From Avant-Garde to Rear-Guard. Debates on the Concept ‘Thing’ (res) in Protestant Reformed Scholasticism

Abstract

The article provides a survey of texts on the debates concerning the concept of ‘thing/res’ in German and Swiss scholastic metaphysics during the early modern age. Even in the vernacular of today, ‘thing’ is a key concept for thinking about reality. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ‘thing’ was the most extensive concept within ontology: everything is a ‘thing’. Protestant Reformed universities inherited the debates of the medieval schools, and brought a similar status quaestionis to Kant, who defines God as a ‘thing in itself’, as something that can be thought, but not (more) known. From “avant-garde,” the concept of ‘thing’ passed to rear-guard.