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«Solo lumine naturae utens». Suárez e la ratio angeli_: note su _DM 35, 1-3In Simona Langella & Cintia Faraco (eds.), Francisco Suárez 1617-2017. Atti del Convegno in occasione del IV centenario della morte, Artetetra Edizioni. 2019.Suárez’s primary attempt to rethink angelology can be found in the De Angelis. This work is a mighty commentary on the prima pars of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae (qq. 50-64) which Suárez left to his colleagues after his years in Coimbra (1597-1607), and which was published posthumously in Lyon in 1620. The composition of the text is somewhat stratified and it includes many references to the Disputationes Metaphysicae, but Suárez most likely already started writing it during his years of teaching in…Read more
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La gloria, lo specchio e la legge. Nota sull'angelologia tra Agamben e TommasoIn Antonio Lucci & Luca Viglialoro (eds.), La vita delle forme. Saggi su Giorgio Agamben. 2016.
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Lux sive qualitas. Incorporeità ed estensione della luce nell’aristotelismo iberico e italiano di primo SeicentoGalilaeana. Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Science 15 61-81. 2018.This article addresses the Aristotelian debate in the 17th century on the incorporeality of light and its extension, focusing especially on the Iberian and Italian contexts. The aim of the essay is to show that, while late Aristotelianism unitedly rejected light’s corporeity, many differences arose regarding the way in which this incorporeality should be understood. Relevant perspectives in all of their discussions were Scotus’ teaching of the intentional nature of light, and the Neoplatonics’ c…Read more
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Dagli angeli alle occasioni. Un'ipotesi a partire dal 'problema della trasduzione'Studi Lockiani 2 (2). 2022.This article addresses some Late Scholastic accounts (Suárez, Abra de Raçonis, Gamaches, Ysambert, Arriaga), of the “problem of transduction” in angels, as a possible source for the genesis of early modern occasionalism, particularly La Forge’s and Cordemoy’s. Indeed, if the “problem of transduction” is a structural issue of all the Aristotelian gnoseology, the impossibility of interaction between immaterial and material substance concerns, more generally, all spiritual substances, posing the is…Read more
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The Domain of the Human. Anthropological Frontiers in Modern and Contemporary Thought (edited book)Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. 2013.The current issue looks into the concept of Man and in particular at the anthropological domain that this notion has represented at different times in the history of modern and contemporary western thought. It does this, however, by focusing on its cut-off points, where questions have revealed a fundamental instability at the root of the very concept of “human’’, thus attempting to show that every “theory of human nature’’ must by its very nature look beyond human nature as it identifies and ‘br…Read more
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Lives from philosophers. Philosophy and Autobiography (edited book)Lo Sguardo. 2013.Chi è quel soggetto che nell’autobiografia dice “io”? Raccontarsi non è già diventare altro? L’autobiografia è un esercizio filosofico in cui l’identità si scopre tramata da altre vite e l’io emerge soltanto perché dislocato nei suoi segni. Sono forse proprio le condizioni di impossibilità di un’autopresentazione trasparente e definitiva che rendono possibile una soggettività autobiografica. Scrivere di sé infatti è già trascendenza: insinua il sospetto di un’alterità, di un’alterazione e turba …Read more
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Acies mentis. Il progetto cartesiano di un'epistemologia dell'intuitus e il suo ripensamento metafisicoDiscipline Filosofiche 2 (31): 139-164. 2021.The present paper deals with the diachronic evolution of the Cartesian concept of intuitus, focusing particularly on the reasons for its (at least lexical) dismissal in Descartes's mature elaborations of his metaphysics. In section 1, I address the notion of intuitus presented in the Rules, showing that this concept is pivotal in Descartes' early epistemology of evidence. In section 2, I argue that such a concept can be traced back to certain distinctive elements of the Late Scholastic debate on…Read more
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Spaces of the Monstrous. Philosophical Topics on Monstruosity (edited book)Lo Sguardo. 2012.A partire dalla seconda metà del Novecento la questione della mostruosità è stata oggetto – insieme a quella del prodigio, da cui si differenzia soltanto parzialmente – di un crescente interesse accademico. Gli studi riguardanti la funzione antropologica, cosmologica, estetica e naturalistica dei mostri, sono oramai tanto numerosi e tanto vari nell'approccio da renderne ardua anche solo una parziale enumerazione. Difficilmente potremmo esimerci dal menzionare un autore come Jurgis Baltrušaitis,…Read more
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L'angelo e la bestia. Metafisica dell'istinto, tra Pierre Chanet e Marin Cureau de la ChambreLo Sguardo. Rivista di Filosofia 18 233-258. 2015.In this essay I address the debate between Pierre Chanet and Marin Cureau de La Chambre on animal instinct, analyzing and connecting it to the question of the relationship between God and secondary causes. While Chanet considers instinctive actions as the result of direct intervention by God, that would conduct his creatures beyond their natural limits, Cureau places them in the cognitive structure that God has given to the animals, doing of instinctive actions natural actions in the strict sens…Read more
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Shades of Platonism in Franciscan Metaphysics: The Problem of Divine Ideas. Remarks on a Recent Work (review)Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie Und Theologie 67. 2020.The problem of Divine Ideas is one of the most consequential in the entire history of Western Thought, and effects of the Medieval debate on exempla-rism can still be found in Early Modern and Modern metaphysics. Speaking of the Middle Ages, such a topic provides a vivid example of the prominent role played by Platonism in the tradition of the Schools in the 13th and the 14th century, often associated with the sole authority of Aristotle. Among the different traditions animating the Schools at t…Read more
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This chapter focuses on the question of the specific truth granted to the human intellect’s concepts qua concepts (simplex apprehensio), as it is presented and discussed in Sebastião do Couto’s commentary on On Interpretation, included in his general commentary on Aristotle’s Dialectics (1606), the final volume of the famous and influential Cursus Conimbricensis (1592–1606). Such a topic finds it roots in a large medieval debate that runs through many authors and especially Augustine, Aquinas, S…Read more
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L’estensione essenziale. La teoria della luce di Marin Cureau de La ChambrePhysis. Rivista Internazionale di Storia Della Scienza 51 345-356. 2017.The article introduces Marin Cureau de La Chambre’s theory of light, focusing especially on the treatise Le Lumière (1657). Specifically, the anti-Cartesian and anti-mechanistic side of Cureau’s work is stressed, reconstructing its account of the “essential” nature of light, linking it to the Franciscan and the Platonic tradition and focusing on the peculiar use of the notion of “extensio formalis.” Additionally, Cureau’s theory of color and his theories on irradiance and light’s movement is pr…Read more
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Review of Igor Agostini, "L'infinità di Dio. Il dibattito da Suarez a Caterus", Editori Riuniti University Press 2008 (review)Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia 2. 2010.
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Quantity Matters. Suárez’s Theory of Continuous Quantity and its Reception Until DescartesIn Simone Guidi, Mario Santiago Carvalho & Manuel Lázaro Pulido (eds.), Francisco Suárez: Metaphysics, Politics and Ethics. 2020.This paper deals with Suárez's theory of extension and continuous quantity, as it is discussed in the Metaphysical Disputations and as a possible source for Descartes's concept of res extensa. In a first part of the paper, I analyse Suárez' account of divisibility and extension in a comparison with the Dominicans', Scotus and Fonseca's, and Ockham's. In the light of this analysis, Suárez's most original contribution seems being the claim that material composites have integral parts 'entitatively…Read more
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Review of Giovanni Leghissa (ed.), "La condizione postumana" - n. 361 di Aut Aut (review)Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia 15 307-317. 2015.
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Lo spirito e l'intelletto. Il Système de l'Âme di Cureau de La ChambreBruniana and Campanelliana 2 (2): 633-643. 2016.The article examines Marin Cureau de La Chambre's Système de l'âme (1664), highlighting the role played in the work by the tradition of Italian Renaissance naturalism. La Chambre profoundly criticizes the very concept of 'passion of the soul', attacking the Aristotelian doctrine of the possible intellect but, contemporarily, also the direct interaction between body and mind presupposed by Descartes in Les passions de l'âme. The solution adopted by Cureau is based on the doctrine of intermediate …Read more
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'Non minus vere homo aegrotus creatura Dei est quam sanus'. Pathological and the monstrous in Descartes’ Sixth MeditationIn Chiara Beneduce & Denise Vincenti (eds.), Oeconomia corporis, «MeFiSto – Supplement of Medicina & Storia». pp. 59-68. 2017.In this essay, I address Descartes’ medical thought, starting from the years of Le Monde and focus- ing especially on the “ontological” explanation of the dropsy in the Sixth Meditation. I especially consider Descartes’ attempt to ‘reform’ physiology according to the universal methodology of geometrical reasoning, as well as with the importance given by Descartes’ epistemology to the re- lationship between medicine and the mind-body union. The possibility of a coherent explanation of all the emb…Read more
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Philosophy and Catastrophe (edited book)Lo Sguardo. 2016.Il termine ‘catastrofe’ porta con sé, quasi non tradotte, le origini dal greco καταστροφή, che potremmo rendere con l’espressione “precipitazione degli eventi”, se sapessimo, con ciò, anche alludere al senso di un rovesciamento radicale, di una ‘situazione’ che questo lemma in sé custodisce. Kαταστροφή è, innanzitutto, parte del lessico della drammaturgia antica, dove è utilizzato per indicare un rivolgimento improvviso, l’avvenimento che mette fine alla καταστάσεις dell’azione drammatica e che …Read more
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Matteo d'Acquasparta vs Tommaso d'Aquino. Ilemorfismo metafisico e immortalità dell'anima (review)la Cultura 3 531-539. 2012.
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La favola della materia. Epistemologia e narrazione nel Monde di DescartesAzimuth. Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age 4 83-113. 2014.This article examines the epistemological role of the fable as used by Descartes in his Monde to present the idea of an entirely mechanical world. Rather than merely a dissimulative-literary device, putting the world into fable form actually turns out to be a real scientific instrument, making it possible for Descartes to re-create the world from a metaphysical and wholly geometrical point of view, based on the changelessness of the divine essence and creation. In this sense his fable du monde g…Read more
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The Principles of Angelic Self-Knowledge. From Thomas Aquinas to João PoinsotMedioevo e Rinascimento 291-310. forthcoming.This paper delves into a pivotal issue of scholastic angelology, the problem of angelic self-knowledge. It compares positions ranging from Thomas Aquinas’s to João Poinsot’s. I stress in particular what I dub ‘the problem of immanent knowledge in presence’, i.e. the problem of the actual, immanent and presential interplay between the angelic intellect and the angelic substance, which Aquinas sees as the rationale for angelic self-knowledge. I then discuss the perspectives of Cajetan and Vázquez,…Read more
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Il teatro cartesiano: sulla funzione della "teatralità" barocca nella Prima Meditazione di DescartesIn Luca Viglialoro & Marco Gatto (eds.), L'esperienza dell'arte. Un percorso estetico tra moderno e postmoderno. pp. 21-55. 2011.Rintracciare con esattezza, nelle Meditazioni, la presenza di specifiche fonti letterarie è un'impresa audace e per certi versi poco utile. Considerata la riluttanza di Descartes a sottomettere il proprio pensiero a ogni genealogia e preso atto dello straordinario eclettismo che anima il Barocco (categoria culturale oltretutto sfuggente per definizione), sembra vano un tentativo di fissare definitivamente i richiami e le atmosfere che attraversano l'opera. Il rischio è anzitutto quello di mante…Read more
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Henri Bergson, Storia dell'idea di tempo. Corso al Collège de France 1901-1902 (edited book)Mimesis. 2019.Il corso sulla Storia dell'idea di tempo, tenuto al Collège de France nel 1902-1903, per la prima volta tradotto interamente in italiano, è dedicato al concetto di tempo nella storia della filosofia antica e moderna. In queste straordinarie lezioni Bergson si confronta con Platone, Aristotele, Plotino, Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Newton e Kant. Nel cuore della metafisica occidentale il filosofo francese intravede una fondamentale negazione del tempo, impropriamente considerato come imi…Read more
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Review of Francesco Cerrato, "Un secolo di passioni e politica. Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza", DeriveApprodi 2012 (review)Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia 13 435-438. 2013.
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Errata naturae. Cause prime e seconde del mostro biologico tra medioevo ed età modernaLo Sguardo. Rivista di Filosofia 9. 2012.According to one of the most influential definitions, formulated by Michel Foucault in his Les anormaux, the monster is, since the Middle Ages, a violation of a “bio-juridical” order. In critically discussing the historical plausibility of this claim this article explores medical and philosophical conceptions of monsters between medieval and early modern period, addressing in particular the matter of the relationships between first and second causes in nature's errors. The main authors dealt wit…Read more
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IntroductionIn Simone Guidi & Joaquim Braga (eds.), The Quantification of Life and Health from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. Intersections of Medicine and Philosophy, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1-50. 2023.This volume sets out to chart a path at the intersection between the histories of medicine and philosophy concerning a topic that is prominent in contemporary debates, i.e. the translation of physiology, and accordingly pathology, into numerical terms. In particular, the book discusses and contextualizes issues that are simultaneous of medical and philosophical import, such as the quantification of temperaments and complexions, the quantification of life processes and physiology, the quantificat…Read more
Simone Guidi
Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche
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Consiglio Nazionale Delle RicercheResearcher