Religion & Philosophy

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 393 pages. This is the first study of the reception of the apocryphal Second Book of Esdras from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The author discusses the concepts of biblical apocrypha and canonicity in connection with the increasingly critical attitude to religious authority that developed with the humanists and intensified with the Reformation.

Hardcover. Leiden/Boston, Brill, 1st, 2002, Hardcover, pictorial cloth, 242 pages. An acclaimed study - now available for the first time in English - investigates the relation between Thomas Hobbes? natural philosophy as represented in his Prima Philosophia (the second part of De Corpore (1655)) and the various currents of Renaissance and early modern Aristotelianism. Although Hobbes presents his mechanistic philosophy of nature as an outright replacement of Aristotelian physics, he continued to use the vocabulary and arguments of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Aristotelianism. Leijenhorst shows that while in some cases this common vocabulary hides profound conceptual innovations, in other cases Hobbes' self-proclaimed "new" philosophy is simply old wine in new sacks. Leijenhorst's book substantially enriches our insight in the complexity of the rise of modern philosophy and the way it struggled with the Aristotelian heritage. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes , 1st, 2003, Hardcover set, two volumes complete, black cloth with red and gilt titles on spine, 1116 pages, ribbon bookmarks. No slipcase. In this Dictionary, more than four hundred biographical entries encompass all the Dutch thinkers who exercised a major influence on the intellectual life of the Golden Age, as well as those who developed their ideas and beliefs through interaction with other scholars. Additional entries describe foreign philosophers who lived in the country temporarily and whose work was influenced by their stay. These include John Locke, Rene Descartes and Pierre Bayle. Ther is some pencil marking to the endpapers, mostly in Vol. 1. Otherwise clean, tight copies. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press , 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 283 pages. This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the philosophical system of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's importance is widely recognized and is essential for understanding early modern philosophers and scientists such as Locke, Leibniz and Newton. Offering a systematic overview of his contributions, LoLordo situates Gassendi's views within the context of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century natural philosophy as represented by a variety of intellectual traditions, including scholastic Aristotelianism, Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the emerging mechanical philosophy. LoLordo's work will be essential reading for historians of early modern philosophy and science. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Mansfield MA, The Franciscan Archive , 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 870 pages. Color frontis, ribbon marker, clean bright copy. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two softcover volumes: Vol. 1: Books 1-V, 364 pages. Vol. 2: Books VI-X and Indexes, 531 pages. Previous owner's name, otherwise clean. James Adam (1860-1907) was a Scottish classics scholar who taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A strong defender of the importance of Greek philosophy in a well-rounded education, Adam published a number of Plato's works including Protagoras and Crito. This two-volume critical edition of the Republic (1902) was another major contribution to the field. Though his preface claims 'an editor cannot pretend to have exhausted its significance by means of a commentary,' Adam's depth of knowledge and erudite analysis of the Greek text ensured that his edition remained the standard reference for decades to follow, and it remains a thought-provoking evaluation of one of the great works of Western thought.

Hardcover. UK, Sheffield Academic Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with gilt lettering, 256 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 313 pages. The Consolations of Philosophy by Boethius, whose English translators include King Alfred, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I, ranks among the most remarkable books to be written by a prisoner awaiting the execution of a tyrannical death sentence. Its interpretation is bound up with his other writings on mathematics and music, on Aristotelian and propositional logic, and on central themes of Christian dogma. Chadwick begins by tracing the career of Boethius, a Roman rising to high office under the Gothic King Theoderic the Great, and suggests that his death may be seen as a cruel by-product of Byzantine ambitions to restore Roman imperial rule after its elimination in the West in AD 476. Subsequent chapters examine in detail his educational programme in the liberal arts designed to avert a threatened collapse of culture and his ambition to translate into Latin everything he could find on Plato and Aristotle. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise bright and clean.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 268 pages. A facsimile reprint of the 1690 edition. One of 9 volumes in More's collected works. Name on front fly leaf otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, Revised Ed., 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 592 pages, b&w illustrations. Lady Anne Conway was a remarkable woman who became a philosopher in her own right at a time when most women were denied even basic education. The Conway Letters is the record of her friendship with the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More, which began when he acted as her unofficial tutor in philosophy and lasted until her death. The letters cover a wide range of topics - personal, philosophical, religious, and social. They give a detailed picture of the More-Conway circle, including such figures as Jeremy Taylor, Ralph Cudworth, Robert Boyle, and Francis Mercury van Helmont, as well as Lady Conway's Quaker associates, George Keith and William Penn. The letters are thus a valuable source for mid-seventeenth-century history, and especially for the intellectual history of the period. Revised from the 1930 printing with new material and introduction by Sarah Hutton. Name on front fly leaf, small chip/tear to top spine of the dust jacket.

Softcover. NY, Penguin Books, reprint, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 1074 pages. James was a vegetarian, wore only linen clothing, bathed daily at dawn in cold water, and was a life-long Nazirite. In this profound and provocative work of scholarly detection, eminent biblical scholar Robert Eisenman introduces a startling theory about the identity of James--the brother of Jesus, who was almost entirely marginalized in the New Testament.Drawing on long-overlooked early Church texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Eisenman reveals in this groundbreaking exploration that James, not Peter, was the real successor to the movement we now call "Christianity." In an argument with enormous implications, Eisenman identifies Paul as deeply compromised by Roman contacts. James is presented as not simply the leader of Christianity of his day, but the popular Jewish leader of his time, whose death triggered the Uprising against Rome--a fact that creative rewriting of early Church documents has obscured. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 403 pages plus a 27 page addenda. A facsimile printing of the 1671 edition. Some 100 illustrations to text showing physical or geometrical calculations. Henry More (1614-1687), was an influential Jesuit, Neoplatonist, and philosopher. This work on metaphysics profoundly influenced the development of Newton's thought, "It seems undeniable that Newton read and was influenced by More's views on space and time, as presented in the Enchiridion metaphysicum. Like More, Newton also believed that for something to exist it must exist in space, and he identified the immensity of infinite space with the extension of God the similarities between their views of space and time, and their relationship to God, guarantees More's place in the history of science." Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean and bright.

Softcover. London, Routledge, reprint, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 287 pages. St Anselm's archiepiscopal career, 1093-1109, spanned the reigns of two kings: William Rufus and the early years of Henry I. As the second archbishop of Canterbury after the Norman Conquest, Anselm strove to extend the reforms of his teacher and mentor at Bec, and his predecessor at Canterbury, Archbishop Lanfranc. Exploring Anselm's thirty years as Prior and Abbot of the large, rich, Norman monastery of Bec, and teacher in its school, this book notes the wealth of experiences which prepared Anselm for his archiepiscopal career--in particular Bec's missionary attitude toward England. Sally Vaughn examines Anselm's intellectual strengths as a teacher, philosopher and theologian: exploring his highly regarded theological texts, including his popular Prayers and Meditations, and how his statesmanship was influenced as he dealt with conflict with the antagonistic King William Rufus. Clean copy.

Softcover. Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 211 pages. Edited and with an Introduction by Blair Worden. This edition brings back into print, after two and a half centuries, the pioneering work of English republicanism, Marchamont Nedham's The Excellencie of a Free-State, which was written in the wake of the execution of King Charles I. First published in 1656, and compiled from previously written editorials in the parliamentarian newsbook Mercurius Politicus, The Excellencie of a Free-State addressed a dilemma in English politics, namely, what kind of government should the Commonwealth adopt? Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with minor edge wear, 396 pages. Volume V ONLY. This is the fifth volume in a six-volume translation of the major writings of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), a philosopher and historian of culture who has had a significant, and continuing, influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. In addition to his landmark works on the theories of history and the human sciences, Dilthey made important contributions to hermeneutics and phenomenology, aesthetics, psychology, and the methodology of the social sciences. This volume presents Dilthey's principal writings on aesthetics and the philosophical understanding of poetry, as well as representative essays of literary criticism. Name on front fly leaf, light pencil marking to about 25 pages in middle of the book.

Softcover. Lincoln NE, Bison Books, reprint, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 324 pages. "Among the heretics of every age, we find men who are filled with the highest kind of religious feeling," Albert Einstein said. He might have been referring to the sixteenth-century Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was tried by two Inquisitions and burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. Bruno's most representative work, Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast), published in an atmosphere of secrecy in 1584 and never referred to as anything but blasphemous for more than a century, was singled out by the church tribunal at the summation of his final trial. That is hardly surprising because the book is a daring indictment of the corruption of the social and religious institutions of his day. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 340 pages. Proclus was the most important figure in Neo-Platonism when it was established as the dominant philosophy of Late Antiquity. Neo-Platonism is not only the final flowering of Greek thought but also the mode in which it was transmitted to the Byzantine, Western European and Islamic civilisations. Stripping away the complexities surrounding this traditionally difficult philosopher, Lucas Siorvanes takes the reader through Proclus' metaphysics and theory of knowledge with original research examining all aspects of Proclus' work. This is the first book which places Proclus in his complete intellectual context and sheds new light on aspects of Proclus' thought, to which previous scholars have rarely done justice. - Presents a general survey of Proclus and his Neo-Platonism- Introduces results of original research, mainly on his metaphysics, theory of knowledge and science. All areas of Proclus' philosophical interest are covered including religion, physics, astronomy, mathematics and poetry. His philosophy is found in all these because concern with being and truth is central to all. Also introduced is the neglected area of his natural philosophy with its remarkable freshness of thought punctuated by the rejection of Aristotelian science and Ptolemy's cosmology. In this book, Proclus is shown as much more than just a metaphysician. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Pickering & Chatto, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth, spine with maroon title block and gilt lettering, 448 pages. Vol. 4 ONLY of a six volume set. Clean, bright copy, no markings.

Hardcover. NY, Garland Publishing, reprint, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Seven hardcover volumes, orange cloth covers, A reprint of the 1805 edition published in London. Name on front fly leafs, light pencil marking to many text pages. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Oxford University Press, reprint, 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 480 pages. Reprint of the 1914 first edition. Later essays by this important British philosopher, mostly published in Mind in the 1900s & 1910s. Bradley is best-known for his influential book Appearance & Reality; in a brief concluding remark he notes the essays appearing here are all linked by his idea of Reality, which, he says, his opponents have failed to understand.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Augustan Reprint Society, reprint, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 96 pages. Introduction by David R. Anderson before a facsimile reprint of the 1728 printing. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Garland Publishing, reprint, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, beige boards with maroon lettering on the spine, 568 pages. A facsimile reprint of the 1941 edition published in London. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Wilshire Book Company, reprint, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 167 pages. Author name spelled Wynn on cover and Winn on title page. Has 1939 and 1956 dates on the copyright page. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, Rider & Co., 1st, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers, black lettering on spine, 143 pages. A spiritual guidebook that explores the four major initiations of the human soul. The book delves into the spiritual journey of the soul and its evolution through the four initiations: Birth, Baptism, Transfiguration, and Resurrection. Conroy draws on the teachings of ancient wisdom traditions and modern spiritual practices to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of these initiations and their significance in the spiritual path. The book is written in a clear and accessible language and provides practical exercises and meditations to help readers deepen their spiritual practice. Name on front fly leaf, inscription on dedication page. Otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. UK, Blackwell Publishers, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 310 pages. This volume is the first to address Foucault's influence and the potential of his work in the understanding and the writing of history. It does so critically and accessibly. Scholars from the United States, France and Italy, including historians, sociologists, an anthropologist and a philosopher, range over Foucault's writing - on love and the family in classical antiquity, the constitution of the self, the history of science and sexuality, to the origins of the liberal state. But, true to its subject, this book does not conceive of history divorced from philosophy: it explores how Foucault's understanding of the past relates to his ideas of truth, ethics, knowledge and action. All-in-all, the book offers a series of mind-opening perspectives on Foucault's work, on the past, and on the present. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 2nd Ed., 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket, 241 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Brattleborough VT, J. Holbrook, 1819, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 336 pages, black leather binding with gilt lettering and decorations on spine. Early Vermont imprint. Previous owner's inscription on blank prelim page, otherwise clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. US, Lapis Press, 1st thus, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 237 pages. Light sun-fade and shelf-wear to dust jacket with slight scratch to rear cover. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, William White & Co, 3rd, 1862, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 344 pages. Black boards with embossed pictorial border, gilt titles to spine. Previous owner's signature to front endpaper, light rubbing to covers, top third of outside of front hinge cracked, mild edgewear, pages crisp and unmarked; overall, a very neat, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Garland Publishing, reprint, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt titles on spine, 347 pages. A reprint of the 1912 London edition. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf. Otherwise, tight clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1st Edition, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 381 pages. Hardcover. Deep red cover boards, gilt title on spine and front cover board, label (price tag?) residue to bottom right corner of back cover board. B/w illustrations. Clean copy.

Softcover. Spain, Editorial Escudo de Oro. S.A., 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 93 pages. Softcover. Mild soiling throughout. An otherwise unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Color photographs throughout.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 1176 pages. We live in an age of disenchantment. The number of self-professed "atheists" continues to grow. Yet many still feel an intense spiritual longing for a connection to what Aristotle called the "eternal and divine." For those who do, but demand a God that is compatible with their modern ideals, a new theology is required. This is what Anthony Kronman offers here, in a book that leads its readers away from the inscrutable Creator of the Abrahamic religions toward a God whose inexhaustible and everlasting presence is that of the world itself. Kronman defends an ancient conception of God, deepened and transformed by Christian belief--the born-again paganism on which modern science, art, and politics all vitally depend. Brilliantly surveying centuries of Western thought--from Plato to Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant, from Spinoza to Nietzsche, Darwin, and Freud--Kronman recovers and reclaims the God we need today. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, like new. A comprehensive and authoritative anthology of Rousseau's important early political writings in faithful English translations. This volume includes the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts and the Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men - the so-called First and Second Discourses - together with Rousseau's extensive Replies to critics of these Discourses; the Essay on the Origin of Languages; the Letter to Voltaire on Providence; as well as several minor but illuminating writings - the Discourse on Heroic Virtue and the essay Idea of the Method in the Composition of a Book. In these as well as in his later writings, Rousseau probes the very premises of modern thought. His influence was wide-reaching from the very first, and it has continued to grow since his death. The American and the French Revolutions were profoundly affected by his thought, as were Romanticism and Idealism. 437 pages.

Hardcover. London, Ruskin House, George Allen and Unwin, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn dust jacket, 194 pages. This study traces the origin of Buddhism in Brahmanism, and fixes its relationship to Hinduism, describing and stressing the basic importance of Buddhist contemplation. No markings.

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 430 pages. As well as being considered the greatest English political philosopher, Hobbes has traditionally been thought of as a purely secular thinker, highly critical of all religion. In this provocative new study, Professor Martinich argues that conventional wisdom has been misled. In fact, he shows that religious concerns pervade Leviathan and that Hobbes was really intent on providing a rational defense of the Calvinistic Church of England that flourished under the reign of James I. Professor Martinich presents a close reading of Leviathan in which he shows that, for Hobbes, Christian doctrine is not politically destabilizing and is consistent with modern science. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Routledge, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 289 pages. Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) is one of the most important philosophers of the seventeenth century after Descartes. A pioneer of rationalism, he was one of the first to champion and to further Cartesian ideas. Andrew Pyle places Malebranche's work in the context of Descartes and other philosophers, and also in its relation to ideas about faith and reason. He examines the entirety of Malebranche's writings, including the famous The Search After Truth, which was admired and criticized by both Leibniz and Locke. Pyle presents an integrated account of Malebranche's central theses, occasionalism and 'vision in God', before exploring and assessing Malebranche's contribution to debates on physics and biology, and his views on the soul, self-knowledge, grace and the freedom of the will. This penetrating and wide-ranging study will be of interest to not only philosophers, but also to historians of science and philosophy, theologians, and students of the Enlightenment or seventeenth century thought.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, reprint, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 690 pages, folding table. Greek & English text. biblio. index. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean. Originally published in 1949.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 239 pages. This book tells for the first time the long and complex story of the involvement of Locke's suggestion that God could add to matter the power of thought in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in the growth of French materialism. There is a discussion of the 'affaire de Prades', in which Locke's name was linked with a censored thesis at the Faculty of Theology in Paris. The similarities and differences between English "thinking matter" and the French "mati`ere pensante" of the philosophes are also discussed. Name o front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Netherlands, Springer, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket, 289 pages. This collection of new essays on John Locke by a constellation of leading Locke scholars focuses on his philosophy, biography, sources and influence. The topics discussed here include his theory of ideas, his debt to Stoicism, his relations the Dry Club and with his translator, Pierre Coste, and the hitherto overlooked critique by Thomas Beconsall. A major emphasis of the collection is the relationship between Locke and seventeenth-century philosophers, Descartes, Hobbes, Cudworth, Bayle, Malebranche and Leibniz. The coverage of Locke's legacy extends to into the eighteenth-century legacy as far as Rousseau and Kant. Ink name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Zurich, Georg Olms, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 220 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the front fly leaf. This volume consists of Yasuhiko Tomida's notable essays on Locke, Berkeley, and Kant, as well as a thought-provoking article written in collaboration with an experimental physicist. Tomida asserts that the logical space of the theory of ideas is originally "naturalistic" in Quine's sense of the term and that Berkeley and Kant 'distort' it in their respective ways, thus offering a wholly new viewpoint concerning the historiography of the theory of ideas.

Softcover. Firenze IT, Le Monnier , 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 299 pages. ITALIAN TEXT. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 384 pages. Plato is the best known and most widely studied of all the ancient Greek philosophers. Malcolm Schofield, a leading scholar of ancient philosophy, offers a lucid and accessible guide to Plato's political thought, enormously influential and much discussed in the modern world as well as the ancient. Schofield discusses Plato's ideas on education, democracy and its shortcomings, the role of knowledge in government, utopia and the idea of community, money and its grip on the psyche, and ideological uses of religion. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan Company, 1st, 1936, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth with gilt lettering on spine faded, 271 pages. The book covers the life and work of Bishop Butler and the impact his philosophy had on the Age of Reason. Name, date on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Eugene OR, Wipf & Stock Publishers, reprint, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 176 pages.

Softcover. Boston, Reidel Publishing, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 314 pages. The goal of the present volume is to discuss the notion of a 'conceptual framework' or 'conceptual scheme', which has been dominating much work in the analysis and justification of knowledge in recent years. More specifi- cally, this volume is designed to clarify the contrast between two competing approaches in the area of problems indicated by this notion: On the one hand, we have the conviction, underlying much present-day work in the philosophy of science, that the best we can hope for in the justifi- cation of empirical knowledge is to reconstruct the conceptual means actually employed by science, and to develop suitable models for analyzing conceptual change involved in the progress of science. This view involves the assumption that we should stop taking foundational questions of epistemology seriously and discard once and for all the quest for uncontrovertible truth. The result- ing program of justifying epistemic claims by subsequently describing patterns of inferentially connected concepts as they are at work in actual science is closely connected with the idea of naturalizing epistemology, with concep- tual relativism, and with a pragmatic interpretation of knowledge. On the other hand, recent epistemology tends to claim that no subsequent reconstruction of actually employed conceptual frameworks is sufficient for providing epistemic justification for our beliefs about the world. This second claim tries to resist the naturalistic and pragmatic approach to epistemology and insists on taking the epistemological sceptic seriously. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 2nd pr., 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 450 pages. The rise of atheism in the modern world is a religious phenomenon unprecedented in history, both in the number of its adherents and in the security of its cultural establishment. How did so revolutionary a conviction as this arise? What can theological reflection learn from this massive shift in religious consciousness? In this book, Michael J. Buckley investigates the origins and development of modern atheism and argues convincingly that its impetus lies paradoxically in the very attempts to counter it. Although modern atheism finds its initial exponents in Denis Diderot and Paul d'Holbach in the eighteenth century, their works bring to completion a dialectical process that reaches back to the theologians and philosophers of an earlier period. During the seventeenth century, theologians such as Leonard Lessius and Marin Mersenne determined that in order to defend the existence of god, religious apologetics must become philosophy, surrendering as its primary warrant any intrinsically religious experience or evidence. The most influential philosophers of the period, Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton, and the theologians who followed them accepted this settlement, and the new sciences were enlisted to provide the foundation for religion. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Baton Rouge LA, Louisiana State University Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, torn dust jacket, 428 pages. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.