Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter: Most Cited Articles http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/15699684?TRACK=RSS Please follow the links to view the content. Thomismus, Skotismus und Albertismus. Das Entstehen und die Bedeutung von philosophischen Schulen iM späten Mittelalter http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bpjam.2.06hoe?TRACK=RSS 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. Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen Sun Feb 10 05:28:48 UTC 2013Z Zum Außenweltproblem in der Antike: Sextus' Destruktion des Repräsentationalismus und die skeptische Begründung des Idealismus bei Plotin http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bpjam.12.03gab?TRACK=RSS Miles Burnyeat famously argued that there could, in principle, be no idealism in Greek philosophy, because it was not yet prepared to regard the existence of an external world beyond our veil of perception as a serious philosophical problem. I believe that this thesis is historically and systematically false. Burnyeat’s claim is backed up by a short sketch of the most important philosophical systems in Greek philosophy that might seem to contradict his no-idealism view, viz. ancient skepticism and Neo-Platonism. In this paper, I argue against Burnyeat’s view on the basis of a reconstruction of Sextus Empiricus’ epistemological skepticism regarding the external world. Then, I try to show that Plotinus’ idealism and his theory of νοῦς are built on the assumption that metaphysical realism entails the problem of the external world and is, therefore, potentially inconsistent because of its skeptical results. Plotinus shows how skepticism about the external world can be avoided by idealism which can, thus, be seen as an explicit overcoming of epistemological skepticism. This whole train of thought explicitly refers to the problem of an external world. Therefore, Plotinus can be seen as answering the skeptical challenge with an idealistic metaphysic of experience. Markus Gabriel Sun Feb 10 05:29:23 UTC 2013Z Der Begriff der inneren Erfahrung bei Petrus Johannis Olivi http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bpjam.13.07rod?TRACK=RSS The concept of inner experience in Peter John Olivi. This article discusses the notion of inner experience and self-knowledge in Peter John Olivi. According to Olivi, each act of cognition is accompanied by some sort of self-awareness or self-experience. Therefore, the problem of an infinite regress of acts of self-awareness arises. Olivi tries to solve this problem by drawing on a theory of reflection which bears a striking resemblance to modern self-representational or dispositional accounts of (self)consciousness. Thus, in order to be said to be »known« or »certain« it is not necessary for each single act of intellect to be followed by a higher-order act; Olivi argues that in many cases a simple first-order cognitive act suffices. Christian Rode Sat Feb 16 11:08:06 UTC 2013Z Aquinas’ Balancing Act http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bpjam.00022.kli?TRACK=RSS Abstract In this paper, I will primarily argue for the consistency of Aquinas’ conception, according to which the human soul, uniquely in God’s creation, is both the inherent, material, substantial form of the human body, and the subsistent immaterial substance underlying the immaterial operations of its immaterial, rational powers, namely, intellect and will. In this discussion, I will point out that typical challenges to Aquinas’ conception usually rely on semantic or ontological assumptions that can plausibly be denied in Aquinas’ own conceptual framework. Since the issue of consistency merely assumes the less than self-evident claim of the immateriality of the human intellect, I will also provide a brief sketch of what I take to be Aquinas’ most promising proof of this claim. Gyula Klima Fri Mar 08 10:07:47 UTC 2019Z Monismus und Dualismus in Platons Prinzipienlehre http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bpjam.2.02hal?TRACK=RSS 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. Jens Halfwassen Sun Feb 10 05:27:43 UTC 2013Z Philosophie als Transzendieren. Der Aufstieg zum höchsten Prinzip bei Platon und Plotin http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bpjam.3.04hal?TRACK=RSS AbstractTranscendent thinking as a basic feature of metaphysical philosophy has always claimed to be more than a mere cognition of reality in terms of its phenomena. Transcendent philosophy intends to consider reality from the perspective of a fundamental ground transcending the reality ordered by that ground. Plato, who created the very notion of philosophy, described the love of wisdom as an ascent to the absolutely transcendent One and Good, which he believed to be the principle and source of all being. Plotinus both took over and renewed the Platonic view of philosophy as transcendent thinking. In his view, the philosopher can only relate to that principle which transcends even thinking itself by practicing a mystical philosophy and thereby leaving behind his own dialectical thinking. Jens Halfwassen Mon Feb 18 11:06:31 UTC 2013Z Selbstrealisierung: Anthropologische Konstanten in der Frühen Neuzeit http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bpjam.10.07lei?TRACK=RSS This article tries to give a survey of anthropological thinking in early modern philosophy, taking ‘anthropology’ not in its modern sense and not even sensu strictu as for example Otto Casman did it in his work from the late 16th century, i.e.: as the physiology of the human being, but sensu lato as a philosophical reflection on the condition of man as an ‘animal rationale’. The arguments focus on three ‘directions’ of the inner movement of the mental and psychological activity of mankind (towards God, towards the mind itself, towards the world), which, taken all together, form the total concept of “Selbstrealisierung” (realisation of the self). Thomas Leinkauf Sun Feb 10 05:27:06 UTC 2013Z Lux Regiomontana. Der kategorische Imperativ in Ciceros De officiis http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bpjam.4.04gle?TRACK=RSS AbstractInterpretation of Cicero's De officiis mostly focuses on questions of traditional Quellen-forschung, especially on its relationship with the lost works of Panaetius, Posidonius and Hecato. This essay, on the contrary, tries to illuminate Cicero's work by confronting a pivotal passage of De off. (3, 19-32) with Kant's famous categorical imperative. Cicero's invention of a formula to decide moral dilemmas as well as its anthropological grounds and socio-political implications foreshadow the Kantian concept in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. This suggests that there may even be a direct influence of Cicero on Kant. Reinhold F. Glei Sun Feb 10 05:29:00 UTC 2013Z Bild-Symbol, Geometrie und Methode: Philosophische Implikationen der frühneuzeitlichen Textillustration http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bpjam.11.06lei?TRACK=RSS 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. Thomas Leinkauf Sun Feb 10 05:28:42 UTC 2013Z Compassion for Wisdom: The Attitude of Some Medieval Arab Philosophers towards the Codification of Philosophy http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/bpjam.1.03str?TRACK=RSS AbstractIn studying the attitude of medieval philosophers towards the act of writing, scholars have tended to concentrate on their esoteric tendencies and their reluctance to commit philosophy to writing. The basic attitude of medieval philosophers to the decision to commit something to writing, whether it be that made by the prophets, the sages or the medieval philosophers themselves, however, is on the whole positive. This article examines the sources - both religious and philosophical - from which this positive attitude stems and then discusses its manifestations in the work of three medieval thinkers: Abu Nasr al-Farabi, Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadl and Moses Maimonides. Sarah Stroumsa Sun Feb 10 05:26:39 UTC 2013Z