SECTION A
1. Identify each of the passages (i) and (ii), explain the part it plays in the
argument of the text from which it is taken and supply whatever background
material and interpretative comments a reader now would need in order to
understand its full significance. You may also compare the two passages.
Passages (i) and (ii) – at end of paper.
2. Identify each of the passages (iii) and (iv), explain the part it plays in the
argument of the text from which it is taken and supply whatever background
material and interpretative comments a reader now would need in order to
understand its full significance. You may also compare the two passages.
Passages (iii) and (iv) – at end of paper.
SECTION B
3. ‘Boethius claims, in his second commentary on the Isagoge, that there are
real, universal things.’ Discuss.
4. Does Abelard’s solution to the problem of universals allow for some form of
realism?
5. Zayd and ‘Amr are both humans, but Avicenna denies that the humanity in
Zayd is the same as the humanity in ‘Amr. Why does he take this position
and how well does he defend it?
6. How important for Scotus is the distinction between common natures and
universals?
7. EITHER (a) ‘Ockham repeatedly begs the question in his attack on Scotus’s
theory of universals’. Discuss.
OR (b) Compare Abelard’s and Ockham’s versions of nominalism.
8. ‘Locke’s professed nominalism is merely superficial.’ Discuss.
9. EITHER (a) How well does Averroes justify his position that the Quran
should be ‘interpreted’ when its literal sense conflicts with a demonstrated
truth?
OR (b) Compare Averroes’s and Maimonides’s intellectual elitism.
10. Does Maimonides believe that we can reach the truth about whether the
world had a beginning?
11. ‘Boethius of Dacia operated with a notion of truth-within-a-game as opposed
to absolute truth.’ Discuss.
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12. In which sense is the knowledge advocated by theologians supernatural
according to Scotus, and how does he explain that it is necessary for human
beings in their lives on Earth?
13. EITHER (a) How successful is Pomponazzi’s critique of Aquinas’s theory of
the human soul and its immortality?
OR (b) Is Pomponazzi’s De immortalitate animae an attack on the
Christianity of his day?
14. What limits does Spinoza set to his naturalism in the Tractatus theologicopoliticus?
PASSAGES
Question 1
i) We do not say it is necessary for every understanding that arises from a
subject, but not as that subject itself is disposed, to be seen as false and
empty. False opinion rather than intelligence occurs only in those cases
that arise from composition. If one puts and joins together by the
understanding what nature does not allow to be joined, no one fails to
realize that that is false. For example, if someone joins a horse and a
man in imagination, and portrays a centaur. But if this understanding
arises from division and from abstraction, then the thing is not disposed
the way it is understood, and yet that understanding is not false at all.
ii) But it seems that we should balk at taking the agreement of things
according to what is not any thing, as if we are uniting in nothing things
that exist when we say this man and that man agree in the status of man
– that is, in that they are men. But we mean only that they are men and in
this respect do not differ at all – I mean in the respect that they are men,
ever though we appeal to no essence here. Now someone’s being a man,
which is not a thing, we call the status of man. We also called it the
common cause of the imposition of a name on single men insofar as they
agree with one another. We often call by the name cause what are not
any thing. For example, when we say ‘He was flogged because he does
not want to go to the forum’. ‘He does not want to go to the forum’, which
occurs as a cause here, is no essence.
Question 2
iii) Truth does not oppose truth; rather, it agrees with and bears witness to it.
Since this is so, if demonstrative reflection leads to any manner of
cognizance about any existing thing, that existing thing cannot escape
either being passed over in silence in the Law or being made cognizable
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in it. If it is passed over in silence, there is no contradiction here; it has
the status of the statutes passed over in silence that the jurist infers by
means of Law-based syllogistic reasoning. If the Law does pronounce
about it, the apparent sense of the pronouncement cannot escape either
being in agreement with what demonstration leads to, or being different
from it. If it is in agreement, there is no argument here. And, if it is
different, that is where an interpretation is pursued.
iv) This is so because the natural philosopher denies as a natural
philosopher that the world and the first motion began to be, and this is for
him to deny that the world began to be from natural principles. Whatever
the natural philosopher denies or concedes as natural philosopher, this he
denies or concedes from natural causes and principles. Wherefore the
conclusion wherein the natural philosopher asserts that the world and the
first motion did not begin to be is false when it is taken without
qualification; but if it is referred back to the arguments and principles from
which the natural philosopher derives it, it follows from these. For we
know that both he who says that Socrates is white, and he who denies
that Socrates is white in certain respects, speak the truth. Thus the
Christian speaks the truth when he says that the world and the first motion
began to be, and that there was a first man, and that a man will return as
living and as numerically one and the same, and that a generable thing
can be produced without being generated; for such things are conceded
to be possible by reason of a cause whose power is greater than that of
any natural cause. The natural philosopher also speaks the truth when he
says that such things are not possible from natural causes and principles;
for he concedes or denies something only from natural principles and
causes, just as the grammarian denies or concedes something as
grammarian only from grammatical principles and causes.