Tetens and Pre-Kantian Debate on the Status of Metaphysics

Sententiae, 2024

The main object of this article will be Thoughts on Some Reasons Why There Are So Few Settled Truths in Metaphysics,2 one of Tetensʼ early works, in which he formulated his first program of philosophical reform, and the main subject will be the critical founda- tions of his program of the reform. The main tasks are to clarify the tradition within which Tetensʼ (metaphysical, methodological and epistemological) views were formed, and the critical foundations of his program for the reform of philosophy.

The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, 1994

Neoaristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics (Routledge), 2014

This volume re-examines some of the major themes at the intersection of traditional and contemporary metaphysics. The book uses as a point of departure Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations published in 1597. Minimalist metaphysics in empiricist/pragmatist clothing have today become mainstream in analytic philosophy. Independently of this development, the progress of scholarship in ancient and medieval philosophy makes clear that traditional forms of metaphysics have affinities with some of the streams in contemporary analytic metaphysics. The book brings together leading contemporary metaphysicians to investigate the viability of a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics.

Trans/Form/Ação, 2010

The present contribute aims to reconstruct, using the methodology of intellectual history, the broad spectrum of metaphysical doctrines that Kant could know during the years of the formation of his philosophy. The first part deals with the teaching of metaphysics in Königsberg from 1703 to 1770. The second part examines the main characteristics of the metaphysics in the various handbooks, which were taught at the Albertina, in order to have an exhaustive overview of all metaphysical positions.

in "Quaestio", 8 (2008), pp. 219-277., 2008

This essay examines the positions of Scotus and a number of Scotists on the nature of metaphysics and its object. According to the mature Scotus, metaphysics is possible as a science distinct both from physics and from revealed theology thanks to a capability and a limitation. The capability is expressed by Scotus in two ways. Firstly: the ratio of being that is included in everything can be abstracted from it; in particular, this ratio can be abstracted from sensible things. Secondly: in reality, metaphysics is a “transcendentology”, which deals both with absolute transcendentals (first of all with the ratio of being) and with disjunctive ones (moreover, considering separately each of their two parts). In particular, metaphysics has to deal with the proper characteristics of the two parts of the disjunctive transcendental “infinite being / finite being”. The limitation posed by Scotus is twofold. First of all, in the present state the human intellect (and, as a consequence, human metaphysics) cannot grasp the proper characteristics of the infinite being. Secondly, in any case the couple “immobile being / mobile being” is not a disjunctive transcendental, so that metaphysics cannot study the proper characteristics of the immobile being. Thanks to these tenets, Scotus advocates a conception of metaphysics as a unitary science dealing both with rationes generalissimae, and – but only to some extent – spiritual substances, nevertheless he binds together these two parts of this science in a way which is intrinsically complex and (due to the fact that one of his works, the De cognitione Dei, failed to circulate) not even fully known by his followers. In this essay I argue that Scotus’ followers solved the “open problems” posed by the theory and the texts of their master by developing divergent strategies. Francis of Marchia and Bonet removed all sorts of asymmetry inside metaphysics between the study of material substances and the study of spiritual substances, but separated the science of transcendental rationes from the science of spiritual beings. By contrast, Andrés, Zerbi and Trombetta combined into a single science the science of tran¬scendental rationes and the science of spiritual beings, but emphasized that metaphysics deals with spiritual substances more in detail than it does with the material ones. In particular, the position of the Scotist Trombetta diverges from the position of his ideal master on an essential point. According to Scotus, the distinction between metaphysics and physics lies in the simple and immediate abstractability of being from what is sensible. This abstractibility is such that the comprehension of being, considered as a unitary and intelligible ratio, does not change during the entire development of metaphysics. By contrast, for Trombetta, the distinction between metaphysics and physics lies in the cognizance that spiritual beings can occur. This cognizance is the result of the demonstration of the existence of spiritual beings.

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 1993

in "Medioevo", 34 (2009), pp. 9-59., 2009

The essay traces the history of the debate on the nature of metaphysics and its object from Late Antiquity to the 14th century in the frame of the history of the debate on the nature of the subject/object of science. As a consequence it identifies five elements constituting the question of the nature of metaphysics: the epistemological role of the subject/object of science; the degree of insight of metaphysics into that which it considers; the role assigned to God and separate substances within metaphysics; the relationship between metaphysics, or rational theology, and revealed theology; and the different conceptions that authors develop of the notion of being. The positions of a number of authors from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages concerning this themes are examined here and their historical relationships investigated. As for Thomas Aquinas, for instance, I argue that he does not consider the ens commune, which is the subject of metaphysics, as conceptually identical with transcendental being. For him, transcendental being includes all its inferiors; by contrast, common being includes some inferiors of being (general rationes; rationes of immaterial substances as far as the latter are taken as principles of being), but not all of them (particular rationes of material beings; rationes of immaterial substances different from those which characterize these substances when the latter are taken as principles of being). Thus, in Aquinas’s view, transcendental being is an ontological/metaphysical notion; common being is an epistemological notion. In reality they are identical, but before the mind they are not completely identical. Furthermore, one can notice that the Italian Dominican maintains that God is both cause of the subject of metaphysics and part of it. Ens commune, taken as it is in reality, is identical with transcendental being; hence, on the one hand, it is common both to material substances and to spiritual substances and, on the other, it is in a way posterior to the latter substances, since it depends upon them.

Routledge, 2023

This volume is dedicated to questions about the nature and method of metaphysics in Classical German Philosophy. Its chapters offer original investigations into the metaphysical projects of many of the major figures in German philosophy between Wolff and Hegel. The period of Classical German Philosophy was an extraordinarily rich one in the history of philosophy, especially for metaphysics. It includes some of the highest achievements of early modern rationalism, Kant’s critical revolution, and the various significant works of German Idealism that followed in Kant’s wake. The contributions to this volume critically examine certain common themes among metaphysical projects across this period, for example, the demand that metaphysics amount to a science, that it should be presented in the form of a system, or that it should proceed by means of demonstration from certain key first principles. This volume also includes material on influential criticisms of metaphysical projects of this kind. Metaphysics as a Science in Classical German Philosophy is a useful resource for contemporary metaphysicians and historians of philosophy interested in engaging with the history of the methodology and epistemology of metaphysics.