Revelation tells of a creating and redeeming God, whose Son has come among us in our flesh, and enters into each individual's personal history and also into human history itself, becoming its Center. Therefore, Jesus Christ is the Lord of History, of concern to every Christian in all the Churches.

Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam during a period of unprecedented scientific, artistic, and intellectual discovery. Upon its release, Spinoza’s Ethics was banned; today it is the quintessential example of philosophical method. Although acknowledged as difficult, the book is widely taught in philosophy, literature, history, and politics. This introduction is designed to be read side by side with Spinoza's work. As a guide to the style, vocabulary, and arguments of the Ethics, it offers a range of interpretive possibilities to (...) prepare students to become conversant with Spinoza's philosophical method and his challenge to conventional thinking. (shrink)

(2011). Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity: The Hidden Enlightenment of Diversity from Spinoza to Freud. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 339-342.

The December 1927 issue of the SCHOOLMAN contained Father Lord's forceful statements contending that philosophers could do nothing more conducive to their scholastic success than give forth again the philosophy they had assimilated by writing it out. The present vivid story is proof that Father Lord himself had "practiced what he preaches," for he wrote it during his own philosophate career. It is through the kind permission of the Editor of America, that this article appears in our magazine.

Aaron Ridley has concluded that “Collingwood’s global Idealism is really only a distraction from the much more important and interesting ideas that constitute his aesthetics.” My paper takes issue with this conclusion. Collingwood’s idealism is an integral part of his aesthetics, and it simply cannot be shucked off, leaving his aesthetics untouched and intact. A careful reading of Collingwood’s oeuvre in aesthetics reveals that it is his long-standing antipathy to realism that grounds both his critique of pseudo-art and his own (...) theory of art, particularly his idealist theory of the imagination. If Collingwood’s aesthetics are interesting and important, so is the idealism that grounds them. (shrink)

Spinoza recognizes that in a democracy, ideals of freedom and equality shape our thoughts about ourselves as human beings. This paper examines Spinoza’s concept of equality in the Theological-Political Treatise, and considers its complexi­ties and ambiguities in light of his theories of freedom and democracy there and in the Ethics. Because Spinoza takes human beings to have unequal power, he does not believe we are naturally or intrinsically equal. Nor does he think equality is good in itself. Equality is good (...) to the extent that it promotes human flourishing. The kind of equality Spinoza endorses is economic equality, which encourages human beings to become more powerful, virtuous, and free. I demonstrate this with reference to Spinoza’s discussion of the state of nature, democracy, and the Hebrew state in the Theological-Political Treatise and his remarks on charity, economic exchange, and their associated affects in the Ethics. (shrink)

The December 1927 issue of the SCHOOLMAN contained Father Lord's forceful statements contending that philosophers could do nothing more conducive to their scholastic success than give forth again the philosophy they had assimilated by writing it out. The present vivid story is proof that Father Lord himself had "practiced what he preaches," for he wrote it during his own philosophate career. It is through the kind permission of the Editor of America, that this article appears in our magazine.

This paper examines Spinoza's remarks on women in the Political Treatise in the context of his views in the Ethics about human community and similitude. Although these remarks appear to exclude women from democratic participation on the basis of essential incapacities, I aim to show that Spinoza intended these remarks not as true statements, but as prompts for critical consideration of the place of women in the progressive democratic polity. In common with other scholars, I argue that women, in Spinoza's (...) system, are deprived of freedom and political participation not by their essential natures, but by their social and historical circumstances. I differ from other scholars, however, in basing this conclusion on the different critical functions of the Political Treatise and the Ethics. Following that critical comparison, I consider Spinoza's views on the `natural right' of women and their equal capacity for political participation in terms of his arguments for the compositional similarity of men and women. Finally, I argue that Spinoza offers an explanation for women's actual disempowerment through his account of economic dependence within marriage. (shrink)

Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method provides an insightful critique of Russell’s analysis and metaphysics of logical atomism, proposing an unduly neglected neo-idealist alternative to Russell’s philosophical method. I summarize Collingwood’s critique of analysis and sympathetically outline the philosophical methodology of Collingwood’s post-Hegelian dialectical method: his scale of forms methodology, grounded on the overlap of philosophical classes. I then delineate Collingwood’s critique of the metaphysics of logical atomism, demonstrating how the scale of forms methodology is opposed to Russell’s logical atomism. (...) Finally, I reflect on the reasons Collingwood’s Essay aroused little interest upon publication and the importance of continually rethinking the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 232-233 [Access article in PDF] Giuseppina D'Oro. Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience. New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. xi + 179. Cloth, $80.00. There is a resurgence of interest in Collingwood among philosophers and political theorists in the English-speaking world. One of the scholars leading this resurgence is Giuseppina D'Oro, whose fine monograph on Collingwood's metaphysics and epistemology appears in (...) the series "Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy." D'Oro's prose is lucid and tightly argued: her analyses of the problems that concerned Collingwood, as well as her reinterpretations and supporting arguments, are a thoughtful model of clarity.Collingwood is generally ignored except by philosophers of art and history; D'Oro aims to reassess Collingwood's important metaphysical and epistemological views and raise awareness of them. Arguing that, when not ignored, these aspects of Collingwood's philosophy often have been misinterpreted, D'Oro supplies a reconstruction and defense of Collingwood's conception of philosophical thought. Admirably and insightfully, she contextualizes his concerns within the past three centuries of philosophy and also within influential contemporary discussions (addressing, for example, relationships to Locke, Hume, Kant, Prichard, Russell, Ryle, Ayer, James, Rorty, and Quine). D'Oro demonstrates that Collingwood provides crucial contributions to both the history of philosophy and contemporary debates.For D'Oro, Collingwood's key text is his An Essay on Philosophical Method (1933), which is concerned with the proper subject matter, method, and task of philosophy. This work, [End Page 232] with its distinction between philosophical and empirical concepts, introduces into Collingwood's metaphysics the Kantian element that D'Oro emphasizes to support her original interpretation. Collingwood's metaphysics, like Kant's, is described as a "descriptive metaphysics" or "metaphysics of experience" (2-3) which was intended to reform, not jettison, metaphysics. Conceptual rather than ontological, Collingwood's metaphysics is an epistemological project that reveals not the "structure of reality," but the "structure of experience" (2). According to Collingwood, all knowledge is based on presuppositions and conditioned by them; thus, metaphysics cannot be a presuppositionless "study of pure being" (3) or things-in-themselves. Rather, Collingwood's Kantian metaphysics aims to uncover the absolute presuppositions behind various aspects of experience, presuppositions that ground or make possible diverse forms of knowledge and that structure different domains of inquiry. D'Oro here argues intriguingly against a view of much Collingwood scholarship: that for the later Collingwood of An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), metaphysics is the study of the historically relative presuppositions adopted by diverse people of different historical eras or epochs, i.e., metaphysics entails historical relativism. Instead, D'Oro contends, metaphysics for Collingwood is the second-order study of the absolute presuppositons that provide the conditions for the possibility of disciplinary knowledge. Furthermore, she argues, this metaphysical view is consistent with An Essay on Philosophical Method. Contra some commentators, there is no "early" and "late" Collingwood, and the notion that he ultimately experienced a "radical conversion" (79) to historical relativism is false.Collingwood's metaphysics of experience entails that domains of inquiry such as art, religion, natural science, and history are governed by distinct presuppositions or a priori principles and thus provide complementary, not competing, accounts of reality. Hence, history deals with actions and presupposes that their causes are freely chosen reasons or motives; natural science deals with events and presupposes that they are caused by empirical regularities in nature. These presuppositional distinctions are philosophical and conceptual rather than empirical, and different areas of knowledge may address the same empirical objects in different ways.This truncated summary hardly does justice to the rich totality of D'Oro's book, much of which provocatively works out the implications of her reinterpretation. Among other things, she defends Collingwood against metaphysical realism, neo-empiricism, and logical positivism; addresses his idiosyncratic "'rehabilitation' of the ontological proof" (67); argues against the common view that his philosophy of history promotes "re-enactment" as a methodological procedure for historical practice; and explores his non-dualist and non-physicalist resolution of the mind/body problem.Perhaps... (shrink)

I argue that eliminative materialism, with its aim of jettisoning folk psychology, cannot account for the possibility of historical knowledge. Eliminative materialism destroys the disciplinary distinctions between history and science in such a way as to eclipse the former. I argue that ‘historical consciousness’ cannot be reduced to the discoveries of neuroscience; Paul Churchland’s charge of folk psychology’s explanatory impotence is undercut by the possibility, indeed, the actuality of historical knowledge, and one of Churchland’s main arguments for eliminative materialism (...) is dependent upon historical knowledge-claims that themselves must contradictorily utilize the propositional attitudes of folk psychology. (shrink)

Father Lord, author of Armchair Philosophy, herein offers to a wider audience some notes from a recent talk to the Philosophers in St. Louis. He believes that writing is necessary not only to express, but also really to assimilate philosophy.

Father Lord, author of Armchair Philosophy, herein offers to a wider audience some notes from a recent talk to the Philosophers in St. Louis. He believes that writing is necessary not only to express, but also really to assimilate philosophy.

This new translation of one of the fundamental texts of Western political thought combines strict fidelity to Aristotle's Greek with a contemporary English prose style. Lord's intention throughout is to retain Aristotle's distinctive style. The accompanying notes provide literary and historical references, call attention to textual problems, and supply other essential information and interpretation. A glossary supplies working definitions of key terms in Aristotle's philosophical-political vocabulary as well as a guide to linguistic relationships that are not always reflected in (...) equivalent English terms. Lord's extensive Introduction presents a detailed account of Aristotle's life in relation to the political situation and events of his time and then discusses the problematic character and history of Aristotle's writings in general and of the_ Politics_ in particular. Lord also outlines Aristotle's conception of political science, tracing its relation to theoretical science on the one hand and to ethics on the other. In conclusion, he briefly traces the subsequent history and influence of the _Politics_ up to modern times. "Lord's translation is clearly the best available."—_Claremont Review_. (shrink)

One of the fundamental works of Western political thought, Aristotle’s masterwork is the first systematic treatise on the science of politics. For almost three decades, Carnes Lord’s justly acclaimed translation has served as the standard English edition. Widely regarded as the most faithful to both the original Greek and Aristotle’s distinctive style, it is also written in clear, contemporary English. This new edition of the _Politics _retains and adds to Lord’s already extensive notes, clarifying the flow of Aristotle’s (...) argument and identifying literary and historical references. A glossary defines key terms in Aristotle’s philosophical-political vocabulary. Lord has made revisions to problematic passages throughout the translation in order to enhance both its accuracy and its readability. He has also substantially revised his introduction for the new edition, presenting an account of Aristotle’s life in relation to political events of his time; the character and history of his writings and of the _Politics_ in particular; his overall conception of political science; and his impact on subsequent political thought from antiquity to the present. Further enhancing this new edition is an up-to-date selected bibliography. (shrink)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 20, Issue 3, Page 636-639, May 2012.

Since its publication at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Earl of Clarendon's history of the English Civil War has remained one of the most important sources for our understanding of the events which changed the course of British history. Clarendon held the offices of Lord High Chancellor of England and Chancellor of the University of Oxford; he began his great work after the Restoration of Charles II at the behest of the King himself.This classic work, (...) long unavailable, has now been reissued by the Oxford University Press in a facsimile of the much-admired 1888 edition. The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England chronicles in absorbing detail the intrigues and upheavals, the alliances and confrontations, the triumphs and the tragedies, of the 1640s and 1650s. In elegant and vital prose it brings to life the personalities who shaped the era, and the principles for which a nation was divided. (shrink)

Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was the mastermind behind the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 that ended the War of the Spanish Succession, and a lifelong rival of Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. He is also known for his political use of history based on the saying of Dionysius of Halicarnassus: ‘history is a philosophy teaching by examples’. While much scholarly attention has been paid to Bolingbroke’s historical criticism of Walpole’s Whig oligarchy, his discussion of European (...) international history has been treated as a mere vindication of the Treaty of Utrecht, thus not meriting further investigation. This article reconstructs Bolingbroke’s writings on European politics as a history of British foreign policy. Arguing that his focus was on Britain’s role in maintaining the balance of power, this article demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, Bolingbroke attacked the Hanoverian government not for its involvement in European politics per se but for its abandonment of the Old System of William III against France. Bolingbroke believed history was repeating itself. As the Stuarts had helped France achieve hegemony half a century ago, the Hanoverians enabled France to regain supremacy in their pursuit of private interests, re-disrupting the European balance of power. (shrink)

Moral leadership matters. As world politics enters a new and dangerous era, judgment, constancy, moral purpose, and a willingness to overcome partisan politicking are essential for America's leaders. Tempered Strength finds the alternative standard of leadership that Americans are seeking in the classical philosophy of prudence. Ethan Fishman's new work brings together leading American political scientists—including Ronald Beiner, Kenneth L. Deutsch, and George Anastaplo—to discuss the evolution of a standard of prudential leadership both reasonable in nature and practical in scope. (...) Section One studies the meaning of prudence and its evolution in the history of political science from Aristotelian phronesis to Xenophon, Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Burke, and Michael Oakeshott. Section Two demonstrates how the theory of prudential leadership can be applied to practical political issues. (shrink)

Since its publication at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Earl of Clarendon's history of the English Civil War has remained one of the most important sources for our understanding of the events which changed the course of British history. Clarendon held the offices of Lord High Chancellor of England and Chancellor of the University of Oxford; he began his great work after the Restoration of Charles II at the behest of the King himself.This classic work, (...) long unavailable, has now been reissued by the Oxford University Press in a facsimile of the much-admired 1888 edition. The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England chronicles in absorbing detail the intrigues and upheavals, the alliances and confrontations, the triumphs and the tragedies, of the 1640s and 1650s. In elegant and vital prose it brings to life the personalities who shaped the era, and the principles for which a nation was divided. (shrink)

This book provides an accessible account of Kant's aesthetic theory, classifying the epistemological status and scope of Kant's justification of the validity of aesthetic judgments. The latter, the book shows, led Kant to investigate the relationship between beautiful objects, subjects, and morality. The book pursues these and related issues, linking Kant's work to contemporary commentaries,including those by Crawford, Crowther, Derrida, Guyer, Makkreel, and Rogeson.

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 98 - 115 What has come to be known as the ‘linguistic turn’ in historical theory over the past forty years or so has finished what the two World Wars began in demolishing the confidence that the historical discipline possessed at the turn of the twentieth century. This confidence was most memorably expressed by Lord Acton that one day we would possess ‘ultimate history’. Today most historians are probably more inclined to (...) subscribe to Pieter Geyl’s view that history is ‘an argument without end’. Yet the jettisoning of a teleological goal for historical accounts does not mean that we have to also part with the idea of progress; we just need a new definition of it. In this article I argue that we should adopt an evolutionary epistemology of history which sees progress as something pushed from behind, rather than aiming at an undefined point in the future; but this is not the only advantage an evolutionary epistemology can offer us. I go on to outline two further aspects of evolutionary epistemology which may benefit historical theorists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 287-292 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism Laughing at the Tao: Debates Among Buddhists and Taoists in Medieval China Taoist Tradition and Change: The Story of the Complete Perfection Sect in Hong Kong Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations (...) of Taoist Mysticism. By Harold D. Roth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xv + 275 pp. Laughing at the Tao: Debates Among Buddhists and Taoists in Medieval China. By Livia Kohn. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. xii + 281 pp. Taoist Tradition and Change: The Story of the Complete Perfection Sect in Hong Kong. By Bartholomew P. M. Tsui. Hong Kong: Chinese Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 1991. 207 pp. Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China. By Kenneth Dean. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. xii + 406 pp. Buddhism in China has many forms: sometimes functioning as a foreign object provoking attraction, rivalry, or persecution, and at other times being so integrated that it epitomized or completed Chinese culture. Although the elite monastic community maintained its distinctive Buddhist identity throughout its history, the story of the various forms of popular appropriation of Buddhist elements beyond the monastic [End Page 287] walls is just beginning to be studied. Probably the most important arena where Buddhism became part of Chinese culture is its mixture with Daoist practice, but only in the 1990s have Daoist studies evolved to the point where the Buddhist presence can be traced and evaluated. The four books listed above are among a shelf-full of new studies on Daoism that offer resources for exploring the complex relationships among Buddhism, Daoism, and Chinese culture.The study of the Inner Training by Harold Roth clarifies a core practice within early Daoism that was later integrated--usually without acknowledgment--as a central practice by both Confucianists and Buddhists, especially Ch'an. In contrast, the definitive study by Livia Kohn of the Xiaodao lun shows a carefully constructed Buddhist attack on Daoist scriptures. During the last millennium, the two most influential integrations of the three religions--Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism--were achieved by Wang Chong-yang (1113-1170) and Lin Zhao-en (1517-1598). Bartholomew Tsui offers an important field study of the liturgical practices of the contemporary followers of Wang as embodied in Hong Kong temples of Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism, while Kenneth Dean provides a massive field report of over one thousand temples of the Xiajiao movement in contemporary Fujian Province that revere the teachings of Lin Zhao-en as Lord of the Three-in-One. All four books provide rich materials for reflecting on interreligious encounter in China.The archaeological discovery of lost Chinese texts has made clear that the Lao-tzu is no earlier than the beginning of the third century b.C.E. and did not exist at the time of Confucius. Harold Roth's book argues that earlier than the book of Lao-tzu there was a movement of internal cultivation that was first expressed in two fourth-century b.C.E. texts, the first seven chapters of Chuang-tzu and a text found among the seventy-six texts in the Kuan-tzu that Roth calls Inner Training. Roth proposes that this latter text constitutes the "original Tao" in the sense that it is the core practice embodied in those thinkers who were grouped together by later historians. Roth observes that the earliest identification of a Daoist school (daojia) by Ssu-ma T'an about 110 b.C.E. emphasized techniques or practices, "not the philosophies that developed along with them and that support them.... Techniques must be seen as a way to define pre... (shrink)

The beginnings of Indian Philosophy take us very far back to about the middle of the second millennium before christ.

In this paper we present an approach between the conceptions of choice in Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). The purpose is to offer elements for a refl ection on the permanency of essentially human characteristics under quite different historical – and theoretical – conditions. The analysis follows the assumptions of Social History, from Braudel’s perspective of Long Duration. In fact, it is possible to identify analogies between Thomas’ and Sartre’s concepts of choice, which allows us, in education, (...) to make inferences about man’s responsibility for their actions. (shrink)

This book offers an interpretation of the philosophical thought of the ancient Maya, in the classic and postclassic periods. Alexus McLeod adopts philosophical methodology, comparative philosophy, and history of philosophy to reveal and understand the ancient Maya by engaging with Maya thought as philosophy.