In his sketch of Greco-Roman philosophy in Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God) , NT Wright quotes this wonderful passage from Diogenes Laertius that describes the Stoic method of collapsing the traditional gods into philosophical pantheism: “The deity, . . . . Continue Reading »
Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ) concludes his book with a summary of the argument of Ernst Benz, who claimed that a metaphysics of will took the place of classic metaphysics of being first in Neoplatonism and then in Christian Trinitarian theology. For Neoplatonists, it is through will . . . . Continue Reading »
Bringing a long history to its culmination, Kant put duty at the center of ethics, even speaking of a “duty of virtue.” For Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ), this is a development from Christian conceptions of liturgical action, but with a decisive difference: “If in . . . . Continue Reading »
For Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ), Suarez’s De natura et essentia virtutis religionis is a crucial moment in the development of modern notions of duty, particularly in the use to which debitum is put: “The concept of debitum , which in Aquinas is hardly formulated, . . . . Continue Reading »
Habit (Gr. hexis ) is typically understood as a part of a theory of action, or a concept in ethics, but Agamben claims ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ) that we cannot understand how the concept works in Aristotle unless we recognize that it’s fundamentally a metaphysical concept: . . . . Continue Reading »
Varro distinguished three kinds of acting - making, acting, and a third that he identified with the verb gerere . The distinction between making and acting, Agamben notes ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty , 82-3), is ultimately from Aristotle’s distinction between praxis and poiesis , . . . . Continue Reading »
As Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ) explains it, the shift from officium as status-specific behavior to something more like our conception of duty begins with the extension of officia to cover the human situation in general. This is already evident in the usage of Cicero and Seneca. In . . . . Continue Reading »
Cicero’s de Officiis played a massive role in the development of Western ethics, since it was considered to be a book “concerning duties.” Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ) points out, however, that the book is not really a book of ethics but a “treatise on the . . . . Continue Reading »
F. P. Ramsey is hardly a household name, even among philosophers, not nearly so well-known as his brother, Michael, who became Archbishop of Canterbury. The TLS reviewer of Frank Ramsey (1903-1930): A Sister’s Memoir captures something of his astonishing brilliance: “In Cambridge in the . . . . Continue Reading »
Buber and Rosenstock were friends, and allies in certain matters, but Rosenstock had profound objections to Buber’s thought. Cristaudo ( Religion, Redemption and Revolution: The New Speech Thinking Revolution of Franz Rozenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy , 107 ) characterizes as the . . . . Continue Reading »
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