Since the publication of the edition of John Blund's Tractatus de anima by the British Academy in 1970 there has been widespread acceptance of the importance of this text for the history of thought. Blund (ca. 1175-1248) was probably one of the first commentators on the libri naturales at Paris before the prohibition of 1210, and later introduced them to Oxford. Indeed, apart from the prohibitions of 1210 and 1215, the De anima of Blund is the (...) one text which sheds light on the first reception of Aristotle at Paris. The text was probably composed at Paris, before 1204. Blund taught arts at Paris ca. 1200-1205, then at Oxford towards 1207-1209. He returned to study theology at Paris during the interdict (1208-1214) and the contemporaneous suspension of the schools at Oxford (1209-1214). He was regent in theology at Paris for twelve years, and taught theology at Oxford after 1229. With the Tractatus a whole area of philosophical speculation--namely Greek and Arabic psychology--arrived at Oxford, where it would continue to grow and be debated throughout the century. Blund did not know Averroes but he reflects the state of Latin Aristotelianism during the first third of the thirteenth century. Like his contemporaries Blund regarded the De anima of Avicenna as a commentary on Aristotle; indeed they found it clearer than the text of Aristotle and were guided by it. Blund is faithful to Aristotle and to Avicenna, rejecting, for example, the binarium famosissimum drawn from the Fons vitae of Avicebron. In expounding the doctrine of Aristotle and following the plan laid out by Avicenna, he considers the arguments for and against before offering his own reasoned position in the solutio. He defends the role of the philosopher as considering the nature of the soul and as distinct from theological considerations. This new English translation makes available this important text to a wider audience of scholars interested in philosophy, theology, medieval history and the history of science and psychology. Students who are learning medieval Latin will be able to follow the original Latin with the help of the parallel translation and text notes. (shrink)

John Blund's Treatise on the Soul is probably the earliest text of its kind: a witness to the first reception of Greek and Arabic psychology at Oxford and foundation for a new area of medieval philosophical speculation. This book contains Hunt's Latin edition with a new English translation and a new introduction to the text by Michael Dunne.

This sourcebook explores how the Middle Ages dealt with questions related to the mental life of creatures great and small. It makes accessible a wide range of key Latin texts from the fourth to the fourteenth century in fresh English translations. Specialists and non-specialists alike will find many surprising insights in this comprehensive collection of sources on the medieval philosophy of animal minds. The book’s structure follows the distinction between the different aspects of the mental. The author has organized the (...) material in three main parts: cognition, emotions, and volition. Each part contains translations of texts by different medieval thinkers. The philosophers chosen include well-known figures like Augustine, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. The collection also profiles the work of less studied thinkers like John Blund, Peter of Spain, and Peter of Abano. In addition, among those featured are several translated here into English for the first time. Each text comes with a short introduction to the philosopher, the context, and the main arguments of the text plus a section with bibliographical information and recommendations for further reading. A general introduction to the entire volume presents the basic concepts and questions of the philosophy of animal minds and explains how the medieval discussion relates to the contemporary debate. This sourcebook is valuable for anyone interested in the history of philosophy, especially medieval philosophy of mind. It will also appeal to scholars and students from other fields, such as psychology, theology, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Il s'agit du temoin le plus ancien d'un cours portant sur les livres II et III au complet du Traite de l'ame d'Aristote. Le cours, enseigne a la Faculte des Arts d'une Universite difficile a preciser (Paris?), est un exemple paradigmatique de la methode litterale (ce qui a permis de reconstituer la version de la Vetus utilisee par le maitre, que l'on pourra ajouter au dossier de l'Aristoteles Latinus) et un temoin precieux de la premiere reception d'Aristote. Le texte permet (...) de constater le retrait d'Avicenne et l'influence croissante d'Averroes (dont le role est cependant purement instrumental, subordonne a l'intelligence purement philosophique du texte d'Aristote). Aucune des grandes doctrines personnelles du commentateur n'est retenue par le maitre. Dans l'etude doctrinale du texte on met en valeur les points du commentaire (nature et puissances de l'ame, l'intellect et les modes de connaissance), et on offre un tableau des doctrines psychologiques professees par les maitres des arts avant 1250 : John Blund, Pierre d'Espagne et d'autres maitres anonymes (tableau complete par un apparat de sources tres riche). On critique la notion de premier Averroisme, car la notion de l'intellect agent comme puissance de l'ame semble etre une contribution proprement latine a l'exegese du De anima. Finalement, on prouve que saint Thomas a eu connaissance de ce commentaire anonyme et qu'il en depend dans sa propre lecture d'Aristote. Cela met en perspective l'originalite de saint Thomas et souligne la contribution des maitres des arts a l'histoire de l'Aristotelisme medieval. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to take a closer look at medieval discussions concerning the phenomenon of ‘perceiving as,’ and the psychological mechanisms that lie behind it. In contemporary philosophical literature this notion is usually used to refer to conceptual aspects of perception. For instance, when I perceive a black birdlike shape as a crow, I may be said to perceive the particular sensible thing x as an instance of a universal crowness φ, that is, as belonging to a (...) natural kind and falling under the concept of ‘crow’. In this sense, perceiving x as φ requires mastering the concept φ. However, I use the term ‘perceiving as’ in a wider sense and concentrate on various kinds of non-conceptual sensory processes, which can be understood as forms of ‘perceiving as’. Even though conceptual perception requires intellectual powers, medieval discussions on cognitive psychology can be understood properly only by taking into account the complex forms of perception that fall short of being truly intellectual, but are nevertheless over and above the simple sensation of sensible qualities of external things. The borderline between simple sensation and conceptual perception is unclear, and quite a lot is going on in the grey area between the two. Instead of presupposing any modern notion of ‘perceiving as’ and applying it to medieval discussions, my purpose is the opposite: to look at medieval discussions and see if they can be used to broaden modern discussions by including also non-conceptual varieties of perception. I shall begin the analysis in section two by specifying various types of cogni- tive processes that were discussed by medieval authors and can be considered as forms of ‘perceiving as’. The bulk of the historical work will be done in sec- tion three, where I focus on medieval discussions on three interrelated cogni- tive functions – perceiving different sensible qualities as a synthetic whole, incidental perception of one sensible quality through another, and the possi- bility of perceiving substances and recognising individuals. The reader should bear in mind that I shall use ideas from several medieval authors without pay- ing much attention to the differences between their theories of perception. Although occasionally radical, these differences are not highly relevant in the context of the present chapter. In section four, I propose two theoretical mod- els that can be used for analysing medieval views concerning these psychologi- cal phenomena. Finally, I conclude the chapter by making some remarks on the potential impacts of reading medieval views in relation to the concept of ‘perceiving as’. (shrink)

Draws on interviews with many of the worlds leading scientists to discuss the possibility that humankind has reached the limits of scientific knowledge.

This study provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of the meaning of Locke's political thought. John Dunn restores Locke's ideas to their exact context, and so stresses the historical question of what Locke in the Two Treatises of Government was intending to claim. By adopting this approach, he reveals the predominantly theological character of all Locke's thinking about politics and provides a convincing analysis of the development of Locke's thought. In a polemical concluding section, John Dunn argues that liberal and (...) Marxist interpretations of Locke's politics have failed to grasp his meaning. Locke emerges as not merely a contributor to the development of English constitutional thought, or as a reflector of socio-economic change in seventeenth-century England, but as essentially a Calvinist natural theologian. (shrink)

Author John E. Rexine expounds on the theologies of the great Roman thinkers Plato and Cicero in this essay.

A fundamental issue concerning the treatment of meaning in context is how to deal with the extremely flexible relationship that appears to hold between descriptions, which are taken as the exchange...

CUA Press proudly announces the reissue of 32 titles from this internationally acclaimed series. These long-unavailable titles, which cover all aspects of philosophy, will be published in paperback and ebook formats. Authors include renowned philosophers such as Ralph McInerny, Robert Sokolowski, and John Wippel.

"Don't believe any of this. Place no value in the book, in the author. Give it up, the idea of author, of truth. Give up all believe: believe only in yourself. You: you are nothing but my experience. Me: I don't. I don't believe any of this." —John Brockman.

John Haldane; The Mystery of Emergence, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 261–268, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristot.

Thornhill, John Among the thinkers who have helped me expand my intellectual horizons, Dawson has a unique place. From an early date, I became aware of the importance of situating the Church's expression of our faith tradition in its historical and cultural context. In time I was to find that Dawson's interpretation of cultural history made it possible to do this within the enlightening framework he provided.

In Adulthood, Morality, and the Fully Human, John Shea examines what it means for someone to achieve full moral development or to become what he calls “fully human.” Shea highlights integrity, mutuality, care, and justice as core components of this process and depicts the effects of personal growth on education, psychotherapy, and spirituality.

Over the past two centuries Western culture has largely valorized a particular kind of 'good' music--highly serious, wondrously deep, stylistically authentic, heroically created, and strikingly original--and, at the same time, has marginalized music that does not live up to those ideals. In Good Music, John J. Sheinbaum explores these traditional models for valuing music. By engaging examples such as Handel oratorios, Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, jazz improvisations, Bruce Springsteen, and prog rock, he argues that metaphors of perfection do justice (...) to neither the perceived strengths nor the assumed weaknesses of the music in question. Instead, he proposes an alternative model of appreciation where abstract notions of virtue need not dictate our understanding. Good music can, with pride, be playful rather than serious, diverse rather than unified, engaging to both body and mind, in dialogue with manifold styles and genres, and collaborative to the core. We can widen the scope of what music we value and reconsider the conventional rituals surrounding it, while retaining the joys of making music, listening closely, and caring passionately"-- $c Page [4] of cover. (shrink)

The Foundations of Pragmatism in American Thought Series offers two sets of volumes containing the most significant defenses and critiques of pragmatism written before World War I: the Early Defenders of Pragmatism and Early Critics of Pragmatism. This, the first collection, Early Defenders, provides key texts for understanding the context of pragmatism's years of greatest vitality. The early defenders were products of pragmatism's three cradles. H. Heath Bawden was a graduate of the Chicago philosophy department, having studied with John (...) Dewey and George Mead. John E. Boodin and Horace M. Kallen earned their Ph.Ds with William James and Josiah Royce at Harvard. D. L. Murray and Howard V. Knox were independent scholars and writers inspired by F. C. S. Schiller's humanistic pragmatism at Oxford. This collection brings together the central texts of the movement along with a representative selection of the secondary texts, reviews and responses, they elicited. Each volume features a newly-commissioned introduction by a leading scholar of American pragmatism. --five central texts reproduced in facsimile, accompanied by the main responses and replies, reset in new typography --scattered and scarce works available together for the first time --new introductions to each volume by leading scholars of American pragmatism. (shrink)

During the last 40 years, political philosophers have made important advances in our understanding of why equality is valuable, and what kind of equality is important. This article summarizes the development of these ideas, in particular, the contributions of John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Ronald Dworkin, Robert Nozick, Richard Arneson, and G. A. Cohen. It shows how these ideas have filtered into economic thinking in the conceptualization of equality of opportunity. It concludes with a brief discussion of how these ideas (...) might be extended to evaluate intergenerational and global distributions of income or welfare. (shrink)

John Haught offers a “critical intelligence” argument against naturalism. In this article, I outline Haught’s version of theistic evolution. Then I discuss the case he makes against naturalism with his critical intelligence argument. He uses two versions of the argument to make his case: a trustworthiness of critical intelligence argument and an ineffectiveness of naturalistic theories of the mind argument. I evaluate both versions of his critical intelligence argument against naturalism and find that they contain false premises. They thus (...) come up short in making a strong case against naturalism. (shrink)

RECENT JEWISH—CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE HAS UNCOVERED THAT THE EARLY church's ethics were firmly rooted in Jewish halakhic thinking. This essay explores the topic through a study of the church's moral reasoning in Acts 10—15. We see the church readily employing distinctions that are now rarely invoked by Christian ethicists, such as between universal and particular moral law. These distinctions allowed the church to understand the ethical significance of the Torah not by imposing external categories on it but through the Torah's own, (...) internal distinctions. Thus, the church's understanding of the Torah can best be understood through the image of geirei toshav. This image could help Christian ethicists understand their relation to pluralistic contexts because it was precisely the increased pluralism of gentile inclusion that prompted the church in Acts. I briefly consider the implications for a concrete case: the Episcopal-Anglican Communion's debate about homosexuality, which employs the Acts 10—15 narrative. (shrink)

In dit stimulerende en diepgravende boek onderzoekt John D. Caputo het religieuze denken. Tijdens dit onderzoek komen fascinerende vragen aan de orde: 'Wat heb ik lief als ik God liefheb?' en 'Wat heeft Star Wars ons te zeggen over de huidige beleving van religie?' (proberen we altijd een manier te vinden om te zeggen: 'God zij met je'?) Waarom betekent religie voor zoveel mensen een moreel houvast in een postmoderne, nihilistische tijd? Is het mogelijk om 'religie zonder religie' te (...) hebben? Via een bespreking van enkele huidige beelden van religie, zoals Robert Duvall's film The Apostle , biedt Caputo ook een aantal fascinerende en originele inzichten in religieus fundamentalisme. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to reconstruct and present in a critical perspective the main methodological devices of John Rawls’ Political Liberalism, which introduces the idea of the overlapped consensus as a way to guarantee, in a political sense, social justice within contemporary democratic societies. Those methodological devices are presented in order to reveal their conceptual failures when contrasted with real world situations and to indicate three elements: a) the psychologism of the theory which reduces the individuals of (...) the comprehensive doctrines to an inhuman procedural forgetting of the historical facticity that defines them and provides them with meaning and identity; b) how unfair the overlapped consensus might be, considering that it is developed without taking into account the doctrines and at the expenses of the historical processes for power and struggles for recognition of such doctrines; iii) the limited reach of the methodological devices when applied to the real world, i.e., that when those devices are faced with the realities of the doctrines they lack practical justification. Because of that, liberalism should be considered as another tradition which struggles with the doctrines. (shrink)

OBVIOUSLY, OBSERVERS EXIST ONLY WHERE LIFE IS POSSIBLE ("THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE"). NOW, THERE MAY BE MANY COSMIC REGIONS, PERHAPS GIGANTIC AND LARGELY OR ENTIRELY SEPARATE "MULTIPLE UNIVERSES," OF WHICH ONLY VERY FEW PERMIT LIFE’S EVOLUTION. GUTH’S COSMIC INFLATION MAY BE INVOLVED HERE, AND DOMAINS WITH DIFFERENTLY BROKEN SYMMETRIES. APPARENT LIFE-ENCOURAGING FINE-TUNING OF NATURAL CONSTANTS MIGHT BE UNDERSTOOD AGAINST THIS BACKGROUND. MANY SCIENTISTS PREDICTIONS RESULT. AN ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNT SPEAKS OF THE WORLD’S CREATIVE ETHICAL REQUIREDNESS ("GOD").

What demands must be met for phenomenology to be the rigorous science Husserl projected? Janicaud complains that some French phenomenologists, while pretending to observe these demands, play fast and loose with them when they apply phenomenology to matters of theology: Derrida, Marion, and Levinas; methodological phenomenology and Henry's phenomenology of the Christian Way. Derrida's deconstructions of the oppositions of immanence and transcendence and of the factual and the transcendental suggest that the rift between him and Henry is not as deep (...) as it must at first seem. Analogical appresentation is a motive of the theological turn. (shrink)

Le livre III de l’Essai de Locke passe pour un des textes importants que la fin du XVIIe siècle consacre exclusivement au langage. Mais il ne faut pas s’attendre à y trouver un traité de linguistique innovant dans un champ vierge; même si Locke découvre tardivement l’importance du nom dans le savoir, il lui est facile de trouver autour de lui suffisamment de travaux pour prendre position, critiquer, simplifier, réorienter. Réorienter car son étude du nom ne vise qu’à préparer un (...) traité de la connaissance, non à faire de la linguistique pour elle-même. Il simplifie de ce fait les travaux que le Scolastique nominaliste notamment avait multipliés. Il critique tous ceux qui dissocient le mot de la double “référence” qui lui est “naturelle” : l’idée et la chose; contre Hobbes mais aussi contre les théoriciens des langues universelles, il ancre les langues dans l’usage commun d’une part, dans le rapport incertain aux choses d’autre part, toujours par la médiation de la pensée individuelle. Il prend enfin position : le nom est l’instrument privilégié de l’abstraction et de la généralisation : indispensable pour la communication et l’accumulation du savoir, il est aussi le lieu de toutes les illusions. Par son approche des espèces naturelles, par sa critique de l’essentialisme qui restaure paradoxalement l’abstrait et l’universel, par sa réduction du langage à la communication d’informations, plus que par sa théorie linguistique, ce texte nous donne encore à penser. (shrink)