Daniel C. Dennett
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER
Daniel Clement Dennett III is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose
research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology,
particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.
Born: 28 March 1942 (age 77 years), Boston, Massachusetts, United
States
Influenced: Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Geoffrey Miller
Education: Hertford College, Oxford (1965), MORE
Influenced by: Richard Dawkins, Charles Darwin, David
Hume, MORE
Quotes:
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you
are and dedicate your life to it.
There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold
dear.
Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an
insight into necessity.
Daniel C. Dennett, in full Daniel Clement Dennett III, by name Dan Dennett, (born March 28,
1942, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.), American naturalist philosopher specializing in the philosophy of
mind. He became a prominent figure in the atheist movement at the beginning of the 21st century.
Dennett’s father was a diplomat and a scholar of Islamic history, and his mother was an editor and
teacher. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963 and subsequently pursued
graduate study at the University of Oxford.
His early years were spent in Lebanon, where his father worked as a secret counter
intelligence agent with the Office of Strategic Services. His father passed away when he was 5
years old, and Daniel returned to Boston along with his mother. He became attracted to the subject
matter of philosophy at the tender age of 11, during a summer camp, and ever since, he was
determined to carve out a career for himself in philosophy. Daniel attended the Phillips Exeter
Academy for a while, and later, enrolled himself at the Wesleyan University for a year. He received
his degree in Bachelors of Arts in philosophy from the Harvard University in 1963. Upon his
graduation, Daniel was admitted to the University of Oxford, where he benefited from the tutelage
of Gilbert Ryle. He was also made a member of Hertford College. In 1965, Dennett received his
Ph.D. in Philosophy.
Dennett began his professional career in 1965, by accepting a teaching position at UC
Irvine, he served here for the next six years. He received a D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965, whereupon
he returned to the United States to teach at the University of California, Irvine. In 1971 he moved to Tufts
University in Medford, Massachusetts, where he was appointed University Professor and became director
Dennett was appointed director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts in 1985. He was
elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987.
CONTRIBUTION
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Doctoral thesis his first book, Content and
Consciousness (1969). In addition to his formal philosophical
training,
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Made an autodidactic forays into the fields of artificial
intelligence, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology.
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The mind-body proble. He had become convinced that
only by being informed by science could one have a productive
philosophical debate about the mind and find a solution to the
question of how the mental is related to the physical). His
somewhat unorthodox approach, which reflected
his skepticism of traditional methods of philosophy, cast him as
a radical among his colleagues.
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First book in 1978, entitled “Brainstorms: Philosophical
Essays on Mind and Psychology”, It provides an insight on his theories of artificial
intelligence and consciousness.
In 1981, he published another remarkable and widely applauded work, entitled ‘The
Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflection on Self and Soul
Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting’, dealt with free will and
determinism, entitled ‘.
‘Intentional stance’ -describes as the level of abstraction and mental properties we see
while examining the behavior of our objects of observation.
Three levels of abstraction: The physical stance, the design stance and the intentional
stance.
. In 1991 Consciousness Explained’ contrasting brain humans and animals, and he sought
to make comparisons. Conducting an analysis on the concept of free will, and its
relationship with naturalistic perspective of the world. The book also shed light on the
multiple drafts model of consciousness
In 1995, Daniel Dennett presented the world with his greatest single work,
entitled “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”, which proposes natural selection as a mechanical
and algorithmic process based on the Darwinism theory of evolution. The book was
globally applauded and awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction ,1995
National Book Award
2003 “Freedom Evolves”, which deals with the concept of free will and moral
responsibilities in relation with consciousness and personhood.
Dennett include ‘Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon’, ‘Sweet Dreams:
Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness’, ‘Neuroscience and Philosophy:
Brain, Mind, and Language’, Science and Religion’, ‘Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for
Thinking’ and ‘Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind’.
In 2003, Dennett published yet another monumental work, titled Several other phenomenal
contributions by Daniel Dennett has been presented with several awards and honors as a tribute to
his groundbreaking research and academic contributions. He has been awarded a Fulbright
Fellowship, a Fellowship at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science, two
Guggenheim Fellowships and a Fellowship of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In 2004, the
American Humanist Association presented him with the title of the Humanist of the Year. In
addition to that, he is also a proud recipient of a Human Laureate of the International Academy of
Humanism.
In 2010, Dennett’s name was listed in the Honorary Board of distinguished achievers by the
Freedom from Religion Foundation. He awarded the Erasmus Prize for his tireless efforts in
translating the cultural significance of science and technology to the masses. Daniel Dennett is an
ardent atheist and secularist, he is famously known as one of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism.
He also serves the Secular Coalition on the American advisory board.
BOOKS:
Books
Consciousness Explained
1991
From Bacteria to Bach and...2017
Darwin's Dangerous Idea
1995
Breaking the Spell: Religion...
2006
Freedom Evolves 2003
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) was a 19th Century German philosopher and
philologist. He is considered important forerunner of Existentialism movement (although he does
not fall neatly into any particular school), and his work has generated an extensive secondary
literature within both Continental Philosophy and Analytic Philosophy traditions of the 20th
Century.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist,
and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual
history. His works were based upon ideas of good and evil and the end of religion in the modern
world. His philosophy is mainly referred to as “existentialism”, a famous twentieth century
philosophy focusing on man’s existential situation. In his works, Nietzsche questioned the basis of
good and evil. He believed that heaven was an unreal place or “the world of ideas”. His ideas of
atheism were demonstrated in works such as “God is dead”. He argued that the development of
science and emergence of a secular world were leading to the death of Christianity. His philosophy
inspired many of his contemporaries, although none of them agreed completely with their true
meaning.
Born: 15 October 1844, Röcken, Lützen, Germany
Died: 25 August 1900, Weimar, Germany
Full name: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Influenced: Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul
Sartre
Quotes
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby
become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the
abyss gazes also into you.
EARLY YEARS
Nietzsche’s home was a stronghold of Lutheran piety. His paternal grandfather had
published books defending Protestantism and had achieved the ecclesiastical position of
superintendent; his maternal grandfather was a country parson; his father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche,
was appointed pastor at Röcken by order of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, after whom
Friedrich Nietzsche was named. His father died in 1849, before Nietzsche’s fifth birthday, and he
spent most of his early life in a household consisting of five women: his mother, Franziska, his
younger sister, Elisabeth, his maternal grandmother, and two aunts.
In 1850 the family moved to Naumburg on the Saale River, where Nietzsche attended a
private preparatory school, the Domgymnasium. In 1858 he was admitted to Schulpforta,
Germany’s leading Protestant boarding school. He excelled academically and received an
outstanding classical education there. Having graduated in 1864, he went to the University of Bonn
to study theology and classical philology. Despite efforts to take part in the university’s social life,
the two semesters at Bonn were a failure, owing chiefly to acrimonious quarrels between his two
leading classics professors, Otto Jahn and Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl. Nietzsche sought refuge in
music, writing a number of compositions strongly influenced by Robert Schumann, the German
Romantic composer. In 1865 he transferred to the University of Leipzig, joining Ritschl, who had
accepted an appointment there.
BASEL YEARS (1869-79)
When a professorship in classical philology fell vacant in 1869 in Basel, Switzerland,
Ritschl recommended Nietzsche with unparalleled praise. He had completed neither his doctoral
thesis nor the additional dissertation required for a German degree; yet Ritschl assured the
University of Basel that he had never seen anyone like Nietzsche in 40 years of teaching and that
his talents were limitless. In 1869 the University of Leipzig conferred the doctorate without
examination or dissertation on the strength of his published writings, and the University of Basel
appointed him extraordinary professor of classical philology. The following year Nietzsche was
promoted to ordinary professor.
Nietzsche obtained a leave to serve as a volunteer medical orderly in August 1870, after
the outbreak of the Franco-German War. Within a month, while accompanying a transport of
wounded, he contracted dysentery and diphtheria, which ruined his health permanently. He
returned to Basel in October to resume a heavy teaching load, but as early as 1871 ill health
prompted him to seek relief from the stultifying chores of a professor of classical philology; he
applied for the vacant chair of philosophy and proposed Rohde as his successor, all to no avail.
During those early Basel years Nietzsche’s ambivalent friendship with Wagner ripened,
and he seized every opportunity to visit Richard and his wife, Cosima. Wagner appreciated
Nietzsche as a brilliant professorial apostle, but Wagner’s increasing exploitation of Christian
motifs, as in Parsifal (1882), coupled with his chauvinism and anti-Semitism proved to be more
than Nietzsche could bear. By 1878 the breach between the two men had become final.
DECADE OF ISOLATION AND CREATIVITY (1879–89)
Apart from the books Nietzsche wrote between 1879 and 1889, it is doubtful that his life
held any intrinsic interest. Seriously ill, half-blind, in virtually unrelenting pain, he lived in
boarding houses in Switzerland, the French Riviera, and Italy, with only limited human contact.
Nietzsche’s acknowledged literary and philosophical masterpiece in biblical-narrative
form, Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), was published between 1883 and 1885
in four parts, the last of which was a private printing at his own expense. As with most of his
works, it received little attention. His attempts to set forth his philosophy in more-direct prose, in
the publications in 1886 of Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil) and in 1887 of Zur
Genealogie der Moral (On the Genealogy of Morals), also failed to win a proper audience.
Nietzsche’s final lucid year, 1888, was a period of supreme productivity. He wrote and
published Der Fall Wagner (The Case of Wagner) and wrote a synopsis of his philosophy, Die
Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols), Der Antichrist (The Antichrist), Nietzsche contra
Wagner, and Ecce Homo, a reflection on his own works and significance. Twilight of the Idols
appeared in 1889; The Antichrist and Nietzsche contra Wagner were not published until 1895, the
former mistakenly as book one of The Will to Power; and Ecce Homo was withheld from
publication until 1908, 20 years after its composition.
COLLAPSE AND MISUSE
Nietzsche collapsed in the streets of Turin, Italy, in January 1889, having lost control of
his mental faculties completely. Bizarre but meaningful notes he sent immediately after his
collapse brought his friend Franz Overbeck, a Christian theologian, to Italy to return Nietzsche to
Basel. Nietzsche spent the last 11 years of his life in total mental darkness, first in a Basel asylum,
then in Naumburg under his mother’s care and, after her death in 1897, in Weimar in his sister’s
care. He died in 1900. His breakdown was long attributed to atypical general paralysis caused by
dormant tertiary syphilis. Later diagnoses included degeneration of the cerebral blood vessels and
retro-orbital meningioma, a tumour of the brain meninges behind the (right) eye.
NIETZSCHE’S MATURE PHILOSOPHY
In his mature writings Nietzsche was preoccupied by the origin and function of values in
human life. If, as he believed, life neither possesses nor lacks intrinsic value and yet is always
being evaluated, then such evaluations can usefully be read as symptoms of the condition of the
evaluator. He was especially interested, therefore, in a probing analysis and evaluation of the
fundamental cultural values of Western philosophy, religion, and morality, which he characterized
as expressions of the ascetic ideal.
The ascetic ideal is born when suffering becomes endowed with ultimate significance.
According to Nietzsche, the Judeo-Christian tradition, for example, made suffering tolerable by
interpreting it as God’s intention and as an occasion for atonement. Christianity, accordingly, owed
its triumph to the flattering doctrine of personal immortality, that is, to the conceit that each
individual’s life and death have cosmic significance. Similarly, traditional philosophy expressed
the ascetic ideal when it privileged soul over body, mind over senses, duty over desire, reality over
appearance, the timeless over the temporal. While Christianity promised salvation for the sinner
who repents, philosophy held out hope for salvation, albeit secular, for its sages. Common to
traditional religion and philosophy was the unstated but powerful motivating assumption that
existence requires explanation, justification, or expiation. Both denigrated experience in favour of
some other, “true” world. Both may be read as symptoms of a declining life, or life in distress.
Nietzsche’s critique of traditional morality centred on the typology of “master” and “slave”
morality. By examining the etymology of the German words gut (“good”), schlecht (“bad”), and
böse (“evil”), Nietzsche maintained that the distinction between good and bad was originally
descriptive, that is, a nonmoral reference to those who were privileged, the masters, as opposed to
those who were base, the slaves. The good/evil contrast arose when slaves avenged themselves by
converting attributes of mastery into vices. If the favoured, the “good,” were powerful, it was said
that the meek would inherit the earth. Pride became sin. Charity, humility, and obedience replaced
competition, pride, and autonomy. Crucial to the triumph of slave morality was its claim to being
the only true morality. That insistence on absoluteness is as essential to philosophical as to
religious ethics. Although Nietzsche gave a historical genealogy of master and slave morality, he
maintained that it was an ahistorical typology of traits present in everyone.
Nihilism” was the term Nietzsche used to describe the devaluation of the highest values
posited by the ascetic ideal. He thought of the age in which he lived as one of passive nihilism,
that is, as an age that was not yet aware that religious and philosophical absolutes had dissolved in
the emergence of 19th-century positivism. With the collapse of metaphysical and theological
foundations and sanctions for traditional morality only a pervasive sense of purposelessness and
meaninglessness would remain. And the triumph of meaninglessness is the triumph of nihilism:
“God is dead.” Nietzsche thought, however, that most people could not accept the eclipse of the
ascetic ideal and the intrinsic meaninglessness of existence but would seek supplanting absolutes
to invest life with meaning. He thought the emerging nationalism of his day represented one such
ominous surrogate god, in which the nation-state would be invested with transcendent value and
purpose. And just as absoluteness of doctrine had found expression in philosophy and religion,
absoluteness would become attached to the nation-state with missionary fervour. The slaughter of
rivals and the conquest of the earth would proceed under banners of universal brotherhood,
democracy, and socialism. Nietzsche’s prescience here was particularly poignant, and the use later
made of him especially repellent. For example, two books were standard issue for the rucksacks
of German soldiers during World War I, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Gospel According to
John. It is difficult to say which author was more compromised by that gesture.
Nietzsche often thought of his writings as struggles with nihilism, and apart from his
critiques of religion, philosophy, and morality he developed original theses that have commanded
attention, especially perspectivism, the will to power, eternal recurrence, and the superman.
NIETZSCHE’S INFLUENCE
Nietzsche once wrote that some men are born posthumously, and that is certainly true in
his case. The history of philosophy, theology, and psychology since the early 20th century is
unintelligible without him. The German philosophers Max Scheler, Karl Jaspers, and Martin
Heidegger laboured in his debt, for example, as did the French philosophers Albert Camus, Jacques
Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Existentialism and deconstruction, a movement in philosophy and
literary criticism, owe much to him. The theologians Paul Tillich and Lev Shestov acknowledged
their debt, as did the “God is dead” theologian Thomas J.J. Altizer; Martin Buber, Judaism’s
greatest 20th-century thinker, counted Nietzsche among the three most-important influences in his
life and translated the first part of Zarathustra into Polish. The psychologists Alfred Adler and Carl
Jung were deeply influenced, as was Sigmund Freud, who said of Nietzsche that he had a morepenetrating understanding of himself than any man who ever lived or was ever likely to live.
Novelists like Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, André Malraux, André Gide, and John Gardner
were inspired by him and wrote about him, as did the poets and playwrights George Bernard Shaw,
Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, and William Butler Yeats, among others. Nietzsche’s great
influence is due not only to his originality but also to the fact that he was one of the German
language’s most-brilliant prose writers.
BOOKS
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Nietzsche's Werke (Classic Reprint) (German Edition) (German) Paperback– January 4,
2018 by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Author)
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Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Modern Library Classics) Paperback – November 28, 2000
by Friedrich Nietzsche (Author), Peter Gay (Introduction), Walter Kaufmann (Translator)
A Nietzsche Reader (Penguin Classics) Paperback – October 26, 1978
by Friedrich Nietzsche (Author), R. J. Hollingdale (Translator, Introduction)
Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Cambridge
Texts in the History of Philosophy) 1st Editionby Friedrich Nietzsche (Author), Rolf-Peter
Horstmann (Editor), Judith Norman (Translator)
Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is; Revised Edition (Penguin Classics)
Paperback – December 1, 1992by Friedrich Nietzsche (Author), R. J. Hollingdale
(Translator), Michael Tanner (Introduction)
Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for everyone and no one by Friedrich Nietzsche,
Translated and introduction by R.J. Hollingdale Nietzsche (Author)
Twilight of the Idols: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Oxford World's Classics)
Reissue Edition by Friedrich Nietzsche (Author), Duncan Large (Translator)
The Will to Power New Ed Edition by Friedrich Nietzsche (Author), Walter Kaufmann
(Editor, Translator), R. J. Hollingdale (Translator)
Nietzsche: The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of
Songs (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) New Ed Edition by Friedrich
Nietzsche (Author), Bernard Williams (Editor), Josefine Nauckhoff (Translator), Adrian
Del Caro (Translator)
The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)
Paperback – March 7, 1996 by Bernd Magnus (Editor), Kathleen Higgins (Editor)
Zarathustra's Secret Hardcover – June, 2002
by Joachim Kohler (Author), Joachirn Köhler (Author), Ronald Taylor (Translator)
Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction Paperback – February 1, 2001 by Michael Tanner
(Author)
Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy by R. J. Hollingdale (1999-04-28) Hardcover –
1656 by R. J. Hollingdale
Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche (Re-Reading the Canon) 1st Edition
by Kelly Oliver (Editor), Marilyn Pearsall (Editor)
Nietzsche: The Great Philosophers (The Great Philosophers Series) 1st Edition by Ronald
Hayman (Author)
Nietzsche (Arguments of the Philosophers) 1st Edition by Richard Schacht (Author), Ted
Honderich (Editor)
New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation 1st Edition by David Allison
(Editor)
What Nietzsche Really Said by Kathleen M. Higgins (2000-02-22)Hardcover – 1673 by
Kathleen M. Higgins;Robert C. Solomon (Author)
The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Nietzsche On Morality (Routledge Philosophy
GuideBooks)1st Edition by Brian Leiter (Author)
Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy: Thinking Freedom (Modern European Philosophy) by
Will Dudley (2002-09-16) Hardcover – 1726 by Will Dudley (Author)
Beyond Hegel and Nietzsche: Philosophy, Culture, and Agency (Studies in Contemporary
German Social Thought) Paperback – February 7, 2002 by Elliot L. Jurist (Author)
Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor by Gregory Moore (2002-02-11)Hardcover – 1734 by
Gregory Moore (Author)
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The Invention of Dionysus 1st Edition by James I. Porter (Author)
Nietzsche as Philosopher (Columbia Classics in Philosophy) (Paperback) - Common
Paperback – 2005 by By (author) Arthur Coleman Danto (Author)
WORKS
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The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1873)
Untimely Meditations (1876)
Human, All Too Human (1878)
The Dawn (1881)
The Gay Science (1882)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
The Case of Wagner (1888)
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
The Antichrist (1888)
Ecce Homo (1888; first published in 1908)
Nietzsche contra Wagner (1888)
The Will to Power (various unpublished manuscripts edited by his sister Elisabeth; not recognized as
a unified work after ca 1960)
THOMAS HOBBES
THOMAS HOBBES was born at Westport in Wiltshire England on .Born April 5, 1588, died
December 4, 1679, Hardwi
 Thomas Hobbes was excellent in classical language.
 He went to Magdalene Hall University Hall University
in Oxford for further studies
 He is an English philosopher, scientist, and historian,
best known for his political philosophy, especially
as artculated in his masterpiece Leviathan(1651).
 Hobbes viewed government primarily as a device for
ensuring collective security. Political authority is justified
by a hypotheticalsocial contract among the many that vests
in a sovereign person or entity the responsibility for the
safety and well-being of all.
 In metaphysics, Hobbes defended materialism, the view
that only material things are real. His scientific writings
present all observed phenomena as the effects
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of matter in motion.
Hobbes was not only a scientist in his own right but a great systematizer of the scientific findings
of his contemporaries, including Galileo and Johannes Kepler. His enduring contribution is as a
political philosopher who justified wide-ranging government powers on the basis of the selfinterested consent of citizens.
His father Thomas Sr. was a quick-tempered vicar of a small Wiltshire parish church. Thomas
Sr. was involved in fight with the local clergy outside his church,forcing him to leave
London.The family was left in the care of Thomas Sr’s older brother,Francis,a wealthy glove
manufacturer with no family.
Hobbes was educated at Westportchurch from age four.He was a good pupil then.
For nearly the whole of his adult life, Hobbes worked for different branches of the wealthy and
aristocratic Cavendish family. Upon taking his degree at Oxford in 1608, he was employed as
page and tutor to the young William Cavendish, afterward the second earl of Devonshire. Over
the course of many decades Hobbes served the family and their associates as translator, traveling
companion, keeper of accounts, business representative, political adviser, and scientific
collaborator. Through his employment by William Cavendish, the first earl of Devonshire, and
his heirs, Hobbes became connected with the royalist side in disputes between the king and
Parliament that continued until the 1640s and that culminated in the English Civil Wars (1642–
51).
Hobbes also worked for the marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a cousin of William Cavendish,
and Newcastle’s brother, Sir Charles Cavendish. The latter was the centre of the “Wellbeck
Academy,” an informal network of scientists named for one of the family houses at Wellbeck
Abbey in Nottinghamshire.
The two branches of the Cavendish family nourished Hobbes’s enduring intellectual interests in
politics and natural science, respectively. Hobbes served the earls of Devonshire intermittently
until 1628; Newcastle and his brother employed him in the following decade. He returned to the
Devonshires after the 1640s. Through both branches of the Cavendish family, and through
contacts he made in his own right on the Continent as traveling companion to various successors
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to the Devonshire title, Hobbes became a member of several networks of intellectuals in England.
Farther afield, in Paris, he became acquainted with the circle of scientists, theologians, and
philosophers presided over by the theologian Marin Mersenne. This circle included René
Descartes.
Hobbes was exposed to practical politics before he became a student of political philosophy. The
young William Cavendish was a member of the 1614 and 1621 Parliaments, and Hobbes would
have followed his contributions to parliamentary debates. Further exposure to politics came
through the commercial interests of the earls of Devonshire.
Hobbes attended many meetings of the governing body of the Virginia Company, a trading
company established by James I to colonize parts of the eastern coast of North America, and
came into contact with powerful men there. (Hobbes himself was given a small share in the
company by his employer.) He also confronted political issues through his connection with
figures who met at Great Tew; with them he debated not only theological questions but also the
issues of how the Anglican church should be led and organized and how its authority should be
related to that of any English civil government.
In the late 1630s Parliament and the king were in conflict over how far normal kingly powers
could be exceeded in exceptional circumstances, especially in regard to raising money for armies.
In 1640 Hobbes wrote a treatise defending King Charles I’s own wide interpretation of
his prerogatives. Royalist members of Parliament used arguments from Hobbes’s treatise in
debates, and the treatise itself circulated in manuscript form. The Elements of Law, Natural and
Politic (written in 1640, published in a misedited unauthorized version in 1650) was Hobbes’s
first work of political philosophy, though he did not intend it for publication as a book.
The development of Hobbes the scientist began in his middle age. He was not trained in
mathematics or the sciences at Oxford, and his Wiltshire schooling was strongest in classical
languages. His interest in motion and its effects was stimulated mainly through his conversation
and reading on the Continent, as well as through his association with the scientifically and
mathematically minded Wellbeck Cavendishes. In 1629 or 1630 Hobbes was supposedly charmed
by Euclid’s method of demonstrating theorems in the Elements. According to a contemporary
biographer, he came upon a volume of Euclid in a gentleman’s study and fell in love
with geometry. Later, perhaps in the mid-1630s, he had gained enough sophistication to pursue
independent research in optics, a subject he later claimed to have pioneered. Within the Wellbeck
Academy, he exchanged views with other people interested in the subject. And as a member of
Mersenne’s circle in Paris after 1640, he was taken seriously as a theorist not only of ethics and
politics but of optics and ballistics. Indeed, he was even credited with competence in mathematics
by some very able French mathematicians, including Gilles Personne de Roberval.
Self-taught in the sciences and an innovator at least in optics, Hobbes also regarded himself as a
teacher or transmitter of sciences developed by others. In this connection he had in mind sciences
that, like his own optics, traced observed phenomena to principles about the sizes, shapes,
positions, speeds, and paths of parts of matter. His great trilogy—De Corpore (1655;
“Concerning Body”), De Homine (1658; “Concerning Man”), and De Cive (1642; “Concerning
the Citizen”)—was his attempt to arrange the various pieces of natural science, as well as
psychology and politics, into a hierarchy, ranging from the most general and fundamental to the
most specific. Although logically constituting the last part of his system, De Cive was published
first, because political turmoil in England made its message particularly timely and because its
doctrine was intelligible both with and without natural-scientific preliminaries. De
Corpore and De Homine incorporated the findings of, among others, Galileo on the motions of
terrestrial bodies, Kepler on astronomy, William Harvey on the circulation of the blood, and
Hobbes himself on optics. The science of politics contained in De Cive was substantially
anticipated in Part II of The Elements of Lawand further developed in Leviathan; or, The Matter,
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Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651), the last—and in the
English-speaking world the most famous—formulation of Hobbes’s political philosophy.
Hobbes was a staunch and outspoken Royalist and in 1640, for fear of his own safety, he fled to
Paris as Parliament and King Charles I moved closer and closer to civil war. During this time in
self-imposed exile from England, Hobbes began publishing philosophical works on the nature of
knowledge, language, and humanity. He watched the political developments in his home country
from afar, and soon after his return in 1651, he boldly published his most famous - and most
political - work, Leviathan. He continued to publish polemical and philosophical works
throughout the 1650s, often arguing with his republican contemporary John Bramall.
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Hobbes continued to write and publish throughout the 1660s, though his works became less
political. For instance, in 1675 he published a translation of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad.
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In October 1679 Hobbes suffered a bladder disorder, and then a paralytic stroke
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Hobbes died in 1679 at 91 years old.His last words were said to have been “A great leap in the
dark”uttered in his final conscious moments. His body was interred in St.John the Baptists
Church, Ault Hucknall,in Derbyshire.
WORKS
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1602. Latin translation of Euripides' Medea (lost).
1620. Three of the discourses in the Horae Subsecivae: Observation and Discourses (A Discourse of
Tacitus, A Discourse of Rome, and A Discourse of Laws).[40]
1626. De Mirabilis Pecci, Being the Wonders of the Peak in Darby-shire, (a poem first published in
1636)
1629. Eight Books of the Peloponnesian Warre, translation with an Introduction
of Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
1630. A Short Tract on First Principles, British Museum, Harleian MS 6796, ff. 297–308: critical
edition with commentary and French translation by Jean Bernhardt: Court traité des premiers
principes, Paris, PUF, 1988 (authorship doubtful: this work is attributed by some critics to Robert
Payne).[41]
1637 A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique (in Molesworth's edition the title is The Whole Art of
Rhetoric). A new edition has been edited by John T. Harwood: The Rhetorics of Thomas Hobbes and
Bernard Lamy, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. (Authorship probable: While
Karl Schuhmann firmly rejects the attribution of this work to Hobbes, disagreeing with Quentin
Skinner, who has come to agree with Schuhmann, a preponderance of scholarship disagrees with
Schuhmann's idiosyncratic assessment.)[42]
1639. Tractatus opticus II (British Library, Harley MS 6796, ff. 193–266; first complete edition
1963)[43]
1640. Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (circulated only in handwritten copies, first printed
edition, without Hobbes's permission in 1650)
1641. Objectiones ad Cartesii Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Third series of Objections)
1642. Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Tertia de Cive (Latin, first limited edition)
1643. De Motu, Loco et Tempore (first edition 1973 with the title: Thomas White's De Mundo
Examined)[44]
1644. Part of the Praefatio to Mersenni Ballistica (in F. Marini Mersenni minimi Cogitata physicomathematica. In quibus tam naturae quàm artis effectus admirandi certissimis demonstrationibus
explicantur)
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1644. Opticae, liber septimus, (written in 1640) in Universae geometriae mixtaeque mathematicae
synopsis, edited by Marin Mersenne (reprinted by Molesworth in OL V pp. 215–48 with the
title Tractatus Opticus)
1646. A Minute or First Draught of the Optiques (Harley MS 3360; Molesworth published only the
dedication to Cavendish and the conclusion in EW VII, pp. 467–71)
1646. Of Liberty and Necessity (published without the permission of Hobbes in 1654)
1647. Elementa Philosophica de Cive (second expanded edition with a new Preface to the Reader)
1650. Answer to Sir William Davenant's Preface before Gondibert
1650. Human Nature: or The fundamental Elements of Policie (first thirteen chapters of The Elements
of Law, Natural and Politic, published without Hobbes's authorisation)
1650. Pirated edition of The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, repackaged to include two parts:
o Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policie (chapters 14–19 of Part One of
the Elements of 1640)
o De Corpore Politico (Part Two of the Elements of 1640)
1651. Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and Society (English translation of De
Cive)[45]
1651. Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil
1654. Of Libertie and Necessitie, a Treatise
1655. De Corpore (Latin)
1656. Elements of Philosophy, The First Section, Concerning Body (anonymous English translation
of De Corpore)
1656. Six Lessons to the Professor of Mathematics
1656. The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance (reprint of Of Libertie and Necessitie,
a Treatise, with the addition of Bramhall's reply and Hobbes's reply to Bramahall's reply)
1657. Stigmai, or Marks of the Absurd Geometry, Rural Language, Scottish Church Politics, and
Barbarisms of John Wallis
1658. Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Secunda De Homine
1660. Examinatio et emendatio mathematicae hodiernae qualis explicatur in libris Johannis Wallisii
1661. Dialogus physicus, sive De natura aeris
1662. Problematica Physica (translated in English in 1682 as Seven Philosophical Problems)
1662. Seven Philosophical Problems, and Two Propositions of Geometru (published posthumously)
1662. Mr. Hobbes Considered in his Loyalty, Religion, Reputation, and Manners. By way of Letter to
Dr. Wallis (English autobiography)
1666. De Principis & Ratiocinatione Geometrarum
1666. A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (published
in 1681)
1668. Leviathan (Latin translation)
1668. An answer to a book published by Dr. Bramhall, late bishop of Derry; called the Catching of
the leviathan. Together with an historical narration concerning heresie, and the punishment
thereof (published in 1682)
1671. Three Papers Presented to the Royal Society Against Dr. Wallis. Together with Considerations
on Dr. Wallis his Answer to them
1671. Rosetum Geometricum, sive Propositiones Aliquot Frustra antehac tentatae. Cum Censura
brevi Doctrinae Wallisianae de Motu
1672. Lux Mathematica. Excussa Collisionibus Johannis Wallisii
1673. English translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
1674. Principia et Problemata Aliquot Geometrica Antè Desperata, Nunc breviter Explicata &
Demonstrata
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1678. Decameron Physiologicum: Or, Ten Dialogues of Natural Philosophy
1679. Thomae Hobbessii Malmesburiensis Vita. Authore seipso (Latin autobiography, translated into
English in 1680)
Posthumous works
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1680. An Historical Narration concerning Heresie, And the Punishment thereof
1681. Behemoth, or The Long Parliament (written in 1668, unpublished at the request of the King,
first pirated edition 1679)
 1682. Seven Philosophical Problems (English translation of Problematica Physica, 1662)
 1682. A Garden of Geometrical Roses (English translation of Rosetum Geometricum, 1671)
 1682. Some Principles and Problems in Geometry (English translation of Principia et Problemata,
1674)
 1688. Historia Ecclesiastica Carmine Elegiaco Concinnata
Complete editions

Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis Opera Philosophica quae Latina Scripsit, Studio et labore
Gulielmi Molesworth, (Londini, 1839–1845). 5 volumes. Reprint: Aalen, 1966 (= OL).
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Volume I. Elementorum Philosophiae I: De Corpore
Volume II. Elementorum Philosophiae II and III: De Homine and De Cive
Volume III. Latin version of Leviathan.
Volume IV. Various concerning mathematics, geometry and physics.
Volume V. Various short works.
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The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; Now First Collected and Edited by
Sir William Molesworth, Bart., (London: Bohn, 1839–45). 11 volumes. Reprint London,
1939-–; reprint: Aalen, 1966 (= EW).
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Volume 1. De Corpore translated from Latin to English.
Volume 2. De Cive.
Volume 3. The Leviathan
Volume 4.
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TRIPOS ; in Three Discourses:
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I. Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policy
II. De Corpore Politico, or the Elements of Law
III. Of Liberty and Necessity
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An Answer to Bishop Bramhall's Book, called "The Catching of the Leviathan"
An Historical Narration concerning Heresy, and the Punishment thereof
Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, and Religion of Thomas Hobbes
Answer to Sir William Davenant's Preface before "Gondibert"
Letter to the Right Honourable Edward Howard
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Volume 5. The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, clearly stated and
debated between Dr Bramhall Bishop of Derry and Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury.
Volume 6.
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A Dialogue Between a Philosopher & a Student of the Common Laws of England
A Dialogue of the Common Law
Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England, and of the Counsels and
Artifices By Which They Were Carried On From the Year 1640 to the Year 1660
The Whole Art of Rhetoric (Hobbes's translation of his own Latin summary of Aristotle's
Rhetoric published in 1637 with the title A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique)
The Art of Rhetoric Plainly Set Forth. With Pertinent Examples For the More Easy
Understanding and Practice of the Same (this work is not of Hobbes but by Dudley
Fenner, The Artes of Logike and Rethorike, 1584)
The Art of Sophistry
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Volume 7.
Seven Philosophical Problems
Decameron Physiologicum
Proportion of a straight line to half the arc of a quadrant
Six lessons to the Savilian Professors of the Mathematics
ΣΤΙΓΜΑΙ, or Marks of the absurd Geometry etc. of Dr Wallis
Extract of a letter from Henry Stubbe
Three letters presented to the Royal Society against Dr Wallis
Considerations on the answer of Dr Wallis
Letters and other pieces
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Volume 8 and 9. The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, translated into English
by Hobbes.
 Volume 10. The Iliad, and The Odyssey, translated by Hobbes into English
 Volume 11. Index.
Posthumous works not included in the Molesworth editions
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The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, edited with a preface and critical notes
by Ferdinand Tönnies, London, 1889 (first complete edition).
Short Tract on First Principles, in The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic,
Appendix I, pp. 193–210.[46] (this work is now attributed to Robert Payne).[47]
Tractatus opticus II (1639, British Library, Harley MS 6796, ff. 193–266): first
partial edition in The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, Appendix II, pp. 211–
26; first complete edition (but omitting the diagrams) by Franco Alessio, Rivista
critica di storia della filosofia, 18, 1963, pp. 147–228.
Critique du 'De mundo' de Thomas White, edited by Jean Jacquot and Harold
Whitmore Jones, Paris, 1973, with three appendixes:
o De Motibus Solis, Aetheris & Telluris (pp. 439–47: a Latin poem on the
movement of the Earth).
o Notes in English on an ancient redaction of some chapters of De Corpore (July
1643; pp. 448–60: MS 5297, National Library of Wales).
o Notes for the Logica and Philosophia prima of the De Corpore (pp. 461–513:
Chatsworth MS A10 and the notes of Charles Cavendish on a draft of the De
Corpore: British Library, Harley MS 6083).
Of the Life and History of Thucydides, in Hobbes's Thucydides, edited by Richard
Schlatter, New Brunswick, pp. 10–27, 1975.
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Three Discourses: a Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young
Hobbes (TD), edited by Noel B. Reynolds and Arlene Saxonhouse, Chicago, 1975.
o A Discourse upon the Beginning of Tacitus, in TD, pp. 31–67.
o A Discourse of Rome, in TD, pp. 71–102.
o A Discourse of Law, in TD, pp. 105–19.
 Thomas Hobbes' A Minute or First Draught of the Optiques (British Library, Harley
MS 3360). Critical Edition by Elaine C. Stroud, Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 1983.
 Of Passions, Edition of the unpublished manuscript Harley 6093 by Anna Minerbi
Belgrado, in: Rivista di storia della filosofia, 43, 1988, pp. 729–38.
 The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes, edited by Noel Malcolm, Oxford: the
Clarendon Edition, vol. 6–7, 1994 (I: 1622–1659; II: 1660–1679).
Translations in modern English
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De Corpore, Part I. Computatio Sive Logica. Edited with an Introductory Essay
by L C. Hungerland and G. R. Vick. Translation and Commentary by A.
Martinich. New York: Abaris Books, 1981.
 Thomas White's De mundo Examined, translation by H. W. Jones, Bradford:
Bradford University Press, 1976 (the appendixes of the Latin edition (1973) are
not enclosed).
New critical editions of Hobbes' works (in progress)
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Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, Oxford: Clarendon
Press (10 volumes published of 27 planned).
Traduction des œuvres latines de Hobbes, under the direction of Yves
Charles Zarka, Paris: Vrin (5 volumes published of 17 planned).
John Duns Scotus
First published Thu May 31, 2001; substantive revision Mon Jan 12, 2015
John Duns Scotus (1265/66–1308) was one of the most
important and influential philosopher-theologians of the
High Middle Ages. His brilliantly complex and nuanced
thought, which earned him the nickname “the Subtle Doctor,”
left a mark on discussions of such disparate topics as the
semantics of religious language, the problem of universals,
divine illumination, and the nature of human freedom. This essay
first lays out what is known about Scotus's life and the dating of
his works. It then offers an overview of some of his key positions
in four main areas of philosophy: natural theology, metaphysics, the theory of knowledge, and ethics
and moral psychology.
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1. Life and Works
o
1.1 The life of John Duns the Scot
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1.2 Scotus's works
2. Natural Theology
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2.1 Some methodological preliminaries
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2.2 Proof of the existence of God
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2.3 Divine infinity and the doctrine of univocity
3. Metaphysics
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3.1 The subject matter of metaphysics
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3.2 Matter and form, body and soul
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3.3 Universals and individuation
4. Theory of Knowledge
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4.1 Sensation and abstraction
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4.2 Intuitive cognition
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4.3 The attack on skepticism and illuminationism
5. Ethics and Moral Psychology
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5.1 The natural law
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5.2 The will, freedom, and morality
Bibliography
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Primary texts in Latin
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Primary texts in English translation
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Secondary literature
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Academic Tools
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Other Internet Resources
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Related Entries
1. Life and Works
1.1 The life of John Duns the Scot
‘Scotus’ identifies Scotus as a Scot. His family name was Duns, which was also the name of the
Scottish village in which he was born, just a few miles from the English border. We do not know
the precise date of his birth, but we do know that Scotus was ordained to the priesthood in the
Order of Friars Minor—the Franciscans—at Saint Andrew's Priory in Northampton, England, on
17 March 1291. The minimum age for ordination was twenty-five, so we can conclude that Scotus
was born before 17 March 1266. But how much before? The conjecture, plausible but by no means
certain, is that Scotus would have been ordained as early as canonically permitted. Since the
Bishop of Lincoln (the diocese that included Oxford, where Scotus was studying, as well as St
Andrew's Priory) had ordained priests in Wycombe on 23 December 1290, we can place Scotus's
birth between 23 December 1265 and 17 March 1266.
Scotus studied philosophy and then theology at Oxford beginning some time in the 1280s. In the
academic year 1298–99 he commented on the first two books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard.
Scotus left Oxford for Paris, probably in 1302, and began lecturing on the Sentences again (we
think in the order Book I, Book IV, Book II, Book III). In June 1303 Scotus was expelled from
France along with eighty other friars for taking Pope Boniface VIII's side in a dispute with King
Philip IV of France. After Boniface died in October 1303 the king allowed the exiled students and
masters to return, so Scotus could have returned in the late fall of 1303 to resume his lectures on
the Sentences. Scotus became Doctor of Theology in 1305 and was Franciscan regent master at
Paris in 1306–07. He was transferred to the Franciscan studium at Cologne, probably beginning
his duties as lector in October 1307. He died there in 1308; the date of his death is traditionally
given as 8 November.
1.2 Scotus's works
It is generally agreed that Scotus's earliest works were his commentaries on the Old Logic:
questions on Porphyry's Isagoge and Aristotle's Categories, two sets of questions on Peri
hermeneias, and De sophisticis elenchis. These probably date to around 1295; the Quaestiones
super De anima is also very likely an early work (the editors date it to the late 1280s or early
1290s). Scotus's other Aristotelian commentary, the Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum
Aristotelis, seems to have been started early; but Books VI through IX are all late or were at least
revised later in Scotus's career. Scotus also wrote an Expositio on Aristotle's Metaphysics. It had
been unidentified for centuries but was recently identified and edited by Giorgio Pini.
Things really get complicated when we come to Scotus's commentaries on the four books
of Sentences of Peter Lombard, since he commented on the Sentences more than once and revised
his lectures over a long period; the relations among the various versions that have come down to
us are not always clear. Certainly the Lectura presents us with Scotus's Oxford lectures on Books
I and II of the Sentences in 1298–99. There is an Ordinatio (i.e., a version prepared for publication
by the author himself) of lectures at Oxford, based in part on the Lectura and on material from his
lectures in Paris. The Ordinatio, which Scotus seems to have been revising up to his death, is
generally taken to be Scotus's premier work; the critical edition was at last completed in 2013.
Finally, Scotus lectured on the Sentences at Paris, and there are various Reportationes of these
lectures. A critical edition is in progress; at present we have a transcription of a reasonably reliable
manuscript of Book I. Although the Paris lectures themselves were later than the Oxford lectures,
it seems probable that parts of the Ordinatio—Book IV and perhaps also Book III—are later than
the corresponding parts of the Reportatio.
In addition to these works, we have 46 short disputations called Collationes dating from 1300–
1305, a late work in natural theology called De primo principio, and Quaestiones
Quodlibetalesfrom Scotus's days as regent master (either Advent 1306 or Lent 1307). Finally, there
is a work called Theoremata. Though doubts have been raised about its authenticity, the recent
critical edition accepts it as a genuine work of Scotus.
2. Natural Theology
2.1 Some methodological preliminaries
Natural theology is, roughly, the effort to establish the existence and nature of God by arguments
that in no way depend on the contents of a purported revelation. But is it even possible for human
beings to come to know God apart from revelation? Scotus certainly thinks so. Like any good
Aristotelian, he thinks all our knowledge begins in some way with our experience of sensible
things. But he is confident that even from such humble beginnings we can come to grasp God.
Scotus agrees with Thomas Aquinas that all our knowledge of God starts from creatures, and that
as a result we can only prove the existence and nature of God by what the medievals call an
argumentquia (reasoning from effect to cause), not by an argument propter quid (reasoning from
essence to characteristic). Aquinas and Scotus further agree that, for that same reason, we cannot
know the essence of God in this life. The main difference between the two authors is that Scotus
believes we can apply certain predicates univocally—with exactly the same meaning—to God and
creatures, whereas Aquinas insists that this is impossible, and that we can only use analogical
predication, in which a word as applied to God has a meaning different from, although related to,
the meaning of that same word as applied to creatures. (See medieval theories of analogy for
details.)
Scotus has a number of arguments for univocal predication and against the doctrine of analogy
(Ordinatio 1, d. 3, pars 1, q. 1–2, nn. 26–55). One of the most compelling uses Aquinas's own view
against him. Aquinas had said that all our concepts come from creatures. Scotus says, very well,
where will that analogous concept come from? It can't come from anywhere. If all our concepts
come from creatures (and Scotus doesn't deny this), then the concepts we apply to God will also
come from creatures. They won't just be like the concepts that come from creatures, as in
analogous predication; they will have to be the very same concepts that come from creatures, as in
univocal predication. Those are the only concepts we can have—the only concepts we can possibly
get. So if we can't use the concepts we get from creatures, we can't use any concepts at all, and so
we can't talk about God—which is false.
Another argument for univocal predication is based on an argument from Anselm. Consider all
predicates, Anselm says. Now get rid of the ones that are merely relatives, since no relative
expresses the nature of a thing as it is in itself. (So we're not talking about such predicates as
“supreme being” or “Creator,” since even though those properly apply to God, they don't tell us
anything about what God is in himself, only about how he is related to other things.) Now take the
predicates that are left. Here's the test. Let F be our predicate-variable. For any F, either
(a) It is in every respect better to be F than not to be F.
~or~
(b) It is in some respect better to be not-F than F.
A predicate will fall into the second category if and only if it implies some sort of limitation or
deficiency. Anselm's argument is that we can (indeed must) predicate of God every predicate that
falls into the first category, and that we cannot predicate of God any predicate that falls into the
second (except metaphorically, perhaps). Scotus agrees with Anselm on this point (as did Aquinas:
see SCG I.30). Scotus has his own terminology for whatever it is in every respect better to be than
not to be. He calls such things “pure perfections” (perfectiones simpliciter). A pure perfection is
any predicate that does not imply limitation.
So Scotus claims that pure perfections can be predicated of God. But he takes this a step further
than Anselm. He says that they have to be predicated univocally of God; otherwise the whole
business of pure perfections won't make any sense. Here's the argument. If we are going to use
Anselm's test, we must first come up with our concept—say, of good. Then we check out the
concept to see whether it is in every respect better to be good than not-good. We realize that it is,
and so we predicate ‘good’ of God. That test obviously won't work unless it's the same concept
that we're applying in both cases.
One can see this more clearly by considering the two possible ways in which one might deny that
the same concept is applied to both God and creatures. One might say that the concept of the pure
perfection applies only to creatures, and the concept we apply to God has to be something different;
or one might try it the other way around and say that the concept of the pure perfection applies
only to God, and the concept we apply to creatures has to be something different. Take the first
possibility. If we come up with the idea of a pure perfection from creatures and don't apply the
same concept to God, we're saying that we can come up with something that is in every respect
better to be than not to be, but it doesn't apply to God. Such a view would destroy the idea that
God is the greatest and most perfect being. So then one might try the second possibility: the concept
of the pure perfection really applies only to God. Scotus points out that that can't be right either.
For then the perfection we apply to creatures won't be the pure perfection any more, and so the
creature wouldn't be better off for having this pseudo-perfection. But the whole way in which we
came up with the idea of the pure perfection in the first place was by considering perfections in
creatures—in other words, by considering what features made creatures better in every respect. So
this possibility gets the test backwards: it says that we have to start with knowing what features
God has and thereby determining what is a pure perfection, but in fact we first figure out what the
pure perfections are and thereby know what features God has.
Not only can we come up with concepts that apply univocally to God and creatures, we can even
come up with a proper (distinctive) concept of God. Now in one sense we can't have a proper
concept of God in this life, since we can't know his essence as a particular thing. We know God in
the way that we know, say, a person we have heard about but have never met. That is, we know
him through general concepts that can apply both to him and to other things. In another sense,
though, we can have a proper concept of God, that is, one that applies only to God. If we take any
of the pure perfections to the highest degree, they will be predicable of God alone. Better yet, we
can describe God more completely by taking all the pure perfections in the highest degree and
attributing them all to him.
But these are all composite concepts; they all involve putting two quite different notions together:
‘highest’ with ‘good’, ‘first’ with ‘cause’, and so on. Scotus says that we can come up with a
relatively simple concept that is proper to God alone, the concept of “infinite being.” Now that
concept might seem to be every bit as composite as “highest good” or “first cause,” but it's really
not. For “infinite being” is a concept of something essentially one: a being that has infinity
(unlimitedness) as its intrinsic way of existing. I will return to the crucial role of the concept of
infinite being in Scotus's natural theology after I examine his proof of the existence of God.
2.2 Proof of the existence of God
Scotus's argument for the existence of God is rightly regarded as one of the most outstanding
contributions ever made to natural theology. The argument is enormously complex, with several
sub-arguments for almost every important conclusion, and I can only sketch it here. (Different
versions of the proof are given at Lectura 1, d. 2, q. 1, nn. 38–135; Ordinatio 1, d. 2, q. 1, nn. 39–
190; Reportatio 1, d. 2, q. 1; and De primo principio.)
Scotus begins by arguing that there is a first agent (a being that is first in efficient causality).
Consider first the distinction between essentially ordered causes and accidentally ordered causes.
In an accidentally ordered series, the fact that a given member of that series is itself caused is
accidental to that member's own causal activity. For example, Grandpa A generates a son, Dad B,
who in turn generates a son of his own, Grandson C. B's generating C in no way depends on A—
A could be long dead by the time B starts having children. The fact that B was caused by A is
irrelevant to B's own causal activity. That's how an accidentally ordered series of causes works.
In an essentially ordered series, by contrast, the causal activity of later members of the series
depends essentially on the causal activity of earlier members. For example, my shoulders move
my arms, which in turn move my golf club. My arms are capable of moving the golf club only
because they are being moved by my shoulders.
With that distinction in mind, we can examine Scotus's argument for the existence of a first
efficient cause:
(1) No effect can produce itself.
(2) No effect can be produced by just nothing at all.
(3) A circle of causes is impossible.
(4) Therefore, an effect must be produced by something else. (from 1, 2, and 3)
(5) There is no infinite regress in an essentially ordered series of causes.
(5a) It is not necessarily the case that a being possessing a causal power C possesses C in an
imperfect way.
(5b) Therefore, it is possible that C is possessed without imperfection by some item.
(5c) If it is not possible for any item to possess C without dependence on some prior item,
then it is not possible that there is any item that possesses C without imperfection (since
dependence is a kind of imperfection).
(5d) Therefore, it is possible that some item possesses C without dependence on some prior
item. (from 5b and 5c by modus tollens)
(5e) Any item possessing C without dependence on some prior item is a first agent (i.e., an
agent that is not subsequent to any prior causes in an essentially ordered series).
(5f) Therefore, it is possible that something is a first agent. (from 5d and 5e)
(5g) If it is possible that something is a first agent, something is a first agent. (For, by
definition, if there were no first agent, there would be no cause that could bring it about,
so it would not in fact be possible for there to be a first agent.)
(5h) Therefore, something is a first agent (i.e., an agent that is not subsequent to any prior
causes in an essentially ordered series—Scotus still has to prove that there is an agent
that is not subsequent to any prior causes in an accidentally ordered series either. That's
what he does in step (6) below). (from 5f and 5g)
(6) It is not possible for there to be an accidentally ordered series of causes unless there is
an essentially ordered series.
(6a) In an accidentally ordered series, each member of the series (except the first, if there is
a first) comes into existence as a result of the causal activity of a prior member of the
series.
(6b) That causal activity is exercised in virtue of a certain form.
(6c) Therefore, each member of the series depends on that form for its causal activity.
(6d) The form is not itself a member of the series.
(6e) Therefore, the accidentally ordered series is essentially dependent on a higher-order
cause.
(7) Therefore, there is a first agent. (from 4, 5, and 6)
Scotus then goes on to argue that there is an ultimate goal of activity (a being that is first in final
causality), and a maximally excellent being (a being that is first in what Scotus calls “preeminence”).
Thus he has proved what he calls the “triple primacy”: there is a being that is first in efficient
causality, in final causality, and in pre-eminence. Scotus next proves that the three primacies are
coextensive: that is, any being that is first in one of these three ways will also be first in the other
two ways. Scotus then argues that a being enjoying the triple primacy is endowed with intellect
and will, and that any such being is infinite. Finally, he argues that there can be only one such
being.
2.3 Divine infinity and the doctrine of univocity
In laying out Scotus's proof of the existence of God, I passed rather quickly over the claim that
God is infinite. But the divine infinity deserves more detailed treatment. As we have already seen,
the concept of “infinite being” has a privileged role in Scotus's natural theology. As a first
approximation, we can say that divine infinity is for Scotus what divine simplicity is for Aquinas.
It's the central divine-attribute generator. But there are some important differences between the
role of simplicity in Aquinas and the role of infinity in Scotus. The most important, I think, is that
in Aquinas simplicity acts as an ontological spoilsport for theological semantics. Simplicity is in
some sense the key thing about God, metaphysically speaking, but it seriously complicates our
language about God. God is supposed to be a subsistent simple, but because our language is all
derived from creatures, which are all either subsistent but complex or simple but non-subsistent,
we don't have any way to apply our language straightforwardly to God. The divine nature
systematically resists being captured in language.
For Scotus, though, infinity is not only what's ontologically central about God; it's the key
component of our best available concept of God and a guarantor of the success of theological
language. That is, our best ontology, far from fighting with our theological semantics, both
supports and is supported by our theological semantics. The doctrine of univocity rests in part on
the claim that “[t]he difference between God and creatures, at least with regard to God's possession
of the pure perfections, is ultimately one of degree” (Cross [1999], 39). Remember one of Scotus's
arguments for univocity. If we are to follow Anselm in ascribing to God every pure perfection, we
have to affirm that we are ascribing to God the very same thing that we ascribe to creatures: God
has it infinitely, creatures in a limited way. One could hardly ask for a more harmonious
cooperation between ontology (what God is) and semantics (how we can think and talk about him).
Scotus ascribes to Aquinas the following argument for the divine infinity: If a form is limited by
matter, it is finite. God, being simple, is not limited by matter. Therefore, God is not finite. This,
as Scotus points out, is a fallacious argument. (It's an instance of denying the antecedent.) But even
apart from the fallacy, simplicity is not going to get us infinity. As Scotus puts it: “if an entity is
finite or infinite, it is so not by reason of something accidental to itself, but because it has its own
intrinsic degree of finite or infinite perfection” (Ordinatio 1, d. 1, pars 1, q. 1–2, n. 142). So
simplicity does not entail infinity, because finitude is not the result of composition. To look at it
another way, Aquinas's conception of infinity is negative and relational. The infinite is that which
is not bounded by something else. But Scotus thinks we can have a positive conception of infinity,
according to which infinity is not a negative, relational property, but instead a positive, intrinsic
property. It is an “intrinsic degree of perfection.”
How do we acquire that conception of positive, intrinsic infinity? The story goes like this. We
begin with “the potentially infinite in quantity.” According to Aristotle, you can never have an
actual quantitative infinity, since no matter how great a quantity you have, you can always have
more. What you can have (and in fact do have, Aristotle thinks) is a quantitative infinity by
successive parts. The next step is to imagine that all the parts of that quantitative infinity remained
in existence simultaneously. That is, we imagine an actual quantitative infinity. Scotus then asks
us to shift from thinking about an actual quantitative infinity to thinking about an
actual qualitative infinity. Think of some quality (say, goodness) as existing infinitely: so that
there is, as it were, no more goodness that you could add to that goodness to make it any greater.
That's infinite goodness. But notice that you can't think of infinite goodness as in some way
composed of little goodness-bits (just an infinite number of them). If I say that an angel is better
than a human being, I can't mean that a human being has a certain number of goodness-bits while
the angel has that many plus some extras. Rather, the specific degree of goodness of a thing is just
an intrinsic, non-quantitative feature of that thing. Infinite being is just like that. Scotus describes
it as “a measure of intrinsic excellence that is not finite.” This is why the concept of “infinite
being” is the simplest concept available to us for understanding God. Infinity is not some sort of
accidental addition to being, but an intrinsic mode of being. Of course, if this is right, then the
concepts of ‘infinite goodness’, ‘infinite power’, and so forth, are every bit as simple as the concept
of ‘infinite being’. So why does Scotus make such a big deal about ‘infinite being’? Because
‘infinite being’ “virtually contains” all the other infinite perfections of God. That is, we can deduce
the other infinite perfections from infinite being. So besides being the next best thing to a simple
concept, it's the most theoretically fruitful concept we can have of God in this life.
3. Metaphysics
3.1 The subject matter of metaphysics
Metaphysics, according to Scotus, is a “real theoretical science”: it is real in that it treats things
rather than concepts, theoretical in that it is pursued for its own sake rather than as a guide for
doing or making things, and a science in that it proceeds from self-evident principles to conclusions
that follow deductively from them. The various real theoretical sciences are distinguished by their
subject matter, and Scotus devotes considerable attention to determining what the distinctive
subject matter of metaphysics is. His conclusion is that metaphysics concerns “being qua being”
(ens inquantum ens). That is, the metaphysician studies being simply as such, rather than studying,
say, material being as material.
The study of being qua being includes, first of all, the study of the transcendentals, so called
because they transcend the division of being into finite and infinite, and the further division of
finite being into the ten Aristotelian categories. Being itself is a transcendental, and so are the
“proper attributes” of being—one, true, and good—which are coextensive with being. Scotus also
identifies an indefinite number of disjunctions that are coextensive with being and therefore count
as transcendentals, such as infinite-or-finite and necessary-or-contingent. Finally, all the pure
perfections (see above) are transcendentals, since they transcend the division of being into finite
and infinite. Unlike the proper attributes of being and the disjunctive transcendentals, however,
they are not coextensive with being. For God is wise and Socrates is wise, but earthworms—though
they are certainly beings—are not wise.
The study of the Aristotelian categories also belongs to metaphysics insofar as the categories, or
the things falling under them, are studied as beings. (If they are studied as concepts, they belong
instead to the logician.) There are exactly ten categories, Scotus argues. The first and most
important is the category of substance. Substances are beings in the most robust sense, since they
have an independent existence: that is, they do not exist in something else. Beings in any of the
other nine categories, called accidents, exist in substances. The nine categories of accidents are
quantity, quality, relation, action, passion, place, time, position, and state (habitus).
3.2 Matter and form, body and soul
Now imagine some particular substance, say, me. Suppose I go from being pale to being tan. Now
it is still I who exist both before and after the sun has had its characteristic effect on me. This
illustrates an important feature of substances: they can successively have contrary accidents and
yet retain their numerical identity. This sort of change is known, appropriately enough, as
accidental change. In an accidental change, a substance persists through the change, having first
one accident and then another. But clearly not all changes are accidental changes. There was once
a time when I did not exist, and then I came into existence. We can't analyze this change as an
accidental change, since there doesn't seem to be any substance that persists through the change.
Instead, a substance is precisely what comes into being; this is not an accidental but
a substantial change. And yet there must be something that persists even through substantial
change, since otherwise we wouldn't have change at all; substances would come to exist from
nothing and disappear into nothing. Scotus follows Aristotle in identifying matter as what persists
through substantial change and substantial form as what makes a given parcel of matter the
definite, unique, individual substance that it is. (There are also accidental forms, which are a
substance's accidental qualities.)
Thus far Scotus is simply repeating Aristotelian orthodoxy, and none of his contemporaries or
immediate predecessors would have found any of this at all strange. But as Scotus elaborates his
views on form and matter, he espouses three important theses that mark him off from some other
philosophers of his day: he holds that there exists matter that has no form whatsoever, that not all
created substances are composites of form and matter, and that one and the same substance can
have more than one substantial form. Let us examine each of these theses in turn.
First, Scotus argues that there is matter that is entirely devoid of form, or what is known as “prime
matter” (Quaestiones in Metaphysicam 7, q. 5; Lectura 2, d. 12, q. un.). Scholars debate now (just
as they debated in Scotus's day) whether Aristotle himself really believed that there is prime matter
or merely introduced it as a theoretical substratum for substantial change, believing instead that in
actual fact matter always has at least some minimal form (the form of the elements being the most
minimal of all). Aquinas denied both that Aristotle intended to posit it and that it could exist on its
own. For something totally devoid of form would be utterly featureless; it would be pure
potentiality, but not actually anything. Scotus, by contrast, argues that prime matter not only can
but does exist as such: “it is one and the same stuff that underlies every substantial change” (King
[2002]).
Second, Scotus denies “universal hylomorphism,” the view that all created substances are
composites of form and matter (Lectura 2, d. 12, q. un., n. 55). Universal hylomorphism (from the
Greek hyle, meaning ‘matter’, and morphe, meaning ‘form’) had been the predominant view
among Franciscans before Scotus. Saint Bonaventure, for example, had argued that even angels
could not be altogether immaterial; they must be compounds of form and “spiritual matter.” For
matter is potentiality and form is actuality, so if the angels were altogether immaterial, they would
be pure actuality without any admixture of potentiality. But only God is pure actuality. But as we
have already seen in his affirmation of the existence of prime matter, Scotus simply denies the
unqualified equation of matter with potentiality and form with actuality. Prime matter, though
entirely without form, is actual; and a purely immaterial being is not automatically bereft of
potentiality.
Third, Scotus holds that some substances have more than one substantial form (Ordinatio 4, d. 11,
q. 3, n. 54). This doctrine of the plurality of substantial forms was commonly held among the
Franciscans but vigorously disputed by others. We can very easily see the motivation for the view
by recalling that a substantial form is supposed to be what makes a given parcel of matter the
definite, unique, individual substance that it is. Now suppose, as many medieval thinkers
(including Aquinas) did, that the soul is the one and only substantial form of the human being. It
would then follow that when a human being dies, and the soul ceases to inform that parcel of
matter, what is left is not the same body that existed just before death. For what made it that very
body was its substantial form, which (ex hypothesi) is no longer there. When the soul is separated
from the body, then, what is left is not a body, but just a parcel of matter arranged corpse-wise. To
Scotus and many of his fellow Franciscans it seemed obvious that the corpse of a person is the
very same body that existed before death. Moreover, they argued, if the only thing responsible for
informing the matter of a human being is the soul, it would seem that (what used to be) the body
should immediately dissipate when a person dies. Accordingly, Scotus argues that the human being
has at least two substantial forms. There is the “form of the body” (forma corporeitatis) that makes
a given parcel of matter to be a definite, unique, individual human body, and the “animating form”
or soul, which makes that human body alive. At death, the animating soul ceases to vivify the
body, but numerically the same body remains, and the form of the body keeps the matter organized,
at least for a while. Since the form of the body is too weak on its own to keep the body in existence
indefinitely, however, it gradually decomposes.
While Scotus's account of form and matter has clear implications for what happens to the body at
death, it is less forthcoming about what happens to the soul. Can the animating soul survive the
death of the body it informs? Scotus considers a number of arguments for the incorruptibility of
the human soul, but he finds none of them persuasive. This is not to say that he denies the
immortality of the soul, of course, but that he does not think it can be proved by human reason
unaided by revelation.
Note that the general tendency of Scotus's theories of form and matter is to allow a high degree of
independence to form and matter. In positing the existence of prime matter, Scotus envisions
matter as existing without any form; in denying universal hylomorphism, he envisions form as
existing without any matter. And the doctrine of the plurality of substantial forms strongly suggests
that the human soul is an identifiable individual in its own right. So everything Scotus says in this
connection seems to make room for the possibility that the soul survives the death of the body and
continues to exist as an immaterial substance in its own right. That this possibility is in fact
realized, however, is something we can know only through faith.
3.3 Universals and individuation
The problem of universals may be thought of as the question of what, if anything, is the
metaphysical basis of our using the same predicate for more than one distinct individual. Socrates
is human and Plato is human. Does this mean that there must be some one universal reality—
humanity—that is somehow repeatable, in which Socrates and Plato both share? Or is there
nothing metaphysically common to them at all? Those who think there is some actual universal
existing outside the mind are called realists; those who deny extra-mental universals are called
nominalists. Scotus was a realist about universals, and like all realists he had to give an account of
what exactly those universals are: what their status is, what sort of existence they have outside the
mind. So, in the case of Socrates and Plato, the question is “What sort of item is this humanity that
both Socrates and Plato exemplify?” A related question that realists have to face is the problem of
individuation. Given that there is some extra-mental reality common to Socrates and Plato, we also
need to know what it is in each of them that makes them distinct exemplifications of that extramental reality.
Scotus calls the extra-mental universal the “common nature” (natura communis) and the principle
of individuation the “haecceity” (haecceitas). The common nature is common in that it is
“indifferent” to existing in any number of individuals. But it has extra-mental existence only in the
particular things in which it exists, and in them it is always “contracted” by the haecceity. So the
common nature humanity exists in both Socrates and Plato, although in Socrates it is made
individual by Socrates's haecceitas and in Plato by Plato's haecceitas. The humanity-of-Socrates
is individual and non-repeatable, as is the humanity-of-Plato; yet humanity itself is common and
repeatable, and it is ontologically prior to any particular exemplification of it (Ordinatio 2, d. 3,
pars 1, qq. 1–6, translated in Spade [1994], 57–113).
4. Theory of Knowledge
4.1 Sensation and abstraction
Scotus adopts the standard medieval Aristotelian view that human beings, alone among the
animals, have two different sorts of cognitive powers: senses and intellect. The senses differ from
the intellect in that they have physical organs; the intellect is immaterial. In order for the intellect
to make use of sensory information, therefore, it must somehow take the raw material provided by
the senses in the form of material images and make them into suitable objects for understanding.
This process is known as abstraction, from the Latin abstrahere, which is literally “to drag out.”
The intellect pulls out the universal, as it were, from the material singular in which it is embedded.
This activity is performed by the active or agent intellect, which takes the “phantasms” derived
from sense experience and turns them into “intelligible species.” Those species are actualized in
the possible or receptive intellect, whose function is to receive and then store the intelligible
species provided by the active intellect. Scotus denies that the active and passive intellect are really
distinct. Rather, there is one intellect that has these two distinct functions or powers.
Phantasms do not, however, become irrelevant once the intelligible species has been abstracted.
Scotus holds (just as Aquinas had held) that the human intellect never understands anything
without turning towards phantasms (Lectura 2, d. 3, pars 2, q. 1, n. 255). That is, in order to deploy
a concept that has already been acquired, one must make some use of sensory data—although the
phantasms employed in using a concept already acquired need not be anything like the phantasms
from which that concept was abstracted in the first place. I acquired the intelligible species of dog
from phantasms of dogs, but I can make use of that concept now not only by calling up an image
of a dog but also by (say) imagining the sound of the Latin word for dog. Scotus's point is simply
that there must be some sensory context for any act of intellectual cognition.
And even that point is not quite as general as my unqualified statement suggests. For one thing,
Scotus believes that our intellect's need for phantasms is a temporary state. It is only in this present
life that the intellect must turn to phantasms; in the next life we will be able to do without them.
For another thing, Scotus may have thought that even in this life we enjoy a kind of intellectual
cognition that bypasses phantasms. He called it “intuitive cognition.”
4.2 Intuitive cognition
Scotus understands intuitive cognition by way of contrast with abstractive cognition. The latter, as
we have seen, involves the universal; and a universal as such need not be exemplified. That is, my
intelligible species of dog only tells me what it is to be a dog; it doesn't tell me whether any
particular dog actually exists. Intuitive cognition, by contrast, “yields information about how
things are right now” (Pasnau [2002]). Sensory cognition, as Scotus explicitly acknowledges,
counts as intuitive cognition on this account. It is, after all, quite uncontroversial that my seeing or
hearing a dog gives me information about some particular dog as it exists when I see or hear it.
Scotus's much bolder claim concerns intellectual intuitive cognition, by which the intellect
cognizes a particular thing as existing at that very moment. Intellectual intuitive cognition does
not require phantasms; the cognized object somehow just causes the intellectual act by which its
existence is made present to the intellect. As Robert Pasnau rightly notes, intellectual intuitive
cognition is in effect a “form of extra-sensory perception” (Pasnau [2002]).
In some places Scotus seems to think of this sort of intuitive cognition as a mere theoretical
possibility, but in others he argues vigorously for the reality of intellectual intuitive cognition.
Indeed, in the latter sorts of passages it becomes clear that intuitive cognition is quite pervasive in
human thought. (For three different takes on what to make of Scotus's apparently conflicting
signals on this matter, see Day [1947], Pasnau [2002], and Wolter [1990a].) He argues, for
example, that since the intellect engages in reasoning that makes reference to the actual existence
of particular sensible objects, it must know that they exist. Abstractive cognition, of course, cannot
provide such knowledge. Moreover, without intuitive cognition I could never know about my own
intellectual states. Abstractive cognition could provide me with an abstract concept of thinking
about Scotus, but I need intuitive cognition to know that I am in fact exemplifying that concept
right this minute.
If these arguments represent Scotus's considered views on intuitive cognition, then Scotus is
making a bold exception to the general rule that in this life the intellect acquires knowledge only
by turning to phantasms. It would seem that he has little choice, given the importance he attaches
to our intuitive self-knowledge (as I discuss in the next section). For our intellect is immaterial, as
are its acts, and it is difficult to see how an immaterial act can be captured in a sensory phantasm.
Even so, Scotus is enough of an Aristotelian about the functioning of our intellect on this side of
heaven to insist that even though our brute acquaintance with those acts is independent of
phantasms, the descriptions under which we know those acts must be capable of being captured in
a phantasm.
And our intuitive cognition
of extra-mental
singulars
extends only
to material singulars, i.e., those that are capable of being captured in a phantasm. Scotus
consistently denies that we can have intuitive cognition of non-sensible objects (such as angels) or
universals in this life.
4.3 The attack on skepticism and illuminationism
Scotus argues that the human intellect is capable of achieving certainty in its knowledge of the
truth simply by the exercise of its own natural powers, with no special divine help. He therefore
opposes both skepticism, which denies the possibility of certain knowledge, and illuminationism,
which insists that we need special divine illumination in order to attain certainty. He works out his
attack on both doctrines in the course of a reply to Henry of Ghent in Ordinatio 1, d. 3, pars 1, q.
4. (For the text and translation, see Wolter [1987], 96–132.)
According to Henry, truth involves a relation to an “exemplar.” (We can think of this relation as
akin to the relation of correspondence appealed to by certain theories of truth, and the exemplar
itself as the mental item that is one of the relata of the correspondence-relation. The other relatum,
of course, is “the way things really are.”) Now there are two exemplars: the created exemplar,
which is the species of the universal caused by the thing known, and the uncreated exemplar, which
is an idea in the divine mind. Henry argues that the created exemplar cannot provide us with certain
and infallible knowledge of a thing. For, first, the object from which the exemplar is abstracted is
itself mutable and therefore cannot be the cause of something immutable. And how can there be
certain knowledge apart from some immutable basis for that knowledge? Second, the soul itself is
mutable and subject to error, and it can be preserved from error only by something less mutable
than itself. But the created exemplar is even more mutable than the soul. Third, the created
exemplar by itself does not allow us to distinguish between reality and dreaming, since the content
of the exemplar is the same in either case. Henry therefore concludes that if we are to have
certainty, we must look to the uncreated exemplar. And since we cannot look to the uncreated
exemplar by our natural powers, certainty is impossible apart from some special divine
illumination.
Scotus argues that if Henry is right about the limitations of our natural powers, even divine
illumination is not enough to save us from pervasive uncertainty. To Henry's first argument he
replies that there is no certainty to be had by knowing a mutable object as immutable. To the
second he replies that anything in the soul—including the very act of understanding that Henry
thinks is achieved through illumination—is mutable. So by Henry's argument it would be
impossible for anything whatever to preserve the soul from error. And to the third argument he
replies that if the created exemplar is such as to preclude certainty, adding extra exemplars will
not solve the problem: “When something incompatible with certainty concurs, certainty cannot be
attained” (Ordinatio 1, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4, n. 221).
So Henry's arguments, far from showing that certainty is possible through divine illumination,
actually lead to a pervasive skepticism. Scotus counters that we can show that skepticism is false.
We can in fact attain certainty, and we can do so by the unaided exercise of our natural intellectual
powers. There are four types of knowledge in which infallible certainty is possible. First,
knowledge of first principles is certain because the intellect has only to form such judgments to
see that they are true. (And since the validity of proper syllogistic inference can be known in just
this way, it follows that anything that is seen to be properly derived from first principles by
syllogistic inference is also known with certainty.) Second, we have certainty with respect to quite
a lot of causal judgments derived from experience. Third, Scotus says that many of our own acts
are as certain as first principles. It is no objection to point out that our acts are contingent, since
some contingent propositions must be known immediately (that is, without needing to be derived
from some other proposition). For otherwise, either some contingent proposition would follow
from a necessary proposition (which is impossible), or there would be an infinite regress in
contingent propositions (in which case no contingent proposition would ever be known). Fourth,
certain propositions about present sense experience are also known with certainty if they are
properly vetted by the intellect in light of the causal judgments derived from experience.
5. Ethics and Moral Psychology
5.1 The natural law
For Scotus the natural law in the strict sense contains only those moral propositions that are per se
notae ex terminis along with whatever propositions can be derived from them deductively
(Ordinatio 3, d. 37, q. un.). Per se notae means that they are self-evident; ex terminis adds that
they are self-evident in virtue of being analytically true. Now one important fact about propositions
that are self-evident and analytically true is that God himself can't make them false. They are
necessary truths. So the natural law in the strict sense does not depend on God's will. This means
that even if (as I believe) Scotus is some sort of divine-command theorist, he is not whole-hog in
his divine command theory. Some moral truths are necessary truths, and even God can't change
those. They would be true no matter what God willed.
Which ones are those? Scotus's basic answer is that they are the commandments of the first tablet
of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments). The Decalogue has often been thought of as involving
two tablets. The first covers our obligations to God and consists of the first three
commandments: You shall have no other gods before me, You shall not take the name of the Lord
your God in vain, andRemember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. (Note that many Protestants
divide them up differently.) The second tablet spells out our obligations toward others: Honor your
father and mother, You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall
not bear false witness against your neighbor, and two commandments against coveting. The
commandments of the first tablet are part of the natural law in the strict sense because they have
to do with God himself, and with the way in which God is to be treated. For Scotus says that the
following proposition is per se nota ex terminis: “If God exists, then he is to be loved as God, and
nothing else is to be worshiped as God, and no irreverence is to be done to him.” Given the very
definition of God, it follows that if there is such a being, he is to be loved and worshiped, and no
irreverence should be shown to him. Because these commandments are self-evident and analytic,
they are necessary truths. Not even God himself could make them false.
But even the first three commandments, once we start looking at them, are not obviously part of
the natural law in the strict sense. In particular, the third commandment, the one about the Sabbath
day, is a little tricky. Obviously, the proposition “God is to be worshiped on Saturday” is not selfevident or analytic. In fact, Scotus says it's not even true any more, since Christians are to worship
on Sunday, not Saturday. So, Scotus asks, what about the proposition “God is to be worshiped at
some time or other”? Even that is not self-evident or analytic. The best one can do is “God is not
to be hated.” Now that's self-evident and analytic, since by definition God is the being most worthy
of love and there is nothing in him worthy of hate. But obviously that's far weaker than any positive
commandment about whether and when we should worship God.
So by the time Scotus completes his analysis, we are left with nothing in the natural law in the
strict sense except for negative propositions: God is not to be hated, no other gods are to be
worshiped, no irreverence is to be done to him. Everything else in the Decalogue belongs to the
natural law in a weaker or looser sense. These are propositions that are not per se notae ex
terminis and do not follow from such propositions, but are “highly consonant” with such
propositions. Now the important point for Scotus is this: since these propositions are contingent,
they are completely up to God's discretion. Any contingent truth whatsoever depends on God's
will.
According to Scotus, God of course is aware of all contingent propositions. Now God gets to assign
the truth values to those propositions. For example, “Unicorns exist” is a contingent proposition.
Therefore, it is up to God's will whether that proposition will be true or false. The same goes for
contingent moral propositions. Take any such proposition and call it L, and call the opposite of L,
not-L. Both L and not-L are contingent propositions. God can make either of them true, but he can't
make both of them true, since they are contradictories. Suppose that God wills L. L is now part of
the moral law. How do we explain why God willed L rather than not-L? Scotus says we can't.
God's will with respect to contingent propositions is unqualifiedly free. So while there might be
some reasons why God chose the laws he chose, there is no fully adequate reason, no total
explanation. If there were a total explanation other than God's will itself, those propositions
wouldn't be contingent at all. They would be necessary. So at bottom there is simply the sheer fact
that God willed one law rather than another.
Scotus intends this claim to be exactly parallel to the way we think about contingent beings. Why
are there elephants but no unicorns? As everyone would agree, it's because God willed for there to
be elephants but no unicorns. And why did he will that? He just did. That's part of what we mean
by saying that God was free in creating. There was nothing constraining him or forcing him to
create one thing rather than another. The same is true about the moral law. Why is there an
obligation to honor one's parents but no such obligation toward cousins? Because God willed that
there be an obligation to honor one's parents, and he did not will that there be any such obligation
toward one's cousins. He could have willed both of these obligations, and he could have willed
neither. What explains the way that he did in fact will? Nothing whatsoever except the sheer fact
that he did will that way.
5.2 The will, freedom, and morality
Scotus quite self-consciously puts forward his understanding of freedom as an alternative to
Aquinas's. According to Aquinas, freedom comes in simply because the will is intellectual appetite
rather than mere sense appetite. Intellectual appetite is aimed at objects as presented by the intellect
and sense appetite at objects as presented by the senses. Sense appetite is not free because the
senses provide only particulars as objects of appetite. But intellectual appetite is free because the
intellect deals with universals, not particulars. Since universals by definition include many
particulars, intellectual appetite will have a variety of objects. Consider goodness as an example.
The will is not aimed at this good thing or that good thing, but at goodness in general. Since that
universal, goodness, contains many different particular things, intellectual appetite has many
different options.
But Scotus insists that mere intellectual appetite is not enough to guarantee freedom in the sense
needed for morality. The basic difference comes down to this. When Aquinas argues that
intellectual appetite has different options, he seems to be thinking of this over a span of time. Right
now the intellect presents x as good, so I will x; but later on the intellect presents y as good, so then
I will y. But Scotus thinks of freedom as involving multiple options at the very moment of choice.
It's not enough to say that now I will x, but later I can will y. We have to say that at the very
moment at which I will x, I also am able to will y. Aquinas's arguments don't show that intellectual
appetite is free in this stronger sense. So as far as Scotus is concerned, Aquinas hasn't made room
for the right kind of freedom.
This is where Scotus brings in his well-known doctrine of the two affections of the will (see
especially Ordinatio 2, d. 6, q. 2; 2, d. 39, q. 2; 3, d. 17, q. un.; and 3, d. 26, q. un.). The two
affections are fundamental inclinations in the will: the affectio commodi, or affection for the
advantageous, and the affectio iustitiae, or affection for justice. Scotus identifies the affectio
commodi with intellectual appetite. Notice how important that is. For Aquinas intellectual appetite
is the same thing as will, whereas for Scotus intellectual appetite is only part of what the will is.
Intellectual appetite is just one of the two fundamental inclinations in the will. Why does Scotus
make this crucial change? For the reason we've already discussed. He doesn't see how intellectual
appetite could be genuinely free. Now he can't deny that the will involves intellectual appetite.
Intellectual appetite is aimed at happiness, and surely happiness does have some role to play in our
moral psychology. But the will has to include something more than intellectual appetite if it's going
to be free. That something more is the affectio iustitiae. But one can't fully understand what
the affectio iustitiae is until Aquinas and Scotus are compared on a further point.
For Aquinas the norms of morality are defined in terms of their relationship to human happiness.
We have a natural inclination toward our good, which is happiness, and it is that good that
determines the content of morality. So like Aristotle, Aquinas holds a eudaimonistic theory of
ethics: the point of the moral life is happiness. That's why Aquinas can understand the will as an
intellectual appetite for happiness. All of our choosing is aimed at the human good (or at least, it's
aimed at the human good as we conceive it). And choices are good—and, indeed, fully
intelligible—only when they are aimed at the ultimate end, which is happiness. So Aquinas just
defines the will as the capacity to choose in accordance with a conception of the human good—in
other words, as intellectual appetite.
When Scotus rejects the idea that will is merely intellectual appetite, he is saying that there is
something fundamentally wrong with eudaimonistic ethics. Morality is not tied to human
flourishing at all. For it is Scotus's fundamental conviction that morality is impossible without
libertarian freedom, and since he sees no way for there to be libertarian freedom on Aquinas's
eudaimonistic understanding of ethics, Aquinas's understanding must be rejected. And just as
Aquinas's conception of the will was tailor-made to suit his eudaimonistic conception of morality,
Scotus's conception of the will is tailor-made to suit his anti-eudaimonistic conception of morality.
It's not merely that he thinks there can be no genuine freedom in mere intellectual appetite. It's also
that he rejects the idea that moral norms are intimately bound up with human nature and human
happiness. The fact that God creates human beings with a certain kind of nature does not require
God to command or forbid the actions that he in fact commanded or forbade. The actions he
commands are not necessary for our happiness, and the actions he forbids are not incompatible
with our happiness. Now if the will were merely intellectual appetite—that is, if it were aimed
solely at happiness—we would not be able to choose in accordance with the moral law, since the
moral law itself is not determined by any considerations about human happiness. So Scotus
relegates concerns about happiness to the affectio commodi and assigns whatever is properly moral
to the other affection, the affectio iustitiae.
Bibliography
Primary texts in Latin

Cuestiones Cuodlibetales. In Obras del Doctor Sutil, Juan Duns Escoto. Ed. Felix Alluntis.
Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1963.

Opera Omnia. (“The Wadding edition”) Lyon, 1639; reprinted Hildesheim: Georg Olms
Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1968. This is the best source for material not yet available in the critical
editions. It does include some material now known to be inauthentic, and it prints as Book 1 of
the Reportatio what is actually the Additiones magnae compiled and edited by Scotus's student
and secretary, William of Alnwick.

Opera Omnia. (“The Vatican edition”) Civitas Vaticana: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950–2013.
The Ordinatio (vol. I–XIV) and Lectura (vol. XVI–21).

Opera Philosophica. St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1997–2006. The questioncommentaries
on
Porphyry's Isagoge and
Aristotle's Categories (vol.
I),
on Peri
hermeneiasand Sophistical Refutations, along with the Theoremata (vol. II), the Quaestiones
super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis (vols. III–IV), and the Quaetiones super Secundum et
Tertium de Anima (vol. V).

Notabilia Scoti super Metaphysicam: una testimonianza ritrovata dell'insegnamento di Duns
Scoto sulla Metafisica, Giorgio Pini (ed.), Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 89 (1996): 137–
180.
Primary texts in English translation

Edward Buckner and Jack Zupko (trans., eds.), 2014. Duns Scotus on Time and Existence: The
Questions on ‘De Interpretatione’, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.

Etzkorn, Girard J., and Allan B. Wolter, OFM, 1997–98. Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle
by John Duns Scotus. St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1997–1998.

Jaczn, A. Vos, H. Veldhuis, A. A. Looman-Graaskamp, E. Dekker, and N. W. Den Bok (trans.),
1994. John Duns Scotus, Contingency and Freedom: Lectura I 39 (New Synthese Historical
Library, 42), Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Newton, Lloyd (trans.), 2014. Questions on Aristotle's Categories, Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press.

Spade, Paul Vincent, 1994. Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals. Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.

Vos, A., H. Veldhuis, E. Dekker, N.W. den Bok and A.J. Beck (eds.), 2003. Duns Scotus on Divine
Love: Texts and Commentary on Goodness and Freedom, God and Humans, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Wolter, Allan B., OFM, 1986. Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1986.

–––, 1987. Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company,
1987.

–––, 2000. A Treatise on Potency and Act. Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle Book IX, St.
Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications.

–––, 2001. Political and Economic Philosophy, St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute
Publications.

Wolter, Allan B., OFM, and Felix Alluntis, 1975. John Duns Scotus, God and Creatures. The
Quodlibetal Questions. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1975.

Wolter, Allan B., OFM, and Oleg V. Bychkov, 2004. The Examined Report of the Paris Lecture:
Reportatio I-A. St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 2004. (An English translation and
preliminary Latin edition through distinction 21).
Secondary literature

Cross, Richard, 1999. Duns Scotus, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

–––, 2002. “Philosophy of Mind,” in Williams 2002.
Martin Heidegger
(1889—1976)
Martin Heidegger is widely acknowledged to
be one of the most original and important philosophers
of the 20th century, while remaining one of the most
controversial. His thinking has contributed to such
diverse fields as phenomenology (MerleauPonty), existentialism (Sartre, Ortega y Gasset),
hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur), political theory
(Arendt, Marcuse, Habermas), psychology (Boss,
Binswanger, Rollo May), and theology (Bultmann,
Rahner, Tillich). His critique of traditional metaphysics
and his opposition to positivism and technological
world domination have been embraced by leading
theorists of postmodernity (Derrida, Foucault,
and Lyotard). On the other hand, his involvement in the
Nazi
movement
has
invoked
a
stormy
debate. Although he never claimed that his philosophy
was concerned with politics, political considerations have come to overshadow his philosophical
work.
Heidegger’s main interest was ontology or the study of being. In his fundamental
treatise, Being and Time, he attempted to access being (Sein) by means of phenomenological
analysis of human existence (Dasein) in respect to its temporal and historical character. After the
change of his thinking (“the turn”), Heidegger placed an emphasis on language as the vehicle
through which the question of being can be unfolded. He turned to the exegesis of historical texts,
especially of the Presocratics, but also of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Hölderlin, and to poetry,
architecture, technology, and other subjects. Instead of looking for a full clarification of the
meaning of being, he tried to pursue a kind of thinking which was no longer “metaphysical.” He
criticized the tradition of Western philosophy, which he regarded as nihilistic, for, as he claimed,
the question of being as such was obliterated in it. He also stressed the nihilism of modern
technological culture. By going to the Presocratic beginning of Western thought, he wanted to
repeat the early Greek experience of being, so that the West could turn away from the dead end of
nihilism and begin anew. His writings are notoriously difficult. Being and Time remains his most
influential work.
Life and Works
Heidegger was born on September 26, 1889 in Messkirch in south-west Germany to a Catholic
family. His father worked as sexton in the local church. In his early youth, Heidegger was being
prepared for the priesthood. In 1903 he went to the high school in Konstanz, where the church
supported him with a scholarship, and then, in 1906, he moved to Freiburg. His interest in
philosophy first arose during his high school studies in Freiburg when, at the age of seventeen, he
read Franz Brentano’s book entitled On the Manifold Meaning of Being according to Aristotle. By
his own account, it was this work that inspired his life-long quest for the meaning of being. In
1909, after completing the high school, he became a Jesuit novice, but was discharged within a
month for reasons of health. He then entered Freiburg University, where he studied theology.
However, because of health problems and perhaps because of a lack of a strong spiritual vocation,
Heidegger left the seminary in 1911 and broke off his training for the priesthood. He took up
studies in philosophy, mathematics, and natural sciences. It was also at that time that he first
became influenced by Edmund Husserl. He studied Husserl's Logical Investigations. In 1913 he
completed a doctorate in philosophy with a dissertation on The Doctrine of Judgement in
Psychologism under the direction of the neo-Kantian philosopher Heinrich Rickert.
The outbreak of the First World War interrupted Heidegger’s academic career only briefly. He was
conscripted into the army, but was discharged after two months because of health reasons. Hoping
to take over the chair of Catholic philosophy at Freiburg, Heidegger now began to work on
a habilitation thesis, the required qualification for teaching at the university. His thesis, Duns
Scotus’s Doctrine of Categories and Meaning, was completed in 1915, and in the same year he
was appointed a Privatdozent, or lecturer. He taught mostly courses in Aristotelian and scholastic
philosophy, and regarded himself as standing in the service of the Catholic world-view.
Nevertheless, his turn from theology to philosophy was soon to be followed by another turn.
In 1916, Heidegger became a junior colleague of Edmund Husserl when the latter joined the
Freiburg faculty. The following year, he married Thea Elfride Petri, a Protestant student who had
attended his courses since the fall of 1915. His career was again interrupted by military service in
1918. He served for the last ten months of the war, the last three of those in a meteorological unit
on the western front. Within a few weeks of his return to Freiburg, he announced his break with
the “system of Catholicism” (January 9, 1919), got appointed as Husserl’s assistant (January 21,
1919), and began lecturing in a new, insightful way (February 7, 1919). His lectures on
phenomenology and his creative interpretations of Aristotle would now earn him a wide acclaim.
And yet, Heidegger did not simply become Husserl’s faithful follower. In particular, he was not
captivated by the later developments of Husserl’s thought—by his neo-Kantian turn towards
transcendental subjectivity and even less by his Cartesianism—but continued to value his earlier
work, Logical Investigations. Laboring over the question of things themselves, Heidegger soon
began a radical reinterpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology.
In 1923, with the support of Paul Natorp, Heidegger was appointed associate professor at Marburg
University. Between 1923 and 1928, he enjoyed there the most fruitful years of his entire teaching
career. His students testified to the originality of his insight and the intensity of his philosophical
questioning. Heidegger extended the scope of his lectures, and taught courses on the history of
philosophy, time, logic, phenomenology, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and Leibniz. However,
he had published nothing since 1916, a factor that threatened his future academic career. Finally,
in February 1927, partly because of administrative pressure, his fundamental but also unfinished
treatise, Being and Time, appeared. Within a few years, this book was recognized as a truly epochmaking work of 20th century philosophy. It earned Heidegger, in the fall of 1927, full professorship
at Marburg, and one year later, after Husserl’s retirement from teaching, the chair of philosophy
at Freiburg University. Although Being and Time is dedicated to Husserl, upon its publication
Heidegger’s departure from Husserl’s phenomenology and the differences between two
philosophers became apparent. In 1929, his next published works—“What is Metaphysics?,” “On
the Essence of Ground,” and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics—further revealed how far
Heidegger had moved from neo-Kantianism and phenomenology of consciousness to his own
phenomenological ontology.
Heidegger’s life entered a problematic and controversial stage with Hitler’s rise to power. In
September 1930, Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) became the
second largest party in Germany, and on January 30, 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor of
Germany. Up to then virtually apolitical, Heidegger now became politically involved. On April
21, 1933, he was elected rector of the University of Freiburg by the faculty. He was apparently
urged by his colleagues to become a candidate for this politically sensitive post, as he later claimed
in an interview with Der Spiegel, to avoid the danger of a party functionary being appointed. But
he also seemed to believe that he could steer the Nazi movement in the right direction. On May 3,
1933, he joined the NSDAP, or Nazi, party. On May 27, 1933, he delivered his inaugural rectoral
address on “The Self-Assertion of the German University.” The ambiguous text of this speech has
often been interpreted as an expression of his support for Hitler’s regime. During his tenure as
rector he produced a number of speeches in the Nazi cause, such as, for example, “Declaration of
Support for Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist State” delivered in November 1933. There is
little doubt that during that time, Heidegger placed the great prestige of his scholarly reputation at
the service of National Socialism, and thus, willingly or not, contributed to its legitimization
among his fellow Germans. And yet, just one year later, on April 23, 1934, Heidegger resigned
from his office and took no further part in politics. His rectoral address was found incompatible
with the party line, and its text was eventually banned by the Nazis. Because he was no longer
involved in the party’s activities, Heidegger’s membership in the NSDAP became a mere
formality. Certain restrictions were put on his freedom to publish and attend conferences. In his
lecture courses of the late 1930s and early 1940s, and especially in the course entitled Hölderlin’s
Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rein” (Hölderlin’s Hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine”)
originally presented at the University of Freiburg during the winter semester of 1934/35, he
expressed covert criticism of Nazi ideology. He came under attack of Ernst Krieck, semi-official
Nazi philosopher. For some time he was under the surveillance of the Gestapo. His final
humiliation came in 1944, when he was declared the most “expendable” member of the faculty
and sent to the Rhine to dig trenches. Following Germany’s defeat in the Second World War,
Heidegger was accused of Nazi sympathies. He was forbidden to teach and in 1946 was dismissed
from his chair of philosophy. The ban was lifted in 1949.
The 1930s are not only marked by Heidegger’s controversial involvement in politics, but also by
a change in his thinking which is known as “the turn” (die Kehre). In his lectures and writings that
followed “the turn,” he became less systematic and often more obscure than in his fundamental
work, Being and Time. He turned to the exegesis of philosophical and literary texts, especially of
the Presocratics, but also of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Hölderlin, and makes this his way of
philosophizing. A recurring theme of that time was “the essence of truth.” During the decade
between 1931 and 1940, Heidegger offered five courses under this title. His preoccupation with
the question of language and his fascination with poetry were expressed in lectures on Hörderlin
which he gave between 1934 and 1936. Towards the end of 1930s and the beginning of 1940s, he
taught five courses on Nietzsche, in which he submitted to criticism the tradition of western
metaphysics, described by him as nihilistic, and made allusions to the absurdity of war and the
bestiality of his contemporaries. Finally, his reflection upon the western philosophical tradition
and an endeavor to open a space for philosophizing outside it, brought him to an examination of
Presocratic thought. In the course of lectures entitled An Introduction to Metaphysics, which was
originally offered as a course of lectures in 1935, and can be seen as a bridge between earlier and
later Heidegger, the Presocratics were no longer a subject of mere passing remarks as in
Heidegger’s earlier works. The course was not about early Greek thought, yet the Presocratics
became there the pivotal center of discussion. It is clear that with the evolution of Heidegger’s
thinking in the 1930s, they gained in importance in his work. During the 1940s, in addition to
giving courses on Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Heidegger lectured extensively on Anaximander,
Parmenides, and Heraclitus.
During the last three decades of his life, from the mid 1940s to the mid 1970s, Heidegger wrote
and published much, but in comparison to earlier decades, there was no significant change in his
philosophy. In his insightful essays and lectures, such as “What are Poets for?” (1946), “Letter on
Humanism” (1947), “The Question Concerning Technology” (1953), “The Way to Language”
(1959), “Time and Being” (1962), and “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” (1964),
he addressed different issues concerning modernity, labored on his original philosophy of
history—the history of being—and attempted to clarify his way of thinking after “the turn”. Most
of his time was divided between his home in Freiburg, his second study in Messkirch, and his
mountain hut in the Black Forest. But he escaped provincialism by being frequently visited by his
friends (including, among the others, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the physicist
Werner Heisenberg, the theologian Rudolf Bultmann, the psychologist Ludwig Binswanger) and
by traveling more widely than ever before. He lectured on “What is Philosophy?” at Cerisy-laSalle in 1955, and on “Hegel and the Greeks” at Aix-en-Provence in 1957, and also visited Greece
in 1962 and 1967. In 1966, Heidegger attempted to justify his political involvement during the
Nazi regime in an interview with Der Spiegel entitled “Only God Can Save Us”. One of his last
teaching stints was a seminar on Parmenides that he gave in Zähringen in 1973. Heiddegger died
on May 26, 1976, and was buried in the churchyard in Messkirch. He remained intellectually active
up until the very end, working on a number of projects, including the massive Gesamtausgabe, the
complete edition of his works.
Heidegger's Collected Works
Heidegger’s earlier publications and transcripts of his lectures are being brought out
in Gesamtausgabe, the complete edition of his works. The Gesamtausgabe, which is not yet
complete and projected to fill about one hundred volumes, is published by Vittorio Klostermann,
Frankfurt am Main. The series consists of four divisions: (I) Published Writings 1910-1976; (II)
Lectures from Marburg and Freiburg, 1919-1944; (III) Private Monographs and Lectures, 19191967; (IV) Notes and Fragments. Below there is a list of the collected works of Martin Heidegger.
English translations and publishers are cited with each work translated into English.
a. Published Writings, 1910-1976
Frühe Schriften (1912-16).
Sein und Zeit (1927). Translated as Being and Time by John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978).
3. Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929). Translated as Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics, by Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).
4. Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (1936-68). Translated as Elucidations of
Hölderlin's Poetry, by Keith Hoeller (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2000).
1.
2.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
Holzwege (1935-46).
Vol. I, Nietzsche I (1936-39). Translated as Nietzsche I: The Will to Power as Art by David
F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1979)
Vol. II, Nietzsche II (1939-46). Translated as “The Eternal Recurrence of the Same” by
David F. Krell in Nietzsche II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same (New York, Harper &
Row, 1984).
Vorträge und Aufsätze (1936-53).
Was heisst Denken? (1951-52). Translated as What Is Called Thinking? by Fred D. Wieck
and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).
Wegmarken (1919-58). Translated as Pathmarks. Edited by William McNeill (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Der Satz vom Grund (1955-56). Translated as The Principle of Reason by Reginald Lilly
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
Identität und Differenz (1955-57). Translated as Identity and Difference by Joan
Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).
Unterwegs zur Sprache (1950-59). Translated as On the Way to Language by Peter D.
Hertz (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (1910-76).
Zur Sache des Denkens (1962-64). Translated as On Time and Being by Joan Stambaugh
(New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Contains: “Time and Being,” “The End of Philosophy
and the Task of Thinking,” and “My Way to Phenomenology.”
Seminare (1951-73).
Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (1910-1976)
b. Lectures from Marburg and Freiburg, 1919-1944
1. Der Beginn der neuzeitlichen Philosophie (winter semester, 1923-1924).
2. Aristoteles: Rhetorik (summer semester, 1924).
3. Platon: Sophistes (winter semester, 1924-1925). Translated as Plato's Sophist by Richard
Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1997).
4. Prolegomena zur Geschite des Zeitbegriffs (summer semester, 1925). Translated
as History of the Concept of Time by Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1985).
5. Logik: Die frage nach der Wahrheit (winter semester 1925-1926).
6. Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie (summer semester 1926).
7. Geschichte der Philosophie von Thomas v. Aquin bis Kant (winter semester 1926-1927).
8. Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (summer semester 1927). Translated as The
Basic Problems of Phenomonology by Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1982).
9. Phänomenologie Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (winter semester
1927-1928). Translated as Phenomenological Interpretations of Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1997).
10. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz (summer semester,
1928). Translated as The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic by Michael Heim
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).
11. Einleitung in die Philosophie (winter semester 1928-1929).
12. Der Deutsche Idealismus (Fichte, Hegel, Schelling) und die philosophische Problemlage
der Gegenwart(summer semester, 1929).
13. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit (winter semester, 19291930). Translated as The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics by William McNeill and
Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
14. Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie (summer semester,
1930).
15. Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes (winter semester, 1930-1931). Translated as Hegel's
Phenomenology of Spirit by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1988).
16. Aristoteles: Metaphysik IX (summer semester, 1931). Translated as Aristotle's
Metaphysics Theta 1-3 On the Essence and Actuality of Force by Walter Brogan and
Peter Warnek (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
17. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet (winter semester,
1931-1932).
18. Der Anfang der abendländischen Philosophie (Anaximander und Parmenides) (summer
semester, 1932).
19 Sein und Wahrheit (winter semester, 1933-1934).
20. Logik als die Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache (summer semester, 1934).
21. Hölderlins Hymnen "Germanien" und "Der Rhein" (winter semester, 1934-1935).
22. Einführung in die Metaphysik (summer semester, 1935). Translated as An Introduction to
Metaphysics by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 2000).
23. Die Frage nach dem Ding. Zu Kants Lehre von den transzendentalen Grundsätzen. (winter
semester, 1935-1936). Translated as What Is a Thing by W. B. Barton, Jr. and Vera
Deutsch, (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1967).
24. Schelling: Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809) (summer semester, 1936).
Translated as Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom by Joan Stambaugh,
(Athens: Ohio University Press, 1984).
25. Nietzsche: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst (winter semester, 1936-1937). Translated
as Nietzsche I: The Will to Power as Art by David F. Krell (New York, Harper & Row,
1979).
26. Nietzsches Metaphysische Grundstellung im abendländischen Denken: Die ewige
Wiederkehr des Gleichen(summer semester, 1937). Translated as “The Eternal Recurrence
of the Same” in Nietzsche II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same by David F. Krell (New
York: Harper & Row, 1984).
27. Grundfragen der Philosophie. Ausgewählte "Probleme" der "Logik" (winter semester,
1937-1938). Translated as Basic Questions of Philosophy by Albert Hofstadter
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982).
28. Nietzsches II. Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung (winter semester, 1938-1939).
29. Nietzsches Lehre vom Willen zur Macht als Erkenntnis (summer semester, 1939).
Translated as "The Will to Power as Knowledge" in Nietzsche III: The Will to Power as
Knowledge and Metaphysics by Joan Stambaugh (New York, Harper & Row, 1987).
30. Nietzsche: Der europäische Nihilismus (second trimester, 1940).
31. Die Metaphysik des deutschen Idealismus. Zur erneuten auslegung von Schelling:
Philosophische untersuchungen ueber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit
zusammenhaengenden Gegenstaende (1809) (first trimester, 1941).
32. Nietzsches Metaphysik (1941-2). Einleitung in die Philosopie - Denken und Dichten (19445).
33. Grundbegriffe (summer semester, 1941). Translated as Basic Concepts by Gary
Aylesworth (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
34. Hölderlins Hymne "Andenken" (winter semester, 1941-1942).
35. Hölderlins Hymne "Der Ister" (summer semester, 1942). Translated as Hölderlin's Hymn
"The Ister" by William McNeill and Julia Davis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1996).
36. Parmenides (winter semester, 1942-1943). Translated as Parmenides by Andre Schuwer
and Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1992).
37. Heraklit. 1. Der Anfang des abendländischen Denkens (Heraklit). (summer semester,
1943); 2. Logik. Heraklits Lehre vom Logos (summer semester, 1944).
38. Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie (1919).
39. Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (winter semester, 1919-1920).
40. Phaenomenologie der Anschauung und des Ausdrucks. Theorie der philosophischen
Begriffsbildung (summer semester, 1920).
41. Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens (summer semester, 1921).
42. Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles: Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung(winter semester, 1921-1922).
43. Phänomenologische Interpretationen ausgewählter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zur
Ontologie und Logik. (summer semester, 1922).
44. Ontologie: Hermeneutik der Faktizität (summer semester, 1923). Translated as Ontology:
The Hermeneutics of Facticity by John va Buren (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1999).
c. Private Monographs and Lectures, 1919-1967
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Der Begriff der Zeit (1924). Translated as The Concept of Time by William McNeill,
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936-1938). Translated as Contributions to
Philosophy: (From Enowning) by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1999).
Besinnung.
Metaphysik und Nihilismus. Die Überwindung derMetaphysik. Das Wesen des Nihilismus.
Hegel. Die Negativität. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Hegel aus dem Ansatz in der
Negativität (1938-1939, 1941). 2 Erläuterung der "Einleitung" zu Hegels
"Phänomenologie des Geistes" (1942).
Die Geschichte des Seyns (1938-1940).
Das Ereignis (1941)
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Wahrheitsfrage als Vorfrage. Die Aletheia: Die Erinnerung in den ersten Anfang;
Entmachtung der Ousis (1937).
Zu Hölderlin - Griechenlandreisen.
Feldweg-Gespräche. (1944-1945)
Bremer und Freiburger Vortraege.
Vorträge Vom Wesen der Wahrheit Freiburg lecture (1930). Der Ursprung der
Kunstwerkes (1935).
Gedachtes.
Anmerkungen zu "Vom Wesen des Grundes" (1936). Eine Auseinandersetzung mit "Sein
und Zeit" (1936). Laufende Anmerkungen zu Sein und Zeit (1936).
Marburger Übungen. Auslegungen der Aristotelischen "physik".
15.
16. Leibniz-Übungen.
d. Notes and Fragments
Vom Wesen der Sprache
Übungen SS 1937. Neitzsches metaphysische Grundstellung. Sein und Schein (1937)
Einübung in das Denken. Die metaphysischen Grundstellungen des abendländischen
Denkens. Die Bedrohung der Wissenschaft.
4. Überlegungen II-VI.
5. Überlegungen VII-XI.
6. Überlegungen XII-XV.
1.
2.
3.
John Dewey
(1859—1952)
born Oct. 20, 1859, Burlington, Vt., U.S.—
died June 1, 1952, New York, American
philosopher and educator who was a founder
of the philosophical movement known
as pragmatism, a pioneer
in functional psychology, and a leader of the
progressive movement in education in
the United States.
Dewey graduated with a bachelor’s
degree from the University of Vermont in
1879. After receiving a doctorate in
philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in
1884, he began teaching philosophy and
psychology at the University of Michigan.
There his interests gradually shifted from the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel to the new experimental psychology being advanced in the
United States by G. Stanley Hall and the pragmatist philosopher and
psychologist William James. Further study of child psychology prompted
Dewey to develop a philosophy of education that would meet the needs of
a changing democratic society. In 1894 he joined the faculty of philosophy
at the University of Chicago, where he further developed his
progressive pedagogy in the university’s Laboratory Schools. In 1904
Dewey left Chicago for Columbia University in New York City, where he
spent the majority of his career and wrote his most famous philosophical
work, Experience and Nature (1925). His subsequent writing, which
included articles in popular periodicals, treated topics in aesthetics, politics,
and religion. The common theme underlying Dewey’s philosophy was his
belief that a democratic society of informed and engaged inquirers was the
best means of promoting human interests.
MEANING derived from Greek word ‘pragma’ which means work, practice, action or activity.
It is the philosophy of practical experience. It is a typical American Philosophy practical in
approach.
EXPONENTS
Protagoras, of ancient Greece. Heraclitus, Gorgias, Charles S. Piers (1839-1914), William
James (1842-1910), John Dewey (1859-1952), W.H.Kilpatrick, J.L.ChildRatners
BASIC PRINCIPLES

Gives importance to action. Gives importance to experience. Believes in change.
No belief in permanent values. Gives emphasis on experimentation. A practical
philosophy. A humanistic philosophy. Pragmatists believe on present. Believe that
growth and development take place through interaction and environment. Deep faith
in democracy. Emphasis on means not on ‘end’.
METAPHYSICS
 Rejects metaphysics as an area of philosophical enquiry. Reality is determined by
individual’s sense experience – Man can know nothing beyond his experience. Any
conclusion we make about life after death is merely guess. Does not believe in anything
spiritual or transcendental values. Reality is constantly changing.
EPISTEMOLOGY
 Knowledge based on experience is true. Phenomenon are constantly changing to
knowledge about truth must change accordingly. They emphasize on functional
knowledge and understanding.
AXIOLOGY
 Does not believe on standard permanent and external values. Man, being a part of
society, the consequences of his actions are either good or bad. If the consequences are
worthwhile, then the value of the action is proven to be good.
PRAGMATISM AND EDUCATIVE PROCESS
 “Education is living through a continuous reconstruction of experiences. It is the
development of all those capacities in the individual which will enable him to control his
emotion and fulfil his possibilities.” - John Dewey
PRAGMATISM IS A PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
 It aims at developing efficiency of the pupil through activities and experience. Education
should enable the child to solve his daily problems and lead a better life. It is a work
philosophy. Activities lie at the center of all educative process.
 John Dewey came to Chicago in 1894 with his wife Alice Dewey, to start a school in
order to test his theories of learning. He believed that learning was active and
children came to school to do things. That learning arithmetic would come from
learning proportions in cooking or figuring out how long it would take to get from one
place to another by rule.
AIMS OF EDUCATION
 Does not believe in setting predetermined fixed, ultimate and general aims of education.
The only aim is more and more growth and creation of new values. One can create
values through activities and experience. Aims of education given by John Dewey in his
‘Democracy and education --Natural development. --Development of social efficiency.
PRAGMATISM AND CURRICULUM
 Pragmatic curriculum is framed according to the following principles: Principles of
dynamism and flexibility. Principle of utility – subjects like language, literature, physical
education, hygiene, history, geography, civics, sociology, psychology etc. Priority is
given to social sciences to make the students good, cooperative and useful citizens.
Natural sciences come next. Principle of activity and experience, agriculture, wood craft
and industrial sciences. Principles of integration.
METHODS OF TEACHING
 Against out dated, lifeless and rigidly traditional methods of teaching. Methods to be
formulated on the basis of following principles: -Principles of purposive process of
learning. -Principle of learning by doing. -Principle of integration.
 Project method by Kilpatrick. Experimental method. It also encourages: Discussion as a
method-laboratory work. Personal reference in the library. Educational tows and
excursions.
TEACHER
 As a friend, philosopher and guide. Not a dictator but only a leader of a group. Should
have knowledge of student’s interest and provide them social environment. Should
believe in democratic values. Should have knowledge of social conditioning. Should not
overshadow the personality of the pupil.
DISCIPLINE
 Freedom as an important element. Promotes self-discipline. Condemn enforced
discipline and advocate social discipline based on child’s interest, activities and a sense
of social responsibility. According to pragmatists, “Discipline is primarily social and it
emerges through active participation in group and purposeful activity.”
SCHOOL
 Any social environment which inspires children for experimentation constitutes a school
for them. A social institution which develops in child a social sense and sense of duty
towards society and nation. According to John Dewey: “School is the embryo of
community.” “School is a miniature society.” “An instrument of transmission and
transformation of the culture.”
LIMITATIONS
 Little attention to spiritual values. Too much emphasis on material things. Insignificant
place to cultural values. Ignores the knowledge accumulated through the ages. Project
method alone can’t be used. Heavy demands on the teachers. Does not indicate fixed
educational goals.
CONTRIBUTION OF PRAGMATISM TO EDUCATION
 Contributes to the development of a system which is vocation centered. Recognizes that
an individual should be socially efficient and productive, the curriculum duly takes note of
it. Another important principal given by pragmatism is the principle of integration. Project
method. Helps to realize the value of today’s life. Saves child from the burden of
education which is too much centered-on books.
CONCLUSION Pragmatism
 is characteristic of current educational thought and it is representative of progressive
trends in education. Progressive education lays emphasis on learning by doing, and
involving the child actively in the learning process. Too much restrain will retard the
natural growth of children. The child must be given educative freedom to express and
develop himself. In the knowledge gaining process, observation and experimentation are
the basic tools and knowledge is of the nature of a hypothesis.
The truth of something - is, knowing whether a given generalization is obtained as a result of
scientific experimentation or an observation, whether it has served purpose or not. If it works
then it is true, otherwise it is not. Secondly because of the principle of change, which is one of
the important tenets of pragmatism, truth is relative to space and time. That is if something is
relevant today, it is possible that the same thing may become irrelevant in future.
Terry F. Godlove Jr.
Dr. Terry Godlove, associate dean for First-Year
Programs and professor of philosophy and religion,
has written Kant and the Meaning of
Religion, published by Columbia University Press.
He works primarily in the theory of knowledge and on
Kant and Kantian themes in particular.
Degrees
PHD, 1984, Univ Chicago; MA, 1982, Univ Chicago;
MA, 1979, Univ Chicago; BA, 1977, Oberlin Coll
Bio
Professor Godlove teaches philosophy and religion at Hofstra University and is currently Senior
Associate Dean of Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for Curriculum and Personnel.
He is interested in Kant, theory of knowledge, modern Christian and Jewish thought, and in
method and theory in the study of religion. Publications include Religion, Interpretation and
Diversity of Belief: The Framework Model from Kant to Durkheim to Davidson (Cambridge,
1989),Teaching Durkheim on Religion (Oxford, 2004), Kant and the Meaning of
Religion (I.B. Tauris / Columbia University Press, 2014), and articles and book chapters in the
areas listed above.
SUBJECTS





Philosophy
Philosophy of Religion
Religion
Religion: Theory
Continental Philosophy
 Dr. Terry Godlove is an associate dean for First-Year Programs and professor of
philosophy and religion at Hofstra University, is the author of Kant and the Meaning of
Religion, published by Columbia University Press.
 The book discusses how Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of religion contributed to our
secular age in which belief and especially unbelief have become real options for millions
of people.
 Dr. Godlove has been on the Hofstra faculty since 1986 and teaches courses in the history
of philosophy, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of religion. His previous books
include Religion, Interpretation and Diversity of Belief: The Framework Model from
Kant to Durkheim to Davidson (Cambridge, 1989) and Teaching Durkheim on Religion
(Oxford, 2004).

He discovers in Immanuel Kant's theoretical philosophy resources that have much wider
implications beyond Christianity and the philosophical issues that concern monotheism
and its beliefs. For Godlove, Kant's insights, when properly applied, can help rejuvenate
our understanding of the general study of religion and its challenges. He therefore
bypasses what is usually considered to be the "Kantian philosophy of religion" and
instead focuses on more fundamental issues, such as Kant's account of concepts,
experience, and reason and their significance in controversial matters. _Kant and the
Meaning of Religion_ is a subtle and penetrating effort by a leading contemporary
philosopher of religion to redefine and reshape the contours of his discipline through a
sustained reflection on Kant's so-called "humanizing project."
 mon·o·the·ism - the doctrine or belief that there is only one God.
discusses how Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of religion contributed to our secular age in
which belief and especially unbelief have become real options for millions of people.
hu·man·ize - make (something) more humane or civilized.
"his purpose was to humanize prison conditions"
synonyms: civilize, improve, better; More
- give (something) a human character.
[Kant and the Meaning of Religion] offers interesting insights into the value of Kant's
work for reflecting on religion, and provides an important antidote to anti-philosophical
trends in current theorizing about religion
Terry F. Godlove
 Kant


and the Meaning of Religion aims to show how Kant's philosophy
serves as a valuable resource for navigating challenging methodological
issues in the field of religious studies.
Godlove's aim is not to commend or support Kant's own philosophy of
religion but to draw from its epistemology in ways that advance the
discussion of key themes in the academic study of religion.
This requires the reinterpretation or even rehabilitation of the Kantian
themes in question, resulting in fresh perspectives on Kant as well as on
the field of religious studies. Godlove's book is quite distinctive for the way
it draws on Kant to address religious issues with virtually no appeal to the
more familiar references to the ethical element in his philosophy of
religion. Moreover, the author announces early on that the Kant of this
volume "has no substantive connection with Christianity," ensuring that his
project should have wide application across the field of religious studies
and should not be viewed as relevant only to the study of religion in the
West. Nor should the volume be seen as one more in a series of works
concerning the relative compatibility between Kant's religious thought and
the biblical outlook. Consequently, one gets the sense of something
genuinely fresh and sophisticated in the way in which Kant's thought is
invoked here.

In short, the book is provocative, constructive, and very welcome. I think it
has tremendous long-term value and should provoke considerable debate.
It reflects not simply the competent efforts of a mature scholar, but the
assured work of a seasoned thinker who has a creative and bold
suggestion to make about important matters. In suggesting an unexpected
but potentially very fruitful way in which Kant's epistemology can promote
the entire field of the academic study of religion, it is in fact an intellectual
head-turner. (Gordon E. Michalson Jr., author of Kant and the Problem of
God)
This bold and carefully-argued work takes issue with Nietzsche's claim
that Kant, even in the first Critique, displays himself as a 'cunning
Christian.' Godlove convincingly refutes Nietzsche by demonstrating that
the key theories defended in the first Critique, especially the distinction
between appearance and the thing in itself, are not concessions to
Christianity. Rather, Kant posed the problem that called into being the
philosophy of religion as a modern discipline. (Stephen R. Palmquist,
Hong Kong Baptist University)
Brilliant and compelling This book can only be called a stunning
accomplishment. One could not ask for a more rich or rewarding study,
the mature reflections of a seasoned scholar who is also a philosopher
Do not miss it. (Journal of the American Academy of Religion)
An ambitious and engaging book that promises to unsettle and provoke
serious reflection on the way philosophers of religion do their
philosophizing. (Review of Politics)
[Kant and the Meaning of Religion] offers interesting insights into the value
of Kant's work for reflecting on religion, and provides an important antidote
to anti-philosophical trends in current theorizing about religion (James J.
DiCenso International Journal for Philosophy of Religion)
A closely argued and richly detailed reading of Kant's epistemology.... As
Godlove's book masterfully illustrates, scholars can benefit greatly from
treating religious ideas―whether Kant's or those of other thinkers―not
only as objects of study, but also as methodological resources for their
own work. (Charles E. Lockwood Journal of Religion)
Godlove... does a fine job demonstrating how Kant's critical philosophy
can be used in the ombudsman's role. (Religious Studies Review)
Books:
 Religion, Interpretation and Diversity of Belief
 The Framework Model from Kant to Durkheim to Davidson (Cambridge, 1989)
 Teaching Durkheim on Religion (Oxford, 2004).
Religion, Interpretation, and Diversity of Belief: The Framework Model from Kant to
Durkheim to Davidson Paperback – November 1, 1996
by Terry F. Godlove, Jr.(Author)