Late Scholastic Thomism into Pieces. Hylomorphism and Indeterminate Dimensions in Domingo Báñez’s Commentary on De generatione et corruptione

Although Domingo Báñez O.P. (1528–1604) is known for his major part in the De auxiliis controversy and has been studied on several ethical, political, and metaphysical topics, his hylomorphic thought has received little attention. In this chapter, I concentrate on Báñez’s commentary on Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione. First, I introduce the work, giving a brief overview of its contents and structure, and showing through his many references to earlier thinkers how Báñez offers a Thomistic perspective on late scholastic hylomorphism. Next, I examine one discussion in the commentary: “Whether quantity and dimensions, determinate and indeterminate, are immediately in prime matter as their subject” (Bk I, cap. 4, q. 14, Art. 3). There Báñez shows some of the fissures that formed among fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Dominican Thomists over how to properly understand Thomas Aquinas on this central issue in hylomorphic theory.