Emotions are the focus of intense debate both in contemporary philosophy and psychology, and increasingly also in the history of ideas. Simo Knuuttila presents a comprehensive survey of philosophical theories of emotion from Plato to Renaissance times, combining rigorous philosophical analysis with careful historical reconstruction. The first part of the book covers the conceptions of Plato and Aristotle and later ancient views from Stoicism to Neoplatonism and, in addition, their reception and transformation by early Christian thinkers from Clement and Origen (...) to Augustine and Cassian. Knuuttila then proceeds to a discussion of ancient themes in medieval thought, and of new medieval conceptions, codified in the so-called faculty psychology from Avicenna to Aquinas, in thirteenth century taxonomies, and in the voluntarist approach of Duns Scotus, William Ockham, and their followers. Philosophers, classicists, historians of philosophy, historians of psychology, and anyone interested in emotion will find much to stimulate them in this fascinating book. (shrink)

Studies in modal notions, such as necessity, possibility or impossibility, have always played an important role in philosophical analysis. The history of these conceptions is a fascinating story of a variety of assumptions which have given shape to one part of rational discourse. A typical modern approach to modality is codified in what is generally known as possible worlds semantics. According to this view, necessity refers to what is actual in any alternative state of affairs, possibility to what is actual (...) in some, and impossibility to what is not actual in any alternative domain. The idea of spelling out the meaning of modal terms with the synchronic alternatives hardly occurred at all in ancient thinkers. They did not draw any sharp distinction between conceptual and real modalities and they were inclined to think that all generic possibilities must prove their mettle through actualization. Why and when did ancient modal conceptions and the modes of thought based on them lose their dominance? The main thesis of this book is that the idea of modality as multiplicity of reference with respect to alternative domains emerged in early medieval discussions and that it was originally influenced by the theological conception of God acting by choice. After a discussion of ancient modal paradigms, the author traces the interplay of old and new modal views in medieval logic and semantics, philosophy and theology. A detailed account is given of late medieval discussions of the new modal paradigms and attempts to apply them to modal logic, epistemic logic, and the logic of norms. These theories show striking similarities to some basic tenets of contemporary approaches to modal matters. This work will thus be of considerable interest to historians of philosophy and ideas, and philosophers of intensional logic and metaphysics. (shrink)

JAAKKO HINTIKKA GAPS IN THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING: AN EXERCISE IN THE METHODOLOGY OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS* For some historians, to understand everything is to pardon everything. For others, like Lord Acton, history is not only a judge, ...

This article considers three medieval approaches to the problem of future contingent propositions in chapter 9 of Aristotle's _De interpretatione_. While Boethius assumed that God's atemporal knowledge infallibly pertains to historical events, he was inclined to believe that Aristotle correctly taught that future contingent propositions are not antecedently true or false, even though they may be characterized as true-or-false. Aquinas also tried to combine the allegedly Aristotelian view of the disjunctive truth-value of future contingent propositions with the conception of all (...) things being timelessly present to God's knowledge. The second approach was formulated by Peter Abelard who argued that in Aristotle's view future contingent propositions are true or false, not merely true-or-false, and that the antecedent truth of future propositions does not necessitate things in the world. After Duns Scotus, many late medieval thinkers thought like Abelard, particularly because of their new interpretation of contingency, but they did not believe, with the exception of John Buridan, that this was an Aristotelian view. (shrink)

The word "modem" in the title of this book refers primarily to post-medieval discussions, but it also hints at those medieval mo dal theories which were considered modem in contradistinction to ancient conceptions and which in different ways influenced philosophical discussions during the early modem period. The me dieval developments are investigated in the opening paper, 'The Foundations of Modality and Conceivability in Descartes and His Predecessors', by Lilli Alanen and Simo Knuuttila. Boethius's works from the early sixth century belonged (...) to the sources from which early medieval thinkers obtained their knowledge of ancient thought. They offered extensive discus sions of traditional modal conceptions the basic forms of which were: (1) the paradigm of possibility as a potency striving to realize itself; (2) the "statistical" interpretation of modal no tions where necessity means actuality in all relevant cases or omnitemporal actuality, possibility means actuality in some rel evant cases or sometimes, and impossibility means omnitemporal non-actuality; and (3) the "logical" definition of possibility as something which, being assumed, results in nothing contradic tory. Boethius accepted the Aristotelian view according to which total possibilities in the first sense must prove their met tle through actualization and possibilities in the third sense are assumed to be realized in our actual history. On these presump tions, all of the above-mentioned ancient paradigms imply the Principle of Plenitude according to which no genuine possibility remains unrealized. (shrink)

Originally published in 1993, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy looks at the idea of modality as multiplicity of reference with respect to alternative domains. The book examines how this emerged in early medieval discussions and addresses how it was originally influenced by the theological conception of God acting by choice. After a discussion of ancient modal paradigms, the author traces the interplay of old and new modal views in medieval logic and semantics, philosophy and theology. A detailed account is given of (...) late medieval discussions of the new modal logic, epistemic logic, and the logic norms. These theories show striking similarities to some basic tenets of contemporary approaches to modal matters. This work will be of considerable interest to historians of philosophy and ideas and philosophers of logic and metaphysics. (shrink)

The last twenty years have seen remarkable developments in our understanding of how the ancient Greek thinkers handled the general concept of being and its several varieties. The most general examination of the meaning of the Greek verb 'esti'/'einai'/'on' both in common usage and in the philosophical literature has been presented by Charles H. Kahn, most extensively in his 1973 book The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek. These discussions are summarized in Kahn's contribution to this volume. By and large, they (...) show that conceptual schemes by means of which philosophers have recently approached Greek thought have not been very well suited to the way the concept of being was actually used by the ancients. For one thing, being in the sense of existence played a very small role in Greek thinking according to Kahn. Even more importantly, Kahn has argued that Frege and Russell's thesis that verbs for being, such as 'esti', are multiply ambiguous is ill suited for the purpose of appreciating the actual conceptual assumptions of the Greek thinkers. Frege and Russell claimed that a verb like 'is' or'esti' is ambiguous between the 'is' of identity, the 'is' of existence, the copulative 'is', and the generic 'is'. At least a couple of generations of scholars have relied on this thesis and fre quently criticized sundry ancients for confusing these different senses of 'esti' with each other. (shrink)

In recent years, the rich tradition of various philosophical theories of perception has been increasingly studied by scholars of the history of philosophy of ...

Many fourteenth-century logicians took affirmative propositions to maintain that the subject term and the predicate term stand or supposit for the same. This is called the identity theory of predication by historians and praedicatio identica by Paul of Venice and others. The identity theory of predication was an important part of early fourteenth-century Trinitarian discussions as well, but what was called praedicatio identica by Duns Scotus and his followers in this context was something different. After some remarks on Scotus’s view (...) and its background, I shall analyse Adam Wodeham’s explanation of Scotus’s praedicatio identica and how he understood the assumptions pertaining to supposition in the Scotist approach. I also describe Wodeham’s own solution to Trinitarian sophisms, which did not deviate from the identity theory of predication. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

The editors comment that the core of this book is formed by the papers presented as a special session at the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, honoring Norman Kretzmann’s contribution to the study of medieval philosophy. They decided to publish these papers with other essays devoted to issues in Aquinas’s moral theory specially commissioned from a group of Kretzmann’s colleagues, friends, and former students. The book, consisting of ten essays and a list of Kretzmann’s publications on Aquinas, is dedicated (...) to Kretzmann, who died just months before the volume appeared. (shrink)

Hugh of Novocastro, Landolfo Caracciolo, John Baconthorpe, and some other medieval authors argued that there are real contradictions in nature. The background of this early fourteenth-century theory was the Aristotelian question of how to determine the instant of change between p and ~p. The argument was that these are simultaneously true at the temporal instant of change if it is an instant of changing. The author’s aim is to discuss the background of this view in Henry of Ghent’s theory of (...) instantaneous change from potentiality to actuality at that very instant. (shrink)

In this article, I shall consider medieval discussions of the principles of Aristotelian syllogistic which were called the dictum de omni et nullo and the expository syllogism. I am particularly interested in how theological questions contributed to the introduction of some influential new medieval ideas, such as the extensional sameness of the subject as the basis of predication, the interpretation of the expository syllogism from this point of view, and the explication of the logical subject of universal and particular syllogistic (...) premises with the phrase `Anything/something which is A. . .'. I end with some remarks about the increasing medieval awareness that these developments were beyond Aristotle's purview. (shrink)

Kirjasymposio: Jari Kaukua: Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy: Avicenna and Beyond. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2015. 268 sivua.

An evening discussion between professors Jaakko Hintikka and Simo Knuuttila on September 2, 2007, at the Helsinki conference: Knuuttila: Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting us to this event and for this opportunity to discuss the latest volume of the Library of Living Philosophers, which was published last spring. The title of the volume is “The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka”. Probably most people here know this series, which was founded in 1939 by P. A. Schilpp. The idea of the (...) volumes is to invite some prominent philosophers to describe their lives and ideas and then ask other philosophers to write and comment on topics which the first author has written about. Then the philosopher to whom the book is dedicated answers and discusses these other people’s papers about his or her philosophy. These volumes gradually became a very popular series which most philosophical libraries wanted to have. It was considered such a good idea, giving rise to one of the most prestigious series in philosophy. It is also considered as a kind of philosophical honor for the philosopher to be chosen to be among these living philosophers. The books always have the same structure; first, an intellectual autobiography, pretty extensive, then the papers on the basic author’s philosophy and, last, the papers are answered separately. So there is a kind of discussion going on. The book on Jaakko Hintikka’s philosophy consists of almost 1000 pages. It is also available as a paperback. Now, I have prepared some questions. (shrink)

This paper discusses the main lines of medieval Latin approaches to future contingents with some remarks on Marcin Tkaczyk’s paper “The antinomy of future contingent events.” Tkaczyk’s theory shows some similarity with the general frame of the views of Ockham and Scotus, the difference being that while medieval authors argued for the temporal necessity of the past, Tkaczyk is sceptical of the general validity of this necessity. Ockham’s theological view was that God eternally has an intuitive and immutable knowledge of (...) all possibilities as well as whether they are ever actualized or not. The content of God’s past knowledge attitude remains contingent before the free choice takes place because God’s knowledge could be different similarly as the truth-value of the proposition. While Ockham held that no past or present thing follows from future things as an effect follows from its cause, this causal link is defended by Tkaczyk. Later thinkers thought that the doctrine of the scientia media sheds light on this question; perhaps it is easier to understand than the retroactive model which is not contradictory but difficult to imagine, as Tkaczyk concludes his paper. (shrink)