Discussions of value play a central role in contemporary philosophy. This book considers the role of values in truth seeking, in morality, in aesthetics and also in the spiritual life. The distinguished contributors include Simon Blackburn, Jonathan Dancy, Paul Horwich, John Leslie, Timothy Sprigge, and David Wiggins.

Students of Thomas Aquinas have so far lacked a comprehensive study of his doctrine of the transcendentals. This volume fills this lacuna, showing the fundamental character of the notions of being, one, true and good for his thought. The book inquires into the beginnings of the doctrine in the thirteenth century and explains the relation of the transcendental way of thought to Aquinas's conception of metaphysics. It analyzes "Being," "One," "True," "Good" and "Beautiful" individually and discusses their importance for the philosophical knowledge of God. Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas is intended as a contribution to the question "What is philosophy in the Middle Ages?". It argues that the doctrine of the transcendentals is essential for understanding medieval philosophy.

Although she never penned a text dedicated exclusively to ethics, Edith Stein’s work encompasses an implicit, but self-consciously developed, moral philosophy not yet sufficiently developed in the current English-language literature. However, comparison of Stein’s anthropological and metaphysical theories against the ethical philosophy of other early phenomenological thinkers, such as Max Scheler and Edmund Husserl, reveals lines of moral theory woven throughout her texts. In On the Ethical Philosophy of Edith Stein: Outlines of Morality, William E. Tullius endeavors to present a systematic account of Stein’s moral thought as it takes shape in conversation with neo-scholasticism and develops across her corpus in conversation with her philosophical anthropology, axiological theory, and metaphysics. The ethics which emerge from these sources is oriented around the moral project of the development of personality through the unfolding of one’s personal core and which entails a call to the development of an ethical community reflective of and oriented by its responsiveness to the highest values and to the communal destiny of all humanity in God

Reprint of the original, first published in 1873.

This book considers the Chinese conception of beauty from a historical perspective with regard to its significant relation to human personality and human existence. It examines the etymological implications of the pictographic character mei, the totemic symbolism of beauty, the ferocious beauty of the bronzeware. Further on, it proceeds to look into the conceptual progression of beauty in such main schools of thought as Confucianism, Daoism and Chan Buddhism. Then, it goes on to illustrate through art and literature the leading principles of equilibriumharmony, spontaneous naturalness, subtle void and synthetic possibilities. It also offers a discussion of modern change and transcultural creation conducted with particular reference to the theory of the poetic state par excellence (yi jing shuo) and that of art as sedimentation (ji dian shuo).