The Reception of Aristotle in the Augustinian Context of Seventeenth-century Louvain (Cornelius Jansenius and Libertus Fromondus on Grace and Free Will)

The basic assumption of this project is that Aristotle was influential in the work of both Cornelius Jansenius and Libertus Fromondus in spite of the pronounced Augustinian context of their entire work or rather in close and complex relationship with it. Aristotle's ideas had a bearing both on particular concepts such as sufficient/efficient grace in Jansenius and on particular definitions such as that of the soul as substance/accident or of the soul as rational/sensitive/vegetative in Fromondus. Moreover, Aristotle was influential through the means of the scholastic method that both Jansenius and Fromondus preferred to the humanist approach. Both of them, but especially Jansenius, criticized the 'novatores' and primarily Erasmus for introducing a more 'philological' method against the traditional scholastic one, influenced by Aristotelian logic. And Aristotle also had an impact on the work of Fromondus through the Aristotelian medical tradition quoted and discussed there. However, the reception of Aristotle in Jansenius and Fromondus seems to have beenrather multi-layered, depending on numerous other theologians/philosophers both medieval and early modern such as Aquinas, Ockham, Scotus, Cajetan or Suárez. The important difference between Jansenius and Fromondus is nevertheless that Fromondus quotes Aristotle extensively while Jansenius does not do that. However, it is clear that Jansenius himself was not at all 'immune' to the Aristotelian influence, which infiltrated in his work through passages from Aquinas and Suárez, whom he quoted extensively, and not only through the scholastic method preferred both by him and by Fromondus and mentioned above.

Trefwoorden:Augustinian, Aristotle, Louvain., Seventeenth-century

Project type:PhD project