Paul Kidder

This thesis demonstrates that the foundations of Lonergan's philosophy are neither primarily epistemological nor primarily ontological, but are evenly balanced between epistemology and ontology. The balance is achieved, not by compromise or conflation of the two standpoints, but by recognition of a fact about reality: that while being is knowable, and may therefore be specified through acts of knowing, knowing is itself within being, and therefore may be specified ontologically. This gnoseo-ontological circularity wherein knowing and being imply one another demands that epistemology and metaphysics complete one another. ;Lonergan's philosophy facilitates such a mutual completion. He develops a theory of cognitional operations as the basis and critical measure for philosophical thought, including metaphysics. He defines being heuristically, as the objective of the pure desire to know. And he defines the metaphysical elements of potency, form, and act as corollaries to the cognitional operations of experience, understanding, and judgment. But at the same time, his realist epistemology allows and encourages a repetition of cognitional theory itself from a metaphysical standpoint: the metaphysical elements are corollaries to cognition because they are principles of cognition; for, again, knowing is within being. ;The human task, on Lonergan's position, is not to overcome the gnoseo-ontological circle, but rather, one might say, through greater knowledge and fuller participation in being, to expand its compass. The circle is only overcome in God, whose knowing and being are thoroughly identical. ;Chapter one elaborates and defends the foregoing in general terms. Subsequent chapters follow the working-out of Lonergan's gnoseo-ontological approach in three major works. In Verbum, it is present in Lonergan's effort to identify a critical dimension to a psychology that Aquinas developed in an essentially metaphysical framework. In Insight, it is a basis for a new kind of metaphysical framework. In Method in Theology, it is present in his broadening of his philosophical program to include a wider range of existential and methodological issues

"Providing a concise and accessible introduction to the work of the twentieth century's celebrated German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, this book focuses on the aspects of Gadamer's philosophy that have been the most influential among architects, educators in architecture, and architectural theorists. Gadamer's philosophy of art gives a special place to the activity of "play" as it occurs in artistic creation, in language, and in thinking. His ideas on the function of symbols and meaning in art draw upon his teacher, Martin Heidegger, while developing further the applicability of Heideggerian thinking. His theory of interpretation, or "philosophical hermeneutics" offers profound ways to understand the influence of the past upon the present, and to appropriate the past in ever new forms. Gadamer's sensitivity to the way that theory arises out of practice and must maintain its relevance to practice gives his thought a remarkable usefulness and applicability. For architects, architectural theorists, architectural historians, and undergraduate and postgraduate students of architecture, Gadamer's thinking opens a world of possibilities for understanding how building today can be rich with human meaning, relating to architecture's history in an insightful manner that does not merely repeat nor merely repudiate that history"--

This is a translation of Le Bergsonisme, published in France in 1966. Deleuze's compendious study offers not an introduction but an interpretation and integration of central Bergsonian concepts and themes. The author assists the reader who has at least some familiarity with Bergson's texts in seeing the notions of duration, memory, élan vital, and intuition--notions spread across various of Bergson's writings-within a single philosophical program. The book is thematically organized and reserves detailed readings of particular Bergsonian texts for only the thorniest of problems.

Jane Jacobs’s classic 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, famously indicted a vision of urban development based on large scale projects, low population densities, and automobile-centered transportation infrastructure by showing that small plans, mixed uses, architectural preservation, and district autonomy contributed better to urban vitality and thus the appeal of cities. Implicit in her thinking is something that could be called “the urban good,” and recognizable within her vision of the good is the principle of subsidiarity—the idea that governance is best when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses—a principle found in Catholic papal encyclicals and related documents. Jacobs’s work illustrates and illuminates the principle of subsidiarity, not merely through her writings on cities, but also through her activism in New York City, which was influential in altering the direction of that city’s subsequent planning and development.