Medieval Philosophy Research Articles

Tolle Lege: Essays on Augustine and on Medieval Philosophy in Honor of Roland J. Teske, SJ. Edited by Richard C. Taylor, David Twetten, and Michael Wren. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2011. 364 pages. $36.00.

Tolle Lege: Essays on Augustine and on Medieval Philosophy in Honor of Roland J. Teske, SJ. Edited by Richard C. Taylor, David Twetten, and Michael Wren. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2011. 364 pages. $36.00. - Volume 40 Issue 1

The Call of Things

This essay is a critique of actor-network theory (ANT), vitalism, and object-oriented ontology (OOO, or “speculative realism”), as advanced by Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, and Graham Harman and his colleagues. It focuses on the contradiction within these newer philosophies. Each holds that objects interact with one another in their own hidden ways, that objects are mysteriously indifferent to the human world, and that human subjectivity itself is just another object. Such a view is described as “posthuman” and is often called “flat ontology” (after Manuel DeLanda). The problem, however, is that each of these newer philosophies exhibits a very strong humanism and a rather traditional ontology in that they claim to hear things “speak,” recording things’ voices, registering their presence, and heeding their indifference. Indeed, this ontology is so traditional as to be just another instance of logocentrism and ontotheology, those ancient traditions in which things speak their being and call out yearningly to the observer. This essay contends that scholars working in these areas would recognize these problems if they adopted a more inclusive conception of the history of thought—a history more attentive to medieval philosophy and mysticism (Meister Eckhart and John Duns Scotus) as well as certain strains of modern idealism (Fichte) and vitalism (Bergson)— in which the resources of medieval mysticism are addressed. Failing to adopt a perspective genuinely open to the Middle Ages, these areas sustain a humanism that is anything but posthuman.

Erotic Perfectionism in Jewish Rationalist Philosophy

AbstractIt is a view commonly held that within the Jewish rationalist tradition epitomized by Baruch Spinoza the snares of erotic love are something that a rational person would actively seek to avoid. But is love a thing for fools? Is this truly the view of Spinoza and the rationalist tradition in medieval Jewish philosophy that he inherited, or can we find a way to conceive of erotic love that accords with the life of reason? In this article I will attempt to answer these questions within the context of an analysis of Isaac Bashevis Singer's “The Spinoza of Market Street” and by considering the erotic perfectionist ethic as it is expressed primarily in Saadia Gaon's Book of Beliefs and Opinions and Spinoza's Ethics. I will show that the significant points of convergence and divergence between these two thinkers serve to illuminate our thinking about erotic perfectionism. Both Saadia and Spinoza are careful, systematic Jewish thinkers developing ethical theories in which reason plays a pronounced role in cultivating a virtuous life. Consequently, like other ethicists for whom the virtues are key, both Saadia and Spinoza are intent on expressing the ideal human conduct of the moral exemplar. In just what way does erotic love fit into the ideal human life?

Barnwell, Michael. The Problem of Negligent Omissions: Medieval Action Theories to the Rescue. Investigating Medieval Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2010. xvi+276 pp. $153.00 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBarnwell, Michael. The Problem of Negligent Omissions: Medieval Action Theories to the Rescue. Investigating Medieval Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2010. xvi+276 pp. $153.00 (cloth).Bonnie KentBonnie KentUniversity of California, Irvine. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 93, Number 2April 2013 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/670792 Views: 12Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Be Still and See: Leisure, Labor, and Human Dignity in Josef Pieper and Blessed John Paul II

IN TWO CLASSIC ESSAYS, written in 1947 and published together in English translation under title Leisure, Basis of Culture, (1) German Roman Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper argues that source of human dignity is found in leisure, sphere of life free from work. He warns against recent philosophic and social tendencies that would reduce all human affairs to punctuated only with occasional necessary periods of rest or recreation. He claims that very survival of Western civilization depends upon an explicit and public restoration of respect for realm of human endeavor transcending notion of utility. Grounding his argument in what he sees as venerable and self-consistent tradition of philosophy and theology--epitomized in works of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, and undermined in key parts by modern philosophers such as Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Immanuel Kant--Pieper understands his position to be harmonious with that of Catholic Church's social magisterium, whose famous efforts to defend dignity of labor he interprets as demanding not so much exaltation of as such, but rather an extension of leisure to working classes. Though Pieper's has generally not received attention it merits, it has succeeded in deeply impressing numerous readers over years, includingT. S. Eliot, (2) C. S. Lewis, (3) and contemporary political and cultural minds such as Gilbert Meilaender, (4) Roger Scruton, (5) Ralph McInerny, (6) Roger Kimball, (7) James V. Schall, (8) and Thomas Hibbs. (9) Given Pieper's credibility among so many who share his concern for application of classical Christian intellectual patrimony to challenges of our day, it is interesting to consider one such prominent voice that, at least initially, does not appear to support Pieper's thesis. In 1981, Blessed John Paul II published encyclical letter Laborem Exercens. (10) In this writing, beginning from prior magisterial teachings on labor, John Paul seeks to stress more strongly than before centrality of not only to the modern 'social question,' but to good of human life as such. He describes as not only related to but even constitutive of man's vocation, dignity, and imaging of God in world, and defines so as to encompass seemingly all intellectual activities, which Pieper emphatically insists upon classifying as leisure and not work. In developing spirituality of work, John Paul goes so far as to call Jesus Christ a man of work and his Gospel the gospel of work, and seems to suggest that Christianity nullifies distinction between servile and liberal arts, whose recovery Pieper considers necessary condition for preservation of human freedom and flourishing (LE, Preface, nos. 1-3, 24-27; Leisure, II, IV). Can John Paul's interpretation of Christian wisdom on labor be squared with Pieper's reading of this same heritage? Or is former in effect refutation of latter? This paper will seek to answer this question through more detailed analysis of claims made by each author, considered in light of philosophic and theological tradition in which each sought to ground his thought. Pieper on Leisure and Threat of Total Work To grasp Pieper's case in defense of leisure and against progress of what he calls total work--a mode of existence in which overvaluation of leads to nearly complete neglect or suppression of leisure and goods it secures--we must first grasp precisely what he means by leisure and by work. Though in modern context leisure emerges as realm that must be preserved from imperious claims of Pieper draws his understanding of these terms from classical and medieval philosophy, which distinguishes between [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or otium--time spent on matters of intrinsic worth--and negative concept [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or negotium, signifying lack or deprivation of such leisure. …

Articulating (Ultimate) Commitments: Historical, Factual and Systematic Considerations

Acknowledging that religion forms a constitutive part of human life is recently confirmed by Gobekli Tepe , an archaeological site in Turkey, from which it appears that religion is basic to all the other cultural developments within human society. This opened the way to illustrate the interplay between ultimate commitments and theoretical articulations with reference to the a priori commitment to gradualism (continuous change) as found in the thought of Darwin and neo-Darwinism. Subsequently a related brief analysis is given of the ultimate commitment motivating the development of Greek philosophy and Medieval philosophy and theology. Distinguishing between conceptual knowledge and concept-transcending knowledge (concept and idea) brought the views of Plotinus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Dengerink and Tillich into the discussion. Negative theology is used to show how ontic conditions play a role in the articulation of ultimate commitments. The long-standing commitment to reason, embodied in the identification of thought and being, resulted in what the physicist, Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, calls faith in science which according to him is the governing religion of our time. The philosophy of science of the 20th century acknowledges that scholarly activities are co-conditioned both by theoretical commitments and s upra-theoretical ultimate commitments – the central dimension of human existence in which the antithesis between Christian and non-Christian convictions is seated. Wolters emphasizes that all aspects of created life and reality are in principle equally good, and all are in principle equally subject to perversion and renewal.

Medieval Philosophy and Philosophical Medievalism

All knowledge begins with the eyes, although the freshness of our earliest perceptions is soon clouded. Language and ideas are always preceded by our perceptual structuring of existence.Roberto Rossellini, 1973 1One can conceive of writing infinitely on past texts, or at least I can. Now, one could very well imagine a time when works in the traditional sense of the word would no longer be written, and the works of the past would be rewritten endlessly, in the sense of perpetually: there would be an activity of proliferating commentary, branching out, recurrent, which would be true writing activity of our time.2In 1971, in an interview, Roland Barthes was discussing the writing activity of his time. His idea of endlessly writing on past texts can surely be applied to the writing of history, but if one discusses today, it encompasses more than writing in the traditional sense. History, and also historiography, have entered a new realm, colliding with the sphere more than they ever have. Historiography in particular is and perpetually expanding, to put it in Barthes's words.This essay will discuss something that may be called public historiography. The sphere of is often times is aimed at the academy and scholars but not so much the larger public. Naturally, the can have access to more or less every piece of writing in a particular field of history, but it usually happens that non-specialists only encounter star titles and bestsellers, such as Robert Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman* Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life, 4 Charles C. Mann's 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, 5 or personal histories such as Mark Twain's Autobiography of Mark Twain.6 These histories are written with the specific purpose of reaching not only specialists but also the general public. Can one discuss, in this case, a particular type of historiography, a public historiography?This essay will define the problematic of public historiography in the context of medieval philosophy. How is medieval perceived in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries by the general public? Academic started, already at the beginning of the twentieth century, to see its audience diminish, as scholars started to discuss the of philosophy as well as the end of its addressability.7 What is the situation with the wider of today, then? Does philosophy, especially medieval, interest the anymore? Can medieval philosophy's public historiography still intrigue today's lay philosophers?Public has an advantage when compared to traditional historiography: it is immensely flexible. It is not only comprised of written material, but also of fictional literature, films, museum exhibits, and even television shows. Indeed, the of medieval abounds in material which, if studied, unveils how the understands and receives the past.Let us take as a fact for the moment and dive into a small portion of its material: the material of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that portrays medieval for every type of public. In other words, let us dive into the of philosophical medievalism.Medieval Philosophy: From its History(iography) to its Film(ography)Kant believed that whereas draws from the fountain of reason itself, historians do nothing more than tell the world what philosophers have drawn from that very fountain.8 For him, the history of was itself; therefore there was no need for historians to interfere with their stories. Was there really no need?This essay will touch upon figures such as Augustine of Hippo, Peter Abelard, al-Ghazali, Averroes, and Michel de Montaigne. How much is the history of their writings and their biographies needed when compared to their writings themselves? …

Destino, provvidenza e responsabilità morale nel pensiero antico e medievale e nella prima età moderna

P. d’Hoine / G. Van Riel (eds), Fate, Providence and Moral Responsibility in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Thought, Studies in Honour of Carlos Steel, Leuven Univeristy Press, Leuven 2014 (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy)

Preface

Preface Laura L. Knoppers (bio) In Paradise Lost, book 9, the tragic tension of the Fall is punctuated by black comedy as a newly fallen Adam, jocular and slightly tipsy, praises Eve’s sagacity, wishes that for one forbidden tree there had been ten, and eyes his comely bride with new interest: For never did thy Beautie since the dayI saw thee first and wedded thee, adorn’dWith all perfections, so enflame my senseWith ardor to enjoy thee, fairer nowThen ever, bountie of this vertuous Tree.1 As scholars have sometimes noted, Adam’s speech echoes an equally memorable moment in the Iliad, when a smitten Zeus propositions a seemingly reluctant Hera, who has in fact intentionally come perfumed, decked out, and armed with the girdle of Aphrodite to distract her husband from the battlefield of Troy.2 Like Zeus, Adam boasts of his newfound ardor, although unlike Zeus he does not praise his wife by cataloguing the other beautiful women who have aroused his desire and produced his numerous illegitimate offspring. This would not normally be the best way to flatter the jealous Hera, but she turns a blind eye, keeping her focus on getting Zeus into bed and, with the aid of Sleep, put away for the night. The humorous and parodic intertext of the duped and deceived Zeus and the scheming Hera helps to distinguish between the [End Page vii] Miltonic scenes of prelapsarian and postlapsarian lovemaking that C. S. Lewis famously objected were too much alike: “[Milton] has made the unfallen already so voluptuous and kept the fallen still so poetical that the contrast is not so sharp as it ought to have been.”3 The Olympian and Edenic husbands take their eye off the ball, so to speak: for Zeus, the field at Troy where Poseidon has come to the aid of Hera’s beloved Greeks, pinned back against their ships, and for Adam, the goal of obedience about which he has repeatedly reminded Eve, as well as the goal of being Eve’s guide and head. Neither marital pair retires decorously, whether to Olympus or to the Edenic bower; Zeus and Hera embrace atop Mount Ida, covered by a golden cloud, while Adam and Eve head for the nearest shady bank. This moment of heightened desire for Adam and Eve is also a moment of heightened intertextuality, of overlapping stories and storytellers, of breaking boundaries between sacred and profane spaces, of transgressive bodies and excessive desire. The episode serves in miniature to highlight some of the current topics in Milton scholarship with which the contributors to this volume engage. In this issue of Milton Studies, our authors bring fresh and probing insights to Milton and storytelling, embodied experience and transgression of boundaries, divine and human relations, and intertextual echo, allusion, and appropriation. The Milton that they examine is fully immersed in literary, cultural, and religious history: shaped by, appropriating, and reworking humoral physiology, monism, classical and medieval philosophy, Reformation theology, classical epic, religious and political polemic, and the Book of Common Prayer. The Milton explored in these essays looks back to the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Aristotle, Augustine, and Lucretius; his works jostle alongside those of such contemporaries as Swiss reformer Johannes Wollebius; tolerationists Lord Brook, Henry Robinson, and William Walwyn; and King Charles I himself; and they resonate forward to the writings of nineteenth century African-American women and of modern-day postsecularism. These Miltonic texts imitate, reprise, and challenge, but they are also marked by process, ambivalence, tension, and inconsistencies, [End Page viii] by angelic stories that do not add up, by gendered song that both expresses and endangers chastity, by boundaries meant to be transgressed, by inclusion that necessarily excludes, by iconoclasm that both tears down and builds up. Like the Homeric gods, the Miltonic narrative can move from reverence, dignity, and power to the absurd and satiric and back again. Opening our first section, “Storytelling and Authorship,” N. K. Sugimura looks at differing, even conflicting, models of causation, as the stories that angels tell in Paradise Lost move between a time-based, linear causation and an alternative Augustinian model of extratemporal causality. Timothy M. Harrison examines the...

What should you know about medieval philosophy?

What should you know about medieval philosophy?

Transformations in the Study of Medieval Philosophy Documented by the Proceedings of the SIEPM Congresses: A Quantitative Analysis

This article traces developments in the study of medieval philosophy through a quantitative-statistical analysis of the proceedings of SIEPM International Congresses in the period 1960 to 2012. The aim of the article is to chart general research trends and to identify the emphases of research activity as documented by the proceedings, which are treated as historical documents. To this end, every contribution has been classified from different perspectives (the language of the contributions, the linguistic area of the medieval authors or topics discussed in the contributions, the temporal frame of reference of the authors treated). In addition, we have determined the absolute frequency of the names of medieval authors in the titles of the articles as well as in the index of names. We present the data of each Congress individually, and we offer a series of comparative diagrams.

Christianity and Secular Reason ed. by Jeffrey Bloechl (review)

Reviewed by: Christianity and Secular Reason ed. by Jeffrey Bloechl Mihaela L. Florescu Christianity and Secular Reason, ed. Jeffrey Bloechl (University of Notre Dame Press 2012) 288 pp. Jeffrey Bloechl, a prolific writer in the field of philosophy of religion, has compiled an assemblage of essays addressing the intersection of secularism and theology as part of a series entitled Thresholds in Philosophy and Theology with Kevin Hart as co-editor of the series. The volume consists of nine essays, many of which were originally presented as outlines for a seminar organized by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross. The present volume begins with Adriaan T. Peperzak’s essay “How Rational Is the Heart? How Natural Is Reason? How Universal is Faith?”. Peperzak’s essay sets the tone for the rest to follow by examining the premises and direction of modern reason in the tradition of Plato, Augustine, and Bonaventura. By critiquing modern reason, Peperzak opens up the door to other elements, such as the role of emotion and the heart, the role of discipleship, and the role of communication, affection, and a return to faith. Peter J. Casarella’s “Naturae Desiderium: The Desire of Nature between History and Theology” explores medieval Christian thought and the idea of nature and soul in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by analyzing a new approach to medieval philosophy represented by the work of Steven P. Marrone and Andreas Speer. Casarella further examines John Milbank’s work “The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate Concerning the Supernatural” with a focus on St. Thomas Aquinas and the Italian Renaissance. Casarella wraps his survey with his own insightful conclusion on the nature of religion and secular reason. Kevin Corrigan’s “Athens, Jerusalem, and …: Overcoming the Exclusivist Paradigms of the Past” explores the relationship between the tools of classical Athens embodied by drama, poetry, and philosophy and the tools of religious Jerusalem in the forms of prophecy and faith. Corrigan dwells on Tertullian’s famous question of “what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?”, promoting the idea that the unfortunate split between these two approaches does not provide a complete view. One sphere cannot be substituted for another and neither can exist in a vacuum. Corrigan advocates a breakdown of the boundaries between the two spheres and an opening to both academic and non-academic approaches. In “Kant: Boundaries, Blind Spots, and Supplements,” Cyril O’Regan examines the legacy of Kant from pure reason to practical reason to judgment to a reading including a supplement of Christianity. O’Regan wraps his essay in an analysis of Derrida’s thoughts, considering religion within the bounds of reason alone as a colonizing monster that reaches all over the world through modern communication and technology and that causes cultural losses for non-European cultures. Jean-Yves Lacoste’s thesis in “On Knowing God through Loving Him: Beyond ‘Faith and Reason’” is based on Kierkegaard’s idea in Philosophical Fragments that knowing God means responding to love and secularity is the absence of this response to love. Lacoste ponders the dialectic between theology as a rational articulation of God as love, and philosophy as involving analysis of the phenomenality of freedom, hope, and faith. Further expanding on the subject of phenomenality, Kevin Hart’s “Phenomenality and Christianity” surveys Christianity as phenomenology through the works of Michel Henry [End Page 243] and the more conventional phenomenological studies of Levinas and Marion. Hart examines three different premises: there cannot be a phenomenology of Christianity, there can be a phenomenology of Christianity, and Christianity is already a phenomenology. Anthony J. Kelly explains the difficulties of secular logic with the event of the resurrection in his “Making the Resurrection Reasonable—or Reason ‘Resurrectional?’” Kelly looks at the resurrectional event through the phenomenological approach of Henry, Levinas, and Marion, using a similar approach as Kevin Hart in the previous essay. Kelly analyzes several aspects of theological phenomenology by looking at the resurrection as revelation, the resurrection as event, the resurrection as aesthetic form, the resurrection as “flesh,” and the resurrection and the Face of Christ; he follows this analysis with a short discussion of phenomenon as...

Avicenna’s Theory of Supposition

Abstract Although he does not have an explicit theory of supposition as is found in the works of Latin medieval philosophers, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) has two doctrines giving something equivalent: the threefold distinction of quiddity (triplex status naturae), corresponding to a division of simple, personal and material supposition, and his analyses of truth conditions for categorical propositions, where sentential context determines in part the reference of their terms. While he does address which individuals are being referred to by the universal terms used there, Avicenna concentrates more on the varied temporal durations of the predications being made. In Western terms, he has incorporated ampliation and restriction into the theory of supposition itself.

O vitae experientia dux. Die Rolle der Erfahrung im theoretischen und praktischen Weltbezug des frühen Humanismus und ihre Konsequenzen

Abstract The essay is divided into five sections: the first section gives a short overview of the history of “experience” – Greek empeiria, Latin experientia – which takes Aristotle’s theory of knowledge as its starting point. Within its theoretical framework, experience served as a crucial mediator between sensory perception and intellectual knowledge. In the philosophy of Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages the category of experience then was reduced to marginal importance under neo-Platonic and Arabic influences. At the dusk of the Middle Ages, however, it was rehabilitated and turned into a rallying cry by those who attempted to overcome late medieval philosophy. The following section describes the revaluation of experience as the fountain of real knowledge under the auspices of Petrarchism, which ran contrary to the formalistic teachings of the Scholastics. The remaining sections first deal with the role of the humanist concept of experience in the field of moral philosophy (specifically regarding the teaching of history). Secondly, it shows how experience worked as an incentive for field research in natural history and medicine and how it precipitated a revival of ancient Aristotelian empiricism within natural philosophy, thereby paving the way for the modern empirical science of nature.

Homenaje al profesor Jorge Ayala

This writing is an homage to Professor Jorge Ayala Martínez because of his many merits in the course of his life as a teacher in different centers, especially in the University of Zaragoza, and as an investigator. His speciality is Philosophy, above all the Spanish, Aragonese and Medieval Philosophy, and other matters. On the other hand his work as a secretary and editor of this magazine Medieval Philosophy Society (SOFIME) has been very praiseworthy and effective.

The Notion of Illumination in the Perspective of Ghazali's Mishkat al-Anwar

Illumination or knowledge through light is a central theme of medieval philosophy, especially in the Islamic tradition. This special kind of knowledge finds its source in the Qur´anic Verse of Light. Light became a major theme ofSufism and Islamic philosophy, the former being more closely to the Qur´anic source and the latter standing in the field of philosophy. In his Mishkāt alanwār, the Niche of Lights, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali attempts to expose themeaning of light and knowledge through light. The bridging figure of the “Proof of Islam” opens an original perspective on the matter: through combination of theory and through embedding the knowledge in Sufi practices. Ghazali´s perspective centers on the character of knowledge accessible through illumination that ultimately leads to an awareness of transcendence.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Synderesis in Late Medieval Philosophy and the Wittenberg Reformers

The present article discusses the concept of synderesis in the late medieval universities of Erfurt and Leipzig and the later developments in Wittenberg. The comparison between Bartholomaeus Arnoldi of Usingen in Erfurt and Johannes Peyligk in Leipzig shows that school traditions played an important role in the exposition of synderesis by the late medieval scholastic natural philosophers. However, Jodocus Trutfetter's example warns against overemphasizing the importance of the school traditions and reminds us of the manifold history of medieval discussions on synderesis, which were more or less familiar to many authors of this period. Finally, the diverse references to synderesis in the texts of Martin Luther, Johannes Bernhardi of Feldkirch and Philip Melanchthon reveal no uniform relationship with late medieval discussions but rather indicate various ways of adopting scholastic ideas and transforming them in the context of humanist and reformation thinking.

Reconciling the Manichaean Heresy in Mikhail Bulgakov's THE MASTER AND MARGARITA

In The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov uses one thematic thread—the Manichaean heresy—to unify the novel. To greatly oversimplify, Mani, a medieval philosopher, believed in the balance of li...

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors