This look at Gassendi's philosophy and science illuminates his contributions to early modern thought and to the broader history of philosophy of science. Two keys to his thought are his novel picture of acquiring and judging empirical belief, and his liberal account of criteria for counting empirical beliefs as parts of warranted physical theories. By viewing his philosophical and scientific pursuits as part of one and the same project, Gassendi's arguments on behalf of atomism can be fruitfully explained as licensed by his empiricism.

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1390-1447) was the most important patron of Italian Renaissance humanism in England during the fifteenth century. This study reconstructs the network of patronage between Gloucester, his Italian middlemen, and several Italian humanists. Analysing their motives for establishing contacts with each other, it considers the literary interests of these men within the political and social context and argues that the early transmission of humanism to England was closely linked with the promotion of political, dynastic and socio-economic interests. This integrative...

This text marks a radical rethinking of the soul and the afterlife in the writings of al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), particularly within his magnum opus, Reviving Religious Knowledge (Ihyā'ulūm al-dīn). Attending closely to variations of genre and discourse mode within his works, it attempts to resolve some of the major ambiguities that have vexed al-Ghazālī's readers for nearly nine hundred years. Beginning with his theory of multi-level, multi-genre writing and working through his theological, philosophical, and mystical positions on the soul's true...

Several schools of thought that are an essential part of early modern philosophy are presented in this work. The author does not concentrate on the main authors or key-concepts that made up seventeenth-century philosophical discourse, but places the practice of philosophy in the Dutch Republic in a wide cultural context. This approach provides the opportunity to assess the emergence and early diffusion of Spinozism as a comprehensive philosophy.

The aim of this book is to examine Erasmus' attitude toward the medieval past and to relate it to his historical consciousness. More than any other Renaissance humanist, Erasmus was committed to the goal of building an alternative to medieval civilisation. In his view, the restoration and study of ancient pagan and Christian literature would result in an elevation of cultural and intellectual as well as moral and spiritual standards. Yet these very assumptions appear to be challenged by Erasmus' specific observations on the course of history up to his own day. The present study is the first...

This study explores a prominent Italian Renaissance theme, the origin of genius, revealing how the coalescence of a Platonic theory of divine frenzy and an Aristotelian theory of melancholy genius eventually disintegrated under the force of late Renaissance events.

This book uncovers the early Jewish, Scottish, and Stuart sources of "ancient" Cabalistic Freemasonry that flourished in Ecossais lodges in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing on architectural, technological, political, and religious documents, it provides real-world, historical grounding for the flights of visionary Temple building described in the rituals and symbolism of "high-degree" Masonry. The roots of mystical male bonding, accomplished through progressive initiation, are found in Stuart notions of intellectual and spiritual amicitia. Despite the expulsion...

This volume deals with the intellectual Huguenot Refuge (ca 1680-1780), discussing its philosophical, theological, historical, and literary aspects in European context. It uses Berlin as its regional point of departure: In the French-Protestant community of Berlin, the erudites rapidly established networks which pursued a very wide range of interest, communicating with every Protestant scholar who might contribute to the dissemination of Enlightened thought. The first part of the book, therefore, introduces the biggest and most complex centre of the Refuge in Germany. Whereas the...

This volume offers an outline of developments in the intellectual debate on religious liberty, religious toleration and religious concord in the eighteenth-century Netherlands. Emphasizing changes in the relations between religious belief and the public sphere, it seeks to add new perspectives to recent analyses of toleration. Each chapter of this book discusses a different aspect of the eighteenth-century Dutch toleration debate. On the basis of a large number of sources, and paying particular attention to minor writers, a broad variety of topics is treated, ranging from the official...

This volume deals with conversions to Judaism from the 16th to the 18th century. It provides six case studies by leading international scholars on phenomena as crypto-Judaism, "judaizing," reversion of Jewish-Christian converts and secret conversion of non-Jewish Christians for intellectual reasons. The first contributions examine George Buchanan and John Dury, followed by three studies of the milieu of late seventeenth-century Amsterdam. The last essay is concerned with Lord George Gordon and Cabbalistic Freemasonry. The contributions will be of interest for intellectual historians, but also...