The relationship between the Late Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times is still acontroversial topic discussed. Some view the 14th and 15th century as a period of decline, others emphasize this era's formative and innovative role in modern times. Volume 31 of Miscellanea Mediaevalia takes an interdisciplinary look at this period while addressing critical, classic evaluations. More than 30 contributions discuss the philosophy of the Late Middle Ages (with special attention to moral and natural philosophy), scientific institutions of the Late Middle Ages, the architecture, economic and legal history, and the spirituality in the Late Middle Ages, as well as prominent figures such as Jean Gerson and Nicholasof Cusa.

Rubens and the Eloquence of Drawing re-examines the early graphic practice of the preeminent northern Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640) in light of early modern traditions of eloquence, particularly as promoted in the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Flemish, Neostoic circles of philologist, Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). Focusing on the roles that rhetorical and pedagogical considerations played in the artist's approach to disegno during and following his formative Roman period (1600-08), this volume highlights Rubens's high ambitions for the intimate medium of drawing as a primary site for generating meaningful and original ideas for his larger artistic enterprise. As in the Lipsian realm of writing personal letters - the humanist activity then described as a cognate activity to the practice of drawing - a Senecan approach to eclecticism, a commitment to emulation, and an Aristotelian concern for joining form to content all played important roles. Two chapter-long studies of individual drawings serve to demonstrate the relevance of these interdisciplinary rhetorical concerns to Rubens's early practice of drawing. Focusing on Rubens's Medea Fleeing with Her Dead Children (Los Angeles, Getty Museum), and Kneeling Man (Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), these close-looking case studies demonstrate Rubens's commitments to creating new models of eloquent drawing and to highlighting his own status as an inimitable maker. Demonstrating the force and quality of Rubens's intellect in the medium then most associated with the closest ideas of the artist, such designs were arguably created as more robust pedagogical and preparatory models that could help strengthen art itself for a new and often troubled age.

Surveys philosophy from the neo-Platonists to St. Anselm, showing how Greek philosophy took the form in which it was known to its cultural inheritors and how they interpreted it.

ein wichtiges Anliegen der grossen Konzilien des Spatmittelalters war die Reform des monastischen Lebens. Ausgehend von der italienischen Benediktinerabtei Subiaco fanden diese Bestrebungen besonders in den deutschsprachigen Klostern ein breites Echo. Es bildeten sich Reformzentren heraus (Melk, Tegernsee, St. Gallen), in denen die Benedikt-Regel eine neue spirituelle und kulturelle Kraft entfaltete."

Translated into English for the first time, the writings of the twentieth-century scholar Annelise Maier on late medieval natural philosophy are here made accessible to a broader audience. The seven selections represent both Maier's earlier and later works. Her perceptions as a trained philosopher, coupled with her familiarity with the full range of primary source material, result in these rare insights into the historical importance of medieval science.

This study began as a paper. It got out of hand. It had help doing that. Oswaldo Chateaubriand, Ronald Haver, Paul Horwich, Bernie Katz, Norman Kretzmann, Stanley Martens, Stephen Pink, Michael Stokes, Eleanor Stump, Bill Ulrich, Celia Wolf, and a lot of other people questioned or criticized or helped reformulate one or another of the arguments and interpretations along the way. In spite of (maybe partly because of) their efforts, the book is full of mistakes. At least, induction over previous drafts indicates that irresistibly. But I do not, right now, know of any particular mistakes. All but a couple of the translations are mine (the exceptions are noted). That is not because existing translations are bad, but because some uniformity was essential. The translations often make unpleasant reading. So, often, does Aristotle; I have tried to be literal. A text and translation of the passage on which the book centers is in Appendix III. Footnotes cite literature by author and (sometimes abbreviated) title. Details are in the bibliography. I do not profess to have covered all the literature. An enormous amount of editorial work was done by Margaret Mundy. She was not able to undo the errors that remain. In particular, the footnotes are often numbered oddly: '4', '4a', '4b', etc.

An inquiry into the origins, dissemination, and consequences of the modern belief that humans can solve any problem and overcome any difficulty, given time and resources enough.

Thomas More remains one of the most enigmatic thinkers in history, due in large part to the enduring mysteries surrounding his best-known work, Utopia. He has been variously thought of as a reformer and a conservative, a civic humanist and a devout Christian, a proto-communist and a monarchical absolutist. His work spans contemporary disciplines from history to politics to literature, and his ideas have variously been taken up by seventeenth-century reformers and nineteenth-century communists. Through a comprehensive treatment of More's writing, from his earliest poetry to his reflections on suffering in the Tower of London, Joanne Paul engages with both the rich variety and some of the fundamental consistencies that run throughout More's works. In particular, Paul highlights More's concern with the destruction of what is held 'in common', whether it be in the commonwealth or in the body of the church. In so doing, she re-establishes More's place in the history of political thought, tracing the reception of his ideas to the present day. Paul's book serves as an essential foundation for any student encountering More's writing for the first time, as well as providing an innovative reconsideration of the place of his works in the history of ideas.

The gradual secularization of European society and culture is often said to characterize the development of the modern world, and the early Italian humanists played a pioneering role in this process. Here Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, with Elizabeth B. Welles, have edited and translated seven primary texts that shed important light on the subject of "civic humanism" in the Renaissance.Included is a treatise of Francesco Petrarca on government, two representative letters from Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni's panegyric to Florence, Francesco Barbaro's letter on "wifely" duty, Poggio Bracciolini's dialogue on avarice, and Angelo Poliziano's vivid history of the Pazzi conspiracy. Each translation is prefaced by an essay on the author and a short bibliography. The substantial introductory essay offers a concise, balanced summary of the historiographcal issues connected with the period.

Im Zentrum dieses Bandes steht die Untersuchung des Wechselspiels und der Eigenlogik von Politik, Religion und Philosophie im Mittelalter und in der Fruhen Neuzeit. Untersucht wird die Differenzierung religioser und politischer Diskurse im Medium der aristotelischen Philosophietradition. Den Leitgedanken bildet dabei die Frage nach der Art und Weise, in der verschiedene Autoren jener Epoche teils affirmativ, teils polemisch auf Aristoteles und seine Philosophie Bezug nahmen und so zur Herausbildung einer bestimmten Form von Politischem Aristotelismus beitrugen, der religiose und philosophische Argumentationen in ihren Geltungsanspruchen kritisch gegeneinander abhebt. Die diachrone Perspektive und die Gleichzeitigkeit von historischer und philosophischer Betrachtungsweise der Studien dieses Buchs fordern nicht nur bedeutende Ergebnisse im Hinblick auf die jeweils untersuchten Autoren und Problemzusammenhange zutage, sondern erproben anhand des Politischen Aristotelismus zugleich ein Deutungsmuster fur das Verhaltnis von Wissenskultur und gesellschaftlichem Wandel uberhaupt."

The new series of Ideen&Argumente subscribes to the ideal of a pluralist and open culture of argument and debate and presents well-produced volumes on topics and questions which make substantive or methodologically important contributions to contemporary philosophy. The publications are designed to effect a productive synergy between the Anglo-Saxon and Continental European philosophical traditions. Ideen&Argumente provides a platform for outstanding systematically oriented original editions and German first editions from all areas of Theoretical and Practical Philosophy. A welcome is extended to programmatic monographs from whatever philosophical direction. The aim is to highlight anew the thematic and methodological richness of contemporary philosophy.

This Element provides an account of Thomas Aquinas's moral philosophy that emphasizes the intrinsic connection between happiness and the human good, human virtue, and the precepts of practical reason. Human beings by nature have an end to which they are directed and concerning which they do not deliberate, namely happiness. Humans achieve this end by performing good human acts, which are produced by the intellect and the will, and perfected by the relevant virtues. These virtuous acts require that the agent grasps the relevant moral principles and uses them in particular cases.

Modern physics has accustomed us to consider events which cannot give rise to certainty in our knowledge. A scientific knowledge of such events is nevertheless possible. The method which has enabled us to obtain a stable and exact knowledge about uncertain events consists in a kind of changing of plane and in the replacing of the study of indi vidual phenomena by the study of statistical aggregates to which those phenomena can give rise. A statistical aggregate is not a collection of real phenomena, among which some would happen more often, others more rarely. It is a set of possibilities relative to a certain object or to a certain type of phenomenon. For example, we could consider the differ ent ways in which a die, thrown in given conditions, can fall: they are the possible results of a certain trial, the casting of the die (in the fore seen conditions). The set of those results constitutes effectively a set of possibilities, relative to a phenomenon of a certain type, the fall of the die in specified circumstances. Similarly, it is possible to consider the different velocities which can affect a molecule in a volume of gas; the set of those velocities constitutes effectively a set of possible values which a physical property, namely the velocity of a molecule, can have."

Henry Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics has been a central part of the utilitarian canon since its publication in 1874. This book, part of the Oxford Guides to Philosophy series, is a consice companion to Sidgwick's masterpiece, written primarily to aid advanced undergraduate students and interested general readers in navigatiing and interpreting the original text. Author David Phillips connects Sidgwick's work to work in contemporary moral philosophy and in the history of moral philosophy, paying particular attention to his relationships with key predecessors, including Kant and Mill, and with Moore and Ross, his most influencial successors in the British intuitionist tradition. The book's first eight chapters end with brief suggestions for further reading. At the end of the final three chapters there are more substantial overviews of the secondary literature on the aspects of Sidgwick's work that have generated the most interest among his commentators: metaethics and moral epistemology; consequentialism versus deontology; and egoism and the dualism of practical reason. The result is an Oxford Guide that will be a helpful resource for both students and scholars.