scholarly journals Visualizing Elemental Ontology in the Livre des propriétés des choses

2020 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-127
Author(s):  
Luke Sunderland
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
French Translation ◽  
Ontological Pluralism ◽  
Ecological Thought ◽  
Modes Of Existence

Abstract This essay offers an encounter with Bruno Latour’s account of ontological pluralism by way of a close reading of the Livre des propriétés des choses, Jean Corbechon’s fourteenth-century French translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s encyclopedia. Engagement with Latour’s Inquiry into Modes of Existence enables a new reading of medieval encyclopedias that takes seriously Latour’s suggestion that premodern cosmologies retain importance for modern ecological thought while simultaneously challenging his arguments about the rigidity of ontologies based on ideas of nature, substance, and matter. This essay argues that the Livre deploys precisely such an ontology in dynamic and flexible ways. The varying visual programs in Livre manuscripts each configure the encyclopedia’s ontology differently, either making humans privileged observers of nature or positioning them as subject to its laws while adopting varying solutions for communicating ontological contentions to readers.

scholarly journals Ontological Pluralism and Multi-Quantificational Ontology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Król ◽  
Józef Lubacz
Keyword(s):  
Existential Quantifier ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Ontological Pluralism ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Modes Of Existence ◽  
General Method ◽  
Formal Theories

AbstractThis paper explores some variants and aspects of multi-quantificational criteria of existence, examining these in the context of the debate between monism and pluralism in analytical philosophy. Assuming familiarity with the findings to date (summarized in broad terms at the outset), we seek to apply to these the newly introduced concepts of “substitution” and “substitutional model”. Possible applications of formal theories involving multiple types of existential quantifier are highlighted, together with their methods of construction. These considerations then lead to a thesis asserting the irrelevance of both multi-quantificational criteria and assumptions involving quantificational ontology to the debate between monism and pluralism in ontology. Many quantifiers cannot properly distinguish different modes of existence–as we aim to show by furnishing a general method for constructing counter-examples to any theory that assumes that different types of existential quantifier correspond to different modes of existence.

Tripoli at the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century A. D./Eighth Century AH

1978 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 55-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Annual Report ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
French Translation ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The People ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town

In the Seventh Annual Report of the Society I published an account of the journey of the shaykh Al-Tijānī to Tripoli at the beginning of the fourteenth century A. D./eighth century A. H., with particular reference to the Arab tribes and chiefs whom he encountered.What follows is a translation of the passages from the Riḥla in which he describes the city of Tripoli as he saw it during the eighteen months of his residence. Page references are to the 1958 Tunis edition of the work, followed by references to the nineteenth century French translation by Alphonse Rousseau. The latter is incomplete, and not always accurate.221, trans. 1853, 135Our entry into (Tripoli) took place on Saturday, 19th Jumāḍā II (707).237, trans. 1853, 135–6As we approached Tripoli and came upon it, its whiteness almost blinded the eye with the rays of the sun, so that I knew the truth of their name for it, the White City. All the people came out, showing their delight and raising their voices in acclaim. The governor of the city vacated the place of his residence, the citadel of the town, so that we might occupy it. I saw the traces of obvious splendour in the citadel (qaṣba), but ruin had gained sway. The governors had sold most of it, so that the houses which surrounded it were built from its stones. There are two wide courts, and outside is the mosque (masjid), formerly known as the Mosque of the Ten, since ten of the shaykhs of the town used to gather in it to conduct the affairs of the city before the Almohads took possession. When they did so, the custom ceased, and the name was abandoned.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Samantha Katz Seal
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
House Of Fame ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Canterbury Tales ◽  
Literary Fame

This Introduction provides an overview of the pressures that late-fourteenth-century England placed upon traditional models of obtaining human posterity from the achievements of paternity. The introduction sets out the book’s argument that Chaucer himself was deeply concerned with questions of human authority in the face of man’s mortality, providing both biographical detail and a close reading of Chaucer’s discussions of literary fame within his early poem, The House of Fame. This introduction also sets up the book’s methodological priorities, introduces the book’s structure and chapter divisions, and argues in favor of addressing The Canterbury Tales in a fluid, non-traditional order.

scholarly journals A peripheral heretic? An early fourteenth-century heresy trial from Sweden*

2020 ◽  
Vol 93 (262) ◽  
pp. 599-620
Author(s):  
Gustav Zamore
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Unique Case

Abstract This article examines the inquisition against Botulf, the only person known to have been executed for heresy in medieval Sweden. It analyses the tactics of evasion that Botulf employed to escape detection and apprehension by tapping into common conceptions of the Eucharist to gloss his dissent. Through a close reading of the sentence in its historical, cultural and liturgical context, the article argues that it not only records a unique case in medieval Sweden, but that it performs clerical and elite identities by drawing on biblical and liturgical topoi, as well as antiheretical rhetoric to depict Botulf as a ‘membrum diaboli’.

A Return to the Analogy of Being

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kris McDaniel
Keyword(s):  
Logical Form ◽  
Specific Property ◽  
Property A ◽  
Ontological Pluralism ◽  
Analogy Of Being ◽  
Disjunctive Property ◽  
Analogous Property ◽  
Modes Of Existence

This chapter explores the metaphysics of what the author calls “analogous properties.” An analogous property is a non-specific property that is less natural than its specifications (called “analogue instances”) but is more natural as a merely disjunctive property. The author discusses and then applies two tests for being an analogous property: a property is analogous provided that it has more unity than a mere disjunction but yet systematically varies with respect to either its logical form or the axioms that govern its behavior. The notion of an analogous property is used to formulate several more versions of ontological pluralism. One kind of ontological pluralism appeals to a distinction between absolute and relative modes of existence. This distinction between modes of being is then used to articulate one kind of ontological superiority, which the author calls “orders of being.”

The Journey of al-Tijānī to Tripoli at the beginning of the fourteenth century A.D./eighth century A.H.

1976 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 41-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brett
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Arabic Text ◽  
French Translation ◽  
Literary Composition ◽  
The Way

Al-Tijānī was a highly-placed scholar and man of letters at Tunis. At the beginning of the fourteenth century A.D., the eighth century A.H., he made a devious and slow journey from Tunis to a point between Tripoli and Misurata, returning much more directly. On the way he employed his considerable leisure to correspond with his acquaintances, often in verse, and still more to collect, by diligent inquiry, the material for the account which he wrote of his adventure. The journey itself became the thread upon which were strung descriptions of each place he visited, first the topography, then the history, the men of religion, and finally the poets illustrated by generous quotations from their works. In this way he managed to provide a great deal of information, at first and second hand, about the route and its interest, contemporary and antiquarian, for an educated gentleman with a taste for literature and literary composition. Some of this information is known to us from other sources; al-Tijānī belonged to the classical Arab literary tradition of the Maghrib as it grew by constant repetition. Some of it is new, because the author drew on works which have not otherwise survived. The rest is al-Tijānī's own contribution, his invaluable tale of what he did and saw. The resultant work, known as the Riḥla or Journey of al-Tijānī, was published in a French translation by Alphonse Rousseau in the Journal Asiatique in 1852–3; this excluded the poetry and a great deal of anecdote, which the translator considered to be ‘sujet de nul intérêt’. The translation itself is not always accurate; nevertheless it is valuable as a guide. The full Arabic text was published at Tunis in 1927, and in a critical edition in 1958.

The mid-fourteenth century capital of Mali

1973 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. O. Hunwick
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Left Bank ◽  
The South ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
River Niger

For over a century scholars have been attempting to locate the area and, if possible, the actual site of the capital of the Mali empire in its period of greatness. Since the 1920S attention has been focused on an area near the Sankararni river, a tributary entering the Niger from the south, upstream from Bamako. Over recent years a Polish-Guinean archaeological expedition has been digging a site there, but with inconclusive results so far.A close reading of the few descriptions we have of the capital of Mali, and in particular of the route taken by Ibn Battūta, who visited the capital in 1352, suggests that the city lay on the left bank of the river Niger somewhere between Segu and Bamako. This is in fact a ‘logical] site for the capital of an empire whose tributaries lay mainly in the savannah and Sahel belts, and in whose armies cavalry played a significant role. For this reason, and a number of others, the recent hypothesis of Claude Meillassoux, suggesting a location for the capital south of the R. Falémé (and perhaps also of the R. Gambia), seems doubtful. The proper name for the capital is also discussed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document