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~66 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY moral theory, especially in the three doctrines of natural law, conscience, and synderesis . The Stoic ideal was to live in harmony with nature, which impels the individual to act in conformity with the norms of virtue and to rise above the impulses of passion. By nature the Stoics meant divine reason immanent in the individual, inclining him to act rightly. Thus the natural law is unwritten, inborn law, belonging to the natural structure of each individual (46). Verbeke shows that natural law was variously interpreted in the Middle Ages, as it is in modern times. His statement that Ockham's teaching on natural law reveals the same orientation as that of Duns Scotus is questionable (65). For Scotus, the natural law is inscribed in the human nature God has freely chosen to create, and in which individuals participate. Ockham denied the existence of such a nature and made the natural law dependent on the divine will. This book fills a lacuna in the literature on medieval philosophy. Much has been written about the influence of Platonism and Aristotelianism in the Middle Ages. Less well known is the part Stoicism played in shaping medieval thought. Verbeke has given us a wealth of information on this subject. His book will be welcomed by everyone interested in the history of philosophical ideas. ARMAND MAURER Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies G. Piaia. "Vestigia philosophorum, ll medioevo e la storiografia filosofica. Studi di filosofia e di storia della filosofia, vol. 6. Rimini, Italy: Maggioli Editore, 1983, pp. 246. Paper, L. x5,ooo. The present work is devoted to philosophical historiography in the Middle Ages and about the Middle Ages. Indeed, its first part ("La storia dei filosofi nelruniverso culturale del Medioevo," 13-159) studies how mediaeval thinkers represented and interpreted the philosophers' histories, while the second part ("I1 costituirsi del pensiero medievale come oggetto storiografico," 163-232) deals with the Middle Ages as an object of historiographic investigation. The author's purpose in the first part is to show that mediaeval historiography is richer and more complex than usually believed, a view which contrasts with a general trend among historians of philosophic historiography, who often pay little attention to it, or neglect its specific features. They consider the mediaeval approach to ancient philosophers merely as an appendix to the survivals of ancient thought, or considered it in the light of the subsequent humanistic and renaissance historiography. Based upon a choice of particularly significant texts, the author first traces the path followed in the Middle Ages by the historic and philosophic themes of antiquity which became the very kernel of the mediaeval approaches to the histories of philosophy; indeed, he indicates by whom they were usedwand variously manipulated--and how they were interpreted, by relating them to the appropriate historical, doctrinal, or biographical context. Next, he strikes a first balance and advances an interpretation; finally, he compares some aspects of mediaeval and modern historiography. BOOK REWvWS 267 Augustine and Isidore are the first authors examined, for both transmitted topics in the history of philosophy which mediaeval thinkers considered for a long time as exemplary. Whereas the first-mentioned writer has, by and large, a tolerant attitude towards heathen culture, the second one, whose writings carry strong traces of the antiheretical polemics, generally opposes it. Both make use of the current doxographies (Isidore relies in part on Augustine as well). Augustine's could be defined as a 'speculative doxography'; his main concern is the evaluation of the ancient philosophies in light of his notion of Christian philosophy. Thus Platonism, the nearest philosophical system to Christianity, becomes the gauge of all remaining philosophies . They are regarded as introductory to Platonism, and evaluated according to their respective closeness to it. On the other hand, Isidore does not worry about such questions; he limits himself to outlining a philosopher's history based on the distinction in sects and 'placita', referring in a scantily and often unreliable fashion to the classification moduli of late antiquity. Topics in philosophers' histories appear in historical works, for instance in the Chronicon of Otto of Freising (twelfth century) and in the Speculum historialeof Vincent of Beauvais (thirteenth century...

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