Interpreting Su Rez

During the seventeenth century Francisco Suárez was considered one of the greatest philosophers of the age. He was the last great Scholastic thinker and profoundly influenced the thought of his contemporaries within both Catholic and Protestant circles. Suárez contributed to all fields of philosophy, from natural law, ethics, and political theory to natural philosophy, the philosophy of mind, and philosophical psychology, and—most importantly—to metaphysics, and natural theology. Echoes of his thinking reverberate through the philosophy of Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, and beyond. Yet curiously Suárez has not been studied in detail by historians of philosophy. It is only recently that he has emerged as a significant subject of critical and historical investigation for historians of late medieval and early modern philosophy. Only in recent years have small sections of Suárez's magnum opus, the Metaphysical Disputations, been translated into English, French, and Italian. The historical task of interpreting Suárez's thought is still in its infancy. The Philosophy of Francisco Suárez is one of the first collections in English written by the leading scholars who are largely responsible for this new trend in the history of philosophy. It covers all areas of Suárez's philosophical contributions, and contains cutting-edge research which will shape and frame scholarship on Suárez for years to come—as well as the history of seventeenth-century generally. This is an essential text for anyone interested in Suárez, the seventeenth-century world of ideas, and late Scholastic or early modern philosophy.

In The Metaphysics of the Material World, Tad M. Schmaltz traces a particular development of the metaphysics of the material world in early modern thought. The route Schmaltz follows derives from a critique of Spinoza in the work of Pierre Bayle. Bayle charged in particular that Spinoza's monistic conception of the material world founders on the account of extension and its "modes" and parts that he inherited from Descartes, and that Descartes in turn inherited from late scholasticism, and ultimately from Aristotle. After an initial discussion of Bayle's critique of Spinoza and its relation to Aristotle's distinction between substance and accident, this study starts with the original re-conceptualization of Aristotle's metaphysics of the material world that we find in the work of the early modern scholastic Suárez. What receives particular attention is Suárez's introduction of the "modal distinction" and his distinctive account of the Aristotelian accident of "continuous quantity." This examination of Suárez is followed by a treatment of the connections of his particular version of the scholastic conception of the material world to the very different conception that Descartes offered. Especially important is Descartes's view of the relation of extended substance both to its modes and to the parts that compose it. Finally, there is a consideration of what these developments in Suárez and Descartes have to teach us about Spinoza's monistic conception of the material world. Of special concern here is to draw on this historical narrative to provide a re-assessment of Bayle's critique of Spinoza.

The volume contains the 23 papers selected for presentation at the ESOP '88 Conference, Nancy 1988. The theme of the ESOP conferences is the design, specification and implementation of programming languages and systems. Particular emphasis is placed on work in which an implemented system embodies an important concept or formal model of programming in such a way that its usefulness is demonstrated. Among the five sections of the volume, the one on language implementation contains the most papers. Here a rather wide spectrum of aspects, ranging from language implementation problems on parallel architectures and optimization of functional programs to new concepts for programming environments is covered. Another large section consists of papers in the area of algebraic specification and type concepts. The papers in this section are devoted to issues such as polymorphism, subtypes and notions of implementation and reuse for algebraic specifications. Two further sections are devoted to new language concepts and novel approaches to program development and verification.

Francisco Suárez is arguably the most important Neo-Scholastic philosopher and a vital link in the chain leading from medieval philosophy to that of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Long neglected by the Anglo-Saxon philosophical community, this sixteenth-century Jesuit theologian is now an object of intense scholarly attention. In this volume, Daniel Schwartz brings together essays by leading specialists which provide detailed treatment of some key themes of Francisco Suárez's philosophical work: God, metaphysics, meta-ethics, the human soul, action, ethics and law, justice and war. The authors assess the force of Suárez's arguments, set them within their wider argumentative context and single out influences and appraise competing interpretations. The book is a useful resource for scholars and students of philosophy, theology, philosophy of religion and history of political thought and provides a rich bibliography of secondary literature.

Shedding the Veil is a highly original overview of Europe's exploration and discovery beyond her own confines. It tackles the subject via an analysis of maps dating from circa 1434 to 1865, with an emphasis on the period before 1600. The book begins with an appraisal of the peculiar circumstances which led late medieval Europe to pursue long-distance travel, both overland and by sea, introduces cosmographic traditions inherited from classical times, and investigates pre-Columbian excursions into the western ocean. Finally, the great voyages and mappaemundi of the early sixteenth century are described in depth. After 1600 the focus begins to narrow North America and particularly to the colonization of the American Northeast. All maps discussed in detail are illustrated. 40 full-page b/w plates, 25 full-page color plates.

This text contains A-Z biographical listings of 1300 individuals worldwide, setting out their qualifications, affiliations, academic background, work experience, awards and distinctions, specialist interests and publications. Details are also given of their specialist expertise and language abilities, their availability for consultation, and full addresses and contact numbers. Fully cross-referenced indexes enable the user to find individuals by both country and specialist expertise.