11th/12th Century Philosophy

Coletânea de artigos em homenagem a Guido Antonio de Almeida e Raul Ferreira Landim Filho.

This paper focuses on the exegetical proposal of the Tractatus de sex dierum operibus by Thierry of Chartres and it is tasked with analyzing the twofold interpretative framework adopted by the Cancelor: first, the accordance between the narration of Genesis and the heuristic models of physical and cosmological causality; second, the mathematical theology, which revises the work of creation according to an arithmological approach. The study is divided into two parts which follow the structure of the Tractatus. In the first (...) part, I analyse the physical plausibility of Christian cosmogony and subsequently the conception of matter with regard to both William of Conches’ inordinatum and the hermetic locus mundi. In the second part, I examine how the numerical discourse interprets the creatural unfolding and dependence on God, as well as the creation per verbum and the individuality of each created being. My purpose is threefold: first, to test the inner philosophical coherence of the Tractatus; second, to interpret specific theoretical points at the light of Thierry’s commentaries on Boethius’ De Trinitate, and finally, to relate the arithmetical issues of the Tractatus to Thierry's Commentum super Arithmeticam Boethii. (shrink)

Raccolta di saggi sulla storia della filosofia rinascimentale e moderna.

Monotheism is a product of abstract thought. Although it does not exactly overlap with the view of God in today's monotheistic religious beliefs, the thought of God in Ancient Greek philosophy, that is, the creative thought other than the creature, found its cores in Plato's Demiurge [Dēmiourgos], and this thought continued to develop with Aristotle, Plotinus and St Augustine. Thus, it can be said that the Christian faith, which includes the Jewish religion in terms of belief and Greek philosophy in (...) terms of thought, easily managed to gain a place in the medieval world of thought. With the effort to rationalize and ground the Christian faith, philosophy has become an end rather than a means on this path. -/- The translation of Aristotle's logical works (by Boethius) at the beginning of the 6th century gave an important impetus to the grounding of knowledge in sacred texts. However, the real influence of Aristotle occurred after the 13th century. The Crusades (1096-1272) and the Islamic world known through trade played an important role in this because the developments in Western Philosophy until the 13th century were largely based on translations and commentary texts in the Islamic world. In the Middle Ages, the person who was seen as the best commentator of Aristotle and who took the title of "commentator" [Shareh] was Averroes (1126-1198), who was also a member of this productive Islamic world of thought. He is known as the "commentator" because he interpreted Aristotle's works by adhering to his teachings. It is also said that Averroes pioneered Aristotle's recognition by westerners. Averroes’ commentaries are divided into three as long, middle, and short. In long commentaries, he blends Aristotle's philosophy with his own thoughts; he interprets Aristotle's philosophy in the middle commentaries; in short commentaries, he gives a summary of Aristotle's thoughts. -/- Aristotle's philosophy played an active role in shaping the thought system of Averroes. So much so that his epistemology is largely similar to Aristotle's epistemology: The source of knowledge, knowledge of knowledge with causes, the processes of the formation of human knowledge, etc. Here, a point where he differs from Aristotle is the source of knowledge, since he is an Islamic thinker. According to Averroes, God is the source and cause of things, and things are the source and cause of human knowledge. The formation of human knowledge consists of three stages: outer sense, inner sense, and mind. Another important issue of his epistemology, apart from the knowledge produced by man and the knowledge of God, is causality. Through causality, knowledge is formed, and since causality is continuous and necessary, this situation brings order with it. This ensures that the information is verified and thus genuine information is obtained. -/- Averroes’ understanding of ontology is in harmony with the teachings of Islam. He mainly talks about the relationship between philosophy and religion and thinks that these two actually talk about the same reality. He explains that philosophy and religion seem to conflict with the fact that the holy book has two meanings, visible and hidden. Thus, philosophy and religion do not actually conflict and do not say contradictory things. -/- Averroes, who followed Aristotle's way in terms of epistemology and ontology, took Plato as an example, not Aristotle, in his political philosophy for technical reasons. For this reason, his thoughts on state structuring are similar to Plato's The Republic [Politeia]. Averroes’ political philosophy is based on ethics. His thoughts on politics can be summarized with the basic concepts of happiness, justice, and equality. As in Plato and Aristotle, happiness is important for Averroes and the state is responsible for providing and protecting it. For this reason, it describes a virtuous city, and the virtue of justice is, in a sense, the condition of existence for all other virtues. -/- Averroes has been an important thinker for both the East and the West. He played a significant role in the efforts of the Middle Ages to reconcile religion and philosophy and became one of the names that the Western world benefited from most in establishing its bond with Greek thought. Averroes became famous as an Aristotelian commentator, but since he did not know Greek, he got to know Aristotle through translated works and wrote his comments on these translated works. Nevertheless, Aristotle's philosophy played an active role in shaping Averroes’ thought system, as he was an Aristotle commentator. (shrink)

Raccolta di saggi dedicati al Prof. Franco De Capitani.

The theology of Pier Damiani († 1072) is still an understudied theme in his scholarship, in particular, for what it concerns his Trinitarian and Christological doctrines. The aim of this study is to reconstruct and discuss especially Damiani’s Christological views as formulated in Letter 81, better known as his De fide catholica. It is argued that Damiani’s approach is mostly exegetical, as he mainly points to and comments on Biblical passages in support of Catholic doctrines. Still, he assumes a peculiar (...) method of investigation, as he devotes the main body of the Letter to the question of the correct understanding (recta intelligentia) of the Catholic interpretation of Christology, and reserves only the final summary to a discussion of Biblical authorities. Eventually, it is argued that despite Damiani’s attempts at clarifying the matter, he acknowledges an inherent difficulty in explaining how it is possible that God became man without truly assuming the person of man, and, if He did so, how this did not give rise to two, however indistinct, persons or hypostases. The concept of ‘co-union’ of human and divine natures, introduced by Damiani, makes the simultaneous unity and distinction of the two natures intuitively clear, but it remains a concept that is not clarified in all its details and implications. (shrink)

In hindsight, it is not surprising that the exegesis of Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi developed into one of the most substantial parts of the Latin commentary tradition. To make a long story short, in its customary capacity as the art of arts and the science of sciences, medieval logic was primarily concerned with discerning the true from the false in arguments as they occur in natural, ordinary speech as opposed to the more formalised parlance later logicians will resort to. It makes (...) perfect sense, then, that medieval logicians paid special attention to everything that threatens sound reasoning and that prevents us from speaking the truth. Indeed, they were second to none and better than most at exposing and elucidating arguments’ flaws and shortcomings. After all, as John Buridan – faithful to a long and illustrious tradition – aptly put it, «rooting out errors» is logic’s first order of business. As early as the 1140s, Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi provided the most fertile ground for such keen interest in fallacies; which, in turn, explains etc. This much is uncontroversial or, at any rate, can withstand any amount of scrutiny we care to throw at it. Courtesy – first and foremost – of Sten Ebbesen, whose long-standing interest in medieval writings on bad arguments has turned the Byzantine and Latin aftermath of Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi into well-charted territory, by all standards. The Anonymus Cantabrigiensis has played no small part in shaping this picture. As a matter of fact, time and again over the last forty years or so, quotes and insights from the anonymous work have kept showing up in Ebbesen’s editions and studies: since he first discovered the commentary in the late 1970s and brought it to the general attention, Ebbesen has routinely drawn on the Anonymus as an early witness of the circulation of Aristotelian logical works and related texts, as a convenient illustration of major trends and distinctive features of the Latin literature on fallacies, and as a sensible interpreter in his own right. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Paul of Venice’s theory of measurement of natural properties and changes. The main sections of the paper correspond to Paul’s analysis of the three types of accidental changes, for which the Augustinian philosopher sought to provide rules of measurement. It appears that Paul achieved an original synthesis borrowing from both Parisian and Oxfordian sources. It is also argued that, on top of this theoretical synthesis, Paul managed to elaborate a quite original theory of intensive properties that marks (...) him out not only from the nominalist framework of his Parisian sources but also from the usual realist treatments of the problem. Finally, it is shown that, to a certain extent, Paul undertook to apply the mathematical and logical tools inherited from the Calculatores tradition to empirical problems of natural philosophy, leading to reevaluate his role in the evolution of scientific thought in early 15th-century Italy. (shrink)

This essay argues that what is provoking about Ibn Rushd today is not his stance on such topics as the eternity of the world, God's knowledge of singular things, or the immortality of the soul. It is rather his radical philosophical elitisim, i.e., his view that every religion has room for philosophy, but only for the few - the majority must simply follow holy writ and leave all questioning and allegorical interpretation to those few individuals who possess sufficient training in (...) apodictic thinking. I start out with chapters on Salman Rushdie and his view of Ibn Rushd in the novel Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights and the reception of Ibn Rushd in the Latin scholastic tradition. I then switch to Ibn Rushd’s biography and the context of his work in Almohad Andalusia. I provide an overview of the development of Islamic philosophy up until Ibn Rushd. I then, in five chapters, offer a detailed reading of his fatwa in defense of philosophy (called the Decisive Treatise). I conclude with some general remarks on the relationship between metaphysics and politics in Ibn Rushd’s works, drawing parallels to other thinkers both in the Islamic and in the Western tradition. The book ends with a selection of Danish-language translations of texts by Ibn Rushd that were translated into Latin during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (his Letter to a friend concerning God’s knowledge of singular things, the last chapter of the Incoherence of the Incoherence, and commenta 5 and 36 from the Commentary on De anima III). (shrink)

This discussion note aims to call into question the first part of Gloria Frost’s article, Aquinas and Scotus on the Source of Contingency, devoted to Aquinas’s thought on the source of contingency in creation. I shall discuss three controversial claims that represent the key points of Frost’s interpretation of Aquinas’s account on contingency: with re spect to existence, every creature exists contingently on the grounds that no creature is necessarily willed by God; with respect to cause-and-effect relationship, only those effects (...) that derive from a voluntary cause are contingently caused; God’s will, as a voluntary cause, is a contingently operating cause and thus cannot immediately produce a necessary effect. According to my analysis, Frost’s misinterpretation of Aquinas’s position on contingency in creation derives from the erroneous assumption that, for Aquinas, the freedom of a cause implies the contingency of such a cause and of all the effects following from it. I shall prove that Frost’s misunderstanding consists in neglecting that Aquinas does not endorse this co-implication between freedom and contingency: in fact, if the freedom of a cause indicates that it can refrain from producing its effect, the contingency of a cause means its mutability and fallibility, namely that it can be prevented in producing its effect. (shrink)

Beginning in the 1990s, the medieval historiography has devoted increasing attention to the presence of thought experiments in the medieval philosophical sources. Following the line drawn by King, Perler, Grellard and Marenbon studies, this paper aims to use the concept of thought experiment as an historiographical category to explore the issues of Peter Damian’s dilemma, in the chapter I of De divina omnipotentia, about the capacity of the divine power to restore the virginity of a maiden who has lost it. (...) In this perspective, the case of the virgin appears as a counterfactual scenario, that makes us understand how the question is not metaphysical but fundamentally epistemological. Peter Damian is not discussing about possible boundaries of God’s nature: he is rather arguing about the inability of the dialectic arguments to explain the omnipotence, in an attempt to define the cognitive and linguistic modes under which the human intellect could comprehend the virgin’s dilemma. The crucial step is the shift from possibilitas – intended as a statistical approach to the possible as “potential” – to potentia as a metaphysical attribute, regardless of her actualization: in this way, Peter Damian lifts the question up from the level of the human will, which often fails to grasp his objects, to the divine form of the will, which unfailingly achieves his objectives. (shrink)

Universals appear to be as central in today's computational-based ontology as they were in medieval ontological investigations. As the author of a recent work on the history of universals (Pinzani, 2018), I was asked for a commentary on Augusto’s article “Bridging Mainstream and Formal Ontology” (Augusto, 2021), which aims at showing that medieval ontological investigations can be relevant for contemporary ontology engineering. In this commentary, I begin by saying something about my way of reading 12th-century logical literature and then offer (...) some modest considerations on the general theme addressed in Augusto's article. (shrink)

This essay analyses Peter Damian’s idea of perfection, by taking into account his texts devoted to the eremitic conversatio avellanita: in particular, Epistles 18, 50, and 109. It answers to the following working question: how is it possible to achieve an ‘angelic’ condition? Particular attention is paid to the ideas of time, space and ascesis.

This essay examines the way in which the modal concept of necessity was discussed and analyzed in some eleventh- and early twelfth-century sources, such as Peter Damian’s De divina omnipotentia, Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur deus homo and several anonymous commentaries on Aristotle’s De interpretatione that were presumably composed in the first two decades of the twelfth century by logicians connected to William of Champeaux’s and Peter Abelard’s milieu. My aim is to offer a comparison of these different sources with respect (...) to their use of the Boethian distinction between two types or kinds of necessity, namely, the “absolute” or “simple” necessity that is involved in statements like “God is necessarily immortal” or “it is necessary for humans to be animals”, and the “conditional” or “temporal” necessity that is at stake when we say, for instance, that someone necessarily walks when he is walking. (shrink)

The presence of quotations from the Laus heremiticae vitae contained in Peter Damian’s letter 28 in Paradiso XXI has led scholars to claim that Dante was familiar with the writings of the hermit and cardinal who lived in the 11th century. Instead, the author believes that Dante had only read the Laus heremiticae vitae, which circulated independently of the other works of Peter Damian, whose writings were otherwise unknown to Alighieri. This conclusion is reached on the basis of the poor (...) quality of the information Dante offers on Peter Damian’s biography, which derives from the traditions of Ravenna and not from Fonte Avellana, where he could have found the manuscripts of the hermit and cardinal’s works. (shrink)

The epistle 49 by Peter Damian contains an original allegorical interpretation of the Jewish Sabbath as a day of rest, enriched by a mystical exegesis of the biblical Hexameron, in which the six days of creation correspond to the inner journey of man called to intimately unite with God. Peter Damian expresses this process of deification through the two images of man as microcosm and sovereign of creation and man as temple of God. The main source of Damian’s text seems (...) to be the De natura hominis by Nemesius of Emesa, which he knows thanks to the translation of Alfanus I of Salerno, one of the recipients of the epistle: this is confirmed by textual evidences, but also by a preliminary historical and historiographic reconstruction of the clue of friendship that binds Peter Damian to the archbishop of Salerno. (shrink)

This article proposes an analysis of the use and value of the terms ‘philosophia’ and ‘philosophus’ in Peter Damian’s works. Despite a remarkable number of ‘negative’ occurrences, the two words are also used in a ‘positive’ sense, especially in the sermo VI, devoted to the figure of Saint Eleuchadius, a pagan philosopher who converted himself to the Christian truth and put his intellectual competencies at the service of the Church. Contradicting the standard image of Peter Damian as ‘anti-dialectician’, Eleuchadius’ case (...) shows how the cardinal-bishop of Ostia could accept the idea of a Christian philosopher, following the Augustinian interpretation of the biblical “Gold of the Egyptians”. (shrink)

The spread of the reform found one of its protagonists in the hermit and Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, Peter Damian. An example worthy of case-study is the Gallic mission as apostolic legate in 1063. The most complete report of this journey was written by an anonymous disciple. This perspective allows to observe Damian’s communication strategies and the different methods used referring to the various interlocutors. The cause of the apostolic legation was the help request from Hugh, abbot of Cluny, for (...) the pressures suffered by the Bishop of Macon. The occasion was propitious from the point of view of the cardinal bishop to expand his network of personal and institutional relationships and to legitimize the papal supremacy. He proceeded to France, summoned a council at Chalon-sur-Saône and proved the justice of the contentions of Cluny. Despite the lack of historiographical success, this work remains an extremely useful source for studying a man who made his ars rethorica a powerful weapon in the service of the reform. (shrink)

Peter Damian’s letter 119 De divina omnipotentia is characterized by two main issues: the dilemma about the God’s capacity to restore virginity to a woman and the question about the possibility of undoing the past. Despite the interweaving between these topics, they have to be distinguished in several respects. Aim of the paper will be, firstly, to isolate the two questions, starting with their textual loci; secondly, to focus on the dilemma about the divine capacity to undoing the past, showing (...) that the key of Peter Damian’s argument is the concept of eternity as an epistemic principle, that allows him to define the omnipotence, in the case of the action on temporal necessity, as a sort of second level property of God; finally, to compare the Damian’s solution with some contemporary theories, developed during the debate on omnipotence in the second half of the 20th century, in order to find continuity and discontinuity factors that can help to better understand the coherence and effectiveness of medieval and contemporary arguments. (shrink)

Peter Damian’s epistle 28, usually called Dominus vobiscum, shows a complex theological discussion. In fact, the author intertwines different subjects: the reform of the Church, the exaltation of monasticism, and, in particular, the primacy of the eremitical life. However, what is central in Peter Damian’s discourse is the Eucharistic sacrament, which the author considers from the standpoint of a theological sensitivity centered on the liturgical dimension of the celebration and on its spiritual and religious value. This contribution analyses Peter Damian’s (...) treatment of the Eucharistic sacrament, placing it in the historical-theological and doctrinal context of the disputes on the sacrament that animated the Church since the mid-eleventh century. (shrink)

Dominus Vobiscum is undoubtedly one of Peter Damian’s most original works, and has experienced a renewed interest thanks to the re-emergence of the ecclesiology of communion around Vatican II, but in-depth studies of the work as a whole are missing and its sources seem quite limited. In this analysis of the text and its argumentative structure, the conceptual development is built on the dialectic of contrasts, starting from the binomial of “solitudo pluralis” and “multitudo singularis”, typical of the hermit. The (...) theme is unfolded in its pneumatological, Christological and ecclesiological aspects. A formal analysis seems to demonstrate that the theses presented by Peter Damian are mainly the result of the power of rhetoric, which he undoubtedly mastered. (shrink)

In the second half of the eleventh century, monastic culture found the theoretical support for the project of ecclesiastical reform in which it participates in the ratio fidei, in the enhancement of the sciences and in the refinement of argumentative techniques, with which to adapt the behaviour of Christians to the Truth of the Mysteries and to the reality of the sacraments. The reform project that supports the need of the institutional Church to restore the powers and moral credit lost (...) in the last two centuries conflicts in several places with a more radical and universalistic conception of the Church as the people of God. And the stakes of this conflict must be sought not in a theoretical aspect but in the defence or downsizing of the Church’s magisterial function. In this context, Pier Damiani’s participation in the debate on Judaism manifests at least three general aspects, in addition to a constructive attitude on the relationship with cultural otherness. In the first place he confirms the attitude of monastic culture to the theological use of the arts; secondly, he explicitly identifies an ancillary role for reason with respect to faith; finally, he implicitly clarifies the ideological nature of the internal oppositions of the reformer movement. (shrink)

In literature Peter Damian has been often presented as an anti-dialectic thinker. Over time this statement has been subjected to careful historiographical revision. Today it is commonly accepted that the distinction between dialectic and anti-dialectic thinkers only partially describes the state of philosophy in the eleventh century. In fact, the relation between faith and reason is complex in Damian. The purpose of this paper is to reconsider this relation in the light of the significance Damian attributes to the notion of (...) contradiction. Reason must respect the principle of non-contradiction not only when it describes the natural world, but also when it explores the dimension of the mysteries of faith. (shrink)

« Non stultam concludentes ». Giordano Bruno and the recourrence of David de Dinant between « De la causa » and « De vinculis in genere » · This research retraces and analyses the use by Giordano Bruno of his indirect source, David de Dinant, recurrent in the ontological reflection developed in De la causa, principio et Uno and in De vinculis in genere. By examining the texts of Bruno’s direct sources, such as Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Nicolas of Cues (...) and Marsilio Ficino, this research reconstructs, first of all, the channels through which Bruno reads and transposes the heretical and censured doctrine of David de Dinant. Secondly, this research examines Bruno’s reformulation of some of the major questions discussed by his indirect source : 1) the link or identity and unity of hyle and mens, matter and form, power and act ; 2) the accidental nature of sensible forms and the eternity or the permanence of an infinite being and substance that is not subject to change. Finally, the research shows how Bruno’s use of the doctrine of David de Dinant, and with it of the pre-Socratic, Eleatic and atomistic philosophies, represents an attempt to think a philosophical and ontological alternative to the Aristotelian theological-metaphysical scholastic-thomistic structure. (shrink)

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, new ways of storytelling and inventing fictions appeared in the French-speaking areas of Europe. This new art still influences our global culture of fiction. Virginie Greene explores the relationship between fiction and the development of neo-Aristotelian logic during this period through a close examination of seminal literary and philosophical texts by major medieval authors, such as Anselm of Canterbury, Abélard, and Chrétien de Troyes. This study of Old French logical fictions encourages a broader theoretical (...) reflection about fiction as a universal human trait and a defining element of the history of Western philosophy and literature. Additional close readings of classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and modern analytic philosophy including the work of Bertrand Russell and Rudolf Carnap, demonstrate peculiar traits of Western rationalism and expose its ambivalent relationship to fiction. (shrink)

The methods of intellectual history have not yet been applied to studying the invention of technology for printing texts and images ca. 1375–ca. 1450. One of the several conceptual developments in this period refl ecting the possibility of mechanical replication is a view of the relationship of eternity to durational time based on Gregory of Nyssa’s philosophy of time and William of Ockham’s. Th e article considers how changes in these ideas helped enable the conceptual possibilities of the dissemination of (...) ideas. It describes a direct connection of human perceptual knowledge to divine knowledge that enhanced the authority of printed production to transfer and reproduce the true and the good. (shrink)

This paper determines the state of mind, logic and language in medieval philosophy. It also exhibits the journey from medieval to early modern philosophy. In medieval philosophy, concept of mind was intimately connected soul or spirit with its harmony with religious tradition. Logic and language as well were corresponding with religion and faith. However in early modern philosophy the schema of mind, logic and language were different. These concepts were bailed from the clutches of religious dogmatism and faith towards the (...) mechanical correspondence. Mind was treated as non-modular. Logical truth which includes mostly inductive and deductive in medieval and modern period has been explained clearly. This paper shows the evolution of these concepts in the tradition of Rationalists, Empiricists and Critical Philosophers. In this paper I would as well show the interrelation between mind along with language and logic. This write up further shows the development of language in medieval period to early modern philosophy. it also demonstrates the footprints for the analytical study and international study in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

This study is concerned with the ontology of Gilbert of Poitiers. Gilbert takes the cue from Boethius’ Theological writings, which contain a system of categorical organization different from the one found in the logical commentaries. Gilbert’s ontological catalog is quite varied: there are special, general and differential subsistences which are called by name: ‘humanity’, ‘animality’, ‘rationality’. We then have all the qualitative and quantitative determinations which rely on subsistences; these properties have particular instantiations, but at the same time eternal specimens. (...) In parallel Gilbert describes a world of individual substances and properties related by certain relations of similarity. There are other objects which Gilbert speaks little about and not always in univocal way, as collections of individual properties and undifferentiated objects, for instance the raw material and the first elements. This rich ontology can be used to support different metaphysical games, my suggestion is that Gilbert does not definitely decide to choose one, whilst providing interesting possible strategies for some of them. (shrink)

This paper is the written version of my contribution to the International Conference «30 years Logica modernorum» held in Amsterdam in November 1997 in honor of the late prof. Lambertus M. de Rijk. Research on Oresme’s modi rerum theory was in the first stage, while now we can read the critical edition of Oresme’s Physics commentary, where modi are introduced and widely used. In this paper I shall consider Oresme’s polemical use of modi rerum, trying to set it in the (...) larger context of both his ontology and his epistemology. Oresme’s challenge to either a realist or terminist ontology by means of modi rerum conceals probably an attack to William of Ockham; Oresme refers explicitly to Ockham concerning exclusive propositions, but I think that on many other occasions the polemical target of Oresme’s criticism can be reasonably identified in William of Ockham or in some unnamed followers of the Venerabilis Inceptor. Some hints are reserved also to the possible sources of Oresme’s modi rerum. (shrink)

Spanish translation of Gilbert de la Porrée on 'De praedicatione' by Boethius.

This slender volume contains a rapid sketch of the development of the notions of conscience and synderesis in medieval thought. Its timeliness is vouched for by the fact that conscience, to which appeal is so often made today, has not been thus far a major theme of modern philosophy. Much of the book's information is quarried from O. Lottin's classic study, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, whose findings have been restated in terms that are meant to be (...) "psychologically" accessible to the modern mind. The Preface calls attention to the undue neglect of medieval philosophy on the part of twentieth-century thinkers, many of whom still cling to the view that philosophy died with Aristotle and came to life again only with Descartes. It also laments the "party spirit" that once tended to characterize the Neo-Scholastic movement, as well as the one-sided emphasis on Thomas Aquinas within that movement. Potts has accordingly sought to broaden the scope of his inquiry by taking into consideration five widely different authors through whose writings one begins to glimpse the subtlety of the medieval teaching on this important topic: Jerome, who introduced the word "synderesis" into the debate ; Peter Lombard, whose Sentences provided the mandatory point of departure for all subsequent discussions of the subject; Philip the Chancellor, the author of the first medieval treatise on conscience; and, finally, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, two of the writers who contributed most significantly to the further elaboration of the doctrine. By the author's own admission, numerous other theologians, whose names are listed in an appendix, could have been included in the roster or substituted for the ones that are included. The book is divided into two even parts, the first of which presents an analysis of the thought of each of the five theologians mentioned, and the second a selection of representative texts from their works. For the convenience of teachers, a "programme for a medieval-philosophy course on conscience" has been added under Appendix 2. (shrink)