Scholastic Philosophy Research Articles

Galileo’s microscopic and telescopic observations and their impact on how bodies are conceived

Abstract Four hundred years ago Galileo Galilei published a work that was immensely successful directly after its publication but is relatively unknown today. The Assayer (Il Saggiatore) started as a polemic reply to Orazio Grassi’s interpretation of the first telescopic observation of comets in history. The Jesuit defended the idea that comets were bodies moving in the superlunary region. However, Galileo never explicitly stated that comets are an illusion or an optical defect. Rather he aimed at undermining Grassi’s argumentation. Consequently, what announced itself initially as a controversy about the nature of comets turned out to become a controversy about the nature of scientific methodology. This paper focuses on two elements that Galileo elaborates on in this pioneering work of scientific method: his views on the qualities of bodies and the fact that “the book of nature” is written in the language of mathematics. It demonstrates how these two elements are not only connected in The Assayer (1623) but also in his earlier work. In addition, it shows how they both played a role in Galileo’s defence of mathematical demonstration and his rejection of the tools of scholastic philosophy.

William of Ockham and Walter Chatton on Sensory Powers and the Materiality of Sensation

While many thirteenth-century scholastic philosophers thought that the human powers of sensation are distinct from the human intellect, this apparent consensus collapsed in the 1320s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. The proximate cause of this transformation was Walter Chatton’s rejection of William of Ockham’s arguments that the human powers of sensation are distinct from the human intellect. This article examines Chatton’s implicit and explicit motivations for rejecting Ockham’s arguments. I show that Ockham thinks that the senses are distinct from the intellect because he holds that sensing is material and embodied in a way that thinking is not. I show that Chatton, on the other hand, sees no need to posit such a difference between sensation and thought with respect to materiality or embodiment because he thinks that nothing about the character of sensory experience shows it to be material or embodied in a way that thinking is not.

Roger Bacon’s Ars poetica sacra: Spiritual Persuasion and the Christian Sublime

Roger Bacon (d. ca. 1292) wrote extensively on rhetoric and poetics. He did so in the context of a critical overview of the religious culture of his age. He places poetry (the argumentum poeticum) at the very pinnacle of culture, above the sciences, above the liturgy and preaching, well above scholastic philosophy and any other mode of expression current in his age. Poetry and rhetoric are the modes of exposition capable of captivating and transporting the listener/reader. That makes them an effective means of converting and of inspiring faith. The religious culture of his own time has so far declined that it is incapable of performing this function. Bacon was looking back on real rhetorical practices that had become outmoded. In earlier days Christianity spoke with force and passion. His sacred poetics has a place in the history of pre-modern Christian discourse, one of two works theorizing sacra eloquentia; the other is Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine. Christian traditions of teaching, preaching, prayer, oratory, sacred music, regularly had called on modes that were emphatic, forceful and passionate: the “grand style,” sermo propheticus, sermo affectuosus. Bacon’s poetics commends these modes as it laments their passing.

Philosophical Questions of the Relation to Goods in Antiquity and Scholastic Philosophy

This paper explores the early issues of the relation to goods in ancient and medieval philosophy trends. As an introduction to the topic, I examine the conditions for the emergence of Greek philosophical thinking. The paper is divided into two major sections: the first section introduces the ideas of ancient Greek philosophy on property and wealth, while the second one considers the development of the ideas of early medieval philosophy on the same topic. It should be pointed out that in ancient philosophy the subject was not given much prominence, since the concept of existence and virtue preceded the problems of property, wealth and distribution. Yet it is worth examining this period from this point of view, too, because regarding the relationship to wealth, we can find several important philosophical principles. I will present primarily the relevant medieval thoughts after discussing the relevant works of great figures of scholasticism. I will also discuss in detail the teachings of Duns Scotus, since it is primarily to him that we owe the most of his statements relevant to our subject of scholasticism. There is no doubt that the questions examined in this study are taking us closer to the definition of the content of common good. This is particularly true about Aristotle and St. Thomas, based on whose work these doctrines are also examined with distinguished attention. To sumup, we can say that questions on wealth distribution and the distribution of goods, in other words the ownership structure between the state and the individual are very much essential, since through them the content of the common good becomes tangible. The aim of my study is to support this assertion.

Giovanni Pico and the Scholastics: A Note on «A Philosopher at the Crossroads»

This review note surveys some important aspects of a recent publication by Amos Edelheit, A Philosopher at the Crossroads: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Scholastic Philosophy. While focus over the last decades has been placed on Pico’s thought in relation to Jewish Kabbalah and mysticism, Edelheit hopes to emphasize the importance of the scholastic tradition (or, rather, the pluriform and various tradition of late medieval and Renaissance scholasticism) in Pico’s thought, and the ways in which this intellectual context places this unique Renaissance thinker at a sort of ‘crossroads’. Beyond providing a brief overview of the three main parts of the text, this note examines more closely Edelheit’s study of Pico’s 900 Theses and the methodological approach which involves a reconstruction of the dialectical context for each thesis. The Latin scholastics are real conversational partners for Pico: he is versed in the 13th-century scholastic sources, is certainly familiar with contemporaneous scholastic thought, and is able to employ scholastic methods and terminology within his wider philosophical project. While scholastic philosophy was very much alive at the end of the fifteenth century, Pico’s new and inclusive approach to philosophy and the history of philosophy, never eschewing the Latin masters, departs from both scholastic and humanist trends.

Late Scholastic Arguments for the Existence of Prime Matter

Scholastic hylomorphism conceives prime matter and substantial form as metaphysical parts of every physical substance. During the early modern period, both hylomorphic constituents faced significant criticism as scientists and philosophers sought to replace Aristotelianism with physical explanations for the workings of the universe. This paper focuses specifically on prime matter and delves into the arguments put forth by four 16th-century scholastic philosophers – Toledo, Fonseca, Góis, and Suárez – in their attempts to establish the existence of prime matter. Firstly, I analyse a set of arguments rooted in substantial change, which emphasize the crucial role of a persistent, common substrate in the processes of generation and corruption. Secondly, I explore a set of ex-nihilo arguments and, thirdly, I examine a series of demonstrations based on the interplay between accidental and substantial change. Although these three sets of arguments converge on the necessity of a common substrate for substantial change to occur, they fall short of demonstrating that this substrate is both prime and shared by all natural entities. Fourthly, I turn to a set of arguments centred on the impossibility of infinite regress, designed to complement those related to natural change, and I assess additional arguments that do not primarily focus on substantial change. Lastly, I draw my conclusions on these argumentative strategies to demonstrate the existence of prime matter.

Scientific Knowledge in Bacon Philosophy: Insights from Dialectical Materialism

Francis Bacon occupies a central position in the history of the philosophy of science, representing a pivotal shift from medieval to early modern scientific thought. Therefore, in the contemporary context, understanding Bacon's philosophy is crucial for appreciating the foundations of modern science and its ongoing evolution. The purpose of the article is to examine the enduring relevance of Francis Bacon's philosophy of science, particularly in the context of his emphasis on empirical methodology, experimentation, and the socio-cultural dimensions of scientific knowledge. By analyzing Bacon's contributions, the study aims to elucidate his methodological innovations and their implications for contemporary scientific practice and theory. The work uses thematic and comparative analysis to determine the role of F. Bacon's philosophy in the analysis of the concept of knowledge.The research highlights Bacon's seminal contributions to the philosophy of science, emphasizing his advocacy for empirical methodology, systematic experimentation, and the socio-cultural context of scientific inquiry. By critiquing the methodological limitations of scholastic philosophy and advocating for a methodological overhaul grounded in experience and observation, Bacon laid the groundwork for modern experimental science. In the conclusion, his integration of dialectical materialism and interdisciplinary perspectives underscores the significance of collective scientific endeavor and the foundational role of natural history in establishing the ontological basis of scientific knowledge. By elucidating Bacon's vision for a science that serves the general welfare of society, the study underscores the continued importance of his insights for addressing contemporary challenges and advancing scientific knowledge for the betterment of humanity.

『네 사중주』에 표현된 시간과 불교의 찰나 생멸

Medieval scholastic philosopher Augustine’s proposition on the question of time is also the central theme expressed in Four Quartets. Regarding the consideration of time, there have been many pioneers’ opinions throughout the East and West and scholars studying Four Quartets in Korea. But their views did not seem to be unified. The concept of time in Four Quartets can be broadly classified into three categories. The first is the concept of time in which the beginning and the end are interconnected, and cyclical. Second, it is divided into the time of phenomenal life and the time of pursuing transcendence. Third, it is a timeless concept of an eternal present where past and future are merged and conquered. On the other hand, my personal view on time is that it is instantaneous changes between birth and death as discussed from Buddhist perspective. Since time is a product of human discernment and in reality exists only as an idea, it can be said to be an illusion, virtuality, ‘Nothingness.’ However, another arguement is a ‘Nothingness but Somethingness’ rather than a ‘Nothingness to Nothingness’. This is pretty similar to “The still point”, “Incarnation” of Four Quartets, ‘Nirvana Samatha’ of Buddhism, ‘Uncertainty principle’ of quantum mechanics and ‘Pure consciousness’ and ‘True self’ of seers. However, I think it is very difficult to accurately express the definition of time in language that is also a product of discernment.

Analytic Philosophy and Scholastic Thought: How Deep Do Their Similarities Go?

It has become common to draw parallels between scholastic philosophy and modern analytic philosophy. As this paper will show, there exist historical reasons within the scholastic tradition itself to support such comparisons. These reasons bolster a Similarity Thesis regarding the style of reasoning in modern analytic and premodern scholastic thought. In the case of early modern scholastics, it is even possible to substantiate an Identification Thesis, indicating that they primarily identified as scholastics with reference to a reasoning style closely resembling that of post-1970 analytic philosophy. While historians of scholastic thought are correct in asserting that there is no single essential characteristic of scholasticism, but rather a plurality of characteristics, the specific role of a particular reasoning style in defining scholastic theology demonstrates that only this style or method was essential for the self-identification of early modern scholastics as scholastics. This discussion primarily centers on definitions of scholastic theology, as explicit definitions of scholastic philosophy appear to be relatively rare in the scholastic tradition. However, it should be noted that the “analytic” reasoning style associated with scholastic theology was evidently a characteristic of scholastic philosophy as well.

Spiritualizing Politics Without Politicizing Religion: The Example of Sargent Shriver by James R. Price and Kenneth R. Melchin

Reviewed by: Spiritualizing Politics Without Politicizing Religion: The Example of Sargent Shriver by James R. Price and Kenneth R. Melchin David O’Brien Spiritualizing Politics Without Politicizing Religion: The Example of Sargent Shriver. By James R. Price and Kenneth R. Melchin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022. 200 pp. $45.00. This is an important book. James R. Price and Kenneth R. Melchin have a fresh address to the very old question of “religion and politics” as it once again explodes across the world and even upsets long settled arrangements here in the United States. The authors want to help clarify the situation which they think has been made difficult by the “fog of the culture wars,” the “proliferation of doctrinaire religious convictions,” and the “growing secularism the academy and the public square.” Price and Melchin are determined not to contribute to these endless debates but instead to “think responsibly about politics and religion” and offer constructive proposals designed to enable communities of faith to help their members carry out their shared responsibilities for public life. Their goal is contained in the title: to “spiritualize politics without politicizing religion.” To do this they intend to “affirm the religion-politics distinction that guards freedom of conscience and diversity of belief” while, with equal conviction, “affirming the religion–politics relations that ensure religious involvement in nurturing values essential for public life.” They understand that balancing religious [End Page 95] integrity and shared responsibility will always be a challenge, perhaps requiring in some cases conscientious objection to agreed-upon policies. The authors believe that religion and politics need to be distinguished from each other, but that politics needs religion to achieve its objectives while Christians need politics to carry out Gospel-based obligations. Faced with religious diversity, religion must avoid the twin temptations of disengagement and withdrawal at one end and theocratic power at the other. Politics on the other hand—and here they usually mean liberal democratic politics—requires the spiritual and moral energy of religion if its citizens are to bear their shared responsibility for self-government. Rather than lament divisions, Price and Melchin look for ways to address these challenges with full respect for religious claims and civic responsibilities. They begin with an extended analysis of the speeches of Sargent Shriver, founding leader of the Peace Corps. Shriver’s life and work illustrates how this worked out with one “exemplary figure.” They find him first as a Catholic layman familiar with church teaching, influenced by the scholastic philosophy of natural law updated by Jacques Maritain, and engaged with lively movements of Catholic Action inspiring women and men of his generation to take on new responsibilities at the centers of American life now open to them. Shriver found leadership roles in public education, race relations, and civic dialogue, first in Chicago, then in Washington in the administration of his brother-in-law John F. Kennedy and his successor Lyndon B. Johnson. Like so many of his generation, Shriver was formed in the remarkable families, parishes, schools, and ideas of the American Catholic community, then took full advantage of new opportunities opened by family aspirations and post-World War II prosperity. Making that move into centers of shared public responsibility while remaining faithful to Christianity and his American Catholic subculture required aspiring middle class Catholics like Shriver to adopt a bilingualism, speaking among themselves of Christian faith, Catholic practice, and the shared values found in church teaching, then using broader terms to embrace others in shared work for common purposes. When, in their professional and public work, they needed to find common ground with non-Catholics, Shriver and others continued to speak of service, respect for the other, and democratic aspirations for liberty and justice, all informed by what Shriver thought of as Christian charity. Some thought this move watered down the claims of faith, but the authors argue that, in the case of Shriver, he in fact expanded and deepened Christian ideals of justice and charity. At one point in his inter-racial work Shriver stated the goal that informed all his work: “to direct the [End Page 96] immense power of religion to shaping the conduct and thoughts of men...

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Obraz člověka a výchovy v Esejích Michela de Montaigne

The study deals with the question of the relationships among the conception of human nature, its cognition and education in Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. In the series of essays, Montaigne repeatedly rejects attempts to base his conception of human nature on antic- scholastic traditions operating with the general concepts of man. Montaigne’s specific Christian scepticism (“new pyrrhonism”) is the starting point and the argumentative method for rejecting the reliability of general concepts and definitions. Whereas scholastic (as well as predominantly entire ancient) philosophy assumed the existence of an ideal species to be the essence that determines each individual’s essential characteristics, Montaigne sees, on the contrary, man in the state of constant transformation, transition as crucial to understanding the human situation. This fundamentally transforms the traditional understanding of the relationship between a pattern and its imitation, into a relationship that has not only epistemological but also pedagogical and moral implications. Montaigne argues that subjectivity cannot be understood against the background of a general pattern, but only from itself, from ambiguities and paradoxes that, on the contrary, exclude, elude any generalization. Human nature cannot be captured in a general concept, it can only be exemplified from a specific experience. Thus, man is much more a transition (from one form to another) than a substance. The aim of this study is to show Michel de Montaigne as a modern and up-to-date thinker who, through his rhetoric and his way of grasping pedagogical issues, has opened up a number of educational questions that are relevant today: for example, how to understand the educational goal in a practical and informal way, how to work in education with the unique and the non-generalizable, and how to consider the relationship between knowledge and action.

Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi's Criticisms Against Materialism's Conception of Religion and God

In this study, the understanding of religion and God through matter in the historical process of materialism has been settled and determined, and the opposite views of Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi (d. 1914), one of the theologians of the New Science of Kalām period, have been tried to be revealed. In this context, first and foremost, a brief history of materialism is mentioned then Filibeli's views have given. Materialism is one of the notable philosophical schools that have found a place in the life of thought since Antiquity. The first steps of this system of thought are observed in Ancient Greece and the understanding of atomism. The common meeting place of the famous materialist philosophers of this period was the atomist understanding. On the other hand, Atomist understanding collects many divinity features such as being eternal and ever in the matter. Having significant effects on the history of thought, materialism experienced stagnation in the middle ages. The reason for this stagnation is that Christianity developed an active understanding of religion in the West, and therefore the views of the church adopted a conservative approach. It can be said that scholastic philosophy is one of the biggest reasons for the loss of the effectiveness of materialism. Afterward, the school of materialism showed a new revival during the period when the oppressive attitude of the church decreased with the scholastic philosophy and the religious reform and Renaissance movements were followed. Materialism, which has started to regain effectiveness since the 18th century, is based on matter and the field called material and does not accept any area other than matter. Materialism rejects the metaphysical field, which agrees with the entities that the sense organs can only perceive as the material field, and the information obtained through experimentation and observation. Since the knowledge and existence of beings such as God, angels, and jinn are of interest to metaphysics, spiritual beings entering this field are denied by materialism. Although it emerged in the Christian western world, materialism emerges as a system of thought that spreads in the following processes and influences the whole world. The ideas of materialism, which started to be seen in our country as a result of the return of students sent abroad with western ideas to examine the progress of the West in the political field, increased its effectiveness, especially through journals and translation. Materialism, which has made such progress in our country, has been criticized by many intellectuals, although some scholars have adopted it. Along with the spread of such ideas, a search for innovation was done in kalām, and the period of the New Science of Kalām began. One of the most important scholars of this period is Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi. Filibeli criticizes this system of thought for the general views of materialism through the concept of denial. Filibeli, who also touches on morality, states that materialism opens the door to immorality, resulting in anarchy.

Ethics without ideology or a new theory of synderesis

The article analyzes the problem of the correlation of morality and ideology. The author believes that the distinction between morality and ideology can be made only at the level of their genealogy: if ideology is a socio-cultural product, then morality is rooted in human nature, in "moral intuitions", which medieval scholastic philosophy called synderesis. In modern ethics, synderesis can be identified with the neurophysiological prerequisites of morality. Opponents of this approach argue that, firstly, it excludes free will, and secondly, it does not explain the content of moral values and norms in any way. The author of the article criticizes these statements and offers his original theory of synderesis. The article draws an analogy between ethics and intuitionistic mathematics, which considers mathematical objects as the results of intellectual construction based on initial intuitions. Ethical objects should also be considered as constructions based on innate intuitions. Moral intuitions do not exclude free will, since they rely on rationality inherent in our nature, the main property of which is the ability to make decisions regardless of external stimuli and internal states. In addition, these intuitions influence the content of our norms, as they are the "operators" of their construction and are included in the "final product".

The Matter of Virtue: Women's Ethical Action from Chaucer to Shakespeare

The Matter of Virtue: Women's Ethical Action from Chaucer to Shakespeare

Monism in Indian philosophy: the coherence, complexity, and connectivity of reality in Śaṃkara's arguments for Brahman

AbstractClassical Indian thought contains a number of arguments for monism that reject the cogency of metaphysical pluralism's account of change, development, and causation in the world. They do this on the basis of (a) the coherence of changes that we see in the world, (b) the difficulty of limning absolute distinctions between individuals, and (c) the prerequisite need for some medium explaining causal interactions. This article provides some background to Indian philosophical thought about a basic fabric of reality that grounds changing forms, containing the telos of their evolutionin potentia. It then sets out Coherence, Complexity, and Connection Arguments for monism as employed by the Vedāntic scholastic philosopher Śaṃkara. Along the way, we clarify the Vedāntic conception of a single material, efficient, and formal cause that provides a medium for connection and combination, is naturally replete with generative order and impetus, and in which the teloi of all forms are embedded. We will briefly consider what the argument shows, if it succeeds – comparing with current philosophical approaches to monism. Finally, we observe that thisrich monism, describing a single vertiginous reality of many levels and powers, is central to classical Hindu conceptions of what makes something ‘divine’.

"Substaunce Into Accident": Transubstantiation and Relics in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale

This article focuses on the "substaunce into accident" trope in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale. In the major critical editions, there is no cohesion among glosses of the trope and its philosophical terms. This has yielded mistaken interpretations of the trope and mis-readings of the Tale, most particularly the trope's relation to a supposed joke about transubstantiation and Wycliffite Eucharistic controversies. The most powerful and influential argument for an allusion to Eucharistic controversy is made in Paul Strohm's article "Chaucer's Lollard Joke." I aim to dismantle this reading, which has been cited often in subsequent criticism, in order to clear space for a fresh interpretation of the trope's relevance to the Pardoner and his Tale. To this end, I present a critique of Strohm's thesis by focusing on the Aristotelian idiom of Scholastic philosophy and the precise application of that terminology to an account of transubstantiation; and in the second half of the article, I develop a new reading of the trope in the context of the Pardoner's faking of relics. The Pardoner capitalizes on the indistinguishable difference between the accidental qualities of a true and fake relic. Like the cooks in his denunciation of gluttony, he turns substance into accident. Ironically, nonetheless, just as his rhetoric causes good outcomes despite his vicious intentions, so too does his faking of relics potentially turn an assemblage of accidents into the substance of true faith.

Body and Spirit in the Middle Ages: Literature, Philosophy, Medicine ed. by Gaia Gubbini

Reviewed by: Body and Spirit in the Middle Ages: Literature, Philosophy, Medicine ed. by Gaia Gubbini Sarah Friedman Gaia Gubbini, ed., Body and Spirit in the Middle Ages: Literature, Philosophy, Medicine ( Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 284 pp. Body and Spirit in the Middle Ages: Literature, Philosophy, Medicine, edited by Gaia Gubbini, consists of fourteen papers presented at a 2014 conference at the Freie Universität Berlin. The conference was funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for Gubbini's project "Breath, Sighs, and Spirits in Medieval Romance Literature." The essays in the volume, written in French, English, and Italian, examine how medieval philosophy, medicine, and literature theorized the "body and spirit question," and shed light on "the complex nature of the medieval Self" (11). While the essays are not grouped into themed sections, there are discernible thematic patterns that unite the contributions, which Gubbini helpfully highlights in her introduction. Gubbini, Danielle Jacquart, and Éric Palazzo analyze the multivalent concept of spiritus; Sarah Kay and Joachim Küpper analyze skin, senses, and emotions; Andreas Kablitz, Stephen G. Nichols, and Howard Bloch analyze the dynamics of mind and body through the lens of gender and sexuality; Aurélien Robert and Massimo Ciavolella analyze representations of illness and bodily imbalance; Irene Caiazzo and Nicolas Weill-Parot analyze the relationship between celestial and terrestrial; and, finally, Franco Suitner and Carla Casagrande analyze the representation of body and spirit in the mystic tradition. In addition to the unifying themes that Gubbini identifies, some of the essays connect in their disciplinary focus and methodological similarity. Multiple essays examine literary representations of bodily experience in light of medical, philosophical, and theological writings. Gubbini's contribution, "Corps et esprit: Les ohls espiritaus de Bernard de Ventadour et la maladie de Tristan," draws on the works of Patristic and medical writers to examine how body and spirit converge in representations of psychosomatic experience in the work of Bernard de Ventadour and in Anglo-Norman romances dedicated to the story of Tristan and Iseult. Also focusing on psychosomatic experience in medieval poetry, Ciavolella's "Melancholy and Creativity in Petrarch" examines Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (1330–74; later titled Il Canzoniere) and Secretum (1342–58) alongside classical and medieval philosophical theories of fantasy to underscore how Petrarch represents humoral imbalance and poetic creativity as intertwined. Kablitz's essay, "Petrarch and the Senses: Petrarch's Anthropology of Love and the Scholastic Transformation of Christian Ethics," performs a close reading of sonnets from Canzoniere alongside Aquinas's Quaestiones disputatae de malo (13th c.) to exemplify how scholastic philosophy's "dismissal of the self-evident superiority and power of reason and its consequences" manifests in Petrarch's [End Page 255] poetic corpus (210). Suitner's essay, "La poésie mystique: Iacopone de Todi et les contradictions de l'âme," demonstrates how the Franciscan poet Jacopone da Todi drew heavily on Franciscan mysticism's Christocentric presentation of the body as a vehicle for both sin and salvation. Instead of examining how nonliterary genres of texts influenced literary texts, Robert's essay, "Amour, imagination, et poésie dans l'oevre médicale de Gentile da Foligno," examines the presence of literary tropes within fourteenth-century Italian physician Gentile da Foligno's commentary on Avicenna's Canon. The essay compellingly demonstrates the link between Gentile da Foligno's analysis of Avicenna and poetic descriptions of lovesickness in works by Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Cavalcanti. Other essays, such as Küpper's "The Medical, the Philosophical, and the Theological Discourses on the Senses," Weill-Parot's "'Le contact virtuel' entre un esprit et un corps et l'action à distance," and Caiazzo's "Le philosophie, les astres, et la physiognomy au XIIIe siècle," connect in their examination of how the disciplines of medicine, philosophy, theology, and even astrology mutually influenced one another and, at times, diverged in their conceptualizations of the body and spirit. Küpper considers the differences and similarities between how medieval theologians and physicians conceived of "post-sensory processing mechanisms" (112). He highlights key differences in how these disciplines approached the question of how the mind converts "quantitative into qualitative data" (112), and compellingly argues that one observes "an acceptance of theoretical plurality" within "official" medieval...

On certain philosophical-scholastic aspects of the doctrine of the Eucharist in the anonymous treatise on the Mass (manuscript München, BSB, Cgm 89)

The existing representation of juxtaposition of the religious literature of the late Middle Ages and contemporary to it university philosophy requires clarification. It is particularly difficult to draw this boundary in texts of the tradition of the so-called "German mysticism". This question is discussed on the basis of the German-language work “The Mystical Treatise on the Mass and Its Effects in the Loving Soul” (Mystischer Traktat über die Messe und ihre Wirkungen in der minnenden Seele). The treatise has survived in several manuscripts of the late Middle Ages, the earliest of which is the manuscript Cgm 89 (BSB, München, near 1375). The conducted historical-philosophical analysis of the selected passages of the anonymous treatise on the Mass indicates the presence of complex combination of stylistically diverse fragments consisting of rearrangement of topoi that belong to both scholastic and religious literature of the late Middle Ages. In enunciation of the doctrine of the Eucharist, the author of the treatise resorts to metaphorical language, description of personal experience of the church sacrament. At the same time, the text identifies the references to Aristotle's treatise "On the Soul" used by the author as the philosophical foundation to describe the process of connecting the soul to God. The conclusion is made that the anonymous treatise on the Mass testifies inappropriateness of rigid juxtaposition of the traditions of religious literature and scholastic philosophy, which still can be encountered in the overall description of the Medieval intellectual culture.

The Problem of Universals from the Scientific Point of View: Thomas Aquinas Should Be More Appreciated

Recently we proposed the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is called quantum language or measurement theory. This theory is valid for both quantum and classical systems. Thus, we think that quantum language is one of the most powerful scientific theories, like statistics, and thus, it is the scientific completion (i.e., the destination) of dualistic idealism. If so, we can introduce the concept “progress” in the dualistic idealism. For example, we can assert that [Plato → Descartes → Kant → Wittgenstein → quantum language], where [“X” → “Y”] means that “Y” is more like quantum language than “X”. In this paper, we will study the problem of universals from the perspective of quantum language (i.e., from the scientific perspective of ignoring any religious perspective). And we can be confident of the progress of both of the two time series [Plato → Anselmus → Thomas Aquinas → quantum language] and [Descartes → Thomas Aquinas → quantum language] in dualistic idealism. The reader may find it surprising that Scholastic philosophy is more scientific than Cartesian-Kantian philosophy. However, this is because Descartes gave up the pursuit of “universals” and presented dualism as a visible “mind-matter dualism” so that it could be familiar to the general public. This made the Cartesian-Kantian philosophy socially successful, but unscientific. The problem of universals has not always been clear in the long history of philosophy. The reader should be convinced that the reason is that the problem of universals has been discussed in an incomplete non-scientific dualism to this day.