Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

"Truth Does Not Contradict Truth": Averroes and the Unity of Truth

Richard C. Taylor — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:51:43 PDT

Ibn Rushd, or Averroes

Richard C. Taylor — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:38:07 PDT

Introduction [to Neo-Kantianism in Contemporary Philosophy, Rudolf A. Makkreel and Sebastian Luft, editors]

Sebastian Luft — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:09:45 PDT

Reconstruction and Reduction: Natorp and Husserl on Method and the Question of Subjectivity

Sebastian Luft — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:54:20 PDT

Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions, Fifth Annual Summer Conference, June 25-26, 2012

Marquette University Department of Philosophy — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 10:06:03 PDT

This Conference is intended to provide a formal occasion and central location for philosophers and scholars of the Arabic / Islamic, Jewish and Latin Christian philosophical traditions of the Middle Ages to present and discuss their current work in medieval philosophy.

Thomas Aquinas: Soul and Intellect (Fall 2012)

Richard C. Taylor et al. — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:10:43 PDT

The Arabic philosophical tradition played an important role in the formation of theological, philosophical and scientific thought in medieval Europe subsequent to the translations from Arabic into Latin in the 12th and 13th centuries. The influence of that Arabic classical rationalist tradition in works by al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes and the Liber de causis is evident in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, though the breadth and depth of that influence is often insufficiently noted and explained by scholars of Aquinas.

This course focuses on the metaphysics, epistemology and psychology of Aquinas in the development of his philosophical conceptions of soul and intellect in the context of his use of sources in Aristotle and works by philosophers of the Arabic tradition, particularly Avicenna and Averroes. Readings are selected from writings from each of the four major periods of his career starting with his first major work, the Commentary on the Sentences.

The course was planned to be taught at Marquette, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Universidad Panamericana as a hybrid course. That is, it was taught using online tools and resources and also in the classroom with face-to-face meetings once per week. And it was taught at Marquette, KU Leuven and the Universidad Panamericana simultaneously. On Thursdays students met online with video and audio for questions and discussion with Profs. Taylor, Robiglio and López-Farjeat and the student groups in Milwaukee, Leuven and Mexico City live.

“Real-Idealism”: An Unorthodox Husserlian Response to the Question of Transcendental Idealism

Sebastian Luft — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 09:36:49 PST

Suarez, Immortality, and the Soul's Dependence on the Body

James South — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:32:30 PST

“The Sound of Urgent Bells and Drums” Gao Xingjian Ink Paintings

Curtis L. Carter — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:05:24 PST

Aquinas, the Plotiniana Arabica, and the Metaphysics of Being and Actuality

Richard C. Taylor — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 08:52:59 PST

Review [of Marguerite Johnson, Harold Tarrant (ed.) Alcibiades and the Socratic Lover-Educator]

Owen Goldin — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:17:12 PST

Averroes on the Sharîʿah of the Philosophers

Richard C. Taylor — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 08:16:41 PST

Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul

Richard C. Taylor — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:06:24 PST

Aquinas's Naturalized Epistemology

Richard C. Taylor — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 14:18:39 PST

Recently much interest has been shown in the notion of intelligible species in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Intelligible species supposedly explain human knowing of the world and universals. However, in some cases, the historical context and the philosophical sources employed by Aquinas have been sorely neglected. As a result, new interpretations have been set forth which needlessly obscure an already controversial and perhaps even philosophically tenuous doctrine. Using a recent article by Houston Smit as an example of a novel and anachronistic modern interpretation of Aquinas’s abstractionism, this paper shows that Aquinas follows the intentional transference of Averroes who proposes a genuine doctrine of abstraction of intelligibles from experienced sensible particulars. The paper also shows that Aquinas uses the doctrine of primary and secondary causality from the Liber de causis when he asserts that human abstractive powers function only insofar as they are a participation in Divine illumination

Abstraction in al-Fârâbî

Richard C. Taylor — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:49:38 PST

Al-Fârâbî’s thought on intellect was known to the Latin West through the translation of his Letter on the Intellect, through the Long Commentary on the De Anima by Averroes and through some other works. Al-Fârâbî identified the active power of intellect in Aristotle’s De Anima 3.5 as the unique and separately existing Agent Intellect, but the role of the Agent Intellect in forming intelligibles in act in the human soul is by no means unequivocally clear. Further, the apprehension of intelligibles by human beings and the intellectual development of the soul, oftentimes described as an activity of abstracting (intaza`a), seems to be a genuine abstraction from experience, yet it somehow involves the emanative power of the Agent Intellect. This paper works to provide a coherent explanation of the nature of abstraction and the role of Agent Intellect in that activity.

Intellect as Intrinsic Formal Cause in The Soul According To Aquinas And Averroes

Richard C. Taylor — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:13:50 PST

Ibn Rushd/Averroes and "Islamic" Rationalism

Richard C. Taylor — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:46:37 PST

The classical rationalist philosophical tradition in Arabic reached its culmination in the writings of the twelfth-century Andalusian Averroes whose translated commentaries on Aristotle conveyed to the Latin West a rationalist approach which significantly challenged and affected theological and philosophical thinking in that Christian context. That methodology is shown at work in his Fasl al-Maqāl or Book of the Distinction of Discourse and the Establishment of the Relation of Religious Law and Philosophy (c. 1280), although the deeply philosophical character of his subtle arguments has gone largely unappreciated. Here the philosophical foundations for his reasoning are exposed to reveal key elements of his rationalism. That approach is confirmed in his assertion in his later Long Commentary on the Metaphysics (c. 1290) that the highest worship of God is to be found first and foremost in the philosophical science of metaphysics rather than in the rituals of religion.

Art Museum as a Purveyor of Culture

Curtis Carter — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:39:42 PST

Philosophy

Richard C. Taylor — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 11:58:45 PST

Averroes' Philosophical Conception of Separate Intellect and God

Richard C. Taylor — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:38:01 PST