In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE GERMAN MARTINEZ Fordham University Bronx, New York VIEWED FROM the institutional, interpersonal, or religious standpoint, marriage is not a distinctively Christian phenomenon, but it is a human partnership with inherently religious symbolism. Consider the complexity of its dimensions : it is a personal bond that is consummated in a sexual relationship; yet its full human reality contains different levels of meaning which point (...) to a transcendent mystery; it is secular and social and at the same time spiritual and personal. Philosophical anthropology and the phenomenology of religion explore these dimensions and stress the complexity of marriage. An entire range of questions stem from the nature and mystery of the conjugal bond as well as from the multiplicity of forms in which this human partnership has been realized in different historical periods and cultures. Precisely because marriage actually takes place in a concrete historico-cultural context, theological reflection must recognize the complexity of this human experience, and this calls for interdisciplinary study. Theological anthropology sees a profound meaning in the created reality of marriage, for it recognizes therein the essential components of a community of love open toward God. An understanding of human values reveals how the experience of marriage touches the roots of people's lives; an understanding of redemption reveals how marriage belongs to both the order of creation and the order of redemption. An anthropological approach is essential. " In good theology one can no longer adopt the simplistic distinction between ' natural mar451 452 GERMAN MARTINEZ riage' and 'sacramental marriage....'" 1 Marriage is not only a meaningful sign of an anthropological reality but also the expression of the human response toward transcendence. Furthermore, the lived experience of marriage in modern society makes us more and more conscious of human existential needs, and theology has to interpret and respond to them in correlation with the content of faith. Against the background of the human sciences and our awareness of the present historical reality, study of this complex experience that is marriage calls for constructive reflection on its anthropological roots. That is where the sacramental mystery is anchored. The crisis in the theological understanding of marriage stems primarily from a crisis of culture, and new anthropological perspectives can establish the possibility of a more personal theology. In fact, the underestimation of its human values or, more precisely, the lack of a personalist anthropology and of an adequate theological consideration of sexuality has been at the root of the weakness of the traditional approach to marriage.z As Theodore Mackin puts it, " The marriage sacrament, like all sacraments, has as its matrix a complex human experience. And there is no understanding of the sacrament unless we first understand its 1 W. Ernst, "Marriage as Institution and the Contemporary Challenge to It," in Contemporary Perspectives on Christian Marriage, ed. R. Malone and J. R. Connery (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1984), p. 69. The following studies are especially valuable in terms of an anthropological approach to Christian marriage: J. Ratzinger, "Zur Theologie der Ehe,'' in Theologie der Ehe, ed. H. Greven (Regensburg 1972), pp. 81-115; H. Doms, "Zweigeschlechtlichkeit und Ehe,'' in Mysterium Salutis, ed. J. Feiner and M. Lohrer, vol. 2, pp. 707-750; T. Mackin, "How to Understand the Sacrament of Marriage,'' in -Commitment to Partnership; Explorations of the Theology of Marriage, ed. W. P. Roberts (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 34-60. z Two major Catholic documents of the magisterium insist on the need for further theological reflection in terms of the personalistic reason behind the theology of marriage: John Paul II, The Apostolic Exhortation on the Family (see Origins, 2 (1981): 438-467); Gaudium et Spes, 47-52 (ed. W. M. Abbot, pp. 249-259). " The beginning, the subject and the goal of social institutions is and must be the human person, which for its part and by its very nature stands completely in need of social life" (Gaudium et Spes, 25; Abbott ed., p. 224). VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 453 matrix-experience." 3 In theological terms, the covenant v1s1on governs the partnership reality, but that divine call without this created reality would be meaningless. While the present essay does not include all the... (shrink)

Since the publication of Between Facts and Norms, Habermas’s concept of communicative power has been the topic of significant discussion. This article contributes to this conversation by examining Habermas’s account of what makes communication powerful. I argue that Habermas’s conception of communicative power describes a nonviolent and noninstrumental mode of acting and being with others in language. This mode of engagement underwrites a conception of power that is structurally different from willing, one that builds meaningful worlds and (trans-)forms those engaging (...) in communicative procedures. In drawing out this aspect of Habermas’s conception, I show that he is not a rationalist and proceduralist whose account of communicative procedures protects decision-making from irrational aesthetic powers. Rather, he presents communication as a mimetic achievement, a set of aesthetic practices and experiences that affectively alter its participants. With this position, Habermas makes an important contribution to and not just against the analysis of the aesthetic dimensions of political life. In casting communication as a mimetic achievement, Habermas presents an account of how communication opens worlds and forms subjects. Yet since these aspects of communication arrive in linguistic form, he can also examine affective and aesthetic experiences within discursive procedures. We can understand world-opening and aesthetic (trans-)formation as an essential part of democratic politics while also identifying the perspectives and resources by which actors can reflect on and critically evaluate whether an opinion is justified or whether a political project is worth pursuing. (shrink)

Rancière’s reception among political theorists connects to what some have called an “aesthetic turn” in the study of politics. One feature of this turn is a critique of the emphasis on reason found in Rawls- and Habermas-inspired political thought. At least on the standard readings of them, Rawls and Habermas conceive of politics as a process of adjudicating competing interests and validity claims. Political theory then becomes an effort to determine the principles that should guide this adjudication and how they (...) might be institutionalized. For theorists of the aesthetic turn, however, such an approach to politics overlooks fundamental issues, specifically about what is sensed and how... (shrink)

This article investigates the forms of respect and responsiveness that must be present in the process of practical reason. Drawing upon Jürgen Habermas’ discourse theory and his incidental remarks about aesthetics, I identify two modes of respect. The first is the mutual respect and equality that emerges in the process of coming to agreement on proposed norms; the second is the call to infinite responsibility that emerges in opening to the transcendent character of others. However, Habermas makes an error in (...) treating these two types of response as appropriate for different classes of beings when he suggests that mutual respect is appropriate for humans, but asymmetry is appropriate when humans deal with animals or others who are incapable of communicative action. Rather, drawing upon the work of Emmanuel Levinas, I argue that both responses are always present in all encounters with the world. There is therefore an aporia at the heart of the process of practical reason: the responsiveness required in the exercise of practical reason demands that participants be open not just to another's opinions and claims, but also to precisely that which is not understood, which entails the idea of infinite responsibility. It is the movement between these orientations that enacts the main features of ethical life. (shrink)

This article explores how people can come to experience constitutional conversations as meaningful. To this end, I reinterpret Habermas’s account of deliberative constitutionalism. For Habermas, constitutional discourses are not only rational procedures of opinion- and will-formation, but also sites at which a “world” gets generated. Deliberative politics, therefore, involves unruly and uncontrollable efforts to solicit others into the roles, orientations, and principles of constitutional practices. The result is a novel account of the relationship between constitutional procedures and the “anarchistic” politics (...) that radical democrats celebrate. Ungovernable inventions of and affective identifications with roles, images, and peoples occur within articulate forms, including constitutional procedures. These aspects of Habermas’s thought push past binary oppositions between legitimate constitutional procedure and radical democratic uprisings. Habermas provides a framework for examining the forms of attentiveness by which actors can come to experience constitutional rules, roles, principles, and procedures as part of their world. (shrink)

Although deeply penetrating in its vision of married love and containing the matrix of a theology of marriage, "Humanae Vitae" has not magisterially advanced thinking on the latter.

This study examines the Ionic frieze of the Parthenon, focussing on the concept of ‘Divinespace’ and ‘Mortalspace’ within its artistic composition. I examine how divinities and mortal figures are depicted in specifically designated spaces and how they intersect during the Panathenaic procession. Notably, two gods, Aphrodite and Hermes, are observed crossing into ‘Mortalspace’, identified by the two groups of athlothetai—officials responsible for the festival’s organization. The casual nature of their presence and the lack of awareness shown towards divine intrusions add (...) depth to the understanding of ancient Greek religious art and rituals. By analysing votive reliefs from the Athenian Akropolis and by comparing them to the frieze, this research sheds light on the intricacies of the depiction and symbolism in this remarkable ancient artwork. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Youth development programs in the majority world are increasingly taking a strengths-based, positive youth development (PYD) approach to promoting youth thriving. Although character strengths are believed to support well-being, more evidence from majority-world contexts is needed. Using data derived from the Compassion International Study of PYD in Uganda (n = 606, M age = 12.5 years, SD age = 2.3, 50.2% female), we validated a measurement model of eight specific character strengths—goal selection, optimization, and compensation; hopeful future expectations; transcendence; (...) contribution/generosity; forgiveness; love; gratitude; and purpose—and assessed their relations to well-being. Character strengths were robustly and positively correlated with well-being, with gratitude, love, and hopeful future expectations consistently demonstrating the strongest correlations with well-being. Both consistency and differences in interrelations emerged across subgroups. These findings provide initial evidence of an ecologically valid and psychometrically strong measurement model that can be used in majority-world countries for assessing character strengths and their relation to well-being and thriving in PYD programs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Person-specific and variable-focused assessments represent two distinct approaches to research, each offering valuable insights from different standpoints. However, the focus of character studies has mostly been on variable-focused assessments that measure between-person differences, leaving the specific trajectories of character development and the relation among character constructs at the within-person level unexplored. In this article, we studied youth character development and the relation among character constructs at both the between- and within-person levels using an intensive longitudinal data set from the (...) Compassion International (CI) Study of Positive Youth Development in Uganda. Participants were 200 CI-enrolled youth (49.5% female, M age = 12.13, SD age = 2.19) who completed a survey of character constructs across 15 weeks. Results showed that although between-person level findings were consistent with previous variable-focused studies, within-person findings supported the specificity and heterogeneity in character development and of the relation among character constructs. We discuss implications regarding the usefulness and necessity of person-specific assessment for character education and development programs. (shrink)

Festschrift honoring P.F. Strawson; includes contributed articles on his contributions in logic and on logic.

Pv~P: Cambridge Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy, Issue 1, 1982.

This is a well-behaved concept in Newtonian physics. But a center of gravity is not an atom or a subatomic particle or any other physical item in the world. It has no mass; it has no color; it has no physical properties at all, except for spatio-temporal location. It is a fine example of what Hans Reichenbach would call an abstractum. It is a purely abstract object. It is, if you like, a theorist's fiction. It is not one of the (...) real things in the universe in addition to the atoms. But it is a fiction that has nicely defined, well delineated and well behaved role within physics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Life Themes Definite descriptions and reference Truth Logical theory Meaning and related notions Individuals Persons and states of mind Subjects and predicates The bounds of sense Responses to skepticism Freedom and resentment Conclusion.

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

P.F. Strawson called his preferred method of philosophizing ‘connective analysis’. Its purpose is to reveal interconnections among several or even many concepts. Its goal may be described as clarification, elucidation, or illumination. Strawson’s and H.P. Grice’s defence of the analytic-synthetic distinction, Grice’s analyses of various kinds of meaning, and his other analyses in philosophical psychology are examples of connective analysis. Unlike conceptual analysis and reductive analysis, connective analysis allows the analyses of a cluster of analyses to be circular as long (...) as the circularity is part of an overall clarification of the concepts. Connective analysis then needs to be distinguished from types of analysis that aim at (a) eliminating a broad range of concepts such as the materialist goal of eliminating non-material concepts or (b) identifying absolutely simple concepts. (shrink)

Hsun K'uang was one of the thinkers of the Warring States period, and he occupies an important place in the history of Chinese thought. He was also an outstanding Chinese logician. He broadened the realm of logical theory and applied logic to the ideological struggle in his time. This article will be devoted to a review of the outline and characteristics of the logical thought advanced in his famous article "Cheng-ming p'ien" [Correct Nomenclature].

A compilation of all previously published writings on philosophy and the foundations of mathematics from the greatest of the generation of Cambridge scholars that included G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maynard Keynes.