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19Editorial: Future Education: Schools and UniversitiesJournal of Philosophy in Schools 6 (1): 1-9. 2019.While some may argue that universities are in a state of crisis, others claim that we are living in a post-university era; a time after universities. If there was a battle for the survival of the institution, it is over and done with. The buildings still stand. Students enrol and may attend lectures, though let’s be clear—most do not. But virtually nothing real remains. What some mistakenly take to be a university is, in actuality, an ‘uncanny’ spectral presence; ‘the nagging presence of an abse…Read more
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15Leadership and EthicsBloomsbury. 2015.Contemporary discussions about the nature of leadership abound. But what constitutes a good leader? Are ethics and leadership even compatible? Accounts of leadership often lie at either end of an ethical spectrum: on one end are accounts that argue ethics are intrinsically linked to leadership; on the other are (Machiavellian) views that deny any such link-intrinsic or extrinsic. Leadership appears to require a normative component of virtue; otherwise 'leadership' amounts to no more than mere po…Read more
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13How Much Aristotle Is in Levine and Boaks’s Leadership Theory?: Response to Schäfer and HühnBusiness Ethics Journal Review 47-50. forthcoming.
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15Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of DeityPsychology Press. 1994.Michael Levine's book is the first comprehensive study of pantheism as a philosophical position. Spinoza's Ethics, finished in 1675, has long been seen as the most complete attempt at explaining and defending pantheism. Historically, however, pantheism has numerous forms and Spinoza's version is best considered as one among many variations on pantheistic themes. Levine manages to disentangle the concept from Spinoza; this book is a broad philosophical and historical survey of pantheism itself. T…Read more
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16Historical Anti-RealismThe Monist 74 (2): 230-239. 1991.In “Narrative Explanations: The Case of History,” Paul A. Roth attempts to defend the legitimacy of narrative explanation in history against two central objections—the “methodological” and the “metaphysical.” Like Roth, I find the category of narrative explanation acceptable even if it is problematic, and even if the notions of “narrative,” “explanation,” and “narrative explanation” are not altogether clear. The philosophically grounded “methodological” objections to narrative explanation are of…Read more
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6Hume On MiraclesPhilosophie Et Culture: Actes du XVIIe Congrès Mondial de Philosophie 3 340-344. 1988.
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5Hume's Analysis of Causation in Relation to His Analysis of MiraclesHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 1 (2). 1984.
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27Museums and the Nostalgic SelfRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 79 77-94. 2016.The first part of this essay asks: What is the function, purpose and value of a museum? Has any museologist or philosopher given a credible account of philosophical problems associated with museums? Is there any set of properties shared by the diverse entities called museums? Overgeneralization is the principal problem here. The essay then examines a central kind of museum experience; one that invokes and relies upon nostalgia. I argue that the attraction of museums are varied but are best expla…Read more
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16If There Is a God, Any Experience Which Seems to Be of God, Will Be GenuineReligious Studies 26 (2). 1990.
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22Can There be Self-Authenticating Experiences of God?: MICHAEL P. LEVINEReligious Studies 19 (2): 229-234. 1983.Let us follow Robert Oakes in describing a self-authenticating experience of God as one that ‘would have the epistemic uniqueness of guaranteeing –all by itself – its veridicality to the person who had it.’ The idea that there could be self-authenticating experiences of God has been criticized often in recent years. It seems that the only experiences that could be self-authenticating are those about one's own current psychological states. Nevertheless, the individual who claims to have such an e…Read more
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36No‐self, real self, ignorance and self‐deception: Does self‐deception require a self?Asian Philosophy 8 (2). 1998.In this paper I dispute Eliot Deutsch's claim [See Deutsch, Eliot (1996) Self-deception: a comparative study, in: Roger T. Ames and Wimal Dissanayake (Eds) Self and Deception: a cross-cultural enquiry (Albany, State University of New York Press), pp. 315-326] that examining self-deception from the perspective of non-Western traditions (i.e. how it is understood in those cultures) can help us to better understand the nature of the phenomenon in one's own culture. Although the claim appears to be …Read more
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4Love and emotionIn Michael Philip Levine (ed.), Analytic Freud: Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Routledge. pp. 231. 1999.
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23Intellectualist and symbolist accounts of religious belief and practicePhilosophy of the Social Sciences 27 (4): 526-544. 1997.An account of the relation between belief and practice is inseparable from a general theory of religion and religious discourse. Rejection of the one time popular, but now more or less defunct, nonrealist position of people such as D. Z. Phillips, Don Cupitt, and indeed Wittgenstein leaves contemporary theo rists in anthropology and the "history of religions" with basically the vastly different "literalist" and "symbolist" analyses of religion from which to choose. This article critically apprai…Read more
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30Why the Incarnation is a Superfluous Detail for Kierkegaard: MICHAEL P. LEVINEReligious Studies 18 (2): 171-175. 1982.Why does the paradox play such a crucial role in Kierkegaard's notion of truth as subjectivity? Richard Schacht explains it as follows: Eternal happiness is possible for a man only if it is possible for him to relate himself to God. A man, however, is a being who exists in time; and it would not be possible for such a being to enter into a ‘God-relationship’ if God had not also at some point existed in time. Through the ‘leap of faith’ in which one affirms the proposition that God did exist in t…Read more
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92Contemporary Christian analytic philosophy of religion: Biblical fundamentalism, terrible solutions to a horrible problem, and hearing God (review)International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 48 (2): 89-119. 2000.
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40‘If there is a God, any Experience which seems to be of God, will be Genuine’1: MICHAEL P. LEVINEReligious Studies 26 (2): 207-217. 1990.In The Existence of God Richard Swinburne argues that ‘if there is a God, any experience which seems to be of God, will be genuine – will be of God.’ On the face of it this claim of the essential veridicality of any religious experience, given the existence of God, is incredible. Consider what is being claimed by looking at a particularly dramatic example – but one that is well within the purview of Swinburne's claim. The ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ who murdered at least thirteen women, claimed to hear v…Read more
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3Feeling for Buffy: the girl next doorIn James B. South (ed.), Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, Open Court. 2003.
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79The Problem of EvilThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 4 127-146. 1999.The shift from the logical to the empirical argument from evil against the existence of God has been seen as a victory by analytic philosophers of religion who now seek to establish that the existence of evil fails to make the existence of God improbable. I examine several arguments in an effort to establish the following: (i) Their victory is pyrrhic. They distort the historical, philosophical and religious nature of the problem of evil. (ii) In attempting to refute the empirical argument they …Read more
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