The Twelfth-Century Renewal of Latin Metaphysics: Gundissalinus’s Ontology of Matter and Form
Durham Medieval and Renaissance Monographs and Essays 6. xiv, 318 pp. 2020. ISBN 978-0-88844-865-1 • Cloth • $95
Medieval metaphysics is usually bound up with Scholasticism and its influential exemplars, such as Aquinas and Duns Scotus. However, the foundations of the new discipline, which would reshape the entire edifice of Western philosophy, were established well before the rise of Scholasticism through an encounter with the Arabic philosophical tradition. The Twelfth-Century Renewal of Latin Metaphysics uncovers what rightly should be considered the first attempt to construct a metaphysical system in the Latin Middle Ages in the work of Dominicus Gundissalinus. It was to prove original, powerful, and far-reaching in every way.