34th Meeting - Abstracts


The talk analyses the transformation of the culturally prevalent ancient maxim of self-knowledge ('know thyself') into an axiological appeal ('know thy dignity') in both the Greek and Latin ancient traditions, claiming that it was within that tradition that the concept of human dignity (dignitas hominis) was popularised and entered the European mindset. The analysis points out the coining of other related notions, such as 'the dignity of human creation' (dignitas conditionis or dignitas originis) and 'the dignity of human restoration' (dignitas renovationis). In order to demonstrate the lasting changes brought about by late Christian antiquity, the presentation traces patristic appeals to know human dignity as well as their reception in the Middle Ages.  



Existing scholarship on immortality in medieval philosophy stresses the embodied aspects of the mystical experience. However, in this paper, I propose an alternative approach to immortality by demonstrating the philosophy of Ji Kang, a representative of 'Mystical Learnings' in 3rd century China. I will first refer to Van Dyke's observation that medieval apophaticism (in Porete, for instance) inherits Platonist prejudice against matter, involving transcendence of sensed experiences, while embodied immortal experience (in Mechthild of Magdeburg, for instance) includes literal descriptions of the immortal body, with a promise of Christ's and the human's resurrection. I will then contrast these approaches to immortality with the philosophy of nourishing life (yangsheng) in Ji Kang. I will demonstrate that both Western and Chinese medieval thinking of immortality share the forsaking of an individualistic consciousness or the emptying of the ego. Yet the particularity of Ji Kang's approach lies in the emphasis of the value of the body (guishen) and the importance of everyday cultivation of it. This implies an understanding of immortality as “a longlife” (changsheng), which doesn’t involve resurrection or afterlife as such, but rather, the postponement of the corruption of the body and this life on Earth. I will also show that nourishing life as a practice for immortality in Ji Kang, involves the becoming of a subject which helps to naturalise individual life to attain its most authentic and spontaneous state, in one with the world, namely Heaven and Earth, and the myriad things. I conclude that this approach can diversify ways to reconsider embodied immortality in medieval philosophy.



Among the many ways in which Thomas Aquinas seeks to bring Christian philosophy into alignment with the newly translated writings of Aristotle, none is more striking than his efforts to rehabilitate Aristotelian eudaimonism. In contrast to many earlier Christian thinkers, when Aquinas seeks to rehabilitate this aspect of Aristotle's thought, he seeks to make our orientation toward happiness more than just a sad testimony to our fallen condition in this life. The theory instead carries its full normative weight, as an account of what it is for us to thrive as moral beings in the present life. But how can the Gospel imperatives to love God above all else and love our neighbour as ourselves be reconciled with the claim that all of our choices should and must have as their end our own happiness? Aquinas's intriguing way forward is to extend the bounds of what counts as our own happiness. Without  abandoning the core eudaimonistic linkage between an agent's moral standing and that agent's own happiness, Aquinas urges a broadening of the concept of happiness to include not just the narrow flourishing of the individual agent but the broader flourishing of the whole of which we are parts.




In this talk, I offer a new reading of question 5 in book I of Scotus's Quaestiones in Duos Libros Peri Hermeneias. I propose to address the analysis of 'est' from the point of view of enunciation rather than signification. The metaphysics of predication will, therefore, acquire a prominent role. The crucial question will be: what kind of thing is a predicate? From Scotus's answer, it will naturally follow the sense in which esse can be aliquid praedicati. In this way, Scotus's view about the semantic content of 'est' tertium adiacens is better understood once the ontological role of the copula is clarified.