Scholasticism

Although Descartes has often been portrayed as the father of the modern concept of mind, his approach to consciousness is notoriously problematic. What makes it particularly hard to assess his role in the development of the theories of consciousness is the difficulty of clarifying the kind of consciousness he might have in mind when using the associated Latin terms (conscius, cogitatio, conscium esse, etc.). In this article, I analyse Antoine Arnauld’s early interpretation of the passages in Descartes that refer to the issue of consciousness. I argue for two separate but interconnected claims. Firstly, I show that when Arnauld sets out to make a case for Descartes’ concept of cogitatio, he reads the central passages in light of some scholastic theories of cognition, in particular, the concept of ‘reflexio virtualis’ which, far from being a Cartesian invention, comes from the late scholastic discourse. Secondly, I argue that by talking about virtual reflection Arnauld provides an interpretation of Descartes’ views in terms of the intrinsic structure of the first-order thought – a reading which is still plausible, even by our contemporary standards.

""In his « little Treatise in English» on Human nature (1640), and, later, in Leviathan (1647 – 1650), Thomas Hobbes examines and redefines the passions. Basing his argument upon the concept of motion, he conceives them as thoughts: passions are nothing but perceptions, which transit through the brain, and then move towards the heart. There they cause various sensations of pleasure or pain, by helping or hindering « vital motion ».
Anger, Hobbes claims, is a break-through in front of a sudden opposition, not the response to an outrage, as the Ancients had erroneously claimed. « Courage, in a large signification, is the absence of fear in the presence of any evil whatsoever; but in a stricter and more common meaning, it is contempt of wounds and death, when they oppose a man in the way to his end. Anger (or sudden courage) is nothing but the appetite or desire of overcoming present opposition. It hath been commonly defined to be grief proceeding from an opinion of contempt; which is confuted by the often experience we have of being moved to anger by things inanimate and without sense, and consequently incapable of contemning us. » (Leviathan, I, 6, 1-2.  Cf. Human Nature, VII, 1-2).
The definition of 'orge', as the grief for an undeserved slight, joined to the wish to retaliate, comes from Aristotle’s 'Rhetoric', a text Hobbes not only knew, but also translated. Anger was, for Aristotle, the political passion par excellence. It is because we are insulted that we revolt, and that our revolt is justified. It is in anger that we commit tyrannicide. Be it a tumultuous explosion or a long lasting grudge, ire is by definition the reasoned answer of a social actor, who suffers in his body as well as in the social image that he has  created for herself, and on behalf of justice: one does not recognize this person for that which he wishes to be considered. The gender mark is intended, given the heroic context. This criticism might appear to be just a minor detail, confined to Hobbes’ typology of the passions.  But since the new description of anger disconnects the emotion from any justification (thus from justice), refuting Aristotle was crucial for the consistency of Hobbes’ theory of the state. Leviathan must have zero tolerance for any form of social violence, from sedition (his sickness) to civil war (his death). Therefore the celebration of the noble killing of a king (conveniently labeled “tyrant”), has no place in modern politics. Those who come to treat a sovereign as an obstacle in their way understand nothing of the nature of the state, which is artificial and vulnerable, always threatened by a return to the state of nature.
    Furthermore, to object to Aristotle on anger was consistent with Hobbes’ profound weariness with classical political theory. One of the most insidious causes of the dangerous misunderstanding of the state, Hobbes argues, was ideological. People learned to cultivate dissent and glamorize discontent from subversive, poisonous political theories: those of the Ancients. « From the reading, I say, of such books, men have undertaken to kill their Kings, because the Greek and Latin writers, in their books and discourses of Policy, make it lawful and laudable, for any man so to do ; provided, before he do it, he call him tyrant. For they say not regicide, that is, killing a king, but tyrannicide, that is, killing of a tyrant is lawful » ('De Corpore Politico', XXVII,  10).  No learning of a language, Hobbes dryly comments, has ever been paid with so much blood, as that of Greek and Latin (Ibidem, 150).
In the transition from a theory of man as a political animal, naturally inclined to sociability (Aristotle), to a vision of human nature, made up of movement and competition, Hobbes rethought the anthropological underpinnings of politics. This required the simplification of the passions, and the rejection of that interlacing of rights, habits and body, which framed the complexity of the emotions in the classical past. The demystification of anger was critical.
 

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40 essays by Ronnie Hsia, Ulrich Leinsle, Marius Reiser, Thomas Marschler, Trent Pomplun, Jean-Louis Quantin, William O'Brien SJ, Stefania Tutino, Carl Trueman, Andreas Beck, Willem van Asselt, Eric Carlsson, Stephen Hampton, Benjamin Mayes, Robert Kolb, Risto Saarinnen, Ola Tjorholm, Sarah Mortimer, Jeff Bach, Keith Stanglin, Hartmut Lehmann, Jonathan Strom, Craig Atwood, Stephen Burnett, Emanuele Colombo, Aza Goudriaan, Carolina Armenteros, Eric Watkins, Maria Rosa Antognazza, Stephen Gaukroger, Jonathan Israel, John Henry.

Haiyaso, a short text found in the collected works of the early Tokugawa Confucian Hayashi Razan (1583–1657), purports to be a record of a debate held in 1606 between Razan and the famous Japanese Jesuit scholastic Habian (1585–1621). The debate is presented in the text as a confrontation between Confucianism and Christianity. In the modern period, right up to the present, the text has been used prolifically to present a conflict between "Western thought and East Asian intellectual systems" as one of the central stories of the intellectual history of early seventeenth-century Japan. In this sense, the text has been used to justify the imposition of fashionable modern dichotomies – between ‘East and West’ and ‘rational and religious’ – onto the intellectual history of Tokugawa Japan. This outlook has been supported by an inaccurate representation of Habian’s Jesuit period treatise Myotei mondo as some kind of ‘introduction to Western thought’. In fact, Myotei mondo is a much more complex work which, among other things, shows the clear influence of Confucian and Neo-Confucian humanism. This article goes back to the extant source documents of indigenous Japanese Jesuit thought, and the attacks on it in the early seventeenth century. Through examining the ideas of Habian in contrast with other Japanese and Chinese Jesuit texts, and by analysing the context within which Haiyaso sits in Hayashi Razan’s collected documents, the paper demonstrates that Haiyaso was a fabrication, in the sense that it is a work of propaganda probably written well after Habian’s death, and imputing to Habian views that he clearly did not hold.

Now is an appropriate time to reconsider the historiographical benefit that a comparative study of the East Syrian ("Nestorian") schools and the Babylonian rabbinic academies may offer.* This is attributable both to the recent, rapid increase in scholarship on Jewish-Christian relations in the Roman Empire and late antiquity more broadly, 1 and to the return by some scholars of rabbinic Judaism to the issues of a scholarly exchange of the late 1970s and early 1980s about the nature of rabbinic academic institutionalization. Furthermore, over the past twenty years, scholars of classics, Greek and Roman history, and late antiquity have significantly added to the bibliography on the transmission of knowledge-in lay person's terms, education-in the Greco-Roman and early Christian worlds. 2 Schools continue to be an intense topic of conversation, and my own recent work on the School of Nisibis and the East Syrian schools in general suggests that the transformations and innovations of late antiquity also occurred in the Sasanian Empire, at * This article is based on a paper given at the Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies in 2005. I thank those who provided feedback at the time, as well as Jeffrey Rubenstein, Natalie Dohrmann, Ra'anan Boustan, and especially Michael Pregill and Bridget Purcell. I also thank those in attendance when I presented a later version in the fall of 2007 at the Center for the Study of Early Christianity, Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures, Catholic University of America. The anonymous reader provided a number of helpful suggestions for which I am also grateful, and I thank Peter Schäfer for helping me with a missing reference.

The purpose of this essay is to explore, and clarify, some key features in Aquinas’ account of the virtue of temperance, with an eye to answering some common objections raised against a positive evaluation of temperance. In particular, I consider three features of Aquinas’ understanding of temperance: First, the role of the rational mean in temperance; second, the role of rightly ordered passions in temperance; and third, the ‘despotic’ control of reason over the passions in temperance. Along the way I consider three common objections to Aquinas’ account of temperance: the objection that temperance can be misused for evil, the objection that temperance devalues effort, and the objection that temperance devalues strong passions and thereby implicitly devalues the goodness of sexuality. In responding to these objections on behalf of Aquinas, I take the opportunity to clarify and slightly extend Aquinas’ account of temperance.

The leading master in the late twelfth-century Paris schools, Peter the Chanter, pleaded for the Waldensians' and laity's right to preach, but not on dogma or within a liturgical framework. To do so, he developed the distinction "praedicatio -- exhortatio" (the former being a clerical monopoly). This distinction was later used by the Franciscans' curial friends to allow the new order (initially made of laymen)  to "speak". The Chanter was not alone in favor shown to a form of preaching by the laity. His non-isolated case shows that the twelfth-century clergy did not always seek to preserve its privileges at all costs.

Muḥammad Majdhūb was one of many Muslims who in the nineteenth century argued against strict adherence to the established madhhab system and sought ways to overcome it. This case study, based on an examination of Majdhūb’s writings and contemporary documents, analyses what this position meant in practice, how it was expressed, and what it signified in a given social context. The challenge to madhhab affiliation appears to have been more radical in theory than in practice. While dismissing fiqh rationality and basing himself on Prophetic Tradition and inspiration, Majdhūb’s practical conclusions consistently—if implicitly—agree with the Shāfiʿī school. In the context in which such views were propagated, however, we find interesting social and political factors that contributed to their attractiveness. Here, they served to transcend a politicised deadlock between proponents of different madhhabs while lending ‘Prophetic’ support to the local as opposed to the ruling Ottoman party.

In late antiquity, Zoroastrian exegetes set out to translate their ancient canonical texts into Middle Persian, the vernacular of their time. Although undated, these translations, commonly known as the Zand, are often associated with the Sasanian era (224–651 ce). Despite the many challenges the Zand offers to us today, it is indispensable for investigations of late antique exegesis of the Avesta, a collection of religious and ritual texts commonly regarded as the Zoroastrians’ scripture.

This paper is an extended study of how exactly sensation constrains our intellectual knowing, according to Aquinas.  I argue against what I call a "Sense-Gatekeeper" reading of Aquinas, which derives from the maxim "Nothing is in intellect that was not first in sense," which is often erroneously thought to be the cornerstone of Aquinas's theory of human knowing, and which is responsible for a longstanding (and in my view mistaken) Thomistic view that human knowers cannot have a positive concept of immaterial entities.  The paper (1) explores the relationship between experiential access and conceptualizing in Aquinas; (2) shows that due to our self-awareness, we do have a positive concept of immaterial or incorporeal being; (3) explains the precise sense in which Aquinas thinks our knowledge of higher incorporeal realities such as angels is restricted.

This article retells the surprising discovery of a considerable Jewish influence on Christian scholasticism in the Middle Ages. While most students of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas knew that both had read Jewish philosophy, only the rediscovery of especially Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed by Jewish philosophers in the nineteenth century showed the whole extent of the scholastics' dependence on Jewish predecessors – especially where they do not refer to them specifically. This Jewish discovery naturally faced Catholic resistance, if not denial, and turns thus into an interesting chapter in the history of theological ideas.

Social epistemology existed in the scholastic tradition in the shape of doctrines on the legitimate use of probable opinions. Medieval scholasticism had developed sophisticated approaches in this respect, but the apogee of scholastic theoretical reflection on social epistemology occurred in the Baroque era and its Catholic moral theology (late sixteenth to eighteenth century). The huge debate on probable opinions at that time produced the most far-reaching and deepest investigations into the moral and epistemological foundations and limitations of opinion-based, reasonable discourse prior to the late twentieth century. It is time to recover the arguments and claims of Baroque scholastic social epistemology, not only to fill a lacuna in intellectual history but also to see whether some of its challenges are still with us today. Today, there are two sorts of social epistemology: the term either signifies the general social conditioning of knowledge, or it refers to the dependency of a person's beliefs on the beliefs of others. 1 We mainly deal here with social epistemology of the latter type because it has prominent antecedents in scholastic thought. When epistemologists today ask why and how it is epistemically legitimate to rely on the beliefs of others, they should realise that the same 1 On modern social epistemology, see Alvin Goldman and Thomas Blanchard, "Social Epistemology," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (version April 2015),

The chapter discusses the symbolic dimensions and underlying structures of the idea of 'submission to the authority of the masters' current in high medieval education. It traces the changes this practice underwent during the course of the twelfth century, arguing that these mirror the division between religious and intellectual expertise coming to the fore during the period. Submission to the authority of the masters meant something different when those masters were guardians of orthodoxy, as during the centuries up to c. 1100, and when they became guardians of the right order of knowledge, as became typical from c. 1150 onwards.

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The dramatic unfolding of events after Martin Luther's revolutionary act led to the ultimate, and seemingly irreparable, fissure with Roman Catholicism: excommunication and schism. Remembering the Reformation enters into this history and pursues a more nuanced reading of Luther's relationship with the Catholic tradition, from his Augustinian roots and medieval training to his reading of scripture and investigations of ecclesiology, as well as his continued relevance and challenge to Catholic theology. An international consortium of scholars, Catholic and Protestant, contribute to this volume and provide a thoughtful reimagining of Luther.

This is my contribution to published symposium on the thesis of Dieter Hattrup concerning Bonaventure's *On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology*. Hattrup notoriously has argued that the *Reduction* cannot be a work of Bonaventure's because its theological vision is inconsistent with the Seraphic Doctor's other works.  I am grateful for Hattrup's question, but I aim to defend the consistency of Bonaventure's *Reduction* within his larger oeuvre.  The implications of what might seem like a petty medievalists' squabble over manuscripts and dating are significant for larger questions of faith and reason.  So my article is an appreciative theological refutation, of sorts.

This paper was delivered on March 9, 2004, at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland, as the College’s tenth Annual Aquinas Lecture. It contrasts the approaches to theology practiced by Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. The argument is essentially this: By transforming "sacra pagina" into "scientia divina," Thomas and the thirteenth century achieved genuine progress in theological thinking. This progress, however, comes at a price, which is the creation of what I call the “methodical subject.” This subject no longer sub-jects itself to the story of the Christian faith, but methodically translates this story into a rigorously articulated system: a "scientia." This subject no longer speaks the metaphorical and poetic language of Scripture, but the conceptually precise, univocal language of the Philosopher. It therefore authors texts in a completely new sense in which originality can become an accomplishment.

This paper analyzes the contributions of some of the pre scholastic and scholastic writers on the doctrine of the “just price”. According to their perspective it is difficult to establish an objective method for discovering the “just price” of goods on the market. On the contrary, they portrayed a theory in which the only instance that ultimately determines the price of goods is the subjective evaluations of those involved in the process of buying and selling. Moreover, the “justice” of an exchange of goods or price, results directly from the absence of fraud or violence. Therefore, a price is “just” if it is voluntarily set and accepted by parties.

La validez de la lengua latina como instrumento de comunicación universal permitió el uso de la misma en géneros de muy diversa índole, incluso en época moderna. Sabido es que desde el Renacimiento se pretendió una renovación de la lengua del Lacio en la idea de adaptarla con la mayor fidelidad posible al modelo creado por los autores clásicos, desterrando así el bárbaro latín producido en la Edad Media 1 y los patrones desarrollados por determinados métodos de enseñanza 2 .

“Scholasticism” is a term that refers to Western medieval philosophy and, by extension, to any philosophical system primarily relying on a given textual corpus and on an argumentative method for exploiting its resources. At the beginning of this essay, Kant’s criticism against all scholastic endeavors is briefly recalled. At the same time, attention is drawn to the “dialogic resources” of medieval scholastic philosophy, resources that were reworked and enriched through the development of spiritual theology in the 17th century. A joint assessment of scholastic philosophy and spiritual theology helps one to focus on the variety of “dialogic styles” and to relate such diversity to the plasticity of language-games. On such basis, our current philosophical task may well be to connect philosophical dialogic styles in their irreducible diversity into an ever-evolving conversing body.

This article focuses on the external features of Dante’s epistemology (i.e. objects of knowledge) as they materialize in the Commedia through the Scholastic notion of principles, understood as ‘beginnings’ or ‘sources’ (rather than more narrowly as ‘fundamental truths’). While causal knowledge appears throughout Dante’s poem, I show how each canticle significantly culminates in thematic beginnings: Lucifer for the Inferno, Earthly Paradise for the Purgatorio and God for the Paradiso. By embedding these historic ‘beginnings’ into the conclusions of each canticle, the poet is able to highlight the pilgrim’s philosophical progression conceived as an epistemological movement toward principles which parallels the protagonist’s metaphysical advancement toward the First Principle. As the physical and metaphysical journey ends with God as the Supreme Being, this similar development applies to the philosophical journey concluding with God as Truth.

In the late 16 th and early 17 th centuries, a number of 'liberal Jesuit scholastics' produced the last great synthesis of Aristotelian psychology with Christian theology. In this magnificently sympathetic reconstruction of their systems of the soul, Dennis Des Chene rescues Toletus, Suarez, and the other 'schoolmen' from the neglect resulting from scornful dismissals by Descartes and his fellows. Deliberating bypassing the political and medical contexts of their work, and focussing almost exclusively on Jesuit rather than other, 'dissident' Renaissance Aristotelianisms, Des Chene focusses intensely on intellectual history, what he calls at one point 'the flurry of subtleties' of these astonishing systematic commentaries on Aristotle.

I testi sono pubblicati previo giudizio espresso da recensori anonimi Segreteria di direzione e redazione / Editorial Secretary Si prega di inviare manoscritti, dattiloscritti, stampati, libri e la posta redazionale al seguente indirizzo / Contributors are kindly requested to send manuscripts, typescripts, print-outs, books and correspondence to the following address:

Introduction: Scotus on "Scientific Knowledge" (scientia) Each account of scientia advanced by Scotus presupposes the definition and the knowledge of the "first object" (primwn obicctum), He explores "first object" in three ways: (1) in its logical-epistemological function in respect to the habit of scientia; (2) in the relationship of the habit to its respective cognitive potency; (3) in the modality of the truths to be known in the habit. His explorations give rise to particular differences bet,veen "subject" and "object" 1 • (1) The first object, even when it is taken in the scie1Jce of the contingent as "first subject" (primum subiectum), is-as long as it is known as such-the epistemological ground of sci8n tific knowledge. "Subject" and "object", each in a habit "as such" (in se) of the contingent ancl/or of the nec8s-sary2, are also an object of the intellecti. If an essence is known perfectly, then as "the known thing", it can cause the habit that expresses its entire knowability through essential-necessary compositions or even accidentalcontingent compositions. (2) In the Prologue to Ordinatio, "subject" and "object" are used in respect to the definition of the first object of a scientific habit fixed in Ord. prol. n. 142. However, •where tvrn kinds of cognitive power are contrasted in relation to the habit of knowledge of the same ob-ject\ "first object" differs from "first subject". Since in a habit in se of necessary truths, the real essence has to be apprehended as such in order for "science" to be obtained in the intellect, "first object" and "first subjed" have, in a formal sense, a different meaning: "first oi~ject" is the proper con-PUCRS, Porto Alegre, Brazil. I would like to thank the Cnpq (Consdho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnol6gico) for the unvaluable support given for the preparation of this article. t For this introduction as a whole see R. H. Pich, Der Begriff dcr wissenschci/r!iclien Erhenntnis nach Johannes Duns Scotus, 2001. 'Whether as a species intclligibilis or not; see It H. Pich, op. cit., 4.1.1, and Con~ clusion l. l and 1.2. ""Object" is above all a concept "respective to a lcognitivel potency of the soul'' luenndgenspsychologisch); see L. Honnefelder. Scienlia in se-scientia in nobis, in: T.

From the late thirteenth through late seventeenth centuries, a single three-word Latin phrase—sapiens dominabitur astris, or “the wise man will be master of the stars”—proliferated in astrological, theological, philosophical, and literary texts. It became a convenient marker denoting orthodox positions on free will and defining the boundaries of the scientifically and morally legitimate practice of astrology. By combining the methodology of a diachronic historical survey with a microhistorical focus on evolving phraseology, this study argues that closely examining the use of this phrase reveals how debates about the meanings of wisdom, free will, determinism, and the interpretation of stellar influence on human events changed radically across four centuries of Western European cultural and intellectual history. The first half of this article charts the scholastic response to theological criticisms of astrology and the reconciliation of Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology with Catholic theology, paying special attention to its implications for astrology as viewed through scholarly uses of the phrase. The second half of the article shows how the phrase developed a multitude of idiosyncratic meanings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fracturing its late medieval scholastic unity, as new forms of philosophical, socio-political, religious, and scientific critiques upended astrological beliefs and practices. Ultimately, this paper argues that examining the theory and praxis of astrology through the changing phraseological meanings of “sapiens dominabitur astris” allows historians and cultural anthropologists to better discern the dialectical (as opposed to binary) relationships between free will and determinism in the West.

This article addresses Joshua HaLorki's discussion of faith (emunah), as it appears in his famous letter to the convert Pablo de Santa Maria. It suggests that ha-Lorki weighed against each other competing models of faith, that he deemed crucial for the issue of conversion,  As I argue, the choice upon which ha-Lorki contemplated was not between the religion of the intellect and mystic beliefs, as some have argued; but rather between the volitional model of scholastic fides, and the religion of tradition.

This essay examines whether the controversy over relics vs. genitals in Jean de Meun's part of the Romance of the Rose should be understood in the context of a larger debate in Paris between 1250 and 1280 about the notion of signification in general.

Abstract. This article proposes a first systematic approach to the manuscript tradition of the Liber de causis. It studies both the manuscript variants and the doctrinal difficulties raised by the transliteration of the Arabic al-ʿaql preserved in the Latin translation. Some authors (such as Albert the Great) interpreted this transliteration as a concept forged by Arab philosophers without an equivalent in Latin. Other authors (such as Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome) do not mention it because they probably knew a different branch of the manuscript tradition. By examining one hundred and ten Latin manuscripts of the Liber de causis (out of two hundred and sixty-five currently known), the article establishes a list of the numerous variations regarding the presence of this transliteration in the text and its forms or spellings (alatyr, alachili, adlahic etc.). This analysis enables a better understanding of both Albert’s position and the hitherto unsuspected diversity of the transmission of the Liber de causis in the Latin West.

The interest of the young Brentano for the philosophy of Plato is linked to his Aristotelian studies. Brentano understands Aristotle's philosophy in deep continuity with Plato's one. This continuity is clear in one of the most controversial points of Brentano's interpretation of Aristotle: the nature of God and the status of human soul. Brentano finds in both Plato and Aristotle a personal, monotheistic and creationistic God who also creates human soul, which is immortal. This approach is explained in some texts from the youth of Brentano, although there are signs indicating that he sustained it until the end of his life. In his interpretation of Plato's God, we see that Brentano identifies Him with the Idea of Good and the Demiurge. The Idea of Good would have even created the other Platonic Ideas, which should be understood as gods.

We think with objects—we conduct our lives surrounded by external devices that help us recall information, calculate, plan, design, make decisions, articulate ideas, and organize the chaos that fills our heads. Medieval scholars learned to think with their pages in a peculiar way: drawing hundreds of tree diagrams. Lines of Thought is the first book to investigate this prevalent but poorly studied notational habit, analyzing the practice from linguistic and cognitive perspectives and studying its application across theology, philosophy, law, and medicine.

These diagrams not only allow a glimpse into the thinking practices of the past but also constitute a chapter in the history of how people learned to rely on external devices—from stone to parchment to slide rules to smartphones—for recording, storing, and processing information. Beautifully illustrated throughout with previously unstudied and unedited diagrams, Lines of Thought is a historical overview of an important cognitive habit, providing a new window into the world of medieval scholars and their patterns of thinking.

Pensar sobre las condiciones de la vida es una característica natural del hombre. Por ello siempre ha habido vía,<; para pensar sobre los fundamentos, objetivos y necesidades de la sociedad. En todo tiempo y lugar los hombres han pensado las formas políticas de la sociedad, las organizaciones del gobierno y de la paz, las actividades políticas de individuos y grupos, y lo han hecho mucho antes de separar ciertos fenómenos políticos del contexto ele la vida humana trasladándolos a una teoría. Un pensamiento político en ciernes, o más bien, ideas de orientación política, pueden encontrarse en la poesía, el arte y la religión, en las ceremonias y rituales, en la representación y el simbolismo ele los gobernantes, en los conceptos de organización legal y en casi toda reflexión sobre la existencia de uno mismo y de los demás. Esas ideas pueden ser consideradas sistemáticamente o, al menos, pueden ser rastreadas e interpretadas por los historiadores. En cada período que nos ha dejado rastros escritos podernos tratar de examinar cómo se establecieron las formas de vida social, las reglas a las que todos se sometían, los desafíos que enfrentaban, las limitaciones a que estaban expuestos y el objetivo que tenían o el que pensaban tener para obrar.

My contention for many years has been that theological problems are first and, primarily, philosophical problems and need to be solved as such. To my mind, Dr. Leslie Dewart’s understanding of “dehellenization,” not to be confused with “unhellenization,” provides a philosophical opportunity for fresh reflection on our inherited classical understanding which presents contemporary problems for theologians. I have attempted such reflection in these pages. I leave it to the reader to decide whether or not my reflections have clarified the issues or clouded them.

This study highlights more unusual cases where Byzantine liturgical sources, such as in
the Menaion and homiletic material of Fathers, are essential to understand certain notions of Palamas’ theoptic and epoptic ideas. The vocabulary and central themes of divine vision and participation in the divine energies are often found in Byzantine hymnody describing such experiences of divine light by the apostles and other saints. In some cases, Palamas’ formulations are closest to literature of a liturgical vs. dogmatic character. Furthermore, certain Palamite values, such as the presumed infallibility of patristic axioms (e.g., Basil the Great’s teaching on the Holy Spirit) build on liturgical assertions of the saint’s authority in doctrinal matters. Palamas’ combination of liturgical sources for his logical arguments on behalf of the apodeictic syllogism within an Aristotelian typology will be explored. This will lead to the conclusion that Palamas was very much influenced by contemporary Scholastic views and opinions on theology as a science and on the nature of the beatific vision. However, his own theory combined a natural epistemological skepticism with a divine illumination theory that distinguishes him from both Medieval Latin and Barlaamian positions on the scientific status of theology.