Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation honors two of the most beloved and productive scholars in the field of Islamic Studies, Professors William Chittick and Sachiko Murata. For the past five decades, and in over 40 books (monographs, editions, translations, edited volumes) and more than 300 articles, Professors Chittick and Murata have presented us with philologically astute and analytically sound expositions of the pre-modern Islamic intellectual tradition, particularly in the areas of Sufism and philosophy. (...) They have done so primarily by zeroing in on the technical vocabularies of these disciplines (in Arabic, Persian, and Chinese), demonstrating just how important the functions of philology and cross-cultural translation are when studying pre-modern cultures and civilizations. (shrink)

The immortality of the soul is one of the oldest tropes in the history of philosophy and one that gained significant momentum in 16th-century Europe. But what came before Pietro Pomponazzi and his contemporaries? Through examination of four neglected but central figures, Joanna Papiernik uncovers the rich and varied nature of the afterlife debate in 15th-century Italy. By engaging with old prints, manuscripts and other archival material, this book reveals just how much interest there was in the question of (...) immortality before the 16th-century boom in Aristotelian translations. In particular, Papiernik sheds light on the treatises of Agostino Dati, Leonardo Nogarola, Antonio degli Agli and Giovanni Canali, all of which have until now been overlooked in modern scholarship. From Dati's critiques of ancient and existing positions to Agli's study of immortality and its relation to the metaphysics of light, this volume investigates not only how wide-ranging the debate was but also the important impact it had on later philosophical thinking. Deftly combining close reading with a broad intellectual survey, and including two editions of unpublished primary texts, Philosophies of the Afterlife in the Early Italian Renaissance provides a crucial insight into the development of early Renaissance Platonism and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This title offers a cultural translation of modern Italian intellectual and philosophical history, a development book-ended by Giambattista Vico and Antonio Gramsci. It shows Italian philosophy to have emerged during the age of the Risorgimento in reaction to 18th century French revolutionary and rationalist standards in politics and philosophy and in critical assimilation of the German reaction to the same, mainly Hegelian idealism and, eventually, Heideggerian existentialism. This is the story of modern Italian (...) class='Hi'>philosophy told through the lens of Renaissance scholarship. (shrink)

In this book, Christopher Celenza provides an intellectual history of the Italian Renaissance during the long fifteenth century, from c.1350–1525. His book fills a bibliographic gap between Petrarch and Machiavelli and offers clear case studies of contemporary luminaries, including Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, and Pietro Bembo. Integrating sources in Italian and Latin, Celenza focuses on the linked issues of language and philosophy. He also examines the conditions in which Renaissance intellectuals (...) operated in an era before the invention of printing, analyzing reading strategies and showing how texts were consulted, and how new ideas were generated as a result of conversations, both oral and epistolary. The result is a volume that offers a new view on both the history of philosophy and Italian Renaissance intellectual life. It will serve as a key resource for students and scholars of early modern Italian humanism and culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:86 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY lamblichi Chalcidensis ex Coele-Syria de vita Pythagorica liber, lamblichos, Pythagoras. Legende--Lehre---Lebensgestaltung. Griechisch und Deutsch, herausgegeben, iibersetzt und eingeleitet von Michael yon Albrecht. (Ziirich & Stuttgart: Artemis, 1963. Pp. 280. = Die Bibliothek der Alten Welt, Reihe Antike und Christentum.) The present edition and translation again makes available one of the texts most valuable for the understanding of the world of late antiquity. The (...) earlier editions, especially that of L. Deubner (1937), are out of print. The fact that this document has been translated into German for the first time is also very helpful, since Iamblichos is sometimes difficult to understand. A brief but nevertheless informative introduction rightly emphasizes that Iamblichos intended to present an introduction and initiation into the Pythagorean way of life rather than a biography of Pythagoras based upon historically trustworthy materials. Although the biography of Pythagoras is certainly a part of the book, it serves only as the ideal example of the Pythagorean way of life, as Iaznblichos sees it. However, more than merely a work of Iamblichos, it ought to be recognized as a "fundamental document of the image of man in later antiquity" (p. 11). The text is based upon L. Deubner's edition, but occasionally it takes up older conjectures or returns to the tradition (for a more detailed discussion cf. W. Burkert, Gnomon 37, 1965, 24ff.). The index and the explanatory notes are also helpful, although the latter prove to be too brief and do not adequately call the reader's attention to the problems of sources, tradition, and composition. One can only agree with von Albrecht that we still need a modem commentary (p. I1). H. D. BETZ Claremont, CaliIornia Agrippa and the Crisis o] Renaissance Thought. By Charles G. Nauert, Jr. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965. Pp. vi W 374. $8.00.) One of the most influential and widely read thinkers of the early sixteenth century was the German Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettisheim (1486-1535). His many works were reprinted often, as well as being translated into several vernacular languages. The De incertitudine et vanitate omnium scientiarum et atrium of 1526, for example, went through at least 16 printings before 1700 and appeared in Italian (1547), English (1569), French (1582), and Dutch (1651) translations, which were themselves often reprinted. Although interest in Agrippa has waned somewhat since the seventeenth century, there is still a significant amount of scholarly debate regarding his importance and the meaning of his writings. Professor Nauert's monograph is the fruit of many years' study of Agrippa's life, thought, and milieu. In it he clearly places Agrippa in his historical context, accurately sketching his background and influence. After a brief introduction (pp. 1-7), the study is essentially divided into two parts: The first (pp. 8-115) traces Agrippa's life and intellectual development, the second (pp. 116-334) discusses in some detail a number of the key themes developed in his writings. There is also a substantial bibliography (pp. 335-,355) and a quite complete and accurate index (pp. 357-374). Although the mass of material which Nanert brings to our attention indicates the opposite, one sometimes gets the impression that the author tends to underestimate the importance of his subject. For example, he says, "Agrippa von Nettisheim is now a forgotten figure in the intellectual history of the West" (p. 322), but this does not seem to be the case. Although much work remains to be done, at least five books have been devoted to Agrippa in the past half century and, indeed, at least seven articles have appeared in the past ten years on one or another aspect of his life and thought. The very fact that Nanert can argue with so much vigor against the views of contemporary scholars like Lynn Thomdike and Paola Zambelli indicates that it is anything but a dead issue. As it is, Nauert's book clearly and accurately describes Agrippa's place in the intellectual ambiance of the sixteenth century. It gives the first detailed analysis of Agrippa's life and thought in English in recent BOOK REVIEWS 87 times and is the first full*scale attempt to exhaustively treat... (shrink)

Translation is an early and ongoing, but as yet for the most part unexamined, theme of Heidegger's lecture courses and essays. According to Heidegger, translation became a central philosophical issue in the Western tradition soon after its beginnings when a number of the basic words of the early Greek thinkers were sometimes mistranslated into Latin and that, as a result, the thought of the pre-Socratics and the classic Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, has remained obscure. ;For Heidegger, because of (...) the relation between thinking and translating, and the relation of both to language, it is not a thinker's words, but rather the translator's thought, that is translated when he attempts to render a text in his own native language. The resulting text is a recomposition of the original text, not the exchange of words between the vocabularies of two natural languages. Translation also goes on within the same language whenever one speaks and writes. ;I first present the principles of Heidegger's philosophy of translation and present them as ontological, hermeneutic and methodological elements. Next, I examine Heidegger's rendering of Parmenides' Fragment VI as an example of his method of paratactic translation, in which each word of an utterance, rather than the syntactic ensemble, initially guides the rendering. Finally, I apply Heidegger' s own principles to a translation of Was ist Metaphysik? and argue on philosophical grounds for new renderings of Heidegger's basic words, including Sein, Seiende, Dasein and Existenz. I also explore the relation of Heidegger's view of translation to the question about the meaning of Sein and the relation of Sein and thinking. ;Heidegger's hermeneutics complements interpretation theory since Schleiermacher, but in suggesting that thinking does not occur in words, Heidegger also challenges that view. (shrink)

The study of Islamic education has hitherto remained a tangential inquiry in the broader focus of Islamic Studies. In the wake of this neglect, a renaissance of sorts has occurred in recent years, reconfiguring the importance of Islam’s attitudes to knowledge, learning and education as paramount in the study and appreciation of Islamic civilization. _Philosophies of Islamic Education_, stands in tandem to this call and takes a pioneering step in establishing the importance of its study for (...) the educationalist, academic and student alike. Broken into four sections, it deals with theological, pedagogic, institutional and contemporary issues reflecting the diverse and often competing notions and practices of Islamic education. As a unique international collaboration bringing into conversation theologians, historians, philosophers, teachers and sociologists of education _Philosophies of Islamic Education_ intends to provide fresh means for conversing with contemporary debates in ethics, secularization theory, child psychology, multiculturalism, interfaith dialogue and moral education. In doing so, it hopes to offer an important and timely contribution to educational studies as well as give new insight for academia in terms of conceiving learning and education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Renaissance Project of Knowing:Lorenzo Valla and Salvatore Camporeale’s Contributions to the Querelle Between Rhetoric and PhilosophyMelissa Meriam BullardThe Journal of the History of Ideas has published two symposia devoted to examinations of Lorenzo Valla's place in Renaissance intellectual history, both of which sought to situate Valla in his appropriate contemporary context and to assess his contributions to developing tools of rhetorical analysis and textual criticism in the fifteenth (...) century. In the first JHI debate published in 1989, Salvatore Camporeale's foundational reexamination of Valla's views on language, rhetoric, and theology was frequently cited; and his assessment served as a fulcrum in the disparate interpretations offered by John Monfasani and by Richard Waswo and Sarah Gravelle.1 In the second forum published in 1996, Camporeale was invited to contribute an essay on Valla's famous critique of the false Donation of Constantine; therein the Roman humanist had appealed for Christian renewal inspired by an early Christianity, unburdened by medieval ontological discourse, and seeking to subvert the imperial (Constantinian) model of the church that had dominated since the fourth century.2More than half a century later in the early sixteenth century, reform-minded intellectuals such as Erasmus, More, Luther, and Melanchthon picked up Valla's pleas and used his insights and textual criticism to buttress their own calls for ecclesiastical reform, challenging the claims to authority of the [End Page 477] Roman church. But despite the popularity among the reformers of Valla's two most noted and provocative texts, his rhetorical and philological refutation of the Donation of Constantine and his annotations for a new translation of the New Testament from Greek, his legacy gradually faded from prominence after the sixteenth century. By then when the Protestants' split from Rome had become an accepted reality, and their battle to achieve a place in a divided Christian world won, the reformers' use of Valla's arguments no longer seemed so controversial. For its part, Catholic discourse in the Tridentine era had reverted to reassertions of papal hierarchy along the Constantinian model. Valla's other contributions to understanding rhetorical hermeneutics and philosophy gradually receded, especially from Anglophone intellectual consciousness and in some quarters even from the metanarratives of intellectual history.3 His legacy frequently goes unacknowledged in reconstructions of antecedents to modern intellectual history and philosophy despite the late twentieth century's lingering love affair with philosophies of language and the stress on contextualization pioneered by Heidegger and Wittgenstein, which share many of the same concerns Valla had plumbed for his day.4 The present group of essays attempts to address that lacuna in various ways, by revisiting Valla's contributions to the philosophy of language, by casting his story forward to understand the nature of his legacy beyond the Renaissance and Reformation, and by exploring why his and other Renaissance humanists' contributions to the project of human knowledge have been minimized or overlooked in more recent times. It is the contention of all the contributors that Valla, and to wit Camporeale's Valla, richly deserves our attention and that his overlooked legacy endures.Beginning in the 1970s Salvatore Camporeale, the leading modern Valla specialist, wrote and lectured widely to highlight the Roman humanist's place in the history of thought and to discuss him in an idiom reflective of modern sensitivities to issues of rhetoric, philosophy, language, and historical context.5 Camporeale's massive tome, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia (Florence, 1972) has only slowly made its fortune beyond Italy and Europe. The book, densely written and daunting for its close philological examination of variant texts and datings, has been more often consulted than read outside [End Page 478] the select circle of Valla devotees, this despite Eugenio Garin's clearly stated appreciation in his presentation of the volume. Garin lauded the depth and precision of Camporeale's scholarship and the lucidity with which he brought into focus the rich fabric of fifteenth-century theological disputes that engaged Valla and that invested his understanding of language and philology.6 Through careful and insightful analysis, Camporeale not only established Quintilian as the major inspiration behind Valla's rhetorical theory, but, logical step by logical step, he... (shrink)

Islam, one of the worlds great faiths, was born as a result of the revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad (c. 570-632) in Arabia. A proper understanding of the Islamic present depends on an accurate knowledge of the way in which Islamic thought developed from medieval times onwards. For instance, Islam evolved a sophisticated theology and set of philosophical systems of its own, which owed something to the impact of Greek thought, but became uniquely Islamic (...) because of the vital presence within that faith of the Quran. Furthermore, Islam soon came into contact with Greek philosophy and science, and a translation movement into Arabic began. The roles of Kason and Revelation, and the primacy that was to be given to one or the other, came to the fore. Problems which had also vexed Christianity such as anthropomorphism, free will and predestination provided intellectual stimulation for Islamic thinkers, while the mystical impulse, articulated in Islamic Sufism, imbued the writings of several of the theologians and philosophers considered in these volumes. Taken together, all of these issues constitute a golden period of Islamic debate and intellectual inquiry, and the articles collected in this fascinating set reflect that Islamic dynamic. (shrink)

This volume deals with the psychological, metaphysical and scientific ideas of two major and influential Aristotelian philosophers of the Italian Renaissance - Nicoletto Vernia (d. 1499) and Agostino Nifo (ca 1470-1538) - whose careers must be seen as inter-related. Both began by holding Averroes to be the true interpreter of Aristotle's thought, but were influenced by the work of humanists, such as Ermolao Barbaro, though to a different degree. Translations of the Greek commentators on Aristotle (Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius (...) and Simplicius) provided them with new material and new ways of understanding Aristotle - Nifo even put himself to learning Greek - and led them to abandon Averroes, especially as regards his views on the soul and intellect. Nevertheless, both Vernia and Nifo engaged seriously with the thought of medieval scholars such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John of Jandun. Both also showed interest in their celebrated contemporary, Marsilio Ficino. (shrink)

All of the selections in this volume have been newly translated and many of them appear for the first time in English. The editors group well-chosen selections from the Renaissance Italian philosophers around four areas of development of philosophy passing out of the middle ages and into modern philosophy. Renaissance Humanism is represented by Petrarch, Leon Alberti, Lorenzo Valla, and Gianozzo Manetti. Renaissance Platonism includes selections from Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, and Leone Ebreo. Renaissance Aristotelianism has (...) pieces from Pomponazzi and Tasso. The Philosophers of Nature included are Telesio, Campanella, and Bruno. Courses in the History of Philosophy too often pass over the Renaissance philosophers, much in the same way as these same courses used to pass over the Middle Ages. Considering the effect that the revitalized Platonism of the Renaissance period had on Descartes and Leibniz, this gap needs to be filled in for a proper understanding of the origins of modern philosophy; this anthology, and, presumably, the companion volume to follow are welcome steps in that direction.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The ideas of Plato (429-347 BC) have exerted such an abiding influence on western philosophy and political thought that it is easy to forget that for many centuries, between about 500 and 1400, his works were almost unknown in western Europe. This was partly because very few people in Medieval Europe knew enough Greek to read Plato and even if they had, copies of the Dialogues were almost impossible to obtain, with only the Timaeus available in Latin translation. (...) Scholars were therefore largely dependent on earlier Latin authors such as Cicero and St Augustine for a second-hand knowledge of Plato's ideas. It was the rediscovery of the Dialogues in the original during the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century that set western thought off on new paths, a rediscovery that was made possible by the preservation and transmission of Plato's work by scholars in Byzantium. (shrink)

The gradual secularization of European society and culture is often said to characterize the development of the modern world, and the early Italian humanists played a pioneering role in this process. Here Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, with Elizabeth B. Welles, have edited and translated seven primary texts that shed important light on the subject of "civic humanism" in the Renaissance.Included is a treatise of Francesco Petrarca on government, two representative letters from Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni's panegyric (...) to Florence, Francesco Barbaro's letter on "wifely" duty, Poggio Bracciolini's dialogue on avarice, and Angelo Poliziano's vivid history of the Pazzi conspiracy. Each translation is prefaced by an essay on the author and a short bibliography. The substantial introductory essay offers a concise, balanced summary of the historiographcal issues connected with the period. (shrink)

The Renaissance, known primarily for the art and literature that it produced, was also a period in which philosophical thought flourished. This two-volume anthology, which was originally published in 1997, contains forty translations of important works on moral and political philosophy written during the Renaissance and hitherto unavailable in English. The anthology is designed to be used in conjunction with The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, in which all of these texts are discussed. The works, originally written in (...) Latin, Italian, French, Spanish and Greek, cover such topics as: concepts of man, Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, and Epicurean ethics, scholastic political philosophy, theories of princely and republican government in Italy and northern European political thought. Each text is supplied with an introduction and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

This Festschrift in Professor Kristeller’s honor consists of contributions by scholars who have had some connection with Columbia University, his "intellectual home in the United States for three decades." It also includes a Tabula Gratulatoria listing many other friends from the United States and Europe. The editor’s opening essay provides an interesting and informative account of this scholar’s academic career, and should be read together with the complete annotated bibliography of his publications through 1974. The latter lists 149 "major publications" (...) and 220 "minor publications." Kristeller’s contributions to the history of Renaissance philosophy are well known to historians of philosophy, and deservedly so. Here reference should be made to his groundbreaking studies on Marsilio Ficino and Pomponazzi, and on others such as Pico della Mirandola and Petrarch, as well as on Renaissance Platonism, Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, Thomism in the Renaissance, Paduan Averroism, and Alexandrism. But he has also contributed greatly to the fields of medieval and Renaissance history, and especially to our understanding of Renaissance humanism, Renaissance music, and Renaissance art. He is universally recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on manuscript research, as is witnessed, for example, by the cooperative project, Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, which he founded, and by his Iter ltalicum. In all of these enterprises he has set an enviable example for other scholars by the exacting standards and the breadth of his expertise. It is only fitting, then, that the many essays in this Festschrift should reflect the breadth and depth of the scholarship so evident in the man to whom they are dedicated. Limitations of space will only permit us to list them here, with a few remarks reserved for those of more special interest to philosophers and historians of philosophy: Eugene F. Rice, Jr., "The De magia naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples" ; Donald R. Kelley, "Louis Le Caron Philosophe", on Le Caron’s effort to bring together jurisprudence and classical, especially Platonic, philosophy; Richard H. Popkin, "The Pre-Adamite Theory in the Renaissance", with fascinating material about theories concerning men before Adam in La Peyrère and widely scattered earlier sources; Richard Lemay, "The Fly against the Elephant: Flandinus against Pomponazzi on Fate", on an unedited attack by an Augustinian Bishop against Pomponazzi’s espousal of the Stoic doctrine of fate; Martin Pine, "Pietro Pomponazzi and the Medieval Tradition of God’s Foreknowledge", on Pomponazzi’s solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom inlight of his familiarity with earlier discussions by Boethius, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham; F. Edward Cranz, "Editions of the Latin Aristotle Accompanied by the Commentaries of Averroes", helpful to all who wish to consult late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century versions of the Latin Aristotle and especially the Latin Averroes; Josef Soudek, "A Fifteenth-Century Humanistic Bestseller: The Manuscript Diffusion of Leonardo Bruni’s Annotated Latin Version of the Aristotelian Economics" ; Edward P. Mahoney, "Nicoletto Vernia on the Soul and Immortality", which details a radical shift on Vernia’s part from an earlier Averroistic reading of Aristotle; Joan Kelly-Gadol, "Tommaso Campanella: The Agony of Political Theory in the Counter-Reformation", which attempts to account for some of the shifts and inconsistencies in Campanella’s political writings by placing them within the troubled personal and political circumstances of his life; Charles Trinkaus, "Protagoras in the Renaissance: An Exploration" ; Maristella de Panizza Lorch, "Voluptas, molle quoddam et non invidiosum nomen: Lorenzo Valla’s Defense of voluptas in the Preface to his De voluptate" ; Neal W. Gilbert, "Richard de Bury and the ‘Quires of Yesterday’s Sophisms"’, with much interesting material on the medieval tradition of sophismata, especially at Oxford; Malcolm Brown, "A Pre-Aristotelian Mathematician on Deductive Order" ; John H. Randall, Jr., "Paduan Aristotelianism Reconsidered", on evidence for influence of the Italian Aristotelian tradition on Galileo; William F. Edwards, "Niccoló Leoniceno and the Origins of Humanist Discussion of Method" ; C. Doris Hellman, "A Poem on the Occasion of the Nova of 1572" ; Edward Rosen, "Kepler’s Mastery of Greek" ; W. T. H. Jackson, "The Politics of a Poet: The Archipoeta as Revealed by his Imagery" ; John Charles Nelson, "Love and Sex in the Decameron" ; George B. Parks, "Pico della Mirandola in Tudor Translation" ; Richard Harrier, "Invention in Tudor Literature: Historical Perspectives" ; Helene Wieruszowski, "Jacob Burckhardt and Vespasiano da Bisticci " ; Morimichi Watanabe, "Gregor Heimburg and Early Humanism in Germany" ; Raymond de Roover, "Cardinal Cajetan on ‘Cambium’ or Exchange Dealings" ; and a series of text editions with introductions including Julius Kirshner, "Conscience and Public Finance: A Questio disputata of John of Legnano on the Public Debt of Genoa" ; John Mundy, "The Origins of the College of Saint-Raymond at the University of Toulouse" ; Charles B. Schmitt, "Girolamo Borro’s Multae sunt nostrarum ignorantionum causae " ; Guido Kisch, "An Unpublished Consiliumof Johannes Sichardus" ; Patricia H. Labalme, "The Last Will of a Venetian Patrician " ; Felix Gilbert, "The Last Will of a Venetian Grand Chancellor" ; Herbert S. Matsen, "Giovanni Garzoni to Alessandro Achillini : An Unpublished Letter and Defense" ; Theodore E. James, "A Fragment of An Exposition of the First Letter of Seneca to Lucilius Attributed to Peter of Mantua". The editor, his collaborators, and the contributors are all to be commended for the high quality of this volume.—J.F.W. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Renaissance ExerciseRoy GlassbergDescribing the influence of Aristotle's Poetics on education in Renaissance Italy, Lane Cooper writes, "Before 15431 it was a regular academic exercise to compare a Greek tragedy with a Senecan, with the demands of the Poetics as a standard."2An interesting prompt for an article, one that I shall here pursue. In what follows, I compare Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrannus with Seneca's Trojan Women in terms of their (...) adherence to a set of three criteria culled from the Poetics, dramatic elements that were regarded by Aristotle as conducive to a well-constructed tragedy. For example, Aristotle writes in chapter 6 that "the most powerful elements of emotional interest in Tragedy [are] Peripeteia or Reversal of the Situation, and Recognition scenes."3 And that these are most effective when they occur concurrently (A, p. 41). Thus, I will inquire of each play whether it includes a scene of reversal and recognition and whether these happen simultaneously.Criterion one: Aristotle states in chapter 13 that "a well-constructed plot should … be single in its issue rather than double as some maintain" (A, p. 47). The plot of Trojan Women is double, one line of action leading to the death of Astyanax, the son of Hector and Andromache, and the other to the death of Polyxena, the daughter of Hecuba and Priam. The plot of Oedipus Tyrannus, on the other hand, is single, with its action focused on Oedipus from its beginning through its middle to its end. [End Page 490]Criterion two: Aristotle tells us in chapter 13 that "a perfect tragedy should … imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation" (A, p. 47). He further remarks that "pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune and fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves" (p. 45). Thus, we pity Andromache and Hecuba for the loss of their children and fear the loss of our own. Similarly, we pity Oedipus for his unmerited misfortune, his situation being the result of a curse brought down upon Laius, his father. And we fear being subject, ourselves, to unmerited divine hostility.Criterion three: As noted above, reversal and recognition are regarded by Aristotle as providing "the most powerful elements of emotional interest in Tragedy" (A, p. 27).In Oedipus Tyrannus, reversal and recognition transpire simultaneously when the messenger comes bearing good news that turns out to be bad news: that the king and queen of Corinth are not Oedipus's real parents.4 We find no scenes of reversal and recognition in Trojan Women.Thus, in comparing Oedipus Tyrannus with Trojan Woman in terms of the three criteria presented above, the game goes to Sophocles.Roy GlassbergPortland, OregonFootnotes1. 1543 was the date of Cinthio's translation of Aristotle's Poetics into Italian, thus making the students' efforts at their own translations moot.2. Lane Cooper, The "Poetics" of Aristotle: Its Meaning and Influence (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1963), p. 201.3. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. S. H. Butcher (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1951), p. 27; hereafter abbreviated A.4. Sophocles, Oedipus the King, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 54–55.Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

The article examines the essays dedicated to the philosophy of the late Fichte, specifically to the concept of the image and the absolute (Netrebiak, 2022 and 2024). It demonstrates the issues arising, on the one hand, from neglecting the context of Fichte’s philosophy in attempts to interpret his late philosophy and, on the other hand, from misinterpreting Fichte’s terminology and incorrect translations of his texts. Additionally, it refutes the claim regarding the theological context of Fichte’s (...) class='Hi'>philosophy, which consistently developed Kant’s program of transcendental philosophy. This program aimed at reforming Christian epistemology and ethics by considering knowledge as the source of faith. The article also deals with Kant’s thesis on the setting aside (aufheben) of knowledge in order to make room for faith (KrV, B XXX) in the context of Luther’s translation of the biblical verb καταργεῖν (Rom. 3:31) as Kant’s claim for a reformation of Christianity. The path of Christianity (and the Christian philosopher) is the justification of knowledge (law, norms) through faith. Kant, however, radically rethinks this stance by justifying faith through knowledge. At bottom, Kant revises Christianity by rejecting transcendence, the supposed source of epistemic and practical world relations, leading to his critique of Christian ethics and its golden rule of morality whithin his doctrine of categorical imperatives. From this perspective, Fichte merely continues Kant’s program of transcendental philosophy, offering a path from knowledge to faith. Attempts to put forward a theological interpretation of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre fundamentally contradict both the early and later versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, as they disregard the epistemological context in which Fichte consistently developed Kant’s revolutionary equating of objective validity with objective reality, even though he employed his own original theoretical vocabulary. (shrink)

The Renaissance, known primarily for the art and literature that it produced, was also a period in which philosophical thought flourished. This two-volume anthology contains 40 new translations of important works on moral and political philosophy written during the Renaissance and hitherto unavailable in English. The anthology is designed to be used in conjunction with The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, in which all of these texts are discussed. The works, originally written in Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, (...) and Greek, cover such topics as: concepts of man, Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, and Epicurean ethics, scholastic political philosophy, theories of princely and republican government in Italy and northern European political thought. Each text is supplied with an introduction and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger was a Florentine Renaissance humanist who died in 1438 at the age of thirty-three. He took part in one of the most interesting phases of Italian Renaissance humanism and achieved in his short lifetime a modest reputation as a first-rate Greek to Latin translator. Less well known is the fact that he wrote a fair amount of prose works. One of the most interesting of these is a treatise which he composed in the year (...) of his death, entitled De curie commodis, or, On the Benefits of the Curia, a portrait of the papal Curia which is written elegantly, learnedly, earnestly, and angrily. ;The goal of this study is to discuss this dialogue in its intellectual and social contexts; there are three chapters. The first is a general introduction to Lapo's life and work, to the dialogue itself, and to the historiography on the De curie commodis. The second chapter discusses the manner in which Lapo employs the virtues in a Stoicizing fashion as persuasive tools in the environment of Italian humanism. It is argued that his particular treatment of the virtues can serve as a key for interpreting the dialogue as a whole. The third chapter touches both on social historical issues in the De curie commodis and on Lapo's defense or curial wealth. ;There has been no adequate edition of the Latin text, based on a wide enough variety of extant manuscripts, nor has the De curie commodis ever been translated into English . Therefore, a thorough critical edition of the Latin text along with an annotated English translation follows the discussion. ;The treatise has been notoriously difficult to interpret and seems often to prevaricate. The interpretive conclusion of this study is that Lapo wrote as a well-informed but liminal figure in the socio-cultural environment of the papal Curia--as an outsider who desired to become a full-fledged insider. The De curie commodis is not the parting shot of a fed-up hanger-on; it is instead Lapo's last-ditch, highly critical but nonetheless sincere attempt to find a patron who would allow him to join a cultural ambient at which he marvelled but from which he felt himself unjustly excluded. (shrink)

Some of the foremost living scholars in Islamic thought have come together to create a standard and definitive work on the subject of Islamic thought. Noted scholars from North America, Europe, and the Middle East offer new and generative interpretations of major themes in the field. They address perennial theological and philosophical questions: the nature of the God-head, the ultimate constitution of matter, the world's origin, causality, divine providence and the existence of evil, freedom and determinism, political wisdom, (...) and the reaches of human knowledge, The contributions include historical and analytical expositions of these issues in medieval Islam as well as discussions of individual thinkers, translations of Arabic texts with commentary, comparisons of Greek and Islamic thought, and bibliographical and textual sources. As a whole, these essays offer a wealth of philosophical, theological, bibliographical, philological, and historical information. Among the outstanding contributions are: an article by Charles Butterworth on Aristotle's rhetoric and how it was understood by al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes; Richard M. Frank's essay on the concepts of atoms and bodies, one of the most complex subjects in Islamic theology; and an article by Shams Inati on Ibn Sina and single expressions that discusses how language relates to mental processes and the unknown. Michael E. Marmura develops a new perspective on the subject of efficient causality, emphasizing the paradigmatic position of God's relationship to the world; Muhsin Mahdi analyzes a treatise of Averroes' that deals with the relationship between philosophy and law. (shrink)

By proposing the Microcosm and Macrocosm analogy for dialogue between Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology, the authors of this volume are reviving the perennial positioning of the human condition in the play of forces within and without the human being. This theme has run from Plato through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modernity, and has been ignored by contemporaries. It now acquires a new pertinence and striking significance due to the scientific discoveries into the "infinitely small" in life, (...) on the one hand, and the prodigious technological discoveries of the "infinitely great" on the other. Both open up undreamt-of prospects for the continuing conquest of cosmic forces. The human person – thrown into turmoil by the new approaches to life and needing to acquire new habits of mind, having lost security of all beliefs – desperately seeks a new clarification of the Human Condition within the unity of everything-there-is, of cosmic forces, and of his destiny. The dialogue between Islamic Philosophy and phenomenology of life can show the way. Papers by: Gholam-Reza A'awani, Mehdi Aminrazavi, Roza Davari Ardakani, Mohammad Azadpur, Gary Backhaus, Marina Banchetti-Robino, William Chittick, Seyed Mostafa Muhaghghegh Damad, Golamhossein Ebrahimi Dinani, Nader El-Bizri, Kathleen Haney, Salahaddin Khalilov, Sayyid Mohammad Khamenei, Mahmoud Khatami, Mieczyslaw Pawel Migon, Nikolay Milkov, Sachiko Murata, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Daniela Verducci. (shrink)

The twelve essays in this new collection by John Monfasani examine how, in particular cases, Greek émigrés, Italian humanists, and Latin scholastics reacted with each other in surprising and important ways. After an opening assessment of Greek migration to Renaissance Italy, the essays range from the Averroism of John Argyropoulos and the capacity of Nicholas of Cusa to translate Greek, to Marsilio Ficino's position in the Plato-Aristotle controversy and the absence of Ockhamists in Renaissance Italy. Theodore Gaza receives special (...) attention in his roles as translator, teacher, and philosopher, as does Lorenzo Valla for his philosophy, theology, and historical ideas. Finally, the life and writings of a protégé of Cardinal Bessarion, the Dominican friar Giovanni Gatti, come in for their first extensive study. (shrink)

Signs and Wonders: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. By R.A. Anderson. Pp.xvii, 158, Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans; Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1983, £4.25. Inheriting the Land: A Commentary on the Book of Joshua. By E. John Hamlin, Pp.xxiii, 207, Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans; Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1984, £4.75. Servant Theology: A Commentary on the Book of Isaiah 40–55. By G.A.F. Knight. Pp.ix, 204, Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans; Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1984, £4.75. God's Chosen (...) People: A Commentary on the Books of Amos and Lamentations. By R. Martin‐Achard and S. Paul Re'emi. Pp.viii, 133, Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans; Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1984, £4.50. The Parable of the Wicked Tenants. By Klyne Snodgrass. Pp.x, 140, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1983, 72 DM. The Johannine Paraclete in the Church Fathers. By Anthony Casurella. Pp.xiv, 258, J.C.B. Mohr Tübingen, 1983, 78DM. Sacraments and Liturgy: The Outward Signs. By Louis Weil. Pp.vii, 115, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1983, £9.50, £3.95. Le Sacrement de l'Ordination. By Joseph Lécuyer. Pp.281, Paris, Beauchesne, 1983, 150 Fr. Christ's Lordship and Religious Pluralism. Edited by G.H. Anderson and T.F. Stransky. Pp.viii, 209, New York, Orbis Books, 1981, £5.50. Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions. By Alan Race. Pp.xi, 176, London, SCM Press, 1983, £5.95. The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul. By Wayne A. Meeks. Pp.xii, 299, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1983, £15.00, £6.50. Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity. By Raymond E. Brown and John P. Meier, Pp.xii, 242, London, Geoffrey Chapman, 1983, £5.95; Ramsey, Paulist Press, 1983, $9.95. The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians. By Rosamund McKitterick. Pp.xiv, 414, London, Longman, 1983, £9.95. The Medieval Reformation. By Brenda Bolton. Pp. 126, London, Edward Arnold, 1983, £4.50. Robert Grosseteste Hexaëmeron. Edited by Richard C. Dales and Servus Gieben. Pp.xxix, 374, London, for The British Academy by the Oxford University Press, 1983, £40.00. William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste. By Steven P. Marrone. Pp.xi, 318, Princeton University Press, 1983, £28.00. Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford. CM. Dent. Pp.viii, 262, Oxford University Press, 1983, £17.30. Paolo Sarpi between Renaissance and Enlightenment. By David Wootton. Pp.viii,192, Cambridge University Press, 1983, £20.00. The Jesuits in England from 1580 to the Present Day. By Francis Edwards. Pp.333, Tunbridge Wells, Burns and Oates, 1985, £20.00. Schelling: An Introduction to the System of Freedom. By Alan White. Pp.xii, 201, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1983, £16.50. Sophists, Socratics and Cynics. By H.D. Rankin. Pp.263, London, Croom Helm, Totowa, Barnes and Noble, 1983, £17.95. Early Medieval Philosophy : An Introduction By John Marenbon. Pp.ix, 190, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, £9.95. Aristotelian Aporetic Ontology in Islamic and Christian Thinkers. By Edward Booth. Pp.xxvi, 314, Cambridge University Press, 1983, £35.00. About Beauty: A Thomistic Interpretation. By Armand A. Maurer. Pp.135, Houston, Center for Thomistic Studies, 1983, $6.00. A History of Ideas and Images in Italian Art. By James Hall. Pp.xi, 415, London, John Murray, 1983, £17.50. Inconsistencies: Studies in the New Testament, the Inferno, Othello and Beowulf. By William Whallon. Pp.107, Woodbridge, D.S. Brewer, 1983, £15.00. The Language of Grace: Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy and Iris Murdoch. By Peter S. Hawkins. Pp.xiv, 137, Cambridge, Cowley Publications, 1983, $6.95. Iulia de Beausobre. By Constance Babington Smith. Pp.xi, 195, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1983, £9.95. A History of Psychoanalysis. By Reuben Fine. Pp.xii, 686, New York, Colombia University Press, 1979, $31.20. Returning to Freud: Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan. Edited and translated by Stuart Schneiderman. Pp.viii, 265, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1980, £12.60. Work: The Shadow and the Substance. By David Bleakley. Pp. 121, London, SCM Press, 1983, £4.95. M.R. James: An Informal Portrait. By Michael Cox. Pp.xviii, 268, Oxford University Press, 1983, £14.50. (shrink)

Rights and Civilizations, translated from the Italian original, traces a history of international law to illustrate the origins of the Western colonial project and its attempts to civilize the non-European world. The book, ranging from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first, explains how the West sought to justify its own colonial conquests through an ideology that revolved around the idea of its own assumed superiority, variously attributed to Christian peoples, Western 'civil' peoples, and 'developed' peoples, and now to democratic (...) Western peoples. In outlining this history and discourse, the book shows that, while the Western conception may style itself as universal, it is in fact relative. This comes out by bringing the Western civilization into comparison with others, mainly the Islamic one, suggesting the need for an 'intercivilizational' approach to international law. (shrink)

This is a one-volume edition of the original two-volume work published in 1990 with a second edition in 1991. The work falls into two main parts. Volume 1 is devoted to a series of studies describing the revival and dissemination of Plato in the Italian Renaissance. There are four main parts to the first volume. The first part treats the revival of Platonic studies in early fifteenth-century Florence. Here the figure of Leonardo Bruni looms large. Part 2 deals with (...) the revival of Platonic studies in Milan. The translations of the Republic by Uberto Decembrio and later by his son Pier Candido Decembrio receive most of the attention. Part 3 deals with mid fifteenth-century developments of Platonic studies in Rome. Here Hankins provides chapters on George of Trebizond, Pletho, Cardinal Bessarion, and a fascinating account of the dispute between Trebizond and Bessarion. Finally, volume 1 ends with an extensive discussion of the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino. Volume 2 consists of various appendices dealing with specific topics, texts by a variety of Renaissance authors dealing with the interpretation of Plato’s writings, and an exhaustive “Census of Manuscripts” designed “to document the diffusion and influence of Renaissance translations of Plato”. Of course, a review of this size can hardly begin to do justice to the breadth and richness of Hankins’s research. Instead, I shall try to point out the general trajectory of his account of the development of Platonism in the fifteenth century. Of course, Hankins’s project is not a philosophical one, as he admits. Indeed, his goal is to place the transmission of Plato within a well-constructed historical context. However, I shall suggest at the end of this review some ways in which Hankins’s study should provoke philosophers to a more careful consideration of the arguments of Renaissance Platonists. (shrink)

The Renaissance, known primarily for the art and literature that it produced, was also a period in which philosophical thought flourished. This two-volume anthology contains 40 new translations of important works on moral and political philosophy written during the Renaissance and hitherto unavailable in English. The anthology is designed to be used in conjunction with The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, in which all of these texts are discussed. The works, originally written in Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, (...) and Greek, cover such topics as: concepts of man, Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, and Epicurean ethics, scholastic political philosophy, theories of princely and republican government in Italy and northern European political thought. Each text is supplied with an introduction and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the split between two kinds of reasoning – non-public (culturally dependent) and public (characteristic for the procedures of policy design and, more generally, of taking generally binding decisions within the institutions of power). A largely acknowledged problem is that attempts to influence the public policies from the positions of cultural communities cannot be rationally substantiated because the arguments used are in most cases not recognized as valid by the general public, which does (...) not share the particular beliefs and assumptions that guide reasoning in a contextually “embedded” cultural environment. This “barrier” between non-public and public reasoning is hindering the progress of recognizing minority rights and allowing the input of religiously inspired ideas into public life, to say the least. More concretely, my purpose is to point out certain philosophical debates which can provide, in my opinion,theoretical “instruments” that might help reconceptualize the possibilities for communication between the nonpublic and the public domains. I mean first of all, but not only, the theories of political liberalism and deliberative democracy as well as the differentiation between “substantivist” and “procedural” kinds of discourse. (shrink)

We point out how some Christian-Muslim comparative philosophies of religion may be enhanced with certain translations or interpretations of Christianity: a modalist view of the trinity and a high Christology. While perhaps of only limited significance, we argue in more detail that a comparison of two leading philosophers, one Islamic, the other Christian, can bring to light a shared philosophy of innate ideas or nativism, grounding moral and theological views of goodness and the divine.

The paper first presents the necessary background to appreciate al-Fârâbî’s views and his originality. It explains the issues Anicent philosophers faced: the natural vs. the conventional origin of language, the problem of ambiguous words, and the difficulty to express Greek thought into Latin. It then sketches andcontrasts the views of Christianity and Islam on the origin of language and the diversity of idioms. It argues that al-Fârâbî follows the philosophical tradition butdevelops it in sophisticated and original manner by telling (...) the story of the origin and development of language and giving little place to the Islamic tradition. Foral-Fârâbî language emerges naturally but develops by convention in three phases: The constitution of utterances and crafts to ensure basic necessities; The development of rhetoric, poetry, memorizing, writing, and the language arts; the development of dialectic, sophistical reasoning and demonstration that leads to philosophy reaching its perfection with with Aristotle. Religion for him is posterior to philosophy and derives form it. As for al-Fârâbî philosophy in Islamic lands was imported from Greece, he includes rules to translate technical philosophical terms from one language into another. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Giulio Castellani (1528-1586): A Sixteenth-Century Opponent of Scepticism CHARLES B. SCH1VHTT THE PROBLEMOF THE ORIGINS of scepticism in early modern philosophy has been a much debated issue. Sanches, Montaigne, Charron, and Bayle all contributed to the milieu which made it possible for the sceptical direction of thought to develop into such a potent force by the time of David Hume. The actual origins of modern scepticism, which seem (...) to go back to a slightly earlier date, lie in the confluence of several different intellectual movements during the early years of the sixteenth century: Christian anti-intellectualism, the reintroduction of the literary remains of the ancient sceptical tradition, the epistemological developments of scholastic nominalism, and certain inherent tendencies of Renaissance humanism. It is in the early decades of the sixteenth century that the seeds which later blossomed forth at the time of Hume originally took root. Hume himself merely reaped the harvest of several hundred years of sceptical preparation? Aside from certain manifestations of doubt which developed out of the epistemological theories of fourteenth-century nominalism, the origins of modern scepticism are generally held to date from the first publication of Sextus Empiricus' ancient summaries of Pyrrhonism during the decade of the 1560's. While it has previously been recognized that at least hints of scepticism were current in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the implications to be derived from this fact do not seem to have been adequately exploredT I shall not here go into these early manifestations of scepticism in a detailed way. Rather, I shall briefly touch upon a few little-known examples of the influence of ancient scepticism during the Reniassance and, then, I shall focus upon an early and practically neglected attack upon scepticism published before the first printings of Sextus Empiricus' writings. I shall discuss the circumstances of the composition of Giulio Castellani's anti-sceptical work, Adversus Marci TuIlii Ciceronis academicas questiones disi For a recent survey of early modem scepticism see Richard H. Popkin, The History o] Scepticism /tom Erasmus to Descartes (Assen: 1960). Of the large literature which connects scepticism with religious doubt during this period see especially Henri Busson, Les sources et le dgveloppement du rati~nalizme dar~ la litt~rature ]ran~aise de la Renaissance (Paris: 1957) and Don Cameron Allen, Doubt's Boundless Sea (Baltimore: 1964). The di.~cussionof this period seems to be the weakest part of Popkin's excellent book, particularly with regard to the treatment which he gives to Italian thought. See, also, his other articles, especially,"Skepticismand the Counter-Reformation in France," Archiv/fir Re/armationsgeschichte, LI (1960),58-86and "The High Road to Pyrrhonism," American Philosophical Quarterly, II (1965),18--32.In my forthcoming study, Gian]rancesco Pico (1469-1533) and His Critique o/Aristotle, I give a detailed analysis of the major representative of early sixteenthcentury scepticism. [151 16 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY putatio (1558), which antedates the first printing of Sextus Empiricus by four years, indicating that scepticism was already widespread enough to provoke an attack from the camp of the dogmatists. Furthermore, I shall analyze Castellani 's arguments in the context of the philosophical views of the mid-sixteenth century. Scepticism in the Early Renaissance Direct knowledge of the major ancient source of scepticism, the already mentioned writings of Sextus Empiricus, was rare throughout the Middle Ages. There are but two known extant Latin manuscripts which date before 1400. s From the fifteenth century we know of two more manuscripts, neither complete in itself, but together containing a significant portion of the extant writings of Sextus. 4 This evidence indicates that Sextus' works were not well known in translation before the first Latin editions of The Oulines o] Pyrrhonism (1562) and of Against the Mathematicians (1569). With the advent of an increased interest in and knowledge of Greek in Western Europe in the fifteenth century, we find a corresponding increase in the number of Greek manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus. Consequently, by the time of the first printings, an appreciable number of copies of his writings were available. Some were brought from the East, but a large number also are attributable to European scribes. 5 We also know that in... (shrink)

Examines the major philosophical movements of the early Italian Renaissance.

The impact of classical thought on Renaissance philosophy is the subject of this volume. In the first part Dr Kraye deals with the interpretations of ancient philosophy put forward by various thinkers of the Italian Renaissance, including the humanist Angelo Poliziano and the Platonist Marsilio Ficino; in the second, she examines the central role of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics within Renaissance moral philosophy and considers the influence of other classical treatises on ethics, especially the Meditations of Marcus (...) Aurelius. The final section explores controversies concerning the authenticity of works in the Aristotelian canon, together with the early printing history of Aristotle. All the articles aim to locate philosophical questions within the historical and cultural context of the Renaissance, and particular attention is paid to the importance of philological scholarship within philosophical debates. The collection includes an essay on Philipp Melanchthon's ethical commentaries and textbooks which has previously appeared only in German translation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mikhail Bakhtin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and the Rhetorical Culture of the Russian Third RenaissanceFilipp SapienzaAlthough Mikhail Bakhtin figures centrally in multiculturalism, community, pedagogy, and rhetoric (Bruffee 1986; Welch 1993; Zebroski 1994; Zappen, Gurak, and Doheney-Farina 1997; Mutnick 1996; Halasek 2001, 182; see also Bialostosky 1986) many of his major ideas remain enigmatic and controversial. The elusive aspects of Bakhtin's theories exist in part because rhetoricians know little about Bakhtin's own (...) rhetorical culture. Theorists recognize this problem and call for a reworking of Bakhtin more on his own terms. This call has been made to resolve concerns about Bakhtin's ambivalence toward rhetoric. Since Bakhtin disliked rhetoric, any use of Bakhtin in rhetorical theory is largely a hybrid synthesis of his distinct ideas on poetics, prose, satire, the epic, the novel, and so forth. John Murphy proposes a reconception of Bakhtin closely built around his ambivalence and guided by the question, "what do we [rhetoricians] mean by the concept of a rhetorical tradition?" (2001, 259). The suggestion encourages rhetoricians to take Bakhtin more on his own terms than has been done in the past. Unfortunately, as the word "we" indicates, Murphy reworks Bakhtin primarily in terms of Western ideas about rhetoric. Slavists and "Bakhtinologists" in Russia argue that when talking about Bakhtin, "we" has often meant Western, obscuring the Russian cultural roots of his theories (Kozhinov 1993; Miller and Platter 1993, 118). The privileging of Western perspectives has also been criticized by scholars of other discourse cultures. Discussing American Indian rhetoric, Malea Powell argues that "we" means a Rhetorical Tradition that begins "with the Greeks, goes Roman, briefly sojourns in Italy, then shows up in England and Scotland, hops the ocean to America and settles in" (2002, 397). Differences in interpreting Bakhtin also proceed from translation difficulties between Russian and English. The Russian reader views Bakhtin in more essentialist ways as opposed to the "post-modern give-and-take" theorist of many Western [End Page 123] interpretations (Emerson 1990, 113). Read in the Russian language and from that cultural context, Bakhtin's vocabulary contains "conspicuous" elements of Orthodox Christianity and Slavic nationalist ideas (Kozhinov 1993; Mihailovic 1997) that reveal a Russian theological subtext to his ideas about community and dialogue.In this essay, I provide a reading of Bakhtin against the background of his own rhetorical culture. More specifically, I offer an analysis of an intertextual dialogue about language and community between Bakhtin and the symbolist writer Vyacheslav Ivanov. Scholars identify Ivanov as a poet, philosopher, and teacher who profoundly impacted Bakhtin (Mal'chukova 1992, 55). The Russian symbolists upheld strong nationalist ideals and a linguistic theory rooted in metaphysics (Mirsky 1972, 188). Many Slavists and Russian readers of Bakhtin suspect that Ivanov strongly influenced Bakhtin's rhetoric even though, for reasons unknown but that are suspected to be political, Bakhtin understates his debt to him (Ivanov 2001, 3). Bakhtin was not unlike his contemporaries in sharing an interest and vocabulary that addressed the major threads of symbolism. Read side by side with Ivanov's essays in Russian, Bakhtin's rhetoric displays a mixture of the European, Slavic, and Christian ideals that were in parlance among many Russian theorists in early twentieth-century Russia. Bakhtin and Ivanov give us a glimpse of this rhetorical culture. More specifically, they help us to better understand our appropriations of Bakhtin based on an elucidation of the meaning of specific terms as they existed among Bakhtin's contemporaries.The method that I use requires translation of specific Russian passages into English. Terms and phrases are interpreted against the usage background of others in early twentieth-century Russia. Bakhtin's Slavic-theological connections become evident through the elucidation of these intertextual references. Through this method, a common and accepted practice in Slavic literary studies, the use of key words and phrases are traced in and among texts to identify a discourse among authors and explicate its meaning.1 As Steven Mailloux points out, a "rhetorical hermeneutics" focuses on "the historical sets of topics, arguments, tropes, ideologies, and so forth" that give meaning to rhetoric (1988, 15-16). The approach is necessary due to the unique political and artistic circumstances during the early... (shrink)

Towards the end of the Tābi‘ūn generation (the generation of Muslims who followed the Sahaba [companions of the prophet Muhammad]), there was a search for a name through history, for people who were members of Ahl as-Sunnah (people of the tradition and the community of Muhammad [peace be upon him]), and were distinguished from other people with their understanding of zuhd (asceticism) and faqr (indigence), and their sensitivity to worship and to abide by righteous deeds. In this process, any name (...) other than Tasawwuf (Islamic mysticism, commonly known as Sufism) was not generally accepted because it was considered incomplete and inadequate in expressing the knowledge, state, behavior, and approaches of Sufi. The debate about the origin of the word Tasawwuf has continued from the first time to the present day. Some authors have argued that the original word was not in Arabic and hence it was not known during the time of Sahaba, while other authors have argued that it was in Arabic and that it was known in the time of Sahaba. Also, there were differences of opinion about the origin of the root word for Tasawwuf among the authors who argued that the origin of the word Tasawwuf was Arabic. When Sufi works are examined, it can be seen that each Sufi made many descriptions of Tasawwuf in accordance with the subjects they cared about and the state in which they lived. However, this study does not aim to examine the terminological descriptions of the notions of Tasawwuf expressed in the historical process, but to bring up some discussions about the origin of the word and to examine some issues related to the subject.Summary: There has been an ongoing search for a name for the group who was a part of Ahl as-sunnah and were distinguished from others with their outside appearances and zuhd (asceticism), and made intensive efforts for the elimination of the heart (sense of selfishness and ego). Some authors declared that this group was essentially famous and known, but that a name was needed to distinguish them from other people and to show their privileges. In the early days, some distinguishing names such as abid, nasik, vari‘, zahid (following are some of the descriptions/meanings of these names; one who prays a lot, servant of God, extremely religious, someone who gave up earthly possessions for God, etc.) were given to the pioneer Sufis. However, these names were not seen as a distinguishing feature because they were also given to other non-Sufi individuals, and the use of these names did not become widespread in later times. In addition, since these names indicated only one characteristic of the Sufi in terms of their meaning, they were considered incomplete and inadequate, and there was a need for a more comprehensive name. In addition to these names, there was also a search for new ones in some regions. Among these names, some names such as fuqaraa (the poor), ghuraba (eccentric and noncomformist), sayyaheen (pilgrims), shiqaftiyyah (cave people), dju’iyyah (who eats just enough to survive), malamatiyya (someone who believes in the value of self-blame), nouriyyah (someone who is trying to reach the God's light [nour in Arabic]) and moqarraboon (blessed). Khorasan, Basra, Damascus, and Baghdad are the locations where new names were searched for extensively. These names used in these regions have not gained prevalence in the historical process either. As a more comprehensive name in the historical process, the word Tasawwuf/Sufiyyah (sufism) was preferred. The word Sufism, which means "one who wears wool", signifies an external meaning. However, the main distinguishing feature of Sufi is not the external aspect, but the internal state and scholarship/wisdom. In this context, the relationship between name and person has always been the subject of discussion. Depending on the spiritual education of Sufi, there will be constant changes in their spiritual state and wisdom. There has been a lack of an encompassing name to express this change. Because of this insufficiency, the word Tasawwuf, which includes external meaning, has been accepted as an umbrella term, which also included the internal meaning. In addition, because wearing wool garments was the custom of elite servants of God such as prophets and saints, Sufis considered it appropriate to be known by this name. Tasawwuf has been accepted as a word that encompasses the meanings of words such as zuhd, faqr, vera’ (being afraid to sin), morality, adherence, nusq (praying for and worshipping God). In this sense, Tasawwuf does not mean only morality, zuhd, or worshipping. It refers to a feature that encompasses all of these and also includes other meanings.There are two different views on whether the word Sufism was known and used during the times of Muhammad (PBUH), Sahaba, and Tābi‘ūn. According to one view, the term Tasawwuf was not known during this period. For this reason, the advocates of this view accept Tasawwuf as a way of thinking and approach which is formed by some non-Islamic influences such as Indian, Iranian, Christian, Jewish, and Greek Philosophy. Contrary to this view, according to some advocates, Tasawwuf was known and used not only during the time of Muhammad (PBUH), Sahaba, and Tābi‘ūn, but also during Jahiliyyah period (ignorance period in Arabia before the advent of Islam. Wool (Suf) symbolized devotion during the Jahiliyyah period. When someone tied wool around his neck and head, this movement meant devotion. There are apparent connections between wool and sacrifice in some customs during the Jahiliyyah period.The fact that the word Sufism does not appear in Qur'an verses and hadith (the record of the words, actions, and approval of Muhammad [PBUH]) and that no one from the two prominent generations of Islam, Sahaba, and Tābi‘ūn, was called Sufi does not make it necessary to search for the origin of Tasawwuf in non-Islamic sources. Because although Tasawwuf is not mentioned in verses and hadith, there are some words such as Moqarraboon and Abrar (good samaritan) which correspond to Sufi. The names Sahaba, and Tābi‘ūn were the most honorable names for these two generations, this should explain why no one in the Sahaba, and Tābi‘ūn generations used the name Sufi or needed any other name. Although the name Sufi was not used as a word in the time of Sahaba, it is known that the life of Sahaba is the main premise of the Sufi lifestyle. For this reason, the Sufis took Sahaba as an example, especially the Ashab al-Suffa (young, unmarried, and poor Sahaba, who dwelled in the Suffas [shades] Muhammad [PBUH] built near the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi [a mosque the prophet built while in Medina]).With the preference of this word, discussions about the origin of the word have come up. Among these discussions, the most effective ones were whether the origin of the word was Arabic and if so, what was the root word. Authors such as Al-Qushayri and Ali Hujwiri did not accept the word Sufism as an Arabic word. According to them, there was no comparison showing that the word originally was Arabic. Whatever meaning is given, it is not correct to derive the name Sufi from a root word in Arabic according to the language rules. In this context, it is more appropriate that it is a moniker, not a word derivative. Contrary to Al-Qushayri and Ali Hujwiri, authors such as Abu Nasr as-Sarraj, Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi, Sohrevardi, Ibn Taymiyyah, and Ibn Khaldun accept the origin of the word as Arabic, but they disagree about the word origin. Abu Nasr as-Sarraj, who is among the first sources of Tasawwuf, stated that the word origin was Safa (enjoyment), while authors such as Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi, Sohrevardi, Ibn Taymiyyah, and Ibn Khaldun stated it was the word Suf (wool). According to them, if the origin of the word is accepted as Suf, in terms of vocabulary, the word becomes authentic and the wording correct. According to al-Kalabadhi, the words put forward about the origin were allied in terms of meaning, even if they appeared different on the outside, and the meanings of all these names were collected in the word Suf. (shrink)

The present work discusses the complex nature of the term ‘gender’ in legal discourse, in the wake of the recent pushbacks that the 2011 Istanbul Convention has received from anti-feminist movements and nations that have not signed/ratified the document or have withdrawn from it. Though its original aim was to protect women’s rights, the debate has eventually surfaced deeply-rooted problems linked to gender-related vocabulary. For this reason, the study will analyse the use of the terms ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ in (...) the 1995 UN Beijing Declaration, the 1998 Rome Statute, and the 2011 Istanbul Convention, from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. It aims to provide a critical comparison of the definitions, translations, and interpretations of the term ‘gender’, in an attempt to overcome some of the issues involved in the harmonisation of EU documentation, which could certainly help guarantee fundamental rights and convince more states to sign/ratify the Convention, or at least, not allow them to use issues not related to women’s rights to not accept the document. The interpretation of gender-related violence is still ‘in progress’, and the lack of harmonisation could eventually hinder fundamental human rights instead of helping the Istanbul Convention save lives. (shrink)

Review of Avital Wohlman, Al-Ghazali, Averroës and the Interpretation of the Qur'an: Common Sense and Philosophy in Islam, Translated by David Burrell Content Type Journal Article Pages 637-639 DOI 10.1007/s11841-010-0207-3 Authors Scott Girdner, Western Kentucky University, 1906 college Heights Blvd., Bowling Green, KY 42101, USA Journal Sophia Online ISSN 1873-930X Print ISSN 0038-1527 Journal Volume Volume 49 Journal Issue Volume 49, Number 4.

The pseudo-Aristotelian treatise Peri kosmou or De mundo is not a text of great philosophical interest, but it was very important for French Renaissance culture, in a time when none of Aristotle’s treatises of natural philosophy was available in French. This short pedagogical text was translated into Latin by Guillaume Budé in 1526, and into French for the first time as early as 1541 by the French grammarian Louis Meigret (Le Livre du monde faict par Aristote et envoyé à (...) Alexandre le Grand). In spite of this first French translation, the Calvinist theologian Lambert Daneau translated it once more (Traitté du monde et des plus nobles et principales parties d’icelui) and published it in a book entitled La physique françoise (1581), along with Basil of Cæsarea’s Homilies and fragments of John of Damascus. This article focuses on Daneau’s translation, which raises several questions: Why publish the translation in a book called Physique françoise? What were the issues of such a translation, made in order to restore a pious, Mosaic, natural philosophy? Did the context shape the way Daneau translated the text? What are the differences and similarities both with Meigret’s translation and with the humanistic Latin paraphrases by Budé? (shrink)

_Philosophy of Molecular Medicine: Foundational Issues in Theory and Practice_ aims at a systematic investigation of a number of foundational issues in the field of molecular medicine. The volume is organized around four broad modules focusing, respectively, on the following key aspects: What are the nature, scope, and limits of molecular medicine? How does it provide explanations? How does it represent and model phenomena of interest? How does it infer new knowledge from data and experiments? The essays collected (...) here, authored by prominent scientists and philosophers of science, focus on a handful of mainstream topics in the philosophical literature, such as _causation_, _explanation_, _modeling_, and _scientific inference_. These previously unpublished contributions shed new light on these traditional topics by integrating them with problems, methods, and results from three prominent areas of contemporary biomedical science: _basic research_, _translational_ and _clinical research_, and _clinical practice_. (shrink)

To an ordinary translator, the idea that there are too many perfect translation schemes between any two languages would come as a surprise. Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation expresses just this idea. It implies that most of the 'implicit canons' actual translators use in their assessment of translations lack objective status. My dissertation is an attempt to present a systematic challenge to Quine's view of language and to support the idea that one could develop an objective (...) theory of translation which is also faithful to actual translation practices. ;I expose a non-superficial similarity between external-world scepticism and Quine's meaning-scepticism, and deploy against Quine an objection which closely resembles his own objection to external-world scepticism. I then develop a new interpretation of Quine's reasoning, according to which denying objective status to intuitive 'meanings' is Quine's way of avoiding a sceptical problem about what other people 'really' mean. ;I argue that the intelligibility of Quine's meaning-scepticism turns on an implicit contrast between the perspective of the theorist of language and the perspective of the user of language. Quine's defense of his scepticism features a theorist of language trying to probe an alien language-- a 'radical translator' -- who reasons that her own judgments as a language user lack objective status. ;I take issue with the use Quine makes of the above contrast. I first argue that understanding the goal of radical translators requires knowing what is to be expected of an adequate translation scheme. Since this is something we learn from experience with existing translation schemes, I offer a pre-theoretic description of the practice of translation between known languages. I show how ordinary translators' assessments of the quality of given translations derive from systematic judgments they make as language-users. It is these sorts of judgments that guide actual radical translators in ruling out bizarre alternative translations of the kind Quine entertains in defending his scepticism. A proper theoretical account of radical translation, I conclude, must begin with-- and include-- the perspective of the radical translator as a language-user. (shrink)

The interconnections, common interests, and other linkages between the Jewish and Islamic traditions have long been a matter of interest to academics. Today the need to understand these relationships, and to emphasize commonalities rather than conflicts, is of the greatest public interest. The present volume of studies, likely the first such collection in the scholarly literature, explores the full range of interconnections between Jews and Muslims in all fields (intellectual history, religion, philosophy, social history, etc.) and in all (...) periods, from the Middle Ages till today. The essays have been written by some twenty distinguished scholars from North America, Europe, and Israel. The volume is dedicated to our esteemed colleague Joel L. Kraemer, John Barrows Professor Emeritus in the Divinity School and on the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. In the course of his distinguished career Professor Kraemer has made major contributions to our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of the Jews in the Arabic world, Islamic and Jewish philosophy and their sources in ancient philosophy, the humanistic renaissance in Islam (on which he published two seminal monographs), and Maimonides (on which he has published many important papers and is completing a biography and a translation of Maimonides' letters, to appear in the Yale Judaica Series). (shrink)

The study of Islamic philosophy has entered a new and exciting phase in the last few years. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. Most twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy has focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth. It is a measure of the transformation that is currently (...) underway in the field that, unlike other reference works, the Oxford Handbook has striven to give roughly equal weight to every century, from the ninth to the twentieth. The Handbook is also unique in that its 30 chapters are work-centered rather than person- or theme-centered, in particular taking advantage of recent new editions and translations that have renewed interest and debate around the Islamic philosophical canon. The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy gives both the advanced student and active scholar in Islamic philosophy, theology, and intellectual history, a strong sense of what a work in Islamic philosophy looks like and a deep view of the issues, concepts, and arguments that are at stake. Most importantly, it provides an up-to-date portrait of contemporary scholarship on Islamic philosophy. (shrink)

In _The Beginning of the World in Renaissance Jewish Thought_, Brian Ogren deeply analyzes late fifteenth century Italian Jewish thought concerning the creation of the world and the beginning of time. Ogren examines uses of philosophy and Kabbalah in the thought of four important fifteenth century thinkers.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 207-224 [Access article in PDF] Atomism, Atheism, and the Spontaneous Generation of Human Beings: The Debate over a Natural Origin of the First Humans in Seventeenth-Century Britain Matthew R. Goodrum The problem of human origins, of how and when the first humans appeared in the world, has been addressed in a variety of ways in western thought. In the seventeenth century (...) the predominant explanation for the origin of the world and the beings that inhabit it, especially human beings, was based on the biblical account of creation. It was almost universally accepted that humans had been created by a supernatural agent using supernatural means. But alternative explanations for the production of the first humans did exist, according to which the first humans were produced by nature through some form of spontaneous generation. Seventeenth-century proponents of this view differed in their conceptions of how spontaneous generation worked, but all relied heavily upon mechanisms first proposed in antiquity. Some followed the example of Aristotle and other early Greek philosophers, who had described how matter, when subjected to the correct conditions, could produce living beings. 1 Others were influenced by the modifications made to these ideas by medieval Islamic philosophers. 2 [End Page 207] A quite different conception of spontaneous generation was derived from the classical atomists, in part from certain notions attributed to Democritus of Abdera but mainly from the philosophical system of Epicurus.While any suggestion that humans might have originated naturally by some kind of spontaneous generation was widely and vigorously rejected by natural philosophers and theologians alike, the most vehement attacks were often directed against the atomists' accounts of the origin of the first humans. The reasons for this were both scientific and religious. Atomism had long been criticized for its materialism, its reliance on chance, and its atheistic tendencies. Thus, the efforts of a small number of natural philosophers to formulate and support a naturalistic explanation of human origins based upon its principles was bound to raise profound theological, philosophical, and scientific difficulties. To these natural philosophers, however, atomism seemed to offer a viable mechanism to explain spontaneous generation. Yet while atomism solved some problems, it raised others; and even if these scientific objections could be overcome, there remained religious objections to both the notion of a natural origin of humans and the atomists' account of the process that had to be addressed. Complicating matters further is the fact that these scientific and religious objections were sometimes intimately connected.This paper investigates the mechanisms proposed by atomists to explain the spontaneous generation of human beings and the kinds of criticisms their hypotheses received in seventeenth-century Britain. This will illuminate a number of interconnected issues relating to the acceptance of atomism as a philosophy of nature and its application to the biological sciences. By analyzing the ways scientific and religious factors interacted in the debate over the spontaneous generation of the first humans we will not only make a contribution to the history of seventeenth-century atomism but also link problems and ideas in the physical sciences with those in the biological and anthropological sciences. At the same time this study illustrates the ways in which scientific ideas were shaped by, or needed to respond to, ideas and concerns that had their roots in religion. Atomism and the Generation of the First Humans The most complete account of the atomic philosophy and the mechanisms it proposed to account for the origin of human beings to survive from antiquity was Lucretius's De rerum natura. Several editions of the text were available during the seventeenth century, including one published at Cambridge in 1675 and an English translation by Thomas Creech that went through four editions [End Page 208] between 1682 and 1699. 3 But Lucretius was not the only source describing the atomists' ideas about the spontaneous generation of the first humans. A more contemporary and perhaps more influential proponent of the atomic... (shrink)

The work of contemporary Italian thinkers, what Roberto Esposito refers to as Italian Theory, is attracting increasing attention around the world. This book explores the reasons for its growing popularity, its distinguishing traits, and why people are turning to these authors for answers to real-world issues and problems. The approach he takes, in line with the keen historical consciousness of Italian thinkers themselves, is a historical one. He offers insights into the great "unphilosophical" philosophers of life—poets, (...) painters, politicians and revolutionaries, film-makers and literary critics—who have made Italian thought, from its beginnings, an "impure" thought. People like Machiavelli, Croce, Gentile, and Gramsci were all compelled to fulfill important political roles in the societies of their times. No wonder they felt that the abstract vocabulary and concepts of pure philosophy were inadequate to express themselves. Similarly, artists such as Dante, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leopardi, or Pasolini all had to turn to other disciplines outside philosophy in order to discuss and grapple with the messy, constantly changing realities of their lives. For this very reason, says Esposito, because Italian thinkers have always been deeply engaged with the concrete reality of life and because they have looked for the answers of today in the origins of their own historical roots, Italian theory is a "living thought." Hence the relevance or actuality that it holds for us today. Continuing in this tradition, the work of Roberto Esposito is distinguished by its interdisciplinary breadth. In this book, he passes effortlessly from literary criticism to art history, through political history and philosophy, in an expository style that welcomes non-philosophers to engage in the most pressing problems of our times. As in all his works, Esposito is inclusive rather than exclusive; in being so, he celebrates the affirmative potency of life. (shrink)

Biography of Ibn Rushd... Averroes, old heathen, If only you had been right, if Intellect Itself were absolute law, sufficient grace. Our lives could be a myth of captivity. Which we might enter: an unpeopled region.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one of the most controversial intellectual disputes was the question of method in natural philosophy, or physics. The tensions between observational experience and geometrization, demonstration from the effects and from the causes, and between Aristotle’s authority and new philosophical tendencies made some philosophers search for new solutions. Others criticized these new solutions and tried to show the validity of several medieval scholastic readings of Aristotle. With this article, I intend to present the role (...) of experience in the dispute between Nicoletto Vernia’s approach to the subject-matter of physics and Gomes of Lisbon’s response to it. While Vernia holds that the subject-matter of physics is mobile body, Gomes argues it is natural substance. What is at stake is how to combine experience, definition, and demonstration to obtain a consistent scientific method. Only through the study of this kind of text and discussion can we gather a solid background to elucidate what has changed and what has been inherited from the past in the scientific shift of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

In this dissertation we observe the diachronic development of certain vocabulary items which form the basis of discourse in Islamic philosophy in the Arabic language. Using a set of philosophical terms from al-Kindi, al-Farabi and Ibn Sina we analyze the use of each term, first individually and then comparatively. To examine philosophical terms in their natural setting, we will look at the philosophers' own definitions of these terms. Thus, we observe how definitions and their use change over (...) two centuries, both in the references made in definitions and in the words selected for their definientia. This development and the enduring effect of the philosophers' definitions in Islamic philosophy will form the focus of our study. ;This dissertation deals with the development of a technical philosophical vocabulary in the Arabic language; it is not primarily a hunt for the Hellenistic origin of the words or ideas. Prior to the translation of Greek philosophical texts into the Arabic language, Arabic lacked the vocabulary to speculate on these ideas. This was not an unusual state of affairs, as philosophy was not a discipline developed by the Arabic language writers prior to the translations of Greek philosophical texts. To speculate about metaphysics, philosophers need words for the objects of metaphysics: substance, cause and matter--terms which form the center of our study. ;An Arabic vocabulary was the tool the philosophers needed to discuss the concepts, ideas and premises brought to them by philosophy, an imported science, without a pre-existing vocabulary in Arabic. For purposes of this study we will focus on language as the tool of philosophy. (shrink)