This anthology of philosophical texts by Greek and Roman authors brings together works from the late fifth century BC to the sixth century AD that comment on major aesthetic issues such as the perception of beauty and harmony in music and the visual arts, structure and style in literature, and aesthetic judgement. It includes important texts by Plato and Aristotle on the status and the role of the arts in society and in education, and Longinus' reflections on the sublime in (...) literature, in addition to less well-known writings by Philodemus, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, Augustine and Proclus. Most of the texts have been newly translated for this volume, and some are available in English for the first time. A detailed introduction traces the development of classical aesthetics from its roots in Platonism and Aristotelianism to its ultimate form in late Antiquity. (shrink)

The phrase combining the terms κάλλ0ς and ἀπoρρoή to my knowledge does not occur anywhere else in the Greek Corpus in the context of contemplating a beautiful beloved. Achilles Tatius therefore must be making an allusion to Plato. This can hardly come as a surprise considering that Phaedr. 251, which describes the influence of the appearance of beauty on the soul of the lover, is one of the most famous and widely known Platonic passages. However, the context within which these (...) two allusions to Plato are introduced deserves attention. Adding a certain learned touch to the description of erotic episodes in his novel, Achilles Tatius presents a ‘scientific’ explanation of the mechanism of visual perception. The consistency of both accounts suggests that he draws on some scholarly theory of vision which was part of his general educational background. But, unlike the above mentioned allusions, this theory is hardly Platonic. (shrink)

The phrase combining the terms κάλλ0ς and ἀπoρρoή to my knowledge does not occur anywhere else in the Greek Corpus in the context of contemplating a beautiful beloved. Achilles Tatius (second centurya.d.) therefore must be making an allusion to Plato. This can hardly come as a surprise considering thatPhaedr.251, which describes the influence of the appearance of beauty on the soul of the lover, is one of the most famous and widely known Platonic passages. However, the context within which these (...) two allusions to Plato are introduced deserves attention. Adding a certain learned touch to the description of erotic episodes in his novel, Achilles Tatius presents a ‘scientific’ explanation of the mechanism of visual perception. The consistency of both accounts suggests that he draws on some scholarly theory of vision which was part of his general educational background. But, unlike the above mentioned allusions, this theory is hardly Platonic. (shrink)

A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology presents for the first time in English key passages from the Summa Halensis, one of the first major installments in the summa genre for which scholasticism became famous. This systematic work of philosophy and theology was collaboratively written mostly between 1236 and 1245 by the founding members of the Franciscan school, such as Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle, who worked at the recently founded University of Paris. Modern scholarship has often dismissed (...) this early Franciscan intellectual tradition as unoriginal, merely systematizing the Augustinian tradition in light of the rediscovery of Aristotle, paving the way for truly revolutionary figures like John Duns Scotus. But as the selections in this reader show, it was this earlier generation that initiated this break with precedent. The compilers of the Summa Halensis first articulated many positions that eventually become closely associated with the Franciscan tradition on issues like the nature of God, the proof for God’s existence, free will, the transcendentals, and Christology. This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the ways in which medieval thinkers employed philosophical concepts in a theological context as well as the evolution of Franciscan thought and its legacy to modernity. A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology is available from the publisher on an open-access basis. (shrink)

One of the important theological issues for ancient and medieval thought was to account for the existence of evil. Augustine provided an aesthetic explanation: evil exists for contrast, to let the good stand out more prominently. Thus, just as a painting that uses both dark and bright colors, the universe that contains both good and evil is beautiful as a whole. The argument was debated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Alexander of Hales, as well as the Franciscan tradition in (...) general, strongly supported the Augustinian position. The article discusses a previously unknown debate between Albert the Great and Bonaventure about this issue and suggests that Bonaventure is defending his fellow-Franciscan Alexander. (shrink)

R. Pasnau once commented that the present-day academic area of cognitive theory suits medieval thought better than epistemology. The comment seems to the point, and the focus of R. Cross’s book is thus appropriately placed. Scotus’s theory of cognition is worth a new treatment both because Scotus represents a new stage in medieval cognitive theory and because his positions are “sometimes rather fluid” and “not always as clear”. This lack of clarity extends to the most important subject in this book, (...) such as various aspects of the issue of intentionality, where Scotus’s discussion is... (shrink)

The phrase combining the terms κάλλ0ς and ἀπoρρoή to my knowledge does not occur anywhere else in the Greek Corpus in the context of contemplating a beautiful beloved. Achilles Tatius (second centurya.d.) therefore must be making an allusion to Plato. This can hardly come as a surprise considering thatPhaedr.251, which describes the influence of the appearance of beauty on the soul of the lover, is one of the most famous and widely known Platonic passages. However, the context within which these (...) two allusions to Plato are introduced deserves attention. Adding a certain learned touch to the description of erotic episodes in his novel, Achilles Tatius presents a ‘scientific’ explanation of the mechanism of visual perception. The consistency of both accounts suggests that he draws on some scholarly theory of vision which was part of his general educational background. But, unlike the above mentioned allusions, this theory is hardly Platonic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:It is difficult to do justice to a monumental study such as PJDS in a short review: only time will determine its real significance. We can only offer some preliminary comments, and in spite of anything we have to say, the mere fact that the book contains such a wealth of information justifies for it a permanent place on a bookshelf of a student of medieval thought.The title of (...) PJDS deserves special attention. While we have books on Scotus's theology or particular topics of his thought, there has been no comprehensive study of his "philosophy," seemingly for a good reason: Scotus is clearly a "fundamental" and systematic theologian who simply uses some classic tools of ancient philosophers and some of their texts and ideas as material for his own discussions. So first of all one needs to determine what constitutes "philosophy" in such a case. V. devotes considerable attention to this question, but unfortunately only at the very end of the study, in Part III, which constitutes almost a separate monograph on the historiography of the debate about "medieval philosophy" and Scotus's role in it. Dichotomizing medieval thought into "philosophy" and theology in recent debates comes from the post-Enlightenment habit of seeing "philosophy" , as opposed to "theology," as something positive in itself. In Chapter 14 V. makes a good observation that "philosophy" and "theology" in ancient and medieval thought are simply two systems that can be coherent in themselves but differ fundamentally as far as their premises are concerned. Using the terminology of contemporary hermeneutical-postcritical analysis, one could say that both disciplines are intratextual systems, with their own internal logic but with different "starting points," opened to a conversation ad extra to various degrees. The classification "intratextual system" based on a solid theoretical foundation in the hermeneutical-postcritical tradition would eliminate the unnecessary dichotomy in ancient and medieval thought. Indeed, it is difficult to see why some of Plato's, Aristotle's or Stoic texts should be classified as "philosophy," not to mention those of Plotinus and Proclus that are often clearly "theology." As a whole, V.'s verdict is that Scotus has his own coherent system of thought based on contingency, as opposed to the "necessitarianism" of ancient philosophers. As for the role of "philosophy," V.'s analysis of recent scholarship shows that "medieval philosophy" is often understood as the logical tools in the service of theology: the interpretation that explains the recent interest in the fourteenth-century thought where those tools were best developed.The book in general is quite readable, despite occasional infelicities in the English and some typos. V. employs a variety of styles, from purely scholarly, which includes a straightforward exposition of relevant texts, with some analysis of the diachronic development of issues, to more literary, ornate and emotional. Similarly varied is his presentation of issues: from dry exposition to creating prolonged "mystery plots" that lead to "discoveries." Unfortunately there is also some unevenness in the text flow: from very smooth to abrupt transitions from one statement to another .Although the book will definitely benefit a variety of readers, the exact readership is difficult to pinpoint. Some sections, such as the extended discussion of distinctions and relations in the section on logic, presuppose a very basic audience; often much of the material from previous sections is repeated . Yet other sections presuppose a rather sophisticated reader who is familiar with the context of the discussion and is able not only to follow but also anticipate the author's train of thought.PJDS provides an excellent coverage of Scotus's work, with one notable exception: the Reportatio tradition. Even though the Wolter/Bychkov edition-translation of Rep. I-A appeared perhaps.. (shrink)

Intentionality, mental representation, sensory perception and its reliability, sensory illusions, and the concomitant issue of epistemological skepticism are becoming an important cluster of related topics in research on medieval cognitive psychology. It is no wonder, because these topics are much more relevant to present-day discussions of cognition and sensory perception, as many of these issues remain unexplained to this date, and therefore any observations in these areas could still be of interest, while many other topics traditionally discussed in studies on (...) medieval philosophy have only historical value and gradually fade into oblivion. Although the two publications included in this review are not... (shrink)

Franciscan thought in the 1300's, starting with Duns Scotus, is quite a revolution in terms of a shift to relying on sensory and phenomenal experience in the construction of cognitive theories.1 However, we do not yet understand the full extent of its convergence with modern and contemporary thought. In what follows, we intend to advance this understanding. The experiential tendency in early fourteenth-century thought is undermined by a Cartesian-style doubt about the reliability of sensory perception and phenomenal experience that stems (...) from the 63rd proposition of the Condemnations of 1277, which rejects the thesis that "God cannot produce the effect of a secondary cause without the secondary cause itself":2 a... (shrink)

The issue of why God, the Trinity and Christ in Christianity can be called "beautiful" has been muddled in literature on theological aesthetics. John Duns Scotus’s detailed discussion of relations within the Trinity helps resolve this issue. The Trinity can be called "beautiful" in at least three senses, depending on whether one considers Trinitarian relations at all, whether one looks at the relation of equality, or whether one analyzes relations of origin.

This article is a book review. I provide a detailed summary and critical assessment of the anthology by Bychkov and Sheppard.

Introduction -- Before bushido: considering samurai thought and indentity -- First explanations of bushido in the Meiji Era -- The early bushido boom, 1894-1905 -- The late bushido boom, 1905-1914 -- The end of the bshido boom -- The Showa bushido resurgence -- Bushido in post-war Japan -- Conclusions and considerations.

This article introduces the theological and philosophical thoughts of Lev Karsavin, who was one of the most creative representatives of Russian religious philosophy in the early 20th century. His conception was historically the last amongst the great systems of Russian metaphysics of all-unity. This conception gave an opportunity for developing an understanding of the relations between God and the world, and the act of creation as gift of God.

A structure (M, $ ,...) is called quasi-o-minimal if in any structure elementarily equivalent to it the definable subsets are exactly the Boolean combinations of 0-definable subsets and intervals. We give a series of natural examples of quasi-o-minimal structures which are not o-minimal; one of them is the ordered group of integers. We develop a technique to investigate quasi-o-minimality and use it to study quasi-o-minimal ordered groups (possibly with extra structure). Main results: any quasi-o-minimal ordered group is abelian; any quasi-o-minimal (...) ordered ring is a real closed field, or has zero multiplication; every quasi-o-minimal divisible ordered group is o-minimal; every quasi-o-minimal archimedian densely ordered group is divisible. We show that a counterpart of quasi-o-minimality in stability theory is the notion of theory of U-rank 1. (shrink)

Modern cognitive approach represents the interdisciplinary branch of scientific reflection uniting researchers of knowledge, studying laws of purchase, transformation, representation, storages and reproduction of the information. People react to own experience, instead of "objective" reality. Cognitive map of the world according to which we operate, our feelings, belief and life experience create. We have no direct access to a "objective" reality, therefore our cognitive map is for us this unique "real" reality. Cognitive science widely uses methodology of synergetic approach successfully (...) describing processes of self‐organizing. On the other hand, the synergetic addresses to modelling cognitive systems both the separate individual and collective cognitive processes. Therefore there are bases tospeak about formation cognitive‐synergetic scientific program ‐ the approach which is under construction on principles of modern nonlinear thinking. (shrink)

Исследование иллюстрируется примерами анализа самого современного искусства в сферах живописи, театра, кино, литературы.

A careful evaluation of well-documented historical data, along with ancient and modern theological writings, reveals the matriarch Rebekah as one of the most important and controversial individuals of the biblical narrative. Her exceptional beauty, hospitality, morality, faithfulness and sacrificial love were highly admired and praised as iconic by ancient historians, philosophers, the Hebrew community, the Church Fathers and numerous other scholars; yet, some theologians and clerics of the past few 100 years have depicted Rebekah in a negative light. This article (...) intends to highlight this contradiction for the contemporary community of believers by providing an insightful description of the ancient hermeneutics of Rebekah's story. It further aims to encourage biblical scholars to methodologically re-evaluate Rebekah's life, investigating possible reasons as to why the positive image of Rebekah has been overturned in recent years, and thereby determine the cause of such a conceptual paradigm shift in interpreting this key biblical narrative. (shrink)

The proposed theory is broad enough to accommodate the reduction or elimination of prior influences by a variety of acts symbolizing separation. However, it does not account for stability in psychological variables, and is contradicted by widely documented stability in people's actual attitudes and behavior over time, in multiple domains, despite people's pervasive everyday acts of symbolic separation.

In many films, story is presented in an order different from chronological. Deviations from the chronological order in a narrative are called anachronies. Narratological theory and the evidence from psychological experiments indicate that anachronies allow stories to be more interesting, as the non-chronological order evokes curiosity in viewers. In this paper we investigate the historical dynamics in the use of anachronies in film. Particularly, we follow the cultural attraction theory that suggests that, given certain conditions, cultural evolution should conform to (...) our cognitive preferences. We study this on a corpus of 80 most popular mystery films released in 1970–2009. We observe that anachronies have become used more frequently, and in a greater proportion of films. We also find that films that made substantial use of anachronies, on average, distributed the anachronies evenly along film length, while the films that made little use of anachronies placed them near the beginning and end. We argue that this can reflect a functional difference between these two types of using anachronies. The paper adds further support to the argument that popular culture may be influenced to a significant degree by our cognitive biases. (shrink)

The intuitions of Raimundus Lullus religious metaphysics are in this article explicated according to the opportunities of the convergence between the medieval and the new time philosophy. Such approach to the creativity of the thinker is possible, because his conception is one sides associated with the mystical symbolic theologism, that is typical for the medieval tradition, over sides develops Lullus the new understanding of the infinity of the world, inherent in the newtime philosophy. This opposition conditions some of the features (...) of Lullus spiritual quest. This quest connected the respect to the past, that causes the homesickness to the lost ideals, together with the progressivity – the presentation of the future. This presentiment is by Lullus expressed as the desire to change the external world. The aim of this change is the approximation of the rational theological base – the model for the real life. Lullus experiences the combination and the unrealized synthesis of this intentions as the tragedy. The acute and intensive conflict of this intentions triggers the practical atheism, when the stimulation of the external distraction of the evil leads causes the appearance and the activation of the new evil. This disaster of life is determined with some aspects of Lullus metaphysics, in that the infinity of God is realized as the infinity of the world. The infinity of the world is by Lullus given as the rational hierarchical order, leading to the creator of the world. The tragedy of life is for Lullus the marker, that emphasizes the crisis of the medieval philosophy, that was based on the revelation. This crisis discovers the land of new philosophy. This philosophy stresses the autonomy of the human personality. (shrink)

The relevance of the research reflects the unity of the requirements of the Beijing Philosophical Congress "Learning to be a man" and the anniversary report of the "Rome Club" "Come On! Capitalism, myopia, population and destruction of the planet", which the transformation processes of the socio-sphere are revealed from the standpoint the need for a radical breakdown of the spiritual and moral world of man and his worldview. The foundation of these transformations is the transition in education, as the hippocrine (...) of our knowledge, the source that quenches thirst in them to the "new Enlightenment" as a decisive factor in the learning of a person to be him. This determined the purpose and objectives of the article. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the natural and necessary character of the formation of the "new Enlightenment", to reveal the architectonics of its content. Research objectives : in the context of the goal to uncover the factors that determine the need for a transition in education to the "new Enlightenment", its qualitative difference from the Enlightenment of the 17th-18th centuries; to characterize the new content of "connectedness" in education based on the use of new information technologies; analyze the process of formation of a new spiritual and moral outlook of a specialist on the universal values of humanity; focus the learner’s attention on focusing knowledge of sustainable development as a determining factor of the global problems of mankind through the interrelation of academic disciplines; an important component presents the demand for the formation of a new integral thinking, innovative in its essence and qualitatively different from the analytical one. It is noted that the transition to the path of integral thinking contributes to the connection, coordination and organization into a single whole of the fragments of the object under study. Such thinking is characterized by stability, reliability, variability; it is original in its connections with science and education, and methodological influence on individual and social consciousness. Integral thinking reflects a qualitatively new level of intelligence. Research methods: to achieve the stated goal and constructive solution of the tasks, the article used the method of abduction, analysis and synthesis, historical and logical, synergistic approach. The results of the research: a new paradigm of education is represented – the noospheric-information one corresponding to the factuality of the “new Enlightenment”, as its ability to reproduce itself on a changing scale. The change in the scale of the socio-sphere is due to its globalization processes. The content of the “new Enlightenment” is explicated as a qualitatively new level of formation of students' sustainable knowledge based on the integral innovative type of thinking based on the information resources of society, the use of modern educational technologies, as well as on the values of society, as the quintessence of its wisdom and public intelligence. Conclusions. Thus, the formation of a "new Enlightenment" is natural and necessary. This follows from the requirements of the “learn to be human” program, as well as from the development of an internally ordered education process. “New Enlightenment” also has an attribute of uniqueness, since it does not have anything to compare with, identify; it is an objective, essential, unique phenomenon; it is single, relative, determined by the previous development of education. It is based on the processes of intellectualization, innovation, informational content, humanism and is capable of solving constructively the tasks facing society. (shrink)

This article addresses the famous 1910 debate between Vladimir F. Ern and Semyon L. Frank centered around the problem of identifying the distinguishing features of Russian philosophy. The debate was a continuation of Ern’s debates with Russian philosophers associated with the international journal Logos (Sergei I. Hessen, Fyodor A. Stepun, Boris V. Yakovenko, and others). The author shows that Ern’s understanding of an original Russian philosophy is organically related to his overall philosophical doctrine. As for Frank, his views during the (...) 1910s on the distinguishing features of Russian philosophy were different in nature. It is worth noting that in the 1920s articles written during his émigré period, Frank’s views on the distinguishing features of Russian philosophy undergo a decisive change. Frank’s new ideas about Russian philosophy turn out to be extremely close to those of his late opponent, both on the whole and in the details. At the same time, Frank’s overall philosophical views do not undergo as dramatic a change and develop in a fully evolutionary mode. The author attempts to identify the reason for these changes. (shrink)