The paper deals with the problem of conceptual interpretation of Aristotle’s prima facie divergent opinions on human happiness in his Nicomachean Ethics, especially in Book 1 and Book 10. As its starting point it takes the well-known expository scheme connected with the polarity “Dominantism versus Inclusivism”. It attempts to show that the relationship of two main candidates on human happines, namely the activities of moral virtues and of contemplation, should be understood on the basis of the predicative scheme called the intrinsic analogy of attribution. While both contemplation and the activities of moral virtues are intrinsically valuable, it is argued that they exhibit certain order of priority and posteriority: the theoretical activities of our intellect realise happiness primarly, whereas the moral activities merely secondarily. The desirable character of intrinsic goodness of our moral actions consists in the fact that they are beautiful and that they, in a certain way, approximate theoria. Interpreting the teleological relation between moral action and contemplation as one of approximation thus seems to represent a plausible alternative, which, unlike the standard means–end relation, keeps in balance both of the desiderata, i.e. the intrinsic goodness of our moral actions as well as their intrinsic orientation toward contemplation.

The subject of the present article is the analysis of fundamental logical-semantical terminology of late-medieval nominalistic logician Jean Buridan (c. 1295–1360). The analysis focuses on the concepts of truth conditions and logical consequence, whose clarification presupposes explication of modal terminology as well as a solution of semantical antinomies such as “Liar” (or an attempt to solve them). The analysis of Buridan’s argumentation suggests that Buridan’s project of logic actually fails due to several failures of conceptual analysis of semantical and modal terminology. An alternative solution of the question concerning logical consequence is thus proposed in terms of Buridan’s implicit (and unused) semantical conception of modalities that makes it possible to establish conceptually and therefore explicatively closed logical framework.

The paper deals with the conception of transcendental and categorial concepts in the work of Thomas Aquinas. As a starting point of the exposition the discussion of this matter in De veritate 1, 1 has been chosen, where Aquinas, drawing on Aristotle and Avicenna, determines which are the first concepts of intellect. The absolutly first concept, the terminus of conceptual analysis, is the concept of being (ens). All other concepts, both categorial and transcendental, result from conceptual addition to being. Aquinas’s conception of conceptual addition is explained in detail and used to illustrate Aquinas’s explication of individual transcendentals and categories. Finally it is shown, how Aquinas derives transcendental and categorial concepts as general and special modes of being (modi essendi) of being as such. Translation: Lukáš Novák

Starting from Aquinas’s natural law theory, the article discusses in which way one can ground an ethical theory relying on the concept of personal autonomy. This is possible because natural law, as a law of reason, determines the ends for which every individual human being reasonably may strive. In this context, it is also possible to justify the role of morality in human life. This is due to the nature of man as a social animal whose natural ends include a life in a human community. From this one can infer the two principles, not to harm others and to attribute his right to everybody. The application of those rules, as of any other rule of natural law, depends upon the person of the agent and his historical and social situation.