philosophy, modern reception of

Ancient philosophy’s modern reception reflects methods of transmission and dissemination of ancient philosophic texts. Ancient Greco-Roman philosophy impacted modernity via six means of influence: printed books, libraries, critical scholarship, vernacular translations, eclectic borrowing, and thematic resonance.

De Man, Paul (1919–83

De Man’s work is among the most renowned and influential in American literary theory of the latter twentieth century, especially regarding literary theory’s emergence as an interdisciplinary and philosophically ambitious discourse. Always emphasizing the linguistic aspects of a literary work over thematic, semantic or evaluative ones, de Man specifically focuses on the figurative features of literary language and their consequences for the undecidability of meaning. His extension of his mode of ‘rhetorical reading’ to philosophic texts also participates in the blurring of generic and institutional distinctions between literature and philosophy, a tendency pronounced in French philosophy of the latter twentieth century.

Translation and Philosophy: The Case of Averroes' Commentaries

Those experienced in translating difficult philosophic texts from one language to another with some degree of literal and stylistic accuracy know well how demanding such a task is. When they strive in addition to represent the thought of the author rather than their own presuppositions about that thought, the task becomes all the more arduous. To avoid prejudging the author, they take the text as it appears, on its own terms, and try to make sense of what the author actually says. They do so because they start from the premise that the author in question knows what he or she wishes to communicate and they thus set as their goal understanding what the author intends.

The Amphibolous Terms in Aristotle, Arabic Philosophy and Maimonides

In Arabic philosophic texts, and following them also in Hebrew philosophic texts, restatements of Aristotle's distinction between ‘equivocal’ (ὁμώνυμα, mushtarakah) and ‘univocal’ (συνώνυμα, mutawāṭi'ah), terms usually contain another type of term which stands midway between these two. It is called ‘ambiguous’ or ‘amphibolous’ (mushakkikah) terms. So far no adequate explanation as to the origin of this type of term has been advanced. In the latest and most important study of the subject, the problem of its origin has been left unsolved. To solve this problem as well as to account for the various treatments of ambiguous terms in Arabic philosophy, including Alfarabi, Avicenna, Algazali, Averroes and Maimonides, is the purpose of this paper.

The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew Philosophic Texts

In Aristotle there is no general term for those faculties of the soul which he treats of in the Third Book of De Anima and in De Memoria et Reminiscentia to differentiate them as a class from the five senses which he treats of in the Second Book of De Anima. In Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew philosophic texts, however, these post-sensationary faculties, or some of them, or sometimes only one of them, are designated by the term “internal senses,” in contradistinction to the five senses which are designated by the term “external senses.” Sometimes instead of “external” the terms “corporeal” and “passive” are used, and instead of “internal” the terms “spiritual,” “separable,” and “cerebral.” Sometimes, too, the term “faculties” or “apprehensions” is used instead of “senses.” The use of the terms “internal,” “spiritual,” and “cerebral” has been explained by the fact that the faculties to which they are applied reside within the brain and operate without bodily organs.