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Emily Dickinson: A poet at the limits
Get PDFEmily Dickinson’s poetry has long been of interest to theologians due to her fascination with faith, doubt, death, and immortality. In this essay, Jaime Wright draws attention to the recent shift in Dickinsonian scholarship towards an examination of the scientific elements of her poetry and the interface between science and theology in her work. In noting this, however, Wright argues that ‘the pertinent intersection is epistemology’. The relation of science and theology is then explored utilising one of Dickinson’s favoured metaphors: that of circumference. By use of this metaphor, Dickinson expresses an understanding of the limits of scientific and theological knowledge. Wright then explores further the paradigm of epistemic limits or circumference in Dickinson’s poetry by means of its varying spatial points: that which is within a circumference (life, humanity, nature), at a circumference (death, dying), and beyond a circumference (God, immortality, eternity). The essay concludes with an affirmation of the continuing persistence of Dickinson’s faith in her life and in her work
“Christ, Church and World: New Studies in Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Ethics” edited by Michael Mawson and Philip G. Ziegler
No full textReview of Michael Mawson and Philip G. Ziegler (eds.), Christ, Church and World: New Studies in Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Ethics (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016
A Remark on Attitudes De Dicto and De Se
Get PDFThis is a two-fold response to the theory of attitudes presented by David Lewis in his paper Attitudes De Dicto and De Se. Lewis’ theory is on the specification of attitudes. On the one hand, it is obvious in his text that Lewis attempts to specify the objects of attitudes uniformly. I will argue that the attempt fails. The reason is that from Lewis’ formulation of an attitude, we cannot read the object of it. On the other hand, Lewis’ account could have been a theory on the specification of attitudes without any commitment on what the objects of attitudes are. I will argue that this does not hold either. In order to do that, I will construct pairs of cases in which the attitude in one case has the same formulization as in the other case according to Lewis’ theory. I will argue that in one such pair of cases, the focus of the attitude in one case can be different from that in the other, while the Lewisian theory of attitudes does not help to specify an attitude’s focus
Is intuition best treated as a sui generis mental state, or as a belief?
Get PDFIt is common in philosophy for philosophers to consult their intuitions regarding philosophical issues, and then use those intuitions as evidence for their arguments. For instance, an incompatibilist about moral responsibility might argue that her position is correct because it is intuitive that, given a deterministic world, people cannot be morally responsible. One might ask whether or not the philosopher is justified in using intuitions in her argument, but it seems that in order to answer this, we require an understanding of what intuitions are. One characterisation of intuitions is that they are either ordinary beliefs, beliefs with particular aetiologies, or inclinations to believe. An alternative view is that intuitions are unique, sui generis mental states, unique in the sense that they cannot be fully understood in terms of other mental states. In this essay, I defend the belief view of intuitions. I argue that intuitions are inclinations to believe, which are derived from unconscious reasoning processes which take our background beliefs and theories as input. I defend this view against Elijah Chudnoff’s claim that intuitions are sui generis mental states akin to perceptual experiences. I suggest that the analogy Chudnoff draws between perceptions and intuitions does not hold, because perceptions are belief independent, while intuitions are not. I then respond to Chudnoff’s counter-example to the belief view, which is that it is possible to have an intuition but no corresponding belief or inclination to believe. I formulate an error theory which demonstrates that it is possible to confuse the rejection of an intuition as part of our consciously derived beliefs, with the elimination of an intuition as part of our unconsciously derived beliefs. Such confusion, I suggest, leads to Chudnoff’s putative counter-example that it is possible to have an intuition and yet no inclination to believe in it
In other words: Towards a poetic theology of the spoken Word of God
Get PDFIn this paper, Jacob Rollison considers poetry in its various relations. Poetry raises questions regarding the relation of the world to a ‘beyond’, and the relation of representation to presence. The question poetry poses to theology is: if Jesus Christ is the Word, is this to be understood prosaically or poetically? as representation or presence? To probe this question Rollison draws on the work of the French theologian, sociologist and poet Jacques Ellul. For Ellul, poetry manifests the inseparability of form and content in communication, resisting Kierkegaard’s ironic stance by viewing the word as inseparable from the life of the one who speaks it. This points, in turn, to an inseparability of form and content in theology and the presence of God in his revelation. In contrast to the post-structuralist view, the world is not a text. For Ellul, the central medium is God’s speech, temporal and non-spatial in its essence. His poetics of speech is in turn based on the poetics of the Word of God. The form, then, of the Apocalypse in Revelation ‘allows the comprehension of its content’: theology is a poetic listening and responding to the Word, architecture in movement. The concerns of theology as poetry are not simply with poetic ideas but with the richer world of poetic existence