Willing and Understanding: Late Medieval Debates on the Will, the Intellect, and Practical Knowledge: (19 Investigating Medieval Philosophy)

Willing and Understanding elucidates a variety of issues in and approaches to debating the will-intellect interplay in the late Middle Ages. Authored by prominent scholars in the field, the contributions offer different perspectives on the development of late medieval theories of the will. Charting a dense map of voluntarist and epistemological ideas—entrenched leitmotifs of late medieval philosophy, seminal insights sparking original trends, and ephemeral novelties—the volume is a testimony to the conceptual multidimensionality and ethical complexity of the past and present iterations of the debate on the will. Contributors are Pascale Bermon, Magdalena Bieniak, Michael W. Dunne, Riccardo Fedriga, Giacomo Fornasieri, Tobias Hoffmann, Severin V. Kitanov, Monika Michałowska, Riccardo Saccenti, Sonja Schierbaum, Michael Szlachta, Łukasz Tomanek, and Francesco Omar Zamboni.

Table of Contents:
Preface Notes on Contributors 1 The Complexity of Late Medieval Debates on the Will  Introduction  Riccardo Fedriga and Monika Michałowska 2 Fear and Conditional Will in Stephen Langton’s Quaestiones and in the Summa Halensis  Magdalena Bieniak 3 What Tips the Scales?   Volition, Motivation, and Choice in Faḫr al-Din al-Razi  Francesco Omar Zamboni 4 How Do Intellect and Will Interact?  Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, and the Determination-Exercise Distinction  Michael Szlachta 5 Understanding and Acting  Deliberation, the Practical Intellect, and Moral Science at the University of Bologna (Gentile da Cingoli, Angelo d’Arezzo, and Cambiolo da Bologna)  Riccardo Saccenti 6 John of Pouilly’s Intellectualist Reading of the March 7, 1277 Condemnation  Tobias Hoffmann 7 Cognitive Attention and Impressions  The Role of the Will in Peter Auriol’s Theory of Concept Formation  Giacomo Fornasieri 8 Dissolving the Air of Inconsistency  William Ockham on Virtuous Volitions and Cognitive Error  Sonja Schierbaum 9 Hybernicus contra Thomam  Richard FitzRalph on the Will and His Critique of Aquinas on the Primacy of the Intellect over the Will  Michael W. Dunne 10 Cracking the Code of the Will  Richard Kilvington on the Will and Logic  Monika Michałowska 11 Adam Wodeham’s Analysis and Defense of Free Will  Severin V. Kitanov 12 Gregory of Rimini and the Augustinian Theory of the Will  Examples of a Mediaeval Reading of Augustine’s De libero arbitrio  Pascale Bermon 13 Necessity, Contingency, and Free Will in John of Jandun and John Aurifaber of Halberstadt  The Transmission of Ideas from Paris to Erfurt in the 14th Century  Łukasz Tomanek Index of Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Names Index of Modern Names

About the Author :
Monika Michałowska, Ph.D. (2007), is Professor at the Medical University of Łódź. Her research focuses on late medieval ethics and theology. She has critically edited Richard Kilvington’s Quaestiones super libros Ethicorum and Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum (Brill, 2016, 2021, 2023). Riccardo Fedriga is Professor of history of ideas at the University of Bologna. He has published several articles and books on philosophy of mind and action in medieval thought, including Safeguarding Free Will (Ksiegarnia Akademicka Publishing, 2022) with Monika Michałowska.