John F. Crosby

It is proposed to test the privation theory of evil by examining three kinds of evil: (1) the evil of the complete destruction of some good (as distinct from the wounding of that good); (2) the evil of physical pain; and (3) certain forms of moral evil in which the evildoer is hostile to some good. It is shown that in none of these cases does evil seem to fit the privation scheme, and that in the second and third case evil seems to be in some way “more” than privation. In conclusion it is argued that to entertain such doubts about the privation theory has nothing to do with restoring a Manichean view of evil. In fact, one can entertain these doubts and still affirm that evil is parasitic on good.

Towards the end of his response to me, Lee presents an argument for the necessity of interpreting all evil as privation. I counter this argument by showingthat it works only for what I call “formal” good and evil, but not for what I call “contentful” good and evil. In fact, evil that is “contentful” presents a challenge tothe privation theory that I had not discussed in my article. I then proceed, in the second part of my response, to revisit the three cases of evil that in my original paper I had presented as challenges to the privation theory. I engage Lee’s objections to these three counterexamples and I try to explain in a new way why the principle of badness in each of them, especially in pain/suffering and in moral evil, is not just a lack or a deficiency.

My interlocutor is anyone who denies peisonhood to the embryo on the grounds that a human person can exist only in conscious activity and that in the absence of consciousness a person cannot exist at all. I probe personal consciousness to the point at which the distinction between the being and the consciousness of the human person appears, and argue on the basis of this distinction that the being of a person can exist in the absence of any consciousness. I proceed to argue that it is not only entirely possible for the embryo to be a human person, but that, given the embodied peisonhood of us human beings, this is the only reasonable assumption which we can make. Keywords: human embryo, personhood, being, consciousness, embodiment CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Taking John Paul II's teaching on the Christian meaning of suffering as my main source for a Catholic perspective on suffering, I show how seriously he takes the reality of suffering, and how seriously he takes the question as to the meaning of suffering. I proceed to explore his many-sided teaching on the way in which sin is and is not involved in the meaning of suffering, giving particular attention to his teaching on social dimensions of sin and suffering that are little understood in the individualistic West today. The heart of his teaching on suffering lies in his explication of how it is that we have to be conformed in our suffering to the suffering of Christ so as to share in His resurrection. But it is not the suffering as such but the love that we are called to live when we suffer, that incorporates us into the risen Christ

I explore the personalism embedded in von Hildebrand’s moral philosophy, and then I explore the personalism in his later account of love. I claim that his personalism was significantly developed in his later work, and that it can be still further developed by us. I begin by explaining what Hildebrandian value-response is, and then I proceed to show how he subsequently qualified this foundational concept, first in his Ethics but especially in his late work, The Nature of Love, and here especially through the concept of Eigenleben that was introduced in that work. I am particularly interested in showing why the personalism of von Hildebrand’s thought is enriched through this concept.

It is proposed to test the privation theory of evil by examining three kinds of evil: (1) the evil of the complete destruction of some good (as distinct from the wounding of that good); (2) the evil of physical pain; and (3) certain forms of moral evil in which the evildoer is hostile to some good. It is shown that in none of these cases does evil seem to fit the privation scheme, and that in the second and third case evil seems to be in some way “more” than privation. In conclusion it is argued that to entertain such doubts about the privation theory has nothing to do with restoring a Manichean view of evil. In fact, one can entertain these doubts and still affirm that evil is parasitic on good.

In the course of his polemic against Kant’s moral philosophy, Scheler was led to depreciate moral obligation and its place in the existence of persons. This depreciation is part of a larger anti-authoritarian strain in his personalism. I attempt to retrieve certain truths about moral obligation that tend to get lost in Scheler: moral obligation is not merely “medicinal” but has a place at the highest levels of moral life; the freedom of persons is lived in an incomparable way in responding to moral obligation; obligation and obedience even have an indispensable place in the existence of Christians. Drawing on the studies of Scheler by Rudolf Otto, Karol Wojtyla, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Dietrich von Hildebrand, I show how Scheler’s personalism is corrected and enhanced once we distance ourselves from his anti-authoritarian animus against obligation and restore obligation to its place in the existence of persons.

This article responds to Dr. Gallup's comments on animal rights. We are not yet ready to discuss whether animals have rights as long as we cannot give a better account of why human persons have rights than the account offered by Dr. Gallup. He thinks that persons have rights only if we say they do. I claim that we have rights for a very different and far more rational reason, namely because we are persons. We say we have rights not to create them but to register the existence of rights which we had before we said anything on the subject. Rights are social in the sense that they can be respected or violated only by another person. But they are not social in the sense that they are conferred by a social consensus. As soon as one person encounters another, the rights of each become actual, and this whether the rights are socially recognized and vindicated or not; for they emerge necessarily as a result of the fact that it is two persons who encounter each other. The only way Dr. Gallup can resist my position is to maintain that there are no persons in reality, but that a being is a person only if we say so. 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

My purpose in this paper is to set forth a case for inclusion, without any restriction whatsoever, of gays and lesbians in the legal definition of marriage within the various jurisdictions within the United States of America. Historical and cross cultural definitions of marriage are usually based on two basic premises or components, structure and function. Structural definitions of marriage, with which most people and jurisdictions identify, are based on exclusion and inclusion, i.e. on who is eligible for inclusion and who must be excluded. Ordinarily the restrictions exclude those not having reached the age of majority, those who are not judged mentally competent, and those of the same gender. Functional definitions of marriage are based on the willingness of the partners to engage in the duties and responsibilities to each other and to all offspring regardless of their physical or mental fitness. I intend to defend the proposition that legal marriage for gays and lesbians is better defined and defended when based on function rather than structure. Specifically, this means that marriage is the union of those who 1.) without mental equivocation embrace their mutual commitment to support and care for each other; 2.) are of legal age; 3.) are of sound mind; and 4.) affirm their commitment to fulfill, to the best of their ability, the following functions as they pertain to the natural birth, legal adoption, or foster care of any and all children included in the marital union: These functions include but are not limited to: protection , economic, affect-giving, socialization, acculturation, education, and sexual access between the conjugal partners. Historically, there is no record throughout the history of humankind, of any state or body politic that does not profess a vested interest in the mate selection patterns of its young. This is not generally for the edification of the married, but rather for the assurance of the socialization and acculturation of the ascending generation

In this essay, I try to advance the reception of Karol Wojtyła’s seminal essay “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in Man.” In particular I try to understand and to think through the distinction that he makes between the “personalist” and the “cosmological” image of man. I unpack Wojtyła’s concept of subjectivity, which underlies all that he says about the personalist image of man. I give particular attention to all that he says about the unity formed by the two images. I then proceed to apply Wojtyła’s analysis to a certain cosmological challenge to a personalist understanding of man: it is the challenge that comes from looking at the immensity of the cosmos and at the infinitesimal smallness of man in it and of thinking that man is swallowed up in this immensity and obliterated in his importance. I argue that precisely the subjectivity of the person implies that there is in each person an “infinite abyss of existence” so that each person is in reality his or her own whole and is no mere part of the cosmic whole but is incommensurable with it.

My interlocutor is Locke with his reduction of person to personal consciousness. This reduction is a main reason preventing people from acknowledging the personhood of the earliest human embryo, which lacks all personal consciousness. I show that Catholic Christians who live the sacramental life of the Church have reason to think that they are, as persons, vastly more than what they experience themselves to be, for they believe that the sacraments work effects in them as persons that can only be believed but that cannot be experienced within themselves in this life. I also show that Christians and non-Christians alike have an experience of moral good and evil in themselves that implies that they are, as moral persons, far more than they find in their conscious self-presence. It is, therefore, natural to think that if my being as person so far exceeds my consciousness, I may well have once existed as person even before the awakening of consciousness.

I use concepts of Karol Wojtyla’s personalism, especially the concept of subjectivity, to explain Newman’s personalism. There is a “turn to the subject” in Wojtyla, and there is a similar “turn to the subject” in Newman; and they explain each other. Thus Newman’s distinction between the theological intellect and the religious imagination, and his particular concern with the latter, is shown to be an expression of his personalism. I try not only to throw new light on Newman’s personalism, but also to explain why his personalism, as Wojtyla’s, has been mistaken for subjectivism. I show that there is in Newman, as in Wojtyla, a unity of subjectivity and objectivity that secures his thought against subjectivism.

Ryn restates and develops certain themes of conservative political philosophy in the tradition of Edmund Burke. His essay centers around a distinction between plebiscitary democracy and constitutional democracy: the "new Jacobinism" is the broad movement of thought, strenuously opposed by Ryn, which has almost succeeded in making the former type of democracy prevail over the latter. Ryn sees the origin of constitutional democracy in a fundamental ethical stance. He argues that our first moral duties and responsibilities are to those with whom we live every day, and that we do not have the same strong duties towards those who live at a distance from us; the love of one's immediate neighbor has priority over the love of "humanity." Whoever recognizes this has a strong experience of his or her moral frailty and fallenness, since it is extremely difficult to practice well the active love of this concrete individual who is my neighbor. Now this fundamental ethical stance gives rise to a very definite kind of political order; one learns to esteem the "small" communities of family and village, since this is where moral character is primarily formed. One constitutes political authority so that it supports and protects family life and local community life, and does not interfere with and overrule them. This means that one decentralizes and limits authority, and does so not only for the sake of the local and the regional, but also because one knows of the moral frailty of human beings.

Newman often argued like this in debate: “you do not accept this claim of mine because you think that it is exposed to certain objections; but this is unreasonable of you, because you make this other claim which is also, if you think it through, equally exposed to the same kind of objections; therefore, you should either withdraw your objections against me, or else give up that claim that you have been making.” Some contemporaries of Newman thought that he unwittingly lent support to unbelief by defending his views with this “kill-or-cure” argument, as he called it. This essay defends Newman’s argument against his critics in such a way as to contribute to an understanding of Newman’s rhetoric.

I explore the personalism embedded in von Hildebrand’s moral philosophy, and then I explore the personalism in his later account of love. I claim that his personalism was significantly developed in his later work, and that it can be still further developed by us. I begin by explaining what Hildebrandian value-response is, and then I proceed to show how he subsequently qualified this foundational concept, first in his Ethics but especially in his late work, The Nature of Love, and here especially through the concept of Eigenleben that was introduced in that work. I am particularly interested in showing why the personalism of von Hildebrand’s thought is enriched through this concept.

In this article I explain various points of contact between Newman and the Catholic philosophical tradition. I begin with Newman’s personalism as it is found in the Grammar of Assent, especially in the distinction between notional and real assent, and in the distinction between formal and informal inference. Then I proceed to Newman’s personalism as it is found in his teaching on conscience and on doctrinal development. I then consider Newman as proto-phenomenologist and also as an Augustinian thinker. Finally, I discuss Newman’s teaching on moral and intellectual virtue in The Idea of a University. If I had to pick one utterance of Newman that epitomizes his philosophical thought in a way that engages Catholic philosophers, I would pick the motto of the Grammar of Assent: “Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum tuum.”