Online research in philosophy

Ramon Llull (1232-1316), born on Majorca, was one of the most remarkable lay intellectuals of the thirteenth century. He devoted much of his life to promoting missions among unbelievers, the reform of Western Christian society, and personal spiritual perfection. He wrote over 200 philosophical and theological works in Catalan, Latin, and Arabic. Many of these expound on his "Great Universal Art of Finding Truth," an idiosyncratic dialectical system that he thought capable of proving Catholic beliefs to non-believers. This study offers (...) the first full-length analysis of his theories about rhetoric and preaching, which were central to his evangelizing activities. It explains how Llull attempted to synthesize commonplace advice about courtly speech and techniques of popular sermons into a single program for secular and sacred eloquence that would necessarily promote love of God and neighbor. Llull's work is remarkable testimony to the diffusion of clerical culture among educated lay-people of his era, and to their enthusiasm for applying that knowledge in the pursuit of learning and piety. This book should find a place on the shelf of every scholar of medieval history, religion, and rhetoric. (shrink)

ETUDES DE PHILOLOGIE 38 ETD'HISTOIRE JEANETTE MA BEER Narrative Conventions of Truth in the Middle Ages GENEVE ...

Une invitation, reçue au début de l’automne 2011, à intervenir dans la séance du 7 mars 2012 d’un séminaire tenu à l’EHESS sur l’islamophobie, a été l’occasion de traiter de « l’affaire Gouguenheim » plus de trois ans après son irruption dans la sphère médiatique. Cette nouvelle lecture d’Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel a permis de mettre en évidence l’importance que Sylvain Gouguenheim attribue à un texte du haut Moyen Age pour suivre la diffusion de l’hellénisme dans l’Europe latine. Il s’agit (...) d’une lettre adressée par le pape Paul 1er à Pépin le Bref. Ce document, le plus souvent négligé par les latinistes en raison de ses obscurités, a excité la sagacité des hellénistes, qui ont très majoritairement montré la difficulté d’en tirer des informations positives. La situation est singulière, si l’on se souvient que, pour l’essentiel, ce sont des latinistes et des arabisants qui ont mené la charge contre les impostures gouguenheimiennes. À la faveur de ce cas d’espèce, « l’affaire Gouguenheim » jette une lumière crue sur la place dérisoire que, pour des raisons historiques, l’enseignement supérieur accorde en France à la philosophie médiévale. Le scandale repose, certes, sur les manipulations d’un agrégé d’histoire ; mais il dévoile aussi l’une des lacunes de l’institution universitaire hexagonale dans l’enseignement de la philosophie médiévale. (shrink)

"The role of logic in the Middle Ages. Regarding the role of logic within the framework of arts and sciences during the Middle Ages, we have to distinguish two related aspects, one institutional and the other scientific. As to the first aspect, we have to remember that the medieval educational system was based on the seven liberal arts, which were divided into the trivium, i.e., three arts of language, and the quadrivium, i.e., four mathematical arts. The so-called trivial arts (...) were grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and during a period of several centuries virtually every educated person, at least every university graduate, received a training in these matters, especially in logic. Students in the medieval faculty of arts probably spent more time studying logic than any other discipline. This first -- institutional -- aspect concerning the role of logic is explained by the second -- scientific -- aspect. The trivial disciplines provided techniques of analysis and a technical vocabulary that permeate philosophical, scientific and theological writings. Logic, as mentioned before, was referred to and was generally regarded as the art of arts and the science of sciences. The increasing cultural dominance of the universities with their obligatory disputationes and their hierarchy of examinations on the one hand and the outstanding status of logic on the other were corresponding features of the educational world of the 13th century. The core of the logic curriculum from the 12th century onwards was provided by the logical works of Aristotle. These represented the material for the study of types of predication, the analysis of simple propositions or statements (2) and their relations of inference and equivalence, the analysis of modal propositions, of the structure and the types of the syllogism, dialectical topics, fallacies and scientific reasoning as based on the demonstrative syllogism. Medieval logicians, however, realized that there were other, non-Aristotelian, approaches to logical subjects, questions and methods that could be investigated.. (shrink)

Of all the philosophers in the West, perhaps the best known by name and less familiar for the actual content of his ideas is the medieval Muslim philosopher, physician, princely minister and naturalist Abu Ali Ibn Sina, known since the days of the scholastics as Avicenna. In this lucidly written and witty book, L. E. Goodman a philosopher long known for his studies of Arabic thought presents a factual, pithy, and engaging account of Avicenna's philosophy. Setting the thinker (...) in the context of his often turbulent times and tracing the roots and influences of Avicenna's ideas, Goodman offers a factual and credible philosophical portrait of one of the world's greatest metaphysicians. The book details Avicenna's account of being as a synthesis between the seemingly irreconcilable extremes of Aristotelian eternalism and the creationism of monotheistic scripture. It examines Avicenna's distinctive theory of knowledge, his ideas on immortality and individuality, including the famous Floating Man argument, his contributions to logic, and his probing thoughts on rhetoric and poetics. Drawing from the very latest scholarship, Avicenna is more than a philosophical appreciation. L. E. Goodman considers the abiding value of Avicenna's contributions, assaying his thought against the responses of his contemporaries and successors but also against our current philosophical understanding. It will have wide appeal among all Arabists and Islamicists, and among students and scholars of philosophy. (shrink)

This work demonstrates how falsafah (which linguistically refers to a group of commentaries by Muslim scholars associated with their readings of "The Corpus Aristotelicum") in Iran has been always closely linked with religion. It demonstrates that the blending of the new natural theology with Iranian culture created an intellectual climate that made Iran the center of falsafah in the Medieval world. The author begins this book by exploring the analytical arguments and methodologies presented as the subject of the first-philosophy (...) (metaphysics) in the works of Aristotle (in particular "The Nicomachean Ethics" and "Rhetoric"). Then, he tells the tale of the Muslims' progression as they came to own and expand upon Aristotle's arguments and methodologies as a measure of their own sense of spirituality. Last, Sadri surveys the implications of that sense of spirituality as it is amalgamated within the Iranian culture and today's Islamic Republic of Iran. The author's aim is to present a different perspective of falsafah (as it is received by Muslims and assimilated within Iranian culture), while maintaining a sense that captures the texture of everyday life-experiences in today's Islamic Republic of Iran. This work is thus about (contemporary) Iranian falsafah and how it remains faithful to its tradition (as falsafah has actually been integrated and practiced by Iranian scholars for the last eleven centuries). It is a tradition that has taken on the task of understanding and projecting a sense of order upon the multiplicity of forms, ideas, examples, and images that have passed through Iran from East and West; it is a story that has gathered, sheltered, and introduced a style and order of Islamic (Shi'at) falsafah. (shrink)

I examine the treatment of metaphor by medieval logicians and how it stemmed from their reception of classical texts in logic, grammar, and rhetoric. I consider the relation of the word 'metaphor' to the notions of translatio and transumptio, and show that it is not always synonymous with these. I also show that in the context of commentaries on the Sophistical Refutations metaphor was subsumed under equivocation. In turn, it was linked with the notion of analogy not so much (...) in the Greek sense of a similarity between two proportions or relations as in the new medieval sense of being said secundum prius et posterius. Whether or not analogy could be reduced to metaphor, or the reverse, depended on the controversial issue of the number of acts of imposition needed to produce an equivocal term. A spectrum of views is canvassed, including those found in the logic commentaries of John Duns Scotus. (shrink)

The mid-thirteenth-century theorist and rhetorician Brunetto Latini proposed a vigorous republican account of the art of government and the nature of community in his encyclopedic treatise, Li Livres dou Tresor. The interpretation of Latini's republicanism has been heavily based on its literary sensibilities, its attachment to rhetoric, and its praise for classical civic virtues. But Latini deserves to be classified as a republican insofar as he founds social and political order upon commercial principles-the production and exchange of material goods for (...) profit-and consequent economic defense of republican government. Hence, the example of Latini challenges one of the principal remaining barriers that supposedly separates medieval defenses of republicanism from Renaissance versions. The essay contends that Latini holds that self-governing institutions depend upon and are especially well suited to sustain a society whose conception of the common good includes the creation and exchange of those material necessities required for physical welfare and comfort. (shrink)

Abstract This essay attempts to articulate an understanding of the goal of ?freedom? in classical Ch'an Buddhism by setting concerns for ?liberation? in relation to the kinds of authority and regulated structure characteristic of Sung dynasty Ch'an monasteries. It begins with the thesis that early Western interpreters of Zen have tended to emphasise the dimensions of Zen freedom that accord with modem Western versions of freedom presupposing tension between freedom and authority as well as between individual autonomy and the demands (...) of a communal setting. These dichotomies, assumed by modem Western interpreters, appear to have been absent from this medieval Chinese context, thus suggesting that their concepts of freedom and liberation must have differed significantly from our own. The essay examines classical Ch'an rhetoric and practices in an effort to reconceive what ?freedom? might have meant in this context and concludes with a proposal for this reconception. (shrink)

De philosophia Aristotelico-Lutherana apud Philippum MelanchthonemIn hac dissertatione elementa principalia relationis Philippi Melanchthonis ad philosophiam Aristotelicam in dialectica, ethica et philosophia naturali summatimexponuntur. Quamquam Melanchthon iuvenili aetate renascentis aevi virorum doctorum mentem de litteris Graecis-Latinisque ad pristinam puritatem restaurandis secutus est, tamen doctrina eius Aristotelica nullo modo „pura“ putanda est. Imprimis eius de „notiis naturalibus“ opinio, quae magnam vim ad eius dialecticam, ethicam, de cognitione doctrinam habuit, Aristotelica haud dicenda est et Platonis potius auctoritatem redolet. Finis, quem Philippi Melanchthonis philosophia (...) Aristotelica recipienda prosecutus est, imprimis Lutheranismi et apologia et propagatio esse videntur. Ita dialectica et rhetorica, quam praebet, exegesi Sacrae Scripturae quasi unice inservire debebant. Simili ratione ductus Melachthon medii aevi theologorum de felicitate opinionem reiecit, et anthropologiam (quam dicunt) in Legis et Evangelii dialecticam collocabat. Idem eius naturalis philosophia, quae fere tota Dei providentiae declarandae vota est, innuit. Quoniam Malanchthonis Aristotelicae docrinae receptio adeo a principiis theologicis M. Lutheri pendet, Aristotelico-Lutherana apte nuncupanda videtur.Lutheran Aristotelianism – Philipp MelanchthonThis article summarises the basic features of Melanchthon’s approach to Aristotle’s philosophy in the areas of logic, ethics and natural philosophy. Although Melanchthon builds upon the humanistic ideal of purifying classical heritage, his Aristotelianism should not be viewed as ‘pure’. His conception of natural knowledge (notitiae naturales) could be regarded as a significant non-Aristotelian element of his philosophy. The view consequently penetrates his logic, ethics as well as epistemology. Primarily, however, the reason behind his reception of Aristotle is a defence of Luther’s views: the aims of logic and rhetoric lie in theexegesis of the Bible within the context of the principle of ‘ Sola Scriptura’; he rejects the medieval concept of felicity and puts antropology into the dialectics of Law and Gospel; the aim of natural philosophy is the exposition of the existence of God’s Providence. Melanchthon’s reception of Aristotle is thus influenced by the theology of the Reformation to such an extent, that we might refer to it as Lutheran Aristotelianism. (shrink)

Guynn offers an innovative new approach to the ethical, cultural, and ideological analysis of medieval allegory. Working between poststructuralism and historical materialism, he considers both the playfulness of allegory (its openness to multiple interpretations and perspectives) and its disciplinary force (the use of rhetoric to naturalize hegemonies and suppress difference and dissent). Ultimately, he argues that both tendencies can be linked to the consolidation of power within ruling class institutions and the persecution of demonized others, notably women and sexual (...) minorities. The book examines a number of centrally canonical works, including the verse romance Eneas , Alan of Lille’s De planctu Naturae , The Romance of the Rose , and the Querelle de la Rose. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive study of the Renaissance commonplace-book. -/- Commonplace-books were the information-organizers of Early Modern Europe, notebooks of quotations methodically arranged for easy retrieval. From their first introduction to the rudiments of Latin to the specialized studies of leisure reading of their later years, the pupils of humanist schools were trained to use commonplace-books, which formed an immensely important element of Renaissance education. The common-place book mapped and resourced Renaissance culture's moral thinking, its accepted strategies of argumentation, (...) its rhetoric, and its deployment of knowledge. In this ground-breaking study Ann Moss investigates the commonplace-book's medieval antecedents, its methodology and use as promulgated by its humanist advocates, its varieties as exemplified in its printed manifestations, and the reasons for its gradual decline in the seventeenth century. The book covers the Latin culture of Early Modern Europe and its vernacular counterparts and continuations, particularly in France. -/- Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought is much more than an account of humanist classroom practice: it is a major work of cultural history. (shrink)

Abstract This article traces a historical shift, and in particular its erasure from memory on the intellectual map of the West, in concepts of subjectivity across practices of rabbinic thinking in late antiquity, medieval interpretations of the Talmud, and modern talmudic scholarship. I first introduce a comparative perspective that relies on a mutual hermeneutics of philosophical and talmudic traditions. I consequently engage with Alain de Libera's archaeological analysis of the birth of the thinking subject in medieval philosophy and (...) theology. In this light, I analyze the role of the notion of the thinking subject in construing the Talmud from Maimonides to contemporary Talmud criticism. Finally, I explore the implications of de Libera's program of a philosophical archaeology of the thinking subject for mapping the complex relationship of mutual presupposition and exclusion between philosophical, rhetorical, and talmudic traditions of thinking in antiquity, as manifested in the larger scope of these traditions. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary reappraisal of Lynn White, Jr.’s “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” reopens several issues, including the suggestion by Peter Harrison that White’s thesis was historical and that it is a mistake to regard it as theological. It also facilitates a comparison between “Roots” and White’s earlier book Medieval Technology and Social Change. In “Roots,” White discarded or de-emphasized numerous qualifications and nuances present in his earlier work so as to heighten the effect of certain rhetorical aphorisms (...) and to generalize their scope and bearing well beyond what the evidence could bear. The meaning of Genesis and other biblical books proves to be just as important in White’s thesis as their historical reception. In “Roots,” White presents, alongside other contentions, the claims that Christian doctrines have all along been both anthropocentric and despotic, especially in the West, and that this is where the real roots of the problems are to be found. These claims, however, conflict with most of the relevant evidence. An adequate reappraisal of White’s work needs to recognize that there is a cultural determinism parallel to the technological determinisms alleged by R. H. Hilton and P. H. Sawyer, to endorse Elspeth Whitney’s “single-cause” critique of links between religion and technological change in the Middle Ages, and to treat sympathetically Whitney’s claim that White and some of his eco-theological critics (despite their disagreements) have in common both their valorizing of individual beliefs and values and their neglect of economic and institutional factors. Nevertheless, our ecological problems need to be understood through explanations turning on beliefs and values as well as on economics and institutions. (shrink)

Studies of medieval Biblical interpretation usually focus on the printed literature, neglecting the vast majority of relevant works. Timothy Bellamah offers a groundbreaking examination of the exegesis of William of Alton, a thirteenth-century Dominican regent master at Paris whose commentaries have never previously appeared in print. As a near contemporary of Hugh of St. Cher, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, William was an important representative of university exegesis at a time of rapidly changing methods and remarkable intellectual (...) development. His commentaries are valuable resources for understanding Biblical study of the thirteenth century, in the schoolroom and in the pulpit. Yet study of William's work has been impeded by the dubious authenticity of numerous commentaries questionably attributed to him over the centuries. Bellamah addresses these complex problems by unearthing evidence of authorship in each commentary's style and methodology. This inquiry employs the traits of William's commentaries as criteria for constituting a list of works that can be reliably attributed to him, which, in turn, provides a crucial basis for studying his exegesis. William was a man of his time, but even more than his contemporaries he was deeply interested in history and the literal sense, which he understood to be the intention of Scripture's authors, divine and human. He took a keen interest in Biblical history and put to use a wide array of procedures for textual, linguistic, and rhetorical analysis. At the same time, he remained aware of the spiritual senses and the diverse elements of the exegetical and theological tradition in which he stood. (shrink)

The paper raises the question of the function of visual representations in medieval cosmographical texts. It proposes to view diverse functions of figures in relation to changing discursive environments, including differing philosophical positions and changing social and intellectual contexts. It further suggests a distinction between figures that were elaborated within the highly specialized disciplines of mathematics and philosophy of nature in Greek Antiquity and figures that were instrumental in transmitting accepted world models, thus avoiding the opposition between scientific and (...) unscientific types of verbal and pictorial documents. Simplifying changes, when figures are abstracted form their geometrical context and accompany doxographical, descriptive accounts, are characterized in terms of schematization. Concomitantly, mathematical and philosophical demonstrations tend to give way to proofs of a predominantly rhetorical nature: images are verbally construed and, in order to enhance these, actual visual figures— mostly linear, diagrammatic constructs—are added. With regard to the Middle Ages, the paper distinguishes two principal periods: the period from the seventh to the eleventh century and the period of the so-called twelfth-century Renaissance. First, the verbal and pictorial cosmological corpus of Roman origin gave rise to explanations and variations but not to consequential theoretical developments and cosmological diagrams tended to fuse with summarizing tables at this time. Then, during the twelfth century, mathematical and philosophical documents of a specialized kind that were translated from the Arabic and also from the Greek became available in the Latin West. In mathematics, specialized types of study remained, however, sparse. Continuous elaborations of the assimilated material set in later only, within the thirteenth-century university context. Nevertheless, twelfth-century authors of cosmographical accounts became increasingly aware that their expositions and visual figures were ultimately derived from geometrical models of the universe. More diversified types of demonstration and corresponding visual figures were being used, as exemplified by William of Conches’ Dragmaticon philosophiae. (shrink)

With the aim of guiding readers along, in Hegel’s words, “the long process of education towards genuine philosophy,” this introduction emphasizes the importance of striking up a conversation with the past. Only by looking to past masters and their works, it holds, can old memories and prior thought be brought fully to bear on the present. This living past invigorates contemporary practice, enriching today’s study and discoveries. In this book, groundbreaking philosopher and author Donald Verene addresses two themes: why should (...) one study the historically “great” texts and, if such a study is necessary, how can one undertake it? Acting out against the rejection of the idea that there is a philosophical canon, he centers his argument on the “tetralogy” of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel. From his opening look at the rhetorical tradition, he brings those core ideals forward to classical Roman and medieval philosophers and then on into Renaissance and modern philosophy, including contemporary thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault. This vital chronological outline is supplemented by Verene’s contextualizing commentary. In ensuing sections, he offers guidance on reading philosophical works with “intellectual empathy,” suggests 100 essential works to establish a canon, illustrates the role of philosophers in history and society, and examines the nature of history itself. Ultimately, Verene concludes that history may be essential to philosophy, but philosophy is more than just its history. (shrink)