June 21st, 2021

Summer 2021

Medieval Philosophy Network
​27th Meeting
21 June 2021
On Zoom
(please contact the organisers to receive the link)

Confirmed Speakers and Schedule

12:00 Nadja Germann (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg)
'The Sound of Meaning:
al-Fārābī’s Philosophy of Language in Context'


13:00-14:00 lunch break

14:00 Suf Amichay (University of Cambridge)
'New Theory of Medieval Modalities' 

15:00 Anna Marmodoro (Durham/Oxford)
'Successors of Aristotle's Stripping Away Argument in the IV century'

16:00-16:30 Coffee break

16:30 Thérèse Cory (University of Notre Dame)
“A Very Determined Intellect: The Case of Albert the Great.”


ABSTRACTS
​
Nadja Germann
'The Sound of Meaning:
al-Fārābī’s Philosophy of Language in Context'

 
What is language? How is it set up and does it work? What is its relation to thought and, beyond thought, to reality? Fārābī was perhaps the only faylasūf – the only self-proclaimed, Neoplatonic Aristotelian – who deeply engaged with questions like these, for whom language constituted a philosophical issue in its own right. Yet, what does his philosophy of language look like? And why is it that he put such a strong emphasis on it? By scrutinizing Fārābī’s broader context, transcending the Neoplatonic Aristotelian tradition, I intend to bring out some of his essential ideas about language, as well as motives that possibly triggered his unique interest.


Suf Amichay (University of Cambridge)
'New Theory of Medieval Modalities' 

In my talk, I will introduce a system for discerning different types of modalities in medieval philosophy. My research is concerned with the development of systems of modality in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin. While carrying out this research it became clear to me that there is no standard system of analysing different approaches to modality. Terms like temporal or statistical modality, the Principle of Plenitude, power-based modality and possible worlds are used incoherently across research. I offer a theory that analyses the different types of modality relevant to different areas of medieval philosophy. This theory, I believe, can help us rearrange the research about modalities so that future studies can come up with coherent conclusions.  

Anna Marmodoro (Durham/Oxford)
'Successors of Aristotle's Stripping Away Argument in the IV century'

Aristotle’s so-called ‘stripping away’ thought experiment in Metaphysics VII.3 ( SAA for brevity) is a pivotal stage in the development of his theory of substance. In this paper I want to show that it has also been deeply influential on his philosophical successors with respect to their thinking about matter. Here I will focus in particular on some thinkers of the 4th century, in the Greek and the Latin tradition, culminating with Calcidius, whose application of SAA leads him to a complex account of matter that is neither Aristotelian nor Platonic, but merges into one elements of both. My overarching argument is that there is no prime matter for Aristotle: I will show that  Aristotle’s SAA does not conclude that there is prime matter; and that  when his successors apply their own version of SAA, they do not reach prime matter either. SAA is not the route to prime matter, and both Aristotle and his successors knew it.

​
 Thérèse Cory (University of Notre Dame)
“A Very Determined Intellect: The Case of Albert the Great.”

Abstract: What is the status of an essence as it exists in thought?  In describing how the intellect is one with what it intelligizes, Albert the Great uses the familiar language of “intentional being” or “intelligible being.”  I show that for Albert, intelligible being is not opposed to real being (as on a common reading of later Scholasticism), but is rather a kind of nature in its own right, which develops to perfection through what I call “progressive determination.”  On this account, intellect’s “determination” by the intelligible must be understood very differently from the way in which that same concept is deployed in later Scholastic authors.

​***

Spring 2021

Medieval Philosophy Network
​26th Meeting
26 March 2021
On Zoom
(please contact the organisers to receive the link)

Confirmed Speakers and Schedule

11:00 Tianyue Wu (Peking University)
 "Aquinas on Human Personhood and Dignity"

12:00 Dominik Perler (Humboldt Universität Berlin)
"Suárez's Compositional Account of
Substance"

12:00-14:00 lunch break

14:00 Rodrigo Ballon Villanueva (Università della Svizzera Italiana) 
"Eriugena Against the Standard Account of Relations in the Middle Ages" 


15:00 Roxane Nöel  (University of Cambridge)
"John of Salisbury’s Nominalism and the Virtuous Quest for Happiness"

​***

ABSTRACTS

Tianyue Wu, Peking University
"Aquinas on Human Personhood and Dignity"


Modern commentators are divided on Aquinas’s theory of human dignity: some were excited to find a contemporary conception of inherent or unearned worth of human beings in Aquinas’s claim that each person is immediately given a certain dignity simply because of its ontological status as a rational individual; whereas others insisted that what Aquinas had in mind was still a more traditional conception of moral worth based upon one’s merits. In this context, this essay endeavors to reconstruct a philosophical account of personal dignity from Aquinas’s theological reflections on hypostasis, person, rationality and dignity. In particular, it will examine his interpretation of the definition of person as “a hypostasis distinct by a property pertaining to dignity”. I will argue that by commenting on this “dignity definition of person”, Aquinas develops an insightful account of human dignity as a personal property (proprietas personalis), which is deeply rooted in a rational substance whose existence cannot be shared, communicated or repeated. It will be shown that personal dignity is neither a merit-based value nor an abstract claim related to the nature of human species, but rather a specific sort of normative force that is grounded on the incommunicable existence of a rational being. 

Dominik Perler (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin)
"Suárez’s Compositional Account of Substance"

According to Francisco Suárez, a substance is composed of many things: form, matter, qualities and other accidents. All of them have their own essence and existence, and all of them are really distinct from each other. In making this claim, Suárez defends a compositional account of substance and radically transforms Aristotelian hylomorphism. This paper examines his reasons for this transformation by paying special attention to his reinterpretation of matter, which he takes to be a fundamental thing with actual and not just potential existence – a thing that is combined with many other things. It is argued that this new way of looking at a substance prepares the ground for a new way of doing metaphysics: we need to mentally decompose and recompose a substance. It is only when doing this kind of “reverse engineering” that we come to know what a substance is. 
 


Rodrigo Ballon Villanueva
University of Italian Switzerland 
Eriugena Against “the Standard Account” of Relations in the Middle Ages.
 
According to “the Standard Account” (TSA) of relations in the Middle Ages, medieval authors claimed that a) relations were monadic properties (instantiated by only one substance), and b) relations were real (as opposed to entia rationis). In this presentation, I am going to argue that the two claims of TSA do not apply in the case of the Carolingian philosopher John Scotus Eriugena (9th century). In other words, my interpretation will defend the view that not only did Eriugena consider relations to be polyadic properties, but also that his approach must be understood within the framework of his so-called idealism. For this purpose, my analysis will focus on Eriugena's treatment of the categories, paying special attention to the two relational ones, namely, ad aliquid and habitus.

Roxane Nöel  (University of Cambridge)
"John of Salisbury’s Nominalism and the Virtuous Quest for Happiness"John of Salisbury’s Nominalism and the Virtuous Quest for Happiness"
 

John of Salisbury is an important figure when it comes to understanding twelfth-century philosophy, but the interest of his writings is usually found more in his description of other views than in his own original ideas. I believe we should not underestimate the interest of his views on universals as expressed in his Metalogicon. This treatise is written as a defense of the arts of the trivium, namely grammar, dialectic (or logic) and rhetoric, and in it he aims to defend the use of teaching these classical arts. The purpose of this talk is to show how John of Salisbury’s nominalism, a view about ontology, is more adequately understood in the broader scheme of his metaphilosophy, which places the virtuous life as the goal of practicing philosophy. This is an unprecedented attempt to link a metaphysical position, usually examined in isolation, to his broader ethical framework. In doing so, I hope to show how we should, generally speaking, think about the links between metaphysical views and the implicit or explicit moral motivations for adopting them.