Augustine's dialogue De libero arbitrio (On Free Choice) is, with his Confessions and City of God, one of his most important and widely read works. It contains one of the earliest accounts of the concept of 'free will' in the history of philosophy. Composed during a key period in Augustine's early career, between his conversion to Christianity and his ordination as a bishop, it has often been viewed as a an incoherent mixture of his 'early' and 'late' thinking. Simon Harrison offers an original account of Augustine's theory of will, taking seriously both the philosophical arguments and literary form of the text. Relating De libero arbitrio to other key texts of Augustine's, in particular the City of God and the Confessions, Harrison shows that Augustine approaches the problem of free will as a problem of knowledge: how do I know that I am free?, and that Augustine uses the dialogue form to instantiate his 'way into the will'.

Cursory allusions to the relation between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are common in philosophical literature, but there has been little in the way of serious and comprehensive commentary on the relationship of their ideas. Genia Schoenbaumsfeld closes this gap and offers new readings of Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's conceptions of philosophy and religious belief. Chapter one documents Kierkegaard's influence on Wittgenstein, while chapters two and three provide trenchant criticisms of two prominent attempts to compare the two thinkers, those by D. Z. Phillips and James Conant. In chapter four, Schoenbaumsfeld develops Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's concerted criticisms of certain standard conceptions of religious belief, and defends their own positive conception against the common charges of 'irrationalism' and 'fideism'. As well as contributing to contemporary debate about how to read Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's work, A Confusion of the Spheres addresses issues which not only concern scholars of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, but anyone interested in the philosophy of religion, or the ethical aspects of philosophical practice as such.

Robinson Crusoe recognizes it is foolish to leave for the open seas; nevertheless, he boards the ship. William Wordsworth of The Prelude sees the immense poetic task ahead of him, but instead of beginning work, he procrastinates by going for a walk. Centering on this sort of intentionally irrational action, originally defined as " akrasia" by the ancient Greeks and "weakness of will" in early Christian thought, Against Better Judgment argues that the phenomenon takes on renewed importance in the long eighteenth century.In treating human minds and bodies as systems and machines, Enlightenment philosophers did not account for actions that may be undermotivated, contradictory, or self-betraying. A number of authors, from Daniel Defoe and Samuel Johnson to Jane Austen and John Keats, however, took up the phenomenon in inventive ways. Thomas Manganaro traces how English novelists, essayists, and poets of the period sought to represent akrasia in ways philosophy cannot, leading them to develop techniques and ideas distinctive to literary writing, including new uses of irony, interpretation, and contradiction. In attempting to give shape to the ways people knowingly and freely fail themselves, these authors produced a new linguistic toolkit that distinguishes literature's epistemological advantages when it comes to writing about people.

Liturgy, a complex interweaving of word, text, song, and behavior is a central fixture of religious life in the Jewish tradition. It is unique in that it is performed and not merely thought. Because liturgy is performed by a specific group at a specific time and place it is mutable. Thus, liturgical reasoning is always new and understandings of liturgical practices are always evolving. Liturgy is neither preexisting nor static; it is discovered and revealed in every liturgical performance.
Jewish Liturgical Reasoning is an attempt to articulate the internal patterns of philosophical, ethical, and theological reasoning that are at work in synagogue liturgies. This book discusses the relationship between internal Jewish liturgical reasoning and the variety of external philosophical and theological forms of reasoning that have been developed in modern and post liberal Jewish philosophy. Steven Kepnes argues that liturgical reasoning can reorient Jewish philosophy and provide it with new tools, new terms of discourse and analysis, and a new sensibility for the twenty-first century.
The formal philosophical study of Jewish liturgy began with Moses Mendelssohn and the modern Jewish philosophers. Thus the book focuses, in its first chapters, on the liturgical reasoning of Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, and Franz Rosenzweig. However, it attempts to augment and further develop the liturgical reasoning of these figures with methods of study from Hermeneutics, Semiotic theory, post liberal theology, anthropology and performance theory. These newer theories are enlisted to help form a contemporary liturgical reasoning that can respond to such events as the Holocaust, the establishmentof the State of Israel, and interfaith dialogue between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

The issues of the nature and existence of God, time and infinity, respectively, and how they relate to each other, are some of the most complicated problems of metaphysics.This volume presents contributions of thirteen internationally renowned scholars who deal with various aspects of these complex issues. The contributions were presented and discussed during the international conference: God, Time, Infinity held in Warsaw, September 22-24, 2015.

A new edition of the study of Syriac Christianity up to the early fifth century CE: its beliefs and worship; its life and art.
In this classic work, Robert Murray offers the fullest and most vivid picture yet available of the development and character of the culture, illustrating both its original close relationship to Judaism and its remoter background in Mesopotamian civilization. He is interested in the subsequent influence of Syriac Christian culture, particularly on European literature.
The largely revised Introduction (now assisted by a sketch map) locates Syriac as an Aramaic dialect, then traces the origins of Syriac Christianity, its relationship to Jewish Christianity and the Syriac Bible version, the character of Syriac asceticism (including Marcionism and Manichaeism), and of the Christian schools. Key Syriac terms are explained, and all citation of Syriac texts throughout the work are given in translation either by other scholars or by the author.
The second part of the introduction reviews the literature studied in the following chapters, concentrating on Aphrahat and Ephrem. In both parts, a number of positions adopted in the first edition are revised in the light of recent studies, the bibliographical details of which are given in the greatly increased number of footnotes.
This book deals with a topic of interdisciplinary importance, at the cultural crossroads of the ancient and medieval worlds of east and west, and of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students.

The First Islamic Reviver presents a new biography of al-Ghazali's final decade and a half, presenting him not as a reclusive spiritual seeker, but as an engaged Islamic revivalist seeking to reshape his religious tradition.

In The Priority of the Person, world-class philosopher David Walsh advances the argument set forth in his highly original philosophic meditation Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being (2015), that "person" is the central category of modern political thought and philosophy. The present volume is divided into three main parts. It begins with the political discovery of the inexhaustibility of persons, explores the philosophic differentiation of the idea of the "person," and finally traces the historical emergence of the concept through art, science, and faith. Walsh argues that, although the roots of the idea of "person" are found in the Greek concept of the mind and in the Christian conception of the soul, this notion is ultimately a distinctly modern achievement, because it is only the modern turn toward interiority that illuminated the unique nature of persons as each being a world unto him- or herself. As Walsh shows, it is precisely this feature of persons that makes it possible for us to know and communicate with others, for we can only give and receive one another as persons. In this way alone can we become friends and, in friendship, build community. By showing how the person is modernity's central preoccupation, David Walsh's The Priority of the Person makes an important contribution to current discussions in both political theory and philosophy. It will also appeal to students and scholars of theology and literature, and any groups interested in the person and personalism.

No one wants to be treated merely as a means-"used," in a sense. But just what is this repugnant treatment? Audi's point of departure is Kant's famous principle that we must treat persons as ends in themselves and never merely as means. Treatment of these kinds is conduct, a complex three-dimensional notion whose central elements are action, its motivation, and the manner of its performance. He shows how the notions of treating persons as ends and, by contrast, merely as means, can be anchored outside Kant and clarified in ways that enhance their usefulness both in ethical theory and in practical ethics, where they have much intuitive force. Audi constructs an account of treatment of persons-of what it is, how it differs from mere interpersonal action, and what ethical standards govern it. In accounting for such treatment, the book develops a wider conception of ethics than is commonly implicit in utilitarian, deontological, or virtue theories. These results contribute to ethical theory, but in its discussion of diverse narrative examples of moral and immoral conduct, the book also contributes to normative ethics. Audi's theory of conduct takes account of motivational elements that are not traits of character and of behavioral elements that are not manifestations of virtue or vice. Here it goes beyond the leading virtue approaches. The theory also advances rule ethics by framing wider conception of moral behavior-roughly, of acting morally. The results advance both normative ethics and ethical theory. For moral philosophy, the book frames conceptions, articulates distinctions, and formulates principles; and for practical ethics, it provides a multitude of cases that illustrate both the scope of moral responsibility and the normative standards for living up to it.

The Reading Augustine series presents concise, personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious scholars. John Rist takes the reader through Augustine's ethics, the arguments he made and how he arrived at them, and shows how this moral philosophy remains vital for us today. Rist identifies Augustine's challenge to all ideas of moral autonomy, concentrating especially on his understanding of humility as an honest appraisal of our moral state. He looks at thinkers who accept parts of Augustine's evaluation of the human condition but lapse into bleakness and pessimism since for them God has disappeared. In the concluding parts of the book, Rist suggests how a developed version of Augustine's original vision can be applied to the complexities of modern life while also laying out, on the other hand, what our moral universe would look like without Augustine's contribution to it.