68 books match the query 'Philosophical anthropology' and 2 start with p

cover of Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture

Perceiving Animals

Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture

Erica Fudge

University of Illinois Press, 2000

The boundaries between human and beast forged a rugged philosophical landscape across early modern England.  Spectators gathered in London's Bear Garden to watch the callous and brutal baiting of animals.  A wave of "new" scientists performed vivisections on live animals to learn more about the human body.
 
In Perceiving Animals, the British scholar Erica Fudge traces the dangers and problems of anthropocentrism in texts written from 1558 to 1649. Meticulous examinations of scientific, legal, political, literary, and religious writings offer unique and fascinating depictions of human perceptions about the natural world.
 
Views carried over from bestiaries--medieval treatises on animals--
posited animals as nonsentient beings whose merits were measured solely by what provisions they afforded humans: food, medicine, clothing, travel, labor, scientific knowledge.  Without consciences or faith, animals were deemed far inferior to humans.
 
While writings from the period asserted an enormous biological superiority, Fudge contends actual human behavior and logic worked, sometimes accidentally, to close the alleged gap.  In the Bear Garden, even a man of the lowest social rank had power over a tortured animal, sinking him, though, below the beasts.  The beast fable itself fails to show a true understanding of animals, as it merely attributes human characteristics to beasts in an attempt to teach humanist ideals.  Scholars and writers continually turned to the animal world for reflection.  Despite this, scientists of the period used animals for empirical and medical knowledge, recognizing biological and spiritual similarities but refusing to renege human superiority.
 
Including an insightful reexamination of Ben Jonson's Volpone and fascinating looks at works by Francis Bacon, Edward Coke, and Richard Overton, among others, Fudge probes issues of animal ownership and biological and spiritual superiority in early modern England that resonate with philosophical quandaries still relevant in contemporary society.
 
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cover of Person and Act and Related Essays

Person and Act and Related Essays

Karol Wojtyla

Catholic University of America Press, 2021

The Catholic University of America Press is honored to announce the publication of the first volume of the critical English edition of The Collected Works of Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II. In conjunction with an international editorial board, the English Critical Edition will comprise 20 volumes, covering all of his writings and correspondence both in the years before and during his papacy. What makes this collection so important is that access to his writings have been a significant challenge. Except for official papal addresses and documents preserved and disseminated by the Vatican, his works have been scattered and limited, or in need of a new translation. Finally, English-language audiences have faced the challenge, even in the case of published texts, of working across multiple languages and translations and of dealing with textual idiosyncrasies. The inaugural volume of this collection is Person and Act, together with related essays, which is in many respects constitutes Karol Wojtyła’s most profound and well-known philosophical work. Originally published in 1969 as Osoba I czyn, this work of metaphysics and philosophy is widely influential even though it is highly challenging intellectually and has heretofore posed difficulties for translators.
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