Human action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus & William of Ockham

2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (01) ◽  
pp. 52-0209-52-0209
Vivarium ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter King

AbstractMediaeval psychological theory was a “faculty psychology”: a confederation of semiautonomous sub-personal agents, the interaction of which constitutes our psychological experience. One such faculty was intellective appetite, that is, the will. On what grounds was the will taken to be a distinct faculty? After a brief survey of Aristotle's criteria for identifying and distinguishing mental faculties, I look in some detail at the mainstream mediaeval view, given clear expression by Thomas Aquinas, and then at the dissenting views of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. I conclude with some reflections on why the mainstream mediaeval view was discarded by Descartes.


Author(s):  
Johann Beukes

The constellation language-logic in medieval philosophy (2): Duns Scotus to De Rivo. This second in a series of two articles continues the attempt to provide an in-depth overview of some of the most prominent – and some of the most underpublished - medieval thinkers’ stances on the constellation of language and logic, thus as a combined and condensed problem in western philosophy between the 5th and 15th centuries. The two articles form part of a rehabilitating series of modern-critical articles on understated and marginalised themes, texts and figures in medieval philosophy. The positions of the well-known philosophers that are covered in the two articles, St Augustine, Peter Abelard, St Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, are juxtaposed with some less familiar philosophical positions, amongst others those of Boethius, Peter of Spain, John Wyclif and Peter de Rivo.


Author(s):  
Johann Beukes

The constellation language-logic in medieval philosophy (1): St Augustine to St Aquinas This series of two articles provides an in-depth overview of some of the most prominent (and some of the most underpublished) medieval thinkers’ stance on the constellation of language and logic, thus as a combined and condensed problem in Western philosophy between the 5th and 15th centuries. The articles form part of a rehabilitating series of modern-critical articles on understated and marginalised themes, texts and figures in medieval philosophy. The positions of the well-known philosophers that are covered in the two articles, St Augustine, Peter Abelard, St Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, are juxtaposed with some less familiar philosophical positions, amongst others those of Boethius, Peter of Spain, John Wyclif and Peter de Rivo.


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