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. What sceptical arguments does Augustine think most serious and how
does he argue against them? (You may restrict your answer to Against
the Academicians if you wish.)
4. ‘The upshot of Henry of Ghent’s supposedly anti-sceptical arguments is
to deny the possibility of fully scientific knowledge in this life.’ Discuss.
5. Does al-Ghazali attack an Avicennian account of causation? If so, for what
reasons? If not, why does he seem to do so?
6. Why does Ibn Taymiyya think that Aristotelian logic is misleading? How
well does he justify his criticisms?
7. ‘Christine de Pizan thought that error was inevitable, but there was no
higher goal, for men and women, than the search for knowledge.’ Discuss,
with special reference to the Vision of Christine.

8. Is the Apology for Raymond Sebond a genuine defence of Sebond?
9. How well does Boethius coordinate these elements in answering the
Problem of Prescience: the Modes of Cognition Principle, God’s
relationship to time, conditional necessity?
10.Given that he holds that God cannot do otherwise than he does, how does
Abelard avoid necessitarianism?
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11.Why does Ockham think Scotus’s way of upholding human freedom of
choice is misguided? How successful are these arguments against
Scotus’s position?
12. ‘Maimonides’s arguments that God exercised choice in creating are so
weak that they suggest he wanted the discerning reader of the Guide to
accept the eternity of the world.’ Discuss.
13. Was Crescas really a compatibilist?
14.EITHER: (a) Is Spinoza’s account of finite and infinite modes consistent
with his claim to be a necessitarian?
OR: (b) Compare Spinoza’s treatment of God and necessity with that by
Maimonides and/or Hasdai Crescas.
15.‘Sixteenth and seventeenth-century philosophers cannot be understood
properly except in the light of their predecessors over the preceding
millennium.’ Discuss with relation to TWO or THREE of the set texts.
PASSAGES
Question 1
(i)
The second approach, with which there is deliverance from these
vilifications, is for us to admit that fire is created in such a way that, if
two similar pieces of cotton come into contact with it, it would burn both,
making no distinction between them if they are similar in all respects.
With all this, however, we allow as possible that a prophet may be cast into
the fire without being burned, either by changing the quality of the fire or
by changing the quality of the prophet. Thus, there would come about
either from God or from the angels a quality in the fire which restricts its
heat to its own body so as not to transcend it (its heat would thus remain
with it, and it would [still] have the form and true nature of fire, its heat
and influence, however, not going beyond it),or else therewill occur in the
body of the prophet a quality which will not change him from being flesh
and bone [but] which will resist the influence of the fire. For we see [that]
a person who covers himself with talc and sits in a fiery furnace is not
affected by it. The one who has not witnessed this will deny it. Hence, the
opponent’s denial that [divine] power includes the ability to establish
a certain quality either in the fire or in the human body that would
prevent the burning is like the denial of one that has never seen talc
and its influence. Among the objects lying within God’s power there
are strange and wondrous things, not all of which we have seen. Why,
then, should we deny their possibility and judge them to be
impossible?
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(ii)
So pure truth certainly should be sought from the senses in a certain
way, as the origin of truth. For a proper sense has the most certain
cognition of its proper object, unless it is impeded either in itself, by
the medium, or by something else. But when every impediment is
lifted, there is no chance that it will err or apprehend its proper object
otherwise than as it is – though such a cognition is not stable, because
of changeability on the part of either the object or the sense itself.
Hence truth that is certain can’t be grasped for long by depending
entirely on the judgment of the senses. Nevertheless, truth that is
entirely certain is grasped through the senses, by abstracting that
which was apprehended by an undeceived sense and forming a
judgment in intellect where what was apprehended remains as if
unchanged, unable to be obscured by truthlike species of phantasms.
And for us the most certain knowledge is that of sensible things when
we can trace it back to sensory experience.
Question 2
(iii)
I said: That God has foreknowledge of absolutely everything and that there
is any freedom of independent judgment – these things seem to me, to be
set against each other, and to be at odds with each other, far too much. For
if God sees all things in advance and cannot be mistaken in any way, that
thing must necessarily happen that Providence foresees will happen. And
for this reason, if Providence has foreknowledgefrom eternity not only of the
actions of mortal men but of their deliberations and of their wills as well, then
there would be no freedom of independent judgment. For there could exist
no action, no will of any sort, other than what divine Providence, which does
not know how to be mistaken, perceives beforehand. I mean, if such things
could be forcibly turned aside in some other direction than they were
foreseen to go, then there would now be no immovable foreknowledge of
the future, but only indefinite opinion instead. And this I judge to be a wicked
thing to believe about God.
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(iv)
The objection made above, that Someone cannot be saved by God
unless it is also the case that God can save him – particularly because
someone is ‘saved by God’ and ‘God saves him’ are the same – is not
enough to prevent me from taking my position. It is, indeed, the same
for a speaking man to be silent and for a man who is speaking to be
silent, and yet it is perhaps not possible for a speaking man to be silent,
whereas it is possible for the man who is speaking to be silent. Or,
although it is the same for that which is white to be black and for
whiteness and blackness to be in the same thing at the same time, it is
not however possible for whiteness and blackness to be in the same
thing at the same time, whereas it is possible for that which is white to
be black. Is it a wonder then, if I consider that it is the same for
someone who ought not to be saved to be saved by God and for God
to save him, and none the less I do not accept that God can save him,
although I grant that he can be saved by God? When we say that he
can be saved by God, we refer the possibility to the capacity of human
nature, as if we were to say that it does not go against the nature of
man that he should be saved, because in himself he is changeable so
that he might consent either to his salvation or his damnation and he
might offer himself to God as one to be treated in the one way or the
other. When, however, we say that God can save the man who ought
not at all to be saved, we refer possibility to the very nature of the
divinity: we are saying that it would not be repugnant to the nature of
God for God to save him. This is entirely false. It does indeed go
against the divine nature to do what detracts from its dignity, and what
it is not at all fitting that he should do. In this way, indeed, when we say
that (a) a voice is audible – that is, able to be heard by someone, and
that (b) someone can hear a voice, or when we say (c) that a field can
be tilled by someone, and that (d) someone can till a field, we refer the
possibility to different things. In (a) and (c), it is to the nature of the
voice or the field, in (b) and (d) to the nature or aptitude of the thing to
hear a voice or to be able to till a field. And so it is not necessary that,
if a voice is audible, that is to say capable in itself of being heard by
someone, that someone should be at that moment capable of hearing
it. Indeed, were all people deaf or even entirely non-existent, any voice
would be of such a nature that it would present itself to a person as
audible, and there would be nothing to be done to it in order to make it
suitable for hearing, even though no person still existed who could hear
it or was capable of hearing it.