Olivi on the Metaphysics of Soul
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چکیده
The centerpiece of Aristotle's De anima is his account of the soul-body relationship in terms of form: the soul is "the form of a natural body that potentially has life" (I1 1,412a20-21). Recent evaluations of this doctrine have varied widely, from effusive to dismissive. Kathleen Wilkes parallels Aristotle's hylomorphism with "the most promising form" of contemporary functionalism; his theory, she holds, is one to which philosophers and scientists should be returning, and in fact are returning.' Jonathan Barnes, in contrast, writes that the De anima analysis "makes so broad a use of 'form' and 'matter' that their analytical powers are entirely 10st."2 One interesting way to explore the ramifications of Aristotle's proposal is to look at how that proposal was developed and criticized during the later Middle Ages. Beginning with Averroes's Commentarium magnum de anima (1 190) and Johannes Blund's Tractatus de anima (c. 1200), Western philosophers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries devoted immense effort to developing Aristotle's thinking about the soul. Never before (and I suspect never again) has any individual's philosophical program received such detailed and sustained attention. There was, moreover, the greatest variety of competing ideas and interpretations, particularly with regard to theories of the soul. The menu of choices here is practically endless, at present limited primarily by the progress that scholars have made in editing texts from manuscripts. We might, then, view the later medieval period as one great extended laboratory for the testing and development of an Aristotelian philosophy. Within that laboratory, no one was more original and controversial than the Franciscan Peter John Olivi (124718-1298), a Paris-trained theologian from the south of France.3 Olivi tests many aspects of Aristotle's philosophy, and rejects
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تاریخ انتشار 2005