"It is generally agreed that those types of philosophy that are loosely called 'Platonic' and 'Neoplatonic' played a crucial role in the history of European culture during the centuries between antiquity and the Renaissance. However, until now no scholar has attempted to describe the evolution of these forms of thought in a single comprehensive academic study." So writes Stephen Gersh in the preface to Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition. Stephen Gersh's two-volume survey of Platonic influences upon the Middle Ages focuses on questions that are basic to scholars of medieval philosophy, history, and literature: What was the influence of Plato's philosophy during the Middle Ages? Is it correct to consider earlier medieval philosophy as Platonic? How do Platonism and Neoplatonism differ? What do Platonic and Neoplatonic modes of thought have to do with Plato? Most medieval philosophers developed their doctrines without access to the greatest intellectual works of the Greeks. Instead, they elaborated their philosophies in relation to the Latin philosophical literature that spanned the classical period to the end of antiquity. Thus, Gersh develops his study by examining the important channels of transmission that existed for medieval philosophers. Following an introduction that outlines particular methodological perspectives relative to the discussion, the history is divided into three main sections. In total, the study surveys an impressive range of authors never previously considered in a single work, with many of the translations previously available only as Greek and Latin texts: I.1 Middle Platonism: The Platonists and the Stoics (Cicero, Seneca); I.2 Middle Platonism: The Platonists and the Doxographers (Gellius, Apuleius, the Hermetic "Asclepius," Ambrose, Censorinus, Augustine); II Neoplatonism (Calcidius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Boethius, Marius Victorinus, Firmicus Maternus, Favonius Eulogius, Servius, Fulgentius, Priscianus Lydus, Priscianrs Grammaticus). The concluding chapter illustrates the Platonic influence upon certain medieval authors up to the early twelfth century, and it establishes guidelines for further study. Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism contains an extensive bibliography and a complete index of Latin texts.

This book is the first extensive study of ideas on earthquakes before the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. The earthquake had a deep impact on European culture, and the reactions to it stood in a long tradition that, before this study, had yet to be explored in detail. Thinking on Earthquakes investigates both scholarly theories and views that were propagated among the early modern European population. Through a chronological approach, Vermij reveals that in contrast to the Ancient and medieval philosophers who suggested rational explanations for earthquakes, supernatural ideas made a powerful comeback in the sixteenth century. By analysing a variety of sources such as pamphlets, sermons, and treatises, this study shows how changes in the ideas on earthquakes were a result of social and political demands as well as from improvements in the means of communication, rather than from scientific methods. Thus, Vermij presents an illuminating case for the production of knowledge in early modern Europe. A range of events are explored, including the Ferrara earthquake in 1570 and the Vienna earthquake in 1590, making this study an invaluable source for students and scholars of the history of science and the history of ideas in early modern Europe.

The Logic of Love in The Canterbury Tales argues that Geoffrey Chaucer's magnum opus draws inventively on the resources of late medieval logic to conceive of love as an "insoluble." Philosophers of the fourteenth century expended great effort to solve insolubilia, like the notorious Liar paradox, in order to decide upon their truth or falsity. For Chaucer, however, and in keeping with Christ's admonition from the Sermon on the Mount, the lover does not judge - does not decide on - the beloved. Through a series of detailed and rigorously "non-judgmental" readings, Manish Sharma provides new insight into each of the prologues and tales and intervenes into scholarly debates about their collective import. In so doing, The Logic of Love in The Canterbury Tales deploys Chaucer's understanding of charity to consider the limitations of modern critical approaches to The Canterbury Tales, including deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and gender theory. In the course of the analysis, Sharma shows not only how love and medieval philosophy together inform Chaucerian composition, but also how Chaucer could serve as a resource for contemporary theoretical reflections on love and ethics.

In this book (a translation of his well-known work L'esprit de la philosophie medievale), Etienne Gilson undertakes the task of defining the spirit of mediaeval philosophy. Gilson asks whether we can form the concept of a Christian philosophy and whether mediaeval philosophy is not its most adequate historical expression. He maintains that the spirit of mediaeval philosophy is the spirit of Christianity penetrating the Greek tradition, working within it, and drawing out of it a certain view of the world that is specifically Christian. To support his hypothesis, Gilson examines mediaeval thought in its nascent state, at that precise point where the Judeo-Christian graft was inserted into the Hellenic tradition. Gilson's demonstration is primarily historical and occasionally theoretical in suggesting how doctrines that satisfied our predecessors for so many centuries may still be found conceivable today.

Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient causality and teleology are among the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Aristotles Revenge argues that these concepts are not only compatible with modern science, but are implicitly presupposed by modern science. Among the many topics covered are the metaphysical presuppositions of scientific method; the status of scientific realism; the metaphysics of space and time; the metaphysics of quantum mechanics; reductionism in chemistry and biology; the metaphysics of evolution; and neuroscientific reductionism. The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of science, so as to bring contemporary philosophy and science into dialogue with the Aristotelian tradition.

This new and updated edition of Christopher Shields and Robert Pasnau's The Philosophy of Aquinas introduces the Aquinas' overarching explanatory framework in order to provide the necessary background to his philosophical investigations across a wide range of areas: rational theology, metaphysics, philosophy of human nature, philosophy of mind, and ethical and political theory. Although not intended to provide a comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of Aquinas' far-reaching writings, the volume presents a systematic introduction to the principal areas of his philosophy and attends no less to Aquinas' methods and argumentative strategies than to his ultimate conclusions. The authors have updated the second edition in light of recent scholarship on Aquinas, while streamlining and refining their presentation of the key elements of Aquinas' philosophy.

This book promotes the research of present-day women working in ancient and medieval philosophy, with more than 60 women having contributed in some way to the volume in a fruitful collaboration. It contains 22 papers organized into ten distinct parts spanning the sixth century BCE to the fifteenth century CE. Each part has the same structure: it features, first, a paper which sets up the discussion, and then, one or two responses that open new perspectives and engage in further reflections. Our authors' contributions address pivotal moments and players in the history of philosophy: women philosophers in antiquity, Cleobulina of Rhodes, Plato, Lucretius, Bardaisan of Edessa, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus, Porphyry, Peter Abelard, Robert Kilwardby, William Ockham, John Buridan, and Isotta Nogarola. The result is a thought-provoking collection of papers that will be of interest to historians of philosophy from all horizons. Far from being an isolated effort, this book is a contribution to the ever-growing number of initiatives which endeavour to showcase the work of women in philosophy.

Aristotle in Aquinas's Theology explores the role of Aristotelian concepts, principles, and themes in Thomas Aquinas's theology. Each chapter investigates the significance of Aquinas's theological reception of Aristotle in a central theological domain: the Trinity, the angels, soul and body, the Mosaic law, grace, charity, justice, contemplation and action, Christ, and the sacraments. In general, the essays focus on the Summa theologiae, but some range more widely in Aquinas's corpus. For some time, it has above all been the influence of Aristotle on Aquinas's philosophy that has been the centre of attention. Perhaps in reaction to philosophical neo-Thomism, or perhaps because this Aristotelian influence appears no longer necessary to demonstrate, the role of Aristotle in Aquinas's theology presently receives less theological attention than does Aquinas's use of other authorities (whether Scripture or particular Fathers), especially in domains outside of theological ethics. Indeed, in some theological circles the influence of Aristotle upon Aquinas's theology is no longer well understood. Readers will encounter here the great Aristotelian themes, such as act and potency, God as pure act, substance and accidents, power and generation, change and motion, fourfold causality, form and matter, hylomorphic anthropology, the structure of intellection, the relationship between knowledge and will, happiness and friendship, habits and virtues, contemplation and action, politics and justice, the best form of government, and private property and the common good. The ten essays in this book engage Aquinas's reception of Aristotle in his theology from a variety of points of view: historical, philosophical, and constructively theological.

This book provides the first analysis of the development of Erasmus' historical methodology and its impact on Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians. Combining a biography of Erasmus with the larger theological debates and the intellectual history of his time, Christine Christ-von Wedel reveals many of previously unexplored influences on Erasmus, as well as his influences on his contemporaries. Erasmus of Rotterdam is a revised and considerably enlarged translation of Christ-von Wedel's well-received 2003 study, originally published in German. Observing the influence of classical, biblical, patristic, scholastic, and late medieval vernacular and popular sources on Erasmus' writing, the author provides comparisons with theologians Agrippa, Lefevre d'Etaples, Eck, Luther, and Zwingli to demonstrate not only the singularity of Erasmus' intellect, but also the enormous impact he had on the Reformation. The result is a lively picture of the man and his time, in which Erasmus emerges as both a devout Christian and a critical seeker of truth who conceded the ambiguities that he could not resolve.

This is the second of the three volumes comprising "Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe." Focusing on the period from c.1090 to 1212, the volume explores the lives, resources and contributions of a wide sample of scholars and others who either took part in the creation of the scholastic system of thought or gave practical effect to it in public life.

At the beginning of the twelfth century a group of scholars, mostly centred on Paris and Bologna began an enterprise of unprecedented scope. Their intention was to produce a once-and-for-all body of knowledge that would be as perfect as humanity's fallen state permits, and which would provide a view of God, nature, and human conduct, promoting order in this world and blessedness in the next. "Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe" reconsiders this enterprise, and its long-term effects on European history.

The first of the three volumes examines the origins of the intellectual enterprise from around 1060 AD. This second volume focuses on the period during which scholars developed the fully-fledged method of absorbing, elaborating, Christianizing and systematizing the whole intellectual deposit of the Greco-Roman past to produce a complete body of doctrine about both the natural and supernatural worlds which would be not only rationally unassailable and doctrinally coherent, but also capable of being given practical application in organizing and governing the whole of western Christendom.

The book discusses the contributions of individual masters involved in the intellectual project, tracing the progress of the enterprise from its scholastic origins under Anselm of Laon, to the main masters in the schools ofParis during the 1090s to c.1160, including men such as Peter Lombard, Peter Abelard, John of Salisbury and the two Peters of Blois. These scholars created a crucial bond between the schools and organized life of European society. The men educated in the great schools during this time brought their scholastic learning to governmental aims and activities, extending the influence of the schools and their intellectual project to the wider world.

Elegantly written, enlivened with wit and vivid anecdote, "Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe" will be a work of seminal importance for the understanding of the civilization of the Middle Ages, and of the evolution of modern European societies.

What is the nature of the material world? And how are its fundamental constituents to be described? These questions are of central concern to contemporary philosophers, and in their attempt to answer them, they have begun reconsidering traditional views about metaphysical structure, including the Aristotelian view that material objects are best described as 'hylomorphic compounds'-that is, objects composed of both matter (hyle) and form (morphe). In this major new study, Jeffrey E. Brower presents and explains the hylomorphic conception of the material world developed by Thomas Aquinas, the most influential Aristotelian of the Middle Ages. According to Brower, the key to understanding Aquinas's conception lies in his distinctive account of intrinsic change. Beginning with a novel analysis of this account, Brower systematically introduces all the elements of Aquinas's hylomorphism, showing how they apply to material objects in general and human beings in particular. The resulting picture not only sheds new light on Aquinas's ontology as a whole, but provides a wholesale alternative to the standard contemporary accounts of material objects. In addition to presenting and explaining Aquinas's views, Brower seeks wherever possible to bring them into dialogue with the best recent literature on related topics. Along the way, he highlights the contribution that Aquinas's views make to a host of contemporary metaphysical debates, including the nature of change, composition, material constitution, the ontology of stuff vs. things, the proper analysis of ordinary objects, the truthmakers for essential vs. accidental predication, and the metaphysics of property possession.

A great deal has been written about the influence of humanism on the Reformation. The present study reverses the question, asking: how did the Reformation affect humanism? Although it is true that humanism influenced the course of the Reformation, says Erika Rummel, the dynamics of the relationship are better described by saying that humanism was co-opted, perhaps even exploited, in the religious debate. Both Reformers and Catholic reactionaries took from humanism what was useful for the advancement of their cause and suppressed what was unsuited to their purpose.

This volume and its companions contain the first English translation of the letters written by the philosopher-priest who helped to shape the changes that we associate with the Renaissance. The letters in this eleventh volume cover the period from autumn 1492 to the spring of 1495, when they appeared in print. A few related or later items are included in an Appendix. A twelfth volume will bring the series to completion with nine distinctive treatises which Ficino gathered into a separate volume in 1476 but later re-included in his Letters as Book II. In the 1490s, Ficino was occupied with the political upheavals in Florence, and much of his effort was concentrated on trying to bring people back into dialogue with one another, in the hope of finding a more constructive outlook. Many of the letters in this book are covering letters to accompany copies of his work On the Sun, which considers the sun in its many aspects, as a heavenly body, a physical life force, a source of inspiration and an allegorical representation of the governing power in the universe. Other important letters include advice on coping with the evils of the time, the responsibilities and privileges of the philosopher, a reiteration of the importance of love, and further reflections on the theme of light. We note the increasing presence of friends in German lands, where several of his works were now being published. He also writes to friends in the French court. One unusual letter tackles a religious question: Ficino was moved to intervene in an argument on the degree to which the Platonic philosophers of old anticipated aspects of the Christian Trinity. While it would be comforting to find such agreement, Ficino says there is none in Plato, though some of the later Platonists offer confirmation of Christian doctrines in their writings. Another controversy relates to the status of astrology, for which Ficino claims only a modest place despite his own writings on the subject. In a related letter on Providence he again returns to the evils the city is experiencing and how these might best be met. Facing one of those evils head on, Ficino composed an address to the French King whose armies were threatening Florence. It is not known whether this address was delivered delivered in the presence of the king during the meeting which Ficino and others attended, but it lies on record as a genuine attempt to resolve hostilities. The illustration on the front of the jacket is from a manuscript of the earliest version of Ficino's work On the Sun, written in 1492 for Count Eberhard of Wurttemberg. It is reproduced with kind permission of the Wurttembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart (HB XV 65,fol.7r). A translation of this early version is included in the Appendix.

Frederick F. Schmitt offers a systematic interpretation of David Hume's epistemology, as it is presented in the indispensable A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume's text alternately manifests scepticism, empiricism, and naturalism in epistemology. Interpretations of his epistemology have tended to emphasise one of these apparently conflicting positions over the others. But Schmitt argues that the positions can be reconciled by tracing them to a single underlying epistemology of knowledge and probability quietly at work in the text, an epistemology according to which truth is the chief cognitive merit of a belief, and knowledge and probable belief are species of reliable belief. Hume adopts Locke's dichotomy between knowledge and probability and reassigns causal inference from its traditional place in knowledge to the domain of probability-his most significant departure from earlier accounts of cognition. This shift of causal inference to an associative and imaginative operation raises doubts about the merit of causal inference, suggesting the counterintuitive consequence that causal inference is wholly inferior to knowledge-producing demonstration. To defend his associationist psychology of causal inference from this suggestion, Hume must favourably compare causal inference with demonstration in a manner compatible with associationism. He does this by finding an epistemic status shared by demonstrative knowledge and causally inferred beliefs-the status of justified belief. On the interpretation developed here, he identifies knowledge with infallible belief and justified belief with reliable belief, i.e., belief produced by truth-conducive belief-forming operations. Since infallibility implies reliable belief, knowledge implies justified belief. He then argues that causally inferred beliefs are reliable, so share this status with knowledge. Indeed Hume assumes that causally inferred beliefs enjoy this status in his very argument for associationism. On the reliability interpretation, Hume's accounts of knowledge and justified belief are part of a broader veritistic epistemology making true belief the chief epistemic value and goal of science. The veritistic interpretation advanced here contrasts with interpretations on which the chief epistemic value of belief is its empirical adequacy, stability, or fulfilment of a natural function, as well as with the suggestion that the chief value of belief is its utility for common life. Veritistic interpretations are offered of the natural function of belief, the rules of causal inference, scepticism about body and matter, and the criteria of justification. As Schmitt shows, there is much attention to Hume's sources in Locke and to the complexities of his epistemic vocabulary.

Terence Parsons presents a new study of the development and logical complexity of medieval logic. Basic principles of logic were used by Aristotle to prove conversion principles and reduce syllogisms. Medieval logicians expanded Aristotle's notation in several ways, such as quantifying predicate terms, as in 'No donkey is every animal', and allowing singular terms to appear in predicate position, as in 'Not every donkey is Brownie'; with the enlarged notation come additional logical principles. The resulting system of logic is able to deal with relational expressions, as in De Morgan's puzzles about heads of horses. A crucial issue is a mechanism for dealing with anaphoric pronouns, as in 'Every woman loves her mother'. Parsons illuminates the ways in which medieval logic is as rich as contemporary first-order symbolic logic, though its full potential was not envisaged at the time. Along the way, he provides a detailed exposition and examination of the theory of modes of common personal supposition, and the useful principles of logic included with it. An appendix discusses the artificial signs introduced in the fifteenth century to alter quantifier scope.

Ethics was a central preoccupation of medieval philosophers, and medieval ethical thought is rich, diverse, and inventive. Yet standard histories of ethics often skip quickly over the medievals, and histories of medieval philosophy often fail to do justice to the centrality of ethical concerns in medieval thought. This volume presents the full range of medieval ethics in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy in a way that is accessible to a non-specialist and reveals the liveliness and sophistication of medieval ethical thought. In Part I there is a series of historical chapters presenting developmental and contextual accounts of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish ethics. Part II offers topical chapters on such central themes as happiness, virtue, law, and freedom, as well as on less-studied aspects of medieval ethics such as economic ethics, the ethical dimensions of mysticism, and sin and grace. This will be an important volume for students of ethics and medieval philosophy.

The leitmotif of Freedom in Response, as the title suggests, is a reasoned exposition of the nature of freedom, as it is presented in the Bible and developed by such later theologians as Martin Luther. Oswald Bayer considers Luther's teachings on pastoral care, marriage, and the three estates, bringing in Kant and Hegel as conversation partners, together with Kant's friend and critic, the innovative theologian and philosopher Johann Georg Hamann.
Oswald Bayer is a major contemporary Lutheran theologian, but so far little of his work has been translated from German into English. This selection of essays indicates the depth and range of his thought on issues relating to theological ethics.

This book discusses fundamental topics on contemporary Ockhamism. The collected essays show how contemporary Ockhamism can impact areas of research such as semantics, metaphysics and also the philosophy of science. In addition, the volume hosts one historian of Medieval philosophy who investigates the way in which William of Ockham "in flesh and bone" construed time and, more generally, future contingency. The essays explore the different meanings of this theory. They cover three main topics, in particular. The first examines the thesis that sentences and propositions about the future have a definite truth value, without any ensuing commitment to determinism or fatalism. The second topic looks at the problem whether the branching-time model needs to countenance a privileged branch (the so-called Thin Red Line). Finally, the third topic considers the idea that there are so-called soft facts. These would be the subject matter of sentences and propositions verbally about the present or the past, but metaphysically about a later time, and which might change in the future. Overall, the book provides an updated and rigorous idea of the debate about Ockhamism. It gives readers a deeper understanding into this philosophical approach influenced by William of Ockham, characterized by the rejection of the Aristotelian idea that, in order to preserve the contingency of the future, future contingents must be deemed neither true nor false.

This book is an introduction to trinitarian theology as it developed from the late medieval period. John T. Slotemaker presents an overview of the central aspects of trinitarian theology by focusing on four themes: theological epistemology, the emanations in God, the divine relations, and the Trinity of persons. He does so by exploring a broad range of theological opinions on each subject and delineating the options that existed for medieval theologians from the early thirteenth century through the sixteenth. He argues that despite the diversity of opinion on a given subject, there is a normative theological center that grounds late medieval trinitarian theology. This center consists of theological developments involving the adoption of Peter Lombard's Sentences as a theological textbook, the conciliar decisions of Lateran IV, and a shared Aristotelian philosophical background of Western trinitarian theology.

The ancient topic of universals was central to scholastic philosophy, which raised the question of whether universals exist as Platonic forms, as instantiated Aristotelian forms, as concepts abstracted from singular things, or as words that have universal signification. It might be thought that this question lost its importance after the decline of scholasticism in the modern period. However, the fourteen contributions contained in The Problem of Univerals in Early Modern Philosophy indicate that the issue of universals retained its vitality in modern philosophy. Modern philosophers in fact were interested in 3 sets of issues concerning universals: (i) issues concerning the ontological status of universals, (ii) issues concerning the psychology of the formation of universal concepts or terms, and (iii) issues concerning the value and use of universal concepts or terms in the acquisition of knowledge. Chapters in this volume consider the various forms of "Platonism," "conceptualism" and "nominalism" (and distinctive combinations thereof) that emerged from the consideration of such issues in the work of modern philosophers. Furthermore, this volume covers not only the canonical modern figures, namely, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant, but also more neglected figures such as Pierre Gassendi, Pierre-Sylvain Regis, Nicolas Malebranche, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth and John Norris.

At the moment of his greatest professional success, vetteran newspaperman & author of this book was struck by a crippling depression. Neither psychotherapy nor Prozac helped him, & it wasn't until he began a painful probe of his life & an investigation into depression's larger issues that he saw a way out. Not a depression memoir, Finding Hope in the Age of Melancholy uses the author's personal experience to launch a profound & inspiring exploration of the depression epidemic in our society. Weaving literature, philosophy, economics, religion, & medicine into a discussion about the roots of our barren culture, the author comes to provocative conclusions. He shows how the nature of our society is often as much to blame for depression as brain chemistry is, how depression can be a positive goad to creativity & deeper self-understanding, & why religious belief & community involvement are often more potent therapies than drugs & the analyst's couch. This is a deeply helpful & illuminating book for all who are looking for meaning in their lives

In this book, Christopher Celenza provides an intellectual history of the Italian Renaissance during the long fifteenth century, from c.1350-1525. His book fills a bibliographic gap between Petrarch and Machiavelli and offers clear case studies of contemporary luminaries, including Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, and Pietro Bembo. Integrating sources in Italian and Latin, Celenza focuses on the linked issues of language and philosophy. He also examines the conditions in which Renaissance intellectuals operated in an era before the invention of printing, analyzing reading strategies and showing how texts were consulted, and how new ideas were generated as a result of conversations, both oral and epistolary. The result is a volume that offers a new view on both the history of philosophy and Italian Renaissance intellectual life. It will serve as a key resource for students and scholars of early modern Italian humanism and culture.