The land of truth, 'ein reizender Name', is according to Kant 'umgeben von einem weiten und stürmischen Ozeane, dem eigentlichen Sitze des Scheins, wo manche Nebelbank, und manches bald wegschmelzendes Eis neue Länder lügt, und indem es den auf Entdeckungen herumschwärmenden Seefahrer unaufhörlich mit leeren Hoffungen täuscht, ihn in Abenteuer verflechtet, von denen er niemals ablassen, und sie doch auch niemals zu Ende bringen kann'. The geographer of human reason has made it his task to set bounds to this island (...) of the truth. Just as in rational psychology and theology veils and illusions are likewise raised up in rational cosmology, so that those who seek after sound ground in the question of the origin of duration of the world are only hurled to and from between pseudo-solutions. The question of this article concerns the following problem: How strong is the position of the so-called first antinomy for Kant's thesis, that reason tangles itself up in unsoluble discrepancies when it is occupied with questions that exceed experience? Kant holds the view that regarding the ancient question on the eternity of the world are always taken up two positions that are mutually exclusive, because each for itself claims apodictic argumentation. But from discussions that Thomas Aquinas made with Aristotle and Bonaventure on time and the infinite appears that the argumentation in the first antinomy is not so apodictic as Kant imagined. So it seems that there are reasons to doubt if reason gets entangled when it is engaged in matters that exceed experience. (shrink)

This article enquires into the origins of the historiographical notion of double truth, a prominent and controversial category in the modern study of medieval philosophy. I believe that these origins are to be found in a short text by Jacob Thomasius from 1663, entitled De duplici & contradictoria veritate, which stands as a very early and highly original example of a history of double truth. I propose a detailed analysis of this document in order to shed light on the mechanisms (...) that transformed duplex veritas from a keyword in Thomasius’s Protestant milieu into a historiographical category. As I show, the De duplici & contradictoria veritate provides a historical legitimation of Thomasius’s own brand of Lutheran Aristotelianism. It does so in a highly ambiguous fashion, namely by bringing together the Lutheran theologian and proponent of double truth Daniel Hofmann with anonymous medieval “Averroists”. I venture an explanation for Thomasius’s line of action by uncovering two of his implicit sources. (shrink)

This paper critically analyzes the deconstructive tendency that some authors have shown against the so-called Metaphysics of Exodus, promoted by philosophers such as Étienne Gilson. The most original notion in Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy is that being (esse) is said to derive not from the Bible as Gilson claims, but from Neoplatonic sources of pagan ambience, such as the author of the De causis (Proclus) or the Dionysius Areopagite. We carry out an analysis of the status quaestionis by showing, contrary to (...) the critics of the ‘Metaphysics of Exodus,’ that this deconstructive tendency is unfounded and untenable. (shrink)