Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, Miscellaneous

Walter Benjamin teaches us that books have a Nachreife, a “maturing process” in their afterlife during which they leave their original but limited historical and cultural context in order to take part in a process that is not defined by the intention of the author or the reader. Through their interaction, writers and readers transform the relationships among the times, places, languages, and schools of thought that informed a literary or philosophical work when it was born. Don Isaac Abravanel’s critical (...) reception of Gersonides is an interesting example of such a transformation, in that it both disassembled the Provençal scholar’s initial scientific and theological project and established new links and interpretations. Don Isaac’s critique of Gersonides did not derive only from a historical process within the Jewish intellectual sphere; it also followed Christian and Humanist trends, including Petrarch’s development of a Humanist defense of religion, more independent of science. Abravanel’s critical reception of Gersonides is an interesting meeting point of Jewish and Christian literary and philosophical trends. In that sense, the cultural and historical processes that informed Abravanel’s attitude towards Gersonides helped create the conditions for a belated literary encounter between two great scholars who had lived in the same geographical and cultural environment of the papal court at Avignon: Gersonides and Petrarch. This new connection produced by the reception process is what our comparative study of Abravanel’s reading of Gersonides in both Jewish and Christian contexts attempts to demonstrate. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin teaches us that books have a Nachreife, a “maturing process” in their afterlife during which they leave their original but limited historical and cultural context in order to take part in a process that is not defined by the intention of the author or the reader. Through their interaction, writers and readers transform the relationships among the times, places, languages, and schools of thought that informed a literary or philosophical work when it was born. Don Isaac Abravanel’s critical (...) reception of Gersonides is an interesting example of such a transformation, in that it both disassembled the Provençal scholar’s initial scientific and theological project and established new links and interpretations. Don Isaac’s critique of Gersonides did not derive only from a historical process within the Jewish intellectual sphere; it also followed Christian and Humanist trends, including Petrarch’s development of a Humanist defense of religion, more independent of science. Abravanel’s critical reception of Gersonides is an interesting meeting point of Jewish and Christian literary and philosophical trends. In that sense, the cultural and historical processes that informed Abravanel’s attitude towards Gersonides helped create the conditions for a belated literary encounter between two great scholars who had lived in the same geographical and cultural environment of the papal court at Avignon: Gersonides and Petrarch. This new connection produced by the reception process is what our comparative study of Abravanel’s reading of Gersonides in both Jewish and Christian contexts attempts to demonstrate. (shrink)

In 2017, the Australasian Journal of Philosophy issued a rare retraction, informing their readers that one of their articles was not in fact written by a cat. The short article, a critique of David Lewis’s ‘Veridical Hallucination and Prosthetic Vision’, was published in 1981 under the name of ‘Bruce Le Catt’, a figure with no discernible institutional affiliation or track record of publishing, but who appears to have been familiar with Lewis’s work. As indeed he might have been, being the (...) beloved pet of the great American philosopher. -/- It may not have come as a surprise to those familiar with Lewis’s work that ‘Bruce Le Catt’ was not the pseudonym of an astute critic, but of Lewis himself. The playfulness of Lewis’s writing is well known: for instance, the paper ‘Holes’ (1970), co-written with Stephanie Lewis, is a dialogue between two characters, ‘Argle’ and ‘Bargle’, on the ontological status of holes as found in Gruyère, crackers, paper-towel rollers and in matter more generally. Nevertheless, the attribution of the 1981 paper to a cat seemed to cross a line. It may have been playful, but it was also deceptive, hence the retraction. -/- Lewis was not the only 20th-century philosopher to publish using an invented persona. The contents page of the book Explaining Emotions (1980), edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, features the essay ‘Jealousy, Attention, and Loss’ by one Leila Tov-Ruach, listed on the Contributors page as ‘an Israeli psychiatrist, who writes and lectures on philosophic psychology’. Some readers might have noticed that this is a rather unusual name – a pun on laila tov ruach or ‘goodnight wind’ in Hebrew – and might have had their suspicions confirmed by the fact that there is no discernible trace of this psychiatrist elsewhere on the medical or academic record. Indeed, as an erratum on the University of California Press website drily notes, Amélie Oksenberg Rorty and Leila Tov-Ruach are indeed one and the same person. (shrink)

This paper offers an introduction to the Renaissance defence of terres- trial motion by the Ferrara humanist Celio Calcagnini, Quod caelum stet, terra moveatur (ca. 1518). It presents its main argument and reconstructs its intellectual context. It also comprises the first modern translation (in Italian). This treatise is an early document of the circulation of geokinetic conceptions. It was written in the very years when the revolu- tionary ideas of Copernicus started to circulate and the De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was (...) taking shape. Calcagnini’s defence of terrestrial motion especially drew on natural and epistemological conceptions stemming from humanistic eclecticism, influenced by scepticism and Platonism. The paper also offers an interpretation of celestial motions that Calcagnini attributed to the Earth, although he did not expound on the mathematical details. (shrink)

I argue for a transformative revival or actualization of the very core of an integrative, methodologically secured form of intellect‑mystical asceticism. This approach draws on traditional sources that are re‑examined from a systematic—synthetic and transcultural—philosophical perspective and in light of the multi‑civilizational global environment of the 21st century. The main traditional points of reference in this paper are provided by Nicolaus de Cusa and Ibn Sīnā, and I refer toa few others, such as Attar of Nishapur, in passing. I begin (...) by developing a basic concept of intellect‑mystical asceticism. It is distinguished from mystification, science, scientism, and modes of everyday communication and cognition. Then, I make the case for an updated, transcultural approach to intellect‑mysticism that can foster the internal (social) and external (environmental) reintegration of the human noosphere and technosphere in future planetary development. In this context, a modern intellect‑mystical philosophical notion of “knowing non‑knowing” (wissendes Nichtwissen, docta ignorantia) is developed. It is inspired by Nicolaus de Cusa and contextualized from a systematic transcultural angle at the same time. Finally, I discuss the problem of the practical, or rather ascetic, realization of the related possibilities of intellect‑mystical self‑enfolding. Here, the preceding steps of the reflection are mapped onto an outline regarding distinct developmental stages of such a transformative intellect‑mystical practice in Ibn Sīnā’s Remarks and Admonitions (al‑Ishārāt wat‑Tanbīhāt). (shrink)

This book offers an interdisciplinary approach - historical, literary, art-historical and archaeological - to the topics of ideology and identity in the medieval East Roman world. The individual chapters explore ideological discourses and practices in various contexts. In particular, they focus on the content of ideas and their role in shaping different kinds of group attachments and identifications within the imperial social order. Moreover, they explore the various visions of community which different collective identity discourses projected within and beyond the (...) political boundaries of the empire. Including both top-down and bottom-up perspectives, and exploring both the empire's centre and its periphery, this collection offers new insights into ideology and identity in the Byzantine world. (shrink)

La condanna della ‘dottrina del giudizio’. I due dialoghi morali del Nolano, "Spaccio de la bestia trionfante" e "Cabala del cavallo Pegaseo", richiamano alla mente, in molti luoghi, L’Anticristo nietzschiano. I giudizi sul cristianesimo che vi sono espressi mostrano, infatti, notevoli concordanze con la celebre ‘maledizione’ del filosofo tedesco.

L'étude de la perspective a longtemps souffert d'un a priori dommageable : celui qui consiste à en faire un système culturel « inventé » à la Renaissance, ou, tout au moins, coupé de ses sources médiévales. Depuis une quinzaine d'années, nombre de recherches se sont attachées à montrer ce que devait la perspective aux connaissances du passé, en postulant tour à tour son origine dans l'optique, l'ars metrica, la statique, la géographie ou l'astronomie... Ce livre montre qu'il n'est pas besoin (...) de convoquer l'ensemble de ces sources et défend la thèse d'un courant de diffusion prépondérant, qui va de l'optique élaborée à Oxford au XIIIe siècle, vers les premières représentations picturales italiennes obéissant aux règles de la perspective linéaire. De fait, ce livre délaisse le regard classique que portent l'histoire et la sociologie de l'art sur la perspective, pour s'intéresser essentiellement au réseau des hommes qui ont rendu possible l'avènement de la perspectiva artificialis en diffusant l'optique d'Oxford. Au croisement de l'histoire et de la sociologie des sciences, cette enquête tente de comprendre les raisons politiques et religieuses qui ont déterminé cette transmission culturelle, tout autant, d'ailleurs, que celles qui ont voulu effacer le passé médiéval de la perspective en créant de toutes pièces un « mythe de la perspective ». Ce livre éclaire les rapports entre la science optique et les techniques de représentation, en interrogeant les mobiles des hommes qui ont transmis, et transformé le contenu de la perspective. (shrink)

In contemporary social epistemology, the claim has been made that there is a traditional “neglect of testimonial knowledge,” and that in the history of epistemology, first-hand self-knowledge was invariably prioritised over secondary knowledge. While this paper acknowledges some truth in these statements, it challenges the given explanations: the mentioned neglect of testimonial knowledge is based not so much on a primacy of self-knowledge, but that of self-agency. This article retraces some crucial chapters of this ‘do-it-yourself’ paradigm: it considers the imperative (...) of autopsia in early Greek epistemology, history and medicine, and the early modern refashioning of the privilege of self-generated and self-taught (autodidactic) knowledge. A new picture emerges of how the emphasis on (self-)agency progressively shifted towards a focus on the self as the source of ultimate knowledge. (shrink)

ヒマラヤ山脈から赤道近辺に及ぶ広大なインド亜大陸。過酷な気象条件のもとに暮らす人々が現代まで連綿と受け継いできた“インド的”な思考の根底にあるものを、ヒンドゥー教ほか正統派とされている思想に焦点を当て ひもとく。.

This article discusses how Nicholas of Cusa’s speculative philosophy harbors an ecumenical spirit that is deeply entwined and in tension with his commitment to incarnational mystical theology. On the basis of my discussion of this tension, I intend to show that Nicholas understands “faith” as a poietic activity whose legitimacy is rooted less in the independent veracity of the beliefs in question than in the potential of particular religious conventions to aid intellectual processes of self-interpretation. In undertaking this analysis, the (...) paper will use Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei—whose overt intention is to show that all forms of religious practice presuppose the same universal faith—as an interpretive lens to explore implications of the philosophical anthropology that Nicholas offers in treatises such as De ludo globi and De venatione sapientiae. Thus, I will argue that Nicholas’ appreciation of the inevitability of religious diversity in the temporal world funds the consistently favored view in his speculative works that “faith” is a virtue only insofar as its adherent genuinely remains in search of understanding and that, consequently, religious beliefs should function as nothing more than tools for creative activity, interpretation, and inquiry. (shrink)

Johann Eck (1486–1543) has been introduced to modern scholarship as a prominent figure of the pre-Tridentine Counter-Reformation. As part of the curricular transformations of the University of Ingolstadt, he wrote commentaries on logical and scientific works by Aristotle and Peter of Spain. Utilising a variety of sources, the two volumes dedicated to physics and natural philosophy published in 1518 and 1519 were self-contained textbooks including annotated translations of the texts and quaestio-commentaries. These developed the doctrines of the Oxford Calculators mediated (...) through Continental sources, reproducing their conceptual and mathematical apparatus, including the famous middle degree theorem and Bradwardine’s law. (shrink)

The 14th-century Dominican theologian and philosopher Durand of Saint-Pourçain was among the intellectuals who took part in the medieval debate on virginity, especially on the relationship between virginity and marriage. This paper discusses a question of his Sentences Commentary (Super Sent., II, d. 20, q. 2), in which Durand poses the question of “whether or not there would have been a loss of virginity in marriage” (utrum in actu matrimoniali fuisset amissio virginitatis) both in statu innocentiae and in statu post (...) peccatum. This paper shows how Durand’s solution to the problem is in opposition to Augustine’s and Thomas Aquinas’s views, based on formal and material aspects of virginity. (shrink)

The Catena aurea entium of Henry of Herford is part of the work of re-elaboration of Aristotle’s natural-philosophical corpus, which characterised the European intellectual environment in the Late Middle Ages. In the central books of his encyclopaedia, Henry comments on the works of natural philosophy of Albert the Great, placing himself in continuity with the cultural project started by Albert in Cologne. The present article aims to compare the 5th book of the Catena aurea entium, which consists of a comment (...) per modum quaestionis on the Meteora of Albert the Great, with some meteorological quaestiones composed between the 13th and 15th centuries. This analysis will lead me to grasp the philosophical orientations and interpretation of Henry and also his reception of Albert the Great’s meteorology. In the 5th book, Henry introduces an extensive medical section taken from the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata, in which he applies the Galenic medical principles to meteorology. Besides, in the quaestio 105 (V 1 105), he interprets Albert through the theological-poetic explanation of ancient origins on the sacrality of the number three and an excerpt from the Liber proverbiorum. (shrink)

This article aims to test the hypothesis that metaphysical grounding is an instance of essentially ordered (or per se ) causation, a species of causation identified by medieval philosophers and theologians like Aquinas and Scotus, but largely forgotten from then on. The article reviews some of the consensus of grounding theorists on the nature of metaphysical grounding (or ontological dependence) compared to some of the crucial characteristics of essentially ordered causal series as articulated by scholastic and neo-Aristotelian philosophers then and (...) now. The authors emphasize their similarities, which they hold is enough to render strongly plausible the thesis that grounding is essentially ordered causation (G = EOC). Moreover, they highlight the potential benefits of this identification both for theories of grounding and EOC, especially as it concerns matters of fundamentality. Finally, they consider the limits of their hypothesis. (shrink)

The cinematic frame is the boundary between the cinematic image and the outside world. In the history of theoretical studies of cinema, the essence of the cinematic frame is analyzed in many ways. Here we focus on two significant viewpoints among them. One of these significant viewpoints considered cinematic frame as a window, and another one considered it as a framework. Both of them had (and have) some supporters. In the case of the window, which realist theories preferred, the cinematic (...) frame is a window upon the world which cuts a slice of the world to produce the cinematic image. In this regard, the window metaphor served as a fenestration or hole through which one could see the world. In this paper, at first, I will report a brief history of the frame in old arts, and in this brief history, I explain that the modern concept of art came out of the Fifteenth century when European artists began to use easel painting. And then, after presenting a very short history of the development of the easel painting and modern concept of the frame in painting and other mediums, I would try to analyze the cinematic frame according to the history of film studies. Finally, in the main part of the paper, I attempt to analyze the cinematic frame according to the distinction between the metaphors of the window and framework. In this respect, I try to find conciliation. This conciliation depends on the concept of off-screen which both formalists and realists have considered it, so I would also examine the concept of off-screen and its role in defining the cinematic frame. After surveying the realist and formalist viewpoints on this concept I try to reach a comprehensive analysis of the cinematic frame which keeps the strong points of both viewpoints. (shrink)

This article aims at reassessing a widespread view, according to which Francisco Suárez left behind the scholastic model of truth as adaequatio, founding a new concept of truth based on his metaphysics of objective being. In the first part, I reconstruct the debate on the complex and incomplex truth, focusing especially on the sources of Suárez’s Disputation 8, and presenting the views of Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Hervaeus, Durandus, Capreolus and Fonseca. Especially the latter proposes an eclectic synthesis, blending elements (...) from the Dominican tradition and Henry of Ghent. In the second part, I analyze Suárez’s Disputation 8, showing that his doctrine of truth reprises and mitigates Fonseca’s, thus following most of the Dominican commentators of Aquinas. Here I explain especially the role played by objective being in the constitution of the truth in cognoscendo, also showing that the latter cannot be given without a previous adequation on the level of the truth in significando (the species). In the third part, I discuss three textual passages used by contemporary historiography to legitimate Suárez’s alleged abandonment of adaequatio, pointing out, in the light of the previous reconstruction, some misreadings in these interpretations. (shrink)

C'è un particolare che può apparire secondario, ma che assume un'importanza fondamentale per la ricostruzione della vicenda personale di Giordano Bruno. Si tratta dell'abito monacale.

Philosophy, Arab; philosophers; Carthage (Tunisia); biography.

Truth is a key notion in Ockham’s philosophical reductionist program, a notion that has been the object of contrasting interpretations in scholarship. My interpretation is that, for Ockham, ‘being true’ expresses an epistemological relation, namely the one through which our mind reflects on a proposition of language, compares it with an extra-mental state of affairs, and thus ascertains their correspondence. Placing truth at a point of intersection of language with mind and reality, Ockham’s interpretation of Aristotle’s characterization of philosophy as (...) the science of truth comes to be innovative. For Ockham, philosophy is a meticulous training of interpretation of language in order to account correctly for the truth-value of propositions. (shrink)

The dissemination of Tommaso Campanella’s thought in the seventeenth-century Dutch context was not only due to his concern with the war involving the Netherlands. His works, indeed, were referred to by scholars interested in establishing a new philosophy and natural history. Johannes De Raey and Paul Veezaerdt took up some of his perspectives on the history of Aristotelian philosophy, and dealt with the theological implications of his arguments.

A sound historiographical account of the role of logic in the development of medieval philosophical and theological reflection requires a thorough examination of its historical roots and its theoretical implications. An apparent historiographical bias, due to the idea that only the development of contemporary formal logic enables a proper reconstruction of the whole history of logic, can be exposed by taking into account the case of the medieval discussions on the topics, starting from their late-antiquity legacy. An attentive inspection of (...) the successive stages of the gradual formalisation process of medieval topical logic brings to the fore significant theoretical aspects in the philosophy of logic, all too often left aside in common contemporary discussions. In particular, the distinction between topical maxims and topical differences, or principles according to and principles from which an inference is drawn, highlights the specific nature of a major part of medieval logic, that deals with meta-logical issues by means of higher-order logical resources. It is precisely this special character of medieval logic that proves to be of the highest significance in the discussion of the most subtle theological—and just as well philosophical—questions that engaged medieval authors, thus testifying to the essential role of logic in the overall development of medieval thought. (shrink)

Tommaso Giannini (1556-1638) was a prominent professor at the Ferrara Studium between the sixteenth and the seventeenth century. Probably influenced by Platonic sympathies nurtured by the Court and partly by the University milieu, in 1587 he published his first work titled De providentia ad sententiam Platonis et Platonicorum liber unus, which was a catalyst for his academic career. His De providentia displays a large amount of sources always tacitly used: Marsilio Ficino, Jacques Charpentier, Giulio Serina, Stefano Tiepolo, Teofilo Zimara, Bessarion, (...) Agostino Steuco, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and amid the ancients Plotinus, Plutarch, Sirianus, Proclus (read through Teofilo Zimara and Leonico Tomeo), Iamblichus, Apuleius, Calcidius, Ammonius, Psellus. Though a compilative work, the De providentia retains nonetheless a great importance insofar as it contributes to focus the bibliotheca platonica of the time, furthermore in the same years and place of Francesco Patrizi da Cherso’s teaching. (shrink)

Till just few decades ago, scholars used to use the label ‘Ockhamism’ to mark a turning-point in the history of mediaeval philosophy, above all in the history of natural philosophy. That turning-point was exemplified by the once so-called ‘Buridanian school’, today known simply as ‘Parisian school of natural philosophy’, whose leading representative was for sure John Buridan. But looking carefully at some crucial points of the Picard master’s idea of ‘nature’, concerning specifically the relationship between God and secondary causes on (...) one side, and the role played by free will, both the divine and the human one, on the other side, one will find out that Buridan’s ‘Ockhamism’ is at least questionable: Scotus’ modal logic is the conceptual framework, within which he redetermines the boundaries of natural laws, but the ‘pure ockhamist’ idea of the prevalence of the will on the intellect in God’s nature is the source of an image of the world in which voluntary behaviours and natural laws are intertwined. Therefore, Buridan’s natural philosophy results as a peculiar synthesis of two of the main divergent lines of thinking of late mediaeval philosophy. (shrink)

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was (probably) poisoned by his secretary, Cristoforo da Casalmaggiore, as Marin Sanudo testifies in his Diarii. After Pico’s remains exhumation, some years ago, it was also supposed that the main responsible of the poisoning was Marsilio Ficino. The purpose of this paper is to trace the ‘romance’ sources of this strange supposition.

This paper examines the attribution to Eckhart of the unpublished collationes contained in the MS Bernkastel-Kues, Bibliothek des St. Nikolaus-Hospitals 21. Eckhart’s authorship was excluded by Koch, but is plausible from the point of view of the history of the manuscript tradition. The paper announces the discovery of a series of similar collationes in a Lüneburg manuscript of Franciscan origin and highlights, through the edition of the texts relating to Advent, some parallels between both works, probably depending on the use (...) of a common source. (shrink)

The 26 essays collected in this volume explore some crucial aspects of the philosophical and scientific traditions of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Using a historical-philological approach, the volume brings to light unpublished documents and offers new reconstructions of the intellectual paths of authors such as Meister Eckhart, Nicole Oresme, John Buridan, Siger of Brabant, William of Ockham, Peter Pomponazzi, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

In his questio on the motion of elements and mixed bodies in a void the Italian professor of practical medicine, Albertino Rinaldi da Salso di Piacenza (Albertinus de Rainaldis de Placentia, also known as Albertino da Piacenza), held the clearly non-Aristotelian view that an element in a void would not move instantaneously, but successively. To prove his conclusion Albertino draws to a large degree on arguments proposed by Richard Kilvington. Among the few 14th century authors who rejected Aristotle’s account of (...) motion in a vacuum Kilvington had presented the most thorough analysis of this subject. While Kilvington is known for his sophisticated argumentation and entangled style of presenting and sometimes nearly hiding his own opinions, Albertino’s treatise is better structured, and his conclusions are brought out more clearly. His disputation is an impressive testimony to the impact of Kilvington’s views of motion in a void. (shrink)

Berthold of Moosburg had the whole Sapientiale by Thomas of York constantly at hand when writing his commentary on Proclus. Even thought Berthold never refers by name to the English Franciscan except in his tabula auctoritatum, where Thomas is registered as «Magister Thomas Anglicus minor», he quotes extensively and verbatim from the Sapientiale throughout his Expositio of Proclus; astoundingly, Berthold quotes more from Thomas than he does from his Dominican predecessors in the Teutonic Province, Albert the Great, Ulrich of Strassburg (...) and Dietrich of Freiberg. The following articles describes the presence of Thomas of York in Berthold of Moosburg’s Expositio super Elementationem theologicam. An appendix provides a systematic investigation of the relationship between the texts of the two authors. (shrink)

In examining Augustine’s contribution to the Christian doctrine of bellum iustum, this article sheds light on some extremely interesting pages, from which it is possible to reconstruct how Augustine conceived the relationship between the Christian religion and the Empire. Rejecting the accusations according to which the Christian religion would be an “enemy of the State,” he affirms instead that, if it were given the attention it deserves, it would give Rome “a foundation and a consecration” which it never knew during (...) its history. Moreover, Augustine’s considerations do not only concern the military sphere, but every aspect of civil life, recognizing Christianity as an element of maximum guarantee for the stability of institutions and of the entire society. (shrink)

The presence of the Church Fathers in Robert Grosseteste’s works has always been an object of interest for scholars. In a 1997 article, Robert Grosseteste and the Church Fathers, Neil Lewis has outlined the status quaestionis on the topic, and has made a few remarks on the peculiarities of Grosseteste’s works dating to different periods of his life. In fact, since the 1230s the presence of the Church Fathers was always prominent in the works of Grosseteste (who could read Greek (...) and draw directly from the Greek sources of the Patristic tradition), but in a way less and less exclusive. In this paper the author reconsiders this topic and makes further remarks on it, with particular regard for Grosseteste’s use of Augustine. (shrink)

The dominance of Augustine of Hippo in philosophy during the second quarter of the fourteenth century is testified to by three evidences: (1) the wide use of quotations from his works, (2) the flourishing of commentaries on them, especially at Oxford, as reconstructed by William J. Courtenay; (3) the historical-critical treatment of the writings of the Fathers, of the theological and philosophical auctoritates, and of contemporary Scholastic authors at Paris by the Augustinians, as reconstructed by Onorato Grassi. In this article, (...) I focus on the second kind of evidence, taking into account some commentaries on Augustine’s De civitate Dei, namely those of Nicholas Trevet and Thomas Waleys in the English area, and that Francis of Meyronnes in the French area. These commentaries became the basis for Raoul de Presles’s translation of Augustine’s work into Middle French. Moreover, I analyze books 1–5 of Raoul’s translation, showing that it was by no means accidental to his intellectual endeavors and that Raoul employed innovative, Humanist techniques of translation, and shedding light on the comparison of Charles V of France to Charlemagne in the rediscovery of the Augustinian corpus. (shrink)

North-American philosophy was bolstered with the doctrines of the Jesuits. The penetration of the Coimbra Jesuits in the United States of America can be examined through the paradigmatic case of Charles Sanders Peirce. The extent to which Peirce was affected by the Coimbra Jesuits has not yet been researched. However, it is known that Peirce was acquainted with the Coimbra Jesuit Aristotelian Course.