The reception history of the 11th-century philosopher Ibn Sina, known in the West by his Latinized name Avicenna, has received little scholarly attention and remains to this day largely virgin territory. Presenting a detailed analysis of the medieval Arabo-Islamic bio-bibliographical tradition, this volume investigates the lives and critically inventories the works of the principal philosophers who created the Avicennan philosophical tradition in the Islamic world between the 11th and 14th centuries. The author's critical prosopographical studies elucidate the literary tropes of the genres of secular and religious biography in Arabic literature, demonstrating how philosophical authority was constructed and deconstructed within the "rational" and "traditional" sciences in Islam; and how the genealogies and methods of these often opposing intellectual trends shaped the scholastic identities and vocations of these philosophers-cum-Islamic theologians and jurists. A work of intellectual archaeology, this volume clearly documents the vitality of the post-classical philosophical tradition as reflected in literary biography, the genres of commentary and gloss, and within the madrasa tradition of medieval Islamic civilization.

'What does it mean to be a human being?' Given this perennial question, Alasdair MacIntyre, one of America's preeminent philosophers, presents a compelling argument on the necessity and importance of philosophy. Because of a need to better understand Catholic philosophical thought, especially in the context of its historical development and realizing that philosophers interact within particular social and cultural situations, MacIntyre offers this brief history of Catholic philosophy. Tracing the idea of God through different philosophers' engagement of God and how this engagement has played out in universities, MacIntyre provides a valuable, lively, and insightful study of the disintegration of academic disciplines with knowledge. MacIntyre then demonstrates the dangerous implications of this happening and how universities can and ought to renew a shared understanding of knowledge in their mission. This engaging work will be a benefit and a delight to all readers.

Metamathematics and the Philosophical Tradition is the first work to explore in such historical depth the relationship between fundamental philosophical quandaries regarding self-reference and meta-mathematical notions of consistency and incompleteness. Using the insights of twentieth-century logicians from Gödel through Hilbert and their successors, this volume revisits the writings of Aristotle, the ancient skeptics, Anselm, and enlightenment and seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Pascal, Descartes, and Kant to identify ways in which these both encode and evade problems of a priori definition and self-reference. The final chapters critique and extend more recent insights of late 20th-century logicians and quantum physicists, and offer new applications of the completeness theorem as a means of exploring "metatheoretical ascent" and the limitations of scientific certainty. Broadly syncretic in range, Metamathematics and the Philosophical Tradition addresses central and recurring problems within epistemology. The volume’s elegant, condensed writing style renders accessible its wealth of citations and allusions from varied traditions and in several languages. Its arguments will be of special interest to historians and philosophers of science and mathematics, particularly scholars of classical skepticism, the Enlightenment, Kant, ethics, and mathematical logic.

This text offers a comprehensive discussion of philosophies that are relevant to the conceptualization and development of the knowledge base and discipline of nursing. Coverage progresses from classical philosophy to the rationalism of Descartes, the roots of modern science in British empiricism, the evolution of modern science, and the concept of interpretive inquiry. Also included are chapters on the knowledge-practice connection and models for nursing knowledge development. This book explores how philosophy shapes aspects of nursing and provides students with a much richer and fuller understanding of how nursing works, how it can be approached most effectively, and how it might be shaped to advance in the future.

An in-depth anthology of the existentialist tradition - with an emphasis on the philosophy of personal experience.