Pedro da Fonseca

Also known as the «Portuguese Aristotle», Pedro da Fonseca S. J. (1527-1599) was a leading figure in modern scholasticism and particularly in the history of the Society of Jesus. He laid the groundwork for the publication of the famous Cursus Conimbricensis (1592- 1606) and was the author of an influential textbook of logic and dialectic, the Institutionum Dialecticarum Libri Octo (1564), officially recommended by the Ratio Studiorum. He was also one of the most important and recognized commentators on Aristotle’s Metaphysics in the 16th century (with his unfinished Commentaria, 1577-1612).

This volume is the first collection of essays in English devoted to Fonseca, 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 the early modern age.