Prof. Dr. Lydia Schumacher

Website: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/lydia-schumacher

Research Interests:

Medieval theology and philosophy, systematic theology, philosophical theology

Biography

Lydia Schumacher is a Reader at King's College London, where she teaches ethics, theology, philosophy, and medieval thought. She received her Habilitation from the Humboldt University of Berlin. She has published 5 monographs (2 with Cambridge University Press, 2 with Routledge, 1 with Wiley-Blackwell), 4 edited volumes and 1 co-translated volume of translations. She is Principal Investigator of an ERC Starting Grant and has held numerous other prestigious research awards, such as a British Academy Fellowship. She is currently co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Medieval Franciscan Thought and editor of the Cambridge History of Early Scholastic Thought.

Project Abstract

The medieval scholastic tradition featured two main schools of thought on God's knowledge of future contingents: one stemming from Aristotle, Augustine, and Boethius, upheld by Aquinas, which sees God's knowledge of future events as synchronous or eternally present; and one, advocated by Franciscans, for whom it is asynchronous. That is to say, God's knowledge of future contingents entails knowledge of them precisely as future rather than present. My research will trace the origins of the Franciscan departure from ancient tradition to their appropriation of the metaphysics of the 11th-century Islamic philosopher Avicenna. This will require examining the little-studied founders of Franciscan thought who acknowledged those debts openly.