Vittorio Hosle

The essay shows that Ovid believed to know why he was relegated to Tomis and had every reason to avoid lying about it; therefore, his assertions are to be considered trustworthy. They are consistent with each other and seem to point to a stage representation of Ovid’s works in which Augustus was mocked. It was organized by influential people who wanted thereby to protest against the lex Papia Poppaea. Julia minor may have taken part in it. The challenge of Augustus’s political and perhaps paternal authority and the emperor’s antipathy against the erotic revolution for which he made Ovid responsible are the main causes of the relegatio. The main alternative explanations are shown to be incompatible with the sources and with probable assumptions about human behavior.

_Forms of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge _addresses a philosophical subject—the nature of truth and knowledge—but treats it in a way that draws on insights beyond the usual confines of modern philosophy. This ambitious collection includes contributions from established scholars in philosophy, theology, mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, literary criticism, history, and architecture. It represents an attempt to integrate the insights of these disciplines and to help them probe their own basic presuppositions and methods. The essays in _Forms of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge_ are collected into five parts, the first dealing with division of knowledge into multiple disciplines in Western intellectual history; the second with the foundational disciplines of epistemology, logic, and mathematics; the third with explanation in the natural sciences; the fourth with truth and understanding in disciplines of the humanities; and the fifth with art and theology.

The volume _The Many Faces of Beauty_ joins the rich debate on beauty and aesthetic theory by presenting an ambitious, interdisciplinary examination of various facets of beauty in nature and human society. The contributors ask such questions as, Is there beauty in mathematical theories? What is the function of arts in the economy of cultures? What are the main steps in the historical evolution of aesthetic theories from ancient civilizations to the present? What is the function of the ugly in enhancing the expressivity of art? and What constitutes beauty in film? The sixteen essays, by eminent scientists, critics, scholars, and artists, are divided into five parts. In the first, a mathematician, physicist, and two philosophers address beauty in mathematics and nature. In the second, an anthropologist, psychologist, historian of law, and economist address the place of beauty in the human mind and in society. Explicit philosophical reflections on notoriously vexing issues, such as the historicity of aesthetics itself, interculturality, and the place of the ugly, are themes of the third part. In the fourth, practicing artists discuss beauty in painting, music, poetry, and film. The final essay, by a theologian, reflects on the relation between beauty and God.

In _God as Reason: Essays in Philosophical Theology_, Vittorio Hösle presents a systematic exploration of the relation between theology and philosophy. In examining the problems and historical precursors of rational theology, he calls on philosophy, theology, history of science, and the history of ideas to find an interpretation of Christianity that is compatible with a genuine commitment to reason. The essays in the first part of _God as Reason_ deal with issues of philosophical theology. Hösle sketches the challenges that a rationalist theology must face and discusses some of the central ones, such as the possibility of a teleological interpretation of nature after Darwin, the theodicy issue, freedom versus determinism, the mind-body problem, and the relation in general between religion, theology, and philosophy. In the essays of the second part, Hösle studies the historical development of philosophical approaches to the Bible, the continuity between the New Testament concept of pneuma and the concept of Geist (spirit) in German idealism, and the rationalist theologies of Anselm, Abelard, Llull, and Nicholas of Cusa, whose innovative philosophy of mathematics is the topic of one of the chapters. The book concludes with a thorough evaluation of Charles Taylor’s theory of secularization. "_God as Reason_ makes a powerful contribution to the task of the philosophical assessment of religion and theology, and indeed to the task of arriving at a philosophically defensible account of God. Vittorio Hösle here addresses key questions concerning teleology in nature, theodicy, freedom and determinism, and the mind-body problem in essays of exemplary clarity and economy of expression that are equally informed by the full breadth of the philosophical tradition of the West and by the most important contemporary developments in both philosophy and the natural sciences." —_Jennifer A. Herdt, Yale Divinity School_.

No overall history of the philosophical dialogue has appeared since Rudolf Hirzel's two-volume study was published in 1895. In _The Philosophical Dialogue: A Poetics and a Hermeneutics_, Vittorio Hösle covers the development of the genre from its beginning with Plato to the late twentieth-century work of Iris Murdoch and Paul Feyerabend. Hösle presents a taxonomy and a doctrine of categories for the complex literary genre of the philosophical dialogue, focusing on the poetical laws that structure the genre, and develops hermeneutical rules for its correct interpretation. Following an introduction that employs the categories of subjectivity and intersubjectivity to classify philosophy's modes of expression, Hösle's book is structured by the classical triad of the production, inner structure, and reception of the literary dialogue. To explain what is meant by "philosophical dialogue," Hösle first deals with the specific traits of philosophical dialogue in contrast to other literary forms of philosophy and its special status among them. Second, he distinguishes the philosophical dialogue as a literary genre from actual philosophical conversation, and as a philosophical literary genre from nonphilosophical literary dialogues. Finally, he takes up the connection between literary form and philosophical content in the philosophical dialogue. Numerous authors of dialogues are discussed, with a special focus on Plato, Cicero, Augustine, Hume, and Diderot. Originally published in Germany as _Der philosophische Dialog: Eine Poetik und Hermeneutik_ (2006), this book not only contributes to the philosophical discussion of dialogue but to a great extent defines it. This fine translation will prove useful to both philosophers and literary critics in the English-speaking world. "With its exceptionally clear and powerful argumentation, the book might become the defining work for the study of dialogue. Paraphrasing Kant, one could say that in philosophy mere theory without a history is empty, while history without a theory is blind. Yet in his work Hösle achieves a unique synthesis of historical perceptivity and systematic rigor. This book will be read for many years to come." —_Dmitri Nikulin, New School for Social Research_.

At least since Plato, the relationship between philosophy and literature has been tense. In the introduction to this book, the author, who is internationally known as a philosopher, political scientist and literary critic, discusses the complex facets of this relationship, emphatically defending the cognitive character of literature. In thirteen interpretations, he also shows concretely how philosophically inspired literary criticism may proceed. His topics are, among others, the problem of linguistic iconism in poetry, Dante’s Commedia, Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus, comedies by Holberg, Goldoni and Büchner, Schiller’s Fiesco, Grillparzer, Ibsen, Raabe, Thomas Mann and le Carré. Both philosophers and literary critics will benefit from this book.