Oftentimes, reality seems to us a chaos that we try to control with our theories. This article starts from the antithetic standpoint, inspired by Antonio Rosmini’s works: reality is intelligible, and originates our thinking. From this perspective, any research that tries to reach the truth is determined by the real, not the contrary. Moreover, interdisciplinarity, far from being a solipsistic enterprise, aims at achieving truth and guaranteeing scientific advancement. Here, we analyze the distinctive character of Rosminian encyclopedism and his principles (...) for preventing human errors. We then clarify why it is impossible to achieve perfection, and why such an impossibility is not problematic for the interdisciplinary dialogue. (shrink)

In the Physics, Aristotle says that there is no change associated with the category of relatives. In this paper, I examine a widespread but neglected strategy that medieval thinkers use to understand Aristotle’s claim. According to this strategy, which I label initial presence, if there is no change in the category of relatives, it is because the relation-properties are already present in their subject as soon as the properties on which relation-properties are founded exist. Appreciating the importance of this strategy (...) is crucial not only for understanding medieval theories of relation but also for assessing the credibility of arguments used in the secondary literature to interpret medieval texts, in particular a well-known passage from Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on the Physics. (shrink)

Ockham’s own formulations of his Razor state that one should only include a given entity in one’s ontology when one has either sensory evidence, demonstrative argument, or theological authority in favor of it. But how does Ockham decide which theological claims to treat as data for theory construction? Here I show how over time (perhaps in no small part due to pressure and attention from ecclesiastical censors) Ockham refined and changed the way he formulated his Razor, particularly the “authority clause” (...) that states that authoritative theological pronouncements constitute a reason for postulating entities in one’s ontology. This refinement proceeded across three stages, culminating in the political writings of the final period of his life, in which Ockham offers reasons (not previously mentioned in scholarly discussions of Ockham’s Razor) against granting ecclesial authority any significant role to play in settling ontological questions. (shrink)

This book investigates Aristotle’s views on abstraction and explores how he uses it. In this work, the author follows Aristotle in focusing on the scientific detail first and then approaches the metaphysical claims, and so creates a reconstructed theory that explains many puzzles of Aristotle’s thought. Understanding the details of his theory of relations and abstraction further illuminates his theory of universals. Some of the features of Aristotle’s theory of abstraction developed in this book include: abstraction is a relation; perception (...) and knowledge are types of abstraction; the objects generated by abstractions are relata which can serve as subjects in their own right, whereupon they can appear as items in other categories. The author goes on to look at how Aristotle distinguishes the concrete from the abstract paronym, how induction is a type of abstraction which typically moves from the perceived individuals to universals and how Aristotle’s metaphysical vocabulary is "relational.’ Beyond those features, this work also looks at how of universals, accidents, forms, causes and potentialities have being only as abstract aspects of individual substances. An individual substance is identical to its essence; the essence has universal features but is the singularity making the individual substance what it is. These theories are expounded within this book. One main attraction in working out the details of Aristotle’s views on abstraction lies in understanding his metaphysics of universals as abstract objects. This work reclaims past ground as the main philosophical tradition of abstraction has been ignored in recent times. It gives a modern version of the medieval doctrine of the threefold distinction of essence, made famous by the Islamic philosopher, Avicenna. (shrink)

Once Socrates has thought something, he comes to acquire an item such that he is then able to think such thoughts again when he wants, and he can, all other things being equal, do this with more ease than he could before. This item that he comes to acquire medieval philosophers called a cognitive habit which most medieval philosophers maintained was a new quality added to Socrates' intellect. However, some disagreed. In this paper, I will examine an interesting alternative theory (...) put forward by Durand of Saint-Pourçain and Prosper de Reggio Emilia about the location of cognitive habits. On their view, cognitive habits are not to be located in the intellect but in something on the side of the body or sensitive soul. (shrink)

Discussions of John Locke’s theory of causation tend, understandably, to focus on the related notion of power and in particular the dialectic with David Hume. But Locke faces a very different threat, one that is internal to his view. For he argues both that causation is a relation and that relations are not real. The obvious conclusion is intolerable. And yet the premises, I argue, are unassailable. Building on an interpretation of Locke’s treatment of relations I have developed elsewhere, I (...) show how Locke can at once speak meaningfully of causation and deny its mind-independent existence. (shrink)

The paper will explore a key tension between eternity and temporality that comes to the fore in the seeming contradiction between freedom of the human will and divine foreknowledge of future contingents. It will be claimed that Duns Scotus’s adaptation of Thomas Aquinas’s view reduces the tension between a human being’s freedom and divine foreknowledge of future contingents to the question of how to conflate the now of eternity and our experience of the instantaneous now. Scotus’s account of the matter (...) is unfortunately not satisfying and it is the purpose of this paper to develop this insight further in a speculative manner. In order to make such co-nowness possible, it will be asked how the eternal and the temporal can co-cause together. This problem will be tackled through a development of Scotus’s doctrine of the will taken elsewhere, in order to examine how the divine and the human wills can occur together. It will be claimed that such co-willing produces a co-nowness of the eternal and the instantaneous ‘nows’ which generates a logical temporal movement. (shrink)

Both through his own work and that of his students, Franz Clemens Brentano had an often underappreciated influence on the course of 20 th - and 21 st -century philosophy. _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ offers full coverage of Brentano’s philosophy and his influence. It contains 38 brand-new essays from an international team of experts that offer a comprehensive view of Brentano’s central research areas—philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and value theory—as well as of the principal (...) figures shaped by Brentano’s school of thought. A General Introduction serves as an overview of Brentano and the contents of the volume and three separate bibliographies point students and researchers on to further avenues of inquiry. Systematic and detailed, _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ provides readers with a valuable reference to Brentano’s work, and to his lasting importance in the history of philosophy and in contemporary debates. (shrink)

The purpose of this entry is to provide a systematic introduction to medieval views about the nature and ontological status of relations. Given the current state of our knowledge of medieval philosophy, especially with regard to relations, it is not possible to discuss all the nuances of even the best known medieval philosophers' views. In what follows, therefore, we shall restrict our aim to identifying and describing (a) the main types of position that were developed during the Middle Ages, and (...) (b) the most important considerations that shaped their development. We shall have occasion along the way, however, to examine in detail certain aspects of the views of important representatives of all the main medieval positions, including Peter Abelard (1079 1142), Gilbert of Poitiers (1085 1154), Albert the Great, (1200 1280), Thomas Aquinas (1225 1274), John Duns Scotus (1265 1308), Henry Harclay (1270 1317), Peter Auriol (1280 1322), and William Ockham (1285 1347). (shrink)

“The problem of universals” in general is a historically variable bundle of several closely related, yet in different conceptual frameworks rather differently articulated metaphysical, logical, and epistemological questions, ultimately all connected to the issue of how universal cognition of singular things is possible. How do we know, for example, that the Pythagorean theorem holds universally, for all possible right triangles? Indeed, how can we have any awareness of a potential infinity of all possible right triangles, given that we could only (...) see a finite number of actual ones? How can we universally indicate all possible right triangles with the phrase ‘right triangle’? Is there something common to them all signified by this phrase? If so, what is it, and how is it related to the particular right triangles? The medieval problem of universals is a logical, and historical, continuation of the ancient problem generated by Plato's (428-348 B.C.) theory answering such a bundle of questions, namely, his theory of Ideas or Forms. (shrink)

The subject matter of this thesis is analytic ontology. Chapters II and III deal with two versions of trope theory, or moderate nominalism; these are defined as ontologies which recognise properties and relations but no (real) universals. The key notion of both theories, trope, is characterised as an abstract particular. What the abstractness amounts to differs between the two. Yet another difference is that simplicity is an essential trait of a trope according to one theory, but not according to the (...) other. Though exact similarity is said to play an important role in both theories, as it turns out, this does not seem to be the case. The ontology dealt with in chapter IV is a mixture of moderate nominalism concerning qualities and realism concerning relations. In it, quality instances (moments) and universal relations are the ultimate constituents of the universe. While relations and moments are considered to be constituents of states of affairs, which are characterised as objects of higher orders, complexes that are objects of the first order are made up of moments on their own. Among these complexes one finds the ordinary objects. Paradoxically, although relations are necessary for the existence of complex first order objects, relations are not thought to be among the contents of these objects. The main subject of chapter V is a particular version of moderate realism; it is an ontology which is realistic in its recognition of universals and moderate in its recognition of instances of these universals. Instances combine to form complex networks. A theoretically motivated claim is that although each instance has a predicational aspect as well as a universal one, it is simple in the sense of lacking internal predicative structure; though, this claim can be called into question. Keywords: analytic ontology, moderate nominalism, moderate realism, particular, universal, abstract, concrete, abstract particular, abstract universal, concrete particular, concrete universal, trope, moment, complex unity, collection, instance, unit attribute, intensional aspect, predicational aspect, continuous composite, articulated composite. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the issue of what kind of distinction separates the attributes of Spinoza’s substance. I propose to consider the distinction between attributes neither as a real distinction nor as a pure distinction of reason. Instead, I ventilate the alternative of understanding attributes as distinguished by a hybrid distinction, of which I trace the development during the Medieval and Early Modern eras. With the term hybrid, I capture distinctions which are neither a real distinction between substances or (...) real accidents; nor a pure distinction of reason, produced or fabricated by the intellect. I shall argue that Spinoza’s notion of attribute falls under the scope of a hybrid distinction, thus sidestepping the longstanding debate between objectivism and subjectivism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines Thomas Aquinas’ and John Duns Scotus’ respective views on the action-passion identity thesis. This thesis, which goes back to Aristotle, states that when an agent causes a change in a patient, then the agent’s causing of the change is identical to the patient’s undergoing of said change. Action and passion are, on this view, one and the same change in the patient, albeit under two distinct descriptions. The first part of the paper considers Aquinas’ defence of this (...) thesis. The second part discusses Scotus’ attack on this thesis. As this paper shows, Scotus argues, against Aquinas and other scholastics, that action and passion are discrete entities inhering in two distinct bearers: action in the agent and passion in the patient. (shrink)

John Locke’s claims about relations (such as cause and effect) and mixed modes (such as beauty and murder) have been controversial since the publication of the Essay. His earliest critics read him as a thoroughgoing anti-realist who denies that such things exist. More charitable readers have sought to read Locke’s claims away. Against both, I argue that Locke is making ontological claims, but that his views do not have the absurd consequences his defenders fear. By examining Locke’s texts, as well (...) as the intellectual context in which they were written, I show that Locke’s position is at once radical and thoroughly traditional. (shrink)

In this article, I consider Duns Scotus’s treatment of accidents existing without substances (= homeless accidents) in the Eucharist to shed light on how he thinks Aristotle’s metaphysics should be modified to make room for miracles. In my reconstruction, Duns Scotus makes two changes to Aristotle’s metaphysics. First, he distinguishes a given thing’s natural inclinations (its “aptitudes”) from the manifestations of those inclinations. Second, he argues that it is up to God’s free decisions (organized in systematic policies) whether a thing’s (...) aptitudes manifest or do not manifest themselves in any given situation. In this way, Duns Scotus tries to find a point of equilibrium between the necessary causal order he attributes to Aristotle and his followers on the one hand, and God’s freedom to break the natural order at any moment on the other hand. (shrink)

This paper comprises two parts. The first part is an introduction to Auriol’s moderate conceptualism, as it is presented in his Commentary on Book II of the Sentences, distinction 9, question 2, article 1. The second part is an edition of the text. In the introduction, I focus on Auriol’s use of the noetic tool of connotation. My thesis, in particular, is that connotation is a necessary prerequisite to his moderate conceptu- alism. To this purpose, the first part of this (...) introduction will be devoted to a brief presentation of Auriol’s conceptualism. In the second part, Auriol’s theory of essential predication will be presented. In the third part, I will present my claim that Auriol’s theory of essential predication can only be made sense of when read against the background of his theory of connotation as applied to intellectual cognition. Finally, I will offer a collation of Auriol’s Commentary on Book II of the Sentences, dis- tinction 9, question 2, article 1, obtained by collating eight manuscripts, which hand down Auriol’s text, that is, Firenze, Biblioteca nazionale centrale, ms. Conv. Soppr. B.6.121, Firenze, ms. Conv. Soppr. A. 3.120, Napoli, Biblioteca nazionale, ms. VII.C.3, Padova, Biblioteca Antoniana, ms. 161, scaff. ix, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. latin 15867; Pelplin, Biblioteka Seminarium duchownego, ms. 46/85, Vaticano (Città del), Biblioteca Apostolica, ms. Borgiano 404, Vaticano (Città del), Biblioteca Apostolica, ms. Vat. lat. 942. (shrink)

La “relación” en Tomás de Aquino es una de las “categorías” aristotélicas que representan “accidentes”. No obstante, tal compromiso metafísico conlleva algunas dificultades ya que el esquema “sustancia”-“accidentes” no deja lugar a la idea de un “término medio” entre dos cosas. En este artículo presento algunas tensiones entre la sistematización de la “relación” como categoría en Tomás de Aquino y su posición sobre el “estatus” de los predicamentos en general. Para ello analizo primero la deducción de las categorías tal como (...) es presentada por el autor para luego abordar la “relación” de modo sistemático. En esta exposición argumento que Tomás tiene severas dificultades para asignarle un “fundamento accidental propio” distinto al de los otros predicamentos que le permita considerarla una de las “categorías”. (shrink)

This is the first special issue of the British Journal of the History of Philosophy to be devoted to the thought of the Middle Ages. Its topic is relations. The articles have been chosen to give an...

Thomas Aquinas is often thought to present a compositionalist model of the incarnation, according to which Christ is a composite of a divine nature and a human nature, understood as concrete particulars. But he sometimes seems to hedge away from this model when insisting on the unity of Christ. I argue that if we interpret some of his texts on the assumption of straightforward compositionalism, we can construct a defence of Christ’s unity within that context. This defence involves the claim (...) that the divine unity is so great, and the relation between Christ’s two natures so unusual, that the divine unity can be transferred to the composite Christ as a “borrowed property”. (shrink)

For Duns Scotus, facts about moral psychology are ultimately reducible to facts about ontology. The created agent has a soul which includes as formal “parts” the intellect and will; the intellect and will, of course, are the seat of qualities (e.g. thoughts and volitions, respectively) and habits (e.g. virtues) that are related to one another in various ways. One of these ways is the conformity relation. From a metaphysical base of categorical being – whether Substance, Quality/Habit, or Relation – Scotus (...) constructs an ethical theory which complements, though in some interesting ways departs from, the Aristotelian tradition of which he is a part. In this essay, our aim is twofold: first, to reconstruct the ontological status of virtue within Scotus's overall metaphysical framework. Second, we attend to the ways in which this metaphysic of virtue places constraints on how one is to understand the conformity relation that, according to Scotus, must exist between an agent's will and right reason whenever a morally good action results. (shrink)