneself, written as continuously as possible, without any link to a specific field site, in the form of a journal and fragments, to understand not social facts, but one human being,” toward a manner of pursuing anthropology grounded in “hyperlucidity and hypersensitivity.” In this article, arguing for a further "liberating turn" in anthropology, I take Albert Piette’s intervention as an invitation, exploring our anthropological potential for engaging with forms of expression (alternative languages, concepts, and forms of writing) which anthropologists tend to keep for themselves (as private, self-referenced, ego-centered, devoid of purpose in the context of the anthropological analysis)