Saturday, February 20, 2016

Umberto Eco: RIP

See Hurtado's blog for some ruminations.

Ashworth on Analogy

Here:

"Despite the vast modern literature devoted to Aquinas's theory of analogy, he has very little to say about analogy as such."

Discuss

Friday, February 19, 2016

Another Review of Brad Gregory

Rather late in the game, a new review of Brad Gregory's Unintended Reformation has appeared, here, by Michael Horton.

He is quite dismissive of the Scotus Myth, even mentioning the names of scholars that actually know things about Scotus (!!!).

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

New Volume of the Scotus Opera omnia Released!

Announced here.

Available for 215 euros, here.

Note it is the first of two volumes of indices,  not texts.

Here is the google-translated announcement:

The first volume of indices, the XV.1 the Vatican series, collects onomastici indexes, bibliographic, of direct and indirect sources of all the volumes of the Ordinatio and the Lectura, as well as the full list of parallel loci of the two works and a concordance updated edition of the Vatican and that of the Wadding-Vives. More than a simple collection of the indexes already appeared in the individual volumes, it is a real reprocessing of those data. A meticulous work was made, first of all, necessary to even out the inevitable methodological inconsistencies within the indexes of the individual volumes published so far, and this extensive revision is also an opportunity for many additions and corrections. The indices have also been updated keeping in mind the publication over the years of numerous critical editions of many scotiane sources. Thus, for example, for all citations of Augustine's works we are now the reference to the three most famous editions: the Corpus Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL); the Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (CCSL) and the Patrologia Latina (PL), while in the first volume there was limited only to Patrologia Latina; while quotations of the works of Aristotle has been added, where absent, the reference all'Aristoteles latinus, in addition to those already present all'incunabolo published in Venice in 1483, to that edition Iuntina of 1562 and, of course, to Bekker . The same principle has been clearly adopted for all authors.

The book is thus composed of 546 pages of material that, for printing needs, has a typographical body slightly lower than that of other volumes, but thanks to which it is now possible to search the entire work of the Ordinatio and the Lectura as well from a single reference.

All material is preceded by an introduction of some forty pages, which has a triple ambition. First, it constitutes, as is natural, a true to the book's introduction in which you seek to clarify, through examples, the criteria used in the indexing of the sources, in the hope of helping the reader to become familiar with the system of citations. Beyond that, it is, if not primarily, a sort of conclusion to the Commentary on Book IV, which had been published without his editorial annotations. And finally, from these considerations on the Commentary on Book IV are of course also sprung more general considerations on the entire work which, although modest, can be regarded as conclusive.

For these reasons, in this introduction, it was considered useful to offer also the complete list and ordered the manuscripts and editions that have been used for the edition of each volume, clarifying, through a pattern, distribution and use in comment by Scotus to several books Ordinatio is that the Lectura. The codes have been grouped, according to the criterion that led all the work in accordance with their "classes", or the breakdown by key families, and their "reviews", ie according to their greater or lesser harmony with the code in the famous code 137 of the Municipal Library of Assisi, considered by publishers the closest version to unfortunately lost Liber Scotus, which regularly reports on the margin any abnormalities.

Another issue on which we focused in this introduction is that the external and internal evidence proving the authenticity of the work and, in particular, the Commentary on Book IV. It refers here, in particular, to those marginal notes or to those internal textual references that, referring to other parts of the Commentary, in addition to certify the authenticity, also sufficient to enable a work internal chronology.

Monday, February 15, 2016

New Grosseteste Edition

An important new edition of Grosseteste has come out, his commentary on pseudo-Dionysius' De caelesti hierarchia. Available here. For a cool 210,00 euro (!)

I've already added it to the notes of my edition of Petrus Thomae's De ente. (yes, Scotists read Grosseteste and ps.-Dionysius: Mayronis wrote commentaries on the Dionysian corpus).

This edition was begun in the 60's as a dissertation, and handed on to several generations of scholars being published only in 2015. What I found utterly shocking was the mention that McEvoy taught in a department of "Scholastic Philosophy", which eventually closed, perhaps in the 70's. Such bygone times I can't conceive of them, or even imagine what it would be like to be part of a mainstream movement (even if only in the Catholic world).

One nice thing about this edition is that they have retained the internal divisions of the text as it was read in the middle ages. Maybe this wasn't an issue since it is a medieval book. I'm thinking here of the Aristoteles Latinus and Avicenna Latinus editions, which do not report the medieval chapter and book divisions, only Bekker's. This makes it difficult to actually find anything with medieval citation practices (aside from sitting down and reading it straight through, of course). This I find stupid because scholars who work on Aristotle and Avicenna read their works in the original language and pay no attention to medieval translations. And rightly so. These editions are only going to be used by people working on medieval latin material, but the editors have made it more difficult for us on purpose! But, again, happily this is not the case for the volume under discussion here.

Anyway, buy this book and read it:

Corpus Christianorum


Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (CCCM 268)

Robertus Grosseteste

Versio Caelestis Hierarchiae Pseudo-Dionysii Areopagitae cum scholiis ex Graeco sumptis necnon commentariis notulisque eiusdem Lincolniensis

D. A. Lawell (ed.)


XLII+330 p., 155 x 245 mm, 2015

ISBN: 978-2-503-55593-5

Languages: Latin, English

Hardback

The publication is available.

Retail price: EUR 210,00 excl. tax





Robert Grosseteste's translation of and commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius.


This volume contains Robert Grosseteste's translation of the Pseudo-Dionysius's Celestial Hierarchy. The Latin text is accompanied by Grosseteste's translation of the Greek scholia as well as his commentary and notes made on the Celestial Hierarchy and scholia. Grosseteste's work presents another insight into the renaissance of Dionysian studies which took place in the thirteenth century, as witnessed by commentators on the Areopagite such as Aquinas, Albert and Thomas Gallus. Grosseteste's commentary is greatly informed by his command of the Greek language which resulted in not only a detailed philological understanding of the Greek but also in a rich interpretation of the mind of Dionysius.


Declan Lawell is a Teacher of Latin in Liverpool. He has already published volumes by Thomas Gallus in the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis series.

Friday, February 12, 2016

Cross on Scotus on Faith and Reason

From Richard Cross, "Fides et Ratio: The Harmony of Philosophy and Theology in Duns Scotus," Antonianum 83 (2008), 589-602.

This article was a response to Benedict XVI's Regensburg address. Benedect has said something to the effect of voluntarism and maybe nominalism arose with Scotus and led to bad modern things and was similar to Islamic voluntarism. My interest in posting the following excerpt is in Cross pointing out that Scotus treats arguments.


"...as I have suggested in a different context, scholastic writers are not doxographers; they offer arguments for the theories they adopt. so here, even if the proposed account of Scotus were accurate, it is not sufficient simply to disagree with the position ascribed to Scotus. Scotus presents arguments - he does not adopt positions just to be perverse - and any intellectually principled engagement with his views would need to consider as well the arguments he proposes in favor of his conclusions."