The University of Basel was founded in 1460 on the basis of a privilege from Pope Pius II. As a young man, this pope had spent several years in the town and felt a strong affinity with it throughout his life. This volume begins with an examination of this prominent humanist and describes the contexts of the founding of the university in a series of further articles. The other examined dimensions are the urban and university contexts, as well as the church and art.

The puzzling nature of temporality and timing of reality remains controversial. This book offers a collection of studies that seeks a new answer by initiating a novel investigation informed by the ancient wisdom of the Greaco-Arabic-Islamic sources and inheritance, on the one side, and the contemporary discernment of Occidental phenomenology of life, on the other, in a common dialogical effort to unravel this great enigma of existence.

Is philosophy endangered by a scientific culture increasingly influenced by demands of utility and efficiency? What are the goals and intentions of philosophy, and what are the reasons that one practices philosophy at all? The main questions of this collection concern the self-understanding of philosophy. Prominent authors consider historical, systematic, and social approaches to this question and discuss possible answers. The purpose is not merely to legitimate philosophical practice but to understand what such practice consists in at all.

The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings provides the definitive anthology of early Christian texts from ca. 100 CE to ca. 650 CE. Its volumes reflect the cultural, intellectual, and linguistic diversity of early Christianity, and are organized thematically on the topics of God, Practice, Christ, Community, Reading, and Creation. The series expands the pool of source material to include not only Greek and Latin writings, but also Syriac and Coptic texts. Additionally, the series rejects a theologically normative view by juxtaposing texts that were important in antiquity but later deemed 'heretical' with orthodox texts. The translations are accompanied by introductions, notes, suggestions for further reading, and scriptural indices. The fourth volume focuses on early Christian reflection on Christ as God incarnate from ca. 450 CE to the eighth century. It will be an invaluable resource for students and academic researchers in early Christian studies, history of Christianity, theology and religious studies, and late antique Roman history.

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together an extensive collection of Bacon's writing - the major prose in full, together with sixteen other pieces not otherwise available - to give the essence of his work and thinking. Although he had a distinguished career as a lawyer and statesman, Francis Bacon's lifelong goal was to improve and extend human knowledge. In The Advancement of Learning (1605) he made a brilliant critique of the deficiencies of previous systems of thought and proposed improvements to knowledge in every area of human life. He conceived the Essays (1597, much enlarged in 1625) as a study of the formative influences on human behaviour, psychological and social. In The New Atlantis (1626) he outlined his plan for a scientific research institute in the form of a Utopian fable. In addition to these major English works this edition includes 'Of Tribute', an important early work here printed complete for the first time, and a revealing selection of his legal and political writings, together with his poetry. A special feature of the edition is its extensive annotation which identifies Bacon's sources and allusions, and glosses his vocabulary. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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).

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.

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.

"This is one of the few books on Montaigne that fuses analytical skill with humane awareness of why Montaigne matters."--Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale University "In this exhilarating and learned book on Montaigne's essays, Lawrence D. Kritzman contemporizes the great writer. Reading him from today's deconstructive America, Kritzman discovers Montaigne always already deep into a dialogue with Jacques Derrida and psychoanalysis. One cannot but admire this fabulous act of translation."--Helene Cixous "Throughout his career, Lawrence D. Kritzman has demonstrated an intimate knowledge of Montaigne's essays and an engagement with French philosophy and critical theory. The Fabulous Imagination sheds precious new light on one of the founders of modern individualism and on his crucial quest for self-knowledge."--Jean Starobinski, professor emeritus of French literature, University of Geneva Michel de Montaigne's (1533-1592) Essais was a profound study of human subjectivity. More than three hundred years before the advent of psychoanalysis, Montaigne embarked on a remarkable quest to see and imagine the self from a variety of vantages. Through the questions How shall I live? How can I know myself? he explored the significance of monsters, nightmares, and traumatic memories; the fear of impotence; the fragility of gender; and the act of anticipating and coping with death. In this book, Lawrence D. Kritzman traces Montaigne's development of the Western concept of the self. For Montaigne, imagination lies at the core of an internal universe that influences both the body and the mind. Imagination is essential to human experience. Although Montaigne recognized that the imagination can confuse the individual, "the fabulous imagination" can be curative, enabling the mind's "I" to sustain itself in the face of hardship. Kritzman begins with Montaigne's study of the fragility of gender and its relationship to the peripatetic movement of a fabulous imagination. He then follows with the essayist's examination of the act of mourning and the power of the imagination to overcome the fear of death. Kritzman concludes with Montaigne's views on philosophy, experience, and the connection between self-portraiture, ethics, and oblivion. His reading demonstrates that the mind's I, as Montaigne envisioned it, sees by imagining that which is not visible, thus offering an alternative to the logical positivism of our age.

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.

This Handbook is intended to show the links between the philosophy written in the Middle Ages and that being done today. Essays by over twenty medieval specialists, who are also familiar with contemporary discussions, explore areas in logic and philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, moral psychology ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy and philosophy of religion. Each topic has been chosen because it is of present philosophical interest, but a more or less similar set of questions was also discussed in the Middle Ages. No party-line has been set about the extent of the similarity. Some writers (e.g. Panaccio on Universals; Cesalli on States of Affairs) argue that there are the closest continuities. Others (e.g. Thom on Logical Form; Pink on Freedom of the Will) stress the differences. All, however, share the aim of providing new analyses of medieval texts and of writing in a manner that is clear and comprehensible to philosophers who are not medieval specialists. The Handbook begins with eleven chapters looking at the history of medieval philosophy period by period, and region by region. They constitute the fullest, most wide-ranging and up-to-date chronological survey of medieval philosophy available. All four traditions - Greek, Latin, Islamic and Jewish (in Arabic, and in Hebrew) - are considered, and the Latin tradition is traced from late antiquity through to the seventeenth century and beyond.

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.

Daniel Schwartz examines the views on friendship of the great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas. For Aquinas friendship is the ideal type of relationship that rational beings should cultivate. Schwartz argues that Aquinas fundamentally revises some of the main features of Aristotle's paradigmatic account of friendship so as to accommodate the case of friendship between radically unequal beings: man and God. As a result, Aquinas presents a broader view of friendship than Aristotle's, allowing for a higher extent of disagreement. lack of mutual understanding, and inequality between friends.

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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.

On 9 January 1632, at the inauguration of the Amsterdam Illustrious School - the predecessor of the city's university - Caspar Barlaeus delivered a speech that has continued to arouse the curiosity of researchers and the general public alike: Mercator sapiens. This famous oration on the wise merchant is now considered a key text of the Dutch Golden Age. At the same time it is surrounded by misunderstandings regarding Barlaeus himself, the nascent Illustrious School and Amsterdam's merchant culture. This volume presents the first English translation and the first critical edition of the Mercator sapiens, preceded by an introduction providing historical context and a fresh interpretation of this intriguing text.

The great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1224/6-1274) was Dominican regent master in theology at the University of Paris, where he presided over a series of questions - academic debates - on ethical topics. This volume offers translations of disputed questions on the nature of virtues in general, the fundamental or 'cardinal' virtues of practical wisdom, justice, courage, and temperateness, the divinely bestowed virtues of hope and charity, and the practical question of how, when and why one should rebuke a 'brother' for wrongdoing. The introduction explains how Aquinas's theory of virtue fits into his ethics as a whole, and it illuminates Aquinas's views by explaining the institutional and intellectual context in which these disputed questions were debated.

Die Beachtung, welche die Gattung Moralische Wochenschrift bisher erfahren hat und aktuell erhalt, entspricht bei Weitem nicht ihrem tatsachlichen Stellenwert in der Aufklarungsepoche als Multiplikator und Katalysator aufklarerischer Ideen und Schreibweisen. Die 19 Beitrage dieses Bandes untersuchen exemplarisch bekanntere und bislang weitgehend unerforschte Moralische Wochenschriften sowie ihnen nahe stehende Periodika aus der Zeit zwischen 1720 und 1790. Die Aufsatze werfen nicht nur ein neues Licht auf die anthropologische, philosophische, theologische, padagogische, politische und asthetische Positionierung der Zeitschriften innerhalb der Aufklarungsepoche, sondern zeigen auch ihre narrativen Verfahren, ihr Verhaltnis zur literarisch-kulturellen Tradition und zu den regionalen Spezifika ihres Erscheinungsumfelds auf. Zudem machen sie auf Desiderate der Wochenschriftenforschung und auf die Unhaltbarkeit weit verbreiteter Vorurteile gegenuber der Gattung aufmerksam. Der Band dokumentiert die Ergebnisse einer im Herbst 2011 an der Universitat Heidelberg veranstalteten Tagung.

Peter Lombard is best known as the author of a celebrated work entitled Book of Sentences, which for several centuries served as the standard theological textbook in the Christian West. It was the subject of more commentaries than any other work of Christian literature besides the Bible itself. The Book of Sentences is essentially a compilation of older sources, from the Scriptures and Augustine down to several of the Lombard's contemporaries, such as Hugh of Saint Victor and Peter Abelard. Its importance lies in the Lombard's organization of the theological material, his method of presentation, and the way in which he shaped doctrine in several major areas. Despite his importance, however, there is no accessible introduction to Peter Lombard's life and thought available in any modern language. This volume fills this considerable gap. Philipp W. Rosemann begins by demonstrating how the Book of Sentences grew out of a long tradition of Christian reflection-a tradition, ultimately rooted in Scripture, which by the twelfth century had become ready to transform itself into a theological system. Turning to the Sentences, Rosemann then offers a brief exposition of the Lombard's life and work. He proceeds to a book-by-book examination and interpretation of its main topics, including the nature and attributes of God, the Trinity, creation, angelology, human nature and the Fall, original sin, Christology, ethics, and the sacraments. He concludes by exploring how the Sentences helped shape the further development of the Christian tradition, from the twelfth century through the time of Martin Luther.

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.