In this article, I argue that St. Bonaventure’s account of angelic natural knowledge of singulars is a remote source for the doctrine of intuitive cognition as this doctrine is later articulated in the writings of John Duns Scotus and his contemporaries. The article begins by reminding the reader of the essential elementsof intuitive cognition, then surveys the treatment of angelic knowledge in Bonaventure’s predecessors and contemporaries, and ends with an analysis ofBonaventure’s own teaching. The point on which Bonaventure anticipates Scotus’s (...) teaching is his insistence that angels know truths about singulars by directlycognizing the existence and presence of singulars without receiving any species in the direct cognitive act. (shrink)

La prima parte dello studio presenta una panoramica sulla vita e l'opera di Wylton, l'indagine poi verte sulla struttura e il contesto dottrinale della quaestio in esame , ed infine sulla dottrina della distinzione formale qui esposta. L'ampia appendice presenta un'edizione della quaestio, tradita nel ms Vat. Borgh. 36.

In this book, John Rist aims to give a "fresh perspective" on the entire range of Augustine's thought so that Augustine may speak to us more readily. To the mind of the present reviewer, Rist has indeed succeeded in doing just that, although the contemporary perspective provided is largely one derived from the renewed interest taken by Anglo-American philosophers in the history of ancient and medieval philosophy; within the programmatic limits of such a perspective, the author has accomplished his task (...) masterfully. (shrink)

In this model critical edition, Professor John Magee of the University of Toronto has provided specialists in the philosophy of the Middle Ages with one of the classical texts of their period, Boethius’s De divisione. Surviving in over seventy manuscripts, and practically required reading both in monastic schools and universities, Boethius’s De divisione treats the modes of division commonly discussed in ancient philosophy: the per se divisions of genera into species, a whole into its parts, and a spoken sound into (...) its significates; the accidental divisions of a subject into its accidents; an accident into its subject, and accidents into other accidents. With its clear examples and carefully argued rationale for the manner of dividing and defining, the work remained a canonical text to the end of the Middle Ages when Aristotelian learning declined in importance. (shrink)

It is my pleasure to present here ten essays devoted to one of the greatest of medieval philosophers, St. Bonaventure. Quite often, Bonaventure is mentioned prominently within histories of medieval philosophy only to be subsequently ignored; his thought is usually deemed too mystical or theological for serious philosophical reflection and analysis. I am happy to say that the present collection shows Bonaventure’s thought as engaging worthwhile issues both in the medieval and in the contemporary context. I hope that this collection (...) may pique interest in the thought of the Seraphic Doctor, whose writings are now being translated into most modern languages, including English. But since the life and writings of Bonaventure are frequently not as familiar as those of his exact contemporary St. Thomas Aquinas, a brief overview of his life and writings are also in order prior to an overview of the essays presented here. (shrink)

It is my pleasure to present here ten essays devoted to one of the greatest of medieval philosophers, St. Bonaventure. Quite often, Bonaventure is mentioned prominently within histories of medieval philosophy only to be subsequently ignored; his thought is usually deemed too mystical or theological for serious philosophical reflection and analysis. I am happy to say that the present collection shows Bonaventure’s thought as engaging worthwhile issues both in the medieval and in the contemporary context. I hope that this collection (...) may pique interest in the thought of the Seraphic Doctor, whose writings are now being translated into most modern languages, including English. But since the life and writings of Bonaventure are frequently not as familiar as those of his exact contemporary St. Thomas Aquinas, a brief overview of his life and writings are also in order prior to an overview of the essays presented here. (shrink)

This lecture treats the theme of habitual cognition in both its commonplace and unusual senses in the tradition of ancient and medieval philosophy. Beginning with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and its teaching on habits, it traces how the ancient and medieval Peripatetic tradition received and developed the idea of habitual knowledge. The lecture then turns to three case-studies in which the notion of habitual knowledge is used in unusual senses: Aquinas’s treatment of self-knowledge; Scotus’s account of human awareness of the concept (...) of being; and Peter Auriol’s observations regarding memory and subconscious awareness in ordinary reptitive acts. Aquinas and Scotus seem to identify habitual knowledge in its unusual sense with the presence of an intelligible in the mind prior to actual cognition of that object. Auriol extends habitual knowledge to cover the cognitive state of someone performing an act without any conscious attention. The uses by both Aquinas and Scotus seem somewhat parallel to the use of habit or pre-conscious knowledge in Hume and Kant. (shrink)

In this remarkable book, Jorge Gracia has assembled a rich collection of essays treating the problem of individuation in what is perhaps its most critical period in the history of philosophy. Each of the essays is devoted to a particular philosopher or group of philosophers whose work is chosen for consideration either for its originality or its influence on the development of theories of individuation; all but a few of the essays are authored by scholars who are the leading experts (...) on the subjects considered in their essays. The entire collection of essays is, moreover, prefaced with a masterful and succinct introduction to the problem of individuation, crafted by Gracia himself, which provides the reader unfamiliar with the problem of individuation a conceptual framework for approaching the study of the philosophers surveyed in the book. It is, indeed, a book which unites both historical scholarship and philosophical acumen so as to provide readers with "an introductory, selective account of the major developments in the period". (shrink)

In this second edition of his critically acclaimed Introduction to Medieval Logic, Alexander Broadie has once again given general readers a clear and concise account of two fundamental areas of medieval logic: the theory of terms and the theory of consequences. Confining himself, in the main, to the major developments in logic from 1250 to 1500, Broadie presents medieval logic in a way that is more systematic than historical; yet his approach is remarkable for the manner in which it manages (...) to convey material of an extremely technical nature in nontechnical prose. (shrink)

In this second revised edition of his now classic history of thirteenth-century philosophy, the late Canon Van Steenberghen has given philosophers and historians of philosophy a masterful restatement of his fundamental outlook on thirteenth-century philosophy. Drawing upon the research of a lifetime and fully cognizant of recent contributions to the field, Van Steenberghen defends in a combative and engaging style the soundness of his interpretations and his historical categorizations, while tracing the development of thirteenth-century thought in a series of chapters (...) devoted to its chief figures and movements. Although one may question his method of organizing parts of thirteenth-century philosophy or his reading of a given philosophical author or movement, the erudition of the author, prominently displayed in his command of the primary and secondary literature bearing on each topic treated, is probably unmatched by any living historian of medieval philosophy. (shrink)

In this brief volume, Alexander Broadie makes available to the philosophical public a valuable, if succinct, account of late Scholastic epistemology. Focusing his attention on eight philosopher-theologians who taught at Paris around 1500 A.D., Broadie presents their discussions of notions and objects, modes of sense and intellectual cognition, and theories of apprehension, judgment, and assent. Throughout the entire work, Broadie amply demonstrates his command both of the historical sources relevant to his topic and the philosophical and logical issues with which (...) those sources are concerned. (shrink)

While working on various medieval philosophers, I have noticed an affinity between their remarks on the reasonableness of accepting propositions that are not matters of proof and strict deduction and St. John Henry Newman’s remarks that we accept unconditionally and rightly everyday ordinary propositions without calibrating them to demonstrable arguments. In particular, Cardinal Matthew of Aquasparta and Blessed John Duns Scotus both claim there is a sense in which assent to everyday propositions is tantamount to knowledge, even though there is (...) no adequate argumentation or demonstrative reasoning compelling us to assent to such propositions. Newman’s distinction between notional and real apprehension of propositions, notional and real assents, and his insistence on the existence of real assents to propositions that are not necessarily proved, or in some cases provable, seem, at first glance, a case parallel to that of the medieval philosophers we have mentioned. (shrink)

In this preliminary volume of the forthcoming edition of Richard Fishacre’s opus magnum, his Commentary on the Sentences, Professor Long and Dr. O’Carroll review in an informative and engaging manner Fishacre’s life and writings. Composed of five chapters supported by a substantial bibliography and graced with an appendix, the volume treats successively Fishacre’s life, painstakingly reconstructed from local archival, episcopal, and royal records, the range of his writings, the scope of the Sentences in particular, and the manuscripts in which that (...) work is preserved as well as the general editorial principles for the edition. (shrink)

In this remarkably ambitious book, Robert Pasnau has sought to trace out the story of medieval epistemology during its formative years, 1250 to 1350, and to draw conclusions both regarding the tenability of views advanced during the High Middle Ages and regarding the relation of medieval epistemology to early modern epistemology. In the history of cognitive theories, Pasnau discusses mainly the figures of Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Peter John Olivi, and William of Ockham, although brief treatments are also included (...) of Roger Bacon and William Crathorn. The conclusions that Pasnau draws are that none of the epistemological theories advanced by the principal authors treated is altogether satisfactory and that medieval epistemology provides a direct antecedent to early modern epistemology since, on Pasnau’s reading, even the cognitive theory of a figure such as Aquinas relies on a kind of representationalism. (shrink)

In this slim volume, Klocker intends to offer a different and more sympathetic reading of Ockham's philosophical and theological ideas than that afforded by what Klocker terms the "traditional view." According to the latter view, chiefly found in the writings of Etienne Gilson and Anton Pegis, Ockham's thought is fundamentally skeptical, a medieval precursor of the philosophical skepticism of Hume in the eighteenth century. Klocker proposes instead to present Ockham's thought as inspired by the condemnations of 1270 and 1277 and (...) concerned, as were the authors of the condemnatory documents, to preserve the freedom of the Christian God. Accordingly, the central thesis of this book is that the unity in the often negative and critical thought of Ockham is the constructive goal of articulating a philosophical vision of the universe in which the freedom of God both to create the universe and to intervene for His own purposes in the created order is assured. (shrink)

Timothy B. Noone - The Light of Thy Countenance: Science and Knowledge of God in the Thirteenth Century - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 258-259 Book Review The Light of Thy Countenance: Science and Knowledge of God in the Thirteenth Century Steven P. Marrone. The Light of Thy Countenance: Science and Knowledge of God in the Thirteenth Century. 2 Vols. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. x + 611. Cloth, $90.00. In this, the (...) most complete study of the tradition of divine illumination ever produced in English, Steven Marrone has set the standard for further studies in thirteenth-century epistemology as well as inaugurated a revival in the historiographical significance of philosophical schools for analyzing medieval thought. He conducts his investigation of thirteenth-century epistemology by focusing upon eleven figures seen as belonging.. (shrink)