Measure of a Different Greatness: The Intensive Infinite, 1250-1650

by Anne Davenport

Overview

This volume examines a selection of late medieval works devoted to the intensive infinite in order to draw a comprehensive picture of the context, character and importance of scholastic efforts to reason philosophically about divine infinity. As Dominican masters face Franciscan 'spirituals' and as university-trained theologians face evangelical laymen, the purpose and meaning of divine infinity shift, reflecting a basic tension between the Church's Petrine vocation for geopolitical orthodoxy and its more Pauline mission to promote Christian orthopraxis. The first part of the book traces the scholastic defense of divine infinity from the holocaust of Montségur up to John Duns Scotus. The second part examines the semiotic breakthrough initiated by William of Ockham and the subsequent penetration of infinist theory into a wide variety of disciplines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789004114814
Publisher:	Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	06/24/1999
Series:	Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters Series , #67
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Anne Ashley Davenport, Ph.D. (1998) in the History of Science, Harvard University, is currently a Research Scholar at Harvard, working on a book entitled Science and the Contemplative Self.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface

1. In the Shadow of Montsegur
2. Thomas Aquinas and the Six-Winged Seraph
3. Infinity and Totality in Henry of Ghent
4. Barefoot for an Infinite God
5. Spiritual Sword and Spiritual Quanta
6. Mirrors and Signs - the Modern Way to Infinity (I)
7. Mirrors and Signs - the Modern Way to Infinity (II)

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index