Abstracts
The following papers have been accepted for presentation at AAP 2013. If you've just submitted an abstract, it may take a few days to appear.
| Name: Dr. John Lamont |
| Institution: none |
| Title: The demise of the Eleatic Principle |
| Abstract: The paper argues for two theses. The first is that the Platonist philosophical synthesis that became generally accepted after the 3rd century held a form of the Eleatic principle, and that this adherence to the Eleatic principle simply followed a consensus of ancient philosophers. This principle claims that everything that exists has some kind of causal efficacy. The second thesis is that adherence to the Eleatic principle came to be rejected in both Muslim and Christian worlds as a result of the opposition of theologians, who found the Eleatic principle an unacceptable restriction upon divine omnipotence. In the Muslim world, the rejection took the form of occasionalism, which asserted that God is the only causal agent. In the Christian world, it took the form of the doctrine of the general concurrence of God in all causal activity, which asserted that no created thing can produce an effect without God making a causal contribution to the production of the effect. The victory of the theologians was so complete that the Eleatic character of philosophy before the Middle Ages was lost sight of. This change, hitherto unrecognised, was one of the most fundamental developments in the history of philosophy. |
| Keywords: Eleatic Principle, Plato, Aristotle, occasionalism |
