How did the relations between philosophy and science evolve during the 17th and the 18th century? This book analyzes this issue by considering the history of Cartesianism in Dutch universities, as well as its legacy in the 18th century. It takes into account the ways in which the disciplines of logic and metaphysics became functional to the justification and reflection on the conceptual premises and the methods of natural philosophy, changing their traditional roles as art of reasoning and as science of being. This transformation took place as a result of two factors. First, logic and metaphysics (which included rational theology) were used to grant the status of indubitable knowledge of natural philosophy. Second, the debates internal to Cartesianism, as well as the emergence of alternative philosophical world-views (such as those of Hobbes, Spinoza, the experimental science and Newtonianism) progressively deprived such disciplines of their foundational function, and they started to become forms of reflection over given scientific practices, either Cartesian, experimental, or Newtonian.

This study shows how Kierkegaard's mature theological writings reflect his engagement with the wide range of theological positions which he encountered as a student, including German and Danish Romanticism, Hegelianism and the writings of Fichte and Schleiermacher. George Pattison draws on both major and lesser-known works to show the complexity and nuances of Kierkegaard's theological position, which remained closer to Schleiermacher's affirmation of religion as a 'feeling of absolute dependence' than to the Barthian denial of any 'point of contact', with which he is often associated. Pattison also explores ways in which Kierkegaard's theological thought can be related to thinkers such as Heidegger and John Henry Newman, and its continuing relevance to present-day debates about secular faith. His volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of philosophy and theology.

During the seventeenth century Francisco Suarez was considered one of the greatest philosophers of the age. He was the last great Scholastic thinker and profoundly influenced the thought of his contemporaries within both Catholic and Protestant circles. Suarez contributed to all fields of philosophy, from natural law, ethics, and political theory to natural philosophy, the philosophy of mind, and philosophical psychology, and-most importantly-to metaphysics, and natural theology. Echoes of his thinking reverberate through the philosophy of Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, and beyond. Yet curiously Suarez has not been studied in detail by historians of philosophy. It is only recently that he has emerged as a significant subject of critical and historical investigation for historians of late medieval and early modern philosophy. Only in recent years have small sections of Suarez's magnum opus, the Metaphysical Disputations, been translated into English, French, and Italian. The historical task of interpreting Suarez's thought is still in its infancy. The Philosophy of Francisco Suarez is one of the first collections in English written by the leading scholars who are largely responsible for this new trend in the history of philosophy. It covers all areas of Suarez's philosophical contributions, and contains cutting-edge research which will shape and frame scholarship on Suarez for years to come-as well as the history of seventeenth-century generally. This is an essential text for anyone interested in Suarez, the seventeenth-century world of ideas, and late Scholastic or early modern philosophy.

This book examines the importance of the Enlightenment for understanding the secular outlook of contemporary Western societies. It shows the new ways of thinking about religion that emerged during the 17th and 18th centuries and have had a great impact on how we address problems related to religion in the public sphere today. Based on the assumption that political concepts are rooted in historical realities, this collection combines the perspective of political philosophy with the perspective of the history of ideas. Does secularism imply that individuals are not free to manifest their beliefs in public? Is secularization the same as rejecting faith in the absolute? Can there be a universal rational core in every religion? Does freedom of expression always go hand in hand with freedom of conscience? Is secularism an invention of the predominantly Christian West, which cannot be applied in other contexts, specifically that of Muslim cultures? Answers to these and related questions are sought not only in current theories and debates in political philosophy, but also in the writings of Immanuel Kant, Benedict Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, Anthony Collins, Adriaan Koerbagh, Abbe Claude Yvon, Giovanni Paolo Marana, and others.

You want to know how it really is. Start here and by the end of the book you will know cause of the universe. Ultimate Cause is your most intimate companion It makes a difference to you yourself, your culture and the people of the world what you think about cause of the universe. You are your thoughts. They are all of the mortal universe except for Ultimate Cause. THINK The universe is a box. Think outside the box. Think of cause of the box. That is Ultimate Cause. This book is about cause of the whole universe from galaxies of stars to subatomic particles, from DNA to human cultures. In seeking to know, in contributing to knowing and in knowing cause of the universe all people, all thought, sciences, religions and philosophies are united. We know Ultimate Cause by inference from our knowledge of the universe as capability to cause the universe to be as it is. With the point of view of Ultimate Cause we see that UC likes and enjoys everything and everyone. We can too. We work and struggle in the processes of life. It all ends. It is all mortal --- except for Ultimate Cause. The mortality and recycling of the universe make sense when we think of it as a drama for UC to experience and enjoy. Our existence, birth and growth depend on mortality and recycling. UC is not mortal, so is not moral, likes and enjoys everyone and everything.. Ultimate Cause is our most intimate companion, sharing our every thought and feeling. UC has it all in memory beyond the existence of the universe. This is

Plato was central both to the genesis of Stoic theory and to subsequent debates within the Stoa. These essays provide new and detailed explorations of the complex relationship between Plato and the Greek and Roman Stoic traditions, and together they show the directness and independence with which Stoics examined Plato's writing. What were the philosophical incentives to consulting and then returning to Plato's dialogues? To what extent did Plato, rather than Xenophon or Antisthenes, control Stoic reconstructions of Socrates' ethics? What explains the particular focus of Stoic polemic against Plato, and how strong is the evidence for a later reconciliation between Plato and Stoicism? This book will be important for all scholars and advanced students interested in the relationship between a major philosopher and one of the most important philosophical movements.

This concise and accessible dictionary explores the central concepts of one of the most significant figures in the history of thought.

The author traces the history of 100 concepts from 'aletheia' to 'world' through Heidegger's entire career, from the earlier lectures to his later essays and seminars - including many that are not yet translated. The book is extremely user-friendly, containing a full index of the words and concepts discussed, and an introduction explaining Heidegger's use of language.

"A Heidegger Dictionary" enables the student to read Heidegger's immensely rich and varied works with understanding, and assigns him to his rightful place in both contemporary philosophy and in the history of the subject.

This book offers insight into the nature of meaningful discourse. It presents an argument of great intellectual scope written by an author with more than four decades of experience. Readers will gain a deeper understanding into three theories of the logos: analytic, dialectical, and oceanic. The author first introduces and contrasts these three theories. He then assesses them with respect to their basic parameters: necessity, truth, negation, infinity, as well as their use in mathematics. Analytic Aristotelian logic has traditionally claimed uniqueness, most recently in its Fregean and post-Fregean variants. Dialectical logic was first proposed by Hegel. The account presented here cuts through the dense, often incomprehensible Hegelian text. Oceanic logic was never identified as such, but the author gives numerous examples of its use from the history of philosophy. The final chapter addresses the plurality of the three theories and of how we should deal with it. The author first worked in analytic logic in the 1970s and 1980s, first researched dialectical logic in the 1990s, and discovered oceanic logic in the 2000s. This book represents the culmination of reflections that have lasted an entire scholarly career.

A comprehensive and systematic reconstruction of the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, perhaps America's most far-ranging and original philosopher, which reveals the unity of his complex and influential body of thought.

We are still in the early stages of understanding the thought of C. S. Peirce (1839-1914). Although much good work has been done in isolated areas, relatively little considers the Peircean system as a whole. Peirce made it his life's work to construct a scientifically sophisticated and logically rigorous philosophical system, culminating in a realist epistemology and a metaphysical theory ("synechism") that postulates the connectedness of all things in a universal evolutionary process.

In "The Continuity of Peirce's Thought," Kelly Parker shows how the principle of continuity functions in phenomenology and semeiotics, the two most novel and important of Peirce's philosophical sciences, which mediate between mathematics and metaphysics. Parker argues that Peirce's concept of continuity is the central organizing theme of the entire Peircean philosophical corpus. He explains how Peirce's unique conception of the mathematical continuum shapes the broad sweep of his thought, extending from mathematics to metaphysics and in religion. He thus provides a convenient and useful overview of Peirce's philosophical system, situating it within the history of ideas and mapping interconnections among the diverse areas of Peirce's work.

This challenging yet helpful book adopts an innovative approach to achieve the ambitious goal of more fully understanding the interrelationship of all the elements in the entire corpus of Peirce's writings. Given Peirce's importance in fields ranging from philosophy to mathematics to literary and cultural studies, this new book should appeal to all who seek a fuller, unified understanding of the career and overarching contributions of Peirce, one of the key figures in the American philosophical tradition.

The stereotype of Casanova as a promiscuous and unscrupulous lover has been so pervasive that generations of historians have failed to take serious account of his philosophical legacy. This has recently changed, however, as the publication of the definitive edition of his memoirs and the majority of his longer treatises has heralded a surge of interest in the writer. This book constitutes an interpretive turn in Casanova studies in which the author is positioned as a highly perceptive and engaged observer of the Enlightenment. Drawing primarily on Casanova's large body of manuscripts and lesser-known works, the contributors reveal a philosopher whose writings covered topics ranging from sensual pleasure to suicide. Analysing Casanova's oeuvre from the perspective of moral philosophy, contributors show how several of his works - including his historical writings and satirical essays on human folly - contribute to the Enlightenment quest for a secular morality. A major feature of this book is the first English annotated translation of Federico Di Trocchio's seminal article 'The philosophy of an adventurer', which paved the way for a re-evaluation of Casanova as a serious philosopher. In subsequent chapters contributors uncover the Italian context of Casanova's anticlericalism, analyse the sources of his views on suicide and explore the philosophical dialogues contained in his recently published manuscripts. Casanova: Enlightenment philosopher marks a turning point in literary and philosophical studies of the eighteenth century, and is an indispensable resource for analysing and interpreting the work of this previously overlooked Enlightenment thinker.

In this book, Robert Doran offers the first in-depth treatment of the major theories of the sublime, from the ancient Greek treatise On the Sublime (attributed to 'Longinus') and its reception in early modern literary theory to the philosophical accounts of Burke and Kant. Doran explains how and why the sublime became a key concept of modern thought and shows how the various theories of sublimity are united by a common structure - the paradoxical experience of being at once overwhelmed and exalted - and a common concern: the preservation of a notion of transcendence in the face of the secularization of modern culture. Combining intellectual history with literary theory and philosophical analysis, his book provides a new, searching and multilayered account of a concept that continues to stimulate thought about our responses to art, nature and human events.

Deriving from the name of its originator, Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), Thomism is a body of philosophical and theological ideas that seeks to articulate the intellectual content of Catholic Christianity. St Thomas was one of the main figures in the medieval Scholastic movement and wrote some of the greatest ever commentaries on Aristotle (also available from Thoemmes Press). Aquinas and his followers believed that faith and reason are both routes to truth - a conflict between them being impossible because they both originate in God - and Aquinas's celebrated "Five Ways" of proving the existence of God have remained central objects of study in the philosophy of religion ever since. The historical influence of Thomism has been enormous, and Thomist theologians and philosophers continue to work in what may be the longest continuous intellectual tradition in the Western world. Twentieth-century Thomists had important things to say in all of the key areas of philosophy: logic, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, natural science and philosophical anthropology. John Haldane has made a considered selection of half a dozen works which represent the best expositions of Thomistic approaches from the period between the first translation of Aquinas's Summa Theologiae into English (1912) and the start of the Second Vatican Council (1962) which transformed the intellectual world of Catholicism. In his substantial introduction to the set, Haldane gives an overview of the history of Thomism and locates these six books within it. He also looks ahead to the prospects for Thomism in the 21st century and beyond.

As read on BBC Radio 4's 'Book of the Week', a timely, moving and profound exploration of how writers, composers and artists have searched for solace while facing loss, tragedy and crisis, from the historian and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist Michael Ignatieff. 'This erudite and heartfelt survey reminds us that the need for consolation is timeless, as are the inspiring words and examples of those who walked this path before us.' Toronto Star When we lose someone we love, when we suffer loss or defeat, when catastrophe strikes - war, famine, pandemic - we go in search of consolation. Once the province of priests and philosophers, the language of consolation has largely vanished from our modern vocabulary, and the places where it was offered, houses of religion, are often empty. Rejecting the solace of ancient religious texts, humanity since the sixteenth century has increasingly placed its faith in science, ideology, and the therapeutic. How do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In a series of portraits of writers, artists, and musicians searching for consolation - from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova, and Primo Levi - writer and historian Michael Ignatieff shows how men and women in extremity have looked to each other across time to recover hope and resilience. Recreating the moments when great figures found the courage to confront their fate and the determination to continue unafraid, On Consolation takes those stories into the present, movingly contending that we can revive these traditions of consolation to meet the anguish and uncertainties of the twenty-first century.

This volume brings to English readers the finest postwar German-language scholarship on Kant's moral and legal philosophy. Examining Kant's relation to predecessors such as Hutcheson, Wolff, and Baumgarten, it clarifies the central issues in each of Kant's major works in practical philosophy, including The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, The Critique of Practical Reason, and The Metaphysics of Morals. It also examines the relation of Kant's philosophy to politics. Collectively, the essays in this volume provide English readers with a direct view of how leading German philosophers are now regarding Kant's revolutionary practical philosophy, one of the outstanding achievements of German thought.

One important task of metaphysics is to answer the question of what it is for an object to exist. The first part of this book offers a systematic reconstruction and critique of contemporary views on existence. The upshot of this part is that the contemporary debate has reached an impasse because none of the considered views is able to formulate a satisfactory answer to this fundamental metaphysical question. The second part reconstructs Thomas Aquinas's view on existence (esse) and argues that it contributes a new perspective which allows us to see why the contemporary debate has reached this impasse. It has come to this point because it has taken a premise for granted which Aquinas's view rejects, namely, that the existence of an object consists in something's having a property. A decisive contribution of Aquinas's theory of esse is that it makes use of the ideas of metaphysical participation and composition. In this way, it can be explained how an object can have esse without being the case that esse is a property of it. This book brings together a reconstruction from the history of philosophy with a systematic study on existence and is therefore relevant for scholars interested in contemporary or medieval theories of existence.

The book grapples with one of the most difficult questions confronting the contemporary world: the problem of the other, which includes ethical, political, and metaphysical aspects. A widespread approach in the history of the discourse on the other, systematically formulated by Emmanuel Levinas and his followers, has invested this term with an almost mythical quality-the other is everybody else but never a specific person, an abstraction of historical human existence. This book offers an alternative view, turning the other into a real being, through a carefully described process involving two dimensions referred to as the ethic of loyalty to the visible and the ethic of inner retreat. Tracing the course of this process in life and in literature, the book presents a broad and lucid picture intriguing to philosophers and also accessible to readers concerned with questions touching on the meaning of life, ethics, and politics, and particularly relevant to the burning issues surrounding attitudes to immigrants as others and to the relationship with God, the ultimate other.

Early modern philosophers looked for inspiration to the later ancient thinkers when they rebelled against the dominant Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. The impact of the Hellenistic philosophers on such philosophers as Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, and Locke was profound and is ripe for reassessment. These new essays offer precisely that. Leading historians of philosophy explore the connections between Hellenistic and early modern philosophy by taking account of new scholarly and philosophical advances in these essays. There work provides invaluable point of reference for philosophers, historians of ideas and classicists.

This book proposes a novel position in the debate on scientific realism: Modal Empiricism. Modal empiricism is the view that the aim of science is to provide theories that correctly delimit, in a unified way, the range of experiences that are naturally possible given our position in the world. The view is associated with a pragmatic account of scientific representation and an original notion of situated modalities, together with an inductive epistemology for modalities. It purports to provide a faithful account of scientific practice and of its impressive achievements, and defuses the main motivations for scientific realism. More generally, Modal Empiricism purports to be the precise articulation of a pragmatist stance towards science. This book is of interest to any philosopher involved in the debate on scientific realism, or interested in how to properly understand the content, aim and achievements of science.

Continuums Guides for the Perplexed are clear, concise, and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers, and subjects that students and readers can find especially challengingGCoor, indeed, downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to fathom, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material. Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most influential ethicists of recent times. The importance and relevance of his work has been recognized and celebrated within philosophy, religion, sociology, political theory, and other disciplines. His writing, however, undoubtedly presents the reader with a significant challenge. Often labyrinthine, paradoxical, and opaque, Levinas work seeks to articulate a complex ideology and some hard-to-grasp concepts. Levinas: A Guide for the Perplexed is the ideal text for the student, teacher, or lay reader who wants to develop a full and effective understanding of this major modern philosopher. Focused upon precisely why Levinas is a difficult subject for study, the text guides the reader through the core themes and concepts in his writing, providing a thorough overview of his work. Valuably, the book also emphasizes Levinass importance for contemporary ethical problems and thinking.

Written by a group of leading scholars, this unique collection of essays investigates the views of both pagan and Christian philosophers on causation and the creation of the cosmos. Structured in two parts, the volume first looks at divine agency and how late antique thinkers, including the Stoics, Plotinus, Porphyry, Simplicius, Philoponus and Gregory of Nyssa, tackled questions such as: is the cosmos eternal? Did it come from nothing or from something pre-existing? How was it caused to come into existence? Is it material or immaterial? The second part looks at questions concerning human agency and responsibility, including the problem of evil and the nature of will, considering thinkers such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus and Augustine. Highlighting some of the most important and interesting aspects of these philosophical debates, the volume will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of philosophy, classics, theology and ancient history.

Hans-Georg Gadamer is depicted as a paradoxical figure in the literature. When Gadamer's work is approached by itself, outside the history of hermeneutics, he is generally presented as the disciple of Martin Heidegger, whose main theoretical contribution lies in having transposed his ontological hermeneutics into the sphere of the human sciences. Usually the master-student relation ends with a break between the two brought about by the student's desire to become herself a master. In Gadamer and Heidegger's case, scholarship has always excluded the possibility of such a symbolic parricide. However, when Gadamer's work is approached from the history of hermeneutics, he, not Heidegger, is revered as the central figure of hermeneutic theory in the twentieth century, and scholars perceive the works of the latter-together with those of his immediate forerunners Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey-as mere preambles to the great hermeneutic theory proposed by Truth and Method, and the works of those following him as footnotes to it. Gadamer and the Question of Understanding: Between Heidegger and Derrida dismantles this paradox by showing, on the one hand, that Gadamer's translation of Heidegger involved, as he himself says, a series of "essential alterations" to the original which make philosophical hermeneutics a more coherent and better articulated hermeneutic theory, one offering a more faithful description of the phenomenon of understanding than Heidegger's. And, on the other hand, by taking the dossier of the famous encounter between Gadamer and Derrida as its cue, Adrian Costache demonstrates that in light of Derrida's deconstruction, every step Gadamer takes forward from Heidegger as well as from Schleiermacher and Dilthey-however necessary--is problematic in itself. The insights in this book will be valuable to students and scholars interested in modern and contemporary European philosophy, especially those focusing on philosophical hermeneutics and deconstruction, as well as those working in social sciences that have incorporated a hermeneutic approach to their investigations, such as pedagogy, sociology, psychotherapy, law, and nursing.

In the fields of metaphysics and epistemology, ethics and political thought, idealism can generate controversy and disagreement. This title is part of the "Idealism" series, which finds in idealism new features of interest and a perspective which is germane to our own philosophical concerns. This text is a collection of essays analyzing the impact of the thought of F.H. Bradley (1846-1924) on philosophy throughout the English-speaking world. Bradley's complex version of absolute idealism plays a key role not only in idealist philosophy, politics and ethics, but also in the development of modern logic, of analytical philosophy, and of pragmatism, as well as in the thinking of figures such as R.G. Collingwood and A.N. Whitehead. The work of a group of Canadian philosophers writing from widely different standpoints, the essays in this volume define both the nature and scale of Bradley's influence and continuing significance in large areas of debate in 20th-century philosophy. Topics covered include: the history of idealism in the 20th century; Bradley's relation to figures such as Bernard Bosanquet, C.A. Campbell, Brand Blanshard, John Watson, John Dewey, R.G. Collingwood, and A.N. Whitehead; Bradley's influence on 20th-century empiricism, modern logic, and analytical philosophy; and his significance for contemporary debates in epistemology and ethics.