This book sheds new light on the history of the philosophically crucial notion of intentionality, which accounts for one of the most distinctive aspects of our mental life: the fact that our thoughts are about objects. Intentionality is often described as a certain kind of relation. Focusing on Franz Brentano, who introduced the notion into contemporary philosophy, and on the Aristotelian tradition, which was Brentano’s main source of inspiration, the book reveals a rich history of debate on precisely the relational nature of intentionality. It shows that Brentano and the Aristotelian authors from which he drew not only addressed the question whether intentionality is a relation, but also devoted extensive discussions to what kind of relation it is, if any. The book aims to show that Brentano distinguishes the intentional relation from two other relations with which it might be confused, namely, causality and reference, which also hold between thoughts and their objects. Intentionality accounts for the aboutness of a thought; causality, by contrast, explains how the thought is generated, and reference, understood as a sort of similarity, occurs when the object towards which the thought is directed exists. Brentano claims to find some anticipation of his views in Aristotle. This book argues that, whether or not Brentano’s interpretation of Aristotle is correct, his claim is true of the Aristotelian tradition as a whole, since followers of Aristotle more or less explicitly made some or all of Brentano’s distinctions. This is demonstrated through examination of some major figures of the Aristotelian tradition (broadly understood), including Alexander of Aphrodisias, the Neoplatonic commentators, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Francisco Suárez. This book combines a longue durée approach – focusing on the long-term evolution of philosophical concepts rather than restricting itself to a specific author or period – with systematic analysis in the history of philosophy. By studying Brentano and the Aristotelian authors with theoretical sensitivity, it also aims to contribute to our understanding of intentionality and cognate features of the mind.

The volume focuses on the relation between Cusanus and Aristotle or the Aristotelian tradition. In recent years the attention on this topic has partially increased, but overall the scholarship results are still partial or provisional. The book thus aims at verifying more systematically how Aristotle and Aristotelianism have been received by Cusanus, in both their philosophical and theological implications, and how he approached the Aristotelian thought. In order to answer these questions, the papers are structured according to the traditional Aristotelian sciences and their reflection on Cusanus' thought. This allows to achieve some aspects of interest and originality: 1) the book provides a general, but systematic analysis of Aristotle's reception in Cusanus' thought, with some coherent results. 2) Also, it explores how a philosopher and theologian traditionally regarded as Neoplatonist approached Aristotle and his tradition (including Thomas Aquinas), what he accepted of it, what he rejected, and what he tried to overcome. 3) Finally, the volume verifies the attitude of a relevant Christian philosopher and theologian of the Humanistic age towards Aristotle.

Epistemology is currently in ferment. Ever since Plato, the textbook story goes, knowledge has been conceived as justified true belief; but in 1963 Edmund Gettier blew a huge hole in this supposedly traditional account. Six decades later, however, ongoing attempts to identify the conditions which turn belief into knowledge continue to face counterexamples and charges of circularity. In response to this recurrent failure, leading philosophers have begun exploring alternative accounts of knowledge. This ground-breaking book pushes the revolt against post-Gettier epistemology in a radically new direction. It begins by challenging the crude history of philosophy underling the entire Gettier paradigm. A survey ranging from the pre-Socratics to the mid-twentieth century reveals that the allegedly 'standard' or 'traditional' analysis of knowledge is neither standard nor traditional. In fact, it is difficult to find major philosophers for thousands of years who regarded knowledge as a species of belief, or belief as entailed by knowledge. The standard view was rather that knowing and believing are distinct, mutually exclusive mental states, involving different mental faculties, and playing distinct and complementary roles in our cognitive lives. Having demolished the historical premise upon which the entire Gettier paradigm rests, this book reframes elements of this age-old consensus in contemporary terms which push 'knowledge first' epistemology in a fresh direction. Knowledge, Antognazza argues, is phenomenologically and ontologically prior to belief, and, crucially, is not a kind of belief - not even “the best kind”. In turn, “mere believing” is not “a kind of botched knowing” but a mental state fundamentally different from knowing, with its own crucial and distinctive role in our cognitive life. Contrary to the claim that belief aims at knowledge, the specific contribution of belief to our cognition is that of aiming at truth when knowledge is out of our cognitive reach. Knowing and believing are mutually exclusive but complementary ways of 'thinking with assent'. The book then applies this renewed paradigm to range of controversial issues, including the taxonomy of belief, the role of the will in belief, testimony, collective knowledge, and religious epistemology. Applying innovative methods to a vast range of materials on a rich variety of topics, this is a rare philosopher and a work of exceptional interest. Applying innovative methods to a vast range of materials on a rich variety of topics, this is a rare philosopher and a work of exceptional interest.

What is the relationship between the concept of person and the concept of intentionality? Is the phenomenological notion of essence somehow related to that of medieval philosophies? What kind of entity is the person understood in her irreducible singularity? These are some of the questions that the chapters in this book seek to address and develop by focusing on the thought of Aquinas, Scotus and Edith Stein. Indeed, the editors of the book are led by the conviction that a fruitful dialogue between medieval philosophy and 20th century phenomenology may prove useful in addressing questions and problems that are still relevant in contemporary debates. The book is divided into three sections, devoted respectively to medieval philosophy, phenomenology and some of the possible systematic and historical intersections between them. Contributors are Sarah Borden Sharkey, Antonio Calcagno, Therese Cory, Daniele De Santis, Andrew LaZella, Dominik Perler, Giorgio Pini, Francesco Valerio Tommasi, Anna Tropia, and Ingrid Vendrell Ferran.

This innovative volume investigates the meaning of ‘something’ in different recent philosophical traditions in order to rethink the logic and the unity of ontology, without forgetting to compare these views to earlier significative accounts in the history of philosophy. In fact, the revival of interest in “something” in the 19th and 20th centuries as well as in contemporary philosophy can easily be accounted for: it affords the possibility for asking the question: what is there? without engaging in predefined speculative assumptions The issue about “something” seems to avoid any naive approach to the question about what there is, so that it is treated in two main contemporary philosophical trends: “material ontology”, which aims at taking “inventory” of what there is, of everything that is; and “formal ontology”, which analyses the structural features of all there is, whatever it is. The volume advances cutting-edge debates on what is the first et the most general item in ontology, that is to say “something”, because the relevant features of the conceptual core of something are: non-nothingness, otherness. Something means that one being is different from others. The relationality belongs to something.: Therefore, the volume advances cutting-edge debates in phenomenology, analytic philosophy, formal and material ontology, traditional metaphysics.

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy showcases the best scholarly research in this flourishing field. The series covers all aspects of medieval philosophy, including the Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew traditions, and runs from the end of antiquity into the Renaissance. It publishes new work by leading scholars in the field, and combines historical scholarship with philosophical acuteness. The papers will address a wide range of topics, from political philosophy to ethics, and logic to metaphysics. OSMP is an essential resource for anyone working in the area.

In the twentieth century English-language philosophy came to be science- and logic-oriented, and was suspicious of metaphysics. The Disappearance of the Soul and the Turn against Metaphysics traces our present philosophical outlook back to debates in Austro-German philosophy about the relation between empirical science and metaphysics: does empirical psychology depend on the metaphysics of the soul, the mental substance? The negative answer - that there is 'a psychology without a soul' - shaped Austrian philosophy and provided a model for ontologies that dispense with substances. Mark Textor tells the story of how and why (Austrian) philosophy turned against metaphysics . He introduces the key thinkers of the time, including the 'fathers of Austrian philosophy' Franz Brentano and Ernst Mach, whose Intentionalism (Brentano) and Neutral Monism (Mach) became distinctive and influential positions in the philosophy of mind. Textor goes on to use the 'psychology without a soul' view as a vantage point from which to reconstruct and assess the immediate pre-history and formation of analytic philosophy (Ward, Stout, Moore, Russell). While Austrian philosophers retired the soul, early analytic philosophers were happy to introduce a successor, the subject, and conceive of the mental as constituted by subject-object relations. The final part of the book returns to the theme of anti-metaphysics from a different perspective. In this part the early Moritz Schlick, who would soon become the leading figure of the Vienna Circle, takes centre stage. The final part of the book reconstructs Schlick's arguments for the conclusion that metaphysics lies beyond the limits of knowledge that are rooted in the philosophy of mind discussed in previous parts.