Philosophia perennis

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Philosophia perennis (Lat., ‘perennial philosophy’). Originally introduced as a term (by Steuchen) in 1540 to describe what the school of Padua and scholasticism had in common. The term since then has had various technical applications, e.g. to what Greek and medieval philosophy have in common, or to Thomism as a whole. But a looser sense was introduced by Leibniz (1646–1716) to pick out those elements of philosophy which had endured through time—his own philosophy being, in his own view, the proper continuation and development of it. Even more loosely, the term has come to refer to a fundamental core of truth to be found at the heart of all religions.