Talk:Joannes Philoponus
In sum (commenting on my own piece), one could say that Philoponus anticipates a MODE OF CONCEPTUALISATION that, in adumbrating important nominalist themes in Ockham, Biel et al (the ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY AND CONTINGENCY OF THE WILL OF GOD in regard to all created existence __as well as the NON-ESSENTIALITY OF CREATED FORM), sidesteps and marginalises Aristotle and Medieval Scholasticism almost one thousand years before the main-stream began to follow on in his wake.
Also, given the influence of this strand of thought on Luther and the Calvinist divines, this is a Catholic thinker who left a legacy with strongly Protestant resonances. To a sympathetic observer, all this is praiseworthy; to others (even a feminist critic like Carolyn Merchant) it is PROTO-REIFICATION!!
Where do I Stand?!
How do Protestantism and Nominalism stand with respect to 'prehistories' of the Enlightenment? As a 'psychic Catholic' (in the same sense as when CG Jung once characterised himself as a 'Catholic Protestant'), I see Philoponus' position in the history of thought as a (relatively tenable) HEGELIAN MOMENT.
But only relatively so!!