Georg Gasser

Wer der Frage nachgeht, was jemand tut, der geht – wenigstens implizit – auch der Frage nach, wer da etwas tut. Handlungen schreiben wir normalerweise Personen zu. Handeln zu können ist eine derjenigen Eigenschaften, die Personen auszeichnet. Die Analyse menschlichen Handelns geht mit der Frage einher, was menschliche Personen sind. Folgender Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Verhältnis von Handlung und Person innerhalb der kausalen Theorie des Handelns. Durch eine eingehende Analyse dieses weitverbreiteten Ansatzes zur Erklärung und Deutung menschlichen Handelns sollen Implikationen für den Begriff des Handelnden herausgearbeitet werden.

In this paper we explicate the notion of a miracle and highlight a suitable ontological framework for it. Our proposal draws on insights from Aquinas’s discussion of miracles and from the modern ontology of powers. We argue that each substance possesses a characteristic set of natural powers and dispositions which are operative or become manifest in the right circumstances. In a miracle divine intervention activates the fundamental disposition inherent in each creature to be responsive to God’s call. Thus, a miracle brings something about which a substance’s set of natural powers and dispositions could not bring about by itself.

What happens to us when we die? According to Christian faith, we will rise again bodily from the dead. This claim raises a series of philosophical and theological conundrums: Is it rational to hope for life after death in bodily form? Will it truly be “we” who are raised again or will it be post-mortem duplicates of us? How can personal identity be secured? What is God's role in resurrection and everlasting life? In response to these conundrums, this volume presents joint work of leading philosophers and theologians on life after death. So this volume is an impressive demonstration of interdisciplinary cooperation between philosophy and theology. Various models are offered which depict what resurrection into an incorruptible post-mortem body might look like

This article argues that the causal theory of action cannot explain conscious human action adequately. Interpreting actions as bodily movements caused by (mental) states internal to the agent does not do justice to the particular role of the agent herself as ‘performing’ or ‘bringing about’ the action in the light of specific reasons. The only thing one can say about actions being distinct from other bodily movements such as automatic physiological processes or reflexes will employ again the concept of action resp. of the agent doing something consciously. Therefore the thesis is defended that the concept of conscious action resp. human agency is a basic concept referring to the basic capacity of human persons to perform actions consciously. This capacity cannot be reduced to other phenomena within the agent such as mental states and causal mechanisms regulating and guiding human behaviour. If this view of human agency is correct, it sets a limit to attempts of naturalising the human person.

Eleonore Stump’s intensive work on theodicy culminates in her opus magnum Wandering in Darkness. Her explicit thesis with regard to the evidential problem of evil is: From the background of a Christian worldview even terrible sufferings can be conceived as a necessary and indispensable part of a healing process through which God guides human beings from their postlapsarian sinful state towards their ultimate end, communion with God and fellow human beings. Stump pursues this aim by the use of biblical narratives as a way of sharing interpersonal experiences between God and men. In this article I present the main steps of Stump’s argument. Then I discuss whether she is successful in her attempt to treat human suffering and the loss of one’s deepest desires as appropriately as she claims. Finally I outline the explanatory limits of this, and most probably, every theodicy by means of the concept of a worldview.