Public selection for n.1 post doctoral fellow position with Incarico post-doc in "Philosophical summae and medical encyclopaedias in medieval Latin reception"

Profile:

The inventor of the genre of the philosophical summa, Avicenna, is also the author of a major encyclopaedia of medical knowledge, the Canon of Medicine, which enjoyed a documentably massive fortune in Latin Europe, well beyond the Middle Ages. The study of the interaction between medicine and philosophy in the thought of Avicenna and especially in its wide reception in Latin authors is a major desideratum of medieval philosophy. Both Avicenna's magnum opus, the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ [Book of the Cure/Healing] and the Canon have been translated into Latin during the Middle Ages, thus offering Latin authors the possibility of studying a tightly interwoven system of philosophy and medicine. In synergy with the goals and overall activity of the FIS 2021 project SPACE - The System of Philosophy in Arabic: Charting the Encyclopaedias, the structural similarities and differences between the two projects by Avicenna will be studied in an innovative way, by paying particular attention to the work of a key Latin student of Avicenna, Albert the Great, who produced his own encyclopaedic project of knowledge, in which philosophy and medicine are peculiarly intertwined.

Activity:

The contract holder will be responsible for examining in detail the structure and content of the Canon of Medicine in its Latin translation, with special reference to the similarities and differences with respect to the arrangement of the philosophical summa translated into Latin (chaptering, further subdivisions, patterns of internal crossreferences, etc.), in synergy with various other collaborators of SPACE project. The contract holder will pay particular attention to the quotations of philosophical and medical relevance made by Albert the Great in his works, and will arrange them also using techniques of digital humanities with special regard to the digital tools and repositories already on stage at the research unit PhiBor.

Duration:

12 months

Gross amount:

€ 28.283,00 per year

Formal requirements:

• PhD in Philosophy;
• The contract holder should possess documented competence in the history of medieval philosophy, with special reference to Latin philosophy and the interaction of medicine and philosophy in scientific, philosophical, and theological texts in the Middle Ages.
• Knowledge of Medieval Latin and English. Competence in the history of medieval philosophy.

SSD:

PHIL-05/C - Storia della filosofia medievale