A study of the Cursus Conimbricensis was long overdue. As a cornerstone of early modern philosophy, in fact, the series of eight texts known as Commentaria Conimbricenses has received but little attention from scholars. Up to recently a reader interested in the way intellectual history developed in continuation with or in response to the various Aristotelian trends in the seventeenth century had to get to grips either with the immense scope of the cursus itself or with a specific literature largely inaccessible to English scholars. Cristiano Casalini's book fills this gap brilliantly by providing a convincing picture of the Jesuits’ pedagogical ideas, organization of knowledge and approach to specific philosophical issues.

In the five dense but readable chapters of his Aristotle in Coimbra, Casalini reconstructs both the context and the peculiar conditions within which the Cursus Conimbricensis took shape. The number itself seems not have been chosen haphazardly: whilst the first two chapters (‘The Gouveia affair’ and ‘A province committed to education’) deal with the various aspects of the Jesuits’ institution in Coimbra at the time of its tumultuous constitution, the central one focuses on the structure of the cursus itself (‘The cursus’), with the two final chapters (‘The problem of the teacher’, ‘The problem of the cause’) devoted to specific theoretical problems at the edge of theology, philosophy and pedagogy. It is particularly praiseworthy that the historical–pedagogical approach chosen by the author allows him to master what has so far proven to be a daunting task for most historians, namely the opportunity to couple social and intellectual history without either reducing ideas to instruments of social promotion/oppression, or treating social history as a remote and demoted suburb in the history of knowledge. This delicate balance proves particularly convincing when Casalini links the pedagogical project promoted by the cursus with its practical outcome (for instance in the fourth chapter), so overcoming a classical position according to which the Commentaria Conimbricenses represented nothing more than a ‘high point of Renaissance editing of texts’. As Casalini rightly stresses instead, ‘Providing the best Aristotelian text, for the Conimbricenses, means supplying students with words and syntax for live speech’ (p. 76).

Of particular interest are the final two chapters dealing with the problem of foreknowledge and cause. The first arose directly from St Augustine's De magistro and reminded teachers of the dilemma implicit in the communicability of knowledge: if teaching means ‘teaching something to someone who does not know it’, then teaching will be impossible, for learning always requires the possession of previous knowledge (praecognitio) on the side of the disciple. The problem of teaching links up, in turn, with the problem of intuitive knowledge in Aristotelian philosophy (de causa) and how the truth of first principles can be grasped. Besides the metaphysical implication of the notion of cause – Casalini tells us – the Jesuits were particularly conscious of practical applications of knowledge and were keen to emphasize the role of hazard and probability in connection with the teaching of ethics and politics. This aspect plays an important role as far as the Jesuits’ pedagogical manifesto is concerned. In their condition of fallen creatures, in fact, human beings could avoid practical atheism not by pursuing mere speculation but by following precise moral norms, to be codified in the form of strict doctrines, notwithstanding the fact that the epistemic status of these very doctrines is anything but grounded in certainty. Far from belittling its consequences – Casalini points out – the Conimbricenses fully accepted the paradox and developed their programme of education mostly in response to it:

This issue, however, comes only at the very end of Casalini's book and the reader would have possibly welcomed a wider and more articulate picture of how the Jesuits’ programme of education was meant to provide a response to that ‘age of doubt’ which characterizes much of seventeenth-century philosophical debate. In its absence, one is left with the impression that a series of questions is still in need of an answer, and, from this standpoint, Aristotle in Coimbra represents an introductory chapter to a story that largely waits to be written.