According to modern categorizations, the commentaries on the Holy Scriptures by Albert the Great are not philosophical works and therefore they have received minimal attention in the field of Albertine studies. Super Matthaeum, for example, is one of the least studied in existing research. As a result, the complexity of the relationships between biblical interpretation and the philosophical and theological disciplines are surprising to the researcher used to seeing in Albert a kind of two-headed Janus – either the natural philosopher (...) or the metaphysician, either the natural scientist or the theologian. Albert himself provided occasion for such a dichotomous view. He often held that theologica non conveniunt cum philosophicis in principiis. Nevertheless, some studies have already documented the clear presence of the “philosophical” Albert alongside Albert the “theologian” and “biblical interpreter.” The present contribution offers a particular case study by analyzing Albert’s exegesis of the words in somnis in his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel. This is a long passage in which the Dominican master makes extensive use of philosophical theories on divination through dreams, which he had already presented in De somno et vigilia. According to Albert’s exegesis, the visio prophetalis experienced by Joseph in Matthew’s Gospel is the same kind experienced by Socrates, the first prophet, and the natural philosopher described in De somno et vigilia. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an analysis of a passage from Eckhart’s commentary on the verse of the Genesis In principio creavit caelum et terram that has not received, in my opinion, sufficient attention so far. In this passage, Eckhart points out that the principium through which God created the world is the ideal model, i.e. the ratio essendi of a thing as well as its ratio cognoscendi. It is also the cause of the essence of the thing and, as (...) Aristotle says, of its definition and its scientific proof. Eckhart also quotes Averroes, according to whom philosophers have always searched for the quiddity of a sensible thing because it could lead to knowledge of the first cause of being. By this, Eckhart warns, Averroes does not mean God, as some erroneously think, but the ratio idealis of sensible things, which is expressed by their definition. Joseph Koch’s critical edition does not identify who the plerique erra... (shrink)

Based on unpublished texts of Estimaverunt Indi, Geomantia attributed to Willelm of Moerbeke and Breviloquium artis geomantie by Bartolomew of Parma, my contribution aims at presenting a general overview of the geomantic technique and its political applications. In order to achieve this aim, I will first offer a few preliminary considerations on the concept of natural divination.

Les Prolegomenes a la Philosophie de Platon sont un manuel d'ecole neoplatonicien. Il s'inspire d'un modele dont Proclus a du etre l'auteur, mais l'origine de ce texte est presque surement alexandrine et doit dater de la premiere moitie du Vle siecle. Cette oeuvre est essentielle pour comprendre comment etait diffuse l'enseignement platonicien, et pour mieux saisir le mouvement des idees de l'Antiquite finissante. Dans une importante introduction, L. O. Westerink a retrace l'histoire de l'ecole d'Alexandrie et celle du genre litteraire (...) de ces introductions a Platon et a Aristote. (shrink)

Tuberculosis (TB) is a potentially fatal infectious disease that, in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), inequitably affects Asian, Pacific, Middle Eastern, Latin American, and African (MELAA), and Māori people. Medical research involving genome sequencing of TB samples enables more nuanced understanding of disease strains and their transmission. This could inform highly specific health interventions. However, the collection and management of TB isolate samples for research are currently informed by monocultural biomedical models often lacking key ethical considerations. Drawing on a qualitative kaupapa (...) Māori–consistent study, this paper reports on preliminary discussions with groups of Māori, Pacific, and Afghan people in NZ, whose communities have been harmed by TB and TB stigma. Participants’ discussions highlight key concerns and meanings that ought to inform the development of guidelines and a more robust consultative process for the governance of how TB isolate samples are collected and used both retrospectively and in future research. We argue for ethical processes to be culturally nuanced and community-generated, flexible and meaningful, and situated in relation to the physical and symbolic effects of TB. We discuss the significance of Indigenous data sovereignty, rights, and kāwanatanga (governorship) in shaping a multicultural data sovereignty model. (shrink)

are synthetic a priori judgements possible?" In both cases, i~thas usually been t'aken for granted in fife one case by Kant that synthetic a priori judgements were possible, and in the other case in contemporary,'d-". philosophical literature that contingent statements of identity are ppss. ible. I do not intend to deal with the Kantian question except to mention:ssj~".

Purpose. To examine the existential anthropology of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski, in order to demonstrate the necessity of distinguishing the universal-spiritual, as human in human being, apart from the individual-existential in him, and to reveal the hierarchical correlation of biosocial, existential and spiritual spheres in personality. Theoretical basis. Within existential philosophy the author differentiates two separate traditions and proceeds from the insufficiency of the distinction of existential sphere, proposed by phenomenological tradition, showing the necessity of its correlation with the (...) spiritual sphere as a sphere of humanity, proposed by non-phenomenological tradition of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski. Originality. The author presents the anthropological conception of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski, in which human personality is understood as unity of individual-existential and universal-spiritual, which requires a special trans-empirical field of culture, which contains senses, images and symbols of humanity. Also, the author presents the recent developments of existential thinkers in distinguishing existential and spiritual dimensions, both not reducible to the physical and social dimensions. Conclusions. In both existential traditions, the specifically human was founded as a trans-biological and trans-social phenomenon, which appears as indefinable and non-predetermined. But in first tradition, humanity is understood as an existence, as a unique individuality, "project", variant of humanity, equivalent to other variants, and universal is understood as a community of human condition in the world. While in the second tradition, the universal is understood as spiritual. Thus, horizontal level of our private existence, as the process of movement from birth to death, is supplemented by vertical of human, universal ideals and images. Humanity appears as a task, on the way to which human being transcends beyond the limits of his individual "self" to the "super-individual", through inclusion into spiritual community, into universal culture. (shrink)

Trope theory is a leading metaphysical theory in analytic ontology. One of its classic statements is found in the work of Donald C. Williams who argued that tropes qua abstract particulars are the very alphabet of being. The concept of an abstract particular has been repeatedly attacked in the literature. Opponents and proponents of trope theory alike have levelled their criticisms at the abstractness of tropes and the associated act of abstraction. In this paper I defend the concept of a (...) trope qua abstract particular by rejecting arguments that purport to show that tropes should not be understood as abstract and by arguing that the abstractness of tropes plays an indispensable role in one of our more promising trope-theoretic analyses of universals and of concrete objects. (shrink)

Modern scholars have been concerned with the hostility shown to Alexander by the Hellenistic schools of philosophy. Two literary portraits have been distinguished, the Peripatetic and the Stoic, the former deriving from Theophrastus' book on Callisthenes, or starting with this work the Peripatetics worked out a theory of and applied it to Alexander, in order to belittle his achievements. It was a case of giving sophisticated expression to the kind of crude resentment expressed by Demades.