Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2006

A specifically rational understanding of the philosophical tradition (“Erkenntnis”), which addresses the question of truth, is opposed to a purely historical understanding of philosophy (“Kenntnis”). Nevertheless this rational understanding of philosophy remains critically related to history: It frees the philosophy of the past from solidification into an antiquity, while it integrates earlier thought into an autonomous re-thinking, and it frees the thinking of the present from its prejudices, while it confronts its comfortable ways of understanding with the unsatisfied truth of the tradition.

Is Aristotle’s ethics founded on a naturalistic fallacy? This article examines in detail the criticism which was levelled at Aristotle by George Edward Moore in his Principia Ethica in 1903. In order to check the correctness of this assumption, Aristotle’s notion of goodness is reconstructed by an analysis of his theoretical as well as his ethical writings. The picture which emerges shows that Aristotle does not understand goodness as a univocal term but as an analogical concept the focal meaning of which is closely related to the perfection of the different natural things or species. Since Moore’s criticism presupposes a univocal definition of goodness, Aristotle’s treatment of this notion does not fall prey to it. Although his understanding of goodness is connected with his teleology of nature, Aristotle is not guilty of deriving »ought« from »is«; therefore, his ethics is also immune to the second argument against the naturalistic fallacy which is usually traced back to David Hume.

Eckhart describes lust as a principle of life in his German Sermon 63. The examples he mentions indicate that he was inspired by his reading of Augustine’s De civitate dei. But while Augustine condemns the Epicurean concept of pleasure emphatically, Eckhart – by contrast – admits that pleasure has an eminent positive value because it is the goal of creation.

This article tries to point out that in the early modern period, including the Renaissance, philosophy increasingly developed a certain kind of thinking and arguing that needed to be sustained by »icons«, »pictures« or »signs«. Following a suggestion made by Stephen Clucas in inviting a group of scholars to discuss the topos of »silent languages« at Birbeck College (University of London), this paper discusses 1. a general possible meaning of »silent language«, divided into three modes of symbolic and geometric representation, and introducing 2. three »stages« in the historical development of philosophical systems representing these three modes: Plotinus, Cusanus, the philosophy of the 16th and 17th century.

In order to attain a deeper understanding of Aristotelian philosophy in the Renaissance, it is necessary to consider the theological implications of given facts. This article discusses a basic problem centring on the reception of Aristotle’s Ethics. The Nicomachean Ethics was widely regarded as the basis for a virtuous ethical life, yet how could a pagan philosophy, with its concepts of happiness, virtue, justice, etc., be the basis of a Christian society? The aim of the present article is to show how Lutheran scholars solved this problem in confrontation with Catholic and Calvinist scholars of the time. The first part deals with the two basic components of Aristotle’s Ethics, namely the doctrines of happiness (Eudaimonologia) and virtue (Aretologia), and attempts to show that Aristotle’s Ethics should not be understood as a system of rules, but rather as a handbook for the cultivation of practical habits in the free human being who strives to live a good life. The second part examines two key ideological confrontations in relation to Aristotle’s philosophy: between Lutherans and Calvinists in respect of definition of theology and philosophical and theological virtues on the one hand, and between Lutherans and »the Enthusiasts« in respect of the concept of virtues on the other.

The renewal of interest in Albert Magnus’ works which has taken place in the last one hundred years or so has in fact produced a multilingual body of studies whose size and diversity are making it more and more difficult for the scholar to identify and to know precisely and with certainty what has been written about this very important philosopher. The partial bibliographies which have been published throughout the 20th century were of some use, but none can compare, in terms of completeness, to the new, selectively annotated bibliography composed by I. M. Resnick and K. F. Kitchell. After briefly analyzing this impressive piece of scholarship and identifying some of the mistakes it inevitably contains, the present paper provides a list of approximately 350 items which are missing from Resnick and Kitchell’s bibliography and which for the most part were written before 2001.