In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Teaching Medieval Christian Contemplation: An Ethical Dilemma?Kristine T. UtterbackBy its very nature, contemplative pedagogy would seem to be a more solitary undertaking than many other forms of pedagogy. We are asking our students to go inward, producing a special kind of engagement unlike any other teaching methods I employ. For me, teaching in the only four-year state university in Wyoming, where I have never encountered (...) anyone else who employs contemplative pedagogy, that already solitary undertaking becomes even more solitary—to the point of isolation. That was one of the reasons that having an opportunity to appear on a panel with others who use contemplative pedagogy provided a rare and treasured opportunity to discuss what I do and to learn from others. I had such an opportunity at the November 2012 American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Meeting. At the session titled “Contemplative Pedagogy: Pitfalls and Potentials” organized by the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, I described my contemplative pedagogy course titled Medieval Christian Contemplation in History and Practice. The panel members and the engaged audience combined to create a lively and thought-provoking discussion.All four of the panelists, including myself, had contributed to the collection of essays edited by Judith Simmer-Brown and Fran Grace, Meditation and the Classroom,1 and we all use contemplative pedagogy in our teaching. In my case, I teach specific Christian contemplative methods to help my students gain a connection with medieval people by using some of the same practices that they did. In the discussion that followed the presentations, an audience member questioned whether these Christian contemplative methods are appropriately taught to all comers—something that would not have been deemed appropriate by the medieval teachers of these methods. I should add that the question spoke to a much larger issue than my course and the ten or fifteen students I teach in a semester, but he raised an interesting and important point, which I will discuss below. Before I address the potential dilemma my questioner elicited, and my argument that other considerations override it, let me provide context for that discussion by describing what, why, and how I teach twenty-first century students medieval contemplative practices.When I teach medieval history, I struggle to help my students get a “feel” for a world very different from their own. The problems of understanding a world far removed from twenty-first-century Americans is obvious, since I can neither bring [End Page 53] a medieval peasant to class nor take field trips to living medieval sites, and almost every medieval assumption about the world differs radically from ours. In 1999, when I saw a call for proposals from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, for Contemplative Practice in Teaching Fellowships, I realized that contemplative practices might offer my students first-person experiences of an important dimension of medieval life: spirituality. Although I had no evidence to support this, it seemed to me that what practitioners experienced a millennium or more ago and what someone experiences today doing the same thing might have a great deal in common. When I applied for the fellowship, I had never heard of contemplative pedagogy, so I viewed my endeavor primarily as experiential learning, but as I have taught the course and learned about contemplative pedagogy, the contemplative focus has joined and to some extent subsumed the experiential one.By the time I received the fellowship, I had already been practicing Christian Centering Prayer for several years. This is a modern contemplative practice based on the teachings of the anonymous author of a medieval classic, The Cloud of Unknowing. I was intrigued by the challenge of developing a course that combined the history of medieval Christian contemplative practice with experiential and, later, contemplative learning. Since receiving the grant, I have offered the course Medieval Christian Contemplation in History and Practice several times; it is cross-listed in both the Religious Studies and the History Departments. Pedagogically I want to allow the students to experience the Middle Ages in some small but real way. I have an additional personal hope, shared with the students but certainly not required, that they might find these practices rewarding enough... (shrink)

Usually thoughts are not in isolation but in varing degrees have interrelations with each other. With regard to this historical fact as a classist want to explore the reception of a few medieval Arabic texts and writers of Socrates available teachings about politics.

This paper applies a very traditional position within Natural Law Theory to Cyberspace. I shall first justify a Natural Law approach to Cyberspace by exploring the difficulties raised by the Internet to traditional principles of jurisprudence and the difficulties this presents for a Positive Law Theory account of legislation of Cyberspace. This will focus on issues relating to geography. I shall then explicate the paradigm of Natural Law accounts, the Treatise on Law, by Thomas Aquinas. From this account will emerge (...) the structure of law and the metaphysics of justice. I shall explore those aspects of Cyberspace which cause geography to be problematic for Positive Law Theory and show how these are essential, unavoidable and beneficial. I will then apply Aquinas’s structure of law and metaphysics of justice to these characteristics. From this will emerge an alternative approach to cyberlaw which has no problem with the nature of Cyberspace as it is but treats it as a positive foundation for new legal developments. (shrink)

This issue was discussed with regard to chosen commentaries to Aristotle’s treatise De anima, formed in the so-called via moderna mainstream, in particular those of John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Laurentius of Lindores. In such a context, the Cracovian commentaries referring to Parisian nominalists were presented by those of Benedict Hesse and Anonymus. The analyses carried out above allow one to ascertain that although William of Ockham’s opinion questioning the possibility of knowledge of the soul in the field of philosophy, (...) nominalists of the late Middle Ages did not resign from speculation on the beginning and the separation from the body of the soul, also the fate of the soul after death. They focused on the nature of the matter – human body and his relation with the soul – in the moment of birth. In the aspect of death 14th century scholars undertook the struggle, which was one with the justification of the psycho-physical unity of the human being existing after death solely as an immortal soul. In both thems, they tried to find their solutions, while if they could not solve these aporeticals questions – they had the courage to admit, that is not possible by solely relying on the natural forces of reason. They had to refer to the teaching of christianity, without however falling prey to fideism. This was a methodical endeavour based on the experience that natural reason in searching for the truth is not capable of its own efforts to attain to certain concepts and might on occasion err, it is then that faith becomes its guide and supplies it with more acceptable solutions. This is the courage of one of the greatest philosophers – Plato, who said that you have to have this “great courage” to undertake only probable knowledge, when another is not possible. (shrink)

Medieval theologians took their concept of heresy mainly from the texts of Jerome and Augustine quoted in Gratian’s Decretum. Thomas Aquinas held that anyone w ho pertinaciously denies even a minor item of Church or Bible teaching falls into heresy. Ockham developed criteria for pertinacity and argued that a Christian, even if his or her opinions are actually in error, cannot be regarded as pertinacious simply for refusing to defer to the teaching of a pope.

This chapter investigates medieval Sweden and its iconography of justice. The Swedish lay judges were without university education, and especially the commoners had few opportunities of seeing images of justice on artefacts or in secular buildings. Yet, the ecclesiastical imagery in churches was seen and understood by all, thanks to the Church’s teaching. Based on surveys of justice-related iconography in medieval Swedish and Finnish churches, the chapter argues that the scope of these motifs was very limited. Images (...) of the Last Judgment and Saint Michael weighing souls predominate, while some churches had murals with Moses receiving the Tables of the Law, Solomon’s justice, or truth- or justice-related Biblical verses in Latin. No images of Lady Justice or other justice-related representations came up. Even only a fraction of the Finnish churches had a Last Judgment or Saint Michael to adorn them. However, these two images together, with images of devils tempting people to sin and perdition, were visualisations that had practical meaning in the Swedish legal culture. The practices of justice and judging were popular and daily reiterated, making each sworn oath a step towards either heaven or hell. (shrink)

Just as Augustine set the stage for the next 1000 years of hermeneutics, working through Augustine's On Christian Teaching, puts the main issues of medieval hermeneutics on the table. The text is divided into four sections. The first offers the figurative meaning of words. In the second and third sections, Augustine turns to language, conventional signs as opposed to natural signs. The final section addresses the question of how we communicate the teachings of scripture. In the background of (...) Augustine's hermeneutics is the church father widely considered to be the first major Christian exegete, Origen. Origen's allegorical interpretations hold sway against those who dismiss the Bible as historically inaccurate. The model for the split between exegesis and theology is St. Thomas Aquinas. The differences between Aquinas's hermeneutics and Augustine's are not that great; most of the relevant views and debates were settled by the fall of the Roman Empire. (shrink)

Debates in Medieval Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses aims to de-mystify medieval works by offering an illuminating, engaging introduction to the problems that medieval philosophers from Augustine through Ockham wrestled with. Each of the volume’s 11 units presents a debate that will enable students to return to the primary texts prepared to think critically and imaginatively about them. Debates include: Does Anselm have a hierarchical or a flat conception of free will? Is Abelard’s ethics conceptually impoverished? (...) Does Avicenna teach that we acquire concepts through abstraction or emanation? What is Aquinas’s purpose in writing the Summa contra gentiles? How sound are Ockham’s criticisms of Scotus’s theory of universals and individuation? The 10 essays newly commissioned for this volume will advance scholarship in medieval metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, logic, and philosophical theology, and in particular they will showcase what is philosophically distinctive and original in medieval philosophy. Students without experience in the history of philosophy will benefit from each unit’s clear, sharply written introductions that supply the necessary background to approach the debates intelligently. In addition, the volume’s general introduction elucidates the value of studying the history of philosophy through debate, in particular the history of medieval philosophy. Students will find in these debates models that will train them to formulate their own critical evaluations of a wide range of philosophical texts by thinkers with diverse philosophical commitments. (shrink)

Taneli Kukkonen - Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.3 471-472 Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings. Edited and translated by Muhammad Ali Khalidi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xlviii + 186. Cloth, $65.00. With late ancient philosophy and Latin scholasticism entering the mainstream of teaching the history of Western philosophy, it is natural that attention should turn next to the Arabic falsafah of the classical period, (...) bridging as it does the two traditions. Designated courses on Arabic or Islamic philosophy have begun to appear in the curricula of forward-thinking philosophy departments. This most welcome development has so far been hampered by the lack of affordable anthologies: the publication of Muhammad Ali Khalidi's collection therefore marks a watershed moment, and the translator and the publisher.. (shrink)

An important part of making philosophy as a discipline gender equal is to ensure that female authors are not simply wiped out of the history of philosophy. This has implications for teaching as well as research. In this context, I reflect on my experience of teaching a text by medieval philosopher Christine de Pizan as part of an introductory history of philosophy course taught to Turkish students in law, political science, and international relations. I describe the challenges (...) I encountered, the ways in which I dealt with them, and draw some conclusions based on my observations and feedback obtained at the end of the course. (shrink)

The theme of this series is given a human touch in Medieval Masters. All of the contributors in this memorial volume are paying tribute to their mentor, former University of Toronto (St. Michael's College) professor, Rev. Edward A. Synan. These essays provide ample proof that Synan's legacy of excellence will continue to influence students of philosophy for decades to come. In addition to ten essays, the volume contains a Synan bibliography and a very heartfelt opening remembrance from M. Jean (...) Kitchel. The essays are wide ranging, exploring Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, Averroes, and Albert the Great, as well as the Thomistic themes of essence and existence; creation, numbers, and natures; and friendship and Christology. There is also a discussion of the treatment of the problem of universals in Boethius, Porphyry, and Abelard. Anyone who studies philosophy, whether a Thomist or not, will find this a valuable volume. That is as much a tribute to Father Synan as it is to the contributors, who were the grateful recipients of his generous and sage teaching. (shrink)

There are varying opinions about whether or not the field of business ethics has a history or is a development of more modern times. It is suggested that a book by a Dominican Friar, Johannes Nider, De Contractibus Mercatorum, written ca. 1430 and published ca. 1468 provides a basis for a history of over 500 years. Business ethics grew out of attempts to reconcile Biblical precepts, canon law, civil law, the teachings of the Church Fathers, and the writings of early (...) philosophers with the realities of expanding economic activity. Nider's background is discussed as well as his book as an example of incunabula.Nider was one of the Scholastics who provided a link between Aristotle and later Reformation thinkers. In Nider we find caveat venditor as his moral guide to merchants as well as other surprisingly modern ideas such as justice in exchange; restitution for defective goods; the market as the final arbiter of value; and the importance of creating utility in products. (shrink)

The research is devoted to the ethical views of Vladimir Monomakh, reflected in the “Teaching” of the Grand Duke. The author’s reflections concerning such fundamental moral categories as good and evil, virtue and vice, the meaning of life and death, free will, duty, happiness are considered and analyzed. A partial continuity of the Grand Duke’s views concerning the relationship to the categories of good and evil, as well as virtue and vice, with the Byzantine Christian tradition, in particular with (...) regard to the “theory of three small deeds”, which is based on the theory of repentance of John Chrysostom, and the theory of “asceticism in the world”, based on the writings of Basil the Great. It is revealed that the ethical views of the Grand Duke do not fit into the strict paradigm of Christian medieval philosophy and theology. In this regard, the author of the article draws attention to the syncretic nature of the worldview of the author of the “Teaching”, expressed in a kind of worldview combining Christian and pre-Christian beliefs. In this vein, the specific understanding of the problems of the meaning of life, death, happiness by Vladimir Monomakh is analyzed, which is revealed when considering the peculiar attitude of the author of the “Teaching” to the sacred rites of prayer and burial. The author’s views on the category of duty in the universal and state terms, as well as the principles of practical behavior, are studied. According to the results of the research, the author of the article comes to the conclusion that the work of the Grand Duke is an ethical “micro-treatise”, the ideological content of which fully reflects the moral concept of the existence of the ancient Rus-sian man. (shrink)

How did medieval Jewish scholars, from Saadia Gaon to Yitzhak Abravanel, imagine a world that has experienced salvation? What is the nature of reality in the days of the Messiah? This work explores reactions to the seductive promises of apocalyptic teachings, tracing their fluctuations between intellect and imagination. The volume extensively surveys the tension between naturalistic and apocalyptic approaches to the history of the messianic idea so fundamental to the history of Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages and reveals (...) the scope and challenges of medieval thought. (shrink)

Recent students of late medieval intellectual history have treated Oxford theologians' Sentences lectures from the 1320s to 1330s as revealing the interface of the theological, logical, and scientific thinking characteristic of a historically momentous ‘New English Theology’. Its conceptual achievement, historians generally concur, was the casting off of the speculative metaphysics of such thirteenth-century authors as Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon; its methodological novelty made it akin to twentieth-century analytic philosophy and seminal for the early Scientific Revolution. Yet the (...) metaphysically cast thirteenth-century sciences of perspectiva and astrologia persisted among scholars long into the early modern period. To show how this apparent paradox may be dissolved, this article details the intersection of thirteenth-century metaphysics and fourteenth-century analysis in the lectures of a controversial and influential proponent of the Oxford theology of the 1330s. (shrink)

This book is an interpretation of the moral teaching of Thomas Aquinas's Summa of Theology. It argues that teaching on the virtues can only be understood by turning to the patterns of divine teaching in the incarnation and the sacraments. It presents this not only as Thomas's great originality in the Summa but also as his contribution to Christian thought in the present.

This article points to the influence of medieval debates about the possible non-existence of a God on the formation of modern atheist discourse. On the basis of sources composed by Muslims, Christians and Jews, alleged appearances of disbelief like apostasy, blasphemy, and immoral behaviour are reconsidered. Medieval Latin conceptions of atheism are described as acedia, temptation, and murmur. It is made clear, that doubts or nonbelief in God’s existence were neither rare nor forbidden nor persecuted. Nonbelievers were regarded (...) as fools, rather than as a threat. At the same time, heretics as representatives of opposing teachings were construed as threatening, and indeed persecuted violently in the Latin Christian world and in some Muslim realms. (shrink)

British logic teaching in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was provided in England by Oxford and Cambridge, both medieval foundations, and in Scotland by the universities of St Andrews and A...

This essay describes trends in the organization of work that have laid the groundwork for the adoption of interactive AI-driven instruction tools, and the technological innovations that will make intelligent tutoring systems truly competitive with human teachers. Since the origin of occupational specialization, the collection and transmission of knowledge have been tied to individual careers and job roles, specifically doctors, teachers, clergy, and lawyers, the paradigmatic knowledge professionals. But these roles have also been tied to texts and organizations that can (...) disseminate knowledge independently from professionals. Professionals and organizations turn knowledge into texts and tools that enable lay people to access knowledge without the intermediation of professionals or organizations. In the 21st century, one emerging tool for transmitting knowledge is the intelligent tutoring system. This paper examines how technological, epistemic, and economic trends in education are supporting the routinization, proletarianization, and automation of the occupation of teaching, leading to the increasing substitution of intelligent tutoring systems for human instruction. Some trends, such as standardized curricula and testing, both restrict teachers’ professional autonomy and facilitate the creation of pedagogical tools. Other trends reduce teachers’ ability to resist automation. The growth of adjunct teaching and paraprofessional roles in higher education allows organizations to take over and rationalize parts of the traditional teacher role. Faculty evaluations and learning outcomes assessment weaken professional claims to be the sole arbiters of instructional quality and student learning. The widespread use of intelligent tutoring systems also depends on the sophistication of software capable of performing the social-emotional and cognitive roles that educators perform. Eventually, pedagogical software will be able to interactively individualize curricula to the needs and interests of every learner, more cheaply, quickly, and accurately than any human teacher. Assessment of learning will be continuous, and certification of learning will be for specific skills instead of broad area competencies. Intelligent tutoring systems will help transition education from its medieval and industrial-era model to more accessible and flexible continuing education for employment and life enrichment. (shrink)

In medieval writers an important distinction was drawn between two applications of the term ‘logica’: there was logica utens, the practice of thinking logically about this or that subject-matter, and there was logica docens, the construction of logical theory. Of course the English word ‘logic’ and its derivative ‘logical’ have a corresponding twofold meaning, and we ignore the distinction at the risk of serious confusion. ‘Logical thought’ may mean thinking that is being commended as orderly, consistent, and consequent, whatever (...) its subject-matter; or it may mean the thinking of logicians about logic, which alas has not always exhibited these virtues. Similarly for ‘teaching logic’: there is trying to get people, by precept and example, to be orderly, consistent, and consequent in their thinking, and there is the endeavour to train logicians for the next generation. In any respectable philosophy department there will be someone teaching logic in the first sense; in my own university there are very many first-year undergraduates who do a course called Reason and Argument with this aim. But we hold that the teacher of such logica utens must himself have a sufficient skill in logica docens if he is to do his job properly; and we undertake the further task of training people in logical theory so that some of them, who have sufficient native ability and motivation, may take up the torch from their teachers. (shrink)

This essay presents a critical review of recent literature on evil in medieval philosophy, as understood by thinkers from Anselm of Canterbury onward. "Evil" is taken to include not only serious, deliberate wrongdoing, but also everyday sins done from ignorance or passion. Special attention is paid to Aquinas's De Malo, Giles of Rome and the aftermath of the 1277 Condemnation, scholarly disputes about Scotus's teachings, and commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics by Walter Burley, Gerald Odonis, and John Buridan.

This slender volume contains a rapid sketch of the development of the notions of conscience and synderesis in medieval thought. Its timeliness is vouched for by the fact that conscience, to which appeal is so often made today, has not been thus far a major theme of modern philosophy. Much of the book's information is quarried from O. Lottin's classic study, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, whose findings have been restated in terms that are meant to (...) be "psychologically" accessible to the modern mind. The Preface calls attention to the undue neglect of medieval philosophy on the part of twentieth-century thinkers, many of whom still cling to the view that philosophy died with Aristotle and came to life again only with Descartes. It also laments the "party spirit" that once tended to characterize the Neo-Scholastic movement, as well as the one-sided emphasis on Thomas Aquinas within that movement. Potts has accordingly sought to broaden the scope of his inquiry by taking into consideration five widely different authors through whose writings one begins to glimpse the subtlety of the medieval teaching on this important topic: Jerome, who introduced the word "synderesis" into the debate ; Peter Lombard, whose Sentences provided the mandatory point of departure for all subsequent discussions of the subject; Philip the Chancellor, the author of the first medieval treatise on conscience; and, finally, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, two of the writers who contributed most significantly to the further elaboration of the doctrine. By the author's own admission, numerous other theologians, whose names are listed in an appendix, could have been included in the roster or substituted for the ones that are included. The book is divided into two even parts, the first of which presents an analysis of the thought of each of the five theologians mentioned, and the second a selection of representative texts from their works. For the convenience of teachers, a "programme for a medieval-philosophy course on conscience" has been added under Appendix 2. (shrink)

Fourteen philosophers share their experience teaching Peirce to undergraduates in a variety of settings and a variety of courses. The latter include introductory philosophy courses as well as upper-level courses in American philosophy, philosophy of religion, logic, philosophy of science, medieval philosophy, semiotics, metaphysics, etc., and even an upper-level course devoted entirely to Peirce. The project originates in a session devoted to teaching Peirce held at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American (...) Philosophy. The session, organized by James Campbell and Richard Hart, was co-sponsored by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. (shrink)

Leo Strauss is known primarily for reviving classical political philosophy. Strauss recovered that great tradition of thought largely lost to the West by beginning his study of classical thought with its teaching on politics rather than its metaphysics. What brought Strauss to this way of reading the classics, however, was a discovery he made as a young political scientist studying the obscure texts of Islamic and Jewish medieval political thought. In this volume, Joshua Parens examines Strauss's investigations of (...) medieval political philosophy, offering interpretations of his writings on the great thinkers of that tradition, including interpretations of his most difficult writings on Alfarabi and Maimonides. In addition Parens explicates Strauss's statements on Christian medieval thought and his argument for rejecting the Scholastic paradigm as a method for interpreting Islamic and Jewish thought. Contrasting Scholasticism with Islamic and Jewish medieval political philosophy, Parens clarifies the theme of Strauss's thought, what Strauss calls the "theologico-political problem," and reveals the significance of medieval political philosophy in the Western tradition. (shrink)

This paper considers the nature of the changes that took place in logic teaching at the University of Oxford from the beginning of the sixteenth century, when students attended university lectures on Aristotle’s texts as well as studying short works dealing with specifically medieval developments, to the beginning of the eighteenth century when teaching was centred in the colleges, the medieval developments had largely disappeared, and manuals summarizing Aristotelian logic were used. The paper also considers the (...) reasons for these changes, including changes in English society, and the effect of humanism and the more scholarly Aristotelianism that it produced. (shrink)

This essay focuses on three of Islam's best-known philosophers: Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. It sets forth and compares their ethical teaching on the following basic issues: (1) the relation of philosophy to religion, (2) the communal basis of ethics and the comcomitant role of statecraft, and (3) some specific charac- teristics of their ethical teaching. Throughout the essay the close connection of medieval Islamic with classical Greek philosophy is noted.

Do we have to conceive of ourselves as isolated individuals, inevitably distanced from other people and from whatever we might mean when we use the word God? On Becoming God offers an innovative approach to the history of the modern Western self by looking at human identity as something people do together rather than on their own. Ben Morgan argues that the shared practices of human identity can be understood as ways of managing and keeping at bay the impulses and (...) experiences associated with the word God. The "self" is a way of doing things, or of not doing things, with "God." The book draws on phenomenology, gender studies and contemporary neuroscience to present a new approach to the history of modern identity. It surveys existing approaches to modern selfhood and proposes an alternative account by investigating late medieval mysticism, in particular texts written in Germany by Meister Eckhart and others in the same milieu. Reactions to the condemnation of Meister Eckhart's teaching for heresy in 1329 offer a microcosm of the circumstances in which something like the modern self arises as people change their behavior toward others, toward themselves, and toward what they call "God." The book makes Meister Eckhart and his contemporaries appear as our contemporaries by changing the assumptions with which we approach our own identity. To make this change requires a revision of current vocabularies for approaching ourselves, and in particular the vocabulary and habits inherited from psychoanalysis. The book finishes by exploring the parallel between late medieval confessors and their spiritual charges, and late-nineteenth-century psychoanalysts and their patients. The result is a renewed vision of the Freud's project of finding a vocabulary for acknowledging and nurturing our everyday commitments to others and to our spiritual longings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Weber’s Lacuna: Medieval Religion and the Roots of RationalizationLutz KaelberFew works in twentieth-century social thought have received as much attention as Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which appeared in its original form in 1904–5. 1 Weberian scholars and critics have focused on the links between religion and the modern economy, but have overlooked an important component of Weber’s study—medieval religion. Analyzing the (...) cultural significance of modern ascetic rationalism, Weber initially wanted to extend the PE stepping back in time and study the historical development of methodical rational ways of life preceding the Reformation. Between publication of the PE essays and his death in 1920, Weber then specified his research agenda and elaborated on his earlier views. First these specifications and elaborations were made as a response to a series of writings by Ernst Troeltsch, particularly The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Groups, 2 and later while preparing a study on The Christianity of the Occident as part of his Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion. The purpose of this essay is to provide an analysis of Weber’s views on medieval religion as they evolved between 1904–5 and 1920, and to [End Page 465] show how Weber linked his explorations of medieval religion to his larger intellectual agenda, appropriating and transcending ideas current in contemporary historical and religious scholarship.Furthermore, I hope to demonstrate that the conclusions of the few existing studies of Weber’s views on this topic have to be revised. His remarks on medieval religion were not confined to the conceptualization of structural transformations in the Middle Ages; 3 nor did they contain the notion of medieval Christianity as a step backward in the course of Western rationalization. 4 On the contrary, Weber was interested in religious contributions and impediments to a rationalization of conduct in different groups in the Middle Ages, and while he saw largely impediments in orthodox lay religion, he presumed the existence of precursors to Calvinist ascetic rationalism in fringe and heterodox religious movements.In the development of his thought Weber’s interest in this topic runs through three phases: first, the years 1904–5, when the PE was published, containing the cornerstones of a sociological treatment of medieval religion; second, the years between 1906 and 1910, in which Ernst Troeltsch supplemented Weber’s treatment and elicited his response; and third, the years between 1910 and 1920, when Weber began to put medieval Christianity in the context of a comparative typology and historical analysis of religious rationalizations in the major world religions.The Protestant Ethic of 1904–5 5In the PE Weber set himself the task of analyzing the contribution of religious factors in the early-modern period to the emergence of one constitutive component of modern culture, that is, methodical behavior based on the idea of a calling. Yet Weber’s intellectual interests went beyond this topic and era. The overarching issue was the cultural significance of Protestantism’s “ascetic rationalism,” which was to be studied for both later and earlier periods. In delineating the meaning of this concept, Weber was careful to point out that ascetic rationalism of a religious providence was just one among many empirical forms the generic concept of rationalism could designate: [End Page 466] “One can very well ‘rationalize’ life according to very different ultimate points of view and in different directions; ‘rationalism’ is a historical concept that encompasses a world of differences.” 6 It was therefore necessary to provide a specification of the term, for which Weber took a cue from the economist Werner Sombart.In his Modern Capitalism (1902) Sombart had characterized the distinguishing feature of the modern capitalist economy as thorough “calculability” (Rechenhaftigkeit). Calculability denotes the precise, encompassing structuring of means for the achievement of capitalist profit. Weber found Sombart’s characterization highly accurate, 7 but also differed from him in two important aspects. First, he viewed calculability as a manifestation of a larger underlying process—ascetic rationalism. For Weber ascetic rationalism manifested itself in the thorough calculability of all social spheres, and it was not merely an institutional characteristic, as Sombart had defined it. Ascetic... (shrink)

This lecture treats the theme of habitual cognition in both its commonplace and unusual senses in the tradition of ancient and medieval philosophy. Beginning with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and its teaching on habits, it traces how the ancient and medieval Peripatetic tradition received and developed the idea of habitual knowledge. The lecture then turns to three case-studies in which the notion of habitual knowledge is used in unusual senses: Aquinas’s treatment of self-knowledge; Scotus’s account of human awareness (...) of the concept of being; and Peter Auriol’s observations regarding memory and subconscious awareness in ordinary reptitive acts. Aquinas and Scotus seem to identify habitual knowledge in its unusual sense with the presence of an intelligible in the mind prior to actual cognition of that object. Auriol extends habitual knowledge to cover the cognitive state of someone performing an act without any conscious attention. The uses by both Aquinas and Scotus seem somewhat parallel to the use of habit or pre-conscious knowledge in Hume and Kant. (shrink)

The life of medieval peasants was dominated by the Church and local society. Both institutions were hierarchical and dependent upon inequality. The Church sought to teach the laity about Christian...

Discussions of the aims and efficacy of teachers tend to focus on an extended present pre supposing a more or less common profile across subjects and recent times. Given the concern with contemporary schooling this is unsurprising, but it limits what might be learned about the character of good and bad teaching, about the particularities of certain fields, and about the ways teachers conceive themselves in relation to their subjects, students and society. This essay considers the teaching of (...) art, by artists to art students, setting this within a long view of the institutions of art and art training. Three partial models of the art educator and their associated qualities can be abstracted from medieval, early modern, and recent periods. (1) The Exemplar: possessed of practical skills and habituated understanding and judgement. (2) The Master: having in addition to the exemplar’s qualitieserudition and cultivated taste. (3) The Critical-Advocate: theory-oriented, and self-consciously progressive. Good art (be it in terms of expressive, imaginative, formal, representational or other relevant aspects) has the power to transform makers and observers, and to encourage and deepen self-examination and self-understanding. Good art teaching should be alert to and directed towards these benefits. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Meaning of “Aristotelianism” in Medieval Moral and Political ThoughtCary J. NedermanI. “Aristotelian” and “Aristotelianism” are words that students of medieval ideas use constantly and almost inescapably. 1 The widespread usage of these terms by scholars in turn reflects the popularity of Aristotle’s thought itself during the Latin Middle Ages: Aristotle provided many of the raw materials with which educated Christians of the Middle Ages built up (...) the edifice of medieval thought. From 1100 it was difficult to receive a good education in Europe without reading at least some Aristotle, along with authors such as Boethius and Cicero who were heavily indebted to the Philosopher’s teachings. After 1200 no university-trained cleric was likely to be wholly unfamiliar with the essential characteristics of the Aristotelian world-view. 2 Thus, Aristotelianism constituted an indispensable common currency of intellectual intercourse during the Middle Ages.Yet at the same time medieval Aristotelianism could never be all-embracing or complete. Given the centrality of Christian religion to medieval Latin thought, it was effectively impossible for Western thinkers to accept basic tenets of Aristotle’s philosophy, such as the nature of the soul, the powers of God, and the source of ultimate human happiness. 3 In view of the [End Page 563] incompatibility of primary Aristotelian and Christian doctrines, no author in medieval Europe could faithfully or safely espouse an unalloyed Aristotelianism.The “Aristotelianism” of the Middle Ages thus possesses something of a paradoxical quality: it is everywhere and yet nowhere. Such uncertainty about the precise meaning and appropriate application of the ascriptions “Aristotelian” and “Aristotelianism” has led some intellectual historians to raise fundamental questions about the validity of these classifications. In a provocative article on the interpretation of “Aristotelianism” in medieval and Renaissance natural philosophy, Edward Grant poses this problem quite pointedly: “What criteria have to be met for one to be considered, say an Aristotelian...? Can such criteria even be formulated? Is there an essence of Aristotelianism... that might provide a means of determining who is, and who is not, a legitimate member of [this group?]” 4 Grant’s own attempts to solve this problem are geared to the particular circumstances of medieval cosmology and physics, fields in which the Aristotelian paradigm entered Latin thought rapidly and reigned unchallenged for three centuries. 5 Consequently, his solutions do not generalize well to other areas of philosophical discourse, such as moral and political philosophy, which experienced rather different processes of Aristotelian transmission and reception.It may therefore be fruitful to examine more carefully the meaning of Aristotelianism as applied specifically to the fields of ethics and politics, and indeed to question whether (or in what ways) the ascription of an Aristotelian outlook to medieval moral and political thought is warranted. In particular I propose to consider the two standard definitions of “Aristotelianism” that have emerged from the literature on the moral and political ideas of the Latin Middle Ages: a strict, essentialist account which holds that Aristotelianism requires endorsement of some salient core of Aristotelian writing or doctrine; and a looser approach which maintains that mere citation of Aristotle’s work or adoption of his language is sufficient to earn the label “Aristotelian” for a medieval text or thinker. While both of these conceptions of Aristotelianism enjoy certain distinct merits, each ultimately proves inadequate to cope with the complexities of the use of Aristotle’s moral and political ideas and texts during the Middle Ages.Does the failure of attempts to define “Aristotelianism” coherently mean that the term itself is a spurious or irrelevant category for the analysis of medieval ethics and political philosophy? I shall ultimately argue that it is possible to identify a coherent meaning of Aristotelianism in the political and moral realms that avoids the shortcomings associated with previous interpretations. Specifically, I claim that the medieval “Aristotelian” tradition is [End Page 564] held together by a particular organization of and orientation towards the kind of knowledge necessary for achieving human good in its moral and political dimensions. Stated succinctly, Aristotelianism posits the practical quality of the study of ethics and politics and hence the value of such knowledge insofar as it guides action. In my view the Aristotelianism... (shrink)

A second reason for this neglect is the form in which Descartes was led or compelled to present his soul doctrine in the Meditations. In some complex manner the Meditations is both a medieval, scholastic-Aristotelian writing, as well as the acknowledged founding writing of modern philosophy. It is traditional as "first philosophy" or speculative metaphysics of substance, and as Christian apologetics concerned with the salvation of the infidel. In accordance with both, the soul is a separate, immaterial substance with (...) an immortal destiny unprejudiced by the fate of the body. On the other hand, the Meditations is novel or modern as quest for indubitable "foundations" of the edifice of the sciences. The goal of the edifice of science is however stated only in the non-apologetic or more secular writings: the "mastery and ownership of nature," or "the enjoyment of the fruits of the earth in this life without pain," or such a wisdom as depends on knowing that "the mind depends acutely on the temperament, and the disposition of the organs of the body...". It is tempting to distinguish two Cartesian soul doctrines, the separate and immortal soul of the apologetic Meditations, and a secular soul articulated mainly outside the Meditations and especially in the Passions of the Soul, where Descartes speaks "as a physicist," addresses "the whole nature of man", never mentions any doctrine of substance, and remains utterly unperplexed about the interaction of mind and body. While such a gross distinction proves to be not without a certain homely truth, it leads us away from the Meditations, the classic document of the discovery of the modern soul doctrine. (shrink)

In his extensive work as a theologian and a historian, Walter H. Principe, CSB, (1922-1996) was committed to reflecting on both the present and the past. He was well-known as an historian of medieval theology and philosophy - especially through the work of Thomas Aquinas, as well as a contemporary theologian. This memorial collection addresses a fundamental feature of Principe's thought, namely his concern that the history of medieval theology and philosophy have a significant role to play in (...) contemporary discussions. Strengthening the ties between historical study and contemporary theological and philosophical thought, this book offers much to those who teach and research in historical theology and the history of philosophy. The ten essays provide significant test cases of how modern scholars may utilise the historical record judiciously for contemporary debates. Those who are concerned with intellectual history (both medieval and modern), the history of doctrines, and Thomism will also find this collection a useful contribution to modern scholarship. (shrink)

Of the scholarly work that has been done in the last twenty years on the medieval French and German prologue, most falls into one of two classes. On the one hand are those studies that investigate a prologue for what it reveals of its author or of the work that follows. What, for instance, does Chrétien mean by “une molt bele conjointure,” and what does this imply about his Erec et Enide? What might Hartmann mean by “rehtiu güete,” and (...) how can our understanding of his meaning improve our understanding of Iwein? The second kind of study of medieval prologues pursues the opposite course, detaching the prologues from the works that follow and treating them separately, as members of an independent tradition, almost a genre. This second group, as it seeks to discover the poetics of the prologue, has not unreasonably turned to the poetic theory that might have been known to French and German authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. What, scholars of this second group have asked, can the classical rhetorical treatises teach us about Chrétien's prologues? And what help might the medieval artes poetriae offer in studying the German prologues of the thirteenth century? The substantial body of work produced by scholars who ask these types of questions suggests that they have found the classical and medieval treatises of considerable use in sketching out the poetics of the medieval prologue. As far as I can see, however, they are mistaken. For, as I hope to show below, neither the classical rhetoricians nor the medieval poetic theorists wrote with the prologues to written narrative in mind, nor can the precepts they propose come close to accommodating the great variety of actual medieval prologues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Individualization of Crime in Medieval Canon LawVirpi Mäkinen and Heikki PihlajamäkiIn The Mourning of Christ (c. 1305, fresco at Cappella dell'Arena, Padua, Italy), Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267-1337) depicts the Virgin Mary embracing Christ for the last time after he has been taken down from the cross. Whereas his predecessors in the devotional Byzantine tradition concentrated on flat, still figures, Giotto emphasizes their humanity and individuality. The (...) grief on the Virgin's face is touching and convincing but in a slightly different way than the sorrow experienced by St. John or the other accompanying figures. Even the ten angels following the scene seem to grieve for the Redeemer in their own personal way. The individuality of Giotto's figures may not seem much if we compare it with the seventeenth-century Flemish masters. Giotto's Virgin and her company still show a restraint in their grief which does not seem entirely natural. In late medieval art, however, Giotto's approach was fresh and new, reflecting a trend toward individualization which was not peculiar merely to art but was taking over many other areas of late medieval life as well. Philosophy, theology, and law—the medieval scientiae—were all putting increasing emphasis on the rights and responsibilities of the individual.Nor does this trend leave criminal law and the law of evidence untouched. The medieval development of law was just as revolutionary as the development of other branches of knowledge. Starting in early twelfth-century Bologna, the Corpus Iuris Civilis became an object of systematic academic research and teaching for the first time in history. The development of canon law was perhaps even more striking. Positive, enacted law first became not only an object of academic studies but also an instrument of social engineering in the domain of church law. The hierarchical structure of the worldwide Catholic Church was built and run in conjunction with positive, enacted legislation.1 [End Page 525] The development of criminal law was just as innovative as the changes that took place in other branches of law, with canon lawyers taking the lead. Aspiring for universal power and competing for it with secular rulers, the Church was in need of an efficient system to control disobedient priests and monks and suppress heretical movements.2 The traditional system of criminal control was clearly not sufficient. Canon law, making use of the contemporary trend toward increased individualization in theology, philosophy, and Roman law, was developed to meet the church's need to master the situation.One of the most important and influential developments in thirteenth-century criminal law concerned the individual's criminal intention and responsibility. Before the change criminal responsibility was mainly based on the consequences of a crime. The canon lawyers began to determine different modes of subjective responsibility. In the law of criminal evidence the individual was also shifted from the margins to the center of attention. Earlier criminal evidence had been produced from sources external to the individuality of the defendant, such as oaths, compurgators, and ordeals. In the thirteenth century and with the development of the so-called statutory or legal theory of proof, increasing attention was paid to the stories of both the defendant (in the form of confessions) and the witnesses. The development of criminal law and criminal procedure in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries can be understood in the context of the simultaneous trend toward individualization that took place in moral philosophy and theology as well as in canon law.3 These connections are not the only way of understanding the modernization of canon criminal law, for the prevailing view sees the transformation in conjunction with the twelfth-century hierarchization and centralization of church bureaucracy. The particular form that the criminal law and law of proof assumed in these changes did not arise out of a vacuum but, however, has to be understood in relation to the neighboring fields of thought.The Human Will and the Individual in Medieval Moral PhilosophyThe primus motor of medieval philosophy, Aristotelianism, encountered its first competing theories in the thirteenth century. One of the most far-reaching ideas concerning human psychology and behavior, developed by the Franciscans... (shrink)

This book offers a selection of 13 case studies on how the notion of grounding helps illuminate philosophical discussions of our past with a special focus on debates of the Middle Ages. It thereby makes not only the case that the notion of grounding, which has become so widely debated in analytic metaphysics, has a long and venerable tradition, but also shows that this tradition has a lot to teach to contemporary philosophers of grounding. This is because the historical authors (...) discussed in this volume – that is, Aristotle, Fazang, Boethius, Avicenna, Abelard, Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, Buridan, Suárez, Leibniz, and others – suggested different types of non-efficient-causal explanations which are to be carefully distinguished. This volume illustrates how philosophy and history of philosophy can be mutually illuminating by showing that the terminology developed in the contemporary debate about grounding can help reconstruct philosophical discussions from Antiquity up to the Early Modern Period, and that these very discussions enrich, and in part challenge the contemporary debate about grounding. In this vein, it is an important reading for everyone interested in the history of grounding and the philosophical insights that this history might have left to us. (shrink)

While the formal treatment of arguments in the late medieval modi arguendi owes much to dialectic, this does not remove the substance and function of the argumentative modes discussed from the realm of rhetoric. These works, designed to teach law students skills in legal argumentation, remain importantly focused on persuasive features of argumentation which have traditionally been strongly associated with a rhetorical approach, particularly in efforts to differentiate from it dialectic as a more strictly scientific and logical form of (...) reasoning. This also sheds some light on the relative roles logic and rhetoric play in the legal discourse of our own time. In their approach to persuasive legal discourse, the modi arguendi stand between the argumentative rhetorics of Antiquity and the rhetoricized dialectics of the Renaissance, and by linking the minute technicalities of professionalized law with broad general considerations of justice, utility, nature, and emotion, they mediate between the modem trend towards atomized field-specific rhetorics and the classical idea of a unified civic rhetoric. (shrink)