TL;DR: Wippel as mentioned in this paper presents a comprehensive presentation of Thomas Aquinas's metaphysics, focusing on the essential structure of finite being, and treats substance-accident composition and related issues, including the relationship between the soul and its powers and unicity of substantial form.
Abstract: Written by a highly respected scholar of Thomas Aquinas's writings, this volume offers a comprehensive presentation of Aquinas's metaphysical thought. It is based on a thorough examination of his texts organized according to the philosophical order as he himself describes it rather than according to the theological order. In the introduction and opening chapter, John F. Wippel examines Aquinas's view on the nature of metaphysics as a philosophical science and the relationship of its subject to divine being. Part One is devoted to his metaphysical analysis of finite being. It considers his views on the problem of the One and the Many in the order of being, and includes his debt to Parmenides in formulating this problem and his application of analogy to finite being. Subsequent chapters are devoted to participation in being, the composition of essence and esse in finite beings, and his appeal to a kind of relative nonbeing in resolving the problem of the One and the Many. Part Two concentrates on Aquinas's views on the essential structure of finite being, and treats substance-accident composition and related issues, including, among others, the relationship between the soul and its powers and unicity of substantial form. It then considers his understanding of matter-form composition of corporeal beings and their individuation. Part Three explores Aquinas's philosophical discussion of divine being, his denial that God's existence is self-evident, and his presentation of arguments for the existence of God, first in earlier writings and then in the "Five Ways" of his Summa theologiae. A separate chapter is devoted to his views on quidditative and analogical knowledge of God. The concluding chapter revisits certain issues concerning finite being under the assumption that God's existence has now been established.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a survey of early medieval political ideas and their relationship to the development of the modern notion of private property rights and the notion of individual and collective freedom.
Abstract: Preface. Introduction. 1. Medieval Political Ideas and Medieval Society. Medieval Sources. The Historical Context of Early Medieval Political Thought. Carolingian Christian Kingship and Feudal Society. Translatio Imperii. Theocratic Kingship. The Origins of Papal Authority and the Gelasian Doctrine. Two Swords Theory. The Twelfth-century 'Renaissance': Canon Lawyers and their Heirs. The Twelfth-century 'Renaissance' and Civil Lawyers. Civilians and Canonists. Individual and Collective Liberties. Sovereignty and Corporations. Natural Law, Rights and the Lawyers Concern for Individual Autonomy. Origins of Property Rights. Medieval Education: Practical Moral Philosophy of Ethics, Economics and Politics. The Contribution of Arabic and Jewish Thinking to the Twelfth-century 'REnaissance'. Aristotle in the Universities. Ethics and Politics in the Liberal Arts Course. The Purpose of Aristotelian Rhetorical Persuasion. The Thirteenth 'Aristotelian' Century. The Later Thirteenth-century Understanding of Rhetoric's Service to a Prince: Giles of Rome. Aristotelian Rhetoric. Returning to Giles of Rome's Rhetorical De regimine principum. Rhetoric outside the University and Aristotle within the University. Aristotle's Ethics for Medieval University Students. Lawyers Versus the Arts Faculty Philosophers. The New Mendicant Orders: Franciscans and Dominicans and Political Theory. 2. St Thomas Aquinas. Philosophy of Man. Reality and Metaphysics. Naming, Natures and Actual Existents. Natures and Definitions. Substantial Form and Corporeal Individuation. Being and Essence. Cause and Effect. Grace Added to and Perfecting, Not Destroying, Nature. Sense Origin of Knowing. Reason and Will. The Will's Relation to Justice as Universal Principal and as Historically Contingent Conclusion. Eudaomonia/beatitudo: Imoorality and the Completion of Desire. Rationality and the Freedom of the Will. The Will and the Doctrine of Original Sin. Natural Theology. State and Church: The Consequences of Natural Theology. Free Will and Responsibility. Aquinas on Law and Ploitics. Natural Law and Politics. Natural Law beyond Cicero. Natural Human Community. The Consequences of the Fall. Individual Rights and the States's Law. The Contrast with Augustine. The Mixed Constitution. Private Property Rights. 3. John of Paris. Biographical Details. The Franciscan Position. The Dominican Position. The Origin of Government. The Thomistic Underpinning of dominium in rebus, Lordship and Ownership of Things. The Justification of Private Ownership. Limitations on Government. The Origin of the Priesthood. The Relation of the Church to its Property. Deposition Theory. 4. Marsilius of Padua. Biographical Details. A Reading Discourse 1. Some Observations from Discourse 2. Conclusions. 5. William of Ockham. Biographical Details. Ockham's Positions on Church and State. Ockham's Epistemology. Ockham's Dualism Concerning Secular and Spiritual Government: Continuing the Narrative. Comparisions with Marsilius. The Exceptional Exercise of Coercive Authority. Natural Rights. Corporattion Theory. Ockham's 'Absolutism'. How did Ockham Come to Hold These Views? Right Reason. Scriptural Hermeneutics. Ockham's Ethics. Conclusion. The Late Medieval Fortunes of Corporation Theories in the Church's 'Concilar Theory.' 6. The Italien Renaissance and Machiavelli's Political Theory. The Italien City-States Compared with Other European Cities. The Unconventional AIms of this VChapter. Communal Discourses and Citizenship. Community, Civitas, Ranked Citizenship and Local Patriotisms. The Involvement of Citizens in Late Thirteenth-century Communal Government. The Communal Ideal and the Menace of Factions. The Evolution of the Florentine Governing Class. Who Wanted to Play an Active Role in Fifteenth-century Florentine Government? Humanism and Humanist Conceptions of Florentine Republicanism. Fifteenth-century Florentine Ideology. Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli's Political Morality. Founding and Maintaining the 'Stato'. The Fixity of Man's Nature. Character Formation. The 'Fit' Between Character and the Times. Fortune. The Impetuous Prince Who Must Learn How Not to Have Fixed Dispositions. Learn to Imitate Foxes and Lions. Machiavelli's 'Popular' Government: His Views of the Popolo. Conclusion. Bibliography. Index.
TL;DR: Leibniz as discussed by the authors gathers together for the first time an important body of texts written between 1672 and 1686 by the great German philosopher and polymath Gottfried Leebniz.
Abstract: This book gathers together for the first time an important body of texts written between 1672 and 1686 by the great German philosopher and polymath Gottfried Leibniz. These writings, most of them previously untranslated, represent Leibniz's sustained attempt on a problem whose solution was crucial to the development of his thought, that of the composition of the continuum. The volume begins with excerpts from Leibniz's Paris writings, in which he tackles such problems as whether the infinite division of matter entails "perfect points", whether matter and space can be regarded as true wholes, whether motion is truly continuous, and the nature of body and substance. Comprising the second section is Pacidius Philalethi, Leibniz's brilliant dialogue of late 1676 on the problem of the continuity of motion. In the selections of the final section, from his Hanover writings of 1677-1686, Leibniz abandons his earlier transcreationism and atomism in favour of the theory of corporeal substance, where the reality of body and motion is founded in substantial form or force. Leibniz's texts (one in French, the rest in Latin) are presented with facing-page English translations, together with an introduction, notes, appendixes containing related excerpts from earlier works by Leibniz and his predecessors, and a valuable glossary detailing important terms and their translations.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose the Composition of Bodies, which is a generalization of the notion of the Entelechy of the Cartesian Continuum, to include the complete and incomplete substances.
Abstract: Preface. Abbreviations. Introduction. 1. Substances: Public and Private. The public monad. Monads and Cartesian minds: the French connection. Disagreement with Descartes. First entelechies. 2. Primary Matter. Substantial form and primary matter. Complete and incomplete substances. Completion of the active and the passive. Naturally necessary extension. 3. Extension. Continuity. Plurality and discrete repetition. Co-existence. Completion of the entelechy. Complete corporeal substances. 4. The Composition of Bodies. Aggregates of substances. Metaphors and similes. The Fardella Notes. Parts and wholes. 5. The Composition of the Continuum. The real versus the ideal. The Cartesian continuum and alternatives. Reality and ideality of corporeal substances. 6. Perceptions and Perceivers. Perceptions and perceivers. Perceptual multiplicity. Independence and solipsism. 7. Phenomenal Bodies. Spiritual phenomenalism. Monadological phenomenalism. Corporeal substance phenomenalism. Real Phenomena. Rainbows. First and third person perspectives. 8. Derivative Forces. Derivative active force. Modifications. Derivative passive force. Pre-established Harmony. Derivative forces and perceptions. Harmony of mind and body. Alleged priority of internal modifications. Multiple harmonies. Final and efficient causes. Nature and grace. 9. Freedom. The perfection of the world. Evil. Passivity and freedom. Appetition. Body. Moral evil. Bibliography. Index of Names. Index of Subjects.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors revisited the Zeta Contradictions and argued that the existence of a substantial form of a substance implies a relation between the substance and its form.
Abstract: The ThemeI. Matter 1. Physical Continuity in Change 2. Radical Transformation 3. Against Hot, Cold, Wet, and Dry Stuff 4. Quantity of Matter: Soma 5. The Essence of MatterII. Universals 1. The Rejection of the Platonic Forms 2. Existential Arguments for Aristotelian Forms 3. The Universality of the Material SubstratumIII. The Birth of the Subject 1. Plato's Discovery of the Subject 2. The "Nature-Feature" Problem 3. Does Participation Presuppose a Partaker?IV: The Substantial Form 1. A Substance and Its Parts: Plato's Legacy 2. The Aggregate Argument 3. Is the Substantial Form a Relation? 4. The Threshold Argument 5. The Trope-Overlap Argument 6. Structural Universals and Substantial Forms 7. The Aristotelian Solution to Davis Lewis's Paradox 8. Universality Requirements on the Substantial FormV. The Unity of Substance 1. Abstraction and Separateness 2. Types of Abstract Entity 3. The Metaphysics of Abstraction: The Unity of Matter and Form in a Substance 4. An Existential Dilemma about Matter and FormVI. Particulars 1. Nonmaterial Substances 2. Particularity and Subjecthood 3. Essence as Subject: The "Second Man" Argument 4. Particularity of Nonmaterial Substances 5. Particularity of Material Substances: How Similar Can Different Substances Be? 6. Substantial Holism 7. Kit Fine's Paradox on the Identity of Aristotelian SubstancesVII. The Zeta Contradictions 1. The Contradictions 2. The Consistent Zeta Picture 3. Self-Caused Unities 4. Potentiality Entails Homonymy 5. Is the Substantial Form of a Substance Numerically One?Conclusion: Revisiting the Zeta ContradictionsAppendix 1: Live Matter Appendix 2: Against Bare Substrata Appendix 3: Against Individual Forms Appendix 4: The Argument of Metaphysics M, 10Bibliography Index Locorum General Index