Dominik Perler

In his theory of action, Suárez defends a voluntarist position. He claims that we are free agents because our will is a two-way power: it can always accept or reject the action-guiding judgement that is presented by the intellect. But why is the will not obliged to accept this judgement? The paper discusses this question by relating Suárez’s theory of the will to his theory of causation. It first examines his arguments against intellectual determinism, paying particular attention to his claim that the intellect is not an efficient cause: it cannot act upon the will and force it to accept a judgement. The paper then analyses Suárez’s account of the relevant cause by focusing on the goal of an action. The goal acts as a final cause, and if the goal is not perfectly good, it does not fully attract the will; consequently, the will can reject it. The paper spells out the functioning of the final cause as a form of normative attraction and argues that the issue of normativity is at the centre of Suárez’s theory of the will: we are free because our will can resist normative attraction.

Проблематика интенциональности стоит в центре не только сегодняшних дискуссий в области философии сознания; она широко обсуждалась уже в Средние века. Книга швейцарского исследователя Доминика Перлера "Теории интенциональности в Средние века" представляет пять моделей интенциональности, которые сформировались в критический период развития схоластической философии с 1250 по 1330 г. Рассматриваются такие разные авторы, как Фома Аквинский, Петр Иоанн Оливи, Дитрих Фрайбергский, Иоанн Дуне Скот, Петр Авреол, Гервей Наталис, Уильям Оккам и Адам Вудхэм. Книга Д.Перлера получила очень высокую оценку в научном мире и является сегодня, пожалуй, самой фундаментальной работой по этой теме.

Was sind Gefühle? Um diese, in der aktuellen Philosophie heiß umstrittene Frage zu beantworten, geht Dominik Perler einen philosophiehistorischen Weg: Er diskutiert die Theorien von Thomas von Aquin, Duns Scotus, Wilhelm von Ockham, Montaigne, Descartes und Spinoza, um einen neuen Blick auf die gegenwärtigen Debatten zu werfen. In seinem überaus klar und verständlich geschriebenen Buch zeichnet er nach, wie sehr sich der theoretische Rahmen zur Erklärung von Gefühlen verändert hat und damit gleichzeitig die Frage, wie man seine Emotionen kontrollieren kann. Der große Reichtum dieser Debatten, zeigt Dominik Perler, eröffnet ganz neue theoretische Zugänge zur alten Frage: Was sind Gefühle?

Den thematischen Schwerpunkt dieses Bandes bilden finale Ursachen und teleologische Erklärungen. Die Artikel verbinden systematische Fragen und historische Perspektiven in einer sehr fruchtbaren Weise. Die systematischen Kernfragen lauten u.a.: Was ist die Relation von teleologischen und kausalen Erklärungen? Wie können wir unserer gemeinsamen Praxis Rechnung tragen, der gemäß wir teleologische Erklärungen sowohl für menschliche als auch für nichtmenschliche Verhaltensweisen verwenden? Ist Teleologie eine biologische Struktur oder ist sie lediglich ein Produkt unserer Art und Weise, die Ereignisse in der Welt begrifflich zu organisieren? Diese aktuellen Fragen werden in historischen Zusammenhängen präsentiert, wobei die Diskussion in diesem Band mit Thomas von Aquin beginnt und dann einen Schwerpunkt in der neuzeitlichen Philosophie hat, vor allem bei Spinoza und Kant. The authors: Marcos G. Breuer, Jasper Doomen, Boris Hennig, Paul Hoffman (†), Dominik Perler, Pauline Phemister, Marianne Schark, Stephan Schmid, Justin Steinberg, Georg Toepfer, Liesbet Vanhaute, Arthur Ward, Markus Wild

According to Francisco Suárez, a substance is literally composed of many entities and therefore displays a complex internal structure. The chapter examines this compositional account of substance, arguing that Suárez radically transformed hylomorphism. It first looks at the ‘thin substance’, which consists of form and matter as the most basic entities. It pays particular attention to Suárez’ thesis that these two entities are really distinct from each other and therefore in need of a special relation that connects them. The chapter then analyses the ‘thick substance’, which has additional powers and properties. All of them are distinct entities that somehow enrich the form-matter compound. In providing this compositional account, Suárez presents metaphysics as a way of doing reverse engineering: we do not know what a substance is unless we decompose it in our thoughts and reconstruct it.

Medieval voluntarists claim that the will is a free power that can always reject an intellectual judgement, even if it is the best possible judgement in a given situation. But does this not lead to irrationalism? A will that dismisses the best judgement without replacing it with another judgement seems to be a power that acts without any rational ground. This chapter examines this problem by analysing a controversy in the late thirteenth century. It first looks at Siger of Brabant, who defends a form of determinism according to which the will is acted upon by the intellect as an efficient cause and so necessarily accepts the intellect’s judgement. It then discusses Henry of Ghent’s anti-determinism: Since the intellect is nothing but an occasional cause, it cannot act upon the will and force it to accept a judgement. This idea of occasional causation, rather than irrationalism, provides the basis for Henry’s claim that the will is a free power. Nevertheless, his reaction to Siger shows that there is a deep disagreement about the scope of explanation. On Henry’s view, the will’s activity is not fully intelligible because it cannot be fully explained by reference to intellectual judgements. Voluntarism, therefore, breaks with rationalism by rejecting the Principle of Sufficient Reason, as the chapter argues in the final section.

It is well known that Descartes rejected the scholastic assumption that there is a sensory soul in addition to the intellectual soul. Consequently, he also rejected the assumption that there are eleven basic passions in the sensory soul. However, this disagreement concerning the metaphysical status of the passions did not prevent him from adopting the very same classificatory criterion the scholastics had used: basic passions are to be defined with respect to their intentional object. This paper first examines the scholastic use of this criterion by paying particular attention to Thomas Aquinas and Eustachius a Sancto Paulo. It then analyzes Descartes’ use and attempts to show how he established a list of six basic passions by distinguishing six different types of intentional objects. Moreover, it looks at the way Descartes explained these objects within the context of his non-Aristotelian metaphysics.

What are the categories: fundamental entities or concepts? Suárez answers this question by rejecting strong realism as well as conceptualism. On his view, the distinction of ten categories marks a conceptual distinction that is grounded in reality, but without there being a one-to-one relation between concepts and entities. Rather, the distinction is grounded in different things (res) as well as modes (modi) and in combinations of these two building blocks of reality. The chapter examines this grounding relation by first analyzing Suárez’s account of things and modes and the way they are related to each other. It then focuses on the categories of substance and quality and explains in what sense the concepts of substance and quality are grounded in things and modes. Finally, it argues that Suárez subscribes to a distinctive form of reductionism that differs from the standard nominalist approach to the categories.

Faculties and Their Explanatory Function In daily life it seems quite natural to explain the activities of nonhuman as well as human animals by referring to their special capacities or abilities. In some situations we also tend to talk about their faculties. Thus, we say that dogs can see and smell things in their environment because they have perceptual faculties. Or we claim that human beings can grasp thoughts and make decisions because they have rational faculties. Sometimes we even try to distinguish different types of animals by focusing on their distinctive faculties. We may say, for instance, that cats are utterly different from dogs because they have a unique visual faculty that enables them to see things from a long distance—something dogs could never do. And we often affirm that human beings are a special type of animal because they have unique rational faculties that enable them to do sophisticated things such as learning languages and composing music. The better we describe its distinctive faculties, the better we can characterize a certain type of animal. This is especially true for human beings, a rather complex type of animal. It hardly suffices to make the trivial statement that they are rational animals because they are endowed with rational faculties. We need to spell out what these faculties consist in, for instance by describing in detail those that are responsible for concept formation, speech, and perhaps even music composition. The better we know what these faculties are, what kind of activities they make possible, and how they interact, the better we can give an account of the so-called rational nature of human beings.

What are the forms in which later medieval thinkers articulate epistemological scepticism, relativism, and doubt? Is it possible to voice different forms of uncertainty in different institutional contexts and languages? Bringing together specialists in philosophy, theology, history, and literature, this book undertakes an interdisciplinary investigation of some of the ways in which the problem of knowledge was explored in the Middle Ages. This is a topic of central intellectual importance and has large cultural consequences. The Middle Ages are often still treated by non-medievalists as a time of naive epistemological self-confidence, and we hope that ultimately this revisionist project will have impact beyond medieval studies, illustrating the extent to which this was a period in which many thinkers were intrigued by, and comfortable with, uncertainty.

Descartes famously claimed that a human soul is a single substance without any parts. But he also affirmed that the soul has two faculties, namely intellect and will, which act as ‘two concurrent causes’. This looks quite puzzling. How can there be two causes in a single and indivisible substance? What is their ontological status? And how do they act? This chapter discusses these questions, paying particular attention to Descartes' scholastic background. It argues that there was no unified scholastic doctrine. Descartes rejected Suárez's theory, which took faculties to be really distinct parts and inner agents of the soul, while defending Ockham's theory, which considered them to be mere ways of acting of a single soul. The two explanatory models gave rise to different accounts of the unity of the soul.