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Reading Aristotle with Thomas Aquinas: His Commentaries on Aristotle’s Major Works offers an original and decisive work for the understanding of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. For decades his commentaries on the major works of Aristotle have been the subject of lively discussions. Are his commentaries faithful and reliable expositions of the Stagirite's thought or do they contain Thomas’s own philosophy and are they read through the lens of Thomas’s own Christian faith and in doing so possibly distorting Aristotle? In order to be able to provide clarity and offer a nuanced response to this question a careful study of all the relevant texts is needed. This is precisely what the author sets out do to in this work. Each chapter is devoted to one of the twelve commentaries Thomas wrote on major works of Aristotle including both his massive and influential commentaries on the Metaphysics, Physics and Nicomachean Ethics as well as lesser known commentaries. Elders places Thomas’s commentary in its historical context, reviews the Greek, Arabic and Latin translation and reception of Aristotle’s text as well as contemporary interpretations thereof and presents the reader with a thorough presentation and analysis of the content of the commentary, drawing attention to all the places where Thomas intervenes and makes special observations. In this way the reader can study Aristotle’s treatises with Thomas as guide. The conclusion reached is that Thomas’s commentaries are a masterful and faithful presentation of Aristotle’s thought and of that of Thomas himself. Thomas’s Christian faith does not falsify Aristotle’s text, but gives occasionally an outlook at what lies behind philosophical thought.

This book presents careful readings of six of the most important theoretical works of Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1463). Though Nicholas' writings have long been studied as either scholastic Aristotelian or proto-Kantian, Clyde Lee Miller locates Cusanus squarely in the Christian Neoplatonic tradition. He demonstrates how Nicholas worked out his own original synthesis of that tradition by fashioning a conjectural view of main categories of Christian thought: God, the universe, Jesus Christ, and human beings. Each of the readings reveals how Nicholas' project of "learned ignorance" is played out in striking metaphors for God and the relation of God to creation.

This selection of previously untranslated documents from the French debates about Christian philosophy provides a long-needed complement to available English-language literature on the subject.

A close and selective commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, offering a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s teachings on the relation between reason and moral virtue.

What does it mean to live a good life or a happy life, and what part does reason play in the quest for fulfillment? Lorraine Smith Pangle shows how Aristotle’s arguments for virtue as the core of happiness and for reason as the guide to virtue emerge in response to Socrates’s paradoxical claim that virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance.

Against Socrates, Aristotle does justice to the effectual truth of moral responsibility—that our characters do indeed depend on our own voluntary actions. But he also incorporates Socratic insights into the close interconnection of passion and judgment and the way passions and bad habits work not to overcome knowledge that remains intact but to corrupt the knowledge one thinks one has. Reason and Character presents fresh interpretations of Aristotle’s teaching on the character of moral judgment and moral choice, on the way reason finds the mean—especially in justice—and on the relation between practical and theoretical wisdom.

Any realist metaphysics must include an integrated account of the transcendentals and the analogy of being, for an adequate metaphysics must be about everything, and all things share in some key metaphysical characteristic—being, unity, truth, goodness, and beauty. However, they do not share in them in exactly the same way. Therefore, there is need to explain the transcendental characteristics in an analogical way. By using the phrase “transcendental analogies,” Reason, Revelation and Metaphysics claims that there are analogies of unity, truth, goodness, and beauty, which are related to, but irreducible to, the analogy of being. As this book is a systematic study of the topic, theoretical reason has primacy in the project and metaphysics is given pride of place. But reason is practical and aesthetic as well; that is, our consciences urge us to seek what is good, and we are delighted by what is beautiful. Although goodness and beauty are not reducible to truth, they must be included in any adequate metaphysical account, for metaphysics looks to explain everything. Although metaphysics is traditionally thought to be a philosophical project involving ontology and natural theology, Montague Brown argues that an adequate metaphysics must ultimately be theological, including within its scope the truths of revelation. Philosophical reason’s examination of the transcendental analogies raises questions that it cannot answer. We experience a world of many beings, truths, goods, and beauties. Recognizing that these many instances have something in common, we affirm a transcendent instance of each (traditionally called God). However, although we know that a transcendent instance exists, we do not know its nature: therefore, we cannot say how it is related to the other instances. If we try to apply this transcendent instance as the prime analogate to shed light on the other analogates, we must fail, for the abstractness and universality of the transcendent instance can add nothing to our understanding of the particular instances. Wanting to know how the many exist and are related, philosophical reason finds no way forward and recognizes its need for help. It is the thesis of this book that reason finds this help only in the revelation of the God’s covenantal relation with the world. The first principle of all things—most perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ, perfect God and perfect man—is really and freely related to us. Only by accepting this revealed prime analogate can the transcendental analogies bear fruit in our ongoing quest for understanding.

Provides commentary on prominent philosophers on important philosophical themes. "These unusual and exquisiteessays focus on a problem or a text with extraordinary acuity".

Reevaluating the method of scientific investigation, James A. Bell provides a bold philosophical framework for developing and assessing archaeologists' theories of the past. More informed and judicious decisions, the author asserts, are made when archaeologists explore questions such as:

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How can theories be formulated so that they increase understanding and provide insight, and are theories still useful when they do not?

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How can theories be adjusted when anomalies are revealed?

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How can theories be assessed against competing theories?

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When should theories be abandoned, and when should they be pursued further?

With numerous examples from archaeology as well as comparative examples from the physical and biological sciences, Bell illustrates how exploring the answers to these and related inquiries will lead to improved formulation and testing of theories.

A collection of papers to mark the 350th anniversary of the publication of Galileo's Dialogue

The second of five planned volumes, this book collects Wittgenstein’s unabridged writings on mathematics and logic composed between 1939 and 1941.

In 1956, a significant but abridged portion of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1937–1944 writings for a continuation of what became Philosophical Investigations was published as Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Now, in these five German-English facing-page volumes, the writings of Remarks on Mathematics and Logic are presented in full as Wittgenstein wrote them: in chronological order, without editorial omissions, selections, or rearrangements.

Volume III contains materials from 1939 to 1941, including previously unpublished—one manuscript and four manuscript parts—and one manuscript from which selections were made for previous abridgements. 

The topics covered in this volume include surveyability and perspicuity in mathematics; Cantor and Gödel; Russellian logicism; geometrical cogency of proofs; consensus as part of the phenomenon of our calculating; rule-following and unwinding; consistency proofs; calculation as invention rather than discovery; superstitious fear of contradictions; why mathematicians cannot philosophize about mathematics; mathematical propositions are overdetermined; the idea of a mathematical reality; the connection between the sense of a mathematical proposition and its use; positioning a proposition in a system; an unproved mathematical proposition as the expression of a problem; the role of mathematical propositions in descriptions (of reality).

This edition will be the authoritative source for Wittgenstein’s writings in their original context.

The first of five planned volumes, this book collects Wittgenstein’s unabridged writings on mathematics and logic composed between 1941 and 1943.

In 1956, a significant but abridged portion of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1937–1944 writings for a continuation of what became Philosophical Investigations was published as Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Now, in the five German-English facing pages volumes of Remarks on Mathematics and Logic, these writings are presented in full as Wittgenstein wrote them: in chronological order, without editorial omissions, selections, or rearrangements.

Volume IV contains materials from 1941 to 1943, including one previously unpublished manuscript and three manuscripts from which selections were made for the previous abridgment. The topics covered in this volume include the philosophy of mathematics, mathematical foundationalism, surveyability in mathematics, language-games and proof-networks, Gödelian undecidability, pictures in mathematics, Cantorian diagonal proofs, applied mathematics without pure mathematics, and mathematics and chess, among others.

This German-English facing pages edition presents Wittgenstein’s writings in their original context—as Wittgenstein wrote them, in chronological order, and without editorial omissions, selections, or rearrangements.

The outstanding contributors to this symposium are Benedict M. Ashley, o.p., Steven Baldner, Angelo Campodonico, William E. Carroll, Lawrence Dewan, o.p., Fulvio Di Blasi, Jude P. Dougherty, Leo J. Elders, svd, Robert A. Gahl, Jr., Anne Barbeau Gardiner, Marie George, John Goyette, Christopher Kaczor, Steven A. Long, Christopher Martin, Ralph McInerny, John O’Callaghan, Vittorio Possenti, Anthony Rizzi, Mario Enrique Sacchi, Michael M. Waddell, and Héctor Zagal.

This volume presents new work in history and historiography to the increasingly broad audience for studies of the history and philosophy of science. These essays are linked by a concern to understand the context of early modern science in its own context.

A consideration of how modern revolutions have employed tropes of classical antiquity.
 
Despite its Latin etymology, “revolution” in its modern understanding arguably did not exist in antiquity, and revolution as we know it today is considered by many theorists to be a term born in modernity. While they certainly had times of momentous political upheaval, the Greeks and Romans tended to understand such events as part of a narrative of political continuity rather than novelty or rupture. Nevertheless, modern revolutions have repeatedly appropriated tropes of classical discourse, such as freedom, tyranny, tragedy, and fraternity.
 
With this book, Miriam Leonard offers a conceptual history of revolution, unraveling modernity’s yearning for the new and questioning why ancient concepts continue to play such an important role in political uprisings. Leonard looks at examples of appeals to antiquity during the French and Haitian Revolutions, in anticolonial struggles, and feminist and queer movements and considers works of theorists such as Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and Sigmund Freud that foreground an engagement with antiquity.
 

A unique, portable guidebook that sketches Rome’s great philosophical tradition while also providing an engaging travel companion to the city.
 
This is a guidebook to Rome for those interested in both la dolce vita and what the ancient Romans called the vita beata—the good life. Philosopher Scott Samuelson offers a thinker’s tour of the Eternal City, rooting ideas from this philosophical tradition within the geography of the city itself. As he introduces the city’s great works of art and its most famous sites—the Colosseum, the Forum, the Campo de’ Fiori—Samuelson also gets to the heart of the knotty ethical and emotional questions they pose. Practicing philosophy in place, Rome as a Guide to the Good Life tackles the profound questions that most tours of Rome only bracket. What does all this history tell us about who we are?

In addition to being a thoughtful philosophical companion, Samuelson is also a memorable tour guide, taking us on plenty of detours and pausing to linger over an afternoon Negroni, sample four classic Roman pastas, or explore the city’s best hidden gems. With Samuelson’s help, we understand why Rome has inspired philosophers such as Lucretius and Seneca, poets and artists such as Horace and Caravaggio, filmmakers like Fellini, and adventurers like Rosa Bathurst. This eclectic guidebook to Roman philosophy is for intrepid wanderers and armchair travelers alike—anyone who wants not just a change of scenery, but a change of soul.

Rousseau and Nietzsche presented two of the most influential critiques of modern life and much can still be learned from their respective analyses of problems we still face.

In Rousseau, Nietzsche, and the Image of the Human, Paul Franco examines the relationship between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche, arguably the two most influential shapers and explorers of the moral and cultural imagination of late modernity.  Both thinkers leveled radical critiques of modern life, but those critiques differed in important respects.  Whereas Rousseau focused on the growing inequality of modern society and the hypocrisy, self-division, and loss of civic virtue it spawned, Nietzsche decried the democratic equality he identified with Rousseau and the loss of individual and cultural greatness it entailed.  Franco argues, however, that Rousseau and Nietzsche are more than mere critics; they both put forward powerful alternative visions of how we ought to live.  Franco focuses specifically on their views of the self and its realization, their understandings of women and the relation between the sexes, and their speculative conceptions of politics.  While there are many similarities in their positive visions, Franco argues that it is the differences between them from which we have most to learn.