What is unique about China is the agreement on all sides that men are naturally equal. This is the second of our two central themes. ...

Donald J. Zeyl begins the historical section of the book by tracing divine causation throughout classical Greek philosophy. Some of the Pre-Socratics held to a single god as the source of rational order or change. These views suggested that the cosmos may be explained teleologically. Plato takes up that suggested promise in his Phaedo and finds it wanting. Instead, he looks to Forms as (formal) causes of natural processes. This direction of inquiry leads him to postulate, in the Republic, (...) the Form of the Good as the “unhypothetical (causal) first principle.” In Plato’s later writings, most notably in the Timaeus, Plato presents a full-blown teleological account of both the universe at large and the varieties of living things that inhabit the earth. The agent that brings about the conformity of the world to the Forms is the divine Demiurge. -/- Aristotle inherits from Plato the belief that processes in the natural world are to be understood teleologically. These processes are explained by the nature (or form) of the organism itself. Aristotle’s world has no beginning and thus has no place for an original efficient cause to get the world started. Aristotle’s “Unmoved Mover” plays no causal role in the processes of the natural world, all of which are exhaustively explained in terms of Aristotle’s well-known theory of the “four causes.” Nevertheless, the Unmoved Mover is a final cause. -/- After Aristotle, only the Stoics offered an account of divine causal agency. As pantheists, the Stoics identified the world with a divine rational principle they named the Logos. All events, natural and social, are completely determined by Reason, so the Stoics were strict determinists, both in their natural philosophy and in their social and ethical thought. (shrink)

Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life offers a bold new assessment of the role of the domestic sphere in modernist literature, architecture, and design.

A companion to Charles Darwin's notebooks, 1836-1844 (Cornell U. Pr., 1987). Because Darwin was in the process of formulating his arguments, entries on a single topic might appear in several series of notes at any number of places in various manuscripts. This concordance gathers these citations toge.

The life-changing principles of Stoicism taught through the story of its most famous proponent Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was the final famous Stoic philosopher of the ancient world. The Meditations, his personal journal, survives to this day as one of the most loved self-help and spiritual classics of all time. In How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, cognitive psychotherapist Donald Robertson weaves the life and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius together seamlessly to provide a compelling modern-day guide to the (...) Stoic wisdom followed by countless individuals throughout the centuries as a path to achieving greater fulfillment and emotional resilience. How to Think Like a Roman Emperor takes readers on a transformative journey along with Marcus, following his progress from a young noble at the court of Hadrian--taken under the wing of some of the finest philosophers of his day--through to his reign as emperor of Rome at the height of its power. Robertson shows how Marcus used philosophical doctrines and therapeutic practices to build emotional resilience and endure tremendous adversity, and guides readers through applying the same methods to their own lives. Combining remarkable stories from Marcus's life with insights from modern psychology and the enduring wisdom of his philosophy, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor puts a human face on Stoicism and offers a timeless and essential guide to handling the ethical and psychological challenges we face today. (shrink)

_Experience the world of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and the tremendous challenges he faced and overcame with the help of Stoic philosophy_ This novel biography brings Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) to life for a new generation of readers by exploring the emperor’s fascinating psychological journey. Donald J. Robertson examines Marcus’s relationships with key figures in his life, such as his mother, Domitia Lucilla, and the emperor Hadrian, as well as his Stoic tutors. He draws extensively on Marcus’s own _Meditations_ (...) and correspondence, and he examines the emperor’s actions as detailed in the _Augustan History_ and other ancient texts. Marcus Aurelius struggled to reconcile his philosophy and moral values with the political pressures he faced as emperor at the height of Roman power. Robertson examines Marcus’s attitude toward slavery and the moral dilemma posed by capturing enemies in warfare; his attitude toward women; the role of Stoicism in shaping his response to the threat of civil war; the treatment of Christians under his rule; and the naming of his notorious son Commodus as his successor. Throughout, the _Meditations _is used to shed light on the mind of the emperor—his character, values, and motives—as Robertson skillfully weaves together Marcus’s inner journey as a philosopher with the outer events of his life as a Roman emperor. (shrink)

Thomism constitutes the only full-scale attempt to systematize an ontological theology which will ground literal statements; ie, its ontological method of ...

George Rudebusch’s book, Socrates, Pleasure and Value is a richly textured book whose central aim is to resolve the dispute. On the one hand, Rudebusch sides with the proponents of in holding that the hedonism of the Protagoras is Socrates’ own considered position, clearly distinct from the hedonism refuted in the Gorgias, despite evident verbal similarities. On the other, he agrees with the proponents of that for Socrates virtue is the supreme intrinsic human good. He thus accepts the burden of (...) reconciling the claim that pleasure is the only intrinsic good with the claim that virtue is the supreme intrinsic good. (shrink)

From the perspective of Christian theology, divine freedom is the paradigm of human freedom, but it is also completely unlike ours in its infinity. This is the paradox of the analogy of being: in its infinity, the Archetype of our being is also completely other. In contrast, likeness between contingent beings is limited in that each being is individuated yet similar to those of like species. No matter how alike beings are, “unlikeness” increases with generic distance. At the asymptotic limit, (...) the Archetype is infinitely unlike us, but remains the ultimate blueprint for each being. If as Archetype, God’s infinite freedom is qualitative of infinite being, then all finite beings must possess freedom to some finite degree. Herein lies the problem treated in this paper: how can bothanimate and inanimate being possess freedom? To answer this question, the author draws upon the first volume of part two of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s sixteen volume trilogy, Theo-logic: The Truth of the World. (shrink)

In this volume Donald Munro, author of important studies on early and contemporary China, provides a critical analysis of the doctrines of the Sung Neo-Confucian philosopher Chu Hsi (1130-1200). For nearly six centuries Confucian orthodoxy was based on Chu Hsi's commentaries on Confucian classics. These commentaries were the core of the curriculum studied by candidates for the civil service in China until 1905 and provided guidelines both for personal behavior and for official policy. Munro finds the key to the (...) complexities of Chu Hsi's thought in his mode of discourse: the structural images of family, stream of water, mirror, body, plant, and ruler. Furthermore, he discloses the basic framework of Chu Hsi's ethics and the theory of human nature that is provided by these illustrative images. As revealed by Munro, Chu Hsi's thought is polarized between family duty and a broader altruism and between obedience to external authority and self-discovery of moral truth. To understand these tensions moves us toward clarifying the meaning of each idea in the sets. The interplay of these ideas, selectively emphasized over time by later Confucians, is a background for explaining modern Chinese thought. In it, among other things, Confucianism and Marxism-Leninism co-exist. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Tocqueville's chapter on the American Constitution reflects on the attempt to superimpose a large-scale union upon what was originally a loose collection of self-governing local democracies. The latter are communities which draw easily from the natural basis for public-spiritedness, which is local patriotism. The constitutional system, on the other hand, must nurture loyalty to a union whose core is a set of legal formalities specifying the allocation of powers. Tocqueville shows that the federal union avoids the combination of republicanism with (...) extreme centralization that was sought by the revolutionaries in France. Nevertheless, the constitutional system harbours a tension between the original, more natural sources of civic loyalty and the abstract principles necessary for a national structure based upon complex theories of federation. The insight into this tension between constitutional idea and local democratic practice is at the heart of Tocqueville's reservations about the future of the union. (shrink)

The generation of evidence is integral to the work of public health and health service providers. Traditionally, ethics has been addressed differently in research projects, compared with other forms of evidence generation, such as quality improvement, program evaluation, and surveillance, with review of non-research activities falling outside the purview of the research ethics board. However, the boundaries between research and these other evaluative activities are not distinct. Efforts to delineate a boundary – whether on grounds of primary purpose, temporality, underlying (...) legal authority, departure from usual practice, or direct benefits to participants – have been unsatisfactory. (shrink)

The network approach to psychopathology posits that mental disorders can be conceptualized and studied as causal systems of mutually reinforcing symptoms. This approach, first posited in 2008, has grown substantially over the past decade and is now a full-fledged area of psychiatric research. In this article, we provide an overview and critical analysis of 363 articles produced in the first decade of this research program, with a focus on key theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions. In addition, we turn our attention (...) to the next decade of the network approach and propose critical avenues for future research in each of these domains. We argue that this program of research will be best served by working toward two overarching aims: (a) the identification of robust empirical phenomena and (b) the development of formal theories that can explain those phenomena. We recommend specific steps forward within this broad framework and argue that these steps are necessary if the network approach is to develop into a progressive program of research capable of producing a cumulative body of knowledge about how specific mental disorders operate as causal systems. (shrink)

The almost 300 articles contain not only historical accounts but also some indication of the state of present day study in classical philosophy.

Although task-unrelated thinking has been increasingly investigated in recent years, the content and correlates of everyday off-task thought in clinical d...

Dewey's project -- Cultural and intellectual background -- Rehabilitating Dewey's psychology -- The nature of knowledge -- What we know -- Feeling, will, and self-realization -- Beyond modernist culture -- A new idealism.

A study of the road to modern problem solving in China, winding between a traditional Confucian style of inquiry and one associated with science.