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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Western philosophy, c 500 to c 1600
Even though individual parents face different issues, I believe
most parents want their children to be good people who are happy in
their adult lives. As such a central motivating question of this
book is how can parents raise a child to be a moral and flourishing
person. At first glance, we might think this question is better
left to psychologists rather than philosophers. I propose that
Aristotle's ethical theory (known as virtue theory) has much to say
on this issue. Aristotle asks how do we become a moral person and
how does that relate to leading a good life. In other words, his
motivating questions are very similar to the goals parents have for
their children. In the first part of this book, I consider what the
basic components of Aristotle's theory can tell us about the
project of parenting. In the second part, I shift my focus to
consider some issues that present potential moral dilemmas for
parents and whether there are specific parental virtues we may want
to use to guide parental actions.
Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, written in Latin around 525
A.D., was to become one of the most influential literary texts of
the Middle Ages. The Old English prose translation and adaptation
which was produced around 900 and claims to be by King Alfred was
one of the earliest signs of its importance and use, and the
subsequent rewriting of parts as verse show an interest in
rivalling the literary shape of the Latin original. The many
changes and additions have much to tell us about Anglo-Saxon
interests and scholarship in the Alfredian period. This new edition
is the first to present the second prose-and-verse version of the
Old English text, and allows it to be read alongside the original
prose version, for which this is the first edition for over a
century, and the introduction and commentary reveal much about the
history of the text and its composition.
The edition contains critical texts of both versions; a
translation; a full introduction examining the manuscripts, the
composition of the prose text and of the subsequent verse, the
language, the authorship and date of the two versions, the
relationship to other texts of the period and later uses of it, and
the nature and purpose of the work; a detailed commentary exploring
the relationship to the Latin text and to the early medieval
commentary tradition; textual notes; and a glossary.
W. Norris Clarke has chosen the fifteen essays in this collection,
five of which appear here for the first time, as the most
significant of the more than seventy he has written over the course
of a long career. Clarke is known for his development of a
Thomistic personalism. To be a person, according to Saint Thomas,
is to take conscious self-possession of one's own being, to be
master of oneself. But our incarnate mode of being human involves
living in a body whose life unfolds across time, and is inevitably
dispersed across time. If we wish to know fully who we are, we need
to assimilate and integrate this dispersal, so that our lives
become a coherent story. In addition to the existentialist thought
of Etienne Gilson and others, Clarke draws on the Neoplatonic
dimension of participation. Existence as act and participation have
been the central pillars of his metaphysical thought, especially in
its unique manifestation in the human person.The essays collected
here cover a wide range of philosophical, ethical, religious, and
aesthetic topics. Through them sounds a very personal voice, one
that has inspired generations of students and scholars.
In diesem Buch liefert Hans-Ulrich Wohler einen reprasentativen
geschichtlichen Uberblick zum dialektischen Denken in der
mittelalterlichen Philosophie. Untersucht werden ausgewahlte Texte
von Autoren unterschiedlicher sprachlicher, religioser und
philosophischer Provenienz aus dem Zeitraum zwischen dem 6. und dem
17. Jahrhundert. Die den Autor dabei leitende Frage lautet:
Inwiefern dachten diese Denker in ihrer Philosophie dialektisch? Im
Zentrum des Bandes steht somit die Beschreibung und Rekonstruktion
von konkreten Ausserungs- und Anwendungsformen und vor allem von
Inhalten eines dialektischen Denkens, unabhangig von ihrer
Selbstkennzeichnung durch deren Urheber. Der gewahlte zeitliche
Rahmen integriert in die Darstellung nicht nur einige klassische
Vertreter der Philosophie im lateinischen, islamischen und
judischen Mittelalter, sondern er bezieht zugleich die Perioden der
Rezeption und Aneignung des antiken Erbes am Anfang und des
kritischen Rekurses darauf am Ende der Epoche ein."
This is a brief, accessible introduction to the thought of the
philosopher John Buridan (ca. 1295-1361). Little is known about
Buridan's life, most of which was spent studying and then teaching
at the University of Paris. Buridan's works are mostly by-products
of his teaching. They consist mainly of commentaries on Aristotle,
covering the whole extent of Aristotelian philosophy, ranging from
logic to metaphysics, to natural science, to ethics and politics.
Aside from these running commentaries on Aristotle's texts, Buridan
wrote influential question-commentaries. These were a typical genre
of the medieval scholastic output, in which the authors
systematically and thoroughly discussed the most problematic issues
raised by the text they were lecturing on. The question-format
allowed Buridan to work out in detail his characteristically
nominalist take on practically all aspects of Aristotelian
philosophy, using the conceptual tools he developed in his works on
logic. Buridan's influence in the late Middle Ages can hardly be
overestimated. His ideas quickly spread not only through his own
works, but to an even larger extent through the work of his
students and younger colleagues, such as Nicholas Oresme,
Marisilius of Inghen, and Albert of Saxony, who in turn became very
influential themselves, and turned Buridan's ideas into standard
textbook material in the curricula of many late medieval European
universities. With the waning of scholasticism Buridan's fame
quickly faded. Gyula Klima argues, however, that many of Buridan's
academic concerns are strikingly similar to those of modern
philosophy and his work sometimes quite directly addresses modern
philosophical questions.
As the 'father' of the English literary canon, one of a very few
writers to appear in every 'great books' syllabus, Chaucer is seen
as an author whose works are fundamentally timeless: an author who,
like Shakespeare, exemplifies the almost magical power of poetry to
appeal to each generation of readers. Every age remakes its own
Chaucer, developing new understandings of how his poetry intersects
with contemporary ways of seeing the world, and the place of the
subject who lives in it. This Handbook comprises a series of essays
by established scholars and emerging voices that address Chaucer's
poetry in the context of several disciplines, including late
medieval philosophy and science, Mediterranean Studies, comparative
literature, vernacular theology, and popular devotion. The volume
paints the field in broad strokes and sections include Biography
and Circumstances of Daily Life; Chaucer in the European Frame;
Philosophy and Science in the Universities; Christian Doctrine and
Religious Heterodoxy; and the Chaucerian Afterlife. Taken as a
whole, The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer offers a snapshot of the
current state of the field, and a bold suggestion of the
trajectories along which Chaucer studies are likely to develop in
the future.
This book examines Robert Grosseteste's often underrepresented
ideas on education. It uniquely brings together academics from the
fields of medieval history, modern science and contemporary
education to shed new light on a fascinating medieval figure whose
work has an enormous amount to offer anyone with an interest in our
educational processes. The book locates Grosseteste as a key figure
in the intellectual history of medieval Europe and positions him as
an important thinker who concerned himself with the science of
education and set out to elucidate the processes and purposes of
learning. This book offers an important practical contribution to
the discussion of the contemporary nature and purpose of many
aspects of our education processes. This book will be of interest
to students, researchers and academics in the disciplines of
educational philosophy, medieval history, philosophy and theology.
Mixtures is of central importance for Galen's views on the human
body. It presents his influential typology of the human organism
according to nine mixtures (or 'temperaments') of hot, cold, dry
and wet. It also develops Galen's ideal of the 'well-tempered'
person, whose perfect balance ensures excellent performance both
physically and psychologically. Mixtures teaches the aspiring
doctor how to assess the patient's mixture by training one's sense
of touch and by a sophisticated use of diagnostic indicators. It
presents a therapeutic regime based on the interaction between
foods, drinks, drugs and the body's mixture. Mixtures is a work of
natural philosophy as well as medicine. It acknowledges Aristotle's
profound influence whilst engaging with Hippocratic ideas on health
and nutrition, and with Stoic, Pneumatist and Peripatetic physics.
It appears here in a new translation, with generous annotation,
introduction and glossaries elucidating the argument and setting
the work in its intellectual context.
Critically engaging the thought of Heidegger, Gadamer, and others,
William Franke contributes both to the criticism of Dante's "Divine
Comedy" and to the theory of interpretation.
Reading the poem through the lens of hermeneutical theory, Franke
focuses particularly on Dante's address to the reader as the site
of a disclosure of truth. The event of the poem for its reader
becomes potentially an experience of truth both human and divine.
While contemporary criticism has concentrated on the historical
character of Dante's poem, often insisting on it as undermining the
poem's claims to transcendence, Franke argues that precisely the
poem's historicity forms the ground for its mediation of a
religious revelation. Dante's dramatization, on an epic scale, of
the act of interpretation itself participates in the
self-manifestation of the Word in poetic form.
"Dante's Interpretive Journey" is an indispensable addition to the
field of Dante studies and offers rich insights for philosophy and
theology as well.
This edited volume reconsiders the notion of life and
conceptualizes those forms of life which have been excluded from
modern philosophy, such as post-Anthropocene life, the life of
non-human animals and the life of inorganic objects. The
contributors, who include prominent contemporary philosophers and
theorists ask a wide range of questions including: what new forms
of subjection can we see with the return of the 'Anthropos'?, what
can animals teach us in the Anthropocene?, can we reconstruct the
perceptual world of animals and take a look into their
'subjectivity'?, what happens to inorganic matter (waste or digital
objects) when no longer used by any subject and can we think about
inorganic matter in terms of subjective self-awareness? The first
section, Life Beyond the Anthropocene, critically questions
Anthropocene theory and outlines alternative scenarios, such as
Gaia theory or post-Anthropocene forms of life on Earth and other
planets, as well as new forms of subjectivity. The second part,
Human and Non-Human Interactions, investigates the obscure
boundary, between life and non-life, and between human and
non-human animal life forms. The third part, Forms of Life and New
Ontologies, concentrates on new ontologies and discusses life in
terms of vitalism, new materialism, movement, form-taking activity
and plasticity.
By exploring the philosophical character of some of the greatest
medieval thinkers, An Introduction to Medieval Philosophy provides
a rich overview of philosophy in the world of Latin Christianity.
Explores the deeply philosophical character of such medieval
thinkers as Augustine, Boethius, Eriugena, Anselm, Aquinas,
Bonaventure, Scotus, and Ockham Reviews the central features of the
epistemological and metaphysical problem of universals Shows how
medieval authors adapted philosophical ideas from antiquity to
apply to their religious commitments Takes a broad philosophical
approach of the medieval era by,taking account of classical
metaphysics, general culture, and religious themes
Towards the end of his life, St. Thomas Aquinas produced a brief,
non-technical work summarizing some of the main points of his
massive Summa Theologiae. This 'compendium' was intended as an
introductory handbook for students and scholars who might not have
access to the larger work. It remains the best concise introduction
to Aquinas's thought. Furthermore, it is extremely interesting to
scholars because it represents Aquinas's last word on these topics.
Aquinas does not break new ground or re-think earlier positions but
often states them more directly and with greater precision than can
be found elsewhere. There is only one available English translation
of the Compendium (published as 'Aquinas's Shorter Summa: Saint
Thomas's Own Concise Version of his Summa Theologiae, ' by Sophia
Institute Press). It is published by a very small Catholic
publishing house, is marketed to the devotional readership,
contains no scholarly apparatus. Richard Regan is a highly
respected Aquinas translator, who here relies on the definitive
Leonine edition of the Latin text. His work will be received as the
premier English version of this important text.
William of Ockham (d. 1347) was among the most influential and the
most notorious thinkers of the late Middle Ages. In the
twenty-seven questions translated in this volume, most never before
published in English, he considers a host of theological and
philosophical issues, including the nature of virtue and vice, the
relationship between the intellect and the will, the scope of human
freedom, the possibility of God's creating a better world, the role
of love and hatred in practical reasoning, whether God could
command someone to do wrong, and more. In answering these
questions, Ockham critically engages with the ethical thought of
such predecessors as Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John
Duns Scotus. Students and scholars of both philosophy and
historical theology will appreciate the accessible translations and
ample explanatory notes on the text.
Richard J. Regan's new translation of texts from Thomas Aquinas'
Summa Theologica II-II--on the virtues prudence, justice,
fortitude, and temperance--combines accuracy with an accessibility
unmatched by previous presentations of these texts. While remaining
true to Aquinas' Latin and preserving a question-and-answer format,
the translation judiciously omits references and citations
unessential to the primary argument. It thereby clears a path
through the original especially suitable for beginning students of
Aquinas. Regan's Introduction carefully situates Aquinas' analysis
of these virtues within the greater ethical system of the Summa
Theologica , and each selection is introduced by a thoughtful
headnote. A glossary of key terms and a select bibliography are
also included.
Anthony Kenny offers a critical examination of a central
metaphysical doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the
medieval philosophers. Aquinas's account of being is famous and
influential: but Kenny argues that it in fact suffers from
systematic confusion. Because of the centrality of the doctrine,
this has implications for other parts of Aquinas's philosophical
system: in particular, Kenny shows that the idea that God is pure
being is a hindrance, not a help, to Aquinas's natural theology.
Kenny's clear and incisive study, drawing on the scholastic as well
as the analytic tradition, dispels the confusion and offers
philosophers and theologians a guide through the labyrinth of
Aquinas's ontology.
This will be a brief, accessible introduction to the lives and
thought of two of the most controversial personalities of the
Middle Ages. Abelard and Heloise are familiar names. It is their
"star quality," argues Constant Mews, that has prevented them from
being seen clearly in the context of 12th-century thought - that
task he has set himself in this book. He contends that the dramatic
intensity of these famous lives needs to be examined in the broader
context of their shared commitment to the study of philosophy.
La naturaleza de la abstraccion ha sido uno de los topicos mas
estudiados dentro de la historia del tomismo, donde se la ha
interpretado como el termino especifico que designa el proceso
intelectual segun el cual el hombre conoce una realidad inteligible
partiendo desde los datos sensibles; o bien, mediante el cual capta
determinadas caracteristicas de un objeto sin considerar otras. De
un modo particular, la exegesis del siglo XX en adelante anadio
sobre esta interpretacion un cariz particularmente epistemologico
al colocar la abstraccion como la causa de la distincion de las
ciencias especulativas y sus objetos. El presente libro tiene como
objetivo demostrar que el termino posee en Tomas un significado mas
amplio que el expuesto en tanto es tambien utilizado en numerosos
casos para designar una propiedad de las esencias de las cosas.
Esta abstraccion de las esencias resulta un elemento clave dentro
del corpus metafisico del Aquinate ya que la operacion intelectual
depende de ella como de su causa formal. De este modo, lo que queda
expuesto es el sentido analogico que posee el termino abstractio en
la obra de Tomas y sus implicancias. A su vez, este descubrimiento
se vuelve relevante toda vez que las interpretaciones mas
difundidas hasta el momento han puesto demasiado enfasis en la faz
intelectual dificultando la interpretacion de algunos textos
importantes. De esta manera, la obra constituye una pieza
importante para avanzar en la comprension de un tema central en la
filosofia tomasiana.
Five hundred years before "Jabberwocky" and Tender Buttons, writers
were already preoccupied with the question of nonsense. But even as
the prevalence in medieval texts of gibberish, babble, birdsong,
and allusions to bare voice has come into view in recent years, an
impression persists that these phenomena are exceptions that prove
the rule of the period's theologically motivated commitment to the
kernel of meaning over and against the shell of the mere letter.
This book shows that, to the contrary, the foundational object of
study of medieval linguistic thought was vox non-significativa, the
utterance insofar as it means nothing whatsoever, and that this
fact was not lost on medieval writers of various kinds. In a series
of close and unorthodox readings of works by Priscian, Boethius,
Augustine, Walter Burley, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the anonymous
authors of the Cloud of Unknowing and St. Erkenwald, it inquires
into the way that a number of fourteenth-century writers recognized
possibilities inherent in the accounts of language transmitted to
them from antiquity and transformed those accounts into new ideas,
forms, and practices of non-signification. Retrieving a premodern
hermeneutics of obscurity in order to provide materials for an
archeology of the category of the literary, Medieval Nonsense shows
how these medieval linguistic textbooks, mystical treatises, and
poems were engineered in such a way as to arrest the faculty of
interpretation and force it to focus on the extinguishing of sense
that occurs in the encounter with language itself.
Shakespeare and Montaigne share a grounded, genial sense of the
lived reality of human experience, as well as a surprising depth of
engagement with history, literature and philosophy. With celebrated
subtlety and incisive humour, both authors investigate abiding
questions of epistemology, psychology, theology, ethics, politics
and aesthetics. In this collection, distinguished contributors
consider these influential, much-beloved figures in light of each
other. The English playwright and the French essayist, each in his
own fashion, reflect on and evaluate the Renaissance, the
Reformation and the rise of new modern perspectives many of us now
might readily recognise as our own.
Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn provides an entirely new look at an era of radical change in the history of West European thought, the period between 1480 and 1540, mainly in France and Germany. The book's main thesis is that the Latin language turn was not only concurrent with other aspects of change, but was a fundamental instrument in reconfiguring horizons of thought, reformulating paradigms of argument, and rearticulating the relationship between fiction and truth. Its topics include Latin dictionaries and phrase-books; religious disputation; and early approaches to literary criticism.
Sir Anthony Kenny offers a critical examination of a central metaphysical doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the medieval philosophers. Aquinas's account of being is famous and influential: but Kenny argues that it in fact suffers from systematic confusion. Kenny's clear and incisive study offers philosophers and theologians a guide through the labyrinth of Aquinas's ontology.
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