Philosophers And Philosophies

200 Pages·1976·11.666 MB·English

by  Frederick Copleston

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Philosophies
Frederick Copleston
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Professor Frederick fe rigencc world-famous for
the clarity, precision and vigour of his expositions
of various periods of philosophy. His History of
Philosophy is the leading work on the subject, and
its nine volumes have won recognition and high
praise from all schools of thought. In this work
he selects fourteen important philosophical topics,
in certain cases more specifically in terms of their
use by a particular philosophic school, and un-
remittingly discloses the pitfalls and possibilities _
of such apparently transparent or controverted
notions as philosophical knowledge, relativism and
recurrence in the history of philosophy, the auto-
nomy of religious language, philosophic bias,
transcendence and the absence of God, Godless |
Christianity, and rational mysticism. Key concepts
of leading philosophers such as Hegel, Aquinas,
Spinoza, and Sartre are examined in context, and
important though recently obscured figures such
as Bergson, Ortega y Gasset and Nicholas of
Autrecourt are questioned for philosophic
relevance. Through all these essays, though each
is a finished exposition in its own right, runs the
connecting theme of an unrelenting search for
truth, offered always with that urbane style,
breadth of reference, and assurance of judgment
that reveal one of the best-stocked philosophic
minds of our times. This is history of ideas in the
best sense. ‘It is a peculiarity of the human being .. .
that, though involved in the world and in the
changing historical process, he is capable ofstanding
back, as it were, and of apprehending his involve-
ment in the changing world of finite things. And
it is in the context of this standing-back that the
so-called ultimate questions arise as questions of
vital concern to the questioner . . . The philosopher
tries to make the implicit explicit . . . 1 do not see
. . . how there can be any approach to God as a
reality which is not “subjective”, in the sense of a
movement of the human subject towards a goal.
For God to be a reality, the approach must be
religious. And I happen to think that a religious
approach can be exemplified in ways of thought
which are sometimes described as metaphysical .. .
I do not believe however that metaphysics can
capture God in a conceptual web. I suppose that I
have a natural sympathy with Paul Tillich’s idea
of the movement from “‘God” to God. But it
remains a movement. The Christian believes of
course that there is a movement the other way,
the movement of which he calls “revelation”.
This movement however must be expressed in
human language. Hence the need for being alive
to the changing relevance of language’ (from the
book).
ISBN (UK) 0 88532 370 1
ISBN (USA) 0 06 4912787
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PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHIES
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
and published by Search Press
A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
VOL. I: GREECE AND ROME
VOL. If: AUGUSTINE TO SCOTUS
VOL. Ill: OCKHAM TO SUAREZ
VOL. IV: DESCARTES TO LEIBNIZ
VOL. V: HOBBES TO HUME
VOL. VI: WOLFF TO KANT
VOL. VII: FICHTE TO NIETZSCHE
VOL. VIII: BENTHAM TO RUSSELL
VOL. IX: MAINE DE BIRAN TO SARTRE
CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY (new edition)
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE: PHILOSOPHER OF CULTURE
(new edition)
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER: PHILOSOPHER OF
PESSIMISM (new edition)
THOMAS AQUINAS
PHILOSOPHERS
AND
PHILOSOPHIES
BY
FREDERICK COPLESTON, S.J.
Professor Emeritus of History of Philosophy
in the University of London
SEARCH PRESS LONDON
BARNES & NOBLE BOOKS NEW YORK
(a division of Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.)
SEARCH PRESS LIMITED
2-10 Jerdan Place, London SW6 5PT
Great Britain
First published 1976
Copyright © Frederick Copleston 1976
ISBN 0 85 5323708
Published in the USA 1976 by
Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.
BARNES & NOBLE IMPORT DIVISION
ISBN 0 06 4912787
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
translated, reproduced, stored in an information retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the previous written permission of Search Press
Limited, 2-10 Jerdan Place, London SW6 5PT,
Great Britain.
' PRINTED AND BOUND IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
Billing & Sons Ltd,
Guildford, London and Worcester
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE
Il. Tue History or PHILOSOPHY: RELATIVISM AND
RECURRENCE 7
III. PHILOSOPHY AND Reon IN JUDAISM AND Gurws-
TIANITY 29
IV. AQUINAS AND THE AUTONOMY OF Remeecs LANGUAGE 43
Man, TRANSCENDENCE AND THE ABSENCE OF GOD 57
VI. CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT BELIEF IN GoD 68
VII. Tue LocicaL Empiricism oF NICHOLAS OF AUTRE-
COURT 79
VIII. SPINOZA AS METAPHYSICIAN : ; : : 90
IX. HEGEL AND THE RATIONALIZATION OF MYSTICISM . 106
FOREGROUND AND BACKGROUND IN NIETZSCHE 117
XI. BERGSON ON MORALITY 131
XII. JEAN-PAuL SARTRE . 5 : 148
XIII. THe EXIsTENTIALIST @onceprion OF Mins ; f 160
XIV. OrTEGA Y GASSET AND PHILOSOPHICAL RELATIVISM . 172
PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHIES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Chapter’I appeared first in Contemporary
British Philosophy: Third Series, ed. H.D. Lewis (London, Allen &
Unwin, 1956). Chapter II was given as an inaugural lecture in the
University of London and appeared in the Heythrop Journal in 1973.
Chapter III was given as an unpublished paper to the Aquinas
Septcentennial Conference at the University of Calgary, Canada, in
1974. Chapter IV was originally presented as the Suarez lecture at
Fordham University in 1967 and published in Thought. Chapter V was
given as a lecture at Westfield College, University of London. Chapter VI
is an unpublished talk to the London Society for the Study of Religion.
Chapter VII is a paper given originally to the Aristotelian Society in 1974
and published in the Proceedings of that Society. Chapter VIII was
published first in Spinoza: Essays in Interpretation, ed. M. Mandelbaum
& E. Freeman (Open Court, LaSalle, Ill., 1975). Chapter 1X appeared in
New Studies in Hegel, ed. W.E. Steinkraus (Holt, Rinehart & Wilson,
N.Y., 1971). Chapter X was published first in The Review of Metaphysics
in 1968. Chapter XI was given as the Dawes Hicks lecture on philosophy
to the British Academy in 1955 and was published first in the
Proceedings of the Academy. Chapter XII was given as an unpublished
talk to the Philosophical Society of Birkbeck College, University of
London. The publishers thank the Editor of the Heythrop Journal, the
Principal of Westfield College, Professor A. Parel of the University of
Calgary, the Editor of Thought, the Secretary of the Aristotelian Society,
the Open Court Publishing Company, Messrs Holt, Rinehart & Wilson,
the Editor of the Review of Metaphysics, and the Secretary of the British
Academy for their kind permission to reprint these chapters.