John Joseph Haldane

Many believe that at the end of her life Mary was assumed bodily ‘into heaven’ where she remains exalted by her divine son. This claim, magisterially entitled The Doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, strikes some as absurd. Even many traditional Christians are opposed to, or have doubts about this aspect of Catholic doctrine of the Theotokos[the one who ‘gave birth to’ God]).Typically critics regard the doctrine as being at best a sentimental piety and at worst a neo–Pagan accretion entirely lacking in support from any appropriate quarter. Others go further, however; suggesting that it is not simply without biblical or other evidential warrant but is in some way incoherent. Here I explore some of the sources of difficulties that confront any attempt to present and defend the doctrine.Ancient and mediaeval accounts often relate narratives of Mary’s final days. Significantly, however, they also reason that given Mary’s unique status the Assumption must have happened because it should have done. I consider this style of deductive theology before examining certain historical presentations, in which I argue that there may be material evidence of the tradition as far back as the end of the persecution of Diocletian around the time of the Edict of Milan.Thereafter I take up the philosophical problems, exploring various possibilities and suggesting that acknowledging Aquinas’s insistence on the impoverished nature of disembodied human souls, and their need of resurrected embodiment is consistent with Mary’s unique role that the mode of her present existence is of a different order to that of other separated subjects.

In opposition to compatibilism, it is argued that the thesis of universal causal determinism is at odds with the idea of free action. Free agency involves liberty of indifference -that is to say the non-determination of action by antecedent events-. Action issues from habitual behavioural tendencies; but this relation is neither deterministic nor random: it is one of propensity, in this case conditioned by practical rationality. In general, specifying reasons for action is not identifying antecedent causes but describing the intentional content of action -saying what kind of behaviour it is-. Practical reasons directs the agent's behaviour towards ends conceived of as good; it is further question whether, as Plato suggest, the end of action, standardly, is a, or the, good

Writing a little over a decade ago of developments in educational philosophy, R. F. Dearden remarked on the dearth of alternative approaches to that of conceptual analysis which predominated, at least in Anglophone cultures, at that time. One possible avenue of enquiry which he identified as conspicuously absent in this respect was the development of a distinctively Catholic approach to problems of educational philosophy, observing that a work of the mid-war years, Maritain's Education at the Crossroads, appeared to be well nigh the only modern effort in this direction. More than a decade on from this, in a climate no longer exclusively dominated by conceptual analysis - indeed, in which there is unprecedented interest in a wealth of different schools, traditions and approaches to philosophy of education - Dearden's remarks about the absence of a distinctively Catholic perspective still apply. In the following essay, therefore, the authors have undertaken, via a critical analysis of Maritain's educational speculations of half a century ago, to try to discern some of the principal issues and considerations which would need to be addressed in the interests of identifying a distinctively Catholic educational philosophy.

Mikel Burley challenges that my essay, "Philosophy, Death and Immortality," in which I discussed the views of Dewi Phillips, fails to establish the case for a realist treatment of claims about the resurrection of Jesus and the general resurrection of human beings. I respond to these criticisms by again distinguishing between the analysis of the sense of religious claims and the determination of whether they purport to make reference beyond human language and practices. I consider particular texts drawn from Christian scripture and argue that they are best understood in realist terms. I conclude by pointing out that a Wittgensteinean about meaning need not be a linguistic idealist.

The activity of thought is deeply perplexing. Anyone resistant to its consignment to the domain of sub‐personal psychology, or to quasi‐behaviouristic elimination, needs to address such matters as why it is that thinking seems to elude capture in consciousness, and what the nature of self‐ascription may be. This paper takes up from an earlier discussion by Claudio Costa (‘ “I’m Thinking” ’Ratio 2001) and argues that his account of thinking is flawed. It also argues, in opposition to Costa, that self‐reflexivity is real and is required to account for the ownership of thoughts. Finally, it identifies an argument from self‐awareness to the conclusion that the subject of thought is not a material object.