The contributors to this volume cover a wide range of philosophers, from Simplicius to John Wyclif, and philosophical problems, including: the harmony of ...

At "Categories" 12b5-16 Aristotle appears to regard the referents of declarative sentences, such as "Socrates is sitting," as what later writers were to call "complexe significabilia," i.e., items such as that Socrates is sitting. Simplicius' discussion of this passage in his commentary on the "Categories" clearly shows the influence of Stoic philosophy of language; but, if we follow the text printed by Kalbfleisch, Simplicius' commentary is seen to be a muddle of Stoic and Aristotelian elements, neither (...) properly understood. It is possible, however, by making a crucial emendation to the text, to preserve the Aristotelian integrity of Simplicius' theory of meaning. On that line Simplicius would be adopting the view that a declarative sentence refers to a thought in the first instance and a "complexe significabile" in the second instance. This view is plausibly the upshot of combining the "Categories" text with the first chapter of "De Interpretatione.". (shrink)

This paper lists and examines the explicit references to Aristotle’s Topics in the Greek Neoplatonic commentaries on the Categories. The references to the Topics by Porphyry, Dexippus, Ammonius, Simplicius, Olympiodorus, Philoponus and David are listed according the usual prolegomena to Aristotle’s works. In particular, the paper reconstructs David ’s original thesis about the proponents of the title Pre-Topics for the Categories and compares Ammonius’, Simplicius’ and Olympiodorus’ doxographies about the postpraedicamenta. Moreover, the study identifies two general trends. The (...) first one is that all the commentators after Proclus share the same general view about: the authenticity of the Topics, Aristotle’s writing style in them, the part of philosophy to which they belong, their purpose, their usefulness and their place in the reading order. The second one is that whereas Porphyry, Dexippus and Simplicius use the Topics as an aid to understanding the Categories, Ammonius, Olympiodorus and David do not. (shrink)

Theodore Waitz, in the section of his introduction to Aristotle's Organon called De Codicibus graecis organi, prints a number of passages found in various manuscripts, which are not to be treated simply as scholia on Aristotle, but are still of some interest to the student of Aristotle's logic. In this paper I am concerned with three leaves, fos. 84–6, from Laurentianus 71, 32, a fourteenth-century manuscript containing paraphrases of several works, which Waitz uses for scholia on the Categories and (...) the De Interpretatione. These leaves are in a different hand from the rest of the manuscript, and Waitz thinks they originated elsewhere. The heading is: Περ τς το ποτ κτηγορς, and the work falls into two parts, a discussion of Time, based on Physics 4, and an independent section in which the category of When, which Aristotle does little more than mention in a number of lists, is treated at length. In Waitz' text there are a number of references to scholia: these are in fact from Simplicius' Commentary on the Categories, and a comparison with these and still other passages of Simplicius not mentioned by Waitz suggests that the author of this work was Boethus of Sidon, the Peripatetic. I propose to examine it and argue that it is indeed by Boethus. Boethus, known as ‘the Peripatetic’, to distinguish him from the Stoic philosopher of the same name, was head of the Peripatos in succession to Andronicus of Rhodes. There is some uncertainty about Andronicus' dates, but he lived some time in the middle of the first century b.c. and we may place Boethus somewhat later in the same century. Andronicus is well known as the editor, and in a sense the rediscoverer, of the esoteric works of Aristotle; it is less well known that he had an independent attitude to Aristotle and put forward what he presumably thought of as some improvements in doctrine. What concerns us here is his attempt to substitute the category of Time for that of When. In opposition to him Boethus may be seen as a conservative, coming to the defence of Aristotle against these innovations. (shrink)

Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories contains the most extended testimony about the Stoic conception of acting (ποιεῖν) and undergoing (πάσχειν). Simplicius ascribed to the Stoics the idea that acting and undergoing are to be reduced to the movement. To this opinion Simplicius opposed the Aristotelian view according to which acting and undergoing are two different categories. In this paper I intend to outline the original Stoic position comparing the reportage of Simplicius with other Stoic sources. Later, I (...) will deal with Boethus’ defense of the distinction between the categories of acting and undergoing. I will argue that Boethus directly reacted against the Stoic opinion reformulating it in Aristotelian language. (shrink)

Simplicius claims in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories that quality is prior to the qualified according to nature. However, in an interesting passage in the same commentary, Simplicius describes the relation between quality and qualified in such a way that it strongly suggests an ontological simultaneity. The aim of this paper is to clarify Simplicius’ notion of natural priority and to investigate the extent to which the assumption of a natural priority of the quality over the qualified (...) is compatible with the assumption of a co-existence of quality and qualified. (shrink)

In his commentary on Physics I 9, Simplicius claims that individual forms individuate matter. Given that in the same text he calls the immanent form ‘universal,’ it seems reasonable to conclude that the individual forms are individual instances of one universal species–form. However, Simplicius also mentions accidental properties that are peculiar to form rather than to matter. On the basis of Simplicius’ commentaries on the Categories and on the Physics, I argue that the individuating accidents are not part (...) of the individual forms, but that each individual’s form coordinates the individual’s accidental features. By belonging to a certain species, the individual form sets limits as to which accidents a matter–form compound can assume. This approach enables Simplicius to combine hylomorphism with a theory of individuation through properties. Furthermore, in his commentary on De Caelo I 9 Simplicius explains the uniqueness of each individual’s conglomeration of properties in light of his Neoplatonic cosmology: each individual corresponds to an individual cosmic disposition that determines its characteristic features. (shrink)

The paper examines Simplicius's doctrine of propensities in his commentary on Aristotle's Categories and follows its application by the late thirteenth century theologian and philosopher James of Viterbo to problems relating to the causes of volition, intellection and natural change. Although he uses Aristotelian terminology and means his doctrine to conflict minimally with those of Aristotle, James's doctrine of propensities really constitutes an attempt to provide a technically rigorous dressing to his Augustinian and Boethian convictions. Central to James's (...) procedure is his rejection, following Henry of Ghent, of the principle that “everything that is moved is moved by another”. James uses Simplicius' doctrine of propensities as a means of extending the rejection of that principle, which Henry had limited to the case of the will, to cognitive operations and natural change. The result is a theory of cognition and volition that sees the soul as the principal cause of its own acts, and a theory of natural change that minimizes the causal impact of external agents. (shrink)

The paper examines Simplicius's doctrine of propensities in his commentary on Aristotle's Categories and follows its application by the late thirteenth century theologian and philosopher James of Viterbo to problems relating to the causes of volition, intellection and natural change. Although he uses Aristotelian terminology and means his doctrine to conflict minimally with those of Aristotle, James's doctrine of propensities really constitutes an attempt to provide a technically rigorous dressing to his Augustinian and Boethian convictions. Central to James's (...) procedure is his rejection, following Henry of Ghent, of the principle that “everything that is moved is moved by another”. James uses Simplicius' doctrine of propensities as a means of extending the rejection of that principle, which Henry had limited to the case of the will, to cognitive operations and natural change. The result is a theory of cognition and volition that sees the soul as the principal cause of its own acts, and a theory of natural change that minimizes the causal impact of external agents. (shrink)

The following discussion' of the manuscript tradition of Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's Physics i-iv originated in an examination of the tradition of the fragments of Parmenides. It is therefore illustrated not only from Simplicius but particularly from the texts of Parmenides quoted by him. This will not be misleading, since, though many of these texts are quoted by Simplicius more than once, there is little or no sign in any manuscript of interpolation from one passage to another and it (...) is not likely that any scribe could have interpolated the text from an independent manuscript of Parmenides. (shrink)

Unlike some of the shorter, introductory commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, such as those by Porphyry, Dexippus, or Simplicius’s teacher Ammonius, Simplicius’s commentary is, as he himself admits, a lengthy treatise that discusses Aristotle’s text lemma by lemma. As is customary, Simplicius begins his commentary with an introduction that includes two schemata of questions. The first situates the Categories within the larger context of Aristotle’s corpus and identifies the necessary qualities of good students and teachers. (...) The second set of questions focuses specifically on the Categories by addressing the goal of the work, its usefulness, its authenticity, its place within logic, the reason for its title, and its division into chapters. Most important in this introductory section is Simplicius’s discussion of the goal of Aristotle in writing the Categories, for at the time there was widespread disagreement as to whether the Categories is a work about words only, about things only, about concepts only, or somehow about all three. Of course, like many of the medievals who studied his commentary, Simplicius argues that it is about all three and contends that the goal “would be about the simple and most generic parts of speech which signify simple realities, and the simple notions which exist in conjunction with these simple realities”. (shrink)

In this article I explain three puzzling features of Simplicius’ use of syllogistic reconstructions in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics: (1) Why does he reconstruct Aristotle’s non-argumentative remarks? (2) Why does he identify the syllogistic figure of an argument but does not explicitly present its reconstruction? (3) Why in certain lemmata does he present several reconstructions of the same argument? Addressing these questions, I argue that these puzzling features are an expression of Simplicius’ assumption that formal reasoning underlies Aristotle’s (...) prose, hence they reflect his attempt to capture as faithfully as possible Aristotle’s actual mode of reasoning. I show further that, as a consequence of this seemingly descriptive use of syllogistic reconstructions, logic serves Simplicius not only as an expository and clarificatory tool of certain interpretations or philosophical views, but also motivates and shapes his exegetical stances and approach. (shrink)

"This volume offers a new translation of the Neoplatonist philosopher Simplicius' commentary on the chapters concerning place and time in Aristotle's Physics, Book Four. Written after the closing of the Athenian Neoplatonist school in A.D. 529, the commentary clarifies the structure and meaning of Aristotle's arguments and provides a rich account of 800 years of interpretation." "Surprisingly, in the first five chapters of Book Four Aristotle shows place as two-dimensional: one's place is the two-dimensional inner surface of one's (...) surroundings. He also suggests that the upward motion of air and fire and the downward motion of earth and water are partly explained by the natural places to which they tend. Place thus has power (dunamis) of its own. In his last five chapters, Aristotle argues that if time did not entail change its passage would be undetectable, and that time, by definition countable, requires the existence of conscious beings to do the counting. Among the many relevant views that Simplicius records are those of Galen, who attacks this claim, and of Eudemus, who rebuts the Pythagorean theory that history will repeat itself exactly. J. O. Urmson's translation serves as a companion to his earlier translation of the Corollaries on Place and Time, in which Simplicius sets forth his own views as distinct from those of Aristotle." "A major sourcebook for the interpretation of Aristotle, this volume will be welcomed by scholars and students in the fields of classics, ancient philosophy, ancient history, and medieval studies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

The doctrines of Parmenides of the one being and of the world of seeming were—as is well known—interpreted in different ways in the course of the history of philosophy, and even in twentieth-century historic-philosophical research, there is no agreement on the meaning of the two parts of the poem. Regarding the one being there are four attempts of explanation to be distinguished: The being is material; the being is immaterial; it is the esse copulae or must be seen as a (...) modal category; it is the entity of being. This latter interpretation, if we can call it an interpretation, is chiefly influenced by Heidegger. The Doxa-part, however, is seen as a more or less critical doxography; a second-best, hypothetic explanation of phenomena which is not truth but verisimilitude; a systematic unit together with the first part, the ἀλήθεια We do not have to discuss the differences between the outlined explanations separately; in the following, we shall show that some modern interpretations were already expressed in a similar way in antiquity. With this, we shall concentrate especially on the Neoplatonist Simplicius who in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics expounds the first part of the Parmenidean poem completely and, in addition, the most important doctrines of the second part. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the history of the concept of where in ancient philosophy. Though Aristotle was the first to recognize the concept as a topic of philosophical interest, numbering the category of where among his ten categories, it is only from late antiquity that more extensive treatments of the concept have come down to us, in Plotinus' The Genera of Being and Simplicius' Commentary on the Categories. Plotinus rejects the category of where on the ground (...) that, on any plausible understanding of locatives, the things they signify do not make up a special category. To show this, Plotinus considers three at least plausible ways to construe the semantics of locatives: they may signify either places or something in something else, or relations. The paper examines these three construals together with Plotinus' dialectical arguments and Simplicius' counter-arguments, concluding that the former, though highly illuminating, are unsuccessful and that, by and large, Simplicius is right in his defence of the category of where. (shrink)

In "De malorum subsistentia" chs 30-7, Proclus criticizes the view that evil is to be identified with matter. His main target is Plotinus' account in Enn. I,8 [51]. Proclus denies that matter is the cause of evil in the soul, and that it is evil or a principle of evil. According to Proclus, matter is good, because it is produced by the One. Plotinus' doctrine of matter-evil is the result of a different conception of emanation, according to which matter does (...) not revert to its principle. Proclus claims that to posit a principle of evil either amounts to a coarse dualism, or makes the Good ultimately responsible for evil. Plotinus does not seem to be able to escape the latter consequence, if he is to remain committed to the Neoplatonic conception of causation. Plotinus equated matter with privation and said it is a kind of non-being that is the contrary of substance, thus violating fundamental Aristotelian tenets. Proclus reinstates Aristotelian orthodoxy, as does Simplicius in his "Commentary on the Categories." It is possible that lamblichus was the source of both Proclus and Simplicius, and that he was the originator of the parhypostasis theory and the inventor of the anti-Plotinian arguments. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Commentaries on Plato’s and Aristotle’s works were central to the Neoplatonic school’s curriculum. In a fixed order, established since Jamblichus, the Aristotelian writings were first read, then the Platonic ones. At the beginning, the logical writings of Aristotle and particularly his Categories were examined. But like any other work, the Categories were construed from the perspective of Neoplatonic anagogy. In addition, the commentator was obliged to work out the commonalities between the two philosophical teachings. That anagogical and (...) harmonising approach culminates in the commentaries on the Categories with the integration of the Aristotelian concept of substance into the Platonic concept of ideas. While Dexippus is primarily engaged in the right modes of predication corresponding to the sensible and the intelligible realm respectively, Simplicius focuses on the description of a continuous connection of being. (shrink)

This is one in a series of translations with introductions, copius notes and comprehensive indexes. It fills an important gap in the history of European thought.

The article focuses on debates concerning ontology and predication in early Neoplatonism (Porphyry and Iamblichus). Evidence coming from Simplicius’ Commentary on the Categories and from the Categories Commentary in the Archimedes Palimpsest suggests that Porphyry and Iamblichus interpreted Aristotle’s theory of synonymous predication (dici de subiecto) and specific differentia within the framework of their ontology (doctrine of the hierarchy of being). While Porphyry possibly suggested that a slightly emended version of Aristotle’s predication could express the relation (...) between ante rem and in re items (akatatakton, katatetagmenon), Iamblichus argued that different metaphysical levels cannot in any way be conceived of as species ranked under the same genus (hence Iamblichus’ emphasis on paronymous predication). Further evidence coming from Iamblichus’ Reply to Porphyry and from the Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides attributed to Porphyry confirms these conclusions. (shrink)

Commentaries on Aristotle's writings have been produced since the 2nd century AD. This edition contains Greek commentaries on his work from the 3rd to the 8th centuries AD by, among others, Alexander of Aphrodiensias, Themistios, Joh. Philoponus, Simplicius in Greek.

The commentary attributed to Simplicius on Aristotle's On the Soul appears in this series in three volumes, of which this is the first. The translation provides the first opportunity for a wider readership to assess the disputed question of authorship. Is the work by Simplicius, or by his colleague Priscian, or by another commentator? In the second volume, Priscian's Paraphrase of Theophrastus on Sense Perception, which covers the same subject, will also be translated for comparison. Whatever its authorship, the (...) commentary is a major source for late Neoplatonist theories of thought and sense perception and provides considerable insight into this important area of Aristotle's thought. In this first volume, the Neoplatonist commentator covers the first half of Aristotle's On the Soul, comprising Aristotle's survey of his predecessors and his own rival account of the nature of the soul. (shrink)

Commentaries on Aristotle's writings have been produced since the 2nd century AD. This edition contains Greek commentaries on his work from the 3rd to the 8th centuries AD by, among others, Alexander of Aphrodiensias, Themistios, Joh. Philoponus, Simplicius in Greek.

The French translation with commentary, the first in a modern language, allows historians of philosophy access to a fundamental work for the understanding of medieval and modern thought. They could also explore more easily the great variety of information contained in the commentary of Simplicius on the history of the exegis of the _Catégories of Aristotle_, and more generally on the history of comparative philosophy of Simplicius. They will discover some important aspects in the actual thought of Simplicius, (...) which so far has hardly been explored. (shrink)

Simplicius surveys ideas about place and time from the preceding thousand years of Greek philosophy. Translation of text with commentary and notes.

This study comprises an analysis of the Categories commentary of Peter of Auvergne, based upon an edition from the manuscripts, and supplemented by a translation. Much information about other Categories commentaries has been included to place the work in its historical and philosophical perspective. ;Peter of Auvergne, active in Paris in the late thirteenth century, had a long career as an Aristotelian commentator and continuator of Thomas Aquinas. His Categories commentary provides me the occasion to (...) survey the genre of Categories commentaries from the early Middle Ages, with special emphasis on those few commentaries known to immediately precede Peter of Auvergne, and on those he influences. Peter is an early representative of the modistae, philosophers who stressed the parallel connections among being, understanding, and signifying, and who are typified by their use of the modi significandi as a tool of analysis. ;This study, the first full-length analysis of a medieval Categories commentary, serves as a guide to the issues generated by Aristotle's Categories. As a comparative study it shows that the genre of Categories commentaries, within a fairly invariant format, allows for a continuous adaptation and development of ideas. As a specific study of an individual commentary, it shows the details of Peter of Auvergne's interests in linguistic analysis, theology, and the exegesis of Aristotle. ;The questions in Peter of Auvergne's commentary are generalizably of two kinds: short, superficial questions which imitate earlier traditions, and more complex questions which attempt original interpretations. Not suprisingly, the latter sort of question finds more parallels in later commentators, including Simon of Faversham, Radulphus Brito, and John Duns Scotus. ;This dissertation, beginning from a thorough exegesis of a central figure, by tracing derivative and influencing themes, gives a dependable picture of the debates conducted in connection with the Categories in the High Middle Ages. I have had the responsibility of editing many of the primary sources I needed. The extensive appendices contain, besides an edition of Peter's Questiones super Praedicamentis, a transcription of another related commentary, Anonymus Matritensis: Questiones super Praedicamentis, and many relevant texts grouped by category. (shrink)

본 논문은 심플리키오스의 저작으로 알려져 있는 『영혼론 주해』 (CAG XI)에나타난 프리스키아노스의 지성론에 대한 연구이다. 프리스키아노스는 아리스토텔레스의 『영혼론』을 풀이하면서 자신의 고유한 신플라톤주의적인 사상을 적극개진하고 있다. 본 논문은 『영혼론』에서 지성의 발전단계와 표상력 및 수동지성에관한 논의와 그에 대한 해석을 중심으로 프리스키아노스의 이론을 알아보고자한다. 따라서 본 논문은 아리스토텔레스의 『영혼론』의 신플라톤주의적인 해석과수용에 대한 한 가지 사례연구가 될 수 있다. 아리스토텔레스의 지성의 세 가지의 발전단계는 프리스키아노스의 인간 지성론에서의 신플라톤주의적인 삼중구조에 상응한다. 프리스키아노스에 따르면 인간의지성은 인간의 정신활동의 원인인 실체적 지성과 실체적 지성에서 유출된 발출지성으로 구성된다. 발출지성은 인식대상의 존재론적 (...) 지위에 따라 다시금 미완성 상태와완성 상태로 나뉜다. 인간의 지성은 미완성 상태에서 완성상태로 옮아가고, 그리고현실적으로 사유함으로써 실체적 지성과 동일하게 되는 것을 목표로 하는 발전과정으로 이해된다. 프리스키아노스는 인간의 표상력과 신체와의 결합을 감각기관에 대한 표상력의 전적인 종속으로 보지 않고, 감각기관을 규정하는 형상적 능력으로 이해한다. 또한 수동지성의 소멸은 신체의 소멸에 동반되는 소멸이 아니라, 유출된 자기 자신을 원인으로서의 자기 자신으로 되돌아가기 위해 지양한다는 의미에서의 소멸로 이해한다. 표상력과 수동지성에 대한 새로운 이해를 통해 프리스키아노스는 아리스토텔레스의 인간 지성의 발전단계를 신플라톤주의 체계 안에서의 지성의존재론적인 발전단계로 해석하는 데에 성공한다. (shrink)

This paper by Miles Little and colleagues identified the state they described as “liminal” within the trajectory of cancer survivorship. Since that time the concept of liminality has provided a powerful model to explore some of the difficulties experienced by people with severe and chronic illness. In this commentary I consider the expanding application of liminality not just to a widening range of medical conditions but to the consequences of therapeutic interventions as well and how this expansion has enriched (...) and challenged its use as a conceptual tool. (shrink)

The French translation with commentary, the first in a modern language, allows historians of philosophy access to a fundamental work for the understanding of medieval and modern thought. They could also explore more easily the great variety of information contained in the commentary of Simplicius on the history of the exegis of the Catégories of Aristotle, and more generally on the history of comparative philosophy of Simplicius. They will discover some important aspects in the actual thought of Simplicius, (...) which so far has hardly been explored. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Spiritual Experience and Psychopathology”Roland Littlewood (bio)Keywordsreligion, innovation, psychosis, culture, diagnosisThis is an ambiguous though clinically valuable paper. Jackson and Fulford suggest that the distinction between their two categories, spiritual experience and mental illness, is conventional, yet their emphasis on issues of correct practice from the medical perspective threatens to return both into distinct ontological categories, albeit with a shared phenomenology. I do not understand (...) why any single instance must either be pathological or spiritual, except through clinical and clerical demands for clarity and order.Mental illness and spirituality are not two distinct natural phenomena “out there,” existing independently of human volition. They are both social—cultural if one prefers—ascriptions. Neither has some substantive core whose elucidation through psychophysiological, phenomenological or ultrahuman procedures could enable us to define its essence and thus differentiate it from the other. Neither experience is a self-evident datum. Both are easily susceptible to critiques, either that they do not exist as natural categories, or else that they should more properly be described as something else—as the workings out of social exclusion in the case of mental illness, as cosmological understanding or mass hysteria in the case of spirituality. Neither, I would suggest, can be specified by physiology or ultrahuman interventions respectively, but rather through shared cultural meanings which in turn are experientially validated by the biosocial phenomena themselves. It is not that we need to exclude the possibility of concurrences in brain states, but rather that these cannot specify the meaning and experience of the phenomena.Note that I emphasize “experienced through cultural meanings,” not “influenced by” culture: I do not accept that psychophysiology can have any existence independent of the social world through which it occurs. The psychiatrists’ form/content distinction, an optimistic proxy for nature/culture (Birnbaum 1923; Schneider 1928) may remain a convenient heuristic device, but it has a curious, perhaps doubtful, intellectual history (see the Endnote following).Cross-cultural comparisons argue that local idioms which we might approximate to current Western notions of mental illness and religion are quite varied. And the validity of particular instances of both “spiritual experience” and “psychopathology” may be contested in any society. While the social consequences of a pattern may determine the approbation accorded to a pattern such that patterns recalling chronic schizophrenia [End Page 67] are regarded as a deficit (and here I agree with James [1902] and the two authors), they are not necessarily aligned to categories of physical illness, but may be seen as a spiritual failure or obstruction. Unsuccessful or inappropriate shamanic practice among Amerindian and circumpolar societies is the classic instance (Eliade 1964). Within Western societies, demonic possession may be read by doctors as mental illness. (It is just as much a “spiritual experience”: why introduce the religionist’s distinctions between different types of ultrahuman agency? Compare Maslow on “peak” experiences. The terms “spiritual” and “religious world view” are naturalized idioms of late Christianity rather than cross-culturally valid terms [Tambiah 1990].) But also the converse (Koch 1972). And this depends on our professional interests. Clearly, psychiatrists prefer to perceive the world in a psychopathological idiom, while religious enthusiasts and clergy may favor divine intercession or demonic possession; and a Christian psychiatry not surprisingly may claim to act as arbiter (Sims 1991). Any specific instance may be perceived differently by individuals in accordance with their interests and affiliations.The paper’s terminology—“spiritual psychotic experience,” “genuine spiritual experience”—is confusing in that it does imply realist, not conventional claims (cf. Endnote 1, Jackson and Fulford). It is not necessary. A less laden idiom—such as “statistically or normatively unusual brain states and their experiential correlates” (Littlewood 1993, 257)—may be just too unwieldy for repetition, but I would propose that at this level of detail we need rather four categories depending or not on concordance with (i) something close to psychiatry’s recognition of a major mental illness, and (ii) something like an anthropological notion of religious or spiritual experience (cf. Littlewood 1991):[Table 1]PsychosisReligious ExperiencePresentAbsentPresentABAbsentCDSo Jackson and Fulford’s three cases fall into group “A” if the PSE was scored... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Non-Cartesian Frameworks”James Phillips (bio)Whither psychoanalytic theory and practice? This is the question raised by Louis Berger as he confronts psychoanalysis’s response to the collapse of Cartesianism that has shaken the foundations of other humanist disciplines (as well as the natural sciences) and has finally caught up with Freud’s heirs. Anyone wanting evidence of this shakeup in psychoanalysis need only consult the final 1994 issue of the (...) International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. For the seventy-fifth anniversary edition of the journal, the editors organized a symposium on “The Conceptualization and Communication of Clinical Facts in Psychoanalysis.” In his foreword to the 300-page issue, the editor, David Tuckett (1994, 865–70), evokes the theoretical pluralism that has beset the field and asserts what is the presupposition of all the articles that follow: There are no theory-free facts, and the challenge now is to deal with this reality.I think I can assume, however, that for Berger these papers would mostly fall into his category of “not going far enough.” He invokes a Cartesian representationalism, critiqued variously by Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Castoriadis, that continues to infect even such discussions of fact and theory in psychoanalysis as those in the landmark volume of the International Journal. Thus, though that volume may represent the official announcement of the death of positivism in psychoanalysis, it stops short of announcing the profession’s entry into the postmodern era. Indeed, it should be noted that in much contemporary discussion, an awareness of the issues of theoretical pluralism and fact/theory dilemmas rests quite comfortably with the most blatant examples of representational thinking. The object-relations tradition, for instance, remains such a dominant force that most of us would have a hard time giving up our talk of internal objects and internal representations.Berger’s presentation of the three critics of representational thought is clear and enlightening. The inclusion of Castoriadis is important because he, unlike Heidegger and Wittgenstein, is a clinician. Berger’s application of this critique of representation to psychoanalysis, and specifically to the question of the theory/practice relationship, is also developed in a meaningful way. (For a development of the critique of representational thinking that emphasizes the role of Locke in expanding the Cartesian tradition, see Nasser 1994.) Since I am in agreement with the thrust of Berger’ s presentation and have little to add to it, I will focus my comments on one area that I think does warrant further discussion—the relations between the postmodern and other postempiricist or postpositivist traditions. Although some writers (e.g., Leary 1994; Silverman 1994) tend to group movements such as postmodernism, hermeneutics, [End Page 187] and social constructionism together, Berger’s argument singles out postmodernism as the only truly nonrepresentational postempiricist movement.Of the other non-Cartesian traditions, Berger says that “their tacit retention of representationalism (including its concomitant, the theory/practice dichotomy) demonstrates their failure to identify, adequately understand, or avoid key Cartesian difficulties and limitations. They fail to appreciate the effects which accompany enframing.” He adds later: “I have been making my point with examples drawn mostly from the American Middle School, but I submit that any analytic position that invokes models or analogous logical formalisms—e.g., hermeneutic, self-psychological, constructionist, action linguistic—is subject to the identical criticisms.” I wish to take up the case of hermeneutics and question whether its differentiation from postmodernism does indeed revolve around the issue of representational thought. Sorting this issue out will bear on the final conclusions of Berger’s paper. It is true, as Berger points out, that hermeneutic discussion in psychoanalysis often involves a comparison of (representationally articulated) models; but that is not the whole story regarding hermeneutics. Remember, after all, that Heidegger—directly in Being and Time (1962, 62), and indirectly through his profound influence on Gadamer—was a pivotal figure in the development of hermeneutics. Heidegger considered his analysis of man’s precognitive enmeshment in the world to be a “hermeneutic of Dasein.” For his part, Gadamer’s analysis of man’s relations to others and to the world concludes in a relationship that is mediated through a language that is fully dialectical and... (shrink)

I provide a critical commentary regarding the attitude of the logician and the philosopher towards the physicist and physics. The commentary is intended to showcase how a general change in attitude towards making scientific inquiries can be beneficial for science as a whole. However, such a change can come at the cost of looking beyond the categories of the disciplines of logic, philosophy and physics. It is through self-inquiry that such a change is possible, along with the (...) realization of the essence of the middle that is otherwise excluded by choice. The logician, who generally holds a reverential attitude towards the physicist, can then actively contribute to the betterment of physics by improving the language through which the physicist expresses his experience. The philosopher, who otherwise chooses to follow the advancement of physics and gets stuck in the trap of sophistication of language, can then be of guidance to the physicist on intellectual grounds by having the physicist’s experience himself. In course of this commentary, I provide a glimpse of how a truthful conversion of verbal statements to physico-mathematical expressions unravels the hitherto unrealized connection between Heisenberg uncertainty relation and Cauchy’s definition of derivative that is used in physics. The commentary can be an essential reading if the reader is willing to look beyond the categories of logic, philosophy and physics by being ‘nobody’. (shrink)

In the first half of the 15ᵗʰ century there was a coherent philosophical system of teaching at the Jagiellonian university, so-called ars vetus, concerning the interpretation of three treatises: Aristotle’s Categories and Hermeneutics and Porphyry’s Isagoge. The question-commentaries on the Categories that have been preserved in several manuscripts show astonishing similarity in solving individual problems – there are three copies of Benedict Hesse’s commentary and one copy of Paul of Pyskowice’s work, moreover, in BJ 1941 there is (...) an anonymous commentary on the Categories that is also very close to the ones mentioned before, to prove that fact. This paper, discussing the four-fold division of opposition in those Polish commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, is part of the studies on the manuscript material that has not been critically edited yet. The main goal is to show the philosophical views on contraries, contradictories, relatives and possession and privation in a wider perspective, comparing the Polish commentaries’ doctrine with the authoritative text itself. (shrink)

Second Scholasticism greatly developed the medieval theory of continuous quantity as the Aristotelian notion for thematizing spatial extension, paving the way for the idea of space as extension in early modern natural philosophy. The article analyzes the section related to the category of continuous quantity in the Coimbra commentary on the Dialectics (1606), showing that it is indebted to the novel theory of Francisco Suárez on quantity as bestowing extension to a body in a particular sense, something which had (...) been overlooked by previous research. The scholarly debate on quantity was brought to China, and here the Chinese translation is examined of the section on quantity in the fourth volume of the Mingli Tan, published in China in 1636-­1639. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Wilhelm Griesinger”Aaron L. Mishara (bio)Arens situates Wilhelm Griesinger in a historical context with which we are no longer familiar. In doing so, she has performed an important task for contemporary clinicians, philosophers, and historians. We find ourselves working and thinking (both in everyday clinical practice and in the construction of our models of mental disorder) with the same categories that Griesinger struggled to sort out (...) and redefine; we often do so, however, without awareness of their history or lack of permanence. Ackerknecht writes that all the dominant trends in modern psychiatry can be traced back to Griesinger; he states that Griesinger is the “founder of neuropsychiatry,” a “merging of the two disciplines” neurology and psychiatry. Griesinger presents us with a “systematic synthesis of the anatomical, physiological, psychological and clinical points of view” (Ackerknecht 1959, 63). Somewhat contrarily, Karl Jaspers, in his General Psychopathology, groups Griesinger with the great observers and describers of clinical experience rather than among the systematic analyzers (Jaspers 1963, 849–50). Although Griesinger is best known for his identification of mental disorders as a subset of brain diseases, Karl Bonhoeffer, a successor to Griesinger as director of the Charité Clinic in Berlin, cautions that Griesinger “continued to see in psychological causes the most frequent and abundant source of mental disorders” (Bonhoeffer 1911, 53). Kales, Kales, and Vela-Bueno, however, write, “Griesinger was representative of a clinical movement that minimized the value of psychological concepts in the understanding of mental diseases” (Kales, Kales, and Vela-Bueno 1990, 15). Precisely because of his importance, contention surrounds his legacy.If Griesinger is the pioneer of empirical approaches in biological neuropsychiatry (as Ackerknecht and others claim), he is also precursor to philosophical criticisms of their limits. It is not so easy to lump Griesinger to one side of the oppositions with which we think today: Griesinger’s scientific psychiatry (formed on the basis of the newly emergent empirical physiology) was meant to steer between the Scylla of the previously reigning overspeculative romantic medicine and the Charybdis of the antitheoretical and “positivistic” materialism of Magendie. As Arens suggests, even during the same generation of university psychiatry which Griesinger was critical in forming, he was posthumously denounced as belonging to the Hegelian idealists; later, he was proclaimed to be an empiricist. Griesinger’s work contained both idealism and empiricism in a fragile synthesis that soon broke asunder.Hermeneutic theory points out that we inevitably interpret an author, in this case, Griesinger, in terms of the prejudices of our own present context of understanding and our current problems of application to clinical practice (Gadamer 1993). On the one hand, we benefit from the advantage of seeing all that follows Griesinger’s work and are able to “understand the author [End Page 165] better than he understood himself.” We are able to see what he only anticipates but is still not able to explicitly articulate as the unpredicted effects of his work. On the other hand, our interpretations are encumbered by the sedimentations of the views of his successors: his work lies buried under the subsequent interpretations and vicissitudes of a reception with its own agendas, contexts of interpretation, and realms of application. It would be easier if we could simply assign him to one side of our current debates concerning mind/body, individual/culture, and explanation/understanding rather than seeing that our present quandaries in understanding, classifying, and treating mental disorder result precisely from a reading of Griesinger that is not careful enough. It is here that Arens can help us develop our present views further by reviewing their past.Although Griesinger is heralded as the pioneer of an empirical physiological approach which employs a natural scientific concept of mechanism (Ackerknecht, O. Marx, Verwey), Arens situates him in the tradition of Kant and German idealism. It is perhaps this solution of being both philosophical and empirical which seems hard for us, today, to understand. We have come to view these directions as contradictory, to be necessarily in a mutually exclusive relationship. (But that is rather the expression of the present impasse and not the way that Griesinger originally approached these problems.) Arens ambitiously retraces the genealogy of Griesinger’s model... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Spiritual Experience and Psychopathology”Francis G. Lu (bio), David Lukoff (bio), and Robert P. Turner (bio)Jackson and Fulford have written an impor-tant paper which addresses an area of increasing interest in the United States—the relationship between religious/spiritual experiences and psychopathology. Using primarily the Present State Examination as the diagnostic framework, the authors describe in rich clinical detail three patients where certain phenomena lead to a possible diagnosis (...) of schizophrenia. However, the patients’ outcomes were uniformly positive—how can this be? The authors argue persuasively for the importance of a contextual assessment “in which psychotic phenomena themselves are embedded in the values and beliefs of the person concerned.” In this commentary, we will first present innovations in the DSM-IV relevant to cultural and religious/spiritual issues, which complement the authors’ conclusions, and then comment upon the paper from this perspective.In the DSM-IV Introduction (1994), a section entitled “Ethnic and Cultural Considerations” provides a rationale for innovations in DSM-IV that better enables its use with culturally diverse individuals: “A clinician who is unfamiliar with the nuances of an individual’s cultural frame of references may incorrectly judge as psychopathology those normal variations in behavior, belief, or experience that are particular to the individual’s culture. For example, certain religious practices or beliefs (e.g., hearing or seeing a deceased relative during bereavement) may be misdiagnosed as manifestations of a Psychotic Disorder” (xxiv). In the introduction, three types of information are cited: 1) sections entitled “Age, Gender and Cultural Considerations” in the text of ninety diagnostic categories discuss clinical variations due to these factors; 2) an Outline for Cultural Formulation designed to assist the clinician in systematically evaluating and reporting the impact of the individual’s cultural context; and 3) a Glossary of Culture-Bound Syndromes. These innovations, based on recommendations of the NIMH Workgroup on Culture, Diagnosis and Care to the Task Force on DSM-IV, are described in extensive detail in an important recent book (Mezzich, Kleinman, Fabrega, and Parron 1996).As an example of the importance of the Age, Gender, and Cultural Consideration section relevant to religious and spiritual experiences, consider the section in the text describing schizophrenia, where the following appears: “Clinicians assessing the symptoms of Schizophrenia in socioeconomic or cultural situations that are different from their own must take cultural differences into account. Ideas that may appear to be delusional in one culture (e.g., sorcery and witchcraft) may be commonly held in another. In some cultures, visual or auditory hallucinations with a [End Page 75] religious content may be a normal part of religious experience (e.g., seeing the Virgin Mary or hearing God’s voice)” (281). Secondly, in the analogous section of the text describing Brief Psychotic Disorder, the following appears: “It is important to distinguish symptoms of Brief Psychotic Disorder from culturally sanctioned response patterns. For example, in some religious ceremonies, an individual may report hearing voices, but these do not generally persist and are not perceived as abnormal by most members of the person’s community” (303).The Outline for Cultural Formulation provides the clinician a concise tool to specify the following information concerning the cultural context that is relevant to clinical care: cultural identity of the individual, cultural explanations of the individual’s illness, cultural factors related to psychosocial environment and levels of functioning, cultural elements of the relationship between the individual and the clinician, and overall cultural assessment for diagnosis and care. Religion is explicitly mentioned in the third section so as to encourage the assessment of “the role of religion... in providing emotional, instrumental, and information support” (1994, 844). This outline for cultural formulation is more fully explicated in a recent chapter by Lu, Lim, and Mezzich (1995).A major innovation in DSM-IV relevant to this topic is the new diagnostic category entitled Religious or Spiritual Problem defined as follows: “This category can be used when the focus of clinical attention is a religious or spiritual problem. Examples include distressing experiences that involve loss or questioning of faith, problems associated with conversion to a new faith, or questioning of spiritual values that may not necessarily be related to an organized... (shrink)

This paper addresses Colin Holmes's suggestion that the psychopathic disorder is best regarded not as a psychiatric concept, but as an ethical one. The paper argues that the concept of psychopathy, like many other concepts, can span both psychiatry and ethics, and that it is not clear what removing if from the realm of psychiatry would entail. Also, the question of whether the concept of psychopathy is useful for psychiatrists must be separated from the question of whether psychopaths should be (...) exonerated from the moral and legal responsibility for their actions. (shrink)