13th/14th Century Philosophy, Misc

David de Dinant, dont les thèses ont été condamnées par le décret de 1210 de l'Université de Paris, est bien connu par les réfutations dont il a fait l'objet de la part d'Albert le Grand et Thomas d'Aquin. En se fondant sur ses Quaternuli, on se propose ici, non pas d'apporter des éléments biographiques nouveaux, mais de reconstituer les médiations qui ont conduit ce commentateur de la « philosophie naturelle » d'Aristote à défendre ses fameuses positions « panthéistes » et (...) « matérialistes », et à identifier Dieu à la matière et à la substance du tout. En marge des commentaires arabes, moyennant un contact direct avec les textes grecs du Stagirite, David propose une lecture toute problématique, mais parfaitement stimulante de l'articulation de la « philosophie naturelle » à la « philosophie première ». David of Dinant, whoses theses were condemned by the decree of 1210 of the University of Paris, is well known by the judgements and refutations concerning him by Albert le Grand or Thomas Aquinas. Based on published manuscripts of his Quaternuli, we do not propose to bring new biographical elements, but instead, to reconstruct the path which led this analyst of Aristotle's « natural philosophy » to defend his famous « pantheistic » and « materialist » points of view, and to indentify God as the matter and substance of everything. Independently of Arab commentaries, and based on Aristotle's Greek texts, David explains the link between « natural philosophy » and « first philosophy », which is both complex and stimulating. (shrink)

Truth is a key notion in Ockham’s philosophical reductionist program, a notion that has been the object of contrasting interpretations in scholarship. My interpretation is that, for Ockham, ‘being true’ expresses an epistemological relation, namely the one through which our mind reflects on a proposition of language, compares it with an extra-mental state of affairs, and thus ascertains their correspondence. Placing truth at a point of intersection of language with mind and reality, Ockham’s interpretation of Aristotle’s characterization of philosophy as (...) the science of truth comes to be innovative. For Ockham, philosophy is a meticulous training of interpretation of language in order to account correctly for the truth-value of propositions. (shrink)

In Latin Europe, the controversy over spontaneous generation of perfect animals – namely those whose breeding occurs through sexual reproduction – is received in different ways, varying from positions very close to Avicenna’s, as in the case of Pietro Pomponazzi, to interpretations that rather refer to Averroes’ perspective. To this ‘Averroist front’ undoubtedly belongs the figure of Urbano da Bologna, author of the Expositio commenti Averrois in VIII libros Physicorum – a work that can be defined a supercommentary to Averroes’ (...) Physica – composed in Bologna around 1334. The present study aims to provide the complete transcription of a quaestio that is present in the work – but which was disputed according to its author also in public – as an example of the elaboration of the theme of spontaneous generation in the early 14th century. The text deals with many aspects of the problem, especially elaborating on the correspondence between each specific form and its appropriate matter, in the light of the lively debates of the time, and reveals a mature understanding of Aristotle’s natural philosophy and its Averroist interpretation. (shrink)

This paper discusses Reiner Schürmann’s notions of ontological anarché and anarchic praxis in his readings of Heidegger and Eckhart, while bringing his philosophy of anarchy into dialogue with Zen-inspired Japanese thought. I thereby hope to shed light on his thought of anarchy in terms of what I call “an-ontology.” The inspiration for this project is the fact that Schürmann himself had practiced Zen as a young adult in France and had engaged in comparative analyses of Zen and Eckhart in his (...) earlier works. I take what Schürmann meant by the principle of anarchy as a form of praxis that precedes the theoretical bifurcation between being and non-being. A similar sort of “anarchic praxis” is recognizable in Zen and we can find comparable (an)ontological implications of such praxis in the Zen-inspired writings of the Japanese medieval thinker Dōgen and of the contemporary philosopher Nishida Kitarō. (shrink)

This paper presents the defense by the medieval philosopher Peter Auriol of the thesis that sounds and odors have no real, mind-independent being, but exist only as mental correlates of acts of hearing and smelling. Auriol does not see this as an idiosyncratic position, as he claims to be following not only Aristotle, but also Averroes on the issue. Since it is often thought that non-realism about sensible qualities was “inconceivable” for medieval authors and was made possible only by the (...) early modern scientific revolution led by Galileo, it is crucial to bring Auriol’s position to the fore. Auriol’s view, and its alleged roots in Arabic philosophy, invites us to reassess our standard narrative in the history of philosophy and science. (shrink)

Some of my mental states are conscious and some of them are not. Sometimes I am so focused on the wine in front of me that I am unaware that I am thinking about it; but sometimes, of course, I take a reflexive step back and become aware of my thinking about the wine in front of me. What marks the difference between a conscious mental state and an unconscious one? In this paper, I focus on Durand of St.-Pourçain’s rejection (...) of the higher-order theory of state consciousness, according to which a mental act is conscious when there is another, suitably related, mental (reflex) act that exists at the same time with it. Durand rejects such higher-order theories on the grounds that they violate the thesis that a given mental power can have or elicit only one mental act at a given time. I first go over some of Durand’s general arguments for this thesis. I then turn to Durand’s application of the thesis to the issue of state consciousnes and reflex acts. I close by considering the objection that Durand’s same-order theory of state consciousness makes consciousness ubiquitous. (shrink)

Can the existence of a social practice justify practical authority? A medieval debate between hierocrats and caesaropapists may help to illuminate this question. Focusing mainly on Marsilius of Padua, with reference to John of Paris, this article suggests that caesaropapists can be read as developing a 'practice conception' of the structure and scope of ecclesiastical authority. Because it brings the conflict over authority to a new battleground, the practice conception supplies caesaropapists with a source of dialectical leverage over hierocratic doctrine. (...) The paper explores the strengths and limitations of this methodological approach and links it to debates in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

The paper presents a preliminary estimation of the extent of dissemination of optical texts, ideas, and issues among the masters connected with the Prague faculty of arts in the late 14th and early 15th century. Investigation of this topic, so far rather neglected, is based chiefly on manuscript research. The paper brings evidence that perspectiva was taught in Prague at least since the 1370s. It suggests that investigation of Prague quodlibetal disputations (ca. 1390s – 1410s) and consideration of perspectivist authorities (...) employed in these texts can also shed some light on the issue. However, the paper is mainly devoted to the question on the mechanism of vision disputed by Bohemian arts master John of Borotín (Iohannes de Borotin, 1378 – after 1458) in the quodlibet organised by John Hus in 1411. It is suggested that the single extant exemplar of the question (preserved in the codex Prague, National Library, X.H.18) probably is Borotín’s autograph. The structure and sources of the question are analysed, with the conclusion being that Borotín proposes a compromise between intromission and extramission influenced by John Peckham’s Perspectiva communis. A critical edition of Borotín’s question is appended to the paper. / / / Please note this article is published with Brepols Publishers as a Gold Open Access article under a Creative Commons CC 4.0: BY-NC license. The article is also freely available on the website of Brepols Publishers under this same license. (shrink)

Scholarship on the philosophy of the Late Middle Ages has tended to overlook certain subject matters, especially some pertaining to ethics and political philosophy. My object of study in this paper is one of these overlooked notions, the idea of craft (ars) as an intellectual virtue. While recent publications have focused on sapientia and scientia, this paper aims to rehabilitate ars as a virtue, in particular John Buridan’s understanding of craft as an intellectual virtue in his Quaestiones super decem libros (...) Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum. My goal is to examine Buridan’s analysis of craft as expounded in this commentary. Once the Picardian master’s theses have been presented, and the objections he raises have been reviewed along with the solutions proposed to those objections, I briefly suggest why craft might have been overlooked as a virtue. (shrink)

Quaestio, Volume 20, Issue, Page 217-238, January 2020.

In this paper, I consider Richard Rufus’ account of generation and corrup- tion. This is a fundamental metaphysical question in the Aristotelian framework. Given that there are things that are corruptible (such as trees and cats and the human body), and things that are incorruptible (such as the celestial bodies and angels), what is it that makes one one, and the other the other? In other words, what is the ultimate explanation (in Rufus' terminology, the principle or principles) of corruptibility (...) and incorruptibility? Do corruptible and incorruptible things have the same principles – the same fundamental metaphysical constitution – or are their principles different? Richard Rufus was among the first ones lecturing on Aristotle’s _Metaphysics_ at the University of Paris. He addresses these questions in book 4 (Gamma), lectio 1, question 2 of his longer commentary on Aristotle’s work (the _Scriptum_), which will provide the main textual basis of this paper. The other textual basis is an anonymous commentary on Aristotle’s _On generation and corruption_, found in Oxford, Corpus Christi MS 119, whose treatment of these issues is remarkably similar to Rufus’. As I show, we can learn a great deal about Rufus’ general metaphysical commitments by looking at this particular question, especially concerning his view of prime matter and his view of the qualities of the resurrected bodies. (shrink)

The querelle des femmes was an intellectual debate over the status of women that occurred in the early modern period, between the 1400s and 1700s. A common argument for the superiority of men and inferiority of women that appeared during the debate is that women are less physically strong than men, and are therefore inferior. In response, two distinct argumentative strategies were developed by defenders of women. First, some argued that men and women did not in fact differ in physical (...) strength. A second strategy was to deny that physical strength is relevant to the question of superiority. In this case, one would argue that a difference in strength is not normatively relevant to evaluations of worth. I argue that this second strategy was the more effective response to the argument that women were inferior because of their alleged physical weakness compared to men. (shrink)

Was ist eine menschliche Person? Durch welche besonderen Eigenschaften zeichnet sie sich aus? Und wodurch unterscheidet sie sich von einem blossen Lebewesen? Mittelalterliche Autoren widmeten sich mit viel Scharfsinn diesen Fragen, indem sie sich auf drei Dimensionen einer Person konzentrierten. Sie setzten bei der metaphysischen Dimension an, indem sie eine Person als eine individuelle Substanz mit einer rationalen Natur bestimmten. Dies fuhrte sie dazu, diese Substanz genauer zu untersuchen: ihre wesentlichen Bestandteile, ihre Einheit und ihre Identitat uber die Zeit hinweg. (...) Sie beschaftigten sich aber auch mit der psychologischen Dimension, indem sie die Reflexionsfahigkeit als die entscheidende geistige Fahigkeit einer Person analysierten. Zudem berucksichtigten sie die handlungstheoretische Dimension, indem sie festhielten, dass eine Person im Gegensatz zu einem blossen Lebewesen Handlungen hervorbringen kann. Sie betonten sogar, dass sich eine Person frei fur Handlungen entscheiden kann und daher fur sie verantwortlich ist. Dieses Buch, das sich auf Theorien des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts konzentriert, rekonstruiert die Debatten zu allen drei Dimensionen im historischen Kontext, wertet sie systematisch aus und schlagt dabei auch einen Bogen zu fruhneuzeitlichen und gegenwartigen Diskussionen. Es verdeutlicht, dass im Mittelalter die Grundlagen fur eine philosophische Anthropologie gelegt wurden. (shrink)

Two recent publications have greatly increased the amount of Wyclif available in translation: the Trialogus, translated by Stephen Lahey, and an anthology translated by Stephen Penn. This review article documents the failings that make these translations worse than useless. A post mortem leads me to claim that the publication of these volumes, the first of which has already been warmly received, is a sign of a gathering crisis in medieval studies, and one that we should take steps to avert.

John Wyclif’s logical works have lain under a kind of fog since they were first published in the 1890s. My first aim is to clear up some long-standing confusions by dispelling this fog once and for all. A partial identification of Wyclif’s source material then allows me to make a more dramatic claim about persistent misunderstandings of what is thought to be his earliest work.

According to most medieval thinkers, whenever something causally acts on another thing, God also acts with it. Durand of St.-Pourçain, an early fourteenth-century Dominican philosopher, disagrees. This paper is about a fourteenth-century objection to Durand’s view, which I will call the Fiery Furnace Objection, as formulated by Durand’s contemporary, Peter of Palude. Although Peter of Palude is not usu- ally regarded as a particularly original thinker, this paper calls attention to one of his more interesting controversies with his fellow friar, (...) while it also clarifies how some medieval thinkers understood the broadly speaking Aristotelian conviction that causes and effects are necessarily related. (shrink)

This chapter compares three different general accounts of personhood (Byzantine, Boethian, and Modern) and argues that if personhood is the basis on which one has equal moral status in the moral community and the disability-positive position is correct, then the Byzantine and Boethian accounts are preferable over the Modern accounts that are surveyed here. It further argues that the Byzantine account is even friendlier to a disability-positive position compared to the Boethian account.

This article presents a few research findings related to the Geomantia attributed to William of Moerbeke. It consists of three sections: The first provides evidence for the classification of the Geomantia within the genre of the medieval compilations. The second includes a comparison of the Geomantia with the Ars geomantie nova of Batholomew of Parma and a few considerations on the datation of the treatise attributed to Moerbeke, based on this assessment. The third brings to the attention of scholars an (...) unpublished marginal note concerning the date of composition of the Geomantia. (shrink)

Il volume ripercorre lo sviluppo del pensiero del giovane Nicola Cusano dalla frequentazione del maestro albertista Eimerico da Campo presso l’Università di Colonia (1425) e dal confronto con le posizioni filosofiche dei domenicani dello Studium coloniense, fino agli anni della maturità a Roma (1450). Il saggio illustra il contesto storico-culturale della genesi del De docta ignorantia, testo che suggella la presa di distanza di Cusano dal proprio passato universitario ma anche, al contempo, la sua insoddisfazione nei confronti dell’umanesimo diffuso in (...) Italia negli anni del Concilio di Ferrara-Firenze; e lo segue nella sua ‘caccia della Sapienza’, nell’incontro con differenti tradizioni e contesti, fino alla formulazione dell’ideale del ‘Socrate cristiano’ nell’Idiota. Il volume, riccamente documentato anche sul piano della storia delle interpretazioni e degli studi su Cusano, contribuisce a far luce sulla formazione del suo pensiero e sulle questioni che ne hanno segnato la vita. (shrink)

An English translation of the essay and an extended introduction are included in the download. In diesem Essay geht es um ein religionsfreundliches Selbst- und Weltverständnis, das die Reichweite der menschlichen Vernunft ebenso wie deren intrinsische Grenzen achtet. In dem weiten Feld wählen wir hier Betrachtungen des mittelalterlichen Philosophen und Theologen Meister Eckhart aus. Eckhart (ca.1260-1338) gilt vielen als Mystiker, anderen als Philosophen des Christentums. Er war wohl Beides. Philosophisch ist seine Lehre, die einzelne menschliche Seele habe einen göttlichen, unvergänglichen (...) Urgrund; eher mystisch die These, dieser Urgrund bedarf einer „Gottesgeburt“ in der Seele, ein Loslassen von allen Bestrebungen, einschließlich dem Bestreben, sich gottgefällig zu verhalten. Mir geht es hier nur um den philosophischen Aspekt mit Betonung auf Erkenntnis. (shrink)

In order to distribute our thoughts and feelings, we must make intelligible and distributable copies of them. From approximately 1375 to 1450, certain Europeans started fully mechanized replication of texts and images, based on predecessor “smaller” technologies. What they started became the most powerful means for the distribution, storage, and retrieval of knowledge in history, up until the invention of digital means. We have scant information about the initiation of print technologies in the period up to Gutenberg, and the picture (...) of Gutenberg that we have has become a great deal more complicated than hitherto. There has not been, however, an approach to the “pre-printing” period in terms of the history of idea or intellectual history. After a brief survey of established approaches, this essay argues that distribution by impression, or print, is bound up with ancient metaphors for understanding communication by the making of multiples. I suggest that there is a rich field of study for printing history in the sophisticated concepts of reality that medieval and late Scholastic philosophy developed. These concepts helped to express and develop a desire or need for communication that led to the technology of replicating texts and images for wide and continued distribution. (shrink)

The relation-theory of mental acts proposes that a mental act is a kind of relative entity founded upon the mind and directed at the object of perception or thought. While most medieval philosophers recognized that there is something importantly relational about thought, they nevertheless rejected the view that mental acts are wholly relations. Rather, the dominant view was that a mental act is either in whole or part an Aristotelian quality added to the mind upon which such a relation to (...) the object can be founded. In this paper, I examine Durand of St.-Pourçain's defense of the relation-theory of mental acts against two objections raised against it: the first from John Duns Scotus, among others, and the second from an anonymous Thomist and Adam Wodeham. -/- . (shrink)

[Sight Darting Forth from the Eyes: 13th-Century Franciscans and Augustine’s Authority in the Issue of Extramissionist Theory of Vision] One of the positions sometimes ascribed to Augustine is the so-called extramissionist conception of vision, i.e. the assumption that the sight is effectuated by something being sent out from the eyes, as opposed to more intuitive receptionist understanding of sight. The paper investigates the attitudes of eleven 13th-century Franciscan thinkers (from Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle in 1230s to (...) Roger Marston and Peter of England in 1280s) to this philosophical problem and Augustine’s authority in this issue. It is demonstrated that whereas the earliest generation of Franciscan thinkers does not conceptualise the issue at all, accepting rather Aristotelian receptionist account at face value, the later Franciscans (such as Roger Bacon) try to the reconcile both positions, which is, in turn, abandoned by the next generation (e.g., Peter of England). The unique example of paying tribute to Augustine without renouncing the philosophical scrutiny is Peter Olivi, who reformulates extramission into a more plausible account of the role of attention in the visual perception. (shrink)

Discussions about singular cognition, and its linguistic counterpart, are by no means exclusive to contemporary philosophy. In fact, a strikingly similar discussion, to which several medieval texts bear witness, took place in the late Middle Ages. The aim of this article is to partly reconstruct this medieval discussion, as it took place in Parisian question-commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, so as to show the progression from the rejection of singular intellection in Siger of Brabant to the descriptivist positions of John (...) Duns Scotus and John of Jandun, and finally to the singularism of John Buridan. All these authors accept some kind of intellectual access to individuals. Therefore, the conundrum is not whether we have some kind of intellectual knowledge of individuals, but rather whether we can know them singularly. This article begins by presenting the crucial obstacle to singular intellection in Siger. Thereafter, the author shows that Jandun and Scotus depart in fundamental ways from Siger’s account, but that for them the intellection of individuals is of a general character. Finally, she proposes that Buridan is a genuine singularist. (shrink)

By reconsidering all the available sources (from Simon du Val’s inquisitorial summons of November 1276 to the Continuatio brabantina, from the Fiore to the X canto of Dante’s Paradiso, from William of Tocco to Peckham’s letters) the article calls into question the thesis – still widely shared – according to which Siger of Brabant died in Italy, and more precisely in Orvieto, at the Papal Court, before November 1284. Above all, from a doctrinal point of view, it shows how it (...) is completely implausible that Peckham could refer to Siger of Brabant when, in his letter to the University of Oxford of November 10, 1284, he mentions two Seculars as the main defenders or ‘inventors’ of the thesis of the uniqueness of the substantial form in the human compound. The end of Siger in Italy could thus be, for the most part, a ‘black legend’, like that of the poisoning of Thomas Aquinas on behalf of Charles of Anjou. The article closes by showing some possible implications, even of a methodological nature, of this different approach. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the doctrine that logic does not require its own epistemology, for its methods are continuous with those of science. Although most recently urged by Williamson, the idea goes back at least to Lakatos, who wanted to adapt Popper's falsicationism and extend it not only to mathematics but to logic as well. But one needs to be careful here to distinguish the empirical from the a posteriori. Lakatos coined the term 'quasi-empirical' `for the counterinstances to putative mathematical (...) and logical theses. Mathematics and logic may both be a posteriori, but it does not follow that they are empirical. Indeed, as Williamson has demonstrated, what counts as empirical knowledge, and the role of experience in acquiring knowledge, are both unclear. Moreover, knowledge, even of necessary truths, is fallible. Nonetheless, logical consequence holds in virtue of the meaning of the logical terms, just as consequence in general holds in virtue of the meanings of the concepts involved; and so logic is both analytic and necessary. In this respect, it is exceptional. But its methodologyand its epistemology are the same as those of mathematics and science in being fallibilist, and counterexamples to seemingly analytic truths are as likely as those in any scientic endeavour. What is needed is a new account of the evidential basis of knowledge, one which is, perhaps surprisingly, found in Aristotle. (shrink)

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Nicole Oresme raises a question that he is apparently the first to ask in these terms, in such a context: do all beings have the desire to persevere into being? Before him, this question is not found in any of the medieval commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics. But after him it became canonical until at least the 16th century, since it can be found in Pietro Pomponazzi’s works for example. The novelty here consists in questioning (...) the validity of Averroes’ thesis, in his own commentary on the Physics, according to which all beings have the desire to persist into being, using the Augustinian analysis of voluntary death and suicide. How can we explain that one can freely put an end to his days if he is naturally inclined by a desire for life and even for eternity? Oresme’s solution consists in justifying not only the possibility, but also the moral obligation to accept death under certain conditions. In most cases, we do not really want to die. The desperate man wishes to cancel his misfortune and the heroic man who sacrifices himself for his country wishes to immortalize himself in the memory of other men. From a moral point of view, Nicole Oresme justifies only one case of voluntary death: that of individual sacrifice for the common good. The aim of this paper is to analyze precisely this important turning point in the long history of the notion of conatus in the West by comparing this quaestio from the commentary on the Physics with the glosses that accompany the French translation of the Nicomachean Ethics realised by Oresme at the court of Charles V. (shrink)

In their pioneering, masterly research and survey on Bartolomeo Fonzio’s manuscripts, published in 1974, Stefano Caroti and Stefano Zamponi informed the reader that the Ms. Ricc. 152 of the Riccardiana Library in Florence was a huge amount of notebooks with notes taken by Fonzio while attending the Studium in Florence. Among them Caroti and Zamponi called the reader’s attention to the notes Fonzio took when he went to Argyropoulos’ lessons on the Posterior Analytics. In this essay the reader finds a (...) transcription of those notes, preceded by some comments on the sources from which the outstanding commentator is likely to have drawn and which can be picked out from the fragmentary notes, that is John Philoponus and Paul of Venice. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine Duns Scotus’ account of divine omnipotence. I shall firstly consider his doctrine of the objective possible and the distinction between logical potency and metaphysical potency. Secondly, by drawing on Scotus’ main texts on divine omnipotence (especially the Quodlibet VII), I will argue that, in his view, God’s omnipotence is not demonstrable, but at the same time is not an irrational concept, as Aristotle and many Medieval philosophi claimed. Finally, I shall discuss the (...) connection between Scotus’ theory of being and that of the superiority of the will over the intellect. (shrink)

This light revision of Bornholdt's doctoral thesis (Würzburg, 2015) is effectively a medievally-oriented follow-up to Richard Gaskin’s 'The Sea Battle and the Master Argument' (1995). The book is stimulating from a philosophical point of view, but the exegesis is disappointingly unreliable.

The aim of this chapter is to take a closer look at medieval discussions concerning the phenomenon of ‘perceiving as,’ and the psychological mechanisms that lie behind it. In contemporary philosophical literature this notion is usually used to refer to conceptual aspects of perception. For instance, when I perceive a black birdlike shape as a crow, I may be said to perceive the particular sensible thing x as an instance of a universal crowness φ, that is, as belonging to a (...) natural kind and falling under the concept of ‘crow’. In this sense, perceiving x as φ requires mastering the concept φ. However, I use the term ‘perceiving as’ in a wider sense and concentrate on various kinds of non-conceptual sensory processes, which can be understood as forms of ‘perceiving as’. Even though conceptual perception requires intellectual powers, medieval discussions on cognitive psychology can be understood properly only by taking into account the complex forms of perception that fall short of being truly intellectual, but are nevertheless over and above the simple sensation of sensible qualities of external things. The borderline between simple sensation and conceptual perception is unclear, and quite a lot is going on in the grey area between the two. Instead of presupposing any modern notion of ‘perceiving as’ and applying it to medieval discussions, my purpose is the opposite: to look at medieval discussions and see if they can be used to broaden modern discussions by including also non-conceptual varieties of perception. I shall begin the analysis in section two by specifying various types of cogni- tive processes that were discussed by medieval authors and can be considered as forms of ‘perceiving as’. The bulk of the historical work will be done in sec- tion three, where I focus on medieval discussions on three interrelated cogni- tive functions – perceiving different sensible qualities as a synthetic whole, incidental perception of one sensible quality through another, and the possi- bility of perceiving substances and recognising individuals. The reader should bear in mind that I shall use ideas from several medieval authors without pay- ing much attention to the differences between their theories of perception. Although occasionally radical, these differences are not highly relevant in the context of the present chapter. In section four, I propose two theoretical mod- els that can be used for analysing medieval views concerning these psychologi- cal phenomena. Finally, I conclude the chapter by making some remarks on the potential impacts of reading medieval views in relation to the concept of ‘perceiving as’. (shrink)

The Middle Ages saw a great flourishing of philosophy. Now, to help students and researchers make sense of the gargantuan—and, often, dauntingly complex—body of literature on the main traditions of thinking that stem from the Greek heritage of late antiquity, this new four-volume collection is the latest addition to Routledge’s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Philosophy series. Christina Van Dyke of Calvin College, USA, and an editor of the Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, has carefully assembled classic contributions, as well as (...) more recent work, to create a one-stop ‘mini library’ of the best and most influential scholarship. -/- With a comprehensive index and a useful synoptic introduction newly written by the editor, Medieval Philosophy will be welcomed as an indispensable resource for reference and research. (shrink)

Introduction: -/- It is likely that Boethius (480-524ce) inaugurates, in Latin Christian theology, the consideration of personhood as such. In the Treatise Against Eutyches and Nestorius Boethius gives a well-known definition of personhood according to genus and difference(s): a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Personhood is predicated only of individual rational substances. This chapter situates Boethius in relation to significant Christian theologians before and after him, and the way in which his definition of personhood is a (...) particular answer to the question, “Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, but is one what?” Among Greek (and Syriac) speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘hypostasis’. Among Latin speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘persona’. It is Boethius’s definition of ‘persona’ that inaugurates personhood as such in Latin speaking theology. Although the Greek and Syriac theologians that I survey come close to a concept of personhood as a distinct category, they do not have such a concept and did not need it for their theological purposes. I show that Rusticus the Deacon is an early witness to this Latin theological invention, and also show that for later Latin theologians, the rationality condition for personhood does very little metaphysical work for their Trinitarian theology or Christology. -/- Further, this chapter surveys Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians’ answers to the question, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are one God, but each is one what?” The same replies as above are typically given by Christian theologians. These two theological questions frame the discussion about personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) and put a boundary around what a satisfying account of personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) would be. -/- In contemporary philosophy, there is a lot of attention paid to the rationality condition for personhood. But if we look at the text in which Boethius defines a person, we do not find any precise criteria for it. In other texts, he says that a rational being is one compatible with (capable of) thought and free choice of the will. What we find is that detailed discussion of personhood shows up in theological questions about the Trinity and Incarnation, but not in e.g., applied ethics. The intrusion of personhood into contemporary applied ethics with a focus on detailed and disputed criteria for rationality as a condition for personhood seems to be a modern development. From a Patristic and Medieval Christian theology point of view, trying to find just the right detailed criteria for rationality in order to define personhood is a wild goose chase. This chapter makes clear another contribution that Christian theology had for personhood. Given the theological issues at play in developing a notion of personhood, Christian theologians came to posit that e.g., an individual human is a person contingently (i.e. not essentially), but God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each a person essentially. The contingency for created persons is not based on whether e.g., an individual human has conscious acts (as might be the case for John Locke) but on the possibility of a divine person’s assuming e.g., an individual human nature. -/- This sampling of Christian intellectual history spans over one thousand years. I make no claim of being exhaustive. The chapter consists of six sections, where each section covers significant historical conversation partners who together represent the sorts of things that Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians where concerned with in theorizing about ‘persona’ or ‘hypostasis’. -/- 1. Origen of Alexandria and the Cappadocians: Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa 2. Miaphysites: Severus of Antioch, John Philoponus, and Peter of Callinicum 3. Boethius and Rusticus the Deacon: Rationality, Subsistence, and the Invention of Personhood 4. Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Leontius of Byzantium 5. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (I): Gilbert of Poitiers, Richard of St. Victor, William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ware 6. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham . (shrink)

What does it mean to be an embodied thinker of abstract concepts? Does embodiment shape the character and quality of our understanding of universals such as “dog” and “beauty,” and would a non-embodied mind understand such concepts differently? I examine these questions through the lens of Thomas Aquinas’s remarks on the differences between embodied intellects and non-embodied intellects. In Aquinas, I argue, the difference between embodied and non-embodied intellection of extramental realities is rooted in the fact that embodied and non-embodied (...) intellects grasp different kinds of universals by means of different kinds of intelligible species, which elicit in them different “modes” of understanding. By spelling out what exactly it means to be an embodied knower, on Aquinas’s account, I argue, we can also shed new light on his mysterious claim that the embodied intellect “turns to phantasms”—the imagination’s likenesses of individuals—in its acts of understanding. (shrink)

In the De malo, Thomas Aquinas claims that the first movements (primi motus) of the sensitive appetite are sinful. This seems surprising, since these movements do not appear to be under the control of reason. Unfortunately, the brevity of Aquinas’s discussion makes it difficult to understand why he would make such a claim. However, if he is read in light of the medieval debate about the first movements that was ongoing during his time, then Aquinas’s reasoning becomes much clearer. This (...) paper thus gives an overview of the medieval debate concerning the sinfulness of the first movements in order to situate Aquinas within his historical context. It argues that Aquinas largely adopts the position of William of Auxerre, who distinguished between first first movements (motus primo primi) and second first movements (motus secundo primi). Auxerre argued that the first first movements were of animal sensuality and where therefore not sinful. The second first movements were of human sensuality and therefore, since they were in some way rational, were sinful. The paper then discusses how Aquinas makes use of this distinction and how this affects the interpretation of his position that the first movements are sinful. (shrink)

Meister Eckhart was a medieval Christian mystic whose wisdom powerfully appeals to seekers seven centuries after his death. In the modern era, Eckhart’s writings have struck a chord with thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Merton, Sartre, John Paul II, and the current Dalai Lama. He is the inspiration for the bestselling New Age author Eckhart Tolle’s pen name, and his fourteenth-century quotes have become an online sensation. Today a variety of Christians, as well as many Zen Buddhists, Sufi Muslims, Jewish (...) Cabbalists, and various spiritual seekers, all claim Eckhart as their own. Meister Eckhart preached a personal, internal path to God at a time when the Church could not have been more hierarchical and ritualistic. Then and now, Eckhart's revolutionary method of direct access to ultimate reality offers a profoundly subjective approach that is at once intuitive and pragmatic, philosophical yet non-rational, and, above all, universally accessible. This “dangerous mystic's” teachings challenge the very nature of religion, yet the man himself never directly challenged the Church. Eckhart was one of the most learned theologians of his day, but he was also a man of the world who had worked as an administrator for his religious order and taught for years at the University of Paris. His personal path from conventional friar to professor to lay preacher culminated in a spiritual philosophy that combined the teachings of an array of pagan and Christian writers, as well as Muslim and Jewish philosophers. His revolutionary decision to take his approach to the common people garnered him many enthusiastic followers as well as powerful enemies. After Eckhart's death and papal censure, many religious women and clerical supporters, known as the Friends of God, kept his legacy alive through the centuries, albeit underground until the master's dramatic rediscovery by modern Protestants and Catholics. Dangerous Mystic grounds Meister Eckhart in a world that is simultaneously familiar and alien. In the midst of this medieval society, a few decades before the Black Death, Eckhart boldly preached to captivated crowds a timeless method, a “wayless way,” of directly experiencing the divine. (shrink)

Once Socrates has thought something, he comes to acquire an item such that he is then able to think such thoughts again when he wants, and he can, all other things being equal, do this with more ease than he could before. This item that he comes to acquire medieval philosophers called a cognitive habit which most medieval philosophers maintained was a new quality added to Socrates' intellect. However, some disagreed. In this paper, I will examine an interesting alternative theory (...) put forward by Durand of Saint-Pourçain and Prosper de Reggio Emilia about the location of cognitive habits. On their view, cognitive habits are not to be located in the intellect but in something on the side of the body or sensitive soul. (shrink)

The aim of the essays of this book is to explain the situation of the philosophical studies, in Italy, during the first half of the XIV century, that is the Dante's years.

Algumas soluções medievais para o sofisma ´omnis homo de necessitate est animal´ postulam um tipo especial de ser, o ser da essência (esse essentiae), que explica como uma predicação necessária pode ser verdadeira sobre seres cuja existência é contingente. O ser da essência, distinto do ser efetivo (esse actuale), admite apenas propriedades necessárias. Deste traço se seguem duas diferenças em relação a teorias meinonguianas acerca do não ser. Inicialmente, segundo Meinong, o tipo de propriedade de um objeto é independente de (...) ele existir – o chamado ´Princípio da Independência´. Além disto, o ser da essência não é parte da explicação da intencionalidade. Teorias medievais que julgam dever explicar a intencionalidade pela postulação de um tipo especial de ser não o fazem pela postulação do esse essentiae. Objetos meinoinguianos, por seu vez, servem para explicar tanto a intencionalidade quanto a distribuição intuitiva de valores de verdade para sentenças sobre inexistentes. (shrink)