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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Western philosophy, c 500 to c 1600 > General
This book offers a comparative study of emotion in Arabic Islamic
and English Christian contemplative texts, c. 1110-1250,
contributing to the emerging interest in 'globalization' in
medieval studies. A.S.Lazikani argues for the necessity of placing
medieval English devotional texts in a more global context and
seeks to modify influential narratives on the 'history of emotions'
to enable this more wide-ranging critical outlook. Across eight
chapters, the book examines the dialogic encounters generated by
comparative readings of Muhyddin Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240), 'Umar Ibn
al-Farid (1181-1235), Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari (d. 1269), Ancrene
Wisse (c. 1225), and the Wooing Group (c. 1225). Investigating the
two-fold 'paradigms of love' in the figure of Jesus and in the
image of the heart, the (dis)embodied language of affect, and the
affective semiotics of absence and secrecy, Lazikani demonstrates
an interconnection between the religious traditions of early
Christianity and Islam.
Elionor of Sicily, 1325-1375: A Mediterranean Queen's Life of
Family, Administration, Diplomacy, and War follows Elionor of
Sicily, the third wife of the important Aragonese king, Pere III.
Despite the limited amount of personal information about Elionor,
the large number of Sicilian, Catalan, and Aragonese chronicles as
well as the massive amount of notarial evidence drawn from eastern
Spanish archives has allowed Donald Kagay to trace Elionor's
extremely active life roles as a wife and mother, a queen, a
frustrated sovereign, a successful administrator, a supporter of
royal war, a diplomat, a feudal lord, a fervent backer of several
religious orders, and an energetic builder of royal sites. Drawing
from the correspondence between the queen and her husband, official
papers and communiques, and a vast array of notarial documents, the
book casts light on the many phases of the queen's life.
In the twentieth century, the boundaries between different literary
genres started to be questioned, raising a discussion about the
various narrative modes of factual and fictional discourses. Moving
on from the limited traditional studies of genre definitions, this
book argues that the borders between these two types of discourse
depend on complex issues of epistemology, literary traditions and
social and political constraints. This study attempts a systematic
and specific analysis of how literary works, and in particular
documentary ones, where the borders are more difficult to define,
can be classified as factual or fictional. The book deals with
several areas of discourse, including history, travel tales,
autobiography and reportage, and opens up perspectives on the very
different ways in which documentary works make use of the
inescapable presence of both factual and fictional elements.
The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, published in
2007, provides an introduction to a complex period of change in the
subject matter and practice of philosophy. The philosophy of the
fourteenth through sixteenth centuries is often seen as
transitional between the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages
and modern philosophy, but the essays collected here, by a
distinguished international team of contributors, call these
assumptions into question, emphasizing both the continuity with
scholastic philosophy and the role of Renaissance philosophy in the
emergence of modernity. They explore the ways in which the science,
religion and politics of the period reflect and are reflected in
its philosophical life, and they emphasize the dynamism and
pluralism of a period which saw both new perspectives and enduring
contributions to the history of philosophy. This will be an
invaluable guide for students of philosophy, intellectual
historians, and all who are interested in Renaissance thought.
The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, published in
2007, provides an introduction to a complex period of change in the
subject matter and practice of philosophy. The philosophy of the
fourteenth through sixteenth centuries is often seen as
transitional between the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages
and modern philosophy, but the essays collected here, by a
distinguished international team of contributors, call these
assumptions into question, emphasizing both the continuity with
scholastic philosophy and the role of Renaissance philosophy in the
emergence of modernity. They explore the ways in which the science,
religion and politics of the period reflect and are reflected in
its philosophical life, and they emphasize the dynamism and
pluralism of a period which saw both new perspectives and enduring
contributions to the history of philosophy. This will be an
invaluable guide for students of philosophy, intellectual
historians, and all who are interested in Renaissance thought.
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.
This sourcebook explores how the Middle Ages dealt with questions
related to the mental life of creatures great and small. It makes
accessible a wide range of key Latin texts from the fourth to the
fourteenth century in fresh English translations. Specialists and
non-specialists alike will find many surprising insights in this
comprehensive collection of sources on the medieval philosophy of
animal minds. The book's structure follows the distinction between
the different aspects of the mental. The author has organized the
material in three main parts: cognition, emotions, and volition.
Each part contains translations of texts by different medieval
thinkers. The philosophers chosen include well-known figures like
Augustine, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. The collection
also profiles the work of less studied thinkers like John Blund,
(Pseudo-)Peter of Spain, and Peter of Abano. In addition, among
those featured are several translated here into English for the
first time. Each text comes with a short introduction to the
philosopher, the context, and the main arguments of the text plus a
section with bibliographical information and recommendations for
further reading. A general introduction to the entire volume
presents the basic concepts and questions of the philosophy of
animal minds and explains how the medieval discussion relates to
the contemporary debate. This sourcebook is valuable for anyone
interested in the history of philosophy, especially medieval
philosophy of mind. It will also appeal to scholars and students
from other fields, such as psychology, theology, and cultural
studies.
Averroes on Intellect provides a detailed analysis of the Muslim
philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd)'s notorious unicity thesis - the
view that there is only one separate and eternal intellect for all
human beings. It focuses directly on Averroes' arguments, both from
the text of Aristotle's De Anima and, more importantly, his own
philosophical arguments in the Long Commentary on the De Anima.
Stephen Ogden defends Averroes' interpretation of De Anima using a
combination of Greek, Arabic, Latin, and contemporary sources. Yet,
Ogden also insists that Averroes is not merely a 'commentator' but
an incisive philosopher in his own right. The author thus
reconstructs and analyzes Averroes' two most significant
independent philosophical arguments, the Determinate Particular
Argument and the Unity Argument. Alternative ancient and medieval
views are also considered throughout, especially from two important
foils before and after Averroes, namely, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and
Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas' most famous and penetrating arguments
against the unicity thesis are also addressed. Finally, Ogden
considers Averroes' own objections to broader metaphysical views of
the soul like Avicenna's and Aquinas', which agree with him on
several key points including the immateriality of the intellect and
the individuation of human souls by matter, while still diverging
on the number and substantial nature of the intellect. The central
goal of this book is to provide readers with a single study of
Averroes' most pivotal arguments on intellect, consolidating and
building on recent scholarship and offering a comprehensive case
for his unicity thesis in the wider context of Aristotelian
epistemology and metaphysics.
By any metric, Cicero's works are some of the most widely read in
the history of Western thought. Natural Law Republicanism suggests
that perhaps his most lasting and significant contribution to
philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of
liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property,
and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are
often taken to be among early modern liberalism's unique
innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought.
However, Michael C. Hawley demonstrates how Cicero's thought played
a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican
project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise
only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be
sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral
law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such
as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through
the tensions in Cicero's vision, laying the groundwork for a theory
of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people's
collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. Tracing the
development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero's original
articulation through the American Founding, Natural Law
Republicanism explores how our modern political ideas remain
dependent on the legacy of one of Rome's great
philosopher-statesmen.
Carl Vogta (TM)s quarrel with Rudolph Wagner is considered to be a
culmination of the materialism dispute in the 19th century. Out of
this basically academic issue on the nature of human mental
functions, a personal dispute quickly developed which was
unrivalled in thematic incisiveness and expression. The aim of this
study is the detailed linguistic analysis of the polemics and
argumentation in this dispute based on extensive text excerpts, in
which for the first time detailed linguistic studies on Vogt and
Wagner are presented.
Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature presents
illegitimacy as a fluid, creative, and negotiable concept in early
literature which challenges society's definition of what is
acceptable. Through the medieval epic poems Cantar de Mio Cid and
Mocedades de Rodrigo, the ballad tradition, Cervantes's Novelas
ejemplares, and Lope de Vega's theatre, Geraldine Hazbun
demonstrates that illegitimacy and legitimacy are interconnected
and flexible categories defined in relation to marriage, sex,
bodies, ethnicity, religion, lineage, and legacy. Both categories
are subject to the uncertainties and freedoms of language and
fiction and frequently constructed around axes of quantity and
completeness. These literary texts, covering a range of
illegitimate figures, some with an historical basis, demonstrate
that truth, propriety, and standards of behaviour are not forged in
the law code or the pulpit but in literature's fluid system of
producing meaning.
Peter Abelard (1079-1142) is one of the greatest philosophers of
the medieval period. Although best known for his views about
universals and his dramatic love affair with Heloise, he made a
number of important contributions in metaphysics, logic, philosophy
of language, mind and cognition, philosophical theology, ethics,
and literature. The essays in this volume survey the entire range
of Abelard's thought, and examine his overall achievement in its
intellectual and historical context. They also trace Abelard's
influence on later thought and his relevance to philosophical
debates today.
Richard J. Regan's new translation of texts from Thomas Aquinas'
Summa Theologica II-II--on the virtues prudence, justice,
fortitude, and temperance--combines accuracy with an accessibility
unmatched by previous presentations of these texts. While remaining
true to Aquinas' Latin and preserving a question-and-answer format,
the translation judiciously omits references and citations
unessential to the primary argument. It thereby clears a path
through the original especially suitable for beginning students of
Aquinas. Regan's Introduction carefully situates Aquinas' analysis
of these virtues within the greater ethical system of the Summa
Theologica , and each selection is introduced by a thoughtful
headnote. A glossary of key terms and a select bibliography are
also included.
Das Eine, das Gute, das Wahre und das Schoene - unum, bonum, verum,
pulchrum - werden in der hochmittelalterlichen Philosophie als
allgemeine Bestimmungen eines ungegenstandlichen Seins, dessen
erkennbare Spur sich in allem gegenstandlich Seienden findet,
verstanden. Weil diese Bestimmungen alle besonderen Seinsweisen
ubersteigen, werden sie 'Transzendentalien' oder 'Communissima'
genannt: das, was allen Dingen gemeinsam ist. Der Sinn dieser Logik
erschliesst sich, wenn wir die Erkenntnis des jeweils Seienden, der
Einzeldinge, in deren Anteilsbeziehung zum schlechthinnigen Sein -
in dem sich das Eine, Gute, Wahre und Schoene verbinden -
begreifen. Eben dazu will uns diese Denkform, die unter anderem auf
Aristoteles zuruckgeht und um die unter den Philosophen des
Mittelalters gerungen wurde, anleiten; sie blieb bis in die Neuzeit
massgeblich als das Herz der europaischen Metaphysik. Heute ist uns
dieses Denken fremd geworden. Man muss es sich aber vor Augen
fuhren, um die mittelalterliche Philosophie, zu der die Neuzeit
trotz aller Diskontinuitaten in weit engerer Verbindung steht, als
uns allermeist bewusst ist, verstehen zu koennen. Zudem war die
Logik der Transzendentalien nicht nur philosophiehistorisch
wirksam, sondern eine Erkenntnislehre, die ihre fortwirkende
Bedeutung bis heute behalten hat und deshalb eine Vergegenwartigung
verdient.
Alone among Thomas Aquinas' works, the Summa Theologiae contains
well-developed and integrated discussions of metaphysics, ethics,
law, human action, and the divine nature. The essays in this
volume, by scholars representing varied approaches to the study of
Aquinas, offer thorough, cutting-edge expositions and analyses of
these topics and show how they relate to Aquinas' larger system of
thought. The volume also examines the reception of the Summa
Theologiae from the thirteenth century to the present day, showing
how scholars have understood and misunderstood this key text - and
how, even after seven centuries of interpretation, we still have
much to learn from it. Detailed and accessible, this book will be
highly important for scholars and students of medieval philosophy
and theology.
In this new introduction to a classic philosophical text, Catherine
Wilson examines the arguments of Descartes' famous Meditations, the
book which launched modern philosophy. Drawing on the
reinterpretations of Descartes' thought of the past twenty-five
years, she shows how Descartes constructs a theory of the mind, the
body, nature, and God from a premise of radical uncertainty. She
discusses in detail the historical context of Descartes' writings
and their relationship to early modern science, and at the same
time she introduces concepts and problems that define the
philosophical enterprise as it is understood today. Following
closely the text of the Meditations and meant to be read alongside
them, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous
background in philosophy. It is well-suited to university-level
courses on Descartes, but can also be read with profit by students
in other disciplines.
Michel de Montaigne has always been acknowledged as a great literary figure but never thought of as a philosophical original. This book is the first to treat him as a serious thinker in his own right, taking as its point of departure Montaigne's description of himself as "an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher". This major reassessment of a much admired but also greatly underestimated thinker is for historians of philosophy and scholars in comparative literature, French studies and the history of ideas.
John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308) was (along with Aquinas and Ockham) one of the three principal figures in medieval philosophy and theology, with an influence on modern thought arguably greater than that of Aquinas. The essays in this volume systematically survey the full range of Scotus's thought. They clearly explain the technical details of his writing and demonstrate the relevance of his work to contemporary philosophical debate.
This monograph proposes a new (dialogical) way of studying the
different forms of correlational inference, known in the Islamic
jurisprudence as qiyas. According to the authors' view, qiyas
represents an innovative and sophisticated form of dialectical
reasoning that not only provides new epistemological insights into
legal argumentation in general (including legal reasoning in Common
and Civil Law) but also furnishes a fine-grained pattern for
parallel reasoning which can be deployed in a wide range of
problem-solving contexts and does not seem to reduce to the
standard forms of analogical reasoning studied in contemporary
philosophy of science and argumentation theory. After an overview
of the emergence of qiyas and of the work of al-Shirazi penned by
Soufi Youcef, the authors discuss al-Shirazi's classification of
correlational inferences of the occasioning factor (qiyas
al-'illa). The second part of the volume deliberates on the system
of correlational inferences by indication and resemblance (qiyas
al-dalala, qiyas al-shabah). The third part develops the main
theoretical background of the authors' work, namely, the dialogical
approach to Martin-Loef's Constructive Type Theory. The authors
present this in a general form and independently of adaptations
deployed in parts I and II. Part III also includes an appendix on
the relevant notions of Constructive Type Theory, which has been
extracted from an overview written by Ansten Klev. The book
concludes with some brief remarks on contemporary approaches to
analogy in Common and Civil Law and also to parallel reasoning in
general.
This book provides a fresh reading of Aquinas' metaphysics in the
light of insights from the works of Frege. In particular,
Ventimiglia argues that Aquinas' doctrine of being can be better
understood through Frege's distinction between the 'there is' sense
and the 'present actuality' sense of being, as interpreted by Peter
Geach and Anthony Kenny. Aquinas' notion of essence becomes clearer
in the light of Frege's distinction between objects and concepts
and his account of concepts as functions. Aquinas' doctrine of
trancendentals is clarified with the help of Frege's accounts of
assertion and negation. Aquinas after Frege provides us with a new
Aquinas, which pays attention to his texts and their historical
context. Ventimiglia's development of 'British Thomism' furnishes
us with a lucid and exciting re-reading of Aquinas' metaphysics.
The old humanistic model, aiming at universalism, ecumenism, and
the globalization of various Western systems of values and beliefs,
is no longer adequate - even if it pleads for an ever-wider
inclusion of other cultural perspectives and for intercultural
dialogue. In contrast, it would be wise to retain a number of its
assumptions and practices - which it incidentally shares with
humanistic models outside the Western world. We must now reconsider
and remap it in terms of a larger, global reference frame. This
anthology does just that, thus contributing to a new field of study
and practice that could be called intercultural humanism.
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