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This book is the first to provide a critical history of analytic philosophy from its inception in the late nineteenth century to the present day. Quentin Smith focuses on the connections between the four leading movements in analytic philosophy—logical realism, logical positivism, ordinary language analysis, and linguistic essentialism—and corresponding twentieth-century theories of ethics and of religion. Through a critical evaluation of each school's theoretical positions, Smith counters the widespread view of analytic philosophy as indifferent to important questions about right and wrong and human meaning. He argues that analytic philosophy throughout its history has revolved around the central issues of existence, and he offers a new ethics and philosophy of religion.The author develops a positive ethical theory based on a method of ethics first formulated by Robert Adams. Smith's theory belongs to the tradition of perfectionism or self-realization ethics and builds on Thomas Hurka's recent theory of perfectionism. In his consideration of philosophy of religion, Smith concludes that there is a sound "logical argument from evil" that takes into account Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense and undermines monotheism, paving the way to a naturalistic pantheism

Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa. Stephen Ellis and Gerrie Ter Haar. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 263 pp.

This text provides a unique exploration of the relationship between religious & scientific thought. Arguing that these two modes of thought are complementary, Barnes delineates the successive stages of the co-evolution of religious & scientific thought in the West, from the preliterate culture of antiquity up to the present day

In the eighteenth and more particularly in the nineteenth century, Russia enjoyed a reputation for unusually strong currents of religious spirituality. Most frequently these mystical currents have been traced to peculiarly native traditions, such as the Eastern patristic literature and the "naturally" mystical bent of the Russian mind. The influence of Western mysticism has been minimized, if not entirely overlooked. Actually, Western mysticism and theosophy were eagerly absorbed in Russia by religiously oriented thinkers from the reign of Peter the Great on into the era of romanticism in the early nineteenth century. Finally, Western mystical sources provided the chief inspiration for the leading theologian and philosopher in late nineteenth-century Russia, Vladimir Soloviëv (1853-1900), whose thought in turn had a decisive impact on the intellectual currents of the so-called Silver Age of Russian culture before World War I.

The essay explores the connection between ecological wisdom and feminist spiri' tuality. It takes a careful look at the difficulties that feminist thinkers have had in establishing such wisdom through a tradition of ethics focused on intrinsic value, a tradition of scientific thinking in which the knower is distanced from nature, and Western religious thinking in which both the feminine and nature are taken as profane. The suggestion is made that the resources of American Naturalism may provide a truly spiritual means to the needed transformation.

Today, nobody would consider George L. Mosse as a historian of Christianity. He is well known primarily for his works on the history of fascism, nationalism and racism. However, not only in the first phase of his career, as a scholar of early modern Europe, he was precisely a historian of Christianity, but his contribution to the understanding of Christian experiences and movements in the last centuries, albeit little known, has continued to be extremely relevant. So this article a reflection about Mosse's approach to religion, and especially to Christianity, analyses the main results of his researches on the subject and their development and proposes a final appraisal of his legacy in this field of research.