Books Edited by Jacob Schmutz
American Catholic Philosophy Quarterly, 2019
Introduction to a special issue of the American Catholic Philosophy Quarterly, dedicated entirely... more Introduction to a special issue of the American Catholic Philosophy Quarterly, dedicated entirely to Baroque Scholasticism, with articles by Igor Agostini, Tomas Machula, Sydney Penner, Petr Dvorak, Lukas Novak, Jean-Pascal Anfray, Rudolf Schuessler and Tomas Nejeschleba.
Papers by Jacob Schmutz
Bulletin de la SIEPM, 2023
A presentation of Josef Ratzinger's academic career and legacy as a medievalist and his involveme... more A presentation of Josef Ratzinger's academic career and legacy as a medievalist and his involvement with the SIEPM (Société Internationale d'Etude de la Philosophie Médiévale), and the role medieval theology played in his theological outlook
¿Qué es la segunda escolástica?, ed. Simona Langella & Rafael Ramis Barceló, Madrid – Porto: Editorial Sindéresis (Colección Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos en la Modernidad, 23), 2023
It is commonly admitted that history of philosophy as an autonomous part of philosophy is a large... more It is commonly admitted that history of philosophy as an autonomous part of philosophy is a largely German and Protestant creation, associated with a figure such as Jakob Brucker. This paper argues that Catholic second scholasticism can be seen as a first attempt to historicize the earlier medieval scholastic tradition, by defending both a cumulative conception of history and a revisionist conception of knowledge.
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement , 2020
Early-Modern Irish Catholics exiled on the European continent are known to have often held promin... more Early-Modern Irish Catholics exiled on the European continent are known to have often held prominent academic positions in various important colleges and universities. This paper investigates the hitherto unknown Scholastic legacy of the Dublin-born Jesuit John Austin (1717–84), a famous Irish educator who started his career teaching philosophy at the Jesuit college of Rheims in 1746–47, before returning to the country of his birth as part of the Irish Mission. These manuscript lecture notes provides us first-hand knowledge about the content of French Jesuit education in the middle of the eighteenth century, which does not correspond to its classical reputation of ‘Aristotelian’ scholasticism opposed to philosophical novelties. While stitching to a traditional way of teaching, Austin introduces positively elements from Descartes, Malebranche, Locke and Newton into the curriculum. The present paper focuses on his conception of philosophical certitude (certitudo), which he considered a necessary condition for the possibility of philosophical knowledge.
Pierre d’Ailly, un esprit universel à l’aube du XVe siècle, ed. Jean-Patrice Boudet, Monica Brînzei, Fabrice Delivré, Hélène Millet, Jacques Verger et Michel Zink, Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 2019
Paul Vignaux (1935) and Reinhold Weier (1976) had studied the influence of Peter of Ailly’s Sente... more Paul Vignaux (1935) and Reinhold Weier (1976) had studied the influence of Peter of Ailly’s Sentences commentary on Martin Luther. In this study, building upon earlier indications by Francis Oakley (1961) on the development of the concept of « laws of nature », I attempt to show the explicit and implicit influence of Peter of Ailly on a different reformed tradition, namely Puritan Calvinism as it flourished in Holland (especially in Franeker) and in colonial New England. I explain that the knowledge Puritan scholars had of Peter of Ailly was largely mediated by Spanish Catholic scholasticism, of which William Perkins (1558–1602), William Ames (1576–1633) and in particular William Twisse (1578–1666) and John Strang (1584–1654) were careful readers. I then follow the reception of these authors among New England divines such as John Norton (1606–63) and Samuel Willard (1640–1707). I argue that the Spanish and Puritan authors interpreted Peter of Ailly as the proponent of strong form of divine command ethics, by reducing all source of morality to the divine will. This early-modern interpretation is the source of the common historiographical perception of Peter of Ailly as ‘voluntarist’. It also constitutes an unacknowledged theological source of the primacy given to the judiciary power in the constitutional debates at the time of the American struggle for independence.
Jesuit Historiography Online, ed. Robert M. Maryks, Brill, 2018
In this contribution, I attempt to sketch the emergence of a historiographical tradition on pre-1... more In this contribution, I attempt to sketch the emergence of a historiographical tradition on pre-1773 Jesuit philosophy, within as well as outside the Society of Jesus, and explain its different ideological motivations and hermeneutical options. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jesuit and non-Jesuit historians of philosophy had very different, sometimes even competing, interests in recovering this tradition. I explain how a canon of classical Jesuit philosophers was constituted, how this historiography became progressively deconfessionalized, and why Jesuit philosophy —and not Descartes— is today perceived by many historians as the true archetype of modernity.
Aquinas's Summa theologiae. A Critical Guide, ed. Jeffrey Hause, Cambridge University Press, 2018
A survey article on the reception of the Summa theologiae in the post-medieval period, challengin... more A survey article on the reception of the Summa theologiae in the post-medieval period, challenging the classical "decline and rebirth" narrative that has dominated histories of Thomism and neo-Thomism.
First, I argue that Thomism never declined, but that it remained a powerful current even in the heyday of the Enlightenment; second, I claim that the eighteenth century, often presented as the “waning” of Thomism, is in reality the true key to understanding the conditions and forms of its later nineteenth-century “revival.” Third and last, I explain why, among Aquinas’s huge intellectual production, it was the Summa that ensured his persistence as an authority during these centuries.
Luis de Molina, Des secours de la grâce, trad. Paola Nicolas (Paris: Les Belles Lettres), 2016
An introduction to Paola Nicolas's French translation of Luis de Molina, Concordia, q. 14, a. 13,... more An introduction to Paola Nicolas's French translation of Luis de Molina, Concordia, q. 14, a. 13, disp. 36-46, putting the work into the context of seventeenth century theology and contemporary thought.
Filosofický časopis, Dec 2016
In histories of medieval ethics, Thomists are usually portrayed as intellectualists and Scotists ... more In histories of medieval ethics, Thomists are usually portrayed as intellectualists and Scotists as voluntarists. The typically voluntarist linking of the morality of acts with an obligation towards a superior law is also often seen as the major influence exerted by late medieval ethics on early-modern natural law theories. The present article will challenge this standard narrative by presenting the early-modern scholastic debate on the constitutive characters of sin (peccatum), as it was proposed by the Spanish Cistercian Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz (1606-82). It will reveal that most Thomists advocated in reality a very voluntarist and theocentric definition of sin, whereas many Scotists on the contrary defended a very intellectualist approach. Caramuel and some early-modern Scotists thereby played an important role in the development of a non-theological definition of sin, the peccatum philosophicum, which represents a major moment in the development of a strictly philosophical ethics during modernity.
Archives de Sciences sociales des religions, 2016
This study attempts to reconstruct the hidden influence of Edmond Ortigues’ unpublished PhD in th... more This study attempts to reconstruct the hidden influence of Edmond Ortigues’ unpublished PhD in theology (1948) within the debates on the relationship between Scripture in Tradition, leading to the Second Vatican Council. A first section summarizes Ortigues’ reading of the Tridentine canon on the sources of revelation. A second section situates his reconstruction in the debate on Scripture and Tradition in the 1950s and 1960s, and shows the proximity of Ortigues’ views with those of leading theologians such as Josef Rupert Geiselmann and Yves Congar, whose work was widely discussed at the Vatican Council. Finally, a third and last part tries to explain how Ortigues considered his own work as a theologian, and why the paradoxes linked to the overcoming of the documentary sources or testimonies (Scripture, Tradition) in order to reach the living divine word itself have finally lead him towards philosophy.
Keywords : Scripture, tradition, Council of Trent, Second Vatican Council, Catholic Theology
Dictionnaire des philosophes français du XVIIe siècle, ed. Luc Foisneau, Classiques Garnier, 2015
The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy, ed. John Marenbon, Oxford University Press, 2012
Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, ed. Iñigo Atucha, Dragos Calma, Catherine König-Pralong & Irene Zavattero, 2011
Bohemia Jesuitica, 1556-2006, ed. Petronilla Cemus, 2010
Philosophie et théologie à l'époque moderne, ed. Jean-Christophe Bardout, 2010
Philosophie et théologie à l'époque moderne, ed. Jean-Christophe Bardout, 2010
Les innovations conceptuelles de la métaphysique espagnole post-suarézienne: les status rerum sel... more Les innovations conceptuelles de la métaphysique espagnole post-suarézienne: les status rerum selon Antonio Pérez et Sebastián Izquierdo Le terme ontologia a mis beaucoup de temps à s'imposer en Espagne. Si les dizaines de manuels néoscolastiques publiés en Espagne au XIX e siècle en font large usage, il n'a guère eu de succès lors de la période la plus créative de la métaphysique espagnole, à savoir dans le contexte post-suarézien du XVII e siècle 1 . On lui préférait alors les appellations plus classiques de metaphysica, philosophia prima, ou, dans les cercles néo-lulliens, celle de scientia generalis. Il n'en demeure pas moins que l'on peut identifier à cette époque de nombreuses amorces en vue d'un projet nouveau de métaphysique. Cette étude cherchera à démontrer dans quelle mesure la détermination de l'objet de la métaphysique, sous forme de l'ens inquantum ens reale, a été considérablement modifiée dans les générations qui ont suivi Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), et que l'inventivité doctrinale des auteurs de la monarchie ibérique alors en pleine décadence politique «Quaestio», 9 (2009), 61-99 • 10.1484/J.QUAESTIO.1.100698 1 La première (cum caute!) oeuvre imprimée en Espagne à utiliser le lexique de l'ontologie semble être une thèse d'origine valencienne, assez marginale, celle du carme observant E. GARCÍA, Assertiones transnaturales ex peripateticae metaphysices viridario decerptae, nimirum ex ontologia, diaphorontologia, aetiologia, anthropologia, uranologia, angelosophia, theologia, primae philosophiae partibus obiectivis, Diego de Vega, Valence 1704. Le milieu culturel valencien a souvent été la porte d'entrée des innovations doctrinales en Espagne, des XVI e au XVIII e siècles: dans ce cas précis, c'est sans doute par l'influence italienne, portée par certaines congrégations modernes, qu'est arrivée la dénomination «ontologie» en Espagne. A Salamanque, l'un des coeurs intellectuels de la «péninsule métaphysique», le célèbre Luis de Losada (1681-1748) n'utilise toujours pas le terme dans ses cours exemplaires de métaphysique dans les années 1720. Cf. L. DE LOSADA, Cursus philosophici regalis Collegij Salmanticensis Societatis Jesu: in tres partes divisi tertia pars, continens tractatum de generatione et corruptione, synopsin tractatuum de mundo, de caelo, de elementis, et mixtis, animasticam seu tractationem de anima, et disputationes metaphysicas, Eugenio García Honorato y San Miguel, Salamanque 1730. Ce n'est véritablement que dans les dernières années du XVIII e que le terme s'impose vraiment, alors que les
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Books Edited by Jacob Schmutz
Papers by Jacob Schmutz
First, I argue that Thomism never declined, but that it remained a powerful current even in the heyday of the Enlightenment; second, I claim that the eighteenth century, often presented as the “waning” of Thomism, is in reality the true key to understanding the conditions and forms of its later nineteenth-century “revival.” Third and last, I explain why, among Aquinas’s huge intellectual production, it was the Summa that ensured his persistence as an authority during these centuries.
Keywords : Scripture, tradition, Council of Trent, Second Vatican Council, Catholic Theology
First, I argue that Thomism never declined, but that it remained a powerful current even in the heyday of the Enlightenment; second, I claim that the eighteenth century, often presented as the “waning” of Thomism, is in reality the true key to understanding the conditions and forms of its later nineteenth-century “revival.” Third and last, I explain why, among Aquinas’s huge intellectual production, it was the Summa that ensured his persistence as an authority during these centuries.
Keywords : Scripture, tradition, Council of Trent, Second Vatican Council, Catholic Theology
Exhibition at KU Leuven, Maurits Sabbe Library, June 3 - September 30, 2024
2024 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Theodor Smising’s giant volume De Deo Uno (printed in Antwerp in 1624), which was soon followed by a second volume De Deo Trino (printed in Antwerp in 1626). Smising’s work was the first printed output of what developed into a specific tradition within early modern thought, the Louvain tradition of Scotism, itself but one part of the broad Scotist tradition that build upon the thought of John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266–1308). This Louvain tradition was primarily based in the Franciscan Convent of the Holy Trinity in the famous university town. The convent itself was much older, dating back to around 1230, when the Franciscan Order was in its very beginnings and long before the University of Louvain was founded (in 1425). In 1607 a second Franciscan Convent was founded in Louvain, St. Anthony’s College, one of a series of convents established by the Irish Franciscans as a result of their persecution in their homeland by the English Protestant rulers. The Irish Franciscans in Louvain, and in their other convents on the European continent, too cultivated the intellectual heritage of Duns Scotus, editing and commenting on his works and writing new works “ad mentem Scoti.” Both of the Franciscan convents in Louvain were closed in the turmoils after the French Revolution. The buildings of St. Anthony’s College still exist, whereas the older “Minderbroedersklooster” (on our exhibition poster) completely vanished from the cityscape.
In recent decades, the Maurits Sabbe Library has acquired a large fund of Franciscan books, mostly from various houses of the Franciscan Order in Belgium that have closed their doors. Our exhibition “Scotism Made in Louvain – The Scholastic Culture of the Franciscans in Belgium” explores this material, complemented by material from the KU Leuven Central Library’s Special Collections and two manuscripts from the archives of KADOC (Documentatie- en Onderzoekscentrum voor Religie, Cultuur en Samenleving). The exhibition tells the story of a significant local scholarly tradition which is placed in the context of the broader Scotist tradition of the Early Modern Period. Whereas Scholasticism as such is often seen as an exclusively medieval phenomenon, our exhibition highlights one important aspect of early modern scholastic culture.
The Curators