Region	Western Philosophy
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Name	Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett
Birth date	June 27, 1925
Birth place	London
School tradition	Analytic
Main interests	Philosophy of mathematicsPhilosophy of logicPhilosophy of languageMetaphysics
Influences	Gottlob FregeG.E.M. AnscombeLudwig Wittgenstein
Influenced	Gareth EvansCrispin WrightChristopher PeacockeTimothy WilliamsonLuciano FloridiHans Sluga }}

Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett FBA D.Litt (born June 27, 1925) is a British philosopher. He was, until 1992, Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford. He has both written on the history of analytic philosophy, most notably as an interpreter of Frege, and has made original contributions to the subject, particularly in the areas of philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, philosophy of language and metaphysics. He is especially well known for his work on truth and meaning and their implications for the debates between realism and anti-realism, a term he helped popularize. He also devised the Quota Borda system of proportional voting, based on the Borda count, and has written scholarly works on tarot. Other interests have been immigration law, English grammar and usage and contemporary Catholicism.

Education and Army Service

Dummett was educated at Sandroyd School, Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford. Upon graduation he was awarded a fellowship to All Souls College, Oxford.

At the end of the War he served in the Intelligence Corps in India and Malaya.

Academic career

In 1979, Dummett became Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford, a post he held until retiring in 1992. During his term as Wykeham Professor, he held a Fellowship at New College, Oxford. He has also held teaching posts at Birmingham University, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Princeton University, and Harvard University. He won the Rolf Schock prize in 1995, and was knighted in 1999. He was the 2010 winner of the Lauener Prize for an Outstanding Oeuvre in Analytical Philosophy.

Work in philosophy

His work on the German philosopher Frege has been acclaimed. His first book ''Frege: Philosophy of Language'' (1973), written over many years, is now regarded as a classic. The book was instrumental in the rediscovery of Frege's work, and influenced a generation of British philosophers.

In his 1963 paper ''Realism'' he popularised a controversial approach to understanding the historical dispute between realist and other non-realist schools of philosophy such as idealism, nominalism, Irrealism etc. He characterized all of these latter positions as anti-realist and argued that the fundamental disagreement between realist and anti-realist was over the nature of truth. For Dummett, realism is best understood as accepting the classical characterisation of truth as bivalent and evidence-transcendent, while anti-realism rejects this in favor of a concept of knowable truth. Historically, these debates had been understood as disagreements about whether a certain type of entity objectively exists or not. Thus, we may speak of (anti-)realism with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities (such as natural numbers), moral categories, the material world, or even thought. The novelty of Dummett's approach consisted in seeing these disputes as, at base, analogous to the dispute between intuitionism and platonism in the philosophy of mathematics.

It is now common, thanks to Dummett's influence, to speak of a post-Dummettian generation of English philosophers, including such figures as John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke, and Crispin Wright—though only Wright has been fairly close to Dummett on substantive philosophical questions.

Activism

Dummett has been politically active, through his work as a campaigner against racism. He let his philosophical career stall in order to influence civil rights for minorities during what he saw as a crucial period of reform in the late 1960s. He also has worked on the theory of voting, which led to his introduction of the Quota Borda system.

Dummett drew heavily on his work in this area in writing his book ''On Immigration and Refugees'', an account of what justice demands of states in relationship to movement between states. Dummett in that book argues that the vast majority of opposition to immigration is founded in racism and says that this has especially been so in the UK.

He has written of his shock on finding anti-Semitic and fascist opinions in the diaries of Frege, to whose work he had devoted such a high proportion of his professional career.

Elections and voting

Dummett and Robin Farquharson published influential articles on the theory of voting, in particular conjecturing that deterministic voting rules with more than three issues faced endemic strategic voting. The Dummett-Farquharson conjecture was proved by Allan Gibbard, a philosopher and former student of Kenneth J. Arrow and John Rawls, and by Mark A. Satterthwaite, an economist.

After the establishment of the Farquarson-Dummett conjecture by Gibbard and Sattherthwaite, Dummett contributed three proofs of the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem in his monograph on voting.

Dummett has also written a shorter overview of the theory of voting for the educated public.

Card games and tarot

Sir Michael Dummett is also an established scholar in the field of card games history, with numerous books and articles to his credit. He is a founding member of the International Playing-Card Society, in whose journal ''The Playing-Card'' he regularly publishes opinions, research and reviews of current literature on the subject; he is also a founding member of the Accademia del Tarocchino Bolognese in Bologna. His historical work on the use of the tarot pack in card games - he has said "(t)he fortune telling and occult part of it has never been my principal interest..." - ''The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City'', attempted to establish that the invention of Tarot could be set in 15th-century Italy. He laid the foundation for most of the subsequent research on the game of tarot, including exhaustive accounts of the rules of all hitherto known forms of the game.

Dummett's analysis of the historical evidence suggested that fortune-telling and occult interpretations were unknown prior to the 18th century. During most of their recorded history, he wrote, Tarot cards were used to play an extremely popular trick-taking game which is still enjoyed in much of Europe. Dummett showed that the middle of the 18th century saw a great development in the game of Tarot, including a modernized deck with French suit-signs, and without the medieval allegories that interest occultists, along with a growth in Tarot's popularity. "The hundred years between about 1730 and 1830 were the heyday of the game of Tarot; it was played not only in northern Italy, eastern France, Switzerland, Germany and Austro-Hungary, but also in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and even Russia. Not only was it, in these areas, a famous game with many devotees: it was also, during that period, more truly an international game than it had ever been before or than it has ever been since...."

Catholicism

In 1944 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, and remains a practising Catholic. Throughout his career, Dummett has published a number of articles on various issues facing the contemporary Roman Catholic Church, mainly in the English Dominican journal ''New Blackfriars''. Dummett has also published an essay in the bulletin of the Adoremus society on the subject of liturgy, and a philosophical essay defending the intelligibility of the Catholic Church's teaching on the eucharist ("The Intelligibility of Eucharistic Doctrine" in William J. Abraham and Steven W. Holzer, eds., ''The Rationality of Religious Belief: Essays in Honour of Basil Mitchell'', Clarendon Press, 1987.)

In October 1987, one of his contributions to ''New Blackfriars'' sparked considerable controversy, when he attacked currents of Catholic theology that diverged from traditional orthodox Catholicism and argued that "the divergence which now obtains between what the Catholic Church purports to believe and what large or important sections of it in fact believe ought, in my view, to be tolerated no longer." A debate in the journal over these remarks continued for months, attracting contributions from the theologian Nicholas Lash and the historian Eamon Duffy, among others.

Works

On analytical philosophy and logic:

*''The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy'', Harvard University Press

* ''Frege: Philosophy of Language'' (Harvard University Press, 1973/1981)

* ''Elements of Intuitionism'' (Oxford, 1977, 2000)

* ''Truth and Other Enigmas'' (Harvard University Press, 1978)

* ''Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics'' (Harvard University Press, 1991)

* ''The Logical Basis of Metaphysics'' (Harvard University Press, 1991)

* ''Origins of Analytical Philosophy'' (Harvard University Press, 1993)

* ''The Seas of Language'' (Oxford, 1993)

* ''Truth and the Past'' (Oxford, 2005)

* ''Thought and Reality'' (Oxford, 2006)

On voting theory and election systems:

* ''Voting Procedures'' (Oxford, 1984)

* ''Principles of Electoral Reform'' (New York, 1997) ISBN 0-19-829246-5

On politics:

* ''On Immigration and Refugees'' (London, 2001)

Tarot works:

*''The Game of Tarot: from Ferrara to Salt Lake City'' (Duckworth, 1980);

*''Twelve Tarot Games'' (Duckworth, 1980);

*''The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards'' (G. Braziller, 1986);

*''Il mondo e l'angelo: i tarocchi e la loro storia'' (Bibliopolis, 1993)

*''I tarocchi siciliani'' (La Zisa, 1995);

*''A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot'' (with Ronald Decker and Thierry Depaulis, St. Martin's Press, 1996;

*''A History of the Occult Tarot, 1870-1970'' (with Ronald Decker, Duckworth, 2002);

*''A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack'' (with John McLeod, E. Mellen Press, 2004).

Notable articles and exhibition catalogs include "Tarot Triumphant: Tracing the Tarot" in ''FMR'', (''Franco Maria Ricci International''), January/February 1985; Pattern Sheets published by the International Playing Card Society; with Giordano Berti and Andrea Vitali, the catalogue ''Tarocchi: Gioco e magia alla Corte degli Estensi'' (Bologna, Nuova Alfa Editorale, 1987).

See also

Is logic empirical? which discusses an article by Dummett on an argument of Hilary Putnam for the correctness of quantum logic

Truth-value link realism, which Dummett criticized in early works

Further reading

Johannes L Brandl, Peter Sullivan (eds.) ''New Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Dummett''. Rodopi, 1999. ISBN 9042004665

Richard Kirkham. ''Theories of Truth''. MIT Press, 1992. Chapter 8 is a discussion of Dummett's views on meaning.

Karen Green. ''Dummett: Philosophy of Language''. Polity, 2001. ISBN 0-7456-2295-X

Richard G. Heck (ed.) ''Language, Thought, and Logic: Essays in Honour of Michael Dummett''. Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-823920-3

Bernhard Weiss. ''Michael Dummett''. Princeton University Press, 2002.ISBN 0-691-11330-0

Anat Matar. ''From Dummett's Philosophical Perspective'', Walter de Gruyter, 1997.ISBN 3110149869

R. E. Auxier and L. E. Hahn (eds.) ''The Philosophy of Michael Dummett, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol XXXI'' Open Court, Chicago, 2007.

References

External links

Michael Dummett at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Biographical notes at Trionfi

Video interview with Dummett on philosophy of logic

Philosophy Bites interview with Dummett on Frege

Category:Analytic philosophers Category:English philosophers Category:Philosophers of language Category:Philosophers of mathematics Category:20th-century philosophers Category:21st-century philosophers Category:Rolf Schock Prize laureates Category:Tarot Category:Card game personalities Category:Roman Catholic philosophers Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism Category:English Roman Catholics Category:British Traditionalist Catholics Category:Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford Category:Fellows of New College, Oxford Category:Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford Category:1925 births Category:Living people Category:Old Wykehamists Category:Statutory Professors of the University of Oxford Category:Intuitionism Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Gifford Lecturers Category:Wittgensteinian philosophers bg:Майкъл Дъмет ca:Michael Dummet da:Michael Dummett de:Michael Dummett es:Michael Dummett fr:Michael Dummett is:Michael Dummett it:Michael Dummett he:מייקל דמט ja:マイケル・ダメット pl:Michael Dummett pt:Michael Dummett ru:Даммит, Майкл Энтони Эрдли sk:Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett fi:Michael Dummett sv:Michael Dummett

Gary Robert Habermas (born 1950) is an American evangelical Christian apologist, historian, and philosopher of religion. He is a prolific author, lecturer, and debater on the topic of the Resurrection of Jesus.

Biography

Habermas is Distinguished Professor of Apologetics and Philosophy and chairman of the department of philosophy and theology at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He holds a Ph.D. (1976) from Michigan State University in the area of History and Philosophy of Religion and an M.A. (1973) from the University of Detroit in Philosophical Theology. He has specialized in cataloging and communicating trends among scholars in the field of historical Jesus and New Testament studies. Habermas has authored or co-authored 35 books on religious and philosophical subjects, contributed to over 60 chapters or articles in books, and published over 100 articles and reviews in peer-reviewed journals. He continues to do research, publish popular and academic papers, give debates, and he frequently appears on television.

In 1985, Dr. Gary Habermas and Antony Flew debated the question of Jesus' resurrection as a literal and historical/physical event, before a crowd of 3000 people. Five philosophers and five professional debate judges judged the debate. Of the philosophers who judged on the content of the debate, four voted that Habermas won and the other was undecided. Of the debate judges who voted on debate technique, three voted for Habermas while two voted for Flew. The debate was published as a book under the title ''Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate'' (Harper & Row).

In 2004, Habermas conducted an interview with Antony Flew published in Biola University's ''Philosophia Christi'' journal, in which Flew reversed his long-standing espousal of atheism by endorsing deistic theism. The interview has been the source of some minor controversy, centering on claims made in the interview's preface regarding the scope and nature of Flew's beliefs, and his subsequent contradictory statements endorsing atheism, the latter being a misnomer, for Flew clearly no longer supports the inference or verdict of atheism, but rather the evidential method or route by which one may secure such a verdict, i.e., the "Presumption of Atheism" is default, nullified only on the condition that the degree of proof is met.

Books

''Why is God Ignoring Me?'' (Tyndale House Publishers, 2010).

with John Thomas ''What's so God about Feeling Bad?'', (Tyndale, 2008).

with Jerry Walls & David Baggett ''C.S. Lewis as Philosopher'', (InterVarsity, 2008).

''Resurrected? : An Atheist and Theist Dialogue'', (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

with Licona, Michael ''The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus'', (Kregel, 2004).

with Moreland, J.P. ''Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality'', (Crossway, 2004).

''The Risen Jesus & Future Hope'', (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

''The Thomas Factor: Using Your Doubts to Draw Closer to God'' (Broadman & Holman, 1999).

''The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ'' (College Press: Joplin, MI 1996).

''Ancient Evidence for the Life of Jesus: Historical Records of His Death and Resurrection''

''Dealing With Doubt'' (Moody Press, 1990)

Gary R. Habermas and Antony G. N. Flew, ''Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate'', ed. Terry L. Miethe (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003).

References

External links

Gary Habermas — personal website

Gary Habermas on Theopedia

Why I Believe The New Testament Is Historically Reliable by Dr. Gary Habermas

Explaining Away Jesus’ Resurrection: The Recent Revival of Hallucination Theories by Gary R. Habermas

Jesus' Resurrection and Contemporary Criticism: An Apologetic (Part I) - PDF File

Jesus' Resurrection and Contemporary Criticism: An Apologetic (Part II) - PDF File

Interview with Dr. Gary Habermas on the implications of Near-Death Experience science for Christian theology.

Category:1950 births Category:American evangelicals Category:American philosophers Category:American theologians Category:Biblical scholars Category:Christian apologists Category:Christian philosophers Category:Christian writers Category:Philosophers of religion Category:Liberty University faculty Category:Michigan State University alumni Category:University of Detroit Mercy alumni Category:Living people

ko:게리 하버마스 pl:Gary Habermas fi:Gary Habermas sv:Gary Habermas

{{infobox philosopher | region	Western Philosophy | era 20th-century philosophy | color #B0C4DE | image | caption Antony Flew | name Antony Garrard Newton Flew| birth_date February 11, 1923 | death_date April 08, 2010 | school_tradition Analytic | main_interests Philosophy of religion | influences David Hume, Richard Swinburne | notable_ideas No True Scotsman}}

Antony Garrard Newton Flew (11 February 1923 – 8 April 2010) was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, he was notable for his works on the philosophy of religion.

Flew was a strong advocate of atheism, arguing that one should presuppose atheism until empirical evidence of a God surfaces. He also criticised the idea of life after death, the free will defence to the problem of evil, and the meaningfulness of the concept of God. However, in 2004 he stated an allegiance to deism, stating that in keeping his lifelong commitment to go where the evidence leads, he now believes in God. He later wrote the book ''There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind'', with contributions from Roy Abraham Varghese. This book (and Flew's conversion itself) has been the subject of controversy, following an article in the New York Times magazine alleging that Flew had mentally declined, and that Varghese was the primary author. The matter remains contentious, with some commentators including PZ Myers and Richard Carrier supporting the allegations, and others, including Flew himself, opposing them.

Flew taught at the universities of Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele and Reading, and at York University in Toronto. He was also known for the development of the no true Scotsman fallacy, and his debate on retrocausality with Michael Dummett.

Biography

Antony Flew, the son of a Methodist minister, was born in London, England. He was educated at St Faith's School, Cambridge followed by Kingswood School, Bath. During the Second World War he studied Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and was a Royal Air Force intelligence officer. After a period with the Inter-Services Topographical Department in Oxford, he was posted to Bletchley Park in June 1944.

After the war, Flew achieved a first class degree in ''Literae Humaniores'' at St John's College, Oxford. Flew was a graduate student of Gilbert Ryle, prominent in ordinary language philosophy. Both Flew and Ryle were among many Oxford philosophers fiercely criticised in Ernest Gellner's book ''Words and Things'' (1959). A 1954 debate with Michael Dummett over backward causation was an early highlight in Flew's career.

For a year, Flew was a Lecturer in Philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford. Afterwards, he was a lecturer for four years at the University of Aberdeen, and a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Keele for twenty years. Between 1973 and 1983 he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. At this time, he developed one of his most famous arguments, the No true Scotsman fallacy in his 1975 book, ''Thinking About Thinking''. Upon his retirement, Flew took up a half-time post for a few years at York University, Toronto.

Flew married on 28 June 1952. He had two daughters. Flew died on 8 April 2010, while nursed in an Extended Care Facility in Reading, England, while suffering advanced dementia.

Atheism and deism

Prominent atheist

While an undergraduate, Flew attended the weekly meetings of C. S. Lewis's Socratic Club fairly regularly. Although he found Lewis to be "an eminently reasonable man" and "by far the most powerful of Christian apologists for the sixty or more years following his founding of that club," he was not persuaded by Lewis's argument from morality as found in ''Mere Christianity''. Flew also criticised several of the other philosophical proofs for God's existence. He concluded that the ontological argument in particular failed because it is based on the premise that the concept of Being can be derived from the concept of Goodness. Only the scientific forms of the teleological argument ultimately impressed Flew as decisive.

During the time of his involvement in the Socratic Club, Flew also wrote the article "Theology and Falsification," which argued that claims about God were meaningless where they could not be tested for truth or falsehood. Though initially published in an undergraduate journal, the article came to be widely reprinted and discussed. Later, in ''God and Philosophy'' (1966) and ''The Presumption of Atheism'' (1976, reprinted 1984), Flew argued that one should presuppose atheism until evidence of a God surfaces. Flew was also critical of the idea of life after death and the free will defence to the problem of evil.

Revised views

Conversion from atheism

On several occasions, apparently starting in 2001, rumours circulated claiming that Flew had converted from atheism. Flew denied these rumours on the Secular Web website.

In January 2003 Flew and Gary Habermas, his friend and philosophical adversary, conducted a dialogue on the resurrection at California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo. During a couple of telephone discussions shortly after that dialogue, Flew explained to Habermas that he was considering becoming a theist. While Flew did not change his position at that time, he concluded that certain philosophical and scientific considerations were causing him to do some serious rethinking. He characterised his position as that of atheism standing in tension with several huge question marks.

In December 2004, an interview with Flew then 81 years old, conducted by Gary Habermas was published in the journal ''Philosophia Christi'' (published by the Evangelical Philosophical Society with the assistance of Biola University), with the title, ''Atheist Becomes Theist - Exclusive Interview with Former Atheist Antony Flew''. Flew agreed to this title. According to the introduction, Flew informed Habermas in January 2004 that he had become a deist, and the interview took place shortly thereafter. Then the text was amended by both participants over the following months prior to publication. In the article Flew states that he has left his long-standing espousal of atheism by endorsing a deism of the sort that Thomas Jefferson advocated ("While reason, mainly in the form of arguments to design, assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that God and individual human beings."). Flew stated that "the most impressive arguments for God’s existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries" and that "the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it". He also answered in the affirmative to Habermas's question, "So of the major theistic arguments, such as the cosmological, teleological, moral, and ontological, the only really impressive ones that you take to be decisive are the scientific forms of teleology?". He supported the idea of an Aristotelian God with "the characteristics of power and also intelligence", stating that the evidence for it was stronger than ever before. He rejects the ideas of an afterlife, of God as the source of good (he explicitly states that God has created "a lot of" evil), and of the resurrection of Jesus as a historical fact though he has allowed a short chapter arguing for Christ's resurrection to be added into his latest book.

Flew was particularly hostile to Islam, and said it is "best described in a Marxian way as the uniting and justifying ideology of Arab imperialism." In a December 2004 interview he said: "I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins".

Controversy over his position

Flew subsequently changed his position given in the Habermas interview as justification for his endorsing of deism. In October 2004 (before the December publication of the Flew-Habermas interview), a letter written to Richard Carrier of the Secular Web, stated that he was a deist and also said that "I think we need here a fundamental distinction between the God of Aristotle or Spinoza and the Gods of the Christian and the Islamic Revelations." Flew also said: "My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species ... [In fact] the only reason which I have for beginning to think of believing in a First Cause god is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms."

In another letter to Carrier of 29 December 2004 Flew went on to retract his statement, writing "a deity or a 'super-intelligence' [is] the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature", and "I now realise that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction". He blamed his error on being "misled" by Richard Dawkins, claiming Dawkins "has never been reported as referring to any promising work on the production of a theory of the development of living matter". His 2007 book revisited the question, however, and questioned contemporary models: "the latest work I have seen shows that the present physical universe gives too little time for these theories of abiogenesis to get the job done." He added: "The philosophical question that has not been answered in origin-of-life studies is this: How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self-replication capabilities, and "coded chemistry"? Here we are not dealing with biology, but an entirely different category of problem."

The work of physicist Gerald Schroeder had been influential in Flew's new belief, but Flew told Carrier that he had not read any of the critiques of Schroeder that Carrier referred him to.

However, in spring 2005, when Raymond Bradley, an atheist in Editorial Board for ''The Open Society'' journal, wrote an open letter to Flew accusing him of not "check[ing] the veracity of [Schroeder's] claims before swallowing them whole", Flew strongly responded to that charge in a letter published in the same journal in summer 2006, describing the content of Bradley's letter "extraordinary offensive" and the accusation made by him as an "egregiously offensive charge"; he also implied that Bradley was a "secularist bigot", and suggested that he should follow Socrates's advice (as scripted in Plato's ''Republic'') of "follow[ing] the argument wherever it leads". Richard Dawkins and other atheists suggested Flew's deism was a form of God of the gaps.

When asked in December 2004 by Duncan Crary of Humanist Network News if he still stood by the argument presented in ''The Presumption of Atheism'', Flew replied he did but he also restated his position as deist: "I'm quite happy to believe in an inoffensive inactive god". When asked by Crary whether or not he has kept up with the most recent science and theology, he responded with "Certainly not", stating that there is simply too much to keep up with. Flew also denied that there was any truth to the rumours of 2001 and 2003 that he had converted to Christianity.

Restatement of position

A letter on Darwinism and theology which Flew published in the August/September 2004 issue of ''Philosophy Now'' magazine left the world hanging when it closed with, "Anyone who should happen to want to know what I myself now believe will have to wait until the publication, promised for early 2005, by Prometheus of Amherst, NY of the final edition of my ''God and Philosophy'' with a new introduction of it as ‘an historical relic’."

The preface of ''God and Philosophy'' states that the publisher and Flew went through a total of four versions (each extensively peer-reviewed) before coming up with one that satisfied them both. The introduction raises ten matters that came about since the original 1966 edition. Flew states that any book to follow ''God and Philosophy'' will have to take into account these ideas when considering the philosophical case for the existence of God:

# A novel definition of "God" by Richard Swinburne # The case for the existence of the Christian God by Swinburne in the book ''Is There a God?'' # The Church of England's change in doctrine on the eternal punishment of Hell # The question of whether there was only one big bang and if time began with it # The question of multiple universes # The fine-tuning argument # The question of whether there is a naturalistic account for the development of living matter from non-living matter # The question of whether there is a naturalistic account for non-reproducing living matter developing into a living creature capable of reproduction # The concept of an ''Intelligent Orderer'' as explained in the book ''The Wonder of the World: A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God'' by Roy Abraham Varghese # An extension of an Aristotelian/Deist concept of God that can be reached through natural theology, which was developed by David Conway.

In an interview with Joan Bakewell for BBC Radio 4 in March 2005, Flew rejected the fine-tuning argument as a conclusive proof: "I don't think it proves anything but that it is entirely reasonable for people who already have a belief in a creating God to regard this as confirming evidence. And it's a point of argument which I think is very important - to see that what is reasonable for people to do in the face of new evidence depends on what they previously had good reason to believe." He also said it appeared that there had been progress made regarding the naturalistic origins of DNA. However, he restated his deism, with the usual provisos that his God is not the God of any of the revealed religions. In the same interview, Flew was asked whether he was retracting belief in an Aristotelian God, but answered no.

One month later, Flew told ''Christianity Today'' that although he was not on the road to becoming a Christian convert, he reaffirmed his deism: "Since the beginning of my philosophical life I have followed the policy of Plato's Socrates: We must follow the argument wherever it leads."

In late 2006, Flew joined 11 other academics in urging the British government to teach intelligent design in the state schools.

In 2007, in an interview with Benjamin Wiker, Flew said again that his deism was the result of his "growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe" and "my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source." He also restated that he was not a Christian theist.

Book with Varghese

In 2007, Flew published a book titled ''There is a God,'' which was listed as having Roy Abraham Varghese as its co-author. Shortly after the book was released, the New York Times published an article by religious historian Mark Oppenheimer, who stated that Varghese had been almost entirely responsible for writing the book, and that Flew was in a serious state of mental decline, having great difficulty remembering key figures, ideas, and events relating to the debate covered in the book. His book praises several philosophers (like Brian Leftow, John Leslie and Paul Davies), but Flew failed to remember their work during Oppenheimer's interview. The article provoked a public outcry, in which atheist PZ Myers called Varghese "a contemptible manipulator."

A further article by Anthony Gottlieb noted a strong difference in style between the passages giving Flew's biography, and those laying out the case for a god, with the latter including Americanisms such as "beverages", "vacation" and "candy". He came to the same conclusion as Oppenheimer, and stated that "Far from strengthening the case for the existence of God, [the book] rather weakens the case for the existence of Antony Flew". Varghese replied with a letter disputing this view. Flew released a statement through his publisher stating that although Varghese did the actual writing, the book belonged to him and represented his thinking. An audio commentary by William Lane Craig concurs with this position, but Richard Carrier disputes this view. In June 2008, Flew stated his position once again, in a letter to a fellow of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship.

Christian writer Regis Nicoll claims that "Moreover, in a signed, handwritten letter (a copy of which I now have) sent to Roy Varghese, the legendary philosopher reaffirmed his conversion while criticising Oppenheimer for drawing attention away from the book’s central argument: the collapse of rationalism." He argues that "Even Mark Oppenheimer described the ex-atheist “flaunt[ing] his allegiance to deism” in May 2006 to a Christian audience at Biola University."

Awards

The New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists has appointed Flew as an Honorary Associate.

Flew was awarded the Schlarbaum Prize by the Ludwig von Mises Institute for his "outstanding lifetime achievement in the cause of liberty." Upon acceptance of the award in Auburn, Alabama, in September 2001, Flew delivered an address entitled "Locke versus Rawls on Equality." Of his choice of topics, he stated "I am the first Englishman and the first professional philosopher to receive the Schlarbaum Prize. So it seems appropriate to begin by talking about the greatest English philosopher, John Locke."

On 11 May 2006, Antony Flew accepted the second "Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth" from evangelical Biola University. The award, named for its first recipient, was given to Flew "for his lifelong commitment to free and open inquiry and to standing fast against intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and expression". When informed of his award, Flew remarked, "In light of my work and publications in this area and the criticism I’ve received for changing my position, I appreciate receiving this award".

Works

''A New Approach to Psychical Research'' (1953)

''New Essays in Philosophical Theology'' (1955) editor with Alasdair Macintyre

''Essays in Conceptual Analysis'' (1956)

''Hume's Philosophy of Belief'' (1961)

''Logic And Language'' (1961) editor

''God and Philosophy'' (1966)

''Logic & Language'' (Second Series) (1966) editor

''Evolutionary Ethics'' (1967)

''An Introduction to Western Philosophy - Ideas and Argument from Plato to Sartre'' (1971)

''Body, Mind and Death'' (1973)

''Crime or Disease'' (1973)

''Thinking About Thinking'' (1975)

''Sociology, Equality and Education: Philosophical Essays In Defence Of A Variety Of Differences'' (1976)

''Thinking Straight'' (1977) (ISBN 978-0-87975-088-6)

''A Dictionary of Philosophy'' (1979) editor, later edition with Stephen Priest

''Philosophy, an Introduction'' (1979)

''Libertarians versus Egalitarians'' (c.1980) pamphlet

''The Politics of Procrustes: contradictions of enforced equality'' (1981)

''Darwinian Evolution'' (1984)

* ''The Presumption of Atheism'' (1976). reprinted as ''God, Freedom and Immortality: A Critical Analysis.'' (1984)

''Examination not Attempted'' in ''Right Ahead'', newspaper of the Conservative Monday Club, Conservative Party Conference edition, October 1985.

''God: A Critical Inquiry'' (1986) - reprint of ''God and Philosophy'' (1966) with new introduction

''David Hume: Philosopher of Moral Science'' (1986) Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

''Agency and Necessity'' (Great Debates in Philosophy) (1987) with Godfrey Norman Agmondis Vesey

''Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? The Resurrection Debate'' (1987) with Gary Habermas

''Power to the Parents: Reversing Educational Decline'' (1987)

''Prophesy or Philosophy? Historicism or History?'' in ''Marx Refuted'', edited by Ronald Duncan and Colin Wilson, Bath, (UK), 1987, ISBN 0-906798-71-X

''Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Parapsychology'' (1987) editor

''God, A Critical Inquiry'' (1988)

''Does God Exist?: A Believer and an Atheist Debate'' (1991) with Terry L. Miethe

''A Future for Anti-Racism?'' (Social Affairs Unit 1992) pamphlet

''Atheistic Humanism'' (1993) (ISBN 978-0-87975-847-9)

''Thinking About Social Thinking'' (1995)

''Education for Citizenship'' (Studies in Education No. 10) (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2000)

''Merely Mortal?'' (2000)

''Equality in Liberty and Justice'' (2001) Transaction Publishers.

''Does God Exist: The Craig-Flew Debate'' (2003) with William Lane Craig (ISBN 978-0-7546-3190-3)

''Social Life and Moral Judgment'' (2003)

''God and Philosophy'' (2005) - another reprint of ''God and Philosophy'' (1966) with another new introduction

''There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind'' (2007) with Roy Abraham Varghese (ISBN 978-0-06-133529-7)

References

External links

From Madalyn Murray O'Hair to Antony Flew From Madalyn Murray O'Hair to Antony Flew: My Own Intellectual Journey in Unbelief by Jorge Reyes.

From Atheist to Deist Antony Flew's evolution from an Atheist to a Deist.

The Warren/Flew Debate on the Existence of God Debate between Thomas Bratton Warren and Antony Garrard Newton Flew, Denton, Texas 20–23 September 1976.

"The Presumption of Atheism." Antony Flew, chapter in ''God, Freedom and Immortality: A Critical Analysis.'' 1984.

Letter from Antony Flew on Darwinism and Theology by Antony Flew, ''Philosophy Now'', #47, August/September 2004.

Joan Bakewell interview with Antony Flew, conducted for BBC Radio 4 broadcast, March 2005: text or Real Audio

Freedom for Universities by Antony Flew, The Freedom Association (undated document).

Excerpts from Antony Flew's ''Thinking Straight'' (1977)

Interview discussing Flew's belief in the existence of an Aristotelian God

Interview with Lee Strobel (former atheist turned christian apologist)

Category:1923 births Category:2010 deaths Category:20th-century philosophers Category:Academics of Keele University Category:Academics of the University of Aberdeen Category:Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Category:Alumni of the School of Oriental and African Studies Category:Analytic philosophers Category:English humanists Category:English philosophers Category:Deist thinkers Category:Former atheists and agnostics Category:Old Fidelians Category:Old Kingswoodians (Bath) Category:People associated with Bletchley Park Category:Royal Air Force officers Category:Royal Air Force personnel of World War II Category:Gifford Lecturers Category:English sceptics

de:Antony Flew es:Antony Flew eo:Antony Flew fa:آنتونی فلو fr:Antony Flew id:Antony Flew it:Antony Flew nl:Antony Flew pl:Antony Flew pt:Antony Flew ru:Флю, Энтони fi:Antony Flew sv:Antony Flew tr:Antony Flew

Vittorio Hösle (born June 25, 1960, in Milan, Italy) is a German philosopher. Having begun his academic career with extraordinary success, including the completion of his doctorate at age 21, he is the author of many distinguished works, including ''Hegels System'' (1987), ''Morals and Politics'' (1997, trans. 2004), and ''Der philosophische Dialog'' (2006). He advances an “objective idealist” theoretical philosophy, which attempts to revitalize Platonic and Hegelian thought, while also drawing from Karl-Otto Apel. His practical philosophy is a modified Kantianism, which also draws much from Hans Jonas.

Having been “alienated by the contemporary situation of his country’s university system,” he has been in the United States since 1999, at the University of Notre Dame. There he is the Paul Kimball Professor of Arts and Letters (with concurrent appointments in the Departments of German, Philosophy, and Political Science). Since 2008, he has also served as the founding Director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study.

Overview of Achievements

In Germany in the 1980s, he earned the titles of “''Wunderkind''” and “the Boris Becker of philosophy,” on account of completing his doctorate at age 21 and earning his ''Habilitation'' (a postdoctoral degree qualifying one as University Lecturer at age 25, based in part on the ''Habilitationsschrift'', a significant scholarly contribution exceeding the standards of a dissertation). Since the average age for completing the ''Habilitation'' is around 40, this feat immediately began comparisons of Hösle to Friedrich Nietzsche, who began his career as a Lecturer only slightly earlier than did Hösle. Both of his degrees were completed at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. Hösle’s facility for languages is comparably impressive. As of 2009—in what is probably a conservative estimate—his CV lists knowledge of 17 languages: “Active knowledge of German, Italian, English, Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, and French; passive knowledge of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Pali, Avestan, Portuguese, Catalan, Modern Greek, Swedish, and Danish.” As of July 2009, he has written or edited 32 books (which have appeared in at least 16 languages), and written over 125 articles. Since most of these works were originally written in German and have not been translated into English, his reputation in the United States has yet to approach that in Europe. In Europe, though, he has become “something of a celebrity, the subject of two documentaries shown on TV stations throughout Europe and even Korea.”

Popular, Scholarly, and Philosophical Writings

Hösle’s writings might roughly be placed into three categories: (1) those intended for a more popular audience, (2) those dedicated to scholarly and often historical topics, and (3) those developing his own philosophical positions systematically. In category (1) we might place many opinion pieces on public policy written in German newspapers. In addition, ''The Dead Philosophers’ Café'' (trans. 2000) presents a series of letters between Hösle and “Nora K.,” an 11–12 year old daughter of some friends of Hösle. The two debate questions such as identity, free will, ethics, evil, and religion in various encounters with “Dead but ever Young Philosophers” such as Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Augustine, Al-Farabi, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. While many valuable books had been written about philosophizing with children or presenting philosophy to children, this book is distinctive in presenting the philosophy ''of'' a child. It has been translated into thirteen foreign languages.

(2) Hösle’s scholarly and historical studies span a broad range of topics, including Greek tragedy, Plato, Giambattista Vico, G. W. F. Hegel, aesthetics, sociobiology, ancient mathematics, the comedy of Woody Allen, the philosophical dialogue, and the philosophies of history and of natural science. Among many notable works, ''Hegels System'' (1987) offers a highly comprehensive analysis of the Hegelian encyclopedia. It defends the encyclopedia as a form of objective idealism, while suggesting some ways to improve its concept formation technique—understood as the essence of dialectic—by regarding intersubjectivity as a synthesis of objectivity and subjectivity. More recently, ''Der philosophische Dialog'' (2006) offers the most comprehensive analysis yet attempted of this literary genre. It offers new interpretations of many dialogues (especially but not only of Plato), and offers novel theories of hermeneutics (i.e., the correct interpretation of the intentions of the author of a dialogue).

(3) Hösle’s own philosophy combines “objective idealism” with a theory of intersubjectivity. In this way he seeks to unite the traditional idealistic philosophy of Plato and Hegel with the transcendental pragmatics developed by Karl-Otto Apel. Hösle writes of his attempt to revitalize “objective idealism”: “The conviction that we can have synthetic ''a priori'' knowledge, and that this knowledge discovers something that is independent of our mind, is of particular importance for practical philosophy. It grounds the position called ‘moral realism’: Albeit the moral law is neither a physical nor a mental nor a social fact, it ''is'' nevertheless; it belongs to an ideal sphere of being that partly determines the structures of real (physical, mental, social) being.” He is fully aware that this highly rationalistic and constructive approach runs counter to the dominant trends of Western philosophy following the rise of post-Hegelian philosophy in the 1830s, and especially amid “that ultra-critical thinking which…has swept over Europe like a great wave” beginning in the 1960s. A useful introduction to the many grounds on which Hösle criticizes the often-unchallenged relativistic assumptions of our time is provided in “Foundational Issues of Objective Idealism,” the opening essay of ''Objective Idealism, Ethics and Politics'' (1998). He establishes his positive position largely through reflexive or transcendental reasoning—that is, reflections upon the necessary presuppositions of all reason and speech. While the theoretical alternative Hösle provides is largely Platonic and Hegelian, his practical philosophy could be described as a modified Kantianism, and is developed in the same volume's second essay: “The Greatness and Limits of Kant’s Practical Philosophy.” There Hösle argues that the autonomous, rationalist, and universalist positions of Kant, based on the synthetic ''a priori'', remain unsurpassed and indispensable achievements. However, Hösle does grant that Kant was mistaken in neglecting the need to cultivate the emotions, as well as in his overly formalist approach, which neglects the need for concrete knowledge of circumstances and wrongly denies the possibility of morally compelling exceptions to objective moral rules.

Hösle’s ''magnum opus'' is ''Morals and Politics'' (trans. 2004), an ambitious work of around 1,000 pages, which aims to present “a comprehensive vision of all the knowledge needed to answer the difficult question of what constitutes moral policies in the various fields of politics such as foreign policy, domestic policy, economics, ecology and such.” To do so it offers a normative foundation of the relation between ethics and politics, a descriptive theory of the objects of political philosophy (including anthropology, sociobiology, the virtues, the principles of power, and the theory of the states), from both of which premises he derives “a concrete political ethics” appropriate for the twenty-first century. Despite the size of the book, its analytical table of contents allows the reader to use it as a handbook on topics of interest. This may help explain the distinguished reception the original received in Germany (''Moral und Politik'', 1997), not only among academics, but in the news media and among politicians as well.

Even a lengthy depiction could not adequately summarize the work, due not only to its length but also its scholarly breadth, philosophical rigor, and ideological subtlety. Here we will attempt to illustrate these qualities by offering a brief overview of one set of interlocking themes—namely, moral universalism, the modern state, and economics. As suggested by the title, ''Morals and Politics'' attempts to overcome the complete decoupling of politics from ethics which begins with Machiavelli, and finds its most horrifying ultimate expression in Carl Schmitt. Against the typical modern views that politics has nothing to do with morals, that politics is a fully autonomous realm, or that morals prove tyrannical when allowed to enter the political sphere, Hösle argues that only objective moral reason itself can criticize excess moralism in politics. This is because “it is only a self-limitation of the moral that can be taken seriously, not a limitation of the moral by something external to it—for this something external would itself have to appear before the tribunal of moral judgment.” Hösle’s political ethic is also strongly universalist. Although he immensely respects the ancients and finds their philosophies unsurpassed in many respects, he maintains that the increase of universalist ethical consciousness in Christianity is an undeniable form of moral progress. Moral universalism, in turn, found its institutional expression “in the constitutional state founded on the rule of law. My greatest concern is that in the historical cataclysms that face us, we will abandon not the self-destructive aspects of modernity, but rather precisely its universalism.” Carl Schmitt, like Friedrich Nietzsche before him and the related movement of National Socialism, all illustrate the “artificial atavism” of those who attempt to repudiate universalist ideas after their historical discovery. Such repudiations result in raw power-positivism, rather than the naïve identification with traditional, pre-modern culture which is the surface intention of such “counter-enlightenment” theories. By contrast, Hösle defends ethical universalism and many recent achievements of the modern state, such as “the international codification of human rights.” Yet he also argues that the foundation of the worldview which supports human rights is “eroding with increasing speed,” and therefore the political cataclysms of the twentieth century are by no means “merely superficial phenomena that ultimately belong to the past.” While attempting to provide a rational defense of the great moral achievements of the modern world, then, Hösle strongly challenges certain modern excesses, such as the loss of a transcendent horizon of consciousness, and an excessive focus on economic growth and ever-expanding consumption. This economic excess increases perceived needs more quickly than it can meet them, leads to self-absorption and lovelessness, and demands more resources ecologically than can be sustained for future generations or universalized to all the people of the world. On the other hand, the modern state’s (classical) liberal capitalism—as qualified by the late-modern welfare state—is itself a significant moral achievement, due to its highly efficient production and distribution of goods. For such reasons, there are moral reasons to limit moralism in economics. For instance, Hösle argues that John Rawls’s difference principle cannot be unconditionally valid in economics, and that the technical expertise of economists is a necessary component in determining the proper means of preventing excessively large social oppositions from arising.

Select Publications

“Cicero’s Plato.” ''Wiener Studien'' 121 (2008): 145-170.

''Darwinism and Philosophy'' (co-edited with Christian Illies). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.

"Did the Greeks Deliberately Use the Golden Ratio in an Artwork? A Hermeneutical Reflection." ''La Parola del Passato'' 362 (2009): 415-26.

“The Idea of a Rationalistic Philosophy of Religion and Its Challenges.” ''Jahrbuch für Religionsphilosophie'' 6 (2007): 159-181.

''Hegels System: Der Idealismus der Subjektivität und das Problem der Intersubjektivität''. [''Hegel’s System: The Idealism of Subjectivity and the Problem of Intersubjectivity''.] 2 volumes. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1987. 2nd edition, 1998.

“Interpreting Philosophical Dialogues.” ''Antike und Abendland'' 48 (2002): 68-90.

“Is There Progress in the History of Philosophy?” In ''Hegel’s History of Philosophy'', ed. D. A. Duquette, 185-204. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003.

“The Lost Prodigal Son’s Corporal Works of Mercy and the Bridegroom’s Wedding: The Religious Subtext of Charles Dickens’ ''Great Expectations''.” ''Anglia'' 126 (2008): 477-502.

"Moral und Politk: Grundlagen einer Politischen Ethik fuer das 21. Jahrhundert." Munich: Beck, 1997. "Morals and Politics," trans. Steven Rendall. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2004.

''Objective Idealism, Ethics and Politics''. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998.

''Platon interpretieren''. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2004.

''Der philosophische Dialog: Eine Poetik und Hermeneutik''. [''The Philosophical Dialogue: A Poetic and Hermeneutical Theory''.] München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2006.

“Philosophy and its Languages: A Philosopher’s Reflections on the Rise of English as Universal Academic Language.” In ''The Contest of Languages'', ed. M.Bloomer, 245-62. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.

''Philosophie der ökologischen Krise: Moskauer Vorträge''. [''Philosophy of the Ecological Crisis: Moscow Lectures''.] München: C.H.Beck, 1991.

“Vico’s Age of Heroes and the Age of Men in John Ford’s Film ''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance''” (co-authored with Mark Roche). ''Clio'' 23 (1994): 131-147.

“Vico und die Idee der Kulturwissenschaft” [“Vico and the Idea of Cultural Science.”] Introduction to Giambattista Vico, ''Prinzipien einer neuen Wissenschaft über die gemeinsame Natur der Völker'' [''Principles of a New Science concerning the Common Nature of Peoples''.] Ed. and trans. Hösle and Ch. Jermann. 2 volumes. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1990.

''Woody Allen: An Essay on the Nature of the Comical''. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.

References

External links

Hösle's professional website

Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study

John Monczunski, “The Amazing World of Vittorio Hösle”

Category:1960 births Category:German philosophers Category:Living people Category:University of Notre Dame faculty

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