Medieval Skepticism, and the Claim to Metaphysical Knowledge

by Gyula Klima (editor)

Medieval Skepticism, and the Claim to Metaphysical Knowledge presents three sets of essays. The first is an exchange between Antoine Cote and Charles Bolyard over Siger of Brabant s strategy to silence the skeptic by discriminating between nobler and lesser senses and grounding certitude in sense perceptions. Second is another scholarly exchange, between Rondo Keele and Jack Zupko, over what Keele describes as Walter Chatton s attempt to discredit Ockhamist nominalism by means of both an anti-razor , employed by Chatton to prescribe ontological commitment, and an argument strategy based on iteration and infinite regress. The last group of essays explores issues that develop out of the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. Joshua Hochschild defends several key positions of Thomistic metaphysics against Anthony Kenny s criticism that Aquinas s treatment of being is inadequate, incoherent or even sophistic. Similarly, David Twetten, after laying out Aquinas s nine versions of the proof for the Real Distinction between essence and esse, suggests one way in which Aquinas could meet the Aristotelian s formidable Question-Begging Objection . Lastly, Scott M. Williams contends that to preserve God s perfect knowledge of individual material creatures, Aquinas must alter his account of the unintelligibility of prime matter in the individuation of material creatures.

170 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2011

About the author

Gyula Klima is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, New York, Director of the Research Center for the History of Ideas of the Institute of Hungarian Research, Budapest, Hungary, and a Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is the Founding Director of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics and Editor of its Proceedings, as well as the Founding Director of the Society for the European History of Ideas and Editor of its Proceedings. He is also an editor of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Editor-in-Chief of a book series at Springer, Historical-Analytical Studies in Mind, Nature and Action, and at Fordham, Medieval Philosophy, Texts and Studies. Before taking up his position at Fordham, he had taught philosophy in the US at Yale and Notre Dame, prior to which he had done research in Europe at the universities of Budapest, Helsinki, St. Andrews, and Copenhagen.