In the Discourse on Metaphysics Leibniz addresses how human beings ought to intervene in a preharmonized world and contribute to the unfolding of its goodness. His view exhibits an instructive tension between belief in a providentially fixed natural order, on the one hand, and, on the other, a characteristically early modern belief in a world of infinite possibilities for human actors, that is, developers of technology. Other texts in Leibniz, as well as comparison with Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kant, helps to reveal the extent to which Leibniz is torn between venerating the ancient tradition of natural philosophy, a purely “contemplative” discipline, and embracing the modern project of mastery of nature, a pragmatic and transformative enterprise.

In Lowe’s Four-Category Ontology, instantiation is a basic formal ontological relation between particulars (objects, modes) and their kinds (kinds, attributes). Therefore, instantiation must be considered as a metaphysically necessary relation, which also rules out the metaphysical possibility of kind change. Nevertheless, according to Lowe, objects obtain their identity conditions in a more general level than specific natural kinds, which allows for kind change. There also seem to be actual examples of kind change. An advocate of Four-Category Ontology is obliged to resolve the tension between these mutually incompatible claims. In this article, we argue that the only viable option for an advocate of Four-Category Ontology is to bite the bullet and stick to the necessity of each of the most specific natural kinds to the object instantiating it. As a major drawback, the four-category ontologist does not have any credible means of allowing for kind change or determination of the identity conditions on a more general level.

Aquinas has been labelled “the greatest advocate of dispositional modality”, by one contemporary power theorist. This paper’s goal is to critically analyse this claim. Before doing so, however, it first explicates some components of Aquinas’s ontology of powers, putting him in dialogue with contemporary discussions. Next it explicates the two competing views of the modality of powers, dispositional modality and conditional necessity, and proceeds to examine the textual basis as to which of the two Aquinas held. Ultimately the paper finds evidence in favour of the latter. The paper then concludes with a suggestion as to how Aquinas would explain examples given by those who advocate the dispositional modality position. In answer to the title, therefore, the paper argues that thinking of Aquinas as the greatest advocate of dispositional modality is a fiction, and that this award belongs to someone else.

Propono hic conversionem in linguam Anglicam conclusionis Collegii Logici, anno 1608–1609 semestri studiorum spatio hiberno a Johanne Rudbeckio Wittenbergæ habiti. Hic commentarius prooemium in conversionem est. Rudbeckius (1581–1646) primus Suecus erat, qui librum didacticum de logica publicavit. Maiorem partem libri iam anno 1606 scripserat, cum Mathesis Professor Upsaliensis esset, sed Logica ex optimis et præstantissimis autoribus collecta & conscripta non ante annum 1625 edita sit. Cum Johanne Canuti Lenæo (1573–1669), collega suo, Rudbeckius primas partes agebat in inducenda in Sueciam scholastica Lutherana, cuius rei scopus defensio erat fidei Lutheranæ per logicam et metaphysicam Aristotelicam. In primo capite condiciones conclusionis Rudbeckii commentor. Secundum caput brevem Rudbeckii vitæ descriptionem offert. Tertium quartumque capita de scripto converso et de ipsa conversione observationes quasdam continent.This note is an introduction to the English translation of the concluding speech of the Collegium Logicum that Johannes Rudbeckius taught in Wittenberg during the winter semester 1608–1609. Rudbeckius (1581–1646) was the first Swede to publish a textbook on logic; his Logica ex optimis et præstantissimis autoribus collecta & conscripta (299 pages) appeared in 1625. The first version of the textbook was completed already in 1606 when Rudbeckius was professor of mathematics at Uppsala University in Sweden. Together with his colleague Johannes Canuti Lenæus (1573–1669), Rudbeckius played a key role in the introduction of Lutheran scholasticism in Sweden; this was a movement within the Lutheran Church whose aim was to defend the Lutheran faith by making use of Aristotelian logic and metaphysics. In Section 1, I comment on the context of Rudbeckius’s discourse. Section 2 offers a short biography of Rudbeckius. Sections 3 and 4 contain, respectively, some remarks about the text translated and about the translation itself.

Hylomorphism is central to Thomistic philosophical anthropology. However, little attention has been paid to the ontological status of the body in this theoretical framework. This essay aims to show that in Aquinas’s hylomorphic ontology, the body as a constituent part of the compound is above all prime matter as pure potentiality. In view of the contemporary criticisms of prime matter, it examines the fundamental theoretical presuppositions of this controversial concept and offers a defensive reading of Aquinas’s conception of the body as prime matter. It also displays possible difficulties in identifying the body with prime matter and gives a clue indicating the way out. This effort will make it possible to defend the consistency of Aquinas’s conception of the body and to react to the severe criticism of hylomorphism in the philosophy of mind by contemporary philosophers such as Bernard Williams, namely by showing how hylomorphism can be formally consistent without slipping into the materialism or dualism it bitterly opposes.

If the influence of libertarian free will on human behaviour is real, the frequency of certain freely chosen actions will differ from the probability of their occurrences deduced from the statistical calculations and neuroscientific observations and laws. According to D. Pereboom, contemporary science does not prove the efficacy of libertarian free will. According to P. van Inwagen, there is always a random element in free decisions, and hence the effect of the free will remains unknown. Swinburne observes that it is not correct to conclude that libertarian free will has no causal effect in the physical world. One can only conclude that these choices are not neurologically real. People sometimes choose to act on abstract principles, and they can do so on a regular and long-term basis. Consequently, human behaviour can be predicted and explained in terms of personal agency and the reasons upon which the people have chosen to act. Probabilistic calculations strengthen the argument that the best way to explain and predict such rational behaviour is to affirm the efficacy of the libertarian free will, which can overcome neurophysiological motivational states of the body and which guarantees a kind of long-term rational determinism.

The Bradwardine-Read multiple-meanings solution to paradoxes invented in 1320s and formally reconstructed and developed in 2000s is based on the so-called “closure principle for signification”, in particular, for sentential meaning. According to this principle, sentences are assumed to signify whatever they imply. As a consequence, paradoxical sentences are proved to signify their own truth and thereby are reduced to simply false self-contradictions. One of the problems of this solution to paradoxes is that the closure principle over-generates if sentences are closed under unrestricted entailment. The present proposal will introduce a restriction based on what will be called the “dynamic closure principle”: sentential meaning will be regarded as closed under the inference steps performed in the (actual or optimal) process of evaluating the respective sentence’s truth-value.

Haec tractatio est responsio critica ad tractationem Ludovici Groarke, titulo “Orbitae ellipticae, possintne Aristotelice explicari?”, necnon ad commentationem Jacobi Franklin, cui titulus “De orbitis ellipticis ac Aristotelica revolutione scientifica”. Auctor imprimis ostendit (ultra censuram a J. Franklin factam procedens) explanationem “Aristotelicam” orbitarum ellipticarum a L. Groarke propositam non solum analysi Newtonianae repugnare, sed etiam in se esse incohaerentem. Porro auctor alia L. Groarke proposita impugnat: scil. nostri temporis physicam mathematicam esse essentialiter Platonicam, item Newtonianam orbitarum ellipticarum explicationem assymetriam prae se ferre inexplicabilem (cui sententiae J. Franklin quoque assentit). Auctor e contra arguit, textibus nonnulis S. Thomae Aquinatis innixus, physicam modernam, mathematica sui methodo non exclusa, realisticae epistemologiae Aristotelicae esse congruam, immo pure Aristotelice intelligi posse (ac debere). Auctor tamen reicit quod J. Franklin insinuat, scil. physicam modernam nunc Aristotelicae philosophiae naturalis explere munia. Physica mathematica enim, methodo sua constricta, quaestiones genuine philosophicas (nempe ad essentias rerum spectantes) movere non potest, ac proinde philosophiae naturalis vice fungi nequit.This discussion article is a critical reaction to L. Groarke’s paper “Can Aristotelianism Make Sense of Perihelion–Aphelion Orbits?” and J. Franklin’s comment “Elliptical Orbits and the Aristotelian Scientific Revolution”. In the first place, the author shows (going beyond Franklin’s criticism) that Groarke’s proposed “Aristotelian” explanation of elliptical planetary orbits is inconsistent both in itself and with the Newtonian analysis. Furthermore, he challenges Groarke’s claims that modern mathematical physics is inherently Platonic and that the Newtonian explication of elliptical orbits involves unexplained assymmetries (a claim endorsed by Franklin as well). With the help of several Aquinas’s texts the author argues that modern physics, including its maths-driven methodology, is not incompatible with Aristotelian realist epistemology but can (and should) be interpreted in a purely Aristotelian vein. On the other hand, the author rejects the view implied by Franklin that modern physics is an up-to-date replacement of Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Due to its methodological limits, mathematical physics is incapable of asking genuinely philosophical questions concerning the essence of bodies, and so it cannot be expected to do the job of natural philosophy.

This discussion article is a critique of the theory of “rational compatibilism”, as presented in D. Peroutka’s eponymous article. The author raises the following nine objections against Peroutka’s conception: (1) Peroutka’s notion of liberty is ill-defined; (2) Peroutka’s argument “from growing probability” suffers from the confusion of logical and epistemic probability; (3) the charge of “irrationality” raised against the libertarian analysis of choice is either unsubstantiated or innocuous; (4) assigning the determining force to a final (rather than efficient) cause makes no difference with regard to freedom; (5) it is inexplicable in Peroutka’s conception why only a rational (as opposed to sensual) good can determine the will in a “compatibilist” way, i.e. without thereby compromising freedom; (6) Peroutka’s conception reduces “libertarian” situations to “perplexed” or “dilemmatic” situations, and so reduces all moral evil to evil “from ignorance”, leaving no room for evil “from weakness” and “from malice”; (7) the “asymmetry” in Peroutka’s conception (only evil acts have to be libertarian) only arises because the possibility of superrogatory acts has been ignored; (8) Peroutka’s conception turns libertarian freedom into an unjustifiable evil; and finally, (9) in his reply to Sartre Peroutka upholds Sartre’s proton pseudos: viz. the confusion of logical and deontic modality (viz. necessity and obligation). In an appendix the author shows that although Peroutka’s conception of rational compatibilism shares some points with Aquinas’s theory, as a whole it cannot be ascribed to him.

In Baroque scholasticism the medieval semantic theory of connotation as a property of terms, originally elaborated by Ockham and others, received an ontological application or re-interpretation in the context of the theory of relations. The main proponent of this ontologized “doctrina de connotatis” seems to have been Suárez. Subsequently, this doctrine was severely criticised by the Jesuits Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza and Rodrigo de Arriaga, but also by the “princeps Scotistarum” Bartholomeo Mastri; whereas another Scotist, John Punch, adopted a theory of relations close to this doctrine. The fates of the original semantic theory of connotation, the ontologized “doctrina de connotatis” and the broader context of the relevant discussions (especially the new res–modus ontology established around 1600) document the complexity of the history of scholastic ideas, irreducible to any simple paradigm (like that of the realism–nominalism strife).

This paper is concerned with the idea of unity of mankind and the possibilities of its political expression, particularly with respect to the contribution of the Spanish scholastics Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez, who gave a crucial impetus to the development of the concept of ius gentium. Then it discusses how the issue was developed in the work of Hugo Grotius and how political expression of the unity of mankind was reflected on in modern scholasticism — in the work of Luigi Taparelli and Jacques Maritain. In the conclusion it briefl y evaluates the differences and the potential impact on the social doctrine of the Church and contemporary political thinking in the context of Christian social thought, particularly with regard to the concept of a ‘global political authority’.

P. Sousedík and D. Svoboda, in their paper “Různá pojetí matematiky u vybraných autorů od antiky po raný novověk: Je matematika teoretická věda nebo pouhá technika?”, proposed an interpretation of Aquinas’s understanding of the nature of mathematics which the author regards as unsatisfactory. The purpose of this review article is to point out its problems and to suggest in its stead an adequate interpretation of Aquinas’s mind, on the basis of a detailed analysis of his texts. The author shows that Aquinas was by no means an instrumentalist in mathematics but considered mathematical truths to be directly applicable to “physical matter”. Such an application takes place in sciences like astronomy, harmonics or optics, which, although sometimes subsumed under mathematics broadly conceived, nevertheless form a special category qua the so-called “middle sciences” (viz. situated between mathematics and physics) and are thus no true species of mathematics. The fact that these sciences are also regarded as “arts” does not preclude their scientific character at all, since the two categories are not mutually exclusive, according to St. Thomas.

This paper investigates what conditions are to be met for sensory perception to occur. It introduces two different theories of perception that were held by two medieval Franciscan thinkers — namely, Roger Bacon (1214/1220–1292) and Peter Olivi (ca. 1248–1298). Bacon analyses especially the causal relation between the object and the sensory organ in his doctrine of the multiplication of species. In his view, a necessary condition of perception is the reception of the species in a fully disposed sensory organ. On the contrary, Olivi stresses the active role of the sensory power. A necessary condition of sensation is the aspectus — i.e. the focus of our power’s attention on the object. Furthermore, the paper investigates whether and how each of the two thinkers can deal with the arguments proposed by his opponent — namely whether Bacon’s theory is able to explain attention and what the causal role of the object in Olivi’s theory is.

In the first half of the 15ᵗʰ century there was a coherent philosophical system of teaching at the Jagiellonian university, so-called ars vetus, concerning the interpretation of three treatises: Aristotle’s Categories and Hermeneutics and Porphyry’s Isagoge. The question-commentaries on the Categories that have been preserved in several manuscripts show astonishing similarity in solving individual problems – there are three copies of Benedict Hesse’s commentary (BJ 2037, BJ 2043, BJ 2455) and one copy of Paul of Pyskowice’s work (BJ 1900), moreover, in BJ 1941 there is an anonymous commentary on the Categories that is also very close to the ones mentioned before, to prove that fact. This paper, discussing the four-fold division of opposition in those Polish commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, is part of the studies on the manuscript material that has not been critically edited yet. The main goal is to show the philosophical views on contraries, contradictories, relatives and possession and privation in a wider perspective, comparing the Polish commentaries’ doctrine with the authoritative text itself.

In general historical treatments, one often encounters the idea that Kepler’s and Newton’s discovery of elliptical planetary orbits marked a decisive break with tradition and definitively undermined any possibility of an Aristotelian approach to physics and astronomy. Although Aristotle had no understanding of gravity, I want to demonstrate that elliptical orbits were a refinement of earlier models and that one can produce an Aristotelian account of elliptical orbits once one corrects his crucial mistake about gravity. One interesting side-effect of this straightforwardly Aristotelian approach is that it eliminates the empty, second focal point around which any elliptical system revolves. I should emphasize that the present paper is not intended to contradict, oppose, or replace any aspect of contemporary mathematical physics or astronomy. The point is not to propose a new scientific theory—we all know that planetary orbits are elliptical—but to demonstrate that metaphysical Aristotelianism is more versatile than is generally supposed.

The Scientific Revolution was far from the anti-Aristotelian movement traditionally pictured. Its applied mathematics pursued by new means the Aristotelian ideal of science as knowledge by insight into necessary causes. Newton’s derivation of Kepler’s elliptical planetary orbits from the inverse square law of gravity is a central example.

This review article examines Panayot Butchvarov’s claim that philosophy in its three main branches, epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics, needs to be freed from anthropocentrism.

Over the past fi fty years or so analytic philosophers (such as David Wiggins and Baruch Brody) have developed accounts of the nature of material objects that can plausibly be described as neo-Aristotelian. We argue that what we term non-robust neo-Aristotelian accounts of hylomorphism fail: if hylomorphism is true, then some species of robust hylomorphism is true. In Section 2 we explain what we take non-robust and robust hylomorphism to be and distinguish two species of non-robust hylomorphism (formal and substantial). In Section 3 we examine Aquinas’s definition of substance. It has much to recommend it, but precludes any sort of non-robust hylomorphism. So we consider whether there is an alternative definition of substance that might be employed in defense of non-robust hylomorphism. The only promising alternative, we suggest, is one inspired by Udayana, the great 10ᵗʰ-century Vaiśeṣika metaphysician, a definition that relies on the concept of inherence. In Section 4 we argue that formal non-robust hylomorphism is false under the alternative defi nition of substance, and that substantial non-robust hylomorphism, too, is false under that definition. And in Section 5 we offer a few final remarks, including a word of thanks to the neo-Aristotelians we so strongly criticize, for their work has signifi cantly benefitted those who, like us, favor a more traditional form of hylomorphism.Philosophi, ut aiunt, analytici (puta David Wiggins, Baruch Brody), postremis quinquaginta annis explicationem rerum materialium naturae, quae rite Neoaristotelica nuncupari potest, elaborant. Arguunt vero huius tractationis auctores, Neoaristotelicas hylemorphismi explicationes, quas ipsi “mitigatas” nominant, parum succedere: si hyle mor phismus verus sit, aliquam hylemorphismi non mitigati speciem veram esse debere. In sectione 2 auctores rationes hylemorphismi mitigati et non mitigati explicant duasque hyle morphismi mitigati species distinguunt: “ formalem” scil. et “substantialem”. In sectione 3 auctores substantiae defi nitionem examinant a S. Thoma propositam. Quae defi nitio nonnullis praestat virtutibus, hylemorphismum vero mitigatum omnino excludit. Hac de causa auctores aliam substantiae defi nitionem quaerunt, qua accepta hylemorphismus mitigatus vindicari possit. Non tamen videtur ulla posse inveniri nisi elaboratio aliqua defi nitionis quam Udayana proposuit (metaphysicus scil. praeclarus qui saec. 10 in India fl orebat, scholae quae “Vaiśeṣika” dicitur sectator): quae defi nitio inhaerentiae conceptui innixa est. In sectione 4 auctores arguunt, hylemorphismum mitigatum tam formalem quam substantialem esse falsum hac altera substantiae defi nitione posita. In sectione 5 auctores paucis quibusdam notulis tractationem concludunt, gratias quoque agentes philosophis Neoaristotelicis, quos ipsi impugnaverunt: eorum enim labore auctores magis traditionali hylemorphismi faventes speciei (huiusce tractationibus auctoribus non exclusis), multum profecerunt.