How did people in the early modern period deal with the question of how to lead a good life in order to also experience a good death? This discourse, deeply rooted in antiquity, continued during the Middle Ages, and then grew significantly in intensity in the 16th and 17th centuries, primarily as a result of the impact of the Protestant Reformation and of innovative medical research, especially the work of Theoprastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus. Theological, philosophical, ethical, moral, medical, and hygienic considerations all intersected and, at times, blended with each other.

Theophrastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541), better known as Paracelsus, was a physician, natural magician, radical activist of the early Reformation, and commentator on the social and religious issues of his day. This elegantly written book is the defining account of the man known as "Paracelsus the Great." Drawing on the whole range of relevant manuscript and printed sources, Charles Webster considers Paracelsus's life and works, explores his advocacy for total reform of the clerical, legal, and medical professions, and describes his precise expectations for the Christian church of the future, focusing on his affinity with the spiritualist Anabaptists. The author concludes with the apocalyptic speculations of Paracelsus, who vividly portrayed the sense of endtime crisis that constituted one of the defining characteristics of his era.

This book offers a comparative study of emotion in Arabic Islamic and English Christian contemplative texts, c. 1110-1250, contributing to the emerging interest in 'globalization' in medieval studies. A.S.Lazikani argues for the necessity of placing medieval English devotional texts in a more global context and seeks to modify influential narratives on the 'history of emotions' to enable this more wide-ranging critical outlook. Across eight chapters, the book examines the dialogic encounters generated by comparative readings of Muhyddin Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240), 'Umar Ibn al-Farid (1181-1235), Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari (d. 1269), Ancrene Wisse (c. 1225), and the Wooing Group (c. 1225). Investigating the two-fold 'paradigms of love' in the figure of Jesus and in the image of the heart, the (dis)embodied language of affect, and the affective semiotics of absence and secrecy, Lazikani demonstrates an interconnection between the religious traditions of early Christianity and Islam.

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA prasentieren seit ihrer Grundung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universitat zu Koeln. Das Kernstuck der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijahrigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Koelner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor uber 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Grundungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinare Charakter dieser Kongresse pragt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beitrage aus allen mediavistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaften sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters.

Die Bettelorden der Franziskaner und Dominikaner sahen sich ab 1250 gezwungen, ihre Existenz und ihre Aktivitaten in Predigt und Theologie zu rechtfertigen. In diesen auf hohem intellektuellen Niveau ausgefochtenen Kontroversen spielte der 1252 von Koln nach Paris berufene Thomas von Aquin eine herausragende Rolle, die in der hier vorgestellten Studie im einzelnen untersucht wird. Das zentrale Dokument ist die vom Autor analysierte Schrift des Aquinaten Contra impugnantes (1255), die zugleich Apologie und Programm ist, in dem sich das Selbstverstandnis einer neuen Elite mit neuen Aufgaben in der Kirche artikuliert. Das Buch ist zunachst ein Beitrag zu einem wichtigen Thema der Frommigkeitsgeschichte, dann aber auch eine Untersuchung zu den Fundamenten der uberaus folgenreichen Armuts- und Bettelordensbewegung. Entstanden ist eine genetische Darstellung aller mit der Existenz und der Funktion des Dominikanerordens verbundenen Themen, wie es sie bisher noch nicht gab."

Francesco Filelfo's philosophical dialogue On Exile (ca. 1440) depicts a prominent group of Florentine noblemen and humanists, driven from their city by Cosimo de' Medici, discussing the sufferings imposed by exile such as poverty and loss of reputation, and the best way to endure and even profit from them. This volume contains the first complete edition of the Latin text and the first complete translation into any modern language.

Die Frage nach der Eigenstandigkeit des AEsthetischen ist ein Schlusselproblem in der aktuellen Debatte. Ein wichtiger Referenzpunkt bleibt dabei die "Kritik der Urteilskraft", gilt doch Kant bis heute als einer der entschiedensten Gegner einer Vereinnahmung des AEsthetischen durch Theorie. Mit dem Bild eines freien Spiels der Erkenntnisvermoegen macht er einen Vorschlag, der durch seine intuitive Plausibilitat besticht. Dieses Buch fragt nach der argumentativen Berechtigung fur den Spielbegriff und unternimmt eine Auseinandersetzung mit Kant, die uber die Bruche seines Texts nicht hinweggeht. Was das Spiel in der AEsthetik soll, so die These der Interpretation, kann sich erst in einem groesseren systematischen Rahmen, unter voller Berucksichtigung der praktizistischen Tendenz in Kants Ansatz klaren.

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA prasentieren seit ihrer Grundung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universitat zu Koeln. Das Kernstuck der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijahrigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Koelner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor uber 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Grundungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinare Charakter dieser Kongresse pragt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beitrage aus allen mediavistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaften sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters.

"Codices Boethiani" is a catalogue of all the Latin manuscripts of the works of Boethius, including his translations of Aristotle and Porphyry. When completed, it is expected to comprise seven volumes arranged geographically, and a general index (although each volume will also be indexed separately). The conspectus includes fragmentary texts, as witnesses to once-complete versions, but not excerpts, abbreviations and vernacular translations. Each entry comprises a short physical description of the manuscript, a complete list of contents, a note of any glosses present, a brief summary of any decoration, the provenance of the manuscript and a select bibliography. Particular attention is paid to the use of the manuscripts. Since Boethius was a pillar of artes teaching, these manuscripts give a particularly interesting insight into who was taught what, where, to what level, and in what way. The three volumes published so far are: "I Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland (WI Surveys & Texts 25)"; "II Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland (WI Surveys & Texts 27)"; and, "III Italy and the Vatican City (WI Surveys & Texts 28)". The number of Boethian manuscripts in the Iberian Peninsula is modest compared with those in the British Isles and Italy, partly, perhaps, because of the Arab domination there; the oldest manuscripts come from Ripoll in Catalonia, which was always under Christian control. The Portuguese manuscripts contain 5 Boethian items, the Spanish, 153, of which the De Consolatione Philosophiae occurs most often. Some of these manuscripts are of exceptional quality, and many of them include extensive glosses.

Thomas Aquinas is one of the most important figures in the history of philosophy and philosophical theology. Relying on a deep understanding of Aristotle, Aquinas developed a metaphysical framework that is comprehensive, detailed, and flexible. Within that framework, he formulated a range of strikingly original and carefully explicated views in areas including natural theology, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, and ethics. In this book, Christopher Hughes focuses on Aquinas's thought from an analytic philosophical perspective. After an overview of Aquinas's life and works, Hughes discusses Aquinas's metaphysics, including his conception of substance, matter, and form, and his account of essence and existence; and his theory of the nature of human beings, including his critique of a substance dualism that Aquinas attributes to Plato, but is usually associated with Descartes. In the final chapters, Hughes discusses Aquinas's account of the existence and nature of God, and his treatment of the problem of evil, as well as his ideas about the relation of goodness to being, choice, and happiness. Aquinas on Being, Goodness, and God is essential reading for students and scholars of Aquinas, and anyone interested in philosophy of religion or the history of medieval philosophy.

This comprehensive reference volume features essays by some of the most distinguished scholars in the field.
Provides a comprehensive "who's who" guide to medieval philosophers.
Offers a refreshing mix of essays providing historical context followed by 140 alphabetically arranged entries on individual thinkers.
Constitutes an extensively cross-referenced and indexed source.
Written by a distinguished cast of philosophers.
Spans the history of medieval philosophy from the fourth century AD to the fifteenth century.

Fur Meister Eckhart (um 1260 - um 1328) ist der Mensch als Ebenbild Gottes ein denkendes Wesen, wobei das Denken fur ihn epistemologische und ontologische Relevanz hat. Diese Arbeit behandelt wesentliche Aspekte von Eckharts Denken, so seine Intellekttheorie, die theoontologische Wertung der Ichs, die Armut, die Liebe, die Zeit, das Nichts, das Gluck und den Frieden.

"One of the most provocative new books of the year, and, for me, mindblowing." -Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind "Kripal makes many sympathetic points about the present spiritual state of America. . . . [He] continues to believe that spirituality and science should not contradict each other." -New York Times Book Review "Kripal prompts us to reflect on our personal assumptions, as well as the shared assumptions that create and maintain our institutions. . . . [His] work will likely become more and more relevant to more and more areas of inquiry as the century unfolds. It may even open up a new space for Americans to reevaluate the personal and cultural narratives they have inherited, and to imagine alternative futures." -Los Angeles Review of Books A "flip," writes Jeffrey J. Kripal, is "a reversal of perspective," "a new real," often born of an extreme, life-changing experience. The Flip is Kripal's ambitious, visionary program for unifying the sciences and the humanities to expand our minds, open our hearts, and negotiate a peaceful resolution to the culture wars. Combining accounts of rationalists' spiritual awakenings and consciousness explorations by philosophers, neuroscientists, and mystics within a framework of the history of science and religion, Kripal compellingly signals a path to mending our fractured world. Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University and is the associate director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. He has previously taught at Harvard Divinity School and Westminster College and is the author of eight books, including The Flip. He lives in Houston, Texas.

John Duns Scotus is commonly recognized as one of the most original thinkers of medieval philosophy. His influence on subsequent philosophers and theologians is enormous and extends well beyond the limits of the Middle Ages. His thought, however, might be intimidating for the non-initiated, because of the sheer number of topics he touched on and the difficulty of his style. The eleven essays collected here, especially written for this volume by some of the leading scholars in the field, take the reader through various topics, including Duns Scotus's intellectual environment, his argument for the existence of God, and his conceptions of modality, order, causality, freedom, and human nature. This volume provides a reliable point of entrance to the thought of Duns Scotus while giving a snapshot of some of the best research that is now being done on this difficult but intellectually rewarding thinker.

Augustinus' "Bekenntnisse" erschlossen der Antike einen fremden seelischen Bezirk: das Reich der Innerlichkeit. Nie zuvor hatte ein Mensch seinen Lebensweg so eindringlich als ein Taumeln zwischen Himmel und Erde, dem heissen Sehnen nach wahrem Gluck und den verwirrenden Leidenschaften geschildert. Ohne das Vorbild der "Confessiones" waren weder Luthers Glaubenslehre noch die autobiographischen Werke Rousseaus und Goethes vorstellbar. Ubersetzt von Wilhelm Timme."

Fifteen of these essays by one of the leading authorities on Renaissance Platonism explore the complex philosophical, hermeneutical, and mythological issues addressed by the Florentine, Marsilio Ficino (1433-99). Ficino was the pre-eminent Platonist of his time and a distinguished philosopher, scholar and magus who had an enormous influence on the intellectual and cultural life of two and a half centuries, and who is one of the most important witnesses to the preoccupations of his age, above all to its fascination with ancient poetry and philosophy and their uneasy accommodation as an ancient "theology" with Christianity. Two further essays treat of cognate themes taken up by Ficino's younger friend and rival, the dazzling prince of Concordia, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94), who was fascinated by Platonism in his youth but also by other philosophical legacies from the past, including Cabala and the Scholastic Aristotelianism of the Middle Ages. This volume's initial essay serves as an introduction to the comprehensive phenomenon of Renaissance Platonism.

The well-known Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco discloses for the first time to English-speaking readers the unsuspected richness, breadth, complexity, and originality of the aesthetic theories advanced by the influential medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas, heretofore known principally as a scholastic theologian. Inheriting his basic ideas and conceptions of art and beauty from the classical world, Aquinas transformed or modified these ideas in the light of Christian theology and of developments in metaphysics and optics during the thirteenth century.

Setting the stage with an account of the vivid aesthetic and artistic sensibility that flourished in medieval times, Eco examines Aquinas's conception of transcendental beauty, his theory of aesthetic perception or "visio," and his account of the three conditions of beauty--integrity, proportion, and clarity--that, centuries later, emerged again in the writings of the young James Joyce. He examines the concrete application of these theories in Aquinas's reflections on God, mankind, music, poetry, and scripture. He discusses Aquinas's views on art and compares his poetics with Dante's. In a final chapter added to the second Italian edition, Eco examines how Aquinas's aesthetics came to be absorbed and superseded in late medieval times and draws instructive parallels between Thomistic methodology and contemporary structuralism. As the only book-length treatment of Aquinas's aesthetics available in English, this volume should interest philosophers, medievalists, historians, critics, and anyone involved in poetics, aesthetics, or the history of ideas.

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA prasentieren seit ihrer Grundung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universitat zu Koeln. Das Kernstuck der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijahrigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Koelner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor uber 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Grundungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinare Charakter dieser Kongresse pragt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beitrage aus allen mediavistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaften sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters.

Too often the study of philosophical texts is carried out in ways that do not pay significant attention to how the ideas contained within them are presented, articulated, and developed. This was not always the case. The contributors to this collected work consider Jewish philosophy in the medieval period, when new genres and forms of written expression were flourishing in the wake of renewed interest in ancient philosophy. Many medieval Jewish philosophers were highly accomplished poets, for example, and made conscious efforts to write in a poetic style. This volume turns attention to the connections that medieval Jewish thinkers made between the literary, the exegetical, the philosophical, and the mystical to shed light on the creativity and diversity of medieval thought. As they broaden the scope of what counts as medieval Jewish philosophy, the essays collected here consider questions about how an argument is formed, how text is put into the service of philosophy, and the social and intellectual environment in which philosophical texts were produced.

Janet Coleman's two volume history of European political theorizing, from the ancient Greeks to the Renaissance is the introduction which many have been waiting for. It treats some of the most influential writers who have been considered by educated Europeans down the centuries to have helped to construct their identity, their shared "languages of politics" about the principles and practices of good government, and the history of European philosophy. It seeks to uncover and reconstruct the emergence of the "state" and the various European political theories which justified it.

This volume continues the story by focusing on medieval and Renaissance thinkers and includes extensive discussion of the practices that underpinned medieval political theories and which continued to play crucial roles in the eventual development of early-modern political institutions and debates. Throughout the author draws on recent scholarly commentaries written by specialists in philosophy, contemporary political theory, and on medieval and Renaissance history and theology. She shows that the medieval and Renaissance theorists' arguments can be seen as logical and coherent if we can grasp the questions they thought it important to answer. Janet Coleman strikes a balance between trying to understand the philosophical cogency of medieval and Renaissance arguments on the one hand, and on the other, elucidating why historically-situated medieval and Renaissance thinkers, respectively, thought the ways they did about politics; and why we often think otherwise.

The volume will meet the needs of students of philosophy, history and politics, proving to be an indispensable secondary source which aims tosituate, explain, and provoke thought about the major works of political theory likely to be encountered by students of this period and beyond.