Programme
Wojciech Wciórka
Future-Oriented Terms and Successive Beings around 1200
One of the remarkable things about the late twelfth-century theologian Stephen Langton is that he presupposed both the logical and physical explications of “to cease” (desinere), together with some ongoing controversies regarding the limits of the so-called successive entities, well before Peter of Spain’s Syncategoreumata. The peak of Langton’s academic career could be placed at 1200, and his Quaestiones theologiae are probably earlier than 1206. In this paper, I would like to highlight four points connected with the verb “to cease”: (1) Langton presupposes the future-oriented understanding of “to cease”, (ii) considers two theories of the nature of time: compositio (dense time) and simplicitas (contiguous instants), (iii) associates “to cease” with the important notion of future-dependence in the case of “to die”, (iv) quotes and considers two competing theories of the limits of successive entities: nullum succesivum est in suo termino and its negation, and takes the distinction between successio and permanentia from the tradition of the Categories commentaries (C26).