Beyond the Limits of Intellect: The Beatific Vision in Second Scholasticism

Objective

Can a finite intellect truly grasp the divine essence? This bold question lies at the heart of the doctrine of the beatific vision, the most elevated act of cognition, in which the intellect is said to attain God directly. While central to medieval thought, it generated sophisticated debates in early modern scholasticism that remain largely overlooked in the history of philosophy. BEATVIS investigates the epistemological foundations of the beatific vision in Second Scholasticism (16th-17th centuries). Although early modern authors agreed on its possibility, they sharply diverged on the cognitive mechanisms that make it possible and on the extent to which the divine essence can be known. The project will reconstruct and compare their models of beatific cognition, focusing on debates about the role of the 'lumen gloriae', the necessity of 'species intelligibiles', the distinction between 'comprehensio' and 'visio clara', and the scope and degrees of intellectual seeing. By mapping these divergent frameworks, BEATVIS provides a systematic account of how Second Scholasticism redefined concepts such as intuition, abstraction, and representation at the threshold of modernity. It will show how early modern Latin theologians received Greek patristic thought and reinterpreted the legacy of Thomas Aquinas, whether by expanding, refining, or refuting his views, in an effort to articulate the limits of created knowledge before infinite intelligibility. The project thus illuminates a neglected chapter in European intellectual history and contributes to understanding how human cognition and the fulfilment of human existence were reimagined and philosophically substantiated.