This chapter contains sections titled: Hugh's overall vision Sources Division of the sciences Biblical interpretation God Creation Providence and evil Human nature and ethics Salvation Spiritual teachings Influence and importance.

Cette contribution s’intéresse à la position problématique des arts mécaniques dans les systèmes médiévaux du savoir. Remplaçant la position secondaire assignée aux arts mécaniques du début du Moyen Âge, les solutions proposées par Hugues de Saint-Victor et Gundissalinus eurent une influence forte durant le XIIIe s. Alors que l’intégration des arts mécaniques dans le système de connaissance de Saint-Victor trahit leurs positions encore accessoires vis-à-vis de la considération des arts libéraux, Gundissalinus propose deux principales nouveautés. D’un côté il (...) place les arts mécaniques aux côtés de l’alchimie et des arts de prédiction et de magie. D’un autre côté cependant, utilisant la théorie avancée par Avicenne, il subordonne ces « sciences naturelles » à la philosophie naturelle elle-même, établissant ainsi une architecture du savoir plus vaste et plus organisée hiérarchiquement. Notre contribution examine les implications découlant de ces développements ainsi que leur réception à Paris durant le XIIIe s., soulignant la pertinence des solutions proposées par Gundissalinus dans les discussions qui ont suivi, concernant la structure de la connaissance humaine. (shrink)

Hugh of St. Victor’s De arrha animae, the spiritual classic by one described as the ‘second Augustine’, needs no commendation; any work which brings it to the notice of a wider public is to be welcomed. Dr. Herbert has given us a clear translation which reads easily, though certain phrases betray its American origin. The introduction is a competent compilation of the available material on the author, his doctrine, and his work. There are occasional notes to the text (...) itself, which is based on the critical edition. The work is pleasantly produced and well printed. (shrink)

Hugh of St. Victor’s De arrha animae, the spiritual classic by one described as the ‘second Augustine’, needs no commendation; any work which brings it to the notice of a wider public is to be welcomed. Dr. Herbert has given us a clear translation which reads easily, though certain phrases betray its American origin. The introduction is a competent compilation of the available material on the author, his doctrine, and his work. There are occasional notes to the text (...) itself, which is based on the critical edition. The work is pleasantly produced and well printed. (shrink)

This is a discussion of self-knowledge in Hugh of St. Victor. It will yield the following three systematic results. First, it will be shown that there is a clear sense in which human self-knowledge is knowledge of one’s own rationality, and therefore knowledge of the proper object of one’s rational capacities (dunameis meta logou). Second, a distinction will be drawn between perfect and imperfect self-knowledge. Third, it will turn out that under conditions of perfect self-knowledge, all our rational (...) capacities would work like our capacity for perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

It might be surprising to find in a journal of contemporary philosophy a text that is mostly about Hugh of St. Victor. The hermeneutic question, however, did not begin only yesterday. While this question has its actual sources in Origen and Saint Augustine, it is in the Didascalicon or The Art of Reading by Hugh of St. Victor that it first finds its clearest formulation and its most methodical development. This “hidden source of hermeneutics” allows for (...) a questioning of the foundations of the hermeneutics of the text from its outset, and also for a return of hermeneutics, or better to turn it, to its primordial origin: a hermeneutics of the “world” or of “creation” [ liber mundi ], rather than of the “text” and of “Scripture” [ liber Scripturae ]. A “Catholic” hermeneutics of “the body and the voice” should, in my opinion, take the place of the “Protestant” hermeneutics of “the meaning of the text” and the “Jewish” hermeneutics of the “body of the letter”. This thesis, which is stated and developed in my book Crossing the Rubicon, has its roots and justification in this historical essay on Hugh of St. Victor. (shrink)

The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor encourages the study of many disciplines in order for the soul to acquire knowledge that aids in the restoration of human nature. However, according to Hugh's epistemology much of the acquired knowledge depends upon sensory qualities internalized as images which distract the soul and cause it to degenerate from its original unity. This essay explores the tension between Hugh's educational optimism and Hugh's epistemological pessimism. After considering and rejecting (...) two unsuccessful strategies the soul might pursue for avoiding degeneration and distraction, we shall utilize Hugh's non-representational conception of cognition to develop a plausible intellectual strategy. We shall also build upon some of Hugh's remarks about music to sketch a model of self-knowledge as a kind of proportionality in the soul. (shrink)

Hugh of Saint Victor was an incredibly influential philosopher and theologian in 10th century France-his eloquence and writing earning him fame exceeding even that of St. Bernard. Yet despite his medieval celebrity, Hugh remains incredibly understudied in contemporary academica. Paul Rorem offers a basic introduction to Hugh's theology, through a comprehensive survey of his works. Drawing his evidence not only from Hugh's own descriptions of his work but from the earliest manuscript traditions of his writings, (...) Rorem organizes and presents his corpus within a tri-part framework, treating each of Hugh's major works in its appropriate place, and orienting the reader to its contents, as well as its location in Hugh's overarching program of theological pedagogy. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that the Twelfth Century spiritually -oriented texts present an important, but often neglected instance of natural theology. My analysis will show that in the texts of Hugh of St. Victor and his student Richard of St. Victor we find a Christian Neo-Platonist variant of natural theology. The elements of natural theology form a central part of their larger spiritual programmes, which in turn are meant to guide the human being in her (...) ascent into divine realities and thereby offer immediate experience of the presence of God. I will give special attention to Hugh’s treatise _De Tribus Diebus_, as it explores both the manifestations of the Trinity in the created world as well as the beauty of all created objects. Hugh’s account will be supplemented by an exposition of Richard’s idea of experience as a vital means for all knowing. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Søren Kierkegaard's prefatory editorial remark in Practice in Christianity about resorting to and making use of grace has a medieval inheritance, which stems from his reading of Hugh of St Victor (1096–1142). Rather than grounding Kierkegaard's remark exclusively within the Lutheran tradition, I suggest that the medieval inheritance of the relationship between operative and cooperative grace contributed to a theological development in Kierkegaard's view of sanctification. Moreover, Kierkegaard's journal entries prior to the (...) publication of Practice in Christianity provide the connection to Hugh of St Victor's theology of sanctification. I briefly survey the development of Kierkegaard's view of grace and examine Kierkegaard's commentary on Hugh of St Victor's Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Then, I survey Hugh's distinction between restorative and cooperative grace against the wider backdrop of his theology of sanctification to highlight a structural affinity with Kierkegaard's writings. My aim is to identify and illuminate this unexplored Catholic source of Kierkegaard's distinction between grace and works that indicates a non-competitive relationship between divine and human agency. (shrink)

_From Knowledge to Beatitude _is a collection of original essays on the intersection between Christian theology and spiritual life primarily in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially in the Parisian School of St. Victor, which honors the influential work of Grover A. Zinn, Jr. Written by distinguished scholars from various fields of medieval studies, these essays range from the study of the exegetical school of twelfth-century St. Victor and medieval glossed Bibles to the medieval cultural reception of women (...) visionaries, preachers, and crusaders. Although focused on St. Victor, they provide analyses of Christian themes up to the modern period. A common thread is Zinn’s careful attention to the connections between medieval spirituality and biblical studies, the origin of these ideas, and their lasting influence in Christian culture. The essays take us from Hugh of St. Victor’s foundation—material culture—to the “beatitude” of a wider understanding of Victorine culture and its lasting legacy. This volume is a fitting tribute to a generous scholar, teacher, and mentor. It will appeal to historians, scholars of religion and theology, and art historians. "_From Knowledge to Beatitude_ serves a need and fills an important gap in the Victorine tradition, the history of medieval exegesis, and medieval studies. The volume also honors the contributions of Grover Zinn, an important medieval scholar and teacher. It serves as a model for doing research and generalizing in the field of medieval studies and demonstrates how the last generation and the current generation of medieval scholars have plowed through difficult primary and secondary sources to make the medieval traditions clear." —_Philip Krey, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia_. (shrink)

This volume offers an English translation of John of St. Thomas's Cursus theologicus I, question I, disputation 2. In this particular text, the Dominican master raises questions concerning the scientific status and nature of theology. At issue, here, are a number of factors: namely, Christianity's continual coming to terms with the "Third Entry" of Aristotelian thought into Western Christian intellectual culture - specifically the Aristotelian notion of 'science' and sacra doctrina's satisfaction of those requirements - the Thomistic-commentary tradition, and the (...) larger backdrop of the Iberian Peninsula's flourishing "Second Scholasticism." In this latter context, John of St. Thomas applies the theological principles of Thomas Aquinas to the Scholastic disputes preoccupying Thomist, Franciscan, and Jesuit theologians, such as Cajetan, Bañez, Luis de Molina, Vazquez, Suárez - to name only a few - in a tour de force of theological thinking throughout the entire period of Scholasticism. In the process - and not insignificantly - the status quaestionis of theology's scientific character is clearly framed and answered according to John's satisfaction. Key to John of St. Thomas's resolution of the question is his understanding of the continuity of the power of human reason with the super-intelligibility of divine revelation spelled out in terms of what he calls "virtual revelation." This text presented in this volume is a quintessential example of the deep and abiding harmony that flourished between faith and reason as well as grace and nature within the golden era of Baroque Scholasticism. (shrink)

History from Loss challenges the common thought that 'history is written by the winners' and explores how history makers in different times and places across the globe have written histories from loss, even when this has come at the threat to their own safety. A distinguished group of historians from around the globe offer an introduction to different history-makers' lives and ideas, and important extracts from their works which highlight various meanings of loss: from physical ailments to social ostracism, exile (...) to imprisonment, and from dispossession to potential execution. Throughout the volume consideration of the information 'bubbles' of different times and places helps to show how information has been weaponised to cause harm. In this way, the text helps to put current debates about the biases and weaponization of platforms such as social media into global and historical perspective. In combination, the chapters build a picture of history from loss which is global, sustained, and anything but a simple mirror of history made by victors. The volume also includes an Introduction and Afterword which draw out the key meanings of history from loss, and which offer ideas for further exploration. History from Loss provides an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and general readers who wish to put current debates on bias, the politicization of history, and threats to history makers into global and historical perspective. (shrink)

The two extant Old English lives of the virgin-martyr St. Margaret of Antioch, in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library 303, reflect the specific interest in this saint that appears to have developed in England in the late Anglo-Saxon period. More broadly, they are representative of the widely evident interest in this period in making hagiographical material available, in prose, to vernacular audiences. Although Ælfric played the leading part in that enterprise, numerous translations (...) and adaptations not by him also survive from late Anglo-Saxon England, presenting a wide range of approaches to inherited material. In that connection it should be noted that there is no mention of St. Margaret in the writings of Ælfric, nor does the passio of St. Margaret appear in the Latin legendary believed to have served as Ælfric's principal source for his saints' lives. (shrink)

John Locke professed Christianity, and his The Reasonableness of Christianity and A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul relate mainly to human nature. Locke acknowledged two sources of human knowledge: Nature and Scripture. Locke adhered to a high anthropology: human nature was designed to be immortal and incorruptible, and mankind's destiny is to be raised to a state of immortal bliss to dwell in a transfigured spiritual body. His reflections on power are also relevant. The distinction between (...) active and passive power is used to comprehend the whole of being: God's power is purely active and originating; material bodies seem only to exhibit passive power; and in between are created spirits. Locke's reflections on personal identity are also apropos, most especially his idea of the self as consciousness. His interpretations of Scripture display a remarkable canniness notable particularly in his high anthropology and his messianism. (shrink)

Khoryev regards Petersburg, a collection of essays by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, published in 1976, as a windup of the writer’s complex ties with Russian culture and literature, which he was widely known to have loved and known in depth. It is a book where, through the legendary city on the river Neva, Iwaszkiewicz takes a look at a number of essential issues of Russian history and its ties with the history of Poland and the Polish people. Iwaszkiewicz avoids unequivocal judgments, noticing (...) the antinomian nature of St. Petersburg, seen as a being full of contrast but at the same time the center of revolutions and despotism, a manifestation of imperial power and the highest achievements of sophisticated art. These contrasts reveal, in Khoryev’s opinion, the multi-faceted and fullest picture of St. Petersburg and its individuality: so mysterious, overpowering and unique. (shrink)

Despite its enormous practical success, many physicists and philosophers alike agree that the quantum theory is full of contradictions and paradoxes which are difficult to solve consistently. Even after 90 years, the experts themselves still do not all agree what to make of it. The area of disagreement centers primarily around the problem of describing observations. Formally, the so-called quantum measurement problem can be defined as follows: the result of a measurement is a superposition of vectors, each representing the quantity (...) being observed as having one of its possible values. The question that has to be answered is: how this superposition can be reconciled with the fact that in practice we only observe one value. How is the measuring instrument prodded into making up its mind which value it has observed? Among some alternatives to resolve the above QM measurement problem, a very counterintuitive one was suggested by Hugh Everett in his 1955 Princeton dissertation, which was subsequently called the Many-Worlds Interpretation of QM (MWI). In this paper we will not discuss all possible scenarios to solve the measurement problem, but we will only shortly discuss Everett’s MWI, because it has led to heated debates on possibility of multiverses, beyond the Universe we live in. We also discuss two alternatives against MWI proposal: (a) the so-called scale symmetry theory, (b) the Maxwell-Dirac isomorphism. In last section, we also discuss shortly MWI hypothesis from philosophical perspective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction by Anthony J. LisskaV. Bradley LewisAnthony J. Lisska. Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. xv + 320. Paper, $24.95.This volume aims to provide an explication of the natural law theory of St. Thomas Aquinas “consistent with the expectation of philosophers in the analytic tradition” (10–11, 17). Accordingly, the author begins, in the first (...) three chapters, by reviewing the recent history of Anglo-American metaethics, aligning himself broadly with those critics of analytic ethics like G. E. M. Anscombe, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Finnis, Martha Nussbaum, and Henry Veatch, who have argued for a recovery of Aristotelian moral theory, against varieties of intuitionism, non-cognitivism, and neo-Kantianism. Lisska’s principal objective is to present a reconstructed natural law theory based primarily on Aquinas’s discussion in questions 90–97 of the prima secundae of the Summa theologiae (a translation of these questions is appended to the book). This he offers mostly in the fourth, fifth and eighth chapters of the book. The sixth chapter is a critique of John Finnis’s account of natural law and the seventh is an exposition of the views of Henry [End Page 526] Veatch. The ninth chapter presents some suggestions on how the author’s account can illuminate controversies over the grounding of human rights, and the tenth is a brief conclusion.The three introductory chapters consist mainly of a review and endorsement of the critics of academic ethics since Moore’s Prıncipia Ethıca. Having accepted arguments for the inadequacy of modern ethics, Lisska argues for the recovery of Aquinas’s views which he sees as in fundamental continuity with Aristotelian ethics (84, 89, 100, 102–105, 108, 134–36). His central thesis is that natural law is a “second-order inquiry” based on a realist metaphysics of the human person as defined by a set of dispositional properties, the realization of which constitutes Aristotelian eudaimonia and Thomistic beatitudo (17, 104–106, 131–37, 152–55, 186, 195–201). Moreover, Lisska contends that Aristotelian “eudaimonism” constitutes an adequate account of moral obligation: what he calls, after Veatch, “obligatory teleology” (107–109, 121, 202–205, 235).At the core of Lisska’s account, then, is a metaphysical dispute that pits Aristotelian essentialism against modern reductionist ontology. This metaphysical core is separated from any theological implications in the fifth chapter (especially 119–23, 137) and Lisska reinforces his metaphysical thesis by appealing to Saul Kripke’s discussion of natural kinds and the early work of Hilary Putnam (97–99, 125, 206–209). Given the centrality of metaphysical argument, a critique of Finnis’s theory goes without saying, and Lisska devotes a chapter to it, adding another to expound Henry Veatch’s contrary view.While this book undertakes an important effort to recover a workable natural law theory—especially in its commendable stress on metaphysical questions—it is, as a whole, less satisfactory than it might have been. A good part of this owes to the book’s abstraction from historical questions. No sustained attention is devoted to the problems that accompanied the reception of Aristotle by Christian theologians, nor to the place of natural law in Aquinas’s overall understanding of morality. The former point is not so surprising, given the book’s analytic concerns; the latter, however, carries more serious theoretical implications. Why is it, for example, that natural law takes up so little space compared to the questions on happiness, human acts, and the habits and virtues in the prima secundae, not to mention the detailed treatments of the virtues and vices in the secunda secundae? Similarly, where Aquinas stresses that natural law as law is directed to the common good (Iallae 90.2), Lisska treats it mostly as a guide to “self-realization.”This issue suggests the tensions between Aristotle and Aquinas, tensions that seem to show themselves precisely in Aquinas’s discussion of the very notion of natural law, a notion that has no equivalent in Aristotle. This question hangs over Lisska’s brief treatment of obligation, in particular, since that concept is also lacking explicit treatment in... (shrink)

Dallas Willard makes the claim that spiritual formation “refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.”1 Can this claim be substantiated and stand up to close scrutiny, or is Dallas Willard selecting an idea of his own fancy and making this the cornerstone of his understanding of spiritual formation? How can this claim be tested and anchored? In this article we (...) will seek to answer these questions by looking at the Apostle Paul in his function as spiritual director. Although it is patently anachronistic to speak of Paul as spiritual director, can we legitimately understand him in this role? We will propose a generative understanding of spiritual direction and then proceed to examine the Apostle Paul and his aims based on that generative understanding. We will also argue that at the core of Paul's functioning as a spiritual director lies a strong appeal to examine and imitate his life and character and to follow his ways. This appeal by Paul for others to imitate him is anchored in Paul's own imitation of Christ himself. Paul's call to imitation thus provides a window into discovering how Paul understood his role as spiritual director and also provides us the means to discern his goals in spiritual direction. (shrink)

Khoryev regards Petersburg, a collection of essays by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, published in 1976, as a windup of the writer’s complex ties with Russian culture and literature, which he was widely known to have loved and known in depth. It is a book where, through the legendary city on the river Neva, Iwaszkiewicz takes a look at a number of essential issues of Russian history and its ties with the history of Poland and the Polish people. Iwaszkiewicz avoids unequivocal judgments, noticing (...) the antinomian nature of St. Petersburg, seen as a being full of contrast but at the same time the center of revolutions and despotism, a manifestation of imperial power and the highest achievements of sophisticated art. These contrasts reveal, in Khoryev’s opinion, the multi-faceted and fullest picture of St. Petersburg and its individuality: so mysterious, overpowering and unique. (shrink)

Father Hugh P. O'Neill, professor of the Classics at St. Stanislaus Seminary, Florissant, gives us in this paper a few of the ways in which training in Logic can be of assistance to the grammarian. Father O'Neill's thoughts run in an original and thought-provoking vein, and we feel fortunate in being able to present his articlewhich may prove an added incentive to many.

The aim of this paper is to offer a version of the so-called conversational hypothesis of the ontogenetic connection between language and mindreading (Harris 1996, 2005; Van Cleave and Gauker 2010; Hughes et al. 2006). After arguing against a particular way of understanding the hypothesis (the communicative view), I will start from the justificatory view in philosophy of social cognition (Andrews 2012; Hutto 2004; Zawidzki 2013) to make the case for the idea that the primary function of belief and desire (...) attributions is to justify and normalize deviant patterns of behaviour. Following this framework, I elaborate upon the idea that development of folk psychological skills requires the subjects to engage in conversationally mediated joint and cooperative activities in order to acquire the conceptual capacity of ascribing propositional attitudes. After presenting the general version of the hypothesis, I present several testable sub-hypotheses and some psychological studies that give empirical plausibility to the hypothesis. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper Hugh Rayment-Pickard challenges Mark Bevir's assumption that Derrida does not care about historical or other kinds of truth. A consideration of Derrida's early work on Husserl shows deconstruction to be a kind of skepsis or epoche launched in search of the truth. Yet deconstruction reveals the truth as ‘undecidable’, which means that Derrida's commitment to the truth must take the form of ‘faith’. The second part of the paper considers an example of (...) definite intentional meaning given in Mark Bevir's Logic: Petrarch's ascent of Mont Ventoux. On examination, Petrach's motivation can be seen to be radically divided between secular and religious concerns, a split vividly illustrated in his imaginary dialogue with St Augustine: The Secret. Finally, Rayment-Pickard looks briefly at Derrida's own dialogue with St Augustine, ‘Circumfession’, which also argues that human intentions are irreducibly complex and plural. (shrink)