This collection of new essays locates Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae in the medieval context of Latin learning and vernacular translations. The first part is devoted to the Latin commentary tradition, while the other parts explore the vernacular traditions.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Latin Literature. A HistoryRichard F. ThomasGian Biagio Conte. Latin Literature. A History. Translated by Joseph B. Solodow. Revised by Don Fowler and Glenn W. Most. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. xxxiii 1 827 pp. $65.00.The work under review is a translation of Gian Biagio Conte’s 1987 book Letteratura latina; Manuale storico dalle origini alla fine dell’ impero, a book whose title (...) page acknowledged the collaboration of Alessandro Barchiesi, Emanuele Narducci, Giovanni Polara, Giuliano Ranucci, and Gianpiero Rosati. In the translation these scholars have been moved into C.’s “Acknowledgements,” making room for the new group on the title page, as given above. Of these, Don Fowler provided a bibliography and “in a sense has helped to direct the whole editorial enterprise,” while Glenn Most (like Solodow, one of C.’s English translators), rewrote sections on reception. Elaine Fantham introduces the work with an encomiastic “blurb” and general appreciation of the scholarship of C. C.’s own preface adds to the “gang of five” original collaborators a new group of three (Mario Labate, Alessandro Schiesaro, Rolando Ferri) who “have freely given me the support of their attentive and considerate criticism.” One recent reviewer talks of “the thorough control of the material by the single mind of the original author” (Robert P. Sonkowsky, The Key Reporter 61.3 [1996] 13), as does another for whom “the book is the production of a single mind” (J. Griffin, “The Long Latin Line,” review in New York Review of Books [Oct. 6, 1994] 43); it therefore seems only right to register my dissent from such a judgment.Much in Latin studies right now seems to involve a pack mentality: teams toil away for their grex, writing encomiastic and disingenuously uncritical reviews, or footnotes acknowledging the help of other teammates, attending conferences, organizing group-solidifying essay collections, even new series and manifestoes promising a “New Latin”—a term that seems to have no particular theoretical or intellectual content, nor a purpose other than to appeal vaguely for some sort of postmodernist approval. Barbara F. McManus’ summary of a paper on the uses of e-mail for mobilizing interest groups, delivered at a conference on computers and the classics by the very editor of the book under review, Don Fowler (“The Scroll and the Screen: Computers and Classical Literary Criticism”), gives a clear account of procedure and techniques in use:Electronic communication allows small groups with strongly related interests to form, cohere, and influence the larger disciplinary community; because such groups start with fundamental agreement on intellectual frameworks and approaches, they can develop ideas rapidly and in depth.(2/8/97 )What happens when other, less organized and more individual, insights fail to coincide with the “fundamental agreement” of the “group,” and how, we might wonder, will such individualism hold up in the face of this mission to “influence the larger disciplinary community”? [End Page 471]Be all this as it may and whatever the realities of authorship, the achievement of Gian Biagio Conte’s volume is a signal one. Latin Literature is a work of considerable value, a work which I have already used with success in teaching the history of Latin literature. Whatever the state of its authorship, I would now move to a review of some of its merits, which are considerable, and in which C. himself is obviously a participant throughout. The book begins with the origins of Latin literature and extends to Bede and the national literatures that were to transmit Latin literature into the vernaculars, that would in turn connect the essential themes and fundamental concerns of classical Latin literature to the cognate and evolving experiences of later antiquity and the middle ages. The original authors worked to a formulaic scheme: generally “Life,” “Works,” some treatment of cultural/political/social context, “Literary Success” (for the Italian “Fortuna”—I would have preferred “Reception”), and bibliography. This latter, again by Fowler, is developed from the Italian version and is generally made more international, often with the result that it sits somewhat uneasily with the original articles, which are largely unchanged, and whose authors presumably made... (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name (...) for threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

In the two centuries covered by this volume, from about AD 250 to 450, the Roman Empire suffered a period of chaos followed by drastic administrative and military reorganization. Simultaneously Christianity emerged as a new religious force, to be first recognized by Constantine and then eventually to become the official religion of the Roman state. The old pagan culture continued to provide the basis for education and the staple literary diet of the leisured classes; but it now had perforce to (...) coexist and indeed to compete with a new, specifically Christian-oriented literature. These and associated developments are reflected in the Latin books of the period. Of the traditional forms and genres, some atrophied, some were transformed and invigorated; and yet others, such as autobiography in something like the modern sense, emerged in response to the pressures of the times. Professor Browning's masterly and comprehensive survey is mostly concerned with pagan literature, but takes into account Christian texts written in classical forms and directed at classically educated readers. The volume ends with a chapter on Apuleius by Professor Walsh, followed by a brief Epilogue from the same hand, sketching the part played by classical studies in the formation of the Latin literature of the Middle Ages. (shrink)

Überblick über die theologische briefliteratur der frühscholastik.-Die theologischen Briefe Walters von Mortagne.-Die theologischen Briefe Hugos von St. Viktor.-Die theologischen Briefe Richards von St. Viktor.

The Cambridge History of Classical Literature provides a comprehensive, critical survey of the literature of Greece and Rome from Homer till the Fall of Rome. This is the only modern work of this scope; it embodies the very considerable advances made by recent classical scholarship, and reflects too the increasing sophistication and vigour of critical work on ancient literature. The literature is presented throughout in the context of the culture and the social and hisotircal processes of which it (...) is an integral part. The overall aim is to offer an authoritative work of reference and appraisal for one of the world's greatest continuous literary traditions. The work is divided into two volumes, each with a similar and broadly chronological structure. Among the special features are important introductory chapters by the General Editors on 'Books and Readers', discussing the conditions under which literature was written and read in antiquity. There are also extensive Appendices or Authors and Works giving detailed factual information in a convenient form. Technical annotation is otherwise kept to a minimum, and all quotations in foreign languages are translated. (shrink)

The sixty years between 43 BC, when Cicero was assassinated, and AD 17, when Ovid died in exile and disgrace, saw an unexampled explosion of literary creativity in Rome. Fresh ground was broken in almost every existing genre, and a new kind of specifically Roman poetry, the personal love-elegy, was born, flourished, and succumbed to its own success. Latin literature now became, in the familiar modern sense of the word, classical: a balanced fusion of what was best and (...) most stimulating in earlier Greek and Roman writing, charged with new and original life by the individual genius of, most particularly, Virgil, Horace and Ovid. Augustan literature, conventionally viewed as the expression in writing of the age itself - political and social stability reflected in artistic equilibrium - turns out on a close and critical reading to have been subject to the same stresses and strains as the society in and for which it was produced. In appraising the monumental literary achievements of the age the underlying tensions and contradictions are not ignored. The critical discussions in this volume do full justice to the complexity and subtlety of the literature itself. (shrink)

What did it mean to keep a secret in early medieval England? It was a period during which the experience of secrecy was intensely bound to the belief that God knew all human secrets, yet the secrets of God remained unknowable to human beings. In Bonds of Secrecy, Benjamin A. Saltzman argues that this double-edged conception of secrecy and divinity profoundly affected the way believers acted and thought as subjects under the law, as the devout within monasteries, and as (...) readers before books. One crucial way it did so was by forming an ethical relationship between the self and the world that was fundamentally different from its modern reflex. Whereas today the bearers of secrets might be judged for the consequences of their reticence or disclosure, Saltzman observes, in the early Middle Ages a person attempting to conceal a secret was judged for believing he or she could conceal it from God. In other words, to attempt to hide from God was to become ensnared in a serious sin, but to hide from the world while deliberately and humbly submitting to God's constant observation was often a hallmark of spiritual virtue. Looking to law codes and religious architecture, hagiographies and riddles, Bonds of Secrecy shows how legal and monastic institutions harnessed the pervasive and complex belief in God's omniscience to produce an intense culture of scrutiny and a radical ethics of secrecy founded on the individual's belief that nothing could be hidden from God. According to Saltzman, this ethics of secrecy not only informed early medieval notions of mental activity and ideas about the mind but also profoundly shaped the practices of literary interpretation in ways that can inform our own contemporary approaches to reading texts from the past. (shrink)

Exploring and understanding how medieval Christians perceived and constructed the figure of the Prophet Muhammad is of capital relevance in the complex history of Christian-Muslim relations. Medieval authors writing in Latin from the 8th to the 14th centuries elaborated three main images of the Prophet: the pseudo-historical, the legendary, and the eschatological one. This volume focuses on the first image and consists of texts that aim to reveal the truth about Islam. They have been taken from (...) critical editions, where available, otherwise they have been critically transcribed from manuscripts and early printed books. They are organized chronologically in 55 entries: each of them provides information on the author and the work, date and place of composition, an introduction to the passage reported, and an updated bibliography listing editions, translations and studies. The volume is also supplied with an introductory essay and an index of notable terms. (shrink)

Innovation of Yoga in vedic saṁhitās -- Elaboration of yogic thought and practices in Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas and Upaniṣads -- Continuation of the tradition in the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata -- Deviation from the vedic tradition in Jainism and Buddhism -- Systematization of Yoga in Patañjali and Haṭha-yoga -- Yoga of Vedāntic ācāryas and yoga-vāsiṣṭha -- Bhakti-yoga of medieval saints -- Yogic sādhanā in Tantra, Śaivism and Sufism -- Revival of the spirit of Yoga in modern India -- Yogic (...) capability in the estimation of logic. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 94 Heft: 2 Seiten: 556-562.

Modality: A History provides readers a sweeping study of the history of philosophical work on modal concepts. Everyday discourse is saturated with appeals to what might be the case or to what must be true or to what cannot happen. Possibility, necessity, and impossibility are modal terms, and philosophers have long wondered how to best understand them. This volume traces the history of some of the most prominent and important contributions to our understanding of possibility and necessity (...) over the past two and half millennia of western philosophy, from ancient Greek philosophers through current debates in the 21st century. Over the course of nine chapters from prominent scholars, this volume traces a history of modal theorizing that begins with extended discussions of Aristotle and the Stoics. Several chapters discuss insights and disagreements among Latin, Arabic, and Jewish medieval scholastics, such as Al-Ghazâlî, Scotus, and Crescas. Three chapters center on early modern philosophers, whose modal views were deeply shaped by this conceptual inheritance but also departed from it in significant ways: Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hume. Kant and Hegel's modal contributions are presented in their own chapter, and another chapter traces the legacy of Kant's account on early-to-mid 20th century modal views, including Husserl, Heidegger, Russell, and Quine. The revival of modal metaphysics in the more recent work of Kripke, Marcus, and Lewis has led to a new flourishing of modal theories, including in recent debates among neo-Aristotelians, as the final chapter illustrates. Although modal concepts are interesting and important on their own, theories of modality often intersect with other significant philosophical topics, such as time, freedom, and God. Modal concepts also extend beyond metaphysics. To illustrate the role of modality in other domains, several small-scale studies, or Reflections, are dispersed among these main chapters on modality in cosmology, religion, music, literature, and logic. Readers will learn how a seemingly timeless and changeless cluster of modal concepts have undergone significant revisions and enjoy a rich developmental history. (shrink)

This volume collects 17 case studies that characterize the various kinds of translations of the European culture of the last two and a half millennia from ancient Greece to Rome, from the medieval world to the Renaissance up to the ...

The first two volumes of a four-volume study, destined surely to become the standard work in its field. Literary criticism in the broadest sense is the book's subject, but the author tries to avoid purely philosophical aesthetics at one extreme--Kant is given 3 pages to Schiller's 24--as well as unsubstantiated judgments of taste at the other. Since he tries to see the past as bearing upon and productive of the literary theory of the present, the book might be said to (...) be more an account of the sources and growth of contemporary thinking about literature and criticism than a "history" in the usual sense. Professor Wellek has a rich store of scholarly knowledge at his disposal, and his interpretive generalizations are well supported by references and texts; yet the argument moves easily and clearly. A fine piece of creative scholarship.--V. C. C. (shrink)

The Hebrew Bible: glimpses of immortality -- Early post-biblical literature: gateways to heaven and hell -- The mishnah: who will merit the world to come? -- The Talmud: what happens in the next world? -- Medieval Jewish philosophy: faith and reason -- Mysticism: reincarnation in Kabbalah -- Modernity: what do we believe? -- The Messiah: the eternal thread of hope.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Theory?Oscar Martín (bio) and Simone Pinet (bio)Theory is, of course, a medieval word, brought from Greek into Latin from a common root (theastai) that also gives us theater, linked through shared meanings related to speculation, contemplation, and so forth. It is used in the Bible, and its English modern use, according to the Oxford english dictionary, probably comes from a medieval Latin translation (...) of Aristotle. The dictionary does not direct us to any specific translation, but prompts us to compare with Italian and, of course, French usage. In French, however, the word théorie was not used until quite late. In fact, it appeared for the first time in French in a 1584 translation of Antonio de Guevara, the famous Spanish court preacher and man of letters whose oeuvre was translated, imitated, and plagiarized in France, Italy, Germany, and England during the sixteenth century. In Spanish, the word theoria had begun its vernacular life a few years before in the writings of Fernando de Herrera.Theoria is already documented by Antonio de Nebrija’s Vocabulario español-latino of 1495, listed between “speculation” and “species” and designating the contemplative and the art of speculation, from theory to the perception of its quality. It is appropriate that Spanish would give theory to the West, sharing with it a point of view or, better, a series of perspectives or miradores, as María Rosa Menocal would call them, from which to look back into or beyond cultural and literary practices [“Visions of al-Andalus”]. For Medieval Iberia was, as this collection of essays purports to be, not a space or a history but a shifting and fluid gaze on the conflicting world surrounding the different literary and cultural works dealt with in this issue.Reluctant at best, and most of the time resentful of theoretical approaches to the study of literature and culture, medievalism found in Hispanism a surprising and most loyal ally. If in most Spanish departments critical theory pushed its way into the study of later periods, to the point that today even the mourning itself (or celebration) of the agony of theory is done from a theoretical standpoint, Hispanomedievalism remained suspicious longer, and sharpened its words on statistics and “scientific” claims to authority. Its close relationship to historical research, however, also made this philology vulnerable to the practices of interpretation. And it is as a will to interpretation that theory has managed to place itself within and outside the criticism of medieval Iberian literature and culture in insightful and renewing ways—including collective projects similar to the present one. Marina Brownlee’s contribution to this volume in this sense offers a most telling guiding thread of this continued approach to the discipline, which she helped revitalize through her participation in the project the new Medievalism. More recently, Josiah Blackmore and Gregory Hutcheson, also contributing to the present volume, sparked a lively debate, as showcased in a forum published by La corónica, with their project Queer iberia: sexualities, cultures, and crossing from the Middle ages to the renaissance. But a host of monographs and single-authored books in recent years have come to inhabit and enliven medieval studies as Hispanism has grown into the most important area of foreign language studies. [End Page 3]Theories find themselves in the articles for this special issue by way of a development from within. There is no application, no rigid use of conceptual frameworks to revisit texts, but an interior process of thought on and through the texts and cultural practices analyzed that produces theoretical insights. While a variety of methodologies and theoretical positionings can be identified, both explicitly and not, from speech-act theory to deconstruction, from Žižek to Badiou, postcolonialism to politics, these seem to emerge from within, as if the obvious result of the need to think questions posed from slightly different standpoints than they have been up until now. All of the articles reflect on very well-known texts and periods, pondering about a discipline, its methodologies, even the nature of its object of study. These articles do not dismiss previous work, but they do bring it under a new light.At a... (shrink)

Despite the prodigious inventiveness of the Middle Ages, the era is often characterized as deeply suspicious of novelty. But if poets and philosophers urged caution about the new, Patricia Clare Ingham contends, their apprehension was less the result of a blind devotion to tradition than a response to radical expansions of possibility in diverse realms of art and science. Discovery and invention provoked moral questions in the Middle Ages, serving as a means to adjudicate the ethics of invention and opening (...) thorny questions of creativity and desire. The Medieval New concentrates on the preoccupation with newness and novelty in literary, scientific, and religious discourses of the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Examining a range of evidence, from the writings of Roger Bacon and Geoffrey Chaucer to the letters of Christopher Columbus, and attending to histories of children's toys, the man-made marvels of romance, the utopian aims of alchemists, and the definitional precision of the scholastics, Ingham analyzes the ethical ambivalence with which medieval thinkers approached the category of the new. With its broad reconsideration of what the "newfangled" meant in the Middle Ages, The Medieval New offers an alternative to histories that continue to associate the medieval era with conservation rather than with novelty, its benefits and liabilities. Calling into question present-day assumptions about newness, Ingham's study demonstrates the continued relevance of humanistic inquiry in the so-called traditional disciplines of contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

De l'antiquité à la Renaissance, la notion de certitude est au coeur de la structuration de la pensée. Cet ouvrage réunit les contributions de spécialistes, qui explorent tous la littérature latine en mettant cette notion à l'épreuve de différentes disciplines et époques.

Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts takes as its starting point an understanding that a medieval book is a whole object at every point of its long history. As such, medieval books can be studied most profitably in a holistic manner as objects-in-the-world. This means readers might profitably account for all aspects of the manuscript in their observations, from the main texts that dominate the codex to the marginal notes, glosses, names, and interventions made through time. This holistic (...) approach allows us to tell the story of the book's life from the moment of its production to its use, collection, breaking-up, and digitization--all aspects of what can be termed 'dynamic architextuality'. The ten chapters include detailed readings of texts that explain the processes of manuscript manufacture and writing, taking in invisible components of the book that show the joy and delight clearly felt by producers and consumers. Chapters investigate the filling of manuscripts' blank spaces, presenting some texts never examined before, and assessing how books were conceived and understood to function. Manuscripts' heft and solidness can be seen, too, in the depictions of miniature books in medieval illustrations. Early manuscripts thus become archives and witnesses to individual and collective memories, best read as 'relics of existence', as Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes things. As such, it is urgent that practices fragmenting the manuscript through book-breaking or digital display are understood in the context of the book's wholeness. Readers of this study will find chapters on multiple aspects of medieval bookness in the distant past, the present, and in the assurance of the future continuity of this most fascinating of cultural artefacts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Academic Skepticism in Early Modern PhilosophyJosé R. Maia NetoAncient skepticism was more influential in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than it had ever been before. Thanks to the groundwork of Charles B. Schmitt and Richard H. Popkin on the influence of ancient skepticism in early modern philosophy and to the extensive research that followed their lead, skepticism is now recognized as having played a major role in (...) the rise of modern thought. 1There were two ancient skeptical schools, Academic skepticism and Pyrrhon-ism. Were both equally influential? Until the sixteenth century, Pyrrhonism was scarcely known. Only a few copies of Sextus’s books (the only surviving primary source of ancient Pyrrhonism) have been discovered in medieval libraries. By contrast the main source of Academic skepticism, Cicero’s Aca-demica, was occasionally referred to by medieval authors and was the object of some commentaries and criticism in the Renaissance. 2 Academic skepticism was preserved from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance not only through Cicero’s Academica, but also through Lactantius’s Divinae Institutiones and [End Page 199] Augustine’s Contra Academicos. 3 This situation changed when Sextus’s works were translated to latin and published in 1562 and 1569. Sextus presents a much more complete and detailed account and defense of ancient skepticism than that of Cicero’s Academica. Sextus presents Pyrrhonism as a coherent form of skepticism and Academic skepticism as a kind of negative dogmatism. 4 It was thus natural that the ancient skepticism that fascinated some (and troubled so many) early modern thinkers was mostly Pyrrhonian. Because of the publication of Sextus’s works, according to Schmitt, the increasing influence of Cicero’s Academica in the Renaissance was halted. Sextus’s Hypotyposes and Adversus Mathematicos took the place of Cicero’s Academica and drastically increased the influence of ancient skepticism. 5 The skeptical crisis at the dawn of modern philosophy is called “pyrrhonienne” not “academicienne.”While the appearance of Sextus’s works in Latin turned him and Pyrrhonism into the main source and influence of ancient skepticism in early modern philosophy, further research on the history of skepticism in the period has shown that the role of Cicero’s Academica and of Academic skepticism in general continued to be considerable. First, Cicero’s works were important items in the university curricula. Although Cicero’s works of rhetoric and morals were those more read, the students could certainly learn about Academic skepticism through at least some of them. Second, many editions of De Natura Deorum, a work of Cicero’s in which Academic skepticism is quite central, were published during the seventeenth century. Third, features of Academic skepticism, exhibited above all in Cicero’s Academica, are basic to the skepticism revived in the late Renaissance by Montaigne and Charron; were related to the new science in the first half of the seventeenth century by Gassendi; were used in the anti-Cartesian reaction of the late seventeenth century by Rapin, Huet, Bayle, and above all Foucher; and were radicalized in the eighteenth century by Hume. Despite the Academic features of Montaigne’s, Charron’s, and Gassendi’s skepticisms, it does seem that from the publication of Sextus’s works to the mid-seventeenth century, Academic skepticism was secondary to Pyrrhonism. But the appearance of Descartes and the development of Cartesianism in the second half of the seventeenth century set conditions for a complete revamping of Academic skepticism, bringing about what Schmitt thought was precluded by the appearance of Sextus in the modern scene, namely, a “full flowering of the Academica as a work to inspire new directions of philosophical thought.” 6 [End Page 200]Montaigne’s Apologie pour Raimond Sebond is rightly considered the first major result of the revival of ancient Pyrrhonism in modern thought. 7 Montaigne never cites the name of Sextus nor acknowledges his source and, by contrast, fills his Apology with passages from Cicero on the Academic skeptics. It is clear, however, that Montaigne follows closely Sextus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism in the central part of the Apology where he gives a detailed and sympathetic exposition of ancient skepticism.After dwelling on the evils and problems arising from knowledge and science, Montaigne... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 585-587 [Access article in PDF] Chumaru Koyama, editor. Nature in Medieval Thought: Some Approaches East & West. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Pp. xiv + 183. Cloth, $65.00. The subtitle of this volume is misleading. The Japanese scholars represented (Koyama, Y. Iwata, and B. R. Inagaki) were all trained in Western medieval philosophy (...) and are highly respected medievalists. None of the Western contributors is an expert on Eastern philosophy. Even readers familiar with Japan will be hard pressed to find anything characteristically Eastern in any of the contributions.In the forward provided by the editor and in a preface written by W. Kluxen, we are informed that the volume was the product of two international conferences. Western [End Page 585] and Eastern experts on medieval philosophy were assembled to discuss the problem of "how each human being and humanity as a whole will handle nature in the future" (viii). Both Koyama and Kluxen assume that medieval Europeans conceived essential features of the understanding of "nature" now common to the whole world.Judging from the essays in the book, we conclude that the volume represents a beginning. There are connections between some of the essays, but the question remains: can the medieval view of nature offer us guidance on how to deal with our environmental crises? In general, one might expect a congenial relationship between ancient Western organic views and Japanese intuitions about nature. Nevertheless, compromise characterizes technological decision-making in both cultures. The challenge posed by radical environmentalists is the adequacy altogether of anthropocentric environmental ethics to save the planet.The essay by Iwata offers an interpretation of natural teleology that is compatible with mechanism and hypothetical necessity. Iwata suggests that art that pursues its own ends and not as an imitation of nature can be the source of environmental crises. Two papers by Kluxen on ethics, nature, and natural law acknowledge major transformations in the Middle Ages, and the challenge he poses is how to reintegrate reason and nature. K. Riesenhuber challenges recent accounts that claim to find in some twelfth-century authors an autonomous interest in nature. While nature as a discipline did not achieve autonomy in the twelfth century, Riesenhuber detects the stirrings of independence, but knowledge of nature remained subordinate to knowledge of God. L. Honnefelder suggests that guidance for our treatment of nature may lie in developing new models for the combination of the Platonic technomorphic with the Aristotelian biomorphic paradigm. Inagaki's paper on original sin and human nature adopts a stance that conforms to the Judeo-Christian tradition of the human break with nature. Whatever the source of that disintegration, the problem described in this way requires first a healing of human nature. The paper by M. M. Adams considers John Duns Scotus's revision of final causality. Scotus distinguished between the perfection of the being that a thing constitutes and the explanatory function of that achievement. On this account, Scotus revised the analysis to secure one sense in which Goodness explains being. The paper provides an example of the sorts of transformations in the medieval view suggested by several of the other contributors.C. Steel's paper questions the assumptions about the connection between medieval and modern conceptions of nature. Steel adopts a more comprehensive historical perspective. Flawed by its selective reliance on secondary literature, the paper nonetheless represents an important effort to understand our current dilemma from a historical perspective. Steel challenges L. White, Jr.'s now famous claim about the Christian roots of our ecological crisis. Steel overlooks White's appeals to Christian traditions at variance with Christian dualism and to the use of the Bible in the seventeenth century to sanction the study of science as a means to master nature. Steel takes up the vexed question of continuity or discontinuity between medieval philosophy of nature and seventeenth-century science. In the end Steel falls on the side of continuity, yet in a way that can be expressed only dialectically! That is to say, medieval commentaries on... (shrink)

Best Book of June 2015 (The Christian Science Monitor) Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis's Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical (...) rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of modern times. In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. The result is an extraordinary account of the ideas, affections and vexations that drove the group's most significant members. C. S. Lewis accepts Jesus Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, maps the medieval and Renaissance mind, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. J.R.R. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into gripping story in The Lord of the Rings, while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship and elucidating, for family and friends, the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. Owen Barfield, a philosopher for whom language is the key to all mysteries, becomes Lewis's favorite sparring partner, and, for a time, Saul Bellow's chosen guru. And Charles Williams, poet, author of "supernatural shockers," and strange acolyte of romantic love, turns his everyday life into a mystical pageant. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years-and did so in dazzling style. (shrink)

In the third century BC Rome embarked on the expansion which was ultimately to leave her mistress of the Mediterranean world. As part of that expansion a national literature arose, springing from the union of native linguistic energy with Greek literary forms. Shortly after the middle of the century the first Latin play took the stage; by 100 BC most of the important genres invented by the Greeks - epic, tragedy, comedy, historiography, oratory - were solidly established in their (...) adoptive Roman forms, and a new genre, satire, had been born. The chapters in this volume describe and analyse the process of creative adaptation which shaped the beginnings of Latin literature and laid the foundations for its future development as one of the great literatures of the world. Essential background is provided by introductory chapters on readers and critics in the Roman world. In these are described the form of the books themselves and the conditions under which they were produced, circulated and read. The whole volume offers an indispensable introduction to the understanding of the nature and quality of Latin literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PostfacePhilippe-Joseph Salazar, Guest Editor"France: Current Writing in Philosophy and Rhetoric" could be a subtitle for this volume. As guest editor I have chosen the genre of the postface rather than that of the preface. I wanted to let writings speak for themselves, unhindered by the added filter of an introduction. Prefaces are either congratulatory or a contribution in disguise—or, worse, a puerile attempt to overshadow the rest. However, by (...) way of a summation, a few, brief remarks are in order.Some thirty years ago it would have been impossible to seek out and secure authors to write on this subject. Since then a sea change has taken place, attracting into the circles of the "rhetorical turn" many a willing partaker. In this new game, two circles gyrate and now and then rotate in unison or collide.One circle, let us call it belletristic, was set in motion by Marc Fumaroli when he released, in 1980, his epoch-making Âge de l'éloquence. It was as if a new chord had been struck, catching most by surprise, heralding the sudden irruption of new thinking about the mainstay of French culture, the "classical age," that is, the seventeenth century, the sacrosanct age of Racine, Descartes, Louis XIV, and Nicolas Poussin. Fumaroli's work in rhetoric, aesthetics, and social commentary went to the heart of French literature and culture: it offered an hermeneutic opportunity to run against the grain of structuralism and Bourdieusian analyses, while it simultaneously brought to [End Page 424] light "rhetorical" layers, both religious and civil, of French culture that militant secularism and social positivism had long cast aside as pernicious or preposterous. It also served as a powerful antidote to "cultural studies." His influence is deep and wide and long lasting. Nancy Struever, who alongside Fumaroli founded the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, draws on her intimate knowledge of the French school to provide here a profound and critical account of his work in which she underscores how Fumaroli transformed, from the standpoint of the history of rhetoric, the study of Western European culture and social life forms—the award of the Balzan Prize to Fumaroli came on the heels of his Histoire de la rhétorique dans l'Europe moderne. He has, for all intents and purposes, created the French school of rhetoric studies, which has nurtured an ever-growing circle of scholars, now in its second generation, with a relief cohort at the ready (Salazar 2007).The other circle took a while longer to gain balance and establish momentum. It concerns itself with the complex relation between philology and philosophy. Indeed, French classical philology had long been resistant to the presence of philosophy and so too philosophy to philology. This uneasy and reciprocal indifference or even distrust can be traced back to the Discourse on Method, in which Descartes invented French philosophical prose, as Pierre Cahné puts it, a situation later aggravated by the spell German metaphysics cast over French philosophy in the nineteenth century. However, it was the enduring presence of Hegel in the 1930s, together with the material and intellectual rescue French philosophers offered Heidegger after 1945, and a sustained interest in Nietzsche and Husserl, that created the conditions for a new dalliance between philology and philosophy. It has been a multifaceted game: some Hellenists, like Nicole Loraux and Marcel Detienne, chose to develop an anthropological meditation on ancient Greece, bringing forth, in the process, rhetorical categories that before them were mere indicators (mètis, epitaphios). On the periphery stood Émile Benveniste with his philological enquiry into Indo European words as mental structures—his Vocabulaire remains a constant source of inspiration. Latinists had a problem of their own: their commonly shared notion that Latin was not a philosophical language, together with their vociferous prejudice against non-Ciceronian Latin, had consigned medieval and Renaissance thinkers and modes of thinking to the bogs of impure language. However, Latin scholars such as Alain Michel sought to unravel the Roman aesthetics inherent in a rhetorical way of life; this school of new Latinists propelled a remarkable revival of Neo-Latinity, which has [End Page 425] had a long-lasting influence on Renaissance studies... (shrink)

Essays concerned with the transmission of Boethian philosophy and poetry also relate to medieval translation practice, the emergence of European literature, reception history, and manuscript studies. 'Knowledge of the understanding of Boethius inthe middle ages is considerably enhanced. 'REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES.

This book studies medieval theories of angelology insofar as they made groundbreaking contributions to medieval philosophy. -/- The discussion of angels, made famous by the humanist caricature of ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin’, was nevertheless a crucial one in medieval philosophical debates. All scholastic masters pronounced themselves on angelology, if only in their Sentence commentaries. The questions concerning angelic cognition, speech, free decision, movement, etc. were springboards for profound philosophical discussions that (...) have to do with anthropology and metaphysics no less than with angelology. Angels qua separate substances were of central importance in medieval metaphysics (with questions on universal hylomorphism, the esse- essentia composition of creatures, and those regarding individuation of material and immaterial substances). The doctrine of angels has not been the subject of much study in the history of medieval thought, and the volume fills an important gap in the literature. The chapters offer a well-rounded, if not encyclopedic discussion in the chronological or doctrinal sense. They cover the history of debate from Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius until the later middle ages, but instead of an author-by-author approach, focus rather on seminal ideas with demonstrable relevance to “secular” and modern philosophical concerns. (shrink)

Das Heilige hat Konjunktur: Im Zuge des religious turn der Kulturwissenschaften erscheint es nicht mehr als Gegensatz zu einer säkularisierten Moderne, sondern als eines ihrer konstitutiven Momente. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes untersuchen Denkfiguren des Sakralen im 20. Jahrhundert - von Nietzsches Diagnose des ”Todes Gottes“ über geschichtsphilosophische Aneignungen jüdisch-christlicher Glaubensinhalte bis hin zu sprachphilosophischen Reflexionen über das Heilige. Sie arbeiten heraus, wie sich die ästhetische Moderne in Auseinandersetzung mit dem Traditionsbestand sakraler Erfahrungen bildet.

Der Band dokumentiert Beiträge zum 18. Symposium des Mediävistenverbandes, das im Frühjahr 2019 in Tübingen stattgefunden hat. Das Thema greift aktuelle Debatten über Autorschaft, Urheberrecht, Originalität und Plagiat auf, die anzeigen, dass diese Konzepte neuerdings in Bewegung geraten sind. Die Beiträge des Bandes fragen aus unterschiedlichen Fachperspektiven, ob und inwiefern die Verfahren des Umgangs mit Autorschaft zwischen Mittelalter und Moderne am Ende stärker vergleichbar sind als gemeinhin angenommen. So werden die aus der Moderne gebildeten Kategorien von Kreativität hinterfragt und unterlaufen. (...) Zugleich zeigt sich, dass eben diejenigen Kreativitätsprozesse der Moderne, die den hohen normativen Ansprüchen einer Geniekultur nicht entsprechen, nicht einfach Defizienzerscheinungen sind, sondern Variationen vielfach geübter Techniken, zu deren Verständnis die mittelalterliche Produktivität dient. Schaffen und Nachahmen sind nicht in einen "künstlerischen" Bereich der Kultur sektorierbar, sondern sie erweisen sich als Grundstruktur menschlichen Handelns auch im wissenschaftlichen, ethischen oder religiösen Feld. So liegt mit diesem Band ein starkes Plädoyer für die Anerkennung der kreativen Kraft der Nachahmung vor. (shrink)

Originally published in 1967 Medieval Minds looks at the Middle Ages as a period with changing attitudes towards mental health and its treatment. The book argues that it was a period that that bridged the ancient with the modern, ignorance with knowledge and superstition with science. The Middle Ages spanned almost a millennium in the history of the humanities and provided the people of this period with the benefit of this knowledge. The book looks at the promise (...) and progress which was reflected by thinkers such as Augustin and Aurelianus, Alexander of Tralles and Paul of Aegina. The book also looks at martyrs like Valentine and Dympna, and the patrons of those afflicted with illnesses such as epilepsy and insanity. Written by the psychologist Thomas Francis Graham, this book provides a distinct and unique insight into the mind of those living in the medieval period and will be of interest to academics of history and literature alike. (shrink)

This collection of essays argues that any valid theory of the modern should—indeed must—reckon with the medieval. Offering a much-needed correction to theorists such as Hans Blumenberg, who in his _Legitimacy of the Modern Age_ describes the “modern age” as a complete departure from the Middle Ages, these essays forcefully show that thinkers from Adorno to Žižek have repeatedly drawn from medieval sources to theorize modernity. To forget the medieval, or to discount its continued (...) effect on contemporary thought, is to neglect the responsibilities of periodization. In _The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages_, modernists and medievalists, as well as scholars specializing in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century comparative literature, offer a new history of theory and philosophy through essays on secularization and periodization, Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, Heidegger’s scholasticism, and Adorno’s nominalist aesthetics. One essay illustrates the workings of medieval mysticism in the writing of Freud’s most famous patient, Daniel Paul Schreber, author of _Memoirs of My Nervous Illness_. Another looks at Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s _Empire_, a theoretical synthesis whose conscientious medievalism was the subject of much polemic in the post-9/11 era, a time in which premodernity itself was perceived as a threat to western values. The collection concludes with an afterword by Fredric Jameson, a theorist of postmodernism who has engaged with the medieval throughout his career. _Contributors_: Charles D. Blanton, Andrew Cole, Kathleen Davis, Michael Hardt, Bruce Holsinger, Fredric Jameson, Ethan Knapp, Erin Labbie, Jed Rasula, D. Vance Smith, Michael Uebel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Medieval Troubadour Mobilized in the French Resistance *Roy RosensteinIntroduction: The Place of Poetry under VichyRien ne semblait plus anachronique que d’interroger, inter arma, le silence des Muses médiévales....Frank 1In Chantons sous l’occupation André Halimi details how raucously the band played on in wartime Paris. 2 If Vercors in 1941 advocated the practice of silence and Sartre in 1945 maintained that Paris had been dead for the four (...) years of the Nazi occupation, Halimi and others have shown that Parisians [End Page 499] sang, danced, and laughed during the Occupation as never before. 3 Rarely had so many plays been staged, so many movies been produced. 4 While in other Nazi-occupied countries the theaters and restaurants remained closed, thus preserving a modicum of national dignity in defeat, in France the arts thrived and la vie mondaine accelerated its pace. Journalist Henri Amouroux rightly explains how cinema and theater provided more than entertainment and why they were periodically the target of curfews. In these wartime performances a seemingly insignificant phrase could take on a rich contemporary context. Thus a line like “toute la fleur du royaume se trouve en prison” in Montherlant’s La reine morte invariably provoked applause. Whether the text was classical or contemporary in origin, the audience “seized upon all the passages that could be linked to the current situation.” 5 In this broad sense, Resistance literature came to include any “poetry written and/or distributed in France during the Occupation, and which the reader sees as implicitly or explicitly conveying hostility to Nazism and Collaboration.” 6Between 1940 and 1944 French audiences escaped their national misfortunes more through literature than through film and drama combined. “Never, perhaps, had literature played such a momentous part in the daily life of French readers,” wrote the late Henri Peyre in 1945. 7 As is often noted, the intellectual Resistance “fut surtout poétique.” 8 Every page of poetry, past or present, seemed to remind wartime readers of their current circumstances. One young poète résistant is categorical: “Never before had poetry played such a decisive role in history.” 9 Pierre Brunel of the Sorbonne is just as emphatic in confirming [End Page 500] the judgment of contemporary scholars and Resistance fighters alike: “During the war years, French poetry found a singleness of purpose and an audience that it had never enjoyed before.” 10In anticipation of more comprehensive treatments of French Resistance poetry sens large, the present study proposes a necessarily modest and certainly partial approach to the role of poetry in the French Resistance. Following the general groundwork of Seghers, Gaucheron, Higgins, and others, it undertakes to track, if only schematically, the reaction to France’s fall as polarized across three territories—in American exile, in Vichy France, and in German camps—through a focus on one exemplary twelfth-century troubadour. Concurrently with the “nouvelle floraison poétique” hailed by André Rousseaux in 1941, 11 Jaufre Rudel was one earlier poet who enjoyed a resurgence of interest during the war. With respect to this troubadour, to date only Dietmar Rieger has mentioned in passing an oblique reference to Rudel’s trademark distant love in Aragon’s “Pour un chant (national)”: “Jaufre’s love from afar is set against a love for France.” 12 This particular troubadour’s legend and lyrics assumed new dimensions through their immediate relevance not only for Aragon but for all French nationals, both imprisoned at home and exiled abroad. Literary historian René Dumesnil observed as early as 1941 with respect to pre-war French classics: “Present circumstances give them new depth and extend their range.” 13 Regarding France’s medieval literature, a modern critic has noted how “the troubadours, just as much as Tristan, Roland, Lancelot, Perceval, or even Yseult..., emerge as agents of unity, even of unanimity, around whom it is still possible to muster the French people in 1940.” 14 [End Page 501]As has been observed for centuries, “Frenchmen abroad seldom wholly give up the idea of going back to France some time or other.” 15 All French patriots and expatriates, wherever they found themselves after the Armistice in June 1940, whether... (shrink)

The lack of a local Jewish community did not prevent medieval Swedish clerics and lay people from being interested in Jews and Jewish questions. They bought, translated, read and preached from most of the available textual sources and thus spread the widely available views of the hermeneutical Jew: a cruel, stubborn and ugly person and at the same time a cipher for the entire Jewish people both in biblical times and today. This article gives an overview of the (...) class='Hi'>Latin and vernacular manuscripts with anti-Jewish motifs and texts and shows that the main and most common textual models and motifs were available in Swedish libraries and collections, from legends via apocryphal texts to fake disputations – adding up to a relatively complete ‘hermeneutical Jew’. A focus was, as in the rest of Europe, on Passion-related piety, which was the most common form of piety in the late Middle Ages – and usually connected with distinct anti-Jewish features. The fact that we can establish direct and indirect textual and narrative lines of tradition between the medieval codices and modern printed booklets of the nineteenth century proves the long-lasting intelligibility of anti-Jewish stereotypes in Sweden – developed and spread completely independently from the Jewish minority. The medieval perspective thus adds a much-needed nuance to the debate about antisemitism in the North: it did not need any actual Jews; it simply made up its own, based on the general Christian tradition. (shrink)

The 'death of man', the 'end of history' and even philosophy are strong and troubling currents running through contemporary debates. Yet since Nietzsche's heralding of the 'death of god', philosophy has been unable to explain the question of finitude. Very Little...Almost Nothing goes to the heart of this problem through an exploration of Blanchot's theory of literature, Stanley Cavell's interpretations of romanticism and the importance of death in the work of Samuel Beckett. Simon Critchley links these themes to the (...) philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to present a powerful new picture of how we must approach the importance of death in philosophy. A compelling reading of the convergence of literature and philosophy, Very Little...Almost Nothing opens up new ways of understanding finitude, modernity and the nature of the imagination. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Against the Greek LogiciansCharles E. ButterworthIbn Taimiyya. Against the Greek Logicians. Translated with an introduction and notes by Wael B. Hallaq. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Pp. lviii + 204. $55.00.Wael Hallaq's most readable translation of Ibn Taimiyya's famous work is complemented by a masterful introduction and intelligent, relevant footnotes. In addition, he has taken care to help the reader in many ways, adding, for example, a list of (...) the emendations he has made to the Arabic text as well as a table that details the correspondence between the paragraphs of his translation and the pages and lines within the more standard Arabic texts.The editor-translator's introduction sets forth Ibn Taimiyya's teaching in a clear and well-argued manner, something that is necessary given the repetitiveness and confusing arguments that characterize the original. Though Hallaq tends to reveal himself to be something of a partisan of Ibn Taimiyya's doctrines and thus to overstate the case for his author, this is a minor flaw. The strength of the Introduction is such that the student of logic or philosophy is compelled to indicate the problems in Hallaq's presentation, that is, to identify the reasons for not being persuaded by his exposition. [End Page 273] To do so, however, is merely a means of carrying the argument a step further and thus a compliment of sorts to Hallaq.As I see it, there are five areas where one might take issue with the editor-translator's presentation of Ibn Taimiyya's teaching. First, because he follows his author too closely, Hallaq relies too much on Avicenna and on Avicenna's commentators to present the position of the philosophers. He seems to ignore that the teaching of Avicenna—he whom Averroes would identify only as "that man"-—is problematic even for the philosophers. Second, Hallaq relies too much on secondary literature in order to present the history of philosophy. He would have been far better advised to trace the history of philosophy for himself, especially the history of medieval Islamic philosophy. By relying on others, especially those whose interpretations are open to major objections, he weakens his own presentation. This tendency becomes especially evident in what I take as a third point of criticism, namely, Hallaq's too ready conflation of the history of philosophy and consequent willingness to blame ancient and medieval philosophers for the folly of modern philosophers (see xxx, n. 98 and xviii:17-18). Worse, Hallaq eventually becomes so carried away with the desire to refute the ancient and medieval philosophers that he no longer cares about the evil consequences of modern philosophy (see xviii:8-xlix:20, esp. xlviii:8-29). Indeed, and this is the fourth criticism, so intent is Hallaq on confirming that Ibn Taimiyya has refuted the philosophers that he is content to call anyone a philosopher, even al-Suhrawardī, al-Baghdādī, al-Tūsī, and, wonder of wonders, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (see xliv:4). Though he has good guidance for this from Ibn Taimiyya, one would hope for more objectivity from the critical scholar than from the engaged defender of the faith. Finally, Hallaq actually introduces Ibn Taimiyya's wider teaching rather than the argument of this book, thereby neglecting the primary function of an introduction to a book. Thus, of 91 notes in the Introduction that refer to Ibn Taimiyya's works, only slightly more than half (52) cite this work. The other 39 are to Ibn Taimiyya's other writings. Moreover, many of the 52 notes to this work also refer to other writings by Ibn Taimiyya.Thankful as we must be to Hallaq for this translation, it is most unfortunate that he chose not to be consistent in his translation of Arabic terms. Apparently, he thought he could make more sense of Ibn Taimiyya's argument by translating terms in accordance with what he took to be the sense of what Ibn Taimiyya wished to say rather than in accordance with what he actually says. Consequently, tasdīq (a term I would translate as "assent") is rendered as "judgment"; but so is hukm (see ¶¶ 5 and... (shrink)