In the great libraries of Europe and the United States, hidden in fading manuscripts on forgotten shelves, lie the works of medieval Hebrew logic. From the end of the twelfth century through the Renaissance, Jews wrote and translated commentaries and original compositions in Aristotelian logic. One can say without exaggeration that wherever Jews studied philosophy - Spain, France, Northern Africa, Germany, Palestine - they began their studies with logic. Yet with few exceptions, the manuscripts that were catalogued in the last century have failed to arouse the interest of modem scholars. While the history of logic is now an established sub-discipline of the history of philosophy, the history of Hebrew logic is only in its infancy. The present work contains a translation and commentary of what is arguably the greatest work of Hebrew logic, the Sefer ha-Heqqesh ha-Yashar (The Book of the Correct Syllogism) of Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides; 1288-1344). Gersonides is well known today as a philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and biblical exegete. But in the Middle Ages he was also famous for his prowess as a logician. The Correct Syllogism is his attempt to construct a theory of the syllogism that is free of what he considers to be the 'mistakes' of Aristotle, as interpreted by the Moslem commentator A verroes. It is an absorbing, challenging work, first written by Gersonides when he was merely thirty-one years old, then significantly revised by him. The translation presented here is of the revised version.

Modern developments in philosophy have provided us with tools, logical and methodological, that were not available to Medieval thinkers - a development that has its dangers as well as opportunities. Modern tools allow one to penetrate old texts and analyze old problems in new ways, offering interpretations that the old thinkers could not have known. But unless one remains sensitive to the fact that language has undergone changes, bringing with it a shift in the meaning of terminology, one can easily perpetrate an anachronism. Yet there is a growing need to bring modern tools and to bear on the struggle for greater understanding of the problems studied and the solutions found by the ancient scholars. If we remain sensitive to the dangers, this openness to new methods can be expected to widen our perspectives and deepen our knowledge of old material. The focus in the present volume is on problems in Medieval and contemporary philosophy of religion.

Thomas More remains one of the most enigmatic thinkers in history, due in large part to the enduring mysteries surrounding his best-known work, Utopia. He has been variously thought of as a reformer and a conservative, a civic humanist and a devout Christian, a proto-communist and a monarchical absolutist. His work spans contemporary disciplines from history to politics to literature, and his ideas have variously been taken up by seventeenth-century reformers and nineteenth-century communists. Through a comprehensive treatment of More's writing, from his earliest poetry to his reflections on suffering in the Tower of London, Joanne Paul engages with both the rich variety and some of the fundamental consistencies that run throughout More's works. In particular, Paul highlights More's concern with the destruction of what is held 'in common', whether it be in the commonwealth or in the body of the church. In so doing, she re-establishes More's place in the history of political thought, tracing the reception of his ideas to the present day. Paul's book serves as an essential foundation for any student encountering More's writing for the first time, as well as providing an innovative reconsideration of the place of his works in the history of ideas.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the key themes in Greek and Roman science, medicine, mathematics and technology. A distinguished team of specialists engage with topics including the role of observation and experiment, Presocratic natural philosophy, ancient creationism, and the special style of ancient Greek mathematical texts, while several chapters confront key questions in the philosophy of science such as the relationship between evidence and explanation. The volume will spark renewed discussion about the character of 'ancient' versus 'modern' science, and will broaden readers' understanding of the rich traditions of ancient Greco-Roman natural philosophy, science, medicine and mathematics.

Almost all twentieth-century philosophy stresses the immanence of death in human life-as drive (Freud), as the context of Being (Heidegger), as the essence of our defining ethics (Levinas), or as language (de Man, Blanchot). In Death's Following, John Limon makes use of literary analysis (of Sebald, Bernhard, and Stoppard), cultural analysis, and autobiography to argue that death is best conceived as always transcendentally beyond ourselves, neither immanent nor imminent. Adapting Kierkegaard's variations on the theme of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac while refocusing the emphasis onto Isaac, Limon argues that death should be imagined as if hiding at the end of an inexplicable journey to Moriah. The point is not to evade or ignore death but to conceive it more truly, repulsively, and pervasively in its camouflage: for example, in jokes, in logical puzzles, in bowdlerized folk songs. The first of Limon's two key concepts is adulthood: the prolonged anti-ritual for experiencing the full distance on the look of death. His second is dirtiness, as theorized in a Jewish joke, a logical exemplum, and T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday": In each case, unseen dirt on foreheads suggests the invisibility of inferred death. Not recognizing death immediately or admitting its immanence and imminence is for Heidegger the defining characteristic of the "they," humanity in its inauthentic social escapism. But Limon vouches throughout for the mediocrity of the "they" in its dirty and ludicrous adulthood. Mediocrity is the privileged position for previewing death, in Limon's opinion: practice for being forgotten. In refusing the call of twentieth-century philosophy to face death courageously, Limon urges the ethical and aesthetic value of mediocre anti-heroism.

This remarkable book shows the seminal Western mystic Meister Eckhart as the great teacher of the birth of God in the soul. It is at once an exposition of Eckhart's mysticism -- perhaps the best in English -- and also an exemplary work of contemporary philosophy.

Schurmann shows us that Eckhart is our contemporary. Writing from experience, he describes the threefold movement of detachment, releasement, and "dehiscence" (splitting open) that leads to the experience of "living without a why" in which all things are in God and which is sheer joy. Going beyond that, he describes the transformational force of approaching the Godhead, the God beyond God.

Keckermann remarked of the sixteenth century, "never from the begin ning of the world was there a period so keen on logic, or in which more books on logic were produced and studies oflogic flourished more abun dantly than the period-in which we live. " 1 But despite the great profusion of books to which he refers, and despite the dominant position occupied by logic in the educational system of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seven teenth centuries, very little work has been done on the logic of the post medieval period. The only complete study is that of Risse, whose account, while historically exhaustive, pays little attention to the actual logical 2 doctrines discussed. Otherwise, one can tum to Vasoli for a study of humanism, to Munoz Delgado for scholastic logic in Spain, and to Gilbert and Randall for scientific method, but this still leaves vast areas untouched. In this book I cannot hope to remedy all the deficiencies of previous studies, for to survey the literature alone would take a life-time. As a result I have limited myself in various ways. In the first place, I con centrate only on those matters which are of particular interest to me, namely theories of meaning and reference, and formal logic."

overall title and the commentary of Narboni, but in which the treatise is given a close association rath De Substantia Orbis VII, which immedi ately follows it in the text. This third version is the sole case in which a Hebrew translator can be named: the translation was made by Todros Todrosi in the year 1340. The only conclusion to be drawn from his translation is that Todrosi may definitively be eliminated as the translator of any of the other ver sions. However, we may be able to draw a tentative conclusion as to the formation of the Hebrew collection. The earliest evidence for the existence of the nine treatise collec tion is the commentary of Narboni, completed in 1349. The fact that nine years earlier one treatise could be attached to a work outside the corpus may indicate that the Hebrew collection of nine treatises was formed during those nine years, or mar even indicate that Narboni him self collected the various treatises. 5 Narboni, however, was not the translator of these works In fact, no 1 definitive indication of the translator's identity exists. 6 3. The Nature of the Question-Form Steinschneider offered the following general characterization of Aver roes' Quaestiones: These are mostly brief discussions, more or less answers to questions; they may be partially occasioned by topics i9 his commentaries and may be considered as appendices to them."

The traditional way of understanding life, as a self-appropriating and self-organizing process of not ceasing to exist, of taking care of one's own hunger, is challenged by today's unprecedented proliferation of discourses and techniques concerning the living being. This challenge entails questioning the fundamental concepts of metaphysical thinking, namely, time, finality, and, above all, being. Garrido argues that today we are in a position to repeat Nietzsche's assertion that there is no other representation of "being" than that of "living." But in order to carry out this deconstruction of ontology, we need to find new ways of asking "What is life?"
In this study, Garrido establishes the basic elements of the question concerning life through readings of Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida; through the discussion of scientific breakthroughs in thermodynamics and evolutionary and developmental biology; and through the reexamination of the notion of hunger in both its metaphysical and its political implications.

A celebration of Montaigne, the most enjoyable and yet profound of all Renaissance writers.
In the year 1570, at the age of thirty-seven, Michel de Montaigne gave up his job as a magistrate and retired to his chateau to brood on the deaths of his best friend, his father, his brother, and his firstborn child. But finding his mind agitated, rather than settled, by idleness, Montaigne began to write, giving birth to the "Essays"--a series of reflections on life in all its profundity and triviality. And, gradually, over the course of his writing, Montaigne turned from a philosophy of death to a philosophy of life, finding consolation in the most unlikely places--the touch of a hand, the smell of his doublet, the flavor of his wine, and the playfulness of his cat.

Aristotle's modal syllogistic has been an object of study ever since the time of Theophrastus; but these studies (apart from an intense flowering in the Middle Ages) have been somewhat desultory. Remarkably, in the 1990s several new lines of research have appeared, with series of original publications by Fred Johnson, Richard Patterson and Ulrich Nortmann. Johnson presented for the first time a formal semantics adequate to a de re reading of the apodeictic syllogistic; this was based on a simple intuition linking the modal syllogistic to Aristotelian metaphysics. Nortmann developed an ingenious de dicto analysis. Patterson articulated the links (both theoretical and genetic) between the modal syllogistic and the metaphysics, using an analysis which strictly speaking is neither de re nor de dicto. My own studies in this field date from 1976, when my colleague Peter Roeper and I jointly wrote a paper "Aristotle's apodeictic syllogisms" for the XXIInd History of Logic Conference in Krakow. This paper contained the disjunctive reading of particular affirmative apodeictic propositions, which I still favour. Nonetheless, I did not consider that paper's results decisive or comprehensive enough to publish, and my 1981 book The Syllogism contained no treatment of the modal syllogism. The paper's ideas lay dormant till 1989, when I read Johnson's and Patterson's initial articles. I began publishing on the topic in 1991. Gradually my thoughts acquired a certain comprehensiveness and systematicity, till in 1993 I was able to take a semester's sabbatical to write up a draft of this book.

The Latin texts collected by Leon Baudry present the late fifteenth century debate at the University of Louvain over the truth-value of proposi tions about future contingent events, a subject of perennial interest in phil osophy. The theologians held fast to divine predetermination, and the Aristotelians in the Arts Faculty supported the doctrine of free choice based on indeterminism. Although the issues in the debate are still argued in philosophy, this rich collection of the theories and arguments has been neglected. Peter de Rivo and Henry de Zomeren, the principal antagonists, are cited in the recent literature, but only on the basis of slight, mostly second-hand information. The full collection of texts has never before been translated into English (or any other modern language), leaving them inaccessible to the majority of students, or any others who are not equipped to work their way through 450 pages of fifteenth-century scholastic Latin. Apart from their philosophical significance, the texts shed light on late scholastic methods in teaching and disputation, on university politics of the period in relation to the Vatican, the Court of the Duke of Burgundy, and the faculties of other great universities, and on legal procedures both secular and ecclesiastical. The human drama that develops as the debate proceeds should hold the interest of even the non-specialist."

Das Eine, das Gute, das Wahre und das Schoene - unum, bonum, verum, pulchrum - werden in der hochmittelalterlichen Philosophie als allgemeine Bestimmungen eines ungegenstandlichen Seins, dessen erkennbare Spur sich in allem gegenstandlich Seienden findet, verstanden. Weil diese Bestimmungen alle besonderen Seinsweisen ubersteigen, werden sie 'Transzendentalien' oder 'Communissima' genannt: das, was allen Dingen gemeinsam ist. Der Sinn dieser Logik erschliesst sich, wenn wir die Erkenntnis des jeweils Seienden, der Einzeldinge, in deren Anteilsbeziehung zum schlechthinnigen Sein - in dem sich das Eine, Gute, Wahre und Schoene verbinden - begreifen. Eben dazu will uns diese Denkform, die unter anderem auf Aristoteles zuruckgeht und um die unter den Philosophen des Mittelalters gerungen wurde, anleiten; sie blieb bis in die Neuzeit massgeblich als das Herz der europaischen Metaphysik. Heute ist uns dieses Denken fremd geworden. Man muss es sich aber vor Augen fuhren, um die mittelalterliche Philosophie, zu der die Neuzeit trotz aller Diskontinuitaten in weit engerer Verbindung steht, als uns allermeist bewusst ist, verstehen zu koennen. Zudem war die Logik der Transzendentalien nicht nur philosophiehistorisch wirksam, sondern eine Erkenntnislehre, die ihre fortwirkende Bedeutung bis heute behalten hat und deshalb eine Vergegenwartigung verdient.

Our world s cultural circles are permeated by the philosophical influences of existentialism and phenomenology. Two contemporary quests to elucidate rationality took their inspirations from Kierkegaard s existentialism plumbing the subterranean source of subjective experience and Husserl s phenomenology focusing on the constitutive aspect of rationality. Yet, both contrary directions mingled readily in common vindication of full reality.

In the inquisitive minds (Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Stein, Merleau-Ponty, et al.), a fruitful cross-pollination of insights, ideas, approaches, fused in one powerful wave disseminating throughout all domains of thought.

Existentialist rejection of ratiocination and speculation together with Husserl s shift to the genesis of rapproches philosophy and literature (Wahl, Marcel, Berdyaev, Wojtyla, Tischner, etc.), while the foundational underpinnings of language (Wittgenstein, Derrida, etc.) opened the "hidden" behind the "veils" (Sezgin and Dominguez-Rey)."

Abelard was one of the greatest thinkers of the twelfth century, a man of towering brilliance and arrogance, but his poetic works written late in life for his wife Heloise and son Astrolabe reveal a different and more humble man. In the Planctus and the Carmen ad Astralabium we see a man newly coming to terms with the life around him, expressing a simple but heartfelt piety, raging against social injustices and the exploitation of the poor, and re-evaluating the importance of rhetoric and education. Most significantly, we find a man struggling to comprehend, through poems written to the wife and child he abandoned, the divine mysteries of love, relationships and family.

This reissue was first published in 1978. Anthony Kenny, one of the most distinguished philosophers in England, explores the notion of responsibility and the precise place of the mental element in criminal actions. Bringing the insights of recent philosophy of mind to bear on contemporary developments in criminal law, he writes with the general reader in mind, no specialist training in philosophy being necessary to appreciate his argument. Kenny shows that abstract distinctions drawn by analytic philosophers are relevant to decisions in matters of life and death, and illustrates the philosophical argument throughout by reference to actual legal cases. The topics he covers are of wide general interest and include: mens rea and mental health, strict liability, freedom and determinism, duress and necessity, intoxication and irresistible impulse, intention and purpose, murder and rape, punishment and deterrence, witchcraft and supernatural beliefs.

Montaigne (1533-92) is commonly regarded as an early modern sceptic, standing at the threshold of a new secular way of thinking. He is also known for his ground-breaking exploration of the 'subject' or the 'self'. Terence Cave discusses these and other key aspects of the Essais (Montaigne's major work) not as philosophical themes but as features in the mapping of a mental landscape: the project of the Essais is cognitive rather than philosophical. Similarly, he reads the Essais not as 'essays' in the literary sense but as 'trials' or 'soundings' in which the manner of writing - the shape of the sentences, the use of metaphors and other figures - is crucial. Taking passages from many different chapters of the Essais, this book guides the reader through Montaigne's investigation of the 'subtle shades and stirrings' of the mind.