Aureol, Peter (c.1280–1322)

Author(s):  
Robert Pasnau

A master of theology at the University of Paris and a member of the Franciscan order, Peter Aureol helped shape the philosophical agenda of the fourteenth century. His original and provocative views were widely discussed during the later Middle Ages, but his influence was rather indirect since his views almost always met with hostility. Although Aureol wrote extensively on a wide range of philosophical and theological issues, his most-discussed contributions to philosophy, in epistemology and metaphysics, centre on his theory of esse apparens (apparent existence).

Vivarium ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-285
Author(s):  
C. Philipp E. Nothaft

Abstract This article examines and edits an anonymous text from the late 1330s (Quesitum fuit utrum per interrogationes …), which was written to refute the arguments presented in a lost quaestio disputata by an unknown Parisian philosopher. At the heart of this scholastic dispute was the question whether the astrological branch known as interrogations was an effective and legitimate means of predicting the future. The philosopher’s negative answers to this question as well as the rebuttals preserved in our anonymous text offer valuable new insights into the debate over astrology that raged at the University of Paris during the fourteenth century. Besides arguing at length for the internal coherence and philosophical soundness of interrogations, the text contains a bold defence against the Augustinian view that astrologers consort with demons. This defence was later rebutted as part of an anti-astrological polemic by the astronomer Heinrich Selder, who is known to have studied in Paris during the 1370s.


Author(s):  
Magali Roques

Abstract In this paper, I intend to examine the conception of metaphor developed by fourteenth-century nominalist philosophers, in particular William of Ockham and John Buridan, but also the Ockhamist philosophers who were condemned by the 1340 statute of the faculty of arts of the University of Paris. According to these philosophers, metaphor is a transfer of meaning from one word to another. This transfer is based on some similarity, and is intentionally produced by a speaker. My aim is to study whether this view on metaphor is related to a specific view on the relation between thought, language, and communication. With this case study, I intend to argue that the view on the nature of thought one holds does not necessarily determine what the nature and function of metaphor are. I will show that the three philosophical doctrines under study diverge in their understanding of the mechanisms of a metaphor, while they share the same view on the nature of thought, namely that thought is a mental language.


Thomas Aquinas was one of the most significant Christian thinkers of the middle ages and ranks among the greatest philosophers and theologians of all time. In the mid-thirteenth century, as a teacher at the University of Paris, Aquinas presided over public university-wide debates on questions that could be put forward by anyone about anything. The Quodlibetal Questions are Aquinas’s edited records of these debates. Unlike his other disputed questions, which are limited to a few specific topics such as evil or divine power, Aquinas’s Quodlibetal Questions contain his treatment of hundreds of questions on a wide range of topics—from ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion to dogmatic theology, sacramental theology, moral theology, eschatology, and much more. And, unlike his other disputed questions, none of the questions treated in his Quodlibetal Questions were of Aquinas’s own choosing—they were all posed for him to answer by those who attended the public debates. As such, this volume provides a window onto the concerns of students, teachers, and other interested parties in and around the university at that time. For the same reason it contains some of Aquinas’s fullest, and in certain cases his only, treatments of philosophical and theological questions that have maintained their interest throughout the centuries.


Traditio ◽  
1947 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 335-339
Author(s):  
A. L. Gabriel

Life within the Colleges of the University of Paris was a charming one, full of interesting details concerning teaching and education in medieval Paris. A manuscript buried amongst the documents of the National Archives is revealing for those who believe that the lectures on Boethius and the explanation of Donatus constituted the entire programme of the student. The present article is only a sketch intended to call attention to some of the practical methods used to implement the Christian teachings on charity.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document