Thursday, December 24, 2020

Mayronis on the Analogy of Being

 Just in time for Christmas I have uploaded a fresh collation of Mayronis' Conflatus q. 12, the question on analogy, to the Digital Conflatus. There is some interesting annotation identifying the opinions of the Scotists, Thomists, Artists, and Aureolists, though the content of the question is not terribly exciting. Mayronis rejects analogy at least for the purposes of philosophy and theology (whether he accepts 'real' analogy remains to be seen). The basic reason is how he classifies analogy, which he does by placing it under equivocity, like Boethius and most of the Latin tradition.

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Latin Help from Robert Pasnau

 Bob Pasnau reviews a book aimed at helping people move from reading classical Latin to Medieval Latin, and adds some helpful discussion of his own, here.

New Book on the Analogia entis

 Several Italian scholars have put together an anthology of texts, available for free here. It has the original language plus Italian translations and introductions to the texts. but they are all important, from Aristotle, the Greek commentators on Aristotle, Avicenna and Averroes, Aquinas, Scotus, Eckhart and Cajetan. The volum jumpts from Eckhart to Cajetan, omitting the author who wrote the most about analogy, in the middle ages, at least, Petrus Thomae. An odd omission, since there was a section in the companion volume on Peter Thomae by Porro. Also, Alexander of Alexandria has a fair bit on analogy in his commentary on the Metaphysics. But enjoy what we have.

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

New Scotus essay

 Scotus seems to be in danger of becoming more mainstream. I came across the announcement of a forthcoming article in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly today, abstract is below.


Yul Kim
Why Does the Wood Not Ignite Itself? Duns Scotus’s Defense of the Will’s Self-Motion
The goal of this paper is to analyze the response of John Duns Scotus to Godfrey of Fontaines’s argument against Henry of Ghent’s theory of the will’s self-motion. Godfrey’s argument is that, if the object is assumed to be causa sine qua non and the efficient causality is totally attributed to the will in the act of volition, it would also follow that not only the will’s motion but every motion in nature, such as, for example, the igniting of wood, is a self-motion. In this paper, I will explain that Scotus’s refutation of this argument in Reportatio II, d. 25 is based on his reflection upon the general possibility of self-motion as well as upon the indeterminacy of the will’s act. In doing so, I will show that the development of Scotus’s theory of the will’s motion is closely related to his universalized theory of self-motion.