Politics and Family

The chapter deals with Alamáns’s return to politics in the late 1830s after a hiatus of several years following his exoneration in the matter of Guerrero’s death. He was appointed to the Council of State (a prestigious, salaried position), and at the invitation of the president wrote reports on the vexing question of copper coinage and inflation, and on public administration under a centralist regime. His family life is discussed in some detail.

‘The More we Wonder’: Union with God, Distance from God, and the Vexing Question of ‘Necessary Reasons’ in Aquinas’s Trinitarian Theology

Scholars have long noted that there is a tension between the strength of Thomas’s arguments for the Trinity and the limits he places on natural reason. Very few, however, have noted a curious pattern: it is often within the same passage that Thomas both seems to prove the Trinity and rules out the possibility of any such proof. This paper begins by drawing out this pattern. It then proposes that this tension in Thomas’s thought might be a reflection of, and an education into, a deeper tension: the tension between union with God and distance from God that structures the beatific vision into which Thomas’s Trinitarian theology hopes to initiate us.

Origins, Bondage, Liberation, and Grace

The Bhāgavata is primarily concerned with how the jīva (self’s) bondage is perpetuated and how it is brought to an end. While the text more or less takes bondage for granted, there are several passages that discuss the important but vexing question of how we became bound in the first place. In some of these passages, the self’s bondage is described as having a beginning, and that beginning is described as a type of “fall” from an original spiritual state. As for freedom from bondage (or liberation), this is basically described as a return to that original state. Standing against this portrayal, however, are a handful of Bhāgavata passages which seem to suggest that the self’s bondage is beginningless (anādi), with no starting point in time. This chapter explores the question of whether the Bhāgavata views the bound jīva as having existed eternally in the cycle of birth and death or as having previously existed in an unbound state of eternal being, from which it fell into temporal cyclical existence.

Architecture in Series

Communist governments in Europe believed that the state should enable the provision of material goods to its people—food, clothing, and shelter among the most critical of these needs. A long-term strategy for how to achieve this goal was left unresolved in the iconic texts and statements of the international communist movement. Architects, planners, and economists had to develop their own solutions to the vexing question of housing for the masses. As part of their work, they had to respond to the new planning regimens of the command economy and institutional structures such as the Five-Year Plan. While the perils of mass production have received much scholarly attention, this essay argues that an alternative base of knowledge about architectural modernism can be mobilized from the history of communist mass housing programs. This model of architecture—referred to here as “serial architecture”—embodied both an aesthetic approach and an ethical stance that remains relevant to enduring questions of the built environment’s agency in creating and sustaining social progress.

Asymmetrism and the Magnitudes of Welfare Benefits

One vexing question for Desire Satisfactionism is this: At what time do you benefit from a satisfied desire? Recently Eden Lin has proposed an intriguing answer. On this proposal – Asymmetrism – when past-directed desires are satisfied, the time interval during which you benefit is the time of the desire; and, when future-directed desires are satisfied, the time interval during which you benefit is the time of the object. In this essay, I argue that Asymmetrism forces us to give implausible answers to a different question: To what extent does a given satisfied desire benefit you?

Economic Inequality: Economics and Theology in Dialogue

This essay is a bi-disciplinary effort in applied ethics by a theologian and an economist who both share the convictions of the Christian faith and wish to demonstrate the significance of this faith for the vexing question of economic inequality. Following the see- judge- act- model often used in public theology, it examines first conceptual matters in order to define economic inequality and undertake a limited descriptive task to get a clearer empirical picture of what economic inequality entails. There is then a moral assessment of economic inequalities (“judge”) where ethically acceptable and objectionable aspects of inequality from the economic and theological perspectives are distinguished. From these perspectives, this essay concludes with possible interventions and actions (“act”) to reduce morally unacceptable forms of economic inequality and scope for co-operative efforts between economics and public theology in this area.