Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter - Volume 2, Issue 1, 1997

AbstractOne of the main problems of Plato's unwritten doctrine has to do with whether his theory of principles has a strictly dualistic or rather a more monistic character. The thesis of this essay is that Plato combines monism and dualism in a particular fashion. Both the dialogues and the testimony of the unwritten doctrine reveal that in Plato's metaphysics the One is the genuinely absolute principle; Plato's second principle, the Many, is not a second absolute - otherwise it would dissolve the very concept of the absolute. Instead, Plato conceives the principle of multiplicity itself as a unity, therefore as in some - in any event ineffable - way as being derived or having emanated from the absolute One. The One itself is wholly transcendent and thus ineffable, knowable neither by reason nor by intellective intuition. Nonetheless, being and knowledge are constituted by the coordination of the One and the Many, for which reason the latter is a principle. Hence, Plato's metaphysics combine a monistic ascent to the absolute with a dualistic derivation of being, a combination made necessary because the One transcends not only all being, but also all knowledge.

AbstractAristotle axiomatically divides the 28 syllogisms of necessity of Anal, prior. I 9-11 into two classes: those with a necessary conclusion and those with a non-necessary conclusion. The fact that Aristotle axiomatically comprehends only 24 syllogisms of necessity, however, raises two questions: 1. What method does he use to decide about the remaining four syllogisms? 2. Is this method consistent with the initial one? This essay pursues the answers to these questions first by means of semantic analysis, showing that Aristotle ultimately considers assertoric propositions to be possible and therewith non-necessary propositions. Aristotle employs this approach, developed within the axiomatic, to the four syllogisms in question, thereby integrating them into the axiomatic. Finally, this essay answers the question of consistency by way of a formalization of the syllogisms of necessity.

AbstractThe first part of this essay treats Eriugena's concept of theophany. Because nature is to be understood as theophany, every visible and invisible creature is a divina apparitio. The second part explains that appearing nature is the metaphor of a creative principle. Metaphor is the inner structure of nature as a process of appearance and the inner structure of our speaking about nature as metaphor. The third part infers that the recognition of nature as metaphor is based upon the thinking of appearance. To understand the cause through which every phenomenon of nature becomes a metaphor means to understand the dialectic of appearing nature: it means to understand nature as apparitio non apparentis. The fourth part concludes that in moments of beauty we recognize the nature of metaphor and nature as metaphor. Beauty is the givenness of what we think as the vivid cause of appearing nature. Its cause - and beauty fundamentally - is the self-consciousness of nature as appearance. Both nature as well as beauty are nonmetaphorical metaphors of themselves.

AbstractIn his Treatise on Categorially Determined Reality, Theodoric of Freiberg addresses the issue of the theoretical status of the categories, rejecting the merely passive-apprehensive function of the theoretical intellect in favor of its constitutive activity in the knowledge of natural things. Thereby, he takes a decisive step beyond Averroes. Proceeding on the basis of the Aristotelian theory of causation, emphasizing in particular that all natural movement and change presuppose an effective cause, Theodoric maintains - in distinction from Albert the Great - that every object receives its peculiar determination, or quiddity, through the actualized possible intellect, for which differentiation and effectuation are one. Nonetheless, Theodoric qualifies the radicality of this position by setting up alongside the causality of the intellect that of the first cause and that of nature, thus allowing for the independence of theology and natural science.

AbstractLate medieval thinking is characterized by the emergence of antagonistic schools of thought such as Albertism, Thomism and Scotism. These schools share the explicit appeal to the authority of a school leader (Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus) and the support of characteristic philosophical doctrines and methods. Initially, in the period between 1277 and 1330, they were rooted in and developed out of the debates between the religious orders (Dominicans and Franciscans). Later, in the fifteenth century, the educational structure of the universities was the decisive factor in their growth, especially the existence of the bursae. This essay explores characteristics of late medieval schools of thought, their emergence, development and significance. It also treats different philosophical approaches in logic and physics apparent in two examination compendia of the University of Cologne, the Promptuarium argumentorum (1492) and the Reparationes librorum totius naturalis philosophiae (1494). As these treatises reveal, already in the first years of their university education students had to study and repeat the different arguments of the different schools. This contributed to the consolidation of the schools as they became an active part of the educational system able to dominate the intellectual climate well into the early modern period.

AbstractIn his Ordinatio, Scotus disregards the constitutive function of thinking inherent to Anselm's ratio. Scotus' representation of the argument in Ordinatio I d. 2 p. 1 q. 2, which lays no claim to coloratio, eliminates this constitutive function, proving instead by means of a syllogism containing the terms «being», «non-being» and «the highest» the existence of the highest. In the coloratio {Ord. I d. 2 p. 1 q. 1), then, Scotus replaces Anselm's expression «that than which nothing greater can be thought» with the concept «the highest thinkable», by which he means an infinite being. The introduction of an infinite being taken as the highest thinkable, however, destroys the structure of Anselm's argument with its innate coherence. In fact, Scotus proves the existence of the highest thinkable not by means of this argumentative structure, but instead on the basis of his own analysis of certain ontological structures. This proof has no real connection in content to Anselm's argument and does not foster its comprehension; instead, Scotus merely couches his argument in Anselm's terms, so that it is more appropriate to talk about a coloratio rationum Scoti.