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An excellent overview of Christianity, suitable for students (and teachers!) embarking on the new GCSE and ‘A’-Level Religious Studies specifications.

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The religion of usual residents and household religious composition in England and Wales, Census 2021 data.

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The religion of usual residents and household religious composition in England and Wales, Census 2021 data.

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This page is also available in Welsh (Cymraeg) (PDF, 349KB)

The religion question is voluntary; 94.0% (56.0 million) of usual residents answered the question in 2021, an increase from 92.9% (52.1 million) in 2011.

For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as "Christian", a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3% (33.3 million) in 2011; despite this decrease, "Christian" remained the most common response to the religion question.

"No religion" was the second most common response, increasing by 12.0 percentage points to 37.2% (22.2 million) from 25.2% (14.1 million) in 2011.

There were increases in the number of people who described themselves as "Muslim" (3.9 million, 6.5% in 2021, up from 2.7 million, 4.9% in 2011) and "Hindu" (1.0 million, 1.7% in 2021, up from 818,000, 1.5% in 2011).

Wales had a greater decrease in people reporting their religion as "Christian" (14.0 percentage point decrease, from 57.6% in 2011 to 43.6% in 2021) and increase in "No religion" (14.5 percentage point increase, from 32.1% in 2011 to 46.5% in 2021) compared with England and Wales overall.

London remains the most religiously diverse region of England in 2021, with over a quarter (25.3%) of all usual residents reporting a religion other than "Christian"; the North East and South West are the least religiously diverse regions, with 4.2% and 3.2%, respectively, selecting a religion other than "Christian".

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2. Religion in England and Wales

The religion question was voluntary

The census introduced a voluntary question on religion in 2001. In the census data, religion refers to a person's religious affiliation. This is the religion with which they connect or identify, rather than their beliefs or active religious practice. As the question is voluntary, be cautious when comparing figures between different areas or between censuses because of varying response rates.

Percentages are calculated out of the overall population as opposed to out of the population who answered the religion question. This aids comparison across time and between areas, as the percentage of the population who answer the question varies.

In total, 94.0% of the overall population in England and Wales (56.0 million people) chose to answer the religion question in 2021. This is a higher percentage than in 2011, when 92.9% (52.1 million) answered the religion question and 7.1% (4.0 million) chose not to answer.

Religious composition of England and Wales

The 2021 data show that the largest changes since 2011 were for those describing their religion as "Christian" and those reporting "No religion".

Figure 1: The percentage of the population reporting "No religion" has increased

Religious composition, 2011 and 2021, England and Wales

Notes:

The base population used to calculate percentages is the overall population for England and Wales.

Download the data

As in 2011, the most common response to the religion question in England and Wales was "Christian" (46.2% of the overall population, 27.5 million people). This was the most common religious group in both England (46.3%) and in Wales (43.6%).

However, the number of people who described themselves as "Christian" decreased to less than half the population for the first time. It was a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3% in 2011 (33.3 million people). This continues the decrease since 2001, when 71.7% (37.3 million) described themselves as "Christian".

This coincided with an increase in the number of people reporting "No religion" to 37.2% (22.2 million) in 2021 from 25.2% (14.1 million) in 2011. Again, this continues the trend between 2001 and 2011, when the number of people reporting "No religion" had risen from 14.8% (7.7 million people).

There are many factors that may be contributing to the changing religious composition of England and Wales, such as differing patterns of ageing, fertility, mortality, and migration. Changes may also be caused by differences in the way individuals chose to answer the religion question between censuses.

Other religious groups

The groups shown so far all correspond to the tick-box responses for the religion question. A person could also identify their religion through the "Any other religion, write in" response option. This write-in functionality has enabled us to produce a detailed classification for religion in our Religion (detailed) in England and Wales dataset, providing insights for 58 religious groups. Further information on how write-in responses are included in the detailed classification for the ethnic group, national identity, language and religion questions can be found in our blog post How am I represented in Census 2021 data?.

Among the 405,000 (0.7% of the overall population in England and Wales) who chose to write-in a response through the "Any other religion" option were the following religions:

The largest increase was seen in those describing their religion as "Shamanism", increasing more than tenfold to 8,000 from 650 in 2011.

Of those who wrote-in a non-religious group to "Any other religion", the largest numbers were:
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3. How religious affiliation varies across England and Wales

England and Wales

In England, there were decreases in the percentage of the population identifying as "Christian" and this coincided with increases in the percentage of the population reporting "No religion" in all English regions and in Wales.

Wales had a greater decrease in people reporting their religion as "Christian" (14.0 percentage point decrease, from 57.6% in 2011 to 43.6% in 2021) and a greater increase in "No religion" (14.5 percentage point increase, from 32.1% in 2011 to 46.5% in 2021) compared with England and Wales overall.

Regions of England

London remained the most religiously diverse region of England. "Christian" was still the most common response in London (40.7%, 3.6 million of all usual residents). Over a quarter (25.3%, 2.2 million) of London's population identified with a religion other than "Christian", up from 22.6%, 1.8 million, in 2011. The next most common religious groups in London were "Muslim" (15.0%, up from 12.6% in 2011) and "Hindu" (5.1%, up from 5.0% in 2011).

Local authorities across England and Wales

Local authority statistics provide further insight into where religious groups tend to be concentrated within England and Wales.

Figure 2: Religion, 2021, local authorities in England and Wales

Source: Office for National Statistics - Census 2021

Download the data

Areas that have seen decreases in the percentage of the population describing their religion as "Christian" have generally seen increases across other response options to the religion question.

"Christian" and "No Religion" by local authority

The English local authorities with the highest percentage of people reporting their religion as "Christian" were all in areas in the North West: Knowsley (66.6%), Ribble Valley (66.4%), and Copeland (65.1%). The Welsh local authorities with the highest proportion of people describing their religion as "Christian" were the Isle of Anglesey and Flintshire (both 51.5%).

The areas of England and Wales with the highest percentage of people reporting "No religion" overall were in Wales: Caerphilly (56.7%), Blaenau Gwent (56.4%), and Rhondda Cynon Taf (56.2%). In England, Brighton and Hove had the highest percentage of the population reporting "No religion" (55.2%), and also saw a relatively large decrease in the percentage of people describing their religion as "Christian" (30.9%, from 42.9% in 2011). Wales also had the areas that saw the greatest decrease in the percentage of people describing their religion as "Christian", with Blaenau Gwent (36.5%, down from 49.9% in 2011) and Caerphilly (36.4%, down from 50.7% in 2011) again in the top two positions.

As well as being the local authority with the highest percentage of people reporting their religion as "Christian", Knowsley also experienced a large percentage increase in the number of those reporting "No religion", from 12.6% (18,000) in 2011 to 27.2% (42,000) in 2021. This increase (of 14.6 percentage points) corresponds with a 14.3 percentage point decrease in the percentage of people in Knowsley who identified as "Christian" (from 80.9% in 2011 to 66.6% in 2021).

Other religious groups by local authority

For other religious groups, the local authorities with the highest percentages of each group tended to be urban areas. As in 2011, the area with the highest percentage of the population who described themselves as "Muslim" was Tower Hamlets (39.9%, up from 38.0% in 2011) [note 1]. Other areas with high percentages of people responding as "Muslim" included Blackburn with Darwen (35.0%) and Newham (34.8%).

Harrow remained the local authority with the highest percentage of the population responding to the religion question as "Hindu" (25.8%, up from 25.3% in 2011), but Leicester, the second highest percentage, had a greater increase of 2.7 percentage points (17.9%, up from 15.2% in 2011).

The areas with both the highest percentage overall and the largest percentage increase of people describing their religion as "Sikh" was Wolverhampton (12.0%, up from 9.1% in 2011) and Sandwell (11.5%, up from 8.7%). The areas with the highest proportions of people describing their religion as "Jewish" were Hertsmere (17.0%) and Barnet (14.5%), and the area with the highest proportion of "Buddhists" was Rushmoor (4.7%).

The area with the highest percentage of people reporting "Any other religion" in 2021 was Enfield (3.1%). Enfield was also the area with the largest increase in people reporting "Any other religion" (up 2.5 percentage points, from 0.6% in 2011).

Because of an error in the processing of the 2011 Census data, the number of usual residents in the "Religion not stated " category was overestimated by a total of 62,000 for three local authorities: Camden, Islington, and Tower Hamlets. The 2011 data provided here has been corrected using published correction factors available in the 2011 Census products: Issues and corrections notice.
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4. Religion within households

For the first time, Census 2021 provides insights into religious group composition within the 17.3 million households that had more than one person (69.8% of total occupied households), in:

32.7% of households (8.1 million) all members who answered the religion question reported the same religion

20.4% of households (5.1 million) all members who answered the question reported "No religion"

13.7% of households (3.4 million) all members who answered the question reported a combination of the same religion and "No religion"

1.9% of households (460,000) all members did not answer the question

1.1% of households (285,000) at least two different religions were reported

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More detailed data and analysis on religion will be published in the coming months, alongside the release of multivariate data. Read more about our Ethnic group, national identity, language and religion analysis plans and the Release plans for Census 2021 more generally.
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Multi-religious household

Classifies households by whether members identify with the same religion, no religion, did not answer the question, or a combination of these options.

This question was voluntary and the variable includes those who answered the question alongside those who chose not to.

Religion

The religion people connect or identify with (their religious affiliation), whether or not they practise or have belief in it.

This question was voluntary, and the variable includes people who answered the question, including "No religion", alongside those who chose not to answer this question.

This variable classifies responses into the eight tick-box response options. Write-in responses are classified by their "parent" religious affiliation, including "No religion", where applicable.

Usual resident

A usual resident is anyone who on Census Day, 21 March 2021, was in the UK and had stayed or intended to stay in the UK for a period of 12 months or more, or had a permanent UK address and was outside the UK and intended to be outside the UK for less than 12 months.
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Reference date

The census provides estimates of the characteristics of all people and households in England and Wales on Census Day, 21 March 2021. It is carried out every 10 years and gives us the most accurate estimate of all the people and households in England and Wales.

We are responsible for carrying out the census in England and Wales, but will also release outputs for the UK in partnership with the Welsh Government, the National Records of Scotland (NRS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). The census in Northern Ireland was also conducted on 21 March 2021, whereas Scotland's census was moved to 20 March 2022. All UK census offices are working closely together to understand how this difference in reference dates will impact UK-wide population and housing statistics, in terms of both timing and scope.

Response rate

The overall person response rate for the census is the number of usual residents for whom individual details were provided on a returned questionnaire, divided by the estimated usual resident population.

The person response rate for Census 2021 was 97% of the usual resident population of England and Wales, and over 88% in all local authorities. Most returns (89%) were received online. The response rate exceeded our target of 94% overall and 80% in all local authorities.

Further information on question-specific response rates will be published in a separate report later this year.

Religious groups in the detailed religion classification

The counts for religious groups identified in our Religion (detailed) in England and Wales dataset are a representation of those who chose to write-in their religion. Some people may have chosen to describe a denomination of one of the tick-box responses (for example, Catholic as a denomination of Christian or Orthodox as a denomination of Jewish) through the "Any other religion" write-in response option.

Take care when comparing the religion data from Census 2021 with the detailed religion classification from the 2011 Census. In 2011, an error in the processing of census data led to the number of usual residents in the "Religion not stated" category being overestimated by a total of 62,000 for the following three local authorities combined: Camden, Islington and Tower Hamlets.

We have published corrected figures for estimates based on the tick-box classification. However, it could not be corrected for the detailed religion classification because the processing and relationships with other output variables is so complex.

For this reason, only apply comparisons for these three local authorities to the tick-box classification, using the corrected figures set out in our 2011 Census products: Issues and corrections notice.
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9. Strengths and limitations

Quality considerations, along with the strengths and limitations of Census 2021 more generally, can be found in the Quality and Methodology Information (QMI) for Census 2021. Read more about the specific quality considerations for Ethnic group, national identity, language and religion.

Further information on our quality assurance processes is provided in our Maximising the quality of Census 2021 population estimates methodology.
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Religion, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

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The religion of usual residents and household religious composition in England and Wales, Census 2021 data.

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Faith leaders warn of risk to vulnerable posed by Assisted Dying Bill

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Faith leaders warn of risk to vulnerable posed by Assisted Dying Bill

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Faith leaders warn of risk to vulnerable posed by Assisted Dying Bill | The Church of England

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster warn today of the risk to vulnerable people should Parliament back a new attempt to change the law on assisted suicide.

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Spain: Gunman euthanised before he can stand trial

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The man had begged to be euthanised after being partially paralysed in a police shootout in Spain.

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Branwen Jeffreys & Jess WarrenEducation editor

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Michaela School: Muslim student loses prayer ban challenge

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Michaela School was entitled to enforce a ban on prayer rituals, the High Court has ruled.

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A MUSLIM pupil at the Michaela Community School, a comprehensive in north London, began to pressure other Muslims girls last year to wear a headscarf or to pray in the playground. Otherwise, she said, they would be "bad" Muslims.

As a result, the students in this multifaith, multi-ethnic school drifted into factions. By trying to push her fellow Muslims towards more conservative Islamic practices, the pupil helped to fracture the student body. Praying in the playground emphasised their differences rather than their commonalities.

Faced with complaints from some students and with growing divisions, the school's solution was blunt: all visible manifestations of prayer were banned by the governors. Now that faith has been pushed into the background, the school has reported that these break-time divisions have faded away. It has "returned to normal" and is once more a "lovely and happy school".

Unlike many of the other methods that Michaela embraces as part of its strict pedagogy, however, banning prayer is ethically and legally problematic.

Michaela, primarily as a result of its vocal founder and headmistress, Katherine Birbalsingh, has courted controversy since it was established in 2009. Its authoritarian approach forbids pupils' gathering in groups greater than four, orders them to walk mutely in single file in the corridors between lessons, and requires them to deliver poetry by rote before the lunch break. But with these sacrifices come rewards. Michaela may be based in one of the most deprived boroughs in London, with 25 per cent of its cohort on free school meals, but its exam results put many fee-paying elite schools to shame. The consequence is that parents flock to it and pupils laud it.

YET, in trying to prohibit prayer in school, and in attempting to adopt an ostensibly secular approach, Ms Birbalsingh and the governors may have crossed a line. A Muslim student at the school has filed a claim against it, alleging that the ban on prayer in the playground discriminates against Muslims.

Unlike Christians, who are usually not mandated to pray in any particular way or at any particular time, most practising Muslims have prescribed times and forms of prayer. Christian students who wish to pray can still do so; they can sit quietly in the playground without there being any visible manifestation of prayer. But Muslim students cannot. Prayer mats are forbidden at the school, as is prostrating themselves on blazers (as some chose to do for a time), and nor is a chapel or quiet prayer room provided. Michaela's governors - who preside over a Muslim-majority school - may have had no intent to discriminate, but that does not preclude there being discrimination.

Indirect discrimination such as this may be regrettable, but regrettable does not mean unlawful. Few rights are absolute; most, including freedom of religion, exist on a spectrum. Michaela - self-evidently, given its majority-Muslim cohort - does not prohibit students' holding any religious belief (or none); nor does it stop its students from displaying outward signs of that belief: students are free to wear a headscarf or a cross or a kippah. They can be a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. What they cannot do is make a visible display of devotion that goes with that faith during the school day.

Compromises such as this are ubiquitous and necessary. Not many would accept a Muslim student's interrupting lessons to conduct noon-day prayers, or a Roman Catholic student's doing so to pray the Angelus. In schools - particularly secular ones - the priority is delivering a curriculum and educating the pupils, not addressing the state of their souls. But, while the school may not need to aid a student's religious belief positively, it also has an obligation not to muzzle their religious belief unnecessarily either.

What the compromise hinges on is what it means to be necessary. Not only does any infringement on a right need to be underpinned by a good reason, but any limitation must go no further than is needed to fulfil that reason. In this instance, Michaela's motivation is clearly valid. Allowing demonstrative prayer during recess and break time created division, upsetting the harmonious interfaith character of the school. Some Muslim girls felt pressured into adopting more conservative Islamic practices, such as wearing a headscarf, or into participating in group prayer. Banning open expressions of faith resolved this.

IT IS difficult, however, to imagine that in a school as rigorous and disciplined as Michaela, such an absolute approach was necessary. The school's reputation is rooted in controlling and limiting unruly and disruptive behaviour. For a single girl (or even a number of them) to be able to alter other students' behaviour so effectively that the only solution was to ban prayer outright would suggest either that she is astonishingly precocious or that Michaela's staff aren't all that they are cracked up to be. Forcing students to adopt religious practices is little more than bullying, and Michaela should have methods in place to deal with that. Prayer was not the issue here.

Absent Michaela's reputation and notoriety, this case would have been kept to the back pages, if it made the press at all. Instead, it has leapt to the front pages of national broadsheets. It is not difficult to imagine that one of the school's reasons for taking such a hard-line approach was to spark another battle in the culture war, showing itself as being at the forefront (as if there were any doubt) of the campaign for a conservative, traditional school system.

Regardless of the ultimate motivations, however, this may be a case where Birbalsingh has pushed Michaela's rigour too far. Limiting students' religious freedom in a school setting might be lawful, legitimate, and necessary. Banning their freedom to pray outright? Less so.

Nicholas Reed Langen is a writer on legal and constitutional affairs, a former Re:Constitution Fellow (2021-22), and editor of the LSE Public Policy Review.

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Adopting a rigidly secular approach is problematic, argues Nicholas Reed Langen

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When Alabama's Supreme Court defined frozen embryos as living children, the shock and confusion was immediate. Major hospitals pulled fertility services and would-be parents scrambled for clarity on what would happen next.

The debate over reproductive rights in America has long been driven, in part, by opposition to abortion from Christian groups - but this ruling has divided that movement and ignited debate about the role of theology in US lawmaking.

Margaret Boyce is soft-spoken, a private person, and certainly not - in her words - a "crier".

She had been taking fertility drugs for 10 months and was days away from her first appointment for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) when the justices of Alabama's top court upended her life.

Their ruling, which prompted many fertility clinics to pause their work, has left her turning to the Bible daily for comfort.

"The journey to becoming parents is different for every single couple - mentally, emotionally and financially," she said, welling up.

"This ruling has added more unnecessary anxiety to something that is already so hard."

For a devout Christian like Margaret, the ruling - given its consequences for what she sees clearly as a process to create life - is even more difficult to comprehend.

"God," she said, "tells you to go forth and be fruitful and multiply."

IVF is a difficult and lengthy treatment, involving the fertilisation of a woman's eggs with sperm in a lab to create a microscopic embryo. The fertilised embryo is then transferred into a woman's uterus, where it may create a pregnancy - but a successful outcome is not guaranteed.

Embryos are often frozen or eventually destroyed as part of IVF, which accounts for around 2% of US pregnancies.

The Alabama court ruled that an existing law - wrongful death of a minor - covers not just foetuses in the womb, but embryos held in a lab or storage facility too.

It did not explicitly restrict or ban IVF, but it has still created deep uncertainty for clinics and medical workers who handle embryos and fear prosecution. In recent days the office of the state's attorney general said he had "no intention" of pursuing criminal charges against IVF clinics - but one clinic told the BBC this statement lacked detail and did not quell their fears.

While the majority of the justices rooted their ruling in law, Chief Justice Tom Parker also had a higher authority in mind, repeatedly invoking scripture in explaining his decision.

The people of Alabama, he wrote in a concurring opinion, had adopted a "theologically-based view of the sanctity of life" in their state constitution.

Delving into religious sources from classic Christian theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas and also a modern conservative Christian manifesto, he concluded that "even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory".

Some anti-abortion groups celebrated the explicit use of scripture in Justice Parker's opinion to justify what for them was a momentous decision.

Tony Perkins, president of evangelical activist group the Family Research Council, described it as "a beautiful defence of life".

But the chief justice's theocratic justification has left Margaret puzzled. She doesn't believe in abortion but she also struggles to see a frozen embryo as a living person. For her, life begins with a heartbeat.

"Nobody understands more that an embryo is not a child," she said, before taking a pause, "than the person yearning for that embryo to be a child."

US courts do sometimes make decisions that seem to be based on religious premises, said Meredith Bender, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law.

But, she added, "rarely do you see it as explicitly stated" as in the chief justice's opinion.

The ruling was however "not an outlier" for a conservative court in a red state, said Kelly Baden, the vice president for public policy at the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion legislation across the US.

"We do see that many elected officials and judges alike are often coming at this debate from a highly religious lens," she said.

While the Alabama state Supreme Court is not appointed by the US president, more than 200 judges were appointed by Donald Trump to federal courts during his four-year term, winning him lasting support from American evangelicals.

Over four years in office he was able to nominate three new justices to the nine-member Supreme Court - all of whom sided with the majority in striking down the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had guaranteed a federal right to abortion.

Since that decision in 2022 re-opened a national battle over reproductive rights, courts in Missouri have quoted Biblical teachings to justify restricting abortion rights and a Trump-appointed judge in Texas who previously worked for a Christian legal organisation tried to impose a nationwide ban on Mifepristone, a commonly used abortion pill.

While many Republican politicians comfortably agree with such rulings, restrictions on abortion imposed by conservative courts have proved a potent campaign issue for Democrats in recent elections, including the 2022 midterms.

The Alabama decision, made by Republican judges and affecting fertility treatments widely supported by the US public, went one step further, prompting immediate fear of a political backlash in a presidential election year.

Any sign of IVF being endangered could worsen the anger that's already cost Republicans since the fall of Roe v Wade, especially among suburban women and those who are uncomfortable with abortion bans.

Donald Trump himself, the clear frontrunner in the Republican nomination race, came out strongly in support of IVF, calling on Alabama lawmakers to preserve access to the treatment. His last remaining rival Nikki Haley at first appeared to support the ruling, but then backtracked.

"It's a win philosophically for the pro-life movement because it carries on the pro-life recognition of unborn life," said Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition.

"But you get into a very difficult situation, where you have this medical procedure that's accepted by most people, and then how do you deal with it? That's the dilemma.

"I agree with the opinion overall - I think it's well written opinion from the legal side and from the medical side," he added.

"But I think the pro-life community in general supports IVF, and I've known and worked with many people who have had children via IVF. And at the same time, they think abortion is wrong. This issue is so different from abortion, but it has to do with life."

For patients in the deep-south state, the last week has been one of panicked phone calls to clinics, emails to local lawmakers and a rush by some to try and transfer frozen embryos out of the state.

Rodney Miller, 46, and his wife Mary Leah, 41, spent a decade trying to have children, before IVF allowed them to give birth to a set of twins 18 months ago, who were adopted as frozen embryos.

He said he "thanks the Lord for the advances in science and medicine" that made that possible.

The couple are now going through the process again, and waiting to see if two embryos transplanted this week will develop into a pregnancy.

"This is not a win [for the Christian right]," says Rodney, who works for Carrywell, an organisation that supports families through infertility.

"It's the classic case of you won the battle but lost the war. Fewer children will be born because of this unless things change.

"How did we become a state where if you want to terminate a pregnancy, you have to leave the state and if you want to initiate a pregnancy, via IVF you [also] have to leave the state?"

Whether the ruling in Alabama influences decisions elsewhere is an open question.

Foetal personhood bills, which enshrine the idea that life begins at conception, have been introduced in more than a dozen states. But these bills, while pushing the idea that a foetus or embryo is a person, don't explicitly relate that to the context of IVF, said Kelly Baden of the Guttmacher Institute.

The Alabama ruling - with its implications that go far beyond abortion access - does not therefore constitute a trend, she said.

Alabama family lawyer Ashleigh Meyer Dunham, who has used IVF herself, has been working with a large number of cases affected by the ruling. She said she was "terrified" that fertility patients in other states could eventually be affected.

"I think the biggest concerns are that people elsewhere forget about us and they think, 'Oh they're just the conservative state, and they're all country bumpkins. Don't worry it will never happen here.'

"And the next thing you know, it is happening in other states that are ultra-conservative."

Because the Alabama ruling involves an interpretation of state, not federal law, it is unlikely to reach the US Supreme Court. Currently a bill is going through the state house in Alabama, introduced by Democrats, which would aim to effectively pause the ruling and allow treatments to resume as before.

Republicans are expected to propose their own bill. If they do, they have to find a way to balance a divided religious constituency, with some celebrating the court's ruling and others disturbed by its potential implications for IVF.

Margaret is praying that lawmakers find a solution.

"I'm not very outspoken, I keep myself to myself. But if any of my friends or family heard that I was sending emails to every single representative and senator, I think they would be shocked."

She takes a breath.

"But this has got me fired up. It is all I can think about now."

Alex Lederman contributed reporting from Alabama. Additional research from Kayla Epstein in New York.

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Alabama IVF ruling divides devout Christians: 'Fewer children will be born'

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After Alabama rules that frozen embryos are children, some fertility patients pray that lawmakers find a solution.

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How could assisted dying laws change across the UK?

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Separate bills to let terminally ill people end their life are being considered at Westminster and in Scotland.

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Voters in the Republic of Ireland have overwhelmingly voted against amending the Irish Constitution.

Proposals to alter wording in the constitution to include families which are not based on marriage were defeated with 67.7% voting 'no'.

A second proposed change on the wording around the role of women in the home was defeated by a higher margin with 73.9% of voters rejecting it.

It was the highest ever no vote percentage in an Irish referendum.

The first result announced on Saturday evening was in the family referendum.

The highest 'no' votes came from Donegal where 80% voted no on family and 84% voted no on care.

Only Dún Laoghaire, south-east of Dublin voted narrowly in favour of changing the definition of a family.

After a long wait, Waterford was the final constituency to declare its result for the care referendum.

In the care referendum, on the role of women in the home, 1,114,620 people voted no, compared with 393,053 yes voters, or 26.07% of the total.

There was a turnout of 44.4% in the referendums, which were held on Friday.

'Defeated comprehensively'

Earlier, Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar said "it was clear" that two referendums have been defeated.

Mr Varadkar said it was clear both amendments had been "defeated comprehensively on a respectable turnout".

He said the Irish government accepted the result and will "respect it fully."

"As head of government and on behalf of the government, we accept responsibility for the result," he said.

"It was our responsibility to convince the majority of people to vote 'Yes' and we clearly failed to do so."

Meanwhile, tánaiste (Irish deputy prime minister) Micheál Martin said he fully accepted the decision of the Irish people.

"On this occasion, the majority clearly were not persuaded as to the merits of the two proposals put forward," he said.

A clear result from the start- Darran Marshall, BBC News NI - in Dublin

The courtyard at Dublin Castle has witnessed many historic moments.

Over recent years it was where crowds gathered to celebrate momentous changes to the country's constitution - including referenda on same sex marriage and abortion reform.

There were no such scenes today. No big crowds. No celebrations. With the exception of a handful of Aontú supporters the courtyard was desolate.

Within minutes of the ballot boxes opening this morning it was clear the electorate had rejected both proposals to change the constitution.

The only question would be, what would be the margin of defeat for the government and the main opposition parties?

The Taoiseach was here for a short time and spoke to the media in a room inside Dublin Castle.

The Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald also spoke to waiting media but her comments were interrupted by a few hecklers.

Earlier on Saturday Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan who campaigned for 'yes' said the result would be respected.

Mr Ryan said: "It's the voice of the people and in our constitution, it's the people who are sovereign.

"It's they who decide what goes into our constitution."

Mr Ryan, who was at the RDS count centre in Dublin said: "If it is a no vote in both, we will have to respect that."

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald was jeered by a small crowd and called "a traitor to the Irish people" as she arrived at Dublin Castle.

Her party advocated for a "yes-yes" vote but she said the government had "come up short in terms of the caring wording" and there had been a "lack of clarity".

Ms McDonald said the people of Ireland had spoken "very, very definitively" but insisted her party were still "very much" in touch with the public.

"They disregarded the citizens assembly, they didn't consult with opposition or with other stakeholders. They didn't collaborate, and they failed to convince," she said.

Government misjudged mood of electorate - McDowell

Senator Michael McDowell, who opposed changes to the Irish constitution, said the results suggested a "no-no substantial margin right across the country".

Mr McDowell a previous tánaiste (deputy prime minister) and justice minister said: "It seems like the government misjudged the mood of the electorate and put before them proposals which they didn't explain, proposals which could have serious consequences."

'Virtue signalling' - Tóibín

Aontú Leader Peadar Tóibín who also backed the 'no' campaign, described the amendments as government "virtue signalling" with vague language.

He added: "The Sinn Féin leadership look marooned from their former support base, from their voters and that's a very dangerous place for Mary Lou and the Sinn Féin leadership to be."

Watershed moment for disabled citizens - Clonan

Senator Tom Clonan described the wording in the care referendum as "toxic" to the fundamental human rights of disabled citizens.

Mr Clonan, who has a 22-year-old disabled son, said he hoped there would now be a conversation about "ableism".

He said a 'yes' vote would have brought Ireland into international disrepute.

"The state has been abject in its treatment of disabled citizens. We now have an opportunity to debate that going forward, and find ways to really bring ourselves in line with the rest of Europe and how we vindicate the rights of disabled citizens.

"I'm hoping that this is a watershed moment for disabled citizens."

What were voters asked about family?

Those taking part in Friday's referendum were presented with two ballots - one white and one green - and were asked to vote yes (Tá) or no (Níl).

The white ballot asked if voters accepted or rejected the Thirty-Ninth Amendment of the Constitution Bill - otherwise known as the Family amendment.

The Irish constitution currently offers legal protections to the family unit, but ties the concept of family to the institution of marriage.

The amendment sought to expand the constitutional definition of family to include other "durable relationships" such as unmarried couples and single parent families.

What is the Care amendment?

The green ballot asked voters to accept or reject the Fortieth Amendment of the Constitution Bill - or the Care amendment.

Currently the Irish constitution - or Bunreacht na hÉireann - says mothers should not have to go out into the workplace to the neglect of their "duties in the home".

It also states that women's "life within the home" is a source of support to the state which is necessary for the "common good".

The amendment asked for both of these articles to be deleted and a new text to be added saying the state "shall strive to support" the provision of family-based care.

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Irish referendums: Voters reject changes to family and care definition

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Voters in the Republic of Ireland reject proposals to alter the wording on family and care.

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As Canada prepares to expand its euthanasia law to include those with mental illness, some Canadians - including many of the country's doctors - question whether the country's assisted death programme has already moved too far, too fast.

Dr Madeline Li can recall the first patient she helped die, about one month after Canada first legalised euthanasia in 2016. "I remember just how surreal it was," she said.

A psychiatrist at Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital, she recalled checking on her patient that day, asking if she had the right music and final meal, and if she was sure she wanted to go ahead. The patient, in her mid-60s and suffering from ovarian cancer, said she was.

Five minutes later, the woman was dead.

"It was like stepping off a cliff, that first one," Dr Li said. "Then time passes and it normalises."

She has since overseen hundreds of medically assisted dying cases.

Dr Li stressed repeatedly that a physician's personal opinions should not influence how they assess a patient for assisted death. But she has significant concerns about the expansion of Canada's euthanasia and assisted dying programme beyond the terminally ill. She is not alone.

Since 2016, Canada's medical assistance in dying programme - known by its acronym 'Maid' - has been available for adults with terminal illness. In 2021, the law was changed to include those with serious and chronic physical conditions, even if that condition was non-life threatening.

This year, it is expected to change again to include some Canadians with mental illness.

That planned expansion has ignited controversy over the assisted death programme as a whole and raised concerns that it may be too easy for the vulnerable to die in Canada. Those fears have been stoked by a recent string of reports suggesting that for some, death has been used as a stopgap for a broken social safety net.

"Making death too ready a solution disadvantages the most vulnerable people, and actually lets society off the hook," Dr Li said. "I don't think death should be society's solution for its own failures."

Medically assisted death arrived in Canada through the courts. In 2015, the country's Supreme Court ruled that banning assisted suicide deprived Canadians of their dignity and autonomy. It gave Parliament one year to draft legislation.

The 2016 law legalised assisted death for Canadians aged 18 and older with a serious and irreversible condition, whose death was "reasonably foreseeable".

In that first year, a little over 1,000 people received an assisted death, a number that has grown every year since. In 2021, the most recent figures available, there were 10,064 Maid cases, accounting for 3.3% of all deaths in Canada.

Opinion polls indicate Canadians broadly support access to at least some form of assisted suicide.

Death for the terminally ill can often be cruel and slow, physicians told the BBC, with the patient's final days spent slipping in and out of a drugged consciousness. The existence of assisted dying in these cases, doctors said, became a salve.

"Almost every single time I deem a patient eligible [for Maid], that patient stops worrying about how they're going to die and starts wondering how they're going to live," said Dr Stefanie Green, president of the Canadian Association of Maid Assessors and Providers.

"It is objectively therapeutic to give someone the option,"she said.

Canada's expansion to Maid last year followed another court decision after two people from Montreal with degenerative diseases launched a legal challenge.

The ruling put Canada in the company of just a handful of countries, including Belgium and the Netherlands, that allow medically assisted dying for those without a terminal illness.

The change included people whose sole medical condition was mental illness, but with a caveat: psychiatric Maid applications would be delayed for two years, while the federal government set up appropriate safeguards.

The looming expansion has attracted intense scrutiny and, for some, cast doubt on the country's assisted dying programme for the non-terminally ill.

Early critics of the programme include three United Nations human rights experts, who wrote to the federal government in 2021 warning that the expanded law could devalue the lives of disabled people by implying that a serious disability was worse than death.

A number of reports suggesting that some Canadians have opted for assisted death, at least in part because they could not afford adequate housing, have also prompted fears it could be used as a solution for societal challenges - that someone may seek out Maid because of poverty, lack of housing, or extreme loneliness.

"Leaving people to make this choice [to die] because the state is failing to fulfil their fundamental human rights is unacceptable," said Marie-Claud Landry, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission in a statement in May.

Others have pointed to what they describe as the programme's flimsy safeguards.

"The Maid law is very Canadian. It was left so vague it could offend nobody," Dr Li said.

The law, she said, "is not specific enough to protect people."

In 2019, 61-year-old Alan Nichols opted for an assisted death after he was admitted to a British Columbia hospital for suicide watch.

In the days before his death, he was agitated, confused, and refused to wear the cochlear implant that helped him hear, his sister-in-law Trish Nichols told a Senate committee last year. On his application for Maid, the stated reason was "hearing loss".

"Alan did not have a valid diagnosis for Maid," Mrs Nichols said. "Would you feel safe now, bringing your suicidal loved one to seek medical care for recovery when there are no oversight or stringent safeguards surrounding a procedure that kills people?"

Then last autumn, authorities launched an investigation after at least four veterans were prompted to consider Maid by a Veterans Affairs case worker, who now no longer works for the department. In one instance, veteran and paralympian Christine Gauthier said she was offered the option by the employee after she asked for a wheelchair ramp to be installed in her home.

The federal government says that the expanded law protects vulnerable Canadians while respecting patient autonomy. Applicants with grievous and incurable but non-life threatening conditions must be assessed by two separate clinicians and undergo a 90-day waiting period.

And proponents of assisted dying insist the existing guardrails are strong enough.

"I see the safeguards in place, I see them working," said Dr Green.

"I'm not naïve, I get it, lack of support in our community - disability support, income support, housing support - these things contribute to a person's suffering," she said. "But in and of itself, if that's what is motivating people to apply, they will not be found eligible."

Derryck Smith, a Vancouver psychiatrist and board member for Dying with Dignity, told the BBC that the standards ensure that only a small fraction of Canadians without terminal diagnoses would be eligible for Maid. "Look at the statistics," he said.

In 2021, the average age of a Maid recipient was 76. Eighty percent had received palliative care and 65% had cancer.

But planned inclusion of mental health has prompted yet another set of concerns. Last month, facing mounting criticism, the Canadian government said it would seek to pause the inclusion of mental illness - scheduled for this March - to allow for additional study.

"We want to be prudent, we want to move in a step-by-step way, so we don't make mistakes," federal Justice Minister David Lametti said.

Much of the controversy is focused on the "irremediability" of a mental illness - meaning if it's incurable - and how that could be assessed. For a person to be eligible for Maid in Canada, their condition must be considered irremediable.

The Canadian Mental Health Association has warned it is "not possible" to determine whether any particular case of mental illness is incurable and strongly opposes the coming expansion. Some leading psychiatrists, like University of Toronto's Karandeep Sonu Gaind, have said the odds of predicting curability are worse than a coin flip.

It is now unclear when Canada's assisted dying law will be expanded to include mental illness. Mr Lametti did not say how long the extension would be, but there is no indication the pause is anything but temporary, as such a move would likely be deemed unconstitutional by the courts.

"We are listening to what we are hearing and being responsive," Mr Lametti said last month. "We know we need to get this right."

Dr Li has celebrated the government's decision to delay, saying healthcare providers may now have a chance to set up adequate safeguards.

"The time for debating 'should we do this' is over," she said. "What we need to start talking about is when and how we're going to do it right."

If you want to talk to someone about the issues raised in this piece, you can call the US Suicide and Crisis Lifeline on 988.

T he BBC Action Line has links to organisations that can offer support and advice for people in the UK.

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Who can die? Canada wrestles with euthanasia for the mentally ill

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As Canada prepares to expand its euthanasia law to include those with mental illness, some Canadians - including many of the country's doctors - question whether the country's assisted death programme has already moved too far, too fast. Dr Madeline Li can recall the first patient she helped die, about one month after Canada first legalised euthanasia in 2016.

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First woman pastor in Holy Land ordained

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Palestinian Sally Azar became the region’s first female church leader at an event in Jerusalem.

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A range of essays is taken from A* through to D to try and produce a clear contrast between the best essays, and essays which fall off top grade. Students and teachers will find the examples and comments invaluable.

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Model Essays for OCR GCE Religious Studies: H573 Philosophy of Religion, Ethics & Christian Thought

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A.J. Ayer (Author), Ben Rogers (Introduction)

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Language, Truth and Logic (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Language, Truth and Logic (Penguin Modern Classics)

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A clear, well-written guide to philosophical thinking about God. Starting with the question of what it means to say we believe in God, and looking at the nature of truth, Peter Vardy goes on to examine ideas about God and their influence on Christian thinking.

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A clear, well-written guide to philosophical thinking about God. Starting with the question of what it means to say we believe in God, and looking at the nature of truth, Peter Vardy goes on to examine ideas about God and their influence on Christian thinking.

Peter Vardy takes the reader through the arguments, using amusing illustrations and analogies. He writes for the lay person or student, not assuming any specialist knowledge, and not imposing any particular view.

'This is about the best elementary textbook in the philosophy of God I have come across... an extremely useful book.'
Hugh Meynell, The Tablet

'This is a masterpiece of coherence. Step by step the reader is led clearly and humorously through the philosophical maze which confuses our thinking about God.'
Linda Smith, Head of Religious Education, King's College, London

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The term "religious language" refers to statements or claims made about God or gods. Here is a typical philosophical problem of religious language. If God is infinite, then words used to describe finite creatures might not adequately describe God. For example, is God good in the same sense that Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan is good? This difficulty challenges us to articulate the degree that attributes used for finite beings can be used for God and what these attributes mean when they describe God. The ambiguity in meaning with respect to the terms predicated of God is the "problem of religious language" or the "problem of naming God." These predications could include divine attributes, properties, or actions. Since the doctrines of the divine in Eastern religious traditions differ radically from the doctrines of the Abrahamic traditions, the problem of religious language has not been accorded much attention in Eastern philosophy.

The problem of religious language is worrisome to practitioners of the Abrahamic religious traditions because it has the potential to undermine those traditions. All three faiths proclaim truths about God in written texts, commentary traditions, and oral teachings. In fact, speech about God is essential to both personal praxis and organized celebration in these traditions. Without adequate solution to the problem of religious language, human speech about God is called into question. Without the ability to speak about God and to understand the meaning of what is spoken, the Abrahamic faiths are vulnerable to the criticism that their sacred texts and teachings are unintelligible.

The problem of religious language also provides a challenge for philosophers of religion. If there is no adequate solution to the problem of religious language, large discussions in the domain of philosophy of religion will also be rendered unintelligible. For example, philosophers of religion debate the nature of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. These claims about God would be rendered unintelligible if human speech about God is impossible. Thus, the problem of religious language is a philosophical problem that must be solved in order to provide a framework for understanding claims about God in both the house of worship and the academy.

Table of Contents

1. What Generates the Problem of Religious Language?

2. Solutions to the Problem

1. Statements about God are Meaningless

2. Other Possible Solutions: An Overview

3. Conclusion

4. References and Further Reading

1. What Generates the Problem of Religious Language?

In contemporary discussions, it is not the question of God's existence that generates the problem of religious language. If God does not exist, any attempt to describe God will be an inaccurate description of reality. Discussions about religious language attempt to articulate how one could speak of God if, in fact, God exists. The problem of religious language is generated by the traditional doctrine of God in the Abrahamic traditions. Since God is thought to be incorporeal, infinite, and timeless, the predicates we apply to corporeal, finite, temporal creatures would not apply to God.

The problem of religious language is also generated by the medieval doctrine of divine simplicity, which claims that God does not have any intrinsic accidental properties. Intrinsic properties are distinguished from Cambridge properties, such that the acquisition or loss of a Cambridge property by a subject does not entail a change in that subject, while the acquisition or loss of an intrinsic property by a subject entails a change in that subject. Moreover, accidental properties are distinguished from essential properties such that if a subject were to acquire or lose an accidental property, the subject would still be a member of its species. However, if a subject were to acquire a new essential property or lose an essential property, that subject would no longer be a member of its species. Thus, statements such as, "God is P," where P is an intrinsic accidental property would be ruled out by divine simplicity. For example, the statement, "Kofi Annan is good," means that some property goodness is a property of Kofi. When one says, "God is good," it would appear that this statement means that some property goodness is a property of God. But if the doctrine of divine simplicity is true, it is impossible that God have the intrinsic accidental property of goodness. Rather, God is goodness. That is, God's essence includes goodness and God is identical with his essence. Consequently, whenever someone applies a positive attribute to God they are speaking falsely, for God does not have properties in the way that creatures have properties. Although divine simplicity is a doctrine associated with medieval thinkers, it has been defended in the twentieth century by Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, among others.

2. Solutions to the Problem

Historically, there have been at least four different solutions to the problem of religious language. Although no single solution has been widely accepted by the philosophical community, some of the solutions have fallen into disrepute.

a. Statements about God are Meaningless

Some philosophers have argued that statements about God do not have truth-values and are thus meaningless or unintelligible. These claims are derived from the views of the Vienna Circle, a group of early twentieth century logical empiricists who developed a test for the truth-value of statements known as Verificationism.

Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) argued that the only way one could be certain of a statement's truth or falsity was by verifying those statements through perceptions, observations, or experience. He offers the following example of the process by which a statement could be verified:

Let us take the statement P1: "This key is made of iron." There are many ways of verifying this statement: for example,: I place the key near a magnet; then I perceive that the key is attracted.

Here the deduction is made in this way: Premises: P1: "This key is made of iron"; The statement to be examined. P2: "If an iron thing is placed near a magnet, it is attracted;" this is a physical law, already verified.

P3: "This object - a bar - is a magnet;" statement already verified.

P4: "The key is placed near the bar;" this is now directly verified by our observation.

From these four premises we can deduce the conclusion: P5: "The key will now be attracted by the bar."

This statement is a prediction which can be examined by observation. If we look, we either observe the attraction or we do not. In the first case we have found a positive instance, an instance of verification of the statement P1 under consideration; in the second case we have a negative instance, an instance of disproof of P1. (Carnap 1966, 208).

Having established the principle of verification, Carnap then argues that metaphysical assertions such as, "The principle of the world is water," cannot be verified. (Ibid. 210). Since metaphysical assertions cannot be verified, they are meaningless. One cannot assess the truth-value of a metaphysical assertion because such assertions cannot be empirically verified.

A.J. Ayer (1910-1989) agreed with Carnap, and thus inferred that since all statements about God cannot be verified, they too are meaningless, "But the notion of a person whose essential attributes are non-empirical is not an intelligible notion at all. We may have a word which is used as if it names this 'person,' [God] but, unless the sentences in which it occurs express propositions which are empirically verifiable, it cannot be said to symbolize anything." (Ayer 1946, 144). Thus, on the basis of Verificationism, statements about God do not have truth-values that can be verified and, thus, are unintelligible expressions. So at least one solution to the problem of religious language is to claim that statements about God are unintelligible.

But Verificationism was challenged by philosophers such as Alonzo Church and Richard Swinburne and largely abandoned in the twentieth century. A.J. Ayer identified and defended a "weak principle of verification" in his seminal paper, "The Principle of Verifiability." He admitted that empirical propositions are not conclusively verifiable, but argued that in order for a claim to be factual, and thus to have its truth-value determined, it must be verifiable by some possible observations. (Ayer 1936, 199). While Ayer didn't specify exactly what those possible observations must be, he argued that they need to be the kinds of observations that could verify an assertion.

In response, Richard Swinburne argues that the premises defending weak Verificationism are false. He offers the following example of an argument in defense of weak Verificationism: "It is claimed that a man could not understand a factual claim unless he knew what it would be like to observe it to hold or knew which observations would count for or against it; from which it follows that a statement could not be factually meaningful unless there could be observational evidence which would count for or against it." (Swinburne 2000, 151).

Swinburne then argues that the premise of the above argument is false, since one could understand a statement if one understands the words forming that statement and if those words are organized in a grammatically significant format. Thus, there could be factual statements that do not have evidence either for or against them and one could understand them. Consequently, metaphysical assertions invoking God and his properties cannot be ruled out as meaningless by weak Verificationism.

Ayer modified his principle of verification for the second edition of his book, Language, Truth and Logic, as follows:

A statement is directly verifiable if it is either itself an observation-statement, or is such that in conjunction with one or more observation-statements it entails at least one observation-statement which is not deducible from these other premises alone; and I propose to say that a statement is indirectly verifiable if it satisfies the following conditions: first, that in conjunction with certain other premises it entails one or more directly verifiable statements which are not deducible from these other premises alone; and secondly, that these other premises do not include any statement that is not either analytic, or directly verifiable, or capable of being independently established as indirectly verifiable. (Ayer 1946, 13).

In a review of the second edition, Alonzo Church argued that even according to Ayer's revised principle of verification, any statement whatsoever or its negation is verifiable:

For let O1, O2, O3 be three "observation-statements" (or "experiential propositions") such that no one of the three taken alone entails any of the others. Then using these we may show of any statement S whatever that either it or its negation is verifiable, as follows. Let - O1 and - S be the negations of O1 and S respectively. Then (under Ayer's definition) - O1 O2 v O3- S is directly verifiable, because with O1 it entails O3. Moreover S and - O1 O2 v O3- S together entail O2. Therefore (under Ayer's definition) S is indirectly verifiable - unless it happens that - O1 O2 v O3- S alone entails O2 , in which case - S and O3 together entail O2 , so that - S is directly verifiable. (Church 1949, 53).

Church's objection was so devastating, that Ayer's definition of verifiability from the second edition of his book was largely abandoned. Despite repeated attempts by various thinkers such as Kai Neilson to reformulate a principle of verification successfully, Verificationism has been continually rejected as an inadequate methodology. As Ruth Weintraub points out in a recent paper, almost no one defends Verificationism in the twenty-first century. (Weintraub 2003, 83).

b. Other Possible Solutions: An Overview

There are at least three solutions to the problem of religious language other than the view that statements about God are meaningless. The first solution argues that when terms are used to describe God and his attributes, those terms are equivocal with respect to what they mean in reference to God and what they mean in reference to creatures. Consequently, this solution would argue that God is not good in the same sense in which Kofi is good; God's goodness is entirely different from the goodness of a creature. Despite this tremendous difference in kind, God can be spoken of by human beings through negations. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) (1135-1204) is one of the most famous proponents of this doctrine. He argued for this position in his Guide for the Perplexed. His view has been defended in the twentieth century by, among others, Harry Austryn Wolfson (1887-1974) and Kenneth Seeskin (1947- ).

The second solution argues that when terms are used to describe God and his attributes, those terms are univocal with respect to what they mean in reference to God and what they mean in reference to creatures. This approach would argue that God is good in the same sense in which Kofi is good. In the contemporary literature William Alston argues that there are some concepts that can be applied univocally to God and to human beings, but he rejects a completely univocal solution.

The third solution argues that when terms are used to describe God and his attributes, those terms are used analogously. This solution argues that God is good in an analogous sense to Kofi's goodness. "Good" applied to both God and to Kofi would signify the same thing, but in different modes. That is, when "good" is applied to Kofi it picks out a property of Kofi, but when "good" is applied to God, it refers to the unity that is God's essence and not to an individual property. This approach provides a middle position between an equivocal solution and a univocal solution, since terms used analogously aren't entirely equivocal nor are they entirely univocal; terms used analogously signify the same thing but in different modes. This is the approach of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). He defends this position in his Summa theologiae as well as his Summa contra Gentiles. The analogical approach as been defended in the contemporary literature by a number of philosophers, including Ralph McInerny (1929-).

i. Equivocal Language

Maimonides, like Aquinas, is committed to the doctrine of divine simplicity, as it is described in Section 1 above. It is for this reason that he rejects affirmative attributes with respect to God, with some exceptions. Although it is accurate to characterize Maimonides' solution to the problem of religious language as equivocal, it certainly includes more than just equivocations. One can speak of God through negations. For example, one can say, "God is not dead," in order to signify that God lives. One can speak of God also through naming the divine actions, such as, "God creates." However, the Maimonidean attribute of action is not to be understood as identical with the Aristotelian accident of action. Attributes of action are understood to be events by Maimonides, while Aristotle (384-322 BCE) understands actions to be accidents or properties that inhere in a substance. Since Maimonidean attributes of action are not properties, they do not abrogate divine simplicity.

One might oppose Maimonides on this point by arguing that actions imply composition in their subject, and thus that they would abrogate divine simplicity. For example, in the statement, "Zayd stood," the fact that Zayd stands shows that Zayd has a special feature, namely, the ability or power to stand. So the action of standing implies that Zayd has the power to stand. This ability introduces composition in Zayd in that it shows that Zayd is composed of "the power to stand" among all his other properties. Consequently, Maimonides would be mistaken in arguing that actions do not introduce composition in their subject. In fact, it looks as if each action will introduce a separate power in the agent, thus multiplying the composition in the agent. So for every divine action, God will have a separate power in himself.

Maimonides addresses this objection by arguing that multiple actions could be brought about by a single power or ability. (Maimonides 1966,Vol. I, 53). He uses the example of the heat generated by a fire, which can burn, blacken wood, cook food, and so forth. So, one should not assume that a multiplicity of actions entails a multiplicity of powers in the agent. In the fire example, the heat of the fire produces multiple actions. The same could be said about an agent who acts by virtue of his will. Consequently, Maimonides argues that God brings about multiple actions and effects through his will, which is contained in his essence but not as a property, and that the multiplicity of effects or actions does not entail a multiplicity of powers in God.

According to Maimonides, predicates such as qualities or relations are to be denied of God. For example, one should say, "God is not a body," but one cannot say correctly, "God is merciful." While there are biblical passages that contain some of these imperfections, they are written in the language of human beings. Maimonides attempts to interpret these passages to eliminate or to deny the imperfections. His foundational assumption is that these passages do not ascribe to God anything that could be viewed as a deficiency. For example, passages that refer to God's "body parts" are to be interpreted as indicating God's actions. Maimonides argues that when the Bible indicates that God has an eye, "eye" indicates the intellectual act of apprehension performed by God. This act of apprehension does not imply composition in God insofar as it is an attribute of action, so it can be attributed to God without compromising divine simplicity. Qualities that are attributed to God in the Bible, such as "merciful," mean that God performs acts that resemble certain acts done by human beings out of a given quality such as mercy. But "merciful" does not indicate what God is like or what his nature is; "merciful" only refers to a certain kind of action. Taken as a quality, terms such as "merciful" are applied to God equivocally. So we cannot say that God has certain qualities such as "mercy" in the same sense in which we would say "Kofi is merciful," because God's simplicity precludes his having the quality of mercy. Nor can we speak of any relation of similarity between God and creatures. Relations are accidental properties and God does not have accidental properties. So any relation between God and another thing must be denied of God.

With respect to God, the so-called essential attributes (for example, living, existing, incorporeal, eternal, powerful, knowing, willing, and one) are interpreted equivocally. According to Maimonides, these attributes indicate composition in God and they purport to indicate a feature of God's essence. In order to preserve divine simplicity, Maimonides interprets these attributes as signifying "the negation of the privation of the attribute in question" with respect to God. A privation is the absence of the existence of a habit. For example, blindness would be a privation of sight. So one could say, "The wall does not see." Maimonides would not say that the wall is blind, because the only things that could be blind are those things that could or should have the capacity for sight. A wall never has the capacity for sight, although a wall is unseeing. So the negation of the privation of the attribute of seeing in the case of the wall indicates that the property of sight is not fittingly said of the wall, even in a negative sense. In the case of God, essential attributes are to be interpreted as indicating that those attributes are not fittingly said of God, even in a negative sense. For example, "God is living," would be interpreted to signify, "God is not dead," which is taken to mean that "dead" is not fittingly said of God. A similar procedure is to be followed for the other essential attributes, none of which are appropriately said of God, even in negations.

In summary, according to Maimonides, we can only say what God is not and what actions he performs. The standard objection to Maimonides' solution is that it is incompatible with the religious practices and assumptions of his own tradition, Judaism, and with those of the other Western monotheisms. Aquinas argues that an equivocal approach to God would undermine religious practices. Any demonstration about God would be formally invalid, as it would include an equivocation. Any communication about God would be severely limited because we cannot make any affirmative claims about God or his nature. Given that the divine actions are named equivocally through a perceived similarity to creaturely actions, how can human beings know what they mean? Even through the divine actions, God is unknowable. Consequently, Aquinas argues that one should look for a means of naming God that does not fall prey to these problems and that is in keeping with religious practices. It is on this basis that he defends the way of analogy as a preferable solution.

It is important to note that Maimonides' pessimism with respect to what can be said about God is derived largely from his metaphysical commitment to divine simplicity. If this commitment were removed, then Maimonides would have more latitude with respect to religious language. However, other religious doctrines in the Abrahamic traditions preclude a wholly univocal solution to the problem, as will become evident in the next section.

ii. Univocal Language

A modern proponent of univocity is William Alston. Alston, however, does not defend complete univocity, in which ordinary terms are used in the same sense of God and creatures, because he recognizes that divine otherness, especially divine incorporeality, would preclude complete univocity. (Alston 1989a, 65). However, he argues that two different things could possess the same abstract feature in different ways,

A meeting and a train of thought can both be "orderly" even though what it is for the one to be orderly is enormously different from what it is for the other to be orderly. A new computer and a new acquaintance can both be "intriguing" in a single sense of the term, even though what makes the one intriguing is very different from what makes the other intriguing. ( Ibid., 66-67).

Having pointed out that two different kinds of things can possess the same abstract feature in different ways, Alston argues that God and human beings can possess the same abstract feature in different ways. For example, a human being can know a particular fact and God can know that same fact. But how God knows something or the way that God knows something will be different from the way that a human being knows something insofar as God is incorporeal, omniscient, and so forth. According to Alston, the difference in the way knowledge is acquired doesn't prevent us from saying that the psychological concept, "knows p," can be applied to both human beings and to God. Moreover, one can also apply functionalist concepts, which are concepts of a certain functional role in the psyche, to both human beings and to God. Alston offers the following description of functionalist concepts,

The concept of a belief, desire or intention is the concept of a particular function in the psychological economy, a particular "job" done by the psyche. A belief is a structure that performs that job, and what psychological state it is - that it is a belief and a belief with that particular content - is determined by what that job is . . . . Our ordinary psychological terms carry no implications as to the intrinsic nature of the structure, its neurophysiological or soul-stuff character. . . . Thus, on this view, psychological concepts are functional in the same way as many concepts of artifacts, for example, the concept of a loudspeaker. ( Ibid., 67-68).

Since functionalist concepts are indifferent as to the nature of the structure of the psyche in which they inhere, it is possible to apply a functionalist concept to both a human being and to God in the same sense. According to Alston:

We can say of a human being that she will tend to do what she can to bring about what she recognizes to be best in a given situation, and we can take this tendency to be partly constitutive of the concept of recognizing something to be best. We can then formulate the divine regularities in tendency terms also. Thus it will be true of God also that if He recognizes that it is good that p He will tend to bring about p insofar as He can unless He recognizes something incompatible with p to be a greater good. ( Ibid., 79).

Alston claims that this example illustrates his method of applying functionalist concepts to God and to human beings univocally. According to Alston, the tendency statements are true of God, but the core of common meaning between human beings and God is to be found in the concept of "recognizing something to be best." Alston further claims that although both God and human beings can be said to perform the function "recognizing something to be best," human beings do not always assess the situation correctly, but God does. Since God and human beings perform the same function, albeit in a different way, the functionalist concept "recognizing something to be best" can be applied truly to both entities with a common core of meaning. So it would be true to say of God that he recognizes something to be best and that this concept can be applied to him and to human beings in the same sense. Thus, Alston argues that functionalist concepts can be constructed in such a way that they apply in the same sense to God and creatures, and he identifies this position as "partial univocity."

At least one of the limitations of Alston's view is that the predicates that are frequently used of God in the historical religious traditions, for example, "good," and that are applied also to human beings cannot be applied univocally to God; only constructed terms, for example, "recognizing something to be best," could be applied univocally to God. Therefore, with respect to the historical religious traditions, Alston's view is not of much help. A religious believer, for example, might ask herself the question whether or not God could be said truly to be good. Alston can't provide an answer to this question, because he intentionally limits partial univocity to functionalist concepts. If goodness could be expressed in a functionalist concept such as "recognizing something to be best," then God could be said truly to possess this predicate in the same sense as a human being who shares the same predicate. But functionalist concepts are descriptive of mental states and so one might wonder if the equation of goodness with a particular mental state is a sufficiently robust description of goodness.

Second, one might wonder why Alston believes that God performs the same functions as human beings, given divine otherness. Presumably, he would argue that mental states would be the same in two minds, regardless of how the minds are constructed or out of what materials they are constructed. Granting this point, on what basis does Alston reject complete univocity between the functionalist concepts of the two minds? If the nature and constituents of their minds does not prevent the two minds from having the same mental state, why would Alston deny that there is a complete univocity between them? Complete univocity is probably denied because of divine otherness. But divine otherness has to do with, for example, divine incorporeality. Divine incorporeality would impinge upon how God's mind is constructed, but this would be irrelevant for the functionalist concepts. One wonders if Alston should be committed to a completely univocal view, given his account of functionalist concepts.

Given the limitations of Alston's view and some of the unanswered questions that arise concerning it, it is appropriate to turn our attention to the third possible solution to religious language, which is the view of St. Thomas Aquinas.

iii. Analogical Language

Aquinas argues that the when terms are used to describe God and his attributes, those terms are used analogously. Thus, when the predicate "good" is applied to God, it doesn't pick out a property that God has. Owing to divine simplicity, God does not have properties. When predicated of God, "good" refers to the unity that is God's essence. So when "good" is attributed to God and to Kofi, it signifies the same thing in both attributions, but it signifies this thing in different modes.

Aquinas grounds his analogical approach in the causal relation that obtains between God and creatures. In his discussion of analogy, Aquinas outlines the following points:

1) Human beings name things as they know them (Aquinas,Ia,.13.1).
2) Human beings know God from creatures.
3) God causes the existence of creatures ( Ibid., 12.8).
4) Creatures resemble God just as an effect resembles its agent cause.

On the basis of the resemblance between creatures and God, human beings can infer that certain perfections of created things are present in God and they can name these perfections. Thus, the foundation for an analogy of names between creatures and God is the causal relationship that holds between God and creatures. >

Aquinas affirms the principle that effects resemble their efficient or agent causes. His account of the similarity between an agent cause and its effect includes a shared form. According to Aquinas, there are at least two different kinds of forms: substantial forms and accidental forms. Substantial forms configure the matter or physical stuff in which they inhere. They contribute a set of essential properties to a substance, such as rationality. A substantial form is the essence of a substance, which is a matter-form composite such as a human being. Accidental forms are non-essential properties, such as perfections or qualities. Aquinas explains that creaturely perfections are associated with both substantial forms and accidental forms;

"God alone is good essentially. For everything is called good according to its perfection. Now perfection of a thing is threefold: first, according to the constitution of its own being; secondly, in respect of any accidents being added as necessary for its perfect operation [...] Thus, for instance, the first perfection of fire consists in its existence, which it has through its own substantial form; its secondary perfection consists in heat, lightness and dryness [...] This [...] perfection belongs to no creature by its own essence; it belongs to God only, in Whom alone essence is existence; in Whom there are no accidents; since whatever belongs to others accidentally belongs to Him essentially, as, to be powerful, wise, and the like." ( Ibid., 6.3.).

According to Aquinas, there is a perfection associated with a thing's substantial form and there are the added perfections that attach to the essence of a thing as accidents. In both cases, these perfections are derived from God. However, insofar as the shared forms are found in more eminent mode in God than in a creature, the creature will be less perfect than God. Consequently, the shared form cannot share a univocal name. However, the shared forms are not wholly different (otherwise they couldn't be shared) and so they cannot share an equivocal name. Thus, Aquinas argues that the shared forms also share an analogical name, which would be neither univocal nor equivocal. So human beings can name God's perfections by way of analogy, on the basis of the causal relationship that holds between God and creatures. It is on this basis that one could say, "God is good," and, "Kofi is good," where "good" is understood to be said truly of both God and Kofi, even though God is good essentially and Kofi possesses goodness only as an accidental property.

Despite the similarities that exist between God and creatures, there are many ways in which creatures do not resemble God. So when one names God, one must be cognizant of the differences between God and creatures as well as the similarities so that one does not make a false attribution to God. So although Aquinas thinks that God can be named on the basis of the resemblance that holds between him and creatures, Aquinas acknowledges that this resemblance is limited and that therefore not all terms that are correctly applied to creatures may be correctly applied to God. For example, any terms indicating corporeality cannot be applied to God since God is incorporeal.

In order to affirm the naming of God by analogy along with the doctrine of simplicity, Aquinas makes a distinction between the mode of signification of a name ( modus significandi)and the thing signified by a name ( res significata). This distinction is not made by Maimonides, so he is unable to use it in his attempt to provide a solution to the problem of religious language. Owing to divine simplicity, the divine names will be different in mode than the same names as applied to creatures. For example, when "good" is applied to a creature it will signify that the property "goodness" inheres in the creature. However, when "good" is applied to God it will signify that "goodness" is somehow included in God's essence, but not as a property. The mode of signification of human language is inherently defective with respect to God since it always picks out predicates as accidental properties. God doesn't have accidental properties. In contrast, the thing signified by names such as "good" belongs properly to God and more so to God than to creatures, since any goodness that could be found in a creature is derived from God as the creator. One could say, "Kofi Annan is good," and one could say, "God is good," where "good" is included in God's essence in a higher mode and to a greater degree than the property "goodness" inheres in Kofi Annan.

One might think that with respect to perfection terms the thing signified would be applied univocally between God and creatures. But, according to Aquinas, things are named univocally when they have both the same name and the same definition of the name. The definition of the name would include both the mode of signification and the thing signified by the name. So in the case of perfection terms applied to God and to creatures, the thing signified by the name would be the same but the mode of signification would be different. So although the thing signified would be the same, the name would not be said univocally between God and creatures. God's perfection isn't a matter of quantity such that he just has more perfection than a creature does. The manner in which he possesses a given perfection is different from the manner in which a creature possesses that same perfection, since God is simple and creatures are not.

One might think that if we reject divine simplicity, all reasons for naming God analogically would disappear. But this isn't quite right. As Alston points out, the problem of religious language can be generated by divine otherness. So even absent divine simplicity, Aquinas would be likely to argue for an analogy between creatures and God. However, Aquinas doesn't limit his approach to religious language solely to analogies. He also approves of naming God by virtue of negations, but he doesn't limit speech about God to negations.

Alston provides a recent objection to Aquinas' analogical solution. He argues that serious problems arise in connection with the thing signified by the name, as Aquinas understands it. This is so because Aquinas is unable to specify completely God's perfections. Moreover, he cannot make explicit what likeness holds between God and creatures because all names fall short of him. According to Alston, there are too many ambiguities in Aquinas' view.

But Aquinas has an answer to this objection in his recourse to the principle that every effect is like its agent cause. Aquinas knows this principle in general based upon observations of other agent causes, such as artisans who craft artifacts, and he applies this principle to God by virtue of the arguments that God is the first efficient (agent) cause. (Aquinas, Ia., 2.3). Thus, God cannot be wholly different from creatures in the way that Alston suspects.

Alston argues that since the thing signified by the name is indeterminate with respect to God, we cannot know, for example, what "God is good" means. But Aquinas would take issue with the inference from the first claim to the second, on the grounds of the relationship between created effects and God. Perfections such as goodness are found both in the created effect and in God, but in God they are found in a different mode and to a greater degree. So "God is good" is not meaningless nor is it the case that we do not know what "God is good" means. We know that goodness is found in God somehow, in a different mode and to a different degree. So "God is good" is a true statement. In fact, "good" is said primarily of God, rather than creatures, because "good" is given to creatures via the causal relationship. The thing signified by "good" is indeterminate in the sense that we do not know exactly to what degree it is found in God, except that the mode is different and the degree is greater than that found in creatures. But this degree of indeterminateness does not entail the kind of agnosticism about the divine attributes that Alston suggests. Consequently, Alston's objection is unsuccessful.

Despite the virtues of Aquinas' approach to naming God, there are some obvious drawbacks for his view. In particular, his view requires a medieval metaphysics that most contemporary philosophers would find questionable. For example, he believes in a causal relation between creatures and God. However, in comparison with the other two solutions and their respective disadvantages, Aquinas makes a strong case in favor of his view.

3. Conclusion

With respect to the problem of religious language, multiple solutions have been suggested and defended. Four of these solutions have been presented in this entry. The first solution suggests that all statements about God are meaningless. The second solution suggests that all attributes predicated of God are to be interpreted equivocally. The third solution suggests that the attributes predicated of God are to be interpreted univocally. The fourth solution suggests that the attributes predicated of God are to be interpreted analogously.

While no single solution has emerged to the satisfaction of all religious communities or philosophers of religion, three of the historical solutions offer a way in which statements about God might be understood. Maimonides' solution severely limits the degree to which human beings can speak about God. Alston's solution raises at least two objections that require a satisfactory response and a possible modification of his proposal. Finally, the solution of Aquinas requires a medieval metaphysic in which one affirms the relation of creation between creatures and God, a foundation many contemporary individuals would reject. Consequently, there is much research and thought that is still to be done on the problem of religious language. The historical solutions offered here provide a tenuous beginning in that direction and show promise for the emergence of a satisfactory solution.

4. References and Further Reading

Alston, William P. "Religious Language." In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion. Ed. William J. Wainwright. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. pp. 220-244.

Alston, William P. "Functionalism and Theological Language." In Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989a.

Alston, William P. "Can We Speak Literally of God?" In Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989b.

Alston, William P. "Divine and Human Action." In Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989c.

Ayer, A. J. "God-Talk is Evidently Nonsense." In Philosophy of Religion. Ed. Brian Davies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. pp. 143-147.
In this extract from his book, Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer argues that since assertions about God cannot be empirically verified that they are therefore meaningless.

Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth and Logic. 2nd ed. New York: Dover Publications: 1946.

Church, Alonzo. "Review of A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic, Second Edition," in Journal of Symbolic Logic. vol. 14, no. 1, (March 1949), pp. 52-53.

Kretzmann, Norman and Eleonore Stump, Eds. The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

McInerny, Ralph. Aquinas and Analogy. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996.

Seeskin, Kenneth. "Sanctity and Silence: The Religious Significance of Maimonides' Negative Theology." In American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly. 76 (2002): pp. 7-24.

Seeskin, Kenneth, Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Swinburne, Richard. "God-Talk is not evidently nonsense." In Philosophy of Religion. Ed. Brian Davies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. pp. 147-152.
In this extract from his book, The Coherence of Theism, Swinburne argues that weak Verificationism is founded on a false premise.

Weed, Jennifer Hart. "Maimonides and Aquinas: A Medieval Misunderstanding?" In Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia. Forthcoming in 2006.
A contemporary comparison between Maimonides' via negativa and Aquinas' way of analogy, along with a re-examination of Aquinas' alleged misunderstanding of Maimonides' method.

Author Information

Jennifer Hart Weed
Email: jweed@unb.ca
University of New Brunswick
Canada

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The term "religious language" refers to statements or claims made about God or gods. Here is a typical philosophical problem of religious language. If God is infinite, then words used to describe finite creatures might not adequately describe God. For example, is God good in the same sense that Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan is good?

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Philosophy of Mind is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind (mental events, mental functions, mental properties and consciousness) and its relationship to the physical body. It intersects to some extent with the fields of neurobiology, computer science and psychology.

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Philosophy of Mind is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind ( mental events, mental functions, mental properties and consciousness) and its relationship to the physical body. It intersects to some extent with the fields of neurobiology, computer science and psychology.

Within philosophy, the Philosophy of Mind is usually considered a part of Metaphysics, and has been particularly studied by schools of thought such as Analytic Philosophy, Phenomenology and Existentialism, although it has been discussed by philosophers from the earliest times. It has a potential influence on philosophical questions such as the nature of death, the nature of free will, the nature of what a person is (and his or her identity and the self), and the nature of emotion, perception and memory.

The central issue in Philosophy of Mind is the mind-body problem (the relationship of the mind to the body), and the challenge is to explain how a supposedly non-material mind can influence a material body and vice-versa. The two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve this problem are Dualism and Monism (see the sections below), with Pluralism as a small minority viewpoint.

However, there are those (notably Ludwig Wittgenstein and his followers) who reject the problem as an illusory one which has arisen purely because mental and biological vocabulary are incompatible, and such illusory problems arise if one tries to describe the one in terms of the other's vocabulary, or if the mental vocabulary is used in the wrong contexts.

Dualism is the position that mind and body are in some categorical way separate from each other, and that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical in nature. It can be traced back to Plato, Aristotle, and the Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, but it was most precisely formulated by Ren Descartes in the 17th Century. Descartes was the first to clearly identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness, and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the physical seat of intelligence.

Dualism appeals to the common-sense intuition of the vast majority of non-philosophically-trained people, and the mental and the physical do seem to most people to have quite different, and perhaps irreconcilable, properties. Mental events have a certain subjective quality to them (known as qualia or "the ways things seem to us"), whereas physical events do not.

There are three main Dualist schools of thought:

Substance Dualism (or Cartesian Dualism) argues that the mind is an independently existing substance - the mental does not have extension in space, and the material cannot think. This is the type of Dualism most famously defended by Descartes, and it is compatible with most theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy an independent "realm" of existence distinct from that of the physical world.
There are three main types of Substance Dualism:

Interactionism, which allows that mental causes (such as beliefs and desires) can produce material effects, and vice-versa. Descartes believed that this interaction physically occurred in the pineal gland.

Occasionalism, asserts that a material basis of interaction between the material and immaterial is impossible, and that the interactions were really caused by the intervention of God on each individual occasion. Nicholas Malebranche was the major proponent of this view.

Parallelism (or Psychophysical Parallelism), holds that mental causes only have mental effects, and physical causes only have physical effects, but that God has created a pre-established harmony so that it seems as if physical and mental events (which are really monads, completely independent of each other) cause, and are caused by, one another. This unusual view was most prominently advocated by Gottfried Leibniz.

Property Dualism maintains that the mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance. Thus, when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e. in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge.

Epiphenomenalism, which asserts that mental events are causally inert (i.e. have no physical consequences). Physical events can cause other physical events, and physical events can cause mental events, but mental events cannot cause anything, since they are just causally inert by-products of physical events which occur in the brain (i.e. epiphenomena) of the physical world. This doctrine was first formulated by Thomas Henry Huxley in the 19th Century, although based on Thomas Hobbes' much earlier Materialism theories.

Predicate Dualism argues that more than one predicate (how we describe the subject of a proposition) is required to make sense of the world, and that the psychological experiences we go through cannot be redescribed in terms of (or reduced to) physical predicates of natural languages.

Monism is the position that mind and body are not ontologically distinct kinds of entities. This view was first advocated in Western Philosophy by Parmenides in the 5th Century B.C., and variations on it were and was later espoused by Baruch Spinoza in the 17th Century and George Berkeley in the 18th Century.

There are three main Monist schools of thought:

Physicalism (also known as Materialistic Monism) argues that the mind is a purely physical construct (the only existing substance is physical), and will eventually be explained entirely by physical theory, as it continues to evolve. With the huge strides in science (especially in atomic theory, evolution, neuroscience and computer technology) in the 20th Century, Physicalism of various types has become the dominant doctrine.
There are two main types:

Reductive Physicalism, which asserts that all mental states and properties will eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states, has been the most popular form during the 20th Century. There are four main types:

Behaviourism, which holds that mental states are just descriptions of observable behavior.

Type Identity Theory, which holds that various kinds of mental states are identical to certain kinds, or types, of physical states of the brain.

Token Identity Theory, which holds that particular instances of mental states are identical to particular instances of physical states of the brain.

Functionalism, which holds that mental states (beliefs, desires, being in pain, etc.) are constituted solely by their functional role and can be characterized in terms of non-mental functional properties.

Non-Reductive Physicalism, which argues that, although the brain is all there is to the mind, the predicates and vocabulary used in mental descriptions and explanations cannot be reduced to the language and lower-level explanations of physical science. Thus, mental states supervene (depend) on physical states, and there can be no change in the mental without some change in the physical, but they are not reducible to them.
There are three main types:

Anomalous Monism, which states that mental events are identical with physical events, but that the mental is anomalous i.e. these mental events are not regulated by strict physical laws.

Emergentism, which involves a layered view of nature, with the layers arranged in terms of increasing complexity, each corresponding to its own special science.

Eliminativism (or Eliminative Materialism), which holds that people's common-sense understanding of the mind ("folk psychology") is hopelessly flawed, and will eventually be replaced (eliminated) by an alternative, usually taken to be neuroscience.

Idealism (or Mentalism or Immaterialism) maintains that the mind is all that exists (the only existing substance is mental), and that the external world is either mental itself, or an illusion created by the mind. According to Idealism, then, the problem of the interaction between mind and body is not a problem at all. A pure form of Idealism was espoused by Bishop George Berkeley, and variations were formulated by various members of the German Idealism school, including Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

Neutral Monism maintains that existence consists of one kind of primal substance (hence monism), which in itself is neither mental nor physical, but is capable of mental and physical aspects or attributes (it is sometimes described as a dual-aspect theory). Thus, there is some other, neutral substance (variously labeled as Substance, Nature or God), and that both matter and mind are properties of this other unknown substance. Such a position was adopted by Baruch Spinoza and also by Bertrand Russell for a time.

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Philosophy of Mind - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy

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Many people associate Plato with a few central doctrines that are advocated in his writings: The world that appears to our senses is in some way defective and filled with error, but there is a more real and perfect realm, populated by entities (called "forms" or "ideas") that are eternal, changeless, and in some sense paradigmatic for the structure and character of the world presented to our senses. Among the most important of these abstract objects (as they are now called, because they are not located in space or time) are goodness, beauty, equality, bigness, likeness, unity, being, sameness, difference, change, and changelessness. (These terms-"goodness", "beauty", and so on-are often capitalized by those who write about Plato, in order to call attention to their exalted status; similarly for "Forms" and "Ideas.") The most fundamental distinction in Plato's philosophy is between the many observable objects that appear beautiful (good, just, unified, equal, big) and the one object that is what beauty (goodness, justice, unity) really is, from which those many beautiful (good, just, unified, equal, big) things receive their names and their corresponding characteristics. Nearly every major work of Plato is, in some way, devoted to or dependent on this distinction. Many of them explore the ethical and practical consequences of conceiving of reality in this bifurcated way. We are urged to transform our values by taking to heart the greater reality of the forms and the defectiveness of the corporeal world. We must recognize that the soul is a different sort of object from the body-so much so that it does not depend on the existence of the body for its functioning, and can in fact grasp the nature of the forms far more easily when it is not encumbered by its attachment to anything corporeal. In a few of Plato's works, we are told that the soul always retains the ability to recollect what it once grasped of the forms, when it was disembodied prior to its possessor's birth (see especially Meno), and that the lives we lead are to some extent a punishment or reward for choices we made in a previous existence (see especially the final pages of Republic). But in many of Plato's writings, it is asserted or assumed that true philosophers-those who recognize how important it is to distinguish the one (the one thing that goodness is, or virtue is, or courage is) from the many (the many things that are called good or virtuous or courageous )-are in a position to become ethically superior to unenlightened human beings, because of the greater degree of insight they can acquire. To understand which things are good and why they are good (and if we are not interested in such questions, how can we become good?), we must investigate the form of good.

Although these propositions are often identified by Plato's readers as forming a large part of the core of his philosophy, many of his greatest admirers and most careful students point out that few, if any, of his writings can accurately be described as mere advocacy of a cut-and-dried group of propositions. Often Plato's works exhibit a certain degree of dissatisfaction and puzzlement with even those doctrines that are being recommended for our consideration. For example, the forms are sometimes described as hypotheses (see for example Phaedo). The form of good in particular is described as something of a mystery whose real nature is elusive and as yet unknown to anyone at all ( Republic). Puzzles are raised-and not overtly answered-about how any of the forms can be known and how we are to talk about them without falling into contradiction ( Parmenides), or about what it is to know anything ( Theaetetus) or to name anything ( Cratylus). When one compares Plato with some of the other philosophers who are often ranked with him-Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kant, for example-he can be recognized to be far more exploratory, incompletely systematic, elusive, and playful than they. That, along with his gifts as a writer and as a creator of vivid character and dramatic setting, is one of the reasons why he is often thought to be the ideal author from whom one should receive one's introduction to philosophy. His readers are not presented with an elaborate system of doctrines held to be so fully worked out that they are in no need of further exploration or development; instead, what we often receive from Plato is a few key ideas together with a series of suggestions and problems about how those ideas are to be interrogated and deployed. Readers of a Platonic dialogue are drawn into thinking for themselves about the issues raised, if they are to learn what the dialogue itself might be thought to say about them. Many of his works therefore give their readers a strong sense of philosophy as a living and unfinished subject (perhaps one that can never be completed) to which they themselves will have to contribute. All of Plato's works are in some way meant to leave further work for their readers, but among the ones that most conspicuously fall into this category are: Euthyphro, Laches, Charmides, Euthydemus, Theaetetus, and Parmenides.

There is another feature of Plato's writings that makes him distinctive among the great philosophers and colors our experience of him as an author. Nearly everything he wrote takes the form of a dialogue. (There is one striking exception: his Apology, which purports to be the speech that Socrates gave in his defense-the Greek word apologia means "defense"-when, in 399, he was legally charged and convicted of the crime of impiety. However, even there, Socrates is presented at one point addressing questions of a philosophical character to his accuser, Meletus, and responding to them. In addition, since antiquity, a collection of 13 letters has been included among his collected works, but their authenticity as compositions of Plato is not universally accepted among scholars, and many or most of them are almost certainly not his (see Burnyeat and Frede 2015). Most of them purport to be the outcome of his involvement in the politics of Syracuse, a heavily populated Greek city located in Sicily and ruled by tyrants.)

We are of course familiar with the dialogue form through our acquaintance with the literary genre of drama. But Plato's dialogues do not try to create a fictional world for the purposes of telling a story, as many literary dramas do; nor do they invoke an earlier mythical realm, like the creations of the great Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Nor are they all presented in the form of a drama: in many of them, a single speaker narrates events in which he participated. They are philosophical discussions-"debates" would, in some cases, also be an appropriate word-among a small number of interlocutors, many of whom can be identified as real historical figures (see Nails 2002); and often they begin with a depiction of the setting of the discussion-a visit to a prison, a wealthy man's house, a celebration over drinks, a religious festival, a visit to the gymnasium, a stroll outside the city's wall, a long walk on a hot day. As a group, they form vivid portraits of a social world, and are not purely intellectual exchanges between characterless and socially unmarked speakers. (At any rate, that is true of a large number of Plato's interlocutors. However, it must be added that in some of his works the speakers display little or no character. See, for example, Sophist and Statesman-dialogues in which a visitor from the town of Elea in Southern Italy leads the discussion; and Laws, a discussion between an unnamed Athenian and two named fictional characters, one from Crete and the other from Sparta.) In many of his dialogues (though not all), Plato is not only attempting to draw his readers into a discussion, but is also commenting on the social milieu that he is depicting, and criticizing the character and ways of life of his interlocutors (see Blondell 2002). Some of the dialogues that most evidently fall into this category are Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Euthydemus, and Symposium.

There is one interlocutor who speaks in nearly all of Plato's dialogues, being completely absent only in Laws, which ancient testimony tells us was one of his latest works: that figure is Socrates. Like nearly everyone else who appears in Plato's works, he is not an invention of Plato: there really was a Socrates just as there really was a Crito, a Gorgias, a Thrasymachus, and a Laches. Plato was not the only author whose personal experience of Socrates led to the depiction of him as a character in one or more dramatic works. Socrates is one of the principal characters of Aristophanes' comedy, Clouds; and Xenophon, a historian and military leader, wrote, like Plato, both an Apology of Socrates (an account of Socrates' trial) and other works in which Socrates appears as a principal speaker. Furthermore, we have some fragmentary remains of dialogues written by other contemporaries of Socrates besides Plato and Xenophon (Aeschines, Antisthenes, Eucleides, Phaedo), and these purport to describe conversations he conducted with others (see Boys-Stone and Rowe 2013). So, when Plato wrote dialogues that feature Socrates as a principal speaker, he was both contributing to a genre that was inspired by the life of Socrates and participating in a lively literary debate about the kind of person Socrates was and the value of the intellectual conversations in which he was involved. Aristophanes' comic portrayal of Socrates is at the same time a bitter critique of him and other leading intellectual figures of the day (the 420s B.C.), but from Plato, Xenophon, and the other composers (in the 390's and later) of "Socratic discourses" (as Aristotle calls this body of writings) we receive a far more favorable impression.

Evidently, the historical Socrates was the sort of person who provoked in those who knew him, or knew of him, a profound response, and he inspired many of those who came under his influence to write about him. But the portraits composed by Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato are the ones that have survived intact, and they are therefore the ones that must play the greatest role in shaping our conception of what Socrates was like. Of these, Clouds has the least value as an indication of what was distinctive of Socrates' mode of philosophizing: after all, it is not intended as a philosophical work, and although it may contain a few lines that are characterizations of features unique to Socrates, for the most part it is an attack on a philosophical type-the long-haired, unwashed, amoral investigator into abstruse phenomena-rather than a depiction of Socrates himself. Xenophon's depiction of Socrates, whatever its value as historical testimony (which may be considerable), is generally thought to lack the philosophical subtlety and depth of Plato's. At any rate, no one (certainly not Xenophon himself) takes Xenophon to be a major philosopher in his own right; when we read his Socratic works, we are not encountering a great philosophical mind. But that is what we experience when we read Plato. We may read Plato's Socratic dialogues because we are (as Plato evidently wanted us to be) interested in who Socrates was and what he stood for, but even if we have little or no desire to learn about the historical Socrates, we will want to read Plato because in doing so we are encountering an author of the greatest philosophical significance. No doubt he in some way borrowed in important ways from Socrates, though it is not easy to say where to draw the line between him and his teacher (more about this below in section 12). But it is widely agreed among scholars that Plato is not a mere transcriber of the words of Socrates (any more than Xenophon or the other authors of Socratic discourses). His use of a figure called "Socrates" in so many of his dialogues should not be taken to mean that Plato is merely preserving for a reading public the lessons he learned from his teacher.

Socrates, it should be kept in mind, does not appear in all of Plato's works. He makes no appearance in Laws, and there are several dialogues ( Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus) in which his role is small and peripheral, while some other figure dominates the conversation or even, as in the Timaeus and Critias, presents a long and elaborate, continuous discourse of their own. Plato's dialogues are not a static literary form; not only do his topics vary, not only do his speakers vary, but the role played by questions and answers is never the same from one dialogue to another. ( Symposium, for example, is a series of speeches, and there are also lengthy speeches in Apology, Menexenus, Protagoras, Crito, Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Critias; in fact, one might reasonably question whether these works are properly called dialogues). But even though Plato constantly adapted "the dialogue form" (a commonly used term, and convenient enough, so long as we do not think of it as an unvarying unity) to suit his purposes, it is striking that throughout his career as a writer he never engaged in a form of composition that was widely used in his time and was soon to become the standard mode of philosophical address: Plato never became a writer of philosophical treatises, even though the writing of treatises (for example, on rhetoric, medicine, and geometry) was a common practice among his predecessors and contemporaries. (The closest we come to an exception to this generalization is the seventh letter, which contains a brief section in which the author, Plato or someone pretending to be him, commits himself to several philosophical points-while insisting, at the same time, that no philosopher will write about the deepest matters, but will communicate his thoughts only in private discussion with selected individuals. As noted above, the authenticity of Plato's letters is a matter of great controversy; and in any case, the author of the seventh letter declares his opposition to the writing of philosophical books. Whether Plato wrote it or not, it cannot be regarded as a philosophical treatise, and its author did not wish it to be so regarded.) In all of his writings-except in the letters, if any of them are genuine-Plato never speaks to his audience directly (see Frede 1992) and in his own voice. Strictly speaking, he does not himself affirm anything in his dialogues; rather, it is the interlocutors in his dialogues who are made by Plato to do all of the affirming, doubting, questioning, arguing, and so on. Whatever he wishes to communicate to us is conveyed indirectly.

This feature of Plato's works raises important questions about how they are to be read, and has led to considerable controversy among those who study his writings. Since he does not himself affirm anything in any of his dialogues, can we ever be on secure ground in attributing a philosophical doctrine to him (as opposed to one of his characters)? Did he himself have philosophical convictions, and can we discover what they were? Are we justified in speaking of "the philosophy of Plato"? Or, if we attribute some view to Plato himself, are we being unfaithful to the spirit in which he intended the dialogues to be read? Is his whole point, in refraining from writing treatises, to discourage the readers of his works from asking what their author believes and to encourage them instead simply to consider the plausibility or implausibility of what his characters are saying? Is that why Plato wrote dialogues? If not for this reason, then what was his purpose in refraining from addressing his audience in a more direct way (see Griswold 1988, Klagge and Smith 1992, Press 2002)? There are other important questions about the particular shape his dialogues take: for example, why does Socrates play such a prominent role in so many of them, and why, in some of these works, does Socrates play a smaller role, or none at all?

Once these questions are raised and their difficulty acknowledged, it is tempting, in reading Plato's works and reflecting upon them, to adopt a strategy of extreme caution. Rather than commit oneself to any hypothesis about what he is trying to communicate to his readers, one might adopt a stance of neutrality about his intentions, and confine oneself to talking only about what is said by his dramatis personae. One cannot be faulted, for example, if one notes that, in Plato's Republic, Socrates argues that justice in the soul consists in each part of the soul doing its own. It is equally correct to point out that other principal speakers in that work, Glaucon and Adeimantus, accept the arguments that Socrates gives for that definition of justice. Perhaps there is no need for us to say more-to say, for example, that Plato himself agrees that this is how justice should be defined, or that Plato himself accepts the arguments that Socrates gives in support of this definition. And we might adopt this same "minimalist" approach to all of Plato's works. After all, is it of any importance to discover what went on inside his head as he wrote-to find out whether he himself endorsed the ideas he put in the mouths of his characters, whether they constitute "the philosophy of Plato"? Should we not read his works for their intrinsic philosophical value, and not as tools to be used for entering into the mind of their author? We know what Plato's characters say-and isn't that all that we need, for the purpose of engaging with his works philosophically?

But the fact that we know what Plato's characters say does not show that by refusing to entertain any hypotheses about what the author of these works is trying to communicate to his readers we can understand what those characters mean by what they say. We should not lose sight of this obvious fact: it is Plato, not any of his dramatis personae, who is reaching out to a readership and trying to influence their beliefs and actions by means of his literary actions. When we ask whether an argument put forward by a character in Plato's works should be read as an effort to persuade us of its conclusion, or is better read as a revelation of how foolish that speaker is, we are asking about what Plato as author (not that character) is trying to lead us to believe, through the writing that he is presenting to our attention. We need to interpret the work itself to find out what it, or Plato the author, is saying. Similarly, when we ask how a word that has several different senses is best understood, we are asking what Plato means to communicate to us through the speaker who uses that word. We should not suppose that we can derive much philosophical value from Plato's writings if we refuse to entertain any thoughts about what use he intends us to make of the things his speakers say. Penetrating the mind of Plato and comprehending what his interlocutors mean by what they say are not two separate tasks but one, and if we do not ask what his interlocutors mean by what they say, and what the dialogue itself indicates we should think about what they mean, we will not profit from reading his dialogues.

Furthermore, the dialogues have certain characteristics that are most easily explained by supposing that Plato is using them as vehicles for inducing his readers to become convinced (or more convinced than they already are) of certain propositions-for example, that there are forms, that the soul is not corporeal, that knowledge can be acquired only by means of a study of the forms, and so on. Why, after all, did Plato write so many works (for example: Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, Phaedrus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus, Philebus, Laws) in which one character dominates the conversation (often, but not always, Socrates) and convinces the other speakers (at times, after encountering initial resistance) that they should accept or reject certain conclusions, on the basis of the arguments presented? The only plausible way of answering that question is to say that these dialogues were intended by Plato to be devices by which he might induce the audience for which they are intended to reflect on and accept the arguments and conclusions offered by his principal interlocutor. (It is noteworthy that in Laws, the principal speaker-an unnamed visitor from Athens-proposes that laws should be accompanied by "preludes" in which their philosophical basis is given as full an explanation as possible. The educative value of written texts is thus explicitly acknowledged by Plato's dominant speaker. If preludes can educate a whole citizenry that is prepared to learn from them, then surely Plato thinks that other sorts of written texts-for example, his own dialogues-can also serve an educative function.)

This does not mean that Plato thinks that his readers can become wise simply by reading and studying his works. On the contrary, it is highly likely that he wanted all of his writings to be supplementary aids to philosophical conversation: in one of his works, he has Socrates warn his readers against relying solely on books, or taking them to be authoritative. They are, Socrates says, best used as devices that stimulate the readers' memory of discussions they have had ( Phaedrus 274e-276d). In those face-to-face conversations with a knowledgeable leader, positions are taken, arguments are given, and conclusions are drawn. Plato's writings, he implies in this passage from Phaedrus, will work best when conversational seeds have already been sown for the arguments they contain.

If we take Plato to be trying to persuade us, in many of his works, to accept the conclusions arrived at by his principal interlocutors (or to persuade us of the refutations of their opponents), we can easily explain why he so often chooses Socrates as the dominant speaker in his dialogues. Presumably the contemporary audience for whom Plato was writing included many of Socrates' admirers. They would be predisposed to think that a character called "Socrates" would have all of the intellectual brilliance and moral passion of the historical person after whom he is named (especially since Plato often makes special efforts to give his "Socrates" a life-like reality, and has him refer to his trial or to the characteristics by which he was best known); and the aura surrounding the character called "Socrates" would give the words he speaks in the dialogue considerable persuasive power. Furthermore, if Plato felt strongly indebted to Socrates for many of his philosophical techniques and ideas, that would give him further reason for assigning a dominant role to him in many of his works. (More about this in section 12.)

Of course, there are other more speculative possible ways of explaining why Plato so often makes Socrates his principal speaker. For example, we could say that Plato was trying to undermine the reputation of the historical Socrates by writing a series of works in which a figure called "Socrates" manages to persuade a group of naïve and sycophantic interlocutors to accept absurd conclusions on the basis of sophistries. But anyone who has read some of Plato's works will quickly recognize the utter implausibility of that alternative way of reading them. Plato could have written into his works clear signals to the reader that the arguments of Socrates do not work, and that his interlocutors are foolish to accept them. But there are many signs in such works as Meno, Phaedo, Republic, and Phaedrus that point in the opposite direction. (And the great admiration Plato feels for Socrates is also evident from his Apology.) The reader is given every encouragement to believe that the reason why Socrates is successful in persuading his interlocutors (on those occasions when he does succeed) is that his arguments are powerful ones. The reader, in other words, is being encouraged by the author to accept those arguments, if not as definitive then at least as highly arresting and deserving of careful and full positive consideration. When we interpret the dialogues in this way, we cannot escape the fact that we are entering into the mind of Plato, and attributing to him, their author, a positive evaluation of the arguments that his speakers present to each other.

There is a further reason for entertaining hypotheses about what Plato intended and believed, and not merely confining ourselves to observations about what sorts of people his characters are and what they say to each other. When we undertake a serious study of Plato, and go beyond reading just one of his works, we are inevitably confronted with the question of how we are to link the work we are currently reading with the many others that Plato composed. Admittedly, many of his dialogues make a fresh start in their setting and their interlocutors: typically, Socrates encounters a group of people many of whom do not appear in any other work of Plato, and so, as an author, he needs to give his readers some indication of their character and social circumstances. But often Plato's characters make statements that would be difficult for readers to understand unless they had already read one or more of his other works. For example, in Phaedo (73a-b), Socrates says that one argument for the immortality of the soul derives from the fact that when people are asked certain kinds of questions, and are aided with diagrams, they answer in a way that shows that they are not learning afresh from the diagrams or from information provided in the questions, but are drawing their knowledge of the answers from within themselves. That remark would be of little worth for an audience that had not already read Meno. Several pages later, Socrates tells his interlocutors that his argument about our prior knowledge of equality itself (the form of equality) applies no less to other forms-to the beautiful, good, just, pious and to all the other things that are involved in their asking and answering of questions (75d). This reference to asking and answering questions would not be well understood by a reader who had not yet encountered a series of dialogues in which Socrates asks his interlocutors questions of the form, "What is X?" ( Euthyphro: what is piety? Laches: what is courage? Charmides: What is moderation? Hippias Major: what is beauty? see Dancy 2004). Evidently, Plato is assuming that readers of Phaedo have already read several of his other works, and will bring to bear on the current argument all of the lessons that they have learned from them. In some of his writings, Plato's characters refer ahead to the continuation of their conversations on another day, or refer back to conversations they had recently: thus Plato signals to us that we should read Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman sequentially; and similarly, since the opening of Timaeus refers us back to Republic, Plato is indicating to his readers that they must seek some connection between these two works.

These features of the dialogues show Plato's awareness that he cannot entirely start from scratch in every work that he writes. He will introduce new ideas and raise fresh difficulties, but he will also expect his readers to have already familiarized themselves with the conversations held by the interlocutors of other dialogues-even when there is some alteration among those interlocutors. (Meno does not re-appear in Phaedo; Timaeus was not among the interlocutors of Republic.) Why does Plato have his dominant characters (Socrates, the Eleatic visitor) reaffirm some of the same points from one dialogue to another, and build on ideas that were made in earlier works? If the dialogues were merely meant as provocations to thought-mere exercises for the mind-there would be no need for Plato to identify his leading characters with a consistent and ever-developing doctrine. For example, Socrates continues to maintain, over a large number of dialogues, that there are such things as forms-and there is no better explanation for this continuity than to suppose that Plato is recommending that doctrine to his readers. Furthermore, when Socrates is replaced as the principal investigator by the visitor from Elea (in Sophist and Statesman), the existence of forms continues to be taken for granted, and the visitor criticizes any conception of reality that excludes such incorporeal objects as souls and forms. The Eleatic visitor, in other words, upholds a metaphysics that is, in many respects, like the one that Socrates is made to defend. Again, the best explanation for this continuity is that Plato is using both characters-Socrates and the Eleatic visitor-as devices for the presentation and defense of a doctrine that he embraces and wants his readers to embrace as well.

This way of reading Plato's dialogues does not presuppose that he never changes his mind about anything-that whatever any of his main interlocutors uphold in one dialogue will continue to be presupposed or affirmed elsewhere without alteration. It is, in fact, a difficult and delicate matter to determine, on the basis of our reading of the dialogues, whether Plato means to modify or reject in one dialogue what he has his main interlocutor affirm in some other. One of the most intriguing and controversial questions about his treatment of the forms, for example, is whether he concedes that his conception of those abstract entities is vulnerable to criticism; and, if so, whether he revises some of the assumptions he had been making about them, or develops a more elaborate picture of them that allows him to respond to that criticism (see Meinwald 2016). In Parmenides, the principal interlocutor (not Socrates-he is here portrayed as a promising, young philosopher in need of further training-but rather the pre-Socratic from Elea who gives the dialogue its name: Parmenides) subjects the forms to withering criticism, and then consents to conduct an inquiry into the nature of oneness that has no overt connection to his critique of the forms. Does the discussion of oneness (a baffling series of contradictions-or at any rate, propositions that seem, on the surface, to be contradictions) in some way help address the problems raised about forms? That is one way of reading the dialogue. And if we do read it in this way, does that show that Plato has changed his mind about some of the ideas about forms he inserted into earlier dialogues? Can we find dialogues in which we encounter a "new theory of forms"-that is, a way of thinking of forms that carefully steers clear of the assumptions about forms that led to Parmenides' critique? It is not easy to say. But we cannot even raise this as an issue worth pondering unless we presuppose that behind the dialogues there stands a single mind that is using these writings as a way of hitting upon the truth, and of bringing that truth to the attention of others. If we find Timaeus (the principal interlocutor of the dialogue named after him) and the Eleatic visitor of the Sophist and Statesman talking about forms in a way that is entirely consistent with the way Socrates talks about forms in Phaedo and Republic, then there is only one reasonable explanation for that consistency: Plato believes that their way of talking about forms is correct, or is at least strongly supported by powerful considerations. If, on the other hand, we find that Timaeus or the Eleatic visitor talks about forms in a way that does not harmonize with the way Socrates conceives of those abstract objects, in the dialogues that assign him a central role as director of the conversation, then the most plausible explanation for these discrepancies is that Plato has changed his mind about the nature of these entities. It would be implausible to suppose that Plato himself had no convictions about forms, and merely wants to give his readers mental exercise by composing dialogues in which different leading characters talk about these objects in discordant ways.

The same point-that we must view the dialogues as the product of a single mind, a single philosopher, though perhaps one who changes his mind-can be made in connection with the politics of Plato's works (see Bobonich 2002).

It is noteworthy, to begin with, that Plato is, among other things, a political philosopher. For he gives expression, in several of his writings (particular Phaedo), to a yearning to escape from the tawdriness of ordinary human relations. (Similarly, he evinces a sense of the ugliness of the sensible world, whose beauty pales in comparison with that of the forms.) Because of this, it would have been all too easy for Plato to turn his back entirely on practical reality, and to confine his speculations to theoretical questions. Some of his works- Parmenides is a stellar example-do confine themselves to exploring questions that seem to have no bearing whatsoever on practical life. But it is remarkable how few of his works fall into this category. Even the highly abstract questions raised in Sophist about the nature of being and not-being are, after all, embedded in a search for the definition of sophistry; and thus they call to mind the question whether Socrates should be classified as a sophist-whether, in other words, sophists are to be despised and avoided. In any case, despite the great sympathy Plato expresses for the desire to shed one's body and live in an incorporeal world, he devotes an enormous amount of energy to the task of understanding the world we live in, appreciating its limited beauty, and improving it.

His tribute to the mixed beauty of the sensible world, in Timaeus, consists in his depiction of it as the outcome of divine efforts to mold reality in the image of the forms, using simple geometrical patterns and harmonious arithmetic relations as building blocks. The desire to transform human relations is given expression in a far larger number of works. Socrates presents himself, in Plato's Apology, as a man who does not have his head in the clouds (that is part of Aristophanes' charge against him in Clouds). He does not want to escape from the everyday world but to make it better (see Allen 2010). He presents himself, in Gorgias, as the only Athenian who has tried his hand at the true art of politics.

Similarly, the Socrates of Republic devotes a considerable part of his discussion to the critique of ordinary social institutions-the family, private property, and rule by the many. The motivation that lies behind the writing of this dialogue is the desire to transform (or, at any rate, to improve) political life, not to escape from it (although it is acknowledged that the desire to escape is an honorable one: the best sort of rulers greatly prefer the contemplation of divine reality to the governance of the city). And if we have any further doubts that Plato does take an interest in the practical realm, we need only turn to Laws. A work of such great detail and length about voting procedures, punishments, education, legislation, and the oversight of public officials can only have been produced by someone who wants to contribute something to the improvement of the lives we lead in this sensible and imperfect realm. Further evidence of Plato's interest in practical matters can be drawn from his letters, if they are genuine. In most of them, he presents himself as having a deep interest in educating (with the help of his friend, Dion) the ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius II, and thus reforming that city's politics.

Just as any attempt to understand Plato's views about forms must confront the question whether his thoughts about them developed or altered over time, so too our reading of him as a political philosopher must be shaped by a willingness to consider the possibility that he changed his mind. For example, on any plausible reading of Republic, Plato evinces a deep antipathy to rule by the many. Socrates tells his interlocutors that the only politics that should engage them are those of the anti-democratic regime he depicts as the paradigm of a good constitution. And yet in Laws, the Athenian visitor proposes a detailed legislative framework for a city in which non-philosophers (people who have never heard of the forms, and have not been trained to understand them) are given considerable powers as rulers. Plato would not have invested so much time in the creation of this comprehensive and lengthy work, had he not believed that the creation of a political community ruled by those who are philosophically unenlightened is a project that deserves the support of his readers. Has Plato changed his mind, then? Has he re-evaluated the highly negative opinion he once held of those who are innocent of philosophy? Did he at first think that the reform of existing Greek cities, with all of their imperfections, is a waste of time-but then decide that it is an endeavor of great value? (And if so, what led him to change his mind?) Answers to these questions can be justified only by careful attention to what he has his interlocutors say. But it would be utterly implausible to suppose that these developmental questions need not be raised, on the grounds that Republic and Laws each has its own cast of characters, and that the two works therefore cannot come into contradiction with each other. According to this hypothesis (one that must be rejected), because it is Socrates (not Plato) who is critical of democracy in Republic, and because it is the Athenian visitor (not Plato) who recognizes the merits of rule by the many in Laws, there is no possibility that the two dialogues are in tension with each other. Against this hypothesis, we should say: Since both Republic and Laws are works in which Plato is trying to move his readers towards certain conclusions, by having them reflect on certain arguments-these dialogues are not barred from having this feature by their use of interlocutors-it would be an evasion of our responsibility as readers and students of Plato not to ask whether what one of them advocates is compatible with what the other advocates. If we answer that question negatively, we have some explaining to do: what led to this change? Alternatively, if we conclude that the two works are compatible, we must say why the appearance of conflict is illusory.

Many contemporary scholars find it plausible that when Plato embarked on his career as a philosophical writer, he composed, in addition to his Apology of Socrates, a number of short ethical dialogues that contain little or nothing in the way of positive philosophical doctrine, but are mainly devoted to portraying the way in which Socrates punctured the pretensions of his interlocutors and forced them to realize that they are unable to offer satisfactory definitions of the ethical terms they used, or satisfactory arguments for their moral beliefs. According to this way of placing the dialogues into a rough chronological order-associated especially with Gregory Vlastos's name (see especially his Socrates Ironist and Moral Philosopher, chapters 2 and 3)-Plato, at this point of his career, was content to use his writings primarily for the purpose of preserving the memory of Socrates and making plain the superiority of his hero, in intellectual skill and moral seriousness, to all of his contemporaries-particularly those among them who claimed to be experts on religious, political, or moral matters. Into this category of early dialogues (they are also sometimes called "Socratic" dialogues, possibly without any intended chronological connotation) are placed: Charmides, Crito, Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Lysis, and Protagoras, (Some scholars hold that we can tell which of these come later during Plato's early period. For example, it is sometimes said that Protagoras and Gorgias are later, because of their greater length and philosophical complexity. Other dialogues-for example, Charmides and Lysis-are thought not to be among Plato's earliest within this early group, because in them Socrates appears to be playing a more active role in shaping the progress of the dialogue: that is, he has more ideas of his own.) In comparison with many of Plato's other dialogues, these "Socratic" works contain little in the way of metaphysical, epistemological, or methodological speculation, and they therefore fit well with the way Socrates characterizes himself in Plato's Apology: as a man who leaves investigations of high falutin' matters (which are "in the sky and below the earth") to wiser heads, and confines all of his investigations to the question how one should live one's life. Aristotle describes Socrates as someone whose interests were restricted to only one branch of philosophy-the realm of the ethical; and he also says that he was in the habit of asking definitional questions to which he himself lacked answers ( Metaphysics 987b1, Sophistical Refutations 183b7). That testimony gives added weight to the widely accepted hypothesis that there is a group of dialogues-the ones mentioned above as his early works, whether or not they were all written early in Plato's writing career-in which Plato used the dialogue form as a way of portraying the philosophical activities of the historical Socrates (although, of course, he might also have used them in other ways as well-for example to suggest and begin to explore philosophical difficulties raised by them, see Santas 1979, Brickhouse and Smith 1994).

But at a certain point-so says this hypothesis about the chronology of the dialogues-Plato began to use his works to advance ideas that were his own creations rather than those of Socrates, although he continued to use the name "Socrates" for the interlocutor who presented and argued for these new ideas. The speaker called "Socrates" now begins to move beyond and depart from the historical Socrates: he has views about the methodology that should be used by philosophers (a methodology borrowed from mathematics), and he argues for the immortality of the soul and the existence and importance of the forms of beauty, justice, goodness, and the like. (By contrast, in Apology Socrates says that no one knows what becomes of us after we die.) Phaedo is often said to be the dialogue in which Plato first comes into his own as a philosopher who is moving far beyond the ideas of his teacher (though it is also commonly said that we see a new methodological sophistication and a greater interest in mathematical knowledge in Meno). Having completed all of the dialogues that, according to this hypothesis, we characterize as early, Plato widened the range of topics to be explored in his writings (no longer confining himself to ethics), and placed the theory of forms (and related ideas about language, knowledge, and love) at the center of his thinking. In these works of his "middle" period-for example, in Phaedo, Cratylus, Symposium, Republic, and Phaedrus-there is both a change of emphasis and of doctrine. The focus is no longer on ridding ourselves of false ideas and self-deceit; rather, we are asked to accept (however tentatively) a radical new conception of ourselves (now divided into three parts), our world-or rather, our two worlds-and our need to negotiate between them. Definitions of the most important virtue terms are finally proposed in Republic (the search for them in some of the early dialogues having been unsuccessful): Book I of this dialogue is a portrait of how the historical Socrates might have handled the search for a definition of justice, and the rest of the dialogue shows how the new ideas and tools discovered by Plato can complete the project that his teacher was unable to finish. Plato continues to use a figure called "Socrates" as his principal interlocutor, and in this way he creates a sense of continuity between the methods, insights, and ideals of the historical Socrates and the new Socrates who has now become a vehicle for the articulation of his own new philosophical outlook. In doing so, he acknowledges his intellectual debt to his teacher and appropriates for his own purposes the extraordinary prestige of the man who was the wisest of his time.

This hypothesis about the chronology of Plato's writings has a third component: it does not place his works into either of only two categories-the early or "Socratic" dialogues, and all the rest-but works instead with a threefold division of early, middle, and late. That is because, following ancient testimony, it has become a widely accepted assumption that Laws is one of Plato's last works, and further that this dialogue shares a great many stylistic affinities with a small group of others: Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus, Critias, and Philebus. These five dialogues together with Laws are generally agreed to be his late works, because they have much more in common with each other, when one counts certain stylistic features apparent only to readers of Plato's Greek, than with any of Plato's other works. (Computer counts have aided these stylometric studies, but the isolation of a group of six dialogues by means of their stylistic commonalities was recognized in the nineteenth century. See Brandwood 1990, Young 1994.)

It is not at all clear whether there are one or more philosophical affinities among this group of six dialogues-that is, whether the philosophy they contain is sharply different from that of all of the other dialogues. Plato does nothing to encourage the reader to view these works as a distinctive and separate component of his thinking. On the contrary, he links Sophist with Theaetetus (the conversations they present have a largely overlapping cast of characters, and take place on successive days) no less than Sophist and Statesman. Sophist contains, in its opening pages, a reference to the conversation of Parmenides-and perhaps Plato is thus signaling to his readers that they should bring to bear on Sophist the lessons that are to be drawn from Parmenides. Similarly, Timaeus opens with a reminder of some of the principal ethical and political doctrines of Republic. It could be argued, of course, that when one looks beyond these stage-setting devices, one finds significant philosophical changes in the six late dialogues, setting this group off from all that preceded them. But there is no consensus that they should be read in this way. Resolving this issue requires intensive study of the content of Plato's works. So, although it is widely accepted that the six dialogues mentioned above belong to Plato's latest period, there is, as yet, no agreement among students of Plato that these six form a distinctive stage in his philosophical development.

In fact, it remains a matter of dispute whether the division of Plato's works into three periods-early, middle, late-does correctly indicate the order of composition, and whether it is a useful tool for the understanding of his thought (See Cooper 1997, vii-xxvii). Of course, it would be wildly implausible to suppose that Plato's writing career began with such complex works as Laws, Parmenides, Phaedrus, or Republic. In light of widely accepted assumptions about how most philosophical minds develop, it is likely that when Plato started writing philosophical works some of the shorter and simpler dialogues were the ones he composed: Laches, or Crito, or Ion (for example). (Similarly, Apology does not advance a complex philosophical agenda or presuppose an earlier body of work; so that too is likely to have been composed near the beginning of Plato's writing career.) Even so, there is no good reason to eliminate the hypothesis that throughout much of his life Plato devoted himself to writing two sorts of dialogues at the same time, moving back and forth between them as he aged: on the one hand, introductory works whose primary purpose is to show readers the difficulty of apparently simple philosophical problems, and thereby to rid them of their pretensions and false beliefs; and on the other hand, works filled with more substantive philosophical theories supported by elaborate argumentation. Moreover, one could point to features of many of the "Socratic" dialogues that would justify putting them in the latter category, even though the argumentation does not concern metaphysics or methodology or invoke mathematics- Gorgias, Protagoras, Lysis, Euthydemus, Hippias Major among them.

Plato makes it clear that both of these processes, one preceding the other, must be part of one's philosophical education. One of his deepest methodological convictions (affirmed in Meno, Theaetetus, and Sophist) is that in order to make intellectual progress we must recognize that knowledge cannot be acquired by passively receiving it from others: rather, we must work our way through problems and assess the merits of competing theories with an independent mind. Accordingly, some of his dialogues are primarily devices for breaking down the reader's complacency, and that is why it is essential that they come to no positive conclusions; others are contributions to theory-construction, and are therefore best absorbed by those who have already passed through the first stage of philosophical development. We should not assume that Plato could have written the preparatory dialogues only at the earliest stage of his career. Although he may well have begun his writing career by taking up that sort of project, he may have continued writing these "negative" works at later stages, at the same time that he was composing his theory-constructing dialogues. For example although both Euthydemus and Charmides are widely assumed to be early dialogues, they might have been written around the same time as Symposium and Republic, which are generally assumed to be compositions of his middle period-or even later.

No doubt, some of the works widely considered to be early really are such. But it is an open question which and how many of them are. At any rate, it is clear that Plato continued to write in a "Socratic" and "negative" vein even after he was well beyond the earliest stages of his career: Theaetetus features a Socrates who is even more insistent upon his ignorance than are the dramatic representations of Socrates in briefer and philosophically less complex works that are reasonably assumed to be early; and like many of those early works, Theaetetus seeks but does not find the answer to the "what is it?" question that it relentlessly pursues-"What is knowledge?" Similarly, Parmenides, though certainly not an early dialogue, is a work whose principal aim is to puzzle the reader by the presentation of arguments for apparently contradictory conclusions; since it does not tell us how it is possible to accept all of those conclusions, its principal effect on the reader is similar to that of dialogues (many of them no doubt early) that reach only negative conclusions. Plato uses this educational device-provoking the reader through the presentation of opposed arguments, and leaving the contradiction unresolved-in Protagoras (often considered an early dialogue) as well. So it is clear that even after he was well beyond the earliest stages of his thinking, he continued to assign himself the project of writing works whose principal aim is the presentation of unresolved difficulties. (And, just as we should recognize that puzzling the reader continues to be his aim even in later works, so too we should not overlook the fact that there is some substantive theory-construction in the ethical works that are simple enough to have been early compositions: Ion, for example, affirms a theory of poetic inspiration; and Crito sets out the conditions under which a citizen acquires an obligation to obey civic commands. Neither ends in failure.)

If we are justified in taking Socrates' speech in Plato's Apology to constitute reliable evidence about what the historical Socrates was like, then whatever we find in Plato's other works that is of a piece with that speech can also be safely attributed to Socrates. So understood, Socrates was a moralist but (unlike Plato) not a metaphysician or epistemologist or cosmologist. That fits with Aristotle's testimony, and Plato's way of choosing the dominant speaker of his dialogues gives further support to this way of distinguishing between him and Socrates. The number of dialogues that are dominated by a Socrates who is spinning out elaborate philosophical doctrines is remarkably small: Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus, and Philebus. All of them are dominated by ethical issues: whether to fear death, whether to be just, whom to love, the place of pleasure. Evidently, Plato thinks that it is appropriate to make Socrates the major speaker in a dialogue that is filled with positive content only when the topics explored in that work primarily have to do with the ethical life of the individual. (The political aspects of Republic are explicitly said to serve the larger question whether any individual, no matter what his circumstances, should be just.) When the doctrines he wishes to present systematically become primarily metaphysical, he turns to a visitor from Elea ( Sophist, Statesman); when they become cosmological, he turns to Timaeus; when they become constitutional, he turns, in Laws, to a visitor from Athens (and he then eliminates Socrates entirely). In effect, Plato is showing us: although he owes a great deal to the ethical insights of Socrates, as well as to his method of puncturing the intellectual pretensions of his interlocutors by leading them into contradiction, he thinks he should not put into the mouth of his teacher too elaborate an exploration of ontological, or cosmological, or political themes, because Socrates refrained from entering these domains. This may be part of the explanation why he has Socrates put into the mouth of the personified Laws of Athens the theory advanced in Crito, which reaches the conclusion that it would be unjust for him to escape from prison. Perhaps Plato is indicating, at the point where these speakers enter the dialogue, that none of what is said here is in any way derived from or inspired by the conversation of Socrates.

Just as we should reject the idea that Plato must have made a decision, at a fairly early point in his career, no longer to write one kind of dialogue (negative, destructive, preparatory) and to write only works of elaborate theory-construction; so we should also question whether he went through an early stage during which he refrained from introducing into his works any of his own ideas (if he had any), but was content to play the role of a faithful portraitist, representing to his readers the life and thought of Socrates. It is unrealistic to suppose that someone as original and creative as Plato, who probably began to write dialogues somewhere in his thirties (he was around 28 when Socrates was killed), would have started his compositions with no ideas of his own, or, having such ideas, would have decided to suppress them, for some period of time, allowing himself to think for himself only later. (What would have led to such a decision?) We should instead treat the moves made in the dialogues, even those that are likely to be early, as Platonic inventions-derived, no doubt, by Plato's reflections on and transformations of the key themes of Socrates that he attributes to Socrates in Apology. That speech indicates, for example, that the kind of religiosity exhibited by Socrates was unorthodox and likely to give offense or lead to misunderstanding. It would be implausible to suppose that Plato simply concocted the idea that Socrates followed a divine sign, especially because Xenophon too attributes this to his Socrates. But what of the various philosophical moves rehearsed in Euthyphro-the dialogue in which Socrates searches, unsuccessfully, for an understanding of what piety is? We have no good reason to think that in writing this work Plato adopted the role of a mere recording device, or something close to it (changing a word here and there, but for the most part simply recalling what he heard Socrates say, as he made his way to court). It is more likely that Plato, having been inspired by the unorthodoxy of Socrates' conception of piety, developed, on his own, a series of questions and answers designed to show his readers how difficult it is to reach an understanding of the central concept that Socrates' fellow citizens relied upon when they condemned him to death. The idea that it is important to search for definitions may have been Socratic in origin. (After all, Aristotle attributes this much to Socrates.) But the twists and turns of the arguments in Euthyphro and other dialogues that search for definitions are more likely to be the products of Plato's mind than the content of any conversations that really took place.

It is equally unrealistic to suppose that when Plato embarked on his career as a writer, he made a conscious decision to put all of the compositions that he would henceforth compose for a general reading public (with the exception of Apology) in the form of a dialogue. If the question, "why did Plato write dialogues?", which many of his readers are tempted to ask, pre-supposes that there must have been some such once-and-for-all decision, then it is poorly posed. It makes better sense to break that question apart into many little ones: better to ask, "Why did Plato write this particular work (for example: Protagoras, or Republic, or Symposium, or Laws) in the form of a dialogue-and that one(Timaeus, say) mostly in the form of a long and rhetorically elaborate single speech?" than to ask why he decided to adopt the dialogue form.

The best way to form a reasonable conjecture about why Plato wrote any given work in the form of a dialogue is to ask: what would be lost, were one to attempt to re-write this work in a way that eliminated the give-and-take of interchange, stripped the characters of their personality and social markers, and transformed the result into something that comes straight from the mouth of its author? This is often a question that will be easy to answer, but the answer might vary greatly from one dialogue to another. In pursuing this strategy, we must not rule out the possibility that some of Plato's reasons for writing this or that work in the form of a dialogue will also be his reason for doing so in other cases-perhaps some of his reasons, so far as we can guess at them, will be present in all other cases. For example, the use of character and conversation allows an author to enliven his work, to awaken the interest of his readership, and therefore to reach a wider audience. The enormous appeal of Plato's writings is in part a result of their dramatic composition. Even treatise-like compositions- Timaeus and Laws, for example-improve in readability because of their conversational frame. Furthermore, the dialogue form allows Plato's evident interest in pedagogical questions (how is it possible to learn? what is the best way to learn? from what sort of person can we learn? what sort of person is in a position to learn?) to be pursued not only in the content of his compositions but also in their form. Even in Laws such questions are not far from Plato's mind, as he demonstrates, through the dialogue form, how it is possible for the citizens of Athens, Sparta, and Crete to learn from each other by adapting and improving upon each other's social and political institutions.

In some of his works, it is evident that one of Plato's goals is to create a sense of puzzlement among his readers, and that the dialogue form is being used for this purpose. The Parmenides is perhaps the clearest example of such a work, because here Plato relentlessly rubs his readers' faces in a baffling series of unresolved puzzles and apparent contradictions. But several of his other works also have this character, though to a smaller degree: for example, Protagoras (can virtue be taught?), Hippias Minor (is voluntary wrongdoing better than involuntary wrongdoing?), and portions of Meno (are some people virtuous because of divine inspiration?). Just as someone who encounters Socrates in conversation should sometimes be puzzled about whether he means what he says (or whether he is instead speaking ironically), so Plato sometimes uses the dialogue form to create in his readers a similar sense of discomfort about what he means and what we ought to infer from the arguments that have been presented to us. But Socrates does not always speak ironically, and similarly Plato's dialogues do not always aim at creating a sense of bafflement about what we are to think about the subject under discussion. There is no mechanical rule for discovering how best to read a dialogue, no interpretive strategy that applies equally well to all of his works. We will best understand Plato's works and profit most from our reading of them if we recognize their great diversity of styles and adapt our way of reading accordingly. Rather than impose on our reading of Plato a uniform expectation of what he must be doing (because he has done such a thing elsewhere), we should bring to each dialogue a receptivity to what is unique to it. That would be the most fitting reaction to the artistry in his philosophy.

The bibliography below is meant as a highly selective and limited guide for readers who want to learn more about the issues covered above. Further discussion of these and other issues regarding Plato's philosophy, and far more bibliographical information, is available in the other entries on Plato.

Cooper, John M. (ed.), 1997, Plato: Complete Works, Indianapolis: Hackett. (Contains translations of all the works handed down from antiquity with attribution to Plato, some of which are universally agreed to be spurious, with explanatory footnotes and both a general Introduction to the study of the dialogues and individual Introductory Notes to each work translated.)

Burnyeat, Myles and Michael Frede, 2015, The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter, Dominic Scott (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ahbel-Rappe, Sara, and Rachana Kamtekar (eds.), 2006, A Companion to Socrates, Oxford: Blackwell.

Allen, Danielle, S., 2010, Why Plato Wrote, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Annas, Julia, 2003, Plato: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Benson, Hugh (ed.), 2006, A Companion to Plato, Oxford: Blackwell.

Blondell, Ruby, 2002, The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bobonich, Christopher, 2002, Plato's Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Boys-Stone George, and Christopher Rowe (eds.), 2013, The Circle of Socrates: Readings in the First-Generation Socratics, Indianapolis: Hackett.

Brandwood, Leonard, 1990, The Chronology of Plato's Dialogues, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brickhouse, Thomas C. & Nicholas D. Smith, 1994, Plato's Socrates, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dancy, Russell, 2004, Plato's Introduction of Forms, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ebrey, David and Richard Kraut (eds.), 2022, The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fine, Gail (ed.), 1999, Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

--- (ed.), 1999, Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

--- (ed.), 2008, The Oxford Handbook of Plato, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Essays by many scholars on a wide range of topics, including several studies of individual dialogues.)

--- (ed.), 2019, The Oxford Handbook of Plato, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frede, Michael, 1992, "Plato's Arguments and the Dialogue Form," in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 1992, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 201-220.

Griswold, Charles L. (ed.), 1988, Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, London: Routledge.

Guthrie, W.K.C., 1971, Socrates, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

---, 1975, A History of Greek Philosophy, Volume 4, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

---, 1978, A History of Greek Philosophy, Volume 5, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Irwin, Terence, 1995, Plato's Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kahn, Charles H., 1996, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

---, 2003, "On Platonic Chronology," in Julia Annas and Christopher Rowe (eds.), New Perspectives on Plato: Modern and Ancient, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, chapter 4.

Klagge, James C. and Nicholas D. Smith (eds.), 1992, Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogue, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 1992, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kraut, Richard (ed.), 1992, The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

---, 2008, How to Read Plato, London: Granta.

Ledger, Gerald R., 1989, Re-Counting Plato: A Computer Analysis of Plato's Style, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McCabe, Mary Margaret, 1994, Plato's Individuals, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

---, 2000, Plato and His Predecessors: The Dramatisation of Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Meinwald, Constance, 2016, Plato, London: Routledge.

Morrison, Donald R., 2012, The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nails, Debra, 1995, Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

---, 2002, The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics, Indianapolis: Hackett. (An encyclopedia of information about the characters in all of the dialogues.)

Nightingale, Andrea, 1993, Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construction of Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Peterson, Sandra, 2011, Socrates and Philosophy in the Dialogues of Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Press, Gerald A. (ed.), 2000, Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Prior, William J., 2019, Socrates, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Rowe, C.J., 2007, Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rowe, Christopher, & Malcolm Schofield (eds.), 2000, Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Contains 7 introductory essays by 7 hands on Socratic and Platonic political thought.)

Rudebusch, George, 2009, Socrates, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Russell, Daniel C., 2005, Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Rutherford, R.B., 1995, The Art of Plato: Ten Essays in Platonic Interpretation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Santas, Gerasimos, 1979, Socrates: Philosophy in Plato's Early Dialogues, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Sayre, Kenneth, 1995, Plato's Literary Garden, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Schofield, Malcolm, 2006, Plato: Political Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Silverman, Allan, 2002, The Dialectic of Essence: A Study of Plato's Metaphysics, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Smith, Nicholas D. and Thomas C. Brickhouse, 1994, Plato's Socrates, Oxford: Oxford University Press

---and John Bussanich (eds.), 2015, The Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates, London: Bloomsbury.

Taylor, C.C.W., 1998, Socrates, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thesleff, Holger, 1982, Studies in Platonic Chronology, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 70, Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica.

Vander Waerdt, Paul. A. (ed.), 1994, The Socratic Movement, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Vasiliou, Iakovos, 2008, Aiming at Virtue in Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Vlastos, Gregory, 1991, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

---, 1995, Studies in Greek Philosophy (Volume 2: Socrates, Plato, and Their Tradition), Daniel W. Graham (ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press.

White, Nicholas P., 1976, Plato on Knowledge and Reality, Indianapolis: Hackett.

Young, Charles M., 1994, "Plato and Computer Dating," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 12: 227-250.

Zuckert, Catherine H., 2009, Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Buy THE PUZZLE OF ETHICS by Vardy (ISBN: 9780006281443) from Amazon's Book Store. Free UK delivery on eligible orders.

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In this topic from the OCR Religious Studies AS specification you will study Augustine's teachings about human nature. It would also be helpful for you to be able to refer to other contrasting theories concerning human nature such as the views of Sartre or Freud.

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If you agree, we'll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Click 'Customise Cookies' to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.

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Christian Theology: An Introduction, 6th Edition

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Buy Christian Theology: An Introduction, 6th Edition 6 by McGrath, Alister E. (ISBN: 9781118869574) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers these timeless questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between "cheap grace" and "costly grace." "Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer wrote, "is the grace we bestow on ourselves...grace without discipleship....Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the girl which must be asked for, the door at which a man must know....It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."

The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of sacrifice and ethical consistency from a man whose life and thought were exemplary articulations of a new type of leadership inspired by the Gospel, and imbued with the spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty.

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The Cost of Discipleship (Audio Download): Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Michael, christianaudio.com: Amazon.co.uk: Books