Medieval Philosophy III

The course aims to reconstruct the main transformations that the Aristotelian doctrine of time undergoes in Latin Scholasticism, particularly between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century and the development of new models of duration unrelated to the Aristotelian tradition. These models are elaborated mainly (but not exclusively) in the field of angelology; yet they are soon used to make up for the apparent lack, in Aristotle, of an appropriate measure for the duration of the common sublunary things. Thus, theology and physics intertwine to find a solution to an Aristotelian paradox: how can the duration of the substantial being of a thing be measured only by means of an accidental form, i.e. through the privation of movement or the duration of a concomitant movement?

Main bibliographical references

• P. Porro, Forme e modelli di durata nel pensiero medievale. L’aevum, il tempo discreto, la categoria ‘quando’, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1996 (« Ancient and Medieval Philosophy », I/16), pp. vii + 532. isbn: 90-6186-783-5
• P. Porro (ed.), The Medieval Concept of Time. Studies on the Scholastic Debate and its Influence on Early Modern Philosophy, Leiden-Boston-Köln, E.J. Brill, 2001 (« Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters », 75), pp. x-587. isbn : 90-04-12207-9

Further bibliographical references will be given during the course.