Complex and Simple Truth: The Conimbricenses’ Reading of On Interpretation in the Jesuit Context

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the question of the specific truth granted to the human intellect’s concepts qua concepts (simplex apprehensio), as it is presented and discussed in Sebastião do Couto’s commentary on On Interpretation, included in his general commentary on Aristotle’s Dialectics (1606), the final volume of the famous and influential Cursus Conimbricensis (1592–1606). Such a topic finds it roots in a large medieval debate that runs through many authors and especially Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, Durandus, and Ockham, reaching in the Jesuit early modern context, with Pedro da Fonseca and Francisco Suárez, a complete and eclectic account that paved the way for the modern understanding of “mind.”