Drafts of Presentations
DRAFTS OF CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
A CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING
NOTE: The drafts of presentations on the pages of this website are provided
by the presenters as rough drafts often without full footnotes. These
incomplete versions are provided as a service for those who were unable to attend
the conferences but would like some indication of the contents of the presentations.
More fully documented versions may be uploaded at a later date.
Final versions will be published later. At that time publication information
will be provided at this website and draft versions will be removed.
Institut Catholique de Paris 30 May 2012: conference link click HERE.
Therese Scarpelli Cory (Seattle, WA)
“The Footprint of Avicenna’s Flying Man in the Early Aquinas”
Abstract
In thirteenth-century Latin discussions of self-knowledge, one of the foremost concerns was the phenomenon of self-familiarity. In his De Trinitate Augustine had unforgettably described how the mind can never encounter itself as foreign or new, but only as something that had always been familiar. In Avicenna’s ‘Flying Man’ thought experiment (Liber de anima I.1 and V.7), a number of early thirteenth-century thinkers found an explanation for this phenomenon: The soul is by nature self-thinking, even though it is generally distracted from itself by involvement with sensation. Although Aquinas initially adopts this Avicennian position at the beginning of his career (In Sent. I), he soon rejects it, arguing instead in Sent. III and De ver. that the intellect perceives itself only in its acts of cognizing other things. While these two views are strikingly different (Avicenna posits an unconscious realm of natural self-thinking, whereas Aquinas posits only a natural habitual self-knowledge, locating self-awareness in the structure of intentional acts), Aquinas’s mature position turns out to have some interesting debts to Avicenna. This paper will begin by sketching Avicenna’s position on self-knowledge as expressed in the texts available to the Latin medievals. I will then trace the Avicennian elements in Aquinas’s developing theory of self-knowledge in four early texts texts—In Sent. I.3.4.5, In Sent. III.23.1.2, ad 3, De ver. 1.9, and De ver. 10.8. Given the prominence of the ‘Flying Man’ in his predecessors’ treatments of self-knowledge and Aquinas’s own strenuous objections to the theory of self-knowledge illustrated therein, however, it is odd that he never refers to it. I conclude by considering possible explanations for this striking absence.
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Institut Catholique de Paris 30 May 2012: conference link click HERE.
Katja Krause (London)
"The Significance of Averroes for the Lumen Gloriae in Aquinas' Scriptum super Sententiis"
Abstract
In strikingly different ways, Albert and Aquinas present the lumen gloriae as an inherent medium under which God is seen in the beatific vision. While Albert holds that this light is a substantial inherence of God’s essence in the whole soul, Aquinas vehemently rejects his teacher’s view view in his Scriptum super Sententiis, Book 4, D. 49 Q. 2. In contrast, Aquinas presents the lumen gloriae as a new intellectual disposition enabling the intellect for God’s formal inherence in the intellect. While recent scholarship has formidably shown that Aquinas derived his philosophical argumentation for God’s formal inherence from Averroes’ conjunction theory, it has not been explored to what extent Aquinas relies on Averroes’ conjunction theory for his understanding of the lumen gloriae as aliqua dispositio sibi inherens. In this paper, I examine in detail the synthetic reasoning of Aquinas and elucidate in detail Averroes’ importance for its development.
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La Sorbonne, Université de Paris 1, 31 May 2012: conference link click HERE.
Michael Chase (CNRS, Paris)
“Abrahamic creation and Neoplatonic emanation in Greek, Arabic and Latin.
Reflections on a recent paper by Richard Taylor”
Abstract
This paper is conceived as a critical discussion of paper presented by Richard Taylor at a conference last Fall in Mexico City, in which he investigated the notion of creatio in the Liber de Causis and Thomas Aquinas, concluding that Neoplatonic emanationism may indeed be described as a kind of creation. In response, I study Taylor's definitions of creation and necessity, then proceed to a critical examination of two central claims: that Plotinus, Proclus, and the Arabic tradition that depend on them allow for the causing by the primary cause of something after nothing, and that the main distinction between Abrahamic and Neoplatonic creationism is the role of the Creator's free will in the former and its absence in the latter. Finally, I return to the Late Antique debate between Simplicius and Philoponus, to evaluate whether Abrahamic and Christian doctrines of “creation ” are really as compatible as Taylor claims.
CLICK ON THE LINK AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE FOR THE PAPER, IF IT HAS BEEN MADE AVAILABLE BY THE AUTHOR.
La Sorbonne, Université de Paris 1, 31 May 2012: conference link click HERE.
Richard C. Taylor (Marquette University, Milwaukee)
“Creation according to Averroes”
Abstract
In his Long Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle Averroes considers three accounts of creation and proceeds to reject (i) an account that all things are latent in matter and only require an agent moving cause for their appearance in creation; and (ii) the account of the Muslim theologians and the Christians that holds for a temporal creation involving no preexistent substance or matter out of which the created world exists so that there are no conditions on the action of the Creator. His own view involves one of three subcategories of a view he describes as involving (iii) generation and a substrate for changing in substance. This presentation explains Averroes’s typology of understandings of creation and explicates his own view. I will address the issue of whether his own understanding is in accord with the Islamic conception of creation.
CLICK ON THE LINK AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE FOR THE PAPER, IF IT HAS BEEN MADE AVAILABLE BY THE AUTHOR.
La Sorbonne, Université de Paris 1, 31 May 2012: conference link click HERE.
R. E. Houser (Houston, TX)
“Avicenna and the Thomistic Doctrine of Creation”
Abstract
At the outset of his consideration of creatures in the Summa theologiae, Aquinas asks “whether primary matter is created by God or is an independent co-ordinate principle.” To prove God creates even prime matter, Aquinas turns historian and paints a memorable miniature of the history of metaphysics, one in which Avicenna holds pride of place. Avicenna contributed to the following Thomistic doctrines: (1) Aquinas’s doctrine of creation includes two parts: the religious doctrine of the creation at a first moment in time, and the metaphysical doctrine of creation as absolute dependence of the creature upon God. (2) The historical development of philosophy mirrors the ontology of creatures. (3) It was Avicenna, even more than Plato or Aristotle, who conceived metaphysics as a truly universal discipline. (4) In creatures there is a distinction between essence and being, while in God there is not. (5) These two theses are so fundamental to metaphysics that they constitute the kind of proper principles called “hypotheses” or “suppositions.” (6) Consequently, Avicenna was correct in distinguishing physics from metaphysics, not just in terms of their subjects, but even more importantly in terms of their principles; for the fundamental principles of physics are the causes, while the fundamental principles of metaphysics are essence and being. First Avicenna and then Aquinas held that the principles of physics are not the same as the principles of metaphysics. Aquinas set out the principles of physics in De principiis naturae, based on Avicenna’s Physics 1 of The Healing; and he set out the principles of metaphysics in his much misunderstood De ente et essentia, based on Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing, Bk. 1.
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La Sorbonne, Université de Paris 1: 31 May 2012: conference link click HERE.
David Twetten (Milwaukee, WI)
“Emanation as ‘Aristotelian Cosmology’ for the Created Material Order in Albertus Magnus “
Abstract
Albert of Cologne has won the designation “the Great” thanks to a monumental literary legacy, especially thanks to his nearly twenty-year project of paraphrases, “rendering Aristotle intelligible to the Latins.” Given contemporary historiographic categories, it would be absurd to render Arabic Proclus materials (the Liber de causis) compatible with Aristotle’s physical sciences. But given Albert’s own categories, not only does this project make sense, but once completed, it can be shown to be anti-Platonic. The paper systematizes Albert’s reflections on the emanative origin of the material order, and it examines Albert’s understanding of their Platonic and Aristotelian credentials.
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La Sorbonne, Université de Paris 1: 2 June 2012: conference link click HERE.
Silvia Donati (Thomas Institut, Cologne)
“Averroes and Aquinas on Prime Matter as Pure Potentiality”
Abstract
The traditional interpretation of Aristotle’s notion of prime matter as an absolutely formless and purely potential substrate has been repeatedly called into question in the last decades within Aristotelian scholarship. Although, like many other medieval thinkers, Averroes and Aquinas endorse the theory of prime matter as a pure potentiality and believe it to be a genuine Aristotelian doctrine, they develop different interpretations of this theory. Central to Averroes’s understanding of prime matter is the idea of matter as a physical principle: in his view, its essential role is to serve as the substrate of substantial change. By contrast, Aquinas’s approach is more decidedly metaphysical and is focused on the essential relationship between prime matter and substantial form. In my paper, I intend to explore Averroes’s and Aquinas’s different understandings of the notion of prime matter as pure potentiality and their implications.
CLICK ON THE LINK AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE FOR THE PAPER, IF IT HAS BEEN MADE AVAILABLE BY THE AUTHOR.
La Sorbonne, Université de Paris 1, 31 May 2012: conference link click HERE.
Marta Borgo (Commissio Leonina, Paris)
“Lectures d’Averroès au XIIIe siècle. Quelques considérations
sur l’anti-pluralisme de Thomas d’Aquin”
Abstract
La structure hylémorphique des substances sublunaires est un sujet qui a suscité l’intérêt de Thomas d’Aquin tout au long de sa carrière. Dès la première heure adversaire de la thèse de la pluralité des formes substantielles, l’Aquinate aborde en effet la question à maintes reprises, et selon des perspectives diverses. Alors que le cible doctrinal reste fixe, la réfutation thomiste relève de sources différentes.
À partir de l’argument proposé par Thomas dans son commentaire à la distinction 18 du IIème livre des Sentences de Pierre Lombard (q. 1, a. 4), je me propose de parcourir les toutes premières étapes de la formation de son paradigme hylémorphique. Mon but étant de montrer le rôle joué par les sources arabes dans la formulation de la thèse thomiste de l’unicité de la forme substantielle, je me concentre notamment sur la manière – très différente par rapport à celle de ses contemporaines – dont le jeune Thomas aborde et interprète certains passages du Commentateur.
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La Sorbonne, Université de Paris 1: 2 June 2012: conference link click HERE.
Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo (Guadalajara, Mexico)
“Averroes and Aquinas on the Dialectical Nature of Revealed Theology”
Abstract
Two of the greatest Aristotelian commentators, Averroes and Aquinas, used the Aristotelian distinction between demonstrative, dialectical, and rhetorical discourses to assign an epistemological status to religious or theological knowledge, that is, to conclusions drawn from revelation. But their respective views on this point turned out to be very different, even opposite. Averroes considered religious knowledge to be dialectical in nature, whereas Aquinas believed revealed Christian theology to be a demonstrative science. The author shows that both of these greater Aristotelian commentators strive, although very differently, to be faithful to Aristotle concerning the epistemological status of theology. Ultimately, however, their approaches converge, particularly insofar as in both accounts, theology is dialectical in nature, at least in a qualified sense in the case of Aquinas.
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La Sorbonne, Université de Paris 1: 2 June 2012: conference link click HERE.
Joel Lonfat (Blackfriars, Oxford)
“Averroès, Thomas d’Aquin et Gilles de Rome à propos de
la localisation de l’espèce intelligible”
Abstract
La localisation de l’espèce intelligible, ainsi que les propriétés hébéphréniques qui en découlent, occupent une place centrale dans la dispute fantôme, car sans adversaire en état de répondre, entre Averroès, Thomas d’Aquin et Gilles de Rome. En mettant en lumière les deux critiques concernant la « localisation » de l’espèce intelligible, la première adressée par Thomas à Averroès dans le De unitate intellectus contra averroistas, la seconde de Gilles à l’encontre de Thomas dans son De plurificatione intellectus possibilis, nous espérons non seulement présenter une analyse fine des problèmes posés par les différentes positions et leur/s critique/s, mais aussi – et surtout – rendre compte de l’importance centrale que ces positions occupent dans la construction des théories de la connaissance proposées par nos différents auteurs et, ultimement, de l’adoption – ou non – d’une théorie aristotélicienne de l’intellection.
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