Stephen R. L. Clark

In this book, Stephen R.L. Clark defends the primary faith of humankind, that there is a real world which is more than a shadow of our desires and fancies, and which can be discovered through right reason. Focusing on the way in which we can "turn aside" to the Truth from the normal delusions of self-concern, Clark offers a properly worked, Platonic metaphysics as the key to identifying that reality. This book is the final volume of Limits and Renewals, a trilogy based on the author's Stanton lectures, delivered at Cambridge between 1986 and 1989, and his Wilde lectures, delivered at Oxford in 1990.

415 The Origin, Persistence, and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory, by Henry H. Bauer - Mikel Aickin 419 The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Arthur M. Diamond, Jr. 422 Thinking about Go¨ del and Turing: Essays on Complexity, 1970–2007, by Gregory J. Chaitin - Edward Ordman 428 Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, by Robert L. Park - Steven B. Krivit 434 Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor, by Roy W. Spencer - Joel M. Kauffman 436 Origin of Inertia: Extended Mach’s Principle and Cosmological Consequences, by Amitabha Ghosh - Thomas E. Phipps, Jr. 438 Muses, Madmen, and Prophets, by Daniel B. Smith - John Smythies 441 The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness, by Jeff Warren - Imants Baruss 442 The Witch in the Waiting Room: A Physician Investigates Paranormal Phenomena in Medicine, by Robert Bobrow - Michael Schmicker 443 The Trial of God, by John Smythies - Stephen R. L. Clark.

The Bishop of Questoriana has recently asked for a pontifical document ‘furnishing a doctrinal foundation of love and respect for life existing on the earth’. Mainstream moralists have urged, since the Axial Era, that it is human life that most demands love and respect. We realize and perfect our own humanity by recognizing humanity in every other, of whatever creed or race. Realizing that biological species are not natural kinds, more recent moralists have hoped to found moral decency either on a respect for ‘rationality’ which excludes many of our conspecifics, or on simple loyalty to our immediate kin. Neither option is without its costs, and Catholic moralists in particular have often been suspicious of a morality that seems to lead to contempt for ordinary human life. Neither advocacy of ‘animal rights’ nor utilitarian calculation of animal pains and pleasures sit well with a traditional Catholic morality. Conversely, many of those who defend traditional practices such as hunting, farming or goading animals to fight, themselves suppose that ‘human’ and ‘animals’ may sometimes inhabit the same moral universe, that there are virtues that both may display in ‘noble action’. Developing this thought, it is possible to locate decency elsewhere than in an over-intellectual respect for ‘reason’. Decent treatment of animals (as of others) is that form of life which lets us live together ‘humanely’, in appreciation of the actual beings they are. Virtue, as Aristotle argued, lies less in acting nobly than in appreciating nobility. Those who claim to appreciate such nobility in beasts must learn to live humanely.

Limits and Renewals is a trilogy based on the Stanton Lectures in the Philosophy of Religion delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1986-8. In this, the second volume, Professor Clark attempts to restate a traditional philosophy of mind, drawing upon philosophical and poetic resources that are often neglected in modern and post-modern thought, and emphasizing the moral and political implications of differing `philosophies of mind and value'. He presents a study of the soul as it has traditionally been conceived and as it can be understood through imaginative attention to our changing moods, beliefs, and fears. He argues that without that traditional concept we have little reason to believe that liberal values are either possible or desirable. Particular topics discussed include the political context of identity claims, the uses of introspection, free will, `the beast within' as alien monster or necessary angel, the possibility of knowledge and the dangers of curiosity, the fear of death, the philoprogenitive gene, the political roots of the distinction between facts and values, and the body-mind problem. Notable features of the book are the author's citation of writers other than the conventionally philosophical, and the emphasis that he gives to traditions other than the self-consciously secular.

In God's World and the Great Awakening, Professor Clark's main concern is with the way we can `turn aside' to the Truth from the normal delusions of self-concern. He restates a traditional, Neoplatonic metaphysics as the proper context for scientific and religious practice, and defends a serious Platonic realism against both scientism and anti-realism. Neither scientism, which identifies Truth with what can be revealed to the objectifying gaze, nor fashionable anti-realism, which equates Truth simply with what `we' choose to take seriously, offer an adequate ground for our scientific or religious faith. The primary faith of humankind is that there is a real world which is more than an obsequious shadow of our desires and fancies, and this real world can be discovered through right reason. The defence of this faith requires a properly worked, Platonic metaphysic of just the kind discernible in Christian orthodoxy. The other two volumes are: Civil Peace and Sacred Order and A Parliament of Souls.