CFPs and Conference Announcements by Jack Zupko
The Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy will be sponsoring as many as four panels/wor... more The Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy will be sponsoring as many as four panels/workshops at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America, occurring March 20–22, 2024 in Boston, MA.
The SMRP welcomes proposals for individual papers or seminar presentations (e.g., abstracts for individual presentations) as well as for full panels (i.e., abstracts for a proposed panel, workshop, or roundtable). Examples of appropriate themes / formats might include (but is not limited to) any of the following:
* A paper or a panel of papers discussing various Renaissance neo-Platonic philosophies
* A seminar session on Renaissance philosophy that provides an opportunity to collaborate on an edited volume
* A workshop or roundtable on various approaches to broadening the philosophical canon in teaching medieval and Renaissance philosophy
Papers by Jack Zupko
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2024
Journal of the History of Philosophy
Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) is one of a handful of figures in the history of philosophy whose sign... more Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) is one of a handful of figures in the history of philosophy whose significance is truly di"fficult to overestimate. Despite an academic career that lasted barely two decades, and numerous writings left in various states of incompletion at his death, his thought has been profoundly influential in the history of western philosophy. The Questions on Aristotle's 'Perihermenias' is an early work, probably written at Oxford in the closing decade of the thirteenth century. The questions, which have come down to us in two sets ('Opus I' and 'Opus II'), most likely originated from Scotus's classroom lectures on Aristotle's text, a work now known by its Latin name, De interpretatione. The Perihemenias was understood in the medieval university as a work of dialectic or logic, although the text itself deals with subjects we would nowadays consider to belong to the intersection of metaphysics and the philosophy of language: the ...
The Review of Metaphysics, Mar 1, 1993
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHERS HAD NO SINGLE RESPONSE to the difficult question of how souls are related t... more MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHERS HAD NO SINGLE RESPONSE to the difficult question of how souls are related to the bodies they animate. In this respect, the theory of psychological inherence advanced by the noted Parisian philosoppher John Buridan is a case in point. Buridan offers different accounts of the soul-body relation, depending upon which of two main varieties of natural, animate substance he is explaining. In the case of human beings, he defends a version of immanent dualism: the thesis that the soul is an immaterial, everlasting, and created (as opposed to naturally generated) entity, actually inhering in each and every body it animates, and thus numerically many.(1) But when his explanandum is the relation between nonhuman animal or plant souls and their bodies, Buridan is a materialist; that is, he regards the sensitive and vegetative souls of such creatures as no more than collections of material, extended powers exhaustively defined by their biological functions, and hence as corruptible as the particular arrangements of matter they happen to animate. In the larger context of medieval Aristotelianism, the fact that Buridan has a hybrid approach to the question of psychological inherence is neither remarkable nor especially interesting. Obviously, some combination of materialism and dualism seems called for if the soul-body relation is to be explained in a way that is both naturalistic and consistent with the possibility of personal immortality for some class(es) of corporeal, animate things. What is both remarkable and interesting, however, is the way in which Buridan manages the details of his hybrid account, that is, the particular explanations he gives under its materialistic and dualistic aspects. My aim in this paper is to examine Buridan's answer to the very basic question of what it means for the soul to inhere in the body. This question is discussed at several junctures in the third and final version of his Questions on Aristotle's De anima (hereafter "QDA"),(2) though as we shall see below, his explanation of how nonhuman souls inhere in their bodies is of a piece with the more general theory of inherence presented in his other writings. I Nonhuman Souls. The question of how the soul inheres in the body is first addressed as such in QDA 2.7. Like virtually all of the questions in this work, QDA 2.7 is based on a lemma from Aristotle's De anima: in this instance, the observation in De anima 2.2 that it is possible for some plants and animals to survive physical division, from which we are to conclude that before division, their souls are actually one but potentially many.(3) For Buridan, this claim raises the question of how we are to understand the presence of the soul's nutritive and sensitive powers in corporeal bodies: in what sense does the whole soul of an organism inhere in its body if a single division of the quantitative parts of that body gives rise to two new whole souls? Since QDA 2, like De anima 2, addresses the nature and function of the sensitive part of the soul, Buridan gives his answer in the context of the psychology of brute or nonhuman animals, creatures whose souls are paradigmatically sensitive. In the main part of QDA 2.7, Buridan introduces four metaphysical principles which he takes to govern the inherence of nonhuman animal souls, and thus also to explain how the sensitive and vegetative souls of such creatures can be in each part of their bodies. I shall discuss each of these principles in turn, and then examine Buridan's dualistic account of the relation between human souls and their bodies in QDA 3. A. The Extensionality Principle. The first principle governing the inherence of nonhuman souls in their bodies is attributed to Aristotle and defined as follows: "The vegetative soul, sensitive soul, and so forth in a horse are not distinct in different parts of the body, but the vegetative, sensitive, and appetitive [souls] are extended throughout the whole body of the animal [per totum corpus animalis extensa est]" (QDA 2. …
Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy, 2015
Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter? Qu'est-ce que la philosophie au moyen âge? What is Philosophy in the Middle Ages?
The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition, 2010
BRILL) announces that at its Annual General Meeting of shareholders (AGM), held today, all propos... more BRILL) announces that at its Annual General Meeting of shareholders (AGM), held today, all proposals were approved.
Franciscan Studies, 1994
One of the many great contributions made by Fr. Gedeon Gal to medieval philosophical scholarship ... more One of the many great contributions made by Fr. Gedeon Gal to medieval philosophical scholarship was his discovery that the theory that the immediate object of scientific knowledge is the complexe significabile (i.e., a state of affairs capable of being signified by a proposition), a view traditionally attributed to the Parisian Augustinian, Gregory of Rimini,1 was in fact authored by the English Franciscan Adam Wodeham, who conceived of it ". . . as a via media between the positions of Walter Chatton and William of Ockham."2 As with virtually all of Fr. Gedeon's work (and that of his colleagues at Franciscan Institute, where he has spent most of his later academic career), the consequence of this particular finding is not simply a matter of revising the appropriate chapters in our medieval intellectual biographies. Rather, it introduces at least two new and highly promising avenues of research. First, it shows that the early 14th-century Franciscan debate on the object of scientific
The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review, 1996
Both theologians and philosophers need to see a completely integrated treatment of both rational ... more Both theologians and philosophers need to see a completely integrated treatment of both rational and faith aspects of Aquinas's theology of creation. To this end, more work on theology as science also would be helpful. Emery's treatment of the end and subject of a science is not quite neoplatonic enough. His presentation of the subject of theology forces God, its subject in the Summa theologiae, on earlier texts of Albert (49) and Aquinas (302). In I Sent. Aquinas says the subject is ens divinum, "being as related to the divine," which is much wider than God, who is the end but not subject of theology. His model is Avicenna's ens commune as the subject of a metaphysics with God as its end. More work also must be done on the articles of faith, part of the subject of theology for Albert; but theology's proper principles for Aquinas. How primordial the articles are, and the interplay of reason and faith in knowing them, are still unresolved issues. In sum, one hopes this fine book by Fr. Emery will be the first of many helping give Thomism the new look it deserves.
The Routledge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, 2021
Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, 2018
A little over a decade ago, I published a paper that tried to unravel the puzzling relationship b... more A little over a decade ago, I published a paper that tried to unravel the puzzling relationship between John Buridan, the most famous Parisian arts master of the fourteenth century, and Nicholas of Autrecourt, the Paris-based bête noir of late-medieval Aristotelianism, who achieved his own measure of fame for having had some of his views condemned and his writings publicly burnt in 1347, just seven years after Buridan's second term as rector of the University 1. The problem is that, without ever mentioning him by name, Buridan in several places criticizes views that look very much like the condemned teachings of Nicholas. Was he tacitly providing intellectual grounds for the condemnation, the official articles of which mention only Nicholas' erroneous teachings? This question is of great interest to historians of medieval philosophy since it would show that there was more than just the heavy hand of authority behind the silencing of the master from Lorraine. Modern minds are primed to read such incidents as exercises of political power, of course, in which the freedoms of individual thinkers are trampled in order to preserve some authoritarian regime-in this case the Church and to a lesser extent the University of Paris. But scholars of the period know that the story is much more complicated than this. I immediately ran into the problem, however, on which efforts to answer this question have always foundered: we do not have enough of Nicholas' work to reconstruct his philosophical or theological system with any certainty. Especially troubling is the fact that his surviving works make it difficult to understand the precise JACK ZUPKO
The Language of Thought in Late Medieval Philosophy, 2017
An Aristotelian faced with the difficult problem of explaining the phenomenon of sensory awarenes... more An Aristotelian faced with the difficult problem of explaining the phenomenon of sensory awareness and self-awareness in both human and non-human animals, John Buridan (ca. 1300–1361) appeals to the Augustinian notion of sensus interior or internal sense, a power of the soul operating in the body through the medium of sensitive or vital spirits. These spirits are a subtle fluid capable of transmitting sensed intentions in a living animal, and their active circulation throughout the body corresponds to baseline self-awareness, making possible an animal’s sub-rational or non-intellectual self perception. On the other hand, Buridan’s slightly younger Parisian contemporary, Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320–1382), appears to treat self-awareness as unique to humans, denying that brute animals are ever aware that they see or hear because he holds that the power of sensory cognition – which is all that they have – is not reflexive. Despite this, he allows that brute animals are able to recognize unsensed intentions and even that their imaginings can sometimes alter their sensations. But Oresme seems more interested in explaining apparently anomalous sensory phenomena than in identifying any broader mechanism of self-cognition.
Preface John Buridan, Metaphysician and Natural Philosopher. An Introductory Survey, Johannes M. ... more Preface John Buridan, Metaphysician and Natural Philosopher. An Introductory Survey, Johannes M. M. H. Thijssen & Jack Zupko John Buridan's Solution to the Problem of Universals, Peter King Buridan's Theory of Definitions in his Scientific Practice, Gyula Klima Buridan's Theory of Identity, Olaf Pluta Necessities in Buridan's Natural Philosophy, Simo Knuuttila The Natural Order in John Buridan, Joel Biard Naturaliter principiis assentimus: Naturalism as the Foundation of Human Knowledge?, Gerhard Krieger John Buridan on Infinity, John E. Murdoch & Johannes M. M. H. Thijssen Buridan's Concept of Time. Time, Motion and the Soul in John Buridan's Questions on Aristotle's Physics, Dirk-Jan Dekker On Certitude, Jack Zupko Sensations, Intentions, Memories, and Dreams, Peter G. Sobol The Notion of "non velle" in Buridan's Ethics, Fabienne Pironet Ideo quasi mendicare oportet intellectum humanum: The Role of Theology in John Buridan's Natural Philosophy, Edith Dudley Sylla Aristotelian Metaphysics and Eucharistic Theology: John Buridan and Marsilius of Inghen on the Ontological Status of Accidental Being, Paul J. J. M. Bakker Philosophical Theology in John Buridan, Rolf Schonberger Bibliography Index of Names Index of Manuscripts
Meeting of the Minds. The Relations between Medieval and Classical Modern European Philosophy, 1999
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CFPs and Conference Announcements by Jack Zupko
The SMRP welcomes proposals for individual papers or seminar presentations (e.g., abstracts for individual presentations) as well as for full panels (i.e., abstracts for a proposed panel, workshop, or roundtable). Examples of appropriate themes / formats might include (but is not limited to) any of the following:
* A paper or a panel of papers discussing various Renaissance neo-Platonic philosophies
* A seminar session on Renaissance philosophy that provides an opportunity to collaborate on an edited volume
* A workshop or roundtable on various approaches to broadening the philosophical canon in teaching medieval and Renaissance philosophy
Papers by Jack Zupko
The SMRP welcomes proposals for individual papers or seminar presentations (e.g., abstracts for individual presentations) as well as for full panels (i.e., abstracts for a proposed panel, workshop, or roundtable). Examples of appropriate themes / formats might include (but is not limited to) any of the following:
* A paper or a panel of papers discussing various Renaissance neo-Platonic philosophies
* A seminar session on Renaissance philosophy that provides an opportunity to collaborate on an edited volume
* A workshop or roundtable on various approaches to broadening the philosophical canon in teaching medieval and Renaissance philosophy