15 results
11 - Friedrich Schleiermacher
- from Part II - Theological figures
- Edited by Paul T. Nimmo, University of Aberdeen, David A. S. Fergusson, University of Edinburgh
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- The Cambridge Companion to Reformed Theology
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- 05 May 2016
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- 25 April 2016, pp 163-178
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Response to Michael Rea
- Kevin W. Hector
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- Scottish Journal of Theology / Volume 68 / Issue 1 / February 2015
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- 09 January 2015, pp. 80-82
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- February 2015
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For several years now, Michael Rea has been working to foster a fruitful discussion between theologians and analytic philosophers, and his article review nicely exemplifies those efforts. Rea recognises that he and I agree on several key points, the most important of which is that ‘cataphatic theology can be done without idolatry or violence’. He wonders, though, whether Theology without Metaphysics succeeds in providing a model for such theology, since he thinks it is liable to several objections. By addressing them, I hope to demonstrate that my model is indeed viable, though I would be surprised if this were sufficient to persuade Professor Rea to adopt it. As I see it, more than one model, including Professor Rea’s, may do justice to the relevant phenomena; here I want to argue, against Rea's criticisms, that mine does too.
Immutability, Necessity and Triunity: Towards a Resolution of the Trinity and Election Controversy
- Kevin W. Hector
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- Scottish Journal of Theology / Volume 65 / Issue 1 / February 2012
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- 06 January 2012, pp. 64-81
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- February 2012
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The controversy sparked by Bruce McCormack's 2000 essay, entitled ‘Grace and Being: The Role of God's Gracious Election in Karl Barth's Theological Ontology’, shows little sign of waning; it seems, in fact, only to be heating up. In this article, I hope to make a modest contribution to this debate, one which will hopefully move it towards a resolution. My proposal is twofold: on the one hand, I will argue that we can do justice to McCormack's motivating concerns, without rendering ourselves liable to criticisms commonly raised against his view, if we accept two propositions: first, that God does not change in electing to be God-with-us, and second, that election is volitionally, but not ‘absolutely’, necessary to God. (By ‘absolutely necessary’ I mean something like ‘true in all possible eternities’, as will become clear.) I will try to demonstrate that this is Karl Barth's own position on the matter, which demonstration, if successful, would mean that the controversy should no longer be centred on the proper interpretation of Barth. This brings me to the second, shorter, part of my proposal, in which I argue that McCormack's position is innocent of some charges frequently brought against it. My hope is that these arguments, taken together, will advance the current discussion and contribute to its resolution.
2 - Concepts, rules, and the Spirit of recognition
- Kevin W. Hector, University of Chicago
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- Theology without Metaphysics
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- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011, pp 47-102
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Summary
The present project aims to render optional a particular picture of God and language – namely, one framed by essentialist-correspondentist metaphysics – by setting alongside it a picture which takes ordinary practices and experience as its explanatory basis, and which thus frees one from the nostalgia one might otherwise feel for such metaphysics. As noted in the first chapter, metaphysics encourages one to hold inflationary notions of fundamental reality and of what it means to be in touch with reality, such that to be freed from its grip, one must be freed from the continuing influence of these notions; otherwise, the rejection of metaphysics will feel like a limitation, as if one were alienated from reality. The previous chapter already discussed an account according to which there need be no distance between God and God-with-us, but this claim faces an obvious problem: even if that account were wholly persuasive, it would not follow that metaphysics had been rendered optional, for the simple reason that the very use of language may betray even the best of anti-metaphysical intentions. According to one highly influential view, at least, metaphysics is written into language itself, from which it would follow that an anti-metaphysical discourse about God is necessarily self-defeating. On this view, language, particularly in its predicative varieties, is thought to be inescapably violent, since it forces objects to fit into predetermined categories.
I agree that such violence must be avoided, but, from a therapeutic point of view, it would appear that the problem is overstated, and that this overstatement seems plausible only on the assumption of a residually metaphysical picture of language. This and the following three chapters aim to free us from this assumption by elaborating an alternative account of language and its relationship to God. The overall strategy is (a) to explain semantical notions such as meaning, truth, and so forth in terms of the norms implicit in recognitive practices, in order to construct a non-metaphysical account according to which language is fit for God’s use of it, and then (b) to argue that the normative Spirit of Christ enables language to be meaningful and true of God by entering into, and so circulating through, these same practices. The present chapter begins, therefore, by explaining the norms implicit in ordinary concept use by appeal to social practices in which performers and performances are recognized as “going on in the same way” as certain precedents. On the strength of this explanation, it will become clear that concepts need not be thought of as “containers,” nor as necessarily violent. I then argue that the normative Spirit of Christ is mediated through these same recognitive practices, and use this account to explain theological concept use: one’s use of a concept counts as following Christ, on this view, only if it goes on in the same way as precedent uses which have been recognized as doing so, in a chain of mutual recognition that stretches back to those recognized by Christ himself. This account thus provides some crucial resources with which to free us from the metaphysical picture of concepts, according to which one’s use of a concept corresponds to an essence-like idea or “meaning,” and so free us from the sense that concept use fits objects into predetermined categories.
5 - Truth and correspondence
- Kevin W. Hector, University of Chicago
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- Theology without Metaphysics
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- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011, pp 201-244
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Summary
Preceding chapters have elaborated and defended a therapeutic approach to concepts, meaning, and reference, but if I am to make good on my project of rendering the essentialist-correspondentist picture of language optional, a daunting hurdle still remains, namely, the semantics of truth – daunting, since truth is often understood in precisely correspondentist terms. The problem is this: if the truth of a belief (or statement, proposition, etc.) just is its correspondence to an object’s fundamental reality, and if it is inappropriate to think of our beliefs as standing in this sort of relationship to God, then it would appear that our beliefs cannot be true of God. The present chapter aims to render this conclusion optional by defending a non-correspondentist account of truth and then using this account to explain how theological beliefs could be true. The key moves are these: (a) to understand truth in terms of the practice of taking-true, that is, one’s judging some belief to be correct on the basis of one’s other beliefs, and thus using it to judge still other beliefs; (b) to understand this practice as carrying on the norms implicit in patterns of intersubjective recognition; and (c) to understand the normative Spirit of Christ as entering into and being carried on through these same practices, thereby supplying the condition of one’s possibly holding true beliefs about God.
Truth problems
Theologians and philosophers have traditionally assumed that truth is a matter of correspondence between beliefs, ideas, or words, on the one hand, and extra-mental, extra-linguistic reality, on the other. So René Descartes, for instance, asserts that “truth, in its proper signification, denotes the conformity of thought with object”; Immanuel Kant takes it for granted that truth is “the agreement of cognition with its object”; and Karl Barth remarks that theological claims are true if and only if “our words stand in a correspondence and agreement with the being of God.” Countless examples could be adduced, but the point is that theologians and philosophers have tended to accept some version of the so-called correspondence theory of truth, according to which a belief, statement, or idea counts as true if and only if it corresponds to or is isomorphic with an object. I will say more about this theory in a moment, but for now, it is important to note that although most theologians have accepted some version of it, the correspondence theory has been subjected to serious criticism, leading some to reason that if (a) truth is indeed a matter of correspondence, and (b) such correspondence is unworkable (at least with respect to God), then (c) our beliefs and sentences cannot be true of God. In due course, I will try to render conclusion (c) optional by calling into question premise (a), but in order to motivate the alternative account by means of which to do so, and to establish some criteria for that account’s adequacy, we need to spend some time considering the problems at issue in premise (b). Toward that end, this section begins by saying more about the correspondence theory and then considering some of the objections it faces.
6 - Emancipating theology
- Kevin W. Hector, University of Chicago
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- Theology without Metaphysics
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- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011, pp 245-293
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Summary
I have been arguing that theology needs to be freed from metaphysical assumptions about God and language, and the preceding chapters have aimed to secure this freedom by elaborating an alternative account of each. One of my central claims, simply stated, was that so long as one remains bound to essentialist-correspondentist presuppositions about language and its relation to God, it will seem as if one has to choose between fitting God into a metaphysical framework, on the one hand, and insisting that God stands at a remove from creaturely language and experience, on the other. To be freed from these presuppositions, then, and so from the sense of alienation they beget, I defended a non-metaphysical understanding of both ordinary and theological discourse: by explaining semantical notions such as concept use, meaning, reference, and truth in terms of the norms implicit in the practice of recognition, explaining the mediation of Christ’s normative Spirit in terms of these same recognitive practices, and using the latter to explain the semantics of God-talk, I concluded that there need be no distance between God and language. The preceding account thus aimed to emancipate theology from its captivity to certain metaphysical assumptions. The aim of this final chapter is to make explicit the extent to which theology, thus emancipated, is itself emancipating, in that (a) it funds a robust notion of “expressive freedom,” and (b) it provides critical and constructive resources for movements of liberation.
Expressive freedom
We begin, accordingly, by making explicit the preceding proposal’s commitment to (and underwriting of) “expressive freedom.” Such freedom can be understood as a species of autonomy – understood, that is, in terms of one’s ability to see one’s doxastic and practical commitments (or “beliefs and actions,” for short) as due to one – where this being-due-to-one can itself be understood in terms of one’s standing in a certain relationship to one’s peers. On the picture that emerges, freedom turns out to depend upon one’s being constrained by communal norms which are themselves recognizable as due to one, and norms count as such just insofar as they are carried on by capacious patterns of mutual recognition.
Contents
- Kevin W. Hector, University of Chicago
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- Theology without Metaphysics
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- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011, pp vii-viii
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Index
- Kevin W. Hector, University of Chicago
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- Theology without Metaphysics
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- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011, pp 294-301
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4 - Reference and presence
- Kevin W. Hector, University of Chicago
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- Theology without Metaphysics
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- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011, pp 148-200
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Summary
The preceding chapters have defended several elements of a therapeutic response to metaphysics: by elaborating a non-essentialist, non-correspondentist account of concepts and meaning, and explaining theological concept use in terms of the Spirit’s circulation through practices of intersubjective recognition, we arrived at the conclusion that one’s rejection of an essentialist-correspondentist picture of language’s relation to God need not be thought to entail that God stands at a distance from language. In order to complete the therapy, we must address two further issues, namely, intentionality and truth. This chapter takes up the issue of “intentionality,” by which I mean the object-directedness of one’s words and thoughts – the issue, that is, of the very idea that words could have God as their object. This issue can be further analyzed in terms of two sub-issues, namely, that of object-directedness – here, the use of words to refer to an object – and of object-directedness – the availability of such objects. It turns out that therapy is needed here, too, since intentionality, like meaning, has long been understood along essentialist-correspondentist lines and has, accordingly, given rise to the assumption that the failure of essentialist-correspondentist metaphysics entails that one cannot intend God with one’s words.
Metaphysics, intentionality, and homesickness
There are two issues involved in accounting for the putative “aboutness” of God-talk: issues related to the semantical notion of reference – paradigmatically the use of a name to pick out some object – and those related to an object’s very availability. Each of these has been understood in essentialist-correspondentist terms at various points in its career, which has made it appear that if God cannot be inscribed within a metaphysical framework, then one cannot refer to God, and God is never available to one.
Preface
- Kevin W. Hector, University of Chicago
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- Theology without Metaphysics
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- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011, pp ix-x
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Preface
I regularly encounter persons who think it is self-evident that language is inherently metaphysical, that it therefore shoehorns objects into a predetermined framework and so inflicts violence upon them, and that it must accordingly be kept at a distance from God. I have never been convinced that this is the case, much less that it is self-evidently the case. This book argues that there is good reason to resist such a view, since there is reason to think that language is not – or need not be thought to be – metaphysical. If I am right about this, the book should contribute to current discussions of theological language as well as of metaphysics. That is my hope, at any rate.
This project began as a dissertation written at Princeton Seminary, and I am grateful to Gordon Graham, George Hunsinger, Wentzel van Huyssteen, Bruce McCormack, Daniel Migliore, and Jeffrey Stout for their invaluable help with it. McCormack and Stout deserve special recognition, since whatever theological and philosophical skill I have is due largely to them. I was blessed to have been mentored by two professors who are not only among the best in the world at what they do, but who earnestly care about – and root for – their students.
3 - Meaning and meanings
- Kevin W. Hector, University of Chicago
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- Theology without Metaphysics
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- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011, pp 103-147
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I have been arguing for an account of language and of God that will free us from essentialist-correspondentist metaphysics, as well as from the sense of limitation one may feel so long as one remains in the grip of metaphysical assumptions. Toward that end, the previous chapter advanced two lines of argument: first, that concepts are a species of norm, that their normativity is carried on through a process of intersubjective recognition, and that concepts are therefore continually changing; and, second, that the normative Spirit of Christ enters into, and is carried on by, this same process of recognition, so as to conform such norms to God. On the resulting picture, concepts can be seen as fit for God’s appropriation, and God can be seen to appropriate them through the work of Jesus and his Spirit. The previous chapter thus defended an account according to which the form of concepts – that is, their “normishness” – is fit for God’s use of them, which thereby renders optional one reason for thinking that God must stand at a distance from language. The present chapter rounds out this account by explaining the content of concepts, that is, their meaning.
The problem here, recall, is this: if (a) the meaning of a concept use is its correspondence to an essence-like idea or “meaning,” and (b) this meaning is fixed once and for all by the concept’s application to certain creaturely objects, it follows (c) that to apply a concept to God would be to cut God down to the size of creaturely objects. It might seem, then, that in order to avoid setting God within a metaphysical framework, one must avoid the application of concepts to God, which would entail that God must be thought to stand at a remove from language about God. From a therapeutic point of view, however, this set of inferences can be seen to depend upon residually metaphysical assumptions about the meaning of concepts. The therapeutic strategy is thus to defend an account of meaning which calls into question premises (a) and (b), thereby rendering optional conclusion (c). Toward that end, this chapter argues, first, for an account according to which a concept’s meaning is the product of a normative trajectory implicit in a series of recognized precedents, such that its meaning is continually changing, and second, for an account according to which the Spirit of Christ applies certain concepts to God by appropriating these trajectories, thereby judging and fulfilling their meaning. With this account on board, it should be clear that the problems facing essentialist-correspondentist metaphysics need not be thought to entail that concepts cannot apply to God, since the inability of concepts to correspond to God would result in their distance from God only on the assumption that concept use depends upon such correspondence.
Frontmatter
- Kevin W. Hector, University of Chicago
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- Theology without Metaphysics
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- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011, pp i-vi
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1 - Therapy for metaphysics
- Kevin W. Hector, University of Chicago
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- Theology without Metaphysics
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- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011, pp 1-46
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Summary
As its name suggests, this book proposes a novel strategy by which to avoid metaphysics. There is nothing new about trying to avoid metaphysics, of course – in the memorable words of Hegel, “metaphysics is a word from which more or less everyone runs away, as from someone who has the plague” – but unlike recent proposals, the chapters which follow pursue a therapeutic, rather than apophatic, approach to doing so. One of the difficulties facing any attempt to overcome metaphysics, it seems, is that certain metaphysical presuppositions about what it means to be in touch with reality – and about reality itself – have become common sense. A crucial first step in overcoming metaphysics, then, is to render these presuppositions visible as presuppositions; on a therapeutic approach, this is accomplished by defending an alternative account of reality, of “being in touch,” and so on, thereby stripping such presuppositions of their apparent self-evidence. Not just any account will do, however, since one who has long been in the grip of metaphysics may feel as if its loss leaves him or her out of touch with reality, as if condemned to a life among shadows. The therapeutic strategy, then, is to inoculate one against such feelings by explaining that which metaphysics purports to explain – what reality is like and what it means to be in touch with it – in terms of ordinary practices and experience, thereby deflating these notions and demonstrating that one need not appeal to metaphysics in order to do them justice. Before elaborating this strategy, however, we need to say more about the metaphysics at which it takes aim; to this we now turn.
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Modern thought has engaged in a recurrent rebellion against metaphysics: so, for instance, Kant’s critical philosophy aims to make the world unsafe for Leibnizian metaphysics; Nietzsche insists that Kant is still beholden to the metaphysics at which his critique took aim; Heidegger claims that Nietzsche’s “will to power” is the culmination, rather than overcoming, of metaphysics; Jean-Luc Marion argues that Heidegger’s “ontological difference” keeps us bound within a metaphysics of Being/being; John Caputo maintains that Marion’s “de-nominative” theology remains complicit in the metaphysics of presence; and so on. This recurrent rebellion against metaphysics indicates that although we moderns may want to avoid metaphysics, we have a hard time doing so. It would appear, in other words, that metaphysics is a kind of temptation: we want to resist it, but find it difficult to do so.
Theology without Metaphysics
- God, Language, and the Spirit of Recognition
- Kevin W. Hector
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- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
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- 15 September 2011
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One of the central arguments of post-metaphysical theology is that language is inherently 'metaphysical' and consequently that it shoehorns objects into predetermined categories. Because God is beyond such categories, it follows that language cannot apply to God. Drawing on recent work in theology and philosophy of language, Kevin Hector develops an alternative account of language and its relation to God, demonstrating that one need not choose between fitting God into a metaphysical framework, on the one hand, and keeping God at a distance from language, on the other. Hector thus elaborates a 'therapeutic' response to metaphysics: given the extent to which metaphysical presuppositions about language have become embedded in common sense, he argues that metaphysics can be fully overcome only by defending an alternative account of language and its application to God, so as to strip such presuppositions of their apparent self-evidence and release us from their grip.
Contributors
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- By Jane E. Adcock, Yahya Aghakhani, A. Anand, Eva Andermann, Frederick Andermann, Alexis Arzimanoglou, Sandrine Aubert, Nadia Bahi-Buisson, Carman Barba, Agatino Battaglia, Geneviève Bernard, Nadir E. Bharucha, Laurence A. Bindoff, William Bingaman, Francesca Bisulli, Thomas P. Bleck, Stewart G. Boyd, Andreas Brunklaus, Harry Bulstrode, Jorge G. Burneo, Laura Canafoglia, Laura Cantonetti, Roberto H. Caraballo, Fernando Cendes, Kevin E. Chapman, Patrick Chauvel, Richard F. M. Chin, H. T. Chong, Fahmida A. Chowdhury, Catherine J. Chu-Shore, Rolando Cimaz, Andrew J. Cole, Bernard Dan, Geoffrey Dean, Alessio De Ciantis, Fernando De Paolis, Rolando F. Del Maestro, Irissa M. Devine, Carlo Di Bonaventura, Concezio Di Rocco, Henry B. Dinsdale, Maria Alice Donati, François Dubeau, Michael Duchowny, Olivier Dulac, Monika Eisermann, Brent Elliott, Bernt A. Engelsen, Kevin Farrell, Natalio Fejerman, Rosalie E. Ferner, Silvana Franceschetti, Robert Friedlander, Antonio Gambardella, Hector H. Garcia, Serena Gasperini, Lorenzo Genitori, Gioia Gioi, Flavio Giordano, Leif Gjerstad, Daniel G. Glaze, Howard P. Goodkin, Sidney M. Gospe, Andrea Grassi, William P. Gray, Renzo Guerrini, Marie-Christine Guiot, William Harkness, Andrew G. Herzog, Linda Huh, Margaret J. Jackson, Thomas S. Jacques, Anna C. Jansen, Sigmund Jenssen, Michael R. Johnson, Dorothy Jones-Davis, Reetta Kälviäinen, Peter W. Kaplan, John F. Kerrigan, Autumn Marie Klein, Matthias Koepp, Edwin H. Kolodny, Kandan Kulandaivel, Ruben I. Kuzniecky, Ahmed Lary, Yolanda Lau, Anna-Elina Lehesjoki, Maria K. Lehtinen, Holger Lerche, Michael P. T. Lunn, Snezana Maljevic, Mark R. Manford, Carla Marini, Bindu Menon, Giulia Milioli, Eli M. Mizrahi, Manish Modi, Márcia Elisabete Morita, Manuel Murie-Fernandez, Vivek Nambiar, Lina Nashef, Vincent Navarro, Aidan Neligan, Ruth E. Nemire, Charles R. J. C. Newton, John O'Donavan, Hirokazu Oguni, Teiichi Onuma, Andre Palmini, Eleni Panagiotakaki, Pasquale Parisi, Elena Parrini, Liborio Parrino, Ignacio Pascual-Castroviejo, M. Scott Perry, Perrine Plouin, Charles E. Polkey, Suresh S. Pujar, Karthik Rajasekaran, R. Eugene Ramsey, Rahul Rathakrishnan, Roberta H. Raven, Guy M. Rémillard, David Rosenblatt, M. Elizabeth Ross, Abdulrahman Sabbagh, P. Satishchandra, Swati Sathe, Ingrid E. Scheffer, Philip A. Schwartzkroin, Rod C. Scott, Frédéric Sedel, Michelle J. Shapiro, Elliott H. Sherr, Michael Shevell, Simon D. Shorvon, Adrian M. Siegel, Gagandeep Singh, S. Sinha, Barbara Spacca, Waney Squier, Carl E. Stafstrom, Bernhard J. Steinhoff, Andrea Taddio, Gianpiero Tamburrini, C. T. Tan, Raymond Y. L. Tan, Erik Taubøll, Robert W. Teasell, Mario Giovanni Terzano, Federica Teutonico, Suzanne A. Tharin, Elizabeth A. Thiele, Pierre Thomas, Paolo Tinuper, Dorothée Kasteleijn-Nolst Trenité, Sumeet Vadera, Pierangelo Veggiotti, Jean-Pierre Vignal, J. M. Walshe, Elizabeth J. Waterhouse, David Watkins, Ruth E. Williams, Yue-Hua Zhang, Benjamin Zifkin, Sameer M. Zuberi
- Edited by Simon D. Shorvon, Frederick Andermann, Renzo Guerrini
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- Book:
- The Causes of Epilepsy
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- 05 March 2012
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- 14 April 2011, pp ix-xvi
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