Presentation
‘Animal Rationale Mortale’. The relationship body-soul in the Commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima produced in the Portuguese Universities of the XVI century
The ARM project is a project of the Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto, funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia – FCT, rated with excellent in the contest for projects in all fields of studies – 2012 (Funding: €50.000 – Reference EXPL/MHC-FIL/1703/2012)
This project examines the doctrines regarding man’s nature and passions of the soul in the textual legacy of the professors of Philosophy (Aristotle’s De anima commentaries) and Theology (Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae I-IIae, qq. 22-48 commentaries), that worked on the Portuguese universities at the end of the XVI century. Some texts of these commentaries subsist, from which we can understand the doctrines that were taught in the Portuguese universities of the end of XVI c. The doctrines in discussion in the literature of the time include a set of questions, namely: what is the origin of human embryo? What is the human process of conception and fertilization? How a rational soul appears in the human body? Do all human beings have the same dignity? What is the seat of human passions: the body or the soul? Do the passions interfere in human intelligence and will? In what sense? The response to these questions varies widely, in texts of the same period, produced in the same academic context and sometimes by fellow authors.
Analysing the Aristotle’s De anima commentaries to the supra-mentioned text of the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, produced in the XVI c. in Portugal, the Project investigates the main influences that they reveal: are the commentaries indicators of proto-modernity, positing a certain autonomy of the body from the soul, the self-identity of each of these principles, use the medical literature to understand the nature of the human compound? Or is there a wide proximity with Aquinas arguments, with the aim of a fidelity to the aristotelian-tomistic tradition, in accordance with the demanding by Ratio Studiorum? What authorities does appear quoted in the texts and in what way shows the existence of a network of knowledge exchanges established in peninsular space? What kind of knowledge of the medical doctrines does the texts reveal to explain physiological phenomena, as the process of human conception, the origin of embryo, or the so called passions ‘of the soul’? Of what kind of tradition is the mentioned medical literature ower? Salernitan? Toledan? Hippocratic and Gaelenic? Aristotelian?
There are not many texts remaining from the textual legacy of Commentaries produced in the Portuguese Universities and where these issues are dealt with. The majority of the texts are manuscripts and unfinished commentaries. By its exploratory character, and by its short duration, the Project aims to analyse mainly the finished commentaries and verify the tendencies that they reveal (humanists or conservative). For this reason, the project examines the authorities and quoted texts, identifies the main doctrines on human’s being nature and the passions of the soul in dissemination through the Portuguese Universities at the end of XVI c.
The project analyses the following subjects/authors:
A. Finished commentaries to Aristotle’s De Anima, Authorized:
• Cristóvão Gil: Commentaries to Books I-III: Lisboa, BNp, cód. 2516;
Commentaries to Books I and II: Lisboa, BNp cód. 2518.
• Marcos de Moura: Commentary to Books I-III: Lisboa, BNp, cód. 4921, ff.
164-202.
• Pedro Luís: Commentary to Book I-III: Lisboa, BNp, cód. 2513.
• Pedro da Fonseca: Commentary to Books I and II; Commentary to Book III:
Coimbra, Biblioteca da Universidade, cód. F3.
B. Commentaries to S. Th, I-IIae, q. 22-48, by Thomas Aquinas:
Commentaries to Summa Theologica I-IIae, q. 22-q-48 (De passionibus), all
Anonyms:
• Coimbra, Biblioteca da Universidade, cod. T 41 (ref. Stegmüller) (q. 22);
• Lisboa, BNp. cod. 2362 (S. Th. I-IIae, q. 30);
• Coimbra, Biblioteca Universidade, cod. T41 (ref. Stegmüller) (S. Th. I-IIae, q.
41).
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