Hugh of Novocastro, Landolfo Caracciolo, John Baconthorpe, and some other medieval authors argued that there are real contradictions in nature. The background of this early fourteenth-century theory was the Aristotelian question of how to determine the instant of change between p and ~p. The argument was that these are simultaneously true at the temporal instant of change if it is an instant of changing. The author’s aim is to discuss the background of this view in Henry of Ghent’s theory of instantaneous change from potentiality to actuality at that very instant.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
See S. Knuuttila and A. Inkeri Lehtinen, “Change and Contradiction: A Fourteenth Century Controversy,” Synthese 40 (1979), 189-207, at 195-199; S. Knuuttila, “Remarks on the Background of the Fourteenth Century Limit Decision Controversies,” in The Editing of Theological and Philosophical Texts from the Middle Ages, ed. M. Asztalos (Stockholm, 1986), 245-266, at 258-261; William Duba’s paper in this volume. For similarities between Caracciolo and Trombetta, see particularly the arguments about removing accidental antecedent changes and the role of ultimate dispositions with respect to an instantaneous change; Knuuttila and Inkeri Lehtinen, “Change and Contradiction,” 206, nn. 33 and 34, and Trombetta, In tractatum formalitatum Scoti sententia, a. 4 (ed. cit., f. 16va).
See Knuuttila and Inkeri Lehtinen, “Change and Contradiction”; S. Dumont, “Time, Contradiction and Freedom of the Will in the Late Thirteenth Century,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 3.2 (1992), 561-597, at 562-571. The relations of influence between medieval authors putting forward this argument have not been systematically studied. For a sixteenth-century example of the same doctrine in the theological controversy about justification, see Petrus de Lorca, Commentaria et disputationes in Secundam Secundae Divi Thomae, q. 24, a. 12 (sect. 3, disp. 22) (ed. Madrid, 1614, 660a, appendix, n. 31): “Respondeo. Illis duobus instantibus [sc. peccati et gratiae] respondet unum instans indivisibile temporis continui, quoniam cum utrumque sit indivisibile et indivisibile additum indivisibili non faciat maius, utrumque indivisibile non signat in tempore extrinseco nisi unum indivisibile, et ideo non solum inter illa duo instantia non mediat tempus intrinsecum, sed neque etiam tempus extrinsecum.”
See Dumont, “Time, Contradiction and Freedom,” 571-577; P. Porro, “Henry of Ghent,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E.N. Zalta (Winter 2014 edition), online; idem, “Possibilità ed esse essentiae in Enrico di Gand,” in Henry of Ghent. Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Occasion of the 700th Anniversary of His Death (1293), ed. W. Vanhamel (Leuven, 1996), 211-253, at 224-225.
R. Wielockx, “Henry of Ghent and the Events of 1277,” in A Companion to Henry of Ghent, ed. Wilson, 25-62, at 51-52.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 293 | 40 | 3 |
Full Text Views | 199 | 4 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 56 | 9 | 4 |
Hugh of Novocastro, Landolfo Caracciolo, John Baconthorpe, and some other medieval authors argued that there are real contradictions in nature. The background of this early fourteenth-century theory was the Aristotelian question of how to determine the instant of change between p and ~p. The argument was that these are simultaneously true at the temporal instant of change if it is an instant of changing. The author’s aim is to discuss the background of this view in Henry of Ghent’s theory of instantaneous change from potentiality to actuality at that very instant.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 293 | 40 | 3 |
Full Text Views | 199 | 4 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 56 | 9 | 4 |