The normative use of the Church Fathers and the theologi approbati, who were among the most important auctoritates next to the Scriptures, demonstrates that late-medieval theologians were faithful to tradition. This predilection for tradition was affirmed by, and institutionalized in, the university, where a fixed list of texts was read and commented upon across generations.The medieval notion of auctoritas and the use of a fixed list of texts is discussed in L. M. de Rijk, La Philosophie au Moyen-Age (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), pp. 82–105. As to the educational system, see J. Hamesse, ed., Manuels, Programmes de Cours et Techniques d'Enseignement dans les Universités Mediévales (Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d'Études Médiévales de l'Université Catholique de Louvain, 1994).

In “The Unmitigated Scotus,” Thomas Williams calls for another, better reading of the Subtle Doctor: one in which he is able to “speak for himself.”Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 80. Bd, 1998, p. 162. In this and other articles, Williams criticizes recent Scotist scholarship for its misguided attempt to save Scotus from “the unpalatable position” he actually held, that is, a libertarian voluntarist divine command moral philosophy.Thomas Williams, “How Scotus Separates Morality from Happiness,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 69 (1995): 425–46; Williams, “Reason, Morality, and Voluntarism in Duns Scotus: A Pseudo-Problem Dissolved,” The Modern Schoolman, 74 (1997): 73–94; Williams, “The Libertarian Foundations of Scotus's Moral Philosophy,” The Thomist 62 (1998): 193–215. He presents his position as one that, finally, allows Scotus to speak for himself.

To best understand the key problem facing any Aristotelian theory of sensation, one would be wise to turn to the words of Jonathan Lear: The task is to show how some part of the world—ourselves and other animals—can become conscious of the rest of the world. The danger is that we make the account of the transition from world to mind either too material or too spiritual. If, on the one hand, we give a purely material account of, say, the physical change that a certain visual scene (a tree) forms in the eye of the perceiver, we seem to leave consciousness out of the account. It remains unclear how, by such a physical change, one is meant to get out of the nonconscious physical world. On the other hand, if we give a totally spiritual account, it is not clear that we have given an account of a transition, for it is not clear that we have begun in a thoroughly nonconscious world.Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 108.

There is a philosophical problem, what I will call the problem of eternal truths, that can be stated as follows: If an unactualized, possible essence has no being and is, hence, absolutely nothing, then what grounds the eternal and necessary truth of propositions that purport to be about them? If there were no men, what would ground the necessary truth, “Man is a rational animal”? And what grounded the truth of that proposition prior to the creation of the world? (If it was in fact true at that moment?)

A surprising number of Western studies or translations of the Sufi thinker and mystic Ibn Al'Arabi (1165–1240) make some kind of reference to the German preacher Meister Eckhart (1260–1327). The strength and conviction behind such references vary—while some simply mention Eckhart in passing, others (such as R. W. Austin) speak of “striking resemblances,” while Richard Netton, in his 1989 work Allah Transcendent, goes so far as to call Ibn ‘Arabi “the Meister Eckhart of the Islamic Tradition.”Fusus al-Hikem [“The Bezels of Wisdom”], trans. Ralph Austin (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1980), p. 16. The Arabic edition used is A. E. Affifi's edition (Beirut: Dar al-kutub al-'Arabi, 1946). All page numbers to original are in bold. Ian Richard Netton, Allah Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology (Routledge, 1989) p. 293.