Dominik Perler

Vivarium (VIV) is an international journal dedicated to the history of philosophy and intellectual life from the early Middle Ages to the early modern era. It is widely recognized as an unrivalled resource for the history of logic, semantics, epistemology, and metaphysics. It welcomes articles on medieval, Renaissance and early-modern thinkers, their ideas, arguments, and writings, as well as the institutional and intellectual life of this period. Editions of texts as brief appendices to the main articles may be added. Articles on early-modern philosophy are welcome if they link it with the medieval and Renaissance traditions. Articles on Arabic and Jewish thought are welcome if there is a clear connection with the Latin tradition. Vivarium also publishes regularly special issues devoted to a particular theme or philosopher.

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.

Vivarium (VIV) is an international journal dedicated to the history of philosophy and intellectual life from the early Middle Ages to the early-modern era. It is widely recognized as an unrivalled resource for the history of logic, semantics, epistemology, and metaphysics. It welcomes articles on medieval, Renaissance and early-modern thinkers, their ideas, arguments, and writings, as well as the institutional and intellectual life of this period. Editions of texts as brief appendices to the main articles may be added. Articles on early-modern philosophy are welcome if they link it with the medieval and Renaissance traditions. Articles on Arabic and Jewish thought are welcome if there is a clear connection with the Latin tradition. Vivarium also publishes regularly special issues devoted to a particular theme or philosopher.

The journal Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, appearing since 1946, is among the most important academic German language journals. It is open to all topics, approaches, and positions of philosophical thought. Given the increasing differentiation and specialization of the field, it thus constitutes a forum offering its various disciplines the opportunity for mutual recognition and exchange. The articles published in it are subject to an anonymous peer review in which internationally renowned scholars of all areas of contemporary philosophical research participate.

Spinoza claims that universal notions (notiones universales) are simply based on the comparison of individuals and that they do not refer to universal properties. But he also holds that common notions (notiones communes) refer to something that is common to all individuals. Does this mean that he defends different theories of universals with respect to different types of notions? This paper rejects this interpretation, arguing that Spinoza subscribes to a comprehensive nominalist position. On his view there are nothing but individuals, which, however, can be apprehended in different ways: with respect to their perceptual or their geometric and kinematic properties. These two kinds of properties give rise to two different types of notions, each of them having its own value. Both types are analyzed and related to each other.

Spinozas These „Wer eine wahre Idee hat, weiß zugleich, dass er eine wahre Idee hat“ hat zahlreiche Interpreten dazu bewogen, ihm eine ernsthafte Auseinandersetzung mit dem Skeptizismus abzusprechen. Es scheint, als würde er die zentrale Frage, welche unabhängige Garantie wir für die Wahrheit einer Idee haben, einfach ignorieren. Gegen diese Auffassung wird argumentiert, dass sich Spinoza durchaus der skeptischen Herausforderung stellt, und zwar indem er eine theoretische Diagnose formuliert: Der Skeptiker nimmt irrtümlicherweise an, Ideen seien isolierte, von körperlichen Zuständen getrennte Repräsentationen, für die je einzeln eine Garantie gesucht werden muss. Spinoza versucht diese Annahme zu korrigieren, indem er eine holistische, monistische und externalistische Theorie von Ideen entwirft: Eine Idee lässt sich nur erklären, wenn sie einerseits in ihrer Verkettung mit anderen Ideen und andererseits mit Blick auf die körperliche Grundlage erfasst wird. Dann zeigt sich, dass die Garantie für die Wahrheit einer Idee im körperlich verankerten Ideennetz und nicht in einer übergeordneten Instanz liegt

The aim of the series Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind is to foster historical research into the nature of thinking and the workings of the mind. The volumes address topics of intellectual history that would nowadays fall into different disciplines like philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, etc. The monographs and collections of articles in the series are historically reliable as well as congenial to the contemporary reader. They provide original insights into central contemporary problems by looking at them in historical contexts, addressing issues like consciousness, representation and intentionality, mind and body, the self and the emotions. In this way, the books open up new perspectives for research on these topics

It seems quite natural that we have cognitive access not only to things around us, but also to our own acts of perceiving and thinking. How is this access possible? How is it related to the access we have to external things? And how certain is it? This paper discusses these questions by focusing on Francisco Suárez’s theory, which gives an account of various forms of access to oneself and thereby presents an elaborate theory of consciousness. It argues that Suárez clearly distinguishes between first-order sensory consciousness and second-order intellectual consciousness. Moreover, Suárez attempts to explain the unity of consciousness by referring to a single soul with hierarchically ordered faculties that is responsible both for first-order and for second-order consciousness.

The journal Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, appearing since 1946, is among the most important academic German language journals. It is open to all topics, approaches, and positions of philosophical thought. Given the increasing differentiation and specialization of the field, it thus constitutes a forum offering its various disciplines the opportunity for mutual recognition and exchange. The articles published in it are subject to an anonymous peer review in which internationally renowned scholars of all areas of contemporary philosophical research participate.

According to Spinoza, there is no categorical distinction between human and non-human animals: they all belong to the same nature and all consist of bodies with corresponding ideas. This thesis gives rise to two problems. How is it possible to distinguish different types of animals, in particular non-rational and rational ones, if all of them have the same metaphysical structure? And why does Spinoza nevertheless claim that human beings have a privileged status that gives them the right to use non-rational animals? This paper examines these two problems, arguing that the solution to both of them lies in Spinoza’s all-embracing naturalism.

Several commentators, among them R. Rorty, argue that Cartesian ideas are to be understood as internal objects or pictures that are presented to the mind on an 'inner arena'. In this paper I intend to show that such an interpretation is flawed if one takes into account Descartes' definition of ideas as mental a c t s having a representational content. I analyze this definition, paying particular attention to three crucial theses: intentionality is an intrinsic feature of all mental acts; mental acts primarily represent the essence of an object, not the existing object; the object, insofar as it is presented to the mind, determines the socalled Objective reality' of an idea. I reach the conclusion that one ought to be careful in attributing a representational theory to Descartes. His theory may be called representational only if it is understood as a theory about representing mental acts that are immediately directed towards external objects

Ockham affirms that a human being consists of three really distinct forms that exist in matter, thus defending a «pluralist» position in the debate about the soul. However, he takes a «unitarist» position with regard to the rational soul, claiming that intellect and will are not really distinct. Why does he not admit a plurality of forms in the rational soul as well? And why does he think that the rational soul as a whole is really distinct from the sensory soul? This paper examines these questions, thus analyzing Ockham’s metaphysics of the soul. It pays close attention to his arguments both for a plurality of forms and for the unity of the rational soul. It argues that Ockham carefully distinguishes between forms that are metaphysical parts of a human being, and faculties that are ways of acting of a specific form. This distinction enables him to reject both a radical unitarism that accepts one single form in a human being, and an excessive pluralism that posits as many forms as there are faculties

Die nicht zuletzt im Zuge der Deklaration eines „nachmetaphysischen Zeitalters“ für überzogen gehaltenen epistemologischen Ansprüche der klassischen Metaphysik scheinen sich auch und vor allem in der Auseinandersetzung mit skeptischen Argumenten bzw. Paradoxien tatsächlich als unhaltbar herauszustellen. Wenn sich bereits alltägliche Wissensansprüche unter dem Seziermesser skeptischen Scharfsinns als insgesamt problematische Klasse entlarven lassen, wie sollte man dann noch sinnvoll Metaphysik betreiben können? Doch der Anschein trügt, wie die Beiträge des vorliegenden Sammelbandes ausführlich darlegen. Dieses Buch reagiert damit auf einen aktuellen internationalen Trend, denn neueste Arbeiten auf dem Gebiet der theoretischen Diagnose des Ursprungs skeptischer Argumente bzw. Paradoxien zeigen deutlich, dass gerade den dominanten neuzeitlichen Formulierungen skeptischer Probleme metaphysische Voraussetzungen zugrunde liegen, die von den großen Projekten der Metaphysik, die im Buch zur Sprache kommen, nicht geteilt werden. MIT BEITRÄGEN VON: Jarnes Conant, Michael Forster, Paul Franks, Hans Friedrich Fulda, Markus Gabriel, Leo Groarke, Jens Halfwassen, Anton Friedrich Koch, Dominik Perler, Jens Rometsch, Klaus Vieweg, Jörg Volbers, Michael Williams und Stephan Zimmermann.

The studies that make up this book were written and brought together to honor the memory of Jan Pinborg. His unexpected death in 1982 at the age of forty-five shocked and saddened students of medieval philosophy everywhere and left them with a keen sense of disappoint­ment. In his fifteen-year career Jan Pinborg had done so much for our field with his more than ninety books, editions, articles, and reviews and had done it all so well that we recognized him as a leader and counted on many more years of his scholarship, his help, and his friendship. To be missed so sorely by his international colleagues in an academic field is a mark of Jan's achievement, but only of one aspect of it, for historians of philosophy are not the only scholars who have reacted in this way to Jan's death. In his decade and a half of intense productivity he also acquired the same sort of special status among historians of linguistics, whose volume of essays in his memory is being G. L. Bursill-Hall almost simultaneously ­ published under the editorship of with this one. Sten Ebbesen, Jan's student, colleague, and successor as Director of the Institute of Medieval Greek and Latin Philology at the University of Copenhagen, has earned the gratitude of all of us by memorializing Jan 1 in various biographical sketches, one of which is accompanied by a 2 complete bibliography of his publications.

Late medieval and early modern commentaries on De anima are Janus-faced texts. They look backwards, continuing ancient debates about well-known Aristotelian topics, and forwards, introducing new concepts and methodological principles that pave the way for non-Aristotelian theories of mind. The eleven essays in this volume, which cover the period between the late thirteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, elucidate this double orientation by presenting case studies of Aristotelians who engaged in discussions about classical issues and thereby opened the door to new theories such as materialism and substance dualism. The papers do not aim at providing a survey of the commentary literature, but focus on specific texts. Some of them deal with often neglected sources. Thus, Olaf Pluta presents a detailed analysis of Nicholas of Amsterdam’s Questions on De anima and nicely shows that one can find a form of “soft materialism” in his philosophy of mind. For Nicholas rejected the thesis that the intellect is a separable, immaterial entity, claiming instead that intellectual states are always dependent on material ones without being reducible to them. Other papers provide a fresh re-interpretation of well-known texts