Descartes and Augustine

Descartes and Augustine PDF Author: Stephen Menn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521012843
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
This book is a systematic study of Descartes' relation to Augustine. It offers a complete reevaluation of Descartes' thought and as such will be of major importance to all historians of medieval, neo-Platonic, or early modern philosophy. Stephen Menn demonstrates that Descartes uses Augustine's central ideas as a point of departure for a critique of medieval Aristotelian physics, which he replaces with a new, mechanistic anti-Aristotelian physics. Special features of the book include a reading of the Meditations, a comprehensive historical and philosophical introduction to Augustine's thought, a detailed account of Plotinus, and a contextualization of Descartes' mature philosophical project which explores both the framework within which it evolved and the early writings, to show how the collapse of the early project drove Descartes to the writings of Augustine.

Thought's Ego in Augustine and Descartes

Thought's Ego in Augustine and Descartes PDF Author: Gareth B. Matthews
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801427756
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
In his concise and ambitious book, Gareth B. Matthews explores the implications of doing philosophy in the first person. He focuses on the most notable attempts in the history of philosophy to take this perspective: Augustine's Confessions, perhaps the first significant autobiography in Western culture, and Soliloquies, a dialogue between himself and reason; and Descartes's Meditations and Discourse on Method. "By examining the first-personalization of philosophy in these two historical figures," he writes, "we can learn something important about our own philosophical options, and about those of any other thinker who dares, philosophically, to say 'I.'"

In the Self's Place

In the Self's Place PDF Author: Jean-Luc Marion
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804785627
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 447

Book Description
In the Self's Place is an original phenomenological reading of Augustine that considers his engagement with notions of identity in Confessions. Using the Augustinian experience of confessio, Jean-Luc Marion develops a model of selfhood that examines this experience in light of the whole of the Augustinian corpus. Towards this end, Marion engages with noteworthy modern and postmodern analyses of Augustine's most "experiential" work, including the critical commentaries of Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Marion ultimately concludes that Augustine has preceded postmodernity in exploring an excess of the self over and beyond itself, and in using this alterity of the self to itself, as a driving force for creative relations with God, the world, and others. This reading establishes striking connections between accounts of selfhood across the fields of contemporary philosophy, literary studies, and Augustine's early Christianity.

The Augustinian Tradition

The Augustinian Tradition PDF Author: Gareth B. Matthews
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520919580
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 419

Book Description
Augustine, probably the single thinker who did the most to Christianize the classical learning of ancient Greece and Rome, exerted a remarkable influence on medieval and modern thought, and he speaks forcefully and directly to twentieth-century readers as well. The most widely read of his writings today are, no doubt, his Confessions—the first significant autobiography in world literature—and The City of God. The preoccupations of those two works, like those of Augustine's less well-known writings, include self-examination, human motivation, dreams, skepticism, language, time, war, and history—topics that still fascinate and perplex us 1,600 years later. The Augustinian Tradition, like a number of recent single-authored books, expresses a new interest among contemporary philosophers in interpreting Augustine freshly for readers today. These articles, most of them written expressly for the book, present Augustine's ideas in a way that respects their historical context and the long history of their influence. Yet the authors, among whom are some of the best philosophers writing in English today, make clear the relevance of Augustine's ideas to present-day debates in philosophy, literary studies, and the history of ideas and religion. Students and scholars will find that these essays provide impressive evidence of the persisting vitality of Augustine's thought.

Augustine and Modernity

Augustine and Modernity PDF Author: Michael Hanby
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415284686
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
This text debates the Augustinian origins of modern subjectivity & the Christian genesis of Western nihilism.

Heidegger's Confessions

Heidegger's Confessions PDF Author: Ryan Coyne
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022620930X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
Heidegger's Paul -- The cogito out-of-reach -- The remains of Christian theology -- Testimony and the irretrievable in being and time -- Temporality and transformation, or Augustine through the turn -- On retraction -- Conclusion : difference and de-theologization.

Augustine and Spinoza

Augustine and Spinoza PDF Author: Milad Doueihi
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674050630
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 131

Book Description
Election and grace are two key concepts that not only have shaped the relations between Judaism and Christianity, but also have formed a cornerstone of the Western philosophical discourse on the evolution and progress of humanity. Though Augustine and Spinoza can be shown to share a methodological approach to these concepts, their conclusions remain radically different. For the Church Father Augustine, grace defines human nature by the potential availability of divine intervention, thus setting the stage for the institutional and political legitimacy of the Church, the Christian state, and its justice. For Spinoza, on the other hand, election represents a unique but local form of divine intervention, marked by geography and historical context. Milad Doueihi maps out the consequences of such an encounter between these two thinkers in terms of their philosophical heritage and its continued relevance for contemporary discussions of religious diversity and autonomy. Augustine asserts a theological foundation for the political, whereas Spinoza radically separates philosophy, and thus authority, from theology in order to solicit a political democracy. In this sharply argued and deeply learned book, Milad Doueihi shows us how interconnections between the two thinkers have come to shape Western philosophy.

Descartes and Augustine

Descartes and Augustine PDF Author: Stephen Philip Menn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1068

Book Description


Character and Conversion in Autobiography

Character and Conversion in Autobiography PDF Author: Patrick Riley
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813922928
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
Challenging predominant theories of subjectivity in autobiography, Character and Conversion in Autobiography recognizes subjectivity as a dynamic process and suggests a redefinition of how we examine character and life writing.

Augustinian Cartesian Index

Augustinian Cartesian Index PDF Author: Zbigniew Janowski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description