Christoph Kann

Was sind Emotionen, Gefühle, Affekte und Leidenschaften? Sprechen wir von erlebten und kommunizierten Gefühlszuständen oder von psychophysiologischen Erregungs- und Reaktionsmustern? Welche Rückschlüsse erlauben motorisches Verhalten und Ausdrucksverhalten auf unsere tatsächlichen Gefühle? Wie prägen soziale Prozesse und kulturelle Voraussetzungen das emotionale Erleben und Ausdrucksverhalten? Sollen wir unseren Gefühlen und Leidenschaften Grenzen setzen oder freien Lauf lassen? Müssen wir unsere Emotionen verbergen, oder dürfen wir Gefühle zeigen? Die Beiträge des Bandes vermitteln plastische Eindrücke von Emotionen im Wandel des Zeitgeists, konzentriert auf die ausgeprägte Gefühlswelt von Mittelalter und Renaissance. Mediävistische Forschung erschließt uns literarische, bildliche und philosophisch-wissenschaftliche Konzepte von Emotionen sowie ihrer Bewertung aus vergangenen Jahrhunderten und regt an, sie auf Fragen unseres eigenen Lebens und unserer geschichtlichen Gegenwart zu beziehen. Mit Beiträgen von Dieter Birnbacher, Mechthild Dreyer, Martin Pickavé, Thomas Nisters, Isabelle Mandrella, Hans Hecker, Achim Landwehr, Hans Körner, Barbara Haupt, Irmgard Rüsenberg, Vittoria Borsò und Katharina Philipowski

Since logic in the 13th century is focussed on syllogistics as its main subject, textbooks on logic provide us with large and detailed treatments of the proposition as the immediate and constitutive basis of the syllogism. In the present paper I will give a survey of these treatments and pay special attention to a certain side-issue, namely to non-assertive sentences and to some difficulties concerning their classification. I will focus on William of Sherwood's apporach to the subject and compare it with the conceptions of Roger Bacon, Peter of Spain and Lambert of Lagny, who are the auhtors of the three main logic compendia besides William of Sherwood's in the thirteenth century.

The study of concepts lies at the intersection of various disciplines, both analytic and empiric. The rising cognitive sciences, for instance, are interested in concepts insofar as they are used in an explanation of such diverse epistemic phenomena like categorization, inference, memory, learning, and decision-making. In philosophy, the challenge imposed by conceptualization consists, among other things, in accommodating reverse intuitions about concepts like shareability, mind-dependency, mediation between reference, knowledge and reality, etc. While researchers have collaborated more and more to contribute to a unified understanding of concepts and categorization, the joint venture unfortunately suffers (so far) from the fact that it is generally left unclear how exactly the different approaches undertaken in the participating sciences relate to each other. What do psychologists and philosophers mean by the notion of a concept? Is there a core-theory of concepts and categorization underlying analytical and empirical studies? The present collection of essays addresses these and related questions and tries to answer them from both a systematic and a historical perspective.

The paper discusses in how far medieval logic can appropriately be characterized as a formal science. In this respect, the special mediecal approach to logic as a scientia sermocinalis is examined as well as its main doctrines, namely the theories of supposition and of consequences, and the famous characterization of logic as an ars artium or scientia scientiarum. It is pointed out that medieval logic is not devoted to the setting up of formal systems or any metalogical analysis of formal structures. Logic in the medieval sense of the discipline is necessarily connected with semantical aspects of natural language. Accordingly, we are confronted with a discipline going far beyond the formal structures of discourse. The classification of medieval logic as a formal science is appropriate only under selected perspectives.