Rem B. Edwards

This article approaches Judaism through Rabbi Bradley S. Artson’s book, God of Becoming and Relationships: The Dynamic Nature of Process Theology. It explores his understanding of how Jewish theology should and does cohere with central features of both process theology and Robert S. Hartman’s formal axiology. These include the axiological/process concept of God, the intrinsic value and valuation of God and unique human beings, and Jewish extrinsic and systemic values, value combinations, and value rankings.

Tom Regan's seafaring dog that is justifiably thrown out of the lifeboat built for four to save the lives of four humans has been the topic of much discussion. Critics have argued in a variety of ways that this dog nips at Regan's Achilles heel. Without reviewing previous discussions, with much of which I certainly agree, this article develops an unexplored approach to exposing the vulnerability of the position that Regan takes on sacrificing the dog to save the humans. It argues that when dealing with the seafaring dog, Regan abandons his own principles, and that this is exactly what he should do. Regan should abandon his view that all subjects-of-a-life have equal inherent worth.

If you relish paradoxes, this is the book for you. The writings quoted are full of them; the book is largely about “a category beyond all categories”, “atemporal temporality”, “the radical possibility of the impossible itself”, the “concept without concept”, “the myth of the myth, the metaphor of the metaphor”, “hospitality-without-hospitality, brotherhood-without-brotherhood, messianicity-without-messianism”, “relation without relation”, “ethics beyond ethics”, and “the One plus or minus One, no longer exactly One, or more than One”. The author and his protagonists seem to conceive of God only as “wholly other”; nothing constructive can be said about God except perhaps that the wholly other really isn’t wholly other because it is wholly-other-than-other.

In his Edifying Discourses, Soren Kierkegaard published a sermon entitled ‘The Unchangeableness of God’ in which he reiterated the dogma which dominated Catholic, Protestant and even Jewish expressions of classical supernaturalist theology from the first century A.D. until the advent of process theology in the twentieth century. The dogma that as a perfect being, God must be totally unchanging in every conceivable respect was expressed by Kierkegaard in such ways as: He changes all, Himself unchanged. When everything seems stable and in the overturn of all things, He remains equally unchanged; no change touches Him, not even the shadow of a change; in unaltered clearness He, the father of lights, remained eternally unchanged. 1

This article argues that process philosophy and Hartmanian formal axiology are natural allies that can contribute much to each other. Hartmanian axiology can bring much needed order and clarity to process thought about the definitions of “good,” “better,” and “best,” about what things are intrinsically good, and about the nature and value of unique, enduring, individual persons. Process thought can bring to axiology greater clarity about and emphasis on the relational and temporal features of human selfhood. The nature and significance of personal endurance is emphasized throughout.

In this article I clarify the concepts of ‘pain’, ‘suffering’. ‘pains of body’, ‘pains of soul’. I explore the relevance of an ethic to the clinical setting which gives patients a strong prima facie right to freedom from unnecessary and unwanted pain and which places upon medical professionals two concomitant moral obligations to patients. First, there is the duty not to inflict pain and suffering beyond what is necessary for effective diagnosis. treatment and research. Next, there is the duty to do all that can be done to relieve all the pain and suffering which can be alleviated. I develop in some detail that individuality of pain sensitivity must be taken into account in fulfihing these obligations. I explore the issue of the relevance of informed consent and the right to refuse treatment to the matter of pain relief. And I raise the question of what conditions, if anv, should override the right to refuse treatment where pain relief is of paramount concern.

The Metaphysics of Experience: Companion to Whitehead’s Process and Reality by Elizabeth M. Kraus develops very classical, Boethian, atemporal understanding of Whitehead’s God. Kraus contends that Whitehead intended “to infer that the divine actual world includes all actual worlds in unison of becoming” (p. 164). Her position is that even in his consequent nature, God coexists simultaneously and changelessly with the entire past, present, and future of every occasion in every world or cosmic epoch. Her rationale for this rests upon 1. a highly questionable interpretation of one text in Process and Reality and the claims that 2. only such a view is compatible with human freedom, and 3. only such a view is compatible with human faith. This article argues that she is mistaken on all three counts.

This book is a collection of articles dealing with criticisms of Robert S. Hartman’s theory of formal axiology. During his lifetime, Hartman wrote responses to many of his critics. Some of these were previously published but many are published here for the first time. In particular, published here are Hartman’s replies to such critics as Hector Neri Castañeda, Charles Hartshorne, Rem B. Edwards, Robert E. Carter, G. R. Grice, Nicholas Rescher, Robert W. Mueller, Gordon Welty, Pete Gunter, George Kimball Plochmann, William Eckhardt, and Robert S. Brumbaugh. Crticial essays and responses to them developed by Rem B. Edwards, Frank G. Forrest, and Mark A. Moore after Hartman’s untimely death in 1973 are also included.

In this promising and well written book, the author struggles with the question of how basic religious beliefs can be groundless without being irrational. He notes that the axiomatic beliefs--philosophical, scientific, or religious--which ground all areas of human knowledge, are groundless in the sense of being unsupported by more primitive evidential considerations. He wishes to avoid purely non-cognitivist accounts of religious belief as purely subjective expressions of tastes, preferences, values, or arbitrary decisions, insisting that it makes sense to speak of fundamental religious beliefs as being informative, true, and reasonable even though unsupported. They are not "hypotheses" whose truth value can be ascertained by identifying logically independent truth conditions. Rather, they closely resemble Wittgenstein's "certainties" in being unprovable beliefs that are so fundamental to our ways of thinking that even doubts about them would be groundless if doubts about them were well founded. Yet, basic religious beliefs are not quite certainties since they can be doubted intelligently "from outside" a given religious outlook, and since secular and religious alternatives to them are readily available. They are best classified as "principles," the author maintains, noting that contemporary philosophers seldom use this term any more even though it was part of our traditional stock-in-trade. Principles resemble certainties in being not grounded in other beliefs more basic than themselves and in sustaining, regulating, and informing other judgments and beliefs. The uniformity of nature, nothing vanishes without a trace, every event has a cause, the principle of sufficient reason, etc., are offered as examples of non-religious principles. Like these, religious principles "help believers to organize, to interpret, or to make sense out of their experience," and "their reasonableness depends on their power of illumination". Various religious principles are discussed which "vouch for a worthwhile ground or end in all that is, thereby enabling believers to pursue a meaningful existence". Belief in divine creation, and belief in predestination are discussed in some detail as examples of religious principles. It is reasonable to adopt principles if they are capacitating and to reject them if they are not, the author insists; so we are not irrational if we do not adopt every principle which comes our way. Basic religious beliefs such as belief in a Creator God, etc., are capacitating, we are told, in the sense that "they are discoveries of purpose and intimations of life's redeeming worth. If they are genuine, they show themselves in 'spiritual', inward capacities, such as the ability to consolidate one's selfhood, to resist despair, and to extend one's concern to others".

This article critically examines the several definitions of, or elements of a single definition of, Robert S. Hartman's understanding of “intrinsic values,” “intrinsic evaluations,” “extrinsic values,” and “extrinsic valuations”. [I have since changed my mind about what is said in the last few sentences. I now think, with Hartman, that only unique, non-repeatable, conscious individuals have intrinsic worth. Repeatable qualities like pleasure and knowledge are “good for us” properties, but not “good in, to, and for themselves” or “for their own sakes” properties.]

These two remarkable books, both published in 2010, share many themes but differ in significant ways, and each is very much worth reading and pondering. Oord’s The Nature of Love concentrates primarily on conceptual and theological themes relating to the very nature of love itself and what influential theologians have had to say about love. His Defining Love focuses on how the social and physical sciences impact our understanding of human and divine love. Both books presuppose and express many themes that are prominent in process theology such as: freedom is universally present (by degrees) in all creatures, especially us; predestination is abhorrent and untenable; God exists necessarily and everlastingly but not ..