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This presentation examines Arthur Eddington’s Two Tables from An Aristotelian Perspective. How ca... more This presentation examines Arthur Eddington’s Two Tables from An Aristotelian Perspective. How can Aristotle help us think about the conflict between modern science and our ordinary conceptions of reality? How can quantum elements and macro elements be related.
For an annotated bibliography, please see the link:
https://spunspero.files.wordpress.com.
46 views
Conference Presentations by brandon spun
Presented at the 51st Annual Medieval Conference at Kalamazoo, MI in 2016 This research surveys ... more Presented at the 51st Annual Medieval Conference at Kalamazoo, MI in 2016
This research surveys thematic and structural elements of Beowulf by means of analyzing correspondences between the poem and a torc. A common artifact of the ancient and medieval world, a torc is a ring borne about the neck, often open in the front and accented by termini at either end. It functions as an ornament, as a symbol of status, of social realities, as well as an image of freedom and glory. Yet interpreted under the lens of differánce, the object simultaneously evokes a series of binary others, exposing traces of the anti-social, thralldom, futility, and death. Implicit ambiguity in Beowulf comes to light in the like ambiguity of the ornament.
Likeness between the ornament and Beowulf suggests that the poem is self-consciously interacting with and deconstructing values and sources of an earlier Anglo-Saxon period. The poem may also critique its own era. The poet is enabled through the distance of faith and time to set the poem in the full, honest relief of futility. In doing so, the narrative interrogates glory by its more terrible twin, the baffling and indomitable darkness of death
Drafts by brandon spun
The nature of the human person has been a central feature of philosophic and theological discours... more The nature of the human person has been a central feature of philosophic and theological discourse. Susan Grove Eastman’s Paul and the Person: Reframing Paul’s Anthropology represents a recent foray into this trans-categorial topic. She explores Paul’s view of the human person by juxtaposing his writing with ancient and contemporary frameworks, using Epictetus, current psychology, and neuroscience as a few of her chief guides. Her research construes the human person chiefly as relational rather than as a Cartesian, self-enclosed individual. Such a construal in some ways echoes the insights of personalist philosophers (Jacque Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, W. Norris Clarke, Josef Pieper, and John Paul II). But Eastman parts ways in significant respects from their methodology and conclusions. Her work differs insofar as our relational nature is construed in almost exclusively modern sociological and psychological categories which downplay classical tensions between body and soul (as well as matter and spirit) and which also deemphasize reason, agency, and individuality. Yet perhaps the most significant shortcoming of such an approach, is in its laying aside or misconstruing historic philosophic and ecclesial contributions to the inquiry.
Ancient and medieval philosophy has a long tradition of philosophic anthropology, and the Church has labored in the past to clarify the nature of personhood, particularly in light of the great Christological and Trinitarian controversies. Further, because Eastman is “not giving a comprehensive overview of either ancient or current views of the person,” the selectivity of her historic dialogue lends itself to a distortion of the options open either to Paul or to his interpreters. This is further prejudiced by Eastman’s claim that to compare historic patterns of thought is to contradict an “embodied, socially embedded understanding of persons.” A result is that Epictetus, who stands in her work as an example of the historic anthropology of the Pauline period, implicitly and precipitously limits the potential range of Paul’s thinking about personhood.
To address these problems, the body of this paper offers an initial foray into the broader historic perspective of philosophic anthropology. Plato and Aristotle provide the methodological and philosophic context inherited by virtually every major thinker who follows them in the West, including the Stoics and potentially St. Paul. In so far as a person is not an utterly self-enclosed or self-sufficient being, her work promises to challenge insufficiently developed conceptions of identity, agency, and interiority, particularly those which posit too radical a demarcation between the self and the world, or which fail to grasp the intersubjective nature of our existence. Nevertheless, the notion of identity or personhood as relational requires further development in order not to fall into ambiguity or contradiction.
This paper provides some of the initial philosophic context for Eastman, via Plato and Aristotle. It explores their use of mereology (the study of parts and wholes), a virtually universal mode of inquiry into the human person. A complete survey would require a thorough analysis of significant aspects of Platonism, Epicurean and Stoic Philosophy, as well as an exploration of Near Eastern and Jewish thought (chiefly in the Hebrew scriptures), the New Testament as a whole, and later developments in Christian anthropology. We would only then be prepared to engage more recent postmodern frameworks of the human person.
Such an overview would nevertheless help us adjudicate personhood from a number of necessary angles. Most fundamentally, it would allow for a historical dialogue in the broadest sense: one which would give due measure not only to the whole scope of philosophy, but especially to the Christian tradition and its fundamental influences. The overarching goal is to understand the human person by seeking a coherent metaphysical and anthropological framework, one which is faithful to Paul and all of Scripture.
An exploration of Pythagorean-Platonic and Aristotelian-Thomistic Accounts of mathematics and sci... more An exploration of Pythagorean-Platonic and Aristotelian-Thomistic Accounts of mathematics and science. This paper argues that mathematics is a specific form of abstraction. It concludes that science remains authentic when it maintains an awareness that it is necessarily abstract or reductionist.
All human communities and relationships exist, in part, through a remembered past. The Church is ... more All human communities and relationships exist, in part, through a remembered past. The Church is a community radically constituted by memory, particularly the historic and spiritual memory recorded in Scripture. This paper will investigate the ways in which memory constitutes the Church and therefore the life of God's people. It will first examine the general significance of memory within human social and political relations. The paper will then explore the exemplary role of memory within the Christian Church. This will reveal how memory helps to incorporate the whole person into Christ, making membership in the Church both personal and corporate. Part I: Memory & Personal Existence While this inquiry will not directly focus on the nature of personhood, we can state at the outset that to be a person is to be a relational being. 1 It follows that the individual cannot be sufficiently understood when wholly abstracted from a social framework. 2 Human relations potentially include God, our neighbor, our self, and the world. The first two, God and neighbor, are of primary interest, insofar as this paper explores the nature of a social community formed by and oriented toward God. Yet, our relations with God and neighbor depend in part on how we understand ourselves and the world. Part I of this paper will explore how the faculty of memory serves as a foundation for these relations and therefore our social existence.
This is a draft of the principles of ethics from a Thomistic/Aristotelian perspective. I attempt ... more This is a draft of the principles of ethics from a Thomistic/Aristotelian perspective. I attempt to deal with the problem or moral growth through the tensions between knowledge and habit. This paper in part follows the model set in my paper on science. The complexity or moral science makes this paper itself more complex. Further because true moral science is theological, this paper draws from natural and supernatural principles.
At some point, middle sections would need editing
This paper evaluates several irreducible features of science, chiefly using a framework derived f... more This paper evaluates several irreducible features of science, chiefly using a framework derived from the works of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The insights of this paper and its general structure are based upon Peter Redpath’s presentation of Thomistic science in his course The One and the Many. The organization and identification of nearly all the following principles are therefore founded upon his synthesis. Other significant sources include Alasdair Macintyre, Armand Maurer, Walker Percy, Michael Polanyi, and William A. Wallace. Examples from the history of science, while given throughout, appear predominately in the second part of the paper.
This paper explores the role of the underlying thing in the development of the central argument o... more This paper explores the role of the underlying thing in the development of the central argument of the Metaphysics. In exploring composite being, Aristotle arrives at separate being. The underlying thing plays a crucial role in an understanding of composite being. It has two senses which are related but irreducible.
Papers by brandon spun
The Heythrop Journal
While Boethius's definition of the person, ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’, pl... more While Boethius's definition of the person, ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’, plays a significant role in Christian theology and anthropology, its reception is by no means uncritical. In the last hundred years, virtually every element in it has been critiqued by theologians and secular scholars. Nevertheless, its context suggests that his understanding of the person is potentially far richer than supposed. This paper places Boethius's definition of the person in its historical framework and in the context of his own thought, especially Contra Eutyches and Consolation of Philosophy, in order to demonstrate that despite shortcomings, it represents a dynamic and holistic characterisation of the person.
This presentation examines Arthur Eddington’s Two Tables from An Aristotelian Perspective. How ca... more This presentation examines Arthur Eddington’s Two Tables from An Aristotelian Perspective. How can Aristotle help us think about the conflict between modern science and our ordinary conceptions of reality? How can quantum elements and macro elements be related.
For an annotated bibliography, please see the link:
https://spunspero.files.wordpress.com.
46 views
Presented at the 51st Annual Medieval Conference at Kalamazoo, MI in 2016 This research surveys ... more Presented at the 51st Annual Medieval Conference at Kalamazoo, MI in 2016
This research surveys thematic and structural elements of Beowulf by means of analyzing correspondences between the poem and a torc. A common artifact of the ancient and medieval world, a torc is a ring borne about the neck, often open in the front and accented by termini at either end. It functions as an ornament, as a symbol of status, of social realities, as well as an image of freedom and glory. Yet interpreted under the lens of differánce, the object simultaneously evokes a series of binary others, exposing traces of the anti-social, thralldom, futility, and death. Implicit ambiguity in Beowulf comes to light in the like ambiguity of the ornament.
Likeness between the ornament and Beowulf suggests that the poem is self-consciously interacting with and deconstructing values and sources of an earlier Anglo-Saxon period. The poem may also critique its own era. The poet is enabled through the distance of faith and time to set the poem in the full, honest relief of futility. In doing so, the narrative interrogates glory by its more terrible twin, the baffling and indomitable darkness of death
The nature of the human person has been a central feature of philosophic and theological discours... more The nature of the human person has been a central feature of philosophic and theological discourse. Susan Grove Eastman’s Paul and the Person: Reframing Paul’s Anthropology represents a recent foray into this trans-categorial topic. She explores Paul’s view of the human person by juxtaposing his writing with ancient and contemporary frameworks, using Epictetus, current psychology, and neuroscience as a few of her chief guides. Her research construes the human person chiefly as relational rather than as a Cartesian, self-enclosed individual. Such a construal in some ways echoes the insights of personalist philosophers (Jacque Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, W. Norris Clarke, Josef Pieper, and John Paul II). But Eastman parts ways in significant respects from their methodology and conclusions. Her work differs insofar as our relational nature is construed in almost exclusively modern sociological and psychological categories which downplay classical tensions between body and soul (as well as matter and spirit) and which also deemphasize reason, agency, and individuality. Yet perhaps the most significant shortcoming of such an approach, is in its laying aside or misconstruing historic philosophic and ecclesial contributions to the inquiry.
Ancient and medieval philosophy has a long tradition of philosophic anthropology, and the Church has labored in the past to clarify the nature of personhood, particularly in light of the great Christological and Trinitarian controversies. Further, because Eastman is “not giving a comprehensive overview of either ancient or current views of the person,” the selectivity of her historic dialogue lends itself to a distortion of the options open either to Paul or to his interpreters. This is further prejudiced by Eastman’s claim that to compare historic patterns of thought is to contradict an “embodied, socially embedded understanding of persons.” A result is that Epictetus, who stands in her work as an example of the historic anthropology of the Pauline period, implicitly and precipitously limits the potential range of Paul’s thinking about personhood.
To address these problems, the body of this paper offers an initial foray into the broader historic perspective of philosophic anthropology. Plato and Aristotle provide the methodological and philosophic context inherited by virtually every major thinker who follows them in the West, including the Stoics and potentially St. Paul. In so far as a person is not an utterly self-enclosed or self-sufficient being, her work promises to challenge insufficiently developed conceptions of identity, agency, and interiority, particularly those which posit too radical a demarcation between the self and the world, or which fail to grasp the intersubjective nature of our existence. Nevertheless, the notion of identity or personhood as relational requires further development in order not to fall into ambiguity or contradiction.
This paper provides some of the initial philosophic context for Eastman, via Plato and Aristotle. It explores their use of mereology (the study of parts and wholes), a virtually universal mode of inquiry into the human person. A complete survey would require a thorough analysis of significant aspects of Platonism, Epicurean and Stoic Philosophy, as well as an exploration of Near Eastern and Jewish thought (chiefly in the Hebrew scriptures), the New Testament as a whole, and later developments in Christian anthropology. We would only then be prepared to engage more recent postmodern frameworks of the human person.
Such an overview would nevertheless help us adjudicate personhood from a number of necessary angles. Most fundamentally, it would allow for a historical dialogue in the broadest sense: one which would give due measure not only to the whole scope of philosophy, but especially to the Christian tradition and its fundamental influences. The overarching goal is to understand the human person by seeking a coherent metaphysical and anthropological framework, one which is faithful to Paul and all of Scripture.
An exploration of Pythagorean-Platonic and Aristotelian-Thomistic Accounts of mathematics and sci... more An exploration of Pythagorean-Platonic and Aristotelian-Thomistic Accounts of mathematics and science. This paper argues that mathematics is a specific form of abstraction. It concludes that science remains authentic when it maintains an awareness that it is necessarily abstract or reductionist.
All human communities and relationships exist, in part, through a remembered past. The Church is ... more All human communities and relationships exist, in part, through a remembered past. The Church is a community radically constituted by memory, particularly the historic and spiritual memory recorded in Scripture. This paper will investigate the ways in which memory constitutes the Church and therefore the life of God's people. It will first examine the general significance of memory within human social and political relations. The paper will then explore the exemplary role of memory within the Christian Church. This will reveal how memory helps to incorporate the whole person into Christ, making membership in the Church both personal and corporate. Part I: Memory & Personal Existence While this inquiry will not directly focus on the nature of personhood, we can state at the outset that to be a person is to be a relational being. 1 It follows that the individual cannot be sufficiently understood when wholly abstracted from a social framework. 2 Human relations potentially include God, our neighbor, our self, and the world. The first two, God and neighbor, are of primary interest, insofar as this paper explores the nature of a social community formed by and oriented toward God. Yet, our relations with God and neighbor depend in part on how we understand ourselves and the world. Part I of this paper will explore how the faculty of memory serves as a foundation for these relations and therefore our social existence.
This is a draft of the principles of ethics from a Thomistic/Aristotelian perspective. I attempt ... more This is a draft of the principles of ethics from a Thomistic/Aristotelian perspective. I attempt to deal with the problem or moral growth through the tensions between knowledge and habit. This paper in part follows the model set in my paper on science. The complexity or moral science makes this paper itself more complex. Further because true moral science is theological, this paper draws from natural and supernatural principles.
At some point, middle sections would need editing
This paper evaluates several irreducible features of science, chiefly using a framework derived f... more This paper evaluates several irreducible features of science, chiefly using a framework derived from the works of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The insights of this paper and its general structure are based upon Peter Redpath’s presentation of Thomistic science in his course The One and the Many. The organization and identification of nearly all the following principles are therefore founded upon his synthesis. Other significant sources include Alasdair Macintyre, Armand Maurer, Walker Percy, Michael Polanyi, and William A. Wallace. Examples from the history of science, while given throughout, appear predominately in the second part of the paper.
This paper explores the role of the underlying thing in the development of the central argument o... more This paper explores the role of the underlying thing in the development of the central argument of the Metaphysics. In exploring composite being, Aristotle arrives at separate being. The underlying thing plays a crucial role in an understanding of composite being. It has two senses which are related but irreducible.
The Heythrop Journal
While Boethius's definition of the person, ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’, pl... more While Boethius's definition of the person, ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’, plays a significant role in Christian theology and anthropology, its reception is by no means uncritical. In the last hundred years, virtually every element in it has been critiqued by theologians and secular scholars. Nevertheless, its context suggests that his understanding of the person is potentially far richer than supposed. This paper places Boethius's definition of the person in its historical framework and in the context of his own thought, especially Contra Eutyches and Consolation of Philosophy, in order to demonstrate that despite shortcomings, it represents a dynamic and holistic characterisation of the person.