medieval philosophy
-
St. Albert the Great on whether God would have become man, if man had not sinned
There is a famous controversy between St. Thomas Aquinas and Bl. John Duns Scotus on the question of whether God would have still become man, if man had not sinned/fallen. Bl. Scotus says yes, for reasons having to do with his theory of the Primacy of Christ; St. Thomas gives a cautious “no,” because he…
-
Id Quo or Id Quod: The Early Albertus Magnus on the Function of the Intelligible Species
For those generally familiar with Aquinas’s thought, it is well known that St. Thomas, along with many of his contemporaries, adheres to a species-model of cognition, according to which an item called a species (sensible or intelligible) plays a central role in the mechanism of cognition. A species is supposed to play a sort of…
-
Albert the Great’s Argument for a First Intellect
One of the first things St. Albertus Magnus does in his treatise De Intellectu et Intelligibili is argue that there is a “first intellect” or “first knower” that is the cause of all cognitive beings. I translate the entire chapter where the argument is presented here: De Intellectu et Intelligibili: Book I, Tractate I, Chapter…
Disputed Questions 