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In this paper, I raise and analyze two rarely discussed stories about the development of idealism in early modernity. I seek to show that Arthur Collier reaches the conclusion that the mind-indepen...

This chapter attempts a reappraisal of the philosophical nature of Chaucer’s writings and sketches the philosophical currents that may have formed the intellectual background of his poetry, in particular medieval nominalism and realism. A brief outline of fourteenth-century English philosophy assesses the nature and content of contemporary debates, offering insights on the kind of philosophical knowledge that may have been accessible to Chaucer. An overview of nominalism and realism follows, exploring in particular the differing views these two currents had of the signification of singular and general terms, and of the status of scientific knowledge. This part also scrutinizes some of the traditional arguments for nominalism and realism in Chaucer’s poetry. Chaucer’s use of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is key to the last section, which focuses on the question, extensively debated during the fourteenth century, of human agency and more precisely the possible compatibility of human freedom and divine foreknowledge.

The article tries to show how a revision of the theological concept of 'sin', as it is taught by both the Catholic and the Protestant traditions, allows us to grasp a better comprehension of the origins of the double concept of ‘will’, which is to be found at the center of discussions regarding human freedom: the Christian concept of total autonomy (voluntarism), which is inadmissible for human reason, and the rational concept (intellectualism), which identifies will and intellect, and denies the traditional idea of guilt. However, it seems that denying the Christian concept of ‘will’ would undermine the basis on which liberal democracy is grounded.

The authors argue that there is an epistemological crisis of conservative Islamic scholarship and Muslim mind, rooted in the centuries-old confinement of a role for reason within strict limits, and in the disappearance of rationalistic discursive theology (kalam) as a dynamic science. Moreover, epistemological crisis is exemplified by seriously insufficient level of protection of human rights under Sharia when judged by contemporary principles of human rights. This crisis demands a necessity of undertaking epistemological reform, which denotes the incorporation of international standards of human rights and justice into the epistemology and methodology of producing Islamic norms (usul al-fiqh). It is argued that the key epistemological premises of rationalistic Islam, such as acceptance that human reason can find goodness and badness independently from revelation and non-acceptance of ethical voluntarism, may offer a good ground to make epistemological reform, which would induce the Muslims to critically approach and reinterpret the pre-modern religious interpretations and to construct an Islamic legal and ethical system that is appropriate for the context of the 21th century. In the end, reason, being the human capacity for shaping reality in a humane way, is indispensable to read religious sources from a historical-metaphorical point of view.

One may approach the history of political thought through a variety of themes that various philosophers share but handle very differently. I wish here to capture a few trends in political thought by analysis of the following two long lived themes, namely: naturalism against moralism as well as determinism versus voluntarism.

The author reveals the evolution of Semyon Frank’s (1877-1950) views towards morality and its foundations. He stresses the influence on the philosopher as the concept of Vladimir Solovyov’s All-Unity so western European thought in the type of Kantian’s ethics of duty and F. Nietzsche’s voluntarism and gave them religion and philosophical interpretation. Frank also inherited ideas Nicholas of Cusa and Hegel. Though substantiating principles of his personalistic ethics Frank opposed any “despotism” in the sphere of morality, both rejecting as rigorism and external norm of moral law (Kant), so “imperative” ideal of “superman” (Nietzsche). In addition, the author considers the concept of freedom and theodicy in Frank’s ethics.

In this article I review some contributions to “mothering ethics” in African feminist religious studies and African gender theory, to examine whether recent and historical practices in Kenyan Christian women’s voluntarism constitute forms of ethical “mothering.” I show that the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the Mothers’ Union (MU) in Kenya have a history of “imperial maternalism,” which highlights that mothering is a set of practices marked by imbalances of power. The social interventions of the YWCA and MU demonstrate that the social and religious authority of “mother” has provided a route through which African Christian women can assert authority in politics and social life. I suggest that this is because mothering is a useful metaphor through which Kenyan Christian women at the YWCA and MU express a relational, caring ethic that has the potential to avoid the problem of essentialism.

Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls muses upon the relation between knowing and desiring, and in so doing, raises questions about the respective roles of the intellect and the will in determining moral action. Reflecting the influence of late medieval voluntarism, the dream vision challenges the classical/Thomistic view that moral virtue results from reason's prudent judgments. Representing a host of avian and human agents motivated by “wil, and herte, and thought” (417), the dream vision asks readers not only to evaluate the rational and affective forces shaping different acts of choice, but also to note the limitations of reason. The bookish narrator's recurrent missteps point to the potential inefficacy of prudent reason, demonstrating that individuals often act against their better judgment. By contrast, the formel's resistance to Reason may signal the moral limits of that faculty, since it lacks the will's receptivity to divine grace.

Podstawowe założenia Światowych Dni Młodych formowały się na przestrzeni trzech ostatnich pontyfikatów. Idea tego wydarzenia zrodziła się z pasterskiej troski Jana Pawła II o młodych. Rozpoznał on, że entuzjazm młodych jest jednocześnie wspaniałym środkiem budującym jedność między różnymi kulturami. Widział też, że to działanie duszpasterskie musi być kościelne, uniwersalne i młodzież musi być w nim głównym protagonistą. Papież Benedykt, podkreślając katolickość i uniwersalność Światowych Dni Młodzieży, wyakcentował rolę wolontariatu, adoracji i sakramentu pojednania. Papież Franciszek podkreślił braterstwo, święto wiary i misję młodych we współczesnym świecie. ŚDM są zatem wydarzeniem bardzo kompleksowym, ale koniecznym w panoramie życia dzisiejszego Kościoła.

One of the aims in Hegel's philosophy of religion is to show how the core of Christian doctrine holds the key for a speculative understanding of the kind of truth sought by philosophy since its beginnings. According to Hegel, once thought has historically completed its development, we can understand Christianity as true religion. With this gesture, Hegel broadens the limits of the so–called ''natural theology'' and aims to unify theology and philosophy. This paper seeks to exhibit where does this Hegelian gesture becomes inadmissible for Christian theology, namely, the intellectualist character of his proposal as incompatible with Christian voluntarism.

After Aquinas, the Aristotelian concept of souls, carefully tended for two millennia, started to unravel. William of Ockham introduced nominalism and voluntarism, necessitating observation and leading to empiricism. Luther and Calvin questioned the dual creation and the power of human intellect. In the seventeenth century Gassendi and Descartes introduced the mechanical philosophy, pushing formal and final causes out of the natural world. The mechanical philosophers embraced a machine metaphor, an ontological elimination (materialism), and an etiological reduction. Only the last proved useful for advancing biology. Physiological and psychological accounts of life took on distinct and irreconcilable vocabularies, with the term “soul” frequently reserved for the latter. Biology lacked a unifying principle for the next two centuries.

Bonaventure distinguishes two modes of beatitudo: the objective, which he defines as the ultimate end of all rational operations; and the subjective, which he considers present in the soul by inherency. In its divine influence, the beatitudo directly updates the mens, that is the potency of the soul and not its substance. This understanding of the unity of order of the potencies in the soul, understood as the express likeness to God, incorporates the concept of fruitio in a spiritual activity that exceeds the dichotomy intelligence-will and is located well beyond the opposition between thomistic intellectualism and the voluntarism of Scotus, integrating them into a spiritualistic synthesis: the sapiential contemplation. This paper analyzes the deductive moments of the acts of the inner potencies of the soul as constituents of the created beatitude. The guideline are the transcendental concepts of being in consonance with the contemplative activity.

Abstract In this review article, I take a closer look at the French journal Tiqqun (1999–2001) and the pamphlet The Coming Insurrection (originally published in 2007). In particular, I consider the overarching political project advanced in these texts as ‘sectarian reason’, that is to say, as a form of bio-politics that is deeply rooted in anthropological and ethical assumptions. Moreover, I identify the intrinsic deadlocks of these suppositions, in particular their latent voluntarism, which they claim to reject if not to have overcome.

Thomas’ Compendium was composed in imitation of Augustine's Enchiridion, and with the intention of correcting features which struck Thomas, as they have struck other readers, as strange. The treatment of faith was the principal focus of Thomas’ discontent. In place of Augustine's wandering history of the engagement of divine goodness with the world, Thomas emphasised the cognitive aspect of faith and its concern with being. The two approaches differ in the extent to which they can allow a distinction of the cognitive from the voluntative in virtue. Augustine's insistence on keeping them together has definite strengths in resisting voluntarism, but Thomas’ emphasis imposes constraints on the moralising reduction of faith to action.

This paper retraces some of the contrast between Aquinas and Scotus with respect to the metaphysical foundations of morality in order to highlight how subtle differences pertaining to the relationship between the divine will and the divine intellect can tip a thinker toward either an unalloyed natural law theory (NLT) or something that at least starts to move in the direction of divine command theory (DCT). The paper opens with a brief consideration of three distinct elements in Aquinas&rsquo, s work that might tempt one to view him in a DCT light, namely: his discussion of the divine law in addition to the natural law, his position on the so-called immoralities of the patriarchs, and some of his assertions about the divine will in relation to justice. We then respond to each of those considerations. In the second and third of these cases, following Craig Boyd, we illustrate how Aquinas&rsquo, s conviction that the divine will follows the ordering of the divine intellect can help inform the interpretive disputes in question. We then turn our attention to Scotus&rsquo, s concern about the freedom of the divine will, before turning to his discussion of the natural law in relation to the Decalogue as a way of stressing how his two-source theory of the metaphysical foundations of morality represents a clear departure from Aquinas in the direction of DCT.

This chapter discusses the question of the epistemological and ethical justification of an act of belief and of the will’s place and role in the production of an assent of faith. It concentrates on three authors: Durand of Saint-Pourcain, Walter Chatton and William of Ockham. I show that Durand and Chatton concur in granting the intellect and its reasoning, theoretical or practical, a prior role in the causal process of the production and justification of an act of belief. Ockham, by contrast, defends a radical voluntarism insofar as he claims that an act of will alone lies at the very root of the causal chain that leads to the production of an act of belief. Current interpretations of Ockham’s doxastic voluntarism are also discussed.

This chapter introduces the three key philosophical positions illuminating Will’s sojourn: natural rights, intuitive cognition, and a voluntarism founded upon the will’s freedom to act against reason’s dictates and initiate a moral action. After discussing their applicability to the sojourn, a discussion of Scholasticism’s historical import provides a foundation to show the innovation of Scotus and Ockham. Their epistemology and theories of the will establish new ways of conceiving cognitive surety and how this knowledge aids in generating charitable acts. Isolating one theory from another one limits their full meaning, for each acquires a greater significance when understood in relation to the other. This matrix of thought generates a profound understanding of the individual, namely Will, and what he is capable of achieving. Their interdependence not only serves as a vital hermeneutic for Piers but also proves that a literary expression of philosophy works bilaterally, fostering a deepened awareness of the other discipline. The text’s overriding question, thus, lies not in how faith drives Will’s search forward, but which choices respond most efficaciously to God’s goodness.

Following this discussion of making the proper choice, the ensuing visions rely upon a more biblically informed type of discourse to instruct Will. Scripture confirms a revealed truth that validates the human desire to seek an end that lies in another realm. The most concrete example of this reality is the Good Samaritan parable. As evinced by Samaritan’s actions, charity proves itself to be not only the motive of God’s communicating his goodness but is the very means that one can love in the way God loves. It elevates the natural loving capacity of the individual because its immediate object is divine goodness. Scotus notes that God can be loved above all not only by charity, but also by one’s natural endowments, at least in the state in which nature was instituted. For Scotus and Ockham, each person can freely choose to respond to the goodness extended by the divine. Although both thinkers assert that particular objects provide certain knowledge, neither one believes that this ability produces metaphysical skepticism; intellectual acumen does not supplant faith. This chapter then considers how the revealed truths of Scripture supplement the tenets of voluntarism and how a proper functioning will produces an ethic of mutuality whose moral goal is friendship with God.

In his A Treatise of Freewill, Ralph Cudworth argues against Stoic determinism by drawing on what he takes to be other concepts found in Stoicism, notably the claim that some things are ‘up to us’ and that these things are the product of our choice. These concepts are central to the late Stoic Epictetus and it appears at first glance as if Cudworth is opposing late Stoic voluntarism against early Stoic determinism. This paper argues that in fact, despite his claim to be drawing on Stoic doctrine, Cudworth uses these terms with a meaning first articulated only later, by the Peripatetic commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias.

This article examines two distinct responses to the reception of Aristotle in the thirteenth century: the Bonaventurean and the Thomist.The outcome of this debate (and the Condemnations of 1277) led to the modern separation of faith and reason. Rather than seeing voluntarism and nominalism as the cause of the modern separation of faith and reason, and theology and philosophy, it will be suggested that it is actually the other way around: the Bonaventurean response indirectly resulted in the growing separation of faith and reason, which led, in turn, to voluntarism. It is important not to confuse the Thomist and Franciscan responses, as sometimes happens in recent scholarship, including in the work of Gavin D’Costa, as will be shown. Both the Thomist and the Bonaventurean approaches are legitimate resources to respond to the (post)-secular context in which we find ourselves, and the former should not be reduced to the latter.

A traditional view is that to be an empiricist is to hold a particular epistemological belief: something to the effect that knowledge must derive from experience. In his recent book The Empirical Stance, and in a number of other publications, Bas van Fraassen has disagreed, arguing that if empiricism is to be defensible it must instead be thought of as a stance: an attitude of mind or methodological orientation rather than a factual belief. In this article I will examine his arguments for this claim in detail. I will argue that they do not succeed and that empiricism is, contrary to van Fraassen's claim, better thought of as a truth-evaluable doctrine than as a stance.

Medieval theories of ethics tended on the whole to regard self-perfection as the goal of human life. However there was profound disagreement, particularly in the late thirteenth century, over how exactly this was to be understood. Intellectualists such as Aquinas famously argued that human perfection lay primarily in coming to know the essence of God in the next life. Voluntarists such as the Franciscan John Peckham, by contrast, argued that ultimate perfection was to be achieved in patria through the act of loving God. The present article argues that Giles of Rome and Henry of Ghent defended a different sort of voluntarism with respect to the final destiny of human beings. Rather than claiming that the goal of human life lay in the perfection of the self, they argued instead that ultimate union with God was to be achieved mystically through an act of self-transcendence, which occurred through ecstasy or quasi-deification.

In addressing the question of what might be next in human geography I endeavour to enrich the debates between Anglo-American poststructuralist and continental European action-theoretical approaches by bringing ‘life’ to the geographical subject. In contrast to established conceptualisations of the geographical self, I will introduce a conception of the self which mediates between the subject and the subjectified, between voluntarism and determinism, and between consciousness and corporeality. Through this reconceptualisation I do not pretend to provide final answers, but rather seek to initiate a new stream of thought.

Leibniz was writing his Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese as the Leibniz-Clarke Controversy developed. Both were terminated by his death. These two fronts show interesting doctrinal correlations. The first is Leibniz' concern for the ''decadence of natural religion.'' The dispute with Clarke began with it, and the Discourse is a defense of Chinese natural religion in order to show its agreement with Christian natural religion. The Controversy can be summed up as ''clockmaker God versus idle God.'' Leibniz wants to escape from the perverse consequences that all criticism of divine voluntarism seems to cause. Thus, his elaboration is directed at a distinct concept of a God that rules without interposing, a supramundane intelligence. And the Leibnizian interpretation of the natural theology of the Chinese can be viewed the same way: it emphasizes a First Principle, Li, which rules without interposing.

Chapter 4 offers some reflections on the philosophical aspects that underlie ‘zhǔyi’ (-ism) as a key concept. Its point of departure is the notion of principled action, that is, the idea that action should be based on rational principles that one commits oneself to as a modern citizen. From this point it is only a short way to the notion of ideology as beacon in man’s life. This chapter further documents how total and fundamental solutions came to be seen as the key to solving China’s problems. Even the problems of individual people were taken to be reducible to social categories and believed to be solvable by the reorganization of society along ideological lines: commitment to the ‘right’ -ism came to be seen as a sort of panacea. While not everyone was happy with this turn of events, hardly anyone escaped the social upheaval and repression that the resulting polarization of society brought about. Although the rise of ismatic politics had clear Western models, a traditional tendency towards optimistic voluntarism may have amplified the receptivity of Chinese intellectuals to ismatic reasoning.

The first thing to note about the place of God, and ultimately Hell, in Kant’s account of morality, is that Kant rejects the idea that morality is in any way based upon, or derived from, God and His commands.1 The position that morality is based upon, or is derived from, God and His commands, is known as Divine Command Theory, or Theological Voluntarism. This is the view that, if there is no God then nothing is morally right or morally wrong — or morally optional;2 on the other hand, if there is a God, and if God issues commands (e.g., “Thou shalt not lie”), then it is morally wrong to disobey those commands, morally right to obey them, and, it seems, morally optional to behave in ways that are not covered by those commands.

Castoriadis identifies the aesthetic as a distinct mode of perception in a way that clarifies and expands his earlier work on the imagination. This chapter addresses the extensive role played by Greek tragedies in the latter years of Castoriadis's work to develop his understanding of autonomy not simply as self-institution but, paradoxically, as a tradition. It explores Castoriadis's understanding of the reciprocity between philosophy and tragedy, a move that leads him to figure philosophical thinking in terms of elucidation rather than construction. In this chapter, the author suggests that Castoriadis's reading of tragedy develops and matures his notion of autonomy to provide a compelling response to voluntarism problem. He concludes by suggesting that while this paradox leaves Castoriadis as an incomplete thinker, his vision of philosophical thinking as attempt to elucidate the antimonial ground of human life provides seminal contribution to contemporary philosophy. Keywords: aesthetics; artistic representation; autonomy; contemporary philosophy; human life; imagination; tragedy

A partir d'une description phenomenologique de l'intentionnalite evaluative, l'A. montre comment Husserl parvient a concilier la morale de l'entendement avec la morale du sentiment, au sein de sa conception de l'axiologie formelle. Resolvant le conflit moderne entre intellectualistes et emotivistes et entre intellectualistes et volontaristes, Husserl developpe une phenomenologie de l'experience morale ou la raison pratique et le sentiment sont co-constitutif du jugement moral

Par le biais d’une methode philologique, historique, et philosophique, ce livre etablit l’absence de lien direct entre Maitre Eckhart et Jacob Bohme. En realite, le concept de la “philosophie mystique allemande”, commencant soit disant avec Eckhart et finissant avec Bohme, a son origine dans la philosophie romantique du 19eme siecle et est toujours en usage aujourd’hui. L'etude se concentre sur la theorie eckhartienne du “grunt” et de l’“abgrunt” et sur sa relation possible avec la theorie bohmienne de l’“Ungrund”. elle montre que les differences entre les deux theories sont essentielles et qu’elles aboutissent a une opposition philosophique profonde entre l’intellectualisme de Maitre Eckhart et le volontarisme de Bohme. Ainsi, il faudrait reviser aussi bien la relation de Bohme a Maitre Eckhart que la place de ce dernier au sein de l’histoire de la philosophie.Through methods of philology, history, and philosophy, this book establishes that there is no direct connection between Master Eckhart and Jacob Bohme. The concept of the “German mystic philosophy”, starting supposedly with Eckhart and ending with Bohme, actually has its origin in the Romantic philosophy of the 19th century and and is still usual today. This study focuses on the eckhartian theory of the “grunt” and “abgrunt” and its possible relation to the bohmist theory of the “Ungrund”. It shows that the differences between both theories are significant and that they culminate in a deep philosophical opposition between the intellectualism of Master Eckhart and the voluntarism of Bohme. Thus, both Bohme’s relationship to Master Eckhart and the position of the latter in the history of philosophy should be revised.

In this chapter, the author seeks to accomplish three goals. First, he intends to analyze how, for Newton, fulfilled Biblical prophecies illustrate that the Lord God of creation has continued to act directly through specially provident, miraculous, acts in the past and that this record of divine intervention gives Newton good reason to believe in the future fulfillment of such prophetic visions as the apocalyptic events described in the Book of Revelation. Second, he contrasts Newton's thorough-going providentialism with Hume's gleeful re-introduction of Epicurus' atheistic materialism which Hume considers to be a serious possible explanation of the apparent order in the universe even if it is only faintly "probable" in comparison to the design hypothesis. Finally, he concludes with a case study of the implications of Newton's providentialist voluntarism and Hume's religious scepticism for their own personal attitudes in the face of imminent death. Keywords: Biblical prophecies; Epicurus; Hume; Newton; providentialist voluntarism; scepticism

Este ensayo presenta una revisión crítica de la llamada teoría “decisionista” de Carl Schmitt tal como fuera expuesta en sus principales trabajos políticos durante el periodo de Weimar. El autor argumenta que el decisionismo de Schmitt no es, como frecuentemente se ha afirmado, una simple variante del voluntarismo ético asociado a filosofías morales existencialistas y positivistas. Decisionismo es en cambio una particular doctrina política que sostiene que el Estado es la fuente absoluta de toda decisión legal y moral en la vida política. Desde esta perspectiva, el autor demuestra que el decisionismo de Schmitt es una doctrina puramente negativa, fundada en la negación simétrica de todos y cada uno de los valores políticos del liberalismo. This essay is a critique of the so called "decisionist" theory by Carl Schmitt, first expounded on his main political works during the Weimar period. The author explains that Schmitt's idea of "decisionism" is not, as it has often been pondered a simple variant of ethical voluntarism associated with both existentialist and positivist moral philosophies. "Decisionism" is a particular political doctrine based on the claim that the state is the absolute source of legal and moral decisions in political life. From this perspective, the author demonstrates that Schmitt's "decisionism" is a purely negative doctrine, based on the symmetrical negation of all the political values of liberalism.

The question is almost as old as Western philosophy itself: What is the relation of morality to the will of the gods? Plato's Socrates famously asks: "Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?"I Within monotheistic religious traditions there is ample historical precedent for disagreeing with Plato and taking morality to be dependent on the will of God. Though theological voluntarism has not been popular among contemporary moral philosophers, there has been a revival of interest in it during the past two decades among analytic philosophers of religion. This revival has been sensitive to the fact that the extreme view according to which divine volitions are wholly arbitrary is just one among many forms of voluntarism and may well not be the most plausible version of the position. I begin this paper by taking stock of what has so far been accomplished in the course of that revival. But my aim is not merely to summarize what has already been done; I also mean to make a contribution to the project of breathing new life into theological voluntarism. So I go on to make a proposal about what should be done next on behalf of this neglected tradition of moral thought, and I then act on my proposal by discussing two promising strategies of argument in support of the view that morality depends on the divine will. One should, of course, be appropriately modest in one's hopes and expectations for success in a project that many philosophers are bound to regard as quixotic. It is most likely not to be expected that philosophers whose deepest loyalties bind them to the predominantly secular assumptions of contemporary academic moral philosophy will be persuaded that theological voluntarism deserves to be taken seriously. It is, however, reasonable to hope that such philosophers can be brought to acknowledge that there are intellectually vital and respectable traditions of moral

This paper argues that the interpretation of Locke's doctrine of political consent is best built on ground between and above the extremes of voluntarism (deriving legitimacy from the form of actual consent) and utilitarianism (basing legitimacy on the proper end of hypothetical consent). Locke's characteristic combination of voluntarism and utilitarian considerations is illustrated by looking at his thoughts on religious toleration and property. Finally, some of the outstanding difficulties in Locke's account of consent are reviewed in the light of these reflections on the intention of his doctrine.

T HE voluntarism which is so characteristic a part of Royce's mature philosophy had its beginnings in the very earliest stages of Royce's philosophical thinking. But whereas in the later stages it was called to do service to his absolutism, in the early stages it was made the basis of a relativistic, pragmatic philosophy. As such it colored all the various aspects of Royce's early philosophy and particularly his philosophy of religion. The religious consciousness, according to Royce, is primarily concerned with the problem of salvation. It is incumbent upon the philosopher of religion, therefore, to inquire into the nature and possibility of that salvation. Before the metaphysics of salvation can be adequately dealt with, however, it is necessary to enter into a discussion of the epistemological problem. In the year 1878, in his unpublished "Thought Diary," Royce wrote: Every man lives in a Present, and contemplates a Past and Future. In this consists his whole life. The Future.and Past are shadows both, the Present is the only real. Yet in the contemplation of the Shadows is the Real wholly occupied; and without the Shadows this Real has for us neither life nor value. No more universal fact of consciousness can be mentioned than this fact which therefore deserves a more honorable place in Philosophy than has been accorded to it.2

that has been going on for the last two generations leaves untouched the, essentials of Christian living. According to the sense in which this assertion is taken, it is either true or false. It is true in the sense that religion, flowing from perennial springs of human need, is a datum, not a mere consequence, of theology. It is false if it means that thinking about religion leaves religion just where it was before. Theology, like other thinking, is born of practical impulses, and its function, apart from the immediate pleasure of insight, is to assist these impulses to their goal. A reconstructed theology implies that the group of which it is one expression is changing, or has already changed, some part of its practical endeavor. The relation between thinking and living is excellently illustrated by the connection between the science of physiology and our pure-food laws. It is true that digestion goes on by virtue of forces resident in the body, not by logic; nevertheless, your actual digestion and mine, after all, are what they are partly because the science of physiology is what it is. How closely the newer type of theology is related to Christian morals may be gathered from three facts: (i) In large measure the movement consists in replacing the old speculative basis of doctrine by a foundation laid in the empirically known needs and satisfactions of moral beings. (2) Progressive theology is commonly associated with the social movement, while theological conservatism is found more often in the company of those who prefer the social or economic status quo. (3) The theological movement is part of a more general change in thought: the growth of historical sense and method; the Kantian emphasis upon the practical reason as against the theoretical; the evolutionary doctrine of progressive adaptation; voluntarism in psychology; the tendency 256

We saw in Chapter I that the principle of philosophy of history, for Berdyaev, is Christ, Godmanhood. We observed, too, that the free will of man figures importantly. By studying Berdyaev’s doctrine of Godmanhood and his voluntarism we will be able to understand his philosophy of history. The present chapter studies the metaphysical subject-matter of philosophy of history especially as it is divine or religious.