Jeff Malpas

New Books on Philosophy of Religion Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks By Nicholas Wolterstorff, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. 326. ISBN 0–521–47557–0. $18.95 (pbk). The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incamational Narrative as History By C. Stephen Evans, Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 386. ISBN 0–19–826397‐X $17.95 (pbk). Consciousness and the Mind of God By Charles Taliaferro, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. 349. ISBN 0–521–46173–1. $65.00 (hbk). Wittgenstein and Quine By Robert L. Arrington and Hans‐Johann Glock (eds) Routledge, 1996. Pp. xvii + 286. ISBN 0–415–09676–6. £40.00. Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas's Pragmatics By Maeve Cooke, MIT Press, 1997 (hbk 1994). Pp. 232. ISBN 0–262–53145–3. £12.00 (pbk). Form and Good in Plato's Eleatic Dialogues By Kenneth Dorter, University of California Press, 1994. Pp. x + 156. ISBN 0–520–08331–8. $45.00 Plotin über Sein, Zahl und Einheit By Christoph Horn, B. G. Teubner, 1995. Pp. 368. ISBN 3–519–07611‐X. The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles I By Norman Kretzmann, Clarendon Press, 199. Pp. 000. 0–19–823660–3. Price £35.00. Reason, Truth and Self: The Postmodern Reconditioned By Michael Luntley, Routledge, 1995. Pp. xv + 248, ISBN 0–415–11853–0. £11.99 Approaches to Intentionality By William Lyons, Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. 261. ISBN 0–19–823526–7. £30.00 Benacerraf and his Critics Edited by Adam Morton and Stephen P. Stich, Blackwell, 1996. Pp. xi + 271. ISBN 0–631–19268–9. £45.00. Atheism and Theism By Jack J. C. Smart and John J. Haldane, Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Pp. 234. ISBN 0–631–19291–3 (hbk). £40.00. ISBN 0–631–19292–1 (pbk). £12.99. Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics Edited by David S. Oderberg and Jacqueline A. Laing Macmillan Press, 1997. Pp. viii + 244. ISBN 0–333–62980–0. £40 Freedom within Reason By Susan Wolf, Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. 162. ISBN 0–19–508565–5. £13.99 (pbk). An Introduction to Political Philosophy By Jonathan Wolff, Opus, Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 230 + index. ISBN 19–289251–7 £8.99.

New Books on Philosophy of Religion Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks By Nicholas Wolterstorff, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. 326. ISBN 0–521–47557–0. $18.95. The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incamational Narrative as History By C. Stephen Evans, Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 386. ISBN 0–19–826397‐X $17.95. Consciousness and the Mind of God By Charles Taliaferro, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. 349. ISBN 0–521–46173–1. $65.00. Wittgenstein and Quine By Robert L. Arrington and Hans‐Johann Glock Routledge, 1996. Pp. xvii + 286. ISBN 0–415–09676–6. £40.00. Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas's Pragmatics By Maeve Cooke, MIT Press, 1997. Pp. 232. ISBN 0–262–53145–3. £12.00. Form and Good in Plato's Eleatic Dialogues By Kenneth Dorter, University of California Press, 1994. Pp. x + 156. ISBN 0–520–08331–8. $45.00 Plotin über Sein, Zahl und Einheit By Christoph Horn, B. G. Teubner, 1995. Pp. 368. ISBN 3–519–07611‐X. The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles I By Norman Kretzmann, Clarendon Press, 199. Pp. 000. 0–19–823660–3. Price £35.00. Reason, Truth and Self: The Postmodern Reconditioned By Michael Luntley, Routledge, 1995. Pp. xv + 248, ISBN 0–415–11853–0. £11.99 Approaches to Intentionality By William Lyons, Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. 261. ISBN 0–19–823526–7. £30.00 Benacerraf and his Critics Edited by Adam Morton and Stephen P. Stich, Blackwell, 1996. Pp. xi + 271. ISBN 0–631–19268–9. £45.00. Atheism and Theism By Jack J. C. Smart and John J. Haldane, Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Pp. 234. ISBN 0–631–19291–3. £40.00. ISBN 0–631–19292–1. £12.99. Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics Edited by David S. Oderberg and Jacqueline A. Laing Macmillan Press, 1997. Pp. viii + 244. ISBN 0–333–62980–0. £40 Freedom within Reason By Susan Wolf, Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. 162. ISBN 0–19–508565–5. £13.99. An Introduction to Political Philosophy By Jonathan Wolff, Opus, Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 230 + index. ISBN 19–289251–7 £8.99

A growing literature testifies to the persistence of place as an incorrigible aspect of human experience, identity, and morality. Place is a common ground for thought and action, a community of experienced particulars that avoids solipsism and universalism. It draws us into the philosophy of the ordinary, into familiarity as a form of knowledge, into the wisdom of proximity. Each of these essays offers a philosophy of place, and reminds us that such philosophies ultimately decide how we make, use, and understand places, whether as accidents, instruments, or fields of care.

Can qualitative ideas of place be adequately encompassed by the quantitative methods of digital and parametric design? This wide-ranging and multi-faceted book explores how designers and architects capture the deeper qualities of place though their practice. It provides a rigorous exploration of the nature of place and its role in design in parallel with a detailed analysis of the nature of parametricism. Parametric design aims to encompass all design criteria and values relating to how a building might be experienced by using algorithmic processes and computational technology. By inputting particular parameters, all elements could be reflected in the resulting design. Drawing on ideas and approaches from diverse, disciplinary perspectives, essays in this book argue for greater attentiveness to place in contemporary design practice, and consider the potential of parametric techniques to enhance the engagement with place in design contexts. Considering place beyond the designer's touch, chapters explore other creative disciplines such as literature, art and music, seeking commonalities across the realm of imaginative endeavour in the creation of a tangible sense of place, environment and experience. Authors also discuss notions of atmosphere and interiority, and consider the potential to extend beyond the bounded internality of architectural spaces and examine interiority through ecological systems, identity and urbanism. The book also explores ideas of home-making through various narrative, spatial, material and digital forms and the possibilities of parametric methods. By decentring existing anthropocentric understandings of place that privilege human perspectives, authors also consider other living perspectives and how design can support more-than-human places of the future.

Recent philosophy has seen the idea of the transcendental, first introduced in its modern form in the work of Kant, take on a new prominence. Bringing together an international range of younger philosophers and established thinkers, this volume opens up the idea of the transcendental, examining it not merely as a mode of argument, but as naming a particular problematic and a philosophical style. With contributions engaging with both analytic and continental approaches, this book will be of essential interest to philosophers and philosophy students interested in the idea of the transcendental and the part that it plays in modern and contemporary philosophy.

The challenge to the “universal point of view” represented by the election of Donald Trump in 2016 is treated here as a challenge to the conception of “the open society” that many had adopted after the Second World War. Karl Popper’s influential modelling of democratic decision making on an idealised conception of the achievement of scientific consensus coincides with the polarisation of the “knowledge classes” from Trump’s “forgotten people”. A different conception of philosophy and its role in modern society is required as a non-scientistic alternative for reconciling the universal point of view with the views of the broader populace.

This article demonstrates the power of the phenomenological concept of ‘world’, and so the importance of philosophical concepts and philosophers, by considering the case of the U.S. Army’s ‘cultural turn’. After invading Iraq, the U.S. military found that soldiers lacked the training necessary for longterm engagement with a civilian population. Turning to anthropology and sociology, it introduced the concepts of culture, cultural awareness, and cultural sensitivity into its training. We argue that these concepts are crude and inadequate, and that the concept of world does a better job of illuminating the differences and similarities between soldiers’ and civilians’ respective lived systems of meaning. Through this case, we can see why we need philosophers and philosophy.

In addition to the long-standing divide between so-called ‘analytic’ and so-called ‘continental’ philosophy, philosophy is challenged in the political realm and concerns about public spending for philosophy increase. This is matched with a growing effort to popularize philosophy, bringing it into the public sphere. The effort to secure support for philosophy highlights the ambiguity of philosophical demarcation tactics, especially in a post-truth era which tends to underline science and technology education contra philosophy. But as with a concern for the history of science, philosophy’s past may yet prove useful in the future. Looking at both hermeneutics and history, inviting more than the usual cast of favorite authors into our intellectual network, it may be possible to bring philosophy into more global and pluralist expressions.

The vast majority of work on Heidegger has focussed on the work of the 1920s and early 1930s, most notably on Being and Time. The thinking that follows after that, especially the thinking belonging to the post-war period, has received much less attention, particularly from English-speaking commentators. Yet although Being and Time is an enormously important and philosophically rich work, we cannot come to any real understanding of the Heideggerian project, or of what Heidegger came to view as lying at the heart of that project, if we remain with that early thinking alone. Rather than treat Heidegger’s later philosophy as given over to mysticism and poetry, this paper argues that the later thinking is essential to any adequate estimation of the nature and significance of Heidegger’s philosophy. The later thinking arises, in fact, directly out of Heidegger’s attempt to respond to, and to overcome, the shortcomings that exist in the earlier work. Inasmuch as Being and Time thus represents, in many respects, a failed pathway, the direction into which Heidegger is turned by that failure—the direction of the later philosophy—is perhaps the more important.

The thirteen essays in this volume represent the most sustained investigation, in any language, of the connections between Heidegger's thought and the tradition of transcendental philosophy inaugurated by Kant. This collection examines Heidegger's stand on central themes of transcendental philosophy: subjectivity, judgment, intentionality, truth, practice, and idealism. Several essays in the volume also explore hitherto hidden connections between Heidegger's later "post-metaphysical" thinking—where he develops a "topological" approach that draws as much upon poetry as upon the philosophical tradition—and the transcendental project of grasping the conditions that make experience of a meaningful world possible. This volume will interest philosophers in the continental tradition, where Heidegger's thought has long had a central role, as well as those many philosophers in the analytic tradition whose own approach to knowledge, semantics, and philosophy of mind traces its roots to Kant.

Donald Davidson's account of the interrelation between attitudes, and linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour is a thoroughly holistic one. The project of radical interpretation itself embodies a holistic approach to the interpretative task. Yet Davidson also accepts a degree of indeterminacy in interpretation. Davidson's commitment to both holism and indeterminacy can give rise to a problem in the Davidsonian position. That problem is explained and a solution proposed. The indeterminacy thesis is thereby clarified, as is the nature of Davidsonian holism.

O lugar comum, no que tange à imagem de Heidegger, é a de um filósofo firmemente enraizado, não na cidade de Freiburg, na qual passou grande parte de sua vida, mas na região rural alemânico-suábia, nos arredores do povoado de Messkirch, onde nasceu. Poderia parecer que a distância entre Heidegger e Benjamin, entre Messkirch e Berlim, ou Paris, não poderia ser maior. Mas até que ponto estão as predileções pessoais de Heidegger pelo provinciano e o bauerlich (camponês) de fato ligadas às posições filosóficas que ele desenvolveu? Poderia ser este o caso, de que a cidade, talvez ainda mais do que o campo, devesse desempenhar um papel central em qualquer tentativa séria de se pensar até o fim as implicações do pensamento de Heidegger sobre o ser? Esta apresentação investigará como Heidegger se sentiria na cidade de Benjamin, bem como o lugar da cidade no pensamento do próprio Heidegger, com o propósito de lançar luz não apenas sobre o pensamento de Heidegger, mas também sobre o do próprio Benjamin.

This essay explores the contemporary relevance of philosophy through a consideration of philosophy as it stands in relation to thinking, and through a consideration of thinking itself. It argues is that the thoughtlessness that underlies so much of what we see around us in the contemporary world is a forgetting or refusal of what thinking itself is, and that this forgetting or refusal is essentially a forgetting or refusal of limit or of bound, and a forgetting or refusal of truth. In this, it involves a forgetting or refusal, not only of philosophy, but also of what is essential to the human.