ABSTRACT
Almost every major seventeenth century philosopher studied Scholastic philosophy at college or university. This chapter discusses a few doctrines and controversies characteristic of Scholastic metaphysics and philosophy of cognition in this period. It presents some salient points of contact between particular seventeenth century philosophers and Baroque Scholasticism. Scholastics commonly believed that universals are conceived only by the intellect. Many studies of Scholastic influence on Descartes have focused on his theory of ideas. Descartes was long read as claiming that the mind has immediate awareness of nothing but its own ideas, which are simply modes of itself. Parallels between some of Spinoza's concepts and doctrines and those of certain Baroque or medieval Scholastics were noted by several nineteenth and twentieth century scholars. Gassendi, Arnauld, and Malebranche constitute the main exception to the generalization that it was the Jesuits, or Protestants influenced by them, from whom the early moderns learned the elements of Scholasticism.
