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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Western philosophy, c 500 to c 1600 > General
Descartes gave the human intellect the central role in rationalism,
his system therefore is a variant of intellectual rationalism.
Other forms of rationalism had emerged in scholastic philosophy and
the ancient philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. While Descartes
had reservations with respect to all of them, he still adopted some
of their elements: not even such a self-directed and critical
philosopher as Descartes could have proceeded on the difficult
journey towards truth without any baggage of tradition whatsoever.
Those who treated this baggage as a useless burden and have
attempted to pursue truth without carrying it, have only discovered
things which had long been known.
Henry of Ghent, the most influential philosopher/theologian of
the last quarter of the thirteenth century at Paris, delivered his
fourth Quodlibet during 1279. This Quodlibet was written at the
beginning of the height of his career. In total there are
thirty-seven questions, which cover a wide range of topics,
including theories in theology, metaphysics, epistemology,
philosophical anthropology, ethics, and canon law.
In these questions, Henry presents his mature thought concerning
the number of human substantial forms in which he counters the
claims of the defenders of Thomas Aquinas, particularly those in
Giles of Lessines's De unitate formae, but also those found in
Giles of Rome's Contra Gradus. He is critical of Thomas Aquinas's
theories concerning human knowledge, the "more" and the "less," and
virtue. He also is critical of Bonaventure's analysis of
Augustine's notion of rationes seminales.
There are thirty-three known manuscripts that contain the text
of Quodlibet IV, and the critical text is reconstructed based on
manuscripts known to have been in Henry's school, as well as
manuscripts copied from two successive university exemplars in
Paris.
The main text is in Latin; the critical apparatus is in
English.
This work argues that teleological motives lie at the heart of
Kant's critical philosophy and that a precise analysis of
teleological structures can both illuminate the basic strategy of
its fundamental arguments and provide a key to understanding its
unity. It thus aims, through an examination of each of Kant's major
writings, to provide a detailed interpretation of his claim that
philosophy in the true sense must consist of a teleologia rationis
humanae. The author argues that Kant's critical philosophy forged a
new link between traditional teleological concepts and the basic
structure of rationality, one that would later inform the dynamic
conception of reason at the heart of German Idealism. The process
by which this was accomplished began with Kant's development of a
uniquely teleological conception of systematic unity already in the
precritical period. The individual chapters of this work attempt to
show how Kant adapted and refined this conception of systematic
unity so that it came to form the structural basis for the critical
philosophy.
Two major themes run through these studies by Gad Freudenthal:
science and philosophy in the medieval Hebrew tradition; and the
repercussions of Greek theories of matter in the medieval Arabic
and Hebrew scientific traditions. The opening essays offer a
sociologically-informed picture of the acceptance or rejection of
the sciences among medieval Jews in Southern France. This is
followed by studies of individual figures: on Gersonides' thought;
on Maimonides' and Gersonides' respective views of astrology; on
al-FAcrAcbA (R)'s philosophy of geometry; and two notes (translated
from Hebrew) on less well-known thinkers. The second part of the
volume is thematic; a study identifying in Anaximander's theory of
matter the fountainhead of a long-lasting scientific problematique
is followed by five essays on its reverberations in the works of
authors as different as Saadia Gaon, Avicenna, Averroes, Shem-Tov
Ibn Falaqera and the author of the mystic Sefer ha-maskil. They all
sought and gave accounts for the unity and persistence of the
cosmos, in which metaphysics often complements physics, some
echoing Stoic physics, a topic to which special attention is
devoted.
In Debating Medieval Natural Law: A Survey, Riccardo Saccenti
examines and evaluates the major lines of interpretation of the
medieval concepts of natural rights and natural law within the
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and explains how the
major historiographical interpretations of ius naturale and lex
naturalis have changed. His bibliographical survey analyzes not
only the chronological evolution of various interpretations of
natural law but also how they differ, in an effort to shed light on
the historical debate and on the medieval roots of modern human
rights theories. Saccenti critically examines the historical
analyses of the major historians of medieval political and legal
thought while addressing how to further research on the subject.
His perspective interlaces different disciplinary points of view:
history of philosophy, as well as history of canon and civil law
and history of theology. By focusing on a variety of disciplines,
Saccenti creates an opportunity to evaluate each interpretation of
medieval lex naturalis in terms of the area it enlightens and
within specific cultural contexts. His survey is a basis for future
studies concerning this topic and will be of interest to scholars
of the history of law and, more generally, of the history of ideas
in the twentieth century.
Human civilization will be forever indebted to the great
thinkers of Jewish philosophy's golden age. Moses Maimonedes, Levi
Gersonides, Judah Halevi, Saadia Gaon, Hasdai Crescas and their
like grappled with some of the most challenging metaphysical
issues, while the profundity of their solutions continue to engage
philosophers today. Did God create the world? Can human freedom be
reconciled with divine foreknowledge? What is the nature of the
good life? Focusing on the central philosophical questions of the
Middle Ages, Daniel Rynhold offers a concise introduction to topics
such as God and creation, human freewill, biblical prophecy, the
Commandments, the divine attributes and immortality. Structured
around themes that form the common "syllabus" of medieval Jewish
philosophy, each chapter builds a debate around a particular topic
and in so doing utilizes the arguments of the chief philosophical
figures of the medieval era. Explaining all concepts in a clear,
non-technical fashion, the book also provides suggestions for
further reading at the end of each chapter. The first dedicated
textbook to introduce the great richness of medieval Jewish
philosophy as a whole, this lively and comprehensive survey is the
ideal introduction for undergraduate students of the subject as
well as the interested general reader.
The question of what characterizes feelings of being alive is a
puzzling and controversial one. Are we dealing with a unique
affective phenomenon or can it be integrated into existing
classifications of emotions and moods? What might be the natural
basis for such feelings? What could be considered their
specifically human dimension? These issues are addressed by
researchers from various disciplines, including philosophy of mind
and emotions, psychology, and history of art. This volume contains
original papers on the topic of feelings of being alive by Fiorella
Battaglia, Eva-Maria Engelen, Joerg Fingerhut, Thomas Fuchs, Alice
Holzhey-Kunz, Matthias Jung, Tanja Klemm, Riccardo Manzotti, Sabine
Marienberg, Matthew Ratcliffe, Arbogast Schmitt, Jan Slaby, and
Achim Stephan.
Originally published in English in 1980, "Rhetoric as Philosophy
"has been out of print for some time. The reviews of that English
edition attest to the importance of Ernesto Grassi's work.
By going back to the Italian humanist tradition and aspects of
earlier Greek and Latin thought, Ernesto Grassi develops a
conception of rhetoric as the basis of philosophy. Grassi explores
the sense in which the first principles of rational thought come
from the metaphorical power of the word. He finds the basis for his
conception in the last great thinker of the Italian humanist
tradition, Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). He concentrates on Vico's
understanding of imagination and the sense of human ingenuity
contained in metaphor. For Grassi, rhetorical activity is the
essence and inner life of thought when connected to the
metaphorical power of the word.
Originally published in 1969, Technology and Empire offers a
brilliant analysis of the implications of technology-driven
globalization on everyday life. The author of Lament for a Nation,
George Grant has been recognized as one of Canada's most
significant thinkers. In this sweeping essay collection, he
reflects on the extent to which technology has shaped our modern
culture.
This book stands in the tradition of past and current common sense
philosophers, like Reid, Berkeley, Sidgwick, Moore, Conant, Slote,
Bogdan, and Lemos, who defend common sense, yet it goes beyond
their accounts by not only defending common sense but also
considering what common sense means. Besides giving a historical
exegesis of common sense in Thomas Reid and showing parallels in
Austin, Searle, Moore, and Wittgenstein, common sense is also
discovered in Hume's An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
and in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. It is made clear how far
common sense generalizes, whether proverbs are a form of common
sense, and whether common sense can be found in the common
knowledge assumption in game theory. Also, folk psychology as a
common sense psychology is discussed. In its account of common
sense, this book draws on research from history of philosophy,
philosophy of mind, and science, linguistics, and game theory to
substantiate its position.
The Summa Theologiae ranks among the greatest documents of the
Christian Church, and is a landmark of medieval western thought. It
provides the framework for Catholic studies in systematic theology
and for a classical Christian philosophy, and is regularly
consulted by scholars of all faiths and none, across a range of
academic disciplines. This paperback reissue of the classic
Latin/English edition first published by the English Dominicans in
the 1960s and 1970s, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, has
been undertaken in response to regular requests from readers and
librarians around the world for the entire series of 61 volumes to
be made available again. The original text is unchanged, except for
the correction of a small number of typographical errors.
Leading figures at the dawn of the sixteenth-century Reformation
commonly faced the charge of "judaizing": 72 In His Name concerns
the changing views of four such men starting with their kabbalistic
treatment of the 72 divine names of angels. Johann Reuchlin, the
first of the four men featured in this book, survived the charge;
Martin Luther's increasingly anti-semitic stance is contrasted with
the opposite movement of the French Franciscan Jean Thenaud whose
kabbalistic manuscripts were devoted to Francis I; Philipp Wolff,
the fourth, had been born into a Jewish family but his recorded
views were decidedly anti-semitic. 72 In His Name also includes
evidence that kabbalistic beliefs and practices, such as the
service for exorcism recorded by Thenaud, were unwittingly recorded
by Christians. Although the book concerns early modern Europe, the
religious interactions, the shifting spiritual attitudes, and the
shadows cast linger on.
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