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Substantial Form
Substantial form was an Aristotelian innovation designed to solve three problems. The first is how physical things can exist as certain types of intelligible things, e.g., Rover and Fido are both dogs because they have the same type of immaterial substantial form. It is the immaterial substantial form that makes the physical thing intelligible as a particular kind of thing. The second problem is how the activities of physical things can transcend the limitations of matter to different degrees: plants through their vegetative substantial form transcend the capacities of inanimate matter via growth and nutritive activities; animals through their sentient substantial form by sensation, perception and emotions; and humans via their rational substantial forms by their abstract thinking and free will. The third problem is how one physical thing can change into another, e.g.the tiger that eats Rover and Fido not only ends the ability of their substantial forms to continue animating their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intelligibility (philosophy)
__NOTOC__ In philosophy, intelligibility is what can be comprehended by the human mind in contrast to sense perception. The intelligible method is thought thinking itself, or the human mind reflecting on itself. Plato referred to the intelligible realm of mathematics, forms, first principles, logical deduction, and the dialectical method. The intelligible realm of thought thinking about thought does not necessarily require any visual images, sensual impressions, and material causes for the contents of mind. Descartes referred to this method of thought thinking about itself, without the possible illusions of the senses. Kant made similar claims about a priori knowledge. A priori knowledge is claimed to be independent of the content of experience. Usage The objects or concepts that have intelligibility may be called intelligible. Some possible examples are numbers and the logical law of non-contradiction. There may be a distinction between everything that is intelligible a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soul
In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being". Etymology The Modern English noun '' soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest attestations reported in the '' Oxford English Dictionary'' are from the 8th century. In King Alfred's translation of '' De Consolatione Philosophiae'', it is used to refer to the immaterial, spiritual, or thinking aspect of a person, as contrasted with the person's physical body; in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50, it means "life" or "animate existence". The Old English word is cognate with other historical Germanic terms for the same idea, including Old Frisian ''sēle, sēl'' (which could also mean "salvation", or "solemn oath"), Gothic ''saiwala'', Old High German ''sēula, sēla'', Old Saxon ''sēola'', and Old Norse ''sāla''. Present-day cognates include Dutch ''ziel'' and German ''Seele''. Religious views In Judaism and in some Chr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristotelianism
Aristotelianism ( ) is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics. It covers the treatment of the social sciences under a system of natural law. It answers why-questions by a scheme of four causes, including purpose or teleology, and emphasizes virtue ethics. Aristotle and his school wrote tractates on physics, biology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, and government. Any school of thought that takes one of Aristotle's distinctive positions as its starting point can be considered "Aristotelian" in the widest sense. This means that different Aristotelian theories (e.g. in ethics or in ontology) may not have much in common as far as their actual content is concerned besides their shared reference to Aristotle. In Aristotle's time, philosophy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at least affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are asserted to exist in a third realm distinct from both the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness, and is the opposite of nominalism." Philosophers who affirm the existence of abstract objects are sometimes called platonists; those who deny their existence are sometimes called nominalists. The terms "platonism" and "nominalism" have established senses in the history of philosophy, where they denote positions that have little to do with the modern notion of an abstract object. In this connection, it is essential to bear in mind that modern platonists (with a small 'p') need not accept any of the doctrines of Plato, just as modern nominalists need not acce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discourse On Metaphysics
The ''Discourse on Metaphysics'' (french: Discours de métaphysique, 1686) is a short treatise by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in which he develops a philosophy concerning physical substance, motion and resistance of bodies, and God's role within the universe. It is one of the few texts presenting in a consistent form the earlier philosophy of Leibniz. The ''Discourse'' is closely connected to the epistolary discussion which he carried with Antoine Arnauld. However Leibniz refrained from sending the full text and it remained unpublished until the mid 19th century.The first edition (in 1846 by Pertz) was from a copy but later the original manuscript was found and Henri Lestrienne published it in 1907; now it is printed in the ''Akademie Ausgabe'', Reihe VI, Vierter Band, p. 1529 Arnauld received only an abridged version in 37 points which resumed whole paragraphs and steered their discussion. Summary The metaphysical considerations proceed from God to the substantial world and back to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history and philology. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. In addition, he contributed to the field of library science: while serving as overseer of the Wolfenbüttel library in Germany, he devised a cataloging system that would have served as a guide for many of Europe's largest libraries. Leibniz's contributions to this vast array of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and in unpublished manuscripts. He wrote in several languages, primarily in L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics, Descartes considered himself a devout Catholic. Many elements of Descartes' philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differed from the schools on two major points: first, he rejected the splitting of corporeal substa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known within the tradition as the , the , and the . The name ''Aquinas'' identifies his ancestral origins in the county of Aquino in present-day Lazio, Italy. Among other things, he was a prominent proponent of natural theology and the father of a school of thought (encompassing both theology and philosophy) known as Thomism. He argued that God is the source of both the light of natural reason and the light of faith. He has been described as "the most influential thinker of the medieval period" and "the greatest of the medieval philosopher-theologians". His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy is derived from his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law, metaphysics, and political theory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scholastics
Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon the Aristotelian 10 Categories. Christian scholasticism emerged within the monastic schools that translated scholastic Judeo—Islamic philosophies, and thereby "rediscovered" the collected works of Aristotle. Endeavoring to harmonize his metaphysics and its account of a prime mover with the Latin Catholic dogmatic trinitarian theology, these monastic schools became the basis of the earliest European medieval universities, and scholasticism dominated education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. The rise of scholasticism was closely associated with these schools that flourished in Italy, France, Portugal, Spain and England. Scholasticism is a method of learning more than a philosophy or a theology, since it places a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference and to resolve contradictions. Scholastic though ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duns Scotus
John Duns Scotus ( – 8 November 1308), commonly called Duns Scotus ( ; ; "Duns the Scot"), was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher, and theologian. He is one of the four most important Christian philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and William of Ockham. Scotus has had considerable influence on both Catholic and secular thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the " univocity of being", that existence is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing between different aspects of the same thing; and the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual. Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued for the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Duns Scotus was given the scholastic accolad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader; he is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most Christians believe he is the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah (the Christ) prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically. Research into the historical Jesus has yielded some uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament reflects the historical Jesus, as the only detailed records of Jesus' life are contained in the Gospels. Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was circumcised, was baptized by John the Baptist, began his own ministry and was often referred to as "rabbi". Jesus debated with fellow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transubstantiation
Transubstantiation (Latin: ''transubstantiatio''; Greek: μετουσίωσις '' metousiosis'') is, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, "the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of the Blood of Christ". This change is brought about in the eucharistic prayer through the efficacy of the word of Christ and by the action of the Holy Spirit. However, "the outward characteristics of bread and wine, that is the 'eucharistic species', remain unaltered". In this teaching, the notions of "substance" and "transubstantiation" are not linked with any particular theory of metaphysics. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that, in the Eucharistic offering, bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ. The affirmation of this doctrine was expressed, using the word "transubstantiate", by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215. It was later challenged by various 14th-c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
