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.

The topic of certitude is much debated today. On one side, commentators such as Charles Krauthammer urge us to achieve "moral clarity." On the other, those like George Will contend that the greatest present threat to civilization is an excess of certitude. To address this uncomfortable debate, Susan Schreiner turns to the intellectuals of early modern Europe, a period when thought was still fluid and had not yet been reified into the form of rationality demanded by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Schreiner argues that Europe in the sixteenth century was preoccupied with concerns similar to ours; both the desire for certainty - especially religious certainty - and warnings against certainty permeated the earlier era. Digging beneath overt theological and philosophical problems, she tackles the underlying fears of the period as she addresses questions of salvation, authority, the rise of skepticism, the outbreak of religious violence, the discernment of spirits, and the ambiguous relationship between appearance and reality. In her examination of the history of theological polemics and debates (as well as other genres), Schreiner sheds light on the repeated evaluation of certainty and the recurring fear of deception. Among the texts she draws on are Montaigne's Essays, the mystical writings of Teresa of Avila, the works of Reformation fathers William of Occam, Luther, Thomas Muntzer, and Thomas More; and the dramas of Shakespeare. The result is not a book about theology, but rather about the way in which the concern with certitude determined the theology, polemics and literature of an age.

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.

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.

On Power (De Potentia) is one of Aquinas's ''Disputed Questions'' (a systematic series of discussions of specific theological topics). It is a text which anyone with a serious interest in Aquinas's thinking will need to read. There is, however, no English translation of the De Potentia currently in print. A translation was published in 1932 under the auspices of the English Dominicans, but is now only available on a CD of translations of Aquineas coming from the InteLex Corporation. A new translation in book form is therefore highly desirable. However, the De Potentia is a very long work indeed (the 1932 translation fills three volumes), and a full translation would be a difficult publishing proposition as well as a challenge to any translator. Recognizing this fact, while wishing to make a solid English version of the De Potentia available, Fr. Richard Regan has produced this abridgement, which passes over some of the full text while retaining what seems most important when it comes to following the flow of Aquinas's thought.

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.

A humorous and philosophical trip through life, from the New York Times-bestselling coauthor of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . Daniel Klein's fans have fallen in love with the warm, humorous, and thoughtful way he shows how philosophy resonates in everyday life. Readers of his popular books Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . and Travels with Epicurus come for enlightenment and stay for the entertainment. As a young college student studying philosophy, Klein filled a notebook with short quotes from the world's greatest thinkers, hoping to find some guidance on how to live the best life he could. Now, from the vantage point of his eighth decade, Klein revisits the wisdom he relished in his youth with this collection of philosophical gems, adding new ones that strike a chord with him at the end of his life. From Epicurus to Emerson and Camus to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr-whose words provided the title of this book-each pithy extract is annotated with Klein's inimitable charm and insights. In these pages, our favorite jokester-philosopher tackles life's biggest questions, leaving us chuckling and enlightened.

This Handbook is intended to show the links between the philosophy written in the Middle Ages and that being done today. Essays by over twenty medieval specialists, who are also familiar with contemporary discussions, explore areas in logic and philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, moral psychology ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy and philosophy of religion. Each topic has been chosen because it is of present philosophical interest, but a more or less similar set of questions was also discussed in the Middle Ages. No party-line has been set about the extent of the similarity. Some writers (e.g. Panaccio on Universals; Cesalli on States of Affairs) argue that there are the closest continuities. Others (e.g. Thom on Logical Form; Pink on Freedom of the Will) stress the differences. All, however, share the aim of providing new analyses of medieval texts and of writing in a manner that is clear and comprehensible to philosophers who are not medieval specialists. The Handbook begins with eleven chapters looking at the history of medieval philosophy period by period, and region by region. They constitute the fullest, most wide-ranging and up-to-date chronological survey of medieval philosophy available. All four traditions - Greek, Latin, Islamic and Jewish (in Arabic, and in Hebrew) - are considered, and the Latin tradition is traced from late antiquity through to the seventeenth century and beyond.

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)."

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.

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.

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."

As originally planned this volume was meant to cover a somewhat wider scope than, in fact, it has turned out to do. When, in rg68, I initially conceived of preparing it, it was proposed to deal with several aspects of early modern scepticism, in addition to the fortuna of the Academica, and to publish various loosely related pieces under the title of 'Studies in the History of Early Modern Scepticism. ' Thereby, I foresaw that I would exhaust my knowledge of the subject and would then be able to turn my attention to other matters. In initiating my research on this topic, however, I soon found that there remained a much greater bulk of material to study than could possibly be dealt with between the covers of the single modest volume which I envisioned. My proposed section on Cicero's Academica was to cover between 50 and 75 pages in the original plan. It soon became apparent, however, especially after Joannes Rosa's hitherto unstudied commentary on Cicero's work was uncovered, that this material would have to be treated at a much greater length than I had foreseen. The present volume is the result of this expanded investigation. The monograph which has come from this alteration in plans has, I think, the virtues of continuity and cohesive ness and one hopes that these advantages offset the benefits of a broader scope which were sacrificed."

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.

This volume explores key aspects of the transmission of learning and the transformation of thought from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period. The topics dealt with include metaphysics as a science, the rise of probabilistic modality, freedom of the human will, as well as the role and validity of logical reasoning in speculative theology. The volume will be of interest to scholars who work on medieval and early modern philosophy, theology, and intellectual history.

Abelard is one of the foremost protagonists of the "twelfth-century Renaissance." He 'picks up the baton' from Boethius resuming the activity of commenting on Aristotle's works. The present book focuses on the logical-grammatical analysis of natural language, which for Abelard is a fragment of "scientific Latin." Tools of modern categorial grammar are employed to clarify many of the problems raised by historiography (such as meaning, abstract entities and universals). Among the merits of the volume is the fact that it has enlightened the radical interplay between the traditions of Aristotle's and Priscian's commentators and, in this context, Abelard's peculiar role in exploring a new field of linguistic inquiry. An ample analysis of grammatical sources and critical literature allows to evaluate the progress which is at the basis of the forthcoming terministic logic. The book is aimed at scholars of medieval philosophy as well as historians of logic and linguistics.