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The Philosophy of Juan de Espinoza Medrano, “El Lunarejo”

Philosophy in Cuzco, Peru, in the 17th century: Espinoza Medrano

Juan de Espinoza Medrano (“El Lunarejo”), professor of the University of San Antonio Abad in Cuzco, Peru, published his Philosophia Thomistica in 1688, the year of his death. It was the first of a projected three-part cursus philosophicus (logic, physics and metaphysics), the usual textbook in the “Second Scholasticism” since the 16^th century. The work consisted of summulae (formal logic) and dialectica (philosophy of logic, epistemology and metaphysics) of 41 and 419 pages respectively.

The Latin in which he wrote his work, like his Castilian and his Quechua, was elegant and suited to his purpose.

Half of the almost 300 philosophers he mentions are “Second” Scholastics, of whom about a quarter published their works in the 16^th century and a third in the 17^th century. Espinoza considers many more writers working in his own century than in any other and refers to at least 16 works published in Europe after his birth (1632). Yet he complains that

the books of the moderns seldom arrive and so we do not adorn our pages with their names.

Espinoza had two motives for publishing his work: (1) to defend traditional philosophy from recent attacks and (2) to defend the intellectual reputation of Ibero-America against misinformed Europeans. In regard to the first, he states on his title page that he wishes:

… to vindicate and defend Plato, Aristotle, Porphyry, St. Thomas, Cajetan and other early pioneers in the sciences from the reproach of their rivals and the criticism of the moderns, and as far as my ability permits, to study and resolve all the new arguments of their opponents.

The "moderns" whose arguments he examines are chiefly the Jesuits Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza (m1651, cursus, 1615), Francisco Oviedo (m1651, cursus, 1640) and Rodrigo de Arriaga (m1667, cursus, 1632). He identifies these writers with the fourth appearance of the “nominalism” of William of Ockham (s.15), anticipated by Roscelin (s.11) and Heraclitus (c.500 bc), and credits himself for ending the trend once and for all:

Me Ochami sectam Hurtadus revocarat ab Orco

Ter functam; at quarto nunc sequor Euridicen;
En jaceo, ingeniis non tanta potentia in umbris:

Vox et conceptus absque re larva sumus.

The author stresses his objectivity in the polemic:

I take pains not to attack or disparage anyone contentiously…. I respect and esteem the Scotists and the nominalists of the Jesuit school no less than the masters of the Thomistic school who have been my own guides.

Espinoza explains his second motive is this way:

I feel almost compelled to publish my Philosophia Thomistica,… since certain Europeans are under the opinion that the learning of authors in the New World is “barbarous”. We owe this honor in particular to “Justus” (actually not quite “just”) Lipsius. His prejudice was challenged by the learned Peruvian Scotist Jerónimo de Valera who when asked if anything good could come from Nazareth or Peru could but reply:

“God is so powerful that He can raise children of Abraham from Peruvian stones.”

Espinoza then marshals poets and philosophers in an eloquent defense of America to answer Lipsius’s slight to Ibero-American universities.

Volume 41, 353-371, Volume 42, 209-234 (includes original source texts).

Besides Espinosa and Valera, four other authors took part in this challenge to Europe.

Besides Espinoza and Valera, four other authors took part in this challenge to Europe.

The importance of Espinoza’s work rests on his philosophical claims and on the arguments he developed to defend them in the context of the Scholastic polemic of the XVII century. These we obviously cannot review here, but we can briefly describe an interesting example of his originality is his theory about the Platonic ideas.

He began by asking this question, surprising fo the “Aristotelians” (Thomists and Scotists) of his time:

Is Plato’s theory [of ideas] so unreasonable as to deserve the common rejection of philosophers,… and are the arguments of the Aristotelians against it compelling enough?

On the contrary, he thought that

Plato conceived his ideas very well indeed… [as] the species of things and their universal essences,… nor does any difficulty follow from his view which the Aristotelians would not also have to accept on similar grounds.

Although both theories seem to entail a separation between what is possible and what is actual, he came to reject

the constant opinion of all that Plato held the ideas to be really separate from singulars and exist by themselves.

He added that

the thesis I am proposing, as far as I know, has not been defended by anyone until now.

Basically Espinoza is saying that the Platonic theory of ideas is entailed by the Scholastic doctrine of possibles. Curiously, a similar theory has recently been put forward by a contemporary author Lloyd P. Gerson. In his study, Aristotle and other Platonists, he notes that in the first century B.C. Plato and Aristotle were thought to be complementary and that the later Neoplatonists saw a harmony (συμφωνία) between them.

A personal note

In 1968, in the University of Texas at Austin, I noticed that there was little interest in the academic philosophy (“Second Scholasticism”) done in colonial Latin America. I decided to review the relevant bibliography and later was able to publish the result as the Bibliography of the Philosophy in the Iberian Colonies of América, a catalogue of printed and manuscript works on the philosophy of the period with an annotated bibliography of the secondary literature.

Then from 1970, supported by the National and Catholic universities of Peru, I chose for a detailed study the Philosophia Thomistica of Espinoza Medrano and published the result in La lógica en el Virreinato del Perú. In the meantime I have also published a number of studies of the content of this philosophy especially in New Spain, supported by several Mexican universities of Puebla.

In the half-century since I began my research the scene has changed essentially. Not only are there a large number of excellent works on this philosophical movement in Latin America, but also on the Second Scholasticism in general, where it is frequently compared to recent trends in analytic philosophy. It would seem that the time has now come for a new “Bibliography” of the Second Scholasticism in Latin America, indeed in Europe and the United States as well.