FORMALITAS · The Formalist Tradition in Late Scholastic Philosophy: a Renaissance Forerunner of Formal Ontology

In this UCLouvain-based project, Claus A. Andersen will demonstrate the philosophical and historical importance of the “Formalist tradition” in Renaissance philosophy (esp. in the time span ca. 1480–1620). The concepts of identity and distinction are the key components in the “Formalist treatises” that enjoyed vast diffusion during the Renaissance, had roots in Late Medieval scholasticism, esp. in the works of the Franciscan Duns Scotus, and played a significant role in textbooks of scholastic philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Formalists discussed whether their doctrines constituted a discipline of its own, a “science of the formalities” that would correspond to what to-day goes by the name of “formal ontology”. The rise of a new metaphysical discipline needs to be part of what we know about the intellectual culture of the Renaissance. The Formalist tradition has mainly been studied through its strains of influence upon other scholastic currents of the Renaissance, but has not itself attracted the attention it merits. This project is innovative in its identification and elimination of this gap in our knowledge and in its focus on scholastic metaphysics during the Renaissance. The project will be supervised by Prof. Jacob Schmutz (UCLouvain); it is conceived as a part of an endeavor to establish an internationally attractive milieu for studies in Early Modern scholastic philosophy at UCLouvain and thus opens rich opportunities for future cooperation. The applicant and the supervisor share a deep interest in the intellectual culture in Early Modern religious orders and will together curate an exhibition in the Maurits Sabbe Library in Leuven that documents the intellectual culture of the Franciscans in Early Modern Leuven on the background of the wider Franciscan scholastic tradition. The project further includes a practical training programme, research articles, an online catalogue of Formalist literature, and a conference with a proceedings publication.