Metaphysics and the Good

Metaphysics and the Good PDF Author: Samuel Newlands
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199542686
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 427

Get Book

Book Description
A collection of original essays by leading philosophers dedicated to exploring many of the facets of Robert M. Adams's thought, a philosophical outlook that combines Christian theism, neo-Platonism, moral realism, metaphysical idealism, and a commitment to both historical sensitivity and rigorous analytic engagement.

Metaphysics and the Good

Metaphysics and the Good PDF Author: Samuel Newlands
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199542686
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 427

Get Book

Book Description
A collection of original essays by leading philosophers dedicated to exploring many of the facets of Robert M. Adams's thought, a philosophical outlook that combines Christian theism, neo-Platonism, moral realism, metaphysical idealism, and a commitment to both historical sensitivity and rigorous analytic engagement.

The Metaphysics of Good and Evil

The Metaphysics of Good and Evil PDF Author: David S. Oderberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000712508
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book

Book Description
The Metaphysics of Good and Evil is the first, full-length contemporary defence, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, of the Scholastic theory of good and evil – the theory of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and most medieval and Thomistic philosophers. Goodness is analysed as obedience to nature. Evil is analysed as the privation of goodness. Goodness, surprisingly, is found in the non-living world, but in the living world it takes on a special character. The book analyses various kinds of goodness, showing how they fit into the Scholastic theory. The privation theory of evil is given its most comprehensive contemporary defence, including an account of truthmakers for truths of privation and an analysis of how causation by privation should be understood. In the end, all evil is deviance – a departure from the goodness prescribed by a thing’s essential nature. Key Features: Offers a comprehensive defence of a venerable metaphysical theory, conducted using the concepts and methods of analytic philosophy. Revives a much neglected approach to the question of good and evil in their most general nature. Shows how Aristotelian-Thomistic theory has more than historical relevance to a fundamental philosophical issue, but can be applied in a way that is both defensible and yet accessible to the modern philosopher. Provides what, for the Scholastic philosopher, is arguably the only solid metaphysical foundation for a separate treatment of the origins of morality.

Being and Goodness

Being and Goodness PDF Author: Scott MacDonald
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501728377
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book

Book Description
The intuition that there is a necessary connection between being and goodness has guided a philosophical tradition that includes Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas; but surprisingly, the details of this legacy remain relatively unknown. In exploring this tradition of philosophical reflection on the nature of goodness, the twelve essays in this book (all but two published here for the first time) present some of the best recent historical scholarship in medieval philosophy and make available to nonspecialists an array of sophisticated treatments of issues that remain central to metaphysics and philosophical theology. The contributors, leading philosophers and scholars of medieval philosophy, represent a variety of points of view and take diverse methodological approaches. They address the works of figures from Augustine and Boethius to Suarez, Descartes, and Leibniz, but focus particularly on thirteenth-century thinkers, especially Aquinas.

God and Good

God and Good PDF Author: David Birnbaum
Publisher: New Paradigm Matrix
ISBN: 0980171016
Category : God (Judaism)
Languages : en
Pages : 552

Get Book

Book Description
Summa Metaphysica proposes a comprehensive and integrated metaphysical structure – a new paradigm. Summa I: God and Evil: Religious Man (published 1988) and Summa II: God and Good: Spiritual Man (first launched 2005 online) comprise Birnbaum’s Summa Metaphysica series. The author has proposed that one fundamental concept – and one fundamental concept alone – Quest for Potential∞ (recursive to the infinite power) – ignited – and drives – the cosmos – and the integral infinite divine. Building upon his 1988 treatise, in Summa II: God and Good: Spiritual Man (17 years later) the author lays out his overarching metaphysical structure in very significantly greater scope, depth, breadth and texture. Summa III: The Transcendent Dynamic: Secular Man offers a metaphysics for ‘Everyman’ – de-linked from any spirituality or religious aspects. It might best be classified as ‘scientific metaphysics’. It Is anchored In a creative finesse of science and logic. Birnbaum’s paradigm is non–linear, as opposed to the linearity of the great bulk of Western philosophy. It is non– circular, as opposed to the circularity of much of Eastern philosophy. Rather, Birnbaum’s paradigm is what the author refers to as a “spiral/reflexive” dynamic (elucidated in the text). The author proposes that this Quest for Potential∞ paradigm more elegantly explains the dynamics of the cosmos – and of life, in particular – than alternate propositions. According to Birnbaum, only the full plethora of potentials – and the quest thereof – could have ignited the cosmos. The combined potentials for love, life, intellectuality, spirituality and, indeed, for an infinitely Perfect Divine, ignited, birthed, nurtured, and projected the cosmos onward on its quest towards infinity. ‘Extraordinariation,’ according to the author, is the overarching goal. Thomas Aquinas wrote Summa Theologica c. 1273 within a Christian context. The Summa Metaphysica series, proposing an original, dynamic, overarching, and integrated metaphysics, is crafted within a Jewish context seven hundred years later. www.

Existence and the Good

Existence and the Good PDF Author: Franklin I. Gamwell
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438435940
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book

Book Description
Morals and politics depend on a metaphysical backing. All reality is marked by certain necessary features and a divine purpose inherent in all reality defines the good to which all human life should be directed. These are bold assertions in a climate where the credibility of metaphysics is widely denied. Indeed, for the past two centuries, Western philosophy has been marked by a consensus that questions about moral and political life should be considered separately from questions about ultimate reality. In this challenging work, Franklin I. Gamwell defends metaphysical necessity against both modern and postmodern critiques. The metaphysics vindicated is not the traditional form both critiques typically have in view, however. Instead, Gamwell outlines a neoclassical project for which Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne are the main philosophical resources. As it maintains the significance of theistic metaphysics, the book makes no appeal to religious authority but solely to common human experience, and on this basis articulates principles of human purpose and democratic justice.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics PDF Author: Donald Wallenfang
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532643527
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 110

Get Book

Book Description
What is metaphysics? Metaphysics: A Basic Introduction in a Christian Key gives a simplified answer to this daunting question. Born under the shadow of the Parthenon by Aristotle and his contemporaries, metaphysics eventually enjoyed its heyday in the medieval era and is finding a resurgence today in modernity. This book explores the perennial question of being and its uptake in the world of Christian theology. Donald Wallenfang leads the reader through five navigable chapters that feature the most basic themes of metaphysics: the question of being, first principles, causality, cosmology, and morality. The abstract tendencies of metaphysics are brought down to earth with reference to the gospel of Jesus and the relevance of metaphysics for daily living. Altogether, the reader will be inspired to think toward the whole by asking questions that penetrate beneath the surface of things. Beauty, truth, and goodness will be unveiled to the degree that we accompany Jesus the metaphysician along his itinerary of being given.

Religion, Metaphysics, and the Postmodern

Religion, Metaphysics, and the Postmodern PDF Author: Christopher Ben Simpson
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725237288
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book

Book Description
William Desmond's original and creative work in metaphysics is attracting more and more attention from philosophers of religion. Putting Desmond in conversation with John D. Caputo, an important philosopher of religion from the Continental tradition, Christopher Ben Simpson casts new light on Desmond's complex, multifaceted, and nuanced thought. The comparative approach allows Simpson to get at the core of recent debates in the philosophy of religion. He develops a rich understanding of how ethics and religion are informed by metaphysics, and contrasts this approach to the decidedly anti-metaphysical stance in Continental philosophy. Religion, Metaphysics, and the Postmodern presents a systematic analysis of Desmond's thought as it advances work on Caputo's thinking and on the philosophy of religion.

Myth, Metaphysics and Dialectic in Plato's Statesman

Myth, Metaphysics and Dialectic in Plato's Statesman PDF Author: David A. White
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754657798
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book

Book Description
Plato's dialogue "The Statesman" has often been found structurally puzzling because of its apparent diffuseness and disjointed transitions. This book interprets the dialogue in ways which account for this problematic structure, and which also connect the primary themes of the dialogue with two subsequent dialogues "The Philebus" and "The Laws."

Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics

Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics PDF Author: E. Feser
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137367903
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book

Book Description
Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics is a collection of new and cutting-edge essays by prominent Aristotle scholars and Aristotelian philosophers on themes in ontology, causation, modality, essentialism, the metaphysics of life, natural theology, and scientific and philosophical methodology.

Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics

Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics PDF Author: Hans Joachim Krämer
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791404331
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book

Book Description
This is a book about the relationship of the two traditions of Platonic interpretation -- the indirect and the direct traditions, the written dialogues and the unwritten doctrines. Kramer, who is the foremost proponent of the Tubingen School of interpretation, presents the unwritten doctrines as the crown of Plato's system and the key revealing it. Kramer unfolds the philosophical significance of the unwritten doctrines in their fullness. He demonstrates the hermeneutic fruitfulness of the unwritten doctrines when applied to the dialogues. He shows that the doctrines are a revival of the presocratic theory renovated and brought to a new plane through Socrates. In this way, Plato emerges as the creator of classical metaphysics. In the Third Part, Kramer compares the structure of Platonism, as construed by the Tubingen School, with current philosophical structures such as analytic philosophy, Hegel, phenomenology, and Heidegger. Of the five appendices, the most important presents English translations of the ancient testimonies on the unwritten doctrines. These include the "self-testimonies of Plato." There is also a bibliography on the problem of the unwritten doctrines.