Neo-Aristotelianism and the Medieval Renaissance – On Aquinas, Ockham, and Eckhart

Syllabus
Plan of Lectures
Literature

Introduction: Aristotle and the Medieval Renaissance

I. The Several Senses of Being in Thomas Aquinas
1. The Copula and ‘Being Real’
2. ‘Being’ As Being-Real (Actuality)
3. ‘Being’ As Being a Thing
4. Aquinas’ Concept of Analogy

II. Aquinas’ Philosophy of Knowledge
1. Knowledge as Secondary Act
2. The Ontological Difference between Connaturality and Conformity
3. The Scope of Connatural Knowledge
4. Connatural Knowledge and the Active Intellect

III. William of Ockham’s Conceptualism
1. Experience and Universals
2. Against Connaturality
3. Conceptualism and Necessity
4. Absolute Power and Contradiction
5. Natural Order Dispersed
6. Dispersion in God

IV. Meister Eckhart’s Speculative Mysticism
1. Dissimilarity
2. Similarity
3. Identity
4. Breakthrough
5. Meister Eckhart on Analogy
6. The Limits of the Analogical Understanding of Being

Notes
Editor's Afterword
Tentative Chronology of Reiner Schürmann's Courses at the New School for Social Research
Lecture Notes of Reiner Schürmann at the NSSR—Pierre Adler's Inventory (1994)
Editorial Statement