ABSTRACT

The historical period covered in this volume begins with the Neoplatonic translator and commentator and Roman senator Boethius (ca. 480–524) and concludes with the Franciscan theologian and philosopher John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266–1308). What we find during the nine hundred intervening years is an exciting, tumultuous, and philosophically robust period of discovery, rediscovery, innovation, and intellectual controversy taking place in multiple languages over large territories, stretching from ancient Rome, through England and France, into Alexandria, Baghdad, Spain, and eventually throughout Europe. Philosophy of mind during this period is in fact much broader and often stranger than it is taken to be in contemporary philosophical circles. Discussions took place within a wider context of investigation into and debate over what is better termed “philosophical anthropology”, or the study of the human soul and its relation to other living things, to God, and to the material world, including human bodies. No introduction to the historical context of the period could do justice to the sheer volume, let alone complexity, of these topics; many excellent studies of various portions of this extensive historical period have been done (and will be noted throughout). Instead, this introduction is intended for those who are more or less unfamiliar with what happened in the history of the philosophy of mind from the end of the ancient period to the start of the fourteenth century. For those already familiar with this period and this material, jump ahead and read the chapters themselves.