Medieval Thoughts (2011/04/19) Charlemagne (742 –814)
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Theories of Truth. Bibliography on Primary Medieval Authors
Theories of Truth. Bibliography on Primary Medieval Authors https://www.ontology.co/biblio/truth-medieval-authors.htm Theory and History of Ontology by Raul Corazzon | e-mail: [email protected] History of Truth. Selected Bibliography on Medieval Primary Authors The Authors to which I will devote an entire page are marked with an asterisk (*). Hilary of Poitiers Augustine of Hippo (*) Boethius (*) Isidore of Seville John Scottus Eriugena (*) Isaac Israeli Avicenna (*) Anselm of Canterbury (*) Peter Abelard (*) Philip the Chancellor Robert Grosseteste William of Auvergne Albert the Great Bonaventure Thomas Aquinas (*) Henry of Ghent Siger of Brabant John Duns Scotus (*) Hervaeus Natalis Giles of Rome Durandus of St. Pourçain Peter Auriol Walter Burley William of Ockham (*) Robert Holkot John Buridan (*) 1 di 14 22/09/2016 09:25 Theories of Truth. Bibliography on Primary Medieval Authors https://www.ontology.co/biblio/truth-medieval-authors.htm Gregory of Rimini William of Heytesbury Peter of Mantua Paul of Venice Hilary of Poitiers (ca. 300 - 368) Texts 1. Meijering, E.P. 1982. Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity. De Trinitate 1, 1-19, 2, 3. Leiden: Brill. In close cooperation with J. C. M: van Winden. On truth see I, 1-14. Studies Augustine of Hippo ( 354 - 430) Texts Studies 1. Boyer, Charles. 1921. L'idée De Vérité Dans La Philosophie De Saint Augustin. Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne. 2. Kuntz, Paul G. 1982. "St. Augustine's Quest for Truth: The Adequacy of a Christian Philosophy." Augustinian Studies no. 13:1-21. 3. Vilalobos, José. 1982. Ser Y Verdad En Agustín De Hipona. Sevilla: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Sevilla. -
The Prolongation of Life in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, with Emphasis on Francis Bacon
THE PROLONGATION OF LIFE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE, WITH EMPHASIS ON FRANCIS BACON ROGER MARCUS JACKSON A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Dr. Reid Barbour Dr. Mary Floyd-Wilson Dr. Darryl Gless Dr. James O‘Hara Dr. Jessica Wolfe ©2010 Roger Marcus Jackson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT ROGER MARCUS JACKSON: The Prolongation of Life in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Under the direction of Reid Barbour) Drawing upon early modern texts of poetry, theology, and natural philosophy written in England and the continent, this dissertation explores the intellectual traditions inherent in Renaissance discourses addressing the prolongation of life. It is organized around two nodal questions: Can life be prolonged? Should it be prolonged? The project hinges upon Francis Bacon (1561-1626), for whom the prolongation of life in the sense of a longer human lifespan serves as the loftiest goal of modern experimental science. Addressing the first question, Part One illustrates the texture and diversity of early modern theories of senescence and medical treatments against the ―disease‖ of old age promoted by Galen, Avicenna, medieval theologians, Jean Fernel, Marsilio Ficino, and Paracelsus. Part Two then demonstrates that Bacon‘s theory of senescence and corresponding therapies nevertheless differ from those of his predecessors and contemporaries in three regards: their attempt to isolate senescence from disease, their postulation of senescence as a process based on universal structures and actions of matter, and their deferral to further experiment for elucidation. -
Early Modern Philosophy of Technology: Bacon and Descartes
Early Modern Philosophy of Technology: Bacon and Descartes By Robert Arnăutu Submitted to Central European University Department of Philosophy In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Supervisor: Professor Hanoch Ben-Yami CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2013 Copyright notice I hereby declare that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions of higher education. Also, I declare that this dissertation contains no material previously written and/or published by any other person, except where appropriate acknowledgement has been made in the form of bibliographic reference. Robert Arnăutu June 2013 CEU eTD Collection i Abstract The contemporary understanding of technology is indebted to Bacon and Descartes, who challenged the pre-modern conceptions regarding useful material production. Although the production of artefacts has been a constant activity of humans since the dawn of history, the Ancient world tended to disvalue it, considering it a lower endeavour that aims to satisfy ignoble material needs. Technology, according to Ancient Greek thinkers, cannot surpass nature but can only bring small improvements to it; moreover, there is a difference in kind between natural things and technological artefacts; the activity of inventing and producing useful objects is unsuited for the nobility and for free men; there is an irreducible gap between proper knowledge and the production of artefacts. This approach toward technology is completely -
Descartes' Optics
Descartes’ Optics Jeffrey K. McDonough Descartes’ work on optics spanned his entire career and represents a fascinating area of inquiry. His interest in the study of light is already on display in an intriguing study of refraction from his early notebook, known as the Cogitationes privatae, dating from 1619 to 1621 (AT X 242-3). Optics figures centrally in Descartes’ The World, or Treatise on Light, written between 1629 and 1633, as well as, of course, in his Dioptrics published in 1637. It also, however, plays important roles in the three essays published together with the Dioptrics, namely, the Discourse on Method, the Geometry, and the Meteorology, and many of Descartes’ conclusions concerning light from these earlier works persist with little substantive modification into the Principles of Philosophy published in 1644. In what follows, we will look in a brief and general way at Descartes’ understanding of light, his derivations of the two central laws of geometrical optics, and a sampling of the optical phenomena he sought to explain. We will conclude by noting a few of the many ways in which Descartes’ efforts in optics prompted – both through agreement and dissent – further developments in the history of optics. Descartes was a famously systematic philosopher and his thinking about optics is deeply enmeshed with his more general mechanistic physics and cosmology. In the sixth chapter of The Treatise on Light, he asks his readers to imagine a new world “very easy to know, but nevertheless similar to ours” consisting of an indefinite space filled everywhere with “real, perfectly solid” matter, divisible “into as many parts and shapes as we can imagine” (AT XI ix; G 21, fn 40) (AT XI 33-34; G 22-23). -
The Postmodern Retrieval of Neoplatonism in Jean-Luc Marion
The Postmodern Retrieval of Neoplatonism in Jean-Luc Marion and John Milbank and the Origins of Western Subjectivity in Augustine and Eriugena Hermathena, 165 (Winter, 1998), 9-70. Neoplatonism commanded important scholarly energy and poetic and literary talent in the later two-thirds of our century. Now it attracts considerable philosophical and theological interest. But this may be its misfortune. The Dominican scholar M.-D. Chenu judged the Leonine utilization of St. Thomas to have been detrimental for our understanding of his doctrine. Thomas was made an instrument of an imperialist Christianity. The use of Aquinas as a weapon against modernity required a “misérable abus.” The Holy Office made Fr. Chenu pay dearly enough for attempting accurate historical study of the Fathers and medieval doctors to make us give him heed.1 The present retrieval of our philosophical and theological past has a very different relation to institutional interests than belonged to Leonine Neothomism. The problems intellectuals now have with truthfulness come more from within themselves than from outside. There is, nonetheless, much in the character of the postmodern turn to Neoplatonism by Christian theologians to cause concern that the ecclesiastical subordination of theoria to praxis which distorted the most recent Thomism may have an analogue for Neoplatonism recovered to serve our desires.2 And if, in fact, our eye has become self-distorting, the problem in our relation to our history will be worse than anything external pressures can cause. This paper aims to begin assessing the character of this distortion in respect to a central question, our understanding of the history of western subjectivity. -
Roger Bacon and the Beginnings of Experimental Science in Britain
FROM THE JAMES LIND LIBRARY Roger Bacon and the beginnings of experimental science in Britain Eric Sidebottom Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford OX1 3RE, UK Correspondence to: Eric Sidebottom. Email: [email protected] DECLARATIONS Roger Bacon is something of an enigma. He has I am puzzled that RW Southern’s biography of been called many things – ‘Britain’s first scientist’, Grosseteste does not mention Roger Bacon,2 des- Competing interests ‘wonderful doctor’, ‘conjurer’ and ‘magician’. pite the Preface in AC Crombie’s Robert Grosseteste None declared Many of the details of his life are uncertain and and the origins of experimental science, published they have been discussed and argued about by half a century earlier, which states: ‘In the 13thC, Funding scholars for centuries. He is generally thought to the Oxford school, with Robert Grosseteste as its None declared have been born in Ilchester, Somerset, around founder, assumes a paramount importance: the 1214, although some authors have put his date work of this school in fact marks the beginning Ethical approval of birth as late as 1220. There is good evidence of the modern tradition of experimental science’.3 that he was in Paris in 1245 and 1251, but it is What is clear is that Roger Bacon was an Not applicable uncertain if he ever actually studied in Oxford. innovative thinker and a courageous scholar, not Contributorship If he did, he would have met Robert Grosseteste, afraid to challenge current beliefs about philoso- often described as Oxford University’s first phy, science and religion. -
Proclus and Artemis: on the Relevance of Neoplatonism to the Modern Study of Ancient Religion
Kernos Revue internationale et pluridisciplinaire de religion grecque antique 13 | 2000 Varia Proclus and Artemis: On the Relevance of Neoplatonism to the Modern Study of Ancient Religion Spyridon Rangos Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/1293 DOI: 10.4000/kernos.1293 ISSN: 2034-7871 Publisher Centre international d'étude de la religion grecque antique Printed version Date of publication: 1 January 2000 ISSN: 0776-3824 Electronic reference Spyridon Rangos, « Proclus and Artemis: On the Relevance of Neoplatonism to the Modern Study of Ancient Religion », Kernos [Online], 13 | 2000, Online since 21 April 2011, connection on 01 May 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/1293 ; DOI : 10.4000/kernos.1293 Kernos Kernos, 13 (2000), p. 47-84. Proclus and Artemis: On the Relevance of Neoplatonism to the Modern Study of Andent Religion* Imagine the situation in which contemporary philosophers would find themselves if Wittgenstein introduced, in his Philosophical Investigations, the religious figure of Jesus as Logos and Son of God in order to illuminate the puzzlement ofthe private-language paradox, or if in the second division of Being and Time Heidegger mentioned the archangel Michael to support the argument of 'being toward death'. Similar is the perplexity that a modern reader is bound to encounter when, after a highly sophisticated analysis of demanding metaphysical questions about the relationship of the one and the many, finitude and infinity, mind and body, Proclus, l in ail seriousness and without the slightest touch of irony, assigns to some traditional gods of Greek polytheism a definitive place in the structure of being. -
Natural Theology and the Christian Contribution to Metaphysics: on Thomas Joseph White’S Wisdom in the Face of Modernity
Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 539 –62 539 Natural Theology and the Christian Contribution to Metaphysics: On Thomas Joseph White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity NICHOLAS J. H EALY , J R. John Paul II Institute Washington, DC From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act “with logos” is contrary to God’s nature. [T]he faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which unlike - ness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abol - ishing analogy and its language (cf. Lateran IV). God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. This inner rapprochement between biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history—it is an event which concerns us even today. 1 It is my view that the neoscholastic rationalism that was trying to reconstruct the praeambula fidei, the approach to faith, with pure rational certainty, by means of rational argument that was strictly inde - pendent of any faith, has failed; and it cannot be otherwise for any such attempts to do that kind of thing. -
Suggestions for Further Reading
MP_D01.qxd 11/23/06 2:43 AM Page 382 Suggestions for Further Reading GENERAL SURVEYS OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY Armstrong, A. H., ed. 1970. The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Copleston, Frederick. 1950. A History of Philosophy, vol. 2: Medieval Philosophy: From Augustine to Duns Scotus. Westminster, MD: The Newman Press (many subsequent reprintings by various presses). Copleston, Frederick. 1953. A History of Philosophy, vol. 2: Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. Westminster, MD: The Newman Press (many subsequent reprintings by various presses). Gilson, Étienne. 1955. History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. New York: Random House. Gracia, Jorge J. E., and Timothy B. Noone, eds. 2003. A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell. Kenny, A. 2005. A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 2: Medieval Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kretzmann, Norman, et al., eds. 1982. The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luscombe, David E. 1997. History of Western Philosophy, vol. 2: Medieval Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marenbon, John. 1981. From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre: Logic, Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marenbon, John. 1983. Early Medieval Philosophy (480–1150): An Introduction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Marenbon, John. 1991. Later Medieval Philosophy (1150–1350): An Introduction. London: Routledge. Marenbon, John, ed. 1998. The Routledge History of Philosophy, vol. 3: The Middle Ages. London: Routledge. McGrade, A. -
Chapter the MIND–SOUL PROBLEM
200437. Ashgatebundel Paul Bakker; 02_Chapter2. Proef 1. 14-11-2006:11.02, page 1. chapter THE MIND–SOUL PROBLEM Robert Pasnau . Introduction Few notions about the history of philosophy are more widely held than the no- tion that Descartes began something important in the way we think about the mind. But what exactly did he begin? A good place to look for an answer to this question is the start of his caustic set of replies to Gassendi, where Descartes cla- rifies a point of terminology. On his usage, he explains, the term ‘mind’ should be taken not in the traditional way, as referring to a part of the soul, but as refer- ring to the whole soul. Hence the two terms, ‘mind’ (mens)and‘soul’(anima), are to be treated as co-referential: ‘I consider the mind not as a part of the soul, but as the whole soul that thinks’.1 To be sure, this is no mere point of terminology. On the contrary, his erasure of the distinction between mind and soul constitutes the most fundamental respect in which Descartes’s conception of mind has influ- enced our own. In fact, one might reasonably think of this passage as marking out a kind of dividing line between medieval psychology and modern philosophy of mind. In what follows I will consider some of the medieval background to Descartes’s position, and show how this dividing line, though significant, is less clear than one might suppose. But before turning back to that earlier tradition, it is worth a closer look at how Descartes accounts for his choice of terminology. -
The Oxford Greyfriars: a Centre of Learning
THE OXFORD GREYFRIARS: A CENTRE OF LEARNING The Oxford Franciscans (Greyfriars) are significant in the history of the University of Oxford and the development of academic learning, especially scientific study. As a Studium Generale the Alchemy was the friary served as an important medieval forerunner of early “college”, within a chemistry. Alchemists network of similar Christian were famously colleges throughout Europe. concerned with the The friary had two libraries, a search for a way to scriptorium (where books were convert low grade copied out and translated), (base) metals, such many knowledgeable friars as iron and lead, into or masters, and a structured precious metals, such teaching programme. It was as gold and silver. They were also absorbed with trying to find the only rivalled in the later 13th elixir of life, which would bring the user youth and longevity and century by similar colleges perhaps immortality. in Paris and Cambridge. With such a good reputation To date, little physical evidence students came to Oxford for the practice of alchemy from across Europe, including has been identified through France, Italy, Spain, Portugal archaeological excavation. Statue to Roger Bacon in the Natural History However, in 2005 a group of Museum, Oxford and Germany. ceramic and glass alembics, The Oxford friars were inspired by great scholarly Arabic texts skillets and furnace fragments from the Islamic Golden Age during the 9th and 11th centuries. were found in an old pit (used They used these texts (translated into Latin) which enabled as a lavatory) belonging to a the ideas and knowledge from previous centuries of Islamic medieval hall buried below scholarship to be studied more widely in the emerging medieval Peckwater Quad, Christ Church, universities of Europe. -
Forgetful Platonism: Misrepresenting Proclus and Twentieth-Century
Misrepresenting Neoplatonism in Contemporary Christian Dionysian Polemic: Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa versus Vladimir Lossky and Jean-Luc Marion American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 82:4 (2008): 683–703. Wayne Hankey Part I: From Eriugena to Nicholas of Cusa The Corpus Areopagiticum in Greek—or at least a part of it—circulated in Rome, probably from the time of Gregory the Great‘s Homily XXIV (592 or 593), but certainly from the middle of the seventh up to the second half of the ninth century.1 Nonetheless, there was no profound encounter by the Latins with the philosophical and mystical content of the corpus, until the translations by Hilduin and Eriugena consequent on its arrival at the Frankish court in 827.2 John the Scot‘s grasp and development of what the Areopagite passed on from his sources has only rarely been equalled. After Boethius, he was the first to draw together the Greek and Latin Platonists. Among the Latins, Augustine and Boethius, together with Ambrose, because, as Eriugena wrote, he so often followed the Greeks, were pre-eminent .3 He learned most from the Greek texts he translated—the Dionysian corpus, the Ambigua and Scoliae of Maximus the Confessor, and the De hominis opificio of Gregory of Nyssa—; what he took from the Latins was generally assimilated to their logic.4 His sources were so nearly exclusively Christian, and the texts so predominantly theological and mystical—despite such ―secular‖ and pagan authorities as the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella from his Irish education5—that no real confrontation between Hellenic and Christian Neoplatonisms occurs for him.