Basic Issues in Medieval Philosophy

Richard N. Bosley and Martin M. Tweedale are Professors Emeritus, Department of Philosophy at the University of Alberta.

Preface
Introduction

TOPIC I : NECESSITY, CONTINGENCY, AND CAUSATION

Introduction

I.1. Aristotle



The four Causes
Senses of the Necessary
Causation, Chance, and Spontaneity
Science and the Accidental

I.2. Avicenna



Two Kinds of Existents
Proof of the Necessary of Existence
What is Possible of Existence is Necessary of Existence from something else
Characteristics of the Necessary of Existence

I.3. Abelard



That God can only do what He does do

I.4. Al-Ghazali and Averroes



Whether the First Cause is simple
About the Natural Sciences

I.5. St. Thomas Aquinas



How absolute Necessity can exist in Created Things
That God does not will other things in a necessary way
Difficulties in the Concept of Will

I.6. Siger of Brabant



Commentary on Necessity

I.7. The Condemnation of 1277



Extending God’s Power

I.8. Henry of Ghent



The Finiteness of the World’s Past

I.9. John Duns Scotus



Proof of a First Cause
The First Cause causes contingently
The Omnipotence of God
Impossibility
Could God make things better than He does?

I.10. William of Ockham



Essentially ordered Causes
Can it be proved that there exists a first productive Cause?
Can it be proved that there exists a first conserving Cause?
Is God able to do Everything that it is possible for a Creature to do?
Can God do things which He neither does do nor will do?
Does not being able to do the Impossible belong to God before not being able to be done by Godbelongs to the Impossible?
Can God make a better world than this one?

TOPIC II : IS THERE AN INFINITELY PERFECT BEING?

Introduction

II.1. Aristotle



Why there must be an eternal Mover that is not itself in Motion
The first Mover has no Size
The Principle on which depend the Heavens and Nature

II.2. St. Anselm



The Being “a greater than which cannot be thought”

II.3. Al-Ghazali and Averroes



Can we prove that the First Being is incorporeal?

II.4. St. Thomas Aquinas



God’s Existence is not self-evident to us
The five Ways
A Being which just is its own Existence

II.5. John Duns Scotus



The first efficient Cause has infinite Power
The Infinity of the most excellent Being

II.6. William of Ockham



Why the first efficient Cause cannot be proved to have infinite Power
Why it cannot be proven that the most perfect Being is infinite in Perfection
Aristotle did not intend to prove the Infinity of the First Cause

TOPIC III : COULD THE WORLD BE ETERNALLY EXISTENT?

Introduction

III.1. Aristotle



Did Motion ever have a Beginning? Will it ever end?

III.2. St. Augustine



What is Time?
How Creatures have always been but are not co-eternal with God

III.3. Al-Ghazali and Averroes



Is the Doctrine of the “Philosophers” as regards the Production of the World coherent?

III.4. Moses Maimonides



Arguments of the Mutakallemim purporting to show that the Universe was created out of nothing
Different views on the Eternity of the Universe among those who believe God exists
That the Universe is eternal has not been proven
The view that God has produced the Universe from all Eternity and how it is to be evaluated

III.5. St. Thomas Aquinas



That it is not necessary for Creatures to have existed always
That God could have created an eternal World

III.6. Henry of Ghent



That a created thing cannot have existed from Eternity
Contradictions involved in the view that God makes eternal things

III.7. John Duns Scotus



Arguments on both sides and their Refutations

III.8. William of Ockham



Could God make a World that has existed from Eternity?

TOPIC IV: DETERMINISM, FREE WILL, AND DIVINE FOREKNOWLEDGE

Introduction

IV.1. Aristotle



Determinism and the Truth of future contingent Statements

IV.2. Boethius



How can God know everything about the Future?

IV.3. St. Anselm



The Harmony of Foreknowledge and Free Will

IV.4. St. Thomas Aquinas



Does God’s Knowledge extend to Future Contingents?

IV.5. Siger of Brabant



How Contingency arises in the World

IV.6. John Duns Scotus



How God can know Future Contingents by knowing His own Will

IV.7. William of Ockham



Why Scotus’s Solution will not work
Propositions in the Present tense but about the Future

TOPIC V: IDENTITY AND DISTINCTION

Introduction

V.1. Aristotle



Senses of ‘same’
Senses of ‘One’
How the Motion of the Agent is the same as the Motion in the Recipient, yet different

V.2. Boethius



Sameness and Difference in the Trinity

V.3. Abelard



How to have many Persons in one God

V.4. John Duns Scotus



Qualified and unqualified Distinctions

V.5. William of Ockham



No formal Distinction without Real Distinction

TOPIC VI : UNIVERSALS AND PARTICULARS

Introduction

VI.1. Plato



A World based on Archetypes

VI.2. Aristotle



Categories and the things there are
Universals and Particulars
The Problem of Universals
Are first Principles Universals?
Substance and Universals

VI.3. Porphyry



The five “Predicables”

VI.4. Boethius



The “deeper Questions”

VI.5. Garlandus Compotista



The Predicables are just Utterances

VI.6. Abelard



The Existence and the Nature of Universals
Universals and Signification
What Propositions signify

VI.7. Avicenna



The Nature of Universals
The Essences of things

VI.8. John Duns Scotus



Natures are not of themselves individuated
What makes a Substance individual
Is a Universal something in things?

VI.9. William of Ockham



Universals and Distinction
The Distinction of First and Second Intentions
The Synonymy of Concrete and Abstract Nouns
Is a Universal a Singular?
Is every Universal a Quality of the Mind?
Is a Category made up of things outside the Mind or of Concepts of Things?

TOPIC VII : SKEPTICISM

Introduction

VII.1. St. Augustine



Arguments against Academic Skepticism
Internal Knowledge
Can we know there is something above Human Reason?

VII.2. Henry of Ghent



Knowledge requires Divine Illumination of the Mind

VII.3. Siger of Brabant



Some Judgments are to be trusted

VII.4. John Duns Scotus



Refutation of Henry and of Skepticism generally

VII.5. Nicholas of Autrecourt



Certainty and the Principle of Non-Contradiction

TOPIC VIII : VIRTUE AND REASON, SIN AND SEX

Introduction

VIII.1. Aristotle



Excellence (Virtue) and the Mean
Ethics and Deliberation

VIII.2. St. Augustine



What is the Supreme Good for Human Beings?
The Ultimate Good is not to be found in this Life
How Order pervades everything
The Works of Reason
Why Adultery is evil
Lust, a Penalty for the Original Sin

VIII.3. Al-Ghazali



Hope
Fear

VIII.4. Abelard



What Sin and Vice consist in

VIII.5. St. Thomas Aquinas



Goodness and Badness in outward Acts
Is Pleasure bad?
Is Enjoyment in the Thought of Fornication a Sin?
Why Lechery is a Sin
Sex in the Garden of Eden

TOPIC IX: THE “DARKNESS WHICH IS BEYOND INTELLECT”

Introduction

IX.1. Plotinus



The One that is the Source of Being
The Intelligence and its Relation to the Soul

IX.2. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite



The Transcendent Good
How God can be called Wisdom
The Mystical Theology
The Divine Darkness

IX.3. John Scotus Eriugena



Things that are and things that are not
God as Hyper-being
God’s Diffusion into all things
The Return of the Many to the One
The three Motions of the Soul
The Indefinability of God
The Self-creation of the Divine Darkness
Man contains all Creatures
The Return of all things to God

IX.4. Ibn Tufail



The Experience of total Self-annihilation

IX.5. Meister Eckhart



On the Names of God
“God is One”
The Intellect perceives God bare of Goodness and Being
The “Negation of Negation”
The Attraction of the Soul to the One
“On Detachment”

TOPIC X: BODY, SOUL, AND INTELLECT

Introduction

X.1. Aristotle



What sort of accounts should we give in psychology?
Is there movement in the soul?
What type of entity is the soul?
What accounts for thinking and knowledge?
Is the intellect formed in the process of fetal generation?

X.2. Alexander of Aphrodisias



On the Intellect

X.3. Themistius



How to understand the potential and active intellects

X.4. Avicenna



What does Aristotle’s definition of the soul tell us?
Is the soul a substance?
How do there come to be many individual human souls?
Can the soul exist after the body has been destroyed?
How does the human intellect come to know abstract essences?
How does the intellect think?
How does the soul relate to its powers?

X.5. Averroes



The nature of the material intellect
The role of the agent intellect

X.6 Siger of Brabant and Thomas Aquinas



How does the intellect unite with the body?
Why the intellectual soul must be the form of the body
Why the Averroists are wrong
How Albert and Thomas go wrong

X.7 Peter John Olivi



Why the human soul cannot be the form of the body

X.8. John Buridan



In what way is the soul an actuality?
How many souls does an individual have?
Is the soul just its powers?
How many powers does the soul have?
Can the soul be spread throughout the body?
Is the intellect passive as regards its objects?
Can what knows something have the character of what it knows?
Three theories about the intellect

BIOGRAPHIES
GLOSSARY
SOURCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY