Thomas Aquinas is widely recognized as one of history's most significant Christian theologians and one of the most powerful philosophical minds of the western tradition. But what has often not been sufficiently attended to is the fact that he carried out his theological and philosophical labours as a part of his vocation as a Dominican friar, dedicated to a life of preaching and the care of souls. Fererick Christian Bauerschmidt places Aquinas's thought within the context of that vocation, and argues that his views on issues of God, creation, Christology, soteriology, and the Christian life are both shaped by and in service to the distinctive goals of the Dominicans. What Aquinas says concerning both matters of faith and matters of reason, as well as his understanding of the relationship between the two, are illuminated by the particular Dominican call to serve God through handing on to others through preaching and teaching the fruits of one's own theological reflection.

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy showcases the best scholarly research in this flourishing field. The series covers all aspects of medieval philosophy, including the Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew traditions, and runs from the end of antiquity into the Renaissance. It publishes new work by leading scholars in the field, and combines historical scholarship with philosophical acuteness. The papers will address a wide range of topics, from political philosophy to ethics, and logic to metaphysics. OSMP is an essential resource for anyone working in the area.

Descartes and the First Cartesians adopts the perspective that we should not approach Rene Descartes as a solitary thinker, but as a philosopher who constructs a dialogue with his contemporaries, so as to engage them and elements of his society into his philosophical enterprise. Roger Ariew argues that an important aspect of this engagement concerns the endeavor to establish Cartesian philosophy in the Schools, that is, to replace Aristotle as the authority there. Descartes wrote the Principles of Philosophy as something of a rival to Scholastic textbooks, initially conceiving the project as a comparison of his philosophy and that of the Scholastics. Still, what Descartes produced was inadequate for the task. The topics of Scholastic textbooks ranged more broadly than those of Descartes; they usually had quadripartite arrangements mirroring the structure of the collegiate curriculum, divided as they typically were into logic, ethics, physics, and metaphysics. But Descartes produced at best only what could be called a general metaphysics and a partial physics. These deficiencies in the Cartesian program and in its aspiration to replace Scholastic philosophy in the schools caused the Cartesians to rush in to fill the voids. The attempt to publish a Cartesian textbook that would mirror what was taught in the schools began in the 1650s with Jacques Du Roure and culminated in the 1690s with Pierre-Sylvain Regis and Antoine Le Grand. Ariew's original account thus considers the reception of Descartes' work, and establishes the significance of his philosophical enterprise in relation to the textbooks of the first Cartesians and in contrast with late Scholastic textbooks.

For nearly four centuries, when logic was the heart of what we now call the 'undergraduate curriculum', Peter of Spain's Summaries of Logic (c. 1230) was the basis for teaching that subject. Because Peter's students were teenagers, he wrote simply and organized his book carefully. Since no book about logic was read by more people until the twentieth century, the Summaries has extensively and profoundly influenced the distinctly Western way of speaking formally and writing formal prose by constructing well-formed sentences, making valid arguments, and refuting and defending arguments in debate. Some books, like the Authorized Version of the English Bible and the collected plays of Shakespeare, have been more influential in the Anglophone world than Peter's Summaries-but not many. This new English translation, based on an update of the Latin text of Lambertus De Rijk, comes with an extensive introduction that deals with authorship, dating, and the place of the Summaries in the development of logic, before providing a chapter-by-chapter analysis of Peter's book, followed by an analysis of his system from the point of view of modern logic. The Latin text is presented on facing pages with the English translation, accompanied by notes, and the book includes a full bibliography.

Richard Cross provides the first complete and detailed account of Duns Scotus's theory of cognition, tracing the processes involved in cognition from sensation, through intuition and abstraction, to conceptual thought. He provides an analysis of the ontological status of the various mental items (acts and dispositions) involved in cognition, and a new account of Scotus on nature of conceptual content. Cross goes on to offer a novel, reductionist, interpretation of Scotus's view of the ontological status of representational content, as well as new accounts of Scotus's opinions on intuitive cognition, intelligible species, and the varieties of consciousness. Scotus was a perceptive but highly critical reader of his intellectual forebears, and this volume places his thought clearly within the context of thirteenth-century reflections on cognitive psychology, influenced as they were by Aristotle, Augustine, and Avicenna. As far as possible, Duns Scotus's Theory of Cognition traces developments in Scotus's thought during the ten or so highly productive years that formed the bulk of his intellectual life.

It has been over a decade since the first edition of The Cambridge Companion to Augustine was published. In that time, reflection on Augustine's life and labors has continued to bear much fruit: significant new studies into major aspects of his thinking have appeared, as well as studies of his life and times and new translations of his work. This new edition of the Companion, which replaces the earlier volume, has eleven new chapters, revised versions of others, and a comprehensive updated bibliography. It will furnish students and scholars of Augustine with a rich resource on a philosopher whose work continues to inspire discussion and debate.

What is the nature of the material world? And how are its fundamental constituents to be described? These questions are of central concern to contemporary philosophers, and in their attempt to answer them, they have begun reconsidering traditional views about metaphysical structure, including the Aristotelian view that material objects are best described as 'hylomorphic compounds'-that is, objects composed of both matter (hyle) and form (morphe). In this major new study, Jeffrey E. Brower presents and explains the hylomorphic conception of the material world developed by Thomas Aquinas, the most influential Aristotelian of the Middle Ages. According to Brower, the key to understanding Aquinas's conception lies in his distinctive account of intrinsic change. Beginning with a novel analysis of this account, Brower systematically introduces all the elements of Aquinas's hylomorphism, showing how they apply to material objects in general and human beings in particular. The resulting picture not only sheds new light on Aquinas's ontology as a whole, but provides a wholesale alternative to the standard contemporary accounts of material objects. In addition to presenting and explaining Aquinas's views, Brower seeks wherever possible to bring them into dialogue with the best recent literature on related topics. Along the way, he highlights the contribution that Aquinas's views make to a host of contemporary metaphysical debates, including the nature of change, composition, material constitution, the ontology of stuff vs. things, the proper analysis of ordinary objects, the truthmakers for essential vs. accidental predication, and the metaphysics of property possession.

Die menschliche Lebensfuhrung ist weder durch Wesenheiten vorherbestimmt noch eine beliebige Konstruktion. Sie bedarf der Aufdeckung der zum Leben notigen Moglichkeiten. Dieser Kategorische Konjunktiv beugt der unmenschlichen Verstetigung ungespielten Lachens und Weinens vor. Menschliche Lebewesen brauchen einen geschichtlichen Prozess, um ihre Natur offentlich herausproduzieren zu konnen. Die Wahrnehmung der ersten Person bedeutet Teilnahme an der Semiosis lebendiger Augenblicke. Diesseits von Naturalismus und Sprachidealismus wird hier der dritte Weg eines modernitatskritischen Philosophierens erkundet. Auf jenem Weg Philosophischer Anthropologie kommt der Geschlechterfrage ein hoher Stellenwert zu. Die Selbstermachtigung zur Produktion biologischer und soziokultureller Geschlechterbestimmungen hat ihre Grenzen am notigen Respekt vor unserer erotischen Leibesnatur."

The French author Michel de Montaigne is widely regarded as the founder and greatest practitioner of the personal essay. A member of the minor aristocracy, he worked as a judicial investigator, served as mayor of Bordeaux, and sought to bring stability to his war-torn country during the latter half of the sixteenth century. He is best known today, however, as the author of the Essays, a vast collection of meditations on topics ranging from love and sexuality to freedom, learning, doubt, self-scrutiny, and peace of mind. One of the most original books ever to emerge from Europe, Montaigne's masterpiece has been continuously and powerfully influential among writers and philosophers from its first appearance down to the present day. His extraordinary curiosity and discernment, combined with his ability to mix thoughtful judgment with revealing anecdote, make him one of the most readable of all writers. In Montaigne: A Very Short Introduction, William M. Hamlin provides an overview of Montaigne's life, thought, and writing, situating the Essays within the arc of Montaigne's lived experience and focusing on themes of particular interest for contemporary readers. Designed for a broad audience, this introduction will appeal to first-time students of Montaigne as well as to seasoned experts and admirers. Well-informed and lucidly written, Hamlin's book offers an ideal point of entry into the life and work of the world's first and most extraordinary essayist.

Terence Parsons presents a new study of the development and logical complexity of medieval logic. Basic principles of logic were used by Aristotle to prove conversion principles and reduce syllogisms. Medieval logicians expanded Aristotle's notation in several ways, such as quantifying predicate terms, as in 'No donkey is every animal', and allowing singular terms to appear in predicate position, as in 'Not every donkey is Brownie'; with the enlarged notation come additional logical principles. The resulting system of logic is able to deal with relational expressions, as in De Morgan's puzzles about heads of horses. A crucial issue is a mechanism for dealing with anaphoric pronouns, as in 'Every woman loves her mother'. Parsons illuminates the ways in which medieval logic is as rich as contemporary first-order symbolic logic, though its full potential was not envisaged at the time. Along the way, he provides a detailed exposition and examination of the theory of modes of common personal supposition, and the useful principles of logic included with it. An appendix discusses the artificial signs introduced in the fifteenth century to alter quantifier scope.

Frederick F. Schmitt offers a systematic interpretation of David Hume's epistemology, as it is presented in the indispensable A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume's text alternately manifests scepticism, empiricism, and naturalism in epistemology. Interpretations of his epistemology have tended to emphasise one of these apparently conflicting positions over the others. But Schmitt argues that the positions can be reconciled by tracing them to a single underlying epistemology of knowledge and probability quietly at work in the text, an epistemology according to which truth is the chief cognitive merit of a belief, and knowledge and probable belief are species of reliable belief. Hume adopts Locke's dichotomy between knowledge and probability and reassigns causal inference from its traditional place in knowledge to the domain of probability-his most significant departure from earlier accounts of cognition. This shift of causal inference to an associative and imaginative operation raises doubts about the merit of causal inference, suggesting the counterintuitive consequence that causal inference is wholly inferior to knowledge-producing demonstration. To defend his associationist psychology of causal inference from this suggestion, Hume must favourably compare causal inference with demonstration in a manner compatible with associationism. He does this by finding an epistemic status shared by demonstrative knowledge and causally inferred beliefs-the status of justified belief. On the interpretation developed here, he identifies knowledge with infallible belief and justified belief with reliable belief, i.e., belief produced by truth-conducive belief-forming operations. Since infallibility implies reliable belief, knowledge implies justified belief. He then argues that causally inferred beliefs are reliable, so share this status with knowledge. Indeed Hume assumes that causally inferred beliefs enjoy this status in his very argument for associationism. On the reliability interpretation, Hume's accounts of knowledge and justified belief are part of a broader veritistic epistemology making true belief the chief epistemic value and goal of science. The veritistic interpretation advanced here contrasts with interpretations on which the chief epistemic value of belief is its empirical adequacy, stability, or fulfilment of a natural function, as well as with the suggestion that the chief value of belief is its utility for common life. Veritistic interpretations are offered of the natural function of belief, the rules of causal inference, scepticism about body and matter, and the criteria of justification. As Schmitt shows, there is much attention to Hume's sources in Locke and to the complexities of his epistemic vocabulary.

Five hundred years before “Jabberwocky” and Tender Buttons, writers were already preoccupied with the question of nonsense. But even as the prevalence in medieval texts of gibberish, babble, birdsong, and allusions to bare voice has come into view in recent years, an impression persists that these phenomena are exceptions that prove the rule of the period’s theologically motivated commitment to the kernel of meaning over and against the shell of the mere letter. This book shows that, to the contrary, the foundational object of study of medieval linguistic thought was vox non-significativa, the utterance insofar as it means nothing whatsoever, and that this fact was not lost on medieval writers of various kinds. In a series of close and unorthodox readings of works by Priscian, Boethius, Augustine, Walter Burley, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the anonymous authors of the Cloud of Unknowing and St. Erkenwald, it inquires into the way that a number of fourteenth-century writers recognized possibilities inherent in the accounts of language transmitted to them from antiquity and transformed those accounts into new ideas, forms, and practices of non-signification. Retrieving a premodern hermeneutics of obscurity in order to provide materials for an archeology of the category of the literary, Medieval Nonsense shows how these medieval linguistic textbooks, mystical treatises, and poems were engineered in such a way as to arrest the faculty of interpretation and force it to focus on the extinguishing of sense that occurs in the encounter with language itself.

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy showcases the best scholarly research in this flourishing field. The series covers all aspects of medieval philosophy, including the Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew traditions, and runs from the end of antiquity into the Renaissance. It publishes new work by leading scholars in the field, and combines historical scholarship with philosophical acuteness. The papers will address a wide range of topics, from political philosophy to ethics, and logic to metaphysics. OSMP is an essential resource for anyone working in the area.

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA prasentieren seit ihrer Grundung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universitat zu Koeln. Das Kernstuck der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijahrigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Koelner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor uber 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Grundungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinare Charakter dieser Kongresse pragt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beitrage aus allen mediavistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaften sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters.

Was man in der alteuropaischen Metaphysik "das Wesen" des Menschen genannt hat, ist historisch zugrunde gegangen. Die Spezifik des Menschen wurde in seiner dualistischen Aufspaltung, entweder Seele oder Korper zu sein, und in seiner monistischen Auflosung, ganz Natur oder Geist zu sein, verfehlt. Gleichwohl sind wir alle in unserem Common sense praktisch der Frage ausgesetzt, wie wir die naturlichen, sozialen und kulturellen Aspekte unserer Existenz in der Fuhrung eines menschlichen Lebens sinnvoll berucksichtigen konnen. Die neuen Reproduktions-, Umwelt-, Kommunikations- und Sozialtechnologien werfen taglich die Frage auf, was es heisst, als vergleichbare Person und als Individuum ein menschliches Leben zu fuhren. Die "Philosophische Anthropologie" (Helmuth Plessner) hat die Spezifik menschlicher Phanomene naturphilosophisch als eine Besonderheit im Spielverhalten hoherer Saugetiere erschlossen. Im Spielen kann Verhalten von seinem ursprunglichen Antrieb abgelost und an einen neuen Antrieb gebunden werden. Dies gelingt seitens des Organismus um so besser, je ruckbezuglicher seine zentrische Form (Gehirn) der Selbstreproduktion wird. Dadurch entsteht aber eine Ambivalenz in den Zentrierungsrichtungen des Verhaltens, namlich spontan aus der leiblichen Funktionsmitte des Organismus heraus oder von den korperlich moglichen Funktionsmitten der Umwelt her. Diese Ambivalenz bedarf zur Stutzung entsprechender soziokultureller Losungsformen, in denen sie lebbar verschrankt werden kann. Wer wie z. B. Kinder spielt, lebt in der Differenz, sein Verhalten verkorpern (von einem Zentrum ausserhalb des eigenen Leibes her koordinieren) und verleiblichen (auf seinen eigenen unvertretbaren Leib hin zentrieren) konnen zu mussen. Die (kategorische) Not solcher Lebewesen, ihre beiden Zentrierungsrichtungen ausbalancieren zu mussen, kann aber auf kontingente Weise (konjunktivisch) befriedigt werden. Dieser "Kategorische Konjunktiv" (Plessner) der Lebensfuhrung macht Menschen einer geschichtlich zu erringenden soziokulturellen Natur bedurftig. Im ersten des auf zwei Bande konzipierten Werks wird Plessners "Kategorischer Konjunktiv" als ein Spektrum menschlicher Phanomene vorgefuhrt, in denen sich unsere verschiedenen leiblichen und korperlichen Sinne zu einer Funktionseinheit verschranken. Der Zusammenhang unserer Sinne ergibt sich daraus, dass jeder Mensch lebensgeschichtlich eine soziokulturelle Elementarrolle spielt. Dank dieser kann man sich personalisieren (vergleichbar werden) und im Unterschied zu ihr individualisieren. Das Schauspielen der Rolle gerinnt in Ausdrucks-, Handlungs- und Sprachformen, unter denen die westliche Modernisierung hochst einseitig solche der Selbstbeherrschung durch Selbstbewusstsein ausgezeichnet hat. Das Ausspielen der Rolle findet aber seine Verhaltensgrenzen in Phanomenen ungespielten Lachens und Weinens, in denen die Zuordnung zwischen Individuum und Person nicht mehr gelingt. Das Eingespieltsein zwischen sich als Person und Individuum kann im ungespielten Lachen zu mehrsinnig oder im ungespielten Weinen sinnlos werden. Die soziolkulturell zu bestimmter Zeit anerkannten Rollen werden aber individuell durch Suchte und Leidenschaften und geschichtlich durch kulturelle Entfremdung der Nachwachsenden und gesellschaftliche Offnung der Gemeinschaftsformen wieder aus der Balance gebracht. Daraus resultiert das Problem der geschichtlichen Selbstermachtigung von Individuen und Generationen. Plessners neue Konzeption souveraner Formen von Macht, die aus der Relation zur eigenen Unbestimmtheit zu gewinnen sind, und im Hinblick auf die moderne Emanzipation der Macht fur plurale Gesellschaften als Minima moralia erortert. In den Verhaltensgrenzen des angespielten Lachen und Weinens werden wir uns unbestimmt. Wer diese Grenzen uberschreitet, begeht der Moglichkeit nach Unmenschliches."

The multi-author Essays in Later Mediaeval Metaphysics focuses primarily on 13th and 14th century Latin treatments of some of the most important metaphysical issues as conceived by many of the most important thinkers of the day. Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Walter Chatton, John Buridan, Dietrich of Freiburg, Robert Holcot, Walter Burley, and the 11th century Islamic philosopher Ibn-Sina (Avicenna) are among the figures examined here. The work begins with standard ontological topics-e.g., the nature of existence, and of metaphysics generally; the status of universals, form, and accidents. Here, a number of questions are considered. What is the proper subject matter of metaphysical speculation? Are essence and existence really distinct in bodies? Furthermore, does the body lose its unifying form at death? Can an accident of a substance exist in separation from that substance? Are universals real, and if so, are they anything more than general concepts? There is also an emphasis on metaphysics broadly conceived. Thus, discussions of theories of mediaeval logic, epistemology, and language are added to provide a fuller account of the range of ideas included in the later mediaeval worldview. Many questions are raised in this context as well. What are the objects of propositional attitudes? How does Aristotelian logic stand up against modern predicate calculus? Are infinite regress arguments defensible in metaphysical contexts? How are the notions of analogy and equivocation related to the concept of being? Contributors include scholars of mediaeval philosophy from across North America: Rega Wood (Indiana), Gyula Klima (Fordham), Brian Francis Conolly (Bard College at Simon's Rock ), Charles Bolyard (James Madison), Martin Tweedale (emeritus, Alberta), Jack Zupko (Winnipeg), Susan Brower-Toland (St. Louis), Rondo Keele (Louisiana Scholars' College), Terence Parsons (UC-Irvine), and E. J. Ashworth (emeritus, Waterloo).

This book is a study ofthe psychology of Averroes and its influence on Roman philosophy. It addresses his famous doctrine of the intellect, and its critical defence by the English 14th-century theologian Thomas Wylton. The major questions related to the body-mind problem are tackled: the relation between soul and body, the status of imagination, the nature of the intellect s power, and the autonomy of the thinker."

How can the Body and Blood of Christ, without ever leaving heaven, come to be really present on eucharistic altars where the bread and wine still seem to be? Thirteenth and fourteenth century Christian Aristotelians thought the answer had to be "transubstantiation."
Acclaimed philosopher, Marilyn McCord Adams, investigates these later medieval theories of the Eucharist, concentrating on the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham, with some reference to Peter Lombard, Hugh of St. Victor, and Bonaventure. She examines how their efforts to formulate and integrate this theological datum provoked them to make significant revisions in Aristotelian philosophical theories regarding the metaphysical structure and location of bodies, differences between substance and accidents, causality and causal powers, and fundamental types of change. Setting these developments in the theological context that gave rise to the question draws attention to their understandings of the sacraments and their purpose, as well as to their understandings of the nature and destiny of human beings.
Adams concludes that their philosophical modifications were mostly not ad hoc, but systematic revisions that made room for transubstantiation while allowing Aristotle still to describe what normally and naturally happens. By contrast, their picture of the world as it will be (after the last judgment) seems less well integrated with their sacramental theology and their understandings of human nature.

The act of eating is a basic human need. Yet in all societies, quotidian choices regarding food and its consumption reveal deeply rooted shared cultural conventions. Food goes beyond issues relating to biological needs and nutrition or production and commerce; it also reveals social and cultural criteria that determine what dishes are prepared on what occasions, and it unveils the politics of the table via the rituals associated with different meals. This book approaches the history of food in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy through an interdisciplinary prism of sources ranging from correspondence, literature (both high and low), and medical and dietary treatises to cosmographic theory and iconographic evidence. Using a variety of analytical methods and theoretical approaches, it moves food studies firmly into the arena of Late Medieval and Renaissance history, providing an essential key to deciphering the material and metaphorical complexity of this period in European, and especially Italian, history.

This volume belongs to the critical edition of the complete works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), an edition that presents the works in broadly chronological order and in accordance with the principles of modern textual scholarship. This volume contains critical editions of five varied works Bacon composed during the 1620s. The most significant and substantial of these five works is his biography of Henry VII (The historie of the raigne of King Henry the seventh) but the volume testifies as well to Bacon's continuing robust allegiance to his youthful vaunt that all knowledge was his province, for it also includes his sketch for a biography of Henry VIII, An advertisement touching an holy war (a thoughtful debate over the prospect of holy war in his own time), Apophthegmes (a lively collection of witty anecdotes, classical to early modern), and his select verse translations from the psalms. In each case an authoritative text has been established based upon fresh collation of the relevant manuscripts and of multiple copies of the seventeenth-century editions, and subjected to a thorough bibliographical analysis of the treatment of Bacon's texts in the early modern printing-house. The Introductions discuss the occasion and context for each work, evaluate his creative transmutation of his sources, and weigh their contemporary reception. A comprehensive commentary identifies and parses Bacon's use of source material, from his refinement of published literary and historical sources and contemporary MSS to the political white papers composed while he served as counsellor to King James. An extensive glossary is integrated into this commentary. An Appendix provides full bibliographical descriptions of all of the textual witnesses, manuscript and printed edition.

In "Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages," Michelle Karnes revises the history of medieval imagination with a detailed analysis of its role in the period's meditations and theories of cognition. Karnes here understands imagination in its technical, philosophical sense, taking her cue from Bonaventure, the thirteenth-century scholastic theologian and philosopher who provided the first sustained account of how the philosophical imagination could be transformed into a devotional one. Karnes examines Bonaventure's meditational works, the "Meditationes vitae Christi," the "Stimulis amoris," "Piers Plowman," and Nicholas Love's "Myrrour," among others, and argues that the cognitive importance that imagination enjoyed in scholastic philosophy informed its importance in medieval meditations on the life of Christ. Emphasizing the cognitive significance of both imagination and the meditations that relied on it, she revises a long-standing association of imagination with the Middle Ages. In her account, imagination was not simply an object of suspicion but also a crucial intellectual, spiritual, and literary resource that exercised considerable authority.