The essays in this book, by a variety of leading Augustine scholars, examine not only Augustine's multifaceted philosophy and its relation to his epoch-making theology, but also his practice as a philosopher, as well as his relation to other philosophers both before and after him. Thus the collection shows that Augustine's philosophy remains an influence and a provocation in a wide variety of settings today.

149 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34: ~ JANUARY 1996 theology and intellectual history. One should value the information it provides and the methodological lessons it has to teach but not rely too heavily on its presentation of philosophical issues and arguments. BONNIE KENT Columbia University Jorge J. E. Gracia, editor. Individuation in Scholasticism: The Later Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation, r r5o-x65o. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Pp. xiv + 619. Paper, $22.95. This impressive volume (...) focussing upon the problem of individuation in scholastic phi- losophy from the beginning of the thirteenth century up to the middle of the seven- teenth presents eighteen essays on individual medieval and Counter-Reformation think- ers written by some of the finest scholars in those periods. Four introductory chapters set forth the problem of individuation for the periods in question, explore the legacy of the early... (shrink)

Galen of Pergamum was the most influential doctor of later antiquity, whose work was to influence medical theory and practice for more than fifteen hundred years. He was a prolific writer on anatomy, physiology, diagnosis and prognosis, pulse-doctrine, pharmacology, therapeutics, and the theory of medicine; but he also wrote extensively on philosophical topics, making original contributions to logic and the philosophy of science, and outlining a scientific epistemology which married a deep respect for empirical adequacy with a commitment to rigorous (...) rational exposition and demonstration. He was also a vigorous polemicist, deeply involved in the doctrinal disputes among the medical schools of his day. This volume offers an introduction to and overview of Galen's achievement in all these fields, while seeking also to evaluate that achievement in the light of the advances made in Galen scholarship over the past thirty years. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

This remarkable collection of almost 1,400 aphorisms was originally published in three instalments. The first appeared in 1878, just before Nietzsche abandoned academic life, with a first supplement entitled The Assorted Opinions and Maxims following in 1879, and a second entitled The Wanderer and his Shadow a year later. In 1886 Nietzsche republished them together in a two-volume edition, with new prefaces to each volume. Both volumes are presented here in R. J. Hollingdale's distinguished translation with a new introduction by (...) Richard Schacht. In this wide-ranging work Nietzsche first employed his celebrated aphoristic style, so perfectly suited to his iconoclastic, penetrating and multi-faceted thought. Many themes of his later work make their initial appearance here, expressed with unforgettable liveliness and subtlety. Human, All Too Human well deserves its subtitle 'A Book for Free Spirits', and its original dedication to Voltaire, whose project of radical enlightenment here found a new champion. (shrink)

Voltaire's Pangloss, the man who held among other things that noses were clearly created in order to support spectacles, is the very archetype of the lunatic teleologist; a caricature of sublimely confident faith in the general and undeniable goodness of the world's arrangement, a faith that managed astoundingly to survive the Lisbon earthquake and his own subsequent auto dafé. Voltaire, of course, is poking fun at such conceptions; and, no doubt, in their extreme sanguinity as well as in their apparent (...) imperviousness to devastating empirical counter-evidence, they do seem to be eminently risible notions. In the face of them we might be tempted to abandon ‘métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologie’, and to agree with Candide that ‘Cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin’. (shrink)

It is argued that donald davidson has not succeeded in showing that we need a constructive theory of meaning--A theory for a natural language which davidson considers to have as its base a finite number of semantic primitives--In order to explain language learning and, In particular, Linguistic productivity. This linguistic productivity is the ability of a speaker who has mastered the meaning of a finite stock of words and a finite number of grammatical rules, To produce and understand sentences which (...) he has not constructed or encountered before. (shrink)

Available on its own, or as part of the 9-volume reissue of the classic Political Thinkers series.

John of Alexandria is an obscure figure. Little is known of his life: his floruit is placed in the first half of the seventh century A.D. He was a practising doctor; the exact significance of the epithet ‘sophista’ which is found on the superscription to his commentary on the sixth book of Hippocrates' Epidemics is uncertain: but it may indicate an interest beyond the purely medical. Apart from the commentaries on the Epidemics and De Sectis, the only other work ascribed (...) to him with any certainty is a commentary on the Hippocratic text On the Nature of the Child, although four other works traditionally attributed to Philoponus and of a purely medical nature have been ascribed to him. (shrink)

In the Archaic Geek world of epic poetry, the causes of things are shrouded in divine mystery; the gods intervene in human affairs, and bring about events, in a cruel and capricious fashion, according to their whims; Apollo visits the devastating plague of Iliad 1 on the Greek host to avenge Agamemnon's ill-treatment of one of his priests; Poseidon shakes the earth and angers the sea, bringing to destruction those who have incurred his ire, as does Zeus himself with his (...) thunderbolts. The gods take on human shape and intervene in battle with devastating effect. In tragedy, the houses of Atreus and of Laius are brought low when men offend against the gods. This article focuses on the explorations of the fundamental concepts of reasons and causation, and the problems of explanation, and argues that it is indeed reasonable to see in Presocratic thought the foundations of Western scientific explanation. (shrink)

It is not the purpose of this short essay to try the impossible and give an adequate historical survey of the Western image (or rather images) of China. There is, moreover, a vast literature on the subject to which both sinologists and historians of European culture have contributed. The following paragraphs will restrict themselves to two poles in this history: the perception and reception of China in the 17th century (with Leibniz as the most significant and impressive representative of the (...) period)—in other words the image of China as current among the philosophes i.e., the pre-enlightenment, still Christian humanists, none of which was (or could have been) a sinologist properly speaking—and again at the end of the 19th century, when academic sinology began to get into stride. Without in any way detracting from the significance of his great predecessors and contemporaries, especially Marcel Granet, we shall limit our discussion to J.J.M. de Groot (Leiden and Berlin, d. 1921). (shrink)

As critical incidents and terrorist threats are on the increase, the military/SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) aspects of U.S. civilian policing are being expanded. The person called upon as a last resort to kill the criminal agent has a unique position on the SWAT team. The police sniper is asked to kill with premeditation and usually not in a situation of self-defense. Very little appears in the ethics literature analyzing the morality of the sniper role. This paper will tentatively outline (...) a process of analysis that draws upon the framework of principles associated with the just-war tradition. Elements examined are the ends of sniper killing, intention and motives, relevant emotions, and implementation means used. The conclusion is that a plausible case can be made for the moral justification of such killing as long as certain conditions or tests are met. (shrink)

This paper first identifies briefly several interpretations of the nature of the general order of eternal objects in the Primordial Nature of God (PNG). W.A. Christian describes the timeless ordering in terms of a “general scheme of relatedness,” or “matrix,” or “reservoir of potentiality.” Others, like Hartshorne, introduce the“continuum” concept. Unfortunately, none of the above terms has strict technical or categoreal meaning in Whitehead’s metaphysics. I try to remedy this defect by utilizing the Whitehead ian notions of abstractive hierarchies and (...) contrast. My interpretation supports the idea that there is one fixed and necessary order of eternal objects in PNG. (shrink)

The European Union ambassadors revenue are lost to fraud and crime,” the of the Council of Minister, Mr. in BiH follow very closely develrelease read. Papandreou, and Mr. Solana, urged the opments as regards the issue of “We also have in mind the positive effect authorities of BiH recently to reach a the adoption, at a state level of single..