A student's guide to the life and thought of Thomas Aquinas, the most widely read and studied medieval thinker.

This book investigates the substance and presentation of major metaphysical themes in Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed. Using rigorous philosophy it seeks to refute the view that the Guide hides an ''esoteric'' philosophical meaning beneath a traditional veneer, and offers a new explanation of his esotericism.

The author of the world wide best-seller, Small Is Beautiful, now tackles the subject of Man, the World, and the Meaning of Living. Schumacher writes about man's relation to the world. man has obligations -- to other men, to the earth, to progress and technology, but most importantly himself. If man can fulfill these obligations, then and only then can he enjoy a real relationship with the world, then and only then can he know the meaning of living. Schumacher says we need maps: a "map of knowledge" and a "map of living." The concern of the mapmaker--in this instance, Schumacher--is to find for everything it's proper place. Things out of place tend to get lost; they become invisible and there proper places end to be filled by other things that ought not be there at all and therefore serve to mislead. A Guide for the Perplexed teaches us to be our own map makers. This constantly surprising, always stimulating book will be welcomed by a large audience, including the many new fans who believe strongly in what Schumacher has to say.

This is the first scholarly collection in English devoted to Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed.

This is a student's guide to the life and work of Augustine; a notoriously challenging thinker, widely read in Philosophy and Christian Theology. The book provides a concise and coherent overview of Augustine, introducing all the key concepts and themes, and is ideal for undergraduates who require more than just a simple introduction to his work and thought.

Moses Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed is the greatest philosophical text in the history of Jewish thought and a major work of the Middle Ages. For almost all of its history, however, the Guide has been read and commented upon in translation—in Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, French, English, and other modern languages—rather than in its original Judeo-Arabic. This volume is the first to tell the story of the translations and translators of Maimonides’ Guide and its impact in translation on philosophy from the Middle Ages to the present day. A collection of essays by scholars from a range of disciplines, the book unfolds in two parts. The first traces the history of the translations of the Guide, from medieval to modern renditions. The second surveys its influence in translation on Latin scholastic, early modern, and contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, as well as its impact in translation on current scholarship. Interdisciplinary in approach, this book will be essential reading for philosophers, historians, and religious studies scholars alike.

The six articles that comprise Book 2, Distinction 1, Question 1 of Aquinas' Writings on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard represent his earliest and most succinct account of creation. These texts contain the essential Thomistic doctrines on the subject, and are here translated into English for the first time, along with an introduction and analysis. In Article One Aquinas argues, against Manichean dualism, that there is one ultimate cause of all created being; in so doing he gives three proofs for the existence of the Creator and the essential features of his answer to the problem of evil. Thomas establishes his definition of creation in Article Two, providing the needed distinctions between philosophical and theological senses of creation. Emanationism and the problem of whether there can be any intermediary causes in God's act of creation are the subject of Article Three. The next article demonstrates that although God is the cause of all created being, nevertheless creatures are true causes in nature. Article Five argues that it is from revelation alone that we know that the world had a temporal beginning, and that the philosophical arguments that purport to show either the necessity or impossibility of the temporal beginning are not persuasive. A detailed exposition of the meaning of the first sentence of the Bible, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," follows in Article Six.