This book focuses on Abelard’s logical-grammatical analysis of natural language. Tools of modern categorial grammar are employed to clarify many of the problems raised by historiography. The book’s ample analysis of grammatical sources and critical literature allows one to evaluate the progress which is at the basis of the forthcoming terministic logic. The book is aimed at scholars of medieval philosophy and historians of logic and linguistics.
This book offers a major reassessment of Abelard’s modal logic and theory of modalities, and provides a comprehensive study of the 12th-century context in which his views originated and developed, by analysing many logical sources that are still unedited and mostly unexplored.
The importance of Pierre Abelard's position in the history of logic has been stressed by the editions of the Glasse Letterali edited 2 by M. Dal Pral, of the Dialectica edited by De Rijk, and, more recently by the publication of two texts which Minio Paluello 3 attributes to the Palatine Master. The interest of students in the writings of Abelard is further stimulated by considering the time in which he lived, a strategic point in the history of mediaeval logic ; also by the echo of the fame in which his contemporaries had cloaked him, and by his own vivacious and rampant personality. The historical humus which nourished and fired the polemic that makes the Palatine Master's pages so personal and noteworthy is not yet completely known to us, and Geyer has already pointed out the difficulty of satisfactorily understanding the logical position of Abelard before being familiar with the contemporary glossary materia\.4 This material, judging by the information supplied to us by John of Salisbury and by the actual words of our subject, who tells us of numerous discussions and frequently refers to the 'sen tentiae' of'quidam' which give a different interpretation ofthe Aristo telian or Boetian passages, turned out to be of considerable weight.
The problem of universals is one of the main philosophical issues. In this book the author reconstructs the history of the problem considering a selection of medieval representative texts and authors. The source of medieval and postmedieval debate is identified in the Socratic-Platonic survey on the definition of concepts. In the Categories, Aristotle discusses important topics concerning the relations that exist between logical terms. In particular he establishes a kind of predication principle: categorial terms have a certain predication relation if (and only if) some facts expressed by ordinary sentences hold. The Categories also because of their particular disciplinary status, halfway between logic and metaphysics, leave a number of questions open. Among these questions, a particularly intriguing one is Porphyry’s riddle: are there genera and species? And, if there are such things, what are they like?
Methods and Methodologies explores two questions about studying the Aristotelian tradition of logic. The first, addressed by the chapters on methods in the first half of the book, is directly about the medieval logical commentaries, treatises and handbooks. How did medieval authors in the different traditions, Latin and Arabic, go about their work on Aristotelian logic? In particular, how did they themselves conceive the relationship between logic and other branches of philosophy and disciplines outside philosophy? The second question is about methodologies, the subject of the chapters in the second half of the book: it invites writers to reflect on their own and their colleagues’ practice as twenty-first century interpreters of this medieval writing on Aristotelian logic. Contributors are Sten Ebbesen, Christopher J. Martin, Christophe Erismann, Andrew Arlig, Simo Knuuttila, Amos Bertolacci, Jennifer Ashworth, Paul Thom, Gyula Klima, Matteo di Giovanni and Margaret Cameron.
A history of philosophy from 1100-1600 concentrating on the Aristotelian tradition in the Latin Christian West. "will long remain the major guide to later medieval philosophy and related topics. Most of the essays are exciting and challenging, some of them truly brilliant." --Speculum
This book is no less than a guide to the whole of Western philosophy—the ideas that have undergirded our civilization for two-and-a-half thousand years. Anthony Kenny tells the story of philosophy from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment into the modern world. He introduces us to the great thinkers and their ideas, starting with Plato, Aristotle, and the other founders of Western thought. In the second part of the book he takes us through a thousand years of medieval philosophy, and shows us the rich intellectual legacy of Christian thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, and Ockham. Moving into the early modern period, we explore the great works of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant, which remain essential reading today. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Hegel, Mill, Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein again transformed the way we see the world. Running though the book are certain themes which have been constant concerns of philosophy since its early beginnings: the fundamental questions of what exists and how we can know about it; the nature of humanity, the mind, truth, and meaning; the place of God in the universe; how we should live and how society should be ordered. Anthony Kenny traces the development of these themes through the centuries: we see how the questions asked and answers offered by the great philosophers of the past remain vividly alive today. Anyone interested in ideas and their history will find this a fascinating and stimulating read.
An exhaustive guide to every significant Christian theologian who lived from the first century to 1308, the year in which John Duns Scotus died. The dictionary encompasses the Catholic, Orthodox, Nestorian and Monophysite traditions, including information not previously available in English. Thoroughly indexed, the dictionary incorporates common variants of names and concepts which will help and direct the reader. The main criterion for inclusion has been contribution to the development of Christian theology. Sub-criteria by which that is measured include, above all, originality and influence on later figures. With over 290 entries, the dictionary provides a handy summary of theologiansi lives and writings together with recent scholarship,as well as an up-to-date, definitive bibliography listing primary texts, translations and secondary literature in the major western European languages. Useful for all levels of academia; no other text matches the depth of the dictionaryis bibliographies. The unprecedented thoroughness of Hill's compilation provides an essential resource for studies at all levels on such a large and varied range of Church thinkers.
