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Kilwardby, Robert (d. 1279)

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-B067-1
DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-B067-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 1998
Retrieved March 28, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/kilwardby-robert-d-1279/v-1

Article Summary

Robert Kilwardby is one of the most remarkable thinkers of the thirteenth century. He is the champion of the traditional approach to philosophy and theology, which developed the body of doctrines worked out by Augustine. His activity is set in the very crucial period of middle scholasticism, when the diffusion of Aristotle’s philosophical system and its utilization for Christian theology caused a sharp conflict between the followers of the Patristic tradition, such as Kilwardby or the members of the Franciscan school, and the new theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, who tried to express the contents of divine revelation within the Aristotelian paradigm. Kilwardby used all of his intellectual resources and ecclesiastical authority in fighting against this new trend and in defending Augustinianism, whose main theses (for example, a plurality of substantial forms in composite substances, the presence of seminal reasons in matter, universal hylomorphism, individuation by matter and form, a conceptual distinction between the soul and its faculties, and the necessity of divine illumination in order to grasp the eternal truths) he supports in his writings.

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Citing this article:
Conti, Alessandro D.. Kilwardby, Robert (d. 1279), 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-B067-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/kilwardby-robert-d-1279/v-1.
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