Walter Burley on divine Ideas

Rivista di Storia Della Filosofia 1:50-75 (2021)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper focuses on the theory of divine ideas of Walter Burley. The medieval common theory of divine ideas, developed by Augustine, was intended to provide an answer to the question of the order and intelligibility of the world. The world is rationally organized since God created it according to the models existing eternally in his mind. Augustine's theory, however, left open problems such as reconciling the principle of God's unity with the plurality of ideas, the way in which ideas can or cannot be said to be eternal, their ontological status. Medieval authors discussed such questions until at least the late 14th century. By resorting to the semantic tool of connotation, Burley explains both in what way ‘idea' can signify the divine essence as much as the creatures, and in what sense we can say that God has thought them from eternity, without slipping into a necessitarian view that undermines the principle of divine freedom. Moreover, by envisaging the objective mode of being as the only mode of being of ideas, he explains in what way they truly differ from one another on the basis of their different conceptual contents.

Similar books and articles

Exemplar Causality as similitudo aequivoca in Peter Auriol.Chiara Paladini - 2018 - In Jacopo Francesco Falà & Irene Zavattero (eds.), Divine Ideas in Franciscan Thought (XIIIth-XIVth century). Canterano (RM): Aracne. pp. 203-238.
St. Thomas Aquinas and Divine Exemplarism.Gregory Thomas Doolan - 2003 - Dissertation, The Catholic University of America
Divine Ideas.Thomas M. Ward - 2020 - Cambridge University Press.
Aquinas on the divine ideas as exemplar causes (review).Antoine Côté - 2009 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (4):pp. 624-625.
Berkeley on the “Twofold state of things”.Melissa Frankel - 2016 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 80 (1):43-60.
The Maker's meaning: Divine ideas and salvation.Mark Mcintosh - 2012 - Modern Theology 28 (3):365-384.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-04-14

Downloads
227 (#91,747)

6 months
58 (#84,076)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Chiara Paladini
Università degli Studi dell'Aquila

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Add more references