Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole were philosophers and theologians associated with Port-Royal Abbey, a center of the Catholic Jansenist movement in seventeenth-century France. Their enormously influential Logic or the Art of Thinking, which went through five editions in their lifetimes, treats topics in logic, language, theory of knowledge and metaphysics, and also articulates the response of "heretical" Jansenist Catholicism to orthodox Catholic and Protestant views on grace, free will and the sacraments. This edition presents a new translation of the text, together with a historical...

Thomas Aquinas (1224/6-1274) was one of the greatest of the medieval philosophers. His Summa Theologiae is his most important contribution to Christian theology, and one of the main sources for his philosophy. This volume offers most of the Summa's first 26 questions, including all of those on the existence and nature of God. Based on the 1960 Blackfriars translation, this version has been extensively revised by Brian Davies and also includes an introduction by Brian Leftow which places the questions in their philosophical and historical context. The result is an accessible and up-to-date...

Reinhold's Letters on the Kantian Philosophy is arguably the most influential book ever written concerning Kant. It propelled Kant's Critical Philosophy, which had previously enjoyed an equivocal reception, into the central position which it has held to this day. It also brought fame to Reinhold, who became a professor at Jena and later developed his own "Elementary Philosophy." This volume presents the first English translation of the work, together with an introduction that sets it in its philosophical and historical contexts.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing is the most representative figure of the German Enlightenment. His defense of Spinoza, who had traditionally been condemned as an atheist, provoked a major controversy in philosophy, and his publication of Reimarus' radical assault on Christianity led to fundamental changes in Protestant theology. This volume presents the most comprehensive collection in English of Lessing's philosophical and theological writings, several of which are translated for the first time.

Schopenhauer's Prize Essay is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant and elegant treatments of free will and determinism. He distinguishes the freedom of acting from the freedom of willing, affirming the former while denying the latter. This volume offers the text in a previously unpublished translation by Eric F.J. Payne, the leading twentieth-century translator of Schopenhauer into English, together with a historical and philosophical introduction by GUnter Zoller.

The Birth of Tragedy is one of the seminal philosophical works of the modern period. The theories developed in this relatively short text have had a profound influence on the philosophy, literature, music and politics of the twentieth century. This edition presents a new translation by Ronald Speirs and an introduction by Raymond Geuss that sets the work in its historical and philosophical context. The volume also includes two essays on related topics that Nietzsche wrote during the same period.

Nietzsche wrote The Gay Science, which he later described as "perhaps my most personal book," when he was at the height of his intellectual powers, and the reader will find it an extensive and sophisticated treatment of the philosophical themes and views most central to Nietzsche's own thought and most influential on later thinkers. This volume presents the work in a new translation by Josefine Nauckhoff, with an introduction by Bernard Williams that elucidates the work's main themes and discusses their continuing importance.

This is a major work by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings have been deeply influential on subsequent generations of philosophers. It is offered here in a new translation by Judith Norman, with an introduction by Rolf Peter Horstmann that places the work in its historical and philosophical context.

Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise (1670) is one of the most important philosophical works of the early modern period. In it Spinoza discusses at length the historical circumstances of the composition and transmission of the Bible, demonstrating the fallibility of both its authors and its interpreters. He argues that free enquiry is not only consistent with the security and prosperity of a state but actually essential to them, and that such freedom flourishes best in a democratic and republican state in which individuals are left free while religious organizations are subordinated to...

David Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, first published in 1779, is one of the most influential works in the philosophy of religion and the most artful instance of philosophical dialogue since the dialogues of Plato. It presents a fictional conversation between a sceptic, an orthodox Christian, and a Newtonian theist concerning evidence for the existence of an intelligent cause of nature based on observable features of the world. This edition presents it together with several of Hume's other, shorter writings about religion, and with brief selections from the work of Pierre Bayle,...