This volume analyses ancient and medieval theories of intentionality in various contexts: perception, imagination, and intellectual thinking. It sheds new light on classical theories (e.g. by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas) and examines neglected sources, both Greek and Latin. It includes contributions by J. Biard, M. Burnyeat, V. Caston, D. Frede, R. Gaskin, E. Karger, C. Michon, D. O'Meara, C. Panaccio, R. Pasnau, D. Perler, Ch. Rapp, P. Simons, R. Sorabji, and H. Weidemann.

This volume analyses ancient and medieval theories of intentionality in various contexts: perception, imagination, and intellectual thinking. It sheds new light on classical theories (e.g. by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas) and examines neglected sources, both Greek and Latin. It includes contributions by J. Biard, M. Burnyeat, V. Caston, D. Frede, R. Gaskin, E. Karger, C. Michon, D. O'Meara, C. Panaccio, R. Pasnau, D. Perler, Ch. Rapp, P. Simons, R. Sorabji, and H. Weidemann.

A major contribution to the history of philosophy in the later medieval period (1250-1350).

Anthony J. Lisska presents a new analysis of Thomas Aquinas's theory of perception. Approaching the subject from contemporary analytic philosophy, Lisska argues for the importance of inner sense, and suggests a modest 'innate' or 'structured' interpretation for the role of the crucial faculty of vis cogitativa.

In our daily lives, we are surrounded by all sorts of things – such as trees, cars, persons, or madeleines – and perception allows us access to them. But what does ‘to perceive’ actually mean? What is it that we perceive? How do we perceive? Do we perceive the same way animals do? Does reason play a role in perception? Such questions occur naturally today. But was it the same in the past, centuries ago? The collected volume tackles this issue by turning to the Latin philosophy of the 13th and 14th centuries. Did medieval thinkers raise the same, or similar, questions as we do with respect to perception? What answers did they provide? What arguments did they make for raising the questions they did, and for the answers they gave to them? The philosophers taken into consideration are, among others, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, William of Auvergne, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, John Pecham, Richard Rufus, Peter Olivi, Robert Kilwardby, John Buridan, and Jean of Jandun. Contributors are Elena Băltuță, Daniel De Haan, Martin Klein, Andrew LaZella, Lukáš Lička, Mattia Mantovani, André Martin, Dominik Perler, Paolo Rubini, José Filipe Silva, Juhana Toivanen, and Rega Wood.

This collection of original essays aims to reinvigorate the debate surrounding philosophical realism in relation to philosophy of science, pragmatism, epistemology, and theory of perception. Questions concerning realism are as current and as ancient as philosophy itself; this volume explores relations between different positions designated as ‘realism’ by examining specific cases in point, drawn from a broad range of systematic problems and historical views, from ancient Greek philosophy through the present. The first section examines the context of the project; contributions systematically engage the historical background of philosophical realism, re-examining key works of Aristotle, Descartes, Quine, and others. The following two sections epitomize the central tension within current debates: scientific realism and pragmatism. These contributions address contemporary questions of scientific realism and the reality of the objects of science, and consider whether, how or the extent to which realism and pragmatism are compatible. With an editorial introduction by Kenneth R. Westphal, these fourteen original essays provide wide-ranging, salient insights into the status of realism today.

Richard of St.Victor (d.1173) developed original ideas about the faculty of imagination in a twelfth-century Parisian context. Related to the historical study of philosophical psychology, Richard of St. Victor’s Theory of Imagination acknowledges that the faculty of imagination, being a necessary precondition for human reasoning and a link between soul and body, plays an important role in Richard’s understanding of the human soul. Richard also deals with the interpretation of biblical language, metaphors, rhetoric, and the possibility of creative imagination. Considering all these aspects of the imagination in Richard’s texts improves our understanding of his theological epistemology and sheds new light on the theory of the imagination in the history of medieval philosophy in general.