58吃瓜

Abstract:

Richard Kilvington, one of the founders of the school of Oxford calculators, has in our time gained fame as a logician. Thanks to the critical edition and translation into English of his Sophismata, Barbara and Norman Kretzmann made him known to historians of medieval science and logic. In the 70s, Edith Sylla drew my attention to four questions about movement that can be found in San Marco Venice library. Annelise Maier attributed these questions to Richard Swineshead. Sylla’s analysis of the text, however, revealed that those questions were composed by Richard Kilvington. With Monika Micha艂owska I have been working on a critical edition of Kilvington鈥檚 theological question; Whether any in itself bad act of free will is itself a thing (Utrum quilibet actus voluntatis per se malus sit per se aliquid). In the above mentioned theological question and in his first question on the Physics (Whether everything what we know, we know thanks to causes), Kilvington discusses the problem of future contingents. The theological context of this problem is not surprising, since already in St. Augustine鈥檚 and Boethius鈥� works we find discussion about God鈥檚 foreknowledge which necessarily affect human actions, thus men鈥檚 free will can be questioned. Since then theologians have tried to overcome this difficulty and reconcile divine and human free will. In the fourteenth century, that is, in the period when Richard Kilvington and his older colleague Thomas Bradwardine, famous because of his treatise on proportions in motion and a great beneficiary of Kilvington鈥檚 theory, most of the discussions were influenced by John Duns Scotus鈥檚 and William of Ockham鈥檚 solutions to the problem of future contingents. As Sarah Hogarth Rossiter claims, Bradwardine was the first and only one to consider the problem in a context of absolute and ordained power of God. However, in Kilvington鈥檚 question there is a remark: omnia que eveniunt de necessitate eveniunt, ut arguat Bradvardinus, and a large part of Kilvington鈥檚 question deals with this problem in the same context. Therefore in my talk I will present Kilvington鈥檚 views and I will try to answer the question whether Kilvington understands Bradwardine well.