|
|
Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Western philosophy, c 500 to c 1600 > General
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.
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.
Thomas Aquinas (1224/6-1274) lived an active, demanding academic
and ecclesiastical life that ended while he was still comparatively
young. He nonetheless produced many works, varying in length from a
few pages to a few volumes. The present book is an introduction to
this influential author and a guide to his thought on almost all
the major topics on which he wrote. The book begins with an account
of Aquinas's life and works. The next section contains a series of
essays that set Aquinas in his intellectual context. They focus on
the philosophical sources that are likely to have influenced his
thinking, the most prominent of which were certain Greek
philosophers (chiefly Aristotle), Latin Christian writers (such as
Augustine), and Jewish and Islamic authors (such as Maimonides and
Avicenna). The subsequent sections of the book address topics that
Aquinas himself discussed. These include metaphysics, the existence
and nature of God, ethics and action theory, epistemology,
philosophy of mind and human nature, the nature of language, and an
array of theological topics, including Trinity, Incarnation,
sacraments, resurrection, and the problem of evil, among others.
These sections include more than thirty contributions on topics
central to Aquinas's own worldview. The final sections of the
volume address the development of Aquinas's thought and its
historical influence. Any attempt to present the views of a
philosopher in an earlier historical period that is meant to foster
reflection on that thinker's views needs to be both historically
faithful and also philosophically engaged. The present book
combines both exposition and evaluation insofar as its contributors
have space to engage in both. This Handbook is therefore meant to
be useful to someone wanting to learn about Aquinas's philosophy
and theology while also looking for help in philosophical
interaction with it.
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS: Translator's Introduction Introduction by
Genevieve Rodis-Lewis The Passions of the Sou l: Preface PART I:
About the Passions in General, and Incidentally about the Entire
Nature of Man PART II: About the Number and Order of the Passions,
and the Explanation of the Six Primitives PART III: About the
Particular Passions Lexicon: Index to Lexicon Bibliography Index
Index Locorum
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."
The topic of certitude is much debated today. On one side,
commentators such as Charles Krauthammer urge us to achieve "moral
clarity." On the other, those like George Will contend that the
greatest present threat to civilization is an excess of certitude.
To address this uncomfortable debate, Susan Schreiner turns to the
intellectuals of early modern Europe, a period when thought was
still fluid and had not yet been reified into the form of
rationality demanded by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Schreiner argues that Europe in the sixteenth century was
preoccupied with concerns similar to ours; both the desire for
certainty - especially religious certainty - and warnings against
certainty permeated the earlier era. Digging beneath overt
theological and philosophical problems, she tackles the underlying
fears of the period as she addresses questions of salvation,
authority, the rise of skepticism, the outbreak of religious
violence, the discernment of spirits, and the ambiguous
relationship between appearance and reality. In her examination of
the history of theological polemics and debates (as well as other
genres), Schreiner sheds light on the repeated evaluation of
certainty and the recurring fear of deception. Among the texts she
draws on are Montaigne's Essays, the mystical writings of Teresa of
Avila, the works of Reformation fathers William of Occam, Luther,
Thomas Muntzer, and Thomas More; and the dramas of Shakespeare. The
result is not a book about theology, but rather about the way in
which the concern with certitude determined the theology, polemics
and literature of an age.
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.
Aristotle's modal syllogistic has been an object of study ever
since the time of Theophrastus; but these studies (apart from an
intense flowering in the Middle Ages) have been somewhat desultory.
Remarkably, in the 1990s several new lines of research have
appeared, with series of original publications by Fred Johnson,
Richard Patterson and Ulrich Nortmann. Johnson presented for the
first time a formal semantics adequate to a de re reading of the
apodeictic syllogistic; this was based on a simple intuition
linking the modal syllogistic to Aristotelian metaphysics. Nortmann
developed an ingenious de dicto analysis. Patterson articulated the
links (both theoretical and genetic) between the modal syllogistic
and the metaphysics, using an analysis which strictly speaking is
neither de re nor de dicto. My own studies in this field date from
1976, when my colleague Peter Roeper and I jointly wrote a paper
"Aristotle's apodeictic syllogisms" for the XXIInd History of Logic
Conference in Krakow. This paper contained the disjunctive reading
of particular affirmative apodeictic propositions, which I still
favour. Nonetheless, I did not consider that paper's results
decisive or comprehensive enough to publish, and my 1981 book The
Syllogism contained no treatment of the modal syllogism. The
paper's ideas lay dormant till 1989, when I read Johnson's and
Patterson's initial articles. I began publishing on the topic in
1991. Gradually my thoughts acquired a certain comprehensiveness
and systematicity, till in 1993 I was able to take a semester's
sabbatical to write up a draft of this book.
On Power (De Potentia) is one of Aquinas's ''Disputed Questions''
(a systematic series of discussions of specific theological
topics). It is a text which anyone with a serious interest in
Aquinas's thinking will need to read. There is, however, no English
translation of the De Potentia currently in print. A translation
was published in 1932 under the auspices of the English Dominicans,
but is now only available on a CD of translations of Aquineas
coming from the InteLex Corporation. A new translation in book form
is therefore highly desirable. However, the De Potentia is a very
long work indeed (the 1932 translation fills three volumes), and a
full translation would be a difficult publishing proposition as
well as a challenge to any translator. Recognizing this fact, while
wishing to make a solid English version of the De Potentia
available, Fr. Richard Regan has produced this abridgement, which
passes over some of the full text while retaining what seems most
important when it comes to following the flow of Aquinas's thought.
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.
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.
The Bibliotheca Teubneriana, established in 1849, has evolved into
the world's most venerable and extensive series of editions of
Greek and Latin literature, ranging from classical to Neo-Latin
texts. Some 4-5 new editions are published every year. A team of
renowned scholars in the field of Classical Philology acts as
advisory board: Gian Biagio Conte (Scuola Normale Superiore di
Pisa) Marcus Deufert (Universitat Leipzig) James Diggle (University
of Cambridge) Donald J. Mastronarde (University of California,
Berkeley) Franco Montanari (Universita di Genova) Heinz-Gunther
Nesselrath (Georg-August-Universitat Goettingen) Dirk Obbink
(University of Oxford) Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians
Universitat Munchen) Michael D. Reeve (University of Cambridge)
Richard J. Tarrant (Harvard University) Formerly out-of-print
editions are offered as print-on-demand reprints. Furthermore, all
new books in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana series are published as
eBooks. The older volumes of the series are being successively
digitized and made available as eBooks. If you are interested in
ordering an out-of-print edition, which hasn't been yet made
available as print-on-demand reprint, please contact us:
[email protected] All editions of Latin texts published in
the Bibliotheca Teubneriana are collected in the online database
BTL Online.
Keckermann remarked of the sixteenth century, "never from the begin
ning of the world was there a period so keen on logic, or in which
more books on logic were produced and studies oflogic flourished
more abun dantly than the period-in which we live. " 1 But despite
the great profusion of books to which he refers, and despite the
dominant position occupied by logic in the educational system of
the fifteenth, sixteenth and seven teenth centuries, very little
work has been done on the logic of the post medieval period. The
only complete study is that of Risse, whose account, while
historically exhaustive, pays little attention to the actual
logical 2 doctrines discussed. Otherwise, one can tum to Vasoli for
a study of humanism, to Munoz Delgado for scholastic logic in
Spain, and to Gilbert and Randall for scientific method, but this
still leaves vast areas untouched. In this book I cannot hope to
remedy all the deficiencies of previous studies, for to survey the
literature alone would take a life-time. As a result I have limited
myself in various ways. In the first place, I con centrate only on
those matters which are of particular interest to me, namely
theories of meaning and reference, and formal logic."
"One of the most provocative new books of the year, and, for me,
mindblowing." -Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and
How to Change Your Mind "Kripal makes many sympathetic points about
the present spiritual state of America. . . . [He] continues to
believe that spirituality and science should not contradict each
other." -New York Times Book Review "Kripal prompts us to reflect
on our personal assumptions, as well as the shared assumptions that
create and maintain our institutions. . . . [His] work will likely
become more and more relevant to more and more areas of inquiry as
the century unfolds. It may even open up a new space for Americans
to reevaluate the personal and cultural narratives they have
inherited, and to imagine alternative futures." -Los Angeles Review
of Books A "flip," writes Jeffrey J. Kripal, is "a reversal of
perspective," "a new real," often born of an extreme, life-changing
experience. The Flip is Kripal's ambitious, visionary program for
unifying the sciences and the humanities to expand our minds, open
our hearts, and negotiate a peaceful resolution to the culture
wars. Combining accounts of rationalists' spiritual awakenings and
consciousness explorations by philosophers, neuroscientists, and
mystics within a framework of the history of science and religion,
Kripal compellingly signals a path to mending our fractured world.
Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy
and Religious Thought at Rice University and is the associate
director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen
Institute in Big Sur, California. He has previously taught at
Harvard Divinity School and Westminster College and is the author
of eight books, including The Flip. He lives in Houston, Texas.
As originally planned this volume was meant to cover a somewhat
wider scope than, in fact, it has turned out to do. When, in rg68,
I initially conceived of preparing it, it was proposed to deal with
several aspects of early modern scepticism, in addition to the
fortuna of the Academica, and to publish various loosely related
pieces under the title of 'Studies in the History of Early Modern
Scepticism. ' Thereby, I foresaw that I would exhaust my knowledge
of the subject and would then be able to turn my attention to other
matters. In initiating my research on this topic, however, I soon
found that there remained a much greater bulk of material to study
than could possibly be dealt with between the covers of the single
modest volume which I envisioned. My proposed section on Cicero's
Academica was to cover between 50 and 75 pages in the original
plan. It soon became apparent, however, especially after Joannes
Rosa's hitherto unstudied commentary on Cicero's work was
uncovered, that this material would have to be treated at a much
greater length than I had foreseen. The present volume is the
result of this expanded investigation. The monograph which has come
from this alteration in plans has, I think, the virtues of
continuity and cohesive ness and one hopes that these advantages
offset the benefits of a broader scope which were sacrificed."
|
You may like...
John Buridan
Gyula Klima
Hardcover
R1,586
Discovery Miles 15 860
|