This "festschrift" brings together authors from various countries who are specialists in different disciplines within the humanities and who share a common vision of human life. These essays in philosophical speculation, political theory, literary criticism, and historical analysis are rooted in the western cultural heritage and Christian religious tradition. Major figures examined include Aristotle, Aquinas, Thomas More, John of the Cross, Donoso Cortes, and the Spanish Carlists. The interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan nature of this "festschrift" reflects the approach and style of (...) the man honored, Dr. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen. A special feature of the volume is a selection of critical studies of Professor Wilhelmsen's own work. (shrink)

Frederick D. Wilhelmsen's Being and Knowing, rooted in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, rests on two basic assertions: first, metaphysics is the science of being in its first and ultimate act, existence ; second, that existence is known not through observing objects, but in affirming through judgments that these objects are subjects of existence. The chapters of this book explore these Thomistic doctrines. Some explain St. Thomas Aquinas's philosophy of being. Others probe his epistemology. The complexity and (...) density of Aquinas's theory of judgment, emphasized throughout most of the book, point not only to a deeper understanding of the nature of metaphysics, but they open doors to the clarification of philosophical issues germane to contemporary thought. This work addresses a number of metaphysical philosophical paradoxes. Wilhelmsen's exploration of them demonstrates why he was the preeminent American scholar of the Thomistic tradition. This volume is part of Transaction's series, the Library of Conservative Thought. (shrink)

Each chapter in Christianity and Political Philosophy addresses a philosophical problem generated by history. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen discusses the limits of natural law; Cicero and the politics of the public orthodoxy; the problem of political power and the forces of darkness; Sir John Fortescue and the English tradition; Donoso Cortes and the meaning of political power; the natural law tradition and the American political experience; Eric Voegelin and the Christian tradition; and Jaffa, the School of Strauss, and the (...) Christian tradition. Wilhelmsen is convinced that mainstream philosophy's suppression of the Christian experience, or its reduction of Christianity to myths, deprives both Christianity and philosophy. He argues that Christianity opened up an entirely new range of philosophical questions and speculation that today are part and parcel of the intellectual tradition of the West. Wilhelmsen remains relevant because political philosophy in America today is following the historic cycle of political philosophy's importance: as things get worse for the nation because it is internally riven by ideological and spiritual conflicts, there is a greater need for the political philosopher to raise and explore profound questions and reassert forgotten truths about man and society, the soul and God, and good and evil, as well as the ground of political order. This is the latest book in Transaction's esteemed Library of Conservative Thought series. (shrink)

For metaphysicians who have imbibed the sober and inebriating teachings of Thomas Aquinas, existence is an act, the act which makes all things actually to be. As the act of existence makes things to be, essence makes them to be what they are. Essence and the act of existence, in other words, are really distinct yet together they compose each of the things that are. Such an understanding involves a number of paradoxes, and Frederick D. Wilhelmsen's articulation of (...) them reveals his philosophical genius. These paradoxes include the fact that the act of existence does not exist, that it can be thought but not conceived by the mind, and that truths about God can be known while He himself remains absolutely unknown. Wilhelmsen argues the notion that the Christian faith and philosophical reason harmonize while remaining completely distinct from each other. Writing in a captivating style, Wilhelmsen begins with a discussion of the development, strengths, and limitations of the ancient Greek philosophical accounts of being. Following that, he develops such key topics as the problem of existence, St. Thomas Aquinas' understanding of being, critical analyses of Hegel's and Heidegger's doctrines of being, existence as "towards God," and a metaphysical approach to the human person. The final two chapters develop the sense in which metaphysical thinking is and is not shaped by historical and social factors. (shrink)

The Metaphysics of Love develops the existential metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, applying it to explore the ontological structure of the human person. Published first in 1962, this book demonstrates the fertility of Thomistic metaphysics and the enduring influence of Thomism on Western philosophy. It uncovers the ecstatic structure of human existence, in dialogue with philosophers ranging from Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, to Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Tillich, Zubiri, and Ortega y Gassett, as well as theologians and historians Romano Guardini, Hilaire (...) Belloc, and Eric Voegelin. Philosophical and theological examinations of love have in various ways raised the following question: how can love of self (eros) be harmonized with love of others (agape)? These types of love represent two drives, Wilhelmsen argues, that in the end must be seen as aspects of existence itself. Moral and psychological problems of love turn out to be manifestations of metaphysical issues. While different cultures have emphasized one of these drives or the other, a healthy culture will not completely forget either. Cultures differ in the way they emphasize one or the other, or flee from one or the other. These dimensions of human existence provide the framework for a person's love of self, neighbour, and God. This volume is part of Transaction's Library of Conservative Thought series. (shrink)

The "quick wit" of integration is mankind's best hope for mastering and ordering the new electronic revolution threatening to drown us in a sea of information.

Telepolitics, the politics of the electronic media, is a new reality, an order of existence that has radically transformed man's relationship with his fellow man.

En este artículo analizamos y comparamos tres marcos de interpretación filosófica muy distintos del Barroco español: el de Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, que desde las filas del tradicionalismo católico considera el Barroco como la «civilización de la Contrarreforma» y la manifestación más pura de la idiosincrasia hispánica, única barrera de contención de las ideas secularizadoras del Renacimiento y la Reforma protestante; el de José Luis Abellán, que desde una visión progresista de la historia interpreta el Barroco español como un (...) periodo sintomático de decadencia, regresión social, antihumanismo y misoneísmo, frente a las corrientes modernizadoras que por entonces recorrían toda Europa, y el de Fernando Rodríguez de la Flor, que desde presupuestos freudianos se adentra en la producción simbólica y el imaginario del Barroco español para desvelar la psicología oculta del sujeto barroco, atravesado por el escepticismo y la energía nihilista. (shrink)

This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor ...

A critique of the hypothesis of extended cognition.

Critics of Divine Command Theory (DCT) have advanced the counterpossible terrible commands objection. They argue that DCT implies the counterpossible ‘If a necessarily morally perfect God commanded us to perform a terrible act, then the terrible act would be morally obligatory.’ However, this counterpossible is false. Hence, DCT is false. Philipp Kremers has proposed that the intuition that the counterpossible above is false is due to conversational implicatures. By providing a pragmatic explanation for the intuition, he thinks that DCT proponents (...) can then maintain that the counterpossible is actually true. In this article, I argue that Kremers's conversational implicature response fails because (a) there is good reason to think that no conversational implicature arises given what critics of DCT have expressed, (b) a competent reader would not understand the critics' utterance that TCC is false as implicating that TCC* is false, and (c) the counterpossible terrible commands objection can be easily modified to be immune to the conversational implicature response by cancelling any potential implicature. Thus, an appeal to conversational implicatures cannot save DCT from the counterpossible terrible commands objection. (shrink)

The first half of the book concentrates on key definitions and epistemological issues, including an overview of philosophy as applied to technology, a definition of technology, and an examination of technology as it relates to practical and ...

In a series of articles specifically commossioned for this volume, some of today's most distinguished business ethicists survey the main areas of interest and ...

Hannah Arendt disavowed the title of “philosopher,” and is known above all as a political theorist. But the relationship between philosophy and politics animates her entire oeuvre. We find her addressing the topic in The Human Condition (1958), in Between Past and Future (a collection of essays written in the early 1960s), and in Men in Dark Times (another collection of essays, this one from the late sixties). It is treated in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, composed during the (...) seventies, and also in the posthumous Life of the Mind, two of three projected volumes of which were complete when she died in 1975. Certainly, Arendt’s thought cannot be understood without taking into account her deep suspicion of and equally deep commitment to philosophy in the context of political reflection. For all that, her writings on this abiding preoccupation do not gel into a systematically articulated theory or programmatic statement. Instead, they reflect Arendt’s appreciation of what remained for her a “vital tension” – an enigma. (shrink)

A new approach to understanding the nature of ethics and ethical decision making, not only in the context of business, but also in other life contexts.

One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis—as the founders of absolute idealism.

That about sums up what is wrong with Clark's view.

Hegel is one of the major philosophers of the nineteenth century. Many of the major philosophical movements of the twentieth century - from existentialism to analytic philosophy - grew out of reactions against Hegel. He is also one of the hardest philosophers to understand and his complex ideas, though rewarding, are often misunderstood. In this magisterial and lucid introduction, Frederick Beiser covers every major aspect of Hegel's thought. He places Hegel in the historical context of nineteenth-century Germany whilst clarifying (...) the deep insights and originality of Hegel's philosophy. A masterpiece of clarity and scholarship, _Hegel_ is both the ideal starting point for those coming to Hegel for the first time and essential reading for any student or scholar of nineteenth century philosophy. Additional features: glossary chapter summaries chronology annotated further reading. (shrink)