Francisco Suarez is arguably the most important Neo-Scholastic philosopher and a vital link in the chain leading from medieval philosophy to that of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Long neglected by the Anglo-Saxon philosophical community, this sixteenth-century Jesuit theologian is now an object of intense scholarly attention. In this volume, Daniel Schwartz brings together essays by leading specialists which provide detailed treatment of some key themes of Francisco Suarez's philosophical work: God, metaphysics, meta-ethics, the human soul, action, ethics and law, justice and war. The authors assess the force of Suarez's arguments, set them within their wider argumentative context and single out influences and appraise competing interpretations. The book is a useful resource for scholars and students of philosophy, theology, philosophy of religion and history of political thought and provides a rich bibliography of secondary literature.

Originally published in 1936, this book provides a concise discussion of Sir Walter Raleigh's connection to the intellectual environment of his time. It analyses Raleigh's position as the focal point for 'The School of Night', a speculated group of literary, philosophical and scientific figures including prominent individuals such as Christopher Marlowe, George Chapman and Thomas Herriot. Whilst there is no firm evidence for the existence of a clearly defined 'School', this remains a thoughtful and rigorous study. It contextualises the development of new ideas during the time, and reveals the close connection between literature and theoretical developments in other areas. A fascinating book, it will be of value to anyone with an interest in the cultural atmosphere of the English Renaissance.

Richard Kilvington was an obscure fourteenth-century philosopher whose Sophismata deal with a series of logic-linguistic conundrums of a sort which featured extensively in philosophical discussions of this period. Originally published in 1990, this was the first ever translation or edition of his work. As well as an introduction to Kilvington's work, the editors provide a detailed commentary. This edition will prove of considerable interest to historians of medieval philosophy who will realise from the evidence presented here that Kilvington deserves to be studied just as seriously as Duns Scotus or William of Ockham.

The history of moral dilemma theory often ignores the medieval period, overlooking the sophisticated theorizing by several thinkers who debated the existence of moral dilemmas from 1150 to 1450. In this book Michael V. Dougherty offers a rich and fascinating overview of the debates which were pursued by medieval philosophers, theologians and canon lawyers, illustrating his discussion with a diverse range of examples of the moral dilemmas which they considered. He shows that much of what seems particular to twentieth-century moral theory was well-known long ago - especially the view of some medieval thinkers that some forms of wrongdoing are inescapable, and their emphasis on the principle 'choose the lesser of two evils'. His book will be valuable not only to advanced students and specialists of medieval thought, but also to those interested in the history of ethics.

Althusius's "Politics Methodically Set Forth and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples", known today simply as "Politica" or Althusius's "Politics", was originally published in Germany in 1603. Professor Carney's translation, which first appeared in 1964, represents the first attempt to present the basic structure of Althusius's political thought in English. "Politica" is now recognised as an extraordinary contribution to the intellectual history of the West. It combines ancient and medieval political philosophy with Reformation theory, and is considered a bridge between the political wisdom of the ancients and the moderns. Friedrich thought Althusius was the most profound political thinker between Bodin and Hobbes. Drawing deeply from Aristotle and Biblical teaching, "Politica" presents a unique vision of the commonwealth as a harmonious ordering of natural associations. According to Althusius, the purpose of the state is to protect and encourage social life. The family is the most natural of human associations, and all other unions derive from it. Power and authority properly grow from more local to more general associations. Each higher union must protect the associations that compose it, seeing to it that all of them are able to carry out the purposes for which they were established. The highest purpose of human association is devotion to God, which the state must encourage, but which properly is the province of a higher religious authority. Of particular interest to the modern reader is Althusius's theory of federalism. It does not refer merely to a division of powers between central and state governments, but to an ascending scale of authority in which higher institutions rely on the consent of local and voluntary associations.

This single-volume reference guide covers the most important authors and movements in Continental Philosophy. Each section focuses on a school of thought, bringing together articles by leading scholars which explore the key thinkers and texts. Arranged in chronological order, the volume begins with the founding texts of Classical Idealism and concludes with Post-structuralism. Sections and Section Editors: Classical Idealism - Philip Stratton-Lake Philosophy of Existence - Lewis R. Gordon Philosophies of Life and Understanding - Fiona Hughes Phenomenology - Gail Weiss Politics, Psychoanalysis and Science - Gillian Howie The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory - Simon Jarvis Structuralism - Jeremy Jennings Post-Structuralism - John Protevi

This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the philosophical system of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's importance is widely recognized and is essential for understanding early modern philosophers and scientists such as Locke, Leibniz and Newton. Offering a systematic overview of his contributions, LoLordo situates Gassendi's views within the context of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century natural philosophy as represented by a variety of intellectual traditions, including scholastic Aristotelianism, Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the emerging mechanical philosophy. LoLordo's work will be essential reading for historians of early modern philosophy and science.

In this groundbreaking collection of essays the history of philosophy appears in a fresh light, not as reason's progressive discovery of its universal conditions, but as a series of unreconciled disputes over the proper way to conduct oneself as a philosopher. By shifting focus from the philosopher as proxy for the universal subject of reason to the philosopher as a special persona arising from rival forms of self-cultivation, philosophy is approached in terms of the social office and intellectual deportment of the philosopher, as a personage with a definite moral physiognomy and institutional setting. In so doing, this collection of essays by leading figures in the fields of both philosophy and the history of ideas provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher, and to the institutional and larger political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.

Since its publication in 1677, Spinoza s Ethics has fascinated philosophers, novelists, and scientists alike. It is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and contested works of Western philosophy. Written in an austere, geometrical fashion, the work teaches us how we should live, ending with an ethics in which the only thing good in itself is understanding. Spinoza argues that only that which hinders us from understanding is bad and shows that those endowed with a human mind should devote themselves, as much as they can, to a contemplative life. This Companion volume provides a detailed, accessible exposition of the Ethics. Written by an internationally known team of scholars, it is the first anthology to treat the whole of the Ethics and is written in an accessible style.

Nel suo pionieristico lavoro Conditions in Koenigsberg and the Making of Kant's Philosophy, Giorgio Tonelli lamentava l'assenza di un'indagine approfondita sul contesto intellettuale di Koenigsberg e sull'eventuale influenza che esso esercito su alcuni aspetti del pensiero di Kant. Questo libro vuole colmare questa lacuna prestando particolare attenzione alla tradizione aristotelica, alla Schulphilosophie, e alla corrente dell'eclettismo, che dominarono l'ambiente regiomontano sino all'avvento della filosofia critica kantiana. Il lavoro mostra come dai fallimenti dei progetti logici e metafisici precritici, legati alle influenze ricevute dall'ambiente di Koenigsberg, Kant abbia tratto le idee e gli spunti per la stesura della Kritik der reinen Vernunft.

By modern standards Bacon's writings are striking in their range and diversity, and they are too often considered a separate specialist concerns in isolation from each other. Dr Jardine finds a unifying principle in Bacon's preoccupation with 'method', the evaluation and organisation of information as a procedure of investigation or of presentation. She shows how such an interpretation makes consistent (and often surprising) sense of the whole corpus of Bacon's writings: how the familiar but misunderstood inductive method for natural science relations to the more information strategies of argument in his historical, ethical, political and literary work. There is a substantial and valuable study of the intellectual Renaissance background from which Bacon emerged and against which he reacted. Through a series of details comparisons and contrasts we are led to appreciate the true originality and ingenuity of Bacon's own views and also to discount the more superficial resemblances between them and later developments in the philosophy of science.

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.

If there is a heaven and you get there, could you still sin? If not, why not, if you're still free? If there is a hell and you end up there, why couldn't you choose to repent and get out? If not, why not, if you're still free? However esoteric these questions may seem, they forced thinkers in the fourteenth century to think hard about just what it is to be free. In what, exactly, does human freedom consist? By addressing a number of theological 'limit situations', such as those mentioned above, Robert Greystones, while at Oxford University in the 1320s, developed his own philosophical theory of human freedom, which is remarkably coherent and persuasive. This volume presents for the first time the Latin critical edition of his discussions, with a clear English translation on facing pages, along with an extensive introduction, describing his life and teaching on human freedom. This volume presents the Latin critical edition, with English translation on facing pages, of six questions from Robert Greystones's Sentences commentary. Greystones's discussions provide an excellent window onto debates concerning the will at Oxford in the early 1320s, since he works out his solutions in critical dialogue with contemporaries such as William of Ockham, William of Alnwick, Robert Cowton, Richard Conington, Henry of Harclay, and Peter Aureol. In order to show the cut and thrust of these debates, the editors include many ample quotations from these thinkers, including material found only in manuscript. A clear and extensive introduction describes Greystones's life and doctrine of the will. The editors also provide a complete list of Greystones's numerous questions in the four books of his commentary, found only in Westminster Abbey MS 13.

Peter Abelard conducted many analyses of Scriptural and Patristic teachings, and achieved an extensive rapprochement between Christian and pagan thought. His public career was ended in 1140 by an ecclesiastical condemnation, but this touched upon the central issues facing the early leaders of the medieval scholastic movement and Abelard's own teachings continued to be controversial. Dr Luscombe considers the influence of Abelard's principal teachings among his contemporaries and successors. his aim is to explain the conflicting estimates of Abelard which were current in the twelfth century and later, and to provide a full account of the writings and varied fortunes of Abelard's disciples. He also examines the manuscript tradition of Abelard's work and that of his followers. The condemnation of 1140 repudiated Abelard's leading doctrines. This led some of Abelard's disciples to partly retreat from the position of their master, whereas some chose to adapt and extend his teachings.

Als Valentin Weigel 1588 in Zschopau starb, hinterliess er ein umfangreiches handschriftliches Werk aus Traktaten, Predigten und Dialogen, das er zu seinen Lebzeiten nur einem kleinen Kreis von Freunden und Bekannten zuganglich gemacht hatte. Allen seinen Schriften ist eine lehrhafte Ausrichtung eigen; diese Beobachtung oeffnet den Blick auf den Seelsorger Weigel. Seinen Anliegen ist die vorliegende Arbeit nachgegangen, in der Weise, wie dies unter der gegebenen UEberlieferungslage moeglich ist, namlich durch die Berucksichtigung der historischen und kirchenpolitischen Verhaltnisse und durch die Analyse zentraler Schriften. Durch Ersteres erhellen sich die Bedingungen, unter denen eine so radikal introvertierte Glaubensform, wie Weigel sie vertritt, hatte entstehen koennen, Letzteres zeigt Weigels Strategien, in prekaren Lebenssituationen sichere Orientierung zu finden und anderen weiterzugeben.

Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, has always been acknowledged as a great literary figure but has never been thought of as a philosophical original. This book treats Montaigne as a serious thinker in his own right, taking as its point of departure Montaigne's description of himself as 'an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher'. Whereas previous commentators have treated Montaigne's Essays as embodying a scepticism harking back to classical sources, Ann Hartle offers an account that reveals Montaigne's thought to be dialectical, transforming sceptical doubt into wonder at the most familiar aspects of life. This major reassessment of a much admired but also much underestimated thinker will interest a wide range of historians of philosophy as well as scholars in comparative literature, French studies and the history of ideas.

Medieval Jewish intellectuals living in Muslim and Christian lands were strongly concerned to recover what they regarded as a 'lost' Jewish philosophical tradition. As part of this project they transmitted and produced many philosophical and scientific works and commentaries, as well as philosophical commentary on scripture, in Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew, the principal literary languages of medieval Jewry. This volume presents new or revised translations of seven prominent medieval Jewish rationalists: Saadia Gaon, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Moses Maimonides, Isaac Albalag, Moses of Narbonne, Levi Gersonides, Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo - including, for the first time in English, the complete Falaquera abridgement of Gabirol's Source of Life. These works range over topics that are both theological (e.g. the creation of the world) and philosophical (e.g. determinism and free choice), but they are characterized by two overarching principles: the unity of truth, and its accessibility to human reason.

Medieval Jewish intellectuals living in Muslim and Christian lands were strongly concerned to recover what they regarded as a 'lost' Jewish philosophical tradition. As part of this project they transmitted and produced many philosophical and scientific works and commentaries, as well as philosophical commentary on scripture, in Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew, the principal literary languages of medieval Jewry. This volume presents new or revised translations of seven prominent medieval Jewish rationalists: Saadia Gaon, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Moses Maimonides, Isaac Albalag, Moses of Narbonne, Levi Gersonides, Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo - including, for the first time in English, the complete Falaquera abridgement of Gabirol's Source of Life. These works range over topics that are both theological (e.g. the creation of the world) and philosophical (e.g. determinism and free choice), but they are characterized by two overarching principles: the unity of truth, and its accessibility to human reason.

This book offers a revisionary account of key epistemological concepts and doctrines of St Thomas Aquinas, particularly his concept of scientia (science), and proposes an interpretation of the purpose and composition of Aquinas's most mature and influential work, the Summa theologiae, which presents the scientia of sacred doctrine, i.e. Christian theology. Contrary to the standard interpretation of it as a work for neophytes in theology, Jenkins argues that it is in fact a pedagogical work intended as the culmination of philosophical and theological studies of very gifted students. Jenkins considers our knowledge of the principles of a science. He argues that rational assent to the principles of sacred doctrine, the articles of faith, is due to the influence of grace on one's cognitive powers, because of which one is able immediately to apprehend these propositions as divinely revealed. His study will be of interest to readers in philosophy, theology and medieval studies.

This is the first complete edition of the later work of the medieval philosopher and theologian Henry of Harclay. In colloboration with Raymond Edwards, an English translation is printed on facing pages, making this work available to a much wider audience. The twenty-nine Quaestiones Ordinariae cover a range of topics in metaphysics, theology, physical science, philosophical anthropology and ethics, which were among the most important of those debated in the early fourteenth century. The articles provide a window to this era, as Harclay discusses many of the main questions of his day: whether and why we choose what is evil, how God can know the future and we can still be free, what a virtue is, whether the human soul survives death, whether all things are made up of atoms. This edition enables us to evaluate Harclay, not only in relation to other notable thinkers of his time (such as John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) but to appreciate the inner coherence of his own thought. An extensive introduction to Harclay's life, works and doctrine is provided. The volumes will also benefit scholars following the debates among lesser-studied thinkers such as William of Alnwick, Thomas of Sutton, Nicholas Trivet, and Robert Walsingham, whom this edition shows to have been in dialogue with Harclay during the years of the composition of his Quaestiones, 1310-1317. Because of the clarity of Harclay's thought and style, now mirrored in the English translation, the Quaestiones Ordinariae are an ideal way to introduce students to key problems in medieval philosophy, as well as to enable scholars to deepen their knowledge of the debates of this period. A further volume will publish Questions XV-XXIX.

Ausgangspunkt der Arbeit ist Galileis Versuch, das kopernikanische Weltsystem mit der heiligen Schrift in UEbereinstimmung zu bringen. Anhand zahlreicher Originaltexte, zum grossen Teil erstmalig in deutscher UEbersetzung publiziert, werden wichtige Phasen der Auseinandersetzung mit der Kosmologie von Aristoteles bis in die Zeit der Scholastik und von Kopernikus und Kepler aufgezeigt. Eine wichtige Rolle spielten dabei die Argumente fur oder gegen die Bewegung der Erde, wie auch fur oder gegen die Bewegung des Himmels. Die Grunde fur das Festhalten am aristotelisch-ptolemaischen Weltbild durch die Fachastronomen, Philosophen und Theologen werden dargelegt. Schliesslich wird die Rolle der reformatorischen Theologie, insbesondere von Calvin, fur die Durchsetzung des kopernikanischen Weltsystems untersucht.

This book reveals how Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera understood metaphor and imagination, and their role in the way human beings describe God. It demonstrates how these medieval Jewish thinkers engaged with Arabic-Aristotelian psychology, specifically with regard to imagination and its role in cognition. Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer reconstructs the process by which metaphoric language is taken up by the imagination and the role of imagination in rational thought. If imagination is a necessary component of thinking, how is Maimonides' idea of pure intellectual thought possible? An examination of select passages in the Guide, in both Judeo-Arabic and translation, shows how Maimonides' attitude towards imagination develops, and how translations contribute to a bifurcation of reason and imagination that does not acknowledge the nuances of the original text. Finally, the author shows how Falaquera's poetics forges a new direction for thinking about imagination.