Timothy Brian Noone

In this remarkable book, Jorge Gracia has assembled a rich collection of essays treating the problem of individuation in what is perhaps its most critical period in the history of philosophy. Each of the essays is devoted to a particular philosopher or group of philosophers whose work is chosen for consideration either for its originality or its influence on the development of theories of individuation; all but a few of the essays are authored by scholars who are the leading experts on the subjects considered in their essays. The entire collection of essays is, moreover, prefaced with a masterful and succinct introduction to the problem of individuation, crafted by Gracia himself, which provides the reader unfamiliar with the problem of individuation a conceptual framework for approaching the study of the philosophers surveyed in the book. It is, indeed, a book which unites both historical scholarship and philosophical acumen so as to provide readers with "an introductory, selective account of the major developments in the period".

Timothy B. Noone - The Light of Thy Countenance: Science and Knowledge of God in the Thirteenth Century - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 258-259 Book Review The Light of Thy Countenance: Science and Knowledge of God in the Thirteenth Century Steven P. Marrone. The Light of Thy Countenance: Science and Knowledge of God in the Thirteenth Century. 2 Vols. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. x + 611. Cloth, $90.00. In this, the most complete study of the tradition of divine illumination ever produced in English, Steven Marrone has set the standard for further studies in thirteenth-century epistemology as well as inaugurated a revival in the historiographical significance of philosophical schools for analyzing medieval thought. He conducts his investigation of thirteenth-century epistemology by focusing upon eleven figures seen as belonging..

In this model critical edition, Professor John Magee of the University of Toronto has provided specialists in the philosophy of the Middle Ages with one of the classical texts of their period, Boethius’s De divisione. Surviving in over seventy manuscripts, and practically required reading both in monastic schools and universities, Boethius’s De divisione treats the modes of division commonly discussed in ancient philosophy: the per se divisions of genera into species, a whole into its parts, and a spoken sound into its significates; the accidental divisions of a subject into its accidents; an accident into its subject, and accidents into other accidents. With its clear examples and carefully argued rationale for the manner of dividing and defining, the work remained a canonical text to the end of the Middle Ages when Aristotelian learning declined in importance.

In this brief volume, Alexander Broadie makes available to the philosophical public a valuable, if succinct, account of late Scholastic epistemology. Focusing his attention on eight philosopher-theologians who taught at Paris around 1500 A.D., Broadie presents their discussions of notions and objects, modes of sense and intellectual cognition, and theories of apprehension, judgment, and assent. Throughout the entire work, Broadie amply demonstrates his command both of the historical sources relevant to his topic and the philosophical and logical issues with which those sources are concerned.