This study represents a comparison between two radical gestures of literary self-reflexivity: romantic irony and postmodernist metafiction. It examines the impact of early German romantic theory and its central concept of irony on German and English romantic narrative fiction and relates the same to postmodernist self-reflexive novels, including its British and American variants. A primary objective of this comparison is to account for the radical skepticism that postmodernist metafiction voices with respect to the paramount philosophical question of truth and (...) reality. The immanent tension between an absolute idealistic and a radically skeptic position which romantic irony articulates and enacts is conceived of as an important and instructive link to the understanding of postmodernism. (shrink)

Clandestine philosophical manuscripts, made up of forbidden works including erotic texts, political pamphlets, satires of court life, forbidden religious texts, and books about the occult, had an avid readership in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, becoming objects of historical research by the twentieth century. The purveyors of the clandestine could be found in the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, and not least in Paris or London. Despite the heavy risks, including prison, the circulation of these manuscripts was a prosperous venture. (...) After Ira Wade's pioneering contribution (1938), Clandestine Philosophy is the first work in English entirely focused on the philosophical clandestine manuscripts that preceded and accompanied the birth of the Enlightenment. Topics from philosophy, political and religious thought, and moral and sexual behaviour are addressed by contemporary authors working in both America and Europe. These manuscripts shed light on the birth of pornography and provide an important avenue for investigating philosophical, religious, political, and social critique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XX, Number 1, April 1994, pp. 143-149 David Hume and Public Debt: Crying Wolf? JOHN CHRISTIAN LAURSEN and GREG COOLIDGE David Hume's views on public credit have not only received prominent attention in the literature on his political thought, but have even been the subject of attention in The Wall Street Journal.1 Most of the attention has centered on Hume's essay "Of Public Credit" of (...) 1752, and treats it only as an expression of ideas, without relating it to the historical facts. This note lays out Hume's views on this matter throughout his lifetime, and juxtaposes them with figures for the actual public debt, carrying the story down to the twentieth century. Public debt as we know it only goes back about 300 years. The British government in the 1690s was the first modern government to establish enough genuine credit that private citizens would loan it money without having to be compelled.2 At the turn of the century, in the year 1700, the British public debt amounted to 14.2 million pounds sterling.3 As early as 1741, Hume was already worrying about the public debt in the essay "Of Liberty and Despotism" (later changed to "Of Civil Liberty"). In the last paragraph of that essay, he wrote of the "degeneracy" brought about by public debt, suggested that debt-service "taxes may, in time, become altogether intolerable, and all the property of the state be brought into the hands of" the government. If it is not curbed, we may come to "curse our very liberty," he wrote.4 That year, the national debt totaled 48.8 million pounds (45.2 million in 1701 pounds5). John Christian Laursen and Greg Coolidge are at the Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521 USA. Laursen e-mail: [email protected]. 144 John Christian Laursen and Greg Coolidge Hume's essay of 1752, "Of Public Credit, " was devoted entirely to criticism of the public debt (Essays, 349-365). His thoughts on public credit at this time can be summed up in this ominous warning: It must, indeed, be one of these two events; either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation. (Essays, 360-361) Hume acknowledged that the use of public credit could benefit the economy in some ways: more men with large stocks and incomes, may naturally be supposed to continue in trade, where there are public debts; and this, it must be owned, is of some advantage to commerce, by diminishing its profits, promoting circulation, and encouraging industry. (Essays, 354) But the many disadvantages would outweigh such advantages (Essays, 354355 ): 1) "It is certain, that national debts cause a mighty confluence of people and riches to the capital," making the head too large for the body. 2) Public stocks "banish gold and silver from the most considerable commerce of the state." 3) The taxes levied to pay the interest oppress the poorer people. 4) "As foreigners possess a great share of our national funds, they render the public, in a manner, tributary to them, and may in time occasion the transport of our people and our industry." 5) Public credit encourages an idle and useless rentier class. All of this pales, however, in comparison to the political consequences. From the point of view of the body politic, public credit was a threat to the security of the state. It would die a natural or a violent death. In wartime, or some national emergency, the funds necessary for the functioning of the economy would be diverted to other purposes. The economy, now dependent on credit, would crumble. The whole fabric, already tottering, falls to the ground, and buries thousands in its ruins. And this, I think, may be called the natural death of public credit. (Essays, 363) Hume Studies David Hume and Public Debt: Crying Wolf? 145 Another scenario would occur if the government became too indebted to intervene in maintaining the balance of power in Europe. Our children, weary of the struggle, and fettered with encumbrances, may sit down secure, and see their neighbors oppressed and conquered ; till, at last, they themselves... (shrink)

In der heutigen Zeit haben aktuelle politische Fragen - wie etwa die Konflikte im Nahen Osten - häufig eine religiöse Dimension oder werden auch über die Religion ausgetragen. Eine globale Friedensordnung ist nur denkbar, wenn die großen weltanschaulichen Systeme, also auch die großen Religionen, einbezogen werden. Die großen Religionen haben auch einen wichtigen Beitrag an die Friedensthematik zu leisten. Der vorliegende Band analysiert, diskutiert und entfaltet schwergewichtig die Beiträge der jüdischen Tradition und besonders des jüdischen Schrifttums, also Tanach und Talmud, (...) zu Fragen der Friedensordnung, zu einer übergreifenden politischen Ethik und zu Themen wie Krieg, Gewalt, Frieden und Versöhnung. Zur Sprache kommen neben den Schriften des antik-klassischen Judentums punktuell auch rabbinische Stellungnahmen, jüdische Autoren des Mittelalters und moderne jüdische Autoren. Das Buch ist Bestandteil einer fünfbändigen Reihe. Bereits erschienen ist Frieden, politische Ordnung und Ethik. Fragestellungen - Erklärungsmodelle - Lösungsstrategien (2018). (shrink)

Der Beitrag nimmt Erich Auerbachs Postulat einer transnationalen Ideengeschichte als Ausgangspunkt, um aktuelle Potenziale einer ideenhistorisch geprägten Literaturwissenschaft zu prüfen. Einerseits ausgehend von der sozialgeschichtlichen bzw. sprachkritisch geprägten Neuausrichtung der Ideengeschichte, wie man sie mit dem Schlüsseljahr 1969 und den Namen Foucault und Skinner in Verbindung bringen kann, und andererseits vor dem Hintergrund ihrer kulturwissenschaftlichen Expansion lotet der Artikel die Möglichkeiten einer Ideengeschichte aus, die sich wieder stärker der Interpretation von Bedeutung, von Ideen als geistigen Tatsachen zuwendet. Dazu schlägt er (...) einen topisch-rhetorischen Begriff der Texthandlung vor, der es dem Leser gestattet, sich dem Autor als dem eklektischen Nutzer und Neuarrangeur verfügbaren Wissens zu nähern. Die Literaturwissenschaft könnte sich auf diese Weise als hermeneutisches Leitverfahren der Ideengeschichte empfehlen, mit dem der Stellenwert eines souveränen Lesersubjekts auch angesichts zur Unübersichtlichkeit neigenden Text-Kontext-Formationen aufrechterhalten werden kann. (shrink)

According to their founders, the DVjs, established in 1923, was supposed to develop a specific focus also for medieval literature and culture. This article analyzes how this program was realized and how the relationship between literary studies and intellectual history (›Geistesgeschichte‹) was shaped in different periods from the early articles of Günther Müller, Wolfgang Stammler or Walther Rehm to the reestablishment by Hugo Kuhn around 1950. The authors reconstruct a particular branch of German medieval studies still relevant today.

Les historiens nous permettent d'avoir une connaissance des guerres. Mais peut-on penser la guerre comme un phénomène unifié au-delà de ses multiples formes? La guerre est-elle le destin de l'humanité ou bien peut-on envisager un monde sans guerre? Comment la paix peut-elle à son tour être conçue? Telles sont les grandes questions auxquelles cet ouvrage entend répondre en convoquant les philosophes et les historiens, mais également les écrivains des traditions les plus diverses. Toutes questions qui se résument à celle-ci ; (...) qu'y a-t-il de pensable sur la guerre aujourd'hui? (shrink)

Schopenhauer, "le vieux prophete", disait Nietzsche. Paru en 1819 dans l'obscurite la plus totale, son ouvrage majeur, Le Monde comme Volonte et comme representation, lui a valu d'atteindre en 1900 a une celebrite posthume telle qu'aucun penseur n'en a jamais connue - influence que son extension meme a fini par occulter aujourd'hui. Car Schopenhauer a fait cristalliser la crise des croyances qui marque la fin du XIXe siecle, dessinant pour l'avenir la physionomie de l'homme moderne. Un homme qui sous un (...) ciel vide eprouve dans le ressentiment la condition qu'il s'est lui-meme assignee : un intellect regi secretement par des pulsions irrationnelles, une concurrence vitale qui l'isole de ses semblables et de la nature, une sexualite dominatrice mais sans joie, une irresponsabilite aveugle vis-a-vis de son propre comportement comme de l'histoire collective, bref l'enracinement de son existence entiere dans une inconscience fondamentale. Nietzsche et Freud n'ont pas ete les seuls heritiers de Schopenhauer qui a remodele ce territoire invisible sur lequel la litterature edifie son discours. Aussi est-il present, on l'ignore generalement, dans la genealogie de tant de grands ecrivains - de Tolstoi, Strindberg, Maupassant, Conrad, Proust, Pirandello, jusqu'a Kafka, Thomas Mann, Celine, Beckett, Bernhard. Ce sont les voies de ce renouvellement inventif qui sont ici tracees. (shrink)

The article analyzes the influence of German thought on Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion. The activities of the British scholar in the networks of Catholic modernism are placed within the broader framework of the international discussion on religion around 1900. His religious universalism was shaped to a great extent by the encounter of German intellectuals from a liberal Protestant background, most notably by Rudolf Eucken, Ernst Troeltsch and Friedrich Naumann. This encounter, started during the 1890s, focussed on the (...) concepts of historical individuality and historical development. It took a new direction with the public role adopted by German intellectuals in the propaganda of the World War. Von Hügel’s often ignored treatise The German Soul reacted to the fusion of liberal religious thought with German nationalism as observed in Troeltsch and Naumann. His criticism of a lack of „international morality“ of German thought and his approach to identify the reason for this deficit in the Lutheran and idealistic tradition shed light on the ongoing discussions of a „Sonderweg“ of German thought. Von Hügel’s late attempts to promote Christianity as an anti-nationalist force remind of other more theological rejections of nationalism after the war. However, these attempts are not based on a strict theological or confessional rationale but try to continue the interconfessional and interdisciplinary discussion of the beginning of the century. This is revealed best by von Hügel’s close but not uncritical relationship to Troeltsch in the early 1920s. (shrink)

Brouwer's criticism of mathematical proofs making essential use of the tertium non datur had a surprisingly late response in logical circles. Among the diverse reactions in the mid 1920s and early 1930s, it is possible to delimit a coherent body of opinions on these questions: (1) whether Brouwer's denial of the tertium non datur meant only the abandonment of this classical law or, beyond that, the affirmation of its negation; (2) whether one or both of these alternatives were logically (...) inconsistent; and (3) whether Brouwer's line of argument was forced to take resort to the very law it was designed to refute. The controversy centred around a series of articles by Marcel Barzin and Alfred Errera who fought against the intuitionistic critique, missed their victory because of conceptual confusions and fallacious reasoning, but emerged unconvinced from the debate in the late 1930s. The controversy is of interest to the historiography of formal logic since it stimulated the clarification not only of the concepts of formal validity, decidability, many-valued systems of logic and non-classical systems generally, but also of the distinction between object and meta-level, and between a formal system and its semantics. Most important, the debate, by putting pressure on the intuitionistic camp to make their ideas more precise, seems to have given the decisive motivation towards Heyting's answer to this demand by his axiomatization of intuitionistic logic in 1930. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Against the Ethicists (Adversus Mathematicos XI) by Sextus EmpiricusJohn Christian LaursenSextus Empiricus. Against the Ethicists (Adversus Mathematicos XI). Translation, Commentary, and Introduction by Richard Bett. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. xxxiv + 302. NP.Sesto Empirico. Contro gli etici. Introduction, Editing, Translation, and Commentary by Emidio Spinelli. Naples: Bibliopolis, 1995. Pp. 450. NP.Joining the rising tide of scholarly literature that says that skeptics can indeed live their skepticism, (...) and that it is not necessarily a bad life, are these two fine translations of Book XI of Sextus Empiricus’s Against the Mathematicians (known as MXI), the most important for ethics and politics. Considering that the length of Sextus’s text is only 39 pages (in the English version), the length of these two volumes alone indicates that a great deal of philosophical and philological scholarship will be found in them. Both authors do an excellent job of tracking down Sextus’s sources and his targets.Spinelli accepts the traditional position (Janacek’s) that MXI was written after Sextus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism, although he is aware of the minority position that it was the other way around. Bett makes a convincing case for the minority position, including a substantial appendix comparing passages from the two works which suggest that Outlines polishes MXI. This has the merit of explaining Sextus’s apparent “negative dogmatism” in MXI as part of early skepticism and a phase on the way to the more refined and more thoroughly undogmatic skepticism of the Outlines. However, Bett himself mentions counterevidence to his thesis, so it cannot be considered decisively established. Spinelli explains the apparent dogmatism on the assumption that Outlines came first: the usual skeptical reservations set forth in that book should be understood as implied (165–66, 169). Other explanations are that apparent affirmations are ad hominem polemic “inside” Stoic theory (240ff.) or merely relative and with no ontological status (291).Bett divides the text into part A (1–167) and part B (168–end), arguing for compilation of the two parts of the book from different sources with different purposes. Spinelli writes that the often-denigrated 168–end “has a precise function in the internal compositional strategy” of the book (339).English speakers have had to rely too long on the Loeb translation by” B. Bury. Bett questions many of his renderings. For example, Bury translated kakon and kakia as “evil,” with connotations of intentionality, and at MXI 121 even supplied a footnote to Genesis! Bett prefers the less-loaded “bad” and “vice.” Spinelli usually translates kakon with “mali” but uses the loaded “malvagità” for kakia at MXI 121, where Bett would have suggested “vizio.” Bury translated alogon and alogois with “irrational” which Bett corrects to “non-rational” at MXI 143, 148, and 161 to capture the point that what is in question is neither rational nor irrational, but rather “sensory happenings” which have [End Page 313] nothing to do with reasoning (161). Spinelli renders alogon as “irrazionale” at MXI 143 and alogois as “sottrati al ragionamento” at MXI 148 and 161.Spinelli’s is a much more useful and substantial volume than the previous Italian translation. The only thing that might keep Bett’s volume from replacing the Loeb edition is that it does not supply the Greek text on facing pages. Spinelli does.The exhaustive and careful analyses of Spinelli and Bett allow them to disagree in important ways with parts of the substantial recent work on ancient skepticism by Hankinson, McPherran, Annas, Nussbaum, Striker, and Decleva Caizzi (cited as Caizzi by Bett), not to mention the older work of Janacek and the debates from the early 1980s (now dated) among Frede, Burnyeat, and Barnes. Although they do not find Sextus’s work to be flawless by any means, it is clear that we are long past the point at which his work could be dismissed as silly or merely derivative.On the test case of the treatment of Sextus’s example of the tyrant (MXI 166), both Spinelli and Bett point in the right direction. Spinelli sees that “the Pyrrhonist can live easily” (330) and that MXI 165–67 provides “a new key to understanding the ‘moral skepticism... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 419-420 [Access article in PDF] Martin Mulsow. Moderne aus dem Untergrund: Radikale Frühaufklärung in Deutschland, 1680-1720. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2002. Pp. x + 514. Paper, € 58.00.This is a marvelous, detailed, textured study of a large number of minor works and minor figures that developed and transmitted many of the elements of modern philosophy in early modern Germany. (...) Many of the texts were written in Latin, and only some were published. One should not teach the philosophy of the Enlightenment from Hazard or Cassirer without attention to these figures, whom they did not know. Now we know where our heroes like Lessing, Hume, and Kant got many of their fundamental ideas.Martin Mulsow ends this book with ten theses. The first holds that most of the authors discussed were radicalized in a multi-layered process, not simply from the reading of Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle, or Toland. For example, one could take the role of an opponent in an academic disputation, and bit by bit begin to believe one's unorthodox role. Or one could be provoked by ultra-orthodox opponents to explore the opposite of what they believed. Some authors evolved into and out of radical positions over the course of their lives.Further theses contend that small, trusted circles of friends were often the enabling condition in which unorthodox views were first expressed and then hammered out. Irony, satire, humor, paradox, and ambivalence played key roles. It is often difficult to tell whether some of these texts were serious or intended as jokes, and perhaps the authors did not always know themselves. Some radical ideas were spread simply by curious erudites who assembled collections and bibliographies of radical manuscripts and texts without believing them.Mulsow shows how people wrote on controversial topics in coded scholarly language. Spinozism was discussed under the rubrics of Platonism and Stoicism; the sovereignty of the people was considered in terms of the lex regia; and Biblical criticism became code for the physicians' rejection of the materiality of the soul. Thus philosophical discourse can be found where one might least expect it in legal, philological, historical, and scientific debates. The numerous case studies that the author assembles amount to philosophical microhistory.Substantial chapters deal with various aspects of the intellectual stew that emerged from the bubbling pot of Jews and Socinians and other Christian sects that were semi-tolerated in the Netherlands. Unlike any construction of moderate and radical positions as opposed and at odds, Mulsow shows how they were often intertwined. The destruction of Christian Platonism, the paradoxical development of Enlightenment ideas out of anti-humanism, and the uses of so-called eclecticism in philosophy made possible the assembly of modern philosophical positions.In yet another paradox, many of these writers belong to what has been called the "conservative Enlightenment," intending only to temporize and draw the teeth of the political and philosophical radicals, and yet their writings systematized and transmitted the ideas of the radicals, opening the way to further radicality. It is a perennial weakness of the skeptics and proto-liberals like Gundling that they defended freedom of thought and libertas philosophandi even where it would undermine the ideas and institutions in which they believed.Most of the philosophically radical positions began as critiques of theological positions, and this is one reason why it is ever more apparent that one cannot understand the rise of modern philosophy without a close acquaintance with early modern theology. None of the early modern philosophers we are trying to understand was ignorant of the many levels of theological debate. There are numerous connections to later times: for example, a seventeenth-century debate over political theology anticipated Carl Schmitt's twentieth-century rediscovery of this topos.Mulsow places the Enlightened ideas of Locke and Newton in the context of their basis in the theology of anti-Trinitarian Socinians and Arians such as Samuel Crell. This was as important to many who radicalized it as the Spinozism credited with spawning the radical... (shrink)

This article argues that theological pacifism is best evaluated when situated in a network of practices, beliefs and biblical reading strategies that support a critique of Empire, and when mapped onto this world open up a space for living that is non-territorial and non-sacrificial, the grammar of which is governed by a political understanding of love.

How to read Plutarch in the context of New Testament studies? Almost 50 years after the seminal project on the topic led by Hans Dieter Betz, this volume elevates once again the issue's priority. Bridging discourses is a fitting description both of the religio-philosophical spirit of Plutarch, the Platonist philosopher and priest of Apollo at Delphi, and the task of bringing his writings into fruitful dialogue with the writings of the New Testament, Hellenistic Judaism, and Early Christianity. Taken together, (...) these authors constitute the religious Platonism of the early imperial era. Contributions from the fields of New Testament, classics, philosophy, religious studies, and patristics explore various ways of how to establish these bridges. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this work of sweeping erudition, one of our foremost historians of early Christianity considers a variety of theoretical critiques to examine the problems ...

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)

This is the story of the transformation of the ways in which the increasingly Christianized elites of the late antique Mediterranean experienced and conceptualized linguistic differences. The metaphor of Babel stands for the magnificent edifice of classical culture that was about to reach the sky, but remained self-sufficient and selfcontained in its virtual monolingualism - the paradigm within which even Latin was occasionally considered just a dialect of Greek. The gradual erosion of this vision is the slow fall of Babel (...) that took place in the hearts and minds of a good number of early Christian writers and intellectuals who represented various languages and literary traditions. This step-by-step process included the discovery and internalization of the existence of multiple other languages in the world, as well as subsequent attempts to incorporate their speakers meaningfully into the holistic and distinctly Christian picture of the universe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 24.1 (2004) 117-133 [Access article in PDF] Emptiness, Kenōsis, History, and Dialogue: The Christian Response to Masao Abe's Notion of "Dynamic Śūnyatā " in the Early Years of the Abe-Cobb Buddhist-Christian Dialogue Charles B. Jones The Catholic University of America Introduction Between 1980 and 1993, the Japanese Zen scholar Masao Abe resided in the United States, teaching in various places.1 This brought (...) him into contact with many American scholars and theologians, among whom was John Cobb, a Protestant theologian then working in the area of process theology. Many of the ideas that Abe brought from Japanese Buddhism and particularly from the "Kyōtō School" of Japanese philosophy appeared to Cobb intriguingly congruent with his theological work, and the two began a series of dialogues that came to include a larger and larger circle of Christian theologians2 and (mostly Western) Buddhist scholar-practitioners. The end result was a series of informal encounters as well as a series of three formal "International Buddhist-Christian Conferences" (1980, 1984, 1987; a second series of dialogues were held without Abe's attendance starting in 1998 after a hiatus under the name "International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter"3 ). From these encounters came an impressive number of publications from Abe and from a variety of other participants in what is sometimes known as the "Abe-Cobb Encounter."The agenda, following Cobb's suggestion and vocabulary, was to allow each side to "cross over" into the other; in other words, to study and internalize the worldview of the other in as much depth as possible without converting or losing one's connection with one's home tradition, abiding in the other side as a guest. Later, one was to "cross back," come home to one's own tradition and reflect on the benefits gained in wearing the other's shoes for a time.4 This agenda, which emphasized understanding the other's worldview and concepts of ultimate reality, suited the highly intellectual style of the dialogues, focused as they were on philosophical and theological concerns. [End Page 117]Nevertheless, even given the concern to study and understand the other's philosophical standpoint, a curious disconnect emerges when one studies the literature produced in this dialogue. During the early phase of these encounters in the 1980s, each side, Buddhist and Christian, appears to have taken one text as normative for the entirety of the other's tradition. For Abe, following his predecessors in the KyōtōSchool, the emblematic textfor Christianity was avery short one: the hymn toChrist recorded by Paul in Philippians 2:6-11. He was particularly drawn to the concept of kenōsis, "emptying," which he thought might serve as a cognate for the Buddhist idea of "emptiness" (Skt: śūnyatā ). While the Christians participating in the dialogueaccepted this as a point of contact, albeit with some reservations, others have objected strenuously to this approach, saying that Abe's method of interpreting this text did not hold to responsible methods of exegesis, and at any rate the passage was much too minute to support an entire theology of God and creation.5The Christian side by and large adopted much the same strategy in coming to grips with Buddhist thought, choosing a brief text as the paradigmatic statement of the Buddhist view of ultimate reality: the Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā (Root Stanzas on the Middle Way; hereafter the MMK) of the second-century Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna. In this instance, objections from the Buddhist side were not forthcoming, because Abe himself took the MMK as a normative statement of Buddhist thought. Nevertheless, his own presentation of Buddhism, especially his key notion of "dynamic śūnyatā, " went considerably beyond Nāgārjuna's presentation and thus elicited some objections from the Christian side for not hewing to their own understanding of Nāgārjuna. Because Abe never responded to these objections directly, the misunderstanding was left unresolved... (shrink)

This paper analyses the early history of David Bohm’s mechanics from the perspective of Ludwik Fleck’s thought-collectives and shows how the thought-style of the scientific community limits the possible modes of thinking and what new possibilities for the construction of a new theory arise if these limits are removed.

The writings of the Church Fathers form a distinct body of literature that shaped the early church and built upon the doctrinal foundations of Christianity established within the New Testament. Christian literature in the period c.100–c.400 constitutes one of the most influential textual oeuvres of any religion. Written mainly in Greek, Latin and Syriac, Patristic literature emanated from all parts of the early Christian world and helped to extend its boundaries. The History offers a systematic (...) account of that literature and its setting. The works of individual writers in shaping the various genres of Christian literature is considered, alongside three general essays, covering distinct periods in the development of Christian literature, which survey the social, cultural and doctrinal context within which Christian literature arose and was used by Christians. This is a landmark reference book for scholars and students alike. (shrink)

This book provides a collection of some 400 passages on music from early Christian literature - New Testament to c. 450 AD - newly translated from the original Greek, Latin, and Syriac. As there are no musical sources of the period, music historians must rely upon remarks about music in literary sources to gain some knowledge of early Christian liturgical music. This volume makes a large and representative collection of the material conveniently available. The passages are (...) arranged chronologically and regionally in eleven chapters with brief commentary. An introduction sets out the major subjects and themes of the original source material. (shrink)

Biogeography is a multidisciplinary field with multiple origins in 19th century taxonomic practice. The Origins of Biogeography presents a revised history of early biogeography and investigates the split in taxonomic practice, between the classification of taxa and the classification of vegetation. This book moves beyond the traditional belief that biogeography is born from a synthesis of Darwin and Wallace and focuses on the important pioneering work of earlier practitioners such as Zimmermann, Stromeyer, de Candolle and Humboldt. Tracing the (...) academic history of biogeography over the decades and centuries, this book recounts the early schisms in phyto and zoogeography, the shedding of its bonds to taxonomy, its adoption of an ecological framework, and its beginnings at the dawn of the 20th century. This book assesses the contributions of key figures such as Zimmermann, Humboldt and Wallace, and reminds us of the forgotten influence of plant and animal geographers including Stromeyer, Prichard and de Candolle, whose early attempts at classifying animal and plant geography would inform later progress. The Origins of Biogeography is a science historiography aimed at biogeographers, who have little access to a detailed history of the practices of early plant and animal geographers. This book will also reveal how biological classification has shaped 18th and 19th century plant and animal geography and why it is relevant to the 21st biogeographer. (shrink)

The present collection of essays is devoted to the Christian philosophy of the most prolific and most speculatively ambitious of the Cambridge Origenists, Henry More. Not only did More revere Origen, whom he extolled as a "holy sage" and "that miracle of the Christian world", but he also developed a philosophical system which hinged upon the Origenian notions of universal divine goodness and libertarian human freedom. Throughout his life, More subscribed to the ancient theology of the pre-existence of (...) souls and took issue with the early modern philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes and Baruch de Spinoza. His vision of God's goodness, experienced in his early school years at Eton, became the cornerstone of an Origenist rationalism which envisaged an extended world animated by divine thought and inhabited by self-moving rational agents. More's philosophy is the crowning attainment of the early modern rediscovery of Origen as well as a neglected major rationalist system in its own right which went on to exert decisive influence upon all subsequent western metaphysics. The essays collected in the first part provide a detailed introduction to More's voluminous writings. After a comprehensive general overview of his metaphysical and ethical system, the essays expound More's historical context and his philosophical development from his early poetry in the 1640s to his mature philosophical and theological prose works of the 50s, 60s and 70s. In addition, the reception of More and Origen in the later Cambridge Origenists and in Isaac Newton is outlined. The second part contains several excerpts from More's influential Latin works first translated into English by the editor. (shrink)

This work investigates the early encounters of French philosophers and religious thinkers with the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Following an introductory chapter addressing context and methodology, Chapter 2 argues that Henri Bergson's insights into lived duration and intuition and Maurice Blondel's genetic description of action functioned as essential precursors to the French reception of phenomenology. Chapter 3 details the presentations of Husserl and his followers by three successive pairs of French academic philosophers: Léon Noël and Victor Delbos, Lev (...) Shestov and Jean Hering, and Bernard Groethuysen and Georges Gurvitch. Chapter 4 then explores the appropriation of Bergsonian and Blondelian phenomenological insights by Catholic theologians Édouard Le Roy and Pierre Rousselot. Chapter 5 examines applications and critiques of phenomenology by French religious philosophers, including Jean Hering, Joseph Maréchal, and neo-Thomists like Jacques Maritain. A concluding chapter expounds the principal finding that philosophical and theological receptions of phenomenology in France prior to 1939 proceeded independently due to differences in how Bergson and Blondel were perceived by French philosophers and religious thinkers and their respective orientations to the Cartesian and Aristotelian/Thomist intellectual traditions. (shrink)

Plato in the Third Sophistic examines the influence and impact of Plato and Platonism on later Christian and Byzantine rhetoric. The volume brings together specially commissioned articles from leading scholars of late antique philosophy and literature. Their examinations show that Plato is the single most important and influential literary figure used to frame the literature of this time. Plato in the Third Sophistic will help scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines better understand the development of (...) class='Hi'>Christian and Byzantine rhetoric and philosophy during the third through sixth centuries. (shrink)

Cefalu offers the first sustained assessment of the ways in which recent contemporary philosophy and cultural theory -- including the work of Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Eric Santner, Slavoj Žižek, and Alenka Zupancic -- can illuminate Early Modern literature and culture. The book argues that when selected Early Modern devotional poets set out to represent subject-God relations, they often encounter some sublime aspect of God that, in Slovenian-Lacanian terms, seems "Other" to himself. This divine Other, while sometimes presented (...) directly as a void or empty place, is more often filled in and presented instead as some form of divine excess. While Donne, and to a lesser extent Traherne, disavow those numinous aspects of God that might subsist beneath such excesses, Crashaw, and especially Milton, attempt to represent the intimate relationship between any creature’s and God's intrinsic alterity. Cefalu introduces new ways of theorizing not only seventeenth-century religious ideologies, but also the nature of Early Modern subjectivity. (shrink)

An integrated overview of history The volume in this series are arranged topically to cover biography, literature, doctrines, practices, institutions, worship, missions, and daily life. Archaeology and art as well as writings are drawn on to illuminate the Christian movement in its early centuries. Ample attention is also given to the relation of Christianity to pagan thought and life, to the Roman state, to Judaism, and to doctrines and practices that came to be judged as heretical or (...) schismatic. Introductions to each volume tie the articles together for an integrated understanding of the history. Offers insights and understanding The aim of the collection is to give balanced and comprehensive coverage, selected on the basis of the following criteria: original and excellent research and writing; subject matter of use to teachers and students; groundbreaking importance for the history of research; background information for issues and opinions. Understanding the development of early Christianity and its impact on Western history and thought offers valuable insights into the modern world and the present state of Christiantiy. It also provides perspective on comparable developments in other periods of history and reveals human nature in its religious dimension. (shrink)

This article is an introduction to a special issue on ‘Contexts of Religious Tolerance: New Perspectives from Early Modern Britain and Beyond’, which contains essays on the contributions to the debates on tolerance by non-canonical philosophers and theologians, mainly from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scotland and England. Among the studied authors are the Aberdeen Doctors, Samuel Rutherford, James Dundas, John Finch, George Keith, John Simson, Archibald Campbell, Francis Hutcheson, George Turnbull and John Witherspoon. The introduction draws attention to several methodological (...) points connected to the decision to look at the debates on tolerance through the prism of rarely studied authors. It then presents the essays, which offer novel perspectives by analysing and contextualising political, religious and moral treatments of tolerance. These are tied especially to debates on the articles of faith and on their status, on confessions of faith and their role in the quest for orthodoxy, on liberty of conscience, and on the relation between church and state. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article discusses the reception of Schelling’s philosophy by the young Paul Tillich. During his study on the theological faculty of the University of Halle from 1905 until 1907 Tillich was influenced by the Fichte interpretation of Fritz Medicus. Tillich uses Fichte’s philosophy as a theoretical frame for a modern theology. The problems from this Fichte reception lay in the concept of freedom as autonomy. In Schelling’s philosophy, especially in his concept of freedom as the possibility to come into contradiction (...) with oneself, the young Tillich finds the solution for these problems. (shrink)

Brings together the key writings of Ferdinand Christian Baur across theology, biblical studies, early Christian history, and philosophy, showing his crucial role in the development of 19th-century thought.

_Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism_ fundamentally rethinks the nature of the transgressive theories and practices of the Buddhist Tantric traditions, challenging the notion that the Tantras were "marginal" or primitive and situating them instead -- both ideologically and institutionally -- within larger trends in mainstream Buddhist and Indian culture. Critically surveying prior scholarship, Wedemeyer exposes the fallacies of attributing Tantric transgression to either the passions of lusty monks, primitive tribal rites, or slavish imitation of Saiva traditions. Through comparative analysis of (...) modern historical narratives -- that depict Tantrism as a degenerate form of Buddhism, a primal religious undercurrent, or medieval ritualism -- he likewise demonstrates these to be stock patterns in the European historical imagination. Through close analysis of primary sources, Wedemeyer reveals the lived world of Tantric Buddhism as largely continuous with the Indian religious mainstream and deploys contemporary methods of semiotic and structural analysis to make sense of its seemingly repellent and immoral injunctions. Innovative, semiological readings of the influential _Guhyasamaja Tantra_ underscore the text's overriding concern with purity, pollution, and transcendent insight -- issues shared by all Indic religions -- and a large-scale, quantitative study of Tantric literature shows its radical antinomianism to be a highly managed ritual observance restricted to a sacerdotal elite. These insights into Tantric scripture and ritual clarify the continuities between South Asian Tantrism and broader currents in Indian religion, illustrating how thoroughly these "radical" communities were integrated into the intellectual, institutional, and social structures of South Asian Buddhism. (shrink)

Innovative readings of the "Guhyasamaja Tantra" underscore the text's overriding concern with purity, pollution, and transcendent insight and a large-scale, quantitative study of Tantric literature shows its radical antinomianism to be a ...

Vor dem Hintergrund eines kurzen historischen Rückblicks argumentiert der Beitrag für die Bedeutung einer an Texten (statt nur Begriffen oder Sätzen) ausgerichteten ideenhistorischen Forschung und plädiert spezifisch für das Forschungsfeld einer ›Literaturgeschichte der Philosophie‹ (doppelter Genitiv) als ein zentrales Arbeitsgebiet der vorliegenden Zeitschrift.

The Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the Chief of His Opinions, published anonymously in London in 1661, is the chief testimony of the renaissance of Origen in early modern Cambridge. Probably authored by George Rust, the later Bishop of Dromore in Ireland, it is the first defence of Origenism, and delineates a rational theology based upon the unshakable foundation of God’s first attribute, his goodness. Trespassing and falling away from God’s goodness, the souls forfeit their original ethereal bodies (...) or ‘vehicles’ and come to inhabit lesser ones made of air and earth. Making responsible use of their freedom, however, they may climb up the ontological ladder again. Rust’s rational theodicy with its stress on God’s universal goodness and the pre-existent soul’s free will is a key document of the Cambridge Platonists’ deeply Origenian philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The early work by Gilbert Harman and John Doris on character and situationism has fostered a vast literature over the past 15 years. Yet despite all this work, there are many important issues which remain largely unexplored. The goal of this paper is to briefly outline eight promising research directions: neglected moral virtues, neglected non-moral virtues, virtue assessment and measurement, replication, non-Aristotelian virtue ethics, positive accounts of character trait possession, prescriptive situationism, and virtue cultivation.

This book proposes a reading of Dionysius the Areopagite's longest and most important treatise 'On the Divine Names' from a philosophical point of view, rather than from a theological point of view which dominates the secondary literature. At the same time, it can serve as an introduction to the entire philosophy of Dionysius.