Although little known today, the Utrecht physician and town councillor Lambert van Velthuysen (1622–1685) was a prolific Dutch seventeenth-century philosopher and a vociferous advocate of the new philosophies of Descartes and Hobbes. The Letter on the Principles of Justness and Decency of 1651 constitutes both the first published reaction to Hobbes's political philosophy and the first attempt by a Dutch philosopher at using Hobbes to supply a ‘Cartesian’ moral philosophy. It is also a highly original work that seeks to define the nature of virtue and vice and to justify the magistrate's right to punish crimes. It will thus be of interest not only to historians of philosophy but to all those interested in the social and cultural history of the Dutch Golden Age.

The very name of Confucius is a constant reminder that the “foremost sage” in China was first known in the West through Latin works. The most influential of these was the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (Confucius, the Philosopher of China), published in Paris in 1687. For more than two hundred years, Western intellectuals like Leibniz and Voltaire read and meditated on the sayings of Confucius from this Latin version.
Thierry Meynard examines the intellectual background of the Jesuits in China and their thought processes in coming to understand the Confucian tradition. He presents a trilingual edition of the Lunyu, including the Chinese text, the Latin translation of the Lunyu and its commentaries, and their rendition in modern English, with notes.

The volume contains critical editions of the extant parts of two hitherto unknown theological works by the Būyid vizier al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/925), who is well known to have vigorously promoted the teaching of Muʿtazilī theology throughout Būyid territories and beyond. The manuscripts on which the edition is based come from Cairo Geniza store rooms. They consist of two manuscripts for each of the two texts—testimony to the impact of al-Ṣāḥib’s education policy on the contemporaneous Jewish community in Cairo. The longer treatise of al-Ṣāḥib of ca. 350/960, possibly his Kitāb Nahj al-sabīl fī uṣūl al-dīn, appears to be the earliest Muʿtazilī work preserved among the Jewish community. The second, briefer treatise also contains a commentary by ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Hamadānī (d. 415/1025).

Foundations of Jurisprudence: An Introduction to Imāmī Shīʿī Legal Theory is a critical edition of the Arabic text with a parallel English translation of Mabādiʾ al-wuṣūl ilā ʿilm al-uṣūl by al-ʿAllāmah al-Ḥillī, introduced, edited and translated by Sayyid Amjad H. Shah Naqavi.
Al-ʿAllāmah al-Ḥillī participated in the leading debates of his day and applied his vast erudition in philosophy, logic, and theology to the paramount subject of jurisprudence. This text presents an exemplar of the rich revival of Shīʿī scholarship in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of the Common Era. Concise, yet comprehensive, this work sets the standard for the subsequent development and discussion of Imāmī Shīʿī legal theory, such that its influence can be traced through to modern times. This dual-text edition is indispensable for students and scholars of Imāmi Shīʿī jurisprudence.

La présente étude, L’imamat et l’Occultation selon l’imamisme, Étude bibliographique et histoire de textes, concerne l’évolution religieuse et historique du Hadith imamite autour de la constitution progressive et complexe des doctrines aussi fondamentales que l’imamat et l’Occultation. L’annexe de ce travail comprend les textes en arabe de ces écrits identifiés et reconstitués à travers leurs citations.

In his work, L’imamat et l’Occultation selon l’imamisme, Etude bibliographique et histoire de textes, Hassan Ansari has attempted to reconstruct a number of doctrines related to the concepts of religious authority ( imāma) as well as occultation ( ghayba) in Twelver Shi‘i Islam ( Ithnā'ashariyya). This has been done through identifying and collecting numerous references to quotations of early works in later Shiʿi texts. Ansari has reconstructed earlier layers of primary materials that are entirely lost and only pre-served in later sources.The book's Appendix comprises fragments of early works of Hadith reconstructed from later sources.

Le Kitāb dā’irat al-aḥruf al-abjadiyya est un traité de magie pratique attribué à Hermès. Ce texte composite, qui ne peut être daté avec précision, est un ouvrage de magie basée sur la doctrine de la science des lettres ( ‘ilm al-ḥurūf). Le présent livre offre la première édition critique du texte, accompagnée d’une traduction annotée et d’une étude historique et philologique exposant les principes théoriques à la base des procédés décrits dans les recettes ainsi que des entités, objets et ingrédients utilisés (noms des anges invoqués, types de fumigations et d’encres, dessins et figures, etc.). Il s’agit d’une des premières éditions critiques d’un traité de magie pratique des lettres, genre encore fort méconnu bien qu’abondamment représenté dans les manuscrits arabes.

The Kitāb dā’irat al-aḥruf al-abjadiyya is a composite treatise of letter magic attributed to Hermes. The edition and annotated translation of the Arabic text are accompanied by an explanation of the theoretical principles underlying the procedures described in the recipes, and a discussion of the entities, objects and ingredients used. These include names of the angels to be summoned, types of incenses and inks to be used, sketches and images to be drawn, etc. This is one of the first critical editions and translations of a full-length text of practical magic containing recipes pertaining to ‘ilm al-ḥurūf (the science of letters). The book is addressed to Arabists and to any non-Arabist interested in the tradition of magic.

Aristotle’s Historia Animalium is one of the most famous and influential zoological works that was ever written. It was translated into Arabic in the 9th century CE together with Aristotle’s other zoological works, On the Generation of Animals and On the Parts of Animals. As a result, the influence of Aristotelian zoology is widely traceable in classical Arabic literary culture and thought. The Arabic translation found its way into Europe through the 13th-century Latin translation by Michael Scotus, which was extensively used by medieval European scholars. A critical edition of the Arabic Historia Animalium has long been awaited, and Lourus Filius’s edition, based on all extant Arabic MSS, as well as on Scotus’s Latin translation, can rightly be seen as a scholarly landmark.

This volume contains the first edition of the Latin version of the Middle Commentary of Averroes on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Book X, the original arabic version being lost. It is accompanied by an annotated French translation. The volume also contains a full study of the manuscript tradition of the Latin text and sets outs the principles used in the edition, which takes into account, where necessary, the Hebrew version of the Commentary. Two further studies complete the volume: the first is devoted to the genre of “Middle Commentary” ( talḫīṣ); the second considers how Averroes uses an analogy with medicine to place ethics at the heart of practical philosophy, and how, in a manner that is foreign to Aristotle, he conceives of ethics as a “science.” Ce volume propose la toute première édition, accompagnée d’une traduction française annotée, de la version latine du Commentaire moyen d’Averroès à l’Éthique à Nicomaque d’Aristote Livre X, dont l’original arabe est perdu. Il présente également une étude complète de la tradition manuscrite du texte latin, et les principes d’édition, qui prennent en compte, ponctuellement, la version hébraïque du Commentaire. Deux études viennent compléter ce volume: l’une, consacrée à la notion de “commentaire moyen” ( talḫīṣ), l’autre à la place qu’Averroès — par le biais d’une analogie avec la médecine — réserve à l’éthique au sein de la philosophie pratique, et à la façon dont il conçoit désormais, de façon non aristotélicienne, l’éthique comme une “science.”

Moses Maimonides' On Coitus was composed at the request of an unknown high-ranking official who asked for a regimen that would be easy to adhere to, and that would increase his sexual potency, as he had a large number of slave girls. It is safe to assume that it was popular in Jewish and non-Jewish circles, as it survives in several manuscripts, both in Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic. The present edition by Gerrit Bos contains the original Arabic text, three medieval Hebrew translations, two Latin versions from the same translation (edited by Charles Burnett), and a Slavonic translation (edited by Will Ryan and Moshe Taube).

The present consilium, commonly known as De causis accidentium, after the Latin translation by John de Capua, was, like the earlier consilium On the Regimen of Health, composed by Maimonides at the request of al-Malik al-Afḍal Nūr al-Dīn Alī, Saladin’s eldest son. As a result of not adopting the lifestyle and dietary recommendations in On the Regimen of Health, al-Afḍal may have continued to suffer from a number of afflictions, amongst them hemorrhoids, depression, constipation, and, possibly, a heart condition. The consilium was written after 1200, the year in which al-Afḍal was deposed and banished from Egypt permanently, but probably not long before 1204, the year in which Maimonides died.