In Theologie und Wissenschaft bei Petrus Aureoli, Florian Wöller offers an account of the theories of science and of theology as they emerge from Peter Auriol's (c. 1280-1322) commentaries on the Sentences.

This paper looks at the critical reception of two central claims of Peter Auriol’s theory of cognition: the claim that the objects of cognition have an apparent or objective being that resists reduction to the real being of objects, and the claim that there may be natural intuitive cognitions of nonexistent objects. These claims earned Auriol the criticism of his fellow Franciscans, Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham. According to them, the theory of apparent being was what had led Auriol to (...) allow for intuitive cognitions of nonexistents, but the intuitive cognition of nonexistents, at its turn, led to scepticism. Modern commentators have offered similar readings of Auriol, but this paper argues, first, that the apparent being provides no special reason to think there could be intuitions of nonexistent objects, and second, that despite his idiosyncratic account of intuition, Auriol was no more vulnerable to scepticism than his critics. (shrink)

This paper explores the accounts of conceptual thought of Peter John Olivi (1248–1298) and Peter Auriol (1280–1322). While both thinkers are known for their criticism of representationalist theories of perception, it is argued that they part ways when it comes to analyzing conceptual cognition. To account for the human capacity for conceptual thought, Olivi is happy to make a number of concessions to indirect realist theories of representation. Insofar as he criticizes a specific branch of indirect realism about conceptual thought, (...) he does so for theological rather than strictly epistemological reasons. This goes to qualify recent philosophical interpretations of Olivi’s ‘Tractatus de verbo.’ By contrast, Auriol’s account of conceptual thought is thoroughly direct realist. According to Auriol, the natures of external things themselves appear to us directly in conceptual cognition, without the mediation of inner images or other representational devices. (shrink)

This book provides for the first time a complete history of the doctrine of the transcendentals and shows its importance for the understanding of philosophy in the Middle Ages.

In this book Han Thomas Adriaenssen offers the first comparative exploration of the sceptical reception of representationalism in medieval and early modern philosophy. Descartes is traditionally credited with inaugurating a new kind of scepticism by saying that the direct objects of perception are images in the mind, not external objects, but Adriaenssen shows that as early as the thirteenth century, critics had already found similar problems in Aquinas's theory of representation. He charts the attempts of philosophers in both periods to (...) grapple with these problems, and shows how in order to address the challenges of scepticism and representation, modern philosophers in the wake of Descartes often breathed new life into old ideas, remoulding them in ways that we are just beginning to understand. His book will be valuable for historians interested in the medieval background to early modern thought, and to medievalists looking at continuity with the early modern period. -/- . (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Epistemology: intentional being Ontology I: individuals and concepts Ontology II: accidents Auriol's historical significance.

This article discusses the theory of perception of Peter Auriol. Arguing for the active nature of the senses in perception, Auriol applies the Scotistic doctrine of objective being to the theory of perception. Nevertheless, he still accepts some parts of the theory of species. The paper introduces Auriol's view on the mechanism of perception and his account of illusions. I argue for a direct realist reading of Auriol's theory of perception and propose that his position becomes clearer if we use (...) the distinction between the first- and third-person perspectives which he seems to presuppose. (shrink)

Some medieval authors defend free choice by arguing that, even though human choices are indeed caused by the practical judgment about what is best to do here and now, one is nevertheless able to freely influence that practical judgment’s formation. This paper examines Peter Auriol’s account of free choice, which is a quite elaborate version of this approach and which brings its theoretical problems into focus. I will argue in favor of Auriol’s basic theory, but I will also propose an (...) emendation to his theory in order to respond to some problems he leaves unresolved. (shrink)

The doctrine of being developed by the Franciscan theologian Peter of Oriol 1is highly original. The present contribution will analyse this doctrine from a distinct point of view. It is mainly interested in Aureoli's description of the concept of being as an implicit concept and reads his doctrine of being exclusively in this regard. The interest of the idea that the concept of being is entirely implicit lies in the particularity that the Franciscan also holds the concept of being to (...) be the first concept known by reason. Peter of Oriol hence presents us with a doctrine of implicit knowledge of being as the unannullable condition, the conditio sine qua non of explicit knowledge. (shrink)

This book is a major contribution to the history of philosophy in the later medieval period (1250-1350). It focuses on cognitive theory, a subject of intense investigation during these years. In fact many of the issues that dominate philosophy of mind and epistemology today - intentionality, mental representation, scepticism, realism - were hotly debated in the later medieval period. The book offers a careful analysis of these debates, primarily through the work of Thomas Aquinas, John Olivi, and William Ockham. Each (...) of these figures attempts to reconceptualise cognition along direct realist lines, criticising in the process the standard Aristotelian account. Though of primary interest to medieval philosophers, the book presupposes no background knowledge of the medieval period, and will therefore interest a broader community of philosophers concerned with the origins of contemporary cognitive theory. (shrink)

The thirty chapters work through various fundamental metaphysical issues, sometimes focusing more on scholastic thought, sometimes on the seventeenth century.

Few philosophers or theologians exerted as much influence on the shape of medieval thought as Thomas Aquinas. He ranks amongst the most famous of the Western philosophers and was responsible for almost single-handedly bringing the philosophy of Aristotle into harmony with Christianity. He was also one of the first philosophers to argue that philosophy and theology could support each other. The shape of metaphysics, theology, and Aristotelian thought today still bears the imprint of Aquinas' work. In this extensive and deeply (...) researched study, Eleonore Stump examines Aquinas' major works, _Summa Theologiae _and _Summa Contra Gentiles, _and clearly assesses the vast range of Aquinas' thought. Philosophers, theologians, and students of the medieval period alike will find this unrivalled study an indispensable resource in researching and teaching Aquinas. (shrink)

This book presents an overview of the later medieval trinitarian theology of the rival Franciscan and Dominican intellectual traditions, and includes detailed studies of thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, ...

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)

How should we understand intuitive cognition? Duns Scotus held that we have intuitive cognition only when objects cause our knowledge without any causal intermediary; if an intelligible species caused our knowledge, it would be abstractive cognition. Compared to abstractive cognition, intuitive cognition is the paradigmatic case of knowledge; by contrast, abstractive cognition is only a "second best.".

Lo studio verte in primo luogo sul commento di Pietro alle Sentenze, in cui viene proposto un «catalogo» delle sette parti della metafisica, intesa come disciplina scientifica. L'A. propone un'indagine dettagliata sul tema, partendo dalla considerazione che il rapporto problematico fra la metafisica intesa come ontologia e la dottrina dell'essere in Aureolo sembrerebbe mettere in discussione lo statuto scientifico della metafisica. Nelle sezioni successive dello studio l'A. si concentra sulla gnoseologia e il significato in Aureolo e Ockham del modus cognoscendi, (...) in particolare mettendo a fuoco il concetto di circumflectio e della metafisica come scientia circumflexiva e della sua possibile fondazione come scientia realis. (shrink)

L'A. illustra la posizione assunta da Pietro Aureolo all'interno del dibattito de aeternitate mundi, fino ad ora non molto studiata, analizzando lo Scriptum super Primum Sententiarum databile al 1316, periodo dell'insegnamento a Bologna e Tolosa, e il commento alle Sentenze, nato durante il magistero parigino. La discussione non è sistematica, ma suddivisa tra il II e il IV libro; dal punto di vista dottrinale non vi sono mutamenti rilevanti tra le due opere. Il modo di procedere di Aureolo nella trattazione (...) dei singoli problemi inerenti alla questione principale è identico nei due testi: una sorta di confronto tra la fazione dei filosofi, rappresentati da Aristotele e Averroè, e quella dei teologi. Ciò che rende peculiare l'approccio dell'autore è la sua grande attenzione alle conseguenze e alle implicazioni epistemologiche delle possibili soluzioni prospettate dai due gruppi, soluzioni che egli reputa difficili da sostenere. L'impossibilità di decidere è connessa alla sua visione dell'uomo che, non possedendo per natura un intelletto astratto, è incapace di avere intuizioni e non può dunque comprendere il modo in cui gli atti divini sono correlati all'essenza divina, né la vera natura dell'istante, né come possa aver luogo un mutamento senza un sostrato precedente che è alla base della nozione di creatio ex nihilo. (shrink)