What would Christianity be like without the soul? While most people would expect the Christian bible to reveal a highly traditional opposition of matter and spirit, the spirit forces of the Old and New Testaments are often surprisingly physical, dynamic, and practical, a matter of energy as much as ethics. The Secret History of the Soul examines the forgotten or suppressed models of body, soul, and human consciousness found in the literature, philosophy and scripture of the (...) ancient and classical worlds. It shows how the spirit forces of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the Old and New Testaments tended to be quantities not entities, and to be closely bound up with the dynamic physical flux of the human body, rather than cleanly abstracted in some absolute immaterial realm. Forces such as menos and thymos, nephesh, pneuma and dynamis not only blurred the line between body and soul, but were potent and transferable, being used, in New Testament culture, to effect magical cures or bestow magical power. Related to this surprising lack of body-soul dualism is a lack of dualistic afterlife in either Homer or Hebrew scripture, where Hades and Sheol are the sole post-mortem destinations. The Secret History of the Soul restores the living strangeness of a spirit world filled with potent energy and practical magic, in cultures which had not yet glimpsed the abstracted soul of later Christianity. (shrink)

Robert Kilwardby on the Human Soul examines Kilwardby’s role in conciliating Aristotelian and Augustinian views on the soul, soul-body relation, and cognition.

INTRODUCTION The Background Mid-way through the twelfth century, as the Latin West was introduced to a wealth of previously unknown scientific and ...

This piece of work intends to shed light on Alexander of Aphrodisias from the second-century Aristotle commentator through the history of Aristotelian psychology up to the sixteenth century's clandestine prompter of the new philosophy of nature. In the millennium after his death the head of the Peripatetic school in Athens served as the authority on Aristotle in the Neo-Platonic school, survived the Arabic centuries of philosophy as Averroes' exemplary exponent of the mortality of the soul and as such (...) was not considered worthy of translation by the Latin Scholastics. This attitude changed only in the Late Middle Ages, when the resistance against Averroes grew fierce and Alexander emerged as the only Aristotelian alternative to him. In 1495 his account of Aristotle's psychology was translated and published and the underlying principles of a natural philosophy, based on sense perception and exempt from metaphysics, became accessible. The prompt reception and widespread endorsement of Alexander's teaching testify to his impact throughout the sixteenth century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy by Daniel Garber, Michael AyersDonald RutherfordDaniel Garber, Michael Ayers, editors. The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 1616. Cloth, $175.Over a decade in preparation, this latest addition to the Cambridge History of Philosophy is an enormous achievement—both in its size and the contribution it makes to redefining [End Page 165] (...) the landscape of seventeenth-century philosophy. The editors make no bones about their intention to rewrite the history of early modern philosophy, reversing the trend dominant through much of this century of reading seventeenth-century philosophers in the light of twentienth-century “interests and preconceptions” (4). As they note, the movement to historicize our understanding of seventeenth-century philosophy has been underway for some time in the English-speaking world, furthered in many cases by contributors to these volumes. From this perspective, the present work represents, if not the culmination, at least a progress report on these efforts and the success they have achieved.As in previous volumes of the Cambridge History, the subject matter is treated thematically. Consistent with their larger goal, the editors have further attempted to organize the volumes in a way that remains faithful to the expectations of the period. Part I sets the stage with chapters that establish the larger social and historical context: “The institutional setting” (Richard Tuck); “The intellectual setting” (Stephen Menn); and “European responses to non-European culture: China” (D.E. Mungello). For the rest, the editors write, “the structure of the collection corresponds to one way, at any rate, in which an educated European of the seventeenth century might have organized the domain of philosophy” (2). First comes logic (including method and general ontology); then, the primary categories of being (God, body, soul); finally, the basic operations of the soul (understanding, will, action), whose treatment comprehends the topics of epistemology and ethics.Part II, “Logic, Language, and Abstract Objects,” opens with three short chapters by Gabriel Nuchelmans that survey the terrain of seventeenth-century logic according to the traditional divisions of term, proposition/judgment, and argument. These are followed by contributions on “Method and the study of nature” (Peter Dear); “Universal, essences, and abstract entities” (Martha Bolton); and “Individuation” (Udo Thiel).The discussion of metaphysics proper begins in Part III with the most fundamental being: God. Included here are chapters that examine specific theological issues—“The idea of God” (Jean-Luc Marion); “Proofs of the existence of God” (Jean-Robert Armogathe); “The Cartesian dialectic of creation” (Thomas M. Lennon)—as well as ones that deal more broadly with the crucial connection between philosophy and religion: “The relation between theology and philosophy” (Nicholas Jolley) and “The religious background of seventeenth-century philosophy” (Richard Popkin).Part IV, “Body and the Physical World,” forms the single largest part of the book and its intellectual core. It opens with two chapters—“The scholastic background” (Roger Ariew and Alan Gabbey) and “The occultist tradition and its critics” (Brian Copenhaver)—that effectively mark out the boundaries of the “new philosophy” that emerges in conjunction with the development of seventeenth-century science. These are followed by a series of chapters that examine particular features of that philosophy: “Doctrines of explanation in late scholasticism and in the mechanical philosophy” (Steven Nadler); “New doctrines of body and its powers, place, and space” (Daniel Garber, John Henry, Lynn Joy, and Alan Gabbey); “Knowledge of the existence of body” (Charles McCracken); “New doctrines of motion” (Alan Gabbey); “Laws of nature” (J.R. Milton); and “The mathematical realm of nature” (Michael Mahoney). [End Page 166]The final section of Volume I takes up the third main category of being: “Spirit.” It begins with Daniel Garber’s overview of the positions of the major figures, “Soul and mind: Life and thought in the seventeenth century,” followed by chapters on “Knowledge of the soul” (Charles McCracken); “Mind-body problems” (Daniel Garber and Margaret Wilson); “Personal identity” (Udo Thiel); and “The passions in metaphysics and the theory of action” (Susan James).Volume II of the History is devoted to topics that, in one way or another, elaborate operations of the soul. Part V, “The... (shrink)

This piece of work intends to shed light on Alexander of Aphrodisias from the second-century Aristotle commentator through the history of Aristotelian psychology up to the sixteenth century's clandestine prompter of the new philosophy of nature. In the millennium after his death the head of the Peripatetic school in Athens served as the authority on Aristotle in the Neo-Platonic school, survived the Arabic centuries of philosophy as Averroes' exemplary exponent of the mortality of the soul and as such (...) was not considered worthy of translation by the Latin Scholastics. This attitude changed only in the Late Middle Ages, when the resistance against Averroes grew fierce and Alexander emerged as the only Aristotelian alternative to him. In 1495 his account of Aristotle's psychology was translated and published and the underlying principles of a natural philosophy, based on sense perception and exempt from metaphysics, became accessible. The prompt reception and widespread endorsement of Alexander's teaching testify to his impact throughout the sixteenth century. (shrink)

From Soul to Self takes the reader on a fascinating journey through philosophy, theology, religious studies, and physiological sciences. Each of the essays, drawn from a number of different fields, focuses on the idea of the soul and of our sense of ourselves. A stellar line-up of authors explore the relationship between a variety of ideas that have arisen in philosophy, religion and science, each idea seeking to explain why we think that we as individuals are somehow distinct (...) and unique. Contributors: Richard Sorabji, Anthony Kenny, Kallistos Ware, Peter Riviere, Gary Matthews, Susan Greenfield, Galen Strawson. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that science is the enemy of religious faith. The idea is so pervasive that entire industries of religious apologetics converge around the challenge of Darwin, evolution, and the "secular worldview." This book challenges such assumptions by proposing a different cause of unbelief in the West: the Christian conscience. Tracing a history of doubt and unbelief from the Reformation to the age of Darwin and Karl Marx, Dominic Erdozain argues that the most powerful solvents of religious (...) orthodoxy have been concepts of moral equity and personal freedom generated by Christianity itself. Revealing links between the radical Reformation and early modern philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle, Erdozain demonstrates that the dynamism of the Enlightenment, including the very concept of "natural reason" espoused by philosophers such as Voltaire, was rooted in Christian ethics and spirituality. The final chapters explore similar themes in the era of Darwin and Marx, showing how moral revolt preceded and transcended the challenges of evolution and "scientific materialism" in the unseating of religious belief. The picture that emerges is not of a secular challenge to religious faith, but a series of theological insurrections against divisive accounts of Christian orthodoxy. (shrink)

Finally, he looks at,the various kinds of unity of the body, both in itself and in its union with the soul.Spirits and Clocks continues Des Chene's highly ...

This study of the interaction of the Aristotelian and Augustinian views of the soul traces the disarray of Latin concepts by 1240, the solutions of Bonaventure ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes on the Human Soul: Philosophy and the Demands of Christian DoctrineRichard A. WatsonC. F. Fowler. Descartes on the Human Soul: Philosophy and the Demands of Christian Doctrine. International Archives of the History of Ideas, 160. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. Pp. xiii + 438. Cloth, $168.00.As Defender of the Faith, René Descartes wrote his Meditations to fulfill the request of the Fifth Lateran Council (...) in 1513 "to support with rational demonstrations the Church's teaching on the immortality of the soul" (28). This allowed him to dedicate the Meditations to the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne in hopes of obtaining their approbation. The Faculty remained silent, but Descartes could interpret this as consent, although he removed from later editions the notice of approbation. What the Council asked for were demonstrations of the immortality of the soul and of the substantial union of the soul with the body.Mersenne thought the Meditiations were going to provide these demonstrations, so he included in the title of the first edition the promise to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, but in later editions Descartes changed this to a promise to demonstrate the distinction between the human soul and the body, or that the soul is an independent substance that is not destroyed by the death of the body, and so can be immortal. Independent substancehood does not prove that the soul is immortal, however, for Descartes agreed that God can destroy the soul at any time. This conclusion greatly bothered Mersenne and Arnauld. As for the absolute separation of the soul from the body, Descartes was criticized for supporting the Platonic doctrine of their absolute separation, making it impossible to demonstrate that the union between soul and body is substantial and not accidental. And "the central Christian doctrines of the Creation, Incarnation, Redemption, and Resurrection required a union of body and soul much more intimate than that of agent and instrument" (310). But all that Descartes's proof supports is the Platonic model of a sailor piloting a ship. Never mind that Descartes adamantly denies that the soul sits in the body thus—for the soul in union with the body feels the body as the sailor does not feel the ship—his friends and foes alike saw that the absolute difference of soul and body made their substantial union inexplicable. It also goes against the Aristotelian view of the Council of Vienne in 1311-1312 that "defined the rational soul as the forma corporis" (310). It is exactly this view that Descartes opposed by eliminating substantial forms from his philosophy.Arnauld warned Descartes about these problems, while Gassendi, Hobbes, and others attacked him. In response, Descartes expanded his views without altering them, and complained about being misunderstood. The Jesuit Father Bourdin's attacks hurt him most, for as he told Mersenne, this made him think that all the Jesuits (they stick together) were against him. This, Fowler argues, is why Descartes dedicated the Meditations to the Faculty of the Sorbonne, and not to the Jesuits.Fowler carefully presents the entire sweep of Descartes's ideas and arguments concerning the immortality of the soul and its union with the body. Descartes in fact did not manage to demonstrate either one. He did agree that of the three sorts of truths—those known by revelation alone, those known both by revelation and demonstration, and those known only by demonstration—these points about the soul belong in the middle category. But he never mentions immortality in the Meditations, and when Princess Elisabeth faces him with his inability to explain how the soul and body [End Page 120] can interact, he just says that we experience it. Gassendi asked him the same question, but Descartes ignored him. With other critics, he shifted the question into the first category of truths—it is a matter of revelation. This was not satisfactory either to his critics or to Descartes, for it had led Pompanazzi to materialism, and it led Descartes's first disciple Regius to say bluntly that metaphysics, and in particular Descartes's metaphysics, is irrelevant to the third category of truths, those of mechanics, physics, and medicine.Baillet calls... (shrink)

Thomas Wylton's Quaestio de anima intellectiva presents a controversial defence of Averroes' interpretation of Aristotelian psychology. The detailed introduction guides the reader through the transmission of the text, as well as the philosophical contents of one of the most significant medieval treatments of the nature of the soul.

Fan Zhen’s 范縝 Shenmielun 神滅論 is a famous Chinese treatise discussing the body-soul problem. This discussion had been advocated by Huan Tan 桓譚 and Wang Chong 王充. However, their views did not receive positive attention: at the beginning of the Eastern Han dynasty, their intellectual weight was far from significant enough to spur the court’s interest in the topic. During the time of Fan Zhen, Emperor Wu of Liang, a keen protector of the thought of dharma, raised the question (...) of the soul and the body to a political level, making it the focus of academic debate. The aim of this article is to give a comprehensive account on the development of the idea of the nonidentity and inseparability of the body and the soul as promulgated by Fan Zhen and his predecessors from the perspective of the history of ideas. (shrink)

From Soul to Self takes us on a fascinating journey through philosophy, theology, religious studies and physiological sciences. The contributors explore the relationship between a variety of ideas that have arisen in philosophy, religion and science, each idea seeking to explain why we think we are somehow unique and distinct.

This article discusses Archibald Campbell’s (1691-1756) early writings on religion, and the reactions they provoked from conservative orthodox Presbyterians. Purportedly against the Deist Matthew Tindal, Campbell crucially argued for two claims, namely (i) for the reality of immutable moral laws of nature, and (ii) for the incapacity of natural reason, or the light of nature, to discover the fundamental truths of religion, in particular the existence and perfections of God, and the immortality of the soul. In an episode that (...) had its peak in 1735 and 1736, a Committee for Purity of Doctrine of the Church of Scotland scrutinised Campbell’s writings. It attacked the second claim as contradicting Calvinist doctrines concerning the universal guilt of mankind after the Fall, and the first claim as contradicting doctrines concerning justification and salvation, and as supporting Deism. The study of this episode reveals new aspects of how the struggle to define orthodoxy crystallised in philosophical and theological debates in Scotland at the dawn of the Enlightenment, and before the rise of the Moderates. (shrink)

Thomas Wylton's Quaestio de anima intellectiva presents a controversial defence of Averroes' interpretation of Aristotelian psychology. The detailed introduction guides the reader through the transmission of the text, as well as the philosophical contents of one of the most significant medieval treatments of the nature of the soul.

Exploring the 'roads less travelled', MacDonald continues his monumental essay in the history of ideas. The history of heterodox ideas about the concept of mind takes the reader from the earliest records about human nature in Ancient Egypt, the Ancient Near East, and the Zoroastrian religion, through the secret teachings in the Hermetic and Gnostic scriptures, and into the transformation of ideas about the mind, soul and spirit in the late antique and early medieval epochs. These transitions (...) include discussion of the influence of Central Asian shamanism, Manichean ideas about the soul in light and darkness, and Neoplatonic theurgy, 'working-on-god-within'. Sections on the medieval period are concerned with the rediscovery of magical practices and occult doctrines from Roger Bacon to Francis Bacon, the adaptation of Neoplatonic and esoteric ideas in the medieval Christian mystics, and the survival of these ideas mixed with natural science in the works of von Helmont, Leibniz and Goethe. The book concludes with an investigation of the many forms of dualism in accounts of the human mind and soul, and the concept of dual-life which underpins our aspiration to understand how humans could have an immortal nature like the gods. (shrink)

Introduction: why the De anima commentaries? This book will concentrate on interpretations of the De anima in late antiquity, and what we can learn from ...

This book describes Descartes's The Passions of the Soul as a foundational work of the Enlightenment, a precursor of later notions of the historicity of the human, and the first psychology of modern type: to understand and heal ourselves, we look not outward at the world in immediate relation to it, but inward, at the self, its brain, and its past history. Special attention is given to Descartes’s account of imagination and its problematic impact on passion and volition.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato's Doctrine of the Psyche as a Self-Moving Motion RAPHAEL DEMOS I WILLXSXTHEREADERto ignore for the time being what he has gleaned about the soul from the reading of the Phaedo and the Republic. In these dialogues Plato speaks of the soul sometimes as wholly rational, as having three parts, and so forth. But in these dialogues he is t~lklng of the human soul, which is (...) a special case, whereas in this essay I am de~Hng with the wider role and the concept of the soul as the efficient cause of motion, change, and all becoming everywhere in the cosmos. My cardinal texts in this exposition are the Sophist (246a-249d), the Phaedrus (245c, d), and a considerable portion of Laws, X. Consider the Phaedo, a dialogue with at least four motifs: it is a dramatic evocation of the last day in the life of Socrates, it is an argument for the immortality of the soul and for the reality of the world of ideas, it is a myth of the nether world, and finally, it is a theory of the cosmos as ruled by purpose--all in all, one of the great pieces of literature of the Western world. For the reader, it is an evocation of an attitude to life, based on Plato's conception of the soul--an attitude expressed in the famous phrase that the wise man spends his life meditating on death. As contrasted with what may be called his existential concern with the soul, in the other dialogues on which I will comment, Plato approaches the topic of the soul as part of his explanation of the cosmos. In these his attitude is objective and quasi-scientific. It is to this side of Plato's thought that I wish to call attention in this essay, where the establishment of the immortality of the soul is incidental to the more basic doctrine that the soul is an arche, a primary factor and an ontological principle. In the,Sophist, we find Plato playing the music of his philosophy in a new key. He refers to the "friends of the forms" as though he, himself, were an outsider looking in; then, too, he asserts that motion is really real in contrast to his derogatory references to motion in the Cratylus, the Phaedo, and the Republic.I In these (and other) dialogues, Plato contrasts change and changing things with the timeless forms in respect of reality: the former are said, at best, to be semi-real; only the latter are really real. But in the Sophist he changes his tune, arguing that total reality (~o ~v, to' ~a~rE~ By) includes both motion and rest (248e 8; 249d 3-4). What does he mean by these two words? That by 'rest' he means the realm of ideas is indicated (if not proved) by his references to the forms in the same context (247b 1But in the Theaeteius,he classifiesmotions in a semi-scientific fashion, leaving the impression on the reader that he regards motion as a reality. [133] 134 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 1-2; 249b, 10, c 1).2 As for motion, Plato makes it clear that the term covers not only (a) physical motion but also (b) life, (c) psyche, and (d) phronesis or naus (249b 5). All these are said to be forms of kinesis; how this is so--how life, soul, mason may be described as motions or changes--is a matter for later comment. What is more to the point is Plato's insistence that motion and what is moved are onta (beings, 249b 2, d 3). Plato uses change (metabol$) interchangeably with kinesis; anticipating the Phaedrus, I will include activity under change. And anticipating the Laws, I will characterize some of this activity as mental; indeed the Sophist, includes within change nous, phronesis, and episteme; that is to say, understanding (in the sense of an activity, 249a, b, c).s Plato offers various reasons in support of his contention that change is real. He may also be offering a special demonstration as follows. The philosopher who denies that change is real is engaged in a mental activity, in short... (shrink)

LANDSCAPING THE HUMAN SOUL In 1996 Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with stage-four testicular cancer. Doctors gave him a forty percent chance of survival. ...

Discusses how new understandings of the origin and nature of the universe, revealed by recent work in theoretical physics, can affect religious belief and spirituality.

Thomas Wylton's Quaestio de anima intellectiva presents a controversial defence of Averroes' interpretation of Aristotelian psychology. The detailed introduction guides the reader through the transmission of the text, as well as the philosophical contents of one of the most significant medieval treatments of the nature of the soul.

The Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethren of Purity), the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity based in Basra and Baghdad, hold an eminent position in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). This compendium contains fifty-two epistles offering synoptic accounts of the classical sciences and philosophies of the age; divided into four classificatory parts, it treats themes in mathematics, (...) logic, natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, and theology, in addition to didactic fables. Epistles 32 to 36 comprise the first five treatises in the third division of the Rasa'il, on the sciences of the soul and intellect. Combining Islamic revelation with Hellenistic philosophy, the Ikhwan delineate herein their metaphysical system. Epistles 32 and 33 present adaptations of the Pythagorean doctrines, and of Neo-Platonist leitmotifs, whereby a numerical analogy is applied to the unique and transcendent God, or the One, from whom all existence emanates. Epistle 34 takes up the pervasive theme of the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, situating the human being as the central link between the celestial and terrestrial realms. In Epistle 35, we find an explanation of the intellectual faculties of the individual human soul, whose ultimate aim is ascension to the timeless reality of pure intellect. Finally, Epistle 36 presents itself as the astrological epistle par excellence of the Rasa'il; from the coming-to-be of worms, to the emergence of religions and empires, nothing in the sub-lunar sphere escapes the determining influence of the celestial cycles. (shrink)

Bonaventure’s Aesthetics: The Delight of the Soul in Its Ascent into God provides an extensive analysis of Bonaventure’s concept of beauty, the first to appear since Balthasar’s Herrlichkeit, and the role it plays in the Itinerarium mentis in Deum.

In der sog. »aristotelischen Zeitaporie« (Physik IV) äußert sich Aristoteles zum Verhältnis von Zeit und Seele. Dieser Text gehört zu den umstrittensten Abschnitten seines Zeittraktates. Zur Interpretation rekonstruiert die vorgelegte Untersuchung die Entwicklungslinien der Analysen zur Zeitaporie von der Spätantike über die arabische Philosophie bis zur Frühphase der lateinischen Aristoteleskommentierung im 13. Jahrhundert. Der erste Abschnitt zeigt, wie die antike Physik-Kommentatoren diesen Text erklärten. Im Zentrum steht dabei die Auslegung des Alexander von Aphrodisias. Den der Spätantike diskutierten die Araber. Ein (...) zweite Abschnitt stellt daher die Analysen der arabischen Zeitphilosophie vor. Vermittelt durch lateinische Übersetzungen, beeinflussen arabische und jüdische Theoretiker die Zeitphilosophie des 13. Jahrhunderts. Die Geschichte des sukzessiven Vordringens der Konzeption des Averroes in die Auslegung der Zeitaporie im 13. Jahrhundert expliziert daher ein dritter Teil. Erst die Philosophen dieser Zeit konnten die These des Aristoteles zum Verhältnis von Zeit und Seele mit der Konzeption des Augustinus vergleichen. Sie haben das elfte Buch der Bekenntnisse neu entdeckt. (shrink)

Recovering the Soul explores an area of historical philosophy that few if any others have attempted by critically comparing the metaphysical doctrines of Thomas Aquinas and Baruch Spinoza on the identity of mind and body. The central premise is that the hylomorphism of Aquinas's understanding of soul and body has a surprising affinity with Spinoza's own understanding of how human beings are enabled to exist as a single entity that is both mind and body. In the process (...) of making the case that hylomorphism can apply to Spinoza's philosophy as much as Aquinas's, the book carefully exegetes the work of each philosopher and indicates how each is internally consistent within his own system of thought. The hylomorphic reading of Spinoza helps to address some interpretive challenges that his commentators have noted and struggled to harmonize with other aspects of this monist ontology. Beyond the historical and interpretive interests the book addresses, it also makes the case that hylomorphism as a metaphysical theory of human constitution best harmonizes with contemporary studies in the human genome and provides a more comprehensive starting point for the philosophy of mind than reductionism or substance dualism. (shrink)

In Timothie Bright and the Origins of Early Modern Shorthand, J. D. Fleming brings together two areas of sixteenth-century intellectual history. One is the period emergence of artificial systems for verbatim shorthand notation-a crucial episode in the history of information. The other is the ancient medical discourse of melancholy humour, or black bile. Timothie Bright (1550-1615), physician and priest, prompts the juxtaposition. For he was the author, not only of the period's original shorthand manual-Characterie (1588)-but also of the (...) first book in English on the dark humour: The Treatise of Melancholy (1586). Bright's account of melancholy involves a cybernetic phenomenology of the human. Essentially, we are psyches (souls or minds). We are sealed off from our bodies, operating them as automata across an interface. Psychological presence, for Bright, is illusion and pathology. Engrossing performances or representations therefore bring great danger, and so does the doctrine of predestination-less for its content than its typical delivery. Painful preaching was indispensable in sixteenth-century English Protestantism. But it falls foul of Bright's proscriptions. This is followed by his publication of the first known system for verbatim shorthand notation since antiquity, its technique heavily inflected toward a vocabulary of the pulpit. The passionate, oral performance of the inspired preacher receives an unprecedented textual preservative-and prophylactic. Bright's technology of information serves his phenomenology of alienation. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the early modern period, the tradition of melancholy, and the history of information-as theory, and technology. (shrink)

Is libertarianism a progressive doctrine, or a reactionary one? Does libertarianism promise to liberate the poor and the marginalized from the yoke of state oppression, or does talk of "equal liberty" obscure the ways in which libertarian doctrines serve the interests of the rich and powerful? Through an examination of the history of libertarianism, this book argues that the answer is (and always has been): both. In this book we explore the neglected 19th century roots of libertarianism to (...) show that it emerged first as a radical and progressive doctrine. Libertarianism took a conservative turn in the 20th century primarily as a reaction against the rise of state socialism. Now, with international communism no longer a threat, libertarianism is in the midst of an identity crisis, with progressive and reactionary elements struggling to claim the doctrine as their own, most notably on issues of race. This book tells the history of libertarianism through an examination of six defining themes: private property, skepticism of authority, free markets, individualism, spontaneous order, and individual liberty. In doing so, it reveals that history to be longer, wider, and considerably more diverse than is commonly believed. It is a history full of internal tensions, idiosyncratic personalities, and surprising arguments. It is a history of the men (and sometimes women) who called themselves: The Individualists. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the thought of Descartes and Spinoza regarding the immortality of the soul. I conclude that Descartes’s argument(s) for the immortality of the soul—or at least the argument(s) that one can construct based on Descartes’s texts—are disappointing, and that Spinoza’s thought on the soul and its relation to the body leaves little room for the traditional doctrine of personal immortality.

Has not such a promiscuous, ill-defined concept come to obscure and confuse rather than clarify a genuine understanding of our experience?Harvie Ferguson ...

Since the publication of the edition of John Blund's Tractatus de anima by the British Academy in 1970 there has been widespread acceptance of the importance of this text for the history of thought. Blund (ca. 1175-1248) was probably one of the first commentators on the libri naturales at Paris before the prohibition of 1210, and later introduced them to Oxford. Indeed, apart from the prohibitions of 1210 and 1215, the De anima of Blund is the one text which (...) sheds light on the first reception of Aristotle at Paris. The text was probably composed at Paris, before 1204. Blund taught arts at Paris ca. 1200-1205, then at Oxford towards 1207-1209. He returned to study theology at Paris during the interdict (1208-1214) and the contemporaneous suspension of the schools at Oxford (1209-1214). He was regent in theology at Paris for twelve years, and taught theology at Oxford after 1229. With the Tractatus a whole area of philosophical speculation--namely Greek and Arabic psychology--arrived at Oxford, where it would continue to grow and be debated throughout the century. Blund did not know Averroes but he reflects the state of Latin Aristotelianism during the first third of the thirteenth century. Like his contemporaries Blund regarded the De anima of Avicenna as a commentary on Aristotle; indeed they found it clearer than the text of Aristotle and were guided by it. Blund is faithful to Aristotle and to Avicenna, rejecting, for example, the binarium famosissimum drawn from the Fons vitae of Avicebron. In expounding the doctrine of Aristotle and following the plan laid out by Avicenna, he considers the arguments for and against before offering his own reasoned position in the solutio. He defends the role of the philosopher as considering the nature of the soul and as distinct from theological considerations. This new English translation makes available this important text to a wider audience of scholars interested in philosophy, theology, medieval history and the history of science and psychology. Students who are learning medieval Latin will be able to follow the original Latin with the help of the parallel translation and text notes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 127-128 [Access article in PDF] Dennis Des Chene. Life's Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. viii + 220. Cloth, $45.00. The history of philosophy aims at the recovery and interpretation of past thought, and its reconstructions seek to avoid anachronism. Dennis Des Chene's book is exemplary in this respect. It (...) offers a sophisticated and accurate report on Late Scholastic views and arguments about life and its form and principle, the soul. It is full of subtle and informed discussions of texts from, principally, Francisco Toledo, Pedro Fonseca, the commentators from Coimbra, Francisco Suárez, and Rodrigo de Arriaga.But the aim of the history of philosophy is philosophical and not exclusively historical. Recovery of the past is, for the historian of philosophy, at the service of contemporary understanding. The Late Scholastic authors studied by Des Chene understood this to be so. Suárez, for instance, distinguished between those doctrines and inquiries which are "antiquated (antiquatae) and wholly relegated from philosophy" and those which are not (Metaphysical Disputations, "Copious Index to Aristotle's Metaphysics," Book I, ch. 7). Unfortunately, when judged from this perspective, Des Chene's book is not as successful.In spite of its many comparisons between current debates, Descartes's views, and Late Scholastic doctrines, the book does not succeed in extracting much by way of genuine philosophical insight. Though well-informed and intelligent, for the most part these glosses are mere statements of Late Scholastic views in contemporary terms. But correctly describing alchemical theories from the point of view of modern chemistry does not make them any less archaic.This book is indeed more a contribution to the history of ideas or of science than to the history of philosophy. To be fair, it is true that, first, as such it is a most valuable contribution; second, much of what Late Scholastics had to say about life and the soul is indeed antiquated; third, even if philosophically antiquated, an adequate grasp of Late Aristotelian thought on these matters is necessary to understand Descartes and subsequent developments; and finally, the kind of informed historical recovery that Des Chene has provided here is a necessary condition for whatever philosophical lessons could be gained from these texts.Life's Form is divided into four parts. The first, "Data for the Study of Souls," looks at the phenomena which the Late Aristotelians sought to understand and explain, recovering both their grasp of the place of the living among other substances, and the constraints, [End Page 127] originating both from accumulated experience and from Christian faith, to which they were subject.The second part, "Defining the Soul," first examines the question of how to define life. It then looks at the definition of the soul as "first act of an organic or potentially living physical body"—whether the soul is an accident of the body, an entirely separate substance, or the substantial form of the body. Here one finds addressed the question whether there is a form of the body separate from the soul, or whether strictly the body has only one form, the soul. The issue of cadaveric forms, peculiar forms of corpses arising after death and the departure of the soul, comes up here. In the last section of this part Des Chene examines the definition of the soul as a principle of life and the relation, both epistemological and ontological, between this definition in terms of the operations of the soul, and the earlier one of the soul as form, that is, in terms of its being.Part 3, "Powers and Parts," looks at the vegetative (nutritive, reproductive, and augmentative), animal (sensitive), and spiritual (intellective) powers of the soul. Des Chene examines the criteria for distinguishing between powers, the relation between the one soul and its many powers, and the unity of the soul. "Unity," the fourth part of the book, takes up this last topic. It looks at the vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual powers as "parts" of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sinai and the Areopagus:Philip Melanchthon, Natural Law, and the Beginnings of Athenian Legal History in the Shadow of the Schmalkaldic WarAlexander D. BatsonIn late August 1546, Philip Melanchthon had some seriously strange dreams. One night, he saw a man in the Elbe struggling to keep his head above the river's powerful current. As Melanchthon approached to help, he recognized the drowning man's visage: Charles V. Despite Melanchthon's attempts (...) to save him, the river dragged the emperor under and carried him away. Another night, he dreamed that while translating Demosthenes with his friend Joachim Camerarius in the Wittenberg castle (a Melanchthon dream if there ever was one!) he looked out a window to see that the Elbe had turned to blood.1 [End Page 713]These ominous visions reflected the precarious world Melanchthon faced in late summer 1546. Martin Luther, the hero of the German Reformation, had died in February, leaving a gaping hole in the evangelical movement. Further, German Protestantism was facing the largest political crisis in its short history. The Schmalkaldic War had begun in July, only a few weeks prior, and the Reformation faced intense military pressure from Charles V. As the emperor slowly advanced, an anxious Melanchthon lived in constant tension between wild hope that Charles would be defeated and grim fear of massive bloodshed.As the war began, Melanchthon was greatly disturbed by the violence and the potential for disastrous defeat of the Protestant cause. In an August 26 letter, he wrote this to a friend: "Often now, when I look over the Elbe River gliding by me, I sigh and think that, even if I could pour forth a river of tears as great as the Elbe's flow, I would never be able to exhaust the sadness which surrounds my soul because of this civil war. If only Charles had not started it!"2 Should the Schmalkaldic League be defeated and political support for the Reformation be crushed, the true church would be in dangerous waters, just like the emperor in Melanchthon's dream.In the midst of this impending catastrophe, on September 1, 1546, Melanchthon published an unusual work: the Collatio actionum forensium Atticarum et Romanarum praecipuarum (A comparison of the principal Attic and Roman legal actions). In this study, Melanchthon organized and compared the legal actions of Athens and Rome, following the order of the Ten Commandments. In 1546, Greek law was a virtually unknown field. Contemporary legal humanists like Andrea Alciato, Ulrich Zasius, and François Baudouin had devoted their attention almost exclusively to Roman or feudal European law.3 Nearly a century before the publication of sprawling [End Page 714] tomes by the Greek legal scholars Samuel Petit, Claudius Salmasius, and Johannes Meursius, Melanchthon treated the law of ancient Athens as a worthy subject.4 Even more puzzling, Melanchthon devoted himself to this arcane work during a moment of dire political crisis. The unusual subject matter of the Collatio and the urgent circumstances surrounding its publication raise a pair of intriguing questions: Why did Melanchthon think Attic legal actions were important? And why did he think they were worth studying while a military and political disaster loomed on the horizon?Melanchthon valued the ancient pagan laws because they showed how God had revealed legal and moral principles to the gentiles. His study of Attic and Roman law demonstrated how, through natural reason, the classical pagans had attained knowledge of the natural law and implemented it in their own societies.5 As a result, the ancient laws became indispensable to Christians studying law and moral philosophy.6 This work on ancient Greek law was an essential part of Melanchthon's pedagogical project of integrating Christianity and the classical world. As he wrote in the introduction, he had decided to write on Attic legal actions "so that students may know that they are not only formulas for litigation, but also a philosophy and a doctrine of virtue."7 By reconstructing the laws of ancient Athens and comparing them with those of Rome, Melanchthon demonstrated that classical moral and legal thought was in complete agreement with the Decalogue and essential for Christian moral development. [End Page 715... (shrink)