Aims

By the end of the seminar, students will have been introduced to a current theme in research in medieval philosophy and to the historical method necessary to its study; they will have been introduced to some useful or necessary research tools for this field.
They will also have learned how to work in a team in the context of a project extended over several years.

Main themes

The seminar will address current themes in research in medieval philosophy that can open up a global view of philosophical and theological currents of thought in the Middle Ages (examples of themes addressed in recent years: happiness, time, the literary genre of quodlibetic questions, the intensification of the forms, the status of the body and the soul).

Content and teaching methods

At the moment, the works of Gundissalinus or Dominique Gondisalvi are under study in the seminar. According to a recent article appearing in the 1999 Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale de la SIEPM, two different people would be hidden behind the man who is today considered as a translator of Arab texts, most notably, Avicenna's Metaphysics, and an author in his own right who would have been one of the instigators of Latin Avicennicism. The translator and the author would be two different people, conflated into one up until now by historians.

To test this hypothesis, which rests upon solid but insufficient facts in order to resolve the debate, stylometric, doctrinal, and source research is necessary to uncover the similarities or, on the contrary, the difference between the two bodies of work supposed to have originated from two different authors.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Pré-requisites :
History of Medieval Philosophy
Knowledge of Latin

Assessment :
Paper on an aspect of the research carried out in the seminar

Supporting material :
Critical editions, microfilms of manuscripts

Course Holder/Course Supervision :
ensured by the lecturers

Other credits in programs