Philosophy Compass is a unique philosophy journal which only publishes survey articles, pieces which aim to summarize recent work. Its aim, as editor Brian Weatherson explains, is to enable people to keep up with a vast, overspecialized, fast-moving, and only somewhat accessible world of philosophical research.
What’s more exciting – they sell the pdfs of the articles for $1.99. They’re trying to be the iTunes of philosophy.The registration process is pretty standard, and the web-based system works well, though not one tenth as slick as the iTunes interface. At $70 / year for 6 issues, I’m tempted to subscribe.
I downloaded a piece on the metaphysics of the Incarnation, by Robin Le Poidevin. On the whole, it was well done – written in plain, clear language, and fair-minded, although oddly it led with a brief discussion of “non-realist” views of the Incarnation. It seemed to me, having read much of the recent literature on this, that a number of things were missing – off the top of my head: work by Davis further pressing the kenotic strategy, Plantinga on abstract vs. concrete understandings of Christ’s “natures”, Hick’s objections to two-minds theories, Merricks on embodiment.
But there was a lot that was good – a summary of Chalcedon, a painless introduction to the relative identity strategy, Senor’s objection to the compositional model of Leftow and Stump, some philosophy of mind objections to the two-minds approach, brief discussion of how four-dimensionalism and the “extended mind” theory might be brought into play.
One problematic assertion Le Poidevin makes is that “fully entering into the human condition includes the possibility of extinction.” (p. 713) I’m not sure why anyone should think that more than the epistemic possibility of one ceasing to exist would be required for Christ sharing our lot – that is, that one can’t rule out one’s future extinction.
But on the whole, it was $1.99 well spent. If you’re a non-philosopher, or a philosopher with another specialty, looking for a path into the recent discussion of the incarnation in philosophical theology, this is a good start
