The philosophical writings of Duns Scotus, one of the most influential philosophers of the Later Middle Ages, are here presented in a volume that presents the original Latin with facing page English translation._ CONTENTS: _ Foreword to the Second Edition. Preface. Introduction. Select Bibliography. I. Concerning Metaphysics II. Man’s Natural Knowledge of God III. The Existence of God IV. The Unicity of God V. Concerning Human Knowledge VI. The Spirituality and Immortality of the Human Soul Notes. Index of Proper Names. (...) Index of Subjects. (shrink)

An English translation of John Duns Scotus's The Questions on Aristotle's "De Interpretatione" including an extensive commentary on some of Scotus's more difficult ideas.

Scotus - unlike Thomas Aquinas - never commented on Aristotle's Politics nor did he write any significant political tracts like Ockham. Nevertheless, despite his primary philosophical reputation as a metaphysician, Scotus did have certain definitive ideas about both politics and the morality of the marketplace.

I. Quaestiones in librum Porphyrii Isagoge ; et , Quaestiones super Praedicamenta Aristotelis -- II. Quaestiones in libros Perihermenias Aristotelis ; Quaestiones super librum Elenchorum Aristotelis ; Theoremata -- III. Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, libri I-V -- IV. Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, libri VI-IX -- V. Quaestiones super secundum et tertium De anima.

René Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture provides a fresh and engaging introduction to and the application of René Girard's mimetic theory. From movies to social media, television to graphic novels, the contributors explore popular culture's theological depths and challenge readers to consider what culture reveals about them.

Basic course of study of elementary Buddhist logic and dialectical studies.

Pt. 1. Rassegna storiografica sulla teoria della modalità -- pt 2. Testi di Giovanni Duns Scoto -- pt. 3. Il caso della relazione tra creatura e Creatore nella condizione di dannazione e di beatudine.

Essays on diverse topics predominantly on moral responsibility, social issues, and critics on modern Tibetan literature.

Cet article présente une approche étymologique des termes souvent confondus pour exprimer ce que sont la loi et les droits. Il tente de découvrir les situations archétypes et les relations qui paraissent avoir été les références originales des mots tels que “loi” et “droits”, “légal” et “juste”, aussi bien que d’autres mots qui sont indispensables lorsqu’on aborde le droit et la justice : “liberté”, “égalité”, “paix”, “autorité”, “société”, etc... Les concepts du juste et du légal peuvent être clairement distingués ; (...) ils semblent appartenir à des perspectives catégoriquement différentes sur l’aspect social de l’existence humaine.La distinction entre eux apporte un éclairage intéressant, non seulement sur la conception du droit par le juriste, mais également sur la vieille controverse concernant le droit naturel. A partir de cette analyse émerge une conception de l’ordre social distinctement libérale ainsi qu’une conception du droit naturel non-normative, dépourvue de toute connotation métaphysique ou théologique en référence à un “droit supérieur”. Les éléments dévoilés par l’analyse apportent un schéma cohérent du droit qui peut servir de base à une logique de la loi non déontique fondée sur les droits.This paper presents an etymological approach to the confusing language of law and rights. It attempts to uncover the archetypical situations and relationships that appear to have been the original referents of words such as ‘law’ and ‘rights’, ‘legal’ and ‘just’, as well as other words that are indispensable in discourses about law and justice: ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, ‘peace’, ‘authority’, ‘society’ and others. The concepts of the lawful and the legal can be clearly distinguished; they appear to belong to categorically different perspectives on the social aspect of human existence. The distinction between them sheds an interesting light, not only on the lawyer’s conception of law, but also on the old controversy over natural law. From the analysis there emerges a distinctly liberal conception of social order as well as a naturalistic, nonnormative conception of natural law, with no metaphysical or theological connotations of a “higher law”. The elements uncovered by the analysis provide a coherent scheme of law that can serve as the basis for a nondeontic, rights-based logic of law. (shrink)

We can characterise modern democracies of the Western type as Hobbesian democracies.1 In a modern democracy the State is a political Sovereign of the Hobbesian kind, enjoying a constitutional authority that for all practical purposes is absolute, having the potential of reaching every nook and cranny of its subjects’ life and work. Its authority is restrained only by the requirement of respect for certain formalities and procedures, and the lingering memory of something called the rule of law.2 Hobbesian democracy’s peculiar (...) characteristic, of course, is that at least some of the people to whom the sovereign power of the State is entrusted are elected by secret ballot under a rule of universal suffrage. Winston Churchill said that ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others’.3 He had a point: democracy is the worst form of totalitarian government except for all the others. However, why should we put up with any government that not only has virtually unlimited or absolute constitutional powers (as in an absolutist regime) but also uses them to regulate and tax everything and everybody within the territory under its control (as in a totalitarian regime4)? As we shall see, there are good reasons for saying that Hobbesian democracy is among the worst forms of government.. (shrink)

How can we develop a global economic architecture which is efficient, morally acceptable, geographically inclusive, and sustainable over time? If global capitalism -- arguably the most efficient wealth-creating system known to man -- is to be both economically viable and socially acceptable, each of its four constituent institutions must be both technically competent and buttressed by a strong moral ethos. Leading thinkers in international business and ethics identify the pressing moral issues which global capitalism must answer.

The apostle Paul deals extensively with gender, embodiment, and desire in his authentic letters, yet many of the contemporary philosophers interested in his work downplay these aspects of his thought. _Christ Without Adam_ is the first book to examine the role of gender and sexuality in the turn to the apostle Paul in recent Continental philosophy. It builds a constructive proposal for embodied Christian theological anthropology in conversation with--and in contrast to--the "Paulinisms" of Stanislas Breton, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek. (...) Paul's letters bequeathed a crucial anthropological aporia to the history of Christian thought, insofar as the apostle sought to situate embodied human beings typologically with reference to Adam and Christ, but failed to work out the place of sexual difference within this classification. As a result, the space between Adam and Christ has functioned historically as a conceptual and temporal interval in which Christian anthropology poses and re-poses theological dilemmas of embodied difference. This study follows the ways in which the appropriations of Paul by Breton, Badiou, and Žižek have either sidestepped or collapsed this interval, a crucial component in their articulations of a universal Pauline subject. As a result, sexual difference fails to materialize in their readings as a problem with any explicit force. Against these readings, Dunning asserts the importance of the Pauline Adam-Christ typology, not as a straightforward resource but as a witness to a certain necessary failure--the failure of the Christian tradition to resolve embodied difference without remainder. This failure, he argues, is constructive in that it reveals the instability of sexual difference, both masculine and feminine, within an anthropological paradigm that claims to be universal yet is still predicated on male bodies. (shrink)

Edited in collaboration with FoLLI, the Association of Logic, Language and Information this book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Logic, Language, and Meaning, TLLM 2020, held in Tsinghua, China, in December 2020. The 12 full papers together presented were fully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions. Due to COVID-19 the workshop will be held online. The workshop covers a wide range of topics where monotonicity is discussed in the context of logic, causality, belief revision, quantification, (...) polarity, syntax, comparatives, and various semantic phenomena in particular languages. (shrink)

An “objectified God” does not satisfy. On this point, surely all will agree with Doctor Marti. To seek an “objectivie essence” behind God’s presence is implicitly to deny the reality of that presence. In subjecting the idea of God to ratiocination, the absoluteness and infinity of God are compromised, for a God-object must assume a particular existence over against the divine essence, and thereby abandon God’s freedom to be, the divine essence as pure relation. On this, reason and faith are (...) in perfect harmony: when God is reduced to an object, it is no longer God that is in view. (shrink)

A limited-liability corporation is an artificial (“legal”) person whose liability is limited to the assets “owned” by the corporation. This means that the real or natural persons (if there are any) who own the corporation are not liable for the consequences of corporate actions or events originating within the property “owned” by the corporation. Thus, while the limited-liability corporation itself is fully liable (i.e., to the full extent of its assets) for such actions and occurrences, its human owners (if there (...) are any) are not liable at all. Admittedly, they run a risk of losing all that they have invested in the corporation, but nothing more. This risk may be called an economic liability but it is not a liability in the relevant juridical sense: debtors cannot turn to the owners of the corporation to ask or compel them to pay its debts—it does not matter whether these debts are consequences of the corporation’s contractual obligations (wages, rents, purchases, loans, etc.) or consequences of harmful actions or events (explosions, flooding, contaminations, etc.) caused by the corporation or its property to third parties. Thus, we have the problem of the standing of the limited-liability corporation in view of the principles of Austro-libertarianism: the limited-liability corporation is a fully liable artificial person that shields any natural persons who are its owners from any liability. This is a problem because we cannot have it both ways. Either the limited-liability corporation is an autonomous (“self-owning”) person in its own right and then no objection can be made to it, as, despite its name, it is fully liable; or it is something owned by natural persons and then these owners must, like all other owners, be held fully liable for what they do (or command or permit others to do) with their property as well as for the consequences of events that originate within their property. Now, from an Austro-libertarian point of view—which, as I understand it, is committed to a realist philosophy and therefore akin to a natural law position1—it does not make sense to say that an artificial person can be an autonomous person in its own right.. (shrink)

Therefore, Lord, you who give knowledge of the faith, give me as much knowledge as you know to be fitting for me, because you are as we believe and that which we believe. Indeed, we believe you are something greater than which cannot be thought. Or is there no such kind of thing, for "the fool said in his heart, 'there is no God'" (Ps. 14:1, 53:1)? Certainly, however, that same fool, having heard what I just said, "something greater than (...) which cannot be thought," understands what he heard, and what he understands is in his thought, even if he does not think it exists. For it is one thing for something to exist in a person's thought and quite another for the person to think that thing exists. For when a painter thinks ahead to what he will paint, he has that picture in his thought, but he does not yet think it exists, because he has not done it yet. Once he has painted it, he has it in his thought and thinks it exists because he has done it. Thus, even the fool is compelled to grant that something greater than which cannot be thought exists in thought, because he understands what he hears, and whatever is understood exists in thought. And certainly that greater than which cannot be understood cannot exist only in thought, for if it exists only in thought it could also be thought of as existing in reality as well, which is greater. If, therefore, that than which greater cannot be thought exists in thought alone, then that than which greater cannot be thought turns out to be that than which something greater actually can be thought, but that is obviously impossible. Therefore, something than which greater cannot be thought undoubtedly exists both in thought and in reality. (shrink)

The writings of David Hume (1711–1776) are a treasure trove for those eager to find pithy, polished memorable quotes to bolster their arguments in favor of freedom, justice, and against the arrogance and follies of governments. It is difficult to resist the youthful élan of his major philosophical work, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), his provocative ironic style, witticisms, irreverence, and occasional sarcasm, which made him an international celebrity, the darling of Parisian salons, and, even now, a reader’s delight.

My grandfather (1882-1960) worked as a mechanic at the plant where the beautiful Minerva cars were produced. He was active in the Belgian Labourers’ Party, the predecessor of the Belgian Socialist Party. In Wilrijk, a village near Antwerp, he became a councillor for that Party and then, in the chaotic days of the Liberation, at the end of the Second World War, the interim mayor. He was a quiet, soft-spoken and above all gentle man. Whatever had landed him in politics, (...) it certainly was not personal ambition. (shrink)

Far into the first volume of his magnum opus, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Hayek points to the bridge between his theoretical analysis of the development of social order and his normative position as an advocate of liberalism in the classical tradition: The understanding that ‘good fences make good neighbours’ […] is the basis on which all known civilization has grown. Property, […] the ‘life, liberty and estates’ of every individual, is the only solution men have yet discovered to the problem (...) of reconciling individual freedom with the absence of conflict. Law, liberty, and property are an inseparable trinity. 1 The quote can serve as a powerful argument in support of the classical liberal theory of law. Property and liberty have many detractors but lawlessness has few advocates. Surprisingly, Hayek made no systematic attempt to defend his inseparability thesis. Never reaching the status of a firmly established conclusion it remained a presupposition that friends could accept readily and enemies could dismiss as an ideological expression without theoretical support. Moreover, Hayek often seemed reluctant even to use the term ‘property’. Most of the time, he preferred to speak of an otherwise unspecified ‘private sphere demarcated by general rules’—a notion that might have delighted a Rousseau or a Burke but not a Frédéricq Bastiat. His theory of law also refers to unspecified general ‘rules of just conduct’ but remains vague about what justice is or how it relates to classical liberal conceptions of property or freedom. Thus, the supposed trinity of law, liberty and property resolves itself in a nondescript order of undefined scope, generated by rules of unspecified generality. It may have seemed obvious to Hayek that one can describe an order of human affairs that respects the property and freedom of individuals only in terms of general rules but that is not a sufficient basis for his claims.. (shrink)

The philosophical writings of Duns Scotus, one of the most influential philosophers of the Later Middle Ages, are here presented in a volume that presents the original Latin with facing page English translation. CONTENTS: Foreword to the Second Edition. Preface. Introduction. Select Bibliography. I. Concerning Metaphysics II. Man's Natural Knowledge of God III. The Existence of God IV. The Unicity of God V. Concerning Human Knowledge VI. The Spirituality and Immortality of the Human Soul Notes. Index of Proper Names. Index (...) of Subjects. (shrink)

von Hippel & Trivers's central assertion that people self-deceive to better deceive others carries so many implications that it must be taken to the laboratory to be tested, rather than promoted by more indirect argument. Although plausible, many psychological findings oppose it. There is also an evolutionary alternative: People better deceive not through self-deception, but rather by not caring about the truth.

To solve the highly counterintuitive paradox of confirmation represented by the statement, “A pair of red shoes confirms that all ravens are black,” Hempel employed a strategy that retained the equivalence condition but abandoned Nicod’s irrelevance condition. However, his use of the equivalence condition is fairly ad hoc, raising doubts about its applicability to this problem. Furthermore, applying the irrelevance condition from Nicod’s criterion does not necessarily lead to paradoxes, nor does discarding it prevent the emergence of paradoxes. Hempel’s approach (...) fails to adequately resolve the paradox. (shrink)

Compilation of some important works on basic course of study of elementary Buddhist logic and dialectrical studies of Bkra-śis-lhun-po Monastery, a college of Buddhist studies in Bylakuppe, Karnataka, India.