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41. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 15 > Issue: 1
Martin Cajthaml Von Hildebrand’s Concept of Value
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The paper aims to present a critical evaluation of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s account of value. This account is von Hildebrand’s most important and original contribution, not just to general value theory but to philosophy as such. I first present this account by explaining, in detail, his analysis of the so-called categories of importance. Then I critically examine the philosophical originality and merit of von Hildebrand’s account of value. I do so by arguing against his claim that value, in the sense of the important in itself, is not in the centre of “traditional ethics”.
42. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 3 > Issue: 1
Petr Dvořák Some Thomists on Analogy: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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The article is a presentation of the Thomist response to Scotist criticism of analogy; namely, the defense of St. Thomas’ teaching in some leading renaissance and post-renaissance Thomists: Thomas de Vio, better known as Cajetan, Sylvester of Ferrara, John Versor and John of Saint Thomas. The author first explains the general core of the semantic doctrine of analogy and outlines the basic terminology. Then he exposes the way Cajetan and other Thomists knit Aquinas’ dispersed remarks on analogy into a systematic doctrinal whole.
43. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 3 > Issue: 1
Lukáš Novák The Scotist Theory of Univocity: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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The article explains the notion of univocity in line with the mature Scotistic doctrine, which plays so crucial a role in the Scotistic rejection of analogy as a middle ground between univocity and pure equivocity. Since univocity of a concept is found to consist in its perfect unity, and the perfect unity of a concept is achieved by means of perfect abstraction, the notion of this so-called abstraction by precision is made clear and contrasted with the so-called abstraction by confusion, by means of which analogical concepts are supposed to be formed by the Thomists.
44. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 4 > Issue: 1
Paul E. Oppenheimer, Edward N. Zalta Reflections on the Logic of the Ontological Argument: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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The authors evaluate the soundness of the ontological argument they developed in their 1991 paper. They focus on Anselm’s first premise, which asserts that there is a conceivable thing than which nothing greater can be conceived. After casting doubt on the argument Anselm uses in support of this premise, the authors show that there is a formal reading on which it is true. Such a reading can be used in a sound reconstruction of the argument. After this reconstruction is developed in precise detail, the authors show that the conclusion, a reading of the claim “God exists”, does not quite achieve the end Anselm desired.
45. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Prokop Sousedík Co je podle Wittgensteina řeč?: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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The author shows that, after some considerations about the nature of speech, we can take two substantially different paths. Wittgenstein’s early philosophy is the paradigm of the first path, his later the paradigm of the second. According the author, the difference between these two conceptions is that in the late Wittgenstein, as opposed to his early conception, rejects the search for, and the clarification of, the essence of our language.
46. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Pavel Materna, Josef Petrželka Definition and Concept. Aristotelian Definition Vindicated: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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The modern (Russellian) theory of definition conceives definitions as abbreviations, so that the question of adequateness (let alone of truth-value) of definitions becomes meaningless. In this paper we show that beside Russellian conception of definitions understood as abbreviations, there is an Aristotelian conception, which exploits the notion of essence and that this conception can be rehabilitated from the standpoint of the modern logic (in particular by means of Pavel Tichý’s Transparent Intensional Logic). Also Carnap’s ‘explication’ indicates that what we feel to be a definition is frequently distinct from a Russellian definition.
47. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 5 > Issue: 1
Suárez’s Metaphysics. Disputationes Metaphysicae in their Historical and Systematical Context.: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
48. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Inocent-Mária V. Szaniszló OP Ktože sú to vlastne pohania? Malé uvedenie do medzináboženského dialógu v dobe sv. Tomáša Akvinského s možnými dôsledkami pre dnešnú dobu: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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Zur Zeit des Hl. Thomas von Aquin war es nicht leicht andere Religionen zu verstehen. Besonders auch deswegen nicht, weil die Verbreitung der Religion mit Macht und Krieg verbunden war. Aber gerade Thomas hat die sogenannte „Heidnische Lehre“ des Aristoteles in das Christentum eingeführt. In den Augen vieler orthodoxen Christen war dies ein unverzeihlicher Fehler. Mit dieser Lehre ist auch das Naturrecht (moralisch natürliche Gesetz) in die katholische Theologie eingeführt worden. Aber die Aristotelische Wiedereinführung (wenn nicht Revolution) in die christliche Philosophie ist bis heute nicht ohne Hindernisse geschehen. Chesterton meint, dass Thomas korrigiert Platon mit Aristoteles, der die Dinge so genommen hat, wie er sie vorgefunden hat. Thomas nimmt die Dinge so, wie sie Gott geschaff en hat. Trotz allem ist es sehr wertvoll zu denken, dass die Wahrheit und der Glaube nicht im Widerspruch stehen können, und alles was die Wissenschaft ans Licht der Welt bringt, kann nicht im Widerspruch gegenüber dem Glauben sein. In den Werken des Hl. Thomas ist immer die Welt der positiven Schöpfung gegenwärtig. In dieser Arbeit möchten wir die Bedingungen der Zeit des Dialogs mit dem Islam und dem Judentum als Hintergrund für die Zusammenfassung der Summa contra Gentiles analysieren nach den Gedanken von M.-D. Chenu, O. H. Pesch, J. Weisheipl, K. G. Chesterton und anderen, die uns ein Bild über die nicht einfache aber trotzdem erreichbare Begegnung mit anderen Religionen zeigen und auch die Gefahr aufzeigen, die sich in einer nicht konsequenten Philosophie birgt.
49. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Peter Volek Die Lehre des Thomas von Aquin über die Entstehung des Menschen: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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This paper attempts to show that if we carefully distinguish between the biological and metaphysical assumptions of Thomas Aquinas, it is possible, with the help of contemporary systems biology, to find good reasons for the thesis that the animation of a human individual takes place at conception. Systems biology is able to identify crucial events on the molecular level. The same would hold also for the possible human clone. In the paper I try to show that it is possible to maintain the notion of simultaneous animation along with the metaphysical assumptions of Thomas Aquinas, despite the fact that Thomas Aquinas himself advocated successive animation, due to his biological knowledge and the common opinions held in his times.
50. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Claudio Antonio Testi Analogy and Formal Logic: from Leśniewski’s Ontology to Aquinas’ Metaphysics
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In this essay, an attempt is made to formalize the idea of analogy in a way which is as faithful as possible to Thomas Aquinas’ theory of analogy. To accomplish this, we must first present Aquinas’ theory of analogy as it appears in his main works; we then express the contents of Aquinas’ theory of analogy using Leśniewski’s Ontology, a symbolic language which is both rigorous and true to the spirit of Aquinas’ philosophy. In doing this we present definitions and theorems lying outside the scope of Leśniewski’s Elementary Ontology and we demostrate that the notion of “to be the definition of” is not an extensional functor.
51. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 8 > Issue: 1
James Franklin Aristotelianism in the Philosophy of Mathematics: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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Modern philosophy of mathematics has been dominated by Platonism and nominalism, to the neglect of the Aristotelian realist option. Aristotelianism holds that mathematics studies certain real properties of the world – mathematics is neither about a disembodied world of “abstract objects”, as Platonism holds, nor it is merely a language of science, as nominalism holds. Aristotle’s theory that mathematics is the “science of quantity” is a good account of at least elementarymathematics: the ratio of two heights, for example, is a perceivable and measurable real relation between properties of physical things, a relation that can be shared by the ratio of two weights or two time intervals. Ratios are an example of continuous quantity; discrete quantities, such as whole numbers, are also realised as relations between a heap and a unit-making universal. For example, the relation between foliage and being-a-leaf is the number of leaves on a tree,a relation that may equal the relation between a heap of shoes and being-a-shoe. Modern higher mathematics, however, deals with some real properties that are not naturally seen as quantity, so that the “science of quantity” theory of mathematics needs supplementation. Symmetry, topology and similar structural properties are studied by mathematics, but are about pattern, structure or arrangement rather than quantity.
52. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 8 > Issue: 1
Luca Gili The Order Between Substance and Accidents in Aquinas’s thought: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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In this paper I examine Aquinas’s commentary on a text of Aristotle in which the type of order between substance and accidents is discussed. I claim that Aquinas maintains that there cannot be any reference to sensibility, despite any prima facie interpretation of Aristotle’s texts, according to which it could be thought that substance is temporally prior to accidents and, hence, that we must presuppose a perceivable change in the world on the basis of which it is possible to consider something temporally prior to something else. This interpretation – which is possible on the basis of Aristotle’s texts – would be a misinterpretation, according to Aquinas. Aquinas’s assumption is philosophically worthwhile because it confi rms that every metaphysical proposition must abstract from sensibility.
53. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 8 > Issue: 1
Daniel D. Novotný Editorial Announcement: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
54. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Miroslav Hanke John Mair on Semantic Paradoxes: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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John Mair (1467–1550) was an influential post-medieval scholar. This paper focuses on his Tractatus insolubilium, in which he proposed semantic analysis of self-referential phenomena, in particular on his solution to alethic and correspondence paradoxes and his treatment of their general semantic aspects as well as particular applications. His solution to paradoxes is based on the so-called “network evaluation”, i.e. on a semantics which defines the concepts of truth and correspondence with reality in contextual terms. Consequently, the relation between semantic valuation, synonymy and contradiction must be redefined.
55. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
James Franklin Science by Conceptual Analysis: The Genius of the Late Scholastics
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The late scholastics, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, contributed to many fields of knowledge other than philosophy. They developed a method of conceptual analysis that was very productive in those disciplines in which theory is relatively more important than empirical results. That includes mathematics, where the scholastics developed the analysis of continuous motion, which fed into the calculus, and the theory of risk and probability. The method came to the fore especially in the social sciences. In legal theory they developed, for example, the ethical analyses of the conditions of validity of contracts, and natural rights theory. In political theory, they introduced constitutionalism and the thought experiment of a “state of nature”. Their contributions to economics included concepts still regarded as basic, such as demand, capital, labour, and scarcity. Faculty psychology and semiotics are other areas of significance. In such disciplines, later developments rely crucially on scholastic concepts and vocabulary.
56. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Michał Głowala What Kind of Power is Virtue? John of St. Thomas OP on Causality of Virtues and Vices: A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism
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The following paper discusses John of St. Thomas’ study of the way in which a habit (moral or epistemic virtue or vice) is a cause of an action it prompts. I begin with contrasting the question of causality of habits with the general question of the causal relevance of dispositions (2). I argue that habits constitute a very peculiar kind of dispositions marked by the connection with the properties of being difficult and being easy, and there are some special reasons to admit the irreducibility of dispositions of this kind. I argue also that there is a special sort of causal connection between a habit and an action it actually prompts. Then I present an analysis of four theses of John of St. Thomas on the causality of habits, which, I think, constitute the most mature and reliable study of the causality of habits in the scholastic tradition: (i) Habits are efficient causes of actions they prompt (3.1). (ii) Virtues do determine the very natures of actions they prompt (3.2); (iii) Virtues do not have a proper counterpart among the characteristics of actions they prompt (3.3); (iv) The formal object of causality of virtue is a masterpiece performance of an action (3.4). In my analyses of John’s arguments for these theses I make three claims: not all powers are “in state of readiness for action”; habits are powers of powers or dispositions of powers; the general concept of a strategy is the key to grasp the properties of being difficult and being easy, and habits should be analysed as a kind of strategies.
57. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Paul Richard Blum The Epistemology of Immortality: Searle, Pomponazzi, and Ficino
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The relationship between body and mind was traditionally discussed in terms of immortality of the intellect, because immateriality was one necessary condition for the mind to be immortal. This appeared to be an issue of metaphysics and religion. But to the medieval and Renaissance thinkers, the essence of mind is thinking activity and hence an epistemological feature. Starting with John Searle’s worries about the existence of consciousness, I try to show some parallels with the Aristotelian Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525), and eventually show the Neoplatonic approach in Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499). The guiding question is: how can one philosophically address the problem of cognition in terms of corporeality and incorporeality? Searle maintains there is mind, although essentially related to a biological basis, and he is comparable to the Renaissance thinkers for his taking the interaction of the mental and the corporeal seriously.
58. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 9 > Issue: 3
Univerzálie ve scholastice
59. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 15 > Issue: 2
Lidia Lanza, Marco Toste Sixteenth-Century Sentences Commentaries from Coimbra: The Structure and Content of Some Manuscripts
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In the second half of the sixteenth century, many universities influenced by Salamanca adopted the Summa theologiae as the textbook for teaching scholastic theology. At the same time, the universities decided that some minor chairs should teach one of the Sentences commentaries written by one of the following authors: Duns Scotus, Durand of Saint-Pourçain, or Gabriel Biel. As a result, some commentaries on these commentaries (so-called supercommentaries) started to appear. This is most notably the case when it comes to the University of Coimbra, where Aquinas’s Summa became the textbook only very late and where the chairs of Scotus, Durand and Biel were instituted in the second half of the century. This article provides a list of questions making up thirteen commentaries produced in Coimbra, where, unlike what happened in Salamanca, the professors belonged to different religious orders (the commentaries presented here were written by one Cistercian, one Carmelite, two Augustinians, one Franciscan and one secular). It also presents the list of questions of one commentary connected with a Franciscan convent. Some reflections on the need to study late-scholastic manuscripts as well as on the structure of these commentaries are also offered.
60. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 15 > Issue: 2
Tero Tulenheimo Johannes Rudbeckius’s View on the Nature of Logic
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Johannes Rudbeckius (1581–1646), one of Sweden’s most influential figures in theology, pedagogy, and church-state relations in the 17th century, published two books on logic: Logica ex optimis et præstantissimis autoribus collecta & conscripta (1625) and Controversiæ logices vel potius earum epitome (1629). In this paper, I present and critically discuss Rudbeckius’s view on the nature of logic as it can be reconstructed from these two works. This requires, in particular, identifying the larger intellectual framework within which Rudbeckius operated. The single most important philosopher having affected Rudbeckius’s ideas on logic is Jacopo Zabarella (1533–1589), which leads me to consider at some length the views on logic that Zabarella puts forward in his De Natura Logicæ (1578).