Dr Matija Jan’s research focuses on the history of early modern philosophy, with particular emphasis on the philosophy of René Descartes. His work is characterised by a combination of a historical approach, which situates the ideas and concepts under consideration within the context of preceding and contemporary intellectual traditions, and a synchronic approach to those same ideas and concepts, which demonstrates how, despite their diverse origins, they ultimately come together to form autonomous and internally more or less consistent systems of thought.

In the past, he has applied this approach primarily to Descartes’ theory of ideas, showing that its conceptual tools are drawn to a considerable extent from late Jesuit scholasticism. By subsequently examining the three principal problems concerning the theory of ideas—their nature, their clarity and distinctness, and their origin—he demonstrated that Descartes’s theory of ideas constitutes an internally consistent system. Whereas his previous research focused primarily on the mental pole of Descartes’ dualistic philosophy, his current work addresses its other pole, namely Descartes’ physiological theory. As part of his postdoctoral project, Philosophy of Cognitive Powers in Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, he is particularly interested in the physiological theory of those bodily processes that, according to Descartes, constitute the material conditions of possibility for forms of thought such as sensation and imagination.