|
Dr. Muth's Academic Interests
____________________________________________________________________
BESTIARIES
Bestiaries
are medieval books describing the physical characteristics and behaviors of
animals, plants, insects, and (in some cases) stones. The descriptions
are used as the basis for symbolic readings of the creatures to reveal
religious or moral truths. Such texts (which can be simply bizarre)
seem unlikely sources for philosophical thinking, but the vision of nature as
a text that the besitiaries assume in fact opens a door to an alternative way
of thinking about nature from our current vision of nature as a
"resource."
The beautiful (and largely representative) Aberdeen Bestiary is available online at The Aberdeen Bestiary Project.
A very fine site that introduces bestiaries and includes links to some
articles and texts is The Medieval Bestiary: Animals in the Middle Ages
found here.
The Biblioteque nationale de France has posted a lovely online exhibition on
bestiaires that can be found here (it is also
available in English).
Another useful site is Dr. Diane Tillotson's pages on Medieval Writing.
Here is her
page on bestiaries.
A very nice bibliography on bestiaries and other texts on animals in the
middle ages can be found here
at Dr. Esther Pascua's site for her class at St. Andrew's University, Ideas
on Nature and Animals in the Middle Ages.
____________________________________________________________________
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
An excellent wite with quite a number of texts is Paul Vincent Spade's Medieval
Logic and Philosophy, though, alas, Dr. Spade (who teaches at Indiana
University) is no longer updating the site. It can be found here. In particular,
look at the downloads page, where Dr. Spade has put links to numerous
translations of texts.
The Internet Medieval Sourcebook (found here) has a wealth of
primary texts in translation from the middle ages, including sections on
Medieval Thought, Saint's Lives, Writings of the Church Fathers, and Medieval
Spiritual Writing.
A complete translation of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae can be
found here at the New Advent
site and here at
the Christian Classics Etheral Library site. (The Latin text can be
found here.)
New Advent also has the helpful Catholic Encyclopedia (1913 edition -- here). The Chrisitan
Classics Ethereal Library also has at its site the complete text of the
Early Church Fathers, which includes works of Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom,
Tertullian, Cyprian, Eusebius, and many others.
Anselm's famous ontological argument appears in his Proslogion. A
translation can be found here at CCEL,
along with the longer Monologion, Cur Deus Homo (Why God
became a Human Being) and Anselm's exchange with Gaunilo. A fine
article by Thomas Williams is available at the Stanford Encyclopedia (click here).
Though not strictly philosophy, Dante is too important to leave out
here. A well-known translation
of the Divine Comedy by Longfellow is available at the CCEL
site. The Digital Dante website
has the Italian original along with translations by both Longfellow and
Mandelbaum, as well as a biography, images, and links to other websites about
Dante.
_______________________________________
BONAVENTURE
Bonaventure of Bagnoregio was an almost exact contemporary of Thomas Aquinas,
though born a few years before Thomas in 1221. He was a Franciscan and
served as the Minister-general of the Order from 1257 until his death in the
summer of 1274 just as the Council of Lyons was ending.
A superb site on Bonaventure, with Latin texts and translations into English
(as well as French, Spanish, and Italian), is here at The
Franciscan Archive. The site also has texts
by and about St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare, and many prominent
Franciscans.
The Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a nice article on
Bonaventure by Tim Noone (at Catholic University of America) and R. E. Houser
(at St. Thomas).
Bonaventure's most famous work is the short but eloquent Itinerarium
mentis in Deum (The Journey of the MInd into God). A
Latin/English copy (side by side) is available here
at the Franciscan Archives.
_______________________________________________
MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE
Architecture, as an attempt to give form and structure to visions of reality,
has been a long-standing interest. Medieval architecture, besides being
beuatiful, is a remarkable expression of this architectural existential
drive.
Dr. Jeffery Howe of Boston College has a nice collection of images of
medieval architecture here at
his Digital Archive of Architecture. Alison Stone at the University of
Pittsburgh also has a site of
images.
Jane Vadnal at University of Pittsburgh maintains a useful glossary of terms
for medieval architecture and art (click here).
An interesting site with some nice images and comments is Earthlore: Gothic
Dreams (click here).
It is a little new-agey (I have a friend who used to pronounce "new
age" as "newage") but does have some good information.
A key text for the importance of light in mewdeival thought is Robert Grosseteste's
On Light, available here.
(Available here
in Latin at The Electronic Grosseteste, a site worth looking through.)
I plan eventually to create a page with pictures of medieval churches and
cathedrals I have taken over the years of visits to England.
________________________________________________
PLATO AND NEOPLATONISM
Alfred
North Whitehead claimed that "the safest general characterization of the
European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes
to Plato" (Process and Reality). Though I am not much of a
process philosopher (sorry WHitehead), I have always found the broad lines of
Platonic thought very congenial.
Some good introductory articles on Plato and his dialogues can be found at
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (here) and the Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (here).
A
collection of Plato's dialogues (in translation) with some good commentary,
including historical background and maps, can be found at Bernard Suzanne's site, Plato and His
Dialogues. The Internet Classics Library has a large collection of
translations as well. The site also has texts by
Aristotle, Aeschylus, Homer, Plotinus, Ovid, Virgil, and many other Greek and
Roman authors.
Plato, of course, did not philosophize in a vacuum. John Burnet's
excellent Early Greek Philosophy is available here on
the internet. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good
general introduction to the history of Greek philosophy (click here).
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good introduction to
Neoplatonism (click here).
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy does not yet have a general
introduction on Neoplatonism, but it does have some excellent articles on
some important neoplatonists, including Plotinus and Porphyry. The
IEP also has an article on Plotinus.
The most important text in neoplatonism is Plotinus' Enneads, which
can be found in translation here (the CCEL)
here, and here.
Iamblichus' Theurgy or on the Egyptian Mysteries can be found here.
_____________________________________________
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Augustine,
354-430 AD, set the agenda for theology and philosophy in the West for the
next 1000 years and still has a powerful influence in those disciplines
today.
An excellent place to learn about Augustine is John O'Donnell's site, Augustine
of Hippo. I don't always agree with O'Donnell's interpretations of
Augustine, but he is thoughtful and plays close attention to the texts.
His site is a wealth of texts, in Latin and translation, commentaries, and
research materials.
A large collection of Augustine's works can be found here at the
Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
Michael Mendelson has a good article on Augustine
at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
_______________________________________________
ALASDAIR MACINTYRE (and STANLEY HAUERWAS)
MacIntyre
is one of the most influential ethicists of the past few decades, since the
publication of his book After Virtue in 1981 (though he had been
publishing long before then). In that book, MacIntyre developes a
rather trenchant, but powerful, critique of ethics since the modern period
and seeks to look back in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas for tools to move
forward. Later books, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Three
Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, and Dependent Rational Animals
continue to develop his virtue ethics in some enlightening ways. I had
the good fortune to study with MacIntyre during his time at Duke (he served
on my dissertation committee) and found him to be a remarkably gracious and
kind individual. He seems to practice what he preaches.
MacIntyre's 2009 Newman Lecture can be found at YouTube (click here) as can some other
lectures.
Ted Clayton At Central Michigan has a nice article on MacIntyre's political
thought at the IEP website and
Stanley Hauerwas, whose own thinking was shaped by MacIntyre, has an
interesting article on MacIntyre in First Things (click here).
Speaking of Hauerwas, he is a force to be reckoned with in Christian ethics
(he's also a hoot in the classroom and at lectures). His writings on
disabilities and other similar issues is, in my estimation, some of the best
work being done presently in ethics. The Stanley Hauerwas Blogspot
(click here) has links to
many articles by and about Hauerwas, along with some sermons and interviews.
______________________________________________
C. S. LEWIS
I
first encountered Lewis as a child, through The Chronicles of Narnia,
and enjoyed the story thoroughly. I returned to reading Lewis in
graduate school and realized that he was not merely a delightful writer, but
a serious thinker as well, and a much edgier one than I had ever suppossed,
especially his critiques of science and other aspects of contemporary
society.
Lewis' writings are still in copyright, so they are not available
online. Some interesting websites include Into the Wardrobe
(click here), which includes some interesting
papers and links; Arend Smilde's Lewisiana website,
which includes some very interesting texts, such as Smilde's correspondence
with Mary Midgley on Lewis, some criticisms of Lewis by J. B. S. Haldane and H.
G. Wells, and Smilde's notes on some of Lewis' books; and the C. S. Lewis
Foundation (click here) which runs a
two-week long summer institute on Lewis in Oxford and Cambridge every three
years and recently began to put in place a new college dedicated to Lewis,
the C. S. Lewis College. The Foundation publishes an online journal, In
Pursuit of Truth, with articles about Lewis and the Inklings (click here).
Hugh Duncan has a website dedicated to issues arising in the works of C. S.
Lewis that includes a series of podcasts called Narnia from A to Z.
The "Z" podcast has to do with animals ("zoo") in C. S.
Lewis. I was one of the interviewees (heard, of course, but not seen --
does that make me a headless talking head?) included. You can find the
podcast here.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Links:
Wesleyan College Home Page
Philosophy
Major at Wesleyan
Religious
Studies Major at Wesleyan
|
