Getting it wrong deals with the dark side of the medieval theory of knowledge, the ways in which perceptions can err, curiosity get out of hand, and knowledge damage the knower. The first and second parts explore the organs, powers and faculies of the soul and the ways in which teaching and learning occur. The third part of the book examines medieval ideas of "common knowledge"and the ways in which individuals can share or fail to share the knowledge human being ought to have. The fourth part considers wisdom and folly, security and incompleteness of knowledge, truth and lies.

Thomas Aquinas' theory of knowledge has mainly been studied from the point of view of his theory of intellect. However, one of the constituent elements of such a theory has been widely neglected: perception. This work tries to disentangle the different aspects of Aquinas' theory. First, the causes of perception are looked at, including analyses on the physics of perception. Secondly, the psychology of perceptual knowledge and the theory of sensibles are explored, and thirdly, the importance of the perceptual apparatus is sketched by stressing the role of the outer and inner senses in the...

This book presents the first study of the development of the theory of modal syllogistic in the Middle Ages. It traces the theory from the first medieval commentators on Aristotle's Prior Analytics to the end of the Middle Ages. In the book, several previously unstudied texts are analysed and the works of philosophers like Robert Kilwardby, Albert the Great, Richard of Campsall, William of Ockham, John Buridan, Pseudo-Scotus, Albert of Saxony, Marsilius of Inghen and Jodocus Trutfetter are studied. These authors' views on modal syllogistics are shown to comprise important insights...

This volume contains the first critical edition of Matthew of Orleans' Sophistaria, dating from the first half of the thirteenth century. The genre is closely related to the Syncategoreumata-treatises and Sophisma-collections, which all deal with logico-semantic problems, but each in a different way. The Sophistaria-treatise takes commonly used logical, semantic and grammatical distinctions as its starting point and subsequently moves to the discussion of puzzling sophisma-sentences these distinctions are exemplified in. The volume contains a broad introduction, as well...

This volume deals with the theory of the transcendentals 'being' ('thing'), 'unity', 'truth', 'goodness' in Suarez' Disputationes metaphysicae (1597). From its beginning in the 13th century the doctrine of the transcendentals is characterized by a plurality of motives and philosophical approaches to which correspond divergent traditions of thought. How does Suarez' metaphysics relate to them? From what point of view does it take up and transform the methods and doctrines which came down from medieval thinkers? Does Suarez arrive at a new synthesis and - if this is the case - what are...

This study examines the scientific interests and rationality which find expression in the quadrivial sources of the 9th to 11th centuries, arguing on this basis for the existence of a 'discovery of nature' already prior to the 12th century. It focuses on the theme of 'time', exemplified by Abbo of Fleury's Computus, as well as Hermann of Reichenau's Epistola de quantitate mensis lunaris, Abbreviatio compoti and Prognostica. The systematic and historical background of the study is established through analysis of Alcuin's De vera philosophia, Bede's De temporum ratione and the...

In modern linguistics one usually differentiates between content words or syncategorematic words and function words or categorematic words. But most people do not know that this differentiation does not have its roots in modern times. In fact it is one of the achievements of the Middle Ages. The tendency to classify words according their function in a sentence and as operators began to develop around the middle of the 12th century. Its probably most productive form was reached in tracts on syncategorematic words, which multiplied in the 13th century and constituted alongside the doctrine of...

Research on the medieval doctrine of the transcendentals is still characterized by one debate: its characteristic peculiarity vs. its structural correspondence to the modern concept of transcendentality. The present study on Peter Aureol's (+ 1322) doctrine of transcendentals offers a contribution to that discussion by delimiting from both directions: by developing Aureol's position in contrast to the contemporary position of a scotist-orientated, formalistic realism, it sheds light on the innovative traits in his doctrine. On the other hand, Aureol's logico-semantical revision of metaphysics...

The first full-length study of Robert Kilwardby's commentary on Aristotle's Prior Analytics, based on a study of the medieval manuscripts.

Absolute Beginners adopts a variety of approaches to study the Absolute as the ultimate source of knowledge in medieval philosophy. From a historical perspective, it examines a forerunner of Spinoza's departure from the Absolute in the Ethics: the doctrine of God as a first object in the generation of knowledge, as formulated by Henry of Ghent (+1293) and Richard Conington (+1330). Methodologically, it offers a case-study in the construction of an historical object, calling into question the self-evident and spontaneous way in which elements in the history of philosophy - its concepts...