Robert Grosseteste (c.1168-1253) was the initiator of the English scientific tradition, one of the first chancellors of Oxford University, and a famous teacher and commentator on the newly discovered works of Aristotle. In this book, James McEvoy provides the first general, inclusive overview of the entire range of Grosseteste's massive intellectual achievement.

Entirely faithful to Boethius' Latin; Relihan's translation makes the philosophy of the Consolation intelligible to readers; it gives equal weight to the poetry--in fact, Relihan's metrical translation of Boethius' metro are themselves contributions of the first moment to Boethian studies. Boethius finally has a translator equal to his prodigious talents and his manifold vision. --Joseph Pucci, Brown University

Although a controversial figure in his own day, St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-74) forged a unique synthesis of faith and reason, of ancient philosophy and sacred scripture, which decisively influenced Dante and the whole subsequent Catholic tradition.

Intensely interested in Aristotle, as well as Plato, Paul and Augustine, Thomas believed that unaided human thought can take us a long way towards wisdom and truth, although it must always be supplemented by the central mystery of revelation. His writings contain many classic statements of doctrine about angels, the Incarnation, Trinity, sacraments and the soul, but also penetrating discussions on choice, creation and conscience, law, logic and the purpose of life.

In this superb selection, arranged chronologically, Ralph McInerny brings together sermons, commentaries, responses to criticism and substantial extracts from one of Christianity's supreme masterpieces, the Summa theologiae. For anyone concerned to find ways of reconciling science and dogma, reason and religion, Thomas has always been a major source of inspiration. This volume reveals both the development and the sheer scope of his work.

This volume contains a translation into clear modern English of an unjustly neglected work by Sextus Empiricus, together with introduction and extensive commentary. Sextus is our main source for the doctrines and arguments of ancient Scepticism; in Against the Ethicists he sets out a distinctive Sceptic position in ethics.

Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) was arguably the single most important Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages, with an impact on the later Jewish tradition that was unparalleled by any of his contemporaries. In this volume of new essays, world-leading scholars address themes relevant to his philosophical outlook, including his relationship with his Islamicate surroundings and the impact of his work on subsequent Jewish and Christian writings, as well as his reception in twentieth-century scholarship. The essays also address the nature and aim of Maimonides' philosophical writing, including its connection with biblical exegesis, and the philosophical and theological arguments that are central to his work, such as revelation, ritual, divine providence, and teleology. Wide-ranging and fully up-to-date, the volume will be highly valuable for those interested in Jewish history and thought, medieval philosophy, and religious studies.

The Novum Organum Scientiarum, is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon. The title translates as new instrument of science and is a reference to Aristotle's work Organon, which was his treatise on logic and syllogism. In Novum Organum, Bacon details a new system of logic he believes to be superior to the old ways of syllogism. This is now known as the Baconian method. "Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything." Sir Francis Bacon was one of the major political figures of his time, served in the court of Elizabeth I and ultimately became Lord Chancellor under James. A scholar, wit, lawyer and statesman, he wrote widely on politics, philosophy and science - declaring early in his career that 'I have taken all knowledge as my province'.

Augustine and Roman Virtue seeks to correct what the author sees as a fundamental misapprehension in medieval thought, a misapprehension that fuels further problems and misunderstandings in the historiography of philosophy. This misapprehension is the assumption that the development of certain themes associated with medieval philosophy is due, primarily if not exclusively, to extra-philosophical religious commitments rather than philosophical argumentation, referred to here as the 'sacralization thesis'. Brian Harding explores this problem through a detailed reading of Augustine's City of God as understood in a Latin context, that is, in dialogue with Latin writers such as Cicero, Livy, Sallust and Seneca. The book seeks to revise a common reading of Augustine's critique of ancient virtue by focusing on that dialogue, while showing that his attitude towards those authors is more sympathetic, and more critical, than one might expect. Harding argues that the criticisms rest on sympathy and that Augustine's critique of ancient virtue thinks through and develops certain trends noticeable in the major figures of Latin philosophy.

In the 16th century, Erasmus was one of the most celebrated figures in Europe--a man of such vast learning that both royalty and universities petitioned for his services. In this very readable biography, a noted scholar traces Erasmus's youth, his years as an itinerant scholar, sojourns in England, France, Switzerland, and Italy, friendship with Sir Thomas More, and disputes with Martin Luther. The author also probes Erasmus's mind and character and discusses his writings, including In Praise of Folly and his great translation of the New Testament.

This new critique of Aquinas's theory of natural law presents an incisive, new analysis of the central themes and relevant texts in the Summa Theologiae which became the classical canon for natural law. Professor Lisska discusses Aquinas's view of ethical naturalism within the context of the contemporary revival and recovery of Aristotelian ethics, arguing that Aquinas is fundamentally Aristotelian in the foundations of his moral theory. The book looks at the historical development of natural law themes in the twentieth century, and in particular demonstrates the important connections between Aquinas and contemporary legal philosophers. The book should be of considerable interest to scholars of jurisprudence as well as philosophers.

It is hard to think of two philosophers less alike than St. Thomas Aquinas and Jean-Paul Sartre. Aquinas, a thirteenth-century Dominican friar, and Sartre, a twentieth-century philosopher and atheist, are separated by both time and religious beliefs. Yet, for philosopher Joseph S. Catalano, the two are worth bringing together for their shared concern with a fundamental issue: the uniqueness of each individual person and how this uniqueness relates to our mutual dependence on each other. When viewed in the context of one another, Sartre broadens and deepens Aquinas's outlook, updating it for our present planetary and social needs. Both thinkers, as Catalano shows, bring us closer to the reality that surrounds us, and both are centrally concerned with the place of the human within a temporal realm and what stance we should take on our own freedom to act and live within that realm. Catalano shows how freedom, for Sartre, is embodied, and that this freedom further illuminates Aquinas's notion of consciousness. Compact and open to readers of varying backgrounds, this book represents Catalano's efforts to bring a lifetime of work on Sartre into an accessible consideration of philosophical questions by placing him in conversation with Aquinas, and it serves as a primer on key ideas of both philosophers. By bringing together these two figures, Catalano offers a fruitful space for thinking through some of the central questions about faith, conscience, freedom, and the meaning of life.

Jacques Maritain was deeply engaged in the intellectual and political life of France through the turbulent decades that included the two world wars. Accordingly, his philosophical reflections often focus on an attempt to discover man's role in sustaining a social and political order that seeks and maintains both liberty and peace. "Scholasticism and Politics", first published in 1940, is a collection of nine lectures Maritain delivered at the University of Chicago in 1938. While the lectures address a variety of diverse topics, they explore three broad topics: the nature of modern culture, its relationship to Christianity, and the origins of the crisis which has engulfed it; the true nature and authentic foundations of human freedom and dignity and the threats posed to them by the various materialist and naturalistic philosophies that dominate the modern cultural scene; and, the principles that provide the authentic foundation of a social order in accord with human dignity. Maritain championed the cause of what he called personalist democracy - a regime committed to popular sovereignty, constitutionalism, limited government, and individual freedom. He believed a personalist democracy offered the modern world the possibility of a political order most in keeping with the demands of human dignity, Christian values, and the common good.

In recent years, there has been a remarkable resurgence of interest in classical conceptions of what it means for human beings to lead a good life. Although the primary focus of the return to classical thought has been Aristotle’s account of virtue, the ethics of Aquinas has also received much attention. Our understanding of the integrity of Aquinas’s thought has clearly benefited from the recovery of the ethics of virtue. Understood from either a natural or a supernatural perspective, the good life according to Aquinas involves the exercise not just of the moral virtues, but also of the intellectual virtues. Following Aristotle, Aquinas divides the intellectual virtues into the practical, which have either doing (prudence) or making (art) as an end, and the theoretical or speculative, which are ordered to knowing for its own sake (understanding, knowledge, and wisdom). One of the intellectual virtues, namely, prudence has received much recent attention. With few exceptions, however, contemporary discussions of Aquinas ignore the complex and nuanced relationships among, and comparisons between, the different sorts of intellectual virtue. Even more striking is the general neglect of the speculative, intellectual virtues and the role of contemplation in the good life. In Virtue’s Splendor Professor Hibbs seeks to overcome this neglect, approaching the ethical thought of Thomas Aquinas in terms of the great debate of antiquity and the Middle Ages concerning the rivalry between the active and the contemplative lives, between prudence and wisdom as virtues perfective of human nature. In doing so, he puts before the reader the breadth of Aquinas’s vision of the good life.

This volume includes the full text of More's 1516 classic, Utopia, together with a wide range of background contextual materials. For this edition the G.C. Richards translation has been substantially revised and modernized by William P. Weaver of Baylor University. As with other volumes in this series, the text and annotations in this edition are taken from The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, acclaimed as "the new standard" in the field. Appendices include illustrations from early editions; relevant passages from the Bible and from Plato; excerpts from More's 1534 Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation that have been cited for their alleged relevance to the debate over whether or not More himself espoused the "communist" principles of the Utopia he imagined.

The author analyzes "old masteries," certain notions of freedom, individualism, and control long associated with the Renaissance, in relation to the ideologies of non-mastery that recur in theory today.

"Avicenna's Physics" is the very first volume that he wrote when he began his monumental encyclopedia of science and philosophy, "The Healing". Avicenna's reasons for beginning with "Physics" are numerous: it offers up the principles needed to understand such special natural sciences as psychology; it sets up many of the problems that take center stage in his Metaphysics; and it provides concrete examples of many of the abstract analytical tools that he would develop later in "Logic". While "Avicenna's Physics" roughly follows the thought of "Aristotle's Physics", with its emphasis on natural causes, the nature of motion, and the conditions necessary for motion, the work is hardly derivative. It represents arguably the most brilliant mind of late antiquity grappling with and rethinking the entire tradition of natural philosophy inherited from the Greeks as well as the physical thought of Muslim speculative theologians. As such, "Physics" is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding Avicenna's complete philosophical system, the history of science, or the history of ideas.

Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar explicates and defends a novel neo-Aristotelian account of the structure of material objects. While there have been numerous treatments of properties, laws, causation, and modality in the neo-Aristotelian metaphysics literature, this book is one of the first full-length treatments of wholes and their parts. Another aim of the book is to further develop the newly revived area concerning the question of fundamental mereology, the question of whether wholes are metaphysically prior to their parts or vice versa. Inman develops a fundamental mereology with a grounding-based conception of the structure and unity of substances at its core, what he calls substantial priority, one that distinctively allows for the fundamentality of ordinary, medium-sized composite objects. He offers both empirical and philosophical considerations against the view that the parts of every composite object are metaphysically prior, in particular the view that ascribes ontological pride of place to the smallest microphysical parts of composite objects, which currently dominates debates in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind. Ultimately, he demonstrates that substantial priority is well-motivated in virtue of its offering a unified solution to a host of metaphysical problems involving material objects.

HUMANISTIC CRITIQUE OF EDUCATION'S ten essays by noted scholars address the subject of educational policy, methods, ideology and more, with stress upon the rhetoric of contemporary teaching and learning. HUMANISTIC CRITIQUE OF EDUCATION focuses on education as symbolic action, as the foundation of discovery and, thus, as "equipment for living" in Kenneth Burke's terms. These essays will spark dialogue about improving education in democratic societies through the lens of humanism. The authors take their lead from Burke's famous essay, "Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education," which is included in the volume, and thus address the design, practice, and outcomes of educational programs in the new millennium. Key subjects include cognitive motivational outcomes, student development, literacy, active learning, constructivism, problem-based learning, cooperative educational movements, learning communities, student retention, community responsibility and service learning, technology, curriculum development, and more. Humanistic Critique of Education is the first sustained attempt to apply Burke's profound insights to the problems of educational reform and policy. CONTRIBUTORS include Peter Smudde, Bernard L. Brock, Kenneth Burke, Andrew King, Mark E. Huglen, Rachel McCoppin, Richard H. Thames, James F. Klumpp, Erica J. Lamm, Robert Wess, Bryan Crable, and David Cratis Williams. ABOUT THE EDITOR Peter M. Smudde (Ph.D., Wayne State University) is assistant professor in the School of Communication at Illinois State University. He came to academe in 2002 after sixteen years in industry in the fields of public relations, marketing communications, and technical writing. His primary research and teaching interest is the application of Burke's ideas and contemporary theories of rhetoric to pedagogy and industry.

Althusius's "Politics Methodically Set Forth and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples", known today simply as "Politica" or Althusius's "Politics", was originally published in Germany in 1603. Professor Carney's translation, which first appeared in 1964, represents the first attempt to present the basic structure of Althusius's political thought in English. "Politica" is now recognised as an extraordinary contribution to the intellectual history of the West. It combines ancient and medieval political philosophy with Reformation theory, and is considered a bridge between the political wisdom of the ancients and the moderns. Friedrich thought Althusius was the most profound political thinker between Bodin and Hobbes. Drawing deeply from Aristotle and Biblical teaching, "Politica" presents a unique vision of the commonwealth as a harmonious ordering of natural associations. According to Althusius, the purpose of the state is to protect and encourage social life. The family is the most natural of human associations, and all other unions derive from it. Power and authority properly grow from more local to more general associations. Each higher union must protect the associations that compose it, seeing to it that all of them are able to carry out the purposes for which they were established. The highest purpose of human association is devotion to God, which the state must encourage, but which properly is the province of a higher religious authority. Of particular interest to the modern reader is Althusius's theory of federalism. It does not refer merely to a division of powers between central and state governments, but to an ascending scale of authority in which higher institutions rely on the consent of local and voluntary associations.

In 1580 Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) presented a literary project to the public the type of wich had never before been introduced- a collection of Essays with himself as subject. Never before had a writer attempted a literary self-portrait, and in so doing Montaigne named and defined a new literary form, the essay. Brush's critical study of Essays examines the complex process of writing a self-portrait and showing the ways in which it is an entirely differnt enterprise from writing an autobiography. The author discusses how Montaigne revealed his "mind in motion," and the most remarkable feature of that mind, skepticism. He treats Montaigne's development of a conversational voice and explicates how Montaigne's intense self-examination became an evolutionary process which had consequences in his life and literature. The work concludes with a discussion of how Montaigne's self-assigned task of introspection included the formulation of a view of humanity and its ethics. Brush's work fills a gap in scholarship by critically examining the essential loci of the Essays, namely, the creation of a literary self-portrait. The book makes its points convincingly because of Brush's intimacy and command of the essays. Montaigne's works are cited in English translation, and the subject is presented in terms accessible to the non-specialist.

Mircea Eliade, influential writer and scholar of religion, envisioned a spiritually destitute modern culture coming into renewed meaning through the recovery of archetypal myths and symbols. Eliade foresaw this restoration of meaning bringing about a "new humanism" of existential meaning and cultural-religious unity - but left it ambiguously defined. Cave sets forward a structural description of what this "new humanism" might have meant for Eliade, and what it signifies for modern culture, through a biographical exegesis of Eliade's life and writings from his early years in Romania to his last years as professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago. Addressing Eliade's political associations and espousals on Romanian politics and culture, theories on myth and symbols, existential and comparative hermeneutics, literature of the fantastic, interpretation of homo religiosus, views on the loss of meaning in modern consciousness and on the cosmic spirituality of archaic humans, as well as other subjects, Cave sets these topics within the totality of Eliade's oeuvre and evaluates them through the lens of the "new humanism". Cave's book is the first to organize and evaluate the whole of Eliade's work around a guiding principle, and on Eliade's own terms. To augment the "new humanism", Cave uses data and themes from the history of religions and draws on philosophy, anthropology, psychology, modern science, and literary studies. The result is a broad and probing overview of this most influential, enigmatic, and frequently controversial man. Cave concludes by endorsing Eliade's radically pluralistic vision which, he argues, offers a key to the revitalization of ourdemythologized and material culture. Cave also repositions previous Eliadean studies, and places the "new humanism" as the paradigm in relation to which future readings of Eliade should be evaluated.

This dual-language book is a translation of John Pechamas De aeternitate mundi (On the Eternity of the World), written probably in 1270. Pecham was born in England around 1230. He pursued studies in Paris, where he may have been a student of Roger Baconas, and at Oxford. He returned to Paris some time between 1257 and 1259 to study theology and in 1269-1270 became magister theologiae. It was at this time that he presumably wrote the essay translated here, and presented it as part of his inception, the equivalent of a doctrinal defense, in 1271, when he sought to become a magister regens, a member of the theological faculty. While Pecham was studying in Paris, two controversial theological "innovations" were being debated. The first issue involved the founding of the mendicant orders (Franciscans and Dominicans) in the first decade of the thirteenth century. Their active moving about, preaching and teaching, represented a departure from the established Rule of St. Benedict in which Orders were largely confined to monasteries. The second debate was over the introduction of the "new" philosophy of Aristotle. The Dominicans and Franciscans found themselves allied against the Latin Averroists (or Radical Aristotelians) on such issues as the unicity of the intellect and the assertion of the worldas eternity in the sense that is was not created. The two Orders disagreed, however, on the truth of other Aristotelian theses such as the unicity of substantial form and the demonstrability of the worldas having a beginning in time. On another front, having to do with the legitimacy of the Dominicans and Franciscans interpretation of religious life, the two Orders united under attacks from thesecular clergy. Pecham, a Franciscan, witnessed his Order allied with the Dominicans against Averroists and secular clergy, and at odds with them over Aristotelianism in orthodox theology. During this tumultuous time Pecham met, and probably discussed his inception with Thomas, and his position on the eternity of the world can be compared to the treatment of the topic found in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure. In 1279, Pecham was named the Archbishop of Canterbury by Pope Nicolas III, in this position it was expected that he carry out reforms mandated by the Council of Lyons. The ruling of that council included the eradication of the Averroists radical departures from theological philosophy and some of the theses held by the Thomists. Pecham died in 1291, no doubt in disappointment that the reforms for which he had strived never came to pass.

Finocchiaro's new and revised translations have done what the Inquisition could not: they have captured an exceptional range of Galileo's career while also letting him speak--in clear English. No other volume offers more convenient or more reliable access to Galileo's own words, whether on the telescope, the Dialogue, the trial, or the mature theory of motion. --Michael H. Shank, Professor of the History of Science, University of Wisconsin--Madison

Paracelsus, the father of modern medicine, was a controversial 16th-century scientist and healer who challenged the medical world's reliance on classical texts and abstract reasoning with his holistic approach, an approach that will strike a chord with many people today, in an age where alternative medicine is becoming more and more popular. This book fills the long-standing gaps in our knowledge of the man and his work.