18 May 2022

Spring/Summer 2022
29th meeting
18 May 2022
(hybrid: in Cambridge, Berlin and online)

Speakers, Titles and Schedule
UK TIMES

12.00 - 13.00 Jeff Brower (Purdue University): “Medieval Views about External Relations—A Case Study”
 
13.00 – 13.30 Break

13.30 – 14.30 Tianyi Zhang (Research Fellow, Clare College, Cambridge): “Avicenna on Human Intellectual Understanding: The Carpenter-Apprentice Analogy”

14.30 - 15.30 Daniel King (Cardiff University): “Why was Greek logic translated into Syriac?”
 
15.30 – 16.00 Break
 
16.00 -17.00 Sten Ebbesen (University of Copenhagen): “British Masters, 1280-1310, on Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations and on Fallacies”

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Abstracts
 
Jeff Brower “Medieval Views about External Relations—A Case Study”
 
In this paper, I discuss an aspect of medieval theories of relations that has tended to be neglected in the secondary literature—namely, medieval views about what are now standardly called external relations. My discussion takes the form of a case study, focusing on a single, paradigmatic type of external relation (namely, spatial location) as understood by a specific medieval philosopher (namely, Thomas Aquinas). But my aim is to highlight some of the complications that external relations in general raise for the proper understanding of medieval theories of relations.

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Tianyi Zhang “Avicenna on Human Intellectual Understanding: The Carpenter-Apprentice Analogy”

How do we best interpret human intellectual understanding in Avicenna, as Abstraction or Emanation? I shall argue that the current debate or disagreement in scholarship has to do with the rendering of Avicenna’s tajrīd as “abstraction”, which is a loaded term and can refer to various models. If we define “abstraction” exactly as the Peeling Model, as described by Avicenna in many places, then his tajrīd, strictly speaking, is not abstraction. If we allow “abstraction” to refer less strictly to an Emanation Model, then this can be Avicenna’s tajrīd. My purpose, therefore, is to interpret Avicenna’s tajrīd as an Emanation Model of abstraction, and thereby to demystify Avicenna’s emanation, and perhaps also to expand our view of abstraction.
I shall argue that the Peeling Model is what we seemingly experience before the Agent Intellect (AI) is introduced, whereas the Emanation Model is what actually happens when the AI is introduced. In fact, the “preparation” required in the Emanation Model is exactly our efforts in the Peeling Model; the essential difference is simply that we are not actually peeling the intelligibles from the sensibles, but rather, they (and indeed all intelligibles) are emanating on us from the AI. And Avicenna has at least three reasons to introduce the AI: the need for an external cause to bring the human intellect from potentiality to actuality, the confidence and certainty we experience when arriving at accurate definitions and syllogisms, and intellectual memory. I also formulate the Carpenter-Apprentice Analogy to illustrate my interpretation.

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Daniel King (Cardiff University): "Why was Greek logic translated into Syriac?"

The practice of Neoplatonist commentary on Aristotelian logic was centred in Greek-speaking Athens and Alexandria; but it also developed in a sophisticated way within the Syriac-language regions of Mesopotamia and Persia. This talk will unpack some of the core elements of this tradition, how it related to the school of Alexandria, and what were the specific intentions, motivations, and methods of those who saw fit to translate Aristotle into Syriac and comment on his logical works.

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Sten Ebbesen (University of Copenhagen): “British Masters, 1280-1210, on Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations and on Fallacies”

British masters active between 1280 and 1310 are responsible for at least one exposition  and four question commentaries on Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations plus two treatises on fallacies  The question commentaries bear witness to a peculiar English development of the quaestio format, which, I think, has never been thoroughly described in the secondary literature. All the texts further show some dependence on the elementary Fallaciae ad modum Oxoniae, the date of which is unknown. I shall introduce the texts and comment on their formats as well as their shared dependence on the Oxford handbook and their relation to contemporary products by Continental authors.
 

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​Winter 2022 
28th Meeting
 19 January 2022
On Zoom

Speakers, Titles and Schedule

12pm Facundo Rodriguez (University of Cambridge): ’Francisco Suárez on voluntarism and naturalism’

lunch break

2pm Zhenyu Cai (University of Cambridge): ‘Revisiting Avicenna’s Conception of Maʿnā’ .  

3pm John Marenbon (University of Cambridge): ‘Against “Renaissance Philosophy”’ 

coffee break

4:30 pm Gloria Frost (University of St Thomas): ‘Aquinas on Final Causation in Nature: What role does God play?’  

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Abstracts

Facundo Rodriguez (University of Cambridge):'Francisco Suarez on Voluntarism and Naturalism'

Suarez’s theory of natural law is an early attempt to find a mid-way between extreme voluntarist accounts of God’s relation to morality, for which the realm of value is entirely constituted by God’s commands, and extreme naturalist accounts, which claim that natural goodness and badness of actions exhaust the realm of value. Despite some interpretative discussion on how Suarez’s theory is related to these two positions (Pink, 2005,2012; Irwin, 2012), surprisingly so far little has been written on the philosophical attractions and shortcomings of Suarez’s original theory. My intention is to provide such an evaluation.

Zhenyu Cai (University of Cambridge): ‘Revisiting Avicenna’s Conception of Maʿnā’ .  
The historical origin of the concept of intentionality is commonly traced back to the scholastic philosopher’s reception of Avicenna’s concept of maʿnā. Recently, Victor Caston has challenged this narrative, which triggers a debate among Avicennan scholars about whether maʿnā bears a connection to intentionality. This paper aims to revisit this debate. I will argue that, for Avicenna, different senses of maʿnā are interconnected and unified under a focal meaning, and reexamine how maʿnā connects to intentionality.

John Marenbon (University of Cambridge): ‘Against “Renaissance Philosophy”’ 
The label ‘Renaissance Philosophy’, as usually employed, designates neither a coherent period, style nor movement in philosophy. Its use does harm both to those working on the authors it is taken to include, and those working on medieval philosophy. We should stop using the label.

Gloria Frost (University of St Thomas): ‘Aquinas on Final Causation in Nature: What role does God play?

Aquinas is committed to the view that all efficient causes act for the sake of ends and that ends influence the actions of efficient causes.  A familiar example of end directed efficient causal activity is a person taking a walk for the sake of being healthy.  Health is the end which causes the person to walk.  The idea that natural causes act for the sake of ends initially seems problematic since natural causes lack intellect and thus, have no way of understanding the ends which supposedly cause them to act.  In a variety of texts, Aquinas provides an account of how natural causes act for the sake of ends despite their lack of intellect.  His account, however, involves an interpretive puzzle.  Aquinas seems to hold that natural elements, such as forms and natural inclinations, are sufficient to explain how natural beings act for the sake of ends.  Yet, in other texts he argues that divine intelligence is required to direct non-rational creatures to their ends.  The goal of this presentation is to examine this interpretative difficulty and reconcile the natural and theological elements within Aquinas’s account of natural teleology. 

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Please contact the organisers to receive the link to participate online.

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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
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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.

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 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.

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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"

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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.