It is commonly supposed that certain elements of medieval philosophy are uncharacteristically preserved in modern philosophical thought through the idea that mental phenomena are distinguished from physical phenomena by their intentionality, their intrinsic directedness toward some object. The many exceptions to this presumption, however, threaten its viability.
This volume explores the intricacies and varieties of the conceptual relationships medieval thinkers developed among intentionality, cognition, and mental representation. Ranging from Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan through less-familiar writers, the collection sheds new light on the various strands that run between medieval and modern thought and bring us to a number of fundamental questions in the philosophy of mind as it is conceived today.

It is commonly supposed that certain elements of medieval philosophy are uncharacteristically preserved in modern philosophical thought through the idea that mental phenomena are distinguished from physical phenomena by their intentionality, their intrinsic directedness toward some object. The many exceptions to this presumption, however, threaten its viability.
This volume explores the intricacies and varieties of the conceptual relationships medieval thinkers developed among intentionality, cognition, and mental representation. Ranging from Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan through less-familiar writers, the collection sheds new light on the various strands that run between medieval and modern thought and bring us to a number of fundamental questions in the philosophy of mind as it is conceived today.

Richard Kilvington was an obscure fourteenth-century philosopher whose Sophismata deal with a series of logic-linguistic conundrums of a sort which featured extensively in philosophical discussions of this period. Originally published in 1990, this was the first ever translation or edition of his work. As well as an introduction to Kilvington's work, the editors provide a detailed commentary. This edition will prove of considerable interest to historians of medieval philosophy who will realise from the evidence presented here that Kilvington deserves to be studied just as seriously as Duns Scotus or William of Ockham.

Originally published in 1936, this book provides a concise discussion of Sir Walter Raleigh's connection to the intellectual environment of his time. It analyses Raleigh's position as the focal point for 'The School of Night', a speculated group of literary, philosophical and scientific figures including prominent individuals such as Christopher Marlowe, George Chapman and Thomas Herriot. Whilst there is no firm evidence for the existence of a clearly defined 'School', this remains a thoughtful and rigorous study. It contextualises the development of new ideas during the time, and reveals the close connection between literature and theoretical developments in other areas. A fascinating book, it will be of value to anyone with an interest in the cultural atmosphere of the English Renaissance.

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."

The history of moral dilemma theory often ignores the medieval period, overlooking the sophisticated theorizing by several thinkers who debated the existence of moral dilemmas from 1150 to 1450. In this book Michael V. Dougherty offers a rich and fascinating overview of the debates which were pursued by medieval philosophers, theologians and canon lawyers, illustrating his discussion with a diverse range of examples of the moral dilemmas which they considered. He shows that much of what seems particular to twentieth-century moral theory was well-known long ago - especially the view of some medieval thinkers that some forms of wrongdoing are inescapable, and their emphasis on the principle 'choose the lesser of two evils'. His book will be valuable not only to advanced students and specialists of medieval thought, but also to those interested in the history of ethics.

In the late 1960s, a whole pantheon of thinkers regarding themselves as radicals stole a part of the anarchic praxis of late capitalism, turned it into philosophy, and with the resulting set of views turned against the foundations of the system in a purportedly radical gesture. Postmodernism was the name for the superficially revolutionary culture which then came into existence. The thought of the late left appears as the subsequent response to the cunning of the system. The main figures of Farewell to Postmodernism are Perry Anderson, David Harvey, Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton and Slavoj Zizek. The book provides an encyclopaedic introduction to their work, while at the same time seeking to grasp the current trajectory of radical thought.

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 presents and analyzes specific metaphysical tendencies that were revived within particular branches of French philosophy from the 1930s to the 1960s. Using the examples of the five philosophers active in this period (Louis Lavelle, Ferdinand Alquie, Jean Wahl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas), who did not belong to or did not form any school of thought, the author attempts to show that the specificity of this non-classical metaphysics could be located in its anti-naturalist, non-substantial, non-objectival, dialectic, critical, non-systematic and pluralist character. The analysis is preceded by a comprehensive introduction in which both theoretical and historical inspirations for the ideas presented in the book are explained. The summary provides possible influences that the described ideas could exercise over more recent currents in French philosophy.

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.

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.

Causality and Mind presents seventeen of Nicholas Jolley's essays on early modern philosophy, which focus on two main themes. One theme is the continuing debate over the nature of causality in the period from Descartes to Hume. Jolley shows that, despite his revolutionary stance, Descartes did no serious re-thinking about causality; it was left to his unorthodox disciple Malebranche to argue that there is no place for natural causality in the new mechanistic picture of the physical world. Several essays explore critical reactions to Malebranche's occasionalism in the writings of Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume, and show how in their different ways Leibniz and Hume respond to Malebranche by re-instating the traditional view that science is the search for causes. A second theme of the volume is the set of issues posed by Descartes' innovations in the philosophy of mind. It is argued that Malebranche is once again a pivotal figure. In opposition to Descartes Malebranche insists that ideas, the objects of thought, are not psychological but abstract entities; he thus opposes Descartes' 'dustbin theory of the mind'. Malebranche also challenges Descartes' assumption that intentionality is a mark of the mental and his commitment to the superiority of self-knowledge over knowledge of body. Other essays discuss the debate over innate ideas, Locke's polemics against Descartes' theory of mind, and the issue of Leibniz's phenomenalism. A major aim of the volume is to show that philosophers in the period are systematic critics of their contemporaries and predecessors.

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.

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.

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.

Almost all twentieth-century philosophy stresses the immanence of death in human life-as drive (Freud), as the context of Being (Heidegger), as the essence of our defining ethics (Levinas), or as language (de Man, Blanchot). In Death's Following, John Limon makes use of literary analysis (of Sebald, Bernhard, and Stoppard), cultural analysis, and autobiography to argue that death is best conceived as always transcendentally beyond ourselves, neither immanent nor imminent. Adapting Kierkegaard's variations on the theme of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac while refocusing the emphasis onto Isaac, Limon argues that death should be imagined as if hiding at the end of an inexplicable journey to Moriah. The point is not to evade or ignore death but to conceive it more truly, repulsively, and pervasively in its camouflage: for example, in jokes, in logical puzzles, in bowdlerized folk songs. The first of Limon's two key concepts is adulthood: the prolonged anti-ritual for experiencing the full distance on the look of death. His second is dirtiness, as theorized in a Jewish joke, a logical exemplum, and T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday": In each case, unseen dirt on foreheads suggests the invisibility of inferred death. Not recognizing death immediately or admitting its immanence and imminence is for Heidegger the defining characteristic of the "they," humanity in its inauthentic social escapism. But Limon vouches throughout for the mediocrity of the "they" in its dirty and ludicrous adulthood. Mediocrity is the privileged position for previewing death, in Limon's opinion: practice for being forgotten. In refusing the call of twentieth-century philosophy to face death courageously, Limon urges the ethical and aesthetic value of mediocre anti-heroism.

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.

overall title and the commentary of Narboni, but in which the treatise is given a close association rath De Substantia Orbis VII, which immedi ately follows it in the text. This third version is the sole case in which a Hebrew translator can be named: the translation was made by Todros Todrosi in the year 1340. The only conclusion to be drawn from his translation is that Todrosi may definitively be eliminated as the translator of any of the other ver sions. However, we may be able to draw a tentative conclusion as to the formation of the Hebrew collection. The earliest evidence for the existence of the nine treatise collec tion is the commentary of Narboni, completed in 1349. The fact that nine years earlier one treatise could be attached to a work outside the corpus may indicate that the Hebrew collection of nine treatises was formed during those nine years, or mar even indicate that Narboni him self collected the various treatises. 5 Narboni, however, was not the translator of these works In fact, no 1 definitive indication of the translator's identity exists. 6 3. The Nature of the Question-Form Steinschneider offered the following general characterization of Aver roes' Quaestiones: These are mostly brief discussions, more or less answers to questions; they may be partially occasioned by topics i9 his commentaries and may be considered as appendices to them."