Abstract

The paper examines attempts to defi ne philosophy as a discipline in early modern Spanish Aristotelianism. Such defi nitions served primarily didactical goals:a defi nition of philosophy conveyed fi rst impressions of what philosophy was in order to facilitate the subsequent detailed apprehension of philosophicaldoctrines. But even though such defi nitions should not be misunderstood as ›metaphilosophical‹ in the contemporary sense, they gave rise to quite detaileddebates on the nature of philosophy, its relation to wisdom, or the domain of objects philosophy is concerned with. Whereas the canon of problems discussedin the texts is quite homogeneous, the answers given differ considerably. These differences concern e. g. the status of philosophical knowledge, the relation between theoretical and practical philosophy or the role of mathematics in the canon of philosophical disciplines.