“Jesuit und Neuzeit. Diskursarchäologische Streifzüge in die Philosophiegeschichte”, by S. K. Knebel

This volume poses the question of why Christian Aristotelianism has been cancelled from the modern era in the historiography of philosophy. In six chapters on theoretical philosophy – centred around the main figures Suárez, Vázquez, Ruiz de Montoya, Arriaga and Izquierdo – the scandal is explained by the delay with which philosophical medieval studies discovered the 14th century for itself. Catholic innovations of the 16th century – the subject matter of the two chapters on practical philosophy – convey an idea of the extent of the ignorance that is an effect of the modern legend. In the age of the witch trials, the so-called Jesuit morality corroded the belief in torture, and the West owes sexual self-determination to the so-called Jesuit morality. Finally, it is argued that talk of a ‘philosophy of the modern age’ and its contrast to the ‘Middle Ages’ should be regarded merely as a relic of the Kulturkampf.