Hylomorphism in a Globalizing World: Scholastic Debates on the Ontology of Nature Across Europe, China, and New Spain

HYLOGLOB aims to reconstruct a long-neglected yet crucial debate among Scholastic philosophers on the ontological constitution of natural bodies. This debate took place in Europe during the 16th c., but its consequences had a global, cross-cultural impact. In their struggle to find a balance among opposite claims about matter, form, and the elements, 16th-c.

Scholastic philosophers produced influential ontologies of nature.

Their theories, in turn, became the lenses through which European thinkers in China and New Spain engaged with metaphysical and cosmological doctrines that were completely alien to them. The reconstruction of the 16th-c.

Scholastic debate on the constitution of natural substances is key to understand the processes of philosophical accommodation and reinterpretation of non-European systems of thoughts that took place in early modern Asia and America.

By using a multi-levelled methodology, HYLOGLOB will reconstruct the Scholastic debate on the ontology of nature and its global impact.

On the one hand, it will analyse how historical actors addressed apparently unsolvable questions on prime matter, substantial forms, and the elements.

On the other, it will assess how these theories were used as influential interpretative tools to grasp sophisticated metaphysical doctrines that utterly diverged from the European tradition.

HYLOGLOB’s results will produce, for the first time, a thorough, comprehensive understanding of how 16th-c. thinkers envisioned the constitution of the physical world.

It will provide meaningful insights on the tensions between metaphysical and physical considerations of nature, the Jesuits materialistic interpretations of Chinese philosophy, and the foundation of an independent philosophical tradition in New Spain.

At the crossroad of different traditions and disciplines, HYLOGLOB will contribute to foster a new, more nuanced understanding of a central aspect of the constitution of European identity in a globalising world.