Book Description

As philosopher, historian, and teacher, John Herman Randall, Jr. is world-renowned and universally respected. In more than fifty years of study he has probed Western thought inclusively from the early Greeks, Aristotle and the Peripatetics through contemporary European and American philosophers. Currently, Professor Randall is conducting his scholarly research at the University of Padua and the Columbia-Padua Institute, a society which he helped found, devoted to the study of the Aristotelian tradition in the Renaissance. In his introduction to this volume, the editor characterizes Professor Randall's relation to the contemporary world of thought. "It can be said in truth that Randall never touched a subject-matter without making it luminous and intelligible, ...and has scorned no inquiry, no idea, no vision ever ardently pursued by men anywhere. The measure of our intellectual indebtedness to him will not soon be taken." This volume has provided the rare opportunity to present related work of several eminent scholars in different fields. Most of the essays were written to honor Professor Randall on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Using Randall's work as a point of departure, and reflecting its broad relevance, they treat subjects as diverse as religion, Greek philosophy, Kant's philosophy of science, Renaissance Aristotelianism, and British Empiricism. Included also are two tributes and memoirs—personal reminiscences of Randall's early career—and a valuable bibliography of Randall's published work.