"Subjectivisation of Sense Perception and Two Models of Early Modern Idealism" The distinction between primary and secondary qualities, most famously outlined by Galileo, and subsequently supported, inter alia, by Descartes and by Locke has widely been considered one of the crucial factors in the development of modern idealism. In its contemporary form, the distinction identifies some of the perceived properties as mental phenomena due to their content and structural dependence on the mind. However, this account of the primary/secondary distinction is (...) largely different from its original version developed by the above-mentioned philosophers, within whose work the mental being of the perceived qualities was demonstrated objectively, from the conceptually-derived nature of matter, and not subjectively, by referring to the mind’s participation in the cognitive process. It was only at the next stage of the early modern subjectivisation of sense perception, best exemplified by such philosophers as Arnold Geulincx and Richard Burthogge, that the creative role played by the mind in sensation and, consequently, the mind-dependency of the sensible qualities was recognised – a turn influenced by the reinterpretation of Aristotelian philosophy offered by Jacopo Zabarella and Paduan school as well as by Anti-Aristotelianism of the kind developed in Netherlands. Furthermore, the two different approaches to the primary/secondary distinction can be linked with two main types of post-Cartesian idealism, i.e. Berkeleian and Kantian – a claim for which illustrative evidence from British philosophy, namely from Berkeley’s and Burthogge’s respective theories, can be drawn. (shrink)

Autor ukazuje na temeljne ideje i teme po kojima će Tomina misao ostati prepoznatljiva u povijesti filozofije: princip aktualizacije, bivstvovanje kao „aktualnost svih akata i savršenost svih savršenstava”, princip individuacije, jedinstvo supstancijalne forme, vrste apstrakcije, odbacivanje univerzalnog hilemorfizma, realna kompozicija (stvarna razlika), „ipsum esse subsistens, esse commune”, umska bića, dokaz za postojanje Boga, itd. … Objavom ove knjige ovo će jezično područje biti iznimno obogaćeno uvidom u relevantnu filozofijsku tematiku u odnosu na pitanje tumačenja Tomina djela, a koje je od (...) posebnog značenja za studente filozofije, kojima se želi ponuditi temeljiti uvod u filozofiju. (shrink)

This paper opens by reviewing Aristotle’s conception of the natural slave and then familiar treatments of the internal conflict between the ruling and subject parts of the soul in Aristotle and Plato; I highlight especially the figurative uses of slavery and servitude when discussing such problems pertaining to incontinence and vice—viz., being a ‘slave’ to the passions. Turning to Campanella, features of the City of the Sun pertaining to slavery are examined: in sketching his ideal city, Campanella both rejects Aristotle’s (...) natural slave and is critical of the European institutions of slavery. The fact that slavery has no place in the City of the Sun takes on added significance when complemented with Campanella’s remarks on dominion and servitude in his Quaestiones de politiciis: I show that Campanella’s conception of slavery is intimately bound to sin, and consider whether his employment of the trope of slavery within the context of vice diverges from familiar usage. (shrink)

This book collects six unpublished and published academic studies on the thought of Francisco Suárez, which is addressed through accurate textual analyses and meticulous contextualization of his doctrines in the Scholastic debate. The present essays aim to portray two complementary aspects coexisting in the work of the Uncommon Doctor: his innovative approach and his adherence to the tradition. To this scope, they focus on some pivotal, but often neglected, topics in Suárez’s metaphysics and psychology – such as his theories of (...) cognition and truth, angelology, continuous quantity – thereby developing an original inquiry into a crucial moment in the development of Western philosophy. (shrink)

The article compares selected chapters devoted the problems of mind (anima) from two philosophical courses by Georgii Konyskyi, taught at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 1747-1749 and 1749-1751 academic years. As Konyskyi taught his first course using verbatim Teofan Prokopovych’s philosophical course of 1706-08 academic years, the article compares the doctrines on mind by these two Mohylian authors. It also shows the evolution of Konyskyi’s views. -/- There are common elements between the philosophy of mind of Prokopovych and Konyskyi: their interpretations of (...) Aristotle’s definition of the soul; the scholastic concept of the man as an integral mind-body entity; the problem of the unity and multiplicity of forms. It is shown that Prokopovych and Konsyskyi understood the three-level structure of a human soul in the same way as Francisco Suarez and Rodrigo de Arriaga. -/- However, there are some differences between these two Mohylian professors. They interpreted differently sensitive and intellectual cognition. Prokopovych upholds the scholastic doctrine of species. Konyskyi, in his second course, abandons this doctrine and defends the doctrine of impressiones. They are developed by the phantasmata – not received from objects. The impressions are modifications of animal spirits by direct or indirect impact of objects on senses of a human being or any other animated being. In the doctrine on intellectual powers, Prokopovych upholds the scholastic distinction between active and passive intellect. Konyskyirejects this common for scholastic tradition distinction and considers that passive intellect can do full-scale intellectual activity. The influence of Early Modern philosophy, especially Cartesianism, was the reason why Konyskyi changed his position. (shrink)

An aporia posed by Theophrastus prompts Priscian to describe the process by which perception formally assimilates to its object as a progressive perfection. I present an interpretation of Priscian’s account of perception’s progressive perfection. And I consider a dilemma for the general class of accounts to which Priscian’s belongs based on related problems raised by Plotinus and Aquinas.

The paper focuses on the theory of cognition developed by Richard Burthogge, the lesser known seventeenth-century English philosopher, and author, among other works, of Organum Vetus & Novum (1678) and An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits (1694). Although his ideas had a minimal impact on the philosophy of his time, and have hitherto not been the subject of a detailed study, Burthogge’s writings contain a highly original concept of idealistic constructivism, anticipating Kant’s idealism. Therefore, a closer examination (...) of his philosophy can not only deepen our understanding of early modern British thought, but may also shed new light on the internal dynamics of the development of the whole post-Cartesian epistemology. (shrink)

The essay presents some gnoseological themes with reference to the intellect of the separated soul according to John Duns Scotus. Four questions of the Ordinatio IV, d. 45 deal with these themes. In this concret cognitive situation is possible, according to Doctor Subtilis, to get to know the new quiddities of things, in spite of a lack of the empiric cognition. It means leaving behind the conception of generic empiricism and moving to the recognition of more cognitive abilities, as in (...) Aristoteles’s conception. In a post death state intellect continues to have the memory of the quiddities of things known while still connected with the body and can remember concret things and events known by the senses during earthly life. Such a gnoseological notion evidences the cognitive continuity of the human intellect after death, its incorruptibility and cognitive ability at least as such as one had during earthly life. We can see here the connection of philosophic and theological questions, which mutually condition and penetrate each other. According to Scotus it is possible for the intellect of the separated soul to remember the past and to acquire new cognition. Moreover, it is also possible for such an intellect to know the prayers we refer to the blessed in heaven. Such an intellectual approach evidences a strong Augustinian influence on John Duns Scotus’ epistemic conception. (shrink)

Talking of “medieval aesthetics” is historiographically disputable. During the Middle Ages, in fact, there is no discipline comparable with the aesthetics as from the eighteenth century we know it. In the medieval period, aesthetic considerations mostly occur in spurious contexts, and are all, so to say, pre-theoretical. They refer to different insights on what is the beautiful and what relationship holds between the beauty and its artistic expression. In the Middle Ages, that is, one can frequently encounters forms we would (...) nowadays call of descriptive aesthetics, occasionally forms of normative aesthetics, rather sporadically meta-aesthetic considerations. Not even a privileged attention is reserved to aesthetics understood as the description of the conditions of pleasure that follow from the perception of the beautiful, despite the theme of dilectum is important in the aesthetic meditations of medieval masters. Aesthetic discussions predominantly concern the relationships between the artist, an object and its representation. In this essay, I reconsider these relationships by discussing a key point of Thomas Aquinas’s reflection on the beauty: the role played by of the notion of representation in the explanation of the artistic process. (shrink)

The paper argues in favour of a direct realist reading of Aquinas’s theory of intelligible species, in opposition to the recent representationalist challenges. In order to secure the direct realist reading, the paper follows three steps: a short description of Aquinas’s process of cognition, a survey of the direct realist arguments and the analysis of the representationalist interpretation. The final step consists of investigating the representationalist reading as it is suggested by two scholars, Claude Panaccio in Aquinas on Intellectual Representation (...) and Robert Pasnau in Theories of Cognition in the Latter Middle Ages. Thus, the paper can be construed as a reply to these two authors, due to the thorough attention paid to their argumentative trails. With regard to Panaccio’s reading the paper focuses on the identity between the intelligible species and the essence of the extra-mental object and argues that Panaccio understands identity in a very narrow sense. Concerning Pasnau’s line of reasoning the focus is on the primum cognitum status of the intelligible species, and the main argument is that intelligible species is understood by Aquinas as the quo and not the quod of cognition. As the paper shows, neither one, nor the other interpretation poses a threat to the direct realist reading of Aquinas’s intelligible species. (shrink)

In our recent book (Abraham and Roy 2010) we have repurposed a mathematical model for the quantum vacuum as a model of consciousness. In this model, discrete space and time are derived from a discrete cellular dynamical network. As our model is essentially atomistic, we included in our book a short support chapter on atomism. In this aticle we expand on the few pages of that chapter devoted to the history of atomism, to place the current revival of atomism in (...) a larger context. (shrink)