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This book explores the earliest works of St. Augustine to discover the anti-dogmatic Augustine, one who gives questioning, uncertainty, and human limitations their due role in his theology. These early works are considered performances, through which multiple questions can be raised and multiple options explored, both in words and through their dramatic framework. It is shown that the very idiosyncrasy of Augustine’s arguments and his manner of pursuing them are of immense significance, which suggests possibilities for interpretation of the more idiosyncratic riches in his later works. The book is divided into three parts. Part I analyzes Augustine’s use of the genre of philosophical dialogue, why he may have chosen the genre, and what he achieves with it. Part II discusses the roles played by Augustine’s mother. Part III focuses on the dialogue, the Soliloquia.

This book provides an overview and analysis of the recent history of Christian-Muslim dialogue in the United States, and the ways in which it has been furthered and enriched since September 11, 2001. Starting with a brief history of Christian-Muslim relations, the text deals with Islam in America, models of dialogue, problems that can occur in interfaith engagement, pluralism as it is understood by Christians and Muslims, and new avenues for dialogue. The specific examples cited suggest to the reader some of the kinds of cooperative events that are taking place, as well as the variety of thinking on the part of both Christians and Muslims as to what it means to be in dialogue and to take seriously the elements of faith held by the other.

Scholarship on Plato's dialogues persistently divides its focus between the dramatic or literary and the philosophical or argumentative dimensions of the texts. But this hermeneutic division of labor is naïve, for Plato's arguments are embedded in dramatic dialogues and developed through complex, largely informal exchanges between literary characters. Consequently, it is questionable how readers can even attribute arguments and theses to the author himself. The answer to this question lies in transcending the scholarly divide and integrating the literary and philosophical dimensions of the texts. This is the task of Trials of Reason.

The study focuses on a set of fourteen so-called early dialogues, beginning with a methodological framework that explains how to integrate the argumentation and the drama in these texts. Unlike most canonical philosophical works, the early dialogues do not merely express the results of the practice of philosophy. Rather, they dramatize philosophy as a kind of motivation, the desire for knowledge of goodness, and as a discursive practice, motivated by this desire and ideally governed by reason. And they dramatize the trials to which desire and reason are subject, that is, the difficulties of realizing philosophy as a form of motivation, a practice, and an epistemic achievement. In short, Trials of Reason argues that Plato's early dialogues are as much works of metaphilosophy as philosophy itself.

This book explores the challenges that culturally plural liberal states face when they hold competing political commitments to cultural rights and sexual equality, and advances an argument for resolving such dilemmas through democratic dialogue and negotiation. Exploring recent examples of gendered cultural conflicts in South Africa, Canada, and Britain, this study shows that there is an urgent need for workable strategies to mediate the antagonisms between the cultural practices and arrangements of certain ethno-cultural and religious groups, and the norms and constitutional rights endorsed by liberal states. Yet such strategies will be successful only insofar as they can resolve conflicts without either reinforcing women’s subordination within cultural communities or unjustly dismissing calls for cultural recognition and forms of self-governance. To this end, the book develops an approach to mediating cultural tensions that takes seriously the demands for justice by cultural and religious minorities in liberal democratic states. Grounded in an argument for democratic legitimacy, this approach invokes norms of political inclusion and democratic dialogue, and highlights negotiation and compromise as the best vehicles for arriving at resolutions to conflicts of cultural value. However, the book also reconceives the basis of democratic legitimacy so as to include not merely formal expressions of political consent, but also a range of informal democratic activities that occur in the private and social spheres, from acts of cultural reinvention and subversion to outright expressions of dissent and cultural refusal.

This book presents a range or perspectives on the role of state constitutions within the context of federalism. Rejecting both the old dual federalism and the newer judicial federalism models, this book understands the generation, development, interpretation, and enforcement of constitutional norms at the national and state levels to be best conceived as constituent activities of a single, collective enterprise conducted by many actors located in many sites scattered throughout the system. The chapters in this book present a conception of national and subnational constitutional law as complementary partners in a complex, collective enterprise of constitutional self-governance. The book aims to advance an understanding of state constitutions in the broader inter-institutional process of constitutional dialogue.

This book focuses on the potential for conflict between overlapping constitutional and EU fundamental rights. When constitutional and EU rights overlap and the respective interpretations diverge, state courts are asked to follow the standard of protection defined by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The ECJ's claim to normative authority needs to be justified. This book advocates a theory of supranational judicial authority grounded in the ideal of dialogue. At the outset, it is argued that traditional approaches to constitutional conflicts based upon supremacy should be overcome. A pluralist framework for structuring the interaction between legal systems in the EU not only offers a better account of reality, but it should be welcomed normatively as well. In this context, the ideal of dialogue will contribute to a better understanding and theorizing of the interaction between national and supranational courts interpreting fundamental rights. Despite multiple and varied references to dialogue in the literature, mostly from a descriptive standpoint, there has been no thorough and rigorous account establishing its legitimating potential regarding ECJ adjudication of fundamental rights norms. This book offers a theoretical account of how the legitimacy of ECJ's authority in adjudicating fundamental rights might be grounded in the ideal of dialogue. The arguments underpinning the legitimating potential of dialogue and the prerequisites for judicial dialogue are explored. Thereafter, the implications of dialogue for the mode of judicial reasoning in interpreting fundamental rights are analyzed. Such a theory of supranational judicial authority would serve as a normative model to assess the activity of the ECJ and to improve current institutional practices.

From the simple and beautiful language of the prose tale, to the verbal fireworks of the dialogue between Job and his friends, to the haunting beauty of the poem on wisdom and the sublime poetics of the divine speeches, this book provides an intense encounter with the aesthetic resources of Hebrew verbal art. In this brilliant new study, the author illuminates the relation between the aesthetic forms of the book and the claims made by its various characters. Her innovative approach makes possible a new understanding of the unity of the book of Job; she rejects the dismantling of the book by historical criticism and the flattening of the text that characterizes certain final form readings.