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In the Old Czech composition Tkadleček (The Weaver; after 1407) the late medieval Bohemian literature achived its pinnacle; it is considered one of the most important works of Czech literary canon. The origin of this anonymous work can be traced back to an extraordinary German text Ackermann aus Böhmen (The Ploughman from Bohemia; around 1400) by Johannes von Tepl. Both compositions are linguistically sublime and present compelling problems, aspiring to more than mere linguistic artistry. The paper focuses on a genre analysis of the text, demonstrating that Tkadleček belongs to the tradition of consolatory rhetoric, drawing special attention to the context of lay piety and pastoral care in Late Middle Ages.
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The article examines the inconsistencies between St. Augustine’s rational reflection on music, as inherited from the Platonic tradition, and his authentic experience of chanting, as described in the Confessions. Drawing on the theories of A. Dihle, the analysis attempts to show that while Augustine presents an ontological perspective on music and develops it in his theoretical treatises, in his practical considerations he does not try to fit the religious experience into an ontological frame of thinking, but uses another, psychological way of speaking. The article discusses, first, the assumptions found in the Platonic tradition of music and its influence on Augustinian reflections, second, Augustine’s ambivalence and interpretations of this ambivalence by contemporary researchers, and third, the limits of the Platonic conception and the importance of emotions for religious experience.
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This essay intends to reveal the fundamental difference between Dionysius Areopagita and Thomas Aquinas in the principle of nomenclature strategies of Negative Theology. Aquinas is one of the most famous interpreters of Denys, but due to historical reasons, he cannot reach the historical Denys, so his interpretations are not a reliable resource to modern scholars. Since the linguistical revolution happened in the 19th century, the historical research project of Dionysian writings has been running for a long time. However, some modern scholars are still unable to escape the shadow of Aquinas. This essay reveals the limitations and deficiencies of the Dionysian nomenclature system in Aquinas’ view, particularly the oversimplified structure of the Negativity and Positivity. With the reference to the Neoplatonic concepts from Denys’ time, we can rebuild the original Dionysian nomenclature which contains a more subtle consideration of “negativity” than Aquinas. Denys inherited the Neoplatonic interpretation of Aphairesis and he distinguished this concept from Apophasis, and the ignorance of the historical background induced Aquinas to misunderstand Denys in many details. At the end of this essay, I will present a new system to deal with the Dionysian writings, much more reasonable than the legacy of Aquinas.
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The present article is dedicated to Question XXXIX of William Ockham’s Ordinatio: whether God can know more (or fewer) truths than he does. However, Occam’s solution to the question of the specificity of knowledge, including God’s knowledge regarding the validity of true and false propositions about things, is not so much prompted by the attempt to prove the truth or falsity of the question. It seems that it was more important for him to answer whether it was possible to substantiate a theory of «objective» or «eternal» truths by means of propositions formed by the human intellect. The important question here is about the status of all that is in the mind: the difficulty of definition comes from the ambiguity of whether it is subjective (i.e. real) in the intellect, is only objective in the intellect and is subjective in the thing, or is objective only in the intellect and is not subjective anywhere else. In this situation, for him, an understanding of the status of true propositions that have a universal character and how they are formed is essential.
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The main aim of this article is to provoke research interest in a rather undeveloped part of Cusan symbolic theology, namely – the mirror metaphor. Its persistent reappearance, together with its compatibility with the broad philosophical context of his system, allows us to assume that for the Cardinal himself this symbol functioned as an additional “key” to the final goal of the learned ignorance – the mystical ascent to the infinite. In order to elucidate this alternative approach, the article examines the images of the mirror, the living mirror, and the perfect living mirror as metaphor’s manifestations on the three general ontological levels – respectively, nature, human, and God. The following comparison of Cusan and Leibnizian uses of the metaphor allows us to conclude that, while the Cardinal’s symbols often “tempt” into drawing parallels between him and the Early Modern philosophy, his views are better understood as independent and should be freed from the prejudices of his protomodernity. This final claim is argued not in terms of the symbol used, but in terms of the motivation behind it.
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The following text is an attempt to trace the relationship between the dialectics of Plato and Nicholas of Cusa with their specific understanding of the importance of the process in which something becomes unknown. In Plato, we find the aforementioned elements in the dialogues in which Socrates helps explicate confusions and incompatibilities in the “certain” and “undoubtable” beliefs of the people with which he communicates and discusses, and for Nicholas of Cusa – in the specific impossibility to understand the nature of God and the importance of a proper conceptualization of this impossibility and “beyondness”. We argue that this process of “becoming-unknown” is a key feature of their respective philosophies and, more specifically, in their dialectical endeavours. This processuality of knowledge through the unknown (and sometimes unknowable) is a certain staple of dialectics which can be seen as one of its essential features in the philosophical tradition. It strives to show the positivity in the negativity in which the unknown presents itself – thus negating the idea of a clear-cut difference between positivity and negativity, but rather demonstrating them as complementary to one another, as crucial moments of the same process. We make an analysis of the ways in which their dialectics are similar and the aspects in which they differ, presenting a line of change within the “nature” of the dialectic. This can serve as an example of its transformations within the historical context of the age in which it is conceptualized or used, forming a certain philosophical tradition that leads to Hegel and beyond.
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Following the main line of Byzantine philosophical thought, the early authors already redefine almost all the concepts they inherited from the Hellenic tradition. An important place in this line is taken by the terms “nature” and “essence”, which were considered synonyms at least since the 4th century. In the text that has become known as Letter 38, Basil the Great introduces “nature” as a name referring to the universal nature (κοινὴ φύσις) and not to a specific being. The Cappadocians do not question the reality of being of the general nature also in the created world. But also according to them, it is not existing otherwise than in the individuals containing the respective nature. On the way, by which the difference between the common nature and the individual bearer of this nature is drawn, they put especially great emphasis. In the line of thought between the Cappadocians and John Damascene, the rule is established that the “essence” is predicated only with respect to self-subsisting beings. Maximus the Confessor summarizes in his definitions what has been achieved up to him and extends it. Damascene defines the nature as the common logos of the being of the things having the same essence, while “hypostasis” marks the independent existence of each nature. Already in the 6th century, in the work of Leontius of Byzantium, the essential difference between nature simply (or at all) and in itself on the one hand, and nature in the individual subject, on the other hand, is asserted. This position can be met almost literally in John Damascene, though he clarifies it further. Nature/essence is primarily conceived as a certain constitutive dynamic, which realizes itself through its own forces and energies. The essence or nature of a thing is primarily a source of energetic manifestations.
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In the Declaration on Procured Abortion, 1974, the Catholic Church argues that the zygote is human because it has a human genotype. The article presents a logical analysis of this argument. It shows that this argument is largely faulty. Thomism plays the function of warranty in this argumentation. The enthymematic Thomistic assumptions are necessary for the inference from premise to conclusion at all. Moreover, it turns out that this argument presupposes a Thomistic interpretation of biological concepts that is inconsistent with modern biological knowledge. Thus, the statement contained in the Declaration has not been effectively argued on the grounds of biology, and it even seems that biology undermines it. It is possible only as a metaphysical statement and only on the basis of certain metaphysics.
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I assess a last Heideggerian critique of Aquinas. Using Suarez, Heidegger critiques the Thomistic real distinction between essence and existence. The distinction is presented as a distinction between two things (rei). The critique is as follows. If a thing is a being by reason of an addition, then the added thing is a being by a third thing ad infinitum. Because of the infinite regress we never have completion and so never have a thing. I argue that Suarez’s critique assumes that every addition to a thing is a thing in the first sense. But additions to things can be acts that are accidents, or attributes. For example, the complexion of the man and the heat of the coffee add to these things. Moreover, acts in this sense do what they do without requiring an addition. Color colors. Heat heats. Hence, an explanation of the colored man is some color and an explanation of the hot coffee is some heat. I conclude by arguing that Aquinas considers existence to be another act of the thing along with its color or temperature and so avoids the regress and Heidegger’s phenomenological reduction of Scholasticism to Dasein’s productive comportment.
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Bartholomew of Jasło was a professor at the University of Prague and the University of Kraków, active about the turn of the 14th century. He was mostly interested in logic, methodology, and social changes, as equal access to education for everyone, no matter their status. His first, and only so far edited, work is the so-called First sermon of the restoration of University. Most of the so far discovered works by Bartholomew are sermons, mostly based on Seneca, Boethius, and others, authors not so popular in his day. The paper introduces to the edition of two redactions just such a sermon: his opening lecture to logic (recommendation of logic).
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Ottoman thought is a structure that was built on the accumulation of Turkish-Islamic culture and civilization that existed before it, and carries traces of other civilizations and thought systems with the expansion of its borders. XII. The stagnation experienced in scientific circles due to the problems experienced in the Islamic geography in the century also affected the Ottoman thought of the classical period.. In this period, efforts were made to revive the life of thought, scientific studies were supported, and the tradition of Tehȃfut was continued. With the effects of the inherited climate of thought, the discipline of philosophy found a place for itself in the Ottoman Empire, in more philosophical vocabulary and Sufism. There were negative attitudes as well as positive approaches in Ottoman thought against philosophy, which was described as "love of wisdom" by Islamic philosophers. In this period, while there were those who expressed negative views on all philosophical views, there were also thinkers who did not mind to engage in philosophy in fields such as logic, ethic and politic apart from the principles of the religious convention.
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Image as a philosophical concept has a long and complex history that begins as early as antiquity. Christian scholars included it in their philosophical studies in the form of imago Dei. In this paper, I analyzed the works of St. Thomas Aquinas to determine the anthropological consequences that follow from the idea of human creation in the image of God. I first establish that humans as beings created in the image of God participate through their intellect in God’s nature. I then present three stages of human participation in God. Subsequently, I defend the classical theory of Aquinas against contemporary reinterpretation of his thought. I argue that Aquinas rightly claims that only the intellectual part of the human soul is, strictly speaking, created in God’s Image, while the human body (and other irrational creatures) resembles God in the likeness of a trace.
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This article consists of three parts: the first gives a synthetic outline of intellectual tendencies in post-Renaissance thought (Hermeticism, Alchemy, Kabbalah, which generated the iconic turn (emblematics, iconology). Its essence boils down to the integral relationship of the motto (lemma), the engraving (imago), and the poetic text (subscription). The second part is a more detailed analysis of one of the illustrations contained in the first volume of the German edition of Jacob Böhme’s works from 1682 (Gutenberg Project). The epoch, aesthetic tastes prevailing at that time and the Theosophical content of the work allow us to read this illustration from the point of view of iconology. The third part is devoted to two issues: First, one of the central themes in German idealism was the discussion around the notion of the absolute—whether the absolute can be grasped in concepts (Hegel) or in internal intuition (Schelling). Romanticism was dominated by a tendency to a subjective and speculative approach to the absolute. The philosophy and art of Romanticism was modeled on, among other things, medieval German mysticism and Böhme’s theosophy, seeking in these sources the best representation of what is unrepresentable, i.e., the absolute. Secondly, philosophical and artistic Romanticism developed a new type of imagery–language images. The dilemma that resulted from the discussion in German idealism—the notion or inner vision—from the modern point of view should be solved by a compromise: word and image.
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Professor Mieczysław Gogacz, the renowned philosopher and founder of the recent version of Thomism – the Consistent Thomism 1, claims that angels are the final causes (causa finalis) of human soul. He derives his conception from the principle, characteristic not only for Thomism but also for the entire classical philosophy, which says that for the existent results we respectively search the prior causes. Ultimately, such established philosophical stance regards searching for causes and asking about causes. Hence in analysing the problem of final causes understood as the external causes which constitute the essence of human being, it is worth to define the scope of the research. First of all, we search for the answer to the question about the causes of human being, therefore metaphysics of real beings is the area of our study, what results in further implications. Primarly, we need to acknowledge that each essential state or activity inevitably must possess its real cause in another being. When we notice there is no such cause it means that we encounter the subsistent being (ens subsistens). It belongs to the essence of the method of metaphysics to demand theses cause to be indicated. Metaphysical methodology, when applied consequently, allows to claim that within the area of human being, reality is that what the essence exclusively receives from its existence (esse). Consequently, there must be some other causes that constitute the essence in its internal content, endowed with an act and potency (potentia), both spiritual and material. The aim of this paper is to follow the thought of Gogacz exactly in the area of discovering the role of angels as causes for the particular development of human soul. Therefore Gogacz’s proposal becomes the „proof for the existence of angels”, on the basis that each thing in order to act and cause results must, first of all, exist.
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The purpose of this paper is to attempt the answer to the question of how the soul comes to know, not as a form of the body, but as a subsistent form, independent in its existence from the body, but dependent on its own created act of being (ipsum esse). We will be interested in the question of how the separated soul comes to know: Whether the two intellectual powers that are naturally in the soul - the possible intellect and the active intellect - will realize their acts, and therefore whether the soul will come to know at all, and whether it will come to know individual reality? There will be a theological theme in the paper, that is, a theme determined by the issue of the completion of the human structure in the body (the resurrection of the body) and the related beatific vision, which is the achievement of the end of human intellectual activities. It seems that the question of anima separata is not a purely speculative problem, since it contains the answer to the question of understanding human nature, an answer that is most relevant to philosophy in its practical field. For Aquinas, the existence of a separated soul, suspended, as it were, be-tween existence in an animated body and existence in a glorified body, is “hypothetical”, and the humanity of such an entity is incomplete. However, given that Thomas is essentially considering real and not possible entities, the topic of the existence and workings of the separated soul should not be within the field of his subject matter. It seems, however, that Thomas was interested in confronting such a theme, which would reveal the uniqueness of human nature also in this aspect.
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The subject of the considerations in presented paper is the concept of ius gentium in two selected fragments of St. Thomas Aquinas: S.Th. I-II, q. 95, a. 4 and S.Th. II-II, q. 57, a. 3. The introduction to their detailed analysis is the discussion of three issues necessary for the correct interpretation of Aquinas’ argu-ments, i.e. the concept of ius gentium in the first book of the Justinian Digest, the definition of ius gentium in the Etymologies of St. Isidore of Seville and an explanation of the relationship between the concepts of ius and lex in the Summa Theologica. The conducted research allows to conclude that the Angelic Doctor uses the concept of ius gentium in a twofold sense. The first of them is of a juridical nature and can be equated with the understanding of this term on the basis of the sources of Roman law. Ius gentium is therefore a set of legal norms common to all peoples, which enable, first of all, mutual economic turnover, although to some extent also apply to the external activity of the state. The second meaning of the term ius gentium, although also to some extent inspired by the sources of Roman law, has a broader character and a deeper philosophical foundation. On the basis of the treaty on justice, ius gentium constitutes the social order of functioning of all people based on natural reason (naturalis ratio).
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The article examines the earliest evidence of the transmission of Indian and Buddhist ideas. The aim is to outline a schematic mental “map” of the first contacts between Ancient Greece and Europe during the early Middle Ages and India in a socio-cultural and religious-philosophical aspect, without claiming absolute comprehensiveness. The historical-philosophical method was used in order to establish the lines of reception, to discover the specifics of the changes during its transmission and, accordingly, the differences that appeared, and to indicate the historical-philosophical connections and moments of “intersection” of the two traditions under consideration. The proposed article is the beginning of a series of articles that will explore in a similar manner the development of the “Indian thread” in Europe until the flowering of mature Indology in the 18th century, as until now there is no similar presentation in the Bulgarian language. The aim is not to bring to the fore a supposed influence on Christianity, nor to debate which came first, but only to show that familiarity with Indian philosophy-religious reality is not something that appears 'suddenly'. The study of the historical-philosophical context of each of the periods would provide clarity on the level of familiarity and the method of reception and interpretation of the "new knowledge" on which to base texts on East-West dialogue in modern times.
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The article presents a philosophical and literary work which, despite its compiler character, played an important role in the history of culture. Thanks to him, important ideas of ancient philosophy were transferred to another era, that is, the Middle Ages. This work is a commentary on the VI book of De re publica by M.T. Cicero of A.T. Macrobius: Commentarii in Ciceronis Somnium Scipionis. This piece was for a long time the only trace of the mentioned piece by Cicero. It was also one of the main sources by which the ideas of Platonism and Pythagoreism as well as elements of ancient astronomical, musicological and mathematical doctrines reached the Middle Ages. This work was commented on very often by medieval scholars and is present in the minds of many of them. The numerous issues raised by Macrobius met with the interest of authors who know his Commentum. They took up macrobian threads and developed and transformed them according to their own way of thinking. Macrobius’ comment was repeatedly rewritten and commented on in the Middle Ages, as evidenced by the number of preserved manuscripts. In this article, I want to present an initial outline of the theological, anthropological and psychological views mediated by the commentary on the transmission of the Middle Ages.
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The Golden Age of Islam saw unprecedented advances across diverse fields led by eminent Muslim intellectuals and scientists. This paper examines the seminal contributions of thirteen prominent Muslim scholars from the 8th to 15th centuries CE who played pioneering roles in history, geography, mathematics, astronomy, optics, medicine, engineering, and other domains. Their groundbreaking work formed the foundations of modern disciplines while stimulating further growth of knowledge globally.
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