Adam Takahashi

Kwansei Gakuin University, School of Humanities, Faculty Member

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Associate professor in Philosophy at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan.

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Andrej Dujella

University of Zagreb

Hemin Koyi

Uppsala University

Jana Javornik

University of East London

Graham Martin

University of Leicester

Gwen Robbins Schug

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Gabriel Gutierrez-Alonso

University of Salamanca

John Sutton

Macquarie University

Eros Carvalho

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Kevin Arbuckle

Swansea University

Jesper Hoffmeyer

University of Copenhagen

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Papers by Adam Takahashi

Albert the Great as a Reader of Averroes : A Study of His Notion of the Celestial Soul in De Caelo et Mundo and Metaphysica

In this paper I will explain why Albert the Great appealed to the notion of the celestial soul or... more In this paper I will explain why Albert the Great appealed to the notion of the celestial soul or intellect, going beyond Aristotle’s original arguments. To this purpose, instead of pursuing the inner logic of his arguments, I will examine how he used Averroes’ commentaries, especially in the former’s paraphrases of Aristotle’s On the Heavens and Metaphysics. Furthermore, in order to explain why the notion of the celestial soul or intellect was crucial for both authors, I will highlight an intellectual tradition going back to Alexander of Aphrodisias, in which the notion of the celestial intellect was closely linked to divine providence. I will conclude that Alexander’s cosmological doctrine as presented by Averroes led Albert to expand Aristotle’s notion of the animation of the heavens in his account of celestial motion and the influence of celestial bodies.

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Nature, Formative Power and Intellect in the Natural Philosophy of Albert the Great

Early Science and Medicine, 2008

The Dominican theologian Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) was one of the first to investigate int... more The Dominican theologian Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) was one of the first to investigate into the system of the world on the basis of an acquaintance with the entire Aristotelian corpus, which he read under the influence of Islamic philosophers. The present study aims to understand the core of Albert's natural philosophy. Albert's emblematic phrase, “every work of nature is the work of intelligence” (omne opus naturae est opus intelligentiae), expresses the conviction that natural things are produced by the intellects that move the celestial bodies, just as houses are made by architects moving their instruments. Albert tried to fathom the secret of generation of natural things with his novel notion of “formative power” (virtus formativa), which flows from the celestial intellects into the sublunary elements. His conception of the natural world represents an alternative to the dominant medieval view on the relationship between the artificial and the natural.

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