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About the author
Claus A. Andersen held research positions at the Universities of Mannheim and Budweis (Czech Republic). He conducted his MSCA project Formalitas at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) (2023–2025). His publications include Metaphysik im Barockscotismus (2016) and Cognitive Issues in the Long Scotist Tradition (co-edited with Daniel Heider, 2023).
Jacob Schmutz is Professor for Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain). His research is dedicated to the long scholastic tradition between the Middle Ages and Modernity. His publications include Caramuel. The Last Scholastic Polymath (co-edited with Petr Dvořák, 2008) and The Legacy of John Duns Scotus (co-edited with Pasquale Porro, 2008).
Summary
This volume aims to document the historical emergence of the various types of distinctions in medieval philosophy, highlighting in particular the emergence of the Formalist tradition that had its roots in the works of the Franciscan John Duns Scotus († 1308) and his early followers. This literature enjoyed vast diffusion during the Renaissance and still played a significant role in textbooks of scholastic philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It framed the early-modern debates about the distinction between body and mind or matter and extension. This book provides an important case for a much-needed revision of the relationship between “Medieval” and “Early Modern” philosophy – these categories are too often used to signal some fundamental divide in intellectual history, where in fact there was continuity. It deals with many figures who have been little studied to date as well as canonical thinkers such as Francisco Suárez and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
Foreword
How medieval and early modern philosophers thought about the concepts of distinction and identity
