Toma Gruica

In his book „I Judge No One: The Political Life of Jesus“, published by Hurst & Company in 2022, the author David Lloyd Dusenbury touches upon various toppics, including Jesus' role as a political figure, the relationship between the secular and the sacred, the concepts of sin and crime, the importance of forgiveness, and how our perception of Jesus changes when we look beyond the political lens. The book, much like the author's previous work „The Innocence of Pontius Pilate“ published in 2021., emphasizes the importance of understanding Jesus in the broader context of European intellectual, legal, and political history. It argues that the Gospels have significantly shaped European thought, influencing everything from literature to philosophy, making a compelling case that Jesus is central to our understanding of these fields. "I Judge No One" is structured as a exploration of how various philosophers, including Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Baruch Spinoza, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, George Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have engaged in discussions about Jesus from both theological and philosophical perspectives. This adds an extra layer of depth to the narrative, offering a comprehensive view of the influence of Jesus on modern philosophical thought.

„Suppose that Jane sees Albert hitting a cat with a stick for the fun of it, and Jane believes Albert's act is wrong“ ..."Why should Jane call Albert's harming of the cat wrong?" There are two kinds of answers to this question. One can say either, "That Albert's conduct is wrong is a (necessary) truth, and she has a (necessary) reason to believe what is true"; or "Given the physical structure of the world, the physical and psychological nature of Jane, and the effect on her nature by her society, she (merely) believes, in view of being taught a (societally invented) standard of wrongness, that it is 'wrong'."

In the book titled Selective Breeding and the Emergence of Philosophy by Costin Vlad Alamariu, his extended and rewritten dissertation originally defended at Yale University and published in 2023, a compelling argument is put forth. This argument posits that philosophy finds its origins in and remains intricately tied to the concept of nature. Moreover, it contends that the genesis of this idea can be traced back to the observation and comprehension of biological phenomena, especially the hereditary transmission of physical and behavioral traits. However, the book presents several issues, including a combination of outdated historical research and bold claims, which are examined here.

Duane Armitage’s book Philosophy’s Violent Sacred. Heidegger and Nietzsche through Mimetic Theory was published in 2021 by the Michigan State University Press in its series of Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. The book attempts to ground a critique of postmodernism and continental philosophy, defined here as the “French reading” of Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche, and their attempt to overcome metaphysics and ontotheology, through an analysis of René Girard’s mimetic theory. The book consists of four chapters, together with the author’s preface and bibliography at the end of the book. Structurally, (1) the first chapter defines and explores Girard’s mimetic theory and the concepts of violence and the sacred as a springboard for a further critique of the fundamental axioms of postmodern philosophy; (2) the second chapter concerns Girard’s and Heidegger’s interpretations of Nietzsche; (3) the third and most extensive chapter analyses Heidegger’s philosophy through Girard’s mimetic theory; (4) the fourth and final chapter is an overarching conclusion and a concluding argument for the necessity of a Judeo-Christian ethic as well as for the idea that postmodern philosophy leads to a form of Christian ethics indistinguishable from Marxism.