Quaestio

The paper aims to provide an updated biography of Benet Perera in the historical background of the early years of the Collegio Romano. As one of the first teachers at the Collegio Romano, Benet Perera played a significant role in the debate on the different drafts of the Constitutiones and the Rationes studiorum of the Jesuit order, often generating criticisms among his colleagues and brothers in the faith (for instance, Diego de Ledesma and Achille Gagliardi). Debating on disciplines and methods of teaching, these discussions involved some crucial topics from an epistemological point of view: mainly concerning the scientific status and role of metaphysics.

Benet Perera started his philosophical career with lecturing philosophy at the Jesuit college in Rome in 1558. Although numerous documents reveal that his lectures were highly appreciated by his listeners, it seems that around the year 1564 Perera’s teachings were criticized by two of his colleagues at Rome, Diego de Ledesma and Achille Gagliardi. They feared Perera would give too much value to the Arab philosopher Averroes and that Perera’s method of teaching would pose a danger to Christian doctrines by raising doubts whether those pious doctrines can be demonstrated within the framework of an Aristotelian philosophy. This article will shed light on the background of this affair by analyzing the questions of how Perera might have provoked the criticism and why his accusers were so keen on putting forward an investigation against Perera. It will become clear that Perera had rather philosophical motives for his method of teaching, whereas especially Ledesma had an explicitly pedagogical rationale for his criticism. By sketching this particular affair this article will also deliver an insight into early Jesuit efforts for and against censorship in teaching philosophy.

Beside from the Collegio Romano, the Jesuit Province of Upper Germany with its universities at Dillingen and Ingolstadt was a centre of the intellectual dispute about Perera. Especially his pupil Anton Balduin and the theologian Gregorius de Valencia are central to the controversy. Despite the restraint of the Rector Theodoricus Canisius in the disputations of Balduinus about physics (1571-1573) there are theses that show the influence of Balduinus: indeterminate dimensions of prime matter, the question of a maximum and minimum in the natural species, the critics of the aristotelian definition of place, the persistence of forms in elementary mixture. Perera’s history of philosophy in book IV of his De communibus is used several times by Jacobus Pontanus in his discourses at Dillingen university and in his Progymnasmata Latinitatis (1591-1594).

A well-established historiography has pointed out the distinction between first philosophy and theology, proposed by Benet Perera (Pererius) in his De communibus, as the “birth” of modern ontology. Ontology is often defined as an independent or neutral science by modern authors as well as contemporary scholars.

This paper aims to show the way in which Perera comes to this distinction, after a long reflection on the status of mathematics and abstractions of theoretical sciences matured during his lectures at the Collegio Romano (shown by different manuscripts).

Interestingly, it appears that after the subject of ontology is removed from its (causal) relationship with God and rational theology, ontology does not seem to acquire the status of neutral and universal science that Perera sought. Ontology becomes, in fact, a science dependent on the definitions provided by other disciplines and sciences, such as logic and mathematics.

Following these recent findings, the paper also provides a renewed confrontation between the ontologies of the Jesuits Perera and Suarez

Benet Perera was not the first Jesuit to comment Aristotle’s De Anima. In Portugal there was already the tradition of doing it, and the so-called Coimbra Course may be seen as the culmination of such a tradition. Moreover, its approach to philosophy is also different from Perera’s. This paper first of all focuses on the place of scientia de anima, the importance physics has in such a science, and the division of metaphysics (according to Perera) or its unity (according to Coimbra). Secondly, it is stated that if Perera could have taken sides with a theological anthropology, Góis (the main author of the Coimbra Course) took a different approach. Lastly, when discussing the immortality of the soul Perera and Álvares (the author of the appendix related to this particular topic) differ over the weight of human capacities in duly evidencing immortality.

In Benet Perera’s De communibus, the question on the first object of the intellectual knowledge is not addressed as a particular topic. On the contrary, it does constitute the general background in which Perera tries to sketch an original theory of the knowledge. Starting from this premise, the following article aims to demonstrate how Perera’s quaestio de primo cognito can clarify, for its reader, the nature of the intellectual knowledge, the relationship between the intellectual knowledge and the sensible knowledge, and the ontology presupposed by this noetics.

Through a detailed analysis of Perera’s arguments and of his claim that the first object of the intellect is the singular, the article focuses on some consequences of the solution proposed by the Spanish Jesuit. To this end, particular attention is given to Perera’s doctrine of the intellect and to the theoretical consequences of its formulation, in connection to the question of the relationship between sensible and intellectual knowledge.

The article analyses in detail, for the first time amongst the philosophical literature on Pererius, the “magna disceptatio” on the distinction, in every creature, between essence and existence as it arises in his work De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principijs et affectionibus. The Jesuit philosopher criticizes the opinion of the Thomists, whom were defending the distinctio realis between essence and existence. His reasoning strategy presents seven arguments against the distinctio realis and five argued answers to the Thomists’ arguments. The interest of Pererius’ discourse lies, firstly in the application of this centuries-old question on theological issue of transubstantiation (or to be more precise of the species of bread and wine during the transubstantiation) which was a thorny problem of Reformation and Counter-Reformation; secondly, in calling into question the relationship between the Thomist’s position and Aquinas’ position about the distinctio realis on the basis of affinity of their position with that of Avicenna, expressly criticized by Aquinas.

The paper deals with the doctrine of time exposed in the De communibus omium rerum naturalium principiis et affectionibus (1576) by Benet Perera. What is the nature and status of time? How does time belong or may it belong to the being? Answering these questions and referring to Aristotle, Augustine and Averroes, Perera remarks on the existence of two different traditions in the field of scholastic philosophy: the first tradition underlines the objective reality of time considering it extrinsically and identifying time with movement that is quantitatively measurable; the second tradition states the noetic reality of time considering it intrinsically, i.e. belonging to the mind and its operations. From his own point of view, Perera gives an “ontological” solution to these problems, thinking of the nature of time not only as duration of movement of beings in respect to before and after, but also (and above all) as intrinsic duration of every existing thing. In this sort of “transcendental” meaning, time is co-extended with eternity (i.e., the duration of the eternal being which has neither beginning nor end) and aeviternity (i.e., the duration of intelligent and angelic beings which have a beginning and end).

Benedictus Pererius as a 16^th-century Jesuit integrated Platonic and Neo-Platonic sources in his philosophical and theological works as long as they were compatible with Catholic theology. His commentary on Genesis and his theological disputations on St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans gave occasions to calibrate philosophy against theology. Pererius judges that pagan thinkers may be laudable for acknowledging the existence of God but cautions Christian readers as to the orthodoxy of such findings. Against the Protestant literalist interpretation of the Bible at the expense of philosophical theory of nature Pererius dealt with the questions of immortality and of the pagan notions of divinity and examined the role of philosophical heroes like Socrates and Hermes. Thus he welcomed philosophy as a potential source of religious thinking.

On December 19^th 1513, the papal bull Apostolici regiminis sanctioned the dogma of the immortality of the soul, imposing the defence of the Christian doctrine during the courses in philosophy. In their lectures, the Christian teachers had to contrast some unorthodox topics such as the mortality of the individual soul, the unity of the intellect and the eternity of the world. All of their arguments should be based on the principle of the unity of truth (verum vero minime contradicit), according to which philosophical truths cannot deny or contradict truths of the faith. The paper aims to trace the history of the reception of the adagio verum vero minime contradicit, starting from the promulgation of the bull and the debate on the Aristotelian psychology up to the Age of Galileo and Scientific Revolution, showing the important role Benet Perera played in this debate.

The paper aims to examine the role of Benet Perera’s and Roberto Bellarmino’s exegetic models in the development of the relationship between the nascent Galilean science and post-Tridentine catholic theology. It intends to show that, during the early decades of seventeenth century, the Catholic Church dealt with the Scientific Revolution with the same hermeneutical tools that it had employed to confront the Protestant Reformation half a century before. However, new science involved a philosophical and scientific culture change so vast and intricate that those models turned out to be inadequate to understand the birth and characteristics of the new era.

Henry of Ghent, one of the most important theologians of the late 13^th century, is well-known for, among other things, defending the unique thesis that theologians can rely on a specific kind of divine illumination to secure their theological knowledge: the lumen medium. His theory of faith, however, which also relies on a kind of divine illumination, has hardly been examined until now. It is, however, most interesting: indeed, within a system that allows for a special kind of theological knowledge of the objects of faith, one is led to wonder what kind of relationship there can be between such a superior knowledge and obscure faith. Can an object of faith also be an object of proper theological knowledge? If it is the case, does theological knowledge build upon faith, as in traditional doctrines, or are they separate? And how can one know that they have been illuminated by God in such or such a way?

In order to answer these questions, and others, we will first study the nature of faith and the corresponding divine light in Henry’s doctrine, especially from a psychological point of view; then we will analyze the way in which theological knowledge actually works; finally, we will examine the nature and the importance of divine illumination as regards the formation of theological knowledge; in conclusion, we will try and determine what precisely warrants our knowledge of the objects of faith.

The Peruvian Franciscan thinker Jerónimo Valera (1568-1625) published in 1610 his Commentarii ac quaestiones in universam Aristotelis ac Subtilissimi Doctoris Ioannis Duns Scoti logicam, which was the first philosophical work printed in South America. Both in his Summulae dialecticae and in the Books that comprise his Commentarii he deals with metaphysical questions. In this paper, we illustrate how he inserts important Scotist logical-metaphysical doctrines in his logical work, in this case the account of transcendental concepts given in his Summulae.

This review-article examines Daniel Novotny’s new book on entia rationis in Baroque-Age scholasticism. Novotný’s presentation of Francisco Suárez’, Pedro Hurtado’s, Bartolomeo Mastri’s and Bonaventura Belluto’s as well as Juan Caramuel’s theories of beings of reason is discussed. Beyond Novotný’s results, it is pointed out 1) that Suárez’ theory of the causation of beings of reason is anticipated by his explanation of the relationship between formal and objective concepts, and 2) that the traditional division of distinctions of reason lies in the background of some scholastic authors’ differentiation between entia rationis ratiocinatae and entia rationis ratiocinantis; this latter motif is echoed in German Enlightenment metaphysics.

J. Dudley, Aristotle’s Concept of Chance. Accidents, Cause, Necessity, and Determinism, State University of New York Press, Albany 2012

R.P. Rivas (ed. por), Tolerancia: teoría y práctica en la Edad Media, Actas del Coloquio de Mendoza (15-18 de junio de 2011), Federation Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes Medievales, Porto 2012

Berthold von Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones 184-211, Herausgegeben von L. Sturlese Unter Mitarbeit von A. Punzi, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 2014

Nicole Oresme, Questiones super Physicam (Books I-VII), edited by S. Caroti / J. Celeyrette / S. Kirschner / E. Mazet, E.J. Brill, Leiden-Boston 2013

Review of P. Cicovacki, The Analysis of Wonder: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann, Bloomsbury, New York- London-New Delhi-Sydney 2014

S. Bassi, Immagini del Rinascimento. Garin, Gentile, Papini, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma 2013