The Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy Thematic Line (Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto) is pleased to announce the second Porto Summer School on Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, on Causality and Contingency from the point of view of natural philosophy, metaphysics and epistemology.

The Summer School is essentially but not exclusively designed for PhD candidates and Master students.  Applications from graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and early careers in philosophy are also welcome.

The program will run in a blended way. There will be expository seminars presented by invited scholars, as well as workshops with presentations of papers submitted by the participants. Participants who want to present papers must submit their abstracts by the 15 April.

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Considering the complexities of human action as the result of deliberation, Aristotle questioned the possibility of a science of the contingent and ultimately denied its feasibility.

The Middle Ages, in turn, inherited from Augustine a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between natural causality and free will. Variations of these two models of action — the Greek model of absolute necessity and the Christian model of contingency — continued to evolve from that era through the Early Modern period up to the present time.

Depending on the range of subjects they have been applied to, these models have diversified into areas like metaphysics, logic, cosmology, theology, the natural sciences, ethics, and law.

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Invited Speakers

• Professor Daniel Heider (University of South Bohemia, CZ), Suárez on Free Causes
• Professor Nicola Polloni (Università degli studi di Messina, IT), Revisiting Material Causality in Later Scholasticism
• Professor Pascale Bermon (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, FR), Le De libero arbitrio de saint Augustin lu par Grégoire de Rimini (d. 1358)
• Professor Tiziana Suarez Nani (Université de Fribourg, CH), Causalité naturelle et possibilité surnaturelle : le cas de la multi-localisation et de la co-location des corps