Les autres philosophes | Philosophie pour enfants ou adultes: Projets de recherche

Projets de recherche




Contrary to the popular belief that philosophy in Arabic declined around the 12th century, it has actually thrived in forms that are largely unexplored. Arabic philosophical manuscripts present a wealth of textual and visual annotations by students, teachers, and individual scholars who have kept selecting, manually copying, teaching, and studying philosophical texts until the 19th century. Well after the printing revolution, the margins of manuscripts served across the Arabo-Islamic world as material platforms – akin to today’s academic journals – for this choral philosophical enterprise.

With a few notable exceptions, this “real-life” philosophy is cut out of historico-philosophical accounts, in which the spotlight is often on a selection of great minds. The views shared by professors, students, and scholars have hitherto remained on the uncharted margins of manuscripts and on the fringe of the global history of philosophy.

“The Uncharted Margins of Philosophy” (UnMaP) aims to bring those contributions from the margins of manuscripts into the forefront of philosophical discourse.

By delving into the paratextual annotations within 207 manuscripts of the Logic of Avicenna’s (d. 1037) Book of Healing, spanning seven centuries and three continents, UnMaP promises to broaden the horizons of the global history of philosophy. It will (1) shed new light on the uncharted routes of cultural transfer in the pre-modern, globalising world; (2) provide a generalisable model of research on neglected sources for the history of philosophy; (3) challenge the paradigm of knowledge as the product of a few soloists and their intellectual hegemony by bringing to light marginalised traditions from the past.

With innovative techniques, including AI-driven handwriting analysis on manuscripts with Convolutional Neural Networks, this project pioneers a new “Material History of Philosophy”, bridging the gap between Material Philology, Philosophy, History, and Digital Humanities.

Conférences :
22.10.2024 : Yoav Meyrav, Manuscripts and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy
26.11.2024 : José Maksimczuk, Material for Thought. Reflections on the Manuscript Transmission of Aristotle's Organon
18.12.2024 : Silvia Di Vincenzo, The Uncharted Margins of Philosophy. An Al-Enhanced Material History of Arabic Logic Across Time (12th-19th c.) and Frontiers (from Spain to India)




i² – The Impossible and the Imaginable:
Late-Medieval Semantics of Impossibility and the Roots of Complex Mathematics
Projet de recherche en 2023–2028
Dirigé par Graziana Ciola,
avec Maria Sidău et Gabriel Andrés Molero

Can we think the impossible?
A popular view in the history of philosophy and science holds that we only conceive what is in some sense possible and cannot truly understand anything intrinsically contradictory. The Chimera is the paradigmatic example of such an inconceivable absolute impossibility in medieval logic. "Chimera" is a necessarily empty term lacking signification and reference. Analogously premodern mathematics dismisses the square root of a negative number as the impossible result of an impossible operation, i.e. something as nonsensical as the Chimera.
Yet by the 16th century complex numbers–i.e. those numbers having an imaginary part i = the numerical value of [root–1]–start being used and problematised. Somewhere down the line these "impossible numbers" had become conceivable and manipulable. How and why did this shift happen?
i² seeks the answer in the late medieval semantics of necessarily empty terms. In the 14th century, Marsilius of Inghen (ca. 1341-96) makes terms like "Chimera" properly signifying, understandable and referential in his semantics. Marsilius' account of imaginable absolute impossibilities is widely influential in the 15th and 16th centuries. Girolamo Cardano–credited with the philosophical problematisation of complex numbers–seems at least partly aware of this Marsilian tradition.
Marsilius' semantics of imaginable impossibilities, its later reception and its possible influence on Cardano have not yet been explored. This is what i² is set to do for the first time, through a key-concept analysis and the applications of the method of historical and rational reconstruction to a rich textual corpus. i² will produce a groundbreaking account of the rise of complex mathematics in relation to the medieval semantics of impossibility and imaginability.
Based at Radboud's Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, and advised by an international board of scholars, i² will deliver high-impact outputs in top journals, two books and knowledge dissemination results.

Site web de i² – The Impossible and the Imaginable





Online supplement to the exhibition Scotism Made in Louvain – The Scholastic Culture of the Franciscans in Belgium, Exhibition at KU Leuven, Maurits Sabbe Library, June 3 – September 30, 2024.
Catalogue de l'exposition : Claus A. Andersen and Jacob Schmutz (ed.), Scotism Made in Louvain – The Scholastic Culture of the Franciscans in Belgium, Exhibition at KU Leuven, Maurits Sabbe Library, June 3 – September 30, 2024, Catalogue.

Conférences :
16 novembre 2023 : Philosophy Day: What is New in the History of Philosophy? 19 octobre 2023 : Modes and distinctions in scholastic formalism
15–17 mai 2023 : Distinction and Identity in Late-Scholastic Thought and Beyond




¿Qué es la Segunda Escolástica?
Projet de recherche en 2021–2024
Dirigé par Rafael Ramis-Barceló

Rafael Ramis-Barceló, La Segunda Escolástica. Una propuesta de síntesis histórica (2024)
Rafael Ramis-Barceló et Simona Langella (ed.), ¿Qué es la Segunda Escolástica? (2023)
Cos'è la 'seconda Scolastica’? Expert Seminar On-Line, 30 juin – 2 juillet 2022





Tout ce que nous savons sur les écoles philosophiques grecques provient des Vies de Diogène Laërtius et de l’Arrangement des philosophes de Philodème de Gadara. Ce dernier texte est conservé par les papyrus Herculanum. Cependant, ces papyrus sont en mauvais état et les éditions actuellement disponibles sont en grande partie devenues obsolètes. Le projet GreekSchools financé par l’UE utilisera les dernières technologies pour produire de nouvelles éditions critiques modernes. Le projet testera des techniques avancées telles que l’imagerie hyperspectrale infrarouge à ondes courtes, l’imagerie térahertz, la tomographie par cohérence optique, la cartographie par fluorescence des rayons X, la microscopie 3D et la relaxométrie par résonance magnétique nucléaire. Cela permettra la lecture du texte caché au verso et dissimulé à l’intérieur des couches superposées. Le résultat sera une édition numérique collaborative en libre accès.

Compte Twitter GreekSchools
Chaîne YouTube GreeksSchools








ACADEMIA
Reconstructing Late Medieval Quests for Knowledge:
Quodlibetal Debates as Precursors of Modern Academic Practice
Projet de recherche en 2021–2026
Dirigé par Ota Pavlíček,
avec Lukáš Lička, Jan Škrvňák, Hana Cassi Pelikán, Barbora Kocánová et Dagmar Kodet Kotorová

ACADEMIA proposes a pioneering study of a neglected corpus of manuscripts stemming from the practice of quodlibetal debates held at Faculties of Arts of European universities, flourishing from the 14th to the early 16th century. As prescribed by the university statutes, dozens of professors participated periodically in these unique collective works of the Middle Ages, which encompassed all the disciplines pursued at the university, from logic to medicine to theology. The PI hypothesises that the professors presented at the hitherto mostly ignored quodlibets their recent scientific innovations, which they then published in the first collective volumes of European academia. The PI thus proposes a novel theoretical framework for understanding the quodlibets: they stand at the origin of the modern concept of science as a collective intellectual enterprise, similar to modern conferences and the subsequent dissemination of results. This makes them and their written form critical for understanding European intellectual and scientific traditions, both past and present. ACADEMIA’s ambition is to establish the corpus of these debates as a new field of study through an extensive examination of manuscripts, thus filling a substantial gap, radically extending the fields of the history of universities and intellectual history, and reconstructing the roots of the modern practice of fostering collective science. A complex analysis of the corpus will bring about a substantial change in our understanding of medieval practices of the production and sharing of knowledge. Aiming to examine the quodlibets as a phenomenon successively interconnecting European intellectual space, ACADEMIA focuses on fourteen universities at which the PI has identified the tradition so far and on their mutual relations and development. ACADEMIA employs an interdisciplinary team and an innovative combination of approaches from history, codicology, palaeography, philology, hermeneutics and Digital Humanities.

Compte Twitter d'ACADEMIA





Notre compréhension de l’Ancien stoïcisme, l’un des courants les plus importants de la philosophie hellénistique, repose sur des fragments transmis par la tradition manuscrite médiévale, les papyrus d’Herculanum et des témoins indirects. Ces fragments ont été principalement rassemblés dans les Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta de Hans von Arnim (1903-1905). Financé par le Conseil européen de la recherche, le projet APATHES entend reconstituer cette œuvre grâce à une méthodologie interdisciplinaire innovante qui intègre la philologie classique, l’histoire de la philosophie antique, la doxographie, la papyrologie, l’épigraphie et de nouvelles technologies de décryptage des manuscrits anciens. Le projet s’est fixé pour objectifs de produire une nouvelle édition critique de la majorité des fragments et des testimonia, de sélectionner et d’évaluer les sources et de réviser certains manuscrits. Il développera également de nouvelles méthodologies de lecture et de reconstruction des sources papyrologiques.








Polyphonic Philosophy:
Logic in the Long Twelfth Century (c. 1070–1220) for a New Horizon in the History of Philosophy
Projet de recherche en 2022–2027
Dirigé par Caterina Tarlazzi,
avec Charles Girard, Sofia Orsino, Pietro Antonio Podolak et Timothy Tambassi

The project aims at an interdisciplinary, manuscript-based approach to Latin logical commentaries from the Long Twelfth-Century (c. 1070-1220).
The contention behind the project is that this little-explored topic presents us with a unique “polyphonic philosophy” that can open up a new horizon in our understanding of philosophical commentaries, on the one hand, and help to reshape some core ideas in the history of philosophy, on the other.

A team of four postdoctoral researchers led by the PI will actualise the potential of some extraordinary preliminary material to study a wealth of 12th-century manuscripts of mainly unpublished texts with novel concepts. We will have three objectives:

Objective 1: A comprehensive study of 12th-century logical manuscripts as the main units for accessing this complex field, in which the notions of unitary text and author have proven challenging.

Objective 2: A study of mainly unpublished logical texts from a "polyphonic" perspective that will follow a comparative, archaeological and analytical approach and develop some pioneering digital scholarly editions of texts to model their polyphony.

Objective 3: Meta-analysis of the concepts used from an interdisciplinary and historiographical perspective, offering new insights into the keyconcepts of the project and non-solo paradigms to reconstruct philosophy's past.

The project will require interdisciplinary expertise in digital medieval studies, digital textual criticism, codicology, the history of education, the history of literacy, the social history of logic, the history of philosophy, and the historiography of philosophy. Following a concrete-to-abstract highly integrated research design, taking advantage of recent methodologies, this project has the ambitious goal of opening up an entirely new horizon for the history of philosophy, while also impacting on several other areas, from medieval studies, to the history of universities, to the study of commentaries more generally.




Dès que je fus passé en Gaule, tout jeune encore, y poursuivre mes études […], je me rendis auprès du Péripatéticien du Pallet [Pierre Abélard] qui, alors sur la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, illustre et admirable maître, avait la préséance sur tous. Là, à ses pieds j'ai reçu les premiers rudiments de cet art et, dans la faible mesure de mes aptitudes naturelles limitées, tout ce qui sortait de sa bouche, je le recevais avec toute l'avidité dont était capable mon esprit. Ensuite, après son départ qui me parut trop rapide, je devins l'élève assidu de maître Albéric, qui d'entre tous les autres brillait comme le dialecticien le plus illustre, et il faut reconnaître qu'il était le plus farouche attaquant contre l'école nominaliste. Ayant passé environ deux années complètes sur la Montagne, j'ai eu comme professeurs dans cet art Albéric et maître Robert de Melun – pour le désigner par le surnom que lui valut son mérite auprès de ceux qui dirigeaient les écoles, puisqu'en réalité il est originaire d'Angleterre.

Jean de Salisbury (ca. 1115–1180), Metalogicon (1159), II, 10

Twelfth-century Paris was the epicentre of one of the most remarkable and formative periods in intellectual history. Facilitated by a marked rise in commerce and urbanization, there was from the late-eleventh century onwards a veritable boom of scientific studies and higher education, which around the year 1200 culminated in the formation of the University of Paris. This boom has come to be known as the twelfth-century renaissance and marks, in the words of Stephen Ferruolo, the “birth (‘naissance’) of the unified, distinct, and enduring culture of Western Europe.”

At the forefront of the boom were a number of philosophers who offered courses in the liberal arts (artes liberales), the forerunner of present-day humanities. Students flocked to Paris from all over Europe to attend lectures, and the masters in turn competed keenly to win scholarly fame and attract students. Particularly in the first half of the century there were a number of famous scholars who on the basis of ancient authors, such as Aristotle, Boethius and Porphyry, developed highly sophisticated positions on a number of perennial philosophical problems in the areas of logic, philosophy of language and metaphysics. Alberic of Paris was one of these philosophers. He is today, like many of them, little but a name.

Well-known, by contrast, is his older contemporary Peter Abelard (1079–1142), commonly hailed as one of the greatest philosophers of the Middle Ages and one of the finest logicians of all time. And yet, we know from the Englishman John of Salisbury, who studied logic in Paris in the 1130s, that Alberic was Abelard's most formidable rival at the time and strongly opposed the metaphysical position which more than any has earned Abelard his fame: nominalism.

While no texts explicitly ascribed to Alberic have survived, a number of logical treatises and philosophical commentaries that stem from his school and report his views have been preserved in various medieval Latin manuscripts. By investigating these writings, the project aims to identify, analyze and synthesize the core philosophical positions of Alberic and his school and to assess the role of this school of thought in the wider context of twelfth-century philosophy.

Alberic the Logician, Enrico Donato, 24 février 2023 (Zoom)
Alberic in Context, 14–16 juin 2023




Revisiting Medieval Dialectics
Colloque international les 30 et 31 août 2021
Organisé par Fosca Mariani Zini, Ana María Mora-Márquez et le Centre d'études supérieures de la Renaissance de Tours




Women on Medieval Philosopy
Colloque international en ligne via Zoom du 8 au 10 juillet 2021
Organisé par Alexandra Anisie, Lisa Devriese, Jenny Pelletier and Zita Toth




Medieval Philosophy in the Manuscripts

20 January 2021 Workshop: Graziana Ciola, Medieval Logical Manuscripts: An Introduction and a Case Study (Marsilius of Inghen’s Consequentiae)





The conventional historiography of ancient Platonism follows patterns that ultimately go back to Antiquity itself. While these traditional doxographical accounts are not per se inaccurate, they do overlook continuities across different phases of this thousand-year history as well as some unexpected discontinuities. The reason for these shortcomings lies in the fact that certain philosophical debates are being ignored. Some omissions could be detected by searching for the philosophical reasons explaining doctrinal developments.
This project chooses an unorthodox approach in that it does not try to reflect the issues emphasised in the sources, but instead selects one particular angle of approach: Aristotle’s critical discussion of Platonic views. By analysing Platonic responses to Aristotle’s criticisms and using these as a heuristic tool, the project pursues a twofold aim: to uncover debates that have hitherto not been picked up in scholarship; and to examine the philosophical reasons for doctrinal varieties and developments. The research hypothesis guiding this project is that Aristotle’s criticism of Platonic philosophy was a driving force for many developments in Platonism.
The aims of the project can only be achieved through a large-scale investigation spanning the entire history of Platonism, searching for Platonic responses in all relevant philosophical domains. Since scholarship has been selective in its choice of topics, it cannot be predicted whether we can find sufficient traces of pertinent discussions in all subdomains. Despite the methodological difficulties and the uncertainty of the results the project is more than worth pursuing, as the pay-off is highly significant: it will radically change the way in which we understand the history of Platonism and add a whole new dimension to our historiographical accounts. If successful, it will uncover new debates and allow us to understand philosophical justifications for many philosophical developments.

Leuven Colloquia on Ancient Platonism, starting in January 2022




NATURA: Reassessing Realism over Universals in the Time of Peter Abelard
Projet de recherche en 2020–2023
Dirigé par Caterina Tarlazzi, avec Richard Cross et Marco Sgarbi

This three-year GF will bring Caterina Tarlazzi at the University of Notre Dame (USA) and at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy), where she will be supervised by, respectively, Richard Cross and Marco Sgarbi. The overall aim of the project is to investigate a neglected, though highly significant, topic in the history of the Problem of Universals: realist theories over genera and species in the Latin tradition, c. 1090-1160. This topic has the potential to bridge the gulf now existing between analytical and historical approaches to philosophy, drawing illuminating comparisons between medieval realism and contemporary analytic views over universals (especially the so-called ‘scientific realism’ of David Armstrong, Michael Loux’s ‘constituent ontology’, and the ‘new essentialism’ of Brian Ellis). It will also re-shape important aspects of the history of medieval philosophy regarding both the Latin 12th-century (where ‘realist’ notions seem to be found in Peter Abelard’s anti-realist philosophy) and its relations to later medieval philosophy (especially the 14th-century forms of realism of, among others, Duns Scotus, Walter Burley, and John Wyclif). The topic has, however, remained almost entirely neglected so far. This is mainly because a number of relevant sources are found in manuscripts scattered around Europe, which have never been published but are familiar to Tarlazzi thanks to her three-year British Academy postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge. Tarlazzi’s past experience and the training planned during this GF now allow for an in-depth study of these sources, which will yield a complete reassessment of 12th-century realism. The results will be disseminated both within academia and to a wider audience. The project has important implications for Tarlazzi’s own career development; for research at the host institution and the teaching of medieval philosophy in Italian high-schools; and for research in history of medieval philosophy in Europe.

Logicalia Medievalia: Latin logical manuscripts before 1220, new website created by Caterina Tarlazzi, with Yukio Iwakuma’s folders on Logical Manuscripts from ca. 800–1200.




Towards a Natural History of Formal Semantics. On the Development of Supposition Theory in Post-Medieval Logic
(c. 1450– c. 1650)
Projet de recherche en 2020–2023
Dirigé par Russell Friedman, avec Christophe Geudens

Supposition theory (ST) is one of the most important non-symbolic forerunners to formal semantics, a branch of linguistics and logic that is characterized by a mathematical (model-theoretic) approach to meaning. ST first emerged after the reintegration of Aristotelian thought in the later 12th c., and it disappeared with the dawn of modern logic in the later 19th c. ST was the predominant current in semantics for a period of more than 500 years, and it is one of the most important components of premodern logic. Research into supposition theory, however, is still in the early stages. To date, scholars have focused almost exclusively on the 13th and 14th c., and thus on only a fragment of the available sources. This project wants to shed new light on the history of ST by studying sources from the post-medieval period (c. 1450- c. 1650), a time frame that is hardly covered in the specialized literature. By means of historical and rational reconstructions of concrete theories, it aims to gain an insight into the many forms of ST during the post-medieval period. The core issues of the project include the relation between 'suppositio' and 'acceptio', and the principles of 'descensus', 'ascensus' and 'ampliatio'.




The Mechanization of Philosophy, 1300–1700
Projet de recherche en 2020–2022
Dirigé par Henrik Lagerlund, avec Erik Åkerlund et Sylvain Roudaut




Calculatores Project
Imaginable Impossibilities and Thought Experiments. The Tradition of the Oxford Calculators and its Influence on Early-Modern Logic and Natural Philosophy
Projet de recherche en 2019–2022
Dirigé par Irene Binini, avec Fabrizio Amerini

The project aims to investigate the tradition of the Oxford Calculators and the influence their works had on early-modern logic and natural philosophy in Europe. The Oxford Calculators were a group of scholars active at Oxford between 1325 and 1350. Among the most notable Calculators were T. Bradwardine, W. Heytesbury, and R. Swineshead, as well as many other English philosophers of the time, such as R. Kilvington, J. Dumbleton and R. Billingham. Their logical work has its roots in the context of the disputationes de sophismatibus, a pedagogical technique that played a crucial role in the education of undergraduate students in European universities throughout the 14th century. An element of novelty in the sophismata of the Calculators is that purely logical techniques were applied to the discussion of mathematical and physical issues, such as the quantitative analysis of qualities or the relations between motion, resistance and velocity. Moreover, their sophismata often involved the use of thought experiments, in which many sorts of intricate non-naturalistic cases and impossible scenarios were posited as conceivable or imaginable, and some theoretical inferences were drawn from them. It is still unclear, however, whether and to what extent these imaginative scenarios were aimed at challenging and revising parts of the Aristotelian physics.
Another element that has not been addressed in detail is whether these authors were referring to a consistent and systematic theory of modalities, and which connections there were between their use of modal terms and the theories and logics of modalities available in the late 13th and 14th century. From a historical viewpoint, the tradition of the Calculators is particularly important because of its influence on early-modern scholars and its contribution to the rise of modern science. Indeed, the Calculators’ achievements in the areas of mathematics and physics, together with their thought-experiment methodology, became widely influential on the Continent (and especially in North Italian universities) during the 15th century, and contributed to the shift from medieval scientific paradigms to a modern scientific view. An accurate study of this topic will allow us to determine in which way and to what extent the Calculators influenced later natural philosophers, and therefore to uncover the Medieval and European roots of the Scientific Revolution.

12-13 May 2020: Irene Binini, The ontological foundation of possibilities in 12th century logic (Intersections of Theology, Language and Cognition in Medieval Tradition and Beyond, Conference)

24 mars 2021, Colloquium "Modality, Tense and Truth” via Zoom, organized by the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen.
15:15 – 16:20 : Irene Binini, Abelard’s modal theory in its “fourth dimension”. Modal metaphysics, essentialism, possible worlds.
16:30 – 17:35 : Robert Pasnau, A Tale of Two Determinisms.

9 April 2021: Irene Binini, Reshaping the boundaries of the possible in 14th-century discussions on modalities (MeLO Seminar)

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE! A series of online seminars on the logic of impossibility



Teaching the Phaedrus at the Neoplatonic School of Athens
Projet de recherche en 2019–2022
Dirigé par Pieter d'Hoine, avec Simon Fortier

Judged by its influence on the history of thought, the Neoplatonic School of Athens was, along with its sister school at Alexandria, one of the most important intellectual institutions in the West. Such was its importance that 529 CE, the year that its doors were forced shut by the emperor Justinian, is often considered to mark the end of Ancient philosophy, and by extension, of Antiquity itself. While the past thirty years have witnessed a flourishing of scholarship on later Neoplatonism, this movement, to which we owe nearly a third of the philosophical texts to have survived the passage from Antiquity, remains the least explored continent of Ancient philosophy. Many questions regarding the School of Athens therefore remain unanswered, amongst them: what were the pedagogical practices, whether in terms of philosophical theory or contemplative practice, of the School? How did the contents of Platonic dialogues such as the Phaedrus affect these practices? What was the influence of a renowned Neoplatonic teacher such as Syrianus on his students? This project argues that the answers to these fundamental questions lie in a largely overlooked text from the School’s golden age, Hermias of Alexandria’s Scholia on Plato’s Phaedrus.




Restoring Plato’s sense of dialectic
Projet de recherche en 2018–2021
Dirigé par Pieter d'Hoine, avec Nicolas Zaks

Scholars often broach Plato’s dialectic from an external perspective. Some believe that while Plato is a superb writer, poet, and creator of inspiring myths that raise intriguing questions, he is definitely not a good logician, especially compared to Aristotle’s breakthrough in logic. Others are more charitable to Plato but still study Plato’s dialectic as if it were an embryonic form of Aristotle’s logic or an important stepping-stone towards Aristotle’s future philosophical achievements. In my project, I plan to study Plato’s dialectic in a way that escapes both kinds of prejudice, in order to show that it is a powerful method (or set of methods) in its own right when read from the perspective of Plato’s own thought and objectives.
My research hypothesis is that a number of key features of Plato’s dialectic that have been criticized by modern scholars can be justified by and better understood through an internal reading of Plato’s philosophy rather than evaluated from an external point of view. My aim is therefore to draw the contours of such an ‘internal’ reading of Plato and to show how it differs from a ‘backwards’ reading of Plato by investigating three notorious cases which should enable me to shed light on the specificity of Plato’s approach, by contrast with Aristotle’s: (a) the conception of science; (b) the use of examples; (c) the lack of use of the qua operator with respect to Forms.




Medieval Logic and Ontology (MeLO) Seminar
À partir de 2021
Organisé par Christophe Geudens et Nicola Polloni

MeLO is a virtual forum dedicated to research in logic and ontology from the period c. 500–1700.

12 February 2021: Jenny Pelletier and Russell Friedman, What is it like to think about roses: Chatton and Wodeham on Objective Existence (aka What is mental being? Auriol, Ockham, Chatton and Wodeham)

26 February 2021: Christophe Geudens, The via antiqua vs. via moderna Approach to Modal Logic. The Case of John Fabri of Valenciennes (fl. c. 1500)





Peter Auriol (d. 1322) and the Later Medieval Debate on Mental Being, 1315–1350
Projet de recherche en 2018–2021
Dirigé par Russell Friedman

When I think of a rose, there is a sense in which that rose exists in my mind as the object of my thinking about that rose. The same is true of my thinking about a unicorn except for the fact that there is no being in external reality that is a unicorn. Even if roses uncontroversially exist “out there” and unicorns do not, what about the mental rose and the mental unicorn, which somehow exist in my mind? What kind of being do they have? In the later Middle Ages, the kinds of being that were usually recognised were the ten Aristotelian categories (substance, quality, quantity, etc). Did mental being fit into the Aristotelian categories? A decisive figure in promulgating the view that mental beings enjoy a peculiar sort of existence, not easily slotted into one of the categories was the Peter Auriol (c. 1280-1322), who claimed that mental beings of all types have "objective existence", i.e. existence as an object of the intellect, fundamentally different from extra-mental existence. Auriol's metaphysics of the mental realm was instantly divisive, garnering significant criticism the depths of which have yet to be assessed. This project aims to trace the reception of Auriol’s innovative but metaphysically disturbing account of mental beings and mental existence at Oxford and Paris respectively. This debate on the mental being(s) attests to the creativity of medieval philosopher-theologians in thinking beyond the metaphysical framework that they inherited from Aristotle.





Vidéos de Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz, Barry Smith, Peter Simons, Jan Woleński, Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, Anna Brożek, Dariusz Łukasiewicz, Wojciech Rechlewicz et Witold Płotka




Filling the Gap: Medieval Aristotelian Logic 1240–1360
Projet de recherche en 2019–2024
Dirigé par Christina Thomsen Thörnqvist, avec Laurent Cesalli, Leone Gazziero entre autres.

The core of the project’s outcome will be critical editions of:

(Cesalli) Richard Brinkley’s (†1379) Summa logicae (new edition of parts I, III, and IV with revision of the previously edited parts II, V, VI, and VII).

(Gazziero) Robert Kilwardby’s (c. 1215–1279) commentary on Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi.

(Thomsen Thörnqvist) Simon of Faversham’s († 1306) Quaestiones super Analytica priora.





DICTUM (Divide and Collect: Understanding Platonic Method) is a research project that investigates the origins of the Western ideal of rational inquiry, Plato’s conception of dialectic. The project examines this conception under the hypothesis that, contrary to a near-consensus in present-day scholarship, Plato’s dialogues embody a unified understanding of dialectic. The experienced researcher tests this hypothesis systematically by minute philosophical analyses of Plato’s dialogues that will be supported by philological and historical considerations.

Plato's conception of dialectic is central to his idea of philosophy and consequently to our understanding of Plato. His discussion of dialectic is also the first philosophical inquiry into the nature of method and central to large parts of the Western and Islamic philosophical traditions. Despite this, very few modern attempts to present a unified Platonic dialectic exist, a consequence of interpretative assumptions underlying the bulk of modern Plato scholarship. DICTUM will challenge these assumptions. The interpretation of Plato is important to classical scholarship in philosophy, philology, and history of ideas, as well as to contemporary philosophy concerned with dialectical inquiry. By challenging the interpretative assumptions underlying the now dominant picture of Platonic method, the project is likely to have a significant impact on these fields of study.

The main hypothesis of DICTUM subsumes four sub-hypotheses (detailed in the project description), and each hypothesis will be tested in discussion with DICTUM's two supervisors. Four articles will treat of each sub-hypothesis and they will constitute the core of DICTUM's dissemination strategy; the project also includes an international conference on Platonic dialectic as well as workhops and lectures and public dissemination activities.




Magister Dixit
Projet de recherche en 2017–

Magister Dixit a pour objectif la numérisation et le dépouillement de tous les carnets de notes de cours manuscrites restantes de l'ancienne Université de Louvain (1425–1797). À cette période, l'Université de Louvain est non seulement l'Université «nationale» des Pays-Bas (du Sud), mais bénéficie aussi d'une excellente réputation parmi les étudiants et les professeurs de toute l'Europe. À travers les âges, ces manuscrits ont été dispersés dans les Pays-Bas et les régions voisines (jusqu'en Écosse, où les plus anciennes notes de cours résident). Dans le même temps, cependant, des institutions publiques (telles que l'Université Catholique de Louvain, la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, l'Université de Liège, l'Université de Gand, et d'autres), ont acquis de considérables collections de ces notes de cours. Magister Dixit les réunit une fois encore dans une unique collection numérique, comprenant une description complète et tous les détails codicologiques.

Logic in Louvain (c. 1425–1530). New Avenues of Research, conférence de Christophe Geudens au Colloque sur L'Europe de la Logique des 14 et 15 mai 2018 au Collège de France. Christophe Geudens consacre sa thèse de doctorat au Visage changeant de la Logique d'Aristote à l'Université de Louvain (1425–1797). Continuité et innovation dans les cahiers d'étudiants et leur contexte européen.

Les manuels de logique et le cartésianisme au XVIIᵉ siècle – les manuels français aux Pays-Bas, conférence de Steven Coesemans au Colloque sur L'Europe de la Logique des 14 et 15 mai 2018 au Collège de France. Steven Coesemans a consacré sa thèse de doctorat (titre initial : L'enseignement de la Logique d'Aristote à l'Université de Louvain (17ᵉ–18ᵉ siècles). Continuité et innovation dans les cahiers d'étudiants et leur contexte européen) aux Faculties of the Mind. The Rise of Facultative Logic at the University of Louvain.




Theories of Paradox in Fourteenth-Century Logic: Edition and Translation of Key Texts
Projet de recherche en 2017–2021
Dirigé par Stephen Read et Barbara Bartocci

It consists of preparing an edition of the Latin text, together with an English translation and commentary, of:

The treatise on Insolubilia from Paul of Venice’s Logica Magna: this has now been completed (Introduction: 25,000 words; Latin text: ~ 26,000 words; English translation: ~ 30,000 words; commentary: ~ 35,000 words; Appendices, excerpts from Paul's Quadratura and Sophismata Aurea: Latin text ~ 8,000 words, English translation ~ 9,000 words). It will appear in the series Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations; dallasmedievaltexts.org

The Summa Logicae of John Dumbleton (containing his Insolubilia, where he presents the eighth view discussed by Paul), presenting a version of cassatio, composed in Oxford in the 1330s (Latin text: ~ 25,000 words);

The Insolubilia of Walter Segrave (the fourteenth view discussed by Paul), presenting a version of restrictio, written in Oxford in the 1320s (Latin text: ~ 12,500 words).

Medieval Logic and its Contemporary Relevance, 30 April–2 May 2018

Video of the panel discussion in June 2020 with Stephen Read, Sara Uckelman et David Sanson.

Recordings of the 21-23 October 2020 Workshop on Theories of Paradox in the Middle Ages.



Medieval Logic Reading Group
Depuis 2006
Organisé par Stephen Read









Le projet de recherche néerlandais (2016–2020) The Art of Reasoning conduit par Mariken Teeuwen, Irene van Renswoude et Irene O’Daly aborde les pratiques de l'argumentation et du raisonnement du début du Moyen Âge à l'âge des Universités médiévales.
Selon le grand récit actuel de l'histoire intellectuelle médiévale, les savants ne commencent à interroger la connaissance reçue et à penser de manière critique qu'à partir du douzième siècle, lorsque l'ère de la scolastique créé un nouveau climat intellectuel et donne naissance aux Universités. Pourtant les outils pour penser de manière critique et défier les autorités ont toujours fait partie du monde intellectuel médiéval (et avant). Le malentendu, arguons-nous, est non seulement provoqué par des préjugés persistants au sujet des «Âges sombres», mais également par la nature cachée des preuves. Alors que les outils de l'argumentation scientifique des douzième et treizième siècles se manifestent dans la production de textes et de nouveaux genres textuels (sententiae, disputationes), ils prennent souvent dans les âges antérieurs la forme de paratextes : commentaires, annotations marginales, diagrammes.
Ce n'est que depuis quelques années que ces paratextes sont devenus visibles à une plus grande communauté de chercheurs. Avant 2000, ils étaient largement cachés dans les marges des manuscrits, bon nombre d'entre eux sont à présent librement exposés dans des centaines de collections de manuscrits numérisés en ligne, prêts, pour la première fois, à être explorés. De la fin de l'Antiquité à la fin du Moyen Âge, ces voix dans les marges sont les témoignages d'un art critique et scientifique d'étudier les textes : les versions sont comparées, les passages semblant corrompus sont mis en évidence, les opinions divergentes sont mises en lumière, confrontées et discutées. En d'autres termes : les annotations offrent une perspective sur la culture intellectuelle du Moyen Âge bien plus riche qu'on ne le supposait auparavant.


The Art of Reasoning in Medieval Manuscripts
Online exhibition by Irene O’Daly, Irene van Renswoude, Mariken Teeuwen
Published online December 2020.

Cette exposition en ligne présente des manuscrits médiévaux contenant des textes sur l'art du raisonnement. Découvrez ce qui était enseigné dans la classe médiévale et comment les lecteurs ont laissé leurs traces dans les manuscrits médiévaux en étudiant et en apprenant. L'exposition contient 14 manuscrits et explore 4 thèmes – Rhétorique et Dialectique, Professeurs et Étudiants, Gloses et Diagrammes, Débat et Controverse – autour d'une question centrale : Comment un lecteur, un étudiant médiéval apprend-il à raisonner et à argumenter ?





Reassessing 9th Century Philosophy. A Synchronic Approach to the Logical Traditions (9 SALT)
Projet de recherche en 2016–2020
Dirigé par Christophe Erismann, avec Caterina Tarlazzi

This project aims at a better understanding of the philosophical richness of ninth century thought using the unprecedented and highly innovative method of the synchronic approach. The hypothesis directing this synchronic approach is that studying together in parallel the four main philosophical traditions of the century – i.e. Latin, Greek, Syriac and Arabic – will bring results that the traditional enquiry limited to one tradition alone can never reach. This implies pioneering a new methodology to overcome the compartmentalization of research which prevails nowadays. Using this method is only possible because the four conditions of applicability – comparable intellectual environment, common text corpus, similar methodological perspective, commensurable problems – are fulfilled. The ninth century, a time of cultural renewal in the Carolingian, Byzantine and Abbasid empires, possesses the remarkable characteristic – which ensures commensurability – that the same texts, namely the writings of Aristotelian logic (mainly Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories) were read and commented upon in Latin, Greek, Syriac and Arabic alike.
Logic is fundamental to philosophical enquiry. The contested question is the human capacity to rationalise, analyse and describe the sensible reality, to understand the ontological structure of the world, and to define the types of entities which exist. The use of this unprecedented synchronic approach will allow us a deeper understanding of the positions, a clear identification of the a priori postulates of the philosophical debates, and a critical evaluation of the arguments used. It provides a unique opportunity to compare the different traditions and highlight the heritage which is common, to stress the specificities of each tradition when tackling philosophical issues and to discover the doctrinal results triggered by their mutual interactions, be they constructive (scholarly exchanges) or polemic (religious controversies).

Christophe Erismann, Writing the History of Aristotelian Logic During the Long Ninth Century

23 Novembre 2017: Logic in the Caroligian Age: Glosses, Diagrams, and Manuscripts

Report: work performed and final results







Sandra Lapointe, Form and Matter in Kantian and post-Kantian Logic
2017 Hylemorphism Conference, Canadian Metaphysics Collaborative





Alain de Libera, Chaire d'Histoire de la philosophie médiévale au Collège de France
2013–2019

Cours et Séminaires
Colloques




Albert of Saxony, Sophismata. Critical Edition
Projet de recherche en 2012–2015 et 2016–2017
Dirigé par Harald Berger, avec Michael von Perger

Albert of Saxony’s Sophismata presumably was written in 1360/62 at Paris University. The text shall be edited with critical apparatus, apparatus of sources, introduction to the edited book and introduction to the edition. At present the applicant knows of 24 complete or larger incomplete manuscript copies and of four small manuscript fragments of this work. Furthermore, there are four Parisian incunabula and an early print. This amount of text witnesses shows the importance and the influence of the work. It was still used in university teaching in the 15th century and at the beginning of the 16th. With regard to logical doctrines, the Sophismata Alberti are a supplement, and in several passages a retractation, of Albert’s logical opus magnum, the Logica. The work never before has been critically edited.
Source : https://static.uni-graz.at/fileadmin/gewi-institute/Philosophie-Gewi/PDFs/Completion_of_the_Critical_Edition_of_Albert_of_Saxony.pdf




History and Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics
Projet de recherche en 2012–2017
Dirigé par Stephen Read, avec Kevin Scharp, Gabriel Uzquiano, Mark Thakkar, Josh Dever, Roy Dyckhoff, Bruno Jacinto, Matthew Cameron, Ryo Ito, Alessandro Rossi

May 2017: Proofs of Propositions in 14th-Century Logic

June 2016: Cardinality, Worlds and Paradox

November 2015: Inferentialism

16-17 May 2015: Wyclif and the Realist Tradition in 14th-Century Logic

11-12 October 2014: Non-Alethic Aims of Enquiry

19-20 June 2014: Philosophy of Logic

5-6 June 2014: Tense in Semantics and Philosophy of Language

12-14 May 2014: Medieval Logic & Metaphysics

16 November 2013: Formal Metaphysics Workshop

11-13 October 2013: Meaning: Models and Proofs

10-11 June 2013: Necessity, Analyticity and the Apriori

22-23 November 2012: Modal Logic in the Middle Ages




Sémantique formelle et langage naturel au XIIIᵉ siècle
Projet de Recherche en 2010-2012
Dirigé par Alain de Libera, avec Laurent Cesalli et Frédéric Goubier

Édition de l'Opus puerorum (ms. Amiens, Bibliothèque Municipale 406)

Geneva, 12-16 June 2012: Symposium Formal Approaches and Natural Language in Medieval logic. XIXth European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics

Formal Approaches and Natural Language in Medieval Logic. Proceedings of the XIXth European Symposium of Medieval Logic and Semantics, Geneva, 12-16 June 2012

Round Table: How Formal is Medieval Logic?




Medieval Logical Manuscripts
Projet de recherche dirigé par Lambertus Marie de Rijk et Egbert P. Bos

Au cours de sa carrière universitaire le professeur Lambertus Marie de Rijk a compilé des notes sur des manuscrits médiévaux contenant des textes logiques. Depuis 1953 le professeur de Rijk a visité un grand nombre de Bibliothèques en Europe, étudié de nombreux microfilms, et analysé de nombreux catalogues. Il releva des cotes, des numéros de feuillets, des titres de traités, des noms d'auteurs, des noms d'auteurs commentés, des incipits, des explicits, des colophons, des années ou des siècles. Il enregistra ces données sur un grand nombre de fiches de classement et les utilisa pour beaucoup de ses livres et articles.
Cette base de donnée est conçue comme un repertoire de textes latins médiévaux de logique dans les manuscrits (médiévaux signifie écrits entre 500 et 1500). Les ars vetus et ars nova eux-mêmes sont omis. La base de donnée contient des commentaires sur l'art ancien et nouveau, des textes appartenant à la logica moderna, et d'autres textes de logique, tels que des traités Sur les arts libéraux ou seulement des pages de notes. Les Logicae modernae sont divisées en traités, commentaires sur l'art ancien ou nouveau, et en commentaires d'œuvres séparées.
Dans beaucoup d'enregistrements, une large partie des champs est encore vide; souvent parce que le codex ne contient tout simplement pas de colophon, la provenance est inconnue, mais aussi souvent parce que nous ne disposons pas encore de l'information. La base de donnée est basée sur les fichiers de cartes que le professeur de Rijk a construit depuis les années 1960. Les données ont été complétées à partir des catalogues disponibles, mais de nombreux catalogues fournissent des informations plutôt parcellaires.