ABSTRACT
Dealing with the “first Jesuit psychology” (Francisco Toletus, Pedro da Fonseca, Manuel de Góis and Baltasar Álvares), this chapter gives textual evidence of Fonseca’s presence in the Coimbra Course; it opposes Góis’s physical view of the soul to the metaphysical version of Toletus as well as their own peculiar approaches to the subject; it thoroughly explains the Coimbra perspective on the science of the soul, the process of knowledge, the 95relevant role of Pseudo-Dionysius, and (as a case-study) the anthropological horizon of hearing. It also gives an interpretation of what could be called the two main directions of Coimbra psychology, the physical (mainly represented by Góis) and the metaphysical (represented by Álvares). If these differences clearly indicate the importance of theology in the Coimbra philosophical project, it is claimed that whereas Álvares’s text can be interpreted in a Cartesian sense, the position primarily represented by Góis forbids any clear identification between “scientia de anima” and what is usually called psychology.
