The Popularization Of Philosophy In Medieval Islam Judaism And Christianity

Provides a more balanced view of medieval philosophy, in contrast to the conventional neglect of Islamic and Jewish influences on medieval Latin-Christian thought Looks at the philosophy of the three great monotheistic traditions, unlike most standard works that discuss the history of single philosophical traditions Pays attention to the influence of Neoplatonism on the three traditions, an important topic in its own right

Modern interpreters have variously cast the Middle Ages as a benighted past from which the West had to evolve and, more recently, as the model for a potential future of intercultural dialogue and tolerance. The Legend of the Middle Ages cuts through such oversimplifications to reconstruct a complicated and philosophically rich period that remains deeply relevant to the contemporary world. Featuring a penetrating interview and sixteen essays only three of which have previously appeared in English this volume explores key intersections of medieval religion and philosophy. With characteristic erudition and insight, Remi Brague focuses less on individual Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers than on their relationships with one another. Their disparate philosophical worlds, Brague shows, were grounded in different models of revelation that engendered divergent interpretations of the ancient Greek sources they held in common. So, despite striking similarities in their solutions for the philosophical problems they all faced, intellectuals in each theological tradition often viewed the others ideas with skepticism, if not disdain.

Goodman, focuses on a series of core issues common to the two intertwined philosophical traditions - freedom and determinism, the basis of ethical values, the relationship between faith and reason, the governance of God, the basis of friendship, and the meaning of history - to examine the rich and varied interactions of two traditions that have carried on a written conversation spanning the centuries."--BOOK JACKET.

Thomas Williams' revision of Arthur Hyman and James J. Walsh's classic compendium of writings in the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish medieval philosophical traditions expands the breadth of coverage that helped make its predecessor the best known and most widely used collection of its kind. The third edition builds on the strengths of the second by preserving its essential shape while adding several important new texts--including works by Augustine, Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Anselm, al-Farabi, al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus--and featuring new translations of many others. The volume has also been redesigned and its bibliographies updated with the needs of a new generation of students in mind.

T. M. Rudavsky presents a new account of the development of Jewish philosophy from the tenth century to Spinoza in the seventeenth, viewed as part of an ongoing dialogue with medieval Christian and Islamic thought. Her aim is to provide a broad historical survey of major figures and schools within the medieval Jewish tradition, focusing on the tensions between Judaism and rational thought. This is reflected in particular philosophical controversies across a wide range of issues in metaphysics, language, cosmology, and philosophical theology. The book illuminates our understanding of medieval thought by offering a much richer view of the Jewish philosophical tradition, informed by the considerable recent research that has been done in this area.