Blackwell Readings in Medieval Philosophy - Fordham University ...

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philosophical output. Indeed, several of the authors, works, and ideas mentioned in this
survey could not make it into the selection, and several selections could not be discussed in
this survey. The latter defect will be remedied by the brief introductions preceding the main
parts. The former, however, can only be taken care of by further study, especially given the
fact that several interesting authors and topics are simply beyond the scope of this volume.
To help with this task, this volume also contains a selective bibliography with pointers to
further information about the authors and works only mentioned here, but not selected for
this volume.
The selections are organized doctrinally (as opposed to, say, around persons or topics),
adhering to the medievals’ own conception of the division of philosophical disciplines (presented
in the first section). Thus, the three main parts of the volume present selections from
the three major philosophical disciplines as Augustine (clearly influenced by the Stoic tradition)
conceived of them: logic (including what we would call epistemology, in general, the
discipline reflective on and regulative of the operations of reason in its search for the knowledge
of Truth); physics/metaphysics (in general, the pure theoretical reflection on the
first principles of Being); and ethics (or in general, practical philosophy, reflecting on the principles
that ought to guide our actions toward what is truly and ultimately Good).
Each part contains several sections, each dealing with some salient problems of its discipline
through an array of chronologically arranged selections. The sections generally strive
to cover the chronological range between early and late medieval philosophy (as much as
this is possible within the confines of the allotted space), giving a taste of the developments
in the ever more sophisticated treatments of the same topics. The introductions preceding
each part place the selections in their proper theoretical context in relation to the foregoing
survey, occasionally providing some pointers to directly relevant secondary literature.
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GENERAL INTRODUCTION