Research on the medieval doctrine of the transcendentals is still characterized by one debate: its characteristic peculiarity vs. its structural correspondence to the modern concept of transcendentality. The present study on Peter Aureol’s († 1322) doctrine of transcendentals offers a contribution to that discussion by delimiting from both directions: by developing Aureol’s position in contrast to the contemporary position of a scotist-orientated, formalistic realism, it sheds light on the innovative traits in his doctrine. On the other hand, Aureol’s logico-semantical revision of metaphysics is presented as an intentional affirmation of tradition, so that a revised view can be taken of Aureol’s role within the development of a modern metaphysics of the object as such.

The origin of transcendental thought is to be sought in medieval philosophy. This book provides for the first time a complete history of the doctrine of the transcendentals and shows its importance for the understanding of philosophy in the Middle Ages.

This book aims at beginning the rewriting of the history of skepticism by highlightening the medieval sources of the modern skeptical discussions. It shows through seven newly written essays how epistemological and external-world skepticism was developed and discussed particularly in the fourteenth century up to sixteenth century Paris.

Few philosophical books have been so influential in the development of Western thought as Aristotle’s Metaphysics. For centuries Aristotle’s most celebrated work has been regarded as a source of inspiration as well as the starting point for every investigation into the structure of reality. Not surprisingly, the topics discussed in the book – the scientific status of ontology and metaphysics, the foundations of logical truths, the notions of essence and existence, the nature of material objects and their properties, the status of mathematical entities, just to mention some – are still at the centre of the current philosophical debate and are likely to excite philosophical minds for many years to come. This volume reconstructs in fourteen chapters a particular phase in the long history of the Metaphysics by focusing on the medieval reception of Aristotle’s masterpiece, specifically from its introduction in the Latin West in the twelfth through fifteenth centuries. Contributors include: Marta Borgo, Matteo di Giovanni, Amos Bertolacci, Silvia Donati, Gabriele Galluzzo, Alessandro D. Conti, Sten Ebbesen, Fabrizio Amerini, Giorgio Pini, Roberto Lambertini, William O. Duba, Femke J. Kok, and Paul J.J.M. Bakker.

This collection of essays, papers originally delivered at conferences in Bonn and Boston, show in a detailed way the tone and nature of philosophical and theological issues and arguments at the University of Paris in the early fourteenth century. They touch on a large number of authors and a broad spectrum of subjects and present these discussions with regard to the intellectual framework set by the earlier Parisian generation of Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaine. It becomes evident that the principal contributors to the new intellectual energy in early fourteenth-century discussions at Paris are Meister Eckhart, John Duns Scotus, Hervaeus Natalis, Durandus of St.-Pourçain, Walter Burley and Petrus Aureoli.

Transcendental unity is a figure of thought of the Latin Middle Ages, which is indebted to Avicenna’s renewal of metaphysics and which is wrongly attributed to Aristotle. A specific interpretation of the demonstrable attribute determines the metaphysical reflection on ‘the one’ and turns it into a transcendental attribute of being. Notwithstanding the variety of epistemic constellations, however, this metaphysical relationship of being and unity always turns out to be a fundamental state of affairs. Transcendental unity identifies as a problem constellation, the principles of which are still effective in the critique of scholastic metaphysics in classical German philosophy.