Author: T. Ryan Byerly File Type: pdf How exactly could God achieve infallible foreknowledge of every future event, including the free actions of human persons? How could God exercise careful providence over these same events? Byerly offers a novel response to these important questions by contending that God exercises providence and achieves foreknowledge by ordering the times.The first part of the book defends the importance of the above questions. After characterizing the contemporary freedom-foreknowledge debate, Byerly argues that it has focused too narrowly on a certain argument for theological fatalism, which attempts to show that the existence of infallible divine foreknowledge poses a unique threat to the existence of creaturely libertarian freedom. Byerly contends, however, that bare existence of infallible divine foreknowledge cannot threaten freedom in this way at most, the mechanics whereby this foreknowledge is achieved might so threaten human freedom.In the second part of the book, Byerly develops a model for understanding the mechanics whereby infallible foreknowledge is achieved that would not threaten creaturely libertarian freedom. According to the model, God infallibly foreknows every future event because God has placed the times that constitute the history of the world in primitive earlier-than relations to one another. After defending the consistency of this model of the mechanics of divine foreknowledge with creaturely libertarian freedom, the author applies it to divine providence more generally. A novel defense of concurrentism is the result.

Author: Fred Moten File Type: pdf In his controversial essay on white jazz musician Burton Greene, Amiri Baraka asserted that jazz was exclusively an African American art form and explicitly fused the idea of a black aesthetic with radical political traditions of the African diaspora. In the Break is an extended riff on The Burton Greene Affair, exploring the tangled relationship between black avant-garde in music and literature in the 1950s and 1960s, the emergence of a distinct form of black cultural nationalism, and the complex engagement with and disavowal of homoeroticism that bridges the two. Fred Moten focuses in particular on the brilliant improvisatory jazz of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, and others, arguing that all black performance-culture, politics, sexuality, identity, and blackness itself-is improvisation. For Moten, improvisation provides a unique epistemological standpoint from which to investigate the provocative connections between black aesthetics and Western philosophy. He engages in a strenuous critical analysis of Western philosophy (Heidegger, Kant, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and Derrida) through the prism of radical black thought and culture. As the critical, lyrical, and disruptive performance of the human, Motens concept of blackness also brings such figures as Frederick Douglass and Karl Marx, Cecil Taylor and Samuel R. Delany, Billie Holiday and William Shakespeare into conversation with each other. Stylistically brilliant and challenging, much like the music he writes about, Motens wide-ranging discussion embraces a variety of disciplines-semiotics, deconstruction, genre theory, social history, and psychoanalysis-to understand the politicized sexuality, particularly homoeroticism, underpinning black radicalism. In the Break is the inaugural volume in Motens ambitious intellectual project-to establish an aesthetic genealogy of the black radical tradition. Fred Moten is associate professor of African American studies and visual studies at the University of California, Irvine. **

Author: Berard Marthaler File Type: pdf

Author: Peter Gratton File Type: pdf Considers the problems of sovereignty through the work of Rousseau, Arendt, Foucault, Agamben, and Derrida. Following up on the fables and stories surrounding political sovereigntyonce theological, now often nationalistPeter Grattons The State of Sovereignty takes aim at the central concepts surrounding the post-911 political environment. Against those content to conceptualize what has been called the sovereign exception, Gratton argues that sovereignty underwent profound changes during modernity, changes tracked by Rousseau, Arendt, Foucault, Agamben, and Derrida. Each of these thinkers investigated the fictions and illusions of claims to sovereign omnipotence, while outlining what would become the preeminent problems of racism, nationalism, and biopower. Gratton illustrates the principal claims that tie these philosophers together and, more importantly, what lessons they offer, perhaps in spite of themselves, for those thinking about the future of politics. His innovative readings will open new ground for new and longtime readers of these philosophers alike, while confronting how their critiques of sovereignty reshape our conceptions of identity, freedom, and selfhood. The result not only fills a long-standing need for an up-to-date analysis of the concept of sovereignty but is also a tour de force engaging readers in the most important political and philosophical questions today. Grattons methodological rigour in reconstructing each pathway is a great strength of the book This is a very pedagogical book, full of lessons in the way it treats each of the authors under discussion. It is therefore a good graduate student text, and for each discussed author the book makes significant contributions to current scholarship. Philosophy in Review Drawing on eminent thinkers including Boulainvilliers, Rousseau, Arendt, Foucault, Agamben, and Derrida, Gratton provides a novel synthesis. He concludes that for those who believe in freedom and democracy, questioning rather than resigning to sovereignty as it presents itself is essential. The book reflects some of Grattons earlier published work and further attests to his facility with French political thought Grattons discussion overall is penetrable and stimulating. CHOICE Peter Gratton is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the coeditor (with John Panteleimon Manoussakis) of Traversing the Imaginary Richard Kearney and the Postmodern Challenge. ** Following up on the fables and stories surrounding political sovereigntyonce theological, now often nationalistPeter Grattons The State of Sovereignty takes aim at the central concepts surrounding the post-911 political environment. Against those content to conceptualize what has been called the sovereign exception, Gratton argues that sovereignty underwent profound changes during modernity, changes tracked by Rousseau, Arendt, Foucault, Agamben, and Derrida. Each of these thinkers investigated the fictions and illusions of claims to sovereign omnipotence, while outlining what would become the preeminent problems of racism, nationalism, and biopower. Gratton illustrates the principal claims that tie these philosophers together and, more importantly, what lessons they offer, perhaps in spite of themselves, for those thinking about the future of politics. His innovative readings will open new ground for new and longtime readers of these philosophers alike, while confronting how their critiques of sovereignty reshape our conceptions of identity, freedom, and selfhood. The result not only fills a long-standing need for an up-to-date analysis of the concept of sovereignty but is also a tour de force engaging readers in the most important political and philosophical questions today.