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The great 12th-century Islamic philosopher Averroes (Ibn-Rushd), may be viewed as postulating an “outsourcing” of intellectual thinking from individual human beings to a single intellect that is eternally emanated from God and is the thinker of all the thoughts that humans ever think. Despite their philosophical respect for Averroes, 13th- and 14th-century European Christian philosophers generally rejected his view as incompatible with Christianity. Chapter 4 explores the different ways in which Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Wylton, and William Ockham argued that the human intellect is so united to the human body as its substantial form that each one of us can think intellectual thoughts individually, for ourselves, though Wylton acknowledged that his argument relied on his faith and not on natural reason alone.

Giles of Rome maintains that the senses are passive powers and more specifically receptive powers, that is, powers to receive something from sensible objects. The items that the senses receive from...

Walter Burley (ca. 1275-after 1344) is the author of a treatise, entitled De primo et ultimo instanti, which is regarded as the most popular medieval work on the problem of assigning first and last instants of being to permanent things. In this paper, however, the author does not deal with this treatise directly. She looks instead at Burley’s Physics commentary to see how he applies the ideas presented in De primo et ultimo instanti to the solution of an Aristotelian puzzle about the ceasing to be (i.e., to exist) of the present instant (Physics IV, 10). In Burley’s interpretation, the relevant question raised by the puzzle is whether the present instant ceases to be when it is or when it is not. While Aristotle’s argument quickly dismisses the first alternative as absurd, Burley defends it by appealing to the ‘expositions’ of sentences about ceasing (desinit). Given that the sentence ‘this instant ceases to be’ has two expositions—(1) ‘this instant now is and immediately afterwards will not be’ (position of the present and negation of the future) or (2) ‘this instant now is not and immediately beforehand was’ (negation of the present and position of the past)—Burley maintains that the sentence is true in exposition (1) but not true in exposition (2), so that an instant ceases to be when it is and not when it is not.

In a passage of De Anima II, chapter 12 (424a17-24), Aristotle makes a general claim about the senses, which is condensed in the formula that the senses are receptive of the sensible forms without the matter. While it is clear that this formula must play an important theoretical role in Aristotle’s account, it is far from clear what it exactly means. Its interpretation is still a focus of controversy among contemporary scholars. In this article the author presents the exegeses of this formula proposed by the two most authoritative commentators on De anima from the second half of the thirteenth century, namely, Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome. Both commentators assume that with this formula and in particular with the qualification “without the matter” Aristotle intends to characterize an “intentional” reception of a form, and to contrast it with a “natural” reception, but they give different accounts of intentionality.

Giles of Rome was one of the most eminent theologians and commentators on the works of Aristotle at the University of Paris in the second half of the thirteenth century. He was probably a pupil of Thomas Aquinas, who exerted a deep influence on Giles’ metaphysical and theological thought. Giles’ reception of Aquinas’ positions, however, was often critical and original. For historians of medieval philosophy, Giles’ name is mainly associated with the doctrine of ‘the real distinction’ between essence (essentia) and existence (esse). According to this doctrine, essence and existence are two completely distinct things (res) of which the ontological structure of every created being is composed. On the issue of the relationship between essence and existence Giles took a firm position against his contemporary Henry of Ghent, who maintained that existence is a mere relation of the essence of a created being to its creator. Giles was also involved in the debate over the unity of the substantial form in composite substances, another burning issue in the thirteenth century. As a commentator on Aristotle’s works, Giles made original contributions to the tradition of Aristotelian natural philosophy, especially in his treatment of extension, place, time and motion in a vacuum.

In Physics VIII 8, Aristotle deals with a difficulty in the temporal description of changes between contradictory conditions, which derives from his doctrine of the continuity of time. The problem arises in establishing the temporal limits of the contradictory conditions involved in some changes such as the change from white to not-white and can be summed up as follows: in the case of a body changing from white to not-white, the temporal interval taken by its change can be divided into two parts, namely, a first part during which the body is white, and a second during which it is not-white. The continuity of time and the properties of contradictory conditions, however, exclude a simple solution to the problem of temporal limits, i.e., that both a last instant in which the body is white and a first instant in which it is not white exist and that these two instants are different, being respectively the last instant of the temporal part during which the body is white and the first instant of the temporal part during which it is not-white. Yet, if these two instants are different, then, because of the continuity of time, there is a temporal interval between them; but since this time is after the last instant of the temporal part during which white exists and before the first instant of the temporal part during which not-white exists, it follows that during such an interval the body is neither white nor not-white, and this violates the law of the excluded middle. Further more, if one maintains that there is only one instant at which the two successive temporal parts join and that such an instant is both the last instant in which white exists and the first instant in which not-white exists, then the law of non-contradiction is violated, since in the same instant the body would be both white and not-white. Thus, if the law of the excluded middle and the law of non-contradiction are to be

In this report we provide information concerning the work of the Commission in the three-year period from September 2007 (Congress of Palermo) to the end of 2010. We give a list and short descriptions of the publications that appeared in this period and of the new projects proposed. The report is divided into two main parts. The first concers the Aristoteles Latinus stricte loquendo, that is, the editions of the Latin translations of Aristotle’s works. The second part treats editions of Latin commentaries on the works of Aristotle. The second part is followed by an Appendix, in which we list some studies related to the commentaries that have been or are being prepared.

In his Physics commentary, Thomas Wylton reports and rejects an opinion about time that posits the existence of minimal times conceived of as indivisible parts of time. This opinion is in contrast with the view that time is continuous, the predominant view in the late Middle Ages. In this paper I first explain the notion of minimal time. I then focus on the relation between the existence of minimal times and the existence of minima naturalia in the extension of natural bodies. In particular, I present the two ways in which the author of the opinion in question deduces the existence of minimal times from the existence of minima naturalia in the extension of natural bodies. I also briefly present the reaction of Wylton against this opinion. I finally explain how in this opinion the position of minimal times is relevant to the problem of the existence of time. The Appendix to the paper contains Wylton's report of the opinion about minimal times.

The focal locus is traditionally defined for a differentiable submanifold of Rn. However, since it depends essentially only on the notion of orthogonality, a focal locus can be also associated to an algebraic subvariety of the space \(P_C^n \), once we have chosen an orthogonal structure on this space. In this paper, we establish somebasic results in the theory of focal loci of algebraichypersurfaces in \(P_C^n \). Our main results concern the irreducibility of the ramification divisor of the end-point map and the dimension of the singular locus of this divisor, the birationality of the focal map and the degree of the focal locus of an algebraic hypersurface.

Etude de la conception tri-dimensionnelle du lieu developpee par R. Bacon dans ses «Questiones altere» sur la «Physique» d'Aristote, et dans le contexte du debat medieval sur la structure quantitative du lieu. Soulevant le probleme d'exegese lie aux positions contradictoires d'Aristote dans les «Categories» et dans la «Physique», l'A. montre que Bacon passe d'une conception bi-dimensionnelle du lieu dans les «Questiones prime» au rejet de la doctrine tri-dimensionnelle dans la «Communia naturalium», apres avoir tente une combinaison ontologique des notions de localisation et de profondeur

Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Kilwardby OP (c. 1215-1279) was a very important and influential thinker in his time, but he has not received the scholarly attention that he deserves. In this book we present the first study of all of his philosophical thinking from logic and grammar to metaphysics and ethics.

Walter Burley was one of the most prominent logicians and metaphysicians of the Middle Ages. This volume, which contain thirteen substantial articles on his philosophy, is aimed to reconstruct the internal evolution of his doctrines and the role they played in the development of Late Medieval philosophy.