First published in 1961, this book considers Hume's request to be judged solely by the acknowledged works of his maturity. It focuses on Hume's first Inquiry in its own right as a separate book to the likes of his other works, such as the Treatise and the Dialogues, which are here only used as supplementary evidence when necessary. This approach brings out, as Hume himself quite explicitly wished to do, the important bearing of his more technical philosophy on matters of religion and of world-outlook generally: "Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man."

This unique introduction fully engages and clearly explains pragmatism, an approach to knowledge and philosophy that rejects outmoded conceptions of objectivity while avoiding relativism and subjectivism. It follows pragmatism's focus on the process of inquiry rather than on abstract justifications meant to appease the skeptic. According to pragmatists, getting to know the world is a creative human enterprise, wherein we fashion our concepts in terms of how they affect us practically, including in future inquiry. This book fully illuminates that enterprise and the resulting radical rethinking of basic philosophical conceptions like truth, reality, and reason. Author Cornelis de Waal helps the reader recognize, understand, and assess classical and current pragmatist contributions-from Charles S. Peirce to Cornel West-evaluate existing views from a pragmatist angle, formulate pragmatist critiques, and develop a pragmatist viewpoint on a specific issue. The book discusses: Classical pragmatists, including Peirce, James, Dewey, and Addams; Contemporary figures, including Rorty, Putnam, Haack, and West; Connections with other twentieth-century approaches, including phenomenology, critical theory, and logical positivism; Peirce's pragmatic maxim and its relation to James's Will to Believe; Applications to philosophy of law, feminism, and issues of race and racism.

One of the key achievements of critical realism has been to expose the modernist myth of universal reason, which holds that authentic knowledge claims must be objectively 'pure', uncontaminated by the subjectivity of local place, specific time and particular culture. Wright aims to address the lack of any substantial and sustained engagement between critical realism and theological critical realism with particular regard to: (a) the distinctive ontological claims of Christianity; (b) their epistemic warrant and intellectual legitimacy; and (c) scrutiny of the primary source of the ontological claims of Christianity, namely the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. As such, it functions as a prolegomena to a much needed wider debate, guided by the under-labouring services of critical realism, between Christianity and various other religious and secular worldviews. This important new text will help stimulate a debate that has yet to get out of first gear. This book will appeal to academics, graduate and post-graduate students especially, but also Christian clergy, ministers and informed laity, and members of the general public concerned with the nature of religion and its place in contemporary society.

Modern scholarship has not given Edirne the attention it deserves regarding its significance as one of the capitals of the Ottoman Empire. This edited volume offers a reinterpretation of Edirne's history from Early Ottoman times to recent periods of the Turkish Republic. Presently, disconnections and discontinuities introduced by the transition from empire to nation state still characterize the image of the city and the historiography about it. In contrast, this volume examines how the city engages in the forming, deflecting and creative appropriation of its heritage, a process that has turned Edirne into a UNESCO heritage hotspot. A closer historical analysis demonstrates the dissonances and contradictions that these different interpretations and uses of heritage produce. From the beginning, Edirne was shaped by its connectivity and relationality to other places, above all to Istanbul. This perspective is employed at many different levels, e.g., with regard to its population, institutions, architecture, infrastructures and popular culture, but also regarding the imaginations Edirne triggered. In sum, this multi-disciplinary volume boosts urban history beyond Istanbul and offers new insight into Ottoman and Turkish connectivities from the vantage point of certain key moments of Edirne's history.

Classical Christian orthodoxy insists that God is Triune: there is only one God, but there are three divine Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - who are somehow of one substance with one another. But what does this doctrine mean? How can we coherently believe that there is only one God if we also believe that there are three divine Persons? This problem, sometimes called the 'threeness-oneness problem' or the 'logical problem of the Trinity', is the focus of this interdisciplinary volume.
Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity includes a selection of the most important recent philosophical work on this topic, accompanied with a variety of compelling new essays by philosophers and theologians to further the discussion. The book is divided into four parts, the first three dealing in turn with the three most prominent models for understanding the relations between the Persons of the Trinity: Social Trinitarianism, Latin Trinitarianism, and Relative Trinitarianism. Each section includes essays by both proponents and critics of the relevant model. The volume concludes with a section containing essays by theologians reflecting on the current state of the debate.

Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) is by any measure the single most influential philosopher in Tibetan history. His articulation of Prasangika Madhyamaka, and his interpretation of the 7th Century Indian philosopher Candrakirti's interpretation of Madhyamaka is the foundation for the understanding of that philosophical system in the Geluk school in Tibet. Tsongkhapa argues that Candrakirti shows that we can integrate the Madhyamaka doctrine of the two truths, and of the ultimate emptiness of all phenomena with a robust epistemology that explains how we can know both conventional and ultimate truth and distinguish truth from falsity within the conventional world. The Sakya scholar Taktsang Lotsawa (born 1405) published the first systematic critique of Tsongkhapa's system. In the fifth chapter of his Freedom from Extremes Accomplished through Comprehensive Knowledge of Philosophy, Taktsang attacks Tsongkhapa's understanding of Candrakirti and the cogency of integrating Prasangika Madhyamaka with any epistemology. This attack launches a debate between Geluk scholars on the one hand and Sakya and Kagyu scholars on the other regarding the proper understanding of this philosophical school and the place of epistemology in the Madhyamaka program. This debate raged with great ferocity from the 15th through the 18th centuries, and continues still today. The two volumes of Knowing Illusion study that debate and present translations of the most important texts produced in that context. Volume I: A Philosophical History of the Debate provides historical and philosophical background for this dispute and elucidates the philosophical issues at stake in the debate, exploring the principal arguments advanced by the principals on both sides, and setting them in historical context. This volume examines the ways in which the debate raises issues that are relevant to contemporary debates in epistemology, and concludes with two contributions by contemporary Tibetan scholars, one on each side of the debate.

The essays in this collection fall into three groups. The first group deals with philosophical accounts of interpretation. The second is concerned with the interpretation of scripture with particular reference to the work of the Oxford theologian and philosopher Austin Farrer. The third group provides some examples of interpretative practice relating to Genesis and the book of Psalms. The contributors represent a wide range of academic disciplines and religious traditions, providing significant pointers for further developments in Biblical criticism and interpretation theory.

"To speak of evil is to speak of a gap between what is and what should be. If classical approaches to this problem often relied on a religious or metaphysical framework to structure their response, Kant's answer is typically modern in that it places within the subject the means of its own moral regeneration. And yet from his first essays on ethics to later, more rigorous writings on the issue, Kant also admits an undeniable fallibility and inherent weakness to humanity. This book explores this neglected existential side of Kant's work. It presents radical evil as vacillating between tragic and freedom, at the threshold of humanity. Through it's careful exegesis of the Kantian corpus, in gauging contemporary responses from both philosophical traditions, and by drawing from concrete examples of evil, the book offers a novel and accessible account of what is widely considered to be an intricate yet urgent problem of philosophy."

Having enjoyed more than a decade of lively critique and creativity, feminist philosophy of religion continues to be a vital field of inquiry. New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion maintains this vitality with both women and men, from their own distinctive social and material locations, contributing critically to the rich traditions in philosophy of religion. The twenty contributors open up new possibilities for spiritual practice, while contesting the gender-bias of traditional concepts in the field: the old models of human and divine will no longer simply do A lively current debate develops in re-imagining and revaluing transcendence in terms of body, space and self-other relations.

This collection is an excellent source for courses in feminist philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics and literature, Continental and analytical philosophy of religion, engaging with a range of religions and philosophers including Kant, Kierkegaard, Marx, Heidegger, Arendt, Weil, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Levinas, Irigaray, Bourdieu, Kristeva, Le Doeuff, bell hooks and Jantzen."

It is widely known that Buddhists deny the existence of the self. However, Buddhist philosophers defend interesting positions on a variety of other issues in fundamental ontology. In particular, they have important things to say about ontological reduction and the nature of the causal relation. Amidst the prolonged debate over global anti-realism, Buddhist philosophers devised an innovative approach to the radical nominalist denial of all universals and real resemblances. While some defend presentism, others propound eternalism. In How Things Are, Mark Siderits presents the arguments that Buddhist philosophers developed on these and other issues. Those with an interest in metaphysics may find new and interesting insights into what the Buddhists had to say about their ideas. This work is designed to introduce some of the more important fruits of Buddhist metaphysical inquiry to philosophers with little or no prior knowledge of that tradition. While there is plenty of scholarship on the Indian Buddhist philosophical tradition, it is primarily concerned with the historical details, often presupposes background knowledge of the major schools and figures, and makes ample use of untranslated Sanskrit technical terms. What has been missing from this area of philosophical inquiry, are studies that make the Buddhist tradition accessible to philosophers who are interested in solving metaphysical problems. This work fills that gap by focusing not on history and texts but on the metaphysical puzzles themselves, and on ways of trying to solve them.

In this all-embracing Christian church history, E. H. Broadbent details the growth, traditions and teachings of churches and denominations through the ages. Intended as an introduction to organized Christianity, the Pilgrim Church selects examples from the time of Christ onward of Christian denominations. From the beginning, Broadbent is keen to emphasize how gaps in history mean much of the church history is simply obscured. How exactly Christians almost two thousand years ago, or in the pre-Reformation Middle Ages, worshipped and practiced their faith is simply a mystery for theologians and historians. The central argument of Broadbent's book is that the Catholic church, in its effort to suppress divergence it deemed as heresy, destroyed much of the evidence of other churches. Much of the book is composed with this underpinning principle; a truth that resounds through the entire text, which is informed by the undoubted scholarship of the author.

This text offers consistent and compatible definitions of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. Variant greater-good defences are explored and derivations of a basic account of this defence are traced to theistic tenets. It also gives accounts of the origins of evil. The free-will defence, soul-making defence and an original redemption defence are viewed as specifications of the more general greater-good defence. It is argued that the defences can be assembled into a complementary apologetic complex that defeats the charge that God's existence is incompatible with evil's existence.

For centuries philosophers have argued about the existence and nature of God. Do we need God to explain the origins of the universe? Can there be morality without a divine source of goodness? How can God exist when there is so much evil and suffering in the world? All these questions and many more are brought to life with clarity and style in The God of Philosophy. The arguments for and against God's existence are weighed up, along with discussion of the meaning of religious language, the concept of God and the possibility of life after death. This new edition brings the debate right up to date by exploring the philosophical arguments of the new atheists such as Richard Dawkins, as well as considering what the latest discoveries in science can tell us about why many believe in the existence of the divine.

In creating one of the first and most successful examples of the inspirational self-help book, James Allen was motivated by his own hard experience to show how our mental attitude has profound control over our lives and how we experience the world. More than that, he shows how, in mastering how we think, we can master our place in the world. As a Man Thinketh first appeared in 1903 and draws its title from the Bible (Prov. 23: 7) "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Written to be accessible to all, the author persuasively describes how readers need to take responsibility for their thoughts as well as their actions, and that how a person thinks literally shapes their life path. In improving our thoughts, we can improve our lives. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of As a Man Thinketh is both modern and readable.

Freud's Mass Psychology examines one of the key concepts in the theory of the psyche. Surprenant treats it as an epistemological issue rather than exclusively as a socio-political issue. Focusing on this neglected concept enables the author to raise anew the question of the "application" of psychoanalysis, beyond a mechanistic understanding of this term and of Freud's writings. This study brings together important topics associated with psychoanalysis, recent French philosophy, and political thought.

In this enlightening and provocative exploration, Dave Pruett sets out a revolutionary new understanding of our place in the universe, one that reconciles the rational demands of science with the deeper tugs of spirituality. Defining a moment in human self-awareness four centuries in the making, Reason and Wonder: A Copernican Revolution in Science and Spirit offers a way to move beyond the either/or choice of reason versus intuition-a dichotomy that ultimately leaves either the mind or the heart wanting. In doing so, it seeks to resolve an age-old conflict at the root of much human dysfunction, including today's global ecological crisis. An outgrowth of C. David Pruett's breakthrough undergraduate honors course, "From Black Elk to Black Holes: Shaping Myth for a New Millennium," Reason and Wonder embraces the insights of modern science and the wisdom of spiritual traditions to "re-enchant the universe." The new "myth of meaning" unfolds as the story of three successive "Copernican revolutions"-cosmological, biological, and spiritual-offers an expansive view of human potential as revolutionary as the work of Copernicus, Galilleo, and Darwin.

As a religious tradition of the "East," Islam has often been portrayed as "other" to the Western Traditions of Judaism and Christianity. The essays in this collection use the underlying allegiance to scripture in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity to underscore the deep affinities between the three monotheistic traditions at the same time that respect for differences between the traditions are preserved. The essays are unique in attempting to bring together both contemporary academic and traditional scholarship on scriptural texts to heal the rift between tradition and the contemporary world.

The Indian philosopher Acharya Nagarjuna (c. 150-250 CE) was the founder of the Madhyamaka (Middle Path) school of Mahayana Buddhism and arguably the most influential Buddhist thinker after Buddha himself. Indeed, in the Tibetan and East Asian traditions, Nagarjuna is often referred to as the 'second Buddha.' His primary contribution to Buddhist thought lies is in the further development of the concept of sunyata or 'emptiness.' For Nagarjuna, all phenomena are without any svabhaba, literally 'own-nature' or 'self-nature', and thus without any underlying essence. In this book, Jan Westerhoff offers a systematic account of Nagarjuna's philosophical position. He reads Nagarjuna in his own philosophical context, but he does not hesitate to show that the issues of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy have at least family resemblances to issues in European philosophy.

It would probably be generally admitted that Vedanta is the apex of the Indian (or Eastern) religious philosophies. Yet today it com mands so little attention, in part, no doubt, because the modem mood in scholarship refuses anchoring and centering of thought. The present work seeks to address modem thought though not in the modem mood. It is nevertheless motivated by the belief that there are times when the timeless is most timely. It is possible that the sources of a tradition such as Vedanta, if approached propefIy, will yield somethIng which can be brought within the ambience of the contemporary philosophical quest, at least of its still largely unmanifest undercurrents. The present work is intended to be an act, imperfect as it is, in that direction. That marks the difference of this project, called Gnosis and the Question of Thought in Vedanta, from customary studies in Indol ogy. The term "gnosis" as employed in this context is a translation of its cognate Sanskrit term jfiana, the latter, however, having a much wider range of meaning than the former, especially in view of the latter's appropriation for a specific usage by the Gnostic traditions of both the East and the West. In the general expression of Vedanta too the Gnostic understanding ofjfiana has undoubtedly persisted especially in the so-called jfiana-marga, or "way of gnosis," made popular from early medieval times on."

This collection of essays explores the development of the New Confucianism movement during the 20th century and questions whether it is, in fact, a distinctly new intellectual movement or one that has been mostly retrospectively created. The questions that contributors to this book seek to answer about this neo-conservative philosophical movement include: “What has been the cross-fertilization between Chinese scholars in China and overseas made possible by the shared discourse of Confucianism?”; “To what extent does this discourse transcend geographical, political, cultural, and ideological divides?”; “Why do so many Chinese intellectuals equate Confucianism with Chinese cultural identity?”; and “Does the Confucian revival of the 1990s in China and Taiwan represent a genuine philosophical renaissance or a resurgence in interest based on political and cultural factors?”.

Although it has been almost seventy years since Time declared C.S. Lewis one of the world's most influential spokespersons for Christianity and fifty years since Lewis's death, his influence remains just as great if not greater today. While much has been written on Lewis and his work, virtually nothing has been written from a philosophical perspective on his views of happiness, pleasure, pain, and the soul and body. As a result, no one so far has recognized that his views on these matters are deeply interesting and controversial, and-perhaps more jarring-no one has yet adequately explained why Lewis never became a Roman Catholic. Stewart Goetz's careful investigation of Lewis's philosophical thought reveals oft-overlooked implications and demonstrates that it was, at its root, at odds with that of Thomas Aquinas and, thereby, the Roman Catholic Church.