Medieval Philosophy: Texts and Studies

This Reader presents translations of key passages from the Summa Halensis. This text was collaboratively authored mostly between 1236-45 by the founding members of the Franciscan school at the University of Paris, who sought to lay down their own distinctive intellectual tradition for the first time.

Reconsiders John Duns Scotus’s theory of the univocity of being in connection to his conception of ultimate difference. Develops a systematic account of ultimate difference from disparate discussions throughout his corpus.

This book offers a history of the idea that human thought is structured like a language, from Plato and Aristotle up to the fourteenth century when William of Ockham gave it a new importance and developed it in a systematic way.

In this book Scotus addresses fundamental issues concerning the limits of human knowledge and the nature of intellect and the object cooperate in generating actual cognition by developing his doctrine of the univocity of being, refuting skepticism and analyzing the way the knowledge in the case of abstractive cognition.

The essays of this volume explore the conceptual relationships among intentionality, cognition and mental representation as conceived by some of the greatest medieval philosophers, including Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham and Buridan, and some of their lesser known, but in their own time equally influential contemporaries.

This entirely new English translation of Buridan’s classic treatment of logical consequence aims to make accessible to the modern reader the foremost treatment of the subject in the middle ages. The translation is accompanied by an introduction in which Buridan’s ideas are set in their historical context and clearly explained.

The influence of the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) on 17th-century philosophy, theology, and law can hardly be underestimated. In this groundbreaking book, Daniel D. Novotný explores one of the most controversial topics of Suárez’s philosophy: “beings of reason.” Beings of reason are impossible intentional objects, such as blindness and square-circle. The first part of this book is structured around a close reading of Suárez’s main text on the subject, namely Disputation 54. The second part centers on texts on this topic by other outstanding philosophers of the time, such as the Spanish Jesuit Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza (1578–1641), the Italian Franciscan Bartolomeo Mastri (1602–73), and the Spanish-Bohemian-Luxembourgian polymath Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1606–82). The book should be of interest not just to those concerned with beings of reason but also for all those with a broader interest in the history of the period. It is written in a clear style that will make it appealing both to historians of philosophy and to anyone interested in applying analytical tools to the history of philosophy.

The multi-author Essays in Later Mediaeval Metaphysics focuses primarily on 13th and 14th century Latin treatments of some of the most important metaphysical issues as conceived by many of the most important thinkers of the day. Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Walter Chatton, John Buridan, Dietrich of Freiburg, Robert Holcot, Walter Burley, and the 11th century Islamic philosopher Ibn-Sina (Avicenna) are among the figures examined here. The work begins with standard ontological topics—e.g., the nature of existence, and of metaphysics generally; the status of universals, form, and accidents. Here, a number of questions are considered. What is the proper subject matter of metaphysical speculation? Are essence and existence really distinct in bodies? Furthermore, does the body lose its unifying form at death? Can an accident of a substance exist in separation from that substance? Are universals real, and if so, are they anything more than general concepts? There is also an emphasis on metaphysics broadly conceived. Thus, discussions of theories of mediaeval logic, epistemology, and language are added to provide a fuller account of the range of ideas included in the later mediaeval worldview. Many questions are raised in this context as well. What are the objects of propositional attitudes? How does Aristotelian logic stand up against modern predicate calculus? Are infinite regress arguments defensible in metaphysical contexts? How are the notions of analogy and equivocation related to the concept of being? Contributors include scholars of mediaeval philosophy from across North America: Rega Wood (Indiana), Gyula Klima (Fordham), Brian Francis Conolly (Bard College at Simon’s Rock ), Charles Bolyard (James Madison), Martin Tweedale (emeritus, Alberta), Jack Zupko (Winnipeg), Susan Brower-Toland (St. Louis), Rondo Keele (Louisiana Scholars’ College), Terence Parsons (UC-Irvine), and E. J. Ashworth (emeritus, Waterloo).

This book recounts the remarkable history of efforts by significant medieval thinkers to accommodate the ontology of the Trinity within the framework of Aristotelian logic and ontology. These efforts were remarkable because they pushed creatively beyond the boundaries of existing thought while trying to strike a balance between the Church's traditional teachings and theoretical rigor in a context of institutional politics. In some cases, good theology, good philosophy, and good politics turned out to be three different things. The principal thinkers discussed are Augustine, Boethius, Abélard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham. The aspects of Trinitarian doctrine dealt with are primarily internal ontological questions about the Trinity. The approach draws on history of theology and philosophy, as well as on the modern formal disciplines of set-theoretic semantics and formal ontology. Augustine inaugurated the project of constructing models of the Trinity in language drawn from Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, especially the conceptual framework of Aristotle's Categories. He used the Aristotelian notions of substance and relation to set up a model whose aim was not so much to demystify the Trinity as to demonstrate the logical consistency of maintaining that there is one and only one God at the same time as maintaining that there are three distinct persons, each of whom is God. Standing against this tradition are various heretical accounts of the Trinity. The book also analyzes these traditions, using the same techniques. All these accounts of the Trinity are evaluated relative to the three constraints under which they were formed, bearing in mind that the constraints on philosophical theorizing are not limited to internal consistency but also take note of explanatory power. Besides analyzing and evaluating individual accounts of the Trinity, the book provides a novel framework within which different theories can be compared.

The Vatican Mythographers offers the first complete English translation of three important sources of knowledge about the survival of classical mythology from the Carolingian era to the High Middle Ages and beyond. The Latin texts were discovered in manuscripts in the Vatican library and published together in the nineteenth century. The three so-called Vatican Mythographers compiled, analyzed, interpreted, and transmitted a vast collection of myths for use by students, poets, and artists. In terms consonant with Christian purposes, they elucidated the fabulous narratives and underlying themes in the works of Ovid, Virgil, Statius, and other poets of antiquity. In so doing, the Vatican Mythographers provided handbooks that included descriptions of ancient rites and customs, curious etymologies, and, above all, moral allegories. Thus we learn that Bacchus is a naked youth who rides a tiger because drunkenness is never mature, denudes us of possessions, and begets ferocity; or that Ulysses, husband of Penelope, passed by the monstrous Scylla unharmed because a wise man bound to chastity overcomes lust. The extensive collection of myths illustrates how this material was used for moral lessons. To date, the works of the Vatican Mythographers have remained inaccessible to scholars and students without a good working knowledge of Latin. The translation thus fulfills a scholarly void. It is prefaced by an introduction that discusses the purposes of the Vatican Mythographers, the influences on them, and their place in medieval and Renaissance mythography. Of course, it also entertains with a host of stories whose undying appeal captivates, charms, inspires, instructs, and sometimes horrifies us. The book should have wide appeal for a whole range of university courses involving myth.