15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Get this book while it is still available!, January 12, 2002
This review is from: Quodlibetal Questions: Volumes 1 and 2, Quodlibets 1-7 (Yale Library of Medieval Philosophy Seri) (Paperback)
This book is a monster text! It is 702 pages and covers every imaginable question that could be asked. For example, "Is an angel in a place through his substance?" or "Does a spoken word lose its significance when a thing [it signifies] ceases to exist?" and many, many more (about 170 questions in all).
This is a paperback one-volume edition to the earlier two volume edition, which means this volume is substantially less expensive than the two volume set. Moreover, the topics covered in this volume are practically exhaustive - logic, ontology, natural philosophy, philosophical psychology, ethics, moral theory, theology, metaphysics, etc.
Added features to this already great text include a lengthy and exhaustive subject index, a short but good introduction, nice explanatory footnotes throughout the text, a short but good selective bibliography, and an index of names and works.
Fred Freddoso (Notre Dame) and the late Francis Kelley have translated this work in such a way that both the scholar of Ockham and the student of Ockham will benefit. Moreover, this is a great introductory work to Ockham for students (such as myself) interested in digging a little deeper into the thoughts and writings of one of the more prominent Medieval thinkers.
The work is laid out as such: a question is posed or asked, if there is something to be noted about the question then it is noted with a nice explanation, a reply to the question is given, and sometimes, depending on the question and the content, a reply to the main argument is given. If there are problems or issue which have arisen about a particular question Ockham is careful to cover these problems and issues. And, all along, footnotes are provided by the translators which help the reader understand the Latin usages (if that issue arises), the context of the question and response, cross references to other works or issues which might help the reader branch out into deeper research, and descriptions and explanations of terms, works, etc. So the book is quite helpful and friendly to all readers, which actually makes reading this text quite helpful. I highly recommend this work! Moreover, buy it soon because it has been my experience that books like these (the really good ones!) for some odd reason usually have a short shelf life!
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