The present article deals with the not very common opinion among medieval philosophers according to which the identity principle (ens est ens) is the true first principle, undermining the primacy of the principle of non-contradiction. Following a refutation of this position in the logical work of the Franciscan Geraldus Odonis, we intend to investigate its target as well as other cases of the same dispute in 14th century authors: Antoine Andre, John of Buridan, John of Baconthorpe and Nicolas of Autrecourt. We defend that Odonis presents a successful response to this position.

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In this paper I examine Hume’s claims about the nature of moral sentiments (mainly in T 3.1.2) using as a foil the Kantian challenge to all material practical principles: they are all of the same type, being based on self-love and making all choices, including moral ones, hedonically fungible. The paper explores Hume’s views on pleasure as constitutive of moral sentiment as an answer to that challenge arguing that for him only pleasure is essentially valuable for beings like us. It thus grounds a notion of value which, through a “progressive or dynamic” view of human nature, informs a conception of moral pleasure – a “taste in character traits” – as a distinctive type of pleasure that is not amenable to a mere quantitative criterium to guide moral choice.