Lukáš Lička is a researcher at the Department for the Study of Ancient and Medieval Thought at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
He conducts research on medieval Latin philosophy and science (13th to 15th century), especially on medieval optical tradition (perspectiva), including its relations to Aristotelian natural philosophy, medieval geometry, and astronomy; as well as on medieval theories of sensory perception, nature of the intellect, and disputation practices at late medieval Faculties of Arts. He has authored numerous studies on these subjects, as well as a monograph on Medieval Theories of Perception and the Activity of Senses in the Franciscan Context (Filosofia, 2021, in Czech). In 2020, he received the SIEPM Junior Scholar Award “for the best research paper on medieval philosophy”.
In the framework of the ACADEMIA project, he is preparing a book-length study of late medieval optics and theories of light and vision as mirrored in the late medieval university disputations, especially quodlibets at Faculties of Arts. He participates in the initial heuristic phase of the project, transcribes manuscript sources and prepares editions. Once the textual corpus is reconstructed, he becomes responsible for investigating its part dealing with perspectivist and psychological topics, i.e. quodlibetal questions stemming from the perspectiva and de anima tradition. He focuses on two kinds of transfer in the intellectual history of late medieval universities: (1) cultural transfer of philosophical ideas, texts, and manuscripts from Western centres of university learning (Paris and Oxford), and (2) ways of transfer of philosophical and scientific knowledge from university lectures and commentaries into the disputation practices.
academia.edu profile
lukas.licka@flu.cas.cz
@scholipetaEducation
2016 – Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava, Ph.D. in Philosophy
2013 – Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava , M.A. in Philosophy
2013 – Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava , B.A. in Latin Language and Culture
2011 – Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava , B.A. in Czech Language and Literature and Social Studies
Selected publications
Journal Articles
- ‘Shadows in Medieval Optics, Practical Geometry, and Astronomy: On a Perspectiva Ascribed to Thomas Bradwardine’, Early Science and Medicine 27.2 (2022): 179-223.
- ‘Perception and Objective Being: Peter Auriol on Perceptual Acts and their Objects’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2016): 49–76.
- ‘An Eastward Diffusion: The New Oxford and Paris Physics of Light in Prague Disputations, 1377–1409’, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 89.2 (2022): 449–516.
Chapters in Edited Volumes
- ‘Buridan Wycliffised? The Nature of the Intellect in Late Medieval Prague University Disputations’, in The Embodied Soul: Aristotelian Psychology and Physiology in Medieval Europe between 1200 and 1420, edited by M. Gensler, M. Mansfeld and M. Michałowska, Cham: Springer, 2022, pp. 277–310. (Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99453-2_14)
- ‘The Aims of Perspectiva in 1360s Paris: Investigating Texts Written in the Hand of Reimbotus de Castro’, in Books of Knowledge in Late Medieval Europe: Circulation and Reception of Popular Texts, edited by P. Cermanová and V. Žůrek, Turnhout: Brepols, 2021, 299–329.
- ‘Studying and Discussing Optics at the Prague Faculty of Arts: Optical Topics and Authorities in Prague Quodlibets and John of Borotín’s Quaestio on Extramission’, in Studying the Arts in Late Medieval Bohemia, edited by O. Pavlíček, Turnhout: Brepols, 2021, 249–300.
- ‘The Visual Process: Immediate or Successive? Approaches to the Extramission Postulate in 13th-Century Theories of Vision’, in Medieval Perceptual Puzzles: Theories of Sense-Perception in the 13th and 14th Centuries, edited by E. Baltuta, Leiden: Brill, 2020, 73–110.
- ‘What is in the Mirror? The Metaphysics of Mirror Images in Albert the Great and Peter Auriol’, in Senses and the History of Philosophy, edited by B. Glenney and J. F. Silva, London: Routledge, 2019, 131–148.
Monographies and Edited Works
- Středověké teorie vnímání a aktivita smyslů ve františkánském kontextu, Praha: Filosofia, 2021. [Medieval Theories of Perception and the Activity of Senses in the Franciscan Context, in Czech]
- D. Heider, L. Lička, M. Otisk (eds.), Perception in Scholastics and Their Interlocutors, Praha: Filosofia, 2017. (= Filosofický časopis 2017, special issue 2)