This is the first comprehensive study of the Renaissance commonplace-book. Commonplace-books were the information-organizers of Early Modern Europe, notebooks of quotations methodically arranged for easy retrieval. From their first introduction to the rudiments of Latin to the specialized studies of leisure reading of their later years, the pupils of humanist schools were trained to use commonplace-books, which formed an immensely important element of Renaissance education. The common-place book mapped and resourced Renaissance culture's moral thinking, its accepted strategies of argumentation, its rhetoric, and its deployment of knowledge. In this ground-breaking study Ann Moss investigates the commonplace-book's medieval antecedents, its methodology and use as promulgated by its humanist advocates, its varieties as exemplified in its printed manifestations, and the reasons for its gradual decline in the seventeenth century. The book covers the Latin culture of Early Modern Europe and its vernacular counterparts and continuations, particularly in France. Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought is much more than an account of humanist classroom practice: it is a major work of cultural history.

About Aquinas: St Thomas Aquinas lived from 1224/5 to 1274, mostly in his native Italy but for a time in France. He was the greatest of the medieval philosopher/theologians, and one of the most important of all Western thinkers. His most famous books are the two summaries of his teachings, the Summa contra gentiles and the Summa theologiae. About this book: Norman Kretzmann expounds and criticizes Aquinas's natural theology of creation, which is `natural' (or philosophical) in virtue of Aquinas's having developed it without depending on the data of Scripture. The Metaphysics of Creation is a continuation of the project Kretzmann began in The Metaphysics of Theism, moving the focus from the first to the second book of Aquinas's Summa contra gentiles. Here we find Aquinas building upon his account of the existence and nature of God, arguing that the existence of things other than God must be explained by divine creation out of nothing. He develops arguments to identify God's motivation for creating, to defend the possibility of a beginningless created universe, and to explain the origin of species. He then focuses exclusively on creatures with intellects, with the result that more than half of his natural theology of creation constitutes a philosophy of mind. Kretzmann gives a masterful guide through all these arguments. As before, he not only expounds Aquinas's natural theology, but advocates it as the best historical instance available to us.

This book reassesses the impact of Aristotle's moral and political philosophy on medieval scholastic thought. It examines the relationship between the common good and the individual good, and between the authority of the Church and the authority of the temporal ruler. The result is a major reinterpretation of the emergence of a secular theory of the state in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

This book presents a new, contemporary introduction to medieval philosophy as it was practiced in all its variety in Western Europe and the Near East. It assumes only a minimal familiarity with philosophy, the sort that an undergraduate introduction to philosophy might provide, and it is arranged topically around questions and themes that will appeal to a contemporary audience. In addition to some of the perennial questions posed by philosophers, such as "Can we know anything, and if so, what?", "What is the fundamental nature of reality?", and "What does human flourishing consist in?", this volume looks at what medieval thinkers had to say, for instance, about our obligations towards animals and the environment, freedom of speech, and how best to organize ourselves politically. The book examines certain aspects of the thought of several well-known medieval figures, but it also introduces students to many important, yet underappreciated figures and traditions. It includes guidance for how to read medieval texts, provokes reflection through a series of study questions at the end of each chapter, and gives pointers for where interested readers can continue their exploration of medieval philosophy and medieval thought more generally. Key Features Covers the contributions of women to medieval philosophy, providing students with a fuller understanding of who did philosophy during the Middle Ages Includes a focus on certain topics that are usually ignored, such as animal rights, love, and political philosophy, providing students with a fuller range of interests that medieval philosophers had Gives space to non-Aristotelian forms of medieval thought Includes useful features for student readers like study questions and suggestions for further reading in each chapter

This lively and highly accessible introduction to the thought of Thomas Aquinas focuses on his philosophy while making clear its openness to theology as reflection on Revelation.
Introduces students this great philosopher of the middle ages in one short book.
Brings together alternative approaches to Aquinas' thought.
Uses key texts to describe the trajectory of Aquinas' philosophy and the legacy it left behind.
This is the first title in a new Polity series, Classic Thinkers.

This work engages in a constructive, yet subtle, dialogue with the nuanced accounts of sensory intentionality and empirical knowledge offered by the Islamic philosopher Avicenna. This discourse has two main objectives: (1) providing an interpretation of Avicenna's epistemology that avoids reading him as a precursor to British empiricists or as a full-fledged emanatist and (2) bringing light to the importance of Avicenna's account of experience to relevant contemporary Anglo-American discussions in epistemology and metaphysics. These two objectives are interconnected. Anglo-American philosophy provides the framework for a novel reading of Avicenna on knowledge and reality, and the latter, in turn, contributes to adjusting some aspects of the former. Advancing the Avicennian perspective on contemporary analytic discourse, this volume is a key resource for researchers and students interested in comparative and analytic epistemology and metaphysics as well as Islamic philosophy.

Moses Maimonides-a proud heir to the Andalusian tradition of Aristotelian philosophy-crafted a bold and original philosophical interpretation of Torah and Judaism. His son Abraham Maimonides is a fascinating maverick whose Torah commentary mediates between the philosophical interpretations of his father, the contextual approach of Biblical exegetes such as Saadya, and the Sufi-flavored illuminative mysticism of his Egyptian Pietist circle. This pioneering study explores the intersecting approaches of Moses and Abraham Maimonides to the spark of divine illumination and revelation of the divine name Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, "I am that I am / I will be who I will be.

Historical Imagination defends a phenomenological and hermeneutical account of historical knowledge. The book's central questions are what is historical imagination, what is the relation between the imaginative and the empirical, in what sense is historical knowledge always already imaginative, how does such knowledge serve us, and what is the relation of historical understanding and self-understanding? Paul Fairfield revisits some familiar hermeneutical themes and endeavors to develop these further while examining two important periods in which historical reassessments or re-imaginings of the past occurred on a large scale. The conception of historical imagination that emerges seeks to advance beyond the debate between empiricists and postmodern constructivists while focusing on narrative as well as a more encompassing interpretation of who an historical people were, how things stood with them, and how this comes to be known. Fairfield supplements the philosophical argument with an historical examination of how and why during late antiquity, early Christian thinkers began to reimagine their Greek and Roman past, followed by how and why renaissance and later enlightenment figures reimagined their ancient and medieval past.

This book provides the first comprehensive treatment of Albert the Great’s (c. 1193-1280) notion of virtus formativa, a shaping force responsible for crucial dynamics in the formation of living beings. Crossing the boundaries between theology and philosophy, the notion of virtus formativa, or formative power, was central in explaining genetic inheritance and the configuration of the embryo.  By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this book reconstructs how Albert the Great, motivated by theological open issues, reorganised the natural-philosophical and medical theories on embryonic development, creatively drawing upon Greek, Patristic, and Arabic sources. A valuable contribution to research, this book offers essential insights for those studying the history of embryology, medicine, and science in the medieval and renaissance periods.

This monograph presents new material on Francisco Suarez's comprehensive theory of sense perception. The core theme is perceptual intentionality in Suarez's theory of the senses, external and internal, as presented in his Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in libros Aristotelis De anima published in 1621. The author targets the question of the multistage genesis of perceptual acts by considering the ontological "items" involved in the procession of sensory information. However, the structural issue is not left aside, and the nature of the relationship due to which our perceptions are mental representations of this or that object is also considered. The heuristic historiographical background includes not only the theories of classical authors, such as Aristotle and Aquinas, but also those of late medieval authors of the fourteenth century. These are headed by John Duns Scotus, John of Jandun, Peter Auriol and Peter John Olivi. Readers will discover the differences between Suarez's and Aquinas's views, as well as other sources that may have served as positive inspiration for the Jesuit's theory. By considering the late medieval philosophy of the fourteenth century, this book helps, to a certain extent, to fill a gap in the historiography of philosophy regarding the link between late medieval and early modern scholasticism. In the first part of the book, the metaphysics of the soul and powers is considered. Chapters on the external senses follow, covering topics such as the sensible species, the causes of sensation, self-awareness, and the ordering of the external senses. A further chapter is devoted to the internal senses and the author argues that by reducing the number and functional scope of the interior senses Suarez deepens the gap between the external senses and the intellect, but he reduces it through emphasizing the unifying efficacy of the soul.This book brings a synthetic and unifying perspective to contemporary research and will particularly appeal to graduate students and researchers in theology and philosophy, especially philosophy of mind.

The authors maintain that Llull was an atypical 'scholar' because he enjoyed a form of access to knowledge that differed from the norm and because he organized the production and dissemination of his writings in a creative and unconventional fashion. Ramon Llull (1232-1316), mystic, missionary, philosopher and author of narrative and poetry, wrote both in Latin and in the vernacular claiming he had been given a new science to unveil the Truth. This book shows why his Latin andvernacular books cannot be read as if they had been written in isolation from one another. Llull was an atypical 'scholar' because he enjoyed a form of access to knowledge that differed from the norm and because he organized theproduction and dissemination of his writings in a creative and unconventional fashion. At a time when learned texts and university culture were conveyed for the most part using the vehicle of Latin, he wrote a substantial proportion of his theological and scientific works in his maternal Catalan while, at the same time, he was deeply involved in the circulation of such works in other Romance languages. These circumstances do not preclude the fact that a considerable number of the titles comprising his extensive output of more than 260 works were written directly in Latin, or that he had various books which were originally conceived in Catalan subsequently translated or adapted intoLatin. Lola Badia is a professor in the Catalan Philology Departament at the University of Barcelona. Joan Santanach is Lecturer of Catalan Philology at the University of Barcelona. Albert Soler (1963) is Lecturer of Catalan Philology at the University of Barcelona.

Petrarch was one of the founding fathers of Renaissance humanism, yet the nature and significance of his ideas are still widely debated. In this book, Gur Zak examines two central issues in Petrarch's works - his humanist philosophy and his concept of the self. Zak argues that both are defined by Petrarch's idea of care for the self. Overcome by a strong sense of fragmentation, Petrarch turned to the ancient idea that philosophy can bring harmony and wholeness to the soul through the use of spiritual exercises in the form of writing. Examining his vernacular poetry and his Latin works from both literary and historical perspectives, Zak explores Petrarch's attempts to use writing as a spiritual exercise, how his spiritual techniques absorbed and transformed ancient and medieval traditions of writing, and the tensions that arose from his efforts to care for the self through writing.

The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was an eminent philosopher and theologian whose Disputationes Metaphysicae was first published in Spain in 1597 and was widely studied throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. The Disputationes Metaphysicae had a great influence on the development of early modern philosophy and on such well-known figures as Descartes and Leibniz. This is the first time that Disputations 17, 18, and 19 have been translated into English. The Metaphysical Disputations provide an excellent philosophical introduction to the medieval Aristotelian discussion of efficient causality. The work constitutes a synthesis of monumental proportions: problematic issues are lucidly delineated and the various arguments are laid out in depth. Disputations 17, 18, and 19 deal explicitly with such issues as the nature of causality, the types of efficient causes, the prerequisites for causal action, causal contingency, human free choice, and chance.

According to Avicenna, whatever exists, while it exists, exists of necessity. Not all beings, however, exist with the same kind of necessity. Instead, they exist either necessarily per se or necessarily per aliud. Avicenna on the Necessity of the Actual: His Interpretation of Four Aristotelian Arguments explains how Avicenna uses these modal claims to show that God is the efficient as well as the final cause of an eternally existing cosmos. In particular, Celia Kathryn Hatherly shows how Avicenna uses four Aristotelian arguments to prove this very un-Aristotelian conclusion. These arguments include Aristotle's argument for the finitude of efficient causes in Metaphysics 2; his proof for the prime mover in the Physics and Metaphysics 12; his argument against the Megarians in Metaphysics 9; and his argument for the mutual entailment between the necessary and the eternal in De Caelo 1.12. Moreover, Hatherly contends, when Avicenna's versions of these arguments are correctly interpreted using his distinctive understanding of necessity and possibility, the objections raised against them by his contemporaries and modern scholars fail.

This volume provides a contemporary account of classical theism. It features sixteen original essays from leading scholars that advance the discussion of classical theism in new and interesting directions.

A thoroughgoing examination of Maximus Confessor’s singular theological vision through the prism of Christ’s cosmic and historical Incarnation. Jordan Daniel Wood changes the trajectory of patristic scholarship with this comprehensive historical and systematic study of one of the most creative and profound thinkers of the patristic era: Maximus Confessor (560–662 CE). Wood's panoramic vantage on Maximus’s thought emulates the theological depth of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Cosmic Liturgy while also serving as a corrective to that classic text. Maximus's theological vision may be summed up in his enigmatic assertion that “the Word of God, very God, wills always and in all things to actualize the mystery of his Incarnation.� The Whole Mystery of Christ sets out to explicate this claim. Attentive to the various contexts in which Maximus thought and wrote—including the wisdom of earlier church fathers, conciliar developments in Christological and Trinitarian doctrine, monastic and ascetic ways of life, and prominent contemporary philosophical traditions—the book explores the relations between God’s act of creation and the Word’s historical Incarnation, between the analogy of being and Christology, and between history and the Fall, in addition to treating such topics as grace, deification, theological predication, and the ontology of nature versus personhood. Perhaps uniquely among Christian thinkers, Wood argues, Maximus envisions creatio ex nihilo as creatio ex Deo in the event of the Word’s kenosis: the mystery of Christ is the revealed identity of the Word’s historical and cosmic Incarnation. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of patristics, historical theology, systematic theology, and Byzantine studies.

This book offers an original contribution to debates about the problem of evil and the existence of God. It develops a Thomistic, Christian theodicy, the aim of which is to help us better understand not only why God allows evil, but also how God works to redeem it. In the author's view, the existence of evil does not generate any intellectual problem that theists must address or solve to vindicate God or the rationality of theism. This is because acknowledging the existence of evil rationally leads us to acknowledge the existence of God. However, understanding how these two facts are compatible still requires addressing weighty, wide-ranging questions concerning God and evil. The author draws on diverse elements of Aquinas's philosophy and theology to build an argument that evil only exists within God's world because God has created and continues to sustain so much good. Moreover, God can and does bring good out of all evil, both cosmically and within the context of our own, individual lives. In making this argument, the author engages with contemporary work on the problem of evil from analytic philosophy of religion and theology. Additionally, he addresses a broad range of topics and doctrines within Thomistic and Christian thought, including God, creation, providence, original sin, redemption, heaven and hell, and the theological virtues. God, Evil, and Redeeming Good is an essential resource for scholars and students interested in philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and the thought of Thomas Aquinas.

The authors of the standard approach to Bonaventure's aesthetics established the broad themes that continue to inform the current interpretation of his philosophy, theology, and mysticism of beauty: his definition of beauty and its status as a transcendental of being, his description of the aesthetic experience, and the role of that experience in the soul's ascent into God. Nevertheless, they also introduced a series of pointed questions that remain without adequate resolution in the current literature. Thomas J. McKenna's book, Bonaventure's Aesthetics: The Delight of the Soul in Its Ascent into God, provides a comprehensive analysis of Bonaventure's aesthetics, the first to appear since Balthasar's Herrlichkeit, and, in doing so, argues for a resolution to these questions in the context of his principal aesthetic text, the Itinerarium mentis in Deum.

This volume brings together contributions from distinguished scholars in the history of philosophy, focusing on points of interaction between discrete historical contexts, religions, and cultures found within the premodern period. The contributions connect thinkers from antiquity through the Middle Ages and include philosophers from the three major monotheistic faiths-Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. By emphasizing premodern philosophy's shared textual roots in antiquity, particularly the writings of Plato and Aristotle, the volume highlights points of cross-pollination between different schools, cultures, and moments in premodern thought. Approaching the complex history of the premodern world in an accessible way, the editors organize the volume so as to underscore the difficulties the premodern period poses for scholars, while accentuating the fascinating interplay between the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin philosophical traditions. The contributors cover many topics ranging from the aims of Aristotle's cosmos, the adoption of Aristotle's Organon by al-Farabi, and the origins of the Plotiniana Arabica to the role of Ibn Gabirol's Fons vitae in the Latin West, the ways in which Islamic philosophy shaped thirteenth-century Latin conceptions of light, Roger Bacon's adaptation of Avicenna for use in his moral philosophy, and beyond. The volume's focus on "source-based contextualism" demonstrates an appreciation for the rich diversity of thought found in the premodern period, while revealing methodological challenges raised by the historical study of premodern philosophy. Contextualizing Premodern Philosophy: Explorations of the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin Traditions is a stimulating resource for scholars and advanced students working in the history of premodern philosophy.

The study shows the reception of the views of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite by Gregory Palamas. The author presents the doctrinal context of Palamas' dispute with Barlaam from Calabria on the possibility of knowing God, the most important issue in 14th-century Byzantium. The author distances herself from many previous interpretations of this problem. She proves that, considering how much Palamas succumbed or did not succumb to the Areopagite or "corrected" his position, he has a very weak doctrinal basis. The author notices that over-emphasizing Dionysius' dependence on the Neoplatonic tradition does not lead to a solution to the problem. Palamas' teachings are placed in the context of the traditions of the Christian East and their relation to the thoughts of the Areopagite himself.

Metaphysics and Hermeneutics in the Medieval Platonic Tradition consists of twelve essays originally published between 2006 and 2015, dealing with main trends and specific figures within the medieval Platonic tradition. Three essays provide general surveys of the transmission of late ancient thought to the Middle Ages with emphasis on the ancient authors, the themes, and their medieval readers, respectively. The remaining essays deal especially with certain major figures in the Platonic tradition, including pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Iohannes Scottus Eriugena, and Nicholas of Cusa. The principal conceptual aim of the collection is to establish the primacy of hermeneutics within the philosophical program developed by these authors: in other words, to argue that their philosophical activity, substantially albeit not exclusively, consists of the reading and evaluation of authoritative texts. The essays also argue that the role of hermeneutics varies in the course of the tradition between being a means towards the development of metaphysical theory and being an integral component of metaphysics itself. In addition, such changes in the status and application of hermeneutics to metaphysics are shown to be accompanied by a shift from emphasizing the connection between logic and philosophy to emphasizing that between rhetoric and philosophy. The collection of essays fills in a lacuna in the history of philosophy in general between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries. It also initiates a dialogue between the metaphysical hermeneutics of medieval Platonism and certain modern theories of hermeneutics, structuralism, and deconstruction. The book will be of special interest to students of the classical tradition in western thought, and more generally to students of medieval philosophy, theology, history, and literature. (CS1094).

Today, managers, politicians, educators, and healthcare providers are highly skilled technicians who navigate modern systems. However, followers seek more than know-how; they desire moral leadership. Even leaders equipped with skills must make difficult ethical choices. This book connects philosophy to leadership by examining three representative texts from the history of philosophy: Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince. The leadership ideas contained in each one of these philosopher's works were not only pioneering for their age but continue to be relevant today because they provide insight into the enduring questions of leadership. The book demonstrates the timeliness of the classical works by applying these philosophical approaches to historical and contemporary cases. This book is ideal for readers who are acquainted with philosophy and those who are uninitiated. The connections made between philosophy, leadership literature, and real-life leaders enable readers to appreciate how deeper reflection into the themes of leadership might merit scholarly attention and bear witness to the close union between the philosophy of leadership and the real world.