Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale

In this paper I discuss Siger of Brabant’s anti-deterministic argument as developed in De necessitate et contingentia causarum. First, I offer an in-depth reconstruction of how Siger justifi es the contingency of effects in nature: the contingent status of an effect depends only on (the contingent status of) its proximate cause, and not on the First Cause. According to Siger, the First Cause, which is understood as a necessary cause, only determines the necessity of its immediate effect. I, then show that such an account runs into an impasse: it is, in fact, impossible to justify how there can be contingent (i.e., impedible) secondary causes in the chain of causes, once it has been assumed that the First Cause is a necessary (i.e., nonimpedible) cause which immediately produces a necessary effect.

The present contribution focuses on Harclay’s Parisian Commentary on the Sentences and is divided into two sections. The fi rst section (§1) is devoted to the attribution to Harclay of a Commentary on the second book of the Sentences, a controversial issue among scholars for decades. In this fi rst section, after having reconstructed in more detail the status quaestionis about the attribution of the Commentary contained in the ms. BAV, Borgh. 346, I will present new evidence in support of its attribution to Henry of Harclay. The second section (§2) is devoted to an analysis of the manuscript tradition of Harclay’s Commentary, shedding light in particular on its indirect tradition, which is indispensable – as we shall see – for any editorial project. This section also contains an editorial Appendix with the text of Harclay’s Sent. II d. 12 q. 1, in which the Author provides his point of view on the topic of prime matter. This appendix is preceded by a brief analysis of the philosophical contents of the question.

Walter Chatton’s Reportatio has been dated to 1322-23, possibly at London, and his Lectura either as a revision of bachelor lectures given earlier at Oxford, or given after 1323. Stephen Brown has shown that material in Chatton’s Lectura dates to 1323-1324 when Chatton and Ockham were disputing in the same place, presumably London, before Ockham left England forever. The present article shows how arguments dating to one place and time can be used in a later work, and should not be used to date that work.

In 1972, Kurt Flasch broke new ground with his contentious thesis that Dietrich von Freiberg, as early as 1300, had formulated a theory of productive subjectivity. Flasch argues that Dietrich recognized the object-constituting function of the mind conceived in transcendental terms, much in the same vein as Immanuel Kant’s so-called Copernican Revolution. Despite the ongoing controversy surrounding this thesis, Kant has been noticeably neglected in the relevant scholarly discussion. The following paper will address this oversight through a comparative analysis of Dietrich’s and Kant’s theories on mental constitution and intellect. While there are general similarities between the two philosophers, closer inspection reveals critical discrepancies in their core theoretical constructs. Additionally, their respective methodologies are fundamentally incompatible. Dietrich’s approach does offer a reorientation in medieval thinking, yet its underpinnings of metaphysics and theocentricism clash with the experimental nature of Kant’s transcendental refl ections.

Recent scholarship has focused on the notion of ‘rationality’ and the consequences of different conceptions to the characterization of the human-animal divide. In this article, I attempt to further muddle the waters by considering examples of stricter requirements being imposed on what counts to be rational. I argue that whereas many medieval authors were willing to identify similarities in the way humans and non-human animals behave and process information, they also tended to emphasize the differences in those processes: human processes are inherently rational (or rational-oriented), while those of other animals may resemble rational processes but are not rational. I further claim that this evidence should lead scholars to be less generous in their attribution of rationality to non-human animals to avoid trivializing that notion.

This reexamination of documents purporting to show that Henry of Ghent served on a commission of 16 theologians that compiled the 219 articles condemned in 1277 produces a different picture. It shows that Henry did not serve on a special commission appointed by bishop Tempier but was present at a meeting of all masters, who condemned the articles. It also shows that Tempier did not bypass masters in the faculty of theology, but had them vote on the articles.

From Hippocrates and Galen, meteorological medicine studied the impact of environmental factors and weather phenomena on mental and bodily health. This theory has been largely diffused by medical works and encyclopaedias, such as those of Vincentius de Beauvais and Bartholomeus Anglicus. However, its reception within mediaeval meteorology still remains to be fully inquired, partly because it was not a traditional topic to be discussed in the question commentaries on the Meteorologica of Aristotle. This article aims to focus on three Parisian quaestiones on the Meteorologica in which Radulphus Brito and Themo Iudaei de Monasterio utilised concepts of meteorological medicine as a tool to explain meteorological principles. The medical theory is used to clarify how antiperistasis works within animals’ bellies and its impacts on their general health; and in the second one, to describe the harmful impacts water has on human and animal bodies; and then thirdly, to explain the process of generating rain.

This article deals with the lectio ultima, the last lecture on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, written by theologians from the University of Cracow in the fi fteenth century. Previous studies concerning the last question from Cracow did not recognize it as a specifi c literary genre or acknowledge its characteristics. This article will attempt to disclose these. There is a strong relationship between the lectiones ultimae and the principia on the Sentences, which, thus far, has not been described in the literature. This article characterizes the hallmarks of the lectiones ultimae which are understood as a separate literary genre and gives a catalogue of examples of this genre from the University of Cracow.