There can be little dispute that culture influences philosophy: we see this in the way that classical Greek culture influenced Greek philosophy, that Christianity influenced mediaeval western philosophy, that French culture influenced a range of philosophies in France from Cartesianism to post-modernism, and so on. Yet many philosophical texts and …

Kai Nielsen is one of Canada's most distinguished political philosophers. In a career spanning over 40 years, he has published more than 400 papers in political philosophy, ethics, meta-philosophy, and philosophy of religion. He has engaged much of the best work in Anglophone political philosophy, shedding light on many of the central debates and c …

“…aspirations to perfection awaken us to our actual imperfection.” It is in the space between these aspirations and our inability to achieve them that Grant reflects upon imperfection. Grant argues that an awareness of imperfection, defined as both suffering and the need for justice, drives us to an unrelenting search for perfection, freedom, …

While there have been a number of specialized books in the field of comparative philosophy, and many in the field of comparative religion, there are few scholars who can address both disciplines. Furthermore, when these disciplines are virtually mutually exclusive, as in Western academia, a full appreciation of non-Western approaches to either reli …

The papers published in this volume were originally read and discussed at a three day seminar sponsored by the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion/Societie Canadienne des Sciences Religieuses at Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec, May 28th to 30th, 1976. This seminar served the important function of bringing together the majority of the C …

The introduction of Aristotelianism into the West created conflict, disruption, and turmoil. Not least, it confronted the Middle Ages with a serious problem concerning the possible conflict between reason and faith. In part, the controversy surrounding Aristotelianism in the Christian world came from the Islamic channels through which much of the A …

Following a critical review of previous theological scholarship on Heidegger and a survey of North American philosophy of religion, the book examines Heidegger’s philosophy of religion and its influence on the North American variety of the same.

Franz Werfel was born in Prague in 1890 and died in Beverly Hills in 1945, a popular and artistic success in Europe and America. Despite his Jewish birth and upbringing, he was attracted to Christianity at any early age, and although he never formally converted, he celebrated his own vision of it in his entire life's work. The origina sof that pecu …

Not much attention has been given to Dostoyevsky's concern with the crisis of the modern West, although allusions to almost every aspect of Western civilization—including the political, economic, and social dimensions—are present in his literary works and abound in his secondary writings.

This book points the way to a better understanding of the …

In The Transcendence of the World, Richard Holmes brings together some of the major figures in the phenomenological movement to help explain our experience of the world—the world meant as independent of any particular awareness of it. Focussing on the writings of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Holmes delivers an accessibl …

“The generation of 1930 in French intellectual life was unique in the gravity of the challenges they faced.” Simone Weil—the brilliant social and political theorist, activist, and spiritual writer—was one of an eminent company in the France of the 1930s who responded to these challenges. In her brief, remarkable life she wrote a host of ess …

This collection examines the production and recreation of religious ideas and images in different times and locations, achieving a comparative perspective on the transmission of religious influences. The essayists look at contact and conflict between insiders and outsiders, centres and margins, Jews and Christians, Slavs and Greeks, and ancient rit …

A Woman of Valour is the biography of Marie-Louise Bouchard Labelle, a French-Canadian woman who found love with a priest thirty-three years her senior. Against all social convention, they lived, produced three children, and built a life together after fleeing their village.However, after several years together, Bouchard’s husband ultimately chos …

Laurence Wilmot’s Second World War memoir is a rare thing: a first-hand account of front-line battle by an army officer who is a resolute non-combatant. And it is paradoxes such as this that also make Wilmot’s book a unique and compelling document. Wilmot, as an Anglican chaplain, is a priest dressed as a warrior, a man of peace in battle fatig …

The stories in Leaving Fundamentalism provide a personal and intimate look behind sermons, religious services, and church life, and promote an understanding of those who have been deeply involved in, and then left, the conservative Christian church.

These autobiographies come from within the congregations and homes of religious fundamentalists, whe …

How do we deal with difference personally, interpersonally, nationally? Can we weave a cohesive social fabric in a religiously plural society without suppressing differences?

This collection of significant essays suggests that to truly honour differences in matters of faith and religion we must publicly exercise and celebrate them. The secular/sacr …

Based on exhaustive reference to primary source material, this volume explores the relationships between religious mythologies and religious philosophical system within the theistic traditions in India. Not content merely to explore these relationships, the author further examines the relevance of mythology and philosophy in a discussion of salvati …

The Japanese Pure Land master Shinran (1173–1262) was a product of his age. His angst in the period of the decay of the Dharma, his subsequent search for spiritual liberation, and his ultimate discovery of the path of the nembutsu could not have occurred isolated from the social temper of his time, any more than his religious thought could have d …

This book is intended as a contribution towards the renewal of theological discourse in the final quarter of the twentieth century. It presents the findings from personal research into the development of the concept of God in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and the application of his conceptual tools in a re-examination of the writings of …

Featuring more than twenty illustrations, including several works of art that were rediscovered by the author and are published here for the first time, The Female Crucifix: Images of St. Wilgefortis Since the Middle Ages provides a new perspective on a very old phenomenon.

The legendary bearded female St. Wilgefortis, also known by a variety of ot …

John Locke is often thought of as one of the founders of the Enlightenment, a movement that sought to do away with the Bible and religion and replace them with scientific realism. But Locke was extremely interested in the Bible, and he was engaged by biblical theology and religion throughout his life. In this new book, K.I. Parker considers Locke� …

This study of the meaning and the experience of mysticism is a product of the author's personal interest in mysticism and his reflection, as a philosopher, on some of the philosophical questions raised by mysticism is a "a psychological process which occurs with varying degrees of intensity in everyone's life" and the observation that this process …

Augustine: From Rhetor to Theologian consists of fifteen chapters from international scholars written to celebrate the 1600th anniversary of the conversion to Catholic Christianity of Augustine of Hippo.

Augustine set his stamp on the Latin Church, yet only in the twentieth century, with its profound, even paradigmatic change did the descendants of …