Introductory Remarks Why Paradigm Variation is Ensuant upon Contradiction How Externalistic Warrant Parries the Threat of [Truth] Relativism Why Not to Ward Relativism off by Means of Foundationalistic Justification Defending a relativistic View of Warrant A Transcendental Argument against [Truth] Relativism Towards [Partial] convergence A Gradualistic Paraconsistent Way to Convergence 7.1. - Perspectivism and Non Copulative Paraconsistent Logics 7.2. - The Strength and Weakness of Two Copulative Approaches to Paraconsistent Logic 7.3. - The Logic of Contradictorial Gradualism 7.4. - Implementing (...) the Notion of Relative Truth Bibliographic References.. (shrink)

x8.1 `Real' The word `real' has many senses, and has been much misunderstood in consequence. It was, along with other philosophical terms, such as quality, quantity, entity, identity, essence and substance, coined by the Schoolmen in the Middle Ages|realis, reale from the Latin res, a thing|to mark the distinction between what really existed and what mere existed in intellectu, in the mind; and the word still carries connotations of thinginess, which can confuse our thinking about reality in the present (...) age. (shrink)

The logic of fiction has been a stand-alone research programme only since the early 1970s.1 It is a fair question as to why in the first place fictional discourse would have drawn the interest of professional logicians. It is a question admitting of different answers. One is that, since fictional names are “empty”, fiction is a primary datum for any logician seeking a suitably comprehensive logic of denotation. Another answer arises from the so-called incompleteness problem, exemplified by the fact (or (...) apparent fact) that some fictional sentences – think of “Sherlock Holmes’ mother was nick-named ‘Polly’” − are neither true nor false. These are sentences to command the attention of logicians who work on non-bivalent logics. A further spur to logical engagement is the supposed fictionality of certain kinds of ideal models in science and certain classes of mathematical objects. No doubt, there are other features of fictional discourse that provide the logician with a natural entré, but perhaps it would also be correct to say that the fiction’s biggest draw for logicians is that our quite common beliefs about the fictional constitute what Nicholas Rescher calls “aporetic clusters”, so named after the Latinized Greek aporos for “impassable”.2 An aporetic cluster is a set of claims such that.. (shrink)

“Nihilism” (from the Latin “nihil” meaning nothing) is not a well-defined term. One can be a nihilist about just about anything: A philosopher who does not believe in the existence of knowledge, for example, might be called an “epistemological nihilist”; an atheist might be called a “religious nihilist.” In the vicinity of ethics, one should take care to distinguish moral nihilism from political nihilism and from existential nihilism. These last two will be briefly discussed below, only with the aim (...) of clarifying our topic: moral nihilism. Even restricting attention to “moral nihilism,” matters remain indeterminate. Its most prominent usage in the field of metaethics treats it as a synonym for “error theory,” therefore an entry that said only “Nihilism: see ERROR THEORY” would not be badly misleading. This would identify moral nihilism as the metaethical view that moral discourse consists of assertions that systematically fail to secure the truth. (See Mackie 1977; Joyce 2001.) A broader definition of “nihilism” would be “the view that there are no moral facts.” This is broader because it covers not only the error theory but also noncognitivism (see NONCOGNITIVISM). Both these theories deny that there are moral facts—the difference being that the error theorist thinks that in making moral judgments we try to state facts (but fail to do so, because there are no facts of the type in question), whereas the noncognitivist thinks that in making moral judgments we do not even try to state facts (because, for example, these judgments are really veiled commands or expressions of desire). (In characterizing noncognitivism in this way, I am sidelining various linguistic permissions that may be earned via the quasi-realist program (see QUASI-REALISM).) While it is not uncommon to see “nihilism” defined in this broader way, few contemporary noncognitivists think of themselves as “nihilists,” so it is reasonable to suspect that the extra breadth of the definition is often unintentional. Both these characterizations see moral nihilism as a purely metaethical thesis...n. (shrink)

Montague was born September 20, 1930 in Stockton, California and died March 7, 1971 in Los Angeles. At St. Mary’s High School in Stockton he studied Latin and Ancient Greek. After a year at Stockton Junior College studying journalism, he entered the University of California, Berkeley in 1948, and studied mathematics, philosophy, and Semitic languages, graduating with an A.B. in Philosophy in 1950. He continued graduate work at Berkeley in all three areas, especially with Walter Joseph Fischel in Arabic, (...) with Paul Marhenke and Benson Mates in philosophy, and with Alfred Tarski in mathematics and philosophy, receiving an M.A. in mathematics in 1953 and his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1957. Alfred Tarski, one of the pioneers, with Frege and Carnap, in the model-theoretic semantics of logic, was Montague’s main influence and directed his dissertation (Montague 1957). Montague taught in the UCLA Philosophy Department from 1955 until his death. (shrink)

In the notes to the translations the numbering of the Psalms accords with the Douay version and, in parentheses, with the King James (Authorized) version. A reference such as “S II, 264:18” indicates “F. S. Schmitt’s edition of the Latin texts, Vol. II, p. 264, line 18.”.

The word transcendence comes from the Latin and means literally to climb across or go beyond. To transcend is thus to surpass or excel or move beyond the reach or grasp of something. Sometimes the term is used epistemologically, as when something is beyond the reach of human knowledge. But in reference to the Christian doctrine of God, divine transcendence is used ontologically, and refers to God being beyond anything that is other than God. In Christian theology what’s other (...) than God is, by definition, the creation. (shrink)

Ibn S¯ına, known to the Latin West as Avicenna, was a medieval Aristotelian— one of the greatest of all medieval Aristotelians. He lived in Persia from 980 to 1037, and wrote mostly in Arabic. Simplicius of Cilicia was a sixth century Neoplatonist; he is known mostly for his commentaries on Aristotle. Both of these men were, broadly speaking, part of the same philosophical tradition: the tradition of Neoplatonic or Neoplatonizing Aristotelianism. There is probably no direct historical connection between them, (...) however, and anyway I will not try to demonstrate one. In this paper I will examine their closely related, but ultimately quite different, accounts of corporeity— of what it is to be a body—and in particular of the essential relationship between corporeity and materiality. (shrink)

It seems one can’t open a climbing magazine these days without encountering a barrage of duty statements such as “It is wrong to retro-bolt” or “It is wrong to bolt a new route too close to a naturally protected route”. Such statements are often referred to as examples of ethical debate, however, as we shall see, they are more properly referred to as moral debate. The distinction is not just a pedantic piece of linguistics either, it is, I believe, essential (...) to understanding the true nature of these disputes, and it is the nature of these disputes which I am concerned with in this article. The distinction between ethics and morality was first brought to my attention in an article by Dr Green called ‘The Ethics of Climbing’ in Screamer 9 (1981). In this article Dr Green explains how ‘ethics’ derives from the Greek ‘ethikos’ which pertains to the spirit of the thing in question, so the ethics of climbing are concerned with the spirit of climbing. ‘Morality’, on the other hand, is is derived from the Latin ‘moralis’ pertaining to right conduct, so a morality is a set of commands, usually used to encapsulate a particular ethic. Dr Green goes on to suggest that just as many Christians’ obsession with the ten commandments is symptomatic of a failure by those individuals to grasp the spirit or ethos of Christianity, so too modern rockclimbers’ obsession with the morals of climbing signifies a shift in the ethos of climbing. I wish to examine this claim a little more closely. I believe that the legitimate role of morals is in the teaching of ethics. For example, it would be difficult to teach a child the abstract ethos of “caring for your fellow human being’s welfare” without first giving some concrete examples in the form of commands such as “Don’t hit other children at school”. It is by learning these moral commands.. (shrink)

In the 18th century, Guilielmus Piso arrives in Brazil as the archiater in the court of John Maurice of Nassau. Upon his return to Europe, he takes on the task of writing a descriptive treatise of these Western Indies. For this purpose, he makes use of the mental framework bequeathed by his education, setting up therefore the treatise On Airs, Waters and Places about Brazil. In the same manner and by the same means found in the homonymous treatise of the (...) Corpus Hippocraticum, and fortified by the authority of Latin (and Galenic) tradition, Piso undertakes an analysis of the man from this Land and his customs, taking as the axis of the “anthropological” part of his treatise the relation between a conception of nature that is merely an interpretation of the Hippocratic φύσις and the indolent ἦθος, which, by its turn, gave birth to a long-term imaginary lasting until the 21st century. (shrink)

In a 1986 article, "Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism," Fredric Jameson concludes his study by contrasting the "situational consciousness" of first and third worlds in terms of Hegel's master/slave dialectic. On Hegel's theory, the slave "whats what reality and the resistance of matter really are" while the master "is condemned to idealism. Elaborating on this analysis, Jameson writes: "It strikes me that we Americans, we masters of the world, are in something of that very same position. (...) The view from the top is epistemologically crippling, and reduces its subjects to the illusions of a host of fragmented subjectivities ... This placeless individuality, this structural idealism which affords us the luxury of the Sartrean blink, offers a welcome escape from the 'nightmare of history,' but at the same time it condemns our culture to psychologism and the 'projections' of private subjectivity. all of this is denied to third world culture, which must be situational and materialist" (Jameson 1986, p. 85). This passage strikes me as providing a useful opening to discuss the relationship between modern Western philosophy and the new Philosophy of Liberation which has emerged above all from Latin America. One of the insights of the Philosophy of Liberation is that Western Philosophy is the philosophy of the center, of the metropoles, of white European males. Its concepts, problems, and problematics are identified with philosophy itself and other perspectives, other positions, are condemned to the margins (Dussel, pp. ). On this view, Western Philosophy is the philosophy of the masters of the world, of the dominant countries, cultures, and class. Is the Philosophy of Liberation, then, -- pursuing Hegel's master-slave metaphor --the philosophy of slaves, of the dominated, of the oppressed and if so what particular insights does this perspective reveal that is lost to western philosophy.. (shrink)

ABBOT:1 You know that we three, who are engaged in study and are permitted to converse with you, are occupied with deep matters. For [I am busy] with the Parmenides and with Proclus’s commentary [thereon]; Peter [is occupied] with this same Proclus’s Theology of Plato, which he is translating from Greek into Latin; Ferdinand is surveying the genius of Aristotle; and you, when you have time, are busy with the theologian Dionysius the Areopagite. We would like to hear whether (...) or not there occurs to you a briefer and clearer route to the points which are dealt with by the aforenamed [individuals]. NICHOLAS: In our respective directions we are busy with deep mysteries. And it seems to me that no one can speak of these matters more briefly and clearly than those whom we are reading. Nonetheless, I have sometimes thought that we have neglected a [point] which would lead us closer to what is sought. PETER: We ask that this [point] be made known [to us]. (shrink)

In L. D. Reynolds , Texts and Transmission: a Survey of the Latin Classics , it is stated by J. G. F. Powell and by M. D. Reeve that MS. Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek Lat. 4° 404 , containing Cicero, De amicitia, and Publilius Syrus, Sententiae, is missing. Not so: it is currently held with numerous other Berlin MSS., including humanistic and musical autographs, at the Jagellonian Library in Cracow, where I saw it on 5 May 1992. Other classical MSS. (...) from Berlin now held in Cracow are Lat. 4° 1 , 257 , 590 , 939 , and 8° 102. (shrink)

Hyperlinked chapter headings will open in a second window, showing the full text (usually the Latin text with English translation parallel). Resize the browser windows so that windows cascade, or use the taskbar to switch from one window to the other.

Experience makes its mark on us in many ways. It leaves traces; it instills habits. A trace, as I define it here, is a quality of the soul or mind which is distinguished by its content, its intentional object. Aristotelian species and Cartesian ideas are traces. A habit I take, following Suárez, to be a quality of the soul which assists in the acts of a power of the soul, enabling them to be performed more easily and promptly. I will (...) use the Latin word habitus for habits so understood. This paper examines, in a preliminary way, the fate of habitus in early modern philosophy. In comparing just two authors, Suárez and Descartes, it can only suggest, schematically, how that fate is to be understood. My suggestion is that the role of habitus in Suárez’s psychology is occupied in Descartes’ psychology by association, understood mechanistically, and by resolution—the mind’s act of binding itself to be guided by certain judgments. These, being acts of will directed toward ideas, are rather traces than habits. No doubt the history is not so simple as this contrast makes it appear. Already, we will see, in Suárez and Descartes, we must complicate the scheme: in Suárez’s case, by the fact that some habitus seem to be expressible as rules; in Descartes’, by phenomena resembling the Suárezian habitus. Nevertheless I think the scheme offers a useful first approximation to the early modern history of habit. (shrink)

Fun for those who know a bit of Latin and still remember the 2000s. A modern version of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, in which Seneca appears to the author and tells us what he thinks about our times and ways.

book 2, distinction 3, extracts from which are in Hyman and Walsh. The first question is, in effect, whether any theory of individuation is needed. Aren't real things individual "from themselves", just by being real? The Latin says: ex se , sive ex natura sua , "from (or out of) itself, or from its nature". Elsewhere he uses as equivalent per se and de se . Se means itself, ex means from or out of, per means through, de means (...) of or by or from. So the question is whether an individual thing gets it singularity or individuality from itself, not from anything else. (shrink)

For many years I have maintained that I learned to philosophize by translating Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputation V from Latin into English. This surely is a claim that must sound extraordinary to the members of this audience or even to most twentieth century philosophers. Who reads Suárez these days? And what could I learn from a sixteenth century scholastic writer that would help me in the twentieth century? I would certainly be surprised if one were to find any references (...) to some of Suárez’s works in any of the works of twentieth-century major philosophers. One of the reasons for my claim is the great difficulty I had in figuring out what Suárez’s text means and how to render it understandable to English readers. Translating the text forced me to think in ways that were quite different from those I was used to think in Spanish, my native tongue, or English, my adoptive tongue. In fact, the translation I produced after having completed many drafts continued, and still continues to this day, to appear to me unsatisfactory, and that dissatisfaction was the key to understanding things I had understood very differently before. I hope to make clear why in what follows. The thesis that I defend is that semantic equivalence between texts of philosophy in different languages is difficult, if not impossible in some cases, to achieve and, therefore, that it is a mistake to restrict doing analytic philosophy to English, as Gustavo Rodríguez-Pereyra argues we should do in a recent article (2013). (shrink)

Contrary to dictionaries, a non sequitur isn’t “any statement that doesn’t follow logically from previous statements”. Otherwise, every opening statement would be a non sequitur: a non sequitur is a statement claimed to follow from previous statements but that doesn’t follow. If the sentence making a given statement doesn’t contain ‘thus’, ‘so’, ‘hence’, ‘therefore’, or something else indicating an implication claim, the statement isn’t a non sequitur in this sense. But this is only one of several senses of that expression, (...) which, contrary to appearances, is a unitary common noun more properly written as one word: non-sequitur or nonsequitur. Above a nonsequitur was, roughly speaking, a conclusion of an invalid premise- conclusion argument, but not every such, only those that were stated to follow from premises that had been stated. Every informative proposition is the conclusion of an invalid argument. Anyway, nonsequiturs were not arguments. However, the expression ‘nonsequitur’ also means “invalid premise- conclusion argument”. It also means something like “fallacious reasoning” as in ‘Abe’s proof of the big-bang hypothesis is a nonsequitur’. The English noun is also used for an irrelevancy, an abrupt change of topic, or for any of many other expressions that are gratuitous, inappropriate, incongruous, or in some other way out of place. The English noun is derived from the Latin expression ‘non sequitur’, which is not a common noun but a sentence variously meaning “it isn’t in sequence ”, “it doesn’t follow”, “it is out of order”, etc. A statement that begins ‘in the second place’ is a nonsequitur if the previous sentence lacked implication of something like ‘in the first place’ or if it contained something similar to ‘in the third place’. In fact, a true implication claim can be a nonsequitur if there is no reason for making it. If Ben says ‘Hence, Abe swims and Abe swims’ in reply to Carl’s statement ‘Abe swims‘, then Ben may well be committing a nonsequitur. Many conversation stoppers are nonsequiturs. This lecture surveys and analyses a wide selection of uses of ‘nonsequitur’ in logic and logic-related literature. -/- END OF DRAFT 4 -/- NOTE 091215: When Rick Perry was discussing possible withdrawal from the race—unfortunately not the human race but the Republican race—a reporter reminded him that just last week Donald Trump predicted the Perry withdrawal. Perry interrupted with “A broken clock is right once a day”. -/- If you did not know Perry you might think his reply was a brilliant diversionary nonsequitur. If you know Perry you might think his reply was a stupid nonsequitur. -/- For the record, he did say ‘once a day’, not ‘twice a day’. BTW, my interjection ‘unfortunately not the human race but the Republican race’ was also a nonsequitur. (shrink)

L’ Isagoge de Porphyre a été l’un des textes fondamentaux pour l’enseignement de la logique dans l’Occident latin. Cet article veut montrer son importance, à partir de l’étude des manuscrits, pour la période 800-980. L’introduction générale est suivie d’un catalogue des manuscrits qui transmettent l’ Isagoge, ou bien l’un des commentaires de Boèce à l’ Isagoge. Pour chaque manuscrit, sont indiqués la datation, le contenu général, les gloses et les diagrammes liés à l’ Isagoge.

One cannot go far in the reading of St Thomas Aquinas and other medieval writers without coming across a multiplicity of usages of the Latin term for ‘being’ or ‘to be’, esse, such as esse intentionale, esse intelligibile, esse naturale, esse sensibile and so on.3 It is not always easy to appreciate the distinctions which these terms are intended to mark and if one is inclined to scepticism one might indeed suspect that these are distinctions without a difference. However, (...) such a judgment would be both precipitate and incorrect. Even if the distinctions marked by such terms are not immediately perspicuous it is essential, if one wishes to understand and appreciate the thought of the medievals, that one come to understand them. Within the compass of a short paper it will not, of course, be possible to be comprehensive, so I shall investigate the notions of immateriality and intentionality with a view to clarifying their relationship.4 In so doing, I hope some light will be thrown.. (shrink)

One large exception to this generalisation is John Scottus Eriugena, who wrote original philosophical works, and also produced some translations of philosophical works. "Eriugena" is his rendering into Greek of "Scottus", which at that time meant Irish: John the Irishman. He was born in Ireland about AD 810, lived and wrote in France from about 840; he was one of the Irish and English clergy attracted to France by the Carolingian renaissance. He mastered Greek; knowledge of Greek was rare in (...) western Europe before the Renaissance of the fourteenth century, but at most times during the middle ages there were some Latin-speaking Europeans who also knew Greek. He translated from Greek into Latin the works of Dionysios the Areopagite: the Mystical Theology , the Divine Names and the Celestial Hierarchy. Dionysios the Areopagite is mentioned in the bible, in Acts 17:34; he was one of the few converts Paul made when he visited Athens. In France it was believed that this Dionysios had travelled to Gaul to preach Christianity, and that he had founded the Abbey of St. Denys in Paris. His writings were held in great respect. Unfortunately they are not authentic. Modern scholars refer to their author as pseudo-Dionysios ("pseudo" meaning "false"), or as Dionysios the pseudo-Areopagite: perhaps his name was Dionysios, but he was not the "Areopagite" mentioned in the bible. His writings are a Christianised version of Proclus and are therefore yet another channel of neo-Platonic influence on medieval Latin thought. John's own philosophical writings, which are also in the neo-Platonic style, did not have much influence on later medieval thinkers. For an account of them see E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. (shrink)

Descartes (1596-1650) is generally regarded as the first of the modern philosophers. Indeed, until about 50 years ago most philosophers would have said that Descartes was the first significant philosopher since Aristotle. Descartes himself does not draw attention to his sources--not to conceal them (that would have been pointless, because to his contemporaries the continuities of his thought with the books they had all been brought up on would have been obvious), but so as to avoid getting embroiled in learned (...) disputes about who had said what and what they had meant. Descartes wanted his readers to look at his arguments and judge them by using their own intelligence. He calls on his readers to empty their minds of prejudices, i.e. previous judgments, and take a fresh look. His writings had such an impact that philosophy after Descartes generally took his arguments and positions as a starting point or as a point of reference, and earlier writers were no longer read. (There was a social reason for this also: philosophical books were, after Descartes set the example, generally addressed in French or some other vernacular language to lay readers outside the universities, and most readers could not easily read the Latin authors Descartes had himself read when he was a student of the Jesuits.) So it came to be thought that Descartes had had no significant predecessors--that all of his ideas were original. Descartes was indeed an original thinker, but he used a good deal of medieval material. In this lecture I want to go through Descartes' chief work in philosophy, The Meditations , outlining the argument and drawing attention to the medieval material. (shrink)

Scholastic philosophers sometimes told jokes. Some of these have been preserved in the texts. (And some are even funny!). -/- But beyond the general human interest in having fun, these thinkers had good theoretical reasons to value humor as well. This is because Aristotle himself claims that ready wit (eutrapelia) is a virtue. I published a paper on this in 2022 (“Scholastic Humor”), and since then colleagues have brought further examples to my attention. (Thanks, everyone!) -/- Here, I aim to (...) do three things: (i) catalog and present these jokes in Latin and facing English translation, (ii) give credit where it’s due, and (iii) expand the collection by encouraging researchers on Scholastic philosophy to find and submit examples of jokes from the texts. -/- The text is open access, and will be updated on a rolling basis. -/- So if you do find any such jokes, please email me at boaz [dot] schuman [at] kuleuven [dot] be. (shrink)

Proclus' Stoicheiosis Theologike has had an enormous impact on Christian theological and philosophical thought; it has had a decisive influence on the theological interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics. However, the impact was less on the text itself than on the 'excerpt' translated from Arabic into Latin with the title Liber de Causis, which, like the Theologia Aristotelis (a compilation of Plotinian texts), was considered authentically Aristotelian. It was only Thomas, thanks to Moerbeke's translation of the Stoicheiosis Theologike, who realised that (...) the Liber de Causis was not a genuine Aristotelian text; nevertheless, he considered it to be fully compatible in meaning and intention with what Aristotle had thought and also used it accordingly in his argumentations. Although this was not the beginning of the theological reading of Aristotle's Metaphysics, this circumstance has completely cemented this conviction until today. -/- The conviction that Proclus' text is primarily a theological treatise has also persisted to this day (see the recent anthologies and monographs on Proclus, most recently Relire les Éléments de Théologie de Proclus, 2021). With my translation and commentary, I would like to counteract this limitation of Proclusian thought. Already the literary form of the text, 211 general propositions, shows that Proclus has something different in mind here than, for example, in his Platonic theology. I would like to make the philosophical content, the philosophical question of Proclus speak. In this text, Proclus poses the question of being and answers it by saying that being is to be understood as the unity of {staying-emerging-returning}. (shrink)

With overwhelming conviction the standard-interpretation of the Aristotelian philosophy translates the Greek ousia with the Latin substantia. There are many reasons, that this translation and equation is false, in a short overview I name six of them.

In an article entitled ‘Some Facts about our Oldest Latin Manuscripts,’ which appeared in this journal, the present writer put together a group of forty-seven MSS. which had this one feature in common, that each page or each column of a page they contained began with a large letter, regardless of whether that letter occurred in the middle of a sentence, or even in the middle of a word. It so happened that the list thus drawn up was composed (...) almost entirely of very ancient MSS.; indeed, it contained a very large proportion of the oldest MSS. extant. In the circumstances it seemed useful to note down the behaviour of these MSS. with respect to four other features—namely, the manner of indicating the omission of m and n at the end of lines, the use of running titles in the top margin, the size and arrangement of the written space, and the manner of signing quires. (shrink)

Joseph Butler was an Anglican priest and later a bishop who wrote about ethics, religion, and other philosophical themes. He is not well known today. During his lifetime and into the early part of the twentieth century he was better known especially for his major work the Analogy of Religion (1736). Today he is known mostly for his sermons which are interpreted as essays on ethics and for his essay on identity. Butler had a profound effect on J. H. Newman, (...) Matthew Arnold, and W. E. Gladstone and some effect on many other popular, academic, and professional readers. This book is as much about Butler’s sources and his reception as it is about the way he arranged and presented the evidence in the first half of the 18th century. He was a good man and is recognized by the Anglican church as a divine. We have no interest in taking a nostalgic look at a quaint figure in English church history. To those who claim Butler is unknown, that he was “blown out of the water” by John Wesley or Karl Barth, or Cornelius van Til, we can only say Butler is not as well known in the 20th and 21st centuries as in the 19th, but he is certainly not unknown to those who have taken any interest in philosophy, religion, or ethics. Today there has been a revival of interest in Bishop Butler. Our concern is to build and maintain a bridge that will help to keep this momentum. He offers an ethic that is universal and clearly Christian, yet it is based on the nature of man. Kant had a similar project, but in our opinion, Butler makes more compelling arguments. What is of interest to the Christian apologist is Butler’s work in this area. The purpose of this book is to present Butler’s ideas. We believe that his ethics have a universality that is applicable to people of all religious faiths and those that have none. It is common sense way of looking at ethics for everyday interaction. This book is a narrative argument presenting in detail how Butler’s creative arrangement of the evidence served as a bridge between the ancients as known in the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew originals, and the moderns, mostly Anglophone, who constituted Butler’s work environment and his reception in the latter day down to the present. We can hardly expect everyone to agree with Butler on all points, we certainly do not. The point at issue is rather whether he merits a seat at the present-day round table of deliberation on matters pertaining to philosophy, religion, and ethics. (shrink)

Después de la Reconquista, se tuvieron que traducir al latín muchos textos árabes en la España del siglo XII. La mayoría de los copistas necesitaban colaboradores para concluir el proceso, sin embargo, Johannes Hispalensis (Juan de Sevilla) conocía tanto la lengua árabe como el latín, por lo que podía trabajar solo. La duplicación de textos latinos se popularizó y divulgó rápidamente. Durante los siglos siguientes, los copistas medievales hicieron múltiples copias, y durante el proceso de reproducción cometieron muchos errores que (...) contribuyeron a la confusión entre la versión correcta del nombre del traductor y su identidad. Por consiguiente, Hispalensis apareció en copias posteriores de su trabajo con varios títulos añadidos, tales como ¿maestro¿ u ¿obispo¿, o unido a un colaborador. Los historiadores modernos aumentaron las complejidades creando un solo personaje de dos traductores distintos. En ocasiones, la propiedad de algunos de los manuscritos estaba basada únicamente en los nombres que aparecían en sus folios. Se hace aquí una tentativa de aclarar cuales son las traducciones de Johannes Hispalensis, trabajando solo, y aquéllas en que colaboró con otros. (shrink)

A considerable number of the thirteenth and early fourteenth-century manuscripts of Michael Scot's Arabic-Latin translation of Aristotle's De animalibus display a system of guiding marginal glosses. These glosses are usually added by a later hand with respect to the hand that had written the text. The manuscripts were not only annotated for personal use, but also so as to allow for a better use in compiling commentaries, encyclopaedias and compendia. We can say that the marginalia form the main, if (...) not only, key to our understanding today of the use that readers made of the text. Apart from offering a mere explanation of the contents, we can see that their interest in the text was chiefly related to biblical exegesis and to scientific and medical knowledge. The approach to the text was often allegorical and moralizing in character. Some remarks reflect the reader's own experience and associations in relation to the text. (shrink)

Term is starting and I’m not going back! Whoopee! At the age of fifty I feel like a wild schoolgirl tearing off my hated uniform and bursting into a chorus of ‘No more Latin, no more ....’ only this time it’s ‘No more meetings, no more forms, no more TQA and no more ...’.

The four volumes of Neil Ker's Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries were published by Oxford University Press between 1969 and 1992. They comprise a catalogue of about 3,000 manuscripts in Latin and Western European vernaculars in hitherto uncatalogued or inadequately catalogued institutional collections in the United Kingdom and form a major research tool for humanist scholars. The index volume, produced under the direction of A. G. Watson, a former pupil of Ker's and now his literary executor, and I. C. (...) Cunningham, formerly Keeper of Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland, provides a variety of indexes, including authors/titles; owners; geographical origins and dates of manuscripts; vernacular manuscripts; Latin and vernacular incipits; manuscripts cited; repertories cited; and iconography. There are also lists of recent accessions to libraries and of manuscripts that have migrated from one institution to another. (shrink)

A considerable number of the thirteenth and early fourteenth-century manuscripts of Michael Scot's Arabic-Latin translation of Aristotle's De animalibus display a system of guiding marginal glosses. These glosses are usually added by a later hand with respect to the hand that had written the text. The manuscripts were not only annotated for personal use, but also so as to allow for a better use in compiling commentaries, encyclopaedias and compendia. We can say that the marginalia form the main, if (...) not only, key to our understanding today of the use that readers made of the text. Apart from offering a mere explanation of the contents, we can see that their interest in the text was chiefly related to biblical exegesis and to scientific and medical knowledge. The approach to the text was often allegorical and moralizing in character. Some remarks reflect the reader's own experience and associations in relation to the text. (shrink)