1 Fair Field of Folk

Being Alone/Being with Others (Buddhism)

Choosing the Good and the Beautiful (Ethics and Aesthetics)

A Fair Field of Folk (Politics and Religion)

A Fair Field of Folk

Politics are not the task of a Christian. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I. Primary Definitions (Field)

POLITICS (Gk., politikos, political, fr. polites, citizen, fr. polis, city, state, city-state). The art or science of governing, i.e., with guiding or influencing governmental policy, or with winning and holding control over a government.

I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

People always have been and always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics, until they learn behind every kind of moral, religious, political, social phrase, declaration, and promise to seek out the interests of this or that class or classes. Nikolai Lenin

A politician is one that would circumvent God. William Shakespeare

POLITICS (Aristotle). In the Politics, Aristotle indicates that politics is a kind or category of "practical knowledge" [Gk, praxis]. It is that part of Ethics that deals with the actions of people in groups (Angeles, paraphrase).

See Aristotle, Politics, rpt. ed., tr. T.A. Sinclair (1992).

RELIGION. The expression of man's belief in and reverence for a supernatural power recognized as the creator and governor of the universe, together with any particular integrated personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.

True religion teaches us to reverence what is under us, to recognize humility, poverty, wretchedness, suffering, and death, as things divine. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. Paul Tillich

II. Secondary Definitions (Concepts)

ABSOLUTE, THE. "A term used by post-Kantian idealist metaphysicians to cover the totality of what really exists, a totality thought of as a unitary system somehow both generating and explaining all apparent diversity." (Flew)

The absolute is a term used by philosophers to signify the ultimate reality regarded as one and yet as the source of variety; as complete, or perfect, and yet as not divorced from the finite, imperfect world. (EOP)

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute. Walter Lippmann

AGNOSTICISM (Gk., agnostos, unknown, unknowable, fr. a-, not + gnostos, known, fr. gignoskein, to know). The view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and (probably) unknowable: "The thesis that, contrary to what atheists and theists alike assume, it is either in practice or in principle impossible to know whether or not God exist" (Flew).

ALTRUISM (F., altruisme, fr. autrui, other people, fr. autre, other, fr. L. alter, other). The ethical doctrine that unselfish regard for and devotion to the welfare of others should be the actual motive and valid end of all conscious, human action. Contrast EGOISM.

The central claim of altruism ... is negative: that the explanation of morality cannot be reduced to self-interest. This can be stated more positively: that an interest in other people for their own sake is a necessary condition of morality. Antony Flew

ANARCHISM (Gk., anarchos, anarchia, no government, fr. a, not + archos, ruler). The political ideology holding that all forms of governmental authority are unnecessary and undesirable and that a good and just society must be based on voluntary cooperation and the free association of individuals and groups. Compare ANTINOMIAN, LIBERALISM, LIBERTARIANISM.

See Daniel Guerin's Anarchism (1970) and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)

ANTHROPOLOGY. The science dealing with the study of human beings. One of the "social sciences." See ECONOMICS, POLITICAL SCIENCE, and SOCIOLOGY.

ANTINOMIANISM (RELIGIOUS). The idea that, under the Christian dispensation of GRACE, moral laws (principles, restrictions) are unnecessary, of no use, and incur no obligation, because faith alone is necessary to salvation. See ANTINOMY.

ANTINOMY (L., anti-nomia, conflict of laws, fr. Gk., anti-, against + nomos, law). A contradiction between what would seem to be two equally valid principles, or between inferences correctly drawn from such principles.

ATHEISM (Gk., atheos, godless, fr. a-, not, without + theos, god). Disbelief in a particular deity or deities. (The Greeks called the early Christians "atheists" for not believing in the Greek pantheon of gods, and the Christians called the Greeks "atheists" for not believing in their God.) Compare FIDEISM.

"Whither is God," he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. ... Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? ... God is dead. ... And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort our-selves?" Friedrich Nietzsche

Because we hark back to Nietzsche's saying about the "death of God," people take such an enterprise for atheism. For what is more "logical" than to consider the man who has experienced the "death of God" as a Godless person. Martin Heidegger

One of the reat realizations of the Enlightenment was that an atheistic materialist could be just as moral a person as a believer-even more so. This insight led to liberation from the constraints of ecclesiastical dogma, which was crucial in forming the sense of intellectual and political freedom we enjoy today. Stephen Batchelor

ATOMISM, POLITICAL. The idea, especially in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704), that society is merely a collection of self-serving individuals,

See Hobbe's Leviathan (1651) and Locke's Two Treatises on Govrnment (1689).

AUGUSTINIANISM. The school of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), his ideas and doctrines concerning faith and understanding, human psychology, epistemology (theories of knowledge), the meaning of history, the ethics of charity, and the superiority of the will as found (especially) in the Confessions (400) and The City of God (412-27).

Although many passages in Augustine's work, like the famous analysis of time in the Confessions, suggest outstanding technical ability, his philosophy was almost always auxiliary to religious preoccupations. He saw both philosophy and religion as essentially quests for wisdom and, through wisdom, beatitude; the crucial difference was that Christian faith succeeded in the quest, while the unaided human reason of the philosophical schools could not. He did not, however, deny that some truths, including theological truths, were attainable by reason alone. Antony Flew

AUTHORITY (L., auctoritas, opinion, decision, power, fr. auctor, author). The power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior; or, an individual or group invested with this power.

When we speak of authority, do we mean rational or irrational authority? Rational authority has its source in competence. The source of irrational authority is always power over people. Erich Fromm

AUTONOMY. Self-government, or the right of self-government. Syn self-determination, independence.

Independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their basic critical function in a society which seems increasingly capable of satisfying the needs of the individuals through the way in which it is organized. Herbert Marcuse

BELIEF. A state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing. syn faith (implying certitude and full trust and confidence whether there be objective evidence or not), credence (implying intellectual acceptance whether there be valid grounds or not), assent (implying mental acceptance whether or not there be certitude or certainty on the part of the believer). ant unbelief, disbelief.

I do not believe in belief. But this is an age of faith, and there are so many militant creeds that, in self-defense, one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance, good temper, and sympathy are no longer enough in a world which is rent by religious and racial persecution, in a world where ignorance rules, and science, who ought to have ruled, plays the subservient pimp. E. M. Forster

BLASPHEMY. Irreverence toward something considered sacred or inviolable.

Very religious people always shock slightly religious people by their blasphemous attitude to religion, and it was precisely for blasphemy that Jesus was crucified. R. G. Colingwood

BLESSINGS. Anything conducive to happiness and welfare.

Health, beauty, vigor, riches, and all the other things called goods, operate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust, as they do as benefits to the just. Plato

The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a schoolboy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. Charles Lamb

BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY. Generally speaking, scientifically based belief in the transient and ephemeral nature of all that we know of the world by means of empirical phenomena. See also CH'AN SCHOOL OF CHINESE PHILOSOPHY.

CAPITAL. A stock of accumulated goods (wealth in the form of money or property owned, used, or accumulated in business by an individual, partnership, or corporation), or the value of these goods, used (or available for use) in the production of goods sold at a profit on investment and the accumulation thereby of more wealth. See CAPITALISM.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven,/ For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond./ We two shall lie together, lapt/ In a five per cent Exchequer Bond. T. S. Eliot

CAPITALISM. An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of CAPITAL goods, by investment determined privately, and by pricing, production, and distribution of goods determined mainly by free-market competition (disallowing in theory monopolistic price-fixing and other unfair practices). See CAPITAL. Compare COMMUNISM, SOCIALISM.

When commercial capitol occupies a position of unquestioned ascendancy, it everywhere constitutes a system of plunder. Karl Marx

I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many ways extremely objectionable. John Maynard Keynes

CASUISTRY. False application of principles, especially with regard to morality or the law. See ETHICS, CASUISTIC.

CH'AN SCHOOL OF CHINESE PHILOSOPHY. The "school of meditation," known in Korea as Son and in Japan as Zen, introduced into China from India in the 6th century by Bodhidharma, who emphasized sitting quietly and calmly and concentrating to the point of complete absence of thought in order to rid the mind of any and all attachments.

CHANGE. A succesion or substitution of one thing for another.

Change alone is eternal. Arthur Schopenhauer

You must understand as one of the fundamental points of Buddhism, the idea of the world as being in flux. Alan Watts

CHOICE. The act or opportunity of choosing, of consciously making a selection from among alternative objects, courses of action, attitudes, states of mind, or the thing chosen.

To govern is to choose. John F. Kennedy

COMMITMENT. A mental state binding one emotionally or intellectually to some course of action. See CHOICE.

One may be committed to a proposition in the sense of relying on it, or using it to structure explanation and prediction, but entirely in an instrumentalist spirit, and therefore without supposing it to be true. Simon Blackburn

COMMUNISM (F., communisme, fr. OF, commun, common). A political theory advocating the elimination of private property, the absence of classes, and the common ownership of the means of production, characterized by the common ownership of the means of production in which the distribution of goods (wealth) is based on need; in MARXISM, a revolutionary political doctrine advocating change towards a post-capitalistic socialism characterized by the equitable distribution of goods (wealth). Compare CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. Karl Marx

CONSCIENCE (L., conscientia, fr. conscire, to know, to have knowledge of, to be conscious of, fr. con, with + scire, to know). The sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character, coupled with an awareness of the need and obligation to do the right thing or otherwise to be good.

We are born out of concern for all beings. Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

My dominion ends where that of conscience begins. Napoleon

My conscience represents not so much my awareness of the approvals and disapprovals of other individuals in isolation as of the ethos of my society, that is, of its mode of interpersonal interactions. H. Richard Niebuhr

CONSERVATISM. In Politics, the advocacy or practice of political reform based on tradition and stressing social stability and established beliefs and institutions. In Religion, the advocacy or practice of conservative principles and institutions. Compare ANARCHISM; INDIVIDUALISM, POLITICAL; LIBERALISM; and LIBERTARIANISM.

See The Portable Conservative Reader, ed. Russell Kirk (1996).

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future. Benjamin Disraeli

What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? Abraham Lincoln

I do not know which makes a man more conservative, to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past. John Maynard Keynes

CONSUMERISM. The theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable; a preoccupation with and an inclination toward the buying of consumer goods.

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied ... but written off as trash. John Berger

It is advertising and the logic of consumerism that governs the depiction of reality in the mass media. Christopher Lasch

COURAGE (ME., corage, fr. OF, cuer, fr. L., cor, heart). The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face dangers with self-possession, confidence, and resolution. syn FORTITUDE.

To see what is right and not do it is want of courage. Confucius

Courage consists, not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing and conquering it. Jean Paul Richter

CREATIONISM. See EMANATIONISM.

CREED (L, credo, I believe, fr. credere, to believe). An authoritative formula or set of fundamental religious beliefs.

In politics, as in religion, we have less charity for those who believe the half of our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it. Caleb C. Colton, English clergyman (d.1832)

CUSTOM The whole body of usages, practices, or conventions regulating the social life of a community.

Custom is the universal sovereign. Pindar

Men commonly think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and imbibed opinions, but generally act according to custom. Francis Bacon

CYNICISM (L., cynicus, fr. Gk., kynikos, lit. like a dog, i.e., currish, ignoble, fr. kyn-, kyon, dog). The faultfinding, captious, hypercritical attitude of one who holds that human conduct is motivated entirely by self-interest. Compare LIBERTARIANISM.

Cynicism is intellectual dandyism. George Meredith

To admire nothing is the motto which men of the world always affect. They think it vulgar to wonder or be enthusiastic. They have so much corruption and charlatanism, that they think the credit of all high qualities must be delusive. Samuel Brydges

DARWINISM, SOCIAL. A theory in sociology holding that socio-cultural progress comes about solely as the result of inter-group conflict and competition and that the socially elite classes (those in possession of wealth and power) have shown themselves to possess biological superiority in the struggle for existence. See ALTRUISM, EGOISM.

Might makes right. In society, as in nature, the "unfit" (weakest) individuals are eliminated, these "unfit" being characterized as typically self-sacrificing, idle, lazy, powerless, and poor. The good of society as a whole is served in this social struggle for existence. The self-made millionaire has in contemporary times been regarded as the exemplar of the "fittest." Peter Angeles

DEISM (Fr., deisme, fr. L., deus, God,). A doctrine advocating natural religion based on human reason rather than revelation, emphasizing morality. Compare THEISM. In the Enlightenment (18th century), the belief, claiming foundation solely upon the evidence of reason, in the existence of God as the creator of the universe, who after setting it in motion abandoned it, assuming thereafter no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and providing no supernatural revelation.

DEMOCRACY (Gk., demokratia, fr. demos, the common people, + -kratia, fr. kratos, strength, power). A form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation. Syn popular sovereignty.

See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (And Two Essays on America), new ed., ed. Gerald E. Bevan (2003) and Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present, rpt. ed., (2003).

Democracies are most often corrupted by the insolence of demagogues. Aristotle

A perfect democracy ... is the most shameless thing in the world. Edmund Burke

DETERMINISM. In general, the doctrine that everything that happens in the world (acts of volition, natural occurrences, social and psychological phenomena) happens of necessity, i.e., as the inevitable consequence of everything that has happened antecedently. In Religion, referred to as theological determinism or predestination, "the doctrine that everything that happens, including particularly the making of all choices, has been fixed in advance by God" (Flew).

The determinist or the fatalist is in despair, and in despair he has lost himself, because for him everything is necessary. The self of the determinist cannot breathe, for it is impossible to breathe necessity alone, which taken pure and simple suffocates the human self. Soren Kierkegaard

DUTY (ME., duete, fr. OF., deu, due; cf. L., debere, to owe, to be in debt). A legal or moral OBLIGATION, that which one feels legally, ethically, or morally compelled to do.

See Cicero, On Duties, ed. Miriam Griffin, et al. (1991).

The path of duty lies in what is near, and men seek for it in what is remote. The work of duty lies in what is easy, and men seek for it in what is difficult. Mencius

ECONOMICS. The science dealing with the buying and selling of goods and services. One of the "social sciences." See ANTHROPOLOGY, POLITICL SCIENCE, and SOCIOLOGY.

EGALITARIANISM. The belief in human equality, especially with regards to social, political, and economic RIGHTS and privileges.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by the same Creator, and however we deceive ourselves, as dear to God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince. Plato

They who say that all men are equal speak an undoubted truth, if they mean that all have an equal right to liberty, to their property, and to their protection of the laws. But they are mistaken if they think men are equal in their station and employments, since they are not so by their talents. Voltaire

EGOISM. The ethical doctrine that individual self-interest is, and should be, the actual motive and valid end of all conscious, human action. Contrast ALTRUISM.

There is an egoistic style of life, even one which calls itself Christian, but has nothing in common with what we see in Jesus Christ, since it seeks only its own happiness and interprets whatever happens to it as action of a God whose only concern is just with this lonely self, a God who is the counterpart of individuality, not the Lord of being. H. Richard Niebuhr

ETERNITY. "The complete possession of eternal life all at once." Boethius Infinite duration, IMMORTALITY. See BUDDHISM: Every other religion accepts the impermanence of man and the world, and the suffering inherent in being in this world, while also espousing the existence of a solid, eternal, everlasting principle in man. The eternal principal in man has been called soul, atman, jiva, anima, and thetan. The eternal principal in the universe has been called God, Jaweh, Allah, the Creator. Buddhism denies the eternal principle in both man and the universe.

We feel and know that we are eternal. Baruch Spinoza

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. Henry David Thoreau

No man can pass into eternity, for he is already in it. Frederick William Farrar, English scholar (d.1903)

Buddhists define a phenomenon as something with characteristics, and as an object that is conceived by a subject. To hold that an object is something external ... prevents us from seeing the truth of that object. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

ETHICS (LL., ethica, ethice, fr. Gk., ethikos, ethical, fr. ethos, character, moral custom). The study of moral principles or values (i.e., what is good or bad), moral duty and obligation, and theories or systems of moral principles or values; and, sometimes, the study of the general nature of morality, of moral language, and of specific moral choices made by an individual in his dealings and relationships with others.

To the layman the word "ethics" suggests a set of standards by which a particular group or community decides to regulate its behaviour-to distinguish what is legitimate or acceptable in pursuit of their aims from what is not. Hence we talk of "business ethics" or "medical ethics." But not all uses of the term need be associated with a specific activity: there can be standards of morality that apply to men not simply in virtue of their particular roles but in respect generally of their being men who live among other men. Antony Flew

PRIMARY TEXTS: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae (Prima Secundae), Spinoza's Ethics, Hobbes' Leviathan, Hume's An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Mill's On Liberty and Utilitarianism, G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica, and W. D. Ross' The Right and the Good. Generally considered the most important work written since Moore's Principia is John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1972), but see as well Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) and Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man (1964), critiques of LIBERALISM from Libertarian and Marxist points of view respectively. Important, interesting, and helpful are Kenneth J. Arrow's Social Choice and Individual Values (1951) and Bernard Williams' Morality: an Introduction to Ethics (1972). See Bibliography #2 (forthcoming).

ETHICS, CASUISTIC (L., casus, chance, case). The use of conniving or false arguments to defend morally an action insupportable by moral rules (Angeles, paraphrase). syn CASUISTRY. Compare RATIONALIZE.

ETHICS, FEMINIST. Investigations into what people do and should value with reference specifically to issues of gender and sexual relations and normative means of liberating women from social and sexual injustice.

See Ethics: a Feminist Reader, ed. Elizabeth Frazer (1992).

ETHICS, NORMATIVE. "The investigation into the content of moral principles and virtues, and their justification in terms of the human condition" (Flew).

... we shall call the body of ethical statements, or the actual normative argument, of the moral philosopher his normative ethics; discussions of the meanings or uses of moral terms and utterances about he nature of moral concepts will be called metaethics. (Other philosophers use different terminologies. Normative ethics is sometimes called substantive ethics or morals. What we shall call metaethics has been referred to as analytical ethics, critical ethics, theoretical ethics, the epistemology of ethics, the logic of ethics, or ethics.) (EOP)

ETHOS (Gk., custom, character). The distinguishing traits, sentiments, moral nature, or guiding principles of a person, group, or institution.

EVIL. Whatever would seem to be morally reprehensible, sinful, or wicked; or, whatever brings sorrow, distress, calamity, suffering, or misfortune, especially if these are the result of wrongdoing.

He said that there was one only good, namely knowledge; and one only evil, namely ignorance. Diogenes Laertius, on Socrates

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. Mary Wollstonecraft

To the Buddhist, good and evil are relative and not absolute terms. The cause of evil is man's inordinate desires for self. All action directed to selfish, separative ends is evil; all which tends to union is good. Christmas Humphreys

EVIL, PROBLEM OF. The conundrum undermining traditional theism: the problem of reconciling an imperfect world with the goodness of God.

The argument against the existence of God based on the fact of evil is as follows. If God is both benevolent and omnipotent, then he would not permit the existence of evil; since, however, evil does exist, a benevolent and omnipotent deity cannot exist. In another but equivalent version, the argument is that if evil exists, this is either because God cannot prevent it, in which case God is not omnipotent, or because God will not prevent it, in which case he is not benevolent; but a being which is [neither omnipotent nor benevolent] cannot be God, since benevolence and omnipotence are both defining properties of a divine being. Robert G. Olson

EVOLUTIONISM. See EMANATIONISM (forthcoming).

FAITH (L., fides, fr. fidere, to trust). Allegiance to and belief and trust in God and the doctrines of religion. 4. firm belief and complete confidence in something for which there is no proof. Compare FIDEISM.

Faith is to believe, on the word of God, what we do not see, and its reward is to see and enjoy what we believe. Augustine

Faith affirms many things respecting which the senses are silent, but nothing which they deny. It is superior to their testimony, but never opposed to it. Blaise Pascal

It is by an act of faith that I choose the level of my investigation; hence the saying, Credo ut intelligam, I have faith so as to be able to understand. If I lack faith, and consequently choose an inadequate level of significance for my investigation, no degree of "objectivity" will save me from missing the point of the whole operation, and I rob myself of the very possibility of understanding. I shall then be one of those of whom it has been said: "They, seeing, see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand" [Matthew 13:13]. E. F. Schumacher

FEAR (ME fer, fr. OE faer, sudden danger). Profound reverence and awe, especially of God.

In time we hate that which we often fear. Shakespeare

There is a virtuous fear which is the effect of faith, and a vicious fear which is the product of doubt and distrust. The former leads to hope as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; those of the other character fear to find him. Blaise Pascal

FEMINISM, PHILOSOPHICAL. Philosophical inquiry as it has to do with the needs and desires of women, with regards, for example, to the contribution of women to Philosophy, to Philosophy as somehow "masculine," and to critiques of the discipline's organization and constituency.

One central question for feminist philosophers has bee n the extent to which Philosophy is biased towards a masculine viewpoint, when the majority of past philosophers have been men? Can Philosophy be trusted to be neutral on the question of sexual difference? It may be a historical accident that Philosophy has been an activity associated with men. If, however, it is more deeply permeated with masculine values, feminists have asked whether such values are indelibly or contingently imprinted into the practice of Philosophy. OCP

See M. Gatens, Feminism and Philosophy (1991), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), John Stuart Mill, The Subjugation of Women (1869), Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949), and French Feminist Thought, ed. Toril Moi (1988).

To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women. Angela Davis

FEMINISM, RADICAL. Investigation into the "roots" (L, radicalis) of oppression, in particular the idea that dominant political and social systems are founded on oppression, i.e., organized on an ETHOS of inclusion-exclusion that encourages the oppression of "outsiders."

See Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (1979), and Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality (1983).

FIDEISM (Fr., fideisme, fr. L., fides, faith). In THEOLOGY, the doctrine (a) that true FAITH requires the acceptance of the absurd or contrary-to-reason (extreme form, as in Kierkegaard), or (b) that true FAITH requires that reason play an auxiliary role in the formulation and elucidation of what must first be accepted on faith (milder form, as in Augustine and Pascal). Compare FAITH.

FIRST CAUSE. 1. the self-created source of all causality: "that uncaused being which is the continual causal ground for the particular cause-effect patterns that occur at any given time in the universe" (Angeles). 2. divinity, the divine being, God, the heavenly father: "the uncaused being usually called God, which is the initial cause of the universe's existence ... [before this there being] either ... no universe in existence and God created the universe out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), or ... a universe exist-ing stati-cally without any causal series or inter-relation-ships activating it" (Angeles). Compare PRIME MOVER. See CAUSES, ARISTOLE'S FOUR.

The second of the Five Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas, an argument to a "First Efficient Cause to which everyone gives the name God." The adjective "efficient" is there to show that Aquinas is concerned with the third of the four kinds distinguished in Aristotle"s doctrine of four causes [material, formal, efficient, final]. Such efficient causes are always expected to be substantial agents rather than mere events....

To understand this argument we have to realize two things. First, ...the aim is to prove, not a first initiation "in the beginning," but the continuing existence of the Creator as the sustaining cause of the Universe. It would therefore miss the point to object that nothing has been said to show that these series of efficient causes could not go back indefinitely in time. Aquinas himself elsewhere argued that it is perfectly conceivable that the Universe might have had no beginning. So he is not arguing, as often is thought, that everything must have a cause, that this series could not go back indefinitely in time, and hence that there must have been an uncaused First Cause ....

The second thing to recognize is the background of a rather astrologi-cal element in Aristotle"s physics. Aquinas followed Aristotle in believing that heavenly bodies ... by their presence or absence cause "the phases of genera-tion and corruption of bodies here on earth." ... It is this sort of continuing supportive activity that everything in the Universe all the time requires, and that, Aquinas is arguing, is all the time provided by his First Cause "to which everyone gives the name God." Antony Flew

FIRST PHILOSOPHY (Aristotle). Metaphysics, "a translation of Aristotle's prote philosophia ... the study of being as being, the study of the general and pervasive characteristics of all types of existence, the causes and first principles of being [syn Metaphysics, Ontology], and ... the study of that kind of being that is immutable and transcendent [Syn THEOLOGY]" (Angeles).

FORCE (L, fortis, strong). 1. the active power, strength or energy, moral or mental power, or power of persuasion, brought to bear on something to cause it to move or change, or be motivated to move or change: "that which is able to affect something else ... any activity (action, power, energy, strength) that changes the condition (characteristics, qualities, motions, spatial relationships) of a thing" (Angeles). 2. violence, compulsion, or constraint: "any action that overcomes resistance or suppresses another action" (Angeles). Compare POWER. See DYNAMISM.

Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe. John Milton

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed [controlled], which is perpetually to be conquered. Edmund Burke

FREEDOM. The absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action, the power or condition of acting without compulsion.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. Mohatma Gandhi

Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty, which robs people of the freedom to satisfy hunger; or to achieve sufficient nutrition, or to obtain remedies for treatable illnesses or the opportunity to be adequatley clothed or sheltered, or to enjoy clean water or sanitary facilities. In other cases, the unfreedom links closely to the lack of public facilities and social care, such as the absence of epidemiological programs, or of organized arrangements for the health care or educational facilities, or of effective insititutions for the maintenance of local peace and order. In still other cases, the violation of freedom results directly from a denial of political and civil liberties by authoritarian regimes and from imposed restrictions on the freedom to participate in the social, political and economic life of the community. Amartya Sen

We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death. Angela Davis

FREEDOM (Plato). The state or quality of "having the will guided by righteousness (dikaiosyne)" (Angeles). Compare LIBERTY.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. Thomas Babington Macaulay

The only freedom that deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. John Stuart Mill

But consider ...

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeaus corpus [protection from illegal emprisonment], these are principles that have guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. Thomas Jefferson

Man requires freedom in his social organization because he is "essentially" free, which is to say, that he has the capacity for indeterminate transcendence over the processes and limitations of nature. Reinhold Niebuhr

FREE WILL. 1. the power to choose. syn FREEDOM. 2. the BELIEF that choice is voluntary and indeterminate. Syn indeteminism. Contrast DETERMINISM.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible. James Froude, English historian (d.1894)

FREEDOM, BEHAVIORISM AND. Mutually contradictory concepts, the behavioral sciences holding that one's behavior is predictable, and thus that one is not ultimately free. See FREEDOM, FREE WILL.

Behavioral scientists operate on the assumption that human behavior is predictable, that men will behave in the future much as they have behaved in the past. But ... if man is free, then human behavior is not predictable; for to say that man is free is just another way of saying that men always can and frequently does act in such a way as to render many important facets of their behavior unpredictable. If, therefore, we wish to determine whether man is free, we cannot have recourse to the behavioral sciences; the validity of their conclusions depends upon the validity of their basic assumptions, among which is the premise that man is not free. Robert G. Olson

FUNCTIONALISM. Any doctrine stressing purpose, practicality, and utility (over such "efficient causes" as human initiative and enterprise).

The superior man is not an instrument. Confucius

GNOSTICISM (Gk., gnosis, knowledge, recognition, fr. gignoskein, esoteric knowledge of spiritual truth). The thought and practice of various cults of late pre-Christian and early Christian times, especially the conviction that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through gnosis: "the knowledge of God supposedly revealed to initiates to enable them to attain salvation" (Flew).

Like Manichaeism, with which it shares many features, gnosticism is fundamentally dualistic, drawing a sharp distinc-tion between the "good" spiritual world and the "evil" material world. To evade the problem of how a supremely good God could have created a material world in which evil exists, the gnostics insisted that the world was the work of a Demiurge. In his world particles of spirit were trapped and Christ was sent as an ambas-sador from God to the unliberated spiritual fragments. The esoteric and elitist aspects of gnostic teaching earned it the wrath of orthodox Christians, but the metaphys-ical attractions of dualism ensured gnosticism"s survival in one form or another throughout the Middle Ages, for instance in the Albigensian heretics of 13th-century France. Antony Flew

GOD. The supreme or ultimate reality, the being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness whom men worship as creator and ruler of the universe.

God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference nowhere. Empedocles

If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. Voltaire

A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

GOD, COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF. The theory that God must exist as the original FIRST CAUSE of all else that exists: "Any of the arguments that proceed from what are regarded as observed facts about the universe, such as motion, cause, contingency, order, to the conclusion that God exists as the origin of and ground for these facts" (Angeles). Compare GOD, ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF.

It does not attempt (as the Ontological Argument does) to derive the existence of God from an analysis of his essential nature alone, nor does it argue from particular manifestations of orderliness or apparent design in the world's structure to a divine designer. It is enough that there is a world--a world of conditioned objects and events. To explore their conditions is to be led toward something unconditioned; to be aware of the regress of causes behind any given event is to become aware that there must be a First Cause of all: to realize the contingency of things in the world is to be impelled to acknowledge a being whose existence is uniquely necessary. This unconditioned, necessary source of the world's being is to be identified with the God of theism. (EOP)

GOD, DEGREES OF PERFECTION ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF. "Since whatever is the most [of something] must be the cause of whatever else is [something], all being and goodness in the Universe must be the work of [the] One who is in these respects The Mostest, ... [whom] we call God." (Flew)

"The proof for the existence of God from degrees of perfection ... finds its best known expression in the fourth of Thomas Aquinas' "Five Ways" in his Summa Theologiae Ia, 2, 3. It is here quoted in full. (EOP):

"The fourth way is based on the gradation observed in things. Some things arefound to be more good, more true, more noble, and so on, and other things less. But comparative terms describe varying degrees of approximation to a superlative: for example, things are hotter and hotter the nearer they approach what is hottest. Something therefore is the truest and best and most noble of things, and hence the most fully in being; for Aristotle says that the truest things are the things most fully in being. Now when many things possess some property in common, the one most fully possessing it causes it in the others: fire, to use Aristotle's example, the hottest of all things, causes all other things to be hot. There is something therefore which causes in all other things their being, their goodness, and whatever other perfections they have. And this we call God."

GOD, MORAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF. The theory that the human moral experience itself (an inherently human "sense of morality" in an otherwise amoral world) is proof of God's existence: "An argument best known in the formulation by Kant, which attempts to find sufficient grounds for theism in the specifically moral experience of mankind" (Flew).

From the time of Kant to the present day, a great many at-tempts have been made to base arguments for God's existence not upon the mere fact that there is a world, nor on the general orderliness it manifests, but on a very special feature of that world-human moral experience. The popularity of moral arguments is not hard to understand. Hume and Kant had produced powerful and apparently disabling criticisms of the traditional arguments of natural theology, criticisms that seemed decisive against any conceivable type of argument to God as the explanation of the world. Hume had no alternative theistic argument to offer and, insofar as theoretical reasoning is concerned, Kant had none either. The structure of Kant's ethical philosophy, however, accorded to "practical reaso"' privileges not shared by theoretical reason. If God was to retain any place in the Kantian system, the weight of apologetic had to be shifted from the theoretical to the practical, to exploring the implications of our moral situation. Between Kant's day and the middle of the twentieth century, skepticism about the theoretical arguments has tended to deepen rather than to lighten; hence, there has been no lack of religious apologists following Kant's new "moral route" to God. (EOP)

According to the Kantian form of the argument, the highest good is a state of affairs in which happiness is distributed in strict proportion to moral virtue. Our obligation to pursue this highest good becomes intelligible only if we see the world as so created and controlled that [the highest good] is in principle realizable, and hence only if we postulate God (in something like the theist's sense). Antony Flew

To escape from evil we must be made, as far as possible, like God; and this resemblance consists in becoming just, and holy, and wise. Plato

GOD, ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF. 1. the theory defining God as "something than which nothing greater (more perfect) can be conceived," which in and of itself is proof of God's existence, i.e., that we cannot think of anything greater than the thought of God is proof that God exists): "the attempt to prove, simply from an examination of the concept of God, that the being to which that concept would apply must in fact exist" (Flew); 2. in St. Anselm: if God is indeed "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" (aliquod quo nihil maius cogitari possit) then He must truly exist in reality, for to exist in reality is greater than to exist only in the mind (in intellectu). 2. in Descartes: (a) God must exist in order to be per-fect, a simplified version of St. Anselm's proof, or (b) God must exist because existence is of the essence of God, that is, the essence of God is existence, just as the essence of a triangle is plain figure with three sides and three angles equaling 1800, or (c) God must exist in order to produce in my finite and imperfect mind the idea of an infinite and perfect Being. (Angeles, paraphrase and condensation)

... first propounded by Anselm (c. 1033-1109), abbot of Bec and later archbishop of Canterbury, in his Proslogion (Chs. 2-4) ... [which begins] with the concept of God as 'something than which nothing greater can be conceived' (aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit, and other equivalent formulations). It is clear that by "greater" Anselm means "more perfect." ... Since we have this idea, it follows that "something than which nothing greater can be conceived" at least exists in our minds (in intellectu) as an object of thought. The question is whether it also exists in extramental reality (in re). Anselm argues that it must so exist, since otherwise we should be able to conceive of something greater than that than which nothing greater can be con-ceived--which is absurd. Therefore "something than which nothing greater can be conceived" [i.e., Anselm's definition of God] must exist in reality. (EOP)

Man first unconsciously and involuntarily creates God in his own image, and after this God (Religion) consciously and voluntarily creates man in his own image. Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach

GOD, POPULAR ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF. Any number of theories based on fallacious (and sometimes desperate) arguments from "necessity," the result usually of insufficient knowledge or skill in reasoning, unwillingness on the part of the thinker to challenge popular assump-tions, or lack of mental effort: "God must exist, for how else can we explain such-and-such?"

Most of the arguments in popular literature may be seen as variants of the more strictly philosophical arguments, such as the Cosmological and Teleological arguments, or those from morals and common consent. The variants are popular largely because they are posed as probable rather than as valid arguments; that is, they are not offered as arguments whose premises entail their conclusions. Almost all of them fall into a common class of arguments of the form "The universe contains some puzzling feature, F (design, an objective morality). God's existence explains F, and no other known hypothesis does. Therefore, God exists." ... It is beside the point to demonstrate the formal invalidity of such arguments, although their invalidity is very easy to show in almost every case. However, it is entirely relevant to require of such an argument that it should make clear just how God's existence explains F. (EOP)

GOD, RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF. The theory that in the presence of mystery itself, whether benign and optimistic or grim and pessimistic, there resides palpable evidence of God's existence, manifes-tation of the divine in the common objects and events of this world, the mortally wounded Prince Andre's "unbearable lightness of being" in Tolstoy's War and Peace: "Yes! all is vanity, all falsehood except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!"

Religious experiences can be generated by perceptions of individual objects (a grain of sand, a bird), by a train of events, by actions-for instance, the memorable account of Jesus' setting his face to go to Jerusalem to his Passion. Even a passage of philosophical reasoning may do this, as when someone contemplates the incomplete-ness of all explanation, the intellectual opacity of space and time, and feels compelled-with a sense of mystery-to posit a divine complete-ness and unity. (EOP)

In all the vast and the minute, we see the unambiguous footsteps of the God, who gives its luster to the insect's wings, and wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds. William Cowper

GOD, TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF. The theory that because the world exhibits an intelligent and purposeful (teleological) design that it must have been produced by an intelligent designer. syn God, Argument from Design for the Existence of.

No argument ... designed to show that facts in nature require a certain explanation can establish the existence of a deity absolutely unlimited in power, knowledge, or any other respect [the omnipotence, omniscience, etc. required conceptually of any supreme being]. By such reasoning we can infer no more in the cause than is required to produce the effect. This deficiency is irremediable. However, there is a simple way of eliminating competing scientific claims-by starting from the universe as a whole rather than from individual instances of design within the universe. There are different ways of doing this. We might think of the whole universe as instrumental to some supreme goal, or we might think of the universe as a unified system of mutually adjusted and mutually supporting adaptive structures. (EOP)

GRACE (L., gratia, favor, fr. gratus, grateful, pleasing). In THEOLOGY, unmerited divine love and protection.

As heat is opposed to cold, and light to darkness, so grace is opposed to sin. Fire and water may as well agree in the same vessel, as grace and sin in the same heart. Thomas Brooks, English divine (d.1680)

GUIDANCE, DIVINE.

We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance. Joseph de Maistre

GUILT (OE, gylt, delinquence). In Politics, the fact of having committed a breach of conduct, especially when this involves breaking a law and incurring some penalty or punishment. Syn culpability. In Religion, remorseful awareness of having done something wrong, whether real or imaginary. Syn remorse.

There are two main forms of the idea of guilt-moral guilt and legal or quasi-legal guilt. Originally these were not sharply distinguished, but enlightened thought requires that they should be. In outward substance the two often coincide. In committing a crime one usually is morally at fault, but the degree of one's guilt is not likely to be the same in the two respects in such instances. We may in any case be morally guilty and legally innocent, and vice versa. (EOP)

It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases. Friedrich Schiller

If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends. Charlotte Bronte

True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is. R. D. Laing

HEAVEN. 1. A spiritual state of everlasting communion with God, 2. In Christian Science, a state of immortality in which sin is absent and all manifestations of Mind are harmoniously ordered under the divine Principle. See ETERNITY.

HEAVEN AND EARTH. Everything that is, the whole of Existence, the entire past, present, and future of all things.

The grand difficulty is so to feel the reality of both worlds as to give each its due place in our thought and feelings-to keep our mind's eye, and our heart's eye, ever fixed on the land of Promise, without looking away from the road along which we are to travel toword it. August Hare, English divine (d.1834)

HEGELIANISM. In general, the influence of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) on such fields as Aesthetics, Historiography, especially the History of Ideas (intellectual history), Metaphysics, Political and Social Philosophy, and Protestant Theology and the Philosophy of Religion, however radically different the interpretation of Hegel's ideas in these various fields.

Different but recognizably Hegelian movements have often reached nearly opposite conclusions .... This great diversity within Hegelianism is due not only to historical contingencies but also to contradictory tendencies within Hegel's system. Hegel himself treated all contradictions as dialectical moments in the life of Absolute Spirit, unified in a single comprehensive system of philosophy. (EOP)

Hegel had argued that history is a process which has a rational end, and soon after his death there was disagreement among his followers about the rationality of the state that history had reached, The so-called Old Hegelians argued that contemporary political conditions were rational; the Young Hegelians disagreed, and said that the business of philosophy was to promote a revolution, more specifically, a revolution of ideas. There was also dis-agreement about the religious implications of Hegel's thought, the Old Hegelians saying that Hegel had reconciled religion and philosophy, the Young Hegelians arguing that a Hegelian approach to religion must be a critical one. Antony Flew

HOLISM (HISTORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE). "A theory that claims that society may, or should, be studied in terms of social wholes: that is, that the fundamental of social analyses are not individu-als or individual manifestations but rather societal laws, dispositions, and movements" (Flew).

HUMANISM. The philosophical and literary movement which originated in Italy in the second half of the fourteenth century and diffused into the other countries of Europe ... also any philosophy which recognizes the value or dignity of man and makes him the measure of all things or somehow takes human nature, its limits, or its interests as its theme ... also ... used to designate the following doctrines: (1) Communism, in that it would abolish man's alienation from himself ... (2) Pragmatism, because of its anthropocentric view ... (3) Personalism (also called spiritualism), which affirms man's capacity to contemplate the eternal truths ... (4) Existentialism, which affirms that `there is no other universe than ... the universe of human subjectivity. (EOP)

Whatever seeds each man cultivates will grow and bear fruit in him. If these seeds are vegetative, he will be like a plant; if they are sensitive, he will become like the beasts; if they are rational, he will become like a heavenly creature; if intellectual, he will be an angel and Son of God. And if, content with the lot of no created being, he withdraws into the center of his own oneness, his spirit, made one with God in the solitary darkness of the Father, which is above all things, will surpass all things. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

HUMANISM, PHILOSOPHICAL. 1. in general, a philosophical doctrine asserting the dignity and worth of man and his capacity for self-realization through reason (mind, intellect), with or without divine (supernatural) intervention. 2. in Ethics and Aesthetics, the doctrine that man is, in and of himself, the ultimate source of ethical and aesthetic values and standards of moral and artistic behavior. 3. in Education, the doctrine that the goal of training in the schools should be to encourage and foster individual moral, intellectual, and artistic development, with emphasis on the worth and ability of the students themselves, without recourse to theories of divine knowledge or supernatural intervention.

I am a man, and whatever concerns humanity concerns me. Terrence

It will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples. Charles Dickens

IDEOLOGY. The systematic body of concepts, especially about human life or culture, that constitute a sociopolitical program.

What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology. Terry Eagleton

IMMANENCE (L., immanere, to remain in, fr. in-, in + manere, to remain). The quality or state of existing in or remaining within the material universe, or being restricted entirely to the mind or consciousness. Syn inherence, subjectivity. Compare TRANSCENDENCE.

The word is often used by pantheists to describe the way in which God dwells in, or is in some sense identified with, the created world. (Flew)

IMMORTALITY. The quality or state of being exempt from oblivion, or from DEATH. See REINCARNATION.

"But how shall we bury you?" Crito asked. "However you please," Socrates replied, "if you can catch me and I do not get away from you." And he laughed gently, and looking towards us, said: "I cannot persuade Crito, my friends, that the Socrates who is now conversing and arranging the details of his argument is really I; he thinks I am the one whom he will presently see as a corpse, and he asks how to bury me. And though I have been saying at great length that after I drink the poison I shall no longer be with you, but shall go away to the joys of the blessed, he seems to think that was idle talk uttered to encourage you and myself." Socrates, in Plato's Crito

We know that the brain is not immortal, and that the organized energy of a living body becomes, as it were, demobilized at death and therefore not available for collective action. All the evidence goes to show that what we regard as our mental life is bound up with brain structure and organized bodily energy. Therefore it is rational to suppose that mental life ceases when bodily life ceases. Bertrand Russell

INDIVIDUALISM. In POLITICS, the doctrine that the rights, independence, and freedom of the individual are of paramount importance, that the state exists for the sole purpose of guaranteeing, preserving, and defending these privileges, being a means only to these ends, and never an end in and of itself. Compare LIBERTARIANISM. See INDIVIDUALISM, POLITICAL.INDIVIDUALISM, POLITICAL. The doctrine that the political and economic independence of the individual must be maintained at all costs, stressing individual initiative, action, and interests: "the theory holding that the principal concern of all political and social groupings is to preserve the rights, guarantee the independence, and enhance the development of the individual person" (Angeles).

Politics and political maneuvering is a means used by individuals in the attainment of these goals and is never an end in itself; society exists for the sake of its individual members. Peter Angeles

INSTRUMENTALISM. The doctrine associated with the philosophy of John Dewey that ideas are instruments of action and that their usefulness determines their truth. Syn experimentalism, the term preferred and used by Dewey himself. Compare PRAGMATISM. See TRUTH, PRAGMATIC THEORY OF.

Ideas are used to control, predict, explain, organize, and create possibilities for human experience. Whether these ideas are "true" or "false" is not of serious concern, but rather whether or not they are useful or powerful enough to explain and cause change and thus satisfy human needs and purposes. One's thinking is judged on the basis of its success in helping individual members of groups adjust to the demands of the group and of life in general and thus survive socially and environmentally. Peter Angeles

INEFFABLE, THE. That which is inexpressible.

The ineffable in practice must be distinguished from the ineffable in principle. That is ineffable in practice which a certain person cannot put into words. A person may, for example, complain on a certain occasion that he cannot describe how he feels, perhaps because he has forgotten or cannot at the moment think of the words appropriate to describe how he feels; still, how he feels can in principle be described. That is ineffable in principle which no one can put into words, that for which there are and can be no suitable words, that for the expression of which all possible words are unsuitable. Only the ineffable in principle is of philosophical interest. (EOP)

God is the explanation for the unexplainable which explains nothing because it explains everything without distinction -- he is the night of theory, nonetheless making everything clear to the mind by removing any measure of darkness and extinguishing the light of discriminating comprehension -- the not-knowing which solves all doubts by repudiating them, which knows everything because it knows nothing in particular and because all things which impress reason are nothing to religion, lose their identity and are nil in God's eye. The night is the mother of religion. Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Ludwig Wittgenstein

INFINITY. The quality or state of being boundless in space or duration.

INTENTION, INTENTIONALITY. In POLITICS, the state or condition in which something points to or concentrates its attention upon something beyond itself, or refers or attends to some purpose or goal. In Theology, that for which a prayer, mass, or pious act is offered.

Karma is intention. Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

INTOLERANCE. Unwillingness to grant equal freedom of expression, especially in religious matters.

Faith is essentially intolerant... essentially because necessarily bound up with faith is the illusion that one's cause is also God's cause. Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach

INTUITION (L., intuitus, pp. of intueri, to look at attentively, gaze upon with astonishment, contem-plate). 1. immediate (noninferential) apprehension or cognition of something, or the KNOWLEDGE attained by such means. 2. the power or faculty of attaining direct KNOWLEDGE or cognition of something without rational thought and inference. 3. the power by which innate, instinctive knowledge (insight) reveals itself or is called up or drawn upon by the mind (CONSCIOUSNESS) independently of reason or sensory experience.

The only really valuable thing is intuition. Albert Einstein

JUSTICE (L., justitia, justice, fr. justus, just, fr. jus, law). 1. the maintenance or administration of what is morally upright or good, fair, proper, or reasonable, especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments: "fairness, equitableness ... correct treatment ... the establishment of a harmony between one's rights and the rights of others" (Angeles). syn rectitude. 2. the quality of being impartial or fair, the principle or ideal of fair dealing or right action, or conformity to this principle or ideal (one of the four CARDINAL VIRTUES): "the embodiment of the virtues (ideals, values, principles) of a society ... correctness and impartiality in the application of principles of rightness and of sound judgment" (Angeles). syn righteousness. See JUSTICE (Plato), JUSTICE, COMMUTATIVE (Aristotle), JUSTICE, CORRECTIVE/REHABILITATIVE, JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE, JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE (Aristotle), JUSTICE, RETRIBUTIVE.

See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1972), considered the most important book in ethics since G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica (1903).

Justice is to give to every man his own. Aristotle

Justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are injured. Thucydides

JUSTICE, CORRECTIVE/REHABILITATIVE. "Justice the aim of which is ...not punishment for the sake of punishment or for revenge, but punishment for the purpose of changing the character and the environment of the offender so that similar actions will not occur again" (Angeles). Compare JUSTICE, RETRIBUTIVE.

COMMENT: It is extremely doubtful that any of the usual "corrective" punishments (incarceration, exile, etc.) have ever effected the ends of rehabilitation in any but the most isolated instances. jbc

JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE. "Justice insuring proportionate or equal distribution of liberty, rights, respect, opportunities, etc., or the fair allocation to members of a community of such things as money, property, privileges, opportunities, education, liberty, and rights" (Angeles).

JUSTICE, DISTRIBUTIVE (Aristotle). "That 'proper proportion' determined objectively by reason, such as that between a person's actions and his reward (or punishment), or between a person's status (abilities, performance) and his compensation, monetary or otherwise" (Angeles).

JUSTICE, RETRIBUTIVE. "Justice the principal aim of which is revenge and/or vindictiveness, implicit in the adage, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'" (Angeles).

KNOWLEDGE. Justified true belief: "things had [held, possessed] in consciousness (beliefs, ideas, facts, images, concepts, notions, opinions) that become justified in some way and . . . regarded as true" (Angeles). Syn cognition. Compare BELIEF.

Knowledge is of two kinds.We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. Samuel Johnson

LAW. An established rule of conduct, i.e., a rule stating uniform behavior under uniform conditions.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous. Edmund Burke

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.
Mohandas Gandhi

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged. Ronald Reagan

One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. Martin Luther King, Jr.

COMMENT: "Law" would seem to mean one thing to those in power, and something entirely different to those "who have most to hope and nothing to lose." jbc

LI (Ch., principle, order). "In Chinese thought li originally means a religious sacrifice. By extension: rules of propriety, good form, decorum. Li also plays the role of a higher law or natural law, approximating to the Greek logos." (Blackburn) Compare LOGOS.

LIBERALISM. A political philosophy based on the belief in PROGRESS, the essential goodness of man, and the autonomy of the individual, and the protection of political and civil LIBERTIES. Compare ANARCHISM; CONSERVATISM; INDIVIDUALISM, POLITICAL; and LIBERTARIANISM.

See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (1995).

When a liberal is abused, he says: Thank God they didn't beat me. When he is beaten, he thanks God they didn't kill him. When he is killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay. Lenin

LIBERTARIANISM. A political philosophy advocating freedom of the will and upholding the principles of absolute and unrestricted LIBERTY, especially of thought and action. Compare ANARCHISM; CONSERVATISM; INDIVIDUALISM, POLITICAL; and LIBERALISM.

LIBERTY (L., liber, free). The quality or state of being free from physical restraint, from arbitrary or despotic control; the enjoyment of various political and economic rights and privileges; the power to do as one pleases.

The free man is the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a goal, nor terrorized like a slave by the fear of punishment. Helvetius

When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

LIFE. The sequence of mental and physical experiences that make up the existence of an individual human being.

It is the bounty of nature that we live, but of philosophy that we live well, which is, in truth, a greater benefit than life itself. Seneca

LOYALTY. The quality or state of being unswerving in allegiance, faithful to one's lawful sovereign or government, faithful to a private person to whom fidelity is due, or faithful to a cause, ideal, or custom; that "sense of obligation" which binds one to that power, person, cause, ideal, or custom to which one is loyal. Syn sense of obligation. Compare OBLIGATION. See TRUST.

A disposition, normally regarded as admirable, by which a person remains faithful and committed to a person or cause, despite danger and difficulty attendant on that allegiance, and often despite evidences that that person or cause may not by quite as meritorious or creditable as they seem. The fact that loyalty can be blind to or unmoved by such evidences gives rise to problems about its value, as the phrases misguided, misplaced, or unquestioning loyalty suggest. None the less, we are apt to see the capacity for selfless commitment contained in loyalty as presumptively good (if it does not become fanaticism). Loyalty need not be to universal or impartial causes; it is often very limited and exclusive in its scope. In this way, too, it can give rise to injustice. Only rarely has it been seen as a cardinal virtue. (OCP)

Yet would today when Courtesy grows chill,/ And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest,/ Some fire of thine might burn within us still./ Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest,/ And charge to earnest-were it but a mill. Henry Austin Dobson, "Don Quixote"

MIND. The intellectual or rational faculty in man; the understanding; the intellect; the power that conceives, judges, or reasons, often in distinction from the body; also, the entire spiritual nature; the soul. Compare NOUS, PSYCHE, and SOUL.

The distinction of mind and matter came into philosophy from religion, although, for a long time, it seemed to have valid grounds. I think that both mind and matter are merely convenient ways of grouping events. Bertrand Russell

MIRACLE (L., miraculum, fr. mirari, to wonder at). An extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.

A miracle is something which would never have happened had nature, as it were, been left to its own devices. (EOP)

A miracle I take to be a sensible operation, which being above the comprehension of the spectator, and to his opinion contrary to the established course of nature, is taken by him to be divine. John Locke

There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves. David Hume

MONISM. The metaphysical doctrine that there is only one kind of ultimate SUBSTANCE, or that reality is one unitary organic whole with no independent parts. See PLURALISM.

"Any view which claims that where there appear to be many things or kinds of things there is really only one or only one kind. Weaker forms of monism may claim simply that the things in question are related together, or unified, in some signifi-cant way." (Lacey)

Monism is a name for a group of views in metaphysics that stress the oneness or unity of reality in some sense. It has been characteristic of monism,from the earliest times, to insist on the unity of things in time (their freedom from change) or in space (their indivisibility) or in quality (their undifferentiatedness). Such a view of the world is already found in a developed form in the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides and was nicknamed the "block universe" (by Thomas Davidson, a friend of William James), that is, the universe thought of as a single closed system of interlocking parts in which there is no genuine plurality and no room for alternative possibilities.(EOP)

MORALITY. Specific moral principles or rules of conduct, e.g., the CUSTOMS of a given society, class, or social group which regulate relationships and prescribe modes of behavior to insure the group's survival, as in "middle-class morality."

Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach

MORAL SENSE. An understanding of what is right and wrong.

In the first half of the eighteenth century certain British philosophers [Shaftesbury, his successor, Francis Hutcheson, and later David Hume] argued that the moral sense is the faculty [feelings or sentiments] by which we distinguish between moral right and wrong.... Our observation of an instance of virtuous action is the occasion for a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction, which enables us to distinguish that action as virtuous. Similarly, our observa-tion of an instance of vicious action is the occasion for a feeling of pain or uneasiness, which enables us to distinguish that action as vicious. (EOP)

MOTIVATION. See MOTIVE. The incentive, inducement, emotion, desire, need, or similar impulse to act. See PSYCHOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY OF.

MOTIVE (L., motus, pp. of movere, to move). An emotion, desire, need, or similar impulse that causes a person to act.

MYSTICISM (ME, mysterie, fr. L., mysterium, fr. Gk., mysterion, fr. (assumed) mystos, keeping silence, fr. Gk., myein, to be closed [of the eyes or lips]). The BELIEF that direct knowledge of spiritual truth or of ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (as INTUITION or insight).

NATURALISM. The doctrine denying that events or objects ever have supernatural significance, specifically that scientific laws are adequate in and of themselves to account for all phenomena. See MONISM.

Naturalism, in recent usage, is a species of philosophical monism according to which whatever exists or happens is natural in the sense of being susceptible to explanation through methods which, although paradigmatically exemplified in the natural sciences, are continuous from domain to domain of objects and events. Hence, naturalism is polemically defined as repudiating the view that there exists or could exist any entities or events which lie, in principle, beyond the scope of scientific explanation. In all other respects naturalism is ontologically neutral in that it does not prescribe what specific kinds of entities there must be in the universe or how many distinct kinds of events we must suppose to take place. (EOP)

NATURE. In Politics, he external world in its entirety. In Religion, the creative and controlling force in the universe.

NEMESIS (Gk., retribution, fr. nemein, to allot). In Greek mythology, first a goddess of the forests and fields, of innocence, whose character and role were very much like those of the maiden goddess Artemis, then later the goddess of retributive justice or vengeance. In Politics, the inflictor of retributive justice or vengeance. In Religion, in typically amoral modern scenarios, a formidable antagonist (whom, one suspects, will be most unmerciful and revengeful, if victorious).

NIHILISM (L., nihil, nothing, nothingness). In Politics, the belief that a particular social organization is so corrupt that its destruction is desirable, no constructive alternative form of government being deemed possible, sometimes coupled with a form of ANARCHISM, advocating terrorism, violent revolutionary activities, and if need be, assassination of key political office holders or persons otherwise of political significance. In Religion, the view that traditional values and BELIEFS are unfounded and that existence is senseless and without purpose or meaning. In Psychology, a state of mind in which the individual client or patient has lost all sense of value, ethical, religious, political, and social, characterized frequently by anger, anxiety, boredom, and despair.

If God does not exist, everything is permitted. Fyodor Dostoevsky

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism. Albert Camus

OBLIGATION (L., obligatus, pp. of obligare, to bind ). In Politics, something that one is bound to do or forbear, whether by law, conscience, or social pressure. Syn DUTY. In Religion, the state, condition, feeling, or sense of being obligated or indebted to someone or some thing, especially legally, ethically, or socially. Syn sense of duty.

Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful. Thomas Hobbes

OLIGARCHY (Gk., oligos, few). Government by the few in which a small group exercises control, especially but not always for corrupt and selfish purposes: "a government resting on the valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it" (Plato).

OPTIMISM (L., optimus, best). The belief that everything is ordered for the best, that the world as it stands is the best possible world. Ant PESSIMISM.

One of the earliest [and only] examples of systematic philosophical optimism is Leibniz's doctrine that God could not but have created the "best of all possible worlds" [an idea derided at great length in Voltaire's Candide]. A generally optimistic philosophical mood characterized the 18th-century Enlightenment. Antony Flew

OTHERWORLDLINESS. Belief in a world other than that of everyday reality and devout preparation for its coming Compare TRANSCENDENTALISM. See ETERNITY, HEAVEN, and HEAVEN AND EARTH.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. Friedrich Nietzsche

PANPSYCHISM. "The theory that holds that the world is rendered more comprehensible on the assumption that every object is invested with a soul or mind" (Flew). See also ANIMAL SOUL and WORLD SOUL.

Like the related doctrines of animal soul and world soul, [PANPSYCHISM] is anti-materialist and historically rooted in post-Cartesian debates about whether only man can be said to possess a soul or mind. In various forms, panpsychical views are evident in the philosophy of Leibniz and Schopenhauer. The most notable modern proponent of the theory has been A. N. Whitehead. Antony Flew

PANTHEISM. "The doctrine that the divine is all-inclusive and that man and Nature are not independent of God, but are modes or elements of his Being" (Flew). Compare EMANATIONISM.

Any theology stressing God's infinity and omnipotence gives pantheism at least some plausibility. Although pantheistic tendencies appear in various religious and philosoph-ical traditions, Christian theism has always rejected it, finding its identification of Nature with God dangerously close to atheism. Spinoza's doctrine of Deus sive natura (God or Nature) is usually regarded as the classic example of pantheism in Western philosophy. Antony Flew

PESSIMISM (F., pessimisme, fr. L., pessimus, worst). An inclination to emphasize the gloomier aspects of life. Ant OPTIMISM.

A pessimistic attitude is evident in the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition, reflected in some of the writings of Plato. This regards earthly existence as a period of penance, with philosophical contemplation helping to achieve a purification of the soul and passage from the world of illusions to the domain of realities. Similar views are present in the teachings of the main eastern as well as western religions, emphasizing the corruptness of this world and the possibility of redemption and joy only in a hereafter. Antony Flew

PESSIMISM (Schopenhauer). The pessimistic thought of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) should not be taken out of context or allowed to discourage reading of this great German stylist, who had many encouraging and intelligent things to say, as well as the strictly pessimistic ideas that follow (as summarized by Angeles): 1. that life is something that ought not to be, nonexistence being preferable to existence: we ought not to take joy in being alive but bemoan the fact; 2. that given the choice ahead of time, and understanding the hopelessness of human existence, any sane individual would decline life; 3. that ultimately all states and conditions of life are frustrated, unhappy, illusory, or painful; 4. that life is fraught with suffering, disappointment, uncertainty, disillusionment, helplessness, despair, and death; 5. that the world as we experience it is the worst possible world ever imagined: that than which nothing worse could ever have been created or conceived; 6. that the world is the expression of a blind, irrational Will, all creatures possessing a will to live, the necessary consequences of which is a meaningless existence of prolonged suffering; 7. that the very best one can hope for in this life is temporarily to overcome the world and alleviate one's suffering by such means as philosophic contemplation, aesthetic experience, and compassion. (Peter Angeles, paraphrase)

PLURALISM. The metaphysical doctrine that there is more than one kind of ultimate substance, or that reality is composed of a plurality of entities. Compare MONISM.

I think the universe is all spots and jumps, without unity, without continuity, without coherence or orderliness or any of the other properties that governesses love. Bertrand Russell

POLITICAL SCIENCE. The science dealing with the practice of government and the managing of public affairs. One of the "social sciences." See ANTHROPOLOGY, ECONOMICS, and SOCIOLOGY.

POWER (OF., poeir, to be able, fr. [assumed] L., potere, to be powerful, fr. potis, pote, able). Possession of control or influence over others. Syn AUTHORITY. See DYNAMISM.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics. Bertrand Russell

See Steven Lukes, Power (1986) and Michel Foucault, Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Volume III (2001).

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. George Orwell

PRAGMATISM (Gk., pragma, a thing done, an act, work, a thing of consequence, fr. prassein, to do). The belief that knowledge is derived from experience, experimental methods, and practical efforts (as opposed to any kind or variety of metaphysical speculation) and should be used to solve problems of an everyday and practical nature. Compare RATIONALISM. See TRUTH, PRAGMATIC THEORY OF.

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something. Thoreau

Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practi-cal bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. Charles Sanders Peirce

PREDESTINATION. See DETERMINISM.

PSYCHE (Gk., psyche, soul). 1. soul, self. 2. mind. See also ANIMAL SOUL, PANPSYCHISM, and WORLD SOUL. Compare MIND and NOUS.

Psyche was used originally to refer to the state of being alive; then to the principle of life (a breath, an invisible vapor, a spirit, a soul in things that causes life); then to the source of consciousness and also of conscience; then to the world soul. Peter Angeles

PSYCHOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY OF. The study of the philosophical implications of psychology and psychological research. See MOTIVATION.

Although what might be called speculative psychology was itself a branch of philosophy until the 19th century, it is the development of experimental psychology as a distinctively independent science, and its subsequent impact on 20th-century thought, that has given rise to a critical philosophy of psychology. For while the psychologist now largely concerns himself with the empirical investigation of mental functioning and behaviour, it is held to be a philosophical task to examine the peculiar concepts of psychology, and their and its presuppositions and implications. (The psychologist asks, "What happens, and why?" The philosopher asks, "So what?"). Antony Flew

PUNISHMENT. A penalty (suffering, pain, or loss) inflicted upon an offender by means of judicial procedure, for offenses (suffering, pain, or loss) committed by the offender against another person, as RETRIBUTION. Compare VENGEANCE.

The philosopher's interest in punishment is mainly connected with questions of justification. It is, prima facie, wrong to deliberately inflict suffering or deprivation on another person, yet punishment consists in doing precisely this. What conditions, the philosopher asks, would justify it? (EOP)

See Michel Foucoult, Discipline & Punish : the Birth of the Prison, Rpt. ed. (1995).

RADICALISM (fr L, radix, root). The tendency in POLITICS to want to make fundamental changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions, using extreme measures if necessary.

Radical simply means "grasping things at the root." Angela Davis

RATIONALISM. In Politics, the presentation of some idea or plan of action as reasonably justified when in fact it is not. In Religion, the reliance on REASON as the basis for religious truth and means by which it is revealed. Compare FIDEISM; MYSTICISM.

"Any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification. Reason can be contrasted with revelation, in religion, or with emotion and feeling, as in ethics, but in philosophy it is usually contrasted with the senses." (Lacey)

RATIONALIZATION. In Philosophy, in a positive sense (frequently overlooked, ignored, or openly ridiculed in the modern age), the process and practice of making something rational, or to endow something with reason or reasonableness. In both Politics and Religion, in the negative sense, to present as a reasonable justification (for a belief or action) that which, in truth, is either not justified or has another more plausible but questionable, confusing, or shameful justification. See ETHICS, CASUISTIC.

See Wayne Booth, Now Don't Try to Reason with Me: Essays and Ironies for a Credulous Age (1970) and Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent (1974).

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude. Karl Popper

REDUCTIONISN/REDUCTIVISM. In both Politics and Religion, the belief that all things can be reduced to one kind of thing (substance, process, matter, God, form, ideal) that is ultimate, necessary, and the most real: "any doctrine that claims to reduce the apparently more sophisticated or complex to the less so" (Flew).

REINCARNATION (LL., re-, again + incarnare, to make flesh, fr. in- (causative) + caro, flesh). The quality or action of being invested anew with bodily nature and form, especially the rebirth of a soul in a new human body. See IMMORTALITY.

The doctrine variously called transmigration of souls, metempsychosis, palingenesis, rebirth, and reincarnation has been and contin-ues to be widely believed. Although some of these terms imply belief in an immortal soul that transmigrates or reincarnates, Buddhism, while teaching rebirth, denies the eternity of the soul. The word "rebirth" is therefore the most comprehensive for referring to this range of beliefs. (EOP)

Beliefs in reincarnation can be found both in ancient Greece and in ancient India, and the Greek idea that the soul about to be reincarnated drinks from the river Lethe (forgetfulness) is typical of the assumption that those who are reincarnated remember little or nothing. The interesting philosophical question is: In what sense [is the reincarnated] the same person as the deceased? Even if psychic drives of the deceased in some way led to the new life, the relation between the two lives could be compared to that of a new flame to the pre-existing flame from which it is lit. "Are these two different flames, or the same flame?" the Buddhist philosopher asks; and the implication is that there is no basis for an answer. (OCP)

Religions are united not by belief in God but by belief in life after death. According to religious Buddhism we will be reborn in a form of life that accords with the ethical quality of actions committed in this or a previous life. A similar principle is followed in the monotheistic religions, although the postmortem options tend to be limited to heaven or hell. Stephen Batchelor

REPUBLIC. A political unit (state or nation) governed by law in which supreme POWER resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote for elected officials and representatives responsible to the people.

See Plato, The Republic, Rpt. ed., tr. Benjamin Jowett (2000).

Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. Horace Walpole

REPUBLICANISM. Adherence to or sympathy with a republican form of government; the principles or theory of republican government. See REPUBLIC.

Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination. On the contrary, under no form of government are laws better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness more effectually dispensed to mankind. George Washington

RETRIBUTION (L., retributus, pp. of retribuere, to pay back, fr. re- + tribuere, to pay). Something given or exacted in recompense, especially PUNISHMENT. Syn VENGEANCE.

RIEFICATION: The error (fallacy) of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea.

RIGHTS. Formally, qualities (such as adherence to DUTY or obedience to lawful AUTHORITY) that together constitute the ideal of moral propriety, or that merit moral approval, but more often today something to which one has a just claim, i.e., the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled, something that one may properly claim as due: "A person's entitlements as a member of society, including 'liberties,' such as the right to use the public highway, and 'claim-rights,' such as the right to defense counsel ... A longstanding philosophical tradition asserts the existence of certain fundamental natural rights-a notion Bentham called 'nonsense on stilts.'" (Flew)

Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man, who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline-the noble life. Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us-by obligations, not by rights. Jose Ortega y Gasset

A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights. Napoleon

RIGHTS, CIVIL. The nonpolitical rights of a citizen, especially the rights of personal liberty guaranteed to U. S. citizens by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution and by acts of Congress. See RIGHTS, NATURAL. Compare RIGHTS, INALIENABLE and RIGHTS, NATURAL.

See Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (1977).

The growth of the American conscience during the years of my adult life in the field of what we now call civil rights ... has been the single most encouraging moral symptom in American society. We have a long way to go before we end racial discrimination once and for all, but the progress made strengthens my faith, even in moments of depression, that an appeal to the American conscience and intelligence is by now means wasted effort. Norman Thomas

RIGHTS, HUMAN. Those rights (claims, needs, ideals) to which all human beings would seem to be entitled, such as good education, decent housing, healthcare, a secure job, an adequate standard of living, freedom from interference and oppression.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end. Immanuel Kant

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Article 1

RIGHTS, INALIENABLE. Those rights (claims, needs, ideals), natural, innate, and incapable of being denied, with which all human beings are born, for example, the right to protect one's life or property.

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ... Thomas Jefferson

If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test. Mary Wollstonecraft

RIGHTS, LEGAL. The right to equality of treatment under the law and the power to make use of the legal system to defend oneself and seek protection from others, to make claims against others, and to change, modify, or otherwise make changes in the legal system.

See H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 2nd. ed.(1997) and Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (1988).

In the cause of freedom, we have to battle for the rights of people with whom we do not agree; and whom, in many cases, we may not like. These people test the strength of the freedoms which protect all of us. If we do not defend their rights, we endanger our own. Harry S. Truman

RIGHTS, NATURAL. Those rights (claims, needs, ideals), such as life, liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness, the ownership of property, the right to work, equality of opportunity, and equal treatment under the law, that one possesses innately. Compare RIGHTS, INALIENABLE. Contrast RIGHTS, CIVIL.

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can. Samuel Adams

The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights. Potter Stewart

RIGHTS, POLITICAL. The right to run for public office, vote, petition the government, lobby, communicate with and criticize public officials, speak out and not be censured, express and defend one's beliefs, and protect one's property and one's life and the lives of those dear to him.

RULE (ME, reule, fr. L., regula, straightedge, rule, fr. regere, to lead straight). In both Politics and Religion, a legal precept or doctrine, a regulation governing procedure or controlling conduct: for example, St. Benedict's Code of Monasticiam, Calvin's Institutes, The Bill of Rights.

My doctrine is not a doctrine but just a vision. I have not given you any set rules; I have not given you a system. Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within. Hannah Arendt

SCIENTISM. An exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science to explain social or psychological phenome-na, to solve pressing human problems, or to provide a comprehensive unified picture of the meaning of the cosmos.

Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a boon to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard. Bertrand Russell

In war it serves that we may poison and mutilate each other. In peace it has made our lives hurried and uncertain. Instead of freeing us ... it has made men into slaves of machinery, who ... complete their long day's work with disgust and must continually tremble for their poor rations. Albert Einstein

SELF. The union of elements (such as body, emotions, feelings, sensations, thoughts) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person. Syn EGO. Compare PSYCHE, SOUL.

The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. Soren Kierkegaard

SELF-ESTEEM. A confidence and satisfaction in oneself. Syn self-respect.

A person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them. Livy

I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others as what I am in my own; I would be rich of myself and not by borrowing. Montaigne

Oft-times nothing profits more/ than self-esteem, grounded on just and right/ Well manag'd. John Milton

SOCIALISM. Any of several economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods (wealth); a social system in which there is no private property, or one in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state; in Marxist theory, a transitional stage between CAPITALISM and COMMUNISM characterized by lingering inequalities and the unequal distribution of the commodities and rewards of production. Compare COMMUNISM.

Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and through them, the events of history. John Maynard Keynes

SOCIETY. "A group of persons unified by a distinctive and systematic set of normative relations, whereby actions of one are perceived as meriting characteristic responses by others" (Simon Blackburn).

I've found it a help to consider that if God must be disappointed in us, so must be the devil in the presence of such courage and comradeship as plain people show. Norman Thomas

SOCIOLOGY. The study of social relationships. One of the "social sciences." See ANTHROPOLOGY, ECONOMICS, and POLITICAL SCIENCE.

SOLIPSISM. "The extreme consequence of believing that knowledge must be founded on inner, personal states of experience, and then failing to find a bridge whereby they can inform us of anything beyond themselves" (Simon Blackburn).

SOUL. The spiritual nature of man considered in relation to God, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state. Compare MIND, NOUS, and PSYCHE.

Plato, presumably following Socrates, both identified the soul with the person who reasons, decides, and acts, and assumed that this person or soul is not the familiar creature of flesh and blood but rather the incorporeal occupant and director of, even the prisoner in, that corporeal being....

Having made this move, for which there were anticipations both in popular religion and earlier philosophy (Orphism, Pythag-oreanism), Plato ... proceeded to contend ... that souls ... are substances ... and, for various reasons--including the [idea] that it is the principle of life--that the soul must be immortal .... Antony Flew

A man should feel confident concerning his soul, who has ... pursued the pleasures that go with learning and made the soul fine with no alien but rather its own proper refinements, moderation and justice and courage and freedom and truth; thus it is ready for the journey to the world below. Socrates, in Plato's Phaedo

SOVEREIGNTY, POPULAR. See DEMOCRACY.

STATESMAN. One who exercises political leadership wisely and without narrow partisanship.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions. Aristotle

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. Edmund Burke

THEISM. "Belief in God ... [as] the single omnipotent and omniscient creator of everything else that exists ... a Being distinct from his creation though manifesting himself through it ... essentially personal, caring for and communicating with mankind, and infinitely worthy of human worship and obedience ... clearly a central element in the whole Judaeo-Christian reli-gious tradition" (Flew). Compare DEISM and PANTHEISM.

Philosophical theism has often been attacked. At the end of the Middle Ages, William of Ockham denied that reason could prove God's existence. This denial was repeated by Kant. In this century, Barthians [followers of protestant theologian Karl Barth], existentialists, and empiricists have rejected the possibility of speculative metaphysics in any form. Yet many philosophers and theologians (for example, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, et al.) still maintain that theistic reasoning is both possible and necessary. (EOP)

The philosophical problems [Theism] raises are, in the first place, those of maintaining the various elements [omnipotence, omniscience, distinctness, manifestation, etc.] of this conception of deity in a coherent unity. For example, there is the problem of doing justice to the limitless nature of God without falling either into pantheism, or denial of human free-dom, or the belief that all the concepts borrowed from the finite world--including that of personality--are hopelessly inadequate and misleading if applied to God. On the other hand, there is the difficulty of doing justice to the independence of creation, without thinking of God simply as a First Cause, who after the initial creative act leaves the world entirely to the operation of the laws of nature. Furthermore, there is the problem of reconciling the benevolence and omnipotence of the creator with the presence of evil in creation. Antony Flew

THEOLOGY (L, theologia, fr. Gk., the-, god + logos, the study of). 1. the study of the nature of God. 2. the study of the nature of religious truth and rational inquiry into religious questions, especially those posed by Christian and other specific religious doctrines. Syn PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.

TIME (Augustine). A nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future.

St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, lived 800 years after the classical Greek philosophers and another 800 years before St. Thomas Aquinas. Educated as a pagan Greek and master of rhetoric, Augustine is our bridge between the ancients and the medieval Christian world. His Confessions is today his most widely read work, and Book XI of that work, on "Time and Eternity," is a key text in the history of philosophy.

It might be said that, "There are three times; a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future." For these three do somehow exist in the soul, and otherwise I see them not: present of things past, memory; present of things present, sight; present of things future, expectation. St. Augustine

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Henry David Thoreau

TIME (Plato). "The moving image of perfect eternity."

"By this Plato meant that time is an imperfect imitation of the timeless unchanging realm of perfect ideal forms. Change, succession, and hence time are merely the results of the mind's inability to grasp things all at once sub specie aeternitas in their entirety. Time is a product peculiar to the mind and dependent on its functions." (Angeles)

TRANSCENDENCE (L., transcendere, to climb over, fr. trans-, over + scandere, to climb). The quality or state of passing beyond human limitations, of existing above and independent of the material universe, of moving beyond the categories of Aristotle or limits of experience of Kant. Compare IMMANENCE.

The word is often used by theists to describe the way in which God supposedly exists beyond and independent of the created world. Antony Flew

TRANSCENDENTALISM. 1. In general, any philosophy that espouses a priori conditions of knowledge and experience, and/or the unknowable character of ultimate reality, and/or the transcendent as the fundamental reality, and/or that asserts the primacy of the spiritual and transcendental over the material and empirical 2. In particular, the religious philosophy of American divine George Ripley (d.1880) and writers Ralph Waldo Emerson (d.1882), Henry David Thoreau (d.1862), Bronson Alcott (d.1888), and Margaret Fuller (d.1850), among others.

TRUST. Assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone (one in whom confidence is placed) or some thing. Syn LOYALTY.

Whether one trusts a specific other commonly depends on whether one thinks the other is trustworthy in the relevant circumstances. This depends on what knowledge one has of the other's future commitments to behave as one trusts. Some writers treat trust as a matter of rational assessment and rational choice on the parts of both the truster and the trusted. Perhaps because of its relation to trustworthiness, some theorists treat trust as inherently normative-even to the point of assigning an obligation of trustworthiness to one who is trusted. John Locke thought trust central to consensual government. Contrary to the purely rational-choice vision, many theorists suppose that only a normative commitment to some degree of trustworthiness can explain the success of many institutions and organizations in serving their clienteles. (OCP)

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. James Ramsey McDonald, Prime Minister of England

UTILITARIANISM. The idea that the purpose of doing anything should be the largest possible balance of pleasure over pain or the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Sometimes referred to as "the greatest happiness theory." Utilitarianism as a systematic ethical theory was first propounded by Jeremy Bentham [1748-1832] and his student John Stuart Mill [1806-73]. It main tenets are ... one should so act as to promote the greatest happiness (pleasure) of the greatest number of people ... [that] pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic evil ... [that] an act is morally right (a) if it brings about a greater balance of good over evil than any other action that could have been taken, or (b) if it produces as much good in the world as, or no less good in the world than, would any other act possible under the circumstances ... [i.e.,] in general, [that] the moral worth of an act judged according to the goodness and badness of its consequences. Peter Angeles

PRIMARY TEXTS: Bentham's Fragment on Government and Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation and Deontology, and Mill's Utilitarianism and On Liberty. See as well, on ideal Utilitarianism, G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica (1903) and H. Rashdall's Theory of Good and Evil (1907), and, in general, on Utilitarianism, A. J. Ayer's "The Principle of Utility" in his Philosophical Essays (1954).

VALUE (L., valutus, pp. of valere, to be strong, to be of worth). Frequently, in modern thought, the quantifiable amount of something considered to be the equivalent of the amount of something else, usually the monetary worth of something,syn dollar value, market value, market price).

VENGEANCE. Punishment inflicted in retaliation for an injury or offense.

VOLITION (L., vol-, stem of velle, to will or wish, + -ition, itio, the act of). The act of making a choice or decision. Syn WILL.

For it to be true that a person is moving his hand, it must be true that his hand is in motion. However, the statement 'He is moving his hand' does not mean the same as 'His hand is in motion.' Some philosophers think of a movement (as distinct from a motion) as being really two things causally connected: (1) a mental activity and (2) its effect, a bodily motion. Instances of the mental activity they call acts of volition, or acts of willing. (EOP)

VOLUNTARISM., THEOLOGICAL. Perhaps the most extreme form of theological voluntarism is ... [that] of St. Peter Damian (1007-1072) ... [who] maintained ... that the very laws of logic are valid only by the concurrence of God's will. God is omnipotent, he said, and can therefore render true even those things which reason declares to be absurd or contradictory. It is thus idle for philosophers to speculate upon what must be true with respect to divine matters, since these depend only on God's will (EOP).

WILL (OE, wille, wyllan, to wish; L., velle, to wish, desire). The act, process, or experience of desiring, choosing, consenting, refusing, or disposing. Syn VOLITION. See VOLUNTARISM, THEOLOGICAL.

God made thee perfect, not immutable! and good he made thee,/ but to persevere he left it in thy power;/ ordained thy will by nature free,/ not overruled by fate inextricable, or strict necessity. John Milton

Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes. Chinese proverb

WORLD SOUL. "The all-pervading, immanent cause of order, life, and intelligence in all existing things, usually thought of on the analogy of the soul and its controlling and integrating influence on the body" (Angeles). Syn World Mind, World Sprit. See ANIMAL SOUL, PSYCHE, and PANPSYCHISM.

Anti-materialist in conception, the idea is founded on the view that the world is productive of life and animation, and can therefore be regarded as itself animate. Anthony Flew

Copyright 2011 John Bruce Cantrell. All rights reserved.

SADASAE

A Fair Field of Folk