On december 10/11, the newly funded project A02 „Contingentia and Disputatio: Decision-making as concept and practice in late medieval theory” will hold its initial workshop. Participants will include international scholars such as William Courtenay, Chris Jones, Sophia Menache and Olga Weijers.

The project is part of the Collaborative Research Centre/SFB 1150 “Kulturen des Entscheidens” (Münster/Germany) which does research on the modes, the framing and the reflection of decision-making in different societies. Within this framework, project A02 investigates the development as well as the social and institutional milieu in which scolastic concepts and practices of decision-making came to be used and implemented.

The main focus is on

- Interaction between academic practices and theoretical concepts of decision-making: Is the emergence of theoretical concepts influenced by practices such as 'quaestio' or 'disputatio' (seen as a ritual, a literary genre or an analytical method)? Do new concepts of decision-making in turn influence academic practices?

- Influence of academic concepts and practices on extra-academic procedures of decision-making: Do academic methods, procedures, rituals and concepts form a model for extra-academic procedures of of decision-making? Is the recourse to academic procedures a source of legitimation? Is knowledge about academic practices and concepts of decision-making a valued know how outside university milieus?

- Conflict groups: How to explain the 'prise de position' of individuals or groups within contexts of academic dispute? Is it purely based on the nature of the scientific topics which are to be decided? Is it based on further, extra-academic lines of conflict which play their role but implicitly? Which is the relation between the scientific topics that are explicitly marked as „being subject to decision-making“ and those lines of conflict which are treated implicitely?

The Workshop: Points of Departure

The workshop’s aim is to identify relevant questions within our field of research. To do so, we do not recur to a specific 'questionnaire', but to a specific historical constellation marked by several aspects which are highly relevant for our research. As a point of departure, the workshop thus concentrates on intra- and extra-academic lines of conflict in the surroundings of the Parisian university (c. 1300). Here, we observe frictions between dominicans and franciscans, between friars and secular clerics, between members of the different faculties, but also conflicts between ‚papalists’ and ‚royalists’, between ‚traditionalists’ and ‚modernists’, between defenders of a noble society ‚of old’ and prophets of ‚modern’ administration and learned officials...

The historical constellation defined above forms a point of departure for contributions to the workshop, but need not be its exclusive subject. Areas of interest might particularly be

- concepts of decision-making: emergence of the notion of contingent, non-determined decisions (John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham et al.);

- reflections on dialogues between 'miles' and 'clericus' (or comparable genres) that stage the clash of conflict groups divided not only by different scientific positions but also by social and political identities;

- reflections on influences exercised by academic concepts and practices on procedures of political decision-making – within or outside the old master narrative of „Philip the Fair and his legists“.

We invite papers of 20-25 minutes. Please send your proposal (in English, French or German) to Georg Jostkleigrewe (g.jostkleigrewe@uni-muenster.de). For further information or a more detailed conference concept (in German), please contact us.

The workshop will be held in English and French. Travel and accomodation costs will be covered by Münster University.