In this book, French develops and defends a "non-objectivist" theory of the origin and function of moral concepts. In his own words, "a morality... is best seen as a collection of conventions designed to guide the choices of persons; those conventions have the not necessarily intended collective effect of being a system of defense against the tendency of any person to act in a way threatening to the future well-being of the members of the community". In chapter 2, he presents (...) an account of moral concepts as "mixed mode" ideas in Locke's sense, i.e., as combinations of simple ideas "that are not offered, to us in the combined form by 'the real existence of things', but that we assemble or frame to meet certain of our specific needs". The needs that provide the raison d'etre of morality are "the preservation and the betterment of the society to which persons are drawn by reciprocal fear, and held by natural affection and advantage rather than by pure self interest, and only in which can they hope to achieve a sense of worth ". There are resonances of such a view in other recently stated views about the nature of morality and moral concepts, e.g., those of Julius Kovesi, J. L. Mackie, and G. J. Warnock. French acknowledges a debt to these thinkers among others, especially to Kovesi, and also to Donald Davidson. (shrink)

Shows the Enlightenment concern with human affairs, and in particular with the problem of human knowledge, by extensive selections from Locke's Essay, and the Treatises of Berkeley and Hume. The editor's comments point out major confusions and errors, and aid the reader in understanding the selections in their own terms.--R. H.

The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that will help in understanding and evaluating, along social and ethical lines, the issue of killing day-old male chicks and two alternative directions of responsible innovations to solve this issue. The following research questions are addressed: Why is the killing of day-old chicks morally problematic? Are the proposed alternatives morally sound? To what extent do the alternatives lead to responsible innovation? The conceptual framework demonstrates clearly that there is a (...) moral “lock-in”, and why the killing of day-old chicks is indeed an issue. Furthermore, it is shown that both alternative directions address some important objections with regard to the killing of day-old chicks, but that they also raise new dilemmas. It also becomes clear that the framework enables and secures anticipation, reflection, deliberation with and responsiveness to stakeholders, the four dimensions of responsible innovation, in a structured way. (shrink)

This revised version of Price's 1960 Gifford Lectures in two series at Aberdeen University presents an extensive analysis of the concept of belief and related problems. The author begins by exploring different senses of knowledge. He continues to examine some logical peculiarities of expressions about believing and knowing, of relationships between the two types of expressions, and remarks on the performatory aspects of the relevant expressions. Connections between believing, and the bearing on beliefs of perceptual evidence, self-consciousness, memory and testimony (...) are examined. The results of this examination are applied to introduce systematic distinctions and concepts, which are made constitutive of the concept of belief. The notion of degrees of belief is introduced. The problem of degrees of assent is examined in the context of Newman's criticisms of Locke's view. Specific theories of belief are surveyed, beginning with Hume's theory, and two traditional occurrence analyses of belief are touched upon. The first series is concluded with a brief examination of Descartes' and Hume's views on freedom of assent. The second series examines various dispositional analyses of belief; the notions of believing and "acting as if" are compared, and the connection between inference and assent examined. The notion of half-belief is reviewed, along with Newman's distinction between real and notional assent, and James' self-verifying beliefs. The second series concludes with a discussion of moral beliefs and feelings; belief "in" and belief "that" are compared, and the possibility of a rapprochement between religious belief and empiricist philosophy is examined. While the author offers no full-blown theory of belief--and does not purport to do so--he provides a most informative discussion of the matrix of epistemological and psychological problems called belief, offers new criticisms of both older and present-day views on persisting problems for belief-analysis, and refines these views with new distinctions and concepts.--J. R. H. (shrink)

The theme of this paper is a philosophical theory of communication; more specifically, a theory about the understanding of language. It is an old theory, whose classical exponent was John Locke, and in the form that Locke expounded it the theory is now generally rejected by philosophers. But it is far from being a mere museum piece. The view about language that Locke put forward was a plausible one, and it has continued to be put forward in (...) various forms. My main concern here is with a very recent version of the theory, contained in a book published early in 1975; however, it will be helpful to begin with a brief account of Locke's version. This is not only classical, but is also simple and clear, and as such it may serve as a useful stepping-stone towards an understanding of the more modern version. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

This book consists of four major papers written by Peter Achinstein, Peter Geach, Wesley Salmon, and J. L. Mackie. Each of the papers has two commentaries. Achinstein’s paper is commented on by Mary Hesse and R. Harré; Geach’s paper, by Peter Winch and Grete Henry; Salmon’s paper, by D. H. Mellor and L. Jonathan Cohen; Mackie’s paper, by Renford Bambrough and Martin Hollis. Each author of the original paper then replies to his two commentators. All four papers are concerned with (...) some aspect of the concept of explanation. Achinstein’s and Salmon’s papers are extensions and justifications of their previous work. For example, Salmon has argued against Hempel’s account of scientific explanation and has maintained that certain scientific explanations are not arguments of any kind, and that consequently they need not embody the high probabilities that would be required to provide reasonable ground for expectation of the event to be explained. He argues instead that a statistical explanation of a particular event "consists of an assemblage of factors relevant to the occurrence or non-occurrence of the event to be explained, along with the associated probability values". He indicates in the present volume that he does not wish to create the impression "that ability to transmit a mark is any mysterious kind of necessary connection or ‘power’ of the sort Hume criticized in Locke". There is little likelihood that Salmon would be misconstrued in this way. Also there is recent literature to the effect that Locke was clearer on the issues of causality than Hume and that there is nothing "mysterious" in Locke’s notion of powerful particulars. Why are they any more mysterious than the passive particulars preferred by Humeans? (shrink)

The notion of resistance to the state has come to be bandied about a great deal, and a great many political movements place themselves under its sign. This intrusion of violence into the realm of the law seems to be spreading since the advocates of insurrection, who accuse the state of betraying its mission, are not those who consider revolt to be the necessary first step towards any kind of affranchisement. Where the partisans of revolution believe that violence is, in (...) Marx's words, “the midwife of every old society that carries a new one within it” and that it is “the instrument by which the social movement sweeps it away and breaks to pieces the political forms that are fixed and dead,” the partisans of the right to resist the state do not share these hopes for political and social upheavals. Marxist theory, which praises revolutionary insurrection, stands opposed to a kind of philosophy that admits of armed opposition to the state, but can nevertheless be called liberal in two respects: formally, from its present perspective, where it appears opposed to Marxist thought, and also historically, in the evolution of political ideas, where it is opposed to absolutist conceptions of the state. For, as R. Derathé remarked, the question of the right to resist “cast light on the chasm that separated the theologians from the legal experts.” The doctrines of divine right left no room for envisaging a limitation on the duty of obedience, without turning such a limitation into the equivalent of a revolt against God. Bossuet, in his Politique tirée des propres paroles de l'Ecriture sainte, asserts that “God has made the kings and the princes his lieutenants on earth so as to render their authority sacred and inviolable.” The result is unconditional obedience to the kings and to all those who hold a parcel of authority: “Declared impiety and even persecution do not exempt the subjects from the obedience they owe to their princes.” The only possible attitude in the face of “the violence of the princes” is to submit “respectful remonstrances, without mutiny and without a murmur, and with prayers for their conversion.” It is also necessary to ban “remonstrances full of bitterness and grumbling” since these “are the beginnings of sedition, which must not be tolerated.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Philosophy of Bishop Stillingfleet RICHARD H. POPKIN EDWARD STILLINGFLEET(1635-1699), the Bishop of Worcester, is known only as Locke's opponent. Although he was a leading figure in seventeenth century intellectual history, he is now almost completely forgotten.1 He is only mentioned once in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy as the first person to write against Deism. 2 His texts have been ditlicult to locate, and have hardly been studied. (...) Although Locke's answers to him comprise a large volume in Locke's Works, little interest has been shown in Stillingfleet's side of the story. His letters to Locke were last printed in the 1710 edition of his works. (I am now publishing a photoreproduction edition of the attacks on Locke, and a photoreproduction of the six volumes of his works is due soon.) In spite of this neglect, Stillingfleet was a quite interesting figure. He was not a simple moss-back, a religious reactionary, fighting progressive theories like Locke's. Rather, he was trying to maintain some basis for religious belief in the face of the intellectual upheavals in the seventeenth century. For over forty years he struggled against a wide range of philosophical and theological developments of the time that he saw as leading to scepticism and infidelity. Stillingfleet attempted to defend the reasonableness of Christianity in an intellectual world dominated by the new science, the new philosophy, the religious wars, the rise of irreligion, Bible criticism, and Spinozism. In the new scientific, philosophical and theological context he sought to show how an intelligent, reasonable man could maintain his religious views as more probable than their denials. And, he tried to show the perils involved in various new lines of thought. As he wrote to Locke, "in an age wherein the Mysteries of Faith are so much exposed by the Promoters of Scepticism and Infidelity, it is a thing of dangerous consequence to start such new methods of Certainty as are apt to leave men's minds more doubtJull than before." 3 Stillingfleet criticized various new views of thinkers like Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza and Locke, and tried to show that they were unreasonable and x No section is devoted to Stillingfleet in Charles de R~musat's Histoire de la Philosophie en Angleterre depuis Bacon jusqu'gt Locke, 2 vols. (Paris, 1875). He is of course briefly treated by Locke scholars, but only in relation to Locke. 2 Ernest C. Mossner, "Deism," Encyclopedia of Philosophy ('New York, 1967), II, 328. 3 Edward StiUingfleet,The Bishop o~ Worcester's Answer to Mr. Locke's Letter (London, 1697), pp. 37-38. [303] 304 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY destructive. Instead he advocated a commonsense philosophy incorporating Aristotelian and Stoic elements, as an adequate basis for a reasonable view of the world. Stillingflect's critique of empiricism, in its Epicurean and Lockean forms, revealed some of the basic difficulties in this emerging philosophy. His own views in some ways foreshadowed the counter-philosophy that Thomas Reid was to offer a century later against the full-blown empirical scepticism of Hume. And Hume's essay "Of Miracles" can, I believe, be seen as the reductio ad absurdum of Stillingfleet's commonsense philosophy. In this paper I shall try to sketch out Bishop Stilhngfleet's philosophy, and to indicate the role it played in the history of British empirical thought. The Bishop's attack on Locke only occurred at the very end of his long and fruitful intellectual career. (He died during the debate in 1699.) To appreciate why he was so concerned with exposing the sceptical and irreligious tendencies in Locke's thought, and the potential conflicts between empiricism and the tenets of Judeo-Christianity, one has to look at his entire theological and philosophical career. Stillingfleet was one of the most erudite divines of the seventeenth century, a leading member of the brilliant group of Anglican theologians, including, besides himself, William Chillingworth, Bishop John Wilkins (the founder of the Royal Society), and Archbishop John Tillotson.4 Stillingfleet was extremely sensitive to the fundamental issues being raised in the religious, scientific and philosophical debates of the time, and tried, like his fellow Anglican divines, to develop a commonsense semirational, semiempirical defense... (shrink)

THE MOST SACRED FREEDOM includes eight essays that were first presented at the 2014 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, the seventh annual conference sponsored by Mercer Universitys Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for Americas Founding Principles. Together, these essays explore the great principle of religious liberty by charting its development in the Western tradition and reconsidering its place at Americas founding. The book begins with a comparison between the flood accounts in Genesis and the Mesopotamian (...) Atra-Has's and advances all the way to the 2014 Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The intervening chapters examine the contributions of figures such as Emperor Julian, Roger Williams, Cecilius Calvert, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the American Founders. Contributors to the volume are Steven Grosby, Jeremiah H. Russell, Maura Jane Farrelly, Daniel Cullen, John Witte, Jr., Scott Yenor, David Ramsey, and Michael Novak. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political PhilosophyAlyssa R. BernsteinArthur Ripstein. Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy. Cambridge, MA-London: Harvard University Press, 2009. Pp. xiii + 399. Cloth, $49.95.This superb, exemplary account of Immanuel Kant’s legal and political philosophy is essential reading not only for Kant scholars, but also for political philosophers and philosophers of law. Lucidly reasoned and written with crystalline clarity, the book is (...) both accessible to non-specialists and a pleasure to read. Ripstein reveals the coherent, systematic structure of thought in Kant’s obscurely written Doctrine of Right, and goes beyond illumination to defense and development of Kant’s conception of equal freedom. In the course of doing all of this, he not only presents Kant in historical context, but also brings to light important differences between Kant’s views and those of other political philosophers and philosophers of law, including John Locke, John Stuart Mill, H. L. A. Hart, and Ronald Dworkin, often enriching the discussion by referring to decisions or arguments made by courts in the U.S. or elsewhere. Ripstein shows that it is unjustifiable to exclude Kant from the primary canon of political philosophy, as is typical of current English-language teaching and scholarship.State governments both tell people what to do and force them to do as they are told; they also claim rights to do these things. Yet people claim the right to be free. Can these claims be consistent? Ripstein argues that Kant shows that they can. By working out the implications of the entitlement to be independent, one’s own master, and free from domination by others, Kant develops answers to the basic questions of political philosophy, addressing state legitimacy, the rule of law, political obligation, revolution, punishment, private property, taxation, and redistribution.The book begins with an overview chapter, followed by a chapter on what Kant calls the “innate right of humanity” in one’s own person, which is the right to be independent. Topics of private right are then addressed in three chapters, with topics of public right in five subsequent chapters, building on the previous ones. A central, bridging chapter explains Kant’s account of the transition from private right to public right, thus his account of political authority, which takes the form of arguments about the state of nature, its defects, and the need for the legal and political institutions of a state. The book ends with an appendix in which Ripstein explains the relation between the Universal Principle of Right and the Categorical Imperative.The right to independence is an original right in the sense that it does not require establishment by any affirmative act, Ripstein explains. Persons capable of acquiring rights through their actions must have the capacity to act in ways that have consequences for rights and thus for others’ conduct. Therefore, any system of rights must presuppose some basic moral capacities that do not depend on antecedent acts on the part of the person exercising them, and thus must presuppose the “innate right” to one’s own person. Each person’s entitlement to independence from another’s choice is the basis of all further rights. It sets restrictions on the capacity to acquire new rights and structures the rights [End Page 531] that each person can acquire. It also imposes duties on the state and restricts the means it can use for achieving its purposes. Equal freedom, understood in terms of restrictions on coercion, governs both private right and public right.In a system of equal freedom, each person is free to use his or her own powers, individually or cooperatively, in order to pursue his or her own purposes, and each person decides what ends to pursue with his or her own means. The right to such independence is an aspect of one’s status as a person in relation to other persons; within a system of reciprocal limits on freedom, it is an entitlement that restricts the conduct of others, consistent with everyone being subject to the same restrictions. It can be violated only by others’ conduct. The sole point of a system of equal freedom is... (shrink)

This collection demonstrates the strong influence that humanism and freethought had in developing the history and ideals of black intellectualism. Most people are quick to note the profound influence that religion has played in African-American history: consoling the downtrodden slave or inspiring the abolitionists, the underground railroad, and the civil rights movement. But few are aware of the role humanism played in shaping the black experience: developing the thought and motivating the actions of powerful African-American intellectuals. Section One of this (...) book offers biographical sketches of such prominent black humanists as Frederick Douglass, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. DuBois, Hubert H. Harrison, and Richard Wright. Section Two features essays by black humanists: Douglass, DuBois, Charles W. Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Jaffree, Claude McKay, Melvin B. Tolson, and Bruce Wright. Section Three offers the views of contemporary black African humanists: Freda Amakye Ansah, Emmanuel Kofi Mensah, Nkeonye Otakpor, Franz Vanderpuye, and Kwasi Wiredu. Section Four contains interviews conducted by Allen on the subjects of black humanist activism, the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, and the Harlem Renaissance with: Martin G. Bernal, Charles Faulkner, Leonard Harris, Norman Hill, and Alaine Locke. (shrink)

The statements and arguments based on experimental evidence used to support the claim that the 3d sub-level is below the 4s sub-level in scandium are examined. The flaw in all the arguments is that they assume the order in which the 3d and 4s sub-levels arrange remains the same in both the neutral atom and in its ions. Analysis of the ground and excited states of atomic spectra shows that as the number of electrons relative to the nuclear charge increases, (...) the 3d level moves higher in energy relative to the 4s level. It is perfectly possible that in a neutral scandium atom the 3d sub-level is above the 4s sub-level and that when it ionizes the energy levels simultaneously rearrange during the process. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * The gaze drifts where the stare dares not. The gaze is attentive while the stare is intent. Dériver : Equally to drift and/or to derive. —When drifting then, something must be taken along. Something must be derived from the drift. Something of oneself must always become other. Incorporating the other, incorporating oneself as other. Je est un autre , Rimbaud disait; 1 this in his last letter to Georges Izambard, a final correspondence to a former mentor and friend, from whom he was drifting away, having derived much. The drift is a control incomplete. To drift is to come closer and closer, but to always be turning away, pulling apart, pulling oneself apart. It is parabolic in the sense that it is always eluding a formerly established intent. Of all axes, it never finds room to rest. Filling new spaces, always changing places, ever escaping the Cartesian; the indubitable pinpointing of position. It is never pinned down. Love together what we will be apart. Once together, we will drift apart. Il le faut . Attention is held; it traces the path. It follows each point which traces the arc, the line, the swerve. It is not concerned with the figure being drawn, but rather the movement between one point and the next. The smallest movement. The clinamen of De Rerum Natura is the smallest of swerves, it is nothing more than the minimum — nec plus quam minimum . Michel Serres says of the clinamen , that it is an absurdity — a logical, geometrical, mechanical, physical absurdity. 'The clinamen, from here (its state of absurdity), finds refuge in subjectivity; it passes from the world to the soul, from the physical to the metaphysical, from the theory of inert bodies in freefall to the theory of the free movements of the living.' 2 So this swerve is something of the mind and something of the body, both in action, rather than a body which is merely acted upon. Swerve, however, has a connotation of suddenness. It is a movement which is made to avoid an otherwise inevitable impact. Drift, on the other hand, is the unleashing of something which is then allowed to follow a more complex series of forces. These forces now come from within as well as without. It is no longer tethered; now following tides, winds, flows or pitched slopes, now acting on its own. We are not atoms in freefall. Our attention long ago pulled us from this precipitous descent. We now live, ourselves, as one of the many forces. In the drift, as with the gaze, there is an ease. ‘Ease is the proper name of this unrepresentable space.’ It is the space nearest, the next, the neighboring space. To occupy this space requires a turn, a shift or a drift. It cannot be reached by proceeding straight ahead. ‘..the space adjacent, the empty place where each can move freely, in a semantic constellation where spatial proximity borders on opportune time (ad-agio, moving at ease) and convenience borders on the correct relation.’ 3 Intention always seeks to straighten this line, to make it less complex, to isolate the point of departure and the desired destination. It believes there can be two points and, between them, there must be a straight line. Can there be? Maybe. Must there be? Never. Straight lines may exist, but they can never be followed to the finish. After leaving this point, we will never reach that one without being buffeted at least a little — at least the least. One foot in front of the other, this is a very restrictive dance, less even than a two-step. Straight lines lead only to lost intentions, being the shortest and quickest way to get there. When attention drifts it slowly turns away from the intended target, leaving it for something which pulls the attention away. Now we are for a moment free; all at once we can pivot, now we can waltz. Drifting along the page, deriving from what is seen. Reading is seeing; the movement of the eyes as they drift. Reading in the eyes what has been seen, what has been derived from the act of reading. Reading eyes drift back and forth down the page, now and then jump back and forth, up to the top, one word, back down, quickly a few pages back, now gaze out towards the horizon. When attention drifts it is the gaze that follows. Our attention is not restricted to the path the words follow, but links them together; deriving what is to be seen, rather than read. La philosophie fait voir . ‘Thus, philosophers speak through proverbs, and demonstrate. They connect their imaginations with foreign rings, flown into famous tombs.’ 4 Now drifting off to sleep, dreams come as unintended visions. To dream is pure drift, vision without an object, gazing into the dark, reading the unknown of the night. NOTES: Arthur Rimbaud, Poésies (Paris: Bibliothéque de Cluny, 1958), 57. Michel Serres, La Naissance de la Physique (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1977), 10. Translation courtesy of R.H. Jackson. Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993), 25. Louis Aragon, Une Vague des Rêves (Paris: Editions Seghers, 2006), 10. Translation courtesy of R.H. Jackson.  . (shrink)

Beginning with an overview of Galileo's earliest work on free fall, the paper examines the relationship between experiment and theory in his study of motion in the period immediately before and after 1604. The possible role of experiment is assessed in relation to the manuscript evidence and by means of reconstructed experiments.

Many have adopted the view that informal logic is importantly dependent on epistemology . Finocchiaro has raised this issue in the context argumentation theory, as perhaps distinguished from informal logic A recent pair of issues of Informal Logic , guest edited by Christoph Lumer, was devoted to epistemological approaches to argumentation. On the other hand, both Johnson and Blair and Johnson have expressed reservations. In this paper I want to take another look at the relationship between informal logic and epistemology. (...) I will argue that there are reasons for skepticism regarding the Received View that have not been taken into consideration and fully appreciated by those who advocate some form of this view. (shrink)

The time taken to react voluntarily to a stimulus is far longer than can be accounted for by ordinary processes of nerve conduction and synaptic delay, and varies unpredictably from trial to trial. Though random, the distribution of reaction times usually follows a relatively simple law, which in turn can be explained by the LATER model, in which a decision signal, representing belief in the existence of the target, rises in response to incoming sensory evidence from an initial value to (...) a criterion level at which action is initiated. But the rate of rise fluctuates randomly from trial, to an extent that cannot be explained by sensory noise at the input. These conclusions, confirmed by recording from neurons in the frontal eye fields, suggest that the randomness of reaction time is due to a deliberate, gratuitous, neural process which confers certain biological advantages as well as having implications for general ideas about the nature of ‘free will'. (shrink)

In his extensive work as a theologian and a historian, Walter H. Principe, CSB, (1922-1996) was committed to reflecting on both the present and the past. He was well-known as an historian of medieval theology and philosophy - especially through the work of Thomas Aquinas, as well as a contemporary theologian. This memorial collection addresses a fundamental feature of Principe's thought, namely his concern that the history of medieval theology and philosophy have a significant role to play in contemporary discussions. (...) Strengthening the ties between historical study and contemporary theological and philosophical thought, this book offers much to those who teach and research in historical theology and the history of philosophy. The ten essays provide significant test cases of how modern scholars may utilise the historical record judiciously for contemporary debates. Those who are concerned with intellectual history (both medieval and modern), the history of doctrines, and Thomism will also find this collection a useful contribution to modern scholarship. (shrink)