9th International Congress Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval
Universidad de Córdoba
Email 9th Congress: ixcongressofime@uco.es
Web of the 9th Congress: https://eventos.uco.es/129766/files/ix-congreso-internacional-sofime-transmision-e-interpretacion-del-saber.html?private=8e1b9dbdf86eda37a1c3
Poster
Córdoba, 3-5 December2025
Keynote Speakers
03/12 – Amos Bertolacci (Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca)
04/12 – Natalia Jakubecki (CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires)
05/12 – Francisco Castilla (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares)
Panel Organizers
Elena Băltuță (Tel Hai College)
Tommaso De Robertis (Università di Macerata / University of Toronto)
Alexander Fidora (ICREA – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Natalia Jakubecki (CONICET – Universidad de Buenos Aires)
Yael Kedar (Tel Hai College)
María Martín Gómez (Universidad de Salamanca)
José Francisco Meirinhos (Universidade do Porto)
Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala (Universidad de Córdoba)
Vera Rodrigues (Universidade do Porto)
Francisco O’Reilly (Universidad de Montevideo)
Andrea A. Robiglio (KU Leuven)
María Jesús Soto-Bruna (Universidad de Navarra)
Congress Organization and Abstracts Submission
The Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval (SOFIME) and the Universidad de Córdoba are pleased to announce the celebration of their 9th International Congress, which will take place in the city of Córdoba from December 3 to 5, 2025.
The congress focuses on research concerning the transmission and interpretation of knowledge across various fields (philosophy, science, philology, and religious studies), spanning from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period.
If there is one place in the West that embodies the central theme of this congress, it is, without a doubt, Córdoba. Recognized worldwide for its cultural and intellectual heritage, Córdoba appears to us as the ideal setting to focus on a fundamental aspect of its legacy: the transmission and interpretation of knowledge.
The congress will be structured into six thematic panels, each addressing a specific field or aspect of knowledge transmission. Each panel will be led by one or two academic coordinators. Participants whose proposals do not fit into any of the specific panels are invited to submit their contributions to SOFIME’s General Panel.
In addition to the academic sessions, two guided tours will be organized: one to the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba and another to Madinat al-Zahra, both UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Presentation Format
With the aim of fostering dialogue between participants and panel organizers, each presentation will last 15 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of discussion. Speakers are requested to share an outline or draft of their presentation at least 10 days before the Congress, allowing attendees to prepare in advance. Presentations may be delivered in Spanish or English.
Congress Fees
All attendees, except for keynote speakers and panel organizers, are required to pay a registration fee of €50 for professors, researchers, and professionals, and €25 for students. Payments can be made via PayPal or bank transfer. Please indicate “IX SOFIME Congress Fee” as payment reference.
PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/MedievalSOFIME?country.x=ES&locale.x=es_ES
Bank transfer:
IBAN: ES392085015546030011869
SWIFT: DEUTESM1XXX
Abstracts submission
We invite candidates to submit an abstract of up to 250 words, detailing their argument, primary sources, and preferred panel. Along with the abstract, submissions should include a short biographical note (maximum 100 words). Please, send abstracts to the Congress email address (ixcongressofime@uco.es) indicating “9th Congress SOFIME – Panel [no. of your selected Panel]”. Deadline for submissions is July 31, 2025.
THEMATIC PANELS
1. SOFIME General Panel
Sponsored by Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval
Organizer: María Martín Gómez (Universidad de Salamanca)
This panel welcomes submissions that do not fall within the thematic scope of the specific panels. It serves as an open space for research fields not covered by the other panels but still relevant to textual and historical studies within the broad chronological framework of our congress.
2. The Division of the Sciences: The Order of Knowledge and Learning
Sponsored by Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval (REFIME)
Organizers: Alexander Fidora (ICREA – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Natalia Jakubecki (CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires)
The transmission of philosophical knowledge is closely linked to the division and order of the sciences. This panel welcomes contributions exploring the organization of knowledge and learning, including questions such as:
- How are different bodies of knowledge philosophically structured?
- What interrelationships do exist among the various disciplines or spheres of knowledge?
- How do their differences and commonalities account for their specific professional and institutional roles in society?
- What should be the sequence in which they are acquired?
The panel will address fundamental epistemological and curricular questions in the history of Arabic, Jewish, and Latin-Christian philosophy, which have been the subject of discussion from the origins of medieval philosophy up to Second Scholasticism.
3. Transfer Discontinued: Stories of Failed Transfers of Knowledge
Sponsored by Mediterranea, International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge (MED)
Organizers: Andrea A. Robiglio (KU Leuven)
Tommaso De Robertis (Università di Macerata / University of Toronto)
The story goes that sciences were born in the ancient Near East, were later received by the Greeks, who invented philosophy as their theoretical background, and passed on to the Islamic world through a Greek-into-Arabic translation movement in 9th- and 10thcentury Baghdad. This heritage was then ‘brought back’ to Europe through two major translation waves: one from Arabic into Latin in the 12th and 13th centuries, and another one from Greek into Latin in the 15th century. While not being untrue, this linear, unidirectional, and strictly genealogical account oversimplifies the dynamics of knowledge transfer and ultimately obliterates the multidirectional, non-genealogical and non-positivistic nature of this phenomenon. This panel seeks to unravel these complexities by exploring moments where the transfer of knowledge faltered through miscommunication, mistranslation, or mis-reception. We welcome proposals that investigate these disruptions and discontinuities, from antiquity up to the early modern era, through both historical and theoretical lenses.
4. Transmission of Texts in the Lands of Islam (8th–13th Centuries)
Sponsored by ORIENS HUM-940 (“The Transfer of Knowledge in the Near East and the
Mediterranean Basin”)
Organizer: Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala (Universidad de Córdoba)
Muslim, Christian, and Jewish authors, translators, scribes, and copyists generated and transmitted a vast corpus of texts throughout the Middle Ages. These works, which would become a substantial part of the Arab cultural heritage as well as that of each individual community, were transmitted across the lands of Islam (Dār al-Islām), both in the East (al-Mashriq) and in the West (al-Andalus, North Africa, and Sicily). This panel welcomes proposals on the transmission of Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew texts of different topics that circulated in the lands of Islam between the 8th and 13th centuries.
5.Transfer in a Global Perspective
Sponsored: GPHNP (Routledge Book Series: Global Perspectives on the History of Natural
Philosophy)
5.1. “Global Perspectives on Natural Causality: Knowledge Transfer from Ancient to
Early Modern Philosophy”
Organizer: Yael Kedar (Tel Hai College)
This panel explores how theories of natural causality were transmitted, transformed, and reinterpreted from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period. We invite papers examining how different scholarly traditions worldwide understood, explained, and taught causal relationships in the natural world. Of particular interest are:
- Translations and commentaries on classical works dealing with natural causation;
- Conceptions of natural causality across cultures;
- Transfer and interpretations of central concepts related to natural causation;
- The evolution of causal reasoning in natural philosophy;
- Methodological approaches to identifying causes in nature.
We welcome contributions addressing these themes across different linguistic, cultural, and religious traditions, including, but not limited to Greco-Roman, Arabic, Persian, Indian, Hebrew, Chinese, Spanish, and vernacular sources. Submissions that highlight the interactions, influences, and dialogues between these traditions are especially encouraged.
5.2. “Between Mind and Matter: Global Perspectives on Psychological Causation from
Ancient to Early Modern Philosophy”
Organizer: Elena Băltuță (Tel Hai College)
This panel investigates how different intellectual traditions conceptualized and transmitted theories about causal relations between the soul and nature. We aim to shed light on how ideas about the soul’s causal powers, their connections to bodily and mental phenomena, and the influence of natural causes on the soul and its faculties evolved across cultural exchanges and scholarly interactions from ancient to early modern philosophy.
We welcome submissions on topics including but not limited to:
- Comparative analyses of soul-body causation across traditions;
- Transmission of psychological theories between different scholarly communities;
- Interface between medical and philosophical theories of soul’s causation;
- Cross-cultural debates about the soul’s causal efficacy;
- Translation and adaptation of classical psychological theories.
We particularly encourage submissions that highlight global perspectives, including but not limited to Greco-Roman, Arabic, Persian, Indian, Hebrew, Chinese, Spanish, and vernacular sources. Submissions that highlight the interactions, influences, and dialogues between these traditions are especially encouraged.
Accepted papers for both 5.1 and 5.2 panels will be considered for inclusion in a collected volume published by Routledge as part of the Global Perspectives on the History of Natural Philosophy series.
6. The transmission of the Tractatus / Summulae logicales of Petrus Hispanus and the configuration of logic between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age
Sponsored by Instituto de Filosofia – Universidade do Porto
Organizers: José Francisco Meirinhos (Universidade do Porto)
Vera Rodrigues (Universidade do Porto)
Petrus Hispanus’ Tractatus or Summulae logicales, composed in the middle of the 13th century, took center stage in studying logic from the beginning of the 14th century. Commented on by Buridan at the University of Paris, they were gradually adopted by European universities, from Salamanca to Bologna, Vienna, Prague or Kraków, and were used until the 17th century. The topics of Aristotelian logic or terministic logic were taught from this work, whose commentary largely replaced that of Aristotle’s Organon.
To discuss its reception, this panel welcomes papers on:
- The Tractatus as a textbook and the canonisation of logic;
- Summulist logical devices in argumentation: modalities, kinds of syllogism,
sophisms, topoi, rules, descensus, suppositio, etc.; - The logic of the Tractatus in different disciplines (natural philosophy in its several
branches, metaphysics, theology, politics, law); - Commentaries and supra-commentaries on the Tractatus;
- The reception of the Tractatus in the universities of continental Europe;
- The reception of the Tractatus in Latin American colleges and universities;
- The replacement of the Tractatus by new textbooks and other approaches to logic;
- The Tractatus in modern logicians (19th-21st centuries): Prantl, Peirce, Bocheński,
Parsons, etc.
We particularly encourage submissions that highlight global perspectives, including but not limited to Greco-Roman, Arabic, Persian, Indian, Hebrew, Chinese, Spanish, and vernacular sources. Submissions that highlight the interactions, influences, and dialogues between these traditions are especially encouraged.
Accepted papers for both 5.1 and 5.2 panels will be considered for inclusion in a collected volume published by Routledge as part of the Global Perspectives on the History of Natural Philosophy series.
7. Processio, emanatio y fluxus
Sponsored by GIR: Hermenéutica Patrística y Medieval y IEM (Universidad de Navarra)
Organizers: María Jesús Soto-Bruna (Universidad de Navarra)
Francisco O’Reilly (Universidad de Montevideo)
This panel welcomes papers focusing on the philosophical notions that have been used to express ontological derivation from unity to plurality.
In particular, we invite contributions exploring the concepts of processus, emanatio, and fluxus, addressing the following key issues:
- Good as the principle of the Universe. The One as Good.
- Light as Cause. Emanatio and Diffusion.
- Beauty as purpose of the Universe.
The contributions may focus on key texts and thinkers that have shaped this discourse, ranging from Eriugena and the anonymous Pseudo-Avicennian Liber de Causis primis et secundis to Albertus Magnus’s.
Organizers
Pedro Mantas España (UCO) – Serena Masolini (UCO)
Scientific Committee
Charles Burnett (The Warburg Institute)
Godefroid de Callataÿ (UC Louvain)
Daniel Di Liscia (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
José Luis Fuertes Herrero (Universidad de Salamanca)
José Higuera Rubio (UNED)
Martín González Fernández (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)
Jules Janssens (KU Leuven)
Francisco León Florido (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Celina Lértora (CONICET – Universidad de Buenos Aires)
Carlos Megino Rodriguez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Jaume Mensa Valls (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Israel Muñoz Gallarte (Universidad de Córdoba)
Nicola Polloni (Università degli Studi di Messina)
Rafael Ramón Guerrero (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
João Rebalde (Universidade do Porto)
José Rosa (Universidade da Beira Interior)
Encarnación Ruíz Callejón (Universidad de Granada)
Richard Taylor (Marquette University)
Anna Tropia (Charles University, Prague)
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Research Group
Oriens HUM 940
SOFIME 