Subtle Scholastic Distinctions and Where to Find Them
(2025) Distinction and Identity in Late-Scholastic Thought and Beyond — ISBN: [978-3-7965-5370-7], p. 9–46, published
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- This introductory chapter sets the frame for the volume Distinction and Identity in Late-Scholastic Thought and Beyond. Distinction theory, along with its ontological implications, was in the focus of a special literature that developed from the early fourteenth century onwards. The concepts of identity and distinction were thus under special scrutiny in the so-called Formalist treatises that had roots in Late-Medieval scholasticism, especially in the works of the Franciscan John Duns Scotus († 1308) and his early followers. This literature enjoyed vast diffusion during the Renaissance and still played a significant role in textbooks of scholastic philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Formalist tradition has never before been the subject matter of a collective volume. While the scope of the present book is much wider than just the Formalist tradition and its peculiar literature, the contention of the book – and certainly of this introduction – is that this particular tradition within late scholasticism had an enormous impact both on contemporary and later thought. Much of the development, external to Formalism properly speaking, in philosophical and theological discourse concerning distinctions and identity may be viewed as – immediate or more remote – repercussions exactly of the Formalist tradition.
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Andersen, C. (2025). Subtle Scholastic Distinctions and Where to Find Them. In Claus A. Andersen, Jacob Schmutz (ed.), Distinction and Identity in Late-Scholastic Thought and Beyond (First edition, p. p. 9–46). Schwabe. https://doi.org/10.24894/978-3-7965-5371-4