This is an exploration and analysis of Aquinas's contribution to the philosophy of religion. It examines Aquinas's contexts, his views on philosophy and theology, as well as faith and reason. His arguments for God's existence, responses to objections against God's existence and his characterization of the nature of God are examined.

This is the first comprehensive study of the Renaissance commonplace-book. Commonplace-books were the information-organizers of Early Modern Europe, notebooks of quotations methodically arranged for easy retrieval. From their first introduction to the rudiments of Latin to the specialized studies of leisure reading of their later years, the pupils of humanist schools were trained to use commonplace-books, which formed an immensely important element of Renaissance education. The common-place book mapped and resourced Renaissance culture's moral thinking, its accepted strategies of argumentation, its rhetoric, and its deployment of knowledge. In this ground-breaking study Ann Moss investigates the commonplace-book's medieval antecedents, its methodology and use as promulgated by its humanist advocates, its varieties as exemplified in its printed manifestations, and the reasons for its gradual decline in the seventeenth century. The book covers the Latin culture of Early Modern Europe and its vernacular counterparts and continuations, particularly in France. Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought is much more than an account of humanist classroom practice: it is a major work of cultural history.

Though the subject of this work, "nominalism and contemporary nom inalism," is philosophical, it cannot be fully treated without relating it to data gathered from a great variety of domains, such as biology and more especially ethology, psychology, linguistics and neurobiology. The source of inspiration has been an academic work I wrote in order to obtain a postdoctoral degree, which is called in Belgium an "Aggregaat voor het Hoger Onderwijs" comparable to a "Habilitation" in Germany. I want to thank the National Fund of Scientific Research, which accorded me several grants and thereby enabled me to write the academic work in the first place and thereafter this book. I also want to thank Prof. SJ. Doorman (Technical University of Delft) and Prof. G. Nuchelmans (University of Leiden), who were members of the jury of the "Aggre gaatsthesis," presented to the Free University of Brussels in 1981 and who by their criticisms and suggestions encouraged me to write the present book, the core of which is constituted by the general ideas then formulated. I am further obliged to Mr. X, the referee who was asked by Jaakko Hintikka to read my work and who made a series of constructive remarks and recom mendations. My colleague Marc De Mey (University of Ghent) helped me greatly with the more formal aspects of my work and spent too much of his valuable time and energy to enable me to deliver a presentable copy. All remaining shortcomings are entirely my responsibility. I asked Prof."

In this collection of articles, Kari Elisabeth Borresen and Kari Vogt point out the convergence of androcentric gender models in the Christian and Islamic traditions. They provide extensive surveys of recent research in women's studies, with bio-socio-cultural genderedness as their main analytical category. Matristic writers from late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are analysed in terms of a female God language, reshaping traditional theology. The persisting androcentrism of 20th-century Christianity and Islam, as displayed in institutional documents promoting women's specific functions, is critically exposed. This volume presents a pioneering investigation of correlated Christian and Islamic gender models which has hitherto remained uncompared by women's studies in religion. This work will serve scholars and students in the humanistic disciplines of theology, religious studies, Islamic studies, history of ideas, Medieval philosophy and women's history. "

In the year 1985, presumed to mark the 850th anniversary of Maimonides' birth, the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter was dedicated to Maim onides as philosopher. We did not enter into the other aspects of his work, rabbinical, legal, medical, etc., except in so far as the relation between his philosophy and his work in halakha (Jewish law) is itself a philosophical question. That no one is quite certain about Maimonides' date of birth is symbolic of the state of his philosophy as well. Maimonides' thought poses various enigmas, lends itself to contradictory interpretations and gives rise today, as it did in the Middle Ages, to sustained controversies. Some of the contribu tions to the present volume deal with these and cognate topics. Others deal with certain aspects of the philosophical tradition in which Maimonides was rooted, with some traits peculiar to the Islamic society in the midst of which he lived, and with his influence on Christian scholasticism. Maimonides' thought had many facets, and for this and other reasons the question as to his place and stature in the history of philosophy admits of no simple answer. In this volume an attempt has been made to draw atten tion to some of these complexities."

This book locates Christine de Pizan's argument that women are virtuous members of the political community within the context of earlier discussions of the relative virtues of men and women. It is the first to explore how women were represented and addressed within medieval discussions of the virtues. It introduces readers to the little studied "Speculum Dominarum" (Mirror of Ladies), a mirror for a princess, compiled for Jeanne of Navarre, which circulated in the courtly milieu that nurtured Christine.Throwing new light on the way in which Medieval women understood the virtues, and were represented by others as virtuous subjects, itpositions the ethical ideas of Anne of France, Laura Cereta, Marguerite of Navarre and the Dames de la Roche within an evolving discourse on the virtues that is marked by the transition from Medieval to Renaissance thought.
"Virtue Ethics for Women 1250-1500" will be of interest to those studying virtue ethics, the history of women's ideas and Medieval and Renaissance thought in general."

This is a fully revised edition of one of the most successful volumes in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series. Incorporating extensive updates to the editorial apparatus, including the introduction, suggestions for further reading, and footnotes, this third edition of More's Utopia has been comprehensively re-worked to take into account scholarship published since the second edition in 2002. The vivid and engaging translation of the work itself by Robert M. Adams includes all the ancillary materials by More's fellow humanists that, added to the book at his own request, collectively constitute the first and best interpretive guide to Utopia. Unlike other teaching editions of Utopia, this edition keeps interpretive commentary - whether editorial annotations or the many pungent marginal glosses that are an especially attractive part of the humanist ancillary materials - on the page they illuminate instead of relegating them to endnotes, and provides students with a uniquely full and accessible experience of More's perennially fascinating masterpiece.

In this groundbreaking collection of essays the history of philosophy appears in a fresh light, not as reason's progressive discovery of its universal conditions, but as a series of unreconciled disputes over the proper way to conduct oneself as a philosopher. By shifting focus from the philosopher as proxy for the universal subject of reason to the philosopher as a special persona arising from rival forms of self-cultivation, philosophy is approached in terms of the social office and intellectual deportment of the philosopher, as a personage with a definite moral physiognomy and institutional setting. In so doing, this collection of essays by leading figures in the fields of both philosophy and the history of ideas provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher, and to the institutional and larger political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.

This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the philosophical system of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's importance is widely recognized and is essential for understanding early modern philosophers and scientists such as Locke, Leibniz and Newton. Offering a systematic overview of his contributions, LoLordo situates Gassendi's views within the context of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century natural philosophy as represented by a variety of intellectual traditions, including scholastic Aristotelianism, Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the emerging mechanical philosophy. LoLordo's work will be essential reading for historians of early modern philosophy and science.

Treatise on Divine Predestination is one of the early writings of the author of the great philosophical work Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature), Johannes Scottus (the Irishman), known as Eriugena (died c. 877 A.D.). It contributes to the age-old debate on the question of human destiny in the present world and in the afterlife.

Since its publication in 1677, Spinoza s Ethics has fascinated philosophers, novelists, and scientists alike. It is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and contested works of Western philosophy. Written in an austere, geometrical fashion, the work teaches us how we should live, ending with an ethics in which the only thing good in itself is understanding. Spinoza argues that only that which hinders us from understanding is bad and shows that those endowed with a human mind should devote themselves, as much as they can, to a contemplative life. This Companion volume provides a detailed, accessible exposition of the Ethics. Written by an internationally known team of scholars, it is the first anthology to treat the whole of the Ethics and is written in an accessible style.

The first Symposium consisted of three people in a cafe in Warsaw in 1973. Since then, meetings have grown in size and have been held in Leyden, Copenhagen, Nijmegen, Rome, Oxford, Poitiers and Freiburg am-Breisgau. The ninth Symposium was held in St Andrews in June 1990, with 57 participants who listened to addresses by 28 speakers. It was very fitting that Scotland's oldest university, founded in the heyday of medievalleaming in 1411, should have been given the chance to bring together scholars from all over Europe and beyond to present their researches on the glorious past of scholastic rational thought. The topic of the Symposium was "Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar". The present volume consists, for the most part, of the papers presented at the Symposium. In fact, however, it proved impossible to include five of the contributions. Two of the papers included here were intended for the Symposium but in the event not delivered, because of the unavoidable absence of the speakers. The Symposium received very helpful financial support from one of the major philosophical associations in Britain, the Mind Association, from the Philosophical Quarterly, a journal published at St Andrews, from the University of St Andrews, from the British Academy, and from Low and Bonarplc. In organising the programme for the conference and in preparing the papers for publication I received invaluable help from: Professor E.J.

By modern standards Bacon's writings are striking in their range and diversity, and they are too often considered a separate specialist concerns in isolation from each other. Dr Jardine finds a unifying principle in Bacon's preoccupation with 'method', the evaluation and organisation of information as a procedure of investigation or of presentation. She shows how such an interpretation makes consistent (and often surprising) sense of the whole corpus of Bacon's writings: how the familiar but misunderstood inductive method for natural science relations to the more information strategies of argument in his historical, ethical, political and literary work. There is a substantial and valuable study of the intellectual Renaissance background from which Bacon emerged and against which he reacted. Through a series of details comparisons and contrasts we are led to appreciate the true originality and ingenuity of Bacon's own views and also to discount the more superficial resemblances between them and later developments in the philosophy of science.

What made the Renaissance tick? Why had it such a force that its thinking spread from a small group of scholars in Florence, working in their own brilliant ways but coming together in Ficino's small villa on the Florentine hillside, supported by the powerful but highly intelligent Medici family - so that it affected the thinking of the whole of Europe, and eventually of America, for five hundred years and is continuing to do so? This is the first English translation of some of the key works: Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), having translated all the extant works of Plato's Greek philosophy for the first time into Latin, absorbs their wisdom and here, in forty short articles, presents to the Medici family, as his patrons and sponsors, his commentaries on the meaning and implications of twenty-five of Plato's Dialogues and of the twelve Letters traditionally ascribed to Plato. The book puts the reader into the moment of history when Cosimo de' Medici and his family were given the opportunity which 'good rulers' have sought, from the earliest Greek state till today, to unite power with wisdom. Though this book will be an essential buy for Renaissance scholars and historians, its freshness of thought and wisdom is presented by its title, jacket illustration and introductory material as a book to be reflected on by general readers of philosophy and wisdom. Here is that extraordinary tsunami of human thought and endeavour and sheer vital power that was the Renaissance, caught for us in its early stirrings of new thought. This is a book of deep wisdom for reflection, as well as a glimpse of mankind awakening once more to its true potential.

The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was an eminent philosopher and theologian whose Disputationes Metaphysicae was first published in Spain in 1597 and was widely studied throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. The Disputationes Metaphysicae had a great influence on the development of early modern philosophy and on such well-known figures as Descartes and Leibniz. This is the first time that Disputations 17, 18, and 19 have been translated into English. The Metaphysical Disputations provide an excellent philosophical introduction to the medieval Aristotelian discussion of efficient causality. The work constitutes a synthesis of monumental proportions: problematic issues are lucidly delineated and the various arguments are laid out in depth. Disputations 17, 18, and 19 deal explicitly with such issues as the nature of causality, the types of efficient causes, the prerequisites for causal action, causal contingency, human free choice, and chance.

In the great libraries of Europe and the United States, hidden in fading manuscripts on forgotten shelves, lie the works of medieval Hebrew logic. From the end of the twelfth century through the Renaissance, Jews wrote and translated commentaries and original compositions in Aristotelian logic. One can say without exaggeration that wherever Jews studied philosophy - Spain, France, Northern Africa, Germany, Palestine - they began their studies with logic. Yet with few exceptions, the manuscripts that were catalogued in the last century have failed to arouse the interest of modem scholars. While the history of logic is now an established sub-discipline of the history of philosophy, the history of Hebrew logic is only in its infancy. The present work contains a translation and commentary of what is arguably the greatest work of Hebrew logic, the Sefer ha-Heqqesh ha-Yashar (The Book of the Correct Syllogism) of Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides; 1288-1344). Gersonides is well known today as a philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and biblical exegete. But in the Middle Ages he was also famous for his prowess as a logician. The Correct Syllogism is his attempt to construct a theory of the syllogism that is free of what he considers to be the 'mistakes' of Aristotle, as interpreted by the Moslem commentator A verroes. It is an absorbing, challenging work, first written by Gersonides when he was merely thirty-one years old, then significantly revised by him. The translation presented here is of the revised version.

Modern developments in philosophy have provided us with tools, logical and methodological, that were not available to Medieval thinkers - a development that has its dangers as well as opportunities. Modern tools allow one to penetrate old texts and analyze old problems in new ways, offering interpretations that the old thinkers could not have known. But unless one remains sensitive to the fact that language has undergone changes, bringing with it a shift in the meaning of terminology, one can easily perpetrate an anachronism. Yet there is a growing need to bring modern tools and to bear on the struggle for greater understanding of the problems studied and the solutions found by the ancient scholars. If we remain sensitive to the dangers, this openness to new methods can be expected to widen our perspectives and deepen our knowledge of old material. The focus in the present volume is on problems in Medieval and contemporary philosophy of religion.

Neostoicism was one of the most important intellectual movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It started in the Protestant Netherlands during the revolt against Catholic Spain. Very quickly it began to influence both the theory and practice of politics in many parts of Europe. It proved to be particularly useful and appropriate to the early modern militaristic states; for, on the basis of the still generally accepted humanistic values of classical antiquity, it promoted a strong central power in the state, raised above the conflicting doctrines of the theologians. Characteristically, a great part of Neostoic writing was concerned with the nationally organized military institutions of the state. Its aim was the general improvement of social discipline and the education of the citizen to both the exercise and acceptance of bureaucracy, controlled economic life and a large army.

Peter Abelard conducted many analyses of Scriptural and Patristic teachings, and achieved an extensive rapprochement between Christian and pagan thought. His public career was ended in 1140 by an ecclesiastical condemnation, but this touched upon the central issues facing the early leaders of the medieval scholastic movement and Abelard's own teachings continued to be controversial. Dr Luscombe considers the influence of Abelard's principal teachings among his contemporaries and successors. his aim is to explain the conflicting estimates of Abelard which were current in the twelfth century and later, and to provide a full account of the writings and varied fortunes of Abelard's disciples. He also examines the manuscript tradition of Abelard's work and that of his followers. The condemnation of 1140 repudiated Abelard's leading doctrines. This led some of Abelard's disciples to partly retreat from the position of their master, whereas some chose to adapt and extend his teachings.