"Machiavelli's Ethics" challenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the "Machiavellian" maxim that the ends justify the means. By carefully reconstructing the principled foundations of his political theory, Erica Benner gives the most complete account yet of Machiavelli's thought. She argues that his difficult and puzzling style of writing owes far more to ancient Greek sources than is usually recognized, as does his chief aim: to teach readers not how to produce deceptive political appearances and rhetoric, but how to see through them. Drawing on a close reading of Greek authors--including Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Plutarch--Benner identifies a powerful and neglected key to understanding Machiavelli.

This important new interpretation is based on the most comprehensive study of Machiavelli's writings to date, including a detailed examination of all of his major works: "The Prince, The Discourses, The Art of War, " and "Florentine Histories." It helps explain why readers such as Bacon and Rousseau could see Machiavelli as a fellow moral philosopher, and how they could view "The Prince" as an ethical and republican text. By identifying a rigorous structure of principles behind Machiavelli's historical examples, the book should also open up fresh debates about his relationship to later philosophers, including Rousseau, Hobbes, and Kant.

Thomas Williams presents the most extensive collection of John Duns Scotus's work on ethics and moral psychology available in English. John Duns Scotus: Selected Writings on Ethics includes extended discussions-and as far as possible, complete questions-on divine and human freedom, the moral attributes of God, the relationship between will and intellect, moral and intellectual virtue, practical reasoning, charity, the metaphysics of goodness and rightness, the various acts, affections, and passions of the will, justice, the natural law, sin, marriage and divorce, the justification for private property, and lying and perjury. Relying on the recently completed critical edition of the Ordinatio and other critically edited texts, this collection presents the most reliable and up-to-date versions of Scotus's work in an accessible and philosophically informed translation.

The closely related problems of creativity and freedom have long been seen as emblematic of the Renaissance. Ullrich Langer, however, argues that French and Italian Renaissance literature can be profitably reconceived in terms of the way these problems are treated in late medieval scholasticism in general and nominalist theology in particular. Looking at a subject that is relatively unexplored by literary critics, Langer introduces the reader to some basic features of nominalist theology and uses these to focus on what we find to be "modern" in French and Italian literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Langer demonstrates that this literature, often in its most interesting moments, represents freedom from constraint in the figures of the poet and the reader and in the fictional world itself. In Langer's view, nominalist theology provides a set of concepts that helps us understand the intellectual context of that freedom: God, the secular sovereign, and the poet are similarly absolved of external necessity in their relationships to their worlds. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In this portrait of the flamboyant Milanese courtier Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481), Diana Robin reveals a fifteenth-century humanism different from the cool, elegant classicism of Medicean Florence and patrician Venice. Although Filelfo served such heads of state as Pope Pius II, Cosimo de' Medici, and Francesco Sforza, his humanism was that of the "other"--the marginalized, exilic writer, whose extraordinary mind yet obscure origins made him a misfit at court. Through an exploration of Filelfo's disturbing montages in his letters and poems--of such events as the Milanese revolution of 1447 and the plague that swept Lombardy in 1451--Robin exposes the extent to which Filelfo, once viewed as an apologist for his patrons, criticized their militarism, sham republicanism, and professions of Christian piety. This study includes an examination of Filelfo's deeply layered references to Horace, Livy, Vergil, and Petrarch, as well as a comparison of Filelfo to other fifteenth-century Lombard writers, such as Cristoforo da Soldo, Pier Candido Decembrio, and Giovanni Simonetta. Here Robin presents her own editions of selections from Filelfo's Epistolae Familiares, Sforziad, Odae, and De Morali Disciplina, many of these texts appearing for the first time since the Renaissance. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Hans Baron's Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance is widely considered one of the most important works in Italian Renaissance studies. Princeton University Press published this seminal book in 1955. Now the Press makes available a two-volume collection of eighteen of Professor Baron's essays, most of them thoroughly revised, unpublished, or presented in English for the first time. Spanning the larger part of his career, they provide a continuation of, and complement to, the earlier book. The essays demonstrate that, contemporaneously with the revolution in art, modern humanistic thought developed in the city-state climate of early Renaissance Florence to a far greater extent than has generally been assumed. The publication of these volumes is a major scholarly event: a reinforcement and amplification of the author's conception of civic Humanism. The book includes studies of medieval antecedents and special studies of Petrarch, Leonardo Bruni, and Leon Battista Alberti. It offers a thoroughly re-conceived profile of Machiavelli, drawn against the background of civic Humanism, as well as essays presenting evidence that French and English Humanism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was closely tied to Italian civic thought of the fifteenth. The work culminates in a reassessment of Jacob Burckhardt's pioneering thought on the Renaissance. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Building on concepts developed in his previously published New Theory of Beauty, Guy Sircello constructs a bold and provocative theory of love in which the objects of love are the qualities that "bear" beauty and the pleasure of all love is "erotic," without being "sexual." The theory reveals a continuity of subject matter between premodern notions of love and modern notions of aesthetic pleasure, thus providing grounds for criticizing modern tendencies to isolate the aesthetic both culturally and psychologically and to separate it from its home in the human body. The author begins with an analysis of enjoyment that reduces all enjoyment to the enjoyment of the "experience of qualities." He explains how we experience qualities as "circulating" in a special form of "space" that includes our own bodies, the external world, and their interpenetration. Sircello generalizes this analysis to encompass all forms of love and grounds the pleasure of all love--aesthetic or nonaesthetic, personal or nonpersonal, sexual or nonsexual--in an experience of the form of an "overall bodily caress." Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Quello delle sostanze corporee e degli animali e uno dei temi ricorrenti nella storiografia leibniziana degli ultimi anni: l'intento di questo lavoro e di estendere l'indagine anche alla botanica. L'interesse di Leibniz per lo studio del mondo vegetale e attestato da numerosi scritti, anche inediti, come le lettere di Leibniz al matematico R. C. Wagner, di cui si presenta in Appendice la trascrizione dell'originale in lingua latina. Tenendo sullo sfondo i principali sviluppi della botanica dell'epoca, la trattazione verte su due temi: l'evoluzione nel pensiero leibniziano del concetto di macchina naturale, dagli anni degli scritti di fisiologia agli sviluppi piu maturi, e il confronto tra Leibniz e Locke sulla botanica sistematica e sui problemi teorici ad essa connessi.

Sarah Hutton presents a rich historical study of one of the most fertile periods in modern philosophy. It was in the seventeenth century that Britain's first philosophers of international stature and lasting influence emerged. Its most famous names, Hobbes and Locke, rank alongside the greatest names in the European philosophical canon. Bacon too belongs with this constellation of great thinkers, although his status as a philosopher tends to be obscured by his status as father of modern science. The seventeenth century is normally regarded as the dawn of modernity following the breakdown of the Aristotelian synthesis which had dominated intellectual life since the middle ages. In this period of transformational change, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke are acknowledged to have contributed significantly to the shape of European philosophy from their own time to the present day. But these figures did not work in isolation. Sarah Hutton places them in their intellectual context, including the social, political and religious conditions in which philosophy was practised. She treats seventeenth-century philosophy as an ongoing conversation: like all conversations, some voices will dominate, some will be more persuasive than others and there will be enormous variations in tone from the polite to polemical, matter-of-fact, intemperate. The conversation model allows voices to be heard which would otherwise be discounted. Hutton shows the importance of figures normally regarded as 'minor' players in philosophy (e.g. Herbert of Cherbury, Cudworth, More, Burthogge, Norris, Toland) as well as others who have been completely overlooked, notably female philosophers. Crucially, instead of emphasizing the break between seventeenth-century philosophy and its past, the conversation model makes it possible to trace continuities between the Renaissance and seventeenth century, across the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century, while at the same time acknowledging the major changes which occurred.

Medieval Philosophy: A Multicultural Reader comprises a comparative, multicultural reading of the four main traditions of the medieval period with extensive sections on Greek-Byzantine, Latin, Jewish, and Islamic traditions. The book also includes an initial 'Predecessors' section, presenting readings (with introductions) from figures of antiquity upon whom all four traditions have drawn. Representative readings from each of the four great traditions are presented chronologically in four different tracks, along with engaging and accessible introductions to the traditions themselves, as well as each individual thinker-all selected and presented by noted scholars within each respective tradition. This groundbreaking collection: -Offers readings from early thinkers that contextualize the medieval traditions. -Presents, for the first time, extensive readings from the Byzantine Christian tradition that has wielded an important cultural influence from Russia and the Balkans to the Middle East and Northern Africa. -Chooses and interprets texts that are integrally important within each of these four traditions-living traditions that continue to shape values and beliefs today-rather than seen from an external point of view, such as that of a later school of philosophy. -Juxtaposes extensive readings from poetic and mystical elements within these traditions alongside the usual, often more analytical readings. -Features a timeline of the entire period, a map indicating the locations associated with philosophers included in this volume, an annotated guide to further reading on each of these traditions, and an index of names and of subjects that appear in the volume. Given its relevance for approaching the medieval world on its own terms, as well as for understanding the foundations of our own world, the volume is intended not only as an academic textbook and reference work, but as a readable and informative guide for the general reader who wishes to understand these great philosophical and religious traditions that continue to influence our world today-or perhaps to simply glean the wisdom from these enduring texts. This is a culturally inclusive title, which seeks to provide the reader with a rich, varied and comprehensive insight into the entirety of the medieval philosophical world.

Die Autorin bietet in ihren einfuhrenden philosophischen Reflexionen eine Auswahl an klassischen und modernen Themen der AEsthetik: Dialektik der Aufklarung, Kunst nahe am Verstummen, Begriffsgeschichte des Schoenen und andere. In zehn Kapiteln werden Zitate durch kommentierende Abschnitte verbunden. Dabei geht das Buch nicht fortlaufend argumentierend vor, sondern prasentiert sich vielmehr als Collage. Jedem Kapitel ist ein literarisches Motto vorangestellt. Es soll den Gefuhlsraum zeigen, in dem sich AEsthetik dann bewegt. Gegenwartige Kunst als kritische Instanz verweist auf die Autonomie der AEsthetik, die stets Tendenzen abwehren muss, welche sie einzuschranken oder gar zu vernichten drohen: dies waren und sind hauptsachlich autoritar-politische Vereinnahmungen.

Die kantische Freiheitsphilosophie stellt eine sakulare Fassung der christlichen Freiheitslehre dar. Diese hat zwei unterschiedliche Grundbegriffe der Freiheit herausgearbeitet: die Freiheit der Wahl zwischen Gut und Boese und die moralische Freiheit. Im Hauptstrom seiner Philosophie stellt Kant allerdings nur den letzten und nicht den ersten Freiheitsbegriff in den Mittelpunkt seines Interesses. Damit entzieht er seiner Moralphilosophie und seiner Rechtslehre ihr eigentliches Fundament und kann dieses Defizit nur in seiner Religionsschrift annahernd ausgleichen. Das umfassende Problem der Freiheit bei Kant diskutiert der Verfasser vor dem Hintergrund zweier, fur das Christentum fundamentaler Freiheitslehren: der von Augustinus und der von Luther.

This book is the first complete English translation of Hasdai Crescas's Light of the Lord, widely acknowledged as a seminal work of medieval Jewish philosophy, one second in importance only to Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. In it Crescas takes on not only Maimonides but, through him, Aristotle, and challenges views of physics and metaphysics that had become entrenched in medieval thought. Once the Aristotelian underpinnings of medieval thought are dislodged, Crescas introduces alternative physical views and reinstates the classical Jewish God as a God of love and benefaction rather than a self-intellecting intellect. The end for humankind then is to become attached in love to the God of love through devoted service.

Which language should philosophers use: technical or common language? In a book as important for intellectual historians as it is for philosophers, Lodi Nauta addresses a vital question which still has resonance today: is the discipline of philosophy assisted or disadvantaged by employing a special vocabulary? By the Middle Ages philosophy had become a highly technical discipline, with its own lexicon and methods. The Renaissance humanist critique of this specialised language has been dismissed as philosophically superficial, but the author demonstrates that it makes a crucial point: it is through the misuse of language that philosophical problems arise. He charts the influence of this critique on early modern philosophers, including Hobbes and Locke, and shows how it led to the downfall of medieval Aristotelianism and the gradual democratization of language and knowledge. His book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the transition from medieval to modern philosophy.

Obwohl der Mundigkeitsbegriff seine herausragende Stellung in der erziehungswissenschaftlichen Diskussion mittlerweile eingebusst hat, ist er immer noch als Erziehungsziel gegenwartig. Wer von Mundigkeit redet, meint - mal mehr, mal weniger explizit - das Verantwortung begrundende Freiheitsvermoegen, sich selbst regieren zu koennen. Angenommen, die moderne Hirnforschung hatte Recht und Freiheit ware tatsachlich nur eine Illusion, musste mit der Unmoeglichkeit von Freiheit und Verantwortung konsequenterweise auch der Mundigkeitsbegriff verworfen werden. Kants Idee der Freiheit zeigt, warum Freiheit trotz (neuronaler) Determination widerspruchsfrei gedacht werden kann. Diese Fundierung des Mundigkeitsbegriffs in der Idee der Freiheit schrankt zugleich auch die Bandbreite dessen ein, was Mundigkeit sein kann und nimmt dem Begriff so seine Beliebigkeit.

Aristotle is generally considered a philosopher whose authority was regognized in the Middle Ages. However, in the sixteenth century alone, more works on Aristotle than throughout the preceding 1000 years were produced. Moreover, the medieval Latin translations were supplanted by new texts. Thus, the entire corpus was made accessible in contemporary Latin before 1600. The whole of Aristotle's oeuvre was subjected to the philosophical reorientation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; eventually the new readings of his works influenced contemporary thought on dialectic, science, poetics etc. In thirteen articles, the authors discuss the changing interpretations of Aristotle's works and his influence on various disciplines, from Dante and until the seventeenth century. With contributions by Sten Ebbesen, Antonis Fyrigos, Kristian Jensen, Eckhard Kessler, Bo Lindberg, David A. Lines, Marianne Marcussen, Heikki Mikkeli, John Monfasani, Olaf Pluta, Gert Sorensen, Cesare Vasoli, and Peter Wagner. Text in English and Italian (two articles).

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), the great Renaissance skeptic and pioneer of the essay form, is known for his innovative method of philosophical inquiry which mixes the anecdotal and the personal with serious critiques of human knowledge, politics and the law. He is the first European writer to be intensely interested in the representations of his own intimate life, including not just his reflections and emotions but also the state of his body. His rejection of fanaticism and cruelty and his admiration for the civilizations of the New World mark him out as a predecessor of modern notions of tolerance and acceptance of otherness. In this volume an international team of contributors explores the range of his philosophy and also examines the social and intellectual contexts in which his thought was expressed.

The Cosmographia of Bernard Silvester was the most important literary myth written between Lucretius and Dante. One of the most widely read books of its time, it was known to authors whose interests were as diverse as those of Vincent of Beauvais, Dante, and Chaucer. Bernard offers one of the most profound versions of a familiar theme in medieval literature, that of man as a microcosm of the universe, with nature as the mediating element between God and the world. Brian Stock's exposition includes many passages from the Cosmographia translated for the first time into English. Arising from the central analysis are several more general themes: among them the recreation by twelfth-century humanists of the languages of myth and science as handed down in the classical tradition; the creation of the world and of man, the chief mythical and cosmographical problem of the period; the development of naturalistic allegory; and Bernard's relation to the "new science" introduced from Greek and Arabic sources. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In 1968, at the climax of the sixties, Os Guinness visited the United States for the first time. There he was struck by an impression he'd already felt in England and elsewhere: beneath all the idealism and struggle for freedom was a growing disillusionment and loss of meaning. "Underneath the efforts of a generation," he wrote, "lay dust." Even more troubling, Christians seemed uninformed about the cultural shifts and ill-equipped to respond. Guinness took on these concerns by writing his first book, The Dust of Death. In this milestone work, leading social critic Guinness provides a wide-ranging, farsighted analysis of one of the most pivotal decades in Western history, the 1960s. He examines the twentieth-century developments of secular humanism, the technological society, and the alternatives offered by the counterculture, including radical politics, Eastern religions, and psychedelic drugs. As all of these options have increasingly failed to deliver on their promises, Guinness argues, Westerners desperately need another alternative-a Third Way. This way "holds the promise of realism without despair, involvement without frustration, hope without romanticism." It offers a stronger humanism, one with a solid basis for its ideals, combining truth and beauty. And this Third Way can be found only in the rediscovery and revival of the historic Christian faith. First published in 1973, The Dust of Death is now back in print as part of the IVP Signature Collection, featuring a new design and new preface by the author. This classic will help readers of every generation better understand the cultural trajectory that continues to shape us and how Christians can still offer a better way.

John Perry revisits the cast of characters of his classic A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality in this absorbing dialogue on consciousness. Cartesian dualism, property dualism, materialism, the problem of other minds . . . Gretchen Weirob and her friends tackle these topics and more in a dialogue that exemplifies the subtleties and intricacies of philosophical reflection. Once again, Perry's ability to use straightforward language to discuss complex issues combines with his mastery of the dialogue form. A Bibliography lists relevant further readings keyed to topics discussed in the dialogue. A helpful Glossary provides a handy reference to terms used in the dialogue and an array of clarifying examples.

"Every page contains thought at a high level." -British Weekly Rudolf Steiner begins these three lectures by depicting the background of early Christian thought, from which scholastic philosophers arose. He focuses on the "unanswered question" of the scholastic movement: How can human thinking be made Christlike and develop toward a vision of the spiritual world? A study of subsequent European thought, especially that of Kant, leads to the possibility of deepening into spiritual perception the scientific thinking that arose from scholasticism. Steiner explains that, since the beginning of the twentieth century, this is true Christianity.