Scholastic Thinkers Research Articles

Изобретение концепта реализма в схоластике

The ancient separation of the world into the domains of ideas and things created the ground for questioning about true existence. Thus, reality could be attributed to ideas, or it could be attributed to things. Given the tension between Platonic and Aristotelian ontologies, the problem of the status of general notions was embodied in medieval philosophical discussion, often clothed in theological form. The article reconstructs the controversy around the ontological status of universals within several scholastic doctrines. The essence of this dispute, from a perspective that is of ontological and gnoseological interest, comes down to clarifying the categorical grid, within which it is possible to make statements concerning reality. There are at least three main positions that refl ect the views of scholastic thinkers on the ontological nature of universals: realism, nominalism and conceptualism. The basic difference between them is determined by confl icting opinions regarding the issues of autonomy of the existence of universals, their dependence on the mind and things, and also about their materiality. This study reproduces the crucial moves of the scholastic thought of realists (A. Canterbury), nominalists (W. Occam), conceptualists (P. Abelard) and moderate realists (F. Aquinas), around which the conceptual background of the conversation about reality is formed. At the same time, it became obvious that the concept of realism (which was not yet in the philosophical vocabulary during the period of scholasticism) acquires its features in the intersections and contradictions between positions in the range from strong realism to extreme nominalism. Besides, it has been demonstrated in actual analysis that a set of alternative solutions to the problem of universals was refl ected in the broad philosophical problems of Modern (along the epistemological teachings of rationalism and empiricism) and contemporary thought (in projects of speculative realism, fl at ontologies, as well as in the fi eld of philosophy of mind). At the same time, it must be recognized, as a result, that the later development of the concept of realism and the problems of cognition associated with it had a retrospective impact on the correlation of scholastic positions with each other.

The School of Salamanca on Value of Money: A Reassessment

Abstract This study endeavors to investigate the theory of the value of money from the vantage point of late scholastic scholars, with a specific focus on the Salamanca School and the two prevailing monetary doctrines: Objectivism (Metallism) and Subjectivism (Chartalism). Our investigation employs the classical works of late scholastic thinkers from the 15th to the 17th centuries to illuminate the perspectives held by the Salamanca School concerning monetary value. The findings affirm that the twofold theory of money value proposed by late scholastic thinkers constitutes a nuanced iteration of the multidimensional approach to money. This comprehensive framework encompasses various facets of value, such as the final, actual, formal, and material dimensions. Moreover, the conspicuous emphasis placed by late scholastic thinkers on the subjective aspects of money value imparts a multifaceted character to their theory, demonstrating striking parallels with modern subjective doctrine.

Philip of the Blessed Trinity’s Summa Theologiae Mysticae: A Commentary on the Works of Teresa of Avila

This paper focuses on the Summa Theologiae Mysticae, the major work of Philip of the Blessed Trinity, OCD (1603-1671). The aim is to show the profound influence of Teresa of Avila on baroque, scholastic thinkers of the Discalced Carmelite Order. The article claims that Philip’s entire work is structured in accordance with Teresa’s teaching on the spiritual life, especially as it is developed in The Life and The Interior Castle. Given the limited space of a single paper, four main topics are chosen to prove this point. These topics are (a) the three stages of the interior life, (b) what is needed for the interior life, (c) various mystical phenomena, and (d) mystical marriage.

The Historical Development of Cajetan's Philosophy of Pure Nature and Its Origins in the Thought of John Capreolus

The Historical Development of Cajetan's Philosophy of Pure Nature and Its Origins in the Thought of John Capreolus Steven Waldorf EVER SINCE the controversy concerning how to understand man's desire for the beatific vision as his ultimate end erupted following the publication of Henri de Lubac's Surnaturel in 1946, the issue of Cajetan's conception of human nature has been much debated. De Lubac's work, continuing from Surnaturel in the 1940s to his more mature Augustinisme et théologie moderne in 1965, aimed at both the theological and the historical deconstruction of what he termed the system of "pure nature," that is to say, the view that human nature must reach its complete end or perfection strictly by natural principles. For de Lubac, such a view, which entails the effective denial of a desire for the vision of the divine essence as the complete perfection of human nature as nature, is both theologically and historically problematic. From a doctrinal perspective, it leads to a purely natural end for man that effectively closes man in on himself, severing his nature from any intrinsic connection to grace and the supernatural. Moreover, historically speaking, it represents a rupture with a classical tradition of thought that runs from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas and the other great Scholastics of the thirteenth century. In purporting to find a theory of pure nature in Aquinas's writings, later Scholastic thinkers betrayed and falsified his thought. In de Lubac's narrative, the progenitor of this view of nature was Tommaso de Vio (1469-1534), better known as Cardinal Cajetan, who was a renowned Dominican theologian of the late [End Page 1] fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Often remembered by historians for his disputation with Martin Luther at Augsburg in 1518, Cajetan was one of the leading theologians of his day, producing a magisterial commentary on Aquinas's Summa theologiae that remained influential into the twentieth century, in addition to dozens of smaller treatises.1 According to de Lubac, Cajetan stands at the origin of the pure-nature theory that the great majority of later Scholastics, including de Lubac's own twentieth-century interlocutors, would adopt.2 Crucially, he was also the first to impute the view to Aquinas himself, passing off his novel philosophy of nature as the latter's own. Nearly all subsequent scholarly discussion of the issues de Lubac raised has addressed the question of whether Cajetan was an accurate interpreter of Aquinas on the pure-nature question. That the Dominican cardinal held a view of nature in which nature must reach its proper perfection in a naturally attainable end is generally not disputed, and the texts, as we shall see, are clear on the point. However, lost in the scholarly debate is sustained treatment of the question of the historical genesis of Cajetan's view. Indeed, contemporary scholars have devoted comparatively little attention to the question of how Cajetan's philosophy of pure nature developed, focusing instead on the question of his fidelity to Aquinas. When such scholars do advert to the question of the origins of the Dominican cardinal's view of natura, they generally do so in passing, attributing it to concerns about the gratuity of grace that supposedly arise from positing a supernaturally attained end as the complete perfection of nature qua nature. Indeed, scholars who find themselves on opposite sides of the debate about Cajetan's faithfulness to Aquinas, such [End Page 2] as Lawrence Feingold3 and Denis Bradley,4 generally concur in attributing the Dominican commentator's view of nature to concerns about this or some other issue of theological orthodoxy. Although theological concerns were foremost in the mind of later proponents of the pure-nature theory, writing in the aftermath of the Baianist controversy, there is less evidence that they preoccupied Cajetan, who was active decades before the controversy erupted. The argument Feingold adduces as proof of the fact that Cajetan's view of nature was motivated by issues of theological orthodoxy is based on a misinterpretation of Cajetan's De potentia neutra, a text in which the Dominican commentator argues against the claim that there can be a natural potency or inclination for...

Probabilismo y esclavitud negra

Little is known yet about the normative discussions on black slavery that were had by scholastic thinkers from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. In this article, we connect the writings of Diego de Avendaño S.J. (1594–1688) to the conceptual history of the slavery of black people. We highlight in particular the connection that Avendaño promotes between the legitimacy of the slave trade, slave ownership and probabilism. This new perspective is acknowledged and criticized by Francisco José de Jaca O.F.M. Cap. (c. 1645–1689) and Epifanio de Moirans O.F.M. Cap. (1644–1689). The main purpose of the present essay is to describe and interpret the reactions of these two authors to Avendaño’s discussion. Their anti-slavery works provide views on slavery in the ius gentium, freedom as a good and a right, and the insufficiency of moral probabilism as a doctrine when applied to the problem of the slavery of Africans.

Second Scholasticism and Black Slavery1 (Continuation and End)

In order to systematically explore the normative treatment of black slavery by Second Scholastic thinkers, who usually place the problem within the broad discussion of moral conscience and, more narrowly, the nature and justice of trade and contracts, I propose two stations of research that may be helpful for future studies, especially concerning the study of Scholastic ideas in colonial Latin America. Beginning with the analysis of just titles for slavery and slavery trade proposed by Luis de Molina S.J. (1535–1600), I show how his accounts were critically reviewed by Diego de Avendaño S.J. (1594–1688), revealing basic features of Second Scholasticism’s normative thinking in Europe and the Americas. The normative knowledge provided by these two Scholastic intellectuals would be profoundly tested during the last decades of the 17th century, especially by authors who sharpened the systemic analysis and a rigorist moral assessment of every title of slavery and slaveholding, as well as the requirements of an ethics of restitution.

Second Scholasticism and Black Slavery

In order to systematically explore the normative treatment of Black slavery by Second Scholastic thinkers, usually placing the problem within the broad discussion of moral conscience and, more narrowly, the nature and justice of trade and contracts, I propose two stations of research that may be helpful for future studies, especially in what concerns the study of Scholastic ideas in colonial Latin America. Beginning with the analysisof just titles for slavery and slavery trade proposed by Luis de Molina S.J. (1535–1600), I show how his accounts were critically reviewed by Diego de Avendaño S.J. (1594–1688), revealing basic features of Second Scholastic normative thinking in Europe and the Americas. Normative knowledge provided by these two Scholastic intellectuals wouldbe deeply tested throughout the last decades of the 17th century, especially by authors who sharpened the systemic analysis and a rigorist moral assessment of every title of slavery and slaveholding, as well as the requirements of an ethics of restitution.

Diego de Avendaño S. J. (1594–1688) e um de seus críticos: um estudo sobre a escravidão negra

O debate normativo sobre a escravidão negra feito por escolásticos pré-modernos, desde o século 16, ainda é pouco conhecido e investigado. Neste estudo, procura-se acentuar o papel que o relato de Diego de Avendaño S. J. (1594–1688) ocupa nessa história conceitual. O parecer de Avendaño resume as típicas ambiguidades dos autores jesuítas sobre a escravidão negra desde a exposição influente de Luís de Molina S. J. (1535–1600). Acentua-se o vínculo feito por Avendaño entre a doutrina do probabilismo moral, a licitude da escravidão e o surgimento de uma ideologia que endossa normativamente a escravidão como sistema de comércio e instituição social. É especialmente esse acréscimo de Avendaño ao debate sobre a justiça da escravidão que se torna objeto de análise e crítica radical por Epifanio de Moirans O. F. M. Cap. (1644–1689), cuja obra contém teses sobre a escravidão no direito das gentes, sobre o valor singular da liberdade como direito natural e uma rejeição convincente do probabilismo moral como moral mínima a ser aplicada para a avaliação da escravização de africanos, no seu tempo. A meta principal do presente estudo é caracterizar e analisar essa crítica.

A Influência da Filosofia Escolástica na Formação do Pensamento Econômico

O presente estudo buscou avaliar o papel que a escola de filosofia escolástica, tanto no seu apogeu quanto na fase tardia, teve para a formação de fundamentais conceitos que formam a base de qualquer pensamento econômico ulterior. Foram apresentadas considerações escolásticas acerca de auto regulação do mercado, comércio, preço justo, teoria do valor, concorrência, propriedade, inflação e valor do dinheiro no tempo. A universidade de Salamanca mereceu destaque, tanto por ser o berço das teorias da economia de mercado, quanto por tentar conciliar as ideias econômicas com as bases morais e históricas, de matriz judaico-cristãs, que sempre nortearam os pensadores escolásticos. Através de uma pesquisa bibliográfica e histórica, com base documental, tanto de fontes primárias quanto de estudos posteriores, o presentatrabalho mostra as raízes escolásticas de escolas de pensamento econômico contemporâneas e a indissociabilidade dos conceitos por elas utilizados de seus autores originais.

The Status of Eucharistic Accidents "sine subiecto": An Historical Survey up to Thomas Aquinas and Selected Reactions by Jörgen Vijgen

Reviewed by: The Status of Eucharistic Accidents "sine subiecto": An Historical Survey up to Thomas Aquinas and Selected Reactions by Jörgen Vijgen O.P. Dominic M. Langevin The Status of Eucharistic Accidents "sine subiecto": An Historical Survey up to Thomas Aquinas and Selected Reactions. By Jörgen Vijgen. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013. Pp. xii + 412. $168.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-3-05-006084-2. The Eucharist is a particularly Christian phenomenon, one whose practice requires a high acceptance of Christologically revealed material. As such, the Eucharist is a locus for theological reflection, but seemingly not one that would garner the attention of philosophers. The latter would be attracted to what is most common in nature and human experience, eschewing the specifically religious and revealed. The unique methodological tolerance—or better, openness—of Christian philosophy, however, has historically been on display in the intense interest that the Eucharist has garnered among both [End Page 146] theologians and philosophers. The Eucharist is the highest sacrament, and its right understanding has demanded the highest of efforts from the two highest sciences. Vijgen's monograph is the revision of a doctoral dissertation in philosophy defended at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome (the Angelicum). Secular philosophers and some heretical theologians treated in this book would claim that philosophical truth clashes with or contradicts one key aspect of orthodox Eucharistic belief and theology, namely, the twofold reality that the Eucharist is Christ and appears to be bread and wine. Vijgen's efforts illustrate how all the resources of theology and philosophy (and for this latter, both Christian and secular) have been brought to bear on this Eucharistic mystery and have enriched each other in a harmonious fashion. After a short, mostly methodological introduction, the book's first part presents the philosophy of Aristotle on being, essence, substance, and accidents. While this "Aristotelian background" can be independently helpful to the modern reader, its importance for understanding Vijgen's presentation of the later Scholastic Eucharistic debates is muted by several factors. First, the reception of these texts (e.g., the Categories, the Posterior Analytics, the Metaphysics) occurred at different times in the Middle Ages as Latin translations became available. Second, medieval philosophers and theologians working on understanding the Eucharist's composition also drew upon other ancient thinkers (e.g., Boethius, St. Basil the Great). Third, even when the medievals were trying to be Aristotelian, they sometimes felt free to adapt Aristotle. Last, Vijgen often does not make clear how the Aristotelian data was appropriated or abandoned by specific Scholastic thinkers. The remaining four parts of the book march chronologically through all major texts (and many minor ones) that deal with Eucharistic accidents, starting with Berengarius of Tours in the eleventh century and ending with John of Stergassen, O.P., in the fourteenth. To a certain extent, the medieval debate about Eucharistic accidents began with and resolved the controversies surrounding Ratramnus of Corbie (not discussed in the book, which deals with a later era) and especially Berengarius. "According to Berengarius it is a token of madness to hold what is unreasonable to hold, i.e., that something exists after it has undergone a change through destruction of the subject (bread), on the basis that another thing, which for the first time begins to exist (body of Christ) through generation of the subject, has accidents similar to the accidents of the thing that was destroyed through destruction of the subject" (33). Berengarius set some of the terms and themes of the debate: "accident," "subject," and the importance of noncontradiction. His language drew upon "Porphyry's Isagoge and Aristotle's Categories in Boethius' Latin translation" (ibid.). In contrast, the use of "substance" would occur after Berengarius (32 n. 9). Several analogies for explaining the Eucharistic accidents were tried during the earlier centuries. Reference was made to the turning of Lot's wife into a [End Page 147] pillar of salt and Christ's changing of water into wine at Cana (e.g., 56). One analogy compared transubstantiation to the merely apparent, visual change of a stick's straightness when inserted into water (e.g., 55-58, 78). Questions were asked about what happens when the...

Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano

Reviewed by: Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano Katja Krause Anthony Celano. Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. x + 263. Cloth, $99.00. Celano’s book focuses on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (NE) and thirteenth-century scholastic appropriations of it. Its objectives are to unravel the inconsistencies in Aristotle’s accounts of eudaimonia, to establish the prominence of phronesis (practical wisdom), and to reveal alterations of Aristotle’s phronesis in medieval moral thought (back-cover). Celano’s textual analyses are laborious, and some features of his story may be considered stimulating insights. His construal of phronesis as primary to Aristotle’s moral conception (viii), his emphasis on Albert’s contribution to medieval moral thought (chapters 5–6), and his inclusion of the largely uncharted anonymous Erfurt commentary (chapter 8) represent important contributions. Yet Celano tells a tale that others have already told (e.g. R. A. Gauthier 1947–48, quoted by Celano on 78): that Aristotle’s NE contains a single veracity which seemingly transcends history. With their decidedly Christian agenda, however, scholastic interpreters “misread Aristotle’s Ethics” (78) or provided readings “contradictory to his thought” (231). Celano’s story takes its impetus from his view that, with the passage of time, thirteenth-century thinkers (all with close ties to the University of Paris) arrive at an improved grasp of Aristotle’s NE. Celano suggests that, early in the century, when only parts of the NE circulated, William of Auxerre, Philip the Chancellor, and six arts masters tried to get to the root of Aristotle’s ethics, but were “not entirely successful” (99). In the second half of the century, when the NE was translated and disseminated in its entirety, “more gifted theologians, such as Albert, Thomas and Bonaventure” achieved better results in understanding the text than their scholastic forebears had done (99). Celano reads Albert’s early De natura boni, [End Page 160] De bono, and De homine—the latter of which he misconstrues as an ethical work (100)—as preparations for Albert’s subsequent reconciliations of the NE “with the Christian ideals of perfect beatitude and natural law” in his two commentaries on the NE (130). Celano then argues that Albert’s commentaries decisively influenced later medieval commentaries on Aristotle, including that of Thomas Aquinas, while he equally portrays Thomas’s reading of Aristotle as departing from Albert’s (169). Finally, Celano discusses two commentaries on Aristotle’s NE written at the end of the thirteenth century: one by the anonymous Erfurt commentator and one by Radulphus Brito. In Celano’s view, they read Aristotle in “decidedly un-Aristotelian ways” to harmonise his NE with their own moral principles (231); and they replaced the “ground-breaking work” of Albert and Thomas (209) with their “reverence for tradition” (231). Celano’s book is a hero-narrative complete with denouement. Crucial to it is the thesis that the scholastic thinkers he discusses altered Aristotle’s intention in accordance with their Christian agenda. While, in Celano’s reading of the text, Aristotle founded his NE on the “human standard” of phronesis, the scholastic readers established it on “a divine foundation.” They read Aristotle through the lens of foreign concepts such as “natural law” or “synderesis” (viii, 64), and restricted Aristotle’s phronesis to moral decisions (231). Yet I wonder whether this is an accurate picture. The scholastic thinkers discussed here were more concerned with determining the truth about human prudence and happiness than with developing a truthful reading of Aristotle’s text. In their negotiations of this truth, they differed notably in accordance with their different historical contexts. Regrettably, Celano underplays these contexts, which constituted the ‘lifeworlds’ (Husserl’s term) within which they wrote. Indeed, it would be helpful to understand that early thirteenth-century moral theology, as propounded by William and Philip, arose within the theological framework established by Peter Lombard, and merely utilised some Aristotelian moral concepts. In contrast, early thirteenth-century moral philosophy conducted by the arts masters shifted the framework away from Lombard toward an Aristotelian one. This contrast could help evaluate important motives behind the early appropriations...

THE IMAGE OF GOD, CHRISTIAN RIGHTS TALK, AND THE SCHOOL OF SALAMANCA

AbstractThe salience of rights talk in Western cultures has generated constructive responses from various religious traditions. This article contributes to this religious hermeneutic by turning to the first-generation Spanish theologians of the sixteenth-century School of Salamanca, Francisco de Vitoria and Domingo de Soto, as important resources for Christian rights talk. These late scholastic thinkers made the image of God doctrine, as transmitted by Thomas Aquinas, the basis for affirming the worth and human natural rights of Amerindian peoples. To highlight the contemporary relevance of the school, the article engages Nicholas Wolterstorff's recent work on rights and his twofold critique of a capacities approach to human dignity and a virtues approach to justice. The School of Salamanca not only addresses the important concerns raised by Wolterstorff but uniquely offers a view of rights inextricably linked to human capacities and Christian virtue that highlights both the patient and agential dimensions of justice. They provide a critical theological challenge to the dominant secular liberal view of rights in a way that Wolterstorff's account does not.

The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation by Patricia Clare Ingham

Patricia Clare Ingham, The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. 288. isbn: 978-0-8122-4706-0. £42.50/$65.What is the 'new'? How do we recognize, value, counterfeit, or control it? And how does situating the 'new' as a subject of inquiry within the Middle Ages, an epoch frequently associated with reverence for the authority of tradition rather than fervor for the new, recalibrate understandings of literary and intellectual history? Patricia Clare Ingham's The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation poses these expansive questions and offers illuminating responses across an introduction and six chapters that promise to influence understandings of topics ranging from romance representations of youth and technology, to alchemical experimentation, to records of transatlantic travel. Central to her argument is that, in the Middle Ages, the 'new' was not simply opposed to the old, but entangled within it, often effected through productive returns to tradition in a culture obsessed with copying; that it was ambivalently valued during those centuries; and that it is most often recognized retrospectively.The book is organized around three sections, 'Ex Nihilo,' 'Ingenium,' and 'Curiositas,' umbrella concepts for two chapters each that interrogate these concepts' significance for intellectual history and literary texts. Chapter One, 'Scholastic Novelties,' examines how thinkers assented to and tinkered with the conceptual space in which humans might create and experience new things and ideas, while still maintaining radical creation as the preserve of an exclusively divine capacity. Scholastic thinkers are revealed as cultivating an ethically charged ambivalence toward the new, an argument that surprisingly grows out of a recuperative reading of Henry Adams, who becomes something of a spokesman for the vision of history the book itself forwards at large, one structured by continual reassessment of and reengagement with old issues, sometimes in new ways. Chapter Two, 'Conjuring Roger Bacon,' approaches the alchemist, inventor, and linguist as a figure by which to demonstrate this medieval ambivalence toward the new and the capacity for the category to signify more richly than in mere opposition to the old. Chapter Three, 'Ingenious Youth,' examines the popular Floris and Blauncheflour romance to demonstrate how childhood makes attention to new learning, intercultural encounters, and general cleverness permissible through an association with innocence. …

The Early Franciscan Doctrine of the Knowledge of God: Between Augustine’s Authority and Innovation

The collaboratively authored Summa Halensis is widely regarded as the first attempt to articulate a distinctly Franciscan intellectual tradition. This paper will examine one of its initial sections, on the knowledge of God, which lays the conceptual foundation for the rest of the work. While the Summa, like most scholastic texts, invokes many authoritative sources in this context, it gives pride of place to the work of Augustine. Nevertheless, it employs Augustine’s thought inconsistently, to argue both for and against the same position. On this basis, the paper will seek to elucidate the method whereby scholastic thinkers manipulated authoritative sources for their own ends. By the same token, it will demonstrate that the Summa’s authors, far from attempting to ‘systematize’ the thought of Augustine as some have supposed, were engaged in an effort to develop an innovative tradition of their own, which reflected their unique spiritual and ministerial vision as Franciscans.

Breaching medical ethics in research.

Breaching medical ethics in research.

Of Bondage: Debt, Property, and Personhood in Early Modern England by Amanda Bailey

Amanda Bailey. Of Bondage: Debt, Property, and Personhood in Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. x + 209 pages. $55.00Reviewed by Ryan NetzleyAmanda Bailey's Of Bondage begins with two key claims: 1) more people are incarcerated for debt than for crime in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, so much so that debt suits swamped the legal system (2-3); and 2) the period is more obsessed with debt bondage and the legal apparatus that turns bodies into collateral than it is with the problem of proscribed usury (11). Yet this book is much more expansive and provocative than a careful adjudication of early modern England's changing legal conceptions of debt and its impact on early modern drama. It also hints at the ways in which debt bonds could create the conditions for the conception of slavery (145- 46), as well as a conception of time and investment that would make modern finance capital possible (138). As such, it not only offers interesting readings of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth- century plays concerned with debt-Timon of Athens, The Merchant of Venice, Middleton's Michaelmas Term and A Trick to Catch the Old One, Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and Fletcher and Massinger's The Custom of the Country. It also suggest that we should revisit some of our basic assumptions about the nature and genesis of debt and money, perhaps in light of David Graeber's magisterial anthropological account of debt and the creation of markets (Bailey, in fact, characterizes her project as an historical examination of Graeber's more sweeping claims [x]).Bailey's account of the distinction between the legal conceptions of debt and usury is especially crisp and timely. Debt bonds in Renaissance England grow out of property law and rest on the assumption that money itself is a nonfungible property, like land. Usury, in contrast, treats money as something that can be expended or wasted. Thus, debt is different than usury in that the latter can keep charging and accumulating interest even after the borrowed sum is used up:In essence, a usurious loan entailed giving away one's property so that another could consume it. Aquinas and the scholastic thinkers objected to charging interest since the lender was, in effect, asking the borrower to pay for something that by definition the borrower would use up. Unlike the one-time payment of a luxury tax, for instance, the establishment of a perpetual, escalating charge for the right to use that which at a certain point no longer existed seemed patently immoral. (54)Debt bonds are of a decidedly different sort. They anchor value in the body of the debtor, but do not allow the bondholder to use or use up her body, precisely because credit and debt are a transfer of nonfungible property (42-43). Thus, they allow for the indefinite imprisonment of the debtor but not her execution because the bond does not convey to the lender absolute ownership, conceived as the right to destroy or waste that which one owns (55). The theory is that one cannot use up the property of another and, therefore, one cannot kill a debtor because he has property in himself:Technically, a creditor could not abdicate ownership over the money he lent, which according to debt jurisprudence could not be wasted or used up as a fungible, like food or wine. In reality, however, debtors spent the coins they borrowed. At the same time, the law allowed an unsatisfied creditor rights in his debtor's person, which as collateral was considered a form of property like the original loan. This meant that while a creditor could not use or destroy his debtor, for instance by forcing him to perform labor or by murdering him, he could detain his debtor indefinitely. (30)Bailey remarks not just a pivotal legal and historical insight here, with ramifications for interpretations of plays and other literature focused on debt and economics, but also emphasizes the period's complex opposition between using and having, an opposition that should haunt and reorient our modern assumptions about exchange, trade, and even the nature of money. …

Ethics in medical education, practice, and research: An insight

A combination of moral principles and values that are applied to take judgements in medical education, practice, and research are termed as medical ethics. There have been other many traditional medical ethics guidelines brought about by Muslim Ishaq ibn Ali al-ruhawi wrote Conduct of physicians, Jewish and Catholic scholastic thinkers over time. Ethics in modern medicine started way back in 18 th century when Thomas Percival, a physician based in England, wrote a book on medical ethics and coined the terminology of medical ethics and medical jurisprudence. The medical profession should be viewed differently and a rethought on the ethical practices is the need of hour to make it an exciting and fulfilling profession. A rethink on the status of modern medicine will certainly pave the way for obtaining specific answers for many dilemmas in modern medicine including the best ethical codes and practices.

Existential Dependence and the Question of Emanative Causation in Protestant Metaphysics, 1570–1620

That the world is dependent on God for its existence is a view that many Scholastic and early modern thinkers took to be a philosophical implication of the biblical creation story. However, they st...

Edith Stein’s Theory of the Person in Her Münster Years (1932–1933)

The new critical edition of Stein's lectures on philosophical and theological anthropology makes it possible to research further her theory of the person as developed during her middle period in Miinster, that is, between 1932 and 1933. Her project revolves around the anthropological foundations of a Catholic pedagogy. This phase of her work is marked by various debates. On one hand, she attempts to bring the intellectual legacy of Husserl and phenomenology into dialogue with Thomas Aquinas and other Scholastic thinkers. On the other hand, she confronts the ideas and spirit of National Socialism with her Catholic faith. Stein's Miinster phenomenological method contrasts with Husserl's transcendental phenomenology; she develops an eidetic psychology within a universal ontology. In her somatological anthropology, the human being appears as a unity of lived body, soul, and mind. As a person, the human being is investigated as species, double species (man-woman), individual, as having a communal essence (outside the concept of race), and, ultimately, as a seeker of God. Stein examines the freedom of human beings, which lies between the givens of nature and grace, as well as the tension between knowledge and faith. In the final section of this paper, I discuss Stein's position over against contemporary deconstructivist feminism.

Human Will, Human Dignity, and Freedom: A Study of Giorgio Benigno Salviati's Early Discussion of the Will, Urbino 1474-1482

AbstractThis article presents the first detailed account of Giorgio Benigno Salviati's discussion of the will written in Urbino during the mid-1470s and the early 1480s. A Franciscan friar and a prominent professor of theology and philosophy, Salviati was a prolific author and central figure in the circles of Cardinal Bessarion in Rome and of Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence. This article focuses on his defense of the Scotist theory of the will. It considers its fifteenth-century context, in which both humanist and scholastic thinkers dealt with the question of the intellect and the will. While basing himself partly on authorities such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, Salviati is clearly aware of the novelty of his theory, and its important implications for ethics and theology.