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Subject Area: Philosophy-Metaphysics
Gonzales, Robert A.1992 0-7734-9818-4 332 pages
The purpose of this study is to systematically determine whether the question of the Sacred has any relevance in Schopenhauer's analysis of the human condition. In light of his metaphysical and anthropological claims, this study proposes that the question of the Sacred remains open given certain "unanswerables" to which Schopenhauer himself alludes in his treatment of the denial of the will-to-live, as specifically manifested in aesthetical and ethical praxis.
Norman, David
2008 0-7734-5519-1 352 pages
This work seeks to present a Post-Cartesian metaphysical anthropology that is consistent with both contemporary philosophy and Reformed Evangelical Christian Theology. It does so by examining the intellectual legacy of Donald M. MacKay, arguing that his concept of complementary descriptions leads us to a deeper understanding of both modern neurophysiology and the Christian hope for personal life beyond the grave. Covering a wide range of topics from the history of philosophy and theology to logic, the philosophy of language, information theory, freedom and determinism, and the philosophy of mind, this work attempts to present an updated form of the school of thought Donald MacKay founded and ambitiously named ‘Comprehensive Realism’. This book contains 5 black and white photographs.
Tripp, Raymond P. Jr.
2000 0-7734-7850-7 356 pages
This study does not ‘explain away’ the poet according to this or that school of contemporary criticism or psychological bias, but takes her at her own word as a late transcendental poet. Part I deals with the common fallacies of Dickinson studies, the conflict of world views between critic and poet, the substitution of biographical speculation for literary criticism, etc. Part II engages the substance of what she has to say about life and living it. Part III presents a new interpretation of her style and language for a metaphysical point of view.
Pietersen, Herman J.
2011 0-7734-1524-6 428 pages
This book provides a fundamental and integrated framework of human thought, beyond the confines of any particular knowledge discipline or tradition. It serves to highlight the intellectual strengths and limitations of each modality and is therefore useful for comparative purposes.
Baofu, Peter
2004 0-7734-6517-0 388 pages
This study argues that human consciousness will not last, to be superceded by post-human forms of consciousness (unto the direction of post-capitalism and post-democracy). The current obsession with the question of how human consciousness can emerge out of something physical is very much like asking how many angels can stand on the head of a pin in medieval scholasticism. The obsession obscures the need to transcend the debate. To this end, Dr. Baofu proposes methodological holism, which is to examine the issues of human consciousness (and other mental states), and its evolution into other forms in the future with a comprehensive analysis of all major theoretical dimensions which have been proposed in the literature. Eleven of them are classified in this project: physical, chemical, biological, psychological, organizational, institutional, structural, systematic, cultural, cosmological, and the rest. The study concludes that the current debate between reductionism and emergencism in the literature has reached a dead end and needs to be transcended.
Chapman, Tobias
1989 0-88946-340-9 120 pages
Proposes that the most serious modern objection made to mystical beliefs - not that they are false, but that they are meaningless - is far too simplistic; and provides arguments for certain distinctively mystical doctrines from the point of view of contemporary analytical philosophy.
Al-Allaf, Mashhad
2007 0-7734-5468-3 180 pages
Locke’s account of the problem of cohesion reflects a serious difficulty in his philosophy because of the way in which he relates it to the problem of substance in his search for something that not only underlies all properties in the traditional Aristotelian sense, but also holds the constituents of matter together. Contrary to common interpretation, this book argues that Locke did not have in mind a metaphysical entity which underlies qualities. Rather, he was more inclined to think that something like a cohesive power is what functions as the “bond” that hold holds together, not only the qualities of a substance, but its individual corpuscles, and on a deeper level even the parts of the corpuscle.
Morris, Thomas F.
2022 1-4955-0987-7 448 pages
Dr. Morris discusses the idea that our lives may be shaped by forces beyond our control and reckoning. He uses Shakespeare's Hamlet as a reference point to other philosophers and theologians on this complex issue.
Whitaker, Campbell
2004 0-7734-6406-9 508 pages
This study also contains a detailed review and analysis of theories of divine creation and their relation to theories of scientific cosmology. There are exhaustive analyses of arguments for the spatial and temporal extent of the world as a whole. There is a careful and extensive consideration of the various meanings which have been attached to the term “space” by both scientific as well as metaphysical thinkers, and important distinctions between the major concepts of space that have been hopelessly confused in most treatments. Last but not least, there are interesting and novel analyses of concepts of the spiritual and the noumenon.
Lee, C. J. P.
1999 0-7734-8184-2 284 pages
Richardson, Herbert W.
2021 1-4955-0909-5 276 pages
This book continues that arguing that Motherlove, or the eros of life, expresses itself through the step-by-step development of levels of consciousness.
Richardson, Herbert W.
2021 1-4955-0910-9 276 pages
Titans, Normunds
2006 0-7734-5747-X 408 pages
This book approaches the issue of overcoming metaphysics from a double perspective called ‘metaphysical insideoutness.’ On the one hand, acknowledging the impossibility of a complete overcoming of metaphysics, it opts for the constant overcoming of one metaphysics with another. On the other hand, it acknowledges some ways of stepping outside metaphysics from the inside. The book starts with an overview of the development of metaphysics from Aristotle to the 18th century and then interprets the modern and recent instances of overcoming metaphysics from the viewpoint of the aforementioned double perspective.
Rebidoux, Michelle
2012 0-7734-2638-8 296 pages
This study looks at the phenomenological work of 20th century French thinker Michel Henry, exploring Henry's work in its various dimensions: in its situatedness within the Western philosophical tradition, such as Meister Eckhart, Descartes, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Jean-Luc Marion; in its dialogue with classic philosophies of the subject and the interior life; in its relation to the question of language and the problem of representationl with regard to ethics, the problem of inter-subjectivity and contemporary philosophies of "the other"; and finally, in terms of its possible contribution to Christian theological thinking today. The author offers her own original critiques of Henry's work.
Blackman, Larry Lee
2005 0-7734-6108-6 388 pages
This anthology consists of twelve essays concerning the thought of University of Iowa Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Panayot Butchvarov, together with his comments on each. Butchvarov’s work reveals extraordinary breadth and depth, running the gamut of metaphysics (including proto-ontology), epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. Unusual for contemporary philosophers, he is sympathetic both to continental phenomenology and existentialism and also to British-American analytical philosophy. Highly eclectic, he draws upon the views of Descartes, Hume, Kant, Meinong, Moore, Wittgenstein (both “early” and “later”), and Sartre as well as other classical and contemporary thinkers, but at the same time he is quite original, setting forth and defending a range of bold, often controversial, theses on identity, existence, reality, knowledge, language, mind, consciousness, goodness, and universals.
Hill, Thomas E.
2004 0-7734-6340-2 256 pages
This book explores the question “What is a Good Life?” from the perspectives of several major regulative ends characteristic of human lives. This important question tends to be neglected among contemporary philosophers or else treated merely as an aspect of Aristotle’s philosophy. The author examines relations between the ends of personal happiness, personal fulfillment, a just community, and a loving community. Drawing from a broad range of philosophical and literary sources, he argues that lives exclusively or primarily devoted to any of the first three ends would fall short of an ideally good life. A principal conclusion is that the values of a loving community include but transcend the values inherent in the other major regulative ends. This work is unusual in its systematic treatment of an important but too rarely discussed topic, in its commitment to drawing together the best from many philosophical resources, and in its critical insights regarding deficiencies in lives exclusively devoted to relatively narrow ends.
d'Aquili, Eugene G.
1990 0-88946-633-5 200 pages
Examines the nature of evolution of increasingly complex systems in the universe. Gains its perspective on this phenomenon by using a model of interaction of wholeness and fragmentation derived from modern systems theory but also informed by the ancient philosophical problem of the One and the Many. Seeks a common ground between different specialities - physical, chemical, social - in order to answer questions regarding the evolution of systems.
Milbank, John
1993 0-7734-9215-1 292 pages
In this two-volume work, the author argues that the avant-garde features of Giambattista Vico's thought stem directly from his engagement with theological traditions, and his concern to develop a Catholic apologetic. This claim is established through a much more thorough engagement with all Vico's texts than is usual in the secondary literature in English.
Religious Dimension in the Thought of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). Volume 1, the Early Metaphysics
Milbank, John1991 0-7734-9694-7 364 pages
In this two-volume work, the author argues that the avant-garde features of Giambattista Vico's thought stem directly from his engagement with theological traditions, and his concern to develop a Catholic apologetic. This claim is established through a much more thorough engagement with all Vico's texts than is usual in the secondary literature in English.
Volume 1 The Early Metaphysics deals with Vico's early writings, where he makes his fullest statements concerning humanist vision and Christian metaphysics. It focuses on Vico's baffling but intriguing outline of a metaphysics in the De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia. Hints are given concerning the import of the metaphysics for the later writings, and it argues that Vico's thought represents an `alternative', theological modernism, at once more radical and more orthodox than the proposals of Kant and Hegel.
Ausmus, Harry J.
1996 0-7734-8891-X 360 pages
This study demonstrates that what is positive in Nietzsche's thought was already more clearly expressed in Schopenhauer's philosophy, and what is questionable was already criticized. It also demonstrates the religiosity of Nietzsche's thought, which is a secularized form of certain aspects of Christian theology, which leads to an elevation of psychology over metaphysics, lending support to a trend that has dominated much of twentieth-century thought. The book calls for a diminution in the importance of psychology, and recommends that metaphysics be reestablished in its rightful position by 'starting over' with the philosophy of Schopenhauer.
Valeska, Jan
1999 0-7734-7925-2 132 pages
This is a comparative analysis of the basic types of postmodern search for transcendence, taking a philosophical, generally contextual viewpoint. It covers, in a panoramic sweep, the complete spectrum of modes of postmodern spirituality and, proceeding from their mutual comparison without setting any preconceived totalizing or reducing criteria, it first seeks to design their typology: according to the modes of penetration toward transcendence, transpersonality, transculturality, transuniversality, transalterity, etc, and according to the scope of the penetration, reaching out at relative or absolute transcendence. The requisite criteria are found within the framework of the process of postmodern search itself. Thus, the questions after relative transcendence as well as those concerning an absolutely transcendent God are philosophically justified within the postmodern context.
Wilson, Fred
2001 0-7734-7369-6 540 pages
This monograph links reasons for attitudes toward death to reasons for different metaphysical positions on the human being and the place of the human being in the universe. Most recent discussions of death either place the topic directly in the context of nothing more than ethical considerations without reference to the deeper ontological or metaphysical issues, or place it in the context of Heideggerian or existentialist considerations. This essays goes deeper than the former and provides a broader context than the latter. The discussion is structured by the thought of Camus, providing a careful reading of both The Myth of Sisyphus and The Outsider. Examines his connection to both the empiricist tradition and Hume, Plotinus, Lucretius, Socrates, Aristotle, the Stoics, and into the modern period with Spinoza. Their metaphysical positions on death are fully laid out.
Williams, Duane
2011 0-7734-1567-X 508 pages
This study begins by drawing attention to assumptions that are made about language, which it seeks to question. Whilst continuing the line of Christian tradition that marries Jewish religion with Greek philosophy, this study also aims to reinterpret that tradition in the light of more recent thought on the Logos that comes from Martin Heidegger.
Naseri, Amir
2022 1-4955-0893-5 440 pages
From the author's preface: "This book comes with a completely brand-new scientific and spiritual theory that for the very first time try to explaining the universe, existence, the whole being and even the non-being or nought in scientific terms and manner."
Kingston, F. Temple
1992 0-7734-9561-4 220 pages
This study of Berkeley's metaphysics, with his insistence on the existence of God and importance of the human spirit, takes account not only of Berkeley's treatment of his contemporaries and English critics, but also of his great influence on contemporary French philosophers. The approach is not analytic but phenomenological.