Religion & Philosophy

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 250 pages. Priscillian (died c.385) was a wealthy nobleman of Roman Hispania who promoted a strict form of Christian asceticism. He became bishop of Avila in 380. Certain practices of his followers (such as meeting at country villas instead of attending church) were denounced at the Council of Zaragoza in 380. Tensions between Priscillian and bishops opposed to his views continued, as well as political manoeuvring by both sides. Around 385, Priscillian was charged with sorcery and executed by authority of the Emperor Maximus. The ascetic movement Priscillianism is named after him, and continued in Hispania and Gaul until the late 6th century. Tractates by Priscillian and close followers, which had seemed lost, were discovered in 1885 and published in 1889. Clean, bright copy.

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.

Hardcover. Bucknell University Press, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 184 pages. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Victor Nuovo. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 2000, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 398 pages. The seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community of Amsterdam the age of twenty-four for 'horrendous heresies', and was eventually reviled by all religious authorities for claiming that human beings are parts of a single, unified nature, that God is identical with nature, and that reason, not revelation, supplies the truth of any aspect of God. Undeterred, he made this thesis the basis for a rational crusade against superstition and prejudice. Dr Gullan-Whur's biography, the first for twenty-eight years, shows how Spinoza's central philosophical beliefs developed within the context of his own life. Drawing on very recent scholary research and making detailed reference to primary sources, some not previously explored, the author focuses on the philosopher's attempt to act solely through reason in the face of turbulent personal and national circumstances. This new approach demolishes the myth that Spinoza was a lofty ascetic. It exposes his emotional and sexual vulnerabilit arrogance and misogyny, yet shows his living philosophical experiment to be shrply relevant today. Clean copy.

Softcover. Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 639 pages. Christian apologists as early as St. Augustine have appealed to Christ's words in Luke 14:23-'Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled'- as a mandate for forcible conversion. In 1685, Protestant philosopher and critic Pierre Bayle wrote a compelling and thorough critique of this belief, contending that all coercion in religious matters is morally untenable as being inconsistent with reason. His Philosophical Commentary establishes the case against this supposed literal interpretation of Luke 14:23, arguing that reason must govern all interpretations of Scripture. According to Bayle, the erroneous conscience has the same rights as the enlightened one, his central tenet being a doctrine of mutual toleration grounded in a theory of the morality of conscience-namely, that all God requires is that people act on what seems to them to be the truth. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 344 pages. Edited by Raymond Klibansky and Elizabeth Anscombe.

Hardcover. Edinburgh, T & T Clark, Revised Ed., 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 606 pages. Volume 2 ONLY. A New English Edition revised and edited by Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar and Matthew Black. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 354 pages. From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the "Problem of Paganism," which this book identifies and examines for the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia, and, later, America and China. Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers-philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci-tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 206 pages. Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) was the most important theorist of the humanist movement. He wrote a major work on Latin style, On Elegance in the Latin Language, which became a battle-standard in the struggle for the reform of Latin across Europe, and Dialectical Disputations, a wide-ranging attack on scholastic logic. His most famous work is On the Donation of Constantine, an oration in which Valla uses new philological methods to attack the authenticity of the most important document justifying the papacy's claims to temporal rule. It appears here in a new translation with introduction and notes by G. W. Bowersock, based on the critical text of Wolfram Setz (1976). This volume also includes a text and translation of the Constitutum Constantini, commonly known as the Donation of Constantine.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 249 pages. Plato's late dialogues have often been neglected because they lack the literary charm of his earlier masterpieces. Charles Kahn proposes a unified view of these diverse and difficult works, from the Parmenides and Theaetetus to the Sophist and Timaeus, showing how they gradually develop the framework for Plato's late metaphysics and cosmology. The Parmenides, with its attack on the theory of Forms and its baffling series of antinomies, has generally been treated apart from the rest of Plato's late work. Kahn shows that this perplexing dialogue is the curtain-raiser on Plato's last metaphysical enterprise: the step-by-step construction of a wider theory of Being that provides the background for the creation story of the Timaeus. This rich study, the natural successor to Kahn's earlier Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, will interest a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and science. Name and date on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st thus, 1953, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt stamping, First one-volume edition, 300 and 332 pages. Spine lettering faded. Good sound copy, but pencil marking throughout.

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. Boston, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, in a bright dust tahathas a closed tear along spine edge, 223 pages. Name on front fly leaf, light pencil marking to 5 pages.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 406 pages. A bold and beautifully written exploration of the "afterlife" of God, showing how apparently secular habits of mind in fact retain the structure of religious thought. Once in the West, our lives were bounded by religion. Then we were guided out of the darkness of faith, we are often told, by the cold light of science and reason. To be modern was to reject the religious for the secular and rational. In a bold retelling of philosophical history, Michael Rosen explains the limits of this story, showing that many modern and apparently secular ways of seeing the world were in fact profoundly shaped by religion. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages. Light sun-fade to dust jacket spine, else a clean, tight copy. Michael Slote challenges the long-dominant conception of individual rationality, which has to a large extent shaped the very way we think about the essential problems and nature of rationality, morality, and the relations between them. He contests the accepted view by appealing to a set of real-life examples, claiming that our intuitive reaction to these examples illustrates a significant and prevalent, if not always dominant, way of thinking. Slote argues that common sense recognizes that one can reach a point where "enough is enough," be satisfied with what one has, and, hence, rationally decline an optimizing alternative. He suggests that, in the light of common sense, optimizing behavior is often irrational.

Hardcover. NY, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 256 pages. Originally published in 1971, this volume was created to commemorate the bicentenary of Hegel's birth in 1770. Thirteen essays are included from experts with diverse approaches, concentrating on the central issues of Hegel's political philosophy, and covering all of the major political works. These essays demonstrate the vitality of Hegel's philosophical perspective, engaging the reader and providing a way into the often difficult explication of his ideas. Whilst this is a commemorative edition, and the views put forward are broadly sympathetic, a critical distance is maintained, allowing for numerous fresh insights. Accessible and highly informative, this book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Hegelian thought and its political implications.

Softcover. Albany NY, State University of New York Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Engaging the Philosophical Contributions of Calvin O. Schrag. Softcover, 214 pages. Providing developments and advancements concerning the thought of Calvin O. Schrag, this book includes the first full-length interview with the American continental philosopher and covers his long and illustrative philosophical contribution to thinking about the consequences of communication. The influence of Schrag's work is significant and broad, and these nine thought-provoking pieces by leading scholars whose work has been influenced by his philosophy presents the best contemporary thought on communicative praxis. Encompassing questions of democracy, the public and private spheres, and relations inside organizational structures, to questions of giving and ethics, rhetoric and narrative, suffering and love, this is a wellspring of insight and provocation for both those already familiar with Schrag's work and those seeking a keen invitation to his many critical reflections. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill NC, University of North Carolina, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 349 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on the title page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 221 pages. Faint foxing to top edge, else a clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, The Free Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 615 pages. Previous owners name on front endpaper. Dust jacket with spine fading, standard wear. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, John Wiley & Sons, reprint, 1888, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 452 pages. Blue cloth covers with gilt titles and black embossed illustration, b&w tissue-protected frontispiece of Ruskin's portrait, brown decorated endpapers, top edge gilt. Slight edgewear and rubbing to covers, previous owner's inscription on blank preview page, a few brown markings to right edge of page block, pages crisp and otherwise unmarked, stiff binding; overall, a very clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Malden, NA, Wiley-Blackwell, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 272 pages. Softcover. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear.

Hardcover. Oxford, England, Clarendon Press, 1st Edition, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 627 pages. Hardcover. Sequel to Hegel's Development: Toward the Sunlight 1770-1801(Clarendon Press, 1972). Black cover boards, gilt title and design on spine. Pages clean and bright. Binding tight. Spine straight. Dust jacket unclipped, faded (shelfwear), light agewear, glossy. Harris distinguishes three main phases in Hegel's development over this period: the period of callaboration with Schelling (1801-3); the appearance of a three-part 'phenomenological' system (1803-50; and the emergence of the mature system.

Hardcover. London, UK, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Reprint, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 404 pages. Hardcover. Volume 2 ONLY. Red cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine. Foldout family trees of the House of Medici, etc. attached. Previous owner's notes/underlining on a few pages in pencil. Top edge dyed orange. Dust jacket price clipped. Some tape outlines on front flyleaf and back page. First published in 1950, this classic translation by the late Leslie J. Waker has been out of print for some years. It is now reissued complete, together with an introductory essay by Cecil H. Clough which places Father Walker's contribution in the context of current researches.

Hardcover. NY/London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 350 pages. The essays in Intention and Identity explore themes in Finnis' work touched on only lightly, if at all, in Natural Law and Natural Rights, developing profound accounts of personal identity and existence; group identity and common good; and intention and choice as action- and self-shaping. In his many-faceted study of what it is to be a human person, and a human community, Finnis not only engages with contemporary philosophers and bioethicists such as Peter Singer, Michael Lockwood and John Harris, with thinkers from other traditions such as Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), and with judges in the highest courts. He also offers illuminating and deeply considered readings of Shakespeare and Aquinas, and debates with Roger Scruton, Joseph Raz, Hans Kelsen, John Rawls, Glanville Williams, Richard Posner, Ronald Dworkin and others. The role of intention in the criminal law and the law of civil wrongs is searchingly explored through case-law, as are judicial attempts to understand conditional and preparatory intentions. Moral or bioethical issues discussed include in vitro fertilization, cloning, abortion, euthanasia, and 'brain death', patriotism, multi-culturalism andimmigration.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 3rd Ed., 1891, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 3/4 leather over marbled boards, ribbed spine with gilt lettering. Frontispiece with tissue guard. Marbled endpapers with gilt pattern. Black and white plates and illustrations. 349 pages. Front cover starting to split from spine but still holding. Mild edgewear to covers, bookplate on inside front cover, otherwise clean copy.

Softcover. Collegeville MN, Liturgical Press, 1st, 2021, Softcover, pictorial wrappers, 388 pages. In this book, David N. Bell explores what Cistercian writers and preachers have said about Mary from the time of the founding fathers of the Order to Armand-Jean de Rance, who introduced the Cistercian Strict Observance and who died in 1700. This work is divided into three parts. The first part presents some selective background material on Mary that is necessary for understanding where the Cistercian writers are coming from and the sources and ideas they are using. The next eight chapters, the second part of the book, examine the Marian ideas of Cistercian writers from Bernard of Clairvaux to a number of visionaries, both male and female, who take us to the very end of the thirteenth century. There is then a gap of more than three centuries--the reasons are given at the end of chapter 12--before we arrive at the birth of Armand-Jean de Rance in 1626. The final chapters--part 3 of the book--summarize the life of Rance, examine the place of Mary at La Trappe, and present annotated translations of Rance's five conferences for three Marian feasts: the Nativity of Mary, the Annunciation, and the Assumption. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Syracuse University, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 272 pages. Clean copy.

Softcover. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 2nd pr., 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 256 pages. "The availability of a paperback version of Boyle's philosophical writings selected by M. A. Stewart will be a real service to teachers, students, and scholars with seventeenth-century interests. The editor has shown excellent judgment in bringing together many of the most important works and printing them, for the most part, in unabridged form. The texts have been edited responsibly with emphasis on readability. . . . Of special interest in connection with Locke and with the reception of Descarte's Corpuscularianism, to students of the Scientific Revolution and of the history of mechanical philosophy, and to those interested in the relations among science, philosophy, and religion. In fact, given the imperfections in and unavailability of the eighteenth-century editions of Boyle's works, this collection will benefit a wide variety of seventeenth-century scholars."

Softcover. Ontario CAN, Broadview Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 365 pages. An important work in the debate between materialists and dualists, the public correspondence between Anthony Collins and Samuel Clarke provided the framework for arguments over consciousness and personal identity in eighteenth-century Britain. In Clarke's view, mind and consciousness are so unified that they cannot be compounded into wholes or divided into parts, so mind and consciousness must be distinct from matter. Collins, by contrast, was a perceptive advocate of a materialist account of mind, who defended the possibility that thinking and consciousness are emergent properties of the brain.Appendices include philosophical writings that influenced, and responded to, the correspondence. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st , 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with light edgewear. 409 pages with index. The philosopher and historian of culture Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has had a significant and continuing influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. explanation. This title presents some of his most important works. Light pecil marking to about 12 pages, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 175 pages. Despite recent advances in Locke scholarship, philosophers and political theorists have paid little attention to the relations among his three greatest works: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises of Government, and Epistola de Tolerantia. As a result our picture of Locke's thought is a curiously fragmented one. Toleration and Understanding in Locke argues that these works are unified by a concern to promote the cause of religious toleration. Making extensive use of Locke's neglected replies to Proast, Nicholas Jolley shows how Locke draws on his epistemological principles to criticize religious persecution - for Locke, since revelation is an object of belief, not knowledge, coercion by the state in religious matters is not morally justified. In this volume Jolley also seeks to show how the Two Treatises of Government and the letters for toleration adopt the same contractualist approach to political theory; Locke argues for toleration from the function of the state where this is determined by the decisions of rational contracting parties. Throughout, attention is paid to demonstrating the range of Locke's arguments for toleration and to defending them, where possible, against recent criticisms. The book includes an account of the development of Locke's views about religious toleration from the beginning to the end of his career; it also includes discussions of his individualism about knowledge and belief, his critique of religious enthusiasm, his commitment to the minimal creed, and his teachings about natural law. Locke emerges as a rather systematic thinker whose arguments are highly relevant to modern debates about religious toleration. Light pencil marking to some pages.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gold lettering on spine, 272 pages. The nine essays compiled in this work deal with the nature of philosophical arguments and the degree to which they are linguistic; the possibility and status of private experience; the criteria of personal identity and the relation between mind and body; the interplay of the referential and descriptive functions of language; the criteria of truth; the interpretation of judgments of probability; the distinction between generalizations of law and generalizations of fact; and the status of judgments about the future and the question of free will and determinism. New theories are advanced and old theories are criticized. Bright, clean copy, lacks dust jacket.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 252 pages. Peter Anstey presents an innovative study of John Locke's views on the method and content of natural philosophy--the study of the natural world. He argues that Locke was an advocate of the Experimental Philosophy: the new approach to natural philosophy championed by the scientists of the Royal Society who were opposed to speculative philosophy. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 314 pages. Black boards, red dust jacket with graphic illustration.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 4th pr., 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 656 pages. John Rawls's work on justice has drawn more commentary and aroused wider attention than any other work in moral or political philosophy in the twentieth century. Rawls is the author of two major treatises, A Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1993); it is said that A Theory of Justice revived political philosophy in the English-speaking world. But before and after writing his great treatises Rawls produced a steady stream of essays. Some of these essays articulate views of justice and liberalism distinct from those found in the two books. They are important in and of themselves because of the deep issues about the nature of justice, moral reasoning, and liberalism they raise as well as for the light they shed on the evolution of Rawls's views. Some of the articles tackle issues not addressed in either book. They help identify some of the paths open to liberal theorists of justice and some of the knotty problems which liberal theorists must seek to resolve. A complete collection of John Rawls's essays. Owner's name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Softcover. La Salle IL, Open Court, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 448 pages. In this 1710 treatise, Gottfried Liebniz's only book-length work, he applies the idea of philosophical 'optimism'- that we live in the best of all possible worlds-to the 'problem of evil'- If a benevolent God exists, why do terrible things happen? He explores the possibility that humanity's happiness is not necessarily part of God's plan.Much of Leibniz's thinking in the realm of the sciences flowed from his philosophy-he believed the universe to operate under simple, intelligible, interconnected rules. Understanding how he approached the metaphysical world and humanity's place in it is vital to understanding his contributions to modern science. The impact of the work of this German mathematician (1646-1716) on modern science and technology is all but incalculable. His notation for infinitesimal calculus-which he developed independently of Newton-remains in use today, and his invention of binary counting is the basis for modern computing. He was a powerfully influential philosopher as well, and is still considered, alongside Descartes and Spinoza, one of the great 17th-century rationalists.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Sandford Publications, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, limited to 750 copies, 182 pages, b&w illustrations, INSCRIBED BY DEWHURST on inside front cover, brown faux-leather. Thomas Willis (1621-1675) was an English doctor who played an important part in the history of anatomy, neurology and psychiatry, and was a founding member of the Royal Society.

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.

Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 180 pages. Using his intimate knowledge of John Locke's writings, John W. Yolton shows that Locke comprehends "human understanding" as a subset of a larger understanding of other intelligent Beings-angels, spirits, and an omniscient God. Locke's books on Christianity (The Reasonableness of Christianity and Paraphrases of St. Paul's Epistles) have received extensive analysis and commentary, but little attention has been given to the place of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in his religious and theological beliefs. Yolton shows that Locke's account of what it is to be human in that work is profoundly religious. Yolton's book opens with an attempt to sort out several important terms basic to Locke's account of identity: man, self, person, and soul. A number of rarely examined components of Locke's thought emerge: the nature of man, the nature of a human being, and the place of man in the universe among the other creatures. Some will be surprised to learn that the domain of God, angels, and spirits is a part of Locke's universe, where it is considered the hoped-for destination of the just. Name, date on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 204 pages. Translated by Roxanne Lapidus. Clean, bright copy. Although elected to the prestigious French Academy in 1990, Michel Serres has long been considered a maverick--a provocative thinker whose prolific writings on culture, science and philosophy have often baffled more than they have enlightened. In these five lively interviews with sociologist Bruno Latour, this increasingly important cultural figure sheds light on the ideas that inspire his highly original, challenging, and transdisciplinary essays. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with mild fading. 175 pages. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-271/0 BCE) has attracted much contemporary interest. Tim O'Keefe argues that the sort of freedom which Epicurus wanted to preserve is significantly different from the 'free will' which philosophers debate today, and that in its emphasis on rational action, has much closer affinities with Aristotle's thought than with current preoccupations. His original and provocative book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in Hellenistic philosophy. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 284 pages. Thirteen original essays by leading scholars explore aspects of Spinoza's ethical theory and, in doing so, deepen our understanding of the richly rewarding core of his system. Given its importance to his philosophical ambitions, it is surprising that his ethics has, until recently, received relatively little scholarly attention. Anglophone philosophy has tended to focus on Spinoza's contribution to metaphysics and epistemology, while philosophy in continental Europe has tended to show greater interest in his political philosophy. This tendency is problematic not only because it overlooks a central part of Spinoza's project, but also because it threatens to present a distorted picture of his philosophy. Moreover, Spinoza's ethics, like other branches of his philosophy, is complex, difficult, and, at times, paradoxical. The essays in this volume advance our understanding of his ethics and also help us to appreciate it as the centerpiece of his system. Clean copy.

Softcover. Leiden, Brill, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 65 pages with a b&w frontis. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 608 pages. This remarkable history tells the story of the independent city-republic of Basel in the nineteenth century, and of four major thinkers who shaped its intellectual history: the historian Jacob Burckhardt, the philologist and anthropologist Johann Jacob Bachofen, the theologian Franz Overbeck, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Focusing on the four professors from Basel, Switzerland, Gossman explains their work and how their environment influenced that work. Basel is a small city state of wealthy merchants who look at the dawn of "modern" Europe with non-disguised horror and disgust. The critique is both with Prussian style nationalism and with incipient "mass culture," here represented mostly by "the press" and newspapers. These thinkers provided a conservative critique that has proved profoundly influential to thinkers on both the left and right. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Ottawa CAN, Dovehouse Editions, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped with gilt lettering on spine and decoration to front cover. 379 pages. Originally written in 1645 by the author who was also known as Lord Herbert of Chirbury. Herbert's major work is the De veritate, prout distinguitur a revelatione, a verisimili, a possibili, et a falso](On Truth, as It Is Distinguished from Revelation, the Probable, the Possible, and the False). He published it on the advice of Grotius. In the De veritate Herbert produced the first purely metaphysical treatise, written by an Englishman. Herbert's real claim to fame is as the father of English Deism. The common notions of religion are the famous five articles, which became the charter of the English deists. Name, light pencil notations to front endpaper and about a dozen pages.