ABSTRACT
The issue of active perception has recently become a frequent topic among scholars researching into scholastic philosophy in general. On the examples 66of Francisco de Toledo, Francisco Suárez, Manuel de Góis (one of the so-called commentators of Coimbra) and Antonio Rubio the author shows that cognitive activism, defined as doctrine stressing the causal activity of the sense power and of the soul, is also shared by “the first Jesuits” (whose theories of the co-principles of sensation are here presented in a doctrinal genealogy). In the conclusion, the overall upshot of the chapter is related to the finding of some contemporary scholars, according to which late scholastics (Suárez, the Coimbra commentators) laid substantial emphasis on the efficient causality of the substantial form in general, and specifically of the soul.
