Böcker utgivna av University of Notre Dame Press

The death of a friend is a source of pain and grief. For the author, it is also a chance to reflect on the role of friendship in our pursuit of truth. His essays explore friendship as the bond linking Christians, Muslims and Jews alike to the religious traditions embraced in the search for truth.

Contributes to the contemporary discussion of secularity prompted especially by Charles Taylor's book A Secular Age. Unlike Taylor's work, however, this collection concentrates specifically on secular reason and explicitly on its relation to Christianity.

Examining the contributions of truth-telling mechanisms, such as truth commissions, to long-term sustainable peace, this book argues that to ensure a future that does not reiterate the past, the atrocities of war and conflict must be brought to light and addressed. It highlights the intersection of peace building and transitional justice.

In Medieval Autographies, A. C. Spearing develops a new engagement of narrative theory with medieval English first-person writing, focusing on the roles and functions of the "e;I"e; as a shifting textual phenomenon, not to be defined either as autobiographical or as the label of a fictional speaker or narrator. Spearing identifies and explores a previously unrecognized category of medieval English poetry, calling it "e;autography."e; He describes this form as emerging in the mid-fourteenth century and consisting of extended nonlyrical writings in the first person, embracing prologues, authorial interventions in and commentaries on third-person narratives, and descendants of the dit, a genre of French medieval poetry. He argues that autography arose as a means of liberation from the requirement to tell stories with preordained conclusions and as a way of achieving a closer relation to lived experience, with all its unpredictability and inconsistencies. Autographies, he claims, are marked by a cluster of characteristics including a correspondence to the texture of life as it is experienced, a montage-like unpredictability of structure, and a concern with writing and textuality. Beginning with what may be the earliest extended first-person narrative in Middle English, Winner and Waster, the book examines instances of the dit as discussed by French scholars, analyzes Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue as a textual performance, and devotes separate chapters to detailed readings of Hoccleve's Regement of Princes prologue, his Complaint and Dialogue, and the witty first-person elements in Osbern Bokenham's legends of saints. An afterword suggests possible further applications of the concept of autography, including discussion of the intermittent autographic commentaries on the narrative in Troilus and Criseyde and Capgrave's Life of Saint Katherine.

In recent years, Niccolo Machiavelli's works have been viewed primarily with historical interest as analysis of the tactics used by immoral political officials. Roger D. Masters, a leading expert in the relationship between modern natural sciences and politics, argues boldly in this book that Machiavelli should be reconsidered as a major philosopher whose thought makes the wisdom of antiquity accessible to the modern (and post-modern) condition, and whose understanding of human nature is superior to that of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, or Mill. Central to Masters's claim is his discovery, based on previously untranslated documents, that Machiavelli knew and worked with Leonardo da Vinci between 1502-1507. An interdisciplinary tour de force, Machiavelli, Leonardo, and the Science of Power will challenge, perplex, and ultimately delight readers with its evocative story of the relationship between Machiavelli and da Vinci, their crucial roles in the emergence of modernity, and the vast implications this holds for contemporary life and society.

In this volume Russell Hittinger presents a comprehensive and critical treatment of the attempt to restate and defend a theory of natural law, particularly as proposed by Germain Grisez and John Finnis.

Abelard in Four Dimensions: A Twelfth-Century Philosopher in His Context and Ours by John Marenbon, one of the leading scholars of medieval philosophy and a specialist on Abelard's thought, originated from a set of lectures in the distinguished Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies series and provides new interpretations of central areas of Peter Abelard's philosophy and its influence. The four dimensions of Abelard to which the title refers are that of the past (Abelard's predecessors), present (his works in context), future (the influence of his thinking up to the seventeenth century), and the present-day philosophical culture in which Abelard's works are still discussed and his arguments debated.For readers new to Abelard, this book provides an introduction to his life and works along with discussion of his central ideas in semantics, ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion. For specialists, the book contains new arguments about the authenticity and chronology of Abelard's logical work, fresh evidence about his relations with Anselm and Hugh of St. Victor, a new understanding of how he combines the necessity of divine action with human freedom, and reinterpretations of important passages in which he discusses semantics and metaphysics. For all historians of philosophy, it sets out and illustrates a new methodological approach, which can be used for any thinker in any period and will help to overcome the divisions between "e;historians"e; based in philosophy departments and scholars with historical or philological training.

In Unearthed: The Economic Roots of Our Environmental Crisis, Kenneth M. Sayre argues that the only way to resolve our current environmental crisis is to reduce our energy consumption to a level where the entropy (degraded energy and organization) produced by that consumption no longer exceeds the biosphere's ability to dispose of it. Tangible illustrations of this entropy buildup include global warming, ozone depletion, loss of species diversity, and unmanageable amounts of nonbiodegradable waste. Degradation of the biosphere is tied directly to human energy use, which has been increasing exponentially since the Industrial Revolution. Energy use, in turn, is directly correlated with economic production. Sayre shows how these three factors are invariably bound together. The unavoidable conclusion is that the only way to resolve our environmental crisis is to reverse the present pattern of growth in the world economy. Economic growth is motivated by social values. Key among them are the desire for wealth and consumer values including gratification, convenience, and acquisition of goods. Sayre maintains that economic growth can be reversed only by eliminating these social values in favor of others more conducive to environmental health. Eliminating these values will involve major changes in lifestyle within industrial societies generally. Only with such changes in lifestyle, he argues, does human society as we know it have a chance of survival.Clearly written and thoroughly documented, this book provides a comprehensive overview of our complex environmental predicament. "e;With unerring logic and science, Kenneth Sayre dissects the origins of the ecological crisis and points to the necessary recalibration of industrial societies with the laws of thermodynamics and ecology. It is a radical book in that he gets to the heart of what ails us, and it charts a course toward a future grounded in authentic hope."e;-David W. Orr, Oberlin College "e;Sayre's assessment forces all seeking a sustainable future to reexamine the preeminence accorded to clean energy. Unearthed uniquely combines thermodynamics and ethics to challenge and broaden readers' understandings of the systemic issues we face. Assembled and presented with piercing clarity, Unearthed constructs a brilliant framework for making sense of our quiet, but growing crises."e;-Felipe Witchger, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates "e;Kenneth M. Sayre's Unearthed: The Economic Roots of Our Environmental Crisis constitutes a major and significant contribution to our understanding of the grave ecological crisis facing humanity. It covers the complete picture, from the basic physical causes of the destruction of our environment to the sociological or anthropological forces that condition our self-destructive actions. The work not only is a brilliant and mind-sweeping piece of diagnosis and prognosis, but it goes all the way to point towards possible solutions."e;-Fernando del Rio Haza, Laboratorio de Termodinamica, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa, Mexico

This work shows that the collapse of the post-reformation confessional state was more the result of religious dissent from within, much of it orthodox, than attacks of an anti-religious Enlightenment.

In this brilliant study, Thomas Pfau argues that the loss of foundational concepts in classical and medieval Aristotelian philosophy caused a fateful separation between reason and will in European thought. Pfau traces the evolution and eventual deterioration of key concepts of human agency-will, person, judgment, action-from antiquity through Scholasticism and on to eighteenth-century moral theory and its critical revision in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Featuring extended critical discussions of Aristotle, Gnosticism, Augustine, Aquinas, Ockham, Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson, Hume, Adam Smith, and Coleridge, this study contends that the humanistic concepts these writers seek to elucidate acquire meaning and significance only inasmuch as we are prepared positively to engage (rather than historicize) their previous usages. Beginning with the rise of theological (and, eventually, secular) voluntarism, modern thought appears increasingly reluctant and, in time, unable to engage the deep history of its own underlying conceptions, thus leaving our understanding of the nature and function of humanistic inquiry increasingly frayed and incoherent. One consequence of this shift is to leave the moral self-expression of intellectual elites and ordinary citizens alike stunted, which in turn has fueled the widespread notion that moral and ethical concerns are but a special branch of inquiry largely determined by opinion rather than dialogical reasoning, judgment, and practice. A clear sign of this regression is the present crisis in the study of the humanities, whose role is overwhelmingly conceived (and negatively appraised) in terms of scientific theories, methods, and objectives. The ultimate casualty of this reductionism has been the very idea of personhood and the disappearance of an adequate ethical language. Minding the Modern is not merely a chapter in the history of ideas; it is a thorough phenomenological and metaphysical study of the roots of today's predicaments.

Guillermo O'Donnell here brings together a collection of significant recent essays in which he considers both the method for and substance of critiques of democracies. While progress has been made in democratization, the authoritarian legacy hangs as a shadow over that advancement. O'Donnell engages in his analysis while keeping a firm gaze on that dangerous past. O'Donnell's work has influenced a generation of political scientists. The essays in this volume bring forward and develop many of the ideas presented in his earlier collection, Counterpoints: Selected Essays on Authoritarianism and Democracy

Consists of a series of studies addressing Moses Maimonides' (1138-1204) appropriation of marginal figures - lepers, converts, heretics, and others. Here, each chapter focuses on a type or character that, in Maimonides' hands, becomes a metaphor for a larger, more substantive theological and philosophical issue.

In Whores of Babylon, Frances E. Dolan offers a study of the central role that Catholics and Catholicism played in early modern English law, literature, and politics. This study examines legal and literary representations during three crises in Protestant/Catholic relations, the Gunpowder Plot (1605), the Popish Plot and Meal Tub Plot (1678-80).

Ten scholars from the varied fields of philosophy, theology, history, anthropology and literature reflect on the theme of courage. Contributors to this volume agree that courage is not just for the few or the dramatically heroic but is required of everyone of us.

Provides the first comprehensive study of the architecture and architectural sculpture of Southern Peru in the late colonial period (1660s-1820s), an enduring and polemical subject in Latin American art history.

Edith Stein, a Catholic convert of Jewish heritage is the second woman in German history to be awarded a PhD in philosophy. The sixteen essays in this collection, written by scholars from the US and Europe, examine her legacy. It represents the comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis in English of Stein's life and philosophical writings.

What Happened in and to Moral Philosophy in the Twentieth Century? is a volume of essays originally presented at University College Dublin in 2009 to celebrate the eightieth birthday of Alasdair MacIntyre-a protagonist at the center of that very question. What marks this collection is the unusual range of approaches and perspectives, representing divergent and even contradictory positions. Such variety reflects MacIntyre's own intellectual trajectory, which led him to engage successively with various schools of thought: analytic, Marxist, Christian, atheist, Aristotelian, Augustinian, and Thomist. This collection presents a unique profile of twentieth-century moral philosophy and is itself an original contribution to ongoing debate. The volume begins with Alasdair MacIntyre's fascinating philosophical self-portrait, "e;On Having Survived the Academic Moral Philosophy of the Twentieth Century,"e; which charts his own intellectual development. The first group of essays considers MacIntyre's revolutionary contribution to twentieth-century moral philosophy: its value in understanding and guiding human action, its latent philosophical anthropology, its impetus in the renewal of the Aristotelian tradition, and its application to contemporary interests. The next group of essays considers the complementary and competing traditions of emotivism, Marxism, Thomism, and phenomenology. A third set of essays presents thematic analyses of such topics as evolutionary ethics, accomplishment and just desert, relativism, evil, and the inescapability of ethics. MacIntyre responds with a final essay, "e;What Next?"e; which addresses questions raised by contributors to the volume.

The New Rhetoric is founded on the idea that since "e;argumentation aims at securing the adherence of those to whom it is addressed, it is, in its entirety, relative to the audience to be influenced,"e; says Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, and they rely, in particular, for their theory of argumentation on the twin concepts of universal and particular audiences: while every argument is directed to a specific individual or group, the orator decides what information and what approaches will achieve the greatest adherence according to an ideal audience. This ideal, Perelman explains, can be embodied, for example, "e;in God, in all reasonable and competent men, in the man deliberating or in an elite."e; Like particular audiences, then, the universal audience is never fixed or absolute but depends on the orator, the content and goals of the argument, and the particular audience to whom the argument is addressed. These considerations determine what information constitutes "e;facts"e; and "e;reasonableness"e; and thus help to determine the universal audience that, in turn, shapes the orator's approach. /// The adherence of an audience is also determined by the orator's use of values, a further key concept of the New Rhetoric. Perelman's treatment of value and his view of epideictic rhetoric sets his approach apart from that of the ancients and of Aristotle in particular. Aristotle's division of rhetoric into three genres-forensic, deliberative, and epideictic-is largely motivated by the judgments required for each: forensic or legal arguments require verdicts on past action, deliberative or political rhetoric seeks judgment on future action, and epideictic or ceremonial rhetoric concerns values associated with praise or blame and seeks no specific decisions. For Aristotle, the epideictic genre was of limited importance in the civic realm since it did not concern facts or policies. Perelman, in contrast, believes not only that epideictic rhetoric warrants more attention, but that the values normally limited to that genre are in fact central to all argumentation. "e;Epideictic oratory,"e; Perelman argues, "e;has significant and important argumentation for strengthening the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds."e; These values are central to the persuasiveness of arguments in all rhetorical genres since the orator always attempts to "e;establish a sense of communion centered around particular values recognized by the audience."e;

This volume contains Guillermo O'Donnell's qualitative theoretical study of the quality of democracy and Vargas Cullell's description and analysis of the empirical data he gathered on the quality of democracy in Costa Rica.

A philosophical investigation of practical knowledge, with major import for professional practice and the ethical life in modern society. It intends to clarify the kind of knowledge that informs good practice in a range of disciplines such as education, psychotherapy, medicine, management, and law.

In his new book, John S. Dunne asks: "e;So what is eternal consciousness? It is, I take it, consciousness of the eternal in us. If time is 'a changing image of eternity,' as Plato says, the changing image of the human being is like The Voyage of Life, four paintings by Thomas Cole, showing childhood, youth, adulthood, and age. The eternal in us is the person going through these phases. It is the vertical dimension of the life, as in the title scene of War and Peace where Prince Andre lay on the battlefield looking up into the peaceful sky, perceiving peace in the midst of war. If the horizontal dimension is time and the vertical dimension is eternity, then eternal consciousness is awareness of the vertical dimension. What is more, the vertical dimension carries through the horizontal, as the person walks through life upright instead of being dragged through in 'quiet desperation.' Willingness and hope, accordingly, is willingness to walk through upright with hope in the face of death and darkness."e; -from the bookWhat can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? Dunne explores these questions in his characteristic hermeneutic method, finding the answer in "e;the words of eternal life"e; (John 6:68). It is the life of the spirit that is the eternal in us, the inner life of knowing and loving, the life of hope and peace and friendship and intelligence. "e;If there were no eternal consciousness in a man,"e; Kierkegaard says, "e;what then would life be but despair?"e; John Dunne adds, if there is eternal consciousness in us, on the other hand, there is hope.To readers of John Dunne's books, Eternal Consciousness will be the latest installment chronicling his spiritual journey; to readers new to Dunne's oeuvre, it will be a lively introduction to the distinctive voice and thought of an inspiring author.

Celebrates the work and influence of Stephen T. Davis over the past four decades in philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and biblical studies. His emphasis on argumentative clarity and logical rigour is reflected in the contributions by the sixteen internationally recognized scholars of Christian philosophical theology whose work is gathered here.

For nearly four decades, E P Sanders has been the foremost scholar in shaping and refocusing scholarly debates in three different but related disciplines in New Testament studies: Second Temple Judaism, Jesus and the Gospels, and Pauline studies. This collection of essays includes a substantive intellectual autobiography by E P Sanders himself.

This collection of original essays by historians and literary critics explores the complex and difficult question of how a culture does, in fact, "return to peace" after a war.