First published in English by Duquesne in 1969, this has become one of the classics of modern philosophy. Fully indexed.

    Written by a 12th- century thinker who was equally active as an original philosopher and as a Biblical and Talmudic scholar, it is both a classic of great historical importance and a work of living significance today.The Guide for the Perplexed was written for scholars who were bewildered by the conflict between religion and the scientific and philosophic thought of the day. It is concerned, basically, with finding a concord between the religion of the Old Testament and its commentaries, and Aristotelian philosophy. After analyzing the ideas of the Old Testament by means of "homonyms," Maimonides examines other reconciliations of religion and philosophy (the Moslem rationalists) and then proposes his own resolution with contemporary Aristotelianism. The Guide for the Perplexed was at once recognized as a masterwork, and it strongly influenced Jewish, Christian, and Moslem thought of the Middle Ages. It is necessary reading for any full comprehension of the thought of such scholastics as Aquinas and Scotus, and indispensable for everyone interested in the Middle Ages, Judaism, medieval philosophy, or the larger problems which Maimonides discusses.

    Crafted with the same care and insight as her award-winning novels, Absence of Mind challenges postmodern atheists who crusade against religion under the banner of science. In Robinson’s view, scientific reasoning does not denote a sense of logical infallibility, as thinkers like Richard Dawkins might suggest. Instead, in its purest form, science represents a search for answers. It engages the problem of knowledge, an aspect of the mystery of consciousness, rather than providing a simple and final model of reality.By defending the importance of individual reflection, Robinson celebrates the power and variety of human consciousness in the tradition of William James. She explores the nature of subjectivity and considers the culture in which Sigmund Freud was situated and its influence on his model of self and civilization. Through keen interpretations of language, emotion, science, and poetry, Absence of Mind restores human consciousness to its central place in the religion-science debate.

    In addition, the wide range of Leibniz's work--letters, published papers, and fragments on a variety of philosophical, religious, mathematical, and scientific questions over a fifty-year period--heightens the challenge of preparing an edition of his writings in English translation from the French and Latin.

    In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms.

    This edition presents the original 1799 text in English for the first time. Richard Crouter's introduction places the work in the milieu of early German Romanticism, Kant criticism, the revival of Spinoza and Plato studies, and theories of literary criticism and of the physical sciences. This fully annotated edition also contains a chronology and notes on further reading.

    Alternative cover for ISBN: 978-0060652944The Abolition of Man, Lewis uses his graceful prose, delightful humor, and keen understanding of the human mind to challenge our notions about how to best teach our children--and ourselves--not merely reading and writing, but also a sense of morality.

    Written by the greatest Italian poet and thinker of the 19th century, these timeless musings contain immense philosophical and psychological insight. Ranging from mankind to nature, social order to the individual soul, they reveal a man of brilliance struggling to reconcile all that he sees around him.

    For de Caussade, living in the moment meant having a complete trust and faith in God, for God's will defined and guided all things. The practical advice contained in his guidebook for the faithful was originally a series of letters written for the Nuns of the Visitation of Nancy, meant to help them navigate the confusing and difficult work of spiritual enlightenment, and comes together here in two distinct parts, one for the theoretical foundations of abandoning oneself to the present moment and one with practical advice on how to live such a life. Though a departure from the standard Christian perspective, Abandonment to Divine Providence remains a deeply spiritual work with a message that many Christians may find freeing and inspiring.

    That is, Death. The authors pry open the coffin lid on this one, looking at the Big D and also its prequel, Life, and its sequel, the Hereafter. Philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre have been wrestling with the meaning of death for as long as they have been wrestling with the meaning of life. Fortunately, humorists have been keeping pace with the major thinkers by creating gags about dying. Death's funny that way--it gets everybody's attention. Death has gotten a bad rap. It's time to take a closer look at what the Deep Thinkers have to say on the subject, and there are no better guides than Cathcart and Klein.

    In its power to touch the heart, to awaken consciousness, [The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying] is an inestimable gift.”—San Francisco Chronicle A newly revised and updated edition of the internationally bestselling spiritual classic, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, written by Sogyal Rinpoche, is the ultimate introduction to Tibetan Buddhist wisdom. An enlightening, inspiring, and comforting manual for life and death that the New York Times calls, “The Tibetan equivalent of [Dante’s] The Divine Comedy,” this is the essential work that moved Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions, to proclaim, “I have encountered no book on the interplay of life and death that is more comprehensive, practical, and wise.”

    This book by Jamie Smith is a small field guide to Taylor's genealogy of the secular, making it accessible to a wide array of readers. Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is also, however, a philosophical guidebook for practitioners a kind of how-to manual that ultimately offers guidance on how to live in a secular age. It's an adventure in self-understanding and a way to get our bearings in postmodernity. Whether one is proclaiming faith to the secularized or is puzzled that there continue to be people of faith in this day and age, this is a philosophical story meant to help us locate where we are and what's at stake.

    50,000 first printing.

    The Enneads bring together Neoplatonism--mystic passion and ideas from Greek philosophy--together with striking variants of the Trinity and other central Christian doctrines, to produce a highly original synthesis.

    He examines the critiques of religious belief, from the Epicureans through Nietzsche to contemporary anthropological inquiry, the assumptions that underlie them, and the counter-arguments of such apologists as Descartes, Leibniz, and Pascal.His exploration of the philosophy of religion covers the historical discussions of the nature and existence of evil, the importance of the concepts of failure and eternity to the religious impulse, the relationship between skepticism and mysticism, and the place of reason, understanding, and in models of religious thought. He examines why people, throughout known history, have cherished the idea of eternity and existence after death, and why this hope has been dependent on the worship of an eternal reality. He confronts the problems of meaning in religious language.