27 octobre 2021
Objective Precision. The Key to Early-Modern Scholastic Ontology
Second Scholasticism. Analytical Metaphysics. Christian Apologetics
A Conference in Honour of Professor Stanislav Sousedík’s 90th birthday
Catholic Theological Faculty, Prague, Czech Republic
27–29 octobre 2021
Abstract
« No question is more famous in the Schools than that about ‘precisions’ » (Nulla celebrior hodie, quam de praecisionibus, in scholis quaestio), wrote the English Jesuit Thomas Compton Carleton in 1649. However, little if nothing has ever been written by historians about this concept, which lays at the core of post-Suarezian scholasticism and has been at the centre of vivid debates until the Enlightenment. In this talk, I will start by explaining the background of medieval theories of abstraction and the emergence of the specific concept of praecisio obiectiva in the seventeenth century, to designate a type of abstract entity existing « objectively », i.e. independently of the formal act of the mind. I will then sketch the scholastic battle that raged about its existence between pro- and anti-precisionists, and how Thomists tried to establish a compromise between Scotists and Nominalists. Finally I will show that from the correct understanding of praecisio obiectiva depends the solution of many other philosophical problems, in particular the problem of distinctions and that of universals.