On 7 April 2025, on occasion of the anniversary of the founding of Charles University, Mgr. Robert Roreitner from the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, has received an award for a series of four extensive and tightly interconnected studies, published in the prestigious Apeiron, Phronesis, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, and Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy magazines. These studies build on the monograph Aristotle on the Essence of Human Thought, published by the Oxford University Press in late 2024. The studies help deepen and develop our understanding of theories of human rationality in ancient ways of thought.
In his research, Robert Roreitner sheds new light on the conception of human reason and the conditions for its development. This conception was elaborated on in the wake of Aristotle by later members of the Aristotelian school of thought and has to some extent laid the foundation for most late ancient, medieval, and to a larger extent many modern theories as well. Under the auspices of Charles University and during a single year, Roreitner has published three unusually extensive studies in three of most respected, long-established journals dedicated to ancient philosophy. The uniqueness of this feat is demonstrated by the fact that only a single study written by a Czech academic with an affiliation to Charles University has been published in each of these journals since 1989.
The study titled “Human Ontogeny in Aristotle and Theophrastus” published in Apeiron, one of the most respected journals for ancient philosophy, presents a new reconstruction of the early Aristotelian concept of the conditions of human rationality. In doing so, it emphasizes the very beginning of human development within the framework of Aristotelian embryology. It shows that Theophrastus’ rarely-studied texts contain a distinctive and in many ways plausible alternative to the interpretations dominating Aristotelian research from late antiquity to the present day.
Another study entitled “Naturalizing Nous? Theophrastus on Nous, Nature, and Motion”, published (in collaboration with Andrea Falcon of Concordia University Montreal) in the prestigious journal of ancient philosophy Phronesis, offers a new perspective on the notorious question of the relationship between the early Aristotelian concept of rationality and naturalism. He shows that Theophrastus, unlike Aristotle, explicitly subscribes to naturalism – it is, however, a deliberately loosened naturalism that leaves a considerable degree of independency to human thought.
In the most prestigious journal on ancient philosophy, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Robert Roreitner has published an extensive study, “Thought ‘From Without’: The Role of the Agent Intellect in Alexander’s De Intellectu”. The study offers a new perspective on the difficult question of the relationship between human and divine reason in the Aristotelian tradition, and also on the way in which this conception influenced a key strand of thought in late antiquity, namely Neo-Platonism.
His monograph, Aristotle on the Essence of Human Thought, examines Aristotle’s definition of the human faculty of rational thought, nous, which Aristotle developed in De anima. For Aristotle, nous is the principle and ultimate explanans of all phenomena of human thought. The book presents a thorough interpretation of De anima III 4–8 as a single and coherent philosophical argument.
The awarded publications have been published as part of the research project CoRe – Beyond Security: Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building, funded by the Johannes Amos Comenius Programme
Name of the Project and Registration Number: Beyond Security: Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building. Reg. Nr. CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004595.
