A Straight Path: Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture. Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 6o9 on the whole, Orelli's text would appear to be sound. The translation is commendably free in the way it renders Latin sentence structure without losing accuracy or degenerating into paraphrase. Some freedom is also used with regard to single words-synonyms may share one translation, one word may have several translations (esseis now 'be', now 'exist') and 'Marcus Tullius' is rendered 'Cicero'. This particular modernization seems unnecessary to me and I feel a little uneasy about the choice of 'assert' to render ponere, but the translator's general strategy seems to me absolutely sound. She is free but takes no liberties with the text. The result is a remarkably readable version of a difficult work. On p. x24 the same mental faculties are said to "provide both things that agree with each other and things that are discordant with each other," suggesting that the mind itself produces its objects; the Latin pr0v/dere here must mean 'deal with', not 'provide'. However, such slips are rare. In general, the reader with no Latin can feel secure and even readers of Latin may sometimes benefit from the commentary that is implicit in the translation. STEN EBBESEN Universityof Copenhagen Ruth Link-Salinger, editor-in-chief. A Straight Path: Studies in Medieval Philosophyand Culture. Essaysin Honor ofArthur Hyman. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988. Pp. xiv + 309 . $35.00. More than any other English-language anthology, Philosophyin the Middle Ages, edited by Arthur Hyman and James Walsh, did much to correct a myopic impression of medieval philosophy--a tendency to see the development of philosophy in the Middle Ages through the spectacles of Christian Europe. In their volume, Islamic and Jewish thinkers are seen to deal with philosophical issues significant in their own right alongside the Christian tradition. A Straight Path continues this balanced approach to medieval philosophy. Collected to honor the scholarship of Arthur Hyman over the past thirty years, the twenty-three articles of this volume are original contributions by established scholars of medieval philosophy. They deal with such notable thinkers as Maimonides, Averroes, and Aquinas but also with such lesser known figures as Obadiah Sforno, Ibn B~jjah, and Richard Fishacre. The editors judiciously opted for variety and accessibility. Each of the articles is about fifteen pages in length. All are in English. They range across a wide spectrum, chronologically, methodologically, and thematically. Chronologically, the articles span issues from the fourth to the sixteenth century. Methodologically, they comprise textual , comparative, and philosophical studies, although in practice these approaches of course overlap. The themes represent current research interests of the contributors. Nevertheless, several concerns predominate the volume: an interest (1) in the views of Maimonides, (2) in the relation between religion and philosophy or faith and reason , and (3) in the polemic of a created versus an eternal world. The first, understandably enough, reflects the prevailing interests of the volume's honoree and contributors. The others comprise two pressing issues among medieval thinkers. 6]0 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:4 OCTOBER ]99 ~ Several studies detail arguments and counterarguments on the issue of creation in, for instance, Gregory of Nysza (Verbeke), Philoponus (Feldman), C,ersonides and Crescas (Kogan). Aquinas explains creative agency in terms of productive knowledge (Burrell), while Maimonides links disorder and order in the created world to matter and form, which, in turn, he understands as manifestations of divine wisdom and will (Goodman). On the issue of religion and philosophy, the approach of Averroes, although by and large missed by scholastic thinkers (Ivry), nevertheless was used as a model by Roger Bacon (Hackett). And the Oxford Dominican Richard Fishacre urged a study of the philosophical sciences as part of the reading of Scripture (Brown). Extensions of this concern in a political context are seen in those who explain prophetic laws in relation to the ideal state of philosophers (Berman), and in an educational context in Maimonides and Aquinas for whom human perfection, directed towards divine science, requires metaphysics (Maurer). Finally, the treatment of Maimonides here is almost exclusively directed towards charting his extensive influence, positive or negative, on other thinkers. Thus while there are points of contact between Maimonides and...