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Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Metaphysics & ontology
The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Logstrup is second in
reputation in his homeland only to Soren Kierkegaard. He is best
known outside Europe for his The Ethical Demand, first published in
Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in
1997. Beyond the Ethical Demand contains excerpts, translated into
English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays
Logstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first
essay, he engages the critical response to The Ethical Demand,
clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In
the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics
"demands" that we are concerned for the other by introducing the
crucial concept of "sovereign expressions of life." Like Levinas,
Logstrup saw in the phenomenon of "the other" the ground for his
ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of "the
sovereign expressions of life," spontaneous phenomena such as
trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding.
The last two essays connect his ethics with political life.
Interest in Logstrup in the English-speaking academic community
continues to grow, and these important original sources will be
essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of
his ethics and phenomenology.
Although Pseudo-Dionysius was, after Aristotle, the author whom
Thomas Aquinas quoted most frequently, surprisingly little
attention has been paid to the role of this Neoplatonist thinker in
the formation of Aquinas' philosophy. Fran O'Rourke's book is the
only available work that investigates the pervasive influence of
Pseudo-Dionysius on Aquinas, while at the same time examining the
latter's profound originality. Central themes discussed by O'Rourke
include knowledge of the absolute, existence as the first and most
universal perfection, the diffusion of creation, the hierarchy of
creatures, and their return to God as final end. O'Rourke devotes
special attention to the Neoplatonist element in Aquinas' notion of
"being" as intensity or degree of perfection. He also considers the
relation of being and goodness in light of Aquinas' nuanced
reversal of Dionysius' theory of the primacy of the good, and
Aquinas' arguments for the transcendental nature of goodness.
This study examines the motivations and doctrinal coherence of the
Commentary on the Elements of Theology of Proclus written by
Berthold of Moosburg, O.P. ( c. 1361/1363). It provides an overview
of Berthold's biography and intellectual contexts, his manuscript
remains, and a partial edition of his annotations on Macrobius and
Proclus. Through a close analysis of the three prefaces to the
Commentary, giving special attention to Berthold's sources, it
traces the Dominican's elaboration of Platonism as a soteriological
science. The content of this science is then presented in a
systematic reconstruction of Berthold's cosmology and anthropology.
The volume includes an English translation of the three fundamental
prefaces of the Commentary. The publication of this volume has
received the generous support of the European Research Council
(ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme through the ERC Consolidator Grant NeoplAT: A
Comparative Analysis of the Middle East, Byzantium and the Latin
West (9th-16th Centuries), grant agreement No 771640
(www.neoplat.eu).
Logics of Worlds stands as one of the most important texts in
contemporary thought. Conceived as the sequel to Alan Badiou's
Being and Event, the book expands upon and elucidates the questions
that were posed in the first book. As a complex theory of worlds,
the text has, for the most part, been misunderstood, but in William
Watkin's diligent and critical close reading of the book, he makes
the case for Logics of Worlds being the essential Badiou book for
anyone interested in existence, meaning and the potential for
radical change. For Watkin, this recasting of ontology is followed
by a transformation of logic, which is not only a theory of being,
but of appearing and allows Badiou to give new meaning to the
object, body and relation. To do this, he explores these concepts
through architecture, astronomy and renowned thinkers such as Kant,
Hegel and Kierkegaard. For students of French Continental
philosophy, ontology and Badiou himself, Watkin's commentary on the
philosopher's text provides a brilliant and incisive new
interpretation of this underrated work by the leading Continental
philosopher of our time.
Horst Ruthrof revisits Husserl's phenomenology of language and
highlights his late writings as essential to understanding the full
range of his ideas. Focusing on the idea of language as imaginable
as well as the role of a speech community in constituting it,
Ruthrof provides a powerful re-assessment of his methodological
phenomenology. From the Logical Investigations to untranslated
portions of his Nachlass, Ruthrof charts all the developments and
amendments in his theorizations. Ruthrof argues that it is the
intersubjective character to linguistic meaning that is so
emblematic of Husserl's position. Bringing his study up to the
present day, Ruthrof discusses mental time travel, the evolution of
language, and protosyntax in the context of Husserl's late
writings, progressing a comprehensive new phenomenological ontology
of language with wide-ranging implications for philosophy,
linguistics, and cultural studies.
The philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi (c. 870-c. 950 CE) is a key
Arabic intermediary figure. He knew Aristotle, and in particular
Aristotle's logic, through Greek Neoplatonist interpretations
translated into Arabic via Syriac and possibly Persian. For
example, he revised a general description of Aristotle's logic by
the 6th century Paul the Persian, and further influenced famous
later philosophers and theologians writing in Arabic in the 11th to
12th centuries: Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, Avempace and Averroes.
Averroes' reports on Farabi were subsequently transmitted to the
West in Latin translation. This book is an abridgement of
Aristotle's Prior Analytics, rather than a commentary on successive
passages. In it Farabi discusses Aristotle's invention, the
syllogism, and aims to codify the deductively valid arguments in
all disciplines. He describes Aristotle's categorical syllogisms in
detail; these are syllogisms with premises such as 'Every A is a B'
and 'No A is a B'. He adds a discussion of how categorical
syllogisms can codify arguments by induction from known examples or
by analogy, and also some kinds of theological argument from
perceived facts to conclusions lying beyond perception. He also
describes post-Aristotelian hypothetical syllogisms, which draw
conclusions from premises such as 'If P then Q' and 'Either P or
Q'. His treatment of categorical syllogisms is one of the first to
recognise logically productive pairs of premises by using
'conditions of productivity', a device that had appeared in the
Greek Philoponus in 6th century Alexandria.
Distinguished metaphysicians examine issues central to the
high-profile debate between philosophers over how to classify the
natural world, and discuss issues in applied ontology such as the
classification of diseases.Leading metaphysicians explore
fundamental questions related to the classification and structure
of the natural worldAn essential commentary on issues at the heart
of the contemporary debate between philosophy and
scienceInterweaves discussion of overarching themes with detailed
material on applied ontology
This is the first volume exclusively devoted to the Expositio by
Berthold of Moosburg (c.1295-c.1361) on Proclus' Elements of
Theology. The breadth of its vision surpasses every other known
commentary on the Elements of Theology, for it seeks to present a
coherent account of the Platonic tradition as such (unified through
the concord of Proclus and Dionysius) and at the same time to
consolidate and transform a legacy of metaphysics developed in the
German-speaking lands by Peripatetic authors (like Albert the
Great, Ulrich of Strassburg, and Dietrich of Freiberg). This volume
aims to provide a basis for further research and discussion of this
unduly overlooked commentary, whose historical-philosophical
importance as an attempt to refound Western metaphysics is
beginning to be recognized. The publication of this volume has
received the generous support of the European Research Council
(ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme through the ERC Consolidator Grant NeoplAT: A
Comparative Analysis of the Middle East, Byzantium and the Latin
West (9th-16th Centuries), grant agreement No 771640
(www.neoplat.eu).
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