1. ‘Despite its title, Augustine’s main aim in Contra Academicos is not to
refute academic scepticism.’ Discuss.
2. Is al-Ghazali a sceptic about causation?
3. How good a case does ibn Taymiyya make that the claims of Aristotelian
logic are unjustified?
4. About what is Nicholas of Autrecourt sceptical, and about what isn’t he?
5. According to Christine de Pizan, opinion plays a key role in the attainment
of grace. Explain this role.
6. Was Montaigne a Pyrrhonian sceptic?
7. How far does Boethius’s attempt to reconcile divine prescience with future
contingents depend on his accepting the view that the present is
necessary?
8. Why does Abelard argue that someone whom God cannot save can
nonetheless be saved by God? How well does he justify this position?
9. Why does Scotus think that the will must have a capacity for opposites at
the same instant? Why does Ockham disagree? And who has the better
of this argument?
10. What are Maimonides’s arguments to show that God does not act out of
necessity? How successful are they?
11. ‘God’s knowledge is not taken from what is known, but brings about the
existence of what is known.’ Explain this distinction and discuss its
importance for Crescas’s thinking about determinism.
12. ‘A thing can in no respect be called contingent, save in relation to the
imperfection of our knowledge.’ (SPINOZA) How does Spinoza justify this
claim? Is his justification convincing?