Peter Auriol was one of the most influential authors of the generation after Scotus. He developed an anti-realist ontology (he denied the extra-mental existence of common natures and consequently the necessity of a principle of individuation) and a new epistemology. In his view, the mental world is somehow richer than the extra-mental one, since our mind can abstract general notions (such as humanitas) that are not matched by general objects in reality. The article is aimed to show how, according to (...) Auriol, the individual things existing outside are the grounds on which all our notions (even the general and abstract ones) are based. Accordingly, the first section analyzes the internal composition of the individual things: material suppositum and singular form, which are interrelated as potency and act. The second section deals with Auriol’s theory of knowledge. In particular, it focuses on the relation between our notions, both concrete and abstract, and the metaphysical parts of extra-mental individuals. The general, abstract notions originate from the formal parts (the singular substantial form) of extra-mental individuals, while the concrete notions from the whole individuals. (shrink)

This study is aimed to investigate Peter Auriol’s theory of the distinction between being and essence. Late medieval Realists considered being and essence as two constitutive principles of the singular things; the former concerned the actual existence of the thing, the latter its nature or quiddity and was expressed by the definition of the thing. Auriol denies that the distinction between being and essence is a distinction between two ontological elements that taken together give rise to the singular things. Instead, (...) for him this distinction is a distinction between two notions (concrete and abstract) of the same singular thing. These two notions derive from our mind’s two different ways of considering the same thing: through intuitive and abstractive cognitions. The combination in the mind of the two notions gives rise to the epistemological truths expressed by propositions. As a consequence, Auriol elaborates a new version of the theory of meaning and truth of both the existential and essential propositions, such as ‘Rosa est’ and ‘Sortes est homo’ respectively, where the abstract terms of our language do not signify pre-existing essences of things, but only their abstract concepts. Thus, in the first case, our mind derives the notion of the actual existence of a thing (ex-pressed by ‘est’) from its abstract general notion (in our example the notion of rose). In the second, our mind combines two different notions of Socrates linked to the different ways of conceiving (modi concipiendi) him, intuitively and abstractively. Since these notions are not subjective modifications of the mind, but they coincide with the thing itself (the whole reality of Socrates) insofar as it is known, they refer to Socrates and to a state of affairs connected with him. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the theory of exemplary causality of Peter Auriol (1280-1322). Until at least the late 13th century, medieval authors claim that the world is orderly and intelligible because God created it according to the models existing eternally in his mind (i.e. divine ideas). Auriol challenges the view of his predecessors and contemporaries. He argues that assuming divine ideas amounts to assuming multiplicity in God and therefore questioning the principle of his absolute simplicity. To (...) avoid this problem, he develops a system that enables him to account for God’s knowledge of creatures (both as individuals and as species) and hence to preserve the theological principle of providence, but at the same time allows him to reject divine ideas as intermediaries for creation. In Auriol’s theory of exemplary causality, divine essence is the only object of God’s knowledge and thus the only exemplar for creation. God’s cognitive act is directed exclusively towards his own essence. However, he knows creatures through multiple connotations, i.e. the multiple ways divine essence is connotated when God knows himself. But these connotations play no role in creation, because imitability is only proper to divine essence. To explain how an object can be the only exemplar for the creation of many different creatures, Auriol has to rethink the concept of imitability and develop a new model of exemplary causality enabling him to account for the relationship between God and his creatures. The traditional model was that of analogy: a cause produces an effect which is partly similar and partly different from it. Auriol relies on the concept of equivocity. He argues that it is unnecessary to assume a particular similarity between a cause and its effect. Quite the contrary: for an object to be the exemplar of multiple different things, it is necessary that it should not be similar to any of them. The concept of aequivocatio allows Auriol to reject the traditional model of creation. Aequivocatio does not entail a resemblance between idea and ideatum. There is no contradiction, then, in claiming that a single object (divine essence) is in an equivocal way (aequivoce) the exemplary cause of multiple different objects. This is Auriol’s new theory of divine exemplarism: the theory of similitudo aequivoca. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the theory of divine ideas of Walter Burley. The medieval common theory of divine ideas, developed by Augustine, was intended to provide an answer to the question of the order and intelligibility of the world. The world is rationally organized since God created it according to the models existing eternally in his mind. Augustine's theory, however, left open problems such as reconciling the principle of God's unity with the plurality of ideas, the way in which ideas (...) can or cannot be said to be eternal, their ontological status. Medieval authors discussed such questions until at least the late 14th century. By resorting to the semantic tool of connotation, Burley explains both in what way ‘idea' can signify the divine essence as much as the creatures, and in what sense we can say that God has thought them from eternity, without slipping into a necessitarian view that undermines the principle of divine freedom. Moreover, by envisaging the objective mode of being as the only mode of being of ideas, he explains in what way they truly differ from one another on the basis of their different conceptual contents. (shrink)

The basic principle of all realist theories of truth developed in the 13th and 14th centuries was that a proposition is true if and only if it tells us how things are in reality. Walter Burley (1275-1344) interpreted this principle in a more radical way than 13th-century realists did. Burley, in fact, proposed a strong correspondence theory, in which there is a strict biunique correspondence between linguistic and extra-linguistic elements. Now, if the principle of correspondence can be applied to Burley (...) unconditionally to all affirmative statements (both for accidental and essential predications), it cannot be applied in the case of negative propositions, since in reality there can be no negative state of affairs. In order to solve this problem, Burley uses the strategy of introducing a complex mental object or objective entity as the significatum adequatum of negative sentences. It is an object which, although it exists only in the mind, is completely independent of our mental operations and which ultimately refers to the extra-mental world, composed exclusively of positive objects and states of affairs. In fact, the truth of a negative sentence does not depend on it corresponding to some negative fact, but rather on the opposite affirmative sentence failing to correspond to some positive extramental fact. Thus, extramental reality, which is only composed of positive objects, recovers its role as a yardstick for verifying the truth or falsity of all particular sentences, both affirmative and negative. (shrink)

Here I present the first version of the transcription of the Commentarius in Metaphysicam by Konrad Graf from Cod. Pp 183 4°, Teil 2, Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern [ZHB], Sondersammlung (ff. 1r-56v), which collects Graf's lectures in metaphysics, held at the Lucerne Gymnasium in 1635-36. The transcription of the text was carried out at the Lucerne Faculty of Theology within the SNSF project "Zwischen monastischer und reformierter Metaphysik. Die schweizerische 'Wiege' der Ontologie im Zeitalter der Reformation" (SNSF project 100012_192559 - (...) applicant: Prof. Dr. Giovanni Ventimiglia (TF- University of Lucerne), Employees: Marco Lamanna, Chiara Paladini. The project aimed to redefine the "cartography" of the Reformation in Switzerland on the traces of metaphysics teaching (Reportationes) in Swiss educational institutions and monastic poles, and thereby to gain a precise place for Swiss studies in the panorama of research on metaphysics and ontology in the early modern period. The project was based on a preliminary investigation that made it possible to recover new texts transmitting lessons on metaphysics held in Lucerne and Engelberg. The method was 1. to produce a systematic and comprehensive documentation based on an index of manuscripts and printed texts, most of them already identified, which testify to the existence of a cultural flourishing in Switzerland that has so far remained unexplored. 2. this documentation should be placed on a solid textual basis by transcribing and eventually critically editing those texts judged to be of interest in terms of their content and influence, in order to make them accessible to the scholarly community and to readers. 3. finally, we will examine the specific aspects of the teachings transmitted in these manuscripts. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Paul of Venice’s realist theory of direct knowledge. In the second half of the 13th century human knowledge was standardly viewed as a process of abstraction enabling the human intellect to grasp the essences of corporeal things, regardless of the matter in which they are embodied. This process was achieved thanks to the mediation of mental entities (species intelligibiles) representing the dematerialised objects in the intellect. By the late 13th and early 14th centuries, however, some authors (...) began to regard this account as unsatisfactory. These authors held that assuming the existence of mediating species (considered themselves as objects of knowledge) amounts to thinking that between ourselves and the world there is a barrier preventing us from acquiring knowledge of reality in itself. Paul of Venice is aware of the sceptical accusations made against the theory of species in the 13th and 14th centuries. Nevertheless, he is a firm advocate of the existence of species. He claims that knowledge, despite coming about through species, is not indirect. Quite the contrary: we have immediate access to reality, and the individual objects that constitute it, precisely because our senses (which are purely passive) receive impressions direct from outside, thanks to species. He points out that species are not object of knowledge. They are not known at all during the cognitive process, as they are a mere means (a mechanical means, so to say), not an image nor a representation of anything, and therefore they are no obstacle between ourselves and the world. Thus, we are able to know reality exactly as it is in itself and, under ordinary conditions, our perceptions are practically infallible and cannot produce false knowledge. (shrink)

Abstract – The basic principle of all realist theories of truth developed in the 13th and 14th centuries was that a proposition is true if and only if it tells us how things are in reality. Walter Burley (1275-1344) interpreted this principle in a more radical way than 13th-century realists did. He proposed a correspondence theory in which there is a strict biunique correspondence between linguistic and extra-linguistic elements. If the principle of correspondence can be applied unconditionally to all affirmative (...) utterances about present entities, it cannot apply in the case of utterances concerning past entities, which no longer exist. In order to maintain the principle of correspondence, Burley argues that such utterances, in order to be true, must not correspond to an extra-mental object, but to a complex mental object or objective entity, a mental proposition with the verb in the present tense which, was true in a past moment. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Der Aufsatz untersucht die Theorie der exemplarischen Kausalität von Petrus Aureoli (1280–1322). Mindestens bis zur zweiten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts behaupteten mittelalterliche Autoren, dass die Welt geordnet und intelligibel war, weil Gott sie nach aus der Ewigkeit in seinem Intellekt existierenden Modellen (d.h. göttlichen Ideen) geschaffen hatte. Aureoli focht diese traditionelle Ansicht an. In Aureolis Theorie ist die göttliche Essenz das einzige Urbild für die Erschaffung. Um zu erklären, wie ein einziges Objekt allein als Urbilder für die Erschaffung mehrerer (...) verschiedener Kreaturen fungieren kann, muss er den Begriff der Nachahmbarkeit neu überdenken und ein neues Modell der exemplarischen Kausalität entwickeln. Das traditionelle Modell war das der Analogie: Eine Ursache erzeugt einen Effekt, der zum Teil ähnlich wie sie und zum Teil anders als sie ist. Aureoli greift auf den Be-griff von Äquivokation zurück. Er argumentiert, dass keine direkte Ähnlichkeit zwischen Ursache und Effekt notwendig ist. Im Gegenteil: Damit ein Objekt das Urbild für mehrere verschiedene Dinge sein kann, ist es notwendig, dass es für keinen von ihnen repräsentativ ist. Der Begriff der Äquivokation erlaubt es Aureoli, das traditionelle Modell der Erschaffung abzulehnen. Aequivocatio sieht keine Ähnlichkeit zwischen Idee und Ideatum vor. Es be-steht also kein Widerspruch darin, wenn man sagt, dass ein einziges Objekt (göttliche Essenz) aequivoce die exemplarische Ursache für mehrere verschiedene Objekte ist. (shrink)

The study is aimed at clarifying Meister Eckhart's theory of relations, which involves all fields of his philosophy: gnoseological, theological, ontological. Its general features (concerning the ontological status of relations and relatives, the nature of the fundamentum relationis, and the origin ab altero proper to the relation) seem to denote a realist position, in opposition to the Nominalism. Yet, when he applies the theory to particular problems, it is evident that his position cannot be simply qualified as a realist one. (...) In Eckhart's view, the objectivity of knowledge is not guaranteed by the correspondence between the extra-mental entities and their images in the mind, but by the close relationship between the subject and the object of knowledge. This same dynamic relationship (a sort of inclusion) holds between the Father and the Son and between God and the creatures: the Son is the image of the Father, who is inside him, like the creature is the image of God, who is the inner ontological foundation of the creature. (shrink)

Le Quaestiones 2 («Se l’oggetto adeguato della conoscenza divina sia l’essenza di Dio o l’ente universale») e 3 («Se le creature secondo le loro proprie nature e le loro essenze siano vita in Dio e nel Verbo») della Distinctio 35 dello Scriptum di Pietro Aureoli sono importanti per la ricostruzione sia del pensiero del loro autore che della storia della dottrina delle idee divine nel Medioevo. Aureoli rifiuta il modello tradizionale di causalità esemplare, secondo cui Dio avrebbe creato il mondo (...) sulla base di modelli archetipi esistenti dall’eternità nella sua mente. Ricorrendo al concetto di aequivocatio, stabilisce che l’essenza di Dio è in maniera equivoca l’unico esemplare per tutte le creature ed elabora, così, la teoria della causalità esemplare equivoca. (shrink)

L’adhésion de Walter Burley au principe de correspondance (c’est-à-dire le principe selon lequel une proposition, pour être vraie, doit correspondre à quelque chose dans la réalité) soulève un problème important. Ce principe peut être appliqué à toutes les propositions affirmatives, mais pas aux propositions négatives, puisqu’il n’existe pas d’état de choses négatives dans la réalité. Afin de résoudre ce problème, Burley introduit un objet mental complexe comme significatum adaequatum des propositions négatives, qui ne correspond à aucun fait positif. De cette (...) façon, la réalité extramentale peut vérifier la vérité ou la fausseté de toutes les propositions singulières, tant affirmatives que négatives. (shrink)