Under the careful editorship of R. A. Markus, this book appears to be one of the very finest anthologies of critical essays dedicated to the elucidation of the thought of St. Augustine. Those familiar with Markus’ contribution to The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy will readily attest to the depth as well as to the breadth of understanding which Markus brings to Augustine scholarship. Three of the essays appear for the first time: "Action and Contemplation," by (...) Robert J. O’Connell; "Si Fallor, Sum," by Gareth B. Matthews; "On Augustine’s Concept of a Person," by A. C. Boyd. The remaining articles have appeared either as separate pieces or as journal articles: "St. Augustine and Christian Platonism," by A. H. Armstrong; "St. Augustine on Signs," by R. A. Markus; "The Theory of Signs of St. Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana," by B. Darrell Jackson; "Augustine on Speaking from Memory" and "The Inner Man," by Gareth B. Matthews; "Augustine on Foreknowledge and Free Will," by William L. Rowe; "Augustine on Free Will and Predestination," by John M. Rist; "Time and Contingency in St. Augustine," by Robert Jordan; "Empiricism and Augustine’s Problems about Time," by Hugh M. Lacey; "Political Society," by P. R. L. Brown; "The Development of Augustine’s Ideas on Society before the Donatist Controversy" and "De Civitate Dei, XV, 2, and Augustine’s Idea of the Christian Society," The essays display scholarly depth as well as concern for contemporary philosophical problems. It is an excellent addition to Augustine scholarship and to contemporary philosophizing. This book is part of the Doubleday Anchor Modern Studies in Philosophy Series, under the general editorship of Amelie O. Rorty.—D. A. C. (shrink)

The purpose of the book is clear from the title: to provide "aids to the history of ideas." For, as Professor Tonelli remarks in his Introduction, "Historians of sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century ideas are realizing increasingly that dictionaries contemporary with the period under consideration are in many cases a basic aid to their work." He states that "the [primary] aim of this bibliography is to provide for the first time an extensive list of these dictionaries and their basic locations (...) in Europe, together with some information concerning their doctrinal affiliations, diffusion and present usefulness." The book consists of three lists. In the first list one finds dictionaries possessing the following traits: 1) an alphabetical ordering of topics; 2) entries which are not the names of persons, places or things; 3) generally speaking, prepared between 1500 and 1800. Bilingual dictionaries, i.e., dictionaries "of merely linguistic interest," and highly technical dictionaries are excluded from this first list. "The second list," remarks Professor Tonelli, "includes items which have been located and seen, but which do not answer to the criteria of selection listed above." The purpose of this second list is to give an account of items which were seen, but excluded from the first list, in order to establish that they have not been overlooked. Also this second list is to give an account of items which were seen, but excluded from the first list, in order to establish that they have not been overlooked as well as to point out that some of them may nevertheless be used as dictionaries. "The third list includes items which could not be located, although they are listed in bibliographies, or referred to elsewhere. Therefore, their character and utility could not be established. This third list is intended as an aid to further research.". (shrink)

This book is designed to demonstrate that "the bibliography of philosophy has not emerged directly from a barbaric past; it has a long history...". It begins with the first known printed bibliography, that of Frisius in 1592, and works its way methodically to 1960. By sketching the contents and divisions of these bibliographies, Jasenas provides us with evidence of what philosophers of different eras took philosophy to be. Some bibliographers were professional philosophers and some were not. But it is clear (...) that those who were not philosophers generally consulted philosophers in preparing their bibliographies. Particularly interesting is the way in which Jasenas ties a given bibliography to the cultural, intellectual, social, political and even musical happenings of the day. This is especially the case when he offers an explanation for the absence of one or other book in a given bibliography. He is careful to note the religious and philosophical preferences of the bibliographer. Granted there is a good deal of speculation and likely guesswork on Jasenas’ part, his suggested explanations give to his book an importance which it would have lacked without them. (shrink)

Although Murphey finds the question "is history scientific?" to be fruitless if not pointless, he does find it of great importance to ask just what it is that historians are doing and how they might do it better. "If truth is to be the daughter of time, it is the historian who must make the delivery, and the quality of his midwifery could stand improvement". At the root of all Murphey’s speculation is the question "just what is ‘historical knowledge'?" It (...) has always been claimed that "history is a discipline which seeks to establish true statements about events which have occurred and objects which have existed in the past". Yet what can this really mean, asks Murphey? Clearly Murphey wants no part of any "empathetic" gestures on the part of historians who claim that they can imaginatively transmigrate back in time. The past as past is not given, or as James Collins, citing Robert Ardley, pointed out recently, "history is what you cannot touch." Just what can we say that "knowing the past" really means, if in fact it means anything? Murphey takes quite serious the implications of Bertrand Russell’s remark that "there is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that ‘remembered’ a wholly unreal past." Murphey argues quite effectively that such an hypothesis involves a complete and inescapable skepticism, more complete than even Danto realized. But Murphey counters this hypothesis by saying that "we should reject Russell’s proposal, not because it is refuted by empirical evidence, but because it is more complex than the alternative". I am not altogether certain that Murphey clearly shows the relatively greater complexity of Russell’s hypothesis, nor that, in the long run, he can work himself free of it. (shrink)

The following papers are contained in this book: "Renaissance Concepts of Man: 1) The Dignity of Man; 2) The Immortality of the Soul; 3) The Unity of Truth" ; "Italian Humanism and Byzantium;" "Byzantine and Western Platonism in the Fifteenth Century;" "Renaissance Philosophy and the Medieval Tradition" and, finally, "History of Philosophy and History of Ideas." All of the essays have been made public, although, to my knowledge, only the last four papers ever appeared in print. The fourth and fifth (...) papers have been published but without footnotes. In his Preface, Professor Kristeller indicates that "the second three essays, in describing the Byzantine and medieval backgrounds of Renaissance thought, offer a supplement to my first Torchbook, Renaissance Thought in which the classical sources of Renaissance thought are discussed." The last paper appeared in the Journal of the History of Philosophy. (shrink)

Schwartz quite decisively puts to rest the long-standing myth that Johnson was, if not openly hostile to science, at least indifferent to it. What emerges is a picture of a man committed to the task of mediating between the new science and the demands of religion and morality. We are presented with some very interesting and provocative historical background on the nature of science, with particular emphasis on its acceptance by literati. Schwartz describes Johnson thus: "His is neither the self-assured (...) smile, the heady, breathless dream, nor the sickness unto death, but rather the measured view." This way of looking at Johnson’s Weltanschauung permeates the entire book. Schwartz is at pains to show that Johnson’s Weltanschauung was one in which religion, morality and science were natural and necessary compliments of one another. Johnson believed that the primacy should be placed on one’s self-knowledge. (shrink)

Contained in this rather short but quite excellent Clarke F. Ansley Award winning work is a skillful presentation of an intriguing thesis: Spinoza’s definition and criterion of truth follows neither the strictly correspondence nor the strictly coherence lines which many commentators have suspected. Rather, says Mark, Spinoza’s doctrine follows the "ontological" view of truth, prevalent in ancient and medieval times. To be true is to be a being, a thing which "is." It is the author’s contention that there are texts (...) which seem to be evidence in favor of interpreting Spinoza’s doctrine along the lines of a correspondence theory, and there are still other texts which seem to betray a kind of family resemblance to the coherence theory of truth. Most commentators, says Mark, have either focused their entire attention on one or the other of these sets of texts, or else pointed out the discrepancy and went on to something else. But what Mark here suggests to us is a rather bold and interesting approach, which, to Mark’s mind, accomplishes the task of facing squarely both sets of texts without compromising either, and without reducing Spinoza to contradiction. (shrink)

Although Joachim of Fiore created a rather intriguing theology of history along with a primitive theory of hermeneutics, his importance for the historian of philosophy is most likely to be in his reaction to the trinitarian doctrine of Peter Lombard and in his influence on Bonaventura. Joachim invokes what he calls a spiritualis intellectus against the teaching of Peter Lombard. This spiritualis intellectus "includes both the preparation of arduous study and the experience of mystical illumination. It includes, thirdly, the phase (...) of close intellectual work which follows the illumination, in which the ‘given’ clues are used to organize the gathered material into patterns which now emerge from within". This spiritualis intellectus, obviously mystical, is quite eschatological and numerological. Two, three, five, seven and twelve figure prominently and often in Joachim’s account of the panoply of history. The specific account of Joachim’s reasons for his opposition to Peter Lombard is quite interesting and, historically, very important. In this passage Joachim is linked with the anti-dialectical tradition which, led by St. Bernard of Clervaux, [[sic]] found scholastic theology to be static, dry and alien to spiritual experience. Scholastic theologians are following nothing but the carnalis intellectus. (shrink)

Adding to an already quite impressive collection of writings on the 16th century and particularly on Erasmus, Professor Hyma has given us a most interesting account of some of the scholarly controversies which have attended the study of Erasmus’ life. Convincingly Hyma argues that there is no reason for assuming that Erasmus was publicly abusive of Pope Julius. Erasmus’ relationship with Luther, on reading Hyma’s account, becomes quite complex and many-faceted. An extremely important discussion of Erasmus’ relationship to "Epicureanism" is (...) found in chapter 15. (shrink)

Lynch’s book should take its place as an important study of late 13th century Franciscan cognition theory. Vital du Four is an important figure in the regard that he bridges the gap between Bonaventura and Duns Scotus. Moreover, he is one of the earliest Franciscan writers to have come to grips with Henry of Ghent. Even more important is the fact that much of Vital’s work was for some time mistakenly held to be that of Duns Scotus. Hence the need (...) for a clarification of Vital’s own doctrine is necessitated by the demand for separating out what is Scotus from what is not. Finally, Vital du Four is a pioneer thinker in the area of intuitive knowledge. A proper understanding of intuitive knowledge would seem to require seeing it in its complete historical perspective; and Vital du Four inevitably plays a part in that perspective. Vital du Four shows remarkable anticipations of classical modern formulations of the problems involved in cognition theory, particularly the problem of self-knowledge. The recent discussion regarding the inference and performance aspects of the Cartesian cogito is anticipated in Vital’s distinction between reasoned self-knowledge and intuitive self-knowledge. (shrink)