“Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions: Structures of Being, World and Mind”
Taking place on the last two Wednesdays of May 2021 and the first two Wednesdays of June 2021
This event is made possible thanks to the support of
the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London,
the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin,
The Christian West and the Islamic East: Theology, Science and Knowledge project at the University of Missouri at St. Louis,
the DeWulf-Mansion Centre of the Institute of Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
the Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City, and
the Department of Philosophy at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
Event Program
For the Zoom link, register with Prof. Brett Yardley (brett.yardley@kuleuven.be)
For information on how to use Zoom, see the bottom of this page.
Conference Facilitators:
Dr Nicholas Oschman, University of Missouri at St Louis, & Prof. Brett Yardley, DeSales University, Center Valley, PA
Wednesday 19 May 2021
8:30 am – 8:45 US Central Time / 15h30 – 15h45 CET Zoom Connection Open
8:40 am US Central Time / 15h40 CET / 14h40 BST: A very short welcome by Richard Taylor.
8:45 – 10:45 1. Ismaili Thought: Between Neoplatonism and Aquinas
Speakers:
Farès Gillon (The Institute of Ismaili Studies, UK), “Spiritual Rebirth and Initiation: the pre-philosophical roots of al-Kirmanī’s ‘two perfections’” Abstract: According to the Fatimid philosopher al-Kirmānī (d. after 1021), beings have two “perfections”: the first is a potential perfection, obtained when they are created, while the second is an actualisation of their essence through acquisition of knowledge. In Ismaili context, such access to knowledge is provided by the spiritual hierarchy and, ultimately, by the Imām. Therefore, the second perfection is acquired via an initiatory process. This paper will discuss two earlier stages in Fatimid Ismaili thought that contributed to shaping and orienting al-Kirmānī’s doctrine, preceding what might be treated as the philosophical formulation of a pre-existing Ismaili initiatory doctrine. I will first present a selection of texts from Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman’s non-philosophical works, in which initiation and access to sacred knowledge are expressed through such concepts as “rebirth” (al-wilāda al-thāniya) and “the “second creation” (al-khalq al-jadīd or al-khalq al-thānī). Some of the works attributed to Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman are in fact later compositions that should be dated from the reign of the fourth Fatimid caliph, al-Muʿizz (953-975), during which philosophical concepts began to be introduced in the Fatimid doctrine. In one of these works, the Taʾwīl al-zakāt, we find another presentation of the initiatory doctrines. As I will argue, this work can be treated as an intermediary between the earlier non-philosophical elaborations and the later Kirmanian doctrine, since it uses a philosophical vocabulary to analyse the ‘two creations’ or ‘two breaths’.
Carmela Baffioni (The Institute of Ismaili Studies, UK), “Ismailism as a possible philosophical medium between East and West: the case of the Ikwān al-Ṣafā’” Abstract: Recent studies suggest that Spain was also the centre of diffusion in the Latin Middle Ages of esoteric philosophical doctrines originating in the Islamic East. One of the main sources of this process is identified in the epistles of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ and the Risāla al-Jāmi’a, the “Comprehensive Epistle” that is supposed to be the esoteric explanation of the encyclopaedia. These treatises reached al-Andalus through Maslama al-Majrīṭī, one of their alleged authors. The subject of my paper is the Risāla al-Jāmi’a. I will present some passages, in which the usual emanationist scheme of Neoplatonic origin is merged, or replaced, by another scheme where an important role is played by the divine Imperative (amr). Sometimes the Imperative, the Active Intellect and the Universal Soul are considered together with Qur’anic depictions such as the divine Throne and Pedestal, or the Preserved Table and the Calamus. Another important element in this framework is that of the divine Will, which has no reason to exist in the traditionally understood process of emanation. These texts, which do not always seem to be reconciled together, show how Muslim thinkers tried to mitigate Neoplatonic ideas to comply with religious requirements that are inescapable in Islam. Ismailism stands out in this attempt. In the Jāmi’a, in fact, some passages seem even to place the Active Intellect, and no longer God, at the beginning of the onto-cosmological process. It is hoped that these texts may be useful in the evaluation of “Eastern models” of creationist doctrines in the Latin Middle Ages. Handout Link
Cristina D’Ancona (Università di Pisa), “Intellect and the intellection of the human soul. An Aristotelian problem and two non-Aristotelian solutions in Arabic philosophy.” Abstract: Human intellection represents a well-known Aristotelian conundrum. On the one hand, it cannot happen without sense-perception, as stated in the De Anima and De Sensu et sensato; on the other, it cannot happen without a ποιητικόν which in the De Anima is described with the same features which in the Metaphysics characterize the Unmoved Mover. The admittedly unpalatable consequence is that while the human soul proceeds in and by itself from sense-perception to the abstraction of the forms and their storage in memory, if it has to intelligize it needs the Unmoved Mover. Alexander of Aphrodisias provided two accounts of Aristotle’s doctrine of intellection whose mutual relationship continues to be a subject of scholarly controversy; in both, however, the ποιητικόν is the Unmoved Mover. A reader of Aristotle and Alexander, Plotinus identified the principle which actualizes the soul’s potentiality to intelligize with the second principle of his own system: the divine νοῦς. While the non-Aristotelian nature of Plotinus’ solution is evident, less evident, still real, is the non-Aristotelian nature of at least some features of Alexander’s. In this paper I discuss the interaction of these three accounts, Aristotle’s, Alexander’s, and Plotinus’, in the formative period of Arabic philosophical thought. Handout Link
Janis Esots (The Institute of Ismaili Studies, UK), Chair and discussant
11:00 am – 1:30 pm 2. Metaphysics of Being in Aquinas and the Arabic Tradition
Speakers:
- Richard C. Taylor (Marquette University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), “The Liber de causis in the Metaphysics of Being in Aquinas” Abstract: It is well known that the most important metaphysical teaching of Aquinas — the distinction of essence and existence — was drawn from his study of the thought of Avicenna, or, more accurately, from the Latin Avicenna itself and/or from the Latin version of the Maqāṣid al-falāsifa of al-Ghazali widely thought to be a work of a follower of Avicenna. (This will be discussed by Prof. Twetten, our next speaker.) Aquinas, however, certainly did not follow Avicenna in all things metaphysical. Avicenna’s account of First Principle of all, built from the distinction of the necessary and the possible, leads by powerful reasoning to the Necessary Being (i) as necessary in itself and (ii) as the eternal direct cause of the first created intellect by the sole and singular act that the logic of necessity allows the unique Necessary Being. Not dependent on anything else, the Necessary Being without form or essence is the Perfect and the Good and is the ultimate cause of this best of all possible worlds. Though Aquinas follows Avicenna in holding that created things must be traced back to a cause of their necessity (scil., the famous Third Way: causa necessitatis aliis), he does not follow Avicenna on the per se nature of the Necessary Being and all that is entailed in Avicenna’s reasoning about its nature, for example, the eternity of the universe. (Still, see his dependence on Avicenna and the Liber de causis at In 2 Sent d.1, q.1, a.1-3.) Rather, in his De Ente et Essentia, ch. 4, he turns to the Liber de causis, chapter 8 (9), where Aquinas found the author of that work to write of the First Cause as esse tantum and yet — in a certain way — infinite form, with the individual nature of the Pure Good pouring forth goodnesses on all things. For Aquinas this Divine Nature is found in (ps.)Dionysius, On Divine Names, chapter 5, — in the Western interpretation of God as Being Itself — radiating first being and then perfections on all creatures. The linking of On Divine Names with the Liber de causis on the notion of being as the first created thing (LDC ch.4) was presented to Aquinas by his teacher Albert who also drew on Avicenna’s understanding of creation. This Aquinas learned during his years at Cologne where he assisted Albert as the Great German Domincan presented a full set of commentaries on the writings of (ps.)Dionysius. For both Albert and Thomas the truths of the writings of (ps.)Dionysius were explained by use of Avicenna (e.g., Aquinas, In 1 Sent., d.8, q.1, a.1, sol.) and the Liber de causis (Albert, Super Dionysius De Divinis Nominibus, cap. 5, p.314a, 315a, 316a, 322). In his selective use of the metaphysics of Avicenna and the Liber de causis, Aquinas drew on the Western interpretation of (ps.)Dionysius and formed his own metaphysical thought as something distinctively different from any of these sources. Handout Link
- David B. Twetten (Marquette University), “The Essence-Existence Distinction behind Aquinas: Avicenna as Turning Point” Abstract: One frequently hears that the “essence-existence real or extra-mental distinction” precedes Aquinas and results from the considerations of actuality and being in Plotinus, Porphyry and their heritage in Arabic or Latin philosophy. I consider some clear indications of “is” as “exists” in Greek philosophy, as well as the first use of “to einai” for existence as opposed to form. Nonetheless, I argue, it is impossible to ascertain a clear distinction between beings and their “actually being” or existence until two senses of “being” as a gerund are clearly distinguished: being as essence vs. being as existence. Of course we can find “is” and “being” as existence prior to Avicenna, but it is not clearly distinguished from the being of the subject of existing. Since this distinction in gerunds appears to be unknown prior to Avicenna, al-Šifāʾ Ilāhiyyāt 1.5, all previous texts that scholars read as containing the “essence-existence real distinction” must be considered as, at best, suggestive of such a distinction. Without Avicenna, the famous extra-mental distinction might never have emerged. By clarifying one sense of ‘being’ with actuality, Avicenna is also the primary source of Aquinas’ eventual characterization of esse as actuality.
- Damien Janos (Université de Montréal), “Tashkīk al-wujūd and the lawāzim in Avicenna’s Metaphysics” Abstract: I will examine the relation between the concomitants (lawāzim) and the notion of tashkīk in Avicenna’s metaphysics by focusing first on his ontology and then on his theology. Building on recent developments in the study of tashkīk al-wujūd, I will try to show that this notion lies at the very heart of Avicenna’s metaphysics and is in fact virtually interchangeable with the study of ‘the existent inasmuch as it is existent.’ I make the following points: modulation (tashkīk) extends not only to wujūd (the paradigmatic case), but to many other notions, including those subsumed under tashkīk al-wujūd that serve to modulate existence; these notions partially overlap with the concomitants, attributes, or accidents of existence or ‘the existent’ described in Ilāhiyyāt I.1–5, which are also modulated; these concomitants of existence in turn bear a close connection to the concomitants of the pure quiddity as described in Ilāhiyyāt V.1. Although there is a narrow interrelationship between tashkīk and the concomitants of wujūd and māhiyyah in Avicenna’s philosophy, it is only partial and relative. First, tashkīk also extends to notions expressing substantiality in the Avicennian corpus. Second, some of the notions included in tashkīk al-wujūd are apparently applied to the pure quiddities in an essential way in Ilāhiyyāt V.1. Third, even though tashkīk al-wujūd and tashkīk al-waḥdah presumably extend to God, they do not treat existence and oneness as concomitants of God’s essence, a view which should be attributed to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (and to some modern interpretations of Avicenna that are influenced by him). Rather, in that context tashkīk designates essential existence and essential oneness. Hence, there are special cases in Avicenna’s metaphysics where tashkīk is predicated essentially. So even though tashkīk al-wujūd (and tashkīk al-waḥdah) are transcendental, as Alexander Treiger suggested, they treat existence and oneness sometimes as concomitants (Avicenna’s ontology of contingent beings), other times as notions identified with the very essence of a thing (God, and perhaps the pure quiddities). This helps to explain three main trends that develop after Avicenna, but all find traction in his works: Rāzī systematically regards wujūd as an external lāzim, even in the case of God; Bahmanyār and Ṭūsī maintain the dual accidental and essential predication of tashkīk, but reserve the latter strictly for God; and Suhrawardī elaborates on Avicenna’s hints regarding the modulation of essence. Handout Link.
- Matteo DiGiovanni (Universita Degli Studi Di Torino), “Metaphysical Formalism vs Anti-Formalism: Historico-Philosophical Explorations from Averroes to Aquinas”. Abstract: The understanding of what is essence and of what constitutes the essence of humans is one of the issues where Thomas Aquinas attacks Averroes most fiercely. For Averroes, the human essence is identical with the human soul (“formalism”), whereas for Aquinas it includes the human body as humans are compounds of soul and body (“anti-formalism”). Aquinas’ presentation of Averroes has become the standard in scholarly parlance, but it requires drastic emendation, since it is both ill-founded and largely tributary to the distorting circumstances of Aquinas’ polemic against the Averroists. The Averroists’ error, as perceived by Aquinas, was to analyze humans as souls essentially devoid of matter, as such unfit for bodily resurrection. This theological and extra-philosophical concern for the dogma of resurrection is what leads Aquinas to analyze humans’ essence in terms of soul and body, albeit that the logical premises from which he moves are not different from Averroes’. In contrast to Aquinas’ theological standpoint, Averroes articulates his view in strict adherence to the demands of philosophical coherence. If the human body belongs in the human essence, the way Aquinas would have it, then it is simply impossible for it to be either separate or separable from the human soul within the same essence, and remain one in essence with it. The point is also implied in Averroes’ famous theory of forms’ “eduction” from matter, although “eduction” itself is open to a good deal of scholarly misunderstanding and it needs to be given new and careful consideration.
Wednesday 26 May 2021
8:30 am – 8:45 US Central Time / 15h30 – 15h45 CET Zoom Connection Open
8:45 – 10:45 3. New Readings of Avicenna
Speakers:
- Rosabel Pauline Ansari (SUNY Stony Brook), “Tashkīk as an Epistemological Problem” Abstract: Pros hen homonymy was developed in the Arabic tradition as predication with “tashkik“, a term literally translated as “ambiguity” but now commonly accepted as “modulation”. Although scholarship on tashkik has focussed on a metaphysical interpretation of the theory, in this paper I draw attention to the importance of the literal meaning of tashkik as ‘ambiguity’, or ‘doubt inducing’. I argue that metaphysical implications notwithstanding, pros hen homonyms such as ‘being’ were labelled ‘ambiguous’ or ‘doubt-inducing’ in Arabic precisely because of the logical and epistemological issues they raise. If these terms are predicated neither fully synonymously nor fully homonymously, how do we ensure they are understood correctly? Handout
- Catherine Peters (Loyola Marymount University), “The Causality of ‘Nature’ in Avicenna’s Physics of the Healing” Abstract: In this study, I question the dominant interpretation of “nature” as a cause in Avicenna’s Physics of the Healing. While it is true that he defines “nature” as a kind of efficient cause (that is, a “power”), he does so only after establishing that matter and form are the two per se principles of nature. He then explains how “nature” is said of both matter and form, but primarily form inasmuch as form is the principle of actuality. The definition of nature as a “power” must, I argue, be taken within its context of matter and form. Read this way, the causality of nature in the Physics of the Healing is not only efficient but formal and material as well. Outline
- Billy Dunaway (University of Missouri, St. Louis), “Necessary Existent Theology” Abstract: In “Metatheology and the Ontology of Divinity”, Jon Kvanvig outlines the project of “meta-theology”: this is a project which begins with a single, fundamental claim about God, and derives other standard theological claims from the fundamental claim. For example: a proponent of “Perfect Being Theology” begins with the fundamental claim that God is the most perfect being, and then derive from this fundamental claim that God is all-powerful, on the grounds that anything that is less than all-powerful would fail to be the most perfect being. In general, while an ordinary theology articulates the claims that are true of God, a meta-theological project structures the theological truths, by identifying one claim as fundamental, and others as non-fundamental, or derived, truths. In addition to Perfect Being Theology, Kvanvig lists two additional meta-theologies: “Creator Theology”, and “Worship-worthiness Theology”. In this paper I argue that there is a fourth candidate that Kvanvig fails to consider, and that it is a view which can be attributed to Avicenna. I call the view “Necessary Existent Theology”, and argue that not only did Avicenna hold that God is the necessary existent in itself, he moreover gives this claim a role that is characteristic of the fundamental claim in a meta-theology.
- Commentator: Jon McGinnis (University of Missouri, St. Louis)
11:00 am – 1:30 pm 4. The Nature of the “Intellect that Becomes All”
Speakers:
Inna Kupreeva (University of Edinburgh), “Alexander of Aphrodisias on Intellect and Intelligibles: the concept of ἕξις in De anima and De intellectu” Abstract: In this paper I consider the way in which the concept ofdisposition (hexis) is used in Alexander’s De intellectu and in his De anima, discuss the differences and similarities and conclude that it is possible to see the De intellectu 110,4-113,12 (sections [B1], [B2], [C1] Sharples) as a report of a Peripatetic position with which Alexander disagrees at some important points and whose drawbacks he aims to amend when designing his account of the intellect in disposition (nous kath’hexin). In particular, it is possible to track the transition from the meaning of hexis as a ‘state, like light’ (De anima 3.5, 430a15) in the early Peripatetic account to the meaning of ‘stable disposition’ (closer to the one used in EN 2.5) in the De anima. Accordingly, Alexander replaces the early Peripatetic account of the causal role of the divine intellect as an auxiliary (sunergos) cause with a more complex metaphysical account which is powerful enough to explain the stable disposition which human intellect acquires and develops. Handout
Stephen Ogden (The Catholic University of America), “A Lot of Potential: Averroes’ Material Intellect” Abstract: Averroes’ unique doctrine of the single ‘Material’ Intellect for all human beings is well known. Much of the focus has fallen on the transcendence, immateriality, and eternal substantiality of this one Material / Potential Intellect (MPI). Yet, this can obscure the utter strangeness and proper understanding of the MPI’s potentiality with respect to all intelligible forms. This potentiality renders the MPI decidedly un-intellectual and radically more mundane in comparison with other separate intellects. Examining some further features of the potential nature of Averroes’s MPI (e.g., its dependence on temporal images and its lack of direct self-intellection), I propose this is the balance Averroes came to adopt alongside his growing Platonist tendencies towards intelligible transcendence.
Therese Cory (Notre Dame), “The Problem of the “Determinate Nature” of the Possible Intellect in Albert and Aquinas” Abstract: What exactly is the metaphysical status of possible intellect? Aquinas describes human knowing in strongly metaphysical language. He is continually comparing the human possible intellect to prime matter, and yet it also seems to be a cognitive power. In this paper, I examine one window into this problem, which is the question of whether the possible intellect has its own “determinate nature” or not. The question is raised by both Albert and Aquinas, and is linked in puzzling ways to a criticism of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s “materialism” concerning the possible intellect. I examine what both Albert and Aquinas say about the “determinate nature” of the possible intellect, and make some preliminary suggestions about the significance. Handout
Commentator: Richard Taylor (Marquette University & KULeuven)
Wednesday 2 June 2021
8:30 am – 8:45 US Central Time / 15h30 – 15h45 CET Zoom Connection Open
8:45 am– 10:45 5. Intellectual Felicity and Conjunction with the Agent Intellect in Greek, Arabic, and Medieval Latin Philosophy and Theology
Speakers:
- Michael Chase (CNRS, Paris), “Porphyry on ittiḥād: New Materials from the Muqābasāt of al-Tawḥidī” Abstract: Argues that additional materials from the Muqābasāt of al-Tawḥīdī should be attributed to the “Essay by Porphyry on the soul” (Porphyry, fr. 436F Smith), preserved only in Arabic. These materials contain indications of doctrines on the origin, nature and function of the union (ittiḥād) between the human soul and the divine Agent Intellect that are unattested in Porphyry’s extant Greek works, but may help to shed light on Avicenna’s hitherto unexplained violent reaction to and dismissal of Porphyrian noetics. Handout Link
- Tracy Wietecha (Post doctoral fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin), “Intellectual Perfection and Albert the Great’s Ethica” Abstract: In 1262 during a stay in Orvieto Italy, Albert the Great (1200-1280) wrote a second commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In this commentary, Albert presents his mature view of the science of ethics as an ethics of perfection. Albert’s preference for speaking of the end goal of ethics as perfection in Ethica aligns his mature work in the moral science with a greater project he had committed himself to many years prior – commenting on the Aristotelian natural sciences of living beings, a project which he began in 1251 with his Commentary on the Physics. Through this commentary project, Albert advances the goal of perfectio as the self-perfective telos of the human being. Through an ordered study of the Aristotelian natural sciences of living beings, one is able to reach the telos of perfectio of the fully actualized human nature in the acquired intellect. In looking at three attributes of acquired intellect, I argue that the defining moment of Albert’s mature account is the attribute of self-reflexivity in the acquired intellect by which one knows one’s self in relation to one’s scientific knowledge. The science of ethics is thus an ethics of perfection which is why Albert holds that it should be studied at the end of the philosophical curriculum after metaphysics. Handout link
- Luis Xavier López-Farjeat (Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City), “Albert the Great’s Use of Averroes in His Digressions on the Knowledge of Intelligible Forms (De anima III.3.8–11)” Abstract: As is well known, Aristotle’s De anima 3.5 led to an intense interpretive debate. Albert the Great is one of the many philosophers participating in the discussion. He deals with the clarification of human intellectual knowledge in several works engaging always in an active and critical dialogue with Greek and Arabic Peripatetic sources (Alexander, Themistius, Theophrastus, Alfarabi, Avempace, Algazel, Avicenna, and Averroes). In most of the works where Albert deals with human intellectual knowledge, he explicitly manifests his disagreement with Alfarabi, Avempace, Algazel, and Avicenna, concerning their doctrines on the intellect. The main reason for this disagreement is that these ‘Arabs’ conceived the agent intellect as something separated from the human soul connecting, thus, the natural human intellectual knowledge with a separate, immortal, and eternal substance, that needs to be understood from an ontological perspective In this paper I shall reconstruct Albert’s argumentation in his De anima III.3.8-11, and highlight the philosophical reasoning on the basis of which he thinks that the doctrines of the intellect of the Arab Peripatetics are unable to provide proper solutions concerning human intellectual knowledge. I then show that Albert follows Averroes’s criticism quite closely to the extent that, inDe anima III.3.11, he solves the problem of how we know intelligible forms by ‘imitating’ some aspects of Averroes’s teachings on the intellect. Given that Albert was aware of how problematic Averroes’s position is, De anima III.3.11 needs some clarification: to what extent is Albert following Averroes and in which aspects does he depart from the Cordoban? Handout Link
- Commentator: Sajjad Rizvi (University of Exeter)
11:00 am – 1:30 pm 6. Medieval and Renaissance Testimony on When to Trust Authority
Speakers:
- Brett Yardley (DeSales University, Center Valley, PA), “Virtuous and Vicious Trust in Epistemic Authority” Abstract: Contemporary theories approach testimony as evidence or as “assurance” by a speaker requiring a presumption of trust or as a reliable intellectual faculty or virtue. However, historic accounts do not treat testimony as evidence and rarely treat such an epistemic entitlement to trust positively nor cleanly differentiate between intellectual and moral virtues. Instead of arguing trust is an intellectual virtue, I propose that the intellectual aspect of the historic virtue autonomy is most responsible for testimonial knowledge. I argue that intellectual autonomy and trust are inversely related in one’s interactions with authority (both practical and theoretical). In being too intellectually autonomous, thinkers do not trust enough and undercut their end of knowledge acquisition. In not being intellectually autonomous enough, thinkers trust too much making them susceptible to lies and manipulation which likewise undercuts knowledge acquisition. Intellectual autonomy must be developed to know who and when to virtuously trust others for knowledge.
- Nicholas Oschman (University of Missouri at St. Louis), “Taqlīd and the Fārābīan Tradition” Abstract: The emergence of Greek philosophy in the Lands of Islam, and with it the logical sciences and, in particular, demonstration, presaged an eventual confrontation regarding the proper method for acquiring truth. Early Muslim philosophers adopted different strategies to reconcile the testimonial authority of special revelation with the writings of Aristotle. Al-Kindī argued that philosophy and revelation were simply two distinct methods for finding truth. Abū Bakr al-Rāzī rejected the testimonial authority of prophecy wholesale, and with it taqlīd, the unreflective imitation or acceptance of revelation. But after al-Rāzī’s denigration of taqlīd, a unique rejection of the value of taqlīd, except insofar as it has political utility, emerged in the thought of al-Fārābī and his successors. Special revelation, and with it the epistemic value of taqlīd and testimony writ large, at least concerning universal theoretical truths, was relegated as valuable only to those incapable of genuine knowledge, i.e., demonstrative knowledge. As a result, taqlīd and reliance upon testimony has no place in the philosophical life, but it does have a place in political life. In this talk, I will endeavor to explore the reasoning behind this tradition’s stark rejection of taqlīd, even while it co-opts taqlīd for political usage, while highlighting some valuable texts which best characterize these thinkers’ views. Handout Link
- Andrea Robiglio (Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven), “Beware of yourself! Dante on the measure of trust” Abstract: An epistemic virtue appears to be intimately connected with the problems of insight, knowledge and certainty according to Dante Alighieri. It concerns the very notion of self-limiting knowledge and emerges especially throughout Dante’s reading of the Pauline epistles. Human knowledge is per se finite and therefore limited; moreover, the human ‘will to know’ needs to set a further, ‘intrinsic measure’ and see it as a condition for any reliable knowledge. This brings Dante closer to a position of ‘Orthodox skepticism’ entailing, for instance, the self-restraint in ‘curiosity’. It seems fair to make a claim that Dante argued for the will not to know. By exploring notions like ‘trust’, ‘recognition’, and ‘epistemic authority’, I shall try to reach a determination of 1) how the right measure of trust might be grasped and judiciously applied and 2) what are the consequences of such a conception for the understanding of the notions of ‘insight’, ‘vision’, and ‘reliable knowledge’.
- Commentator: Katja Krause (MPIWG, TU Berlin)
Wednesday 9 June 2021
8:30 am – 8:45 US Central Time / 15h30 – 15h45 CET Zoom Connection Open
8:45 am – 10:15 7. “Nature, Intellect and Imagination: Configurations and Representations in Arabic Anthropology and Cosmology”
Speakers
- (Withdrawn due to an unexpected family matter) Cristina Cerami (CNRS, Paris), “Alexander, Avicenna and Averroes on mixis: sources and stakes of a more than medieval controversy” Abstract: Recent studies have succeeded in showing the importance of the notion of mixing in the natural philosophy of the Peripatetic tradition, both in the Greek and Arabic world. Not clearly systematised by Aristotle himself, mixing becomes a crucial notion for all Greek and Arabic readers of Aristotle’s physics. Alexander of Aphrodisias (2nd century CE) devoted a treatise to this very subject, ultimately intended to dismiss Stoics’ physics. Avicenna makes mixing a pivotal stage in his ontology of the sensible world. Averroes places it at the very heart of his conception of natural substance. This presentation aims to outline the main stages of this process of reworking of Aristotle’s physics and, in this context, to highlight the role of the famous Greek physician, Galen (2nd century CE).
- Beate Ulrike La Sala (Freie Universität, Berlin), “Cosmology and Psychological Concepts in Ibn as-Sīd al-Baṭalyausī’s Kitāb al-Ḥadāi’q” Abstract: The intellectual project of the Arabic-Islamic Andalusian thinker Ibn as-Sīd al-Baṭalyausī, a contemporary of Ibn Bāǧǧa, proved to be decisive for the intellectual tradition of Andalusia, including the works of Ibn Rushd. Nevertheless, his works still remain less intensively studied than the philosophical accounts of other authors of the same period. This presentation concentrates on his major philosophical text, the Kitāb al-Ḥadāi’q, analyzing the way in which cosmology and psychology are narrowly intertwined in the theory of the soul deliberated by the author in this book.
- Adam Takahashi (Toyo University, Tokyo), “God, Celestial Soul and Providence: Thomas Aquinas’ De caelo et mundo and His Use of Greek and Arabic Commentators” Abstract: Thomas Aquinas’ De caelo et mundo (a commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens) is one of his last writings and is considered to be the “high water mark” of his entire career. While the importance of this treatise seems to be acknowledged by historians, it has rarely been subject to in-depth doctrinal analysis, with the exception of Thomas Litt’s monumental work Les corps célestes dans l’univers de saint Thomas d’Aquin. To fill this lacuna I would like to examine how Aquinas developed his cosmological ideas in this treatise, by addressing his use or appropriation of the late ancient Greek and Arabic Aristotelian commentators: Alexander of Aphrodisias, Simplicius and Averroes. Aquinas, like other medieval thinkers, held Aristotle’s On the Heavens to be a very controversial work. For in this treatise the Stagirite presented philosophical arguments that are not only incompatible with Christian dogma, such as the eternity of the world, but are also different from his own ideas put forth in his other works. Among the discrepancies between Aristotle’s works, a key issue that sparked intense debate among commentators is the nature of the first principle of the universe and its relation to the natural world. In the Metaphysics Aristotle explained the principle of celestial motion by appealing to the idea of a transcendent unmoved mover separated from celestial bodies. But in On the Heavens, instead of referring to an unmoved mover, he argued that the heavenly bodies can carry out their circular motion by their own natures, traditionally identified with their souls. Furthermore, in contrast to the unmoved mover, which does not attend to anything other than itself, the celestial deities described in On the Heavens play an active role in maintaining and organizing the order of the natural world.Keeping in mind these controversial issues surrounding On the Heavens, I would like to focus on Aquinas’ account of the nature of celestial bodies and celestial influence. Aquinas acknowledges, at least in his commentary on this treatise, that celestial bodies have their own souls, and that their influence on the inferior world amounts to a sort of divine providence. Although these pagan cosmological ideas have often been traced to his reception of Greek and Arabic astrological tradition, I would like to show that Aquinas developed these ideas by appropriating the works of the Aristotelian commentators mentioned above.
- Commentator: Olga Lizzini (Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence)
10:15 am – 11:15 am Concluding Open Discussion
11:15 am Farewell, and
NEWLY ADDED OPTION: 11:15 am Welcome to Post-Conference Wine Reception (BYOW: Bring your own wine, beer, tea or coffee) Opportunity for further discussion!
Organized by Janis Esots, Katja Krause, Luis X. López-Farjeat, and Richard C. Taylor, with invaluable assistance by Prof. Brett Yardley and Dr. Nicholas Oschman.