The nature and properties of angels occupied a prominent place in medieval philosophical inquiry. Creatures of two worlds, angels provided ideal ground for exploring the nature of God and his creation, being perceived as 'models' according to which a whole range of questions were defined, from cosmological order, movement and place, to individuation, cognition, volition, and modes of language. This collection of essays is a significant scholarly contribution to angelology, centred on the function and significance of angels in medieval speculation and its history. The unifying theme is that of the role of angels in philosophical inquiry, where each contribution represents a case study in which the angelic model is seen to motivate developments in specific areas and periods of medieval philosophical thought.

The Two-Soul’d Animal illuminates an early modern debate that recognized the troubling extent to which Christian thought had defined the human in terms of two incompatible models of soul. As the sixteenth century progressed, Christian and humanist thinkers began to realize that these two souls fundamentally contradicted each other. On the one hand, Christian theology had a great debt to Aristotle’s tripartite model of the soul based on three organic faculties: intellection, sensation, and nutrition. On the other, the Christian soul was defined by its immortal, immaterial, and transcendental substance. The sixteenth-century acknowledgement of the two souls provoked a great deal of anxiety, leading Christian thinkers to ask: How can we, as God’s perfect design, have two redundant and yet contradictory souls? And how could the core of the religious subject possibly be defined by a psychological paradox? As a result, the “soul” was an intrinsically unstable term being renegotiated in Renaissance culture. The English writers studied in The Two-Soul’d Animal place two prevailing interpretations of the soul’s faculties—one rhetorical on the plane of aesthetics, the other theological on the plane of ethics—into contact as a way to construct a new mode of Christian agency.

Mary Astell (1666-1731) is best known today as one of the earliest English feminists. She is also known as a Tory political pamphleteer, an Anglican apologist, an eloquent rhetorician, and an educational theorist. In this book, Jacqueline Broad interprets Astell first and foremost as a moral philosopher, or as someone committed to providing guidance on how best to live and how to attain happiness. The central claim of this work is that all the different strands of Astell's thought—her theory of knowledge, her metaphysics, her philosophy of the passions, her feminist vision, and her conservative political views—are best understood in light of her ethical objectives. To demonstrate this, Broad examines Astell's major writings and traces her programme to bring about a moral transformation of character in her fellow women. This programme draws on several key aspects of seventeenth-century philosophy, including Cartesian and Neoplatonist epistemologies, proofs for the existence of God, arguments for the immaterial soul, and theories about how to regulate the passions in accordance with reason. At the heart of Astell's philosophy, it is argued, lies a theory of virtue and guidelines on how to cultivate generosity of character, a benevolent disposition toward other people, and the virtue of moderation. This book will help readers to see Astell's feminist, political, and religious views in the context of her wider philosophical vision. It provides a rich and illuminating account of a unique female-centred contribution to the philosophy of the early modern period. It will appeal to students and scholars in philosophy, history of ideas, and gender studies.

The portrait of John Locke as a secular advocate of Enlightenment rationality has been deconstructed by the recent 'religious turn' in Locke scholarship. This book takes an important next step: moving beyond the 'religious turn' and establishing a 'theological turn', Nathan Guy argues that John Locke ought to be viewed as a Christian political philosopher whose political theory was firmly rooted in the moderating Latitudinarian theology of the seventeenth-century. Nestled between the secular political philosopher and the Christian public theologian stands Locke, the Christian political philosopher, whose arguments not only self-consciously depend upon Christian assumptions, but also offer a decidedly Christian theory of government. Finding Locke's God identifies three theological pillars crucial to Locke's political theory: (1) a biblical depiction of God, (2) the law of nature rooted in a doctrine of creation and (3) acceptance of divine revelation in scripture. As a result, Locke's political philosophy brings forth theologically-rich aims, while seeking to counter or disarm threats such as atheism, hyper-Calvinism, and religious enthusiasm. Bringing these items together, Nathan Guy demonstrates how each pillar supports Locke's Latitudinarian political philosophy and provides a better understanding of how he grounds his notions of freedom, equality and religious toleration. Convincingly argued and meticulously researched, this book offers an exciting new direction for Locke studies.