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The author reviews the background to Tillich's theology including his debts to Schelling, Kant and Husserl. He surveys Tillich's achievement as a philosophical theologian, examining his ontological approach to christology, and his understanding of the church as a spiritual community.

Nasir al-Din Tusi, the renowned Shi'i scholar of the 13th century, produced a wide range of writings in different fields of learning under Ismaili patronage and later under the Mongols. "Contemplation and Action" is his autobiography, in which he recounts details of his early education, his search for knowledge and his eventual conversion to Ismaili faith. It is also a clear and vivid elaboration of the Ismaili doctrine of "ta'lim", the need for an authoritative teacher in spiritual knowledge. T...

Blaise Pascal had an extraordinary life and career. Renowned as a child prodigy, he engaged with the intellectual ferment surrounding the mathematician Father Mersenne before turning to his scientific experiments, his work on mathematics and construction of mechanical calculating machines, his correspondence with Pierre de Fermat and Rene Descartes, and his 'Memorial', a scrap of paper he always wore close to his heart on which he described an overwhelming religious experience.This book consider...

In The Enlightened Joseph Priestley Robert Schofield completes his two-volume biography of one of the great figures of the English Enlightenment. The first volume, published in 1997, covered the first forty years of Joseph Priestley’s life in England. In this second volume, Schofield surveys the mature years of Priestley, including the achievements that were to make him famous—the discovery of oxygen, the defenses of Unitarianism, and the political liberalism that characterized his later life. H...

The controversial Jewish thinker whose tortured path led him into the heart of twentieth-century intellectual lifeScion of a distinguished line of Talmudic scholars, Jacob Taubes (1923-1987) was an intellectual impresario whose inner restlessness led him from prewar Vienna to Zurich, Israel, and Cold War Berlin. Regarded by some as a genius, by others as a charlatan, Taubes moved among yeshivas, monasteries, and leading academic institutions on three continents. He wandered between Judaism and C...