Revisiting Medieval Dialectics

Revisiting Medieval Dialectics

This book presents a collection of essays by prominent young researchers and established scholars on the medieval reception of Aristotle’s Topics in the Latin, Arabic and Hebraic traditions, as well as on its late-ancient sources in Alexander of Aphrodisias and Boethius. The book thus provides a fruitful engagement with the late-ancient to medieval reception of the Topics, a tradition that has been understudied in recent scholarship. The collected contributions revisit the reception of the Topics focusing on historical analyses of dialectics as a general method of argumentation and as a scientific method. The authors studied in this book range from well-known figures such as Alexander, Boethius, Buridan and Avicenna, to the lesser-known Radulphus Brito, Judah ben Shlomo ha Kohen, and Ibn Tumlus. This book is an important contribution to the study of argumentation theory in the historical past and is of interest to scholars of the historical development of dialectical argumentation and argumentation theorists.

Futures for the Past

Faced with the challenge of new ideological emphases and subjects of study, academic history has undergone significant changes in its contents in the past half-century. Simultaneously, pressures to change have been directed at its form, particularly in the shape of calls for more socially engaged and up-to-date modes of presentation. The demand for ‘history’ in this more existential sense is equally evidenced by the rise of practical and popular uses of the past outside academic history writing. Reflecting on these shifts in the broader history culture, this collection explores the entanglements and opportunities of history and historians today, moving between questions of social and institutional self-justification, desires relating to identity and self-understanding as well as the consumption and entertainment needs of audiences. The authors find inspiration in varied traditions and media ranging from ancient philosophy and classic history writing to reality TV and Twitter. In doing so, they also present exciting futures for where history may yet go. This book was originally published as a special issue of Rethinking History.

Philosophie et science au Moyen Age / Philosophy and Science in the Middle Ages