Brian Davies offers the first in-depth study of Saint Thomas Aquinas's thoughts on God and evil, revealing that Aquinas's thinking about God and evil can be traced through his metaphysical philosophy, his thoughts on God and creation, and his writings about Christian revelation and the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
Davies first gives an introduction to Aquinas's philosophical theology, as well as a nuanced analysis of the ways in which Aquinas's writings have been considered over time. For hundreds of years scholars have argued that Aquinas's views on God and evil were original and different from those of his contemporaries. Davies shows that Aquinas's views were by modern standards very original, but that in their historical context they were more traditional than many scholars since have realized.
Davies also provides insight into what we can learn from Aquinas's philosophy. Thomas Aquinas on God and Evil is a clear and engaging guide for anyone who struggles with the relation of God and theology to the problem of evil.

This book is a detailed account of and commentary on Thomas Aquinas's most influential work: the Summa Theologiae. Intended for students and general readers interested in medieval philosophy and theology, the book will also appeal to professors and scholars, although it does not presuppose any previous knowledge of its subject. Following a scholarly account of Aquinas's life, the book explores his purposes in writing the Summa Theologiae and works systematically through each of its three Parts. It also relates their contents and Aquinas's teachings to that of other works and other thinkers both theological and philosophical. In addition to being expository, the volume aims to help readers think about the value of the Summa Theologiae for themselves. The concluding chapter considers the impact Aquinas's best-known work has had since its first appearance, and why it is still studied today. Davies's study is a solid and reflective introduction both to the Summa Theologiae and to Aquinas in general.

One of Aquinas's best known works after the Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles is a theological synthesis that explains and defends the existence and nature of God without invoking the authority of the Bible. A detailed expository account of and commentary on this famous work, Davies's book aims to help readers think about the value of the Summa Contra Gentiles (SCG) for themselves, relating the contents and teachings found in the SCG to those of other works and other thinkers both theological and philosophical. Following a scholarly account of Aquinas's life and his likely intentions in writing the SCG, the volume works systematically through all four books of the text. It is, therefore, a solid and reflective introduction both to the SCG and to Aquinas more generally. The book is aimed at students of medieval philosophy and theology, and of Aquinas in particular. It will interest teachers of medieval philosophy and theology, though it does not presuppose previous knowledge of Aquinas or of his works. Davies's book is the longest and most detailed account and discussion of the SCG available in English in one volume.

Nathan L. King's The Excellent Mind considers the importance of the intellectual virtues: the character traits of excellent thinkers. He explains what it means to have an excellent mind: one that is curious, careful, self-reliant, humble, honest, persevering, courageous, open, firm, and wise. Drawing from recent literature in philosophy and psychology, he considers what these virtues are like in practice, why they are important, and how we grow in them. King also argues that despite their label, these virtues are not just for intellectuals: they are for everyone. He shows how intellectual virtues are critical to living everyday life, in areas as diverse as personal relationships, responsible citizenship, civil discourse, personal success, and education. Filled with vivid examples and relevant applications, The Excellent Mind will serve as an engaging introduction to the intellectual virtues for students and anyone interested in the topic.

The topic of certitude is much debated today. On one side, commentators such as Charles Krauthammer urge us to achieve "moral clarity." On the other, those like George Will contend that the greatest present threat to civilization is an excess of certitude. To address this uncomfortable debate, Susan Schreiner turns to the intellectuals of early modern Europe, a period when thought was still fluid and had not yet been reified into the form of rationality demanded by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Schreiner argues that Europe in the sixteenth century was preoccupied with concerns similar to ours; both the desire for certainty -- especially religious certainty -- and warnings against certainty permeated the earlier era. Digging beneath overt theological and philosophical problems, she tackles the underlying fears of the period as she addresses questions of salvation, authority, the rise of skepticism, the outbreak of religious violence, the discernment of spirits, and the ambiguous relationship between appearance and reality.
In her examination of the history of theological polemics and debates (as well as other genres), Schreiner sheds light on the repeated evaluation of certainty and the recurring fear of deception. Among the texts she draws on are Montaigne's Essays, the mystical writings of Teresa of Avila, the works of Reformation fathers William of Occam, Luther, Thomas Muntzer, and Thomas More; and the dramas of Shakespeare. The result is not a book about theology, but rather about the way in which the concern with certitude determined the theology, polemics and literature of an age.

On Power (De Potentia) is one of Aquinas's ''Disputed Questions'' (a systematic series of discussions of specific theological topics). It is a text which anyone with a serious interest in Aquinas's thinking will need to read. There is, however, no English translation of the De Potentia currently in print. A translation was published in 1932 under the auspices of the English Dominicans, but is now only available on a CD of translations of Aquineas coming from the InteLex Corporation. A new translation in book form is therefore highly desirable. However, the De Potentia is a very long work indeed (the 1932 translation fills three volumes), and a full translation would be a difficult publishing proposition as well as a challenge to any translator. Recognizing this fact, while wishing to make a solid English version of the De Potentia available, Fr. Richard Regan has produced this abridgement, which passes over some of the full text while retaining what seems most important when it comes to following the flow of Aquinas's thought.

This is an introduction the thought of Robert Holcot, a great and influential but often underappreciated medieval thinker. Holcot was a Dominican friar who flourished in the 1330's and produced a diverse body of work including scholastic treatises, biblical commentaries, and sermons. By viewing the whole of Holcot's corpus, this book provides a comprehensive account of his thought. Challenging established characterizations of him as a skeptic or radical, this book shows Holcot to be primarily concerned with affirming and supporting the faith of the pious believer. At times, this manifests itself as a cautious attitude toward absolutists' claims about the power of natural reason. At other times, Holcot reaffirms, in Anselmian fashion, the importance of rational effort in the attempt to understand and live out one's faith. Over the course of this introduction the authors unpack Holcot's views on faith and heresy, the divine nature and divine foreknowledge, the sacraments, Christ, and political philosophy. Likewise, they examine Holcot's approach to several important medieval literary genres, including the development of his unique "picture method," biblical commentaries, and sermons. In so doing, John Slotemaker and Jeffrey Witt restore Holcot to his rightful place as one of the most important thinkers of his time.

Most readers first encounter Augustine's love for Scripture's words in the many biblical allusions of his masterwork, the Confessions. Augustine does not merely quote texts, but in many ways makes Scripture itself tell the story. In his journey from darkness to light, Augustine becomes Adam in the Garden of Eden, the Prodigal Son of Jesus' parable, the Pauline double personality at once devoted to and rebellious against God's law. Throughout he speaks the words of the Psalms as if he had written them. Crucial to Augustine's self-portrayal is his skill at transposing himself into the texts. He sees their properties and dynamics as his own, and by extension, every believing reader's own. In Christ Meets Me Everywhere, Michael Cameron argues that Augustine wanted to train readers of Scripture to transpose themselves into the texts in the same way he did, by the same process of figuration that he found at its core. Tracking Augustine's developing practice of self-transposition into the figures of the biblical texts over the course of his entire career, Cameron shows that this practice is the key to Augustine's hermeneutics.

This is a brief, accessible introduction to the thought of the philosopher John Buridan (ca. 1295-1361). Little is known about Buridan's life, most of which was spent studying and then teaching at the University of Paris. Buridan's works are mostly by-products of his teaching. They consist mainly of commentaries on Aristotle, covering the whole extent of Aristotelian philosophy, ranging from logic to metaphysics, to natural science, to ethics and politics. Aside from these running commentaries on Aristotle's texts, Buridan wrote influential question-commentaries. These were a typical genre of the medieval scholastic output, in which the authors systematically and thoroughly discussed the most problematic issues raised by the text they were lecturing on. The question-format allowed Buridan to work out in detail his characteristically nominalist take on practically all aspects of Aristotelian philosophy, using the conceptual tools he developed in his works on logic. Buridan's influence in the late Middle Ages can hardly be overestimated. His ideas quickly spread not only through his own works, but to an even larger extent through the work of his students and younger colleagues, such as Nicholas Oresme, Marisilius of Inghen, and Albert of Saxony, who in turn became very influential themselves, and turned Buridan's ideas into standard textbook material in the curricula of many late medieval European universities. With the waning of scholasticism Buridan's fame quickly faded. Gyula Klima argues, however, that many of Buridan's academic concerns are strikingly similar to those of modern philosophy and his work sometimes quite directly addresses modern philosophical questions.

Words have determinable sense only within a complex of unstated assumptions, and all interpretation must therefore go beyond the given material. This book addresses what is man's place in the Aristotelian world. It also describes man's abilities and prospects in managing his life, and considers how far Aristotle's treatment of time and history licenses the sort of dynamic interpretation of his doctrines that have been given. The ontological model that explains much of Aristotle's conclusions and methods is one of life-worlds, in which the material universe of scientific myth is no more than an abstraction from lived reality, not its transcendent ground.

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Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

The brilliant and provocative new book from one of the world’s foremost political writers.

In The War on the West, international bestselling author Douglas Murray asks: if the history of humankind is one of slavery, conquest, prejudice, genocide and exploitation, why are only Western nations taking the blame for it?

It’s become perfectly acceptable to celebrate the contributions of non-Western cultures, but discussing their flaws and crimes is called hate speech. What’s more it has become acceptable to discuss the flaws and crimes of Western culture, but celebrating their contributions is also called hate speech. Some of this is a much-needed reckoning; however, some is part of a larger international attack on reason, democracy, science, progress and the citizens of the West by dishonest scholars, hatemongers, hostile nations and human-rights abusers hoping to distract from their ongoing villainy.

In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows the ways in which many well-meaning people have been lured into polarisation by lies, and shows how far the world’s most crucial political debates have been hijacked across Europe and America. Propelled by an incisive deconstruction of inconsistent arguments and hypocritical activism, The War on the West is an essential and urgent polemic that cements Murray’s status as one of the world’s foremost political writers.

The Renaissance witnessed an upsurge in explanations of natural events in terms of invisibly small particles - atoms, corpuscles, minima, monads and particles. The reasons for this development are as varied as are the entities that were proposed. This volume covers the period from the earliest commentaries on Lucretius' De rerum natura to the sources of Newton's alchemical texts. Contributors examine key developments in Renaissance physiology, meteorology, metaphysics, theology, chymistry and historiography, all of which came to assign a greater explanatory weight to minute entities. These contributions show that there was no simple 'revival of atomism', but that the Renaissance confronts us with a diverse and conceptually messy process. Contributors are: Stephen Clucas, Christoph Luthy, Craig Martin, Elisabeth Moreau, William R. Newman, Elena Nicoli, Sandra Plastina, Kuni Sakamoto, Jole Shackelford, and Leen Spruit.

These essays present new readings of Anselm's speculative and spiritual writings on topics including his relationship to Augustine, proofs for God's existence, faith and reason, human freedom and the problem of evil, his spiritual meditations and prayers, as well as Anselm's reception by 19th and 20th century thinkers, modernism, and feminism. These philosophical, theological and literary analyses bring fresh perspectives on Anselm both in his historical context and in dialogue with contemporary questions. Contributors are: Tomas Ekenberg, Riccardo Fredriga, Emery de Gaal, Kyle Philip Hubbard, Maggie Ann Labinski, Roberto Limonta, Ian Logan, Gavin Ortlund, M.B. Pranger, Gregory B. Sadler, Kevin Staley, Karen Sullivan, Eileen C. Sweeney, Michael Vendsel, Luca Vettorello, James Wetzel, and Kevin White. See inside the book.

This monograph is a critical and historical account of Aristotelian essentialism and modal logic. In Chapter One, ancient and contemporary interpretations and claims of inconsistency in Aristotle's modal syllogistic are examined. A more consistent model is developed through attention to Aristotle's comments on negation. In Chapter Two, proofs for each of the mixed apodictic syllogisms are analyzed and diagrammed. Chapter Three explores how Aristotle's modal metaphysics fits within the context of the Posterior Analytics. Chapter Four contrasts Aristotelian modal logic to contemporary modal metaphysics and argues for ways in which a return to Aristotle may spark intriguing thought in contemporary discussions of the philosophy of science and in debate over the metaphysics of identity.

Machiavelli is chiefly known for The Prince, but his main considerations on politics are found in his later work Discourses on Livy. Despite this book's historical and theoretical importance, its complexity, length and style have often discouraged new readers and interpreters of Machiavelli from engaging with it. For this reason, the Discourses has not been given the attention it deserves. This volume of newly commissioned essays by some of the world’s leading Machiavelli experts seeks to remedy this deficiency. It is the first collective volume dedicated specifically to this profound work, covering topics such as Machiavelli’s republicanism, the relation between liberty and tyranny, the role of religion, Machiavelli’s conception of history, his writing style, his view of society as a plural and conflictive body, his suggestion of how a free state should be organized, and his notions of people and virtù. Contributors: Jérémie Barthas, Thomas Berns, Alessandro Campi, J. Patrick Coby, Marie Gaille, Marco Geuna, Mark Jurdjevic, Cary J. Nederman, Gabriele Pedullà, Diogo Pires Aurélio, Fabio Raimondi, Andre Santos Campos, Miguel Vatter, and Camila Vergara.

Although Pseudo-Dionysius was, after Aristotle, the author whom Thomas Aquinas quoted most frequently, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role of this Neoplatonist thinker in the formation of Aquinas' philosophy. Fran O'Rourke's book is the only available work that investigates the pervasive influence of Pseudo-Dionysius on Aquinas, while at the same time examining the latter's profound originality. Central themes discussed by O'Rourke include knowledge of the absolute, existence as the first and most universal perfection, the diffusion of creation, the hierarchy of creatures, and their return to God as final end. O'Rourke devotes special attention to the Neoplatonist element in Aquinas' notion of "being" as intensity or degree of perfection. He also considers the relation of being and goodness in light of Aquinas' nuanced reversal of Dionysius' theory of the primacy of the good, and Aquinas' arguments for the transcendental nature of goodness.