The Metaphysics of Personal Identity: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Volume 13
One of the most debated topics in medieval philosophy was the metaphysics of identity—that is, what accounts for the distinctness (non-identity) of different individuals of the same, specific kind and the persistence (self-identity) of the same individuals over time and in different possible situations, especially with regard to individuals of our specific kind, namely, human persons. The first three papers of this volume investigate the comparative development of positions. One problem, considered by William of Auvergne and Albert the Great, deals with Aristotle’s doctrine of the active intellect and its relation to Christian philosophical conceptions of personhood. A larger set of issues on the nature and post-mortem fate of human beings is highlighted as common inquiry among Muslim philosophers and Thomas Aquinas, as well as Aquinas and the modern thinker John Locke. Finally, the last two papers offer a debate over Aquinas’s exact views regarding whether substances persist identically across metaphysical “gaps” (periods of non-existence), either by nature or divine power.
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Gyula Klima is a Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Founding Member and Director of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics and Editor of its proceedings. Professor Klima’s most recent book is Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy, edited for Fordham University’s Medieval Philosophy: Texts and Studies series.
Alex Hall is a Professor of Philosophy at Clayton State University, Assistant Director and Secretary of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, and Managing Editor of its proceedings. Hall’s recent scholarship includes “Natural Theology in the Middle Ages” in the Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology.
Stephen Ogden is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. In addition to contributions to volumes of the Society of Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, his recent scholarship also includes “On a Possible Argument for Averroes’s Single Separate Intellect” in a volume of Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy.
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