Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories: (10 Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition)

Medieval commentary writing has often been described as a way of "doing philosophy," and not without reason. The various commentaries on Aristotle's Categories we have from this period did not simply elaborate a dialectical exercise for training students; rather, they provided their authors with an unparalleled opportunity to work through crucial philosophical problems, many of which remain with us today. As such, this unique commentary tradition is important not only in its own right, but also to the history and development of philosophy as a whole. The contributors to this volume take a fresh look at it, examining a wide range of medieval commentators, from Simplicius to John Wyclif, and discussing such issues as the compatibility of Platonism with Aristotelianism; the influence of Avicenna; the relationship between grammar, logic, and metaphysics; the number of the categories; the status of the categories as a science realism vs. nominalism; and the relationship between categories.

Table of Contents:
Preface ......................................................................................... vii The Importance of Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories ................................................................................... 1 Lloyd A. Newton The Medieval Posterity of Simplicius ’ Commentary on the Categories: Thomas Aquinas and al-Fārābī ............................. 9 Michael Chase Avicenna The Commentator ...................................................... 31 Allan Bäck Albertus Magnus On the Subject of Aristotle’s Categories ......... 73 Bruno Tremblay Interconnected Literal Commentaries on the Categories in the Middle Ages ............................................................................ 99 Robert Andrews Thomas Aquinas on Establishing the Identity of Aristotle’s Categories ............................................................................... 119 Paul Symington Reading Aristotle’s Categories as an Introduction to Logic: Later Medieval Discussions about Its Place in the Aristotelian Corpus ................................................................... 145 Giorgio Pini Simon of Faversham on Aristotle’s Categories and The Scientia Praedicamentorum ....................................................................... 183 Martin Pickavé Duns Scotus’s Account of a Propter Quid Science of the Categories ............................................................................... 221 Lloyd A. Newton Fine-tuning Pini ’s Reading of Scotus ’s Categories Commentary ........................................................................... 259 Todd Bates How Is Scotus’s Logic Related to His Metaphysics? A Reply to Todd Bates ........................................................... 277 Giorgio Pini John Buridan : On Aristotle’s Categories ....................................... 295 Alexander W. Hall A Realist Interpretation of the Categories in the Fourteenth Century: The Litteralis sententia super Praedicamenta Aristotelis of Robert Alyngton ................................................................ 317 Alessandro D. Conti Thomas Maulevelt’s Denial of Substance ................................. 347 Thomas Maulevelt: Quaestiones super Praedicamenta: Quaestio 16 ............................................................................... 358 Robert Andrews Categories and Universals in the Later Middle Ages ................ 369 Alessandro D. Conti Bibliography ................................................................................ 411 List of Contributors .................................................................... 429 Index ........................................................................................... 433

About the Author :
Lloyd Newton, Ph.D., (2003) in Philosophy, University of Dallas, is currently an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Benedictine College, Kansas. He has published several articles on medieval logic and is working on translating Duns Scotus' Commentary on Aristotle's Categories. Contributors include: Michael Chase, Allan Bäck, Bruno Tremblay, Robert Andrews, Paul Symington, Giorgio Pini, Martin Pickavé, Todd Bates, Alexander W. Hall, and Alessandro D. Conti.