On Light:  Light Essence According to Robert Grosseteste in De Luce

Ranjbar, Ebrahim

doi:10.30465/crtls.2024.46703.2780

On Light: Light Essence According to Robert Grosseteste in De Luce

Document Type : Research

Author

Ebrahim Ranjbar

PhD Candidate, Philosophy Department, Literature and Foreign Languages Faculty, Allame Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.30465/crtls.2024.46703.2780

Abstract

Robert Grosseteste was one of the greatest philosophers of 12^th and 13^thcenturies. Among his writings, there is a treatise called “De Luce” in which he tries to consolidate his philosophical approach with theology and to give an account that fits his scientific-philosophical point of view and the creation in the Book of “Genesis”. To this end, Grosseteste in the first part of the treatise explains the very nature of Light and then demonstrates how is it possible to consider Light a creator of all things created and how this Light actualizes these possible things from within not outside. He asserts that Light extends Seipsam, a byproduct of which is matter’s extension, and this assertion would be a basis for him to give an innovative interpretation of how things are created. In this article, we first try to investigate his intellectual background and to show upon which basis he interpreted Light in this manner, by doing this there will be an appropriate moment for us to analyze “De Luce” and to show what sort of intellectual consequences had his light theory and how it could contribute in developing of Renaissance philosophy.

Keywords

Robert Grosseteste

Light

Form

Matter

Creation

Subjects

Philosophy

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