Eleonore Stump

In a preceding issue of Faith and Philosophy Stewart Goetz criticized a paper of mine in which I try to show that libertarians need not be committed to the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) and that Frankfurt-style counterexamples to PAP are no threat to libertarianism. In my view, the main problem with Goetz’s arguments is that Goetz does not properly understand my position. In this paper, I respond to Goetz by summarizing my position in as plain a way as possible. Goetz’s charge against my position has two parts, first, that it isn’t libertarian and, second, that it provides no good reason for libertarians to abandon PAP. This paper briefly presents my answers to these two parts of Goetz’s charge.

In this paper, the author argues that a second-person experience is an experience one has when one has conscious awareness of another consciously aware person. The author shows that there are some things we know in second-person experiences which are either difficult or impossible to put in propositional form at all but stories can capture them for us. An account of a second-person experience is what we typically find in narratives. The author argues that the second-person point of view has a special place in some areas of philosophy, including philosophy of religion. It matters to many issues in philosophy of religion, perhaps especially to the problem of evil, that God is taken to be a person who has personal relations with created persons. The paper proceeds to show that philosophical attention to the second-person account in the biblical narrative of the book of Job illuminates the book in a new way and sheds light on the problem of evil. /// O presente artigo parte do princípio de que uma experiência na segunda-pessoa constitui a experiência que temos quando estamos conscientemente atentos à presença de outra pessoa conscientemente desperta. A autora demonstra a existência de algumas coisas que conhecemos mediante a experiência da segunda pessoa as quais são ou difíceis ou até mesmo impossíveis de colocar em forma proposicional, ainda que narrativas as possam perfeitamente captar para nós. O relato de uma experiência na segunda pessoa é precisamente aquilo que tipicamente encontramos em narrativas. A autora argumenta que o ponto de vista da segunda pessoa tem um lugar especial em algumas áreas da filosofia, incluindo a filosofia da religião. Na verdade, não deixa de ser relevante para o tratamento de muitas questões no âmbito da filosofia da religião, mas talvez de um modo muito especial no que se refere ao tratamento do problema do mal, partir do princípio de que Deus é pessoa e mantém relações de pessoa-a-pessoa com as suas criaturas pessoais. Posto isto, o artigo procede com a demonstração de que a atenção filosófica ao relato na segunda pessoa que se encontra no Livro de Job não deixa de iluminar este livro sapiencial bem como de projectar nova luz sobre o velho problema do mal

Among the great philosophers of the Middle Ages Aquinas is unique in pursuing two apparently disparate projects. On the one hand he developed a philosophical understanding of Christian doctrine in a fully integrated system encompassing all natural and supernatural reality. On the other hand, he was convinced that Aristotle's philosophy afforded the best available philosophical component of such a system. In a relatively brief career Aquinas developed these projects in great detail and with an astonishing degree of success. In this volume ten leading scholars introduce all the important aspects of Aquinas' thought, ranging from its historical background and dependence on Greek, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy and theology, through the metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, to the philosophical approach to Biblical commentary.

The atonement has been traditionally understood to be a solution to the problem created by the human proneness to moral wrongdoing. This problem includes both guilt and shame. Although the problem of human guilt is theologically more central to the doctrine of the atonement, the problem of shame is something that the atonement might be supposed to remedy as well if it is to be a complete antidote to the problems generated by human wrongdoing. In this paper, I discuss the difference between guilt and shame; I explore the different varieties of shame, and I suggest ways to connect the atonement to a remedy for all the kinds of shame.

The atonement has been traditionally understood to be a solution to the problem created by the human proneness to moral wrongdoing. This problem includes both guilt and shame. Although the problem of human guilt is theologically more central to the doctrine of the atonement, the problem of shame is something that the atonement might be supposed to remedy as well if it is to be a complete antidote to the problems generated by human wrongdoing. In this paper, I discuss the difference between guilt and shame; I explore the different varieties of shame, and I suggest ways to connect the atonement to a remedy for all the kinds of shame.

Professor Penelhum has argued that there is a common error about the history of skepticism and that the exposure of this error would significantly improve our understanding of a current confusion in the philosophy of religion with regard to the issue of the rationality of religious beliefs. Penelhum considers certain contemporary philosophers of religion such as Plantinga skeptics because he reads Plantinga (for example) as arguing that religious beliefs are properly groundless in virtue of the fact that none of our beliefs have any ultimate grounds, and Penelhum argues that this sort of defense of religious belief is both limited and dangerous for religion. I argue that on the interpretation of ancient skepticism which Penelhum gives ancient skepticism is just what it has often been claimed to be: either practically untenable or incoherent or both. I show that in any case the confusion in philosophy of religion which Penelhum wants to sort out with the help of ancient skepticism is not one of which its alleged proponents are guilty. The views of Plantinga and others who take his line are more complex and powerful than Penelhum's presentation makes them seem; these views do not constitute an acceptance of skepticism but a denial of a certain sort of foundationalism. Contrary to Penelhum, then, I argue that ancient skepticism does not serve as a significant corrective for certain trends in contemporary philosophy of religion.

Recent work on the subject of faith has tended to focus on the epistemology of religious belief, considering such issues as whether beliefs held in faith are rational and how they may be justified. Richard Swinburne, for example, has developed an intricate explanation of the relationship between the propositions of faith and the evidence for them. Alvin Plantinga, on the other hand, has maintained that belief in God may be properly basic, that is, that a belief that God exists can be part of the foundation of a rational noetic structure. This sort of work has been useful in drawing attention to significant issues in the epistemology of religion, but these approaches to faith seem to me also to deepen some long-standing perplexities about traditional Christian views of faith.

The aim of this essay is to sketch the basic outline of Aquinas’s metaethics and its support for his virtue-based ethics. When Aquinas’s central metaethical thesis is combined with his theological views, especially his understanding of the doctrine of divine simplicity, then the theological interpretation of the central metaethical thesis constitutes the basis for a religious ethics that makes God essential to human morality but without tying morality to God’s will. The result is a metaphysically grounded, objective normative virtue ethics which is theological at least in this sense that it is ultimately based in God’s nature.

In Simon Wiesenthal's book The Sunflower: On the Possibility and Limits of Forgiveness, Wiesenthal tells the story of a dying German soldier who was guilty of horrendous evil against Jewish men, women, and children, but who desperately wanted forgiveness from and reconciliation with at least one Jew before his death. Wiesenthal, then a prisoner in a camp, was brought to hear the German soldier's story and his pleas for forgiveness. As Wiesenthal understands his own reaction to the German soldier, he did not grant the dying soldier the forgiveness the man longed for. In The Sunflower, Wiesenthal presents reflections on this story by numerous thinkers. Their responses are noteworthy for the highly divergent intuitions they express. In this paper, I consider the conflicting views about forgiveness on the part of the respondents in The Sunflower.I argue that those respondents who are convinced that forgiveness should be denied the dying German soldier are mistaken. Nonetheless, I also argue in support of the attitude that rejects reconciliation with the dying German soldier. I try to show that, in some cases of grave evil, repentance and making amends are not sufficient for the removal of guilt, and that reconciliation may be morally impermissible, whatever the case as regards forgiveness.

This 1982 book is a history of the great age of scholastism from Abelard to the rejection of Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, combining the highest standards of medieval scholarship with a respect for the interests and insights of contemporary philosophers, particularly those working in the analytic tradition. The volume follows on chronologically from The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, though it does not continue the histories of Greek and Islamic philosophy but concentrates on the Latin Christian West. Unlike other histories of medieval philosophy that divide the subject matter by individual thinkers, it emphasises the parts of more historical and theological interest. This volume is organised by those topics in which recent philosophy has made the greatest progress.

This is the first of a three-volume anthology intended as a companion to The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. Volume 1 is concerned with the logic and the philosophy of language, and comprises fifteen important texts on questions of meaning and inference that formed the basis of Medieval philosophy. As far as is practicable, complete works or topically complete segments of larger works have been selected. The editors have provided a full introduction to the volume and detailed introductory headnotes to each text; the volume is also indexed comprehensively.