This new edition of Aristotle s De interpretatione provides an improved text compared to the 1949 Oxford edition, based upon an evaluation of the seven earliest surviving medieval manuscripts as well as many translations and commentaries from late antiquity. A text-critical apparatus provides information about the different readings.".

Text und Übersetzung -- Arabisch-lateinisch-griechisches Wörterverzeichnis -- Griechisch-arabisches Wörterverzeichnis -- Versio Latina.

Fred Miller offers a controversial reappraisal of the Politics, suggesting that nature, justice, and rights are central to Aristotle's political thought. He sheds new light on Aristotle's relation to modern natural rights theorists, and to the current liberalism-communitarianism debate.

Written by a highly respected scholar of Thomas Aquinas's writings, this volume offers a comprehensive presentation of Aquinas's metaphysical thought. It is based on a thorough examination of his texts organized according to the philosophical order as he himself describes it rather than according to the theological order. -/- In the introduction and opening chapter, John F. Wippel examines Aquinas's view on the nature of metaphysics as a philosophical science and the relationship of its subject to divine being. Part One (...) is devoted to his metaphysical analysis of finite being. It considers his views on the problem of the One and the Many in the order of being, and includes his debt to Parmenides in formulating this problem and his application of analogy to finite being. Subsequent chapters are devoted to participation in being, the composition of essence and esse in finite beings, and his appeal to a kind of relative nonbeing in resolving the problem of the One and the Many. Part Two concentrates on Aquinas's views on the essential structure of finite being, and treats substance-accident composition and related issues, including, among others, the relationship between the soul and its powers and unicity of substantial form. It then considers his understanding of matter-form composition of corporeal beings and their individuation. Part Three explores Aquinas's philosophical discussion of divine being, his denial that God's existence is self-evident, and his presentation of arguments for the existence of God, first in earlier writings and then in the "Five Ways" of his Summa theologiae. A separate chapter is devoted to his views on quidditative and analogical knowledge of God. The concluding chapter revisits certain issues concerning finite being under the assumption that God's existence has now been established. -/- John F. Wippel, professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, was recently awarded the prestigious Aquinas Medal by the American Catholic Philosophical Association. In addition to numerous articles and papers, Wippel has coauthored or edited several other works, including Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas and The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines, both published by CUA Press. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 38.4 (2000) 479-502 [Access article in PDF] Possible Worlds in the Tahâfut al-Falâsifa Al-Ghazâlî on Creation and Contingency Taneli Kukkonen University of Helsinki 1. This article is the second half in an inquiry into the debate between al-Ghazâlî (1058-1111) and Averroes (1126-1198) on the metaphysical basis of modalities. The first article focused on Averroes' exposition of the Arabic Aristotelian position on the eternity (...) of the world and the modalities, as found in the Tahâfut al-tahâfut, the "Incoherence of the Incoherence [of the Philosophers]" from ca. 1180.1 In this paper I propose to sketch the outlines to a very different conception suggested by al-Ghazâlî in the Tahâfut al-falâsifa (1095) and quoted verbatim and commented upon by Averroes in the Tahâfut al-tahâfut.2 In contrast to the naturalistic model of modalities propounded by [End Page 479] Averroes, al-Ghazâlî develops an interpretation of possibility in which conceivability and co-assertability are central. In several key respects al-Ghazâlî's approach mirrors that of John Duns Scotus in the fourteenth century: it makes possible, for instance, a distinction between conceptual and natural possibilities in a manner reminiscent of later Latin medieval theory, and, reflecting this, a distinction between the (non-temporal) moments of conception and causation in the divine mind. The parallels between al-Ghazâlî's and Augustine's basic conceptions, meanwhile, highlight the theological motives lying at the heart of the new thinking.As in the previous article, the dialectical form of Averroes' later Tahâfut al-tahâfut is used for critical insight. Averroes' criticism of al-Ghazâlî's modal theoretical innovations gives rise to an important question about the lengths to which al-Ghazâlî's proposals could be taken. The issue is to an extent unresolveable; one would do well to note why. Whereas Averroes' formulations in the Tahâfut al-tahâfut are made readily understandable against the backdrop of his Aristotelian commentaries and wider systematic teaching, it is less easy to determine how far al-Ghazâlî is willing to develop his own ideas. The materials given in the Tahâfut al-falâsifa leave the impression of being inconclusive and open-ended—perhaps deliberately so—and the ambiguities are mirrored in al-Ghazâlî's other texts.3Taken as they stand, al-Ghazâlî's formulations retain a substantial Avicennian residue, for better or for worse. This makes for a curious mixture of old and new in his overall scheme, a feature which Averroes can exploit by criticizing al-Ghazâlî from a strict Aristotelian viewpoint (just as he criticized Avicenna), while all the time maintaining that his adversary's proposals do not add up to a coherent and full-bodied alternative to that venerable tradition. But Averroes' criticisms do not touch on the way al-Ghazâlî's suggestions, vague as they may be, do represent a genuine breakthrough. Al-Ghazâlî's interpretation of the modal terms bypasses the connection traditionally made between true possibility and temporal instantiation. This allows for a freer handling of counterfactual possibilities, an important feature in any refiguring of the limits of possibility. 2. Al-Ghazâlî's innovations have their root in the idea of God freely choosing (arbitrating) between alternatives equal to him. This simple kernel of an idea, seated in the kalâm conception of possibility, allows for a recognition of the genuineness of synchronic alternatives: a seemingly small shift, but all-important [End Page 480] to the ensuing debate. Al-Ghazâlî has defended the notion of God's genuine choice earlier,4 but in refuting "the third proof of the philosophers for the world's eternity," he begins to make systematic use of the notion of possibility. A brief recapitulation of the philosophers' argument will serve to recall the reasoning from which al-Ghazâlî takes his cue. The philosophers, in al-Ghazâlî's words, had... (shrink)

This comprehensive study of Aristotle's Politics argues that nature, justice, and rights are central to Aristotle's political thought. Miller challenges the widely held view that the concept of rights is alien to Aristotle's thought, and presents evidence for talk of rights in Aristotle's writings. He argues further that Aristotle's theory of justice supports claims of individual rights that are political and based in nature.

The Metaphysics of Theism presents an explanation and evaluation of Aquinas's natural theology, the paradigm of which is the first book of the Summa contra gentiles. Natural theology provides the traditional and still central means of integrating philosophy with (some of) theology. What makes this enterprise natural theology is its forgoing of appeals to revelation as evidence for the truth of propositions. What makes it natural theology is its agenda to investigate, by means of analysis and argument, not only the (...) existence and nature of God but also the relation of everything else—especially human nature and behaviour—to God, considered as reality's first principle. Natural theology still offers the best route by which philosophers can, as philosophers, approach theological propositions. The one presented in this book undertakes to show that there must be a necessary being that constitutes the ultimate explanation of the universe. (shrink)

Al-Kindī's views concerning time are dispersed in different places in his works, but they are to be found principally in his On First Philosophy and De quinque essentiis. Yes, he does follow Aristotle, but he insists on the homogeneity of the instant and of time; he also distances himself from the Philosopher by denying the eternity of the world a parte ante as well as a parte post. On the other hand, in his accounts of the realization of possible things (...) and of the organization of the cosmos, he presents certain views that sometimes tend toward the principle of plenitude, and sometimes toward the doctrine of the best possible world, and here one can discern a principle that is distinctly theological. (shrink)

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias,1 Abelard distinguishes the form of an expression2 (oratio) from what it says, that is, its content. The content of an expression is its understanding (intellectus). This distinction is surely the most well-known and central idea in Abelard’s commentary. It provides him with the opportunity to distinguish statements (enuntiationes) from other kinds of expressions without implying a diference in their content, since the ability of a statement to signify something true or false (verum vel (...) falsum)3 cannot be found in its content. More precisely, Abelard distinguishes statements both from complete expressions (orationes perfectae) that are not statements but rather questions, requests, commands, etc. and from incomplete expressions, that is, mere word strings (orationes imperfectae), such as homo albus. These kinds of expressions, according to Abelard, do not differ in the understanding they present but in the way they present it. (shrink)