Medieval Thinkers Research Articles

The History of the Development of Doctrines on Criminal Personality in the Period of Antiquity and the Middle Ages

The article is devoted to one of the actual topics of modern criminology and criminal law. The authors reveal the history of formation and development of the doctrines on the personality of the criminal in the period of antiquity and the Middle Ages. The authors used works of ancient and medieval thinkers, philosophers and representatives of religion during the study, which allowed them to explore this topic more deeply. As an example, they cited the statements, opinions and positions of such thinkers as Aristotle, Plato, Democritus, F. Aquinas and others. A comparative analysis of the evolution of the doctrine of criminal personality in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages was carried out, which helped to formulate some conclusions on the results of the study. The authors determined the purpose, subject and relevance of the study, used the necessary methods of cognition.

What’s the Matter with Angels? Angelic Materiality and the Possible Intellect in Some Early Fourteenth-century Franciscans

While the question of whether angels are composed of matter and form, may seem, to the modern reader, somewhat odd, medieval thinkers saw it as a genuine puzzle. On the one hand, angels are purely intellectual creatures, which, according to some (perhaps most famously Aquinas), seems to imply that they are altogether devoid of materiality. On the other hand, however, angels are capable of change, which, according to the broadly-speaking Aristotelian framework, seems to imply an underlying material substrate. This paper traces the views of some early fourteenth-century Franciscan texts, according to which angels are material: the Disputed questions by Gonsalvus of Spain, a De Anima question-commentary sometimes attributed to the early Duns Scotus, and the Sentences commentaries of Peter of Trabibus and of Peter Auriol. As will be seen, the question of angelic materiality gave ample opportunity for these thinkers to elaborate on what they meant exactly by ‘matter’, and to hint at the ways in which this metaphysical principle is related to other important metaphysical notions in the neighborhood, such as change, corporeity, or potency.

The Two-Wills Theory in the Franciscan Tradition: Questioning an Anselmian Legacy

The medieval Franciscan John Duns Scotus famously distinguished between two different wills, which are characterized by an affection for advantage or happiness and an affection for justice. He identified the source of his theory in the earlier medieval thinker, Anselm of Canterbury, who first articulated the distinction. This article will demonstrate, however, that there is significant disparity between Anselm and Scotus’ understanding of the two wills. To this end, the article will explore the two wills theory articulated by Scotus’ predecessors, Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle, who together composed the so-called Summa Halensis, the founding text of the Franciscan intellectual tradition. These authors drew on John of Damascus’ distinction between thelesis and boulesis to delineate the theory that Scotus attributed to Anselm. However, their theory was just as distant from the Damascene’s original understanding as Scotus’ was from Anselm. In demonstrating this, the article seeks to highlight the originality of the Franciscan theory while at the same time allowing its sources to be interpreted on their own terms.

Ockham’s Flying Soul An Argument Against Henry of Ghent on the Powers of the Soul

Medieval thinkers unanimously believed a human soul has various powers. Yet, the latter point is also nearly the only one they agreed upon. In the paper, I focus on two contrary opinions maintained by Henry of Ghent and William of Ockham. Whereas Henry of Ghent held powers of the soul are defined with respect to the activities they are powers-for, Ockham refuted such a contention. To make his point Ockham launches a thought experiment: if God created an intellective soul without creating anything else, wouldn’t the powers in this soul still exist fully? Upon succinctly presenting Henry of Ghent’s view on the powers of the soul, I provide a detailed analysis of Ockham’s counterargument. I argue Henry could still reply to Ockham’s rebuttal, and show how the latter bares a remote resemblance to Avicenna’s flying man argument.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSATIVE-HOLISTIC MODEL OF HEALTH

Within this study, the necessity of a causative-holistic approach to health, viewed through philosophical and spiritual contexts, is substantiated. The author focuses on the structural analysis of the health model, based on the conducted research on the understanding of the phenomenon of health by ancient philosophers, medieval thinkers, and contemporary scientists. The article acknowledges the importance of spirituality in health and defines it as a causal factor that sets parameters for the development of physical health. The research offers a detailed description of the structure of holistic health, which includes unity, duality, and trinity, forming the foundation on the tripartite model “spirit-soul-body,” which has shaped the understanding of holistic health since medieval times and remains unchanged. Based on the metaphysical system proposed by the German mystic Jacob Böhme, the author substantiates the septenary structure of the spirit, reflecting in the septenary manifestation of the human being, and should have its analogy in the physical body and social dimension of the human being. A decenary model of health is also proven, appearing in the connection of the septenary «earthly human» with the triple metasystem complex, reflecting the spiritual aspect of holistic human. This decenary model forms a new causative-holistic view on human health and can be the basis for changing the medical paradigm, which should be based on primary spiritual factors of health for the preservation and improvement of both physical health and the health of the metasystem complex human-collective-society-planet.

Memory as a Universal Thinking Machine

The present article is designed to reassess the intrinsic values of using memory in the process of language acquisition and language learning, with a focus on the four skills – reading, writing, listening, and speaking – as the building blocks in achieving the best communication goals. According to researchers like Mary Carruthers, Janine Rider, or Lambert Schenkel, there are people who possess a retentive memory, and others who excel in the power of memory. One way or another, memory gives us the ability that generates knowledge, and, by the same token, enables us to speak, read, and write effectively and logically. The sustaining pillars of this monumental edifice are, as touted by medieval thinkers, the concept of memory as a universal thinking machine, as well as (according to more recent researchers) the power of working memory, which can work wonders when we know how to hold and manipulate knowledge. The study of memory from a historical perspective and reflected in world literature can give us an exhaustive frame of reference and the benefits that result in turning accumulated knowledge into accumulated learning.

Morphology of V.N. Ilyin in the Context of World Philosophical Thought

The research is devoted to the morphology that V.N. Ilyin developed in the work Static and Dynamics of Pure Form and other archival texts. Morphology is central to the philosophy of V.N. Ilyin, but it remains an unexplored subject. The article’s author explores the morphology of the philosopher from a historical and philosophical point of view. In addition to apparent influences (G.W. Leibniz, E. Husserl, N. Lossky), the article’s author revealed the connection of V.N. Ilyin’s ideas with the history of Western European philosophy and his attitude to medieval thinkers. The author considered how V.N. Ilyin understood and assessed his modern philosophy and its results by the middle of the twentieth century. V.N. Ilyin especially paid attention to phenomenology and its connection with morphology, analyzing phenomenology's influence on existential philosophy. In addition to phenomenology, V.N. Ilyin highly appreciated the intuitism of H. Bergson and N. Lossky. The third main philosophical direction in the twentieth century for V.N. Ilyin was religious philosophy (Neo-Thomists and followers of H. Bergson), which aimed at creating axiology, a new system of values. V.N. Ilyin sought to combine various philosophical ideas in the project of morphology based on logic and scientific methodology. He stated the need to reform formal logic and create “metalogic” that would be more consistent with the philosophical tasks of the twentieth century. The morphology of V.N. Ilyin is based on the idea of synthesis and focuses on creating universal science. The comparison of various philosophical ideas of the twentieth century with morphology makes it possible to understand better his philosophical worldview, the course of his reflections, and the meaning of the morphological project.

충청 지역 여성독립운동의 성격과 공적

The history of the Korean women’s independence movement was not only an anti-Japanese independence movement that sought national independence, but also a human liberation movement that sought to break away from feudalism within the nation. Ironically, it was only during the independence movement when the country was taken away that awareness of Gender Equality began to take root in society. In the course of Korea’s modern history, women’s activities have achieved remarkable growth compared to the previous era, but research results are still insufficient to give meaning.
 In modern times, the Christian gospel brought about an awakening that women had not experienced in the pre-modern feudal era. Since the Bible women educated by Christian missionaries had a greater ability to spread the gospel than any other missionaries, the Bible women can be evaluated as the leading figures who achieved great results in the Christian gospel and women's liberation in the Chungcheong Province.
 Women in Chungcheong Province were able to learn the Korean alphabet and overcome illiteracy by studying the Bible with female missionaries and Bible women from the Southern Methodist Church. Memories of learning and strong faith brought awareness and strengthened women’s inner self, giving them the strength to overcome any adversity.
 Feudalism persisted in the Chungcheong Province for a long time compared to other regions, and women were dismissed as socially inferior and in need of education. It can be said that the process of enlightenment and modernization for women in Chungcheong was more painful than any other region due to the dominance of the patriarchal idea that women are subordinate to men. This is because the long tradition of Confucianism, which was built as a moral system, and the wall of conservatism were that thick. Modern enlightened women had the dual task of reforming feudal society internally and opposing the Japanese imperialist invasion force externally, but women who did not enjoy the benefits of education remained stuck in medieval thinking even into modern times. Nevertheless, in the colonial system, women fought for the value of national liberation above their own liberation, and entered the independence movement with the determination that women's liberation could never be achieved without national liberation.
 Rather than staying in the Chungcheong province, women in Chungcheong left traces of an active independence movement by moving to other regions or abroad. Therefore, the Chungcheong region could not create an ecosystem for the independence movement where the women's movement could develop. At the time of the National Debt Compensation Movement in 1907, national debt compensation organizations were created by women in various regions, but they were not found in any of them in the Chungcheong Province. In addition, although the Geunwoohoe(근우회), which was founded in 1927 as the women’s only unified cooperative front organization, developed into a national organization, the fact that no branches were established in the South Chungcheong rigion speaks for this phenomenon.
 Although the proportion of women who participated in the March 1st Movement and the student movement is significantly lower than in other regions, we can see that awareness of women in gender and class discrimination is changing significantly as we witness the dedication and sacrifice of Chungcheong women who led the March 1st Movement. Along with these changes of the times, women’s worldview and historical awareness also changed significantly, leading to the realization that an intact community could not be maintained without women’s participation. In this way, the vision of building an independent nation-state without gender discrimination could finally be unified.

Политические идеалы отечественных мыслителей XI – начала XVII вв.

Introduction. Unfortunately, at present, scientists have not given an adequate assessment of the political ideals of Russian thinkers, writers, and publicists of the XV – early XVII centuries, many of them are directly discredited, as they are manipulated into the scheme of “the initial commitment to autocracy», perceived as synonymous with absolutism. Serious scientific disagreements concern not one, not two, or even not three medieval thinkers, but all of them, especially the late Middle Ages, represented by such famous names as Joseph Volotskiy, Filofey Pskovskiy, I. S. Peresvetov, A. M. Kurbsky, Zinoviy Otenskiy, anonymous authors of the Valaam Conversation, etc. This galaxy is completed at the turn of the Middle Ages and the first quarter of Modern Times by the sovereign clerk Ivan Timofeyev. Methods. The authors, based on a systematic, historical, and comparative analysis of the works of these thinkers, offered their own viewpoint on the political ideals formulated by them. Results. The result of the study is presented by the following conclusions: researchers’ understanding of the political ideal of medieval thinkers depends on the assessment of both their works themselves and the historical conditions in which they were created; the preservation of some outdated schemes, many of which originated in the pre-revolutionary period which were uncritically perceived in Soviet historiography and remain up to nowadays, prevents the achievement of unity in the definition of the forms of government which were forming in different historical epochs and the assessment of the accompanying political and legal doctrines; in historical and especially historical and legal studies, it is always necessary to apply historical, rather than modern terminology in the analysis of key concepts used by medieval thinkers in characterizing existing (for them) historical conditions and in their proposed projects of state-legal transformations.

Eschatology of the post-Christian Republic

The author analyzes the development of the political and philosophical concept of republic as a common cause in the conditions of transformation of the value system of Western society. The main problem of the research is the reason why the existence of the republic in the conditions of modern ideological and theoretical foundations of the society of individual consumerism faces the impossibility of achieving the common good as the goal-setting of a common cause. The study traces the ontology of the republic in the political thought of ancient philosophers, medieval thinkers and modern representatives of Western political theory. The central role, in this sense, is played by Christianity, which for many centuries has been a systematic representation of the essence of the common good. In the conditions of modern Western society, it has ceased to be a transcendent system of values, giving way to relativistic concepts that are unable to act as a foundation for social harmony. The author comes to the conclusion that the modern era has led to the deprivation of the republic of goal-setting, replacing the collective essence of society with the individual egoism of a citizen, while postmodernism, rejecting any form of collective self-identification of a person, deprives him of the opportunity to act as a citizen.

Russian Thinkers of the XI–XIII Centuries on Justice

The article examines the ideas of medieval thinkers of the XI–XIII centuries about justice as the main function of the head of state – the Grand Duke. For an adequate understanding of their views, it is necessary to find out the origin and historical meaning of the main terms used by thinkers: “law”, “truth” and “justice”. Initially, the terms “law” and “truth” denoted concepts similar in content, but with the adoption of Christianity under the influence of doctrinal dogmas, the term “law” as a result of its sacralization expanded the scope of its content. They began to denote high values of religious status: the Laws of God, the Laws of Jesus Christ, the Laws of Ecumenical Councils, etc. At the same time, the legal nature of the law did not disappear, but was combined with the moral and ethical commandments of Christianity, which fully corresponded to the concept of sin as a violation primarily of the Divine Commandments, so the moral norms of Christianity, but also the laws of secular the authorities. However, the highest sacred concept of the law led to the fact that in everyday vocabulary princely decrees and orders were called princely “truth” [“Russian Truth” or “Тhe Truth of Yaroslav” (XI century.); “The Truth of Yaroslavich” (XII century)]. Justice as a religious and philosophical category was placed above all concepts and actions of people, since it was defined as “the property of Jesus Christ” embodied in the Gospel commandments. Every Christian should strive to achieve justice by steadily fulfilling all the Commandments of Jesus Christ in all spheres of political and legal activity, as well as personal life. Russian Russian medieval thinkers formulated their idea of justice on this religious and political basis, referring to the Books of the Bible, as well as the Byzantine and original Russian writings spread in Russia, presented in the article.

Religious Vocabulary on Creation: Eriugena, Hildegard of Bingen, Eckhart

This paper departs from biblical images of creation (wisdom, word, mirror), and goes on to consider those images in three medieval thinkers from the Neoplatonist tradition. Firstly, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, who uses sapientia and in principio images. Secondly, St Hildegard of Bingen, in whose visions the images of wisdom and mirror-God appear. In third place, M. Eckhart, who refers in his Latin writings to God’s creation in se ipso. The article will try to show that a common feature regarding creatio can be found in all the three authors: the explanation of the origin of the world as manifestation of the first principle and the final return–union–to it. This subject has recently been partly dealt with by authors such as W. Beierwaltes, W. Otten or M. Marder. The present research follows the thread of previous studies, claiming at the same time to be an original contribution to the history of Neoplatonic thought about creation.

Holographic Composition Technique

In the field of photography, the term hologram is defined as: "a three-dimensional image reproduced from an interference pattern produced by a split coherent beam of rays." Relating the above statement to the genre of music, the closest we can come to explaining the hologram is to consider the phenomenon of combination tones. Combination tones are the ghost sounds created in the inner ear when two different tones are played simultaneously. Holographic Composition Technique is a term I coined specifically for my practice of the compositional path. It is a technique based on two main themes in music that interest me most: psychoacoustics, and the world of microtonality, with the biggest influence being the world of Just Intonation and non-Western tuning systems. As someone fascinated by physics and mathematics, both psychoacoustics and microtonality are very attractive sources of inspiration. My interest in microtonality encompasses all kinds of approaches: different temperament systems, Just Intonation techniques, non-octave subdivisions or the so-called "traditional non-Western" practices. Nevertheless, I will focus on Iranian microtonality, especially the tuning systems written by Persian polymaths between the 9th and 15th centuries, with a focus on the works of Fārābi (10th century), Ibn Sinā (10th century) and Safiaddin Ormavi (13th century). This research intends to connect the world of psychoacoustics, the medieval Iranian tuning systems, and the Radif of classical Iranian music, in an attempt to combine them as material for compositional practice. I categorise various tunings of the medieval thinkers and polymaths who were active in the vast territories of the Middle East, and show ways in which this material can be used in contemporary music to create a personal fusion of the manifestations of the Orient and Occident in music.

Antonio Pérez (1599-1649) on Intentional Identity: A Revisionism of Peter Auriol’s Thought

This article is aimed to study Antonio Perez’s criticism against Peter Auriol’s theory of intentional identity. Pérez’s theory of cognition is clearly in debt with Auriol’s theory of intentionality. The Spanish Jesuit often uses the same linguistic expressions of Auriol (such as apparent being) and agrees with him about the intentional identity between the cogniser –conciding in act with the act of cognition–, and the cognised object, which is the same thing existing outside the intellect. Both Pérez and Auriol ground their theory of intentional identity on Aristotle’s De anima, but the Spanish Jesuit highlights an inconsistency in Auriol’s doctrine which contradicts what succinctly stated by Aristotle about the identity between the cogniser and the cognised during the act of cognition. By reviewing in-depth Auriol’s theory of intentional identity, conceived as a kind of identity of indistinction, Pérez points out an inconsistency between Auriol’s description of the act of cognition and his conception of the identity of indistinction. Furthermore, Pérez seems to consider insufficient Auriol’s identity of indistinction used to describe the intentional identity characterising the act of cognition. Consequently, he offers a new definition of the identity of indistinction in order to present the apparent being as an undetermined reality which can be determined by any intelligible content. This Perezian review of Auriol’s theory of the apparent being, on the one hand, can be considered as a case of the early modern scholastic revisionism applied to a medieval thinker and, on the other hand, finds a wider application in Pérez’s metaphysics and philosophical anthropology.

Mobility and Identity in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Mobility and Identity in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations

Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations

“No Change for Relatives”: The Strategy of Initial Presence

Abstract In the Physics, Aristotle says that there is no change associated with the category of relatives. In this paper, I examine a widespread but neglected strategy that medieval thinkers use to understand Aristotle’s claim. According to this strategy, which I label initial presence, if there is no change in the category of relatives, it is because the relation-properties are already present in their subject as soon as the properties on which relation-properties are founded exist. Appreciating the importance of this strategy is crucial not only for understanding medieval theories of relation but also for assessing the credibility of arguments used in the secondary literature to interpret medieval texts, in particular a well-known passage from Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on the Physics.

Animal Soundscapes in Anglo-Norman Texts. By Liam Lewis

Professional medieval thinkers habitually characterized humans as the only truly linguistic animal. Liam Lewis’s book joins recent work on medieval animals by describing cases that elude the strictures of such hierarchical binaries. Lewis’s examples, drawn from Anglo-Norman encyclopaedias, conduct manuals, fables, and hagiography, show that animal noise was not simply the opposite of rational sound but rather something bon à penser. In Philippe de Thaon’s Bestiaire, the earliest vernacular bestiary, Lewis finds some anxiety about sound in the representation of sirens. While illustrations show them with their mouths closed, as if refusing to imagine their threatening song, Philippe’s text itself focuses exclusively on their physical attractiveness, which medieval misogynist moralizing knew better how to handle. With the bestiary’s mandrake, we have a creature whose deadly cry muddles easy distinctions between sentient and non-sentient life. Next, Lewis considers the list of animal noises in Walter of Bibbesworth’s Le Tretiz: humans lead off the list (‘home parle’), followed immediately by the roaring of bears (‘ourse braie’) with the noun glossed in Middle English. As he traces further entanglement of animal sounds and human languages, Lewis also imagines the young readers of Le Tretiz learning their roles as aristocrats and men both by imitating animal sounds, and by gathering geese and women together into the same collective noun, a ‘compaignie’: the category in Le Tretiz of ‘home’, the human or more simply man, allies with (certain) animals while reducing most humans to servitude. The third chapter, on an anonymous Vye de Seynt Fraunceys, relies on Angelo Clareno’s division of zoē, mere life, from bios, holy life, practised by the saints: drawing from Giorgio Agamben, but eschewing Agamben’s gloominess, Lewis studies how St Francis of Assisi allies with animal sounds — crickets’ chirps, sheep’s bleating, and birdsong — to worship with them, or to help human and animal both rise from zoē to bios. His last full chapter considers the fables attributed to Marie de France. Though famously a genre featuring animals that talk, their animal sound matters too: Marie’s goats bleat to summon rescuing dogs, while elsewhere a dog’s reasoning with a thief ends with a bark, as if it’s raising the hue and cry, a human legal mechanism enacted not through language but through noise. Mouth and muzzle, as Lewis observes, are not so obviously different in their effects. Lewis writes well, creatively attends to poetics, and generates new readings without distorting his sources. Overall, I am more pessimistic than Lewis about the positive benefits of ‘reassessing human exceptionalism’ (p. 161). The landed aristocrats who learned to be men by imitating animals asserted their dominance in part by imagining themselves bestial. St Francis is one model; these rapacious men another. Lewis’s book, to its credit, urges us to be more like the former than the latter.

LITURGICAL DRAMA AND THEATRICAL ARTS

At the first stage of Christianity spreading the Church has banned theatre show. That’s about writes Aurelius Augustine in his work “Confessions”, where on the background of continued dialogue with God, before us is opened solilokvium (lat.: soliloquium – solo – himself, alone, loqui – to speak), which uses Augustine. It should be noted that such form was assumed in the Literature or theatre performances of that time. This represents the analogy of ancient theatre form, which was used by playwrights to make familiarize with audience, certain development event. Blissful Augustine believes that what is developed on the stage and the experiences of audience – the despair on the stage, the grief appeared in the spectator and tears on the composed, this is some kind of sin and God’s banishment from you. The main postulate of early medieval thinkers, mainly ecclesiastics was ignorance of theatre shows and announcement of theatre actors and creators as sinners. Later, the church itself, for attracting crowds of people, with aim of domination on the parish, used and created not only theatre shows, but its “sketch” – liturgical (liturgy – Greek. liturgy – the main Christian religious rite: liturgy times) drama, which is based on the Biblical stories. As Maximus the Confessor writes: “The liturgy is Christian drama. It is the transition of spirit from potential state to action and is directed towards eidos, as the ultimate goal, to full implementation of telos – the whole, visible and invisible world to Christ’s coming out of the body. And the mythos, we can say, the scenario of Christ, is the St. Letter”. The liturgical drama for Maximus is: a) ritual, the reality “trimmed” with divine character, which is connecting really existing – God in the Christ’s divine personality the man – the church – the world; b) Drama, which plot is the St. letter, as Christ’s body and that it exactly in this drama the St. letter as a potential – body, is becoming Christ’s eschatological body; c) also theurgy activity, aimed at human transferring to God.

The Anchorite as Analysand: Depression and the Uses of Analogy

ABSTRACT Contemporary scholars sometimes analogize premodern acedia to modern depression, finding promise in ancient therapies for acedia—chiefly forms of bodily activity and mental discipline. This article identifies an alternative model of medieval ascetic therapy in a brief passage in Ancrene Wisse in which a mother playfully hides from her child, who is left to cry alone until she returns and embraces him. The scene, later dubbed “the play of love,” is presented as a similitude illustrating God’s withdrawal from the anchorite, which is experienced as the depressive state known to medieval thinkers as sterilitas mentis. Although it belongs to a long tradition on the benefits of temptation, the play of love also serves an immediate therapeutic end, allowing the anchorite to conceptualize her solitary suffering as part of an ongoing relation with a complex God. The form of the similitude, which facilitates identification across difference, is crucial to this process. Though the play of love operates differently from the therapeutic modes that emerge from other work comparing acedia and depression, it underlines the value of the analogy in the first place, whatever the risks of anachronism.