Recent philosophical work on the concept of human nature disagrees on how to respond to the Darwinian challenge, according to which biological species do not have traditional essences. Three broad kinds of reactions can be distinguished: conservative intrinsic essentialism, which defends essences in the traditional sense, eliminativism, which suggests dropping the concept of human nature altogether, and constructive approaches, which argue that revisions can generate sensible concepts of human nature beyond traditional essences. The different constructive approaches pick out one or (...) two of the three epistemic roles that are fused in traditional essentialist conceptions of human nature: descriptive, explanatory, definitional, or explanatory and definitional. These turns towards diverging epistemic roles are best interpreted pluralistically: there is a plurality of concepts of human nature that have to be clearly distinguished, each with a legitimate role in respective scientific contexts. (shrink)

Rejecting the notion that Picasso's representations of faces should always be considered in a biographical context as portraits, it is argued that in considering them as human faces we encounter a crisis in the idea of an essential humanity. The essay then discusses Picasso's faces relation to Georges Bataille's treatment of vernacular portrait photography and of animality in human emotional expression, arguing that Picasso's human faces court the inhuman. This inhuman countenance, bred so effectively in the artist's work in the (...) 1930s and 1940s, raises in turn the question of the origin of the human in the inhuman. Turning to Bataille's discussion of the cave of Lascaux, discovered in 1940 and made to stand for the question of humanity posed so brutally by the war, the essay analyses the irruption of the origin of the human ideal in the sovereign act of the depiction of animality. A double refusal of destinies, of animality and of humanity, is caught before our eyes in such depictions. This temporal suspension of destinies is read back into Picasso's human faces. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how Robertson's History of America depicts the transition of world history from pre-modern disorder to a recognisably modern commercial order. It argues that in his narrative of action he moves beyond the limitations imposed by stadial forms of history, with which America is usually associated, and displays the importance of disordered forms of activity as a creative force in shaping the modern world. It concludes by suggesting that a close reading of his history does (...) not support Robertson's assumptions concerning the formation of a stable, ordered and industrious ‘commercial character’ out of this process, but rather establishes a more complex and less teleological path to modernity. ☆ This paper was presented in abbreviated form at the conference on ‘Political Economy and 18th Century Scottish Culture’ at George Mason University, June 2001. The author wishes to thank all those who contributed to the panel on William Robertson, especially Ingrid Merikoski and Jan Cleaver. (shrink)

This paper summarizes (in German) recent tendencies in the philosophy of the life sciences.

When building causal knowledge in behavioural genetics, the natural randomisation of genotypes at conception (approximately analogous to the artificial randomisation occurring in randomised controlled trials) facilitates the discovery of genetic causes. More importantly, the randomisation of genetic material within families also enables a better identification of (environmental) risk factors and aetiological pathways to diseases and behaviours.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 142-154 [Access article in PDF] Critical Discussions The Fortunes of Avant-Garde Poetry Mary Anne O'Neil Invisible Fences. Prose Poetry as a Genre in French and American Literature, by Steven Monte; xii & 298 pp. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000, $50.00. Modern Visual Poetry, by Willard Bohn; 321 pp. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000, $47.00. The situation of French poetry at the (...) turn of the twenty-first century is far different from what it was during the last fin de siècle. In 1900, poetry was a booming art, and France was home to numerous poets of varied inspiration and expression. The religious verse of Claudel and Péguy shared the attention of the reading public with the philosophical poetry of Valéry and the futuristic celebrations of Paris and modern life found in Apollinaire's Alcools and Calligrammes. Long poems, short poems, poems written in standard verse, free verse, prose, and even published as drawings, suggested that the golden age of poetry begun in the early nineteenth century by the Romantics and continued after 1850 by Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé, would not soon come to an end. This indeed proved to be the case, for the heirs of the Symbolist tradition of the first decade of the twentieth century were soon followed by the Surrealist revolutionaries of the 1920s and 1930s, many of whom directed their talents to the composition of political verse at the time of the Second World War. Political poetry by and large disappeared from France after 1950, only to be [End Page 142] succeeded over the next two decades by two very different types of verse. On the one hand, writers like St. John Perse and Pierre Jean Jouve produced difficult works whose appeal was limited to a sophisticated audience, while lyricists, such as Jacques Prévert and even the songwriter Georges Brassens, made poetry more accessible to the general public, often through popular songs. The fact that, during the days of May 1968, students scrawled verses of the Surrealist-Communist poet Paul Eluard on the walls of the Sorbonne to encourage efforts to bring down the social order attests to the power exerted by poetry on the intellectual life of France well into the second half of the twentieth century. Such, however, is no longer the case today. There are only two well-known living French poets, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. While reviews dedicated to original poetry do still exist, especially in the south of France where the poetic arm of the French Resistance was most active in the 1940s, poetry attracts many fewer readers--and fewer writers--than it did even fifty years ago.Such a radical change merits some reflection. What has happened to French poetry since the mid-twentieth century? In a sense, all good things must come to an end sometime, and a century and a half of inventiveness and poetic energy may simply have run its natural course. French publishing houses, well aware that prose sells better than verse, have done little to encourage young poets. However, certain trends in the subject matter and form of contemporary French poetry have probably contributed to the current lack of interest. Since the end of the Second World War, French poets have concerned themselves almost uniquely with everyday life--common objects, geographical locales, and ordinary people. This obsession with the ordinary has produced some excellent poetry, especially René Char's evocations of Provençal landscapes and Yves Bonnefoy's treatments of childhood. Yet, this concentration on everyday life has severed poetry from the traditional subjects that have sustained it ever since classical antiquity, such as the celebration of heroic figures and heroic deeds, philosophical and religious inquiry, love, loss, prophetic vision. This very narrow range of subject risks consigning poetry to the status of a minor art. At the turn of the twenty-first century, French poetry also finds itself at the end of a very long period of formal experimentation that began in the second half of the nineteenth century and which includes... (shrink)

In a recent article, George Sher argues that a realistic conception of human agency, which recognizes the limited extent to which we are conscious of what we do, makes the task of specifying a conception of the kind of control that underwrites ascriptions of moral responsibility much more difficult than is commonly appreciated. Sher suggests that an adequate account of control will not require that agents be conscious of their actions; we are responsible for what we do, in the (...) absence of consciousness, so long as our obliviousness is explained by some subset of the mental states constitutive of the agent. In this response, I argue that Sher is wrong on every count. First, the account of moral responsibility in the absence of consciousness he advocates does not preserve control at all; rather, it ought to be seen as a variety of attributionism (a kind of account of moral responsibility which holds that control is unnecessary for responsibility, so long as the action is reflective of the agent’s real self). Second, I argue that a realistic conception of agency, that recognizes the limited role that consciousness plays in human life, narrows the scope of moral responsibility. We exercise control over our actions only when consciousness has played a direct or indirect role in their production. Moreover, we cannot escape this conclusion by swapping a volitionist account of moral responsibility for an attributionist account: our actions are deeply reflective of our real selves only when consciousness has played a causal role in their production. (shrink)

In his response to my essay “Out of Control,” Neil Levy contests my claims that (1) we are often responsible for acts that we do not consciously choose to perform, and that (2) despite the absence of conscious choice, there remains a relevant sense in which these actions are within our control. In this reply to Levy, I concede that claim (2) is linguistically awkward but defend the thought that it expresses, and I clarify my defense of claim (1) (...) by distinguishing my position from attributionism. (shrink)

Although moral history in the twentieth century was much less intense than in earlier centuries, it never entirely disappeared. Now it seems to have increased in the past two decades. Moral history, however, is a difficult genre to define. How many moral judgments on the part of the historian qualifies it as part of the category? What work is without some moral component? But whether or not George Cotkin is mistaken on a few minor matters, this is excellent, thought-provoking (...) historiography that is a benefit to the discipline as a whole. (shrink)

Natural law theory is enjoying a revival of interest in a variety of scholarly disciplines including law, philosophy, political science, and theology and religious studies. This volume presents twelve original essays by leading natural law theorists and their critics. The contributors discuss natural law theories of morality, law and legal reasoning, politics, and the rule of law. Readers get a clear sense of the wide diversity of viewpoints represented among contemporary theorists, and an opportunity to evaluate the arguments and counterarguments (...) exchanged in the current debates between natural law theorists and their critics. Contributors include Hadley Arkes, Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., John Finnis, Robert P. George, Russell Hittinger, Neil MacCormick, Michael Moore, Jeffrey Stout, Joseph Raz, Jeremy Waldron, Lloyd Weinreb, and Ernest Weinrib. (shrink)

This article lays the ground for a sensuous appreciation of both the human body and the physical world. Drawing on the biographical account of the climber's embodied reflection of rock-climbing, the `climbing body' highlights our overwhelming tactile and kinaesthetic engagement with the phenomenal world. I Begin by emphasizing the need to consider the organic nature of human being, that we should understand how the awareness of death and our consequent sense of mutability provide a significant moment to remember the body. (...) I highlight how this might be achieved through the practice of adventure climbing. The increasing denial of the body's organicity, its mutability - perhaps a key impulse of modernity - is thereby usurped. This is followed by a structure of thought, based around the work of Georg Simmel, conveying the radical materiality of the phenomenal world. In doing so, I highlight the propensity of the environment to inscribe itself upon the human body. This idea is brought alive during the second half of the article, which focuses upon the climbing body and, in particular, the hands of the climber. As they navigate vertical ground climbers are guided by the sense of touch in order to `make sense' of the world. The climbing body orientates itself through tactile navigation: by feeling or grasp-ing its way through the world. To engage with the world tactually is to situate oneself consciously in that world and to have a potentially unmediated relationship with it. In doing so, the climber opens up the possibility for a corporeal reconceptualization of modernity. (shrink)

I raise the question of what cognitive attitude self-deception brings about. That is: what is the product of self-deception? Robert Audi and Georges Rey have argued that self-deception does not bring about belief in the usual sense, but rather “avowal” or “avowed belief.” That means a tendency to affirm verbally (both privately and publicly) that lacks normal belief-like connections to non-verbal actions. I contest their view by discussing cases in which the product of self-deception is implicated in action in a (...) way that exemplifies the motivational role of belief. Furthermore, by applying independent criteria of what it is for a mental state to be a belief, I defend the more intuitive view that being self-deceived that p entails believing that p. Beliefs (i) are the default for action relative to other cognitive attitudes (such as imagining and hypothesis) and (ii) have cognitive governance over the other cognitive attitudes. I explicate these two relations and argue that they obtain for the product of self-deception. (shrink)

Hegel and Canada is a collection of essays that analyses the real, but under-recognized, role Hegel has played in the intellectual and political development of Canada. The volume focuses on the generation of Canadian scholars who emerged after World War Two: James Doull, Emil Fackenheim, George Grant, Henry S. Harris, and Charles Taylor.

In a recent essay, George Annas, the legal columnist for The New England Journal of Medicine, observed that the resuscitation of extremely premature infants, even over parental objection, is not problematic because “once the child's medical status has been determined, the parents have the legal authority to make all subsequent decisions.” Annas himself is quick to concede that treatment in a high-technology neonatal intensive care unit frequently takes on a life of its own. He also acknowledges that although bioethicists (...) and courts agree that there is no ethical or legal difference between withholding or withdrawing a respirator from a patient, parents and physicians find the withdrawal much more emotionally troubling. (shrink)

Xiaohe Lu is Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Executive Director of the Centre for Business Ethics, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Georges Enderle is Arthur and Mary O’Neil Professor of International Business Ethics at the Mendoza College of Business, Univer­sity of Notre Dame.

In the April 2008 issue (volume 69, issue number 2) of the Journal of the History of Ideas, George Cotkin published his article, "History's Moral Turn." Four essays responding to Cotkin's article, written by Neil Jumonville, Michael O'Brien, James Livingston, and Lewis Perry, were also published in the April 2008 issue. In this essay, "A Conversation about Morals and History," Cotkin addresses the critiques of each of these four historians.

This paper, first presented at the spring 1990 conference on Mass Media Ethics in the Information Age, compares and contrasts approaches of five scholars - Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Neil Postman, and Jacques Ellul - whose works are chief contributions to an influential communications theory that posits that the history of media technologies is central to the history of civilization, that media transformations result in social change, and that changes in the form of media technology alter the (...) structure of consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:146 BOOK REVIEWS Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays. Edited by ROBERT P. GEORGE. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. 371. $39.95 (cloth). As the editor of this volume, Robert P. George points out in his foreword that this hook is yet another manifestation of the renewed and growing interest in natural law theory. But why this recent increased interest in natural law theory? What purpose is this theory (...) supposed to serve, or in what way do its proponents see it as an improvement on existing theories? First of all, it must be noted, as the variety of essays in this volume makes abundantly clear, that natural law theory, as it is presently conceived, most certainly does not represent anything like a unified, single theory of tightly knit principles and conclusions. In the present volume one can easily see a half-dozen or more different approaches to natural law theory. So different in tone and spirit are some of the essays that one can easily wonder if they have enough in common even to classify them as " family resemblances." But if they all in their different ways do indeed evidence, as the editor claims, an increased awareness of and interest in natural law theory, the question immediately arises, why this increased interest? What problems do the advocates of these theories hope to solve by them or what questions do they think their theories will better address than the theories currently in place? First of all, one may make a division which places the theories, however divers~ among themselves, into two general groups. The first of these groups wishes natural law theory to function as a general approach to morality. For this group natural law does the work of a moral theory. In this group I would place the essays of Joseph Boyle, Robert George, Russell Bittinger, John Finnis, and Hadley Arkes (probably). The second group uses natural law theory as a way of determining the connection between moral law and positive law or legal theory. The essays of Jeffrey Stout, Neil MacCormick, Jeremy Waldron, Michael Moore, Lloyd Weinreb, Joseph Raz, and Ernest Weinrib fall into this second category. In all there are twelve essays in this volume. Space will not permit me to give a detailed analysis and critique of each. At most I can only indicate very briefly some of their more salient features. The book is divided into four parts, the first of which is titled "Natural Law, Practical Reasoning and Morality." In the very illuminating first essay of this section, "Natural Law and the Ethics of Traditions," Joseph Boyle undertakes to clarify the question of the relation of natural law theory to tradition. Certain approaches to moral theory currently popular BOOK REVIEWS 147 which are called virtues ethics, of which Alasdair Macintyre would he an example, claim that natural law theory is tradition-dependent. If Macintyre and other virtues ethicists are correct, then since natural law theory is culture-hound, and since the culture in which it was horn and flourished, medieval culture, has irretrievably retreated into the pages of history, then natural law theory is equally dead, of interest, if at all, only in an antiquarian way. Boyle carefully points out that there is more than one sense of being tradition-dependent. It is true that natural law theory is tradition-dependent in the sense that it did indeed come into existence in a particular historic epoch and that its language and thought do indeed express the period of its flourishing, i.e. the medieval period. But this, Boyle is careful to point out, does not mean that its validity and meaning were exhausted with the end of that culture. Rather the tradition is a living tradition so that its rich resources can continue to be exploited as that tradition is enlarged by its application to present day moral problems. Boyle's conclusion then is that in some senses natural law is indeed dependent on an ancient and medieval tradition, hut not so totally dependent that it has lost all validity for contemporary moral theory. In the contribution by Robert George, "Natural Law and Human Nature," George tries to defend Germain Grisez's version of natural law... (shrink)

Douglas N. Walton considers the question of whether the conventions of informal conversation can be articulated more precisely than they are at present. Specifically, he addresses the problem of the fallacy of ad hominem argumentation as it occurs in natural settings. Can rules be formulated to determine if criticisms of apparent hypocrisy in an argument are defensible or refutable? Walton suggests that they can, and ultimately defends the thesis that ad hominem reasoning is not fallacious per se. He carries his (...) analysis to the core of action--theoretic reasoning--by examining a number of specimen arguments. As suggested by the title, the conclusion of ad hominem argument is demonstrated to be relative to the arguer's position. In the appendixes of the book, articles by Gerald McAuliffe and Gordon R. Lowe illustrate vivid and powerful cases in which Walton's contentions are put to the test. (shrink)

From a celebrated scholar on race, a book on ways of seeing, and seeing through, whiteness.

Morin argues that ideographies are limited because graphic codes lack a capacity for proliferating standardization. However, natural graphic systems display rich standardization and can be placed in sequences using complex combinatorial structures. In contrast, ideographies are not natural, and their limitations lie in their attempts to artificially force a graphic system to behave like a writing system.

By assessing interrelationships among variables within a specified theoretical framework, network analysis provides nuanced insights into how associations between psychological constructs are related to outcome measures. Noting this, the authors used NA to examine connections between Paranormal Belief, cognitive-perceptual factors, and well-being. Data derived from a sample of 3,090 participants who completed standardised self-report measures capturing the study constructs online. Transliminality, Unusual Experiences, and Depressive Experience demonstrated high expected influence centrality. This indicated that these factors were the most strongly connected (...) and influential in the network. Moreover, Transliminality was a connecting variable between Paranormal Belief, positive schizotypy, and psychopathology. Depressive Experience bridged the relationship between Transliminality and well-being. The conceptual implications of these outcomes are discussed with regards to better understanding relationships between Paranormal Belief, cognitive-perceptual factors, and well-being. (shrink)

In works of literary fiction, it is a part of the fiction that the words of the text are being recounted by some work-internal 'voice': the literary narrator. One can ask similarly whether the story in movies is told in sights and sounds by a work-internal subjectivity that orchestrates them: a cinematic narrator. George M. Wilson argues that movies do involve a fictional recounting (an audio-visual narration ) in terms of the movie's sound and image track. Viewers are usually (...) prompted to imagine seeing the items and events in the movie's fictional world and to imagine hearing the associated fictional sounds. However, it is much less clear that the cinematic narration must be imagined as the product of some kind of 'narrator' - of a work-internal agent of the narration. Wilson goes on to examine the further question whether viewers imagine seeing the fictional world face-to-face or whether they imagine seeing it through some kind of work-internal mediation . It is a key contention of this book that only the second of these alternatives allows one to give a coherent account of what we do and do not imagine about what we are seeing on the screen. Having provided a partial account of the foundations of film narration, the final chapters explore the ways in which certain complex strategies of cinematic narration are executed in three exemplary films: David Fincher's Fight Club , von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress , and the Coen brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There. (shrink)

Epicurus, born at Samos, Greece, in 341 BC, and died at Athens in 270 BC, founded a school of philosophy in the ancient world which has little to do with the meanings that surround the word "Epicureanism" today and more to do with living a mindful, simple life, maximizing simple pleasures and minimizing pain, such as the irrational fear of death--"Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not." (...) Epicurus did not believe that humans would be punished for their sins after death, and stressed the search for lasting pleasures during the life we have, such as tranquility, friendship, and philosophical inquiry. What is good is what is pleasurable and what is bad is what is painful. Epicurus was a prolific author, but very few of his writings have come down to us. Included in this collection, edited and translated by George K. Strodach, are a collection of observations that were preserved by the biographer of ancient philosophers, Diogenes Laertius, and three important letters. (shrink)

George Berkeley (1685-1753) is the superstar of Irish Philosophy. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700 and became a fellow in 1707. In 1724 he resigned his Fellowship to become Dean of Derry, and in 1734 he was made Bishop of Cloyne. He settled in Oxford in 1752 and died the following year. The work of George Berkeley is marked by its diversity and range. His writings take in such topics as mathematics, psychology, politics, health, economics, deism and (...) education, as well as that with which he is most associated - philosophy. Whatever topic he dealt with, his grasp of the subject matter was always impressive and his criticisms of his contemporaries often acute. Among the most noteable of the British Empiricists, he took his starting point from Locke's new 'way of ideas', but he rejected abstract ideas and the possibility of real existence outside perception. It is for this doctrine that he is most known - that there is no such thing as matter, and that things are collections of ideas which can exist only in our minds and only for so long as they are perceived. This philosophy, summed up in his phrase 'to be is to be perceived', he termed 'immaterialism'. A.C. Fraser's collection includes a series of what were previously unpublished notes by Berkeley on all the main topics of his philosophy. This, the 1901 edition, was the first complete edition of his works. (shrink)

What methodology should philosophers follow? Should they rely on methods that can be conducted from the armchair? Or should they leave the armchair and turn to the methods of the natural sciences, such as experiments in the laboratory? Or is this opposition itself a false one? Arguments about philosophical methodology are raging in the wake of a number of often conflicting currents, such as the growth of experimental philosophy, the resurgence of interest in metaphysical questions, and the use of formal (...) methods. This outstanding collection of specially-commissioned chapters by leading international philosophers discusses these questions and many more. It provides a comprehensive survey of philosophical methodology in the most important philosophical subjects: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, philosophy of science, ethics, and aesthetics. A key feature of the collection is that philosophers discuss and evaluate contrasting approaches in each subject, offering a superb overview of the variety of methodological approaches - both naturalistic and non-naturalistic - in each of these areas. They examine important topics at the heart of methodological argument, including the role of intuitions and conceptual analysis, thought experiments, introspection, and the place that results from the natural sciences should have in philosophical theorizing. The collection begins with a fascinating exchange about philosophical naturalism between Timothy Williamson and Alexander Rosenberg, and also includes contributions from the following philosophers: Lynne Rudder Baker, Matt Bedke, Greg Currie, Michael Devitt, Matthew C. Haug, Jenann Ismael, Hilary Kornblith, Neil Levy, E.J. Lowe, Kirk Ludwig, Marie McGinn, David Papineau, Matthew Ratcliffe, Georges Rey, Jeffrey W. Roland, Barry C. Smith, Amie L. Thomasson, Valerie Tiberius, Jessica Wilson, and David W. Smith. (shrink)

The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes published this work in two volumes in 1845–6. This is a reissue of an 1892 printing, which brought the volumes into one book. Lewes wrote widely on literature, science and philosophy, and was also the long-term intimate companion of George Eliot. This book is a narrative history, rather than an encyclopedia, of key philosophers. It is, therefore, a partial and personal study instead of an exhaustive textbook. The first volume concentrates solely (...) on Greek philosophy, beginning with the Pre-Socratics and ending with the Neo-Platonists. The second volume jumps to Francis Bacon, concentrating on British, German and French philosophy, and addressing, among others, Spinoza, Locke, Hume and Kant, and ending with Auguste Comte. Containing both historical anecdotes and pithy analyses of ideas, this book reflects the expertise and intellectual sympathies of a Victorian polymath. (shrink)

“We have no more beginnings,” George Steiner begins in this, his most radical book to date. A far-reaching exploration of the idea of creation in Western thought, literature, religion, and history, this volume can fairly be called a magnum opus. He reflects on the different ways we have of talking about beginnings, on the “core-tiredness” that pervades our end-of-the-millennium spirit, and on the changing grammar of our discussions about the end of Western art and culture. With his well-known elegance (...) of style and intellectual range, Steiner probes deeply into the driving forces of the human spirit and our perception of Western civilization’s lengthening afternoon shadows. Roaming across topics as diverse as the Hebrew Bible, the history of science and mathematics, the ontology of Heidegger, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Steiner examines how the twentieth century has placed in doubt the rationale and credibility of a future tense—the existence of hope. Acknowledging that technology and science may have replaced art and literature as the driving forces in our culture, Steiner warns that this has not happened without a significant loss. The forces of technology and science alone fail to illuminate inevitable human questions regarding value, faith, and meaning. And yet it is difficult to believe that the story out of Genesis has ended, Steiner observes, and he concludes this masterful volume of reflections with an eloquent evocation of the endlessness of beginnings. (shrink)

Reflections by leading Latin American and African American philosophers on their identity within the field of philosophy.

George Faithful tells the story of a group of young Lutheran women who formed the Ecumenical Sisterhood of Mary in 1947 in order to advocate collective national guilt for the sins of the German people (Volk) against God and against the Jews.

Some of the foremost living scholars in Islamic thought have come together to create a standard and definitive work on the subject of Islamic thought. Noted scholars from North America, Europe, and the Middle East offer new and generative interpretations of major themes in the field. They address perennial theological and philosophical questions: the nature of the God-head, the ultimate constitution of matter, the world's origin, causality, divine providence and the existence of evil, freedom and determinism, political wisdom, and the (...) reaches of human knowledge, The contributions include historical and analytical expositions of these issues in medieval Islam as well as discussions of individual thinkers, translations of Arabic texts with commentary, comparisons of Greek and Islamic thought, and bibliographical and textual sources. As a whole, these essays offer a wealth of philosophical, theological, bibliographical, philological, and historical information. Among the outstanding contributions are: an article by Charles Butterworth on Aristotle's rhetoric and how it was understood by al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes; Richard M. Frank's essay on the concepts of atoms and bodies, one of the most complex subjects in Islamic theology; and an article by Shams Inati on Ibn Sina and single expressions that discusses how language relates to mental processes and the unknown. Michael E. Marmura develops a new perspective on the subject of efficient causality, emphasizing the paradigmatic position of God's relationship to the world; Muhsin Mahdi analyzes a treatise of Averroes' that deals with the relationship between philosophy and law. (shrink)