L'A. esamina in primo luogo l'origine del problema metafisico in Enrico. Il tema del subiectum metaphysice è inquadrato nel contesto della problematica del soggetto scientifico e ciò che interessa l'A. è soprattutto il procedimento argomentativo di Enrico ed il significato delle conseguenze di tale procedere. Lo studio si chiude con uno sguardo sul commentario alla Metafisica di Pietro di Auvergne, evidenziando la relazione fra soggetto della metafisica e dottrina del primum cognitum nell'intelletto umano. Riferimenti alle posizioni di Avicenna, Averroè e (...) Tommaso. (shrink)

Lo studio verte in primo luogo sul commento di Pietro alle Sentenze, in cui viene proposto un «catalogo» delle sette parti della metafisica, intesa come disciplina scientifica. L'A. propone un'indagine dettagliata sul tema, partendo dalla considerazione che il rapporto problematico fra la metafisica intesa come ontologia e la dottrina dell'essere in Aureolo sembrerebbe mettere in discussione lo statuto scientifico della metafisica. Nelle sezioni successive dello studio l'A. si concentra sulla gnoseologia e il significato in Aureolo e Ockham del modus cognoscendi, (...) in particolare mettendo a fuoco il concetto di circumflectio e della metafisica come scientia circumflexiva e della sua possibile fondazione come scientia realis. (shrink)

As the subtitle indicates, and the introduction explains in more detail, this is a sequel to Aubry's 2006 book, Dieu sans la puissance. Dunamis et energeia chez Aristote et chez Plotin. In the present as well as in the previous studies, the author traces the developments and transformations undergone by the notion of power and in particular how these transformations affect the understanding of God. Whereas the first study follows the development from Aristotle's account of the divine being to Plotinus, (...) the present volume covers, in five densely written chapters, medieval philosophers from Augustine to John Duns Scotus. According to the author, the history of the notion of power reflects two... (shrink)

Nach wie vor wird das Verhältnis des späten Mittelalters zur anbrechenden Neuzeit kontrovers diskutiert. Manche sehen im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert eine Periode des Verfalls, andere betonen die prägende und innovative Rolle dieser Epoche für die Neuzeit. Der 31. Band der Miscellanea Mediaevalia wirft einen interdisziplinären Blick auf diese Zeitspanne und wendet sich dabei auch kritisch klassischen Einschätzungen zu. Die über dreißig Beiträge behandeln die Philosophie des Spätmittelalters, spätmittelalterliche Wissenschaftsinstitutionen, die Architektur, die Wirtschafts- und Rechtsgeschichte, die Spiritualität im Spätmittelalter, aber (...) auch so prominente Figuren wie Jean Gerson und Nikolaus von Kues. (shrink)

Cet article essaie de démontrer que le discours cartésien sur l’a priori est tributaire de la tradition philosophique antérieure et en particulier de la tradition médiévale. Selon cette dernière, l’expression a priori est strictement liée à un certain type de démonstration. Cette interprétation n’est pas contredite par les emplois que Descartes fait de l’expression a priori dans le traitement de deux thèmes clés de son œuvre : ses remarques sur l’ordre des raisons dans ses Méditations et sa présentation d’une des (...) preuves de l’existence de Dieu comme preuve a priori. Au contraire, le sens de ses remarques méthodologiques et le caractère particulier d’un tel type de démonstration se comprennent mieux si l’on envisage l’usage de l’expression a priori dans la perspective de la philosophie médiévale.This article intends to show that Descartes’s discourse on the a priori is heavily influenced by the preceding philosophical tradition and in particular by the medieval tradition. According to the latter, the expression a priori is strictly confined to characterizing a certain kind of demonstration. This interpretation is not challenged by the way in which Descartes uses the expression a priori in treating two central themes of his work : i.e. by his remarks regarding the order of reasons in the Meditations and by his presentation of one of the proofs for the existence of God as an a priori proof. On the contrary, the meaning of his methodological remarks and the peculiar character of this type of proof become clearer if we look at the use of the expression a priori from the perspective of medieval philosophy. (shrink)

Lange war die philosophische Mediävistik über die Lehre und Person des in die universitären Verurteilungen von 1210 und 1215 verwickelten Magister David von Dinant nur äußerst schlecht unterrichtet. Spärliche Erwähnungen in mittelalterlichen Chroniken und vor allem das Zeugnis Alberts des Großen stellten den einzigen Zugang zu einer Person dar, die — wie die gesamte frühe Geschichte der Pariser Universität — weitgehend im Dunkeln lag. Die quaternuli, ein im Verurteilungsdekret von 1210 genanntes Werk des Dinanter, galten als verschollen, und Gabriel Théry (...) unterzog sich der mühevollen Arbeit, aus den Erwähnungen Alberts einen Rekonstruktionsversuch derselben vorzulegen. (shrink)

Peter Auriol is a good example of the debate over the nature of habits, moral habits in particular, that raged at the University of Paris in the early fourteenth century. This chapter examines Peter Auriol’s basic understanding of habits and virtues in his quodlibetal questions and his commentary on the Sentences. The first part is devoted to the ontological status of virtues and other habitual dispositions and examines why, according to Auriol, habits are qualities. The second part turns to the (...) unity of virtues. Since Auriol holds that one and the same moral virtue belongs to different psychological powers, the question arises of how to account for the unity of virtues and other similar dispositions. In the last part, the chapter turns to the question of what role virtues and practical habits have in the causation of action. Interestingly, Auriol denies that virtues have any direct causal role. (shrink)

This volume explores emotion in medieval and early modern thought, and opens a contemporary debate on the way emotions figure in our cognitive lives.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Gott—Mensch—Natur: Der Personenbegriff in der philosophischen Anthropologie Heinrichs von Gent by Julian E. JoachimMartin PickavéJulian E. Joachim. Gott—Mensch—Natur: Der Personenbegriff in der philosophischen Anthropologie Heinrichs von Gent. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge, 86. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2020. Pp. 558. Paperback, €78.00.In recent years, there has been a noticeable uptick in studies exploring medieval conceptions of personhood. One line of approach taken by (...) scholars of medieval philosophy has been to investigate the emergence of the idea of subjectivity in medieval philosophical and theological texts and to work from there toward a broader picture of medieval accounts of personhood. Alain de Libera’s as-of-yet incomplete series of books under the title Archéologie du sujet (the first volume appeared in 2007 for Vrin) exemplifies this approach. Others, such as Dominik Perler in Eine Person sein: Philosophische Debatten im Spätmittelalter (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2020), take their starting point from some uncontroversial aspects and dimensions of personhood (rationality, reflexivity, and moral agency) and pursue the various debates that ensued around these among medieval philosophers and theologians. Very few interpreters today start with what medieval authors themselves have to say about persona. This is unsurprising, given the theological context in which the term persona is discussed, and it is not clear at first sight how discussions about the persons of the Trinity can teach us anything about what medieval authors thought about human persons. The book by Joachim is an exception to this trend. The author takes his lead from the Trinitarian context and aims to move from there to a wider understanding of what Henry of Ghent (d. 1293), the most important scholastic thinker in the generation after Thomas Aquinas, thinks a person is.Apart from an extensive introduction (9–52) in which the author justifies his approach, the book consists of four very long chapters. The first chapter (53–169) does not deal with Henry of Ghent at all. Rather, it is devoted to the prominent and influential definitions of what a person is that we can find in Boethius’s treatise Contra Eutychen et Nestorium (person as “individual substance of a rational nature” [naturae rationabilis individua substantia]) and Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate (person as “incommunicable existence of an intellectual nature” [naturae intellectualis incommunicabilis existentia]). The author spends a considerable amount of space explaining how Boethius and Richard arrived at their respective definitions and how their definitions ought to be understood, and concludes with some remarks on the differences between the two accounts. In the rest of the book, the author turns to Henry of Ghent. Because Joachim holds that there are three thematic areas in Henry of Ghent that are closely connected to the notion of a person, he devotes chapters 2 through 4 to each one of those areas. Chapter 2 (170–308) deals mostly with individuation and individuality, chapter 3 with the eternity of the world and creation (309–428), and chapter 4 is organized around discussions about freedom of the will (429–505). [End Page 504]Joachim’s decision to start chapter 2 by focusing on the connection between personhood and individuality is fully justified, as Henry himself draws this connection in question 1 of article 53 of his Summa quaestionum ordinariarum. Article 53 is the closest we get to a dedicated treatment of personhood in Henry’s oeuvre, although this article is, as usual, part of a longer discussion of the Trinity. Furthermore, Joachim explores individuation and individuality in two respects: first, he is interested in pursuing what is meant by the very notion of an individual; second, he explores what, for Henry, counts as the principle or cause of individuation. A lot of ground gets covered in these pages, as the author delves into various aspects of Henry’s ontology. Although it is not always easy to follow the main line of argument, Joachim provides a lot of helpful material for understanding the various moves Henry makes in Summa, article 53. He frequently contrasts Henry’s positions with those of Thomas Aquinas, which both helps in terms of clarity and provides useful... (shrink)

This volume offers a new and comprehensive study of a central aspect of Henry of Ghent's (+ 1293) philosophical thought: his understanding of metaphysics.

The discovery of the reportatio of Giles of Rome’s lectures on the Sentences by Concetta Luna is without doubt one of the most important contributions to the history of medieval philosophy and theology in the last years. This note reviews Luna’s edition of the reportatio and draws attention to what seems to be its earliest indirect witness: the anonymous Dominican Sentences commentary in ms. Bruges, Stadsbibliotheek, 491.

In this comment on Thomas Nisters’ “Gratitude, Anger and the Horror of Asymmetry” I propose a different reading of Schnitzler’s short story that serves as a basis for Nisters’ reflections. On my interpretation, the behaviour of Franz is best understood on the background of a traditional understanding of gratitude, one that we can find, for instance, in Thomas Aquinas.

Biographical note: Martin Pickavé ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Thomas-Institut der Universität zu Köln.

In recent philosophical debates about the nature of human emotions the intentionality of emotions plays a key part. The article explores how medieval philosophers of the late 13th and early 14th centuries accounted for the fact that our emotions, such as love, hate, anger and the like, are intentional mental states, states that are ‘of’ or ‘about something’. Since medieval philosophers agree that emotions are essentially movements of the appetitive powers, the intentionality of emotions is part of the broader problem (...) of the intentionality of our appetitive acts. Do emotions and other appetitive acts derive their intentionality from the relevant cognitive acts on which their occurrence depends? And if so, how? Are appetitive acts intrinsically intentional states? The contribution discusses these and similar questions, while special attention is given to authors such as Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Thomas of Bailly, Adam Wodeham and Gregory of Rimini. (shrink)

In this short contribution I argue that the history of philosophy has much to gain from an engagement with the questions and conceptual tools of contemporary philosophy. In particular I argue against the view that the historian of philosophy’s engagement with contemporary philosophy necessarily leads to anachronism. Whatever the risks of failure, they seem to be outweighed by the potential for insight. Advocates of a “purely” historical approach to the history of philosophy defend their approach by pointing to the idea (...) that the history of philosophy can and should be studied on its own terms and independently of our current philosophical interests. I try to show that this is an illusion. (shrink)

This is the first book-length treatment of the philosophical thought of one of the major thinkers at the University of Paris in the late thirteenth century. The book examines all major areas of James’s philosophical thought, exploring his connections with other important masters of the time and highlighting his originality in the context of late medieval philosophy.

Alberti Magni Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Physica, ed. P. Hoßfeld; id., Quaestiones, edd. A. Fries, W. Kübel et H. Anzulewicz; id., Super Dionysium de caelesti hierarchia, edd. P. Simon et W. Kübel.