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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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117Descartes 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
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Data vs. Mathesis. Contrasting Epistemologies in Some Mechanizations and Quantifications of MedicineIn 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. 201-240. 2023.In this chapter I argue that the general category of 'iatromechanics' conceals different views about how mathematics and mathematical physics should be applied in medicine, and thereby about how physiology should be quantified and mathematized. Mechanism, quantification and mathematization are indeed different, albeit interrelated, notions, which overlap without ever coming to be identical, and all of which depend upon the overall epistemological debate over the method for finding truth in scien…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
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9The 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
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133The 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
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Epigenesis and Generative Power in Descartes's Late Scholastic SourcesIn Fabrizio Baldassarri (ed.), Descartes and Medicine: Problems, Responses and Survival of a Cartesian Discipline, Brepols. pp. 59-79. 2023.What does Descartes's embryology look, if related to the Scholastic theories of his time? In order to reply to this question, the present chapter aims at sketching a portrait of the embryological epigenetics Descartes could find in his recognized Scholastic sources (the Commentaries on Aristotle by Toledo, the Coimbra Jesuits, Suárez, and Rubio, as well as the Summae by Eustachius a Sancto Paulo and Abra de Raçonis), a tradition that received and incorporated in the Aristotelian-Galenic body man…Read more
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16Quasi 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
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272“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
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7Pedro 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
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Pedro da Fonseca on Substance, Subsistence, and SuppositIn Simone Guidi & Mario Santiago Carvalho (eds.), Pedro da Fonseca. Humanism and Metaphysics, Brepols. 2023.Twenty years before Suárez’s Metaphysicae disputationes, Pedro da Fonseca offered one of the most impressive modern attempts to reorder Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In the present chapter, I will endeavour to show how insightful Fonseca’s effort truly was, by dealing with his ousiology. I will focus especially on the Jesuit’s account of three pivotal concepts in the scholastic theory of substance, i.e. Divine Substance, created substance and prime substance, or supposit. These notions are primarily …Read more
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14Pedro 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
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156Introducing 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
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Separated soul and its nature: Francisco Suárez in the scholastic debateIn Robert A. Maryks, Senent de Frutos & Juan Antonio (eds.), Francisco Suárez (1548-1617): Jesuits and the complexities of modernity, Brill. 2019.
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150Indivisibles, 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
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168Parts, 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
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226Introduction - 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
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697Ecstasy 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
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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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Review of Francesca Bonicalzi, Silvano Facioni (eds), "L'intrico dell'io", Jaca Books 2014 (review)Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia 17 465-471. 2015.--
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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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Review of Marin Cureau de La Chambre, "Quale sia la conoscenza degli animali e fin dove possa estendersi", a cura di Emanuela Scribano, Felici Editore 2010 (review)Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia 6. 2011.
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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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Review of Loana Liccioli, "Medicina More Mechanico. La fisiologia di Descartes", Archetipolibri 2011 (review)Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia 9. 2012.
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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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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
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Consiglio Nazionale Delle RicercheResearcher