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“Like a Slowly Moving Censer”: Learning to Read with Newman
Philosophy
“Like a Slowly Moving Censer”: Learning to Read with Newman

Compared to my usual diet of scholarly articles and books, Newman’s writings stood out for what appeared to me as their meandering character. Unlike most contemporary works, Newman does not state upfront what he is going to say and then take the reader through the motions of a demonstration delivered blow by blow. He begins, instead, with a puzzle, or a question, that he brings before his audience; he unfolds his thinking slowly, almost searchingly, from his initial questions; he also frequently refrains from tying up his argument, leaving whatever he said simply to “air” with the reader.

Luigi Russi
Luigi Russi
January 31, 2024
11 min
Critical Notice of <em>Newman in the Story of Philosophy: The Philosophical Legacy of Saint John Henry Newman</em>
Critical Notice of Newman in the Story of Philosophy: The Philosophical Legacy of Saint John Henry Newman

Newman scholars interested in philosophy should take note of Daniel J. Pratt Morris-Chapman’s recent book, Newman in the Story of Philosophy: The Philosophical Legacy of Saint John Henry Newman.  While standard histories of philosophy tend to make no mention of Newman as a philosopher, Pratt Morris-Chapman thinks this is a mistake. This is not only because he takes Newman to have a body of philosophical work that is worthy of our attention, but because he takes Newman’s thought to have played an important role in the development and progress of philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

Science's Equivocal Crisis
Newman and Locke on the Epistemic Scope of Certitude
Newman and Locke on the Epistemic Scope of Certitude

In the scholarly literature, John Locke (1632–1704) features as a formative influence on Newman’s philosophical thought. What usually gets highlighted, for example in the Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, are Newman’s criticism of Locke’s notion of degreed assent and his call for a broader and more nuanced account of the rationality of religious belief. However, some have argued that the Grammar largely focuses on the psychological conditions of religious belief.

Oikonomia and History: Newman’s Critique of Henry Hart Milman and the Historicism of Ernst Troeltsch
Reading Newman Philosophically: An Integrative Exercise
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