Anselms Quest and an Opposed Subjectivity
Anselm tells us that the Proslogion was undertaken because he wanted an argument for the existence and nature of God which conformed to the divine nature. He was dissatisfied with the form of the Monologion which he characterized as a concatenation of many arguments woven together. He wanted, instead, unum argumentum which by its own simplicity and self-sufficiency imaged the divine self-sufficient unity Anselm 1946, Prooemium, p. 93, lines 5-7 . The quest for a thinking which conforms in this...
Sarah Pessin Introduction
Avicenna is subject to a variety of well-known criticisms, perhaps most famously that he made of existence an accident.2 Rahman and others have, I think convincingly, argued that in fact, Avicenna does not literally treat existence as an accident.3 However, there seems to remain in both Avicenna and Aquinas scholarship the residual sense that even if he did not literally mean to make of existence an accident Avicenna does resort to invoking a misleading 'essence existence' image, if you will.4...
Contents
Introduction Towards a Balanced Historiography of Medieval Philosophy 1 Medieval Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition 17 2 A Philosophical Odyssey Ghazz li's Intentions of the Philosophers 30 3 The Relationship between Averroes and al-Ghaz ll as it presents itself 42 in Averroes' Early Writings, especially in his Commentary on al-Ghaz ll's al-Musta f 4 Al-Ghazali and Halevi on Philosophy and the Philosophers 54 5 Projection and Time in Proclus 70 6 Forms of Knowledge in the Arabic...
Porphyry and Learned Ignorance in AP
We have now seen the philosophical motivation for the doctrine of learned ignorance in AP. It falls into a general pattern of thought on the Adaptor's part in which he uses terms implying deprivation in order to express transcendence. Let us, then, turn to the question of the sources of the doctrine of ignorance as used by the Adaptor. I argued above that a major source for his defense of the doctrine was Aristotelian, but that Aristotle was not the entire inspiration for the passage in the...
CHAPTER SIX Forms of Knowledge in the Arabic Plotinus
The theme of docta ignorantia, a learned ignorance or an ignorance that transcends knowledge, is a familiar one to students of Neoplatonism. It is perhaps most closely associated with the 15th century philosopher Nicholas of Cusa, but of course appears much earlier in the Neoplatonic tradition. Among these earlier appearances is the discussion of a knowledge beyond knowledge and ignorance gnosin exo gnoseos kai agnoias in a fragment of the Commentary on the Parmenides attributed to Porphyry...
Preexistence and the Aristotelian Defense of Avicennian Ontology
Without spending too much time rehearsing Rahman's defense of Avicenna against the reading of those who take Avicenna to have made of 'existence' an accident, it should be noted that it is a very Aristotelian defense of Avicenna. In brief, this defense has the effect of reducing Avicenna's claims about essences and existences to claims about Aristotelian ousiai the substantial existents of Aristotle's ontology.7 In effect, Rahman and others argue that Avicenna does not mean by 'existence' an...
Notes 1
Al-Farabi. 1985. Al-Farabi on the Perfect State. Abu Nasr af-Forabi's Mjbadt' Ara'Ahlal-Madina al-Fadila The principles of the Opinions of the Virtuous City . Edited and Translated by R.Walzer. Oxford. The Clarendon Press. --. 1969. Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Translated by M.Mahdi. Ithaca, N.Y. --. 1964. Kitab al-Siyasa al-Madaniyya The Political Regime . Edited by F.Najjar. Beirut Imprimerie Catholique. Translated partially by F.Najjar. 1963. In Medieval Political Philosophy...
Notes Jdg
1 For literature see Hankey 1999a Charles-Saget 1998 Putallaz 1991a Putallaz 1991b are 2 Hankey 1998a, Hankey 1999a and Hankey 1999b are endeavours to expose the problems and 3 Hankey 1998c attempts part of this work. 5 For a fuller consideration of how these structures meet in Latin Christianity see Hankey 6 Boethius 1998, 9 225.10ff, where the question of prayer is not raised. 7 Porphyry 1975 c.10 All things are in all things, but everything is accommodated to the ousia of each knower in the...
Plenitude and the World of Becoming Proclus Simplicius
The question arises why this suspended, constant and eternal outflow from God or, in truth, from the One, for the God of Avicenna is the God of the Neoplatonists. The answer, in short, is Providence. The One is good by nature, and so its self-realization necessarily lies in the overflowing of being to its greatest possible extent. In Plotinus and in Neoplatonist thought ever onwards we find the idea of maximal creation revitalized the principle of Plenitude in the sense Lovejoy deemed most...
The Volume
The claim here is that we need more cross-pollination in the study of medieval thought than occurs at present and especially in the histories that do so much to establish and maintain the boundaries of the discipline. The present work is an attempt to move in this direction. As the Islamic philosophical tradition was the privileged site for the study and continuation of the Classical philosophical tradition in the Middle Ages, due attention is given to this tradition. An initial chapter on the...
Introduction Jwd
Although there are disagreements about the details, commentators on the Confessions seem to agree that Augustine had various mystical experiences of a roughly Plotinian sort before his conversion to Christianity, and that his vision at Ostia was the same sort of experience, although considerably changed by his Christianity. Mandouze, for example, says that there was no difference in nature at all between the Milan ascent of 7.17.23 and the Ostia ascent of 9.10.24-25 Mandouze 1968, 697 . And...
James Lowry Proclus
This chapter is an examination of certain parts of the philosophy of Proclus. Its aim is to clarify in what manner Proclus is a systematic thinker. The notion of philosophical system which comes to mind from a contemporary standpoint is not the notion which Proclus had, and any interpretation of Proclus from a later standpoint is bound to fail. Proclus' notion of philosophical system, moreover, is important for the interpretation of all medieval philosophy, because the Greek Neoplatonic...
Time as a Moving Image of Eternity
In what manner is Time a moving image of Eternity Proclus tells us that Eternity measures the intelligible, as a unity, while Time measures the things which are in becoming, as numbered. Eternity is a measure in the sense that the multiplicity of intelligibles in the autozoon are all beings, and as such they are all expressions of the unity which is the One-Being. Eternity is the principle which brings them forth into a permanent existence, and leads them back beyond itself to the One-Being,...
History of Understanding The Intentions of the Philosophers
It was just before his departure from Baghdad that Ghazzali began the Intentions of the Philosophers,4 a book apparently composed at the request of his students. In it, Ghazzali provides a systematic exposition of the philosophical sciences with a distinctly Aristotelian angle. The Intentions, an expression of his two years of personal study,5 is a clear and careful work, reflecting the philosophical tradition of al-Farabi d. 339 950 and Ibn Sina Avicenna 428 1037 , whom Ghazzali considered the...
Conclusion
The consequences of this conception of dianoia for Proclus' systematic philosophy cannot be ignored. Being and thought for Proclus are dynamic, from the highest to the lowest levels of Being. His system traces the motion of a single power which begins from absolute unity and divides itself in a dynamic remaining, procession, and return. In this process Being itself is articulated, and brought to birth. Each successive level is the same as its prior insofar as it is similar and an image, but it...
Info Hco
When preparing myself to write about medieval Islamic philosophy and the classical tradition, I felt a touch of anxiety a fear that I would be belaboring the obvious.1 For medieval Islamic philosophy, as we know it, was a direct result of the translations of Greek philosophy and science to Arabic. It is rooted in Greek philosophy. I also felt some discomfort with the term medieval, a chronological and cultural term commonly applied to European history. To what extent and in what sense can it...