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In the mid-1260s in Paris, a dispute raged that concerned the relationship between faith and the Augustinian theological tradition on the one side and secular leaning as represented by the arrival in Latin of Aristotle and various Islamic and Jewish interpreters of Aristotle on the other. Masters of the arts faculty in Paris represented the latter tradition, indicated by the phrase "double truth theory."

The introduction places the work historically and sketches the controversy to which it was a contribution. Part 2 includes the Latin Leonine text and McInerny's translation. Part 3 analyzes the basic arguments of Thomas's work and provides a series of interpretive essays meant to make Thomas accessible to today's readers.

Augustine's Love of Wisdom is an analytical and interpretive focus on the first thirty chapters of book ten of Augustine's autobiographical Confessions. Bourke provides a rich synthesis of key tenets of Augustine's psychology in the context of his philosophical system and selects the most intensive writing of Augustine on the intricacies of the human psyche, providing the reader with insight on an Augustinian explanatory method, introspection.

The first part of Augustine's Love of Wisdom establishes the context of Augustine's writings with a biographical sketch of Augustine from his early life and career and an exploration of his background and methodology. Part 2 provides the reader with the original Latin and an English translation of the first thirty chapters of book 10 of the Confessions. Part 3 is Bourke's analysis and commentary of these chapters.

Soren Kierkegaard (1818-55) is perhaps best known for existentialism, and his critique of the Western metaphysical tradition makes him a religiously committed postmodernist. Becoming a Self provides a reader's guide to the book often taken to be Kierkegaard's most important contribution to philosophy and theology.

Confessions of a Rational Mystic exposes both aspects of this transitional thinker through a multidimensional interpretation of his Pioslogion. It treats Anselm’s famous proof for the existence of God as both a rational argument and an exercise in mystical theology, analyzing the logic of its reasoning while providing a phenomenological account of the vision of God that is embedded within it. Through a deconstructive reading of the cycle of prayer and proof that forms the overall structure of the text, not only is the argument returned to its place in the Proslogion as a whole, but the historic relationship that it attempts to establish between faith and reason is examined. In this way, the critical role that Anselm played in the history of philosophy is seen in a new light.

This volume provides a general account of the philosophy of David Hume in a way that shows that he is, contrary to common belief, a highly systematic thinker whose thought and personality are closely related. it is also designed to assist the reader to make the most informed use of the rich resources of contemporary Hume scholarship.

Long recognized as one of the greatest medieval philosophical theologians, John Duns Scotus made his most innovative theoretical contributions in the area of metaphysics.

A careful and detailed study of his argument for the existence of God and the theory of knowledge that makes this possible provides the most direct access to his basic ideas. Unlike the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas or Anselm's famous Proslogion argument, Scotus's proof is of another order of complexity and amounts to a little "summa" of-his metaphysics. Among those theologians to accept Aristotle's scientific theory, Scotus is perhaps the first to realize fully its negative consequences - the philosophical doctrines of divine illumination and the analogical concept of being.

In Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology, Joseph J. Kockelmans provides the reader with a biographical sketch and an overview of the salient features of Husserl's thought. Kockelmans focuses on the essay for the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1928, Husserl's most important effort to articulate the aims of phenomenology for a more general audience. Included are Husserl’s text (in the original German and in English translation on facing pages), a synopsis, and an extensive commentary that relates Husserl's work as a whole to the essay for the Encyclopedia.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Wissenscbaftslebre arises out of a particularly stormy period in the philosopher's personal, academic, and intellectual life. The work he produced is many things at once: an epistemology or theory of knowledge, a philosophical anthropology, an ethics or metaethics, the foundation for a political theory (Rousseau), the basis for an aesthetic program (Romanticism), perhaps even a philosophy of nature.

Seidel presents the English and German text of part 1of the Wissenscbaftsiebre, followed by a commentary on the text. The work concludes with a summary of parts 2 and 3 of the Wissenscbafislebre. An annotated bibliography surveys the important literature on the philosopher.

Ockham's views on many subjects have been misunderstood, including his views on ethics. This book is designed to avoid pitfalls that arise in reading medieval philosophy generally and Ockham in particular.

The Pbaedrus lies at the heart of Plato's work, and the topics it discusses are central to his thought. In its treatment of the topics of the soul, the ideas and love, it is closely tied to the other dialogues of Plato's "middle period," the Pbaedo, the Symposium, and the Republic.

This book provides a practical reading guide to the thought of Plotinus, the great philosopher who was born in Alexandria in the third century a.d., lived in Rome and wrote in Greek. Deeply immersed in earlier Greek philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus’ thought was to have an immense influence upon the theology and philosophy of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as well as to bear a deep resonance with the major forms of Eastern mystical thought, particularly Buddhism and Hinduism. At the same time, Plotinus’ philosophy remains unique in its own right.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) presents himself several times as a physician of culture. He considers it his task to make a diagnosis of the culture of his age, to point to the latent or patent diseases, but also to the possibilities to overcome them. His diagnosis, prognosis, and prescriptions implied an overcoming of traditional interpretation of what is going on in the main domains of culture: knowledge, morality, religion, and art.

This book presents Nietzsche's thoughts on knowledge and reality, on morality and politics, and on religion. Preceding these main dialogues is an introduction on the art of reading Nietzsche's texts and on his art of writing.

De Dijn’s comprehensive introduction to Spinoza's philosophy is based on two key texts. He first provides an in-depth analysis of Spinoza's Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, which De Dijn characterizes as his introduction to philosophy. This notoriously difficult text is here made accessible, even in its details. This analysis is followed by a comprehensive survey of Spinoza's metaphysics as presented in his famous Ethics. De Dijn demonstrates how Spinoza's central philosophical project as introduced in the Treatise - the linkage of knowledge and salvation - is perfectly realized in the Ethics. In this way, the unity of Spinoza's thought is shown to consist in his preoccupation with the "ethical" question of salvation. The book also contains introductory chapters on Spinoza's life and work, the original Latin text of the Treatise and its new English translation by Edwin Curley, and an annotated bibliography on the secondary literature.

The American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce, best known as the founder of pragmatism, has been influential not only in the pragmatic tradition but more recently in the philosophy of science and the study of semiotics, or sign theory. Strands of System provides an accessible overview of Peirce's systematic philosophy for those who are beginning to explore his thinking and its import for more recent trends in philosophy.

The fruit of the author's many courses on Emmanuel Levinas in Europe and the United States, this study is a clear introduction for graduate students and scholars who are not yet familiar with Levinas's difficult but exceptionally important oeuvre.

After a first chapter on the existential background and the key issues of his thought, chapters 2, 3, and 4 concentrate on and include a short text, "Philosophy and the idea of the Infinite," which contains the program of Levinas's entire oeuvre. Chapter 5 is a companion to the reading of Levinas's first opus magnum, Totality and the Infinite. It analyzes the structure of this book and shows how its questions and answers adhere together. "Through phenomenology toward a saying beyond phenomena and essence" could be the summary of Levinas's attempt to think, with and against Martin Heidegger, the otherness of the Other. This is brought out even more clearly in his second opus magnum, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, whose significance is shown in chapter 6. A bibliography is added to facilitate further study.

Wittgenstein's Thought in Transition offers a detailed exposition of Wittgenstein’s philosophy as a continuous engagement with a single set of problems. Dale Jacquette argues that the key to understanding the transition in Wittgenstein’s thought is his 1929 essay "Some Remarks on Logical Form," which is reprinted in this book. Wittgenstein disowned the essay, then came to see its failure as refuting his early theory altogether and began to investigate the requirements of meaning with a new method that resulted in the characteristic innovations of his later period.