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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Western philosophy, c 500 to c 1600
Most readers first encounter Augustine's love for Scripture's words in the many biblical allusions of his masterwork, the Confessions. Augustine does not merely quote texts, but in many ways makes Scripture itself tell the story. In his journey from darkness to light, Augustine becomes Adam in the Garden of Eden, the Prodigal Son of Jesus' parable, the Pauline double personality at once devoted to and rebellious against God's law. Throughout he speaks the words of the Psalms as if he had written them. Crucial to Augustine's self-portrayal is his skill at transposing himself into the texts. He sees their properties and dynamics as his own, and by extension, every believing reader's own. In Christ Meets Me Everywhere, Michael Cameron argues that Augustine wanted to train readers of Scripture to transpose themselves into the texts in the same way he did, by the same process of figuration that he found at its core. Tracking Augustine's developing practice of self-transposition into the figures of the biblical texts over the course of his entire career, Cameron shows that this practice is the key to Augustine's hermeneutics.
More than any other topic, prophecy represents the point at which the Divine meets the human, the Absolute meets the relative. How can a human being attain the Word of God? In what manner does God, when conceived as eternal and transcendent, address corporeal, transitory creatures? What happens to God's divine Truth when it is beheld by minds limited in their power to apprehend, and influenced by the intellectual currents of their time and place? How were these issues viewed by the great Jewish philosophers of the past, who took the divine communication and all it entails seriously, while at the same time desired to understand it as much as humanly possible in the course of dealing with a myriad of other issues that occupied their attention? This book offers an in-depth study of prophecy in the thought of seven of the leading medieval Jewish philosophers: R. Saadiah Gaon, R. Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Gersonides, R. Hasdai Crescas, R. Joseph Albo and Baruch Spinoza. It attempts to capture the original voice' of these thinkers by looking at the intellectual milieus in which they developed their philosophies, and by carefully analyzing their views in their textual contexts. It also deals with the relation between the earlier approaches and the later ones. Overall, this book presents a significant model for narrating the history of an idea.
This book is the first extensive study of ideas on earthquakes before the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. The earthquake had a deep impact on European culture, and the reactions to it stood in a long tradition that, before this study, had yet to be explored in detail. Thinking on Earthquakes investigates both scholarly theories and views that were propagated among the early modern European population. Through a chronological approach, Vermij reveals that in contrast to the Ancient and medieval philosophers who suggested rational explanations for earthquakes, supernatural ideas made a powerful comeback in the sixteenth century. By analysing a variety of sources such as pamphlets, sermons, and treatises, this study shows how changes in the ideas on earthquakes were a result of social and political demands as well as from improvements in the means of communication, rather than from scientific methods. Thus, Vermij presents an illuminating case for the production of knowledge in early modern Europe. A range of events are explored, including the Ferrara earthquake in 1570 and the Vienna earthquake in 1590, making this study an invaluable source for students and scholars of the history of science and the history of ideas in early modern Europe.
The Legacy of Aristotelian Enthymeme provides a historical-logical analysis of Aristotle's rhetorical syllogism, the enthymeme, through its Medieval and Renaissance interpretations. Bringing together notions of credibility and proof, an international team of scholars highlight the fierce debates around this form of argumentation during two key periods for Aristotle's beliefs. Reflecting on medieval and humanist thinkers, philosophers, poets and theologians, this volume joins up dialectical and rhetorical argumentation as key to the enthymeme's interpretation and shows how the enthymeme was the source of a major interpretive conflict. As a method for achieving the standards for proof and credibility that persist across diverse fields of study today including the law, politics, medicine and morality, this book takes in Latin and Persian interpretations of the enthymeme and casts contemporary argumentation in a new historical light.
I first became interested in De dialectica in 1966, while I was doing re search on Augustine's knowledge of logic. At the time I made a transla tion of the Maurist text and included it as an appendix to my doctoral dissertation (Yale, 1967). In 1971 I thoroughly revised the translation on the basis of the critical text of Wilhelm Crecelius (1857) and I have re cently revised it again to conform to Professor Jan Pinborg's new edition. The only previously published translation of the whole of De dialectica . is N. H. Barreau's French translation in the Oeuvres completes de Saint Augustin (1873). Thomas Stanley translated parts of Chapters Six and Nine into English as part of the account of Stoic logic in his History of Philosophy (Pt. VIII, 1656). I offer De dialectica in English in the hope that it will be of some interest to historians of logic and of the liberal arts tradition and to students of the thought of Augustine. In translating I have for the most part been as literal as is consistent with English usage. Although inclusion of the Latin text might have justified a freer translation, for example, the use of modern technical terms, it seemed better to stay close to the Latin. One of the . values in studying a work such as De dialectica is to see familiar topics discussed in a terminology not so familiar. In the translation I follow these conventions."
"It is generally agreed that those types of philosophy that are loosely called 'Platonic' and 'Neoplatonic' played a crucial role in the history of European culture during the centuries between antiquity and the Renaissance. However, until now no scholar has attempted to describe the evolution of these forms of thought in a single comprehensive academic study." So writes Stephen Gersh in the preface to Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition. Stephen Gersh's two-volume survey of Platonic influences upon the Middle Ages focuses on questions that are basic to scholars of medieval philosophy, history, and literature: What was the influence of Plato's philosophy during the Middle Ages? Is it correct to consider earlier medieval philosophy as Platonic? How do Platonism and Neoplatonism differ? What do Platonic and Neoplatonic modes of thought have to do with Plato? Most medieval philosophers developed their doctrines without access to the greatest intellectual works of the Greeks. Instead, they elaborated their philosophies in relation to the Latin philosophical literature that spanned the classical period to the end of antiquity. Thus, Gersh develops his study by examining the important channels of transmission that existed for medieval philosophers. Following an introduction that outlines particular methodological perspectives relative to the discussion, the history is divided into three main sections. In total, the study surveys an impressive range of authors never previously considered in a single work, with many of the translations previously available only as Greek and Latin texts: I.1 Middle Platonism: The Platonists and the Stoics (Cicero, Seneca); I.2 Middle Platonism: The Platonists and the Doxographers (Gellius, Apuleius, the Hermetic "Asclepius," Ambrose, Censorinus, Augustine); II Neoplatonism (Calcidius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Boethius, Marius Victorinus, Firmicus Maternus, Favonius Eulogius, Servius, Fulgentius, Priscianus Lydus, Priscianrs Grammaticus). The concluding chapter illustrates the Platonic influence upon certain medieval authors up to the early twelfth century, and it establishes guidelines for further study. Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism contains an extensive bibliography and a complete index of Latin texts.
1. 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS At the end ofthe 19th century, when the discipline called psychology 1 is said to have become "independent" , attention began to be focused towards nominalistic philosophy from a point of view that can be called psychological. At that time, Vienna, the capital of the Austro- Hungarian Dual Monarchy, was a center for several disciplines. It is no wonder that it was there that the research conceming the psychological themes of William Ockham and other nominalists began. Karl Wemer (1821-1888), a Catholic, neo-scholastic scholar, professor of New Testament studies at the Univers?ty of Vienna (1870), and a member ofthe Imperial Academy of Sciences (1874), seems to have planned a history of medieval psychology. However, only fragments of it were printed, among them the following articles: 'Der A verroismus in der christlich-peripatetischen Psychologie des sp?teren Mittelalters' (1881), 'Die nominalisirende Psychologie der Scholastik des sp?teren Mittelalters' (1881) and 'Die augustinische Psychologie in ihrer mittelalterlich-scholastischen Einkleidung und Gestaltung' (1882). 2 Wemer deals especially with Ockham's 1 See Kusch 1995 and 1999. 2 Pluta 1987, 12-13. See Wemer 1881a, 1881b, 1882. (Those three texts were republished in 1964 under the name Psychologie des Mittelalters. ) Prior to those books, Wemer had written about William of Auvergne's, Bonaventure's, John Duns Scotus's and Roger 1 2 CHAPTERONE psychology, among other things, in the second of these articles.
This book promotes the research of present-day women working in ancient and medieval philosophy, with more than 60 women having contributed in some way to the volume in a fruitful collaboration. It contains 22 papers organized into ten distinct parts spanning the sixth century BCE to the fifteenth century CE. Each part has the same structure: it features, first, a paper which sets up the discussion, and then, one or two responses that open new perspectives and engage in further reflections. Our authors' contributions address pivotal moments and players in the history of philosophy: women philosophers in antiquity, Cleobulina of Rhodes, Plato, Lucretius, Bardaisan of Edessa, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus, Porphyry, Peter Abelard, Robert Kilwardby, William Ockham, John Buridan, and Isotta Nogarola. The result is a thought-provoking collection of papers that will be of interest to historians of philosophy from all horizons. Far from being an isolated effort, this book is a contribution to the ever-growing number of initiatives which endeavour to showcase the work of women in philosophy.
In this book (a translation of his well-known work L'esprit de la philosophie medievale), Etienne Gilson undertakes the task of defining the spirit of mediaeval philosophy. Gilson asks whether we can form the concept of a Christian philosophy and whether mediaeval philosophy is not its most adequate historical expression. He maintains that the spirit of mediaeval philosophy is the spirit of Christianity penetrating the Greek tradition, working within it, and drawing out of it a certain view of the world that is specifically Christian. To support his hypothesis, Gilson examines mediaeval thought in its nascent state, at that precise point where the Judeo-Christian graft was inserted into the Hellenic tradition. Gilson's demonstration is primarily historical and occasionally theoretical in suggesting how doctrines that satisfied our predecessors for so many centuries may still be found conceivable today.
E. M. Cioran confronts the place of today's world in the context of human history--focusing on such major issues of the twentieth century as human progress, fanaticism, and science--in this nihilistic and witty collection of aphoristic essays concerning the nature of civilization in mid-twentieth-century Europe. Touching upon Man's need to worship, the feebleness of God, the downfall of the Ancient Greeks and the melancholy baseness of all existence, Cioran's pieces are pessimistic in the extreme, but also display a beautiful certainty that renders them delicate, vivid, and memorable. Illuminating and brutally honest, "A Short History of Decay" dissects Man's decadence in a remarkable series of moving and beautiful pieces.
Integralism is the application to the temporal, political order of the full implications of the revelation of man's supernatural end in Christ and of the divinely established means by which it is to be attained. These implications are identified by means of the philosophia perennis exemplified in the fundamental principles of St Thomas Aquinas. Since the first principle in moral philosophy is the last end, and man's last end cannot be known except by revelation, it is only by accepting the role of handmaid of theology that political philosophy can be adequately constituted. Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy is a handbook for those who seek to understand the consequences of this integration of faith and reason for political, economic and individual civic life. It will also serve as a scholastic introduction to political philosophy for those new to the subject. Each chapter finishes with a list of the principal theses proposed.
A number of Jewish philosophers active in Spain and Italy in the second half of the 15th century (Abraham Bibago, Baruch Ibn Ya'ish, Abraham Shalom, Eli Habillo, Judah Messer Leon) wrote Hebrew commentaries and questions on Aristotle. In these works, they reproduced the techniques and terminology of Late-Medieval Latin Scholasticism, and quoted and discussed Latin texts (by Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, John Duns Scotus, and other authors) about logic, physics, metaphysics, and ethics. All of these works are still unpublished, and they have not yet been either studied, or translated in modern languages. The aim of this book is to give an idea of the extent and character of this hitherto neglected "Hebrew Scholasticism." After a general historical introduction to this phenomenon, and bio-bibliographical surveys of these philosophers, the book gives complete or partial annotated English translations of the most significant Hebrew Scholastical works. It includes also critical editions of some parts of these texts, and a Latin-Hebrew glossary of Scholastical technical terms.
Moses Maimonides-a proud heir to the Andalusian tradition of Aristotelian philosophy-crafted a bold and original philosophical interpretation of Torah and Judaism. His son Abraham Maimonides is a fascinating maverick whose Torah commentary mediates between the philosophical interpretations of his father, the contextual approach of Biblical exegetes such as Saadya, and the Sufi-flavored illuminative mysticism of his Egyptian Pietist circle. This pioneering study explores the intersecting approaches of Moses and Abraham Maimonides to the spark of divine illumination and revelation of the divine name Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, "I am that I am / I will be who I will be.
This book provides the first analysis of the development of Erasmus' historical methodology and its impact on Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians. Combining a biography of Erasmus with the larger theological debates and the intellectual history of his time, Christine Christ-von Wedel reveals many of previously unexplored influences on Erasmus, as well as his influences on his contemporaries. Erasmus of Rotterdam is a revised and considerably enlarged translation of Christ-von Wedel's well-received 2003 study, originally published in German. Observing the influence of classical, biblical, patristic, scholastic, and late medieval vernacular and popular sources on Erasmus' writing, the author provides comparisons with theologians Agrippa, Lefevre d'Etaples, Eck, Luther, and Zwingli to demonstrate not only the singularity of Erasmus' intellect, but also the enormous impact he had on the Reformation. The result is a lively picture of the man and his time, in which Erasmus emerges as both a devout Christian and a critical seeker of truth who conceded the ambiguities that he could not resolve.
This book discusses fundamental topics on contemporary Ockhamism. The collected essays show how contemporary Ockhamism can impact areas of research such as semantics, metaphysics and also the philosophy of science. In addition, the volume hosts one historian of Medieval philosophy who investigates the way in which William of Ockham "in flesh and bone" construed time and, more generally, future contingency. The essays explore the different meanings of this theory. They cover three main topics, in particular. The first examines the thesis that sentences and propositions about the future have a definite truth value, without any ensuing commitment to determinism or fatalism. The second topic looks at the problem whether the branching-time model needs to countenance a privileged branch (the so-called Thin Red Line). Finally, the third topic considers the idea that there are so-called soft facts. These would be the subject matter of sentences and propositions verbally about the present or the past, but metaphysically about a later time, and which might change in the future. Overall, the book provides an updated and rigorous idea of the debate about Ockhamism. It gives readers a deeper understanding into this philosophical approach influenced by William of Ockham, characterized by the rejection of the Aristotelian idea that, in order to preserve the contingency of the future, future contingents must be deemed neither true nor false.
The study shows the reception of the views of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite by Gregory Palamas. The author presents the doctrinal context of Palamas' dispute with Barlaam from Calabria on the possibility of knowing God, the most important issue in 14th-century Byzantium. The author distances herself from many previous interpretations of this problem. She proves that, considering how much Palamas succumbed or did not succumb to the Areopagite or "corrected" his position, he has a very weak doctrinal basis. The author notices that over-emphasizing Dionysius' dependence on the Neoplatonic tradition does not lead to a solution to the problem. Palamas' teachings are placed in the context of the traditions of the Christian East and their relation to the thoughts of the Areopagite himself.
The first collection of essays devoted to the Arabic philosopher Averroes's brilliant Commentary on Plato's "Republic," which survived the medieval period only in Hebrew and Latin translations. The first collection of essays devoted entirely to the medieval philosopher Averroes's Commentary on Plato's "Republic" includes a variety of contributors from across several disciplines and countries. The anthology aims to establish Averroes as a great philosopher in his own right, with special and unique insight into the world of Islam, as well as a valuable commentator on Plato. A major feature of the book is the first published English translation of Shlomo Pines's 1957 essay, written in Hebrew, on Averroes. The volume explores many aspects of Averroes's philosophy, including its teachings on poetry, philosophy, religion, law, and government. Other sections trace both the inspiration Averroes's work drew from past philosophers and the influence it had on future generations, especially in Jewish and Christian Europe. Scholars of medieval philosophy, ancient philosophy, Jewish studies, and the history of political thought more generally will find important insights in this volume. The anthology is also intended to provide the necessary background for teachers aiming to introduce Averroes's commentary into the classroom. With the Republic regularly appearing near the top of lists of the most frequently taught books in the history of philosophy, this volume shows how the most important medieval commentary on it deserves a place in the curriculum as well.
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed a rising interest in Arabic texts describing and explaining the rituals of the Coptic Church of Egypt. This book provides readers with an English translation of excerpts from three key texts on the Coptic liturgy by Abu al-Barakat ibn Kabar, Yuh.anna ibn Sabba', and Pope Gabriel V. With a scholarly introduction to the works, their authors, and the Coptic liturgy, as well as a detailed explanatory apparatus, this volume provides a useful and needed introduction to the worship tradition of Egypt's Coptic Christians. Presented for the first time in English, these texts provide valuable points of comparison to other liturgical commentaries produced elsewhere in the medieval Christian world.
Central to Niccolo Machiavelli's writing is the argument that a successful state is one that prefers to lose with its own arms (arma propriis) than to win with the arms of others (arma alienis). This book sheds light on Machiavelli's critiques of military force and provides an important reinterpretation of his military theory. Sean Erwin argues that the distinction between arma propriis and arma alienis poses a central problem to Machiavelli's case for why modern political institutions offer modes of political existence that ancient ones did not. Starting from the influence of Lucretius and Aelianus Tacticus on the Dell'arte della guerra, Erwin examines Machiavelli's criticism of mercenary, auxiliary, and mixed forces. Giving due consideration to an overlooked conceptual distinction in Machiavelli studies, this book is a valuable and original contribution to the field.
We as Self argues for a notion of we-ness based not on a self-centered or a self-less point of view, in which the "we" is only either a collection of individuals or an anonymous whole, but on "relation." This relation is pre-subjective, meaning that the conscious, reflective, subjective self is not the conceptual basis of the relation. The irreducible metaphysical distinction between self and other is always there, but the awareness of it is not prior to this relation, which is an ontological pre-condition of self. Hye Young Kim demonstrates that the distinction and unity of self and other in this relation can be comprehended spatially by applying knot logic. The author analyzes certain linguistic practices in Korean to show one representation of pre-subjective we-ness in language, but not in an ethnographical manner. By doing so, the author criticizes and challenges the Eurocentric tendency of philosophy and contributes to efforts to expand diversity in philosophy. |
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