This analysis of the human need to persuade offers a new, creative, application of Aristotelian essentialism to human discourse. Using Thomas Aquinas's adaptation of essentialism as a starting point, Jeffrey J. Maciejewski argues that persuasion is natural to human beings and that it possesses dispositional properties that bring about stages of human action that ultimately harmonize the operations of the mind in addition to harmonizing human relationships. Aquinas's philosophy of human nature is reviewed and re-examined in order to discover why it is that humans need to persuade themselves and each other. The book should be of considerable interest to scholars of human nature, Thomist philosophy, and those interested in the history of rhetoric and rhetorical theory.

As the concept of recognition shifts from philosophical theory to other fields of the humanities and social sciences, this volume explores the nature of this border category that exists in the space between sociological and philosophical considerations, related as it is to concepts such as status, prestige, the looking-glass self, respect, and dignity - at times being used interchangeably with these terms. Bringing together work from across academic disciplines, it presents theoretical conceptualizations of recognition, demonstrates its operationalization in historical and literary research, considers recognition as a fundamental problem of sociological theory and examines the concept as a marker of social distances and redistribution. An examination and demonstration of the full potential of recognition as a category, Understanding Recognition: Conceptual and Empirical Studies explores the contemporary meanings and manifestations of recognition and sheds light on its capacity to complement the notions of status, class or prestige. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory, philosophy, history and literary studies.

The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was an eminent philosopher and theologian whose Disputationes Metaphysicae was first published in Spain in 1597 and was widely studied throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. The Disputationes Metaphysicae had a great influence on the development of early modern philosophy and on such well-known figures as Descartes and Leibniz. This is the first time that Disputations 17, 18, and 19 have been translated into English. The Metaphysical Disputations provide an excellent philosophical introduction to the medieval Aristotelian discussion of efficient causality. The work constitutes a synthesis of monumental proportions: problematic issues are lucidly delineated and the various arguments are laid out in depth. Disputations 17, 18, and 19 deal explicitly with such issues as the nature of causality, the types of efficient causes, the prerequisites for causal action, causal contingency, human free choice, and chance.

An inspiring and provocative exploration of an alternative to traditional religion

Questions about the role of God and religion in today's world have never been more relevant or felt more powerfully. Many of us are searching for a place where we can find not only facts and scientific reason but also hope and moral courage. For some, answers are found in the divine. For others, including the New Atheists, religion is an "enemy."

But in Good Without God, Greg Epstein presents another, more balanced and inclusive response: Humanism. He highlights humanity's potential for goodness and the ways in which Humanists lead lives of purpose and compassion. Humanism can offer the sense of community we want and often need in good times and bad--and it teaches us that we can lead good and moral lives without the supernatural, without higher powers . . . without God.

This book uses the tools of analytic philosophy and close readings of medieval Christian philosophical and theological texts in order to survey what these thinkers said about what today we call 'disability.' The chapters also compare what these medieval authors say with modern and contemporary philosophers and theologians of disability. This dual approach enriches our understanding of the history of disability in medieval Christian philosophy and theology and opens up new avenues of research for contemporary scholars working on disability. The volume is divided into three parts. Part One addresses theoretical frameworks regarding disability, particularly on questions about the definition(s) of 'disability' and how disability relates to well-being. The chapters are then divided into two further parts in order to reflect ways that medieval philosophers and theologians theorized about disability. Part Two is on disability in this life, and Part Three is on disability in the afterlife. Taken as a whole, these chapters support two general observations. First, these philosophical theologians sometimes resist Greco-Roman ableist views by means of theological and philosophical anti-ableist arguments and counterexamples. Here we find some surprising disability-positive perspectives that are built into different accounts of a happy human life. We also find equal dignity of all human beings no matter ability or disability. Second, some of the seeds for modern and contemporary ableist views were developed in medieval Christian philosophy and theology, especially with regard to personhood and rationality, an intellectualist interpretation of the imago Dei, and the identification of human dignity with the use of reason. This volume surveys disability across a wide range of medieval Christian writers from the time of Augustine up to Francisco Suarez. It will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in medieval philosophy and theology, or disability studies.

The Latin Middle Ages were characterised by a vast array of different representations of nature. These conceptualisations of the natural world were developed according to the specific requirements of many different disciplines, with the consequent result of producing a fragmentation of images of nature. Despite this plurality, two main tendencies emerged. On the one hand, the natural world was seen as a reflection of God's perfection, teleologically ordered and structurally harmonious. On the other, it was also considered as a degraded version of the spiritual realm - a world of impeccable ideas, separate substances, and celestial movers. This book focuses on this tension between order and randomness, and idealisation and reality of nature in the Middle Ages. It provides a cutting-edge profile of the doctrinal and semantic richness of the medieval idea of nature, and also illustrates the structural interconnection among learned and scientific disciplines in the medieval period, stressing the fundamental bond linking together science and philosophy, on the one hand, and philosophy and theology, on the other. This book will appeal to scholars and students alike interested in Medieval European History, Theology, Philosophy, and Science.

The first publication in a new series-Christian Arabic Texts in Translation, edited by Stephen Davis-this book presents English-language excerpts from thirteenth-century commentaries on the Apocalypse of John by two Egyptian authors, Bulus al-Bushi and Ibn Katib Qas.ar. Accompanied by scholarly introductions and critical annotations, this edition will provide a valuable entry-point to important but understudied theological work taking place at the at the meeting-points of the medieval Christian and Muslim worlds.

This book is a study into the intellectual oeuvre of Juan Luis Vives, scholar and Renaissance humanist / The author analyses the political and philosophical aspects of Juan Luis Vives' writings and arguments, which will appeal to all those interested in Renaissance humanism / This book also brings to light Juan Luis Vives' arguments on legal and spiritual reform in Christendom, which will appeal to all those interested in the European Renaissance and it's effect upon the philosophical thinking of its contemporaries.

Bede and the Cosmos examines Bede's cosmology-his understanding of the universe and its laws. It explores his ideas regarding both the structure and mechanics of the created world and the relationship of that world to its Creator. Beginning with On the Nature of Things and moving on to survey his writings in other genres, it demonstrates the key role that natural philosophy played in shaping Bede's worldview, and explores the ramifications that this had on his cultural, theological and historical thought. From questions about angelic bodies and the destruction of the world at judgement day, to subtle arguments about free will and the meaning of history, Bede's fascinating and unique engagement with the natural world is explored in this comprehensive study.

Calling an epoch Middle Age already involves some sort of judgment. But Middle Ages represent a historic period, in which the identity was established, which was denied by the renaissance, modern world and which however is now being discovered again in its sense and beauty. It is a period in which a co-existence between faith and intellect, between ecclesiastical and profane culture was possible. It was a varied living space in which philosophy, mystique and practice could exist side by side. It is a world which is lost today and which we can get a hold of again only by intellectual appropriation.

In this book, Joseph Torchia, OP, explores the mid-rank of the soul theme in Plotinus and Augustine with a special focus on its metaphysical, epistemological, and moral implications for each thinker's intellectual outlooks. For both, human existence assumes the character of a prolonged journey-or, in the nautical imagery they both employ, an extended voyage. Augustine's account incorporates theological significance, addressing the ontological difference between God and creatures. As a rational creature, the soul stands mid-way between God and corporeal natures and, in broader terms, between eternity and temporality. Plotinus and Augustine on the Mid-Rank of Soul: Navigating Two Worlds encompasses two parts: Part I addresses the significance that Plotinus attributes to the soul's mid-rank within the broader context of his understanding of universal order, and Part II delineates Augustine's interpretation of the intermediary status of the soul with an ongoing reference to his spiritual and intellectual peregrinatio, as recounted in the Confessions.

Thomas Aquinas believed that human actions have species, such as theft or almsgiving. A problem arises, however, concerning his teaching on how such moral kinds are determined. Aquinas uses five different terms - end, object, matter, circumstance, and motive - to identify what gives species to human actions. Although similarities in meaning can be discerned between certain of these terms, apparent differences between others make it difficult to grasp how all five could refer to what specifies human actions. Joseph Pilsner examines and compares Aquinas's understanding of these five terms to see if a consistent account of his teaching on specification can be proposed.

Ibn Miskawayh, the Soul, and the Pursuit of Happiness explores the moral philosophy and context of Ibn Miskawayh (932–1030), an advocate of the intellectually cultivated life with a strong religious bent. Though not necessarily a major innovator, he sought through his writings to provide a moral compass for turbulent times, much like thinkers such as Petrarch (1304–1374), Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), Francois Rabelais (1494–1553), Montesquieu (1689–1755) or more recently, Mortimer Adler (1902–2001). Despite the tumultuous times in which they lived, these thinkers offered the world hope through a humanism that cultivated both civic and moral character. Whether directly expressed in his moral philosophy or illustrated in the examples of renowned or notorious historical figures, Miskawayh’s core idea is that one’s character is much easier kept than recovered. In this book, John Peter Radez shows how Miskawayh stands out not only as one of Islam’s first ethicists, but also one of its true intellectuals: thinker, historian, codifier of the science of adab, and a truly happy sage who represented the best of his generation’s intellectual and cultural elite. Miskawayh’s message of how to create lives worthy of human beings—his civic humanism—resonates today.

This book offers a new reading of Aquinas's views on faith. The author argues that the theological nature of faith is crucial to Aquinas's thought, and that it gives rise to a particular and otherwise incomprehensible relationship with reason. The first part of the book examines various modern and contemporary accounts of the relationship between faith and reason in Aquinas's thought. The author shows that these accounts are unconvincing because they exhibit what he calls a Lockean view of faith and reason, which maintains that the relationship between faith and reason should be treated only by way of evidence. In other words, the Lockean view ignores the specific nature of the Christian faith and the equally specific way it needs to relate to reason. The second part offers a comprehensive account of Aquinas's view of faith. It focuses on the way the divine grace and charity shape the relationship between evidence and human will. The final part of the book ties these ideas together to show how Christian faith, with its specifically theological nature, is perfectly compatible with rational debate. It also argues that employing the specificity of faith may constitute the best way to promote autonomous and successful rational investigations. Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Aquinas, philosophy of religion, Christian theology, and medieval philosophy.

During the seventies, there was a revival of systematic philosophy in general and of ontology in particular. At the same time, especially in Anglo-Saxon thinking, systematic philosophy interacted very creatively with the history of medieval philosophy. It seems to us that the work of John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) could substantially benefit these develop ments. Not only this, but his works cries out to be developed across the whole spectrum of theology -that science which, in the Middle Ages, ruled all others ('regina scientiarum'). This book is the outcome of several years of scholarship and friend ship during which, guided by Dr. A. Vos, we have studied the work of Scotus. Our research group is connected to the Theological Faculty of Utrecht and to the Dutch Franciscan Study Centre (Stichting Francis caans Studiecentrum). This study presents a translation and commentary of Lectura I 39, which, in our view, is noteable as one of the key texts in the history of systematic theology and philosophy. In this book we have used specialist language and argumentation, but at the same time have taken pains to make it useful to a circle of in terested readers wider than simply that of those well-versed in medieval scholasticism. In this way, we hope to present the difficult but instruc tive work of the 'subtle master' ('doctor subtilis') in such a way as to make it attractive to other scholars and students in theology and philoso phy."

This title was first published in 2002: JArg Breu belonged to the generation of German Renaissance artists that included DA1/4rer, Cranach, GrA1/4newald, Altdorfer, and, in his own city of Augsburg, Hans Burgkmair the Elder. His art registered the early reception of Italian art in Germany and spanned the dramatic years of the Reformation in Augsburg, when the city was riven with social and religious tensions. Uniquely, for a German artist, Breu left a diary chronicling his reaction to the massive social and cultural forces that engulfed him, including his own conversion to the Protestant cause. His story is representative of the condition of many artists during the Reformation years living through this watershed between two cultural eras, which witnessed the transfer of creative energies from religious painting to secular and applied forms of art. In this wide ranging and original study, Andrew Morrall examines the effect of these events on the nature and practice of JArg Breu's art and its reception, not just in his own period, but right up to the present day.

In this close analysis of Immanuel Kant's aesthetics in his Critique of Judgment, Dr. Julie N. Books, explains why Kant fails to provide a convincing basis for his desired necessity and universality of our aesthetic judgments about beauty. Drawing upon her extensive background in the visual arts, art history, and philosophy, Dr. Books provides a unique discussion of Kant's supersensible, illuminating how it cannot justify his a priori nature of our aesthetic judgments about beauty. She uses examples from the history of art, including paintings by Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rubens, and Constable, to support her views. This book will make a significant addition to courses on the philosophy of Kant, aesthetics, philosophy of art, metaphysics, the history of Western philosophy, ethics, psychology, and art history.

Few philosophers or theologians exerted as much influence on the shape of medieval thought as Thomas Aquinas. He ranks amongst the most famous of the Western philosophers and was responsible for almost single-handedly bringing the philosophy of Aristotle into harmony with Christianity. He was also one of the first philosophers to argue that philosophy and theology could support each other. The shape of metaphysics, theology, and Aristotelian thought today still bears the imprint of Aquinas' work.
In this extensive and deeply researched study, Eleonore Stump examines Aquinas' major works, Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles, and clearly assesses the vast range of Aquinas' thought. Philosophers, theologians, and students of the medieval period alike will find this unrivalled study an indispensable resource in researching and teaching Aquinas.

Here are The Prince and the most important of the Discourses newly translated into spare, vivid English. Why a new translation? Machiavelli was never the dull, worthy, pedantic author who appears in the pages of other translations, says David Wootton in his Introduction. In the pages that follow I have done my best to let him speak in his own voice. (And indeed, Wootton's Machiavelli does just that when the occasion demands: renderings of that most problematic of words, virtu, are in each instance followed by the Italian). Notes, a map, and an altogether remarkable Introduction no less authoritative for being grippingly readable, help make this edition an ideal first encounter with Machiavelli for any student of history and political theory.

This book argues for substantial and pervasive convergence between Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth with regards to God's relation to history and to the Christocentric orientation of that history. In short, it contends that Thomas can affirm what Barth calls "the humanity of God." The argument has great ecumenical potential, finding fundamental agreement between two of the most important figures in the Reformed and Roman Catholic traditions. It also contributes to contemporary theology by demonstrating the fruitfulness of exchanging metaphysical vocabularies for normative. Specifically, it shows how an account of God's mercy and justice can resolve theological debates most assume require metaphysical speculation.

The Metaphysics of Good and Evil is the first, full-length contemporary defence, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, of the Scholastic theory of good and evil - the theory of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and most medieval and Thomistic philosophers. Goodness is analysed as obedience to nature. Evil is analysed as the privation of goodness. Goodness, surprisingly, is found in the non-living world, but in the living world it takes on a special character. The book analyses various kinds of goodness, showing how they fit into the Scholastic theory. The privation theory of evil is given its most comprehensive contemporary defence, including an account of truthmakers for truths of privation and an analysis of how causation by privation should be understood. In the end, all evil is deviance - a departure from the goodness prescribed by a thing's essential nature. Key Features: Offers a comprehensive defence of a venerable metaphysical theory, conducted using the concepts and methods of analytic philosophy. Revives a much neglected approach to the question of good and evil in their most general nature. Shows how Aristotelian-Thomistic theory has more than historical relevance to a fundamental philosophical issue, but can be applied in a way that is both defensible and yet accessible to the modern philosopher. Provides what, for the Scholastic philosopher, is arguably the only solid metaphysical foundation for a separate treatment of the origins of morality.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781351116022, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 licence. DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351116022 Published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation. This volume is an investigation of how Augustine was received in the Carolingian period, and the elements of his thought which had an impact on Carolingian ideas of 'state', rulership and ethics. It focuses on Alcuin of York and Hincmar of Rheims, authors and political advisers to Charlemagne and to Charles the Bald, respectively. It examines how they used Augustinian political thought and ethics, as manifested in the De civitate Dei, to give more weight to their advice. A comparative approach sheds light on the differences between Charlemagne's reign and that of his grandson. It scrutinizes Alcuin's and Hincmar's discussions of empire, rulership and the moral conduct of political agents during which both drew on the De civitate Dei, although each came away with a different understanding. By means of a philological-historical approach, the book offers a deeper reading and treats the Latin texts as political discourses defined by content and language.

Humanism and Religion in Early Modern Spain brings together twenty-five essays by renowned historian Terence O'Reilly. The essays examine the interplay of religion and humanism in a series of writings composed in sixteenth-century Spain. It begins by presenting essential background: the coming together during the reign of the Emperor Charles V of Erasmian humanism and various movements of religious reform, some of them heterodox. It then moves on to the reign of Philip II, focusing on the mystical poetry and prose of St John of the Cross. It explores the influence on his writings of his humanist learning - classical, biblical and patristic. The third part of the book concerns a verse-epistle by John's contemporary, Francisco de Aldana. One chapter presents the text with a parallel version in English, whilst two others trace its debt to Florentine Neoplatonism, particularly the thought of Marsilio Ficino. The final part is devoted to the humanism of the poet and Scripture scholar Luis de Leon, and specifically to the confluence in his work of biblical and classical motifs. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of early modern Spanish history, as well those interested in literary studies and the history of religion.

the volume provides a set of criteria to evaluate providential divine action models, challenging the underlying theologically contentious assumptions of current discussions on divine providential action. It presents a comprehensive account of Aquinas' metaphysics of natural causation, contingency, and their relation to divine providence