This book offers a brief, accessible introduction to the thought of Boethius. After a survey of Boethius's life and work, Marenbon explicates his theological method, and devotes separate chapters to his arguments about good and evil, fortune, fate and free will, and the problem of divine foreknowledge. Marenbon also traces Boethius's influence on the work of such thinkers as Aquinas and Duns Scotus.

This book offers a major reassessment of the philosophy of Peter Abelard (1079-1142) which argues that he was not, as usually presented, a predominantly critical thinker but a constructive one. By way of evidence the author offers new analyses of frequently discussed topics in Abelard's philosophy, and examines other areas such as the nature of substances and accidents, cognition, the definition of 'good' and 'evil', virtues and merit, and practical ethics in detail for the first time. The book also includes (...) a discussion of Abelard's life and works, and considers problems of chronology and canon (including the question of the authenticity of the correspondence with Heloise). '... not only an outstanding exposition of Abelard's philosophy, but a work that opens up for specialists and non-specialists the world of twelfth-century thought.' The Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

_Abelard in Four Dimensions: A Twelfth-Century Philosopher in His Context and Ours_ by John Marenbon, one of the leading scholars of medieval philosophy and a specialist on Abelard's thought, originated from a set of lectures in the distinguished Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies series and provides new interpretations of central areas of Peter Abelard's philosophy and its influence. The four dimensions of Abelard to which the title refers are that of the past, present, future, and the present-day philosophical culture in (...) which Abelard's works are still discussed and his arguments debated. For readers new to Abelard, this book provides an introduction to his life and works along with discussion of his central ideas in semantics, ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion. For specialists, the book contains new arguments about the authenticity and chronology of his logical work, fresh evidence about Abelard’s relations with Anselm and Hugh of St. Victor, a new understanding of how he combines the necessity of divine action with human freedom, and reinterpretations of important passages in which he discusses semantics and metaphysics. For all historians of philosophy, it sets out and illustrates a new methodological approach, which can be used for any thinker in any period and will help to overcome the divisions between "historians" based in philosophy departments and scholars with historical or philological training. "This searching, thorough, and original study examines Abelard's past, present, and future, and our present. John Marenbon offers the best enquiry yet made into the sequence of Abelard's writings and their chronology, followed by an incisive and highly illuminating account of the various, successive formulations of his 'unpopular argument' to the effect that God cannot do otherwise than as he does. This is an accomplished work which will be eagerly read and hugely appreciated by students and their teachers on courses of philosophy, theology, and history." —_David Luscombe, University of Sheffield_. (shrink)

Introduction to Medieval Philosophy combines and updates the scholarship of the two highly successful volumes Early Medieval Philosophy (1983) and Late Medieval Philosoph y (1986) in a single, reliable, and comprehensive text on the history of medieval philosophy. John Marenbon discusses the main philosophers and ideas within the social and intellectual contexts of the time, and the most important concepts in medieval philosophy. Straightforward in arrangement, wide in scope, and clear in style, this is the ideal starting point for students (...) beginning the subject. (shrink)

Boethius, though a Christian, worked in the tradition of the Neoplatonic schools, with their strong interest in Aristotelian logic and Platonic metaphysics. He is best known for his Consolation of Philosophy, which he wrote in prison awaiting execution. His works also include a long series of logical translations, commentaries and monographs and some short but densely-argued theological treatises, all of which were enormously influential on medieval thought. But Boethius was more than a writer who passed on important ancient ideas to (...) the Middle Ages. The essays here by leading specialists, which cover all the main aspects of his writing and its influence, show that he was a distinctive thinker, whose arguments repay careful analysis and who used his literary talents in conjunction with his philosophical abilities to present a complex view of the world. (shrink)

This Handbook is intended to show the links between the philosophy written in the Middle Ages and that being done today.

This study is the first modern account of the development of philosophy during the Carolingian Renaissance. In the late eighth century, Dr Marenbon argues, theologians were led by their enthusiasm for logic to pose themselves truly philosophical questions. The central themes of ninth-century philosophy - essence, the Aristotelian Categories, the problem of Universals - were to preoccupy thinkers throughout the Middle Ages. The earliest period of medieval philosophy was thus a formative one. This work is based on a fresh study (...) of the manuscript sources. The thoughts of scholars such as Alcuin, Candidus, Fredegisus, Ratramnus of Corbie, John Scottus Eriugena and Heiric of Auxerre is examined in detail and compared with their sources; and a wide variety of evidence is used to throw light on the milieu in which these thinkers flourished. Full critical editions of an important body of early medieval philosophical material, much of it never before published, are included. (shrink)

Later Medieval Philosophy (1150-1350) provides an introduction to philosophy in the Latin West between 1150 and 1350. Part I describes the medieval thinker's intellectual and historical context, by examining the structure of courses in the medieval universities, the methods of teaching, the forms of written work, and the translation and availability of ancient Greek, Arab, and Jewish philosophical texts. Part II examines the nature of intellectual knowledge by explaining the arguments given by Aristotle, his antique commentators, and the Arab philosophers, (...) Avicenna and Averroes. (shrink)

Peter Abelard was one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the twelfth century, famed for his skill in logic as well as his romance with Heloise. His Collationes - or Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher, and a Jew - is remarkable for the boldness of its conception and thought.

No online description is currently available.

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers—philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci—tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired (...) Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. (shrink)

According to Alain de Libera, Boethius replies to Porphyry’s famous three questions about universals by using a theory of abstraction. Universals can exist only in thought, although they derive, through abstraction, from what is common in things. I contrast this “neutral abstractionism” with a “realist abstractionism” — the view that it is only by conceiving universals that humans are able properly to grasp the form or likeness according to which particulars belong to a given species or genus. I try to (...) show that, in his second commentary on the Isagoge, Boethius is uncertain which sort of abstractionism to prefer, but in the Consolation he opts for realist abstractionism. (shrink)

My article surveys philosophical discussions of Abelard over the last twenty years. Although Abelard has been a well-known figure for centuries, his most important logical works were published only in the twentieth century and, so I argue, the rediscovery of him as an important philosopher is recent and continuing. I concentrate especially on work that shows Abelard as the re-discoverer of propositional logic (Chris Martin); as a subtle explorer of problems about modality (Simo Knuuttila, Herbert Weidemann) and semantics (Klaus Jacobi); (...) as a metaphysician before the reception of Aristotle's Metaphysics (Peter King); and as an ethical thinker who echoes the Stoics (Calvin Normore) and anticipates Kant (Peter King). (shrink)

Si Dieu prévoit toute chose, rien n’arrive sauf par nécessité car il y a incompatibilité entre la certitude de la connaissance et la contingence. Une des réponses classiques est celle que la philosophie analytique nomme « la solution boécienne » ou « de Thomas d’Aquin » et qui repose sur l’idée que Dieu est atemporellement éternel.Dans ce livre, John Marenbon démontre que les théories de ces deux auteurs ne correspondent pas à cette solution dans le sens où, selon eux, la (...) connaissance est relative aux sujets connaissants. Deux chapitres sont consacrés aux solutions du problème de la prescience avec, pour guides, Pierre Abélard, Guillaume de Conches, Pierre Lombard, Guillaume d’Auxerre, et d’autres. Dans le chapitre final, l’auteur pose la question de savoir jusqu’à quel point les techniques de l’analyse pratiquée par la philosophie anglo-saxonne servent à découvrir ce que les philosophes du Moyen Âge ont véritablement pensé. (shrink)

William of Ockham is known to be one of the major figures of the late Middle Ages. The scope and significance of his doctrine of human thought, however, has been a controversial issue among scholars in the last decade, and this book presents a full discussion of recent developments. Claude Panaccio proposes a richly documented and entirely original reinterpretation of Ockham's theory of concepts as a coherent blend of representationalism, conceptual atomism, and non reductionist nominalism, stressing in the process its (...) special interest for current discussions in philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The usual division of philosophy into 'medieval' and 'modern' may obscure very real continuities in the ideas of thinkers in the western and Islamic traditions. This book examines three areas where these continuities are particularly clear: knowledge, the mind, and language.

This article is currently available as a free download on ingentaconnect.

This special issue grew out of a small conference The Known & the Unknown: Exploring Twelfth-Century Philosophy, which was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, hosted by the Saxo Institute, and held at the University of Copenhagen in April 2018. Its central topic was the many, mostly unexplored, commentaries on Aristotle, Boethius, and Porphyry that constitute the key textual evidence for a fascinating phenomenon that, although it played a pivotal role in the philosophical revival of Western Europe, remains frustratingly underexplored to (...) this day: the logical schools of the twelfth century. The present introduction has two parts. In the first part, John Marenbon lays out the background to this special issue of Vivarium as a whole, explaining both what the philosophical project pursued by twelfth-century logicians was and how, and how far, the historical project of understanding it has progressed over the last two hundred years. In the second part, Heine Hansen briefly presents the issue and its contents. (shrink)

This book examines the medieval tradition of Aristotelian logic from two perspectives.

The discussion of sameness and difference in the three versions of the Theologia has been analyzed by a number of recent writers. Despite some disagreements, they concur that Abelard’s views are best expressed in the Theologia christiana and that he is putting forward a theory that—perhaps adapted—can help philosophers now in considering the material constitution of objects. By contrast, I argue that his views, which should be seen as developing and reaching their final form in the Theologia “scholarium,” are much (...) more closely linked than these scholars have thought to the particular theological problems involved in discussing the Trinity. (shrink)

“Problem of paganism” is my name for the set of questions raised for medieval thinkers and writers, and discussed by some of them (Abelard, Dante, and Langland are eminent examples), by the fact that many people—especially philosophers—from antiquity were, they believed, monotheists, wise and virtuous and yet pagans. In this paper, I argue that Boethius, though a Christian, was himself too much part of the world of classical antiquity to pose the problem of paganism, but that his Consolation of Philosophy (...) was an essential element in the way medieval writers saw and resolved this problem. In particular, because it was a text by an author known to be Christian which discusses philosophy without any explicitly Christian references, it opened up the way to treating texts by ancient pagan philosophers as containing hidden Christian doctrine. (shrink)

Volume 2 covers one of the richest eras for the philosophical study of religion. Covering the period from the 6th century to the Renaissance, this volume shows how Christian, Islamic and Jewish thinkers explicated and defended their religious faith in light of the philosophical traditions they inherited from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The enterprise of 'faith seeking understanding', as it was dubbed by the medievals themselves, emerges as a vibrant encounter between - and a complex synthesis of - the (...) Platonic, Aristotelian and Hellenistic traditions of antiquity on the one hand, and the scholastic and monastic religious schools of the medieval West, on the other. (shrink)

Several specialists illustrate the wide range of Britain's contribution to medieval philosophy. A number of the discussions throw new light on celebratedBritish medieval philosophers, such as Robert Grossetetste and John Duns Scotus. Others show the importance of less well-known thinkers such as Richard Fishacre, Richard Rufus and Thomas Wylton? The subjects of the papers range widely, both chronologically-from Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century to the political and ethical writers of fifteenth-century Oxford and Cambridge - and in method - (...) from philosophical analyses to manuscript studies. (shrink)

Compact but singularly well thought out material of a theological, logical, poetic as well as philosophical nature.

For many of us, the term 'medieval philosophy' conjures up the figure of Thomas Aquinas, and is closely intertwined with religion. In this Very Short Introduction John Marenbon shows how medieval philosophy had a far broader reach than the thirteenth and fourteenth-century universities of Christian Europe, and is instead one of the most exciting and diversified periods in the history of thought.Introducing the coexisting strands of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish philosophy, Marenbon shows how these traditions all go back to the (...) Platonic schools of late antiquity and explains the complex ways in which they are interlinked. Providing an overview of some of the main thinkers, such as Boethius, Abelard, al-Fârâbî, Avicenna, Maimonides, and Gersonides, and the topics, institutions and literary forms of medieval philosophy, he discusses in detail some of the key issues in medieval thought: universals; mind, body and mortality; foreknowledge and freedom; society and the best life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. (shrink)

A collection of essays written by pupils, friends and colleagues of Professor Peter Dronke, to honour him on his retirement. The essays address the question of the relationship between poetry and philosophy in the Middle Ages. Contributors include Walter Berschin, Charles Burnett, Stephen Gersh, Michael Herren, Edouard Jeauneau, David Luscombe, Paul Gerhardt Schmidt, Joe Trapp, Jill Mann, Claudio Orlandi and John Marenbon. It is an important collection for both philosophical and literary specialists; scholars, graduate students and under-graduates in Medieval Literature (...) and in Medieval Philosophy. (shrink)

The philosophy discussed in this volume constitutes the intellectual and philosophical ideas of the medieval era, from Aquinas and Anselm, the intellectual philosophy of the Judaic and Arabic traditions, the Twelfth Century Renaissance and the philosophical ideas associated with the emergence of the universities. This volume provides a broad and scholarly introduction to the major authors and issues involved in the philosophical discourse of the medieval era, as well as some original interpretations of the philosophical writings addressed. It includes a (...) glossary of technical terms and a chronological table of philosophical and other cultural events. (shrink)