Weakness of will, the phenomenon of acting contrary to one's own better judgment, has remained a prominent discussion topic of philosophy. The history of this discussion in ancient, medieval, and modern times has been outlined in many studies. Weakness of Will in Renaissance and ReformationThought is, however, the first book to cover the fascinating source materials on weakness of will between 1350 and 1650. In addition to considering the work of a broad range of Renaissance authors (including Petrarch, Donato Acciaiuoli, John Mair, and Francesco Piccolomini), Risto Saarinen explores the theologically coloured debates of the Reformation period, such as those provided by Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, John Calvin, and Lambert Daneau. He goes on to discuss the impact of these authors on prominent figures of early modernity, including Shakespeare, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz.
While most of the historical research on weakness of will has focused on the reception history of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Saarinen pays attention to the Platonic and Stoic discussions and their revival during the Renaissance and the Reformation. He also shows the ways in which Augustine's discussion of the divided will is intertwined with the Christian reception of ancient Greek ethics, and argues that the theological underpinnings of early modern authors do not rule out weakness of will, but transform the philosophical discussion and lead it towards new solutions.

The importance of Bessarion's contribution to the history of Byzantine and Renaissance philosophy and culture during the 15th century is beyond dispute. However, an adequate appreciation of his contribution still remains a desideratum of scholarly research. One serious impediment to scholarly progress is the fact that the critical edition of his main philosophical work "In Calumniatorem Platonis" is incomplete and that this work has not been translated in its entirety into any modern language yet. Same can be stated about several minor but equally important treatises on literary, theological and philosophical subjects. This makes editing, translating and interpreting his literary, religious and philosophical works a scholarly priority. Papers assembled in this volume highlight a number of philological, philosophical and historical aspects that are crucial to our understanding of Bessarion's role in the history of European civilization and to setting the directions of future research in this field.

Thomas Aquinas is the most widely read and arguably most influential of the medieval philosophers. He is famous for his impressive and coherent synthesis of Greek Philosophy and Christian Theology and his magisterial "Summa Theologiae" is a hugely important, and enduring, text in the history of philosophy. Yet he is also a very difficult thinker and his ideas present a number of challenges to his readers.
"Aquinas: A Guide for the Perplexed" is a clear and thorough account of Aquinas's thought, his major works and ideas, providing an ideal guide to the important and complex writings of this key thinker. The book introduces all the key concepts and themes in Aquinas's thought and examines the ways in which they have influenced philosophical and theological thought. Geared towards the specific requirements of students who need to reach a sound understanding of Aquinas's ideas, the book serves as a clear and concise introduction to his philosophy and natural theology. This is the ideal companion to the study of this most influential and challenging of thinkers.

John Buridan (d. ca. 1360) was one of the most talented and influential philosophers of the later Middle Ages. He spent his career as a master in the Arts Faculty at the University of Paris, producing commentaries and independent treatises on logic, metaphysics, natural philosophy, and ethics. His Questions Commentary on the eight books of Aristotle's Physics is the most important witness to Buridan's teachings in the field of natural philosophy. The commentary was widely read during the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This volume presents the first critical edition of books I & II of the final redaction of Buridan's Questions Commentary on the Physics. The critical edition of the Latin text is accompanied by a detailed guide to the contents of Buridan's questions.

In 1632, the Amsterdam regents founded an Athenaeum or 'Illustrious School'. This kind of institution provided academic teaching, although it could not grant degrees and had no compulsory four-faculty system. Athenaeums proliferated in the first century after the Dutch Revolt, but few of them survived long. They have been interpreted as the manifestation of an evolving vision of the role of a higher education; this book, by contrast, argues that education at the Amsterdam Athenaeum was staunchly traditional both in methods and in substance. While religious, philosophical and scientific disputes rocked contemporary Dutch learned society, this analysis of letters, orations and disputations reveals that a traditional and Aristotelian humanism thrived at the Athenaeum until well into the seventeenth century.

Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus are arguably the most celebrated representatives of the 'Golden Age' of scholasticism. Primarily, they are known for their work in natural theology, which seeks to demonstrate tenets of faith without recourse to premises rooted in dogma or revelation. Scholars of this Golden Age drew on a wealth of tradition, dating back to Plato and Aristotle, and taking in the Arabic and Jewish interpretations of these thinkers, to produce a wide variety of answers to the question 'How much can we learn of God?' Some responded by denying us any positive knowledge of God. Others believed that we have such knowledge, yet debated whether its acquisition requires some action on the part of God in the form of an illumination bestowed on the knower. Scotus and Aquinas belong to the more empirically minded thinkers in this latter group, arguing against a necessary role for illumination. Many scholars believe that Aquinas and Scotus exhaust the spectrum of answers available to this circle, with Aquinas maintaining that our knowledge is quite confused and Scotus that it is completely accurate. In this study, Alexander Hall argues that the truth about Aquinas and Scotus lies somewhere in the middle. Hall's book recommends itself to the general reader who is looking for an overview of this period in Western philosophy as well as to the specialist, for no other study on the market addresses this long-standing matter of interpretation in any detail.

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.

From Empedocles to Wittgenstein is a collection of fifteen historical essays in philosophy, written by Sir Anthony Kenny in the early years of the 21st century. In the main they are concerned with four of the great philosophers whom he most esteems, namely Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Wittgenstein. The author is not only one of the most respected historians of philosophy, and possibly the widest-ranging, but also one of the most successful at writing on the subject for a broad readership. In this volume he presents scholarly explorations of some themes which caught his interest as he worked on his acclaimed four-volume New History of Western Philosophy.

Returning to themes first discussed in his book A History of Franciscan Education (Brill, 2000), Bert Roest discusses in this volume a wide range of issues pertaining to the organization of learning in the Franciscan order in the late medieval and early modern period, and the ways in which this order engaged in pastoral and missionary activities in confrontation with the rise of Protestantism. The essays in this volume break new ground in their treatment of school formation, the chronology of educational developments, and the transformation of Franciscan schools between the mid fifteenth and the mid seventeenth century. They also challenge ingrained scholarly verdicts on the efficacy of sixteenth-century mendicant homiletics, and on the role of the Franciscans in the Dutch mission from the early seventeenth century onwards.

Constant J. Mews offers an intellectual biography of two of the best known personalities of the twelfth century. Peter Abelard was a controversial logician at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame in Paris when he first met Heloise, who was the brilliant and outspoken niece of a cathedral canon and who was then engaged in the study of philosophy. After an intense love affair and the birth of a child, they married in secret in a bid to placate her uncle. Nonetheless the vengeful canon Fulbert had Abelard castrated, following which he became a monk at St. Denis, while Heloise became a nun at Argenteuil. Mews, a recognized authority on Abelard's writings, traces his evolution as a thinker from his earliest work on dialectic (paying particular attention to his debt to Roscelin of Compiegne and William of Champeaux) to his most mature reflections on theology and ethics. Abelard's interest in the doctrine of universals was one part of his broader philosophical interest in language, theology, and ethics, says Mews. He argues that Heloise played a significant role in broadening Abelard's intellectual interests during the period 1115-17, as reflected in a passionate correspondence in which the pair articulated and debated the nature of their love. Mews believes that the sudden end of this early relationship provoked Abelard to return to writing about language with new depth, and to begin applying these concerns to theology. Only after Abelard and Heloise resumed close epistolary contact in the early 1130s, however, did Abelard start to develop his thinking about sin and redemption--in ways that respond closely to the concerns of Heloise. Mews emphasizes both continuity and development in what these two very original thinkers had to say."

"In this massive, meticulously researched work Trinkaus makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Italian humanists and the Christian Renaissance in Italy. . . . The author argues persuasively that the Italian humanists drew their inspiration more from the church fathers than from the pagan ancients. . . . [This is] the most comprehensive and most important study of Italian humanism to appear in English. It is a mine of information, offering, among other things, detailed analyses of texts which have been ignored even by Italian scholars." -Library Journal

Elijah Del Medigo (1458-1493) was a Jewish Aristotelian philosopher living in Padua, whose work influenced many of the leading philosophers of the early Renaissance. His Two Investigations on the Nature of the Human Soul uses Aristotle's De anima to theorize on two of the most discussed and most controversial philosophical debates of the Renaissance: the nature of human intellect and the obtaining of immortality through intellectual perfection. In this book, Michael Engel places Del Medigo's philosophical work and his ideas about the human intellect within the context of the wider Aristotelian tradition. Providing a detailed account of the unique blend of Hebrew, Islamic, Latin and Greek traditions that influenced the Two Investigations, Elijah Del Medigo and Paduan Aristotelianism provides an important contribution to our understanding of Renaissance Aristotelianisms and scholasticisms. In particular, through his defense of the Muslim philosopher Averroes' hotly debated interpretation of the De anima and his rejection of the moderate Latin Aristotelianism championed by the Christian Thomas Aquinas, Engel traces how Del Medigo's work on the human intellect contributed to the development of a major Aristotelian controversy. Investigating the ways in which multicultural Aristotelian sources contributed to his own theory of a united human intellect, Elijah Del Medigo and Paduan Aristotelianism demonstrates the significant impact made by this Jewish philosopher on the history of the Aristotelian tradition.

Ruth Glasner presents an illuminating reappraisal of Averroes' physics. Glasner is the first scholar to base her interpretation on the full range of Averroes' writings, including texts that are extant only in Hebrew manuscripts and have not been hitherto studied. She reveals that Averroes changed his interpretation of the basic notions of physics - the structure of corporeal reality and the definition of motion - more than once. After many hesitations he offers a bold new interpretation of physics which Glasner calls 'Aristotelian atomism'. Ideas that are usually ascribed to scholastic scholars, and others that were traced back to Averroes but only in a very general form, are shown not only to have originated with him, but to have been fully developed by him into a comprehensive and systematic physical system. Unlike earlier Greek or Muslim atomistic systems, Averroes' Aristotelian atomism endeavours to be fully scientific, by Aristotelian standards, and still to provide a basis for an indeterministic natural philosophy. Commonly known as 'the commentator' and usually considered to be a faithful follower of Aristotle, Averroes is revealed in his commentaries on the Physics to be an original and sophisticated philosopher.

This book contains twenty essays on Italian Renaissance humanism, universities, and Jesuit education by one of its most distinguished living historians, Paul. F. Grendler. The first section of the book opens with defining Renaissance humanism, followed by explorations of biblical humanism and humanistic education in Venice. It concludes with essays on two pioneering historians of humanism, Georg Voigt and Paul Oskar Kristeller. The middle section discusses Italian universities, the sports played by university students, a famous law professor, and the controversy over the immortality of the soul. The last section analyzes Jesuit education: the culture of the Jesuit teacher, the philosophy curriculum, attitudes toward Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives, and the education of a cardinal. This volume collects Paul Grendler's most recent research (published and unpublished), offering to the reader a broad fresco on a complex and crucial age in the history of education.

During the seventeenth century Francisco Suarez was considered one of the greatest philosophers of the age. He was the last great Scholastic thinker and profoundly influenced the thought of his contemporaries within both Catholic and Protestant circles. Suarez contributed to all fields of philosophy, from natural law, ethics, and political theory to natural philosophy, the philosophy of mind, and philosophical psychology, and-most importantly-to metaphysics, and natural theology. Echoes of his thinking reverberate through the philosophy of Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, and beyond. Yet curiously Suarez has not been studied in detail by historians of philosophy. It is only recently that he has emerged as a significant subject of critical and historical investigation for historians of late medieval and early modern philosophy. Only in recent years have small sections of Suarez's magnum opus, the Metaphysical Disputations, been translated into English, French, and Italian. The historical task of interpreting Suarez's thought is still in its infancy. The Philosophy of Francisco Suarez is one of the first collections in English written by the leading scholars who are largely responsible for this new trend in the history of philosophy. It covers all areas of Suarez's philosophical contributions, and contains cutting-edge research which will shape and frame scholarship on Suarez for years to come-as well as the history of seventeenth-century generally. This is an essential text for anyone interested in Suarez, the seventeenth-century world of ideas, and late Scholastic or early modern philosophy.

A Companion to Jan Hus includes eleven substantial essays covering the central aspects of the life, thought and commemoration of Jan Hus ( 1415), Czech theologian, reformer and martyr. Besides older experienced specialists in the Hussite studies, also younger researchers who enter the scientific discourse with new approaches participated in the volume. Experts and students alike will profit from this guide to Jan Hus, who was well known as follower of John Wyclif and forerunner of Martin Luther. Burning of Jan Hus at the stake at the Council of Constance gave rise in Bohemia to religious and social revolt that ushered the European reformations of the 16th century.

Integralism is the application to the temporal, political order of the full implications of the revelation of man's supernatural end in Christ and of the divinely established means by which it is to be attained. These implications are identified by means of the philosophia perennis exemplified in the fundamental principles of St Thomas Aquinas. Since the first principle in moral philosophy is the last end, and man's last end cannot be known except by revelation, it is only by accepting the role of handmaid of theology that political philosophy can be adequately constituted. Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy is a handbook for those who seek to understand the consequences of this integration of faith and reason for political, economic and individual civic life. It will also serve as a scholastic introduction to political philosophy for those new to the subject. Each chapter finishes with a list of the principal theses proposed.

As the final work by Ye Xiushan, one of the most famous philosophers and scholars of philosophy in China, this two-volume set scrutinizes the historical development of both Chinese and Western philosophy, aiming to explore the convergence between the two philosophical traditions. Combining historical examination and argumentation based on philosophical problematics, the author discusses the key figures and schools of thought from both traditions. Far from being a cursory comparison between different philosophical concepts and categories, the author discusses the logical paths and conceptual approaches of the two traditions on the same philosophical issues, thus giving insights into conceptual categories commonly used in both Chinese and Western philosophies. The two volumes illuminate the different core spirits and dilemmas of Western philosophy and Chinese philosophy, encouraging a constructive dialogue between the two and a new transformation of Chinese philosophy in itself. The title will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers interested in philosophical history, comparative philosophy, Chinese philosophy, and Western philosophy ranging over Greek philosophy, German classic philosophy, and contemporary continental philosophy.