A beautifully illustrated history of the Renaissance told through the lives of its most important and influential patrons. 'Exceptionally sumptuous... This vivid history brings to life the vices and virtues of the feuding ruling families of Italy.' Michael Prodger, The Times 'Full of treasures to be uncovered... A chance to visit a glittering, at times rather gory, world that is different and yet dreamily familiar to our own.' BBC History Revealed From the late Middle Ages, the independent Italian city-states were taken over by powerful families who installed themselves as dynastic rulers. Inspired by the humanists, the princes of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy immersed themselves in the culture of antiquity, commissioning palaces, villas and churches inspired by the architecture of ancient Rome, and offering patronage to artists and writers. Many of these princes were related by blood or marriage, creating a web of alliances that held society together but whose tensions sometimes threatened to tear it apart; thus were their lives dominated as much by the waging of war as the nurture of artistic talent. In a narrative that is as rigorous and closely researched as it is accessible and informative, Mary Hollingsworth sets the princes' aesthetic achievements in the context of the volatile, ever-shifting politics of a tumultuous period of history.

In Volume One of Ernest Fortin: Collected Essays, the renowned theologian and political philosopher examines various facets of the unique encounter between biblical religion and Greek philosophy during the early Christian centuries and the Middle Ages. Fortin's aim is to uncover the crucial issues to which this encounter gave rise, such as the sometimes troubling but immensely fruitful tension between divine revelation and philosophic reason. The book includes sections on St. Augustine and the refounding of Christianity; the encounter between Jerusalem and Athens; the medieval roots of Christian education; and Dante and the politics of Christendom.

Alongside a revival of interest in Thomism in philosophy, scholars have realised its relevance when addressing certain contemporary issues in bioethics. This book offers a rigorous interpretation of Aquinas's metaphysics and ethical thought, and highlights its significance to questions in bioethics. Jason T. Eberl applies Aquinas's views on the seminal topics of human nature and morality to key questions in bioethics at the margins of human life - questions which are currently contested in the academia, politics and the media such as: When does a human person's life begin? How should we define and clinically determine a person's death? Is abortion ever morally permissible? How should we resolve the conflict between the potential benefits of embryonic stem cell research and the lives of human embryos? Does cloning involve a misuse of human ingenuity and technology? What forms of treatment are appropriate for irreversibly comatose patients? How should we care for patients who experience unbearable suffering as they approach the end of life? Thomistic Principles and Bioethics presents a significant philosophical viewpoint which will motivate further dialogue amongst religious and secular arenas of inquiry concerning such complex issues of both individual and public concern.

Thomas Aquinas devoted a substantial proportion of his greatest works to the virtues. Yet, despite the availability of these texts (and centuries of commentary), Aquinas's virtue ethics remains mysterious, leaving readers with many unanswered questions. In this book, Pinsent argues that the key to understanding Aquinas's approach is to be found in an association between: a) attributes he appends to the virtues, and b) interpersonal capacities investigated by the science of social cognition, especially in the context of autistic spectrum disorder. The book uses this research to argue that Aquinas's approach to the virtues is radically non-Aristotelian and founded on the concept of second-person relatedness. To demonstrate the explanatory power of this principle, Pinsent shows how the second-person perspective gives interpretation to Aquinas's descriptions of the virtues and offers a key to long-standing problems, such as the reconciliation of magnanimity and humility. The principle of second-person relatedness also interprets acts that Aquinas describes as the fruition of the virtues. Pinsent concludes by considering how this approach may shape future developments in virtue ethics.

During most of the Christian millennia Aristotle has been the most influential of all philosophers. This selection of essays by the eminent philosopher and Aristotle scholar Anthony Kenny traces this influence through the ages. Particular attention is given to Aristotle's ethics and philosophy of mind, showing how they provided the framework for much fruitful development in the Middle Ages and again in the present century. Also included are some contributions to the most recent form of Aristotelian scholarship, computer-assisted stylometry. All who work on Aristotle and his intellectual legacy will find much to interest them in these Essays on the Aristotelian Tradition.

Although Machiavelli is usually considered a pioneer among modern political philosophers, he read deeply in and was greatly influenced by the works of classical Roman thinkers such as Livy. There is thus a fundamental tension between the modern and the ancient within Machiavelli's philosophy; he is both a precursor to the Enlightenment and a throwback to republican Rome. This is the main thesis behind Patrick Coby's innovative study of the neglected Machiavellian classic Discourses on Livy. Coby argues that scholars have been too quick to dismiss the ancient antecedents of Machiavelli's thought, particularly with regard to the modes and orders of the Roman republic. The book seeks to resolve the central paradox of the Discourses, that Machiavelli recommends adoption of Roman modes and orders even though those modes and orders destroyed the virt-, the strength, which Machiavelli would have moderns resuscitate by imitating Rome. A sophisticated, highly engaging book, Machiavelli's Romans will be of special interest to political theorists, Renaissance scholars, and classicists.

In 1543, Copernicus publicly defended geokinetic and heliocentric universe. This book examines why and how he became a Copernican and what his affirmation of heliocentrism means in the context of the Scientific Revolution. Close reading of Copernicus' texts and examination of his sociocultural context reveals his commitment to the Platonist program of True Astronomy, which is to discover the well-proportioned, harmonious universe, hidden beyond visible appearances, but accessible through mathematical reasoning. The principal goal of the work is to show that the hypothesis of Copernicus' Platonism brings unity and internal coherence to his project and provides historical background of his contributions to the Scientific Revolution.

If we are to distinguish mere non-being from that which is not, yet may be, from that which was not, yet could have been, or from that which will not be, yet could become, we are committed in some way to grant being to possibilities. The possible is not actual; yet it is not nothing. What then could it be? What ontological status could it possess? In Contingency, Time, and Possibility: An Essay on Aristotle and Duns Scotus, Pascal Massie opens these questions by combining two approaches: First, an original inquiry that analyses the notions of chance, fate, event, contradiction, and so forth, and suggests that the distinction between potency and act arises from a confrontation with the impossible. Second, a historical inquiry that focuses on Aristotle and Duns Scotus, two key figures contributing to a fundamental transformation in the history of Western ontology; namely, the transition from a metaphysics of nature (Aristotle) to a metaphysics of the will (Scotus). In doing so, this book departs from the prevailing interpretation of the history of modal logic according to which Scotus rejected the principle of plenitude attributed to Aristotle and replaced the ancient diachronic theory of possibilities with a synchronic one, thereby contributing to a "possible world's semantics." Rather, Massie argues that in its proper ontological import, the question of possibility concerns the limit between being and non-being and that this limit must be thought in terms of temporality. With Scotus, however, a radical shift occurs. Possibilities are understood in terms of will, creation, omnipotence, and transcending freedom. As such, they belong to the realm of what is supremely actual (i.e., superabundant activity). What used to be understood as a lesser degree of being (the quasi non-being of uninformed matter and mere possibilities) becomes the mark of omnipotence.

New investigation of John Wyclif's writings on the theory of the "just war" shows him to be the first genuine pacifist of medieval Europe. John Wyclif (c. 1330-84) was the foremost English intellectual of the late fourteenth century and is remembered as both an ecclesiastical reformer and a heresiarch. But, against the backdrop of the Hundred Years War, Wyclif also tackled the numerous ethical, legal and practical problems arising from war and violence. Since the fifth-century works of St Augustine of Hippo, Christian justifications of war had revolved around three key criteria: just cause, proper authority and correct intention. Utilising Wyclif's extensive Latin corpus, the author traces how and why Wyclif dismantled these three pillars of medieval just war doctrine, exploring his critique within the context oflate medieval political thought and theology. Wyclif is revealed to be a thinker deeply concerned with the Christian virtues of sacrifice, suffering and charity, which ultimately led him to repudiate the concept of justified warfare in both theory and practice. The author thus changes the way we understand Wyclif, demonstrating that he created a coherent doctine of pacifism and non-resistance which was at that time unparallelled. Dr Rory Cox isa Lecturer in Late Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrews.

The early modern and modern cultural world in the West would be unthinkable without Petrarch and Boccaccio. Despite this fact, there is still no scholarly contribution entirely devoted to analysing their intellectual revolution. Internationally renowned scholars are invited to discuss and rethink the historical, intellectual, and literary roles of Petrarch and Boccaccio between the great model of Dante's encyclopedia and the ideas of a double or multifaceted culture in the era of Italian Renaissance Humanism. In his lyrical poems and Latin treatises, Petrarch created a cultural pattern that was both Christian and Classical, exercising immense influence on the Western World in the centuries to come. Boccaccio translated this pattern into his own vernacular narratives and erudite works, ultimately claiming as his own achievement the reconstructed unity of the Ancient Greek and Latin world in his contemporary age. The volume reconsiders Petrarch's and Boccaccio's heritages from different perspectives (philosophy, theology, history, philology, paleography, literature, theory), and investigates how these heritages shaped the cultural transition between the end of the Middle Ages and the early modern era, as well as European identity.

The Ascent of Man develops a comprehensive theory of human nature. James F. Harris sees human nature as an emergent property that supervenes a cluster of properties. Despite significant overlap between individuals that have human nature and those that are biologically human, the concept of human nature developed in this book is different. Whether biologically human or not, an individual may be said to possess human nature. This theory of human nature is called the"cluster theory."

Harris takes as his point of departurePlato's comment that in learning what a thing is we should look to the ways in which it acts upon or is acted upon by other things. He commits to a methodological naturalism and draws upon current views from the social and biological sciences. The cluster theory he develops represents one of the very few completely novel theories of human nature developed in the post-Darwin era. It will prove most useful in dealing with philosophical questions involving such contemporary issues as cloning, cybernetics, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

The fundamental conceptual issue is how plastic and elastic is the nature of human nature. Just how different might we imagine human beings to be and still be human in the sense that they still possess whatever it is that accounts for a unique nature? The theory of human nature developed in this book is a descriptive, dynamic, bottom-up, non-essentialist, naturalist theory. Harris is well versed in classical philosophy and contemporary behavioral science. He writes in a graceful, open-ended way that both educates and illuminates renewed interest in what it means to be human.

This book demonstrates the influence that the philosophical and theological anthropology of Saint Thomas Aquinas had on Nicholas of Cusa's (Cusanus) view of human nature. While Rudolf Haubst suggested that Aquinas had, in fact, influenced several factors of Cusanus' theology, Haubst did not explore the topic of anthropology. Since the philosophy of man is supposed to be one of the determining characteristics of the Renaissance, and because there is a prevailing opinion that Cusanus was not only a Renaissance philosopher but indeed one of the founders of Renaissance humanism, I demonstrate that his view of the place of man in the universe is remarkably similar to the view of Aquinas. A close examination of the texts of both thinkers when compared to some of the leading Renaissance writers indicates that it is not entirely true that Cusanus is Renaissance in his analysis of the human condition. Because Cusanus' copies of some of the works of Aquinas are still intact and his marginal comments in these manuscripts indicate not only that he read Aquinas carefully, but also actually reacted to texts in Aquinas, it is possible to conduct a study of Cusanus' use of Aquinas based directly on the text of Aquinas. It is also possible to explore similarities by studying the formulae that both writers used in expressing their respective positions. The present study appeals to students and scholars of late medieval theology and philosophy in its unique examination of the impact of Aquinas' thought upon Cusanus.

Thomas Aquinas devoted a substantial proportion of his greatest works to the virtues and associated matters, yet despite the availability of these vast texts and centuries of commentary, Aquinas's virtue ethics remains mysterious, raising questions to which satisfactory answers have not yet been given. In this book, Pinsent argues that the key to understanding Aquinas's work is to be found in an association between attributes he appends to the virtues and certain interpersonal capacities revealed recently by the scientific study of social cognition. This book shows that Aquinas's approach to the virtues is radically non-Aristotelian and founded on the concept of second person relatedness. To highlight the explanatory power of this principle, Pinsent demonstrates how the second person perspective provides a coherent interpretation of Aquinas's descriptions of the virtues in general and offers a key to long-standing problems, such as the reconciliation of magnanimity and humility. The principle of second person relatedness also provides a way to interpret those actus or operationes that Aquinas describes as the fruition or realization of the virtues.Pinsent concludes by considering how this approach may help to shape future developments in virtue ethics.

A milestone in the study of value in human life and thought, written by one of the world's preeminent living philosophers The Moral Powers: A Study of Human Nature is a philosophical investigation of the moral potentialities and sensibilities of human beings, of the meaning of human life, and of the place of death in life. It is an essay in philosophical anthropology: the study of the conceptual framework in terms of which we think about, speak about, and investigate homo sapiens as a social and cultural animal. This volume examines the diversity of values in human life and the place of moral value within the varieties of values. Its subject is the nature of good and evil and our propensity to virtue and vice. Acting as the culmination of five decades of reflection on the philosophy of mind, epistemology, ethics, and human nature, this volume: Concludes Hacker's acclaimed Human Nature tetralogy: Human Nature: The Categorial Framework, The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature, and The Passions: A Study of Human Nature Discusses traditional ideas about ethical value and addresses misconceptions held by philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists The Moral Powers: A Study of Human Nature is required reading philosophers of mind, ethicists, psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, and any general reader wanting to understand the nature of value and the place of ethics in human lives.

In recent years the philosophy of information has emerged as an important area of research in philosophy. However, until now information's philosophical history has been largely overlooked. Information and the History of Philosophy is the first comprehensive investigation of the history of philosophical questions around information, including work from before the Common Era to the twenty-first century. It covers scientific and technology-centred notions of information, views of human information processing, as well as socio-political topics such as the control and use of information in societies. Organised into five parts, 19 chapters by an international team of contributors cover the following topics and more: Information before 500 CE, including ancient Chinese, Greek and Roman approaches to information; Early theories of information processing, sources of information and cognition; Information and computation in Leibniz, visualised scientific information, copyright and social reform; The nineteenth century, including biological information, knowledge economies and information's role in empire and eugenics; Recent and contemporary philosophy of information, including racialised information, Shannon information and the very idea of an information revolution. Information and the History of Philosophy is a landmark publication in this emerging field. As such, it is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, philosophy of science and technology, and library and information studies. It is also a valuable resource for those working in subjects such as the history of science, media and communication studies and intellectual history.

Of all the topics in the history of philosophy, the history of different forms of thinking and contemplation is one of the most important, and yet is also relatively overlooked. What is it to think philosophically? How did different forms of thinking-reflection, contemplation, critique and analysis-emerge in different epochs? This collection offers a rich and diverse philosophical exploration of the history of contemplation, from the classical period to the twenty-first century. It covers canonical figures including Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, as well as debates in less well-known areas such as classical Indian and Islamic thought and the role of speculation in twentieth-century Russian philosophy. Comprising twenty-two chapters by an international team of contributors, the volume is divided into five parts: * Flourishing and Thinking from Homer to Hume * The Thinking of Thinking from Augustine to Goedel * Images and Thinking from Plotinus to Unger * Bodies of Thought and Habits of Thinking from Plato to Irigaray * The Efficacy of Thinking from Sextus to Bataille Thought: A Philosophical History is the first comprehensive investigation of the history of philosophical thought and contemplation. As such, it is a landmark publication for anyone researching and teaching the history of philosophy, and a valuable resource for those studying the subject in related fields such as literature, religion, sociology and the history of ideas.

First published in 1905, this reissued edition of The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon is an edited collection based upon the definitive seven volume edition of 1857, translated and prefaced by Robert Leslie Ellis and James Spedding.

Of great historical, philosophical and scientific interest, this collection brings together translations of Bacon 's most important works, including the Novum Organum, the De Augmentis Scientarium, the Parasceve, and the De Principiis atque Originibus, as well as works originally written in English, such as the Valerius Terminus and the Filum Labyrinthi. The reissue offers a comprehensive and provocative collection of the key writings of the man we now consider to be the father of Empiricism who popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry. All works include prefaces by Robert Leslie Ellis and James Spedding, and the collection includes an introductory note from the editor John M. Robertson.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) is widely recognized as one of the greatest scientific thinkers in history. Intriguingly, when offered a place in the Medici court in 1610, he requested the title of "Philosopher and Chief Mathematician." Reading Nature's Book: Galileo and the Birth of Modern Philosophy is the first book-length study written with undergraduates in mind that examines the philosophical implications (both theoretical and historical) of Galileo's scientific discoveries, including many matters that were later taken up by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers. This close analysis of Galileo's philosophical insights demonstrates the prominent place his thought should have in the history of early modern philosophy. Reading Nature's Book provides contextual material for college and university students enrolled in modern philosophy courses, introducing them to ideas and concepts that dominated philosophical discussion during the era. Furthermore, students and scholars interested in the history of philosophy of science will also benefit from a decidedly philosophical approach to such a leading scientific figure. Many of the topics explored by Galileo continue to be of philosophical interest today, including scientific methodology and the relation between science and religion.

The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Being-in-the-World brings St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Heidegger into dialogue and argues for the necessity of Christian philosophy. Through the confrontation of Heideggerian and Thomist thought, it offers an original and comprehensive rethinking of the nature of temporality and the origins of metaphysical inquiry. The book is a careful treatment of the inception and deterioration of the four-fold presuppositions of Thomistic metaphysics: intentionality, causality, finitude, ananke stenai. The analysis of the four-fold has never before been done and it is a central and original contribution of Gilson's book. The four-fold penetrates the issues between the phenomenological approach and the metaphysical vision to arrive at their core and irreconcilable difference. Heidegger's attempt to utilize the fourfold to extrude theology from ontology provides the necessary interpretive impetus to revisit the radical and often misunderstood metaphysics of St. Thomas, through such problems as aeviternity, non-being and tragedy.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Gregor Reisch's The Philosophical pearl (Margarita Philosophica), first published in 1503 and republished 11 times in the sixteenth century, was the first extensive printed text which discussed the disciplines taught at university to achieve widespread dissemination. This distinguishes it from printed editions of individual texts of Aristotle and other authorities. It is presented as a dialogue between master and pupil, covering the seven liberal arts, natural philosophy and moral philosophy, and with illustrations throughout. It has received remarkably little attention in its own right as a work of education which helped shape the world view of sixteenth-century educated men. Its author was a Carthusian monk. This volume presents an edited translation and an extensive introduction, of the four books which deal with natural philosophy - the predecessor of modern science. These books clearly show the extent to which for Reisch the study of nature was still primarily undertaken for Christian ends. Not only was nature studied as God's creation, but the study of the soul (a central part of natural philosophy pursued on Aristotelian lines) and its fate was here completely integrated with the salvation or damnation of the individual Christian, as taught in the Bible and by the church fathers, especially Augustine. Natural philosophy for Reisch was a discipline which was as concerned with God and the Bible as it was with Nature and Aristotle.

This book deals with Johannes Scottus Eriugena, an Irish scholar at the Court of Charles the Bald in France in the second half of the ninth century - to be clearly distinguished from John Duns Scotus (1264-1308), after whom `Scotist' philosophy is named. Eriugena's main work, Periphyseon (de divisione naturae), is a remarkable attempt at a real intellectual synthesis between the Bible and Neoplatonist philosophy. It was not looked upon with great favour in the West except by the mystics and, more recently, by German Idealist philosophers of the last century. Now, however, because of the growth of interest in Medieval Studies, there is an increasing curiosity about Eriugena and his work - but there has been no comprehensive book about him since that of M. Cappuyns in 1933. Bringing together the results of the most recent research on Eriugena, this book discusses his background in Ireland and life in France, and of his career as teacher, controversialist, translator, and poet. It gives an extended and careful summary of the Periphyseon, and the first translation into English of the brief Homily on the Prologue to St.John's Gospel.

The work is an examination of the role of language in the constitution of self and in the presentation of identity. Following the path laid out by George Herbert Mead, Kenneth Burke and Mikhail Bakhtin the work presents self, identity and meaning as ongoing accomplishments between human actors who participate in what may be termed the dramas of human relations. Human agents use language as symbolic actions with which they transform themselves and others, as well as places and things, clothing and money etc into meanings with which they conduct their lives.

A User's Guide to Melancholy takes Robert Burton's encyclopaedic masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy (first published in 1621) as a guide to one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance. Burton's Anatomy is perhaps the largest, strangest, and most unwieldy self-help book ever written. Engaging with the rich cultural and literary framework of melancholy, this book traces its causes, symptoms, and cures through Burton's writing. Each chapter starts with a case study of melancholy - from the man who was afraid to urinate in case he drowned his town to the girl who purged a live eel - as a way into exploring the many facets of this mental affliction. A User's Guide to Melancholy presents in an accessible and illustrated format the colourful variety of Renaissance melancholy, and contributes to contemporary discussions about wellbeing by revealing the earlier history of mental health conditions.