This volume is a collection of the Lullian contributions to the 2012 Congress of the Societe Internationale pour l'Etude de la Philosophie Medievale (SIEPM), held in Freising, Germany, 20-25 August. The Lullian Opera constitute a philosophical mirror of the medieval tradition. The questions and interests of medieval masters played a role in the Renaissance and Early Modern period through the Lullian Art. The three parts of this volume-Knowledge, Contemplation and Lullism- are intended to show that influence, collecting (...) the contributions of well-known specialists on the Lullian works, conceived of as Opera philosophica, in different areas such as geometry, logic, methodology, or Early Modern law. The results of Lullian studies in the past 20th century and the revival of Lullian discussions at present also hold an important place. The Raimundus-Lullus-Institut in Freiburg supports this edition, and in the introduction its members place the volume in the great tradition of Lullian studies. The celebration of a Lullian meeting devoted to the relationship between medieval philosophy and the Lullian Opus at the 2012 SIEPM Congress, the recent constitution of a Lullian Section by the SIEPM-Bureau to develop projects about Llull's works as a vehicle of medieval philosophical concerns and the history of its reception, and the results collected in this volume, are a good example of the increasing relevance of Llull-studies today. (shrink)

No início do século XIV, Raimundo Lúlio, contrapondo-se aos mestres em Artes por ele identificados como averroistae, desenvolveria não menos que dois métodos resolutivos de inconsistência, a fim de refutar aquelas teses filosóficas que divergem da fé cristã. Um deles serve-se de silogismos contraditórios capazes de expressar a estrutura de um argumento ad hominem, ao passo que o outro nada mais é do que uma reductio ad impossibile elaborada com base em suposições contraditórias. In the early fourteenth century, Ramond Lully, (...) opposed to university philosophers whom he identified as averroistae, developed no less than two methods for the resolution of inconsistency, in order to refute philosophical theses which diverge from the Christian faith. The first of these uses contradictory syllogisms expressing the structure of an ad hominem argument, while the other is a reductio ad impossibile produced with contradictory suppositions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.2 (2003) 168-172 [Access article in PDF] Logic and the Art of Memory: The Quest for a Universal Language. Paolo Rossi. Trans. Stephen Clucas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Pp. xxviii + 333. $32.00 cloth. Of the traditional five canons of rhetoric—inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and actio—the most circuitous and fascinating history belongs to memoria. From its propulsion of Homeric lore to its grounding of (...) rhetorical invention to its exile under print culture to its recent revival in public memory studies, the promiscuous and perplexing history of memory in the West may be one of the least appreciated, and perhaps least understood, elements of rhetorical and intellectual history. The publication in 1966 of Frances Yates's highly praised The Art of Memory drew the attention of contemporary scholars to the importance of mnemotechnics to the culture of late medieval and early modern Europe. 1 Yates persuasively argued that the art of memory is an integral element of European intellectual history, one that can enrich our understanding of everything from Dominican theology to Shakespearian theater. However, six years earlier, in 1960, the Italian intellectual historian Paolo Rossi published in Italian an important precursor to Yates's work entitled Clavis Universalis: Arti Della Memoria e Logica Combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz. The book traces the encyclopaedic and mnemotechnical traditions from Aristotle through Cicero and Raymond Lull and into the early-modern period, arguing that the art of memory provides an important antecedent to the advent of method in seventeenth-century philosophy, especially in the works of Bacon, Descartes, and Leibniz. Yates, in her preface to The Art of Memory, acknowledges her debt to Rossi's work, and now this work has been made available in English translation. Stephen Clucas's translation, under the title Logic and the Art of Memory, will no doubt stimulate and supplement research into the mnemotechnical tradition in the English-speaking world, and perhaps lead us to reconsider the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric.Rossi argues that the neglect of the mnemotechnical tradition in its Ciceronian and Lullian strands has distorted our understanding of the "new" science and philosophy of the seventeenth-century, which is often interpreted as constituting, in a Kuhnian sense, a drastic paradigm shift from a [End Page 168] Renaissance worldview that still retained occult elements. Rossi places the work of Bacon, Descartes, and Leibniz within the historical strand of the logico-encyclopaedic and mnemotechnical traditions, suggesting that these figures culminate late medieval and early modern intellectual and cultural ambitions as much as they give rise to new ones. Rossi makes his argument by providing a history of mnemotechnics from Aristotle into the fifteenth century in chapter one; by examining the fascination with encyclopaedism, combinatoria, and memory in the sixteenth century in chapters two and three; by investigating the role of artificial memory in the works of key intellectual figures in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in chapters four through six; and by tracing the impulse toward universal knowledge and its connection to mnemotechnics among seventeenth-century Cartesians, Baconians, and in the work of Leibniz, in chapters seven and eight.Chapter one, after showing the pervasiveness of Renaissance mnemotechnical literature, surveys its classical and medieval antecedents in philosophy and rhetoric. Rossi argues that Aristotle's De memoria et reminiscentia, Cicero's De oratore, Quintilian's De institutione oratoria, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, and the works of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas were each important to the mnemotechnical tradition into the seventeenth century. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century treatises on the ars memorativa and the ars predicandi, drawing on these classical and medieval theories, emphasize the importance of memory places (loci), images (imagines), and order or arrangement (dispositio) in mnemotechnics. Additionally, they intimately link the memory to the imagination, stressing the importance of exciting and stimulating the imagination in memorization. The Italian Pietro da Ravenna, for example, attributed the might of his memory to, in his own words, turning "the images of the most beautiful virgins into memory places" (22). Such imaginative mnemonic techniques were considered to... (shrink)

En los últimos años han surgido, bajo el título de una Teología pluralista de las Religiones, varias críticas entorno a la posibilidad de un auténtico diálogo interreligioso desde la posición tradicional de la Iglesia. El presente artículo quiere demostrar cómo, a partir de la apologética luliana, pueden evitarse varias dificultades a las que apuntan los teólogos pluralistas, como por ejemplo John Hick, sin tener que abandonar por ello la pretensión de verdad universal que caracteriza a todas las religiones. A este (...) fin, se analizaran brevemente las críticas actuales al diálogo interreligioso, presentando luego los rasgos distintivos de la apologética luliana, a saber, la duda y el filosofar, y proponiendo, para acabar, una Filosofía de las Religiones inspirada en Llull y la teología actual. During the last few years several crificisms conceming the possibility of an authentic interreligious dialogue within the tradifional doctrine of the Church have, emerged under the title of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions. The present paper tries to show how many of the problems pointed at by the pluralistic theologians, as for instance John Hick, can be solved by Ramon Llull's concept of apologeties without abandoning the universal truth-claims that characterize each religion. To this end, first the actual criticisms concerning the interreligious dialogue will be analized, secondly the most distinctive features of the lullian approach will be presented, i.e. doubt and philosophy, and finally a Philosophy of Religions inspired by Llull and current theology will be proposed. (shrink)

Lúlio descreve a realidade como uma estrutura reticuladamente estratificada. Para tanto, ele se vale da noção metafísica de fundação e a ela confere duas funções absolutamente básicas. Em primeiro lugar, cabe à fundação assegurar a distinção entre os princípios enumerados na figura A da Ars generalis ultima, seus correlativos e Deus, que, apesar de serem necessariamente coextensionais, não se confundem hiperintensionamente por não compartilharem a mesma fundação. Paralelamente, compete à fundação assegurar que os constituintes da realidade possam se arranjar hierarquicamente (...) segundo a variação dos seus graus de semelhança, encadeando-se fundacionalmente conforme a intensidade com a qual os princípios neles se contraem. De fato, a responsável direta por tal organização hierárquica da realidade é justamente essa capacidade de contração que os princípios têm de assumir uma condição contraída nas coisas que os manifestam e que a eles confere o seu caráter fundacional. (shrink)

This article introduces the relatively new field of religious studies devoted to Western esotericism, or Western esoteric traditions including alchemy, various magical traditions, Christian theosophy, Rosicrucianism and other secret or semi-secret groups. In it Versluis also argues that Western esoteric traditions as a whole rely on the power of the written word or image in order to convey and perhaps generate changes in consciousness. Thus Western esotericism tends to see and use language in a fundamentally different way than many of (...) us are familiar with -- here language is used not for conventional designation in a subject object relationship, but in order to transmute consciousness or to point towards the transmutation of consciousness through what Versluis terms hieroeidetic knowledge. Be it Kabbalism or alchemy, troubadours and chivalry, the Lullian art, magic or theosophy, pansophy or esoteric Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry, one finds a consistently recurrent theme of transmuting consciousness, which is to say, of awakening latent, profound connections between humanity, nature and the divine, and of restoring a paradisal union between them. Hieroeidetic knowledge can be understood in terms of a shift from an objectifying view of language based on self and other to a view of language as revelatory, as a via positiva leading towards transcendence of self other divisions. It is here, in their emphasis on the initiatory, hieroeidetic power of language to reveal what transcends language, that the unique contribution of Western esoteric traditions to consciousness studies may well be found. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer the spanish translation with notes of three treatises of Ramon Llull : Artificium electionis personarum, the chapter XXIV of book II from Llibre d’Evast, d’Aloma e de Blaquerna named «En qual manera Natana fo eleta a abadessa» and De arte electionis. These three texts show a new election technique supported on the Ars magna methods. The translations are preceded by a short introduction explaining the place that such texts occupy in the whole lullian opus (...) and the advances of recents investigations. (shrink)

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of appIied ethics in this country-why? The events which face our society today are outside the business-oriented collection of shared beIiefs that set (...) our pubIic policy agenda. Cur beIiefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call "business science," e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own uniqueself in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long. (shrink)

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of appIied ethics in this country-why? The events which face our society today are outside the business-oriented collection of shared beIiefs that set (...) our pubIic policy agenda. Cur beIiefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call "business science," e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own uniqueself in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long. (shrink)

What role does race play in the moral judgment of character? None, ideally, philosophers insist, contending that the proper assessment of an action requires that we disregard any social values associated with the body performing it. What rightly comes under evaluation, they assert, is the neutral, abstract deed irrespective of the race of the agent. Only under these conditions, presumably, can we gauge true moral worth. Reading together Immanuel Kant and Frantz Fanon on ethics and race, I propose instead that (...) embodied values such as those accorded by race do not distort the portrait of the ethical subject but rather bring that subjectivity into being. Key Words: blackness • embodiment • ethics • Frantz Fanon • Immanuel • Kant • morality • race • value. (shrink)

We explore themes in Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan’s work and apply his Ethics and Economic Progress to problems facing individuals and firms. We focus on Buchanan’s analysis of the individual work ethic, his exhortations to “pay the preacher” of the “institutions of moral-ethical communication,” and his notion of law as “public capital.” We highlight several ways people with other-regarding preferences can contribute to social flourishing and some of the ways those who have “affected to trade for the public (...) good” might want to redirect their efforts. We show how Buchanan’s work has considerable implications for business ethics. Just as his economic analysis of politics changed how we understand government, we think his economic analysis of ethics can (and should) change how we understand business. (shrink)

Bhabha, Georges Didi-Huberman, David Morgan and Lee Siegel, as well as a series of focused contributions by Yve-Alain Bois, Wendy Doniger, Kenneth Frampton, Martin E. Marty, John Hallmark Neff, Annemarie Schimmel, and Helen Tworkov consider how rapture resonate's both in a cultural context and within the experience of a single human being.

Abstract…observations of skylfull pylotts is the onlye waye to bring it in rule; for it passeth the reach of naturall philosophy. – Michael Gabriel, 1576 (Collinson, 1867, p. 30)Abstract The tension between empirical data and formal theory pervades the entire history of geomagnetism, from the Middle Ages up to the present day. This paper explores its early-modern history (1500–1800), using a hybrid approach: it applies a methodological framework used in modern geophysics to interpret early-modern developments, exploring to what extent formal (...) conjectures shaped observation and vice versa. A range of pertinent case studies supports classification of this entire period as proto-scientific, characterised by the initial formation of theories being largely disconnected from observational constraints, and their subsequent evolution being advanced primarily by their empirical falsification, and not necessarily associated with the introduction of an alternative. The few exceptional instances of purely data-driven discovery were essentially due to an improved signal-to-noise ratio. (shrink)

Discusses about selective engagement as the most desirable strategy for contemporary America, stating that it is the one that seeks to forestall dangers, not simply to react to them; that is politically viable; at home and abroad; and that protects US interests.