Aurélien Robert

It is well known that during the Middle Ages the Eucharist was not only a theological question but also a philosophical one. Recent studies have shown the semantical and ontological problems concerning the status of substances and accidents after the transsubstantiation. Here the paper focuses on the gnoseological problem of the Eucharist. How do we know that the substance has changed after the consecration of the host? Moreover, how do we manage to know substances in general if sometimes it changes without apparent modifications in the accidental features apprehended by our sense faculties? The aim of this paper is to show that a new dilemma appeared at the end of the 13th century between the sceptical consequences of the dogma of transsubstantiation and the necessity to abandon or at least to interpret differently the sacrament. Wyclif chose the second option while most of the theologians and philosophers tried to adapt their theory of knowledge, especially the Franciscans, to which a large part of this paper is devoted. This paper tries to assess the different solutions to this problem of the knowability of substances.

When contemporary philosophers look at the medieval debate on intentionality, they usually have in mind what we call “Brentano’s thesis”. Indeed, Brentano ascribes to some medieval philosophers the thesis according to which objects of thought have a special kind of being that explains how can our thoughts be about this or that kind of things. Here, we decided to focus on the debates among the so-called “Latin Averroists”, because they clearly show that the medieval question on intentionality cannot be reduced to the well-known theory of intentional beings. More precisely, we endeavored to understand an apparently strange question that appeared in the faculties of arts in France and in Italy in the 14th century: to which category do intentions in the mind belong to? In Aristotelian terms: are they substances or accidents? The problem is the following: if they are accidents, how can they represent something else that an accident? If they are substances, what does it mean to affirm that we have substances in the mind, even intentional substances? After a detailed analysis of the responses one can find in Siger of Brabant, Angelo of Arezzo, Matthew of Gubbio, John of Göttingen, Anthony of Parma, Bartholomew of Bruges and John of Jandun, we try to show that only a very few philosophers adopted the formal identity thesis , according to which the object in the mind is formally identical with the object known outside the mind. This shows that a lot of medieval philosophers didn’t limit intentionality to intentional being or formal identity, but also considered other explanations of how the human mind can think about objects for which no representation can be found in the mind.

Contrary to what is generally said about the reception of Epicurus in the Middle Ages, many medieval authors agreed on his great wisdom, even if he made some philosophical and theological errors. From the 12th century to the 14th century on can find several "Lives of Epicurus" in which the best sayings of Epicurus are gathered from ancient sources (Seneca, Cicero, Lactantius, etc.). In this paper, we follow these quite unknown sources about Epicureanism in the Middle Ages. We try to show that if Epicurus was considered as a wise man in the MIddle Ages, Epicureans are condemned because after the Revelation of God's word, Christians can only accept Epicurus's ascetic ethics, not his errors about the eternity of the world, the mortality of the soul et the subordination of happiness to pleasure.

It is well known that during the Middle Ages the Eucharist was not only a theological question but also a philosophical one. Recent studies have shown the semantical and ontological problems concerning the status of substances and accidents after the transsubstantiation. Here the paper focuses on the gnoseological problem of the Eucharist. How do we know that the substance has changed after the consecration of the host? Moreover, how do we manage to know substances in general if sometimes it changes without apparent modifications in the accidental features apprehended by our sense faculties? The aim of this paper is to show that a new dilemma appeared at the end of the 13th century between the sceptical consequences of the dogma of transsubstantiation and the necessity to abandon or at least to interpret differently the sacrament. Wyclif chose the second option while most of the theologians and philosophers tried to adapt their theory of knowledge, especially the Franciscans, to which a large part of this paper is devoted. This paper tries to assess the different solutions to this problem of the knowability of substances.