How does the mind know the world? This classical question, at the base of every doctrine of intentionality, will be the starting point of this course. On the one hand, there is the cognitive subject, with its mental structure and constitution – on the other, the world, which can be considered as the totality of the objects that the mind can cognize. Medieval philosophers received from the Ancients the idea that, in order to know something, the knower must become similar to it – by assimilating itself to the known thing. How this “assimilation principle” arrives to the Middles Ages – and how it is appropriated by the Medievals – is a multifaced story, declined in many and different ways. In this course, the doctrines of two of the most representative thinkers of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and John Duns Scotus (1266-1308), will be analysed in order to reveal the main differences – and the main points of contacts – between them. More particularly, the bank-test to clear their positions will be offered by the treatment of human and angelic cognition.
Předmět je vyučován v angličtině.
Poslední úprava: Pastyříková Iveta, Mgr. (21.11.2023)
Literatura - angličtina
Literature
Aristotle, On the Soul, transl. by W. S. Hett, Loeb Classical Library 1964
Augustine of Hippo, texts from Eighty-three different questions and The Trinity
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (ST):
Latin text: Vatican 1889–. (UFAR library, but also accessible online: corpusthomisticum.org)
English Text:
Full text translated by A. Freddoso (accessible online: https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm)
“The Treatise on Human Nature: ST Ia 75-102” by A. Freddoso, South Bend 2010 (UFAR library; also accessible online, at Freddoso’s webpage above indicated)
(another translation) R. Pasnau, Treatise on human nature, ST Ia 75-89. Cambridge University Press 2002
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima (Engl. Transl. by R. Pasnau, Yale University Press 1999 – UFAR library)
John Duns Scotus, Being and Cognition, Transl. by J. Van Der Bercken, Fordham University Press 2016 (UFAR library)
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy. Engl. Transl. by J. Cottingham, Cambridge University Press 2017 (UFAR library)
René Descartes, texts from the Correspondence, ed. Ch. Adam- P. Tannery, Vrin, 1996 (UFAR library)
Suggested Readings (more on Moodle)
R. Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on human nature: a philosophical study of Summa theologiae Ia 75-89, Cambridge University Press 2002
R. Pasnau, Theories of Cognition in Later Middles Ages. OUP 1998
E. Scribano, Angeli e beati. Modelli di teoria della conoscenza da Tommaso a Spinoza. Laterza 2006
Poslední úprava: Pastyříková Iveta, Mgr. (21.11.2023)
