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Philosophy Graduate Student Portfolio Papers Guide

Guide for portfolio papers

Introduction

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Last Updated: February 2022 by Kyle Tanaka

Augustine of Hippo

Editions

The above translations of of the Confessions, Pine-Coffin's and Chadwick's, are both widely-used translations. Chadwick's translation is more recent, and is based on a more complete and updated version of the Latin text.

New City Press, in conjunction with The Augustinian Heritage Institute, is overseeing a complete English translation of Augustine's entire corpus--a total of 132 works in 49 volumes. As of this writing, 44 volumes have been published. You can visit their site here.

 

For the Latin, there are multiple editions worth consulting:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

General Secondary Literature:

Confessions Secondary Literature:

On Free Choice of the Will Secondary Literature:

Note: it may also be worth consulting Book V of Augustine's The City of God, which also offers an extended reflection on predestination and free will.

Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius)

Editions

​Walsh's translation is commonly used. Relihan's translation is a more literal translation, although it suffers in readability a bit because of this.

Moreschini's volume is the critical edition of the Latin. A newer (2005) edition exists, but is not (as of this writing) in Emory's collection.

There is also a meta-translation work, Remaking Boethius: The English Language Translation Tradition of The Consolation of Philosophy, which analyzes and contrasts the 24 translations (historical and modern) of Boethius' work.

 

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Al Ghazali

Editions

The above edition, translated by McCarthy, is standard. A slightly more updated version of the above translation is available, although it is not in Emory's collection. It also includes some related texts.

 

  • ​al-Ghazali. Deliverance from Error: Five Key Texts Including His Spiritual Autobiography, al-Munqidh min al-Dalal. Translated by R. J. McCarthy. Louisville: Fons Vitae, 2004.

 

A scan of the Arabic can be found by clicking here.

 

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Anselm of Canterbury

Editions

The Hackett collection of Anselm's writings includes the Proslogion along with Anselm's other philosophical writings. However, the standard scholarly edition of the Proslogion is the Charlesworth translation, which also includes the Latin.

 

The critical edition of the Latin is as follows:​

The Latin is also available online:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon)

Editions

The Pines translation of the Guide is standard. The following volumes may, however, also be useful:

For the Judeo-Arabic, the standard edition is as follows:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Thomas Aquinas

Editions

The Selected edition above is the one listed by the portfolio handbook. As a compilation edition, it pulls from numerous writings from Aquinas, but primarily draws from Aquinas's two major works, the Summa Theologica and Summa contra Gentiles. Accordingly, it may be worth consulting the full editions of these works:

The Latin editions of Aquinas' works are available online, although not all editions are yet published.

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Duns Scotus (John Duns)

Editions

The above edition, translated by Wolter and published by Hackett, is the one specified by the portfolio guide. However, this edition should be supplemented with additional editions, in large part because some selections contain omissions and although the Latin is included, it is not the critical edition. All of the selections in the Hackett volume come from Scotus's Ordinatio.

Note: the Ordinatio is a series of lectures later revised by Scotus on Peter Lombard's Sentences. The Sentences in their entirety can be found in the following volumes:

For those not wishing to read 4 volumes of Medieval philosophy on top of Scotus's works, a summary of the Sentences can be found in the following sources:

Unfortunately, there is no complete English translation of the Ordinatio. However, the following volumes do contain translations of important passages:

 

The history of Scotus's texts is long and convoluted. In short, the surviving texts of Scotus have often been found piece by piece, meaning no one series of texts exists which contains them all. The following volumes and series comprise the bulk of the critical Latin editions of Scotus's works.

Although the above will generally suffice for most of Duns Scotus's works, a variety of other critical and semi-critical editions of works and pieces are available.

 

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

William of Ockham

Editions

The Hackett edition above, translated/edited by Boehner and revised by Brown, is the one specified by the portfolio guide. As is often the case with Medieval figures, no complete standard English translation of Ockham's works exists. For those wishing to supplement the writings in the Hackett volume, the following works contain addition material from Ockham:

 

The critical edition of the Latin is as follows:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Cusanus (Nicholas of Cusa)

Editions

There is only one translation of Cusanus's Of Learned Ignorance [De docta ignorantia], by Jasper Hopkins. There is an online version of the Hopkins translation with the Latin (Opera Omnia edition) side by side available here.

Hopkins also has downloadable PDF versions of his translations available on his site.

 

The Latin can also be found in his complete works:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Note: Secondary literature on Nicholas of Cusa is English is scarce; there is far more written on him in languages other than English, especially German and Italian.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Editions

There is not a sufficiently large body of individuals working specifically on Pico to result in a consensus on a standard edition of the Dignity. The above two editions, however, are both used.

 

The Latin is available both digital and physical editions:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

General Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Marsilius of Padua

Editions

The above edition, translated by Brett, is generally taken as standard.

 

The Latin text is contained in the following volume:

Online Resources:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Dante Alighieri

Editions

There are myriad translations of both individual books of the Divine Comedy and the work as a whole. Some translators preserve the poetic structure of the work in some form, others opt to simply convert the work into prose.

For poetic translations, both the Hollander and Mandelbaum translations are commonly used.

For prose translations, Singleton is often used. A more modern, readable edition is the Durling translation.

 

A helpful comparison and analysis of available translations (including samples) can be found here.

 

The following is the critical edition of the Italian text:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Christine de Pizan

Editions

The above is the standard English translation of The Book of the City of Ladies.

 

The original text, written in French but often employing Latin syntax, lacks a modern critical edition. However, the following volumes may be worth consulting:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

  • Arlima - Bibliography
    • In French. A bibliography of Christine's works and relevant secondary literature.

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Galileo Galilei

Editions

The above, translated by Drake, is the only modern English translation of the text.

 

For the Italian, the standard edition is contained in Galileo's complete works:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Dōgen (Dōgen Zenji, Eihei Dōgen)

Editions

The above edition (Primer) is the one specified by the portfolio. It is a translation of selections from Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō zuimonki. As with many texts in the history of Asian philosophy, translations into English are often disputed and simply cannot capture the full range of meanings in the original. That said, two additional versions worth consulting (both above) are Waddell and Abe's, which is often considered a solid, clear translation (influenced by the Kyoto school) and Yokoi's, which is touted by Critical Buddhism advocates as more faithful to Dōgen's teachings.

 

It may also worth be consulting the Sōtō Zen Text Project:

  • Sōtō Zen Text Project

    • ​An extensive translation project that aims to translate and annotate the entire Shōbōgenzō. In anticipation of its publication (est. 2020), the online portion has been taken down. However, individual portions of the Shōbōgenzō are still available in individual journal issues, starting with no. 9 (October, 2001).

 

For the Japanese, the Shōbōgenzō can be found in Dōgen's collected works:

  • Sakai Tokugen 酒井得元, Kagamishima Genryū 鏡島元隆, and Sakurai Shūyū 桜井秀雄, editors. Dōgen zenji zenshū (道元禅師全集). Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1988–1993. 7 vols.

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

General Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Editions

There are a huge number of available English translations of the Prince, and no one translation stands above the rest as indisputably superior. Wootton's translation, available both in the above Hackett volume and as a standalone edition, is often used. Mansfield's translation is another commonly-used edition.

 

For the Italian, the following volumes are worth consulting:

Online Resources:

Bibliographies:

  • Oxford Bibliographies Page
  • Fiore, Silvia Ruffo. Niccolò Machiavelli: An Annotated Bibliography of Modern Criticism and Scholarship. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1990.
    • A bibliography of scholarship published 1935-1988.

Secondary Literature:

Items in Bold are available via online access from Emory's collections.