In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions GALILEO AND THE SCHOOL OF PADUA The first issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas, appearing in 1940, contained an article on the development of scientific method in northern Italy during the Renaissance and its significance for the growth of modern science. It is no exaggeration to say that this article, by John H. Randall, Jr., has been one of the most important and (...) influential contributions to the history of ideas in recent years, casting new light on a much-neglected tradition (Italian Aristotelianism) and suggesting an entirely different picture of Galileo's relations to the school philosophy of his day. Randall's thesis has won wide acceptance, by such competent and careful scholars as Crombie, Dijksterhuis, Butterfield, and the Kneales. Giacomo Zabarella (1532-1589) has been restored to the high esteem in which he was held in the Renaissance, and has been hailed as the thinker who "summed up the collective wisdom of the Padua school" and "formulated the classic version of their teaching method, in the terms and with the distinctions so fruitfully employed and consciously expressed by Galileo." Now the article has been reprinted (John H. Randall, Jr., The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science [Padua, 1961], 141 pp.) with several other provocative articles reassessing the thought of Pomponazzi and Leonardo Da Vinci, as the first in a series of monographs sponsored jointly by the universities of Padua and Columbia. It has also been incorporated in a chapter of Randall's admirable Career of Philosophy, but without the Latin texts that make the present edition definitive. In the face of the almost universal acceptance of Randall's thesis, I find it an uncongenial task to express a dissenting opinion with regard to its crucial point, namely, the presumed debt of Galileo to Zabarella. Uncongenial, because much of what Randall has urged seems well taken, and because there is an initial attractiveness about the view that philosophical discussions at Padua could have contributed to the birth of the new science. Historians of science are usually so unfair to philosophy that it is refreshing to be able to entertain the view that scientific research may even have received some encouragement from philosophers. And it is prima facie plausible that this encouragement should have come to a focus at Padua in the sixteenth century, for here if anywhere the new science was born. Unfortunately, the resulting picture of Galileo leaves us with some puz- [zz3] 224 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY zling facts, or more precisely, non-facts: if we accept it, we are left wondering why there is so little tangible evidence of Zabarella's influence on Galileo. It may well be that there is evidence that I have missed, and for the sake of the reputation and prestige of Italian Aristotelianism, I hope there is. But I should like to present some of the difficulties I have with Professor Randall's thesis, in the hopes that some defender of his view will be inspired to allay my misgivings. Anyone who has ever read a page of Galileo's writings knows how often and violently he expressed his opposition to "the Aristotelians" and with what withering scorn he treated the contemporary representatives of the Peripatetic tradition. He often concedes that Aristotle would have been more flexible than his so-called followers, and would have yielded to new evidence in natural philosophy. But Galileo never admits that Aristotle's followers have developed anything of scientific value in the way of methodology. The methodology of the Aristotelians relied exclusively on the syllogism ; but Galileo specifically insists that the syllogism has no value in scientific discovery, whatever its other uses may be. In the face of these stronglyexpressed and consistently-held attitudes, it is hard to see how Zabarella, a loyal Aristotelian who relied exclusively on the syllogism as the "instrument of science," could have escaped Galileo's general condemnation. This point would lose its force if Galileo had ever expressly singled Zabarella out as a shining exception among the run-of-the-mill Aristotelians. Unfortunately, there is no mention of Zabarella in the whole mass of Galileo 's writings, and there is no evidence that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Concept of Will in EarlyLatin Philosophy NEAL W. GILBERT AN HISTORICALDISCUSSIONOf the concept of will is best begun with an analysis of the use of voluntas in Latin philosophy, from its earliest occurrences in Lucretius and Cicero on down to Augustine and medieval times. This development can be traced without much controversy because the line of transmission and development is more or less unbroken. But the correlating of (...) Latin psychological terms with their Greek originals presents problems. Greek philosophy was indeed the source from which Latin philosophical psychology developed: Lucretius reflects Epicurean doctrine, while Cicero and Seneca were strongly influenced by Stoic philosophy when they discussed moral action. However, many modern scholars are convinced that the Greeks had no word that corresponds to our "will" at all, and so we seem to be left with no choice but to regard the will as an original creation of Latin philosophy. But this would be to overlook the fact that ancient Latin writers sometimes specifically equated voluntas with certain Greek terms, and such evidence ought not to go unexamined. Voluntas was well established in Latin usage before Roman writers began to concern themselves with philosophical problems, but it did not have a technical sense. It meant simply "good will," or "favor," or concretely, a "will, or testament. ''I Clustered around it were other derivatives of "volo," such as "benevolentia" and "malevolentia," "well-wishing" and "ill-wishing." When Roman writers began to deal with philosophical problems, there were a number of different contexts in which voluntas could play a leading role. Chief among them, naturally, was the "freedom of the will" which, then as now, intrigued the ordinary man or the moralist. However, discussions revolving around the determinist-libertarian issue often fail to clarify the concept of the will itself. Major philosophers (Chrysippus, Augustine, or Hume, for example) offer fine distinctions within moral action when considering the determinist-libertarian dispute, but lesser figures are apt to "C'est seulement lots de la creation du vocabulairephilosophiqueque voluntas a pris le sens abstrait et technique de 'volont6'." Ernout, A., and A. Meillet,Dictionnaire Etymologique de la langue latine, 4th ed. (Paris, 1959),sub "volo." [17] 18 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY neglect the detailed analysis of moral action in favor of sweeping metaphysical pronouncements. When a Latin writer wished to say that a person did something of his own accord, the locution most natural to him was "sua sponte," an ablative absolute derived from the same root as our word "spontaneous." The nominative case of "sponte" ("spons") was almost never used, so that dictionaries are perhaps somewhat misleading in suggesting that the word "spons" means "free will": it would be more correct to say that the phrase "sua sponte" means "of his own free will." Latin writers also indicate that someone did something willingly by saying that he did it "non invitus" ("not unwillingly "). Finally, they could apply the adjective "voluntarius" to such an action, or say that it was done "ex voluntate." When the latter term begins to be used as a designation for a separate faculty of the soul distinct from reason or intelligence, it begins to resemble the modern concept of will. Augustine is usually given credit for introducing the concept of will into philosophy, but even the earliest Latin treatment of the free-will problem framed the issue in terms of voluntas. Nevertheless, I think that the received view is substantially correct, although it would be more proper to say that what Augustine introduced into philosophy was not the concept of will in general but the concept of the evil will. What Augustine called the "good" will ("bona voluntas") was closely related to the "reasonable desire" of the Stoic sage, rendered into Latin by Cicero as voluntas, without any adjective. The addition of the evil will altered the outlines of moral analysis considerably, involving among other things the major shift from a Socratic or Platonic psychology and ethics (usually labeled "intellectualistic") to a Christian psychology and ethics (usually labeled "voluntaristic"). Such a characterization is likely to be drawn too sharply, and to overlook anticipations of voluntarism in Greek thought or reminiscences of Greek intellectualism in Christian thought. Hence it may be useful... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Concept of Will in EarlyLatin Philosophy NEAL W. GILBERT AN HISTORICALDISCUSSIONOf the concept of will is best begun with an analysis of the use of voluntas in Latin philosophy, from its earliest occurrences in Lucretius and Cicero on down to Augustine and medieval times. This development can be traced without much controversy because the line of transmission and development is more or less unbroken. But the correlating of (...) Latin psychological terms with their Greek originals presents problems. Greek philosophy was indeed the source from which Latin philosophical psychology developed: Lucretius reflects Epicurean doctrine, while Cicero and Seneca were strongly influenced by Stoic philosophy when they discussed moral action. However, many modern scholars are convinced that the Greeks had no word that corresponds to our "will" at all, and so we seem to be left with no choice but to regard the will as an original creation of Latin philosophy. But this would be to overlook the fact that ancient Latin writers sometimes specifically equated voluntas with certain Greek terms, and such evidence ought not to go unexamined. Voluntas was well established in Latin usage before Roman writers began to concern themselves with philosophical problems, but it did not have a technical sense. It meant simply "good will," or "favor," or concretely, a "will, or testament. ''I Clustered around it were other derivatives of "volo," such as "benevolentia" and "malevolentia," "well-wishing" and "ill-wishing." When Roman writers began to deal with philosophical problems, there were a number of different contexts in which voluntas could play a leading role. Chief among them, naturally, was the "freedom of the will" which, then as now, intrigued the ordinary man or the moralist. However, discussions revolving around the determinist-libertarian issue often fail to clarify the concept of the will itself. Major philosophers (Chrysippus, Augustine, or Hume, for example) offer fine distinctions within moral action when considering the determinist-libertarian dispute, but lesser figures are apt to "C'est seulement lots de la creation du vocabulairephilosophiqueque voluntas a pris le sens abstrait et technique de 'volont6'." Ernout, A., and A. Meillet,Dictionnaire Etymologique de la langue latine, 4th ed. (Paris, 1959),sub "volo." [17] 18 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY neglect the detailed analysis of moral action in favor of sweeping metaphysical pronouncements. When a Latin writer wished to say that a person did something of his own accord, the locution most natural to him was "sua sponte," an ablative absolute derived from the same root as our word "spontaneous." The nominative case of "sponte" ("spons") was almost never used, so that dictionaries are perhaps somewhat misleading in suggesting that the word "spons" means "free will": it would be more correct to say that the phrase "sua sponte" means "of his own free will." Latin writers also indicate that someone did something willingly by saying that he did it "non invitus" ("not unwillingly "). Finally, they could apply the adjective "voluntarius" to such an action, or say that it was done "ex voluntate." When the latter term begins to be used as a designation for a separate faculty of the soul distinct from reason or intelligence, it begins to resemble the modern concept of will. Augustine is usually given credit for introducing the concept of will into philosophy, but even the earliest Latin treatment of the free-will problem framed the issue in terms of voluntas. Nevertheless, I think that the received view is substantially correct, although it would be more proper to say that what Augustine introduced into philosophy was not the concept of will in general but the concept of the evil will. What Augustine called the "good" will ("bona voluntas") was closely related to the "reasonable desire" of the Stoic sage, rendered into Latin by Cicero as voluntas, without any adjective. The addition of the evil will altered the outlines of moral analysis considerably, involving among other things the major shift from a Socratic or Platonic psychology and ethics (usually labeled "intellectualistic") to a Christian psychology and ethics (usually labeled "voluntaristic"). Such a characterization is likely to be drawn too sharply, and to overlook anticipations of voluntarism in Greek thought or reminiscences of Greek intellectualism in Christian thought. Hence it may be useful... (shrink)