The Genesis of the Historiographical Notion of Second Scholasticism

The article aims to elucidate the genesis of the concepts of “scholastic philosophy” and “second scholasticism”. The researches hitherto conducted on the history of the concept of “scholasticism” do not seem to have addressed the possible difference between the history of the concept of “scholastic philosophy” and the history of the concepts of “scholastic theology” and “scholasticism”. In this study, the thesis is advanced that the history of the concept of “scholastic philosophy” is interrelated but not identical with the history of those two concepts, and clues are presented about the timing and manner in which, from early modern times to the beginning of the twentieth century, the adjective “scholasticus” was used to characterise a type of philosophy which is conceived to be at variance with the one practised by modern authors. The results of this inquiry provide the basis for determining the reasons that, in the 1940s, led Carlo Giacon to formulate the notion of “second scholasticism”, displaying Giacon’s historiographical convictions and theoretical perspectives.