Elena Baltuta | Tel Hai College (original) (raw)

As an Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doctoral Fellow (2015-2017) hosted by Prof. Dr. Dominik Perler at the Institute for Philosophy, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, I am pursuing the individual research project “Aristotelian vs. Augustinian Accounts of Sense Perception in the 13th Century. Study Case: Thomas Aquinas, Robert Kilwardby and Peter Olivi”

Summary of the current research project:
Mapping the interaction between Aristotelian and Augustinian accounts of sense perception in the 13th century, by focusing on the works of Aquinas, Kilwardby and Olivi, is the central aim of this project. Just as before creating a map one needs to opt for a type of map, I choose to approach the aforementioned interaction from a metaphysical perspective. What this means is that when analysing the different arguments advanced by each traditions through the voices of their representatives I am interested in identifying the metaphysical presuppositions, their most basic beliefs about the world and our interaction with it, that have shaped their positions in order to isolate which of them contributed to the divergent, respectively the convergent opinions on sense perception. In different wordings, this is an attempt to discover how metaphysics shapes epistemology. For achieving this goal I will follow three stages: an anatomical stage focused on describing the elements involved in sense perception, a physiological one concerned with how each element functions and a metaphysical stage where the different metaphysical presuppositions will be sorted and their impact on sense perception will be analysed. The main hypothesis of this project is that Aristotelians and Augustinians, despite employing similar metaphysical vocabularies, have slightly different understandings of concepts, which triggers a rift between them, and consequently between their accounts of sense perception. To give but one example, I believe that a different understanding of hylomorphism, the metaphysical doctrine according to which things are composed of form and matter, is accountable for triggering changes that lead to a gap between the two traditions by affecting the way in which the relation between the soul and the body is understood, the soul being the form of the body which stands for the matter of the compound.

Previous fellowships and academic positions:
1 October 2013 – 31 July 2014 Individual research project “Thomas von Aquin und die kognitiven Kriterien“ financed by DAAD supervised by Prof. Dr. Dominik Perler at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Institute for Philosophy
1 October 2011 – 30 April 2013 member of the project „Brentano's Psychology and the Problem of Intentionality of Sensuous Acts”, coordinated by Dr. Ion Tănăsescu, Romanian Society for Phenomenology, “Alexandru Dragomir” Institute for Philosophy, Bucharest, Romania
1 April 2010 – 30 November 2010, PhD guest at “Transformations of Mind: Philosophical Psychology, 1500-1750”, Humboldt University of Berlin, Deutschland, coordinated by Prof. Dr Dominik Perler
2009 – Collaborator of the project Person, Determination and Freedom, A.D.S.T.R. (The Association for Dialogue between Science and Theology Romania), financed by John Templeton Foundation
2007 – Collaborator of the On-line Encyclopaedia of Romanian Philosophy

Selected talks:
30 – 31 October 2015 Dutch Seminar in Medieval Philosophy, University of Groningen, Netherlands (Paper: Aquinas on the Intellectual Cognition: a Defense of a Representationalist Reading of the verbum mentis)
14 – 15 July 2015 Immateriality, Thinking and the Self in the Long Middle Ages, University of Cambridge, UK (Paper: Three Accounts of Form and Matter in the Thirteenth Century: Aquinas, Kilwardby and Olivi)
23 June 2014, Forschungskolloquium moderated by prof. dr. Dominik Perler, Humboldt University, Berlin (Paper: Aquinas on Mental Cognition: The Case of the Mental Word)
13 – 14 June 2014, “Lange Nacht der Europaeische Philosophie”, organized by the French Cultural Institute in Berlin. Invited by the Romanian Cultural Institute in Berlin.
1 – 4 May 2014, Incontro S.I.T.A. Bologna 2014, Bologna, Italy
27 November 2012, „Aquinas on Mental Content: the Debate between Direct Realism and Representationalism”, Trinity College, Cambridge University, UK
26 – 27 May 2012, „Analytical Approaches to Thomas Aquinas”, Krakow, Poland, (Paper: Aquinas on Intellectual Cognition: The Case of Intelligible Species), (http://aquinas- conference.appspot.com/)
9 November 2010, Leibniz Preis Projekt “Transformations of Mind: Philosophical Psychology, 1500-1750”, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany, (Paper: Aquinas on Human Cognition)
29 April – 1 May 2010, Incontro S.I.T.A. Bologna 2010, Bologna, Italy, (Paper: On the Scientific Character of the Sacred Doctrine: An Analysis of Summa Theologica Q.1),
For the complete list of talks and publications see the CV section of this site.

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