For Peter John Olivi, intentional directedness can be modelled after the directedness of causal agents upon their patients. This paper articulates in what way Olivi takes intentional and causal directedness to be similar. It argues that his direct-realist theory of representation is motivated, not only by worries about a veil of species, but also by his more general views on the metaphysics of causation and action. While Olivi’s language of powers “reaching out” to their objects has sometimes been taken as (...) evidence of a commitment to some variety of the extramission theory of perception, this paper argues that Olivi rejected extramission. (shrink)

Our mental states are considered intentional in that they express a directedness toward something. Mental states include acts of thought and will, acts of consciousness, emotions, and possibly acts of sense perception. Did any medieval philosopher give a unified account of all these acts? In the Middle Ages, no author explicitly offers such an account. There is however one author, the Dominican Hervaeus Natalis (†1323), who explains intentionality in a way that allows us to extract from his texts the unified (...) account we are searching for. The key to obtaining this account is to approach intentionality from the side of the thing that is intended. For if we are in relation to things, things, too, are in relation to us. Specifically, Hervaeus holds that intentionality designates a kind of relation, not however the relation ensuing from our directedness toward things (as we are accustomed to understanding it today), but the relation that things bear on us. This is a primitive and radical condition that specifically endows every mental state with intentional character. (shrink)

When we humans encounter a wolf in the wild, we perceive it as dangerous and consequently feel fear. It seems sheep, too, perceive wolves as dangerous, which is why they flee from them. However, when humans perceive something as dangerous, they make use of concepts. Sheep cannot do that. They do not have an intellect, hence they do not have access to concepts. At least, this is what philosophers in the Middle Ages thought. But then what do sheep make use (...) of when they perceive something as dangerous? In this paper, I explore the answers of two thirteenth-century Oxonians, Geoffrey of Aspall and John Pecham. Both agreed that sheep have an internal sense, the estimative power, that allows them to perceive something as dangerous. Nevertheless, they did not agree on how the estimative power does this or what exactly it provides access to. While Aspall believed that contents of the type “dangerous” consist of an arrangement of sensible forms, Pecham referred to these contents as “intentions.” I begin the paper by examining Dominik Perler’s approach of medieval conceptions of animal emotions. He argues that the metaphysical stance on the sensory input determines the shapes the intentional content can take. I argue that additional variables, as proposed by Aspall and Pecham, can and should be taken into account. Such variables diminish the explanatory power of Perler’s approach. In other words, the intentional content is not determined solely by how the sensory input is metaphysically conceived. (shrink)

Brentano famously claimed that intentionality is one of the marks of the mental and that he found his concept of intentionality in the Middle Ages. It is now known that intentionality does not constitute a mark of the mental in medieval thought: scholars have shown that extra-mental things also display intentionality. In addition to this argument based on extra-mental things, I argue that some medieval theories do not present intentionality as a feature of all mental acts. Moreover, I argue that (...) certain medieval theories differ in another way from Brentano’s conception of intentionality: when presented with intentionally related objects (e.g., my past cognition of the rose), mental acts prove unable to focus freely on one or the other object (the act or the rose). (shrink)

After Thomas Aquinas, it became standard to divide “intentio” into first and second intentions (the distinction ultimately derives from Avicenna). Roughly, the distinction captures the intentionality of concepts like “Socrates” or “human being,” which are first intentions, versus concepts like “species” or “genus,” which are second intentions. Hervaeus Natalis (d. 1323) was the first to write an independent treatise on this distinction, and he also introduced and used the word “intentionaliter” in a new way, as well as attempts a definition (...) of the notion of intentionality, perhaps the first such attempt. His treatise is called De secundis intentionibus (On Second Intentions), and can only be described as a treatise on the philosophy of mind and about the problem of intentionality. In this article, I will place Hervaeus in relation to the debate on mental content between Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus, and show how he has the resources to define a concept of “intentionality” as “the mark of the mental.”. (shrink)

Ernst Bloch formulated problems of enormous philosophical and human relevance. He held that in our contemporary situation we have but two questions concerning the fundamental direction of our lives and history: we must choose, first, between hopeless nihilism and transcendent hope; and, second, between transcendent hope with transcendence and transcendent hope without transcendence. Bloch opted for the transcendent hope without transcendence and formulated a hard critique of hope with transcendence. Josef Pieper and Bernard Schumacher have offered a competent response to (...) Bloch from the Catholic perspective. However, we offer here a little explored aspect of the problem by demonstrating that Bloch’s metaphysical arguments do not consider that (a) a material reality necessarily has the concrete potentiality of dissolving, and (b) therefore, left to itself, it will dissolve necessarily in infinite time; and that (c) no effect can have a reality disproportionate to its cause, which is the reason why (d) no immortal reality can proceed from mortal reality without the intervention of a higher cause. (shrink)

In this paper I ask what subjectivity is and why it reveals man as person, as Karol Wojtyla and others claim. First, I explain subjectivity, which I also call interiority, in terms of self-presence, which is a mode of relating to myself from within myself. I am present to myself as subject, not only as object. Only I can encounter myself in the intimacy of my self-presence; no other person can be present to me as I am to myself. Next, (...) I further explore self-presence as weak or strong, calling strong self-presence recollected self-presence. Finally, I conclude by explaining how it is that recollected self-presence reveals man as person. Against the suspicion that this “turn to the subject” opens the door to a bad subjectivism, I argue that it entirely coheres with the realism of Christian philosophy. (shrink)

Scholars in recent decades have downplayed or completely denied that Evagrius Ponticus has a metaphysical system, instead suggesting that he merely borrows from various philosophies, particularly Stoicism, without a coherent system. In this paper, I propose a different perspective, arguing for a metaphysical and Platonic interpretation. I reconstruct Evagrius’s metaphysics systematically, relate its fundamentals to the environment of the late antique Medio- and Neoplatonic tradition, and show that by establishing the principles and structures of being, Evagrius indeed reveals himself to (...) be a metaphysician. (shrink)

Stein, in an attempt to fortify the realist position she fears is not satisfactorily established by a “moderate” Thomist view, champions the “essential” as a distinct kind of finite being by which units-of-meaning are. This pushes up wrinkles elsewhere in her ontology, however—particularly in difficulties that arise regarding the relationship between such essential being and the eternal being of God. These difficulties are brought to a head in Stein’s puzzling treatment of the divine ideas, which appear to have deep and (...) conflicting affinities with both the essential and the eternal. This article analyzes Stein’s contested consideration of the complex intersection of essential and eternal being in the divine ideas, unpacking her seemingly disparate assertions to bring to light a “dual countenance” according to which the divine ideas can be identified with essential being in one sense and eternal being in another—thereby maintaining intentional tension while resisting outright contradiction. (shrink)

The present essay considers the doctrine of the analogia entis that the late Baroque Scholastic thinker Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza develops. Central to Hurtado’s account is the notion of transcendence that he appropriates from Francisco Suárez’s transcendental explication of being. Being’s immanent containment within its own differences marked an important feature of Suárez’s own teaching, but his was a teaching with which Hurtado was left fundamentally unsatisfied. For Hurtado, being’s immanent transcendence makes it at once identical with itself but also, (...) paradoxically, diverse from itself. Still, though he finds reason to maintain that the common concept of being is in fact analogical, there remain concepts that, as Hurtado sees it, are truly univocal with respect to substance and accidents as well as God and creatures. Hurtado stands on the cusp, as it were, of the transition from the Jesuit Scholastic preference for analogy to the eventual wide-spread adoption of univocity. (shrink)

In this article, I examine two ways to approach Anselm’s argument: as a logical demonstration and as a persuasive piece of reasoning—one that notably persuaded Anselm himself. First, I follow Ermanno Bencivenga and argue that Anselm’s argument is a logical illusion. The deduction is not simply invalid, nor is it simply unsound; instead, it appeals to two mutually inconsistent sets of assumptions, each of which is rationally defensible. Consequently, the argument emerges as either valid or sound, but not both simultaneously. (...) I also argue that this peculiar piece of reasoning should not be classified as an “ontological” argument. When interpreted as a persuasive piece of reasoning, the argument appeals to experience—an experience of something alluded to by the phrase “something than which nothing greater can be thought.” Here, the logical apparatus primarily serves to channel and refine contemplation on this experience. (shrink)

Contemporary scholarship is divided over whether Anselm maintains a version of Eudaemonism. The debate centers on the question of whether the will for justice only moderates the will for happiness or, instead, provides a distinct end for which to act. Because of two key passages, various scholars hold that Anselm maintained elements of medieval Eudaemonism. In this article, I argue that Anselm separates morality from happiness, and I provide a sketch of his alternative view. First, I argue against some recent (...) perspectives that Anselm maintained Eudaemonism. To do so, I provide a non-Eudaemonist reading of the two key passages and show how Eudaemonist readings are lacking in different respects. Second, I examine what this argument means for Anselm’s understanding of happiness and moral obligation. While there are some Eudaemonist themes in Anselm’s thinking, he flatly denies and revises aspects of the system. (shrink)

In this article, the author explains some of the main ideas of his 2020 book on Anselm’s Proslogion and responds to several criticisms raised by Richard Campbell and others in reviews of the book. Finally, the author qualifies his case for the view that “that than which a greater cannot be thought” is Anselm’s single argument by drawing attention to a problematic aspect in a key passage in Anselm’s Responsio.

The essay examines Anselm’s De libertate arbitrii and De casu diaboli, arguing that the points made about the will and free choice are mirrored in the questions and struggles of the student interlocutor in the dialogues. In contrast to Plato and Aristotle, who want to bring us to see that virtue is the path to happiness, Anselm wants to show that we have free choice and are responsible for not choosing rightly (i.e., choosing justice for its own sake), and that (...) human beings are autonomous but also finite and flawed. For this kind of learning, not just reasoning but insight and self-examination are required, a process reflected in the very human will, willfulness, and weakness of the student as he engages with his teacher. (shrink)

According to the privation theory of evil, evil is nothing. In De casu diaboli Anselm’s student-interlocutor raises three arguments meant to show that evil is in fact something: the argument from fear (if evil is nothing, there can be no reason to fear it), the argument from signification (if evil is nothing, “evil” has no signification; if “evil” has a signification, evil is not nothing), and the argument from causal efficacy (if evil is nothing, how can it enslave the soul (...) to passion and cause it so much trouble?). I expound the account of language that Anselm uses to answer the argument from signification and the distinctions between justice and advantage and between positive and privative evils that he uses to answer the arguments from fear and from causal efficacy. I conclude that, by the time Anselm gets done with it, there is not much left of the privation theory. (shrink)

The argument from divine hiddenness (ADH) requires accepting that nonresistant nonbelief has existed or does exist. Yet some reasons for accepting nonresistant nonbelief are also reasons for accepting theistic-supporting and naturalism-falsifying evidentially compelling religious experiences (ECREs). Additionally, any reasons for rejecting ECREs can be used to reject nonresistant nonbelief, thus creating parity (at the very least) of epistemic warrant between the two claims. Consequently, accepting nonresistant nonbelief should lead to accepting ECREs. Accepting nonresistant nonbelief therefore indirectly threatens naturalism, atheism and (...) even the ADH itself. To any reason that can be given for rejecting ECREs there corresponds a parallel reason for rejecting nonresistant nonbelief. So it is irrational to accept the ADH while refusing to accept ECREs. Yet the existence of ECREs contradicts the ADH’s conclusion. So the ADH is self-defeating. (shrink)

This article examines Richard Lynch’s metaphysics and finds that he ultimately resolves his account of being in terms of essens—that which denotes the essential structure that a being (ens) has apart from existence. For Lynch, unlike many of his Jesuit contemporaries, existence is accidental to being. Yet, even if essens is distinct from existence, it is not altogether lacking being, but is accorded a certain kind of “essential being,” which is identified with the possible. Lynch thus seems to re-appropriate an (...) essentialist metaphysics that has antecedents in Avicenna and Henry of Ghent’s notion of esse essentiae. More proximate to Lynch is the Jesuit thinker Francesco Albertini, who takes Henry’s metaphysics and conveys it to Baroque Scholasticism. Lynch continues down that metaphysical path which, as we shall see, generated fierce controversy among late seventeenth-century Scholastics regarding the nature of creaturely possibility. (shrink)

Joshua Stuchlik’s /Intention and Wrongdoing/ provides a rigorous, comprehensive defense of the coherence of double-effect reasoning and its importance to moral philosophy. The book is essential reading for anyone doing research into double-effect reasoning or adjacent topics in philosophy and theology. It is accessible enough to be read by graduate students or advanced undergraduates, and will also be beneficial to specialists in the area. It ought to set the agenda for future research on these topics.

There are two competing models for how to understand Aquinas’s hylomorphic theory of material substances: the Simple Model, according to which material substances are composed of prime matter and substantial form, and the Expanded Model, according to which material substances are composed of prime matter, substantial form, and all of their accidental forms. In this paper, I first explain the main differences between these two models and show how they situate Aquinas’s theory of material substances in two different places within (...) the contemporary debate on concrete particulars, highlighting several advantages that Aquinas’s approach has over other varieties of substratum and bundle theory along the way. I then offer some reasons to think that the Expanded Model, as a theory of concrete particulars, is preferable. I argue that the Expanded Model avoids two major concerns for the Simple Model: the problem of extrinsicality, and the problem of too-many-possessors. (shrink)