Lola Graziani: TBA
TBA
Dustin Klinger: TBA
A remarkable feature of Avicenna’s logic was the incorporation of hypothetical syllogistic that integrated elements from propositional and term logic. Avicennan logicians recognized wholly hypothetical syllogisms consisting of two conditional premises as producing a conditional conclusion entirely parallel to categorical syllogisms. By the 13th century, however, a specific case of such syllogisms elicited extensive discussions that later became notorious for their difficulty. This specific case – unknown in the Graeco-Latin logical tradition, as far as I can see – concerns wholly hypothetical syllogisms whose premises share only one term instead of one proposition. The present paper explores discussions of such syllogisms only sharing an “incomplete part” (by Zayn al-Dīn al-Kashshī, Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī, Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī, Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī, Ibn Wāṣil, Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī, Quṭb al-Din al-Rāzī) and their relevance for our understanding the different ways in which Avicenna’s logic was received and developed.
Tianyue Wu: Augustine on the Mirror and the Self-Knowledge
This paper examines Augustine's complex and seemingly contradictory views on the mirror metaphor in his theory of self-knowledge. While Augustine, breaking from the Platonic tradition, explicitly rejects the analogy of knowing oneself as one sees a face in a mirror, he champions the mind's immediate self-presence (sibi praesens). Yet, he also famously employs St. Paul's phrase "through a glass, darkly" to argue that the mind knows itself as the image of God by serving as a mirror for knowing its creator.
To resolve this tension, this paper distinguishes between two forms of self-knowledge in Augustine. The first is an immediate, non-mirrored, and non-representational knowledge of the self's existence, stemming from the mind's unique self-presence. Augustine argues this foundational self-awareness is certain but substantively limited, insufficient to fulfil the Delphic injunction "know thyself". The second is a substantial, mirrored knowledge of the self, achieved when the mind actively thinks of itself (se cogitare) as the imago Dei. By viewing itself as a mirror reflecting its divine archetype, the mind gains substantive knowledge of its own nature, value, and ethical purpose. This paper concludes that Augustine's innovative distinction demonstrates the coherence of his theory and shows how he transcended his philosophical predecessors to offer a richer, multi-dimensional account of the knowledge of the self.