The Calvinist International
For Reformed Catholics, appreciation extends well beyond our Reformed heritage. It has to. For our appreciation of the Christian tradition to cease to move beyond our Reformed borders is in fact to cease to be Reformed. But just how far can appreciation extend? Even to pagan sources? Yes, indeed. After Calvin, in the time of […]
After asserting that man’s physiology bears witness to the three kinds of “worlds” that exist and the kinds of knowledge that correspond to them, Zanchi notes that natural philosophy is useful for two of them (the lower and the middle), he adds–in reliance on the Platonici–that there are three kinds of men that correspond to these three […]
In today’s installment from his prolegomena to Aristotle’s Physica, Zanchi again explains man as microcosm, which he now refers to as “smaller world” (minorem mundum,) in different terms–the terms of human physiology–in a way that will presumably strike most modern readers as passing strange. I leave it here without further comment. But others call him a […]
In the next installment, Zanchi notes that the kind of natural philosophy he has in view ranks second only to the Word in helping us to learn the things that we need to know about nature, God, and ourselves (more on this in a moment). Zanchi here invokes the Platonist hierarchical schema to describe the various “levels” of […]
It’s been a while, but we now return to Zanchi’s prolegomena to Aristotle’s Physica, in which Zanchi discusses his views of philosophy in general and of natural philosophy in particular. At the end of the previous installment, we saw Zanchi’s conclusion that the study of philosophy is eminently appropriate for a Christian: Therefore, that the study of […]
At long last, we continue with Zanchi’s remarks on the history of philosophy in the prolegomena to his edition of Aristotle’s Physica. In the previous installment, Zanchi claimed that it we had Solomon’s philosophy books, we wouldn’t need Aristotle. But–alas!–we don’t, and he wants to be clear about the real contributions the Greeks made to the […]
In this installment, Zanchi continues his exposition of the spread of philosophy after its initial revelation to Adam. Philosophy, according to Zanchi, comes to the Hebrews eventually, but not directly. It rather goes from Adam’s direct descendants to Noah and his sons after the Flood, and proceeds to various people groups before finally arriving in […]
Zanchi continues his exposition of Adam as the first philosopher. His evidence? “Man gave names to all the animals.” (That’s a Bob Dylan song, of course; you can listen to Johnny Cash’s version here.) There is an important point about language in Zanchi’s position here: for him, it seems, language is not conventional (arbitrary signs […]
Despite the title, this is about Plato rather than Aristotle. In the next section of the prolegomena to Aristotle’s Physica, Zanchi makes the case that philosophy ultimately comes to man by divine revelation. I’m afraid that I misspoke in the first note of the previous post, in which I said that Zanchi was about to express […]
In this section (first see parts 1 and 2), Zanchi continues his exposition of philosophy as a revelation of God. To defend his position, he has to deal with those who think it is a discover of man. Isn’t that what Plato and Aristotle teach in saying that philosophy begins in wonder (τὸ θαυμάζειν)–that is, […]