Propono hic conversionem in linguam Anglicam conclusionis Collegii Logici, anno 1608–1609 semestri studiorum spatio hiberno a Johanne Rudbeckio Wittenbergæ habiti. Hic commentarius prooemium in conversionem est. Rudbeckius (1581–1646) primus Suecus erat, qui librum didacticum de logica publicavit. Maiorem partem libri iam anno 1606 scripserat, cum Mathesis Professor Upsaliensis esset, sed Logica ex optimis et præstantissimis autoribus collecta & conscripta non ante annum 1625 edita sit. Cum Johanne Canuti Lenæo (1573–1669), collega suo, Rudbeckius primas partes agebat in inducenda in Sueciam scholastica Lutherana, cuius rei scopus defensio erat fidei Lutheranæ per logicam et metaphysicam Aristotelicam. In primo capite condiciones conclusionis Rudbeckii commentor. Secundum caput brevem Rudbeckii vitæ descriptionem offert. Tertium quartumque capita de scripto converso et de ipsa conversione observationes quasdam continent.This note is an introduction to the English translation of the concluding speech of the Collegium Logicum that Johannes Rudbeckius taught in Wittenberg during the winter semester 1608–1609. Rudbeckius (1581–1646) was the first Swede to publish a textbook on logic; his Logica ex optimis et præstantissimis autoribus collecta & conscripta (299 pages) appeared in 1625. The first version of the textbook was completed already in 1606 when Rudbeckius was professor of mathematics at Uppsala University in Sweden. Together with his colleague Johannes Canuti Lenæus (1573–1669), Rudbeckius played a key role in the introduction of Lutheran scholasticism in Sweden; this was a movement within the Lutheran Church whose aim was to defend the Lutheran faith by making use of Aristotelian logic and metaphysics. In Section 1, I comment on the context of Rudbeckius’s discourse. Section 2 offers a short biography of Rudbeckius. Sections 3 and 4 contain, respectively, some remarks about the text translated and about the translation itself.

The paper describes the theory of the so-called “value-blindness” created by Dietrich von Hildebrand. The importance of the topic becomes apparent especially as its elaboration reveals a complex and dynamic relationship between moral cognitivity (esp. the cognition of values and disvalues) and fundamental moral attitudes (moralische Grundhaltungen) of the cognizing subject. The article presents Hildebrand’s teaching on moral blindness as a coherent theory that was first introduced in the early work Sittlichkeit und ethische Werterkenntnis, and subsequently in the late Graven Images. By way of a conclusion the author examines the relation between Hildebrand’s theory of moral blindness to Aristotle’s doctrine of acrasia. The significance of Hildebrand’s theory for fundamental systematic questions and problems of moral philosophy thus becomes manifest.

In the history of scholastic philosophy, the fifteenth century is traditionally regarded as a period of decay, a downturn between the heights of fourteenth-century nominalism and the Spanish revival of scholasticism in the sixteenth century. This paper sets out to challenge this received view. First, however, the received view is confirmed on the basis of sixteenth-century lists of ecclesiastical writers containing very few notable scholastic philosopher-theologians for the fifteenth century. On the other hand, the same lists show a significant increase in notable scholastics in the fields of practical ethics and jurisprudence. The overall picture signals a shift of philosophical and theological activity from theoretical towards practical concerns. If practical philosophy is not considered to be of lesser rank than theoretical philosophy, there was thus no downturn of scholastic philosophy in the fifteenth century.

Duns Scotus and Aquinas agree that whereas God comprehends Himself or even is his own comprehension, no creature can ever comprehend God. In the 17th century, the two Scotists Bartolomeo Mastri and Bonaventura Belluto discuss comprehension in their manual of philosophical psychology. Although they attempt to articulate a genuine Scotist doctrine on the subject, this article shows that they in fact defend a stance close to the one endorsed by contemporary scholastics outside the Scotist school. The article situates their discussion within 17th-century scholasticism (authors cited include, among others, the Scotists Theodor Smising and Claude Frassen, the Jesuit philosopher-theologians Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza, Luis de Molina, Rodrigo de Arriaga, and Diego Ruiz de Montoya, as well as the eclecticist Jean Lalemandet). The article furthermore highlights the theological motifs in Mastri and Belluto’s discussion of comprehension. Although they claim that their discussion does not transgress the limits of Aristotelian psychology, all of their arguments are theological in nature. From this I conclude that in this particular context (within their Cursus philosophicus) our two Scotists clearly start out with a set of theological convictions, rather than with any particular philosophico-epistemological beliefs.

The paper aims to present a critical evaluation of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s account of value. This account is von Hildebrand’s most important and original contribution, not just to general value theory but to philosophy as such. I first present this account by explaining, in detail, his analysis of the so-called categories of importance. Then I critically examine the philosophical originality and merit of von Hildebrand’s account of value. I do so by arguing against his claim that value, in the sense of the important in itself, is not in the centre of “traditional ethics”.

In the second half of the sixteenth century, many universities influenced by Salamanca adopted the Summa theologiae as the textbook for teaching scholastic theology. At the same time, the universities decided that some minor chairs should teach one of the Sentences commentaries written by one of the following authors: Duns Scotus, Durand of Saint-Pourçain, or Gabriel Biel. As a result, some commentaries on these commentaries (so-called supercommentaries) started to appear. This is most notably the case when it comes to the University of Coimbra, where Aquinas’s Summa became the textbook only very late and where the chairs of Scotus, Durand and Biel were instituted in the second half of the century. This article provides a list of questions making up thirteen commentaries produced in Coimbra, where, unlike what happened in Salamanca, the professors belonged to different religious orders (the commentaries presented here were written by one Cistercian, one Carmelite, two Augustinians, one Franciscan and one secular). It also presents the list of questions of one commentary connected with a Franciscan convent. Some reflections on the need to study late-scholastic manuscripts as well as on the structure of these commentaries are also offered.

Johannes Rudbeckius (1581–1646), one of Sweden’s most influential figures in theology, pedagogy, and church-state relations in the 17th century, published two books on logic: Logica ex optimis et præstantissimis autoribus collecta & conscripta (1625) and Controversiæ logices vel potius earum epitome (1629). In this paper, I present and critically discuss Rudbeckius’s view on the nature of logic as it can be reconstructed from these two works. This requires, in particular, identifying the larger intellectual framework within which Rudbeckius operated. The single most important philosopher having affected Rudbeckius’s ideas on logic is Jacopo Zabarella (1533–1589), which leads me to consider at some length the views on logic that Zabarella puts forward in his De Natura Logicæ (1578).

This is an article in the philosophy of happiness — but one with an untypical focus. It clarifies the claim of the phenomenologist Dietrich von Hildebrand that (H) high happiness comes especially from loving others, and compares it with the apparently rival Aristotelian claim that (A) high happiness comes especially from contemplating God. The former claim is understood to be about felt love (love defined as an emotional rather than volitional state). Both claims are understood to be about felt happiness (happiness defined as an emotional state rather than a state of objective flourishing). The article argues that, in fact, the two claims are not rival but mutually consistent, since the beloved person can be God, and the contemplation can be a loving one. Both claims are also consistent with scientific evidence, although it is tangential and tentative. Moreover, both claims are plausible, since both are backed up by intuitive explanations of why they should be regarded as true. However, both are in need of a further philosophical or scientific research that could confirm them even more.

In this paper I consider respects of dependence, namely, the fact that some entities depend on other entities in some respect or another. In the first section, I provide a characterization of contemporary debates on dependence based on respects of dependence. I also single out seven desiderata a good theory of dependence should satisfy and three ways of interpreting respects of dependence. In the second section, I criticize two such ways and, in the third section, I defend the remaining option, namely, that respects of dependence correspond to different dependence-relations between entities (e.g., existence-dependence, identity-dependence, and so on). In the fourth section, I develop my theory of Respect-of-Dependence (RD ) Relations in order to distinguish between partial and full dependence and between specific and generic dependence, and to qualify RD -relations in temporal and modal terms. Finally, in the last section, I anticipate and reply to three objections against dependence pluralism.

Tyron Goldschmidt has recently published a non-paper in which he claims to demonstrate the causal power of absences. His non-paper is, precisely, an empty page. The non-paper is ingenious and at first “glance” the “reader” might think that the absence of words on the page does prove that negative beings can literally cause states such as surprise or disappointment. Closer analysis, however, shows that Goldschmidt’s clever non-paper not only lacks words but also lacks causal power. Serious metaphysical problems pile up if we suppose otherwise.

At the beginning of his influential De Nominum Analogia, Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469–1534) mentions three mistaken positions on analogy. He does not attach names to these positions, but each one was held by distinguished Thomists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Furthermore, their proponents were responding to the same set of challenges from John Duns Scotus that set the agenda for the De Nominum Analogia. In this paper, I would like to do something that Cajetan did not do, and that is, directly consider the merits of the first position in his list of mistaken accounts of analogy; namely, the position that analogy is constituted by (in)disjunction. More specifically, this paper investigates the polemical use for which Hervaeus Natalis (1260–1323) deployed analogy of disjunction; the reply of John Duns Scotus; and the implications of this back and forth for understanding the Thomist-Scotist dispute over the concept of being.

For more than four decades around the middle of the sixteenth century, Giacomino Malafossa from Barge († 1563) held the Scotist chair of metaphysics at the University of Padua. In his A Question on the Subject of Metaphysics, in Which Is Included the Question, Whether Metaphysics Is a Science, he developed a remarkable stance on the subject matter of metaphysics. Metaphysics has two objects: being qua being and God. However, only when it deals with the latter object can it be said to be a science in a strict sense. The reason is that the strict Aristotelian notion of science presupposes that the object of any science has demonstrable properties, which is the case with God, but not with being as being. Although being qua being does have certain properties, namely the transcendentals, these cannot be truly demonstrated. Malafossa’s Quaestio bears witness both to the clash between Averroism and Scotism at the Italian Renaissance universities and to the complexity of the Scotist tradition itself. This introductory article highlights Malafossa’s sources and traces the critical reception of his views among later Scotist authors.

The late scholastic era was, among others, contemporary to the “emergence of probability”, the German academic philosophy from Leibniz to Kant, and the introduction of Newtonian physics. Within this era, two branches of the late-scholastic analysis of induction can be identified, one which can be thought of as a continual development of earlier scholastic approaches, while the other one absorbed influences of early modern philosophy, mathematics, and physics. Both branches of scholastic philosophy share the terminology of modalities, probability, and forms of (inductive) arguments. Furthermore, induction was commonly considered valid as a result of being a covert syllogism. Last but not least, there appears to be a difference in emphasis between the two traditions’ analyses of induction: while Tolomei discussed the theological presuppositions of induction, Amort’s “leges contingentium” exemplify the principles of induction by aleatory phenomena and Boscovich’s rules for inductive arguments are predominately concerned with the generalisation of macro-level observations to the micro-level.

Giacomino Malafossa’s A Question on the Subject of Metaphysics, in Which Is Included the Question Whether Metaphysics Is a Science, from 1551 (first printed 1553) consists of two parts. In the first part, the author discusses various positions regarding the subject matter of metaphysics. In particular, he debates which conditions any scientific object must fulfill, the most important one being that an object of a science virtually contains all of its truths. Since being as being virtually contains whatever is considered in metaphysics, this is the adequate object of metaphysics. In the second part, the author addresses the problem that the transcendental properties of being are not truly demonstrable. This endangers the status of metaphysics as a science in the strict Aristotelian sense. The author discusses various Scotist solutions to this problem. His own solution is that metaphysics indeed is a science in the strict sense, but only when it considers God, not when it considers being as being, thus unwittingly challenging Duns Scotus’s own idea that metaphysics is a “transcending science” because of its consideration of being and its transcendental properties. Malafossa’s Quaestio is an important example of the metaphysical discourse at the University of Padua in the sixteenth century.

This paper is an attempt to explicate, using the method of conceptual reconstruction rather than historical, text-oriented analysis, the plurality of meanings of two connected terms that play an important role in scholastic thought: “confusio” and “praecisio”. These terms are used in a plurality of meanings by the scholastics, and sometimes even in one and the same context. The aim of this paper is to disentangle these various meanings from each other, offer their precise definitions and explore not only their interrelations, but also their role and impact in such crucial matters as theory of abstraction, realism-nominalism dispute, theory of science, or theory of analogy.

I describe a “logic of creating” inspired by the “existential” argument of the existence of God in St. Thomas Aquinas’s De Ente et Essentia. suggest a modal reading of his reasoning based upon states-of-affairs said to be actual, contingent, necessary and the like. I take “creating” as teasing actuality out of possibility. After explaining the modal logic that I am assuming and relating it to Christian understandings of meaning and being, I present my modal interpretation, contrasting it with the views of three modern philosophers. In an appendix I will analyze the text of St. Thomas’s existential proof.

The paper addresses a mainstream contemporary view of the notion of common sense in Thomas Reid’s philosophy, as proposed by Nicholas Wolterstorff who claims that Reid was not clear about the concept of common sense, or about the principles of common sense. In contrast, this paper presents Reid’s conception as a clear and traditional Aristotelian notion of common sense and its principles as presuppositions of particular sense judgments, usually taken for granted. The alleged confusion about principles is resolved by a distinction between principles of common sense and first principles as such.

The question of how, according to Aristotle, the principles of science are acquired remains contested among scholars. An aspect of this broader topic concerns the role of induction, and whether it is able to provide us with knowledge of natural necessity without the assistance of intuition (nous). In a recent publication in this journal, David Botting argues in favour of the enumerative/empiricist interpretation of induction and criticizes the intuitive/rationalist interpretation of it, a version of which was defended in one of my publications. He thinks that Aristotle is like Hume: both understand the cognitive process of induction similarly; and, both are equally skeptical about acquiring knowledge of natural necessity through induction. My reply argues that reading Aristotle’s induction in Humean terms is problematic in several respects. I argue, in addition, that natural necessity can be known through induction if nous is involved. My explanation of how this is possible relies on thinking of the act of noēsis in terms of an act of recognition. Botting claims, furthermore, that Aristotle only differs from Hume in that the former does have a non-inductive and non-intuitive method by which natural necessity may become known, and which Botting calls “the constructive proof of necessity”. My reply examines this method, showing how certain steps in it rely on cognitive acts that are really acts of intuition merely expressed in Humean terms. Despite the criticisms, I end with suggestions for how Botting’s account might offer original paths of research to Aristotle scholars seeking to answer the question of the acquisition of principles of science, particularly in the early stages of this process.