The first session of two Medieval Philosophy mini-colloquia will take place in the Meeting Room, E Staircase, New Court, Trinity College, from 5.00 to 7.10 pm, on 27 February. Julie Brumberg-Chaumont (CNRS, Paris) will give a paper 'Logic and the Making of Humanity in Philosophical Anthropology of the Thirteenth Century'. John Marenbon (Trinity College, Cambridge) will give a paper 'Anthropology and Ethnology in the Long Middle Ages'. There will be drinks after the talks. A map indicating the routes from Porter's Lodge to E Staircase, New Court, Trinity College can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gsis61l5rf6koq1/Map-Medieval%20Mini-Colloquia.png?dl=0
Below are the abstracts of the two papers given in this session. Julie Brumberg-Chaumont: Logic and the Making of Humanity in Philosophical Anthropology of the Thirteenth Century. Man without logic? a worthless beast, called ‘man’ only equivocally The second half of the 13th century saw two well-known phenomena I would like to bring together: the “Averroist” definition of a strong anthropological ideal of the philosopher as ‘complete human being’, where logic plays a fundamental role, and the adoption of logical teaching as a generalized standard within the growing educational system. By doing so, I want to delineate the anthropological dimension of logic in the Middle Ages, by which our authors mean not just a properly human activity, but an operation that makes a man a man. The elitist ideal of a ‘logical man’ promoted by a sociological group, the ‘artists’ (philosophers) of the Arts Faculty, was also often instrumental in pushing to the margin of humanity large groups of people: not only those to which natural logical abilities were denied, the ‘logically disabled people’ (intellectually deficient people, fools, injured people, as well as Albert the Great’s ‘pigmies’), but also all those who were seen as unable or unwilling to upgrade their natural logic into a full artificial logic, beyond everyday argumentation: peasants, uneducated people, sensual people, all of them beasts, called ‘man’ in a homonymous sense. John Marenbon: Anthropology and Ethnology in the Long Middle Ages I shall try to establish that there were genuine ethnologists and anthropologists in the Middle Ages, especially so far as the anthropology of religion is concerned, looking at figures such as John of Piano Carpini, William of Rubruk, Roger Bacon and ‘John of Mandeville’. I shall also try to answer the objection that these medieval writers, working within the framework of Christianity, lacked the scientific detachment to engage in anthropology as a scientific discipline. ================================ HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY SEMINAR/ CAMBRIDGE - PSL EXCHANGE SCHEME Was there anthropology in the Middle Ages? Does logic have a social history? There will be two mini-colloquia, under the aegis of the Cambridge - Paris Sciences et Lettres exchange scheme, exploring these themes, with papers given by Julie Brumberg-Chaumont (CNRS, Paris) and John Marenbon (Trinity College, Cambridge). They will take place in the Meeting Room, E Staircase, New Court, Trinity College on Tuesday 27 February and Tuesday 6 March, from 5.00 to 7.10 pm. Seminar 1: Tuesday 27 February 5.00 John Marenbon: Introduction 5.05 Julie Brumberg-Chaumont: 'Logic and the Making of Humanity in Philosophical Anthropology of the Thirteenth Century' 6.10 John Marenbon: 'Anthropology and Ethnology in the Long Middle Ages' 7.10 Drinks Seminar 2: Tuesday 6 March 5.00 Julie Brumberg-Chaumont: 'The Rise of Logic as a General Educational Standard in the Latin West: Contrasting Traditions and Contexts in Europe' 6.10 John Marenbon: 'Aristotle in the Latin and the Arabic Traditions: a comparison in the social history of logic' 7.10 Drinks All welcome. Enquires to John Marenbon ([email protected]) please. -- Hanyang Liu MPhil in Philosophy Trinity College 07398855466 _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
