Dominik Perler

Dass wir durch Wahrnehmung einen Zugang zur materiellen Welt haben, scheint selbstverständlich zu sein. Und dass die visuelle Wahrnehmung dabei einen prominenten Platz einnimmt, scheint ebenfalls selbstverständlich zu sein. Doch was genau sehen wir: die Gegenstände selbst oder bloß ihre wahrnehmbaren Eigenschaften? Wie gelingt es uns überhaupt, etwas zu sehen? Können wir allein aufgrund von optischen und physiologischen Vorgängen etwas sehen, oder setzt das Sehen bereits Begriffe voraus, mithilfe derer wir etwas als etwas sehen können? Diese Fragen, die in der gegenwärtigen Wahrnehmungs- und Erkenntnistheorie ausgiebig erörtert werden, waren bereits in der Frühen Neuzeit Gegenstand intensiver Debatten. In vielfacher Hinsicht legten die Diskussionen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert sogar die Grundlage für heutige Theorien, da sie zum einen die Probleme in aller Schärfe benannten, zum anderen aber auch Lösungsstrategien vorlegten, die auch heute noch von Bedeutung sind. Der Band soll diese Debatten neu erschließen und einem breiten philosophisch interessierten Publikum zugänglich machen. Es soll gezeigt werden, dass die Frühe Neuzeit kein ehrwürdiges Museum der Philosophiegeschichte ist, sondern eine äußerst produktive und anregende philosophische Epoche, die zu einem Dialog einlädt.

This book explores different accounts of powers and abilities in early modern philosophy. It analyzes powers and abilities as a package, hopefully enabling us to better understand them both and to see similarities as well as dissimilarities. While some prominent early modern accounts of power have been studied in detail, this volume covers lesser-known thinkers and several early modern women philosophers. The volume also investigates early modern accounts of powers and abilities in a more systematic fashion than has been previously done. By broadening its scope in these ways, the volume uncovers trends and tendencies in early modern thinking about powers and abilities that are easy to miss. The chapters explore how twenty-two early modern thinkers approached the following questions: What kind of entities are powers and abilities? Are they reducible to something categorical or not? What is the relation between powers and abilities? Is there a fundamental metaphysical difference between them or not? How do we know what powers objects have and what abilities agents have? Are human abilities in any way special? How do they relate to the abilities non-human animals have? And how do they relate to the powers of inanimate objects? Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in the history of early modern philosophy, in metaphysics, and in the history of science.

Memory is as intentional as perception, imagination, and other forms of cognition. But what is it about? Aquinas mentions two types of objects: sensory memory is about earlier perceived particulars, whereas intellectual memory is about earlier apprehended universals. Commentators therefore often understand him as postulating two separate memories, each of them dealing with its own object. The paper challenges this interpretation and argues that Aquinas takes human memory to be unified: it is about a single object and makes it present both under a particular and a universal aspect. The paper spells out this double aspect theory by showing (i) how an earlier acquired and reactivated sensory representation makes memory of the particular aspect possible and (ii) how a reactivated concept categorizes an object, thereby revealing its universal aspect. Full-fledged human memory involves the simultaneous use of a sensory representation and a concept and therefore captures both aspects. There can be forms of memory that lack the sensory or the conceptual aspect, as the paper shows, but they are forms of deficient memory.

Occasionalism is a well-known theory of causation—a radical theory that takes God to be the only real cause. When examining its origin and dissemination in Europe, scholars tend to focus on Malebranche, La Forge, Cordemoy, and other French authors. It is in the French context, they often assume, that occasionalism was developed as an attempt to solve some deep problems in Descartes’s theory of causation.Henkel’s original and highly stimulating book goes beyond this research tradition. It convincingly shows that occasionalism was also present in the German context. In fact, occasionalism was defended by at least four German authors in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, namely by Erhard Weigel... Read More.

Die Auseinandersetzung mit Aristoteles und der aristotelischen Tradition war in der frühen Neuzeit geprägt durch eine Spannung zwischen polemischer Ablehnung und impliziter Weiterführung oder gar expliziter Zustimmung. Einerseits setzten sich Bacon, Descartes, Malebranche, Hobbes, Locke und zahlreiche andere ›moderne‹ Philosophen, die von der mechanistischen Physik beeinflusst waren, ganz entschieden von aristotelischen Prinzipien und Erklärungsmodellen ab. Allerdings beschäftigten sie sich kaum mit den Werken des Aristoteles, sondern mit spätscholastischen Kompendien. Daher richtete sich ihre Kritik eher gegen spätmittelalterliche Transformationen oder Verformungen des Aristotelismus als gegen Aristoteles selbst. Andererseits wurden die Schriften des Aristoteles an den Universitäten weiterhin gelesen und kommentiert, und aristotelische Autoren versuchten, Kernstücke der Metaphysik – etwa den Hylemorphismus und die Substanztheorie – gegen die zunehmende Kritik zu verteidigen.

Spinoza denies that there are powers or abilities as distinct entities and has there- fore often been understood as an antirealist. This paper rejects such an inter- pretation and argues that he subscribes to reductive realism: abilities are really present in individual things but can be reduced to their inner structure. The paper first shows how this realism differs from the late-scholastic realism which posits abilities as special entities. It then analyzes how Spinoza reduces material powers to geometric-kinematic structures and mental abilities to representa- tional structures. He thereby offers a unified account of all powers and abilities and does justice to the common view that different things – in particular living things – are to be categorized with respect to their specific powers and abilities.

This chapter examines how Spinoza deals with the identity problem by looking at his account of material and mental things. To understand how material things can remain the same over time, it looks at the “Physical Digression” where Spinoza explains the constitution of bodies. By using the structural criterion, Spinoza can solve a number of problems concerning identity and change. Spinoza would say that there is no identity between the body before and after the accident because the proportion between its moving and non‐moving parts is no longer the same. Memory plays no decisive role, and can therefore be disregarded in the account of diachronic identity. Spinoza goes far beyond the Aristotelian conception by spelling out the form in kinetic terms for material things, and in representational terms for mental things.

All Aristotelians subscribed to the thesis that the soul as the principle of life has many powers. But how are the powers related to the soul’s essence? It has often been argued that medieval philosophers gave two answers to this ques- tion: some took them to be necessary accidents that are distinct from the soul’s essence, whereas others simply identified them with the essence. This paper intends to show that there were alternatives to these two standard models. Peter of John Olivi argued that the powers are not accidents but substantial forms that constitute the soul’s essence. He thereby defended a strong mereological thesis, for he assumed that the powers are literally parts that make together a whole. Henry of Ghent also rejected the idea that powers are accidents. Instead, he defended the claim that a power of the soul is a whole constituted by the soul’s essence and a relation determining the essence to an act and an object. In making this claim, Henry proposed a determination thesis. The paper dis- cusses both theses in detail, looks at the arguments Olivi and Henry adduced against the two standard models, and evaluates their theories in the historical context.

How is it possible to investigate philosophical texts analytically, but simultaneously to contextualize them historically and thus to pursue an analytic Geistesgeschichte? The following contribution answers this question in four theses: (1) According to the Nominalism-Thesis, individual texts as opposed to general trends or ideas are to be attended to. (2) The Relationism-Thesis holds that these texts are always to be related to other texts within their historical context. (3) The Multi-Perspectivism-Thesis emphasizes the fact that texts in various contexts are to be considered so that different kinds of relation become clear. (4) Finally, the Historiography-Thesis requires that in addition to the texts themselves interpretive schemata are also to be critically examined. All four theses are explicated with reference to medieval philosophy.

Human beings quite often choose bad actions because of cognitive deficits: they fail to understand what they ought to do. But what about angels? They are, by definition, perfect in their cognition. How can they choose bad actions or even commit sins? At first sight, this problem seems to be of mere theological significance, for it is only in the context of Christian theology that angels are supposed to exist. However, a closer look reveals that the problem runs deeper, as Tobias Hoffmann makes clear in his highly original study. Medieval authors used examples of angelic sinning as "test cases for the robustness of their theories of free will". They sought to explain the voluntary production of bad actions by...