•  7
    Camus and Aristotle on the Art Community and its Errors
    Labyrinth: An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics 22 (2): 40-59. 2020.
    The purpose of this paper is to show the agreement of Camus and Aristotle on the cultural function of the art community, in particular their criticism of what should be called barbarian or nihilistic practices of art. Camus' art and criticism have been frequent targets of modern critics, but his point is and would be that such critics have the wrong idea of the purpose of art. His answer to such critics and the parallelism of his ideas with Aristotle's criticism of barbarian culture, show that t…Read more
  •  309
    Camus and Aristotle on the Art Community and its Errors
    Labyrinth: An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics 22 (2): 40. 2021.
    The purpose of this paper is to show the agreement of Camus and Aristotle on the cultural function of the art community, in particular their criticism of what should be called barbarian or nihilistic practices of art. Camus' art and criticism have been frequent targets of modern critics, but his point is and would be that such critics have the wrong idea of the purpose of art. His answer to such critics and the parallelism of his ideas with Aristotle's criticism of barbarian culture, show that t…Read more
  •  2
    Book reviews (review)
    with Donald Wayne Viney, Louis P. Pojman, George I. Mavrodes, Edward L. Schoen, and Lewis S. Ford
    Peer Reviewed.
  •  30
    Empiricism or Its Dialectical Destruction?
    International Philosophical Quarterly 61 (2): 139-160. 2021.
    Pamphilus’ introductory letter opens contradictory ways of reading Hume’s Dialogues. The first, suggested by Pamphilus' claim to be “mere auditor” to the dialogues, which were “deeply imprinted in [his] memory,” is the empiricist reading. This traditional reading could, and has, gone several ways, including to such conclusions as Philo forces upon Cleanthes, shocking Demea; e.g., that the design of the mosquito and other “curious artifices of nature,” which inflict pain and suffering on all, b…Read more
  •  121
    Psychology, Character, and Performance in Hamlet
    In Joseph Pearce (ed.), Ignatius Critical Editions: Hamlet, Ignatius Press. pp. 217-230. 2008.
    As Shakespeare is closer in time and spirit to medieval psychology than to popular modern explanations of psyche, this article presents a fourfold analysis of ecstasy from Aquinas' Summa Theologiae to examine the characters of the play. I also suggest performance choices which make a variety of these ecstasies of soul more visible.
  •  23
    Aristotle and Tolkien: An Essay in Comparative Poetics
    Christian Scholar's Review 49 (Number 1 (Fall 2019)). 2019.
    Both Aristotle and Tolkien are authors of short works seemingly concentrated on one form of literary art. Both works contain references which seem to extend further than that single art and offer insights into the worth and purpose of art more generally. Both men understand the relevant processes of mind of the artist in a similar way, and both distinguish the value of works of art based on their effect on the audience. But Tolkien figures the natural human artistic bent as an elvish strain in u…Read more
  •  103
    In a very literarily complicated setting, Frater Taciturnus sets a remark about Hamlet not being a Christian tragedy. After unpeeling that literary setting and noting that Taciturnus' remark aims more at Jacob Börne than at Shakespeare, the paper shows how Frater Taciturnus' remark calls into question the religious project of a certain danish author. For, Taciturnus' primary concern is to show that religious drama is not possible, or at least "ought not be." This general law applies to Hamlet …Read more
  •  87
    The problem Plato sounds from the first lines of LAWS, his final dialogue, might be put in Jean-François Lyotard's term: it is the problem of the differend. Lyotard's position is briefly explained, shown to be applicable to the discussion in several ways (not the least of which is the three different gods appealed to as sources of the laws). We then see how Plato makes a chorus of the differend, resolving Lyotard's modern problem.
  • Kant's famous statement (from the first Critique) that he found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith acknowledges a religious or theological telos to the entire critical project. This article outlines a series of relations of 'knowledge' to 'faith' in the architectonic repetitions with variation that plays from the first Critique through the Religion. Various deployments of 'truth' at each stage presume a kind of 'faith' or trust all the way along. These deployments …Read more
  •  59
    Reason, Feeling, and Happiness: Bridging an Ancient/Modern Divide in The Plague
    Philosophy and Literature 43 (2): 350-368. 2019.
    Camus is defined by many as an absurdist philosopher of revolt. The Plague, however, shows him working rigorously through a well-known division between ancient and modern ethics concerning the relation of reason, feeling and happiness. For Aristotle, the virtues are stable dispositions including affective and intellectual elements. For Kant, one’s particular feelings are either that from which we must abstract to judge moral worth, or are a constant hindrance to proper moral activity. Further,…Read more
  •  331
    The usual interpretation of Republic 10 takes it as Socrates’ multilevel philosophical demonstration of the untruth and dangerousness of mimesis and its required excision from a well ordered polity. Such readings miss the play of the Platonic mimesis which has within it precisely ordered antistrophes which turn its oft remarked strophes perfectly around. First, this argument, famously concluding to the unreliability of image-makers for producing knowledge begins with two images—the mirror (596e…Read more
  •  17
    Love Song for the Life of the Mind: An essay on the purpose of comedy
    Catholic University of America Press. 2007.
    Prefaced by an argument that the ancients understood mimesis as fundamental to being human, and art as therefore essential to human moral and intellectual development, this book starts from the problematic status of the (happily ending) Iphigenia in Poetics. How Aristotle must explicate tragedy to hold Iphigenia as the best thus sets up the exploration of comedy. Chapter two shows that comedy aims at the catharsis of desire and sympathy. This analysis is then applied in detail to Aristophanes’…Read more
  •  108
    The Augustinianism of Albert Camus' The Plague
    Heythrop Journal 61 (3): 471-482. 2020.
    Camus himself called The Plague his most anti-Christian text, and most theologically oriented readings of the text agree. This paper shows how the sermons of Fr. Paneloux—an Augustine scholar--as well as Dr. Rieux’s mother present an Augustinian picture of love. This love opposes the passionate concupiscence for possession of things with the divine love which wishes for the constant conscious presence of the beloved in the light of the good. Such is possible for us, as Augustine exhibits and h…Read more
  •  22
    Augustine and Kierkegaard. Edited by John Doody, Kim Paffenroth, and Helene Tallon Russell (review)
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93 (3): 577-579. 2019.
    Review of an edited book of articles by various authors, each article on some aspect of both thinkers.
  •  47
    Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition. By Gregory Scott (review)
    Ancient Philosophy 39 (1): 248-252. 2019.
    This is a review of Gregory Scott's book on Aristotle's Poetics, which he argues, with excellent and well-defended reasons, has the much narrow focus of dramatic musical art.
  •  31
    Socrates as the Mimesis of Piety in Republic
    International Philosophical Quarterly 58 (3): 243-254. 2018.
    The absence of any discussion of the virtue of piety in Plato’s Republic has been much remarked, but there are textual clues by which to recognize its importance for Plato’s construction and for the book’s intended effect. This dialogue is Socrates’s repetition, on the day after the first festival of Bendis, of a liturgical action that he undertook—at his own expense, at the “vote” of his “city”—on the previous day. Socrates’s activity in repeating it the next day is an “ethological” mimesis of …Read more
  •  6
    Sweet Use: Genre and Performance of The Merchant of Venice
    Philosophy and Literature 33 (2): 280-295. 2009.
    This paper answers the questions ‘what is the Merchant of Venice?’ and ‘how may it accomplish its purpose?’ I argue that the usual treatments of this play are inadequate and show how the play is a comedy through which the passions appropriate for the good human being are engendered. What is raised and ridiculed are our own temptations to lesser joys and less sweet uses mimetically roused in us by the action and characters of the play. What is whetted but left unsatisfied is our higher love fo…Read more
  •  120
    The relation of monologion and proslogion
    Heythrop Journal 46 (2). 2005.
    This paper argues that Monologion and Proslogion though distinguishable are not really separable. They are distinct as "the way in" and "the way when one is in" but "the way in" reveals itself as a discovery of already being in; thus these ways are distinct in act, but not in being. Monologion moves from imaginary ignorance to real reverence, while Proslogion begins within reverence to achieve understanding.
  •  190
    Sublimity and Human Works: Kant on Tragedy and War
    Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress 2 509-517. 1995.
    Kant admits that there are two kinds of human works that have something sublime about them, the work of the poet, e.g., tragedy, and the work of the politician, i.e., war. This paper will explore Kant's reasoning about the sublime element in these two human works.
  •  2435
    Ion
    International Studies in Philosophy 29 (4): 23-50. 1997.
    This reading of Plato's Ion shows that the philosophic action mimed and engendered by the dialogue thoroughly reverses its (and Plato's) often supposed philosophical point, revealing that poetry is just as defensible as philosophy, and only in the same way. It is by Plato's indirections we find true directions out: the war between philosophy and poetry is a hoax on Plato's part, and a mistake on the part of his literalist readers. The dilemma around which the dialogue moves is false, and would…Read more
  •  54
    Five Readings of Euthyphro
    Philosophy and Literature 38 (2): 495-509. 2014.
    Euthyphro is frequently dissected for its philosophical dilemmas regarding god’s love’s relation to holiness, and whether justice is a part of the holy or the converse. But how can we understand it as a literary whole? This paper exhibits five ways in which it can be so understood: Euthyphro is the subjectivist patsy (both a literalist and divine command theorist) playing against Socrates’ natural law-like moral objectivity; the dialogue is elenchic because the dilemmas are true; the dialogue …Read more
  •  50
    Book review: Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society (review)
    Philosophy and Literature 21 (1): 199-201. 1997.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Mimesis: Culture, Art, SocietyGene FendtMimesis: Culture, Art, Society, by Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf; translated by Don Reneau; 400 pp. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, $45.00 cloth, $18.00 paper.The purpose of this book is to develop “a historical reconstruction of important phases in the development of mimesis” (p. 1) from a brief discussion of its pre-Platonic Greek significance through contempor…Read more
  •  52
    The (Moral) Problem of Reading Confessions
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 72 171-184. 1998.
    In Augustine's Confessions we can find two arguments against drama. One of them is entirely Platonic, echoing the problems raised in Republic 2 and 3 that representations of evil encourage moral turpitude. The other, which can be found in Republic 10, is much more visible in Confessions, and Augustine is more perspicuous than Plato in laying out the difficulty; it has to do with the immoral effect of suffering grief at staged sufferings, where we are moved neither to escape the suffering nor t…Read more
  •  30
    Poetic and dramatic readings of selected Platonic dialogues show the fallacy of the philosophical and political positions usually attributed to Plato. Dialogues dealt with include Apology, Meno, Ion, Republic, Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Laws.
  •  15
    Hippias Major, Version 1.0: Software for Post-Colonial, Multicultural Technology Systems
    Journal of Philosophy of Education 37 (1): 89-99. 2003.
    The first half of Plato’s Hippias Major exhibits the interfacing of the first teacher (Socrates) with the first version of a post-colonial, multi-cultural information technology system (Hippias). In this interface the purposes, results, and values of two contradictory types of operating system for educational servicing units are exhibited to, and can be discovered by, anyone who is not an information technologist.
  •  32
    Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions (review)
    Faith and Philosophy 21 (3): 402-406. 2004.
  •  258
    Libidinal Economy and the Life of Logos
    Philosophy and Literature 18 (2): 320-325. 1994.
    This paper brings Lyotard into connection with the discussions of Socrates in REPUBLIC concerning general libidinal economy and its relation to the logos in human beings. Since desire is always the desire to be amoral -- not to recognize the person as subject, but rather recognizing it as a market for the capital gain of desire, it is to be suspected that desire within the subject is the cause of so-called differends between subjects. This is what Republic is about.
  •  13
    This book exhibits the centrality of hope in Kant's critical philosophy, and brings into question the rationality of that hope, and how the question of that rationality can be raised. The question of the rationality of hope is further explored through Kierkegaard's writing.