Scott MacDonald

In this paper I investigate the philosophical developments at the heart of what appears to be the earliest systematic formulation of the doctrine of the transcendentals by comparing the first questions of Philip the Chancellor''sSumma de bono (the so-called first treatise on the transcendentals — ca. 1230) with its immediate ancestor, a small group of questions from William of Auxerre''sSumma aurea (ca. 1220). I argue that Philip''s innovative position on the relation between being and goodness, the centerpiece of his doctrine of the transcendentals, is motivated by an Aristotelian conception of theoretical knowledge that grounds inquiry in metaphysical classification and definition understood in terms of Aristotle''s doctrine of the categories. The concerns about taxonomy and definition that Philip introduces into the early thirteenth-century discussion of the metaphysics of goodness lead him to the theses that are the foundations of the medieval doctrine of the transcendentals, among them that being and goodness are conceptually distinct but the same in reality.

The Confessions recounts Augustine 's successful search for God. But Augustine worries that one cannot search for God if one does not already know God. That version of the paradox of inquiry dominates and structures Confessions 1–10. I draw connections between the dramatic opening lines of book 1 and the climactic discussion in book 10.26–38 and argue that the latter discussion contains Augustine 's resolution of the paradox of inquiry as it applies to the special case of searching for God. I claim that he develops a model, relying on the universal human experience of joy and truth, that identifies a starting point that is common to all human beings, is sufficient for guiding a successful search for God, and avoids commitment to recollection of experiences prior to birth. The model is crucial to Augustine 's rejection of traditional Platonist views about recollection

The purpose of the article is to offer a detailed exegetical analysis of the argument in chapter four of "de ente et essentia" in which aquinas argues for a distinction between "esse" and essence and to develop an interpretation of it on the basis of the analysis. I argue that the reconstructed argument shows that aquinas argues for a real distinction and that he establishes it earlier in the argument than some commentators have thought. I criticize a rival interpretation of the argument defended recently by joseph owens.

This volume is an important supplement to the two volumes in the series of Cambridge Histories covering the philosophy of the Middle Ages. Dronke's book, which adopts the format of the latter volume, is intended to fill the gap between them. It contains sixteen contributions by fifteen scholars. The contributions are arranged in four parts. The four essays in part 1, "Background," provide useful summaries of the intellectual inheritance that provides the cultural environment for what has been called the twelfth-century renaissance. These essays give us, for the first time I think, a clear and reasonably broad account of the historical and philosophical relations between twelfth-century thinkers and ancient thought. Part 2, "New Perspectives," contains four chapters, one on twelfth-century scientific speculations, one on the grammatical, logical, and semantic issues that grew out of interest in grammar, and two on logic during the period. These chapters are the most exciting in the book: they succeed in showing us not only some of what is new and distinctive in twelfth-century thought but also in taking us to the frontiers of some of the philosophically most interesting current research. Fredborg's "Speculative Grammar" and Jacobi's "Logic : The Later Twelfth Century" uncover some of the strange and intriguing roots of characteristically medieval developments in logic: issues such as the properties of terms, the theory of supposition, and fallacies; and methods such as the use of sophismata and instantiae.