This paper focuses on the 12th-century Byzantine scholar Michael Glykas and the two main pillars of his multifarious literary production, Biblos Chronike and Letters, thoroughly exploring for the first time the nature of their interconnection. In addition to the primary goal, i. e. clarifying as far as possible the conditions in which these two works were written, taking into account their intertextuality, it extends the discussion to the mixture of features in texts of different literary genre, written in (...) parallel, by the same author, based on the same material. By presenting the evidence drawn from the case of Michael Glykas, the paper attempts to stress the need to abandon the strictly applied taxonomical logic in approaching Byzantine Literature, as it ultimately prevents us from constitute the full mark of each author in the history of Byzantine culture. (shrink)

This volume brings together the studies by the late Gabriel Nuchelmans (1922-96) on the history of logic and semantics from the 12th to the 17th century. They exemplify his conviction that the study of problems of modern analytical philosophy can help in understanding the authors of earlier centuries - and that the study of earlier solutions can stimulate modern discussions. The first articles deal with medieval theories of the proposition and predication; the final section is concerned with (...) Renaissance philosophy, from Lorenzo Valla to Locke. (shrink)

This volume is based on the ongoing studies on post-Avicennian philosophy in the context of naturalising philosophy and science in Islam from the 12th to the 14th century - a topic that deserves the special attention of historians of Islamic intellectual history. The contributors address the following questions using case studies: What was philosophy all about from the 12th to the 14th century? And how did Muslim scholars react to it during the period under consideration? The (...) present volume approaches complex philosophical topics from different angles and is structured around six main sections: 1. Historical and Social Approaches to Philosophy, 2. Knowing the Unknown, 3. God, Man and the Physical World, 4. Universals, 5. Logic and Intellect, and 6. Anthropomorphism and Incorporealism"--Back cover. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 249 - 268 The tract on logic that has now become known as the _Introductiones Montanae maiores_ provides us with useful evidence of the kind of education that was on offer in the Parisian schools of the 12th century. In this contribution, I will go through a number of arguments brought up in connection with the definitions of basic logical concepts. By doing so I aim to provide more details about (...) some of the most important theoretical positions of the tract. (shrink)

Among the various testimonia assembled by Iwakuma and Ebbesen to the twelfth-century school of philosophers known as the Nominales,Iwakuma Yukio and Sten Ebbesen, “Logico -Theological Schools from the Secon d Half of the 12th Century: A List of Sources,” Vivarium XXX (1992):173–210. four record their commitment to the apparently outrageous thesis that nothing grows. My aim in this essay is to explore the reasons the Nominale s had for maintaining this thesis and to investigate the role that (...) the theory which supported it played in the development of late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century debates over the character of the hypostatic union. My investigation concerns onl y one aspect of twelfth-century NominalismSince this group were apparently the first ever to be called ‘nominalists’ I think that we may justifiably capitalize the name of the theory to indicate that we are referring to their version of it. but once this part of their system is understood, we will be better able to characterise the whole and the way in which the views of the Nominales conflicted with those of their opponents. S o long as the testimonia remain few and rather slight such a reconstruction offers our only hope for finding the Nominales and their influence where their name has not been recorded. (shrink)

"The role of logic in the Middle Ages. Regarding the role of logic within the framework of arts and sciences during the Middle Ages, we have to distinguish two related aspects, one institutional and the other scientific. As to the first aspect, we have to remember that the medieval educational system was based on the seven liberal arts, which were divided into the trivium, i.e., three arts of language, and the quadrivium, i.e., four mathematical arts. The so-called trivial (...) arts were grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and during a period of several centuries virtually every educated person, at least every university graduate, received a training in these matters, especially in logic. Students in the medieval faculty of arts probably spent more time studying logic than any other discipline. This first -- institutional -- aspect concerning the role of logic is explained by the second -- scientific -- aspect. The trivial disciplines provided techniques of analysis and a technical vocabulary that permeate philosophical, scientific and theological writings. Logic, as mentioned before, was referred to and was generally regarded as the art of arts and the science of sciences. The increasing cultural dominance of the universities with their obligatory disputationes and their hierarchy of examinations on the one hand and the outstanding status of logic on the other were corresponding features of the educational world of the 13th century. The core of the logic curriculum from the 12th century onwards was provided by the logical works of Aristotle. These represented the material for the study of types of predication, the analysis of simple propositions or statements (2) and their relations of inference and equivalence, the analysis of modal propositions, of the structure and the types of the syllogism, dialectical topics, fallacies and scientific reasoning as based on the demonstrative syllogism. Medieval logicians, however, realized that there were other, non-Aristotelian, approaches to logical subjects, questions and methods that could be investigated.. (shrink)

This book collects most of the invited papers presented at the 12th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science in Oviedo, August 2003. It contains state of the art accounts of ongoing work by a selection of the most renowned researchers in the field. The papers in the Logic section deal with topics in mathematical logic, as well as philosophical logic, and the area of logic and computation. The section on General Methodology (...) contains articles on models, theories, probability, induction, causation, and other topics. A number of papers discuss Philosophical Issues of Particular Sciences, such as mathematics, physics, linguistics, psychology, biology, and medicine. There is also a section on Ethics of Science, and papers from a special symposium on the Emergence of Scientific Medicine in the 19th-20th Century. (shrink)

This study reads Anselm of Canterbury's enigmatic work De grammatico as his introduction to dialectic, covering a model for discourse, a theory of fallacies, and a theory of signification. It provides a new perspective on Anselm's dialectical thought, on dialectic in the 11th century, and on the continuity with 12th Century logical thought.

Collection of articles on medieval logic and semantics. Introduction by Sten Ebbesen and 24 contributions by scholars in the history of medieval theories of language. The papers in this volume treat several aspects of the history of theories of language from the 12th to the 14th century, aspects that have in a way or another been dealt with by Ebbesen himself.Festschrift in honor of Sten Ebessen in the occasion of his 65th birthday.

In this essay, I consider some logical treatises and commentaries from the first decades of the 12th century (many of which are still unedited) which contain a discussion on modalities and modal logic. After presenting a short catalogue of these sources and a description of their common features, I shall focus on some definitions of the modal term “necessarium” which are provided in them. As we will see, Abelard and logicians of his time advanced three different characterizations (...) of this term: necessity was either defined in terms of unavoidability (ineuitabilitas), or in terms of immutability and omnitemporality (impermutabilitas, sempiternitas), or again in terms of absolute necessity as opposed to conditioned one (necessitas absoluta vs. determinata). I argue that the temporal understanding of necessity in terms of omnitemporality, inherited from ancient sources and extensively used by Abelard and others in the first years of the twelfth-century, started to disappear in texts datable from around the 1120, perhaps due to several difficulties that were related to this definition when applied in logical contexts. I also discuss how the notion of necessitas determinata was used by Abelard’s contemporaries to qualify the modal status of present and past events, which were generally believed to be necessary only in a “weak” and harmless sense that did not prevent them from being contingent. -/- . (shrink)

One of the main controversies of the Logic Schools of the 12th century centered on the question: What follows from the impossible? In this paper arguments for two diametrically opposed positions are examined. The author of the ‘Avranches Text’ who probably belonged to the school of the Parvipontani defended the view that from an impossible proposition everything follows (‘Ex impossibili quodlibet’). In particular he developed a proof to show that by means of so-called ‘disjunctive syllogism’ any arbitrary (...) proposition B can be logically derived from a pair of contradictory propositions A and Not-A. The author of the Ars Meliduna instead argued that nothing follows from an impossible proposition (‘ex falso nihil sequitur’). This view is supported by various counterexamples which aimed to show that the admission of impossible premises would give rise to inconsistent conclusions. Upon closer analysis these inconsistencies do not, however, have the formal structure of a real contradiction like A and Not-A, but rather the structure of two rivalling conditionals like ‘If B then A’ and ‘If B then Not-A’. Hence these counterexamples rather have to be considered as refutations of the basic principles of ‘connexive logic’. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 221 - 248 One of the peculiarities of Peter Abelard’s analysis of incomplete and non-assertive sentences is his use of the notion of desire: in both _Dialectica_ and _Glosses on Peri hermeneias_ the terms _desiderium_ and _desidero_ move to the foreground side by side with _optatio, expectatio, suspensio_ and the related verbs. Desire plays a structural role in Abelard’s descriptions of the compositional way in which the linguistic message is received, changing step by (...) step from incomplete to complete: the person who receives the incomplete message desires to get further information through other words since he knows that the purpose of such words or sequences of words is to combine with other words in order to form a complete sentence. On the other hand, the expression of the speaker’s attention to his inner affections renders the same semantic content a different complete sentence. (shrink)

This book offers a major reassessment of Peter Abelard's modal logic and theory of modalities, presenting them as far more uniform and consistent than was until now recognized. Irene Binini offers new ways of connecting Abelard's modal views with other parts of his logic, semantics, metaphysics and theology. Further, the work also provides a comprehensive study of the logical context in which Abelard's theories originated and developed, by presenting fresh evidence about many 11th- and 12th-century sources (...) that are still unpublished. This analysis sheds new light on the relations between Abelard and ancient authors such as Aristotle, Boethius, and Priscian, as well as between Abelard and his contemporaries, such as Anselm of Canterbury, William of Champeaux, Joscelin of Soissons, and Alberic of Paris. (shrink)

I have attempted here to trace the development of Haribhadra's biography. My contention throughout has been that there is a basic incongruity between what one can discern from the actual works about the author Haribhadra and the legends that came to be associated with him. I have argued that the legends initially came from elsewhere in part from the legends of the arrogant monk who challenges the schismatic Rohagutta, and in part from the stories told of Akalanka, who probably was (...) Haribhadra's contemporary. The question must inevitably arise as to why these stories were attached to Haribhadra, when they so poorly match what we can clearly know to be the attitudes displayed by the writer of the works associated with his name. That is a question I cannot satisfactorily answer, although I suspect that in general the hostile attitude of the prabhadhas and related texts towards Buddhism is a late, deliberately contrived and very political stance.30 It would seem that these legends of Haribhadra and the stories told of others which are also replete with examples of Jain hostility to the Buddhists came to take shape around the 12th century A.D., during a period when Jainism was making significant Hindu conversions, particularly among royalty. We know that the prabandhas were primarily written for royal audiences or for ministers close to the kings. A natural question is then whether we can discern anything specific in the relationship between Buddhism and royal power during the 12th century in India that might have led Jain writers deliberately to cast the Buddhists in an unfavourable light and portray Jains as the extirpators of the Buddhist menace and thus as champions of the true faith. In fact the mid -12th century was a low period for the fortunes of Buddhism in its final stronghold in Bengal. Valāllasena of the Sena dynasty came to power c. 1158 A.D. His Dānas-agara was completed in 1169 A.D. and gives ample evidence of the strong emphasis on orthodox Hinduism and promotion of the cause of the Brahmins that historians have associated with the Senas.31 It is tempting to see in the prabandhas, which were addressed to the ruling class, and in the legends of Jain religious and intellectual leaders which emphasize the conflict between Jainism and Buddhism, a continued attempt to separate Jainism radically from Buddhism which was anathema to these kings in Bengal. Hindus had historically regarded Jains and Buddhists as equally outside the Hindu fold and outside the fold of civilization. That Jains in the 12th century devise biographies with a distinct emphasis on the Jain triumph over a Buddhist enemy requires some explanation. That the collections of these biographies were usually addressed to kings and their ministers suggests that courting the royal court may have had something to do with the tone of the biographies. The most obvious historical circumstance that suggests itself by way of explanation for the anti-Buddhist tone of medieval Jain biographies is the contemporary Hindu revival in Bengal with its decidedly anti-Buddhist stance. Perhaps Jain writers in seeking to win royal patronage for their faith and indeed royal converts felt the need to divorce Jainism from the religion with which it had been so closely associated and which became so obviously out of royal favour elsewhere in the country. I offer this only as a suggestion which must await further research for confirmation. (shrink)

We trace two logical ideas further back than they have previously been traced. One is the idea of using diagrams to prove that certain logical premises do—or don’t—have certain logical consequences. This idea is usually credited to Venn, and before him Euler, and before him Leibniz. We find the idea correctly and vigorously used by Abū al-Barakāt in 12th century Baghdad. The second is the idea that in formal logic, P logically entails Q if and only if (...) every model of P is a model of Q. This idea is usually credited to Tarski, and before him Bolzano. But again we find Abū al-Barakāt already exploiting the idea for logical calculations. Abū al-Barakāt’s work follows on from related but inchoate research of Ibn Sīnā in eleventh century Persia. We briefly trace the notion of model-theoretical consequence back through Paul the Persian and in some form back to Aristotle himself. (shrink)

In this article, the meaning of concept of sharʿī science gained in the conception of education, which was established in Islamic civilization, was studied. The main problem of the research is to evaluate the idea of education in Islamic Civilization, which is closely related to the concept of sharʿī science, with a false perception that it consists entirely of religious education. The beginning of Islamic Civilization is traced back to descent of the Qur'an. The conception of education that started to (...) emerge after this period is based on the understanding of the Qur'an and hadiths at first. In later times, a wide variety of fields, such as language, literature, logic, wisdom, riyāzat, nature, and astronomy, have been included in the concept of education to encompass the whole existence of the entity. In the following centuries, these fields, which were included in the course curriculum of the madrasahs, were examined in detail in the works of classification of sciences. Therefore, the false perception needs to be reconsidered. For this reason, the article focuses on how the concept of sharʿī science is defined. Historical data analysis method was used to solve the problem. The claim of the article is that the concept of shar′i science has wide perspective to cover the world of meaning, mind and essence of man. As a result, this article, it was determined that the concept of sharʿī science has a meaning to cover the majority of information fields that are subject to instruction in our educational conception.Summary: The formation of the conception of education in Islamic civilization has emerged in the long term through a scientific process. During this time, a rich curriculum on the concept of education was shaped. The sciences that form the curriculum have been diversified in later periods compared to the early periods of Islam. With the advent of the different sciences, which provided this diversification and which were not at first, all the existing sciences were classified according to different perspectives by the ulama (muslim scholars). In the classifications, which have important contributions to the conception of education, the sciences were tried to be introduced and their position in the education life was tried to be explained. The sciences classified have not been dealt with against each other but rather to complement each other in different ways. The distinction of sciences in classification; different approaches such as linguistically, religious, secular, mental, transportation, philosophical and sharʿī have been developed.The concept of sharʿī science, which can be expressed as a general definition of the sciences, is given in almost all of the works related to the classification of sciences, even under the name or different titles. When we look at the classification, it is seen that sharʿī sciences are handled in four different approaches. As the first approach, the sharʿī sciences are among the main elements of main division in the classification. Here, the sharʿī sciences, in general, with the linguistic sciences and mental sciences were included in the top title. In the second approach, there are works in their classification that do not include the sharʿī sciences and the distinction between it. In addition, these works collect the sciences within this scope under other scientific compositions or other names. In the third approach, among the works that give information about the general of the sciences, there are those who mentioned all together without classifying these sciences and others. In the last approach, the sharʿī sciences are seen as the upper description of the knowledge fields that are included in the teaching, which covers the majority of the other sciences except for the linguistic sciences.The approaches presented in the classification of sciences indicate the diversity of the issue. In order to have better understanding of the issue, it is useful to look closely at the meaning of the concept of sharʿī sciences. At this point, three definitions of 2nd, 4th and 12th centuries are given respectively. Firstly, for Jābir b. Hayyān sharʿī science is the most useful politics in terms of religion and the world, because it contains the benefits of the world's interests after death.Secondly, al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) describes the sharʿī science as the knowledge learned from Şārī ʿ and prophets, but not by the experience and hearing. According to this, the sharʿī science is defined as the knowledge of the sunnah that only gives information about revelation. The information fields outside this definition are also considered as the sciences, which are instrumental in reaching to sharʿī science.The perspective of the third definition of sharʿī science is given by Saçaklızāde (d. 1145/1732). He lists the three definitions made before the time of his life from the specific (hās) to the general (ām). Saçaklızāde gave the aforementioned definition of al-Ghazali in the first sense of the concept of sharʿī science. He points out that the meaning given here is allocated. The second definition belongs to Molla Husraw (d. 885/1480). According to him, the sharʿī science is the sciences that can be reached through the sciences of the Şārīʿ. In other words, it is the sciences that are not used except for obtaining the sciences obtained from Şārīʿ itself. This meaning is a bit more extensive since there are no records as described in al-Ghazali. This definition is also included in the sciences benefited from it. Although it is not the first, there is usūl-i fiqh (Islamic legal theory) within this meaning.In the third definition, sharʿī science is the sciences that form the basis for things arising from Şārīʿ or originating from Şārīʿ. This definition belongs to Ibn Hajar el-Haytamī. He did not consider the partial allocation of the second meaning as given above, and included all the instrument sciences in the definition of sharʿī science. Based on the definitions he gave, three sharʿī science approaches made before the time he lived were listed from specific to general. Thus, in a sense, he depicts the general shape of the sharʿī science perspective. With the approach to generalization, we can say that a sharʿī science perspective that encompasses the majority of the fields involved in education is developing. In the third meaning of sharʿī science, it is seen that the majority of the fields of knowledge in education and training are gathered under one roof. The most important factor gathering the sciences together is the effort to understand the purpose of Şārīʿ, who owns the whole area of existence. The fields of knowledge and sciences needed to achieve this aim can be included in the definition of sharʿī science. The effort to understand the purpose of Şārīʿ is also at the center of the idea of Islamic education. Since there are various dimensions of being, each step taken to understand and learn them is directed in a way to Şārīʿ itself. Whether it is language and literary sciences or other sciences, such as mathematics, physics and philosophies, the aim is to recognize and understand Şārīʿ for the collection of things that fall within the scope of all educational activities. With sharʿī science approach, teaching the whole of the area of existence owned by Allah is possible within the concept of education. In the works written for the education curriculum, it is seen that the perspective covering the majority of the sciences in the definition of third sharʿī science is preserved. First of all, the meaning integrity of the sharʿī science concept has been determined. In the definitions of three different periods given here, it is seen that the approach to the sciences, which are the subject of instruction in education is not exclusive but inclusive. Especially because of the width in the third sense, the majority of the instrument sciences and mental science fields in the curriculum are included in the definition of sharʿī science. (shrink)

The focus on the Logica Nova in the research on 11th and 12th century Quaestio-literature is misleading. It seems to derive from a particular view of the Logica Vetus, which takes Boethius seriously only as a translator and perhaps a commentator of Aristotle. The puzzlement dissappears when Boethius is taken seriously as a logician and dialectician in his own right. Two Boethian works are of particular importance for early medieval as well as for Boethian dialectic, namely the commentary (...) on Cicero's Topica and the De Differentiis Topicis. While all great historians and medieval philosophy acknowledge the early presence and importance of these works, the extent of their influence on the development of the Quaestio has yet to be appreciated. The first section develops the problem by giving an outline of the important features of Bazàn's account of the Quaestio and its place between Lectio and Disputatio. The second section studies Boethius account of dialectic, with particular consideration of teh commentary on Cicero's Topica and the De Differentiis Topicis. The third section argues that Bazàn's and Grabmann's assumption that the 'old logic' did not provide the necessary means for the development of the Quaestio is unjustified. The fourth and final section offers some remarks on the relation of Abelard's Sic et Non to the method of the Quaestio. (shrink)

According to Scheler, since the 12th century, Europe and the West have gradually lost their way. They abandoned the Pascalian “logic of the heart”, that is, the knowledge of holy values, spiritual values and vital values through intentional feeling (Fühlen) of the heart, in favour of the logic of reason or understanding, that is, the knowledge of domination of the external world by reason. Nevertheless, Scheler notes that since that time, European thinkers have occasionally succeeded in (...) rediscovering this knowledge of the heart, and that there is even a powerful contemporary movement in this direction in Europe. The challenge for Europe, then, is to build on this momentum and rediscover the “logic of the heart” in order to achieve a harmony of knowledge forms, and then a harmony of world civilization. (shrink)

In this book, 11 leading scholars contribute to the understanding of the scientific and philosophical works of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), the most luminous Jewish intellectual since Talmudic times. Deeply learned in mathematics, astronomy, astrology (which he strongly rejected), logic, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and jurisprudence, and himself a practising physician, Maimonides flourished within the high Arabic culture of the 12th century, where he had momentous influence upon subsequent Jewish beliefs and behavior, upon ethical demands, and upon ritual traditions. (...) For him, mastery of the sciences was indispensable in the process of religious fulfilment. (shrink)

Here are the most significant ethical writings of the 12th-century philosopher, physician, and master of rabbinical literature—newly translated from the original sources by noted Maimonides scholars Raymond L. Weiss and Charles E. Butterworth. Among these are the first English versions of Eight Chapters and the Letter to Joseph. Other selections include Laws Concerning Character Traits, Treatise on the Art of Logic, and gleanings from Maimonides’ medical writings. Introduction. Notes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:184 BOOK REVIEWS knower, one may avoid undercutting the position that the cognitive powers are passive, without failing to do justice to the fact that aware· ness and discrimination are activities of the knower {pp. 71-72; 148· 49, n. 6). Second, Kai holds that the individual human being cannot really he said to have intuitive mind in himself: "Man has mind; hut only to a certain degree and without (...) mind losing its independence from the human whole.... the divine mind is present in man without los· ing its character of divine mind " (p. 75). If only God has intuitive mind {pp. 155, n. 32; 156-57, n. 13), how can the individual human being really know, even in the sense of having discursive thought? Since knowledge depends on first principles, what does not possess the intuitive mind which knows the first principles would, it seems, not properly have knowledge. The only hope for a definitive interpretation of the disconcertingly brief De Anima, 3. 5, lies in the possibility that one can establish a definite connection between this chapter and other elements in the Aris· totelian corpus, a connection that would elucidate the otherwise in· scrutable teaching on active mind. It is the great merit of Kai to have made an excellent case for a connection between De Anima, 3. 5, and two other elements in the Aristotelian corpus: nous as it functions in the logic and epistemology, and the unmoved mover of Metaphysics, Lambda. Exploring this connection in a penetrating and thorough analysis of a great body of Aristotelian and secondary te~ts, Kai has not merely taken a position on a more than two-thousand-year-old con· troversy, hut also has decisively advanced our understanding of active mind. St. John's University Jamaica, New York JAMES T. H. MARTIN Anselm Studies: An Occasional Journal. Vol. 2. Edited by JosEPH ScHNAUBELT, OSA, et al., White Plains, New York: Kraus Inter· national Publications, 1988. Pp. 634. $55.00. This volume contains the proceedings of the Fifth International Saint Anselm Conference (Villanova University, September 16-21, 1985). Held in conjunction with the Tenth International Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference, the meeting occasioned papers concen· trating on areas of "influence and juncture" in the life and thought of St. Anselm and St. Augustine. Given the dependence of much of Anselm's work on the thought of St. Augustine, the Conference took as its particular objective the understanding of the relationship between BOOK REVIEWS 185 faith and reason. While the focus of the papers in this volume includes both saints, the principal emphasis falls on Anselm as inheritor and interpretor of the methods and ideas of his intellectual ancestor. A brief introduction provides cameo presentations of Anselm's character as abbot, monk, and archbishop, together with a conspectus on Anselm's position vis-a-vis the canonical and ecclesiological issues of his day. The papers are then divided into five chapters: "Anselm's Monasticism." "The Proslogion Argument," "Truth: Anselm and Augustine," "Theological Method," and "The Anselmian Worldview." While the papers are of use to scholarly readers desiring detailed treatment of central issues in Anselm's logic and epistemology, the un· doubted strength of the collection lies in its well-calculated effort to integrate an understanding of Anselm's intellectual and spiritual out· look with the theological, spiritual, and literacy currents of his time. Especially for the historian of intellect and society, the essays in this volume provide analysis that advances our understanding of the cultural context of the 11th and 12th centuries. The contribution to our understanding of Anselm's culture is par· ticularly clear in the first and fourth divisions of the volume, the sec· tions dealing with monasticism and Anselm's worldview. In the former division, Glenn Olsen's assessment of " Anselm and Homosexuality" neatly evaluates the evidence for Anselm's sexual orientation made controversial by John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. In fact, the present article, together with its notes, provides a useful summary of the critical literature which has grown up of late around the Boswellian thesis as well as the study of literary expressions of affection in the 11th and 12th centuries. Olsen grasps the... (shrink)

Maimonide, philosophe dans la mouvance d'al-Farabi, etait medecin, informe des mathematiques et maitre de la litterature talmudique. Ce livre a pour ambition d'examiner les liens entre philosophie et science dans l'oeuvre de Maimonide, et aussi de placer celle-ci dans son veritable contexte historique entre Cordoue et Le Caire au XIIe siecle. Les etudes rassemblees ici explorent plusieurs facettes de cette oeuvre: logique, savoir et philosophie mathematiques, ecrits medicaux, conception du libre-arbitre ou des rapports entre nature et loi... Elles examinent aussi (...) l'impact qu'a eu l'oeuvre de Maimonide en arabe, en hebreu et en latin. Maimonides, a philosopher in the tradition of d'al-Farabi, was a physician, well-informed in mathematics, and a master of Talmudic literature. The goal of this book is to examine the links between philosophy and science in Maimonides' work, and also to situate it within its genuine historical context, between Cordoba and Cairo in the 12th century. The studies collected here explore several facets of this work: logic, mathematical knowledge and philosophy, medical writings, conception of free will and of the relations between nature and law, etc. They also examine the impact of Maimonides' work on Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin scientific and philosophical literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Possibility and Necessity in the Time of Peter Abelard by Irene BininiWolfgang LenzenIrene Binini. Possibility and Necessity in the Time of Peter Abelard. Investigating Medieval Philosophy Series. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Pp. xii + 326. Hardback, $166.00.This book is an impressive work written by a young Italian scholar who received her PhD only five years ago in Pisa. It is divided into three parts. Part 1 gives a survey (...) of "Early 12th-Century Debates on Modal Propositions"; part 2 is devoted to "Abelard's Modal Logic"; [End Page 327] part 3 deals with the views of "Abelard on the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Modalities." The author displays a profound knowledge of the relevant literature. The primary sources comprise twenty manuscripts preserved in various European libraries, plus forty-eight printed works (from Abelard to William of Sherwood). The list of secondary sources contains altogether 136 items from A (Astroh) to Z (Zagzebski), but, interestingly, it does not mention a monograph that, by its very title, claims to give an exposition of Abelard's logic, namely Maria Teresa Beonio-Brocchieri Fumagalli's La Logica di Abelardo (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1964).As far as I can judge (as a nonnative English-speaker), the linguistic quality of Binini's book is quite good. The explanations in the main text, including the translations from Latin sources, are easily comprehensible, and the many quotations (distributed over no less than 655 footnotes) are almost without any fault. Thus, the book rightly deserves inclusion in the prestigious series Investigating Medieval Philosophy. Yet, at least according to my taste, the book contains many redundancies. Again and again, the author first explains a certain issue at some length, then confirms the correctness of her interpretation by means of a longer (English) quotation, and finally reconfirms it by fully quoting the Latin text in the footnotes.As Binini explains in the book's concluding chapter, her aim is to present "an all-encompassing reflection on [Abelard's] works on modalities" and "a comparison between these works and the parallel reflections advanced by other masters and logicians in the early 12th century" (308). She undoubtedly achieves this goal. The comparison of Abelard's views on possibility and necessity with the views of other logicians is mainly carried out in chapters 1–3. Ancient and early medieval logicians such as, in particular, the Stoics and Boethius favored the basic idea that "something," p, is necessary if and only if p is always the case (or true). Accordingly, p is possible if and only if p is at least sometime the case. Abelard, however, was not willing to accept that each possibility has to become realized at some time. He instead offered a "nature-based characterization of possibility" that can "account for unrealized, past, counterfactual, and even unactualizable possibilities" (308). Abelard's idea is that something, x, is possibly a P if and only if the property of being P is compatible with the nature of x. Hence this view basically amounts to a de re conception of possibility that attributes modalities to things, while the temporal view attributes modal properties primarily to propositions (or states of affairs) and hence can be labeled de dicto (or de sensu).Let us now turn to Binini's twofold aim (as formulated on the back cover of her book) to present a "uniform and consistent" reassessment of Abelard's theory of modalities and of his modal logic. The former task is tackled in chapters 8–10. After summarizing, in chapter 8, Abelard's general views on "Nature and Modalities," chapter 9 is devoted to a detailed discussion of the "Many Senses of Possibility." In five consecutive sections, Binini investigates the conception of (1) possibility as "non-repugnancy with nature" (illustrated by the thesis that "any man can be a bishop" [235]); (2) unrealizable but "conceivable" possibilities (such as the existence of humans lacking the ability to laugh [240]); (3) determinate potencies (like that of an amputee who nevertheless "can walk" [248]); (4) past and counterfactual potencies (like that of a blind person who might be able to see); and (5) other puzzling de re possibilities (such as "irrational humans" [261]).The final... (shrink)

Peter Geach describes the 'doctrine of distribution' as the view that a term is distributed if it refers to everything that it denotes, and undistributed if it refers to only some of the things that it denotes. He argues that the notion, so explained, is incoherent. He claims that the doctrine of distribution originates from a degenerate use of the notion of ?distributive supposition? in medieval supposition theory sometime in the 16th century. This paper proposes instead that the doctrine (...) of distribution occurs at least as early as the 12th century, and that it originates from a study of Aristotle's notion of a term's being ?taken universally?, and not from the much later theory of distributive supposition. A detailed version of the doctrine found in the Port Royal Logic is articulated, and compared with a slightly different modern version. Finally, Geach's arguments for the incoherence of the doctrine are discussed and rejected. (shrink)

This work aims to a critical edition of an Aristotle’s Categories commentary, transmitted by M2 codex of St. Ambrose’s Chapter Archive in Milan. Written in Northern Italy, in the 12th century, it was probably a handbook for Chapter School. It is based upon some passages from the auctoritates, as it’s evident from the heading: incipiunt flores glosse categoriarum. It deals whit fundamental logical issues, and it presents a widespread use of the status’s theory, in order to solve some (...) of the logical, physical and metaphysical problems in Aristotle’s Categories. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, after centuries of neglect, a revival of interest towards Aristotle’s Rhetoric took place in 12th century Constantinople, which led to the production of a number of commentaries. In order to give an overview of the commentary tradition on the Rhetoric, I examine first the surviving extant commentaries themselves, then the information that the commentators offer regarding their preceding interpretations, and last the traces of commentaries on the Rhetoric found in other treatises. This (...) examination will show that, at least within a specific group of scholars, the Rhetoric was studied and commented upon like never before. Finally, I attempt to explain this revival of interest, especially with respect to the role that philosophical and rhetorical education played in 12th century Byzantium. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century, volume two of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. By BERNARD MCGINN. New York: Crossroad, 1994. Pp. xv + 630. $49.50. This second volume of the History of Western Mysticism covers the period from the sixth through the twelfth century, from Gregory the Great to the Victorines. It fully (...) lives up to the high expectations raised by the first part and displays the same skill in presenting the fruit of enormous learning in a clear, comprehensible manner. The compact section of notes, occupying onethird of the volume, shows how well the author has succeeded in mastering the abundance of sources, primary and secondary, the current Renaissance of medieval studies has rendered available. Undaunted by the mass of recent literature McGinn's established and constantly renewed acquaintance with the original texts enables him judiciously and critically to compare interpretations and judgments. Method and balance mark this work as much as learning and erudition. Its unadorned but easy style, the language of the lectern, renders his work accessible to a wider public, even if the casual tone does not always reflect the intensity of its subject. The author has structured his study around four major figures: Gregory the Great (sixth century), Scottus Eriugena (ninth), Bernard and William of Saint-Thierry (twelfth). They form the centers of three spiritual epochs of the early Middle Ages. Each one of these periods is introduced by informative chapters on the general conditions of spiritual life. The study concludes with a chapter on visionaries who belong to none of the schools represented by the key figures and a chapter on Victorine writers that already prepares for the next volume on the high season of Christian mysticism. The simple structure allows each of the great ones to be given a full chapter. Rather than drowning his survey in an abundance of forgettable names as encyclopedic histories tend to do, McGinn has accommodated the minor figures in his transition chapters where general headings dominate individual characteristics. By devoting so much space to the great ones, the author has transformed much of what could have remained a mere survey into a series of monographs. It enabled him to highlight the unique significance of at least two previously neglected figures in the rather arid span of time that separates the patristic period from the flowering of the twelfth century: Scottus Eriugena and William of Saint-Thierry. Eriugena's intellectual importance has been established for some time, yet mainly with historians of philosophy and Neoplatonist thinkers. Here he appears as the key thinker who transmits 475 476 BOOK REVIEWS Dionysius's negative theology to the Latin West and who prepares the new mysticism of the divine image that was to culminate in Eckhart and Ruusbroec. Was Eriugena a mystic? The question returns us to the provisional definition given in the general Introduction and consistently maintained throughout volume one and most of volume two. There we learned that "mystical" refers to any belief, system, or practice conducive to the experience of God's presence (vol. I, p. xvii). This definition happily replaces the one adopted through much of the modem period of exclusively private, mostly exceptional, experiences and the unusual expressions (visions, raptures, etc.) that often accompany them. Professor McGinn presents a more objective and more controllable criterion. He extends the mystical to a more or less direct consciousness of the divine presence as evident in texts that witness of, or are conducive to, such a consciousness. This sensible change enables him to include a great many theological texts of the first millennium without having to worry about the degree of their authors' subjective awareness of God's presence and to avoid the predicament to which all attempts to ascertain another person's private experience lead. Before the twelfth century almost no reports of private experiences exist and the ones that do exist, such as Augustine's "vision" of Ostia, so closely follow an established Neoplatonic pattern that they leave us wondering about their private nature. His more objective approach also dispensed the author from having to be overly concerned about the fine, in the early... (shrink)

Classical Arabic Begging Poetry and Šakwā, 8th–12th Centuries. By Nefeli Papoutsakis. Arabische Studien, vol. 14. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017. Pp. viii + 254. €58.

The question concerning the view of Hugo Etherianus is placed here in a broader context of the processes that shaped and reshaped the Byzantine culture model between the 11th and the 12th century. The newly formed culture determined the cultural situation after the fall of Constantinople in 1204 and remained valid until the end of the Byzantine period. Characterizing the Byzantines relation to the West was the key component of this model. During various theological and philosophical debates between (...) Latin and Romaic thinkers in the 12th century in Byzantium, the nearly 20-year career of Hugo Etherianus occupied a prominent position in Constantinople. Hugo was the best Latin expert on Hellenic and Byzantine philosophy and theology in the 12th century, particularly associated with the new dialecticians. His writings and letters as well as his debates with various Byzantine philosophers and theologians are an important testimony on the parting of the Byzantine and the Latin intellectual traditions during the last quarter of the 12th century. (shrink)

The history of modern logic is usually written as the history of mathematical or, more general, symbolic logic. As such it was created by mathematicians. Not regarding its anticipations in Scholastic logic and in the rationalistic era, its continuous development began with George Boole's The Mathematical Analysis of Logic of 1847, and it became a mathematical subdiscipline in the early 20th century. This style of presentation cuts off one eminent line of development, the philosophical development (...) of logic, although logic is evidently one of the basic disciplines of philosophy. One needs only to recall some of the standard 19th century definitions of logic as, e.g., the art and science of reasoning (Whateley) or as giving the normative rules of correct reasoning (Herbart). In the paper the relationship between the philosophical and the mathematical development of logic will be discussed. Answers to the following questions will be provided: 1. What were the reasons for the philosophers' lack of interest in formal logic? 2. What were the reasons for the mathematicians' interest in logic? 3. What did "logic reform" mean in the 19th century? Were the systems of mathematical logic initially regarded as contributions to a reform of logic? 4. Was mathematical logic regarded as art, as science or as both? (shrink)

According to Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī, al-Ghazālī was the renewer of the Muslim faith at the end of the 5th / 11th century, whereas al-Rāzī was the renewer of faith at the end of the 6th / 12th century. That al-Ghazālī deserves such an honour can hardly be disputed, and his importance in the history of Islamic thought is generally recognised. However, the same cannot, as easily, be said of al-Rāzī, whose historical significance is far from being truly (...) appreciated, and some of the most important books of whom still await publication. Much is known about his views on particular philosophical and theological problems, and about the historical backgrounds to, and the relations amongst, some of these views. Some rather general observations on his thought are also common; for instance, that he is a heavily philosophising Ash‘arī mutakallim, a master dialectician, and an influential critic of Ibn Sīnā. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce the great innovation that takes place in the XIIth century in relation to individual responsibility; this novelty is analyzed in contraposition to what happened in previous centuries of the Early Middle Ages. The main source used are the Penitential Books, specially the one by Alan of Lille.

This is a story about a single letter and its circulation. It began as a letter addressed to an unnamed nun in France in the mid-twelfth century, and made its way into a vita of a Franciscan holy woman in Italy in the late thirteenth century. The letter was composed by Arnulf, the bishop of Lisieux from 1141 to 1181. Arnulf later included it in the various collections of his letters that he prepared for publication. Although transmission of (...) Arnulf's letter in Italy was very minimal, it somehow got into the hands of Stefania, a member of the Sorores minores inclusae at San Silvestro in Capite, and it became part of her story about the founder of her community, Margherita Colonna. From Arnulf's hand to... (shrink)

Formal logic was subjected to numerous criticisms during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and by the early nineteenth century was in serious decline in Britain. Its resurgence began when Edward Copleston defended it as useful for education in the liberal arts. His defense was continued by Richard Whately, whose Elements of Logic revived the study of logic in Britain. Although Whately gave the impression that he was merely restating Aristotle, he limited logic to the study (...) of formal reasoning and provided an account of logical form. This account was challenged by Sir William Hamilton who claimed that the quantifiers “all” and “some” attach to both the subjects and the predicates of propositions. Charitably interpreted, this enlarged formal logic by admitting valid, non-Aristotelian syllogisms, but instead of completing logic as Hamilton claimed, it opened the way for further developments. (shrink)

While the history of Western philosophy as a whole can be seen as the appropriation by philosophers of the discourse of truth from the poets and makers of myth, of the replacement of the narrative form by the 'properly philosophical' form of argument, it is an appropriation that also takes place within medieval thought, particularly in the construction of theology as a legitimate academic discipline. Whether that appropriation constitutes progress or loss was as much debated in the Middle Ages as (...) it is in recent thought. I offer this medieval chapter not to take a side on the issue, but as an example of some of the presuppositions and dangers awaiting both sides of the polemic. The particular example I would like to examine is a well-known one, the conflicts over and changes in the nature of theology in the Latin twelfth century, beginning with the even more familiar conflict between Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux. I offer this essay with fully knowledge that characterizations of this conflict are cliché-ridden. It has often been seen as the conflict between the first stirrings of the modern critical spirit and the conservative, fideistic opposition, between an emerging ‘Scholastic’ and a revised ‘monastic’ theology, and/or between ‘systematic’ and ‘mystical’ theologies. (shrink)

In an article published in 2003, Klaus Jacobi—using texts partially edited in De Rijk's _Logica Modernorum_—demonstrated that twelfth-century logic contains a tradition of reflecting about some of the transcendental names. In addition to reinforcing Jacobi's thesis with other texts, this contribution aims to demonstrate two points: 1) That twelfth-century logical reflection about transcendental terms has its origin in the _logica vetus_, and especially in a passage from Porphyry _Isagoge_ and in Boethius's commentary on it. In spite of (...) the loss of the major part of the Aristotelian corpus, the twelfth-century masters in logic still received some Aristotelian theses concerning the notions of one and being via Porphyry and Boethius; on the basis of such theses, they were able to elaborate a sort of proto-theory of the transcendentals as trans-categorical terms. 2) That this theory is centred on the idea that there exists a particular group of names which have the property that they can be said of everything; this group includes "being", "one", "thing" and "something". Twelfth-century masters in logic try to question the thesis that these terms are equivocal, although they do not deny it completely. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 50 Heft: 1 Seiten: 329-360.

This paper intends to enhance the great relevance that the promotion of reason received in the XIIth century. The main representatives of thought in this century can be considered, at least in a certain sense, as antecedents to what later was the European Illustration. Indeed their emphasis on rationality is huge.