Hugh of Saint-Victor's De Sacramentis is usually regarded as an early summa of theology. As such it has been regarded as not totally satisfying, lacking a clearness of its conceptual system when compared with the work of e.g. Peter the Lombard. What may make up for this lack of system and even confer coherence, be it on a different level, is Hugh's pedagogical view of creation and salvation history, as it shows most clearly in his tropological digressions. In his exposition (...) of the history of salvation as it unfolds since the very beginning, Hugh incorporates the process by which the monk can not only follow the story of the macrocosm, but at the same time can read his self into being, allowing recognition of ambivalence from the start, and thus presenting a multi-demensional view of being human. In the same way as, on the cosmic level, any pre-lapsarian state of innocence exhibits a flaw from the very beginning, so the life of man is in a permanent state of ambiguity. This ambiguity is the framework for man as a moral being. Only within the possibility of choice can man be just or happy, without choice justus and beatus have no real significance. Matters are shown to be even more complicated when, in the story of Eve Hugh draws attention to her doubtful interpretation of God's command, as a factor which precedes her choice. In this way, De Sacramentis is not only a doctrina in our sense of the content of Christian dogma, but it offers the monk a point to which he can attach and conform his intentio: by bringing his intentio in form with the story about creation and fall and reparation, the reader can in fact effect the necessary reparatio, consisting of knowledge of truth and love of virtue. (shrink)

The study of the formation of the literary culture of the words of the "peoples of the nations" is impossible without analyzing the role of libraries of monasteries and cathedrals as centers of documentary memory of the Christian past. After all, the library, as a social institution, has always played an important role in the development of education, science, culture, and religious thought on a long path to its development.

While ante rem structuralism offers a promising account of mathematical truth and mathematical ontology, several of the most prominent formulations of the view seem to be subject to significant difficulties involving the identity conditions of the objects they posit. In this paper I argue that those difficulties can be overcome by adopting encoding structuralism, a version of realism about mathematical objects developed by Bernard Linsky, Uri Nodelman and Edward Zalta.

Open peer commentary on the article “Making Sense and Meaning: On the Role of Communication and Culture in the Reproduction of Social Systems” by Raivo Palmaru. Upshot: The author addresses implications arising from socializing observer-dependent heuristics. Above all, Palmaru’s terminology is called into question since its conceptual deficiencies with regard to the relation between an observing system and its environments cause naturalistic fallacy. The author’s reply espouses a concise reanalysis of the complementary relations of fundamentally incomparable domains, namely the observer (...) and the social system. (shrink)

I have always found it a sore trial of my faith to regard suam ipsam as = suam dominant, and can only join ipsam with matrem. This leaves suam stand alone, as = suam dominam. That use is doubtless defensible of a wife or mistress in the case of a lover; but it is hardly possible of a sparrow, to whom the lady does not ‘belong’ in that relation. That one who is not lover or husband may know suos is (...) no proof that he may know suum or suam alone. (shrink)