In this highly original work, Robert Nozick develops new views on philosophy’s central topics and weaves them into a unified philosophical perspective. It is many years since a major work in English has ranged so widely over philosophy’s fundamental concerns: the identity of the self, knowledge and skepticism, free will, the question of why there is something rather than nothing, the foundations of ethics, the meaning of life.
Writing in a distinctive and personal philosophical voice, Mr. Nozick presents a new mode of philosophizing. In place of the usual semi-coercive philosophical goals of proof, of forcing people to accept conclusions, this book seeks philosophical explanations and understanding, and thereby stays truer to the original motivations for being interested in philosophy.
Combining new concepts, daring hypotheses, rigorous reasoning, and playful exploration, the book exemplifies how philosophy can be part of the humanities.
“It is a great pity that we in the United States do not have our own Roger Scruton. As his . . . collection of essays reminds us, he is an accomplished philosopher who writes trenchantly about many important political, social and religious issues, who cares passionately about art and culture and who is also a brilliant conservative polemicist. . . .
“Mr. Scruton has two great virtues as a critic. One is his ability to combine a delicate appreciation of culture with the robust analytical skills of a trained philosopher. . . .
“Mr. Scruton’s other great virtue is his habit of assessing things from the inside, taking them on their own terms. If his judgments are often harsh, one nevertheless comes away feeling that he has made the best case possible for his subject. This makes his criticism more devastating yet also more generous than the criticism of most other commentator.” – Roger Kimball, New York Times Book Review
“Each essay has been constructed with considerable care, and the positions taken are clearly stated and soundly argued. . . . He shows . . . that the philosopher-critic is alive and well. . . . Recommended for all academic libraries.” – Library Journal
“[Scruton] writes eloquently of the way in which social bonds, if refashioned in contractual form. ‘become profane, a system of façade, a Disneyland version of what was formerly dignified and monumental.’” – Peter Clarke, London Review of Books
“If only every introductory course were as engaging as Philosophy 101 by Peter Kreeft! Kreeft offers a marvelous way of using Plato’s Apology both to introduce the whole scope of philosopher and to evoke a personal response. Even the diffident freshman, prone to keeping a new subject like philosopher as arm’s length, will feel the enchantment of love-for-wisdom that philosophy is supposed to be.” – Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., chair, Department of Philosophy, Fordham University
“A terrific introduction to philosophy through this not uncontroversial commentary on Plato’s Apology. Not everyone will agree that Socrates provided the best possible defense for himself nor that he intended to. But Kreeft’s is an eminently defensible reading of the Apology and will awaken many a student to the delights of Plato and Philosophy. The comparisons of Socrates with Christ are fascinating. This book will go a long way to consoling those who are not privileged to have Socrates or Kreeft as teachers in the flesh.” – Janet Smith, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit
Philosophy and the Young Child presents striking evidence that young children naturally engage in a brand of thought that is genuinely philosophical. In a series of exquisite examples that could only have been gathered by a professional philosopher with an extraordinary respect for young minds, Gareth Matthews demonstrates that children have a capacity for puzzlement and mental play that leads them to tackle many of the classic problems of knowledge, value, and existence that have traditionally formed the core of philosophical thought. Matthews’s anecdotes reveal children reasoning about these problems in a way that must be taken seriously by anyone who wants to understand how children think.
Philosophy and the Young Child provides a powerful antidote to the widespread tendency to underestimate children’s mental ability and patronize their natural curiosity. As Matthews shows, even child psychologists as insightful as Piaget have failed to grasp the subtlety of children’s philosophical frame of mind. Only in children’s literature does Matthews find any sensitivity to children’s natural philosophizing. Old favorites like Winnie the Pooh, the Oz books, and The Bear That Wasn’t are full of philosophical puzzlers that amuse and engage children. More important, these stories manage to strip away the mental defensiveness and conventionality that so often prevent adults from appreciating the way children begin to think about the world.
Gareth Matthews believes that adults have much to gain if they can learn to “do philosophy” with children, and his book is a rich source of useful suggestions for parents, teachers, students, and anyone else who might like to try.
So many questions, such an imagination, endless speculation: the child seems to be a natural philosopher--until the ripe old age of eight or nine, when the spirit of inquiry mysteriously fades. What happened? Was it something we did--or didn't do? Was the child truly the philosophical being he once seemed? Gareth Matthews takes up these concerns in The Philosophy of Childhood, a searching account of children's philosophical potential and of childhood as an area of philosophical inquiry. Seeking a philosophy that represents the range and depth of children's inquisitive minds, Matthews explores both how children think and how we, as adults, think about them.
Adult preconceptions about the mental life of children tend to discourage a child's philosophical bent, Matthews suggests, and he probes the sources of these limiting assumptions: restrictive notions of maturation and conceptual development; possible lapses in episodic memory; the experience of identity and growth as "successive selves," which separate us from our own childhoods. By exposing the underpinnings of our adult views of childhood, Matthews, a philosopher and longtime advocate of children's rights, clears the way for recognizing the philosophy of childhood as a legitimate field of inquiry. He then conducts us through various influential models for understanding what it is to be a child, from the theory that individual development recapitulates the development of the human species to accounts of moral and cognitive development, including Piaget's revolutionary model.
The metaphysics of playdough, the authenticity of children's art, the effects of divorce and intimations of mortality on a child--all have a place in Matthews's rich discussion of the philosophical nature of childhood. His book will prompt us to reconsider the distinctions we make about development and the competencies of mind, and what we lose by denying childhood its full philosophical breadth.
The question of truth has never been more urgent than today, when the distortion of facts and the imposition of pseudo-realities in the service of the powerful have become the order of the day. In The Paradox of Being Poul Andersen addresses the concept of truth in Chinese Daoist philosophy and ritual. His approach is unapologetically universalist, and the book may be read as a call for a new way of studying Chinese culture, one that does not shy away from approaching “the other” in terms of an engagement with “our own” philosophical heritage.
The basic Chinese word for truth is zhen, which means both true and real, and it bypasses the separation of the two ideas insisted on in much of the Western philosophical tradition. Through wide-ranging research into Daoist ritual, both in history and as it survives in the present day, Andersen shows that the concept of true reality that informs this tradition posits being as a paradox anchored in the inexistent Way (Dao). The preferred way of life suggested by this insight consists in seeking to be an exception to ordinary norms and rules of behavior which nonetheless engages what is common to us all.
Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including Mrs. Dalloway, The Well of Loneliness, Bend It Like Beckham, and Children of Men, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy.
In October of 2007, the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina) hosted an International Symposium on the philosophy of Parmenides to celebrate the creation of the University’s new Center for the Study of Ancient Philosophy. The event—co-organized by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies (Switzerland) and Parmenides Publishing—brought together scholars from around the world to present their latest work and participate in discussion. These Proceedings present the collected papers that were given—all fully translated into English—and edited by Néstor-Luis Cordero.
During the two years leading up to the International Symposium, no fewer than seven books on Parmenides were published. This revival and resurgence of interest in Parmenides and the critical reviews of traditional interpretations of his poem made this the perfect time for a global conference dedicated to the renowned figure known as the true father of philosophy.
The Symposium on Parmenides united the world's foremost Parmenidean scholars, with many participants having written one, if not several books on Parmenides. The proceedings volume therefore represents the most cutting-edge and in-depth scholarship on Parmenides available today, and will be a great and timely enrichment to the field of Presocratic Philosophy.
In this interpretive commentary on Theaetetus, Gregory Kirk makes a major contribution to scholarship on Plato by emphasizing the relevance of the interpersonal dynamics between the interlocutors for the interpretation of the dialogue’s central arguments about knowledge. Kirk attends closely to the personalities of the participants in the dialogue, focusing especially on the unique demands faced by a student—in this case, Theaetetus—and the ways in which one can embrace or deflect the responsibilities of learning. Kirk’s approach gives equal consideration to the dual demands of dramatic interpretation and philosophical argument that constitute the unique character of the Platonic text, and he develops an original interpretation of the Theaetetus, concluding that the uncertainty that characterizes wisdom supersedes the certainty of knowledge.
Plato’s dialogues are some of the most widely read texts in Western philosophy, and one would imagine them fully mined for elemental material. Yet, in Plato and Tradition, Patricia Fagan reveals the dialogues to be continuing sources of fresh insight. She recovers from them an underappreciated depth of cultural reference that is crucial to understanding their central philosophical concerns. Through careful readings of six dialogues, Fagan demonstrates that Plato’s presentation of Socrates highlights the centrality of tradition in political, erotic, and philosophic life. Plato embeds Socrates’s arguments and ideas in traditional references that would have been familiar to contemporaries of Socrates or Plato but that today’s reader typically passes over. Fagan’s book unpacks this cultural and literary context for the proper and full understanding of the philosophical argument of the Platonic dialogues. She concludes that, as Socrates demonstrates in word and deed, tradition is essential to successful living. But we must take up tradition with a critical openness to questioning its significance and future. Her original and compelling analyses may change the views of many readers who think themselves already well versed in the dialogues.
Winner of the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities
Winner of the Istvan Hont Book Prize
An ambitious reinterpretation and defense of Plato’s basic enterprise and influence, arguing that the power of his myths was central to the founding of philosophical rationalism.
Plato’s use of myths—the Myth of Metals, the Myth of Er—sits uneasily with his canonical reputation as the inventor of rational philosophy. Since the Enlightenment, interpreters like Hegel have sought to resolve this tension by treating Plato’s myths as mere regrettable embellishments, irrelevant to his main enterprise. Others, such as Karl Popper, have railed against the deceptive power of myth, concluding that a tradition built on Platonic foundations can be neither rational nor desirable.
Tae-Yeoun Keum challenges the premise underlying both of these positions. She argues that myth is neither irrelevant nor inimical to the ideal of rational progress. She tracks the influence of Plato’s dialogues through the early modern period and on to the twentieth century, showing how pivotal figures in the history of political thought—More, Bacon, Leibniz, the German Idealists, Cassirer, and others—have been inspired by Plato’s mythmaking. She finds that Plato’s followers perennially raised the possibility that there is a vital role for myth in rational political thinking.
The leading scholars represented in Politics, Philosophy, Writing examine six key Platonic dialogues and the most important of the epistles, moving from Plato's most public or political writings to his most philosophical. The collection is intended to demonstrate the unity of Plato's concerns, the literary quality of his writing, and the integral relation of form and content in his work. Taken together, these essays show the consistency of Plato's understanding of the political art, the art of writing, and the philosophical life.
Studies emphasizing the unity of Plato's lifework have given way in recent scholarship to specialized and overspecialized examinations of individual dialogues. While each of the contributors to Politics, Philosophy, Writing studies one text, his or her work is oriented toward illuminating the whole of Plato's project. Each of the essays is an innovative contribution to scholarship on its topic; as a collection, they constitute a unique reading of Plato's political philosophy.
Plato scholars have generally divided themselves into two camps: those who concentrate on the analytic or logical aspects of the dialogues, and those who concentrate on the literary-critical features. In one camp are the philologists and classicists, and in the other, the writers of inventive interpretive commentaries. By avoiding distinctions between Plato the poet and Plato the philosopher, Politics, Philosophy, Writing allows a deeper exploration of the comprehensiveness of Plato's theoretical vision and illuminates the lasting challenge of his understanding of the human condition.
Once again available in paperback, Plato is the first half of Eric Voegelin's Plato and Aristotle, the third volume of his five-volume Order and History, which has been hailed throughout the Western world as a monumental accomplishment of modern scholarship.
Faced with the difficult task of discerning Plato’s true ideas from the contradictory voices he used to express them, scholars have never fully made sense of the many incompatibilities within and between the dialogues. In the magisterial Plato’s Philosophers, Catherine Zuckert explains for the first time how these prose dramas cohere to reveal a comprehensive Platonic understanding of philosophy.
To expose this coherence, Zuckert examines the dialogues not in their supposed order of composition but according to the dramatic order in which Plato indicates they took place. This unconventional arrangement lays bare a narrative of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. In the drama’s earliest dialogues, for example, non-Socratic philosophers introduce the political and philosophical problems to which Socrates tries to respond. A second dramatic group shows how Socrates develops his distinctive philosophical style. And, finally, the later dialogues feature interlocutors who reveal his philosophy’s limitations. Despite these limitations, Zuckert concludes, Plato made Socrates the dialogues’ central figure because Socrates raises the fundamental human question: what is the best way to live?
Plato’s dramatization of Socratic imperfections suggests, moreover, that he recognized the apparently unbridgeable gap between our understandings of human life and the nonhuman world. At a time when this gap continues to raise questions—about the division between sciences and the humanities and the potentially dehumanizing effects of scientific progress—Zuckert’s brilliant interpretation of the entire Platonic corpus offers genuinely new insights into worlds past and present.
An insightful commentary on Plato’s Laws, his complex final work.
The Laws was Plato’s last work, his longest, and one of his most difficult. In contrast to the Republic, which presents an abstract ideal, the Laws appears to provide practical guidelines for the establishment and maintenance of political order in the real world. Classicist Seth Benardete offers a rich analysis of each of the twelve books of the Laws, which illuminates Plato’s major themes and arguments concerning theology, the soul, justice, and education.
Most importantly, Benardete shows how music in a broad sense, including drama, epic poetry, and even puppetry, mediates between reason and the city in Plato’s philosophy of law. Benardete also uncovers the work’s concealed ontological dimension, explaining why it is hidden and how it can be brought to light. In establishing the coherence and underlying organization of Plato’s last dialogue, Benardete makes a significant contribution to Platonic studies.
What is the best possible society? How would its rulers govern and its citizens behave? Such questions are sometimes dismissed as distractions from genuine political problems, but in an era when political idealism seems a relic of the past, says Jonny Thakkar, they are more urgent than ever. A daring experiment in using ancient philosophy to breathe life into our political present, Plato as Critical Theorist takes seriously one of Plato’s central claims: that philosophers should rule. What many accounts miss is the intimate connection between Plato’s politics and his metaphysics, Thakkar argues. Philosophy is the activity of articulating how parts and wholes best fit together, while ruling is the activity that shapes the parts of society into a coherent whole conducive to the good life. Plato’s ideal society is thus one in which ideal theory itself plays a leading role.
Today’s liberal democracies require not philosopher-kings legislating from above but philosopher-citizens willing to work toward a vision of the best society in their daily lives. Against the claim that such idealism is inherently illiberal, Thakkar shows that it is fully compatible with the liberal theories of both Popper and Rawls while nevertheless pushing beyond them in providing a new vantage point for the Marxian critique of capitalism.
Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
One of the central problems in recent moral philosophy is the apparent tension between the "practical" or "action-guiding" side of moral judgments and their objectivity. That tension would not exist if practical reason existed (if reason played a substantial role in producing motivation) and if recognition of obligation were one of the areas in which practical reason operated. In Practical Reason, Aristotle, and the Weakness of the Will,Norman Dahl argies that, despite widespread opinion to the contrary, Aristotle held a position on practical reason that both provides an objective basis for ethics and satisfies an important criterion of adequacy—that it acknowledges genuine cases of weakness of the will. In arguing for this, Dahl distinguishes Aristotle's position from that of David Hume, who denied the existence of practical reason. An important part of his argument is an account of the role that Aristotle allowed the faculty nous to play in the acquisition of general ends. Relying both on this argument and on an examination of passages from Aristotle's ethics and psychology, Dahl argues that Aristotle recognized that a genuine conflict of motives can occur in weakness of the will. This provides him with the basis for an interpretation that finds Aristotle acknowledging genuine cases of weakness of the will.
Dahl's arguments have both a philosophical and a historical point. He argues that Aristotle's position on practical reason deserves to be taken seriously, a conclusion he reinforces by comparing that position with more recent attempts, by Kant, Nagel, and Rawls, to base ethics on practical reason.
The first English translation of On Anger
This latest volume in the Writings from the Greco-Roman World series provides a translation of a newly edited Greek text of Philodemus’s On Anger, now supplemented with the help of multispectral imaging. As our sole evidence for the Epicurean view of what constitutes natural and praiseworthy anger as distinguished from unnatural pleasure in vengeance and cruelty for their own sake, this text is crucial to the study of ancient thought about the emotions. Its critique of contemporary Stoic and Peripatetic theories of anger offers crucial new information for the history of philosophy in the last two centuries BCE. The introduction and commentary also make use of newly revised texts and readings from several other ancient treatises on anger.
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A Greek edition of Plotinus's philosophical works with notes for students of Classical Greek
Plotinus, the father of Neoplatonism, composed the treatise On Beauty (Ennead 1.6) as the first of a series of philosophical essays devoted to interpreting and elucidating Platonic ideas. This treatise is one of the most accessible and influential of Plotinus's works, and it provides a stimulating entrée into the many facets of his philosophical activity. In this volume Andrew Smith first introduces readers to the Greek of Plotinus and to his philosophy in general, then provides the Greek text of and English notes on Plotinus's systematic argument and engaging exhortation to foster the inner self. The volume ends with the text of and notes on Plotinus's complementary statements in On Intelligible Beauty (Ennead 5.8.1–2).
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How was the universe created, and what is our place within it? These are the questions at the heart of Plotinus’ Against the Gnostics. For the Gnostics, the universe came into being as a result of the soul’s fall from intelligible reality—it is the evil outcome of a botched creation. Plotinus challenges this, and insists that the soul’s creation of the world is the necessary consequence of its contemplation of the ideal forms. While the Gnostics claim to despise the visible universe, Plotinus argues that such contempt displays their ignorance of the higher realities of which the cosmos is a beautiful image.
Against the Gnostics is a polemical text. It aims to show the superiority of Plotinus’ philosophy over that of his Gnostic rivals, and poses unique challenges: Plotinus nowhere identifies his opponents by name, he does not set out their doctrines in any great detail, and his arguments are frequently elliptical. The detailed commentary provides a guide through these difficulties, making Plotinus’ meandering train of thought in this important treatise accessible to the reader.
This book intends to introduce readers to the work of Charles E. Butterworth, and thereby to introduce students to Medieval islamic political philosophy, of which Butterworth is one of the world’s most prominent scholars. In a wider sense, the Festschrift introduces its readers to the current debates on Medieval islamic political philosophy, related as they are to the questions of the relationship between islam and Christianity, the Medieval to the Modern world, and reason and revelation. Butterworth’s scholarship spans six decades, primarily translating, editing, and interpreting the works of the Muslim political philosopher Alfarabi (d. 950) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, d. 1198). He began his studies of Muslim political philosophy at a time when the Middle East and islam did not have the political salience they have acquired in more recent years. instead, Butterworth’s reason for engaging with islam was rooted in the question of the relationship between reason and revelation.
While one possible answer was pursued in the Christian, latin West, the islamic borderlands of Greek, Roman, and Muslim civilization offered another. By exploring Averroes, who provides the possibility of an Aristotelian-Islamic political philosophy, and Alfarabi, who pursues a Platonic-islamic political philosophy, Butterworth showed how islamic civilization provided a viable alternative to the theologico-political question reason v revelation, as well as serving as an inspiration to the latin West.
This longstanding and highly regarded volume is the first to explore the doctrine of prophetic revelation, a critical and definitive area of Islamic religious and political thought. In it, the esteemed Islamic scholar Fazlur Rahman traces the inception of this doctrine from ancient Greek texts, its interpretation and elaboration by Muslim philosophers in order to suit their vision of the Prophet, and, finally, the varying degrees of acceptance of these convergent ideas by the Muslim orthodoxy.
The latest edition of this classic text includes a new foreword by Islamic studies expert Michael Sells, confirming Prophecy in Islam as the best source on its subject after more than half a century. This longstanding and highly regarded volume is the first to explore the doctrine of prophetic revelation, a critical and definitive area of Islamic religious and political thought. In it, the esteemed Islamic scholar Fazlur Rahman traces the inception of this doctrine from ancient Greek texts, its interpretation and elaboration by Muslim philosophers in order to suit their vision of the Prophet, and, finally, the varying degrees of acceptance of these convergent ideas by the Muslim orthodoxy.
The latest edition of this classic text includes a new foreword by Islamic studies expert Michael Sells, confirming Prophecy in Islam as the best source on its subject after more than half a century.
Written for his brother Benedictine monks around 1077, Anselm’s Proslogion is perhaps the best-known partially-read book of the Middle Ages. Many readers are familiar only with Anselm’s well-known argument for God’s existence in Chapters 2–4, which is often called the “ontological argument,” a misleading appellation coined centuries later by Immanuel Kant. In this argument Anselm begins with the thought of “something than which nothing greater is able to be thought,” and subsequently he leads the reader to see that such a reality necessarily exists and cannot be thought not to be. This argument – which is, to be sure, crucial to the work constitutes – but a small portion of the whole. Preceding it is a profound but oft-overlooked opening chapter in which Anselm contemplates his all-too-human condition and disposes the reader to receive aptly his argument for God’s existence in the next three chapters. And following this argument are 20 chapters in which Anselm artfully unfolds the depth and breadth of God’s true existence as that than which nothing greater is able to be thought, showing God to be (among other things) able-to-sense, pity-hearted, just, good, and uncircumscribed. Indeed, if the reader is willing to give himself over to the work as whole, he will be compelled, under Anselm’s deft guidance, to “endeavor to straighten up his mind toward contemplating God,” which is how Anselm describes his own role in the work in his prefatory remarks.
This edition provides a faithful yet readable English rendering of the whole Proslogion, the objections raised to Anselm’s argument by his contemporary Gaunilo, and Anselm’s replies to those objections. (After responding to Gaunilo, Anselm himself requested that these objections and replies be included in subsequent editions of the Proslogion.) This edition also includes an introduction that contextualizes the Proslogion within the monastic, pre-Scholastic age in which it first made its appearance. In addition, by means of notes and commentary, this edition articulates how to contextualize Anselm’s famous argument in the Proslogion as a whole and in light of his replies to Gaunilo, how to appreciate the artistry whereby Anselm knit the Proslogion together into a coherent and concise unity, and how the work may be taught effectively to interested students. These features set this affordable English edition of the Proslogion apart from those currently available, which too often fail to capture accurately the beauty of Anselm’s prose, which often treat the work through the lens of either later Scholasticism or contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, and which take little note of the craftsmanship whereby Anselm constructed this masterfully integrated work that is remembered too often for too few of its 24 chapters.
Matthew Walz has taught in the interdisciplinary program at Thomas Aquinas College in California, and since 2008 he has been a professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Dallas.
The Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return of the golden age. His Platonic evangelizing was eminently successful and widely influential, and his Platonic Theology, translated into English for the first time in this edition, is one of the keys to understanding the art, thought, culture, and spirituality of the Renaissance.
This sixth and final volume of the I Tatti Renaissance Library edition includes comprehensive indexes to the whole work.
The Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato.
A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return of the golden age. His Platonic evangelizing was eminently successful and widely influential, and his Platonic Theology, translated into English for the first time in this edition, is one of the keys to understanding the art, thought, culture, and spirituality of the Renaissance.
The Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato.
A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return of the golden age. His Platonic evangelizing was eminently successful and widely influential, and his Platonic Theology, translated into English for the first time in this edition, is one of the keys to understanding the art, thought, culture, and spirituality of the Renaissance.
The first full-length study of Francesco Patrizi—the most important political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance before Machiavelli—who sought to reconcile conflicting claims of liberty and equality in the service of good governance.
At the heart of the Italian Renaissance was a longing to recapture the wisdom and virtue of Greece and Rome. But how could this be done? A new school of social reformers concluded that the best way to revitalize corrupt institutions was to promote an ambitious new form of political meritocracy aimed at nurturing virtuous citizens and political leaders.
The greatest thinker in this tradition of virtue politics was Francesco Patrizi of Siena, a humanist philosopher whose writings were once as famous as Machiavelli’s. Patrizi wrote two major works: On Founding Republics, addressing the enduring question of how to reconcile republican liberty with the principle of merit; and On Kingship and the Education of Kings, which lays out a detailed program of education designed to instill the qualities necessary for political leadership—above all, practical wisdom and sound character.
The first full-length study of Patrizi’s life and thought in any language, Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy argues that Patrizi is a thinker with profound lessons for our time. A pioneering advocate of universal literacy who believed urban planning could help shape civic values, he concluded that limiting the political power of the wealthy, protecting the poor from debt slavery, and reducing the political independence of the clergy were essential to a functioning society. These ideas were radical in his day. Far more than an exemplar of his time, Patrizi deserves to rank alongside the great political thinkers of the Renaissance: Machiavelli, Thomas More, and Jean Bodin.
Here is a major contribution to the history of Christian kabbalism by an eminent authority. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a central figure in Lorenzo de' Medici's Platonic Academy, was the first notable Christian humanist to become learned in the Kabbalah; and the two sets of kabbalistic theses he wrote started Kabbalah on its Christian career. This is a study of those theses, their meaning, and their relation to the Hebrew texts Pico studied.
Chaim Wirszubski establishes which Hebrew texts Pico used and identifies the sources for individual theses. In the process he provides special insight into Jewish Kabbalah and its several schools. Pico's goal was to use Jewish Kabbalah to confirm Christian theology. In his analysis of Conclusiones Cabalisticae, Wirszubski elucidates this Christian kabbalistic doctrine and shows how it was tied to other currents in Renaissance thought, especially platonism and magic. This study will be valued by students of mysticism and of Renaissance thought.
“Pre-modern philosophy” means the line of reflection that started with Plato andvAristotle, passed through Augustine and Boethius, and reached its acme in Aquinas, Scotus, and Suarez. The whole line was harshly judged by Descartes, then mocked by the empiricsts of the 18th Century. Why, then, did Pope Leo XII make a determined effort to revive it? And, more importantly, why was the revival a stunning success by the middle of the 20th Century?
The answers to both questions are found in a famous German book, Philosophie der Vorzeit by Josef Kleutgen, now available for the first time in English. Pre-ModernPhilosophy Defended shaped and strengthened Pope Leo’s resolve. It showed how inaccurate the harsh judgments had been and how sadly inferior the modern replacements from Descartes to Hegel had turned out to be in many respects.
Not in all. Kleutgen was no knee-jerk reactionary. He made no bones about the obsolete status of pre-Newtonian physics and cosmology. Rather, he focused on the central boast of “modern” thought, namely, that it had turned at least to the “subject” and had provided a long-needed thing called a “critique of knowledge.”
This book is must reading for intellectual historians and for philosophers working today in epistemology. But most of all, it is essential reading for laity and clergy concerned about revivals of modernism in the church. What was modernism, after all, but an attempt to make the Church revise her theology in the “light” of Kant or Hegel? This is why every Modernist knew Kleutgen’s name and hated this book.
Here is the first English translation (from the German) of the master work of Josef Kleutgen, the nineteenth century social philosopher whose thought lies at, or near, the heart of Catholic Social Thought. Kleutgen is widely and rightly seen as the shadow author of the social encyclicals of Leo XII. Leo’s Rerum Novarum remains the origin and constant reference point of all Catholic Social Teaching. And Popes since have dated their own social encyclicals from Rerum Novarum – hence, Quadragesimo anno and Centesimus annus. —Gerard V. Bradley, University of Notre Dame
Pre-Modern Philosophy Defended is must reading for intellectual historians and for philosophers working today in epistemology. And it is essential reading for laity and clergy concerned about revivals of modernism in the church. What was modernism, after all, but an attempt to make the Church revise her theology in the ‘light’ of Kant or Hegel? This is why every Modernist knew Kleutgen's name and hated Philosophie der Vorzeit (Pre-Modern Philosophy Defended).
The Enlightenment was the age in which the world became modern, challenging tradition in favor of reason, freedom, and critical inquiry. While many aspects of the Enlightenment have been rigorously scrutinized—its origins and motivations, its principal characters and defining features, its legacy and modern relevance—the geographical dimensions of the era have until now largely been ignored. Placing the Enlightenment contends that the Age of Reason was not only a period of pioneering geographical investigation but also an age with spatial dimensions to its content and concerns.
Investigating the role space and location played in the creation and reception of Enlightenment ideas, Charles W. J. Withers draws from the fields of art, science, history, geography, politics, and religion to explore the legacies of Enlightenment national identity, navigation, discovery, and knowledge. Ultimately, geography is revealed to be the source of much of the raw material from which philosophers fashioned theories of the human condition.
Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, Placing the Enlightenment will interest Enlightenment specialists from across the disciplines as well as any scholar curious about the role geography has played in the making of the modern world.
In May 1908 William James, a gifted and popular lecturer, delivered a series of eight Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College, Oxford, on “The Present Situation in Philosophy.” These were published a year later as A Pluralistic Universe.
During the preceding decade James, as he struggled with deep conflicts within his own philosophic development, had become increasingly preoccupied with epistemological and metaphysical issues. He saw serious inadequacies in the forms of absolute and monistic idealism dominant in England and the United States, and he used the lectures to attack the specific form that “vicious intellectualism” had taken. In A Pluralistic Universe James captures a new philosophic vision, at once intimate and realistic. He shares with his readers a view of the universe that is fresh, active, and novel. The message conveyed is as relevant today as it was in his time.
This is the fourth volume of The Works of William James in an authoritative edition sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies. Prepared according to modern standards of textual scholarship, this series utilizes all available published and unpublished materials; its texts have been awarded the seal of approval of the Center for Editions of American Authors. Frederick Burkhardt is General Editor; Fredson Bowers, Textual Editor; Ignas K. Skrupskelis, Associate Editor.
Most human thinking is thoroughly informed by context but, until recently, theories of reasoning have concentrated on abstract rules and generalities that make no reference to this crucial factor. Perspectives on Contexts brings together essays from leading cognitive scientists to forge a vigorous interdisciplinary understanding of the contextual phenomenon. Applicable to human and machine cognition in philosophy, artificial intelligence, and psychology, this volume is essential to the current renaissance in thinking about context.
Perceptual Acquaintance was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Philosophers, wrote Thomas Reid in 1785, "all suppose that we perceive not external objects immediately, and that the immediate objects of perception are only certain shadows of the external objects." To Reid, a founding father of the common-sense school of philosophy, John Locke's "way of ideas" threatened to supplant, in human knowledge, the world of physical objects and events—and to point down the dreaded path to scepticism.
John Yolton finds Reid at least partly responsible for this standard (and by now stereotypic) account of Locke and his eighteenth-century British successors on the subject of perception. By carefully examining the writings of Descartes and the Cartesians, and Locke and his successors, Yolton is able to suggest an alternative to this interpretation of their views. He goes back to a wide range of original texts—those of the period's major philosophers, to Descartes' scholastic precursors, to obscure pamphleteers, and to writers on religion, natural philosophy, medicine, and optics—all in an effort to help us understand the issues without the interference of modern labels and categories. The subtle changes over time reveal an important transformation in the understanding of perception, yet one that is prefigured in earlier work, contrary to Reid's view of the past. Included in Yolton's reevaluation is a full account of the role of Berkeley and Hume in the study of perceptual acquaintance, and of the connection between their work.
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