bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Kilvington, Richard (d. 1361)
Authors: Kretzmann Norman
Published: September 2018

Richard Kilvington, an English philosopher and theologian, was born near the beginning of the fourteenth cantury and died in 1361. His academic career in Oxford (1320–38) was followed by diplomatic service and an ecclesiastical career that culminated in his serving as dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London. His known works (besides a couple of sermons) are commentaries or ‘questions’ (philosophical inquiries) regarding three works by Aristotle, a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (a standard academic requirement for theologians in the later Middle Ages) and the Sophismata. Only his Sophismata has been edited, translated and studied. An ordered collection of philosophical puzzles designed to raise and settle issues in natural philosophy and epistemology, it is one of the earliest and subtlest contributions to the literature associated with the Oxford Calculators.
Marston, Roger (c.1235–c.1303)
Authors: Etzkorn Girard J.
Published: September 2018

Roger Marston, an English Franciscan philosopher–theologian, was a pupil of John Pecham and a fellow student with Matthew of Aquasparta. Following closely in the footsteps of his master, Marston championed the views of Augustine in a conscious effort to counteract the growing fascination with Averroistic Aristotelianism. Of his works, three sets of Quaestiones disputatae (Disputed Questions) and four sets of quodlibetal questions, the Quodlibeta Quatuor (Four Quodlibets), survive.
Matthew of Aquasparta (c.1238–1302)
Authors: Brown Stephen F.
Published: September 2018

Matthew walked in the footsteps of Bonaventure, which were widened by his first followers, Walter of Bruges, John Pecham and William of Mare. For them, the knowledge of God’s existence is the first truth implanted in the human mind. God’s existence cannot be proved a priori (from something prior to it), since it is the first truth. It is a truth that is immediately known, not in the sense that there is actual knowledge of God implanted in the mind at birth, but because any judgment we make presupposes that the mind has contact with the Truth that is the measure of all truth. Such a first Truth must exist.
Neckham, Alexander (1157–1217)
Authors: Jordan Mark D.
Published: September 2018

Alexander Neckham is one of the leading thinkers in the English appropriation of the new science made available during the twelfth century. His best known writings, especially De naturis rerum (On the Natures of Things), show a prodigious acquaintance with natural history. Neckham was most concerned, however, that the study of the natural world be made to serve the purposes of theology. He thus strove not only to draw moral lessons from nature, but to apply to theological method the doctrines of the new logic, especially Aristotle’s Topics. While Neckham cannot be said to have mastered the texts that were flooding into the Latin West, he certainly did realize the challenges and the possibilities that they offered to inherited theologies.
Nemesius (fl. c.390–400 AD)
Authors: Bussanich John
Published: September 2018

Nemesius’ treatise De natura hominis (On the Nature of Man) is the first work by a Christian thinker dedicated to articulating a comprehensive philosophical anthropology. Like many of his pagan and Christian contemporaries, Nemesius employs Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoic ethical psychologies in developing his views, but he also provides remarkably detailed accounts of the physiological structure and function of the sense-faculties based on extensive medical knowledge.
Nicholas of Autrecourt (c.1300–69)
Authors: Perler Dominik
Published: September 2018

Unlike most of his late medieval contemporaries, Nicholas of Autrecourt did not subscribe to Aristotelianism. Instead, he radically challenged the foundations of Aristotle’s metaphysics and epistemology by asking two questions: first, how are we supposed to explain the basic constituents of the world, given that the Aristotelian categories are mere theoretical constructions and not immediately perceivable? Second, what can we know with absolute certitude, given that sense perception – the starting point in Aristotelian epistemology – is fallible and unreliable? Focusing on these two questions, Nicholas elaborated an atomistic metaphysics and defended an epistemology that emphasizes knowledge of a logical principle (the principle of non-contradiction), dismissing all knowledge based on inductive reasoning as uncertain.
Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64)
Authors: Hopkins Jasper
Published: September 2018

Also called Nicolaus Cusanus, this German cardinal takes his distinguishing name from the city of his birth, Kues (or Cusa, in Latin), on the Moselle river between Koblenz and Trier. Nicholas was influenced by Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Ramon Llull, Ricoldo of Montecroce, Master Eckhart, Jean Gerson and Heimericus de Campo, as well as by more distant figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius and John Scottus Eriugena. His eclectic system of thought pointed in the direction of a transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In his own day as in ours, Nicholas was most widely known for his early work De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance). In it, he gives expression to his view that the human mind needs to discover its necessary ignorance of what the Divine Being is like, an ignorance that results from the infinite ontological and cognitive disproportion between Infinity itself (that is, God) and the finite human or angelic knower. Correlated with the doctrine of docta ignorantia is that of coincidentia oppositorum in deo, the coincidence of opposites in God. All things coincide in God in the sense that God, as undifferentiated being, is beyond all opposition, beyond all determination as this rather than that.

Nicholas is also known for his rudimentary cosmological speculation, his prefiguring of certain metaphysical and epistemological themes found later in Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, his ecclesiological teachings regarding the controversy over papal versus conciliar authority, his advocacy of a religious ecumenism of sorts, his interest in purely mathematical topics and his influence on the theologian Paul Tillich in the twentieth century. A striking tribute to Nicholas’ memory still stands today: the hospice for elderly, indigent men that he caused to be erected at Kues between 1452 and 1458 and that he both endowed financially and invested with his personal library. This small but splendid library, unravaged by the intervening wars and consisting of some three hundred volumes, includes manuscripts written in Nicholas’ own hand.
Peter of Spain (c.1205–77)
Authors: Longeway John
Published: September 2018

For hundreds of years, a number of works in philosophical psychology, medicine and logic have been attributed to a single thirteenth-century author known as Peter of Spain. According to the latest research, however, there were actually two authors of that name. One, who later became Pope John XXI, wrote on medicine and on the soul. In his writings on the soul, this Peter argued for an independent material form that prepared the body for the soul, its substantial form, and he took an Augustinian view of God’s role in illuminating the intellect in ordinary cognition. The second Peter of Spain was a Spanish Dominican who wrote the logical works. He is chiefly known for his Tractatus, an influential textbook of logic written before 1250, expounding both traditional topics and the theory of supposition, concerning reference in sentential contexts.
Richard of St Victor (d. 1173)
Authors: Emery Kent
Published: September 2018

Richard is most famous for his contemplative doctrine, which is based on a biblical anthropology that involves a philosophical psychology and noetic theory. Richard’s writings should be understood in the context of Hugh of St Victor’s programme for a complete theological pedagogy, organized according to the threefold sense of Scripture (literal, allegorical, tropological). Richard’s specifically exegetical works include an encyclopedic introduction to the methods of interpreting Scripture, the Liber exceptionum, and important commentaries on the Apocalypse and Ezekiel. Like Hugh, he stresses that the literal sense of Scripture is the foundation of its spiritual senses.
Themistius (c. AD 317–c. AD 388)
Authors: Bussanich John
Published: September 2018

As a pagan philosopher and adviser to Christian Roman emperors, Themistius aimed at making the celebrated writings of his heroes Plato and Aristotle more accessible through explanatory paraphrase. An apostle of cultural Hellenism to his contemporaries, in the Middle Ages he was widely known as an important epitomizer of Aristotle.
Ulrich of Strasbourg (c.1220/5–1277)
Authors: Bussanich John
Published: September 2018

A Dominican theologian and philosopher and a student of Albert The Great, Ulrich was well known for a widely studied summa theologiae, De summo bono (On the Supreme Good), which represents an advance over previous summae in plan and organization. Ulrich provides a rich synthesis of Christian Neoplatonic theology and mysticism by systematizing the Aristotelianized Neoplatonic philosophical theologies of Albert the Great, Pseudo-Dionysius’ De divinis nominibus and the Liber de causis. He exercised a notable influence on the Rhineland mystics.
William of Auvergne (c.1180–1249)
Authors: Marrone Steven P.
Published: September 2018

Active in Paris during the third and fourth decades of the thirteenth century, when universities were emerging as centres of Western European intellectual life, William played a decisive role in the early development of high medieval philosophy. His writing reveals a familiarity with Aristotle, all of whose major works except the Metaphysics were readily available in Latin translation, and with the Islamic philosophers, most especially Avicenna but also Averroes, whose commentaries on Aristotle were just beginning to circulate. William looked back to the Neoplatonic traditions of the twelfth century, but he also looked ahead to the late-thirteenth-century Aristotelianizing that he and his contemporary, Robert Grosseteste, did so much to promote.
William of Auxerre (1140/50–1231)
Authors: MacDonald Scott
Published: September 2018

William’s career spans the decades at the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth century during which the newly recovered Aristotelian natural philosophy, metaphysics and ethics and the newly available works of great Muslim thinkers such as Avicenna and Averroes brought enormous energy and upheaval to intellectual culture. William’s own views are traditional, owing their largest debts to Augustine, Boethius and Anselm. However, his major work, Summa aurea, is an influential precursor of the monumental systematic theological treatises that followed half a century later.
William of Champeaux (c.1070–c.1120)
Authors: Tweedale Martin M.
Published: September 2018

William studied under Anselm of Laon and became one of a number of famous teachers of logic, rhetoric, grammar and theology in early twelfth-century France, teachers who helped to establish the schools which eventually turned into the University of Paris. He is perhaps best known for his dispute with his young pupil Peter Abelard over the reality of universals, a debate which William lost so badly that most of his students elected to be taught by Abelard instead.
William of Conches (fl. c.1130)
Authors: Marenbon John
Published: September 2018

William of Conches – whom many historians have attached to the School of Chartres – was one of the early twelfth century’s keenest commentators on Platonic texts, and wrote also on natural science. He believed in the harmony of Platonism and Christianity. He thought that the ostensibly pagan texts of Plato and his followers contained Christian truths which the interpreter needed to uncover, while Platonic (and more recent) science could help towards an understanding of the account of creation in Genesis.
Biel, Gabriel (before 1425–95)
Authors: Farthing John L.
Published: September 2018

Biel was the last great systematizer of scholastic theology and philosophy. Not noted for originality, he sought to produce a synthesis of the work of his predecessors. His thought is pervasively religious; a profound sense of the freedom of God’s will is basic to his perspective. He followed Ockham and Duns Scotus in emphasizing the sheer contingency of things. Nature, morality and salvation depend entirely on God’s will, and God could have determined otherwise. Such a view places sharp limits on the ability of reason to discover the truth about the nature and will of God; Biel subordinates reason to faith (although he is a master in the use of reason to defend revealed truth). The radical freedom of God coexists with significant moral freedom in humanity, since it is decreed by God that humans should be free to play an active role in determining their own destiny. Implied in this view of the human situation is an activist, pragmatic tendency, an interest in concrete applications of theoretical insights rather than in abstract speculation for its own sake.
Blasius of Parma (d. 1416)
Authors: Vescovini Graziella Federici
Published: September 2018

Blasius of Parma was an important Italian philosopher, mathematician and astrologer who popularized the achievements of Oxford logic and Parisian physics in Italy. He questioned the Aristotelian foundations of medieval physical science, mechanics, astronomy and optics, thus helping to open the way to the mathematics, optics and statics of modern times. His teaching influenced the artists of the Florentine Renaissance in their rediscovery of linear perspective, and his discussion of proportions influenced the Paduan mathematicians up to the time of Galileo. He presented an atomist and quantitative account of physical reality, and a materialist account of the human intellect. His consequent denial of the immortality of the soul won him the title of ‘diabolical doctor’ (doctor diabolicus). His position on the human ability to avoid astrological determinism was equivocal. Though his work was scholastic in style, he enjoyed good relations with such Italian humanists as Vittorino da Feltre, whose request for lessons in mathematics he refused. In Florence, he took part in conversations between humanists and scholastics.
Cardano, Girolamo (1501–76)
Authors: Kessler Eckhard
Published: September 2018

The Renaissance Italian Girolamo Cardano is famous for his colourful personality, as well as for his work in medicine and mathematics, and indeed in almost all the arts and sciences. He was an eclectic philosopher, and one of the founders of the so-called new philosophy of nature developed in the sixteenth century. He used both the Aristotelian and the Neoplatonic traditions as starting points, and following the medical paradigm of organic being, he transformed the traditional Aristotelian universe into an animated universe in which, thanks to their organic functional order, all individual parts strive towards the conservation both of themselves and of the whole universe. As a result, they can be subjected to a functional analysis. In his more casual writings on moral philosophy, Cardano showed his orientation to be basically Stoic.
Charron, Pierre (1541–1603)
Authors: Popkin Richard H.
Published: September 2018

Pierre Charron was a French Catholic priest of the late sixteenth century who used Montaigne’s sceptical thought, which he presented in didactic form, in order to refute Calvinists, non-Christians, and atheists. He advanced a fideistic defence of religious thought which was based on accepting complete scepticism while appealing to faith alone as the source of religious knowledge. His De la Sagesse (On Wisdom) (1601) is one of the first significant philosophical works to be written in a modern language. It is also one of the first modern works to set forth a naturalistic moral theory independent of religious considerations, and based primarily on Stoic ideas. Charron’s views were extremely popular in the seventeenth century, and they influenced many sceptically inclined thinkers in France and England. His sceptical ‘defence’ of religion was regarded as insincere by some of the orthodox theologians, but other important religious thinkers defended him.
Erasmus, Desiderius (c.1466–1536)
Authors: Rummel Erika
Published: September 2018

Although Erasmus was not a systematic philosopher, he gave a philosophical cast to many of his writings. He believed in the human capacity for self-improvement through education and in the relative preponderance of nurture over nature. Ideally, education promoted docta pietas, a combination of piety and learning. Erasmus’ political thought is dominated by his vision of universal peace and the notions of consensus and consent, which he sees as the basis of the state. At the same time he upholds the ideal of the patriarchal prince, a godlike figure to his people, but accountable to God in turn. Erasmus’ epistemology is characterized by scepticism. He advocates collating arguments on both sides of a question but suspending judgment. His scepticism does not extend to articles of faith, however. He believes in absolute knowledge through revelation and reserves calculations of probability for cases that are not settled by the authority of Scripture or the doctrinal pronouncements of the Church, the conduit of divine revelation. Erasmus’ pioneering efforts as a textual critic of the Bible and his call for a reformation of the Church in its head and members brought him into conflict with conservative Catholic theologians. His support for the Reformation movement was equivocal, however. He refused to endorse the radical methods of the reformers and engaged in a polemic with Luther over the question of free will. On the whole, Erasmus was more interested in the moral and spiritual than in the doctrinal aspects of the Reformation. He promoted inner piety over the observance of rites, and disparaged scholastic speculations in favour of the philosophia Christi taught in the gospel. The term ‘Christian humanism’ best describes Erasmus’ philosophy, which successfully combined Christian thought with the classical tradition revived by Renaissance humanists.
Ficino, Marsilio (1433–99)
Authors: Hankins James
Published: September 2018

With Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino was the most important philosopher working under the patronage of Lorenzo de’Medici, ‘Il Magnifico’, in the Florence of the High Renaissance. Ficino’s main contribution was as a translator of Platonic philosophy from Greek into Latin: he produced the first complete Latin version of the works of Plato (1484) and Plotinus (1492) as well as renderings of a number of minor Platonists. He supplied many of his translations with philosophical commentaries, and these came to exercise great influence on the interpretation of Platonic philosophy in the Renaissance and early modern periods. Ficino’s most important philosophical work, the Theologia platonica de immortalitate animae (Platonic Theology, On the Immortality of the Soul) (1474) aimed to use Platonic arguments to combat the Averroists, ‘impious’ scholastic philosophers who denied that the immortality of the soul could be proven by reason. The most famous concept associated with his name is that of ‘Platonic love’.
John of St Thomas (1589–1644)
Authors: Doyle John P.
Published: September 2018

The seventeenth-century Portuguese Dominican, John of St Thomas or John Poinsot, was a major figure in late scholastic philosophy and theology. Educated at Coimbra and Louvain, he taught both disciplines in Spain: at Madrid, Plasencia and Alcalá. Aspiring to be a faithful disciple of Thomas Aquinas, he published a three-volume Cursus philosophicus thomisticus (Thomistic Philosophical Course) and before he died began the publication of a Cursus theologicus (Theological Course). His philosophical writing was explicitly on logic and natural philosophy. However, in both his philosophical and theological works, he treated many metaphysical, epistemological and ethical issues. His logic is divided into two parts, formal and material. Of particular interest is his semiotic doctrine which appears in the second part. In natural philosophy, he explained Aristotle with a Thomistic slant. While following Aquinas in theology, John at times developed his master’s doctrine along new lines. Both in his own time and after he has had considerable authority within scholasticism, especially for Thomists. Among those whom he has influenced in twentieth-century Thomism are Joseph Gredt, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Santiago Ramirez, Jacques Maritain and Yves Simon.
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de (1533–92)
Authors: Popkin Richard H.
Published: September 2018

Montaigne was a sixteenth-century French philosopher and essayist, who became known as the French Socrates. During the religious wars between the Catholics and the Protestants in France, he was a friend and adviser to leaders of both sides, including the Protestant leader Henri de Navarre, who converted to Catholicism and became King Henri IV. Montaigne counselled general toleration for all believers, a view promulgated by the new king in the Edict of Nantes (1598). His main literary work was in the form of essais (a word originally meaning ‘attempts’), or discussions of various subjects. In these he developed various themes from the sceptical and Stoic literature of antiquity, and in his unique digressive way presented the first full statement in modern times of Pyrrhonian scepticism and cultural relativism. In particular, he presented and modernized the ancient sceptical arguments about the unreliability of information gained by the senses or by reason, about the inability of human beings to find a satisfactory criterion of knowledge, and about the relativity of moral opinions. His advocacy of complete scepticism and relativism was coupled with an appeal to accept religion on the basis of faith alone. His writings became extremely popular, and the English translation by John Florio, first published in 1603, was probably known to Shakespeare and Francis Bacon. Montaigne, whose essays provided the basic vocabulary for modern philosophy written in vernacular languages, was one of the most influential thinkers of the Renaissance, and his works are regarded as classics of literature and philosophy.
Nifo, Agostino (c.1470–1538)
Authors: Mahoney Edward P.
Published: September 2018

Agostino Nifo was a university teacher, medical doctor and extremely prolific writer. His books included many commentaries on Aristotle’s logic, natural philosophy and metaphysics, as well as original works on topics ranging from elementary logic to beauty and love. However, his most important works had to do with the human intellect, and with Averroes’ view that there is just one intellect shared by all human beings. Although he never accepted Averroes’ position as true, he did initially believe that Averroes correctly interpreted Aristotle on this point. He also entered into public controversy with Pomponazzi on the question whether human immortality could be proved. Nifo’s Aristotelianism reflects his interest in many different traditions of commentary on Aristotle, including medieval Latin commentators, especially Thomas Aquinas, medieval Arab commentators and their Latin followers, especially John of Jandun, but most of all the Greek commentators. Here he shows the strong influence of Renaissance humanism, which made the Greek texts available. It was when Nifo himself learned Greek that he came to abandon the notion that Averroes was an accurate interpreter of Aristotle. Nifo was also very interested in Plato and Platonism, particularly as presented by Marsilio Ficino. His careful presentations of other people’s doctrines were popular in university circles for much of the sixteenth century.
Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) (1493–1541)
Authors: Ashworth E.J.
Published: September 2018

Paracelsus (pseudonym of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) was an itinerant Swiss surgeon and physician who formulated a new philosophy of medicine based on a combination of chemistry, Neoplatonism and the occult, all within a Christian framework. His works, usually in German rather than Latin, were mostly published after his death. His importance for medical practice lay in his insistence on observation and experiment, and his use of chemical methods for preparing drugs. He rejected Galen’s explanation of disease as an imbalance of humours, along with the traditional doctrine of the four elements. He saw the human being as a microcosm that reflected the structure and elements of the macrocosm, thus presenting a unified view of human beings and a universe in which everything was interconnected and full of vital powers. Paracelsian chemical medicine was very popular in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, largely due to its presentation as part of a general theory.
Platonism, Renaissance
Authors: Hankins James
Published: September 2018

Though it never successfully challenged the dominance of Aristotelian school philosophy, the revival of Plato and Platonism was an important phenomenon in the philosophical life of the Renaissance and contributed much to the new, more pluralistic philosophical climate of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Medieval philosophers had had access only to a few works by Plato himself, and, while the indirect influence of the Platonic tradition was pervasive, few if any Western medieval philosophers identified themselves as Platonists. In the Renaissance, by contrast, Western thinkers had access to the complete corpus of Plato’s works as well as to the works of Plotinus and many late ancient Platonists; there was also a small but influential group of thinkers who identified themselves as Christian Platonists. In the fifteenth century, the most important of these were to be found in the circles of Cardinal Bessarion (1403–72) in Rome and of Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) in Florence. Platonic themes were also central to the philosophies of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), the two most powerful and original thinkers of the Quattrocento. While the dominant interpretation of the Platonic dialogues throughout the Renaissance remained Neoplatonic, there was also a minority tradition that revived the sceptical interpretation of the dialogues that had been characteristic of the early Hellenistic Academy.

In the sixteenth century Platonism became a kind of ‘countercultural’ phenomenon, and Plato came to be an important authority for scientists and cosmologists who wished to challenge the Aristotelian mainstream: men like Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Francesco Patrizi and Galileo. Nevertheless, the Platonic dialogues were rarely taught in the humanistic schools of fifteenth-century Italy. Plato was first established as an important school author in the sixteenth century, first at the University of Paris and later in German universities. In Italy chairs of Platonic philosophy began to be established for the first time in the 1570s. Though the hegemony of Aristotelianism was in the end broken by the new philosophy of the seventeenth century, Plato’s authority did much to loosen the grip of Aristotle on the teaching of natural philosophy in the universities of late Renaissance Europe.
Rabelais, François (c.1483–1553)
Authors: Duval Edwin M.
Published: September 2018

Rabelais, a French humanist and comic writer of the Renaissance, is best known for his chronicles of Gargantua and Pantagruel, in which coarse popular humour, fine Lucianic irony and staggering erudition are uniquely blended, and which claim to reveal, first appearances notwithstanding, ‘certain very high sacraments and dread mysteries, concerning not only our religion, but also our public and private life’ ([1532–52] 1955: 38).

Rabelais has been subjected to the most contradictory interpretations and judgments. Like Erasmus, whom he admired, Rabelais was attacked in his own time by schismatic Protestants (most notably Calvin) and by reactionary Catholics (most notably the faculty of theology at Paris), as an obscene Lucianic atheist and a heretic. At the same time he was admired and supported by high-minded patrons including Francis I, the king’s devout sister Marguerite de Navarre, and Cardinal Jean Du Bellay. Even today Rabelais’ religion and philosophy are the subject of debate among scholars, while his work is known to non-specialists more for the ‘Rabelaisian’ ribaldry of a few pages than for the complex irony and profoundly humanistic design that characterize his works as a whole.
Suárez, Francisco (1548–1617)
Authors: Doyle John P.
Published: September 2018

Francisco Suárez was the main channel through which medieval philosophy flowed into the modern world. He was educated first in law and, after his entry into the Jesuits, in philosophy and theology. He wrote on all three subjects. His philosophical writing was principally in the areas of metaphysics, psychology and philosophy of law, but in both his philosophical and theological works he treated many related epistemological, cosmological and ethical issues. While his basic outlook is that of a very independent Thomist, his metaphysics follows along a line earlier drawn by Avicenna (980–1037) and Duns Scotus (1266–1308) to treat as its subject ‘being in so far as it is real being’. By the addition of the word ‘real’ to Aristotle’s formula, Suárez emphasized Aristotle’s division of being into categorial being and ‘being as true’, as well as Aristotle’s exclusion of the latter from the object of metaphysics. Divided into a general part dealing with the concept of being as such, its properties and causes, and a second part which considers particular beings (God and creatures) in addition to the categories of being, Suárez’s metaphysics ends with a notable treatment of mind-dependent beings, or ‘beings of reason’. These last encompass negations, privations and relations of reason, but Suárez’s treatment centres on those negations which are ‘impossible’ or self-contradictory. Inasmuch as such beings of reason cannot exist outside the mind, they are excluded from the object of metaphysics and relegated to the status of ‘being as true’. In philosophy of law he was a proponent of natural law and of a theory of government in which power comes from God through the people. He was important for the early development of modern international law and the doctrine of just war. While his brand of Thomism was opposed in his own time and after by some scholastics, especially Dominicans, he had great authority among his fellow Jesuits, as well as other Catholic and Protestant authors. Outside scholasticism, he has influenced a variety of modern thinkers.
Toletus, Franciscus (1533–96)
Authors: Doyle John P.
Published: September 2018

Toletus had an independent, somewhat eclectic, but fundamentally Thomistic outlook. In philosophy his most important works were his commentaries on Aristotle in the areas of logic and natural philosophy. In these commentaries he drew upon the whole previous scholastic tradition to raise and answer questions which were debated in his time and later. In theology he commented upon the greater part of Aquinas’ Summa theologiae. Here again he drew upon scholastic philosophers to raise and discuss a wide variety of metaphysical, epistemological and ethical topics. Far from being a slavish follower of Aquinas or Aristotle, he expressed his respectful disagreement with them wherever reason compelled it.
George of Trebizond (c.1396–c.1472)
Authors: Monfasani John
Published: September 2018

George was a fifteenth-century humanist important for his work in rhetoric, his translations from the Greek, and his role in the Renaissance Plato–Aristotle controversy. In 1458, as a fierce opponent of Plato and supporter of Aristotle, he transformed what had previously been a quarrel among Byzantines into a major European controversy. He also wrote the first and, for a time, the most popular humanist manual of logic.
Christine de Pizan (1365–c.1430)
Authors: Willard Charity Cannon
Published: September 2018

Christine de Pizan, France’s ‘first woman of letters’, is primarily remembered as a courtly poet and a propagandist for women. Her extensive writings were influenced by the early humanists, reflecting an interest in education (particularly for women and young people) and in government. Following Aquinas, Christine defined wisdom as the highest intellectual virtue and tried to apply the concept of the just war to contemporary problems. Her works are also noteworthy for their contribution to the transmission of Italian literature to Parisian intellectual circles.
Vanini, Giulio Cesare (1585–1619)
Authors: Shelford April G.
Published: September 2018

Although he wrote little, Giulio Cesare Vanini occupies a secure place in European intellectual history. His philosophical atheism connects the developments in late Italian Renaissance thought with the audacious libertins érudits of seventeenth-century France. He is identified with the Aristotelian naturalism of Padua and disseminated the Machiavellian view of religion as a political tool. Conflicts with ecclesiastical authorities in Italy, England and France forced him to travel widely. He fled Paris when the condemnation of his second book was imminent, briefly finding refuge in Toulouse under a false name. In 1619, unaware of his true identity, the Parlement there executed him for atheism, blasphemy and impiety.
Bayle, Pierre (1647–1706)
Authors: Larmore Charles
Published: September 2018

Bayle was one of the most profound sceptical thinkers of all time. He was also a champion of religious toleration, and an important moral philosopher. The fundamental aim of his scepticism was to curb the pretensions of reason in order to make room for faith. Human reason, he believed, suffers from two fundamental weaknesses: it has a limited capacity to motivate our actions, and it is more a negative than a positive faculty, better at uncovering the defects of various philosophical positions than at justifying any one of them. This conception of reason led Bayle to see, with an uncommon clarity, that the nature of the sceptic’s arguments must be to proceed by internal demolition, showing how claims to knowledge undermine themselves in their own terms.

Bayle’s moral thought is to be found essentially in his critique of attempts (such as that of Malebranche) to show how God, all-powerful and good, could have created a world in which there is evil. Such theodicies, he argued, rely on unacceptable models of moral rationality. Bayle’s arguments reveal a view of moral reasoning that is of considerable interest in its own right. Like Malebranche (and contrary to Leibniz, who attacked Bayle’s critique of theodicy), he believed that there are duties superior to that of bringing about the most good overall. But unlike Malebranche, Bayle saw these duties as lying not in what the rational agent owes himself but in what he owes to the inviolable individuality of others. This outlook had its psychological roots, no doubt, in Bayle’s own experience as a Huguenot victim of religious persecution.
Charleton, Walter (1620–1707)
Authors: Rogers G.A.J.
Published: September 2018

The physician Walter Charleton was the first to introduce Epicurean atomism into England in the form advocated in France by Gassendi. Charleton’s version of atomism, although largely derivative, was nevertheless influential. Together with his advocacy of a Christian hedonism, it helped to make both atomism in natural philosophy (with its associated mechanistic account of nature) and utilitarian theories in ethics acceptable to such thinkers as Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, John Locke and others associated with the foundation of the Royal Society, of which Charleton was himself an active early member.
Clarke, Samuel (1675–1729)
Authors: Gaukroger Stephen
Published: September 2018

Regarded in his lifetime along with Locke as the leading English philosopher, Clarke was best known in his role as an advocate of a thoroughgoing natural theology and as a defender of Newtonianism, most notably in his famous correspondence with Leibniz. His natural theology was set out in his Boyle lectures of 1704 and 1705, but it left little room for revelation, and endeared him to neither side in the quarrel between deists and orthodox Anglicans. A staunch proponent of Newtonian natural philosophy, he defended it against criticisms of its notions of gravity and absolute space.
Clauberg, Johannes (1622–65)
Authors: Garber Daniel
Published: September 2018

Johannes Clauberg was a member of the Cartesian school in the years immediately following Descartes’ death, and is extremely important as an early expositor of Descartes and a spirited defender of the Cartesian philosophy. His writings include a number of direct commentaries on Descartes’ published works, as well as extensions and elaborations of the master’s views.
Culverwell, Nathaniel (c.1618–c.1651)
Authors: Beiser Frederick
Published: September 2018

Nathaniel Culverwell (or Culverwel) was one of the first natural law theorists in seventeenth-century England, and one of the first moral philosophers to stress the primacy of reason. His aim was to revive the natural law tradition of Aquinas and Suarez, which had fallen into disrepute in English Calvinism. Culverwell’s theory is a synthesis of rationalism and voluntarism. It attempts to do justice to both the normative and coercive, to the moral and punitive aspects of law. The emphasis of his theory is, however, strongly rationalist, a reaction against the voluntarist legacy of Calvinism. Culverwell had close connections with some of the leading figures of Cambridge Platonism. He is not, however, a typical member of this school, because of the strong Calvinist strands of his early sermons.
Fardella, Michelangelo (c.1646–1718)
Authors: Floridi Luciano
Published: September 2018

Fardella was one of the first and most famous Italian Cartesians. Influenced by Malebranche and Leibniz, he rejected materialism in metaphysics, and endorsed a strongly Augustinian form of Cartesian dualism in philosophy of mind. In mathematics, he popularized Descartes’ analytic method. An insufficiently radical thinker, the cultural significance of his work rests on his defence of the Cartesian method against scholasticism.
Glanvill, Joseph (1636–80)
Authors: Rogers G.A.J.
Published: September 2018

Joseph Glanvill was an opponent of the scholastic philosophy which he had been taught in England, supporting instead the new learning associated with Francis Bacon and the Royal Society of which he became a Fellow in 1664. Although he called himself a sceptic and is often so classified, this may easily give a misleading picture of his philosophy. He was a sceptic in so far as he believed that human knowledge is very limited, opposing both the extravagant religious ‘enthusiasm’ for doctrines to the contrary which still retained adherents throughout his life, and the more general dogmatism which holds firmly to an opinion even though the evidence does not warrant it. Although he was not untouched by the revival of Platonic philosophies in Cambridge and was a great admirer of Henry More, in general he advocated an anti-dogmatic and generally empirical philosophy which in some ways anticipates the thought of Locke. In one area he might be accused of succumbing to the enthusiasm of his opponents, and that was in his espousal of a belief in witchcraft, though he claimed that in his explorations of the spirit world he was merely concerned to gather empirical evidence for a religious view. His analysis of causation has been held to anticipate that of Hume. Although it is true that he does have some of Hume’s insights, the extent of that anticipation has sometimes been exaggerated.
Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius van (1614–98)
Authors: Brown Stuart
Published: September 2018

Although he lived in the seventeenth century, van Helmont belongs more to late Renaissance than to modern intellectual culture. He was a larger-than-life figure who, in his prime, had an international reputation as an alchemist and a physician. His metaphysical interests came increasingly to the fore, however, and he became particularly associated with Kabbalistic doctrines. A friend of Locke and Henry More, he was also closely connected with Anne Conway and Leibniz, with whom he shared many intellectual affinities. It is these connections that make his philosophy – in particular, his theodicy and his monadology – of enduring interest.
Keckermann, Bartholomew (1571/3–1609)
Authors: Mercer Christia
Published: September 2018

Calvinist philosopher and theologian, Bartholomew Keckermann wrote textbooks in logic, ethics and metaphysics which were widely read and in which he advanced his notion of a system of knowledge. Like so many of his contemporaries in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Keckermann was interested in methodological matters. As professor of philosophy in Danzig, Poland, he implemented a new curriculum intended to give students an encyclopedic education within three years. His proposals had considerable influence on subsequent educators and philosophers, especially in northern Europe.
Latitudinarianism
Authors: Marshall John
Published: September 2018

The term ‘Latitudinarianism’ designated, initially abusively, the attitudes of a group of late seventeenth-century Anglican clergy who advocated ecclesiastical moderation, voiced broad if heavily qualified support for religious toleration, and emphasized an undogmatic probabilism, ‘moral certainty’, a reasoned faith and moral performance over against infallibility, dogma, ritual performance and ‘unreasoning’ faith. They attempted to construct a ‘reasonable’ faith, with some emphasizing belief in carefully evaluated miracles to attest to the central truths of Christianity. The Latitudinarians had considerable influence on the thought of John Locke, among others, although Locke’s anti-clericalism, tolerationism and reticence on the Trinity went beyond their positions. The most important of the Latitudinarians, listed from the most eirenic to the least, were Edward Fowler, Benjamin Whichcote, John Wilkins, John Tillotson, Gilbert Burnet, Joseph Glanvill and Edward Stillingfleet; they were particularly influenced by the thought of William Chillingworth, the Cambridge Platonists and Hugo Grotius.
Malebranche, Nicolas (1638–1715)
Authors: Nadler Steven
Published: September 2018

Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), a French Catholic theologian, was the most important Cartesian philosopher of the second half of the seventeenth century. His philosophical system was a grand synthesis of the thought of his two intellectual mentors: Augustine and Descartes. His most important work, De la recherche de la vérité (The Search After Truth), is a wide-ranging opus that covers various topics in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, physics, the physiology of cognition, and philosophical theology. It was both admired and criticized by many of the most celebrated thinkers of the period (including Leibniz, Arnauld and Locke), and was the focus of several fierce and time-consuming public debates. Malebranche’s philosophical reputation rests mainly on three doctrines. Occasionalism – of which he is the most systematic and famous exponent – is a theory of causation according to which God is the only genuine causal agent in the universe; all physical and mental events in nature are merely ‘occasions’ for God to exercise his necessarily efficacious power. In the doctrine known as ‘vision in God’, Malebranche argues that the representational ideas that function in human knowledge and perception are, in fact, the ideas in God’s understanding, the eternal archetypes or essences of things. And in his theodicy, Malebranche justifies God’s ways and explains the existence of evil and sin in the world by appealing to the simplicity and universality of the laws of nature and grace that God has established and is compelled to follow. In all three doctrines, Malebranche’s overwhelming concern is to demonstrate the essential and active role of God in every aspect – material, cognitive and moral – of the universe.
Overton, Richard (d. circa 1665)
Authors: Thiel Udo
Published: September 2018

Overton was one of the leading figures of the radical Leveller movement in England in the 1640s. He fought for the equality of all men before the law and for complete religious and political toleration, often by appealing to notions such as the social contract and the natural law. In metaphysics he denied that the soul is a separate immaterial and immortal substance, arguing that immortality is not achieved until the resurrection. His views on the soul may have influenced Milton.
Thomas White (1593–1676)
Authors: Southgate Beverley
Published: September 2018

Thomas White’s reputation has suffered unmerited decline since he was described by John Evelyn in 1651 as ‘a learned priest and famous philosopher’. His works embrace theology, metaphysics, natural philosophy and political theory. The leader of a minority faction of English Catholics, known after his alias as ‘Blackloists’, White’s overall intellectual position is determinedly antisceptical, characterized by a certainty-seeking synthesis of old and new. The traditional Aristotelianism of his own education is blended with aspects of the ‘new philosophy’ which he encountered in the 1640s; and in this respect White stands as an important representative of the intellectually turbulent times in which he lived.
Astell, Mary (1666–1731)
Authors: O'Neill Eileen
Published: September 2018

Best known for her proposal to establish a women’s college, Astell published on a variety of other topics: religious dissent, the social contract, the marriage contract, epistemic issues, mind–body dualism, immortality, proofs for God’s existence, reason and revelation, and Locke’s views on ‘thinking matter’. Her correspondence with John Norris treated the pure love of God and occasionalism. On marriage she drew a shrewd contrast between the treatment of political tyranny by contractarians (such as Locke), and their failure to deal with domestic tyranny. Some of her reactions to the views of major philosophers anticipated later debates.
Cavendish, Margaret Lucas (1623–73)
Authors: O'Neill Eileen
Published: September 2018

The only seventeenth-century woman to publish numerous books on natural philosophy, Cavendish presented her materialism in a wide range of literary forms. She abandoned her early commitment to Epicurean atomism and, rejecting the mechanical model of natural change, embraced an organicist materialism. She also addressed the relations that hold among philosophy, gender and literary genre.
Thomasius (Thomas), Christian (1655–1728)
Authors: Haakonssen Knud
Published: September 2018

Christian Thomasius’ stature as the ‘founder’ of the German Enlightenment has been the source of much debate. His many essays dealing with issues in moral enlightenment and law reform (bigamy, witchcraft, torture, heresy, adultery, the use of the vernacular and so on) certainly single him out from other seventeenth-century writers. He was the public philosopher par excellence, a suitable match for August Hermann Francke, the great public theologian. Both men spent most of their career in Halle (in Brandenburg), and it was there that Francke institutionalized pietism, just as Thomasius propagated secular natural law theory. Despite many tensions, pietism and modern natural law thereby fused into a social duty-ethics that was of the greatest importance in shaping the modern Prussian state. The basis for natural law was God’s will and it was the attempt to follow this law that made humanity a moral species. Since humankind could not have any certain knowledge of the content of God’s law, the natural powers of the mind would have to be relied upon, and Thomasius’ thought was an investigation into the nature and social effect of these powers. His best-known result was a series of linked divisions between law and morality, between public and private spheres, between external and internal obligation, and between action and intention.