Philosophy Archive
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Mental Disability and Intellectual Impairment in the Middle Ages: Some Preliminary Research Findings
Posted on May 19, 2013 | No CommentsThis interesting paper was one of the four given in the Mental Health in Non-medical Terms session at KZOO. It looked at philosophy, iconography and the way mental disability was viewed in the Middle Ages. -
Late Medieval Attitudes on the Evil in Warfare: Honoré Bouvet’s Arbre des batailles and its Sources
Posted on May 2, 2013 | No CommentsMy approach in this paper will be to look at Bouvet’s view on the nature of warfare under these broad guidelines, and to treat them as a part of the greater tradition of medieval thought that was fed simulatenously by both pagan and Christian writings. -
Penance and Peter Abelard’s Move Within
Posted on April 21, 2013 | No CommentsOf the many individuals in the twelfth century whose fame in their own time has reached down to ours, figures like Thomas Becket, Frederick Barbarossa and Bernard of Clairvaux, there is no one whose fame surpassed that of Master Peter Abelard and no figure more public. Indeed, fame was something Abelard coveted, something he consciously built. -
Rule by Natural Reason: Late Medieval and early Renaissance conceptions of political corruption
Posted on April 17, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper argues that, from about the eleventh century CE, a new and distinctive model of corruption accompanied the rediscovery and increased availability of a number of classical texts and ideals, particularly those of Cicero and the Roman Jurists. -
The Greek Renaissance in Italy
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsFor various reasons north Italy toward the end of the fourteenth century seemed peculiarly adapted to become the seat of another classical renaissance, though of one some what different in character and results from that which had already run its course. -
Foolishness and Fools in Aquinas’s Analysis
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsFools are legion. This self-evident truth, vouched for by Holy Scripture, is quoted more than twenty times by Thomas Aquinas: 'stultorum infinitus est numerus'. -
The Metaphysics of Peter Abelard
Posted on March 24, 2013 | No CommentsI’ll begin with Abelard’s antirealism about universals, since it is the key to his irrealism. It provides the foundation for his conviction that only individuals exist, a thesis that calls for further analysis of the nature of individuals -
Reality and Truth in Thomas of York: Study and Text
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThe investigation is conducted through a study of opposites into which being is divided. These opposites are principally the one and the many, potency and act, truth and falsity. -
The Islamic Scholar Who Gave Us Modern Philosophy
Posted on February 20, 2013 | No CommentsAbū al-Walīd Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd—or Averroës, as he was known to Latin readers—was born in 1126 at the far western edge of the Islamic world, in Córdoba, Spain. -
The Eternity of the World and Renaissance Historical Thought
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsMedieval and Renaissance controversies over the Aristotelian doctrine of “the eternity of the world” have hitherto been treated as disputes restricted to natural philosophers and theologians. -
The Oxford Calculators
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsOxford’s medieval philosophers deserve greater recognition, says Mark Thakkar -
Origins of the Medieval Theory That Sensation Is an Immaterial Reception of a Form
Posted on December 26, 2012 | No CommentsLet me begin my own discussion of Aquinas by saying that it seems to me that Cohen adequately proved that it was a mistake to view the sensible form as existing in the soul rather than the organ, and that Aquinas is not denying to the sensible form as received by the sensor a place in the physical world, or indeed physical existence, when he says it exists immaterially or spiritually. -
Exegesis According to the Rules of Philosophy or the Rule of Faith?: Methodological Conflict in the Ninth-Century Predestination Controversy
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsThe development of biblical exegesis, as Contreni shows, was rapid, but not homogeneous. On the one hand, one of the main ways to acquire biblical wisdom was to rely on the interpretations and teaching of the Holy Fathers, whose texts were studied, assimilated, simplified, collected, and taught. On the other hand, Alcuin’s revival of the liberal arts6 paved the way for the rise of another method of biblical exegesis. -
Love and Saint Francis of Assisi: A Performer in the Middle Ages
Posted on December 2, 2012 | No CommentsIn “spending most of his life out of doors, in all seasons” Francis defies the basis of what we call civilized existence; if history is about progress in terms of making human life secure from nature’s vagaries, Francis rejects such a conception of history, along with its false sense of security, in order to situate human life in and as the natural world. -
John Scotus Eriugena
Posted on December 2, 2012 | No CommentsEriugena, master of the liberal arts, translator, philologue, poet, philosopher, and theologian, ‘reinvented the greater part of the theses of Neoplatonism’, by his time largely forgotten in the Latin West. -
Exploring the Connections between Metaphysics and Political Thought in the Age of Wyclif and Gerson
Posted on November 22, 2012 | No CommentsRussell focuses on how important late medieval thinkers such as John Wyclif (c. 1320 – 1384) and Jean Gerson (1363–1429) understood metaphysics and how this had an instrumental effect on their political thought. -
The Passion of Peter Abelard
Posted on November 22, 2012 | No CommentsIn the philosophical part of the project we chose not to use Abelardís work Dialogue of the Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian, which explains his views on different religions. Since we decided to use the Letters of Direction in order to get an overview about Abelardís view on Christianity, there appeared to be little need for the aforementioned book. -
The Three Recensions of Eriugena’s Versio Dionysii
Posted on November 18, 2012 | No CommentsHowever, as G. Théry later discovered, Traube’s point of departure—the citations of Dionysius in Hincmar’s treatise on predestination—was faulty. Since Traube published his notes on the manuscripts of the Versio, Théry has proven that the citations in Hincmar’s Liber de praedestinatione come from Hilduin’s translation rather than that of Eriugena. -
‘In the Beginning’: The London Medieval Graduate Network Inaugural Conference
Posted on November 13, 2012 | No CommentsThis is a summary of the The London Medieval Graduate Network Inaugural Conference by Rachel Scott. The conference was held on November 2nd at King's College London. -
Science and Religion in the Middle Ages
Posted on November 6, 2012 | No CommentsWhy did science and natural philosophy suffer such disparate fates in the two great civilizations of Christendom and Islam? -
The Concept of Jihad in the Period of Arab Expansion
Posted on October 31, 2012 | No CommentsPaper given at Religious Tolerance – Religious Violence – Medieval Memories: A colloquium in memory of James Powell -
10 Female Philosophers Who Should Be Studied More
Posted on October 18, 2012 | No CommentsAn article provided by OnlinePhdPrograms.com showcasing overlooked women philosophers! -
The Lost Millennium: Psychology During the Middle Ages
Posted on September 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe medieval period - roughly the 1,000 years from the classical Greco-Roman age to the Renaissance and modern era has long been neglected in the history of psychology. -
St. Isidore and mediaeval science
Posted on September 12, 2012 | No CommentsDid Isidore appear foolish to his contemporaries and immediate mediaeval successors, or is his foolishness a more recent discovery? -
Francis Bacon’s use of ancient myths in Novum Organum
Posted on September 8, 2012 | No CommentsIn this paper, I will show how the ancient myths of Pan, Perseus, Dionysius, and Prometheus have an impact on Book I of Francis Bacon's Novum Organum.
