The Soul and its Powers According to Tommaso del Garbo (d. 1370), a Physician in Trecento Italy

Abstract

Tommaso del Garbo, son of the famous Dino del Garbo and a pupil of Gentile da Foligno, taught medicine in several Italian universities in the 14th century. Although he left no philosophical treatises, his taste for intellectual speculation is well known and some passages in his medical works bear witness to this. In this paper, we examine quaestiones and dubia on the relationship between the soul and its powers, which are quite similar to what can be read at the same time in commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima. Thanks to these texts, which we are editing as an appendix to this paper, we will show that Tommaso del Garbo had a very precise knowledge of the debates of his time (he quotes Radulphus Brito, John of Jandun, Francis of Marchia and William of Alnwick) and that he defends an original position inspired by William of Ockham’s nominalism. According to this theory, the soul is nothing other than its powers, which are only ways of designating the same reality on the ontological level.