In the earlier part of the sixth century, John of Scythopotis collected and edited the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. Elevated to the episcopacy of the important see of Palestina Secunda, sometime between 538 and 544, John not only gathered these texts of Dionysius, he also lent his own Neochalcedonian Christology to them in order to have one more apostolic authority from which to quote against the Monophysites of his day. Thanks in large part to Beate Regina Suchla's (...) recent work in John's original Syrian, scholars have been able to discern more easily his commentary on the Dionysian corpus from Maximus the Confessor's, as both were unfortunately melded together by Père Migne. This excellent study from Rorem and Lamoreaux thus introduces us to John of Scythopolis: both a compiler and commentator on the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius as well as a theologian and defensorfidei in his own tight. (shrink)

The present article focuses on the idea that divine nature is prior to being. This idea was first articulated in John of Scythopolis’s commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius. It was adopted by Maximus Confessor and re-used in Meister Eckhart’s first Quaestio Parisiensis. The main tenet of this idea is that, if God is the origin of being, he must be more fundamental than being. Thus, being cannot be identical to divine nature. The conclusion that can be drawn from the discussion (...) of this idea is that the importance that has been traditionally attached to the "Exodusmetaphysik" must be reconsidered, and that the pro-ontological conception of divine nature constitutes an autonomous tradition in Christian thought. (shrink)

The chronicle of John of Worcester is one of the most important sources of earlier English history. The chronicle, which was written at Worcester by 1140, is of considerable interest to historians of both the Anglo-Saxon period and of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Its backbone is a translation of an Anglo-Saxon chronicle with varied connections, and this edition makes possible the detailed examination of these allegiances. Its annals for the second half of the ninth century provide one (...) of the earliest surviving witnesses to the text of Asser's Life of Alfred. The author had access to otherwise unrecorded sources of events in the eleventh century, and the chronicle's value as a contemporary source for the reign of Stephen has long been acknowledged. Dr McGurk has completed the edition of the work left unfinished by R. R. Darlington on his death in 1977. The chronicle will be published in three volumes. Volume II covers the annals for 450 to 1066, and volume III the annals from 1067 to 1140. Volume I will be published last, and will contain a general introduction and supplementary material. (shrink)

John of Scythopolis, the first scholiast of the Corpus Dionysiacum, played a role in the debates that took place after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and contributed in an original way to the development of Christological dogma in preparation for the Council of Constantinople II in 553. In particular, he uses the theopaschite formula both in its so-called “Alexandrian” version as well as in that attributed to the Scythian monks. Several instances of the formula occur in three (...) of his Scholia on Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus and show both his concentration upon the hypostasis of the Word as well as his identification of Christ with the Lovgoç. In this way, he looks for a new via media within Christological doctrine that truly can be called “Neo-chalcedonian.”. (shrink)

The obscure 2 nd century CE writer Ariston of Pella is mentioned in two accepted works: Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History and John of Scythopolis / Maximus Confessor’s Notes on the Mystic Theology of the Areopagite. He is also mentioned in two other works but the attributions are currently regarded with suspicion: Moses of Chorene’s History of Armenia and the Chronicon Paschale. Upon further investigation, it appears that an 18 th century theory regarding Ariston’s presence in the Chronicon Paschale as (...) the author of a previously unknown Christian Apology is correct. Also, the investigation of the theory demonstrates that previous claims regarding the Chronicon material’s reliance upon Ecclesiastical History are incorrect. With these points established, it becomes clear that Ariston can be regarded as the author of a Christian Apology addressed to the Roman Emperor Hadrian, with an internal assigned date during the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-135 CE). This attribution sheds new light on Ariston of Pella and establishes a more reliable date for his floruit. In addition, it establishes a new Christian Apology from the time of the reign of Emperor Hadrian. It also contributes new information about Eusebius’ sources for Ecclesiastical History and further information about Aquila of Pontus, Emperor Hadrian and the Bar Kokhba Revolt. (shrink)

This volume offers an English translation of John of St. Thomas's Cursus theologicus I, question I, disputation 2. In this particular text, the Dominican master raises questions concerning the scientific status and nature of theology. At issue, here, are a number of factors: namely, Christianity's continual coming to terms with the "Third Entry" of Aristotelian thought into Western Christian intellectual culture - specifically the Aristotelian notion of 'science' and sacra doctrina's satisfaction of those requirements - the Thomistic-commentary tradition, and (...) the larger backdrop of the Iberian Peninsula's flourishing "Second Scholasticism." In this latter context, John of St. Thomas applies the theological principles of Thomas Aquinas to the Scholastic disputes preoccupying Thomist, Franciscan, and Jesuit theologians, such as Cajetan, Bañez, Luis de Molina, Vazquez, Suárez - to name only a few - in a tour de force of theological thinking throughout the entire period of Scholasticism. In the process - and not insignificantly - the status quaestionis of theology's scientific character is clearly framed and answered according to John's satisfaction. Key to John of St. Thomas's resolution of the question is his understanding of the continuity of the power of human reason with the super-intelligibility of divine revelation spelled out in terms of what he calls "virtual revelation." This text presented in this volume is a quintessential example of the deep and abiding harmony that flourished between faith and reason as well as grace and nature within the golden era of Baroque Scholasticism. (shrink)

Introduction -- Prologue -- Book one -- Book two -- Book three -- Book four.

Excerpt from Opera Omnia The Works of J ohn of Salisbury have never before been collected together, nor have they ever until now, either wholly or in part, been printed in this country. Yet the writer was without doubt superior to all his contempo raries, and his Works are by far the most valuable compositions which have come down to us, from the twelfth and thirteenth cen tuties. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic (...) books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This Handbook contains forty essays by an international team of experts on the antecedents, the content, and the reception of the Dionysian corpus, a body of writings falsely ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, a convert of St Paul, but actually written about 500 AD. The first section contains discussions of the genesis of the corpus, its Christian antecedents, and its Neoplatonic influences. In the second section, studies on the Syriac reception, the relation of the Syriac to the original Greek, and (...) the editing of the Greek by John of Scythopolis are followed by contributions on the use of the corpus in such Byzantine authors as Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Theodore the Studite, Niketas Stethatos, Gregory Palamas, and Gemistus Pletho. In the third section attention turns to the Western tradition, represented first by the translators John Scotus Eriugena, John Sarracenus, and Robert Grosseteste and then by such readers as the Victorines, the early Franciscans, Albert the Great, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Dante, the English mystics, Nicholas of Cusa, and Marsilio Ficino. The contributors to the final section survey the effect on Western readers of Lorenzo Valla's proof of the inauthenticity of the corpus and the subsequent exposure of its dependence on Proclus by Koch and Stiglmayr. The authors studied in this section include Erasmus, Luther and his followers, Vladimir Lossky, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Jacques Derrida, as well as modern thinkers of the Greek Church. Essays on Dionysius as a mystic and a political theologian conclude the volume. (shrink)

John of Salisbury (c. 1115-1180) was the foremost political theorist of his age. He was trained in scholastic theology and philosophy at Paris, and his writings are invaluable for summarizing many of the metaphysical speculations of his time. The Policraticus is his main work, and is regarded as the first complete work of political theory to be written in the Latin Middle Ages. Cary Nederman's new edition and translation, currently the only version available in English, is primarily aimed at (...) undergraduate students of the history of political thought and medieval history. His new translation shows how important this text is in understanding the mores, forms of conduct and beliefs of the most powerful and learned segments of twelfth century Western Europe. (shrink)

No mathematical background is necessary to appreciate this classic of probability theory, which remains unsurpassed in its clarity, readability, and sheer charm. Its author, British logician John Venn (1834-1923), popularized the famous Venn Diagrams that are commonly used in teaching elementary mathematics.

Rationality requires that we intend the means that we believe are necessary for achieving our ends. Instrumental Rationality explores the formulation and status of this requirement of means-ends coherence. In particular, it is concerned with understanding what means-ends coherence requires of us as believers and agents, and why.

Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-226-97861-3 (alk. paper) — isbn 0-226-97862-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Science — Philosophy. 2. Science — History. 3. Progress. I. Title. Q175 .Z25 2004 501 — dc2i 200301 1970 ...

Vol. 1. Ars logica seu de forma et materia ratiocinandi -- v. 2. Naturalis philosophiae I. pars. De ente mobili in communi. III. pars. De ente mobili corruptibili -- v. 3. Naturalis philosophiae IV. pars. De ente mobili animato.

What makes careless conduct careless is easily one of the deepest and most contested questions in negligence law, tort theory, and moral theory. Answering it involves determining the conditions that make the imposition of risk unjustifiable, wrong, or impermissible. Yet there is a still deeper as well as overlooked and undertheorized question: Why does subjecting others to risk of harm call for justification in the first place? That risk can be impermissibly imposed upon otherspresupposes that imposing risk is the kind (...) of thing that can be impermissible. Unless imposing risk can be impermissible after all, unjustified risking is literally impossible. In this discussion, I explore what I call the moral significance of risking, arguing that the moral significance of risking resides in a certain kind of nonmaterial autonomy interest that is implicated whenever one imposes risk of harm on another. (shrink)

How can we be certain that software is reliable? Is there any method that can verify the correctness of software for all cases of interest? Computer scientists and software engineers have informally assumed that there is no fully general solution to the verification problem. In this paper, we survey approaches to the problem of software verification and offer a new proof for why there can be no general solution.

This study of Plato's Phaedo promotes better understanding of its arguments for the soul's immortality by showing how Plato intended them, not as proofs, but as properly dialectical arguments functioning in accordance with the method of hypothesis. Unlike the argument for the soul's immortality in the Phaedrus, which does seem intended as a proof, the Phaedo arguments are proceeding toward the first principles that could serve as the basis for a proof - the most important being an account of the (...) soul's own essential nature. This study attends to the substantial progress the Phaedo makes toward such an account. It also considers Socrates' epistemic situation in the dialogue and the problem of whether his confidence in the face of death is misplaced if his arguments have not been proofs before considering how the concluding myth draws together several of the dialogue's main themes. (shrink)

If we imagine a chess-board with alternate blue and red squares, then this is something in which the individual red and blue areas allow themselves to be distinguished from each other in juxtaposition, and something similar holds also if we imagine each of the squares divided into four smaller squares also alternating between these two colours. If, however, we were to continue with such divisions until we had exceeded the boundary of noticeability for the individual small squares which result, then (...) it would no longer be possible to apprehend the individual red and blue areas in their respective positions. But would we then see nothing at all? Not in the least; rather we would see the whole chessboard as violet, i.e. apprehend it as something that participates simultaneously in red and blue. (shrink)

This is both a small and a large book. In number of pages it is modest, but it aspires to sort through a very large topic indeed. One of the challenges for a naturalist theology, which is to say a naturalist conception of the divine, and perhaps more importantly of the sacred, is to resolve the obvious problem of accommodating as an element of nature an entity that has for the most part been understood as supernatural. Yalcin’s book attempts to (...) do just that. Though I have some misgivings about this and that detail, which I will mention below, Yalcin succeeds, I would say, in articulating a coherent, plausible, creative, and wholly interesting understanding of the sacred on strictly naturalist grounds.It is... (shrink)

Excerpt from An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times Quamvis Pontica Pinus, Silqilia nobilis, Jae'tcs 8c Genus 8: Nomcn inutile. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, (...) such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

1. Introduction: memory and interdisciplinarity (footnote 1) Memory is studied at a bewildering number of levels, in a daunting range of disciplines, and with a vast array of methods. Is there any sense at all in which memory theorists - from neurobiologists to narrative theorists, from the developmental to the postcolonial, from the computational to the cross-cultural - are studying the same phenomena? This exploratory review paper sketches the bare outline of a positive framework for understanding current work on memory, (...) both within the various cognitive sciences and across the gulfs between the cognitive and the social sciences. (shrink)

The papers in this volume were originally presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during 2007-8. Four colloquia deal directly with major works of Aristotle, while another discusses Aristotle's influence on the Stoics. Three colloquia deal with Plato, discussing the _Philebus_, _Phaedrus_ and _Republic_.

Miracle in a strict sense is to be discriminated from acts of special providence by its being radically unnatural in terms of prior expectation. The key issue in relation to credibility is theological in character, inasmuch as divine consistency must imply that miracles are capable of being understood as “signs,” affording deeper insight into the divine care for creation. These issues are explored by reference to scriptural miracles, particularly the virginal conception and the resurrection of Christ.

This paper challenges the recommendation of 1981 President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research that all jurisdictions in the United States should adopt the Uniform Determination of Death Act, which endorses a whole-brain, rather than a higher-brain, definition of death. I argue that the Commission was wrong to reject the "personhood argument" for the higher-brain definition on the grounds that there is no consensus among philosophers or the general population as to what (...) constitutes "personhood". I claim that philosophers agree that some potential for cognitive function is necessary for personhood and that, when this is absent in cases of anencephaly and persistent vegetative state (PVS), the individual should be considered dead. I further argue that the lack of consensus among the general population is due in large measure to misunderstandings about the medical reality of PVS and beliefs influenced by feelings for a specific individual in PVS. I also examine and reject two tutiorist arguments which have been used to support the Commission's position: that the higher-brain definition would threaten the severely senile and severely retarded, and that there are not currently adequate medical techniques for determining when all higher-brain activities have ceased. Keywords: death, personhood, persistent vegetative state, anencephaly CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Les théoriciens sémantistes de la fiction cherchent typiquement à expliquer nos relations sémantiques au fictionnel dans le contexte plus général des théories de la référence, privilégiant une explication de la sémantique sur le psychologique. Dans cet article, nous défendons une dépendance inverse. Par l’éclaircissement de nos relations psychologiques au fictionnel, nous trouverons un guide pour savoir comment développer une sémantique de la fiction. S’ensuivra une esquisse de la sémantique.

This paper argues that the value of acting freely and responsibly is a species of the value of self-expression. When I act freely, I write a sentence in the story of my life, and this gives my life the shape of a narrative, which, in turn, gives my life a unique sort of meaning and value.

Intuition suggests there is no value in adding people to the population if it brings no benefits to people already living: creating people is morally neutral in itself. This paper examines the difficulties of incorporating this intuition into a coherent theory of the value of population. It takes three existing theories within welfare economics - average utilitarianism, relativist utilitarianism, and critical-level utilitarianism - and considers whether they can satisfactorily accommodate the intuition that creating people is neutral.

Commentators on John Broome's Tanner Lecture. The Tanner Lectures are a collection of educational and scientific discussions relating to human values. Conducted by leaders in their fields, the lectures are presented at prestigious educational facilities around the world.

The chronicle of John of Worcester is one of the most important sources for earlier English history. Completed at Worcester by 1140, it is of considerable interest to historians of both the Anglo-Saxon period and the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Its annals complement and add significantly to those in the surviving versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It has never been adequately translated and a modern edition has long been needed. In this volume, Dr McGurk uses all the available (...) manuscript evidence, as well as the additions for 1122-41 made in a Gloucester continuation of a manuscript started in Johns own handwriting. Taken with these interpolations, the chronicle offers crucial evidence for the first five years of King Stephens reign. The Chronicle will be published in three volumes. Volume II covers the annals from 450 to 1066, and Volume III from 1067 to 1140. Volume I will be published last, and will contain a general introduction and supplementary material. (shrink)