Medieval Philosophy and Theology 

About: Medieval Philosophy and Theology is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Ancient philosophy & Metaphysics. It has an ISSN identifier of 1057-0608. Over the lifetime, 85 publications have been published receiving 794 citations.

Maimonides’ Demonstrations: Principles and Practice

Abstract: It is well known that Maimonides rejects the Kalam argument for the existence of God because it assumes the temporal creation of the world, a premise for which he says there is no “cogent demonstration ( burhan qat'i) except among those who do not know the difference between demonstration, dialectics, and sophistic argument.” Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), I:71:180. All references are to this translation; parenthetic in-text references are to part, chapter, and page. By contrast, he claims to establish belief in the existence of God “through a demonstrative method as to which there is no disagreement in any respect” (I:71:182). Taken at his word, Maimonides’ proofs for the existence of the deity, like Aquinas’s five ways, have traditionally been read as models of medieval natural theology: of the power of human reason to independently establish revealed truth. In recent years, however, the same demonstrations have assumed a second kind of significance. For scholars, like myself, who argue that Maimonides holds severe views about the limitations of human knowledge of divine science and metaphysics, these demonstrations are the strongest conceivable counterevidence. The locus classicus for this view is Shlomo Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge According to Al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I Twersky, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), I:82–109. See also his “Les Limites de la Metaphysique selon Al-Farabi, ibn Bajja et Maimonide; Sources et Antitheses de ces Doctrines chez Alexandre d’Aphrodise et Chez Themistius,” Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13 (1981): 211–25; “Dieu et L’Etre Selon Maimonide: Exegese d’Exode 3,14 et doctrine connexe,” in Celui qui est: Interpretations juives et chretiennes d’Exode 3, 14, ed. A. de Libera et E. Zum Brunn (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf [Collection “Patrimoines”], 1986), 15–24; and “The Relation between Maimonides’ Halakhic and non-Halakhic Works,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed., S. Pines and Y. Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987). Pines concludes, on the basis of the limitations of the intellect with respect to knowledge of metaphysics, that Maimonides, like Kant, gives priority to the practical over the theoretical. For arguments drawing different ‘skeptical’ conclusions, see my “Maimonides in the Skeptical Tradition,” ms.; “Maimonides on the Growth of Knowledge and the Limitations of the Intellect,” to appear in Tony Levy, ed., Maimonide: Traditions philosophiques et scientifiques medievales arabe, hebraique, latine ; “Logical Syntax as a Key to a Secret of the Guide of the Perplexed, ” (in Heb.), Iyyun 38 (1989): 137–66; “Maimonides on Language and the Science of Language,” in Maimonides and the Sciences, ed., H. Levine and R. Cohen (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000), pp. 173–226; and The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (forthcoming). If Maimonides really held that humans cannot apprehend metaphysical truths about the deity, how could he have demonstrated (or even thought he could demonstrate) the existence of God? If he does demonstrate it, then humans evidently do have knowledge of metaphysics. As one distinguished scholar has recently protested, it is nothing less than “perverse” to interpret Maimonides as “meaning that the existence of God is unknowable when he in fact prides himself on having demonstrated the existence of God in four different ways.” Herbert A. Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge,” Maimonidean Studies 3 (1992–1993): 49–103, 86. See also Alfred L. Ivry, “The Logical and Scientific Premises of Maimonides’ Thought,” in Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism, ed. Alfred L. Ivry, Elliot R. Wolfson, and Allan Arkush (Amsterdam: Harwood Publishers, 1998), pp. 63–97, 70.

Analogy and Formal Distinction: On the Logical Basis of Wyclif's Metaphysics

Abstract: forms, like humanitas, are states of affairs, because of their own inner organization and make up (for example, humanitas is equal to the \"sum\" of animalίtas and rationalitas). As a consequence, one can refer to the same entity by means of various types of term: abstract nouns (like 'humanitas'), concrete nouns (like 'homo'), infinitive expressions (like 'hominem esse'), and complex expressions (like 'humanitas communis', 'homo in communV, and 'species hominis'), which therefore are synonymous. Every universal is a form, a truth, or state of things capable of being signified by a complex, just as being a man is a common nature in which all men, in virtue of their species, resemble each other, and correspondingly with other things. That is why professional philosophers have called universals by abstract names, like 'humanity' 'equinity' and so on for other species. . . . So someone who wants to be made acquainted with the quiddity of universals has to think confusedly and abstractly, by genus and species, of the same thing as he first thought of by means of a complex whose subject is the specific or generic term; thus the species of man is the same as there being a man, the genus of animal is the same thing as being an animal. And each of these is common to its supposits. Wyclif's metaphysical world, like his physical world, consists of \"atomic\" objects, that is single essences belonging to the ten different types or categories. These metaphysical \"atoms\" however are not simple, but composite, because they are reducible to something else, belonging to a different rank of reality, and unable to exist by itself: being and quίdditas, potentia and actus, matter and form, abstract genera, species and differences. For that reason, everything which one can speak about, or think of, is both a res and an atomic state of affairs, while every true 23. Cf. De ente praedicamentalί, chap. 5, pp. 38-39. 24. Cf. Tractatus de universalibus, chap. 2, pp. 55-56; chap. 3, pp. 70, 74, and 84; chap. 6, pp. 118-19. 25. On this topic see below the section on being and essence. 26. Tractatus de universalibus, chap. 3, pp. 70 and 74 (Kenny's trans, pp. 19 and 21): \"Omne universale est forma, verίtas vel disposίtio significabile per complexum, ut esse hominem est natura communis in qua omnes homines specifice conveniunt, et correspondenter de aliis. Unde periti philosophantes vocaverunt universalia nominibus abstractis, ut 'humanitas', 'equinitas', et ita de aliis speciebus.. . . Volens igitur manuduci in notitiam de quidditate universalium debet intelligere confuse et abstracte idem per genus et speciem quod intelligit primo per complexum, cuius subiectum est terminus specificus vel terminus generis, ut idem est species hominis et hominem esse, idem genus animalis et esse animal. Et utrumque illorum est commune suis suppositis.\" 27. Cf. Continuatio logicae, tr. 3, chap. 9, pp. 60-63, and 80. On Wyclif's atomism see Kenny, Wyclif, pp. 4-5, and 62. 142 ALESSANDRO D. CONTI sentence expresses a molecular state of affairs, that is the union (if the sentence is affirmative) or the separation (if the sentence is negative) of two (or more) atomic

Aquinas on Our Responsibility for Our Emotions

Abstract: INTRODUCTION Philosophical investigations of the concept of responsibility, mirroring its most common function in ordinary language and thought, have been geared for the most part to clarifying intuitions concerning moral and legal accountability for actions. But the resurgence of interest in ethical theories concerned with human virtues has resurrected old questions about our responsibility for our character, attitudes, and emotions. The philosophical tradition that takes virtues as a central moral category has taught us to think of virtues not only as involving dispositions to actions, but also dispositions to desires and emotions. It has also taught us to think of actions as only one of the proper objects of moral evaluation, alongside, for example, motives, intentions, beliefs, desires, and emotions. So it is natural that interest in ethical theories concerned with the virtues would yield interest in responsibility for our attitudes and emotions. Robert Adams has already done much to draw our attention to the different concept of responsibility we are forced to define if we focus on our intuitions about moral accountability for emotions, attitudes, and beliefs, rather than for actions. See R. Adams, “The Virtue of Faith,” in Adams, The Virtue of Faith (Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 9–24; and “Involuntary Sins,” Philosophical Review 94 (1985): 3–31. I disagree with his account of responsibility for such states, but I am indebted to his illuminating discussions of the topics. Thomas Aquinas, who of course is one of the most important architects of the tradition that takes virtues to be central moral categories, holds a very complex set of views about our responsibility for our emotions. My aim in this essay is to develop and explain Aquinas’s views about whether and when, why, and to what extent we can be responsible for our emotions. I hope to show, in so doing, that his view is plausible, and fits well with some of our own conflicting intuitions about the question.