-
1257Francisco Suárez: Metaphysics, Politics and Ethics (edited book)Coimbra University Press. 2020.This volume publishes the Proceedings of the 1st International Meeting "Thinking Baroque in Portugal" (26-28 June 2017), which dealt with the metaphysical, ethical and political thought of Francisco Suárez. Counting on the collaboration of some of the greatest international specialists in the work and thought of this famous professor of the University of Coimbra in the 17th century, this volume celebrates the 400th anniversary of his death and marks the productivity of his philosophical-theologi…Read more
-
672Ecstasy and Vision. Variations on a Theme from the Middle Ages to the Contemporary AgeLo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia. 2022.In its literal meaning, the term ἔκστασις (ekstasis) indicates a displacement, ‘being out of immobility’, and ultimately being outside oneself. To some extent, this term takes on a mystical connotation in late Antiquity, notably in book VI.9.11.24 of Plotinus’ Enneads, where ekstasis is described as a non-ordinary way of seeing. The notion of ecstasy, often inseparable from the concept of vision, would keep its mystical role, though altered in some ways, over the centuries, conceptualizing a spe…Read more
-
378From Charity to the Care of the Self: Thomas Browne’s Religio MediciIn Joaquim Braga & Mário Santiago de Carvalho (eds.), Philosophy of Care. New Approaches to Vulnerability, Otherness and Therapy. Advancing Global Bioethics, Vol. 16, Springer. pp. 259-274. 2021.This chapter deals with Thomas Browne’s most famous work, Religio Medici, and especially with his account of Charity. The first paragraph focuses on Browne’s specific account of the relationship between natural and supernatural. This view is inspired by Bacon, Sebunde, and Montaigne, and is crucial to understand the background of Browne’s view about the virtue of Charity. The second paragraph is about Browne’s specific understanding of Charity, which seems to be a middle stage between the tradit…Read more
-
246“The Bright Initiator of Such a Great System.” Suárez and Fonseca in Iberian Jesuit Journals (1945–1975)Noctua 10 (2–3): 441-498. 2023.In this paper I focus on the historiographical fate of Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) and Pedro da Fonseca (1528–1599) in two Iberian journals ran by Jesuits and founded in 1945: the Spanish Pensamiento, and the Portuguese Revista portuguesa de filosofia. I endeavor to show that the discussions of Suárez’s and Fonseca’s ideas on these journal is a two-sided case of constructing the legacies of major figures in late scholasticism, and I emphasize how the demand to identify cultural national heroes …Read more
-
237Baroque Metaphysics: Studies on Francisco SuárezPalimage. 2020.This book collects six unpublished and published academic studies on the thought of Francisco Suárez, which is addressed through accurate textual analyses and meticulous contextualization of his doctrines in the Scholastic debate. The present essays aim to portray two complementary aspects coexisting in the work of the Uncommon Doctor: his innovative approach and his adherence to the tradition. To this scope, they focus on some pivotal, but often neglected, topics in Suárez’s metaphysics and psy…Read more
-
209Introduction - Understanding Parts and Wholes: Medieval Mereology and Early Modern MattersBruniana and Campanelliana 1 (2022). 2022.In this paper I reconstruct and discuss Antonio Rubio (1546-1615)’s theory of the composition of the continuum, as set out in his Tractatus de compositione continui, a part of his influential commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, published in 1605 but rewritten in 1606. Here I attempt especially to show that Rubio’s is a significant case of Scholastic overlapping between Aristotle’s theory of infinitely divisible parts and indivisibilism or ‘Zenonism’, i.e. the theory that allows for indivisibles, …Read more
-
147Introducing in China the Aristotelian Category of Quantity: From the Coimbra Commentary on the Dialectics (1606) to the Chinese Mingli tan (1636-1639)Rivista di Storia Della Filosofia 4 663-683. 2022.Second Scholasticism greatly developed the medieval theory of continuous quantity as the Aristotelian notion for thematizing spatial extension, paving the way for the idea of space as extension in early modern natural philosophy. The article analyzes the section related to the category of continuous quantity in the Coimbra commentary on the Dialectics (1606), showing that it is indebted to the novel theory of Francisco Suárez on quantity as bestowing extension to a body in a particular sense, so…Read more
-
146Parts, Wholes, and Matter in Early Modern Natural Philosophy: Mereological Perspectives (edited book)Bruniana & Campanelliana, 2022/1. 2022.Themed Section of Bruniana & Campanelliana 2022/1, pp. 85-198 - Simone Guidi, Introduction; - Andrew W. Arlig, Part-Whole Interdependence and the Presence of Form in Matter According to Some Fifteenth-Century Platonists; - Jean-Pascal Anfray, Aux limites de la métaphysique: parties, indivisibles et contact chez Suárez; - Simone Guidi, Indivisibles, Parts, and Wholes in Rubio’s Treatise on the Composition of Continuum (1605); - Dana Jalobeanu, Dissecting Nature ad vivum: Parts and Wholes in F…Read more
-
138Indivisibles, Parts, and Wholes in Rubio’s Treatise on the Composition of Continuum (1605)Bruniana and Campanelliana 1. 2022.In this paper I reconstruct and discuss Antonio Rubio (1546-1615)’s theory of the composition of the continuum, as set out in his Tractatus de compositione continui, a part of his influential commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, published in 1605 but rewritten in 1606. Here I attempt especially to show that Rubio’s is a significant case of Scholastic overlapping between Aristotle’s theory of infinitely divisible parts and indivisibilism or ‘Zenonism’, i.e. the theory that allows for indivisibles, …Read more
-
123The Truth We Know. Reassessing Suárez’s Account of Cognitive Truth and Objective BeingMediaevalia. Textos E Estudos 39 (39-40): 297-334. 2020.This article aims at reassessing a widespread view, according to which Francisco Suárez left behind the scholastic model of truth as adaequatio, founding a new concept of truth based on his metaphysics of objective being. In the first part, I reconstruct the debate on the complex and incomplex truth, focusing especially on the sources of Suárez’s Disputation 8, and presenting the views of Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Hervaeus, Durandus, Capreolus and Fonseca. Especially the latter proposes an eclect…Read more
-
91Descartes and the 'Thinking Matter Issue'Lexicon Philosophicum 10 (10): 181-208. 2022.In this paper, I aim to address a specific issue underpinning Cartesian metaphysics since its first public appearance in the Discourse right up until the Meditations, but which definitely came to the surface in the Second and Fifth Replies. It involves the possibility that to be thinking and to be extended do not actually contrast as two entirely different properties; hence, these two essences cannot serve as the basis for a disjunctive, real distinction between two corresponding substances, the…Read more
-
15La quaestio veritatis in Pedro da Fonseca: il problema della simplex apprehensio e la fondazione delle identità logicheRivista di Storia Della Filosofia 1 51-80. 2020.The Question of Truth in Pedro da Fonseca: the Problem of the simplex apprehensio and the Foundation of Logical Identities. This article deals with the theory of truth in Pedro da Fonseca (1528-1599) as it is presented in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics (1577-1612). The first part of the paper is dedicated to Fonseca’s definition of intellective truth within the doctrinal topography of the Aristotelian tradition. The Author especially points out Fonseca’s attempt to justify the notion …Read more
-
14The Quantification of Bodies in Health: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (edited book)Emerald Publishing Limited. 2021.The use of digital tracking technologies is a widespread phenomenon. Millions of people around the world now track, document, and analyse their physical activities, vital functions, and daily habits through wearable devices, apps, and platforms. The aim is to assess and improve health, productivity, and wellbeing. The current Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the uptake of tracking technologies. At the heart of this trend lies the quantification of the body, deemed as a key element in medical pr…Read more
-
14Quasi ens artificiale. Suárez on Angelic Assumed BodiesIn Antonio Petagine & Valentin Braekman (eds.), Les anges dans la philosophie médiévale et moderne. Études offertes à Tiziana Suarez-Nani, Aracne. pp. 351-372. 2023.In this paper, I address Francisco Suárez's solution to the problem of the angelic assumption of artificial bodies, dealing in particular with the discussion in his De Angelis (book 4, chapters 33-39). The peculiarity of Suárez's approach lies, in particular, in the fact that it is one of the last major attempts to reformulate scholastic angelology from the ground up, taking into account the new spirit of the Counter-Reformation. Despite this goal, Suárez consistently discusses these issues taki…Read more
-
13L'angelo e la macchina. Sulla genesi della res cogitans cartesianaFrancoAngeli. 2018.A widespread historiographical portrayal represented Descartes' dualism as constituted in direct contrast with Aquinas' concept of soul-form. In the wake of the many studies that have opposed this prejudice in recent decades, this book reconstructs the fifteenth and seventeenth-century debate on psychology, focusing primarily on the Jesuit context and on the intersection between Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Augustinianism in early modern France. Beginning with a rigorous investigation of the …Read more
-
11Pedro da Fonseca: Humanism and Metaphysics (edited book)Brepols. 2023.This volume is the first collection of essays in English devoted to Pedro da Fonseca SJ (1527-1599), his intellectual endeavour, and thought. The book brings together some of today's leading specialists in early modern scholasticism, Portuguese Aristotelianism, and the history of the Society of Jesus, in order to present a reliable portrait of Fonseca's institutional role, to reconstruct his thought on many important aspects of scholastic metaphysics, and to discuss the reception of his work in …Read more
-
10Quantifying Bodies and Health. Interdisciplinary Approaches (edited book)Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos. 2021.How are the contemporary conceptions of the living body and health related to numerical systems? Addressing the contemporary practice of quantification of bodies and health, such a question is bound to arise. As a discipline historically positioned amidst natural sciences, technology, and art, medicine has always been sensitive to theories and apparatuses able to quantify and reshape the living body, as well as to the practical possibility of operating on it. This is why, in the era where teleco…Read more
-
8Corpus sive materia. Estensione e movimento in DescartesIn Carlo Altini, Berenice Cavarra & Giovanni Cerro (eds.), Nel labirinto della materia. Il dibattito filosofico e teologico dalla tarda antichità all'età moderna, Edizioni Di Storia E Letteratura. 2021.As of the early seventeenth century, the collapse of the hylomorphic conception of nature offers the opportunity for an association - which was unthinkable in the Aristotelo-scholastic context - between the notions of 'body' and matter. In this paper, I endeavor to show that Descartes is among the emblematic cases of this conceptual switch, dwelling on his sources, as well as on the metaphysical and physical correlates of this option.
-
8The Quantification of Life and Health from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. Intersections of Medicine and Philosophy (edited book)Palgrave Macmillan. 2023.This edited volume explores the intersection of medicine and philosophy throughout history, calling attention to the role of quantification in understanding the medical body. Retracing current trends and debates to examine the quantification of the body throughout the early modern, modern and early contemporary age, the authors contextualise important issues of both medical and philosophical significance, with chapters focusing on the quantification of temperaments and fluids, complexions, funct…Read more
-
8Virtuality Beyond Reproduction. Remarks on the History of MetaphysicsIn Joaquim Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art to Technology, Springer. pp. 181-210. 2019.This essay focuses on the ontology of the virtual, looking especially at its historical connection with today’s technology. The work begins by discussing the metaphysical structure of the Aristotelian dynamis, understood as the conceptual root of the Latin virtus. Reading Aristotle, especially through bergsonian concepts, I show how his dynamis allows a proto-deterministic account of spontaneity, strictly related to goal-oriented processes of human serial production and with the possibility of a…Read more
-
5Pedro da Fonseca. Humanism and Metaphysics (edited book)Brepols. 2023.Also known as the "Portuguese Aristotle", Pedro da Fonseca S. J. (1527-1599) was a prominent figure in early modern Scholasticism and particularly in the history of the Society of Jesus. He took part in the writing of the Society's Ratio Studiorum and laid the groundwork for the publication of the famous Cursus Conimbricensis (1592-1606). Furthermore, he was the author of an influential handbook of logic and dialectics (the Institutionum Dialecticarum, 1564), in addition to being one of the most…Read more
-
1Separated Soul and Its Nature: Francisco Suárez in the Scholastic DebateIn Robert Maryks & Juan Antonio Senent de Frutos (eds.), Francisco Suárez (1548–1617): Jesuits and the Complexities of Modernity, Brill. 2019.For Christian theology, the survival of the soul after the death of the body is a matter of fact. However, its philosophical explanation is probably the most peculiar issue of Thomas Aquinas’ radically Aristotelianaccount of body-soul. For both Augustine and Avicenna – who, together with Aristotle, can be considered the main sources of thirteenth century philosophy – the certainty of the immaterial soul’s ability to survive independently from the body was so strong that, coining their very own n…Read more
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
Review of Giovanni Leghissa (ed.), "La condizione postumana" - n. 361 di Aut Aut (review)Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia 15 307-317. 2015.
Simone Guidi
Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche
-
Consiglio Nazionale Delle RicercheResearcher