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CONFERENZE 146, Sulle orme di Ortensio Lando e altri studi, Roma 2022, Accademia Polacca delle Scienze, Biblioteca e Centro di Studi, Roma 2022

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Ep. 34: "Oxford calculators" or the logical-mathematical approach of 14th century thinkers to solving philosophical problems

The project Novel approaches in late medieval theology. Richard Kilvington’s Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum pointed out the novelty of arguments and ideas of 14th-century theology focusing on the concepts of Richard Kilvington formulated in his Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum (Sentences). Richard Kilvington, an English fourteenth century philosopher, was one of the founding and most prominent members of a group of scholars called the “Oxford Calculators”. In his Sentences Kilvington discusses a great variety of theological issues, such as absolute and ordained powers of God, God’s infinity in terms of simpliciter and secundum quid, the possibility of actual infinite capacity of a soul to love God, or of actual infinite capacity for grace and beatitude, human freedom, future contingents, conflicts between volition and cognition. What becomes particularly noteworthy is the approach taken by Kilvington in theological considerations. To study the dilemmas, he not only employs theological arguments, but reinforces his theses with arguments adopted from logic and mathematical physics, which becomes a characteristic feature of his thought. Kilvington’s emphasis on the application of logical tools to the study of theological and ethical problems is significant for the understanding of both his ethics and his vision of the world. His treatment of ethical and theological entities as objects that can be dissected, deconstructed, measured, and probed from various angles by means of logical investigation reveals his general idea of the uniformity of the world as composed of multiple entities (be they mental or physical) that are subject to the same processes and changes. His unorthodox perspective helps him go beyond the standard and taken-for-granted views (views which suit us so comfortably) to advance our understanding of the world. It could be said, following Karen Barad, that in this way, Kilvington teaches us that “[t]heories are living and breathing reconfigurings of the world. The world theorizes as well as experiments with itself. Figuring, reconfiguring.” (Barad, 2012, p. 207) The project was carried out at the Faculty of Humanities, Department of Philosophy and Communications, Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna, as well as in the libraries, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio (Bologna), Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (the Vatican), and Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Florence). It resulted in the publication of a critical edition of Kilvington’s question 3 of his Sentences, Richard Kilvington on the Capacity of Created Beings, Infinity, and Being Simultaneously in Rome and Paris: Critical Edition of Question 3 from Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters vol. 130), Leiden–Boston: Brill 2021.
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