THE LIGHT OF THY COUNTENANCE VOLUME ONE
STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT EDITED BY HEIKO A. OBERMAN, Tucson, Arizona IN COOPERATION WITH ROBERT J. BAST, Knoxville, Tennessee HENRY CHADWICK, Cambridge BRIAN TIERNEY, Ithaca, New York ARJO VANDERJAGT, Groningen
VOLUME XCVIII STEVEN P. MARRONE
THE LIGHT OF THY COUNTENANCE VOLUME ONE
THE LIGHT OF THY COUNTENANCE SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
VOLUME ONE A DOCTRINE OF DIVINE ILLUMINATION BY
STEVEN P. MARRONE
BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KOLN 2001
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marrone, Steven P., 1947The light of Thy countenance : science and knowledge of God in the thirteenth century / by Steven P. Marrone. p. cm. — (Studies in the history of Christian thought, ISSN 0081-8607 ; v. 98) Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, p.) and indexes. Contents: v. 1. A doctrine of divine illumination—Gods at the core of cognition. ISBN 9004119477 (set: alk. paper) 1. Knowledge, Theory of (Religion)—History. 2. God—Knowableness— History of doctrines. 3. Religion and science—History. 4. Thirteenth century. I. Title. II. Series. BT50 .M28 2000 261.5'5'09022—dc21 00-046862
CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufhahme Marrone, Steven P.: The light of thy countenance : science and knowledge of god in the thirteenth century / by Steven P. Marrone. - Leiden ; Boston ; Koln : Brill (Studies in the history of Christian thought; Vol. 98) ISBN 90-04™11947-7 Vol. 1. A doctrine of divine illumination. - 2001
ISSN ISBN
0081-8607 9004 11947 7 (set)
© Copyright 2001 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy itemsfor internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
To Ellen
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CONTENTS VOLUME ONE A DOCTRINE OF DIVINE ILLUMINATION
Acknowledgments Sigla Introduction
ix xi 1 PART ONE
BIRTHPANGS OF A PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION 1210 1245 ROBERT GROSSETESTE AND WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE
Introduction to Chapter One Chapter Two Reference Chapter Three Chapter Four
Part One Certitude of Knowledge The Origin of Knowledge and its Knowledge of Immutable Truth Mind's Road to God
29 38 60 84 97
PART TWO THE CLASSIC AUGUSTINIANS 1250-1280 BONAVENTURE, GILBERT OF TOURNAI, JOHN PEGHAM AND MATTHEW OF AQUASPARTA
Introduction to Part Two Chapter Five Truth and the Certitude of Knowledge Chapter Six The Object of Knowledge and the Noetic Process Chapter Seven Immutability of Knowledge and the Cognitive Object Chapter Eight A Natural Way to Know God
Ill 122
186 201
Conclusion to Volume One
247
152
Vlll
CONTENTS
VOLUME TWO GOD AT THE CORE OF COGNITION
Introduction to Volume Two
251
PART THREE A PARTING OF THE WAYS 1275-1295 HENRY OF GHENT AND VITAL DU FOUR
Introduction to Part Three Chapter Nine Truth, Certitude and Science Chapter Ten Mind's Object and the Road to God Chapter Eleven Essence and the Ontology of the Mental Object Chapter Twelve Aristotle and Augustine Revisited
259 270 299 335 359
PART FOUR THE NEW DISPENSATION 1290-1310 WILLIAM OF WARE AND JOHN DUNS SCOTUS
Introduction to Part Four Chapter Thirteen Rejection of Illumination and a Worldly Theory of Knowledge Chapter Fourteen Noetics and the Critique of Henry's Ontology of Essence Chapter Fifteen Fully Natural Knowledge of God Chapter Sixteen What about Augustine?
391
444 489 537
Conclusion
565
Bibliography of Works Cited
575
Indices Index of Names Index of Places Index of Subjects
599 604 605
401
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
By the time a book like this reaches print the author has typically gone over the arguments and analyses so often it is impossible to remember where ideas originated or exactly what influences shaped the ordering of thoughts from the start. The prudent course is therefore simply to thank those who have been personally involved in the work's preparation, cite borrowings in the notes, and leave it to readers to apportion credit among all the scholars whose pioneering efforts have left traces in the final product. In the present instance, however, I have taken so long — over fifteen years - to produce and polish this single narrative that the enormity of my debt to others has had time to lay itself open to my own eyes. Often, while undertaking a new line of research for a paper or article or rereading the standard literature with students in classes and seminars, I have come upon lines of analysis so deeply ingrained among my own habits of mind that I had begun to regard them as attributable peculiarly to me. In each instance, I have been forced to recognize that I was fortuitously revisiting the original statement of the case that, in some by-then-forgotten moment of earlier investigation, had initially set me thinking. These unnerving moments of illumination have occurred so frequently with regard to the writings of three historians that I suspect my own work might well be described as virtually a distillation of theirs. The three are Camille Berube, Efrem Bettoni and the late Fernand van Steenberghen. All, of course, are recognized masters in the interpretation of high-medieval philosophy. But for me they have also served as guides for how to think historically. If this book makes any contribution to understanding the dynamics of thought among thirteenth-century scholastics, it is due largely to techniques of interpretation picked up from them. Camille Berube is the only one of the three I ever met, but I feel I have known them all quite well. My mentors and intellectual companions, they have contributed the imaginative capital out of which these two volumes have emerged. There is, moreover, a fourth scholar whose work has profoundly affected my thinking but who has in addition actively supported my efforts. I can scarcely consider medieval Scholasticism without
X
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
drawing upon the insights of Heiko A. Oberman, whose writings have been formative to my understanding since my days of graduate study. It is thus with special pleasure that I find myself in a position to thank Professor Heiko A. Oberman for including this book in his series Studies in the History of Christian Thought. Both he and the people at Brill have proven the depth of their kindness by underwriting production of so lengthy a book in these days of leaner, meaner publication. Finally, I thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent agency of the United States government, which generously supported work on this book with a research grant. Steven P. Marrone Arlington, Massachusetts 21 July 2000
SIGLA AFH AHDLMA Beitrage
Archivum Franciscanum Historicum Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Litteraire du Moyen Age Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophic des Mittelalters; since 1928: Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophic und Theologie des Mittelalters. BFS Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi CC Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina CF Collectanea Franciscana Comm. Post. an. Robert Grosseteste, Commentarius in Posteriorum analyticorum libros, ed. Pietro Rossi. Florence, 1981. CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum EF Etudes Franciscaines FrS Franciscan Studies FS Franziskanische Studien Henrici Opera Henrici de Gandavo Opera Omnia. Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Wulf-Mansion Centre, Ser. 2. Leuven, 1979Mag. div. William of Auvergne, Opera Omnia, 2 vols. Orleans-Paris, 1674/repr. Frankfurt a.M., 1963. MS Mediaeval Studies Opera Phil. B. loannis Duns Scoti Opera Philosophica. St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1997-. Phil. Werke Robert Grosseteste, Die philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln, ed. Ludwig Baur. Miinster, 1912. PL J.P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, 221 vols. Paris, 1844-64. Quod. Henry of Ghent, Quodlibeta, 2 vols. Paris 1518/repr. Leuven, 1961. RFN Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica RNS Revue Neo-Scolastique; later: Revue Neoscolastique de Philosophic RSPT Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Theologiques RTAM Recherches de Theologie Ancienne et Medievale SRHCI Scholastica ratione historico-critica instauranda, Acta Congressus Scholastic! Internationalis, Rome, 1950. Rome, 1951. SF Studi Francescani Summa Henry of Ghent, Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, 2 vols. Paris, 1520/repr. St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1953. Vatican loannis Duns Scoti Opera Omnia (Vatican edition). Vatican City, 1950Vives Joannis Duns Scoti Opera Omnia (Vives). Paris, 1891-95. WuW Wissenschaft und Weisheit
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INTRODUCTION
Though Pope Leo XIII hardly spoke for the world of scholarship when in the encyclical Aeterni patris of 1879 he called for increased study of the work of Thomas Aquinas, his general interest in drawing attention to high-medieval Scholasticism in the history of philosophy was shared by academics throughout Europe. By the late nineteenth century it had become commonplace to associate the thirteenth century with the flowering of medieval thought. The idea has maintained a grip on the historical imagination up to the present day. Even as competing centuries vie for attention, the thirteenth continues to monopolize the energies of historians of medieval philosophy, with the vast majority of studies in medieval intellectual history devoted to thirteenth-century thinkers. Of course the tenor of scholarly investigation into the thirteenth century in the more than one hundred years since Aeterni patris has varied, with programs of research reflecting the intellectual fashions of the day. Nevertheless, two lines of inquiry have stood out for their persistent ability to generate scholarly debate. Their stories are well known to students of the Middle Ages. The older investigative track goes back to the start, and it has to do with the question of intellectual schools. Maurice De Wulf, virtual founder of modern scholarship on medieval philosophy who echoed Aeterni patris in his admiration for high-medieval scholastics, like Leo XIII viewed their achievement as monolithic, Scholasticism comprising a unified intellectual system most perfectly embodied in the work of giants such as Aquinas.1 Yet already in De Wulf's day there was dissatisfaction with the notion of Scholasticism as a seamless fabric of knowledge. Karl Werner, and more famously still Franz Ehrle, argued that it had to be divided into two separate doctrinal 1
This notion pervades De Wulf s work but was perhaps most eloquently expressed early in his career in "Qu'est-ce que la philosophic scolastique?" RNS 5 (1898): 141-53, 282-96. In English, see De Wulfs Medieval Philosophy. Illustrated from the System of Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge, Mass., 1922); and Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1922), where on pp. 82-83 he points to a "common fund of doctrine, to which [he] was the first to limit the name of 'scholastic philosophy.'"
2.
INTRODUCTION
swatches, each constituting a distinct school of thought. Aquinas spoke for only one school, the Aristotelianism praised by Aeterni patris. More venerable in the thirteenth century was a contrasting, often opposing Augustinianism championed especially by members of the Franciscan Order.2 In the politically charged atmosphere of the late nineteenth century such a multivalent characterization of high-medieval philosophizing was bound to be well received, and by century's end it had obtained confirmation in Pierre Mandonnet's monumental study of Siger of Brabant.3 Indeed Mandonnet felt compelled to add a third school, the Latin Averroism he saw as founded by the thinker at the center of his own research. The vision of differing schools of scholastic thought naturally demanded clarification of the chronology of their development, and in a pair of articles from the late 1920s Etienne Gilson laid out the parameters of an ingenious and influential interpretative scheme.4 According to Gilson, Augustinianism had its roots in medieval tradition, stretching back before the thirteenth century, while Aristotelianism as an authentic intellectual school was an innovation of Aquinas and his followers. Moreover, thirteenth-century Augustinianism was itself complex, composed of at least two competing strains, an Aristotelianizing Augustinianism that may have nourished Thomas and an Avicennizing Augustinianism laying more emphasis on Neoplatonic modes of understanding. Such a vision of distinct currents of Scholasticism did not go unchallenged, and before Gilson entered the fray De Wulf had responded to the vogue for differentiation by claiming that Augustinianism was not a separate current in opposition to his Aristotelian scholastic monolith but rather an early version of the same system, which simply assumed a more refined embodiment in Aquinas's
2 See Karl Werner, Der Augustinismus in der Scholastik des spdteren Mittelalters, vol. 3 of Die Scholastik des spdteren Mittelalters (Vienna, 1883); and especially Franz Ehrle, "Der Augustinismus und der Aristotelismus in der Scholastik," Archiv far Litteraturund Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters 5 (1889): 603-35; given final form in an Italian version: "L Agostinismo e I'Aristotelismo nella Scolastica del secolo XIII," in Xenia Thomistica 3:517-88 (Rome, 1925). 3 Pierre Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et I'aoerroisme latin au XIIP siecle (Fribourg, 1899); 2nd ed., 2 vols., Les Philosophes Beiges 6-7 (Leuven, 1911 & 1908). 4 Etienne Gilson, "Pourquoi saint Thomas a critique saint Augustin," AHDLMA 1 (1926-27): 5-127; and "Les sources greco-arabes de raugustinisme avicennisant," AHDLMA 4 (1929): 5-149.
INTRODUCTION
5
work.5 Yet when De Wulf returned to the debate after Gilson, it was increasingly apparent that beneath the rhetoric of ideological unity he had been forced to make room for what looked very much like philosophical schools. Still insisting that scholastic debate had all taken place within the confines of Aristotelianism, he was by 1932 prepared to list four different medieval Aristotelian systems - Augustinianism, Thomism, Scotism and Averroism - and one more purely Neoplatonic species that stood alone.6 From then on no serious scholar could maintain that Scholasticism comprised an unbroken doctrinal whole.7 The second dominant line of inquiry was slower getting under way. In part it had to wait for maturation of the first, from which it drew inspiration; in part it depended on an early-twentieth-century revaluation of the importance of the twelfth century.8 Instead of searching for parallel but competing streams of thought, this second approach sought to chronicle an epoch-making shift in intellectual orientation. There have been two ways to conceive of this change. According to one formulation, it had to do with the displacement of older Platonic or Neoplatonic ways of thinking by an Aristotelian approach over the course of the thirteenth century. Again Pierre Mandonnet
5 Maurice De Wulf, "Augustinisme et aristotelisme au XIIF siecle," RNS 8 (1901): 151-66. (> De Wulf made his initial response to Gilson in "L'augustinisme 'avicennisant,'" RNS 33 (1931): 11-39. He listed his five currents next year in "Courants doctrinaux dans la philosophic europeenne du XIIF siecle," RNS 34 (1932): 5-20. ; In an often cited article from 1951, Leon Veuthey identified an ostensibly standard scheme of four high-medieval schools: Franciscan Augustinianism (divided into three currents), Christian Aristotelianism (or Thomism), Averroistic Aristotelianism, and scientifico-physical Augustinianism (of Bacon and his successors) - see Veuthey, "Les divers courants de la philosophic augustino-franciscaine au moyen age," in SRHCI, Acta Congressus Scholastici Internationalis, Rome, 1950 (Rome, 1951), p. 629. All the popular English-language introductions to medieval thought from the 1950s and 1960s use a schema of differing schools to present high-medieval philosophy - see Frederick C. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 2: Medieval Philosophy (Westminster, Maryland, 1950); Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York, 1955); Gordon Leff, Medieval Thought. St. Augustine to Ockham (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1958); David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (London, 1962); Armand Maurer, Medieval Philosophy, 1st ed. (New York, 1962); and Julius R. Weinberg, A Short History of Medieval Philosophy (Princeton, 1964). 8 On the revaluation of the twelfth century, see the seminal works by Artur Schneider, Die abendldndische Spekulation des zwolften Jahrhunderts in ihrem Verhdltnis zur aristotelischen undjiidisch-arabischen Philosophic, Beitrage 17.4 (Miinster, 1915); and Charles H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1927).
4
INTRODUCTION
was an early spokesperson for the position, which has itself become commonplace among medieval intellectual historians.9 A competing perspective takes a longer view. Here the effort is not to characterize transformation within the thirteenth century but rather to chart the rise of Scholasticism as a whole. Scholars following this tack speak of the metamorphosis from a subjective and highly literary or hermeneutical mentality in the twelfth century to a more empirical and discursive one in the thirteenth, and they often claim to be laying bare the triumph of "rationalism" in high-medieval thought.10 By either understanding, what is at stake is something like a Kuhnian 9 See Mandonnet's early review article, "L'augustinisme Bonaventurien," Bulletin Thomiste 3 (1926): 50. The notion of a progressive triumph of Aristotelianism has been especially well received by historians of the so-called Augustinian current, by none so cogently as the indefatigable Efrem Bettoni — for example, in his "Introduzione" to Bonaventure, L'ascesa a Dio, ed. Efrem Bettoni (Milan, 1974), p. x. 10 The conceit of a radical cultural divide between twelfth- and thirteenth-century Europe has become a commonplace of popular surveys, as can well be illustrated by the example of Friedrich Heer's excellent Mittelalter (Zurich, 1961), which begins (pp. 5-27) with a ground-laying characterization of the continent in the twelfth century as open and expanding in contrast to one that is closed and divided against itself - to the point of competing intellectual systems - from the thirteenth century on (in English translation as The Medieval World [London, 1962], pp. 1-13). Of the two expressions of this approach attributed in the present study to historians of high-medieval thought, the first (subjective and hermeneutical to empirical and discursive) has been especially popular of late — see, for instance, Andreas Speer, "Wissenschaft und Erkenntnis. Zur Wissenschaftslehre Bonventuras," WuW 49 (1986): 169. Ewert H. Cousins, "St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, and the Movement
of Thought in the 13th Century," in Bonaventure and Aquinas. Enduring Philosophers, ed.
Robert W. Shahan and Francis J. Kovach (Norman, Okla., 1976), pp. 8—11, gives an uncommonly sensitive account of this sort of shift, which he conceives as a move from subjective consciousness to a more empirical, outer-directed one over the course of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. As for the second expression, Speer, "Wissenschaft und Erkenntnis," p. 169, describes the "Paradigmenwechsel" from the twelfth to the thirteenth century as due to the rise of "Rationalitat." Georg Wieland, "Plato or Aristotle — a Real Alternative in Medieval Philosophy?" in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. John F. Wippel (Washington, D.C., 1987), pp. 77, 82-83, explicitly links this formulation with the competing general perspective, characterizing the rise of thirteenth-century "rationality" as at the same time a shift from a Platonic to an Aristotelian philosophical base. It should be mentioned that thinking about cultural metamorphosis in Europe from twelfth to thirteenth century has been greatly nourished by Richard Southern's ruminations on "medieval humanism," beginning with his essay of that name in Medieval Humanism and other Studies (New York, 1970), pp. 29-60; reworked as chapter 1: "Scholastic Humanism," in his Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, Vol. 1: Foundations (Oxford, 1995), pp. 19—57. In the
"Introduction" to the latter book (pp. 1-13), Southern adds precision to the suggestions of his previous work that the inclusionary humanism of the twelfth century was diverted into a contentious and authoritarian rationalism in the thirteenth, pointing explicitly to 1270 as starting point for the transformation.
INTRODUCTION
0
paradigm-shift. Intellectual displacement of this magnitude did not so much distinguish contemporary thinkers into schools as sweep everyone up in a new intellectual orientation, even a new consciousness. Over the years these two main avenues of investigation, one tracing the boundaries of divergent currents and the other searching for the fault-line of high-medieval change, acquired so eminent a respectability that, although there were always scholars of medieval thought refusing to take up either one, practically no one seriously challenged their dominance. The very language of historiographical tradition seemed to require reference to schools and to the transformative rationalizing of thirteenth-century masters as a condition for entering into scholarly debate. Only recently have signs of change emerged. For the first time since the nineteenth century, indications from some quarters are that interest in both themes is beginning to flag. Historians of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century thought have been the most vocal in opposing adherence to the old historiographical schemes. On the basis of research into the celebrated clash of philosophical and theological "ways" in late-medieval universities, they have over the past decade increasingly cast doubt on the validity of habitual assumptions about the division of Scholasticism into welldelineated schools. Armed with such well-grounded scepticism, they now insist on reconsideration of the matter for the whole of medieval intellectual history, arguing with ever greater frequency that even the boundary between Augustinian and Aristotelian milieus in the thirteenth century is not so clear as previously claimed, or that there was at most a short-lived consolidation of opposing camps in the decades just before and after 1300. Moreover, taking stock of the profound alterations in intellectual outlook attributed to the very late Middle Ages and the early modern period, there are many to deny that there was anything peculiarly "rational" or "rationalist" much less truly "empirical" about the thirteenth century." The implication is that were both overarching theoretical presumptions not so
'' A forceful argument for the inappropriateness of school labels before the late fourteenth century comes in Zenon Kaluza, Les querelles doctrinales a Paris. Nominalistes et realistes aux confins du XIV et du XV siecles (Bergamo, 1988). William J. Courtenay
has been more generally sceptical about the reality of intellectual schools at any time in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as can be seen in his "Theology and Theologians from Ockham to Wyclif," in The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. 1:
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INTRODUCTION
deeply ingrained in modern scholarship, no one would think twice about conducting research on medieval philosophy without taking them into account. Indeed, if historiographical inertia were the only thing keeping these lines of inquiry alive, it would doubtless be best to let them expire. They have surely provided occasion for exaggerated claims of novelty as well as doctrinaire efforts to squeeze medieval fecundity into a straitjacket of preconceived oppositional modes. But there is reason to believe that both still hold promise for yielding riches to the historical investigator willing to delve into them anew. What is needed is an effort to update them and bring them more into line with current insights into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and beyond. Already for decades an awareness has been building, even in circles of thirteenth-century intellectual history, that the two timeworn research agendas represent opposite sides of the same coin. Despite their formal dissimilarity - the one chronicling synchronic diversity and the other diachronic change — they therefore yield a single story, narrated from different points of view. The first steps towards this realization came in the early 1940s with the work of Fernand Van Steenberghen.12 In his massive study Late Medieval Oxford, ed. J.I. Catto and Ralph Evans, 1-34 (Oxford, 1992); and "Was There an Ockhamist School?" in Philosophy and Learning. Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, J.H. Josef Schneider and Georg Wieland, 263-92 (Leiden, 1995); although in the former article (pp. 9 and 11) he appears willing to concede validity to the traditional school divisions for the late thirteenth and very early fourteenth centuries. Two further recent additions to the debate can also be found in Philosophy and Learning, ed. Hoenen et al.: Kaluza's "La crise des annees 1474-1482: L'interdiction du Nominalisme par Louis XI" (pp. 293-327); and Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, "Late Medieval Schools of Thought in the Mirror of University Textbooks. The Promptuarium argumentorum (Cologne 1492)" (pp. 329-69). As for doubt about a peculiarly rational or empirical bent in the thirteenth century, the present author has been criticized for positing it in a review of his own work by Katherine H. Tachau in Isis 75 (1984): 755-56. 12 Fernand Van Steenberghen, Siger de Brabant d'apres ses oeuvres inedites, 2: Siger dans I'histoire de 1'aristotelisme, Les Philosophes Beiges 13 (Leuven, 1942), the trail-blazing chapter 2 of which was extracted and revised for a French-speaking audience in Aristote en Occident (Leuven, 1946); further revised for an English-speaking one in Aristotle in the West (Leuven, 1955; 2nd ed., Leuven, 1970). At about the same time Van Steenberghen was introducing his views, Anton C. Pegis, in "The Mind of Augustine," MS 6 (1944): 53-54 and 57-58, came out with similar ideas about the changing nature of Augustinianism, in particular its appearance in truly philosophical form only after Bonaventure. Van Steenberghen returned to his fundamental vision many times, nowhere more clearly and forcefully than in La philosophie au XIII' siecle (Leuven, 1966), especially pp. 181-89 and 464-71. In The Philosophical Movement in the Thirteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1955), key elements of which are recapitulated
INTRODUCTION
7
of Siger of Brabant he argued for making a distinction between philosophy as a rigorous discipline and philosophy as simply a general intellectual perspective or world view. Before the 1250s, he said, there was no philosophy in the medieval West in the first sense but just an amorphous collection of imperfectly integrated doctrines, largely Aristotelian but also Neoplatonic, that could be labeled "philosophy" in only the second, less rigorous way. This Neoplatonizing Aristotelianism of the early decades was shared by all scholars at the universities insofar as they chose to speculate at all about the nature of reality. So far as philosophical thinking was concerned, there were therefore no schools in these years and no systematic differences among scholastics. Only after 1250, Van Steenberghen claimed, did philosophy as a system expounded with disciplinary rigor appear on the scene. It developed among a group of artists and theologians bent on advancing a purified Aristotelianism. First to succeed in doing so were Thomas and his followers, soon to be imitated by Siger and the more daring of his colleagues in the Faculty of Arts, and what they produced was not merely the first rigorous philosophy of the thirteenth century but also, because of their sensitivity to systematic coherence and difference, the first opposing philosophical schools: a moderate Aristotelianism promoted by Thomas and the radical or heterodox Aristotelianism of Siger. Once these two philosophies were established, and primarily in reaction to them, more conservativeminded thinkers began to look for a rigorous philosophy for themselves. The result, emerging after 1277, was Neo-Augustinianism, which was thus not an end-of-the-century variant of a traditional school but rather the very first Augustinian philosophy in the whole period.13 Van Steenberghen's account plainly marked a move towards thematic integration. While paying respects to De Wulf by claiming that before 1277 there was no philosophy in the West that was not Aristotelian and before the 1250s no true intellectual schools, it conceded to advocates of schools of thought - most especially in La philosophic, Van Steenberghen laid out the historiographical background against which his scholarly contribution had to be measured, taking special care to indicate points of opposition to or agreement with Gilson on a variety of issues, including those of the chronology and nature of intellectual schools under examination here. 13 Georg Wieland has put this point quite nicely in English in his "Plato or Aristotle," pp. 81-82.
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INTRODUCTION
Mandonnet - that by the end of the 1270s there were three, the very ones Mandonnet had proposed. More alluring still, it opened the way to combining the two dominating lines of historiographical inquiry in the field. The reason there wrere no philosophical schools before the 1250s while no less than three after 1277 was that in the interim a major shift had occurred in the nature of intellectual activity. The transition from vague philosophizing to philosophical rigor — a movement closely associated with the concern to toe a more purely Aristotelian line — had created an atmosphere in which schools could appear and thrive. Of course, Van Steenberghen viewed the critical transformation in medieval thought as the triumph of Aristotelianism over its rivals, particularly Platonism, in the thirteenth century. The longer view of intellectual reorientation in the high Middle Ages sees the change, on the other hand, as a shift from subjectivity to empirical objectivity and from interpretation to logical argument, taking both to be signs of an increased reliance on rationality detectable already before 1200.14 If the latter characterizations are correct, then the seismic realignments Van Steenberghen presumed to trace were surely well under way already early in the century; indeed the significant cultural break must have come between the twelfth century and the thirteenth, between an old age where rationalized philosophizing had to fight for a place at the table and a new one where it set the terms for learned discourse. From this more encompassing perspective, even Van Steenberghen's sprawling Neoplatonizing Aristotelianism of the early 1200s has to be taken as product of the new spirit, one that bears contrasting not so much with more truly systematic philosophies that followed as with traditional, less rationalized modes of thought that came before. And if philosophical schools, as defined by doctrinal rigor and coherence, appeared only after mid-century, the root cause of this development could hardly be the emergence of purified Aristotelianism by itself. Instead, it is more likely that the crystallization of all schools, including the pure Aristotelian, represents an intensification across the board of the drive for logical analysis and rational examination underway since before century's beginning. Perhaps De Wulf and Gilson were both right. A single spirit may animate Scholasticism in the thirteenth century, and yet there may be significantly different 14
See above, n. 10.
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9
currents or schools of thought, each with roots reaching back well before 1250. In short, Van Steenberghen's approach, while moving in the right direction, does not succeed in putting in play all the historiographical variables at once. For a truly global assault on the question of high-medieval Scholasticism, one more line of investigation and debate needs to be drawn in. Strictly speaking, the new line belongs to the history of science, although aspects of the long viewr of intellectual change mentioned above are indebted to it.15 Its terms of discourse go back to Pierre Duhem and Alexandre Koyre, and they have to do with the place of medieval thought in the rise of modern science. Duhem argued that medieval thinking played an instrumental role, laying the foundations for most of the significant achievements of the seventeenth century. For him, the real revolution in science came in the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, so that by 1400 most of the elements of modern science were loosely in place, just waiting to be refined and developed by the great systematizers, Galileo, Descartes and Newton.16 Koyre believed the opposite, that the essential attributes of modern science, on the level of theory, praxis and results, were concocted from scratch in the seventeenth century. Whatever the Middle Ages achieved, it was fundamentally at odds with a modern scientific point of view and had to be rejected before modern science could emerge.17 Duhem and Koyre each had their followers, and the argument among them sometimes raged fiercely. On Duhem's side, scholars reached farther and farther back into the Middle Ages, seeing ever
'' Both the second and third scholars cited above in n. 10 have a partially scientific model in mind for the second of their two paradigms or forms of consciousness. Speer speaks of "scientific rationality," and Cousins of Aristotelian empiricism. "' Most of Duhem's work was published over a considerable span of time, extending to far beyond his death, in two great series of studies: Etudes sur Leonard de Vinci, 3 vol. (Paris, 1906-13); Le systeme du monde, 10 vol. (Paris, 1913-59). For a superb introduction to Duhem's thesis and an evaluation of its significance, see John E. Murdoch, "Pierre Duhem and the History of Late Medieval Science and Philosophy in the Latin West," in Gli studi difilosofia medievale fra otto e novecento, 253-301 (Rome, 1991). 1 ' Koyre espoused this position throughout his own series of studies, Etudes galileennes, published in three volumes (Paris, 1939). His sharpest attack on Duhem's views comes in "Le vide et 1'espace infinie au XIVe siecle," AHDLMA 17 (1949): 45-91. A useful compendium of Koyre's views in English is From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore, 1957).
10
INTRODUCTION
more of the essential traits of modern science prefigured in medieval thought. While in the late 1940s Herbert Butterfield made a stab at a moderate synthesis of the arguments for originality and anticipation in the medieval period, shortly thereafter Alistair Crombie assumed a more radical stance, extending the origins of modern scientific attitudes all the way to the early thirteenth century and going Duhem one better by including the experimental method among the achievements of scholastic minds.18 Eventually, however, the tide turned against Duhem. Though his ideas still carry considerable weight, with his specific research interests largely setting the agenda for medieval history of science, it is fashionable nowadays among both medieval and modern historians to disparage his expansive vision of the prehistory of the Scientific Revolution. Surely Crombie went too far in characterizing medieval views on experiment and experience as virtually equivalent to those of the seventeenth century, and Duhem can be legitimately accused of exaggerating formal similarities between medieval and classical scientific theories while ignoring crucial differences in context and intent.19 Yet if Duhem's claim that much of classical dynamics and cosmology was prefigured in the Middle Ages cannot be accepted in original form, that does not mean he was wrong to look for the roots of modern science in medieval thought. An argument can be made that classical science, despite its innovation, built on ideological foundations laid down in the high Middle Ages, while highmedieval science for its part owed much less to intellectual attitudes and assumptions immediately preceding it. This is not to deny the originality of the seventeenth century. It is rather to weigh the continuities between modern science and high-medieval thought against the discontinuities between high-medieval thought and its intellectual antecedent. And it is to suggest that in searching for intellectual revolutions, one must entertain the notion that the reorientation leading to Scholasticism was not only instrumentally implicated in the emergence of modern science but actually entailed a shift in cognitive direction of greater magnitude than the realignment of the seventeenth century. 18 Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modem Science, 1300~1800 (London, 1949); and Alistair C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 1100-1700 (Oxford, 1953). 19 Murdoch, "Pierre Duhem," pp. 272~86 and 299-302, is especially good on detailing Duhem's specific weaknesses while pointing out his enduring influence on the shape of research.
INTRODUCTION
11
Simply put, it is possible to recast Duhem's thesis in terms of the long view of intellectual change in the high Middle Ages introduced above, thereby restoring its value as an analytical model for the prehistory of modern science. Doing so, moreover, entails modifying the long view of high-medieval intellectual change itself, or at least amplifying the descriptive resonances it carries evocative of continuities between medieval and early modern thought. And this in turn demands being absolutely, perhaps embarrassingly, explicit about the intellectual assumptions and rhetorical norms of both the scholastic and pre-scholastic periods. From such a point of view, it can be maintained that prior to the twelfth century in the European West educated — or literate — minds speculated about the realities of the world in ways that must be described as largely symbolic and animist, organizing or communicating their thoughts primarily by means of interpretation or textual exegesis. In other words, they saw reality as a mediating system of signs to be explained or personalities to be related to, and they took explanation to entail deciphering the message and identifying the characters or persons. Even the great Neoplatonic tableaux of the twelfth century, like Bernard Silvestris's Cosmographia, and universal histories, like Otto of Freising's Two Cities, retain much of the flavor of these cognitive and rhetorical laws. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, a competing set of assumptions and norms emerged, not so much replacing the earlier set as displacing it, taking over its function in a range of speculative contexts that would previously have been handled according to the old rules. The new attitude largely ignored the symbolic for the concrete, unmediating "bare fact" and passed over the animist for the inert, invariable world of essential traits and observable regularities. Furthermore it turned away from exegesis to the stylized logic of inference and deduction; in fact its career was inseparable from the history of logic from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries. First signs of the new attitude can be found in the awakening to nature that Marie-Dominique Chenu located in the early twelfth century and its full flowering in the highly articulated productions of scholastic philosophy and theology of the thirteenth and fourteenth.20
20 See especially Chenu, in La theologie au dou&eme siecle 2nd. ed. (Paris, 1966), Ch. 1 (pp. 19-51), to which correspond pp. 1-48 in an abridged English transla-
12
INTRODUCTION
The rhetorical and ideological linchpin for the whole process, the keystone in the arch describing Scholasticism's progress from twelfth to fourteenth centuries, was the almost obsessive promotion of "science" - the Latinate word for what Aristotle meant by episteme. It was through the adoption, even aggressive extension, of an apodictic — and thus "scientific" — model for knowledge that thirteenthcentury thinkers imposed the new naturalizing and logical standards on educated discourse in their time. And it was in the near universal acceptance of this model in the universities - whose history was, by no accident, largely coincident with the model's rise - that defeat by scholastic assumptions and norms of the symbolic, animist and exegetical approach of earlier years was first revealed, with the spoils of victory set out for all to see in the great summas of scholastic form.21 Admittedly, other developments lay in store that would modify and considerably complicate the scholastic canons of science established in the 1200s, among them the move to a more intensely analytical mood in the fourteenth century.22 But from the beginning of the thirteenth century, scholastic thought and scholastic science advanced without interruption until their own marginalization in the tion of the work, entitled Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century (Chicago, 1968). 21 Brian Lawn, The Rise and Decline of the Scholastic "Quaestio disputata." With Special Emphasis on its Use in the Teaching of Medicine and Science (Leiden. 1993), represents a major recent effort to relate the literary form of scholastic production to its ideological presumptions and scientific pretensions. Andreas Speer, inspired by Chenu, has lately turned his attention to the continuities between twelfth and thirteenth century (compare with the somewhat different approach of the work referred to above, n. 10), arguing that the formal conception of philosophy characteristic of the thirteenth century arose in direct response to the problematic introduced by the twelfth century's new understanding of nature. See his Die entdeckte Natur (Leiden, 1995), esp. pp. 1 and 297-98; and "The Discovery of Nature: The Contribution of the Chartrians to Twelfth-Century Attempts to Found a Scientia Naturalist Traditio 52 (1997): 137. 22 The seminal work on the rise of an analytical mood in the fourteenth century is Ernest A. Moody, "Empiricism and Metaphysics in Medieval Philosophy," The Philosophical Review 67 (1958): 145-63. John Murdoch has done the most to clarify and refine the idea. See his "Philosophy and the Enterprise of Science in the Later Middle Ages," in The Interaction between Science and Philosophy, ed. Yehuda Elkana, 51-74 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1974); "From Social into Intellectual Factors: An Aspect of the Unitary Character of Late Medieval Learning." in The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, ed. John E. Murdoch and Edith C. Sylla, 271-348 (Boston, 1975); "The Development of a Critical Temper: New Approaches and Modes of Analysis in Fourteenth-Century Philosophy, Science, and Theology," in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Siegfried Wenzel, Proceedings of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Summer 1975, 51-79 (Chapel Hill, 1978); "The
INTRODUCTION
13
early modern world. Even more important, this same Scholasticism, with the assumptions and norms encapsulated in its "science," fed directly into the "science" of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, in the sense that along the path from medieval science to Galileo and Newton there was no ideological rift comparable to the emergence of scholastic thinking in the face of the intellectual tradition it displaced. Change, even dramatic change, occurred in the transition from medieval to modern, but science in the seventeenth century was like science in the thirteenth in a way that thirteenth-century science was not like educated speculation in the West before the twelfth century. Equipped with this broadest account of change and continuity, one can at last revisit the traditional questions of schools of thought and intellectual reorientation in the high Middle Ages with an eye to integrating them into a single investigative scheme compatible with the full sweep of contemporary historiography. First, the issue of schools of thought. Ever since Ehrle suggested there were intellectual schools in the high Middle Ages it has been common to define them by doctrine, which is to say that each school has been tied to a set of specific teachings — determinate responses to a number of major problems of philosophy, natural science or theology — that are then taken as characteristic of the work of each member of the school. In fact much of the historical debate about high-medieval schools has been devoted to establishing exactly which doctrines accompanied what schools, with great effort expended on generating canonic lists to serve as a litmus test for classifying scholastics according to their affiliation.23 The notion of a progressive intellectual metamorphosis throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries spanning the scholarly landscape and affecting thinkers across the board makes it hard to imagine how the vision of doctrinal continuity within schools could possibly be correct. On the one hand, the continual rethinking intellectual reorientation would necessarily entail must seriously have undermined Analytic Character of Late Medieval Learning: Natural Philosophy without Nature," in Approaches to Nature in the Middle Ages, ed. Lawrence D. Roberts, 171—213 (Binghamton, N.Y., 1982); and "The Involvement of Logic in Late Medieval Natural Philosophy," in Studies in Medieval Natural Philosophy, ed. Stefano Caroti, 3-28 (Florence, 1989). 23 Veuthey's article, "Les divers courants," is a classic example, offering on pp. 630-32 an influential and frequently cited listing of the identifying doctrines of the intellectual current to be treated in this book: Augustinianism.
14
INTRODUCTION
doctrinal coherence within any single school. On the other, if the realignment truly covered the map, one would expect to find similar innovations emerging in different currents of thought at nearly the same time. Discrete sets of doctrine would thus have been quite difficult to maintain, with any short-term opposition among groups continually eroding under the powerful assimilative forces of change. Both these factors reduce the search for canonic doctrinal lists to a hunt for the will-o'-the-wisp. Indeed, this is exactly what critics of the notion of high-medieval schools of thought have wanted to suggest. Van Steenberghen found it hopeless to try to distinguish scholastics according to philosophical allegiance before the closing decades of the thirteenth century, while scholars of the late Middle Ages have extended their scepticism to the century as a whole.24 A hard look at the evidence backs them up. While it is possible to identify moments of doctrinal convergence among specific thinkers for short periods of time, no list of doctrines can preserve its integrity long enough to define a school of thought. There is nevertheless no reason to jettison the notion of schools altogether. Scholastics themselves had a sense of oppositional continuity that belies the confusing pattern a history of doctrines alone reveals. John Pecham, the sometimes intemperate archbishop of Canterbury in the 1280s, spoke for more than himself when he claimed to see an ideological conflict in his time between scholastics of two different camps. What is more, his characterization of his own side in the struggle as conservative and true to an Augustinian core was not altogether wide of the mark.25 Beneath the distracting 24 See above, nn. 11 and 12. Courtenay's "Was There an Ockhamist School?" is especially helpful here by clarifying the ways "schools of thought" can be understood. He identifies four approaches, the first two of which (pp. 266-69) attempt in different ways to establish a canonical list of doctrines to be associated with each school, a tack he concludes, at least so far as Ockhamism and Nominalism are concerned, is bound to fail. 25 See Pecham's letter of 1285 to the Bishop of Lincoln, where he talked about the two camps and their ideological character (edited in John Pecham, Registrum epistolarum, ed. C. Trice Martin, III: 896-902 [London, 1885]; and Franz Ehrle, 'John Peckham tiber den Kampf des Augustinismus und Aristotelismus in der zweiten Halfte des 13. Jahrhunderts," ^eitschrift fur katholische Theologie 13 [1889]: 183-86), and the even more poignant statement in his letter of the same year distributed to certain cardinals: "Haec idcirco vobis scribimus, sancte pater . . . ut sacrosancta Romana ecclesia attendere dignaretur, quod cum doctrina duorum ordinum in omnibus dubitabilibus sibi pene penitus hodie adversetur; cumque doctrina alterius eorundem abiectis et ex parte vilipensis sanctorum sententiis, philosophicis dogmatibus quasi totaliter innitatur . . . quantum inde futuris temporibus poterit eccle-
INTRODUCTION
15
surface of doctrinal change and innovation ran undercurrents of allegiance among thinkers that gave rise to views like Pecham's and provided the substance for real intellectual schools. The key to recognizing them is abandoning the doctrinal definition in favor of a characterization having more to do with dynamics of debate. What held scholastics of a single allegiance together, making them members of a school of thought defined along non-doctrinal lines, was the tendency to resort to a distinct set of metaphors and analytical models. Related to this was a shared disposition to evoke both an intellectual attitude and a resonance of meaning behind the literal text, something a common fund of models and metaphors would be likely to do and for which it would stand as tangible sign. By "disposition to evoke a resonance of meaning" is meant here simply the conscious or unconscious tendency to imply specific ideological commitments — for instance, to theological or religious priorities by means of a philosophical exposition only indirectly related to them. By "disposition to evoke an intellectual attitude," the less immediately evident, but to contemporary listeners and readers equally discernible, proclivity to suggest affiliations with identifiable groups of scholars, especially those who had gone before, merely by using language and images in ways reminiscent of their work. The latter can be described as just the politics of language, for that is what language does in a charged political atmosphere — and charged the political atmosphere of the thirteenth-century university most assuredly was. Indeed both dispositions stem from the ideological and political power of words, the potential for summoning up unspoken or only implicit ideas as well as for reminding the reader of lines of consanguinity among past and present thinkers.26
siae periculum imminere. Quid enim magis necessarium . . . quam vilipensis authenticis doctoribus Augustino et caeteris, foedum venire principem et veritatem succumbere falsitati?" (in Martin, ed., 871-72; Ehrle, 181). 2<> The third and fourth of the four ways Courtenay identifies for approaching the problem of schools of thought in "Was There an Ockhamist School?" (see above, n. 24) correspond roughly in methodological orientation to what is intended here by the appeal to two dispositions to evoke unstated associations. The difference is that while Courtenay lays emphasis on looking for external evidence, explicit labelling either by potential members of a school or their contemporaries (see his article, pp. 269-70), here the focus is placed on generating internal evidence by examining inferred commitments and ideological implications in the scholarly works produced by potential school members. The latter approach need not limit itself to comparing only contemporaries.
16
INTRODUCTION
When thirteenth-century intellectual history is viewed through the lens of this non-doctrinal conception of allegiance, schools reappear. The theme of continuity, even of continuous currents of opposition, is thus able to reassert itself above a background of profound secular change. Threads of partisanship may not have been as tightly woven as those opting for a doctrinal definition of schools have presumed, but they were more than sufficient to have influenced the texture of intellectual debate over the course of decades. And they are traceable even in the philosophical jumble Van Steenberghen identified for the century's first fifty years. Continuity and change, if correctly understood, are thus not incompatible and the possibility of locating schools of thought not ruled out by accepting the reality of decisive intellectual transformation. Yet a non-doctrinal approach to schools of thought, a notion of synchronic diversity accommodated to the idea of profound diachronic change, reflects back on the perception of that change itself. Ineluctably one returns therefore to the second traditional theme of investigation: the study of intellectual reorientation in the high Middle Ages. Quite simply, appreciating the outwardly rhetorical character of high-medieval schools encourages re-examination of the process of modulation. Thomas Kuhn's ideas about revolutionary shifts in intellectual structures have come under such criticism, at least in the form in which he initially put them forth, that it is hard to believe any more that radical paradigmatic change occurs in the dramatic fashion the word "revolution" implies.27 But Kuhn's call for sensitivity to the structural nature of ideological transformation still rings true. Most significant here is his warning against thinking of intellectual development as a tidy process. Change of the sort Kuhn had in mind, and that would have been involved in the transition of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries described above, would have been profoundly unsettling to the ideological equilibrium of even its most fervent promoters. It would have generated seismic waves disrupting areas of thought as well as behavior only casually related to the novel paradigm itself, in this case areas like religion and morality that the 27 For a taste of the debate over Kuhn's ideas, see Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, ed., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge, 1970); Gary Gutting, ed., Paradigms and Revolutions. Appraisals and Applications of Thomas Kuhn's Philosophy of Science (Notre Dame, 1980); and Ian Hacking, ed., Scientific Revolutions (Oxford, 1981).
INTRODUCTION
17
paradigm had not been designed to address.28 For the attempt at intellectual change to succeed, all these secondary disturbances would have to be quieted and the new ideas assigned their place in the more spacious architecture of patterns of understanding and modes of thought and behavior making up culture as a whole. In the long run, paradigmatic intellectual change would have to be accompanied by a process of accommodation over a much wider cultural terrain than solely the area of discourse in which the primary change occurred.29 It was argued above that the change to a new view of knowledge and nature was supported by all intellectuals in the thirteenth century, and that the model of apodictic science triumphed in all circles of the university and all faculties, from arts to theology. In other words, this particular paradigmatic change was broadly cultural, at least for the class of intellectuals, and substantively unaffected by currents of intellectual opposition. To this extent, schools of thought were irrelevant to the mechanics of change. Yet it has just been affirmed that currents of opposition continued throughout the period as schools of thought defined by ideological disposition and politics. The rise of a scientific ideal of intellection, by placing a premium upon systematic clarity and coherence, even worked to sharpen school lines, as Van Steenberghen discovered for the later thirteenth century.30 And these schools, perhaps because of their doctrinal
2K See especially Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 77, 188-200, and 225-28; and his comments in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1970), pp. 152-53. 2>> Much of the most recent literature on the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century has concentrated on this more broadly social aspect of intellectual change. Among those who have most insisted on how new scientific ideas must be accommodated to a broader cultural world, see Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England. A Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law, and Literature (Princeton, 1983); Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1986); Margaret C.Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689~1720 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1976); and The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution (New York, 1988); Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius. The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought (Cambridge, 1991); Julian Martin, Francis Bacon, the State, and the Reform of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 1992); and perhaps most famously of all, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985). The classic statement of the case is Robert K. Merton's Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England (Bruges, 1938). 30 It is important to draw attention to recent and powerful efforts to consider more social origins for the diversity of schools in the late thirteenth century.
18
INTRODUCTION
porousness and flexibility, succeeded in playing an instrumental role in the intellectual transformation itself. They did so not so much by contributing to the generation of the new paradigm as by facilitating its accommodation. Different schools reacted differently in the way they made room for the new ideal and connected it to the host of tangential patterns of thought and behavior defining them as schools. It was by virtue of the fact that diverse ideological currents could accommodate the new ideas in divergent ways that an element of elasticity was introduced into a process of wrenching change which might otherwise have been intolerably brittle. Ironically, therefore, the history of schools of thought might be the best place to look for indications of how a profound and universal intellectual metamorphosis took place. This book sets out to explain the rise of an ideal of apodictic science in the thirteenth century, more precisely to show how it was possible for this rise to occur, by looking at a single intellectual current. The current is what is called the Augustinian School, the one prompting the debate about medieval schools of thought back in the nineteenth century. In a sense, all scholastics were Augustinians, since all recognized the authority of Augustine's thought and all quoted him liberally and drew upon his language and ideas when elaborating their own views.31 But "Augustinian School" means here what it usually does in the scholarly literature on the high Middle Ages, essentially what Ehrle meant when he divided Augustinians from Aristotelians. By this construction, the Augustinian School consists of those scholastics who consciously took it upon themselves to defend the heritage of Augustine against what they saw as Aristotelian inroads. Groundbreaking here have been the proposals of Alain de Libera concerning the rise of intellectual professionalism in the thirteenth century, as for example in Penser au moyen age (Paris, 1991), pp. 10-13 and 22-23. Interesting, and related, ideas have also begun to be laid out by Georg Wieland, "Der Mendikantenstreit und die Grenzen von Theologie und Philosophic," in Philosophy and Learning, ed. Hoenen et al., 22-23, on how the controversy over the mendicants effectively raised the stakes of debate in the thirteenth-century universities, thereby promoting a kind of theological professionalism which directly led to the division into self-proclaimed schools of thought. 31 Goulven Madec, "La notion d'augustinisme philosophique," in Jean Duns Scot et ses auteurs (Paris, 1988), pp. 153-54, comments intelligently on the difficulty of applying the term "Augustinianism" to any particular philosophical current of the Middle Ages. By Van Steenberghen's way of seeing things (La philosophie au XIII' siecle, pp. 187-88), the Augustinian commonalities of thirteenth-century thinkers attached to their "theology" as opposed to their "philosophy."
INTRODUCTION
19
Because of their reactive posture, such thinkers are commonly labeled conservative at least in philosophy - and it is interesting to note that they were especially prominent in the Franciscan Order, conspicuously rare among Dominicans.32 John Pecham's comments about the strength of the ideological attachment to Augustine among his fellow Franciscan intellectuals represents an uncommonly poignant recognition of this state of affairs in the Middle Ages itself.33 For years historians have urged us to believe that what was most Augustinian about the Augustinian School was its theory of knowledge. Not everyone has agreed, to be sure, but the argument has won a sort of pragmatic endorsement through the emphasis on epistemology in studies on Augustinian thought.34 At the very least it would appear that issues of epistemology, and perhaps noetics as well, ranked high among the concerns of thirteenth-century Augustinians, whether or not they should be viewed as more central than any other area of speculation. It must be remembered, of course, that a prominent aspect of Augustine's own epistemology was his idea of divine illumination.33 Arising out of the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato's views on the cognitive role of ideal forms, this 32
Among the classic studies of Franciscan Augustinianism, in addition to the Veuthey article cited above, n. 7, see Franz Ehrle, "Das Studium der Handschriften der mittelalteriichen Scholastik mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Schule des hi. Bonaventura," ^eitschrift fiir katholische Theologie 1 (1883): 1-51; Berard Vogt, "Der Ursprung und die Entwicklung der Franziskanerschule," FS 9 (1922): 137-57 (trans, as "The Origin and Development of the Franciscan School," FrS 3 [1925]: 5—23); Etienne Gilson, "La philosophic franciscaine," in Saint Francois d'Assise, 148-75 (Paris, 1927); Dorothea E. Sharp, Franciscan Philosophy at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1930); Ephrem Longpre, "Le courant franciscain d'Alexandre de Hales a Duns Scot," Revue des Questions Historiques 3rd. ser., 18 (1930): 387-95; and Giulio Bonafede, // pensiero francescano nel secolo XIII (Palermo, 1952). Not everyone has agreed that the Franciscans were particularly Augustinian. Philotheus Boehner, "The Spirit of Franciscan Philosophy," FrS 2 (1942): 217-37, maintained that there is no reason to label Franciscans any more Augustinian than Aristotelian. 33 See above, n. 25. 34 The most significant early work arguing for the central importance of epistemology in characterizing the Augustinian School was Gilson's "Pourquoi saint Thomas a critique saint Augustin" (see above, n. 4), and Gilson's view was quickly attacked by De Wulf, "L'augustinisme 'avicennisant'" (see above, n. 6). A noteworthy anticipation of Gilson's perspective can be found in Martin Grabmann, Der gottliche Grand menschlwher Wahrheitserkenntnis nach Augustinus und Thomas von Aquin (Miinster, 1924). It is worth reading Van Steenberghen's account of the controversy over Gilson's assertion in La philosophic au XIIF siecle, pp. 466 69. For all his debt to De Wulf, Van Steenberghen agrees on this issue with Gilson. 3) Grabmann, Der gottliche Grund, p. 14, drew attention to the special place the notion of divine illumination had in Augustine's thought.
20
INTRODUCTION
idea actually consisted of a cluster of theories about the way human intellect comes to the most perfect products of its natural operations, all incorporating the notion of an intervention by God, typically but not always - as light of truth. Not surprisingly, divine illumination as an epistemic phenomenon figures prominently in the philosophical and theological works of thirteenth-century Augustinians. A fundamental tenet of this book is that medieval schools of thought cannot be defined by doctrine, and also that there was a dramatic change in the way intellectuals thought about cognition over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It would be ironic if the idea of divine illumination escaped these strictures and was held by Augustinians, as an unvarying doctrine at the core of their epistemology, from beginning to end. In fact, such was not the case. Not only was "divine illumination" as a weapon in the philosophical armory of thirteenth-century Augustinians more protean than a single doctrine in any true sense of the word; even the constituent theories making it up had a variable history among Augustinian thinkers. Notions of divine light as guarantor of human knowledge of truth promoted by Augustinians in the early and middle decades of the century were unambiguously rejected toward century's end.36 It is the fact of this rejection that makes the Augustinians so rewarding a case study for how new attitudes towards nature and knowledge, particularly science, were accommodated in the thirteenth century. If high-medieval Augustinians can be characterized, as has been suggested, as philosophically conservative, their special attachment to the Neoplatonic cluster of theories associated with divine illumination was one of the most conservative things about them. Such theories fit nicely with earlier, more meditative and interpretative attitudes about cognition, where the requisite revelation might seem like an almost routine part of what it was to know. Yet by their very conservatism, their special compatibility with old ways of thinking, the same views were particularly susceptible to the disruptive shocks of intellectual change. It was only natural that Scholasticism's new attitudes, its demand for concrete evidence and emphasis on explicit reasons, would be hard to satisfy with appeals to an imperceptible illumination from on high.3' The resultant challenge to illu3b Again Grabmann was a prominent early voice pointing this out - see Der gottliche Grund, pp. 41-43. 37 Once more, Gilson made the classic statement of this point - in his case, in
INTRODUCTION
21
minationist sympathies was one of the most prominent of the threats the new paradigm would make to the ideological map intellectuals had inherited from the precedent mental world. Here is where the multivalence of the term "divine illumination" came into play - the fact that it covered a cluster of theories, not all of which were applied to precisely the same philosophical purpose and thus not all of which were equally vulnerable to the threat from apodictic science. Of the various purposes, two singled out by Gilson in the 1930s as marking a fundamental cleavage among views of illumination were critical.38 Paradigmatically since the time of Augustine illuminationist theories had been deployed to explain howintellect knows truth and is certain that it is truth it knows. This normative epistemic function - a question of judgment, in Gilson's words - is what the image of a light of intellection is most suited to perform. Yet another key aspect of "divine illumination" by the thirteenth century was its capacity to account for the emergence in intellect of ideas. This more purely noetic function - a matter of concept formation for Gilson, or ideogenesis according to Efrem Bettoni — served to explain how mind comes to know a whole range of objects. In the hands of medieval thinkers it was often turned to answering the question of how human intellect knows God. If God's light streamed down on mind in order to produce ideas, then the cognitive process itself involved contact with the divinity and presumably generated evidence for what it was like.39 This would have been grounds, moreover, for a particularly full knowledge of God, given the directness of the contact such an operation implied.
terms of the threat posed by Aristotelianism - see his "Sur quelques difficultes de 1'illumination augustinienne," RNS 36 (1934): 321-31 - and again Grabmann anticipated him in Der gottliche Grund, p. 33. Jan Pinborg, "Diskussionen um die Wissenschaftstheorie an der Artistenfakultat," in Die Auseinandersetzungen an der Pariser Universitat im XIII. Jahrhundert, ed. Albert Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 10 (Berlin, 1976), p. 243, has put the idea in terms more in harmony with the theme of this book, noting how the notion of science that arose in the thirteenth-century university made masters in arts increasingly resistent to epistemological theories of illumination. 38 See Gilson's "Sur quelques difficultes," pp. 322-23. The distinction was picked up and used effectively by Efrem Bettoni in "La dottrina bonaventuriana dell'illuminazione intellettuale," RFN 36 (1944): 140-41. 39 Efrem Bettoni, S. Bonaventura da Bagnoregio. Gli aspetti filosofici del suo pensiero (Milan, 1973), p. 201, offers an especially compelling description of the connection between the theory of illumination and the Augustinian vision of knowledge of God.
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INTRODUCTION
There is every reason to believe that for thirteenth-century Augustinians the second function of illuminationist views was more highly cherished than the first. Because it argued for direct, or nearly direct, cognitive access to the divinity under normal conditions of intellection, it stood as eloquent testimony to an extraordinary intimacy between God and mind, even in the world of sin. Confirmation of such intimacy was particularly important for the Augustinians, more valuable than any specific philosophical creed taken for itself, since upon mind's intimacy with God depended a host of traditional religious inclinations and devotional practices. Through this second function, therefore, and the attendant confirmation of intimacy, the notion of divine illumination was tied to the religious identity of a whole group of intellectuals.40 The complex of ideas and associations involved could be summed up in what was almost a philosophical mantra for Augustinians, the description of the soul as created in God's image, traditionally taken to indicate that mind was directed to God as to its object and intellective light. It was also frequently associated with one of Augustine's favorite psalms: "Lord, thou hast lifted up the light of thy countenance upon us."41 It would have been unthinkable for Augustinians to relinquish the vision of the intimacy of God to mind associated with illuminationism's noetic side. It is likewise evident from the historical fate of the notion of divine light as guarantor of knowledge of truth that the more epistemological applications of illumination theory were not equally indispensable.42 Coincidentally, they were also more vulnerable to the corrosive effect of Scholasticism's intellectual novelties. If the dilemma of Augustinians was that new attitudes towards knowledge and science - attitudes exercising as much power over them as over other scholastics in thirteenth-century universities - rendered increasingly problematic their traditional philosophical attachment to "divine illumination," then perhaps the solution was to find a way 40 Van Steenberghen, La philosophie au XIIF siecle, p. 469, draws attention to the importance of the notion of illumination among Augustinians just because of what it implied about the interior life and mind's relation to God. 41 Psalm 4, 7: "Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine." Ludwig Hodl, "Die Zeichen-Gegenwart Gottes und das Gott-Ebenbild-Sein des Menschen in des hi. Bonaventura 'Itinerarium mentis in Deum' c. 1-3," in Der Begnff der Repmesentatio im Mittelalter, ed. Albert Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 8 (Berlin, 1971), p. 98, makes clear the connection between Augustinian views on illumination, the idea of image, the notion of God's intimacy to mind, and this psalm. 42 Refer again to n. 36, above.
INTRODUCTION
23
to sever the connection between plainly untenable elements of that cluster of theories, most especially the literal image of a lighting up of mind serving the paradigmatic normative function, and other less volatile ingredients more relevant to the question of divine intimacy, including Augustinian ideas about the wayfarer's knowledge of God. In short, the easiest way out might be to break up the cluster, jettison aspects which could not be defended, and save those less inimical to the new attitudes which had a long history of identification with other fundamental commitments of a traditional ideological milieu. This is precisely the path the Augustinians took, and the story of their journey along it is therefore the story of their accommodation to the new scientific ideal. The following chapters will tell this story. At issue will be all the theoretical focal points where the question of the nature of science and the multivalent notion of "divine illumination" converged: the matter of the character of scientific knowledge and the criteria for speculative certitude, the nature of mind's object and the noetics by which that object is seized, the explanation for immutability of scientific truth, and the account of how God can be known by intellect working in the world. To follow the trail from beginning to end requires examining the thought of eleven masters of theology at Paris and Oxford from the early 1200s to the beginning of the next century. They are William of Auvergne, Robert Grosseteste, Gilbert of Tournai, Bonaventure, John Pecham, Matthew of Aquasparta, Henry of Ghent, Vital du Four, Richard of Conington, William of Ware and John Duns Scotus. Their careers span four stages in the process whereby Augustinians accommodated the new scientific attitudes. The first two stages describe a trajectory leading to the adoption of a self-conscious Augustinian stance, and along the way to the systematization of an authentic doctrine of divine illumination according with emerging scholastic expectations for scientific discourse. The second two spring from the realization of inconsistencies in the novel cognitive synthesis and advance progressively towards a resolution in which the separate components are sorted out, some abandoned and others reformulated in greater harmony with the new standards for thought, all to the end of preserving a sense of common heritage. Three of the scholastics stand out effectively as beacons along the way: Bonaventure as inspiration for the systematic rendering of "divine illumination," Henry of Ghent as barometer of the crisis and signpost for the wTay out, and Duns Scotus as architect of the final resolution.
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INTRODUCTION
Because the cleavage between the first two stages and the second tw7o cuts so deeply into the dynamics of development and change, it will be taken as formal basis for dividing this study in two. Volume 1 lays out the first half of the story, comprising stages one and two. In play here are the initial endeavors to confront Augustinian ideas of cognitive illumination from a philosophical perspective imbued with the formal canons of Aristotle's model of science. The volume starts at stage one Part 1 below — involving the efforts from the 1220s to the 1240s by Robert Grosseteste and William of Auvergne to clarify the expectations for scientific cognition, identify the elements of a theory of knowledge and mind likely to meet these requirements and consider the implications for traditional assumptions about intellect's access to God. At this point, the Augustinianism of the enterprise is more latent than apparent, and the very parameters of doctrinal coherence and rigorous analysis just beginning to be explored. At the second stage the lines of the conventional image of a school of thought become manifest for the first time. This is the subject of Part 2, which registers the undertaking inspired by Bonaventure and Gilbert of Tournai in the 1250s and brought to fruition in the 1260s and 1270s by John Pecham and Matthew of Aquasparta, whereby out of epistemological and noetic fragments culled from their predecessors' thought is constructed a unitary doctrine of divine illumination promoted under a conspicuously Augustinian banner. In this study their achievement will be referred to as the classic Augustinian line, and indeed it is their views that are most readily connected to the notion of divine illumination commonly presented in historical studies, theirs the names most regularly associated with an Augustinian School. Volume 2 turns to the fortunes of this suddenly self-aware Augustinianism through the rest of the thirteenth and the very beginnings of the fourteenth century. For the doctrinal unity so carefully constructed by Bonaventure and his followers was exceptionally fragile, as evanescent as the hopes of some alarmist masters of theology at Paris in the 1270s to halt the forces of theoretical innovation and change. The narrative thus resumes in Part 3 not with the probing and sifting characteristic of the century's early decades, first attempts systematically to engage the legacy of ancient and Arabic thought, nor with the confident, undeviating systematizing of the doctrine makers of the first thirty years after 1250, but rather with the disintegrative re-examining of critical evaluation. This, the third stage,
INTRODUCTION
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belongs to Henry of Ghent, echoed periodically by Vital du Four and Richard of Conington, who grasped the contradictions between Augustinian illumination and Aristotelian ideal of science and struggled from mid-1270s to early 1290s to craft a nuanced theory of knowledge and mind adequate to the demands of both powerful limiting forces and more resilient than the simple synthesis his classic predecessors had conceived. But what Henry imagined was not his to achieve, and already in the 1290s, up through the first decade of the fourteenth century, his intellectual heirs were at work recasting his ideas. Part 4 concerns this fourth and final stage, in which William of Ware and John Duns Scotus cap the century-long processus with a vision of knowledge and mind's access to God less transparently Augustinian than that of Bonaventure, Pecham and Aquasparta but still comparable to it in its determination to remain true to fundamental Augustinian concerns, perhaps even superior in its synthetic unity and power to survive the vicissitudes of scholastic debate over the next two centuries. Behind the legendary subtlety of this last fruit of thirteenth-century Franciscan speculation, the Augustinian fire continued to burn. In the end, of course, the complete tale reveals that, for all the twists and turns of their doctrinal odyssey, and despite the ideological trauma of a paradigm shift towards a naturalizing, rationalist, and self-consciously scientific ideal of intellection and debate, the eleven thinkers examined in this book maintained a bond marking them as members of a coherent intellectual current. The bond consisted in their common allegiance to a core of images and models associated with "divine illumination," which in turn manifested their agreement that God is directly and intimately accessible to human mind. By deploying this thematic cluster and displaying this consensus, the eleven scholastics suggested to their readers a historical affinity tying them together, identifiable beneath the sometimes chaotic surface turbulence of significant changes in intellectual direction. Such lines of convergence, the upshot of a virtual conspiracy to echo one another across the divides of doctrinal diversity, constitute the reality of an Augustinian School in the thirteenth century. The philosophical evolution by which Augustinians managed to sustain their solidarity for all those years explains how the idea of science developed and was accepted in the high medieval world.
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PART ONE
BIRTHPANGS OF A PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION 1210-1245 ROBERT GROSSETESTE AND WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE
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INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE
Despite the association of thirteenth-century Augustinianism with the Franciscan order, an inquiry into the epistemology of the Augustinian School must begin with two masters who started their career before any of the mendicants made their appearance at Oxford or Paris and who remained to the end among the secular clergy. Both were in their own day celebrated scholars and churchmen. William of Auvergne died in 1249 as bishop of Paris, thus nominal supervisor of the great French university, and Robert Grosseteste in 1253 as bishop of Lincoln, within whose diocese lay the schools at Oxford. Already in the thirteenth century these two masters were conceded a special place in the history of Augustinianism. Roger Bacon, himself a Franciscan and often regarded as quintessentially Augustinian, invoked their name in the 1260s in defense of one of his most cherished, and most Augustinian, doctrines.1 Alarmed by an emerging consensus that Aristotle's agent intellect was an intrinsic power of human mind, Bacon insisted that God alone was intellective agent for humanity, from which all knowledge poured into the receptive possible intellect, unique inherent cognitive power of the soul.2 Those who disagreed he accused of abandoning the teaching of the great lights of the previous generation, among whom he singled out only three: bishops William and Robert and the Franciscan friar and
1 Martin Grabmann, in his groundbreaking Der gottliche Grund menschlicher Wahrheitserkenntnis, pp. 30-31, included Bacon among a small group of especially pure Augustinians he labeled as promoters of an "Augustinian Platonism." 2 According to Dominique Salman, "Note sur la premiere influence d'Averroes," RNS 40 (1937): 210, only in the 1240s did the idea of two inherent powers of intellect, agent and possible, began to take hold among Parisian masters, most notably Albert the Great. More recently, Rene A. Gauthier has shown that in fact this notion of agent and possible intellects prevailed in the Faculty of Arts at Paris as early as 1225, where it was seen as Averroes's alternative to Avicenna's insistence on a separate agent. Gauthier adds that in the 1250s theologians such as Albert the Great began interpreting Averroes as positing a separate agent, as well as possible, intellect, a position however that they, like the artists of earlier years, repudiated. See Gauthier, "Le traite De anima et de potenciis eius d'un maitre es arts (vers 1225)," RSPT 66 (1982): 17-19; "Notes sur les debuts (1225-1240) du premier 'averroisme,'" RSPT 66 (1982): 335; and "Notes sur Siger de Brabant," RSPT 67 (1983): 227-32.
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confidant of Grosseteste, Adam Marsh. He even claimed twice to have heard bishop William defend the cause at Paris before the convened masters of the entire university.3 Modern scholars have frequently echoed Bacon on this score. Though not all concede William and Robert shared Bacon's views about agent intellect, most have accepted the implication that both stood at the fountainhead of a conservative, Augustinian current of thought.4 Much has been made in this regard of the two seculars' role in the establishment of the Franciscan curriculum at Oxford and Paris. Grosseteste was the Franciscans' first lecturer at Oxford, taking up that task in either 1229 or 1230, shortly after the Gray Friars arrived at the university, and he was subsequently revered by English Franciscans as virtually a spiritual and intellectual father.3 Though William never had so official a magisterial role among Franciscans at Paris, a case can be made that he was similarly, if not so uniquely, influential in the beginnings of Franciscan scholarship there.6 If, as indications in Grosseteste's episcopal correspondence to William suggest and recent evidence locating a Robert
3 See Bacon, Opus mains II, 5 (ed. John H. Bridges, Suppl. vol., 47 [London, 1900]); and Opus tertium, c. 23 (in Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. John S. Brewer, I, 74-75 [London, 1859]). * For William see the succinct statements of Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy, p. 258; and Fernand Van Steenberghen, La philosophic au XIII' siecle, p. 185. A similar estimate is found in Matthias Baumgarmer, Die Erkenntnislehre des Wilhelm von Auvergne, Beitrage, 2, 1 (Miinster, 1893), pp. 97-98, although Baumgartner carefully circumscribed the places where William's thought could be called Augustinian. This general estimate of William goes back to Barthelemy Haureau, Histoire de la philosophic scolastique (Paris, 1880), II1, 157-58 and 169-70, who characterized William as an extreme realist, one of the most conservative scholastics of the thirteenth century. On Grosseteste see Ludwig Baur, Die Philosophic des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln, Beitrage 18, 4-6 (Miinster, 1917), p. 201; and more peculiarly. Alistair C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 15 and 57; as well as Gilson, History, pp. 261-62 (where he draws a parallel between William and Grosseteste); and Lawrence E. Lynch, "The Doctrine of Divine Ideas and Illumination in Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln," MS 3 (1941): 173. 5 See among others Johannes Beumer, "Robert Grosseteste von Lincoln der angebliche Begriinder der Franziskanerschule," FS 57 (1975): 183-95. It is no accident that Dorothea E. Sharp began her work, Franciscan Philosophy at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century, with an examination of Grosseteste. Nor were the English the only Franciscans to regard Grosseteste with interest and respect. See the evidence presented by Francois-Marie Henquinet, "Un recueil de questions annote par S. Bonaventure," AFH 25 (1932): 553-55. 6 At Paris pride of place for early influence on the Franciscans must go to Alexander of Hales. Yet there are indications William was closely associated with the Franciscans and doctrinally important for them. See Ephrem Longpre, "Guillaume
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Grosseteste in Paris in the early 1220s and before may confirm, the two were friends from the first decades of their maturity, these practical and ideological convergences were far from coincidental.7 Still, the connection between William and Robert and thirteenthcentury Augustinianism is not free of ambiguity. Their writings also bear witness to undeniably Aristotelian leanings, and a number of recent scholars has stressed the importance of both in introducing Aristotle, particularly the Aristotle of the Analytics and the works of natural philosophy, into the mainstream of the scholastic curriculum.8 Some have concluded that they were as much a source for
d'Auvergne et I'Ecole Franciscaine de Paris," La France Franciscaine 5 (1922): 426-29. One piece of evidence is Bonaventure's testimony that he heard William officially determine a question in the Franciscan school at Paris, perhaps in Alexander's classroom. See Bonaventure, Commentarium in Ilium librum Sententiarum, d. 40, a. un., q. 3 (in Opera omnia III, 895b-96a [Quaracchi, 1887]). One should also not forget that it was while William was bishop of Paris that the University, in 1236, allowed Alexander to carry his magisterial chair over into the Franciscan studium, thus conceding the Friars Minor a toehold in the official academic hierarchy against the protestations of the secular masters. On the latter event, begin with the comments of Jacques Guy Bougerol on pp. 9-10 of the introduction to his editon of John of La Rochelle's Summa de anima, cited below, introduction to Part 2, n. 4. 7 Josiah Cox Russell, "Some Notes Upon the Career of Robert Grosseteste," Harvard Theological Review 48 (1955): 205-6, called attention to the epistolary indications of a longstanding friendship between bishops Robert and William. In his revisionary Robert Grosseteste. The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1986; 2nd ed. 1992), especially pp. 49-83 and 143, Richard Southern threw cold water on this idea with the argument that, contrary to commonly accepted reconstructions of Grosseteste's scholarly career, the bishop of Lincoln was a true English provincial, never having studied or taught outside his native land, certainly not in Paris. But old views die hard. Joseph Goering, "When and Where Did Grosseteste Study Theology?" in Robert Grosseteste. New Perspectives on his Thought and Scholarship, ed. James McEvoy, Instrumenta Patristica, 27 (Turnhout, 1995), pp. 35-42, returns to the striking signs of friendship between William and Robert and lays out a persuasive case that the latter was personally involved with individuals and events in the school of theology at Paris in the 1220s. And there is new and startling evidence, presented by N.M. Schulman, "Husband, Father, Bishop? Grosseteste in Paris," Speculum 72 (1997): 330-46, to suggest not only that Grosseteste spent considerable time in Paris before returning to England around 1225 but also that he had a wife and children, owned property there and was on cordial terms with notyet bishop William of Auvergne. Like Goering, Schulman (p. 337) reviews the matter of Grosseteste's correspondence with William, revealing still further the degree to which it apparently bespeaks a special relationship between the two. It ought to be made clear that the present author's earlier reference to the possible friendship between the two bishops, to which Schulman refers on p. 337, n. 40, relied on the evidence already pointed out by Russell. 8 For William, see Gabriel Jiissen, "Wilhelm von Auvergne und die Entwicklung der Philosophic im Ubergang zur Hochscholastik," in Thomas von Aquin im philosophischen Gesprach, ed. Wolfgang Kluxen (Freiburg/Munich, 1975), pp. 189 and 191;
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INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE
the current of more genuinely Aristotelianizing scholastics like Thomas Aquinas as for the stream of thought associated with the Augustinian School.9 It will not do, therefore, to see William and Robert as simply the intellectual founders of high-medieval Augustinianism. Coming at an early stage in the encounter between Neoplatonizing and Aristotelianizing elements in academic discourse, their Augustinianism was neither so self-conscious nor so pure as in the better-known versions of the 1260s and 1270s. It constituted less a coherent ideological core than a philosophical treasury upon which subsequent, more classic Augustinian scholars drew but that coexisted with elements tributary to strictly Aristotelian currents as well. To understand their influence, one must sort out their ideas with an eye to a disparate heritage later in the century. Determining William's and Robert's place in this history of science and the Augustinian School thus demands taking a critical look at the whole range of issues in their thought dealing with scientific cognition and illumination, breaking the latter notion down into its functional parts in order to examine each on its own. One cannot assume that the parts fit well together or even that William or Robert aspired to combine them into a coherent whole. Above all, one must avoid projecting the well-developed and meticulously rationalized illuminationism of later Augustinians back onto their work. And one must recognize that a classical locus of Augustinianism could sometimes serve them as occasion to develop ideas commonly associated with ensuing, more militantly Aristotelian schools. Helmut Borok, Der Tugendbegriff des Wilhelm von Auvergne (1180-1249). Eine moralhistorische Untersuchung zur ideengeschichtlichen Reception der aristotelischen Ethik (Diisseldorf, 1979), pp. 23-24; Jan Rohls, Wilhelm von Auvergne und der mittelalterliche Aristotelismus. Gottesbegriff und aristotelische Philosophie zwischen Augustin und Thomas von Aquin (Munich, 1980), pp. 42-43 and passim; and Steven P. Marrone, William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste. New Ideas of Truth in the Early Thirteenth Century (Princeton, 1983), pp. 28-31. For Grosseteste, see again Marrone, New Ideas, esp. pp. 140-42; curiously again Crombie, Robert Grosseteste, 53-54, 74, and passim; and for all his emphasis on Grosseteste's Neoplatonism, James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 1982), pp. 326-34 and 337-38. 9 Here most explicitly Ernest A. Moody, "William of Auvergne and his Treatise De anima," in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Science, and Logic (Berkeley, 1975), pp. 105-6; and Gabriel Jiissen in the excellent "Wilhelm von Auvergne und die Transformation der scholastischen Philosophie im 13. Jahrhundert," in Philosophie im Mittelalter, ed. Jan P. Beckmann et al. (Hamburg, 1987), esp. pp. 161-64; but also Stephan Schindele, Beitrdge zur Metaphysik des Wilhelm von Auvergne (Munich, 1900), p. 9; and Aime Forest, "Guillaume d'Auvergne, critique d'Aristote," in Etudes medie-
INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE
33
To make the requisite division of illuminationist theory into parts, it is convenient to return to Gilson's ideas about the philosophical purposes a notion of divine cognitive light might serve.10 Building on his foundation, one can distinguish four general functions, each at least inchoately present in the work of William and Robert and each the basis for a different component of the general notion of divine illumination. The first function has to do with the question of judgment. It speaks to the normative role of the divinity as light of truth, laying bare the criteria by which mind can separate truth from falsehood and thus providing the epistemic basis for certitude. Since the days of Augustine this was the defining element of cognitive illumination from God. Second comes a more ambiguous cluster of doctrines, all having to do with Gilson's ideogenic function - the question of concepts and how divine light might insert them into mind. Although the focus shifts here from epistemology to noetics, in fact more than just the genesis of ideas is at stake. One might say this second aspect of divine illumination concerns questions about how intellect gathers its knowledge of things, especially those of highest order of reality, and how such knowledge formally relates to the cognitive object. Historically, it would seem, these problems were handled together. According to Gilson, they were of little interest to Augustine himself. Third is the specific issue of explaining immutable truth or, precisely put, the phenomenon of immutably true propositions. Focusing on a narrower field than either of the previous two functions, it corresponds to a less fundamental component of the general notion of vales qffertes a Augustin Fliche (Vendome, 1953), p. 79. Bernard Landry, "L'originalite de Guillaume d'Auvergne," Revue d'Histoire de la Philosophic 3 (1929): 441; and Richard Heinzmann, "Wilhelm von Auvergne," in Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirche, 2nd ed. (Freiburg i. Br., 1965), X, 1127, while seeing William as primarily an old-fashioned Neoplatonic Augustinian, admit that he often fell under the influence of Aristotle. In an interesting argument functionally quite like Moody's although on its face radically divergent, Karl Werner, Wilhelms von Auvergne Verhdltniss zu den Platonikern des XII. Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 1873), p. 54, claimed that William was neither Platonizer nor Aristotelian but the protagonist of a kind of intellectual interlude between the traditions of the twelfth century and the Aristotelianism of the later thirteenth, an interlude Werner thought served ultimately to promote the transmission from old to new. Amato Masnovo's Da Guglielmo d'Auvergne a s. Tommaso d'Aquino, 3 vols., 2nd ed. (Milan, 1945-46), represents an extended variation on Werner's theme. It is worth noting that Werner himself, in Die Psychologie des Wilhelm von Auvergne (Vienna, 1873), p. 1. conceded that William could not completely escape the influence of his opponent, Aristotle. 10 See above, general introduction, n. 38.
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INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE
illumination and is, in many ways, simply corollary to the first, more epistemological consideration of warrant for certitude. But since applying illuminationist doctrines to resolve this particular problem amplifies metaphysical questions readily passed over in a broad treatment of the other two functional areas, it makes sense to consider the matter as a distinct facet of illuminationist theory. In all three of these functional areas one discerns in William and Robert ideological seeds that would grow into the mature Augustinianism of mid-century. But in none of them did divine illumination furnish the exclusive theoretical apparatus for either scholar's resolution of the philosophical problem involved. In some instances, in fact, the place of illumination in the full accounting for the issue was minimal. Equally important, nowhere was the conception of illumination discrete enough, or compatible enough with the description of divine light's action according to its other two functions, to permit all three to be brought together under the rubric of a general theory of illumination. Which leads to the fourth functional theme, not specifically attached to divine illumination in either its epistemological or noetic guise in Robert's or William's works but where ideas were elaborated that would be crucial for the consolidated illuminationism of later thinkers. For the moment, this final area can be referred to as the matter of the mind's road to God, beginning with the way intellect turns to God as cognitive object in the life of sin. It would ultimately link up with the ideogenic processes of the second, largely noetic functional theme. Significant about it is that it encouraged the introduction of a cognitive dynamic within the complex of illuminationist theories that would eventually bear the burden of confirming God's intimacy to mind and so be salvaged when other aspects of illuminationism were jettisoned late in the thirteenth century. Understanding William's or Robert's position on each of these philosophical issues means looking for their emergence at any point in their wrritings. This in turn requires sifting through a range of compositions of divergent genre, beginning at the earliest as far back as the 1210s and going up at least to the mid-1240s. For Grosseteste, it will be necessary to start with a number of short works once thought to have been composed late in his career but now generally dated much earlier, probably sometime in the second decade of the thirteenth century: his De veritate, De veritate propositionis and De
INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE
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scientia Dei.11 Although Richard Southern has recently re-championed a later date for De veritate, his arguments depend on a complicated revaluation of the whole course of Grosseteste's career that, for all its ingenuity, is not in the end convincing.12 In this study, the early date for De veritate will be accepted.13 Second comes the commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics.14 Although this work was once thought to be among Grosseteste's first scholarly compositions, it is now most commonly accepted as, in its 11 On dating these works, see Marrone, Mew Ideas, pp. 139-40, especially n. 5. They appear in the volume edited by Ludwig Baur, Die philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln, Beitrage, 9 (Miinster, 1912), henceforth cited as Phil. Werke. 12 Southern, Robert Grosseteste. The Growth of an English Mind, p. 113. For two other opinions conceding the value of some of Southern's skepticism concerning the previously accepted account of Grosseteste's early career but noting the implausibility of parts of his own reconstruction (especially on the matter of the chancellorship), see M.B. Hackett, "The University as Corporate Body," in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 1, The Early Oxford Schools, ed. J.I. Catto, pp. 45-47 (Oxford, 1984); and J.I. Catto, "Theology and Theologians 1220-1320," in Early Oxford Schools, ed. Catto, pp. 480-81. These two articles refer principally to Southern's piece in the same volume, pp. 1-36: "From Schools to University." Probing appraisals of Southern's book can be found in James McEvoy's review in Bulletin de Theologie Ancienne et Medievale 14 (1987): 353-58; Bruce S. Eastwood's review in Speculum 63 (1988): 233-37; and Michael Haren's "Epilogue" to Medieval Thought. The Western Intellectual Tradition from Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century, 2nd ed. (Toronto, 1992), pp. 227-35. Southern has responded, especially to Eastwood, with "Intellectual Development and Local Environment: The Case of Robert Grosseteste," in Essays in Honor of Edward B. King, ed. Robert G. Benson and Eric W. Naylor, 1-22 (Sewanee, Tenn., 1991); and "A Last Review" in the 2nd edition of his Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 1992), pp. xvii-lxvi. On this matter, see also above, n. 7, with particular attention to Goering's remarks on Grosseteste's chancellorship, in "When and Where," pp. 47-50. 13 In his previous work, New Ideas of Truth, the present author included among the early works the Quaestiones theologicae published by Daniel Callus in "The summa theologiae of Robert Grosseteste," in Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke (Oxford, 1948), pp. 180-208. Southern's warning, in Robert Grosseteste, pp. 29-30, against taking their presence in a manuscript among other works of Grosseteste as evidence for his authorship is sufficiently cautionary to exclude them from this study. This may represent excessive circumspection, however, for it must be conceded to Callus, who held these fragments to be authentic, that the ideas of the Quaestiones are fully compatible with what we know from Grosseteste's uncontested works. Southern has misconstrued the language in De scientia Dei that he sets against similar terminology in the Quaestiones (see Robert Grosseteste, p. 30, n. 6); indeed the parallel passages he offers as arguing against Grosseteste's authorship of the Quaestiones present a striking instance of similarity between the two works. Moreover, Goering, "When and Where," pp. 24-25, adds additional reasons for taking the Quaestiones as likely to be from Grosseteste's pen. 14 The text of the Commentary used in the present study is the critical edition by
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INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE
present form, a work of his maturity, completed before he became bishop and before he learned Greek but after most of his works on natural philosophy. James McEvoy's dating to after 1224-25 and before 1230, most likely around 1228, is most plausible at present.15 Finally there are the works from Grosseteste's last decades, after he was fully immersed in theological and pastoral concerns, after he had been made bishop and after he had learned Greek. These are his commentaries on the four works of Pseudo-Dionysius and two very late sermons, all of them imbued with the mysticism of the Dionysian treatises and concerned with human vision of and perfection in God.16 The commentaries on Pseudo-Dionysius date from 1238-43; the sermons probably from between 1242 and 1244.17 As for William of Auvergne, he must be approached through his magnum opus, the Magisterium divinale ac sapientiale, most especially the final two treatises comprising this work, De universo and De animal
Pietro Rossi, Commentarius in Posteriorum analyticorum libros (Florence, 1981). Citations to this edition will henceforth be made to Comm. Post. an. 11 See McEvoy on the date of compositon of this work in "The Chronology of Robert Grosseteste's Writings on Nature and Natural Philosophy," Speculum 58 (1983): 636-43. See also Marrone, in New Ideas, pp. 140-41, esp. nn. 10 and 11. Again Southern (in Robert Grosseteste, pp. 131-33) has challenged so late a date but moves its composition forward only slightly, to 1220-25. Since Southern's argument depends on his whole vision, or revision, of Grosseteste's career, the separate parts of which must be either taken together or rejected in toto, the present author opts for the latter course and accepts McEvoy's date. 16 The commentaries used in this study are on The Celestial Hierarchy, The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology. Appropriate citations will be given when they are first referred to below. The two sermons are "Ex rerum initiarum" edited by Servus Gieben in "Robert Grosseteste on Preaching," CF 37 (1967): 120-41; and "Ecclesia sancta celebrat" edited by James McEvoy in "Robert Grosseteste's Theory of Human Nature," RTAM 47 (1980): 169-87. 1 ' On the date of the Dionysian commentaries, see Daniel A. Callus, "The Date of Grosseteste's Translations and Commentaries on Pseudo-Dionysius and the Nicomachean Ethics," RTAM 14 (1947), 186-210. On the two sermons, see McEvoy, "Theory of Human Nature," p. 140. 18 References to these treatises from William's Magisterium will be to the 1674 edition of the Opera omnia, 2 vols.-the second containing a supplement (OrleansParis, 1674; repr. Frankfurt a. M., 1963). Henceforth, this edition will be cited as Mag. div. Guglielmo Corti, "Le sette parti del Magisterium divinale ac sapientiale di Guglielmo di Auvergne," in Studi e ricerche di scienze religiose (Rome, 1968), pp. 304-6, has argued that William's original conception of the Magisterium did not include De anima and that he never decided how this later work fit in. For William's idea of what the Magisterium was about, see Roland J. Teske, "William of Auvergne on Philosophy as divinalis and sapientialis," in Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter, eds. Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer, 475-81, Akten des X. Internationalen Kongresses fur mittelalterlichen Philosophie, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 26 (Berlin, 1998).
INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE
37
Although William was working on the Magisterium throughout the 1220s and may well have drawn on ideas, even notes, from the earliest years of his teaching for all its parts, it would appear that De universo and De anima were composed or put into present form after 1230. It is even possible that final touches were not added to De universo until about 1240, pushing De animals completion to the early 1240s.19 One can therefore assume that William's ideas were developed throughout the period for which there are relevant writings from Grosseteste's pen and set down in publishable form in the years preceding and up through the latter's commentaries on PseudoDionysius. Given the ambiguities of dating, it is perhaps best to think of William's work as broadly contemporaneous with the productions of Grosseteste's maturity.
1!l
A dating of De anima and De universo to 1231-36 was proposed by Josef Kramp, "Des Wilhelm von Auvergne 'Magisterium divinale,'" Gregorianum 1 (1920): 538-84; and 2 (1921): 42-78, 174-87. Amato Masnovo, Da Guglielmo d'Auvergne, I, 38; and "Guglielmo d'Auvergne," RFN 19 (1927): 132, held that although the final redaction of both treatises may have come after 1231, it was likely they represented William's opinion as teacher before 1228. Moody, in "William of Auvergne," pp. 9-11, generally accepted Kramp's dating but noted that one could be certain only that De universo from I, II, 7 on postdated 1231 and suggested that part of the work might even have been completed closer to 1240. Most recently, Rene A. Gauthier, "Notes sur les debuts," pp. 356 and 360—62, has argued that De universo was begun ca. 1230, finished ca. 1240, and De anima written sometime around 1240, immediately after the completion of De universo. As for another piece of the Magisterium cited occasionally here - De Trinitate - it is normally dated to around 1223. See the edition by Switalski, p. 5.
CHAPTER ONE
CERTITUDE OF KNOWLEDGE
For Augustine the most salient characteristic of divine illumination was its epistemic and normative function: it provided mind with certitude in knowledge of truth. Indeed his primary evidence for higher intervention into human cognitive processes was the fact that despite diversity of experience and unreliability of sensation human beings agreed about a number of unassailable verities. The doctrine of divine illumination was, simply put, Augustine's Christianizing variation on Platonic reminiscence.1 When this epistemic function of illumination was applied to knowledge of complex utterances, it meant simply that propositional knowledge had to be evaluated in light of an illumination from God. Thus, as Aristotle's logic worked its way into the scholastic curriculum, there were many who felt that his worldly explanation of knowledge of truth - for Aristotle exclusively an attribute of complex cognition - had to be supplemented by appreciation of the normative role of God's light. This in itself would have assured divine illumination a significant philosophical presence, and the idea of illumination as normative in complex cognition was in fact a prominent feature of the doctrine in the thirteenth century. But for medieval Augustinians the notion of divine illumination — even the part of the notion having to do solely with its function as guarantor of certitude frequently involved much more. Working from foundations already present in Augustine, many Latin scholars insisted that divine illumination as normative applied as much to simple cognition as to complex. For Aristotle truth had nothing to do with simple ideas precisely because in his cognitive system intellective judgment, upon which an assertion of truthfulness depended, was possible only after simple elements of cognition had been combined.2 1 See, for instance, Augustine, Retractationum libri II I, 4 (ed. Almut Mutzenbecher, CC, 57 [Turnhout, 1984], p. 15). 2 See Marrone, New Ideas of Truth, p. 39, especially the references in n. 1 to Aristotle's De interpretatione I, 1, and De anima III, 6. A third key passage not mentioned there is Metaphysics VI, 4 (1027bl8-27).
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In contrast, the Augustinian view that God contained the exemplars for creation, which exemplars were themselves normative for human cognition, opened a window for judgment at all levels of knowledge. The clearest, and classic, medieval statement of truth viewed this way is found in Anselm's De veritate. Anselm said that truth was quite simply a Tightness (rectitudo). Since God was creator of all, all things could be said rightly to be insofar as they were faithful to the idea, or exemplary ideal, God had of them. Applied to created essences, therefore, the word "truth" denoted the state of a thing as it conformed to its divine exemplar, so that human knowledge registering the correspondence between essence and divine idea was knowledge of a thing as true.3 From this perspective knowledge of noncomplex objects plainly made room for judgment — an estimation of how well object imitated exemplar according to which it was fashioned — upon which judgment rested the claim to truth. Given Augustinian assumptions about processes of mind, this suggested that even in simple cognition intellect had need of an irradiation from God. Anchored firmly in Anselm's influential exposition, the notion that the question of cognitive certitude, and thus divine illumination, applied as much to simple as to complex cognition was so common among thirteenth-century Augustinians that scholars frequently think of it as ubiquitous. Indeed the model of divine illumination as applied to cognition of essences is often seen, and surely was often regarded by medievals, as paradigmatic for the normative function of divine light in human understanding. It is curious therefore that when one looks to the works of Robert Grosseteste and William of Auvergne one finds few instances where divine illumination is interpreted this way, indeed where questions of cognitive certitude or judgment are included at all among the problems of simple cognition. William left no place for judgment of truth before prepositional knowledge, so for him there was simply no question of a normative or certifying function of divine illumination at the level of simple ideas.4 It is only with Grosseteste that this elemental aspect of divine illumination is
3 Anselm, De veritate, 1 and 13 (ed. Francis S. Schmitt, Opera omnia, I [Edinburgh, 1946], pp. 185-86 and 198). + See Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 39-51. In De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 794bE-95aB), William listed six ways to take the word "truth," corresponding generally to the definitions found in Grosseteste's De veritate, except for the significant omission of truth as comparison of simple object to exemplar or as rectitude.
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given a role in epistemology, and explicitly in just a single work, De veritate.3 Even there Grosseteste conceded that the word "truth" was most commonly used with reference to complex cognition, where it could be described, in words adapted from Aristotle, as the condition holding whenever what was signified was as it had been described.6 Thus truth was, following a definition already established in the schools by Grosseteste's day, the adequation of word and reality (adaequatio sermonis et rei}.1 Yet though this definition most properly applied to complex knowledge, it could be extended to conditions of simple cognition, too, to refer to the truth of noncomplex objects in the world. In this way truth could be said to be, in a phrase highlighting Grosseteste's reliance on a correspondence theory of truth, the conformity of thing to the word by which it was described in the divine mind — that is, to the eternal reason of that thing. This was no less than what Anselm had maintained before, and it could be restated in more explicitly Anselmian terms as the Tightness or rectitude of each thing insofar as it corresponded to God's idea.8 Defined as an attribute of real objects in the world, truth entered into human cognition insofar as it was known. If one could apprehend the rectitude of a real object, one would thereby know that object as true — or, know the truth of that object. This is what it would mean to have certitude at the level of simple intellection. 5 It is not common to divide De veritate from the rest of Grosseteste's work, but there is good reason to do so when trying to understand the history of the doctrine of divine illumination. Even James McEvoy, a persuasive defender of the unity of Grossetete's philosophy, could find just one passage in the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics applying to normal human cognition the model of divine illumination given in De veritate, and that passage is not unambiguous in this regard. See McEvoy, Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste, pp. 339-40 and 346-47; and the corresponding sections in "La connaissance intellectuelle selon Robert Grosseteste," Revue Philosophique de Louvain 75 (1977): 31 and 39. The passage, Comm. Post. an. I, 19 (pp. 279-80, 11. 29-67), is analyzed as ambiguous in Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 197-99. McEvoy omitted mention of an even richer discussion along similar lines in Comm. Post. an. I, 17 (pp. 240-41, 11. 39-47). 6 De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 134): ". . . veritas . . . est. . . ita esse in re signata, sicut dicit sermo." Grosseteste explicitly attributed this definition to Aristotle, most likely Metaphysics IV, 7 (1011b25-27). 7 De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 134); and also De veritate propositianis (Phil. Werke, p. 144). The definition, often erroneously attributed to Isaac Israeli, came from Avicenna, Metaphysics or Liber de philosophia prima I, 8 (see the edition by Simone Van Riet, Avicenna Latinus [Leuven, 1977], I, 55-56). On its history, see Marrone, New Ideas, p. 81, n. 11. 8 De veritate (Phil. Werke, pp. 134-35, 137 and 139), and above, n. 3.
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Knowing such truth would, moreover, entail having access to God, for if truth were a correspondence between thing and divine idea then it could be attained only by a mind that had somehow come to see the idea and judged that the thing was like it. This is what threw Grosseteste back on the language of Augustine and divine illumination. As he said, "created truth could not be seen except in the light of the highest Truth" - the light of God.9 For Grosseteste in De veritate, therefore, judgment, certitude and knowledge of truth found a place in simple cognition, and a theory of divine illumination was necessary to explain how mind attained to them. But as had often been the case with like-minded thinkers going back to Augustine, Grosseteste's exposition of the theory was caught in a contradiction. Simply put, it suffered from failure to lay out the mechanism of the normative role of divine illumination in consistent terms. Grosseteste offered two accounts in De veritate of God's action leading mind to truth, and it would appear that he could not decide whether to bind his description of illumination in simple cognition precisely to one or the other. He certainly never made it clear how the two accounts fit together, or even whether they were compatible. Grosseteste's initial description of the normative aspect of divine illumination w7as relatively plain. If truth was the conformity of thing to rule in the divine mind, human intellect could perceive truth only if it saw not just the thing in itself but also the rule, an eternal reason (ratio aeterna] or divine idea. Nothing less would permit a judgment that the thing conformed to the word by which it was created and thus was true.10 Yet there was danger in so explicit a formulation, and it lay in the implication that mind needed actually to gaze on the divine idea — which meant, for orthodox Christians, seeing God himself — in order to know simple truth. There is, as James McEvoy has argued, no reason to believe Grosseteste would ever have accepted such radical ontologism, but neither did he show in De veritate exactly how to read his first formulation of divine illumination without interpreting it along ontologistic lines.11 Instead he
9 De veritate (Phil. IVerke, p. 137): ". . . creata veritas non nisi in lumine veritatis summae conspicitur." 10 De veritate (Phil. IVerke, p. 137); see the quotation below, Pt. 1, ch. 2, n. 3. 11 See McEvoy, Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste, pp. 324-26; and below, Pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 60-61.
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turned immediately to a second description, one equally well grounded in Augustinian tradition but not explicitly entailing direct vision of God and inherently more suited to an ideogenic than a normative role. In this second description, which unlike the first incorporated the image of illumination in literal form, divine light shone on created object, thereby empowering it to reveal to intellect its truth.12 Again McEvoy has given a lucid argument for how Grosseteste must have had in mind something analogous to his own theory of corporeal vision, wherein sensory light shone on a colored body and activated it to generate the visible species making possible perception of the body by the eye. In the case of cognition, God's super-sensory light would thus make the object actively intelligible so that it could be grasped by mind.13 By way of advantage over the first description, this second account avoided the ontologist implication that in knowing truth mind saw God. Just as someone perceiving a colored body in sunlight need not see the sun itself, so a mind knowing the simple truth need not see God or even realize God's light was an element in its intellectual vision.14 But this benefit was purchased at a price. The new description obscured, even obliterated, the formal logical structure — the comparison between thing and standard underpinning the judgment of truth. If the terms of this description were literally correct, then perhaps the normative function of illumination was illusory, or at least incapable of being accounted for in concrete terms. There is no indication in De veritate that Grosseteste recognized the contradiction in his exposition. There is not even a sign he thought of his two descriptions as significantly different, much less incompatible, or that he saw that they properly served fundamentally diverse philosophical roles. He was after all expounding an idea with a long tradition in Western thought and in which inconsisten12 De veritate (Phil. Werke, pp. 137-38). Grosseteste actually said that "created truth" revealed the "true thing" in light of divine truth (see p. 137, 11. 23 and 28-30). It is hard to imagine what this might mean if "created truth" is taken to be the conformity between thing and idea, the way Grosseteste had defined it (see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 148-50). Here I have simply changed the wording in a way I do not think does violence to Grosseteste's general point but is more consistent with the rest of De veritate. 13 See McEvoy, Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste, pp. 321-22. I cannot find the passage in Grosseteste's Hexaemeron to which McEvoy refers on p. 321, n. 4. 14 De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 138).
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cies and contradictions had been embedded from the start. Yet it is telling that Grosseteste never returned to this unhappy combination of formulas in his other works. Whether or not De veritate represents an early stage of thought consciously abandoned later on, on a theoretical plane it is unique among Grosseteste's writings. In tone and substance, it practically demands to be dealt with apart. In Grosseteste's other compositions and in the writings of William of Auvergne, the handling of certitude and truth is different. Of course, only for Grosseteste did the issue of knowledge of truth arise with regard to simple cognition, but even here the absence of Augustinian illumination is striking. There is admittedly just one passage in Grosseteste's later works where he defined truth of a simple object, yet that definition contrasts significantly with any examined so far. Almost in passing Grosseteste noted in his Commentary on the Postenor Analytics that truth was illud quod est.13 Although he did not alert his reader, the definition was taken from Augustine, who in his Soliloquia gave the phrase "id quod est" as one meaning among many for the word "truth."16 Augustine's phrase had been quoted once in De veritate as an equivalent for "truth," where it was absorbed fully into the illuminationist perspective of the early work.17 In the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, it took on instead the Aristotelian coloration of the text being commented on. To see how, one must keep in mind the way truth, judgment and certitude went together. Certitude was the recognition of knowledge of truth, the way truth was manifested consciously - perhaps critically - in knowledge.18 For Grosseteste of the Commentary it came to intellect, at least so far as simple cognition was concerned, with the definition of an object, definitions being what pointed mind towards mental objects in a way inducing confidence in its comprehension of them.19 Such a position is not surprising in a work not only commenting on Aristotle but also advocating a largely Aristotelian notion of science, since definition was for Aristotle the very foundation of 15
Comm. Post. an. I, 2 (p. 99, 11. 16-18). Soliloqma II, 5, 8 (PL, 32, 889). '' See De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 141); and the discussion in Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 155-56. 18 In Hexaemeron, Pro., n. 73 (ed. Richard C. Dales and Servus Gieben, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 6 [London, 1982], p. 36), Grosseteste contrasted the certitude of truth (veritatis certitudo] with opinion. 19 Comm. Post. an. II, 4 (p. 379, 11. 324-25): ". . . per diffinitionem acquiritur in nobis certa visio substantie rei." 1(1
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scientific knowledge. But in this case it is important to be clear about exactly what Grosseteste thought the definition referred to. If certitude was the subjective manifestation of knowledge of truth, and definition allowed mind to grasp its object with certitude, then that to which definition pointed must be precisely the truth of simple cognition, the illud quod est of Grosseteste's passing recollection of Augustine. The Commentary on the Posterior Analytics leaves no doubt that this simple object definition referred to was quiddity - essential nature of the thing. It was, Grosseteste said in words consciously echoing Aristotle, that about an object making it what it was (quid est).20 Other words for the same thing were "essence" or, in a technical phrase literally reproducing Aristotle's Greek, quod quid est.21 This is exactly what a good Aristotelian would say. But if quiddity was the object of definition, and thus the truth mind grasped in simple cognition, then Grosseteste would have to distance himself from the notion of truth as comparison or rectitude advanced in De veritate. The absence in the Commentary of any mention of the earlier description of truth would indicate that this is precisely what he had done. At the same time, his shift towards the essentialism of Aristotelian science brought him closer to the views of William of Auvergne, who had never accepted the idea that simple cognition involved comparison and continually identified mind's noncomplex object with the essence, sometimes the very substance, of what was known.22 Yet Grosseteste, even in the Commentary, differed from Aristotle, and from William, too, by keeping a role for the language of certitude in his account of simple knowledge.23 And if certitude had a place, then there ought to be in simple cognition some evaluative process by which mind established confidence in what it knew. Since evaluation or certification was what Augustinian illumination had been principally designed to explain, might it not be reasonable to suppose that the new terms in which Grosseteste now described truth
20
Comm. Post. an. II, 4 (p. 379, 11. 326-27): ". . . diffinitio [est] oratio que indicat quid est esse. . . ." See also Comm. Post. an. II, 2 (p. 307, 11. 83-84). 21 For essence, see Comm. Post. an. II, 2 (p. 305, 11. 43-44); for quod quid est, Comm. Post. an. II, 2 (p. 344, 11. 849-52). 22 See Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 40-41. 23 See above, n. 19, as well as what follows the passage quoted in n. 20 (Comm. Post. an. II, 4 (p. 379, 11. 327-28): ". . . quod autem [diffinitio] indicat est generans certam visionem. . . ."
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did not in the final analysis represent a weakening of his support for divine intervention in simple knowledge? Most modern readers of Grosseteste have assumed that it did not. A close analysis of the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics reveals how weak is the argument upon which such an assumption is founded. The weight of evidence leans instead in the opposite direction. This is clearest if one turns to the third of the interlocking factors mentioned above: judgment. In Anselm's, and Grosseteste's early, description of knowing truth, the evaluative act undergirding certitude in simple cognition was a judgment that object or essence corresponded to divine ideal. Indeed the very image of a judgment following a comparison furnished the only unambiguous explication of divine illumination's normative role. If Grosseteste in his Commentary no longer made room for judgment in apprehension of simple truth, and a fortiori in the attainment of certitude at the simple level, this would be a considerable deviation from Augustine and a nod in the direction of Aristotle, as well as William. The discussion of definition and essence given above and the examination below of the conditions Grosseteste stipulated for cognitive reference make it clear that in his later works — commentaries on either Aristotle or Pseudo-Dionysius — all mention of judgment disappeared. Even in those extraordinary instances of cognition explicitly allowing for apprehension of the divine exemplar, as in mystical rapture or the knowledge of angels, there is no longer a word about comparing anything with the exemplar or using it to rectify something known before. From such intellectual heights down to the most mundane of situations the later Grosseteste described knowledge of simple truth as lucid apprehension of a noncomplex, non-relative object. Knowledge of truth was acquired, he now insisted, when intellect seized its simple object in the "purity of its essence," which meant coming to know essence after meticulously stripping away the material conditions obscuring the nature of the thing itself.24 There would seem therefore to be little question but that Grosseteste had abandoned his earlier normative description of divine illumination. Comparison of res and exemplar as a means to knowledge of simple truth did not fit his new and Aristotelianized epistemology. 24 Comm. Post. an. II, 6 (pp. 406-7, 11. 82~84): "Apprehendentes verum solurn sunt sicut scientia et intellectus, quia apprehendunt res in puritate essentie sue non cum admixtione conditionum materialium."
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Since there had always been the awkward question of ontologism raised by any literal application of the comparison paradigm, perhaps Grosseteste was happy to let the idea go. Still, if judgment based on comparison to divine ideal had no place in his later understanding of knowledge of truth, there remains Grosseteste's second description of divine illumination from De veritate, more dependent on the image of light itself. Although this description was vague about how God's action served a normative role, its very imprecision suggests that it might have been retained to indicate some safely non-ontologist way that divinity was implicated in a certifying evaluation of simple knowledge even without comparative judgment outright. In his later works, most especially the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, Grosseteste frequently made use of the image of light to speak about certitude in simple cognition. Again, most scholars take this to mean that he continued to advocate a version of divine illumination. Once more, however, the evidence for such an interpretation is sparse and relatively weak, especially in comparison with evidence to the contrary. Grosseteste was adamant about preserving a role for the language of vision, with all it implied about the function of light, in discussion of cognitive certitude on the level of simple cognition as well as any other. Indeed his definition of certitude was founded on explicit analogy to the workings of the eyes: "Things are said to be certain according to the relation they have to knowledge - that is, to mental vision."20 On this basis he then described simple intellection so as to identify a cognitive factor corresponding to each factor in visible sight. Where in sensation there were visible corporeal objects and the bodily eye, so in simple intellection there were intelligible objects and the eye of the mind. And where in sensation there was the light of the sun shining on objects and making vision possible, so in intellection there was a spiritual light which 25 Comm. Post. an. I, 17 (p. 240, 11. 38-39): "Res autem dicuntur certe a comparatione quarn habent ad cognitionem sive ad visum mentalem." The similarity between this definition of certainty and the definition of truth as adequation to mind indicates the connection between truth and certitude in Grosseteste's mind and that of other Augustinians. Later in the century, Henry of Ghent would define truth in terms almost identical to Grosseteste's definition here of certitude. See Henry's Summa (Quaestiones ordinariae), a. 34, q. 5 (ed. Raymond Macken, Henrici Opera, 27 [Leuven, 1991], p. 228, 11. 53-54): ". . . omnes perfectae definitiones et rectae veri aut veritatis dantur ex ordine aliquo sive comparatione ad intellectum. . . ."
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made the process work.26 Even more than before, in the Commentary it was the action of intelligible light that explained the whole schema of certitude, a schema Grosseteste now wanted to integrate into his vision of Aristotle's science.27 Yet exactly what kind of intelligible light did Grosseteste have in mind? Modern scholarship has simply assumed it was the light of God. The structural parallel between the cognitive process described in the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics and that outlined, although more sketchily, in De veritate has effectively barred any other interpretation. Yet careful examination suggests that Grosseteste had changed his entire approach. There are only two passages in the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics to suggest that the light of intellect Grosseteste was referring to in his description of normal processes of mind was God's light of truth, and even these two are ambiguous in this regard.28 The two paint essentially the same picture of intellect's dependence on intelligible light; it is the picture described above as drawn by analogy to sensory vision. In Grosseteste's words: I say again that there is mental sight apprehending intelligibles, and there are things visible to this sight, which we call intelligible and knowable objects, and there is light flooding over this sight and the object to produce the act of vision, just as light of the sun does in sensible vision.29 Bringing to mind Augustinian illumination and echoing the earlier language of De veritate, a passage like this surely invites the common interpretation. It is moreover unlikely that Grosseteste would have been so insensitive not to realize that his words would imply he was speaking about God as intelligible light. Yet this by itself does not prove that he was. Scattered throughout his later works - (> Comm. Post. an. I, 17 (pp. 240-41, 11. 39-42): "Dico ergo quod est lux spiritualis, que superfunditur rebus intelligibilibus et oculo mentis, que se habet ad oculum interiorem et ad res intelligibiles sicut se habet sol corporalis ad oculurn corporalem et ad res corporales visibiles." The image reappears in a parallel passage in Comm. Post. an. I, 19 (p. 279, 11. 29-32). 27 See Comm. Post. an. I, 17 (pp. 241, 11. 42-47; and 256, 11. 340-44). The first of these passages is analyzed below at nn. 30 and 31, and the second at n. 55. 28 See above, n. 5, and also n. 26. 29 Comm. Post. an. I, 19 (p. 279, 11. 29-32): "Et iterum dico quod est visus mentalis apprehensivus intelligibilium, et sunt res visibiles ab hoc visu quas dicimus intelligibiles et scibiles, et est lumen quod superfusum visui et visibili facit visionem in actu, sicut facit in visu exteriori lux solis."
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are numerous indications he thought of God as only one of human mind's lights of intellection, perhaps not even the most normal one at that. In a passage coming just after the first of the Commentary's two apparently "Augustinianizing" descriptions of mind's reliance on a spiritual illumination, Grosseteste made an effort to explain exactly what cognitive certitude consisted in.30 He noted that objects more receptive of intelligible light were more easily comprehended by mind, from which easier comprehension arose greater certainty. Then, in a parenthesis of much significance he added that mind itself was a spiritual light.31 In other words, the light of intellect was itself a candidate for the intelligible illumination he had just lines before compared to the rays of the sun. Other places imply that mind served as sole intelligible light in normal intellection. At the very beginning of the Commentary Grosseteste remarked that not all knowledge was acquired by teaching, knowledge of scientific principles being exempt. To clarify his point he added that by "teaching" he meant not just the process by which we learn from a master's lectures or a book but also that by which we consult a teacher within ourselves illuminating mind and revealing truth.32 Although his words recall Augustine on God as within each person teacher of mind, it is more than likely Grosseteste was not thinking about the divinity.33 After all, if God were the teacher he was referring to, this would mean that the most important sort of knowledge, that of principles, did not depend on God in the way a lesser sort did. On another occasion in the Commentary Grosseteste spoke similarly about the necessity for reason or argument (ratio) to convince mind of the truth of non-principal knowledge and the absence of such a need when it came to principles. Here he expli30
See Comm. Post. an. I, 17 (p. 241, 11. 42-47). The text immediately preceding is quoted above, n. 26, and referred to again, n. 28. 31 Comm. Post. an. I, 17 (p. 241, 11. 45-47): "Res itaque huius lucis magis receptibiles ab acie mentis, que similiter est irradiatio spiritualis, perfectius penetrantur, et hec penetratio perfectior est certitude maior." The emphasis is the author's, not Grosseteste's. In Comm. Post. an. I, 17 (p. 249, 11. 211-14) Grosseteste commented that what made an object more receptive to this light was its closeness to intellect, a closeness that could be glossed as proximity to the intelligible light itself. The implication was that intellect and intelligible light were the same. 3 ~ See Comm. Post. an. I, 1 (p. 94, 11. 32-36), esp. 11. 35-36: ". . . sed verus doctor est qui interius mentem illuminat et veritatem ostendit." 33 See Augustine, De magistro XI, 38; and XII, 40 (ed. Gunther Weigel, CSEL, 77, 1 [Vienna, 1961], pp. 47 and 48-49).
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citly stated that the mind's eye (aspectus mentis] was itself a reason (ratio) - in the sense of "rational power" - either producing the arguments for non-principal knowledge or assenting to a principle immediately without any discursive persuasion.34 Both the analogy between sight and intellection and the notion of an interior explainer or teacher reappear in this case without so much as a hint of the doctrine of divine illumination. If this is not enough, there is an even more remarkable passage from the end of the work where it is stated in no uncertain terms that the spiritual light, the light per se visible to mind and upon which knowledge of the principles of science depends, is none other than mind's own intellective power (virtus intellective^.33 By "spiritual light" Grosseteste clearly meant to refer back to the very same "light" spoken of in the two passages most likely to be taken as supportive of Augustinian illumination, but this time there is no way to read his language as making reference to an illumination from God. Which is not to say that Grosseteste never spoke of God's light as mind's intelligible illuminator in his later works. In the commentary on Dionysius's Divine Names, Grosseteste noted that the splendor of the eternal reasons of things in God's mind illuminated all knowledge (omnes cognitiones}, thus bringing it back to them as to its end and termination.36 Yet such general language could be accommodated to almost any theory of the relation between intellect and God advanced in the thirteenth century, and Grosseteste himself somewhat diminished its force by adding that what he was talking about happened only insofar as God allowed (ut est fas). Indeed sometimes when he was speaking about the light of God as mind's illuminator, his intention seems to have been to show that this light was lost to human intellect in the world of sin. According to the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, all higher light, including that of 34
Comm. Post. an. I, 8 (pp. 157-58, 11. 255-68). Comm. Post. an. II. 6 (pp. 407-8, 11. 104-7): ". . . eadem natura, que est virtus intellectiva, est idem secundum quod aliquid est principium primum et sine medio acceptum, quia, ut superius dictum est, lux spiritualis per se visibilis a mentis aspectu est huiusmodi natura." See discussion of this passage in Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 198-99. :% Commentary on De divinis nominibus, c. 1, sec. 7, n. 59 (in Francis Ruello, "La divinorum nominum reseratio selon Robert Grossetete et Albert le Grand," AHDLMA 25 [1959]: 156): "In mente enim divina preextiterunt ab eterno eterne rationes omnium creandorum . . . ex quarum fulgoribus omnes cognitiones illustrantur ad cognoscendum et, ut ipsis est fas, ad eas revocantur et terminantur . . . " ij
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angelic illumination, was unavailable in normal human intellection.37 In sum, even on those occasions where Grosseteste in his later works discussed certitude in simple intellection in terms of the action of light, it is probable that the noetic and epistemological significance of his words was radically different from that of the light-specific account of divine illumination given in De veritate. Only the resounding echo of Augustine's words make one reluctant to say divine illumination had dropped entirely out of the picture. At the very least, Grosseteste's focus had changed, and his interest in Aristotle overwhelmed his ability to maintain explicit place for the epistemological principles of Augustine's thought. What happens, then, when one turns to certitude interpreted along more properly Aristotelian lines — that is, certain knowledge of the truth of propositions? Both Robert and William admitted that by philosophical convention the problem of truth and knowledge of it - was most appropriately located here, at the level of complex cognition. The reason was that by any understanding, knowledge of truth at this level incorporated a process of mental judgment. If divine illumination were to have a place in their epistemology, one would expect it to be manifest at this point. Perhaps not surprisingly, both scholastics' discussion of complex knowledge made considerable room for the language of seeing and illumination. They agreed that intelligible light was the bearer of certitude in complex cognition, the very motor of knowledge of truth. As William said, mind (virtus intellective!) was no other than interior, spiritual sight, and the light of that sight, which accounted for spiritual visibility, was truth itself.38 "Truth it is," he added, "given which there is spiritual vision in all spiritual objects and without which there is none."39 The image is of course akin to that already seen applied to simple cognition in Grosseteste's Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, and Robert himself explicitly extended application of his 31 Comm. Post. an. I, 14 (p. 213, 11. 228-35). This passage will be examined more closely below, Pt. 1, ch. 2, nn. 19, 21 and 23. 38 De anima VII, 7 (Mag. din., II supp., 212b): "Amplius quid est virtus intellectiva nisi visus interior spiritualis ac nobilis: quia igitur solum verum est hujusmodi visui visibile, necesse est veritatem lucem esse hujusmodi visus." See also De retributionibus sanctorum (Mag. div., I, 319a): "Cognitio . . . scientialis ad intellectum pertinet, cujus suum proprium cognoscibile est lux intellectualis, idest veritas, sive verum. ..." 39 De anima VII, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 212b): "Veritas igitur est qua posita ponitur visibilitas spiritualis in omni spiritualiter visibili, et qua remota removetur."
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version of it to knowledge of propositions as well.40 Unlike William, he did not call the cognitive light "truth," but it served exactly the same function as in William's analysis, making intelligible objects visible to mind. This common reliance on the image of a light of cognition has established the presumption, as before with Grosseteste on simple cognition, that both William and Robert saw a major role for divine illumination in complex knowledge. Yet again the historian must look for surer indications of what these references to intelligible light were intended to mean. Are they signs of allegiance to an Augustinian scheme of divine illumination, or should they be read more loosely as descriptions of mundane processes of mind, much as has been argued for simple cognition in Grosseteste's Commentary? The evidence weighs heavily in favor of the latter interpretation. It has already been shown how for Grosseteste the light of intellection for normal human cognition was most probably the active power of intellect, and that alone. William's understanding strayed even farther from the bounds of the illuminationist camp. Although a few passages suggest that he, like his English contemporary, held there to be a kind of intelligible light emitted by mind, he generally avoided the strong analogy Grosseteste drew between action of the eye and that of intellect, with its consequent emphasis on an intellective irradiation.41 Instead William generally tailored his references to cognitive light to point simply to the light of truth, dissociated from any particular intellective power or source, whether God or human mind. In fact it would seem that neither thinker was much interested in specifying exactly what the intelligible light might be. Both employed the image of illumination not to lay out the precise epistemic or noetic conditions under which knowledge of propositional truth could be attained but instead to exhibit the intensities of cognitive certitude and show how they were ordered. Under these constraints the image of light worked as shorthand for a universal carrier of intelligibility, regardless of whether one took it to be divine light, mind or simply truth itself. It was thus the image's practical function in 40 The image is drawn out clearly in the passages cited above, nn. 26 and 29, the second of which explicitly extends the image to complex cognition - see Comm. Post. an. I, 19 (p. 279, 11. 38-40). In his epistemological application of the image of light, Grosseteste made little distinction between the cases of simple and complex cognition. 41 On this see below, Pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 68-69 and 70-71.
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a particular type of explanation rather than its metaphysical or noetic import that was crucial, for it succeeded in making particularly clear a view of the levels of certitude dependent, ironically, on Aristotle's schema for the sciences. There were two ways the image of a light of intelligibility did this. First, it revealed the relation between principles of knowledge and conclusions drawn from them, especially the causal link between the two and the differing certitude attainable for each. One of the two passages from the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics commonly cited to support an Augustinian interpretation shows how this is so. Immediately following the sketch of the analogy between sight and intellection quoted above, Grosseteste continued: And although this spiritual light is to the highest degree [possible that which is] visible first and in itself, as is the light of the sun to the bodily eye, nevertheless just as we say that a colored body, insofar as it is the first to receive the light of the sun, is visible first and in itself, so we say concerning intellectual vision that that which is first in itself to receive the spiritual light is visible first and in itself. . . . And if that which is visible in itself to the sight of mind is a complex object, then it is a principle of demonstration.42 In other words the principles of science could, at least in a derivative sense, be called first, per se intelligible objects of mind just because they were the complex objects upon which the light of intellection, first per se intelligible in the primary sense, fell first of all. The same understanding was also surely implicated in the image of intelligible light shining on complex objects of mind as found in the works of William: Thus just as only an illuminated body is visible to sensory vision, so only an illuminated spiritual object is visible to intellectual vision. . . . From this it is clear that the spiritual light is nothing more than truth itself, in which and by means of which this sort of spiritual illuminated object shines forth to our intellect.43
42
Comm. Post. an. I, 19 (p. 279, 11. 32-40), which follows immediately upon the passage quoted above, n. 29. The punctuation in the Rossi edition must be changed as indicated in the translation. 43 De anima VII, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 212b): "Quapropter quia solum lucidum corporale visui corporali visibile est, sic solum lucidum spirituale visui spirituali visibile est. . . . Ex quo etiam manifestum est, quod lux vel luciditas spiritualis, non est nisi ipsa veritas, in qua, et per quam esse hujusmodi spirituale lucidum lucet intellectui nostro sive virtuti intellectivae nostrae."
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Both scholastics drew upon this foundational image to transfer to principles so much of the quality of the intelligible light in which they were seen that they could themselves be called lights to the mind, illuminating it so that it could see truth.44 Behind all this lay, of course, the notion of science as presented at the outset of the Posterior Analytics. Both William and Robert accepted Aristotle's contention that science was certain knowledge of necessarily true propositions acquired by demonstration from even more certain knowledge of necessarily true principles, known immediately and not acquired from any prior complex cognition.45 Indeed at the very beginning of his Commentary, Grosseteste explicitly committed himself to this point of view. Science in the most proper sense was, he said, knowledge of immutable truth — that is, the conclusion of a demonstration — by means of knowledge of its immutable cause - that is, by resolution into the scientific principles for demonstrating it.46 Misinterpretation of this passage, taking "science in the most proper sense" to mean metaphysics or some sort of knowledge of divine things, has been central to the exaggeration of Augustinianism and illuminationism in Grosseteste.47 When it is realized how 44 Most clearly William, De anima VII, 5 (Mag. div., II supp., 21 Ob): Quapropter manifestum est quod principia scientiarum et doctrinarum, quae per semetipsa nota sunt, lumina sunt per seipsa lumine seu cognitione illuminantia eandem [virtutem itellectivam]"; but also from a treatise of his, De bono et malo (J. Reginald O'Donnell, "Tractatus Magistri Gulielmi Alvernensis De Bono et malo," MS 8 [1946], p. 282), where he spoke of "ipsa lux principiorum." Grosseteste's language, calling the principles lucida visibilia, was closer to the image of the passage quoted above n. 43. See Grosseteste, Comm. Post. an. I, 8 (p. 158, 11. 262~66): "Et sicut lucidum visibile ad hoc ut videatur non eget nisi visu exteriori cadente super ipsum, sic dignitas ad hoc ut sciatur non eget nisi ratione, que est aspectus mentis, simpliciter super ipsam cadente . . ." (The beginning of this sentence must be changed from the way it is presented in Rossi's edition.) It is instructive to note that William especially liked the image of principles as lights to the mind because it allowed him to make clear how they revealed themselves and their truth to mind "by themselves without the help of anything else." He saw this as a powerful argument against the need to posit an agent intellect, the evident truth of the principles on their own being the illuminating motor driving the mind to know them as certainly true. See De anima VII, 5 (Mag. div., II supp., 21 Ob). 45 On this see Marrone, New Ideas, p. 21. 46 Comm. Post. an. I, 2 (pp. 99^100, 11. 9-27). See the translation of this passage in Marrone, Mew Ideas, p. 224, and the discussion on pp. 225-30. William, too, accepted knowledge of principles as the foundation for scientific cognition, and he likewise referred his readers to Aristotle's Posterior Analytics as the authority on this. See William, De anima VII, 5 (Mag. div., II supp., 910a). 47 On this critical misinterpretation by both Alistair Crombie and Robert Palma, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 224~25, n. 24; and 228, n. 32.
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close to Aristotle he actually intended to steer, the epistemological debt to Augustine can be reduced to proper proportions. More like Aristotle than anyone else on the matter of science, he accepted as fact that scientific knowledge was characterized by demonstration from undemonstrated principles.48 He even insisted on using the very terms Aristotle had in the Posterior Analytics to describe this epistemic reality: scientia (for the Greek episteme) as the habit of knowledge of necessary conclusions, intellectus (for Greek nous] that of knowledge of principles from which conclusions were proved.49 The image of light was ideally suited to this conceptual model, for it graphically displayed how knowledge of principles was more certain than that of any other complex object of mind precisely because it was the cause, by a kind of reflected splendor, of cognitive certitude about all other necessary propositions. In William's words: "It is clear that. . . principles [are] most manifest [of all propositions] since they reveal first of all themselves and then [all] other [propositions] when they have been fitted to them by means of a syllogism."00 This is what it meant, he added, to call them "lights" to the mind.31 Such a characterization of knowledge of principles naturally applied most fittingly to propositions known most immediately, the very first of all. They were in Grosseteste's words the common principles of science, what William called first impressions or first principles of philosophy.52 For both thinkers they con-
48 Comm. Post. an. I, 14 (p. 202, 11. 74-76): "Ad hoc enim quod habeamus completam scientiam necesse est ut demonstratio sit ex principiis per se notis et inmediatis. . . ." 49 See for example Comm. Post. an. II, 6 (p. 406, 11. 76-79). 30 De anima V, 15 (Mag. div., II supp., 137b): "Unde manifestum est quod . . . principia per se manifestissima tanquam semetipsa per se in primis ostendentia, et deinde alia cum applicata fuerint illis ordinatione syllogistica." 51 Ibid. "Et quemadmodum dixi tibi de principiis, quia lumina sunt se ipsa et alia ostendentia." Grosseteste, too, noted frequently that knowledge of principles (intellectus) was most certain of all complex habits of mind and cause of certain knowledge of conclusions. See Comm. Post. an. I, 2 (p. 103, 11. 91-94); I, 15 (p. 226, 11. 190-93); and II, 6 (p. 403, 11. 10-13; p. 407, 11. 89-91 and 96-98). He likewise tied this to the image of light. The passage in Comm. Post. an. I, 19, pointed to so often above, explains the epistemological priority of the knowledge of principles in terms of his analogy to sensible vision: "Est igitur intellectus sicut visus colorati; scientia vero sicut visus colorati figurati magni vel parvi, moti vel quiescentis, quas differentias non accipit visus nisi per coloratum." (Comm. Post, an., p. 279, 11. 42~44 - this passage following almost immediately upon that quoted above, n. 42.) 52 See Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 108-9 and 260-61. For William's use of these
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stituted, following a Euclidian model to which they believed scientific knowledge conformed, the axioms (dignitates] of human reasoning.03 From them cascaded the hierarchy of certitudes within the realm of science, going through proper principles of the higher sciences, immediately accepted as true but still tangentially dependent on logical patterns established by the axioms of thought, to principles of natural science and on to conclusions of scientific demonstrations themselves, all increasingly attenuated manifestations of the cognitive light of axioms.14 The second way the image of light served William's and Robert's purposes was by revealing how the strength of scientific certitude varied according to the nature of the objects to which propositions were to be referred. Grosseteste gave clearest formulation to this manner of explaining relative certitude in the various sectors of human knowledge: That science is more certain that is prior - that is, that is about prior things. . . . For those things that are prior are closer to the spiritual light, which floods over intelligible objects and makes them actually visible to the mind's eye, and [thus] they are more receptive of that light and more easily penetrated by mind.""11
terms see De anima I, 3 (Mag. die., II supp., 66b-67a); VII, 4 (Mag. div., II supp., 209b); and most especially his extended description of how they were absolutely first in V, 15 (Mag. div., II supp., 137a~b). For Grosseteste see Comm. Post. an. I, 8 (p. 154, 11. 184-85). "' See William, De anima VII, 4 (Mag. div., II supp., 209b); and Grosseteste, Comm. Post. an. I, 8 (p. 157, 11. 255-60); and Ecclesia sancta celebrat, n. 5 (in James McEvoy, "Robert Grosseteste's Theory of Human Nature," RTAM 47 [1980]: 171). McEvoy, in "Grosseteste's Theory of Human Nature," pp. 145 and 172, n. 75; and Robert Grosseteste, p. 301, incorrectly states that Grosseteste included both knowledge of first principles and of separate intelligible substances under the mental habit, intellectus, which was to be separated from reason (ratio}. In fact Ecclesia sancta celebrat says that only knowledge of first principles is intellectus - that is truly immediate - while knowledge of the separate intelligences must be included along with knowledge of the conclusions of science among the manifestations of ratio. '* For discussion of both William's and Grosseteste's scheme of principal cognition, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 104-5 and 159-63; and "Robert Grosseteste on the Certitude of Induction," in L'homme et son univers au moyen age, ed. Christian Wenin, II, 485-88, Actes du Septieme Congres International de Philosophic Medievale, 30 August-4 September 1982 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1986). 35 Comm. Post. an. I, 17 (pp. 255-56, 11. 337-43): ". . . scientia certior est que prior est, hoc est que de prioribus. . . . Que enim priora sunt, propinquiora sunt luci spiritual!, cuius superfusione res intelligibles ab aspectu mentis fiunt actu visibiles et magis sunt receptibilia illius lucis et magis penetrabilia ab aspectu mentis. . . ." See
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He went on to say that this meant that a science of separate substances — metaphysics, for instance should be more certain than science of incorporeal substance tied to body - such as psychology, about the soul — which should in turn be more certain than science of corporeal things - for example, physics. The reason why to humans in their earthly life the mathematical sciences were most certain of all, even more than metaphysics, was because the corruption of sinful mind distorted the consequences of the natural priority of objects.56 By his very words linking certitude with the object's receptivity to the intelligible light, Grosseteste plainly expected the reader to recall his prior discussion of certitude and mind's inherent spiritual light of understanding.n7 He was now simply adding the observation that objects higher on the scale of being would, because of their increased immateriality, be more fully illuminated and thus more perfectly comprehended. William, too, drew attention to the ranking of objects on the ladder of ontological perfection, a hierarchy reflected in the degree of certitude attained by the respective fields of human cognition. And although as noted before he never explicitly posited a noetics like Grosseteste's with an active light of mind, he explained the correlation in terms of intellectual "lucidity" - the openness of object to the light of understanding.38 It should be clear that for all its intrinsic interest and importance in revealing the taxonomy of scientific knowledge, William's and Grosseteste's use of the image of intelligible light in their account of complex knowledge does not say much about the actual epistemic requirements for certain knowledge of truth, much less indicate that they held God or a divine light to be functionally implicated in normal complex cognition. For both, the image worked to make plain the relative strength of evidence various complex objects presented to mind; it did not describe concretely what that evidence consisted in. To discover this, one must look elsewhere in their work, and when one does, it is impossible to turn up any role for illuminaalso Comm. Post. an. II, 6 (p. 408, 11. 112-16), where Grosseteste stated the general principle that certitude in science partially depended on the nature of the object known. 56 See Comm. Post. an. I, 17 (pp. 256-57, 11. 344-65). 31 See above, nn. 27 and 31. 58 See De bono et malo, pp. 292 and 293. As William noted on p. 293: "Quanto quippe altior est cognitio, tanto certior atque lucidior."
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tionism or Augustinian patterns of thought. For the nuts and bolts of an epistemology sustaining the Aristotelian schema of science to which both scholastics swore allegiance, the image of light was beside the point. Here, where the limits of Augustinian epistemology had been exceeded, Augustinian language, too, had to be left behind. Grosseteste alone made the effort to set down in plain philosophical terms what constituted for human minds evidence of complex truth. Full analysis of what he said would go beyond the focus of this book, but at least some attention should be given if only to suggest the range of his thoughts about human certitude. Behind everything lay what has already been referred to as a correspondence theory of truth, with both Grosseteste and William accepting for complex knowledge the definition of truth already current by their time: the adequation of speech and reality (adaequatio sermonis et rei}.39 Since complex knowledge had to do with propositions, however, each composed of multiple terms, the problem was how to know when the configuration of terms in a proposition correctly reflected — corresponded to — the reality of external things. It was to this question that the matter of evidence could be reduced. Grosseteste's answer rested on a principle of identity. For propositions, truth was achieved when the referent of the predicate was in substance identical to that of the subject, and this truth was known when the identity was sufficiently evident to be grasped by mind. If the evidence was immediate — that is to say, if mind could see the substantial identity of subject and predicate simply by coming to know the terms themselves, without recourse to knowledge of other terms or further inference - then the proposition could be called an axiom, one of the common principles of science.60 The truth of such a principle was apparent, in short, in the manifest identity of its terms. There was thus no need here for reference to an external evidential light; the manifestation of truth depended simply upon the characteristics of specific terms. And this was in fact the way, Grosseteste made clear, he intended his occasional language describ-
59
For Grosseteste see above, n. 7; for William, see the discussion in Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 80-84; and below, Pt. 1, ch. 3, n. 17. 00 Comm. Post. an. I, 8 (p. 158, 11. 268-71): "Cognoscitur autem veritas propositionis cum videtur identitas in substantia subiecti et predicati. . . . In quacumque autem propositione . . . manifeste sunt per se identitates iste, ilia propositio est dignitas " See also Comm. Post. an. I, 3 (p. 160, 11. 321-28).
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ing principles as lights to mind to be understood.61 As a luminous body needed nothing else to help it reveal itself to the eye, so a first principle, once formulated, carried in its own terms the evidence for its truth. In precise philosophical terminology, the metaphor of light as applied to knowledge of principles reduced to this. If the evidence for prepositional truth was not immediate, mind was forced to turn to inference or further investigation of the terms. In this case, the construction of a syllogism would be required to reveal the truth-value of the complex object, so that arriving at truth would depend upon judging whether the syllogism was valid or not. Here, too, identity was the governing criterion. The validity - in Grosseteste's words, the necessity of a syllogism was reducible to the substantial identity of the referents of the extreme terms with that of the middle term or terms, and when this identity was evident, the truth of the conclusion could be accepted with certitude by the intellect. A perfect syllogism, the basis upon which all more complex forms of argument rested, was one in which the identity was so plain that intellect had only to be presented with the syllogism to know it was true.62 Indeed the power of all reasoning could be traced back to the incontrovertible evidence of syllogisms of this sort.63 The privileged place of perfect syllogisms among inferences was thus analogous to that of common principles among propositions, perfect syllogisms — those of the first figure of the first mode of Aristotle's logic — needing nothing other than themselves to reveal their truth to mind.64 Again, this was all the language of light really came down to when talking about complex understanding. By this time we are far from Augustinian illumination. The issue, however, remains the same as that with which this chapter began: certitude in human knowledge of truth. And in this instance, pertaining to complex cognition, Grosseteste's attitude towards the problem most likely remained stable throughout his mature years. The same could be said of William, to the extent that he dealt with the 61 The passage quoted above in n. 60 follows directly upon that quoted in n. 44 about the lucidity of principles. 62 Comm. Post. an. I, 8 (p. 158, 11. 269-73): ". . . cognoscitur necessitas sillogismi cum videtur identitas utriusque extremitatis cum medio termino. . . . In qu[o]cumque autem . . . sillogismo manifeste sunt per se identitates iste, . . . ille sillogismus est perfectus." See also Comm. Post. an. I, 8 (p. 160, 11. 321-23); and I, 13 (p. 202, 11. 67-69); and Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 248-49. 63 See Comm. Post. an. I, 13 (p. 202, 11. 63-80). 64 Comm. Post. an. I, 8 (p. 158, 11. 266-28).
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questions involved. In the end, therefore, the Augustinianism of both scholastics on truth and certitude would seem to be tenuous, or in Grosseteste's case largely limited to his early teaching. Even where Augustine's language made an appearance, its force was mitigated by the Aristotelian milieu into which it had to be introduced.
CHAPTER TWO
THE ORIGIN OF KNOWLEDGE AND ITS REFERENCE
The second component of thirteenth-century theory of divine illumination consists of the cluster of doctrines about the object and the origin of simple human cognition. Although there was no necessity for these two matters to be considered together, they were customarily intertwined by scholastics of the period and thus developed in tandem, with views on cognitive reference frequently determining options for explaining how knowledge was obtained or theories about the origin of knowledge setting limits for proper object. In either case, the questions posed dealt more with concepts and their generation - ideogenesis according to Gilson's taxonomy than with the normative procedure of bringing knowledge into line with truth. Both William and Robert expounded at length on these issues, but for neither is it a simple matter to say how far their teaching reflected a concern to preserve a role for God and to what extent it departed from so ostensibly traditional a goal. It is convenient to begin with the question of reference - that is, the object of human intellection - especially in cases of knowledge constitutive of science, and for the present the problem can be restricted to noncomplex cognition alone. As before, Grosseteste's De veritate must be taken as a special case. It is the only work of either Robert or William to provide an exposition of conditions of reference explicitly evocative of Augustinian illumination. The subject emerges in De veritate in the context of Grosseteste's first formulation for knowledge of truth, the one dependent literally on an Anselmian definition of truth as the rectitude of a thing insofar as it corresponds to divine ideal.1 Since such rectitude had to be grasped by the truth-perceiving mind, it was a potential object of simple cognition, with the result that Anselm's definition became implicated in the referential apparatus a theory of knowledge would have to contain.2 See above, Ch. 1, nn. 3 and 8. Grosseteste, De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 135, 11. 6-9).
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Any theory tailored to such dimensions imposed awkward demands. As Grosseteste himself asked, how could mind see a rectitude which came down to the conformity of external essence to divine idea unless both members of the conformity were themselves perceived, or how could it make the requisite comparison unless each term to compare was objectively available to it? All acts of simple cognition attaining to truth thus implicated a double referent, the created essence whose truth was to be known and the idea of that essence in God. Normal knowledge of simple truth required intellect somehow to peer into the divine mind and see the eternal reasons.3 Grosseteste's hesitation in the face of this theoretical prospect has already been noted. Little wonder he immediately followed his appeal to such a referential configuration with a phrase clearly intended to adapt it to his second, less ontologist formulation of knowledge of simple truth, calling on Augustine's model of illumination by a divine light: "All created truth is therefore evident insofar as the light of its [ - that is, the object's - ] eternal reason is present to mind."4 But even with such mitigating language, ontologist implications were unavoidable. When one turns to Grosseteste's other writings and to the works of William of Auvergne, the problematic view of cognitive reference disappears. No longer is there mention of a dual referent, nor of any need for comparison to grasp what there was to be known about the simple object. All trace of Anselmian influence simply falls away. The difference stands out most clearly in the attack both scholastics mounted against Plato's theory of forms. William was the more accurate about the historical Plato, or what he took to be a possible interpretation of Plato's views. He explained that by a narrow reading Plato posited a separate domain of species, an archetypal world cut off from the sensible world inhabited by humans in the present life. In this archetypal world was located the truth or truths of things and thus, in accordance with the insistence that mind 5
Grosseteste's language was explicit in this reqard: "Quomodo enim conspici posset conformitas alicuius ad aliquid, nisi conspecto etiam illo, cui est confbrme? Aut rectitude rei quomodo agnoscitur, quoniam rectitude est, cum non sit secundum se rectitude, nisi in regula sua, quae secundum se recta est, et secundum quam ipsa res est rectificata? Quae regula non aliud est, quam ratio rei aeterna in mente divina. Aut qualiter cognoscetur, quod res est, ut esse debet, nisi videatur ratio, secundum quam sic esse debet?" De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 137, 11. 4-11). 4 De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 137, 11. 17-19).
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know simple truth, the proper objects towards which intellect was directed.5 Indeed, said William, Plato went so far as to claim that strictly speaking one should reserve the names of things, like "fire" or "earth," for objects in the separate world, applying indirect substantives such as "firelike" or "earthlike" to whatever could be seen or touched here below.6 William thought any reasonable person would concede the absurdity of such a position. By this interpretation, Plato was simply creating a second world parallel to the one we inhabit, a world he would have been forced to admit was itself particular and discrete and so in no measure preferable as object of intellection.7 Yet there was another way to read Plato, through the eyes of Augustine, which approach had long been common in the Latin West and explained why Platonizing views had generally been received with greater sympathy. Both William and Grosseteste realized this, and each suspected Plato himself intended to be interpreted along Augustinian lines. From this perspective, the truth of things — the archetypal world - was constituted by ideal forms, or ideas, in the mind of God.8 Although perfectly legitimate as an account of the origin of things, this reading was just as absurd as the first when taken to explain what was commonly known by human mind. In William's words, Plato pushed his theories, which contained a grain of truth insofar as they made plain the exemplary reality of God's ideas, too far.9 The simple truth of things important for noncomplex human knowledge was, as has been shown already for both William and the later Grosseteste, the essence of each thing or perhaps, for William, the full substance.10 And this truth just had to be in things themselves 5 De unimrso II, 1, 14; II, 1 16; and II, 1, 34 (Mag. div., I, 821BA, 823aC, and 835bB). 6 De universe II, 1, 16 (Mag. din., I, 823aC); and also II, 1, 34 (Mag. div., I, 835bA). 7 See De universo II, 1, 35 (Mag. div., I, 836aF-836bH), especially p. 836bH: "Quare mundus archetypus non erit, nisi alter mundus sensibilis similis huic." 8 William, De universo II, 1, 35 (Mag. div., I, 836bH); and Grosseteste, Comm. Post, an. I, 7 (p. 139, 11. 103-6): "Cognitiones enim rerurn creandarum que fuerunt in causa prima eternaliter sunt rationes rerum creandarum et cause formales exemplares, et ipse sunt etiam creatrices. Et he sunt quas vocavit Plato ydeas et mundum archetypum. . . . " 9 De universo II, 1, 34 (Mag. div., I, 835aA). On Christ as "exemplary world," see De universo II, 1, 17 (Mag. div., I, 823bC). 10 See above, Gh. 1, n. 21, and also for William, De universo II, 1, 35 (Mag. div., I, 836aE).
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as they existed in the world humans inhabit, not off in a separate realm of forms or the mind of God. When it came to normal human cognition one was, after all, primarily interested in creation, so what sense did it make to refer to a reality anywhere else? Like the narrow reading of Plato, locating objective truth in God's mind merely established a world parallel to the one on earth but having little relevance to the real business of cognitive reference.11 In plain language this meant that the concepts and terms of human discourse, including those that were general or universal, were typically predicated solely of a reality in the substantial world here below and not of God or anything in him; their reference was to essence in the world, the earthly essence of singular things. As William pointed out: "Earth" is the name of that which is here with us and can be seen, and in no way of anything that is with the Creator or in his mind.12
Defending the views of Plato, even interpreted after an Augustinian fashion, constituted be an "intolerable abuse" (abusio intolerabilis).1* Grosseteste, too, insisted that the foundation of universal predication was the singular reality of the substantial, largely sensible world around us and not some separate realm. It was to forms immanent in singular substances that human speech normally referred. 14 In words strikingly like William's, he added that Plato's separate forms, if taken as the referents of genera and species predicated of the subjects of human knowledge, were monsters conjured up by an errant mind. Again, ideas in God's mind, the exemplary, creative bases for things, were irrelevant to the everyday business of predication.15 11
See above, n. 7, and also De universo II, 1, 36 (Mag. div., I, 837aB-C). '' De universo II, 1, 34 (Mag. div., I, 835bD): ". . . terra est nomen ejus, quod est apud nos et videtur, et nullo modorum alicujus, quod sit apud creatorem, vel in mente ipsius. . . ." 13 De universo II, 1, 34 (Mz?. div., I, 835bOD); II, 1, 35 (Mag. div., I, 836aE-F and 836bH); and II, 1, 36 (Mag. div., I, 837aA-B). 14 Canon. Post. an. I, 17 (p. 245, 11. 127-34); and I, 18 (p. 266, 11. 143-47). On Grosseteste's theory of the universal, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 184-88. '' See the remarkably explicit passage in Comm. Post. an. I, 15 (p. 224, 11. 142-50): "Unde omne quod predicatur simpliciter repertum est in subiecto vel de subiecto, quia forme separate a subiectis, quas posuit Plato genera et species et predicabilia, sunt sicut prodigia que format error intellectus, sicut sunt prodigia in natura que format natura errans, quia licet sint ydee et rationes rerum increate ab eterno in mente divina, ipse ydee nichil pertinent ad ratiocinationem in qua predicatur aliquid de aliquo. Ipse itaque ydee in se prodigia non sunt, sed cum intellectus vult facere eas predicabiles de rebus a quibus sunt divise et separate, in hac ordinatione
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Exemplarist doctrine should not be allowed to intrude on theory of reference, and the failure to keep them apart exacted a grievous philosophical price. William had sternly warned that Plato's position on reference, by either the narrow or the Augustinian interpretation, rendered impossible in quid predication about the real world humans inhabit.16 If Plato were right, then there could be no definitions of things nor, Grosseteste added, any demonstration - in other words, no possibility of science.17 Once, Grosseteste did make an effort to explain how such a spare, Aristotelian theory might be reconciled with Platonic or Anselmian views. The occasion, in a passage from his Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, is well known. Though ostensibly about what Grosseteste, diverging from normal practice, called principles of knowledge, both content and context - the question of how universals were incorruptible - reveal that the discussion concerned the cognitive object. In it he outlined five ways reference of universal terms could be explained.18 If intellect were pure and undistracted by sensible images, it could gaze on the First Light, in which case eternal reasons would be the principal referent of both terms and concepts of simple cognition. This was how Plato, suitably interpreted along Christian lines, had accounted for knowledge. Intellect not quite so purified might look on a lesser but still superior light an intelligence — and in it see forms or "descriptions" of things below the intelligence, which forms might be labeled "created ideas" in contradistinction to the divine ideas of God. In this case, such lower exemplary forms provided immediate reference for what intellect knew. Below7 intelligences lay the heavens or celestial spheres, and in their luminous bodies and powers were found the causal reasons of all earthly objects. These, too, could serve as referents of universal knowledge for intellects able to look on them and appreciate them for what they were. prodigia sunt." As can be seen here, and in William's De universo II, 1, 35 (Mag. div., I, 836bH), neither scholastic made a clear distinction between predicates (or more properly praedicabilia) and referential objects themselves. This potentially confusing conflation is related to a similar one that will be noted below concerning propositions (enunciabilia}. For present purposes, however, it can be ignored, since the general referential implications of what they had to say are clear enough. 16 De universo II, 1, 34 (Mag. div., I, 835bA-B). 17 William, De universo II, 1, 35 (Mag. div., I, 836bF); Grosseteste, Comm. Post. an. I, 8 (p. 160, 11. 318-28). 18 Comm. Post. an. I, 7 (pp. 139-41, 11. 99-145). See the analysis in Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 166-78.
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The remaining two ways were more down to earth. Intellect incapable of rising to the heavens and beyond could still know the objects of knowledge by turning to forms immanent in things in the world. Since immanent form was token of each thing's essence and immediate principle of its existence, it provided adequate reference for in quid knowledge. Here was Aristotle's explanation of human cognition, sufficient for his notion of science. Yet some minds were even too weak for this. To them real essences lay hidden, and all that could be known were sensible accidents. In this case, there could be no essential referent, only an ersatz collection of objects below true power of mind. What Grosseteste's listing accomplished was to distribute the most common views about the referent of human knowledge along a spectrum where position varied according to the time and circumstances of human experience. The first two ways had to do with states of existence almost never found among humans in this world.19 The very first, knowing things by knowing divine ideas, was, except for the departed souls of the blessed, limited to a few historical cases — Paul, Moses, perhaps the Virgin Mary — where the divine light had revealed itself in this earthly life.20 Since it worked to explain knowledge of both ideas and created things seen in them, it was the only explanation corresponding even loosely to the model of double referent associated with the Anselmian position Grosseteste had taken as typical in De veritate. The second way was familiar in the early thirteenth century in non-Christian form through the writings of Avicenna. McEvoy has correctly argued that by "intelligence"
19 See, for instance, Comm. Post. an. I, 14 (p. 213, 11. 227-235): "Et similiter si pars suprema anime humane . . . non esset mole corporis corrupt! obnubilata et aggravata, ipsa per irradiationem acceptam a lumine superiori haberet completam scientiam absque sensus adminiculo, sicut habebit cum anima erit exuta a corpore et sicut forte habent aliqui penitus absoluti ab amore et phantasmatibus rerum corporalium." 2(1 In his commentary on the Divine Names of Pseudo-Dionysius, Grosseteste noted that divine light was available directly only to the blessed, while in the commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy he added that there were perhaps temporary exceptions in the case of Paul, Moses and Mary. See Francis Ruello, "La divinorum nominum reseratio," pp. 153-55; and, for the Celestial Hierarchy commentary, Hyancinthe-Francois Dondaine, "L'objet et le 'medium' de la vision beatifique chez les theologiens du XIIP siecle," RTAM 19 (1952): 125. William, too, held that direct irradiation of the human intellect by God was rare (see De universo II, 3, 20 [Mag. div., I, 1053bD~ 1054aE]), though, as will be shown below, he made a major exception for knowledge of some basic terms.
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Grosseteste meant "angel," adding that Grosseteste thought instances of knowledge configured this way were relatively rare and limited to religious revelations.21 William - more under Avicenna's spell - took this to be how Aristotle understood human cognition, the Aristotelian agent intellect being nothing more than an intelligence imparting knowledge to mind by means of the concepts it contained.22 In any case, it was no more suitable than the first as an account of the origin or reference of most of what humans knew.23 The third way was extraordinary, too. It was reserved for the astronomer-scientist, hardly a typical figure but one with special attraction for Grosseteste, whose interest in astronomy depended on a notion of the generative power of stellar light promoted in his Hexaemeron.^ As for the fifth way, although it was neither rare nor special, it applied to cases hardly worthy of the name "knowledge," far below the standards of science. Just Grosseteste's fourth way, therefore, submitted an account applicable to normal human cognition. It was, though not the sole explanation for reference in human knowledge as Aristotle had thought, the one uniquely suited to conditions of human existence in the world of sin. All other solutions to the problem of cognitive reference had to be assigned a place outside normal experience in the world. And this included recourse to a double object, a higher form along with a lower to which it could be compared. William made the point explicit: 21 McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 351-54; "La connaisance," pp. 44-47. In his letter to Adam Rums, Grosseteste made clear he thought angels were the same as what the ancients had called intelligences. See Letter 1, in Epistolae, ed. Henry R. Luard (London, 1861), p. 8; also in Baur's edition as De intelligentiis (Phil. Werke, p. 112). Pietro B. Rossi, "Robert Grosseteste and the Object of Scientific Knowledge," in Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives, ed. McEvoy, 70, reacts to this same passage about five bases for universals with a comment on the Neoplatonic, even Avicennian, flavor of Grosseteste's thought here, although, as his words on p. 75 of the same article make clear, he would take this Neoplatonism as working its way into even the fourth foundation for universals, interpreted in the present work as more strictly Aristotelian. 22 See below, n. 31. 23 In two late sermons, Grosseteste explained how angels could not be known again, presumably taking into account only normal cognition — by human mind directly in this life but only indirectly (per media}, which effectively eliminated the possibility of his second mode of reference. See Ecclesia sancta, in McEvoy, "Grosseteste's Theory of Human Nature," p. 172, n. 6; and Ex rerum, in Gieben, "Robert Grosseteste on Preaching," p. 121. 24 Hexaemeron III, 16, 5, ed. Richard C. Dales and Servus Gieben, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 6 (London, 1982), p. 118.
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There are many terms (nominationes) for creatures that imply no comparison or similitude to the Creator. . . . Therefore these terms refer properly to creatures, in being and in truth, without any comparison or relation to the Creator.20 Of course, even in common speech terms could be used to refer to God — as, for instance, when prophets called God the Sun of Justice - but in that case they would not have their proper signification but should be said to apply only by metaphor or analogy (per similitudinem aliquam).26 Yet if a role for divine exemplars could be ruled out when it came to normal conditions of reference, might not there still be place for God in the origin of concepts? As before with the question of truth and certitude, eliminating divine presence in formal matters of largely epistemic concern need not have precluded its reappearance under more ambiguous, process-oriented guise, this time as source of an Augustinian light necessary for ideogenesis. But again, the later works of Grosseteste and William's writings — save for one major exception discussed below leave little room for the doctrines associated with a notion of divine illumination. This assertion, defended by the present author in his earlier work, has taken many readers by surprise and seems to run counter to the testimony of Roger Bacon already mentioned above, twice invoking the name of both Robert and William in support of his insistence that God as cognitive light was agent intellect for human mind, with reference to William saying that he personally heard him declare upon the issue.27 Yet there is reason to doubt the relevance of Bacon's words. If one reads Bacon carefully, one sees that while he implies his two predecessors supported the notion of God as agent intellect, all 23
De universe II, 1, 34 (Mag. div., I, 835aA-B): ". . . multae nominationes sunt de creaturis, quae nulla comparatione, vel similitudine ad creatorem dicuntur. . . . Haec igitur . . . nominationes sunt creaturis secundum suum esse, et veritatem, et secundum proprias dispositiones suas absque ulla comparatione, et respectu ad creatorem." 26 William, De umverso II, 1, 36 (Mag. div., I, 837aOD). -' See citations above in the introduction to Pt. 1, n. 3. Salman, in "Note sur la premiere influence d'Averroes," pp. 210-11, remarked that Adam of Buckfield, writing about 1250, mentioned certain "theologi" who held to the view of God as separate agent intellect for the mind. An anonymous text, De potentiis animae et obiectis, published by Daniel A. Callus in "The Powers of the Soul. An Early Unpublished Text," RTAM 19 (1952): 131-70, and dated by Callus to sometime between 1220 and 1230, refers to "quidam philosophorum" who held agent intellect to be a separate substance irradiating the mind but rejects their view (see p. 156).
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he says explicitly is that they argued against those positing an agent as immanent power of the soul (pars animae). James McEvoy, though firmly maintaining that God was for Grosseteste source of at least one of mind's lights in the earthly life, concedes the weakness of Bacon's testimony regarding Grosseteste's precise position on agent intellect.28 And what about William? It is highly unlikely he ever publicly promoted a view like Bacon's labeling God a separate agent intellect, for in his writings he resolutely resisted designating an agent intellect for soul in any form, whether as external power or part within. It is worth looking briefly at his arguments. According to William, Aristotle posited an agent intellect in order to avoid Plato's theory of reminiscence.29 The origin of universal knowledge was to be explained not by previous vision in an ideal world but rather by the presence of an active intellective force here and now, "an intelligible sun to our souls, a light to our intellect."30 William added - taking Avicenna as faithful interpreter of Aristotle's thought - that this light was a separate spiritual substance, in fact the tenth and lowest of the intelligences ranged between mind and God, from which forms or concepts flowed into human intellect.31 Against this "Aristotelian" position William argued that the whole idea of agent intellect under any interpretation must be rejected. To posit an active external source of intelligible forms was to make of human intellect a purely passive receiver along the lines of a looking glass, rendering it fundamentally non-intelligent.32 William insisted that mind had to be both passive and active in itself, "not just material and receptive of intelligible forms but also effectively generative of them."33 To posit an agent immanent in soul, so that agent and
28
McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 346-51. De universo II, 1, 14 (Mag. div., I, 821bA); and II, 3, 20 (Mag. din., I, 1053B). 30 De universo II, 1, 14 (Mag. div., I, 821aD). See also De anmia VII, 3 (Mag. div., II supp., 205a-b). 31 De universo II, 1, 17 (Mag. div., I, 823bD-824aE); De anima VII, 5 (Mag. div., II supp., 210a); and on a spiritual substance, De anima VII, 4 (Mag. div., II supp., 206a). See also De universo II, 1, 16 (Mag. div., I, 822bF); and De anima VII, 3 and 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 205b and 2lib). On how Aristotle's agent functioned, see De universo II, 1, 16 and 41 (Mag. div., I, 822bG-823aB and 839bD-840aE). 32 De anima V, 6, 7 and 8 (Mag. div., II supp., 121a, 122a and 123a). 33 De anima V, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 122b): ". . . [intellectum esse] non solum materialem receptibilem formarum intelligibilium. sed etiam effectivum et generativum earurn. . . ." See also De anima V, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 12 Ib). 29
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material intellect were soul's two integral parts, was likewise unacceptable. The radical impartibility of the soul stood in the way.34 Nor could the agent be some other element in mind's cognitive make-up, for instance an innate or acquired mental habit.30 The undeniable fact was that external intelligible objects (intelligibilia) along with the indivisible intellect sufficed by themselves for the process of intellection, rendering recourse to the idea of an agent intellect philosophically otiose.36 Bacon may therefore have been honest when he said he had heard William argue against those positing an agent as part of the soul, but he was stretching the truth by implying that William agreed with him about God as agent intellect. William's position was that nothing should be called agent intellect of mind, whether it be God, a celestial intelligence or a part of mind itself.37 Bacon's words do not furnish evidence for an ideogenic interpretation of the doctrine of divine illumination on William's part. There is also positive reason to believe that neither William nor Grosseteste supported divine illumination generally as ideogenesis. As will be seen below, a major piece of William's philosophy does have God serving as giver of forms to human intellect. Yet this marked an exception to the rule. For all the rest of William's noetics and every bit of Grosseteste's in his later works, the theory of normal generation of ideas leaves no room for any intellective light or power besides mind itself. Examination of this side of the philosophy of the two scholastics need here be nothing more than schematic. On every occasion in his later works where Grosseteste spoke about the normal origin of human knowledge in the world of sin he said that everything known, including simple and complex universals, was arrived at by induction from sensible objects.38 Not once did he make mention, even by 34
De anima VII, 3 (Mag. dw., II supp., 205b). See also De anima VII, 3, 4 and 8 (Mag. dw., II supp., 206a, 208a and 214a). 35 De anima VII, 3 (Mag. dw., II supp., 206a~b). % See De anima VII, 4 (Mag. div., II supp., 29b): "Supervacue igitur, et frustra ponitur quantum ad scientias intellectus agens;" and also VII, 4 and 5 (Mag. div., II supp., 207b and 210a-b). '' Haureau long ago came to exactly this conclusion (Histoire de la philosophic scolastique II, 1, 154). 38 See, for example, Comm. Post. an. II, 6 (p. 406, 11. 67-69): ". . . manifestum est quoniam universalia prima composita sicut et simplicia ex inductione a sensibilibus facta nobis sunt manifesta."
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implication, of an ideogenic role for God. William, more cautious, restricted himself to knowledge of sensibles and the sciences derived from them, but he too insisted that such cognition was dependent on reception of information from sensible objects by means of their impression on the senses. Again, nothing was said about a role for God.39 Both scholastics admitted that dependence on sensation was not the best humanity could hope for, since it marked a limitation imposed by the fall from grace, but it was nonetheless a fact of cognitive life in the sinful world.40 Although the way the two described the ideogenic process differed on particulars, both descriptions followed broadly similar lines. Key to each was explanation of the origin of simple concepts, all complex cognition being generated from this foundation. Grosseteste proved more faithfully Aristotelian, as might be expected of someone elaborating his views in a commentary on Aristotle, and he was likewise more inclined to emphasize logical aspects of the procedure. His fullest statement came in Book I, chapter 14, of the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, where he outlined a process starting with data offered by the senses, moving on to a stage where mind worked upon these data by division and abstraction, and finishing with a judgment of universality aided, evidently, by a primitive form of induction.41 Induction's role was even more plainly laid out in other passages, and there can be no doubt Grosseteste considered it foundational for generation of simple cognition.42 Indeed he openly adopted Aristotle's notion, expounded in Metaphysics I, 1, of a cumulative, and thereby inductive, progression from sense through memory and experience to the universal, mapping it onto a Neoplatonic psychology of powers including the estimative.43 39 De universo II, 2, 69 (Mag. din., I, 921bD-922aG). Although the purpose of this passage was to discuss knowledge obtained by angels, as William made clear the processes he was describing also applied to human cognition. On the sensory origin of knowledge, see also William's "De bono et malo," pp. 282-83. 40 See Grosseteste, Comm. Post. an. I, 14 (pp. 213-14, 11. 228-41); and William, De anima V, 18 (Mag. div., II supp., 143b). It is interesting that William saw an original falling away from direct knowledge of substance of sensibles, without recourse to the senses, while Grosseteste envisioned falling away from illumination from above. 41 Comm. Post. an. I, 14 (p. 214, 11. 238-52). For more complete treatment of Grosseteste on the origin of simple concepts, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 201-9. 42 For example, Comm. Post. an. I, 14 (p. 212, 11. 205-11); and II, 6 (pp. 405-6, 11. 56-72). 43 Comm. Post. an. II, 6 (p. 404, 11. 24-40).
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William was more concerned with the Augustinian question of how intellect, as fully immaterial, could receive information from material objects.44 His answer relied upon a combination of Aristotelian and Augustinian psychology — not always successfully integrated — intended to demonstrate that mind could take up something from the senses, as Aristotle had held, by resorting to its own power to assimilate what lay outside it, as Augustine insisted, and without any passivity.41 Specifically, he sketched out three processes, not all of which were operative in every case: mind's initial apprehension of object based on sensory data, abstraction and, finally, discovery by following the connection among things (per connexionem), as between cause and effect.46 The first two of these processes were founded on William's conviction that the essence of each particular thing was of itself singular without addition of matter or material accident, so that it was possible, contrary to Aristotle, for intellect to know both singulars and universals.47 Thus simple cognition arose in mind as the perfectly predictable outgrowth of its access to objective essence or substance, grasped in the first instance as by nature individual and then transformed by abstraction into knowledge of a simple universal. Such a position marked, of course, a departure from the stricter Aristotelianism seen in Grosseteste, but beyond the idiosyncrasy on the matter of individuation, the general contours of the origin of simple knowledge were for William otherwise much the same. He saw abstraction as a kind of "spoliation" of the particularities carried to mind in the sensory phantasms of its object, and he characterized the abstractive process by means of the very example Grosseteste had used, comparing it to the sensory experience of seeing someone from afar and gradually realizing exactly whom one was looking at.48 As for the more fundamental, and precedent, 44 See De universo II, 2, 69 (Mag. div., I, 922aE), where he posed the question most plainly; also II, 2, 65 (Mag. din., I, 914bH). 45 De universo II, 2, 74-75 (Mag. div., I, 927bB-928bH). See also De universo II, 2, 65; and II, 3, 19 and 21 (Mag. div., I, 914aH, 914bF-H, 1051bA-B, and 1057aO 1057bA); De anima V, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 121b); and De Trinitate 26 (ed. Switalski, p. 146, 11. 5-13). 46 De anima VII, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 213a-b). 47 See Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 53-55. 48 Compare De anima VII, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 213a-b) with Comm. Post. an. II, 6 (pp. 405-6, 11. 58-65). The major difference is that William chose the name Hercules for his example while Grosseteste followed Aristotle in using Callias. See
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apprehension of individual essence, given the peculiar nature of the object - for William singular and known as such - it is the way knowledge of it was attained that is of interest here. William believed that with the Fall intellect lost its ability to perceive singular essences directly. In the world of sin, it had therefore to read essence or substance indirectly from sensible impressions.49 His description of the process was consequently not far from what Grosseteste said about mind's initial apprehension of a simple object, although in Grosseteste's case the end product was a universal concept, in William's a singular. For William sensible impressions constituted a "book" from which mind read what it could learn about real essences out in the world; for Grosseteste the senses were a "boat" carrying mind to its sensible objects.D° Both insisted, significantly, that the senses somehow called mind to action, drawing its attention to a reality of which it was otherwise unaware, in Grosseteste's words "waking it up" (expergefactid) and in William's "disturbing it" (exercitatio) from its sleep.3l The third of William's pathways to simple concepts per connexionem ~ referred to the discovery of middle terms for use in demonstration.52 William proposed this procedure to answer the question of the origin of habits of science. The idea was not that developing complex propositions of scientific knowledge departed from the procedures already outlined for simple cognition but rather that it built upon them, extending their reach.53 Once more, his position differed from Grosseteste's stricter Aristotelianism largely by being idiosyncratic in detail and more concerned with psychology than logic. William thought the origin of complex habits of mind could be traced back both to God as fountain of knowledge and to teaching and sensory experience here below (doctrina et experientia).34 God was also De unwerso II, 1, 15 (Mag. div., I, 822aG-H), which seems to give William's view despite the disclaimer in p. 822aF and which is also more evidently influenced by his idiosyncratic notion of individuation. 49 In addition to the passage cited above, n. 46, see also De unwerso II, 3, 21 (Mag. div., I, 1057aC-1057bA); and De amma III, 12; and VII, 1 (Mag. dw., II supp., 102a-103b and 203b). 50 Compare De unwerso II, 3, 21 (Mag. div., I, 1057aC-1057bA) with Comm. Post, an. I, 14 (p. 214, 11. 238-47). 51 See De unwerso II, 3, 19 (Mag. div., I, 105IbA); and the passage from Grosseteste cited above, n. 50. 52 See De anima VII, 8 (Mag. div., II supp., 213b). 53 See Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 112~25 and 251-86; and "Certitude of Induction," pp. 485-88; and for Grosseteste's argument, Comm. Post. an. II, 6 (p. 404, 11. 37-40; and 406, 11. 67-69). 54 De anima VII, 8 (Mag. div., II supp., 214a); and on teaching and experience alone, De Trimtate 15 (ed. Switalski, pp. 93-94, 11. 21-27; and 95, 11. 54-64).
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source for the habits of the revealed, contemplative sciences; experience of sensibles source for all the rest.35 To defend the role of earthly experience at the origin of the mundane sciences, William pointedly referred to the opening passage of Aristotle's Metaphysics, on sense, memory and experience, the same one associated above with Grosseteste's analysis of induction.56 For all his mention of God, therefore, William's position on the generation of scientific habits was congruent with that of his English contemporary and reliant primarily on Aristotle. He was even aware of the significant role induction would have to play.17 Analysis of both reference and origin of knowledge in Robert and William thus turns up occasional examples of Augustinian language but, with the exception of Grosseteste's De veritate, no sign of a place for divine illumination among normal processes of intellect. Yet there is a part of William's philosophy of mind that reserved a conspicuous role for God in the origin of ordinary human cognition, and it would find considerable resonance in doctrines of Augustinians later in the century. This piece of William's thought has to do with the provenance of a special set of terms. In part 6 of Chapter 7 of De anima William asked where scientific principles were located - by which he meant to include the question, where human knowledge of them came from and how it was that they were eternally true — that is, immutable.58 After disposing of the latter issue in the manner discussed in the next chapter, he turned to the former, making it clear that the fundamental problem had to do not with principles themselves as complex logical entities but rather with the simple concepts or terms of which they were composed. His attention focused especially on the intelligible forms by which these simple terms were known: Since it is not possible for mind to understand without a phantasm and I mean without a mental sign or intelligible form . . . it is necessary that intelligible signs or forms be in the understanding intellect."9
" De anima VII, 9 (Mag. div., II supp., 216b). j6 Ibid, and above, n. 43. " This is the implication of De anima VII, 8 (Mag. div., II supp., 214a). 58 De anima VII, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 21 la). °9 Ibid. "Quoniam autem non est possibile animam intelligere sine phantasmate, et intendo sine signo vel forma intelligibili . . . necesse est apud intellectum intelligentem esse signa intelligibilia seu formas antedictas."
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So far as theory of mind was concerned, the question of the origin of knowledge of the principles of science reduced to the question of the origin in mind of certain simple intelligible forms. Simply put: "Where did those signs or forms come from into intellect?"60 Since principles themselves, mere logical entities, could not give intelligible forms to mind, they must have come from some other thing or things. Plato said they were derived from universals in a separate world, but William had already discredited this view. Aristotle, realizing that they had to come from a particular - that is, real source, devised his notion of agent intellect, an intelligence full of forms with direct access to human mind. But this view, too, had been categorically rejected by William.61 As might be expected, William's solution was that the intelligible forms serving as building blocks for principal cognition came directly from the singular objects of knowledge. And it is already clear in part what this would entail: going back to William's idea of knowledge from the sensible world, more specifically to the three ways he said simple knowledge originated out of mind's contact with worldly, exterior things.62 Yet that was not all. Turning to a favorite topos situating human mind on the boundary between the earthly and the divine, he noted that God, too, was source of some of the primary simple intelligibles that found their way into intellect. According to Christian doctrine . . . one must maintain that the human soul is naturally constituted and ordered, as it were, on the border of two worlds. One of these is the world of sensibles, to which it is intimately joined by the body. The other is the Creator himself.63
With these words, William opened the door to divine illumination in all its Augustinian splendor. God, as source of some intelligible forms, was a light shining on mind and illuminating its knowledge. Even more, he was a mirror full of forms and a living book or, to 60
Ibid. ". . . unde ilia signa seu formae venerunt in intellectum." On these rejected answers, see De anima VII, 6 (2lib). 62 This is the view expounded in the passage cited above, n. 46. It should be noted that it was indeed expounded as part of William's answer to the problem of the origin of knowledge of principles. 63 De anima VII, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 2lib): "Secundum doctrinam autem christianorum . . . ponendum est animam humanam velut in horizonte duorum mundorum naturaliter esse constitutam, et ordinatam. Et alter mundorum est ei mundus sensibilium cui conjunctissima est per corpus: alter vero creator ipse est in semsetipso. . . ." On the image of human mind set between two worlds, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 34-35. 61
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switch metaphors, that which impressed forms in intellect and wrote intelligible signs upon it.64 Coming as it does right after consideration of Aristotle's agent intellect, William's characterization of God as giver of forms brings to mind the Avicennizing Augustinianism Gilson associated with him. One of William's expositions of Aristotle on agent intellect even made use of precisely the language applied here to God, down to the very images of a book and a mirror of forms.65 Despite his professed rejection of anything smacking of Avicenna's - or what he took to be Aristotle's - views on the higher source of human intellection and his refusal to tolerate use of the term "agent intellect," it would seem that, in the case of the special intelligible forms at issue here, William indeed conceived of God along the lines of Avicenna's knowledgeproducing intelligence. There was a kernal of truth after all in Bacon's identification of his own position on the agent with William's. Yet how one labels William's position on God as giver of forms - whether Avicennizing Augustinian or Baconian - is of secondary importance. The crucial question to ask is: To exactly what principles, and thus what intelligible forms, did he intend the illumination to apply? William himself listed the types of principle he had in mind. They were: All the rules of truth — that is, the rules [that are] first and known per se - also the rules of right living, and finally a whole universe of hidden truths, to which no created intellect can attain without the free gift of divine revelation.66
The second and third types can be disregarded; they concern moral precepts and divine perhaps also magical ~ mysteries, the latter 64 See De anima VII, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 2lib). For example: "Ex [creatore] igitur tanquam ex libro vivo, et speculo formifico legit [intellectus] per semetipsum duo ilia genera regularum, atque principiorum . . . ab illo igitur fiunt impressiones de quibus agitur, et inscriptiones signorum antedictorum in virtute nostra intellectiva. . . . " 65 See De universo II, 1, 17 (Mag. div., I, 823bD-824aE): "Quapropter ipse [i.e. intellectus agens secundum Aristotelem] est rerum omnium . . . liber, in quo est eas legere modo, quem dicam. Et ut dixi, speculum mundum, in quo lucidissime resultant omnia ilia." w> De anima VII, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 2lib): ". .. omnes regulae veritatis, regulae inquam primae, ac per se notae: similiter ac regulae honestatis, nee non et universitas absconditorum scibilium, ad quae non attingit intellectus creatus, nisi dono et gratia revelationis divinae." On this passage, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 107-10.
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not a component of normal human cognition and the former not speculative but rather practical principles, thus outside the scope of this inquiry. That leaves the rules of truth, which, as the name indicates, must have been propositions of an extremely basic sort. But among basic propositions, which ones was William thinking of? He never explicitly answered this question himself, but a response can reliably be fashioned for him by looking again at what he had to say about reference of terms. In arguing against Plato William had maintained that the simple truth of things — their essence had to be located in the world and the reference of simple terms attached directly and exclusively to created essence - or its accidents. Yet it must now be noted that he allowed for a significant exception to this referential rule. According to the fifth of his six definitions of truth, God alone was true, all else falsehood.67 For the most part this definition functioned to preserve the rhetoric of homiletics and had little to do with philosophical analysis of normal language or knowledge, but there was everyday speech for which the fifth definition of truth had greater relevance. William admitted that some special predicates or names (praedicationes, nomina, nominationes} referred at bottom even in quite normal discourse to God's magnificence, providence or glory, so that they signified God as their proper object more than they signified any of his creatures.68 This meant that technically speaking the legitimate reference of these terms, no matter how employed, was not to something in the world but to God himself. When such terms were used in conversation to refer to creatures or their effects, they were being taken equivocally or, one might say, according to a secondary or secundum quid signification.69
h/
De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 794bG-H), from the passage cited above, Ch. 1, n. 4. 68 De universo II, 1, 33 (Mag. div., I, 834aF-G). 69 De universo II, 1, 33 (Mag. div., I, 834bG-H): "Nomen igitur potentiae vera impositione, et propria significatione non nominal, nisi potentiam puram usquequaque ab impotentia, et eidem omnino immixtam. . . . Manifestum igitur est ex his, et per haec, quia verae, et propriae significationes hujusmodi praedicationum soli creatori conveniunt, aliis autem non applicantur, nisi aequivoce, et secundum quid, vel ad aliquid, vel qualiqualem, et longissime distantem a creatore similitudinem. Quantum igitur ad hujusmodi nominationes, et denominationes, veritates (ut ita dicatur) sunt apud creatorem. In creatura autem solae similitudines hujusmodi veritatum. . . ." See also the passage quoted below, n. 72, and De universo II, 1, 37 (Mag. div., I, 837bD).
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In short, though for the majority of concepts and terms known to human mind, objective truth was to be explained according to William's primary theory of reference as pointing to the world, there were concepts and terms, even if only a few, whose truth was God, or in God. Here the typical referential scheme was reversed: these terms properly picked out the divinity as object, worldly things only by similitude.70 Examples included "power" and "powerful," "being" (ens and entitas), "truth" and "true," "goodness" and "good," "beauty," "wisdom," "height" and "nobility" and their adjectival forms, as well as "king" and "lord."71 All such terms, when taken in a pure sense, referred only to God or his attributes, the mixed motives of speech being what permitted them to be used less authentically to speak about objects in the world.72 This special set of terms comprised a most significant class for theory of science. Although words like "king" and "lord" may be taken as anomalies — evidence, perhaps, of theoretical exuberance on William's part - the others were for the most part what were beginning to be called transcendentals, or what Henry of Ghent later referred to as first intentions.73 They were terms so basic that they applied before any of the categories of thought - Aristotle's categories but also the more basic division into "created" and "Creator." For this reason they were by necessity the very first terms known and, consequently, the first to be combined into propositions. The most basic propositions, the most general principles of all knowledge, were made up of them. The propositions for whose terms the proper object lay in God were therefore none other than the common principles of science, 70
De universo II, 1, 34 (Mag. div., I, 835bB, and also 835aB). De universo II, 1, 33 and 37 (Mag. div., I, 834bH and 837bB). De universo II, 1, 37 (Mag. div., I, 837bA-B): "lam vero dixi tibi in eis quae praecesserunt, quod nominationes quaedam secundum veritatem exactissimam, et positionem nominum primitivam proprie conveniunt creatori. Communicant tamen hujusmodi nominationes vel omnibus, vel aliquibus ex creaturis. Sicut est ens, esse, potens . . . et his similia, quae secundum depuratam, et immixtam contrario per omnia veritatem, soli conveniunt creatori. Verum communicantur aliis per quandam (licet longe distantem) similitudinem. . . . [C]um depuraveris, et a contrariis usque ad purum removeris intentiones eorum, invenies ea esse nomina solius creatoris. . . ." 73 On early use of the word "transcendental" to describe these terms - perhaps first appearing in the works of Roland of Cremona - see Allan B. Wolter, The Transcendentals and their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1946), pp. 1-2. 71
72
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those privileged elements of complex cognition in the Aristotelian epistemological scheme which William called first impressions or first principles of philosophy.74 Among them most fundamental of all were the logical principles of noncontradiction and of excluded middle, but there were many others, such as: The whole is greater than any of its parts.70 All were fashioned from words like "true," "good," "whole," simple yardsticks against which all other knowledge had to be measured. It was plainly propositions like these, the principles of scientific thought, to which William was referring when he said that the rules of truth were impressed on mind by God himself. Once this is clear, much of what William asserted elsewhere about common principles of science, his first impressions, makes more sense. He had insisted that human mind not only could not reject the truth of such principles but also could not be ignorant of them, the reason being that they were so close to mind that they impressed themselves on it.76 It is now evident such language alluded to the fact that the terms for these principles came directly from God, by his omnipotence always present to intellect and more intimate to it than any other object.77 Gods's continual, unobstructable revelation at the heart of intellect meant that the mind's eye could never be closed to them. For the same reason principles constructed of such terms were as if innate to mind.78 They could even be called "natural" not in the sense of arising from human nature or being inborn but because they came to consciousness from within, not from outside by teaching or experience as with most normal cognition.79 The Augustinian inflection of such language is striking. Grosseteste, too, believed there was something extraordinary about the origin of knowledge of the first principles of science, something special about how the terms of which they were composed came to be known. In his lexicon a complex object of cognition whose truth was known as soon as mind grasped the meaning of its terms was 74
See above, Ch. 1, n. 52. He also used the phrase "principia prima disciplinalia aut doctrinalia" (De virtutibus 9 [Mag. diu., I, 124b]). ?D See, for example, De anima V, 15 (Mag. div., II supp., 137a). 76 De universo II, 2, 49 (Mag. div., I, 891aA). See also De anima I, 3 (Mag. div., II supp., 66b); and De virtutibus 9 (Mag. div., I, 120a). 77 On God as close to mind, see De anima VII, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 2 l i b ) . 78 De anima V, 15 (Mag. div., II supp., 137a): "Per semetipsas enim [impressiones primae] animae humanae se offerunt, et ingerunt ac si innatae vel naturaliter inditae eisdem essent. . . ." 79 De virtutibus 9 (Mag. div., I, 124a-b).
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by definition immediate (per se visibile), which is what made it a principle, a proposition grasped by the Aristotelian nous or intellectus. Yet not all principles were constituted by terms immediate themselves.80 For most the proper principles of a science, for instance — knowledge of terms had to be arrived at by analyzing or dividing the data of experience. Only a limited number of principles was composed of terms conceived by all minds without any inference and no more experience than simply the act of thinking. They were the same principles William had singled out as fashioned from terms supplied by God, and their terms signified the same concepts, most fundamental of all.81 Yet for Grosseteste there was no special impression of these terms on the mind, no illumination from God. Knowledge of them arose from mind's confrontation with the world; it was just that there was no mediating discursive process by which they came to be formed. Thus even here Grosseteste's view of the origin of knowledge was free from the influence of Augustinian illumination. He likewise rejected the theory of reference upon which William's single concession to illuminationism was founded. There were, to Grosseteste's way of thinking, no terms predicated in quid that could be referred to God according to their first, or proper, signification. Every term was predicated of God by figure or similitude.82 William's theory of reference for the most general simple terms would have threatened, for Grosseteste, the very transcendence of God. But if William and Robert diverged on referential conditions of the basic terms of human knowledge and on their noetic significance as concerns divine illumination, there is one aspect of their views on the reference and origin of such terms where they appear to have found common ground. Although only a minor facet of either scholastic's philosophy, this area of agreement bears looking at, for it touches on a theme of considerable importance for the future. 80
See Comm. Post. an. I, 19 (p. 279, 11. 38-42). Refer to Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 270-71. 82 See Grosseteste's Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy, c. 9 (in Ruello, "La divinorum nominum reseratio," p. 194): "Nee est nomen aliquod quod ipsam divinitatis essentiam primo et proximo pure et precise significet, ut aiunt quidam qui de divinis nominibus tractant. . . . Nomina igitur in quid predicata, si dicantur de Deo, non attribuunt ei suum primum et immediatum significatum, quia sic esset sermo impossibilis, sed attribuunt ei quod est in ipso manifestatum aliquo modo per immediatum significatum, sicut figura pedis imprimentis vestigium manifestatur per vestigium." 81
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It has already been noted that "being" (ens, esse) was among the special terms first known and basic to the construction of scientific thought, because of course, according to William, "being" was, like all the others, predicated primarily and essentially of God, only accidentally of all creatures.83 However "being" was also unique. It was, in William's words, predicated of creatures not only accidentally but also by participation (secundum participationem).84 Though the same could perhaps have been said of the other terms, William explicitly connected participation with "being" alone, and the reason might have been that "being" was by tradition more intimately tied to God than any other term. At least since Boethius, Latin speculation about God had conceded that the most apt description of the divinity was as "being." Had not God himself revealed his nature to Moses as "I am"?85 William was surely drawing on this tradition when he commented that it was as "being" (ens), and only as "being," that God impressed himself per se on human intellect. All other terms referring to God, apparently even those other terms originating in mind directly by divine light, were not so primary or privileged a means of knowing the divinity in itself.86 In large part, Grosseteste agreed. God was, before all else, called "being," a word suiting him best simply because it was most general and comprehensive of all simple terms.87 Of course, where for William knowledge of God as "being" was impressed on mind by God himself, for Grosseteste - at least Grosseteste in the later works - no such special divine impression was implied. But more important, for neither philosopher did the fact that "being" was a primary and basic predicate for both God and creatures mean that it was 83
De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. din., I, 794bH): ". . . esse quod praedicatur per hoc verbum est, hoc est, esse, quo unumquodque est, hoc inquam esse, de unoquoque aliorum dicitur accidentaliter, sive secundum participationem. De solo autem creatore dicitur essentialiter, sive secundum essentiam, aut secundum substantiam." 84 Ibid. 85 Exodus 3, 14. 86 De Trinitate 4 (ed. Switalski, pp. 33-34, 11. 99-4): "Per viam igitur intellectus non est [ens primum] natum cognosci, nisi per se. . . . Igitur ipsum per se impressum est intellectui nostro, in quantum ens; in quantum autem Deus et Dominus, non est ex primis impressionibus. . . . " It is, admittedly, not easy to reconcile this passage with the discussion of such terms as "dominus" in De universo II, 1, 37 (Mag. div., I, 837bB-D). 8/ See the commentary on the Divine Names, c. 1 (ed. Ruello, p. 165): ". . . primo dicitur [Deus] ens. quia ante hanc nominationem generaliter omnia continentem non potest esse altera prior. . . ." Also see Hexaemeron IV, 1, 1 (p. 121, 11. 25-27).
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not radically different as used to refer to its two widely divergent kinds of object. As Grosseteste made clear, God had nothing really in common with any of his creatures.88 Consequently, the term "being" as predicated of God was not univocal with its homonym as predicated of anything else.89 William insisted on the same point. There was no univocity, only equivocation, between terms applied to God and terms applied to creation.90 "Being" might be transcendent, but as such it was not univocal. Given both scholastics' general ideas about cognition and reference, the philosophical implications of these views on knowledge and naming of God can hardly be exaggerated. Because of the connection between God and "being," human knowledge of the divinity fell into the same theoretical basket as knowledge of the most basic terms of science and logic. The philosophical problem of knowing God was thus interlaced with the noetics and epistemology of common principles and the terms of which they were constituted, and theological or religious implications were, perhaps implausibly but nonetheless by necessity, inserted into the foundational doctrines of William's and Robert's theories of knowledge. For the early Grosseteste, moreover, this portentous aspect of his philosophy took on an even more dramatic cast. His views on knowledge of God as "being," as reported in De veritate, spilled over almost into ontologism, yielding a vision of the primitive opening of the mind onto God that even William, with his theory of impressed basic terms, could not match. The occasion for Grosseteste's remarks was mention of the association in Augustine's Soliloquies of truth and id
88
See "Ecclesia sancta," n. 4 (in McEvoy, "Robert Grosseteste's Theory of Human Nature," p. 171): "Deus autem supremus est entium, et superens, et cum nullo habens aliquid commune;" and also n. 89, below. 89 Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy, c. 2 (in Ruello, "La divinorum nominum reseratio" p. 194): "Sciendum autem quod nihil essentiale seu substantiale habet Deus commune cum aliquo. Unde nee univocari potest cum aliquo sub nomine essentiam demonstrante. Quapropter omne nomen dictum de aliquo alio essentialiter, in eadem significatione de ipsa thearchia non dicitur." 90 De universo II, 1, 34 (Mag. div., I, 835bC): "Et hoc apparet ex ipsa communicatione, seu communione nominationum, communione inquam, qualem dixi tibi, quae revera aequivocationis est, et non univocationis, hoc est, unius ratlonis apud nos, similitudo vero sola apud creatorem." Also De universo II, 1, 37 (Mag. div., I, 837bD): "Manifestum igitur est tibi, quia hujusmodi nominationes non communicantur creaturis secundum intentiones depuratas, quibus appropriantur creatori, et propter hoc non univoce, sed aequivoce, et distantissima similitudine." Finally, see the passage quoted above, n. 69.
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quod est.91 As noted before, this prompted him to propose a definition of truth otherwise anomalous in De veritate, equating it with being.92 If truth (veritas) and being (esse) were the same, was it not reasonable to suppose that just as no truth was seen except in light of First Truth, so no being was seen except in Supreme Being?93 Did it not make sense, in short, to extend the model of divine illumination, originally crafted to explain knowledge of truth, to knowledge of being as well? Grosseteste answered that it did, defending his claim by pointing out that God was ontological foundation for all being, which, were divine support withdrawn, would flow back into nothingness as quickly as water flowed back into shapelessness when poured from a container.94 The inevitable conclusion was that no created being could be known unless mind perceived it as existentially supported by God.93 Moreover, this line of reasoning not only justified transfer of the image of illumination to cognition of being; it also suggested that the Anselmian notion of comparative judgment to know the truth was equally apropos. Just as seeing truth entailed making a comparison between creature and ideal, so seeing created being required perceiving it "in comparison to First Being."96 In sum, all knowledge of created objects implicated a fundamental knowledge of God. Grosseteste's only concession was that, just as in the case of knowing truth, not everyone realized how in grasping the lower object one also grasped the higher.97 For both thinkers, therefore, the accounting for knowledge of the most basic elements of thought and especially for Grosseteste in 91
See above, Ch. 1, n. 16. See above, Ch. 1, n. 17. 95 De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 141, 11. 13-17): "Potest autem quaeri, cum idem sit veritas et esse . . . an sicut non videtur aliqua veritas, nisi in luce supremae veritatis, sic non videatur aliquid esse, nisi in ente supremo?" 94 De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 141, 11. 18-26). 95 Ibid. (p. 141, 1. 33-p. 142, 1. 1): "Nee scitur vere aliquid creatum esse, nisi in mente videatur ab aeterno Verbo supportari." % De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 142, 11. 1-5): "Et ita in omni esse, quod est adhaerere esse primo[,] videtur aliquo modo esse primum, licet etiam nesciat videns se videre esse primum, nee videtur esse posterius, nisi in comparatione eius ad esse primum, quod supportat illud." Also note the language of De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 141, 11. 26~32): "Cum igitur [omnis creatura] non ex se sit, sed in se solum consideratum, invenitur labile in non-esse: ubi vel quomodo videbitur, quod sit, nisi in coaptatione ad illud, quod supportat ipsam ne fluat in non-esse et in conspectione, quod hoc supportatur ab illo?" 97 See both passages quoted above, n. 96. 92
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De veritate, investigation of "being," first among them — resonated with the harmonies of Augustinianism, even if Augustine's images had to be applied uncharacteristically to noetic processes other than attaining certitude of truth. Despite the fact that most of what Robert and William had to say about reference and origin of human cognition made the model of divine illumination appear irrelevant for a philosophy of knowledge in the present life, on these issues Augustinian metaphors and ideas reappeared with a clarity and intensity for which the rest of their noetics leaves us unprepared. More important, the references to a divine role in human cognition at such critical junctures were to echo powerfully in the decades that followed. They must be kept in mind as one examines Augustinian views on knowledge over the next seventy-five years.
CHAPTER THREE KNOWLEDGE OF IMMUTABLE TRUTH
Third among the problem areas implicated in divine illumination in the thirteenth century was the question of immutably true propositions, or more specifically the ontological underpinnings of immutable truth. Neither William nor Robert, except in his early work, resorted to illuminationist doctrine to resolve the philosophical issues raised by the phenomenon of such truth, their ideas on the matter instead veering far from the purportedly Augustinian perspective. Yet the place reserved by accounts of illumination later in the century for discussion of immutability of truth argues for examining these two early scholastics on the topic all the same. Their resistance to making room here for God in the business of human cognition casts into relief efforts of later Augustinians to take an illuminationist approach to the same concerns. The way the question of immutable truth arose among scholastics highlighted metaphysical concerns. Since the truth-value of most propositions, such as the sentence: "It is raining," varied with conditions of time and place, the transience of creaturely existence appeared to be adequately reflected in the terms of understanding. Yet there were propositions whose truth-value was unchanging, among them the most fundamental objects of complex knowledge: basic truths of logic, truths of mathematics, indeed the most general principles in any field of thought. For thinkers in the thirteenth century it seemed natural to say that these propositions, like "The whole is greater than any of its parts," were forever true. Throughout most of the preceding history of philosophy, indeed, they had been described as instances of "eternal truth." Such language plainly invited the assumption that special ontological circumstances were wrapped up in the conditions ensuring their truth. To Christians, of course, mention of eternity pointed in one direction, since God alone was eternal, all other things created in time and destined to pass away. It is hardly surprising therefore that immutable truth was thought to implicate God. Somehow, divinity must have grounded the logical status of these special propositions,
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perhaps being even directly involved in the way they were known to be true. The idea naturally encouraged a turn to the philosophical terrain of divine illumination. Grosseteste's De veritate provides a case in point. The body of this primitive scholastic question deals with truth in simple cognition, but towards the end it turns to complex objects of mind, or what Grosseteste called oratioms enuntiativae, whose truth he had defined at the outset as the adequation or correspondence of utterance and reality (adaequatio sermonis et rei).1 Taking a cue from Augustine's De libero arbitrio, he noted that the truth of mathematical propositions appeared to be eternal. The same could be said for conditional truths, where the circumstances for truth were specified in the proposition itself, as well as statements negating existence of a created object — for instance: "The world does not exist." The latter were after all true without beginning (sine initio) before Creation, and thus never-ending at one end of time. In each of these cases the conformity of reality — what Grosseteste here called the enuntiabile — to utterance apparently persisted for eternity.2 If this was so, of course, the problem was to explain just what was eternal. Since there were many eternal truths, there must be many eternal conformities of utterance to reality. But this implied that there were many eternal things. How was one to reconcile such a conclusion with the Christian doctrine that only God was eternal?3 Grosseteste proposed referring the eternity of eternal truths back to the existence of God. There were, to his mind, two ways this could be done.4 One might concede that the correspondence constituting truth was the sort of passive relation (conelatio as passio] not requiring the existence of both related terms. For example, Caesar or Socrates could be praised for all eternity, supposing an eternal being to do the praising, even though neither Caesar nor Socrates existed any more than a limited number of years. In the same way,
1
De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 134, 11. 17-21). See above, Ch. 1, n. 7. De mutate (Phil. Werke, p. 139, 1. 29-p. 140, 1. 3). In De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 132, 11. 22-28), Grosseteste had quoted Augustine's De libero arbitrio II, 83 (ed. William M. Green, CSEL, 74 [Vienna, 1956], p. 57) to the effect that "Seven and three are ten" was true not only now but forever, thus eternally. On the use of "enuntiabile" in the sense noted here, see also below, n. 18. 3 See De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 140, 11. 3-12). 4 De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 140, 1. 13-p. 141, 1. 13), repeated verbatim in Grosseteste's own De libero arbitrio (Phil. Werke, p. 190, 1. 23-p. 191, 1. 31). 2
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something might be eternally true simply because God knew it as such, not because anything existed outside God to which truth could be referred. Truth relations might thus be labeled eternal not on the basis of the reality side of the correspondence but just on that of an eternal utterance (dictio) of truth in the knowing mind of God.3 On the other hand, one might take the reality side of the correspondence to be sufficiently accounted for by "eternal reasons of things in the mind of God."6 In this case, the eternal correspondence of truth would lie between ideas in God's mind, as formal basis for the real condition, and a truth-declaring utterance in God's Word. Again the ontological reality would be reduced to God's existence alone, this time not by dismissing the metaphysical status of the referent but by identifying it, just like the utterance, with God. By either understanding, the ontological problems posed by immutable truth were settled simply by regarding God as ultimate and eternal existential foundation. Alluding to Augustine as authority for this point of view furthermore meant that Grosseteste's readers would likely interpret his position in light of all he had said about divine illumination. Despite the absence of any comment on how the metaphysics of eternal truth related to the process by which such truths were grasped by human intellect, he had practically ensured that the issue of immutable truth would reinforce the illuminationist presumption that God certified human knowledge. When one turns from Grosseteste to William of Auvergne's handling of the same issue, one is struck at first by the similarity in the way the problem is set up and in the use of language - terms like correspondence, enuntiabilia and even passiones. Yet it does not take long to see that William's solution was radically different. He examined the matter in De universo, following extended discussion of how God's word could be true and unchanging even with regard to contingent and changeable events.7 After tackling this dilemma with only 5
De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 141, 11. 2-10): "Similiter igitur cum dicitur 'hoc verum aeternum est aut enuntiabile aeternum est,' suscipitur praedicatio haec propter formam correlativam dictioni in aeterno Verbo; propter quam tamen relationem nihil exigitur extra Deum esse." Again Grosseteste was using "enuntiabile" to refer to the referential side of the truth relation, although whether he meant a physical reality or some more tenuous logical entity, like the proposition, is unclear. See above, n. 2. b De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 141, 11. 11-12): ". . . aut cogemur fateri, enuntiabilia nihil aliud esse, quam rationes aeternas rerum in mente divina." Once more we must take "enuntiabile" in the sense remarked above, n. 2. 7 The analysis covers six pages, De universo I, 3, 25-26 (Mag. div., I, 792bG-796aF), and is summarized and referred to in De anima VII, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 21 la).
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modest success, he announced that its solution was in fact corollary to that of a much larger problem concerning eternal truth in general. The question arose with respect to a special set of enuntiabilia. The term, of course, was the same as Grosseteste's in his own discussion, but probably closer to the usage already established by twelfth-century logicians as standing for the primary bearer of truth, in modern parlance, the proposition.8 There could be no doubt, William asserted, that some enuntiabilia were eternally true. Most obvious were the necessary truths of science and many future contingents, but there were countless others of which the same could be said. Examples included not only the two most basic rules of philosophy excluded middle and noncontradiction but also the geometrical theorem that the diameter of a square was incommensurate with any of its sides, the statement that it was not possible for man to be a jackass, the alternation: "Either Socrates disputes or he does not," and the affirmation that there is some truth.9 Given that these were all true, they had to be so either by a truth that existed and resided in them - whatever one decided enuntiabilia were — or not. If not, then they were true by a nonexistent truth, at least at first blush a highly implausible prospect. If by a truth that existed and resided in them, then they — whatever they were — had to exist, for otherwise they could not be subject to it.10 But since all these propositions were eternally true, the truth in them was eternal as wfell, and so they, too, as subject to truth had eternally to exist. Again there arose precisely the problem Grosseteste had faced in De ventate. Where was William to locate an ontological foundation that could be said to persist for eternity? He first considered a subject in the created world in which eternal truth could be eternally grounded, but here quickly ran up against the inevitable objection that the world was not eternal.11 There was 8 See Gabriel Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition (Amsterdam, 1973), pp. 149-56 and 160 61 on foundations in Abelard; pp. 169-70 and 170-73 for the term's actual appearance in other logical texts of the early twelfth century. '' For the first four, see De anima VII, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 21 la); for the last two, De universo I, 3, 25 (Mag. div., I, 794aG). 1(1 De universo I, 3, 25 (Mag. div., I, 792bG-H): ". . . enunciabilia fuerunt ab aeterno, et hoc per vias, quas ostendam tibi: aut enim vera fuerunt veritate, quae erat, et quae erat in eis, aut non: si sic, erat igitur veritas eorum, et erat in eis, erant igitur et ipsa, cum in non entibus nee veritas, nee aliud esse possit: si vero non erat veritas eorum, nee erat in eis, quomodo igitur vera erant ea veritate, quae nee erat, nee erat in eis?" 11 See De universo I, 3, 25 (Mag. div., I, 792bH-793aA).
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no real worldly object in which anything could be said eternally to reside. Perhaps, then, the ontological basis was God himself. There had been philosophers, said William, who claimed it was the First Truth by which all other truths, eternal ones included, were true. The idea was of course most famously associated with Anselm, but it was also precisely the position Grosseteste had defended in De veritate.12 Yet this, too, would not do. According to William, anyone taking such an answer seriously was an imbecile, maybe legitimately frustrated by the difficulty of explaining eternal truth but too blind to perceive the real solution.13 As he explained, those who maintained that all other truths were true by the First Truth interpreted this either formally - in which case God himself was somehow implicated or resident in the truth of all things — or efficiently — in which case a divine effect or influence, perhaps God's light, shone on things and provided the foundation for their truth.14 Either way the philosophical obstacles were insurmountable. The "formal" route, taking God himself as somehow in the truth of things, implicated the divinity in a host of absurdities and improprieties, none of which was worth a moment's consideration. But the "efficient" tack, assuming that it was God's influence or light that was in truth, was deficient as well. Whether this influence were seen as falling on the objects of knowledge or on the utterances by which truth was announced, at some point in eternity it would have to settle on or in something that did not exist, an obvious impossibility.15 From the bankruptcy of the two common approaches - seeking an ontological foundation for eternal truth either in the world or in n
For Anselm, see De veritate 1, 10 and 13 (in Opera omnia, ed. Francis S. Schmitt, I, 33, 176, 190 and 196-99 [Edinburgh, 1946]). 13 De universo I, 3, 25 (Mag. div., I, 793aA): "Exagitati quidam vel his, vel similibus rationibus, et imbecillitate intellectus deficientes ab inventione veritatis, et ejusdem januam tanquam caeci, et errabundi non invenientes, dixerunt primarn veritatem esse, qua vera sunt omnia hujusmodi." 14 De universo I, 3, 25 (Mag. div., I, 793aB): ". . . aut enim intelligunt, quod prima veritate vera sunt omnia hujusmodi formaliter, aut effective, quod est dicere, quoniam aut intelligunt, quod per hoc nomen, vera, praedicetur prima veritas, quae non est nisi creator benedictus, et tune ponent earn ex necessitate in omni vero, aut intelligunt, quod per hoc nomen, vera, praedicetur quidam effectus primae veritatis cadens super omnia vera, quemadmodum lumen sparsum a Sole super omnia illuminata ab ipso." On p. 793bD William said this light could also be said to represent an influence (influentid) from God. 1;> William's arguments occupy the rest of De universo I, 3, 25 (Mag. div., I. 793aB794bE).
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God ^ William turned to his own solution. Of the six ways to define truth laid out in a passage already referred to above, the sixth alone, for truth of a proposition, was appropriate to the matter at hand.16 And this definition was none other than the scholastic standard derived from Avicenna and accepted by Grosseteste as well: the adequation or correspondence of utterance and reality." William's words here were "adequatio orationis et rerum," but there was other language he also used for either term of the correspondence. On the side of utterance lay enuntiatio and the exclusive pair, qffirmatio et negatio, on the side of reality the pair, compositioms et divisiones renim, but also enuntiabile, enuntiatum and significatum.^8 The significance of this definition was that it established truth as a relation.19 For William, the bare fact of a relationship made no demand on the status of the related extremes.20 There could thus be a relation, comparison or correspondence without the actual existence of at least one of the terms to which it applied. And this was possible because some relations, such as love, apprehension, desire or even truth, had to do with "passive predication," the description of objects not according to what they were but according to a quality relating back to them from without.21 The idea was identical, of course, with that of Grosseteste's passive relations (passiones), and like
"' The six are presented in De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 794bE—795aB). See above, Ch. 1, n. 4. '' See above, Ch. 1, nn. 7 and 59. It is worth quoting William (De universo I, 3, 26 [Mag. div., I, 795aA-B): "Sexta vero intentio veri, et veritatis, qua vera dicuntur enunciata et verae enunciationes, et hoc, ait Avicenna, est adaequatio orationis, et rerum. . . ." 18 For equivalents to oratio, see the passage cited above, n. 16; and several instances throughout De universo I, 3, 26, especially Alag. div., I, 795a. For enuntiabile, see De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795aC and 795bD); for enuntiatum, n. 17 above and the same part of De universo, p. 795bC; and for significatum, De universo I, 3, 25 and 26 (Mag. div., I, 793bA and 795bC). In De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795aC), William offered an alternative version of the classic definition: convenientia vel concordia enunciabilis et enundationis. 19 De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795aC): "Unde manifestum est, quod veritas, et falsitas secundum intentiones istas, velut respectus sunt, aut comparationes . . . sive relationes. . . ." 20 De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795aD): ". . . quia comparationes, et relationes nee addunt, nee minuunt rebus in semetipsis, nee ponunt aliquid in illis, neque comparatum, aut relatum, per hoc, quod est comparatum, aut relatum, habet aliquid in se, sed habet aliquid ad se, vel sibi." 21 De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795aD-795bA): "Et generaliter verum fest], quod demominationes passivae, sive praedicationes fiunt de rebus, in quibus non sunt, quoniam sunt in eas, vel ad eas, vel de eis."
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Grosseteste William thought such peculiar configurations of words and objects offered an escape from the metaphysical dilemmas of eternal truth. Yet the similarity between William's and Grosseteste's solution ends here. Where for Grosseteste passive relativity validated the idea that God provided ontological foundation for all eternal truths, even where the referent was something in the world, William wielded it to take a radical stand against any Augustinianism at all. He did so by referring the existential indefiniteness of passive predication not simply to one side of the truth relation but to both, referent and utterance as well. Truth as William described it was a privative relation (privatio).22 On the one hand this meant that a true assertion ~ just like the privative predications "nudity" and "blindness" did not so much make a positive statement about reality as refrain from saying anything wrong.23 The referential side of the correspondence - the res, enuntiatum or enuntiabile need not actually exist for truth to be said about it. But the same was true of the correspondence's other side, and one might posit true enuntiabilia even when no statements were actually being made about them, just so long as it was possible for a true affirmation to be put forth.24 One therefore did not have to implicate the Deity as existential base, even if only as source of an eternally true utterance.
" De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795bB): "Revertar igitur ad solvendas quaestiones, et argumentationes supra positas, et dicam, quia enunciabilia de future, ubi nee subjecta sunt, nee praedicata, praesentialiter vera sunt hujusmodi veritate, hoc est, convenientia, sive concordia, sive adaequatione, sive aequalitate, et dico multas convenientias, multasque hujusmodi comparationes nee esse aliquid in rebus, nee ponere aliquid in eis, et esse etiam pnvationes quasdam earum, vel dici secundurn privationes." 23 De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795bC): ". . . convenientia inter orationem, et ejus significatum vel privatio est, vel secundum privationem dicitur: sicut apparet ex ratione adaequationis, quae posita est videlicet quae non aliquid aut aliud aut aliter, nee plus, aut minus, quam ipsum enunciatum continet, hoc est, asserit, vel negat. . . . " 24 De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795bD): "Debes etiam scire, quod cum dicuntur enunciabilia vera esse, id est convenientia, sive adaequata, affirmationibus, aut negationibus suis, non intelligitur hoc, quod dicitur, de affirmationibus, et negationibus suis secundum actum, sed secundum potentiam, et hoc est dicere, quia non intendo affirmationibus, vel negationibus suis, quas praesentialiter habeant, hoc est, quibus praesentialiter, aut actualiter significentur, sed potius, quibus possibilia sunt affirmari, vel negari."
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If someone should want to remind us that all true affirmations and all true negations have been affirmed or denied from eternity by the divine Word . . . what he says would be true, but he would not thereby cut the knot of the question because he would not [really] be accounting for the truth of the kind of correspondence we have in mind.25
Maybe Grosseteste was not in William's sights when he wrote these words, but he could hardly have taken more direct aim at the solution Grosseteste's De veritate had proposed. In the end, Grosseteste simply had not taken the idea of passive relation far enough. The ontological indeterminateness of truth was not limited to one side of the correspondence but could be extended to both at once. In the most radical language imaginable for the early thirteenth century, William claimed that the problem was just not ontological; truth was a logical or rational matter and deserved an appropriately logical account.26 Nothing about the phenomenon of eternal truth forced a philosopher to have recourse to an eternal foundation in God or anywhere else.27 Indeed, one might legitimately speak of things true by a truth that did not actually exist.28 To hedge in the correspondence of truth with limitations of actual existence was a mistake. Divine illumination thus found no place in William's analysis of eternal truth because he had explicitly excluded God, or any other eternal actuality, from the correspondence by which things were eternally true. He had effectively decided that the matter of immutable truth was not about eternity at all. By the time of his Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, Grosseteste adopted a similar stance. Indeed in 25 De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795bD-796aE): "Si quis autem dicere voluerit, quoniam prirno verbo omnia affirmabilia vera, et omnia vera negabilia, affirrnata, et negata sunt ab aeterno . . . verum quidem dicet: sed non solvit nodurn quaestionis quoniam non exponit veritatem de hujusmodi convenientia, vel adaequatione. . . ." 26 De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 796aE): ". . . veritas hujusmodi, veritas rationalis, sive logica, [est], et convenientia enunciationum, quae non magis exigit res esse, quam non esse, et econverso, nee magis est ad entia, quam ad non entia." 27 De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795bD): "Non cogeris igitur per praedictas argumentationes dicere innumerabiles veritates, vel innumerabilia enunciabilia actu fuisse ab aeterno." 28 De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 795bC): ". . . nihil igitur prohibet . . . aliquid esse verum veritate, quae non est, sicut neque aliquid esse nudum nuditate, quae non est, et convenire non entia convenientia, quae non est. . . ." See also De universo I, 3, 26 (Mag. div., I, 796aE); and De anima VII, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 21 la): ". . . non est necesse omnem veritatem qua aliquid verum est vel in aliquo esse, vel etiam esse."
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this work he removed the problem of immutable truth so far from traditional Augustinian concerns that he did not even bother to attack the position locating such immutability in God. Grosseteste had not just caught up to William; he had openly abandoned the terms within which the problem had been conceived before. The issue arose where he was considering the nature of science, trying to determine the precise attributes of scientific propositions and proofs. The scope of his analysis was thus more circumscribed than William's, who tackled immutability as it attached to some kinds of contingent knowledge as well, but his formulation of the question revealed that his understanding had moved even farther ahead. He opened discussion by asking how universals were incorruptible.29 Incorruptibility of knowledge had been, of course, the elusive quality inspiring his own earlier examination of eternal truth and William's too, but the philosophical problem it generated emerged this time in strikingly different guise. First of all, Grosseteste turned his attention exclusively to issues of reference, leaving aside the status of language in which cognition was expressed. To be sure, he was no longer examining truth, by definition embracing both referent and utterance, but rather the simple universal, which had traditionally focused scrutiny simply on the objective basis for what was known. Yet his shift in approach was surely more telling than that. The general issue was still what it had been in De veritate and for William in De universo, how to explain the immutability of some kinds of understanding, and if that question had raised problems of both language and referent before, presumably it should again here. Perhaps Robert had been convinced by arguments like William's that the theoretical possibility of speech was sufficient to insure cognitive immutability. Maybe Aristotle's focus on the referential aspects of cognition influenced him. Whatever the reason, where in De veritate he had tried to show how eternal truth could be defended by looking to incorruptibility of assertions in the divine Word, here he dared explain cognitive immutability without so much as a glance at utterance. Secondly, the conceptualization of immutability was radically changed. The specific question in the Commentary concerned the incorruptibility of universals, and now there was no hint of the language 29
Comm. Post. an. I, 7 (p. 139, 1. 96): "Hie autem oritur questio quomodo universalia sunt incorruptibilia."
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in which such matters had traditionally been addressed. Grosseteste made it clear that incorruptibility placed on universals the philosophical requirement that they be perpetual (perpetud).50 The word "eternity" was not even mentioned. Simply put, immutability had become a temporal quality beginning when time began and terminating if time should ever end - with no implication of a divine mode of being.31 Grosseteste's question, therefore, was: How could universals, the objects of scientific knowledge, be said to remain unchanged and undiminished - immutable - for all of time? What ontological constraints did this place on the real objects to which the truths of science referred? This constituted a still formidable problem but much less likely than the question of eternal truth to implicate God. For Grosseteste of the Commentary, God was in fact not involved. He worked out his solution by dividing the question into two parts, each relevant to a different sort of complex knowledge. The first consisted of the conclusions of the higher sciences, those that were strictly speaking demonstrative — as mathematics always was and metaphysics would be for the beatified intellect. Most of the principles of other sciences, even those below mathematics, were probably also included here. The second sort was composed of the conclusions of sciences employing a more elastic standard of proof, most notably natural philosophy.32 For the first sort of knowledge, accounting for perpetuity of simple universals sufficed to ensure the same for scientific conclusions and principles themselves.33 Grosseteste's answer therefore simply entailed reviewing the possible ways to explain simple universal reference. He did so in the passage already examined about the five places to locate the immediate object of universal terms, passing from ideas in God's mind down to material accidents in the world.34 Perpetuity was obvious if one looked to the first three kinds of referent, but it was the last two sorts, or more accurately just the fourth of Grosseteste's types, which was important to explain. If universals as known by humans in this world were to be perpetual, it would 30
Comm. Post. an. I, 1 (p. 139, 11. 88-95). On this distinction, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 235-36. For fuller discussion of Grosseteste on these two groups, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 237-45. 33 This is implied in Comm. Post. an. I, 7 (p. 139, 11. 96-99). 34 See above, Ch. 2, n. 18. 31
32
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have to be because of a quality attributable to essential forms of things on earth. Grosseteste offered two explanations as to how this might be so.3° Although they can be taken as alternatives, they can also be thought of as complementary. The first required distinguishing a logical entity, immediate object of universal cognition, from the ultimate referent, a real form in the world. According to this scenario, the perpetuity of universals attached not to the real referent but only to the logical entity, untouched by the flux of earthly existence. This solution of course demanded a logical interpretation of universals, but given that, it sufficiently shielded universality from the corruption, and evident non-perpetuity, of sub-lunar creation.36 The second explanation tackled the problem at the level of real objects themselves, essential forms in actual existence. Here Grosseteste maintained that perpetuity was ensured by the unbroken succession of individuals throughout time. Thus, no specific set of individual referents for any universal was perpetual, but there was for every universal at any moment a set of such individuals to which it could be referred. The continuity of species was thus adequate to underwrite the incorruptibility of human science. Grosseteste even noted that variation of seasons contributed to this process, for though some species withered away in winter there was always a place in the world where weather was warm enough to sustain the fullness of natural life. For the second sort of knowledge, recourse to conditions of simple universal reference alone would not suffice. Many of the conclusions of natural science were made up of terms referring to objects themselves not simple things with easily locatable forms — such as horses, trees or even numbers like three and four - but elusive entities like a lunar eclipse, no one thing at all but rather a configuration among objects. The succession of individuals would not guarantee perpetuity for an eclipse, since most of the time there was no actual configuration to which the term "eclipse" could refer. Nor would it help to separate the logical aspect of universality from its real foundation, for, Grosseteste insisted, without at least some particular real referent, all universality would collapse.37 The temporal irregularities 35 Comm. Post. an. I, 7 (pp. 141-42, 11. 145-57). See analysis in Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 190-92. 36 For Grosseteste on the universal, see Marrone. New Ideas, pp. 184-85. 37 Comm. Post. an. I, 7 (pp. 143-44, 11. 189-94).
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of objects like an eclipse could apparently not be prevented from diminishing the incorruptibility of the universal term referring to them. To solve this dilemma Grosseteste had to advocate an even more radical solution to the problem of immutability. Again he offered two options, both of which he thought were consistent with Aristotle. The first attempted to relate the problem of perpetuity of knowledge in these lower sciences to that of the higher sciences discussed before. It pointed out that although the not-truly-simple object - in this instance, a lunar eclipse — did not have an existent particular referent at every moment, it could be reduced to the formal multiplicity of its causal components (rationes suae causales), each of which did have perpetual reference by means of a succession of individuals.38 I have argued elsewhere that these causal components were, in the last analysis, the individual forms of things that came together to comprise the non-simple objects of the natural sciences.39 Admittedly in the case at hand the components were the heavenly bodies accounting for an eclipse - earth, sun and moon - which were themselves perpetual without any succession, but this circumstance would not have applied to any science but astronomy. Grosseteste's second option brings his full audacity to the fore. Here alone he shifted attention away from qualities of the cognitive referent and towards conditions under which scientific knowledge was expressed: Perhaps one should hold that Aristotle did not intend to say that an eclipse always exists but rather that the conclusion in which [the cause of] an eclipse is demonstrated is a proposition true at any moment, whether there [actually] is an eclipse [at that moment] or not. . . . And this is what Aristotle meant — that is, that when it comes to demonstrating those things that occur with natural regularity, the conditions [must be stipulated] which [would make] such things true at any time.40
38
Comm. Post. an. I, 7 (p. 144, 11. 196-200). See Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 240-42. 4(1 Comm. Post. an. I, 7 (pp. 144-45, 11. 200-204 and 211-14): "Aut enim . . . dicendum est . . . quod Aristoteles non intendebat dicere quod eclipsis semper est, sed intendebat dicere quod conclusio in qua demonstratur eclipsis est proposido habens veritatem in omni hora sive eclipsis sit sive non sit. . . . Et hoc est quod intendit Aristoteles dicere, scilicet quod ea que frequenter fiunt secundum quod veniunt in demonstrationem veniunt cum conditonibus secundum quas recipiunt veritatem in omni hora." 39
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This is not the place to go deeply into Grosseteste's ideas. Simply put, he was saying that perpetuity of knowledge - he even used the word "truth" - in such cases depended on the possibility of making a demonstration accounting for the circumstances under which it would hold. In the instance of an eclipse, one would have to note that an eclipse occurred only when earth came directly between sun and moon. This made for more complicated discourse than talking about simple essences like horse or equilateral triangle, but it alone ensured that knowledge of ephemeral but regular phenomena was not subject to the vagaries of time and place. What is more, it made plainer than ever the logical nature of immutability in scientific thought, its only tenuous connection to issues of ontology. And it did so in a way sympathetic to the ideas of William but much more philosophically precise. Most interesting of all, it was a solution seized upon by leading thinkers later in the century and fruitful for speculation up into the modern world, grounding even Galileo's understanding of natural science.41 Clearly, both William and Robert felt free to abandon the Augustinian arena of divine illumination when it came to the problem of immutable truth, and both proved capable of dealing with universal knowledge and science without making reference to God or his eternity. They were able to do this largely because they saw fit to set such issues apart from the business of metaphysics, recognizing the power of logic alone to bring the problem down to size. Grosseteste even took the first steps towards hammering out details of a hypothetical science. On every count they were working with material that would be of great importance for future scholastics. Yet such ambitious proposals did not flow into the Augustinian current of their immediate successors. Here their influence wras limited to the general example of the philosophical issues they had identified and resolved in their own, radically non-Augustinian way.
41
These ideas were important for both Albert the Great and Aquinas, undergirding what was called ex suppositione demonstration. See Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 243-45, and especially the citations to the works of William A. Wallace given there, p. 245, n. 68.
CHAPTER FOUR
MIND'S ROAD TO GOD
Last of the ways illuminationist theory showed its face in the thirteenth century was as a reckoning of soul's intellectual opening onto God. On this matter William and Robert themselves drew little upon the literal image of divine light, their thoughts inspired instead by the hazier vision of an intellectual dynamic leading to spiritual encounter with the divinity. Yet their characterization of this dynamic, driven chiefly by a desire to relate mind's activities in the world to the ultimate aim of human intellection, generated philosophical strategies that would prove of considerable significance for illuminationism and the ideological perspective associated with it among Augustinians later in the century. What rendered William's and Robert's idea of a spiritual dynamic sweeping mind up to God so powerful an inspiration was the way it worked to retain an Augustinian flavor in their increasingly Aristotelianizing deliberations about worldly cognition. It served the purpose, whether consciously intended or not, of compensating for the imperfect assimilation of illuminative processes into their theory of knowledge. Pointing to the opposition in Grosseteste "between Augustinian and Aristotelian theories of knowledge," James McEvoy has suggested that the English scholastic endeavored to reconcile the two extremes by distinguishing between conditions of knowledge in this life and those in the life of glory.' Yet if either Robert or William hoped to preserve Augustine's notion of God's intimate presence at the foundation of human cognitive operations, they might well have been disappointed with the resultant disparity between normal acts of intellection in this life and those of humankind's predetermined end. It may have looked dishearteningly dubious that God had 1 McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 331-32, 329 and 338 (parallel passages in "La connaissance," pp. 21, 17-18 and 29). Of course, McEvoy followed this assertion with another, quite different proposal for reconciling the two tendencies, suggesting that Grosseteste held the doctrines of De veritate as allowing for both Aristotelian and Augustinian procedures of knowledge simultaneously in this life - see Robert Grosseteste, p. 340 ("La connaissance," p. 31).
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anything at all to do with cognition in the world. Little surprise a dynamic orienting sinful mind in direction of the divinity would have appeared attractive. Of course, the precedents for positing an incongruity between intellect's normal worldly actions and its divinely ordered potential reach far back in the philosophical tradition. In William and Robert the notion is linked to a well-worn image for describing the metaphysical - or more properly, cosmological - position of human mind. As William put it, the soul of each person had two intellectual faces insofar as it was situated on the border of two cognitive worlds. One of the worlds, inferior in excellence, was that of sensible substances, from which mind received knowledge of material reality in all its mutability and imperfection. The other, superior, was the realm of intelligible substances more brilliant than soul, and although angels and other intelligences were among this higher world's inhabitants, it was God that constituted its dominant light.2 By nature, therefore, human mind looked out on a dual intellectual field and was in theory free to receive knowledge from either one.3 Grosseteste, too, situated mind between higher substances, including God, and corporeal things below, holding it to be intellectually open to both. His distinction between wisdom (sapientia) and scientific knowledge depended on just such a noetic divide.4 A simple assertion that mind could learn directly from God as well as from the world below was perfectly compatible with Augustine, but neither Robert nor William believed things were actually so simple. In contrast to their Jewish and Arab sources for the image of a Janus-faced intellect, they, Latin thinkers in a hardbitten age, could not but feel that so rosy a picture misrepresented mind's powers in its earthly state.5 Each amplified the imperfection of knowledge from 2
De anima VII, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 2lib), already cited above, Ch. 2, n. 63. See also De anima V, 21; and VI, 33 (Mag. div., II supp., 146a and 193a); De universo II, 3, 20 and 21 (Mag. div., I, 1056aH and 1057aC); and De bono (ed. O'Donnell, p. 282). For the image of two faces, see De bono (p. 280). 3 William spoke of this original freedom of mind in De universo II, 3, 20 (Mag. div., I, 1056aH) and De anima VI, 33 (Mag. div., II supp., 193a). 4 The schema is laid out in "Ecclesia sancta celebrat" (in McEvoy, "Grosseteste's Theory of Human Nature," pp. 171-73, nn. 4-8); and more briefly in "Ex rerum initiatarum" (in Gieben, "Robert Grosseteste on Preaching," p. 121). Grosseteste also employed a version of the image of two faces - see J.T. Muckle, "The Hexameron of Robert Grosseteste. The First Twelve Chapters of Part Seven," MS 6 (1944): 154-55. 5 On these sources, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 34-35, nn. 2 and 3.
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mind's lower face, making it not just inferior to that from above but valueless and devaluing, dark source of a cognitive obscurity unbecoming intellect's ordained power.6 If for Grosseteste mind seeking understanding among objects in the world was instead punished with a proclivity for indiscriminate mixing of truth and falsehood, William went so far as to claim that philosophizing in the life of sin was the way not to truth but error, at each step of syllogistic argumentation lapsing into ever more imperfect comprehension.7 Each also drove a formidable barrier between processes of mind in the world, obsessed with its lower face, and the capacity for more perfect knowledge from above. In William's words: In the present life, soul is bent down and pulled toward sensible things, so that its intellective power is, so to speak, asleep, or rather dead and buried, so far as [higher and more] noble objects of intellection are concerned.8
Grosseteste's language was strikingly similar: Because the purity of soul's eye is clouded over and weighed down by the corrupted body, all powers of human rational soul are so possessed by body's mass that they cannot act, as if they were asleep.9
For both scholastics, therefore, the created powers of soul were neither fully available to it in the world nor worth much in their present state of decay. The wayfarer's mind had lost its natural access
'' See William, De bono (ed. O'Donnell, p. 280): "Quicquid autem est ei [i.e. animae] deorsum, hoc est infra se, tenebrae eidem est;" and (p. 281): "Necesse est a parte vero tenebrarum, quae infra ipsam [animam] est, nihil earn posse recipere quod non deturpat ejus essentiam; nihil decet earn de his quae infra ipsam. . . ." ' Grosseteste, "Ex rerum initiatarum" (in Gieben, p. 125); and William, De bono (ed. O'Donnell, p. 282). 8 William, De universo II, 3, 21 (marked as 20 in the text) (Mag. div., I, 1057bA): ". . . modo incurvatur [anima], et trahitur, ad sensibilia, et remanet virtus ejus intellectiva, quasi sopita, vel potius sepulta, quantum ad intelligibilia nobilia." See also the same place, p. 1057bB. " Comm. Post. an. I, 14 (pp. 213-14, 11. 235-38): ". . . quia puritas oculi anime per corpus corruptum obnubilata et aggravata est, omnes vires ipsius anime rationalis in homine nato occupate sunt per molem corporis, ne possint agere, et ita quodammodo sopite." In 1. 231 Grosseteste spoke of the "moles corporis corrupti" weighing down body, a phrase that reappears almost verbatim in his commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy, c. 4 (in Hyacinthe-Francois Dondaine, "L'objet et le 'medium,'" p. 124, 11. 18-20). See also Comm. Post. an. II, 6 (p. 406, 11. 71-72); and I, 17 (pp. 256-57, 11. 356-61), which adds that mind's eye was brought down not only by the mass of corrupted body but also by its own love for corporeal things (affectu rerum corporalium).
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to the higher light tying it most closely to God and divine things, and thus had to rest content with the feeble glow of sensibles in which it was mired.10 Even worldly comprehension was not what had been intended, with William noting that though mind was by nature capable of knowing sensible substance fully and directly, in this life it knew of sensibles only so much as could be gathered from sensory data, and Grosseteste agreeing that all mind's powers had been injured and turned from their proper course.11 Blame fell on body, in William's words a "noxious instrument" to which soul was tied, yet neither he nor Robert faulted body as such.12 Carefully distancing himself from what he labeled Plato's views imagining an irreconcilable opposition between body and soul, William went so far as to link this position with the heresy of the Cathars, both Plato and Cathars erroneously regarding body as punishment inflicted upon soul for sins committed in a pre-corporeal life.13 Not body per se but rather body as corrupted by sin led soul to its depressed state.14 The soul itself, by choosing to sin, brought on the cognitive limitations of its worldly life, and it was not release from body that would restore to mind its initial powers but rather the healing light of God's grace.10 Grosseteste even explained how original sin brought this to pass, corrupting will (qffectus anime] so that it was turned away from higher things and towards purely corporeal enticements. Since will and mind (aspectus anime) were bound together, perversion of will's interests carried mind along with it.16 10
William, De anima V, 18-19 (Mag. div., II supp., 143b-144a): " Quapropter a propria luce naturali, et intima destituta, mendicat [anima] lumina sensuum et rerum particularium sensibilium: propter eamdem adjuvari necesse habet, quemadmodum et nos destituti a luce solari, et lumine diei, lucernas nobis accendimus, etc." See also De universo II, 3, 20 (Mag. div., I, 1056aH): "Nunc autem non est ei [i.e. animae] liberum elevare se ad mundum superiorem, sive regionem illam, in statu miserae, et corruptionis istius. . . . " 11 For William, see De anima V, 18 (Mag. div., II supp., 143b); and De universo I, 3, 29; II, 2, 15; and II, 3, 21 (Mag. div., I, 802aG, 859aB-C, and 1057aC); for Grosseteste, "Ex rerum initiatarum" (in Gieben, p. 126). 12 See De anima V, 10 (Mag. div., II supp., 125b). 13 See De universo II, 3, 19 (Mag. div., I, 1051aA-B); and De anima V, 8 (Mag. div., II supp., 124b). 14 See language in passages cited above, nn. 9 and 10. 13 William, De anima VI, 12 (Mag. div.. II supp., 167a-b). See also De universo II, 3, 20 (Mag. div., I, 1056bF); and De anima VI, 33 (Mag. div., II supp., 193a). 16 Grosseteste, Comm. Post. an. I, 14 (pp. 215-16, 11. 279-86). William also used the term "qffectus" for the will - for instance, in De anima VII, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 212b).
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Both theologians deprecated these altered capacities. Mind, and thus soul, could achieve cognitive perfection only if open to intelligible lights from above - most importantly the divine light.17 Since perfection was essential to beatitude, humankind could achieve its intended end only when illumined by God.18 With such illumination out of the question in the present life, soul depended upon faith and obedience for hope of salvation and upon the words of the Fathers and traditions of the Church for whatever specific higher knowledge was required.19 To be sure, there were direct divine revelations to a few privileged souls before death, though not always totally lucid and sometimes of modest cognitive content.20 According to Grosseteste God showed himself this way only to individuals perfectly free of love of material things, perhaps just Moses, Paul and the Virgin Mary, while a more liberal William granted that melancholy might render one prone to such visions.21 Chief prerequisites for Godly revelation were in any case pure living and strong attachment to study, and William remarked that even some diligent philosophers of unsavory life had been given special insights by the divinity.22 These were, however, rare exceptions. Thus, a chasm stretched between intellectual activities in the sensible world and those involving intervention by God or a role for his intelligible light, a separation paralleling the radical Christian distinction between the human predicament in this life and in the next. A somber Aristotle had triumphed in the noetics of everyday,
'' William, De bono (ed. O'Donnell. p. 283): "Sola igitur quae desursum in ipsam [animam] descendant cognitionum et affectionum lumina ipsam inaltant et elevant et approximant ad altitudinem gloriae et perfectionis suae ultimae. . . ." 18 William, De unwerso II, 1, 39 (Mag. dw., I, 839aB). 19 On faith, see William, De bono (ed. O'Donnell, p. 283); on words and traditions, Grosseteste's commentary on the Divine Names, c. 1 (Ruello, "La divinorum nominum reseratio" pp. 153-54, nn. 51-52). 20 Wrilliam, De unwerso II, 3, 20 (1053bD-1054aE) ~ cited above, Ch. 2, n. 20 and De unwerso II, 3, 21 (Mag. dw., I, 1058aF-G). 21 See Comm. Post. an. I, 14 (p. 213, 11. 228-35), where Grosseteste said God might reveal himself to "aliqui penitus absoluti ab amore et phantasmatibus rerum coroporalium;" and "Ecclesia sancta" (in McEvoy, p. 179, n. 19), allowing the same to the "summe perfecti." On who these were, see Hexaemeron I, 6, 1; and XI, 6, 4 (ed. Dales and Gieben, pp. 56, 11. 5-6; and 312, 11. 21-22); and the commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy, c. 4 (in Dondaine, "L'objet et le 'medium,'" p. 125, 11. 54-65) - the latter cited above, Ch. 2, n. 20. For William, see De unwerso II, 3, 20 (Mag. dw., I, 1054aG). 22 William, De unwerso II, 3, 20 (Mag. dw., I, 1054bE and G); and De anima V, 15 (Mag. diu., II supp., 137a).
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leaving little, in William's and Robert's view of the wayfarer, of that Godly intimacy to mind Augustine had been determined to preserve and to which they were theologically inclined. In time both scholastics found a way to attenuate the formidable presence of this ideological dissonance in their thought. Here is where the intellectual dynamic emerged. Stepping back from the contrast between Aristotle and Augustine, and between this life and the next, they looked to the wider prospect of progressive but natural intellective movement transforming the one kind of knowing into an initial stage of the other. The resultant dynamic redeemed the lower activities of mind, if only potentially at first, by making them a foreshadowing of and preparation for higher processes to which it was ultimately inclined. This schema is evident in William's efforts to characterize the trajectory of human progress towards beatitude as continuous striving after a single goal — a generalized search for truth. In a notable passage in De anima already alluded to above, he reminded his readers that the class of things denoted by the words "true" (verum) and "truth" (veritas) constituted mind's proper intelligible object (suum ac proprium scibile), or, in more figurative language, the proper visible object (suum et proprium visibile) for interior or spiritual sight.23 But so fundamentally static a formulation of the relationship between mind and its proper object in fact covered a dynamic reality, in which the attitude of mind to object could more accurately be described as a natural inclination (inclinatio naturalis] of intellect into truth. 24 Since a natural inclination in turn demanded a state of perfection in which to find completion, it was fair to say that mind had to be perfected by vision of and direct illumination by God, the very first truth of all (prima veritas),,25 23 De anima VII, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 212b-213a), partially quoted above at Ch. 1, n. 43. 24 De anima VII, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 212a): "Dico igitur quod duo sunt circa quae naturaliter versantur, et in quae intendunt naturaliter, et ad quae habent conversionem suam sive inclinationem naturalem virtus intellectiva, sive cognoscitiva animae humanae, et vis motiva nobilis ejusdem. Haec autem duo sunt veritas et bonitas." On the natural aptitude of mind for science, see De anima V, 15 (Mag. div., II supp., 138a). 25 De anima VII, 7 (Aiag. div., II supp., 212a, 212b and 213a). The passage quoted above in n. 24, for instance, continues as follows: "Quae autem inquirunt ex his duobus duae istae vires sunt illuminatio, et jocundatio. Manifestum quoque est tibi quoniam illuminatio perfecta non potest ei esse nisi ex virtute prima luminosissima quae est creator benedictus."
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The picture of mind inclined into God as into its cognitive perfection and end restored confidence, somewhat shaken by the expansion of a worldly noetics, that human intellect was not only intended to be illuminated by the divinity but also fully illuminable by him.26 William could happily confirm that mind was created precisely for the intellectual vision of God after all, a vision that was to be immediate and unobstructed by any intervening barrier, so that no one should hesitate to maintain that intellect was, in the true sense of the word, "naturally" constituted to seize a divine end.27 Grosseteste, too, who in De veritate had maintained that the healthy mind saw God in himself and in him all other things, continued to insist at the end of his career that the natural potential of soul was to see God face-to-face. The fruits of such vision constituted what he even called natural wisdom (naturalis sapientia).'2K All one had to remember was that realizing mind's goal required hard work, growth and the passage of time, but nevertheless no radical change in the rules of thinking or truth. None of this gainsaid the distinction between life in the world and the life of glory or undermined the necessity for grace. Mind's 2(1 De anima VII, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 213a): ". . . manifestum est tibi per hoc omnem substantiam intelligentem a parte virtutis intellectivae esse speculum ab ipso [creatore], et per seipsum informabile, et visum ab eo illuminabilem, et librum ab ipso solo designationibus intelligibilibus omnium intelligibilium inscriptibilem." See also De bono (ed. O'Donnell, p. 282). -' For instance, De universo II, 1 , 8 (Mag. div., I, 816a): "Intellectum igitur, idest, virtutem intellectivam necesse est creatum esse propter intellectum solius creatoris, intellectum inquam ilium ipsius, qui perficitur perfectione completa, seu completione perfectionis ultimae. . . . Ipse enim creator benedictus est in seipso velut mundus intelligibilis, et exemplar lucidissimum omnium, et propter hoc in ipso lucidissime videntur omnia ab his, qui eum ad nudum, et absque medio intuentur . . ."; and De anima VII, 1 (Mag. div., II supp., 203a-b), where William specifically calls this a visio creatoris; or especially De anima V, 15 (Mag. div., II supp., 139a): "Quod si naturam animae humanae perscrutatius consideraveris, invenies earn in naturali sanitate, libertate, et puritate sua velut venatorem, venabulis instructum, et armatum ad capiendam antedictam nobilissimam et pretiosissimam quam praedixi praedam." See the same emphasis on the natural power of mind to receive direct illumination from God in De anima VII, 7 (Mag. div., II supp., 212b and 213a). 28 Compare the early De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 142, 11. 5-7): "Diximus autem supra quod oculus mentis sanus videns primam et supremam lucem in se in ea etiam omnia cetera videret clarius, quam contuens eadem in seipsis"; with the later "Ecclesia sancta" (in McEvoy, p. 171, nn. 4-5); "Ex rerum initiatarum" (in Gieben, p. 121); and commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy, c. 4 (in Dondaine, "L'objet et le 'medium,'" pp. 124—25). William, too, used the term "healthy" to describe a mind that could see God face to face - see De universo II, 3, 21 (Mag. div., I, 1057bA); and the second of the quotations given above, n. 27.
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natural opening onto God (libertas naturalis) was not fully available to humans living in sin and could be restored only by God's free gift, the benefits of which were not completely realizable until after death.29 Nevertheless, the decision to set all efforts of mind, from lowest to highest, on a continuum marked by the search for truth smoothed the transition from one world, and its activities, to the next. Simply by admitting a continuity William and Robert were narrowing the gap separating the wayfarer's knowledge from knowledge as it ought to be, moderating the dissonance between Aristotle and Augustine. By insisting that soul's intellectual efforts in the material world were ultimately made good in, and thus aimed at, the beatific vision, both scholastics succeeded finally in cleaving close to the Augustinian dictum that God was mind's own proper light.30 One manifestation of this moderated dissonance was an occasional respect for the intellectual efforts of mind in the world. Despite their disparagement of worldly knowledge, both thinkers were ready at times to recognize its value even for the Christian. Naturally their estimation of the importance of speculative activity bore a decidedly contemplative stamp - that is, it set value on every cognitive act according to the degree the act furthered the goal of contemplating God — yet the esteem was nonetheless sincere. Although William never explained how one might progress from scientific studies in the world to sapiential consideration of God, he had great regard 29
William, De universo II, 3, 20 (Mag. div., I, 0156bF): "Nunc autem, et a ternpore multo jam didici per exercitationem rerum divinalium animas humanas non posse purificari ab inquinamentis vitiorum, et peccatorum, nisi virtute, et gratia creatoris; et istam libertatem, quamquam naturalis sit, videlicet, erumpendi, et elevandi se in regionem lucis, non esse eis aliter reparabilem, aut restaurabilem." See also the second passage quoted above, n. 10. 30 There is a passage of striking Augustinian resonance in William's early work, (De Trinitate 16 [ed. Switalski, p. 98, 11. 47-51]): "Quod enim intelligere nostrum indiget intellectu ipso illuminante et inscribente speculum nostrae virtutis intellectivae, inde est, quia virtus nostra in se ipsa non est lux intelligibilis, sed magis tenebra, licet illuminabilis. Virtus igitur intellectiva, quae est sibi et in se ipsa lux, ad intelligendum non indiget illuminatore alio." The "intellectus" required by the mind in this case, its "illuminator alius," would have to be God. As one can discover by examing the references given in Switalski's edition, p. 98, note for line 51, such language abounds in Augustine, where it is invariably to be taken in that sense. See also William's use of the term "propria lux naturalis" to designate divine irradiation of mind in De anima V, 18-19 (Mag. div., II supp., 143b~144a), quoted above, n. 10. At least one place in William's works departs from this use of "natural," insisting that the state of glory is not natural to soul but rather "ultra naturam" see De anima V, 21 (Mag. div., II supp., 146a). For Grosseteste on God's illumination as mind's "proper light," see below, n. 33.
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for the discipline of learning in Antiquity and in his own time, conceding a sort of moral equivalence between habits of mind exercised in pondering the secrets of the world and those devoted to the even more arduous rigors of divine science.31 Grosseteste was more explicit, in his Commentary on the Posterior Analytics giving a succinct account of how the two types of intellection fit together. The passage is well known and follows immediately upon the account cited above about moral deficiencies introduced into will by original sin dragging down mind as well.32 Grosseteste wanted to explain how intellect might find its way back to its ordained wellbeing. Now when the sight of mind has been deflected from its light (suum lumen), it is necessarily turned toward darkness and idleness until it comes forth somehow through the bodily senses and finds in some way in external sensible light a trace of the light originally intended for it. When it comes upon this [trace], it is, so to speak, excited by it and begins to seek out its proper light (lumen propriuni), and the more [soul's] love is diverted from corruptible bodily things, the more its sight is turned to this light and the more it recovers it.33 Mind's proper light is surely in this instance the divine light itself. By the terms of Grosseteste's vision, therefore, mind's knowledge in the world, initially available to it only from evidence provided by the senses, sets it off on the quest for God, giving it a taste of what intellection could be and reminding it of its destined goal of knowing God and delighting in that knowledge. The idea recalls William's claim that all knowledge was part of the search for truth, the first halting steps of which still moved intellect that much closer to seizing the ultimate truth in God. But the muffling of discord between Aristotle and Augustine made possible by a dynamic model for knowledge was manifested another way, too, one pointing more urgently away from mundane concerns. In his later works Grosseteste evidenced growing interest " See sympathetic comparison between the two kinds of study in De anima VI, 18 (Mag. dii\, II supp., 174a). 52 See above, n. 16. " Comm. Post. an. I, 14 (p. 216, 11. 284-91): "Aspectus autem mentis a suo lumine aversus necessario convertitur in tenebras et otium, donee egrediens modo aliquo per sensus exteriores in luce sensibili exteriori per modum aliquem reperit lucis ad ipsum nate vestigium, ad quod cum offendit quasi excitatus incipit querere lumen proprium; et in quantum avertitur amor a corporalibus corruptibilibus in tantum convertitur aspectus ad suum lumen et in tantum reperit ipsum."
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in contemplation, an intimate and immediate mental confrontation with God, and in the end-oriented, ever-accelerating way of acting, living and thinking associated with the vita contemplativa.^ His discussion in the Hexaemeron of the six ages of man both natural man and the reformed man of grace — reveals how much he had by then come to view human existence as a slow but progressive movement away from material things, including body, towards the ever higher knowledge, greater virtue and more intimate relation with God achievable only in contemplative vision, wrhich for the man of grace carried over beyond life in the world into the final consummation in beatitude.33 The same bias towards the contemplative life, both as long-term striving after the divine vision and daily effort here and now to prepare oneself for it, is apparent in the sermon "Ex rerum initiatarum," which insists on priestly training in contemplating the divine Word sine imaginibus.36 "Ecclesia sancta celebrat" dwells at length on how contemplative desire to reach God and know him could transform worldly powers of mind into vehicles for a singleminded search for the divinity, even though no powrer below the redeemed sapientia naturalis was capable of seeing it face to face.37 By these works, the dynamic sketched out quickly in the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics had gone from abstract reassurance about the human condition to stimulus for a consuming commitment to meditative discipline in the present life. One must not exaggerate the reorientation represented by this way of seeing things or the magnitude of its effect on Grosseteste's thought. He was still talking about a dynamic requiring more than an earthly lifetime, not a sudden or even soon-to-be-achieved actualization of full power of mind.38 This was a call to an existence redirected towards the ultimate goal, not a blueprint for complete renewal of 34
See the excellent discussion of the vita, contemplativa as a life of preparation for and striving towards contemplation in Jean Leclercq, Etudes sur le vocabulaire monastique du moyen age (Rome, 1961), especially pp. 121-22 and 140. 35 Hexaemeron VIII, 32-33 (ed. Dales and Gieben, pp. 256-58). 36 In McEvoy, pp. 139-40. 37 See McEvoy, "Robert Grosseteste's Theory of Human Nature," pp. 178, nn. 17-18; and 184-86, nn. 33-35. 38 On the same score William confessed that in his youth he thought the achievement of divine or prophetic illumination would be easy, only to be taught by experience how slow and difficult was the process of purfication by which mind was made worthy of such intellection, a process ultimately dependent on the inscrutable will of God (see De universo II, 3, 20 [Mag. div., I, 1056aH-1056bF]).
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soul in this world. Grosseteste here at the end was thus making an explicit place for mysticism at the upper end of the scale of cognitive certitude outlined earlier in his Commentary on the Posterior Analytics., simply reinserting into the mental world mapped out under the influence of Aristotle the Godly intimacy so powerfully evident in De veritate.39 He was not breaching the barrier between the life of sin and the peace of resurrection, and even in this expanded scheme there was for mind no more than a taste of its highest power — natural though it was — in the present life. The wisdom coming at the top of the ladder of natural processes of mind was only inchoate here below.40 But for all that, and whatever the relation to the Grosseteste of the Commentary, this late reassertion of the Augustinian side to his thought clearly diverges from the approach of De veritate. The difference is manifest in the fact that in none of the later works is God's luminance spoken of as immanent, if unrecognized, light of truth. Every mention of God's light in the late works refers instead to one of three quite different sorts of phenomenon. First, and most obviously, the term is used to call to mind the glorified or enraptured vision by which the "light of God's essence" is made plain without intervening images. Here God's light is his own essential radiance immediately accessible to blessed mind.41 Second, it points to the more ethically oriented light of baptism by which God irradiates soul and sets it on the regenerative path leading only in the end to beatitude and the divine vision. This is God's light as salvific grace.42 Finally it returns to the Dionysian notion of the divine ray (divinus radius)
39 See discussion in "Ecclesia sancta" (in McEvoy, "Theory of Human Nature," pp. 171-73, nn. 4 8 ) ; and "Ex rerum initiatarum" (in Gieben, "Robert Grosseteste on Preaching," p. 121), passages also cited above nn. 4 and 28. The cognitive scheme presented in them extended that given in Comm. Post. an. I, 2 (pp. 99-100, 11. 9-27). For full translation of this latter passage and analysis of its meaning, refer to Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 223-27. 40 In "Ecclesia sancta" (in McEvoy, "Theory of Human Nature," p. 178, n. 18) Grosseteste spoke of the part of natural wisdom achievable in this life as a "vita sapientiae gratuita, licet nondum perfecta, sed inchoata." See also the same text, pp. 184-85, n. 33. 41 The commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy, c. 4 (in Dondaine, "L'objet et le 'medium,'" p. 125) describes this as vision of "ipsa lux divine essentie." See also commentary on the Divine Names (in Ruello, "La divinorum nominum reseratio" p. 155, n. 56). 42 See "Ecclesia sancta" (in McEvoy, "Theory of Human Nature," p. 178, n. 17).
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dimly perceived by mind in the fog of darkness (caligd) at the summit of contemplative strivings. Such a light is not so much something seen as object of expectation for which soul rises above all other actions to lie quietly anticipating in sublime ignorance.43 This is the light of the mystic way. None of these kinds of illumination coincides with the Augustinian illumination central to De veritate, a striking circumstance bespeaking a different attitude towards the question of knowing God and a different perspective on the intellective powers of soul. One can conclude only that the later Grosseteste inhabited a speculative world quite far from that presented in De veritate, which conclusion itself offers strong incentive to reaffirm the chronology placing De veritate among his early works, followed by the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, a composition in turn completed and rounded out by the even later commentaries on Pseudo-Dionysius and sermons cited just above. It is the vision of these later works, an ideological projection of a cognitive dynamic connecting knowledge in the world to knowledge of God, that represents Grosseteste's and William's thought at its maturity. And as with their ideas about immutable truth, so their views on this progressive link between intellect's lower powers and its highest possibilities offered both challenge and inspiration to later Augustinians. Though most of the specifics by which these two early masters understood the dynamic were rejected by their successors, the conviction that a kind of intellectual kinesis provided the key to Augustinian explanation of mind's relation to the divinity remained central in the epistemology and noetics of them all. This simple notion was to prove a most effective philosophical tool for preserving the intimacy of God to mind.
43 See the commentary on the Mystical Theology (ed. Gamba, pp. 36—37); commentary on the Divine Names (in Ruello, "La dwinorum nominum reseratio," p. 156, n. 58); and "Ecclesia sancta" (in McEvoy, "Theory of Human Nature," pp. 186-87, n. 36).
PART TWO
THE CLASSIC AUGUSTINIANS 1250-1280 BONAVENTURE, GILBERT OF TOURNAI, JOHN PECHAM AND MATTHEW OF AQUASPARTA
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INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO
The thought of William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste was eclectic, Van Steenberghen's epithet for all scholastic discourse before the 1250s.1 Neither theologian attempted to construct a consistent set of theories applicable across the full spectrum of problems they addressed. Instead they handled issues piecemeal as each arose almost at random out of their studies into logic, natural philosophy and, most importantly, theology. What resulted was - again to borrow from Van Steenberghen's interpretation more like philosophizing than philosophy, an ambiguous intellectual brew drawn from Neoplatonic traditions of twelfth-century speculation and Latin antiquity but also from the Arab commentators on Aristotle - Avicenna and increasingly Averroes - and from Aristotle himself not simply the logician of the Organon but the scientist of the Posterior Analytics and works of natural philosophy as well. Such a mix of imperfectly integrated ideas was volatile, and nowhere more so than in theory of knowledge. Traditional explanations of cognition, largely Neoplatonic, had tended to attribute all of value in human understanding to contact with a higher reality, most especially God. Aristotle's view of science, along with the noetics and psychology required to make sense of it, focused attention instead on the world and the need to assure that intellection captured the essence of material reality. Inevitably, Aristotelian ideas weakened the hold of the past, making it difficult to apply traditional views and tempting to push them aside or restrict them to special, supernatural cases. Of course, Aristotelianism could not sweep the field overnight; indeed it never completely vanquished competing lines of thought. Given the complexity of the issues, formulating a coherent response to the question of knowledge would take time. Yet out of the mixture of old and new, more consistent views did inexorably evolve after William's and Robert's day. And since Aristotelianism and the worldliness associated with it were the most novel, and hence most 1 Consult references given above in the general Introduction, n. 12, especially La philosophic au XIIP siecle, pp. 181-83.
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disruptive, ingredients in the brew, they can be given much of the credit for moving things to the point where speculation became more systematic and theoretical boundaries more sharply drawn. There were three ways the passion for Aristotle had this effect. First of all Aristotle's works and the notion of science associated with his name convinced thinkers generally that formal rules of reasoning should set the standard for intellectual activity, engendering impatience with the ad hoc and often incompletely articulated philosophizing of the past. The tolerant eclecticism even of innovators like William and Robert came to be regarded as unacceptable while scholastics hurried to systematize their own ideas and clarify ambiguities that had so far lain unresolved. Second, the new ideas, with their empirical and worldly bias, brought a concern to separate out the religious moralizing about knowledge evident in both William's and Robert's pessimism concerning intellection in the sinful world so as to reserve a place for non-judgmental, self-consciously philosophical examination of the natural workings of mind. Perhaps unintentionally, this led to higher estimation of normal human mental capacities, outside the sacral realms of revelation and meditation on the divine word. Both these processes were self-reinforcing, conducive of an ever greater appreciation of Aristotle which in turn intensified the effects of his influence, and they both appear to have worked among scholastics across the board. Beginning in the 1250s, all thinkers at the universities came under their spell, and the whole business of intellectualizing shifted course as if by command. But the third way the spread of Aristotle affected scholarly habits cut against the grain and was of more limited scope, involving immediately only part of the academic community. For some scholastics, the triumph of Aristotelian attitudes and weakening of Neoplatonic assumptions threatened grievous loss. Most obviously in natural philosophy, it looked to some that fundamental truths were in danger of being swept away. Even in epistemology and theory of mind, the fields of inquiry under investigation here, there emerged a fear that the new ideas posed a danger, surely because the newfound reluctance to appeal to a higher, divine reality undercut traditional confidence in God's intimacy to intellect. The response of this apprehensive group of thinkers was, like that of all scholars of their day, both systematic and resolutely naturalistic, but rather than promote the newly fashionable ideas in anything like Aristotelian purity they hastened to search within Neo-
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platonic tradition for principles to reassert or develop along sometimes aggressively conservative lines. This returns us to Van Steenberghen and the story of scholasticism from the 1250s on. For what was born of these three impulses was real philosophy in his terms, intended as systematic, consistent and precise about natural processes in the world. Indeed not just one philosophy emerged but several, each increasingly self-conscious about how it differed from the others. For the first time in the Latin West, the scholarly efforts of the universities generated intellectual parties that could be characterized along doctrinal lines. The focus here is on the conservative party, thinkers not just carried along on the Aristotelianizing wave but also partially engaged in reaction against it. Van Steenberghen chose for them the name "Neo-Augustinians," but they are perhaps better identified simply as a particular instantiation of the longer-term, non-doctrinal current of thought labeled in this study the "Augustinian School."2 Not immune to Aristotelian ideas the very impulse towards philosophical clarity and consistency being an effect of the attraction of Aristotle they were engaged in an effort to build a system of thought cleaving as close to Augustine as could be contrived. Ambivalence thus lay at the heart of their endeavor, and the reality of their achievement was as much a matter of polemics as substance.3 They constituted a corps of thinkers aiming to create a collective identity under the aegis of Augustine's name; it was in this modest sense that they were Augustinian, not that they represented pure Augustine or that Augustine's influence was not pervasive in other circles as well. Intent, just like their non-Augustinian contemporaries, on systematizing their theories and making them consistent, these conservatives took seriously the task of rendering philosophical explanations in precise detail and, even more than Aristotle, specifying concrete mechanisms for natural processes. In the case of theory of mind and knowledge, this meant concentrating, again like the more enthusiastic Aristotelians, on operations in the world and identifying accessible evidence for intellectual acts of judgment. They thereby differed from even Augustinian scholastics who had come before, reflecting
~ On naming this current, see above, general Introduction, particularly nn. 13, 31 and 32. ^ Van Steenberghen, recalling both Ehrle and De Wulf, points to this polemical element in La philosophie, p. 466. See also general Introduction above, n. 25.
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the more critical temper of their age. What made them unique among contemporaries was, of course, their determination to toe a philosophical line drawn in explicit allegiance to Augustine and the Neoplatonizing traditions that had so long underlain Latin thought. Out of their efforts came, for the first time, a real doctrine of divine illumination, theoretical condensation of the hitherto unintegrated set of images associated with the notion of intellectual enlightenment by God. Illuminationism in its classic form, so often spoken of as a body of teaching that might be called upon at any time in the Middle Ages, was thus in fact a philosophical artifact of the three decades from the mid-1250s on. Only then were the scattered thoughts about God's intervention in natural processes of mind brought together by Augustinians into a single explanation, complete, internally consistent and corresponding to what was considered a discrete and seamless phenomenon of mind. At the same time the functioning of this process was subjected to exhaustive critique, with the intention of confronting head-on all the problems that the new, Aristotelianizing science posed for the credibility of traditional thought. To the extent that the move to construct a doctrine of divine illumination drew directly upon the epistemology and noetics of William and Robert, it marked a clear continuation of their thought. Most obviously important in this regard were elements of theory resonating with Neoplatonism and the sublimating God-centered rhetoric of Augustine, making it often necessary to ignore countervailing tendencies in their work or rely on ideas, like those of Grosseteste's De veritate, of only marginal significance for their mature philosophy. Yet much in William's and Robert's speculation fed directly into the more aggressive Aristotelianism that conservatives were reacting against. Since the new illuminationist theory was itself intended to meet the increasingly rigorous standards of the day for philosophy and scientific thought, that part of William's and Robert's Aristotelianism devoted to clarifying and establishing a strictly formalized and exhaustively critical methodology was not without interest. It is therefore in two curiously opposing ways that William and Robert must be understood as feeding into the current of conservative scholastics after mid-century. Perhaps equally curious is the fact that while William and Robert were seculars, fashioning a doctrine of divine illumination fell to Franciscans. In this crucial period, the Franciscan school at Paris and the Augustinian current of thought became for all practical pur-
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poses one and the same. The commonplace identification of Franciscan thought and Augustinianism in historical literature back to the days of Ehrle finds its basis in this singularity. Yet despite the ties connecting William and Robert to the Franciscans of their own day, there was nothing inevitable about such a turn of events, nor were the most prominent early Franciscan masters heading in this direction. Though little can be said for Alexander of Hales, first Franciscan to hold a chair of theology at Paris, since his extant writings barely touch on the issue of intellectual certitude, John of La Rochelle, leading Franciscan master between Alexander and Bonaventure, prefigured in key areas of theory of mind the more perfect Aristotelianizers of the third quarter of the thirteenth century like Aquinas rather than either Roger Bacon or Franciscan theologians contemporary with Thomas. For John, it was legitimate to call God agent intellect of human mind and source of true knowledge respecting higher matters like the mysteries of the Trinity, but for knowledge of things here below soul had its own intrinsic agent, a trace (signatio) of God, since created by him, yet sufficient on its own to lead to truth.4 There would seem to be no place for a special illumination in normal human cognition according to this point of view. 4 On higher knowledge, see John's Tractatus de divisions multiplici potentiarum animae II, 20 (ed. Pierre Michaud-Quantin [Paris, 1964], p. 90, 11. 710-22); and the nearly identical text in his Summa de anima II, 116 (ed. Jacques Guy Bougerol [Paris, 1995], p. 279, 11. 41-49 - in the less reliable edition by Teofilo Domenichelli [Prato, 1882], II, 37 [p. 292]); on knowledge of things below, see Tractatus II, 20 (ed. MichaudQuantin, pp. 90, 1. 262-92, 1. 289) - reproduced in the Summa II, 116 (ed. Bougerol, pp. 279-80, 11. 58-75 - also ed. Domenichelli, II, 37 [pp. 292-93]). As for the nature of the intrinsic agent, see Tractatus II, 17, 19, 21 and 23 (ed. MichaudQuantin, pp. 87, 11. 616-22; 90, 11. 694-700; 91, 11. 749-53; and 95, 11. 890-96) all but the third passage reproduced in Summa II, 114, 116 and 118 (ed. Bougerol, pp. 275, 11. 28-32; 278, 11. 28-34; and 283, 11. 22-30 - also ed. Domenichelli, II, 36, 37 and 38 [pp. 289; 291; and 295]) - which taken together imply that it normally worked independent of any special influence from God. Michaud-Quantin in his edition, p. 23, dated the Tractatus to between 1233 and 1239, the Summa after the Tractatus but before 1245, but Bougerol, in the introduction to his edition of Summa de anima, pp. 10-11, makes a convincing argument that John became regent master in theology at Paris while Alexander of Hales retained his own regency, the two thus sharing the single chair recently transferred to the Franciscans. Bougerol (p. 12) then resituates John's works to a somewhat earlier time-frame, the Tractatus to shortly after 1233 and the Summa to around 1235-36. See also Bougerol, 'Jean de La Rochelle. Les oeuvres et les manuscrits," AFH 87 (1994): 205-7. The interpretation of John given in the present work agrees with Parthenius Minges, "Zur Erkenntnislehre des Franziskaners Johannes von Rupella," Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Gorresgesellschaft 27 (1914): 461-77; and Odon Lottin, "Les traites sur Fame et les vertus de Jean de la Rochelle," RNS 32 (1930): 5-32. G. Manser,
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The critical years came shortly after mid-century. Although the traumatic conflicts in the 1260s and 1270s between intellectual conservatives and purer Aristotelianizers like Thomas or radicals like Siger in the Faculty of Arts played a large role in firming up the new doctrine and giving its adherents in the Franciscan Order a sense of philosophical identity, seeds for an integrated theory of illumination can be detected among Franciscans already in the decade before.5 In Bonaventure's early works from the mid-1250s, for instance, one senses a shift away from the increasingly skeptical ideas of William and Grosseteste on God's role in normal cognition to a determination to maintain a place for Augustinian epistemology and noetics in the scientific atmosphere of scholasticism. The polemical Augustinianism of John Pecham's letters of the 1280s represents an aggravated sense of contrast and crisis but no real philosophical change over the calmer attitudes of conservatives three decades before.6 Key protagonists in the drama were the Franciscan theologians Bonaventure, his disciple at Paris and later Archbishop of Canterbury, John Pecham, and Pecham's pupil, future Franciscan Minister General, Matthew of Aquasparta. If Van Steenberghen is right in claiming Bonaventure as the inspiration for scholastic Augustinianism and
"M. Johann von Rupella +1245. Ein Beitrag zu seiner Charakteristik mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung seiner Erkenntnislehre," Jahrbuch fur Philosophie und spekulative Theologie 26 (1912): esp. p. 311, argued that John defended the need for divine illumination for at least knowledge of the principles of science. John's view on an intrinsic agent intellect may have been influenced by two anonymous treatises from the 1220s, De potentiis animae et obiectis, cited above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, n. 27 (see Callus, ed., p. 156, 11. 4-20), and De anima et de potenciis eius, cited above, Pt. 1, intro., n. 2 (see Gauthier, ed., pp. 51-52), both influenced by Averroes and constituting two of the earliest testimonies to knowledge of him in the Latin West. The description of the agent as a trace (signatio] of God surely referred to Psalm 4, 7, cited above, general Introduction, n. 41, but now interpreted contrary to the more Augustinian reading, where the signatio was the divine light itself. 5 Van Steenberghen characterized Thomas and Siger as catalysts leading to the formation of "Neo-Augustinianism" - see La philosophic, pp. 456—57 and 464-71. 6 Again see above, general Introduction, n. 25. While Ehrle, in the article cited there in n. 32, associated Pecham's polemic with growing contentiousness between Dominicans and Franciscans, as well as division among Franciscans themselves, Decima L. Douie, Archbishop Pecham (Oxford, 1952), pp. 26-38, noted that it also came at a time of considerable tension between mendicants and seculars. See also David Knowles, "Some Aspects of the Career of Archbishop Pecham," English Historical Review 57 (1942): 8-9; and Edouard-Henri Weber, Dialogue et dissensions entre saint Bonaventure et saint Thomas d'Aquin a Paris (1252-73), Bibliotheque Thomiste, 41 (Paris, 1974), pp. 142 and 485.
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Pecham as its founder, then Matthew was surely its most energetic and exacting defender. 7 Mention must also be made of another Franciscan, Gilbert of Tournai, who seems to have served as intermediary between the more Augustinian of William's and Robert's ideas and Bonaventure.8 An exhaustive account would include Bonaventure's other followers at Paris, Eustace of Arras and Walter of Bruges, but examining their plainly derivative treatment of illumination complicates the story unnecessarily.9 To trace the full narrative requires looking at sources from as early as 1251 to as late as 1280 or 1281.10 For Bonaventure, the first works are a number of sermons of the early 1250s and the Commentary on the Sentences, probably prepared for publication between
7 Van Steenberghen, La philosophic, p. 470. The view of Bonaventure as key to the emergence of an Augustinian current in thirteenth-century philosophy is widespread. See, for instance, Bernhard Rosenmoller, Religiose Erkenntnis nach Bonaventura, Beitrage, 25, 3-4 (Miinster, 1925); Adelhard Epping, "Seraphische Weisheit," FS 56 (1974): 221-48; and Gabriel Jiissen, "Idee," in Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophic, ed. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Griinder, IV, 87-88 (Basel/Stuttgart, 1976). On Matthew as interested in making room for Augustinian illuminationism in an Aristotelianizing theory of knowledge, see Anton C. Pegis, "St. Bonaventure Revisited," in S. Bonaventura 1274^1974, 4, 21-44 (Grottaferrata [Rome], 1973). Yet Matthew has also been characterized as old-fashioned, with little influence on anyone's thought, for example, by Efrem Bettoni, "Matteo d'Acquasparta e il suo posto nella scolastica post-tomistica," in Filosofia e cultura in Umbria tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, Atti del IV Convegno di Studi Umbri, Gubbio, 22-26 May 1966 (Perugia, 1967), pp. 24247; and Victorin Doucet in the "Introductio critica" to his edition of Matthew of Aquasparta, Quaestiones disputatae de gratia, BFS, 11 (Quaracchi, 1935), pp. CLVI— CLVII. 8 Camille Berube, in "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste. Sources inconnues de la doctrine de 1'illumination suivi de 1'edition critique de trois chapitres du Rudimentum doctrinae de Guibert de Tournai," in S. Bonaventura, 1274-1974, 2, 631 (Grottaferrata, 1973), identifies Gilbert's writings as the first sign of Grosseteste's influence on the Franciscan School at Paris, but as will be noted below, Gilbert's Rudimentum also relies on William. 9 On Eustace and Walter, see the similar stance of Ignatius C. Brady, "St. Bonaventure's Doctrine of Illumination: Reactions Medieval and Modern," in Bonaventure and Aquinas. Enduring Philosophers, ed. Robert W. Shahan and Francis J. Kovach, pp. 61-62 (Norman, Okla., 1976). The interesting and sometimes ideosyncratic views of Roger Marston might also be considered but would lead far afield. 10 For general, although sometimes now superseded, dating of works of masters at the University of Paris, see Palemon Glorieux, Repertoire des maitres en theologie de Paris au XHF siede, 2 vols. (Paris, 1933-34); La litterature quodlibetique, 2 vols. (Le Saulchoir, 1925; Paris, 1935); and La Faculte des arts et ses maitres au XIII" siede (Paris, 1971); and Victorin Doucet, "Maitres franciscains de Paris. Supplement au 'Repertoire des maitres en theologie de Paris au XIIF siecle' de M. le chan. P. Glorieux," AFH 27 (1934): 531-64.
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1251 and 1253." His most important writings on illumination date from his regency in theology at Paris, most notably a sermon, Unus est magister vester, Christus, from 1253 or 1254, and the disputed questions De scientia Christi, perhaps from the academic year 1253^54, and De mysterio Trinitatis, most likely set down the following year.12 In 1259 or shortly thereafter, he composed the mystically inspired Itinerarium mentis in Deum, a work difficult to categorize but shedding crucial light on the evolution of his thought.13 Finally there are two of the three sets of lectures he gave in Paris when, faced with mounting crisis over the effect of Aristotle and the philosophers on Christian learning, he sounded the alarm for a conservative reaction: his Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti of spring, 1268 and the Collatioms in Hexaemeron of spring, 1273.14 John Pecham's first work is his Commentary on the Sentences, brought together for publication at the latest by 1269.'° The period of his 11
There is still no agreement on precise dates for any but Bonaventure's last works, yet the differences are not critical for the present analysis of his thought. The dates given here are culled, selectively, from the basic studies of his chronology: most importantly, Balduinus Distelbrink, Bonaventurae scripta authentica dubia vel spuria critice recensita (Rome, 1975); John F. Quinn, "Chronology of St. Bonaventure (1217-1257)," FrS 32 (1972): 168-86; and J. Guy Bougerol, Introduction a I'etude de Saint Bonaventure (Tournai, 1961); but also Quinn, "Chronology of Bonaventure's Sermons," AFH 67 (1974): 145-84; and Brady, "St. Bonaventure's Doctrine of Illumination." Bonaventure's Sermones de tempore, de sanctis, de B. Virgine Maria et de diversis can be found in vol. 9 of his Opera Omnia, published at Quaracchi, 1901; the Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum in vols. 1-4 of the Opera Omnia (Quaracchi, 1882-89). 12 Unus est magister is available in the Opera Omnia, 5, 567-74 (Quaracchi, 1891), but has been re-edited by Renato Russo in La metodologia del sapere nel sermone di S. Bonaventura "Unus est magister vester Christus" (Grottaferrata, 1982), pp. 100-32. Quaestiones disputatae de scientia Christi are found in Opera Omnia, 5, 3-43 (Quaracchi, 1891); and Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis in Opera Omnia 5, 45-115. 13 Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, in Opera Omnia, 5, 293-313. 14 See Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti in Opera Omnia, 5, 455-503. Two redactions of the Collationes in Hexaemeron have survived: the longer edited in Opera Omnia, 5, 327-449; a shorter, occasionally significantly different version in Collationes in Hexaemeron et Bonaventuriana quaedam selecta, ed. Ferdinand M. Delorme (Quaracchi, 1934). |J For the chronology of Pecham's career, see Willibrord Lampen, "Jean Pecham, O.F.M., et son office de la S. Trinite," La France Franciscaine 11 (1928): 211-29; Victorin Doucet, "Notulae bibliographicae de quibusdam operibus Fr. loannis Pecham, O.F.M.," Antonianum 8 (1953): 307-28 and 425-59; Ferdinand M. Delorme's introduction to John Pecham, Quodlibet Romanum (Rome, 1938); Decima Douie, Archbishop Pecham; Ignatius Brady, "Questions at Paris c. 1260-1270 (cod. Flor. Bibl. Naz. Conv. sopp. B.6.912)," AFH 62 (1969): 688; and David C. Lindberg's introduction to John Pecham and the Science of Optics. Perspectiva communis (Madison, Wise., 1970). On dating the Commentary on the Sentences, see Hieronymus Spettmann, "Der
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regency in theology at Paris, from 1270 to 1271 or 1272, saw a collection of disputed questions De anima, and three quodlibetal disputations, the third of which might possibly have been debated instead at Oxford between 1272 and 1275.16 From 1277 to 1279, after a regency in theology at Oxford and two years as Franciscan provincial minister in England, he served as lecturer (magister palatii] at the papal curia, where he disputed his Quodlibet IV and the questions De beatitudine corporis et animae and wrote his last scholastic composition, the Tractatus de anima}' Pecham finished his career as Archbishop of Canterbury, 1279—92, and from those years come his polemical writings, many self-consciously in defense of an Augustinian school of thought. Last of the three principals, Matthew of Aquasparta compiled his Commentary on the Sentences in 1271-72 or shortly thereafter.18 Quite Sentenzenkommentar des Franziskanererzbischofs Johannes Pecham (+1292)," Divus Thomas (Fribourg) 3d. ser., 5 (1927): 327-45. Fragments of this work have been published in Augustinus Daniels, Quellenbeitrdge und Untersuchungen z.ur Geschichte der Gottesbeweise im dreizehnten Jahrhundert, pp. 41-50, Beitrage, 8, 1-2 (Miinster, 1909); Gaudenzio Melani's edition of John Pecham, Tractatus de anima (Florence, 1948); and Hieronymus Spettmann, ed., John Pecham, Quaestiones tractantes de anima, Beitrage, 19, 5 6 (Mtinster, 1918). Quotations from the Commentary will here be identified using the numeration of questions supplied by Spettmann in "Der Sentenzenkommentar," regardless of the number given in the edition from which the quotation is taken. "' On dating Pecham's disputed questions, see Spettmann, ed., Quaestiones tractantes de anima, xxxiii-xxxiv; and on the quodlibets, Girard J. Etzkorn, "Revision dans 1'ordre des Quodlibets de Jean Pecham," Bulletin de Philosophie Medievale 19 (1977): 65; Antoine Dondaine, "Le 'Quodlibet' de Jean Pecham 'De natali' dans la tradition manuscrite thomiste," in Studies Honoring Ignatius Charles Brady Friar Minor, ed. Romano S. Almagno and Conrad L. Harkins, 199-218 (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1976); Delorme in Quodlibet Romanum, p. xx; and Etzkorn, in his introduction to John Pecham, Quodlibeta quatuor (see just below), pp. 21*-25*. Spettmann edited Quaestiones de anima in Quaestiones tractantes de anima; the first three quodlibets have been edited by Girard J. Etzkorn in John Pecham, Quodlibeta quatuor, eds. Girard J. Etzkorn and Ferdinand M. Delorme, 1-170, BFS, 25 (Grottaferrata, 1989). '' Quodlibet IV (the Quodlibet Romanum] was edited by Delorme (see above, n. 15), which edition appears as revised by Girard Etzkorn in John Pecham, Quodlibeta quatuor, eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, pp. 179-295. Quaestiones de beatitudine corporis et animae have been edited by Spettmann in his Quaestiones tractantes de anima; Tractatus de anima by Melani (see above, n. 15). On dating the latter, see Melani's edition and Franz Pelster, "Neue Textausgaben von Werken des hi. Thomas, des Johannes Pecham und Vitalis de Furno," Gregonanum 31 (1950): 284-303. 18 On dating, see most importantly Victorin Doucet's "Introductio critica" to his edition of Matthew of Aquasparta, Quaestiones disputatae de gratia, BFS, 11, esp. pp. XIV-XXIV and CXV-CXIX; Doucet, "L'enseignement Parisien de Mathieu d'Aquasparta (1278-79)," AFH 28 (1935): 568-70; Gedeon Gal's preface to his edition of Matthew of Aquasparta, Quaestiones disputatae de productione rerum et de
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possibly from his inception as master of theology at Paris in the academic year, 1276-77, come the first four of his disputed questions De fide, followed in the next two years by the rest of De fide and the disputed questions De cognitione.[9 In 1279 Matthew succeeded Pecham as lecturer at the papal curia, a post he kept until his election as Minister General of the Franciscans in 1287. Most likely during the years at the curia he disputed his Quaestiones de anima beata, the Quaestiones de productione rerum, and his Quodlibet IV, all of which probably date from early on, before 1282.20 After 1287, Matthew pursued an illustrious career in the church, first as Minister General and from 1289 directly in the service of the popes, but composed no more scholastic works. As for Gilbert of Tournai, the dates of his literary activity are uncertain. Considerably older than Bonaventure and a secular master of theology at Paris already by 1235, Gilbert gave up his chair to join the Franciscan Order around 1240. It was possibly at the urging of Bonaventure, with whom he developed a warm friendship, that he returned to Paris sometime between 1259 and 1262 to teach theology again, now in the Franciscan school.21 His only work rele-
providentia, BFS, 17 (Quaracchi, 1956), pp. 5*-10*; and "Ad lectorem" in Matthew of Aquasparta, Quaestiones disputatae de fide et de cognitione, 2d ed., BFS, 1 (Quaracchi, 1957), pp. 5*-8*; and also A. J. Gondras, "Les Quaestiones de Anima VI, manuscrit de la Bibliotheque communale d'Assise n° 159, attribuees a Matthieu d'Aquasparta," AHDLMA 24 (1957): 203-352; Gondras's edition of Matthew of Aquasparta, Quaestiones disputatae de anima XIII, pp. 11—12 (Paris, 1961); Efrem Bettoni, "Matteo d'Acquasparta e il suo posto," pp. 231-48; and with caution, Ephrem Longpre, "Matthieu d'Aquasparta," In Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, 10.1, coll. 375-89 (Paris, 1928). Matthew's Commentary on the Sentences remains unedited, but a unique autograph copy of Book I survives in MS. Todi, Bibl. com. 122; of Book II in MS. Assisi, Bibl. com. 132. Matthew also jotted down second thoughts on the commentary on Book I, published by Doucet in his edition of Quaestiones de gratia as Animadversiones ad libr. I Sententiarum and dated by him to Matthew's days at the papal curia, although they could just as well be from his regency at Paris. All citations to volumes of Matthew's work published in the series, Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi, will henceforth be to BFS. 19 The questions De fide and De cognitione are edited in Quaestiones disputatae de fide et de cognitione, 2d ed., BFS, 1. 20 Quaestiones de anima beata were edited by Aquilinus Emmen in Matthew of Aquasparta, Quaestiones disputatae de anima separata, de anima beata, de ieiunio et de legibus, BFS, 18 (Quaracchi, 1959); those De productione rerum by Gal in BFS, 17; Quodlibet IV is available only in manuscript. It is possible that Quaestiones de anima beata were disputed in Matthew's last year at Paris. 21 On Gilbert's life, see L. Baudry, "Wibert de Tournai," Revue d'Histoire Franciscaine 5 (1928): 23-61; and Berube, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," pp. 629-31.
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vant to this study is the Rudimentum doctrinae, almost certainly written after Gilbert became a Franciscan but probably before or just as he began his second theological regency. It surely predates Bonaventure's later writings and was composed most likely even before Bonaventure's early magisterial sermons and disputed questions of the mid-1250s.22
22 Baudry, "Wibert de Tournai," p. 30, dates the Rudimentum to 1259-62, an assessment Servus Gieben repeats in "Four Chapters on Philosophical Errors from the Rudimentum Doctrinae of Gilbert of Tournai O. Min. (died 1284)," Vivarium 1 (1963): 141; but Berube, in "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 630; and "Henri de Gand et Mathieu d'Aquasparta interpretes de saint Bonaventure," Naturaleza y Gratia 21 (1974): 134, argues that it was composed considerably earlier than Bonaventure's Itinerarium (ca. 1259). The present author thinks it likely the Rudimentum was written even before Bonaventure's Quaestiones de scientia Christi (1253-54). Selections from the Rudimentum were edited by Gieben in the article (co-authored with Berube), "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," and in his "Four Chapters of Philosophical Errors."
CHAPTER FIVE
TRUTH AND THE CERTITUDE OF KNOWLEDGE
Since the notion of divine illumination that emerged in the works of Bonaventure and his followers was a different philosophical creature from the illuminationism of the preceding generation, it has to be approached with a different sensibility. Where before the functional applications of illuminationist imagery could be examined separately with little concern for how or if they fit together, now they must be regarded as attributes of a single doctrine offering a cohesive, if multifaceted, account of knowledge and mind, each function fully appreciable only if understood in conjunction with all the others. The whole doctrine is nonetheless far too complex to analyze without breaking it up into manageable parts, so the functional divisions remain useful, even if they must now be taken as more heuristic than real. Among them, the most basic disjunction falls between illumination conceived of as normative process linked to the epistemic question of truth and illumination as ideogenic mechanism undergirding operations of mind. Although the Augustinians following Bonaventure strove to reconcile these two perspectives and overcome the contradictions seen so far, they must continue to be dealt with apart. The paradigmatic function of divine illumination still concerned knowledge of truth. Among definitions of truth given in the works of William and Robert, one had identified it as the intellectual object's essence, the Aristotelian quod quid est to which mind was directed by simple cognition.1 In more Augustinian terms, this could be called id quod est, the full reality of an objective entity.2 The same definition resurfaces among the Franciscan Augustinians of a generation later. Gilbert's Rudimentum reproduces, by means of nearly verbatim quotations, William's argument in De universo against a Platonic theory of reference — that is, one pointing to divine reality as referential field 1 a
See above, Part 1, ch. 1, nn. 20-22, and ch. 2, n. 10. See Part 1, ch. 1, nn. 15 and 16.
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for human knowledge.3 Like William, Gilbert insisted, at least for the moment, that truth was purely and simply the essence of a thing existing in the created world.4 Bonaventure's early works offer a similar view. A thing could be regarded as having existence in three ways: in an eternal exemplar in the divine mind, in a concept in a created intellect, and in its proper, real being (in mundo secundum entitatem propriam, in proprio genere). Considering the thing for itself, Bonaventure remarked that it more truly existed (verius habet esse) in its proper, worldly being; only if one asked where the thing had more noble existence would the answer be that it was more truly in God.3 In short, reference in normal human discourse was to truth as simple essence in the world. Yet this definition of truth constituted only a secondary theme. Gilbert followed his quotation from William with a warning that there was another position on reference, important for theologians and probably more to his own liking. Since God was ultimate cause of all knowledge and all natural operations, then the similitudes or ideas of things found in him could legitimately be called truths. From this perspective, things were more truly in God than in themselves.6 Bonaventure, too, insisted in his Collationes in Hexaemeron that created things were, in comparison to the Creator, only lies, the real truth of creatures consisting in the divine word or ideal.7 Here was a 3 Rudimentum, p. I, tr. I, sec. B, tit. D, c. 3 (ed. Gieben, in "Four Chapters," pp. 152-53), the paragraph spanning these two pages composed of snippets from William's De universo II, 1, 16, 34-36 and 39 (Mag. div., I, 823aC, 835aO836bH, 837aA and 838bH). See above, Part 1, ch. 2, pp. 61-63, for William on this matter. 4 Rudimentum, p. I, tr. I, sec. B, tit. D, c. 3 (ed. Gieben, "Four Chapters," p. 153): "Nos autem dicimus veram terrain esse apud nos. . . . Nee exemplar proprie dicitur veritas exempli. Veritas enim non est nisi essentia rei." Gilbert is quoting, with only minor changes, from William's De universo II, 1, 34 and 35 (Mag. div., I, 835bD and 835bD-aE) 5 Bonaventure, In I. Sententiarum, d. 36, a. 2, q. 2 (Opera Omnia, 1, 625b~26a). (> Gilbert, Rudimentum, p. I, tr. I, sec. B, tit. D, c. 3 (ed. Gieben, in "Four Chapters," p. 153): "Sed ne detur in doctoribus errandi materia, sic dicimus apud eum esse rerum similitudines quod etiam veritates. In Deo enim sunt res sicut in causa cognitiva et operativa, et verius quam in se ipsis." See also Rudimentum, p. I, tr. Ill, c. 3, n. 4 (ed. Gieben, in "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 652): "Sed verius habet esse et verius est ratio rei quam res. . . . " ' Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaemeron 3, n. 8 (Opera Omnia, 5, 344b): ". . . omnis creatura mendacium est. . . . [EJrgo necessario est, ut Verbum vel similitude vel ratio sit veritas; et ibi est veritas creaturae. . . ." The use of the word "lie" recalls one of William's definitions, by which all created things were "falsehoods" (see above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, n. 67).
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definition which by directing attention to the divinity steered closer to these Franciscan Augustinians' concerns. Even so, the idea of God as truth did not furnish the dominant motive for Gilbert's and Bonaventure's account of normal human cognition. For this, both scholastics, and their followers, turned to a view bringing together the two sorts of truth defined so far, the Augustinian and Anselmian notion of truth as relation between essences in the world and ideas in God's mind. They did this, significantly, without any of William's and Robert's hesitation and with the intention of setting a relation-based truth at the heart of a systematic theory of knowledge. Gilbert, acting perhaps as intermediary for all the rest, lifted the traditional descriptions for this relation directly from Grosseteste's De veritate, calling truth "the adequation of thing and mental word" or "the conformity of the nature of a thing to the eternal word."8 Bypassing even Grosseteste's perfunctory nod to the Aristotelian insistence on complex cognition as locus of truth, he deployed these definitions in Augustinian fashion solely with respect to simple objects of mind. Bonaventure followed this lead and in two of his celebrated Collationes noted in even more general terms that the truth of things was, by definition, "the adequation of intellect and object," a formulation he glossed to mean not adequation of object and understanding in a human mind but rather the deeper connection between thing and causal intellect of God.9 About the same time, John Pecham defended a similar point of view, writing in his Commentary on the Sentences that truth was "the
8 Gilbert, Rudimentum, p. I, tr. Ill, c. 3, n. 4 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 652): "Veritas igitur est adaequatio rei et verbi interioris. . . . [Njihil aliud est quam conformitas rationis suae in verbo aeterno." (One might question here the reading "in," as the context clearly prescribes a comparison of "ratio" to "verbum.") Compare to Grosseteste, De veritate (Phil. Werke, p. 134, 11. 23-24; and 137, 11. 1-2); see also above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, nn. 7 and 8. Although Gilbert did not cite Grosseteste by name, he was plainly dependent on him, since (as Gieben has noted, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 653, n. 131) the rest of this chapter of the Rudimentum amounts to a verbatim quotation (from De veritate [Phil. Werke, pp. 137-38]). Gilbert has, however, somewhat twisted Grosseteste's words. For Grosseteste, the conformity lay between thing and divine idea (ratio}', Gilbert, drawing on his notion of ratio as truer than essence (see above, n. 6), situated the conformity between nature (ratio) and divine word. 9 See Bonaventure, Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti 4, n. 7 (Opera Omnia, 5, 475a): ". . . veritas rerum est 'adaequatio intellectus et rei'"; and at greater length Collationes in Hexaemeron 3, n. 8 (Opera Omnia, 5, 344b).
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conformity of thing to idea" in the mind of God.10 While unlike either of his predecessors he explicitly rejected any identification of truth with simple essence, he nevertheless explained that truth as conformity should not be regarded as an accident or property of essence but rather as something between essence and accident, so close indeed to essence as to be called "essential" though not "essence" outright.11 Pecham in fact at times described truth as the simple entity of an object, surely much nearer to Aristotelian essence or Augustine's id quod est than the conformity designated by his formal definition.12 The resultant equivocation cannot be eliminated from Pecham's views and is perhaps related to another unresolved dilemma in his thought to be examined below: whether divine illumination was limited to complex cognition or functioned in knowledge of simple objects as well.13 Finally, there is Matthew of Aquasparta, typically anxious to accommodate the scattered thoughts of his predecessors but supplying a theoretical framework solid enough to eliminate most ambiguity and inconsistency. He remarked that "true" and "truth" were among the special terms at the foundation of all understanding which logicians referred to as first intentions, or in his words, intentiones universales, adding that such terms could be approached from numerous points of view.14 In line with those identifying truth with essence pure and simple, he conceded that considered absolutely the term "truth" referred to that which made a thing separate and distinct, thus to its simple actuality.15 But "truth" also implied a comparison of simple object to something else, from which perspective it could be 10 See Pecham, In I. Sententiarum, d. 8, q. laa (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, pp. 218 [q. 40]): ". . . rei veritas est eius conformitas ad suam ideam . . ."; and d. 8, q. laB (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones, p. 219 [q. 41]): ". . . veritas cuiuslibet esse convenit in conformitatem ad primum principium. . . ." Pecham was also familiar with the definition of truth as adequation: In I. Sententiarum, d. 8, q. laa, arg. contra 3 and ad 3. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones, pp. 217 and 219 [q. 40]). 11 Pecham, In I. Sententiarum, d. 8, q. laa (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones, pp. 217-18 [q. 40]). 12 Pecham, In I. Sententiarum, d. 8, q. Ic (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones, p. 221 [q. 42]): "Veritas in
plexa, quae est vera rei entitas. . . ." u See below, pp. 148-51. The tension between the two views of truth is clearest in In I. Sententiarum, d. 8, q. laa, ad 2. and ad 3. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones, p. 219 [q. 40]). 14 Matthew, Commentarius in librum I Sententiarum, d. 8, q. 2 (MS Todi, Bibl. com. 122, f. 36ra). 15 Matthew, Camm. m lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 2 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, ff. 36ra
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regarded more properly as a thing's nature insofar as it imitated and expressed a separate reality to which it was assimilated as to its underlying principle.16 Here was wiiere the definition of truth as adequation came in.17 Since the adequation could be drawn between simple object and either of two assimilative ideals exemplary cause in God or formal understanding in human mind - there were two different truths of this comparative sort. One lay in things as they reflected God's ideas, the other in mind as it was directed to external objects.18 Of these, the former had priority as origin and immediate cause of the latter.19 In fact this priority was absolute, and in the end it was only because things were true by imitating a divine ideal that one could say that essence itself, formal means of such imitation, was secondarily a thing's truth.20 With their emphasis on a comparative truth demanding judgment at the level of simple apprehension, Bonaventure and his followers and 36rb); and most clearly, d. 8, q. 3 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 36vb): ". . . sicut dictum fuit in questione precedenti, ueritas dicit rationem discernendi et depungendi (?) secundum quod dicitur actus rei simplicis quo distinguitur res ab omni alio." 16 Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 2 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 36rb): "Proprie dicitur ueritas ratio ymitandi siue exprimendi, et uerum dicit assimilatum; et hoc modo dicitur ueritas species qua unumquodque imitatur suum principium." 17 Ibid. ". . . et ilia [diffinitio] Algazelis: ueritas est adequatio rei ad intellectum." See also Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 4, q. 8, ad 3. (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 39rb). In both instances, Matthew attributed the definition not to Avicenna, as was common, but, possibly by confusion, to his summarizer and critic, AlGhazzali. Matthew also kept a place for Anselm's definition of truth as a rectitude, referring to it in Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 8, qq. 2 and 4 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, ff. 36ra-b and 37rb). 18 Matthew, Comm. m lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 2 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 36ra): "Possunt tamen autem sumi ueritas et sufficientia istorum [terminorum ut bonum et unum] per istum modum, quia ens potest considerari in se uel in relatione ad causam uel in relationem (sic) ad animam. . . . Si in comparationem (sic) ad causam . . . formalem exemplarem, sic est ueritas que est ratio discernendi. . . . Si considerentur in relatione ad animam, . . . si ueritas in intelligentia que est uirtus discretiua." 19 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 1. (BFS, 1, 215). 20 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 232, 11. 24-28). Matthew recognized the truth of complex cognition - the truth of a proposition - and as good logician characterized this second truth according to the classic definitions of Aristotle and Augustine: see Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 4 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 37ra): "Efficiens et effecta ueritas in re nature et effecta est a prima ueritate et efficit ueritatem intellectam siue in enunciatione, secundum Philosophum: ab eo quod res est uel non est dicitur oratio uera uel falsa, et Augustinum, 15° De Trinitate, capitulo 13°: quod tune est uerum uerbum cum ita est in re." (The references are
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turned from the more purely Aristotelianizing tendencies of William or of Grosseteste in his later years back towards the unhesitating Augustinianism of Grosseteste's De veritate. Already in Gilbert it is apparent that Franciscans of mid-century were prepared to give full play in both epistemology and noetics to Godly intervention in normal human cognition. Gilbert incorporated verbatim into his Rudimentum the heart of Grosseteste's account of divine illumination from De veritate, adopting even the ambivalence about whether the process was fundamentally epistemic and normative or noetic and ideogenic.21 Not surprisingly, this borrowing committed him as well to Anselm's language of "rectitude" and Augustine's more poetic descriptions of the light of divine reasons shining within the mind.22 Most likely through Gilbert the same Grossetestian view's passed into the rest of the Franciscan school.23 In his early Commentary on the Sentences, Bonaventure gave no hint of the doctrine of divine illumination associated with his later works, but around 1253, in a number of early sermons and the disputed questions De scientia Christi, he began to take up the line of thought presented in Gilbert's Rudimentum. The first of the sermons for the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, dating from November 1253, quoted the Gospel of Matthew on Christ as unique teacher for all humanity, adding by way of commentary that there could be no cognitive certitude by the created light of intelligence alone but only if one turned to God's own intelligible light, acting in Augustine's words as "spiritual sun" for mind.24
to Aristotle, Categories 5 [4b8-10]; and Augustine, De Trinitate XV, 15 [eds. William J. Mountain and Fr. Glorie, CC, 50-50A {Turnhout, 1968}, 2, 497]). Yet it was not complex truth that interested Matthew when it came to explaining processes of mind, but rather the simple truth of comparison or adequation. -] See above, n. 8. Baudry, "Wibert de Tournai," pp. 60-61, comments on the incomplete synthesis of disparate views found in Gilbert's work and the resultant tendency towards incoherence. -~ Another reference to the rectitude of true knowledge comes in Gilbert's Rudimentum, p. I, tr. II, sec. B, c. 2, n. 9 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 645). -'' Andrew G. Little, "Was St. Bonaventure a Student in Oxford? His Visit to England in 1259," AFH 19 (1926): 290, hypothesized a connection between Grosseteste and Bonaventure's thought, but the means of transmission remained unclear. (See also above, Pt. 1, intro, n. 5.) It was Berube who first brought attention to Gilbert's role - see above, Pt. 2, intro., nn. 8 and 22. 24 Bonaventure, Sermo, Dominica XXII. post Pent., 1 (Opera Omnia, 9, 44lb— 42a), with references to Matthew 23, 10: ". . . magister vester unus est, Christus"; and to Augustine, Soliloquia I, 8 (PL, 32, 877). On dating this sermon and most others, the present work follows Quinn, "Chronology of Bonaventure's Sermons,"
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A second version of the same argument, reinforced with more citations from Augustine and the Bible, appears in the sermon "Unus est magister vester Christus," now with the observation that Christ functions as teacher insofar as he is "truth."23 Finally, in a third and still more developed variation from the fourth question De scientia Christi, Bonaventure summarized his sermon language only to set it in context of a general disquisition on the nobility of knowledge of truth and the dignity of mind capable of attaining it.26 Recourse to language of light is equally evident in two sermons from 1254. In his fourteenth sermon for the third Sunday of Advent, dating from December of that year, Bonaventure stated that no truth was seen except by means of the First Truth, acting as light shining on all those able to receive its illumination.27 Just four months before, in a sermon honoring St. Dominic, he had insisted that it was "impossible that anyone should come to understand the light of any truth except by the infallible light, the light of eternal Truth."28 The point here was only slightly blunted by his observation that mind carried the image of eternal light naturally within itself, an admission that might suggest John of La Rochelle's interpretation of illumination along Aristotelianizing lines.29 Bonaventure even defended his insistence on a Godly role in normal cognition by appealing to the Aristotelian canons of science — most notably immutability and certitude.30 He cited the maxim from the Posterior Analytics that scientific knowledge comes from knowing the most complete and convincing discussion of the matter. An echo of the language of this sermon can be heard in Bonaventure's Itinerarium mentis in Deum 3, n. 3 (Opera Omnia, 5, 304b). Augustine had spoken of Christ as mind's teacher in De magistro XI, 38, and XII, 40 (in the edition by Gunther Weigel, CSEL, 77, 1 [Vienna, 1961], pp. 47 and 48-49); and in In Epistolam Joannis ad Parthos, tr. Ill, n. 13 (PL, 35, 2004), he quoted the text from Matthew in this regard. Gilbert knew this latter instance, referring to it in Rudimentum, p. I, tr. II, sec. B, c. 2, n. 13 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 647). -° "Unus est magister," nn. 8—10 (ed. Russo, pp. 108-10). 26 De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 23b-24a). Both broader perspective and condensation of the language of the sermons argue that question 4 of De scientia Christi postdates the two sermons, but it could not have been written much later, probably within a year. 27 Sermo, Dominica III. Adventus, 14 (Opera Omnia, 9, 73a). 28 Sermo de S. Dominico (Opera Omnia, 9, 563b-64a), esp. 564a: "Impossibile namque est, quod quis perveniat ad comprehensionem lucis alicuius veritatis nisi per lucem infallibilem, quae est lux Veritatis aeternae." 29 Ibid., p. 563a. On John, see above, Ft. 2, intro., n. 4. 30 See Sermo, Dom. XXII. post Pent., 1 (Opera Omnia, 9, 441a-42b); and the same language in "Unus est magister," n. 6 (ed. Russo, p. 106).
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the cause "on account of which something is" and realizing that things could not be any other way, assuming it was evident to all that the cause in question was God himself.31 Totally ignored was Grosseteste's more authentic interpretation from the Commentary, whereby the cause of scientific knowledge was the formal explanation propter quid.3'2 The same twist to Aristotle is likewise apparent in the almost casual reference to the need to consult divine ideas in order to define something with cognitive certitude.33 Such an association of illumination and Aristotelian science, so foreign to the sensitivity of either William or Robert, remained with Bonaventure throughout his life, resounding even in the language of his sometimes stridently non-Aristotelian Collationes in Hexaemeron.^ Not that he forgot his more fundamental debt to Augustine. Every mention of illumination was accompanied by an avalanche of references to the works of this most quotable of Latin fathers. Augustinian citations are most liberal in the polished sermon, "Unus est magister vester," but some of the same passages appear in the sermon for the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost and that for St. Dominic's day.35 Most Augustinian of all, of course, was the insistence on judgment (diiudicatid) in all knowledge, involving a comparison of mutable object to immutable, eternal ideal in God.36 Mind needed a measure of its understanding in simple as well as complex apprehension, and only God could provide one reliable enough to serve the purposes of truth. Here at last, in the 1250s and 1260s, Grosseteste's early approach to truth and cognition was beginning to bear fruit. 31 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics I, 2 (73MO-12); see the Latin translation by James of Venice (in Aristoteles Latinus, IV, 1-4, ed. Lorenzo Minio-Paluello and Bernard G. Dod [Bruges, 1968], p. 7): "Scire autem opinamur unumquodque simpliciter . . . cum causamque arbitramur cognoscere propter quam res est, quoniam illius causa est, et non est contingere hoc aliter se habere." 32 On Grosseteste's reading, see Marrone, New Ideas of Truth, pp. 224-26, esp. n. 24. 33 Bonaventure, De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 24a): ". . . portio superior [rationis] est ilia . . . quae et aeternis regulis inhaerescit et per eas quidquid definit certitudinaliter iudicat et definit. . . . " 34 Collationes in Hexaemeron 12, n. 5 (Opera Omnia, 5, 385a~b). 3) "Unus est magister," nn. 8 and 10 (ed. Russo, pp. 108-12); Sermo, Dom. XXII. post Pent., 1 (Opera Omnia, 9, 442a); Sermo de S. Dom. (Opera Omnia, 9, 564a). 3h Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum 2, n. 9 (Opera Omnia, 5, 301b-2a). That Bonaventure thought a judgment was involved even in simple abstraction is clear from Itinerarium mentis in Deum 2, n. 6 (Opera Omnia, 5, 30la).
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The new vision was enthusiastically taken up by Bonaventure's pupils and their successors in the Franciscan school at Paris. By the time John Pecham composed his Commentary on the Sentences, the notion of divine illumination in normal cognition of truth was so familiar that he could answer the question: Whether God is cognitive means for all certain understanding? by launching immediately into discussion of how God served this function, confident that his audience readily accepted the fact that he did.37 A simple sentence sufficed later in the same work to lay out the whole of Bonaventure's view, including his definition of simple truth, insistence on judgment in all knowledge and idea of truthful rectitude.38 Pecham even agreed that science - that peculiarly Aristotelian category of knowledge - depended on illumination from God.39 Indeed, he maintained that everything mind knew (quaecumque intellectualiter cognoscit) it perceived with assistance from the uncreated light.40 Perfect knowledge of truth would, of course, have demanded clear vision of the divine reasons, available only to the blessed, but however imperfect the wayfarer's knowledge of the truth, it demanded at least some access to Godly ideals.41 Lest there be any doubt, he specifically ruled out interpreting divine intervention along the lines of John of La Rochelle: it was not enough to say that God illumined mind simply by endowing it with a natural capacity to know.42 Matthew of Aquasparta followed the same course from his earliest work. Beginning with the definition of truth as adequation, he argued that since things were more truly represented in God than 3/
See Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, pp. 131 and 134-36). 38 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. laa, ad 1. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 219 [q. 40]): "[R]es in tantum vera est, in quantum imitatur rationem aeternalem, quam animus in iudicando de rebus attingit, si recte iudicat. . . ." 39 Pecham, Tractatus de anima 3, 2 (ed. Melani, p. 10): "Acquiritur autem animae scientia occasione per sensus praestita. Sed causa scientiae est lux aeterna." 40 Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 5 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 67): "Igitur fatendum est quod intellectus humanus videt, quaecumque intellectualiter cognoscit, in ipso lumine increato." See also Pecham's Tractatus de anima 5, 1 (ed. Melani, p. 17). 41 Pecham, Quodlibet HI, q. 10 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 153, 11. 23-25). See also Quaestiones de beatitudine corporis et animae, q. 22, ad 6. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 175). 42 See Pecham, Quodlibet IV, q. 4 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 183-84, 11. 29-72). On John's position, see Pt. 2, intro., n. 4, as well as n. 29 above.
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in their own essential being, they were more truly known — and the adequation of their truth greater - when mind was directed to divine ideal rather than to the essential object itself.43 Of course this might mean simply that perfect knowledge required special intervention by God, but Matthew made clear that the need for recourse to divine reasons applied to all knowledge of truth here on earth; indeed the model was especially designed to explain the cognitive attainments of fallen mind.44 As if to reinforce the point, he introduced a notion of truth he called more proper than any other: the power to make manifest - that is, to produce cognition.45 By these terms truth was best understood as itself a cognitive light, and Matthew left no doubt that there was only one such light fully worthy of the name, that of God himself.46 Though created objects had an imperfect and partial ability to produce cognition and thus be self-manifesting lights, under no circumstances could they act without an empowering superfusion from God.47 There was, in short, no knowledge of truth except where the light of divine truth was at work. And like Pecham, Matthew hastened to add that God's operation was more than his creation
4:5 Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 4, q. 8, ad 3. (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 39rb): "Uerius autem representantur [res] in Deo quam in proprio genere, et propterea uerius cognoscuntur ibi et est maior adequatio." 44 This is clear from Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 4, q. 7 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 38vb); and d. 24, q. 10 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 127rb): "Uerum est etiam quod irradiationem prime cause et eius inluminationem cognoscimus quicquid cognoscimus." See also the citations below, n. 50; and Matthew's Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 7 (ed. Emmen, in Quaestiones disputatae, BFS, 18, 329, 11. 15-18): ". . . sic lux increata . . . est ratio videndi in omni visione intellectuali; ita quod quidquid videtur, per ipsam videtur." 43 Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 2 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 36rb): "Propriissime dicitur ueritas ratio manifestandi et uerum dicit aptum natum manifestari et de se manifestum et clarum. Et hoc modo ueritas dicitur lux siue claritas qua unumquodque se manifestat et declarat sicuti est." In Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 233, 11. 1-3), Matthew attributed this definition to Hilary of Poitiers, as did Henry of Ghent (see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge in the. Thought of Henry of Ghent [Cambridge, Mass., 1985], p. 51, n. 38). I have been unable to locate any passage in Hilary corresponding to Matthew's words. 4(1 Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 3 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 36vb): "Similiter, in quantum [ueritas] dicit rationem innotescendi uel declarandi uel manifestandi in solo illo est qui est lux prima et pura, unde lucent quecumque lucent et que manifestat se et omnia alia a se et est principium omnis cognitionis et manifestationis. Hec autem lux non est nisi Deus, secundum Augustinum and Anselmum." 47 Matthew, Comm. m lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 3 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 37ra): "Nee aliqua lux est in creatura nisi in quantum uero illustratur. Quia et si lux sit uel habeat aliquid lucis . . . tamen obscura est nee sufficit se manifestare nisi superfusa luce ilia a qua facta est.
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of mind's innate power to know, for in order truly to understand, mind had to go beyond itself to be somehow touched or subjoined to the divine light, "the perfect means of knowing."48 Drawing a term from Augustine's lexicon, he said that only such divine mediation yielded knowledge of truth in all purity (sinceritas veritatis).49 Along with his predecessors, Matthew also explicitly associated God's activity as light of truth with the epistemic quality of certitude.50 Prolific quoter of Bonaventure, usually without acknowledgment, he reproduced practically word for word the master's most salient comments about certitude and infallibility, specifically on the need to reduce all knowledge aspiring to such claims back to God himself.51 He defended the Augustinian notion that even simple knowl48 Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 5 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 37vb); and the same words, only slightly modified and expanded, as copied into Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 233, 11. 1-14). 49 Matthew, Animadversiones in I. Sent. (ed. Victorin Doucet, in Quaestiones disputatae de gratia [BFS, 11], p. LXXXV); and Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 1. (BFS, 1, 48). The term sinceritas veritatis is used by Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, q. 9 (ed. Almut Mutzenbecher, CC, 44A [Turnhout, 1975], p. 16). It appeared in the form sincera veritas in the works of Henry of Ghent about the same time it was employed by Matthew, although for Henry it played a much more central role - see below, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 80. 50 See, for instance, Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. [21], q. 7 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. lOlrb) (quoted below, n. 78); d. 24, q. 9 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 126rb); Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 214, 11. 27-29); and q. 2 (BFS, I, 238, 11. 17-19): "Ergo necesse est omnia quae certitudinaliter cognoscuntur, in lumine veritatis aeternae et in regulis incommutabilibus cognosci." 51 See for example Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 235, 11. 15-20), virtually reproducing the passage from Bonaventure cited above, n. 33. Scholars stressing Matthew's dependency on Bonaventure include Doucet, "Introductio critica," BFS, I I , pp. CLVII-CLX; Ephrem Longpre, "Matthieu d'Aquasparta," coll. 387-88; and "S. Augustin et la pensee franciscaine," La France Franciscaine 15 (1932): 47 (quoted by Doucet, BFS, 11, p. CLIX); and Efrem Bettoni, "Rapporti dottrinali fra Matteo d'Acquasparta e Giovanni Duns Scoto," SF Ser. 3, 15 (1943): 124-26 and 129; and "Matteo d'Acquasparta," p. 243. Helen Marie Beha, "Matthew of Aquasparta's Theory of Cognition," FrS 20 (1960): 161-204; 21 (1961): 1-79 and 383-465; and Pasquale Mazzarella, La dottrina deU'anima e della conoscen^a in Matteo d'Acquasparta (Padua, 1969), have preferred to see Matthew as a compromiser, transitional between Bonaventure and later thinkers. John D. Dowd, "Matthew of Aquasparta's De Productione Rerum and its Relation to St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure," FrS 34 (1974): 34-73, has pointed to the many Aristotelianizing elements in Matthew. For further discussion of the tenor of Matthew's thought, see Martin Grabmann, Die phibsophische und theobgische Erkenntniskhre des Kardinals Matthaeus von Aquasparta, Theologische Studien der Leo-Gesellschaft, 14 (Vienna, 1906), esp. pp. 48-55; Giulio Bonafede, "La gnoseologia di Matteo d'Acquasparta," in Filosofia e cultura in Umbria tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, 249-69, Atti del IV Convegno di Studi Umbri, Gubbio, 22-26 May 1966 (Perugia, 1967); and Francois-Xavier Putallaz, La connaissame de soi au XIIF siecle de Matthieu d'Aquasparta a Thierry de Freiberg (Paris, 1991), pp. 23-30.
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edge required mental judgment, ultimately validated only by God, and proved himself as capable of manipulating the Anselmian terminology of cognition as Grosseteste in De veritate?'2 Finally, he, too, interpreted Aristotle's scientific injunction on knowing the cause as referring to divine ideal, like Bonaventure taking the requirement to apply as much to simple as to complex cognition.53 In all this, neither Bonaventure nor his followers wanted to imply that God or the divine reasons were "sole, naked or total means of knowledge" for fallen mind. As Bonaventure explained twice, using words repeated even more often by Matthew, if God were sole means, then wisdom would not differ from earthly science; if he were naked means, then the beatific vision would not improve on that of the wayfarer; and if he were total means, then there would be no need of sensory experience for knowledge in the world.34 Cognitive reality demanded something else, a middle way between Plato, who
52
For the former, see Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 1. (BFS, 1, 49, 11. 8-19); for the latter, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 237, 11. 19-25). 53 Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 116va): "Illud enim quod certitudinaliter scitur necessarium est in se et immutabile, secundum quod dicit philosophus: 'Tune enim scimus cum causam quam abstrauimus cognoscemus propter quam res est et scimus quoniam ipsius est causa et quoniam impossibile est aliter se habere.' Et hoc quidem uerum est non solum quantum ad actum intellectus qui est non solum (sic) in perceptionem (sic) terminorum sed propositionum et illationum." The passage continues by showing how this necessarily implicates God in human cognition. For Bonaventure's anticipation of Matthew on this score, see above, nn. 30 and 31. It is interesting to note that when in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 236, 11. 7-11), Matthew reworked this passage from his Commentary on the Sentences, he dropped the reference to Aristotle and the quotation from the Posterior Analytics, and by the time of his Quaestiones disputatae de fide, he was willing explicitly to concede that when Aristotle spoke of knowledge of the cause of things he might not have had God in mind. See Matthew, Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 12. (BFS, 1, 55, 11. 26-30). 54 Bonaventure, "Unus est magister," n. 18 (ed. Russo, p. 120): "Quod autem dicatur ratio intelligendi, sane intelligendum est, non quia sit intelligendi ratio sola, nee nuda, nee tota. - Si enim esset ratio sola, non differret cognito scientiae a cognitione sapientiae. . . . Rursus, si esset ratio nuda et aperta, non differet cognitio viae a cognitione patriae. . . . Postremo, si esset ratio tota, non indigeremus specie et receptione ad cognoscendas res. . . . " A shortened version of the same appears in De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 22b-23a). Matthew copied the passage from "Unus est magister" nearly verbatim into his Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 8 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 117vb), which served as literal model for Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 233, 11. 15-29). The same words, modified a bit more, can be found in Matthew's Quaestiones de fide, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 44, 11. 11-19), while the shorter argument from Bonaventure's De scientia Christi is taken up in Matthew's Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35. q. 8 (f. 117vb); and De cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 231, 11. 10-14).
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attributed all efficacy to the ideal reasons above, and Aristotle, who admitted only the action of sensible objects below. For these Franciscans of mid-century it was of course Augustine who had charted the course.DD The Augustinian description of God as sun of cognition, shining on all objects of knowledge and thereby promoting the business of knowing, preserved all of value in either the Platonic or Aristotelian tradition and served besides to guarantee divinity's mysterious action in human understanding. Yet in the intellectual climate of the 1260s and 1270s, the problem was how to set Augustine's insight into concrete and critical form suitable to the demands of scholastic science. Interestingly enough, Bonaventure himself did not play the dominant role in working towards a solution. His philosophy has often been characterized as mystically oriented, and indeed for all his familiarity with scholastic canons of logic, his method tended more towards the rhetorical, deeply tinged with the language of contemplation, than towards the prosaic, analytic and demonstrative ideal of most late-thirteenthcentury theologians.06 As Ewert Cousins has said, he retained a subjectivity tying him to the past, in contrast to the self-conscious 53
Bonaventure's most detailed presentation of the two ways of Aristotle and Plato and Augustine's mediating solution came in "Unus est magister," nn. 18-19 (ed. Russo, pp. 120-22), but it was in a quick recapitulation in De scientia Ckristi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 23a-b) where he said that Augustine's ideas held "quasi medium . . . inter utramque viam." Matthew repeated the analysis, including the call for an Augustinian "via media," in Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 8 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 117vb); and Quaestiones de cognitions, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 232, 11. 14-15). 56 There is a considerable literature on the character of Bonaventure's thought. Etienne Gilson, La philosophic de saint Bonaventure, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1943), pp. 62 and 65-66 (original edition translated as The Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure [London, 1938]), stated most clearly the view of Bonaventure as propounder of a philosophy transfigured by faith, with similar estimation given by Karl Werner, Die Psychologic und Erkenntnislehre des Johannes Bonaventura (Vienna, 1876; repr. New York, 1973), p. 40; Philotheus Boehner, The History of the Franciscan School 2 vols. (Typescript, St. Bonaventure, New York, 1943), I, 9e; Efrem Bettoni, S. Bonaventura (Beescia, 1945) [translated as Saint Bonaventure (Notre Dame, 1964; repr. Westport, Conn., 1981}], p. 26; M. Hurley, "Illumination according to S. Bonaventure," Gregorianum 32 (1951): 388-404; Antonio Zigrossi, Saggio sul Neoplatonismo di S. Bonaventura. II concetto di unita e la struttura del reale come problema teologico (Florence, 1954), pp. 67-68; and perhaps Edouard-Henri Weber, Dialogue et dissensions, p. 485. This position has been attacked on the one side by those holding Bonaventure's philosophy as no more uniquely oriented to faith than anyone else's: Patrice Robert, "Le probleme de la philosophic bonaventurienne," Laval Theologique et Philosophique 6 (1950): 145-63; and 7 (1951): 9-58; and Thomas R. Mathias, "Bonaventuran Ways to God through Reason," FrS 36 (1976): 192-232; and 37 (1977): 153-206. On the other side are those maintaining that Bonaventure was no proper philosopher at all, rather a the-
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objectivity, or empiricism, already triumphant in his day. 57 It was instead Bonaventure's followers who, building on his insights but with greater concern for consistency and precision, transformed illuminationism into an authentic scholastic doctrine. One issue to settle was the question of how directly God intervened, attempts to find a precise answer beginning as early as Gilbert. Well-versed in the language of Augustine, he spoke in his Rudimentum of God's special intimacy to mind yet was bothered by the idea that God himself or anything partaking of divine substance - should be formally implicated in normal processes of human cognition or, even worse, immediately grasped by intellect.18 It was the old concern to avoid an ontologism antithetical to the Christian view of conditions in the world of sin. Gilbert's solution was to stipulate that the agent permitting knowledge of truth and lending it certitude was an "influence" of the divine light, not the divine light or divinity itself.39 The idea must have been current at Paris even before it appeared in Gilbert's work, for already in the 1230s William of Auvergne spoke of those holding that God intervened in human knowledge by means of an effect or influence. Theirs was a position against which he argued at length in his analysis of the referential conditions of eternal truth.60 ologian: Pierre Mandonnet, "L'augustinisme Bonaventurien," Bulletin Thomiste 3 (1926): 53-54; and Jean Chatillon, "Saint Bonaventure et la philosophic," in San Bonaventum maestro di vita francescana e di sapienza cristiana, ed. Alfonso Pompei, I, 429-46, Atti del Congresso Internazionale, Rome, 19-26 September 1974 (Rome, 1976). For more on the character of Bonaventure's thought see Bonifaz A. Luyckx, Die Erkenntnislehre Bonaventuras, Beitrage, 23, 3-4 (Miinster, 1923); Giulio Bonafede, "II problema dell'illuminazione in S. Bonaventura," Sophia 4 (1936): 78-82; and 5 (1937): 48-55; Luigi Bellofiore, "La dottrina deH'illuminazione dell'intelletto in S. Bonaventura," Sophia 6 (1938): 535-37; and 7 (1939): 172-87; Leon Veuthey, S. Bonaventurae philosophia Christiana (Rome, 1943); and "Le probleme de 1'existence de Dieu chez S. Bonaventure," Antonianum 28 (1953): 19-38; Gonsalvus Scheltens, "De bonaventuriaanse illuminatieleer," Tijdschrift voor Philosophic 17 (1955): 383-408; and with less confidence P.J. McAndrew, "The Theory of Divine Illumination in St. Bonaventure, The New Scholasticism 6 (1932): 32-50; and Theodore Crowley, "St. Bonaventure Chronology Reappraised," FS 56 (1974): 310-22. >7 See the citation to Cousins above in the general Introduction, n. 10. >8 See Rudimentum, p. I, tr. II, sec. B, c. 2, n. 13 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 647): "Nam, si Deus in omni operatione intime agit eo quod intimior sit substantiis quam forma substantialis earum sibi ipsis, ibi illuminat intellectum ubi nulla alia substantia attingere potest." -'•' See the introduction to Rudimentum, p. I, tr. II, sec. B., c. 2 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 643): "Quod sine influentia lucis increatae non potest intellectus veritatem intelligere." 60 See above, Pt. 1, ch. 3, nn. 14 and 15.
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In Gilbert's version of the theory, the uncreated light (lux) had the power to illumine a multitude of intelligences and intellects "by means of the varied splendor (splendor) of multiform rays," a function of which illumination was to lead to knowledge of truth. Thus, by means of one type of ray (sub aliquo radio) the divine light revealed truth to every intelligent soul, the whole process comparable to the phenomenon of color activating visual sight in the light of the sun: color corresponding to intelligible object, sight to mind and sun to God himself.61 Surely Gilbert deciphered the image according to his reading of a passage from Avicenna's De anima distinguishing among lux, lumen and radius, whereby lux signified the substance of a shining object, lumen or radius a quality proceeding from the object and thereby separable from it.62 The point was that whatever light God generated to regulate human knowledge of truth, it was not the same as God himself. Mind did not have unmediated access to divinity in its normal cognitive operations. Bonaventure's early sermon for the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost employs language reminiscent of Gilbert's on God as emitting varied and multiform rays to explain how different sciences could come from one original source, the undivided deity.63 The phrase "divine influence" also occasionally appears in his works with reference to mind's need for something other than its own innate light in order to know truth, so Gilbert's notion of an influence from God was not entirely foreign to Bonaventure's thought.64 But there is no evidence Bonaventure accepted Gilbert's understanding of what this hl
Rudimentum, p. I, tr. II, sec. B, c. 2, nn. 11 and 12 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 646). 62 For discussion of this passage in Gilbert's Rudimentum, p. I, tr. Ill, c. 2, n. 8 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," pp. 649-51), see Marrone, "Matthew of Aquasparta, Henry of Ghent and Augustinian Epistemology after Bonaventure," FS 65 (1983): 258-59. Note how much Gilbert's analysis sounds like what William had argued against more than two decades before (see above, n. 60). Gilbert referred to Avicenna, Liber de anima sen sextus de naturalibus III, 1 (Avicenna Latinus, ed. Simone Van Riet [Leiden, 1972] I, 170-71). David C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago, 1976), p. 113; and Katherine H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockahm. Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250-1345 (Leiden, 1988), p. 58, call attention to the fact that the distinction between lux and lumen had entered the perspectivist tradition from at least the days of Roger Bacon. 63 Bonaventure, Sermo, Dom. XXII. post Pent., 1 (Opera Omnia, 9, 442a). 64 See Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 1, ad 6. (Opera Omnia, 2, 412b-13a): ". . . [Deus] potest producere et facere lucem creatam aliquo modo sibi conformem; quae tamen sibi non sufficit, etiam postquam producta est, nisi
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influence was or how it worked. By the time of De scientia Christi, when he was committing himself to a theory of divine illumination, he had decided resolutely to oppose any interpretation holding that an influence separate from and lower than God was means by which the divinity worked to give certitude to human cognition. Since Augustine had often spoken clearly about the need for knowledge to be certified by the divine reasons themselves and not some "habit of mind" lower than God, to say anything less was absurd.60 John Pecham followed Bonaventure's lead at least in part. As early as his Commentary on the Sentences he commented on a reading of Augustinian illumination positing God as efficient cause (efficiens, effective] in human knowledge of truth but not himself informing intellect.66 So great is the proximity to William of Auvergne's words decades earlier about a position defending God's illuminative action by means of an influence working effective, with only an effect (quidam effectus] of divine truth directly implicated in human cognition, that it is easy to believe Pecham had in mind the very view William had attacked, and which Gilbert supported only fifteen years before.67 His response was entirely negative: God had himself to be directly and formally involved.68 adsit ei summae lucis influentia;" and a similar passage in the late Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti 8, n. 15 (Opera Omnia, 5, 496b), which speaks of an "illustratio per divinam influentiam." 1)5 Bonaventure, De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 23a~b). Berube has convincingly argued that Bonaventure differed with Gilbert on the question of whether God illuminated through an influence - see Berube, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 637; "Henri de Gand et Mathieu d'Aquasparta," p. 141; and "Olivi, critique de Bonaventure et d'Henri de Gand," in Studies Honoring Ignatius Charles Brady Friar Minor, ed. Romano S. Almagno and Conrad L. Harkins (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1976), p. 71. It is curious to note that Fortune Palhories, in "La theorie de 1'intelligence chez saint Bonaventure," RSPT 6 (1912): 481-82 and 488-89; and Saint Bonaventure (Paris, 1913), pp. 58-59, posed the problem of whether for Bonaventure illumination came from an influence or a real presence and said it could not be resolved, while Renato Lazzarini, S. Bonaventura. Filosofo e rnistico del Cristianesimo (Milan, 1946), p. 210, interpreted Bonaventure on this issue the way Gilbert is interpreted in this book. w> Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 134): "Sunt qui dicunt quod lumen aeternum non est informans intellectum, sed efficiens tantum cognitionem intellectualem non in quantum informans vel formaliter ostendens, sed mediante aliqua luce creata" (emphasis Melani's). Practically the same position, but cast specifically as a view on the nature of the agent intellect, is described and rebutted in Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 5 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, pp. 66-67). 6/ See again above, n. 60. <)8 Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, pp. 134-35).
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Yet Pecham's attack on God as efficient cause can be taken merely as criticism of those like John of la Rochelle holding God to be illuminator simply by endowing mind with its own created power to know, a position he plainly opposed on at least one other occasion.69 And when it came to explaining exactly how God acted on mind in cognition of truth, Pecham's views were not so different from Gilbert's after all. The Commentary on the Sentences asserted that divine light intervened not as inhering form but rather as form impressing knowledge of something else on intellect, the concern being, as with Gilbert, to avoid ontologism.70 Quaestiones de anima went even farther, characterizing God as "exemplary and so-to-speak efficient form" for mind just because he impressed his similitude on it and did not inhere like the impression of a seal in wax.71 Only the insistence that in illumination the eternal reasons themselves were touched (attingi] by mind cautions against concluding that Pecham had entirely capitulated to Gilbert's view.72 The ultimate awkwardness of the problem is confirmed by Matthew of Aquasparta's attempts to resolve it. Most successful of all his Franciscan contemporaries in fashioning a systematic Augustinian philosophy, he, too, initially vacillated on the nature of God's influence on mind. In his earliest work to survive, the Commentary on Book I of the Sentences, he adopted Bonaventure's mature views and In Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti (Opera Omnia, 5, 497a), Bonaventure said that God acted effective in illuminating the mind because he immediately informed it. His view is clearly related to Pecham's in his Commentary, and since the two texts are quite likely contemporary, it is impossible to say which might have influenced the other. 69 See above, n. 42. Another passage lending itself to this reading is Quaestiones de anima, q. 4, ad 1. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 53). 70 Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 136): ". . . exemplum de specie pro tanto est dissimile, quia species est forma impressa et inhaerens, lux aeterna forma tan turn imprimens aliarum notiones. . . . " 71 Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, ad 19. (ad octavum in text) (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 71): ". . . lux divina est omnium forma exemplaris et quasi efficiens, imprimens suam similitudinem. . . . Non tamen est alicuius forma inherens sicut vestigium sigilli in cera." That Pecham meant this general statement to refer as well to the case of God as cognitive form of intellect is obvious from the terms of the position against which he was arguing - see arg. 8 (p. 64 in Spettmann's edition). 72 See, for example, Pecham, Quodlibet III, q. 10 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 154, 11. 69-72). It is possible, however, to make too much of Pecham's language on this point; Matthew of Aquasparta was himself capable of using the same terms even after clearly coming to accept Gilbert's view - see below, n. 87.
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inveighed against those proposing only an influence — fulgor or relucentia - of God as necessary for cognitive certitude. From his point of view, such an explanation left the intellective process without any immutable, and thus fully reliable, constituent by which certainty could be assured.73 Yet the dangers of ontologism weighed heavily on Matthew's mind, leading him by the time of his regency in theology to switch allegiance to the very views of Gilbert against which he fulminated early on. Already the Commentary on the second book of the Sentences shows signs of flagging opposition to illumination by means of an influence, and by Quaestiones de fide he was preparing to argue how his previous reasoning against it did not apply.74 With Quaestiones de cognitione, the transformation was complete. In the crucial question 2 of this series, the initial opposing arguments not only have mind attaining certitude alone but also add the suggestive stipulation: "without the influence of the divine reasons."70 The subsequent determination, whose first half is literally modeled on the question from the Commentary on the first book of the Sentences cited just above, makes good on this suggestion by departing from its exemplar in a most significant manner. Whereas the Commentary offered three views about certain cognition Aristotle's, Plato's and that positing an influence from God — all to be rejected in favor of a compromise solution making certitude dependent on both evidence from the world and the divine reasons in themselves, the question De cognitione presents only two positions to reject - Aristotle's and Plato's — incorporating the idea of influence into a newly minted middle way/6 73 Matthew, Comm. m lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 8 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 117va): "Edam propterea aliqui theologi posuerunt istam lucem esse rationem et principium cognoscendi solum extraneam, nee ad cognitionem dixerunt necessariam nisi lucis illius influential!!, utpote quemdam fulgorem uel relucentiam. . . . Si enim ista positio et sic deficiat sicut prima, tamen et ipsa est ... [here a word I cannot decipher], pro eo quod quicquid sit ilia influentia uel fulgor siue relucentia, quid creatum est et ideo mutabile. Ad cognitionem autem certitudinalem, ut supra monstratum est, necesse est concurrere aliquid immutabile et illud, quicquid sit, aliquo modo ab anima attingi." On this passage, see Marrone, "Matthew of Aquasparta," p. 262. /4 See Marrone, "Matthew of Aquasparta," pp. 268-69, especially nn. 77 and 81-83, and below, ch. 8, n. 138. 7) Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 222): "Quod autem lumen naturale sufficiat ad certam cognitionem sine influentia illarum rationum, ostenditur sic. . . ." 7(1 Compare Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 8 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, ff. 117va-b) with Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 231-32). It is equally significant that Matthew's De cognitione, q. 2: ". . . utrum quidquid certitudinaliter cognoscitur . . ., cognoscatur in aeternis rationibus vel in lumine primae veritatis" (see BFS,
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Most succinct is the response to argument 14: "The divine light (lux divind) is by its essence efficient and motive cause [for knowledge], but that influence which we posit is formal cause."77 Here was Matthew explicitly defending the position of Gilbert he had once attacked and setting himself against John Pecham's warning not to maintain efficient causality of the divinity in illumination without giving God a formal role as well.78 In clear contradiction to his own Commentary on Book /, he was also ready to explain why a mutable and created thing like an influence from God was adequate to the task of insuring cognitive immutability.79 He was even prepared to show how his defense of an influence differed from the argument seen in John of La Rochelle that God acted efficiently as creator of the innate power to know.80 This was a theory of illumination by divine influence that was fully formed, systematically articulated and carefully contrasted with competing views.81 1, 222), actually conflates questions 7 and 8 of his Commentarius in librum I. Sent., d. 35: ". . . utrum quicquid certitudinaliter cognoscitur, cognoscitur in illis [divinis] rationibus" and ". . . utrum cognoscendo per illas regulas uideat illas regulas in se aut tantum in sua influentia sicut quidam posuerunt" (see MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, ff. 115ra and 117rb). Since by De cognitione, q. 2, Matthew had taken up the "influence" position as his own, he no longer felt compelled to divide his investigation of illumination into two stages, the second devoted to making the refined distinction between seeing in an influence and seeing in the divine reasons themselves. " De cognitione, q. 2, ad 14. (BFS, 1, 244, 11. 8-10): ". . . . lux divina per suam essentiam est ratio effectiva et motiva, sed ilia influentia quam ponimus [est] ut ratio formalis." /8 See Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 234-35), for the explicit adoption of Gilbert's usage of the terms lux and lumen'. "Lumen ergo illud, movendo nostrum intellectum, influit quoddam lumen menu nostrae, ita quod per lucem divinam videt obiective et quasi effective, sed per illud et in illo lumine videt formaliter; quod quidem lumen continuatur et conservatur in mentibus nostris ad praesentiam divinam." Also relevant are Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. [21], q. 7 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. lOlrb): ". . . [intellectus] qui est noster effectiue et proprie sed non formaliter, cuius<modi> est lux prima, que uere intellectus est per cuius inradiationem et inluminationem cognoscitur quicquid certitudinaliter cognoscimus, sicut Augustinus probat in multis locis. . . ."; and Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 6. (BFS, 1, 52, 11. 6-17 - quoted below, n. 99). For Pecham's warning, see above, nn. 66 and 68. 79 Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2. ad 14. and ad 17. (BFS, 1, 244, 11. 10-16 and 31-37). 80 Quaestiones de cognitione, qq. 2, ad 24.; and 3, ad 12. (BFS, 1, 246 and 270). 81 For a summary of this theory with more complete citations to relevant texts, see Marrone, "Matthew of Aquasparta," pp. 260-61 and 270. Matthew gave independent evidence of holding an Avicennian distinction between lux and lumen similar to that expounded by Gilbert (see above, nn. 62 and 78): Quaestiones de anima i, q. 8 (BFS, 18, 347, 11. 14-19).
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But even after determining the immediacy of God's role, one still had to decide how the formal element of illumination, whether God or his influence, was integrated into the cognitive act. The challenge here was to steer a path between God's general concursus in all natural activity and his special gift of salvific grace.82 In attempting to chart a middle course the classic Augustinians fell back on a formulation of illuminative activity as neither that of full participant or possessed object, as with grace or beatitude, nor that of mere originator and distant creator, as with providence, but rather of present and active means for understanding, ratio intelligendi, or, in even more dynamic language, ratio motiva.83 As means of knowledge, God or his influence could play a role sufficient to engender certitude but not be noticed or reveal divine secrets. Of course, God also acted as means of knowledge in giving wisdom to mystics and the pure in heart, which wisdom was different from plain science and normal certitude.84 To meet the demands of a precise and critical scholasticism, the term ratio intelligendi itself would have to be further delimited and divided. First task was to clarify the distinction between means of knowledge and outright object that is, to sharpen the antithesis ratio-obiectum. Although Bonaventure had introduced this binary opposition, it was again his disciples who worked out the particulars. Both Pecham and Matthew insisted at minimum that anything entering into cognition as authentic object (obiectum cognitionis) had to be seen and consciously recognized, while a means of knowledge (ratio cognoscendi\ even when taking full part in the process, might not be perceived by the knowing subject.83 In the case of divine illumination, the 82
Bonaventure put this well in "Unus est magister," n. 16 (ed. Russo, p. 118, 11. 235-39). 83 See, for example, Bonaventure, "Unus est magister," nn. 16, 18 and most importantly, 17 (ed. Russo, pp. 118-20). As frequently the case, Matthew adopted Bonaventure's terminology: see Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 116vb); repeated almost word for word in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 235, 11. 31-33). M Bonaventure made the point in "Unus est magister," n. 18 (ed. Russo, p. 120, 11. 259-61) - see above, n. 54. 8j See Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 135): "Sic . . . attingo lucem aeternam ut rationem cognoscendi; nee hoc adverto . . .; et non attingo earn lucem ut obiectum"; Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, ad 13. and ad 14. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 69); and Tractatus de anima 5, n. 5 (ed. Melani, p. 19), where he said the divine light acted as ratio videndi. In Comm. m lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 115vb), Matthew
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means could be compared to visible light in sensory vision, or even better, Pecham thought, to the sensible species. Just as the species of color formally present to the eye provided the vehicle by which color was apprehended without itself being seen, so God the illuminator of truth functioned as vehicle present but unobserved.86 To be sure, God, or more precisely, his eternal reasons, were in this process somehow touched (aliquo modo attingitur) by mind, as even Matthew with his theory of Godly influence conceded, enshrined as such language was in the works of Augustine.87 However if God was so attained, Pecham hastened to add, it was only "in part and obscurely, with bleary eyes."88 Yet means of knowing were sometimes better grasped than that which they made known, like premises of a demonstration compared to the conclusions proved by them.89 Pecham therefore refined the theory by differentiating between ways of acting as cognitive means. His comments are particularly noteworthy since they probably provided ground for a development of monumental proportions in the thought of Henry of Ghent.90 Granted all means of knowing led to said the eternal reasons took part in certain cognition as medium et ratio cognoscendi; and in Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 4. (BFS, 1, 51, 11. 5-6), he said of God in normal cognition, "quod latet ut obiectum cognitionis, sed patet ut ratio cognoscendi." See below, n. 91, for a case where Pecham also used the term "medium." Berube, in "Henri de Gand et Mathieu d'Aquasparta," p. 144; and "Olivi, critique," pp. 79 and 80, n. 53, asserts that Pecham introduced the distinction between ratio videndi and ratio objecti, but of course the seeds for the idea were present already in Bonaventure's thought. 8b On God as lumen ostendens, see Pecham, Quodlibet IV, q. 4 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 184, 11. 57-59); as lux refulgens, Quaestiones de anima, q. 5 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 67, 11. 19 21). On God as species, see Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 135); Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, ad 16. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 70); and Quodlibet HI, q. 10, (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 154, 11. 69~72). 87 Bonaventure, De scientia Christi, q.4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 23b); Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 2, ad 9. (ad 2.) (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 25); Quodlibet III, q. 10, (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 154, 11. 69-70); and Quodlibet IV, q. 4 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 184, 11. 57-58); and Matthew, Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 5. (BFS, 1, 52, 11. 3-5); and Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 233, 11. 13-14). For Augustine, see for example De Trinitate XIV, 15 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 2, 450-51). 88 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 135): ". . . attingit etiam rationes aeternas ex parte et obscure, oculo lippienti. . . ." On this, see also below, n. Pt. 2, ch. 8, pp. 210, 220, 229-30 and 239-44. 89 Pecham, Quodlibet IV, q. 4 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 182, 11. 15-17). This example was commonly drawn from Aristotle's comments on demonstration in Posterior Analytics I, 2 (72a25-32). 90 See below, Pt. 3, ch. 9, pp. 270-72.
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knowledge of something other than themselves (ducere in alia), but Pecham insisted there were two ways this might occur.91 Something could be both means of knowing and itself object of knowledge for instance, the above-mentioned principles or premises, more clearly known than the conclusions to which they led. On the other hand, something might be only means of knowing and not object, like sensible species facilitating apprehension of other objects but not themselves sensed. Divine light worked in normal human cognition the latter way, not as object and means but as means alone. Still, the claim that God as illuminator was means not object seemed to run afoul of the theological notion of "image." The classic Augustinians accepted the scholastic commonplace that mind was "image of God" just insofar as it was intellectually open to him (capax eius), which further entailed, Bonaventure remarked, that it had God as mental object.92 But the notion of image applied to soul according to its nature, regardless of its state of sinfulness, beatitude or grace, and among the natural processes manifesting this notion was understanding truth by divine illumination.93 Second task of an acceptable account of cognitive means was therefore to show how the division means-object did not proscribe all descriptions of God the illuminator as somehow object, too. The classic Augustinians tried to make clear that mind as image was directed to God not as to its object pure and simple but rather
91 Pecham, Quodlibet IV, q. 4, ad 4. (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 185, 11. 105-15), with the distinction lying between "rationes cognoscendi quae sunt objecta virtutis cognoscitivae" and "rationes cognoscendi quae non sunt objecta, sed tantum media in alterum ducentia." See a parallel discussion in Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, ad 16. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima. p. JO). 92 Bonaventure, "Unus est magister," n. 16 (ed. Russo, pp. 118-20); Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 8aB (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima. p. 198); and Quaestiones de anima, q. 2, ad 6. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 25); and Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 116vb); and Quodlibet IV, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 44, f. 217vb). The idea of soul as image of God because it was capax Dei can be found in Augustine, De Trinitate XIV, 8 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 2, 436). On this entailing God as object, see Bonaventure, De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 24a): "In quantum imago, comparatur [creatura] ad Deum ut ad obiectum." 93 See Bonaventure, Sermo de S. Dominico (Opera Omnia, 9. 563a); De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 24a), shortly above the passage cited in n. 92; and Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 8 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 117vb). Ludwig Hodl, "Die Zeichen-Gegenwart Gottes," p. 95, states well how Bonaventure's theology of image lay at the heart of his view of God's intimacy to man as well as his epistemology.
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to object as mover, or motive object (obiectum motivum).94 Put another way, God acted on his image as a motion-inducing means of knowing (per modum rationis movmtis)?3 The problem thus reduced to explaining in what fashion a cognitive means could be motive (motivum) or moving (movens), and it was Matthew who formulated the fullest response, making the dynamics of motion the paradigmatic way for him to interpret God's action as ratio cognoscendi. Matthew tied the characterization of God as ratio motiva in human knowledge of truth precisely to the notion of God in such cognition as efficient cause.96 It should be remembered that whereas Pecham had insisted that God's role as efficient cause of certain knowledge (efficiens) could not be separated from his action in informing mind (informans), the mature Matthew always worked to deny this, claiming that only the divine influence or lumen informed mind, not the efficient cause of illumination, the divinity itself.97 Adding now that God as efficiens in illumination was motive permitted him to demonstrate precisely what the efficient cause did if not to inform. A passage from Matthew's Quaestiones de fide dramatically reveals how this was so. In Quodlibet Romanum Pecham had described two ways a means of knowing could act, either as both means and object — like premises in a syllogism — or as means alone — like sensible species in sensation. The latter example provided the model for God's action in divine illumination, efficient but unobserved cause of knowledge of something other than himself.98 Matthew in De fide turned to exactly the same issue yet in contrast to Pecham presented not two but three ways a means of knowledge could operate:
94 Bonaventure, "Unus est magister," n. 16 (ed. Russo, p. 118): "Imago autem dicit comparationem ad Deum non solum sicut ad principium, verum etiam sicut ad obiectum motivum." Matthew, in Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 116vb); and again in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 235-36), copied nearly verbatim the whole of Bonaventure's "Unus est magister," nn. 16 and 17, including the passage quoted above. See also Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 8 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 117vb). 9> Bonaventure, De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 24a). 9(1 See Matthew, Animadversiones in I. Sent. (ed. Doucet, in Quaestiones disputatae de gratia [BFS, 11], p. LXXXV): ". . . ratio motiva et quasi effectiva seu lumen cui anima subiuncta est secundum Augustinum. Ex parte ista est veritas;" Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 1. and ad 6. (BFS, 1, 49, 11. 15-16, and 52, 11. 13-14); and the passage in De cognitione quoted above, n. 77. 9 ' See above, nn. 66, 68 and 77-78. 98 See above, n. 91.
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It must be said that there is one kind of means [of knowing] that acts as object, like a premise in demonstration or a mirror in vision, and it is true that this sort of means must be known with more certitude than that which it makes known. There is another kind of means that does not act as object but rather as something that informs [the knowing subject], like the visible similitude in sight, and it is not necessary that this sort of means be known with more certitude [than that which it makes known] — just as the species of a knowable object, residing in intellect, is not [better known than the object itself]. There is [yet] another kind of means that acts as motive force or efficient cause, like light, and it is not necessary that such a means be seen or known [at all] but just that by its action something [else] be seen. Now God is a means [in illumination] neither as an object nor as something that informs, but [just] as a motive force."
So clearly does this passage challenge Pecham's analysis that Matthew must have had his predecessor in mind. God the illuminator functioned as cognitive means not by analogy to a syllogistic premise nor to sensible or intelligible species but solely as a force moving mind and thereby efficiently causing knowledge of truth. Not God himself but rather the divine "influence" constituted the formal element accounting for certitude, the only directly inhering contribution from above.100 The two ingredients Pecham had combined in God's action as means - efficient cause and informing agent - had thus to be assigned to two different entities, God and his influence, with the description of God as intelligible mover distinctive mark of his function as efficient cause. Yet what place did this leave for the image-inspired idea of God as object? Of all descriptions designating the divinity as efficient cause (ratio effectivd) and motive means (ratio motiva] in knowledge of truth, Matthew preferred the term "motive object" (obiectum motivum). Since 99 Matthew, Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 6. (BFS, 1, 52, 11. 6-17): ". . . dicendum quod est quoddam medium quod habet rationem obiecti, sicut medium in demonstratione, vel sicut speculum in visu; et de hoc verum est quod oportet esse certius cognitum quam illud quod eo mediante cognoscitur. Aliud est medium quod non habet rationem obiecti, sed informativi, ut est similitudo visibilis in visu; et de hoc non est necesse quod sit certius cognitum, sicut nee species rei cognoscibilis in intellectu. Aliud est medium quod habet rationem motivi sive effectivi, sicut lumen; et tale medium non oportet quod sit visum vel cognitum, sed quod virtute sua aliquid videatur. Deus autem est medium non per modum obiecti, nee per modum informativi, sed per modum motivi." 100 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 14. (BFS, 1, 244, 11. 6-10): [anima] videt in ilia luce [divina] . . . ut in ratione, ita quod lux divina per suam essentiam est ratio effectiva et motiva, sed ilia influentia quam ponimus [est] ut ratio formalis." See also De cognitione. q. 2, ad 21. (BFS, 1, 245-46).
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the phrase came from Bonaventure, like him Matthew used it in part just to remind the reader that God as illuminator was not that in which mind's cognitive motion terminated but merely agent leading without pause to a further cognitive goal.101 But for Matthew the reference to "motive object" implied something more. He conceived of motion along Aristotelianizing lines as entailing one thing's being moved by another, in the course of which something — formal content of the act was imprinted on the thing moved by that which did the moving. In the case of cognition generally, the object was mover, the subject that which was moved and the formal means of knowing that which was imprinted.102 As applied to illumination permitting knowledge of truth, this meant that God as motive object provided a motive force by imprinting his truth-revealing influence on mind.103 What made the operation special was the fact that in this case the imprinted influence did not lead directly to knowledge of the imprinter or mover, God himself, but rather something else, the truth. In short, Matthew's understanding of motion in the physical world rendered the idea of God as cognitive motive object exactly coincident with a view of illumination through divine influence. All this helps explain why the notion of God as motive object in intellectual illumination was so attractive, for it opened the door to a profoundly Augustinian spiritual dynamic, one already glimpsed in William of Auvergne's discussion of God's place in human knowledge. If the divine role in illumination was to move mind as a kind 101 On God as not obiectum terminans, see Matthew, Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 6. (BFS, 1, 52, 11. 17-20); and Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 28. (BFS, 1, 247, 1. 32^248, 1. 1); on God as not obiectum quietans or quietativum, see Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 8 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 117vb); and De fide, q. 1, ad 4. (BFS, 1, 51, 11. 6-7); on both, De fide, q. 1, ad 12. (BFS, 1, 55-56); and Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 8. and q. 2, including ad 19. (BFS, 1, 218, 234 and 245). For Bonaventure's use of the language of object, see, for example, above, n. 94. A similarly modest vision of the term "motive object" is suggested by Matthew's pairing it with the description of God as cognitive light - see Matthew, Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 6. (BFS, 1, 52, 11. 20-23); Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 6. (BFS, 1, 242); and Quodlibet IV, q. 8 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 44, f. 218rb): "In operationibus autem intellectualibus cooperatur [Deus] ut obiectum motiuum siue per modum obiecti motiui. Quemadmodum enim lux corporalis que est per se uisibilis mouet in omni operatione uisuali, ita quod sine luce nichil uidetur et quicquid uidetur in ilia et per illam uidetur, ita lux diuina mouet in omni operatione et cogitatione intellectual!. . . . " 102 Matthew, Quaestiones de amma beata, q. 8 (ed. Emmen, BFS, 18, 347, 11. 25-32). lus Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 16. (BFS, 1, 244, 11. 25-28), quoted below, Ft. 2, ch. 6, n. 115.
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of object, although an object not grasped or directly seen, then knowledge of truth was just one of a class of phenomena in which mind was oriented to God. It was the first step along a journey to end only with the beatific vision. For Matthew in particular, knowledge of truth had therefore to be viewed from the grand perspective of intellect's march towards its appointed goal. The status of mind as image, by which God was illuminator and motive object in normal cognition here below, effectively culminated in soul's consummate cognitive and affective union with God.104 The description of God as means and motive object capped off an account of knowledge of truth in which Bonaventure and his followers proved themselves theoretically equal to the scientific strictures of their day, but before turning to illumination's ideogenic side, it is worth looking at two corollary points. First the relatively simple question of whether to describe God's intervention in normal human understanding of truth as natural or not. In his Rudimentum, Gilbert noted almost in passing that though human mind naturally (a natura} possessed the potential for knowing truth, it attained such knowledge only ex gratia, making God's illuminative action strictly speaking an act of grace.105 It is impossible to know exactly how Gilbert meant to be read. Surely the grace involved in imparting true knowledge fell short of the saving grace by which the soul was redeemed, yet he must have been implying that in every case of illumination God acted not with natural regularity but voluntarily, at least with more intentionality than in ordinary acts of nature or providence. William of Auvergne had claimed as much for all acts of divine illumination, attributing even the sharing of basic terms of science to the inscrutability of God's will.106 If this was Gilbert's view, as it had been William's, it was not Bonaventure's. In his questions De scientia Chris ti, the latter recalled an argument against divine illumination to the effect that if one could see truth only in the divine reasons, then this must be by God's conscious will, but since whatever knowledge God imparted 104
Matthew, Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 7 (ed. Emmen, BFS, 18, 327, 1. 36 to 328, 1. 3): "Natura enim intellectualis, hoc ipso quod intellectualis, est ad imaginem Dei. Hoc autem ipso quod est ad imaginem Dei, ordinatur ad ipsum tamquam in finem per cognitionem perfectam et amorem." 105 Rudimentum, p. I, tr. 2, sec. B, c. 2, n. 6 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 644). 106 William, De anima VII, 6 (Mag. div., II supp., 211a~12b).
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by will was, strictly speaking, revealed knowledge, cognition of truth must be equivalent to prophecy. Bonaventure countered that although God himself was perfectly simple and thus every act on his part indivisible, operating through his eternal light he could nevertheless represent different objects in different ways, some openly (aperte), others more secretly (occulte). In the first case he acted as if by necessity, according to the determination of his general plan for creation (secundum necessariam ordinationem artis divinae). This was how he operated in ordinary divine illumination, so that mind came to know truth about natural things according to a purely routine and natural process. Only in knowledge of supernatural things did God function in the second way - that is, secretly - and thus according to particular dictates of his will, so that voluntarism and revelation were restricted to this special, prophetic sort of understanding.107 As often the case, Matthew followed up on Bonaventure's insight by reworking his solution with greater technical subtlety. In De cogmtione, he conceded that giving God a special illuminative role in knowledge of truth raised doubts about the naturalness of human cognition, yet he thought they could ultimately be turned aside. On the one hand, one might point out that mind turned to the divine light insofar as it was God's image, a purely natural attribute and therefore occasion for a "natural" act. On the other, one could argue that although the Godly influence Matthew held to be formally accountable for illumination was itself not "from natural principles" (ex principiis naturae) and so to a degree supernatural, it was nonetheless indissolubly bound to human nature and soul's natural workings, hence a fully "natural" element in the cognitive process.108 More than Bonaventure, Matthew seemed impressed by how hard it was to avoid Gilbert's and William's response. The matter would remain a stumbling block for those examining divine illumination in the decades to come.109 The second corollary issue is more complicated, if not of such long-term significance, and concerns an apparent idiosyncrasy in John Pecham's approach to divine illumination and knowledge of truth. 10/
Bonaventure, De scientia Christi, q. 4, arg. 21 and ad 21. (Opera Omnia, 22a and 26a). 108 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 2. and ad 13. (BFS, 1, 241 and 243-44). 109 The issue was most famously tackled by Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus. See discussions below, Pt. 3, ch. 9, pp. 297-98; and Pt. 4, ch. 13, pp. 411-14.
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Pecham's ambivalence about the nature of simple truth, noted above, led him occasionally to depict it as near to but not quite the same as created essence, definitely not a separable quality or pure relation as the traditional terms "rectitude" or "adequation" might imply.110 This tendency to collapse truth into simple entity was at times strong enough to encourage the idea that mind could know noncomplex truth merely by grasping objective essence alone through its own natural processes, unaided by God's light. Divine illumination would then be needed only for complex intellection, to apprehend the truth of propositions. To restrict the domain of divine illumination this way is untypical among the classic Augustinians, not uniformly evident even throughout Pecham's work. There are passages where he seems to support the more characteristic Augustinian position that divine intervention was required for any veridical intellection, whether simple or complex.111 Yet the narrower interpretation is advanced frequently enough, and with sufficient clarity, to indicate that Pecham thought it worthy of serious consideration. Already in distinction 2 of his commentary on the first book of the Sentences Pecham outlined the theoretical foundations for the restrictive view. Simple terms of propositions were sufficiently represented in phantasms or intelligible species for mind to know them and their referents without recourse to any other perceptual field, but when it came to the propositions' truth, where the relation between simple terms had to be judged, mind needed to acquire a vision of the eternal reasons by which the terms were represented in the mind of God.112 A fuller statement of the idea, recast explicitly in terms of knowledge of simple and complex truth, appears in the same commentary, distinction 8: Simple truth, which is [the same as] the true entity of a thing, is known by means of the [intelligible] species, as is the thing of which it is the truth. The truth of a proposition, [however,] is known effectively
110
See above, nn. 11-13. For instance, Quaestiones de anima, q. 5 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, pp. 66-67), a passage that concludes: ". . . intellectus humanus videt, quaecumque intellectualiter cognoscit, in ipso lumine increato." Leon Veuthey, "Joannes Pecham," Miscellanea Francescana 39 (1939): 679, concluded that for Pecham divine illumination worked in all acts of knowledge, simple as well as complex. 112 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 2, q. la, ad 4. (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrdge und Untersuchungen, pp. 47-48); and Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 135). 111
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(effective) by [means of] the eternal light, objectively (objective] by [means of] the [intelligible] species of the simple terms making up the proposition, fully and completely (completive) by [means of] the relation [of the intelligible species] to the immutable light.113
The only slightly later Quaestiones de anima add that in knowledge of the truth of propositions, the terms provided by intellect on its own constitute the material ingredient of understanding, while the formal ingredient - the relation among terms - is seized only with aid of the eternal light.114 A related theory surfaces in Pecham's most mature work. The discussion of agent intellect in Tmctatus de anima carefully distributes responsibility for purely natural and for illuminative functions. To the agent that is constituent part of the created intellect belongs the power to abstract or lead mind to simple cognition, but the judicative power to examine relations among objects in search of truth depends on an external agent that is God himself, the divine light."5 Curiously enough, Bonaventure's last work, Collationes in Hexaemeron, produces the hint of a similar notion where, in Collatio 5, he distinguishes between God's light as lux magna, illuminator in apprehension of simple essences, and as lux clam, making possible understanding of propositions and arguments. Since lux magna is further identified with God as cause of being (causa essendi], lux clara with him as means of understanding (ratio intelligendi}, a possible implication is that God entered into simple cognition merely as creator and providential conserver of existence but into the attainment of complex knowledge as authentic light of intellect."6 If so, there may be a source for Pecham's ideas. 113 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. Ic (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 221): "Veritas inplexa, quae est vera rei entitas, cognoscitur per speciem, sicut res cuius est veritas. Veritas enuntiabilis cognoscitur effective per lucern aeternam, obiective per species simplicium terminorum enuntiabile constituentium, completive per relationem ad lucem incommutabilem. . . . " A parallel idea is expressed in Quaestiones de anima, q. 2 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 22), which claims that apprehensive and memorative powers of intellect - those concerning simple knowledge - depend heavily on sensory organs, while judgmental and inventive powers - those critical for complex cognition - work only in communion with divine light. 114 Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, ad 7. (18.) (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 70). 115 Pecham, Tractatus de anima 5, 6-7 (ed. Melani, pp. 20-21). On this understanding of the collative or comparative power of mind, see also Quodlibet IV, q. 4, ad 2. (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 185, 11. 89-94). 116 Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaemeron 5, n. 1 (Opera Omnia, 5, 353b-354a).
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But regardless of precedent, Pecham alone can be credited for generating a psychological rationale. If mind grasped a simple object by focusing on a single intelligible species resident within it, to know the truth of a proposition it had simultaneously to consider at least two simple objects, referents of the subject and predicate terms. This feat it could not manage on its own, for that would require it to be informed by two different intelligible species at the same time, to Pecham an obvious impossibility. Mind was therefore left to consider the two objects in the only place they could be represented at once, in the mind of God, where all forms were unified in the divine simplicity."' In Quaestioms de anima, however, Pecham argued precisely to the contrary.118 Only once did he indicate how he might have reconciled these two opposing lines of his thought. Quodlibet III remarks that the truth of simple as well as complex cognitive objects is evident only in God's light, but then Pecham adds that so far as simple objects are concerned, the statement is true at least for terms like "one," "true" and "good."119 Perhaps he sensed that a position on transcendentals similar to William of Auvergne's decades before would bring together the competing strands of his thought.120
Another sign Bonaventure thought simple terms were taken from the world without divine intervention comes in his reading of the famous passage from Aristotle's Metaphysics I, 1, on the origin of art and science, in "Unus est magister," n. 18 (ed. Russo, p. 122). "' Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 135); and Tractatus de anima 5, 6 (ed. Melani, p. 20). Faustino A. Prezioso, La critica di Duns Scoto aU'ontologismo di Enrico di Gand (Padua, 1961), pp. 47-48, called attention to this point in Pecham's theory of mind. 118 Pecham, Quaestioms de anima, q. 5, arg. 14 and ad 14. (7.) (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, pp. 62 and 69). "'* Quodlibet III, q. 10 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 153, 11. 26-28): "Inde enim [i.e. a rationibus aeternis] veritas lucet incomplexorum, inde veritas et evidentia complexorum. Incomplexorum, dico, saltern quantum ad primas intentiones quae sunt 'unum,' 'verum,' 'bonum.'" 120 See above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 73-78.
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THE OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE NOETIC PROCESS
Second only to the aspect of the classic doctrine of divine illumination focusing on a judgment of truth was the side accounting for basic processes of mind. Although the integration of illuminationist theories in the years between 1250 and 1275 meant that such functional distinctions no longer spelled philosophical fragmentation, as with the epistemic and normative slant so the more noetic and referential ramifications of God's cognitive interventions are best analyzed on their own. At issue is how the classic doctrine served to explain God's role in the primary generation of understanding — especially the formation of simple concepts - and his place in the referential conditions entailed. On such matters the classic Augustinians began with the antiPlatonism, or anti-Neoplatonism, already seen in William of Auvergne. After all, the notion of God as cognitive means (ratio cognoscendi] had found ready reception in their explication of illumination's bearing on truth precisely because it left no doubt that neither divinity nor divine ideas were truly mental object in normal intellection. Even Matthew of Aquasparta with his preferred designation of God the illuminator as "motive object" made every effort to shield his theory from charges of ontologism, insisting that the authentic intellectual object, obiectum terminans, was typically something in and of the world.1 By the same token, all the classic Augustinians maintained that the source from which knowledge's content was drawn consisted under normal circumstances in something created and ordinarily even material. This line of thought is evident as early as Bonaventure's first works. A key passage from his commentary on Book II of the Sentences explains how most human understanding could be described as both innate and acquired.2 All the great authorities, including Augustine 1 2
See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 101. Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, a. 1, q. 2 (Opera Omnia, 2, 903a).
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and Aristotle, agreed, he said, that two things were necessary for cognition: the presence of an object to be known and an intellective light. For normal human intellection the light was constituted by a power inherent to soul - what could be called in Augustinianizing language the naturale iudicatorium - and because this power was with soul from its creation, the knowledge arising by means of it could be thought of as innate. The knowable object, on the other hand, typically lay outside of mind. According to the Aristotelianizing noetics of the day, it was known through an intelligible species constructed from data provided by the senses. From this perspective, therefore, one would have to concede that knowledge was acquired, usually from sources in the created world. So far as concerns the latter, Bonaventure's insistence on created sources was even more radical than had been William of Auvergne's. Like William, he granted that apprehension of some objects could not be explained the normal way. The soul knew itself and qualities residing in it, as well as God, without recourse to sensation or to species built on sensory data.3 Yet the number of exempted objects remained very small, so that for Bonaventure, Aristotelian abstraction extended to knowledge not only of natural kinds like "horse" or "rock" — "father" or "mother" were his examples — but also of primary knowables like "whole" and "part," which William had regarded as revealed by God.4 Bonaventure's confidence in the acquisition of knowledge from worldly, material sources applied, therefore, even to those special terms serving as building blocks for the complex foundations of thought, the first principles of science. If knowledge of principles was sometimes represented as especially "innate," it was only because once principal terms had been abstracted from sensory data, the principles themselves were accepted as true by mind's inborn
3
Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, a. 1, q. 2 (Opera Omnia, 2, 904b). Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, a. 1, q. 2 (Opera Omnia, 2, 903a): "Nemo enim unquam cognosceret totum, aut partem, aut patrem, aut matrem, nisi sensu aliquo exteriori speciem eius acciperet." In Itinerarium mentis in Deum 3, n. 2 (Opera Omnia, 5, 303b), with reference to the knowledge of certain simplicia like "point," "instant" and "unity," Bonaventure claimed that the source was not "ab exteriori . . . per phantasmata" but rather "a superiori" - that is, it would appear, from God. In this instance he seems therefore to have been promoting William's theory on the origin of first intentions, but the reference is neither lengthy nor explicit enough to permit one to say how it ought to be related to the otherwise unambiguous rejection of such a view in the Commentary on the Sentences. For William's view on the knowledge of such terms, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 73-78. 4
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judgmental light without recourse to further evidence or argumentation, an Aristotelian and decidedly non-Neoplatonizing rationale.0 In Bonaventure's later writings, the conviction that mind worked to generate knowledge of the world solely on its own with data from the senses yielded slightly to the need to specify a place for God. Question 4 of De scientia Christi returned to the notion of God as means for understanding to note that while species abstracted from sensory images were the proper and distinct vehicles for knowledge, the divine mind and eternal reasons residing in it contributed something to intellect on the way to knowing, perhaps something functionally analogous to abstracted species themselves.6 Yet even so it is likely that with this contribution Bonaventure had in mind not so much an ideogenic role for the divinity as assistance in the judgmental process, specifically the process of knowing complex truth. Such an interpretation would appear to be confirmed by later references to the generation of knowledge attributing content to worldly experience while dividing responsibility for judgment between mind's native power and the divine light the latter most emphatically with regard to immutable truth. 7 John Pecham and Matthew of Aquasparta retained Bonaventure's fundamental perspective but worked out specific points left ambiguous in his works, each in a different way. Since Matthew adhered on the whole more literally to the master's scheme than Pecham, it is appropriate to begin with him. 5
Again see Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, a. 1, q. 2 (Opera Ornnia, 2), p. 903a and more importantly 903b. The same idea lies behind the account of knowledge of principles in Itinerarium mentis in Deum 3, n. 2 (Opera Omnia, 5, 303b). In Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti 8, n. 13 (Opera Omnia, 5, 496b), Bonaventure defended his account of principal cognition with reference to the classical passage from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics I, 3 (72b24—25), whereby principles were known "in quantum terminos cognoscimus." (See the Latin translation by James of Venice, in Aristoteles Latinus, IV, 1-4, ed. Minio-Paluello and Dod, p. 10.) 6 De scientia Christi, q. 4, body of the response and ad 15. (Opera Omnia, 5, 24b and 25b). ' See Itinerarium mentis in Deum 3, n. 2 (Opera Omnia, 5, 303b-4a), where the immutable light acts in the knowledge of invariable truths; and Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti 8, nn. 12^15 (Opera Omnia, 5, 496a-b), where the divine intervention comes last, after experience and the natural workings of mind, as if to aid the naturale iudicatorium. These passages might be yet another sign of sympathy for the view Pecham would later espouse, whereby simple cognition was accounted for by mind working solely with its natural power in the material world, complex knowledge by a supplementary illuminative intervention from God - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 116.
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From his earliest work, Matthew conspicuously endorsed the contention that the objects from which mind culled most natural knowledge lay in the world, conceding only an auxiliary role to the divine reasons. A passage from distinction 35 of the commentary on Book I of the Sentences presents a conflation of Bonaventure's epitome, from the sermon "Unus est magister," of Aristotle's account of generation of universal knowledge from sense, memory and experience, and his stipulation in De scientia Christi, question 4, that the proper and distinct means for knowledge came from worldly things, only a more general means from God.8 The same ideas are repeated in Def.de and in De cognitione, question 2, the latter reproducing almost word for word the passage from the Commentary on the Sentences.9 As for the contribution of the worldly and divine elements, again Matthew simply reasserted, with accommodation to his own favorite philosophical idioms, what could already be found in Bonaventure. The divine ideas were allotted a dynamic function along the lines of Matthew's description of God acting in illumination as motive means and efficient cause, reserving for the sensible object the job of providing intelligible content.10 When it came to explaining the content-providing role, Matthew was more original. Drawing on the Aristotelian dichotomy between matter and form, he proposed in his Animadversiones, or reflections, on the first book of his Sentences commentary that three things contributed to knowledge: sensible species as material factor, abstracted intelligible species as formal reason, and divine light as motive and
8 Comm. in lib. I. Sent, d. 35, q. 8 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 117vb): "Portio superior rationis . . . attingat illas [diuinas] rationes ut . . . cognoscendi rationem. . . . Rationem inquam, ut dictum est, non solam . . . nee totam, quia nee indigeremus specie nee receptione ad cognoscendas res, quod manifestum est falsurn. . . . Sed anima secundum Augustinum connexa sit legibus eternis, quod ita quodammodo [preceding word surmised] attingat. Tamen indubitanter uerum [preceding three words surmised] est quod dicit Philosophus: cognitionem aggenerandam in nobis uia sensus, memorie et experientie, ex quibus concipitur uniuersale, quod est principium artis et scientie. Nee nudam, quia sic non differret cognitio uie a cognitionem [sic] patrie; nee proprias [sic], sed quodammodo generales. Et ideo, cum his attingit rerum similitudines a materia abstractas tanquam proprias et distinctas cognoscendi rationes." The two Bonaventuran texts are "Unus est magister," n. 18 (ed. Russo, pp. 120-22), partially cited in Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 116; and De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 24b), cited above, n. 6. 9 Matthew, Quaestiones de fide, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 44, 11. 15-27); and Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 233, 1. 18-234, 1. 1). 10 See, for instance, below, n. 11.
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efficient cause.11 Nearly the same words reappear in De fide, where, as in the questions De cognitione as well, it is explained that the senses are instrumental in all this, not literally causing cognition but delivering to mind the "matter" out of which knowledge is formed.12 Material objects in the world were thus the originative principle (principium originate) of intelligible species and consequently of the understanding the species represented. 13 They were, in language that momentarily violated the strict classification of the Animadversiones, the efficient cause of truth as intellect knew it.14 What they caused of course were most immediately the species themselves, first sensible and then intelligible, that served respectively as "matter" for and marker of mind's simple intellection, all of which meant, as noted, that insofar as reference was concerned, created, worldly things were the terminating object of most cognition.15 On the topic of distinguishing knowledge arising out of this worldly, material source from the more restricted class of cognitive phenomena dependent upon another origin, Matthew was once again literally Bonaventuran. From the Commentary on the Sentences up through his last works he insisted that understanding of all material objects arose by means of the senses and with the use of the imaginative power; only incorporeals were known some other way.16 The latter, he argued, were apprehended by soul insofar as it looked within itself or searched above in the divine reasons, to which it was directed 11 Animadversiones in I. Sent. (ed. Doucet, in Quaestiones disputatae de gratia [BFS, 11], p. LXXXV): "Unde tria ibi concurrunt: species sensibilis, que est quasi materialis, ratio formalis que est species intelligibilis abstracta, ratio motiva et quasi effectiva seu lumen cui anima subiuncta est secundum Augustinum." 12 Quaestiones de fide, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 49, 11. 12-17); and the same (BFS, 1, 53, 11. 25~26): "Cognitio enim nostra causatur a sensu non per modum efficientis, sed per modum ministrantis materiam." See also Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 215, 11. 3-5); and q. 3, ad 12. (BFS, 1, 270, 11. 1-4). 13 On the originative principle, see Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 264, 11. 13-15). That intelligible species were not normally impressed, see Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 266, 11. 15-20). 14 Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 1. (BFS, 1, 216, 11. 7-9): "Sed res extra, etsi sunt causa effectiva veritatis in intellectibus, non tamen sunt causa conservativa. . . . " 15 See Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, including ad 21. (BFS, 1, 240, 11. 25-27; and 246, 11. 2-4); and also n. 13 above. On terminating object, see above, n. 1. 16 See Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 20, q. 8 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 96va): "Aliqua enim impossibile est intelligere sine ministerio sensuum et ymaginationis, ut res corporales, quas [anima] nata est per sensum recipere." For a late confirmation, see Quaestiones de productione rerum, q. 1, ad 1. (BFS, 17, 18, 1. 21-19, 1. 5). See also Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 1. and ad 8. (BFS, 1, 49, 11. 2-5; 53, 11. 20-23).
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by the terms of Augustinian illumination.17 Moreover it was along precisely Bonaventuran lines, relying on the very same citations to Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, that he applied this analysis to the first or common principles of science. Mind knew the truth of first principles immediately in virtue of its knowledge of the simple terms from which they were constructed, and it knew the terms only by means of experience in the sensory world.18 Examples of principles known this way - what Matthew called, in language reminiscent of William of Auvergne, dignitates or common conceptions of mind - were the rule of exclusive alternation and the truth that the whole is greater than any of its parts.19 Such principles might be called innate, as Bonaventure had suggested, but only because recognition of their truth arose without inference as soon as mind applied its inborn intellective light to simple cognitive constituents acquired from outside.20 17 See Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 220ra): "Item, ideo est alia positio concors dictis beati Augustini et Philosophi, que ex omnibus istis medium quoddam elicit. Et ista est talis: quod duorum [sic, for: duo] sunt genera rerum cognoscibilium, scilicet corporearum et incorporearum. Rerum incorporearum notitiam anima a sensu corporis nee recipit nee accipit, sed aut in regulis immutabilibus aspicit, quibus naturaliter connexa est, aut in se uidet ipsa dum ad se mouet in quantum illis connexa est, ut dicit Augustinus 12° De Trinitate et 1° Retractationum. Et inde est quod de huiusmodi uera respondet querentibus. Rerum uero corporearum notitiam per sensus corporis colligit. Hanc distinctionem ponit Augustinus 9" De Trinitate capitulo 3°." (Compare Bonaventure's claim that all but knowledge of soul, qualities residing in soul and God could be accounted for by Aristotelian noetics - above, n. 3.) Nearly the same words appear in Matthew's Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 261, 1. 28-262, 1. 11). For the Augustinian citations, see De Trinitate IX, 3; and XII, 15 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 1, 296 and 378); and Retractationum libri II I, 4 and 8 (ed. Mutzenbecher, pp. 15 and 22). In Quaestiones de produdione rerum, q. 1, ad 1. (BFS, 17, 19, 11. 10-21), Matthew conceded that for the wayfarer's intellect, even knowledge of such immaterial objects as God might require recourse to phantasms, not as sources of content but as indispensable concomitants of cognition. 18 Matthew, Comm. m lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 10 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 127rb): ". . . ut dicit philosophus, et est supra allegatum, principia cognoscimus in quantum terminos. Terminos autem non cognoscimus nisi per experientiam et per uiam sensuum accipiendo, ut dicitur secundo posteriorum. . . ." The Aristotelian references were to Posterior Analytics I, 3 and II, 19, both of which were cited by Bonaventure - see above, n. 5, and Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 116. A similar reference by Matthew to Posterior Analytics II, 19 (and maybe Metaphysics I, 1) can be found in the passage quoted above, n. 8. '" Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 10 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 127rb): " . . . principia uniuersalia . . . que uidentur esse ratio cognoscendi omnia, sicuti est quod omne totum est maius sua parte, et de quolibet affirmatio uel negatio, que sunt communes conceptiones et dignitates, quas nullus ignorare potest." On these terms in William, see Marrone, New Ideas of Truth, p. 109. 20 Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219rb):
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As could be expected, Matthew did not totally exclude God from the process by which mind arrived at knowledge of principles. In another passage in the commentary on Book 2 of the Sentences explaining the modest way principal cognition could be characterized as innate, he noted that mind exercised its inborn illuminative function insofar as it was subjoined to the divine light.21 That he had in mind a more intrusive role for divinity than the mere fact of creation John of La Rochelle's interpretation — is apparent from explicit statements elsewhere that mind's natural judicative power worked "with the aid of the divine light."22 Yet even in these statements Matthew
Responding to the position that all mind's knowledge is innate, Matthew argues: "Tertio quoniam et si de principiis artium intellectualium aliquomodo possit intelligi, de artibus sensibilibus nullo modo potest, ut dicit etiam Augustinus 12" De Trinitate. Et ilia etiam principia intellectualium artium, utpote [previous word hard to decipher] uidebitur, licet habeat [or: habeas] in quadam uirtute propter naturale lumen et iudicatorium per quod statim cum offertur sibi aliquod uerum evidens [previous word surmised] statim approbat et iudicat uerum esse, tamen materiam non habeat siue terminos. Unde non potest scire quod omne totum est maius sua parte nee habeat speciem totius et partis, quam non habet nisi accipiat per uiam sensus, ut dicit Philosophus 2° Postmortem, e t . . . [here three words are illegible] ibidem, quod principia cognoscimus inquantum terminos." (The reference to Augustine is to De Trinitate XII, 1 [eds. Mountain and Glorie, 1, 356]. The references to Aristotle are to the same two texts cited above, n. 18.) This passage is reproduced nearly verbatim in Matthew's Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 258, 1. 30-259, 1. 8), except for the mention of the principles of the sensible arts. In both texts, Matthew is simply elaborating on the idea Bonaventure advanced in Book 2, distinction 39 of his own Commentary on the Sentences (see above, n. 5). 21 Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 10 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 127rb): "Pro tanto autem dicitur mens habere ista principia habere [sic] impressam [sic] quia habemus lumen quoddam et naturale iudicatorium quo ista statim ut audimus uel recipimus approbamus. Igitur quantum ad id quod materiale est non habemus sed per sensus recipimus. Non enim possemus unquam scire quod omne totum est maius sua parte nisi receperimus speciem totius et partis. Sed id quod formale est et rationem approbandi eorum impressam habemus ex quadam continuatione apicis intellectualis et coniunctione seu subiunctione ad lumen primum et eternum et incommutabile, in qua parte anima sigillatur regulis istis uniuersalibus secundum Augustinum in multis locis." Matthew's idea of the power of mind as formal reason in this passage contrasts with his identification of intelligible species as the formal reason in his Animadversiones (see above, n. 11). 22 See Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., prologue, q. 1, ad 2. (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 3va-b): "Ad secundum dicendum quod anima, ut uisum est, habet et scientiam innatam principiorum et acquisitam consequentium, nee creatur ut tabula rasa quantum ad ilia [principia] sed quantum ad ista [consequentia], nisi forte secundum actum. Et ista precognitio sufficit ad doctrinam et disciplinam. Habet autem anima naturale iudicatorium ita quod experimenta querans [preceding two words surmised] potest cognoscere si obiciatur cognoscibile cum adiutorio luminis primi." Matthew makes the point even more clearly in Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 3. (BFS, 1, 50, 11. 14-24).
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was not going beyond the concession to illuminationism already seen at the same point in Bonaventure's thought, with divine assistance taken as reinforcing the judgment of truth but not contributing to ideogenesis.23 Exactly how mind was able to derive most simple knowledge from evidence presented by the senses was a question Matthew7 took pains to answrer in detail. The problem lay in explaining how it was possible for the material world to deliver something to immaterial powers of mind. Matthew gave his response at question 6 of distinction 39 in the commentary on the second book of the Sentences'. Whether science is an innate or acquired habit of mind, later copying down virtually the same words in response to question 3 of Quaestiones de cognitione: Whether in knowing mind receives species from external things, or forms them from itself, or already possesses them on its own. Both passages laid out the solutions commonly proposed by preceding or contemporary thinkers and offered a lengthy criticism of each one.25 Since some held that mind took nothing from outside, at least nothing from the sensible world, neither they nor Matthew's argument against them need be considered here. Only with the fourth of the solutions presented in the Sentences commentary, the fifth in Quaestiones de cognitione, did he come to matters of greater concern. As he put it, some thinkers maintained that mind received from the senses "merely an excitation or occasion for forming the intelligible species in itself."26 Such thinkers distinguished themselves from others who similarly described mind as receiving no more than an excitation but went on to posit in the intellect inherent seminal reasons 94
23
See above, n. 7. Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 217va): "Queritur utrum scientia sit habitus innatus uel adquisitus"; and Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 248, 11. 15-16). 25 In Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 11 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 128ra-b), Matthew had reduced the common solutions to three basic responses but declined to say which was closer to the truth, promising to return to the issue later. Distinction 39, question 6 evidently constitutes his attempt to make good on this promise. Maz/.arella, La dottrina deWanima e delta conoscenza, pp. 150-84, is excellent on the sources and opponents Matthew had in mind in the question from De cognitione. See also Faustino Prezioso, "L'attivita del soggetto pensante nella gnoseologia di Matteo d'Acquasparta e di Ruggiero Marston," Antonianum 25 (1950): 259-326. 2 " Comm. m lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219rb): "Aliorum positio . . . ponit animam nichil recipere nisi solum excitationem siue occasionem fbrmandarum in se specierum." See nearly the same language in Quaestioms de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 259, 11. 20-22). 24
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by their insistence that mind, excited by senses, was simply by itself able to generate intelligible species representing objects outside because it was by nature ready to be assimilated or configured to all created things. It was, to quote Aristotle, potentially all species — a species specierum —just as the hand was potentially conformable to all objects, thus the organ of organs.27 What made mind assimilable to external essences was the fact that soul was united to body as its perfection, the union effectuated along a hierarchy of points of contact from lowest sensory receptor to highest percipient faculty. At each point soul, though immaterial, was prompt to conform itself by means of its own power to whatever immutation or impression the relevant organ received.28 It should not be surprising therefore that once sensation had worked its way by stages up the ladder of sensory organs, and so up the ladder of conforming responses by sensitive powers of soul, the latter would continue to perform its own assimilations and generate a completely non-sensory species on the level of intellect.29 In this way one could account for Aristotle's whole abstractive process without implying that anything extrinsic to mind passed over from material world into the field of intellection. Mind simply transformed itself in proportion to external essence by relying on the natural connection (naturalis colligantid) of soul's various powers to bodily organs.30 27 The position on seminal reasons is expounded and rejected by Matthew in Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219ra-b); and Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 257, 1. 22-259, 1. 19). As for that positing excitation, see Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219va): "Sed dicunt quod anima omnium est similitudo et quantum ad sensum et quantum ad intellectum. Nam, ut dicit Aristoteles, 3° De anima, intellectus est omnia intelligibilia sicut sensus omnia sensibilia, et intellectus est species specierum sicut manus organum organorum. Unde anima est omnibus assimilabilis et configurabilis." The corresponding text in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 comes on p. 259, 11. 25~29. The reference to Aristotle is to De anima III, 8 (431b20-23 and 432al-3). 28 Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219va): "Anima igitur sic assimilata rebus aut secundum sensum aut secundum intellectum unitur corpori ut perfectio. . . . Unitur autem corpori secundum rationem diuersarum virium et dispositiones diuersas. Quando ergo fit aliqua immutatio [previous three words surmised] in corpore, secundum dispositionem secundum quam unitur corpori anima quantum ad aliquam potentiam necesse est quod anima proportionaliter immutetur." A clearer version of the same is given in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 260, 11. 4-13). 29 Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219va): "Quando autem fit immutatio in ultimo organo sensitiuo quod est per aliquam speciem, tune [anima] transformat se in illam speciem et configurat se illi secundum intellectum." See Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 260, 11. 19-22). 30 Comm. in lib. II. Sent,, d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219va): "Et
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Such a view of ideogenesis had a proud pedigree in thirteenthcentury Augustinian circles. With its references to excitation, occasion and natural connection of soul to body, it resonated with the language of William of Auvergne and, as will be shown below, probably was intended to convey precisely the opinion of John Pecham.31 Matthew confessed that it was clever and had been defended by masters of no mean repute; still he took it to be incorrect.32 Instead he offered another explanation, one he touted as more faithful to both Augustine and Aristotle.33 He agreed that mind was never actually subject to bodily passions or in any way subordinated to sensible impressions after the fashion of matter. To assert as much would be to deny a fundamental principle of Augustinian and Aristotelian thought.34 Yet it was equally wrong to suppose that intellect took up nothing from senses, waiting for mere excitation and then forming intelligible species totally of and by itself. On the contrary, mind worked with the impressions received by the senses and, using them as a sort of matter for the production of species, transformed them and ordered them according to its own immaterial nature until it produced a similitude that was truly intelligible.35 hoc modo nitantur saluare illos gradus abstractionis quos ponit Philosophus. Non quod aliquod extrinsecum in essentiam anime ingrediatur, quia hoc nephas apud omnes, sed quod proportionaliter secundum gradus organorum se transformat propter naturalem colligantiam potentie cum organo." See nearly the same, Quaestiones de cogmtiom, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 260, 11. 22-27). 31 For William's account, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, nn. 44, 45 and 49-51; and in greater detail, Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 57-69. 32 Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219va): "Quamuis autem ista positio sit multa preclara [previous word surmised] et multum subtilis, tamen uie philosophic omnino est dissona." Quaestiones de cognitione, q, 3 (BFS, 1, 261, 11. 5-6), slightly mitigate this criticism: "Ista positio magnorum Magistrorum est et multum subtilium; tamen hanc videntur sequi aliqua inconvenientia." 33 Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 220ra): "Item, ideo est alia positio concors dictis bead Augustini et Philosophi, que ex omnibus istis medium quoddam elicit." This is the beginning of the passage quoted above, n. 17. See also Quaestiones de cognitione. q. 3 (BFS, 1. 261, 1. 28-262, 1. 1). 34 Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 220ra): "Colligit autem notitiam rerum corporearum et sensibilium non ab ipsis aliquid patiendo, ut eis uice subdatur materie, nee ut ipse aliquid in animam efficiant uel aliquas species seu numcros fabricentur. Hoc enim omnino perabsurdum est, quoniam honorabilius et prestantius est agens patiente, ut Augustinus dicit et Philosophus." See nearly the same, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 262, 11. 12-17). 33 Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 220ra): "Non ergo patitur anima aliquid a rebus sensibilibus siue corporeis, sed potius facit ex illis et de illis et format sibi species aptas et proportionatas secundum exigentiam
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The process by which this transformation was accomplished sounded, Matthew confessed, much like the gradual ascent from lower to higher powers postulated by the excitationist position. Moreover, the ability of mind to receive information from the senses, which otherwise would have seemed unapproachably distant, depended on the fact that soul was body's perfection, not separably according to specific locations but totally throughout the whole - also a mark of the rejected view.36 The difference was that, in sharp contrast to his opponents, Matthew insisted on mind's actually taking up something from the senses, thus receiving something from its cognitive objects in the material world.37 For all his sensitivity to Augustinian concerns about insuring soul's independence from body and insisting on its selfinitiated power to act, he was determined to make room for the Aristotelianizing precept that mind truly learned from sensibles, reinforcing the point with a noetics that provided for a real transfer of content from sense to intellect. That he did so in Augustine's name does not diminish the radicalness of his alteration to the tradition he inherited. As for John Pecham, since his work followed upon Bonaventure's more immediately than did Matthew's, he might be expected even more directly to have reflected the master's ideas about the source of normal cognition. Given his frequent suggestion with reference to organorum et uirtutum, quousque det sibi esse intelligibile et coaptet ad intellecturn et formet siue transformet in possibilem intellectum, quo est omnia fieri." See practically the same words in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 264, 11. 5-10). 36 Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 220ra): "Sed quoniam anima, que est tanquam perfectio corporis, colligata est corpori non pars parti sed tota tod et tota cuilibet [previous word surmised] parti, ut in primo libro uisum est - est autem colligantia omnis [previous word surmised] secundum aliquam dispositionem, qua stante stat ipsa unio et colligantia, qua cessante cessat, ut dixit superior opinio - et ita [previous word surmised] colligata diuersis corporis organis per diuersas sui uires seu potentias et secundum dispositionies diuersas, excepta intellectiua potentia, que secundum Philosophum nullius corporis partis est actus, quando igitur fit aliqua immutatio in organo aliquo corporeo per aliquam speciem, non potest latere potentiam seu anima<m> secundum illam potentiam organi perfectricem [preceding two words surmised], sed statim percipit earn. Percipiendo autem format earn in se secundum illius organi proportionem, ita quod uel sensibilem uel ymaginatiuam." Compare the nearly identical text in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 262, 11. 17-29). 37 See Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 220rb): "Ratio autem ad istius positionis confirmationem sumi potest prima ex parte intellectus agentis, quoniam actus intellectus agentis est abstrahere species a phantasmatibus. . . . Iste autem actus locum non habebit in anima nisi acciperet aut caperet aliquid a rebus sensibilibus." See Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 264, 11. 20-28).
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knowledge of truth that divine illumination had no place in simple cognition, he would indeed seem to have been especially well positioned to agree that mind drew its understanding of simple objects entirely from contact with the world.38 In general this was the case. Not delving so deeply into the issue as Matthew, he nonetheless made it plain he believed that most objects were known to the wayfarer by means of mind's natural recourse to sensation. In his words, mind "knew all things subject to its natural power by its own ability to form [intelligible] similitudes; its understanding of things exceeding its natural faculties, the knowledge of which descended onto the intellect from the Father of lights, was caused by a superior power."39 Yet despite his general affinity with Bonaventure on this score, two anomalies mark Pecham's theories as distinctively different from those of the other classic Augustinians. Returning to the views of William of Auvergne, he first of all claimed that a number of special concepts commonly used with reference to the material world did not derive from sensory experience. Ideas such as "one," "true" and "good," all of which, like William, Pecham placed under the rubric of "first intentions," instead arose in mind via illumination from divine ideas.40 Moreover their unusual noetic status was due, just as William had maintained, to the fact that they each implied a referential ordering or comparison to the first principle, God himself, all other simple terms referring instead absolutely to an object in the world and requiring no comparison to a higher standard.41 :i!!
See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, pp. 148-51. Pecham, Tractatus de anima 3, n. 5 (ed. Melani, pp. 11-12): "Sic igitur cognoscit omnia, quae sunt natural! potentiae subjecta vi sua, scilicet, transformativa in eorum similitudines; alia quae naturalem facultatem excedunt, quorum cognitio a Patre luminum descendit super intellectum, a virtute superiori causatur [sic] in intellectum. . . ." See also below, n. 40. 40 See the quotation from Quodlibet III, q. 10, given above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 119. The same question gives a brief indication how Pecham thought the illuminative process might work in this case (see Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 154, 11. 45-57). For William on such concepts, see the reference above, n. 4. Pecham also held like Bonaventure and Matthew that knowledge of soul, its qualities or affections, and higher immaterial substances did not derive from sensory experience. His views on the matter were, however, more elaborate, differentiating knowledge of corporeal objects (the intelligible species of which he said were abstracted] from knowledge of separate substances like God and the angels (known by impressed species), knowledge of the soul (known by an expressed species) and knowledge of the passions of the soul (known by residual species {similitudines relicta]). See Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 8 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, pp. 85-86). 41 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 2. q. la, 6. (ad 7.) (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrdge 39
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Since from such concepts were constructed the basic axioms of mind - the common principles of science - Pecham, again like William, went so far as to say that the "rules of truth" (regulae veritatis} were impressed on intellect by the eternal light.42 He even divided intellectual memory, setting to one side the power to retain the "natural impressions" of terms like "true" and "good" that were received directly from God, and to another the power of storing concepts derived by means of abstraction from the phantasms.43 Not that his statements on the matter are without ambiguity. In Quaestiones de anima, he once distinguished innate species (species innatd) of concepts like "good," placed in mind at its very creation, from impressed species (species impressd) pointing to objects such as God or angels and given to mind in time by a special cognitive intervention from above.44 By this understanding, knowledge of first intentions could scarcely be explained with the paradigmatic scheme of divine illumination. In the later Quaestiones de beatitudine corporis et animae, on the other hand, both kinds of knowledge - of first intentions and of superior substances - were lumped into a single category of things known by species naturally impressed (similitudines naturaliter impressae).43 Yet whatever the mechanism by which first intentions were und Untersuchungen, p. 48): ". . . ista propositio: 'quaecumque dicuntur, etc.' veritatem habet in omnibus intentionibus in quibus est ratio vestigii cuius modi sunt unum, verum, bonum, quia ista dicunt ordinem ad primum principium in trina habitudine, et ita bene concludi potest ilia esse in Deo summe; sed album et calidum et huiusmodi intentiones dicunt absolutas, non ad aliud dictas. . . ." The "propositio," which held that first intentions were special in tying the mind directly to God, was presented in the initial arguments of the question (see Daniels, Quellenbeitrcige, p. 42, n. 4), while the case against it, to which Pecham was specifically directing his rebuttal, was listed among the arguments contra (see Daniels, p. 44, n. 6). Note how Pecham's examples for absolute reference - "white" and "hot" - were terms whose significance varied by degrees of intensity, thus not absolute in another sense of the word. 42 Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 6, ad 4. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 75): "Ratio superior habet illas regulas impressas ab intellectu agente i.e. luce aeterna." That he meant the regulae veritatis is clear from the text of the argument to which he was responding (see the same edition, p. 72, n. 4). 43 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 8aoc, ad 3. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 197): "Item auctoritatibus variis colligo quod triplex est memoria: memoria sensibilis . . . et intellectualis duplex, una quae continet animae naturales impressiones veri et boni et regulas lucis aeternae, et haec organo non utitur, alio modo est memoria intellectiva, quae recipit species a phantasmatibus depuratas et intellectuales effectas. . . . Et [secunda memoria] est, quae pertinet ad imaginem." 44 The passage cited above at the end of n. 40. 4j Quaestiones de beatitudine corporis et animae, q. 23, ad 5. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 177). The roots of this conflation can be traced to Quaestiones
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made known, it clearly exceeded the normal noetic dependence on sensibles alone. Second, Pecham's noetics of simple cognition stood out for its account of the process of abstraction, where once more he returned to the views of William of Auvergne. The essentials are present already in his first Quodlibet, question 3, posing the familiar problem of explaining how knowledge could come to mind from the material world without derogation to the spiritual nature of soul.46 Pecham answered that although knowledge of material objects depended on the senses, there was nothing sensible or material that mind took up and then transformed into intelligible species. Instead, it reacted to the senses and formed intelligible species in and of itself. Therefore [the intelligible] species are formed from the substance of soul as it is[, so to speak,] material and passive, while the superior part [of the soul] acts to judge [such species]. Thus the [material] species alters the bodily organ [of sensation], and the altered organ excites soul to alter itself similarly and in its own way, which alteration soul makes in itself and of itself. . . . In short. . . the external object comes to be understood when [soul] is excited from without and propelled into similitude with the object, and this [is possible] because of the natural connection of soul with body. [The whole process] does not require any foreknowledge [on the part of soul] but [merely] the force of the natural connection.47
From the insistence that sensible species impinge only on sensory organs, which then excite intellective soul to an immanent act of understanding, through the demand that soul form intelligible species entirely out of its own substance, to the crucial positing of a de anima, q. 8, where Pecham says that knowledge by innate species is "sometimes" called "impressed knowledge" (notio impressa). See Spettmann, Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 85. Also in Quodlibet HI. q. 10 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 153, 11. 34-35), Pecham, citing Augustine, referred to knowledge of terms such as "good" as impressed. +(> Pecham, Quodlibet I, q. 3 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 7, 11. 5-6): "De anima quaesitum est utrum recipiat in se species corporales ab extra." 4/ Quodlibet I, q. 3 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 10, 11. 67-80): "Ergo de substantia animae, ut materialis et passiva est, formantur istae species, cum tamen pars superior iudicet de eisdem. Ergo species immutat organum corporale et organum immutatum excitat animam ad immutationem sibi consimilem suo modo quam anima facit in se ipsa de se ipsa. . . . Ita . . . fit actu res intellecta dum [anima] excitatur ab extra et propellitur in eius similitudinem, et hoc natural! colligatione animae cum corpore, ubi non exigitur praecognitio sed naturalis colligationis ductio." The punctuation here has been changed slightly from that of the edition.
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natural connection (naturalis colligatio) between soul and body, this account reproduces almost word for word the fourth of the positions on ideogenesis Matthew presented in his Sentences commentary and then argued against.48 Pecham even goes on to quote the text from Aristotle's De anima that Matthew highlighted as a citation his opponents put forth in their defense.49 In fact, Pecham claimed both Aristotle and Augustine as supporters, just like William of Auvergne before him turning to Augustine's description in De Genesi ad litteram, book 12, of soul fashioning intellectual images of and from itself with wondrous swiftness.50 Pecham's is, in short, precisely the sort of activist vision of the intellective soul that Matthew7 thought went too far. An abbreviated version of the same position appears in Quodlibet ///, which adds that soul's connection to body is due to its being body's perfection, another proviso Matthew had attributed to his unnamed opponents.01 Quodlibet IV and the Tractatus de anima offer fuller accounts, again raising new points that would be addressed in Matthew's critique. Pecham specifically notes that the senses act by offering an occasion, but not a true cause, for the intellective act, and for the first time he states in no uncertain terms that mind receives nothing from body or senses.32 Even William had conceded that the abstracting mind took something from the senses.03 The fact that Matthew's criticism targeted the more radical claim pro48
See above, pp. 159-61. See Pecham, Quodlibet /, q. 3 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 10, 11. 84-86). The text, from De anima III, 8, is cited above, n. 27. Pecham repeatedly referred to it in later discussions of abstraction. °° Pecham, Quodlibet I, q. 3 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 9, 11. 62-63). The Augustinian passage is De Genesi ad litteram XII, 16 (ed. Joseph Zycha, CSEL, 28, 3, 2 [Vienna, 1894], p. 402). It, too, was cited by Pecham in nearly every account of abstraction. For William on this, see Marrone, New Ideas, p. 58, n. 62. 31 Pecham, Quodlibet III, q. 9 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, p. 151, 11. 36-37): "Si quaeris qualiter? Dico quod quia colligatur anima corpori, sicut perfectio perfectibili, et advertit naturaliter immutationes corporis et transformat se in illarum similitudinem." For Matthew's mention of the matter, see above, n. 28. 52 For "occasion," see Quodlibet IV, q. 17 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, pp. 213-15, 11. 47-99); and Tractatus de anima 3, 2-3 (ed. Melani, pp. 10-11), esp. n. 2 (p. 10): "Acquiritur autem animae scientia occasione per sensus praestita." On receiving nothing, see Quodlibet IV, q. 17 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 214, 11. 56-58): "Anima rationalis. . . nihil recipit a corpore;" and Tractatus de anima 3, 2 (ed. Melani, p. 10): ". . . non igitur a corpore anima rerum similitudines recipit, set ipsa seipsa excitata a sensibus, in omnem rerum similitudinem se transformat. . . ." For Matthew, see above, n. 26. 53 See Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 58-59. 49
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vides additional evidence that his reaction was directly to Pecham himself. In light of the passages examined so far, it would seem safe to conclude that Bonaventure and his disciples cut God and divine illumination completely out of the business of generating most simple cognition and largely out of that of acquiring the fundamental principles of thought. But when one moves from questions of reference and the source of knowledge to processes of mind more fully construed, a different picture emerges. Here it becomes clear that the classic Augustinians intended to carve out a role for the divinity and divine light with respect to the generation of both complex intellection and simple as well. Just as with the issue of truth, all three thus contributed to an extension of the paradigm of divine illumination beyond what it had been for earlier thirteenth-century Augustinians. Indications of an expanded role for divine light can be found already in Bonaventure's late works. A curious passage from Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti already referred to above makes clear that he thought there were three lights working in all generation of understanding: first the natural light of intellect itself, second the light, metaphorically speaking, of cognitive objects in the external world, third the eternal light of God.54 More ambiguous but also more tantalizing reference to God's noetic cooperation with mind comes in Collationes in Hexaemeron with a remark made almost in passing that the divine Word sheds the light of its own intelligible species over abstracted species residing in the human mind, rendering possible the clear intellection of objects otherwise clouded by the obscurity of phantasms.50 Perhaps Bonaventure had in mind a notion of double species contributing to simple cognition, a configuration implicit already in Grosseteste's De veritate.56
34 Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti 8, n. 12 (Opera Ornnia, 5, 496a): "Iste intellectus, qui est ianua considerationum scientialium, partim est a dictamine naturae, id est a lumine interior!; partim ex frequentia experientiae, sicut a lumine exteriori; et partim ex illustratione lucis aeternae, sicut a lumine superiori" - a passage contained in the citation above, n. 7. See also mention of God's illuminative cooperation with intellect in Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti 8, n. 20 (Opera Omnia, 5, 498b). " Collationes in Hexaemeron 12, n. 5 (Opera Omnia, 5, 385a-b): "Ipse [Christus] enim intimus est omni animae et suis speciebus clarissimis refulget super species intellectus nostri tenebrosas; et sic illustrantur species illae obtenebratae, admixtae obsuritati phantasmatum, ut intellectus intelligat." 5b On Grosseteste, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, n. 9; and ch. 2, n. 3.
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Matthew, too, gave signs of introducing an ideogenic role for God or his eternal light. It has already been noted how, in repeating Bonaventure's claim that mind's knowledge of principles was both innate and acquired, he suggested that soul's natural intellective power worked "with the aid of divine light."57 The stipulation apparently applied to the judgment of truth, not formation of simple ideas, and the same can be said for distinction 8, question 5 of the commentary on the first book of the Sentences, explaining how the rational power of mind could not judge truth and falsehood without being conjoined and subordinated to the divine light, "the perfect means for knowing all things."58 However, when the latter passage was incorporated into Quaestiones de cognitione, Matthew added that the activity of mind's own light consisted not just in judging true and false but also abstracting intelligible species from sensory data.39 Both functions were now said to require the aid of divine light. Lest there be any doubt, Matthew's response to the opposing arguments twice explicitly states that the natural light of mind cannot perform abstraction without divine light assisting, touching and moving it along.60 Even Pecham, despite the numerous indications he believed God was not involved in simple cognition, hinted at a similar role for divine illumination. As has been noted, occasional passages in his work insist quite to the contrary that God's illumination is necessary for all true understanding, whether simple or complex.61 He once explicitly described abstraction itself, understood according to his peculiar principles of immanent intellectual activity, as occurring only under illustration from the divine light.62 j7
See above, n. 22; and also the similar inference in n. 21. The claim that mind works with the aid of divine light reappears in Matthew's Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219va), cited below, n. 108. 58 Comm. m lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 5 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 37vb): "Propterea prouidet deus menti rationali lumen quoddam, quo quidem naturaliter potest iudicare uera et falsa, bona et mala. Sed ad hoc illud lumen non est sufficiens nisi quodam modo coniungatur et subiungatur lumini eterno, quod quidem est perfecta ratio cognoscendi omnia." 09 Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 233, 11. 5-14): "Ideo providit Deus nostrae menti quoddam lumen intellectuale, quo species rerum obiectarum abstrahit a sensibilibus. . . . Indidit nihilominus naturale iudicatorium, quo discernat et iudicet bona a malis, vera a falsis. Sed nee istud lumen est sufficiens . . . nisi subiungatur et connectatur illi lumini aeterno, quod est perfecta et sufficiens ratio cognoscendi. ..." 60 Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 5. and ad 12. (BFS, 1, 241, 1. 32-242, 1. 3, and 243, 11. 25-28). 61 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 111. 62 Quodlibet ///, q. 9 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 151, 11. 30-34).
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What is not clear from all this is exactly how the classic Augustinians envisioned God's intervention. As must be remembered, Bonaventure distributed the constituent elements for human knowledge under two headings, which were, in language only slightly modified to suit the present analysis, the object from which knowledge was generated and the light by which such generation occurred.63 By now it should be evident that neither he nor his pupils thought God or his light was normally implicated in the objective conditions from which simple ideas were drawn and to which they referred. The role to be reserved for God and illumination in the origin of knowledge must therefore have been as contributing to or reinforcing the generating light. Such a contribution would have come in addition to the judgmental assistance God provided as light of truth; it would have involved divine illumination in the very abstractive activity of speciesmaking.64 As had been the case with divine illumination and knowledge of truth, Bonaventure declined to give further details. It was left to his successors to work out the technical terms of God's involvement. On those occasions w7here Pecham wras inclined to grant God a role in the process of abstraction, he frequently turned to listing all the noetic factors in play. Just as in sensory vision one could identify the natural light of the eye, the sensible species and the light of the sun, so, according to Quodlibet III, in intellection there came together the light of the created agent intellect inherent to mind, the phantasm and the divine light shining on the created agent.63 All three were instrumental in the process by which intelligible species were formed. 66 Pecham's claim surely depended on the passage from Bonaventure's De donis attributing intellection to the working of three lights: mind's light, the external object and the light of God, as did 63
See above, n. 2. Etienne Gilson, "Sur quelques difficultes," p. 329, n. 7, called attention to the problem Bonaventure and his followers faced in explaining the origin of concepts with what he saw as Augustine's essentially epistemological concept of illumination. He believed any such attempt was doomed to fail. to Quodlibet III, q. 10 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 154, 11. 45-52). Pecham had already used a similar comparison - with an intelligible species substituting for the phantasm - in his Commentary on the Sentences. See the first passage cited below, n. 84. w> Such would seem to be the implication of a most succinct summary from the same place in Quodlibet III (11. 54-57): "Rationes igitur cognoscibilium fiunt in anima, excitante phantasmate, formante intellectu agente creato, et supersplendente lumine increato in quo omnis veritas intelligitur." 1)4
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a reprise of the same listing in Quodlibet IV, but by the time of Tractatus de anima he had zeroed in on abstraction's dynamic constituents alone. Here the point was that as vision required coordination of the receptive perspicacity of the eye, eye's own natural radiation (splendor} and the light of the sun, so intellection called upon a receptive possible intellect, the active power of mind fixing intelligible forms in the possible and a light from above in which all cognitive objects were seen but which could not itself be observed.6' Matthew picked up where Pecham left off and in a pair of most lucid passages brought together all four components. Again drawing the analogy between sensory vision and the noetic process, he explained in his Commentary on the Sentences how to the seeing eye corresponded the possible intellect, to the visible species intelligible species in the mind, to the light of the sun God's own divine illumination and to the intrinsic light of the eye the agent intellect.68 The idea was repeated in a passage in Quaestiones de cognitione where, as indicated above, he specified that the operation he was talking about was the process of abstraction.69 Striking about all these lists is the fact that they include among the active intellective powers both an agent intellect and the light of God. As already noted, Roger Bacon's testimony concerning the agent intellect has encouraged a presumption that the notion of God as agent for mind might serve as a litmus test for thirteenth-century 67
For the Bonaventuran precedent, see above, n. 54. The passage in Quodlibet IV, q. 4 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 184, 11. 68-72), echoed not just Bonaventure but also the language quoted above, n. 58, from Matthew's Commentary on the Sentences. As for the final configuration, see Pecham, Tractatus de anima 5, nn. 2 and 5 (ed. Melani, pp. 17-18 and 19): "Ad hoc ut visus sit in effectu tria concurrunt, scilicet: perspicuitas in oculo, splendor oculi naturalis et lux Solaris radians super oculum. . . . Similiter dico esse in anima intellectiva. Habet enim quasi perspicuitatem mentis possibilitatem . . . et haec vis, sicut credo, dicitur, intellectus possibilis: habet enim vim activam, naturalem claritatem vel celeritatem ipsam possibilitatem in omnium formarum similitudines vel differentias impellentem; habet lucem superius radiantem, in qua omnia videt, et tamen ipsam non videt. . . ." 68 Comm. m lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 9 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 126va): "Exemplum horum est in uisu siue uisione corporali, ad quam non solum concurrit oculus et species uisibilis et lumen extrinsecum, sed lumen naturale intrinsecum; ita quod oculus respondet intellectui possibili, species sensibilis speciei intelligibili, lumen extrinsecum lumini diuino, lumen uero proprium naturale intrinsecum intellectui agenti." 69 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 12. (BFS, 1, 243, 11. 20-30), cited above, n. 60. In Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 8 (ed. Emmen, BFS, 18, 353, 11. 19-20), Matthew had pertinent comments on the two kinds of light he saw operative in both sensory and intellectual vision: intrinsic and extrinsic.
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Augustinianism.70 That presumption was rejected above with regard to William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste, but the issue is clearly worth revisiting in light of this new evidence concerning a later generation. At the very least one must ask how Bonaventure and his disciples thought these two active powers related, perhaps even whether for them the appellation "agent intellect" might appropriately be extended to God. For the sake of completeness, it is best to regard the issue as divisible into three parts. First there is the question of whether some separate intelligence might be considered as agent intellect, intruding on mind's internal noetic processes; second the question of how far it wyas legitimate to regard the agent intellect as simply part of the human soul; finally the question of where God's light fit in. On the first question the classic Augustinians of mid-century all followed William of Auvergne, rejecting the claim that the agent intellect was a separate created intelligence above mind. Bonaventure himself made the point unequivocally in his Sentences commentary: For some have wanted to say that the agent intellect is a separate intelligence, while the possible intellect is the soul itself, conjoined to body. This way of thinking is based on many writings of the philosophers, who held that rational soul was illuminated by the tenth of the intelligences and perfected by union with it. But this way of thinking is false and erroneous.'1
Pecham argued the same, explicitly identifying the view's promoters as Avicenna and his followers (Avicenna et sui}/2 Matthew attributed the position to Avicenna as well as Al-Ghazzali and nearly all other Arab philosophers. He, too, warned that it was an error to be repudiated by the faithful.73 '" See above, Pt. 1, introduction, nn. 1-4; and ch. 2, n. 27. " Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 2, 568a): "Quidam namque dicere voluerunt, quod intellectus agens sit intelligentia separata; intellectus autem possibilis sit anima corpori coniuncta. Et modus iste ponendi et dicendi fundatus est super multa verba philosophorum, qui posuerunt, animam rationalem illustrari a decima intelligentia et perfici ex coniunctione sui ad illam. Sed iste modus dicendi falsus est et erroneus. . . ." For William's position, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 68-69. '- Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 5 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, pp. 65-66). See also his criticism of this position in Tractatus de anima 11, 2 (ed. Melani, p. 39). 73 Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 9 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 126rb): "Alii posuerunt esse quidem intellectum agentem, sed non esse in anima nee esse aliquid aliquid (sic) anime, sed ab ea separatum secundum substantiam et
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Among the reasons against the Avicennian stance all three theologians laid emphasis on the argument that the only external intellect capable of illuminating human mind directly, imprinting intelligible forms upon it, was God. Their contention set them against even the weakened Avicennianism of Grosseteste, who had conceded that created intelligences might illustrate mind at least on special occasions.74 Bonaventure spoke for the others when he explained how God alone could flow into human mind and operate intimately in it.7° Since illumination required an intimate presence, angels or other intelligences could exercise an intellective effect on mind not by illuminating but only indirectly by exciting it perform its own intellectual act.76 Augustine himself, said Bonaventure, insisted on this, taking divine intervention as the only correct interpretation of illumination.77 As for the second question, on the agent as integral part of intellective soul, Bonaventure and his followers took exception to William's views, lining up instead behind the opinion probably already operative in Grosseteste's works that the term "agent intellect" properly referred to an inherent power of human mind.78 Though attributed to Averroes earlier in the thirteenth century, this position had by naturam, intelligentiam scilicet separatam decimam secundi ordinis. Que quidem mouet intellectum possibilem . . . sicut agens perfectiuum, quod quidem sigillat eum et in ipsum inprimems formas intelligibiles et in earum habitu perficiens. . . . Ista est positio Auicenne, Algazelis et fere omnium arabum. . . . Et . . . ista positio tanquam herror est repudiandus et ab omnibus fidelium abhorrendus." See also the similar attack on this position in Matthew's Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219ra): "Aliorum positio est modernorum philosophorum sicut Auicenne et Algazelis, quod anima rationalis formas siue species intelligibiles de rebus sensibilibus non recipit sed ab intelligentia et maxime decima, que est ultima in ordine intelligentiarum. . . . Sed ista positio omnino herronea et ab aliis philosophis est reprobata et merito. . . ." The latter discussion is reproduced in abbreviated form in Matthew's Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 256, 11. 9-18). 74 See above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 65-66. '•' Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 8, p. 2, a. un. q. 2 (Opera Omnia, 2, 226b). /f> Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 8, p. 2, a. un. q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 2, 23la). For Pecham, see Tractatus de anima 3, 5-6 (ed. Melani, pp. 11-12); and also 11, 2 (the passage cited above, n. 72); for Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. [21], q. 7 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 101 rb); and d. 24, q. 9 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 126rb), where the passage quoted above, n. 73 continues as follows: "Nisi forte intelligatur angelus siue intelligentia separata pro tanto uocari intellectum agentem [sic] quia multa celestia reuelantur nobis per angelos et ipsi sua quadam prepotenti uirtute communicant nobis sua uisa et sua cognita quodam modo mirabili se applicando spirutui nostro. . . . Sed hoc ualde improprie est." " See Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 10, a. 2, qq. 1 and 2 (Opera Omnia. 2, 263b-64a and 265b-66a). 78 On William's position, again see above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 68-69. James McEvoy
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the 1250s come to be associated more exclusively with Aristotle himself, and the fact that it was now embraced as authentic by Bonaventure, Matthew and - to a degree - Pecham is sign of the increasing prominence of Aristotelianism even in the Augustinian camp.79 On this point, the classic Augustinians were willing to follow the lead of Franciscans like John of La Rochelle, abandoning strict adherence to Augustine's taxonomy of mind.80 Bonaventure made his views clear from the start. Already in his Commentary on the Sentences he identified two powers (potentiae) within human mind, one largely receptive and the other largely active, which he called respectively possible and agent intellect. His only demur was that these not be described in terms he said some had erroneously attributed to Aristotle, making the one purely passive and the other purely active, but rather conceived along what he considered more genuinely Aristotelian lines as two differences (differentiae] of the genus "power," dividing the dynamic spiritual substance that constituted human soul.81 The idea of an immanent agent intellect likewise appeared in Collationes de donis, where he spoke of a light etched on soul - the Psalmist's light of God's countenance - by which it came to know first principles, the same light that in his questions De scientia Christi he designated the created light of the principles.82 argues convincingly in The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste, pp. 346-47 and 351, that Grosseteste accepted the idea of something like an "agent intellect" as a power of the soul. /C| See above, Pt. 1, intro., n. 2. 80 On John, see above, Pt. 2, intro., n. 4. 81 Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 2, 568b-69a and 570a). See also Bonaventure's related insistence that soul was created with its own spiritual or intellectual light, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 1, ad 6. (Opera Omnia, 2, 412b-13a). That he saw agent intellect as a light is clear from Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 2, 569b). 82 Bonaventure, Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti 8, n. 13 (Opera Omnia, 5, 496b); and De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 25b), which speaks of a "lumen creatum principiorum." The passage in De donis describes the light as a "lumen naturae signatum," clearly a reference to the light of God's face "signatum super nos" mentioned in Psalm 4, 7. Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 2, 569b) had already suggested that the Psalmist's lumen signatum was the same as Aristotle's agent intellect, part of the soul. With this, Bonaventure joined John of La Rochelle against most other thirteenth-century Augustinians, who interpreted the light mentioned in Psalms to mean the divine light - again, see above, Pt. 2, intro, n. 4; as well as the general Introduction, n. 41. Refer also to Bonaventure's parallel citation of this Psalm in Collationes in Hexaemeron 4, n. 1 (Opera Omnia, 5, 349a). Only once, in Itinerarium mentis in Deum 5, n. 1 (Opera Omnia, 5, 308a), did Bonaventure interpret the light of the Psalm as God's own light, the lumen veritatis aeternae.
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As Averroes was a notable source for the idea that agent intellect generated knowledge of the principles of science, these two instances surely point to an Averroistic influence on Bonaventure's thought, as does another passage from De donis confirming that the agent intellect God impressed on mind acted as a light of judgment. 83 Despite this flourish in his thought, however, Bonaventure plainly thought the agent functioned first of all in generation of simple knowledge, the process of abstraction. Pecham appears generally to have accepted Bonaventure's vision of soul as having both active and passive sides, but there is in his works a recurrent reluctance to apply the term "agent intellect" to an immanent component of mind. In the early Commentary on the Sentences, he conceded that an intellective light identifiable as created agent and part of the soul was the force forming intelligible species or in some manner transforming soul into a similitude of its cognitive objects.84 Yet in his later works he inclined towards saying only that intellect had something active about it (aliquid activum), which, he added, was both formative of intelligible species and judicative that is, capable of leading to complex cognition.83 Perhaps just one 83 On Averroes and the agent as origin of principal cognition, consult Gauthier, "Notes sur Siger," pp. 227-28. See Bonaventure, Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti 4, n. 2 (Opera Omnia, 5, 474a), and note that the phrase used there to refer to agent intellect, "naturale iudicatorium," is also employed in a passage from De donis, cited partially above, n. 82, indicating the light of first principles - see Collationes de donis 8, n. 15 (Opera Omnia, 5, 469b). 84 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 135), where, speaking of the three elements involved in cognition, intelligible species, created agent and divine light, he described the second as "lux intellectus creati agenti (sic), qui forte est vis formativa specierum, vel vis transformativa animae in omnium similitudinem." In Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 8aot, ad 5. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 197), Pecham revealed even more clearly his ambivalence about exactly how to characterize the agent's action: " . . . dicendum quod intellectus agens, secundum quod creaturam nominal, nihil est, ut credo, nisi vis intellectus formativa, qua potest se omni intelligibili assimilare. . . . Vel est intellectus agens aliquis naturalis splendor intellectus, differens ab intellectu possibili, sicut differunt perspicuitas et radiositas oculi." The inclination to call the agent a "splendor" instead of a "vis formativa" was most likely related to Bonaventure's occasional characterization of the agent simply as mind's light, as in the second and third passages cited above, n. 81. 80 Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, body of response and ad 5. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, pp. 66 and 68). The phrase, "aliquid activum," also appears in Quodlibet I, q. 3 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 10, 11. 76-77); as well as "aliquid actu" in Quodlibet IV, q. 17 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 215, 1. 107). See also the term "vis activa" in Tractatus de anima 5, n. 5 (ed. Melani, p. 19 - cited above, n. 67). In Quodlibet IV, q. 4 (eds. Etzkorn
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more symptom of a special loyalty to William of Auvergne, or at least an aversion to abandoning William's terminology, this attitude towards the term "agent intellect" was also reflected in Pecham's reading of Aristotle. Though he was familiar with the interpretation gaining ground from 1250 on of Aristotle's agent as part of the soul, he nonetheless was convinced it could not be reconciled with the famous passage from De anima implying that agent intellect was always in act.86 To satisfy Aristotle's terms, he insisted, one must hold the agent to be separate from and above soul. Not that Pecham never, after the Commentary on the Sentences, used the term "agent" to describe an inherent human intellective capacity. In Quaestiones de anima, q. 6, he explained that soul contained its own agent intellect, whose function wras to transform possible intellect into the intelligible similitude of its objects, adding, in contradistinction to Bonaventure, that agent and possible did not constitute two powers (potentiae] but rather two forces (vires) of the same pow7er.8/ Similarly in Quodlibet HI he pointed to a created agent in soul which was formative of intelligible species.88 Indeed, Tractatus de anima, from the very end of Pecham's scholarly career, offers his most elaborate accounting of the inherent agent, whose function it was to abstract
and Delormc, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 184, 11. 70-72), Pecham spoke of the "lumen intellectus creatum" as contrasted to the "intellectus possibilis," but he still did not characterize it as "intellectus agens." See Adriaan Pattin, "Pour 1'histoire du sens agent au moyen age," Bulletin de Philosophie Medievale 16-17 (1974-75): especially p. 102. ii() See Quaestiones de anima, q. 5 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 66); and the even more explicit language of Quodlibet IV, q. 4, ad 1. (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, pp. 184-85, 11. 73-85). The passage from Aristotle can be found in De anima III, 5 (430a22). A similar reference to this text comes in Pecham's Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 8aa, ad 5. (just before passage quoted above, n. 84). Bonaventure had earlier taken note of this Aristotelian dictum, explaining that it did not have to mean that the agent was always in act but merely that it was an active force, ever ready to illuminate - see Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 2, 569b and 570a). Pecham would have seen William of Auvergne as favoring his, not Bonaventure's, view - see above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, nn. 30 and 31. Kl Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 6, resp. and ad 2. and 4. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, pp. 73, 74 and 75). On the agent as vis and on how it differed from the possible, see also nn. 84 and 85 above, and Tractatus de anima 11. n. 4 (ed. Melani, p. 40). In Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 8aa, ad 5.), Pecham had similarly denied that the possible and agent intellects were two powers (potentiae) of the soul, insisting this time that they were two different aptitudines of the same power. For Bonaventure on the soul's two powers, see above, n. 81. 88 See the passage cited above, n. 65.
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species from phantasms and unite them to possible intellect, which could then be said to understand.89 Matthew of Aquasparta was less hostile to the emerging consensus on Aristotle's notion of the agent. True, his first references to soul's active intellective function were simply to a judgmental power (iudicatoriuni) that was mind's natural light, thus harking back to Bonaventure's connection between an active power of mind and judging truth.90 Yet already in the commentary on the second book of the Sentences he was prepared to accept the argument that soul needed a light called agent intellect to bring possible intellect to know7 intelligible species, adding significantly that this light was at least in part intrinsic to soul, though it might also be partly a light from God.91 Like Pecham in his Tractatus, Matthew went on to explain the function of the agent as precisely to actualize intelligible species residing in potency in phantasms and insert them into or impress them on the possible.92 His explanation, or the oral presentation it records, 89
Tractatus de anima 5, n. 7; and 11, n. 2 (ed. Melani, pp. 20-21 and 39). See Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., prologue, q. 1, ad 2.; and d. 8, q. 5 (as quoted above, nn. 22 and 58). On Bonaventure, see above, n. 83. 91 Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 8 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 125va): "Exemplum autem istius est quod ponit Aristoteles in uisione corporali. Sicut enim in uisione corporali est oculus, color et lumen . . . sic per omnem modum in uisione spiritual! siue intellectual! est intellectus, species existens in fantasmate et lumen, scilicet intellectus agens. Ita quod species existens in fantasia est intelligibilis in potentia; intellectus est intelligens in potentia; intellectus autem agens, qui est ut lumen, facit speciem intelligibilem in potentia intelligibilem actu et intellectum possibilem intelligentem in potentia intelligentem actu." See also Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 9 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 126rb): "Et ideo dicendum quod supposita ilia influentia primi et eterni luminis, cui anima rationalis natural! ordine subiuncta est et subconnexa et quod contingit secundum sui suppremum et sine quo nichil uidet et in quo uidet quicquid uidet nee aliquod creatum lumen ad certam cognitionem sufficit, necesse est ponere intellectum agentem creatum, non aliquam intelligentiam separatam sed ipsius anime naturalem potentiam, iuxta Aristotelis sententiam." Compare the passage quoted above, n. 68; and another from the same question, ad 10. (f. 126vb): "Sic in anima duplex est lux, prima intrinseca, que est intellectus agens perfecta et possibilis diminuta. . . . Extrinseca uero est duplex, una prima et principalis, que est fons omnis inluminationis omnem intellectum inluminans sicut lux increata, alia quasi adiuuans et confortans [preceding word surmised] lucem intrinseca<m>, sicut sicut [sic] est lux angelica." See also Matthew, Quaestiones de anima separata, q. 4 (ed. Gedeon Gal, BFS, 18, 66). 92 Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 10 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 127va): "Et ideo dicendum quod intellectus agens secundum ueram philosophiam non est habitus nee est potentia habitu omnium intelligibilium informata, sed est potentia naturalis actiua que inest anime ex parte sui principii formalis, ex qua parte habet illud lumen naturale. . . . Qui ad omnes species ad quas est in potentia intellectus possibilis est ipse non in actu sed in uirtute actiua, ita quod statim 90
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might well have furnished a source for Pecham, whose Tractatus almost surely postdated it. Matthew even insisted that agent intellect was operative in all simple acts of intellection, whether original generation of species out of sensory data or consequent calling them to mind out of what he, like his fellow classic Augustinians, called intellectual memory.93 Here he specifically remarked that the former act, generating species by actualizing them from their potency in the phantasms, was what Aristotle meant by abstraction.94 One could hardly have moved farther from the position of William of Auvergne. In accord with Pecham, too, Matthew maintained that agent and possible intellect were not properly speaking two powers (potentiae) of intellect but rather two forces (vires). Yet he added that they could also be called two differences (differentiae), perhaps thereby hoping to reconcile Pecham with Bonaventure, who had once allowed that term as well.9s By the time of his magisterial Quaestiones de cognitione he ut sibi obiciuntur, facit eas actu intellectas et possibilem intellectum quantum ad eas reducit ad actum." Contrary to Pecham, but like Bonaventure (see above, n. 86), Matthew explained here that this was why Aristotle had said that the agent was always in act. On the function of the agent, see also the same question in Matthew's Commentary, f. 127rb, and the first passage quoted above, n. 91. For Pecham's late view, see above, n. 89. "3 Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 11 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 128rb): "Utrum autem intellectus agens reducat ad actum intellectum possibilem ita quod facial de potentia intelligentem actu intelligentem, dico quod sic. Sed intellectus possibilis potest intelligi esse in duplici potentia uel duobus modis, scilicet in potentia essentiali ante quam habeat species intelligibiles et in potentia accidentali postquam species rerum sunt facte in memoria intelligibili, quam secundum Augustinum oportet ponere ponere [sic] in anima. Et similiter species intelligibiles duobus modis possunt dici esse in potentia intelligibiles, uel in potentia essentiali, uel in potentia accidentali; primo <modo> sunt in fantasmatibus, secundo modo sunt in memoria. Et utroque modo intellectus agens reducit ad actum intelligendi tarn species intelligibiles, ut sint intellecte in actu, quam intellectum possibilem, ut sit intelligens actu, sed primo modo quasi transmutando et generando et creando, sed secundo modo quasi adiuuando et proibens remouendo. . . . Ita quod actus intellectus agentis non solum est in intellectum possibilem nudum sed adeptum, non solum in fantasmata sed species existentes in memoria." 94 Comm. m lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 220rb): "Intellectus agens est quo est omnia facere. Sua uirtute transformat earn [i.e. speciem] in intellectum possibilem et facit earn actu intellectam, et illud uocat Philosophus abstrahere." This passage is repeated nearly verbatim in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 264, 11. 2-4). Matthew gave an even fuller account of the ways the agent's action had been described, by Aristotle as well as the Commentator, Averroes, in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 264, 11. 20-28), which passage expands a similar account also from Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 220rb), where, however, no mention was made of Averroes. n5 Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 16 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 130rb): "Intellectus autem possibilis et agens.. . non dicuntur proprie potentie diuerse
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was, moreover, ready to jettison the willingness seen in Bonaventure and perhaps his own early work to ascribe to the agent a secondary, judgmental role. In explicit and obviously Aristotelianizing terms he made clear that it was agent intellect's job to abstract intelligible species, that of a special judgmental power to pass judgment, as on the value of propositions.96 To answer the third and final question, how God fit into the noetics of abstraction, the three Augustinians unanimously opted for the paradigm of divine illumination. Each agreed that God could be called agent intellect for mind, at least if the term were loosely applied. And each made plain that by this concession he wanted to insure a function for God or his light in the processes by which mind generated simple knowledge. Their stance on this matter marked, as much as any aspect of their thought, the advance of their generation in an Augustinian — as opposed to Aristotelian direction beyond the still hesitant and ambiguous attitude of both William of Auvergne and Grosseteste. Here, if anywhere, lay some vindication for Roger Bacon, a partial though ex post facto coming-around of Augustinians to his point of view. As earliest of the three, Bonaventure was most ambivalent about applying the term "agent intellect" to God. In his commentary on the second book of the Sentences, he remarked that there was a way of seeing God as mind's agent, reserving "possible intellect" for the whole intellective soul, and he noted that this approach might be justified by reference to Augustine's language about the illuminative function of the divinity.9' Yet he gave such usage little currency, inclined instead to attribute to God an illuminative role in human intellection only as ultimate source of all operations, not as a special active principle. Since God had provided mind with an intrinsic active light, the philosophical discussion of the nature of agent and possible intellects was properly directed to constituent powers of the soul. It was the internal agent that Bonaventure himself went nee tamen sunt omnino una et eadem potentia, sed potest dici quod sunt diuerse uires. Uires enim dicuntur que negotiantur circa idem obiectum nee habent actus perfectos sed subseruiunt et subministrant ad perfectum actum, sicut est memoria et intelligentia. . . . Differunt ergo intellectus agens et possibilis . . . sicut due uires siue intellectus differentie, eo modo quo dictum est." For Bonaventure's use of the term "differentiae," see above n. 81; on Pecham, see n. 87. 96 See Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 5. (BFS, 1, 241, 11. 32-34). 97 Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 2, 568b).
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on to examine, and throughout the rest of his work he conspicuously avoided using "agent intellect" to describe God.98 Pecham was more receptive to a Baconian notion of "agent intellect" as a term properly applied to God. As early as his Commentary on the Sentences he spoke of an "agent intelligence" to which mind was conjoined in its natural functioning, almost certainly intending thereby a reference to God himself. Surprisingly, he associated this idea with the teaching of Avicenna, contrary to his depiction of the latter a short while later in his Quaestiones de animal Regardless of the changes about Avicenna, however, the Quaestiones reveal him even more resolute in his own view of agent intellect. There was, he now stipulated, a separate agent intellect that was God's eternal light and clearly to be distinguished from the created agent intrinsic to soul.100 Moreover the divine agent was precisely the one Aristotle was speaking about in his works, or at least the only intellective power worthy of the noble properties Aristotle had attributed to the agent.101 On this score even Avicenna, now seen as identifying the agent with a separate, created intelligence, was closer to the truth than those characterizing the agent as simply part of the soul.102 Most of this was reaffirmed in Pecham's late Tractatus de anima, which repeated the claim that the eternal light was mind's agent intellect, commenting that this was not only Augustine's view but also the sole position consonant with Aristotle and, once more, 98
In contrast to the view given here, Bernhard Rosenmoller, Religiose Erkenntnis nach Bonaventura, p. 29, claimed that for Bonaventure God was the agent intellect. Luyckx, in Die Erkenntnislehre Bonaventuras, pp. 66-72, argued that God was like a second agent intellect for Bonaventure. 99 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3, ad 4. (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 137): "In cognitione vero naturali operantur virtutes naturales, per quas anima habilis est ut coniungatur intelligentiae agenti, ut docet Avicenna. . . ." Given Pecham's preceding response to the question, it is hard to imagine that he meant the agent to be anything other than God. On his discussion of Avicenna in the Quaestiones de anima, see above, n. 72. 100 Quaestiones de anima, q. 6, ad 2. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 74): ". . . lumen illud, de quo Augustinus loquitur, est lumen aeternum increatum. . . . Et istud lumen increatum est intellectus agens separatus. . . . Amplius: Intellectus agens creatus aliquod lumen habet." 101 Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 6 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 73), especially: "Intellectus siquidem agens, de quo Philosophus loquitur, non est usquequaque pars animae, sed Deus est, sicut credo, qui est lux omnium mentium, a quo est omne intelligere." 102 Ibid. For Pecham's comments on Aristotle's description of the agent intellect and the incompatibility of this description with the theory of agent as part of the soul, see above, n. 86.
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Avicenna.103 Pecham took pains here as well to show how the language of such authorities could be reconciled with the notion, less firm in his philosophy, of an agent intrinsic to the soul. One must simply understand that there were two agent intellects (duplex intelligentia agens] for mind, one uncreated and the other created.104 Perhaps more important, while specifying the function of the created, intrinsic agent as abstracting intelligible species and uniting them to the possible, he now characterized the role of the uncreated agent as allowing mind to judge.105 By the end he was thus both moving to bind the language of "agent intellect" more closely to God's light than would either Bonaventure or Matthew while and also returning to his own idiosyncratic view of divine illumination as having to do with complex rather than simple cognition. Matthew retreated somewhat from Pecham's stance, proving the most punctilious of the three in his use of Aristotelian terminology. As early as the second book of his Commentary on the Sentences he noted that some thinkers had taken the agent intellect to be none other than God himself as eternal truth. Such an assertion was true, even Catholic, he conceded, but only so long as it was not held to imply that soul did not have its own inherent agent acting naturally to generate knowledge.106 Taking issue with the argument that Aristotle's description of the agent as always knowing was compatible 103
Tractatus de anima 5, n. 6 (ed. Melani, p. 20). In Tractatus de anima 11, n. 2 (ed. Melani, p. 39), he conceded that perhaps Aristotle and Avicenna had viewed the agent as the tenth created intelligence but did not rule out the possibility that they had seen Augustine's truth. 104 Tractatus de anima 5, n. 7 (ed. Melani, p. 20). Douie, Archbishop Pecham, pp. 17 and 23-24, said Pecham saw God as the agent intellect but still tried to reconcile this with Aristotle's noetics by way of John of La Rochelle. Hieronymus Spettmann, Die Psychologie des Johannes Pecham, Beitrage, 20, 6 (Munster, 1919), p. 55, compared Pecham with Bacon and Marston, all three having held that there were two agents, one separate and one conjoined. 105 Tractatus de anima 5, n. 7 (ed. Melani, pp. 20-21). This reference to the function of the created agent was cited above, n. 89. 106 Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 9 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 126rb): "Alii posuerunt intellectum agentem esse non intelligentiam aliquam separatam creatam sed intelligentiam primam, id est ipsam ueritatem incommutabilem et eternam, cuius inluminatione anima rationalis cognoscit quicquid cognoscit certitudinaliter, sine cuius inluminatione nihil uerum cognoscit, et que per semet ipsum [sic] mentes inluminat. . . . Et hec positio uera et sana et catholica, si sane intelligatur modo [previous word surmised] autem tradito fuit [sic] supra in primo libro, distinctione 36a, ubi de hoc diffuse disputatum fuit. In hoc autem posset deuiare a ueritate, quod uideretur sic ponere intellectum agentem ueritatem primam quod excludit intellectum agentem quern posuimus potentiam anime."
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only with interpreting the agent as divine light, he countered that the fact that mind's intrinsic agent was continually inclined to activity (in uirtute activa), so long as mind existed, sufficed to preserve the meaning of Aristotle's words.107 Even more revealing, in the same work, while reviewing what was surely Pecham's account of how mind performed its active function, Matthew observed almost as an aside that the divine light was, according to nearly everyone, more properly designated agent intellect than any active power of the soul.108 Yet when he reworked this early text for inclusion in his Quaestiones de cognitione, he altogether omitted mention of God as agent intellect or, for that matter, any reference to divine light.109 Apparently he was no longer persuaded that "agent intellect" applied to God. His later works use the term solely to refer to an intrinsic potency of mind, the divine light never being so described.110 Still, beyond their differences of emphasis, it should be clear that Bonaventure and his disciples were in the end working with an essentially harmonious vision of how God participated in the fundamental processes of human mind. Having received from William and Robert a predilection for the image of divine illumination, they all significantly enhanced the inherited vision. Most importantly, they gave an explicit and all-pervasive role to divine light in the noetics of simple cognition, the generation of simple concepts. Although the
107
For this claim, see above, n. 92. For Matthew's review of the position and its defense by Pecham, see above, nn. 26-28 and 49. Immediately after the passage quoted in n. 27 and immediately before that quoted in n. 28, Mathew continued: "Unde propterea oportet quod [anima] habeat et quo assimilatur et quod assimilat, id est principium assimilans actiuum et passiuum. Et principium quo assimilatur est materiale ipsius uel possibile, quod Philosophus uocat intellectum possibilem. Principium uero quod assimilat actiuum est et actuale et forma est ipsius anime, quod uocatur intellectus agens, qui est quasi lux, ut dicit Aristoteles 3° De anima. Tamen ista lux non sufficit sine adiutorio et inradiatione luminis increati, quod magis proprie secundum omnes est agens intellectus." Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219va). 109 See Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1, 259, 1. 29-260, 1. 4): "Habet igitur et quo assimilatur et quod assimilat, et principium assimilandi activum et passivum. Et principium assimilativum est intellectus agens, qui est quasi lux; principium quo est assimilabilis est intellectus possibilis." 110 See, for example, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 12. (BFS, 1, 219, 11. 9-11); q. 2, ad 12. (BFS, 1, 243, 11. 28-30); and Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 8 (ed. Emmen, BFS 18, 353, 11. 15-17): "Lumen enim intrinsecum est lumen intellectus agentis; lumen autem extrinsecum, hoc est quod non est de natura rei, est lumen divinum." 108
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idea was not totally absent from earlier Augustinians, finding a place in Grosseteste's De veritate and William's description of mind's coming to know its fundamental objects, only now was it laid out in unambiguous language and given central position in the theory of divine illumination. Also significant is the fact that the extension of the idea of illumination was made consciously under the banner of Augustine. If self-awareness can be taken as a sign, Augustinianism was at last coming of age. And finally perhaps ironically in light of the preceding claim — there was here, commensurate with the more general advance of an increasingly Aristotelianizing scholastic orthodoxy, an almost fastidious attention to spelling out doctrines with care. On this last point Matthew again proved himself the most meticulous technician of all. Inveterate systematizer, he alone stepped back to draw a schematic of all he and his colleagues had achieved concerning the simple noetics of divine illumination. Rudiments of the scheme appear as early as the Animadversiones, in the passage noted above listing three elements necessary for true knowledge: sensible species, abstracted intelligible species and divine light.111 Here Matthew described sensible species as the matter out of which mind constructed simple knowledge of an external object - in technical terms, material means (ratio materialis] for cognition - intelligible species as formal means (ratio formalis) and divine light as efficient and motive cause (ratio motiva et quasi effectiva). By the time of the questions De cognitions, the structure had expanded to include two further elements: the intrinsic active light of intellect agent intellect in what Matthew saw as the authentic Aristotelian sense - and the illuminative influence from God both he and Gilbert of Tournai accepted as the only divine element directly implicated in the wayfarer's cognitive operations.112 The technical function of the divine influence was laid out in question 2, which specified that God's own light (lux divind) acted on mind as already stated in the Animadversiones, objectively and as efficient cause (obiectiue et quasi effective), the influence (lumen) somehow more formally (formaliter).n3 The point
111
See the quotation above, n. 11, a passage reused by Matthew nearly verbatim in De fide, q. 1 (see n. 12). 112 For a discussion of this influence, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, pp. 135-36 and 141-45. 113 See Quaestiones de cogmtione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 234, 1. 33-235, 1. 4), discussed above (see Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 78).
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was that the influence operated similar to intelligible species as formal reason or cause (ratio formalis), a phrase employed later in the same question, and the reason for such duplication was Matthew's conviction that mind needed formal input from God in order for cognition to be truly shaped by the divinity."4 Since God or a divine light essentially identical with him could not reside in mind as something formally inhering in it, there had to be an element different from God - an influence or species that could be formally present as residue of illumination. The rules of formal inherence and even the laws of motion demanded as much."1 As for the role of the intrinsic agent intellect, here, too, the significant contrast was to be drawn with God the illuminator. In an extraordinary passage in De cognitione, question 3, Matthew stated that both God and intrinsic agent were active ingredients — efficient causes - in mind's noetic processes, but not to the same degree."6 Good Augustinian, he insisted on God as primary efficient cause (quasi efficient primarium et prindpale), leaving for mind's own agent the subsidiary role of secondary efficient cause (quasi efficient secundarium}.Ul
114 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 14. and ad 21. (BFS, 1, 244, 11. 6-10; 245, 1. 32 246, 1. 1), both passages cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 100. " :> This argument against God's formal inherence in mind is given above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, pp. 144-45. See also Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 16. (BFS, 1, 244, 11. 24-30), especially: ". . . etsi sit Deus intimus menti, tamen in ratione moventis necessaria est influentia vel species sua, qua mediante movet. . . . Est etiam necessaria in ratione informantis: Deus enim non potest esse forma intellectus; ratio autem cognoscendi forma est intellectui inhaerens." Compare the same question, ad. 14. (quoted above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 100) and the passage from Quaestiones de anima beata. q. 8, cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 102. The argument about the necessity of a divine influence as formal reason in illumination is paralleled in Matthew's discussion of the gift of grace, which acts in the soul formally and comes from God, who is effective salvific. See Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 14. (BFS, 1, 244, 11. 13-16); Quaestiones de anima beata, qq. 1, ad 10.; and 7 ad 10. (ed. Emmen, BFS, 18, 195, 11. 19-23 and 336, 11. 3-5). llb The text of this passage is quoted below, n. 118. '" This way of describing the intrinsic agent - as efficient cause of knowledge in contrast to formal cause - must be kept separate from the characterization of the agent intellect as form of a human being - that is, equivalent to soul as formal constituent of each individual. The two descriptions were intended to answer entirely different philosophical questions, one about the nature of knowledge, the other about the nature of man. For description of the agent intellect as a form, see the passage from Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39. q. 6 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. 219va), quoted above, n. 108; and that from Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. [21J, q. 7 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com. 132, f. lOlrb), partially quoted in Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 78, but continuing as follows: "Tertio modo potest intelligi intellectus noster formaliter, qui quidem pertinet ad nostrum esse et est pars nostra."
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Thus God got the process going by creating soul and keeping it in motion, while soul supplied the proximate intellective power necessary for concept generation to occur. Indeed, this passage set out the whole scheme.118 As always, sensible species served as the matter from which knowledge was drawn, beyond which were two efficient causes providing the energy or motion for the endeavor: God the primary mover and soul's intrinsic agent, secondary but more immediate to the cognitive process. Finally came the two formal factors: intelligible species abstracted by mind an incomplete formal cause - and the influence from God - completive and consummative formal cause bringing the process to a close. In light of the explicit pairing of these last two ingredients, it is tempting to interpret Matthew's always somewhat shadowy "influentia" as in the final analysis consisting of species impressed by God on mind. Such a reading finds confirmation in question 2 of De cognitione, especially the passage arguing from laws of motion to the need for God the illuminator to generate something formally inherent in intellect, where this formal something is called not just "influentia" but also "species" and "forma.""9 The same question adds that God graces mind with his influence only with regard to knowledge of things for which there is already an abstracted intelligible species, noting that in such illumination there is a different and distinct "influentia" for each species.120 It would seem that Matthew had in mind what would later appear more definitively in 118
It is worth quoting the passage in its entirety: "Propter quod intelligendum quod ad notitiam veritatis concurrunt tria, scilicet species accepta a sensibus quasi materiale; et lumen naturale intellectus agentis quasi efficiens secundarium; et species facta actu intellecta per actum eius quasi formale, sed incompletum; tertium est lumen divinum irradians quasi efficiens primarium et principale, et lumen ab eo fluxum, formale completivum et consummativum, ut in quaestione praecedenti visum est. His tribus vel quatuor concurrentibus, concipitur perfecta veritatis notitia" (Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3, ad 12. [BFS, 1, 270, 11. 4-12]). The reference to "the preceding question" must be to De cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 240, 11. 25-29), which should therefore be read according to the schema outlined in question 3. Thus when in question 2 Matthew says that the "ratio formalis" is partly from within (ab intrd) and partly from above (a superiori), he is referring not so much to the material origin of the two formal ingredients but rather to their efficient causes, the intelligible species being "made" by the agent intellect and the influence "made" by God. "'' See the passage quoted above, n. 115. 120 Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 21. (BFS, 1, 246, 11. 1-6): "In Deo autem relucent omnia; tamen non influit ad cognoscenda naturali cognitione nisi ea solum, quorum species accipiuntur a rebus vel corporalibus vel spiritualibus. Et puto quod alia sit influentia et alia species secundum diversitatem cognitorum, secundum pluritatem rationum rerum diversarum."
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the early work of Henry of Ghent: a notion of simple human cognition as having recourse to two species or exemplars, one derived from things in the world and the other coming directly from God.121 The difference was that for Matthew two species would have been necessary for all simple cognition; for Henry, as will be seen, only for knowledge of purest truth. If this is correct, it is worth noting that Matthewr was even more precise about the noetic function of the two species than Henry.
A similar view was once suggested in Bonaventure. See above, n. 56.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IMMUTABILITY OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE COGNITIVE OBJECT
In accounting for normative processes of truth-recognition as well as the generation of concepts, the formulators of the classic doctrine of divine illumination had taken care to insure that divinity entered in not as object known but as unseen instrument or agent. The central position reserved for characterizing God as means of knowing (ratio cognoscendi] serves to make this clear. Aware that illuminationist language could suggest that God himself was directly perceived by human mind acting normally in the world of sin, Bonaventure and his followers happily adopted a figure of speech so conveniently insulating their thought from any such implication. But despite this fact, the notion of God as authentic cognitive object still managed to find a place in their discussion of his illuminative role. Though not so prominent a motif as that of God as purely cognitive means or so easy to explain in the long run it w7as just as important. Of course, traditional accounts of divine illumination had often conceded a modest objective role to God, evident even in Grosseteste's De veritate} In view of the near inevitability of speaking about God as in some fashion object simply by virtue of his being intellective light, the combination of roles thus crept naturally into Bonaventure's and his followers' language and into the contours of their thought.2 In most cases it emerged almost incidentally, as in the notion of
1
See the discussion above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, pp. 41-43. Dramatic evidence is Bonaventure's Collatianes in Hexaemeron 10, n. 7 (Opera Omnia, 5, 378a): "Si autem claritas [fidei vel veritatis] consideratur ut veritas efficiens, hoc est tripliciter: aut in quantum inchoat naturam; aut in quantum illustrat intelligentiam; aut in quantum inspirat gratiam. . . . Ut illustrat intelligentiam; et sic format animam, scilicet intellectum humanum et angelicum, ut sit Deus obiectum intellectus." Berube, "Henri de Gand et Mathieu d'Aquasparta," pp. 142-44, has observed that Bonaventure's penchant for mystical language guaranteed that works such as the Itinerarium would be permeated with the odor of ontologism. His less mystically inclined followers, Pecham and Matthew, were left to search for ways to make clear that the doctrine of illumination they inherited did not imply an objective role for God in the full sense of the word. 2
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mind directed towards God because created in his image or the theory that God worked effective in human cognition as mover that was in some way also object, an obiectum motwum? Yet in two instances the classic notion of divine illumination adopted a theoretically bolder description of God as in some way normal object of the wayfarer's mind. Because each yielded philosophical dividends in areas of inquiry outside the primary focus on judgment of truth and ideogenesis, they both contributed powerfully towards undermining Augustinian reticence about the otherwise attenuated theme of divinity as noetic object. The first had to do with natural knowledge of God - specifically, the proposition that God as intellectual object was immanent in the concept of being. Complicated, elusive and pointing to illumination's fourth functional component, it will be dealt with in the next chapter. The second entailed a strategy for underwriting immutability in knowledge of greatest epistemic value - that is, scientific truth. This much simpler matter commands attention now. A conviction that immutability in some of the stronger forms of knowledge was connected to the phenomenon of divine illumination was present from the start among proponents of classic Augustinianism and represents a major departure from the stance of the mature Grosseteste and William of Auvergne. In his early sermon for the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, Bonaventure considered how Christ might be called a teacher. One explanation led to examination of the nature of science. Building upon Aristotle's admonition that attaining scientific knowledge meant uncovering necessary causal conditions, Bonaventure commented that science made two unalterable demands: immutability on the part of the cognitive object and certitude on the part of the knowing subject.4 Both demands, he said, could be assured for the fallen mind only through the workings of God's light, or in other words, the magisterial clarity of Christ himself. Of the two requirements, certitude had of course to do with problems of mind and judgment, traditional locus of Augustinian illumination and the heart of the classic doctrine presented above. It was :! On "image of God," see Pt. 2, ch. 5, p. 143; on "motive object," Pt. 2, ch. 5, pp. 143-47. 4 Sermo, Dom. XXII. post Pent.. 1 (Opera Omnia, 9, 441b-42a). On the reference to Aristotle, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 31. As the editors of Bonaventure's Opera Omnia point out, he might also have had in mind Nicomachean Ethics VI, 3 and 6 (1139bl8-24 and 31-35, and 1141a3-8).
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the demand for immutability on the object's part that introduced the more uncommon attempt to locate a divine element in the objective ground itself. Bonaventure made his case by listing the various ways an object might be present to mind: in its own, external nature (in proprio genere), as a concept of intellect (in humana mente), or through representation by a divine and eternal ideal (in aeterna rations}? Since only the last instance entailed true immutability, God or his divine ideas had necessarily to be implicated in the objective conditions of knowledge whenever there was scientific cognition. The divinity played, in short, an authentic role as object in divine illumination, all talk about God as ratio cognoscendi notwithstanding. The same argument reappears in the sermon, "Unus est magister," as well as in question 4 of De scientia Christi, where the virtual identification of God's roles as light and object of mind is more pronounced than in any other place in Bonaventure's work.6 As already remarked, Matthew of Aquasparta echoed these very passages in his own Commentary on the Sentences and Quaestiones de cognitione.1 And when the late questions De anima beata return to the theme once more, they explicitly argue with reference to science's first principles that intellect cannot recognize their immutability unless in some way directed to them as resident in the divine mind.8 All this was, to be sure, subject to a major qualification. Though God found an objective place in the attainment of science, his eternal reasons were seen, in Bonaventure's words, only "partly and in a shadow." Under no stretch of the imagination were they seized distinctly as one might know their mutable, exemplified counterparts in the created world.9 For the most part insistence on a divine grounding for cognitive immutability emerged only when it came to consideration of complex intellection — that is, knowledge of arguments and propositions.
3
See the passage cited above, n. 4. "Unus est magister," nn. 6—7 (ed. Russo, p. 106); De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 23b~24a), also cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 26. ' See the passages cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 53. 8 Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 1, ad 3. (ed. Emmen, BFS, 18, 192, 11. 5-16). Essentially the same argument can be found again in Matthew's Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 4. (BFS, 1, 50, 1. 25-51, 1. 2). 9 Bonaventure, De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5): p. 24a: ". . . attingit eas ex parte et in aenigmate;" and p. 25b (ad 15.): ". . . non omnino distincte videmus illas rationes in se." See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 88, where Pecham repeated Bonaventure's warning; also fuller discussion below, Pt. 2, ch. 8, pp. 210, 220, 229-30, 239-44. 6
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This made sense from a strictly Aristotelian perspective, where truth, and consequently the immutability of true knowledge, were qualities exclusively of propositional and inferential logic. Bonaventure provided the paradigmatic instance in an extended passage from Itinerarium mentis in Deum, where, demonstrating how God's light shone into mind as into its image, he surveyed intellect's operations, including knowledge of propositions and inferences.10 If the latter was to be worthy of the name of science (scire), then the propositions had to be known as immutable, the inferences as absolutely necessary. Since such qualities could not be accounted for by reference to worldly objects or to mind's innate power to represent objects in itself, there had to be some additional semantic role for the divine light and the eternal exemplars shining in it. Matthew twice reproduced Bonaventure's words nearly verbatim, once in his Commentary on the Sentences and again in De cognitione, question 2. 11 As an example of an immutable proposition he offered the often cited principle: The whole is greater than any of its parts, on another occasion adding two more: Two and three are five, and: Man is a mortal, rational animal.12 The same idea was taken up by Pecham in his Sentences Commentary, where he explained that knowledge of necessary propositions, while making reference to objects as known through phantasms or cognitive species in the intellective memory, could not exhibit immutability without additional reference to the eternal and divine reasons.13 Like Matthew, he cited the law
10
Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum 3, n. 3 (Opera Omnia, 5, 304a-b). These passages immediately follow those referred to above, n. 7, echoing Bonaventure's De scientia Christi and sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. See Matthew, Oman, in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 116va-b); and the nearly identical text in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 236, 1. 29-237, 1. 18). 12 Both the Commentary and De cognitione make reference to the whole and its parts, but Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 5 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 37vb) adds the two additional examples in a passage again echoing Bonaventure (as cited above, n. 10) by considering the object as it exists in the material world, in the soul and in the eternal exemplar: "Cum ergo omne totum est maius sua parte, et duo et tria sunt quinque, et homo est animal rationale mortale, hanc immutabilem ueritatem non habeat quantum ad materiam, sed nee quantum ad animam, sed quantum ad illam incommutabilem formam. Unde in materia est deus, nee in anima, sed ilia exemplari forma, ubi est habitudo immutabilis." 15 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 2, q. la, ad 4. (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchungen, pp. 47-48). In Quaestiones de anima, q. 2 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 20), Pecham dared, for the sake of argument about the soul, to describe the quality of immutability in some truths as "immortality." 11
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of the whole and its parts and also a mathematical truth, in this case: Three plus four equal seven.14 The precise way God's reasons played their referential role, and how the process fit with mind's knowledge of simple terms, remained ambiguous. For Bonaventure, and for Matthew7 in passages reproducing Bonaventure's words, presentation of the matter was always couched in an uncritical blend of cliches on the need for a higher intelligible light with warnings about the partialness and obscurity of vision in the eternal exemplars. In Matthew's case the issue was caught up additionally in his own ambivalence about whether God acted directly or through an influence. Early on he saw the argument from immutability as reason for rejecting the idea of God's mere illuminative influence on mind, yet he retained the immutability argument even after turning to favor illumination by influence alone.10 Presumably he regarded describing God as obiectum movens sufficient assurance of a place for God's immutability in the referential conditions of complex knowledge. Pecham made a stab at greater precision but ended up no clearer. The passage from the commentary on Book I of the Sentences, distinction 2, specified two levels of representation for necessary propositions: one in abstracted species residing in mind, another in eternal reasons.16 Though representation by mind's species — the proper means of knowing — implied nothing about reference, it is hard to see how representation by divine ideas would contribute to immutability of reference unless the divine ideas were in some way known themselves. Yet in distinction 3 of the same work, Pecham insisted he had no objective role in mind. In knowing immutable truth intellect, in the familiar phrase, "touched on" eternal reasons but only obscurely and in part, just enough to perceive in them the immutable configuration of terms (habitudo incommutabilis) lending the proposition its infallibility.17 The idea is related to Pecham's division between u See Commentary on the Sentences as cited in the preceding note. Pecham referred to Augustine as authority for the idea that regardless of whether truths such as rules of addition applied to corporeal reality seized by mind in phantasms, their validity ultimately fell back on divine reasons. Almost surely he had in mind Augustine's discussion of number and truths such as "Seven plus three equal ten" in De libero arbitrio II, 8 (ed. William M. Green, CSEL, 74 [Vienna, 1956], pp. 56-60). 15 For the early stance, see Matthew, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 8 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 117va), quoted above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 73. 16 See the first passage cited above, n. 13 - esp. p. 48. 17 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 135). Refer also to n. 9, above.
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knowledge of simple and complex truth, the latter requiring Godly intervention and the former not.18 To explain the divine intervention in that case he most often retreated to vague language about God's acting as a light, and now again he did the same, adding that just as mind's own species were rationes cognoscendi, so in knowledge of immutable truth divine light was "touched on" as means of knowing not truly object known.19 On one occasion Bonaventure did, however, attempt to clarify the logical side of the matter, in an excursus in De scientia Christi, question 4, on the immutability of demonstrative principles, and by extension all naturally known immutable truths. Among arguments marshaled against an Augustinian vision of a divine role in reference, he said, were several holding that if the immutability of principles was reducible to that of God and the divine reasons, then such absurdities would follow as that all truths and everything known in them were the same as God, that all knowledge should be worshipped as divine and that in knowing immutable truth anyone, including demons, would see the divinity and thereby be blessed.20 In response, he noted that it was necessary first of all to distinguish between levels of signification.21 As commonly understood, a demonstrative principle was a logical object — a "quid complexum" in Bonaventure's words or what we would call a proposition — and thus a created thing (creaturri), in which case knowing a principle could in no way be construed as equivalent to knowing God. Yet it had to be conceded that the proposition was merely the immediate object. Every true proposition signified a truth, a complex referent to be grasped if one was to recognize the proposition as true, and this truth might reside, as Bonaventure had always held, in material reality, in the soul or in the divine mind.22 Were the proposition immutably true, then the referent itself would have to be immutable, and given the choices, this would appear to exclude all but the truth resident in the divine mind.
18
See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, nn. 112-15. See especially Pt. 2, ch. 5, nn. 113 and 114, and compare to the continuation of the passage cited above, n. 17. -° De scientia Christi, q. 4, arg. ad opp. 23-26 (Opera Omnia, 5, 22b). 21 Bonaventure responded to the arguments in De scientia Christi, q. 4, ad. 23-26. (Opera Omnia, 5, 26b-27a). -- This idea goes back to his early sermons. See above, n. 6; or more pertinently, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n.' 30. 19
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Here came the interesting part of Bonaventure's answer. The fact that mind was referred to an immutable truth did not by itself mean that the referent was divine, for immutability could be taken either absolutely (simpliciter} or conditionally (ex suppositione). The only thing absolutely immutable was that which was truly eternal, God himself, but many non-eternal things w7ere immutable conditionally.23 It was thus entirely possible that the complex referent even at this second level of signification was still something created, either in the material world or in the soul. Surely Bonaventure was relying at this point on the concept of hypothetical reasoning employed to great effect in his own day by Albert the Great and earlier implied, without use of the term ex suppositione, by Grosseteste himself.24 From this perspective, a proposition could be considered immutably true, even though the real object referred to was a transitory event like an eclipse of the moon, if conditions could be specified which, when met, guaranteed the proposition's verity. For Albert and for Grosseteste, ex suppositione reasoning had provided a way to explain immutability of truth in much of natural philosophy without having to make reference to enduring essences, much less a direct referential role for God or divine ideas. For Bonaventure, this was partially the case, but he declined to cut God out of the noetic process altogether. After explaining how immutably true propositions could depend on a conditional immutability fully in the world, he went on to show that God was ultimately involved. His insistence was that, for all the importance of hypothetical reasoning, demonstrative knowledge demanded that mind be absolutely (simpliciter) certain about the truth it knew. And for this an object immutable ex suppositione was not enough; absolute certainty demanded an absolutely immutable (immutabile simpliciter} referent. To account for the latter Bonaventure returned to the paradigmatic configuration of classic illumination. Immutable truth in the mind that is, the mental instantiation of an immutably true proposition — was related to a truth in external, material things immutable ex suppositione and to a truth in the divine mind that was absolutely so. From the material truth mind received certitude in a manner of speaking (secundum quid)', from the divine truth certitude 23
Bonaventure also made this point earlier in the same question, p. 23b. See above, Pt. 1, ch. 3, n. 41, and the citation to Grosseteste in the preceding n. 40. 2+
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pure and simple (simpliciter). Scientific knowledge required, in the end, reference to God. Matthew took the same tack in his own Quaestiones de cognitione.-3 Replicating Bonaventure's argument in condensed form, he insisted that in knowing immutable truths mind was directed to created objects immutable ex suppositione and an uncreated one immutable purely and simply. Relying on the former it became certain secundum quid; absolute certitude arrived only with recourse to the uncreated referent in God. Matthew's sole modification was to add that the created immutable referent was obiectum terminans, the divine referent obiectum movens. He simply tailored Bonaventure's view of immutability to the idiom of his own analysis of divine illumination. Neither Bonaventure nor Pecham had anything more to say about God's objective role in guaranteeing immutability of scientific knowledge. Alone among the classic Augustinians, Matthew ventured farther, extending investigation of God as cognitive object in perception of immutable truths beyond complex intellection to the way this role was manifested in the simple understanding upon which prepositional knowledge depended. Perhaps he was persuaded to go so far because of the concern in his mature work to defend a notion of normal illumination by means only of an influence from God. Such indirectness on divinity's part made it hard to imagine how one could promote any objective role for God or divine reasons, even in human knowledge of immutable truth. The awkwardness of Matthew's position fairly begged for greater specificity. Almost everything he had to say on the subject is contained in the remarkable first question De cognitione inquiring whether the existence of a thing is necessary for knowledge of it.26 Like all the others on knowledge, this question was written sometime between 1277 and 1279, just after the composition - probably a bit longer after the oral classroom presentation — of the first parts of Henry of Ghent's Summa. To prepare the ground for his response, Matthew first undertook to identify the proper object of mind, for which he turned to Aristotle, revealing himself on this point an Aristotelianizer along the lines of William of Auvergne and Grosseteste before him, but with 25
Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 28. (BFS, 1, 247, 1. 32^248, 1. 6). ~() See Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 201, 11. 3-5). Consult the excellent analysis by Anton Pegis, "Matthew of Aquasparta and the Cognition of Non-Being," in SRHCI, pp. 463-80.
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an even more finely tuned grasp of Aristotle's ideas.27 Intellectual acts, he specified, had to be divided into two sorts: simple and complex. The former were relevant to the issue at hand, and with them the object was the quiddity of the thing to be known.28 Responding to an initial objection, he remarked that quiddity could likewise be called, in more literally Aristotelian terms, quod quid est - that is, a thing's essential or denning characteristics.29 In deference to Augustine, it could also be referred to as what was true (verurri), echoing the famous definition of truth in the Soliloquies as id quod est?° Yet Matthew intended to go beyond the formal parameters of an Aristotelianizing theory of reference to raise deeper questions about the ontology of the cognitive object. He often took care to note that mind's simple referent was not just quiddity but rather "absolute quiddity" (quidditas absolutd) or "quiddity pure and simple" (quidditas simpliciter), meaning that strictly speaking it abstracted from considerations of actuality, remaining in itself indifferent to existence or non-existence in Matthew's Latin sometimes rendered esse and nonesse, sometimes existentia and non-existential This idea he now explicitly attributed to Avicenna, who in what was becoming a famous and much scrutinized passage had divided the notion of quiddity or essence from that of being or existence, asserting that the former could be considered completely by itself as absolute essence.32 A similar spirit, Matthew maintained, was present in Augustine, whose definition of truth as id quod est he thought referred not to what actu-
~' For William and Robert on mind's object, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, nn. 15 and 19-22. 28 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 211, 11. 16-21); and also q. 2 (BFS, 1, 233, 11. 5-10). This notion of object is fully compatible with that noted previously (Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 1; Pt. 2, ch 5, n. 101), whereby mind in most of its simple acts is directed towards a thing in the world (quid creatum). The difference is that now Matthew was focusing on the object's formal content rather than its referential domain and considering all acts of simple cognition, not just the most typical. 29 See Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 5. (BFS, 1, 217, 11. 5-11). 30 Ibid. For Augustine's definition, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, n. 16. 31 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 212, 11. 15-19 and 213, 11. 25-26); and also De cognitione, q. 1, ad 9. and ad 15. (BFS, 1, 218, 11. 17-20 and 220, 11. 16-17). See the discussion in Marrone, "Matthew of Aquasparta," p. 276. 32 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 212, 11. 22-30). The reference was to Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima V, 1 (ed. Van Riet, 2, esp. pp. 230 and 233~34). See also Avicenna, Philosophia prima I, 5 (referred to below, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 14), where such quiddity is called esse proprium and certitudo propria. Avicenna associated it with "res," in contrast to "ens," the latter denoting an object's existential side - see below, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 52; as well as Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 13.
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ally was at any moment but rather to what perdured beyond the particular circumstances of here and now.33 The admission that quiddity was cut loose from conditions of existence brought Matthew back at last to the fundamental question: Could one know a nonexisting object? In light of the preceding remarks, the obvious answer was: Yes, one could.34 But obvious or not, such a response was problematic, at least in his eyes, for it implied that knowledge might well end or terminate in nonbeing? Was this not odd, or even impossible?35 To escape his dilemma, Matthew had recourse to a subtle distinction.36 There were, he said, two kinds of nonbeing - that is, two ways to understand nonexistence. One could point to absolute nonbeing (non-ens simpliciter), which comprised the empty set of what was in no way existent, either in potency or in act. Since whatever was nonbeing in this sense not only was not but could never be, it was completely outside the class of possible things. One could, on the other hand, think of nonbeing in a restricted sense (non-ens aliquo modo) as describing something that at the moment did not exist (non ens actu) but had the potential to be - for example, something anticipated in an efficient or exemplary cause. Here lay the metaphysical realm of possibility. According to Matthew, nonbeing of the first type absolute — could never be the object of intellection. Yet nonbeing only in a certain sense - that is, as possible but not actually existent at the time of cognition - attached to objects fully capable of being understood. It represented the minimum a theory of cognition should demand. In fact, nonbeing of this sort precisely characterized mind's proper referent in simple understanding, for if the simple object of mind was absolute quiddity, then strictly speaking intelligibility prescinded from existence.37 Mind could not focus its sights on absolutely nothing, but in its paradigmatic simple act it wras directed towards a class of
33
Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 5. (BFS, 1, 217, 11. 11-14). Refer to n. 30, above. Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 213, 11. 4-12 and 211, 11. 7-14). 33 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 213, 11. 15-16): "Sed tune manet difficultas, quid est obiectum intellectus, cum non possit terminari ad non-ens." 36 Matthew, Quaestioms de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 209, 11. 24~210:3 and 213, 11. 16-21). See also Marrone, "Matthew of Aquasparta," p. 275. 37 As Matthew said in Quaestioms de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 213, 11. 18-20): ". . . aliquid quod de ratione sui non concernit esse actuale, tamen intelligibile, apprehensibile, intellectui repraesentabile, est ... obiectum intellectus." 34
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objects that were not necessarily actual.38 There was, moreover, nothing philosophically awkward about this fact, since intellection established a relation between mind and object that was real on the part of mind but merely conceptual (secundum rationem} on object's side.39 From this point of view, actual existence of an objective essence made no contribution to the cognitive configuration. Yet philosophical awkwardness was not the only thing Matthew wanted to avoid. Thus far he had played the philosopher, Aristotelian as well as Avicennian, but he was more than that, a confirmed Augustinian who would not be satisfied with a purely worldly solution. On this point concerning the ontology of knowledge he harbored a lingering doubt no amount of philosophical reasoning could dispel.40 If the object of mind was totally severed from actuality, did that not render all hope for science or cognitive certitude vain?41 Augustine had said that knowing the definitive nature of man meant knowing something that was necessarily true, immutably true, even eternally true. Such a description sat uncomfortably with the idea that mind's object was no more than being in potency. None of the arguments adduced so far fully eradicated the sense that knowledge must be founded on the objective side in some real thing.42 For complete resolution of the matter, Matthew said, maybe philosophy was not enough. Maybe one had to turn to the principles of theology.43 And here the occasion arose for appeal to divine ideas.
38 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 213, 11. 21-26): "Intellectus igitur habens apud se speciem quidditatis humanae vel cuiuscumque, ilia species repraesentat sibi illam quidditatem non tamquam ens actu vel non ens, sed simpliciter earn repraesentat. . . . Et hoc sufficit ad rationem obiecti. Nam nee re existente, quidditas ut est in rebus est obiectum intellectus." 39 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 14. and 18. (BFS, 1, 219, 1. 21-220, 1. 4 and 220, 11. 33-36). 40 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 213, 11. 29-30): "Iste modus est philosophicus et congruus; non tamen puto quod sufficiat." 41 One of Matthew's concerns was a fear of what might be called conceptualism, the notion that the object of knowledge was nothing more than the mental concept or species itself. This would of course eliminate the need to find an objective foundation for knowledge outside mind, but to Matthew it appeared to make a mockery of the claim that science led to knowledge of something besides intellect's own inventions. See the beginning of the passage cited below, n. 42, as well as Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 8. (BFS, 1, 218, 11. 6-8). 42 See Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 213, 1. 31-214, 1. 11), especially the last line: "Necesse est igitur [scientia] fundari in aliquo." 43 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 213, 11. 30-31): "Et fortassis hie dificiunt principia philosophiae, et recurrendum est ad principia theologica."
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If knowledge, especially definitive or quidditative knowledge, had ultimately to be grounded in some real thing not subject to the fluctuations of time, then that could not be an external created thing, which might pass away while truth remained, nor the created intellect, which was likewise more volatile than truth. Knowledge had ultimately to be secured in God, bearer of the eternal exemplars of all he created.44 Here lay objective content suitable to assure that at least the higher forms of knowledge were worthy of the name. The turn to theology, and to Augustine's vision of truth, accompanied of course a substantial transformation in the nature of the question being addressed. What had begun as an attempt to locate the ontological ground of simple understanding became a search for an explanation of immutability in knowledge of the most powerful form.43 Significantly, whereas his fellow Augustinians had followed that quest only so far as concerned complex cognition and scientific propositions, in question 1 of De cognitiom Matthew fixed his gaze nearly exclusively on the incomplex constituents upon which science was built, inquiring after immutability as it attached to simple objects of mind.46 He recognized that even at this point there was a worldly way to weave immutability into cognition, one with an honorable tradition in the thirteenth-century schools. Grosseteste, for instance, was satisfied Aristotle's requirement that universal knowledge be about what was "always and everywhere" could be met so long as mind located its reference in the particular instances of the universal whenever and 44
Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 214, 11. 11-19). See, for instance, Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 214, 11. 20-24): "Ulterius, veritas creata non est aliud nisi quaedam expressio veritatis increatae; et unumquodque in tantum verum est, in quantum illud exemplar imitatur. Si igitur ista vera immutabilia non possunt intelligi nisi ubi sunt, nee sunt immutabilia nisi in arte, ergo necesse est quod intelligantur in arte." 46 See Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 236, 11. 7-11); even already Quaestiones defide, q. 1, ad 5. (BFS, 1, 51, 11. 20-21 and 52, 11. 1-3). Of course, Matthew also referred to immutability in complex knowledge - see Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 7. (BFS, 1, 217, 11. 23-27). His theory of the ontology of the simple intellective object was thus a reworking and extension of ideas from Bonaventure and Pecham on the immutability of principles of science, carried out under the influence of Henry of Ghent. The passage from De cognitione, q. 2, is instructive on this score, comprising an almost verbatim quotation from the Bonaventure text cited above, n. 10, but with Matthew insisting that knowledge of all three sorts - of terms, propositions and inferences - be immutable, a point that does not appear in the corresponding Bonaventuran text, in which knowledge of simple terms was not a major concern. 4j
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wherever they actually existed.47 But from Matthew's "theological" point of view, this strategy still fell short of the mark. His appeal was rather to the language of divine illumination, where he could call upon formulae going back to his earliest work loosely combining a vision of God's illuminative role in generating human knowledge with understanding of the divine ideas as ground for the immutability of science.48 In making that connection explicit, he literally expanded the boundaries of the intellectual tradition in which he was working, simultaneously extending the philosophical reach of illuminationist discourse and intensifying the Neoplatonic character of Augustinian theory of mind. Curiously enough, in the process Matthew not only turned away from the commitment, going back to Grosseteste as well as William, to account for immutability of simple objects without recourse to an ontology of eternal existence or the idea of divine reasons as objective foundation for knowledge; he also drew back from William's strongly Neoplatonizing account of the origin of knowledge of the common principles of science. The latter had held that the terms from which these most fundamental of all immutable truths were constructed came to mind by direct infusion from God. It has been shown how Matthew would have none of this explanation.49 Instead he stood William on his head. For William God was source of the terms from which principal propositions were constructed, but the logical explanation of the principles' cognitive immutability entailed no reference to the divinity; for Matthew^ principles were immutably true because knowledge of their constituent terms drew on God as objective ground, but mind culled the terms solely from the created world. Here was a position distinctly different from anything in
47
Matthew, Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 5. (BFS, 1, 51, 11. 8-12). See discussion of Grosseteste on this point, above, Pt. 1, ch. 3, pp. 91-94; and Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 189-94. The passage in Aristotle raising the two criteria for universality is Posterior Analytics I, 31 (87b32). 48 For example, Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 1. (BFS, 1, 215, 1. 31-216, 1. 4); and Comm. in lib. I. Sent., pro!., q. 1 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 3va): "Sed incommutabiles manent et eterne rationes, ut probat [maybe: dicit] Augustinus in pluribus locis, et manifestum est quod nullo homine existente, uerum est quod homo est animal rationale mortale. Ex quibus quidem rationibus influuntur quedam rationes in nostris mentibus." 49 For William's account, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 73-78; for Matthew's response, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 18-20.
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William, Grosseteste or the other classic Augustinians, evocative rather of the thought of later theologians like Henry of Ghent.50 More curious still is precisely how Matthew worked the notion of God's reasons as underlying referent in simple understanding into his Avicennian vision of absolute quiddity as object of mind. He never described the operative mechanism more than briefly, but the scheme presented is again reflective of the ideas of Henry of Ghent, most likely borrowed directly from him.3' At its heart lay the notion that neither absolute quiddity nor divine reasons alone were the object of intellect but rather the two of them combined: Therefore, when we understand the quiddity of anything - its definitive reason — the object of our intellect is not the concept of mind alone; nor is it the quiddity alone, which [in any case] is not a real thing; nor is it the eternal exemplar acting as a complete and final object, because this is the object only of the beatified or beatifying intellect. Instead it is the quiddity as conceived by our intellect yet related to the eternal art or exemplar, which touches our mind as [intellective] mover.02
Matthew repeated the same formulation many times.53 Lapidary, almost enigmatic in its conciseness, it passes before the eye of the casual reader making hardly an impression. Yet read in the light of Henry's theory of essence and his ontology of knowledge, it constitutes an almost breathtaking epitome of a complicated and controversial vision of how mind, mental object and God come together in the wayfarer's simple intellective act. The details of the vision lying behind Matthew's words will be laid out in the discussion of Henry below.54 Though there is no proof
°° For Henry's ideas, see below, Pt. 3, ch. 12. 51 On this, see below, Pt. 3, ch. 11, pp. 354-58; and Marrone, "Matthew of Aquasparta," pp. 277-78. 52 Matthew, Quaestioms de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 214, 1. 30-215, 1. 3): "Cum ergo intelligimus alicuius rei quidditatem et suam rationem definitivam, obiectum intellectus non est ipse mentis conceptus tantum; nee ipsa quidditas tantum, quae non est in rerum natura; nee exemplar aeternum est obiectum quietans et terminans, quia hoc est solum obiectum intellectus beati et beatificans. Sed est quidditas ipsa concepta ab intellectu nostro, relata tamen ad artem sive exemplar aeternum, in quantum, tangens mentem nostram, se habet in ratione moventis." 53 See Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 2., 6., 7., 8. and 9. (BFS, 1, 216, 11. 16-19; 217, 11. 19-22; 217, 11. 27-28; 218, 11. 10-14; and 218, 11. 20-21); and q. 2, ad 28. (248, 11. 3-6). 54 See the whole of Pt. 3, ch. 11.
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that Matthew had precisely this vision in mind, the circumstantial evidence is strong. Henry's ideas about essence as cognitive object constitute the only medieval theory that makes full sense of Matthew's otherwise unglossed reference to a necessary epistemic relation between absolute essence and divine ideal.53 In the final analysis, Matthew's thought retained a coloration of its own. He borrowed, but in the name of the classic Augustinian determination to bring the scattered elements of divine illumination together into a single doctrine. He, but not Henry, explicitly tied an understanding of the relative character of the object of intellect to the account of the truth of knowledge and God's illuminative role in providing certitude, even speaking about mind's simple object in terms that echo Henry's ideal of illuminated truth: only by seeing quiddity as related to eternal exemplar could mind achieve fully veridical understanding (verax notitia).'36 Nothing in Bonaventure or Pecham approaches this for sheer intellectual virtuosity. On the matter of cognitive immutability, Matthew brought to perfection the mixture of Aristotle and Augustine that was Augustinianism in these classic years. His audacity even begins to portend the metaphysical subtlety and complexity of Henry and Duns Scotus. It foreshadows as well their sense of the urgency of resolving the problems of Augustinian epistemology ontologism only one of many - in an increasingly Aristotelianized intellectual world.
:3 ' This is one of several striking echoes of the thought of Henry of Ghent in Matthew's philosophy, perhaps the most important of which remains to be discussed below, Pt. 2, ch. 8, pp. 234-39. Berube, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," pp. 629 and 639-41, discusses Matthew's probable dependence on Henry, although the evidence he advances for it - Henry's presumed acceptance of divine illumination through an influence of God - surely misrepresents Henry's thought. Jb See the passage just before that quoted above, n. 52, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1, 214, 11. 27-29): ". . . impossibile est quod intelligam vere et certitudinaliter aliquam rem, nisi per applicationem quodam modo et relationem ad exemplar aeternum"; and the line following immediately on the same quotation (BFS, 1, 215, 11. 3-4): "Et inde concipimus rerum veracem notitiam." The latter language resonates of Henry's notion of sincera veritas, examined below, Pt. 3, ch. 9, pp. 288-90. See also Matthew, Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 1, ad 3. (ed. Emmen, BFS, 18, 192, 11. 14-17).
CHAPTER EIGHT A NATURAL WAY TO KNOW GOD
The second salient instance where the notion of God as cognitive object worked its way into the classic Augustinians' theory of knowledge concerned the problem of knowing the divinity. What ultimately emerged here was a theory of the wayfarer's natural knowledge of God, especially in or through knowledge of "being." In this case unlike that of immutable truth — the depiction of God as object built on elements already present in the thought of William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste, yet the coherence Bonaventure and his followers brought to the discussion, and the centrality it assumed in their work, marked a significant departure from the earlier theologians' approach.1 By synthesizing disparate and largely unassociated ideas, the Augustinians of mid-century transformed their meaning, tapping a previously unrealized potential of the images tied to illumination. The contrast stands out immediately upon comparison of old and new. Two clusters of ideas found in William's and Grosseteste's writings furnished the classic Augustinians with inspiration for their vision of a natural knowledge of God. First was William's account 1 Efrem Bettoni has argued that Bonaventure conceived of the doctrine of divine illumination much less as a philosophical account of cognitive certitude than an explanation for humankind's knowledge of God. See Bettoni, "Punti di contatto fra la dottrina bonaventuriana deH'illuminazione e la dottrina scotista dell'univocita," in SRHCI, p. 520; // problema della conoscibilita di Dio nella Scuola Francescana (Padua, 1950), p. 245; S. Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, pp. 199-201; and somewhat more ambivalently, "La dottrina bonaventuriana dell'illuminazione intellettuale," pp. 140-42 and 153. Berube, "Olivi, critique," pp. 72 and 77, maintains that in the Itinerarium Bonventure moved from seeing cognitive vision in the eternal reasons as the central aspect of illumination to emphasizing the phenomenon of an innate knowledge of God; and in "De la theologie de 1'image a la philosophic de 1'objet de 1'intelligence chez saint Bonaventure," in S. Bonaventura 1274-1974, III, 161-200 (Grottaferrata, 1973), he adds a final step, Bonaventure's interest in God as first object of mind. Similar views of a progressive reorientation of Bonaventure's thought can be found in Weber, Dialogue et dissensions, pp. 140-42, 486-87 and 489-90. On the other hand, Zacharias Van de Woestyne, "Augustinismus in gnoseologia S. Bonaventurae et S. Thomae," Antonianum 9 (1934): 479-81, argued that divine illumination was for Bonaventure exclusively connected with the question of certitude.
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of knowledge of what he called first impressions, more generally known as the first or common principles of science — the basic rules of thought.2 As has been noted, William maintained that the terms composing propositions expressing such principal truths were given to mind by God acting as cognitive light or intelligible book. They were literally impressed or inscribed on intellect by direct divine action, for which reason the resultant principles could be called innate.3 The terms William had in mind constituted a generous and largely indeterminate set including what would later be called first intentions, already sometimes referred to as transcendentals: terms like "being," "good" and "true," all of which applied more legitimately to God than to created things. The second ideological cluster centered on William's musings about a dynamics of mind bridging the gap between normal human intellection and knowledge of God, a topic addressed in Grosseteste's writings as well.4 Motivating both thinkers here was a fear that intellect might not have natural cognitive access to the divinity, which encouraged them to look for a way of reaffirming the intimacy of God to soul and guaranteeing his attainability as cognitive object. Their solution was to sketch out an intellectual progression founded on mind's evident inclination into truth and stretching either out of this life into the next or, especially in Grosseteste's case, from worldly understanding into the contemplative vision. In these early instantiations, the two sets of ideas were completely unconnected — perforce in Robert's work, where only one was present, but in William's as well. The theory of the impression of first intentions, firmly embedded in Augustine's language of divine illumination, applied to semantics and the apprehension of first principles, with nothing made of it as an explanation for knowledge of God. The vision of a dynamic lifting mind out of its normal functions bypassed the language of illumination, making use instead of either the image of an intellectual inclination into beatitude or the lexicon of mysticism, especially as fed by the writings of pseudoDionysius, and served precisely to show how mind could know God. There was no attempt to unite the two stands or relate them in function or form. Refer to Pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 73-78, above. See above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, nn. 78-79. See above, Pt. 1, ch. 4.
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With the classic Augustinians, the two lines of analysis began to intersect — or more graphically put, the functional chemistry of one contaminated the other. What happened was that the volatile dynamics of intellectual sublimation, raising worldly cognition to knowledge of God, spilled over from consideration of mind's path to perfection or the contemplative way into the account of grasping fundamental concepts of understanding, the result being a metamorphosis in both sets of ideas. Liberated from the burden of guaranteeing the wayfarer access to God, consideration of the via contemplativa was opened up to a more purely mystical agenda and examination of beatitude effectively severed from speculation on the here and now. Meanwhile, the theory of basic concepts of mind, enriched by a novel appreciation for its theological potential, triggered an effort to anchor the cognitive intimacy of God in natural operations of intellect in the world. One can hardly imagine a more striking change, or one more likely to intensify the power of Augustine's imagery of illumination in scholastic discourse about processes of mind. This theoretical alchemy performed by Bonaventure and his followers was not, to be sure, entirely unprecedented. Both William and Robert had agreed that of all first intentions, "being" was privileged with respect to knowledge of God, so that it was as "being" that divinity was best known to intellect working in the world.3 Since for William knowledge of being was impressed on mind by God, this admission could well have offered ready-made a way to explain how God granted mind natural knowledge of himself. What was lacking was a readiness to make plain the connection.6 More promising still, Grosseteste, even without William's theory of impressed first intentions, once explicitly described the perception of God as "being" so as to suggest a fundamental knowledge of divinity implicated in the understanding of everything else and somehow theoretically connected to God's illuminative role as bearer of truth. 7 Carried to its logical end, either idea might have issued in the theories of the classic Augustinians on God as natural object of mind. Yet in Robert's and William's works, the requisite transformation never occurred.
5
See Pt. 1, ch. 2, nn. 85-87. William came close to doing so in a single passage in De Trinitate, quoted above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, n. 86. 7 See above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, n. 93. (>
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The first signs of a willingness to capitalize on the potential for a theory of natural knowledge of God came instead with Gilbert of Tournai, foreshadower as well of the classic Augustinian position on illumination's role in revealing truth. As always, Gilbert proved audacious in weaving together the disparate threads of earlier patterns of thought but less adept at technical detail. His discussion began almost casually with an observation about knowing God. Despite the apparent fact that for the wayfarer God was known or seen in creatures that is, whatever natural knowledge mind had of divinity was built upon the perception of created things - the truth of the matter, Gilbert interposed, was to the contrary that creatures were seen in God. For although God was known through (per) creatures in the sense that knowledge obtained naturally in the world was the vehicle for cognitive access to divinity, it was God himself that was first (prius) perceived in all acts of understanding. Only subsequently, and in this knowledge of God, did creatures themselves come to be known.8 With a wave of his hand Gilbert thereby dismissed the problem of assuring God's intimacy to mind, compressing the uplifting dynamic guaranteeing such intimacy in the noetics of Augustinians of the previous generation into an instant at the very core of his theory of mind. It was axiomatic for him that God was properly an object of the wayfarer's intellect, for God was by necessity very first thing known. This in itself was a significant move. But equally important is the fact that he reinforced his new understanding by wrapping it in the imagery of Augustinian illumination and William's ideas on basic concepts of mind. First of all, the affirmation of the prevenience of knowledge of God in all cognition, coming as it did right after a disquisition on knowledge of truth in divine light, implied that the noetic mechanism underlying this prevenience was the phenomenon of divine illumination. Indeed the first example Gilbert produced to show how God could be known through creatures but creatures only in God was drawn from sensory vision. As he pointed out, one could see gold
8
Gilbert, Rudimentum, p. I, tr. Ill, c. 2, n. 1 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 647): "Quoniam igitur Deus est alpha et omega, principium et finis, non tamen in creatura Deus finaliter cognoscitur, sed per earn prius ab intellectu advertitur et sic creatura cognoscitur." In the heading to this chapter Gilbert had said: "Quod in creatura Deus primo ab intelligentia advertitur, et sic in eo quodammodo cetera cognoscuntur" (ibid.).
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only if it were first bathed in visible light, the foundation for all vision whether or not recognized as such by the eyes.9 Effectively the same phenomenon, he explicitly argued in the succeeding chapter, happened in intellection, with mind perceiving objects in a higher intellective light, the difference being that mind's light, which bore a density lacking in material luminescence, could be discerned in and of itself.10 Secondly, having introduced the example of gold and light, Gilbert continued by speculating on the concept of being. He said that if asked which had truer being, gold or light, one could not possibly answer without recourse to an idea of being without defect (ens sine defectu essendi} that could serve as standard for everything less. Such recourse was necessary, moreover, even though one might not be aware of consulting a standard at all. As he explained: You had recourse to this [standard] within yourself, and you made your judgment because of it. Thus you [actually] knew it first, even though you did not realize it. 11
In short, all assessments of being — of objectivity itself — were made with prior knowledge of a perfect being, knowledge more fundamental than any other action of mind although generally unnoticed. Finally, Gilbert insisted that the standard-setting idea of being without defect was not the concept of a general attribute abstracted from multiple objects of mind; it was specifically the concept of eternal being, God himself.12 After all, a generalized "being" somehow included in all specific "beings" would of necessity have been analogical 9 Gilbert, Rudimentum, p. I, tr. 3, c. 2, n. 2 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 647). Berube, "Olivi, critique," p. 63, suggests that Gilbert was first to connect the doctrine of illumination with the notion of innate knowledge of God - or, as we might say, the idea of God as first object of intellect. 10 Gilbert, Rudimentum, p. I, tr. Ill, c. 3, nn. 2 & 3 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," pp. 651-52). 11 Gilbert, Rudimentum, p. I, tr. Ill, c. 2, n. 2 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 648): "Sed ad istud intra te recurristi et per illud iudicasti. Ergo prius illud novisti, sed prius illud te nosse non advertisti." 12 Gilbert, Rudimentum, p. I, tr. Ill, c. 2, n. 2 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 648): "Non enim poteras iudicare illud esse verius illo . . . nisi per ens quod est sine defectu essendi aliquo; ens scilicet quod numquam non fuit, et numquam non esse poterit. . . . Nee est illud ens ad quod recurris ens analogum, quia, cum tale sit in sola intentione, minus habet de esse quam lux vel aurum. Non igitur de entibus certe iudicabit anima per illud ens deficiens et vanum." Although the logic is awkward here, implying a simple concept of analogical being whatever that might be - it was not unusual for the mid-thirteenth century and surely made Gilbert's point.
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(ens analogum), for like all his contemporaries Gilbert denied there was anything common among all beings to serve as basis for a universal univocal attribute. And whatever "analogical being" was, it was no more than conceptual, thus hardly suitable standard against which to measure real beings like gold and light. There is no proof Gilbert intended these examples and elaborations to represent literally the process by which God was first and most fundamental object known, for strictly speaking they provided mere confirmation that some object could serve in such a way. But in a philosophical world so permeated with Augustine's association between intellective judgment and the very notion of coming to know, was not drawing a parallel between knowledge of eternal being as basis for cognitive judgment of all other entities and knowledge of God as primary vehicle for the understanding of creation inevitably to suggest that the two phenomena were one and the same? And by turning to the image of illumination for clarification, did not Gilbert unavoidably imply that God was primitively available to mind through his action as intelligible light? Certainly readers like Bonaventure took him to be saying as much. It is even likely he was consciously resurrecting Grosseteste's passing attempt in De veritate to transfer the ontological centrality of God as source of all being onto the realm of noetics, making knowledge of God's being the condition for all other cognition. If so, he went a step beyond Grosseteste to claim that in the process, it was God, not worldly things, that was known first. Such a view carried with it attendant complications, not least of which the implication of ontologism, and aware of that fact, Gilbert cautioned that he did not want to suggest divine essence was ever known fully by the wayfarer in the world of sin.13 Yet if not fully, it was known to some degree, for otherwise it could not be that which was first perceived and in which all else was understood. To explain just how, he advanced a number of complementary qualifications. To begin with he insisted that although every intellect knew God as somehow prior natural object in all acts of cognition, this did not mean that divinity directly informed mind. It was instead a similitude of God that served as formal constituent of knowledge in each
13 Gilbert, Rudimentum, p. I, tr. Ill, c. 2, n. 8 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 649).
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case.14 Thus Gilbert not only endorsed the general view that God could not inhere in mind and so was implicated in mental acts only through a mediating form or similitude but also tacitly confirmed the Aristotelianizing insistence that all knowledge involve reception of a similitude or species as formal cause. To support his position he quoted a famous passage from Augustine's De Trinitate, holding that intellect knew God formally by means of a similitude by necessity inferior to divine essence since it rested in an inferior subject the knowing mind.' 1 Next he turned to the image of illumination, his paradigm for God's operation at the foundation of all cognition. The problem was to explain how divine light could somehow be seen yet not attained in any way detrimental to God's essential imperviousness to sinful mind. His solution was to note that divine light was not perceived in itself but only in the refulgence or brilliance emanating from it.16 Significantly, he defended his interpretation by referencing the Avicennian distinction between lux and the splendor or lumen to which it gave rise, the same maneuver that had been crucial to his efforts to make sense of God's place in knowledge of truth.1' Predictably, he followed this point by equating God's splendor with his influence, again a throwback to the discussion of divine illumination and truth. 18 And this association prompted the comment that insofar as God was known to the sinner by means of an influence, he was in effect shining on mind in or through his image naturally
14 Gilbert, Rudimentum p. I, tr. Ill, c. 2, n. 8 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," pp. 649-50). h) Augustine, De Trinitate 9, 11 (ed. William J. Mountain and Fr. Glorie, Corpus Christianorum, 50-50A [Turnhout, 1968], p. 307): ". . . quemadmodum cum per sensum corporis discimus corpora fit aliqua eorum similitudo in animo nostro . . . ita cum deum novimus . . . [fit] aliqua dei similitudo ilia notitia, tamen inferior est quia in inferiore natura est." Gilbert's citation differed slightly from the text in the modern edition. "' Gilbert, Rudimentum p. I, tr. Ill, c. 2, n. 8 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 650): "Ilia enim lux inaccessibilis increata nobis est invisibilis, quia nimia. Videtur tamen in sua refulgentia vel circumfulgentia." 17 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, nn. 61 and 62. 18 Rudimentum, p. I, tr. III. c. 2, n. 8 (ed. Gieben, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste." p. 650): "Prout vero [lux Dei] consideratur in sua influentia in via, sic lucet in sua imagine naturaliter impressum [for: impressa?] secundum illud psalmi: 'Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine,' vel fulget gratis super infusum, et sic ctiam est primum intelligibile. ut dictum est." On a divine influence and knowledge of truth, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 59.
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impressed upon it.19 The notion of image by tradition of course called attention to mind's relation to God as to its object, but in this instance Gilbert added as gloss a citation to the Psalmist's "Signatum est super nos lumen vultus mi."20 John of La Rochelle had taken the trace or signatio of God in soul to be the agent intellect, natural power of mind itself.21 Though Gilbert might have been echoing John, so that mind would know God through its own self-understanding, surely he was also conspicuously imputing a more Augustinian meaning to the Psalmist's words. In gracing the soul with his image, God lent mind a light higher than any inherent agent, a cognitive illuminator and similitude of himself. By the end Gilbert had constructed the framework for a theory of natural knowledge of God in mind's normal processes of cognition. Something was impressed on mind by which it knew divinity in the world of sin, and this impression did not arise from the operation of the senses but was rather the effect of an ever-present divine illumination. The resultant knowledge was moreover not just knowledge of God but also of being, by which means God was first intelligible (primum intelligibile) to mind, in via and not just in the blessed life.22 Yet Gilbert's account left room for considerable ambiguity. It remained for Bonaventure and his followers to render the theory in full-fleshed, tangible form. To see how, it is best to look at the thought of each of the classic Augustinians alone. Bonaventure came first, not only serving as the conduit through w7hich Gilbert's intuitions made their way to Pecham and Matthew of Aquasparta but also initially articulating a complete, coherent account. Curiously enough, though Gilbert's ruminations made plain that charting the shortest theoretical path to a natural knowledge of God would entail shifting some of the cognitive functions previously assigned to the contemplative way onto William's explanation of knowledge of the transcendentals, at first glance Bonaventure's thought seems entirely untouched by such an idea. None of the places in his early works where he dealt expressly 19
See the quotation in n. 18. above. In this passage Gilbert seems to add that God could be perceived in via through a special superinfused grace, an interesting idea but since not pertaining to natural cognition, irrelevant here. -° On "image, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, nn. 92 and 93. For the psalm, see the general Intro., n. 41. 21 See above, Pt. 2, intro., n. 4. r2 For Gilbert's use of the phrase, in via, see above, n. 18.
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with transcendentals and knowledge of the principles constructed from them reveal so much as a sign of the influence either of Gilbert's and Grosseteste's speculation on the cognitive significance of "being" or of William's account of the impression of such terms directly on mind by God. As shown above, Bonaventure insisted that knowledge of first intentions — in his words, the terms of the "first principles" of science — was obtained by mind from the senses alone, so that the principles formed from such terms should be called innate only in the sense that intellect's natural light of judgment sufficed to reveal their truth once they had been constituted as mental propositions.23 On this score he fell in line with John of La Rochelle on God's role in human noetics — not immediate source of basic ideas as with William of Auvergne but rather simply creator of mind's power to know.24 He even referred to the Psalm, "Signatum est," which had appeared to such contrasting purposes in John's and Gilbert's thought, so as to come down clearly on the side of John's interpretation. The Psalmist's seal on mind was the human intellect and not any other special impression.23 To be sure, in his later works, from De scientia Christi on, Bonaventure added an Augustinian touch, whereby God played a more direct role in knowledge of first principles. Yet this was through contribution of a second light of judgment on top of intellect's own created agent, not impression of simple knowledge on mind or dispensing of any intentional content.26 There is, in short, nothing here to resonate with the themes in William, Robert or Gilbert discussed so far. Instead, indications of Bonaventure's sympathy to the attitudes of Gilbert and his two predecessors about natural knowledge of God emerge in passages not primarily concerned with first principles and their constituent terms. It has already been shown how he felt divine illumination ultimately gave mind cognitive access to God after a fashion not adequately conveyed by his image of God as obiectum motivum. The divine light and reasons were, after all, themselves 23
See Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 4 and 5. -4 See again, Pt. 2, intro, n. 4. -:> Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, a. 1, q. 2 (Opera Omnia, 2, 903b). For other evidence Bonaventure saw the lumen signatum as soul's natural light of judgment, contrasted to the special light of divine illumination, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 82. 2(> See the discussion above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 6 and 7.
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touched or attained by mind at the upper reaches of its intellectual strivings, even in the world.27 This was so true that mind could be described as conjoined (coniunctus) to Eternal Truth, from which the rules of right thinking descended into it as rays of light and to which it could be taught to turn in contemplation if it paid heed to the lesson of its illumination.28 In short, the normative process of cognitive illumination established God as authentic object of intellect.29 One need only be careful to remember that the resultant knowledge was less than the rapturous vision of divinity provided to Paul and Moses or the revelations given to prophets, and that it in no way involved vision of God in his essence in this life.30 It could be described, said Bonaventure, as more "contuition" (contuitus) than full viewing or understanding.31 But exactly what kind of knowledge did such normal, natural access to God furnish, and precisely how it was obtained? Bonaventure's answer to these questions followed two different theoretical tracks, each developed in accordance with suggestions already found in Gilbert's work and derived from material in both William and Robert. He surely thought of the two tracks as harmonious, but each was elaborated independently and neither explicitly related to the other. The first line of attack, inspired by the notion of mind as image of God, drew upon the assumption that knowledge of divinity was innate, impressed on human intellect or somehow inserted into it 27 Bonaventure, "Unus est magister," n. 18 (ed. Russo, pp. 120-22): ". . . aliquo modo [aninia] illud lumen [divinum] attingit secundum supremam aciem intellectus agentis et superiorem portionem rationis." See also De sdentia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 24a); Itinerarium mentis in Deum 3, n. 2 (Opera Omnia, 5, 304a); and the passage cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 87. 28 Itinerarium mentis in Deum 3, nn. 3 and 7 (Opera Omnia, 5, 304b and 305b). 29 See the concise words of Bonaventure's Collationes in Hexaemeron 10, n. 7 (Opera Omnia, 5, 378a): "Si autem claritas [fidei] consideratur ut veritas efficiens, hoc est tripliciter: aut in quantum inchoat naturam; aut in quantum illustrat intelligentiam; aut in quantum inspirat gratiam. . . . Ut illustrat intelligentiam; et sic format animam, scilicet intellectum humanum et angelicum, ut sit Deus obiectum intellectus. . . ." 30 Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 23, a. 2, q. 3 (Opera Omnia, 2, 544b); "Unus est magister," n. 19 (ed. Russo, pp. 122^24); and De sdentia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 24b). For warning that God's essence could not be seen in this life, see Collationes in Hexaemeron 2, n. 10 (Opera Omnia, 5, 338a). 31 Bonaventure, De sdentia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 23b): "Et ideo est tertius modus intelligendi . . . scilicet quod ad certitudinalem cognitionem necessario requiritur ratio aeterna . . . ut ex parte a nobis contuita secundum statum viae."
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from creation.32 Nearly all Bonaventure had to say on the subject came early in his career, in the Commentary on the Sentences. For all his insistence that mind generally gathered from sensation the elements of simple cognition, including the terms of first principles, Bonaventure invariably conceded that knowledge of a few things came not from outside via abstraction but rather from within. As he explained in Book 2 of the Commentary, distinction 39, Aristotle's characterization of mind in De anima as starting out a blank slate applied to knowledge only of objects perceived by means of a similitude abstracted from sensation (similitudo abstracta), not of those like mind itself and God, which were known "without the help of external senses."33 Objects of the latter sort were represented not by a species (per speciem) but "by their essence" and were thus cognitively available to intellect from its beginning - in the case of God, knowledge of them having been, according to the widely cited words of John Damascene, literally inserted into mind.34 As Bonaventure put it in the Itinerarium, for some perfectly simple objects - among which certainly was God - knowledge entered mind not through the doors of the senses but rather from above, so that intellect might be said simply to possess their forms in itself.33 32 See Bonaventure, De mysterio Trinitatis, q. 1, a. 1 (Opera Omnia, 5, 49a): ". . . cognitio huius veri [i.e. Deum esse] innata est menti rational!, in quantum tenet rationem imaginis, ratione cuius insertus est sibi naturalis appetitus et notitia et memoria illius, ad cuius imaginem facta est. . . ." The term "insertus" brings to mind the classic phrase of John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa I, 1: "Omnibus enim cognitio existendi Deum ab ipso naturaliter inserta est." (from John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa. Versions of Burgundia and Cerbanus, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert [St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1955], p. 12), a phrase frequently cited by Bonaventure's followers to support the claim made here. See also below, n. 34. 33 See Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, a. 1, q. 2 (Opera Omnia, 2, 904b), cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 3. The reference to Aristotle was to De anima III, 4 (429b31-430a2). 34 Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, a. 1, q. 2 (Opera Omnia, 2, 904a): "Si qua autem sunt cognoscibilia, quae quidem cognoscantur per sui essentiam, non per speciem, respectu talium potent dici conscientia esse habitus simpliciter innatus, utpote respectu huius quod est Deum amare et Deum timere. Deus enim non cognoscitur per similitudinem a sensu acceptam, immo 'Dei notitia naturaliter est nobis inserta,' sicut dicit Augustinus." As the editors note, Bonaventure's reference to Augustine is an obvious mistake. For the Damascene text, see above n. 32. In Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 8, p. 1. a. 1, q. 2 (Opera Omnia, 1, 155a), Bonaventure remarked that "omni animae eius [i.e. Dei] cognitio est impressa." 3) Itinerarium mentis in Deum 3, n. 2 (Opera Omnia, 5, 303b), a passage also referred to above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 4, where it is noted that Bonaventure might have been speaking, quite uncharacteristically, of a whole range of simple objects including first intentions.
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Such language was, however, still imprecise. Innate knowledge of God, though facilitated by essence and not by species, had by Bonaventure's own principles necessarily to fall short of truly essential vision of divinity.36 A clue as to what he thought it entailed is found in Book 1 of the Sentences commentary, in a discussion of special qualities not known by mind in the ordinary, abstractive way.37 The quality at issue in this passage was charity, and the question was how it could be perceived by those who were themselves not charitable. They could not know it directly by its essence, since charity was absent from them, nor could they know it by abstraction from the senses, incapable of conveying the image of so immaterial a thing. Since it was equally impossible that they knew it by special infusion from God — again because of their uncharitable condition — it must have been that an innate similitude facilitated cognition. The uncharitable knew charity, Bonaventure concluded, by a mental species that was not abstracted but rather constituted "a certain impression of the highest truth in the soul."38 Two comments reveal how this description was relevant to the case of naturally inserted knowledge of God. First, Bonaventure made clear that knowledge of charity through innate species was not by means of a "pure species" that was similitude alone but rather one that was both similitude and a sort of truth (quaedam veritas in se ipsa).39 It is not fully apparent what he meant by this distinction, but at the very least he must have been thinking of a pure species as mere cognitive marker resting in mind, while a marker that was also a sort of truth constituted something more intimately connected to the object ^ in this case, a kind of outflowing from the source of all charity into intellect. Second, Bonaventure associated the impressed similitude of charity with the Psalmist's lumen signatum. He may thus have envisioned innate knowledge of charity as a perception formally mediated through or by means of soul's own natural power to judge, love and know - that is, its own intellective light - again turning to the vision of God's illuminative role presented by John of La Rochelle.40 36
See above, n. 30. Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 17, p. 1, a. un., q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 1, 30Ib). 38 Ibid. 39 See the passage cited above, n. 37; and also the same question (Opera Omnia, 1, 301b-2a). 40 See the same question (Opera Omnia, 1, 301b). On John and the lumen signatum, refer to nn. 24 and 25 above. 37
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On both counts one can see how it might have made sense to describe such knowledge as obtained by essence rather than species without thereby implicating fully essential grasp of the object. That some such notion of an impressed similitude was what Bonaventure intended as vehicle for natural knowledge of God is confirmed by a passage earlier in the Commentary meeting the issue head on. One of the introductory objections in a question whether God was knowable to created intellects appealed to the Aristotelianizing requirement that all knowledge occur by means of a form or species resident in the knower. Since so far as concerned the wayfarer, divine essence could not perform such service, nor would any abstracted similitude suffice to represent divinity, God was, to this view, completely unknowable.41 In response Bonaventure returned to his persistent claim that God was always present to intellect, indeed more present to it than any other object.42 As he put it, there was no need to abstract a similitude from senses, because God was available to mind "by his truth" — the same term later used to explain cognition of charity.43 One could, therefore, fully concede the requirement of a formal intelligible marker as well as the point that God's essence could not play such a role, for when God was known by mind, a sort of similitude (velut similitude) of him - not abstracted but rather impressed — was there to mediate between the ever-present divinity and intellect. By way of clarifying the similitude's precise nature, Bonaventure even quoted the passage from Augustine's De Trinitate which had appeared in Gilbert's Rudimentum, explaining that it was inferior to God since subsistent in soul but superior to soul because directly impressed by God.44 41
Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un, q. 1, obj. 5 (Opera Omnia, I, 68a-b). 42 See the passages cited above, n. 27, as well as the statement in Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 8, p. 2, a. un, q. 3 (Opera Omnia, 2, 227a), that only God was so intimate as to flow into (illabi] the mind. 43 Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, p. 1. a. un., q. 1, ad 5. (Opera Omnia, 1, 70a): ". . . dicendum, quod Deus est praesens ipsi animae et omni intellectui per veritatem; ideo non est necesse, ab ipso abstrahi similitudinem, per quam cognoscatur. . . ." On knowledge of charity by a "truth," see above, n. 39. 44 See the same question, continuing the passage quoted above, n. 43 (Opera Omnia, 1, 70a-b): ". . . nihilominus tamen, dum cognoscitur ab intellectu, intellectus informatur quadam notitia, quae est velut similitudo quaedam non abstracta, sed impressa, inferior Deo, quia in natura inferiori est, superior tamen anima, quia facit ipsam meliorem. Et hoc dicit Augustinus. . . ." The Augustine text is cited above, n. 15.
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As late as the lectures In Hexaemeron, Bonaventure repeated his insistence that God deposited a form in mind as cognitive vehicle for natural knowledge of him.45 And as indicated by the question on the knowability of God as well as a later one on Adam's knowledge of God in innocence, this form or species was other than either God or mind itself.46 In a phrase reminiscent of Gilbert's illuminating influence, it could even be described as an effectus interior in soul.47 Bonaventure's second theoretical line on natural knowledge of God turned on the simple concept already recognized as special in Grosseteste and Gilbert, "being," viewed however not as one among many first intentions but rather all by itself. Here he came closest to Gilbert's ideas in the Rudimentum and was perhaps directly dependent on them. The earliest sign of this approach appears in question 4 of De scientia Christi, where among the introductory arguments on Bonaventure's side, one plainly echoes the remarks of Gilbert on cognition of all beings in a prevenient knowledge of God: No defective being - that is, no creature - can be conceived except through ens perfectum, and thus nothing is understood except insofar as God, the perfect being, is in some way known.48 Yet it was in the Itinerarium, and then the lectures In Hexaemeron — that is, 1259 and after — that Bonaventure worked out the theme in his own voice. For the first time in the scholastic tradition, the full power of the connection 45
See the passage quoted above, n. 29. The later question is Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 23, a. 2, q. 3 - see especially Opera Omnia, 2, 544b~45a. 47 Ibid. This might appear to take the matter of knowing God far from divine illumination, since Bonaventure rejected the workings of an influence or any lessthan-divine effect in illuminated knowledge of truth. Yet he was capable of bending this principle of his thought, resorting on occasion to language of an illumination "by means of a divine influence." See Collationes de donis Spiritus Sancti 8, n. 15 (Opera Omnia, 5, 496b), cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 64, and the citation in the same note to the Commentary on the Sentences. There is also at least one instance where Bonaventure may have suggested mind had natural knowledge of God insofar as it knew the natural light of its own agent intellect, much as with charity in the passage cited above, n. 40. See the statement in De mysterio Trinitatis, q. 1, a. 2 (Opera Omnia, 5, 55b), that the mind naturally knew God by a "lumen inditum et signatum tanquam lumen divini vultus," an obvious reference to the psalm Bonaventure habitually took as a referring to the agent intellect. Efrem Bettoni, "Rapporti dottrinali fra Matteo d'Acquasparta e Giovanni Duns Scoto," pp. 122~24, claimed that for Bonaventure the foundation for mind's innate idea of God was simply the light of its own reason, yet Scheltens, "De bonaventuriaanse illuminatieleer;" and Francesco Corvino, Bonaoentura da Bagnoregio francescano e pensatore (Bari, 1980), p. 210, have taken the view defended here, that he had in mind a special similitude. 48 Bonaventure, De scientia Christi, q. 4, arg. 25 (Opera Omnia, 5, 19b~20a). 46
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between the doctrine of divine illumination and the idea of being as avenue to knowledge of God was revealed. A striking passage in the Itinerarium gives the most complete account, the occasion being analysis of knowledge of simple terms, here taken as evidence that soul was indeed the image of God.49 Mentioned in the passage were those terms singled out as early as William of Auvergne - first intentions like "being," "one," "good" and "true." Bonaventure claimed that to know or, in his words, seize the signification of any term, one had to understand its definition, yet a valid definition could be formulated only by resolution into the most general, thus irreducible, terms of all. Among these, only "being in itself" was absolutely fundamental. Therefore unless mind knew "being in itself," it could not possess, at least fully, knowledge of any other thing. In his defense, Bonaventure not only implicitly cited Averroes on knowledge of privations through that of the missing quality but also returned to the argument already seen in Gilbert and in his own De scientia Christi on knowledge of defective being only in that of being without defect.50 He concluded by identifying this perfect being with simple and eternal being (ens simpliciter et aeternurri), God himself. Two chapters later in the same work he began to reveal what probably led him, as well as Gilbert and Grosseteste before, to lay such extraordinary emphasis on "being." In the midst of recapitulating the preceding argument, he now observed that "being" (esse) was the first idea to come to intellect (primo cadit in intellectu].^ His words, appearing without argument or explanation, were surely intended to evoke a passage from Avicenna's Metaphysics explaining how "being" (ens) was among the few concepts first impressed on soul (imprimuntur in anima prima impressione).3'2 Then in the lectures In Hexaemeron he added the Liber de causis as another source.53 Arguing 49
Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum 3, n. 3 (Opera Omnia, 5, 304a). For the Averroes citation, see the Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros III, 25 (ed. F. Stuart Crawford, Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem, Versionum Latinarum, VI, 1 [Cambridge, Mass., 1953], p. 462). Augustine, too, could have been a source - see De civitate Dei XII, 7 (eds. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, CC, 47-48 [Turnhout, 1955], 2, 362), on knowing privationes. Jl Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum 5, n. 3 (Opera Omnia, 1, 308b~9a). :>2 Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina I, 5 (ed. Van Riet, 1, 31). Refer to also the citations of Avicenna on "being" given above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, n. 32. M See Collationes in Hexaemeron 10, n. 18 (Opera Omnia, 5, 379b); and 2, 3, n. 18 (ed. Delorme, p. 132). The version given by Delorme presents a more sensible 50
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for the intelligible primacy of "being" not, in this case, from knowledge of simple terms but rather the discursive process of reasoning, he cited the Liber's terse proposition 4 on the priority of esse, taking it as justification for his own assertion that "first of all inferred things was 'to be.'"54 Neoplatonic sources that must for decades have lain at the heart of attitudes towards "being" were at last coming to the fore, grounding the discussion and rendering it more precise.35 Of course, neither Bonaventure nor Gilbert was thinking in terms completely true to their Neoplatonic inspirers. For these thirteenthcentury scholastics, it wras not a general notion of being that was ultimate basis for knowledge but rather the concept of a specific but perfect being, God. Bonaventure worked the transformation most plainly, and most cleverly, in the very passage in his Itinerarium that seems to have drawn on Avicenna.06 There he moved deftly from Avicenna's ens, conceptual container for knowledge, to actual being (ens in actu), cognitive source for the general term. Since being (esse) as pure act was most actual of all, it was this that comprised mind's first intelligible object. Surely inspired by the parallel passage in Gilbert, he then considered the possibilities for what the pure act of being might be.57 It could not be a particular created being (esse par-
reading of the argument, although it omits the precise words from Liber de causis. Neither version can be quite what Bonaventure actually said - for example, the word "illuminationes," appearing twice in the Delorme text, must surely be changed to read: "illationes." °4 Liber de causis, prop. 4 (ed. Adriaan Pattin [Leuven, 1966], p. 54): "Prima rerum creaturarum est esse. ..." 55 In William, for instance, it was Boethius who resonated as source of similar ideas - see above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, p. 80. On early Neoplatonic views about intelligible primacy of being, see Gerard Verbeke, "Aristotle's Metaphysics Viewed by the Ancient Greek Commentators," in Studies in Aristotle, ed. Dominic J. O'Meara (Washington, D.C., 1981), pp. 124-26. 56 Itinerarium mentis in Deum 5, n. 3 (cited above, n. 51): "Si igitur non ens non potest intelligi nisi per ens, et ens in potentia non nisi per ens in actu; et esse nominal ipsum purum actum ends; esse igitur est quod primo cadit in intellectu, et illud esse est quod est purus actus. Sed hoc non est esse particulare, quod est esse arctatum, quia permixtum est cum potentia, nee esse analogum, quia minime habet de actu, eo quod minime est. Restat igitur, quod illud esse est esse divinum." Berube, "Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste," p. 638, also saw Bonaventure's rejection of primary knowledge of being in an analogical concept to be a turning away from Avicenna's precise ideas on the priority of being, while in "Olivi, critique," pp. 85-86, he described a similar modulation in Henry of Ghent as a reduction of Avicennian ens simpliciter into Augustinian ens simpliciter et subsistens. On this, see below, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 13 and 14. 3/ Compare above, n. 12.
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ticulare), for that would not be absolutely pure. Nor could it be an exceptional idea like "analogous being" (esse analogum), since such an intentional object was barely actual at all. The reason for this conclusion was that Bonaventure, along with Gilbert and all scholastics before Duns Scotus, held that since nothing was really common to God and creatures, there could be no concept univocally applicable to both.58 The "being" signifying both God and his creation was thus only analogically unified — in the awkward language of the Itinerarium, an esse or ens analogum - which meant it was not really a simple concept at all. It was in short even more non-actual than other constructs of mind.09 All that was left for mind to seize on was an actual being that was also pure, the esse divinum itself. Like Gilbert, Bonaventure hastened to assure his reader that if God was first object known, he was not necessarily perceived, a point reinforced, as in Gilbert, with reference to vision of colors in light that was itself not noticed by the eyes.60 The example reveals how much Bonaventure already associated natural knowledge of God with the process of divine illumination, even though the two phenomena were rarely examined simultaneously in his work. A passage in the Hexaemeron lectures makes the connection even more clearly, explicitly positing a light through which the mind knows first being.61 Bonaventure thus offered the full picture of a natural knowledge of God, tied to illumination and dependent on the idea that divinity, conceived as "pure being," was cognitively implicated in and known before all other objects of understanding. Though he never explained how his two main approaches to the subject fed together j8 See Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., q. 2, ad 3. (Opera Omnia, 1, 72b): ". . . dicendum, quod non est commune [Creatori et creaturae] per univocationem, tamen est commune per analogiam, quae dicit habitudinem duorum ad duo . . . vel unius ad unum. . . ." :9 ' As remarked above, n. 12, the logically awkward term ens analogum was habitual for Bonaventure's generation. <>(l Itinerarium mentis in Deum 5, n. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 309a), which recalls the passage from Gilbert cited above, n. 10. Although Gilbert had contrasted sensory and intellectual vision with regard to the innate visibility of the activating light, Bonaventure said nothing on the matter and might possibly have disagreed. (>1 Collationes in Hexaemeron 5, n. 30 (Opera Omnia, 5, 359a): ". . . ergo necessario intelligentia experitur in se, quod habeat aliquod lumen, per quod cognoscat primum esse." Compare the somewhat different version in the Delorme edition (I, 2, n. 30), p. 89. Berube, "Olivi, interprete de saint Anselme," in De I'homme a Dieu selon Duns Scot, Henri de Gand et Olivi (Rome, 1983), pp. 231-32, mistakenly claims that only with Matthew did ideas of illumination and God as first object of mind come together.
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one drawing on the notion of a natural impression and the other on knowledge of God in "being" — there is no doubt that, woven into the fabric of his doctrine of illumination, both converged in the unity of his vision of that procedure. Their convergence marked an extraordinary moment for the Augustinian tradition in the thirteenth century. Before examining the reverberations among Bonaventure's disciples, it is worth pointing to a few corollaries that would also be crucial, particularly as inspirations for Henry of Ghent. First of all, knowledge of God the wayfarer obtained by natural means was not precise but only general. It was, as often noted, not knowledge in the divine essence itself but rather in one of the divine attributes, specifically the attribute best suited to represent God's perfection, his being (entitas).62 This idea was of course readily associated with the Biblical reference to God as "I am."63 More importantly, it made it easy to see how Avicennian or Neoplatonic theories of the intentional priority of "being" might apply to a natural concept of God, since what was entailed in the latter was not a knowledge so restrictive as to make it impossible to imagine it as the basis for knowledge of creatures, too. Second, although Bonaventure's presentation of natural knowledge of God sometimes sounds like a quick description of the process of reasoning from creatures as defective beings to God as being pure and simple, there is no doubt he had in mind a simple and immediate cognitive phenomenon. In his Commentary on the Sentences, he explicitly distinguished between knowing God per creaturam — that is, by inference from creatures - and knowing him in creatura.M Although never fully realized by the wayfarer, the latter was clearly what 62
Bonaventure, De scientia Christi, q. 4, ad 16. (Opera Omnia, 5, 25b): ". . . ratio aeterna . . . movet ad cognoscendum . . . non specialiter de se, sed generaliter in statu viae; et ideo non sequitur, quod ipsa sit nobis nota secundum se, sed prout relucet in suis principiis et in sua generalitate. . . ." See also De mysterio Trinitatis, q. 1, a. 1, ad 9. (Opera Omnia, 5, 50a): "Hoc autem est, quod primo manifestum est de Deo, scilicet ipsius entitas. ..." On the impossibility of natural knowledge of God in his essence, see above, n. 30. 63 See Collationes in Hexaemeron 10, n. 10 (Opera Omnia, 5, 378b); and II, 3, n. 11 (ed. Delorme, pp. 129-30). The Delorme version makes more sense, but to capture Bonaventure's meaning its first two sentences probably ought to be changed in line with the Opera Omnia text: "Primum ergo speculabile est Deum esse. Primum nomen enim Dei est esse, quia est manifestissimum et quia perfectissimum, et ideo est primum." The Biblical reference was, as indicated, to Exodus 3, 14. 64 Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., q. 3 (Opera Omnia, 1, 74b); and the same idea in Itinerarium mentis in Deum 2, n. 1 (Opera Omnia, 5, 299b).
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Bonaventure meant by the prior and fundamental knowledge of God in "being." It involved seeing divinity present in everything known, in contrast to coming to know it after reflecting on the implications of creation. The idea was probably indebted to Gilbert's assertion that although God could be said to be known through creatures, further consideration revealed that divinity was known first and creatures understood in it.60 It was also surely tributary to Henry's later distinction between an a posteriori rational knowledge of God and an a priori natural one.66 Bonaventure felt it justified calling mind's initial knowledge of God innate, even if in fact it was somehow dependent on or wrapped up in the acquired knowledge of creatures.67 Still he hesitated to expunge all trace of discursive thought from his model of natural knowledge of God. In the lectures In Hexaemeron, it would appear that he envisioned the mind progressing from reasoning, to the more immediate kind of knowledge he labeled innate, only finally to an intuitive (puro intuitu et aspectu) cognition verging on or perhaps constituting beatitude.68 Some slight inferential reflection seems to have lain at the start of any approach mind made to God.69 This trace of a progressivity in what was supposed to be a simple process of mind leads finally to the question of how Bonaventure's conception of natural knowledge of God fit with his understanding of contemplative life or the beatific vision. The imperfect assimilation 65
See above, n. 8. See below, Pt. 3, ch. 10, pp. 303-5 and 311-14. b/ On such knowledge as innate, see Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaemeron I, 3, n. 30 (ed. Delorme, p. 89); on it as inextricably tied to knowledge of creatures, see De scieniia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Ornnia, 5, 24b). Bettoni has been the scholar most insistent on emphasizing "innatism" in Bonaventure's understanding of the wayfarer's knowledge of God - see his "La dottrina bonaventuriana," pp. 151-52; S. Bonaventura (1945), pp. 128-33; and // problema, pp. 241-45. Berube, "De la theologie," pp. 187-93, argues on the other hand that Bonaventure was not thinking of anything more than knowledge of God achieved through intellectual reflection, thus setting Bonaventure off the path leading to what he sees as Henry's and Duns's more innatist views on knowledge of God. Veuthey, "Le probleme de 1'existence de Dieu," pp. 22-23, interprets Bonaventure much the way Henry will be interpreted below in Pt. 3, ch. 10 - that is, as holding that mind knew God first but realized the fact only after reflection. 68 See Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaemeron 5, nn. 29-32 (Opera Omnia, 5, 359a-b); and I, 2, nn. 28-32 (ed. Delorme, pp. 88-89). <>9 See Collationes in Hexaemeron 12, n. 11 (Opera Omnia, 5, 386a): ". . . ideo videre [lucem Dei] non possumus simplici intuitu nisi ratiocinando;" as well as the implication of De mysterio Trinitatis, q. 1, a. 1, ad 13. (Opera Omnia, 5, 51b), that one could know something of the quid est of God in via, but only through reasoning. 66
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of illumination into the noetics of William and Robert had engendered doubt about the natural knowability of God, encouraging their appeal to a cognitive dynamic pointing towards divinity as ultimate object and passing typically out of this life into the next. Did a more integrated theory of mind now result in reduced emphasis on such cognitive gradualism? Given Bonaventure's reputation as a mystical theologian, almost no one will assume that it did. Yet while he took great interest in the dynamics of intellectual transformation bringing mind eventually face to face with God, especially by way of the mystical journey within the world of sin, he seems as well to have made more of the wayfarer's perfectly natural power to seize divinity at once in everyday procedures of thought. Mind's capacity to know God as object was, it would appear, subtly being recast as an immediate, even normal, affair, its progressive character projected onto the simple act of plumbing the metaphysical depths of a single epistemic moment. One can see this already in the question from the Commentary on the Sentences investigating Adam's knowledge before the Fall.70 In his response, Bonaventure maintained that human mind could see God as in a mirror (per speculum] in both innocence and sin, in the former instance a clear (clarum) mirror, in the latter a darkened (obscuraturn) one. There was thus always a perfectly natural means for mind to know God, one never completely corrupted in via and different from the believer's knowledge through faith. In more technical terms, it was knowledge of God through a formal entity present to mind and less than the divine essence, so that, excluding the trivial case of knowing divinity indirectly by knowing creation, even in the world of sin God could be conceived naturally by means of an intelligible marker (in effectu proprio) deposited in intellect.71 Bonaventure here
70 Bonaventure, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 23, a. 2, q. 3 (Opera Omnia, 2, 545a-b), cited above, n. 46. 71 This is the "interior effect" mentioned earlier in the same question (Opera Omnia, 2, 544b - referred to above, n. 47), which Bonaventure called in his reply to objection 5 a "grace" or "influence" (see p. 546a). The other classic Augustinians also described natural knowledge of divinity as obscure in comparison to knowledge of God in himself or direct access to him in innocence - see Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 234, 11. 12-18); and Pecham, as cited Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 88. All these passages echo the famous characterization of the wayfarer's knowledge of God in I Corinthians 13, 12 as "per speculum in aenigmate," but only Bonaventure literally copied the Bible's language - in the text cited here and in De scientia Christi, q. 4 (Opera Omnia, 5, 23b and 24a), also referred to above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, n. 9. It
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described such knowledge as "contemplatio," noting that it was subject to degrees of intensity according to soul's purity and freedom from burdens of the flesh. Plainly he was speaking of precisely the natural knowledge examined extensively above according to either approach, innate impression or cognition in a concept of being. This was not to forget true mysticism. As much as any thirteenthcentury scholastic, Bonaventure was mindful of the authentic contemplative life, a chronological progression of mind bringing it to know God at an intellectual plateau above the natural. He mentioned this sort of mental dynamic even in the question about Adam's cognition in innocence, characterizing it as an elevation out of normal processes of cognition into a spiritual cloud.72 It was the result of a special privilege (privilegium specialty and associated with the docta ignorantia of Dionysius, invariably accompanied by a burning love (inflammatur qffectio). In an early sermon he referred to it as mystical knowledge (mystica cognitio), once more having as much to do with affect as speculation.73 By the lectures In Hexaemeron he was prepared to portray it as a union in which all but the affective side of mind fell asleep, so that it was not properly intellect which touched God but rather a super-intellective power operating through an act of love, effectively transcending all understanding and science (tmnscendit omnem intellectum et scientiam}.7* Now only this form of knowing God was worthy of the term "contemplatio."70 Here lay the final stage in the three-fold progression from reasoning through innate understanding to intuitive intelligence, which Bonaventure also called "contuition" (contuitus), a state identical with the intellectus adeptus he said had been promised to the philosophers of old.76 The centrality of
should be recalled that Matthew pointed out how it would not do to compare God to a mirror in his operation of illumination, since a mirror was seen in itself - see Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 99; and Quaestiones de cogmtione, q. 2, ad 14. [BFS, 1, 244, 11. 6-7].) The image of a mirror had, of course, been used freely by William of Auvergne in discussions of illumination, but the more critical atmosphere of the later thirteenth century apparently rendered it objectionable. '- Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 3, a. 2, q. 3, ad 6. (Opera Omnia, 2, 546a). /3 Bonaventure, Sermo de S. Dom. (Opera Omnia, 9, 564b), explicitly setting such knowledge above natural cognition of God, referred to in this context as symbolic (cognitio symbolica). 74 Collationes in Hexaemeron 2, n. 30 (Opera Omnia, 5, 341a-b). 7j Ibid. Compare this with the use of "contemplatio" in the passage cited above, n. 70. 7<) See above, n. 68. For "contuition," see Collationes in Hexaemeron 5, n. 33 (Opera Omnia, 5, 359b); and I, 2, n. 33 (ed. Delorme, p. 90), quoted below, n. 77. "Contuitus"
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affection in such cognition explained, indeed, why some of the ancients like Socrates had so emphasized purity of life. Such musings on the via contemplativa seem far from Bonaventure's ideas about a way to God fully through natural workings of mind, and it is significant that most of what he said about the higher path came with In Hexaemeron, composed at the very end of his life. The parallel with Grosseteste is hard to miss, a theologian likewise increasingly drawn to Dionysian mysticism towards the close of his career. Still, Bonaventure never lost sight of the unity of the human intellectual endeavor, like William of Auvergne insisting on continuity of knowledge from beginning to end, accommodated under the umbrella of truth. If love and affect dominated the intellect that had come to see God, truth began the process by tugging at mind. 7/ In words that could have come from William's mouth, he reminded his readers how "truth [itself] reveals that a natural inclination carries mind towards the [Final] Truth."78 None of Bonaventure's immediate followers could rival him in expanse of vision concerning humankind's natural knowledge of God. Nor did they, with the possible exception of Matthew on God as motive object for mind, do much to break new ground. Yet while neither Pecham nor Matthew ventured far from the architectonics of the master's conceptual scheme, each managed to perfect his theory at critical points by explicitly articulating its connection with those aspects of the doctrine of divine illumination affirming mind's direct access to divinity. As a consequence, both also evidenced less interest in the mystical way and paid less attention to the contemplative dynamic slowly transforming mind so as to see God. Of the two, Pecham, with his views on the illumined reception of
also appeared in the probably contemporaneous Summa philosophiae of PseudoGrosseteste with reference to the highest vision of mind, the vision of God, also called intelligence - see Charles K. McKeon, A Study of the Summa philosophiae of the Pseudo-Grosseteste (New York, 1948), p. 144. On Averroes's "intellectus adeptus," see Arthur Hyman, "Aristotle's Theory of the Intellect and its Interpretation by Averroes," in Studies in Aristotle, ed. Dominic J. O'Meara (Washington, B.C., 1981), p. 188. For a quite different application of the term "contuition," see above, n. 31. 77 Collationes in Hexaemeron 5, n. 33 (Opera Omnia, 5, 359b): "Dum . . . consurgit ad divinum contuitum, dicit, se habere intellectum adeptum . . . et ad hoc veritas trahit." For William's views, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 4, pp. 102-3. /f! Collationes in Hexaemeron 4, n. 3 (Opera Omnia, 5, 349b): "Ergo veritas indicat, quod mens nostra fertur natural! inclinatione ad Veritatem. . . ." For William's view of the same dynamic, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 4, nn. 23-27.
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first intentions, would seem to have provided more fertile ground for a theory of natural knowledge of God yet may actually have been less hospitable than Matthew. Given the scattered and rather fragmented nature of his comments, it is hard to draw firm conclusions. From his very earliest work he cited the standard reference to John Damascene about knowledge of God's existence naturally inserted into mind, which he interpreted to mean that God was known by a "natural impression."79 All the same he explained that what was grasped by this means was the fact that "God is," not his quiddity. So far as concerned simple cognition, therefore, mind did not naturally have a definitive concept of divinity but only a lessthan-essential notion of "quid est quod dicitur per nomen," sufficient for constructing a proposition affirming God's existence.80 As for exactly what this nominal notion amounted to, a clue can perhaps be found in the Quaestiones de anima, where Pecham again quoted Damascene about naturally inserted knowledge of God's existence, noting that such understanding could technically be called "innate knowledge," though Augustine had occasionally referred to it as impressed.81 By way of example he cited Augustine on knowledge of "the good." He may thus have intended to conflate knowledge of first intentions like "good" with knowledge of God, making the latter known naturally through one or more general property. That had been the gist of Bonaventure's pronouncements on knowledge of God in "being," and in a curious phrase from Quodlibet IV Pecham seems to have alluded approvingly to just such a position.82
'•' Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 2, q. la (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrdge und Untersuchungen, p. 45): "Unde dicit Damascenus Libro I Cap. 1: 'Cognitio existendi Deum ab ipso naturaliter nobis inserta est. . . .' Ex his verbis colligitur. quod Deus a nobis tripliciter cognoscitur, scilicet per naturalem impressionem, per investigationem quae ex creaturis colligitur, et per revelationem quae in scripturis invenitur." For the citation to Damascene, see above, n. 32. 80 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 2, a. laoc (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrdge und Untersuchungen, p. 50:) ". . . nullo modo potest veraciter cogitari [Deum] non esse cum assensu, si tamen vere intelligitur quid est quod dicitur per nomen. Sed quamvis sit naturaliter notum Deum esse, non tamen quid sit Deus est notum. . . ." For a good introduction to Aristotle's notion of nominal understanding, see the reference to Dumont below, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 34. 81 This is the passage referred to above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 40 and 44. 82 Pecham, Quodlibet IV, q. 4, ad 5. (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 186, 11. 124—26): "Item, videtur dicere Augustinus quod quantum ad aliquas proprietates esse naturae Deus est certius cognitus in via quam creatura." The phrase "esse naturae" seems odd and may be a scribal error.
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Nevertheless, Pecham's express speculation on knowledge of first intentions, most importantly "being," does not unambiguously support this interpretation. His doctrine of first intentions characterized them as innate to mind — which is to say, always present because placed there by God from the beginning - though they, too, could be called impressed.83 And he introduced a division within what he called intellective memory, with one part devoted exclusively to storing the "natural impressions" of these innate terms, attained without recourse to senses.84 All of which sounds very much like what he said about naturally inserted knowledge of God. He was moreover candid about the metaphysical grounding of these mental phenomena. First impressions were different from other terms because they referred to a reality specifically related to divinity and understandable only in this connection.83 Taking off from Bonaventure's aversion to a view of divine illumination by means of a less-than-divine intermediary, he concluded that mind's innate knowledge of such terms opened it directly to the divine reasons. He was if anything more insistent on this than Bonaventure. It was wrong, he argued, to maintain that in knowing first intentions - or whatever else came from God's cognitive light - mind consulted only "vestiges" of the divine ideas left in soul and not the ideas themselves.86 Finally, as if to confirm that all this had something to do with knowledge of God, he remarked that in knowing such terms mind realized its status as God's image, standard reference to mind's bearing on divinity as to its object.87 83
See above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 40 and 44-45. Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, a. 8aa, ad 3. (as cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 43), where Pecham may have been drawing on the passage from Bonaventure's Itinemrium cited above, n. 35, as well as in Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 4. Although it is not clear what simple cognition other than knowledge of God Bonaventure was there referring to, he definitely had in mind a power of memory devoted to retaining at least that one special kind of knowledge not drawn from sensation. 8) Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 2, q. la, 6. (ad 7.), quoted above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 41. 80 Pecham, Quodlibet III. q. 10 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme. Quodlibeta quatuor. p. 153, 11. 24-27 [referred to above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 119; and ch. 6, n. 40]}: "Et ideo etiam imperfecta et intellectualis cognitio non habetur nisi aliquatenus attingantur ipsae rationes. Inde enim veritas lucet incomplexorum. . . . Incomplexorum, dico, saltern quantum ad primas intentiones. . . ." He continued 11. 41-42: "Si dicis quod istae rationes non sunt aeternae, sed vestigia earum in anima, contra: AugustinusJI De libero arbitrio. . . . " 8/ See the passage from Pecham's Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 8aa, quoted above, Pt. 2, ch. 6^ n. 43. 84
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Yet nowhere did Pecham explicitly equate innate knowledge of first intentions with knowledge of God. As with all other cognition, he insisted that apprehension of first intentions was made possible by a similitude resting in mind.88 His stipulation that in having such knowledge mind directly consulted the divine ideas may therefore have referred more to the origin of the knowledge than its object. Nothing proves he saw the doctrine as basis for a theory of natural knowledge of God. Where Pecham did speak about knowledge of God in or through first intentions wras not while considering them as innate or impressed but rather when approaching them, most especially "being," as product of abstraction and ratiocination. In a brief but fascinating passage in the Commentary on the Sentences he responded to criticism of the famous text from Augustine's De Trinitate explaining how by stripping away particulars from its apprehension of "good" mind could come by abstraction to know God. The critic claimed that what was arrived at was not a concept of God but rather universal "good," signifying God no more than any other good object.89 Pecham answered by insisting that mind was capable of two different sorts of abstraction.90 By peeling away the particularity of the object (abstrahendo particularitatem), it did indeed generate a universal, which in the case of "good" pointed as much to created being as to God. By bracketing the object's creaturely status as participant in a higher reality (abstrahendo participationem), however, it sometimes ended up with a concept referring directly to God. This was precisely what happened with "good," one of those special terms whose metaphysical grounding entailed an ordering towards divinity. All things other than God wfere good by participation in divine goodness, so if the conditions of participation were peeled away, what remained was an idea signifying only the unparticipated core, divinity itself. 8H
See the same passage referred to often above, Quaestiones de anima, q. 8 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 85): "Dico speciem innatam notionem animae concrcatam sicut dicit Damascenus. . . . Et sic cognoscuntur per similitudinem omnia naturaliter nobis cognita. . . ." "'' Pecham. Comrn. in lib. 1. Sent., d. 2, q. la, arg. 4 sic and arg. 7 contra (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchutigen, pp. 42 and 44). The text in question was from Augustine's De Trinitate VIII, 3 (ed. Mountain and Glorie, CC. 50, 272). '"' Cornm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 2, q. la, 7. (Ad obiectum de auctoritate) (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchungen, p. 48). The idea might well have been the source for Henry of Ghent's analogous distinction between logical and metaphysical abstraction, which served much the same purpose see below, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 43.
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A related argument appears in the late Quaestiones de beatitudine, where, taking his cue from Bonaventure and Avicenna, Pecham focused exclusively on "being." Again he positioned himself in opposition to an initial objection, this time that because being (esse) was mind's first object and God was first being, he could not be known, for an ultimate intellectual principle could not itself be understood.91 In response Pecham conceded that being (esse) was first and proper object of intellect, and he agreed that it was to be found most truly in God, the entity preceding and responsible for all others.92 Yet he denied the opponent's conclusion, and by implication the remaining premise upon which it was based. According to Pecham, the premises he conceded implied not that God was unknowable but rather that he was the most intelligible thing of all. Then, in a most significant qualification, he added that though God was inherently understandable, he was conceived by the wayfarer only through or by means of creatures (ex creaturis}. In short, some kind of intellectual processing was required. Moreover, although intellect truly knew God in this way, it grasped him not formally in a quidditative or proper reason but presumably instead, as Pecham noted elsewhere, in a more general property.93 It should come as no surprise that Pecham advanced here the same two points observed above in Bonaventure's discussion of natural knowledge of God: that divinity wras not grasped in essence or quiddity but through a property - or, as Bonaventure said, in general - and that it was known not directly but in or by means of creatures.94 More noteworthy was that for Pecham the phenomenon revolved closely about the business of reasoning and manifested lit91 Pecham, Quaestiones de beatitudine corporis et animae, q. 21, arg. 3 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 166). 92 Quaestiones de beatitudine corporis et animae, q. 21, ad 3. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 173): "Ad tertium dicendum quod ipsum esse est primum et proprium obiectum intellectus. Ipsum autem esse est verissime in Deo. Et ideo Deus de se est maxime intelligibilis, quamvis propter defectum nostrum non intelligatur nisi ex creaturis." Here, like Bonaventure in the passage examined above, p. 208, Pecham was playing off the ambiguity between ens, the more authentically Avicennian term, and esse. 93 See Pecham, Quaestiones de beatitudine corporis et animae, q. 21, ad 5. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 173): "Ad quintum dicendum quod in creaturis non invenitur, quod [for: quid?] Deus est formaliter vel proprium esse divinum. Et tamen invenitur ex creatura ipsum esse divinum." For the suggestion that God was seen in a property, see above, n. 82. 94 For Bonaventure on these points, see above, nn. 62 and 64.
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tie of the priority and immediacy so important for Gilbert and Bonaventure.93 In fact in the passage noted previously where Pecham spoke of knowledge of God "per naturalem impressionem" — the closest he would come to the paradigm of cognitive priority Bonaventure and Gilbert had in mind - he explicitly distinguished it from the kind of knowledge of God under consideration here, collected "ex creaturis." This latter was unapologetically discursive (per investigationem).^ Like all scholastics, Pecham also held that nothing was really common to God and creatures, which along with his contemporaries he took as requiring that the concept of being arrived at on the way to knowing divinity was never more than analogically applicable to all objects.97 There was no univocal "being" signifying both God and creation.98 As for how mind traversed the analogical divide, drawing from creatures the idea of a "being" having nothing in common with them, he had little to say. It is reasonable to assume that the doctrine of divine illumination, with its implication of direct input from above, spared him the need for any further account, although he never explicitly referred to illumination in these passages about "being" and knowing God. His only explicit statement did nothing to distinguish him from Aristotelianizers like Thomas Aquinas: conceptual analogy did not necessarily entail an infinite cognitive difference and it could be crossed, indeed was crossed, by mind on its road to God.99 There is in the end no way to escape a degree of confusion. Pecham held to something like William of Auvergne's position on 9) Even on knowing God by means of creatures, the difference in wording may have been significant: for Pecham ex creaturis, for Bonaventure in creaturis. 9(1 See the passage cited above, n. 79. 9/ See Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 2, q. la, ad 1. (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrdge und Untersuchungen, p. 46), especially: "Dicendum igitur quod ens quod de Deo dicitur plenum est et de ipso convertibiliter praedicatur et analogice de creatura." 98 In Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 2, q. la, 6. (ad 7.) (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchungen, p. 48), Pecham's words imply that first intentions or transcendentals, in contrast to terms like "white" and "hot," can be conceived in a form applicable univocally to both God and creatures. It is hard to believe he actually intended to make this point; perhaps something is wrong with the Daniels text. In the same question, ad 7. (ad obiectum de auctoritate - p. 48), also appears the puzzling attribution to Aristotle of the anomalous doctrine that first intentions like "good" are generic and thus by implication not transcendental. Again it would be unwise to conclude much from the isolated appearance of so peculiar a doctrine. ()9 See again, Pecham, Quaestiones de beatitudine corporis et animae, q. 21. ad 3. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 173). The relevant text follows that quoted above, n. 92.
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innateness of knowledge of first intentions, which he interpreted along lines strikingly similar to Gilbert's and Bonaventure's explanation of natural knowledge of God, seeing first intentions as prior to and implicated in all other cognition. Yet when he directly addressed the issue of knowing divinity, even knowing God in the most basic of all first intentions, "being," he seems to have abandoned both innateness and priority. He was like his predecessors, yet different from them. Of course the quandary may be no more than an artifact of too rigid exegesis. Though Pecham's analyses of knowledge of first intentions and knowledge of God in "being" were separate and unconnected by cross references, at times he did speak more generally as if both were aspects of a unitary cognitive process. Question 5 of Quaestiones de anima replied to charges of circularity laid against any theory of knowledge holding all things to be known through God as cognitively prior but God in turn only through other things by insisting that this was precisely what happened in human understanding and denying that there ensued a logical contradiction.100 The explanation was that the two ostensibly opposing paths merely registered different cognitive modes. Mind came to know God through creatures by discursive cognition (cognitio collativa), while in simple cognition (cognitio simplex) God provided the means for knowing other things. Perhaps similarly knowledge of first intentions by innate impression and of God by investigation were just modes of a single noetic phenomenon relating mind to God, whereby intellect perceived all things through divinity but realized this only upon reflection.101 Indeed in response to another objection in the same question Pecham remarked how natural it was that intentions most fundamental, and thus absolutely prior, in simple cognition should require the greatest effort to extract with discursive powers of mind.102 100 pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, 17. (ad 6.) (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 70): "Ad sextum dicendum quod non est inconveniens causam cognosci per effectum et econtra secundum diversum modum cognoscendi. Et sic est in proposito, quoniam lux aeterna cognoscitur per creaturas cognitione collativa, creaturae autem per lucem aeternam cognitione simplici et quasi certificativa." 101 The resolution suggested here would appear to find theoretical support in Pecham's analysis of the difference between simple and complex cognition given in Quaestiones de anima, q. 8, ad 7. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 88). 102 Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, 20. (ad 9.) (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 71): "Ad nonum quod quanto aliquid simplicius, tanto est improportiona-
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Also suggestive is the fact that in these passages laying out a reciprocal relation between prior, unexamined knowledge of God and subsequent, reasoned comprehension of him, as well as in some focusing solely on knowledge of God as prior or fundamental, Pecham talked about the priority as providing a basis for intellective certitude. For instance, in the late Quaestiones de beatitudine, taking up the language of Gilbert as transmitted through Bonaventure he argued that less perfect being could be known only through perfect - ens secundum quid through ens simpliciter ~ but deviating from his predecessors tied the schema of cognitive immanence precisely to the process by which all intellection was certified by means of knowledge that was itself perfectly certain.103 Providing cognitive certitude had been the hallmark of divine illumination, and sure enough, in the passage denying circularity in a noetics where God was known in things and things in God the latter procedure described as certifying (certificativa) - Pecham actually referred to the divine object as "eternal light."104 More dramatically, in question 4 of Quaestiones de anima where he proposed that the first principles of philosophy were revealed to mind by divine light, he added, drawing on Augustine, that because of this in knowing principles mind discerned God by intuition (rationalis mentis intuitu]}^ All the strands of Pecham's theory of first intentions and of his views on knowledge of God may very well have been bound up in a seamless fabric of divine illumination. In a few passages relying on the image of divine illumination as model for the wayfarer's knowledge of God, Pecham even revealed how he thought the different ways God could be approached by mind related. Since making God's foundational role as means for perceiving all other things yield a vehicle for knowing God himself
bilius in cognitione composita, sed non in cognitione simplici, in qua necesse est fieri resolutionem ad ultimam et certissimam rationem cognoscendi." This idea will reappear to even greater effect in the work of Henry of Ghent. 103 See Pecham, Quaestiones de beatitudine corporis et animae, q. 21 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 172, 11. 30-35); and compare with Bonaventure in the passages cited above, nn. 48 and 49. Pecham's full responsio in this question is worth setting beside the similar but differently articulated scheme of three levels of knowledge of God in Bonaventure's Collationes in Hexaemeron, cited above, n. 68. 104 See above, n. 100. 10) Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 4, ad 1. (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima. p. 53). The reference to Augustine is to De Trinitate IX, 6 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 1, 303).
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as intellective object required discursive thought or mental reflection, it was just the wise, a minority of the human race, that succeeded in grasping divinity after this fashion.106 Thus even the most rudimentary perception of God in a precise concept of mind required an inclination towards the contemplative life. To go further and seize God as terminating, all-absorbing object required still more. Only pious souls redeemed by faith were capable of such mental sight, more truly affective than intellectual, and by that point mind was well into the mystical way, far beyond natural cognition.107 There remained yet a higher level of knowing the divinity, not contemplating it through the illuminative means it provided to know other things but rather seeing it in essence.108 This ultimate vision was reserved for the blessed.109 Like his predecessors, therefore, Pecham acknowledged the harmony between the language of illumination, of mysticism and of beatitude. More than Bonaventure, however, he kept the types distinct, firmly guaranteeing the possibility of naturally attainable knowledge of God in this life well short of grace or a special contemplative vision. One final observation to be made about Pecham's thought concerns his reaction to the notion that God could be known by a similitude of himself deposited in mind. The idea had figured significantly in Bonaventure's account of mind's natural knowledge of God, but it appeared in Pecham to quite different purpose. As already shown, for Pecham there was no truly quidditative knowledge of God naturally available to mind. Instead the wayfarer naturally knew only the truth of the proposition: God is, and some less-than-quidditative, nominal conception upon which the complex cognition was based.110 106 See Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3, ad 1. (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 136); as well as the parallel response to a nearly identical objection in Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, 12. (ad 1.) (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 69). 107 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3, ad 2. (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 136): ". . . pervenire ad eas [rationes aeternas] contingit dupliciter: [vel] ratiocinando, secundum quod illuminant intellectum, vel quiescendo per affectum. Primum esse potest bonorum vel malorum, secundum tantum piorum habentium fide animum purgatum." 108 Pecham, Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3, ad 7. (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 137): "Unde inferior est modus contemplandi Deum in ratione ideali, quam in ratione essentiae absolutae. . . ." 109 See a brief passage in Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, q. 3 (ed. Melani, in Tractatus de anima, p. 135 [bottom of the page]), where Pecham set out the scheme of three of these four stages of knowing God. 110 See above, nn. 80 and 93.
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Conscious perception of this nominal notion was apparently dependent on a process of ratiocination whereby intellect worked its way to a mental similitude representing God in a general property like "being." Where mind did attain knowledge quid est of God, it was by means of a distinctly different process. Pecham maintained that intellect was capable of receiving from either angels or God intelligible species impressed on it in the strict sense of the word "impressed," and they served to make possible direct knowledge of the impressing agents."1 Like Bonaventure as well as Gilbert when they were discussing impressed species, he quoted here the famous passage from Augustine's De Trinitate about a similitude in mind, inferior to divinity but by which divinity could be known."2 Cognition by impressed species was therefore technically speaking the way intellect grasped quidditative knowledge of divinity in a God-given similitude. As Pecham frequently made clear, he believed all knowledge had to depend on species to furnish the formal means of intellection."3 The requirement held for soul's knowledge of itself and extended even to knowledge of God in glory, an essential vision but still per speciem.114 It is thus possible that when he spoke of knowledge of God by a similitude impressed by divinity on mind Pecham was thinking of the glorious vision. By his own admission any such cognition impressed in the strict sense of the word was not the same as the wayfarer's innate knowledge of God the inserted knowledge mentioned by John Damascene - and because the species God supplied led directly to divinity as object, the noetic dynamics were completely different from anything associated with divine illumination, where God's role was ratio cognoscendi.113 Nothing but the glorious 111 See Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 8 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 86): "Impressam [speciem] dico quae animae ex tempore accedit, sive ab angelo sive a Deo. . . . Et sic etiam cognoscitur Deus per similitudinem. Unde De Trin. IX, cap. 11. ..." Consult the references above to the full schema laid out by Pecham at this point, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 40 and 44. 112 See the citations above in nn. 15 and 44. 115 See for example Pecham, Quodlibet IV, q. 17 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 213, 11. 38-39). 114 On soul's self-knowledge see Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 8 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 86) on expressed species; and Quodlibet IV, q. 27 (eds. Etzkorn and Delorme, Quodlibeta quatuor, p. 236, 11. 15-22). For the beatific vision, see Quaestiones de beatitudine corporis et animae, q. 23 (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, pp. 175-76). "•' On innate knowledge, see above, n. 81, and also Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 44, for explicit contrast between innate and strictly impressed cognition. On the limited
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vision remained.116 If so, then a curious situation obtained. Bonaventure had seen impressed knowledge of God as integral to mind's natural awareness of its creator; Pecham reserved the same language technically for a kind of cognition not attained in the world of sin. Despite the broad similarity of approach to knowledge of God, here was an aspect of Bonaventure's theory he radically displaced from the position it had previously held. Matthew of Aquasparta, Pecham's pupil, continued the business of enhancing the unity of Bonaventure's theory of natural knowledge of God by more explicitly implicating divine illumination, advancing even farther along the way. Yet the precise manner in which he pursued the task contrasted dramatically with that of his teacher. Still more than Bonaventure, Matthew was untouched by William's idea, which Pecham had adopted, that God was responsible for impressing transcendental concepts or first intentions on mind. As shown above, he insisted that the material for knowledge of all simple terms was taken from sensation, and he accepted without reservation Bonaventure's argument that first principles were innate merely in the sense that the mental power confirming their truth was inherent to intellect and capable of judging them without recourse to inference or syllogism.u/ There would appear to be little potential here for seeing first intentions as source for natural knowledge of God. Just as in Bonaventure's case, the true picture emerges only when one turns from consideration of first intentions in general to places where "being" was examined alone. Matthew fully appropriated the idea seen in Grosseteste and developed in Gilbert that First Being was known in all other being, and vice versa. Pecham had accepted the same view, but he most likely understood it to mean that mind had naturally at its disposal the wherewithal to work its way to general understanding of God. Matthew's interpretation was more like Bonaventure's. In his Commentary on the Sentences he inserted nearly verbatim Bonaventure's classic statement from the Itinerarium that cognitive implications of illumination, see the discussions in Pt. 2, ch. 5, especially at nn. 88 and 94, and above, pp. 229-30. 11(5 There are times when Pecham spoke of an impressed similitude from God in a looser sense of the term than as intelligible species leading to knowledge of divinity — see, for example, Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, 19. (ad 8.) (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 71). 117 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, pp. 155-57.
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simple cognition depended on knowing the definition, which was in turn possible only if the constituent parts had been resolved into the most general terms.118 Of such terms, "being" was fundamental, most basic of all comprising not "being" in general but rather the idea of the simplest and most perfect being, God himself. Knowledge of everything was thus ultimately grounded in knowledge of the being of God. The passage is repeated in nearly identical form in De cognitione.U9 Moreover, like Bonaventure, Matthew defended his views with references to Avicenna and the Liber de causis, thereby setting himself directly in the line of thought extending back to Gilbert and emphasizing in Neoplatonic fashion the absolute cognitive priority of a simple idea of divinity.12" Perhaps this emphasis on an unambiguous priority of knowledge of God explains Matthew's subsequent course. Such a posture would have been easy to defend in a system like Pecham's, where knowledge of fundamental terms like first intentions was impressed on 118 Matthew, Comm. m lib. I. Sent., d. 35, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 116va): "Capit enim [preceding two words surmised] intellectus terminorum significata cum apprehendit quid est unumquodque per diffinitionem. Diffinitio autem habet fieri per superiora, et ilia per superiora, quousque uero arriuatur ad generalissima quibus ignoratis non possunt sciri, intelligi, diffinire [sic; or: diffinitiue] inferiora [preceding word surmised]. Nisi igitur cognoscatur quid est ens per se, non potest plene sciri diffinitio alicuius specialis substantie, nee ens per se cognosci potest nisi cognoscatur cum suis conditionibus, que sunt unum, uerum et bonum. Ens autem cum possit cogitari ut diminutum, ut completum, ut imperfectum, ut perfectum, ut ens in potentia, ut ens in actu, ut ens secundum quid, ut ens simpliciter, ut ens in parte, ut ens totaliter, ut ens per aliud, ut ens per se, et sic de ceteris conditionibus que sunt ends ut ends [or: ens], priuationes autem non possint cognosci nisi per positiones, non uenit [preceding word surmised] intellectus noster ut plene resoluens in intellectum alicuius entium creatorum nisi adiuuetur ab intellectu ends purissimi, actualissimi, completissimi, nee poterit scire ens imperfectum, defectiuum et incompletum - enim nee sciret hoc plurimum [preceding word surmised] differre ab illis - nisi illud quod perfectum est mente uideretur, sicut dicit Augustinus De uera religione." This passage follows directly after the quotation given above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 53. 119 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (BFS, 1, 236, 11. 11-29). 120 Matthew, Comm. m lib. I. Sent., d. 8, q. 2 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 122, f. 36ra): "Respondeo dicendum quod ens est prima impressio intellectus secundum quod dicit Auicenna, Et est prima rerum creatarum, ut dicitur in Libra de causis." The reference to Avicenna is to the passage cited above, n. 52; that to Liber de causis to the passage cited in n. 54. Matthew made reference to Avicenna again in Quaestiones de cognitione. q. 1 (BFS, 1, 209, 11. 29-31). It is admittedly possible to find an occasional passage leaning more towards Pecham's emphasis on ratiocination - for example, Matthew's Quaestiones defide, q. 1, ad 12. (BFS, 1, 55, 11. 30-34). Berube, "Henri de Gand et Mathieu d'Aquasparta," pp. 166-68, interprets Matthew as holding that the wayfarer could work his way to God only by reasoning.
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mind directly by God, but how could Matthew justify his stance while holding that knowledge of all things was materially derived from sensation? His solution was to espouse a complicated and in some ways improbable theory of a dual priority of "being." By this view, two ideas of being were first and fundamental to mind, one arising from creatures and applying categorically to them, the other from God and signifying him alone. It wras due to mental confusion that most people - even most philosophers - did not realize such was the case. Because this theory appears in Matthew's noetics only in his mature works, from 1278 and after, and closely follows lines already laid down by then in Henry of Ghent, it is almost certain he borrowed the idea from Henry.121 The earliest sign is found in the first of Matthew's Quaestiones de cognitione, where in answer to an opposing argument he explained that the most primitive among mind's concepts was not that of anything determinate (aliquid determinaturri) but rather of "being" as logically prior to all determination.122 It was a hallmark of Henry's thought to characterize the "being" mind knew first as, above all, indeterminate.123 Within a short time the debt to Henry grew into an all-out commitment to his ideas. One sees this clearly in a terse but dense passage in the Quaestiones de anima beata, where in few words Matthew laid out the status quaestionis on the problem of "being" and knowledge of God as it had evolved among Augustinians up to his day. The occasion was provided by one of the initial arguments in question 1: Whether God was the sole good in which the beatific vision terminated.124 The argument answered in the negative, pointing out that whatever good was finally seized in glory had to be known, which God most definitely was not. As proof, reference was made to Avicenna's insistence on the conceptual priority of "being." Such "being" could not be divine being, since God was plainly not known first by everyone; nor was it "being" common to God and creatures, for there was nothing really common to both. Consequently it had to be "created being" that was mind's first concept, in which
121 See the remarks in Marrone, "Matthew of Aquasparta," pp. 286-89, and discussion of Henry's fuller presentation of the idea below, Pt. 3, ch. 10, pp. 322-26. 122 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 3. (BFS, 1, 216, 11. 24-31). 123 See below, Pt. 3, ch. 10, pp. 313-14. 124 See Matthew, Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 1, arg. 11 (ed. Emmen, BFS 18, 182, 11. 11-25).
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it knew all else. From this it followed that God was, for human intellect, completely unknowable. By way of rebuttal Matthew proffered two alternative responses. On the one hand, he observed, it could be said that what mind knew first was neither "created being" nor "uncreated being" but, the opposing objection notwithstanding, "being" common to both and thus suitable for representing God.125 Like all thinkers of his day he agreed that there was nothing really common to God and creation, yet he insisted that this did not stand in the way of a concept of common being (ens commune), since he thought that concept could signify a being not univocal (ens univocum) but rather analogous (ens analogum) to both extremes. If so, he explained, primary "being" would not be a transcendent, and thus illegitimate, genus but instead a concept applying to God per se, to all other beings by participation.126 From this answer alone it is evident that Matthew was prepared to go beyond Bonaventure and Pecham as well. Like them, he wanted to claim both that God was primary object of mind and that the first thing mind knew provided adequate basis for knowing creatures, but his sense that neither Bonaventure nor Pecham had satisfactorily shown how this might be so drove him, like Henry at the same time, towards a more nuanced approach. Yet his first reply was still not perfectly acceptable. He was proposing that both God and "created being" were present to mind in a first concept united in some analogical way. But speaking of "analogous being," or, even more, an analogical concept of being, was logically awkward, and Matthew was trying to cut his logic extremely fine.127 If, as he said, "analogous being" was predicated per se of God, only by participation of
123 Matthew, Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 1, ad 11. (ed. Emmen, BFS, 18, 195, 11. 26-33): ". . . . dico quod illud ens, quod prirno cadit in apprehensione, non est ens creatum nee increatum, sed commune, non univocum, sed analogum; ita tamen quod de primo ente dicitur per se, de aliis per participationem et tamquam de quodam vestigio primi et summi ends; et ideo non sequitur quod illud sit simplicius." 126 In Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 1. ad 9. (ed. Emmen, BFS, 18, 194, 11. 17-24), Matthew indicated the analogy depended on an agreement of imitation (convenientia imitationis), standard scholastic explanation for the analogical unity of "being." 12/ See above, nn. 56 and 59, for a case where Bonaventure had, equally imprecisely, spoken of ens analogum, the awkwardness of which he recognized by denying it full status as a real concept. By Matthew's, and Henry's, day such awkwardness was beginning to seem intolerable, but the appeal of a unified concept of being only increasingly enticing.
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creatures, perhaps strictly speaking it reduced to just a concept of divine being, pure and simple? What then of the insistence that mind knew neither "uncreated being" nor "created being" first of all? Was he not basically returning to Bonaventure's position that mind's first object was God alone? Surely because of such inconsistencies he offered his second reply, confronting head-on the difficulty of talking about a single analogical concept signifying two absolutely different realities. Moreover this time he did so without sacrificing either the primitiveness of the idea of divine being or the conviction that mind's first perception was sufficient base for understanding both God and creatures: Alternatively it can be said that the being that is first apprehended [by mind] is not any one thing, but rather two — that is, created and uncreated being. However the intellect, because of its dullness, apprehends [these two] indistinctly and thus does not differentiate between them.128 As if from nowhere came a solution cutting to the heart of his dilemma. There was not one primary intellectual object but two, which mind then treated as one. As will be clear below, this solution reproduced exactly the position Henry had been espousing in the preceding years. For a moment, Matthew's ideas on knowledge of God had become completely dependent on Henry of Ghent. He then turned to a final point. The opposing argument held that a sense [ratio) of mind's first and fundamental object wras necessarily retained in all things subsequently conceived, precisely because it was means of knowing all else.129 There would have been no problem with this had Matthew kept to the letter of his second reply - that mind actually had two first and fundamental concepts. But apparently he was not fully confident of that answer, and understandably so if he had just lifted it from Henry. Instead he conceded to his opponent that "created being" was in some way known by intellect first of all yet denied that it was sole means of knowing and retained
128 Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 1, ad 11. (ed. Eramen, BFS, 18, 195, 1. 33 196, 1. 2): "Vel potest dici quod ens primo apprehensum non est aliquid unum, sed duo, scili-cet creatum et increatum; sed intellectus propter sui hebetudinem apprehendit in quadam indistinctione, nee discernit inter unum et aliud." 129 See again Matthew, Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 1, arg. 11 (ed. Emmen, BFS 18, 182, 11. 23 24): "Sed ratio primi salvatur in omnibus posterioribus et est ratio omnium posteriorum. . . ."
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in all understanding that followed. His counterargument was to distinguish between what was first apprehended {primum apprehensum) and what was most suitable to be apprehended first of all {primum apprehensibile).m Even if "created being" was first thing apprehended by the wayfarer's mind, the idea of God's being was still always objectively at hand, ready to be apprehended and more suited for apprehension than any other intelligible object. Present to mind but unseen, "uncreated being" would thus qualify as means for knowing {ratio cognoscendi) all things created and divine. Admittedly, Matthew's brevity makes it hard to be sure exactly what he had in mind. Plainly trying to convey a notion of the immanence of knowledge of God in all cognition, even when that immanence went unrecognized, he struggled to do so without denying mind's primary opening onto the created world. It appears that to this end he was willing partially to abandon the commitment to the co-equal cognitive priority of a concept of uncreated being and a concept of created being - not to speak of the notion of a primitive analogical concept — and to draw back somewhat from the theories of Henry of Ghent.131 Both phenomena, the cursoriness of his exposition and the tentativeness of his commitment, reinforce the impression that he was newly in debt to Henry for what was innovative about his approach. 130 Matthew, Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 1, ad 11. (ed. Emmen, BFS 18, 196, 11. 2-10): "Ulterius, quod dicit: 'primum apprehensum est ratio apprehendendi in omnibus posterioribus,' dico quod, quamvis ens creatum esset primum apprehensum, non tamen esset ratio apprehendendi in aliis: differt enim apprehensum et apprehensibile. Primum autem ens est primum apprehensibile et per se et per prius et principalius, sed non est primum apprehensum propter defectum»intellectus appre hendentis; et ideo non ens creatum, sed increatum est ratio apprehendendi in omni apprehenso et cognito." See also the same question, ad 15. (BFS 18, 197, 11. 23-24): " . . . verum et bonum increatum . . . est ratio cognoscendi et diligendi in omni cognito et dilecto. . . ." 131 Matthew's division apprehensum/apprehensibile relegates God or divine being to the status of possible but not actual first known, replacing the literal priority of a notion of God with a weak form of immanence. In this way he moved in a direction opposite to Richard of Conington, who in his clarification of Henry's position insisted that God's being was always actualiterfirstknown if not so perceived — see below, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 64-66. Had Matthew chosen like Richard to draw the distinction more between immanent knowledge and recognition, so that, for instance, created being was first apprehensum, divine being first cognilum, he might have come closer to preserving the ideas of Henry he had espoused before, though still he would not have been able to avoid the criticisms of Duns examined below, Pt. 4, ch. 15, pp. 496-99. On the mattter of priority, see also Berube's comments in the passage cited above, n. 120.
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By De productione rerum he had conquered ambivalence and strengthened his allegiance to Henry's views. Not that he eliminated all ambiguity about the general nature of being. In question 1, on the existence of a first being as principle and cause of all others, he repeated his assertion that although there was nothing common and univocal to created and uncreated beings, there was something common and analogous, if this meant belonging more to one than to the other — to the uncreated being per se, to created being secondarily and by participation.132 And while admitting that this suggested there was something common only in a limited way (aliquo modo commune), indeed confessing that strictly speaking no "being" (ens) was really or logically prior to being as created or uncreated, he still could not resist attributing something like generic unity to common and analogous being, a unity that would seem to have undermined its strict transcendence.133 Rather than expunge the logical awkwardness of "analogous being," he had almost made it worse.134 Yet now the noetic problem of priority in mind was fully resolved.130 There were two ideas equally and absolutely primitive - created and uncreated being - and Avicenna's reference to a first impression on intellect applied to both at once. Though in its confusion mind did not realize the fact, when it progressed from first impression to a specific being, either created or uncreated, it was not passing from a single, original idea to plurality but rather moving along one of two irreducible paths. The first and most fundamental step of all 132
Matthew, Quaestiones de productione rerum, q. 1, ad 3. (BFS, 17, 20, 11. 13-21). On something "aliquo modo commune" but still no ens prior to created and uncreated being, see above, n. 125; on the near generic quality of general being, see the same question, ad 6. (BFS, 17, 21, 1. 23-22, 1. 12). To be fair, Matthew resisted the extreme language of his opponent referring to a common being ("ens universaliter acceptum" and "universum ens" - see arg. 6 [BFS, 17, 5-6]) and spoke in his response only of a looser "universitas entium." And in the same question, ad 11. (BFS, 17, 24, 11. 6-15), he gave an ontological description of the genuslike unity of all creation that made plain the irreducible divide between God's being and that of all others. 134 As will be clear below, it is the contention of this book that the tension inherent in such awkwardness was released only with Duns's dramatic decision that common "being" was indeed univocal. 135 Quaestiones de productione rerum, q. 1, ad 4. (BFS, 17, 20, 0. 23-29): ". . . ens quod est prima impressio vel apprehensio intellectus, vel ens quod primo intellectus apprehendit, non est quid unum commune end increato et create, a quo fiat descensus ad ilia, sed potius intellectus apprehendit quaedam duo sub quadam confusione et indistinctione, quia non sufficit inter ilia distinguere, et ideo non descendit ab uno communi ad ilia plura, sed potius inter ilia distinguit." In the initial argument (p. 4), the reference to Avicenna implied by these words was made explicit. 133
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cognition was therefore not a matter of logical descent from more to less general but rather one of distinguishing between two alternatives that had been there from the start. This was Henry's solution, pure and simple. With Henry's help, Matthew thus succeeded in articulating more precisely than ever the growing conviction among classic Augustinians that Avicenna's ideas on first intentions made possible a theory of natural knowledge of God inherent in knowledge of being. Still, when it came to speaking of intellect's turn to God as intentional object as opposed to reflecting on the ultimate basis for thought, he preferred the language of an impressed similitude or species to the more amorphous discourse about "being" as first object of mind. And like Pecham in his own approach to knowledge of God, here he reached for the theoretical glue of the doctrine of divine illumination to make the strands of his noetics cohere. Because of his eccentric notion that such illumination worked not directly but by means of a divine influence, he in fact achieved this end more satisfactorily and with greater philosophical exactitude. Matthew summarized his views about an impressed species early on, in a question from the commentary on the second book of the Sentences dealing with the nature of the human agent intellect. Among a number of positions he listed on the matter was one he did not accept as apt characterization of the agent but which he would consider fair appraisal of God's relation to mind: A third opinion comes from those who have said that the agent intellect is a habit [deriving from] the First Cause, and we call this habit a kind of notion or species of the First Truth that has been impressed on us and through which we know God. This habit is superior [to us], because it is [from] a superior nature, but it is inferior to God, because [it rests] in a nature inferior [to him]. And this habit or notion or species is the active principle of knowing and understanding all intelligibles. Now this position is fundamentally true, for according to Augustine it is true that we have such a knowledge impressed [on us] and it is also true that whatever we know, we know through the irradiation and illumination of the First Cause. Nevertheless, as has been shown, in addition to the divine light it is necessary to posit a natural light that is the agent intellect. Besides, it would not be this species [impressed from God] that was called the agent intellect but rather the irradiating light itself.136
1;i<>
Matthew, Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 24, q. 10 (MS Assisi, Bibl. Com.
132,
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At the beginning Matthew appears to be summarizing the views of John of La Rochelle, for whom agent intellect was an effect of God inherent to soul, yet by the end it is clear he read his third position as referring to neither a component of intellect nor any of its natural cognitive tools but rather something considerably more elevated. The reference to Augustine and the partial quotation of the famous passage from De Trinitate make this plain. He took the discussion to be about a special impression, something like a species but also like a habit or active principle, by which mind could know God and which, in line with Bonaventure's gloss on the De Trinitate passage, was essentially less than God but higher than soul.137 To Matthew's eyes, the third position simply reflected Bonaventure's stand on mind's knowledge of God through an impressed similitude, a perfectly legitimate position so long as not taken as describing the agent intellect. Then he made a further move. It was shown above how by the time of De cognitione Matthew had adopted the un-Bonaventuran idea that in the paradigmatic function of divine illumination, revealing truth, God acted on mind through an influence. Here in his Commentary on the Sentences, Book 2, he was apparently already committing himself to such a view. For unlike Bonaventure, on whom he otherwise relied for this third position, he noted that the phenomenon by which God impressed on mind a species through which he could be known was precisely the same as that by which he illumined intellect in every act of cognition. Indeed the illuminating principle, the special cognitive light given in illumination, was the species itself, which
f. 127rb): "Tertia opinio est eorum qui posuerunt intellectum agentem esse habitum prime cause, quern habitum nos appellamus quandam notionem uel speciem prime ueritatis nobis impressam, per quam Deum cognoscimus, que est superior quia nature superioris et inferior Deo quia in natura inferiori. Et ille habitus siue notio siue species est principium actiuum cognoscendi et intelligendi omnia intelligibilia. Sed ista positio uera sit quantum ad fundamentum, nam uerum est quod illam notionem habemus impressam, secundum Augustinum; uerum est etiam quod irradiationem prime cause et eius inluminationem cognoscimus quicquid cognoscimus. Tamen cum lumine diuino, ut preostensum, oportet ponere lumen naturale, quod est intellectus agens. Et preterea non diceretur ilia species agens intellectus sed potius ipsa lux irradians." 137 Bonaventure's reference to De Trinitate on an impression lower than God added, like Matthew's, the stipulation that it was also higher than the soul, while Gilbert, first among these Augustinians to draw attention to the passage, had restricted himself to the original Augustinian version. See above, nn. 15 and 44.
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might well be called an influence from the divinity.138 This explained how the truth-revealing light from God could serve as a formal marker by wiiich mind could know God in the world of sin. In a way not possible for Bonaventure — much less for Pecham — Matthew had managed to combine the paradigm of divine illumination with the doctrine of knowledge of God through an impressed species so as to make them not just parallel or mutually reinforcing but precisely the same thing. Naturally he associated this explanation of knowledge of divinity with his account of God as motive object for intellect, for his understanding that a motive force moved something else by leaving a formal marker in it only strengthened his conviction that the problem of illumination and that of knowing God were two sides of a single coin.139 Along these same lines he interpreted the well-known passage from John Damascene about knowledge of God's existence being naturally inserted into mind. According to Matthew, John was referring to the natural impression by which mind knew God and his existence and which had to be contrasted with any more rational or discursive cognition of the same.140 Following Pecham, Matthew was even prepared in strict philosophical terms to distinguish between innate and impressed species. 118
In fact, in the preceding question in his commentary on the Book II of the Sentences, Matthew had used the word "influentia" in what appears to be a technical sense to refer to this very irradiating gift. See the second quotation above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 91. 139 See Matthew, Quodlibet IV, q. 7, ad 1. (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 44, f. 217vb quoted in Marrone. "Matthew of Aquasparta," p. 268, n. 78), where he essentially repeated in condensed form what he had said about knowledge of God in the passage from the Commentary on the Sentences quoted above, n. 136, down to citation of Augustine's De Trinitate, and then noted that this was "secundum aliquos" how God was "causa mouens" for mind in intellection. In Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2, ad 19. (BFS, 1, 245), Matthew explicitly stated that God as "obiectum movens e t . . . ratio videndi" - that is, as illuminator of truth - was the way he was known in via, even using in the same question, ad 16. (BFS, 1, 244), the word "species" to describe what God, as illuminator and movens, left in the mind. For Matthew on a form imprinted by motion, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, nn. 102 and 103. 1411 Matthew, Quodlibet IV, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 44, f. 217vb): "Ad istam autem cognitionem [Dei] multis modis, multis uiis, ascenditur. Primo per naturalem impressionem. Quoniam hoc ipso quod ymago Dei, habet sibi impressam noticiam Dei. Unde Johannis Damascenus, 1" libro, l"capitulo: 'Cognitio existendi naturaliter nobis inserta est.' Secundo per rationabilem manuductionem. . . . " See also Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 2, a. 1, q. 3 (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchungen, p. 60), almost verbatim a quotation from Bonaventure's De mysterio Trinitatis, q. 1, a. 1 (Opera Omnia, 5, 49a); and Matthew, Quaestiones de productione rerum, q. 1 (BFS, 17,
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In a passage in Quaestiones de anima beata essentially reproducing Pecham's analysis from Quaestiones de anima of the various types of species, he explained that natural knowledge (naturalis cognitio) of God as referred to, for instance, by Damascene worked by means of an innate species; only the blessed had knowledge of God by means of a species properly called impressed.141 From the perspective of this late work, the earlier references to a natural, impressed knowledge of God were therefore technically imprecise. Whatever the correct terminology, however, Matthew had a more generous notion of what this natural knowledge entailed than any of his predecessors, and again his interpretation owed much to his understanding that God acted in illumination by means of an influence. As he explained in terms explicitly opposed to Pecham, the divine essence was itself involved in the normal processes of cognition only as efficiens, not informant, to mind.142 Thus no matter how amply he construed the natural knowledge of God implicated in the processes of illumination, his account was less vulnerable to accusations of ontologism. Simply put, the presence of a formal influence in mind provided it with a ready-made intelligible species directly from God which could be expected to lead cognitively back to him, so where Pecham, even Bonaventure, had exhibited some hesitancy about the exact nature of intellect's natural knowledge of God, Matthew could unambiguously posit it as quidditative. It went far beyond the privative descriptions of the via negativa to attribute something positively to divinity.143 Of course Christian orthodoxy put limits on how far he could
11). Although the latter passage refers explicitly just to knowledge of God's existence, it seems to assume as a basis some natural simple knowledge of divinity. 141 See Matthew, Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 8 (ed. Emmen, BFS 18, 354, 11. 15-17 and 355, 11. 6-20). For the passage in Pecham, see above, n. I l l , and Ft. 2, ch. 6, nn. 40 and 44. 142 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, nn. 66, 68, 77-78 and 100. 143 Matthew, Quodlibet IV, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 44, f. 217vb): "Cognitione autem apprehensiua, uel quia est uel quid est, licet non perfecte set (sic) imperfecte, uel ipsum contueri uidendo, Deus est ab humano intellectu cognoscibilis, et humanus intellectus potest Deum cognoscere." Also Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 7, ad 11. (BFS, 1, 353, 11. 27-31): ". . . in vita ista potest de Deo sciri quid est, non tantum privative, sed positive; non tamen plene et perfecte, sed semiplene et imperfecte, notitia utcumque apprehensiva, non comprehensiva, ut quod Deus est summum ens, summum bonum, aeternum, et iis similia." Finally, see Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1, ad 16. (BFS, 1, 220, 11. 19-24). Consult Bettoni, "Rapporti dottrinali," on Matthew's view of innate knowledge of God.
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outdistance other Augustinians on this point. If mind knew of God quid est by natural means in this life, its understanding still could not entail full knowledge of divine quiddity. Drawing on a distinction frequently seen in Bonaventure, Matthew explained that intellect attained what should modestly be described as apprehension of God, not comprehensive knowledge of him.144 What is more, in what must be a reference to the theory of knowing God in a first intention like "being," he admitted that such apprehension was framed according to a general and indeterminate notion.143 On this point he claimed no more than Bonaventure or Pecham before.146 Still Matthew's accomplishments were considerable. More than any of the other classic Augustinians he condensed elements of divine illumination scattered throughout the tradition so as to fashion an articulate theory of natural, quidditative knowledge of divinity available to intellect in the world. In his works, the fusion of the notion of normative cognitive illumination with a conception of mind's road to God reached a perfection unequaled before or after. Consequently, he had less need to turn to the gradualist dynamics of his forebears to insure a cognitive opening onto divinity, either as expressed in the mystical rhetoric of Bonaventure or played out in the expectations of William of Auvergne and Grosseteste for amelioration after this life. This is not to say he spurned William's argument that mind's search for truth in the world was the first step along a path ultimately leading beyond its inchoate efforts towards absorption in the
144
See above, n. 143. For Bonaventure's distinction between cognitio per apprehensionem and cognitio per comprehensionem, see his Comm. in lib. I. Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. un., q. 1, ad 1. (Opera Omnia, 1, 69a). 145 Matthew, Quodlibet IV, q. 7 (MS Todi, Bibl. Com. 44, f. 217vb): "Et istis tribus modis cognoscitur quia est et quid est [Deus], licet imperfecte - quoniam perfecte quid est cognoscere est ipsum comprehendere - non sub propria et determinata ratione, sed general! et indeterminata, ut enim quod est 'aliquid quo magis cogitari non potest,' quod est summum bonum, infmitum, eternum, immutabile, et hiis similia." Also Quaestiones de fide, q. 1, ad 6. (BFS, 1, 52, 11. 29-33): " etsi de Deo non sit cognoscibile quod quid est sub determinata et propria ratione, est tamen sub quadam ratione generali, quod est 'quo maius cogitari non potest'; et istud est insertum menti humanae." I4I> Although like the others Matthew interpreted the idea of God as known in a general notion to mean that mind knew him naturally in such nominal descriptions as "highest being" or "highest good," he also included the Anselmian semidefinition, "quo maius cogitari non potest," a peculiarity that stands out clearest in contrast to Henry of Ghent, for whom such a complex description was well outside the bounds of natural knowledge. See below, Pt. 3, ch, 10, nn. 48-50.
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unique and superabundant truth consisting in God himself.147 It simply means he was much firmer about setting boundaries between cognitive activities in this life and anything approaching final or mystical vision of God. In fact Matthew displayed scant interest in speculating about the contemplative life, and there is relatively little about contemplation or the preparations necessary for it in his works. When he spoke of the vision of God or understanding of him other than through the natural procedures examined so far, it was to knowledge of God in his essence he turned his attention. And here, a bit like Pecham, he emphasized how different such essential knowledge was from - how dramatically discontinuous with - anything available by normal processes in the world. Even the saving grace given believers could not be intensified sufficiently to allow for vision of God in his essence; only a new and distinct gift of grace would suffice.148 No matter how faithful one was or how far advanced in Christian morality, one was thereby intrinsically no closer to seeing God in his essence than a pure novice. Short of beatitude, just the special gift of rapture, dependent on an inscrutable and quite extraordinary infusion from God, permitted essential vision of divinity, and such a gift could be neither predicted nor prepared for, coming instead suddenly and momentarily from another world.149 Strictly speaking there is nothing peculiar about this, yet set against the thought of his predecessors Matthew's comments evoke a dissonant image of the life of the mind. Absent is Bonaventure's awareness of an ever-present opening onto higher levels of cognition, the possibility of a mystical enhancing of powers of mind to be won by a program of discipline and purification.100 Gone, too, is even Pecham's conviction that intensification of faith might lead to a terminating apprehension of God - not, to be sure, the essential knowledge of 147 See Matthew, Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 7 (ed. Emmen, BFS, 18, 328, 11. 22-31); and compare the passage from the same question, cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 104. On William, see again the citation given above, n. 77. 148 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 7 (BFS, 1, 346, 11. 11-24 and 347, 11. 20-22). 149 Matthew, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 7 (BFS, 1, 347, 11. 23-36); and on the momentary nature of rapture, the same question, p. 350, 11. 7-14. 100 See above, nn. 72 76. Etienne Gilson, "La philosophic franciscaine," pp. 154-56, gives a fine account of the importance of an affective, mystical dynamic for Bonaventure's philosophy, while Berube, "Henri de Gand et Mathieu d'Aquasparta," p. 170; and "De la theologie," pp. 186-87, is excellent on how Matthew differed in this regard.
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beatitude but at least an imitation bringing a measure of cognitive repose.1'1 It is as if for Matthew the middle dropped out of the picture of mind's climb upwards. On the one hand was natural knowledge, the potential of which to reveal the divine nature was more confidently espoused than ever before; on the other, essential vision of God in rapture or glory. The sense of a continuum between the two, of a real-life dynamic leading from one to the other, had disappeared. Matthew thus represents the culmination of the attempt to make of divine illumination a theory both internally consistent and philosophically explicit enough to satisfy the demanding canons of scholastic discourse. Here was a scientific noetics designed to reveal God's considerable role in human cognition and capitalize on the cognitive intimacy implicit in the Augustinian tradition, providing the wayfarer with a direct and natural road to God. The general lines of the achievement were present in Bonaventure and Pecham; Matthew was simply the most punctilious about philosophical technicalities. By the same token, his version of Augustine's vision of mind was also the most prosaic.
151
See above, nn. 107-9.
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CONCLUSION TO VOLUME ONE
The story told thus far has followed a simple plot of accelerating advance towards doctrinal clarity and coherence. Two principal moving forces were at work. First was the urge among all scholars in thirteenth-century universities to grasp the requirements of an apodictic model of science and apply them, both formal considerations of logic and a substantive bias towards naturalizing explication, to their investigations and the literary products that ensued. Second was the more mysteriously implicated but no less powerful attachment of a number of masters to the notion of a profound intimacy between God and human mind, an ideal traditionally associated with the language of intellectual illumination. Under the combined pressure from these two fronts there emerged in the third quarter of the century a unified doctrine of divine illumination, foundation for an epistemology and a noetics that could compete in a scholastic world of escalating demands for intellectual rigor. This doctrine was promoted by its fashioners as uniquely Augustinian, true to the intellectual commitments of that great Father of the Church. It came to count as one of the identifying marks of an increasingly self-conscious coterie of Augustinian intellectuals. Of course the passage towards this moment of unity was marked by two quite distinct stages. From the 1220s to 1240s two scholars, ultimately bishops of Lincoln and Paris, like all others examined in this study attracted to both the apodictic, Aristotelian scientific model and the deeply Augustinian confidence in God's intimate presence to intellect, worked through a bundle of questions concerning the nature of truth, the way it was ascertained by human mind, the origin of simple concepts in via, the reference of a variety of concepts, and the relevance of all these to the wayfarer's knowledge of divinity. In doing so, they not only made common currency out of the still imperfectly understood epistemology and noetics of Aristotle; they also began to clarify and bring into conformity with the new discursive prescriptions a host of approaches to human cognition of traditionally Neoplatonic hue. All of the latter were in some fashion connected to the image of God's working as cognitive light.
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The upshot of their efforts, however, was not yet a shared identity that could be labelled "Augustinian." Indeed, there was to this point still nothing characterizable as a cohesive and well articulated doctrine of divine illumination. Neither William nor Robert aspired to any such unity or precision. For them it was enough of a challenge to make sense of the tangle of authorities and come to terms with a demanding expository ideal. Yet the materials had begun to be assembled from which such a doctrine could be contrived. Regardless of whether they wrere conscious of the fact, a treasury of images and theoretical motifs had been generated and the example laid down of a determination to make use of Neoplatonic models of cognition and intellectual judgment in an otherwise Aristotle-bedazzled scholarly world that would prove crucial for the future. Eclectic philosophizers on almost every score, and definitely not system builders, the two first protagonists of this tale were all the same laying the foundations for a conspicuously Augustinian school of thought. What eventually forced the Augustinian School to coalesce, and the doctrine of divine illumination to assume architectonic solidity on the philosophical landscape, was continued pressure from the novel discursive demands. This happened in the second stage, associated above with the rise to prominence of the "classic" Augustinians. The new scientific ideal placed a premium on consistency, on theoretical precision and on concrete explication whenever possible linked to processes in the material world. To attract an audience, much less supporters, in the theater of learning and debate from midcentury on, one had therefore to make sure that one's ideas were systematically integrated, carefully articulated at every juncture and intelligible within the limits of what could be accepted as natural operation at the time. All of which was a lot to ask of those who were likewise committed to emphasizing God's intimate presence to mind, the very sort of explanatory configuration hard to render in such concrete and elaborate detail. But beginning with Gilbert and Bonaventure, and continuing through Pecham and Aquasparta, that is precisely what an increasingly partisan group of theologians managed to do. "Partisan" is the correct word, for from the late 1260s to the early 1280s the politics of intellectual affiliation dominated the university scene. Authentic doctrines, coherent, precise and embedded in a system of correlated responses to the entire spectrum of theoretical concerns, were emerging from all directions. The doctrine of divine
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illumination received as classic in the modern historiography of medieval thought was simply one of the more prominent among them. It thus constituted an artifact of a particular place and time, as argued above the first real doctrine of divine illumination on the Latin philosophical stage. And it was promoted by what can only be called an intellectual party, a group of scholars aware of their collective identity and anxious to register doctrinally their mutual agreement as well as their common opposition to a correspondingly determinate set of antagonists. The third quarter of the thirteenth century bore witness, in short, to a general progression towards philosophical clarity. Intellectual consanguinities defined along doctrinal lines and actively underwritten by the protagonists in academic debate were the rule of the day. The result very much resembles the ideological topography prescribed by the conventional understanding of scholastic thought as ordered into identifiable schools. Were one to stop here, one might legitimately infer that history confirms the rise of an Augustinian School in just the form imagined by Ehrle one hundred years ago. But the present study does not stop with the classic Augustinians and the decade of the 1270s. That special moment of doctrinal convergence which appeared with John Pecham and Matthew of Aquasparta was not to last. Instead, the transformative power of an apodictic ideal of knowledge continued to make its presence felt, so that the theoretical edifice of which Pecham was so proud was immediately buffeted by a critique tearing it asunder already before Matthew had passed from the scene. And with the disruption of doctrinal continuity evaporates the ideal of a historical narrative tracking intellectual currents established along doctrinal lines. For some, this ambiguous state of affairs suggests the inappropriateness of schools as an explanatory model for the medieval scholastic world.1 That is, however, not the only possible lesson to be drawn. As Volume 2 will show7, the notion of schools, in particular the notion of an Augustinian school, can continue to bear fruit in analyzing developments at least through the beginning of the fourteenth century. What is needed is a more flexible idea of what a school entails. The occasion for fashioning such an idea will lie in recounting the
1 As indicated above in the Introduction, at n. 11. this is the route many scholars, particularly those focusing on the late Middle Ages, are inclined to take.
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third and fourth stages of the process of accommodation with which this book is concerned. Here the story revolves around those two poles of late-thirteenth-century Augustinianizing thought, Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus. They will dominate the narrative which is to follow.
THE LIGHT OF THY COUNTENANCE VOLUME TWO
STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT EDITED BY HEIKO A. OBERMAN, Tucson, Arizona IN COOPERATION WITH ROBERT J. BAST, Knoxvillc, Tennessee HENRY CHADWICK, Cambridge BRIAN TIERNEY, Ithaca, New York ARJO VANDERJAGT, Groningen
VOLUME XCVIII STEVEN P. MARRONE
THE LIGHT OF THY COUNTENANCE VOLUME TWO
THE LIGHT OF THY COUNTENANCE SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
VOLUME TWO GOD AT THE CORE OF COGNITION BY
STEVEN P. MARRONE
BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KOLN 2001
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marrone, Steven P., 1947The light of Thy countenance : science and knowledge of God in the thirteenth century / by Steven P. Marrone. p. cm. — (Studies in the history of Christian thought, ISSN 0081-8607 ; v. 98) Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, p.) and indexes. Contents: v. 1. A doctrine of divine illumination—Gods at the core of cognition. ISBN 9004119477 (set : alk. paper) 1. Knowledge, Theory of (Religion)—History. 2. God—Knowableness— History of doctrines. 3. Religion and science—History. 4. Thirteenth century. I. Title. II. Series. BT50 .M28 2000 261.5'5'09022—dc21 00-046862 CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufhahme Marrone, Steven P.: The light of thy countenance : science and knowledge of god in the thirteenth century / by Steven P. Marrone. - Leiden ; Boston ; Koln : Brill (Studies in the history of Christian thought ; Vol. 98) ISBN 90-04-11947-7 Vol. 2. God at the core of cognition. - 2001
ISSN 0081-8607 ISBN 90 04 11947 7 (set) © Copyright 2001 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy itemsfor internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 DanversA4A 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
CONTENTS VOLUME ONE A DOCTRINE OF DIVINE ILLUMINATION Acknowledgments Sigla Introduction
ix xi 1 PART ONE
BIRTHPANGS OF A PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION 1210-1245 ROBERT GROSSETESTE AND WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE
Introduction to Chapter One Chapter Two Reference Chapter Three Chapter Four
Part One Certitude of Knowledge The Origin of Knowledge and its Knowledge of Immutable Truth Mind's Road to God
29 38 60 84 97
PART TWO THE CLASSIC AUGUSTINIANS 1250-1280 BONAVENTURE, GILBERT OF TOURNAI, JOHN PECHAM AND MATTHEW OF AQUASPARTA
Introduction to Part Two Chapter Five Truth and the Certitude of Knowledge Chapter Six The Object of Knowledge and the Noetic Process Chapter Seven Immutability of Knowledge and the Cognitive Object Chapter Eight A Natural Way to Know God
Ill 122
186 201
Conclusion to Volume One
247
152
VI
CONTENTS
VOLUME TWO GOD AT THE CORE OF COGNITION
Introduction to Volume Two
251
PART THREE A PARTING OF THE WAYS 1275-1295 HENRY OF GHENT AND VITAL DU FOUR
Introduction to Part Three Chapter Nine Truth, Certitude and Science Chapter Ten Mind's Object and the Road to God Chapter Eleven Essence and the Ontology of the Mental Object Chapter Twelve Aristotle and Augustine Revisited
259 270 299 335 359
PART FOUR THE NEW DISPENSATION
1290-1310
WILLIAM OF WARE AND JOHN DUNS SCOTUS
Introduction to Part Four Chapter Thirteen Rejection of Illumination and a Worldly Theory of Knowledge Chapter Fourteen Noetics and the Critique of Henry's Ontology of Essence Chapter Fifteen Fully Natural Knowledge of God Chapter Sixteen What about Augustine?
391
444 489 537
Conclusion
565
Bibliography of Works Cited
575
Indices Index of Names Index of Places Index of Subjects
599 604 605
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This book has two subjects. One concerns the deepening impress of an Aristotelian and apodictic model of science on thirteenth-century Scholasticism, specifically mounting insistence on assimilating modes of explication to logical rules of argument and impatience with analysis straying far from concrete operations in the natural world. The subject here is approached obliquely by examining how such a model was accommodated in an academic arena where more than speculative concerns were at work, some of religious and devotional import potentially hostile to the aspirations of the new science. The second subject has to do with the history of an Augustinian current throughout the same hundred years. Occasion for considering this current is the emergence of a doctrine of divine illumination in the wayfarer's cognition and that doctrine's subsequent fate in the hands of ostensibly sympathetic scholastics. But the narrative subtext bears more broadly on the question of schools of scholastic thought, not just whether it is legitimate to suppose such schools existed but also how they might be characterized, assuming that they did. The decision to develop these two themes simultaneously relies upon the conviction that an Augustinian school can be identified for the thirteenth century, one conceding the importance of the new ideal of scientific argumentation but retaining a special regard for attitudes threatened by the penetration of the apodictic model and its accompanying worldliness into all fields of thought. Yet a fundamental assumption of this book as well is that the identity of the Augustinian school, indeed of any of the "schools" often proposed for the thirteenth century, cannot be located by applying specifically doctrinal criteria. The general drift of the thirteenth century towards consensus about descriptions of mind that counted as plausible and the epistemic parameters of the problem of truth practically ensured that doctrinal differences among competing groups of intellectuals would be eroded over time. They would require reconfiguration if lines of divergence were to be preserved and extended. Of course, the precise dimensions of the latter phenomenon, because investigated here with regard to merely the notion of intellectual illumination of the wayfarer by God, can only be approximated by
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TWO
extrapolation even with regard to the profile of a single school. But limited as the evidence presented may be, it suggests a general picture that is credible and could readily be tested with reference to other presumed marks of Augustinianism as well. Volume 1 has chronicled the gradual condensation of an Augustinian core, culminating in the emergence of an authentic doctrine of divine illumination by the third quarter of the thirteenth century. The "classic" Augustinians, Bonaventure and his followers John Pecham and Matthew of Aquasparta, managed to bring together traditional themes of largely Neoplatonic inspiration into a structure of noetics and epistemology calibrated to meet contemporary expectations for science while still upholding Augustinian values about knowledge, mind and the wayfarer's relation to God. Their achievement could well serve as ideal type for the notion of divine illumination adopted by conventional historical accounts of Augustinianism in the high Middle Ages. The theoretical construct they produced is presented above as a composite of elements serving four discrete functions, each of which followed a separate path both before and after Bonaventure and his admirers brought them together.1 First and most emblematic was the association of divine cognitive light with a normative epistemic intervention whereby mind was enabled to separate truth from falsehood, or at least sharpen a perception of truth it had already gained. Second came Godly illumination in the mainly noetic guise of contributory source of simple concepts to mind, entailing potentially a divine element in the referential conditions of much of normal human knowledge. Third, though somewhat less centrally, there was the weaving of God's light into the explanation of how some truths could be immutable. Last was the connection between the image of divinity radiating into mind and human knowledge of God in the state of sin, a thread of analysis sometimes extending beyond death to beatitude. Special about the classic Augustinians was not only the fact that they turned to a notion of divine illumination to account for every one of the four functions but also that they seemed to have the same process in mind whenever, for each function, they spoke about the
1
Refer to the initial discussion of these functions in the introduction to Part 1, pp. 33-34.
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action of God's light. In these two peculiarities lies the essence of what it means to say that for them there existed a genuine doctrine of divine illumination, not just a congeries of invocations of an illuminative operation throughout epistemology and noetics. Yet the appearance of this doctrine on the academic scene shortly after mid-thirteenth century, striking sign of extraordinary developments in the tenor of university discourse, was also short-lived. Already by the 1270s even masters whose support might have been expected were finding contradictions within it and inconsistencies with the general rules of scientific exposition in line with which it had originally been advanced. In less than a decade efforts were afoot to resolve the problems. Such efforts rescued the noetic and epistemological heritage of Augustine from a surely suicidal collision with the ideals of apodictic truth. But by formally separating the functional elements the classic Augustinians had consolidated, refashioning some of them so as to engage less explicitly a mechanism of illumination arising from God, the rescue shattered the theoretical unity so recently acquired. From the late 1270s on, the story of divine illumination therefore ceases being that of a coherent doctrine and reverts to the tale of a collection of theories related more by image and evocation than philosophical intent. And that spells the end of any potential for uncovering doctrinal continuity in a presumed Augustinian school. Still, the Augustinian current did not expire with the demise of the classic ideal of illumination. Nor did all the functional applications of the notion of God's light disappear from theory of mind cultivated by masters with a loyalty to Bonaventure's and his followers' attempt to fashion a peculiarly Augustinian brand of thought. Volume 2 takes up this narrative, once the unified doctrine of divine illumination was on its way out but while the spirit animating it was yet very much alive. Part 3, on the third stage in illumination's thirteenth-century career, chronicles the efforts of the classic Augustinians' immediate successors to retain the religious and devotional resonances of their thinking, especially the sense of God's intimacy to mind, while taking steps to erase the residues of ontologism that criticism of the classic position had laid bare. The story revolves almost exclusively around Henry of Ghent in the 1270s and 1280s, though attention must also be given to his younger contemporary Vital du Four and the somewhat later Richard of Conington. Key is the theoretical divorce of
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guaranteeing knowledge of truth from the function of providing a source for ideas, and severance of the latter from connection to the literal notion of God as offering intelligible illumination. The fourth stage, told in Part 4, turns to masters responding more to Henry than to the classic Augustinians themselves, readier than Henry to abandon the specifics of illumination but responsive to the same desire to stress the cognitive intimacy of God. Evident, therefore, is still a fundamental loyalty to Augustinian inspiration, but now with no tolerance for even the slightest awkwardness entailed by the classic doctrinal structure. From 1290 to the first years of the fourteenth century, William of Ware and John Duns Scotus confidently laid out a theory of knowledge and of mind with not so much as a hint of the offending attributes of earlier illumination theory. It displayed all the while deep structural parallels with the preceding ideal's approach to the relation between intellect and God. As might be expected, the change in complexion of the story from Volume 1 to Volume 2 brings with it a shift in method as well. Examination of Augustinian attitudes towards knowledge and illumination in the decades from William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste through Matthew of Aquasparta necessarily dwelt upon synthetic efforts to integrate functions and draw relations among them. Those were after all years when Augustinians grew to recognize the utility of presenting their ideas in systematic form, most striking manifestation of which was the emergence of a doctrine of divine illumination. From Henry of Ghent through Duns Scotus the posture towards illumination was, in contrast, critical of a doctrine already put forward. Because of this new coloration, the developmental dynamics at work in these later stages are less amenable to description in narrative mode, more difficult to analyze in typically linear historiographical fashion. There is, however, compensation in the fact that the philosophical issues at play are more nuanced and complex. Among the most prominent of these is the problem of invention, the challenge of moving from a critique of materials at hand to novel formulation of issues or explanations, or both at once, productive of an acceptable resolution. Of course, to save the notion of intellectual school in such a milieu requires a different ideal type, or perhaps a different approach to recognizing affiliations and similarities. Volume 2 thus covers a territory where the alternative mode of conceiving schools advanced in
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the introduction can be put to the test, because it is that mode alone which holds out promise of saving the notion of schools in such turbulent intellectual waters.2 It is as a set of undercurrents of allegiance, and not lines of doctrinal agreement, that Augustinianism goes forth into the early fourteenth century.
2 On this non-doctrinal notion of schools of thought, consult the Introduction, p. 15.
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PART THREE
A PARTING OF THE WAYS 1275-1295 HENRY OF GHENT AND VITAL DU FOUR
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INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE
The accomplishments of Bonaventure, John Pecham and Matthew of Aquasparta are obvious. During the three decades from 1250 to 1280 they succeeded in fabricating an integrated doctrine of divine illumination out of divergent strands of Augustinian, broadly Neoplatonic and Aristotelian inspiration present in the eclectic writings of theologians from the second quarter of the century. Partial products of a wider effort to erect a system of consciously Augustinianizing thought, the epistemology and noetics embedded in this illuminationist theory have come to be regarded as emblematic of a conservative vein in thirteenth-century Scholasticism. Yet the classic Augustinian synthesis, impressive though it was, would not long endure. Already in the later years of Matthew of Aquasparta's magisterium it was beginning to dissolve. Bonaventure's and his followers' efforts at system-building were, after all, not unique, and the emergence of philosophical schools, a fortiori of coherent doctrines like the theory of illumination, was a phenomenon of wider scope than the history of medieval Augustinianism. If Franciscans brought the energy and discipline of their young order to bear on Neoplatonizing traditions of the Latin West and newly emergent strains of Aristotelianism, imposing system on chaos, it can be argued that Dominicans did them one better, even quicker to bring their efforts to fruition. To many minds in the decades of the 1260s and 1270s Thomas Aquinas was the systematizer par excellence, the thinker with whom "philosophy" came of age. The appearance of competing systems of thought and the philosophically meticulous attitudes giving birth to them did much to unsettle the atmosphere at the universities, so that along with the enthusiasm of the first decades after mid-century came an increase in what can only be called intellectual anxiety. Academic politics had always been highly charged, but as philosophy became more serious business, the consequences of philosophizing grew to be regarded more soberly, at times with fear. The faculty of theology, most eminent of those at Paris, was particularly alarmed, first in the 1260s at the aggressive posture of some of those teaching in arts
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and then in the 1270s even at the speculation of leading Aristotelianizers within its own ranks, Thomas among them.1 A series of Parisian condemnations, one in 1270 and another in 1277, echoed by a condemnation at Oxford in 1277 and another two in 1284 and 1286, were only the most obvious signs of consternation. At Paris in 1277 formal processes of investigation were initiated in the theology faculty probably against the now-dead Thomas and surely against his very much alive champion, Giles of Rome, while at Oxford in the years immediately following 1284, Archbishop Pecham Bonaventure's former student engaged in what can fairly be described as an all-out attack on Thomists in the Dominican Order. In such an atmosphere, the integrity of any system of thought would be put to the test. Critics abounded, ready to hammer away at the slightest fissure in an intellectual edifice with hopes of breaking the whole apart. Ironically it was the Thomists, hardest hit by their often partisan critics, who were best at keeping their system — or, more precisely, systems - intact. The ostensibly more traditional vision of Bonaventure, Pecham and Matthew did not survive. Still, the short life of the classic Augustinian synthesis cannot be 1
On the condemnations of the 1270s and 1280s, see, for a start, Roland Hissette, Enquete sur les 219 articles condamnes a Paris le 7 mars 1277 (Leuven, 1977); and the lucid introduction to Thomas by Simon Tugwell in Albert and Thomas, Selected Writings, ed. Simon Tugwell (New York, 1988), pp. 226-32 and 236-44. Following Hissette's work, there has been increasing debate about the real target and even the exact events in 1277. Here, especially with regard to Thomas and Giles of Rome, one must begin with Robert Wielockx's "Commentaire" to Giles of Rome's Apologia, Aegidii Romani Opera Omnia, 3, 1, Unione Accademica Nazionale, Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi, Testi e Studi, 4 (Florence, 1985), pp. 67-225; and his "Autour du proces de Thomas d'Aquin," in Thomas von Aquin. Werk und Wirkung im Licht neuerer Forschungen, ed. Albert Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 19 (Berlin, 1988), pp. 413-38. Important, too, are Ludwig Hodl, "Neue Nachrichten iiber die Pariser Verurteilungen der thomasischen Formlehre," Scholastik 39 (1964): 178-96; John F. Wippel, "The Condemnations of 1270 and 1277 at Paris," The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 1 (1977): 169-201; "Thomas Aquinas and the Condemnation of 1277," The Modem Schooman 72 (1995): 233-72; and "Bishop Stephen Tempier and Thomas Aquinas. A Separate Process Against Aquinas?" Freiburger ^eitschrift fur Philosophic und Theologie 44 (1997): 117-36; Roland Hissette, "L'implication de Thomas d'Aquin dans les censures parisiennes de 1277," Recherches de Theologie et Philosophic Medievales 64 (1997): 3-31; and Johannes M.M.H. Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris 1200-1400 (Philadelphia, 1998), especially ch. 2, pp. 40-56. Finally, for entree to the interesting speculations of Luca Bianchi on the significance of 1277, see his "1277. A Turning Point in Medieval Philosophy?" in Was 1st Philosophic im Afittelalter, eds. Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer, Akten des X. Internationalen Kongresses fur mittelalterlichen Philosophie, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 26 (Berlin, 1998), pp. 90-110.
INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE
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attributed solely to the fierceness of external opposition. Dominican scholars sympathetic to Thomas, the most likely detractors of the Augustinians, were at first too busy defending their own doctrines to mount a full-scale attack on those of the Franciscans arrayed against them. Instead Bonaventure's, Pecham's and Matthew's creation fell largely of its own weight, among friends, with the most corrosive criticism coming from minds sympathetic to the general philosophical attitudes it promoted. Classic Augustinian doctrines were simply too fragile for the world of late thirteenth-century thought. Bonaventure and his followers had made a heroic effort to translate what they considered the essential core of Christian speculation into the idiom of high medieval Scholasticism. They had respected the novel demands for technical precision and the Aristotelianizing call for explaining natural phenomena in terms of concrete processes in the world, all the while, in accordance with the canons of the day, striving for systematic coherence. Yet vast areas of their thought appeared to possess a unity more contrived than real, the rhetoric of tradition overlying philosophical images and analytical devices that sounded collectively discordant and seemed individually unfit to withstand scrutiny in the harsh light of the new Aristotelianizing world.2 If an Augustinian program was to succeed — if place was to be made in high-medieval Scholasticism for a system of thought defiantly bearing witness to the spirit of the Augustinian and Neoplatonic vision as Bonaventure, Pecham and Matthew had conceived it - then the whole structure would have to be redesigned. A new plan would have to be drafted to specifications this time indisputably conforming to the requirements for technical precision and Aristotelianizing worldliness current in the schools. Nothing less was required than another Augustinian synthesis, even more relentlessly detailed, concrete and systematic — philosophical in Van Steenberghen's rigorous sense — than classical Augustinianism had been.
- Modern scholarly discussion of this issue goes back again to Gilson's seminal article from 1934, "Sur quelques difficultes," cited above, general introduction, n. 37. Patrick J. Doyle, The Disintegration of Divine Illumination Theory in the Franciscan School, 1285-1300: Peter of Trabes, Richard of Middleton, William of Ware (Ph.D. diss., Marquette University, 1983/Ann Arbor [University Microfilms], 1984), pp. 13-15, offers a nice statement of the problem, quoting notable passages from Gilson's article as well as from his History of Christian Philosophy and David Knowles's Evolution of Medieval Thought.
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Nowhere was this clearer than with the doctrine of divine illumination. The theoretical components from which the classic doctrine had been built, dealing in turn with the divine role in humankind's knowledge of truth, the primary objects of its intellection and the origin in mind of a number of special concepts, including that of God, had always carried a danger of ontologism. How could intellect have recourse to something divine as normative standard or ultimate object or conceptual foundation without seeing divinity itself? Bringing the discrete elements together, by reinforcing the doubts each piece engendered on its own, only magnified the threat, calling for heroic effort to show how the doctrine could be defended without drawing in God as direct object of the wayfarer's mind. By the 1270s even sympathizers were concluding that the labors of Bonaventure, Pecham and Matthew were insufficient, and the revision of their work among those of Augustinian temperament had begun. The dominant voice in the revisionist current was that of Henry of Ghent. He advanced an interpretation of knowledge and mind that, for all its debt to the classic Augustinianism of the decades preceding, was distinctly different and, along with the novel understanding of divine illumination it promoted, rapidly won the field among thinkers valuing Augustine's special emphasis on intimacy between God and intellect. For the rest of the thirteenth century and some of the fourteenth as well, his ideas were those typically associated with Augustinian thought. What Henry did was to prolong the life of the notion of divine illumination in normal human cognition, only recently codified in a coherent doctrine by the classic Augustinians, but at the price of cleaving in two the seamless structure his immediate predecessors had so painstakingly contrived. He accomplished this in effect by drawing a clear theoretical line separating the normative action of divine illumination as guarantor of certitude from noetic matters concerning divinity's role in ideogenesis and attendant questions of reference and an objective ontological ground. With this simple maneuver he managed to retain the paradigmatic Augustinian notion that knowing truth required an infusion of light from divinity and yet, by avoiding the suggestion that such illumination implicated mind in knowing God, insulate himself from charges of ontologism. From his perspective, the set of issues regarding the cognitive object, especially in sensitive cases concerning special concepts like first intentions, had to be kept apart from discussion of illumination most typically speak-
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ing, regarded in fact as dependent on an entirely different mental process. One might suppose this meant reverting to the eclecticism and ideological imprecision of William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste, where a variety of approaches to divine intervention in normal human understanding were not bound up in an integrated whole, but such was not the case. Henry was even more responsive to the systematizing and Aristotelianizing demands of late thirteenth-century Scholasticism than Bonaventure, Pecham and Matthew had been. When he split the classic doctrine of illumination in two, it was to insure that his full account of knowledge was more precise, more concrete and more coherent than anything Augustinians had come up with before. Equally important, his success in realizing this philosophical program depended on preserving one of the most significant ideological advances the classic Augustinians had made. Besides combining the role of divine light as revealer of truth with its function in ideogenesis the move Henry's theoretical fastidiousness led him to reject their unified doctrine of divine illumination had contrived to absorb William's and Robert's vision of a dynamic naturally inclining mind towards God as ultimate cognitive goal, the most dramatic result of which was their theory of the wayfarer's natural knowledge of divinity in a general concept of being. To this achievement Henry remained steadfastly true, continuing to tie the ideogenic and referential conditions of mind's understanding of fundamental concepts to a sense of its inclination into God as authentic object and on this basis erecting a theory of natural knowledge of God in first intentions. Given his strict separation between the truth-giving process of divine illumination and the mechanics of God's role in generating concepts, he could in fact spin out the theory with less fear of the ontologizing pitfalls his predecessors had struggled to avoid. Confidence in mind's intimate access to God, heretofore bound either to the paradigmatic illuminationist image for knowing truth or the mystical conception of the via contemplativa, could thus be completely transferred to a notion of God as natural object of intellect, a philosophical figure free of the ontologist odors of much of preceding Augustinian noetics and epistemology but still redolent of the devotional tradition in which illuminationist language had flourished. Henry's modulation of the Augustinian heritage did not in fact stop there, for his mature ideas once more reconfigured, virtually to
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TO PART THREE
the point of doing away with them altogether, the theoretical boundaries he had worked to erect early in his career — particularly between analysis of knowledge of truth and philosophical justification for knowing God in the concept of being. Yet from first to last, his pronouncements on these matters confirmed the precariousness of the classic Augustinians' views, marking the beginnings of a new direction in the Augustinian current of high medieval thought. His initial insistence on radically distinguishing God as light of truth from God as object to be known thus inaugurated a third stage in the history of the developmental processes with which this study is concerned. The history of this third stage is largely the story of Henry's speculations alone, because for all the resonance his ideas found in scholastic debates during the decades before and after his death, few thinkers adopted them with any inclination to reproduce authentically the intellectual vision from which they had originally sprung. Henry more readily stimulated reaction than adherence. Yet he did have his followers, some so slavish as to repeat him word for word with minimal elaboration or comment, and two are worth looking at, the few occasions when they advanced beyond him sometimes clarifying ambiguities in his thought or confirming the interpretation of debatable points. If there can be no certainty such glosses on Henry's ideas accurately represent his intentions, they at least reveal how he was understood by sympathetic minds among his contemporaries and immediate successors. Interestingly enough, this third stage of development brings us for a moment back out of the world of exclusively Franciscan theologians. Henry was a secular priest, canon at two wealthy sees in Flanders and vigorous opponent of the privileges of the mendicant orders in the acrimonious debates about them in late thirteenthcentury Paris.3 He incepted in theology at Paris in 1276, assuming one of the secular chairs at the university, where he taught and wrote 3 Henry probably studied at the cathedral school of Tournai. By 1277 he was archdeacon of Bruges and in 1278 or 1279 was appointed to the same office at Tournai. On his role in the political struggle over the privileges granted the mendicants by Martin TV's bull of 1281, see Heinrich Finke, "Das Pariser Nationalkonzil vom Jahre 1290," Romische Quartalschrift 9 (1895): 171-82; Leopold Delisle, "Das Pariser Nationalkonzil vom Jahre 1290," Journal des Savants (1895): 240-44; Palemon Glorieux, "Prelats francais contre religieux mendiants. Autour de la Bulle 'Ad fructus uberes,'" Revue d'Histoire de I'Eglise de France 11 (1925): 309-31, 471-95; Raymond Macken, "Ein wichtiges Ineditum zum Kampf liber das Beichtprivilegium des Bettelorden: der 'Tractatus super facto praelatorum et fratrum' des Heinrich von Gent," FS 60 (1978): 301-310; and most importantly Ludwig Hodl's "Theologiege-
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in the theology faculty almost without interruption till near his death in 1293.4 In 1277 Bishop Tempier named him to the commission of masters appointed to scrutinize doctrines being taught at the university for their orthodoxy, the report of which most likely served as basis for Tempier's condemnation of 219 propositions that same year.5 He was, in a word, a leading light in the conservative constellation arrayed against the reputedly extreme Aristotelianism of such as Thomas and, even more, a circle of the radicals in the Faculty of Arts.6 schichtliche Einfuhrung" to Henry of Ghent, Tractatus super facto praelatorum etfratrum, ed. Ludwig Hodl and Marcel Haverals, Henrici Opera, 17 (Leuven, 1989), pp. vii-cxvii. + It is possible that Henry was not at Paris during the academic year 1283-84. The critical reconstruction of his biography began with Franz Ehrle, "Beitrage zu den Biographen bertihmter Scholastiker: Heinrich von Gent," Archiv fur Literatur- und Krchengeschichte des Mittelalters 1 (1885): 365-401, 507-8 (translated into French by J. Raskop as "Recherches critiques sur la biographic de Henri de Gand dit le Docteur Solennel," Bulletins de la Societe Historique et Litteraire de Tournai 21, suppl. [1887]: 7-51). For scholarly progress on the subject since then, see Hippolyte Delehaye, "Nouvelles recherches sur Henri de Gand," Messager des Sciences Historiques ou Archives des Arts et de la Bibliographie de Belgique (1886): 328-55, 438-55, and (1887): 59-85; and "Notes sur Henri de Gand," ibid. (1888): 421-56; Alphonse Wauters, "Sur les documents apocryphes qui concerneraient Henri de Gand, le docteur solennel, et qui le rattachent a la famille Goethals," Bulletin de la Commission Rqyale d'Histoire (Brussels), 4th series, 14 (1887): 179-90; "Sur la signification du mot latin Formator, a propos de Henri de Gand," ibid. 16 (1889): 12-15; and "Le mot latin Formator, au moyen age, avait la signification de Professeur," ibid. 16 (1889): 400-410; Napoleon De Pauw, "Note sur le vrai nom du Docteur solennel Henri de Gand," ibid. 15 (1888): 135—45; and "Dernieres decouvertes concernant le Docteur solennel Henri de Gand, fils de Jean le Tailleur (Formator ou de Sceppere)," ibid. 16 (1889): 27~138; Clemens Baeumker, 'Jahresbericht iiber die abendlandische Philosophic im Mittelalter. 1890," Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 5 (1892): 113-38; Maurice De Wulf, Histoire de la philosophie en Belgique (Brussels, 1910), pp. 80-116; Martin Grabmann, Mittelalterliche lateinische Aristotelesuberset^ungen und Aristoteleskommentare in Handschriften spanischer Bibliotheken, Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-philologische und historische Klasse, 1928, 5. Abhandlung (Munich, 1928), pp. 95-96; Palemon Glorieux, La litterature quodlibetique de 1260 a 1320, 1, 177; Repertoire des maitres en theologie de Paris au XIII' siecle, 1, 387; and Aux origines de la Sorbonne, I: Robert de Sorbon (Paris, 1966), p. 809; Jean Paulus, Henri de Gand: Essai sur les tendances de sa metaphysique (Paris, 1938), pp. xi-xxiii; Raymond Macken's introduction to Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet I, ed. Macken, Henrici Opera, 5 (Leuven, 1979), pp. vi-xii; and Robert Wielockx in his edition of Giles of Rome, Apologia, pp. 152, 171, and 239-40. For other works on Henry's life, consult the bibliography at the end of Raymond Macken, "Hendrik van Gent (Henricus de Gandavo), wijsgeer en theoloog," in Nationaal biografisch woordenboek, 8:377-95 (Brussels, 1979). J See Henry's own statement in his Quodlibet 2, q. 9 (in Quodlibet II, ed. Robert Wielockx, Henrici Opera, 6 [Leuven, 1983], p. 67, 11. 21-24). b On Henry's ongoing debate with Thomas's follower, Giles of Rome, see Edgar Hocedez, "Gilles de Rome et Henri de Gand sur la distinction reelle (1276-1287),"
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All Henry had to say on the issues of illumination, human cognition and knowledge of God can be found in two massive works, his Summa quaestionum ordinariarum and his collected Quodlibeta.' The former is a greatly revised, most likely expanded, compilation of questions probably disputed in class while he was bachelor or master of theology; the latter simply his final redactions, polished for publication through the university bookseller, of the special open disputations he held practically every year from his first as master in 1276 up through 1291 or 1292. Although the Summa gives the impression of having been composed all at once, it is clear Henry wrote, or at least revised, it in sections over the course of his long career, so that the finished version progresses chronologically from beginning to end in parallel with the obviously sequential series of quodlibets.8 It is absolutely crucial to keep this chronology of composition
Gregorianum 8 (1927): 358-84; and "Le premier Quodlibet d'Henri de Gand (1276)," Gregorianum 9 (1928): 92-117; Jean Paulus, "Les disputes d'Henri de Gand et de Gilles de Rome sur la distinction de 1'essence et de 1'existence," AHDLMA 13 (1940—42): 323-58; and again Wielockx, introduction to Giles of Rome, Apologia. ' The editions of Henry's works chiefly used in the present book are Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, 2 vols. (Paris, 1520/reprinted St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1953); and Quodlibeta, 2 vols. (Paris, 1518/reprinted Leuven, 1961). Henceforth all citations of these works will be made to Summa and Quod., followed by volume and folio numbers. A critical reedition of all Henry's writings has been begun at the De WulfMansion Center of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven - see Macken, Bibliotheca manmcripta Henrici de Gandavo, Henrici Opera, 1-2 [Leuven, 1979]; "Die Editionstechnik der 'Opera Omnia' des Heinrich von Gent," FS 63 [1981]: 227-39; and "Der Aufbau eines wissenschaftlichen Unternehmens: Die 'Opera Omnia' des Heinrich von Gent," FS 65 [1983]: 82-96; and Ludwig Hodl, "Literar- und Problemgeschichtliches zur neuen kritischen Edition der Opera omnia des Heinrich von Gent," Freiburger ^eitschrift fur Philosophie und Theologie 32 (1985): 295-322; and "Der Projektband der kritischen Edition der Summa des Heinrich von Gent," Ephemerides Theological Lovanienses 64 (1988): 225-28. Quodlibets I, II, VI, VII, IX, X, XII and XIII, and Summa, a. 31—46, have appeared so far, references to which will henceforth be cited as Henrici Opera, followed by volume and page number. 8 In this study Henry's works are dated generally according to the schema devised by Jose Gomez Caffarena, "Cronologia de la 'Suma' de Enrique de Gante por relacion a sus 'Quodlibetos,'" Gregorianum 38 (1957): 116-33. Since Henry systematically revised all his works for publication, sometimes making the revisions in several stages, no chronology for them will ever be perfect, but Gomez Caffarena's comes close to the mark, with my own work (see, for example, Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge in the Thought of Henry of Ghent [Cambridge, Mass., 1985], pp. 117, n. 65; and 119, n. 68) and that of the editors of the Leuven edition suggesting only minor modifications. A table of the various dates proposed for the Quodlibets can be found in Macken's introduction to his edition of Henry's Quodlibet I, Henrici Opera, 5:xvii. For a short bibliography of studies on dating Henry's works, see Raymond Macken, "La theorie de l'illumination divine dans la philosophic d'Henri de Gand," RTAM 39 (1972): 88-89, n. 26. Recent ideas on the publication - as opposed
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continually in mind, as Henry's thought was profoundly developmental, perhaps more so than that of any high-medieval thinker besides Duns Scotus, and can be understood only if one gives due consideration to growth and change. First of Henry's followers to be examined is the Gascon friar, Vital du Four, who studied theology at Paris in the late 1280s and early 1290s, where he surely heard Henry of Ghent, at least attending his public disputations.9 During the academic year 1295-1296, Vital was lecturer in the Franciscan studium generate at Montpellier, and he is found holding the same position in Toulouse in 1297. Sometime afterwards but before 1307 he rose to master of theology, although it is not clear where or exactly what year. By 1307, when he was named provincial minister of Franciscans in Aquitaine, his career as an ecclesiastic had taken off, propelled by the patronage of fellow countryman, Clement V, first of the Avignonese popes. He was made cardinal priest of St. Martin in Montibus in 1312, then cardinal bishop of Albano in 1321, dying in 1327 a wealthy and privileged member of the religious establishment. Vital's literary career as a scholastic was probably finished by 1300. Of his works important for the present study, the first Quodlibet was to composition - of the Summa in one or two blocks are discussed by Hodl in the "Introduction" to Raymond Macken's edition of Henry of Ghent, Summa (Quaestiones ordinariae) art. XXXI XXXIV, Henrici Opera, 27 (Leuven, 1991): pp. xxiv-xxviii; Macken in his "Etude critique" in the same work, pp. xlv—Ivii; and Marrone, "Henry of Ghent in Mid-Career as Interpreter of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas," in Henry of Ghent. Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Occasion of the 700th Anniversary of his Death (1293), ed. Willy Vanhamel (Leuven, 1996), pp. 208-9. 9 On Vital's life and the dating of his works, see Ferdinand M. Delorme, "Praefatio," in Vital du Four, Quodlibeta tria, ed. Ferdinand M. Delorme, v-xxii (Rome, 1947); Franz Pelster, "Neue Textausgaben von Werken des hi. Thomas, des Johannes Pecham und Vitalis de Furno," Gregorianum 31 (1950): 284-303; and Valens Heynck, "Zur Busslehre des Vitalis de Furno," FS 41 (1959): 163-212; and "Vitalis de Furno," in Lexikonfur Theologie und Kirche, 2nd ed., ed. Josef Hofer and Karl Rahner, 10:819-20 (Freiburg im Br., 1965). See also Charles-Victor Langlois, "Vidal du Four, Frere Mineur," in Histoire Litteraire de la France, 36:295-305 and 647-52 (Paris, 1924 & 1927); Delorme, "L'oeuvre scolastique de maitre Vital du Four d'apres le MS. 95 de Todi," La France Franciscaine 9 (1926): 421-71; and "Les questions breves 'De rerum principle' du Cardinal Vital du Four," Sophia 10 (1942): 290-327; Ephrem Longpre, "Pour la defense de Duns Scot," RFN 18 (1926): 32-42; Palemon Glorieux, "Pour en finir avec le 'De rerum principio,'" AFH 31 (1938): 225-34; P. Godefroy, "Vital du Four," in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique 15, 2:3102-3115 (Paris, 1950); Friedrich Stegmiiller, "Vitalis de Furno," in Repertorium biblicum medii aevi, 5:424-25 (Madrid, 1955); John E. Lynch, The Theory of Knowledge of Vital du Four (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1972); and Alexandre-Jean Gondras, "Un commentaire avignonnais sur le Liber de sex prinapiis, attribue a 'Maitre Vital,'" AHDLMA 42 (1975): 183-317.
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written before 1295 and surely after 1290.10 Between 1297 and 1300 he composed Quodlibets II and III, presumably at Toulouse, as well as his most significant piece on mind and epistemology, a collection of eight Quaestiones de cognitione.^ An inveterate plagiarizer, he incorporated stretches of other authors' writings into his own work so frequently and on so vast a scale as to make him exceptional even at a time when such unattributed copying was established practice. He gives the impression of being a careerist who published sufficiently to advance but never engaged deeply enough in ideas to bother with originality. Whatever the reason, his views on knowledge and illumination are so derivative of Henry that they can be used only to shed light on the master. Indeed, most of the passages from Quaestiones de cognitione cited here are pastiches of quotations from Henry's works. Since there is so little of Vital himself in them, the chronology of their composition is of virtually no importance. For the record, it should be pointed out that despite his debt to Henry in epistemology and noetics, Vital was not on all matters a follower of Henry's thought. A truly catholic bricoleur, his writings are strewn with verbatim insertions drawn also from John Pecham, Matthew of Aquasparta, Roger Marston, Giles of Rome, Godfrey of Fontaines and Peter Olivi.12 Second of Henry's followers is the English Franciscan, Richard of Gonington. No less uncritical an admirer of the Flemish master's epistemology and noetics than Vital, he is referred to by some English scholastics of the early fourteenth century as Henry's disciple.13 By rights he belongs to the generation of Duns Scotus, for he taught at Oxford as master of theology sometime around 1305 1307, before 10 Vital's Quodlibet I appears in Vital du Four. Quodlibeta tria, ed. Ferdinand M. Delorme, Spicilegium Pontificii Athenaei Antoniani, 5 (Rome, 1947). An early edition of Quodlibet I appeared in Ferdinand M. Delorme, "Le Quodlibet I du Cardinal Vital du Four," La France Franciscaine 18 (1935): 113-42. 11 Quodlibets II and III have been edited by Delorme in Quodlibeta tria, cited in the previous note. Henceforth all citations of Vital's quodlibets will be made to this edition. The Quaestiones 8 de cognitione have also been edited by Delorme in "Le Cardinal Vital du Four. Huit questions disputees sur le probleme de la connaissance," AHDLMA 2 (1927): 156-336. 12 See Godfroy, "Vital du Four," col. 3107-3108; Delorme, "L'oeuvre scolastique de maitre Vital," p. 28; and Stephen D. Dumont, "Giles of Rome and the 'De rerum principio' Attributed to Vital du Four," AFH 77 (1984): 81-109. 13 See Franz Pelster, "Franziskanerlehrer um die Wende des 13. und zu Anfang des 14. Jahrhunderts in zwei ehemaligen Turiner Hss.," Gregorianum 18 (1937): 308-9.
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becoming provincial minister of England in 1310.14 Yet because his account of knowing essence, set fully in the context of Henry's metaphysics, elucidates a point never explicitly addressed in Henry's own work, he is included here in examination of the Augustinian current's third stage. Among Richard's extant writings are a relevant question from his Quaestiones ordinariae and another from his Quodlibet /, both products of his regency at Oxford or Cambridge around 1306-1310, the Quodlibet following close upon the Quaestiones.1^ His early teaching was probably well known to Duns, and it would seem that his exposition of ideas drawn from Henry was in some instances expressly intended to defend them against Scotus's criticism.16 Because most of his activity postdates the period covered in the present study, he, like Vital, will not be interrogated for evidence of further development of Henry's thought but rather used for historical corroboration of an interpretation of doctrines assigned to the master himself. It is Henry who dominates the Augustinian stage after Pecham and before Scotus, his defenders figuring as mere epigones in his presence.
14 For what is known of Richard's life, see Victorin Doucet, "L'oeuvre scolastique de Richard de Conington, O.F.M.," AFH 29 (1936): 396-442; Stephen F. Brown, "Sources for Ockham's Prologue to the Sentences," FrS 26 (1966): 36~65; and the entry "Conington, Richard de," in A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, ed. A.B. Emden, 1:447 (Oxford, 1957). 15 Question 1 from the Quaestiones ordinariae has been edited by Doucet in "L'oeuvre scolastique," pp. 430-38; question 2 from Quodlibet I by Stephen F. Brown in "Richard of Conington and the Analogy of the Concept of Being," FS 48 (1966): 300-307. "' The editors of the Vatican edition of Duns's complete works speculated on Duns's knowledge of Conington as an expositor of Henry's ideas - see references to that edition below, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 81; and Pt. 4, ch. 14, n. 86.
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The determination to dispel the slightest whiff of ontologism marked Henry's approach to the epistemological and noetic legacy of the classic Augustinians from the start. Key to his efforts was uncompromising fidelity to the analytical device already employed by his Augustinian predecessors, the distinction between object of knowledge (obiectum cognitum) and means of knowing (ratio cognoscendi)} Where the classic Augustinians had regarded this binary opposition as a tool occasionally indispensable for defending the theory of illumination from particular charges of ontologism, Henry made it into a structural principle of his noetics, intended permanently to insulate the processes of illumination from criticism at any point.2 At first glance the difference between the two approaches is hardly apparent. Henry agreed with the classic Augustinians that seeing God as full object of understanding was not what was entailed in any of divine illumination's manifestations in normal cognition in the world of sin, since God or a divine exemplar entered into human cognition on earth as manifest object only under the most extraordinary circumstances. Not even saving grace could fortify mind's natural powers sufficiently to allow so exalted a vision; what was required was an exceptional infusion of light almost never delivered outside of heaven.3 A few privileged individuals had been granted the blessing before their death, perhaps no more than Moses on the mountain, Paul in rapture on the road to Damascus and Benedict in an incident reported in Gregory's account of his life.4 For most Christians, such cognitive access to God would come only with beatitude. Like his Augustinian predecessors, Henry insisted that where God was involved in the wayfarer's normal processes of intellection, it 1
See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5rE); and also a. 1, q. 2 (l:6rl); and a. 24, q. 9 (l:146rV). 2 On classic use of the opposition, see above, Part 2, ch. 5, pp. 141-42; ch. 6, p. 147; and ch. 7, pp. 186-87. 3 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:6vl). 4 Ibid.
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was as means of knowing.5 There were, however, two ways such a means could take part in the cognitive act. An element extrinsic to the perceptive power might serve as means of knowing something else while at the same time being in some measure perceived.6 For example, the reflection in a mirror brought the eyes to seize upon that of which it was an image but also offered itself as object to be seen. Henry made ample use of this model of cognitive instrumentality in accounting for God's role in the wayfarer's understanding, taking it as foundational for his version of classic Augustinian theories about natural knowledge of God. He steadfastly denied it had anything to do with divinity's role in normal, truth-seeking acts of mind.7 Instead, God intervened in the wayfarer's apprehension of truth as means of knowing alone (ratio cognoscendi tantum)^ Vital faithfully echoed Henry on this score.9 Just as, in contrast to an image in a mirror, the sensible species in the senses or intelligible species in intellect was cognitive means in no way seen or known, so God as revealer of truth brought intellect to conceive of something else without revealing himself at all.10 Thus Henry returned to the views of John Pecham, who had also compared God's role in illumination of truth to that of sensible species in sensation and drawn a sharp distinction between acting as only means of knowing and acting as
5
Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:6vl): "Si vero sciatur sincera veritas aspiciendo ad divinum exemplar ut ad rationem cognoscendi, hoc modo posuit Plato omnem veritatem cognosci aspiciendo ad exemplar aeternum. . . . Hanc igitur sententiam Platonis insecutus est Augustinus. . . ." 6 See Henry, Summa (Qg. ord.), a. 33, q. 3, ad 4. (Henrici Opera, 27:161, 11. 8—12). In this passage Henry was not drawing the distinction so as to use it in exactly the same way it is employed here, but his words can nonetheless be taken as a legitimate and concise statement of the general point. ' To this degree Henry agreed with Matthew that God as mirror was not an appropriate model for understanding the normal procedure of divine illumination. See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 99; and ch. 8, n. 71. 8 See Henry's precise language in Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:6rl); a. 2, q. 1 (l:23vB); and a. 24, q. 8, ad 2. (l:145vR). () Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 331). 10 See above, n. 6, and also Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:8vA): "Quod enim non habet rationem obiecti, nullo modo potest dici esse per se and in se cognitum a nobis; utputa species sensibilis in oculo, quia potentia supra sensum, nullum potest facere sensum, neque species intelligibilis informans intellectum. Lux autem divina illustrans mentem in notitiam veritatis simpliciter vel sincere solum se habet ut ratio intelligendi, non ut obiectum visui et intellectui." In the passage cited above, n. 9, Vital reproduces in abbreviated form the very words quoted here.
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means and object, too.11 He merely rendered Pecham's thoughts more technically precise, defining a means of knowing as a formal entity somehow resident in intellect and activating its intellective potential.12 The innovation of Henry's approach becomes evident only when one goes beyond his choice of analytical devices, all of which were inherited, to examine the use he made of them. For in his early works, Henry insisted on interpreting the description of God's illuminative role as means alone in the strictest, most literal sense, excluding even the merest implication that divinity thereby also served as object of mind. With such uncompromising standards, he was led to segregate, as theoretically unrelated, occasions where the mechanism of divine intervention had been used to resolve the epistemological, and normative, problem of truth from those where it was applied to matters of the cognitive object and ideogenesis. The upshot was that noetic processes and functions concerning God's role as guarantor for knowledge of truth were kept absolutely separate from those accounting for the wayfarer's knowledge of God. In the interest of philosophical purity, Henry opened a cleavage straight down the middle of the doctrine of divine illumination the classic Augustinians had only recently made unified and whole. Henry was the first among thirteenth-century Augustinians to make this fundamental division and defend it in explicit and unmitigated terms. Moreover he believed that it was true to the intention of Augustine, who, he thought, had expected his readers to discriminate between instances where God related to mind as somehow object and those where God was ratio tantum.n Since the heart of 11 See above, Part 2, ch. 5, especially nn. 86 and 89. This time Henry was ignoring the warnings of Matthew, who had criticized Pecham's ideas on this point — see again above, Ft. 2, ch. 5, n. 99. In Summa, a. 24, q. 6, ad 3. (l:143vC), Henry used language to describe the distinction especially reminiscent of Pecham's words in the passage cited in n. 89. There is more on this distinction and Henry's elaborations on it below, Part 3, ch. 10, pp. 300-2. 12 Summa (Qg. ord.), a. 34, q. 5 (Henrici Opera, 27:205, 11. 2-4): "Ratio intelligendi in intelligentia est esse formale quo intelligibile facit intelligentiam talem in actu, quale ipsum est, cum de se, in quantum intelligentia est, non est nisi in potentia tale." It is important to be forewarned that this volume of the Leuven edition of Henry's Opera Omnia sometimes presents readings patently inferior to those of the Radius edition of the Summa reprinted at St. Bonaventure in 1953 (see above, introduction to Part 3, n. 7) - as, for example, in the sentences following the ones quoted just above. 13 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2, ad 5. (l:8rR); and a. 24, q. 8, ad opp. (l:145v-46r[S]). For more on Henry's view of the distinction, see below, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 7.
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Augustinian illumination had always lain with the normative matter of knowledge of truth and attainment of certitude, it is hardly surprising Henry chose to privilege that particular aspect of theory of knowledge with exclusive linkage to the circumstances where God and his reasons acted as means of knowing alone. To see how he worked out the details, one must look at the vision, laid out in the first years of his magisterium and never again in just the same manner, of the wayfarer's cognition at all grades of comprehension, including those where God had no direct role. Because Henry was more sanguine than Bonaventure, Pecham or even Matthew about mind's power to act without intervention from God, his view of knowledge embraced a greater variety of types than had previously been the case. Henry's cognitive schema revolved around his concept of truth. As he explained it most broadly, being true constituted that aspect of a thing by which it was object of intellect; indeed it could be said that truth itself was intellect's objective domain.14 Other ways of putting this were that the precise nature (praecisa ratio] of truth was intelligibility, or that truth was that aspect of a thing relating it to mind (respectus ad intellectuiri).^ In short, only what was true could be known, and whatever was known was ipso facto true. Yet there was another, more philosophically revealing notion of truth, for a thing was properly designated "true" insofar as it contained within itself that which the exemplar according to which it had been created set forth. 16 Restating Henry's formula, Vital simply said that a thing was true insofar as it represented the exemplar according to which it was made.17 The implications of all this were clear. Both Henry and Vital, like the classic Augustinians and even Grosseteste before, ascribed to a view of truth that applied to knowledge of simple objects, a fact differentiating them from strict Aristotelianizers and setting them in line with thinkers whose epistemology owed more to Augustine. 14 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:4vC); and also Summa, a. 2, q. 6 (l:27rE): ". . . . veritas rei est id quo res scitur et intelligitur, quia ipsa est proprium obiectum intellectus." 15 Henry, Summa (Qg. ord.), a. 33, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:137, 11. 41-42; and 139, 1. 00-140, 1. 3). 1(1 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5rD): "[Quaelibet res potest considerari] inquantum in esse suo habet quod de ea exemplar ad quod est repraesentat. Sic convenit ei intentio veri. Intantum enim vera est quaecumque res, inquantum in se continet quod exemplar eius repraesentat." '' Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 324).
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Moreover, as with nearly all Augustinians, so for these thinkers knowing the truth of simple cognition entailed making a judgment based on comparing object to exemplar, so that some minimally complex procedure of mind was bound up with knowledge even at what would appear to be its simplest stage. Yet despite the echoes of Augustine, Henry was more generous about the possibility of absolutely simple acts of intellect and less demanding of the need for illuminative intervention from God than were the classic Augustinians. Characterizing knowledge as the correlative in the knowing subject of the true object, he continued by defining it in the most general sense possible (scire large] as certain understanding (certa notitia), without error or deception, of a thing as it was.18 Thus all knowledge scientia most broadly construed entailed a minimal degree of certitude, the question being in what it consisted and how it was attained. There were those, Henry noted, who maintained that, left completely to its own devices (ex puris naturalibus), mind had no possibility of attaining knowledge construed along these lines, no matter how loosely. Instead, for intellect truly to know something it had to receive a supernatural infusion of intellective light from God, the truth-giving intervention Henry typically referred to as special divine illumination (specialis illustmtio divina) but at times simply divine illumination (divina illustmtio) or the illumination commonly available (illustratio communis} to mind.19 Defenders of this position character-
18
Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 1 (l:lvB): "Dicendum quod scire large accepto ad omnem notitiam certain qua cognoscitur res sicut est absque omni fallacia et deceptione." See also Summa, a. 6, q. 2 (l:43rL). It is interesting to note that according to this broad definition even sensory cognition qualified as knowledge, although it was not scire properly speaking - see Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:4vB-C). 19 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:4rB). Other references to "specialis illustratio" in this sense appear in the same question, ad 1. and ad 2. (l:8rN & O). For "divina illustratio" broadly see the same question, (l:7vM); for "illustratio communis," Summa, a. 13, q. 5 (l:93rOJ. "Special illumination" of this sort was to be distinguised from any other illumination from God, as for instance the exceptional light of grace wherein mind saw the divinity as full and beatific object - see above, n. 3 - although Henry occasionally referred to such other illuminations as "special." (In Summa, a. 6, q. 1 [l:42vD]; and a. 13, q. 6 [l:94rC], Henry refers to the illumination leading to truth as a "divina illustratio generalis" in order to distinguish it from an even higher illumination - referred to as "specialis" in these passages - which he thought brought theology to the level of a science. On Henry's "special light of theology," see Stephen Dumont, "Theology as a Science and Duns Scotus's Distinction between Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition," Speculum 64 [1989]: 585-89.) The fact that Vital adopted Henry's standard usage with absolute consistency would indicate
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ized it as faithful to Augustine, whose notion of true knowledge as dependent on judgmental recourse to a standard above mind imposed, they said, so heavy a burden on all acts worthy of the verb "to know."20 Among their number must surely be included Bonaventure and his followers. For all his sympathy with the Augustinian line, Henry objected that such a posture derogated from the dignity of human mind, in no uncertain language insisting to the contrary that any human being could come to knowledge without special illumination, solely on his or her own power.21 By this he did not mean to exclude an indirect role for divinity, for God exercised on all intellection a general influence (generalis influentid) analogous to his function as first mover in all natural motion.22 Yet, sometimes calling the influence "general providence," Henry apparently regarded it as simply the noetic expression of God's creative role, endowing each mind with its natural intellectual light, to which degree he endorsed John of La Rochelle's opinion that God was illuminator just by virtue of being creator.23 Having disposed of the most ambitious application of a theory of divine illumination, Henry was then obligated to explain exactly what he thought the wayfarer's knowledge consisted in. Here is where he laid out his scheme of cognitive levels. He chose to begin at the bottom of the ladder, and since for him knowledge formally entailed certainty, that meant starting with knowledge that was least certain.24 According to Henry, the most primitive grade of knowledge obtained when mind knew the true (verurri) but not yet the truth (veritas).23 Vital that his readers already took such language to be technically specific - see for instance Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 311 and 324). 20 See the first citation given above, n. 19. 21 Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:4vB): "Absolute ergo concedere oportet quod homo per suam animam absque omni speciali divina illustratione potest aliqua scire aut cognoscere, et hoc ex puris naturalibus. Contrarium enim dicere multum derogat dignitati animae et humanae naturae." See also Henry's comments immediately after introducing the so-called Augustinian position in the same question (l:4rB). 22 See the continuation of the passage from Summa, a. 1, a. 2 (l:4vB), quoted in the preceding note, and also the same question, ad 1. (l:8rN). 23 See Henry Summa, a. 3, q. 5 (l:30rT). In Summa, a. 1, q. 7 (l:17rK), Henry divided God's general action into his role as "universale causans" (that is, creator) and as "universale movens" (conservator of his creation). For Rochelle's view, see above, Part 2, intro., n. 4. 24 See Henry, Summa, a. 6, q. 2 (l:43r-v[L]). 25 Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:4vC): "Aliud tamen est scire de creatura id quod verum est in ea, et aliud est scire eius veritatem; ut alia sit cognitio qua cognoscitur res,
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adopted his words without modification.26 At minimum their statement reaffirmed the fact that all acts of intellect were by definition directed towards what was true, but the purpose being to mark off one cognitive level from another, the important distinction lay between "true" and "truth." The problem is that neither in Henry's early works nor in Vital's at any point in his career is it exactly clear how to draw the boundary between the two. From the beginning Henry's language suggested two lines of attack.27 On the one hand, knowing the true involved grasping just that which a thing was (id quod res est}, while coming to truth required seizing the formal whatness (quid est). From this perspective the level of knowledge attained corresponded to something about the object, specifically the clarity or fullness in which it was perceived. On the other hand, in knowing the true mind worked by simple understanding (simplex intelligentia}'., getting to truth depended on compounding and dividing (intelligentia componente et dividente]. Here the emphasis lay on the character of the mental act — precisely its simplicity or complexity. Again Vital echoed Henry with exactly the same phrases.28 Although Henry may have intended these two approaches to be fully complementary, his early work made no attempt to bring them together. The first set "true," pointing to less than an object's "whatness," against a "truth" residing in the profound reaches of "whatness"
alia qua cognoscitur veritas eius." Not all scholars have taken note of this important distinction, although it was pointed out already in the work of Paulus, Henri de Gand, p. 4; and Theophiel Nys, De werking van het menselijk verstand volgens Hendrik van Gent (Leuven, 1949), p. 123. 26 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 322-23), which simply took up Henry's language from the previous note, inserting it into the author's own gloss. Martin Grabmann, Der gottliche Grund menschlicher Wahrheitserkenntnis, pp. 35-36, called attention to an anonymous text in MS Bibl. Vat., Vat. lat. 3054, drawing exactly the same distinction, even dividing knowledge of veritas as Henry would between that aided by divine light and that which was not. 27 See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:4vC): "Cognitione igitur intellectiva de re creata potest haberi duplex cognitio. Una qua praecise sci sive cognoscitur simplici intelligentia id quod res est. Alia qua scitur et cognoscitur intelligentia componente et dividente veritas ipsius rei. In prima cognitione intellectus noster omnino sequitur sensum, nee est aliquid conceptum in intellectu, quod non erat prius in sensu. Et ideo talis intellectus inquantum huiusmodi bene potest esse verus concipiendo sive cognoscendo rem sicuti est, quemadmodum et sensus quem sequitur, licet non concipiat vel intelligat ipsam veritatem rei certo iudicio percipiendo de ipsa quid sit, ut quod sit verus homo vel verus color." 28 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 323), a discussion dependent closely on Henry's words in the passage from which the quotation in the previous note is drawn.
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itself - that is, quiddity or essence - and indeed throughout his career Henry consistently identified truth with a thing's essence or quiddity. Of course, that had been Grosseteste's position in the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, with the difference that there truth, essence and quiddity were equated with Augustine's id quod est."29 Perhaps Henry was trying to maintain Grosseteste's early distinction in De veritate between quod est and truth while reading the latter term in line with the Commentary. Still, there is no perfect fit with either Grosseteste's early or later views. Henry went on to explain that in knowing "the true" mind laid hold only of what was available to the senses, and Vital repeated his words almost verbatim, adding, as often, his own comments and illustrations.30 Presumably both relied on an Aristotelianizing conviction that, since access to quiddity was the mark of intellect, any mental act not reaching so far had to be more or less equivalent to sensation. Henry even characterized knowledge of "the true" as an intellectus phantasticus?1 What could cognition amount to at this lower level? Once Henry contrasted knowledge simpliciter with the distinct (distinctive] understanding obtained after further consideration, as if this were a way to differentiate knowing the true from knowing truth.32 In the same vein he spoke of a confused or indeterminate knowledge of simple terms opposed to determinate knowledge of "truth of the quiddity" in dejinitiva rationed He would seem in both cases to have been moving 29
See Henry, Summa, a. 2, q. 6 (l:27rD); and Quodlibet II, q. 6 (ed. Robert Wielockx, Henrici Opera, 2), p.32. In Summa, a. 24, q. 8 (l:145rN), Henry used the even more authentically Aristotelian phrase "quod quid est" as equivalent to "truth." On Grosseteste, see above, Part 1, ch. 1, nn. 15, 20 and 21. For an interesting take on Henry's identification of knowledge of truth with knowledge of essence, arguing, somewhat differently from what is maintained in the present work, that his dissatisfaction with mind's grasp of essence led him even in the early articles of the Summa to doubt that truth could be attained by intellect without divine assistance, see Robert Pasnau, "Henry of Ghent and the Twilight of Divine Illumination," The Review of Metaphysics 49 (1995): especially 66-71. 30 On Henry, see above, n. 27, as well as Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5rD); and Quodlibet II, q. 6 (Henrici Opera, 2:32, 11. 58-60); for Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 323). The latter prudently added ("Huit questions," p. 324) that knowledge of the true, for all its similarity to sensation, took mind deeper (prqfundius) than the senses could penetrate, an observation perhaps reliant on Henry in Summa, a. 1, q. 2, ad opp. (l:8rS). 31 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 8 (l:145rM-N); and also, though less clearly, a. 13, q. 6 (l:94vD). y2 Henry Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:8vA). 3i Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 12 (l:22rK-L), significantly contrasting the prior knowledge, in significato nominis, from the subsequent, in dejinitiva ratione.
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towards the Aristotelian distinction between preliminary nominal knowledge and consequent understanding of quiddity in the definition, although the unambiguous exposition of such a scheme would appear only in his later works.34 His understanding along such lines remained at best inchoate at the beginning of his career. Significantly, Vital, while accepting much of Henry's language on this matter, was reluctant to carry the distinction so far. In question 8 of Quaestiones de cognitione he laid out what is essentially Henry's mature contrast between knowing "the true" as, in Vital's words, a "confusa manifestatio rei" and knowing truth in the definition.35 Adopting almost verbatim Roger Marston's arguments in his Quaestiones de anima, he roundly condemned such a position, apparently much too Aristotelianizing for his taste.36 If this is fair indication, by the late 1290s Henry's followers preferred a sanitized version of the master's thought, suppressing developments of his middle years in favor of the tenor of his earliest writings when Aristotelian themes had not yet been brought into full relief. Henry's second approach to "true" and "truth" saw knowledge of the two as different because the former was simple, the latter semidiscursive and necessitating a procedure of compounding and dividing after which intellect made a judgment (indicium) about what it had apprehended at the lower level.37 The reference to judgment in what constituted, strictly speaking, non-propositional cognition was sure sign of Augustinian influence, for though Henry possessed an authentically Aristotelian notion of compounding and dividing as leading to truly complex cognition, that was not what he had in 34 Robert Grosseteste had made an early attempt to explain this distinction in his Comm. Post. an. II, 2 (pp. 322—41). See also the interesting remarks of Stephen D. Dumont, "The quaestio si est and the Metaphysical Proof for the Existence of God according to Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus," FS 66 (1984): 342-49. Dumont's analysis of Henry's interpretation of Aristotle draws largely on writings from the middle of his career. 35 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 312-13.) 36 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 315-21). Against the Aristotelianizing view and in favor of a more strictly illuminative scheme (which is itself later rejected as too strict), Vital took up the arguments from Marston's Quaestiones de anima, q. 3 (in Quaestiones disputatae, BFS, 7 [Quaracchi, 1932], pp. 253-64, 265, 267-68). Marston's, and perforce Vital's, arguments were, it must be admitted, only incidentally directed against an emphasis on the distinction between confused and definitive knowledge, more immediately targeting the implied rejection of a normal divine illumination. 37 See the passage quoted above in n. 27, as well as Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5rD); and a. 24, q. 8 (l:145rN).
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mind here.38 Knowledge of truth in this instance was neither entirely complex nor entirely simple; in Henry's words it was a cognitio discretiva as opposed to the absolute cognitio simplicis notitiae of perceiving just "the true."39 This time Vital wholeheartedly supported him, even sharpening his terminology by adding that getting to truth required the power of reasoning (ratiocinando).40 But just as before, in the second approach the lower grade, knowledge of the true, remained — at this early point for Henry and always for Vital - shrouded in obscurity. All one can say is that the term by which Henry referred to this primitive form of knowledge, simplex intelligentia, held constant throughout his career, reminder that below truth knowledge was simple absolutely and in every sense of the word.41 To be honest, Henry was not much interested in knowledge of the true, his philosophical appetite aroused only at the level of knowing truth. Here he relied in his earliest work on the Augustinian instincts of his second approach, attuned to judgment and the relative simplicity or complexity of the cognitive act, putting off till later in his career capitalizing on the Aristotelianizing potential of his first line of reasoning, in which grasping the definition provided the critical difference. To explain why complexity of procedure was necessary to get to the second level of knowledge, Henry turned to the two most general terms known by mind, "being" and "true." Although as discussion of the first stage of cognition made plain, intellect knew every object insofar as it was true, "true" was not the precise attribute « por tne Aristotelian notion, see Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:14v—15r[B]), in contrast to an Augustinian interpretation of compounding and dividing leading to simple cognition in Summa, a. 24, q. 8 (l:145rN), cited in the preceding note. 39 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:8vA). In Summa, a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vX), Henry defined cognitio discretiva as "cum animadversione notitia, qua scilicet [intellectus] cognitum unum discernit ab alio." 40 Vital, Quaestwnes de cognitione. q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 324), which, except for a few additions, including ratiocinando, follows almost word for word Henry's Summa, a. 1. q. 2 (l:5rD), cited above n. 37. It must be a lapse on Vital's part that in this passage he exemplifies knowledge of the truth with a case of clearly prepositional knowledge. 41 Henry did not always use exactly the phrase, simplex intelligentia; approximations include: simplex notitia (see the first citation above in n. 39); cognitio simplicis apprehensionis (Summa, a. 1, q. 10, ad 3. [l:20vK]; and intellectus or intelligentia simpliaum (see Summa, a. 1, q. 2 [l:5rD]; a. 24. q. 8 [l:145rN]). Raphael Braun, Die Erkenntnislehre des Heinmh von Gent (Fribourg, 1916), pp. 43-44, mistakenly put Henry's simplex intelligentia on the level of what he called knowledge of logical truth. To the contrary, simplex intelligentia was precisely below knowledge of truth of any sort.
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mind recognized first, which was instead the absolutely fundamental "being" (ens).42 Perceiving an object as "true" required stepping beyond the absolute - which is to say, entirely non-relative - parameters of "being" to consider it in relation to something else.43 The pertinent relation was, of course, the relative orientation (respectus) towards intellect Henry had submitted among his characterizations of "truth," quite naturally described according to the traditional definition of truth as an accommodation of thing and intellect (adaequatio rei et intellectus).^ Henry more readily depicted it as a relation to an exemplar, precisely the conformity of object to an exemplar representing or otherwise setting it forth.40 This conformity constituted the truth mind would have to know in order to move beyond simplex intelligentia, and, as itself complex, it demanded a complex act of intellect to be perceived. Such talk brought Henry back to Grosseteste in De veritate and, as he and Vital both confessed, the authoritative words of Anselm in his work of the same name, thus to the heart of the Augustinian traditions associating knowledge with divine illumination.46 But Henry was not yet ready to incorporate illumination into his theories; he wanted to keep the views of the classic Augustinians a while longer at arm's length. Instead, he turned his attention for a time to analysis of the idea of scientific cognition. 42
Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:4vC). Vital argued almost identically in his Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 323). 43 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5rD): "Quia igitur verum dicit intentionem rei in respectu ad suum exemplar, quae non est prima sed secundaria, ens enim dicit intentionem rei primam et absolutam, id quod est ens et verum in re bene potest apprehendi ab intellectu absque hoc quod intentio veritatis eius ab ipso apprehendatur. . . . Intentio vero entis apprehenditur in re absoluta sine omni reali respectu." Vital gave essentially the same account, though in his own words, in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 324). 44 See above, n. 15; and Henry, Summa, a. 1., q. 2 (l:7rL); a. 1, q. 3 (l:10rF); a. 7, q. 2 (l:48vK). Vital also cited the definition of truth as adaequatio in his Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 330). 45 See the quotation in n. 16, above; also slightly lower on the same page of the Summa: "Intentio enim veritatis in re apprehendi non potest nisi apprehendendo conformitatem eius ad suum exemplar" - a description Vital reproduces in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 324). See also p. 327 of the same question 8. 4(> See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5rE); and Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 324). The passages Henry and Vital proffered as from Anselm on truth and conformity correspond, approximately though not literally, to statements made in De veritate, 1 (ed. Schmitt, 1, 185~86-see above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, n. 3); for Grosseteste, see above, Part 1, ch. 1, n. 7.
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Henry respected, and always accepted, the Aristotelian definition of science in strictest terms as knowledge of apodictically proved conclusions.47 From Grosseteste on, thirteenth-century scholastics took this as given. Yet in accordance with the Augustinian heritage Henry also entertained a notion of scientific knowledge more broadly construed, expanded so as to embrace complex knowledge of more than demonstrated conclusions - that is, principles, too - and more importantly the special sort of simple understanding upon which such complex cognition was based. He called this broad category "science properly speaking" (proprie scire) to contrast it with "knowledge in the broadest sense of the word" (scire large), which he had associated with the first and lowest degree of certainty.48 Only slightly modifying Henry's language, Vital said that this was what it meant "truly to know" (vere scire).^ Such broad but still proper scientific cognition constituted, according to Henry, "certain knowledge of truth" (certa veritatis notitia), which, momentarily recalling his first approach to the true-truth dichotomy, he also designated as knowledge of the object's quiddity or quod quid £5t.50 In short, "scientific knowledge properly speaking" and "knowledge of the truth" were, for Henry as well as for Vital, congruent categories.51 The two thinkers agreed, however, that cognition of this kind was available to human minds in the world at two different levels, and this partition of science into two grades yielded, after the distinction between knowing the true and knowing truth, the second fundamental division in their taxonomy of human cognition, crucial 47
See, from Henry's early writings, Summa, a. 1, q. 1, arg. 1 and ad 1. (l:lrA and 2vE); a. 1, q. 5 (l:15rB); a. 1, q. 10 (l:20rC); a. 6, q" 1, arg. 1 and ad 1. (l:42rA and 42vE); and a. 33, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:147, 11. 4-7), in all of which he quotes or alludes to Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, including the famous passage from Book I, ch. 2 (73blO-12), that science is obtained by knowing the cause. The latter text, universally influential in the thirteenth century, was of course also important for the other Augustinians for Grosseteste and William, see above, Part 1, ch. 1. n. 46; for Bonaventure, Part 2, ch. 5, nn. 30 and 31. 48 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5rD). On scire large, see above, n. 18. 49 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 324). r >» por "certain knowledge of the truth," see Henry, Summa, a. 2, q. 2 (l:24rF) Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5vE) seems to have reserved the same phrase for a higher level of cognition - for quiddity and quod quid est, Summa, a. 2, q. 2, ad 1. (l:24rG); and a. 3, q. 4 (l:29vP). All this suited the general notion that science was only of universals - see Summa, a. 6, q. 1, ad 2. (l:42v-43r[FJ) - and should be associated with the scientia stride appellata of Summa, a. 6, q. 1 (l:42vB). '' The correspondence between science and knowledge of truth is nowhere clearer than in Henry's Summa, a. 2, q. 6 (l:27rD); and a. 7, q. 2 (l:48vK).
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in determining their attitude toward the theory of divine illumination. For according to Henry and Vital, at only one of the two levels of science — the higher — was divine illumination in play. Science in the first instance was available to mind working solely by its natural powers. After all, Henry's and Vital's model of knowing truth and thus attaining scientific knowledge demanded that mind go beyond seizing a simple objective content on the level of "the true" (verurn) and compare its object critically with an exemplar. Yet there were two exemplars to consider. First was the universal intelligible species elicited from the object itself and residing as mental marker in intellect, the abstracted species of Aristotelianizing noetics; second was the ideal reason of the thing present in God's mind, describable as a kind of divine art because it contained the exemplary forms according to which all things were made.32 Faithful follower, Vital reproduced Henry's ideas in a virtual epitome of his wrords.33 From the duality of exemplars resulted the doubling of science properly speaking, so that there were, as Henry put it, two kinds of truth (duplex veritas) and two ways by which truth could be known (duplex modus sciendi veritatem).34
)2
Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5rE): "Et est dicendum quod cum, ut dictum est iam, veritas rei non potest cognosci nisi ex cognitione conformitatis rei cognitae ad suum exemplar . . . secundum quod duplex est exemplar rei, dupliciter ad duplex exemplar veritas rei habet ab homine cognosci. Est enim secundum quod vult Plato in primo Timaei, duplex exemplar: quoddam factum atque elaboratum, quoddam perpetuum atque immutabile. Primum exemplar rei est species eius universalis apud animam existens, per quam acquirit notitiam omnium suppositorum eius, et est causata a re. Secundum exemplar est ars divina continens omnium rerum ideales rationes, ad quod Plato dicit deum mundum instituisse. . . ." See also Sumrna, a. 24, q. 8 (l:145vP), referring back to this passage and summarizing it. In Summa, a. 1, q. 7 (l:17rK), Henry called the first exemplar "abstractum et causatum a re." 53 See Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 324-25), drawing at times verbatim from the passage quoted above, n. 52. 54 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5vF). In Matthew of Aquasparta's early works appears a related notion of two truths, although not exactly the same as Henry's and not used to the same effect - see above, Part 2, ch. 5, nn. 18 and 19. Some scholars (for instance, Braun, Die Erkenntnislehre, pp. 43-44; Edward Dwyer, Die Wissenschqftslehre Heinrichs von Gent [Wiirzburg, 1933], p. 36; and Prospero Stella, "La prima critica di Herveus Natalis O.P. alia noetica di Enrico di Gand: II 'De intellectu et specie' del cosiddetto 'De quatuor materiis,'" Salesianum 21 [1959]: 127) have distinguished Henry's two truths as "logical" and "ontological," but for the reasons given in Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 26, n. 26, I prefer not to employ this terminology.
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It was this epistemic topology that allowed Henry, in contrast to the classic Augustinians, to defend a kind of scientific knowledge "ex puris naturalibus" — that is, with no greater divine intervention than the general providence God exercised over all nature. At the lower grade of science - first level of knowing truth - there was neither recourse to a divine ideal nor special illumination in the technical sense Henry assigned to that phrase. Instead intellect worked solely with objects found in the world and the mental entities it had, on its own, drawn from them. As he explained, mind came to knowledge of this completely natural sort of truth by first employing the intelligible species it had abstracted not as object to know but as means of knowing (ratio cognoscendi}. Then, looking back on the species, it generated in itself a concept in conformity with it, thus formally knowing the truth and attaining to science of the lower sort.33 Vital seconded Henry by simply repeating him, almost word for word.56 Henry's description was not free of inconsistency. He had formally characterized truth at this level as conformity between object, outside intellect, and exemplar, the intelligible species in mind, so that knowing truth called for comparing the two to see how they conformed. Yet in describing the actual mental process he spoke of fashioning a concept conforming to the species. In his early work Henry never explained exactly where the conformity lay. Perhaps an explanation was impossible. If, as he insisted, the intelligible species served only as means of knowing, how could one ask that mind compare it, unperceived, to something else or generate something in conformity with it? His theory would seem to have been caught in the contradiction between an Augustinian noetics demanding judgment even in simple cognition and a more Aristotelianizing one taking mental entities such as species to be mere instruments for unreflective access to what lay outside mind. Not the sole late-thirteenth-century scholar to confront this dilemma, he ultimately decided it required a dramatic response, by mid-career jettisoning the notion of intelligible species altogether.07 " Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5rE). Dwyer, Die \Vissenschaftslehre, p. 11, failed to notice this first sort of science, claiming that according to Henry all science required divine illumination. "' Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 325). " See Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 22-23; and for the classic discussion of Henry's abandoning intelligible species, Nys, De werking van het menselijk
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Meanwhile he simply tolerated ambiguity. He noted that the concept mind devised in knowing truth, mental marker of its new cognition, was not another intelligible species but rather, drawing from Augustine's lexicon, a mental word (verbum)."8 This word was wholly product of an act of intellect and permitted more perfect understanding of the object than did the species generated somewhat passively ab extra in knowing merely "the true."59 By the terms of his ascending scale of cognitive perfection, this meant that science at the first level was more certain than any knowledge coming before.60 Where knowledge of the true, scire large, had been without error or deception, the initial grasp of truth resulted in a mind not just free from error (notitia libem ab omni errore) but also unplagued by doubt (nequaquam de ea dubitare possumus).61 Such knowledge was not, however, obtained in absolute fullness of mental vision (in aperta veritatis visione), wherein truth was seen clearly (dare) by mind's eye.62 As Henry explained while examining the status of theology as a science, certainty could be reduced to two component factors on the part of mind: security and evidence. The former was almost exclusively a subjective matter; Henry even
verstand (in an abbreviated Latin version: De psychologist cognitionis humanae secundum Henricum Gandavensem [Rome, 1949]). Braun, Die Erkenntnislehre, passim, remarked on Henry's rejection of the notion of impressed species, but he was not aware that Henry's earliest ideas supported the opposite view. 58 For instance, Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2, ad 2. (l:8rO); a. 1, q. 5, ad 2. (l:15vF); and most fully, Quodlibet 2, q. 6 (Henrici Opera, 6:32, 11. 56-66). In Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10rF), Henry traced his use of "verbum" back to Augustine's De Trinitate IX, 7 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 1, 303-4). Vital followed Henry, even adding the term "verbum" to the passage cited above, n. 56, patterned on a section in Henry's Summa that spoke merely of "concept." For more detailed description of "word" by Vital, again dependent on Henry's ideas, see Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 294). 59 Henry, Summa (Qg. ord.}, a. 34, q. 2, ad 4. (Henrici Opera, 27:185, 11. 19-23); and Summa, a. 1, q. 12, ad 4. (l:23vR). In Summa, a. 24, q. 8 (l:145rN), Henry maintained, inconsistently with what he said practically everywhere else, that judgment of the word was necessary for knowledge of truth, but with Henry one can rarely be sure what is contradiction and what simply reformulation of an old idea. 60 For the scale of certitude, see above, n. 24. 61 On the certainty of scire large, see above, n. 18; of the initial levels of knowledge of truth, Henry, Summa, a. 2, q. 1 (l:23vB). A more general observation on the connection between knowing truth and certitude is referred to above, n. 50. 62 See the passage from the Summa cited in the previous note. Vital commented that "some" thinkers (among whom he must have included Henry) maintained that, left solely to its own devices, mind came to know truth "quodam modo tenebroso et non omnino clare" - see Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 328).
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called it "certitude adhaesionis," or what might be termed the strength of intellectual assent. The latter pointed the subject more towards objective conditions, registering its degree of access to the cognitive referent.63 By saying that the first level of knowing truth was errorfree and untainted by doubt but not entirely clear, Henry was conceding that it met the strictest subjective demands but had some way to go so far as evidential foundations were concerned, sufficient achievement all the same to meet the sceptical arguments of the Academics.64 He went on to observe that science of this sort was what Aristotle had aimed for, meaning that it provided the foundation for apodictic knowledge along the lines laid out at the beginning of the Metaphysics and the end of the Posterior Analytics.^ Surprisingly he added that it was also what Augustine often had in mind when speaking of human cognition.66 Indeed Henry interpreted the famous passage from De Trinitate about mind's eye seeing in an incorporeal light of its own kind as referring specifically to the parameters of this way of knowing.67 On this point Vital seems to have differed;
63 Henry, Summa, a. 7, q. 2 (l:49rN): "Ex parte vero scientis dupliciter contingit scientiae certitude: uno modo ex parte securitatis de veritate eorum que continet haec scientia, alio modo ex parte evidentiae in notitia veritatis, quam sciens de scitis ex hac scientia consequitur. . . . Et appellatur haec securitas certitude adhaesionis, quae bene potest esse sine omni clara et evident! notitia." 64 Again see the passage from Henry's Summa, cited above, n. 61. Modern philosophers, and most scholastics in the fourteenth century, have typically asked more in the way of evidence for even the most modest forms true knowledge. On the problem of scepticism facing scholastics, see the cogent remarks of Marilyn Adams in her William Ockahm (Notre Dame, Ind., 1987), I, 551. to Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5rE). The Aristotelian passages were the classic texts in Metaphysics I, 1 (981a5~6); and Posterior Analytics II, 19 (100a3-9) - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 116; and ch. 6, nn. 8 and 18, for instances where Bonaventure and Matthew of Aquasparta cited the same texts. Vital paraphrased Henry, with reference not to Aristotle but to the "philosophi," in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 325). (>b Consult the passage from the Summa cited in the preceding note. Transcribing into his own work these words of Henry's, Vital deleted the association with Augustine - see also the citation in the preceding note - thus confirming his reluctance, referred to in n. 68 below, to recognize anything but a call for divine illumination in Augustine's explication of knowledge of truth. 1)7 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2, ad 3. (l:8rP). The Augustinian passage about a "lux sui generis" comes in De Trinitate XII, 15 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 1, 378). Henry interpreted this passage inconsistently: in Quodlibet IX, q. 15 (ed. Raymond Macken, Henrici Opera, 13:261, 11. 91-99), claiming Augustine was referring to the light of God, while in Quodlibet XIII, q. 8 (ed. Jos Decorte, Henrici Opera, 18:50, 11. 40-44), returning to the earlier reading, seeing the light as one of mind's natural powers.
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at least he was sympathetic to Marston's criticism of those who read Augustine in such a way.68 Both Henry and Vital concurred, on the other hand, that scientific knowledge at this first level embraced a limited domain of knowables. Dependent on an exemplar drawn from objects in the sensible world, it could not rise above material things and whatever they implied — wiiat Henry denominated "scibilia philosophica" — or pretend to proper understanding of the most elevated subjects, especially not perfect knowledge of God.69 Never absolutely lucid, it did not even offer full understanding of the objects falling within its range, the reason being its reliance on those imperfect purveyors of data, the phantasms of sensible cognition. Echoing Grosseteste, perhaps, too, the occasional pessimism of William of Auvergne, Henry called Aristotle's science at bottom "phantastic knowledge of truth" (veritatis notitia phantasticd), while Vital spoke of it more pejoratively still as cloudy (nebulosa cognitio}.1(] Knowledge generated without Godly intervention might be able to attain certitude, but such certainty was hardly the best mind could manage, even in the world of sin.71 For as the doubling of the category of science implied, both theologians believed mind could go beyond what Aristotle had imagined. Above knowledge of truth constructed with regard to the worldly exemplar came truth-perception of the second sort, more perfect than any understanding available to mind working with its natural 68
In Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 314), Vital offered unattributed Henry's interpretation of the passage, while on p. 317 he produced, nearly verbatim, Marston's arguments against it from Quaestiones de anima, q. 3, ad 1. (in Marston, Quaestiones disputatae, BFS, 7, p. 265). Though Vital never explicitly stated his own view, by implication he agreed with Marston. 09 Henry, Summa, a. 3, q. 4 (l:29vP). /0 Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5vG); and a. 1, q. 3 (l:9vE). This notitia phantastica was, of course, different from the intellectus phantasticus mentioned above (see n. 31) in connection with knowledge of "the true." On Robert and William, see Marrone, New Ideas of Truth, pp. 35-36 and 203-9; and above, Pt. 1, ch. 4, pp. 93-102. For Vital, see Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 327 and 329), and also the passage cited above, n. 62. '' On rare occasions the early Henry revealed some hesitation about fully accepting that mind could have knowledge of truth without a special divine intervention. As argued in Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 25-26, n. 42, these instances should not be seen as undermining his formal position in favor of such knowledge but rather as signs of an underlying anxiety about cutting himself loose from the classic Augustinian view. In addition to the examples cited in Truth and Scientific Knowledge, see also Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (IrlOvG). As might be expected, Vital echoed Henry's ambivalence - see Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 335), Vital's rewrite of the passage from Henry's Summa, a. 1, q. 3.
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powers alone but still accessible to the wayfarer and not requiring a gift of grace. Henry called it certain or perfect science.72 It depended, of course, on having recourse to an exemplar in the divine mind, thus entailing divine intervention beyond God's general providence.'3 Here is where Henry made room for the divine illumination of classic Augustinians, "special illumination" in his own vocabulary/4 To his eyes this was the type of cognition consonant with Augustine's, and he thought the proper, interpretation of Plato's views about mind and knowledge, which pointed to a kind of science truer (verior modus acquirendi scientiam) than that accounted for by the Aristotelian formula./D Surely not by accident, Henry commented that this mode of cognition was pertinent to the cognitive foundations for knowing conclusions as well as principles.76 Indeed he specifically took aim at those who wanted to limit God's illuminating intervention in human science to knowledge of first principles and the rules of rational discourse alone.77 From the wording of his argument it would seem almost certain the target was John Pecham, who had used the very language Henry criticized on those occasions where he defended illumination only with respect to principal cognition.78 Again, Henry's views were carefully calibrated to be distinguishable from those of the classic Augustinians, Vital faithfully echoing him on this score.79 ri Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5vE) for "certa scientia;" Summa, a. 1, q. 4 (l:12vD) for "perfecta scientia." 73 Henry, Summa, a. 1. q. 2 (l:7v-8r[MJ). 74 See above, n. 19. " For Henry on Augustine, see Summa, a. 1, q. 1, ad 4. (l:3r—vl); and a. 1, q. 2 (l:6vl), quoted above, n. 5; for comparison to Aristotle, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:7vL), where Henry added that he thought it likely Aristotle personally agreed with Plato but, like many in the Academy, simply hid his true ideas from the vulgar crowd of readers. 7(1 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:7rL). " Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10vG): "Unde patet quod peccant qui ponunt quod prima principia et regulae speculabilium sunt impressiones quaedam a regulis veritatis aeternae, et cum hoc non ponunt aliquam aliam impressionem fieri aut informationem in nostris conceptibus a luce aeterna quam illam solam quae fit a specie a re accepta adiutorio lucis naturalis ingenitae." '8 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, especially the passages cited in nn. 42 and 43. 7 '' Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 336). Lynch, in his Theory of Knowledge, p. 191, suggests that Vital and therefore Henry had Thomas Aquinas in mind, which is possible, although their language makes Pecham the more likely candidate. Richard of Mediavilla, In II. Sent. 10, 2, 1, ad 3. (in Super quatuor libros Sententiarum, 2, 130a [Brescia, 1591/repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1963]), also spoke of human knowledge of first principles in a way that might make him Henry's and Vital's target, at least as much as Thomas, with whom Richard was on this point in essential agreement.
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Since science at this higher level constituted knowledge of the second of two sorts of truth Henry recognized, he chose, drawing on Augustine, to demarcate its object by calling it "pure truth" (sincera veritas), a phrase employed so consistently in his early wrork that it can be considered a technical term in his, as well as Vital's, philosophical thesaurus.80 Other labels for the same thing were "clear truth" and "certain truth."81 On the scale of certitude, knowledge arriving at truth of this kind could be described as completely certain (certa omnino notitia), an epistemic achievement Henry thought was manifested in two ways.82 First of all, such cognition was free from error, like knowledge of "the true," and indubitable, as with science at the first level, but also, advancing to a degree of subjective intellectual security immune to even the most obdurate scepticism, in Henry's words infallible.83 Second, it was knowledge of truth that was fully open (in aperta veritatis visione), sufficiently so for it to be designated intellectually "clear."84 For the first time Henry could point to a type of cognition that unconditionally satisfied science's objective requirements for evidence and clarity of mind. 80 See, for example, Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5vE & G, 6rH); and Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 328, and 327): "sincere [cognita] veritas." In De diversis quaestionibus 83, q. 9, Augustine had spoken of a special sinceritas veritatis, a passage Henry incorrectly quoted (Summa, a. 1, q. 2 [l:5vE]) as referring to sincera veritas. About the time Henry was writing, Matthew of Aquasparta used the more authentic Augustinian form to refer to much the same thing. For citations to Augustine and Matthew, see above, Part 2, ch. 5, n. 49. As almost always with Henry, one can find exceptions. In Summa, a. 1, q. 1, ad 2. (l:2vF), he said that truth known without the divine exemplar might be called "pure truth," although not "absolutely" (simpliciter) pure. Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5vG) noted that those who did not recognize his higher form of science simply failed to distinguish between the two kinds of truth. 81 For "clear truth" (liquida veritas, clara veritas}, see Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:7vM and 8rS); and a. 2, q. 1 (l:23vB); for "certain truth" (certa veritas}, Summa, a. 1, q. 8 82
Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5vE). Ibid. It was thus the source of what could be called "infallible science" (Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10vG). Vital repeated Henry about infallibility in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 325-26). See above, nn. 18 and 61, on the two lower ranks of security; and n. 63, for the subjective and objective ingredients of certitude. As for the claim here about immunity to scepticism, Marilyn Adams (William Ockham, I, 570), quoting from Henry, Summa, a. 2, q. 1 (l:23vB), points out that this is not quite true, as there was still some evidential imperfection at this level of science, a concession Henry surely intended more to protect the exclusivity of the beatific vision than to allow scepticism an opening into his theory of knowledge in the world. 84 See Summa, a. 2, q. 1 (l:23vB), also cited above, n. 63. In Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5vG), Henry called it "notitia liquida" - compare references to "liquida veritas" given above, n. 8 1 . 83
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As always, the problem was explaining how the noetic process worked. Henry's model of truth as conformity would have mind act to compare exemplar, in this case divine ideal, with appropriate object in the created world.85 How could he then circumvent the ontologism perennially stalking the Augustinian explanation of truth? Henry appealed once more to the distinction between object known and means of knowing. Mind could look to divine exemplar as to an object providing means for knowing that which it exemplified or as to means alone (ratio tanturri).86 If divine exemplar was grasped as object and means, then intellect would be able to draw a comparison so sharp as to pass above science of pure truth to a higher level, the most perfect way of knowing truth, which Henry called perfect certitude.8' Vital agreed.88 But such cognition was impossible without an illumination more special than Henry's technical "special illumination," more elevated even than the common light of saving grace.89 To see the divine exemplar in this way required that infusion of light so extraordinary that it had to be considered a gift of special grace, granted exclusively to the blessed and those rare earthly seers: Moses, Paul and Benedict.90 The process amounted to seeing the divine essence face to face, and Henry associated it with what he called the "eye of contemplation" (oculus contemplationis}.91 For
83
See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 7 (l:16vK). Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:6rl); and a. 24, q. 8, ad 2. and ad 3. (l:145vR-S); the first passage taken up almost verbatim by Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 327). 8/ Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:6rl); and a. 2, q. 1 (l:23vB), where he said truth could be known in this way "perfecta certitudine." 88 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 328). 89 Henry-, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:6vl) - cited above, n. 3 - and also a. 24, q. 2 (l:138rl). Braun, in Die Erkenntnislehre, seems not to have discriminated adequately between these two types of special illumination, so that he interprets Henry as positing no divine illumination short of a gift equivalent to a special light of grace. Mieczyslaw Gogacz, Problem istnienia boga u Anselma z Canterbury i problem prawdy u Henryka z Gandawy (Lublin, 1961), may be making a similar interpretation, although I am not sure I have understood him correctly. See also Gogacz, "Czy wedhig Henryka z Gandawy jest mozliwe poznanie czystej prawdy bez pomocy oswiecenia" ("La connaissance de la verite pure selon Henry de Gand"), Roc^niki Filozofazne 8, n. 1 (1960): 161-71. 90 Again, see the passage cited above, nn. 3-4, and consult Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:8vA and 9vE); and a. 2, q. 1 (l:23vB). Vital reproduces the second of the two passages from a. 1, q. 3 in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 333.) '" Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 4 (l:12rD). Henry thought there was another way God presented himself to mind as both object and means of knowing, not in his essence but under a general attribute. That way will be discussed below in Part 3, ch. 10. 86
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knowledge just of pure truth, Henry maintained and Vital agreed, the divine exemplar was grasped only as means for knowing.92 And here, as at the first level of science, in conceiving this, its second truth, mind formed in itself a concept or word - the second word in the whole process which served as mental marker of its newfound cognition.93 But did Henry's words really make sense? As with truth at the lower level, the need to reconcile an injunction against objective status for the exemplar with a call for comparison of exemplar and exemplified generated a tension, so much greater in this case given the risk of implying a vision of God. It is fair to say that Henry never entirely resolved the problem in his early work. There is no doubt, however, that he recognized the sensitivity of the issue and at least pointed in the direction of a resolution - that no literal comparison to the exemplar occurred.94 He tried to defend his claim by maintaining, with Vital repeating him nearly verbatim, that God as illuminator in knowledge of pure truth acted in analogy to three basic elements in sensible sight: light, species of color, and object's determining shape or figure.90 A cautionary note was necessary simply to warn the reader that God, unlike light, species or figure in sensation, would never inhere (non inhaerendo) in the receptive power as form in subject but rather flowed (illabendd) into mind, subtly making his presence felt.96
92
See Henry, Summa, a. 1. q. 2 (l:6vl); a. 1, q. 3 (l:8vA) - quoted above, n. 10 and a. 24, q. 9 (l:146rV); and Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 327~28 - drawing on Henry's Summa, a. 1, q. 2 - and p. 331 reproducing the passage from a. 1, q. 3). On Vital's copying Henry, see Leo von Untervintl, "Die Intuitionslehre bei Vitalis de Furno, O. Min. (+1327)," CF 25 (1955): 228-36. 93 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:7rK). 94 For full discussion, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 30-39. 95 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:9rB): "Ut autem ex modo illustrationis videamus quomodo ars divina . . . possit esse ratio cognoscendi . . . considerandum est in simili de visione oculi corporalis. In ipso enim ad completionem actus videndi . . . tria requiruntur ex parte obiecti quod in nobis operatur actum videnti. . . . Primum illorum quae requiruntur in visu corporal! est lux illuminans organum ad acuendum. Secundum est species coloris immutans eum ad intuendum. Tertium figuratio determinans eum ad discernendum." Lower on the same page (9rC), Henry called the third element a "character figurae corporis colorati." Vital's version of the passage can be found in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 331), where he called the third element a "configuratio." % Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:9rD).
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By advancing the claim about inherence Henry was, of course, rejoining the classic Augustinians, most especially Pecham, in their concern to protect God's transcendence.97 He even rationalized divinity's flowing presence as Bonaventure had by recalling that God was, of all things, most intimate to mind.98 Vital appreciated the relevance of arguments some of the classic Augustinians had brought against the notion of divine illumination merely by means of an "influence" and, using language reminiscent of the early Matthew of Aquasparta, noted that were the illuminating force to inhere in intellect it would have to be created, not divine, thus no suitable standard for immutable truth.99 Ironically, ideas from Matthew's early years were thereby turned against the position Matthew himself adopted later in his career. Yet putting aside restrictions on formal inherence, the introduction of the analogy made the point that divinity's illuminative action was subject to a threefold description: working as spiritual light, as form or species, and as figure or character. At first glance each way would seem to have been coequal to the others. Only a closer look reveals that Henry, and thus also Vital, did not intend to give them all the same weight. Acting as incorporeal light God served to purge and heal mind, sharpening it in preparation for arrival at pure truth.100 Since only the blessed were exposed to divine light without intermediary, this shining was indirect, with God diffusing his light first on the intelligible species of things - literally, on intelligible things by means of
97 Pecham had specifically warned against seeing God the illuminator as inhering in mind - see above, Part 2, ch. 5, nn. 70 and 71. 98 See again the passage cited above, n. 96. For Bonaventure, see above, Part 2, ch. 8, n. 42. 99 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitiom, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 332): "Hanc autem impressionem seu caracterizationem non facit lux divina mend nostrae inhaerendo tamquam quaedam dispositio . . . quia . . . tune ilia impressio, cum sit creatura, esset mutabilis et per consequens non posset esse medium ad cognoscendum immobilem veritatem." Note how close the language here is to that of Matthew in the passage from his Commentary on the Sentences quoted above, Part 2, ch. 5, n. 73. Delorme (in the edition of Vital, p. 332, n. 5) draws attention to Marston, Quaestiones de anima, q. 3, ad 15. (in Marston, Quaestiones disputatae, pp. 268-69) as source for Vital's ideas, but though it is true Marston is making much the same point as Vital in the passage indicated by Delorme, the similarities of language are not nearly so great as between Vital and Matthew. Still, it is hard to believe Vital had actually seen a copy of Matthew's Commentary. 100 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:9vD).
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their species — and through them reflectively (obliquo aspectu) on intellect.101 A passage late in the Summa seems to suggest that this literally illuminationist characterization of God's truth-giving act should take pre-eminence among the three, for it is there claimed that by acting as light God was most properly said to lead mind to knowledge of pure truth, but immediately Henry added he was referring not to the preparatory honing described just now but rather to the divine role as art and book of reasons, terms paradigmatically associated with God's functioning in the third way, as figure or character.102 Far from being central to Henry's thought, the description of God as vision-sharpening light was in fact a minor theme, rarely mentioned in his work. As form or species, analogous to the species of color in sensible sight, God somehow transformed (immutare) or even informed (formare) mind so that it could see, not distinctly but after the manner of pure perception of color undetermined by shape or figure.103 Precisely how Henry intended this simile to be taken is hard to say, but it is tempting to read it as making the divine exemplar literally
101
Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:9vF). Vital copied him in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 333-34). Some have read their description as making of God a kind of Avicennian agent intellect, a phrase Henry actually applied to the divinity later on - see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 31. Etienne Gilson was first to suggest there was a current of thirteenth-century thinkers holding to a notion of agent intellect qualifying them as proponents of an "augustinisme avicennisant" - see his works cited above in the general introduction, n. 4. Paulus, Henri de Gand, pp. 5-6; and Jose Gomez Caffarena, Ser participadoy ser subsistente en la metajisica de Enrique de Gante (Rome, 1958), p. 246, agreed that Henry could be called an Avicennizing Augustinian, at least so far as his theory of illumination was concerned. Raymond Macken, "La theorie de l'illumination divine," pp. 92-93; and Faustino Prezioso, La critica di Duns Scoto, p. 62, both accept Henry as an Avicennizing Augustinian in his later years, Prezioso (p. 20) going so far as to claim him as a proponent of an "immediatistico-attualistico" version of divine illumination, along with William of Auvergne, Roger Bacon, Roger Marston and John Pecham. In Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 329), Vital admitted God appeared to act as a kind of agent intellect. 102 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 8 (l:18rE), where he listed the alternatives of influencing intellection by means of light or by means of species, claiming that God acted in the former and not the latter way in leading to knowledge of truth. This assertion would seem to contradict his support for what was Pecham's view - that God illuminated as a species - cited above, nn. 10 and 11, but it is likely that Henry was using neither "light" nor "species" in anything like their normal sense. 103 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10rF). Vital gives the same description in his own words in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 334). On how color could not cause distinct vision without shape or figure, see Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:9rC).
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a second species available to mind which it could set alongside the preceding species abstracted from created reality so as to derive a compounded understanding of pure truth. Gilson interpreted Henry's position on illumination this way in general, and one brief passage in the Summa referring to "double species" can be cited on his behalf.104 Such talk would echo earlier language of John Pecham on two species leading to knowledge authenticated by God as well as intimations in others of the classic Augustinians that a dual species was at work in divine illumination, and it would surely come closest to the Anselmian prototype of comparison of two objects present to mind.103 Yet the very passage about two species seems in fact to have been intended as analysis of God's illuminative action according to the third mode, determining figure.106 Like the first, the second description, too, was apparently not central to Henry's thought, perhaps included only to echo Bonaventure's words about God as species in mind.107 Henry's eventual blanket repudiation of impressed intelligible species meant that it would disappear without a trace in his later work. Which leaves the third description of divine action, as figure or character transforming intellect and bringing it to understand pure truth distinctly.108 God functioned in this instance like an art, store-
104 Gilson, "Roger Marston: Un cas d'augustinisme avicennisant," AHDLMA 8 (1933): 41, n. 1. The passage in Henry is his Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10rG): "Sciendum est quod duplex species et exemplar rei debet interius lucere in mente tamquarn ratio et principium cognoscendi rem: una species accepta a re quae disponat mentem ad cognitionem ipsi inhaerendo; altera vero est quae est causa rei quae non disponit mentem ad cognitionem ei inhaerendo, sed ei illabendo praesentia, et maiori quam inhaerendo in ea lucendo." iO) Qn pecham, see Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, arg. 7 and ad 7. (18.) (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, pp. 64 and 70), where he relied upon analogy between intellect and sensory sight, claiming that just as two visual images merged as they fed into a single nerve leading to the brain, so two species representing the same object - one abstracted, the other supplied by God - could come together in the mind's eye. On Bonaventure, see Part 2, ch. 6, nn. 6, 55 and 56; for Matthew of Aquasparta, Part 2, ch. 6, nn. 119 and 120. I0fa See the context of the passage quoted above, n. 104. 10/ For Bonaventure, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 39, 41 and 43. This cautionary stance acts as a healthy corrective against taking too far the similarity between Henry and Pecham on illumination working along the lines of cognitive species see above, nn. 10 and 11. 108 The following description depends on Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10rF). Of all classic Augustinians, Pecham came nearest to anticipating Henry on this score with his characterization of God the illuminator as exemplary and quasi-efficient form - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 71.
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house of the exemplary models by which all things had been made and all knowledge would ultimately be certified. More concretely put, the divine exemplar made an impression on the already knowing intellect, which impression constituted a word in which mind seized the pure truth about that which it had previously comprehended only imperfectly. It all happened, as Augustine had suggested, the way a signet ring impressed its image on wax.109 Here lay the key to interpreting the illuminative process, and Vital copied Henry's rendition of it almost word for word.110 Henry was quick to point out that God worked on mind in this operation in coordination with the lower exemplar drawn from the object, an intelligible species already in intellect.111 Knowing pure truth was therefore continuous with earlier cognitive processes dependent on the senses, and Henry always insisted that there could be no natural knowledge of objects outside mind that did not begin with sensation.112 How it happened was that the divine exemplar spiritually present to mind acted upon the word already formed in the business of knowing truth at the first grade of science, reshaping it and making it into a second, more perfect wrord capable of representing truth at the level of sincera veritas.113 The new word was more perfect precisely because refashioned in conformity with the creative exemplar, ultimate source of truth for either thing or mind. Today one might say the divine exemplar worked as a normative force, bringing concepts more into line with truth. Henry's words were that intellect began with something "material and incomplete" the word at the first stage based on an abstracted species and then 109
Augustine, De Trinitate XV, 15 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 2, 451). "° Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione. q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 334.). 111 See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10rF); and also (l:10vG). 112 See the combined testimony of Summa, a. 1, q. 10 (l:21rC); and a. 1, q. 4 (l:12vD); as well as the texts cited above, n. 111. 113 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10rF): "Verbum perfectum veritatis debet esse fbrmata cogitatio secundum supremam et perfectam similitudinem ad ipsam rern, quae non potest esse nisi exemplar illud aeternum. . . . [S]ic verbum quod non est simillimum neque sincerae veritatis, sive etiam veritatis simpliciter, expressivum, formatum a sola specie et exemplari accepto a re, ... fiat similimum et sincerae veritatis, et etiam veritatis, simpliciter expressivum, solum ab exemplari aeterno." See also Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:7rL): "Necesse est igitur quod ilia veritas increata in conceptu nostro [i. e. verbo] se imprimat, et ad characterem suum conceptum nostrum transformet, et sic mentem nostram expressa veritate de re informet similitudine ilia quam res ipsa habet apud primam veritatem." The former passage is essentially reproduced by Vital in his Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 334-35).
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moved on to something "formal and complete" - the word shaped or normalized by the eternal exemplar."4 Though the parallel is imperfect, such language nearly enough recalls Matthew of Aquasparta in De cognitione characterizing the abstracted species as formal but incomplete cognitive element, the light God poured into mind as formal, complete and consummating, to suggest that both scholastics were edging towards the same idea, Matthew's infused illumination approximating Henry's perfect word of truth.110 Since Matthew's text probably postdates Henry's, classic Augustinianism was in this case striving to accommodate the more fastidious philosophizing of the 1270s and 80s. It is easy to see why Henry found his third description of illumination most attractive for conceiving the role two exemplars played in knowledge of pure truth, for only this model laid bare a triangular set of relations: of mind's word through abstracted species to object, of object immediately to divine exemplar, and finally of mind's word to exemplar again.116 By these terms knowledge itself reflected the objective truth of the referent in the world; indeed because of its impressed relation to divine exemplar, the mental word could be said to reproduce the object's truth in intellect."7 If this idea strayed 114 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10r-v[GJ): "Et sunt in conceptu huius verbi duo consideranda. . . . Est enim in eo considerare aliquid materiale et incompletum, et aliquid formale et completum, ut illud incompletum fiat perfectum et completum. Ex exemplari enim accepto a re habet quod materiale est in ipso et incompletam similitudinem ad veritatem rei. . . . Ex exemplari autem aeterno recipit complementum et informationem perfectam, ut sit verbum expressae similitudinis ad rem extra. . . ." Vital reproduces this nearly word for word in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 335). 113 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 118, but also the cautions below, nn. 120 and 121, about taking Henry, like Matthew, to be talking about an "influence." 116 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10rG): "Istis siquidem duabus speciebus exemplaribus in mente concurrentibus . . . mens concipiat verbum veritatis perfecte informatae . . . ut ad modum quo prima veritas sigillavit rem veritate quam habet in essendo, sigillet etiam mentem ipsam veritate quam habet in earn cognoscendo, ut eadem idea veritatis qua habet res suam veritatem in se, habeat de ea veritatem ipsa anima, ut sic sit expressa similitudo verbi ad rem ipsam, et utriusque ad eius exemplar primum. . . ." "' Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:10vG): "Et cum tale verbum perfectae veritatis formatum fuerit in anima, est ibi considerare tres veritates sibi correspondentes. Primo veritatem exemplaris divini. Secundo veritatem rei productae ab ilia. Tertio veritatem in conceptu mentis ab utraque expressam, quae est tamquam conformitas utriusque et ex utriusque ratione concepta et menti impressa, qua mens formaliter vera nominatur." Vital reproduces this in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 335), where comparison with Henry suggests that in the last line on this page of Delorme's edition "res" should read "mens."
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from the formal notion of knowledge of truth as mind's consideration of object's conformity to exemplar, it compensated by revealing how intellect could itself come to participate in the non-mental exemplary relations by which creation was sustained. Moreover, emphasizing a normative impression on intellect over comparison of exemplar to object nicely minimized the latent ontologism of the classic illuminationist tradition. Henry practically admitted as much at the end of the Summons article 1, question 3, validating the inference some drew from the Augustinian model that in grasping truth one actually saw God, but only to the extent that in knowing pure truth mind possessed a word shaped by the eternal exemplar, through which it could have a minimal understanding of the exemplary agent.118 In support he even cited the famous passage from Augustine's De Trinitate about knowing God by means of a similitude inferior to the divine nature, effective of knowledge not face to face but rather per speculum et in aenigmate.119 Camille Berube takes this to mean that Henry subscribed to Gilbert of Tournai's - and by extension the mature Matthew of Aquasparta's — notion of divine illumination by an influence from God.120 But Henry's inferior similitude was not an active principle like Gilbert's and Matthew's "influence"; it was rather the word, product of an act performed by God and itself merely marker of knowledge of pure truth. Wary of ontologism, Henry found a way of accounting for illumination that in no measure reduced the immediacy of God's intervention.121 118 See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3, ad 1., 5., 6. (l:10vH, K, and L), which marks a unique concession that the process of divine illumination leading to truth might be connected with at least one natural way of knowing God, two phenomena otherwise sharply separated in his early works. 119 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 15. For other classic Augustinians on this, see the same chapter, nn. 44, 112, 136 and 137. 120 See, for instance, Berube, "Henri de Gand et Mathieu d'Aquasparta," p. 145. Prezioso, La critica, pp. 98-100, similarly maintained that Henry, like Matthew, interpreted divine illumination as working through an influence of God. I have argued elsewhere that I do not agree - see Marrone, "Matthew of Aquasparta," pp. 263-65. 121 This is especially obvious in contrast to Matthew, who specifically used the passage from Augustine about an inferior similitude to defend his vision of an active principle of illumination lower than God but above the mind, which he identified as the illuminative influence ~ see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 136 and 138. To the degree that Vital offers a clue as to what Henry was thinking, it is instructive to recall (above, n. 99) his version of Henry's warning against seeing God as inhering in mind, which reached back to Matthew's early language ruling out any attempt to reduce the active principle of illumination to a mere influence.
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Meanwhile he tackled another problem confronting the classic Augustinians: whether divine illumination occurred naturally or depended in each instance on the will of God, and at any rate what it implied about the naturalness of human intellection. With regard to the first part of the question his response paralleled Gilbert's and William of Auvergne's — in opposition to Bonaventure. 122 Henry took every act of illumination to be voluntary on God's part and so distinguished knowledge of pure truth from the natural, thus necessary, processes of cognition below it. Since God's inscrutable choice decided who would know what with the certitude of illumined science, evil minds might occasionally be given greater access to divine reasons than good Christians.123 Yet inherent strength of mind had at least some role to play in the process.124 While at times Henry seems to have meant by this that God took account of the mental powers of individuals, offering divine assistance more fully to those who could make better use of it, on other occasions his implication is that God decided, voluntarily but still irrevocably, to give illumination to all minds, allowing each to make use of it according to its own capacity.125 Vital preferred the latter view, for when he copied Henry's general assertion that God offered illumination to whomever he chose, he added his own comment that so far as pure truth was concerned divine assistance was available to everyone who wanted it.126 As for the naturalness of intellection of pure truth, Henry appears to have grasped the difficulty of the question even better than Matthew, who touched on it about the same time. 127 In the increasingly Aristotelianizing atmosphere of late-thirteenth-century Scholasticism, Augustinians were hard pressed to explain how illumination of any sort could bear upon mind, the Godly light being not only far above human intellect but also foreign to its nature. Henry's response was to divide the various meanings of "natural." Admitting that mind 122
See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, nn. 105-6. Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:7vM). 124 See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:9vE). l2 ' For the first position, see Summa, a. 1, q. 4 (l:llvD); for the second, Summa, a. 1. q. 2, ad arg. (l:8vS); or the even stronger statement in Summa, a. 13, q. 6 (l:94vE). It is interesting to see that immediately after the passage in a. 1, q. 2, Henry noted that the evil of some might incline God to withhold all illumination from them, counter to the implications of the passage cited above, n. 123. 12<) Compare the passage cited above in n. 123 with Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 330). 127 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 108. 123
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did not know pure truth naturally, if this meant solely by virtue of its own natural powers (ex puris naturalibus naturaliter), he insisted that it nevertheless came to know it, through God's help, with all its powers intact and none of them violated (in puris naturalibus constitutus}.^ In other words, although the wayfarer's natural strength of intellect alone was insufficient to perceive pure truth, it was not "unnatural" for mind to have access to so much of the divine light as was necessary to raise it to such a vision.129 Later on, when addressing the problem of knowledge by a still higher gift of grace, Henry advanced a parallel argument even more clearly.130 Knowledge by grace was not according to mind's natural powers, in which sense it was not natural. Yet intellect was by nature ordained to be receptive of a free gift permitting knowledge higher than the natural powers could by themselves attain. Such ordination or proclivity constituted a kind of naturalness, though of a different sort from what was normally meant by the word.131 It is uncanny how much Henry's defense anticipated criticisms Duns would level against illumination over two decades later. As always, the secular master proved himself extraordinarily aware of the philosophical hurdles to be overcome if Augustinian noetics and epistemology were to survive.
128
Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:8rM). Henry, Summa, a. 1, q.2 (l:7vM). 13(1 Henry, Summa, a. 3, q. 5, ad 2. (l:30rY): ". . . quod illius luminis gratiae non est susceptibilis per naturam . . . dicendum quod verum est, ita quod ex puris naturalibus illud sibi acquirat, vel quod naturaliter lumen ipsum sibi inditum habeat. Est tamen ipsius susceptibilis per naturam, quia natura de se ad hoc ordinata est, ut munere creatoris hoc recipiat. . . ." 131 See Henry, Summa, a. 3, q. 4, ad 2. (l:29vR), where he explicitly talks about these two ways to use the term "natural" (naturaliter). 129
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The distinction between object and means had permitted Henry to embrace a theory of divine illumination in knowledge of truth while at the same time avoiding charges of ontologism that might be leveled against the epistemology of the classic Augustinians. Yet did the particular way he applied the distinction not threaten the sense of intimacy between God and mind central to Augustinian intellectual traditions? After all, his uncompromising separation of object and means severed Augustine's paradigmatic image of God's irradiating truth from most matters of origin of concepts, object of knowledge and nature of its metaphysical grounding, even though it had been on the ideological terrain of the latter issues that classic Augustinians had made the greatest strides in reinforcing illuminationism's assurance of divine intimacy to mind. Indeed a mark of their accomplishment was their success in integrating earlier ideas about a dynamic sweeping mind up to God as ultimate object with those very ideogenic and referential elements of the traditional cluster of illuminationist ideas, thereby drawing out of Augustinian noetics for the first time a scholastically respectable theory of the wayfarer's natural knowledge of God. If the same elements were now to be divorced from the notion of a divine light of truth for the sake of insulating the latter from ontologizing implications, what was to prevent them from either degenerating into a fully ontologist description of the vision of God in the sinful life or collapsing into an incoherence forfeiting the remarkable achievements Bonaventure and his followers had made? Henry had no intention of allowing his predecessors' achievements to be lost. Instead of undermining philosophical support for God's intimacy to mind, his radical division between means and object permitted him to lavish greater attention on the notion of natural knowledge of God, making it even more technically precise and concrete, thus capable of drawing still greater profit from classic Augustinians' introduction of a God-oriented cognitive dynamic into traditional Augustinian theories of mind. In fact, since from the days of Grosseteste the literal image of a light of truth was, of all facets of illuminationist discourse, most fraught with ontologist ambiguity, it would
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appear that Henry simply decided he could gather together the threads of that discourse entailing knowledge of God and, by dealing with them in theoretical isolation from the notion of divinity's irradiating function as guarantor of truth, liberate Augustinian ideas about object and ideogenesis from the most menacing implications of ontologism. Meanwhile, ironically, the conventional core of illumination, increasingly linked exclusively to knowledge of truth and relieved of the philosophical burden of explaining cognitive reference or knowledge of God, could be yet further extracted from its own ontologizing past. In short, cleaving the newly unified doctrine of illumination promoted less hesitant and more explicit analysis on either side. This bifurcation of what had grown into a seamless whole with the classic Augustinians - this theoretical separation of knowledge of truth from knowledge of God - proved a watershed for Augustinianism in the thirteenth century. Given the Aristotelianizing pressures of the university milieu, it opened the door to rapid decline of support even among self-styled conservatives for the notion of a normative illuminative function for God, which could henceforth be abandoned without risk to the valued sense of divine cognitive intimacy. It likewise marked the beginnings of an Augustinian understanding of natural knowledge of divinity that would, unlike the pathbreaking efforts of Bonaventure and his followers, be increasingly unconnected to an image of Godly intellectual light. The structural foundations for such an understanding constitute Henry's second fundamental contribution to illuminationism in the initial years of his magisterium, counterpoint to his efforts to preserve a place for divine light in a scientific epistemology and in the long run more enduring. Since, in contrast to his handling of illumination in knowledge of truth, Henry's first endeavors with regard to issues of reference, origin of concepts and cognition of God established the parameters of a single approach to which he remained faithful throughout his career, it is not necessary here to discriminate between the ideas of his early and later writings. As before, discussion hinged on the distinction between means of knowing and object known, the difficulty in this case consisting in finding a way for God to serve to some degree as mental object without being fully and clearly perceived.1
See above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 3-4; and also Summa, a. 3, q. 4 (l:29vP), for
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Because this was an instance of divine intervention in normal human cognition, Henry's noetics required placing God technically in the role of part means for knowing other things, part object of mind.2 A suitable account of the whole process would thus have to turn to Henry's idea of the kind of cognitive means mentioned before: an image in a mirror, seen itself but also taken as a way to know the imaged object.3 Of course, a full object of cognition could furnish the means to know something else, the way direct vision of the divine exemplars facilitated perfect knowledge of all exemplified creatures, but full knowledge of God was already out of the question.4 The problem was finding proper middle ground between full object and means alone, God's illuminative role in leading to knowledge of pure truth.3 Here the analogy to a mirror's image was by itself insufficient guide, for Henry conceived of the noetic mechanism it stood for as broad enough to embrace even so elevated a matter as God's role in the beatific vision.6 Simply put, it was not enough that the divine element active in natural knowledge of God constitute, in contrast to truth perception, object and not only means; the very nature of the divine factor had to be different. God acted as illuminator of truth in virtue of being exemplar for all creation, an aspect of his reality specifically correlated to divine substance and thus capable of revealing him "in his own particularity."7 If divinity were in any way exposed to mind as object and not just means by virtue of this same
Henry's comments about the impossibility of what he called "perfect knowledge of God" by natural means. 2 To see how Henry understood this configuration, condense his comments in Summa, a. 24, q. 8, ad 1., ad 2., and ad opp. (l:145v[Oj-S]). For Henry's general views on means of knowing and God's intervention in normal cognition, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 5-6. 3 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 6 and 7. + On exemplars functioning as both object and means, see Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:6rl); on the exclusion of full vision of God, n. 1, above. 5 See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:8vA); a. 24, q. 9 (l:146rV), which refers back to this passage; and on illumination of truth, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 8 and 10. {> The beatific vision is, in fact, one of the ways Henry applied the example of a mirror's image in the passage cited in Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 6. ' Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 3 (l:8vA): "[Lux divina] non est ratio cognoscendi sinceram veritatem in aliis sub ratione alicuius generalis attributi dei, quale a nobis cognoscibile est in hac vita . . . sed ut est ipsa divina substantia et ars increata in suo esse particulari, quae ut obiectum sine lumine gloriae in vita futura vel specialis gratiae in praesenti a mente humana videri non potest. . . ." See also a. 24, q. 8 (l:145r-v[O-PJ); a. 24, q. 9 (l:146rV); and the first passages cited above, n. 2.
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aspect, the resultant vision would potentially be tantamount to that more correctly relegated to the resurrected life. Knowledge of God available naturally to mind working in the world had therefore necessarily to be dependent on divinity acting under some other guise. What Henry was reaching for was the idea Bonaventure had briefly suggested decades earlier, that the foundation for all that mind perceived of God by purely natural means lay in seizing divinity as an object known only in general, or as Henry put it, by virtue of one of his general attributes (sub ratione alicuius generalis attributi Dei).8 Another way of saying this was that in mind's initial efforts God was not conceived naturally by means of a proper understanding (in speciali] befitting a specific term like "God," applicable solely the divinity, but rather more generally (in general?) by means of apprehension of any of the broad properties God shared with creatures.9 This, Henry thought, was the sort of understanding John of Damascus referred to in the famous passage dear to the classic Augustinians about knowledge of God's being naturally inserted into mind.10 Grasped naturally in this general way, God was in fact mind's very first cognitive object, with everything else perceived in him as in the most primitive means of knowing.'' All this, of course, merely amplified the classic Augustinians' view that natural knowledge of God was somehow immanent in mind's cognition of "being" and other first concepts.12 Like his predecessors, Henry defended this position by quoting Avicenna on "being" as among the initial concepts impressed on soul, adding a reference to the Liber de causis as well.13 As if to prove that the idea also 8
See the quotation given above, n. 7. On Bonaventure, see Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 62. Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 2 (l:130vQJ. 10 Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 2 (l:130vQJ: "Et solummodo de ilia notitia essendi Deurn generali loquitur Damascenus quando dicit illarn nobis naturaliter insertam esse." See also above, n. 9; and Summa, a. 22, q. 6 (l:135vL). On the quotation from John and its use by the classic Augustinians, see Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 32, 34, 79 and 140, from which it is obvious that Henry and his predecessors did not interpret the remark from Damascene in exactly the same way. 11 See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2, ad 5. (l:8rR); and also a. 22, q. 6 (l:135vL), cited below, n. 33; as well as a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vX), cited in n. 34. 12 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 49. 13 On the passage from Avicenna, see Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 5 (l:134vD); and also a. 1, q. 12 (l:22rL); a. 3, q. 1 (l:28rB); and Quodlibet VI, q. 1 (ed. Gordon A. Wilson, Henrici Opera, 10:3, 11. 63-65); for Bonaventure's use of it, above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 51 and 52. On Liber de causis, see Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:4vC) - the text erroneously refers to the fourth proposition of De causis as "prima propositio" - and for Bonaventure's citation of it, Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 53 and 54; as well as n. 120 for a citation by Matthew. 9
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belonged to the Christian tradition, he produced a long excerpt from Augustine's De Trinitate about how in knowing primary concepts like "good" which were impressed on the soul mind thereby knew God.14 Of these authorities, it was Avicenna, so often Henry's guide along the borderland between noetics and metaphysics, who carried the greatest weight. In a reference momentarily shifting attention away from simple to complex cognition, Henry claimed that the knowledge of God he had in mind lay behind Avicenna's assertions at the beginning of his Metaphysics where, on the topic of natural knowledge (notitia naturalis et ex puris natumlibus acquisita), it was suggested that in addition to a posteriori proofs of God's existence there was one that worked a priori.10 Avicenna had not used the phrase "a priori" - his exact words were that this proof came "not through the testimony of the senses but rather out of universal propositions known per se" - but the implication had been plain enough for Averroes, who in his own commentary on the Physics criticized this apparent concession to apodictic knowledge of God's existence.16 Well aware of this history of controversy, Henry admitted that if Avicenna had meant that in constructing its proof mind had no recourse to sensible cognition, then Averroes's strictures were justified. For all Damascene's words about naturally inserted knowledge of God and despite the fact that such primitive cognition was achieved without analysis or investigation, it could not be considered innate. 17 14 See Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 5 (l:134vD). The quotation was patched together from passages in De Trinitate VIII, 2 and 3 (CC, 50:271-73). As should be clear from n. 17, below, Henry took neither Avicenna's nor Augustine's reference to an impression to mean the knowledge was innate. For how both Bonaventure's and Henry's stand on knowledge of "being" and "God" entailed shifting Avicenna's authentic position in the direction of Augustine, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 56. 15 Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 5 (l:134r-v[B]). 1(> In the passage cited above, n. 15, Henry quoted from Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima I, 3 (ed. Van Riet, 1, 23-24), including the phrase: "non ex via testificationis sensibilium, sed ex via propositionum universalium intelligibilium [per se notarum]." He noted that Averroes criticized Avicenna for this in his Commentary on the Physics I, 5 (in Aristotelis Opera cum Averrois commentariis, 4 [Venice, 1562/repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1962], f. 47c). '' The passage from Henry's Summa, a. 22, q. 2 (l:130vQJ, quoted above, n. 10, continues: "Et hoc ideo quia huiusmodi generalem notitiam essendi Deum homo naturaliter sine studio et investigatione primo conceptu concipit . . . sicut capit prima principia, non quia aliqua notitia nobis sit innata. . . . " Some historians have described Henry's theory of knowledge of God, as well as his view of illumination, as dependent on a kind of cognitive innatism see, for instance, Efrem Bettoni, // processo astrattivo nella concezione di Enrico di Gand (Milan, 1954), pp. 73 and 81; Paulus, Henri de Gand, p. 10, on what is called an "inneisme midge" (also below, n. 34); and Braun, Die Erkenntnislehre, pp. 59, 67-69, on an innate disposition. Strictly speaking,
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Here Henry drew the line, rejecting at least the terminology of the otherwise sympathetic position of John Pecham, for what was at stake was natural knowledge, thus neither inborn nor revealed but necessarily derived from sensation.18 But Henry believed that Avicenna had not actually intended to eliminate a foundational role for the senses, pointing the way instead to a proof of God's existence drawing on them though not really arguing from the data they produced, at least not in the way an a posteriori demonstration would by inferring existence of a cause from evidence of its effects. There was, therefore, a legitimate way of proving God's existence that worked, literally speaking, "not through the testimony of the senses," so long as one realized that any such proof necessarily took its origin from sensation all the same.19 In a remarkable passage, one Duns Scotus surely read and rejected, Henry suggested that Avicenna was thinking of a middle way between the a posteriori proof of the natural scientist and the nonempirical conviction of the theologian or believer, what he saw as the path of the philosopher, more precisely first philosopher or metaphysician.20 This way was better than any a posteriori proof, since it was truly
such an interpretation cannot stand, as Dwyer realized, in Die Wissenschqftslehre, pp. 44-45, arguing against Braun as cited just above. On innatism in Bonaventure whose words veer closer to it than Henry's - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 67. 18 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 81. 19 Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 5 (l:134vE): "Est enim iste modus alius a via cognoscendi Deum esse testificatione sensibilium, qua esse creaturae testificatur esse Dei, secundum quod apparuit in questione praecedenti. Non tamen non est omnino iste alius modus a via cognoscendi Deum esse per creaturas, quia iste modus ortum sumit a cognitione essentiae creaturae." (The reading of the last sentence is corrupt. A more likely version might begin: Non tamen est iste modus omnino alius a. ... "At any rate, its meaning is clear enough, for confirmation of which, see the same question, f. 135rE.) As Henry indicates, he had given numerous a posteriori proofs for God's existence in Summa, a. 22, q. 4 (l:132\—34r). Raymond Macken, "The Metaphysical Proof for the Existence of God in the Philosophy of Henry of Ghent," FS 68 (1986): 253-55, has argued that the last five of the proofs offered in a. 22, q. 4, were actually close to the kind of proof he was thinking of in q. 5. 20 Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 5 (l:135rF). In Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:141r-v[N]) } Henry described this as the way of the metaphysician, and in a. 22, q. 5 (l:134rB), he confessed that his interpretation of Avicenna took the latter to be talking as a "pure philosopher." As I have pointed out in "Matthew of Aquasparta," p. 281, n. 141, Berube misreads Henry when he claims, "Henri de Gand," pp. 151-53, that he was discussing here a proof open only to the theologian working with supernatural evidence. The mistake is related to Berube's views on Henry's supposed innatism see again above, Pt. 3, ch. 8, n. 67.
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a priori, dependent on enough of an understanding of God's essence to reveal that in the proposition "God is," the predicate necessarily inhered in the subject.21 Henry's, and Avicenna's, metaphysical, a priori way of proving God's existence thus ultimately rested on a suitable explanation of God's role as simple object to mind operating with only its natural powers. When Avicenna made reference to universal propositions as the springboard for his middle way to God, Henry explained, he was thinking about the class of general propositions involving "being," "unity" and "good," primary concepts that by the end of the century would be known as transcendentals and which Henry, in technical terms, commonly called the first intentions of reality or sometimes first concepts. If Avicenna was right about an a priori proof, it was because these were not just simple concepts, even the first seized by mind; it had to be that in them intellect also perceived God himself.22 To appreciate how Henry thought this was so, and how, due to his strict segregation of natural knowledge of God from the paradigmatic image of a truth-revealing light, his approach contrasted with that of the classic Augustinians from whom he drew inspiration, it is necessary to review his understanding of simple cognition, beginning with the assumptions about reference upon which it was based. Henry held the proper object of intellect to be quiddity universal quiddity, he said - and for the wayfarer working with only natural powers, that was limited to the quiddity of things perceptible
21
See Summa, a. 22, q. 5 (l:135rE); and also (l:134vC). Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 5 (l:134vD): "Hoc ut credo intellexit Avicenna, cum dixit quod possit homo scire Deum esse ex via proposidonum universalium intelligibilium, non ex via testificationis sensibilium. Sunt autem propositiones illae universales de ente, uno, et bono, et primis rerum intentionibus, quae primo concipiuntur ab intellectu, in quibus potest homo percipere ens simpliciter, bonum, aut verum simpliciter. Tale autem ... ipse Deus est." See also a. 22, q. 2 (l:130vOJ, cited above, n. 9. For "first intentions" or "first intentions of reality" (primae rerum intentiones), see, for example, Summa, a. 1, q. 12, ad 1. (l:22vN); and a. 22, q. 5 (l:134vD), quoted just above; for "first concepts" (primi conceptus], Summa, a. 22, q. 2 (l:130vQJ (n. 9); and for both, Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:14vB); and a. 24, q. 6 (l:142vV). In Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:15rB), Henry called knowledge of these intentions or concepts "indivisibilium intelligentia," the phrase used by Thomas to describe all understanding of simple objects - see Thomas, Commentarium in libros Posteriorum analyticorum, prooemium, 5 (in Opera Omnia [Leonine ed.J, I [Rome, 1882], p. 138b), quoted in Marrone, New Ideas of Truth, pp. 2 1 - 2 2 , n. 21. 22
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to the senses.23 Yet "proper object" for him meant something like "perfect object," achieved under the best circumstances, for as indicated in the preceding chapter mind had access less conditionally to a more all-encompassing object, close to quiddity but below it: what Henry called "id quod est."24 Since everything known under this broader rubric could be described as "true," "truth" designating the quality of a thing as object of understanding, it was therefore not precisely quiddity that mind knew in general but rather "the true."25 Once it was established that "true" was broadly speaking the object of intellect, Henry promptly considered other ways to denominate the same thing. "Being," "one" and "good" came immediately to mind, not by chance, of course, the very four terms Bonaventure had focused on in his Itinerarium when discussing mind's primary knowledge of God.26 These were, by common consent, the most fundamental of transcendentals or first intentions, not merely the broadest characterizations of mind's general object but also, because of this, the very first concepts it seized in its efforts at cognition. Among them, moreover, obtained an order of priority. As already explained, "true" was not the attribute of the object that came first to understanding but rather "being," for although mind invariably knew what was true, it did not take stock of that quality as such without further reflection. At first it simply conceived a true thing, the most primitive characterization of which was "being" or ens?-1 The argument could be taken still further with comparison to propositions, for just as all complex cognition could ultimately be pursued back to one absolutely first and best known principle (primum et notissimum), so it was possible to trace all simple concepts to 23
See, for example, Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 1 (l:137vE); a. 34, q. 2 (1:21 IvO and 212rR); Quodlibet 2, q. 6 (Henrici Opera, 6:32); Quod. 3, q. 15 (l:76vA); and Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:175vG). 24 For the association of perfect cognition with grasping quiddity, see Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 12, resp. and ad 4. (l:22vL and 23rR); and a!" 2, q. 2, ad 1. (l:24rG). On knowledge of "id quod est" below quiddity, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 27. 20 See Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 14 and 15. Of course "true" as the broader category embraced the narrower "quiddity"; indeed "truth" and "quiddity" were identical see Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 29 and 50; also Summa (Qg. ord.), a. 34, q. 5 (Henrici Opera, 27:203, 11. 41-44). a> Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:4vC—D). Vital's version of this discussion can be found in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 323). For Bonaventure, consult Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 49, already cited above, n. 12. 27 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 42 and 43; and also, in the context of knowing God, Quodlibet 13, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 18:5, 11. 28-36).
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one alone that was first of all.28 On this point Henry agreed with Bonaventure, and Gilbert, too, about what Bonaventure called the resolution of all terms into one simple idea.29 However, unlike his predecessors, he had in mind as primary object not "God's being" but rather a general notion of ens, more authentically Avicennian than they going so far as to call it "being as being" (ens inquantum ens), a phrase duly attributed to its Avicennian source.30 Vital faithfully echoed him on this score.31 Like the classic Augustinians, they both meant not only that this was mind's very first concept but also that all others were in some way seen in or derived from it.32 Only here, after having faithfully followed Avicenna to his theoretical foundations, did Henry veer off to rejoin his Augustinian predecessors in granting entry to a natural knowledge of God, in effect a cognition of divinity at the fountainhead of all that could be naturally known not only about him but also about creatures. Anyone knowing anything about creatures in a concept that could be referred as well to God, he explained, by that fact knew God himself, but the first intentions — "being" most of all were concepts of just this sort, each applying more readily indeed to divinity than any of the other concepts by which mind knew creation. Thus in knowing "being" intellect also knew God, and since "being" was first of all concepts that it formed, it knew God among all objects absolutely first, although in a general and confused way.33 This general knowledge of God was likewise means for knowing all other objects, just as the first intentions - again "being" most importantly - were means for understanding all ideas less fundamental than they.34 As Richard 28 Henry, Swnma (Qg. ord.), a. 34, q. 3 (Henrici Opera, 27:190, 11. 31-40); and Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (ed. Raymond Macken, Henrici Opera, 14:171-72). 29 See Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 11, 12 and 49. 30 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 12 (l:22rL); a. 3, q. 4 (l:29rO); and a. 34, q. 3 (Henrici Opera, 27:190, 11. 38-40). The last of these texts explicitly cites Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima I, 2 (ed. Van Riet, I, 12). Henry was, however, capable of using Bonaventuran language to describe the reduction of all knowledge into a simple concept of being referring properly to God, as, for instance, in Summa, a. 24, q. 7, ad 2. (l:144vK); and a. 24, q. 8 (l:145vP). :il Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 172): "ens ut ens;" and Quodlibet 2, q. 1 (ed. Delorme, p. 42): "ens inquantum ens." 32 See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:4vD); a. 1, q. 12 (l:22rL); a. 2, q. 3 (l:25rM); and a. 3, q. 4 (l:29rO). ; " Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 6 (l:135vL); and also Summa, a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vX). The same argument, greatly abbreviated, appears later in Richard of Conington, Quaest. ord., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, p. 437). 34 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vX); and also the preceding note and n. 11,
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of Conington said in epitome, God was conceived in the conception of any single thing, constituting in fact the first thing conceived of all.35 Critical, of course, was the fact that at issue here was general knowledge of God (in generali) - in Henry's words also confused (confuse, sub confusione, in intellectu confuso) or universal (in universali} knowledge - as opposed to specific or particular understanding (in speciali, in particulari}.^ By "general" as opposed to "specific" he was thinking in this instance not of the logical distinction between universal and particular but rather the difference between knowing God in an attribute shared with creation and knowing him plainly in his essence.37 It was perfectly possible to have knowledge of creatures, either general or specific, without having "specific" or "particular" knowledge of God in the latter sense; in fact, by normal means one never knew God "specifically" or "in particular" in this way, since that required beatific or rapturous vision.38 The most one could conceive naturally about God fell under an attribute like "being," "true," or "good," opening equally well onto creatures and entailing only vague, though still minimally quidditative, idea of what God was.39 Perhaps draw-
above. Richard of Conington, in Quaest. ord., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, p. 438), put this into the language of causality, saying that the concept of God in mind was cause of the concepts of all other things. In discussing Henry's theory of the primacy of knowledge of God, Paulus (Henri de Gand, pp. 58~63) likewise turned to the idea of cognitive causality, in doing so suggesting Henry came close to positing an innate idea of God. 35 Richard of Conington, Quaest. ord., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, p. 434): "Hiis premissis, dicendum ad questionem quod intellectus concipiendo intentionem creature, per speciem creature necessario concipit actualiter et formaliter intentionem propriam Deo, licet imperceptibiliter. Secundo, quod concipit earn prius naturaliter quam intentionem creature." 36 Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 6, resp. and ad 1. (l:135v[L & M]). The passage cited above, n. 9 (Summa, a. 22, q. 2 [l:130vQJ), makes it even clearer how this analysis applied not only to complex knowledge of God's existence but also to the simple cognition upon which it was based. In the same question (l:131rV), Henry characterized the two ways - confused and particular - as "cognitio in universali et indeterminata" and "cognitio determinata et in particulari." For the term sub confusione, and the distinction in speciali/in generali, see again n. 9. For in intellectu confuso, see above, n. 33. 37 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vX); and also Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142rP). 38 See above, nn. 36 and 7. Henry called the rapturous or beatific knowledge of God in particulari a visio aperta of divinity - see Summa a. 24, q. 6 (l:142rP); also a. 22, q. 2 (l:131rV), cited above n. 36; and a. 22, q. 5, ad 2. (l:135vl). 39 As the first passage cited above in note 37 shows, Henry realized God's simplicity dictated that his attributes be identical with his essence, so that knowing any attribute in all its fullness would mean attaining specific knowledge of divinity. He
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ing on Duns Scotus, Richard of Conington added in passing that this was imperfect knowledge, with an imperfection no human understanding of divinity could escape short of supernatural aid.40 Henry's notion of a general, primary knowledge of God was furthermore embedded in a complicated network of cognitive levels. As he saw it, there were three successive grades to the cognition intellect could naturally acquire about God through an attribute: general, more general and most general.41 Following the ordinary progression of cognitive processes from confused to distinct, such understanding began with the most general or confused mode, knowing God in the most general conception of being, which level was itself further subdivided into three subgrades or submodes.42 First mind knew only a singular but still indeterminate object, "this being" (hoc ens); then it stripped away singularity, knowing "being" itself as common to many objects (simply ens - that is, ens commune); finally it progressed to the notion of a thoroughly independent, "subsistent being" (ens subsistens), unparticipated though still not grasped with distinctness or lack of generality. At each subgrade the referential domain included a divine element, for knowledge of any shared attribute always pointed at least in part to God, but only with the last was everything but divinity excluded. For clarity's sake, Henry explained that there were two kinds of abstraction by which a form could be intellectually separated from instantiations (supposita) in the real world.43 One was to abstract from
therefore explained, in Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142rP), that by general knowledge the wayfarer did not seize the divine attribute as identical to essence but rather as a "certain universal disposition" (quaedam dispositio universalis) of the divinity by which God had some resemblance (communicare) to creation. 40 Richard of Conington, Quaest. ord., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, p. 437). On Duns, see below, Pt. 4, ch. 15, nn. 6, 9 and 10. 41 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142vT). He called them the modus (or gradus) generalis, the modus generator, and the modus generalissimus - see Summa, a. 24, q. 7 [l:244rF]), for an instance actually employing the adjectival, and not the adverbial, forms of the three key words. 42 Henry worked out his example in Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142v) in terms of "good," not "being," but as he noted that his reasoning applied to any of the attributes - thus to an understanding of God in any first intention (see f. 142vS & V; and also a. 24, q. 9 [l:146vY] - it is legitimate to substitute "being" as here in the text. Henry surely chose "good" because he was working off a passage in Augustine's De Trinitate VIII, 3 (CC, 50:273) about knowing God in "the good." The De Trinitate passage followed immediately after those quoted by Henry before and cited above, n. 14. 4:i Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142vS).
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perceived objects to a generality in which they participated, as from particular to universal; the other was to abstract from them to a sort of template absolutely untouched by them, as from particular participants to an unparticipated subsistent form serving as model for the attribute they shared. By means of the former abstraction mind worked from knowledge in particular of an attribute predicable of both divinity and creatures — for instance, "this being" — to that of the general form the particular instantiation participated in - "being" alone - thereby progressing from the first subgrade of most general natural knowledge of God to the second. By means of the latter, it moved from the same starting point to knowledge of "subsistent being," the indivisible and exemplary being of the Creator himself, thus passing on to the third subgrade. The idea was surely lifted, almost untouched, from Pecham's Commentary on the Sentences, where Henry's predecessor likewise attempted to explain the Augustinian notion of knowledge of God in the understanding of a generality like "good."44 As a quick answer to the question of how mind drew knowledge of God from cognition of the world, it worked well. After the "most general" level, with its three subdegrees, followed the two higher modes, in which mind refined its perception of the attribute, focusing increasingly on what was exclusively divine. At the "more general" (generalior) grade it considered its object, by now "subsistent being," no longer as something which by its exemplarity and perfection pointed back to the participating beings of creation but rather that which stood eminently above and apart from all other reality.45 Here intellect consciously acknowledged that its object, though still viewed through a general attribute as if in a universal concept, was of a type radically different from any other being perceived, for the first time considering it under the express guise (sub tali ratione] of assignment to divinity alone. The consequent "general" (generalis) mode brought intellect even closer to particular consideration of God, with the realization that all divinity's attributes were reducible to one first and absolutely simple principle (unum primum simplicissimum attributum), the divine unity reflective of the fact that God, alone among all entities, was as an individual immediately and 44
See above, Ft. 2, ch. 8, n. 90. Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142v-43r[VJ), where he said this was knowledge of God in an attribute, but "sub quadam praeeminentia, ut scilicet est quaedam natura excellentissima." 45
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indivisibly his own essence.46 At last mind was able to see that God's attributes were no different from the quiddity in which they resided, even though this "whatness" could not naturally be represented otherwise than by giving it an attribute's name for instance, "absolutely simple being." Beyond this stage intellect could not advance without special divine assistance. The same scheme of three modes was loosely correlated to a division Henry drew between knowing God in an attribute by means of indistinct cognition and knowing him in an attribute distinctly, the difference depending on whether the attribute registered as a quality still vaguely shared with creatures or one appropriated exclusively to God.47 The dividing line plainly fell somewhere between the lower subgrades of "most general" knowledge of divinity and the two higher modes, "more general" and "general." More revealing was a differentiation between natural and rational knowledge of God. Citing Aristotle's Physics as authority, Henry called attention to a fundamental disjunction among operative principles between reason and nature between those that might have variable effects and those that, under normal conditions, always produced the same result. In human cognition, for example, knowledge of primary principles, where mind was constrained to consent, could be described as natural, while knowledge of conclusions, where it had to deliberate on whether to assent or disagree, could be called rational.48 Applied to knowledge of God ex creaturis, the kind of knowiedge at issue here, the latter distinction dictated that the initial, confused cognition of divinity in first intentions be called natural in a strict sense of the word, since immediate and involuntary, while the more 46
Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:143rZ). Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 3 (l:139vX); and a. 24, q. 6 (l:141vN). Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 4, ad 1. (l:13rG). The same division could be described from a different perspective as between natural (or unpremeditated) and voluntary knowledge - see Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:15r[B—C]). As his source for the latter version of the dichotomy, Henry cited Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros III, 36 (ed. Crawford, p. 496) - a passage Rene A. Gauthier has called to our attention in "Notes sur Siger de Brabant," p. 227. In Summa, a. 1, q. 11 (1:2IrC), Henry spoke of the involuntary, natural knowledge of such things as principles as verging on necessity, thus inevitable once the senses had been exposed to the appropriate objects outside mind. Henry realized his distinction was at work in the standard scholastic opposition between intellectus and scientia and was related to another technical duality, intellectual versus rational modi intelligendi. On the Aristotelian terms intellectus and scientia, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, n. 49; and Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 4, ad 3. (l:13rl); for intellectualis versus rationalis, see Summa, a. 1, q. 12 (l:22vL). 47
48
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reflective understanding built on these foundations be called rational.49 Henry even indicated precisely how his various modes of general knowledge should be distributed. The first two subgrades of most general knowledge, where mind was directed to creatures as well as God, constituted natural knowledge of divinity; the third subgrade and the two subsequent modes, more general and general, advanced to the category of rational, with God exclusive object, known more or less distinctly for himself.50 A by-product of this division between two kinds of unrevealed knowledge of God was greater clarity about how and when God was first object of mind. Again, Henry seems to have drawn inspiration from John Pecham, this time his distinction between discursive and simple cognition of God, and once more what Pecham merely suggested grew in Henry's hands into fully elaborated theory.51 For rational knowledge, the equivalent of Pecham's discursive cognition, divinity was in fact not first mental object, since the reasoning intellect began with an indiscriminate knowledge of creatures and only subsequently progressed to conceiving whatever could be known of God's essence from sensory data through a willful process of cogitation and reconsideration.52 Because the resultant semi-distinct cognition was perforce a constructed knowledge, although not constructed on the foundations of formal a posteriori argumentation but instead on the simpler basis of metaphysical analysis, it was moreover not truly immediate, in contrast to strictly natural knowledge of God, in which not even minimal reasoning intervened. Yet if not "natural" in either of these ways — primary and immediate — it was still "natural" in the looser sense of not requiring special intervention from above. Free of revelation, such cognition was, Henry readily admitted, open to what he called the best of philosophers (summi philosophi), people of wisdom (sapientes) even outside Christian tradition, as the history of philosophy confirmed.53 Only with natural knowledge of God in the strict sense - equivalent to Pecham's simple cognition — could Henry reaffirm the tradi49
Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 7 (l:144rF); and also Summa, a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vY). Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 7 (l:144r[F-G]). '' See above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 100-102; for a hint of the same idea already present in Bonaventure, see Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 64. 32 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 7 (l:144rF). 53 See Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 2 (l:131rV); a. 24, q. 3 (l:139vV); and a. 24, q. 6 (l:143rV). 50
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tion holding God to be first object for wayfarer's mind. At his first two subgrades of "most general" knowledge of God, where divinity was grasped in the attribute "being" as yet indiscriminately and generally conceived, God was very first thing seized by mind and means for it to know all else, thus truly first and most fundamental cognitive object.54 The reason for this had to do with the nature of indetermination. In line with what he had already asserted about the direction of cognitive processes, Henry reminded his reader that intellect, just like the senses, moved naturally from indeterminate to determinate, so that by nature, if not always by temporal priority, mind knew more universal and cognitively confused objects before the more particular or distinct, and it knew the same object under more universal, confused guise before knowing it in its particularity.15 But there were two different types of indetermination. An intelligible object was indeterminate privatively if grasped without determination although it was, at another time or under different consideration, capable of being determined, while an object was indeterminate negatively if it was under no circumstances susceptible to determination, either in itself or from any point of view. Indetermination of the first sort characterized the universal notion of "being"; of the second sort, "being" as subsistent and unparticipated, thus totally beyond determination. Negative indetermination, as the greatest (maior) kind imaginable, was cognitively the more primitive, thus always known prior even to indetermination of the privative sort.56 Of course, knowledge of God at the first two subgrades of "most general" cognition was confused or indeterminate in the broad sense of looking away from any distinct or particular quality of divinity, but perhaps surprisingly Henry insisted as well that each of the two 54 Henry, Summa, a. 24, a. 7 (l:144r[G~H): "Loquendo autem de primo modo supra iam dicto intelligendi Deum quid est, scilicet naturaliter in primis intentionibus entis, que sunt ens, verum, unum, bonum, naturaliter intellectis, quod pertinet ad modum intelligendi Deum quid sit modo generalissimo in primo et secundo gradu eius, dicendum quod quid est Deus est primum comprehensibile per intellectum. . . . Absolute ergo dicendum quod in generalissimo modo intelligendi quid est Deus, quo ad primum et secundum eius gradum, quid est Deus est primum obiectum quod ab humano intellectu ex creaturis habet intelligi." 5) Henry. Summa, a. 24, q. 7 (l:144rG). For the preceding formulation of the same dynamic principle in terms of confused and distinct knowledge, see above, n. 42. 3(1 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 7 (l:144rH). See also a. 21, q. 2, ad 3. (l:124v 25r [P~QJ).
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subgrades embraced confusion or indetermination of both of his two different sorts. Thus at each grade mind seized "universal being" — that is, being privatively undetermined and also "subsistent being" — the negatively undetermined being of God. It could therefore be concluded not only that "most general" knowledge, at both subgrades, was, by virtue of either indeterminate object, principal or fundamental to human cognition but also that among the two objects the one constricted to divinity's type of being came, at each subgrade, absolutely first.57 Because of his radical indeterminacy, God stood at the source of all that could be understood, nothing else being conceivable unless God was known first in at least this most general way.08 The delineation of natural and rational knowledge of God constituted a considerable achievement, erasing many of the ambiguities and contradictions that had plagued the classic Augustinians when they tried to explain how humankind's primary perception of God related to processes of reasoning.59 With his penchant for drawing sharp theoretical boundaries, Henry had gone a long way towards eliminating the philosophical embarrassments of his predecessors. He did so, moreover, without recourse to the image of a light of truth, banished from his understanding of God as first object even though it had helped predecessors like Pecham introduce a modicum of clarity into their otherwise somewhat untidy thoughts.60 Still, one might question whether the deepest theoretical difficulties had been resolved. In natural cognition of God, the first two subgrades of most general knowledge, divinity was by express stipulation the primary object. Yet Henry's initial description of the three subgrades had presented mind as beginning with "this being," a particular object which even if known indistinctly was for the wayfarer
" Summa, a. 24, q. 7 (l:144rH): "Ergo cum semper intellectus noster naturaliter prius concipit indeterminatum quam determinatum . . . intellectus noster intelligendo bonum quodcumque in ipso naturaliter prius cointelligit bonum negatione indeterminatum, et hoc est bonum quod Deus est. Et sicut de bono, ita et de omnibus aliis de Deo intellects ex creaturis." Henry's argument about indetermination was succinctly summarized (without the language of negative and privative indetermination) by Richard of Conington in his Quaest. on/., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, p. 437). 08 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 7 (l:144rH): "Et sicut nihil aliud potest perfecte cognosci nisi ipso [Deo] prius perfecte cognito, sic nee aliquid potest cognosci quantumcumque imperfecte, nisi ipso prius saltern in generalissimo gradu cognito." 59 See Ft. 2, ch. 8, nn. 64, 67-68, 93, and 95-96. 60 See Pt. 2, ch. 8, pp. 227-29.
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by necessity creaturely and not divine. And to get to the second subgrade intellect abstracted from the initial particular object to a universal "being" in which all such particulars participated — to "participated being" as he so often called it - which would ostensibly lie exclusively within the realm of created entity as well.61 By these terms, did it not make more sense to say that in its journey to God mind knew created objects first? The dilemma went back at least to Gilbert of Tournai, and similar difficulties had plagued the classic Augustinians.62 Henry evidently believed that he had a solution, which lay in distinguishing between conscious and unconscious cognition. Rational knowledge was fully conscious; natural knowledge was not. Thus, although God was naturally first object for mind, intellect did not always take note of the priority.63 Indeed, natural knowledge being what it was nonreflective - at the very moment mind was engaged in the first two subgrades of most general knowledge of God, it literally could not grasp the significance of what it saw. All this would explain the apparent equivocation in Henry's language. Since conscious cognition was unambiguous and easy to picture, Henry simply fashioned his precise description of the three substages of "most general" knowledge to reflect a rational point of view. If mind consciously - that is, rationally - looked back over the steps of its cognition, it would, after all, inevitably conclude that it had known first "this being," and then a universal intention of "participated being," before coming to anything that could be identified
61 For instance, Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 7 (l:144rF): "Abstrahendo enim ab hoc bono singulari, et etiam a bono simpliciter universal! et participate a creaturis, ipsum bonum simpliciter quod non est bonum participatum sed subsistens bonum, prius oportet intelligere bonum singulare a quo primo fit abstractio boni universalis, et deinde etiam ipsum bonum universale participatum, a quo ulterius bonum separatum non participatum per eminentiam et remotionem abstrahitur, quam illud quod ab illo abstrahitur." See the same implications in Henry's introduction of the two sorts of abstraction, cited above, n. 43. 62 On Gilbert, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, p. 204. 1)3 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 7, ad 1. (l:144vl), where he said mind did not discern (non discernit) God as first object; and ad 2.(l:144vK): "In omnibus ergo generalibus intentionibus rerum cum aliquam illarum intelligis simpliciter - ut ens, verum, bonum - primo Deum intelligis, etsi non advertis. . . ." Immediately before the latter passage, Henry implied that the difference between knowing God confusedly in natural cognition and knowing him distinctly was simply a matter of becoming mentally aware, an idea surely related to the definition for discrete knowledge in Summa, a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vY): "cum animadversione notitia."
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with the divine. Correlating this same progression with the simultaneous but inverted dynamics of natural knowledge, where divine object was first known but not consciously perceived, was a messier affair, so Henry satisfied himself with just reminding the reader that, despite rational appearances, a more complicated configuration of referents was actually at work. Though such a strategy ran the risk of confusion, Henry could argue in his own defense that by describing the first two subgrades as pointing to "this being" and "universal being" — both of which from the rational perspective implicated solely created objects — he was not so much obscuring the reality of a primary knowledge of God as reflecting the subjective impression of mind. At each level God lurked below the surface; intellect, as natural, was merely unprepared to put that fact into words. There is, to be sure, no explicit confirmation in Henry's words that this is what he had in mind. However, a few decades later Richard of Gonington, surely responding to Duns Scotus's critique of the idea of God as first known but not perceived, returned to Henry's claim about unconscious knowledge, leaving no doubt that he read the master in precisely this manner. First he outlined a number of ways in which concepts could be conceived without at the same time being discerned by mind.64 Then he applied the scheme to the general notion of being, which he said was a concept actually and formally (actualiter et fonnaliter) conceived in every act of cognition, though not fully perceived (non percipitur), at least not in the initial stages.65 Finally he turned to the simple notion of being proper to God, a notion he surely meant to correspond to whatever mind knew about God in Henry's first two subgrades of "most general" knowledge, asserting that it, too, was actually and formally conceived by mind in every cognitive act, although — and here, under pressure from Duns, he parted ways with Henry — mind working without revelation in the world was never able to bring it to conscious perception.66 A clearer statement of the solution could hardly be desired. Yet in addition to an explanation for the subjective impression, or misimpression, of mind about its first object, a full defense of 64
Richard of Conington, Quaest. ord., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, p. 432). Richard of Conington, Quaest. ord., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, p. 433). The Latin phrases come from the outline of the scheme given on p. 432 of Doucet's text (n. 64, above). 66 See Richard of Conington, Quaest. ord., q. 1, arg. 5 and ad 6. (ed. Doucet, pp. 431 and 438); and also the discussions below, nn. 87 and 93. 65
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Henry's theory needed to offer an accounting of noetical details, and this accounting would have to satisfy two potentially conflicting demands. To sustain his vision of the real if not temporal priority of a general concept of divinity, it would have to guarantee that from the very start the wayfarer's knowledge embraced both God and creation. But to save the idea of naturalness, it would also be required to respect the rule that all human cognition in the world, short of revelation, was drawn from creatures (ex creaturis) and began with sensation. Finding a philosophical reckoning to serve both ends would be difficult, forcing Henry to focus on mental processes and cognitive entities as well as objective conditions and their connection to mind. Precisely what, in external reality, was grasped at the first two stages of most general knowledge, and how was it made available to intellect? Was what was known something common to God and creatures, and if not, how could two objects be seized at once? Finally, with respect to mental entities in which knowledge was made manifest, was there a common concept of divine and created being or was any such concept impossible to conceive? These concerns were not new, but with Henry they took on an urgency never seen before, signaling a new phase in the high medieval discussion of the object of mind. Simply put, the peculiar dynamics of Henry's thought, the theoretical demands imposed by his desire to attain a systematic balance between Aristotelianizing and Augustinian perspectives, brought him face to face with the question of the univocity of the concept of being, an issue that would plague scholars in more or less the same form for a generation to come. Like all scholastics before and after, Henry held that there was nothing really common to God and creatures, no aspect of one, substantial or accidental, that could also be found in the other. Even an attribute so general as being was not really the same in a creature and in divinity.6' Consequently, when a universal like "being" was predicated of both God and creatures, this was not a sign of real referential unity but rather an indication of unity by name alone '" For example, Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 2 (l:124rF): "Quare cum multo minus in aliquo uno reali conveniunt creator et creatura, quam duae creaturae, substantia scilicet et accidens . . . nullo modo ens potest esse aliquid commune reale Deo et creaturae. Et ideo absolute dicendum quod esse non est aliquid commune reale in quo Deus communicet cum creaturis." See also Summa, a. 21, q. 3, resp. and ad 2. (l:126rE and 126vl). As late as Summa, a. 75, q. 6, ad 3. (2:31 IvZ), Henry was making the same point.
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(sola nominis communitas), so that no term, not even "being," referred univocally to absolutely everything there was. Yet Henry agreed with his contemporaries, that when the term "being" was applied to creatures and creator the usage was not purely equivocal, either. There was instead a middle ground: "being" signified God and creatures by analogy (analogicv?).68 Henry explained what he meant by looking at how terms were connected to the forms they signified.69 A term was univocal if it always signified exactly the same form — for instance, "horse" or "animal." A term was purely equivocal — Henry used the technical description drawn from Boethius: "aequivocum casu" — if it signified different forms but without any determinate order or priority.70 His example was the name "Ajax," which referred to many men of that appellation and to no one of them more readily than any other. Finally, a term was analogical if it signified different forms but in a definite order, so that it pointed to just one form principally and all others with respect to or in proportion to the first. "Being" was a term of this sort, primarily signifying the Godhead but secondarily, and always in deference to its primary significance, capable of referring to creatures, too. On occasion Henry spoke of this kind of signification as a case of attribution, a technical description again dependent on Boethius, who had listed it among the types of aequivocatio a consilio, accepted by scholastics as the general rubric under which analogy fell.71 Both Vital and Richard of Conington expressed similar views while striving for even greater exactitude about the precise nature of the analogy ensconced in "being."72
(8 ' The passage quoted above in n. 67 continues: "Et ita si ens aut esse praedicatur de Deo et creaturis, hoc est sola nominis communitate, nulla rei, et ita non univoce per definitionem univocorum, nee tamen pure aequivoce, secundum definitionem aequivocorum casu, sed medio modo ut analogice." See also Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142vS); and Quodlibet VII, qq. 1-2, ad 2. (ed. Gordon A. Wilson, Henrici Opera, 11:27-28). Richard of Conington reproduced these ideas in Quaest. ord., q. 1, resp. and ad 4. (ed. Doucet, pp. 434, 436 and 438). Like his contemporaries, Henry held that "being" was not univocal, but only analogical, to the ten categories, too see Henry, Summa, a. 26, q. 1 (l:157rC); Quodlibet 10, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 14:202); and Quodlibet 13, q. 9 (Henrici Opera, 18:57-58). 69 Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 2 (l:124rl); see also Summa, a. 75, q. 6, ad 3. (l:313rK). 70 See Boethius, In Categorias Aristotelis libri quatuor I (PL 64:166). 71 Henry, Summa, a. 7, q. 3 (l:50rB). For Boethius, again consult the passage cited above, n. 70. /2 Vital, Quodlibet 3, q. 5 (ed. Delorme, p. 130), noting two kinds of analogy, one by attribution of two divergent significanda to a third and another by attribution of
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The whole scheme made metaphysical sense if one understood how some logical relations among terms arose out of the way their referents agreed in form (convenientia in forma, communicatio in forma)./3 To be precise, there were two kinds of formal agreement. One was for things to agree in form in respect to the same formal consideration (secundum eandem rationem}. It was this way that objects participating in an identical universal form communicated, as white things in whiteness or men in humanity, and Henry said the word for this type of agreement was similarity (similitude). Univocity presupposed correspondence of this strong sort. The other kind of formal agreement applied when things communicated in form but in respect to different considerations (secundum aliam et aliam rationem). Agreement of this weaker sort, called imitation, was what was generally found between cause and effect, and since God was the ultimate cause of all created being, all creatures agreed with him - imitated him - in precisely this way/ 4 The analogical character of "being" rested on such imitation. From this Henry concluded that there could be literally no single concept signifying both God and creatures, no matter how general or unspecific the concept might be. Concepts were correlated to form, even to formal consideration (ratio), so that one concept could never refer to two things whose form, in respect to at least one consideration, was not the same. Another way of putting it was to say that concepts were constrained by univocity. Applied to the noetics
one significandum to another, with "being" predicated by analogy of the latter sort. Richard of Conington, in Quodlibet 1, q. 2 (ed. Brown, pp. 300 and 302), simply used the Boethian terms, aequivocatio a casu and aequivocatio a consilio, the latter indicative of a unity of "signified intentions" that was, although not univocal, at least secundum quid. In Quaest. ord., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, p. 436), Richard also spoke of the analog)' of "being" in terms of attribution. ' 3 Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 2 (l:124rG): ". . . notandum quod convenientia rei ad rem maxime in forma attenditur, et hoc dupliciter, secundum quod duplex est modus communicandi aliqua in forma. Una secundum eandem rationem, quae dicitur convenientia similitudinis, et est eorum quae una forma participant secundum rem, ut albedine duo alba, et humanitate duo homines, quae facit convenientiam univocationis, qualis, ut dictum est, non est Dei et creaturae in esse. Alia vero est convenientia in forma secundum aliam et aliam rationem, quae dicitur convenientia imitationis, et est universaliter in efficientibus et factis, causis et causatis." In a similar discussion in Summa, a. 24, q. 6, ad 1. (l:143vA), Henry was back to describing the difference with reference solely to form, without mention of consideration (rationes), as above, n. 69. See also Summa, a. 21, q. 2, ad 2. in opp. (l:125vV); a. 21, q. 3, resp. and ad 2. (l:126rE & 126vl); and a. 26, q. 2, ad 2. (l:159vV). 74 Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 2 (l:124rH).
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of knowing God, this meant that at every point in the course of mind's investigation of being, any single concept devised by it, no matter how general, necessarily referred either to uncreated being or to created being but not to both.70 Richard of Conington echoed Henry on this score, going so far as to claim that at their most general the concepts of uncreated and created being might be said to form a unity in a manner of speaking (secundum quid], not in any real sense of the word (simpliciter).'^ The problem was that Henry's language frequently implied just the opposite. When it came to the workings of mind in the first two subgrades of "most general" knowledge of God, he could hardly resist the temptation to speak as if there were a single concept referring jointly to God's being and that of creatures.7/ Sometimes this
75 Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 2, ad 3. (l:124vO): "Nunquam enim potest concipi aliquis intellectus entis simpliciter absque eo quod homo concipit aliquem intellectum Dei aut creaturae, ut concipiat aliquem unicum intellectum simplicem communem ad Deum et creaturam, alium praeter intellectum Dei aut creaturae, quia nullus potest esse talis. Sed si aliquid concipit homo, illud est aut quod pertinet ad esse Dei tantum, aut quod pertinet ad esse creaturae tantum. . . . Omnis ergo conceptus realis quo aliquid rei concipitur concipiendo esse simpliciter, aut est conceptus rei quae Deus est, aut quae creatura est, non alicuius communis ad utrumque." See also Summa, a. 21, q. 2, ad 2. in opp. (l:125r[T-V]); and a. 21, q. 3 (l:126rE). 76 Richard of Conington, Quodlibet 1, q. 2 (ed. Brown, p. 306): "Sed quod dicunt, quod intentio entis abstracta a Deo et creatura, ab accidente et substantia[,] est una, falsum est." Also the same question, ad 2. (p. 307): "Ad secundum dicendum quod intellectus sistit et terminatur ad unum secundum quid quod est duo simpliciter, percipiendo tamen unitatem non dualitatem." The same view is expressed in the language of analogy in Richard's Quaest. ord., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, p. 436). On unity secundum quid according to Richard, see also above, n. 72. Stephen F. Brown, in "Avicenna and the Unity of the Concept of Being. The Interpretations of Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, Gerard of Bologna and Peter Aureoli," FrS 25 (1965): 123, renders Henry's views in terms of Conington's distinction between secundum quid unity and duality simpliciter, but he gives no supporting citation to Henry's works, and is surely reading Henry through Conington's eyes. 77 For instance, Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 3 (l:126rE): "Prius enim res quaecumque nata est movere intellectum ratione qua ens est indeterminate conceptum sub indifferentia ad duplicem determinationem praedictam, quam ratione qua Deus creator est aut creatura." See also Summa, a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vY). Gomez Caffarena, in Ser partidpado, p. 183; and Berube, in "Olivi, critique," p. 86, n. 63; and "Henri de Gand," pp. 160-61, attribute the inconsistency to Henry's having changed his mind. They argue - Gomez Caffarena by implication and Berube explicitly - that in article 24 Henry lent his support to the notion of a common concept, later abandoning the idea and inserting language in article 21 denying conceptual community. The passages cited in the present note and those that follow furnish evidence that their contention is not justified: in both article 24 and article 21 Henry's language appears at some point to come down on each side of the question. The likeliest explanation is that he tried to make it clear there was no common concept but never succeeded in purging language which might give rise to the opposite
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took the form of reference to a "most common being" (ens communissime dictum).78 Sometimes he simply talked about "being" (ens) as a common, although analogical cognitive entity (commune analogum), in the same way that Richard of Conington would speak of a common, but not univocal, concept applicable to God and creatures (intentio communis non univoca Deo et creature).1^ Occasionally Henry even suggested that intellect descended from the most general notion of being to more specific concepts of it by adding conceptual determinations, as if "being" were a genus.80 He actually dared speak of one formal consideration (ratio) of "being" in respect to which it was common to creatures and to God and another in respect to which it was proper to creatures, thus entangling the term "being" in the very technicalities he had used before to distinguish univocity from analogy.81
view, the difficulites inherent in explaining primary knowledge of God ex creaturis simply proving too great to allow him absolute clarity. All this has led Stephen D. Dumont, "The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Fourteenth Century: John Duns Scotus and William of Alnwick," MS 49 (1987): 5, n. 10, to remark how close Henry came to positing the univocity of the concept of being. Berube points out in "Henri de Gand," p. 161, n. 87, that both he and Robert Prentice discovered an anonymous question from the late thirteenth century that falls into the same ambivalence as Henry. 78 See Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 2 (l:124rl); and a. 26, q. 2, ad 1. (l:159rT): ". . . est alia ratio ends et intentio eius, scilicet quod est commune analogum creator! et creaturae, et eius quod est proprium creaturae et analogum substantiae et accidenti. Ens enim analogum creatori et creaturae est ens communissime dictum, et sub intentione simplicissima sine omni additione accepta." Much the same point is made in a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vY), where Henry speaks of an "intellectus entis simpliciter communis de Deo et creaturis." 79 See Henry, Summa, a. 26, q. 2, ad 1. (l:159rT), quoted above, n. 78; a. 24, q. 6 (l:142vV): and a. 24, q. 7, ad 1. (l:144vl). The logical peculiarity of talking about an analogical concept is noted above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 12 and 59. Other texts implying a common concept of being are Summa, a. 21, q. 3 (l:126rD); and a. 24, q. 7, ad 2 (l:144vK). For Richard of Conington, see Quaest. ord., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, p. 434). 80 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 3 (l:138vP): ". . . omnis alia cognitio de re sive creati sive increati, sive substantiae sive accidentis, per additionem se habet ad istam [i. e. cognitionem primi et simplicissimi conceptus entis], sicut omnis alia intentio entis se habet per additionem ad esse, et differens est ab ilia vel secundum rationem vel secundum intentionem aliquam." In Summa, a. 26, q. 2 (l:158vN), he made the point again with regard to the descent from created "being" to the ten categories. In Quodlibet 10, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 14:196-97, 11. 25-29), Henry tried to be more technically cautious by speaking of "being" analogous to the categories as having a unity broader or logically superior to generic unity: "communitas quaedam superior quam sit communitas generis." In Summa, a. 74, q. 6, ad 3. (1:31 lr[V-Y], Henry finally got around to listing the degrees of unity various general terms or markers might have, including the greater and lesser univocity of species and genuses. 81 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142rQJ; a. 26, q. 2, ad 1. (l:159rT), quoted
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There was an excuse for this language, or at least Henry thought he could account for it innocently enough, although his reasoning would not satisfy critics like Duns Scotus. Indeed, he felt his usage was practically unavoidable, the explanation being precisely what Matthew of Aquasparta seems to have picked up from him and employed in his own writings to resolve the same dilemma.82 According to Henry, the unity of "being" at its most general, the unity he was thinking about when he spoke of a "most common being" and that appeared from time to time in his descriptions of the first two subgrades of "most general" knowledge of God, reduced to the paradigmatic equivocal unity of word (vox) or name (nomen). As word — not mental concept but simply spoken or written marker — "being" was apt to refer indifferently and equally immediately to either of the two kinds of being, divine or created.83 Just a word, therefore, and not a concept constituted the cognitive reality jointly pointing to creatures and to God. But the word "being," unlike purely equivocal terms, descended from this most common, conceptually indiscriminate signification to its two less general but proper applications, referring to either of the two primary sorts of being, without attachment of any explicit modifiers.84 For example, both Sirius and Fido above, n. 78; and Quod. 11, q. 3 (2:446rE). On the description of univocity according to identity of rationes, see above, n. 73. In Summa, a. 75, q. 6, ad 3. (2:31 lv[Y-Z]), Henry actually used the word "univocal" to describe the term "being" as signifying both created and uncreated objects, but as his immediately succeeding comments show he did not mean this in the way "univocal" was normally taken or so as to defy his usual proscription of the unity of all being in any single ratio. What he intended was that insofar as all things were God, because radically from God, they could be said to have his being, and thus described as "being" univocally with the creator; insofar as they were separably themselves, of course, they did not possess such being. Thus general "being" was, Henry concluded, partly univocal, partly equivocal (partim univocum et partim aequivoami). The same way all things "are" in virtue of God's being is explained in Quodlibet 9, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 13:30, 11. 9-14). 82 On Matthew, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, pp. 233-39. 83 In Summa, a. 21, q. 2, ad 3 (l:124vO), just after explaining that there was no single concept signifying both divine and created being (see the quotation in n. 75, above), Henry said: "Sed utrumque eorum [i.e. esse Dei et esse creaturae] indifferenter et aeque simul quantum est ex parte vocis natum est praesentari in significato eius quod est esse." Remember also the passage quoted above, n. 68, where Henry insisted that the unity of "being" applied to both God and creature was a unity in name alone. 84 Henry, Summa, a. 75, q. 6, ad 3. (2:311rY). This is a view on the use of "being" as a term that Duns would reject (see below, Pt. 4, ch. 15, pp. 521-24). Only if Duns had held to it as well as to his position on the univocity of "being" as transcendental would Allan Welter's interpretation of him as given in The
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were "dogs," in an equivocal application of the term, but to pick out one or the other it was necessary to speak explicitly of "dog star" or "barking dog." "Being," on the other hand, could legitimately be used precisely to designate either God or creature, the ontological reality of the referent alone sufficing to narrow the term without added qualifier. Moreover it was not just that the word "being" was unusually elastic; there was also a psychological or subjective element involved. Some minds, not recognizing the conceptual division between God's being and created being, simply took unity of word for unity of concept and proceeded upon the assumption that "being," as embracing all reality, was truly univocal. Plato, Henry thought, provided a notorious example of a philosopher who took this route.83 Indeed all intellects made this assumption initially, at the first two subgrades of most general knowledge of God, by not registering the distinction between divine and created being. In such primitive cognitive endeavors there was thus something approaching a common concept of being, which instead of a legitimate concept was more truly a confused mode (modus confusus) of understanding, a conceiving of two different objects, or concepts, as if they were one.86 Richard of Transcendentals and their Function, pp. 46-48, n. 35, be justified (see also Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity in Duns Scotus's Early Works," FrS 43 [1983]: 372-75). (Wolter maintains that Duns used "being" alone sometimes as an absolutely simple and common term, in which case it was the univocal applying to both God and creatures, and sometimes as a proper term, in which case it stood for one of the two analogous concepts, created and uncreated being.) It would appear that Richard of Conington, like Henry an opponent of univocity of "being," retained Henry's attitude toward the term's logical descent; in Quaest. ord., q. 1, ad 2. and ad 3. (ed. Doucet, p. 438), he claimed that there was an unmodified term "being" proper to God (in deference to Duns he described it as absolutely simple [sirnpliciter simplex]} which was also included in another "being" that was somehow broader (if only unified in a manner of speaking - see above, nn. 72 and 76). 8 ' The passage from Henry's Summa, a. 21, q. 2, ad 3. (l:124vO), quoted above in n. 75, making the point about the impossibility of a common concept for the being of God and creature, continues: "Videtur tamen hoc [i.e. conceptus ends communis esse ad esse Dei et esse creaturae] non potentibus distinguere multiplicitatem entis et esse creatoris ab esse creaturae, sicut nee potuit Plato ponens ens esse genus, tamquam sit nominis entis unum aliquid commune conceptum, quod non videtur subtilioribus potentibus distinguere ens et eius significata discernere, qualis erat Aristotelis." On this failure properly to distinguish the concepts of being, see also Summa, a. 24, q. 7, ad 1. (l:144vl); and a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vY). 8b Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142vV): "Et licet secundum se diversos intellectus distinctos faciunt bonum creatoris et bonum creaturae, sicut et ens de Deo et de creatura, quia tamen proximi sunt, intellectus noster concipit modo confuso utrumque ut unum." Stephen Brown, "Avicenna and the Unity of the Concept of
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Conington made the point by saying that at this most general cognitive level mind simply failed to perceive the duality of concepts, involuntarily abstracting from its two objects distinctly understood to a kind of imperceptible distinction (impercepta distinctio).87 Mind was wrong to do this — technically speaking, Henry said it was in error — but the mistake was nonetheless understandable.88 As already explained, at the first two subgrades of most general knowledge of God cognition was highly indeterminate; indeed at these stages mind seized its dual object under the two most indeterminate modes possible.89 It should not be surprising that such indetermination was reflected in mind's assessment of its knowledge, preventing it at first from deciding what sort of object it knew, whether divine, created or both.90 To put the argument another way, the negative indetermination of the primary concept of God's being and the privative indetermination of the primary concept of being of creatures were so close (propinquae or proximae) that intellect fell naturally into taking the two concepts for one and the same, thinking of its object, erroneously of course, as undivided.91 Being", pp. 122 and 148, describes this as the "apparent unity" of the concept of being in Henry's thought. 87 Richard of Conington, Quodlibet 1, q. 2 (ed. Brown, p. 306): "Alia est abstractio duarum intentionum a seipsis distincte intelligibilibus, in quantum huiusmodi, ad sui ipsarum imperceptam distinctionem. Et quia quod a dualitate non abstrahitur oportet quod sit duo et utrumque, manifestum est quod talis abstractio non terminatur ad intentionem unam et neutram sed ad duas et utrasque, tamen sine dualitate [dualitatis?] et utriusque perceptione. Unde dico quod concipiens ens concipit Deum et creaturam, sed non percipit nee distinguit intuitive sed convincit necessaria ratione quod ita est." See also above, n. 76. Matthew of Aquasparta adopted the idea of a confused knowledge of two kinds of being in terms more literally faithful to Henry's - see Quaestiones de productione rerum, q. 1, ad 4. (BFS, 17, 20), partially quoted above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 135. 88 For the word "error," see below, n. 91. 89 See above, n. 56. 90 See Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 2, ad 3. (l:124vP). 91 Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 2, ad 3. (l:125rS): "Per hunc ergo modum esse indeterminatum per abnegationem convenit Deo, et per privationem creaturae. Et quia indeterminatio per abnegationem et per privationem propinquae sunt, quia ambae tollunt determinationem, una tantum secundum actum, alia secundum actum simul et potentiam, ideo non potentes distinguere inter huiusmodi diversa pro eodem concipiunt esse simpliciter et esse indeterminatum, sive uno modo sive alter, sive sit Dei sive creaturae. Natura enim est intellectus non potentis distinguere ea quae propinqua sunt, concipere ipsa ut unum, quae tamen in rei veritate non faciunt unum conceptum. Et ideo est error in illius conceptu." For the term "proximi," see the account in Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142vV), quoted in n. 86 above. In Summa, a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vY), Henry gave the same explanation, saying God's being and created being were "prope existentia."
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Henry even found a way to account for mind's error that advanced dramatically in the direction of Duns's later notion of "being" as an absolutely simple (simpliciter simplex) concept. As he saw it, mind's confusion, its initial inability to discern God's being from being proper to creatures, could be traced to the extreme simplicity of both primitive general concepts under which being was conceived.92 Concepts so simple just did not furnish mind with much by which to tell them apart. Of the two, predictably enough, it was the concept of being referring to God that was simplest of all, and Richard of Conington evidently took this fact as justification for adopting Duns's very term, "simpliciter simplex." The notion of "being" proper to God that the
92 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vY): "Unde ista cognitio eius quod quid est de Deo . . . habetur . . . naturaliter et simplici conceptu, sicut et concipiuntur prima principia complexa et incomplexa, inter quae conceptus Dei sub ratione entis aut boni simpliciter alicuius huiusmodi intentionis generalis est, aut primo primus, quern non discernit propter eius simplicitatem ab intentionibus huiusmodi convenientibus creaturis, a quibus concipitur quod in eis convenit creatori; sicut etiam intelligendo entia particularia in quibus primo conceptu homo intelligit intentionem entis simpliciter et universalis ad omne ens creatum, non discernit illam propter eius simplicitatem ab aliis intentionibus communibus et particularibus, quamvis non sit tantae simplicitatis ut est intellectus entis simpliciter communis de Deo et creaturis, et maxime ut est intentio entis quae soli Deo convenit." See also Quodlibet 6, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 10:3, 11. 63-65); and Quodlibet 13, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 18:5, 11. 28-32). It is worth noting that in the passage from a. 24, q. 9 quoted here, and in Summa, a. 26, q. 2, ad 1. (l:159rT), quoted above, n. 78, Henry claimed that the "being" analogically common to God and creatures - for all that it was not a true concept - was also most simple (simplicissimum). Except for the matter of univocity, this was Duns's mature position on "being;" or perhaps one should say that including the stand on analogical community, it was precisely the position Duns seems to have advocated in his early works, where he had not yet come to posit the univocity of "being" - see Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity," pp. 368-70. In Summa (Qg. ord.}, a. "34, q. 3 (Henrici Opera, 27:190, 11. 43-48), Henry observed that when descending from the analogically unified notion of being - as from the "being" applicable to the ten categories - to any more proper concept - as, for instance, to "substantial being" - the formal aspect (ratio) added to the original term could not be extraneous to being itself. This, too, foreshadows Duns, in this case his theory of the descent from univocal "being" by intrinsic modes. Passages like the one from Summa, a. 24, q. 9, quoted in the present note, are what prompted Gomez Caffarena and Berube to claim that at one point Henry held to the notion of a single concept of being absolutely common to God and creatures (see above, n. 77). But a full reading of a. 24, q. 9 (l:146vY), reveals how his position there was compatible with his notion of a unity of "being" as common to creatures and God only by means of a "confused mode" of understanding, not any real unity of concept. Indeed it was in article 24—q. 6 (l:142vV) - and not in article 21, as Gomez Caffarena and Berube would suggest, that Henry introduced the phrase "confuso modo" to describe the way mind thought of God's being and created being as somehow one (see above, n. 86).
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wayfarer acquired in this life, though always without perceiving it, was according to Richard "absolutely simple."93 In sum, Henry's response to the concerns about the precise noetic conditions of the wayfarer's natural knowledge of God was emphatically to reaffirm that both the concept of God's being and that of creatures were primitive to mind, present at the very beginnings of cognitive activity and both drawn somehow from sensory cognition of the world. Intellect was thus positioned at the very foundation of its knowledge here below to know both God and creatures, even if at first it did not perceive the former as legitimately and naturally its object. Logical reflection revealed, furthermore, that by simplicity and metaphysical elementarity the concept of God's being, even as confusedly known in a general attribute, held the place of absolute cognitive priority. Somewhat unexpectedly, given his theoretical separation of the normative functions of illumination from the phenomenon of natural knowledge of God, Henry sometimes elucidated his theory of divine being as mind's first object by turning to explanatory devices which, for the classic Augustinians, had been bound up with God's literal role as light of truth. In his hands these schemes took on an altered coloration and, put to new use, assumed novel significance. For instance, he distinguished two ways something could be designated as that out of which (ex quo] another object was known: formally and materially.94 An object was known out of another formally when the latter constituted formal means of knowing it (formalis ratio cognoscendi), in the way knowledge of conclusions was drawn from principles or, more generally, inferred understanding derived by discursive thought from a more fundamental source. Taking "out of" in this sense, natural knowledge of God conceived most generally in an attribute like "being" was that out of which created things were known, while for rational understanding of divinity just the reverse held true, with God in the third subgrade of most general cognition and at the more general and general levels being known out of prece93 See the passages from Richard's Quaest. ord., q. 1 (ed. Doucet, pp. 431 and 438) cited above, nn. 66 and 84, and the discussion below, Pt. 4, ch. 15, n. 87. In Quodlibet 1, q. 2, ad 4. (ed. Brown, p. 307), Richard conceded to Duns that "being" was "simpliciter simplex" while insisting that this did not necessarily mean it was also univocal, yet the "being" he had in mind this time was not God's being, but rather a common being, such as the "being" shared by the ten categories. 94 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 7, ad 1. (l:144vl).
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dent cognition of creatures. An object was known out of another materially, on the other hand, when the means for knowing it were extracted (extrahitur) from the latter, the way intelligible species were culled from sensation. In this way God was in no way source of knowledge here below, everything mind knew by normal procedures, including natural knowledge of divinity, coming materially out of sensory perception of creatures. The point is reminiscent of Matthew's commentary about material and completive formal causes for cognition in his sketch of the ingredients of human knowledge in question 3 of De cognitione.93 In Matthew's version all knowledge came materially from sensation; formally and completively it was an influence from God that furnished the source. The difference is, of course, that Matthew was talking about knowledge of truth and conceiving of the completive formal origin as truth-revealing light, Henry was not. Otherwise the ideas of the two thinkers are so close that it is likely Matthew drew on Henry for his more elaborate but still more traditionally Augustinian scheme. Looking at the formal origins of knowledge alone, Henry drew a further distinction, again suggestive of ideas of the classic Augustinians. Despite his initial proposal that natural knowledge of God was formally source for cognition of all else after the fashion of complex principles with respect to conclusions, he now confessed only two questions later that this was not precisely so.96 Strictly speaking, principles constituted a proper and absolute object (per se absolutum obiectum] for discursive mind, thus known better and more clearly than the conclusions for which they provided the formal source, but the same was not true of God. Since divinity was naturally known only obliquely and in general, a better analogue for the way knowledge of God yielded the formal source for all else known was the action of light in sensory vision of color, where radiation was means of seeing but only in a secondary and restrained sense object seen. Adding to the two preceding modes the even more limited manner in which God served as cognitive means in illumination of truth, one is left with three ways Henry posited for one thing to act as formal source for knowledge of another: after the manner of principles for conclusions, light for color, or a species - more exactly a 93 9(1
See above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 118. Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 9, ad 1. (l:146v-47r[Z]).
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character or figure - for that which it made known.97 Given the comment about principles noted just above, it is clear that Henry believed God could serve as formal source for knowledge along the lines of syllogistic principles for conclusions in cases of beatific vision and rapture alone.98 His three ways of serving as formal origin thus picked out three major ways he understood God to intervene in human thought: as beatific object after the fashion of principles, as first thing naturally known after that of light, and as revealer of truth after that of character or species. Surely more than by coincidence, Matthew, in De fide, laid out precisely the same three ways to be means for knowing something else, like Henry on first object of mind settling on light as the appropriate image for explaining God's role in the knowledge with which he was concerned.99 Once more, however, there is the difference that Matthew, but not Henry, was talking about illumination and truth. Henry's view of the latter always more closely approached that of John Pecham, for whom God was illuminator in the manner of a mental species.100 A second time, Henry and Matthew seem to have converged on an analytical structure only to part ways when applying the schema to specific noetic concerns. Still, with these exceptions, Henry generally avoided applying to his theory of natural knowledge of God philosophical contrivances from the classic Augustinians not designed specifically to illustrate the role of "being." Most notably absent from his work was the notion of impressed similitude or species.101 Admittedly he did quote Augustine's De Trinitate on knowledge of God as ultimate good — thus ultimate being impressed on intellect from the start, while at times in his Quodlibets he cited the well-worn passage from the same work on conceiving God by means of a similitude inferior to divine essence and residing in mind.102 Yet none of this was intended to undermine 97 On God's formal role in illumination, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 10, 103 and 108. 98 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 3-4, 87 and 89-90; and also this chapter, nn. 4 and 6. 99 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 99. 100 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 91; Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 11; and this chapter, n. 5. 101 On this idea in Bonaventure's thought and that of his followers, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, pp. 210-14, 222-25 and 234-42. 102 On the first reference, see above, n. 14; as well as Henry's Summa, a. 24, q. 7, ad 1. (I:a44vl); and a. 24, q. 8 (l:145vP). The statement about the impression of good on the mind comes from De Trinitate VIII, 3 (CC 50:272). On the inferior
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an uncompromising denial of innate knowledge of God.103 Instead, the references to Augustine's more audacious formulations made simply a deferential nod to the most illustrious proponent of the tradition to which he saw himself belonging, reverently expounded so as to fit the cognitive model he had in mind. Henry was otherwise conspicuously silent about the whole Bonaventuran account of knowledge of the divinity as dependent on direct impression from God. Such language, however generously represented in the intellectual genealogy from which so much of his theory of knowledge arose, had no place in his considerably more Aristotelianized philosophical world. The noetics of Henry's natural knowledge of God projected, in sum, a novel vision, drawing on numerous elements in the classic Augustinian synthesis but systematically eliminating any connection to the light of truth and eschewing all hint of innate understanding. His caution on these matters amounted to an insurance policy against charges of ontologism. Augustinian, even Avicennian, on the relation of mind to God, he would nonetheless do nothing to obscure the radical effects of the Fall. Yet Henry managed to leave ample room for the cherished notion of divine intimacy to intellect in the world, making sure his readers appreciated that the knowledge of God he posited as natural was, if attenuated and general, nevertheless knowledge of God in his quiddity.104 To this extent he surpassed the zeal of predecessors like Bonaventure and Pecham, for whom knowledge of divinity in a general property like "being" could not claim quidditative status.103 Only Matthew among classic Augustinians similitude, consult Henry, Quod. 3, q. 1 (l:48vX); and also Quod. 4, q. 7 (l:95vF); and q. 8 (l:98vQ_). For the use of this text by the classic Augustinians, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 15, 44 and 136, and to somewhat different effect, n. 112; for its use by Henry in a different context, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 118 and 119. 103 See above, n. 17. 104 Henry, Summa, a. 58, q. 2 (2:131vM); and perhaps slightly more tentatively, a. 24, q. 6 (l:141r-v[N]). The latter question (l:141vO) insisted that even if "most general" knowledge of God did not give access "simpliciter" to the divine "quid secundum substantiam," it did so "aliquo modo." After all, Augustine himself made clear that some quidditative knowledge of God had to be available to all mankind, even in the present life - see Summa, a. 24, q. 1 (l:137rC) and especially (137vE): "Absolutely igitur concedendum quod quiditas Dei et essentia ab homine est cognoscibilis, non solum in futuro . . . sed et in praesenti." 105 See Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 62, 80 and 93-94. Jean Paulus, "Henri de Gand et 1'argument ontologique," AHDLMA 10-11 (1935-36): 321, identified from Bonaventure to Duns Scotus a progessive movement among Franciscan theologians towards increasing the quidditative nature of the wayfarer's knowledge of God.
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conceded that intellect naturally conceived God's quid est, and he had benefit of Henry's prior arguments to open the way.106 To be sure, knowledge of God in an attribute, never rising to essential particulars, would be perception of God's quiddity only universally and as if by accident (in universali et secundum accidens solwri), yet it surpassed the nominal knowledge (quid est quod dicitur per nomeri) that was all Pecham granted to the wayfarer's mind.107 Though Henry conceded that still at the third subgrade of "most general" knowledge intellect's concept of divinity was only nominal, with "more general" and "general" knowledge - the upper levels of rational cognition it advanced to at least something of God's essence.108 Equipped with so well-developed a natural theory, Henry was, again like Matthew of Aquasparta, less interested than most of his predecessors in exploring the dynamics of contemplation as a way of guaranteeing God's intimacy to mind.109 At least his early writings display nothing remotely like the febrile dynamism of Bonaventure's noetics, in which a near-mystical vision of God always lay within reach, or the more sedate occupation of the later Grosseteste with preparations for mystical transcendence. Henry demonstrated, in fact, almost no interest in urging mind to push beyond its natural state to the point where it might touch God. Thus while he continued along the path begun by the classic Augustinians, like them shifting the function of William of Auvergne's and Robert Grosseteste's vision of a progressive sweep into a higher world of truth onto worldly and ordinary processes, he seems to have been more fully satisfied than any save perhaps Matthew to keep within the limits of normal intellection. Indeed, he did more than all of them, Matthew included, to naturalize - or perhaps Aristotelianize - the notion of what normal cognition might be. Here was a theologian who brought the Augustinian tradition down to earth. On the noetics of knowing God, only a short step separated Henry from the even more worldly ideas of Duns himself.
106
See above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 143. Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 6 (l:142rOJ. On natural knowledge of God as not in his particularity, see also above, nn. 7 and 8. For Pecham's view, see Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 80. On nominal knowledge in general, see Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 34. 108 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 5 (l:140vG). 109 On Matthew, see the comments above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, pp. 243-45. in/
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It remains to be asked whether Henry's views on God as first object naturally known impinged on his understanding of the way to knowledge of the common principles of science. According to the broadly Aristotelianizing Scholasticism in which he had been educated, common principles were special because they were constructed out of the most general terms, his first intentions, the very elements of simple cognition in which God, conceived generally and in a confused manner, was made available to mind as its first and fundamental object. Did this mean that knowledge of such principles was somehow drawn from God? Henry fully conceded the epistemological connection between first intentions and intellect's primary complex cognition. Combining the principles of excluded middle and noncontradiction into a single superprinciple, he called it the very first complex truth known to mind, explaining its priority as a direct result of its foundation exclusively on the concept of being, first in order of simple understanding."° Moreover, all further common principles followed immediately upon this most basic proposition and preceded less primitive complex truths precisely because they arose out of the other first intentions, subsequent to "being" but known before the rest of simple concepts. Among such principles he listed the assertions that the whole is greater than any of its parts and that if equals are taken from equals the remainders are equal.111 He also realized that, philosophically speaking, first intentions established a link between knowledge of principles and his theory of God as first cognitive object. Much of his discussion of principles can be found in articles 22 and 24 of the Summa, two key sections devoted to investigating human knowledge of divinity.112 Yet when it came to explaining how mind composed common principles and knew them to be true, Henry passed up the opportunity to exploit this link, relying instead exclusively on the Aristotelianizing account of principal cognition and its place in science sweeping the universities by the second half of the thirteenth century. In a completely unexceptional paraphrase of Aristotle, he held 110 111 112
15.
Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 12 (l:22rL). See also Summa, a. 24, q. 3 (l:138vP). See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:14\M5r[B]). For example, see the references given above, n. 110; and below, nn. 114 and
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that principles were propositions knowledge of whose truth was acquired by mind without any preceding complex cognition, while conclusions were affirmed from knowledge of the principles upon which they were based.113 Among principles, furthermore, some were more basic than others, constituting the foundations for rational thought, and these were, in words drawn from the standard lexicon, the first principles of science (prima principia scientiamm). Other names for them included the Boethian phrase, "common concepts of the soul" (communes animi conceptions), and the more authentically Aristotelian "dignitates" and "propositiones maximae."114 The reason their verification did not require precedent complex cognition was that their truth lay immediately exposed to any mind grasping the simple terms of which they were composed, a point Henry supported by quoting the familiar phrase from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics that principles were known insofar as their terms were understood.115 Since the same Aristotelianizing ground had been covered by the classic Augustinians, there is nothing remarkable about its appearance in Henry's thought. He even followed his predecessors on what it meant for knowledge of principles to arise virtually without effort at intellect's initial stirrings. His account in question 11 of article 1 could well have been based on Bonaventure's declaration in the Commentary on the Sentences that principles were both received, since the intelligible species grounding their terms were acquired through reception, and also innate, but only to the extent that they depended on an inborn judgmental light.116 Henry differed merely by avoid113
Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 1, ad 5. & 6. (l:3vK); and a. 1, q. 10 (l:20rC). For "first principles of science," see Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:15rB); for "common concepts," a. 1, q. 12 (l:22vL); a. 22, q. 2 (l:130vR); and a. 24, q. 3 (l:138vP); for "dignitates" and "propositiones maximae," a. 22, q. 2 (l:131rT). On these terms and their origins, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, nn. 52 and 53; and Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 19. 115 See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:15rB); and a. 22, q. 1 (l:130rL), in both of which Henry quoted Aristotle; as well as the related a. 22, q. 2 (l:130vR). On the Aristotelian text and its citation by classic Augustinians, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 5 and 18. Henry recognized both an objective and subjective component to the immediacy or per se notum quality of principles, since beyond the nature of the object evidence was important in determining which propositions were truly first principles. Only those whose truth was immediately evident to mind working normally in the world would qualify - see Henry, Summa, a. 22, q. 2 (l:130vS and 131vX). 116 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 11 (l:21rC). For rejection of any innate knowledge for mankind, see also Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:15rB). On Bonaventure, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 5; and ch. 8, n. 23. Matthew also adopted these ideas, in a manner truer to Bonaventure's language - see Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 20. 114
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ing the word "innate," drawing instead on the Bonaventuran reference to natural judgment (naturale iudicatorium) for his own cautious description of knowledge of principles as "naturally acquired" (naturaliter acquisitum}. The term "natural" nicely recalled his own distinction between natural and rational aspects of the wayfarer's cognition of God. Knowledge of first principles was natural - like the most primitive knowledge of God because acquired as if by nature alone and without discursive reasoning; all other complex cognition depended on the analytical and argumentative powers of inquiring mind, thus on rational procedure."7 But Henry took such theories even farther than predecessors like Bonaventure and Matthew along the path to divorcing knowledge of principles from consideration of a special cognitive role for God. As noted above, at times he rehabilitated the pure Avicennian notion of mind's first concept as signifying "ens inquantum ens," and it is telling that one of the occasions he did so was when considering knowledge of principles.118 To found principal cognition on "being" conceived in this way deflected attention away from the involvement of God and went hand in hand with Henry's other efforts to reduce what he must have perceived as intrusions of the supernatural in the noetics of the classic Augustinians. His rejection of the language of innate knowledge and of that part of Bonaventure's description of natural cognition of divinity invoking a mental impression had the same effect. Indeed the one explicit place he reserved for God in discussion of knowledge of principles had nothing to do with divinity as first object of intellect but rather with its separate function as illuminator of truth. Twice he noted that principles were seized with the aid of divine light, of course just insofar as pure truth was concerned.119 In short, nothing in Henry compares to Pecham's theory u/
Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 4, ad 3. and ad 5. (l:13rl and 13vL); and a. 1, q. 5 (l:15rB) - see also above, n. 48. In a. 1, q. 4, ad 3. (l:13rl), he echoed the passage from Bonaventure's Comm. in lib. II. Sent., d. 39, a. 1, q. 2 (cited Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 5; and referred to above, n. 116), that habits of principal cognition were "quodam modo . . . innati et quodam modo acquisiti." In Henry's hands, this was transformed into the statement that knowledge of principles "quodam modo est naturalis, et quodam modo est acquisita." There could be no clearer indication how much Henry's idea of natural knowledge rested on Bonaventure's prior notion of a cognition he called innate. 118 See the first reference given above, n. 30. 119 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 4, ad 5. (l:13vL); and ad 3. (l:13rl). In making his claim, Henry could point to the prior example of Bonaventure - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 6 and 7; and ch. 8, n. 26.
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of first principles as impressed from above, which in turn drew upon William of Auvergne's association of principles and God's direct action.120 All that remains in his thought of these powerful currents from Augustinian tradition of the preceding decades is the unelaborated convergence at the same point in his noetics of knowledge of principles, knowledge of "being," and knowledge of God.
On Pecham, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 40~43.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ESSENCE AND THE ONTOLOGY OF THE MENTAL OBJECT
In the first years of his magisterium Henry had managed to reformulate the classic Augustinian position on human knowledge so as to embrace its two core elements, a theory of illumination validating Augustine's intuitions about truth and certitude and an explanation of divinity as natural cognitive object insuring God's intimacy to mind, while steering conspicuously clear of implications of ontologism. But his efforts to preserve Augustinianism in the critical world of high medieval Scholasticism confronted one final obstacle. For all the subtlety of Henry's handling of concept and reference, he had yet to accommodate his notion of primitive knowledge of God in a general grasp of "being" by means of a plausible psychology of concept formation to an account of objective reality. The problem went back to the two potentially conflicting demands on his noetics.1 Like all scholars up to his time he had maintained there was no single concept univocally capable of representing God and creatures, even "being" at its most general possessing only analogical unity and masquerading for two real concepts, one referring properly to God and the other to creatures. How was he to remain faithful to such semantic strictures while positing the primitive emergence in mind of both concepts of being out of sensation alone. It was easy to picture the origin of the concept proper to creatures: intellect simply distilled it from data provided by the actions of creatures themselves on the senses. But why should the concept of God's being - referentially radically distinct and, counter to expectations, by nature as well as logic absolutely first - be derivable from the same source? And if it was not, since no other data were normally available to sinful mind, how could the wayfarer know God the way Henry said it did? The dilemma can be framed in language drawn from Henry's own work. In the early article 3, question 4, of the Summa, he confronted 1
See above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, pp. 316-317.
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the oppositional argument that, if, as he had said, knowledge of being at its most general lay at the foundation of thought, then the wayfarer's intellect should have absolutely unlimited access to all things, including God himself. After all, "being" at its broadest included in potency the idea of every conceivable object, so nothing should fall outside mind's purview.2 His response was to insist that such reasoning overlooked the constraints imposed by the way mind's first concepts were generated.3 In all natural processes, he reminded his readers, whatever arose from something prior retained the flavor of its roots. Since the wayfarer's notion of being was taken from sensory data, regardless of what was true about "being" viewed absolutely and without limitation, "being" as known by mind working naturally in the world was suitable for underpinning knowledge only of those things at least implicitly included in the domain of sensible reality. One should therefore not expect to know much about God, or any immaterial substance, in the world of sin. According to the technical terms introduced later in the Summa and mentioned in the preceding chapter, intellect's natural knowledge of divinity was drawn "materially out of" sensible cognition.4 The point here was that it could never escape the limitations of such material origins. Was this response not tacit admission of the bankruptcy of Henry's position on natural knowledge of God? Did it not invalidate his claim that mind working naturally in the world came up with a primitive concept of being proper to God capable of yielding a quidditative notion of divinity? Duns Scotus would advance something very much like this critique, couched in words reminiscent of the response from article 3 of the Summa., when he attacked Henry's theory of knowing God.3 The same accusations, possibly drawn from Duns, appear 2
Henry, Summa, a. 3, q. 4, arg. 1 (l:29rO). Henry, Summa, a. 3, q. 4, ad 1. (l:29vQJ: ". . . sicut in naturalibus illud quod procedit ex radice semper tenet et sapit naturam radicis, nee potest naturam radicis excedere, sic prima principia naturalis cognitionis cum a sensibus et sensibilibus velut a radice trahantur . . . vim et naturam sensibilium excedere non possunt. . . . Licet ergo ratio ends simpliciter et absolute accepta sit sufficiens in potentia ratio cognoscendi quodlibet cognoscibile quod sub ratione general! ends condnetur, inquantum tamen est accepta per sensum a sensibilibus limitata est ut sit in potentia principium cognoscendi solum ilia ad quae potest deducere ratio naturalis adminiculo sensuum et sensibilium et non alia." The same principle of the cognitive origin setting formal limits on all subsequently known appears as well in Matthew of Aquasparta - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 129. 4 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 94. 5 See below, Pt. 4, ch. 15, n. 26; and also further on, n. 116. 3
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as an argument Richard of Conington felt compelled to answer in defense of Henry's position in his own Quodlibet I.6 Of course, the general problem was not peculiar to Henry, for every theologian of the high medieval period struggled to explain how there might be natural but still meaningful discourse about God. Yet the not untypical insistence on the sensible origin of all the wayfarer's ideas placed uncommon strains on Henry's thought. Purer Aristotelianizers could simply assert that intellect devised a concept of divinity by spinning out an analogy with whatever it knew from the sensible world. Since such a concept would be neither quidditative nor, contrary to Henry's claim, a priori, but unabashedly a posteriori, no philosophical awkwardness followed from admitting that it was ultimately constrained by the inferential limitations of sensory evidence. Such thinkers were satisfied with so modest a degree of natural human knowledge of divinity. The classic Augustinians would likewise not have been much confounded by an argument about concepts savoring of their roots. Although not conceding the limitation to a posteriori natural cognition of God, neither were they committed - at least before Matthew - to its quidditative nature. But even if they had demanded so much, at their disposal lay the theoretical resources of an integrated doctrine of divine illumination. With the light of eternal truth directly active in all mind's endeavors, it was not surprising that concepts should emerge resonant with more meaning than purely sensible foundations would bear. For them, intellect was not left to cross the analogical gap between created and divine "being" on its own, since God's luminous presence was there to lead the way.7 But how could Henry, who despite his Augustinian sympathies had, fearing ontologism, insulated the processes of natural knowledge of God from the mechanism by which mind was illumined in knowing pure truth, justify proposing a richer natural conception of divinity than the non-quidditative, a posteriori notion allowed by Aristotelianizers? How could he agree with earlier Augustinians that sinful intellect had a fuller idea of what God was? Given his noetics '' Richard of Conington, Quodlibet 1, q. 2, arg. 7 (ed. Brown, p. 304). ' Essentially this understanding of the Augustinian position led Allan Wolter to remark that "the medieval theory of analogy" was rooted in Augustinian illuminationism (Wolter, The Transcendentals and their Function, pp. 32 and 40-43). See also Marrone, "Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus on the Knowledge of Being," Speculum 63 (1988): 30-31.
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and the suppositions of his semantics, it would seem that there was no avoiding the damning implications of his own early confession about the limited cognitive horizon of the wayfarer in the world. There is in fact no sign that Henry sensed the least threat from his statements in article 3, question 4, about constraints on mind's primitive idea of being. Instead, he plainly regarded his response in that question as merely demonstrating the impossibility of perfect cognition of divinity or higher spiritual substances so long as mind relied on its natural capacities alone, a limitation fully compatible with his account of the wayfarer's knowledge of God in a general attribute.8 Simply put, he intended to concede only that mind, working on its own in the world, could attain - as indeed he always believed - no particular concept of God or spiritual substances, nothing more than the general understanding implicit in the cognition of "being" and other transcendental attributes.9 The concession left him entirely at ease insisting that it had such general knowledge, that it had it a priori, and that its understanding was at least minimally quidditative. How could he be so confident? The answer would seem to lie in his metaphysics, specifically his theory of essence, and in the possibilities this theory opened up for the mechanics of ideogenesis and attendant views about knowledge. Admittedly Henry advanced no such claim himself, never even laying out explicitly how his metaphysics bore on problems of noetics in general or more particularly on the question of what kind of objects were available to mind. But for all his silence on the matter, his theory of essence so clearly provided an exit from the noetic dilemma he faced that one cannot but believe it played a pivotal role in his decision to support a complex of ideas about natural knowledge of God that would otherwise have stood in grave doubt. It provided the crucial, if unspoken, justification for advancing beyond the views of both Aristotelianizers and Augustinians immediately preceding him.10 8 Henry's point is obvious from Summa, a. 3, q. 4 (l:29vP): that working purely naturally mind could have neither a clear knowledge of God nor one equal even to the enigmatic understanding of faith. () Summa, a. 3, q. 3 (l:29rL), makes it clear that Henry, in that article, wanted to deny to mind working by philosophy alone cognitive access simply to the particularity of God and spiritual substances. On the impossibility of natural knowledge of God in particular, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 7, 36 and 37. 10 For fuller analysis of the relevant aspects of Henry's metaphysics, see my Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 105-30, upon which the following pages rely. For Henry's
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In the late thirteenth century, after the seminal efforts of Thomas Aquinas, it was commonplace to distinguish between essence (essentid) and being (ens, esse} or existence (existentid). Every thinker accepted the notion that for each object these two elements had to be differentiated, and debate focused on how the separation was to be made. Despite the universality of the issue, however, Henry's views were so complicated and unusual that they must be considered a special case. Along with his contemporaries, Henry traced the origin of the distinction to Avicenna, but more than most he saw fit to resurrect what he considered Avicenna's authentic views, beginning with discussion of "thing" or res, in his opinion key to the Arab philosopher's theories. In the same passage from Avicenna's Metaphysics he had used to defend his claim about the cognitive priority of the concept of being, "thing" was also listed as among mind's first impressions.11 According to Henry, Avicenna in fact meant to imply that "thing" was the most fundamental concept of all, by nature very first even if not initially seized by human intellect.12 Any object was therefore capable of being regarded absolutely in itself (simpliciter et absolute] as "thing" without consideration of its conditions of being, whether as being in mind, being outside it in particulars, or simply nonbeing.13 The reason Avicenna could attribute this special status to "thing," Henry thought, was because he believed that in the structure of the world thing (res) and being (ens in the Latin translation of Avicenna, esse in Henry's words) were radically different. "Thing" pointed to the essential or quidditative aspects of an object - in the Latin Avicenna also denominated "certitude," "quidditas" and even "esse proprium" while "being" possessed what would later be called a modal character, referring to the terms of existence.14 Thus Avicenna's "absolute own words, see especially Summa, a. 21, qq. 2 and 4; a. 28, q. 4; a. 34, q. 2; Quodlibet 1, q. 9; 3, q. 8; 5, q. 2; 7, qq. 1-2; and 10, qq. 7 and 8, works spanning the period from 1276 to 1286. 11 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 13; for the citation to Avicenna as well as Bonaventure's evocation of it, Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 51 and 52. 12 Henry, Summa (Qg. ord.), a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:174, 1. 40-175, 1. 55); and Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:60vO). 13 Henry, Summa (Qg. ord.), a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:174, 11. 46-50): "Ratio enim rei, ut dicit Avicenna . . ., ratio propria est quod nomine suo exprimat naturam et quiditatem eius cuius est simpliciter et absolute absque omni conditione esse, sive in intellectu sive extra ipsum, aut non esse." The marks in the edition, indicating direct quotation from Avicenna, have here been dropped as misleading. 14 See above, n. 13, and also Henry, Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:60vO): "Hie est advertendum
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thing" — that is, "thing" regarded solely in itself (secundum se et absolute] — was the same as "absolute essence" (essentia absolute], which was essence apart from consideration of either being or universality and particularity.10 Here lay the basis for the commonplace separation of being and essence. Vital merely appropriated all this by quoting Avicenna to the same effect about the absolute consideration of "thing."16 As Henry saw it, there were three ways the word "thing" could be used, and they pointed to three telescoping fields of reality.17 First came "imaginable thing" (res a rear reris dicta], covering all that was knowable or even fanciable, excluding only that which was absolutely nothing at all.18 This constituted the broadest of the three fields, ranging from concrete objects like the book one was reading to the most fantastic — a golden mountain, the mythical chimera, or Aristotle's goat-stag.19 It was consequently the most tenuously real. Second came "conceivable thing" (res a ratitudine dicta], corresponding to what Avicenna meant by "absolute thing" or "absolute essence" and what Henry variously called "essence," "nature" or "quiddity."20 quod secundum quod vult Avicenna in primo Metaphysicae suae, unaquaeque res in sua natura specifica habet certitudinem propriam quae est eius quiditas qua est id quod est et non aliud a se, sicut albedo in sua natura habet certitudinem qua est albedo et non nigredo nee aliquid aliud. Et ob hoc convenit ei intentio qua dicitur res, quae est intentio alia circa naturam ipsam ab intentione de esse." The reference to Avicenna is to Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina I, 5 (ed. Van Riet), I, 34-35. 15 See Henry, Quodlibet 2, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 6:4-5, 11. 30-54); and Quodlibet 7, qq. 1 & 2 (ed. Gordon A. Wilson, Henrici Opera, 11:18). In both passages Henry refers to Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima V, 1 (see above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, n. 32). 16 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 274), which draws, sometimes verbatim, on Henry's Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:60vO). 17 In Summa, a. 21. q. 4 (l:127rO); and a. 34, q. 2 (l:212r[R-S]), Henry spoke of three formal aspects (rationes) of "thing" - in line with the language used just above, three different ways "thing" could be considered. The essentials of his understanding of these three fields of reality can be found in Summa, a. 21, q. 2 (l:124vK); a. 21, q. 4 (l:127r-v[O]); a. 28, q. 4 (l:167vV); a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:174-75); Quod. 5, q. 2 (l:154rD); and Quodlibet 7, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera 11:26-28). For more extended analysis, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 108-12; and for possible sources, Marrone, "Henry of Ghent in Mid-Career," pp. 206-7, n. 44. 18 On absolutely nothing (purum nihil) in this sense, see Quodlibet 1, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera 11:26-27, 11. 49-53); also "non ens": Quodlibet 6, q. 3, ad 2. (Henrici Opera 10:49-50). 19 For goat-stag, see Summa, a. 24, q. 3 (l:138vO); for goat-stag and golden mountain, Quodlibet 7, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera, 11:27); for goat-stag and Chimera, Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:61vO); and Quod. 5, q. 2 (l:154rD). Aristotle spoke of the goat-stag in Posterior Analytics II, 7 (92b5-8). 20 At least once Henry anomalously called the level of "res a reor reris" that of "res absolute" - see Summa, a. 21, q. 4 (l:127r—v[O]).
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Here was located essence in itself, shorn of consideration of actuality or logical determinations of universality or individuality. Henry also referred to it as "being" (ens this time and not esse, which for him signified more act than object) as well as "essential" or "quidditative being" (ens per essentiam, ens quidditativum) and "being pure and simple" (ens simpliciter dictum}.'11 Everything at this level also counted of course as "res a reor reris" — that is, was included in the previous, broader field — but it comprised something more, or more restricted, since it had truly essential content. For Henry, essentiality was manifested in three basic qualities or characteristics. First, whatever was essence was a proper object of intellect; whatever was not essence was not. Thus, while anything that was "res a reor reris" could be imagined, put together piecemeal by fantasy from disparate elements drawn from mind's store of knowledge, only essence — "res a ratitudine" — could, technically speaking, be known. In Henry's words, essence was uniquely "ratum quid."22 Second, to every essence, but only to essence, corresponded an ideal reason or exemplar (ratio exemplaris] in the divine mind.23 This made sense, because essence as uniquely knowable had to be conceived by God, who apprehended all objects through his ideas. The one exception to this rule was God himself, who, though essence, was essence of a very special sort and not represented by any idea.24 Third, and as a consequence of the preceding, essences taken together made up the realm of all possibles. Since God selected the objects he wanted to create, to bring into existence, from among his ideas, everything that was essence, but only what was essence, had the potential to appear in the actual world.20 For this reason Henry referred to essence as creatable whatness (creabile quid), also that which was producible (factibile).26
21 For "ens" used this way, see Summa, a. 21, q. 2 (l:124vK); and also a. 2, q. 6 (l:27rD); for "ens per essentiam," Summa, a. 28, q. 4 (l:167vV); for "ens quidditativum," Summa (Qg. ord), a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:174, 11. 42-45); for "ens simpliciter dictum," Summa, a. 21. q. 4 (l:127rM). 22 Henry, Summa (Qg. ord), a. 34. q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:174, 11. 42-46). 23 Henry, Quodlibet 6, q. 3, ad 2. (Henrici Opera, 10:49, 11. 10-12); and Quodlibet 9, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 13:34). Vital made the same point in his Quodlibet 3, q. 5 (ed. Delorme, p. 145). 24 Henry, Quod. 5, q. 2 (l:154rD); and Quodlibet 7, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera, 11:27-28). 25 Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 4 (l:127rO). 26 For "creabile quid," see Henry, Quodlibet 9, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 13:8, 11. 18-20); for "factibile," Quod. 8, q. 9 (2:314rK). Vital referred to essences as "factibilia" in
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Following essence and last of all came the narrowest field, limited to "actually existing thing" (res existens in actu), or what Henry also denominated "natural thing" (res naturalis) or "thing of nature" (res naturae), taking the word "nature" this time in a more restrictive sense than that which applied with "res a ratitudine."27 Again, everything here was found in the preceding field as well, since every existing thing was ipso facto possible, but these were the possibles actualized at a given moment. For all moments taken together, they constituted, in addition to God himself, everything God would ever create or cause to be generated in the world. Among the three fields, "res a ratitudine" or essence provided the fulcrum for Henry's metaphysics. Ontologically everything derived from it, "res a reor reris" by declension into merely imaginable constructs, "res existens" by elevation into actuality.28 This is probably what one would expect, given his essentialist ontology, heavily dependent on Avicenna, but what is most important about the centrality of essence is that at precisely this point "being" entered into the scheme. Following Avicenna's lead, Henry had divided thing (res) or essence (essentid) from being - his esse - but he had also revealingly called the second level of reality - essence or "res a ratitudine" "being" according to the substantive form of the same root: ens. The reason was not just that he posited no real (re) separation between essence and being (esse} - that is, that they were not really or in actuality different things.29 It was also that for him there was a way being was bound to essence, so that in a sense beingness or entity — not actual entity, to be sure, but a lesser kind of being - began at the essential level. A variant terminology he sometimes applied to the three fields was shaped accordingly: res for "res a reor reris" but, beginning with "res a ratitudine," ens secundum essentiam, and then with "res in actu," ens secundum existentiam.30 "Res a reor reris" alone
the passage cited above, n. 23; and in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 273) — where he also used the term "creabile" — and q. 8 (p. 323). 27 For "res naturalis," see Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:61rO); for "res naturae," Summa (Qcj. ord.), a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:175, 11. 58-59). 28 For fuller discussion, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 120-21. 29 See Henry's arguments against Giles of Rome on the real distinction of essence and existence in Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14, esp. pp. 151-66), as well as those probably aimed at the same target in Quodlibet 1, q. 9 (Henrici Opera, 5:48-56). Henry inveighed against the real distinction, and most likely expressly against Giles, throughout his career. 30 See Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 4 (l:127vS), where the match between res and res
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stood as in no way being, or, at most, being in only an imaginary sense (ens secundum imaginationem).3] This subtle subordination of being to essence emerged even more strikingly in Henry's metaphysics with a peculiarity that marks his understanding of the being-essence distinction as truly astonishing. In Henry's system there was not just a single "being" opposed to "essence" the "being" signifying existence as distinguished from the quiddity to wrhich it attached. Instead he saw two grades of being: a "being of existence" (esse existentiae) corresponding to the actuality of an object at his third level of "thing" but also a "being of essence" (esse essentiae] appropriated to essence in "thing's" second field, short of consideration of it as actualized in either mind or external world.32 Henry said he found the distinction already in Avicenna's works, a claim Vital merely repeated in his defense of Henry's quite extraordinary views.33 Henry thought of esse essentiae as a sort of being that essence possessed in and of itself, an idea which, aside from historical sources, seems to have arisen out of the perceived need to find a metaphysical principle for differentiating the realm of possibles from entirely fictitious objects like goat-stag or chimera. After all, his ontology had been designed to fence off the pure or absolute nothing that was not even imaginable, the null set outside of "res a reor reris," but he believed in addition that exclusively imaginary objects included in the latter field should themselves be considered pure nothing or nonbeing to some degree, since they could never actually exist and were therefore not even potentially actual things. He sometimes called this less
a reor is not exact but close enough for the point made here. The same idea is reflected in similar language in Vital's Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 323). See also below, n. 89. 31 Henry, Quod. 8, q. 9 (2:314rK). Borrowing Henry's words, Vital, in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 277), said such "real" nonentities had only "entitas secundum imaginationem." 3 - Consult Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 105, 112-14. Key passages in Henry's work are: Quodlibet 1, q. 9 (Henrici Opera, 5:53-54); Summa, a. 21, q. 2 (l:124vK); a. 21, q. 4 (l:127r-v[O]); and a. 28, q. 4 (l:167vV). 35 Henry, Quodlibet 1, q. 9 (Henrici Opera, 5:53, 11. 64-69), which traces the relevant passage from Avicenna to Metaphysics (Liber de philosophia prima) VI, almost surely an error for Liber de philosophia prima V, 1 (ed. Van Riet, p. 295). Vital, in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 273), reproduces Henry's claim down to the inaccurate citation to Avicenna. Pasquale Porro, Enrico di Gand. La via delle proposizioni universali (Bari, 1990), pp. 23-24, n. 15, notes that Jan Pinborg suggested Roger Bacon as inventor of the term, "esse essentiae."
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empty empty set "pure nothing so far as nature or essence was concerned" (purum nihil in natura et essentia).M Essences, or real natures, were consequently distinguishable from the imaginable nothings of this essentially empty set by greater ontological density, a way of being on a metaphysical plane somehow rarer than actuality. Since this special being was of essence, indeed arose out of essence (ex essentia}, Henry saw it as itself essential, save only the fundamental Avicennian principle that it and essence should not be regarded as entirely identical. He called it, besides "being of essence," "quidditative being" (esse quidditativum] and "definitive being" (esse definitivum)., and it constituted so much a part of thing as essence that it was no less impossible for it to be separated from (absolvi) essence as for essence to be divided from itself.30 But of course essences considered in themselves were, as Henry had said, indifferent to being and nonbeing, in the fuller sense of "being" as actuality.36 In their own way, therefore, absolute essences were nonentities compared to actually existing things.37 Explaining the ontological density of the latter was the function of his second sort of "being," "being of existence," which came closer to what most scholastics meant when using the term and arose not so much ex essentia as from the outside, almost accidentally to thing itself.38 He even dared call it an accidental being (esse accidentale}.^ All of which, down to the distinction between types of nonbeing, was taken up by Vital nearly untouched from Henry's work.40 34 For "purum nihil" in this sense, see Summa, a. 24, q. 3 (l:138vO); and a. 68, q. 5 (2:230vT); for "purum non ens," Summa, a. 21, q. 2 (l:124vK); Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:62rQ); and Quod. 5, q. 2 (l:154rD); for "non ens simpliciter," Summa, a. 30, q. 2, ad 1. (l:179rF); for "purum nihil in natura et essentia," Summa, a. 21, q. 4 (l:127rO); and for "omnino nihil per essentiam," Summa, a. 26, q. 1 (l:157vC). On the even emptier kind of absolute nothing, see above, n. 18. 3:> For "esse quidditativum," see Quod. 5, q. 2 (l:154rD); and less properly, Summa (Qg. ord.}, a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:174, 1. 43); for "esse definitivum," 1, q. 9 (Henrici Opera, 5:53, 11. 72-73); and Quod. 3, q. 9 (1:6IrO); for both, 7, q. 13 (Henrici Opera, 11:93-94), the latter passage revealing most plainly how such being arose out of essence-ness itself. On its inseparability from essence, see Summa, a. 26, q. 1 (l:157vD). As will be clear below, n. 44, Henry thought essence could nonetheless be considered, at least by ratio, separately from its essential being. 36 See above, nn. 13 and 14, and even more clearly, Summa, a. 28, q. 4 (l:167vV). 37 For "non ens" this way, as opposed to the two sorts of "purum non ens," see Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:61vP and 62rR), the latter referring also to "non esse in effectu." 38 See Quodlibet 1, q. 9 (Henrici Opera, 5:54, 11. 78-86; and [ad 3.] 57, 11. 55-56); and Quodlibet 2, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 6:4, 11. 34-39). 39 Henry, Summa, a. 26, q. 1 (l:157vD). 40 See Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 273-74), which took special care to explain how existence was not truly an acci-
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Strictly speaking, both types of being represented an addition to thing or essence in itself but were in the last analysis not really different from it.41 There was thus composition in reality among the bearer of being and the two kinds of being that were borne, though not composition of different things, and Henry struggled to find an adequate description throughout his career. Clearly the combination of essence and being of existence found in actual existents was more salient, joining elements more divergent than being of essence and essence, or whatever it was within essence to which being of essence was added.42 Henry attempted to express this variance in terms of kinds of difference - not just real (re) but also conceptual (ratione) and even a middle way, intentional (intentione), that he was first to champion and which provided an intellectual source for Duns's later formal distinction.43 Yet he could never irrevocably decide how the analysis applied. Always insisting that essence and being of existence differed intentionally, consistent with the salience of their composition, he
dent (res accidentis). Vital's desire to play down Henry's description of "esse existentiae" as coming "extrinseca participatione" (see Quodlibet 1, q. 9 [Henrici Opera, 5:54, 1. 79]) or "ab extrinseco" (Quodlibet 1, q. 9, ad 3. [Henrici Opera, 5:57, 1. 54]), which led him to say (ed. Delorme, p. 273) that essence actually had existence "intrinsece," probably violated Henry's own intentions. Oddly enough, the text called the Memoralia quaestionum fratris Vitalis de Furno, n. 8 (given in Vital's Quodlibeta tria, ed. Delorme, p. 247), defends the real (realiter) difference of being (esse) and essence. Either Vital radically changed his mind or the attribution to Vital of the views presented in this text must be reconsidered. 41 On Henry's opposition to real distinction between being and essence, see above, n. 29. 42 On Henry's almost absurdly complicated attempts to explain composition at the level of absolute or pure essence, see my Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 113-14, n. 60, adding to the references to Henry given there Summa, a. 28, q. 4 (l:168rV); Quod. 5, q. 2 (l:154r-v[D]); and Quodlibet10, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 14:202, 11. 95-98). 43 The literature on this is vast. For a beginning, see Edgar Hocedez, "Gilles de Rome et Henri de Gand," pp. 358-84; Ludwig Hodl, "Neue Begriffe und neue Wege der Seinserkenntnis im Schul- und Einflussbereich des Heinrich von Gent," in Die Metaphysik im Aiittelalter, ed. Paul Wilpert, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 2 (Berlin, 1963), p. 614; John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines (Washington, D.C., 1981), pp. 80-85; and Raymond Macken, "Les diverses applications de la distinction intentionelle chez Henri de Gand," in Sprache und Erkenntnis im Alittelalter, Akten des VI. internationalen Kongresses fur mittelalterliche Philosophic, 29 August-3 September 1977, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 13 (Berlin, 1981), 11:769-76. Henry was not allowed to advance his theory of intentional distinction without controversy see his Summa, a. 27, q. 1, ad 5. (l:161vM and 162r-v[O-P]); and an extraordinary pair of passages showing him engaged in debate with Giles of Rome, possibly following confrontation with him during the public disputations, over the rationality of positing a middle way for objects to differ: Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14:163-166); and Quod. 11, q. 3 (2:444v[QrT]). Vital explained intentional difference in Qiiaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huh questions," pp. 281-82).
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wavered on the matter of essence (or something within essence) and being of essence, holding early on that they differed only conceptually (ratione), later suggesting it was by intention, in the end hesitating to endorse an opinion, although probably leaning again towards conceptual difference.44 Vital picked up on the first and most likely final posture, affirming an intentional distinction between essence and being of existence, merely a conceptual one between essence and being of essence.43 Unambiguous, however, was the fact that no matter how the composition was described, the two kinds of being attached to "thing" or its essential core in differing ways. This had to be so because being of essence was truly of or out of essence whereas being of existence fell to essence almost accidentally.46 At times Henry even spoke of being of existence as coming to its subject de novo, as if in time and following upon a previous state of positive nonexistence. The ease with which he slipped into such language is not hard to comprehend in light of the fact that reception of being of existence
44 See Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 114-19, especially nn. 65 and 66. For other treatments of the same issue, see Jean Paulus, Henri de Gand, p. 314; and "Les disputes d'Henri de Gand et de Gilles de Rome," p. 327; Paul Bayerschmidt, Die Seins- und Formmetaphysik des Heinrich von Gent in ihrer Anwendung auf die Christologie, Beitrage, 36, 3-4 (Miinster, 1941), passim; John F. Wippel, "Godfrey of Fontaines and Henry of Ghent's Theory of Intentional Distinction between Essence and Existence," in Sapientiae procerum amore. Melanges medievistes offertes a Dom Jean-Pierre Mutter O.S.B., ed. Theodor W. Kohler, 289-321 (Rome, 1974), passim; and "The Relationship between Essence and Existence in Late-Thirteenth-Century Thought: Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, and James of Viterbo," in Philosophies of Existence. Ancient and Medieval, ed. Parviz Morewedge, 131-64 (New York, 1982), p. 160, n. 69; and Pasquale Porro, Enrico di Gand, pp. 63-64, n. 54. 4j See Vital, Quaestioms de cognitione. q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huh questions," pp. 282 and 274). This question relies heavily on Henry's Quodlibet 10, q. 7, from which Vital quotes extensively, but a critical passage (in the Delorme edition, p. 281, 1st paragraph) drawn nearly verbatim from Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14:159-60, 11. 39-47) interpolates an explicit affirmation, not found in the finished text of Henry, of merely conceptual distinction between essence and being of essence. Vital went so far as to say that in actuality - as manifested in a thing already created in effect - essence did not differ from its being of existence even by intention (p. 284). Henry would never have conceded this point, and its appearance in Vital shows how in the debates over essence and existence in late-thirteenth-century Paris Henry's position was diluted among his followers, probably out of desire to avoid being seen as in any way supportive of Giles of Rome's real distinction. 4b Henry literally described being of existence as "falling to" essence (accidit ei) see Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:62rQ); and Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14:190, 1. 61); language taken up by Vital in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 274); and Quodlibet 3, q. 5 (ed. Delorme, p. 145). The idea was connected to the notion of being of existence as "accidental" - see above, nn. 38 and 39.
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corresponded typically to creation, an event temporally determinable for every creature.47 Indeed both kinds of being were God's gift, accepted by "thing," or again its essential core, "ab alio" from him who was origin of both essence and existence, even though the terms of acceptance were significantly dissimilar.48 All essence possessed being of essence formally (formaliter) — that is, it received it, loosely speaking, from an ideal exemplar acting as formal cause. Put another way, essence was essence just because an exemplary form for it could be found in God. In fact, being of essence arose immediately from divine mind, constituting a quality attributable to essence less by virtue of an authentic act than by the omniscient nod of God's head (Dei intentione}.^9 On the other hand, particular essences instantiated in actuality possessed being of existence effectively (effective) - that is, they received it, properly speaking, from God as creative force in the role of efficient cause. One could say that actualized essence was existent because produced by a legitimate act, and since the act was voluntary, being of existence emanated not so directly from God's ideal reasons as from divine will.00 As before, all this was simply accepted and epitomized by Vital.51 4/ See Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, on Henry's difficulties clarifying the idea of creation. John Wippel has much more on the subject in The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines. On the reception of being of existence de novo, see Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 4 (l:127rN and 127vO), and on the connection between this fact and creation, Quodlibet 1, q. 9, ad 3. (Henrici Opera, 5:57, 11. 49-59). 48 Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 3 (l:126vG): "Omnis autem res quae creatura est formaliter habet esse essentiae suae ab alio ut a causa exemplari, a qua etiam effective habet suum esse existentiae . . . et hoc vel immediate ex prima creatione . . . vel mediantibus aliis causis ex rerum creatarum gubernatione." Henry used the term "formal cause" in this context in Quodlibet 9, q. 1, ad 2. (Henrici Opera, 13:22, 11. 71-74); "efficient cause" in Quod. 11, q. 3 (2:444rO); and both in Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14:151, 11. 51-56); and q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 14:201 and 202, 11. 92 and 5). Vital drew on these ideas in his Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 273). In Quod. 8, q. 9, ad 1. (2:320rK) - quoted below, n. 53and Quodlibet 10, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 14:202, 11. 3-7), Henry referred to the granting of "esse existentiae" as "productio." While Vital accepted Henry's general views on being as a gift of God, he was always more cautious about employing the phrase ab alio (see above, n. 40). 49 See Henry, Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:61rO). This is reflected in Henry's statement in Quodlibet 9, q. 1, ad 2. (Henrici Opera, 13:23, 11. 99-01), that essences were caused by God's knowledge (scientia). '" Henry, Quodlibet 1, q. 9 (Henrici Opera, 5:54, 11. 76-78): "Secundum esse non habet creatura ex sua essentia sed a Deo, in quantum est effectus voluntatis divinae iuxta exemplar eius in mente divina." '' See the passage from Vital cited above, n. 48, and also Quaestiones de cognitione. q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 277).
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In the end, Henry viewed both kinds of being as the participation of creaturely things in God — more precisely, in God's being — the exact mode of which was determined by the type of causal role God played in either case.52 He even spoke in patently Neoplatonic fashion of two different flowings from divinity.53 Essence participated in God's being formally (formaliter) insofar as it enjoyed being of essence; it participated efficiently (effective) in the same divine being through being of existence.54 By extension, essence thus participated in being of essence practically through itself, since essence itself composed each thing's formality, while participation in being of existence arose to a greater degree ab alio.5'3 Differently put, an object's essential core possessed being of essence by participation (participative) yet still essentially (essentialiter), which is to say by virtue of its very essentiality (ex sua essentia}, but being of existence came by a less intrinsic participation (quadam extrinseca participation] and so was more aptly described as arriving from God (ex Deo).*6 Most important, each participation established a relationship between creature and God, the relation implicating God not under the mere guise of a general attribute but more amply as divine essence manifested in an ideal reason, idea or exemplar.57 At the foundation of 32 Henry, Summa, a. 28, q. 4 (l:167vV); and Quodlibet 10, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 14:201-2, 11. 87-92 and 3-5): "Esse vero est in ipsa essentia participatio quaedam divini esse, qua ipsa essentia in se ipsa est quaedam similitude divini esse atque divinae essentiae. . . . Est autem ista participatio divini esse in essentia, esse essentiae, in quantum essentia ilia exemplatum est divini esse secundum rationern causae formalis. . . . Est vero dicta participatio divini esse in essentia, esse existentiae, in quantum est similitudo producta a divino esse secundum rationern causae efficientis. . . ." See also Quodlibet 2, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 6:4, 11. 34-41); Quod. 5, q. 2 (l:154rD); and Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14:163, 11. 20-24). 53 Henry, Quod. 8, q. 9, ad 1. (2:320rK): "Et secundum hoc essentiae sive formae rerum quasi dupliciter fluunt a primo: uno modo per quandam imitationem formalem, et hoc quo ad esse essentiae . . .; alio modo per quandam productionem, et hoc quo ad esse existentiae. . . . " 54 Henry Summa, a. 26, q. 2, ad 2. (l:159vV). In Quodlibet 1, q. 9 (Henrici Opera, 5:55, 11. 99-02), Henry referred to the two kinds of being as "esse participatum formaliter" and "esse participatum effective." 55 See the the central paragraph, Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 121. 56 Henry, Quodlibet 1, q. 9 (Henrici Opera, 5:53-54, 11. 69-80). The point relates to the contrast between the intrinsic and extrinsic character of the two kinds of being according to Henry as cited above, n. 40. :>/ Henry, Quod. 5, q. 1 (l:151vM): "Omnia enim quae sunt in creatura habent respectum ad sapientiam divinam non ratione qua est attributum, sed ratione qua est in ea idealis ratio cuiuscumque, quam respicit secundum esse essentiae suae ut rationern formalem, secundum esse existentiae ut rationem effecuvam quodammodo." Henry spoke about ideas in God in Summa, a. 1, q. 1, ad 4. (l:3rl); a. 68, q. 5
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being of essence thus lay a relation of thing to God as to its formal reason (ratio formalis); at that of being of existence, a relation to God as to efficient cause (ratio effectiva}.38 Vital, too, pointed to distinct relations by which an object was constituted either as essence or as actual existent.59 For his part, Henry occasionally spoke in terms of comparison (comparatio) of each thing to divine essence.60 This notion that being entailed a relation to God explained how either of a thing's two beings were not really (re) different from essence. Since being of essence and being of existence emerged, one might say, first as God conceived of an essence and then as he produced it in the real world, they were in fact no more than the metaphysical expression of two causal processes originating in God and terminating in an identical object, the essence itself. Nothing in reality would seem to correspond to them more perfectly than the very relations the processes set up.61 Indeed, Henry went nearly so far as to say that each being was the relation itself, or more precisely the relative orientation (respectus), according to which it was constituted but not quite.62 And to defend himself against the complaint of Giles
(2:231rV); Quodlibet 7, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera, 11:5); and QuodlibetV, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 13:36-37); and he referred to these ideas as divine exemplars in Quodlibet 7, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera, 11:19); and Summa, a. 68, q. 5 (2:230vT). Depending on which term was used for the divine correlative, essences could be called "exemplata" (as related to an exemplar) or "ideata" (as related to an idea) - for instances of the former, see Summa, a. 21, q. 4 (l:127vQ,and 128rS); a. 28, q. 4 (l:167vV); Quodlibet 9, q. 1, ad 2. (Henrici Opera, 13:22, 11. 71-73); and q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 13:37, 11. 2-4); and Quodlibet 10, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 14:201, 11. 90-92); for an instance of the latter, Summa, a. 68, q. 5 (2:230vT). 58 See the passage quoted just above, n. 57, and also Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 4 (l:128rS), the latter speaking both of a relation (relatio) and the relative orientation (respectus} established by it in the related thing. On the relation pertaining to being of essence alone, see also Henry, Summa, a. 21, q. 4 (l:127vO & Q); Quod. 5, q. 2 (l:154rD); and Quodlibet 9, q. 1, ad 1. (Henrici Opera, 13:8, 11. 10-14). Naturally, these relations could also be thought of as holding directly between each thing and the two different kinds of divine cause from which it drew its two sorts of being, and Henry sometimes referred to them that way - see Quodlibet 9, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 13:22, 11. 71-74); Quodlibet 10, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 14:201-202, 11. 87-07); and Quod. 11, q. 3 (2:444r-v[O-F]). ''' Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 277, 278 and 290. '*' Henry, Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14:151, 11. 48-51). (>1 See Henry's suggestive comments, Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14:151-52, 11. 56-59; 161-62, 11. 87-95; and 163, 11. 21-24) (> - See the remarkable passage in Henry's Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14:160, 11. 48-58), which Vital repeated nearly word for word in his own Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 281).
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of Rome that being, or at least existence, had to be something absolute and not relative, he simply countered that for created things this was not the case.63 A creature's being or existence was sustained only by dependence on God and was thereby truly "ad aliud," not absolute. The repercussions of so baroque a theory of being and essence on Henry's understanding of the foundations for reality become apparent when one tries to pin down the philosophical status of his two sorts of being. For all the peculiarity of being of essence, Henry had no intention of establishing a second reality beside the hereand-now of God and creation. Instead his theory scrupulously distinguished between the question of being (esse) and that of actuality, so that although he spoke of ways something could be said to be (esse), either as essence considered absolutely or as existent, only the latter way expressly pointed to actual things. He was, he insisted, not positing a separate world of essences like the realm of ideas Aristotle accused Plato of arguing for.64 Avicenna himself had been unambiguous in this regard, denying actuality to essence considered in and of itself, so that no one should dare attribute existential significance to the being of essence setting true essences apart from imaginary things.63 The corollary to this position was that so far as actuality was concerned, being of essence was absorbed into being of existence. Despite the fact that the former served as philosophical marker for an aspect of reality different from existence and capable of being considered apart from it, in actuality whatever had being of essence — that is, 63
Henry, Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14:154). As the editor, Raymond Macken, has noted in the apparatus criticus to this text, Henry was responding to Giles of Rome's De esse et essentia, q. 9 (in De esse et essentia, De mensura angelorum, et De cognitione angelorum [Venice, 1503/repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1968], f. 19a). 64 See Henry, Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:60vO): "Non autem dico quod quantum [certitude naturae cuiuscumque vel essentia] est de se habet esse absolutum absque eo quod habet esse in intellectu vel singularibus, tamquam sit aliquid separatum. . . ." Also Quodlibet 7, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera, 11:18-19): "Quam tamen [essentiam absolute consideratam] esse nullus ponit secundum se extra singularia et extra intellectum, quali tamen modo Aristoteles ponit Platonem posuisse essentias rerum et quidditates secundum se existere separatas a rebus et extra intellectum et esse ideas rerum." Slightly further on, Henry contended that Plato was falsely accused by Aristotle on this score, a claim repeated in Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:265, 11. 11-21). He thought Plato instead foreshadowed Augustine, recognizing that the ideas existed in God's mind. 65 See Henry, Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:60vO and 61vO), which refers to Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima V, 1 (ed. Van Riet, p. 234).
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whatever actually was essence — also always possessed being of existence in some fashion.66 Vital simply agreed.67 Since the only two expressions of being of existence were as object in mind or as extramental singular in the real, mostly created world, Henry sometimes referred to two varieties of existence: conceptual being (esse rationis} and natural being (esse naturae}.™ His language has encouraged the notion that he saw a three-fold division of "being" into being of essence, being in mind and natural being, as if these constituted three alternative ways for something actually to be.69 Yet he meant only that actuality could take shape within mind or outside it, thus giving rise to the two varieties of being of existence. Being of essence taken by itself did not offer an alternate actuality but rather said nothing about actuality at all. All this meant that when one knew an essence, the mental object had at least the actuality of something in mind - that is, it at least possessed conceptual being (esse rationis} or, in a phrase already traditional in the schools, "diminuta rei entitas."70 The connection between essence and conceptual being was in fact so strong for Henry w> See, for instance, the two passages quoted above, n. 64, as well as Quod. 3, q. 9, ad 1. (l:62rS): "Nullo enim modo est ponere aliquam essentiam quin habeat esse essentiae eo modo quo est earn ponere: ut si ponatur in intellectu habet esse essentiae in intellectu; si in singularibus extra, habet et esse essentiae suae in singularibus extra. Quod si neutro modo ponatur essentia esse - scilicet nee in singularibus nee in intellectu - tune nullo modo habet essentia esse essentiae alicuius, neque similiter esse essentiae suae existit aliquo modo. . . ." See also above, n. 29, on Henry's denial of real distinction between essence and existence. (>/ See Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 274 and 277). 68 See Quod. 3, q. 9 (1:61 rO); and Quodllbet 7, q. 13 (Henrici Opera, 11:93-94, 11. 25-40), where he called them "esse in re extra" and "esse in intellectu." See also Summa, a. 23, q. 1, ad 8. (9 ' Among those who have proposed this interpretation are Godfrey of Fontaines in Henry's day and John Wippel and Jean Paulus today - see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 105-6, n. 35. In addition to the first two passages cited in the previous note, Henry's mention of a four-fold consideration of essence in Quodllbet 7, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera, 11:18, 11. 43-53), contributes to this view. My reasons for rejecting it are spelled out in Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 105-7, a position also taken by Antoni Siemianowski, "Teoria istnienia realnego i tzw. sposoby istnienia u Henryka z Gandawy" ("La theorie de 1'existence reelle et les 'modes d'existence' chez Henri de Gand"), Roczniki Filozqficzne 13, no. 1 (1965): 33-41. '" On "diminuta rei entitas," see Armand Maurer, "Ens Diminutum: A Note on its Origin and Meaning," MS 12 (1950): 216-22; and Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 54-55, n. 47. For Henry's use of the phrase in the sense indicated here, see. for example, Summa, a. 28. q. 4 (l:167vT); 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:172, 11. 3-4); 34, q. 5, ad 1. (Henrici Opera, 27:235, 1. 72); Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:96vl); and Quodllbet 9, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 13:31, 11. 53-56).
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that he sometimes spoke as if mind were uniquely the location of absolute essence, though of course essence as essence was just as much resident in actual extra-mental things; indeed at times he nearly equated the "diminuta rei entitas" of mental objects with being of essence (esse essentiae) itself.71 It was more valid to say, in Vital's words, that before having actual existence externally, all essence must exist in mind.72 This was especially pertinent with regard to the mind of God. In knowing essence God necessarily provided it with the minimal actuality required of entity in general by constituting it in divine conceptual being, so that over eternity outside creation and above time - that was precisely what the essences of creatures came down to: objects existing in divine mind and thus ultimately coincident with divine essence. In God's eternal present the exemplars or divine ideas and the essences they exemplified (exemplata) collapsed into the same thing.73 Yet if there was no separate realm of essentiality, so that outside instantiation in external singulars essence fell back on the actuality 71
See Henry, Quodlibet 10, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 14:202, 11. 9-12). In Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:62rR), he spoke of "esse rationis" as if it were equivalent to "esse essentiae," while in Quod. 8, q. 9, ad 1. (2:319v-20r[K]j, he seemed to identify "esse essentiae" with "esse cognitivum." In Quodlibet 1, q. 9 (Henrici Opera, 5:53-54, 11. 69-74); Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:61rO); Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:177vR); and Quodlibet 10, q. 7 (Henrici Opera, 14:166, 11. 3-6), Henry revealed he appreciated the real basis for this potentially misleading connection: all essence must at least have existence in intellect. rl See Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 273): "Tale autern esse quod est esse essentiae, quod habet res antequam actualiter existat extra, solum habet in divino exemplari vel in mentis conceptu. . . . " See also the same question, p. 277. Henry realized this, as is evident from the last four citations given above, n. 71. /5 My argument for this position, not universally ascribed to, is given in Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 122~28. To the supporting passages cited there in nn. 93 and 94 (pp. 127-28) should be added Quod. 3, q. 9, ad 1. (l:62rS - following immediately after the text quoted above, n. 66): Quod. 8, q. 9, ad 1. (2:320rK); and Quodlibet 9, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 13:27, 11. 45-48; 30-31, 11. 30-52; and 34, 11. 15~22). For reference to interpretations different from the one given here, see Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 123, n. 78. Those inclining towards a view like mine include Paulus, Henri de Gand, pp. 91-92, 95, 99, 371-72 (passages can also be found that seem to lean the other way); Ludwig Hodl, "Neue Begriffe und neue Wege der Seinserkenntnis," p. 609; Walter Hoeres, "Wesen und Dasein bei Heinrich von Gent und Duns Scotus," FS 47 (1965): 154; Anton C. Pegis, "A New Way to God: Henry of Ghent (II)," MS 31 (1969): 96, 98, and 116; and "Henry of Ghent and the New Way to God (III)," MS 33 (1971): 160; and Stephen D. Dumont, "The quaestio si est," p. 338, nn. 20 and 21. Heinrich Riissmann, %ur Ideenlehre der Hochscholastik unter besonderer Berticksichtigung des Heinrich von Gent, Gottfried von Fontaines und Jakob von Viterbo (Wiirzburg, [1937]), pp. 49~50 and 71, described Henry's position as even verging on pantheism.
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of the conceptual world constituted by active minds, Henry so focused on absolute essence as the core of his metaphysics that he introduced a remarkable fluidity at just this point. Despite diverse acts of existence in particular things or in the mind of God and human beings, in some way any determinate essence was always really (re) one and the same. The essence of an object as constituted in conceptual being in mind was really (re) identical to the essence as formally instantiated in an external thing.'4 Indeed essences as known in human mind were really identical to the corresponding essences as known in the mind of God. Henry was even prepared to say that they were identical to the divine ideas themselves.70 For all his efforts at emphasizing the actuality of the particular world, there is a remarkable participationist, even Neoplatonic, cast to the vision of essence upon which his structure of reality depended.76 These extraordinary undercurrents to Henry's metaphysics of essence carried over into his theory of knowledge, where, ironically enough, they were reinforced by Aristotelian elements otherwise unconnected to his ontology. As already noted, essence, or quiddity, constituted for Henry mind's proper object.7' According to his taxonomy of 14
Henry, Quod. 5, q. 15 (l:181vZ): "Unde . . . eadem re est forma quae est in intellects ut obiectum in cognoscente et quae est extra ut forma in formato et participante." See also Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:96vl); and Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:265, 11. 1—4). Vital tried to say the same in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 294). 75 Henry, Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:262, 11. 29-31), quoted below, Ft. 3, ch. 12, n. 90. /b A number of scholars (beginning with Francois Huet, Recherches historiques et critiques sur la vie, les ouvrages et la doctrine de Henri de Gand [Ghent, 1838], p. 96) have noted what has even been characterized as an unusually pure Platonism in Henry's thought. See Karl Werner, "Heinrich von Gent als Reprasentant des christlichen Platonismus im dreizehnten Jahrhundert," Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Classe, 28 (Vienna, 1878), p. 98; Braun, Die Erkenntnislehre, pp. 108-9; Robert Bourgeois, "La theorie de la connaissance intellectuelle chez Henri de Gand," Revue de Philosophie, n.s. 6 (1936): passim; Paulus, Henri de Gand, pp. 386-89; Gomez Caffarena, Ser participado, p. 248; and Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 142. Maurice De Wulf, Histoire de la philosophie scolastique dans les Pays-Bos et la Principaute de Liege jusqu'a la Revolution Francaise, Memoires Couronnes et Autres Memoires publics par 1'Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 51 (Brussels, 1894-95), pp. 191-94 and 267-68; and Georg Hagemann, "De Henrici Gandavensis quern vocant ontologismo," Index lectionum quae auspiais augustissimi ac potentissimi Imperatoris Regis Guilehni II in Academic. Theologica et Philosophica Monasteriensi. . . pub lice privatimque habebuntur (Miinster, 1898), pp. 3-12 (Summer, 1898) and 3-13 (Winter, 1898/99), argued against this view, saying Henry was no more Platonist than Aristotelian. 77 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 23.
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"thing," this meant that the appropriate object of intellect was "thing" at the level of "res a ratitudine," which was essence considered absolutely in itself.78 A similar convergence on absolute essence manifested itself in his theory of "being" as first concept of mind, for the "being" (ens) first known was metaphysically grounded at the level of "ens secundum essentiam" indeed the objective content of the primitive concept of being was precisely essence or "res a ratitudine" generally conceived.79 In knowing anything from its first concepts to the more complicated configurations built upon them, mind was therefore opened up to the very ontological horizon where for Henry the reality of external objects flowed into the conceptual environment of intelligible formalities only to touch eventually on the superessential shores of God's eternal wisdom. The cognitive world, anchored in essence, was from start to finish a world vibrant with God's presence. Given this, it is obvious where Henry drew his confidence that a notion of being referring properly to God was present to mind at a cognitive stage just as primitive as that of the notion of being generally applicable to creatures. The natural origin of knowledge in the sensible world and the merely analogical connection between intellect's two fundamental concepts of being presented no barrier to its primary access to a concept with a uniquely divine referent, because from the broadest metaphysical perspective knowledge of sensible things yielded access to an intentional ground that ran unbroken right to God. The same idea could be corroborated by turning to Henry's account of the ontological import of essence's special being - that is, his suggestion that being of essence was an expression of, almost equivalent to, a relation between essence and God. Any intellect knowing essence or quiddity, and thereby perceiving an object on the level of being of essence, presumably had this relation cognitively available. From this it was only reasonable to infer 78
See above, n. 22, and Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:61vO and 62rQ). Consult also Quodlibet 7, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera, 11:27-28); and Quod. 8, q. 12 (2:324rB). 79 Henry, Summa (Qg. ord.}, a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:174-75, 11. 42-52): ". . . super illam rationem rei [dictae a reor reris] prima ratio quae fundatur, est ratio ends sive esse quiditativi . . . a quo accipitur ratio rei dictae a ratitudine, quae eadem est cum ratione ends quiditativi. . . . Ita quod ratio ends sit ratio primi conceptus obiective in intellectu, quia 'quod quid est est proprium obiectum intellectus' " See also Summa, a. 21, q. 3 (l:126rE); and a. 24, q. 3 (l:138vP), showing how the primitive concept of being was tied to the being of essence attaching to ens and manifested its objectivity as essence. "Being" as first known pointed, therefore, not to existential reality but rather to the essential quality of things as possibles.
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that it could see both extremes of the relation — not just absolute essence but also God himself. If Henry never set out this argument himself, it nevertheless lay close to the surface of his thought. Time and again he noted how the proper object of intellect, "res a ratitudine" or essence, was formally such because of its relation to a divine exemplar.80 And it was, after all, the formal aspect of a thing that determined the content the attendant mind picked up. Moreover, Henry's followers apparently recognized the argument as implicit in his works, some going so far as to draw it out explicitly for themselves. One such was Richard of Conington. In a passage preserved because quoted by the English scholastic, William of Alnwick, Conington argued that "ens ratum," or what he also called "ens dictum a ratitudine" — Henry's "res a ratitudine" was known only insofar as distinguished from "ens dictum a reor reris."81 In other words "ens ratum," wrhich amounted to essence, had to be perceived precisely 80 For example, Henry Quod. 5, q. 2 (l:154rD); and q. 14 (l:177rR): "Ex hoc enim solo est aliquid scibile simpliciter quod est aliquid per essentiam habens rationem extra rem in Deo." Also Quodlibet 1, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera, 11:28, 11. 82-87): "Et hoc est per se quiditas et natura cuiuslibet creaturae. . . . Et est illud de quo iam diximus, quod habet per se ideam in Deo, unde et per se de ipso habet esse scientia." Porro, Enrico di Gand, pp. 135-36, esp. n. 14, reveals a reluctance to accept this explanation for Henry's confidence in his theory of a natural knowledge of God. 81 The passage is transcribed by the editors in Duns Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Opera Omnia [Vatican Edition] [Vatican City, 1956] 4:174-75, apparatus criticus [F]). In it, Conington was dealing with the same problem as that touched on in his Quodlibet 1, q. 2, arg. 7 (see above, n. 6), but his response in the latter work (ad 7.) (ed. Brown, p. 307) only hints at the argument laid out in Alnwick's quotation. Remember that Henry had also called "res a ratitudine" by a similar term: "ratum quid" - see above, n. 22. Conington's reasoning rests on holding that knowledge of a relation in one extreme - perhaps he meant: knowledge of a relative orientation in one extreme would cause knowledge of the other extreme, a principle Henry might have been reluctant to concede. For in at least one other context Henry maintained the opposite: that a relation could not be conceived in one extreme unless the other extreme was previously known independently - see Henry. Quodlibet 13, q. 1, ad 2. (Henrici Opera, 18:8, 11. 25-26). Conington might have found support for his position in John Pecham, who in Quaestiones de anima, q. 5, 16. (ad 5.) (ed. Spettmann, in Quaestiones tractantes de anima, p. 70), held that in simple cognition, but not complex, something could be known as compared to something else before it was known as absolute - see also Pecham, Quaestiones de anima, q. 8, ad 7. (ed. Spettmann, p. 88.) Since it is possible to imagine an argument similar to Conington's being made without recourse to the principle in question, none of this stands in the way of seeing Henry as fundamentally sympathetic to the stance Conington's reasoning was intended to defend.
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for what it was, and this meant grasping its constituent conditions. Because what constituted "ens ratum" or essence was a relation to the first being, God himself, to which it was directed as to exemplary formal cause, in knowing essence mind conceived of its object not as formally absolute (sub ratione absolutd) but rather as relative (sub ratione relativa), relative, that is, to God. Since knowledge of a relation entailed knowledge of both correlative extremes, knowing the object as related to God required somehow having God as intellectual object, too. In short, despite the analogical character of "being," it was perfectly plausible that the concept of creaturely being seized by mind working naturally in the world should serve as vehicle for knowledge of a "proper concept of the first being," God. Cognitive access to divinity was an immanent, if hidden, feature of the process of knowing created essence. A similar extrapolation from Henry's metaphysics is evident in Matthew of Aquasparta's handling, discussed above, of the kindred problems of knowing nonexistents and knowing immutable truth.82 Like Henry, drawing on Avicenna, Matthew identified the simple object of mind as absolute quiddity, Avicenna's and Henry's absolute essence.83 To answer the question of whether the actual, extra-mental existence of such an object was required for knowledge of it, he then made reference to a contrast between possibles and actuals plainly derivative of Henry's distinction between "res a ratitudine" and "res existens in actu."84 Just as Henry, he claimed that only possible existence was necessary for knowledge, not actual.85 For Matthew, however, this answer, at least on the surface implying no need in human cognition for an actual external object, was ultimately insufficient to meet the demands of immutable truth.86 A deeper account of cognition incorporated, he thought, the notion of quiddity as dependent
82
See the discussion above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, pp. 193-200. See Pt. 2, ch. 7, nn. 31-32. 84 See Pt. 2, ch. 7, nn. 36-39. 85 In fact Matthew would seem to have been drawing on a passage from Henry's Summa published shortly before his own work that gave exactly the same answer to the question of whether mind could know nonbeing and in similar language distinguished between two kinds of "non-entia," one knowable and the other not. Compare the response (especially f. 28rC) in Henry's Summa, a. 3, q. 1 (l:28r): "Utrum contingit hominem scire non entia," to the first passage cited above Pt. 2, ch. 7, n. 36 (from Matthew's Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1). Like Matthew, Henry made reference to Avicenna's Liber de philosophic prima I, 5 as source for his ideas. 86 See Pt. 2, ch. 7, nn. 40-44. 83
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on a relation to divine exemplar, thus bringing in God himself as cognitive ground for whatever intellect knew.87 It is evident how much this response depended on Henry's theory of essence, covering the same ground as Conington's subsequent defense of the primacy of a concept of being proper to God. Vital apparently recognized Matthew's debt to Henry and adopted an identical line of reasoning in his own approach to the question about knowledge of nonexistents.88 Avid supporter of Henry, he simply tailored Matthew's diction more closely to fit the contours of the master's thought. Reproducing Matthew's division of nonbeing into two kinds, he showed how Matthew's two could be defined in terms of the second and third of Henry's three types of "thing" — "ens secundum essentiam" and "ens secundum actum."89 He then presented Matthew's initial answer that possible being was sufficient to make something intelligible — carefully translating it into the language of being of essence and being of existence.90 More cautious than Matthew, however, he satisfied himself with suggesting the final insistence on a divine ground for knowledge, merely reminding his reader that the cognitive object was such expressly because it had an exemplary cause in God.91 On the question of immutability, in fact, Henry himself seems at one point to have been ready to draw out the implications of his metaphysics and explicitly posit divinity as ground for human knowledge. He once noted that the truth of propositions concerning essential attributes was founded on essence as essence, thereby invoking 87
See Pt. 2, ch. 7, nn. 52 and 53. Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 272): "[UJtrum intellectus coniunctus, ad hoc quod intelligat rem, indiget actual! existentia rei." Vital began his discussion of the question (p. 272) with what would seem to be an amalgam of the passage from Matthew's De cognitione, q. 1, and the heart of Henry's response in Summa, a. 3, q. 1, both cited above, n. 85. 89 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 285). For Henry on these two kinds of "entia," see above, n. 30. 90 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 293): "Si vero quaeras: Quid tune est obiectum intellectus? cum non potest terminari ad nonens . . . respondeo . . . quod quamvis res tune sint nihil privando actum existentiae, non tamen sunt nihil privando actum essentiae. . . ." 91 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 291). Immediately following the passage quoted above, n. 90, Vital repeated the point about being of essence entailing existence of a divine exemplar, but drawing back from Matthew's concern about immutability he simply concluded (p. 294) that so far as knowledge of an object was concerned, being in mind constituted sufficient grounding. 88
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an actuality not located in external things but rather in mind.92 He then added, in sharp contrast to his customary assurance that no divine element was necessary to account for immutable truth, that since essence as essence was eternal only in God's mind, the eternal truth-value of such propositions derived precisely from the divine conceptual actuality of their exemplary component terms.93 Unstated but easy to surmise was the implication that human knowledge acceded to immutability, and thus participated in eternity, just insofar as it obtained access to God by means of the special ontology of essence. For all his concern to pull back from the dramatic theoretical condensation of divine illumination among the classic Augustinians, Henry was to this degree party to the very homologizing of an Augustinian role for God in human knowledge seen in Matthew of Aquasparta.94
92 Henry, Quod. 3, q. 9 (l:62rQJ: "Talis enim conceptus solius quiditatis et essentiae rei est ratione ea qua est quiditas et essentia, super quam secundum esse tale quod habet in simplici mentis conceptu fundatur per se veritas enunciationum de inhaerentia essentiali, ut quod homo est homo, vel animal, vel huiusmodi. Et per accidens fundatur super hoc quod habet esse extra in particularibus." 93 Just after the passage quoted above, n. 92, comes the following: ". . . res hoc quod est in certitudinem [for: certitudine?] essentiae suae non habet ab alio effective . . . sed solum habet hoc quia est in alio formaliter, ut in intellectu divino . . . in quo est quid aeternum. Propter quod veritas enunciationum fundata super talem certitudinem potest esse aeterna in intellectu aeterno. . . ." Henry's usual approach to cognitive immutability involved nothing more than the broadly Aristotelianizing attitude seen since Grosseteste's Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, whereby it was sufficient merely to locate the objects of science as mental entities, abstracted from particular conditions of extramental existence and endowed with the universality of conceptualization - see Henry, Summa, a. 2, q. 2, ad 1. (l:24rG); also Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:178vX); as well as similar ideas on the object of intellect in Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 292. For Grosseteste's views, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 3, nn. 33-34. w See above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, nn. 48-50.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ARISTOTLE AND AUGUSTINE REVISITED
Henry's philosophical accomplishments even as a new voice among Parisian theologians were stunning. He had separated the two fundamental elements of classic Augustinianism, a theory of normative illumination of mind by Eternal Truth and a notion of natural knowledge of God as first cognitive object, and then by means of an ingenious metaphysics rendered the latter, cut loose from classic moorings in an integrated doctrine of illumination, credible alongside a noetics where knowledge arose exclusively from sensation. But despite his apparent success, he was himself not satisfied with the ideological apparatus he had forged, and within a decade his approach to knowledge was shifting. As already indicated, not every aspect of his early recasting of Augustinian epistemology and theory of mind was subjected to transformation. On natural knowledge of God his ideas remained basically the same to the end of his career. But when it came to knowledge of truth, he progressively distanced himself from the position established in his beginning years. The theory of normative illumination laid out in chapter 9 above is an artifact of his earliest work, summed up in the initial articles of the Summa and the first two Quodlibets. After 1277 he never again returned to the original schema with comparable clarity or conviction. Some have argued that he simply abandoned the early view, leaving no room for it in his mature thought, but this surely goes too far. From time to time in his later work Henry referred back to his first account of truth-perception with approval, indicating an expectation that it be factored into his comments about knowledge and mind whether explicitly mentioned or not.1 The break between his 1 Paulus, Henri de Gand; and Stella, "La prima critical di Herveus Natalis," suggest that Henry turned away from his early views on illumination, while Macken, "La theorie;" Nys, De werkinff, and Prezioso, La critica, insist he never really abandoned the doctrine. On this question, and on instances where the later Henry mentioned the earlier theory, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 8, nn. 14 and 15.
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early and middle years was thus not a full repudiation, nor was it perfectly clean. Yet the fact remains that from 1279 or 1280, the notion of a divine light of truth took a back seat, its prominent place in the structure of his thought coming to be occupied instead by a view of truth and certitude in human knowledge, as wrell as a corresponding noetics, reflective of a more exclusively Aristotelianizing bent. And what wTas left of normative illumination in its new, recessive position was not exactly the same as before, entailing even less literally a divine intervention in the classic Augustinian sense than it had according to the already mitigated terms of his first work. Together, these developments mark an undeniable alteration in attitude towards the problems of truth and scientific cognition. To a degree the evolution was inevitable. The tide of Aristotelianizing epistemology surging through the universities in the latter part of the thirteenth century ran deep and strong, and a scholar concerned for his professional status would have to find ways of trimming his sails to the demands of science conceived along Aristotelian lines. Henry was as sensitive as any of his colleagues to such pressure, perhaps even more determined than most to defend the apodictic character of his work.2 Too zealous an attachment to the image of a truthrevealing Godly light must have weighed like so much heavy baggage in the intricate maneuverings of academic debate he engaged in year in, year out. But the classic Augustinians had been subject to pressure, too, and for all their concessions to Aristotle they did not reduce the theoretical importance of normative illumination, giving it instead a more salient, if more cautiously articulated, position in their thought. An additional factor must have intervened to make Henry, otherwise loyal member of the Augustinian camp, more susceptible to the impetus of the Aristotelianizing swell. It has frequently been suggested above that a primary motive for the classic Augustinian condensation of a doctrine of divine illumination was the desire to highlight the cognitive intimacy of God to human intellect, particularly as manifested in the notion of a natural knowledge of divinity reaching far beyond the limits of a posteriori reasoning and loosely regarded as innate. Henry's metaphysics 2 See, for example, Henry's extraordinary defense of efforts to explain theology as true science and his acerbic attack on those who considered it something less — Quodlibet 12, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 16:20-21, 11. 43-51). This outburst was occasioned by criticism of his notion of a special intellectual light raising theological argument to the level of apodictic certainty, for which see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 19.
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of essence had permitted him to give this intimacy a different theoretical basis, free of connection to illumination of truth. Once the idea of a primary knowledge of God in "being" was reinterpreted along these lines, the obligation to retain for the paradigmatic Augustinian light a central role in philosophy of knowledge practically disappeared. Henry must have recognized the opportunity for what it was if only gradually and probably never in such explicit terms — and turned increasingly in an Aristotelianizing direction whenever he dealt with epistemic matters in his later work. This is not to say that he consciously contrived to make his work more Aristotelian. He was all the same engaged in a less intentional process to comparable effect. At each turn in the ongoing philosophical debate of his later career when he came to questions of cognitive certitude, he looked to Aristotle for help in formulating a response, and with every step his voiced support for his early theories became more attenuated. The extraordinary ability of his system to validate Augustine's demand for intimacy between mind and God without recourse to the light of Truth relieved him even of the need to make clear his stand on the matter, so that, in contrast to the classic Augustinians, he could forego the ever more complicated affirmations of normative illumination in face of a growing reliance on an Aristotelianizing appraisal of truth and certitude. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the theoretical balance of his epistemology shifted, and out of the change a new structure of thought emerged. Such an account is hypothetical, and there can be no proof it is correct. But there is also no denying that the complexion of Henry's thinking modulated in just the way described. Beginning in 1279 or 1280 he began to attack formal questions of knowledge with something like the intensity of the earliest questions in the Summa, but now his answers emanated a new air, though his analysis still resonated with the structural harmonies of his early years. This new air - an Aristotelianizing motif - would carry through to the end of his career.3 J Maurice De Wulf, in Histoire de la philosophie scolastique dans les Pays-Bas, p. 268, characterized Henry as eclectic, while Paulus, Henri de Gand, pp. 5-6, said that in theory of knowledge - with the sometime exception of illumination - he was Aristotelian, although beneath everything lay an Augustinian view of cognition as judgment. Edward Dwyer, however, in Die IVissenschqftslehre Heinrichs von Gent, unequivocally claimed that Henry moved increasing towards Aristotle on all fronts over the course of his career. Nys, on the other hand, in De werking, pp. 117-18, 137 (see also De
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In returning to the issues of science and certitude with which he had begun his Summa, Henry did so not as previously to establish a methodological basis for his work but rather to elucidate theological concerns like God's knowledge or the nature of the divine persons. Still, time and again he came up against the very foundational problem he had previously confronted: how to characterize the difference between true knowledge and knowledge of truth, which was of course also for him the boundary between non-scientific cognition and science. His early attempts at a solution had been complicated by his positing two levels of truth to know, first Aristotelian and "phantastic," second pure (sincera) and attainable only through divine illumination, and he had spent most of his efforts exploring the latter.4 In contrast he now made no mention of a division and in discussing the way to accede to truth breathed not so much as a word about divine illumination. What had once been simply the lesser of two epistemic targets — Aristotelian and phantastic truth as opposed to lucid and pure had become his sole interest. It was not that Henry's fundamental vision of the truth-determining constituents of objective reality had changed. Article 34 of the Summa, composed in 1279 or 1280, went right back to his Augustinian, also Avicennian, roots, looking at truth as he had conceived of it in his earliest years. As he explained in question 2, truth could be defined as an accommodation (adaequatio) or rectitude tying together intellect and thing.3 What was different this time was instead what he made of this vision for normal human cognition.
psychologic,, p. 6), held that beginning as an Aristotelian in philosophy, Henry turned, under the influence of Averroes, more and more to Augustine, and Macken, in "La theorie," pp. 92-93, has traced a similar trajectory towards Avicenna and Augustine in the works leading up to Quodlibet 9. See also Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 143-44. 4 On the distinction between true and truth, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 25 and 51; on the two truths and Henry's efforts to characterize them, nn. 52, 65, 69-70, 72-75 and 80-83. 5 Henry, Summa (Qq. ord.}, a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:177, 11. 2-5): ". . . veritas, in communi significato . . . definitur sic, quod scilicet est adaequatio rei et intellectus et ita quasi quaedam mensura et rectitude aequans ambo, quae sola mente percipitur. . . ." See also a. 34, q. 3 (Henrici Opera, 27:191, 11. 66-71). For the Avicennian "adaequatio" in Henry's early work, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 44. The more Augustinian "rectitude perceived solely by mind" is described in explicitly these terms in Anselm's De veritate 11 (ed. Francis S. Schmitt, 1 191), which text is cited by Henry in Summa (Qg. ord.}, a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:177, 11. 5-6); and a. 34, q. 5 (Henrici Opera, 27:218-19, 11. 27-28; and 228, 1. 61).
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Question 1 of the same article had prepared the reader to believe that there were two ways to apply truth's definition, leading to two different species of truth: the truth of a thing (veritas rei} and the truth of a sign (veritas signi}.6 Applied to "thing," the definition of truth translated into doing what nature required, which came down to being what the thing, in essence, was/ This description not only provided Henry with the opportunity to reassert his long-held association between truth and quiddity; it also pointed the notion of accommodation back towards the relation between thing and divine mind, more specifically between created essence and uncreated exemplar, which latter was after all, for him as for all late-thirteenthcentury thinkers, source of each object's essential core and thus in Augustinian terms the decisive condition of its truth.8 But whereas in his early work Henry moved from this consideration directly to examining human perception of truth, from 1279 onwards he did not. Truth as reflective of a relation between object and divine exemplar now played no explicit role in his analysis of normal intellection. The terms of external reality expressed by such truth were not denied - on the contrary they were expressly reaffirmed - yet they were simply disregarded, as if irrelevant, when it came to the question of truth as known. For the purpose of analyzing human knowledge, Henry turned to the truth of a sign. Following Anselm, he asserted that there were four types of sign pertinent to truth: sentences, concepts, desires and actions.9 Since he was considering speculative knowledge, only two types were relevant to his concerns: concepts (cogitationes) and sentences or propositions (orationes). In line with his often evident Augustinian 6
Henry, Summa (Qg. on/.), a. 34, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 27:164, 1. 18). ' Ibid. (p. 165, 11. 36-38): ". . . sic veritas rei oportet quod sit, quando res id existit quod natura sua requirit ut sit, videlicet quod in se contineat omne id quod ad naturam suam pertinet, et quiditatem." 8 On truth and quiddity, see the pointed comments in Summa (Qq. ord.), a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera. 27:171, 11. 65-69); and also a. 34, q. 4 (Henrici Opera, 27:196, 11. 26-27); q. 5 (Henrici Opera, 27:203, 11. 41-44; and 216, 11. 69-70); and n. 7, above. For Henry's early identification of the two, consult Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 29 and 50, above. On divine exemplar as source for quiddity or truth, see Summa (Qg. ord.), a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:176, 11. 78-98); and q. 5, resp. and ad 2. (Henrici Opera, 27:216, 11. 72-75; and 235, 11. 94-96); on truth as arising out of a relative orientation (respectus) of thing to divine mind, a. 34, q. 3 (Henrici Opera, 27:192, 11. 96-97): ". . . veritas per se non est in aliqua re naturali creata nisi ex respectu ad intellectum increatum. . . ." 11 See again Henry, Summa (Qg. ord.}, a. 34, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 27:164, 11. 18-20), the source being Anselm, De veritate 2-5 (ed. Schmitt, 1, 177-83).
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bias, he chose to focus not on propositions but rather on knowledge's simple constituents, taking the truth of concepts as his main concern.10 If one tailored the general definition of truth to the requirements of grammar, one could see that a sign was true when it signified properly, so the truth of a concept consisted in the concept's presenting its referent as it really was." Knowledge of truth consequently constituted knowledge of a valid relation between concept and object. With this understanding as guide, Henry thus returned to the second line of analysis from his early examinations of truth, identifying it as a complex configuration grasped by an evaluative act of intellect.12 Knowing truth meant judging knowledge of the true, "simplex notitia" according to the yardstick of the created referent outside mind. It was in article 34, question 5, of the Summa, a piece principally devoted to analyzing truth and other reflexive relations in God, where he presented this version of his new approach to human knowledge of truth, specifically interpreting it in terms of intellect's reflexive capacity to turn back on and judge its own grasp of external quiddity.13 By all appearances related to — maybe even dependent on Aquinas's examination of complex truth along similar lines, the account is complicated, and there is no need here to go into details.14 Suffice it to say that it not only raises a theory of truth dependent solely on factors found in the natural world to an eminence its counterpart did not possess in Henry's early work but also serves as corrective to several ambiguities in the description of truth of the Aristotelian, phantastic sort from his inaugural years.10 First of all, he had by now decided that the primitive level of knowledge mind was to judge by comparison to external reality knowledge of the true — already pointed to quiddity, making the true 10
See also above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, p. 281. Henry, Summa (Qg. ord.), a. 34, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 27:164-65, 11. 33-36): ". . . veritas signi tune est, quando signum facit hoc quod facere debet, sive quod natura sua requirit ut facial, videlicet quod faciat omne id quod pertinet ad suam significationem, scilicet ut indicet ipsum significatum secundum quod est in re extra. . . ." 12 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, pp. 276-79. 13 See Henry, Summa (Qg. ord.), a. 34, q. 5 (Henrici Opera, 27:201-38). 14 Instead, consult Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 50-69; and "Henry of Ghent in Mid-Career." 15 Compare the discussion above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, pp. 282~84. 11
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object (veruni) grasped by intellect before it went on to know truth equivalent to essence itself.16 Second, having come to the point of being prepared to give up the notion of impressed intelligible species, he now found it easier to say precisely what elements were implicated in the comparison. The mental words which he would substitute for impressed species could legitimately be regarded as themselves objects of knowledge and not - like species - just means for knowing.17 He was consequently free to speculate that mind formed a mental word or "conceptus" at the level of knowledge of the true, reflected back on it to see how well it conformed to the external quiddity it was meant to express, and after consideration generated a second, evaluative word, conceptual marker of knowledge of truth.18 Finally, and most significantly, he now made no reference to any involvement of God or divine light. And lest his silence be taken as either a momentary lapse or a result of the limited purposes of the argument at hand - investigation of truth in God - it should be noted that he actually returned to the terminology of his earlier years but in a fashion revealing just how much his views had evolved. In article 34 Henry called knowledge mind obtained simply by reflecting back on itself and its created object knowledge of "pure truth" (sincera veritas), the very phrase his earlier lexicon had reserved exclusively for cognition arrived at with the aid of God.19 Yet despite its historical importance as an index of change, the description of knowledge in the Summa, article 34, does not represent Henry's usual position on epistemology in his later years. Indeed it constitutes the only significant occasion from 1279 onwards where he drew on the second of his early lines of truth-analysis, based on comparison or judgment. For a fully naturalistic - that is, worldly reckoning of the standards for normal human cognition, the mature
lb See Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 58, n. 56; and also p. 41, n. 2. Contrast the description of "true" in Henry's early work: Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 27 and 29-31. '' On Henry's rejection of impressed species, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 57; on the word, below, n. 24. 18 See Henry, Summa (Qg. on/.), a. 34, q. 5 (Henrici Opera, 27:219-20, 11. 46-69): and the account in Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 61-62. 19 In fact he called it "perfecta et sincera veritas" - Summa (Qg. ord.), a. 34, q. 5 (Henrici Opera, 27:215, 1. 43). (Note that the reading "divino" in 1. 42 of this passage is probably not preferable to the alternative, "omnino," presented in the apparatus, Henrici Opera, 27:214, 1. 6 from bottom.) See also Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 69, n. 92.
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Henry more often reverted to the first of his early approaches, differentiating truth from the true simply according to an intrinsic quality of the object as perceived, in particular the clarity by which it manifested quiddity or essence.20 Such a posture was even more authentically Aristotelianizing than that taken in article 34, since it hinged upon mind's efforts to seize Aristotle's quod quid est, basis for science in his epistemic scheme. Again the new account worked incidentally to clarify some of what Henry had said about knowledge of truth early on, but in this instance he was bringing to center stage a line of analysis only peripheral in his previous work. Once more it is sufficient for present purposes to raise a few salient points.21 Henry embarked upon his mature analysis of knowledge according to degree of perception of quiddity in Quodlibet 4, question 8, written in 1279 or 1280, shortly before article 34 of the Summa, and he continued along substantially the same path for the remainder of his career.22 As outlined in Quodlibet 4, the process began when intellect, so far nothing more than a clean slate (tabula complanata], was confronted by a universal abstracted from some object's particular representation in a phantasm and moved by it to generate an act of cognition terminating in the object itself.23 The formal marker of this act, summing up its cognitive content, was in Henry's words a mental "notion" (notitia actualis] or "word" (verburri), precisely the sort of conceptual entity he was, as just noted, increasingly substituting for intelligible species in his noetics. In Quodlibet 4 he commonly referred to it as a "forma expressiva," to contrast with the "forma impressa" or "impressiva" he identified with species, although "verbum" was the more authentic Augustinian term. Unlike impressed species, which rested in mind as accident in subject, the word for Henry amounted to the object itself having taken on intelligible existence, present to mind after its own special fashion "as known in the knower" (ut cognitum in cognoscente).24 20
On this first line of analysis, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, pp. 426-27. For greater detail, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 69-92. 22 Although Gomez Caffarena dated Quodlibet 4 to the Christmas recess of 1279, Paulus preferred a date of Easter 1280 - see Paulus, Henri de Gand, p. xv. 23 Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97rM and 98rP). 24 Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:96vl and 97rL); and Quod. 5, q. 25 (l:204rl). On the word constituting object as present to mind, see also Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:175rD); for Henry's earlier references to a "word," see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 58. The first unambiguous sign of a complete and irrevocable rejection of impressed species came in this very Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:174rV and 177rR). 21
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As in the epistemic scheme outlined in article 34 of the Summa, so in Quodlibet 4 this first word arose at the conceptual level of knowledge of the true, and Henry even called it the marker of a "simplicium comprehensio," a variant on his old "simplex intelligentia." Congruent with cognition at that stratum in his early works, it pointed to something close to what was perceived by the senses, though not formally under the aspect of singularity (sub ratione particularis).25 To advance beyond it intellect had to ponder on what it knew and pose the fundamental Aristotelian question about the nature of simple objects: quid est?2(* Once it discovered the answer it produced a second formal marker of its understanding, a second word, which came now properly at the level of knowledge of truth, or science.27 This second marker was legitimately a "word of truth," expressive, Henry hastened to make clear, of knowledge of Aristotle's quod quid est.2* Since the foregoing description made knowledge of truth dependent not on comparison of concept to object, as in the Summa, article 34, but rather on firmer grasp of object alone, Henry could now say that both knowledge of the true and knowledge of truth were directed to the same simple referent, continuously present to mind in the phantasm. What separated one stage from the other was simply deeper cognitive penetration.29 Yet over and above this difference with the Summons nearly contemporary account, conspicuous once more were the modifications to the terms of Henry's early analysis - this time, naturally, to the first of his two basic approaches to truth. As in article 34, of course, so in Quodlibet 4 mind formed a word at both cognitive levels, not as previously only at the stage of
23
Henry, Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97r-v[M] and 98rP). On "simplex intelligentia" in the early Henry, see Ft. 3, ch. 9, nn. 27 and 41. In Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97vM), he called this stage of knowledge "simplex notitia," and the word in which it was conceived, "verbum simplicis intelligentiae" (l:98rP). Mature references to "simplex intelligentia" in this sense can be found in Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97vN) (quoted below, n. 26); Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:177rR); and Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130vH). 2<) Henry, Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97vN): "Habita igitur in principio praedicta notitia simplicis intelligentiae . . . statim vis intellectiva comprehensa admiratur et format sibi quaestiones de incomplexo, ut quid est sol, quid est eclipsis et caetera huiusmodi." 27 Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97v-98r[OJ), in which question (f. 98rP) Henry called it the "verbum scientiale." 28 See Henry, Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:98rP); and Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:177rR). 2! ' Henry, Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:98rP). On knowing truth as penetrating more deeply into the object, see Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130vl). Henry traced the language about penetrating deeper back to Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima IX, 7 (ed. Van Riet, 2, 511 12)"
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knowledge of truth. Yet Henry did not hold to this position for very long, already by Quodlibet 6 having reinterpreted the initial understanding of an object knowledge of the true — to be just the "simple manifestation of a thing" present to mind in the phantasm. According to this view, only at the level of science, knowledge of truth, did intellect formalize its cognition by generating a word.30 Now, however, he declined to turn to impressed species to explain how intellect performed. Instead, the incompletely known object itself and the phantasm in the imagination sufficed to represent "the true" without further formal element in mind. Of even greater moment was what this approach said about the technical distinction between knowing the true and knowing truth. The early Henry had maintained that knowledge of the true referred to something below quiddity, knowledge of truth alone to quiddity or essence. Article 34 of Henry's Summa demonstrates that by 1279 or 1280 he was ready to jettison that view, but without recourse to the line of analysis seeing truth as dependent on comparison between concept and object, how was he to establish the grounds for a difference?31 Starting from Quodlibet 4, the mature Henry gradually elaborated a thoroughgoing response. The division did not lie between particular and universal cognition, for Henry insisted that even at the level of "simplex intelligentia" mind's object was universal.32 In Quodlibet 5, composed just after article 34 of the Summa, he drew upon the newT views espoused there to confirm that knowledge of the true already amounted to knowledge of quiddity, adding now that cognition at the level of science or truth moved on, in contrast, to "quod quid est."33 But exactly what did these words mean? Picking up on a motif detectable even in his earliest work, he finally settled on the opposition between knowing something as confused and knowing it as distinctly articulated into parts (distincta per paries}.^ As explained in a remarkable 30
Quodlibet 6, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 10:14, 11. 82-87; 14-15, 11. 93-07; 16, 11. 25-31; 17, 11. 53-55; and 19, 11. 82-91). See also Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130vl). 31 See above, n. 16. 32 See the first reference given above, n. 25. 33 Henry, Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:176v-77r[O]). See also Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97vN), where knowledge of the true is described as of "id cuius est quod quid est" - that is, of that from which knowledge of "quod quid est" could be drawn. The same phrase appears again in Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130vl). 34 Henry, Summa, a. 54, q. 9 (2:104vC); and also Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130vl). In Quod. 14, q. 6 (2:566vE), Henry called the first level "intellectio con-
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passage from Quodlibet 6, question 1, written in 1281 or 1282, knowledge of the true, "simplex intelligentia," was confused and indefinite in the sense that its object was definable but not yet defined. Making this knowledge distinct and raising it to the level of truthperception entailed articulating the definition, thereby revealing the object's essential parts. Grasped by intellect, the definition constituted the object's "definitiva ratio," and as mind uttered this "ratio" to itself, it produced the mental word of truth, formal marker of scientific knowledge.35 Already in Quodlibet 4, question 8, Henry had charted the way for explaining how this process occurred. Intellect began with the broadest or most common conception of its object, and by sorting out variations and winnowing them down to the specific difference, it came up with the ingredients for a definition of the species to which the object belonged. In the case of "human being," that would be the phrase "rational animal."36 All this was, of course, no more than the Aristotelian procedure of division, and Henry identified it as such the "via divisiva" - directing his reader for instruction to the second book of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and Boethius's Liber de divisione.37 The discipline responsible for teaching the procedure was the traditional art of defining (ars definitive^.,38 fusa simplicissima," his point apparently not just that it was literally incomplex knowledge, which was the case with knowledge of truth, too, but also that it constituted the simplest, most undiflferentiated way of knowing a simple object. On Henry's early use of the idea of confused versus distinct cognition, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 32 and 33. 'x' Henry, Quodlibet 6, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 10:14-15): "Est etiam ista notitia [simplex] de re quasi quaedam confusa et indefinita manifestatio eius, quia per ipsam cognoscitur res tamquam quiddam definibile confusum et indistinctum, ut circulus qui complete ab intellectu non cognoscitur donee formet in se eius definitionem, cognoscendo de eo quod est figura plana etc. Ad formandum autem in se de re ipsum quod quid est, expressum per definitionem, se habet intellectus noster active discurrendo via artis investigandi quod quid est, dividendo et componendo generi alterum dividentium, quousque habeatur convertibile cum definite, iuxta regulas artis definitivae traditae in II" Posteriorum. . . . Cum vero, ultima differentia adiuncta, concipit definitivam rationem, ilia est verbum in intellectu de re iam perfectum et formatum per actum eius secundum . . . et in eo quiescit discursus intellectus, quia omnino perfectus est quoad notitiam simplicis intelligentiae de intelligibili incomplexo, cognoscendo ipsum tamquam quid distinctum et determinatum. . . ." 3() Henry, Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97vN). See also Quodlibet 6, q. 1 (quoted above, n. 35); and Quod. 14, q. 6 (2:566vE), where he said intellect began with the "genus supremum." 37 Again Henry, Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97vN). w Henry, Quod. 14, q. 6 (2:566vE); and the passage from Quodlibet 6, q. 1 (quoted above, n. 35), where it is also called "ars investigandi quod quid est."
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In the end, therefore, the distinction between knowledge of the true and knowledge of truth came down to a matter of logic. The object was the same in both cases but known to a different degree of conceptual articulation.39 This vision of human cognition moreover mapped directly onto Henry's understanding of the relation between nominal knowledge and an Aristotelian grasp of "quid est." He held that Aristotle's nominal knowledge, preliminary to all other intellectual apprehension, was a kind of precognition of an object's quiddity (cognitio eius quod quid ut est praecognitio], followed not only by knowledge "si est" but also immediately thereafter by full quidditative comprehension as manifested in the definition.40 He even characterized precognition of "quid est" in terms borrowed from the discussion of knowledge of the true, as confused knowledge of the named object (intellectus confusus eius quod significatur per nomeri).^1 For clarification he introduced here the Aristotelian example of a circle, nominal knowledge of which entailed receiving the word "circle" but having only a vague idea what it meant, quidditative knowledge embracing the definition: a plane figure described by a single line.42 The very same example would reappear in his detailed exposition of the difference between knowing the true and knowing truth found in Quodlibet 6, question I. 43 Such emphasis on defining naturally suggested that the way to knowledge of truth, even as conceived in these instances with regard 39
See Henry, Quod. 14, q. 6 (2:566vE): "Licet enim quod quid est sit universale, quia est ratio definitiva universalis proprie dicti et convertibile cum ipso . . . differunt tamen proprie loquendo, quia ipsum commune esse definibile per genus et differentias, ut consideratur sub ratione confusi et indistincti secundum partes quae cadere debent in definitiva ratione, sic proprie dicitur universale, et dicitur esse eius quidditativum esse definitum continens ipsum distinctum secundum partes, ut homo animal rationale. ..." 40 On this progression, see Stephen D. Dumont, "The quaestio si est," pp. 342^47. Dumont (p. 343, n. 51) cites the revealing account in Summa, a. 24, q. 3 (l:138vO). See also above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 34. 41 Refer to the passage from Henry cited above, n. 40. 42 Henry, Summa, a. 24, q. 3 (l:139rR), which calls upon Aristotle, Physics 1, 1 (184a26-bl 1). Dumont quotes this passage and gives the citation to Aristotle in "The quaestio si est," p. 346, n. 63 43 See above, n. 35. All this, even the quotation from Aristotle, had been quickly sketched out in article 1, q. 12 from the Summa (see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 33), which thus serves as a reminder that Henry's mature views on truth constituted less a radical departure from his early ideas than a more forcefully articulated and prominent presentation of what had previously been present only in germ. Significantly, in Summa, a. 1, q. 12, he followed his early practice of reserving the term "quiddity" for what was known at the level of knowledge of truth.
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to what was technically simple knowledge of "quod quid est," ultimately depended on complex activity of mind. Henry noted that though the true, object of "simplex intelligentia," was grasped in a purely simple intellective act, truth could be attained only after the complicated procedure of compounding and dividing (componendo et dividendo}.^ The realization led him to remark that in coming to know the true, intellect could be said hardly to act at all, making it legitimate to characterize understanding as passive up through the first stage of cognition, with authentic activity arising only at the second stage required to know truth.40 There emerges here a strongly Aristotelian sense of the purely receptive character of human intellection in at least its initial grades, agency coming into play only when logical analysis was involved. All told, Henry's mature analysis of truth along these lines offered a coherent explanation of simple knowledge in the world, significantly one that, like the more singular account in article 34 of the Summa, at no point made mention of a divine role. Just as in article 34, the second, illuminative stage of knowledge of truth, which occupied center stage in his earliest works, had simply dropped out of the picture, and again, its disappearance would scarcely seem attributable to the mere fact that he was on most occasions investigating knowledge of truth not for itself but rather to apply the findings to other issues of more immediate concern.46 Not once among any of the 44 Henry, Quod. 5, q. 25 (l:204vK); and Quodlibet 6, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 10:14) (quoted above, n. 35). For earlier mention of this distinction, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 27 and 37. 45 Henry, Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97vN) on the first stage "sine studio," and (98rP) on the second stage involving "negotiari et discurrere." For other discussions of intellect as purely passive in knowing the true, partly active in knowing truth, see Quod. 5, q. 25 (l:204r-v[I-K]), where the initial passivity is limited to possible intellect; Quodlibet 6, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 10:14, 11. 80-85 and 93-95); Summa, a. 54, q. 9 (2:104rC); and a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:131rL), where again possible intellect is designated as passive. In Summa, a. 54, q. 9 (2:104vC); and a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130vl), the secondary, active capacity of mind is explained in fully Augustinian terms, with ample reference to Augustine's De Trinitate. Sometimes even reflexivity, associated above with a Thomistic approach to truth, is invoked in this regard: see Summa, a. 54, q. 9 (2:104vC); and a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130v[I and K]). Henry's most subtle discussion comes in the late Quod. 14, q. 6 (2:566vE), where he admits some "actio" at all levels of knowledge, since even at the first stage the possible acts in an attenuated way, but confesses that only from the second stage does mind act to form its knowledge. 4(1 In fact, not all the passages examined just above analyze human cognitive processes solely for the sake of producing models to use in resolving another problem. See, for instance, Quod. 14, q. 6.
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aforementioned attempts from 1279 on to analyze the dichotomy between knowledge of the true and knowledge of truth was a model of cognition brought forth where God had a part to play. It was as if Henry had become so fully satisfied with an Aristotelianizing account of certitude that he no longer felt the need to call upon illuminationist theories of truth. If he had not fully abandoned such Augustinian ideas, they had surely receded far from the center of his attention. Following the precedent of article 34, he now even graced fully worldly cognition with an accolade once reserved for knowledge dependent upon God's light. His Aristotelianizing model for knowing truth brought intellect, he claimed, to "true and perfect knowledge" (vera et perfecta de incomplexo notitia), distant cry from the disparaging assessment of Aristotle's paradigm in his early years, more in line with the "perfect science" of his previous understanding of pure, illumined truth.47 Henry's followers evidently perceived the course of his thought in exactly this way. At least Vital sensed a change in direction and, even truer Augustinian than his more illustrious forebear, rejected the formulations of the master's later years. In the passage from De cognitione, question 8, already noted above, he summarized a view about knowing the true and knowing truth that in all essentials followed Henry's mature account, employing language lifted nearly verbatim from Quodlibet 4, question 8, and Quodlibet 6, question I.48 When he then, borrowing Roger Marston's words, rejected the whole position out of hand, he was expressly repudiating the Aristotelianizing vision of Henry's maturity.49 For some Augustinians, even this champion of their cause could veer too far in Aristotle's direction. For his own part, Henry went on enthusiastically to examine processes of mind, and their psychological concomitants, in which to ground his Aristotelianizing epistemology, revealing himself on 47 Henry, Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130vl). For the early pejorative description of an Aristotelianizing model, see Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 70-71; for "perfect science," Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 72. On re-estimation of Aristotelianzing knowledge in article 34, see above, n. 19. 48 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 35. Vital's complete presentation (Quaestiones de cognitions, q. 8 [ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 312-14]), which includes the passage referred to in that note, is drawn nearly verbatim from Henry's Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97v[N-O]); and Quodlibet 6, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 10:14-15, 11. 81-97), much of which material is either quoted or referred to in nn. 35-38 above, and nn. 65, 66 and 76 below. 49 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 36.
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occasion to be an Averroist of considerable discernment.50 As early as the first article of the Summa he had noted that some thinkers, most prominently Avicenna but also others among the Arabs, had held that a separate intellect provided human mind with knowledge through a formal process of participation. Such an intellect was necessarily a power higher than mind but close to it, by tradition the intelligence animating the tenth and lowest celestial sphere.31 With respect to normal human knowledge, Henry rejected this position without reservation.32 From his earliest to his very last work he committed himself instead to what he identified as Aristotle's point of view, that knowledge was not poured into mind from above but rather intellect, always potentially knowing, was moved to generate its own act of cognition in the presence of an active intellectual impulse (activum aliquid}.53 In his mature writings Henry explained the relation of this active impulse to mind with reference to a third factor, the intelligible object. As already remarked, at the level of knowledge of both the true and truth mind's object was universal, Henry having insisted throughout his career that there could be no authentically intellectual perception — at least no direct perception — of anything else.54 °° On Averroist elements in Henry's psychology, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 82-85, especially the comments on p. 83; more generally on his noetics and psychology, see Jerome V. Brown, "Abstraction and the Object of the Human Intellect according to Henry of Ghent," Vivarium 11 (1973): 80-104; "Henry of Ghent on Internal Sensation," Journal of the History of Philosophy 10 (1972): 15-28; and "Sensation in Henry of Ghent: A Late Medieval Aristotelian-Augustinian Synthesis," Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 53 (1971): 238-66; Paulus, "A propos de la theorie de la connaissance d'Henri de Gand," Revue Philosophique de Louvain 47 (1949): 493-96; and De Wulf, "L'exemplarisme et la theorie de Pillumination speciale dans la philosophic de Henri de Gand," RNS 1 (1894): 53-75. Less reliable is Giuseppina Cannizzo, "La dottrina del 'verbum mentis' in Enrico di Gand," RFN 54 (1962): 243-66. 51 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 4 (1:1 IvC). In Quod. 8, q. 12 (2:324rA), he referred to this position as the less common of two on the nature of agent intellect. For discussion of such a position as early as William of Auvergne and its attribution to Avicenna, see above Pt. 1, ch. 2, n. 31. On Henry's one explicit description of God as agent intellect, see below, nn. 96 and 98. 32 Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 4 (1:1 IvD). j3 See Henry, Summa, a. 1, q. 4 (l:12r-v[E]). The phrase "aliquid activum" had also appeared in Pecham - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 85. ^ On the need for universality in the intellectual object, see Henry, Quodlibet 6, q. 6 (Henrici Opera, 10:68, 11. 53-54); Quodlibet 1, q. 14 (Henrici Opera, 11:98); Quod. 8, q. 12 (2:324rB); Quod. 14, q. 6 (2:566vE); Quod. 15, q. 9 (2:581rD); and Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130rG); on the impossibility of knowing singulars directly, see, for example, Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130r[G and H]). Vital, too, insisted
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Since real essences were not universal in themselves, something was needed to insure they be presented to intellect under the guise of universality.55 Here is where the active impulse came in, to prepare a universal ground for mind to survey. Henry took it to be Aristotle's opinion, which he accepted as correct, that this active impulse was one of human intellect's two parts, thereby adopting the view seen increasingly among Augustinians from Bonaventure on that there were two varieties of intellect, each representing an inherent capacity possessed by every human soul.56 He also followed Pecham in saying that technically speaking these were not two different powers (potentiae) of soul but rather two forces (vires), a less radical division.57 Vital agreed.58 Both men were thinking, of course, of the agent and possible intellects, by then the almost universally accepted scheme for dividing functions of mind. The complete description of how these forces worked evolved as Henry moved from accepting impressed intelligible species to their total elimination in favor of the mental word, but relevant to discussion here are only those mechanisms of mind not affected by the change. It is important to remember that Vital never accepted Henry's mature position on the erroneousness of positing intelligible species.59 From beginning to end of career Henry gave a virtually invariant account of how the two forces operated in the first stage of the procedure, leading to "simplex intelligentia" or knowledge of the true. Agent intellect's primary role at this point was to render the cognitive material resident in phantasms suitable for understanding, and it did so by denuding the phantasms of particular conditions so as
that what he called "cognitiones scientificae" had to be of the universal - see Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 180). 55 See Henry, Quod. 4, q. 14 (l:178vX). 56 Henry, Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:129v-30r[D-F]). See above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 81-82, for Bonaventure's views. 57 Henry, Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:129vD); and also Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:176vO); and Quodlibet 13, q. 8, ad 1. (Henrici Opera, 18:56, 11. 75-80). See Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 87, for Pecham on this distinction. Matthew took the same route - see Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 95. Early on Henry was willing to call these two parts of the intellect "potentiae" - see Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:14vB) - suggesting he had not yet read, or understood, Pecham. 58 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 197). As indicated below, Vital disagreed with Henry on exactly how these two powers worked. 59 See Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 207); and also below, n. 71.
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to reveal their universal core, the process called abstraction.60 On this point Henry revealed himself as anxious as Matthew of Aquasparta to adopt an Aristotelianizing line on the necessity for all normal cognition to originate in the external world as apprehended through the senses.61 Yet the agent had a secondary function directed not to the intelligible object but rather to possible intellect. Drawing on Aristotle's De anima Henry claimed that the initial processes of intellection were analogous to those of sight, so that agent intellect should be seen as a cognitive light, falling on phantasms in the way visible light illuminated colors and irradiating possible intellect just as visible light shone on the visible medium, the sensory organ and perhaps the power of sight itself. In this fashion, the agent prepared the possible for understanding by making it receptive of the abstracted universals.62 By his later writings an even more complicated analysis appeared, with the agent performing two roles with regard to each target: working on phantasms by making them intelligible and giving them the capacity to act on the possible, on the possible by disposing it to receive universals and, as immanent in the universals themselves, determining it to a specific intellective act.63 Here he explicitly evoked the idea seen in Grosseteste, that as the visual power necessarily possessed its own innate light of seeing, so intellect naturally contained an intelligible light within itself.64 The noetics of the second step, leading to knowledge of truth, Henry examined extensively only in his middle and later years. As noted above, he saw mind at this level as taking on a more active 60
Henry, Quod. 8, q. 12 (2:324rB). On Matthew, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 35 and 37. In Aristotelian fashion Henry also insisted that mind in the world was capable of knowing only when a phantasm was present - see Quod. 5, q. 25 (l:204vK); Quodlibet 6, q. 6 (Henrici Opera, 10:68-69, 11. 55-77); and Quod. 8, q. 12 (2:324vC). Towards the end of his career he began to entertain exceptions to this rule, speaking of some kinds of knowledge from divine illumination or God's creative action that were independent of phantasms - see below, nn. 85-86 and 102. G '- Henry, Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:129v-30r[D-F]); and also Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:14vB); and Quod. 8, q. 12 (2:324rB). He traced the analogy back to Aristotle, De anima III, 5 (430al4-17). For description of the agent's act without recourse to this analog^7, see Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97rM). Quick sketches of the whole process from sensation to intellection also appear in Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:176v[M—O]); and Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130r-v[H]). "' Henry, Quodlibet 13, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 18:50-52, 11. 28-73). M Henry, Quodlibet 13, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 18:50, 11. 35-41). On Grosseteste, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, nn. 31 and 35. Pecham and Matthew also held to this view - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 67-69. 61
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mien in contrast to its predominant passivity while coming to know the true. For although agent intellect was operative in the business of "simplex intelligentia," possible intellect remained at that stage completely subject to the action of abstracted universals, but once it had been informed with knowledge of the true it arose from passivity to function along with the cooperating agent in actively searching out truth.63 Indeed it was precisely possible intellect that performed the compounding and dividing revealing the object's definition.66 From Henry's description of possible intellect's workings in knowledge of truth it is evident that his understanding of this stage in the cognitive process drew heavily on Augustine's vision of the inherent activity of mind, from which he had, after all, taken the idea of a mental word exclusively associated with the second step in his earliest works.67 To this degree even the mature Henry proved himself legitimate heir to the classic Augustinians, who likewise thought of mind as fundamentally active, Bonaventure claiming that the Aristotelian terms "agent" and "possible intellect" were by no means to be taken as implying total activity or passivity for either power of mind.68 Apparently aware that he was in this respect distancing himself from Aristotle, Henry remarked how at the stage of "simplex intelligentia" both of mind's forces functioned "naturally," which was to say according to the precepts of a fully Aristotelianized natural world, but that subsequently intellect was "active," thus even willful, so far as either force was concerned. 69 Besides Augustine, however, he also drew inspiration on this matter from Averroes. Possible intellect, rendered active by its reception of knowledge of the true, was, he said, exactly what Averroes meant by the capacity of mind he called speculative intellect.70 65 Henry, Quod. 5, q. 25 (l:204rl); and Quod. 14, q. 6 (2:566vE); see also Quodlibet 6, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 10:14, 11. 80-85). For mention above of mind's initial passivity, see n. 45. (>fi Henry, Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130v[H-I]); and also Quodlibet 6, q. 1 (Henrici Opera, 10:14, 11. 93-95). bl See the passage from article 58 of the Summa cited above, n. 66. On this Augustinian side to Henry, see also above, n. 45. 68 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 81. 69 Henry, Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:130vH). On Henry's understanding of "natural," see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 48. 70 Henry, Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:131rL and 132vP). The term "intellectus speculativus" was drawn from Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros III, 5 (ed. Crawford, pp. 389-90 and 406). Consult other references in Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 83-84, n. 141. On Averroes's influence on Henry see also Nys, De werking, pp. 80-88 (De psychologia, pp. 34-37). In Quodlibet 13, q. 8
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Predictably enough, as on other occasions where he seemed to stray from the path of Augustinian orthodoxy, so here, too, with this Averroizing facet of his later noetics Henry was rejected by his otherwise faithful followers. Vital summarized the master's views on the role of agent and possible intellects in a question in De cognitione the main purpose of which was to attack the rejection of impressed intelligible species. The body of the question made it clear that he was troubled not just by Henry's position on species but also by his whole description of mind's functioning, in particular the attribution of extreme passivity to possible intellect in the first stage of cognition and the power of compounding and dividing at the second stage, a power Vital reserved for the agent/ 1 As for how mind took up impressed species, for which he retained a noetic function, Vital returned to Matthew of Aquasparta in distinction 39 of his Commentary on the Sentences and De cognitione, question 3, the latter providing his texte de base, mined according to form as source for verbatim borrowings.72 In keeping with Matthew, Vital chose to target a stance on mind's simple processes reminiscent of John Pecham's, for whom the senses played a merely occasional role by exciting intellect to immanent act. Vital altered Matthew's description of the targeted views, however, by eliminating intelligible species, a change almost certainly intended to bring the position in line with that of Peter Olivi/3 It (Henrici Opera, 18:54, 11. 25-31), Henry explained the two faces of possible intellect by saying that possible itself had two forces (vires) - by the first, "memoria," it was purely passive; by the second, "intelligentia," it was active and capable of seeking out truth. '' See Vital's conclusion, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 2 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 197), the question referred to above, n. 59. In the first article, Vital summarized Henry's views on noetics (pp. 185-92), especially those presented in Quodlibet 5, q. 14; Quodlibet 13, q. 8; and Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. - attributing them to "quidam magni" (p. 185) - and reproduced a list of reasons in their favor drawn sometimes verbatim from a work of Giles of Rome (pp. 192-96). He then relied heavily on the same work to reject these views in the second article (pp. 196-207). As Delorme notes in his edition of Vital, Giles's work was his De cognitione angelorum, q. 4 (in De esse et essentia, De mensura angelorum, et De cognitione angelorum, ff. 81d-86a). '- Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 211-32), dependent on Matthew even for the wording of the question (compare Vital, p. 211, with Matthew, De cognitione, q. 3 [BFS, 1:248]). For Matthew's analysis of the noetics of simple cognition, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, pp. 159-62. '•'' For Vital's description, see his Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 215-16), which draws sometimes word for word on Matthew, De cognitione, q. 3 (BFS, 1:259-60) - cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 26-30. On this as close to Pecham's views, see Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 48, 51 and 52. Among defenders of such ideas Vital quotes Olivi - see Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (arg. 5-11) (ed.
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is in fact possible he had only Olivi in mind, not realizing Matthew had originally been expressing doubts about ideas of the otherwise exemplary Pecham. Vital's own opinion, again greatly dependent on Matthew, was that mind really took something from external, sensible things in receiving intelligible species, even though this did not occur so as to subject it to material reality. Instead it acquired what it did simply by virtue of being an active power.74 In short, he, like Matthew, championed a noetics that although Aristotelianizing enough not altogether to deny receptivity to mind, made ample room for an uncompromisingly Augustinian stand on its fundamental activity. As for Henry, he realized that beyond the still technically simple knowledge discussed so far, there remained genuinely complex cognition, knowledge of propositions, where alone according to the strict Aristotelian lexicon "truth" came into play and the term "science" applied.75 For these complex truths he also offered an epistemological analysis and underlying noetics, although much sparer than for what might be called "simple truth." Broadly speaking, he called all that had to do with knowledge of the assertions of science "syllogistic knowledge," observing that it was established upon the logical procedures outlined in the Logica nova, the latter part of Aristotle's organon.76 More precisely, he conceded that this general rubric covered two different kinds of understanding, knowledge of propositions and knowledge of arguments, only the latter, of course, involving syllogism in the strict sense, or in the case of science, demonstration, and each dependent on a radically divergent intellective operation. For all that, in both cases possible worked actively along with agent intellect to carry the process forward.77 By his final years, quite plainly, Henry had developed a comprehensive vision of human knowledge in the world, remarkable in Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 217-18), all of which can be found in Olivi, Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum, q. 58 (ed. Bernhard Jansen, BFS, 5:454-56 [Quaracchi, 1924]). In the same text, p. 477, Olivi makes clear his stand on intelligible species. Any jab at Olivi's rejection of intelligible species would naturally hit Henry as well. '4 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 3 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," pp. 218-19 largely dependent on Matthew, De cognitione [BFS, 1:263-64] - and p. 224). 7;) On Henry's recognition of this fact about Aristotle, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 47. /b Henry, Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:97vN). The Logica nova consisted of Aristotle's two Analytics, the Topics and On Sophistical Refutations. 11 Henry, Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3. (2:132vOJ; and also (2:130vH). For more on his discussion of such fully complex processes of mind, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 83-85 and 88-90.
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someone with his Augustinian proclivities for its dependence on an Aristotelianized epistemology explaining certitude and the attainment of science without reference to Godly intervention. As noted before, some historians have concluded that he consequently abandoned his early ideas on truth, rejecting in particular the second level, knowledge of "pure truth," revealed by divine illumination, but passages in his later work unequivocally reaffirming illumination of truth prove that this was not the case. Yet it has also been suggested that one should not think he held firm to the position on the issue mapped out early in his career. The normative illumination Henry had in mind in the scattered and for the most part unelaborated reaffirmations of his maturity was not precisely the same as the doctrine presented in the first articles of his Summa. This chapter and the preceding two have shown how from midcareer on Henry not only worked out a greatly Aristotelianizing philosophy of knowledge and mind but also strengthened his appreciation of the way his theory of essence combined with his views on natural knowledge of God to promote an affirmation of divine intimacy to human intellect independent of Augustine's ideas about truth. It must now be added that he gradually perceived this same theory of essence as permitting his mature, Aristotelianizing epistemology to yield, with only modest effort at interpretation, something like those very Augustinian intuitions about God's place in cognition. Such tailoring of Aristotle to Augustine demanded a theoretical distancing from the literal image of a divine light of truth, which sat uneasily with the concrete processes of an Aristotelianized noetics, but it did not require abandoning the basics of Augustine's approach. Henry was now able simply to embrace Augustine without having to tack on, as had been the case in his early theories, a procedure involving God's action on mind as second stage in knowing truth above intellect's first, more Aristotelian operations. In light of his metaphysics, the two processes collapsed into one, with knowing truth in Aristotelian terms effectively equivalent to knowing it along Augustinian lines as well. Another way to put this is that Henry's metaphysics of essence permitted the theory of knowledge he constructed in his later years to reproduce the fundamental epistemic conditions relegated in his early work to an explicit theory of divine illumination.78 It was thus '8 On the collapse of the two levels of science into one, see Marrone, Truth and
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ultimately possible for him to account not only for divine intimacy to mind, already displaced onto his idea of natural knowledge of God, but also for divinity's function as guarantor of truth without referring to the paradigmatic Augustinian light. Increasingly Aristotelianizing, Henry could still plausibly claim he remained true to the end to the normative illuminationist theories prominently displayed in his early work just because his mature epistemology could be said to leave room for the truth-revealing dimensions of illumination whether or not he employed expressly illuminationist language or bothered to remind his readers that a divine role was involved. For the same reason he could also draw back from the absolute separation introduced in his early years between natural knowledge of God and knowledge of truth, the former entailing divinity as object but the latter only as means of knowing. Henry's mature writings tapped into his metaphysics of essence to amplify God's role as somehow object even in truth-perception. Ironically he thus returned in his final years to a theoretical unity on the matter of God's place in cognition reminiscent of the classic Augustinians, this time, however, without recourse to the doctrinal glue of illumination by Eternal Truth. A last look at what he had to say about knowledge of truth in his later years shows how all this was so. Scattered throughout his mature works are indications he realized how the truth mind was directed towards according to his fully developed theory of scientific knowledge, essence as signified by "quod quid est" and seized in the definition, was metaphysically identical to what he described in other contexts as absolute essence and had therefore to be located in his ontological scheme at the level of "res a ratitudine." He arrived at this understanding about the time Matthew, himself surely dependent on Henry, was coming to the same conclusion.79 Already by Quodlibet 3, from 1278 or 1279, he had come to believe that the Scientific Knowledge, pp. 139-40 and 146. Similar views on the role of metaphysics in Henry's later work were advanced by Gomez Caffarena, Ser partidpado, pp. 33-35; and Pegis, "A New Way to God: Henry of Ghent (II)," pp. 113-15, where the claim is made that the later Henry fused the Avicennian notion of absolute essence with Augustinian illumination. Prospero Stella, "La prima critica," also suggests that Henry progressively worked towards greater appreciation of Avicennian absolute essence, as well as a more active view of mind, while Dwyer, Die Wissenschqftslehre, pp. 38-43, remarks upon development of Henry's epistemology from early attachment to divine illumination to later emphasis on vision of the incorporeal reasons. 79 On Henry, see the references given above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 78; for Matthew's views, see Pt. 2, ch. 7, n. 56.
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truth of propositions about essential attributes was founded on absolute essence, inferring from this that all science was ultimately grounded in the same.80 Soon after, in article 34 of the Summa, he noted similarly that truth - this time, the objective truth of simple things to which knowledge was directed and according to which it had to conform to be true — was to be found in "res a ratitudine."81 Vital meant the same thing when he claimed that the formality in virtue of which a thing should be labeled true was grounded in entity, a term both he and Henry used interchangeably with "res a ratitudine," as conceived absolutely (per se) by intellect.82 But the foundation for "res a ratitudine" was a relation between essence and divine ideal. Already of course in the Summa, article 34, Henry had drawn the inference that things possessed essential truth only by grace of a relative orientation (respectus) to God's mind, and within a year he was pointing out howr human knowledge, by necessity directed toward essence, was possible only insofar as the object of intellection depended radically on a relation to divine exemplar.83 It was a short step from this idea to appreciating that the underlying vision crucial to his discussion of mind's first object, the notion that normal human cognition opened onto a conceptual ground leading directly to God, applied as well to his account of knowledge of truth or science. Again, Henry's metaphysics of essence simply entailed the fact that already present in, if not explicitly expressed by, his
80 See the quotation from Quod. 3, q. 9, given above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 92. Shortly after this passage he noted: "Unde et ratio talis entis [i.e. essentiae absolutae conceptae], quia est aliquid secundum naturam et essentiam per se, est obiectum intellectus de quo habent esse scientiae. . . ." See also Quod. 8, q. 12 (2:324rB), where he explained that the intelligible objects perceived in phantasms under the universalizing illumination of agent intellect were known insofar as they were essences pure and simple (sub ratione qua essentiae simpliciter sunt] - that is, as absolute essences. 81 Henry, Summa (Qg. on/.), a. 34, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 27:175-76, 11. 70-74): "Et ideo veritas cuiusque rei subsistentis in creaturis non dicitur fundari nisi in re secundo modo [i.e. secundum rationem rei dictae a ratitudine]. Quanto enim aliquid in re plus habet ratitudinis sive firmitatis, tanto plus habet entitatis, quare et veritatis. Ut ex hoc veritas dicatur esse in unoquoque, quia habet in se participatum id formae et essentiae, quod natum est habere secundum suam speciem. . . . " 82 Vital, Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 6 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 293): "Ratio autem veri non fundatur in actuali existentia r e i . . . sed . . . in entitate ut concepta ab intellectu per se." !tt Henry, Summa (Qg. ord.}, a. 34, q. 3 (Henrici Opera, 27:192, 11. 96-97), quoted above, n. 8, on truth and relative orientation; on objects intelligible because related to an exemplar, Quod. 5, q. 14 (l:177rR); and also Quodlibet 7, qq. 1 & 2 (Henrici Opera, 11:28), both quoted above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 80.
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Aristotelianizing description of truth-perception was the implication that mind knowing truth had access to a divine object. It took a mere signal to his readers, at most a short exposition, to give new currency to the Augustinian account of knowledge of truth he seemed otherwise to ignore in the epistemological and noetic explorations of his mature works. The first evidence Henry saw things this way comes in question 15 of Quodlibet 5, composed in late 1280 or early 1281. There he brought together his notion of the intelligible object, interpreted according to his metaphysics of essence, with specific recognition of God's role as conceptual light. As he put it, God's function at the level of essence was not just ontological, furnishing formal ground for quiddity or objective truth, but also cognitive insofar as the very fact of divine grounding insured intelligibility.84 But he fully tipped his hand, if only briefly, in Quodlibet 9, from 1286 and the height of his career. Question 15 of that work asked whether there was in mind a hidden knowledge (intelligere abdituni) arising somehow beyond the normal point of entry among phantasms in imagination, to which he responded by insisting that Augustine had unambiguously answered in the affirmative.80 He then explained that Augustine had in mind the ever-present and absolutely primary action of divine light on human intellect requisite for access to pure truth, an action which since not apparent to everyone, even those calling upon it, was properly designated "hidden."86 When he then went on to describe the process, his account matched the analysis of the way to knowledge of pure truth given in his first works, though at times with slightly modified terminology.87 As before, 84
Henry, Quod. 5, q. 15 (l:179vl): "Et . . . quia sicut lumen in corporibus est visibile primum et per se, per quod etiam alia videntur inquantum sunt luminis participantia et inquantum sunt lumine exteriori illustrata, sic et in spiritualibus lux prima quae Deus est, primum est et per se intelligibile, cuius participatione in esse formali uniuscuiusque et illustratione omnia alia intelliguntur." Just before, Henry had pointed out to his readers he was building on his understanding of the object of intellect laid out in the preceding question of the Quodlibet, for which see above, n. 83. K> Henry, Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:258, 11. 2-5 and 11-18). Henry referred to Augustine, De Trinitate X, 10; and XIV, 7 and 12 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 1, 329; and 2, 433-34 and 442-43). 86 Henry, Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:261, 11. 96-99) and also (13:265, 11. 22-28). On how this action was not recognized by all, see q. 15, ad arg. (Henrici Opera, 13:268, 11. 92-97). 87 Ibid. (p. 262, 11. 23-28): "Est ergo intentio Augustini . . . quod postquam [aninia]
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there were here two separate stages in truth-perception, the first revealing an "imaginaria veritas" reminiscent of the "phantastic knowledge of truth" of the initial articles of the Summa, only the second yielding knowledge of pure truth, where God's intervention was critical.88 Henry even referred his readers back to the beginning of the Summa for details about how the illuminative procedure worked, as if to imply that there had been no significant evolution in his thought.89 Yet in the middle of this unexceptional description appears an astonishing statement, unprepared for by anything he had said in his early years. Immediately after indicating that for full knowledge of truth mind must turn to the divine ideas or reasons, he remarked that the abstracted objects known through or in the phantasms and the ideal reasons in God — that is, the very two cognitive elements to be compared according to the early paradigm for knowing pure truth were in fact the same; indeed they were both identical with the essences of things.90 One can understand this assertion only in light of the metaphysics already laid out in Henry's other works, whereby, first of all, each thing's essence in itself - that is, its absolute essence - remained really the same throughout all instantiations in external reality or thinking minds and, second, the exemplified essences known by God were, over eternity, identical to the divine ideas.91 Given these two presuppositions, it was no more than inferring the obvious to state, as in
intelligibilia rerum sensibilium conspexerit in phantasmatibus per sensus receptis, a sensibus se subtrahit et phantasmatibus, et per haec attingit praedictas incorporeas rationes in ipsa veritate incorporea existentes." For full exposition of this account, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 94-98. 88 Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:264, 1. 97). On "phantastic knowledge," see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 70. Henry drew the term "imaginaria veritas" from Augustine's mention of an "imaginarium conspectum" (or in Henry's words "imaginarium intellectum"), which he quoted several times (p. 264, 11. 75-76, 79 and 83). See Augustine, De Trinitate IX, 6 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 1, 303). 89 Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:264, 11. 85-87); also the same, p. 262, 11. 35-36. 90 In Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:262, 11. 29-31), Henry continued the passage quoted above, n. 87, with the following words: "Sunt enim eadem cognita et praedicta intellecta in phantasmatibus, et ipsae incorporeae rationes in ipsa veritate aeterna: non sunt enim aliud quam ipsae naturae et essentiae rerum." '" For fuller support of this interpretation, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 134-40. On the first point, about the unicity of absolute essence, see also above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 74; on the second, about exemplified essences and divine ideas, the same chapter, n. 73. That Henry used the term "ideal reasons" (incorporeae rationes) as quoted above, n. 90, to refer specifically to the ideas (that is, God's
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Quodlibet 9, that in progressing from the initial stages of knowledge, whether at the level of the true or in the first approach to truth, to the final act of knowing "pure truth," mind did not so much change referents or multiply formal objects, bringing in a second exemplar separate from the abstracted exemplar of "phantastic" cognition, as simply view the same item under different guise.92 Beginning by perceiving essence as implicated externally in material things, it ended by considering the identical object as manifest in God's exemplary ideas, at which point it could fully judge the value of what it knew and thus attain knowledge of pure truth.93 By such a reading, the Augustinian notion of knowledge of truth could readily be seen as coincident with the Aristotelianizing epistemology and noetics of Henry's mature years. According to the latter, just as with the new reading of Augustine, coming to know truth meant not switching or multiplying objects but rather viewing the same object from a new perspective, specifically by penetrating beyond perception of the universal expressed concretely in the phantasm to rarer vision of the object as absolute essence alone. The process by which Henry had described Augustinian illumination in Quodlibet 9 might thus be thought of as another way of talking about knowledge of truth in more thoroughly Aristotelianizing terms. One could even combine both points of view to claim that mind, starting with apprehension of the object still limited by the phantasm, moved on to awareness of absolute essence, where it not only grasped the definition but, because absolute essence lay on the metaphysical plane where exemplar and exemplified were related, also in some way "rationes cognoscendi") and not simply to the exemplified essences is clear from Quodlibet 9, q. 2 (Henrici Opera, 13:36-37, 11. 78-06); and Summa, a. 68, q. 5 (2:231rV). 92 On the notion of two exemplars in his early view of truth, and the most extreme interpretation of it, whereby mind would compare the two as if they were two formal objects, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 52 and 104. 93 Note especially Henry's language in Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:264, 11. 80—91): ". . . tune in ilia luce et per hoc in ilia aeterna veritate ex qua facta sunt omnia, mente conspicimus . . . formas secundum quas habent esse ilia de quibus imaginarium habemus intellectum, et secundum illas, ut secundum se conspicimus eas, iudicamus de eisdem ut habent esse in materia, et per hoc habemus de eis veracem notitiam. . . . Et sic per formas quae sunt essentiae rerum, ut secundum se conspiciuntur illustratione lucis increatae, cognoscuntur vera notitia ipsae eaedem formae ut habent esse in materia, quae conspiciuntur in phantasmatibus illustratione lucis creatae quae est intellectus agentis. . . ." (I have added emphases to call attention to the essential identity of object at all levels of cognition.) See also the same question, p. 265, 11. 1-4.
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gained access to God. Since on this plane God's ideas stood as guarantors of a thing's truth, it was not farfetched to suggest that at this conceptual level God's ideas were actually illuminating mind.94 Augustinian reliance on God as revealer of truth had simply become immanent in an epistemic process that on the surface remained predominantly Aristotelian. It might require another step for this fact to be brought to consciousness, but that was from Henry's perspective of little concern.93 These precious indications of a novel reading of Augustine stand as eloquent testimony to the fact that, although much of Henry's language in question 15, Quodlibet 9, reproduces what he said about knowledge of pure truth early on, he was no longer thinking along exactly the same lines, hoping now instead to steer clear of too literal a reliance on the illuminist image of much of Augustinian tradition. As if to make the point clear, for the first time he explicitly called God an agent intellect for mind, working alongside the agent properly part of the soul in the effort to know truth.96 Although he thereby incidentally reaffirmed terminology preferred by Pecham but generally avoided by the rest of the classic Augustinians, on which score he was faithfully seconded by Vital, his intention was plainly that God be thought of as agent in a peculiar fashion, precisely suited to his mature vision of knowledge of truth.97 Drawing upon 94 All this is implied in the suggestive language of Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:265, 11. 4-7): "Propter quod dicit Augustinus . . . quod res per oculos nuntiata imaginarium facit conceptum, sed rnente aliud conspicio, licet non sit aliud re, licet differat intellectus agens qui Deus est, et qui est potentia animae rationalis. . . ." 93 From a modern perspective, this might seem philosophically irresponsible. See the remarks in Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 137, n. 122. 96 Henry, Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:264-65, 11. 92~00); and also the passage quoted above, n. 94. Macken, in "La theorie," pp. 92-93, discusses this as a salient aspect of Henry's later noetics, although I hesitate to make quite as much of it - see Truth and Scientific Cognition, pp. 98-99. Henry's characterization of God as agent intellect lies at the heart of what many historians identify as the "Avicennian Augustinianism" of his thought - see Prezioso, La critica di Duns Scoto, p. 62; Macken, "La theorie," pp. 92-93; and Pegis throughout his three perceptive articles, "Towards a New Way to God: Henry of Ghent," MS 30 (1968): 226-47; "A New Way to God: Henry of Ghent (II)," pp. 93-116; and "Henry of Ghent and the New Way to God (III)," pp. 158-79. 9/ On Pecham, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 100 and 104. Matthew of Aquasparta adopted the same language, but less enthusiastically - see Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 106. For Vital's position, see Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 329). From the middle of p. 328 to the middle of p. 329 of that question, Vital simply copied the collage of Augustinian texts presented in Henry's Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:263-64), inserting additional comments about the two agents
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an option already present in his earliest work, he insisted that the divine agent acted not so much like light, which more befitted the agent that was part of mind, as like art.98 Regardless of how he had conceived of "art" at the beginning of the Summa, here it surely served to indicate a repository of ideas objectively available to mind at the apex of its ascent to truth. According to this vision God entered into the cognitive process less as authentic actor - for it was mind itself that w7as active in the business of abstraction and definition than as a kind of ultimate, ideal epistemic ground." There is, however, still more to Henry's vision of mind's natural capacity for divinely grounded understanding from the maturity of his career. Once again taking Augustine as guide for the notion of hidden knowledge, he explained in Quodlibet 9 that the workings of God on mind entailed in the epistemic processes paradigmatically associated with illumination left behind an impression that could provide the vehicle for cognition of divinity.100 Such language is highly reminiscent of Bonaventure's conviction that God as revealer of truth supplied mind with an innate species or "effectus" through which he, himself, was naturally known, and contrasts with Henry's more summarizing Henry's views expressed in the same work (p. 264). Significantly, he completely excised the indications of the ultimate identity of all essence in the passage from Henry quoted above, n. 93. It is interesting to note that in Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 8 (ed. Delorme, "Huit questions," p. 317), Vital presented Roger Marston's views on how God and a part of the soul were both agent intellects - see Marston, Quaestiones de anima, q. 3 (in BFS, 7:259) - only to reject (p. 321) this way of seeing the two agents, which made the agent part of the soul an imperfect noetic actor. His rejection relied on an argument Henry had advanced in Quodlibet 13, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 18:53, 11. 9-11), namely that mind was an image of God only insofar as its powers were considered in act. 98 Henry, Quodlibet 9. q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:265, 11. 7-10): "Agens enim qui Deus est, agit sicut ars quae ponit formam in materia artificii; agens vero qui est potentia animae, agit sicut lumen circa phantasmata. . . ." On Henry characterizing God as "art" in his earliest work, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 108, 111 and 113-14; for other indications of the inclination to separate the language of light specifically from discussion of truth-perception, see Pt. 3, ch. 10, pp. 327-28. In Quodlibet 13, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 18:53, 11. 3-6), he would appear to contradict the implication in Quodlibet 9 that God as agent did not act as intelligible light. 99 Pecham's comments on God as agent can conceivably be read as approaching the interpretation given here for Henry, especially the passage cited above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 105. 100 Henry, Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:265-66, 11. 23-34), which incorporates Augustine's own language from De Trinitate XIV, 15 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 2, 451).
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typical, and early established, reservations about such views.101 Similar indication that ideas not unrelated to Bonaventure's position on innate knowledge of God and other higher realities appealed to the later Henry emerges in brief remarks in question 12 of Quodlibet 8. There he used the term "hidden knowledge" to refer to innate cognitive habits (habitus innati) leading to knowledge of both divinity and universal objects present in all minds though not readily available once intellect had become enmeshed in phantasms after the Fall.102 Clearly, the notion of God as mental object was coming to the fore in Henry's final thoughts about divinity's role in normal cognition of truth. Indeed it appears he considered the traces God's activity left in mind to be not only markers providing a minimal natural knowledge of divinity but also the basis for a dynamic sweeping soul upwards, ultimately into a mystical vision. He noted that souls received these impressions or "descriptions" to greater or lesser degree according to their purity — that is, their freedom from material distractions — in the very fashion some pagan philosophers held minds to obtain greater or lesser illumination from higher intelligences according to intensity of intellectual disposition.103 There was apparently a ladder of cognitive levels founded on God's hidden action on mind, viewed unambiguously now as leaving an impression, each higher level revealing divinity with greater clarity and all of them apportioned with an eye to the subject's intellectual cleanliness. At its top rung the ladder touched on the supernatural and even prophetic vision of divine things.104 In the full blush of his career, therefore, Henry was prepared to attach to a theory of knowledge most readily expressed in Aristotelianizing terms, a dynamic depiction of mind's orientation to God harking back to the rhetorical flights of Bonaventuran mysticism. 101
For Bonaventure, see above. Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 41-47; on Henry's reservations, see the discussion above at Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 101-3, as well as n. 102 just below. 102 Henry, Quod. 8, q. 12 (2:324vC). He advanced this idea despite early protestations against any notion of innate knowledge in human mind - see Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (l:15rB); and 1, q. 11 (l:21rC); as well as above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 17 and 116. 103 Henry, Quodlibet 9, q. 15 (Henrici Opera, 13:266, 11. 33-44). 104 Henry, Quodlibet 9, q. 15, ad arg. (Henrici Opera, 13:269, 11. 21-25): ". . . actus abdit[i] quos ponit Augustinus . . . in veritate ponendi sunt: in ipsis enim consistit perfectio cognitionis contemplantium modo naturae, et in ipsis fundatur perfectio contemplantium modo supernaturali secundum tertium genus visionis intellectualis eorum quae futura sunt modo prophetico. . . . "
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Knowledge of truth, for all its worldly complexion, was also touchstone for the contemplative way, a matter more often alien to Henry's scholarly concerns.105 The same mature intuitions about the deep structure of cognition also reached back to William of Auvergne and the notion that knowledge of truth was initial testimony to the impetus of mind into the life beyond. Directed to truths in this world, intellect started out on a path culminating in the vision of the absolute and completely fulfilling truth, God himself.106 It is ironic that at the time of his greatest efforts at Aristotelianizing philosophy Henry felt uncharacteristically free to tap into the most traditional elements of the heritage associated with an Augustinian cast of mind.
105 Berube has remarked on the almost Bonaventure-like dynamism of Henry's mature vision - see especially his "Dynamisme psychologique," p. 12; and "De 1'etre a Dieu chez Jean Duns Scot," in Regnum hominis et Regnum Dei, ed. Camille Berube, I: 48, Acta Quarti Congressus Scotistici Internationalis (Rome, 1978). What is suggested here is in part what Berube had in mind, although not so fully, or authentically Bonaventuran, as he intended. On Henry's more typical reluctance to insinuate the mystical path into his theory of knowledge, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, p. 330. 106 On William, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 4, nn. 23-27. In Quod. 3, q. 1 (l:48r-v[V])5 Henry, like William, defended the notion of God as ultimate, beatifying object of intellect by pointing to divinity as pure truth and thus naturally involved, by means of illumination, in all true knowledge. In his Quodlibet 2, q. 1 (ed. Delorme, pp. 43-44), Vital inverted the argument: since mind was directed to God as to infinite truth, so it was naturally capable of knowing all other, particular truths.
PART FOUR THE NEW DISPENSATION 1290-1310 WILLIAM OF WARE AND JOHN DUNS SGOTUS
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INTRODUCTION TO PART FOUR
If the classic Augustinianism of Bonaventure, Pecham and Matthew of Aquasparta had proven inherently unstable, the reforms introduced by Henry of Ghent were, for all their brilliance, subject to even more rapid decay. Henry's dramatic turn away from the search for a unified epistemology and noetics grounded in the image of divine illumination had singlehandedly reoriented thirteenth-century Augustinianism, opening a new chapter in the history of high medieval thought, and even contemporaries appreciated the significance of the achievement. Already in the last ten years of his life, and for several decades thereafter, his writings were the focus of extraordinary attention. Yet aside from a few supporters like Vital du Four and Richard of Conington, almost all who turned to Henry's work did so to criticize. Attacks came from every direction, most readily to be sure from the ranks of those attracted to Thomistic Aristotelianism, but it was from fellow Augustinians that the most penetrating, and historically most fruitful, critique arose.1 Already in Henry's day prominent Franciscan intellectuals had begun to question the wisdom of an epistemology relying on the notion of special illumination from God to explain the normative process of ascertaining truth, raising calls for rejection of this fundamental tenet of classic Augustinianism and Henry's early philosophy of knowledge as well. Peter Olivi throughout the 1280s, and towards the end of the decade or the beginning of the next his disciple, Peter of Trabes, launched a radical inquiry into cherished ideals of both Aristotelianizing and Neoplatonizing currents, one arm of which was insistence that the odor of ontologism attaching to the classic doctrine of divine illumination was an inevitable, intolerable concomitant of any such view.2 From an entirely 1 Among critics sympathetic to Thomas the most prominent were Godfrey of Fontaines and Giles of Rome. On their attitude towards Henry see, for a start, John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines; and Robert Wielockx's "Commentaire" to Giles of Rome, Apologia. - Camille Berube has had much to say about Olivi's critique of illuminationist theories - see Berube, "Jean Duns Scot: Critique de l"avicennisme augustinisant,'" in De doctrina loannis Duns Scoti, I, 207-43, Acta Congressus Scotistici Internationalis, Oxford and Edinburgh, 11-17 September 1966 (Rome, 1968), esp. pp. 210 and
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different perspective, uncharacteristically receptive to Thomistic positions on noetics and epistemology, Richard of Mediavilla revealed similar reservations about traditional Augustinian ideas of a normative illumination from God.3 The French master Raymond Rigaud was yet another Franciscan calling for reconsideration of the classic illuminationist position.4 But of course Henry's own enthusiasm for literal illumination of mind by God in normal cognition had waned by the end of his career. He thus shared in the increased scepticism about a natural illumination leading to truth, his own mature ideas serving as a contributing if largely unrecognized factor in the eventual rejection of classic illuminationism within Augustinian ranks and in particular the Franciscan Order.3 Far from countering the theoretical advances over classic Augustinianism Henry put forth, the critics of illumination should therefore more correctly be seen as accelerating the thrust of 240; "Henri de Gand et Mathieu d'Aquasparta," p. 170; and "Olivi, critique de Bonaventure et d'Henri de Gand," pp. 57-58. Still the best general exposition of Olivi's thought is Efrem Bettoni, Le dottrine filosofiche di Pier di Giovanni Olivi (Milan, 1959). For references about dating the primary work where Olivi confronts issues of epistemology, his Questions on the Sentences, to the late 1280s, see David Burr, The Persecution of Peter Olivi, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, N.S. 66, 5 (Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 6a and 11 a. Long ago, Martin Grabmann, in Der gottliche Grund menschlicher IVahrheitserkenntnis, pp. 41-43, noted Peter of Trabes's refusal to support the classic illuminationist doctrine. Friedrich Stegmiiller, Repertorium commentariorum in Sententias Petri Lombardi (Wiirzburg, 1947), 1, 339 (entry 696), dated Peter's Commentary on the Sentences to more or less the same period as Olivi's. On Peter's rejection of the doctrine of divine illumination (and Richard of Mediavilla's, as well, referred to in the next note), see Patrick Doyle's excellent study, "The Disintegration of Divine Illumination Theory in the Franciscan School, 1285-1300." 3 Edgar Hocedez, Richard de Middleton. Sa vie, ses oeuvres, sa doctrine (Leuven, 1925), pp. 152-54, observed that Richard cast doubt on the doctrine of illumination, a fact widely appreciated in more recent literature. Hocedez dated Richard's Sentences Commentary to around 1284, his quodlibetal disputations to 1284-87, which latter dates Palemon Glorieux, "Maitres franciscains regents a Paris. Mise au point," RTAM 18 (1951): 329, assigned to Richard's regency in theology at Paris. 4 Ferdinand Delorme, "Quodlibets et questions disputees de Raymond Rigaut, maitre franciscain de Paris, d'apres le Ms. 98 de la Bibl. Comm. de Todi," in Aus der Geisteswelt des Mittelalters. Studien und Texte Martin Grabmann . . . gewidmet, ed. Albert Lang et al., 2:826, Beitrage, Supplementband 3,2 (Miinster, 1935); and Palemon Glorieux, "Autour de Raymond Rigauld, O.F.M., et de ses Quodlibets," AFH 31 (1938): 532-33, concluded that the quodlibets generally attributed to Rigaud date from 1287 to 1293. Glorieux, "Maitres franciscains regents a Paris. Mise au point," p. 332, placed Rigaud's Parisian regency in theology in the years 1287-89. My knowledge of Rigaud's positions derives from a reading of manuscript sources. 5 See my comments in "Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus on the Knowledge of Being," p. 40; and the general analysis given above, Pt. 3, ch. 12.
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change initiated by him. By the 1290s a new orthodoxy had been established. Franciscans almost without exception repudiated literal illumination of mind by divine light as given in the classical position of the 1260s and 1270s.6 All of which means that to progress beyond Henry's achievements to a further stage of development, Augustinians would have not just to criticize literal illumination but also respond to the more profound innovation he had introduced into the classic doctrine from his very earliest works, the separation between God's role as normative means in knowledge of truth and as natural and primitive object of mind in general cognition of being. And the scholastics who passed this milestone in the evolution of thirteenth-century Augustinianism, thereby completing the disengagement from the vision of Bonaventure and his followers, were not the critics of the late 1280s but rather those whose work began just as Henry was leaving the scene. As in the generation before the great secular master rose to prominence, the pertinent developments occurred here exclusively among Franciscans, making them once more sole bearers of the high-medieval Augustinian voice. The twro protagonists who figure most prominently in this fourth, and for the present study final, stage in the transformation of Augustinian epistemology and noetics are William of Ware and John Duns Scotus. They sit nicely together not only because their works display so many parallel lines of thought but also since there is reason to believe that William was, if not actually Duns's teacher, at least a formative influence on him during his years of theological study at Oxford.' In line with the new orthodoxy, but now more 6
The most renowned exception was master Gonsalvus of Spain, often taken to be one of Duns Scotus's teachers (see Andre Callebaut, "Le B. Jean Duns Scot etudiant a Paris vers 1293-96," AFH 17 [1924]: 3-12) but most probably on the basis of a misreading of the evidence, as C.K. Brampton argues convincingly in "Duns Scotus at Oxford, 1288-1301," FrS 24 (1964): 6-8. Glorieux, "Maitres franciscains regents a Paris. Mise au point," p. 332, assigned Gonsalvus's regency at Paris to 1301-3, making it likely he commented on the Sentences at the very end of the thirteenth century. On his theory of knowledge, see Benoit Martel, La psychologic de Gonsalve d'Espagne (Montreal, 1968). ; The number of fourteenth-century testimonies found for the assertion that Ware was Duns's teacher has been continually augmented by research in this century, but none of them furnishes conclusive proof. See Hubert Klug, "Zur Biographic der Minderbriider Johannes Duns Skotus und Wilhelm von Ware," FS 2 (1915): 377-85; Augustinus Daniels, "Zu den Beziehungen zwischen Wilhelm von Ware und Johannes Duns Skotus," FS 4 (1917): 222; Franz Pelster, "Handschriftliches zu
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explicitly than ever, William and Duns repudiated any literal notion of divine illumination in normal processes of the wayfarer's thought, including even a minimally Augustinian normative intervention for knowledge of truth. In its place emerged an aggressively Aristotelianizing worldliness and a willingness to speculate on epistemic standards linking mind ever more indissolubly to the created world of here and now. To compensate for the loss, both elaborated on the insights of Henry as well as classic Augustinians concerning the connection between knowing "being" and knowing God, thus maintaining a positive and fully natural way for intellect to grasp divinity in this life. But here, too, a characteristic readiness to run the risk of philosophical innovation led to doctrinal maneuvers unlike those of either Augustinians or Aristotelianizers in earlier years, making at least Duns's ideas on "being" not only controversial and influential in his time but also a landmark for historians of medieval thought. With their determination to go Henry of Ghent one better in shattering the unity Augustinian epistemology and noetics had achieved under Bonaventure and his followers, William and Duns thus complete the circle of our story, in some way returning the language of divine illumination to the ambiguous status it possessed in the 1220s Skotus mit neuen Angaben liber sein Leben," FS 10 (1923): 2-4; Andrew G. Little, "The Franciscan School at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century," AFH 19 (1926): 867; Heinrich Spettmann, "Die philosophiegeschichtliche Stellung des Wilhelm von Ware," Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Gb'rres-Gesellschqft 40 (1927): 404-5; Ephrem Longpre, "Le Commentaire sur les Sentences de Guillaume de Nottingham," AFH 22 (1929): 232-33; and Francisco de Guimaraens, "La doctrine des theologiens sur 1'Immaculee Conception de 1250 a 1350," EF n.s. 10 (1953): 27. Josef Lechner, "Wilhelm v. Ware," in Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirche, ed. Michael Buchberger, 2nd ed., 10:910 (Freiburg im Br., 1938); and "Die mehrfachen Fassungen des Sentenzenkommentars des Wilhelm von Ware O.F.M.," FS 31 (1949): 16-17; and Pelster, "Handschriftliches zu Skotus," pp. 2-4, preferred to leave the question open, but most scholars have leaned towards taking the assertion as true - for instance, Ephrem Longpre, "Guillaume de Ware O.F.M.," La France Franciscaine 5 (1922): 75-76; and "Le Commentaire," p. 232; Pierre Muscat, "Guillelmi de Ware quaestio inedita de unitate Dei," Antonianum 2 (1927): 336; Charles Balic, "Quelques precisions fournies par la tradition manuscrite sur la vie, les oeuvres et 1'attitude doctrinale de Jean Duns Scot," Revue d'Histoire Ecclesiastique 22 (1926): 551-66; and Athanasius Ledoux, "De gratia creata et increata iuxta quaestionem ineditam Guillelmi de Ware," Antonianum 5 (1930): 137-56. Given the unanimous if not unassailable testimonial evidence from the fourteenth century and the striking parallels between William's and Duns's thought, the latter seems to be the wisest course. As both Guimaraens, "La doctrine des theologiens," p. 28; and Charles Balic, "The Life and Works of John Duns Scotus," in John Duns Scotus, 1265-1965, ed. John K. Ryan and Bernardine M. Bonansea (Washington, D.C., 1965), pp. 10—11, suggest, the most likely scenario is that Duns audited William's bachelor lectures on the Sentences at Oxford in the early 1290s.
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and 1230s. Theirs was, however, no historical retreat but rather an ambitious step forward, for they revisited the issues raised by William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste with the seasoned eye of experienced campaigners who had witnessed the heroic attempts at an Augustinian synthesis and were now equipped to offer a more subtle resolution. The radicalism of their ideas permitted them - Duns in particular - to surpass any of their predecessors in seizing the cognitive dynamism at the heart of the traditions of divine illumination and giving it a place, even domesticating it, in the matter-of-fact, almost pedestrian world of Aristotelianizing epistemology. They bring to culmination thirteenth-century efforts to preserve the uniqueness of the Augustinian heritage, in particular its vibrant sense of intellect's intimacy with God, in an academic arena where specificity and concreteness as well as systematic coherence weighed heavily. Among Augustinians, they represented the philosophical future. William was probably the elder of the two. Born in Hertfordshire, England, sometime early in the second half of the thirteenth century, he entered the Franciscan Order while a youth, but little more is known of his life. It is certain that he studied at Oxford, nearly so that he lectured there on the Sentences as a bachelor in the early 1290s, and some have said he also taught as master of theology at Paris, although that is largely a matter of conjecture.8 His only work to survive is a collection of Quaestiones super quatuor libros Sententiarum,
8 On William's biography, see Klug, "Zur biographic der Minderbruder"; Longpre, "Guillaume de Ware O.F.M.," pp. 74-77; Little, "Franciscan School at Oxford," pp. 866-67; Spettmann, "Die philosophiegeschichtliche Stellung"; Gedeon Gal, "Gulielmi de Ware, O.F.M. Doctrina philosophica per summa capita proposita," FrS 14 (1954): 155-56; and Aquilinus Emmen, "Wilhelm v. Ware," in Lexikon filr Theologie und Kirche, ed. Josef Hofer and Karl Rahner, 2nd ed. fully revised, 10:1154-56 (Freiburg im Br., 1965). Ledoux, "De gratia creata et increata," made the now unlikely suggestion that William lectured at Oxford and Duns attended his lectures as late as 1300-1302. Palemon Glorieux, "D'Alexandre de Hales a Pierre Auriol. La suite des maitres franciscains de Paris au XIIP' siecle," AFH 26 (1933): 277; and "Maitres franciscains regents a Paris. Mise au point," pp. 325 and 332, assumed that William was master of theology at Paris, and in the latter work proposed 1296-99 as tentative dates for his regency, but as Guimaraens ("La doctrine des theologiens," pp. 25-26) reminds us, there is no proof he taught there. Franz Pelster, "Die Komrnentare zum vierten Buch der Sentenzen von Wilhelm von Ware, zum ersten Buch von einem Unbekannten und von Martin von Alnwick im Cod. 501 Troyes," Scholastik 27 (1952): 347, n. 8, is on firmer ground in concluding that it is unlikely William was ever master at Paris or regent, indeed, at any university. Elia Magrini, "La produzione letteraria di Guglielmo di Ware," Miscellanea Francescana 36 (1936): 312-32; 38 (1938): 411-29, is unreliable.
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based at least originally on lectures delivered at Oxford and for which there are probably three redactions, only scattered excerpts of which have been published, none in a critical edition.9 Given the indeterminateness of both text and biography, it is safest to assume that what remains of William's teaching dates from the early or mid1290s, with the likelihood that some manuscript versions present revisions or reconsiderations from slightly later on.10 More evidence exists about the life and works of Duns Scotus, so that although here, too, there is uncertainty, it is at least possible to construct a plausible chronology of events.'' He was born in Scotland,
9 In addition to the references given above, n. 8, see also Josef Lechner, "Beitrage zum mittelalterlichen Franziskanerschrifttum, vornehmlich der Oxforder Schule des 13./14. Jahrhunderts, auf Grund einer Florentiner Wilhelm von Ware-Hs." FS 19 (1932): 99-127. In "Wilhelm von Ware" (1938), col. 910, Lechner suggested that there were at least two redactions of the work, along with various reportationes, while by "Die mehrfachen Fassungen" (1949), pp. 28-30, he had decided that the authentic work existed in at least three versions. 10 Numerous manuscripts purport to contain the whole of William's collected Quaestiones, but in addition to textual variations among the three versions the manuscripts also show differences in the order and even number of questions included. Augustinus Daniels, "Zu den Beziehungen," pp. 230-38, offered what he thought was a complete listing, numbering 230 questions in all, and though his list should not be taken as exhaustive or authoritative, expediency requires using his numeration in referring to William's questions no matter how they are ordered or identified in the specific manuscript or edited version cited. Thus, questions 14 and 21 in the Daniels list have been edited by Daniels himself in Quellenbeitrdge und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Gottesbewdse im dreizehnten Jahrhundert, 89-104, Beitrage, 8, 1-2 (Miinster, 1909); question 15 by Muscat in "Guillelmi de Ware quaestio inedita," pp. 344-50; question 19 by Daniels in "Wilhelm von Ware tiber das menschliche Erkennen," in Festgabe z.um 60. Geburtstag Clemens Baeumker, 311-18, Beitrage, Supplementband 1 (Miinster, 1913); and question 85 among others by Michael Schmaus in Der Liber propugnatorius des Thomas Anglicus und die Lehrunterschiede zuoischen Thomas von Aquin und Duns Scotus. II: Die Trinitarischen Lehrdifferen&n, 234*-85*, Beitrage, 29 (Munster, 1930). Excerpts of other questions (of special interest here, questions 20 and 45) appear in Gal, "Guilielmi de Ware, O.F.M. doctrina philosophica"; while further excerpts (notably of questions 45, 46, 101 and 129) are given in Doyle, "The Disintegration of Divine Illumination Theory." At times these excerpts will be cited below. All other citations of William's work will be made to transcriptions I have taken from MS Bibl. Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, with occasional reference to the slightly different version offered in MS Vat., Chigi. B. VII. 114. A German translation of question 129 in Daniels's list is given in Hieronymus Spettmann, ed. and trans., Die Erkenntnislehre der mittelalterlichen Franziskanerschulen von Boncwentura bis Skotus, 80-85 (Paderborn, 1925), but the text is so condensed that it offers nothing over the transcriptions I have made of the same question and the excerpts given in Doyle. 1 ' The following account of Duns's life is based on conclusions presented in three recent works: C.K. Brampton, "Duns Scotus at Oxford" (1964); Charles Balic, "The Life and Works of John Duns Scotus" (1965); and Allan B. Wolter, "Duns Scotus on Intuition, Memory and Our Knowledge of Individuals," in History of Philosophy
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probably in the mid-1260s, received into the Franciscan Order at an early age, and sent to study theology at Oxford perhaps in the fall of 1288. Here he likely came under the influence of William of Ware, possibly attending Ware's bachelor lectures on the Sentences}2 It is probable that he offered his own lectures on the Sentences as baccalaureus theologiae during the academic year, 1298^99, spending the next year reworking them for potential publication. This revision of his notes for the Oxford Sentences lectures has come down to us as the Lectura oxoniensis, probably the first theological opus from Duns's pen.13 In the year 1300-1301, Duns may have delivered bachelor lectures on the Bible, or, having finished his requisite bachelor lecturing, he may have disputed under various masters at Oxford as baccalaureus formatus. His whereabouts in 1301—2 are unknown, but it is not inconceivable that he taught at a Franciscan convent elsewhere in England. On the other hand, he may have gone to Paris.14 Already he had begun what was to be his largest and most authoritative
in the Making. A Symposium of Essays to Honor Professor James D. Collins on his 65th Birthday, ed. Linus J. Thro, 83 (Washington, D.C., 1982). For further biographical references, consult these works and Felix Alluntis and Allan B. Wolter, "Introduction," in John Duns Scotus, God and Creatures. The Quodlibetal Questions, xvii-xxxiv (Princeton, 1975). The compendiary efforts of Efrem Bettoni, Vent'anni di studi scotisti (1920—1940) (Milan, 1943); and Maurice Grajewski, "Duns Scotus in the Light of Modern Research," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 18 (1942): 168-85, are now out of date. 12 See above, n. 7. 13 The Lectura covers only the first three of the four books of Sentences. Books I and II have been edited in the projected complete edition of Duns's works being published at the Vatican City (Opera Omnia, 16-19 [Vatican City, 1960-93]). Henceforth all citations to this work will be to Vatican, followed by volume, page and paragraph number. In "De Ordinatione I. Duns Scoti disquisitio historico-critica," in Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, 1:160* (Vatican City, 1950), the editors note that Duns probably kept his own notes in quires from which he lectured, on the basis of which he compiled the more polished text called the Lectura. Luka Modric, "Rapporto tra la 'Lectura' II e la 'Metaphysica' di G. Duns Scoto," Antonianum 62 (1987): 508; and the editors in "Prolegomena" to Duns Scotus, Lectura (Vatican, 17:13*), locate the Lectura's composition between 1296 and 1302, but it would appear that a narrower range of dates (1298-1300) is even more likely. 14 In an important pair of papers delivered originally in Rome in 1993, William Courtenay, "Scotus at Paris," in Via Scoti. Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, ed. Leonardo Sileo, 1, 149-63, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internazionale, Rome, 9-11 March 1993 (Rome, 1995); and Allan Wolter, "Duns Scotus at Oxford," in Via Scoti, ed. Sileo, 1, 183-92, debate the precise lines of Scotus's career from 1297 to 1302. In the end, Wolter keeps alive the supposition that Scotus lectured on the Bible, which Courtenay had cast into doubt, and Courtenay, while reinforcing the current consensus that Duns did not study in Paris before 1300, opens the possibility that he was resident there before 1302.
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composition, the ordered collection of questions on the Sentences known by the name of Ordinatio, material for which was lifted primarily from the Lectura though Duns greatly reworked his original ideas and eventually drew also upon another set or sets of lectures he gave on the Sentences in Paris.13 It has been established that he was laboring on the Ordinatio's Prologue in the middle of 1300, that he had probably finished Book II before the fall of 1302, and that he was still engaged with Book IV in 1304 or later.16 The work never received his finishing touches, so that even in its fullest redaction it is incomplete and occasionally ambiguous.'7 In June 1302, the Franciscan General Chapter, recognizing the young theologian's extraordinary talent, assigned him to lecture on the Sentences in the order's studium at the University of Paris, a commission he fulfilled, still as bachelor, during the academic year, 1302-3.18 He may not have been quite done when he was banished
13 On the genesis of this work, see "Adnotationes," in Duns Scotus, Ordinatio (Vatican, 7:1* and 4*~6*). A critical edition of it has also been begun in the Opera Omnia published at the Vatican City, beginning with volume 1 in 1950. Henceforth references to this edition will be made, as with the Lectura, to Vatican, followed by volume, page and paragraph number. Those parts of the Ordinatio not yet available from the Vatican press will be cited from the edition by Luke Wadding, reissued in the collection of Duns's Opera Omnia published by Vives at the end of the nineteenth century (volumes 8~21 [Paris, 1893-94]). References to this edition will be made to Vives, followed by volume and page number. In "Duns Scotus on Intuition," pp. 98, n. 7, and 104, n. 64), Wolter reminds us that the version given by Vives (most correctly referred to as Opus oxoniense) was probably written later than the authentic Ordinatio and does not always read the same, although the differences would seem to be greater for the first two books than for the third and fourth. Vladimir Richter, Studien zum literarischen Werk von Johannes Duns Scotus (Munich, 1988), attacked the authenticity of what is known as the Ordinatio, but the reply by Luka Modric, "Osservazioni su una recente critica all'edizione Vaticana dell' Opera omnia di Giovanni Duns Scoto," Antonianum 58 (1983): 336-57, made on occasion of the original appearance of Richter's critique, speaks for the majority of scholars, who recognize the work as belonging to Duns. 16 See Brampton, "Duns Scotus at Oxford," pp. 8-10; and Wolter, "Duns Scotus on Intuition," p. 104, n. 64. 17 See "Disquisitio historico-critica," Duns Scotus, Ordinatio (Vatican, l:172*-73*). 18 Brampton, "Duns Scotus at Oxford," p. 8, argued persuasively that contrary to frequent assumption there is no reason to think Duns either studied or taught theology at Paris prior to 1302, but as Courtenay ("Scotus at Paris," p. 162) and Wolter ("Duns Scotus at Oxford," pp. 183 and 192), agree, all that can be said for certain now is that nothing indicates Scotus was at Paris before 1300. Although there exist manuscript references to his presence sometime at the University of Cambridge, Brampton believes (p. 18) that there is no compelling indication he lectured on the Sentences there. Still, Alluntis and Wolter, in "Introduction" to God and Creatures, p. xxii, suggest that he may have given Sentences lectures at Cambridge in
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from France along with other Franciscans in June of 1303 for refusing to side with King Philip IV in his dispute with Boniface VIII. Tensions subsided in less than a year, and by May 1304 Duns was back in Paris, perhaps completing the series of lectures interrupted the previous spring. It is even possible that in 1304—5 he undertook a course of lectures on the Sentences at Paris for a second time.19 The record of all such lecturing is extant only in the form of student notes collectively referred to as the Reportatio parisiensis, for which there are numerous versions, one, known as the Reportatio examinata or magna, almost surely examined and corrected by the lecturer himself and thus carrying greater authority than the rest.20 Gonsalvus of Spain, acting in his capacity as General Minister of the order, wrote the Parisian Franciscans in the fall of 1304 urging them to persuade the chancellor to grant Duns the license to teach. The latter incepted as master of theology sometime in 1305, officiating as regent in the Franciscan studium at Paris during the academic year 1306-7. In that same year he held his only quodlibetal disputation, the written revision of which was never quite finished and stands along with the final distinctions of the Ordinatio as his last theological production.21 By fall of 1307 Duns had been transferred to the Franciscan studium at Cologne, where he served as principal lecturer until his death, traditionally assigned to November 8, 1308.
1303-4 when he was back in England from Paris. At present no firm conclusion can be drawn about Duns's connections to Cambridge. 19 For the most recent conjectures on this second series of Parisian lectures, see Courtenay, "Scotus at Paris," pp. 160-62; and Wolter, "Duns Scotus at Oxford," pp. 190-91. 20 The Reportatio examinata (generally referred to as Reportatio IA, IIA, IIIA and IVA) is almost entirely unedited. Reportatio IA, dist. 2, qq. 1-4, will be cited below according to the edition in Allan B. Wolter and Marilyn McCord Adams, "Duns Scotus' Parisian Proof for the Existence of God," FrS 42 (1982): 252-321. All other references to the Reportatio parisiensis will be to the version offered in the Vives edition (vol. 22-24 [Paris. 1894]), cited below to Vives, followed by volume and page. Book I in this edition actually gives the Additiones magnae in I. Sententiarum, and Book II the Additiones in II. Sententiarum, both rewrorkings of Scotus's Oxford and Parisian lectures compiled by William of Alnwick and not Duns himself - see "Disquisitio historico-critica," Duns, Ordinatio [Vatican, 1:39*-40* and 144*-49*]; and "Adnotationes," Ordinatio [Vatican, 7:4*]. Stephen D. Dumont, "Theology as a Science," p. 585, n. 25, notes however that for the prologue, the text given by Vives is quite close to that of the examined version. 21 The text of Quaestiones quodlibetales used here is the edition available in Vives (vol. 25-26 [Paris, 1895]). References to this text will be to Vives, followed by volume and page.
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Besides the commentaries on the Sentences and the quodlibetal questions, Duns also delivered occasional independent lectures or collationes in question form throughout his theological career, the record of forty-six of which has been preserved, nineteen definitely issuing from his stay at Paris and at least some of the rest from Oxford.22 Significant for this study are also commentaries on the logical works of Aristotle and Porphyry, all of which can reasonably be presumed to date from before Duns's years as student of theology.23 There is finally the sprawling commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, the Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum.^ Scholars diverge widely on the date of this work, but it is increasingly apparent that the surviving text is the product of several rewritings, its base either predating Duns's studies in theology or hailing from the early 1290s but some additions being inserted at least after the composition of the Lee turn.23 Even the most careful editing cannot render it fully consistent, and it was probably abandoned by Duns without a definitive polishing. Whatever the case, it is a fascinating work that must be considered in any examination of his thought.
22
See Charles Balic, "De Collationibus loannis Duns Scoti doctoris subtilis ac mariani," Bogoslovni Vestnik 19 (1929): 185-219. The text of the collationes used here will be that given in Vives (vol. 5 [Paris, 1892]), cited as Vives, followed by volume and page. Those collationes not included in the Vives edition will be cited either according to the text given in Charles R.S. Harris, Duns Scotus, 2:361-78 (Oxford, 1927); or that in Charles Balic, "De collationibus loannis Duns Scoti," pp. 201-12; occasionally by way of a combination of the two. 23 When any of these works is used below, the reference will be to the editions given in Vives (vol. 1—2 [Paris, 1891]), cited as Vives, followed by volume number and page. 24 This work will be cited according to the new edition, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, eds. R. Andrews et al., B. loannis Duns Scoti Opera Philosophica, 3-4 (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1997), reference made to Opera Phil, followed by volume, page and paragraph number. Only Books I-IX of Duns's authentic Questions are extant. 25 On dating the Questions on the Metaphysics, see Timotheus Barth, "Zum Problem der Eindeutigkeit," Philosophisches Jahrbuch 55 (1942): 314-15; Odon Lottin, "L"Ordinatio' de Jean Duns Scot sur le livre III des Sentences," RTAM 20 (1953): 117; Balic, "The Life and Works of John Duns Scotus," pp. 21-22; Wolter, "Duns Scotus on Intuition," p. 83; Modric, "Rapporto," pp. 507-8; Dumont, "Theology as a Science," p. 581, n. 7; Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity in Duns Scotus's Early Works," p. 391; and Giorgio Pini, "Duns Scotus's Metaphysics: The Critical Edition of his Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis," RTAM 65 (1998): 357-58 and 365-66.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
REJECTION OF ILLUMINATION AND A WORLDLY THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
Preoccupied with the fact that Duns Scotus turned away from Henry of Ghent's theory of illumination in normal knowledge of truth, modern scholarship has long taken this rejection as marking the fundamental shift in late thirteenth-century Augustinian epistemology and noetics.1 Yet as shown above, not only was Duns - as well as William of Ware, with whom he is here paired — unoriginal on this score, serious questions about divine illumination having been floated among Franciscans already in Henry's lifetime, but Henry himself had actually taken significant steps in that direction. Indeed, the more is known about all three scholastics, the clearer it is how much the thought of William and Duns is derivative of Henry's just where it would appear to be most resolutely opposed, with Henry bequeathing his two successors the very problematic for many of the issues they addressed.2 Even in the matter of knowing truth, where the contrast 1 An exemplary account of Duns's rejection of divine illumination, emphasizing its break with earlier Augustinian thought, can be found in Bettoni, Duns Scotus. The Basic Principles of his Philosophy, trans. Bernardino M. Bonansea (Washington, D.C., 1961), esp. pp. 16-17, 43 and 46 (the preceding an English translation of Duns Scoto [Brescia, 1946]), but the classic statement appeared in Gilson's "Pourquoi saint Thomas a critique saint Augustin," p. 5. 2 Hadrianus Borak, "Aspectus fundamentales platonismi in doctrina Duns Scoti," in De doctrina loannis Duns Scoti, I, 114, Acta Congressus Scotistici Internationalis, Oxford and Edinburgh, 11-17 September 1966 (Rome, 1968); and Anton Pegis, "Toward a New Way to God" (1968), p. 246, have made the latter point about Duns, while both Efrem Bettoni, Duns Scotus, p. 20; and Olivier Boulnois, intr., trans, and comm. for Jean Duns Scot, Sur la connaissance de Dieu et I'univocite de I'etant (Paris, 1988), pp. 30 (n. 51), 35 and 43, call attention to Duns's dependence on Henry, despite the changes he introduced. Although Paulus, in "Henri de Gand" (1935-36), pp. 103 and 135, said Duns Aristotelianized Henry's Platonism, by Henri de Gand, pp. 133-35, he admitted how much of at least the structure of Henry's Platonism remained in Scotus. Numerous scholars have noticed Henry's influence on William: see Hieronymus Spettmann, "Die philosophiegeschichtliche Stellung des Wilhelm von Ware," pp. 42-49; Pelster, "Die Kommentare zum vierten Buch"; Gal, "Doctrina philosophica," p. 291; and Doyle, "The Disintegration," pp. 363-65. In this light it is also worth noting Gal's assertion ("Doctrina philosophica," p. 291) that among all Franciscans of the late thirteenth century, William was closest to Scotus in content and structure of thought.
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would seem to be unambiguous and profound, one must therefore be careful not to draw too sharp a dividing line between Henry's ideas and those of his successors. Not surprisingly, William and Duns approached the problem of truth with a recognition of the primacy of the division between simple and complex cognition, the Aristotelian commonplace accepted even among thirteenth-century Augustinians as central in discussions of epistemology. They openly acknowledged Aristotle as source for the idea that truth had to do exclusively with complex knowledge, Duns going on to make clear he agreed, holding in Aristotelian fashion that judgment alone, an option available to mind only in its complex acts, lay at the heart of what it was to know truth.3 Yet both scholastics adopted this Aristotelian posture with a nod to the decidedly un-Aristotelian application it had received immediately preceding them in Henry's distinction between the simple procedure of knowing a "true" object and the semi-complex one of knowing an object "as true," defining attribute of knowledge of "truth."4 In fact, William reminded his readers that Henry had corroborated his position by insisting that among the most basic concepts, "being" came to mind before "true," making it only logical that there be a stage of knowledge prior to consideration of truth or falsehood, which reminder Duns repeated at greater length.3 Just as important, both thinkers were aware that Henry had called the more 3 William cited the Metaphysics as authority for the connection between truth and complex cognition in his Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," pp. 313-14). In Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14 (Vives, 26:5a-b), Duns referred to book 3 of De anima for the distinction between simple and complex cognition, a reference previously made in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:99, n. 12), where he went on to tie complex cognition specifically to knowledge of truth(Opera Phil., 3:99-100, n. 14). He pointed out the importance of judgement in knowing truth in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:110, n. 47). For the authoritative Aristotelian texts, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, n. 2. 4 On Henry's distinction, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 25, 27, 42-45, and 51. William drew attention to this position in Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 313); Duns laid out his understanding in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:299, n. 187); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:157, n. 258). It is interesting to note that William, and Duns in the Lectura, mentioned only one level of knowledge of truth. By the Ordinatio, Duns, having apparently refined his understanding of Henry, faithfully represented him as positing two levels at which truth could be known. It may be that the early Duns saw Henry through William's eyes, only later coming to appreciate him more in his own right. 5 William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 314); and Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:283-84, n. 153); as well as Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:126-27, n. 208).
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primitive of his two kinds of cognition "simple understanding" (simplex intelligentia), a term they were prepared at times to use the same way themselves.6 Since for Henry the contrast between simple understanding and the composite mental act associated with knowing truth did not coincide with Aristotle's separation of simple from complex apprehension - knowledge of a term from knowledge of a proposition - it is suggestive, to say the least, to find the theme repeated in William and Duns.7 Of the two scholastics, only Duns characterized each of the contrasting operations precisely enough to reveal exactly what the distinction entailed for him. Scotus was familiar with all the definitions of truth current in thirteenth-century Augustinianism: Avicennian "adequation of object to intellect," "conformity of exemplar to exemplified" as seen in Grosseteste's work, and "mental rectitude" drawn from Anselm.8 In one of his early logical commentaries, he carefully explained that, because something was true only insofar as it was accommodated to its proper measure, and since the measure here was intellect, truth arose by comparison to intellect or understanding.9 But there were two types of intellect to consider: one exclusively measure of other things and the other just as often measured by something else. With regard to intellect that was always measure God, himself - all things were true to the degree they imitated a divine idea, which was to say that they were true insofar as they
b See the passage from William's Quaestiones, q. 19, cited above, n. 3, for Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:127, n. 208), possibly derivative of the aforementioned passage from William, and also Ordinatio I, d. 35, q. un. (Vatican, 6:247, n. 9). On the term in Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 41. 7 Since Duns appreciated the nature of the authentic Aristotelian distinction, he sometimes employed the contrasting terms "simplex apprehensio" and "compositio terminorum" with it in mind - for instance, Ordinatio III, d. 23, q. un., n. 9 (Vives, 15:15b); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 6, n. 7 (Vives, 25:243b). A fully Aristotelianizing exposition of the difference appears in Duns's Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:194, n. 4). 8 Duns, Collationes 19, n. 1 (Vives, 5:22 la-b) for the former two; Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:105, n. 170) for Anselm's rectitude. On the three definitions, consult above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, nn. 7 and 8. 9 Duns, In duos libros perihermenias quaestiones, q. 3, n. 2 (Vives, l:588a). The same conclusion reappears in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:111, n. 183), where Duns added that "true" entailed a formal relation (respectus) to intellect. More precisely, he admitted that the measure of truth was an idea or formal nature residing in intellect, so that it was only in a secondary or mediated sense that "true" related object to intellect itself (see In duos libros perihermenias., q. 3, n. 3 (Vives,
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approximated the contours of their specific nature. With regard to all other intellects - among them human mind - which might be the measure of artifacts but, when it came to natural objects, were themselves to be measured, the accommodation pointed in the other direction. These intellects were said to be true by conformity to object known.10 By the Questions on the Metaphysics, Duns had developed the idea so far as to say there were two varieties of truth, one in things and another in intellects.11 His words call to mind Henry's mid-career distinction between truth of a thing and truth of a sign, the latter finding its most significant epistemological manifestation either in or from intellect, and Duns admitted he was drawing upon other, unnamed thinkers.12 Turning initially to the first of the two varieties, he explained that things were true either by comparison to a producer or by comparison to a knowing subject.13 So far as the former configuration was concerned, reproducing his earlier notion of conformity between object and an intellect that was measure but not measured, further division could be made into two sub-varieties. If the conformity to the unmeasured measure, which was God, were drawn in fullness (adaequatio], then there was only one true object, Christ, the Son, but if standards were relaxed to imply just imitation (imitatio), then every created object was thereby true.14 Plainly, Duns accepted the universal scholastic attribution of objective truth to all creation on grounds of the exemplarity of God. But like the mature Henry before him, as epistemologist Duns quickly passed over the truth binding things to God and looked instead to the comparison between thing and knowing subject, most especially human mind. Here the truth in things led to a description of "true," already familiar from the works of Henry, as capable of manifesting itself to intellect or assimilating intellect to itself.13
10
See again, In duos libros perihermenias, q. 3, n. 3 (Vives, l:588a). Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil, 4:65, n. 22): "Est enirn veritas in rebus et veritas in intellectu." 12 On Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 12, nn. 6, 7 and 9; for Duns's admission of dependence, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil, 4:60-61, nn. 13-14). Duns even used the terms "verum in re" and "verum in signo" to make essentially Henry's point - see Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:72, nn. 44-45). 13 Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:65, n. 23). 14 Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:65-66, n. 25). 15 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil, 4:66, n. 26); 11
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Of course, the notion of manifestation pointed conspicuously to something arising in the knowing intellect, either as a quality resident in it or, more properly, as the objective presence of what was known in the knower.16 Inexorably, therefore, consideration of the thing's truth gave way to consideration of truth in an intellect, where it was mind and not object that was measured, measured indeed by comparison to the object understood. And here Duns laid bare the precise dimensions of his dependence on Henry's division between knowing the true and knowing truth. As he said, there were two ways there might be something "true" in intellect: either as intellect perceived a simple object, generating a single concept expressing its understanding, or as it united different concepts in an act of complex cognition.17 In the first case, which pertained to all acts of simple cognition, most emphatically those yielding concepts that were absolutely simple (simpliciter simplex), truth followed understanding immediately and necessarily, for no matter what concept mind formed, that concept represented a referential content to which it could be said to correspond. The idea of white conformed to whiteness and was in that sense true, regardless of conditions in the external world.18 On this matter Duns simply confirmed Henry's confidence in the building blocks of knowledge, adding that what competed with truth at the level of simple understanding was not falsehood but ignorance, the total absence of knowledge.19 Yet such cognition perception of what was true — was not tantamount to knowledge of truth, for like Henry, Duns conceded that at this primitive level of understanding intellect was not cognizant of the truth it contained.20 a description repeated in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:274-75, n. 128); Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:105, n. 169); and Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 1, n. 37 (Vives, 22:26b). For Henry on truth as manifestive or declarative of itself, see his Summa, a. 34, q. 2 (1:21 lv[N & O]; and q. 4 (l:215vB); and Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 51; as well as related formulations in the passage cited above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 15. "' Duns Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:66, n. 26), where, concerning the latter, he explained: ". . . facta manifestatione vel assimilatione, res est in intellectu, sicut cognitum in cognoscente." 17 Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:67-69, nn. 31-35). 18 See n. 17, above, and also Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:112-13, n. 56). 19 Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:68, n. 32). On Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, p. 273, especially n. 14, and pp. 275-76. 20 Duns, In duos libros perihermenias, q. 3, n. 3 (Vives, l:588b): "Licet autem sensus dicatur verus, et intellectus similiter . . . tarnen sensus secundum se non cognoscit conformitatem sui ad id, quod cognoscit. . . . Similiter est de intellectu simplici. . . ."
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Knowledge of truth entered the picture only at the complex level, where the activity of compounding and dividing permitted mind to consider correspondence or conformity and judge whether its knowledge was true or not.21 For complex cognition, therefore, the alternatives to truth were not just ignorance but also falsehood.22 Influenced by Henry and his other predecessors in the Augustinian tradition, Duns did not invariably insist that the judgment in question entail an authentically Aristotelian assessment of a complex condition in the world, granting sometimes that it might consist in merely ascertaining whether a simple intellective content corresponded faithfully to a specific object outside.23 Like Henry, he also held that the ability to deliver such judgment depended on mind's capacity to reflect back upon itself.24 He even went so far as to make gestures towards Henry's idea of a mental word, claiming that only after intellect had reflected on its own knowledge could it be said that truth emerged not as merely a formally inhering quality (formaliter), as with simple understanding, but as something directing intellect to a separate objective content (obiective}.23 Yet despite these signs of leanings in Henry's direction, more often Duns adhered strictly to Aristotle, declaring even in the Questions on the Metaphysics that the complex cognition through which mind attained knowledge of truth was precisely prepositional.26 On these occasions he countered the Augustinian contention that intellect ought to be 21 The passage quoted above, n. 20, continues: ". . . sed intellectus componens cognoscit illam conformitatem sui ad rem" ~ a view which lay at the heart of Duns's Aristotelianizing statement: "Dicendum, quod verum et falsum sunt circa compositionem et divisionem intellectus tantum, sicut in cognoscente" (In duos libros perihermenias, q. 3, n. 2 (Vives, l:588a). See also Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil, 3:112-13, n. 56). 22 Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:69, n. 35). 23 In duos libros perihermenias, q. 3, n. 3 (Vives, l:588b): "Non enim intellectus componit per hoc, quod dicit unam speciem intelligibilem esse aliarn; sed per hoc, quod judicat ita esse in re, sicut intellectus conformatur rei." 24 See the last passage from Scotus cited above, n. 3. On Henry and reflection, consult Pt. 3, ch. 12, nn. 13 and 14. 25 Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:69, n. 36), and the same question, p. 60, n. 13. The idea is related to Duns's description, plainly evocative of Henry, of object residing in mind as "the known in the knower," for example in the second passage just cited; the passage quoted in n. 16; Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VII, q. 14 (Opera Phil., 4:289, n. 27); and In duos libros perihermenias, q. 3, n. 3 (Vives, l:588b). On Henry's notion of "word," see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 58 and 59; and more importantly, Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 22-23 and 41-42. 26 Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:69, nn. 36-37).
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just as able to judge conformity to objective conditions in the case of simple knowledge as propositional by insisting that such an argument overlooked an important difference between the two kinds of knowing. The authentic referent (signatwri) of a simple concept was not, he contended, an external object but rather the cognitive content of the concept itself. There was therefore no separate measure against which to test a simple concept for truth or falsity. With propositional knowledge, on the other hand, the conjunction of terms exhibited in an assertion could be set against the evidence of the terms as they existed separately, which separation was naturally prior to their combination.27 Judgment was therefore possible in complex cognition insofar as one took the measure of terms or logical entities as they existed at one stage of knowing and at another, and since judgment lay at the heart of knowing truth, at the complex level knowledge was at last capable of being either true nor false. Mind inquiring after truth did so, in short, by comparing a proposition to its separate terms, or rather to the mutual relationship habitually existent in each of them.28 This final claim not only cemented the bond to Aristotle but also effectively severed any necessary tie between knowledge of truth and conditions outside mind. Knowing truth, even if regarded solely as a matter of evaluating the validity of a proposition, depended less on checking a mental configuration against real composition or disjunction of external objects than on judging how well it represented the inherent properties of terms. Duns had dared, in short, to go further than any Augustinian since William of Auvergne towards eliminating the question of existential import and emphasizing the logical nature of truth.29 His "terminism," moreover, should prepare 27 Duns laid out the Augustinian argument in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:72-73. nn. 45 and 47), giving his answer in the same question, p. 73, n. 48. Note that this reading involves interpreting Duns in n. 47, contrary to what the editors of the new edition suggest, to be referring with "ad primum" to n. 45, with "quod praedictum est" to n. 36 (p. 69). 28 Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:74, n. 51): "Nota . . . quare complexum est verum. Quia complexionem, quae est a ratione, praecedit naturaliter identitas extremorum, vel alia habitudo virtualiter inclusa in ipsis, cui actum rationis conformari ut mensurae est ipsum verum esse." In the same question, pp. 81-82, n. 69, doubt is raised about this theory of truth dependent on a virtual habit, but rather than resolve the matter Duns simply invites his reader to investigate the question. 2!l On William of Auvergne, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 3, especially nn. 24 and 26; for Duns's attitude on existential import, his In primum librum Perihermenias quaestiones,
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the reader for the subsequent repudiation, despite the undeniable echoes of Henry's ideas about true and truth, of his forebear's early reliance on divine illumination to account for the wayfarer's natural knowledge, the side of Duns's relation to Henry upon which modern scholarship has focused. Although Duns's Franciscan predecessors had blazed the way for this rejection, even more profoundly influential was William of Ware. There can be no doubt that both William and Duns took Henry's ideas on illumination as a foil to their own views. In question 19, where he specifically addressed God's illuminative role in human cognition, William devoted his primary efforts to delineating the position of those (alii) who, having distinguished knowing the true from knowing truth, held that "pure truth" (sincera veritas) could be seen only in the divine light.30 He presented three arguments deployed by the proponents of this theory to support it, the very three reasons Henry himself had highlighted in his classic exposition of special illumination in article 1 of the Summa, which text William most likely had before him as he wrote.31 When Duns turned to theories of illumination in both the Lectura and the Ordinatio, he followed William's lead, taking stock of exactly the same passage from Henry's work.32 It is illustrative of the way Duns made use of William that his account of Henry's theory is on the whole sharper and more faithful to the original than is that of his teacher. Whether out of ignorance or by design, William simply overlooked the level of truth Henry q. 8, n. 13 (Vives, l:555b). Matthew of Aquasparta had made a similar claim, only to insist that it was theologically deficient - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, nn. 38, 40-43. 30 William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," pp. 313-14). 31 William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 314). The passage from Henry is in Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (l:5vE). 32 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:283-89, nn. 152-61 [nn. 157-59 reproducing Henry's three arguments in the Summa]); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:126-32, nn. 208-17 [nn. 211-13 on the three arguments]). Jerome V. Brown has extensively analyzed Duns's arguments in Book I, dist. 3 of both works in 'John Duns Scotus on Henry of Ghent's Arguments for Divine Illumination: The Statement of the Case," Vivarium 14 (1976): 94-113; "John Duns Scotus on Henry of Ghent's Theory of Knowledge," The Modern Schoolman 56 (1978-79): 1-29; and "Duns Scotus on the Possibility of Knowing Genuine Truth: The Reply to Henry of Ghent in the 'Lectura Prima' and in the 'Ordinatio'." RTAM 51 (1984): 136-82; but his interpretation differs from the one given here. Even more at variance are the conclusions of Ruggero Rosini, "Gli 'intelligibili' nella dottrina di Giovanni Duns Scoto," in Deus et homo ad mentem I. Duns Scoti, Acta Tertii Congressus Scotistici Internationalis, Vienna, 28 September-2 October 1970, 673-91 (Rome, 1972).
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placed between the plain "true" of the object and "pure truth" of special illumination. By his account, Henry's theory allowed just two alternatives: to know the true without divine light or truth with it.33 Duns, on the other hand, took pains to lay out the complexity of his source, with his rendition correctly positing two levels of knowing truth, only the second of which required intervention of divine light.34 He was also more informed, or more revealing, about Henry's terminology. In both Lectura and Ordinatio Henry's higher level is referred to not only as "pure" truth, the word found in William, but also as "certain" and "infallible" truth, both descriptions of considerable importance for Henry.33 William and Duns were mindful of Henry's attempt to elude ontologism by differentiating between reliance on divine exemplar as merely means of knowing and as both means and object, too.36 They also called attention to the three-fold presentation of God's action from Henry's Summa, article 1, question 3, which compared the divine 33
William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 313). Duns, Lectura 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:286, nn. 156-57); and Ordinatio 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:127-28, nn. 210-11). A more primitive version of an illuminationist theory of truth appears in Duns's Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, qq. 2-3 (Opera Phil., 3:212, n. 36), where, as in William, truth is unitary and involves comparison with the divine exemplar. It is not clear in that question what Duns thought of the theory or in any case how he would have related it to Henry's views. 33 For Henry's use of these three terms, see Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 80, 81 and 83; for Duns's, Lectura 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:281, 286 and 289, nn. 144, 157 and 161); and Ordinatio 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:123, n. 202). In Ordinatio 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:128, n. 211), Duns even quotes Henry's phrase: "omnino certa et infallibilis notitia veritatis" (see above. Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 82). Ordinatio 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:130, n. 214), refers to "certa scientia et infallibilis veritas," echoing the "infallibilis scientia" of Henry's illuminative knowledge of truth (see again Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 83). 36 In Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," pp. 314-15), William characterized the distinction as between a light seen "obiective" or "directo aspectu" and one seen "indirecto aspectu" or "oblique." Duns picked up on this language but also employed the more authentic terminology referring to a "ratio cognoscendi" see Lectura 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:288-89, n. 160); and Ordinatio 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:130-31, n. 215). On Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn, 86 and 92. Duns also used the distinction elsewhere in his thought, for Henry's "ratio tantum" sometimes substituting the term "praecise ratio cognoscendi" - see Quaestiones quod/ibetales, q. 14, n. 2 (Vives, 26:3a-b); and n. 26 (Vives, 26:108a). In Ordinatio 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:130, n. 214), he perceptively remarked how for Henry God served as means of knowing in understanding pure truth insofar as he was "nudum exemplar," in contrast to being grasped as object known in this world merely in a general attribute. For Henry's views on this, see Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 7 and 8. 34
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contribution in knowledge of truth first to light, then to a species and finally to a character or figure. William even commented how beautifully this encapsulated Henry's thought.37 For his part, Duns interpreted the whole description as a theory of two exemplars at work in knowledge of pure truth, thus amplifying the feature of Henry's illuminationism tying him most closely to the classic Augustinians, especially Pecham. He recognized nonetheless how careful Henry was to stipulate that the divine exemplar did not take part in the process as something actually inhering in mind.38 Above all, William and Duns were sensitive to the ostensibly Augustinian pedigree of illuminationist views, and they realized that Henry had called explicitly upon Augustine as authority in his behalf, both pointedly remarking upon the Augustinian origin of Henry's term, "pure truth."39 But for all the careful argumentation and despite the impressive genealogy claimed for the ideas, neither lent Henry his support. Instead, they stoutly denied any validity to the presumed connection between illumination and normal knowledge of truth. Their position was that there was no need for a special light of truth, since indubitable certitude could be obtained by mind working solely in its own natural light.40 Duns suggested it was only the appeal to Augustine, which he considered fundamentally misdirected, that gave
3/ William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 315); and Duns, Lectura 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:288, n. 160), merely noting that the theory described God's action "tripliciter"; and Ordinatio 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:131, n. 216), listing the three ways. On Henry, see Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 95. 38 Duns, Lectura 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:289, n. 161); and Ordinatio 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:131-32, n. 217). For this theme in Henry and the classic Augustinians, see Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 104-7. 39 William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 312); and on Augustine's reliance on a theory of divine illumination in knowledge of truth for proving the existence of God, Quaestiones, q. 14 (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchungen, p. 92). In Lectura 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:287, n. 157), Duns traced Henry's term "sincera veritas" back to Augustine's 83 Quaestiones, a connection mentioned without regard to Henry in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I. q. 4 (Opera Phil, 3:96, n. 6). Ordinatio 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:129, n. 211) parallel to the passage cited above from Lectura - omitted the word "sincera" from the Augustine quotation. William identified Augustine as the specific source for "sincera veritas" in Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 314). On Henry's, and Matthew of Aquasparta's, debt to Augustine, consult above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 80. 40 Duns, Lectura 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:290-91, nn. 165-66); and William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von \Vare," pp. 315-16). In Ordinatio 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:156-57, n. 258), Duns explained that infallible truth could be known "ex puris naturalibus."
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such otherwise implausible theories whatever credibility they possessed.41 In the end, this was all he and William would make of the celebrated tradition of divine illumination in the Augustinian school. As for the specific arguments Henry had put forth, William and Duns concurred that they effectively invalidated themselves. In Duns's words, the three reasons of the Summa, article 1, did not simply fail to establish a role for divine light in normal human cognition but actually worked to deny the possibility of cognitive certitude under any conditions, thus completely missing the mark.42 Among Duns's counterarguments, perhaps the most interesting had to do with Henry's third reason, concerning the need for a reliable exemplar against which to measure knowledge fashioned by means of cognitive species drawn from below. Returning to the two-exemplar interpretation of Henry's views, he reminded his readers that no chain was stronger than its weakest link, so that as long as mind relied, if even partially, on an intellective exemplar extrapolated from created objects, its knowledge could not overcome that exemplar's inherent limitations.43 William, too, had found this rebuttal particularly convincing, it being the only argument to appear in his work in precisely the form it would later take with Duns.44 It is worth observing how William held that direct involvement of the divine in human cognition, even if it could compensate for the limitations of creaturely agency, would so overshadow mind's native contribution as to make Henry's illumined knowledge not the natural cognition he was aiming for but rather something of an entirely supernatural kind.40 Here was one of the rare arguments 41 In Lectura 1, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:282, n. 144), Duns introduced the opening arguments in favor of special illumination by saying: "Et quod requiritur specialis influentia, probatur per auctoritates Augustini, quae faciunt difficultatem in hac quaestione." 42 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:291-92, nn. 168-70); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:133-35, nn. 219-22). Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:132 and 135, nn. 218 and 222) claims that Henry's three reasons lead to the error of the Academics, scepticism. On the arguments in Henry, see above, n. 31. 43 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:292, n. 170); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:134, n. 221). 44 William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 317). Duns's language in the Ordinatio passage cited above, n. 43, is especially close to William's. 45 William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 316): "Item si lumen supernaturale requiritur in omni cognitione intellectual!, cum omnis actus accipiat denominationem et qualificationem ex modo et ratione operand!, sequitur quod omnis talis operatic esset supernaturalis." This appears to be the criticism of
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William leveled against Henry that Duns declined to adopt even in qualified form. Instead, in a question not specifically about illumination and truth, he drew attention to an anomalous instance where Henry himself had presumed a conflict between natural and supernatural action not unlike the one William called upon to advance his argument against Henry. Noting how Henry had maintained that the impossibility of raising natural knowledge to an unambiguous understanding of the divine argued for the necessity of supernatural revelation for the fullness of faith, he commented that this argument was elsewhere contradicted by Henry's own illuminationist claim that God could work directly in knowledge of pure truth without obliterating the naturalness of the act.46 Clearly, Duns was saying, Henry's reasoning about revelation was inconsistent with his own avowed principles concerning the relation between natural aptitude and the efficacy of divine assistance. The point was well taken, and damaging to Henry's case, yet Duns was on to even more than would at first appear. Both Henry before him and Matthew, too, had sensed the difficulty of sustaining a role for divine illumination in normal cognition without effacing the natural character of the intellective act, anticipating William's challenge. Their solution was to concede that the illuminative action yielding knowledge of pure truth did not arise from nature while insisting nevertheless that neither act nor resultant knowledge was incompatible with the natural character of intellect and thus not entirely unnatural.47 Duns accepted their reasoning, as usual adding his own precision in articulation. He said there were two ways one could look at the division between natural and supernatural acts.48 The first way, dependent on calibrating a receptive power against the act formally received or generated in it, every act was natural, violent or neutral according to whether or not the power was positively inclined to receive the particular act. From this perspective there was no such thing as superHenry's illuminationism that Doyle, "The Disintegration" pp. 338-39, takes as most important for William. 46 Duns, Lectura Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 16:12-13, n. 30): and Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:31, n. 52). Henry's argument about revelation appears in his Summa, a. 3, q. 4 (l:29vP). Duns once made a similar charge about Henry's inconsistency in a question dealing explicitly with illumination - see Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:158-59, n. 260). 47 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 128-31; and Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 108. 48 Duns, Lectura Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 16:13-14, nn. 31-32); and Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:35, n. 57).
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natural action, for if the term "supernatural" were to add anything to the three alternatives already presented it would have to entail not merely countermanding a power's natural inclination but violating its very receptive nature, effectively evacuating the possibility of any action whatsoever. No power could receive that which it was by nature absolutely unsuited to receive, and no degree of mediation, no matter how supernaturally potent, could make things otherwise.49 On this score, Duns would have been prepared to go even farther than William's argument against Henry and insist that if the theory of divine illumination was intended to overcome natural limitations on the receptiveness of mind, it simply would not work. Yet there was a second way of categorizing acts, relying on calibrating a power against the agent from which it received the form determining its act.50 Here lay room for distinguishing between natural and supernatural acts, since the natural order of things linked each power with some agents and not with others. When a receptive power received a form from an agent naturally ordered to act upon it, the act was natural; when from an agent operating outside the order of nature, the act was supernatural. Both cases were possible, for in both the formal action was not unsuited to the power that received it and in neither was the nature of the receptive power expunged. It was surely supernatural action of this sort that Henry and Matthew were getting at with their defense of special illumination as not entirely natural but not completely unnatural either, and, when it suited his purpose, Duns was prepared to state the principle 49 Duns made this point often with regard to first object of intellect and knowledge of separate substances, as in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, qq. 2-3 (Opera Phil, 3:210, n. 32); Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:71 and 114-15, nn. 114 and 188); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 12 (Vives, 26:46b). It is ironic that despite the sentiment indicated above, n. 45, when it came to the questions of adequate object of intellect and knowledge of God, William of Ware was willing to admit that a special, presumably beatific, illumination could sufficiently "strengthen" the power of mind to enable it to see objects it was otherwise naturally incapable of attaining - see William, Quaestiones, q. 12 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb~ va), a fragment of which is quoted (from another manuscript) in Gal, ed., "Gulielmi de Ware," p. 169. 10 See above, n. 48. In the Lectura passage, Duns said literally that the comparison lay between the power and "the form as received from the agent," while by the Ordinatio he had abandoned so ambiguous a description of the latter compamndum, replacing it with "agent" alone. For more on this second way and the possibility of supernatural acts, see Lectura Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 16:15-16, n. 36); and Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:37, n. 60); on how even supernatural acts would not excede the natural perfectibility of a power, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 2 (Vives, 26:2b).
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in language quite close to Henry's. Talking about knowledge of God, he insisted that one must distinguish between mind's power to receive a particular understanding and its power to attain such understanding on its own or by order of natural causation.31 What lay within its power in the first sense might well lie outside it in the second. Surely this fundamental agreement with Henry on what constituted the supernatural explains why he passed over William's argument against special illumination on grounds it violated mind's natural powers. For Duns as well as Henry, God might well intervene with no such violation. To Duns's eyes, the aspect of Henry's special illumination that called the theory into question had to do not with the nature of the agent or the character of the act but rather the identity of the object known. He was bothered by the ontologism long haunting the Augustinian point of view. In his opinion, Henry's explanation for knowledge of pure truth obliged mind to know both created object and ideal exemplar in the divine mind, for otherwise it could not draw the requisite comparison. Yet Henry would surely have admitted, like every orthodox theologian of his time, that the viator normally had no such cognitive access to God or what lay within his mind. In short, all Henry's talk about God's light acting as means of knowing but not object known was inadequate to the demands of his theory of truth.52 Most likely because of this sensitivity to the threat of ontologism, in the earliest of his commentaries on the Sentences Duns presented Henry's theory of knowing pure truth as stipulating recourse to a "special influence" from God. Access to merely an influence would of course relieve mind of the necessity for gazing upon divinity itself, which was precisely why the notion had surfaced occasionally among
01 See Duns, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 2 (Vives, 26:2b-3a); and also below in discussion of the adequate object of intellect, Pt. 4, ch. 16, n. 34. 52 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:300, n. 187); and Ordmatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:157, n. 258): ". . . alio modo, intelligit per veritatem, conformitatem ad exemplar . . .; si autem ad exemplar increatum, conformitas ad illud non potest intelligi nisi in illo exemplari cognito, quia relatio non est cognoscibilis nisi cognito extremo. Ergo falsum est quod ponitur exemplar aeternum esse rationem cognoscendi et non cognitum." William made nearly the same point, though not quite, in Quaestiones, q. 19, arg. 1 contra (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 312).
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the classical Augustinians and why Henry's language at times seemed to lend it support."3 But for Duns there was just one way to interpret reference to a special influence in knowledge of truth, and this was to see it in light of the tradition going back to John of La Rochelle as signifying the created agent intellect, concrete manifestation of God's cognitive solicitude for soul. Duns was dubious Henry meant his own theory to be read this way.04 Incidentally, William, too, had proffered such a reading of language traditionally associated with divine illumination, saying that the Psalmist's signum or signaculum of God in mind was meant to indicate something lower than divinity itself.31 It stood for the intellective power, or what could be called the natural light (naturale lumen] of intellect, in which all truth was seen.06 Yet if Henry's arguments could be so easily dismissed, there remained the problem Duns had initially alluded to that Augustine's
)3 For this formulation, see Duns's Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:281, n. 144): "Utrum intellectus alicuius viatoris possit naturaliter intelligere aliquam certain veritatem et sinceram absque speciali influentia a Deo"; and also the same question (Vatican, 16:286, n. 157). By Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:123, n. 202), the wording had been changed to: ". . . an aliqua veritas certa et sincera possit naturaliter cognosci ab intellectu viatoris, absque lucis increatae speciali illustratione." The use of the term "special illustration" reflects in my opinion a more accurate reading of Henry's intentions, but for modern interpretations of his theory as requiring only a special influence, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 120. Only once in the Ordinatio (I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 [Vatican, 3:131, n. 216]) did Duns speak of a special influence, and this would appear to be because he could find no other way to understand the third of Henry's three descriptions of God's illuminative action: as a character impressed on mind (see above, n. 37). >4 On this reading of Henry, see Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:158, n. 260). The version given in Uctum I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:300, n. 188) is somewhat different. See above, Pt. 2, Intro., n. 4, for Rochelle's views, and the discussion of God's "influence" in Pt. 2, ch. 5, pp. 135-36. 55 William Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 318), also quoted by Doyle in The Disintegration of Divine Illumination, p. 335, n. 153. On how other Augustinians interpreted this Psalm, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 82; and ch. 8, nn. 18, 20, 22 and 25. Jl> On this natural light, see William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "\Vilhelm von Ware," pp. 315-16): "Sicut lumen glorie sufficit ad cognoscendum omnia que spectant ad cognitionem gloriosam . . . ita lumen naturale ad cognoscendum que subsunt cognitioni naturali, subposita, dico, influentia universali divina." See also Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135. f. 2rb): "Sed omnis operatic naturalis intellectus nostri est mediante lumine naturali tamquam instrumento." Duns referred similarly to the natural light of mind in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:120, n. 83); and Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., nn. 1 and 21 (Vives, 15:35a and 52b).
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writings were interpreted by so many to support a similar conclusion. Neither William nor Duns considered this any greater obstacle than Henry's reasons themselves, for both were convinced that an honest appraisal of Augustine would disclose his views to be quite different from what Henry, or the classic Augustinians for that matter, had held them to be.°7 In particularly revealing comments capitalizing, ironically enough, on a suggestion appearing in Henry's work, both took Augustine's famous mention of mind working in a "lux sui generis" to refer not to special divine light but again simply to intellect's own natural power to know.58 Of course, both scholastics assumed that in all human understanding God worked in the background as a general influence in contrast to the special influence or light posited in the "Augustinian" noetics against which they were arguing. No one of any ideological stripe denied this general role to divinity.09 In Duns's words, God acted thus as ultimate cause (generalis causa) of all natural effects.60 William quoted Augustine on God's power as revealed in the world 57
See Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:289-91, nn. 162-64, 167); Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:135-36, nn. 223-24); and a reference back to the question in the Lectura (Vatican, 16:306, n. 201), in Lectura I, d. 35, q. un. (Vatican, 17:456, n. 32). William made the same general point in Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 317), shortly before offering the alternate explanation (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 318) that Augustine had once held a view similar to Henry's but repudiated it upon retracting his early acceptance of Plato's theory of reminiscence. 08 For earlier interpretations of Augustine's phrase, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 67-68. On William, see Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 316): "Item Augustinus XII De Trinitate capitulo ultimo: credendum est ita conditam esse naturam mentis intellectualis, ut rebus naturalibus naturali ordine disponente subiecta sic ilia videat in quadam luce sui incorporea. . . ." In Quaestiones, q. 129 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88rb), he identified this light as the soul's inherent agent: "Intellectus autem possibilis presupponit ante se potentiam generis sui, videlicet intellectum agentem disponentem ipsum fantasma. . . ." In Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:290, nn. 164-65), Duns echoed William's q. 19 by freely quoting Augustine and associating the "lux sui generis" with the natural light of mind. It is interesting to note that in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:125-27, nn. 99 and 102-5), Duns said one could interpret Augustine's statements on pure truth as either, in Aristotelian fashion, contrasting knowledge of pure truth, available only to mind, with sensation, insufficient for manifesting truth, or positing a special revelation far beyond mind's normal natural processes. 39 For earlier references to God's general influence, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 82; and Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 21-23. William mentioned the idea in the passage quoted above, n. 56; on Duns's views, see I^ectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:259, n. 91); and, more specifically on interpreting Augustine in this light, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:165 and 166, nn. 269 and 272). 60 Duns, Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 12 (Vives, 17:43b).
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through a dual operation, one falling under general and the other under special providence, concluding that so far as intellection was concerned, general providence came down to God's providing all minds with their own natural light.61 Duns was in fact so bold as to designate as the "common opinion" of Christian speculation the view that Augustine assigned to divine light the role of remote or general cause in truth-perception, thereby shutting Henry out of the mainstream. He even turned Henry's preferred term, "pure truth" (sincera veritas), to his own purposes, taking a rare opportunity to evoke it here for this non-illuminationist version of Augustine on truth.62 In his Lectura - but no longer in the Ordinatio - Duns reached all the way back to Matthew of Aquasparta, who had drawn on Pecham's notion of a double agent intellect to explain how both God and mind's inherent light acted as efficient causes (effective] in human knowledge of truth.63 Like Matthew before him, Duns insisted that it was proper to the intellective agent to act efficiently (effective) but not formally (formaliter) in causing understanding. Thus just as mind had its own natural light to act as efficient cause of knowing, so divinity served as remote agent for human cognition by cooperating in the efficient causality of the natural light.64 Such ideas ranged Duns along with Matthew against those like Pecham who resisted the claim that God acted in human intellection primarily as efficient cause.65 And in the very fashion that Matthew held God to be primary and principal efficient cause in the process, so Duns reasoned, though not in exactly the same spirit, that one should indeed more r>1 William, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb): "Ideo aliter dicitur quod, cum secundum beatum Augustinum 8 Super Genesim, c. 9: 'Gemina operatic dei relucet in mundo, una ex prouidentia generali qua mouet res secundum naturas eorum, alia ex prouidentia special! qua mouet eas per potentiam obedialem in eis existentem,' congruum est quod regat creaturam rationalem prouidentia uniuersali et special!: uniuersali secundum quod indidit sibi lumen naturale ad omnia cognoscibilia naturaliter cognoscenda que subsunt sue potentie, particulari seu special! qua cognoscat et diligat aliquid supra se." b2 Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:159, n. 260): "Si dicas quod lux increata cum intellectu et obiecto causet istam veritatem sinceram, haec est opinio communis, quae ponit lucem aeternam sicut 'causam remotam' causare omnem certam veritatem." The point is made less dramatically in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:301, n. 188). See also below, n. 153. li:i See above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 104 for Pecham; nn. 116 and 118 for Matthew. "4 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:301-2, n. 189). On Matthew, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 113. <» por p ecnarnj see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, nn. 66 and 68; for Matthew's critique, nn. 77-78 and 99-100.
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properly be said to see intelligible objects in divine light than in the light of one's own agent intellect, since first, not proximate, causes always exercised greater influence over any act.66 In place of Henry's illuminationist explanation for knowledge of truth from the early articles of the Summa, Duns settled instead on a fully natural account of more literally Aristotelianizing inspiration. Significantly, this account is reminiscent of Henry's ideas from middle and later career, a reminder that despite Duns's attacks on his predecessor's work, he continually depended on him to blaze the path to a new noetics and epistemology. Yet where Henry had only begun to open up a more purely Aristotelian clearing in the thickets of traditional Augustinianism, Duns carried the project several stages beyond. More than any of his intellectual soulmates, he suggested the possibility of constructing a naturalism escaping even the principles of Aristotelian thought, plainly leaving William of Ware behind, whose works give but a premonition of his disciple's audacious conceptualizing. To establish the notion of a knowledge of truth unencumbered by divine illumination, Duns had to lay out the criteria for calling knowledge true. This brought him back to the concept of certitude, the subjective quality most prominently associated with knowledge of truth throughout the thirteenth century. Curiously enough, it was only in his mature works, from the Ordinatio on, that he defined "certitude," and he did so in terms taken from Henry of Ghent. Picking out precisely the two features Henry had associated with his first and lower level of science, he explained that cognitive certitude consisted in freedom from doubt and deception.67 For Henry, of course, there had been a second degree of science, knowledge of pure truth, which advanced beyond the first by adding infallibility, but for Duns infallibility was already implicit in knowledge where mind had no doubt it was not deceived.68 66 Consult Duns as cited above, n. 64, again explicitly echoing Augustine, and undermining Henry, by employing the term "pure truth." On Matthew, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 117. 67 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:136, n. 225): ". . . nam certitudo habetur quando excluditur dubitatio et deceptio." Nearly identical wording is found in Ordinatio Prol., p. 4, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 1:141, n. 208); Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 13 (Vives, 15:44b); Reportatio parisiensis Prol.. q. 1, n. 4 (Vives, 22:8a); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 17, n. 11 (Vives, 26:220b - cited below, n. 80). For Henry on these two features, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 18 and 61. b8 On Henry and the infallibility required for knowing pure truth, see above,
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Having set these parameters, Scotus then insisted that mind could meet the two conditions for certitude - freedom from deception and indubiety — solely on its own without special divine aid (ex puris naturalibus).69 Psychologically speaking, this was because soul possessed within itself, as Duns always held, adequate cognitive light, the natural power of mind mentioned in connection with Augustine above/0 Yet like Henry, and most of the classic Augustinians, he conceded that intellect drew its knowledge naturally from sensation, making sense data a contributing cause of natural cognition and thus partial basis for whatever certitude was achieved. Here arose the age-old dilemma: Might not recourse to sensation leave an opening for error? It has already been shown how Duns, in an Aristotelianizing mood, stressed that simple knowledge, which was what the senses yielded most immediately, was always true.' 1 In other words, as William of Ware had also maintained, intelligible species taken from sensation provided mind with absolutely reliable understanding.72 The difficulty arose with judgment. If the senses were indisposed, then intellect might refer a mental image or idea to the wrong real object or implicate it in a presumed condition which did not really obtain.73
n. 35, and also Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 83. That Duns thought infallibility was included in the first two conditions is clear from Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:156, n. 258), quoted below, n. 69. In Ordinatio III, d. 23, q. un., n. 16 (Vives, 15:23a), he associated infallibility simply with freedom from deception, and indeed Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:136, n. 225), partially quoted above, n. 67, had plainly used the phrase "non fallimur" to express such freedom. 1)9 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:156-57, n. 258): ". . . quaero quid intelligit per veritatem certam et sinceram? Aut veritatem infallibilem, absque dubitatione scilicet et deceptione, - et probatum est prius et declaratum . . . quod ilia potest haberi ex puris naturalibus." See also Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:135-36, n. 224). /0 See above, n. 58. Further mention of the sufficiency of natural light for the philosophical sciences comes in Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 3, n. 13 (Vives, 22:52a); see also Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:98, n. 11). In Quaestiones super libros Metaphysieorum Prol. (Opera Phil., 3:4, n. 3), Duns explained how mind's cognitive certitude could be traced to its immateriality. '' See above, nn. 18 and 19. 72 Duns's marginal note in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:149, 11. 17-19): ". . . sic species intelligibilis - non phantasma - est delebilis, sed immutabilis a vera repraesentatione in falsam." See also the same question (Vatican, 3:153, n. 251). Duns explained that this meant any intelligible object was, alone and in itself, always an adequate source of true knowledge - see Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:149, 11. 19-22); and Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:275, n. 129). For William's views, see Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 317). " See Duns, Ordinatio III, d. 23, q. un., n. 16 (Vives, 15:23a-b); and William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 317.
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But sensation in no way bound mind to any judgment or even authentically caused it. As Duns said, the senses were, so far as concerned judgment of truth, merely the occasion for knowledge, for although reason received the simple content of its understanding from sensation, it decided how to apply this content on its own.74 In short, mind had the power to override whatever misreckoning might arise from indisposed senses and bring its own instinct for certainty to bear on the search for truth.75 In one of the most remarkable uses of the dichotomy "occasion" and "cause" since William of Auvergne — but one paralleling a similar application by John Pecham — Duns simply severed intellectual certitude from the conditions of sensory perception.76 Certain judgment was thus fully within the power of mind and, as he saw it, most perfectly attained in a few basic types of cognition. Absolutely indubitable, these types provided the principles, in the broadest sense of the word, upon which the entire structure of certain knowledge would be built. All in all there were three: first principles, or immediately self-evident truths, within whose shadow fell the conclusions drawn from them as well, statements known to be true by experience, and assertions about one's own acts, especially internal or mental acts.77 In a later note he added a fourth type, statements known "ut nunc" by sensation, by which he clearly meant to bring into play his controversial concept of intuitive knowledge, but this is a topic with which the present study is not concerned.78 Both the Lectura and the Ordinatio produce arguments for 74 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:140-41, n. 234 - strictly speaking on judgments of immediately evident truth - and 138, 11. 13-14); Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (16:308-9, nn. 205 and 207); and Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum iI, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:101-2, nn. 17 and 19). 75 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metapkysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:109, n. 45; also 101, n. 18). In the same question, pp. 113-14, nn. 57-61, he even defended Henry by name from criticism on this score. For theoretical defense of the evident disposition of intellect for certain judgment, see Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:154 and 156, nn. 253 and 257). 76 On William, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 61-69; for Pecham, above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 52. 11 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:138, n. 229): "Quantum ad secundum articulum - ut in nullis cognoscibilibus locum habeat error academicorum videndum est qualiter de tribus cognoscibilibus praedictis dicendum est, videlicet de principiis per se nods et de conclusionibus, et secundo de cognitis per experientiam, et tertio de actibus nostris, - utrum possit naturaliter haberi certitudo infallibilis." A parallel passage can be found in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:292, n. 172). 78 Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:137, 11. 9-12). There is a considerable
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why the certitude of each of these cognitive foundations was obvious and irrefragable. With regard to knowledge of internal acts, Duns took the almost Cartesian stance that it was simply indisputable that mind was directly open to such acts and possessed reliable understanding of them. Not unlike Descartes, he considered the inerrant access of intellect to its own activity as the indispensable condition for all other knowledge of truth. 79 To account for the certitude of the other two foundational types required going beyond mind to locate a separate factor permitting it to deliver judgment with confidence. Thus Duns here came up against the problem of evidence, even in cases of per se or self-evident truth, for he readily admitted that what distinguished certain from uncertain knowledge — except, of course, in the case of intellect's awareness of its own acts - was the ability to point to something other than mind by which judgment could be justified, whether that be an aspect of a proposition or simple object in itself or some other sufficient cause for knowing.80 As is clear at several points, a comparable problem applied to knowledge by faith, where certitude rested upon the reliability of confirming testimony.81 But since only literature on the notion of intuition in Duns's thought and much disagreement about what it meant for him. Early on Deodat-Marie de Basly, "L'intuition de 1'extramental materiel," EF 48 (1936): 267-79, argued Duns held for some form of intellectual intuition in the life of the viator, while Leon Veuthey, "L'intuition scotiste et le sens du concret," EF 49 (1937): 76-91; "Coherence: Eclectisme ou synthese," EF 49 (1937): 324-32; and "L'esprit du concret," RFN 29 (1937): 44-58, insisted he did not. The classic account of intuition in Scotus is Sebastian J. Day, Intuitive Cognition. A Key to the Significance of the Later Scholastics (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1947), though Day's conviction that the idea of intuition was relatively unproblematic for Duns has come under criticism of late. See, for a beginning, Allan B. Wolter, "Duns Scotus on Intuition, Memory and Our Knowledge of Individuals"; and Richard E. Dumont, "Scotus' Intuition Viewed in the Light of the Intellect's Present State," in De doctrina loannis Duns Scoti, Acta Congressus Scotistici Internationalis, Oxford and Edinburgh, 11-17 September 1966, 2, 47-64 (Rome, 1968). 79 For Duns's discussion of certain knowledge regarding mental acts, see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:296-97, n. 181); Ordmatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:144-46, nn. 238-39); and Ordmatio III, d. 23, q. un., n. 17 (Vives, 15:26b). Consult also Peter C. Vier, Evidence and its Function according to John Duns Scotus (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1951), pp. 121-35. On this as the basis for all other evidence, see Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:137, 1. 12-138, 1. 11): ". . . tertium [i.e., cognitio de actibus nostris] concluditur esse per se notum, alias non iudicaretur quid esset per se notum. . . ." 80 Duns, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 17, n. 11 (Vives, 26:220a-b). 81 On firm adherence by faith, see Duns, Ordinatio III, d. 23, q. un., n. 5 (Vives, 15:8b); and Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 23, q. un., n. 6 (Vives, 23:435b-36a). Elsewhere he commented that faith did not exclude absolutely all doubt - see Ordinatio III,
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natural knowledge is presently of concern, it is with regard to naturally known truths alone that one needs to examine his account of the evidence sufficient to induce certitude.82 This constituted evidence in the most proper sense of the word, an identifiable something drawn from or materially related to a cognitive object and by which science was distinguishable from faith.83 Duns constructed his theory of evidence with an eye to Aristotle's scheme for certain knowledge — that is, within the framework of what was by then the standard notion of the formal constitution of science. He was more precise about this than any of the Augustinians who came before him, though like all since Grosseteste he took his understanding of science from the portrayal given in the Posterior Analytics.^ By these terms science proper had to do with knowledge of universals, but equally importantly it was confined to knowledge of conclusions drawn from appropriately arranged principles or premises.80 Since Duns accepted Grosseteste's exposition of the dis-
ci. 24, q. un., n. 17 (Vives, 15:48a); and Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, q. un., n. 21 (Vives, 23:457a). On faith, because in its own way certain, as a subcategory of "scientia" broadly construed, see Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 13 (Vives, 15:44a-b); and Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, q. un., n. 15 (Vives, 23:453b-54a). Strictly speaking, however, "science" did not include faith, for there could be no demonstration from propositions held on faith - see Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:138, n. 76). 82 Such truths made up what Duns called speculative knowledge derived naturally, or, in other words, by way of sensation - see Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 4:18, n. 45). 83 Duns, Ordinatio III, d. 23, q. un., nn. 5, 6 and 17 (Vives, 15:8b, 10a-b and 26a); Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 23, n. 6 (Vives, 23:436a); and d. 24, q. un., nn. 2 and 10 (Vives, 23:447b and 45lb). 84 See Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:7, n. 9), although Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 2 (Opera Phil., 4:43, n. 20) conceded that broadly speaking any argued knowledge could be called scientific. Duns was familiar with Grosseteste's analysis of Aristotle on science and even referred to him as an authority on the subject - see Collationes 13, n. 1 (Vives, 5:200a). 85 On science as only of universals, see Duns, Super Unwersalia Porphyrii quaestiones, qq. 7-8, nn. 1 (arg. 2) and 8 (ad 2.) (Vives, 1:118b and 121b); and Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 4 (Vives, 15:38b); as of conclusions, see Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 4:5, n. 8); Lectura Prol., p. 3, q. 1 (Vatican, 16:39, n. 107); Ordinatio Prol., p. 4, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 1:141, n. 208); and Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 1, n. 4 (Vives, 22:8a~b). William of Ware suggested that science could be of both universals and particulars - see his Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb): "Item, omnis scientia acquisita vel est universalis, vel particularis." For Duns on science and particulars, see below, pp. 434^38, and Marrone, "Concepts of Science among Parisian Theologians in the Thirteenth Century," in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Reijo Tyorinoja
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tinction between principles and conclusions, the former known immediately by means of understanding (mtellectus], the latter discursively by reason (ratio), unique instrument of scientific thought (scientia), his first job was simply to lay out the full scheme in detail.86 As with Grosseteste in his Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, he viewed Aristotle's plan as specifying levels of relative authenticity of knowing, so that in his own Questions on the Metaphysics he explained that above mere belief in the truth of a proposition there were three types of complex true cognition. First came experiential knowledge of a fact or condition (knowledge quia est}, then the nondiscursive knowledge of principles, and finally demonstrated knowledge of the reasoned fact (knowledge propter quid}.37 Of these, knowledge of the reasoned fact fell under the category of knowledge of conclusions, or science proper, where evidence was discursive and thus not relevant to the matter of primary certitude at issue here. This left nondiscursive knowledge of principles and knowledge of fact - in other words, cognitive acts directed towards first principles and statements known by experience, the very two of Duns's three foundational types whose certitude remained to be explained. To fill out the picture specifying the conditions of evidence for all primary cognition, one might et al., Ill: 130-31, Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (Helsinki, 1990). 86 See Duns's use of the pair mtellectus/scientia in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, q. 1 (Opera Phil, 3:195, n. 6); VI, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 4:6, n. 10), and briefly in Ordinatio ProL, p. 3, q. 1-3 (Vatican, 1:98, n. 145); for the contrast between mtellectus and ratio, see Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:112, n. 55). On whether the significant distinction lay between two types of knowledge or two processes of knowing, see Marrone, "Certitude of Induction," p. 482. Duns also recognized another use of the word "scientia," as the aggregate of all principles and conclusions about a single subject - see Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:50-51, n. 103; and 60, n. 131); and VI, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 4:7, n. 13); and for both uses, VI, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 4:15-16, nn. 39-40). It was this second meaning he had in mind in Ordinatio Prol, p. 3, qq. 1-3 (Vatican, 1:98, n. 145), and which presumably allowed him to speak loosely of knowledge of principles as "science" in Ordinatio III, d. 23, q. un., n. 7 (Vives, 15:1 la). This usage, too, went back to Grosseteste - see Marrone, New Ideas of Truth, p. 226. 8/ Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:118, n. 79): "Expertus vero, demonstratione carens, sciet quia est certitudinaliter et sine dubitatione cognoscet, quia videt et certus est naturam, ut in pluribus, uniformiter et ordinate agere. Principium vero intelligens, absque applicatione ad conclusionem, sciet 'in virtute'; demonstrationem vero habens sciet 'propter quid.'" These three types of knowing are practically the same as the last three levels of "science" listed by Grosseteste in his Commentary I, ch. 2 - see Marrone, New Ideas of Truth, pp. 224-26).
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also add a further sort of principle about which Duns had little to say: immediate propositions derived from the subject of a science.88 Among these three types of principle, most basic were those that were such in the strictest sense of the word, what Grosseteste had called axioms (dignitates) or first common principles and William of Auvergne simply first principles.89 Another traditional name for them was common conceptions of mind.90 Duns referred to them from the beginning as first principles or common conceptions and, following the oft-quoted passage from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, said that they were known to be true, once composed in prepositional form, immediately from knowledge of their constituent terms.91 Like Grosseteste and William of Auvergne, he observed that some among them were absolutely first, others less strictly so.92 Examples included the proposition: "It is impossible for the same thing both to be and not to be" — a radically metaphysical application of the principle of noncontradiction — and the commonly cited: "The whole is greater than any of its parts."93 As with all principles, the certitude attaching to knowledge of such propositions was greater than that of conclusions derived from them, since less dependent on mediating processes of inference.94 On the
88
On these three sorts of principal knowledge in Grosseteste, see New Ideas of Truth, pp. 256, 260-62. 89 Consult the reference to Grosseteste in n. 88, above, and for William, New Ideas of Truth, p. 109; see also above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, nn. 52 and 53. 90 See Man-one, New Ideas, p. 109, n. 68. 91 Duns, In librum Pmedicamentorum quaestiones, q. 4, n. 12 (Vives, l:449a): "Ad aliud dico, quod 'principia cognoscimus inquantum terminos cognoscimus,' ut dicitur 1. Posteriorum. . . ."; as well as Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:100, n. 14); Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:8, n. 10); and Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 1, n. 4 (Vives, 22:8b). For the citation to Aristotle, already present as early as Bonaventure, see Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 5. Duns referred to "prima principia" again in Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 1 (arg. 7) (Vives, 15:35a~b); to "communes conceptiones" in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:108, n. 44); and occasionally to "principia immediata," as in Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 11 (Vives, 15:42a). 92 Duns, Quaestiones super libros A'letaphysicorum II, q. 1 (Opera Phil, 3:195-96, n. 8); also I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:108~9, n. 44); and Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2, n. 5, and q. 3, n. 16 (Vives, 22:35b and 53a). For William and Grosseteste, see New Ideas of Truth, pp. I l l , 270-71. 93 Duns, Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1~2 (Vatican, 16:117, n. 20); and the first passage cited above, n. 92. See also William of Ware, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2ra): "Primum uero principium complexum est: De quolibet est affirmatio vel negatio." 94 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Prol. (Opera Phil., 3:10, n. 21): ". . . certissima cognoscibilia sunt principia et causae, et tanto secundum se certiora
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part of intellect, it was the naked light of mind and no more complicated mental maneuver that accounted for this certainty, which is to say that mind knew first principles as true without having to make a judgment about their relation to something else.9' Of course it had to compose the propositions, so that twro acts were required of intellect in knowing the truth of a first principle besides just receiving simple terms: forming the proposition and then recognizing its truth.96 It is likely Duns assigned these acts to different powers of mind, like some of his predecessors attributing the proposition-forming function to possible intellect in contrast to the agent, which had already abstracted the simple terms.97 Yet neither act constituted authentically discursive thought. The evidence compelling mind to recognize truth in these instances consisted in the terms themselves, which offered patent testimony of the conformity of principal propositions to their inherent interrelationship.98 The fact that this evidence was not separate from the components of the propositions themselves meant that first principles could be said to be known as true "per se" — that is, that they were self-evident or immediate truths.99 Since the terms were universal, quanto priora. Ex illis enim dependet tota certitude posteriorum." See also Ordinatio III, d. 23, q. un., nn. 7 and 8 (Vives, 15:1 la and 12a). The idea can be seen as early as William of Auvergne, for whom it sometimes carried pejorative overtones see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 35-36. 93 See Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4; and II, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:100, n. 14; and 194, n. 4); and also Reportatio parisiemis Pro!., q. 2, n. 20 (Vives, 22:44b): ". . . lumen naturale . . . sufficit ad cognoscendum per se notam ex terminis. . . ." 9b On composing the proposition, see Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil, 3:108, n. 44);and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:140, n. 234); on then recognizing truth, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:69-70, n. 38): "Contra . . . videtur quod principia, statim cum apprehenduntur, cognoscuntur esse vera. - Responsio: propter evidentem habitudinem terminorum, intellectus componens statim percipit actum componendi esse conformem entitati compositorum. Posset ergo dici quod ibi est alius actus, et reflexus sed imperceptus, quia simul tempore." Quaestiones II, q. 1, n. 2 (Vives, 7:96b) lays out all three stages: simple perception of terms, composition of principles and assent to their truth. 9/ Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:120-21, n. 85). On a similar view in Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 12, n. 77. 98 In Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:74, n. 52), Duns spoke of the terms as containing a virtual habit, presumably of their mutual relation, to which their composition in the principal proposition was seen to conform. By 'Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:292-93, n. 173); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:138-39 and 141, nn. 230 and 234), he had abandoned such language to speak more simply of the evident conformity of composition to terms. 99 Duns, Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:114-17, nn. 14, 19 and 20);
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there was furthermore no necessary connection between such principles and actual conditions of existence in the extra-mental world.100 Of course, the terms had originally to be drawn from existing objects via sensation and abstraction, but both objects and act of sensation again served only as occasions for mind's knowledge and not in any real sense compelling causes.101 In this restricted sense alone could first principles be said to be induced, not because there was a logical process of inductive argument leading to their acceptance.102 Much like Grosseteste long before, Duns insisted that even if mind were to observe in the extramental world the conjunction of relevant real objects, such as a whole and its parts, that would not add to the certainty with which it affirmed the principle's truth. Perception of a complex particular instance would not serve in such a case as in any way proof but merely a kind of assistance (manuductio) to mind which could easily be done without.103 Knowledge of first principles was, moreover, so directly consequent upon sensation of the appropriate simple objects from which the constituent terms could be extracted that Duns held it to be, like simple cognition, always true, which was to say mind never perceived first principles without granting their truth.104 One might even say such knowledge was innate, not in the Platonic sense, by which it would actually be in us from birth, but rather along lines already laid out in Bonaventure and the classic Augustinians, because the inborn light of intellect sufficed to explain true knowledge of prin-
Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:131, n. 15); and Quaestiones q. 7, n. 5 (Vives, 25:287a); also Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 17, n. 11 (Vives, 26:220a). William of Ware made the same point in Quaestiones, q. 21 (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchungen, p. 101). 100 On the demand for universality, see Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:115, n. 66); on the relation to actual existence, Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:124, n. 37); Ordmatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:147-48, n. 38); and III, d. 24, q. un., n. 19 (Vives, 15:49a). 101 Duns, Ordinatw I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:140-41, n. 234), cited above, n. 74. 102 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:115, n. 67); Ordinatw III, d. 24, q. un., n. 19 (Vives, 15:49a~b); and Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, q. un., n. 23 (Vives, 23:457b~58a). 103 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:100-101, nn. 14-15 and 17); and also the passage from the same work cited in the preceding note. For Grosseteste, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 277-78. "w Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:128, n. 107); and Ordinatio II, d. 6, q. 2, n. 11 (Vives, 12:356a).
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ciples immediately upon simple cognition of the appropriate terms.103 Duns was willing here to concede as well the familiar language of John of Damascus, according to whom knowledge of this kind was "inserted" into mind, though he was surely more comfortable with his own terminology, by which first principles were said to be naturally known (naturaliter notd).]06 And with this "naturalism" of the intellective act he associated a metaphysical naturalism remarkable for a scholar of Augustinian bent, for according to Duns there was a "naturalitas" — what might even be called a natural necessity (necessitas naturalis) - about the truth of first principles precedent even to God's will.107 As for the type of principle taken from the subject of a science, added incidentally to the list above but about which Duns had nothing explicit to say, implied in his writings is the standard Aristotelianizing view already presented by Grosseteste. Such truths were known immediately once the definition of the subject had been revealed.108 This is presumably what Duns was talking about in a passage from the Ordinatio contrasting strictly per se cognition of first principles with the immediately evident knowledge of propositions formed from a term conjoined to definition.109 By the Quodlibetal Questions he was prepared to embrace a profoundly Aristotelian notion 105 In Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil, 3:105-8, nn. 32-42), Duns presented the Platonic interpretation and gave reasons for rejecting it. He agreed with Henry (see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 17 and 19; and also ch. 9, n. 112) that all natural human cognition arose out of sensation (see Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, q. 1 [Opera Phil, 3:194, n. 4]). For his analysis of the language of "innate" along classic lines, see the same question, in Quaestiones (Opera Phil., 3:194-95, nn. 5-6). Vier, Evidence and its Function, p. 104, comments on this aspect of Duns's thought and gives a further citation. On Bonaventure and Matthew, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 2, 4, 5, 18 and 20. UK, por rj uns quoting Damascene, see Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:113, n. 8); and Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:128-29, n. 10). On the passage from John of Damascus itself, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 32. 10/ See the extraordinary passage in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:164-65, nn. 268-69), including the sentence: "Et in talibus [veris necessariis ex vi terminorum] est maxima naturalitas - tarn causae remotae quam proximae - respectu effectus, puta tarn intellectus divini ad obiecta moventia, quam illorum obiectorum ad veritatem complexionis de eis." Corollary matters were mind's lack of freedom to deny the truth of such propositions (Ordinatio II, d. 6, q. 2, n. 11 [Vives, 12:355b]) and Duns's comment that this was why Augustine, contrary to Aristotle, said mind made no judgment in affirming such truths (Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 [Vatican, 3:149, 1. 23-150, 1. 16]). 108 See Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 256-59. 109 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican. 2:132-34, nn. 16, 18-19).
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of the central importance of the latter for science, contending that knowledge of definitions lay at the heart of all scientific thought.110 More explicit, and far more interesting, were his comments on the remaining type of speculative principle, statements drawn from experience, constituting most of the principal truths peculiar to the natural sciences. Here, in contrast to first principles proper, which were known as true immediately from their terms, there was a place for frequent observation and something like inductive argumentation. Here, too, one sees dramatic development in Duns's thought from his early to later years. His first remarks on the matter were prompted by examination of the difference between demonstration of a fact (quid) - that is, a posteriori argument to cause from effect - and demonstration of the reasoned fact (propter quid] a priori explanation of a complex configuration by revealing its proper cause.1" At this early stage he apparently saw the distinction between the two as pertinent just to the conclusions of science, and reasonably enough, since only conclusions were demonstrated in the narrow sense of the word. As his Questions on the Metaphysics explained, sensory cognition could contribute to knowledge of conclusions not merely, as in the case of first principles, by providing simple terms for propositions, but also by enabling mind to grasp by experience by frequent acquaintance with the facts the truth of a general statement of affairs. There was, then, an authentic evidential role in science for induction, one suggested by Aristotle's remarks at the beginning of his own Metaphysics, and Duns went on to note that such inductive or experiential knowledge of fact (quid) could lead to scientific knowledge in a more proper sense (propter quid] by propelling intellect to inquire about the reason or cause for the conditions it knew to be true. 112 The problem with experiential knowledge of fact was the difficulty of defending its reliability. Duns recognized first of all that by the standards of Aristotelian inferential logic, knowledge of fact was less 110 Such knowledge was, he said, "cognitio praevia scientiae" - see Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 7 (Vives, 25:289b), quoted below, n. 156. 111 On this distinction, see Duns, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 3 (Vives, 7:283b), which refers to the classic Aristotelian discussion in Posterior Analytics I, 13. 112 On this idea and citation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, see Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil, 3:95, 11. 3-4; 101-2, nn. 19-20; and 116, n. 69); and also the late Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 3 (Vives. 284a), which adds reference to the Posterior Analytics. The locus classicus was Aristotle's Metaphysics I, 1 (980b28-981a3).
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certain than knowledge of reasoned fact, since as a posteriori it was less immediately apodictic.113 Second, and even more worrisome, was the inherent insecurity of any premise, regardless of order of argumentation, dependent on particular observations, because no matter how many supporting cases one could point to, there might remain an instance as yet unnoticed to disprove the rule. In any case, a proper explanation had to reveal essential connections and not just accidental coincidence of effects, but to assume that an induction from experience involved essential relations begged the question, since that was something the induction itself would have to prove. It would seem that the best to expect from experience was, as Grosseteste had once suggested, plausible or dialectical argument, and nothing like the demonstration required of science."4 Duns had an answer for both concerns. Regarding the second he said that when one brought to sensory data, particular though they were, the premise that nature acts with regularity, then one could extrapolate from them fully universal knowledge.110 Such an Aristotelianizing invocation of the principle of uniformity of nature had, of course, already been made by others in the Augustinian tradition, and Duns explicitly referred to Henry of Ghent as source for the idea.116 He was satisfied that it sufficed to make experiential knowledge of the fact fully certain, adequate to the demands of science even if technically nondemonstrative.117 As for the first concern, concerning the logical ordering of complex knowledge drawn from experience, he had already maintained that mind could transform knowledge of fact (quid) into fully scientific knowledge of reasoned fact (propter
113
Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:27, n. 30). See Duns's comments in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:102-4, nn. 21-28; and 116-17, nn. 70-75). On Grosseteste's admission that knowledge induced from experience might not be strictly scientific, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 225~26. 115 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:115-16, n. 68): "Ad primum argumentum principale dicendum quod ex multis singularibus cum hac propositione 'natura agit ut in pluribus, nisi impediatur,' sequitur universalis. Et si non sit causa impedibilis, sequitur simpliciter quod in omnibus." Consult Vier, Evidence and its Function, pp. 136-52, which brings Duns's ideas on the matter together into a unified theory, in contrast to treatment here, highlighting development over the course of his career. " fa See Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:113, nn. 57-58); and for Grosseteste on the relation between science and natural regularity, Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 262-63, nn. 126-27. 117 See the passage quoted above, n. 87. 114
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quid}.118 What remained was to show how the transformation was possible. The way led through the logical process of division.119 Duns had complete confidence in the reliability of this process, insisting that while one could not literally prove in any case that division had worked to select the immediate and proper cause of an effect, the validity of the result would nevertheless be apparent from the nature of the terms produced.120 It was as if truth obtained by applying division to a posteriori knowledge of conditions in the world was virtually as self-evident as that of knowledge of first principles. Duns even hinted at a parallel between the sort of experiential cognition he was thinking of and the authentically immediate knowledge of principles, for he used the word "intellectus," paradigmatic Aristotelian term for principal cognition, to refer to the type of evident but undemonstrated knowledge he had in mind.121 Such comments on the scientific role for experience in the Questions on the Metaphysics established the parameters of Duns's approach for the rest of his career, but they only suggested the ultimate reach of his ideas. By the time of the Lectura he had gone a step further. Most important was that the parallel between experience and principal cognition hinted at in the Questions now emerged explicitly with admission that it might be not just conclusions but also some principles of science that experience could reveal.122 Beyond this, he worked to clarify, perhaps having familiarized himself more fully with the Aristotelianizing literature, the defense of the certitude that experience could bring. His treatment of the principle of uniformity in nature was now more precise, the explanation of where it might apply fleshed out with reference to two instances most likely drawn 118
See above, n. 112. Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:119, n. 81). 120 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:119-20, n. 82): "Dividendo enim multa praedicata dicta de subjecto propositionis mediatae probandae, invenietur unum quod mediat inter ipsum et praedicatum de ipso probandum. Quod unum, an mediate an immediate insit subjecto, patebit ex ratione terminorum; et similiter si praedicatum probandum sibi immediate insit, vel non." 121 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:117-18, n. 77). 122 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:294, n. 177): "De certitudine veritatis secundae cognitionis, acquisitae per experientiam, est sciendum quod per experientiam acquiritur certa cognitio veritatis tarn de conclusione quam de principio." For a later comment on knowing principles from experience, see Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2, n. 5 (Vives, 22:35b). 119
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from Grosseteste's Commentary on the Posterior Analytics. One was the case, traceable originally to Avicenna, of frequent healing observed in connection with a particular herb, the other Aristotle's example of a lunar eclipse, which Duns used to show at greater length how he thought division might work.123 Yet he still had little to say about exactly how all this applied to the business of acquiring scientific principles. Just when he appeared to be raising the issue, he turned instead to a circumscribed discussion of mind's ability to judge an erring sense.124 The dramatic theoretical advance came with the Ordinatio, in a reworking of the passage on certitude and experience from the Lectura. Here Duns enhanced the precision about the rule of uniformity of nature already seen in the earlier work and added a dialectical defense of its truth. Apparently he now reckoned this rule among the first principles of science, known by mind as true immediately from the terms of which it was composed.120 Then he turned to the two examples previously introduced in the Lectura. It was in explaining them that he moved significantly beyond anything he had yet said, at last capitalizing fully on the kind of Aristotelianizing analysis made by Grosseteste three-quarters of a century before. The case of a lunar eclipse offered occasion to show how mind could turn experiential knowledge of fact (quid) into true propter quid knowledge of a scientific conclusion.126 Repeating the claim from the Questions on the Metaphysics that mind acquainted with a condition known to hold true by experience would seek out its cause, he almost casually observed that technically speaking intellect had to hypothesize the conclusion and then search, by way of division, for a per se principle or principles to explain how it had come to be. 12/ For all its brevity, the reference to hypothesis, or suppositio, is striking in 123 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:294-95, nn. 177-78). For Grosseteste's use of the two examples, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 273-74, nn. 154 and 155; and 278, nn. 159 and 160. 124 See Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:295-96, n. 180); and on the same issue, also Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:112-13, n. 56; and 128, n. 107). 123 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:141-43, n. 235; and 138, 11. 15-17). 12(1 Duns, Ordmatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:143, n. 236). 127 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:143, n. 236): "Sed ulterius notandum quod quandoque accipitur experientia de conclusione . . . et tune, supposita conclusione quia ita est, inquiritur causa talis conclusionis per viam divisionis: et quandoque devenitur ex conclusione experta ad principia nota ex terminis. . . ."
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its novelty for Duns, and reveals a profound awareness of Aristotelianizing theories of science, especially the tradition of Aristotle commentary running from Grosseteste through Albert the Great and Thomas.128 Such awareness moreover enabled him finally to put aside all doubts about the relative reliability of knowledge obtained the experiential way. Intellect beginning with experience and moving through hypothesis and division to discovery of cause could be said to know with the certitude of strictly scientific demonstration.129 Even more fascinating is the approach to the example of herbal healing. Here Duns faced head-on the theoretical challenge of grounding principles of natural science in a logic of particular experience, candidly assessing for the first time the extent to which induction might find a foundational and not simply propaedeutic place in the construction of scientific argument. In doing so, he not only returned the Augustinian tradition to Grosseteste's promising speculations on induction but actually moved the discussion a stage beyond.130 As Duns saw it, an intellect grasping the truth of a factual condition (quid) sometimes might not be able to work by division to a per se or self-evident principle by which to explain the circumstances in fully demonstrative form. In such cases, it would have to rest content with experiential knowledge of the fact as the only principle upon which to ground further scientific argumentation.131 For exam128 por Grosseteste, Albert and Thomas on hypothesis, see Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 229-30 and 242-44; and above, Pt. 1, ch. 3, nn. 40 and 41. See also Vier's comments, Evidence and its Function, pp. 150-52. As noted above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, at nn. 23 and 24, Bonaventure revealed a similar appreciation of hypothesis but hardly worked it deeply into his thought. 129 Again, Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:143, n. 236): "Et si [principium per se notum] inventum fuerit per divisionem . . . scietur certissime demonstratione propter quid (quia per causam), et non tantum per experientiam, sicut sciebatur ista conclusio ante inventionem principii." Related is the explanation in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:151, n. 247), that natural truths could be considered immutable in any case where the posited condition invariably held true whenever the terms were instantiated in reality. Also see Reportatio pariesiensis (examinata) I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-3 (ed. Wolter and Adams, in "Parisian Proof," pp. 258 and 266), on how an argument from contingents might be rendered demonstrative by couching the premises in the language of possibility. 130 On Grosseteste and induction of principles, see again Marrone, New Ideas, pp. 225-26; as well as the discussion of experiment and quick wit, pp. 272~81. 131 The passage is important enough to be quoted in its entirety Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:143-44, n. 237): "Quandoque autem est experientia de principio, ita quod non contingit per viam divisionis invenire ulterius principium notum ex terminis, sed statur in aliquo 'vero' 'ut in pluribus,' cuius extrema per experimentum scitum est frequenter uniri, puta quod haec herba talis specie!
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pie, one might be able to discover by experience that a species of herb was hot and take this as the reason why such herb was therapeutic for specific ills, without being able to discover a more immediate middle term to account for the herb's hotness, and thus its curative power. In this instance, one could therefore never offer a truly propter quid explanation for the healing process, based exclusively on proper first principles. Knowledge obtained in this fashion was, Duns insisted, fully certain and free of fallibility. But the certitude, as initially in all cases of knowledge of conditions drawn from experience in the real world, depended upon the principle of uniformity of nature, which in light of the failure of division to produce an obvious immediate middle term, remained the sole justification for granting the induction of universal truth.132 Although such knowledge was scientific, it was just barely so, falling, as Duns said, into the last and least grade of science. The problem went beyond logic, beyond the fact that one of the ultimate premises, multiple experience, was not truly a priori. The real difficulty was metaphysical. For as Duns reminded his reader, a predicate signifying a property that might not be truly part of its subject and logically implicated in it — like "hotness" with respect to an herb - might point to something that could be separated from the subject, even if only by the absolute power of God. Argument employing such a predicate was, in short, more about the "aptitude" of things than, as in the case of strictest science, about an absolute necessity in every possible case. With these comments on induction from experience, Duns completed his survey of the evidential basis for all principles of scientific truth. Were one to pose the further question of how such evidence translated into support for scientific conclusions at the other end of demonstrative argumentation, the answer could have been easily provided by anyone schooled in the medieval curriculum in arts. Duns's est calida, nee invenitur medium aliud prius, per quod demonstretur passio de subiecto propter quid, sed statur in isto sicut primo noto, propter experientias: licet tune incertitude et fallibilitas removeantur per istam propositionem 'effectus ut in pluribus alicuius causae non liberae, est naturalis effectus eius,' tamen iste est ultimus gradus cognitionis scientificae. Et forte ibi non habetur cognitio actualis unionis extremorum. sed aptitudinalis. Si enim passio est alia res, absoluta, a subiecto, posset sine contradictione separari a subiecto, et expertus non haberet cognitionem quia ita est, sed quia ita aptum natum est esse." 1w On Duns's expectation that, in the best of cases, division would produce such a term, see above, n. 120.
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treatment of the matter was not surprisingly terse, almost offhand. He had unshakable confidence in the principles of inferential logic. Having accounted for true knowledge of principles, he could simply point to the obvious indubitability of syllogism to justify assent to conclusions demonstrated from them as premises.133 In a way reminiscent of the case of first principles, the power of mind alone was capable of recognizing the validity of a true inference with no more evidence than the formal structure of the argument itself.134 Indeed, so transparent was inference that the certitude of conclusions could be said to depend entirely and directly upon the evident certitude of principles.130 In all this, Duns's understanding of scientific cognition and the evidence it required represented an intensification of already powerful Aristotelianizing drives within the Augustinian tradition. Yet his appreciation of the possibilities of natural knowledge articulated in line with Aristotle's science, even where surpassing Grosseteste's insights, was not radically innovative by the general standards of late thirteenth-century Scholasticism. One might say Duns had merely reclaimed for Augustinians an interest partially surrendered to other schools of thought after Grosseteste's death. Where Duns's epistemology made unique strides forward was instead in his willingness to contemplate an extension of these same impulses beyond anything Aristotle had dreamed of. Most significant in this regard was his occasional determination to shift the criteria for scientific knowledge — or, if not strictly "science," a new epistemic category of comparable prestige — away from the formal requirements of demonstration, especially to allow for 133 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:140, n. 233): "Habita certitudine de principiis primis, patet quomodo habebitur de conclusionibus illatis ex eis, propter evidentiam formae syllogismi perfect!, - cum certitude conclusionis tantummodo dependeat ex certitudine principiorum et ex evidentia illationis." See also Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:290-91, n. 166). 134 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil, 3:109, n. 45): ". . . statim virtute luminis sui assentit [intellectus] conexioni [terminorum in syllogismo], quia 'syllogismus perfectus est' etc. . . ." On Duns's confidence in mind's ability to recognize a valid syllogism, see Ordinatio II, d. 6, q. 2, n. 11 (Vives, 12:355b); and Reportatio parisiensis Pro!., q. 2, n. 6 (Vives, 22:36b). 135 Duns, Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 11 (Vives, 15:42a): ". . . tota evidentia conclusionis dependet essentialiter a principiis." See also Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 1, n. 5 (Vives, 22:9a); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 17, n. 11 (Vives, 26:220a): "Conclusio autem est certa per principium, tanquam per causam suae certitudinis. . . ."
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inclusion of God's knowledge of singular, contingent events, absolutely certain but by Aristotelian standards patently unscientific. It makes no sense to go deeply into the matter here, but some account is due if only to reveal the range of Duns's thought.136 The issue arose in the context of discussing the scientific value of theological knowledge, a topic raised by the familiar questions whether theology was a science and whether a scientific grasp of the truths of theology would be compatible with faith in those same truths. Duns's response made use of suggestions put forth by Henry of Ghent at a similar juncture in his own thought, but in a fashion more poignantly indicative of their radical potential for breaching the limits of an Aristotelianizing perspective.137 Five times when he examined the scientific status of theology Duns listed the criteria for strictly scientific cognition, construed according to Aristotle's definition. All five listings are similar, but the first three are so much alike in wording and application that they can be taken as virtually identical renditions.138 The first criterion was that the knowledge be certain, which for Duns of course meant that it had to exclude both error and doubt.139 The second was that it be necessary, a quality alternately ascribed to the object of knowledge or to the knowledge itself.140 The third criterion stipulated that such knowledge be produced by a cause evident to intellect, and the fourth, that it result from discursive, specifically syllogistic, reasoning. Twice, in the prologues to the Lectura and the Ordinatio, Duns asserted that the last criterion, requiring syllogistic reasoning — as well as, by implication, so much of the third as implicated discursive
136
For more on the problem, see Marrone, "Concepts of Science among Parisian Theologians." 137 On Henry, see Marrone, "Concepts of Science among Parisian Theologians," nn. 21 and 22. The crucial texts are Henry's Summa, a. 6, q. 1; and a. 7, q. 2. 138 Duns, Lectura Prol., p. 3, q. 1 (Vatican, 16:39, n. 107); Ordinatio Prol., p. 4, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 1:141, n. 208); and Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 13 (Vives, 15:44b). The listing in Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, q. un., n. 16 (Vives, 23:454a-b) is much the same, except that Duns does not follow up with an attempt to modify Aristotle. For the fifth, more pertinent passage, see below, n. 149. As explicitly indicated in Ordinatio Prologue and III, d. 24; and Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, the lists were intended to synopsize Aristotle's ideas from Posterior Analytics, I, 2 (71b9-22). 139 On Duns's view of certitude, see above, n. 67. 140 Duns's words implied the former ascription in the Prologue to both Lectura ("de necessariis") and Ordinatio ("de cognito necessario"), the latter in Ordinatio III, d. 24 ("cognitio necessaria"). The two remaining passages both ascribe the quality to the object of knowledge.
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appeal to a cause - was actually a token of cognitive imperfection. Immediate knowledge was manifestly superior to that dependent on a process of inference. Accordingly, the finest forms of understanding, such as theology in the divine mind or even theology considered absolutely and in itself, should not be held to this standard.141 One could discard Aristotle's requirement for discourse or syllogism without in any way diminishing epistemic prestige and authenticity. He also believed it possible to go beyond Aristotle on the question of necessity. Because theology frequently concerned contingent propositions, such as the fact that Christ was made flesh to save humankind, then if it were to be considered scientific, the criterion of necessity would have to be modified to accommodate an objective contingency Aristotle would never have tolerated. Once more in the two prologues he explained how this might be done.142 One could say that, in excluding contingent propositions from science, Aristotle had considered necessity only as applicable to the cognitive object, not thinking of it as a potential attribute of knowledge itself. This was plausible with regard to human cognition, where any instance of knowledge was in itself not necessary but contingent, liable to be forgotten as quickly as learned. Yet one could imagine knowledge of a more perfect kind. Looking to God, one saw a mind for which contingency in knowing was out of the question. Divine knowledge was itself always necessary, at least in the sense that it was absolutely perpetual and unchanging even when about contingent propositions or events.143 The same was effectively true of theology in itself, since the evidence for theological truths lay in their
1+1
Lectura Prol., p. 3, q. 1 (Vatican, 16:39, n. 107); and Ordinatio Prol., p. 4, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 1:141-42, n. 208): "Ultimum, videlicet causatio scientiae per discursum a causa ad scitum, includit imperfectionem, et etiani potentialitatem intellectus recipientis. Ergo theologia in se non est scientia quantum ad ultimam condicionem scientiae. ..." The Lectura passage added, by parallel reasoning, the exclusion of the requirement that such knowledge be effected by a cause - after all, neither God nor his understanding was subject to a cause. For the time being, Duns made nothing more of this point, but see below, n. 149, for a place where he took it as occasion for more dramatic speculation. 1+2 Duns, Lectura Prol., p. 3, q. 1 (Vatican, 16:41, n. 112); and Ordinatio Prol., p. 4, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 1:144-45, n. 211). 143 See the passage from the Ordinatio cited above, n. 142, in particular: "Si igitur aliqua alia cognitio est certa et evidens, et, quantum est de se, perpetua, ipsa videtur in se formaliter perfectior quam scientia quae requirit necessitatem obiecti. Sed condngentia ut pertinent ad theologiam nata sunt habere cognitionem certam et evidentem et, quantum est ex parte evidentiae, perpetuam."
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perpetual manifestation in the divine mind, lending them a necessity not of object but rather of habit of knowledge, derived from God's own mental acts. In short, there was a sort of necessity theological truths could aspire to different from the necessity demanded by Aristotelian science but much more perfect.144 Again one could depart from Aristotle without devaluing what it meant to know. Indeed, such a departure, by improving upon Aristotle's criterion of necessity, would render knowledge more truly "scientific."140 Combining his two reservations, Duns was even so bold as to propose that all that was required to reach the height of cognitive perfection were the two scientific criteria of certitude and evidence just the first and third on his list.146 The idea had already been advanced by Henry, who used it to defend his special lumen medium of the theologian's knowledge, but Duns invested it with even greater prominence.147 If Aristotle had constructed his "science" so as to coincide with cognitive perfection, then he had inconveniently introduced a pair of needless constraints. Science, or more impartially, cognition, that truly aspired to being the best knowledge of all had to worry only about attaining certitude and producing evidence upon which it could rest. Duns was conscious that in saying this he was abandoning the Aristotle of historical record. Thus he once suggested that although the perfect "science" of God's knowledge and of theology in itself might violate the criteria of the Posterior Analytics, perhaps it was compatible with a more capacious definition offered in the Nicomachean
144 Again the same passage as cited in n. 143: "Igitur contingentia ut pertinent ad theologiam nata sunt habere perfectiorem cognitionem quam scientia de necessariis acquisita." 143 See the passage from Lectura cited above, n. 142: "Et ideo theologia in se est vera scientia, licet sit de contingentibus; quod non contingit de alia scientia naturaliter acquisita." 146 Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 4, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 1:144, n. 211): "Hie dico quod in scientia illud perfectionis est, quod sit cognitio certa et evidens. . . ." The same point is assumed in Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un, n. 1 (Vives, 15:34a); and also n. 17 (Vives, 15:47b): "Nunc autem si res ipsae de quibus Scriptura tractat, essent clare apprehensae et intuitive, generarent notitiam certam absque omni dubitatione, et haec notitia, quia evidens est, diceretur scientia." Vier, Evidence and its Function, pp. 117-20 and 165-66, has given considerable attention to Duns's emphasis on these two criteria. 147 See Marrone, "Concepts of Science among Parisian Theologians," p. 129; and Dumont, "Theology as a Science," pp. 586-87. For Duns's take on this special science available to theologians, see below, Pt. 4, ch. 15, nn. 126-32.
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Ethics.1^ More often, he simply accepted the fact that for his purposes Aristotle had to be left behind. Perhaps he was talking about what should be called "wisdom" rather than "science," reserving the latter description for more strictly Aristotelian intents.149 Whatever his words, however, and whatever latitude he read into Aristotle's work, he plainly intended to continue playing Aristotle's game. Like the latter, he was looking for a formal description of cognitive perfection, although he thought he could follow this ideal even beyond Aristotle's own rules. If this meant foregoing the term "science," so be it. But in laying out his new criteria Duns was, to his mind, only furthering the quest fascination with Aristotelian science had inspired. He was merely refining the standard by which knowledge should be judged. Duns's examination of theology as a science generated the most radical epistemological ideas he was to produce, carrying his theory 148 Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 4, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 1:145-46, n. 212), the passage he had in mind being Mcomachean Ethics VI, 3 (1139b 15-35). 1+9 Duns, Lectura Prol., p. 3, q. 1 (Vatican, 16:41, n. 113): "Et ideo proprie theologia dicitur sapientia et non scientia, quia est evidens notitia, non mendicata per discursum nee per causam, sed ex evidentia extremorum." See also Ordinatio Prol., p. 4, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 1:146, n. 213): "Magis tamen proprie potest dici quod theologia est sapientia secundum se. . . . Quantum . . . ad contingentia, habet evidentiam manifestam de contingentibus in se visis . . . et non habet evidentiam mendicatam ab aliis prioribus; unde notitia contingentium ut habetur in ea magis assimilatur intellectui principiorum quam scientiae conclusionum." Both passages identify the absence of discursive thought as reason not to call theology in itself a science. (In contrast, in Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 17 (Vives, 12:48a), when speaking of the special theological science God sometimes revealed to mankind (see above, n. 147), Duns said it might not be properly designated science because it did not involve full and proper understanding of its simple terms.) In this regard it should be noted that in the fifth of the passages (see above, n. 138) listing the criteria for science Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 1, n. 4 (Vives, 22:7b-8b) - Duns modified his third criterion so as to stipulate that the knowledge had to be not only evident but also from some prior element (ex prius evidente}. This change was important, for now when he affirmed the third criterion of God's knowledge he could insist that for God there was some ordering of propositions even if not the strictly discursive arrangement Aristotle had in mind. In short he was back to the problem of God's absolute impassivity once briefly alluded to in the Lectura (see above, n. 141), now ready to offer a new solution. As he showed in the same question in Reportatio parisiensis, articles 3 and 4 (Vives, 22:16a-33b), not all God's knowledge was precisely like mankind's knowledge of self-evident principles, for there was in God an ordering of concepts and propositions, even if only by nature and not actually in time as would be necessary for true discourse. By making this claim Duns was apparently preparing to shed his hesitation noted in the second Ordinatio passage quoted above about calling theology a true science because it imitated principal more than discursive knowledge. Note, too, that in Reportatio parisiensis Prol, q. 3, quaestiuncula 2 and 3, nn. 12 and 15 (Vives, 22:51b and 52b), he admitted that his expanded idea of science meant that singulars could be the object of scientific cognition.
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of knowledge farther than even the most suggestive of Henry of Ghent's departures from Aristotelian orthodoxy. Yet there remain aspects of his analysis of the terms of cognitive certitude bringing us back to a more familiar face of late thirteenth-century Augustinianism and Henry's attempts in his later years to insinuate a more faithful Aristotelianism. Here he took up threads in Henry's thought neglected by otherwise doctrinaire disciples like Vital du Four. The subject on these occasions was not so much science itself as its foundation in a type of simple cognition sufficiently perfect or replete to sustain the propositions of scientific reason. He was in effect probing the divide between what Henry had called simple understanding (simplex intelligentid) and his initial level of knowledge of the truth. l3n First of all, Duns laid hold of Henry's early view, which the latter himself shunned in his mature years, that to pass from knowledge below science to the level of truth meant moving to an authentic concept of quiddity from something less.' 01 Citing a passage from De Trinitate, he explained in both Lectura and Ordinatio that he took Augustine's comments about seeing an object in the eternal reasons to refer to knowing it in itself (secundwn se) in contrast to grasping it as terminus of an accidental intellective act (ens per accidens}.^'^ By this distinction he meant to separate mind's inchoate focus on a farrago of accidental qualities as perceived in the phantasm, which in the Ordinatio he described as yielding an accidental concept (conceptus per accidens} of the thing, from the more perfect grasp of authentic essence in a simple concept of quiddity (conceptus simplex quidditatis}. As he said, only when intellect understood its object in the latter way did it seize the precise or proper nature of a term (propria, praecisa ratio termini}}-* This w7as the understanding opening the w7ay to genuine scientific knowledge of truth.
1; '° On Henry's distinction, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 25 and 27; and ch. 12, pp. 367-69. 151 For Henry's early views, see Pt, 3, ch. 9, nn. 27, 29, 30 and 31; for his later, Pt. 3, ch. 12, nn. 32-33. 152 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:307, n. 202); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:167-69, nn. 275-76). On ens per accidens in this sense, as an intelligible object incorporating elements of various logical kinds or genuses, see Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 2 (Opera Phil., 4:40-41, nn. 15-16). The reference to Augustine was to De Trinitate XII, 14 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 1, 376-77). 153 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:167-68, n. 275): "Veritates autem primae sunt praecise tales ex propria ratione terminorum, in quantum illi termini
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Second, he developed the idea, which Henry had adhered to throughout his career, that moving towards science entailed coming to know an object's definition.154 His clearest statement on the matter appears in the Ordinatio, where he asserted that the most perfect knowledge attainable at the level of simple cognition was apprehension of the definition, obtained through the logical process of division. Upon this was built knowledge of principles and then the conclusions inferred from them.153 Though he conceded that one might loosely characterize definitive knowledge as scientific, technically speaking it was immediately prior to science, marking the last grade of intellection before advancing to complex certitude.106 The difference between it and the more primitive understanding, literally that between knowing the definition and knowing just the definitum, like Henry he traced back to Aristotle's notion of a "nominal knowledge" signifying the object only by name and thus unsuitable to be employed in scientific reasoning.157 Following Henry as well, he reserved for definitive cognition the strict Aristotelian designation, knowledge of "quod quid est," or even more precisely than Henry, "quod quid erat esse.'"38 Here he also employed Henry's distinction between confused and distinct knowledge, another maneuver rejected by Vital du Four.159 Developed by Duns to a far greater degree than by Henry, the division became a virtual leitmotif for his thought. His views are laid abstrahuntur ab omnibus per accidens coniunctis cum eis. . . . Et ideo intellectus qui numquam intelligit totalitatem nisi in 'conceptu per accidens' . . . numquam intelligit sinceram veritatem . . . quia numquam intelligit praecisam rationem termini per quam est veritas." 154 See Pt. 3, ch. 9, n. 33; and ch. 12, n. 35. 155 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:157, n. 259). 15I> Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 7 (Vives, 25:289b): ". . . ultimus tamen gradus cognoscendi aliquod incomplexum cognitione scientifica, sive praevia scientiae, est cognitio definitiva. . . ." This passage is cited above, n. 110. 157 On the literal distinction, Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:178, n. 58); on "nominal knowledge," Collationes 13, n. 1 (Vives, 5:200a): "Dico secundum eum [i. e. Philosophum], quod notitia prima et confusissima, quae habeatur de re, est notitia qua scitur quid significatur per nomen, et ista est magis suppositio quam scientia, vel notitia. . . ." See also Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:133, n. 18); I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:101, n. 164); IV, d. 1, q. 2, n. 2 (Vives, 16:100a); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 7 (Vives, 25:289b). For Henry on this, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 12, nn. 40-42. 158 por "quoc[ quid est" see Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:132, n. 17); for "quod quid erat esse," Ordinatio IV, d. 1, q. 2, n. 3 (Vives, 16:10la). 159 For Henry, see above, Pt, 3, ch. 12, n. 34; on Vital's rejection, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 35 and 36.
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out most fully in parallel passages in the Lectura and the Ordinatio, and though the latter exposition is somewhat more refined, both present the same basic scheme. Each carefully differentiates one disjunctive pair: knowing a confused object (confusum intelligere) and knowing a distinct object (distinctum intelligere)., from another: knowing confusedly (confuse intelligere) and knowing distinctly (distincte intelligere).16° A confused object was one with sufficient integrity to be seized by mind in a simple act corresponding to a simple concept but still in itself divisible into what might be called simpler logical constituents, either the "essential parts" of a complete essence — such as the matter and form of a composite - or the "subjective parts" of a universal - like the various species of a genus. A distinct object was one that could not be so divided, such as an ultimate species or an individual. The distinction in this case was thus effectively between more and less general, or universal, levels of representation.161 Knowing confusedly, on the other hand, entailed knowing an object, as by name alone, without resolving it into definitive elements or formal parts. Knowing distinctly demanded making that resolution - that is, finding the definition. One might know either confusedly or distinctly at the same level of generality. Duns insisted that when it came to knowing things confusedly, that which was more specific and less common or general — that is, the more "distinct" object - was known by human intellect before that which was more common or "confused." Thus, mind attained a nominal grasp, as opposed to definitive understanding, of "man" before "animal," of "white" and "black" before "color."162 In contrast, in the business of knowing things distinctly — that is, by definition — the more common or "confused" object or concept was arrived at first. One had to know the definition of "animal" before being able 160
Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:250, n. 69); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:49-50, n. 72). In Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:251, n. 70); II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:324, n. 292); and Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:555, n. 324), he used the term "cognitio confusa" for knowing confusedly, echoing more closely Henry's words (see again, Pt. 3, ch. 12, n. 34). 11)1 In Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 4:35-36, n. 94), in either a much earlier or an even later statement of his ideas, Duns spoke of what he usually called "confusum" as "communissimum" and what he usually called "distinctum" as "particularium," much as we might be inclined to do today. "'- Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:251, n. 70); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:50, n. 73). For the example of "white," "black" and "color," see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:254, n. 78).
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to compose that of "man."163 Moreover, if the very process of knowing things confusedly were compared to the process of knowing things distinctly, then absolute priority would go to knowing confusedly.164 Thus, intellect grasped any object confusedly, as a simple definiendum, before knowing its definition. For Duns there was no doubt that knowing distinctly was more perfect and more to be valued than knowing confusedly.165 The difference between the two therefore served ideally to convey his views on the move from an initial imperfect grasp of an object to the deeper simple understanding precedent to scientific reasoning. Coming to know quiddity, which amounted in logical terms to finding the definition, could be legitimately described as passing from knowing confusedly to knowing distinctly, or more simply from confused to distinct cognition.166 The same description suited the equivalent process of going from accidental concept of an object to concept of the object in itself.16/ In short, Duns could adopt almost without reservation the ideas and even much of the terminology of the later Henry concerning the simple cognitive foundation for Aristotelianizing science. Although Duns realized that for Henry the formal marker of most perfect simple cognition, Henry's knowledge of truth as basis for sci163 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:252, n. 75); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:54, n. 80). He made the same two points, but again in an atypical formulation - compare n. 161, above - in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 10 (Opera Phil., 3:184-85, n. 18). 164 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:253-54, nn. 78-79); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:56, n. 82): "Sed comparando ordinem confuse concipiendi ad ordinem distincte concipiendi, dico quod totus ordo confuse concipiendi prior est. . . ." 165 See Duns, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 2 (Vives, 26:3a): ". . . cognitio intellectiva . . . potest intelligi perfecta, aut imperfecta; et intelligo . . . quod scilicet ilia intelligatur perfecta, qua attingitur objectum sub perfecta ratione suae cognoscibilitatis, hoc est, per se propria et distincta; et per oppositum, imperfecta dicatur ilia, qua attingitur tantum per accidens, vel tantum in aliquo conceptu communi, vel confuso." i6o por example, Duns, Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:115, n. 16); Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:133, n. 18); Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 7 (Vives, 25:289b) - the latter two referred to above, n. 157. See also the lucid passage cited above, n. 155. In Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 19 (Vives, 15:49a-b); and Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, q. un., n. 23 (Vives, 23:458a), Duns expatiated on the unsuitability of knowing confusedly for the construction of science, except in the case of subalternated science. lb/ The language of confused and distinct cognition appears in the discussions in the Lectura and Ordinatio cited in this regard above, nn. 152 and 153.
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ence, was a mental word (verbum), he did not adopt such language himself.168 The omission was surely no accident, for unlike his forebear he never rejected intelligible species and thus had no reason to turn to so controversial a description of processes of mind. William of Ware was more hospitable. Despite an attempt to dissociate himself from Henry's precise position on mental words, he was broadly tolerant of it, especially inclined to the early stance that Henry abandoned only to embrace again in Quodlibet 6 and later, according to which the mental word emerged just at the level of knowledge of truth, simple cognition adequate to science.169 Duns's and William's differing reactions on this same point serve as a reminder that many particulars of Henry's understanding of truth and science, and the noetics that went with it, found a resonance at Oxford and Paris early that would not survive Scotus's critical winnowing.
168
Duns traced the term "verbum veritatis" to Henry - see Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:132, n. 217). On Henry and "word," see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 58-59; and ch. 12, nn. 18, 24, 27, 28 and 30 (especially n. 24 for the "word" as "cognitum in cognoscente"). Duns at times deigned to use the latter phrase to describe the objective content of knowledge - see above, nn. 16 and 25. 169 In Quaestiones, q. 84 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 49vb), William commented favorably on those seeing the word as a "quidditas formata . . . per intellectum," evoking Henry's language of "formata notitia" in Quod. 4, q. 8 (l:974b), though later he took steps to distance himself from any such position. In Quaestiones, q. 85, he characterized one of three opinions on "the word" as describing it as terminus of intellection and declarativum, which description he later explicitly tied to Henry - see ed. Schmaus, in Der Liber propugnatorius, pp. 259* and 270*. While never specifically adopting this position himself, preferring instead to characterize the word as identical to the act of intellection (ed. Schmaus, in Der Liber propugnatorius, p. 264*), he admitted it could be accommodated to his own view (ed. Schmaus, in Der Liber propugnatorius, p. 270*). As for William's preference for the early version, see his general description (in Quaestiones, q. 85 [ed. Schmaus, in Der Liber propugnatorius, p. 259*]) of Henry's position, which he said could be accommodated to his own, and his account of Henry's views (ed. Schmaus, in Der Liber propugnatorius, p. 264*) in an argument he felt could possibly be made against them. For Henry's change of mind, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 12, n. 30.
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NOETICS AND THE CRITIQUE OF HENRY'S ONTOLOGY OF ESSENCE
Although William of Ware, and Duns Scotus even more, had been eager to transcend Henry of Ghent's approach to the nature of truth and the precise configuration of scientific knowledge, in the final analysis neither put forth an epistemology radically different from their predecessor's in the more Aristotelianizing moments of his middle and later years. The rejection of classic Augustinian views on the normative epistemic function of divine illumination in this last, Scotistic phase of thirteenth-century Augustinianism thus constituted not so much a revolution as amplification of what Henry had already dared to suggest. The same is not true with regard to those aspects of classic illumination falling on the other side of Henry's functional divide matters of ideogenesis, object of intellect and ontological grounding of reference — where he had introduced a different set of novelties with his complicated metaphysics of essence. By astutely manipulating this metaphysics Henry had been able to validate the Aristotelianizing worldliness emergent in theory of mind even among classic Augustinians — indeed, greatly intensify it by stripping away the language of a Godly light or divine intervention from his description of how mind generated ideas — while at the same time insuring intellect direct and intimate access to divinity in a manner designed to elude the charge of ontologism. Here again Duns capitalized upon these precedent innovations on his way to revisionary reconstruction of the Augustinian heritage. Yet this time he cannot be said merely to have ridden Henry's coattails. When it came to questions of mind's object and the metaphysics against which it was to be seen, Duns, though admittedly not William, veered off in a direction neither Henry nor any of the classic Augustinians had contemplated. It is not just that he subjected Henry's metaphysics of essence to a withering critique, for which, in contrast to the criticism of divine illumination, no precedent can be found in a late, mature phase of Henry's work. For despite a con-
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siderable debt to his forebear's ontology evident in both the structure and language of his own metaphysics, in this instance Duns saw in such novel efforts possibilities not merely that Henry had not realized but that he would have rejected had they been presented to him. On these matters where noetics and metaphysics intersected, Duns broke with the past so cleanly that the crucial discontinuity in the Augustinian tradition must be located with him and not with Henry of Ghent. Understanding this side of Duns's and, so far as necessary, William's thought means beginning with noetics and the questions of where human knowledge originates and how, in this life, it is obtained. Among these issues continuities with Henry still predominated. From the outset Duns made clear he would concede no direct role in the normal genesis of human cognition to divine ideas or ideal reasons, whether they be thought of as separate entities or as intelligibles residing solely in God's mind. So far as he was concerned, the understanding of ideas as essences existing on their own was inherently unacceptable. Explaining in the Ordinatio that according to Aristotle's report such a position had been defended by Plato, he turned approvingly to Augustine's counterproposal that ideas were the quiddities of things made manifest in divine intellect, a view he took as actually closer to what the authentic Plato had intended to suggest.' Of course Henry, with his eternal exemplata, had been accused of positing the very separate essences Duns was here at pains to criticize, but it has been argued above that this accusation passed wide of the mark.2 Instead, Henry probably pointed the way for Duns. He had gone on record holding that Aristotle wrongly interpreted Plato as locating the ideas separate from God, and like Duns he felt the notion was in any case philosophically untenable.3 Yet even if one should accept ideas as separate essences, Duns insisted that no role need be ascribed to them in human knowledge of the world. In the Questions on the Metaphysics, he confessed that although it was not absolutely contrary to the principles of ontology that separate ideal essences should exist, there was no necessity to invoke them in accounting for natural human cognition, and consequently no philosophically compelling reason to concede them a 1 2 3
Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 35, q. un. (Vatican, 6:262, n. 41). See above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 73; and Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 122-23. See above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 64.
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place.4 Concerning them he took the position Grosseteste and William of Auvergne had assumed long before with respect to any reason or idea above the particulars of the world. A case could simply not be made that such unworldly elements were implicated in normal conditions of predication.5 As for ideas viewed as the quiddities of things resident in God's mind, the argument against a semantics appealing to independent intelligible essences outside the world suggests that Duns was not likely to make room among the referents of natural human knowledge for ideal objects under this guise either. The ontology of essence and theory of reference outlined below confirm this to be the case.6 But questions about reference aside and looking simply to noetic processes or the mechanics of the mental act, Duns still could not envision a normal role for divine ideas. Ideal intelligible forms, even when Christianized according to the traditional Augustinian interpretation, were not to be seen as part of the day-to-day workings of intellect. The easiest way to make this clear is to look at Duns's, and where relevant William's, account of the generation of knowledge here below. Duns insisted that three primary factors entered into human cognition: object, intellect and means of knowing (ratio intelligendi or cognoscendi}.1 By limiting himself to just these three he managed to affirm a simple naturalism of intellection in the world, linking up with an even more purely Aristotelianizing noetics than was to be found in Henry of Ghent. Concerning the first factor, the objective origin of knowledge, there can be no question about his views. As all his Augustinian forebears since Bonaventure had conceded, human cognition arose from below from the world - and not above. In the Questions on the Metaphysics Duns explicitly dissociated himself from either of the most famous Platonizing depictions of a source for human intellection in a world above mind.8 Avicenna's theory of the infusion of intellectual species 4
Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VII, q. 18 (Opera Phil., 4:340-41, n. 14). J Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VII, q. 18 (Opera Phil., 4:341, n. 15); on William and Grosseteste, see above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, pp. 62~64. c See below, pp. 458-75 and 479-81. 7 Duns, Lectura I, d. 35, q. un. (Vatican, 17:446, n. 7); and Ordinatio I, d. 35, q. un. (Vatican, 6:247, n. 7). 8 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:105, nn. 31-32),
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from a superior intelligence was barely worth mentioning, generally discredited among Augustinians since the days of William of Auvergne, or at least the death of Grosseteste. Yet Plato's theory of reminiscence was no more satisfactory, as Duns believed he could demonstrate with a variety of arguments drawn from Aristotle, Augustine and plain good sense. In the classic phrase invoked by William of Ware, human mind was created as a blank slate.9 Calling upon Aristotle as authority, both Duns and William affirmed that all that was written upon this slate emerged from the senses.10 Each echoed the phrase already seen in Henry of Ghent, that human understanding took its origin (ortus) from sensation.11 More correctly, it was knowledge of simple terms, necessary for the subsequent grasp of complex cognitive objects, that derived precisely from sensory cognition.12 As already mentioned above, Duns thought knowledge of complex truths, particularly those of science, was not dependent directly upon the evidence of sensory acts.13 He
for the presentation of Avicenna's and Plato's views. The arguments against Plato follow on pp. 106-8, nn. 35-42. 9 William, Quaestiones, q. 129 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88rb): "Et quantum ad huius determinationem creata est anima sicut tabula rasa." See the full passage from which this comes, n. 26, below. 10 William, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2ra): "Item in potentiis ordinatis ad inuicem, numquam aliquid potest esse obiectum potentie superioris nisi fuerit obiectum potentie inferioris, ut patet de sensu communi et particulari. Cum ergo sensus et intellectus sunt potentie ordinate ad inuicem, non poterit aliquid esse obiectum intellectus quod non fuerit obiectum sensus naturaliter loquendo." Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:99-100, n. 14): "Igitur nullo actu intellectus cognoscitur aliquid a nobis nisi praecesserit cognitio sensibilium in sensu." 11 William, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb): "Item omnis cognitio nostra naturalis ortum habet a sensu, ex 2° De anima et ex primo Posteriorum. Quod patet ex hoc quia in omnibus potentiis ordinatis non potest esse aliquod obiectum superioris potentie, nisi aliquo modo prius fuerit in inferiori . . ." Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II. q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:194, n. 4): "Dicendum quod non habet aliquam cognitionem naturalem secundum naturam suam, neque simplicium neque complexorum, quia 'omnis nostra cognitio ortum habet a sensu.'" See also the phrase: "cognitio oritur a sensu," in Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 1 (Opera Phil, 4:18, n. 45); and Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un, n. 19 (Vives, 15:49a). Henry employed the phrase about the origin of knowledge in a somewhat different context, natural knowledge of God, but with the same general point in mind - see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 19. On Duns's insistence that knowledge began with sensation, see also above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, pp. 419-20. 12 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:100, n. 15); II, q. 1 (Opera Phil.. 3:194-95, nn. 5-6); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:140, n. 234). 13 See above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, nn. 74-75.
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furthermore wanted to distance himself from an Aristotelianizing position he surely associated with Thomas and his followers, which saw the sensible origin of simple cognition as restricting mind to knowing only material substances in this life. Denial of this limitation would be particularly important in Duns's arguments about the wayfarer's knowledge of God.14 Instead he insisted that intellect could extrapolate from sensation, through a process of cognitive composition, an understanding of objects in no way subject to the senses.10 To explain how the sensible object, located in the extramental material world, brought about the cognitive act, Duns resorted to language seen before in several others of the Augustinian tradition and detected above in his own theory of science. He maintained that the sensible, and likewise sensation of it, acted to a degree as efficient cause of knowledge, but only instrumentally, or more exactly, as "occasion" for mind's intellective act.16 This less-than-perfect causal efficacy was manifested among other ways by the fact that simple knowledge did not arise from sensible object directly but only from the phantasm in the imagination under the influence of the agent intellect.17 William of Ware made a related point when he commented
14 See Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, qq. 2-3 (Opera Phil, 3:206, n. 22) for the inference; and pp. 215-23, nn. 51-75, for Duns's arguments against it. On these arguments' later importance for Duns, see below, Pt. 4, ch. 15, pp. 521-23 and 528-30; but also ch. 16, pp. 539-47. 15 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 3:227, n. 90); and for a more mature version of the same, Ordinatio I, d. 3. p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:44, n. 63). 16 See Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:120, n. 83), which refers back to the principal argument on p. 95, n. 1; and also the first two references given above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 74. This "occasionalism," which was really a kind of partial or imperfect efficient causality, must be distinguished from the more authentic occasionalism attacked by Matthew in his account of simple cognition - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 26-32. '' Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VII, q. 18 (Opera Phil., 4:352-53, n. 51); Lectura Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 16:14, n. 32); Ordinatio ProL, p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:37, n. 61) - these latter two cited below, n. 22 - and Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:20, n. 62): "Nihil naturaliter causatur in intellectu nostro nisi a phantasmate cum intellectu agente. . . ." When the last of these passages was taken up again in Duns's Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:173-74, n. 51), the list of contributing causes was increased to three, more in line with the three elements mentioned above, n. 7: ". . . quidquid enim est naturaliter movens intellectum nostrum pro statu isto, sive intellectus agens sive phantasma sive species rei intelligibilis, habet pro effectu adaequato causare in nobis conceptum. . . ." See also the lapidary statement in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:21, n. 35): ". . . nullus conceptus realis causatur in intellectu viatoris naturaliter nisi ab his quae sunt
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that both intellect and object - or to put it another way, both knower and known - cooperated in the act of cognition.18 Indeed William probably had the very same process in mind, for he, like Duns later on, noted that intellect did not accept knowledge from its object directly but relied instead on the mediation of the phantasm.19 So great was this dependence that, although the phantasm was not an intelligible entity, mind could manage the act of simple intellection only when a phantasm was present.20 For all its extraordinarily Aristotelianizing tenor, this position must not be confused with that of purer Aristotelians like Thomas Aquinas. Arguing from a perspective crucial to his theory of intuition, Duns held at least by end of career that, absolutely speaking, the external object could present itself directly to intellect without mediation of any phantasm, while soul was likewise not constrained by nature to turn to phantasms for intellection.21 Only "in via" was a phantasm required, and thus only after the Fall was it "natural" for mind to know things in a mediated way.22 This is what Duns meant with naturaliter motiva intellectus nostri; sed ilia sunt phantasma, vel obiectum relucens in phantasmate, et intellectus agens. . . ." 18 William, Quaestioms, q. 127 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 85vb): "Uel aliter potest dici quod hoc diceretur pro tanto quod ipse actus intelligendi uel uidendi, quia fit siue pariter ab utroque, uidelicet cognoscente et cognosendo - hoc est, pariter ab obiecto et a potentia . . . ideo dicitur quod idem est actus sensibilis et sensus; non quod intellectus siue sensus nullum actum habet, sed quia ab utroque causatur, scilicet a cognoscente et cognito." 19 William, Quaestioms, q. 130 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88vb): ". . . intellectus noster non accipit cognitionem suam immediate a re, sed a fantasmate." 20 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:237, n. 32): ". . . intellectus non intelligit nisi dum phantasia phantasiatur singulare, quod intellectus intelligit universaliter. . . ." Also Ordinatio I. d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:113, n. 187). This meant that intellect could remember something only when sensitive memory had retained a sensible species to be used in generating a phantasm in the imagination: see Ordinatio IV, d. 45, q. 3, n. 16 (Vives, 20:34la). Even mind's self-knowledge depended on phantasms of material objects - see Lectura II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 1 (Vatican, 18:310, n. 256); and Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 1 (Vatican, 7:537, nn. 291-92). 21 On object's power, see Duns. Ordinatio IV, d. 45, q. 3, nn. 8 and 12 (Vives, 20:302a-b and 305a); on soul's, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:113-14, n. 187). 22 Duns, Lectura Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 16:13-14, n. 32): "Unde comparando intellectum ad movens naturaliter natum movere ipsum, in via solum est cognitio naturalis quae causatur a phantasmate et ab intellectu agente, quia ilia sola nata sunt movere ipsum; et ideo talis tantum est cognitio naturalis hie." See also Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:37, n. 61); and Quaestioms quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 11 (Vives, 25:293b). Duns made the same point by referring to the "status vitae praesentis" - see Lectura II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 1 (Vatican, 18:309, n. 254); and Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 1 (Vatican, 7:535, n. 289).
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his stipulation that by the normal laws of nature (de communi lege] intellect needed a phantasm in order to act.23 And the reason was not, as most of Neoplatonic tradition would suggest, because in the world soul had been consigned to a body necessarily constraining its activity but simply because, as may have been suggested to Duns by William of Ware, in the present life things had been ordered by God so that mind should have recourse to phantasms.24 Whether the divinity had laid down this order as punishment for original sin or on no other grounds than its own free and inscrutable will, Duns admitted he did not know.20 Of course mind could make use of the phantasm just because it had its own power of understanding, the active ingredient permitting material object to elicit intellective act and the second of Duns's three primary factors of cognition. Of the three, this was the one intellect - most qualified to be counted as efficient cause in the strict sense of the word. William of Ware assessed its contribution to cognition by referring to two ways something could be said to be in potency: either accidentally or essentially.26 With regard to the general 23 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-3 (Vatican, 16:243, n. 46); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 11 (Vives, 25:293b). 24 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:113-14, n. 187); and Ordinatio IV, d. 45, q. 3, n. 20 (Vives, 20:366a): ". . . nee modo possumus uti specie intelligibili sine phantasmate, tune autem poterimus, non propter novam perfectionem, sed quia non est ibi ille ordo illarum potentiarum in operando, qui nunc est." Compare William, Quaestiones, q. 130 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 89ra): "Sed nunc est sic quod intellectus noster, qui est ultimus in genere intelligentium, non accipit cognitionem immediate ab ipsis rebus. . . . [PJropter ordinem uniuersi de ratione intellectus nostri est accipere cognitionem a rebus median te sensu. ..." 25 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:113-14, n. 187). Lectura II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 1 (Vatican, 18:309-10, n. 255), suggested that human intellect might have been ordained to know via phantasms even in the state of innocence, but by Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 1 (Vatican, 7:536-37, n. 290), Duns had revised his thinking to make it clear that only in the state of sin was it natural for mind to turn to phantasms. There he seemed to determined to show that it could not have been sin alone that accounted for this state of affairs but also God's decision to establish a natural order of powers. 26 William, Quaestiones, q. 129 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88rb): "Ad aliud dicitur quod aliquid esse in potentia est duobus modis, uidelicet in potentia accidentali et in potentia essentiali. Modo igitur dico quod intellectus non est nisi in potentia accidentali actiue loquendo ut actum eliciat, et non requiritur quod aliquid sibi imprimatur a motore essentialiter ut actiue actum eliciat, sed solum remoto siue soluto prohibitante potest de se exire in actum. Sed intellectus est in potentia essentiali ad determinationem actus sui antequam habeat speciem terminantem suum actum, et ideo requiritur quod a motore extrinseco aliquid sibi imprimatur, uidelicet ipsa species, nee potest habere actum intellectionis antequam ipsa species imprimatur. Non quod sit in potentia essentiali actiue, sed solus sic est in potentia determinatiue,
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capacity to produce a cognitive act, intellect was only accidentally in potency. It could in other words cross over into act entirely of itself so long as there was no impediment, for such purposes standing in need of no extrinsic force or active formal principle beside its own power to know. In a noetic context, accidental potency thus stood for mind's implicit intellective actuality. Yet with respect to any particular act of intellection, mind was in essential potency, requiring a formal contribution from outside directing the internally generated act to this or that determinate thing. This formal addition arose from the phantasm and was impressed in a receptive intellective capacity reflective of the fundamental potentiality for knowing things. The whole account was, quite obviously, a general restatement of the standard Aristotelian doctrine of intellect as divided into active and passive powers — agent and possible intellects — a doctrine accepted even among Augustinians since the days of Bonaventure and Matthew and almost universally conceded by William's and Duns's time.27 Concerning agent intellect, Duns, following the position traced above to John of La Rochelle, commented that it was an effect of divine light and as such sufficient to act without further intervention by divinity or reinforcement through any other of divine light's effects — effects, presumably, of the sort posited by Gilbert and later Matthew under the rubric of "influence."28 As noted previously, along
sicut dictum est. Et quantum ad huius determinationem creata est anima sicut tabula rasa. Et ideo propter huius determinationem oportet quod recipiat speciem qua determinatur non ad actum simpliciter sed ad talem actum." See the same passage from another manuscript version in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 325, n. 97; and a related passage from the same question in the succeeding n. 98. William's language is echoed in Duns, Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 1 (Vatican, 7:534, n. 287); and even more resoundingly in the earlier version of the same, Lectura II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 1 (Vatican, 18:309, n. 253). ' ll See early endorsement of the doctrine in Duns's Super Uniuersalia Porphjrii, q. 5, n. 3 (ad 2.) (Vives, l:106a): ". . . intellectus possibilis est virtus passiva, et ilia praesupponit suum objectum: sed intellectus agens non praesupponit, quia non est virtus passiva." Another early mention can be found in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:246-47, n. 57). On agent and possible intellect in the classic Augustinians, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, pp. 171-78; in Henry and Vital, Pt. 3, ch. 12, nn. 56-58. Note how in the first passage cited above Duns uses neither the term "potentia" nor "vis" but rather "virtus." On this, compare Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 81, 87 and 95; Pt. 3, ch. 12, n. 57. 28 See the extraordinarily clear statement to this effect in Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:300, n. 188). On John of La Rochelle, see above, Pt. 2, Intro., n. 4; on Gilbert and Matthew, Pt. 2, ch. 5, nn. 59, 61-62 and 74-81.
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these lines alone — that is, just because divine light was efficient cause of mind's intrinsic agent — had Duns found it possible to accept the occasional characterization of God's light itself as agent intellect for human mind, his minimalist concession to the Baconian language commonly referred to as Avicennian Augustinianism.29 More to the point, since the intrinsic agent was an effect of a higher light, it was legitimate to refer to it in standard Aristotelian terms as a light itself, a description proffered by both William and Duns.30 This light acted, Duns made clear, efficiently but not formally, which was to say, more truly than any other contributor as efficient cause of intellection yet not as determinant of its formal content.31 The idea was cognate, of course, to William of Ware's contrast between two kinds of intellective potency, accidental and essential, and in either form, whether Duns's or William's, surely drew upon Matthew of Aquasparta's distinction between formal and efficient factors in the cognitive act.32 As for exactly what agent intellect caused, and on or in what it acted, Duns explained that one of its operations was to impose directly on the phantasm a form or active principle by virtue of which the latter could move possible intellect to understanding and which could itself be described, like the agent generating it, as a light or "lumen."33 William of Ware meant much the same thing when he said that a task of the agent was to "actuate" the phantasm by irradiation.34 Yet the agent also abstracted simple concepts or, in what was in Duns's lexicon a virtually synonymous process, produced cognitive universality, and this was an effect not directly 29 Refer to Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 64, above. See also a more oblique version of the same schema in Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:159, n. 260). Duns's language in these passages, with its reference to efficient causality, recalls Matthew's formulation that God acts in human intellection as "primary efficient cause" - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, nn. 117-18; also Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 65. 30 See Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:301, n. 189) for an analogical application of this language to God. Consult also William, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 317); q. 28 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 19vb), quoted below, n. 40; and more obliquely, q. 128 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 86vb): "Sic dicam quod tale fantasma existens sub tali lumine poterit facere unam speciem in intellectu possibili, singularem subiectiue loquendo, tamen uniuersalem representatiue." 31 Again, see the passage cited above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 64. 32 For Matthew, see again above, Pt. 2, ch. 6, n. 117; also Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 99 (cited above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 65). 33 See Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:100, n. 14); and for "lumen," the same question, pp. 121~22, n. 89 - quoted below, n. 35. 34 William, Quaestiones, qq. 28 and 129, both as quoted below, n. 40.
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induced in the phantasm but rather secondarily resultant from agent's initial act.35 Duns realized that some had described abstraction as a discursive process following and not formally included in agent's action — elements of such a view were evident in Henry of Ghent — but early on he rejected any such description.36 Instead, he took abstraction to mean the act whereby agent intellect, working in conjunction with the object's nature as manifest in the phantasm, caused the object to take on intelligible being - first and foremost as a mental habit and secondarily and only intermittently in actuality — as a determinate formal content in the possible intellect.37 William went so far as to characterize abstraction as the process by which agent removed from object as resident in phantasm the particular conditions impeding its intelligibility, a variety of Aristotelianizing fare already served up by previous Augustinians.38 Duns, with his conviction that the natures of things were ultimately intelligible in themselves, found it hard to adopt such language.39 To understand fully how he viewed the object's intelligibility would entail going into his idea of common nature and his account of the principles of individuation, a far remove from the theme of this study, but it should be pointed out nonetheless that his novel vision on this score left his advocacy of an agent intellect resting on a weak reed. He could never say precisely what the agent did besides lending a power of agency to the phantasm - that is, he could never exactly
35 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:120, n. 85) for abstraction; and pp. 121-22, n. 89 for universality: ". . . ultimus terminus actionis intellectus agentis est universalitas. Non autem terminus proximus, quern producit in phantasmate, ut mediante illo inducat ultimum terminum; immo productum in phantasmate est aliquod lumen." See also Super Universalia Porphyrii, q. 5, n. 3 (ad 2.) (Vives, l:106a): "Universale etiam non est objectum [intellectus agentis], sed quod quia [sic for: quid] est, in phantasmatibus, et universale est finis ejus." 36 For Henry's view, consult above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 37-39; and ch. 12, nn. 35, 44 and 45; on which, see Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:122, n. 89) - the passage following that quoted above, n. 35. That Duns rejected this description is clear from Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VII, q. 18 (Opera Phil., 4:352-53, n. 51), where he claimed that the agent was partial cause of a real universal species. 37 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VII, q. 18 (Opera Phil., 4:350-51, nn. 46-48). On references in this passage to first and second being, see the same question, p. 348, n. 44. 38 William, Quaestiones, q. 26 (in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 327, n. 105; for a similar position in Henry, above, Pt. 3, ch. 12, n. 60. i!) On the object as directly intelligible without the phantasm, see the passage from Ordinatio IV, d. 45, q. 3, cited above, n. 21.
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delineate its other, abstractive function — yet by his view of the object, phantasms could be completely done without. William had a theory that might have served Duns well. Agent intellect operated not merely to dispose the phantasm to act — which was, he said, all that the ancients had known about its function but also to prepare the possible for receiving understanding.40 As if to underline the broader significance of his point, he commented on how it made an agent indispensable regardless of whether or not objects were intelligible without recourse to phantasms.41 He even assigned the agent two roles vis-a-vis phantasm and two others vis-a-vis possible intellect, precisely the position Henry of Ghent had taken in late career, a passage from Henry's Quodlibet 13, q. 8 providing the likely source for his words.42 With his own quite different
40
William, Quaestiones, q. 129 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88rb): "Dicit quod duplex est operatio intellectus agentis. Quarum una est disponere fantasma ut potest mouere ipsum intellectum possibilem, et philosophi solum propter illam opinionem posuerunt intellectum agentem, sicut potest haberi a Commentatore 3° De anima, ubi dicit quod si essent res separate, sicut posuit Plato, non esset necesse ponere intellectum agentem. Alia autem operatio intellectus agentis est disponere intellectum possibilem ut possit recipere speciem et intelligere." This passage synopsizes Henry's views as given in the passages cited in Pt. 3, ch. 12, n. 62. For the reference to Averroes, see Commentarium magnum in De anima III, 18 (ed. Crawford, p. 440). In another question, William drew even more clearly on Henry's assertion in Summa, a. 1, q. 5; and a. 58, q. 2, that agent was to phantasm as light to color, agent to possible as light to the medium - or, Henry added, to the visus: see William's Quaestiones, q. 28 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 19vb): "De primo sciendum est quod secundum Philosophum 3° De anima, intellectus agens est habitus ut lux. Sicut enim lux non habet solum actuare colorem ut facial de potentia uisibili actu uisibile, sed etiam disponere medium ad susceptionem speciei, ita intellectus agens habet irradiatione sua fantasmata actuare, ut de potentia intelligibilibus facial actu intelligibilia; habet etiam disponere intellectum possibilem, seu memoriam, ad receptionem specierum intelligibilium." Compare the somewhat less satisfactory version in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 328, n. 108. For Aristotle, consult De anima III, 5, also cited above, Pt. 3, ch. 12, n. 62. 41 William, Quaestiones, q. 28 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 20ra): "Ad aliud dico quod intellectus agens comparatur ad intellectum possibilem et ad alias potentias, et ad fantasmata. Licet ergo non requiratur intellectus agens propter fantasmata et hoc si res essent abstracte, ut posuit Plato - requiritur tamen per comparationem ad intellectum possibilem." 42 William, Quaestiones, q. 28 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 19vb): "Sic lumen intellectus agentis duo facit circa fantasmata: unum quod facit intelligibile quod est ibi in potentia esse actu intelligibile, et aliud quod dat sibi actualitatem per quam possit mouere intellectum possibilem. Similiter circa intellectum possibilem duo facit: unum quod disponit ipsum ad receptionem speciei, aliud quod dat sibi actualitatem per quam possit elicere actum secundum." On Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 12, n. 63. Gal pointed out the connection to Henry in "Guilielmi de Ware doctrina," pp. 162-63.
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vision of quiddity, Duns simply ignored all this from his two predecessors, ultimately leaving ambiguous the place of the agent in his noetics. Concerning possible intellect, William and Duns agreed that its role was to receive from the phantasm the intelligible abstraction of the object.43 In line again with Henry, they also insisted that once this reception had occurred, the possible generated its own activity by which mind came at last to actual simple intellection - what had amounted in Henry's system to the formation of an expressed species or word.44 Duns was in fact prepared to assert, once more like Henry but taking his ideas a step further, that possible intellect was then responsible on its own for subsequent complex acts not only of compounding and dividing received simple concepts but also recognizing whether the resultant propositions were true or false.43 What passed from phantasm to the receiving possible intellect under the agent's influence was an intelligible species, a formal principle that could inhere in the possible and thereby serve as concrete vehicle conveying information about the object to mind. This was, of course, the third of Duns's primary factors of simple cognition the means of knowing and both he and William defended its place in noetics in the face of the Henry's rejection of it as a threat to cognitive objectivity.46 As William had illustrated by means of his 43 William, Quaestiones, q. 28 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 19vb), quoted above in nn. 40 and 42. In Duns the point is continually implied, rarely explicitly stated, although Duns does talk about reception by possible intellect in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VII, q. 18 (Opera Phil., 4:351, n. 47). 44 William, Quaestiones, q. 28 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 19vb), quoted above, n. 42; Henry's views are outlined above, Pt. 3, ch. 12, nn. 65 and 67. As might be expected, given Duns's radical ideas about the intelligibility of the object, he was more tentative about a second act, but he, too, seems to have accepted it to the extent of recognizing the difference between the inhering of the intelligible species in the possible and a concomitant actual cognition - see the passages from Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VII, q. 18, cited above, nn. 36 and 37. 43 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 3:100, n. 14): "Ille [intellectus possibilis] igitur sic, conceptis simplicibus, potest virtute propria ipsa componere vel dividere." Also the same question, pp. 120-21, nn. 84™85: "Responsio: quod in demonstratione intellectus possibilis est principalis causa, quia in ipso est habitus principiorum et conclusionum. Sed quid hie? - Responsio: si experimentum sit in parte sensitiva, tune intellectus agens abstrahit incomplexa, et intellectus possibilis componit ilia, et adhaeret illi complexioni per se si est principium, vel ex cognitione sensitiva, quae vidit extrema coniungi in singulari saepe." Compare Henry's views Pt. 3, ch. 12, n. 66, 76 and 77 - which were, in contrast, partly about simple cognition and in any case attributed a complementary role to agent intellect. 46 See mention of intelligible species in Duns's Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum
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distinction between accidental and essential potency, the species provided the determinative complement to intellect regarded as in potency to every specific instance of understanding, marking a cognitive operation as such an act - that is, one referring to this or that object.47 For all this, William as well as Duns affirmed that there was no absolute necessity for intelligible species in human intellection, which could and, under the right circumstances, did occur without species at all. William defended his position with reference to the principle of parsimony and an argument about the true nature of formal causation.48 It was a matter of considerable significance for the history
VII, q. 18, cited above, n. 36. The same question, p. 349, n. 45, identified as the "common opinion" (via communis) the view that there were intelligible species and that they were retained by mind after the initial act of intellection. Duns realized that Henry, whom he did not mention by name, denied intelligible species - see again the same question, pp. 349, n. 44; and 351, n. 50; and Reportatio parisiensis Pro!., q. 1, n. 14 (Vives, 22:14b) - and in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:299, n. 185), he expressly contrasted his own position to Henry's. For William of Ware, see Quaestioms, q. 129 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88rb), quoted above, n. 40. 4/ William, Quaestiones, q. 129, as quoted above, n. 26; and also the same question, (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88rb): "Nunc autem est ita quod intellectus agens non presupponit ante se aliam potentiam disponentem suum obiectum, nee in se recipit aliquid quod determinatiue terminet suum actum. Intellectus autem possibilis presupponit ante se potentiam generis sui - uidelicet intellectum agentem - disponentem ipsum fantasma ut possit mouere ipsum intellectum, et recipit aliquid in se quod determinatiue terminet suum actum - uidelicet ipsam speciem obiecti - que cadit etiam media inter obiectum et actum, sicut dictum est." See also from the same question, f. 87vb, quoted below, n. 49. 48 William, Quaestioms, q. 129 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 87va): "Sed quia nullam speciem oporteat ponere in intellectu possibili propter defectum a parte potentie, uidetur, secundum Philosophum primo Physicorum, qandocumque aliquid eque bene fieri potest per pauciora sicut per plura, ponendum est id fieri per pauciora - quare enim secundum Philosophum idem potest saluari per tria principia, quod posset per infinita si ponerentur, ideo, dicit, tria principia esse ponenda cum, igitur, illud idem quod saluatur ipsi siue illi ponendo speciem requiri a parte potentie - ut scilicet a tali potentia cum tali specie actus eliciatur - possumus saluare nos per potentiam nudam nullam speciem in ea ad hoc ponendo, melius est ponere ipsam non requiri quam requiri. . . . Ergo potentia intellectiua, cum sit multo actualior caliditate, quia est forma immaterialis plus habens de entitate quam caliditas, que est forma materialis, poterit per se sine aliqua forma sibi superaddita in suum actum, qui est intelligere. . . . Sed si species requireretur a parte potentie ut causa formalis respectu intellectionis, igitur ipsa magis esset potentia intellectiua actiua intellectionis quam ipsa potentia intellectiua. Et confirmatur hoc ex 9° Metaphysice, ubi dicit quod illud est potentia actiua quo aliquid agit, et illud potentia passiua quo aliquid patitur. Cum igitur talis species esset illud quo potentia intellectiua intelligeret, ipsa esset intellectiua actiue loquendo, quod est inconueniens." For the references to Aristotle, see Physics I, 6 (189al4—17); and Metaphysics IX, 1 (especially 1046all-15). William's argument against species as active formal principle may have implicitly contradicted Matthew of Aquasparta on the formal principles
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of thought that this conditional exclusion of intelligible species rested on grounds quite different from those of Henry's unconditional rejection, his insistence that there be no impressed or inhering intellective form in any act of intellection - that is, it rested on the conviction instead that if an object could be present in itself, there was no need for species, too.49 Duns in particular took such reasoning as invitation to expand beyond what anyone had previously thought prudent the number of cases in which object presented itself directly to intellect, opening the way for his famous notion of intuitive cognition — knowledge without species being the hallmark of Scotistic intuition, with species playing a role only in what he called abstractive intellection.30 Though William never used the term "intuitive" for knowledge
of understanding - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, n. 102; and ch. 6, pp. 182^85, especially n. 115. 49 On Duns's explicit rejection of Henry's view on species, see above, n. 46. William also mentioned Henry's opinion and made clear it differed from his own see Quaestiones, q. 129, (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 87vb): "Secundus modus dicendi est quod intellectio in homine fit tantum modo per speciem expressam in fantasmate uirtute luminis agentis uniuersale representantem ut intellectus possit uniuersale intelligere. Secundum quam opinionem patet etiam speciem tantum poni propter representationem obiecti absentis ut potentia intellectiua informetur, cum nee aliquam formam isti ponant recipi in ipso intellectu." William's description of Henry as allowing an inhering species only insofar as object was represented in phantasm is echoed in Duns's later criticism of Henry on species: see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:299, n. 185); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:153, n. 251). On why species were needed in those instances where they came into play, see William, Quaestiones, q. 129 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 87vb): "Alia uero est potentia que nullam presupponit formam ex parte sui propter actum suum, sed tamen presupponit et requirit rem ipsam uel speciem in se ipsa, que suum actum terminet - rem si sit in ipsa res presens intellectui, uel speciem rei si res sit absens. Nam ad hoc solum ponitur species in intellectu possibili ut res representetur que absens est. . . . Species uero ponitur magis propter absentiam obiecti videlicet, quia non est obiectum presens, ideo ponitur species ipsum representans. . . . Ex iam dictis potest patere qui sunt modi ponendi circa modum intelligendi in nobis et in angelo. . . . Quartus modus est, quern magis intelligo, quo dicitur quod ipsa potentia intellectiua secundum se sine alio superaddito potest actum intellectionis elicere non requirens speciem nisi ut obiectum, quando est absens, representet. Et si obiectum esset presens, nulla species requireretur." See also the same question, excerpted in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 238, n. 109. Duns made the same point, but more obliquely, in his Reportatio parisiensis ProL, q. 1, n. 11 (Vives, 22:13a): ". . . quia nihil potest esse in intellectu objective, nisi vel objiciatur intellectui principaliter in se ipso, vel in aliquo repraesentativo ejus realiter existente." 50 See, for instance, Duns, Lectura II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:322, n. 388): ". . . non autem dicitur esse cognitio 'intuitiva' quia non est 'discursiva,' sed prout distinguitur contra abstractivam qua per speciem cognoscitur res in se." Dumont's argument ("Theology as a Science," nn. 28 and 30) pointing to Henry's 3 - fold typology of knowledge as source for Duns's idea of a kind of knowledge by the
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of an object present in itself, he clearly accepted the phenomenon in much the same terms as Duns, holding that it applied to human cognition at least in the case of the beatific vision.Ol Despite the obvious departures, William's and Duns's theory of mind was in the end, on the themes of major concern for the present study, fundamentally like what had already appeared in Henry of Ghent, often directly derivative of him. All three theologians offered a strongly naturalizing noetics with regard to normal circumstances in the world of sin, and most important, for none of them, neither William nor Duns at any point nor Henry after mid-career, was there even the trace of a direct role for God. But as remarked at the beginning of this chapter, Henry's noetics and his theory of the object of mind had been considerably enriched — one might say transformed beyond appearances — by his ontology and his metaphysics of essence. Through these aspects of his philosophy God was drawn back in, notwithstanding his absence from the technical account of noetic procedures. Here is where Henry had brought his greatest inventiveness to bear on issues of mind and cognitive object, and where he retained an intimate role for divinity regardless of what was to be believed about normative questions of truth and illumination. At this point Duns, although probably not William, resolutely broke with Henry. He adamantly, and quite conspicuously, rejected the latter's theory of essence and all its implications for mind's road to God. In so doing, he made his most dramatic contribution to the Augustinian tradition of which he was part. Still, even in rejection, it is striking how much of the structural underpinnings of Henry's metaphysics remained. Duns worked out his own quite contrary ontology in a philosophical context where the terms as well as many of the formal relations among them came from Henry, were indeed incomprehensible without an understanding of his thought. Like Henry, and in line with the Aristotelianizing currents of the day, William and Duns held the object of mind to be quiddity.02
presence of the object (Henry's "visio") is strengthened by the appearance in William of Ware of reference to the very same 3-fold scheme - see William, Quaestiones, q. 20, as quoted in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 326, n. 101. 31 William, Quaestiones, q. 129 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88va): "Similiter ex hoc soluitur utrum essentia diuina in patria uideatur per speciem, quia patet per eandem rationem [i.e. quod non ponitur species nisi propter absentiam a parte obiecti,] quod non." M On Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 23.
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More precisely, it was, as William said, the quiddity of material things, to which Duns agreed, adding by way of more generous terms he set in mid-career that this included whatever was logically contained in or inferred by material objects.53 As will be clear below, Duns had a yet vaster notion of the domain of intellectual objects when it came to what mind was by nature directed towards, but of concern now is only what could be knowrn in the world of sin/04 William and the early Duns appear to have concurred, like purer Aristotelianizers, that mind's quidditative object was necessarily known as a universal, though Duns eventually abandoned this view.00 Even in his early works he had conceded that the universal was not precisely the same as quiddity or quod quid est, a sign that he, like Henry, was prepared to consider the mental object in a strongly Avicennian light. As he well knew, for Avicenna absolute essence, equivalent to quiddity in his system, was prior to universality or singularity.36 By '' William, Quaestiones, q. 26 (in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 327, n. 105); and q. 130 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88vb): ". . . obiectum intellects nostri est ipsa quidditas rei, et non esse ipsius rei, siue quidditas in sensibus." For Duns's earliest statement, see Super Universalia Porphyrii, q. 5, n. 3 (Vives, l:106a): ". . . quia intelligitur de primo subjecto [here, in the sense of "object"], quod est quod quid est rei materialis." For the later, more generous version, see Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:20-21, n. 62); Ordinatio ProL, p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:20, n. 33); and I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:76, n. 123): "Concordant hie Aristoteles et 'articulus,' quod quiditas rei sensibilis est nunc obiectum adaequatum, intelligendo 'sensibilis' proprie, vel inclusi essentialiter vel virtualiter in sensibili." 34 The point about a more inclusive object by nature if not in actual fact is made most explicitly in Duns, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 12 (Vives, 26:46b~47a). For discussion of object of mind absolutely speaking, see below, Pt. 4, ch. 16, pp. 539-45, also cited above, n. 14. 5:1 William, Quaestiones, q. 130 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88vb): "Ex hoc sequitur differentia secunda, scilicet quod obiectum intellectus nostri est uniuersale tantum. Quia ex quo quidditas tantum est obiectum que induit rationem uniuersalis tantum, uniuersale ipsum erit obiectum intellectus nostri." On Duns, see Super Universalia Porphyrii, q. 4, n. 2 (Vives, l:96b); and q. 5, n. 2 (Vives, l:106a): ". . . primum objectum intellectus, scilicet quod quid est, intelligitur sub ratione universalis." :>() The passage from Super Universalia Porphyrii, q. 5, n. 2 (Vives, l:106a), quoted in the preceding note, continues as follows: "Ilia vero ratio non est idem essentialiter cum illo quod quid est, sed modus ejus accidentalis." For a related idea, expressed in even more Avicennian terms, see Duns, In primum librum Perihermenias, qq. 5-8, nn. 4 and 14 (Vives, l:552a and 556a). In Quaestiones super libros Aietaphysicorum VII, q. 18 (Opera Phil., 4:351, n. 49), Duns cited the classic passage from Avicenna on absolute essence that Henry had set at the foundation of his own metaphysics (see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 15). William of Ware was also aware of Avicenna's position and referred to the same text, though he did not draw from it any conclusions about the intellectual object - see William, Quaestiones, q. 45 (in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 311, n. 20).
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the time Duns wrote the Questions on the Metaphysics, he had drawn the obvious conclusion with regard to his own philosophy. Henceforth mind's object in the first instance, outside intellect, was for Duns universal only in the sense that as absolute essence it was open to being considered under the guise of universality.37 William seems never to have fallen so fully under the spell of Henry's Avicennianism. Regardless of this disagreement, however, both scholastics came together again in borrowing extensively from the peculiar structure of reality with which Henry had undergirded his notion of the cognitive object, a structure of deeply Avicennian hue. In particular, each made liberal use of the distinctive terminology of Henry's metaphysics of essence, especially the odd designation of a being of essence separate from being of existence, the former more typically described by Duns as quidditative being (esse quiditativuni).38 This phenomenon was not unique in the late thirteenth century, for Henry's terms appeared in the work of other scholastics, too.39 But William and Duns knew Henry exceptionally well and took unusual care to reproduce the exact array of metaphysical categories found in his thought. More laconic on the matter than his sometime disciple, William focused on the distinction between essence and the two kinds of being that came to it.60 In contrast, Duns was lavish in his description, by his later works laying out essentially the entirety of his predecessor's ontology. Indeed, he revealed himself an extraordinarily perceptive reader of Henry, adept at using and reformulating his distinctive ideas. For instance, he carefully sketched out the schema of three levels of thing (res) and their relation to God, and while reproducing the fundamental categories in Henry's own words - "res 57
Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VII, q. 18 (Opera Phil, 4:347, n. 41). See also the same question, p. 354, n. 59; and at the end of his career, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 13, n. 9 (Vives, 25:522a). Of course, such a shift in position would not force Duns to change his description of science as of quod quid est (see Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 158) although it might dramatically recast the ontological implications of his language. 58 William, Quaestiones, q. 45 (in Doyle, "The Disintegration," pp. 306, n. 1; and 311, n. 20). Duns was already using "esse existere" in In primum librum Perihermenias, qq. 5-8, nn. 9 and 10 (Vives, l:554a-b); and "esse existentiae" and "esse quiditativum" in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3; and IX, qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil., 4:59, n. 10; and 521, n. 34). Henry had also occasionally used the term "esse quidditativum" - see above, Pt. 3. ch. 11, n. 35. 59 See Marrone, "Knowledge of Being," p. 41, n. 68. 60 For instance, William, Quaestiones, q. 45 (in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 311, nn. 19 and 20).
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a reor-reris," "res a ratitudine" and "res actualis exsistentiae" - he also felt free to offer language he found philosophically more revealing, for the first category substituting "realitas opinabilis," for the second, "realitas quiditativa."61 He likewise realized how Henry's notion of progressively denser levels of being implied that there were more and less empty varieties of "nothing" as well, capturing at least the second and third of the three ways Henry had used the term.62 Yet beyond being at home with Henry's terminology and willing to draw extensively upon it, both scholastics were prepared to accept much of the accompanying metaphysical analysis or understanding of reality. This receptivity is plainest and strongest in William, who seems to have adopted Henry's vision virtually without critique. He endorsed the position that the dissimilar ontological status given to essence by being of essence and to an actual thing by being of existence precisely reflected essence's divergent relation (respectus or comparatio) to God as to formal and to efficient cause.63 He also apparently conceded, or at least never denied, that the division between being
61 Duns, Ordinatw I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 3:188-89, n. 310); compare Henry's three levels, above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, pp. 340-43. Already in Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:462, n. 4), Duns had commented on these three levels, a description reduced in Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:273, n. 4) to simple reference to Henry's Summa, a. 21, q. 4. Later, in Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 3 (Vives, 22:523a-b), he offered a fuller summary, including explanation of the relation to God entailed at each stage. This late question is remarkable, constituting a compendium of ideas found in Book I of both Lectura and Ordinatio, dd. 3, p. 2, q. un.; 36, q. un.; and 43, q. un. It should be noted that the scheme of three levels of res or ens given in Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 3, nn. 2-3 (Vives, 25:114a— 15b), is idiosyncratic and not intended reproduce Henry's ideas. On Duns's use of modified terminology, see again Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 3:188, n. 310). He also continued to prefer the term "esse quiditativum" (see above, n. 58) to Henry's "esse essentiae," as in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:59, n. 10); Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:464, n. 13); and Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:209, n. 138). In Ordinatio I, d. 30, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 6:193, n. 53), he showed he thought "esse quiditativum" could also be called, in language true to Henry's ideas, "esse exemplatum." In general, I feel Jerome Brown, in "John Duns Scotus on Henry of Ghent's Arguments; and 'John Duns Scotus on Henry of Ghent's Theory of Knowledge," has underestimated Duns's insight into Henry's ideas. 62 Duns, Lectura II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:24, n. 75); and Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:41-42, nn. 76-77). On Henry's three kinds of nothing, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, nn. 18, 34, and 37; and also below, n. 129. 63 William, Quaestiones, q. 45 (in Doyle, "The Disintegration," pp. 310, n. 18(b); 311, n. 20). For Henry's views, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, nn. 48-50, 52 and 57-58. Doyle agrees that William was generally "comfortable" with Henry's views on being of essence and being of existence - see his "The Disintegration," p. 262.
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of essence and being of existence was so sharp that the latter could be withdrawn from essence by God while the former in some way — for Henry, of course, in divine mind - survived.64 He did make a minor criticism of Henry's view on how the three fundamental elements - essence, being of essence and being of existence - differed, characterizing his predecessor as holding that essence and being of existence were distinguishable by intention, essence and being of essence only conceptually.65 This was, as noted, Henry's authentic position at times, although there is evidence he changed his mind temporarily in mid-career.66 While William agreed that the three were not really (re) diverse, he faulted Henry for introducing a two-fold distinction below real difference.67 To his eyes, such finetuning went too far. There was no such thing as Henry's "intentional difference," and he suggested instead that all three elements differed the same way - that is, conceptually - a stance found at no point in Henry's work.68 Despite the fact that Duns never embraced Henry's metaphysics so warmly as William, he, too, adopted much of the basic approach, at least early on. Naturally, he began with the vital Avicennian notion that essence, also called nature or quiddity and corresponding to 64 William, Quaestiones, q. 46 (in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 314, n. 32 surely a slightly defective transcription). Doyle's comment that William seems here to accept Henry ("The Disintegration," p. 261) is my reason for saying he "apparently" did, for the matter is not absolutely clear to me and could only be resolved by further reading in William's work. Gal quotes from the same question 46 (see Gal, "Guilielmi de Ware doctrina," p. 267) a passage that might reflect Henry's views - that outside the world all essence fell back on existence in divine mind (see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, nn. 70, 71 and 73) - but could just as well anticipate Duns's opinion that being of essence was not preserved by object's presence in mind. 65 William, Quaestiones, q. 45 (in Doyle, "The Disintegration," pp. 311-12, nn. 21 and 22), reproducing the very examples of the three kinds of distinction Henry had given in Quodlibet 11, q. 3 - see Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 43. 66 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 44. <>y William defended the real identity of the three by noting that the two kinds of being added only a "modus positivus" to essence - see Quaestiones, q. 45 (in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 312, n. 23). His arguments against Henry's particular view are found in the same question (Doyle, "The Disintegration," pp. 312-13, nn. 24-27). The transcription Doyle gives in n. 24 is defective and should be corrected by Gal's version of the same in "Guilielmi de Ware doctrina," p. 266. 68 William. Quaestiones, q. 45 (in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 313, n. 29) also quoted by Gal in "Guilielmi de \Vare doctrina," p. 266. Relying on Gal's arguments, Doyle sees William's version of the conceptual distinction in this case as foreshadowing Duns's formal distinction - see Doyle, "The Disintegration," pp. 260-62, esp. at n. 30; and Gal, "Guilielmi de Ware doctrina," pp. 176-79 and 265-66.
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Henry's "res a ratitudine," did not connote existence, which is what justified considering it exclusively under the aspect of its own special being, Duns's "esse quiditativum."69 From this, he inferred that the question of whether something had essence, or was ens, was separate from the question of existence, and like Henry he believed it corresponded to what Aristotle meant by asking si est.70 Moreover, just as for Aristotle the question si est was immediately followed by inquiry after quid est, seeking the essential definition, so asking about essence in Duns's terms ineluctably prompted a search for the quiddity of a thing, thus providing the basis for science. Indeed, precisely at the level of being of essence - again, for Duns, "esse quiditativum" - was the object of knowledge to be located, so that essence properly speaking was the same as "ens ratum," which comprised all things available for mind to know.71 Essence was as such fundamentally opposed to fiction (figmentum], which could never legitimately be object of knowledge.72 Equally important, possessing essence meant being "apt to exist," which was to say, "being possible," a phrase Duns sometimes used substantively as synonymous with "quidditative being.'"3 In short, he and Henry appeared to agree that the domain of essence, stripped of all but its own special
b9
Duns, In primum librum Perihermenias, qq. 5-8, n. 7 (Vives, 1:553a-b). Duns, In primum librum Perihermenias, qq. 5-8, n. 9 (Vives, l:554a). On the ways something could be called "ens," see the same question, n. 10 (Vives, l:554b-55a), while for Henry on ens as at the level of res a ratitudine, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, nn. 29, 30 and 79. For the larger issue, consult Dumont, "The quaestio si est," pp. 344-45 and 350. '' On esse quiditativum and the object of knowledge, see Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 2 (Opera Phil., 4:45-46, n. 25); and q. 3 (Opera Phil, 59, n. 10); for ens ratum, the following note. Henry's use of the cognate term, "ratum quid," is cited above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 22. As shown below, n. 107, Duns later made the significant move of divorcing "ens ratum," at least according to its primary sense as "possible," from "esse quiditativum." 72 Duns, Ordmatio I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 3:192-93, n. 317); and I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:290, n. 48). /:1 Duns, In primum librum Perihermenias, qq. 5-8, n. 9 (Vives, l:554a): "Nihil enim habet essentiam, nisi quod aptum natum est existere," echoing Henry's language from Surnma, a. 21, q. 4 (l:127rO) that something that was essence "nata est produci in actuali esse." In Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IX, qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil., 4:518, n. 27), Duns said that essence was "possibilis esse," a phrase which by Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:131, n. 57) had developed into the substantive "esse potentiale" and the near-substantive "esse possibile." Finally in Ordinatio I. d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:162, n. 56), "esse possibile" appears in fully substantive form as synoymous with "esse quiditative." /()
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being, was both situs of science and coincident with the realm of possibles.74 Unlike William, however, Duns quickly developed serious reservations about the ontological implications of all this, especially so far as concerned "res a ratitudine," the tenuous something at the level of quidditative being which was presumed to constitute the locus of possibility. In the first two questions, Book IX, of the Questions on the Metaphysics, dealing with potentiality and act, he outlined two primary ways of taking the word "potency," either as referring to a concrete principle of motion and change or as denoting a state or mode of being, and two secondary usages derived by extension from the latter, mathematical powers and logical possibility/3 It was potency as a mode of being, which he labeled the metaphysical sense of the word, that interested him, and under it lay three subtypes: first, potentiality as equivalent to possibility in general and opposed to impossibility; second, potentiality as possibility in contrast to necessity, or what we would call contingency; and third, potentiality as possibility shorn of actuality, or rather the capacity for something to come to be which did not yet exist. Each type applied, of course, not to the complex possibility and impossibility of propositions, which had already been set aside as "logical," but only to that of simple objects or things. Of the three, both the first and the third readily evoked Henry's notion of essence or "res a ratitudine," but the third most clearly presented that elusive object as resident somehow solely in being of essence or quidditative being and separate from existence. For the purposes of discussion, Duns said he would focus attention on just this third. 74
On possibles, see Duns, Lectura II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:24, n. 76); and Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:42, n. 78). As will be clear below, n. 107, by the time Duns wrote the latter passage he had decided that primitive possibility was not located at the level of quidditative being or being of essence, so that in Vatican, 7:41-42, nn. 77-79, he was merely giving Henry's views, immediately followed by his own refutation on p. 43, nn. 80-81. 75 For the full schema laid out in this paragraph, see Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IX, qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil., 4:512-16), nn. 14-22). Lengthier analysis of these two questions and the issues they raise appears in Marrone, "Dun Scotus on Metaphysical Potency and Possibility," in Essays in Honor of Girard Etzkorn, ed. Gordon A. Wilson and Timothy B. Noone, 265-89 (FrS 56 [1998]) (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1998). There is beginning to be a considerable literature on Duns's understanding of possibility - in particular, his approach to what is called "modality" in current philosophy - for which see the references, especially to Simo Knuuttila, in Marrone, "Revisiting Duns Scotus and Henry of Ghent on Modality," in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder et al., 175-89 (Leiden, 1996).
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Of particular importance was the question of ontological density that arose when trying to explain exactly what the third type of metaphysical potentiality amounted to. Whatever this third type consisted in, it did not entail actual existence, for it designated what was potential to actuality.76 But then what was it? And was not some sort of entity required of it, marking it off from absolutely nothing and raising it into the realm of potential being? Duns's initial answer was that a kind of entity was indeed involved, something ontologically more tangible than logical possibility but less than existence. This something was the entity separating possible essences from fictions, like the Chimera, which had no entity at all.77 If Duns meant this to represent his position on the ontological status of metaphysical potentiality, it us astonishing how great the resemblance to Henry's vision of possibility as founded in essence at the level of quidditative being. And there is every reason to believe that he composed his words with Henry in mind. Shortly before in the same question he had commented on his third type of metaphysical potentiality in terms that could easily have come from Henry's pen, exhibiting the same focus on essence with its own special purchase on being, while much later, in Book II of the Ordinatio, when explicitly describing Henry's opinion on the potentiality of essence, this time overtly linked to quidditative being, he employed the very same philosophical terms.78 Of course, such a view of essence had gotten Henry into trouble, eliciting charges that he was positing a separate realm of possibility apart from the actual world.79 Already in the Questions on the Metaphysics Duns seems to have sensed a similar danger himself. Rather than explore the "entitas" of metaphysical possibility any further, he simply confessed that the difficulties 7(1 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IX, qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil., 4:520, n. 30). 11 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IX, qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil., 4:520-21, n. 33): ". . . potentiae activae cuicumque necesse videtur ponere aliquid possibile correspondens; quia respectu eius quod non est in se possibile, nulla est potentia activa. Deus autem est creativus antequam creet, ergo creabile est possibile creari, non tantum potentia logica. . . . Propter hoc ergo ponitur potentia ilia metaphysica in essentia possibili - aliqua entitas qualis non est in chimaera." '8 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IX, qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil., 4:518, n. 27): ". . . potentia metaphysica praecise sumpta . . . fundatur praecise in essentia, quae dicitur possibilis esse, et est ordo illius essentiae ad esse tamquam ad terminum. . . ." Compare this quotation, along with that given above, n. 77, to Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:42, n. 78). '" See above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, especially nn. 64, 69 and 76.
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of accounting for it were great and better deferred to a time when they could be given more attention.80 But Duns had a surprise in store, for having as much as endorsed Henry's view, he then introduced another way of accounting for metaphysical potentiality that took quite a different ontological route. Some, he said, simply conceded that the potentiality for being something possessed no entity at all but was in itself nonentity or nonbeing.81 If such potentiality appeared closer to entity than did absolute nothing, the reason was that it constituted the sort of nonbeing to which being might succeed, or to put it another way, that it consisted in the privation of being but not its negation. Here at last was a metaphysical interpretation of possibility which abandoned Henry and the complicated ontology of essence he had devised. What is more the real surprise — Duns added that this second interpretation struck him as more probable than the first. It was, he noted, especially compelling if one took essence and being, by which latter he evidently meant being of existence, to differ only conceptually, exactly as William of Ware had thought Henry's metaphysics ought to be construed.82 The doubts about Henry's ontology that surfaced in the Questions on the Metaphysics swelled to a flood tide of criticism in the commentaries
80 The passage quoted above, n. 77, continues (p. 521, n. 33): "Sed de fundamento eius, qualem entitatem habet antequam exsistat, difficultas est magna, nee hie pertractanda; forte videretur diffusius et prolixius principal!." 81 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IX. qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil, 4:522-23, n. 35): "Aliter dicitur quod ens in potentia simpliciter est non-ens. . . . [S]ic in proposito 'ens in potentia' nihil formaliter dicit nisi non-ens quoddam, cui scilicet potest succedere ens. . . . Et pro tanto videtur ens in potentia magis ens quam negatio entis, sicut privatio videtur magis ens quam negatio . . . secundum illos qui ponunt essentiam nullam habere entitatem omnino nisi quando exsistit actu." See a confirmation of this view in the same question, p. 533, n. 64. Later Duns apparently decided that potentiality was indeed the negation of nonbeing, but perhaps not so much a negation as total nonentity - consult below, n. 129. 82 The passage quoted above, n. 81, continues as follows (Opera Phil., 4:523, n. 36): "Videtur haec via secunda probabilis, et maxime si ponant essentiam et esse non differre nisi ratione." Indeed, in Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:49, n. 93) - quoted in part below, n. 117 - Duns presented as his own an interpretation of possibility or potentiality exactly like the one introduced here in opposition to Henry's. Berube has already called attention to this preview in the Questions on the Metaphysics of a shift in Duns's opinion: see Berube, "Pour une histoire des preuves de 1'existence de Dieu chez Duns Scot," in Deus et homo ad mentem I. Duns Scoti, Acta Tertii Congressus Scotistici Internationalis, Vienna, 28 September-^ October 1970 (Rome, 1972), p. 21. For Duns's full-blown mature position on the matter, see below, n. 116. On William's views, see above, nn. 67 and 68.
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on the Sentences. First of all, Henry's views were attacked for their implications about the theology of creation. Duns felt that the peculiar way both being of essence and being of existence were defined as merely relative orientations (respectus) towards God would lead logically to the denial of creation in time.83 Alternatively, since according to Henry the object as known eternally by God possessed being of essence — in Duns's words, quidditative being — then it was hard to see what remained of creation ex nihilo.^ But perhaps more significantly, Duns questioned the philosophical coherence of Henry's ideas. Again he focused on the feature of the latter's metaphysics positing the two kinds of being as arising out of relative orientations, or even consisting in nothing more than relations, to God.85 Most troublesome was the relation accounting for essence or "res a ratitudine." The immediate target of criticism was an extreme formulation of the theory, a version of which had appeared, as shown above, in the works of Richard of Gonington. By this, "res a ratitudine" or "ens ratum" - Richard's term, which Duns pointedly reproduced was so radically constituted by relation to God that one could not know it without in some way knowing the relation, too.86 Of course this general idea had been crucial for the noetic implications of Henry's ontology, most especially for the inferences he and his 83
Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 30, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 6:174-75, nn. 15-16), much of which reappears with slight variants in Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, nn. 5-6 (Vives, 22:524a-25b); Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:464-65, nn. 14-15, 17); and Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:276-77, nn. 15-17). The latter two texts are referred back to respectively in Lectura II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:25-26, n. 79); and Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:43, n. 81). See also the arguments listed in Collationes, 33, nn. 1-2 (Vives, 5:278a-b). Paulus has interesting comments on all this: Henri de Gand, pp. 131-33. 84 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:464, n. 13); and Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:276, n. 13). For Henry on esse essentiae through eternity, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 73. Consult Marrone, "Knowledge of Being," p. 43, n. 77, for other criticisms of Henry on these points. 83 See Henry's position above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 62. 86 Duns laid out this view many times: Lectura I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 16:317 and 318, nn. 226 and 228); Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 3:185-86 and 193, nn. 303-5 and 318) - for the meaning of "respectus vestigialis," see the same, p. 176, n. 287 - Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:21, n. 63); Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:174-75, n. 52); Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:461, n. 1); Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:271, n. 1); and a revision of the preceding two in Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 1 (Vives, 22:522b-23a). On Conington, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 81. In Duns's Opera Omnia 3:175, note 3, the editors commented that Duns was referring to someone other than Henry himself but admitted they did not know to whom, while by Opera Omnia 4:174, note 5, they had identified Richard of Conington as the likely referent.
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followers drew about the wayfarer's knowledge of God. Even Matthew of Aquasparta had succumbed to the charm of Henry's theories on this score.87 Perspicacious reader of his "adversaries," Duns recognized that although explicit statement of the position could not be found in Henry's own works, the idea was nourished by them. He seems in fact to have located a peculiar theoretical convolution of Henry's that could be applied so as to render it formally precise: mention of an "aliquid", or what Duns called "aliquitas," even more fundamental than essence, a baroque twist most modern observers have overlooked.88 Duns excoriated any such vision of the constitution of essence or the "ratitudo" of a thing and said it could not be made consistent with the rest of the metaphysics of the thinker upon whose ideas it was founded - Henry, that is.89 Setting inconsistency aside, however, there remained the more intrinsic problem that if a thing were not in itself essentially firm and determinate - "ratum" in Richard's and Duns's language — there was nothing one could add to it, especially not a mere relation or relative orientation, by which to make it so. Whatever a thing was in essence it had to be so absolutely (ad se) and not with reference to something else.90 Thus, against both Henry 87 For the implications in Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, pp. 354-55; on Matthew, the same chapter, nn. 82-87. 88 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 16:317, n. 225); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 3:184-85, n. 302). For the theory in Henry, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 113-14, n. 60. To the citation given there to Henry's Quodlibet 10, q. 7, must be added Quod. 5, q. 2 (l:154r-v[D]); Summa, a. 28, q. 4 (l:168rV); and Quod. 10, q. 8 (Henrici Opera, 14:202, 11. 95-98). The reference to Henry provided by the editors to Duns's Opera Omnia (3:184, note 3) is less appropriate. 89 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 16:319-20 and 323, nn. 234-35 and 241); Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 3:188-93, nn. 310, 311-14 and 317); and references back to these treatments in Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:22, n. 66); Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:176, n. 54); and Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:291, n. 51). See also Collationes 32, n. 2 (Vives, 5:273b~74a), and Collatio 24 (ed. Balic, p. 217; also given in Harris, Duns Scotus, 2, 375), criticizing the presumption that such a notion of "res a ratitudine" could explain how mind got a proper concept of God. Also compare Lectura I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 16:323, n. 243). As noted above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 81, there is reason to believe Henry himself would have been forced to reject a formulation precisely like Richard's had he been confronted with it, and for the very reasons Duns pointed to. 90 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 3:194-95, n. 323); also Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:22, n. 66). On this, see Ludger Honnefelder, "Die Lehre von der doppelten ratitudo entis und ihre Bedeutung fur die Metaphysik des Johannes Duns Scotus," in Deus et homo ad mentem I. Duns Scoti (Rome, 1972), pp. 664-65.
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and Richard, Duns maintained that a thing was "ens ratum," a possible essence, completely and formally on its own (de se formaliter) and so in need of no extrinsic cause for its essential identity.91 The same was true for whatever was not "ens," whatever was impossible.92 In Duns's lapidary pronouncement: "There is no reason (causa formalis} why 'man' is the sort of thing to which being is not repugnant and 'Chimera' [the sort] to which it is, except [the fact] that Chimera is Chimera and man is man."93 Yet it was not enough simply to deny Henry's ontology of essence. Contemporary debate demanded a positive accounting of the metaphysical foundations for essence or simple possibility: Duns himself had raised the issue, if a bit tentatively, in his Questions on the Metaphysics.^ Moreover, it could hardly be said that Henry had made no attempt to put forth a nuanced, philosophically engaged explanation. Although accused by many of making absolute essence too actual or real, he intended his claim that being of essence was a relation, or based on one, to demonstrate how essence by itself did not constitute actuality. The same motive lay behind his insistence that being of essence and being of existence were never found alone in any actual case.95 Insofar as some actuality on the part of the object was required to explain the possibility of nonexistents, he located it in mental entity (ens rationis): outside objects' realization 91 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:472, n. 32): ". . . quando arguitur quod humanitas de se non est ens ratum, dicendum quod si intelligatur per 'ens ratum' ens prout distinguitur ab impossibili, cui non repugnat esse, sic homo de se est ens ratum formaliter, - et a quo habet quod sit ens, ab eodem habet quod sit ens ratum de se formaliter: nee huius est aliqua causa. . . ." See also Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:296-97, nn. 60 and 62); and I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 6:354, n. 6): "Sed lapis est possibilis esse ex se formaliter." As Duns admitted in Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 16 (Vives, 22:529a), this did not mean that created things were uncaused, just that there was no extrinsic explanation for the contours of their quiddity: "Dico igitur, quod formaliter ratum seipso est ratum formaliter, si per 'ratum' intelligatur, cui non repugnat esse, et causaliter est a Deo." 92 Duns, Lectura I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 17:532, n. 12); and Ordinatio I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 6:353, n. 5): "Illud ergo est simpliciter impossibile cui per se repugnat esse, et quod ex se primo est tale quod sibi repugnat esse, - et non propter aliquem respectum ad Deum, affirmativum vel negativum. . . . " See also Lectura II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:29, n. 89). 93 Duns, Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 15 (Vives, 22:528b): "Nee est alia causa formalis, quare homo est talis naturae, cui non repugnat esse, et chimaera cui repugnat esse, nisi quia chimaera est chimaera, et homo est homo." 94 See above, nn. 77 and 80. 95 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 66. For discussion of other critics of Henry's theory of essence before Duns, see Paulus, Henri de Gand, pp. 123-29.
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externally in things of nature, their essence and being of essence could be found in them as conceived by mind, human or divine, where they were sustained by intellect's own being of existence.96 Duns chose to make his break with Henry complete by challenging even this effort to ward off the charge of Platonism. Like his predecessor, he emphasized that being of essence and being of existence were in actuality inseparable, yet in sharp contrast he refused to attribute any sort of borrowed being of existence, and pan passu any being of essence, to an object as conceived in mind - to anything other than the fully real thing in the extramental world.97 For Duns, the actuality of an act of cognition did not pass over to object 96
See above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, nn. 70, 71 and 73; and Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 125, n. 88. 97 In Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:290, n. 48), Duns, speaking of "esse essentiae" and "esse exsistentiae" said: ". . . unum non est sine altero, qualitercunique distinguantur;" and referring back to this passage later in Lectura II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:43, n. 82), he reaffirmed: ". . . numquam esse essentiae realiter separatur ab esse exsistentiae." He developed his argument that the object as understood - by God or man - did not have either esse existentiae or esse essentiae in Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:468-69, nn. 23, 24 and 26); and Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:281-82 and 292, nn. 27, 28 and 53--in the latter question especially (pp. 281-82, n. 28): "Quia si aliquid non sit, potest a nobis intelligi (et hoc sive essentia eius sive exsistentia eius), et tamen non propter intellectionem nostram ponitur quod illud habeat verum esse essentiae vel exsistentiae." This is a philosophically stronger claim than maintaining merely that knowledge does not require the object's existence, which all scholastics would have agreed to, for by such weaker terms one would need only admit that object as understood does not have authentic esse existentiae. See this weaker claim in William of Ware, Quaestiones, q. 130 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 88vb): "Fantasma autem potest esse in anima sensitiua non existente re extra. Hec enim est differentia inter sensus exteriores et interiores, quia exteriores non possunt esse in actu nisi presentibus sensibus [sic for: sensibilibus?]; interiores uero possunt, sicut patet de fantasia. Et ideo obiectum exteriorum est ens in actu; non oportet autem quod obiectum interiorum sit ens in actu." Duns himself, holding to the stronger claim, was naturally free to make the weaker one as well: see Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 11 (Vives, 22:527a); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 6, n. 7 (Vives, 25:243b). Of course, neither he nor anyone else intended to deny that mental phenomena, considered as mental phenomena and not for their cognitive content, had their own actuality or being of existence - see below, nn. 136 and 146. Berube has called attention to Duns's decision to break with Henry on being of essence and object of mind, referring to the same passage from the Lectura cited just above - see Berube, "Pour une histoire des preuves," p. 25. Although not generally reliable in his description of Henry, Otto \Vanke, Die Kritik Wilhelms von Alnwick an der Ideenlehre des Johannes Duns Scotus (Bonn, 1965), pp. 63—64, also recognized Duns's turn against him on this point, while other scholars have failed to notice so important a shift in perspective: for instance, Bettoni, "II problema degli universali in Duns Scoto," Studi Francescani 38 (1941): 54; and Tamar M. Rudavsky, "The Doctrine of Individuation in Duns Scotus," FS 62 (1980): 68.
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and thus in no way provided grounding for the object's own being - no grounding for its being of existence and none for its quidditative being as well. This difference signals a profound structural discord between Duns's and Henry's metaphysics. Henry set "res a ratitudine" or absolute essence in the first instance against "res in actu" or actual thing, and then for the latter recognized two kinds: thing as object in mind and thing outside in the extramental world. Duns, on the other hand, set "ens in anima" or conceptual thing against "ens extra animam" or real object, with the latter distinguished by two aspects: quidditative being and being of existence or, more simply, essence and existence.98 Where in Henry's system essence was primary, to be taken as in some way prior even to actuality, for Duns it was just an aspect of what it was actually to be. By Duns's scheme, only the objective domain located outside mind was truly being (verum esse) or being in an absolute sense (simpliciter esse), a category that inextricably combined both being of essence and being of existence." Early on, in the Lectura, he had called the same category "real being" (esse reale) or "truly real being" (verum esse reale) as opposed to "intelligible being" (esse intelligibile] or "being only
98 For Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, pp. 351-53; and Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, p. 125; for Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:285, n. 36): ". . . prima distinctio ends videtur esse in ens extra animam et in ens in anima, et illud 'extra animam' potest distingui in actum et potentiam (essentiae et exsistentiae). . . ." Also the same question (Vatican, 6:298, n. 66): ". . . 'esse intellectum' est esse distinctum contra totum esse reale, tarn quiditativum quam exsistentiae." Consult the discussion in Marrone, "Knowledge of Being," pp. 44-45. 99 As early as In primum librum Perihermenias, qq. 5-8, nn. 1 and 5 (Vives, l:549b and 552b), Duns was using "verum ens" as equivalent to "simpliciter ens," both in the sense of "existing." Likewise in Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:282, nn. 28-29); and d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 6:355, n. 9), he used "esse simpliciter" to mean actual existence, comprising both being of essence and being of existence and found only outside mind (see Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. [Vatican, 6:285, n. 36]). For "verum esse" used this way in the later works, see Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:468, n. 23); Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:290, n. 48); Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:43, n. 81); and Reportatw parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 15 (Vives, 22:528a). Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:292, n. 54), offers the variant, "entitas simpliciter." The only exception to strict identification of both being of essence (quidditative being) and being of existence with true being outside of mind is more apparent than real: Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 12 (Vives, 22:527a), where Duns coined the amphibious term "esse quidditativum intelligibile," contrasting it to "esse in re." For Henry's contrasting use of the substantives "ens simpliciter dictum," "esse simpliciter dictum" or "esse simpliciter" to mean "esse essentiae," see his Summa, a. 21, q. 4; and a. 26, q. 1 (l:127rM and 157r-v[C]).
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in mind" (esse secundum rationem).m He sometimes referred to the latter as "intentional being" (esse intentionale), "cognitive being" (esse cognitum or esse cognoscibile), or even, with respect to God's mind, "exemplified being" (esse exemplatwri).m Just as frequently he took up the traditional scholastic designation, describing it as a diminished version (ens deminutum, esse deminutum) of the real thing.102 In contrast to the true being of an object in the extramental world, such ephemeral manifestation merely as conceived or understood could be called the object's being only improperly or in a manner of speaking (secundum quid).m 100 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:464 and 467, nn. 13 and 21); d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 17:533, n. 14), which language reappears in Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 3, n. 2; and q. 13, n. 12 (Vives, 25:114a and 525b). 101 For esse intentionale, see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:300, n. 188); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:258, n. 260); for esse cognitum or esse cognoscibile, the remarkably Avicennian passage in Super Universalia Porphyrii, q. 3, n. 2 (Vives, l:136a); and also Lectura I, d. 30, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 17:412-13, n. 48); d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:469, nn. 27 and 28); d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 17:534, n. 19); Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:284, n. 34); II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:49, n. 93); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 13, nn. 10, 12, and 14 (Vives, 25:522b, 525b and 54la); for esse exemplatum, Ordinatio I, d. 30, qq. 1—2 (Vatican, 6:194, n. 56); and d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:284, n. 34). The phrase "cognitive being" as applied here to manifestation in mind of object as understood must be kept separate from Duns's more particular use of "ens rationis" to designate a logical second intention (see Ordinatio IV, d. 1, q. 2, n. 3 [Vives, 16:100b-101a]), what in Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 3, n. 2 (Vives, 25:114a-b) he called "res rationis." 102 The term is used early on in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:59, n. 9). For later examples, see Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:469, nn. 26-27); Ordinatio I, d. 35, q. un. (Vatican, 6:254, n. 24); d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:285, 286, 288 and 289, nn. 36, 39, 44 and 46); and Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, nn. 13 and 15 (Vives, 22:528a~b). Duns sometimes called this "ens deminutum" the "obiectum formale" of mind - see Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:226, n. 146). On use of the term "diminished being" before Duns, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, nn. 70-71. 103 Duns, Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:114, n. 11); d. 30, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 17:416, n. 62); d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:471, n. 31); and Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:284, 285 and 288-89, nn. 34, 36 and 44-45). See also Lectura II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:26, n. 82); Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:43-44, nn. 83 and 84); and Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, nn. 13 and 19 (Vives, 22:527b and 530a), which states quite succinctly: ". . . esse lapidis in cognitione est esse diminutum lapidis, et secundum quid." Duns occasionally employed the term "esse verum" more broadly to include cognitive being, but such cases can be clearly identified by context and must be kept separate from the more typical usage cited above, n. 99. See, for instance, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:468-69, nn. 26-27), where it is said that being in a mind is a kind of "verum esse" but not "esse verum essentiae vel existentiae" (the latter phrase also in Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. [Vatican, 6:282, n. 28]). In Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:288, n. 44), Duns repeated this peculiar usage of "verum esse" but noted (Vatican, 6:289, n. 46 - quoted below, n. 146) more meticulously that such being of the object was really "verum esse secundum quid." Towards the end of his life, in Ordinatio IV,
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From such a perspective it was hard not to view Henry, despite his protestations, as lending essence a kind of actuality all its own. How else was one to explain divorcing an object's being of essence from its own proper existence as a real thing and giving it expression in the cognitive activity, or noetic ambience, of a knowing mind? Moreover, having come to this unfavorable judgment of Henry's metaphysics, it was nearly impossible not to criticize him as well for positing two moments in each object's ontological history. For Duns there was not only no need for quidditative being to precede actual existence; it was in fact inconceivable that it did.104 Likewise, he felt compelled to deny Henry's contention that an object was constituted by two differing relations to God, one to divinity as exemplary form and another to it as efficient cause. Instead he insisted that God as efficient cause created a thing simultaneously in essence and existence, establishing a single relationship between exemplified, created thing and himself.100 It is worth remembering that William of Ware had also laid out the double-relation aspect of Henry's theory of essence but unlike Duns had given it his blessing.106 Here, as so often on
d. 1, q. 2, n. 2 (Vives, 16:100a); and d. 8, q. 1, n. 2 (Vives, 17:7a), he did use "verum esse" and "aliquid reale" to designate "having quiddity" in such a way as clearly to include possessing it solely in a mind, exceptional behavior more like what one would expect from Henry. 104 Duns, Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 11 (Vives, 22:526b): "... nulla necessitas est ponere tale esse quidditativum praecedens esse in effectu. . . ." For Henry's notion of movement through being of essence to existence, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, nn. 46-47. 105 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:466, n. 19); and Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:279~80, n. 23). Especially revealing is the passage from the question in the Lectura (Vatican, 17:472, n. 32): "Et quando dicitur quod habet tune [i.e. in esse essentiae] respectum ad Deum et non ad Deum ut efficiens est, quia 'efnciens' non terminat quaestionem 'quid est' sed definitio, dico quod illud esse ratum, quod est esse essentiae, non est nisi causa esse actualis exsistentiae; et ideo Deus sic terminat rationem utriusque, in quantum dat utrumque esse effective." The discussion in d. 36 clarified a more ambiguous handling of the issue earlier in Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:124-25, n. 39), whose corresponding text in Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 is terser, probably because by then Duns had already written the more complete analysis of Lectura I, d. 36. The criticism is repeated in Reportatio parisiensis IA (examinata), 2, qq. 1-3 (ed. Wolter and Adams, in "Parisian Proof," p. 256); and II, d. 1, q. 2, nn. 6-8 (Vives, 22:525a~b). On Henry's views, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, nn. 52, 53, 58 and 61. ""' In Quaestiones, q. 45, William laid out Henry's views (see Doyle, "The Disintegration," pp. 311 and 312, nn. 20 and 25) and then showed he accepted them as valid (Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 313, n. 29; and the same in Gal, "Guilielmi de Ware doctrina," p. 266). All these passages are referred to above, nn. 63, 67 and 68.
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matters of metaphysics, the latter revealed how for all his debt to William he was quite prepared to leave both him and Henry behind. Naturally, since Duns agreed that before creation all creatable things were possible, his criticism of Henry on the metaphysical location of essence forced him to cut the tie so important in Henry and even in his own early work between "the possible" and "essence," or between "possible being" and "being of essence" or "quidditative being."107 In short, "possible" became for Duns a more inclusive category than either "being in act" or "being in essence" - that is, either being of existence or quidditative being.108 Possibility included things that were purely and simply nonbeing.109 Dividing reality this way altogether circumvented Henry's difficulties in explaining how his theory of essence did not entail eternal actualities other than God, since possibility was no longer to be associated with anything Duns would call "truly being."110 By the same token, God's ideal
10/ In Lectura I, d. 36, q. un., Duns laid out Henry's position (Vatican, 17:462-63, nn. 6-7) on possibles having a type of quidditative being before existence and then (Vatican, 17:464, n. 13) showed how his conviction that quidditative being or being of essence was "truly being" required rejecting such a view. By Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:43, n. 81), he was arguing that "esse possibile" was therefore not the same as "esse essentiae," thus contradicting his own earlier usage (see above, n. 73 - already in Ordinatio I, d. 43, q. un [Vatican, 6:359, n. 16] he had used "esse possibile" in the newer sense). Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:472, n. 32) reveals Duns willing to apply the term "ens ratum" equivocally to either possible being or quidditative being, so long as it was clear that the two were not the same, a point made again in Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 15 (Vives, 22:528a-b); and less clearly in Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:290-91, nn. 48-50). In Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 14 (Vives, 22:528a), he explained that possible being was, in contrast to quidditative being, being only in a manner of speaking (secundum quid}. However, Reportatio parisiensis IA (examinata}, d. 2, qq. 1-3 (ed. Wolter and Adams, in "Parisian Proof," p. 266), shows Duns quite late still capable of reverting to his earlier usage of "quidditative being" and "possible being" as synonyms. 108 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:473, n. 36): "'Possibile' est communius quam ens in actu vel ens secundum esse essentiae. . . ." As shown below, n. 113, there was a way Duns used "ens" as synonymous with possibility. 109 That is, possibility included things that were not, in his terms, "being pure and simple" (simpliciter esse} - see above, n. 99. A sign of Duns's ineradicable debt to Henry is that, despite this attempt at clear and categorical language, he was also willing to talk, like Henry, of levels of nothing or nonbeing - see above, n. 62, and below, n. 129. 110 See the discussion in Collationes 33, nn. 1-2 (Vives, 5:278a-b); and Duns's statements in Lectura I, d. 30, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 17:416, n. 62): ". . . potest dici quod si ponatur quod res non habuerunt ab aeterno esse reale, ex hoc quod fuerunt possibilia-esse, sed tantum esse secundum quid, tune . . ."; and d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:468, n. 26): "Ideo dico quod res ab aeterno non habuit esse verum essentiae vel exsistentiae. . . ."
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understanding of things, the basis for his eternal exemplarity, could now be detached from anything objectively so "real" as the cognitum's being of essence.111 Yet Duns went even further to dismantle Henry's ontology. Having uncoupled simple possibility from quidditative being and eliminated the requirement that it rest on any true being at all, he then proceeded to establish it on purely formal grounds. Duns's classic definition of the possible was simply that to which being was not repugnant, while conversely the impossible was that to which being was repugnant.112 This definition of "possible" could at times be loosely extended to "being" (ens) itself, although strictly speaking "being" in the active sense of "esse" - either of essence or of existence - was for the mature Duns a much more restrictive ontological category.113 In rare instances he actually referred to "the possible" defined this way as "quiddity," though it was more proper to say quiddity was ultimately founded in it, quidditative and possible being constituting two very distinct things.114 Regardless of such lapses from semantic strictness, however, he remained insistent that "the possible" was such formally of itself (de se formaliter), requiring no external reason or cause, such as Henry's exemplary relation to God, to account for its status."0 111 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:467, nn. 21-22), produces two arguments for why Henry was wrong to demand that the thing in "esse essentiae" be simulaneously correlative to God's knowledge of it, which arguments are reproduced in reverse order in Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:278-79, nn. 20—21). For Duns's own view, see Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:468, n. 23): "Ideo dico . . . quod creatura (ut lapis), ut est fundamentum relationis idealis, non est verum ens secundum esse essentiae, nee secundum esse exsistentiae." 112 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:472, n. 32), on "the possible" as "cui non repugnat esse;" and the same question (Vatican, 17:475, n. 39), on "the impossible": ". . . chimaera dicitur nihil - et quodlibet impossibile - propter formalem repugnantiam ad positivum ens." See also Lectura I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 532, n. 12 - quoted below, n. 122); and Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:291, n. 50); and d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 6:353, n. 5). Once he called "the possible" that which was not contradictory to being - see Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:131, n. 57): " . . . ['possibile esse'] . . . non includit contradictionem ad esse. . . ." 113 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:472, n. 32); and Ordinatio IV, d. 1, q. 2, n. 8 (2! in text) (Vives, 16:108b-9a); and d. 8, q. 1, n. 2 (Vives, 17:7b). 114 Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:69, n. 155); Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:131, n. 57); Ordinatio IV, d. 1, q. 2, n. 8 (2! in text) (Vives, 16:109a), and the reference to the same question given above, n. 103; and the citations to the Reportatio parisiensis examinata given above, n. 107. This use of "quiddity" resounded greatly of the metaphysics of Henry of Ghent. " r> See above, nn. 90, 91 and 93; as well as Lectura I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 17:532, n. 12); Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:291, nn. 50-51); and d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 6:353-54 and 360, nn. 5 and 17). Hadrianus Borak, "De radice
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Bereft of being, possibility came down to logic. In fact, by his mature works Duns was willing to say that what could be called "objective potentiality," corresponding precisely to the third type of "metaphysical potentiality" in his Questions on the Metaphysics,
was
immediately emergent out of a logical potential independent of any ontological considerations: Nor should we imagine that [being] is not repugnant to "man" because ["man"] is being in potentiality, and that [being] is repugnant to "Chimera" because ["Chimera"] is not being in potentiality. Instead, the contrary is true: because [being] is not repugnant to "man," therefore ["man"] is "a possible" in logical potentiality, and because [being] is repugnant to "Chimera," therefore ["Chimera"] is "an impossible" in the corresponding impotentiality. And upon the logical potentiality [of such as "man"] there follows an objective potentiality [for real being].116 In short, he had at last decided conclusively between the alternative explanations offered for metaphysical potentiality in the Questions on the Metaphysics, opting for the way implicating no real conditions of being, no objective "entity" at all, and was besides prepared now explicitly to connect metaphysical potentiality to logical, grounding the former in the latter. 117 As he repeated over and over, even if per
ontologica contingentiae," Laurentianum 2 (1969): 138; and Ludger Honnefelder, "Die Lehre von der doppelten ratitudo entis," pp. 228-69, have pointed to this significant aspect of Duns's mature notion of possibility. 116 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:296, n. 61): "Nee est hie fingendum quod homini non repugnat quia est ens in potentia, et chimaerae repugnat quia non est ens in potentia, - immo magis e converse, quia homini non repugnat, ideo est possibile potentia logica, et chimaerae quia repugnat, ideo est impossibile impossibilitate opposita; et illam possibilitatem consequitur possibilitas obiectiva. . . ." In Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IX, qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil., 4:524-25, n. 41), Duns had already labeled his third type of metaphysical potentiality "potentia objectiva." On this, again consult Marrone, "Duns Scotus on Metaphysical Potency," pp. 272 and 287-89. '" For the earlier alternate explanations, see above, nn. 77 and 81. The passage in Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:49, n. 93), cited above, n. 82, makes clear Duns's choice between them: "Concede enim quod omne creabile prius erat possibile ex parte sui, sed ista possibilitas vel potentialitas non fundatur in aliquo esse simpliciter. . . ." On metaphysical and logical potentiality, see above, n. 75. Since for Duns metaphysical potentiality succeeds logical, the passage quoted above, n. 116, is for the most part technically consistent with that quoted from the Questions on the Metaphysics in n. 77, indicating that on this matter he may simply be clarifying views he held early on. What is, again, significantly different about the position in the Ordinatio is the rejection of the previous identification of metaphysical or objective potentiality with entity or essence - contrast the end of the quotation in n. 77 (and the passage in n. 78) with the text from Ordinatio II, quoted just above.
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impossibile God did not exist, possibility or more precisely, its logical dimension - would remain, and if, again per impossibile, some non-divine mind were to appear, that mind would be able to comprehend it.118 Henry's whole ontology of essence, and with it the set of implications to be drawn from it for theory of mind, most especially with regard to natural knowledge of God, fell at a single blow, as Duns effectively conceded by the very end of his career.119 It could be asked, of course, how logic bore on the kind of primitive potentiality Duns had in mind. Since in the Questions on the Metaphysics he had said that logical potentiality applied to complex mental objects like propositions, what sense did it make to maintain now that simple objects, or simple ideas, were either logical or illogical?120 Duns held already early on that absolutely simple (simpliciter simplex] objects, or their respective concepts, were always logically valid or compelling.121 It was thus only in the case of simple objects capable of yet further division or analysis that doubts about logicality might arise. The reason was, he eventually explained, that the formal constituents of not-absolutely-simple objects might themselves prove mutually incompatible, in which case the objects could not be taken as
118 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:472, n. 33): ". . . si Deus non esset, nee aliquid determinatum in metaphysica, adhuc aliquis vere posset scire metaphysicam, si posset esse." Also Ordinatio I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 6:353-54, n. 5): "Illud ergo est simpliciter impossibile cui per se repugnat esse, et quod ex se primo est tale quod sibi repugnat esse, - et non propter aliquem respectum ad Deum, affirmativum vel negativum; immo repugnaret sibi esse, si per impossibile Deus non esset." (Given the parallelism between possibility and impossibility, the latter argument naturally applied to "possible" as well as "impossible.") See also the continuation of the passage quoted above, n. 116; and Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 3, q'uncula 4, n. 17 (Vives, 22:53b). Duns had in fact already taken this stand on logical potentiality in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IX, qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil., 4:518, n. 18), which discussion is effectively reproduced in Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1-5 (Vatican, 17:494, n. 49). Once more, the difference lies in the way with his later position he insinuates this logical possibility into objective possibility, removing from the latter all entity or essence. 119 Duns, Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 11 (Vives, 22:527a): "Non enim novit [intellectus creatus] rosam solum ut in intellectu divino, sed rosam, quam novit in existentia in effectu, ita quod si, per impossibile, intellectus divinus non esset, nee per consequens rosa in mente divina, adhuc si intellectus creatus maneret, cognosceret rosam non existentem." 120 On logical potentiality, and its difference from metaphysical potentiality, see again n. 75, above. m One can draw this conclusion already from what is said in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:68, n. 32), about truth or falsity of concepts, but the point is made much more clearly in the presumably later Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:91, n. 147).
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candidates for real being and would have to be declared impossible.122 On grounds of the consistency or inconsistency of composition, therefore, the language of contradiction, normally restricted to the logic of propositions, found a legitimate place even in discussion of simple ideas.123 Though Duns neglected to say so, he was here drawing on a theme originally developed by Henry: the notion that anything which could be conceived by mind, even if it were not a proper intellectual object but only a figment in the class of res a rear reris, had to be constructed from concepts that were themselves possible and signified res a ratitudim.124 He merely added explicit reason for what Henry had not seen fit to explain, noting that it was precisely a logical property which decided whether such constructions would themselves be res a ratitudine or not — that is, "possibles" or "impossibles." Simply put, the conceptual parts of anything intellect could in any way conceive were each fully legitimate, as Henry's account made clear, but the chance of an inherent mutual repugnance, a property analogous to the logical incompatibility of contradictory extremes, meant that even though mind had brought such constituents together in an "imagined" object, that did not ensure they could be conjoined in the extramental world.120 Taking up an idea of Aristotle's,
122
Duns, Lectura I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 17:532, n. 12): ". . . nihil est simpliciter impossibile nisi cui repugnat esse; nulli autem primo repugnat esse quia non est respectus alterius ad ipsum, sed ratio prima quare alicui repugant esse erit intrinseca ex repugnantia formali ex quibus constituitur: quia enim unum illorum formaliter repugnat alteri, ideo non possunt constituere unum, sed illi propter eorum incompossibilitatem repugnat esse..."; also (Vatican, 17:534, n. 16). Ordinatio I, d. 43, q. un., makes the same point - see Vatican, 6:353, n. 5; 359, n. 16; and especially 356, n. 10: ". . . quia ilia impossibilitas in creatura est propter formalem repugnantiam partium." Compare the similar treatment, in terms now of a "ratio in se vera" (or "falsa"), in Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:120, n. 26); and Ordinatio IV, d. 1, q. 2, n. 5 (Vives, 16:106a) - both cited below, n. 126. Language nearly identical to that from Ordinatio I, d. 43, occurs in Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 16 (Vives, 22:529a): ". . . neque potest esse aliquid, quin sit res rata isto modo, nisi sit res tails, quae est incompossibilis esse ratione formalis repugnantiae partium." Matthew of Aquasparta had used the term "incompossibile" in just this way: Quaestiones de cognitione, q. 1 (BFS, 1:213, 1. 14). 123 The use of such language appears, without explanation, already in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IX, qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil, 4:515, n. 21), but is presented fully in Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:209, n. 137) - both cited below, n. 126. See also the final Lectura passage quoted above, n. 112. 124 See Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 110-11 and 120-21; also above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 28. 120 Duns, Lectura I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 17:533, n. 15): ". . . illud enim quod
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Duns called those mental objects that, due to the formal coherence of their parts, were indeed possible "concepts in themselves true" (rationes in se verae], distinguishing them, with their inherent "truthfulness," from objects "true of something else" (rationes de aliquo verae) ~ for instance, propositions. Concepts lacking such inherent integrity were "in themselves false."126 The same phenomenon explained why only possible objects were truly understandable and thus proper objects of intellection.12' Although mind had the power to form a mental image of an "impossible" Henry's fiction or object precisely and exclusively res a reor reris such an image was, because of its inherent incongruity or "falsehood," nothing more than a nominal object (quid nominis), incapable of representing a quiddity or forming the basis for authentic knowledge.128 On this score, Duns was actually willing to approach Henry's non potest esse in rerum natura, imaginatur ut aliquod compositum ex pluribus repugnantibus, quae non faciunt unum nee possunt facere unum (sicut est chimaera et huiusmodi); illas autem partes potest Deus producere, ut caput hominis et caudam leonis et huiusmodi. . . ." Note again, as above at n. 116, how Duns employs as example the Chimera, paradigm of res a reor reris for Henry. 126 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:68, n. 33): "Nam intellectus simplex circa conceptum non simpliciter simplicem, licet non possit esse formaliter falsus, potest tamen esse virtualiter falsus, apprehendendo aliquid sub determinatione sibi non convenienti. Et hoc modo dicitur in V, cap. 'De falso,' quod est ratio aliqua in se falsa, non solum de aliquo falsa. . . . " The reference to the capitulum "De falso" was to Aristotle, Metaphysics V, 29 (1024h>17-19). See also Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IX, qq. 1-2 (Opera Phil., 4:515, n. 21 - cited above, n. 123); Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:120, n. 26): Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:141-42, n. 30); d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:91, n. 147); and IV, d. 1, q. 2, n. 5 (Vives, 16:106a); d. 8, q. 1, n. 2 (Vives, 17:7a); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 13. n. 24 (Vives, 25:569b); and q. 14, n. 4 (Vives, 26:6a). 127 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:209, n. 137): ". . . in cuius cognitione vel cogitatione includitur contradictio, illud dicitur non cogitabile, quia sunt tune duo eogitabilia opposita nullo modo faciendo unum cogitabile, quia neutrum determinat alterum." See also Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 3, n. 2 (Vives, 25:114a): "Verissime enim illud est nihil quod includit contradictionem, et solum illud, quia illud excludit omne esse extra intellectum et in intellectu. . . ."; and q. 14, n. 4 (Vives, 26:6a). In Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 3, Duns made room for a kind of concept that could be properly understood yet never find a real, extra-mental referent, so as to allow for second intentions - see Vives, 25:114a-b. On Henry's view that what explained intelligibility was being of essence or quidditative being, see above, n. 71. 128 The passage quoted above, n. 126, from Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:68, n. 33), continues: ". . . et tamen ratio ilia in se falsa simplici apprehensione intelligibilis est, sed ipsa non exprimit aliquod 'quid' nisi forte aliquando quid nominis." As Duns explained, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 4 (Opera Phil., 4:87, n. 10), when the Aristotelian question "si est" was asked of such an object, the answer was negative - it had no quidditative being. For Duns and Henry on "si est," see above, n. 70.
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notion that "impossibles" - again, objects exclusively res a rear reris were "more nothing" than "possibles" before actualization, though unlike Henry he accounted for the difference in purely logical terms. The Chimera could be said to be "more" nothing than man even before creation, not because it involved greater negation of being for negation did not come in degrees - but rather because there were more ways it was opposed to being than was "man".129 Clearly Duns drastically attenuated the ontological grounding of possibles as presented by Henry of Ghent, pushing the metaphysics of potentiality far in the direction of logic. It is just as important to recognize, however, that he simultaneously expanded the domain of objects accessible to direct reference and available for supposition; perhaps one should say he enriched the metaphysical spectrum of intelligible objects. Like Henry, he took pains to showr that the ontological status of object as known had to be divorced from extramental conditions and, as will be clear below, resorted to locating whatever actuality was necessary for the act of knowing solely in the intellective subject.130 But Henry had allowed something of the existence of the subject to spill over into the object as object, enough to provide ground for the being of essence of what was known, while Duns, with a more austere metaphysics, had made object's being of essence or quidditative being absolutely inseparable from full objective actuality, thus placing an impermeable barrier between being known and "being" in any true sense of the word, whether quidditative or existential.131 It was just this greater austerity that in turn freed him to hold a wider range of objective conditions subject to cognition. In the same breath with which he reminded his readers that a mental object as known - an intellectively constituted "objective possible" in his metaphysical scheme — possessed an ontological status prescinding not only from the object's actual being of existence but 129
Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:474-75, nn. 38-39). By Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:294-296, nn. 58-60), Duns had softened his language so than the Chimera was not "more" nothing than man but just nothing in a different way. Even later, Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 18 (Vives, 22:530a), he decided to offer both formulations without choosing between them. On Henry's levels of nothing, see above, n. 62. In a similar vein, William of Ware had talked about levels of impossibility, which were, like Duns's levels of nothing in the Lectura, to be explained in purely logical terms - see William, Quaestiones, q. 21 (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrdge und Untersuchungen, p. 101). 130 See below, nn. 135 and 136. 131 See above, nn. 96 and 97.
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also from its being of essence, he went on to say that over all eternity any mind, whether God's or, per impossibile, a human being's, could know both essence and existence of any possible object. Thus any object could be known as it would be in actual being of essence or being of existence at the very moment it possessed neither.132 Such a position encouraged what would have been to Henry's ear the peculiar language that intellect could know quiddity even when there was no quiddity, or existence even when no object existed.133 For Duns, the peculiarity was more apparent than real. To his way of seeing things, knowing placed no ontological burden on object as object, a radical divorce between circumstances of cognition and objective content that nonetheless in no way diminished the reality of what was known. At any time an object could be known in the fullness of being or existence regardless of actual conditions. On three occasions in his commentaries on the Sentences he explained in technical detail how this was so.134 The being of an object as 132 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:469, n. 26): ". . . sicut si ponatur quod ego fuissem ab aeterno et quod ab aeterno intellexissem rosam, ab aeterno tune intellexi rosam secundum esse suum essentiae et secundum esse exsistentiae; et tamen non habuit esse nisi cognitum. . . ." Also Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:281-82, nn. 27-28): ". . . praecognovit ergo [Deus] esse exsistentiae sicut esse essentiae, - et tamen propter istam relationem fundatam non concedit aliquis 'esse exsistentiae' fuisse verum esse tale, scilicet verum esse exsistentiae ab aeterno; ergo pari ratione nee concedendum est de esse essentiae. . . . Quia si aliquid non sit, potest a nobis intelligi (et hoc sive essentia eius sive exsistentia eius), et tamen non propter intellectionem nostram ponitur quod illud habeat verum esse essentiae vel exsistentiae. . . ." The same point is made in Ordinatio I, d. 30, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 6:176, n. 17), while the argument in Ordinatio I, d. 36, cited just above, is paralleled by that in Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 11 (Vives, 22:526b), where the principle of parsimony is used to show that God's eternal knowledge of both essence and existence requires neither the actual essence nor existence of the object. See also the continuation of this last passage, as quoted above, n. 119. 133 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:471, n. 30): "Sic in proposito intelligo quiditatem rosae, quando non est nee sua quiditas ponitur: quiditas rosae absolute est obiectum respectu cognitionis meae. . . . " See also the discussion in Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:290, n. 49), with respect to ens ratum in the sense of fully existent: "Distincta autern cognitio potest esse alicuius, licet ipsum non sit ens ratum; non enim oportet nisi quod ens ratum terminet cognitionem definitivam. . . ." (On the two ways Duns used "ens ratum," see above, n. 107.) Duns drew on the ironies of language even more in Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 15 (Vives, 22:528b): "Proinde sicut non est ens ratum, nisi quando est, sic non habet esse, quod exprimitur per definitionem, nisi quando est, et non sequitur quod definitio potest terminare quaestionem an est, quia potest habere esse defmitivum, loquendo de esse definitive, hoc est, distincte cognito, quando non est; non tamen tune habet esse definitivum, quod exprimitur per definitionem." 134 Duns, Lectura I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 17:471, n. 30); and the much longer,
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known — its actuality in the act of cognition was, as he had said, a diminished or attenuated being (esse deminutum)', it was the cognitive being supplied vicariously by the acting mind.130 But the diminution of, or divorce from, an object's fully actualized being at the time of cognition did not mean that what mind knew was the object as diminished and divorced. In other words, the ontological diminution entailed in the act of cognition did not extend to object as object, and it was object as object to which mind was directed, not object as known. The philosophical commitment entailed by such a position becomes especially poignant in Duns's description of the creative process arising out of God. Having conceded, like Henry, that there must be some actuality in all knowledge, at minimum the actuality of the knowing mind and its ideas, he offered an account of creation yielding a significant place for the object as known (obiectum cognitum) and at least superficially reproducing Henry's theory of the process, by implication accepting even its more controversial aspects.136 Most important of these was the idea that created things arose by a twostage procedure out of nothingness and into existence, the same vision of creation which, when interpreted strictly according to Henry's metaphysics, Duns repudiated in his Parisian lectures.13' As he explained it now, in the very first moment after God knew himself he produced all other possible objects in their cognitive being (esse intelligibile) by the simple act of thinking of them. Only then, after all available objects were known, were some of them created by being raised to the actuality of being of existence, which for Duns of course parallel accounts in Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:283—85, nn. 32-36); and Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, nn. 12-13 (Vives, 22:527a-28a). See also Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:288-89, n. 45). The heart of the matter is perhaps best expressed in an excerpt from the version in Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:284, n. 34): ". . . esse enim hominis simpliciter - et non deminutum - est obiectum opinionis, sed istud 'esse simpliciter' ut in opinione, est esse 'secundum quid'; et ideo non sequitur 'Homerus est in opinione, ergo Homerus est,' nee etiam 'Homerus est exsistens in opinione, ergo Homerus est exsistens,' - sed est fallacia secundum quid et simpliciter." All these accounts represent a shift from an earlier view, in which Duns appears to have held that the referent of knowledge was in the first instance the object as known, an "ens per intellectum" - see In primum librum Perihermenias, qq. 5-8, nn. 4 and 13 (Vives, l:551b-52a and 555b); and In duos libros Perihermenias, q. 2, nn. 3 and 5 (Vives, l:586a-b). 135 See above, nn. 100-2. 136 On Duns and the minimum of actuality required in being known, see above, nn. 132 and 135; for Henry, n. 96. 137 See above, n. 104.
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implicated being of essence as well.138 In apparent contradiction to his. efforts to sever possibility from even the minimal "true being" implied in Henry's being of essence, here was Duns admitting that before creation things were "produced" in possibility.139 What is more, this production of possibles, though not to be confused with creation, was still movement out of nothing (de simpliciter nihilo) into a condition of other than absolute nonbeing.140 Yet beneath the similarities of structure and language lay profound metaphysical disparities between Duns's and Henry's view. The notion that any possible object had first to take shape in intelligibile being before it could be brought to existence had implied for Henry that God was precise, or exclusive, cause of "the possible" as possible. Duns, on the other hand, made it plain that his understanding of possibility as due to the absence of a formal repugnance of constituent conceptual parts, a logical quality in no way dependent on God or derived from his power to produce, meant that God was not sole, perhaps not even most significant, cause of possibility in possible objects.141 In his words, a thing was possible formally on its own (ex se formaliter), although so far as principiant causes were concerned (principiative) - we might say, causes that had the capacity to bring about real effects - possibility arose from the divine
138 Duns laid out this two-stage process in a pair of passages devoted more specifically to explaining divine ideas: Lectura I, d. 35, q. un. (Vatican, 17:452, n. 22); and Ordinatio I, d. 35, q. un. (Vatican, 6:258, n. 32). See also references to the same view in Lectura I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 17:533-34, nn. 14, 17 and 19); Ordinatio I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 6:358, n. 14); Lectura II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:26, n. 80); and Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:43, n. 80). 139 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 6:358-59, n. 14): "Si tamen res intelligatur esse possibilis antequam Deus per omnipotentiam producat, illud sic est verum, sed in ilia possibilitate non est simpliciter prius, sed producitur ab intellectu divino." See also Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:43, n. 80). On Duns cutting "possibility" from quidditative being, see above, nn. 107 and 108. 140 Duns, Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:44, n. 84): "Potest aliquid produci (licet non creari) de simpliciter nihilo, . . . istud tamen 'produci' non est creari, quia non creatur aliquid in esse simpliciter, sed producitur ad esse secundum quid." Similar language, but mixed with uncharacteristic use of "quidditative being," can be found in Collationes 33, n. 4 (Vives, 5:279b). Duns's position in Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:43-44, n. 83), that creation proper could not be "simpliciter de nihilo", revised his earlier view finding such language perfectly acceptable - see Lectura II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:26-27, nn. 81-82). 141 Duns, Lectura I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 17:534, n. 17): "Ex hoc autem apparet quod potentia Dei non est praecisa causa quare aliquid est factibile et producibile, sed cum ilia requiritur quod non sit formalis repugnantia partium."
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mind, the ultimate extrinsic principle (primum extrinsecum principiuni) by which a "possible" was produced in cognitive being.142 More to the point, he insisted that any description of creation as proceeding by stages be held to the terms of his absolute divide between cognitive and real being, the latter inseparably embracing being of existence and of essence.143 Consequently, the object as known by God and residing before creation as "objective possible" in divine mind was not to be formally identified with the object as object that God knew, either its existence or its essence. Cut off completely from the reality attaching to the created world, such a "possible" in mind had only "diminished being": it was merely a diminished and not authentic version of the thing.144 Thus despite the common practice of calling it the object known, the appellation was valid only in a manner of speaking (secundum quid}, as if by a philosophical figure of speech.145 Of course, since this same "possible," taken as a mental phenomenon produced by God's intellect, subjectively possessed the true being of a cognitive act, Duns admitted that if forced to identify an objective actuality associated with it one could reply that the being in a manner of speaking (esse secundum quid] of the object God knew was in a sense reducible to the
142
Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 6:354, nn. 6-7): ". . . sed lapis est possibilis esse ex se formaliter; ergo et reducendo quasi ad primum extrinsecum principium, intellectus divinus erit illud a quo est prima ratio possibilitatis in lapide. .. . [Ejrgo [lapis] est ex se formaliter possibilis et quasi principiative per intellectum divinum." The same was true of impossibility - see the same question (Vatican, 6:360, n. 17). In Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 16 (Vives, 22:529a), Duns said a thing was possible "formaliter" on its own, "causaliter" from God. In Lectura II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:26, n. 82); and even more in Ordinatio I, d. 43, q. un. (Vatican, 6:358-59, n. 14), he located a thing's production in cognitive being by God and its becoming a possible in itself in successive instants of nature, while in Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:49-50, nn. 93~94), he made sure it was clear that there was no temporal progression here by noting that possibility, which was formally from the object ex se, was always accompanied by cognitive being, even though cognitive being and possibility were not formally exactly the same. See also the more detailed analysis of "principiative" causation with regard to possibility in Marrone, "Duns Scotus on Metaphysical Potency," pp. 284-87. 143 On the divide, see above, nn. 99-101. 144 See above, nn. 102 and 135. 140 On "the possible" as the object itself only secundum quid, see above, n. 103; and also the passage from Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 1, q. 2, n. 14, cited above, n. 107. On "the possible" as having less than "true being" before creation, see the passages from Lectura II, d. 1, q. 2; and Ordinatio II, d. 1, q. 2, cited above, nn. 103 and 140; as well as the quotations from the Lectura given in n. 110. Also consult the discussion of this point in Marrone, "Knowledge of Being", pp. 45-46.
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being pure and simple (esse simpliciter) of a cognitum in the divine mind. But in contrast to Henry when faced with same noetic configuration, he returned to his claim that the actuality in question was not part of the true being of the object; formally it remained forever the being pure and simple of God's thoughts.146 As always for Duns, actuality of knowledge implied actuality of mind but said nothing about actuality of object. Objects were known as determined by conditions at some point or points in their extramental history, not necessarily conditions at the time of cognition and most assuredly not those attaching to the knowing intellect. From this it should be obvious how Duns would resolve the problem of immutability in special complex truths like the truths of science. He naturally recognized that certain knowledge, at least with reference to universal truth, did not require actual existence of its immediate objects in the created world, a position nearly unanimously accepted in the schools since the days of William of Auvergne.147 Yet scholastics such as Matthew of Aquasparta had conceded this fundamental principle and still contended that the immutability of such knowledge ultimately rested on some tie with God and his ideas, the only truly immutable and eternal reality in all existence. Even Henry had once implied as much.148 William of Ware seems to have yielded to such Augustinianizing attitudes, too, although the evidence he did so is only indirect.149 Duns resolutely rejected all such appeals to an ontological underpinning of cognitive immutability in God or God's eternal understanding. Just as Henry on occasion, and Grosseteste more consistently
14l)
Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:289, n. 46 - also cited above, n. 103): "Et si velis quaerere aliquod esse verurn huius obiecti ut sic, nullum est quaerere nisi 'secundum quid,' nisi quod istud 'esse secundum quid' reducitur ad aliquod esse simpliciter. quod est esse ipsius intellectionis; sed istud 'esse simpliciter' non est formaliter esse eius quod dicitur 'esse secundum quid,' sed est eius terminative vel principiative, ita quod ad istud 'verum esse secundum quid' reducitur sic quod sine isto vero esse istius non esset illud 'esse secundum quid' illius." See also Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:267, n. 51); and II, d. 1, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:49, n. 93) - the latter cited above, nn. 82, 117 and 142. 147 Duns, Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:552, n. 319); Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2, n. 5 (Vives, 22:41b~42a); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, nn. 8-9 (Vives, 25:290a-b). 148 On Matthew, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, nn. 44-45; for hints of the same in Henry, and also Vital du Four, Pt. 3, ch. 11, nn. 91-93. 149 William, Quaestiones, q. 14 (arg. "sexto") (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrdge und Untersuchungen. p. 92).
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before him, so he refused to accept the Augustinian argument — seen, for instance, in Bonaventure — that mutability in the natural world made divine intervention necessary to sustain immutability at the level of science. As he said in the Lectum, such reasoning simply failed to take account of the fact that whatever permanence attached to human knowledge depended not on external objects but rather intelligible species representing objects to mind, species free of the ontological restraints of the extra-mental world.150 By the time these ideas were revised for the Ordinatio, Duns had only sharpened his opposition to the Augustinian point of view, with the invocation of species serving merely to introduce a more subtle way of considering the cognitive object. He now explained that it was the "nature" of things - that is, their absolute essence in his sense of the term - and not precisely the particular objects themselves that generated species in the mind, so that these natures (naturae per se) constituted the authentic object of scientific knowledge. It was thus in conformity with fixed relations among natures, not connections among particular things, that intellect formulated propositions representing immutable truth. 10 ' Given Duns's insistence on ontologically separating object from conditions of cognition and his determination to anchor the validity of concepts to their inherent logical coherence, the new emphasis on "nature" could only point even further away from actual existence, whether in the world or, as Augustinians would suggest, in the divine mind, and towards the ephemeral realm of logic itself. Less and less was appeal to extramental support necessary to sustain immutability. Indeed, by his Parisian lectures Duns would go so far as to say that there could be science, certain and immutable, even if, per impossibile, there were no God.'02 Yet still he felt compelled to explain how it was admissible to apply a term like "immutable," with its metaphysical concreteness and the echo of eternal existence, to human cognition. The answer, inserted as a further revision to the text, was that in the cases of
150
Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:298, n. 183); the Augustinian reasoning is presented in the same question, p. 287, n. 157. For the latter's appearance in Bonaventure, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, n. 10. On Henry, consult Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 93; on Grosseteste, Pt. 1, ch. 3, nn. 33-34. 151 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:150-51, n. 246). On this, see also above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 29. 1)2 Duns, Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 3, q'uncula 4, n. 17 (Vives, 22:53b), also cited above, n. 118.
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intelligibile species in their role as signifiers, of the intellectual object no matter how defined, or most especially of immutable complex truths — for instance, scientific principles or self-evident propositions — "immutability" need not imply unchanging reality perduring through all time. Instead all such things were "immutable" if, whenever they existed, they were incapable of shifting from true to false or vice versa, remaining unalterably, necessarily - one might even say "always" univalent.133 With regard to such objects, therefore, once mind had perceived them correctly it could not fall into error, since their truthvalue, although not their being, never varied.l34 Here Duns turned to a distinction already seen in Bonaventure's work, whether or not that was actually his source. The latter had separated absolute (simpliciter) immutability — the existentially eternal variety seen in God — from immutability by supposition (ex suppositione) — undeviating in value whenever its subject was found to exist — and upon these two established two sorts of cognitive certitude, absolute (simpliciter) and qualified (secundum quid}}^ Along the same lines, Duns distinguished absolute (simpliciter) necessity or incorruptibility, semantically equivalent to immutability in this context, from necessity or corruptibility in a qualified way (secundum quid}. The first attached to whatever existed and remained the same for eternity, the second to whatever remained the same whenever it happened to be. It was according to the latter sort of necessity that human mind attained to necessary truth, making immutability of this sort what science could aspire to.156 Duns thought this sufficed: for human knowledge to be called 153 por compiex truths, see Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:151, n. 247); for truths, species and objects, the same question, (Vatican, 3:149, 11. 16-22). 154 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:152-53, n. 250). 155 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, nn. 21 and 23; for the same in Matthew, n. 25. 156 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:151-52, n. 248): "Contra: quomodo propositio 'necessaria' affirmatur, si identitas extremorum potest destrui? Respondeo: quando res non est, non est identitas eius realis, - sed tune si est in intellectu, est identitas ut est obiectum intellectum, et necessaria secundum quid, quia in tali 'esse' extrema non possunt esse sine tali identitate; tamen ilia potest non esse, sicut extremum potest esse non intellectum. Ergo 'propositio necessaria' in intellectu nostro secundum quid, quia immutabilis in falsam; sed 'simpliciter necessaria' non nisi in intellectu divino, sicut nee extrema habent identitatem simpliciter necessario in aliquo 'esse' nisi in illo 'esse' intellecto." Duns used the term "simpliciter incorruptibilis" for the same idea earlier in the question, (Vatican, 3:149, 1. 17). In Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 43 (Vives, 25:317a~b) he employed what he considered more Aristotelianizing language: "necessitas a se" and "necessitas formalis."
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immutable, it need attain no more than immutability secundum quid. Unlike Bonaventure, he felt no urgency to resort to divine support to shore up the weakness of mankind's cognitive grasp and was simply willing to sever the tie between immutable knowledge in the world of sin and the authentic eternity of God.'07 Regardless of his debt to Henry and his borrowing from the classic Augustinian tradition, he thus differed radically from previous Augustinians. He wanted to bring Augustinian metaphysics down to earth, and more than anyone else before, even William of Auvergne and Grosseteste at their most Aristotelianizing, he succeeded.
1 >7
See discussion of the eternity secundum quid of immutable truths in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:160, n. 262), a passage drawing on Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:303, n. 192), where Duns made clear how human mind does not grasp immutable truths as they are related to God, thus explicitly abandoning Matthew of Aquasparta's and Richard of Conington's invocation of Henry's metaphysics to reaffirm Augustinian noetics. A related passage, severing cognitive necessity from the ontology of actuality, can be found in Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:147-48, n. 38).
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Both William of \Vare and Duns Scotus had borrowed the technical lexicon and much of the structure for their metaphysics of being and essence from Henry of Ghent. But unlike William, Duns had jettisoned the ontological freight Henry designed this analytical framework to carry, particularly a number of controversial assumptions about reality that had seemed to assign absolute essence special ontological status tied to its exemplary relation to God. For Duns, there was little about the constitution of essence that resonated of anything more than a simple logic of noncontradiction. Yet Henry's theory of essence, precisely because of its ontological implications, had permitted his otherwise worldly and Aristotelianizing noetics to accommodate profoundly Neoplatonizing inferences about the object of cognition. And the latter had proven crucial to his explanation of the wayfarer's knowledge of God, even strengthening Augustinian claims for intimate access to divinity within the limits of normal intellective activity. Duns's attack on Henry at just this point in his metaphysics would presumably weaken such claims, in light of his anti-illuminationism perhaps extinguish them altogether. So far as natural knowledge of God was concerned, one might expect Duns to have been forced to quit the Augustinian camp. In fact, the historical upshot was quite different. No doubt the rejection of divine illumination in normal cognition of truth and Duns's distaste for Henry's ontology of essence stretched to the limit his ties to the intellectual currents examined in the chapters above. But rather than signal the end of a tradition, his ideas on natural knowledge of God breathed new life into many of the most fundamental Augustinian demands. Here, as with metaphysics pure and simple, Duns's thought marked a dramatic turning point, a discontinuity within the Augustinian tradition, but no abandonment of it. Relying once more on prodigious insight and originality, he moved beyond the mere presentiment of critical Augustinians like William of Ware that Henry's elaborate vision could not stand to an altogether reconstructed formulation of traditional concerns.
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The engine driving Duns's reworking of the theory of a natural knowledge of God was denial of immediate access to divinity, the resolute elimination of any process or mechanism smacking of supernaturalism or divine intervention tucked inside the order of nature. His determination to avoid so much as the hint of ontologism had indeed provided a powerful corroborative motive for eschewing Henry's subtle efforts to bind reality to God through metaphysical convolutions in essence in the first place. On this score he was not content simply to follow Henry's, and Matthew of Aquasparta's, lead in naturalizing Augustinianism, purging it of the quasi-mystical dynamic that had emerged so often up through Bonaventure, but insisted on carrying his predecessors' initial, and sometimes halting, steps all the way to their logical conclusion. Still, with all his naturalizing he was not striving for the kind of Aristotelianism championed by such as Thomas and his followers. He valued the Augustinian cast of mind, most especially its assurance that intellect had access to a special opening onto God by way of the very cognitive evidence it garnered from the senses. Duns was confident he could preserve this perspective alongside an uncompromising worldliness. Translated by him into a philosophical language fully accommodated to Aristotelianizing attitudes about nature and natural processes, Augustine's seductive vision of a harmony between mind and its divine object was at last equipped with adequate means to withstand the ideological pressures threatening to overwhelm it in the years when Henry's metaphysically more luxuriant defense of Augustinianism came under attack. Duns's ideas about natural knowledge of God thus represent the culmination of a seventy-five year process of adaptation and clarification engaging the Augustinian current since William of Auvergne. His was the final step in an effort to accommodate a powerful version of Neoplatonism to the new scholastic standards of the university world. As often, what strikes one initially is how much Duns retained of Henry's general approach. There can be no doubt he began his thinking about natural knowledge of God with Henry as his guide, and the same could be said for William of Ware, at least from what little is known of his ideas on the matter. Just like Henry, Duns stipulated that the mind of the wayfarer could by natural means know something of God's essence, even "quiddity."1 He was if anything Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:16-17, n. 25): "Dico ergo
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more sanguine on this score than his predecessor, criticizing Henry for qualifying intellect's knowledge of God's "whatness" as "almost accidental" (quasi per accidens}. For Duns, the wayfarer's concept of divinity was quidditative in the full sense of the word.2 Like Henry, too, he specified that precisely because this knowledge was natural, the concept of God it provided had to be derived from knowledge of creatures - which was to say, it must originate in sensory cognition.3 But surpassing Henry once more, he insisted that this meant the wayfarer's natural knowledge of God was entirely a posteriori.4 William remained more ambiguous, holding closer to the literal formulations in Henry's work while still denying any immediate grasp of a concept of God.5 Due to the limitations imposed by its sensible origin, intellect's
primo quod non tantum haberi potest conceptus naturaliter in quo quasi per accidens concipitur Deus, puta in aliquo attributo, sed etiam aliquis conceptus in quo per se et quiditative concipiatur Deus." On Henry's view, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 104 and 108. Since Duns realized it might be argued God had no quiddity, in the sense of an essence capable of being represented by a definition, he took care to explain the special way he thought the notion of quiddity could be applied to God: see Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:24, n. 23); and for related comments on "being," pp. 40-41, n. 75. Strictly speaking, it was not "quiddity" but a "quidditative aspect" (quid] one identified in God, and in such general objects as "being." Olivier Boulnois, in the "Introduction" to Jean Duns Scot, Sur la connaissance de Dieu et I'univocite de I'etant (Paris, 1988), pp. 68-69, has taken all this as evidence Duns agreed with Henry and the authors of the Condemnation of 1277, implicitly against Thomas Aquinas, that the viator must have a positive, not just privative, concept of God. Against it, however, must be set a more cautious attitude evidenced by Duns in nn. 122 and 123 below. 2 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:225 and 231-32, nn. 10 and 20); and Ordmatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:11, n. 20, and 16-17, n. 25 quoted above, n. 1). For an idea what the phrase "quasi per accidens" means in this context, see Lectura Prol., p. 3, qq. 1-3 (Vatican, 16:29 and 30, nn. 77 and 80): it implies knowledge solely by means of a property or attribute. On Henry's position, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 107. Timotheus Barth, "De univocationis ends scotisticae intentione principali necnon valore critico," Antonianum 28 (1953): 95-97, concludes from this that Scotus believed Henry allowed no natural quidditative notion of God. It is interesting that in Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 2 (Vives, 26:3a), Duns himself used the phrase "per accidens" loosely in association with knowledge in line with the way he claimed mind knew God in via - that is, in a common, confused concept. 5 Duns, Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 1, n. 16 (Vives, 22:16a); and less explicitly, Collationes 13, n. 2 (Vives, 5:200b). 4 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:24, n. 24) ". . . sicut prius de 'si est' [Deus] . . . ita de quid est. Potest tamen utrumque a posteriori in hac scientia [metaphysicali] manifestari. . . ." Henry had insisted the wayfarer's natural knowledge of God was a priori: see above, pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 21. 3 William, Quaestiones, q. 21 (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchungen, p. 102).
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natural knowledge of God was, though quidditative, never perfect under conditions of sin. While William tried to explain by saying that divinity could never be known faultlessly by means of its effects, since nothing other than God himself was really, and pari passu epistemically, commensurate with him, Duns was satisfied with the simple assertion that imperfect understanding of the term "God" was the best mind could attain by natural means in its present state (naturaliter nunc).6 For him, such imperfection came down to the fact that the knowledge in question was confused rather than distinct: it was simple knowledge which had not been reduced to a clear definition.7 William, too, took "imperfect" and "indistinct" to be equivalent descriptions in this regard.8 Both conceded one could make the same point by noting that mind's natural knowledge of God in via was not under the formal aspect of divinity itself (sub rations Dei] or the Godhead's particular essence (sub ratione huius essentiae ut haec}, reservations reflective of Henry's insistence that God did not intervene in humankind's natural cognition as object in his own essence.9 They were aware, moreover, that separating perfect from
6 William, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb): " . . . causa nunquam per effectum cognoscitur perfecte, nisi effectus adequet suam causam. Cum igitur nullus effectus adequetur ipsi Deo, ipse perfecte cognosci non potest per effectus naturales." Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:29-30, n. 48); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 3 (Vives, 26:5b). 7 Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 2 (Vives, 26:3a), cited above, n. 2. Duns confirmed such language, stating that intellect could form no distinct and fully quidditative concept of God by natural means in the world of sin, in Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 11 (Vives, 25:293a~b). On distinct and confused knowledge according to Duns, see above, Ft. 4, ch. 13, nn. 160-61. 8 William, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb): "Ad primum pro opinione [MS Vat., Chigi. B. VII. 114, f. 2vb, adds: contraria secundo adductum] dicendum quod ad illam connexionem cognoscendam aliquo modo se extendit scientia que oritur a sensu, et tantum possumus scire de ea et de extremis naturaliter, ad quantum se extendit ista scientia. Et hoc non est nisi sub ratione ends et esse uniuersalis, non ad perfectam et distinctam cognitionem." 9 William, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb): "Sed nulla scientia acquisita determinat de Deo sub ratione Dei. Quia si aliqua esset, hec esset methaphysica, sed hec non, quia de Deo determinat sub ratione cause et sub ratione ends communissimi." Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:39, n. 57), and especially (Vatican, 3:38, n. 56): "Tertio dico quod Deus non cognoscitur naturaliter a viatore in particulari et proprie, hoc est sub ratione huius essentiae ut haec et in se." See also Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:238 and 247, nn. 35 and 57); and Reportatio parisiensis (examinata) IA, d. 2, qq. 1-3 (ed. Wolter and Adams, in "Parisian Proof," p. 254): ". . . quia medium ad esse est nobis ignotum, scilicet essentia Dei ut haec vel deltas sub ratione deitatis." On Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 7, 8, and 38.
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imperfect cognition of divinity in this way mirrored Henry's distinction between knowing God in particular (in particulari or in spedali] and knowing him in general (in universali or in generali), a division commensurate with the difference between human knowledge of God in beatitude and in the world of sin.10 On this last point, Duns added that Henry's description "in universali" did not refer to the strict universality of categorical predication but rather, as Henry had made plain, to the fact that God was known in a general nature (communis ratio) loosely shared with creatures." Furthermore, in accord with Henry, both he and William were prepared to link up with the hybrid of Augustine and Avicenna that had become increasingly entrenched over the course of the thirteenth century, declaring that the general nature in which divinity was known was "being" itself. William accepted Henry's reasoning on the matter without hesitation, and from his earliest references to knowledge of God in the Questions on the Metaphysics Duns seems to have done the same.12 As with Henry, and the classic Augustinians before him, the two theologians defended their views by referring to the famous text from Avicenna on "being" as among the first ideas impressed on mind, a passage liberally quoted throughout their works.13 Duns read Avicenna as arguing, moreover, that "being" was
10
On Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 9 and 36-38. Richard of Conington, like Duns and William, characterized the difference as between "perfect" and "imperfect" knowledge - see the same chapter, n. 40. William referred to Henry's distinction in Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb), in a passage immediately preceding that quoted above, n. 9: "Item, omnis scientia acquisita uel est uniuersalis, uel particularis. Si particularis, sic est de aliquo subiecto sub ratione particulari, et si sit uniuersalis, de aliquo erit sub ratione uniuersali et communi." Duns explicitly recognized the parallel between his perfect versus imperfect and Henry's special versus general knowledge in Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:29-30, n. 48 - cited above, n. 6); while in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:226, n. 11); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:12, n. 20), he referred to Henry's division "in universali" as opposed to "in particulari." In Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:238 and 241, nn. 35-36 and 44); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:38-39, nn. 56-57 - partly quoted above, n. 9), he said he agreed with Henry that humankind's natural knowledge of God was universal and not particular, but not for the same reasons. 11 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:12, n. 20); and for the term "communis ratio," Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:226, n. 11). 12 See the passages from William's Quaestiones, q. 2, quoted above, nn. 8 and 9; and the implication of the same in q. 21 (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchungen, p. 102 [Ad illud Augustini]); and Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, qq. 2-3 (Opera Phil., 3:233-34, nn. 115-16). 13 William, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2ra): ". . . primum
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absolutely first of all precisely because "being" qua "being" (ens inquantum ens] was most common or inclusive, from which it followed that positively every other concept, including that of God, was ultimately known in and through it.14 While recognizing that Henry had referred to the primitive common concepts as "first intentions," Duns chose to call them "transcendental universals" (universalia transcendentid) or just "transcendentals" (transcendentia, rationes transcendentes}.^ Plainly both William and Duns were not just well acquainted with their predecessor's position on natural knowledge of God and God as first object of intellect but also inclined to draw on it for their own work. Again it was Duns who went the extra mile to lay out Henry's views in detail, and as before with the metaphysics of essence, here, too, he revealed himself a perceptive reader.16 Especially impressive is his sketch of Henry's three levels of the sinner's knowledge of divinity and, within the most general, three sublevels comprising mind's very first steps to God.17 Careful to reproduce the description
principium incomplexum est ens secundum Auicennam . . ."; and also q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 214) - neither passage, however, arguing specifically about knowledge of God. For Duns, see Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Prol.; I, q. 10; and VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 3:8, n. 17; and 182, n. 6; and 4:63, n. 20); Lectura Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 16:1, n. 1); Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:2, n. 1); Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:270, n. 120); and Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:215, n. 125) - all of the latter referring to the problem of knowing divinity. On Henry and the reference to Avicenna, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 1.3. 14 Duns, Collationes 19, n. 2 (Vives, 5:222a); and Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Prol.; and I, q. 10 (Opera Phil., 3:8, n. 17; and 182, n. 6). Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:38-39, nn. 68 and 70) makes the point that "ens inquantum ens" is "communissimum;" while the same question, p. 71, n. 161, advances the claim for "ens in communi." William of Ware had already noted that the "being" in which God was known was "communissimum": see above, n. 9. For Henry and Vital du Four on "ens in quantum ens" as a primary concept, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 30-31. 15 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Prol.; I, q. 1; IV, q. 1; and VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 3:9, n. 18; 15, 11. 5-6; and 308, n. 51; and 4:63, n. 20); Lectura 1, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:263, n. 103); and d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:37, n. 107). His definition of the transcendentals was specifically devised so as to include more than just the traditional "first intentions": Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:37-38, n. 110); and Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:206, n. 114). 1(> Duns examined Henry's ideas about knowing God most extensively in his commentaries on the Sentences, at distinction three of the first book: Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:225-30, nn. 10-17); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1~2 (Vatican, 3:11-15, nn. 20-23). 17 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1~2 (Vatican, 16:227-28, n. 12); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:12-13, n. 21. On Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, pp. 309 and 311-12.
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of the second of the three sublevels as involving abstraction of an all-inclusive notion of being and the third the quite different extraction of a notion of being applicable solely to the perfectly subsistent form of God, he repeated Henry's observation that the former notion signified "being" in general as privatively indeterminate while the latter extrapolated still further to the stage of negative indetermination. In his uncompromisingly logical way, he even eliminated the ambiguity in the second stage as Henry had presented it, stipulating that "being" at this level referred to both creatures and God.18 He then went on to explain how for Henry all the levels, from most general to general, could be distributed between two basic ways of knowing God in the world: naturally and rationally. So far as divinity was known "naturally" in the first two sublevels of most general knowledge, it constituted mind's very first object, while known "rationally" in the last sublevel of most general and the two somewhat narrower levels that followed, it was among the last objects of mind, coming well after knowledge of most creatures.19 He even pointed out that Henry had been forced to concede that God as known first in natural knowledge was not consciously perceived by intellect and how he had turned by way of explanation first to the extraordinary simplicity of the concept of being in which God was initially conceived, second to the fact that the manner in which mind grasped its first two sublevels of most general knowledge was not, in Henry's words, according to any formal characteristic by which God's being could be distinguished from that of creatures.20 The Lectura added Henry's conclusion that since God was truly first known, though unperceived, the concept of God was "means of knowing" (ratio cognoscendi] all else.21 Finally, Duns recognized that for Henry and his followers the unity 18 On this second stage, see especially Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:15, n. 22); and Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:20, n. 59). For the ambiguity in Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 61-62. 19 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:228-30, nn. 14 and 16); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:14-15, n. 22). On Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 49, 50, 52 and 54. 211 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:229, n. 15); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1—2 (Vatican, 3:15, n. 23). For Henry on mind's failure to perceive God as object, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 63; on the lack of distinction and the extreme simplicity of the primitive idea of being, the same chapter, nn. 91-92. 21 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:230-31 and 258, nn. 17 and 88); merely implied in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:78, n. 125). On Henry, see Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 11, 33 and 34.
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attributable to the primitive notion of being mind retrieved from the depths of sensory cognition was no more than analogical, spanning two similar but still divergent concepts. He realized Henry had tried to account for intellect's impression that at the level of "natural" knowledge of God it was directed to a single common concept by fixing the blame on mental error, a predictable conceptual confusion resulting from the fact that the two authentic concepts of being were formally so close (propinqui, proximi).22 Even more astutely, he understood that Henry's insistence that there was no single concept truly common to God and creatures — "being" in absolutely every case signifying, strictly speaking, either one or the other class of object but not both - meant not only that all the wayfarer's natural ideas of God were proper, picking out God as object and nothing else, but also that, in light of "being"'s radical conceptual simplicity no matter how construed, as referred to God the concept was at the same time proper and absolutely simple (simpliciter simplex). Here he brought to the surface more of the philosophical implications of Henry's system than Henry had himself, almost surely providing the inspiration for Conington's similar conclusions about Henry's ideas on "being" signifying God.23 Yet if Duns was a keen reader of Henry, ready to adopt a good part of the latter's theory of the wayfarer's natural knowledge of divinity, he was ruthless in expunging logical confusion as wrell as anything he thought savored of either ontologism or suspension of 22 On the analogical nature of "being" and mind's error, see Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:226, n. 11); d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:17 and 26, nn. 53 and 77); and Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:171, n. 44); and d. 22, q. un. (Vatican, 5:341-42, n. 2); on the closeness of the two concepts, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:226, n. 11); Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:12 and 20, nn. 20 and 30); and d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:179, n. 59). For Henry's views, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 68, 85, 86 (on knowledge of being most generally as a "modus confusus"), 90 and 91. It is interesting to note that in Collationes 3 (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:371), or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," pp. 212-13), Duns described the pertinent position as holding that the most general concept of being was "unus secundum quid," a characterization appearing not in Henry but rather in Richard of Conington - see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 76. 23 Duns, Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:26, n. 77), on all Henry's concepts of God as proper; and Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:141, 11. 15-17); and d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:10 and 20, nn. 18 and 31), on "being" applied to God as both proper and absolutely simple. On the general idea of absolute simplicity, see Wolter, The Transcendental, pp. 81-82. For Henry's confirmation that all concepts referred strictly either to God or to creatures, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 75; for Conington's conclusions, the same chapter, nn. 84 and 93; and below, n. 87.
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the order of nature. And evidently he believed there was a great deal to be expunged. In sharp contrast to William of Ware, he was convinced that Henry's theory, at least according to the precise terms in which Henry had presented it, would not suffice to account for knowledge of God, or if it did, accounted for knowledge of the wrong kind. So far as concerns the latter charge, he argued that if Henry really meant for mind to know divinity across an analogical divide, and thus by means of creaturely imitation of the divine, then the principles of his own philosophy made it more reasonable to suppose that God was grasped as ideal exemplar than as simple being, for it was as idea that God was most closely imitated by his effects. But in that case, since Henry held that God served as idea in his particular, or "bare," essence, it followed that intellect should know God naturally in particular (in particulari or ut haec), which both Henry and Duns vigorously denied.24 In fact, the rejection by Henry of knowledge of divinity in any concept common to it and creatures immediately implied the same. As indicated just above, Duns took such rejection as requiring that the concept mind formed of God as "being" be proper and absolutely simple, and this, to his view, necessitated that it represent divine essence ut haec.23 Surely more weighty, however, was the claim that, questions of particularity or generality aside, Henry had failed to provide a plausible explanation for how sinful intellect working by natural means obtained whatever general knowledge of God he claimed it did. If creatures and divinity had nothing really in common, as all scholastics agreed, then despite what Henry said, there was simply no way mind, beginning solely with information provided by sensation, could pierce through to (suffbdere) a concept of God - or more precisely, a concept of God's being - formally divergent, as Henry insisted, from any concept legitimately applied to creatures. To Duns's way of seeing things, an object just could not provide material for
24 See Duns's argument, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:38-39, n. 56). For Henry on God as creative ideal in his own particular essence, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 7; on Henry and Duns against natural knowledge of God ut haec, see above, this chapter, n. 9. 25 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:177, n. 55); q. 4 (Vatican, 4:257-58, n. 188); and d. 22, q. un. (Vatican, 5:342-43, n. 31). The reading chosen by the editors for Vatican, 4:177, 1. 9 - "non" - should surely be replaced by the variant: "enim." For the argument about "being" signifying God as proper and absolutely simple concept, see above, n. 23.
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a cognitive representation formally unlike (omnino alterius rationis) every concept by which the object itself was naturally known.26 Of course it could hardly be said that Henry's philosophy was devoid of resources to deflect criticism of this sort. Having begun the revisionism of Augustinian epistemology by taking serious steps away from a doctrine of divine illumination, and having sought support for his notion of natural knowledge of divinity exclusively in the theory of cognition of all things in "being," he at least intuitively sensed that he was putting at risk the ideal of the wayfarer's special access to God. Absent divine illumination, he needed new corroboration for the claim that mind could span the gap between the being of creatures and the merely analogous being of divinity so as to move to a knowledge of the latter sufficiently dense to be characterized as quidditative.2' Deliverance for him lay with his views on essence - or more precisely, because of them he felt free to regard neither the distance between creature and divinity nor the solely analogical unity of "being" as destructive of his espousal of a natural, quidditative knowledge of God.28 Duns was acutely aware of the crucial role Henry's vision of essence played, and despite the fact that its function was never expressly acknowledged by Henry himself, he made a special point of airing his own dissatisfaction with any attempt to redeem Henry's account of natural knowledge of divinity by relying on metaphysics of so unusual a sort. He particularly targeted the efforts advanced in Henry's name to use the idea of essence as founded on a relation to God, or perhaps even equivalent to such a relation. Of course Richard of Conington had been one of those proposing just such a defense; Matthew of Aquasparta seems to have been another. Duns had already criticized Conington's view of essence, or ens ratum, on its own terms. He now made clear he believed that even if such a view 26 Duns gave Henry's view in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1~2 (Vatican, 16:228, n. 13); offering his own counterargument in the same question (Vatican, 16:245, n. 54); and in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:43, n. 62). 21 On this problem, see Marrone, "Knowledge of Being," pp. 31, 51 and 52; and above, Ft. 3, ch. 11, n. 7. Robert P. Prentice, The Basic Quidditative Metaphysics of Duns Scotus as Seen in his De primo principio, Spicilegium Pontificii Athenaei Antoniani, 16 (Rome, 1970), p. 22, affirms the not uncommon view that it was allegiance to a theory of illumination which allowed Henry to tolerate the analogical character of "being." 28 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, pp. 337-38; and Marrone, "Knowledge of Being," pp. 35 and 39.
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could be upheld, it would do nothing to salvage the account of the wayfarer's knowledge of God.29 Both Lectura and Ordinatio laid out the basics of Conington's argument: that knowledge of a created essence, because it necessarily entailed perception of the relation to God by which all essence was constituted, sufficed to explain knowledge of the divine correlative making the object what it was. In other words, the relational character of essence itself ensured that immanent in cognition of any created thing lay knowledge of a formally distinct divine being.30 Duns responded that this turned the process of intellection on its head. To his eyes, one could know the relation Henry and Conington had in mind only if one already knew both correlatives upon which it was based, so that knowledge of essence as they conceived of it, rather than accounting for knowledge of God, was instead attainable only after God was already known.31 Yet even if one conceded that a relation might be perceived before the correlative extremes were known, and thus that Henry and Richard were correct about mind's initial grasp of essence as relative, this still would not serve to explain the knowledge of God they had in mind. The relation of creatures to divine ideal was merely conceptual, therefore woefully inadequate for generating understanding of a divine correlative which was in fact God's absolute essence or perfection.32 But criticizing Henry brought Duns only halfway. Indeed, the very sharpness of his criticism intensified the urgency to devise his own explanation for humankind's natural knowledge of God. Along with 29
On Duns's critique of this application of Henry's theory of essence, see Marrone, "Knowledge of Being," p. 35. For the attack on Conington's metaphysics of essence in itself, see above, Pt. 4, ch. 14, nn. 89 and 90; on Matthew in this regard, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 87; and Pt. 2, ch. 7, nn. 52-53. 30 Duns, Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:21, n. 63); and Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:174-75, n. 52) - both cited above, Pt. 4, ch. 14, n. 86. See a quick statement of the same in Collationes 3 (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:374); or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," p. 216). For Conington on his own position, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 81. 31 Duns, Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:21, n. 64); and as an aside in Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:176, n. 54 [p. 176, 11. 1-3]). 32 Duns, Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:22-23, nn. 67-68); and Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:175-76, nn. 53-54), the later version homing in precisely on the inadequacy of a conceptual relation to generate absolute knowledge of an exalted extreme. For a short version of the more general argument given in the Lectura (Vatican, 17:22-23, n. 68), see Collationes 3 (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:375); or (with a better variant of the text) 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," p. 217).
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William of Ware, he had modeled his general approach to the problem on Henry's, yet after careful scrutiny of the details, he himself had been led to reject several critical assumptions Henry brought to bear. How could he make good on the Augustinian promise of intimate knowledge of divinity while repudiating so much of his predecessor's account of the way it was to be achieved? His problem was potentially even more intractable than that Henry had faced after moving away from divine illumination, a dilemma of a philosophical order unmatched in the thought of any Augustinian examined so far. Could Duns, without the classic doctrine of divine illumination, without Henry's conviction that knowledge of essence directed mind to God, without even his vision of the constitution of essence itself, explain the natural origin of a quidditative concept of God? Could he, equipped with so few of the tools the Augustinian current had traditionally employed, span the chasm the analogical nature of "being" set before the wayfarer's inquiring mind? Duns appears to have been awrare of the precariousness of his plight. His hope for natural theology — what he called metaphysics — as well as positive theology — plain "theology" in his lexicon — among believers in the world depended on a successful resolution. At stake, in short, lay his aspirations for defending meaningful discourse about God in via - meaningful for anyone, that is, but those to whom a vision had been granted in which the significance of the term "God" or its equivalent was revealed. If there was no explanation for natural knowledge of divinity other than Henry's, then one would have to count on a miracle for sinful humanity to form a serviceable concept of its God.33 So serious a challenge demanded a radical response. First among all scholastics, Duns moved beyond the analogical unity of "being" to claim that the concept was, in its absolute simplicity, fully univocal. At a stroke he thereby eliminated the noetic discord between knowing creatures and knowing the divine and made it easy to explain how, starting with only knowledge drawn from and legitimately referring to created objects, one could work by natural means to meaningful, indeed quidditative, cognition of God. The maneuver 33 On Duns's hope for positive theology, see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:266-67, n. 113); on the more general need to resolve his problem in order to defend discourse about God, Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:20-21, nn. 61-62), partially quoted below, n. 56.
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was undeniably bold. The history of the concept of being as well as of the notion of univocity had seen little change since Aristotle's day. Overnight, discourse on both topics was transformed, as if Duns alone realized the extent of the noetic problem first evident in Henry's search for an alternative to the classic Augustinian route to God and dared opt for a solution resolving all the philosophical difficulties simultaneously. With his audacity, he reaped the harvest of what Henry had sown.34 There is, of course, nothing new about calling attention to the revolutionary nature of the espousal of univocity of "being," nor is it novel to suggest that Duns's motive was to facilitate explanation of natural knowledge of God. Both claims have a venerable past, harking back among medievalists to Gilson and Bettoni.35 But the
34
On the problem of univocity of "being" introduced by Henry but not fully plumbed or resolved by him, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, pp. 316-17. Just prior to Duns, Matthew of Aquasparta put into words the theoretical dilemma facing Augustinians on this score: how to explain knowledge of God in a world where all cognition began with created objects if there was nothing common between the concepts of created and divine being - see Quaestiones de anima beata, q. 1, arg. 11 (ed. Emmen, BFS 18:182). He chose to resolve the matter by having recourse to Henry's noetics - see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 125 and 128. Having rejected this route, Duns was forced to mount a more audacious attack on the character of "being." For a discussion of Duns's metaphysics of being, see Hadrianus Borak, "Metaphysischer Aufbau des Seinsbegriffes bei Duns Scotus," WuW 28 (1965): 39~54. 33 See Etienne Gilson, "Avicenne et le point de depart de Duns Scot," AHDLMA 2 (1927): 116~17; and Efrem Bettoni, Duns Scotus: The Basic Principles of His Philosophy, pp. 16-17, 43, 46; // problema della conoscibilita di Dio, esp. pp. 254, 354-55, and 387-90; "Punti di contatto," pp. 520-25 and 529-30; "De argumentatione Doctoris Subtilis quoad existentiam Dei," Antonianum 28 (1953): 55; "The Originality of the Scotistic Synthesis," in John Duns Scotus, 1265-1965, ed. John K. Ryan and Bernardino M. Bonansea (Washington, D.C., 1965), pp. 41-44; and "Duns Scoto nella scolastica del secolo XIII," in De doctrina loannis Duns Scoti, Acta Congressus Scotistici Internationalis, 1, Oxford and Edinburgh, 11-17 September 1966 (Rome, 1968), vol. I, p. 111. One of the earliest modern statements of this position is Seraphin Belmond, Etudes sur la philosophic de Duns Scot, 1: Dieu: Existence et cognoscibilite (Paris, 1913), pp. 164-65. On its appearance among other scholars, see the other listings in Marrone, "Knowledge of Being," nn. 2 and 3, especially the references to Wolter, The Transcendental, p. 32; and "The 'Theologism' of Duns Scotus," FrS 7 (1947): 398. To the citations made there to Timotheus Barth must be added "Zur univocatio ends bei Johannes Duns Scotus," WuW 21 (1958): 95-108; and "De fundamento univocationis apud loannem Duns Scotum," Antonianum 14 (1939): 181-206, 277-98 and 373-92 - this latter work not so reliable as Earth's other studies. See also Parthenius Minges, "Beitrag zur Lehre des Duns Scotus liber die Univokation des Seinsbegriffes," Philosophisches Jahrbuch (der Gb'rresgesellschaft) 20 (1907): 307; Franz Paul Fackler, Der Seinsbegrijf in seiner Bedeutung fur die Gottes-Erkenntnis bei Duns Scotus (Augsburg, 1933), p. 16 (imprecise on the exact meaning of univocity for Duns);
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standard account contends that prompting the move was rejection of the Augustinian theory of divine illumination. The point here is instead that Henry had already taken this step, at least to the extent of removing illumination as a factor in knowledge of God. What led Duns to go further and embrace the idea of univocity was an additional, and for him more immediate, stimulus: resistance to Henry's theory of essence and the noetics it implied. Before showing how univocity of "being" worked to make natural knowledge of God in the world of sin plausible even within the constraints Duns placed on Augustinian noetics and Henry's metaphysics, it is necessary briefly to examine the theory itself and Duns's defense of it. In his early, logical works he had opted for the stance on both univocity and "being" that had prevailed for centuries, holding, like all thinkers since Boethius, to an expanded version of Aristotle's position: that univocity entailed commonness of both concept and reality and pertained exclusively to the five predicables of Porphyry: genus, difference, species, accident and property. The concept of being, an intention transcending genera, was consequently not a candidate for univocity, a prohibition so generally agreed upon that Duns characterized it as the common opinion.36 Andre Marc, L'idee de I'etre chez saint Thomas et dans la Scolastique posterieure, Archives de Philosophic, 10, 1 (Paris, 1933); Cyril L. Shircel, "Analogy and Univocity in the Philosophy of Duns Scotus," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 18 (1942): 143-64; Michael Schmaus, £ur Diskussion tiber das Problem der Univozitdt im Umkreis des Johannes Duns Skotus, Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse (1957), n. 4 (Munich, 1957); Gonsalvus Scheltens, "Die thomistische Analogielehre und die Univozitatslehre des J. Duns Scotus," FS 47 (1965): 315-38 - to be read with caution; Ludger Honnefelder, "Die Lehre von der doppelten ratitudo entis," p. 671; and Ens inquantum ens. Der Begriff des Seienden als solchen als Gegenstand der Metaphysik nach der Lehre des Johannes Duns Scotus, Beitrage, N.F. 16 (Mlinster, 1979), p. 305 - this latter one of the very best analyses of the basis of Duns's metaphysics; Douglas C. Langston, "Scotus and Ockham on the Univocal Concept of Being," FrS 39 (1979): 105-29; and Bernardino M. Bonansea, Man and his Approach to God in John Duns Scotus (Lanham, Md., 1983), pp. 118-19, which explicitly echoes Bettoni's view on the role of both univocity and first object of mind. 36 For closer examination of Duns's early views, see Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity," pp. 349~58. On Duns and the "common opinion," see, for instance, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:58, n. 125): and from near the end of his career, Ordinatio II, d. 24, q. un., n. 8 (Vives, 13:184a) - also cited below, n. 82. Parthenius Minges, "Beitrag zur Lehre des Duns Scotus," pp. 315-17, was a strong early voice arguing that Duns already held to the univocity of "being" in his early works, while Raymond de Courcerault, "L'ontologie de Duns Scot et le principe du pantheisme," EF 24 (1910): 138 and 154n, perceptively opposed him. De Courcerault's position has been upheld by S.Y. Watson, "Univocity
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Along with his contemporaries, the early Duns naturally conceded a degree of unity to "being," not the strong unity of univocity but rather the weaker one of analogy. William of Ware had couched his own defense of the analogical unity of "being" in the traditional Boethian language of attribution, whereby "being" of the highest sort was "attributed" to other types of being, each of which in some way approached it.3/ Duns agreed but took greater pains to be precise, following Henry's example by saying that, strictly speaking, "being" according to its broadest usage constituted a unity only in word (vox}.™ Even here, where loyal to convention, he added a special touch. The analogical unity of "being," Duns said, held only for the metaphysician and the natural philosopher; for the logician "being" was purely equivocal. The reason was that both metaphysics and natural philosophy looked beyond language to reality, to the real significanda where the attribution at the heart of analogy of "being" was located. Logic, on the other hand, attended just to terms and the way they signified. Since the word "being" referred to any one of its significanda no more immediately than to another, here there was no order of attribution and only equivocation among the differing applications.39 and Analogy of Being in the Philosophy of Duns Scotus," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 32 (1958): 189-206; Robert P. Prentice, "Univocity and Analogy according to Scotus's Super libros Elenchorum Aristotelis" AHDLMA 35 (1968): 39—64; and An Anonymous Question on the Unity of the Concept of Being (Attributed to Scotus) (Rome, 1972), p. 11; and Honnefelder, Ens inquantum ens, pp. 274-75. 3/ William, Quaestiones, q. 15 (ad 2.) (ed. Muscat, in "Guillelmi de Ware quaestio inedita," p. 348). In q. 85 (ed. Schmaus, in Der Liber propugnatorius, pp. 268*-69*), William commented that the unity of "being" was something like that of a genus, but there is no reason to believe he meant this to contradict his other statements limiting "being" to strictly analogical unity. For Henry on analog)' and attribution, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 71. 3H On attribution, consult the text cited below, n. 39; on the unity of a word, Duns, In librum Praedicamentorum, q. 4, n. 9 (Vives, l:448b). P'or Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 83. 39 See the classic passage in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IV, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:315-16, n. 70) - translated in Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity," p. 352. On challenges to the authority of this passage, which I regard as excessively sceptical, see the same article, p. 352, especially the reference in n. 18 to W7olter, The Transcendentals, p. 46n. It should also be noted that the new edition of the Questions on the Metaphysics deletes from the first sentence of this passage the explicit denial of univocity to "being" that is present in six of the eleven manuscripts collated as a basis for the edited text. As Pini points out, "Duns Scotus's Metaphysics," p. 364, the editors have not provided sufficient justification for this inherently controversial decision. But the matter is, in the end, less significant than even Pini believes, for what remains in the newly edited text can still not be seen as avoiding explicit
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In his later works, however, Duns unambiguously rejected this original position on "being," and on univocity, too. The first signs of a change of heart appear in the Questions on the Metaphysics, where alongside the prevailing wisdom can occasionally be found arguments for greater unity to "being" than that of analogy alone. The two views sit side by side, no attempt made to reconcile them or even confront the contradiction. Either Duns began revising the Questions without finishing the job, or he simply composed them at a transitional moment, unable to make up his mind at the time and never bothering subsequently to tidy up the text.40 But the commentaries on the Sentences, starting with the Lectura, embrace a fully new perspective, one plainly at odds with Duns's stand in the logical works and radically opposed to the centuries-old tradition to which all his contemporaries subscribed. Here for the first time was offered a definition of univocity looking exclusively to the conceptual side of philosophical discourse. Continuing, in Henry's wake, to link univocity with isolation of a single concept, or even a single formal aspect (ratio), for all legitimate referents, Duns now explicitly put aside consideration of objective realities and their degree of commonness.41 For a term to be considered univocal, it was sufficient that it entail contradiction when affirmed and denied of the same subject, no further extra-logical conditions needing to be taken into consideration.42 In line with this
contradiction with Duns's later views on "being." In the rest of the passage from the Questions on the Metaphysics IV, q. 1, Duns stipulates that "being" is equivocal for the logician, though that is exactly the point at which he later introduces univocity, holding that for the logician, in contrast to the metaphysician or natural philosopher, "being" is univocal. On this change, see below, n. 45, and the comments in Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity," pp. 378-84. It is furthermore of interest that in the passage under discussion here Duns says that "being" is considered by the metaphysician to be analogical by attribution, thus linking up with Henry's view that the analogy of "being" is a case of Boethius's aequivocatio a consilio (see again above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 71; and Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity," pp. 352-53), while in In librum Praedicamentorum, q. 4, nn. 4-7 (Vives, l:446a-47b), he takes pains to show "being" constitutes for the logician a simple instance of aequivocatio a casu. See the same idea in Duns, In libros Elenchorum, q. 15, nn. 3 and 6 (Vives, 2:20b and 22a). 40 See Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity," p. 391, and for discussion of evidence concerning Duns's opinion in the Questions, pp. 385-91. 41 On univocity as synonymous with unicity of concept, see Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:235-36, n. 30). For Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 73. 42 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1~2 (Vatican, 3:18, n. 26): ". . . univocum
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dramatic shift, moreover, he further insisted that univocity, previously limited to the five predicables, applied to "being" as well.43 In fact, for the later Duns, univocity attached to all the first intentions, or in his words, transcendentals.44 Indeed, Duns even corrected his own previous comments on the different sciences, still affirming that "being" was only analogical to the eyes of the metaphysician or natural philosopher but contending, in sharp contrast to the Questions on the Metaphysics., that the logician, taking heed of the fact that despite real divergence among objects the concept of being was itself unitary, could legitimately treat it as univocal.43 Here the consequences of defining univocity so as to play down real differences and focus instead on unity or diversity at the conceptual level emerged in highest relief. Duns could now defend univocity of "being" without in any way narrowing the real - both physical and metaphysical gap between creatures and God, so important for preserving divine transcendence.46
conceptum dico, qui ita est unus quod eius unitas sufficit ad contradictionem, affirmando et negando ipsum de eodum. . . . " 43 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:232, n. 21): "... non concipitur Deus in conceptu communi analogo sibi et creaturae, sed in conceptu communi univovco sibi et creaturae, ita quod ens et bonum et sapientia dicta de Deo et creatura univoce dicuntur de eis . . ."; and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:18, n. 26), the latter passage not explicit but still intended as referring to a univocal concept of being. See also Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:17 and 33, nn. 53 and 99); and Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:198, n. 95). This view was confirmed in Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un, n. 22 (Vives, 15:53b); and Collationes 3 (ad 2.) (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:371); or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," p. 213, where "maior" must be changed to read "minor"). In the latter text Duns confessed less than absolute confidence in his position. See also below, n. 91. 44 For example, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:232, n. 21 - quoted just above, n. 43); and also Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:37, n. 107). 45 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:268-69, nn. 117-18 - partly translated in Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity," p. 379); and a bit less clearly in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:100-101, nn. 162 63). See also Collationes 3 (ad Porphyrium) (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:371 and 373), or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," pp. 213 and 214). For Duns's position in his work on the Metaphysics, see above, n. 39. 4<> For the new emphasis on conceptual over real unity, see the references given above, n. 45, as well as Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:46-47, n. 129); Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:190, n. 82; and 221, 11. 19-21); and Collationes 3 (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:374), or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," p. 215). The point is perhaps made best in Lectura I, d. 8. p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:29, n. 84): "Nunc autem creatura et Deus conveniunt in uno conceptu absque unitate in aliqua realitate, sicut post dicetur; sunt igitur primo diversa in realitate, sed non in conceptu." Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:195, n. 88) shows clearly how for the later Duns precise conditions of reality were relatively unimportant in
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In support of his claim of conceptual unity, Duns furthermore drew on an idea introduced in his logical works about the exceptional formal simplicity of "being," its purity as a ratio, regardless of the reality it signified. The early works had maintained that such extreme simplicity accounted for mind's curious proclivity for grasping a concept of being without knowing which genus it fell into, although in every instance the concept, since not absolutely all-inclusive, in fact pointed to just one genus or another. He now returned to the idea of simplicity to propose that the concept of being was in every case so all-embracing, thus so empty of formal content, as to be among the very simplest concepts of all. It was indeed so simple that it could not be further analyzed, which was to say that it was absolutely simple (simpliciter simplex)*1 Such radical simplicity furnished yet another reason for concluding that all concepts of being were actually identical, a single intentional form applicable to all objects, and thus "being," in light of the new standards for univocity, a univocal term. In all this, of course, univocity was for the first time in philoso-
determining univocity, but it should be noted that in Collationes 3 (Responsio) (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:374), or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," p. 216 - a somewhat less satisfactory reading), he admitted that at least analogical unity at the level of reality was necessary for univocity at the conceptual level. 47 For Duns's early views, see Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity," pp. 367—71, especially n. 56, quoting from In librum Praedicamentorum, q. 4, n. 13 (Vives, l:449b), and the comments on p. 371. On his later understanding of "being" as absolutely simple, see Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:222, n. 138), where the idea is implied; and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1~2 (Vatican, 3:9, n. 17), where it is explicitly set forth; as well as the same question (Vatican, 3:54-55, n. 80): "Ens autem non potest concipi nisi distincte, quia habet conceptum simpliciter simplicem." Duns had come to this position already by Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:118, n. 24), where he mentioned it almost casually, as if expecting no opposition. Of course, he had always held that Henry, despite his stance on the analogical unity of "being," would have been forced to concede the absolute simplicity of the term under any one of its analogous meanings - see above, nn. 20 and 23. De Courcerault, "L'ontologie de Duns Scot," pp. 423-25 and 430; Seraphin Belmond, "Duns Scot metaphysicien," Revue de Philosophie 36 (1929): 422-23; Timotheus Earth, "Die Stellung der univocatio im Verlauf der Gotteserkenntnis nach der Lehre des Duns Skotus," WuW 5 (1938): 240 and 246; and Prentice, The Basic Quidditatwe Metaphysics, p. 24, have all emphasized the importance of the simplicity and intentional emptiness of "being" for Duns's thought. For Duns's definition of an absolutely simple concept as not reducible to prior or simpler concepts, in contrast to simple concepts that could be further analyzed into subjective or essential parts, see Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:118-19, n. 24 - cited just above); Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:142-43, n. 31); Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:250, n. 68); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:49, n. 71).
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phy's history being held to extend above Aristotle's ten categories, thus above all genera. That was what positing the transcendental univocity of "being" entailed.48 So novel an idea raised the question of how such super-generic unity descended to the separate genuses without addition of specific differences, something which could not be allowed short of conceding that the genuses themselves fell within a genus. Here, too, Duns came up with an innovative response. On the conceptual level, the move from "being" pure and simple to a more determinate class - "substantial being," for example - involved the addition of an intrinsic mode (modus intrinsecus entitatis or entis) ~ in the example just offered, "substantial" or "per se" - which unlike a specific difference supposited for nothing really distinct from the more general referent but nonetheless could be, indeed had to be, separated off when conceptualizing the absolutely simple general term. It constituted a kind of marker for the grade of perfection attained by the referent in a specific case, much like the varying grades of whiteness possessed by objects all of which fell without difference under the univocal term "white."49 In this way, the concept of being descended to "divine being" or "created being" by mind's recognition of the mode of existence a specific instance of being actually possessed, but not by means of any real, or really different, addition. A second question that needed answering as well was: How could "being" be predicable of all reality, as would seem to be demanded of a true transcendental, when by Duns's own argument it could not be predicated "in quid" of a range of special terms, including the intrinsic modes of being? The answer was crucial for Duns's philosophy, and controversial even among his followers, but not especially relevant to the matters at issue here. Suffice it to say that he posited a distinction between primacy of commonness, which permitted truly quidditative predication, and primacy of virtuality, allowing
48 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:267-68, n. 115); and Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:198, n. 95); as well as note 44, above. 49 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:271-72, n. 122); Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:40, n. 58); Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:43-44, n. 123); and Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:202-3, 221 and 222-23, nn. 108, 136 and 139). Duns included this idea of modality among the arguments of his opponents in the early In libros Elenchorum, q. 15, n. 4 (Vives, 2:2la), making it likely, therefore, that he did not invent it himself but borrowed it from an earlier source.
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predication only denominatively, and then claimed that the absolute transcendence of "being" could be adequately defended by showing how it was prior to and predicable of all other concepts in one or the other of these two ways.30 Armed with responses to these two questions, Duns was ultimately satisfied he could put forth a theory of univocity of "being" both plausible and equal to the philosophical tasks expected of it. One can scarcely imagine a more dramatic deviation from intellectual traditions or clearer instance of a thinker proposing radical ideological revision entirely on his own. Yet the core issue, at present, is why he made this break with the past, specifically whether it was, as argued above, to save for the wayfarer a natural, quidditative knowledge of God in face of the ideological abandonment of divine illumination and rejection of Henry's views on essence. Fortunately, a resolution can in great measure be obtained simply by looking to the reasons Duns himself gave for taking the stand he did. Duns focused on the univocity of "being" at two places in his lectures on the Sentences., as evidenced by both the Lectura and Ordinatio. The first was in Book I, distinction 3, where he posed the questions, greatly inspired by Henry of Ghent, whether the wayfarer had natural knowledge of God and, if so, whether God was first object known. The second came in distinction 8 of the same book, on the question of whether any predicate legitimately applicable to God placed him within a genus.51 In both cases, Duns's reply drew on 50 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:85, n. 137): ". . . dico quod primum obiectum intellectus nostri est ens, quia in ipso concurrit duplex primitas, scilicet communitatis et virtualitatis, nam omne per se intelligibile aut includit essentialiter rationem ends, vel continetur virtualiter vel essentialiter in includente essentialiter rationem entis. . . ." See also, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:261—62, n. 99), with an exemplifying application (Vatican, 16:263, n. 104); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:93, n. 151). This theory, like that of modes of being, was foreshadowed by comments in the early Duns, but this time in passages he may have at least partially intended to endorse - see the discussion of Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IV, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:310-13, nn. 58 and 60-61), in Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity," pp. 386-89. The same language appears in Collationes 3 (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:373), or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," p. 215). For full exposition of Duns's ideas on the matter, see Wolter, The Transcendentals, pp. 77-98, and the chart epitomizing his views, p. 99. 51 See, for example, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:223 and 224, nn. 1 and 6): "... utrum Deus sit naturaliter cognoscibilis a nobis pro statu isto. . . . [UJtrum Deus sit primum cognitum a nobis. . ."; and d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:16, n. 48): "Utrum cum simplicitate Dei stet quod sit in genere, vel quod aliquid formaliter dictum de Deo sit in genere."
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his new theory of univocity, and each time he gave considerable attention to the reasons he felt justified his unprecedented views, distinction 8 presenting largely a recapitulation of those already aired in distinction 3. The Oxford lectures, known through the Lectura, list three principal grounds for holding to univocity of "being" besides the testimony of "authorities." First was an argument Duns habitually referred to as "de conceptu certo et dubio," which ran that if one were certain about the meaning or reference of one term but doubtful about that of two others, then the three must correspond to completely different concepts. Even his opponents recognized that everyone confidently used the term "being" while many were not clear about what was meant by "divine being" or "created being." Thus "being" by itself must stand for a concept prior to and discrete from those represented by the latter two phrases, making it a candidate for univocity.52 Duns was, of course, taking aim here at Henry, whose defense of analogy claimed that the notion of being mind began with, and which it could not specify as either "created" or "divine," was not a single concept but rather a confused amalgam of two, disjunctively referring properly to creatures and to God. His point was that Henry drew the wrong conclusion from the right set of facts.03 Mind's original, unqualified notion of being was not a sign of confusion but rather of the existence of a unique and univocal general term. Such reasoning may have been prompted by Avicenna, whose Metaphysics had argued for "being" as among the most fundamental objects of mind by remarking how intellect grasped it before any of the other general constructions of reality — for instance, the division into agent and patient.04 52 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:232-33, n. 22); and d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:23, n. 69). °3 For Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 86, 90 and 91. The form of the argument "de certo" Duns gives in Collationes 3 (ad 1.) (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:372), or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," pp. 213-14), appears expressly tailored to refute Henry, as in the passage in his Summa, a. 75, cited above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 84. That in Collationes 3 (si respondeatur) (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:371), or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," pp. 212-13), targets instead Conington, in whose words analogical "being" was one concept "secundum quid." On the latter view, see above, n. 22; and Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 76. )4 Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima I, 5 (ed. Van Riet, 1:33-34 [esp. p. 33, 11. 32-34]), a reference suggested by Olivier Boulnois in his introduction to John Duns Scotus, Sur la connaissance de Dieu, p. 30, n. 52. Henry of Ghent presents his own argument "de conceptu certo et dubio," applied to a different issue, in Summa,
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The second argument for univocity of "being" claimed that otherwise the wayfarer would by natural means know nothing of God or more precisely, would be unable to fashion a concept designating divinity.55 Since all natural knowledge depended on phantasms drawn from sensation, the only concepts naturally generable were those of sensible objects and general qualities essentially or virtually contained in them. But no idea of being merely analogically related to the being of sensible things met this criterion. If God could not therefore be known as "being" according to the sense of the term univocally signifying creatures as well, he would have to be perceived by some other, necessarily supernatural, procedure or not at all. Lectura I, distinction 8, made the case vividly and to the point: Unless "being" was univocal to God and creatures, only a miracle would allow the wayfarer knowledge of God.56 Third came the argument that theologians had always actually relied on the univocity of "being" to devise a concept of God, regardless of attempts to deny such univocity in theory. For the truth was that all had agreed one should work to knowledge of divinity by selecting the noblest attributes of creatures, removing whatever there was of imperfection from the concepts by which they were perceived, then attributing the residue to God.37 One might, for instance, identify wisdom in humankind, clear away any implication of limitation or blemish, and predicate of God the perfect wisdom that remained. This would be impossible, Duns insisted, unless the "wisdom" of the perfection one ended up with was formally the same (eiusdem rationis) as, thus univocal with, that of the imperfect attribute with which one began. One might otherwise just as well turn to any creaturely
a. 21, q. 3, arg. 1 (l:125vA), thus indicating that the general topos was known in scholastic circles before Duns. What would appear to be an early version of it as applied to the univocity of "being" appears in passages in Duns's Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum that may have been added to an earlier redaction of the work: see Quaestiones II, qq. 2-3; and IV, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:230, n. 106; 306-7, n. 46; and 320, n. 91). 55 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:233-35, nn. 25-28). Note the general statement (Vatican, 16:233, n. 25): "Praeterea, si conceptus dictus de Deo et creatura sit analogus et realiter duo conceptus omnino nihil congosceremus de Deo." 56 Duns, Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:20-21, nn. 61-62), especially the conclusion, p. 21, n. 62: "Igitur si nihil sit commune Deo et creaturae, numquam proprium conceptum de Deo habebimus nee aliquam cognitionem omnino, nisi ille conceptus imprimatur per miraculum." 57 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:235-36. nn. 29-30); and d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:26-27, n. 79).
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attribute to construct a description of the divinity, for everything about a creature was at least analogously related to an exemplary ideal, in which case describing God as a "rock" should be regarded as of equal insight to calling him "wise."08 What could be said of "wisdom," moreover, held even truer where "being" was concerned. Duns was in fact so convinced that this was how theological discourse functioned that he insisted the process of winnowing down to a univocal concept lay at the heart even of the Dionysian negative way, which consequently should not be seen as ultimately negative but instead reliant on a positive core.59 In the Ordinatio, the same three reasons reappear. There, Duns drew the argument "de conceptu certo et dubio" even more clearly than before. With regard to the unqualified notion of "being," mind was either certain about predicating it as a single, univocal term or completely at sea, in which case its very use of the word was open to doubt.60 He added that the attempt to circumvent such reasoning by resorting to Henry's claim that there were two primary analogical concepts of being so close (propinqui] that mind could not initially distinguish them would destroy all confidence in philosophical speech, leaving any appeal to univocity vulnerable to the identical rejoinder that intellect was merely confused.61 The argument from the impossibility of natural knowledge of God in via without univocity of "being" remained essentially unchanged, though aired at greater length.62 As for the invocation of the way theologians
58
See especially Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:235-36, n. 30). Duns, Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:27, n. 80); repeated in Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:186 and 193, nn. 73 and 85). Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:4, n. 10), laid down Duns's "positive" approach to the negative way, the heart of which he summed up nicely in the phrase (p. 5, n. 10): "Negationes etiam non summe amamus." 60 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:18, nn. 27-28); with another version of the same in q. 3 (Vatican, 3:86, n. 138). Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:178, n. 56) simply refers back to the text of Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2. 61 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:20, n. 30): "Quod si ... dicas quod quilibet [philosophans] habet duos conceptus in intellectu suo, propinquos, qui propter propinquitatem analogiae videntur esse unus conceptus, - contra hoc videtur esse quod tune ex ista evasione videretur destructa omnis via probandi unitatem alicuius conceptus univocam. ..." A longer refutation of the argument from propinquity appears in Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:179-82, nn. 59-64). On Henry and the two close concepts, see above, n. 22. (2 ' Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:21-24, n. 35); and d. 8, J<)
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historically worked their way to knowledge of God, this, too, was recapitulated in slightly expanded form, with the eventual addition of a more technical version of the argument analyzing what it meant for a perfection to be attributed to God.63 All this in what must have been an early redaction of the Ordinatio. A later reworking of the text afforded the opportunity to add two other reasons Duns had not thought of before, both specifically tailored to Henry's views. Duns invariably held that the argument for the analogical nature of the wayfarer's primitive knowledge of God implied that the only concepts of divinity intellect could generate were proper concepts. He now observed that if this were true, then sinful mind should be naturally able to know every necessary proposition affirmable of God. As that was obviously not the case, Henry must be wrong, even about the analogical nature of "being."64 Next came a complicated argument that if Henry were again correct about the analogical nature of the primitive grasp of God in "being," then created objects at different levels of perfection should yield more or less perfect notions of divinity. Given the whole range of creation, it should theoretically be possible for the wayfarer to come up with concept of God equivalent to the face-to-face vision of beatitude. Once more, the conclusion was unacceptable. Clearly preferable was the assumption that each grasp of a created object produced the same, univocal notion of being, upon which knowledge of God was built.65
p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:173-74, n. 51). The argument is mentioned in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:86-87, n. 139). 63 See Duns, Ordinatio I, d, 3, p. 1. qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:26-27, nn. 39-40), with the addition inserted in a revision (Vatican, 3:25-26, n. 38). Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:184-85, n. 70) refers back to just the original argument of Vatican, 3:26-27. 64 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:24-25, nn. 36-37). On his view of Henry and proper concepts, see above, n. 23. Of course, Duns himself did not deny to the wayfarer a proper concept of God - see below, nn. 88-90. He must therefore have composed this additional argument hastily, for in this form it applied as much to himself as to Henry, and in an even later interpolation he summarily dismissed it - see Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:29, 1. 15-30, 1. 3). On the other hand, he continued to maintain that a proper concept of God that was also absolutely simple would necessarily reveal everything about the divinity, meaning that any such concept could be known only to the blessed - see above, n. 25, and below, nn. 87 and 115. Surely it was the latter understanding of the matter that lay at the heart of Duns's argument here against analogical "being." 65 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:27-28, nn. 41-43). No effort is made to justify the sweeping minor premise of this argument.
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Looking back over all five arguments, it is plain they each hinge on explaining natural knowledge of God in the world of sin. Considering the context, this comes as no surprise, but the fact is significant nonetheless. While there might be other grounds for affirming univocity of "being," these five were, by Duns's testimony, the reasons convincing him.66 To be sure, they do not all introduce the fact of knowledge of divinity at precisely the same turning in their logical structure. The first and third in the order given above argue from the actual way God has been known after the Fall — the first drawing more on the experience of mankind in general, the third on that of intellectuals speculating on divinity. The second argues more ambitiously that there could be no other means short of miraculous intervention for the wayfarer to arrive at a meaningful concept of God. This puts analogy's alleged noetic inadequacy to safeguard discourse about the divine in sharpest relief. The two added later are similarly oriented but directed more to Henry alone, and to showing that positing analogy of "being" was not a viable alternative. All point to the conclusion, however, that Duns was led to espouse univocity of "being" precisely in order to save the wayfarer's natural knowledge of God — to solve, in short, the very noetic difficulty his criticism of classic Augustinianism and Henry's metaphysics confronted him with. Admittedly, none of this technically constitutes more than circumstantial evidence. In fact there is no way to prove beyond a doubt that the claim advanced here is true. But built on circumstance or not, the argument in its favor is strong. It was, after all, just when Duns came to examine issues concerning the wayfarer's natural knowledge of God and the foundation for discourse in the sinful world about divinity — that is, when he began lecturing on W)
It must be noted that Duns did, on occasion, mention two other reasons. His first was that if "being" were not univocal, then there would be no first or adequate object of intellect - see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:261, nn. 97-98); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:16, 11. 20-23); and q. 3 (Vatican, 3:80-81, n. 129). This issue will be dealt with below, pp. 518-20; and also in Pt. 4, ch. 16, pp. 542-43. The second additional reason was that if "being" were not univocal, then in the state of sin there would be no knowledge of substance: see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1~2 (Vatican, 16:265-66, nn. 110-11); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 86-87, n. 139). On this matter Duns's thinking mirrored his approach to the second of his five main reasons, to which indeed he always subordinated the arguments concerning knowledge of substance, as can be seen in the citation to the Ordinatio given just above. For present purposes, therefore, the second additional reason need not be taken as going beyond the original five.
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the Sentences - that he set out his new theory. In his earlier works, where he had scrutinized "being" and univocity with only logical considerations in mind, he had been content with tradition. It is hard not to believe that change of venue related to change of mind as cause to effect.67 Only two major objections can be raised against such an interpretation. One has to do with scattered statements by Duns indicating uncertainty about the ability of his theory of "being" to solve the aforementioned problems surrounding natural knowledge of God; the other with entirely divergent grounds for supporting univocity. Regarding the former, the Vatican edition of the Ordinatio reveals a lengthy passage inserted into the text of questions 1-2 of Book I, distinction 3, part 1, revising the original redaction of the work.68 It is conceivable Duns made the insertion the same time he introduced his additional fourth and fifth arguments for univocity mentioned above, and in it he turned to consider a number of counterarguments to reasons he had initially adduced in his favor, perhaps criticisms encountered in debate. The counterarguments were aimed at the first two of his three original rationales — that is, at the argument "de conceptu certo et dubio" and that from the impossibility by any other means of natural knowledge of God in via. The attack on the argument "de conceptu certo et dubio" Duns eventually succeeded in turning aside. In the insertion to distinction 3 he referred his reader to Ordinatio I, distinction 8, where three specific counterarguments to his own original reasoning had already been laid out in full. There he had dealt with the first two easily enough, dismissing them with what he thought were incontrovertible rebuttals in his own behalf.69 The third, the only one explicitly taken up in the distinction 3 insert, proved more intractable. This counterargument, referred to as "de toto disiuncto," proposed that it was not a single concept about which intellect was certain in its very first apprehension of "being" but rather two concepts in disjunction: "either divine or created being." Duns's revision to distinction 3 conceded he had not effectively opposed this counterargument 67 See similar comments in Marrone, "The Notion of Univocity," pp. 392-94; and "Knowledge of Being," p. 54. 68 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:31-38, nn. 46-55). 69 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:178-83, nn. 57-67). The second of these counterarguments, depending on Henry's notion of the propinquity of analogical concepts of being, and Duns's rebuttal of it are also mentioned above, n. 61.
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in distinction 8, where indeed no response in support of Duns's view is to be found in what appears to be the first redaction of the text. A rebuttal to his opponents does, however, appear in a reworking of distinction 8 probably postdating the insertion in distinction 3. It is therefore likely, or at any rate possible, Duns was in the end at least minimally satisfied that on this point he had successfully defended his original ideas.70 The counterarguments against the second original reason for univocity constituted a more serious threat. Here, where the general possibility of natural knowledge of God in the world of sin was at issue, Duns had to grant that his opponents managed to make a serious case for sticking with the analogical nature of "being," even absent the theoretical support of divine illumination and Henry's view of essence. Following the trace of an analogy from created to divine being might not yield a perfect idea of God, they conceded, but then that was not what one was after, and it was reasonable to presume that analogical thinking generated a concept of divinity adequate to the less stringent demands of theology as actually practiced by the wayfarer.71 Duns responded that generating a concept of God based on analogy would render that concept less perfect than any proper concept referring to creatures themselves. How then could intellect be considered blessed by theological knowledge, even if one meant by this only a natural beatitude, when the operative idea of God was in itself inferior to the notion of something so lowly, for example, as a stone?72 What is important is that, having said this, Duns then went on to list further defenses of the counterargument, holding that the theory of univocity of "being" raised comparable difficulties concerning the wayfarer's theology, especially in light of what will later be shown to be Duns's insistence on the specifically constructed nature of a natural, proper concept of God, and that technical adjustments made to circumvent these difficulties with regard to univocity worked equally
70 Duns, Ordmatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:31, n. 46); and d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:184, nn. 68 [the counterargument] and 69 [Duns's eventual rebuttal]). The editors of the Vatican edition (3:184) note that a version of this third counterargument can be found in Thomas of Sutton. 71 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:31, n. 47). 72 Refer to Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:32-33, nn. 48-49). On p. 33, it would seem that in lines 7 and 8, the reading "concepto" would be preferable to the editors' choice, "conceptu."
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well for analogy. And this time his response was reduced to the retort that his opponents defended analogical unity of "being" no better than he defended univocity. Thus if their counterarguments provided no compelling reason to abandon univocity in favor of analogy, he was nonetheless forced to admit he could neither advance an absolute imperative for his own side nor put to rest all doubts about his second main reason.73 That Duns was ultimately left with nagging doubts about his theory of univocity is confirmed by an authorial annotation to distinction 3, part 1, qq. 1-2, composed most likely after the inserted discussion of counterarguments just reviewed. The note lists ten arguments regarding univocal versus analogical unity of "being," six exclusively in favor of univocity. These six consisted of the five main reasons presented in the expanded redaction of the body of the question, the last one duplicated by being offered in two slightly different forms — that is, they were the arguments "de conceptu certo et dubio," on the impossibility otherwise of knowing God in via, on knowledge otherwise of all necessary propositions about God, on theologians' attribution of perfection to the divinity, and two on the multitude of grades of cognition that would otherwise be involved, leading perhaps to perfect cognition.74 After setting them quickly before the reader, Duns returned to each one, showing what counterarguments his opponents made and indicating where, or if, in his works - especially distinctions 3 and 8 of the Ordinatio, Book I - he had responded.75 As the text shows, Duns's own reservations about arguments in
73 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 33-37, nn. 50-54), especially the concluding remarks in n. 54: "Non ergo propter istam rationem [contra univocationem] dimittatur opinio [de univocatione], quia est communis difficultas utrique, et aeque, si analogia conceptuum exponatur de conceptis." 74 See the marginal note, Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:29, 11. 3-10). The order of arguments in the note differs slightly from that given above in the exposition of Ordinatio I, d. 3 (see above, nn. 60, 62-65), with three and four reversed. The note, not the exposition, is true to the actual order in which they appeared in the revised body of the Ordinatio text. 75 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:29, 1. 11-31, 1. 13). The examination of the first two reasons in the note refers the reader to the passages cited above, nn. 69-73. As for the fourth - on arguing to God from the perfection of creaturely attributes - the note produces an argument against, a rebuttal referring to the practice of the saints and most theologians, and then alludes to another counterargument and rebuttal added as an insertion into Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:187, nn. 75-77).
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his favor now extended to three more of his main reasons - the third, fifth and sixth of the annotation's listing, corresponding effectively to the two added to the body of the Ordinatio, distinction 3, in the first reworking.76 Apparently he had come to believe that these arguments raised difficulties just as vexing to those positing univocity of "being" as to those holding for analogy. His conclusion was that his opponents need worry seriously only about the first and fourth reasons listed in the note — that is, the argument "de conceptu certo et dubio" and that from the theological practice of attributing all perfection to God. These, he had now come to think, were the only ones not generating equally weighty problems for both sides or perhaps rendering the defense of natural knowledge of God impossible under any terms.77 By the end, therefore, Duns admitted that the reason he might have been expected to emphasize most - his argument that otherwise the wayfarer would have absolutely no natural knowledge of God perhaps worked to sustain his position on "being" no better than that of his opponents, or at least raised comparable obstacles to both. Still, he continued to promote two arguments, each dealing, if less categorically, with natural knowledge of divinity, one by appealing to how the wayfarer normally understood God, the other by considering the way theologians constructed their idea of the divine. Even after sober reflection, he could thus honestly maintain that univocity of "being" fit better than analogy with the most prominent maybe the sole - two ways humans in via actually came to know God. He had been forced to draw in his horns, tempering his confidence that only univocity of "being" preserved the promise of knowing and talking about God in this life.78 But the fact remains that a powerful original impulse for turning to univocity was the desire to expound a noetics successfully compensating for his criticism of Henry and classical Augustinian ideas about knowing God. This "' See above, nn. 64 and 65. Duns, Ordmatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:31, 11. 14-17): "Itaque de sola prima ratione et quarta cures, turn quia non sunt 'aeque difficiles' utrique parti, turn quia non concludunt nimis ultra propositum. Non enim concludunt quod nullus conceptus potest haberi proprius Deo, sed quod aliquis communis." '8 It should be remembered that, as mentioned above, n. 43, in Collationes 3 (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:371), or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," p. 213), Duns conceded that he could not be absolutely certain of his position on univocity. Earth, "De argumentis et univocationis entis natura apud Joannem Duns Scotum," CF 14 (1944): 35, concluded that Duns was never sure "being" was univocal. 77
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is what the initial recensions of the Ordinatio declare, and what no later reconsiderations can put in doubt. There is, however, still the second possible objection to the interpretation offered here of Duns's philosophical motivation for positing univocity of "being." For one can point to a rationale Duns put forth entirely different from any mentioned so far. At times he contended that a first or adequate object of intellect had to be a common concept univocally predicable of all knowable objects. Since everyone conceded that mind could know things in each of the ten categories, and theologians agreed that eventually it would know both creatures and God, it followed that only "being" was broad enough to serve as this common term. In short, the very notion of a first object of intellect was reliant on the theory of univocity of "being."79 From this it could be argued further - though the argument was never explicitly advanced by Duns — that if a first object of intellect was a requirement for cognition, then the very possibility of knowledge entailed univocal "being." Or one might assert even more poignantly that, given the fact of the wayfarer's knowledge of created things, upon Duns's theory of "being" as univocal to creatures and divinity rested the hope that humanity might also know God, not only in sin but also in beatitude.80 Here was thus a second motive, independent of any reason examined above, for Duns to espouse his new views. But if this was a fundamental concern driving him to promote univocity of "being," it is odd that in neither of two annotations to the Ordinatio where he listed arguments for univocity is it so much as mentioned.81 And well might he have left it out, since apparently /9
See the references given above, n. 66. An argument coming close to this does appear in Duns, Collationes 11, n. 8 (Vives, 5:191a): that if intellect's first object was not all-inclusive "being," then mind could never know God. Yet it is not claimed there that a first object has to be univocal, and Reportatio parisiensis (examinata) Prol., q. 3 (cited below, n. 83), shows Duns making a related argument about first object of intellect but willing to concede, at least for the sake of debate, that it could be either univocal or equivocal. 81 See Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:29, 11. 3-10) - cited above, n. 74 - and d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:173, 11. 13-18) - the latter passage adding nothing to the former but a few citations to authorities. Note that Stephen F. Brown, "Scotus' Univocity in the Early Fourteenth Century," in De doctrina loannis Duns Scoti, Acta Congressus Scotistici Internationalis, Oxford and Edinburgh, 11-17 September 1966 (Rome, 1968), vol. 4, p. 38, counts the need for a single formal object of intellect as a major reason impelling Duns to advocate univocity of "being." Simo Knuuttila, "Being qua Being in Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus," in The 80
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he was not at all sure of two crucial premises: either that a first adequate object of intellect was required for cognition or that univocity of predication was necessary for an object to be considered first and adequate. In two versions of his commentary on Book II of the Sentences, both composed toward the end of his career, Duns took the position that if "being" were not univocal to creatures and divinity, then there could be no first adequate object of intellect, since it was certain that at least the blessed knew both God and creation. Here was a perfect opportunity to make the argument for univocity. Rather than do so, he backed off instead from his insistence that there be a first object. Admitting that he would prefer not to dispense with the requirement himself, he confessed nevertheless that since common opinion regarded all-inclusive "being" as not univocal, most theologians would have no choice but to accommodate themselves to such a loss. He even offered a possible rationale, claiming that it spoke to the perfection of humankind's intellect for it to be capable of seizing disparate objects without having to reduce them to a common core.82 In the Quodlibetal Questions, when faced with a similar dilemma, he took the opposite tack. There, in what is surely among his last writings, he said that so far as first object of intellect was concerned, he did not care whether one held it to be by univocity or by analogy that "being" was common to all particular objects. In either case, "being" was obviously the sole term uniting all things to which mind was directed.83 This time, in other words, it was the notion of a
Logic of Being. Historical Studies, ed. Simo Knuuttila and Jaakko Hintikka (Dordrecht, 1986), pp. 201-22, argues that Duns's novel intensional notion of modality was a motivating factor, admittedly one he might not be expected to have reflected upon himself. 82 Duns, Ordinatio II, d. 24, q. un., n. 8 (Vives, 13:183b-84a); and Reportatio parisiensis II, d. 24, q. un., n. 12 (Vives, 23:115b), which is even clearer on the last point. 83 Duns, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 3, n. 2 (Vives, 25:114b): ". . . et isto intellects communissimo, prout res vel ens dicitur quodlibet conceptibile . . . sive ilia communitas sit analogiae, sive univocationis, de qua non euro modo, posset poni ens primum objectum intellectus. . . ." He made the same point in Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 11 (Vives, 26:40a), adding that "being" at its broadest was only potentially first object to which the mind of the wayfarer was inclined. See below, Pt. 4, ch. 16, pp. 539-48, for Duns's theory of the adequate object of mind. In Reportatio parisiensis (examinata) Prol., q. 3 (ed. Berube, in "De 1'etre a Dieu," p. 57, n. 25), one finds the same indifference concerning univocity or analogy in face of the question of first object of intellect. See also a similar attitude in Quaestiones super
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necessary connection between univocity and first object from which he opted to retreat. No matter how he resolved the issue, all these late passages reveal Duns as convinced, in short, that the question of first object of intellect was not the appropriate venue for determining whether "being" was univocal. The plain philosophical plausibility of knowledge of God - whether natural or supernatural, in beatitude or in via viewed apart from the question of how such knowledge might be generated, simply did not depend on one's views about the nature of the concept of being. In the final analysis, therefore, neither objection holds, and the most convincing argument remains that Duns came to espouse univocity of "being" in order to insure natural knowledge of God for intellect in the world of sin. If early on he realized that the theory of univocal "being" could also be applied to other problems, like the matter of first object of intellect, his eventual appreciation of the complexity of such issues and the awkwardness of using them to decide about univocity dampened his initial enthusiasm. By career's end, the only defense of univocity of "being" he regarded as valid appealed, as at the beginning, to the wayfarer's knowledge of God. The difference was that he now inclined towards retracting a number of the specific ways he had mounted this defense at the start. Of course, having made his dramatic break with the past on the issue of univocity, Duns could then proceed to tap into the Augustinian tradition of intimate natural knowledge of God so fully exploited by Henry, but without recourse to what he saw as the illogical maneuverings of the latter's metaphysics and the implicit ontologism of his noetics. Like Henry he started with the conviction that the wayfarer in the world of sin, working only with knowledge made available through the processes of sensation, could come to know God, which, he explained, meant fashioning a concept or idea of divinity.84 Like Henry he also thought that such fashioning began Bros Metaphysicomm II, qq. 2-3; and IV, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:228-29, nn. 94-95 and 100-104; and 319-20, nn. 86-88). Note the dramatic contrast between this stance and that Duns assumed on the choice between not positing a first object and conceding that univocity was not critical in the passage from Reportatio parisiensis cited above, n, 82. 84 This is exactly how Duns framed the issue in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:11, n. 19): "Est ergo mens quaestionis ista, utrum aliquem conceptum simplicem possit intellectus viatoris naturaliter habere, in quo conceptu simplici concipiatur Deus." See also above, n. 1, and on Henry, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 17.
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with intellect's primitive grasp of "being." Since "being" was a concept immediately predicable of God, in knowing "being" mind at least inchoately and incompletely conceived of the divine. Yet the theory of univocity lent a wholly different coloring to Duns's understanding of what the doctrine of a primitive knowledge of God in "being" implied. In sharp contrast to Henry, he insisted that the "being" mind grasped at every stage of cognition was the same concept, undivided and indivisible. And unlike Henry he also held that this single concept was univocally predicable of all its referents. In this assertion of conceptual unity and commonness of predication lay all that was new about Duns's approach. It was unity and commonness that allowed "being," discovered in the business of knowing creation, to serve as foundation for knowledge of a reality so elevated as God. But it was the same unity and commonness which signaled that the wayfarer's intellect had no a priori — or to be fair to Henry, quasi a priori — route straight to divinity. There was nothing in mind's primitive cognition of "being" that was not both derivative from and legitimately predicable of created, even sensible, things.80 Since for Duns "being" was absolutely simple, it was perforce represented by a concept itself irreducible into further subjective or essential parts.86 The all-inclusive univocity of this concept meant, however, that the primitive knowledge of God it provided could not be proper — that is, knowledge exclusively predicable of divinity. Duns's ideas were thereby shielded from what he saw as the intolerable implications of Henry's theory: that because initial knowledge of "being" encompassed two analogical concepts, the wayfarer's primary knowledge of the divine was already proper, making it naturally possible in via to have proper and absolutely simple knowledge of God.8/ In lieu of such a vision, he came to the inevitable conclusion 85 See Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 2, q. un. (Vatican, 16:314, n. 220): "Item, omnes creaturae repraesentant Deum sub ratione generali tantum, quod probatum est supra in ista distinctione quod ex creaturis tantum cognoscimus Deum in conceptu communi entis. . . ." The reference "supra" is to Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2: see Vatican, 16:232, n. 21, quoted below, n. 91. For Henry's view, see above, Ft. 3, ch. 10, nn. 19-21. 8(i See above, n. 47. 8 ' On these implications, see above, n. 23; on the results of conceding them to be true, nn. 25 and 64. Richard of Conington accepted Duns's reading of the implications of Henry's theory (see above, n. 23; also Ft. 3, ch. 10, n. 93) and to avoid the undesirable results commented that although God was first known in a proper,
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that all proper knowledge of God would have to be constructed on the initial common concept through a process of modification and restriction of its referential sweep. A proper concept of divinity devised by the wayfarer would therefore be more complicated than the initial knowledge in "being" and necessarily fall short of absolute simplicity.88 Because the proper knowledge in question was naturally attained in via, all the building blocks for fashioning it would be concepts derived from knowledge of creatures and legitimately predicable of them. Since the goal was knowledge of God, the same building blocks had likewise to be predicable of divinity. The upshot was that for Duns proper but natural knowledge of God was fabricated exclusively out of common terms: univocal general terms like "being," most fundamental of them all. In short, the wayfarer had to bring together or "compound" absolutely simple terms, none of which referred exclusively to God, until it reached an aggregate concept, no longer absolutely simple, that pointed to divinity and nothing else. It was thus aggregation alone that worked to restrict the referential domain to divinity, not the addition of a specifically divine signifier. As examples of constructs intellect might end up with Duns listed the compound concepts "highest being" or "highest good," also "highest and most actualized good." He even noted that their gen-
absolutely simple concept, mind did not really "perceive" that it possessed the concept and therefore could not draw from it any conclusions about the divine nature (see Richard of Conington, Quaest. ord., q. 1, ad 2. and ad 3. [ed. Doucet, p. 438], cited above, Ft. 3, ch. 10, n. 84). These comments were given in answer to an initial argument that sounds as if it came from Duns, or was at least inspired by him see Conington, Quaest. ord., q. 1, arg. 2 (ed. Doucet, p. 430). Richard was plainly taking refuge in Henry's idea of mental confusion of concepts in primary knowledge of "being," a notion Duns likewise considered philosophically reprehensible and that he had combated with his argument "de conceptu certo et dubio" - see above, n. 53. Richard knew Duns's argument "de conceptu certo et dubio" and believed he could refute it - see his Quodlibet 1, q. 2, "Sed contra . . . Primo"; and ad 1. (ed. Brown, pp. 303 and 306-7). For his part, Duns realized his opponents would take - or had taken - Richard's route in defense of Henry's view, and when not arguing specifically about the way mind formed its natural knowledge of God he was willing to lay out the defense and even concede it for the sake of argument see Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:141, 11. 14-21). 88 Duns, Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:119, n. 25): ". . . omnis conceptus proprius, quern nos concipimus de Deo, est non simpliciter simplex . . ."; and his argument for this conclusion, taking as a premise the univocity of concepts like "being," in the same question (Vatican, 16:120, n. 27). Both argument and conclusion are repeated in Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:140-41 and 142, nn. 29 and 31). See also Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:9, n. 17): ". . . nulla ratio simpliciter simplex habetur de Deo quae distinguit ipsum ab aliis. . . ."
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eration was by the same operation as that by which mind contrived fictions like "golden mountain," the difference being that in the case of the divinity there was a real referent, though one that had not been directly perceived.89 From all this it is clear that there were for Duns two basic ways the wayfarer could naturally conceive of God: either in a common concept that was absolutely simple and univocally applicable to both God and creatures ~ for instance, "being" or "good" - or in a proper concept compounded of conceptual parts themselves univocally applicable to all reality - "highest good" or "infinite being."90 He once even offered a summary of how these two ways fit into the broader debate over analogy and univocity. In Lectura, Book I, distinction 3, he had attacked Henry's position on the analogical nature of mind's primitive notion of being by insisting that God was never known in a common concept analogically signifying divinity and creatures but only in one that was univocal to the two.91 When this statement was reworked for the Ordinatio, he took pains to make the still more
89 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3. p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:246, n. 56), especially the last sentence: "Sic igitur, abstrahendo a creaturis intentiones communes et coniungendo eas, possumus cognoscere Deum in universali, et etiam ilium conceptum dictum de Deo qui maxime sibi convenit prout a nobis congnoscitur." The same question (Vatican, 16:247, n. 57) also uses the term "componendo" to describe the process. Duns's account of the procedure is repeated in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1~2 (Vatican, 3:42, n. 61); and again in the late Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 3 (Vives, 26:5b-6a). A more subtle description can be found in the intermediate Reportatio parisiensis, ProL, q. 1, n. 16 (Vives, 22:16a). The clearest statement that the parts of such a compound concept would be common, only the aggregate proper to God, can be found in Collationes 3 (ad aliud) (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:375); or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," p. 217) - a combination of which readings gives the most plausible text. As noted in Collationes 3 (ad 3.) (ed. Harris, in Duns Scotus, 2:372-73); or 24 (ed. Balic, in "De collationibus," p. 214), all this meant that the proper concept of God was "composite." For mention of "golden mountain," see the passages from Lectura I, d. 3; and Ordinatio I, d. 3, cited just above; on other fictions, see above, Pt. 4, ch. 14, n. 125. 90 See Duns, Collationes 13, n. 4 (Vives, 5:202a~b): "Dico quod conceptus conclusi per modum complexionis conveniunt Deo, nee conveniunt creaturae ~ hujusmodi sunt conceptus compositi - non autem simplices conceptus - cujusmodi sunt conceptus ends, boni, etc. - nam tales conceptus dicuntur univoce de Deo et creatura." The punctuation here is mine. 91 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:232, n. 21): "De secundo articulo est dicendum, in quo expresse sibi [i.e. Henrico] contradico, quod non concipitur Deus in conceptu communi analogo sibi et creaturae, sed in conceptu communi univoco sibi et creaturae, ita quod ens et bonum et sapientia dicta de Deo et creatura univoce dicuntur de eis, et non dicunt duos conceptus." See also the reference to this passage in n. 85, above.
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revealing assertion that intellect formed concepts of God both univocally and analogically applicable to creation.92 Univocity characterized the common concepts like "being," analogy the proper concepts like "highest being," analogically related to terms for created objects such as "this sensible being" or "that sensible being" from which its conceptual ingredients were drawn. There are scholars to be sure, Allan Wolter most prominent among them, who have taken Duns's words in the Ordinatio to mean that he posited not only a common, univocal concept of being tout court but also at least two more proper ones, related by analogy. Using the former concept mind would comprehend God and all creatures at once, while calling upon one of the latter it would be directed exclusively either to "being" that was divine or "being" that was created. I have argued elsewhere that Wolter is wrong to say Duns's early works posit a concept of being univocally predicable of all things, and I must now add that I find it equally incorrect to claim his later writings hold that the term "being" alone might be employed according to several proper, analogous meanings.93 In short, at no time in his career did Duns believe that "being" was both univocal and analogical. It is true that Henry's viewpoint approached the position Wolter attributes to Duns.94 But such an attitude was just what the latter was careful to avoid, and, in his maturity, to expunge wherever it threatened to take hold. The argument "de conceptu certo et dubio" plainly demands that there be only one concept of being and one term, "being," univocally predicable of everything.90 92
Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1^2 (Vatican, 3:18, n. 26): "Secundo dico quod non tantum in conceptu analogo conceptui creaturae concipitur Deus, scilicet qui omnino sit alius ab illo qui de creatura dicitur, sed in conceptu aliquo univoco sibi et creaturae." 93 See Wolter, The Transcendentals, pp. 46-48, n. 35, and 55-56; and my contrasting argument in Marrone, "Notion of Univocity," pp. 372~76. Cyril L. Shircel, The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Philosophy of John Duns Scotus (Washington, D.C., 1942), p. 164, has also maintained that the later Duns denied that the term "being" alone should ever be taken as analogical. 94 Most clearly in Henry, Summa, a. 26, q. 2, ad 1. (l:159rT) - quoted above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 78 - and a. 75, q. 6, ad 3. (2:31 IrY) - cited in the same chapter, n. 84. The view is also implied in other passages referred to in that chapter, n. 81. 9:5 Manifest most clearly in Duns's argument against Henry's more pliant use of "being" from Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:233, n. 24): "Praeterea, quilibet experitur in se ipso quod potest concipere ens non descendendo ad ens participatum vel non participatum. Si fiat descensus ad utrumque conceptum, quaero an stet conceptus ends, aut non? Si sic, habetur propositum; si autem indeterminate importat quasi unum, et quando fit descensus, est duo conceptus, tune impos-
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So far as concerns proper knowledge by itself, Duns proposed that the "most perfect" - that is, simplest and most precise - concept of God the wayfarer could naturally construct was the notion of "infinite being."96 In taking this stand he put himself in opposition to Henry, who had said that the best way rational mind could know God naturally was by reducing all divine attributes to simplicity.97 Duns added that the distinction between knowing God as "being" and knowing him as "infinite being" was equivalent to the difference between cognition in imperfect and perfect concepts. Only the latter seized the reality with its intrinsic mode of existence, and thus only the latter truly described what it was to be God.98 It should be remembered that perfect knowledge of God in this sense was not yet the authentically perfect cognition intellect would attain in beatitude, when it saw God face-to-face in his full particularity, ut haec. In that case, mind would conceive of "being" and its intrinsic divine mode at a single stroke, without need for even the minimal conceptual composition manifest in a term like "infinite being."99 Equipped with these convictions about the differing ways intellect conceived a notion of God, Duns managed to elude the ambiguity regarding order of concepts that had plagued Henry's account of natural knowledge of divinity.100 Along the way, he criticized his sibile esset probare aliquid esse univocum. . . ." See also Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:142, n. 31). 96 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:244, n. 50); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1—2 (Vatican, 3:40, n. 58 - with an argument for why p. 41, n. 60). See also Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:215, n. 147), referring to the passage in distinction 3. Note, however, that in Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:194, n. 86), Duns said "bonum per se" was the most perfect concept. In a similar vein, Augustinus Daniels, "Zu den Beziehungun," pp. 226 and 228, remarks that William held at one point that God "sub ratione bonitatis sue" was the object of theology, at another point that it was God under the aspect of infinite. 97 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:41-42, n. 60). Henry's view is referred to above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 46. It must be admitted that in the passage from the Reportatio pansiensis cited above, n. 89, Duns comes strikingly close to Henry's view. 98 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:222, n. 138). On "being" and its intrinsic modes, see above, n. 49. 99 On knowing God in particular, see above, n. 9, and also Lectura I, d. 22, q. un. (Vatican, 17:301-2, n. 4); on particular knowledge of God as "perfect," above, n. 6. In Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:224, n. 142), Duns explained how perfect knowledge of God - this time in the sense of beatific knowledge would seize object and intrinsic mode without any distinction of formalities. Compare Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:44-45, n. 125). 100 For the ambiguity in Henry, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 61-62; as well as this chapter, nn. 18 and 20. In Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:67-68,
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predecessor for alleging that God was first object naturally known, even if unperceived, reasoning that if all natural cognition derived from knowledge of creatures, as both thinkers agreed, then it made no sense to say God was apprehended before anything else.101 He also reproached him for holding on principle that the more indeterminate the object, the earlier it was known. Henry's "more indeterminate" was translatable into Duns's lexicon as "more confused," and it was at the very opposite end of the conceptual spectrum, with "most distinct," that Duns believed the order of intellection began. For him it was not what was most general or confused but rather particulars available to mind through sensation that constituted, absolutely speaking, its first cognitive objects.102 Yet he still found a way to preserve the core Augustinian vision of a knowledge of God, in "being," somehow primary and implicated in knowledge of all else. To remove all doubt about precisely where this cognition was situated in the natural conceptual order, he simply appealed to his pair of distinctions: knowing a confused versus knowing a distinct object and knowing confusedly versus knowing distinctly.103 Directly contradicting Henry, for whom primitive knowledge of God in "being" was confused cognition (modus confusus or intelligere confuse), he insisted that although "being" was a general or "confused" term (confusuni), the fact that it was absolutely simple meant it could not be known confusedly (confuse). With no simpler conceptual parts into which it might be resolved, it had to be known distinctly (distincte} or not at all.104 Since for Duns the order of known. 107), Duns accused Henry of contradicting himself on primary knowledge of God. Taking a page from Matthew of Aquasparta, he suggested that the best Henry might manage would be to maintain that although divinity was not for human intellect "first known" (primum cognitum), it was in itself "first knowable" (primum cognoscibile) - Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1~2 (Vatican, 3:63-64, n. 100); on Matthew, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, nn. 130-31. What for Matthew had been a mark of some sympathy with Henry was thereby reduced, in Duns's hands, to a sign of exasperation. 101 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:257-58, nn. 85-86). 102 In Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:66, n. 104), Duns expressly announced that his position on the order of intellection was diametrically opposed to Henry's, referring readers back to the account of his own views earlier in the same question (Vatican, 3:56 and 50, nn. 82 and 73). See also above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 164. 103 For Duns's pair of distinctions, see above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, nn. 160-61. 104 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:250, n. 69) "Et sic ens, licet sit confusum cognitum, non tamen confuse cosgnoscitur, quia non habet per quod potest distingui in plura aut priora . . ."; and also Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:54—55, n. 80): "Ens autem non potest concipi nisi distincte, quia habet
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ing confusedly preceded that of knowing distinctly, it followed that "being" was not a candidate for mind's very first object.100 Looking to the order of distinct cognition alone, however, a different picture emerged. Here, where clear articulation of conceptual parts was key, it was the simpler concept that was more easily grasped and thus known first. "Being" was not just absolutely simple; it was, as most general term of all, the absolute simplest. In the line of knowing distinctly, "being" was thus first concept known. In fact, since "being" was part of the definition of everything else, all other distinct cognition was ultimately built upon knowledge of it.106 Translated into Henry's terminology, to which Duns temporarily reverted, this meant that "being" as privatively indeterminate (indeterminatum privative) - that is, as a universal term - was "being" as mind knew it first. It constituted indeed first concept distinctly known. Only after grasping this common concept could intellect go on to construct a notion of "negatively indeterminate being" - that is, "being per se," or God himself.107 For Duns, therefore, Augustinianism had to be tempered so as to eliminate a priori knowledge of God. Yet because "being," first concept distinctly known, applied univocally to both creatures and God, the wayfarer's distinct natural knowledge of God was directly derived from the most primitive concept it distinctly perceived in attending to created things. With only slight strain to his philosophical lexicon, Duns could even say that God was known confusedly (quasi confuse) in the primitive perception of "being" as an absolutely simple common term.108 It was in this conceptum simpliciter simplicem." On Duns, see also above, n. 53; for Henry's views, Pt. 3, ch. 10, nn. 36 and 86. Kb On priority among the two orders of knowing, see again above, n. 102; and Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 164. 10(i Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:252-53, nn. 75 and 77); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:55, n. 80). For Duns on priority in distinct cognition, see above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 163. There was a way Duns saw the most confused or general term as absolutely first known, and this was in habitual or virtual cognition. He thus saved Avicenna's famous pronouncement on "being" by reading it to mean that "being" was very first object habitually or virtually conceived - see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:255, n. 81); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:60—61, n. 93). For other references to Avicenna on "being," see Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 10 (Opera Phil., 3:182, n. 6; 185, n. 21; and 301-2, nn. 31-32). 10/ In Lectura I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 17:30, n. 87), Duns expressly used Henry's language of privitive and negative indetermination. By Ordinatio I, d. 8, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 4:193-94, n. 86), he had cast the argument in more general terms. 1(18 See Duns, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 3 (Vives, 26:5b-6a): "Breviter dico,
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restricted, but still precious, sense that he was able to redeem the frequently quoted phrase from John of Damascus, that knowledge of God had been inserted into all human minds.109 On such foundations he erected his theory of the wayfarer's access to theology. Duns agreed with William of Ware that metaphysics, if not exclusively about God, at least dealt with him extensively, drawing out all that could be known about divinity simply as perceived in the term "infinite being."110 To this degree metaphysics constituted a naturally constructed science of God, or what could be referred to as natural theology.111 But what today might be called positive theology - and which Duns spoke of as "our" theology, in opposition to God's — looking to divinity's precise attributes, like "trine," and manifesting its hidden truths, was also in Duns's opinion elaborated on the basis of natural understanding of God as "infinite being." Although the particular propositions Christian theology held as true were divinely revealed, the intentional content of quod quodcumque transcendens per abstractionem a creatura cognita [for: cognitum?], potest in sua indifferentia intelligi, et tune concipitur Deus quasi confuse, sicut animali intellecto, homo intelligitur." 109 Duns, Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:122-23, n. 34); and Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:145, n. 34): "Ad argumentum principale Damasceni: potest exponi de potentia cognitiva naturaliter nobis data per quarn ex creaturis possumus cognoscere Deum esse, saltern in rationibus generalibus . . . vel de cognitione Dei sub rationibus communibus convenientibus sibi et creaturae. . . ." Bettoni took such passages in Duns as evidence of a theory of virtual innatism of knowledge of God in humankind, a version of what he called apriorismo: see his comments in "Oggetto e soggetto nell'atto intellettivo secondo Duns Scoto," SF 39 (1942): 31; "Rapporti dottrinali," p. 130; Duns Scoto filosofo (Milan, 1966), p. 61; "Fund di contatto," pp. 528-31; and "II fondamento della conoscenza umana secondo Duns Scoto," FS 47 (1965): 300-314. Earth, "Duns Scotus und die ontologische Grundlage unserer Verstandeserkenntnis," FS 33 (1951): 348-84; and "De univocationis ends," pp. 106-7; and Berube, in "Jean Duns Scot: Critique," pp. 208, 235-36 and 243; and "De 1'etre a Dieu chez Jean Duns Scot," pp. 50-53, have rightfully contested the presence of innatism in Duns's thought, whether virtual or not. However, Berube, in "Dynamisme psychologique et existence de Dieu," pp. 18-19; and "De Petre," pp. 56~59, posits - wrongly, I believe - for Duns's early work the same virtual innatism Bettoni claims to have found throughout. 110 William, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb): ". . . sed hec [scienda metaphysica] . . . de deo determinat sub radone cause, et sub ratione entis communissimi." Duns, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 11 (Vatican, 25:293b): "Viator habens conceptum simplicem et perfectissimum ad quem attingit homo ex naturalibus, non transcendit cognitionem perfectissimam simplicem de Deo possibilem metaphysico." On Duns and the wayfarer's most perfect concept of God, see above, n. 96. 111 Duns, Reporiatio parisiensis Pro!., q. 3 (quaestiuncula 1), n. 11 (Vatican, 22:51a); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 17, n. 10 (Vives, 26:219b), which refers to metaphysics as a "cognido naturalis sciendfica de Deo."
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the term "God" contained in them did not exceed the concept compounded naturally by the wayfarer's intellect. It was, in fact, the very referential limitation of positive theology to concepts that could be devised naturally by intellect which opened it up to general discussion, exposition as well as debate, even among non-believers.112 Thus, faith did not render the naturally constructed concept of God otiose, for though divine inspiration was the motor driving mind to assent to positive theological truths, understanding their meaning remained the job of the wayfarer's natural intellectual powers.113 Of course all this entailed equally well, both Duns and William conceded, that there was in the world of sin no naturally acquired science of God as trine — in other words, that for the wayfarer positive theology wTas not a demonstrative discipline."4 Only if God were known in his essence ut haec would it be evident to mind, either immediately or by demonstration, what his proper attributes were and thus whether or not the specific propositions of Christian theology 112 On the meaning of "God" as well as other terms in "our" theology, see Lectura Pro!., p. 2, qq. 1-3 (Vatican, 16:32, n. 88); Ordinatio III, d. 23, q. un., n. 9 (Vives, 15:15b); and d. 24, q. un., n. 22 (Vives, 15:53b). On the possibility of theological discussion between Christians and non-Christians, see Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 11 (Vives, 15:42b); Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 4 (Vives, 26:6a); and Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, q. un., n. 12 (Vatican, 23:452b): ". . . ilium conceptum quern habet theologus de Deo trino et uno, habet haereticus, quia idem post negat quod prius affirmavit. ..." 113 Duns, Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2 (ad 3.), n. 21 (Vives, 22:45b); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 3 (Vives, 26:6a); and q. 7, n. 11 (Vives, 25:293b): "Cognitio enim fidei non tribuit conceptum simplicem de Deo, sed tantummodo inclinat ad assentiendum quibusdam incomplexis [for: complexis!], quae non habent evidentiam ex terminis simplicibus apprehensis, et per consequens per fidem non habetur conceptio simplex transcendens omnem conceptum simplicem apud metaphysicum." On the importance to Duns of univocity of "being" for founding both metaphysics and positive theology, see the comments of Belmond, Etudes sur la ph.Uosoph.ie de Duns Scot. Vol. 1: Dieu. Existence et cognoscibilite, pp. 162-64 and 354; Wolter, The Transcendentals, p. 31; Stephen Brown, "Scows' Univocity," p. 38; and "Avicenna and the Unity of the Concept of Being," pp. 130-31; Robert P. Prentice, "The Fundamental Metaphysics of Scotus Presumed by the De primo prindpio" Antonianum 44 (1969): 227-308; Ivo Zielinski, "Moglichkeit und Grenzen der natiirlichen Erkenntnis Gottes bei Johannes Duns Scotus," WuW 48 (1985): 17-32; and Boulnois, "Introduction" to Jean Duns Scot, Sur la connaissance de Dieu, pp. 11, 12, 30, 34, 43 and 45. 114 William, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb): "Et si concedatur quod de quocumque potest esse scientia naturaliter acquisita, non tamen de quocumque et qualitercumque consideretur, quia non de deo ut est trinus et unus." See also his q. 21 (ad illud Augustini) (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchungen, p. 102). For Duns, see Ordinatio III, d. 23, q. un., n. 9 (Vives, 15:15b); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 9 (Vives, 25:14b-15a), which specified that theology was demonstrative neither "quia" nor "propter quid."
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were true, a circumstance far surpassing natural understanding of divinity in a concept compounded from universal terms (in universali).U:> It is worth noting, however, that in further inquiry into why intellect's natural concepts of God did not suffice for evident knowledge of his proper attributes, Duns explicitly rejected Henry's argument that such concepts always retained the flavor, or limitations, of their roots in sensible cognition. With his theory of univocity of "being," he wanted no part of an explanation that might limit the referential reach of transcendental terms. His reasoning was instead that because natural concepts of divinity were constructed out of universal terms, they could lead to knowledge of nothing more than attributes common to God and creatures, not the proper divine attributes of positive theological discourse.116 From Duns's perspective, even natural theology — metaphysics with respect to God - was not a science "propter quid," though since it investigated common rather than proper attributes of divinity, attributes like "being" and "wisdom," concerning which intellect could learn something from nature, it was "quia" or a posteriori.117 The limitation here, too, was imposed by the generality of human knowledge of God in via. Not about divine essence in particular or ut haec, such knowledge provided no middle terms or true definitions by 110
Duns, Lectura Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 16:14, n. 33); and p. 2, qq. 1-3 (Vatican, 16:32, n. 88-cited above, n. 112); Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:38, n. 62); III, d. 23, q. un., n. 9 (Vives, 15:15b); and d. 24, q. un., n. 22 (Vives, 15:53a); Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, q. un., n. 23 (Vives, 23:459b); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 9 (Vives, 15:15a); and also above, nn. 25 and 64. Positive theology as a true science - that is, theology as known by God - had, quite exceptionally, a singular subject, since God in himself fell under no genus or species: see Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 3 (quaestiuncula 2), n. 12 (Vives, 22:5 Ib). 116 See Lectura Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 16:18-19, nn. 44-45) for Duns's rejection of Henry's ideas, and (Vatican, 16:19-20, n. 46) for his own view; and the same in Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:50-51, nn. 83-84 and 86). In contrast, William of Ware seems to have been satisfied with Henry's account, or at least not so bothered by the implication that the sensory origin of natural knowledge limited reference to material things: see William, Quaestiones, q. 2 (MS Vat., Chigi. B. VIII. 135, f. 2rb): ". . . postquam cognitio istorum principiorum non aduenit homini nisi amminiculo sensus uel sensuum, non possunt ducere naturaliter nisi in cognitionem eorum que aliquo modo cadunt sub sensu cum sunt materialia." On Henry and "savoring of roots," see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, n. 3. 117 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:148, n. 39); Reportatio pansiensis Prol., q. 3 (quaestiuncula 1). n. 11 (Vives, 22:5la) - cited above, n. I l l ; Reportatio parisiensis (examinata) IA, d. 2, qq. 1-3 (ed. Wolter and Adams, in "Parisian Proof," pp. 254-56); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 12 (Vives, 25:294a). The idea appears in Duns as early as Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum I, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:22, n. 19).
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which even common properties could be demonstrated of God a priori."8 Such a position entailed diminution of Augustinian claims about the wayfarer's knowledge of God, forcing Duns to take issue with William of Ware himself, for whom propositions such as "God exists" could be known as true per se immediately evident, like principles of science - by those who did the hard work of searching the recesses of mind.119 He nevertheless hastened to point out that a posteriori reasoning sufficed to make natural theology authentically scientific or minimally demonstrative. Though the existence of God was not grasped by the wayfarer as an immediate, per se truth, it could still be proven by indubitable argument from his effects in the world.120 More than any of his fellow Augustinians, Duns thus succeeded in laying out a fully naturalizing explanation for simple knowledge of God, on the basis of which could be established the framework for a natural theology as well as the linguistic substratum for a positive theology open to rational examination even outside Christian circles. All the while, he made good on Augustinian presumptions of the centrality of "being" for understanding theology and the possibility of natural concepts capturing something of God's essence and referring directly to it. It was as if he brought to completion the efforts of Henry of Ghent and Matthew of Aquasparta to set mind and its activity entirely in the world while not forgetting its natural orientation towards God. Here was an Aristotelianizing noetics and epistemology effectively harnessed to the aspirations of an Augustinian cast of mind.121 118
Duns, Reportatio parisiensis (examinata) IA, d. 2, qq. 1—3 (ed. Wolter and Adams, in "Parisian Proof," p. 254), cited just above, n. 117; and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 11 (Vives, 25:293a-b). 119 See William, Quaestiones, q. 21 (ad illud Augustini) (ed. Daniels, in Quellenbeitrage und Untersuchungen, p. 102): ". . . in quantum . . . est unum et primum ens et causa omnium, potest esse per se notum, modo supradicto, Deus est." Duns argued vigorously against the per se character of the wayfarer's knowledge of such propositions: see Lectura I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:117, 120 and 122, nn. 22, 25 and 33); Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:138-39 and 141, nn. 26 and 29); and Reportatio parisiensis (examinata) IA, d. 2, qq. 1-3 (ed. Wolter and Adams, in "Parisian Proof," p. 254), cited above, n. 117. 120 On demonstration of the fact of God's existence, see Duns's Ordinatio I, d. 2, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 2:161-62, n. 56). In Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2, n. 19; and q. 3 (Vives, 22:44a and 47b), he noted that although such propositions were not grasped as true per se in metaphysics, they could still be naturally proven to be true. 121 See above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, pp. 243-45, on Pecham's and Matthew's steps away from a Bonaventuran dynamic of mind; Pt. 3, ch. 10, p. 330, on the more formidable effort of Henry. Gilson remarked, in Jean Duns Scot. Introduction a ses positions
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To the end, Duns retained some doubt, perhaps a healthy scepticism, about the extent of his achievement. In his Collationes he admitted that it was only loosely one could claim to devise an idea of God's quiddity from what could be known of creatures. Indeed, looking disjunctively at the separate parts of a natural concept of God, the common notions compounded by aggregation, one could well appreciate how profoundly creature-oriented the cognitive object remained, so that even the fully constructed proper concept could hardly be held to say much positively about the divine. The Dionysian negative way, with its imputation of real ignorance, best expressed the character of human knowledge of God in the world of sin.122 And here in the Collationes, in contrast to the commentaries on the Sentences, it was clearly the "negative" in the via negativa Duns wanted to emphasize. Reminding his readers that God's essence was in itself most suited to being seized in an absolutely simple concept, he explained that when in the world of sin the wayfarer managed to put together a compound proper concept referring to divinity, it was still the elusive absolutely simple concept to which it intentionally aspired.123 Natural knowledge of God in via was at bottom an ersatz cognition, inclining intellect towards an object that could not truly be naturally known. Sober thoughts like these surely explain Duns's willingness to concede to the wayfarer, in exceptional cases, knowledge of divinity vastly superior to naturally attained cognition if still short of rapturous or beatific vision. God could, he confessed, grant more perfect than usual understanding of himself without lifting intellect out of the wayfaring state. He was aware that Henry had posited a kind of knowledge available to theologians surpassing natural comprehension and constituting a true science of Christian theology in via:
fondamentaks (Paris, 1952), p. 573, that Scotus transformed Augustinian metaphysics to Gilson's mind, by laying out a program of theological certitude or science - but still managed to retain a place for Franciscan emphasis on affect or love. 122 Consider the pointed remarks in Duns, Collationes 13, n. 4 (ad quaestionem) (Vives, 5:202a). Barth, "De univocationis ends," pp. 102~5, comments on Duns's realization of the limits to natural knowledge of God. 123 The same collatio, n. 5 (Vives, 5:202b): "Ideo licet in altissimo conceptu [quern habemus de Deo in via] nihil concipimus, nisi modo composito, tamen intendimus conceptum simpliciter simplicem, quia ilium habemus in communi tantum, et confusissimum, et communem Deo et creaturae." On Duns more typically about the Dionysian way, see above, n. 59.
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the knowledge made possible by Henry's lumen medium.m Special theological understanding in precisely this form was not, however, a proposal he could underwrite. In an argument reminiscent of his opposition to traditional doctrines of divine illumination, he observed that no matter what extraordinary light of intellectual operation was provided to mind, the fact remained that the terms of simple cognition garnered naturally in the world imposed limitations on the semantic value of theological propositions. Any such proposition composed of naturally constructed terms was simply incapable, no matter what the conditions, of revealing truths beyond those already plain in the glow of mind's natural light. Under no circumstances could the wayfarer's positive theology attain to the level of true science.125 What Duns was prepared to allow for was a different sort of positive theology, short of strict science but more far-reaching than natural theology or metaphysics, manifesting the truths of faith with greater clarity than faith by itself. There were, he explained, three ways other than by rapture to know about divinity in via: by faith, by the exegetical and, from a scientific point of view, dialectical arguments of most theologians, and by the kind of extraordinary insight — the vision from the mountaintop - God vouchsafed to the Apostles and prophets.126 In virtue of his omnipotence, God could bestow the gift of this third type of knowledge upon the wayfarer without revealing himself openly and thus without canceling the terms of mind's sinful exile from the divine presence. Indeed, he had often opted to do so in order to steel his chosen earthly emissaries against the trials and tribulations they faced in building his church, for anyone
124
Henry's ideas are referred to above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, n. 147. For Duns's presentation of them, see Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un, n. 5 (Vives, 15:39a); Reportatio parisiensis Pro!., q. 2, n. 6 (Vives, 22:36a); and III, d. 24, q. un., n. 7 (Vives, 23:449b~50a). 123 For Duns's argument against the cognitive effects Henry attributed to a lumen medium, see Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 11 (Vives, 15:42a-b); Reportatio parisiensis Pro!., q. 2, n. 14 (Vives, 22:40b-41a); and III, d. 24, q. un., n. 13 (Vives, 23:452a-b); on the impossibility of a scientific theology for the wayfarer, Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., nn. 13 and 17 (Vives, 15:44b and 48a); and Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, q. un., nn. 16 and 22 (Vives, 23:454b and 457a). In the Prologue to Reportatio parisiensis, Duns surprisingly defended the contrary position, that there could be a demonstrative theology in via: see below, n. 129. 12(1 Duns, Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 14 (Vives, 15:45a); Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, q. un., n. 17 (Vives, 23:454b~55a); and most fully in Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2, n. 17 (Vives, 22:42b~43a), where two still higher kinds of knowledge are added: knowing God face-to-face and knowing him in a species.
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receiving understanding of this sort would cling to the truths of faith with a certitude equivalent to that of science itself. Although lacking the evidence for true belief that strict scientific knowledge could have provided, the strength of such an individual's intellectual adherence would permit characterizing his or her knowledge as something like science, loosely construed.127 To this degree, Henry was on the right track, and to this extent Duns was prepared to admit supernaturalism into his otherwise rigorously naturalizing account of the wayfarer's knowledge of God. On rare occasions — just two, in fact — he dared suggest even more. The Prologue to the Reportatio parisiensis and question 7 of the Quodlibetal Questions reveal a step further in Henry's direction. First hint of the move comes in the Reportatio, where Duns took note of attacks that had been made on Henry regarding the lumen medium, commenting that he thought they went too far. From his point of view, Henry's opponents risked giving too little credit to Christian theology and theologians, thereby fueling the efforts of Christianity's adversaries, inspired by the example of Averroes, to poke fun at Christian speculation.128 Then, in both Reportatio and Quodlibetal Questions, he went on to make clear he thought it possible for the wayfarer to receive from God simple knowledge, in the form of a concept of divinity, that would contain evidence for many of the hidden propositions of theology and thereby permit demonstration of most such truths. God could moreover grant this simple knowledge without needing to reveal himself face-to-face, as entailed in either rapture or beatific vision. Here was Duns positing for the wayfarer just the kind of scientific theology he had twice rejected elsewhere in the commentaries on the Sentences.l29
127
Duns, Ordinatio III, d. 24, q. un., n. 17 (Vives, 15:47b-48a); and Reportatio parisiensis III, d. 24, q. un., n. 21 (Vives, 23:456b~57a). On certitude as one of two perfections of science in the strict sense of the word, and thus as worthy of special emphasis, see above, Ft. 4, ch. 13, n. 146. 128 Duns, Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2, n. 8 (Vives, 22:38a): "Sed isti nimis parurn attribuunt theologo et theologiae. . . . Sed quod aliquis doctor propter auctoritatem Averrois, qua deridet Christianos, dimittat opinionem aliquam, videtur potius deridendus, quam tenens priorem opinionem propter auctoritates sanctorum plurimas." This is, of course, the text of what is actually the Additiones magnae. For a slightly variant version, as given in the Reportatio examinata, see Dumont, "Theology as a Science," p. 590, n. 49, which article, pp. 589-91, offers an excellent synopsis of Duns's extreme position in the Prologue and the Quodlibetal Questions, q. 7. 129 Duns, Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2, n, 15 (Vives, 22:4Ib), quoted in Dumont,
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The way the requisite simple cognition was produced, Duns explained, was by God furnishing mind with an intelligible species representing himself distinctly. The wayfarer would then have access to perfect abstractive knowledge of divinity ut haec, though not the intuitive knowledge of direct mental vision. Abstractive understanding of this sort fully sufficed for science, strictly construed, and Duns insisted that any theologian receiving it would be able to theologize "perfectly scientifically" (perfecte scientijice}.m He even added that if such intellection in a species was what Henry had had in mind with his theory of a lumen medium, as unlikely as he thought this to be, then Henry's ideas could be nearly totally vindicated.131 One had only to be cautioned that where Henry believed such special knowledge was available to all hard-working theologians, he was sure God granted it in just the most extraordinary circumstances. The Apostles and prophets might have theologized scientifically; in his own day theology was routinely a less strictly demonstrative business.132 Hedged about with qualifications, Duns's admission that Henry was close to being right on this issue is remarkable nonetheless. His readiness to follow his predecessor on so controversial a matter, even during his years at the University of Paris, where Henry's ideas were coming under attack, speaks eloquently of his intellectual debt to the
"Theology as a Science," n. 50; and Quaestiones quodlibetaks, q. 7, n. 7 (Vives, 25:289a). On his previous denial of anything approaching this position, see above, n. 125. The fact that the contradictor)7 views both appear in Reportatio parisiensis complicates understanding the history of this text's composition. 130 See Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2. n. 15 (Vives, 22:42a); and Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 7, n. 8 (Vives. 25:290a), for confirmation of such abstractive knowledge; and the quodlibetal question, n. 10 (Vives, 25:290b-91a) for discussion of its scientific value, ending with the remarkable assertion: "Esset ergo viator perfecte scientifice theologus, qui per conceptum distinctissimum divinitatis possibilem haberi, citra cognitionem intuitivam, cognosceret ordinate veritates omnes necessarias. . . . " There is further evidence from his treatment of other issues, such as angelic cognition, that Duns accepted the idea God could be known by means of a proper intelligible species: see Lectura II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 2 (Vatican, 18:323-24, n. 292); and Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 2, q. 2 (Vatican, 7:554-55, n. 324). This was, of course, one of the two additional ways of knowing God Duns had listed in the passage from the Prologue to the Reportatio parisiensis cited above, n. 126. Alluntis and Wolter, in John Duns Scotus, God and Creatures. The Quodlibetal Questions, p. 163, nn. 10 and 11. comment on this late position of Duns concerning the possibility of an abstractive concept of God. 131 Duns, Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2, n. 17 (Vives, 22:43a-b); and Quaestiones quodlibetaks. q. 7, n. 10 (Vives, 25:29la), where he revealed his doubts about Henry's real intentions. 1;v - Duns, Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 2, n. 17 (Vives, 22:43b).
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theologian whose theories he commonly took as a foil to his own. That he would find a way of defending Henry on a point which did so little to promote his own assiduous efforts to institute a more natural and worldly vision of the workings of mind testifies to a deep loyalty to the Augustinian current to which they both belonged.133
133
William of Ware considered the notion that God could be known by the wayfarer in a species representing his nature, and rejected it: see William, Quaestiones. q. 20 (in Gal, "Guilielmi de Ware doctrina," p. 174; a longer, less reliable version of which can be found in Doyle, "The Disintegration," p. 326, nn. 101 and 102). Perhaps William felt no pressure to make room for Henry's views on a lumen medium because he had already accepted so much of what Henry posited about natural a priori knowledge of divine things.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
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Scotus's fully developed noetics, along with his semantics of "being," made it possible to account for entirely natural knowledge of divinity that was, in keeping with the tradition on which he had been nourished, at least minimally quidditative. Even more than William of Ware he thus managed to preserve a sense of intimacy between mind and God, so important in earlier Augustinian circles, despite the eclipse of classic Augustinian ideas about processes of intellection and the nature of the cognitive object. No one since Matthew of Aquasparta had gone so far towards meeting the philosophical demands of high-scholastic naturalism while simultaneously reaffirming the affective core of Augustinian thought, and unlike Matthew, Duns accomplished the task alongside definitive abandonment of the notion of special illumination. Here was a scientific Augustinianism set to compete with the efforts of Aristotelianizing purists in staying resolutely in the world. But still a classic Augustinian looking at Duns's noetics and epistemology, as well as his ontology, might have wondered whether his efforts were sufficient. There were limitations to the intimacy with God Duns allowed intellect in the world of sin that would surely have disappointed traditionalists of radically Augustinian hue. The problem emerges in sharpest relief in connection with the notion of first object of intellect, an issue briefly described above as providing a subsidiary reason for positing univocity of "being."1 Not surprisingly, Duns's thoughts on the matter were deeply influenced by Henry of Ghent, for whom mind's first object was God, and through him by the general ideological drift of Augustinians throughout the century. As usual, however, he took issue with the particulars of his predecessors' ideas, ending up by recasting the question in a fashion at once technically more precise and philosophically more subtle. As early as the Questions on the Metaphysics Duns defined the first object of intellect as a single element or attribute included essentially See above, Pt. 4, Ch. 15, n. 66 and pp. 518-20.
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in everything that was properly and in itself intelligible.2 Conversely, all things embraced by mind's first object as logically inferior to it were themselves properly and naturally objects of intellection.3 The implication was that the first object was a common property distributed among the class of all knowables, but Duns hastened to explain that technically speaking it could also be a thing virtually containing all other objects - that is, one object having the power, once known, to generate knowledge of all others.4 To express the commensurability of the relation between first object and intellect he said that the former was adequated (adaequatum} to the latter, by which he meant that it was operatively exactly proportional to it.3 The first object constituted, in short, the "precise cause" of cognition on the part of what was known, a single ingredient necessary and sufficient to account for intelligibility.6 Putting all this together he came up with the phrase "first adequate object," highlighting the peculiarly epistemic character of the priority he was thinking of,
2
Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil., 4:63, n. 20): ". . . primum objectum intellectus non potest esse aliquid nisi quod essentialiter includitur in quolibet per se intelligibili." 3 Duns, Lectura Prol., p. 2, qq. 1-3 (Vatican, 16:27, n. 69); and Quaestiones quodlibetales. q. 14, n. 11 (Vives, 26:40a): ". . . quidquid per se continetur sub primo objecto naturali alicujus potentiae, ad illud potentia potest naturaliter attingere, alioquin objectum primum non esset adaequatum potentiae, sed transcendens in ratione objecti. . . . " 4 On a common property as first object, see the first passage cited in the preceding note as well as Ordinatio Prol., p. 3, qq. 1-3 (Vatican, 1:100, n. 146): ". . . primum obiectum potentiae est aliquid commune ad omnia per se obiecta illius potentiae." For first object as virtually containing the rest. Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:259, n. 90): "Alio modo dicitur esse obiectum adaequatum potentiae quia movet potentiam ad actum circa alia, quae virtualiter continentur in ipso. . . ." On virtuality see also, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1. q. 3 (Vatican, 3:79, n. 127). Duns sometimes distinguished the two ways of being first object as serving "secundum praedicationem" (for something common) in contrast to "secundum virtualitatem" (for something by reason of which all other things are known) - see Collationes 12, n. 10 (Vives, 5:199a); and Reportatio pansiensis Prol.^ q. 1, n. 7(!) (Vives, 22:lib). 5 Duns, Lectura Prol., p. 1. q. un. (Vatican, 16:1, n. 1); and Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:2, n. 1): ". . . primum obiectum dicitur quod est adaequatum cum potentia. . . ." See also the references to Lectura I, d. 3; Collationes; Reportatio pansiensis; and Quaestiones quodlibetales given above in nn. 3 and 4. For the term "proportional," see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:260, n. 94). A clear statement of how adaequation between first object and power typically fell to a common element comes in Ordinatio Prol., p. 3, qq. 1-3 (Vatican, 1:100-101, n. 148). 0 See Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:48, n. 69), where in speaking of intelligibility Duns used the term "adaequatio" interchangeably with "causalitas praecisa."
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different from that of objects first according to either order of cognition or perfection of intelligibility.7 He knew that a common opinion among thinkers of his day was that the quiddity of material things comprised first adequate object of human mind.8 This was the view associated with Aristotle, in whose words, he said, first object was simply "quiddity of sensibles" ~ that is, whatever quidditative content could be abstracted from sensible things or derived from knowledge of them - and it was also the position taken by Thomas Aquinas, whom Duns referred to by name in a late note added to the Ordinatio's discussion of Aristotle's stand on the matter.9 A second, conflicting opinion asserted that intellect's first object was God. This was Henry of Ghent's contention, which Duns correctly characterized as applying only to what Henry called the power of mind to know naturally, not to its rational processes of cogitation.10 Rejecting both of these prominent views, Duns maintained humankind's first adequate intellectual object to be, as indicated in the previous chapter, none other than "being" itself.11 This had not been
' For example, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:68): "Utrum Deus sit primum obiectum naturale adaequatum respectu intellectus viatoris"; or Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:261, n. 98): "obiectum primum adaequatum." On priority of order (primitas originis et generations] and priority of perfection (primitas perfectionis), see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:249, n. 66); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:48, n. 69). 8 Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:259, n. 92); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:69, n. 110). In Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, qq. 2~3 (Opera Phil., 3:207, n. 25), Duns called this the "proper" object of intellect. 9 On Aristotle, see Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:20, n. 33); and for Aquinas, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:76, n. 124 [quoted below, n. 37]), which refers back to an exposition (Vatican, 3:70, nn. 111-12) of Thomas's three kinds of intellective power, among which was human intellect, directed to the quiddity of material things. The latter exposition is repeated nearly verbatim in Duns, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 11 (Vives, 26:40a-b). 10 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:258, n. 88); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:78, n. 125). On the distinction between natural and rational cognition, see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:228-29, n. 14); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:14-15, n. 22). For Henry's views on first object of mind, see above, Pt. 3, Ch. 10, nn. 52, 54, 94 and 96. 11 Refer to n. 1, above. Duns presented the arguments in favor of "being" as early as Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (Opera Phil, 4:63, n. 20), but definitively supported this view only in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:261-62 and 264, nn. 99 and 104; and especially 16:277, n. 133): "Sic igitur dictum est quod ens est primum obiectum adaequatum intellectui nostro, et non Deus, nee 'quod quid' substantiae materialis, nee alia passio entis, ut verum aut bonum aut unum." See the same in Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:80-81, n. 129).
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his posture at the beginning of his career, when he defended substance as intellect's first object, nor was it unambiguously his stance as late as early sections of the Questions on the Metaphysics}2 Yet by the time of the commentaries on the Sentences he had come to accepting it fully, explaining that he got the idea from Avicenna, especially the famous comments in the Philosophia prima concerning first impressions on mind.13 As for Duns's reasons, they were varied and complicated. A quick look was taken above at his arguments against Henry on God as first object.14 Only for divine mind itself was God first object of intellection, in which it saw not merely its own essence but also all other things as virtually contained in its perfection.15 With regard to quiddity of material things, it seems that when Duns initially inclined towards positing "being" as first object he felt he could disprove the Aristotelianizing position with a host of philosophical rationales as well, clear to anyone of sound and open mind.16 In his Sentences commentaries, however, he carefully segregated philosophical grounds for rejecting Aristotle from theological ones, convincing only to those accepting the tenets of faith, and in the process substantially reduced the number and range of arguments to be regarded as authentically philosophical. Theology, of course, promised believers the intellectual vision of God, at least in beatitude. Unless one were to suppose that the blessed intellect constituted an entirely different cognitive power from intellect in this world, a supposition severely compromising to the 12 Duns, In librum Praedicamentorum, q. 4, n. 12 (Vives, l:449a-b); and Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum IV, q. 1 (Opera Phil., 3:319, nn. 86-87), which should be contrasted to the reference to the same work cited above, n. 11. Later, in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:260-61, n. 95); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:80, n. 128), Duns categorically rejected his earlier view. 13 Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:15, n. 24); and the reference to Avicenna's Philosophia prima (Metaphysics] in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum VI, q. 3 (cited above, n. 11); and Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:2, n. 1). For the Avicenna text, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 8, n. 52. 14 See above, Pt. 4, ch. 15, nn. 100-102. 15 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:259, n. 90); Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:80, n. 127); and Reportatio parisiensis Prol., q. 1, n. 7 (Vives, 22:10b-lla). By God as object Duns did not here mean a confused knowledge of God, which he saw in some way as primary to human mind in the confused concept of being - see above, Pt. 4, ch. 15, n. 108. 16 Duns, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, qq. 2-3 (specifically Opera Phil., 3:221-23, nn. 67-75, but also pp. 208-12, nn. 27-37; and pp. 215-21, nn. 51-66, against the corollary that separate substances were not naturally known).
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Christian message of personal salvation, it was necessary to infer that immaterial things were among the proper objects of mind and consequently that intellect's first object was not so narrow as Thomas and Aristotle had proposed.17 Against the counterargument that God could raise intellect in glory to see beyond its natural first object by granting it an extraordinary light or cognitive habitus, one could simply respond that this retort itself confirmed the weakness of the case. For such a gift to work and expand the domain of objects of mind, after all, it would have effectively to obliterate the original power by turning it into something else. Again all hope for personal salvation would disappear.18 On the other hand, philosophy, as Duns now saw it in the Sentences commentaries, offered just two, or maybe three arguments.19 Both Lectura and Ordinatio invoked the Aristotelian principle that a natural desire could not exist in vain to conclude that, since human intellect plainly longed to grasp its immaterial cause in particular, not just general, terms, it must possess the natural power to acquire distinct knowledge of more than material objects. Duns likewise pointed in both works to the evident feasibility of a science of metaphysics as grounds for taking intellect's object to be other than Aristotle had supposed. Metaphysics, after all, considered things under the universal category of "being," which stretched far beyond material quiddity. To limit mind's first object to material quiddity alone would put such a science completely out of reach. Finally, the Ordinatio added a third reason, which Duns admitted came very close to the second. It, too, appealed to the existence of metaphysics, claiming that if the latter were to be different from physics it must have "being" qua "being" as its subject. The inescapable conclusion was again that nothing more restricted than "being" qua "being" was suited to serve as intellect's first object. 17 See the argument in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:240 and 241-42, nn. 40 and 44), and the reminder (Vatican, 16:259, n. 92) that it would work only among believers (catholici], since it depended on faith in the beatific vision. In Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:70, n. 113) Duns explicitly presented the argument as exclusively theological. It is reproduced without comment about its theoretical coloration in Collationes 11, n. 8 (Vives, 5:19la). 18 See above, Pt. 4, Ch. 13, n. 49; also the comments in the same note on how William of Ware was willing to concede more here on God's ability to extend the reach of a power than was Duns. 19 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:241 and 259-60, nn. 42 and 92-93); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:72-73, nn. 116-18).
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Important to note is that the arguments against Aristotle, especially the last two philosophical ones, appear to rest on the notion of first adequate intellectual object as an element common to all things known, though Duns had already conceded in theory that an object might also be first and adequate because it "virtually contained" knowledge of all others.20 In fact the restriction of intellect's first object to a common property was a relic of Duns's early thoughts on the matter, and when it came to affirmative arguments for "being" as first object, this narrow approach was dominant no later than among passages in the Questions on the Metaphysics.'11 The idea was most likely inherited from William of Ware, though William would never have supported the univocal commonness of object promoted by the mature Duns.22 In any case, by the time of the commentaries on the Sentences, Duns had switched to defending "being" as first object on the basis of his broader understanding of what a first object entailed. It was, after all, in the Sentences commentaries that he elaborated his famous doctrine of the double primacy of "being." Henceforth, "being" was for him first object both by commonness, because it was essentially included in most specific objects of intellection, and by virtuality, because it virtually included a few specific objects while others were virtually or essentially included in an object essentially including "being."23 Of course, while Duns originally concluded that "being" could serve in this way as first object only if it were univocal - indeed the need for a first object afforded an argument in favor of univocity of "being" he later reconsidered and decided maybe not. As a result, in his final works he felt free to call upon the idea of "being" as first object in the debate about knowledge of God without having 20
See above, n. 4. See Duns, Quaestiones super libros Aietaphysicorum II, qq. 23 (Opera Phil., 3:228, n. 94). The same idea did carry over vestigially into I^ectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:261, n. 98); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:80, n. 129). The constraints this assumption placed on the nature of human intellect's first object were what prompted Duns in Ordinatio II, d. 24, q. un., n. 6 (Vives, 13:183a-b), to say that only God's mind had a first adequate object which was not an abstracted quality (abstraction). Tl Consult William's comments on the nature (ratio) of mind's object in his Quaestiones, q. 85 (ed. Schmaus, in Der Liber propugnatorius, p. 269*). 23 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16: 261-64, nn. 99 and 104); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:85 and 93, nn. 137 and 151) - all referred to above, Pt. 4, Ch. 15, n. 50. The point is made most succinctly in a note Duns added to Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:16, 11. 20-23). 21
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simultaneously to resolve the question of "being" 's univocity. Even Henry's theory of analogy of "being" would, for Duns in his Parisian years, suffice to sustain the assertion that "being" was mind's first object and thus that God could, at least in beatitude, be directly known.24 Such an attitude about the nature of first object appears to have been adopted as well by William of Ware, for whom "being" was intellect's "formal object," though not univocal.2^ Admittedly, the late Duns remained somewhat tentative in this regard, for on occasion in his Parisian works he volunteered for argument's sake to forego the requirement of a first object for human cognition in order to save the necessary connection between univocity and an adequate object of mind.26 More significant, as this wavering on the tie between univocity and first object suggests, the commitment to "being" as first object of mind laid out in the early avatars of Duns's Sentences commentaries turns out itself not to have been the last word. On the contrary, his ideas about "being" as first adequate object of intellect continued to evolve even in his maturity. He had recognized from the start that despite his rejection of the quiddity of material things as first object, only material things were directly known by intellect in the world of sin.27 Duns was always enough of an Aristotelianizer to insist that the wayfarer's knowledge begin with sensibles, having 24 On the demand for univocal "being," see the discussion above, Pt. 4, ch. 15, p. 518, and the citations given in n. 66 of that chapter. Duns made the point clearly in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:261, n. 97): "Ideo conclude quod vel nullum obiectum erit primum intellectus nostri, vel oportet ponere univocationem ends, modo praedicto." For his later change of mind, see Pt. 4, ch. 15, pp. 518-20, and the citations to Reportatio parisiensis and Quaestiones quodlibetales, qq. 3 and 14, given there in n. 83. In a late addition to Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:29-30, n. 48), Duns applied his realization that the questions of univocity of "being" and mind's first object were separable to consideration of the necessity for revealed knowledge in salvation. Curiously, these final views of Duns on univocity and first object brought him back full circle to precisely his position in Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum II, qq. 2-3 (Opera Phil., 3:228-29, nn. 94-95 and 100-101). 21 William, Quaestiones, q. 85 (ed. Schmaus, in Der Liber propugnatorius, p. 268*). 2(1 See the references to Book II, d. 24 of the Ordinatio and Reportatio parisiensis given above, Pt. 4, ch. 15, n. 82. Since these works predate the Quaestiones quodlibetales, it is possible that the position taken in these two passages represents a penultimate view, superseded by a real last stand, that of the citations of n. 24, above. ~' Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1—2 (Vatican, 16:244, n. 49): ". . . licet pro statu viae ex statute divino non possumus de facto intelligere nisi ista materialia, non tamen ipsum materiale est primum obiectum intellectus nostri." On quiddity of material things as object of sinful mind, see also above, Pt. 4, ch. 14, nn. 53-54.
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taken the injunction so strictly after all as to rule out Henry's noetics of essence, whereby normal cognition was grounded in a primitive perception of the being of God.28 And like all thirteenth-century scholastics, he held that special revelation alone would permit human mind to know the Godhead precisely in its own particular essence.29 Knowledge of that sort was the privilege of the blessed in heaven and perhaps a select number of souls on earth, among them the apostle Paul.30 Only the exotic idea, repudiated even by William of Ware, that God might in extraordinary circumstances grant the wayfarer an intelligible species furnishing distinct knowledge of himself outside the state of rapture licensed the slightest deviation in Duns's later thought from Aristotle's vision of the origin and range of knowledge in the world.31 To accommodate this understanding of the limits of cognition in the world with affirmation of universal "being" as properly first object of intellect, the mature Duns moreover gradually devised a language distinguishing that which mind was ultimately created to know from effective cognitive capacity at any given time. Already in the Lectura he explained that one could speak of mind's natural object as that either towards which it was naturally inclined or by which it was naturally moved. In the first instance, the object was "being" in its totality, but in the second it was something much less.32 Distinction 3 of Book I of the Ordinatio advanced an even more rigorous formulation, in which Duns specified that by nature of the pure power of cognition (ex ratione potentiae) "being" in all its commonness was intellect's adequate first object, although in the present state of sin (pro
28 On origin of knowledge in sensation, see above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, p. 419; and ch. 14, nn. 10—11. For explicit indication that non-material things, including God, were not known by the wayfarer except in a general concept of being, see Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:112, n. 185). 29 See above, Pt. 4, ch. 15, nn. 9 and 10. 30 On knowledge of the blessed (or "sancti"), see the preceding n. 29; and also Ordinatio I, d. 22, q. un. (Vatican, 5:341, 11. 9-12). On Paul's special vision, see Lectura Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 16:14, n. 33); and I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:243, n. 47). Duns held that even the contemplative in the world of sin did not see God in his essence: Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 16:249, n. 65); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1-2 (Vatican, 3:47, n. 66). 31 See above, Pt. 4, ch. 15, nn. 130, 132 and 133. 32 Duns, Lectura Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 16:21, n. 49). The general idea is not far from Matthew's distinction between apprehensum and apprehensibile: see above, Part 2, ch. 8, n. 130.
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statu isto) the quiddity of sensible things was adequate object actually moving it to know (in ratione motivi, in movendo}.^ A still more exacting version of this analytical scheme had, in fact, already appeared in the Prologue to the Ordinatio. There Duns noted that the notion of a natural object could be taken to mean either that towards which a perceptive power was by nature inclined, whether it could naturally attain knowledge of it at any moment or not, or that knowledge of which the power could in a specific instance, by solely natural means, attain.34 He then continued that an object, most especially a common property, would qualify as a naturally attainable first object (primum obiectum naturaliter attingibile] only if all objects logically inferior to it - that is, all particular instances - were also naturally attainable. This was what it should mean, after all, for the first object to be adequated to the power, and to hold otherwise would deprive the notion of its philosophical utility.35 Applying these ideas to the question of first object of human intellect, one had to conclude that "being" at its broadest was not the naturally attainable first object for every state in which mind might find itself, most especially not for the state of sin. In the sinful condition, "being" qualified merely as first object to which mind was by nature inclined.36 As Duns had come to realize, and as he confessed in a very late addition to the Ordinatio, he ultimately agreed with Aristotle, and Thomas, that for the wayfarer mind's first adequate object was just the quiddity of material things. He differed with them only in insisting that absolutely speaking - considering intellect without reference to limitations imposed by any particular state (ex natura potentiae) the first object was nothing less than "being" in general.37
33
Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:112-14, nn. 186 and 187). Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:54, n. 90): ". . . distinguo de obiecto natural!. Potest enim accipi obiectum naturale vel pro illo ad quod naturaliter sive ex actione causarum naturaliter activarum potest potentia attingere, vel pro illo ad quod naturaliter inclinatur potentia, sive possit attingere naturaliter illud obiectum sive non." The same idea was touched on above with regard to Duns's views on "naturalism" in a power (see Part 4, ch. 13, nn. 48-50, and esp. n. 51). He felt that a power must be naturally inclined to any object it could ever be expected to reach, although it might not actually be able to grasp every such object on its own. 35 Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:55, n. 91), especially the passage quoted below, n. 40; as well as Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:77, n. 124), also quoted in the same note. 3(1 Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:56, n. 92); and more dramatically, Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, n. 11 (Vives, 26:40a). 37 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:76, nn. 123-24: "Concordant 34
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In light of these considerations it should already be clear how widely disparate were the epistemic overtones of Duns's views about first object of intellect and those of his theory of univocity of "being," and, when all is said and done, how modest the claims of his theory of univocity for saving fully Augustinian intimacy of God to mind. Having conceded to human intellect a concept of being univocal to God and creatures, he could easily explain how, though all sinful cognition derived from sensible things, the wayfarer's intellect was able naturally to know objects beyond those sensation could grasp and denominate them by compounding general terms extrapolated from sensory cognition.38 For this reason he had rejected Henry's claim that the wayfarer's knowledge retained the flavor or limitation of sensible cognition, laying out his own quite contrary exposition of the possibility, in sin, of a natural, proper, and quidditative conception of God.39 Yet the wayfarer's knowledge of "being" in a single concept, as "hoc intelligibile" known "uno actu," though univocal and not limited in reference to any particular class of objects hie Aristoteles et 'articulus' [i. e. Duns's view], quod quiditas rei sensibilis est nunc obiectum adaequatum, intelligendo 'sensibilis' proprie, vel inclusi essentialiter vel virtualiter in sensibili. . . . Discordat: - obiectum adaequatum 'intellectui ex natura potentiae' nihil sub ente. Hoc 'articulus' contra Aristotelem, et bene contra Thomam hie prima ratio." Duns returned to this point in Quaestiones quodlibetales, q. 14, nn. 12 and 16-20 (Vives, 26:46b-47a, 54a and 62b~65b), not only to confirm it but also to emphasize that "being" was, in fact, naturally mind's first object, if in this life only that to which it was naturally inclined or directed. Thus God, too, was a natural object, and the reason he could not be seen by the wayfarer was due not to the constraints of nature but rather to the artifical limitations imposed by God's will. See also Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:113-14, n. 187). It should be noted that Boulnois, claiming support from both Giuseppina Cannizzo and Vladimir Richter, takes the word "articulus" in the passage quoted above from Ordinatio I, d. 3, as more properly to be read "Harcley" - that is, as referring to the views of Duns's contemporary and sometime disciple, Henry of Harcley. He thus takes issue with the editors of the Vatican edition on what is admittedly an arguable point of interpretation. (See Boulnois, Sur la connaissance de Dieu, p. 135; and the discussion on pp. 7; 447-48, n. 1 to para. 184; and 451, n. 4 to para. 185.) Whether Boulnois or the editors are right has little bearing on the point made here. Even if Duns's special reference was to Harcley, he still wanted to indicate his own partial agreement and partial disagreement with Aristotle and Thomas. Boulnois himself takes the discussion in question as referring as much to Duns's own views as to Harcley's — see Boulnois, p. 360, n. 1 to para. 123, and n. 1 to para. 124. 38 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:76, n. 123): "Non igitur nunc est adaequatum obiectum eius [i.e. intellectus] quod supremae sensitivae, quia intelligit omne inclusum in sensibili essentialiter, usque ad ens, sub qua indifferentia nullo modo sensus cognoscit, — et etiam inclusum virtualiter, ut relationes, quod non sensus." 39 See above, Pt. 4, ch. 15, n. 116.
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such as material things, still did not imply direct cognitive access to all the particulars falling under it, most importantly not to divinity itself. For this to be so, "being" would have had to constitute the actually attainable first object of mind, which in the present state it most certainly did not.40 Simply knowing "being" as univocal did not, therefore, chip away much at the need for a special, revealed knowledge of God. In Duns's eyes even his opponents' theory of the analogical nature of "being" contributed little towards that.41 The wayfarer's natural knowledge of God was in either case like knowing the first figure of plane geometry merely by abstracting the term "figure" from a quadrangle, the term "first" from random first things, and then combining the two into the proper term "first figure," without ever coming to perceive a triangle, the first figure itself. Minus immediate grasp of "triangle," knowledge of "first figure" remained forever vague and imprecise.42 In similar fashion, knowledge of the divinity as "infinite being" did not remotely approach the cognitive amplitude of beatitude or salvation. By the end in fact, Duns actually came to believe that to remain true to his own principles he must admit that the confidence intellect would ultimately be capable of immediate proper knowledge of God, which underlay his claim that considered as a power without regard to any particular state mind was inclined into "being" as first adequate object, was not justifiable by reason on its own.43 Thus in 40
This is the combined meaning of Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:77, n. 124): "Ens enim in quantum ens, communius est quocumque alio conceptu primae intentionis . . . et sic intelligitur nulla contractione omnino cointellecta - nee habitudine ad sensibile, nee quacumque"; and Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:55, n. 91): "Licet enim ens ut est quid intelligibile uno actu (sicut homo est intelligibilis una intellectione) sit naturaliter intelligibile (ilia enim unica intellectio entis ut unius obiecti est naturalis), non tamen potest ens poni primum obiectum naturaliter attingibile, quia est primum obiectum ut includitur in omnibus per se obiectis, et ut sic non est naturaliter attingibile nisi quodlibet illorum sit naturaliter attingibile." For the phrase "hoc intelligibile" referring to a single concept, see Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:77, n. 124): ". . . ens ut 'hoc intelligibile' intelligitur a nobis, sed si esset primum obiectum, hoc esset secundum totam indifferentiam ad omnia in quibus salvatur, non ut aliquod unum intelligibile in se, - et quidlibet illius indifferentiae posset intelligi. Ideo non est obiectum adaequatum pro nunc." 41 Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:29-30, n. 48). 4 - Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:27-28, n. 46). 43 See the addition to Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 3:76-77, n. 124), where Duns betrayed ambivalence about whether his view on "being" as ultimate first object of the mind was rationally demonstrable or not; and the categorical admission that it was not in Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:19, n. 33): "Ad aliud negandum est illud quod assumitur, quod scilicet naturaliter cognoscitur ens
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a dramatic late addition to the Ordinations Prologue he confessed that all his arguments, and not just some as he had previously maintained, about ultimate first object of intellect and the beatific requirement for special revelation were not philosophical but strictly theological, and therefore technically "persuasions" rather than proofs. Philosophically speaking, Aristotle had the best of the debate on both counts: the quiddity of material things was first object, both now and forever, and special revelation did not factor into mind's attainment of perfection.44 Moreover, the appeal to Avicenna and his remarks on first impressions was not philosophically compelling. Avicenna had said what he did about "being" and mind because as a Muslim he took on faith that ultimately intellect would know God and other immaterial substances directly and in particular, not because reason had convinced him this was true.45 When, on top of this final admission, one adds Duns's denial of Henry's metaphysics of essence and all which that denial entailed, the lament of the Augustinian imagined at the outset of this chapter that the theory of univocity of "being" and Scotistic ideas about first object of intellect retained little of the fullness of the classic understanding of mind's road to God begins to reverberate with ever
esse primum obiectum intellectus nostri. . . ." Consult Boulnois, Sur la connaissance de Dieu, pp. 360-61, n. 2 to para. 124, on Duns's ambivalence in Ordinatio I, d. 3, and his firmness in the Prologue. This important aspect of Duns's theory of first object of intellect has been noted by Wolter, "The 'Theologism' of Duns Scotus," pp. 382-83; Balic, "Circa positiones fundamentales I. Duns Scoti," Antonianum 28 (1953): 268-69 and 278; and most recently, Honnefelder, Ens inquantum ens, pp. 84-85 and 88-89, all of which are excellent on the more general aspects of the theory. Other pieces dealing with the first object are Minges, "Zur Erkenntnislehre des Duns Scotus," Philosophisch.es Jahrbuch (der Gorres-Gesellschqfi) 31 (1918): 52-74; and Colman O Huallachain, "On Recent Studies of the Opening Question in Scotus's Ordinatio" FrS 15 (1955): 1-29. Not so reliable are Paul Tochowicz, Joannis Duns Scoti de cognitionis doctrina (Fribourg, 1926); and Basil Reiser, "The Primum Cognitum according to Duns Scotus," FrS 2 (1942): 193-216. 44 Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:9, n. 12): "Nota, nullum supernaturale potest ratione naturali ostendi inesse viatori, nee necessario requiri ad perfectionem eius; nee etiam habens potest cognoscere illud sibi inesse. Igitur impossibile est hie contra Aristotelem uti ratione naturali; si arguatur ex creditis, non est ratio contra philosophum, quia praemissam creditam non concedet. Unde istae rationes hie factae contra ipsum alteram praemissam habent creditam vel probatam ex credito; ideo non sunt nisi persuasiones theologicae, ex creditis ad creditum." For Duns's earlier claim that some of his arguments were authentically philosophical, see above, pp. 439-43, and also nn. 17 and 19. 45 Duns, Ordinatio Prol., p. 1, q. un. (Vatican, 1:19-20, n. 33), referring back to Vatican, 1:15, n. 24. On the appeal to Avicenna, see above, n. 13.
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greater force. One is tempted to regard the assertion made in the preceding chapter that Duns's achievement was to naturalize Augustinianism and purge it of the quasi-mystical dynamic that had animated it for over seventy years as something of an understatement.46 For all the arguments of this final section that he kept alive the flame of Augustinian intimacy between mind and God, it would appear that the fire had grown frightfully cold. No doubt there is value in this perspective and profit to be gained from the reminder that despite his debt to Henry and the many Augustinian resonances of language and metaphor, Duns had strayed far from what the classic Augustinians had had in mind. Yet this should not be taken to mean he had turned his back on the current of thought with which the present study has been concerned. Above all, it must not be forgotten how important it was for him to retain an authentic place in his thought for Augustine's own words, and for the images commonly employed by his Augustinian predecessors in the schools. Indeed, even given the philosophical ground covered so far, there remains in Duns's thought a residue still of something more, a kind of persistence of intention that transcends doctrinal content, sometimes flies in the face of it, and stands as confirmation of the historical reality of intellectual currents in the thirteenth century. One last time, therefore, it is instructive to return to the theme of truth. Despite his naturalizing and demystifying, on which score he surpassed all others examined above, including Matthew and William of Ware, Duns insisted on going beyond the "common opinion" that Augustinian references to "pure truth" in human cognition evoked merely God's role as remote general cause of all things, beyond even the view associated with John of La Rochelle that they pointed to divinity as efficient cause of soul's inherent agent intellect and thus in its own way a kind of agent itself.47 The latter was all William of Ware would concede in his attempt to validate the language of seeing truth in the divine light.48 Duns demanded something
+(i
See above, Pt. 4, ch. 15, p. 490. ' See the discussion of both views above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, pp. 415-18; and ch. 14, pp. 451-52. 48 William of Ware, Quaestiones, q. 19 (ed. Daniels, in "Wilhelm von Ware," p. 318). In the same question (p. 317), William made it clear he did not see God's action in this case as in any way that of a formal principle - that is, something contributing to the substantial content of knowledge. 4
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further, with greater capacity to elicit the special timbre of Augustine's authentic modes of speech and thought. There are two places where he made clearest this determination to remain loyal to Augustine. They are the parallel sections in Book I, distinction 3, of the Lectura and Ordinatio where he posed the question inspired by Henry of Ghent, whether intellect could know pure truth (sincera veritas) without a special divine influence or illumination.49 Notwithstanding his explicit repudiation there of the answer typically attributed to Henry, when it came to the texts of Augustine so often cited in defense of the cognitive role of divine light Duns offered an interpretation surprisingly evocative of Henry's ideas. It is as if having rejected his predecessor's earliest thoughts on the process of knowing pure truth, implicating God literally in a comparison of images or exemplars, he then took uncharacteristic strides towards accepting the more mature account, dependent on the conviction that precise grasp of essence somehow opened directly onto God. He managed this feat, moreover, in spite of, sometimes even in virtual contradiction to, his own quite un-Henrican ontology of essence. Since his views on the matter were, as so often, marked by a pattern of development, they are best approached by examining the two instances in turn. In the Lectura he first commented that one could affirm Augustinian language about knowing pure truth in divine light by reading it along the lines mentioned just above, echoing John of La Rochelle. According to this view, God's cognitive light, his Truth, was implicated in normal human cognition precisely at the level of efficient causality (effective). After all, divine truth stood as ultimate efficient cause of mind's intrinsic agent, which was in turn proximate efficient cause of true knowledge. The image of divine illumination was intended to signify just this efficient causal nexus.00 Against such reasoning the objection might be raised, however, that if God's truth or cognitive light was responsible for true knowledge in its role as cause of agent intellect, much more so was God's will, efficient cause of creation in the most proper sense of the word. Taking efficient causality as litmus test for illumination, therefore, 49 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:281, 11. 18-20); and Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:123, 11. 14-16). 30 See above, n. 47, and the relevant passage in Ledura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:301-2, n. 189).
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would lead one to regard God's will as an even more prominent factor in knowledge of truth. The result was a reading of illumination invoking a voluntarism any theologian would be forced to disavow.0' Duns believed the objection would not hold, and to show why he returned to a theory of creation examined above. In so doing he exhibited an analysis of the function of God's light significantly different from what he had laid out just before. The retort rested on his conviction that God produced all things other than himself in cognitive or conceptual being (esse intelligible) by the primitive act of knowing all possible objects in his own essence. Only then, in a secondary act, did he choose by his will to create some of them in actual existence. The order of the two acts was crucial. Since the initial production into cognitive being preceded the operation of will, it had to be a purely natural act. Thus God was natural, not voluntary, cause of things in their cognitive being, and he served this function as light or intellect.52 The idea was akin to Henry's earlier insistence that being of essence arose eternally and directly from divine mind, being of existence only later from the act of divine will.33 Having established the character of causality exercised by God's light, Duns then responded to the objection. If divinity as truth or light was natural cause of all things in cognitive being, then whatever pertained to things precisely because of such being was due to God's action as intellective light (convenit eis naturaliter respectu lucis increatae}. Yet things were understood by human intellect - that is, they were constituted as intelligible objects - just insofar as they inclined mind into their cognitive being. Inescapable was the conclusion that objects were intelligible, and thus understood, precisely with respect to God's action on them as light of truth. It was God's intellective light, not his will, that accounted for cognition and thus knowledge of truth.04
51
Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:302, n. 190). Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:302, n. 191), concluding with the phrase: ". . . igitur Deus est causa naturalis aliorum a se secundum esse intelligibile." For Duns's more extensive presentation of his views on creation, see above, Pt. 4, ch. 14, nn. 138-39. 33 See above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, nn. 49-50. 54 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:302~3, n. 191), especially: "Quidquid igitur convenit rebus secundum esse intelligibile, convenit eis naturaliter respectu lucis increatae; sed res ut obiecta intellectui, inclinant intellectum naturaliter in esse intelligibile; et sic inclinare intellectum convenit essentiae lapidis vel aliorum in quantum sunt a Deo ut est lux quaedam, a qua prius sunt secundum esse intelligibile quam a voluntate. Et ideo dicimur intelligere in luce increata, et non in voluntate increata." 52
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For present purposes there is not much of interest here in Duns's conclusion that divine will was not a primary factor in knowledge of truth. Important, instead, is how close his argument brought him to the noetics and metaphysics of Henry of Ghent and Richard of Conington. By Duns's own words, it was now "with respect to divine light" that things were constituted as objects of intellect. It was "with respect to divine light" that they inclined mind into knowledge of truth. Gone was the emphasis on God as efficient cause of agent intellect; in its place the telltale notion of a relation to God as constitutive of and fundamentally implicated in things' knowability. All that separated Duns from Conington was the latter's admission that in knowing things with respect to God, mind somehow perceived the relation itself, and thus both extremes. Even Henry, in his theory of natural knowledge of God, had avoided explicitly requiring intellect to register the relation underlying its knowledge of truth.55 On the surface, Duns and Henry look much the same. It is a sign of the harmony between the two thinkers' ideas that at this point in the Lectura Duns expressly shifted attention to examining the role of God's light as not efficient (effective) but rather objective (obiective or sicut in obiecto) - today one might say "formal" or perhaps "material" - cause of knowledge of truth. Henry had always insisted on God's illuminative role as due to formal, not efficient, causality. And of course Duns was already considering God's light more under the guise of formal than efficient causation ever since he introduced the factor of cognitive being. As if to underline the importance of the objective or formal construction of God's role, he even added the claim that this was how Augustine himself understood the business of seeing truth in God's light.56 According to Duns, there were three ways God's light might intervene objectively in the wayfarer's normal cognition that is to say, as a sort of object in or by virtue of which mind grasped pure truth.07 5
"' On Henry and Richard, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 11, pp. 353^56. Admittedly, Duns's express denial of mind's knowledge of the relation might be seen as significantly separating him from Henry of Ghent - see Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:303, n. 192 [11. 26-30]). 56 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:303, n. 192) for the switch to God's objective role; the same (Vatican, 16:305, n. 196), for the comments on Augustine. On Henry's views, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 10, n. 7; and ch. 11, nn. 48 and 50. 57 Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:303, n. 192).
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The first way, God acted formally as object known (obiective formaliter), so that strictly speaking intellect saw the divine light and in it truth.38 Here Duns simply picked up where he had left off with his preceding analysis of knowing cognitive being. As he explained, it was in the very same way and according to the very same conditions by which things were objects for divine intellection that they were subsequently objects for human knowledge. This was so because the essences of things were seized by intellect insofar as they had cognitive being (esse intelligible), which being they originally and eternally received from God's intellective act and which remained objectively (obiective) - perhaps one could say, so far as content was concerned ~ identical and undivided in all instances in which they were known.39 By virtue of the formal process of knowing things, therefore, mind was thrown back on a cognitive field ontologically constituted by God's own light. The second way, God acted as that which contained the known object but was itself not seen. Presumably the metaphysical grounds for this way were the same as for the first, with the difference that the focus now lay not on formal conditions of intellection but on the end or goal: the truth of the created thing known. Set in these terms, God's noetic role was much reduced. The third way, divinity reappeared again authentically as object known. Here mind actually saw truth in divine light as in its cognitive goal (sicut in obiecto cognito), or in other words not because God was formal cause of intelligibility, as in the first way, but rather because mind consciously extrapolated from its cognition an awareness of the original principle from which all things were derived. This was the only way in which mind was fully cognizant of God's light as cause of true knowledge.
58
Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 1:304, n. 193): "Sic . . . intellects noster potest in via videre sinceram veritatem in luce aeterna obiective formaliter, ita quod lux aeterna formaliter videatur. . . ." 5!) Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:303, n. 192): ". . . illud idem et sub eadem ratione obiectiva quod est secundarium obiectum intellectus divini, est obiectum viatoris. Et . . . ideo secundum hoc dici potest quod viator videt veritatem in luce aeterna, quia videt essendam lapidis vel alterius rei, quae secundum esse intelligibile semper fuit et aeterna. . . ." It is striking how greatly this language recalls that of Henry of Ghent in Quod. IX, q. 15 (ed. Macken, p. 262), quoted also above, Pt. 3, ch. 12, n. 90: "Sunt enim eadem cognita et praedicta intellecta in phantasmatibus, et ipsae incorporeae rationes in ipsa veritate aeterna: non sunt enim aliud quam ipsae naturae et essentiae rerum."
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It was also much less what the classic Augustinian model of illumination was meant to entail.60 Historically interesting as they may be, the second and third of these "objective" ways of interpreting illumination hardly constitute significant indicators of traditionalist leanings. The same cannot be said about the first. Duns's analysis of God as formal object in normal knowledge of truth represented a step well outside the usual ambit of his mature approach to human cognition in the world of sin. Working with ideas he had begun to articulate in the reply to the objection about God's will as efficient cause of truth, he had effectively displaced his theory of knowledge in the semi-ontologist direction associated with Henry of Ghent. And while technically not violating his mature rejection of Henry's contention that the immediate object of all intellection possessed in itself being of essence, he nonetheless managed momentarily to project onto his own version of the intellective object as an entity in cognitive being alone practically the same divine-oriented metaphysical configuration that had characterized his predecessor's view.61 One is reminded of similarly suggestive echoes of Henry in Duns's discussion of possibles, where for all his insistence that possibility rested exclusively on logical coherence he still managed to speak of the divine mind as principiant cause whereby possibles were produced.62 Such turns of phrase, innocuous in isolation, loom large in their cumulative effect. When it came to glossing Augustine, Duns could evidently be as radically illuminationist as Henry himself. Had he paused at this point to attend carefully to what he was saying, perhaps he would have been forced to agree, and maybe he would have been prompted to modify his language. It would seem, at any rate, that when he later re-examined the matter - that is, when he came to composing the parallel section of the Ordinatio — he entertained second thoughts about some of the claims made in
60 For the second and third ways, see Duns, Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:304, nn. 194-95). 61 For Duns's evoking views on the correct ontological characterization of the cognitive object, see above, Pt. 4, ch. 14, nn. 71, 107, 111 and 146. It must be remembered that despite the fact that by the Lectura Duns had expressly severed the connection between cognitive object and being of essence (or quidditative being), his language still sometimes betrayed the lingering influence of Henry's ideas: see Pt. 4, ch. 14, nn. 107, 114 and 140. 62 See above, Pt. 4, ch. 14, nn. 139, 140 and 142.
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the Lectura. The Ordinatio submits a more cautiously nuanced interpretation of the illuminative role of divine light. Not only did Duns no longer accept efficient causality as an apt description of any of the functions he had in mind for God's illumination, dropping it from his explicit analytical scheme and incorporating whatever could be salvaged from the Lectura analysis of God's light as efficient cause, including his response to the objection about voluntarism, into another - the third by his new numbering - of the ways God acted as "objective" cause of knowledge of truth.63 He also trod more carefully over the ontologizing topography of his previous views, taking pains to specify the exact mechanism by which God's light worked in each of the ways it served as illuminator for human mind. Yet in the end, the impression of his words upon the reader is much the same. According to the Ordinatio there were four legitimate readings of Augustine's language about seeing "infallible truths" in the "eternal reasons," and in all of them God's light acted as objective cause (obiective).M The first reading took up the analysis of the first of the three "objective" ways presented in the Lectura, by which divine light had acted formally as object known (obiective formaliter). Abandoning that earlier terminology, Duns now explained that God's radiance functioned as illuminator in this instance because it was specifically proximate that is, immediate or direct object of intellection (sicut in obiecto proximo), the reason being, as previously indicated in the Lectura, that all objects were intelligible only insofar as they received cognitive being (esse intelligibile) from the intellective act of God's mind. Since every truth predicable of intelligibles was potentially contained in them as they were constituted in cognitive being, human intellect could be said to know such truths precisely by virtue of its knowing the objects themselves, and thus by virtue of grasping them as they were rendered intelligible by God.*" To guarantee his readers understood why the image of light was appropriate, Duns actually drew upon traditional figures of speech absent in the passage from the Lectura. The very same act of divine
<>:•* por the new version of Duns's arguments against voluntarism and for God as "natural" cause of objects' intelligibility, see Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:163-64, n. 268). 64 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:160, n. 261). 1)5 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:160, nn. 261-62).
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intellection that constituted cognitive objects in intelligible being also made them "truths," since it established them in conformity to the divine exemplar. It made them "light" as well, since it gave them the power of manifesting truth by becoming known.66 Here was language harking back to Robert Grosseteste and William of Auvergne.67 The maxims of Augustinian epistemology were evidently as valid as ever: knowing truth entailed knowing intelligible objects as they were grasped by God's mind, and that meant knowing them as conforming to divine exemplars, by which conformity they were both truth and eternal light.68 The second reading offered in the Ordinatio echoed the second of the "objective" ways of the Lectura. In fact the exposition here was literally a reprise of the earlier analysis, identifying God's light as a kind of vessel containing the object (continent obiectum), in which truth was seen without the vessel itself being perceived. As before, Duns explicitly tied this interpretation to Augustine's reference to God's light as a book in which all truths had been inscribed.69 Both of these first two readings plainly validated Augustinian illumination and maintained a place for classic descriptions of divine radiance as revealer of truth, yet neither fully satisfied Duns. The first, in particular, fell short. By its terms, intellect saw truth "in the eternal light" because whatever it knew had been constituted in cognitive being by God and thereby rendered "truth" and "light" to mind. But as Duns already admitted in the Lectura, unlike divinity itself such truth or light was not authentically eternal. In fact, it did not fully exist. Grasped by mind in cognitive being, it possessed existence only in a manner of speaking (secundum quid}.™ Should one thus
w> por the foregoing description, see Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:160, n. 262). b/ See above, Pt. 1, ch. 1, nn. 3 and 8, on truth as conformity; nn. 38, 43 and 50, on truth as manifest in the manner of light. 68 Duns concluded the passage cited in n. 66 as follows: "Sic igitur . . . possumus dici 'videre in luce aeterna,' hoc est in obiecto secundario intellectus divini, quod est veritas et lux aeterna. . . ." 69 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:160-61, n. 263), making explicit mention of Augustine's De Trinitate XIV, 15 (eds. Mountain and Glorie, 2, 451). Notable is how Duns's words recall those of William of Auvergne, who spoke in more authentically Neoplatonic terms of God the illuminator as a "living book" of forms - see above, Pt. 1, ch. 2, n. 64. 70 See Duns's Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:160, n. 262): "Sed [ilia obiecta in quantum sunt veritates,] aeternae sunt secundum quid, quia 'aeternitas' est condicio exsistentis, et ilia non habent exsistentiam nisi secundum quid." He
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take Augustine to have been saying that intellect saw infallible truth in a light that was eternal, and thus divine, only in a manner of speaking as well?71 To meet this deficiency Duns introduced his third interpretation. Here is where he now situated what remained of the ideas inspired by John of La Rochelle, taken in the Lectura as implicating divine light in efficient causality of knowledge of truth but regarded this time as indicative of yet another of God's "objective" roles, specifically as cognitive light by virtue of which the direct or proximate object moved mind to know.72 This constituted, for the later Duns, the principal way to read the Augustinian image of illumination. The argument in the Ordinatio, like the response to the objection from its counterpart in the Lectura, started with the principle that things were objects for mind only insofar as they possessed cognitive being, which they originally received by virtue of God's knowledge of them. Now, however, Duns added a line of reasoning initially absent in the earlier work.73 He reminded his readers that, as he had just remarked with reference to his first reading of illumination, cognitive being was being, or existence, improperly and in a manner of speaking (secundum quid), thus not real being (esse simpliciter) at all. Since what did not really exist was incapable of real operation, if intelligible objects were to move mind to intellection, they had to do so in virtue of something else which was existent and could therefore lend them the power to act. This "something else" must be had made the same point in his description of the first "objective" way in Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:303, n. 192). 71 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:161-62, n. 264): ". . . quomodo dicemur 'videre in luce increata' ex hoc quod videmus in tali 'luce aeterna secundum quid'? . . ." Duns's ideas here are reminiscent of comments of Bonaventure and Matthew of Aquasparta on immutability of truth ex suppositione as opposed to immutability simpliciter, the latter tied to absolute certitude but the former to certitude secundum quid: see above, Pt. 2, ch. 7, nn. 21, 23 and 25. /2 See Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:160, n. 261), characterizing God's light in this way as "[id] virtute cuius obiectum proximum movet." /3 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:162, n. 265). Similar reasoning was inserted into the text of the Lectura as a late addition: see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1. q. 3 (Vatican, 16:305~6, n. 198). In both cases, the argument relied on the notion Duns was to defend in Ordinatio I, d. 36, whereby the "being in a manner of speaking" of an object of divine intellection could be reduced to the "being pure and simple" of God, which as being pure and simple did not actually belong to the object but was properly attributable only to divinity - see above, Pt. 4, ch. 14, n. 146. In fact, just following the passage quoted in that note, Duns referred back to the discussion from Ordinatio I, d. 3, of God as source for the force of intelligibility: see Ordinatio I, d. 36, q. un. (Vatican, 6:289^90, n. 47).
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divine intellect, which indisputably existed and was, after all, what produced intelligible objects in the first place and sustained them in cognitive being. No matter, then, that the first reading, by construing Augustine's words as referring to mind's direct or proximate object, yielded a "light of truth" that existed, and a fortiori was eternal as well as divine, only in a manner of speaking. It was still correct to say that a strictly eternal light illuminated intellect, for by the Augustinian "light" one could equally well understand not the proximate object but rather the direct cause of intellection - in other words, that by virtue of whose intelligible force the object was capable of acting on mind and coming to be understood. In this case, the "light of truth" was authentically eternal and fully divine; it was, quite simply, God's intellect, cause of all intelligibility.74 Having laid out this new argument, Duns then returned to language more resonant of the Lectura. God not only provided mind's objects with their intellective force; precisely because he produced them in intelligible being he also furnished each with the essential traits characterizing it as "this" or "that" sort of thing, thus imbuing it with a determinate nature as object of intellect (tails ratio obiecti). Besides being cause of the power of intelligibility, God's light was thus also cause of the intelligible objects themselves and in this way, too, that by virtue of which truth was known.75 Combining the two accounts, Duns described them as comprising a "dual causality" by which God was light of truth. Under the guise of light, divinity was both productive cause of intelligible objects and direct source of the power by which they moved human mind to 74 See from the first passage cited above, n. 73: "Sic ergo in 'luce aeterna secundum quid' sicut in obiecto proximo videmus, sed in 'luce aeterna increata' videmus secundum tertium modum, sicut in causa proxima, cuius virtute obiectum proximum movet." For similar analysis of God as cause of knowledge, see Duns, Collationes 13, n. 8 (Vives, 5:204a-b). 7) Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:162, n. 266), especially: "luxta hoc etiam potest dici quod . . . videmus in luce aeterna sicut in causa obiecti in se." The language of this passage draws most from the sections of the Lectura cited above, nn. 52 and 54. It is worth noting that the same schema provided one of the ways by which Duns understood the notion of divine ideas or eternal reasons, an idea being the object of God's knowledge as produced in cognitive being: see Ordinatio I, d. 35, q. un. (Vatican, 6:261, n. 40); and also Lectura I, d. 35, q. un. (Vatican, 17:455, n. 30). Paulus, Henri de Gand, p. 135, commented how on this matter Duns followed, even surpassed, Henry of Ghent in identifying idea with "exemplatum," but without Henry's idealism.
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cognition. The third reading of Augustine was, in sum, ultimately to be construed in complex fashion as positing two roles embedded in a single figure of speech.76 As if to signal that he had set out on the road to these ideas by considering the role of mind's intrinsic agent intellect - here the genuine echo of John of La Rochelle - Duns even drew an analogy to the latter's operation in the cognitive process. Just like God, the agent was also a light, active cause bringing objects to intelligible actuality and endowing them with the force to set intellect in motion/' For all his circumspection, once again Duns had fallen back onto the metaphysical universe of Henry of Ghent, with its ontologist implications for the noetics of truth. The discussion of the third way of affirming Augustine makes no allowance for a natural capacity of real created objects in the physical world for cognitive self-manifestation. Here mind's objects are entities in intelligible being whose power to become known arises directly from God. One might even see Duns as reaching beyond Henry to the classic Augustinians. The words about divine mind as that in virtue of which objects move intellect echo Matthew's ideas about divinity as motive object, a Godly power immanent in intelligibles and leading to truth/ 8 More precisely, Duns would appear to be moving, as suggested at the outset of this return to Augustinian motifs, into the world of Henry's late discussions of knowledge of truth. Whether God's illuminative power be traced back to his general influence (influentia generalis) or to the natural necessity (necessitas naturalis) Duns had proposed, in either case it bespoke a normally hidden but everpresent divine action in all human intellectual acts that made superfluous any special illumination (illustratio specialis).'9 As with the late Henry, so with the mature Duns, because God's role in the noetics of truth arose from the essential and intelligible heart of things, it did not require 7() Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:163, n. 267), describing the "duplex causalitas" of divine intellect, whereby it was "vera lux increata, videlicet quae producit obiecta secundaria in 'esse intelligibili'" and "illud virtute cuius secundaria etiam obiecta producta movent actualiter intellectum." 77 Duns, Ordinatw I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:162-63, n. 266). 78 On Matthew's motive object, see above, Pt. 2, ch. 5, pp. 144-46. Duns's description of God as intellectual mover in the passage from Ordinatio I, d. 36, cited at the end of n. 73, above, is the closest he comes to Matthew's words. 7!1 Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:164-65, n. 269). For his analysis of God's role in natural necessity, see above, nn. 52 and 63. On Henry's late skittishness about affirming a special illustration, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 12, pp. 359-61.
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a separate, supernatural intervention from above. The same perspective allowed him to show why knowledge of truth, and thus access to God's light, did not presume moral elevation. Naturally implicated in the workings of the constituent elements of cognition, the illuminative power of God's truth was available to pagan philosophers as readily as to the faithful. More ample natural gifts of mind or more diligent application to the search for truth were what provided greater access to this light, not a more religious life.80 Duns corroborated this approach, more tellingly still, by turning to both the Aristotelianizing vision of cognition Henry had expounded in his early writings, equating knowledge of quiddity with knowledge of truth, and that from the later works, whereby true knowledge consisted in distinct as opposed to confused cognition. These were the cardinal elements Duns had already incorporated into his own mature notion of science as dependent on grasp of quiddity, seen clearly in the definition and not confusedly in the sensible phantasm or the inchoate intellectual perception emergent immediately from it, and they constituted, in the end, the instruments whereby he made Henry's term "pure truth" his own.81 Following much the same path as Henry at career's end, he thus blended Aristotle and Augustine into a noetic and epistemological amalgam maintaining the link to illuminationist currents of the past.82 His efforts reaffirmed the her80 Duns, Ordmatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:166-67, nn. 273-74); and n. 276 (Vatican, 3:168), where he commented that the few who knew truth best were distinguished "non . . . propter specialem illustrationem, sed vel propter meliora naturalia (quia habent intellectum magis abstrahentem et magis perspicacem), vel propter maiorem inquisitionem. . . . " Duns inserted similar views into the Lectura by means of a late addition: see Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:306-7, n. 201). 81 Duns, Ordmatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:167-68, nn. 275-76). Again, he inserted the same views in a late addition to Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:307, n. 202). On these ideas in Duns's epistemology, see above, Pt. 4, ch. 13, pp. 439-43. On early Henry and quiddity, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9. nn. 27 and 29; on late Henry and distinct cognition, Pt. 3, ch. 12, nn. 34-35; and Marrone, Truth and Scientific Cognition, pp. 78-79. 82 General evaluations of Duns's thought are varied and numerous, but many have noted its tendency to combine two quite distinct doctrinal currents. Etienne Gilson, "Avicenne et le point de depart," pp. 146-47, saw Duns as injecting Augustinian ideas into Aristotelianism, although he often emphasized the Augustinian (and Platonic) side of the combination (see Gilson, Jean Duns Scot, p. 112), as did Earth, "Being, Univocity, and Analogy according to Duns Scotus," in John duns Scotus, 1265-1965, eds. John K. Ryan and Bernardino M. Bonansea (Washington, D.C., 1963), p. 233. Charles R.S. Harris, Duns Scotus (Oxford, 1927), vol. 2, p. 61; Barth, "De tribus viis diversis existentiam divinam attingendi. Disquisitio historicocollativa inter S. Thomam, Henricum Gandavensem, Duns Scotum," Antonianum 18
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meneutic expedient Henry had grasped but more hide-bound minds like Vital du Four would not accept: that Aristotelianizing motifs did not necessarily endanger an Augustinian appreciation of the noetic role of God.83 On the contrary, Augustine's call for recourse to divine light could well be taken as one more reason to promote the meticulous and critical standards of scientific discourse in the schools.84 This was as far as the late Duns would go. For his fourth and final reading of Augustinian illumination he returned to the third of the Lecturer's "objective" roles for God's light, by which divinity entered into the cognitive process as mind resolved separate truths into the ultimate principle of truth in divine mind. He now explicitly characterized divine light viewed from this angle as remote object of intellect, in contrast to its function as direct or proximate object in the first of his four ways, adding that this mode of understanding was peculiar to theology. It was after all theologians who considered
(1943): 91-117; and "Duns Scotus und die ontologische Grundlage," p. 372; and Bettoni, "Duns Scoto nella scolastica del secolo XIII," pp. 101-11, make the same point by describing Duns as occupying a middle way between Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent. On the other hand, Hadrianus Borak, "Aspectus fundamentales," p. 137; and Bettoni in his earlier work, Duns Scoto (Brescia, 1946), pp. 200, 217-18 and 249 (English translation: Duns Scotus. The Basic Principles, p. 152), characterize Scotus's thought as more monolithically Augustinian; while Seraphin Belmond, "Simples remarques sur 1'ideologie comparee de saint Thomas et de Duns Scot," Revue de Philosophic 24 (1914): 242-60; Bettoni in "La posizione storica di Duns Scoto nel problema della conoscenza," SF 39 (1942): 97-109; and Berube, "Pour une histoire des preuves," pp. 17-18, all describe him as Aristotelian. Leon Veuthey, "L'ecole franciscaine et la critique philosophique moderne," EF 48 (1936): 257-58 and 266; "Coherence: Eclectisme ou synthese"; and "L'esprit du concret," argued that Scotus failed in his attempt to synthesize Augustine and Aristotle, a position Belmond criticized in "Le scotisme philosophique manque-t-il de coherence?" EF 49 (1937): 178-88. Olivier Lacombe, "La critique des theories de la connaissance chez Duns Scot," Revue Thomiste 35 (1930): 24-47, 144-57 and 217-35, argued that it was wrong to classify Scotus as either Thomist or Augustinian. 83 On Henry as combining Aristotle and Augustine, see Marrone, Tmth and Scientific Knowledge, pp. 136-7 and 140. For Vital's rejection, see above, Pt. 3, ch. 9, nn. 35-36. 84 See, for example, Duns's Aristotelianizing reading of Augustine's famous analog)7 between seeing truth and gazing at the sun as one stands on the mountaintops high above the clouds (Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 [Vatican, 3:168-69, n. 276]). The Augustine text is De Tnnitate IX, 6 (eds. Mountain & Glorie, 1, 302-3). This attitude explains why the late Duns took the Augustinian notion of illumination to refer only to knowledge of necessary truths: see Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican. 3:164 and 166, nn. 269 and 272). A similar restriction appears in a late addition to Lectura I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 3 (Vatican, 16:306, n. 200).
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all truths insofar as they pertained to divinity and to divine providence.83 And in what looks to be an afterthought, he virtually admitted that full realization of this fourth sort of illumination would occur only in revealed or supernatural cognition. God alone, who knew things by knowing himself, knew everything invariably as "pure truth" in this way; other minds typically followed a more mundane route to veracity.86 Of all the readings of illumination in the Ordinatio, clearly the third resonates most vibrantly of the tradition nourished by the classic Augustinians. Here lies concentrated the theoretical distillate of Duns's hopes for keeping a place in noetics and epistemology for Augustine's vision of God's natural intimacy to the wayfarer's mind. Here, more than at any other point in his thought, are reproduced not only the most characteristic elements of Henry's Augustinianizing language of knowing but also the contours of much of the special ontological structure that gave meaning to those words. Of course, this suggestive moment must be set beside Duns's more characteristic efforts to construct a philosophy purified of the ontologism still suffusing the thought of Henry of Ghent. Again, central to this endeavor was his concern to make clear that the essences of things, the epistemic and ontological center of gravity for entities in the objective world, were not to be identified with their cognitive being as understood by God or any other active intellect.87 Yet even with this caveat, Duns's reading of Augustine on illumination works to powerful effect. It was not philosophical necessity that drove him to reinsinuate God's light into his account of knowing truth, for by the terms of both his metaphysics and his noetics, objects in the physical world had the power to move mind, and mind the capacity to know material objects. He brought God's light into play just because he chose to do so, and this in a way that was not simply metaphorical. The language from Ordinatio I, d. 3, and that of the parallel section of the Lectum, is indeed so unmitigatedly Augustinian
8j Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:169, n. 277), especially his comment about theologians: "Et hoc modo cognitio omnium pertinet ad theologum." afi Duns, Ordinatio I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 (Vatican, 3:170, n. 277): "Hoc modo solus Deus cognoscit omnia tantum sincere . . .; omnis alius intellcctus moved potest ab obiecto alio, ad cognoscendum veritatem aliquam virtute eius." 8/ See particularly the passage quoted in Pt. 4, ch. 14, n. 146 (referred to above, n. 73); and the discussion in the same chapter, pp. 470-75 and 483-85; as well as the mention above at n. 61.
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as to make sense more from the perspective of Henry's ontology than from the metaphysics of Duns himself. Here was an unabashed effort to replicate the Augustinian core of Henry's thought. One could ask for no clearer sign of the continuing strength of the Augustinian current at century's end. On the periphery of an ontology, epistemology and noetics conceding so much to the increasing worldliness of high-medieval scholastic thinking, Duns reintroduced the specter of a metaphysically immanent God that he elsewhere had done so much to dispel.88 Precisely here can be registered the impress of tradition's weighty hand, or discerned the vestiges of a past one must never lose sight of but which requires such effort to bring into view. Only when one is fully attuned to the resonances of the philosophical discourse that had gone on before and the ideological alliances worked out and renewed decade after decade is it possible truly to evaluate Duns's words. Only after taking stock of more than technical precision and logical coherence, and recognizing the sometimes unconscious, even contradictory impulses linking him to what preceded, to ways of thinking and speaking to which he felt alternatively loyal and opposed, can one begin fully to appreciate his thought. In the process, one comes to realize how the Augustinian agenda, that protean force apparent throughout thirteenth-century Scholasticism, was as much alive in Duns as it had been among his intellectual forebears eighty years before.
88
Refer back to the remarkable passages cited above, Pt. 4, ch. 14, nn. 141-42; and this chapter, n. 62; where Duns seemed to sense this very tension and grapple with it.
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CONCLUSION
Now that so long a story has reached its end, it is time to step back and consider once more what it all might mean. The foregoing analysis has engaged itself massively with detail. But obsession with particulars would seem in this instance to be a necessary part of the investigative apparatus. To make such sweeping assertions about events covering nearly a century of time, on the basis of interpretative models of such porousness and malleability, would hardly be credible without testing hypotheses against practically every scrap of evidence. A mountain of circumstance about other scholastics and other philosophical issues remains uninvestigated, but this study has made an attempt at comprehensiveness within the limits of its subject domain. If meaning, not its validity, is at issue now, then it is probably best to approach this work from three perspectives. First has to do with the history of science, or at least of a scientific mentality among Europe's educated elite. It should be clear that from beginning to end the thirteenth century witnessed a progressive acceptance of what is here called an Aristotelianizing, apodictic model of scientific knowledge, closely associated with concrete explication and an appeal to worldly, naturalizing operations. Less has been said above concerning the positive promotion of new theories and methods than what one might call the negative side of the phenomenon, evaporation of opposition to them. Practically ignored have been what most modern readers would principally associate with "science," the substantive pronouncements of the natural sciences, especially those approximating what is accepted as scientifically valid today. Yet that does not mean this book is not about the development of a body of knowledge intimately linked to "science" at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is, and to that degree it contributes to the prehistory of modern science in the late medieval West. Important to remember above all is that substantive theories and models — such as laws of motion or an idea of atomic particles — are not the only intellectual constructs contributory to the development of scientific thought. An adequate account of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, for instance, must counterbalance
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the origin of specific hypotheses and arguments with transformation in methodology. And even there the story is by no means confined to the often-extolled rise of an experimental method. Ideas about how the results of investigation should be presented and what general standards should apply to qualify arguments as scientific are equally important in accounting for what went on among intellectuals in that century of change. The vast literature on rationalism and scepticism in the seventeenth century should make this plain.1 What the present study has emphasized on this positive score can be called a matter of organization of knowledge. For thirteenthcentury thinkers the term "scientific" applied, after all, principally to the way knowledge was defended and displayed. It summarized an array of logical and discursive practices that had been introduced in Aristotle's Organon, were aimed towards achieving demonstration in the strict sense of the word, and received their first significant exposition in efforts to comment on the Posterior Analytics. Despite the fact that such formal considerations resonate little with modern attitudes towards science as experimental, mathematical, even statistical, it would seem that the habits of mind necessary for the practice of modern science were incubated in these early preoccupations of the medieval universities. As argued in the introduction, the transition from prescholastic literate discourse to the highly formalized procedures of the late thirteenth century constituted a gigantic step, one whose equivalent cannot be found anywhere along the line from thirteenth century to contemporary world. Classical mechanics, relativity, quantum physics all arose within a rationalist conceptual universe established, at least for Western Europe, in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century schools. They bear almost no affinity to even educated modes of thought typical of preceding medieval culture. To this extent Duhem and those who have insisted on the importance of medieval science are right in searching for the origins of modernity in the Middle Ages. 1 It suffices merely to look at work on Descartes, reputed master of both sceptical and rationalist trends. The classic study tying together scepticism and rationalism in Descartes is Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes, rev. ed. (New York, 1964) - in its latest avatar, Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley, 1979). But the perennial interest of Descartes scholars in investigating these themes is evident in such recent introductory collections as John Cottingham, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cambridge, 1992), esp. ch. 3 and 9; or even more, Cottingham, ed., Descartes (Oxford, 1998), ch. 1, 11 and 12.
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And while the present book has focused more on the negative side of the ledger, adding up efforts to accommodate the novel epistemic approach and clear away obstacles to its acceptance, here, too, there are lessons to learn. The new model of science generated predictable ripples in the broader expanse of thirteenth-century culture, not simply posing the question of whether such a model was consistent with discursive procedures already long ingrained but at times frontally assaulting familiar cognitive and ethical assumptions and the rationales upon which they had been built. Implications of the new attitudes for religious and devotional commitments epitomized in the notion of God's intimacy to mind constituted the primary irritant for the story told above. The fact that ways were found to adapt tradition to the demands of the new paradigm, in some instances in fact by discarding elements of traditional ideology, as with insistence on illumination for arriving at truth, stands as testimony to the power of the forces of intellectual innovation. Apparently inconceivable was any effective effort to halt their advance, so firm was their hold on the thirteenth-century imagination. Indeed, the apodictic, naturalizing paradigm for science made inroads in all philosophical and theological circles over the course of the century, with the imperative to accommodate it only growing in urgency the more the new model was elaborated and explored. Even on this "negative" side, moreover, one can discern secondary developments feeding back into the positive efforts to establish and understand the new scientific model. Ideological operations were at work in the processes of accommodation vital for determining the shape the model would assume in the fourteenth century. In short, the very business of critically reconsidering old explanatory devices and attempting to salvage what could be retained from them set in motion mechanisms of constructive character that fed back onto the very intellectual innovations generating the critique in the first place. The irony, therefore, is that fruitful intellectual invention occurred within circles typically regarded as conservative, associated with a defensive posture reactive to the most obviously dynamic elements in the thirteenth-century ideological mix. Prominent examples were Henry of Ghent's almost intuitive awareness that God's illuminative function in truth-finding had to be separated from the noetics of the wayfarer's grasp of divinity, as well as his speculations on being and essence and the way things' natures related eternally to divine intelligence. More significant over the long haul were the accomplishments
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of Duns Scotus. For historians of philosophy, of critical importance was his revolutionary espousal of the univocity of "being," prompted in large part by his conviction that a way must be found to render the "scientific" understanding of natural knowledge in the world compatible with unequivocal use of normal language by the wayfarer to describe divinity.2 Most relevant to history of science were Duns's ruminations on the foundations of cognitive certitude. His determination to make a place for intellectual assent to statements of particular fact led him to break free of strictly Aristotelian epistemology, most especially the demand for universality and solely demonstrative argument, and encouraged his predilection to appeal to experience as one among several guides to scientific truth. And although on these matters Duns had been anticipated by other Augustinian thinkers in the last decades of the thirteenth century, his contributions on the question of intuitive cognition, which promised to provide for certitude about particulars a firm theoretical ground, belonged more nearly to him alone. In all these cases, the ramifications for theories of knowledge in the fourteenth century, and for attitudes towards scientific method up through the modern period, were far-reaching and profound. One need only consider the crucial question of what should count as evidence to see how this is so. Though an honest reckoning of the significance of such instances of ideological invention is impossible here, it is tempting nonetheless to hypothesize a fundamental connection between mental processes of reaction and critique, which surely set a premium on the ability to reconceptualize the old at just the spots where it is most threatened by the new, and procedures of intellectual discovery. The idea is at least worth exploring, by means of both historical and philosophical investigations capable of putting it to the test. Beyond history of science, however, lies a second approach to the meaning of the present work. It focuses more narrowly on the philosophical fate of the notion of divine illumination throughout the thirteenth century. Since the chronicle of the figures of speech and analytical devices associated with in via intellectual illumination by God lies nearer to the surface of the narrative laid out above, there 2 On what motivated Scotus to promote univocity of "being," and on potential challenges to adopting exclusively the account presented in this book, see above, Pt. 4, ch. 15, pp. 508-20, especially the last three pages.
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is less need than in the case of the history of science to comment on it. The story of divine illumination comprises, in the most obvious way, the story of this book, the twists and turns of which will surely have asserted themselves to even the least committed reader. But still, a further word is due. Central to all the foregoing observations about illuminationist theory and philosophical functions associated with it either occasionally or in nearly every case resides the emphatic insistence that there was over the course of the thirteenth century no single continuous understanding of what divine illumination entailed. Certainly there existed no integrated doctrine of illumination for any more than a short period of time. As an explanatory device in epistemology and noetics, illumination instead followed a more complicated course, beginning with early efforts to explore functions traditionally ascribed to God's intelligible light and compare them to Aristotelianizing attitudes about intellection and mind, passing through attempts to construct a unified theory of divine illumination in the wayfarer's cognition actively promoted under Augustine's name, then through a period of crisis as inconsistencies between the classic construct and the growing consensus about natural operations and apodictic standards of argument came to light, and culminating in an ingenious project to salvage a devotional core from illuminationist traditions compatible with an enlarged vision of science and invulnerable to charges of anti-naturalism. Less conspicuous but in the final analysis equally germane is the contention that various positions put forth in the thirteenth century on the wayfarer's natural ability to form a concept of divinity, some of which had nothing explicitly to do with God's light shining on intellect or any intellectual intervention directly from God, are fully comprehensible only if linked historically to other positions advanced in those same years that did in fact draw upon illuminationist language to account for the same phenomenon. Since all the positions in question, both illuminationist and those shunning appeal to illumination in the literal sense, are found among a group of thinkers whose theories of knowledge and mind patently echo each other at numerous points, it seemed likely that at some level they resonated with a common attitude toward processes of intellect. Profound structural parallels among the explanations, despite differences in receptivity to the notion of illumination, suggest that this was in fact the case. On this issue — natural knowledge of God — all these thinkers
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were bound up in a single causal nexus, wherein ideas advanced earlier to one effect inspired theoretical solutions advocated later with quite another noetic configuration in mind. That the lines of influence strayed across the illuminationist versus non-illuminationist divide, with formal structures of explanation passing as if by osmosis from one side to the other, only confirms the depth at which their community of intention lay fixed. It was, in the end, a commonality manifest in an unshakable agreement about a primitive and foundational connection between knowing being in the most abstract terms and knowing God. Of course the active ingredient in that common resolve, as well as the source of the determination to salvage from illuminationist language an inalienable core, is here taken to consist in an attachment to generous assumptions about God's intimate presence to mind, itself sign of a yet more basic religious and devotional posture of ultimate commitment to the contemplative life.3 Both inclinations might loosely be thought of as comprising an attitude prevalent among Franciscan thinkers in the thirteenth century though surely adopted by others as well, as shown above especially by scholars involved in their own day with Franciscan education or those whose works were assiduously mined by Franciscans following upon them. The argument for their existence is even more circumstantial than any of the arguments presented so far, but the power of their presence to explain otherwise mysterious ideological parallels and lines of continuity renders the hypothesis plausible at the very least. If there was such a shared posture, and if there were the consequent assumptions about God and intellect, two dispositions of mind typically associated with the image of divine illumination, but not necessarily dependent on it in the strict sense of the word, attach to all eleven thinkers investigated above. And that means, as in the end this study implies, that the historical reach of illuminationist ideas far exceeded actual recourse to the literal images of shining and light. All of which calls to mind a final approach to the present work's significance. It bears upon the question of an Augustinian school of thought in the thirteenth century and, more generally, what to make 3 This is "contemplative life" in the broad sense of a fundamental orientation to living in expectation of ever deepening communion with the divinity. See above, Pt. 1, ch. 4, n. 34.
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of the notion of intellectual schools altogether. For the fact that one can trace the progress of an unbroken line of speculation among like-minded thinkers about the place of God in normal workings of the wayfarer's mind, a train of thought invariably characterized by the functional centrality of philosophical tropes associated with divine illumination, can be taken as evidence for the existence of a similarly continuous, but ideologically much broader intellectual current represented at least in part by the very same thinkers. And as with the narrow line of speculation, so with the broad current or school of thought subsuming it, the nature of the uniformity brought to light must necessarily be formally quite loose, as of a community of ideological inclination rather than convergence upon a crisply delineated doctrinal core. As promised, therefore, this study begins to put forth an argument reasserting the historiographical validity of talking about an Augustinian school in the thirteenth century. Though establishing full confidence in such unfashionable terms of analysis will require confirmation by more investigations than this alone, the case presented here is already substantial. It works, of course, precisely because its understanding of schools is so much less constrictive than any applied by historians in the past. On the one hand, this looser standard for intellectual consanguinity can be thought of as a matter of cause or motivation. Making sense of a discrete line of speculation regarding the constellation of functions associated with divine illumination depended on postulating a shared religious and devotional orientation, summed up in the notion of God's intimacy to human intellect. Rendering understandable the existence of an Augustinian school will require presuming that there were many such nodes of conjoint sentiment and intellectual inclination, perhaps all related but surely not containable under a single rubric as simple as the notion of divine intimacy to mind. On the other hand, the standard will have to be associated with an especially elastic set of formal boundaries or constraints. As proposed in the introduction to Volume 1, the concrete expression of a school in the extant philosophical and theological literature will most likely consist in a tendency to call upon a common fund of metaphors and models of analysis, ideological tools like the image of divine cognitive light in the present case or the acceptance of an almost a priori knowledge of God in being. Behind this concrete expression, and discernible in the textual evidence as well in a proclivity for using such metaphors and models in a fashion evocative
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of particular thinkers who have come before, will surely also lie that shared disposition to evoke a resonance of meaning and an intellectual attitude likewise pointed to in the introduction.4 No matter how one approaches them, commonalities of this sort have to be considered as much political as philosophical or formally intellectual. The identity of a school will subsist to that degree more in the intentions and sometimes unconscious motivations of scholastics engaged in their work, and in the reactions of readers poring over their writings, than in the actual substance of the theories or doctrines propounded. For the philosophically-minded, that might not seem like much upon which to build a school. Yet political lines of affinity are surely important factors in all cases of ideological debate, no matter how conspicuously and clearly defined the contours of doctrinal differentiation. Hardly a word spoken in defense of any idea or a criticism leveled against it does not conjure up in the mind of contemporary readers and listeners tacit sympathies with or antipathies to familiar groups of allies or opponents. One might say that the primary job of the intellectual historian is to amplify these reverberations, long-muffled with the demise of both principals and audience of the original debate, and thus render them audible to the modern ear. Nor should one presume that such subtle concomitants of political affinity, because not explicitly introduced into the argument, do not have doctrinal repercussions. Though they could hardly be expected to determine doctrine precisely, as might the kind of canonical lists this study has conceded are rarely to be found, they certainly would point the way towards a limited range of doctrinal options, the theoretical specifics likely changing with time but the cumulative degree of divergence among the currents, groups or schools remaining much the same. Among Augustinians in the thirteenth century the lines of continuity, amorphous though they may be when measured against the expectations of historians like Mandonnet and Gilson, seem furthermore to yield a strange pattern of regularity, at least with regard to the subjects examined in this book. Twice in the course of the narrative presented here is completed a cycle of movement from a period of exploration, with little doctrinal focus or coherence, to one of synthesis, when theoretical consistency and systematic unity are
4
See Introduction, pp. 15-16.
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more on display. The largely tentative periods are associated with the work of William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste, exploratory in the truest sense of the word, and Henry of Ghent and Vital du Four, perhaps critical rather than exploratory but open to ideological reassessment and experimentation all the same. The periods of synthesis come in the mid-century offensive of Bonaventure and his followers, purveyors of practically the stereotype of Augustinian illumination, and the twenty-year inventive enterprise of William of Ware and Duns Scotus, hardly stereotypical Augustinians but ralliers to a kindred cause in what was still a philosophically Aristotelianizing world. Of course, the theoretical confections of the moments of synthesis are the more readily reducible to philosophical schemata, and thus the more easily reproducible by medieval or modern scholars searching the past for a defining core of doctrinal orthodoxy. No wonder that both Bonaventure's and Scotus's works have been employed by historians as the basis for establishing canonical lists of teachings for a presumed Augustinian School. Equally unsurprising is the fact that reputed Augustinians from late Middle Ages to post-Neoscholastic twentieth century have looked to Bonaventure and Scotus as favorite ideological types. Yet if the story told in this book about illumination, science and knowledge of God is true, then whatever the cycles or patterns of recurrence, there is no good reason to privilege one stage over another, times of synthesis over times of exploration or critique. For Augustinianism in the only way sense can be made of the idea for the entire span of the thirteenth century, and in all likelihood beyond, the continuing reality lies in the repeated effort from generation to generation to make contact with elements of the intellectual past and perpetuate collective propensities and disinclinations, broadly ideological but not necessarily determinate in philosophical or theological detail. No simple doctrinal list could possibly reveal such an effort. Required instead is the painstaking comparison of analytical approaches and theoretical concerns over long stretches of time. The work is arduous and the results bound to yield less than apodictic certainty. But the rewards are great for those seeking insight into processes of philosophical development and change. In such a climate, and among investigators with such goals in mind, one can begin to speak meaningfully again of the history of an Augustinian school.
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INDEX OF NAMES
(The names of the 11 scholastics focused on in this book (see above, p. 23) are not included in the following list. To locate references to them the reader should begin with the table of Contents.) Adams, Marilyn McCord 285n, 288n, 399n Albert the Great 29n, 96n, 192, 432 Al-Ghazzali 126n, 171, 172n Alnwick, William of 355, 399n Alluntis, Felix 397n, 398n, 535n Anselm 40, 45, 60, 64-65, 82, 88, 124, 126n, 127, 133, 243n, 403; De veritate 39, 280, 362n, 363n Apostles 535 Aristotle 12, 24, 31, 38, 43, 52, 65, 66, 68, 71, 74-75, 77, 95, 112, 134, 139, 155, 161, 173, 176-77, 179-81, 187, 193-94, 223n, 227n, 247-48, 287n, 31 In, 350, 361, 366-67, 373, 378-79, 402-3, 406-7, 427n, 431, 436-38, 440, 445, 447, 459n, 501, 539, 541, 545, 546n, 548, 560; Categories 127n; De anima 38n, 160n, 166, 160n, 175, 211, 375, 402n, 454n; De interpretatione 38n; Metaphysics 38n, 70, 73, 15In, 157n, 285, 402n, 428, 478-79; Nicomachean Ethics 187n, 437-38; Physics 311, 456n; On Sophistical Refutations 378n; Posterior Analytics 54, 111, 128, 129n, 133n, 142n, 154n, 157, 198n, 281n, 285, 332, 340n, 369, 422, 424, 428n, 435n, 437, 566; Topics 378n Augustine 18-19, 21, 33, 38, 41, 48, 50, 54, 62, 71, 86, 97, 113-14, 127-29, 134, 156n, 161, 165n, 169n, 177n, 179, 196-97, 223, 239, 275, 277, 287, 335, 350n, 361, 376, 379, 410, 415-17, 427n, 445, 447, 549-50, 552, 560-61; De civitate Dei 215n; De diversis quaestionibus 83 132n, 288n, 410n; De Genesi ad littemm 166; De libero arbitrio 85, 190n; De magistro 48n, 128n; De Tnnitate 127n, 142n, 143n, 157n, 158n, 207, 213, 225, 229, 231, 240,
241n, 284n, 285, 294n, 296, 303, 309n, 328-29, 37In, 382, 383n, 386n, 416n, 439, 556n, 561n; In Epistolam Joannis ad Parthos 128n; Retractationum libri II 38n, 157n; Soliloquies 43, 81, 127n, 194 Averroes 29n, 111, 116n, 172, 174, 177n, 222n, 362n, 373, 534; Commentaria in libros de Physico magna 303; Commentarium magnum in De anima 215, 31 In, 376, 454n Avicenna 29n, 65-66, 75, 89, 111, 126n, 171-72, 179-80, 180n, 194n, 233-34, 238-39, 292n, 302, 303n, 356, 362n, 373, 403, 431, 446, 459-60, 493-94, 527n, 548; De anima 136; Metaphysics 40n, 215-16, 233n, 303-5, 307n, 339-40, 342-44, 350, 367n, 509, 540 Bacon, Roger 29-30, 67-69, 75, 115, 170, 178, 180n, 292n, 343n, 452 Baeumker, Clemens 265n Balic, Charles 394n, 396n, 400n, 548n Earth, Timotheus 400n, 49In, 50In, 506n, 517n, 528n, 532n, 560n Baudry, L. 120n, 121n, 127n Baumgartner, Matthias 30n Baur, Ludwig 30n, 33n Bayerschmidt, Paul 346n Beha, Helen Marie 132n Bellofiore, Luigi 135n Belmond, Seraphin 50In, 506n, 529n, 561n Benedict, St. 270, 289 Berube, Camille 117n, 120n, 12In, 127n, 137n, 142n, 186n, 200n, 201n, 205n, 216n, 217n, 219n, 233n, 237n, 244n, 296, 304n, 320n, 321n, 325n, 388n, 391n, 466n, 470n, 528n, 561n Bernard Silvestris 11
600
INDEX OF NAMES
Bettoni, Efrem 4n, 21, 117n, 119n, 132n, 134n, 20In, 214n, 219n, 242n, 303n, 392n, 397n, 40In, 470n, 501, 502n, 528n, 561n Beumer, Johannes 30n Bianchi, Luca 260n Boehner, Philotheus 19n, 134n Boethius 80, 216n, 502-3, 504n; De divisione 369; In Categorias 318 Bonafede, Giulio 19n, 132n, 135n Bonansea, Bernardino M. 502n Boniface VIII, pope 399 Borak, Hadrianus 40In, 475n, 50In, 560n Borok, Helmut 32n Bougerol, Jacques Guy 3In, 115n, 118n Boulnois, Olivier 40In, 49In, 509n, 529n, 546n, 548n Bourgeois, Robert 353n Brady, Ignatius C. 117n, 118n Brampton, C.K. 393n, 396n, 398n Braun, Raphael 279n, 282n, 284n, 289n, 303n, 353n Brown, Jerome V. 373n, 408n, 461n Brown, Stephen F. 269n, 320n, 323n, 518n, 529n Buckfield, Adam of 67n Burr, David 392n Butterfield, Herbert 10
Day, Sebastian J. 42In de Basly, Deodat-Marie 42In de Courcerault, Raymond 502n, 506n Delehaye, Hippolyte 265n De Libera, Alain 18n Delisle, Leopold 264n Delorme, Ferdinand M. 118n, 119n, 267n, 268n, 291n, 377n, 392n De Pauw, Napoleon 265n Descartes, Rene 9, 421, 566n De Wulf, Maurice 1-3, 7-8, 113n, 265n, 353n, 361n, 373n Distelbrink, Balduinus 118n Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter 17n Dondaine, Antoine 119n Dondaine, Hyancinthe-Francois 65n Doucet, Victorin 117n, 118n, 119n, 120n, 132n, 269n Douie, Decima L. 116n, 118n Dowd, John D. 132n Doyle, Patrick J. 26In, 392n, 40In, 412n, 46In, 462n Duhem, Pierre 9-11, 566 Dumont, Richard E. 42In Dumont, Stephen D. 223n, 268n, 274n, 278n, 321n, 352n, 370n, 399n, 437n, 457n, 463n, 534n Dwyer, Edward 282n, 304n, 36In, 380n
Caesar 85 Callebaut, Andre 393n Callias 7 In Callus, Daniel 35n, 36n, 67n Cannizzo, Giuseppina 373n, 546n Cathars 100 Catto, J.I. 35n Chatillon, Jean 135n Chenu, Marie-Dominique 11 Christ 62n, 127-28, 187 Copleston, Frederick C. 3n Cord, Guglielmo 36n Corvino, Francesco 214n Cottingham, John 566n Courtenay, William J. 5n, 14n, 15n, 397n, 398n, 399n Cousins, Ewert 4n, 134 Crombie, Alistair 10, 30n, 32n, 53n Crowley, Theodore 135n
Eastwood, Bruce S. 35n Ehrle, Franz 1, 2n, 13, 18, 19n, 113n, 115, 116n, 249, 265n Emmen, Aquilinus 395n Epping, Adelhard 117n Etzkorn, Girard J. 119n Eustace of Arras 117
Damascene, John 211, 223, 225n, 231, 241-42, 302-3, 427, 528 Daniels, Augustinus 393n, 396n, 525n
Fackler, Paul 50In Finke, Heinrich 264n Forest, Aime 32n Funkenstein, Amos 17n Gal, Gedeon 119n, 395n, 40In, 454n, 462n Galilei, Galileo 9, 13, 96 Gauthier, Rene A. 29n, 37n, 174n, 311n Gieben, Servus 36n, 12In, 124n Giles of Rome 260, 268, 342n, 345n, 377n, 391n, 342n, 346n, 350n Gilson, Etienne 2-3, 7n, 8, 19n, 20n, 21, 30n, 33, 75, 134n, 169n,
INDEX OF NAMES
244n, 261n, 292n, 293, 40In, 501, 531-2(n), 560n, 572 Glorieux, Palemon 117n, 264n, 265n, 267n, 392n, 393n, 395n Godefroy, P. 267n, 268n Godfrey of Fontaines 268, 39In Goering, Joseph 3In, 35n Gogacz, Mieczyslaw 289n Gomez Caffarena, Jose 266n, 292n, 320n, 325n, 353n, 366n, 380n Gondras, Alexandre-Jean 120n, 267n Gonsalvus of Spain 393n, 399 Grabmann, Martin 19n, 20n, 2In, 29n, 132n, 265n, 276n, 392n Grajewski, Maurice 397n Gregory the Great, pope 270 Guimaraens, Francisco de 394n, 395n Gutting, Gary 16n Hackett, M.B. 35n Hacking, Ian 16n Hagernann, Georg 353n Hales, Alexander of 30-31 (n), 115 Harcley, Henry of 546n Haren, Michael 35n Harris, Charles R.S. 560n Haskins, Charles H. 3n Haureau, Barthelemy 30n, 69n Heer, Friedrich 4n Heinzmann, Richard 33n Heiser, Basil 548n Henquinet, Francois-Marie 30n Hercules 7 In Heynck, Valens 267n Hilary of Poitiers 131 n Hissette, Roland 260n Hocedez, Edgar 265n, 345n, 392n Hodl, Ludwig 22n, 143n, 260n, 264n, 266n, 267n, 345n, 352n Hoenen, Maarten J.F.M. 6n Hoeres, Walter 352n Homer 482n Honnefelder, Ludger 468n, 476n, 502n, 503n, 548n Huet, Francois 353n Hurley, M. 134n Hyman, Arthur 222n Israeli, Isaac
40n
Jacob, Margaret C. 17n John of La Rochelle 115, 128, 130, 138, 140, 158, 173, 208, 212, 275, 415, 451, 549-50, 559 Jiissen, Gabriel 3In, 32n, 117n
601
Kaluza, Zenon 5n, 6n Klug, Hubert 393n, 395n Knowles, David 3n, 116n, 26In Knuuttila, Simo 464n, 518n Koyre, Alexandre 9 Kramp, Josef 37n Kuhn, Thomas 4, 16-17 Lacombe, Olivier 56In Lakatos, Imre 16n Lampen, Willibrord 118n Landry, Bernard 33n Langlois, Charles-Victor 267n Langston, Douglas C. 502n Lawn, Brian 12n Lazzarini, Renato 137n Lechner, Josef 394n, 396n Leclercq, Jean 106n Ledoux, Athanasius 394n, 395n Leff, Gordon 3n Leo XIII, pope 1 Lindberg, David C. 118n, 136n Little, Andrew G. 127n, 394n, 395n Longpre, Ephrem 19n, 30n, 119n, 132n, 267n, 394n, 395n Lottin, Odon 115n, 400n Luyckx, Bonifaz A. 135n, 179n Lynch, John E. 267n, 287n Lynch, Lawrence E. 30n Macken, Raymond 264n, 265n, 266n, 267n, 292n, 304n, 345n, 350n, 359n, 362n, 385n Madec, Goulven 18n Magrini, Elia 395n Mandonnet, Pierre 2-4, 8, 135n, 572 Manser, G. 115-16(n) Marc, Andre 502n Marrone, Steven P. 32n, 35n, 36n, 38n, 39n, 40n, 42n, 43n, 44n, 53n, 54n, 57n, 63n, 64n, 70n, 7In, 72n, 79n, 93n, 95n, 96n, 98n, 107n, 129n, 13 In, 136n, 139n, 140n, 157n, 161n, 166n, 194n, 195n, 198n, 199n, 234n, 241n, 266n, 267n, 282n, 283n, 286n, 292n, 296n, 304n, 305n, 323n, 325n, 337n, 338n, 343n, 345n, 346n, 347n, 348n, 35In, 352n, 353n, 359n, 362n, 364n, 365n, 366n, 373n, 376n, 378n, 379n, 383n, 385n, 392n, 400n, 406n, 420n, 422-27(n), 429n, 431-32(n), 435n, 437n, 445n, 460n, 464n, 467n, 470n, 47In, 476n, 478n, 484n,
602
INDEX OF NAMES
498n, 499n, 501n, 502n, 503n, 504-6(n), 508n, 514n, 524n, 560n, 561n Marsh, Adam 30 Marston, Roger 117, 180n, 268, 278, 286, 291n, 292n, 372, 386n Martel, Benoit 393n Martin, Julian 17n Mary, St. 65, 101 Masnovo, Amato 33n, 37n Mathias, Thomas R. 134n Maurer, Armand 3n, 35In Mazzarella, Pasquale 132n, 159n McAndrew, PJ. 135n McEvoy, James 32n, 35n, 36, 40n, 41-42, 55n, 65, 66n, 68, 97, 106n, 172n McKeon, Charles K. 222n Mediavilla, Richard of 287n, 392 Melani, Gaudenzio 119n Merton, Robert K. 17n Michaud-Quantin, Pierre 115n Minges, Parthenius 115n, 50In, 502n, 548n Modric, Luka 397n. 398n, 400n Moody, Ernest A. 12n, 32n, 33n, 37n Moses 65, 80, 101, 210, 270, 289 Muckle, J.T. 98n Murdoch, John E. 9n, lOn, 12n Muscat, Pierre 394n Musgrave, Alan 16n Newton, Isaac 9, 13 Nuchelmans, Gabriel 87n Nys, Theophiel V. 276n, 283n, 284n, 359n, 361n, 376n 6. Huallachain, Colman 548n Olivi, Peter 268, 377-78, 391, 392n Otto of Freising 11 Palhories, Fortune 137n Palma, Robert 53n Pasnau, Robert 277n Pattin, Adriaan 175n Paul, St. 65, 101, 210, 270, 289, 544 Paulus, Jean 265n, 266n, 276n, 292n, 303n, 308n, 329n, 346n, 35In, 352n, 359n, 361n, 366n, 373n, 40In, 467n, 469n, 558n Pegis, Anton C. 6n, 117n, 193n, 352n, 380n, 385n, 401n Pelster, Franz 119n, 267n, 268n, 393n, 394n, 395n, 401n
Philip IV, king 399 Pinborg, Jan 2In, 343n Pini, Giorgio 400n, 503n Plato 19, 38, 61-64, 68, 74, 76, 100, 122, 133-34, 139, 287, 323, 350, 416n, 427n, 445, 447, 454n; Timaeus 282n Popkin, Richard H. 566n Porphyry 406, 502 Porro, Pasquale 343n, 346n, 355n Prentice, Robert P. 32In, 498n, 503n, 506n, 529n Prezioso, Faustino A. 15In, 157n, 292n, 296n, 359n, 385n Pseudo-Dionysius 36, 45, 49, 65, 107-8, 202, 221-22, 511, 532 Pseudo-Grosseteste 222n Putallaz, Francois-Xavier 132n Quinn, John F.
118n, 127n
Raskop, J. 265n Richter, Vladimir 398n, 546n Rigaud, Raymond 392 Robert, Patrice 134n Rohls, Jan 32n Roland of Cremona 77n Rosenmoller, Bernhard 117n, 179n Rosini, Ruggero 408n Rossi, Pietro 66n Rudavsky, Tamar M. 470n Rufus, Adam 66n Riissmann, Heinrich 352n Russell, Josiah Cox 3In Salman, Dominique 29n, 67n Scheltens, Gonsalvus 135n, 214n, 502n Schindele, Stephan 32n Schmaus, Michael 396n, 502n Schneider, Artur 3n Schulman, N.M. 3In Shaffer, Simon 17n Shapin, Steven 17n Shapiro, Barbara J. 17n Sharp, Dorothea E. 19n, 30n Shircel, Cyril L. 502n, 524n Siemianowski, Antoni 35In Siger of Brabant 2, 7, 116 Socrates 85, 223 Southern, Richard W. 4n, 3In, 33n, 35, 36n Speer, Andreas 4n, 12n Spettmann, Hieronymus 118n, 119n, 180n, 394n, 395n, 396n, 401n
INDEX OF NAMES
Stegmiiller, Friedrich 267n, 392n Stella, Prospero 282n, 359n, 380n Sutton, Thomas of 515 Tachau, Katherine H. 6n, 136n Tempier, Etienne 265 Teske, Roland J. 36n Thijssen, Johannes M.M.H. 260n Thomas Aquinas 1, 7, 32, 96n, 115-16, 227, 259-60, 265, 287n, 339, 364, 37In, 432, 448, 490, 539, 541, 545, 546n, 56In; Commentary on Posterior Analytics 305n Tochowicz, Paul 548n Trabes, Peter of 391, 392n Tugwell, Simon 260n Van de Woestyne, Zacharias 20In Van Steenberghen, Fernand 6-7, 8-9, 14, 16-17, 18n, 19n, 22n, 30n 111, 113, 116, 117n, 261 Verbeke, Gerard 216n Veuthey, Leon 3n, 13n, 19n, 135n, 149n, 219n, 421n, 561n Vier, Peter C. 421n, 427n, 429n, 432n
Vogt, Berard 19n von Untervintl, Leo
603
290n
Wadding, Luke 398n \Vallace, William A. 96n Walter of Bruges 117 Wanke, Otto 470n Watson, S.Y. 502n W'auters, Alphonse 265n Weber, Edouard-Henri 116n, 134n, 201n Weinberg, Julius 3n Werner, Karl 1, 2n, 33n, 134n, 353n Wieland, Georg 4n, 7n, 18n Wielockx, Robert 260n, 265n, 266n, 391n Wippel, John F. 260n, 345n, 346n, 347n, 351n, 391n Wolter, Allan B. 77n, 322n, 337n, 396n, 397n, 398n, 399n, 400n, 421n, 496n. 501n, 503n, 508n, 524n, 529n, 535n, 548n Zielinski, Ivo 529n Zigrossi, Antonio 134n
INDEX OF PLACES
Aquitaine
267
Lincoln
29, 247
Cambridge 269, 398-99(n) Canterbury 14, 116, 119 Cologne 399
Montpellier 267 Oxford 23, 29-30, 119, 260, 268-69, 3g3 _ 97; ^ 44g
Damascus
Papal curia 119,120 Paris 23, 24, 29-31, 116-20, 130, 135, 247, 259-60, 264, 267, 393n, 395, 397-400, 443, 535, 543
England
270 119,269
Flanders 264 France 399 Hertfordshire
395
Scotland
396
Toulouse
267-68
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Abstraction 70, 71, 160, 165-66, 168-70, 174, 177-78, 225, 283, 366, 374-76, 426, 453, 457, 535, 539; two kinds of 309-10 Accidents, sensible 65, 439. See also Material conditions Actuality 350, 352, 356, 465, 470, 473, 480, 485-86 Adaequatio 40, 57, 89, 124, 126, 149, 280, 362n, 403 Aenigma 188, 220n, 296 Agreement, formal 319-21 Aliquitas 468 Analogy 67, 79, 205-6, 217, 227, 235-38, 318-21, 325, 337, 354, 496-98, 500, 503-4, 510, 512-13, 515-17, 519, 521, 523-24, 543, 547 Angel 45, 50, 66, 66n, 70n, 98, 163n, 164, 172, 231, 535n. See also Intelligence, separate Animism 11 Apprehension-comprehension distinction 243 Apprehensum-apprehensibile distinction 237, 526n, 544n Aptitudes of power of mind 175n Art, divine 282, 292-94, 386 Aspectus mentis 49, 100, 105 Astronomy 66, 95 Attribute, general, knowledge of God in 218, 302, 308, 310, 326, 329-30, 338, 409n, 493, 522. See also "Being"; Natural knowledge of God Augustinian School 18-19, 25, 113, 182, 247-49, 251-53, 254-55, 261, 300, 411, 444-45, 489-90, 549, 563, 570-72 Augustinianism, Avicennizing 2, 75, 292n, 385n, 452 Averroism 2, 3 Axiom (dignitas) 55, 157, 164, 332, 424. See also Principles, first Baptism 107 Beatitude 141, 143, 202, 219, 244, 252, 388n, 413n, 493, 518, 525, 543, 547, 548
"Being" 80-83, 187, 201, 203, 205-6, 214-19, 223-28, 232-39, 279-80, 302-3, 306-10, 313-18, 325-26, 331, 335-36, 338-39, 342-45, 354, 356, 394, 402, 475, 493-98, 500-508, 520-28, 531, 537, 539-48. See also Univocity of "being" Being: common 235-38, 309, 317, 321-24, 495-97; conceptual 351-53, 469-72, 482-84, 551, 553-55, 557-59, 562 (see also Being, diminished); diminished 351-52, 472, 481-82, 484 (see also Being, conceptual); natural 351; of essence (esse essentiae) 343-44, 347-52, 354. 460-63, 467, 469-75, 479n, 480-81, 483, 551, 554, 567 (see also Being, quidditative); of existence (esse existentiae) 343-44, 346-52, 460-63, 466-67, 469-75, 480-82, 551; qua being (ens inquantum ens] 307, 333, 494, 541; quidditative (esse quidditatwuni) 341, 344, 460, 463-65, 467, 473-75, 479n, 480 (see also Being, of essence); subsistent 309-10, 313 Blank slate 211, 366, 447 Blessed souls 130, 230, 289, 291, 544 Body, human 100 Book 48; intelligible 74-75, 202, 292, 556; of senses 72 Cause: efficient 137, 140, 144-45, 149-50, 155-56, 182-84, 187, 242, 347-48, 417-18, 452, 461, 473, 550, 552, 555, 557; exemplary 356-57, 473 (see also Exemplar); formal 140, 183-84, 242, 349, 356, 417, 452, 461, 552-54; motive 140, 155-56; objective 150, 552-53, 555-59, 561; principiant (prindpiatwe) 483-84, 554 Certitude 43-44, 46n, 54-56, 187, 196, 200, 201n, 229^ 262, 274, 284-86, 288, 360-61, 409-10, 418-39, 485, 487, 557n, 568; absolute and secundum quid 192-93; perfect 289 Character or figure 291-93, 328, 410
606
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Charity 212 Chimera 340, 343, 465, 469, 475n, 476, 479n, 480 Common conceptions of mind 157, 332, 424. See also Principles, first Compounding and dividing 276, 278, 371, 376-77, 406, 455. See also Discursive reason Conclusions of science 52-53, 55, 93,
Distinction, formal 345, 462n Division 70, 79, 369, 430, 432, 433n. See also Compounding and dividing Dominican Order 259-61
Eclipse, lunar 94-96, 192, 431-32 Empiricism 4-5, 8, 9n, 112. See also Experience 142-43, 287, 311, 332, 422-23, 428, Enuntiabile 85-87, 89-90 433-34, 440 Equivocation 76, 81, 318-20, 322-23, Condemnations of 1270s and 1280s 503 260 Essence 44, 45, 62, 65, 71, 72, 76, Confused cognition 277-78, 307-8, 123, 125, 149, 194, 211, 277, 308, 311-13, 368-70, 440-42, 492, 330, 338-58, 363, 365, 368, 379, 526-27, 540n, 560 381, 429, 444, 458-75, 477, 484, Confusion of mind 234, 238, 323~25, 489-90, 492, 498-500, 502, 540, 496, 509, 511, 514-15 544, 548, 550-51, 553, 562 (see also Connection, natural (colligantia naturalis) Quiddity; Quod quid est; Ratum quid or 160-61, 165-66 ens ratum}; absolute 194, 339-41, Conscious cognition 315-16, 385, 495 352-56, 380, 383-84, 459-60, 471, Contemplation and contemplative life 486, 489 (see also Quiddity, absolute) 104-8, 134, 141, 202-3, 208, 210, Estimative power 70 219-22, 230, 243-45, 263, 289, Evidence 56-58, 284-85, 421-34, 330, 387-88, 490, 549, 570 435-37, 447, 568 Contemplative science 73 Excitation of mind 72,159-62,165, 377 Contuition (contuitus) 210, 221 Countenance, light of God's. See Psalm Excluded middle, principle of 78, 87, 4, 7 157, 331 Creation 347n, 467, 482-83, 551. See Exemplar 274, 280, 282; divine 39, also Production 45, 123, 126, 189-90, 197, 199-200, 270, 294-96, 301, 341, Definition 43-44, 197, 233, 278, 369, 347-48, 352, 355-57, 363, 381, 404, 376, 380, 384, 427-28, 440-42, 409-10, 414, 497, 556 (see also Idea, 49In, 530, 560; art of (ears definitiua) divine; Reasons, eternal) 369 Exemplata 352, 383, 445-46 Demons 191 Existence 194-96, 339, 342-43, Demonstration 142, 378, 422n; of 463-64, 473, 484, 551, 557 the fact (quid) 428-29, 431; of the Exodus 80n, 218n reasoned fact (propter quid] 423, Experience 72-73, 79, 155, 157, 420, 428-30, 431-33 423, 428-33, 455n, 568 Dialectical argument 429, 548 Experimental method 10, 506 Dictio 86 Difference: conceptual 345-46, 462, Faces of soul 74, 98 466; intentional 345-46, 462; of Faith 101, 220, 230, 412, 421-22, power of mind 173, 177; real 533 342, 345, 349, 353, 462 Fall of humankind 329, 387 Discovery of middle term 71, 72 Fiction (figmentum) 463, 479 Discursive reason 226~29, 231, 233n, First Corinthians 220n 241, 278-79, 312, 333, 423-25, First impressions 54, 78, 202, 339. 435-36, 438n, 539 See also Principles, first Distinct cognition 277, 309, 311-14, First intentions 77, 125, 153, 163-65,
368-69, 440-42, 492-93, 526-27, 560
202-3, 209, 215, 223-25, 228, 232-33, 239, 243, 262-63, 302-3,
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
607
impressed; Species, innate); sensible 160 Inclination, natural 102, 202, 412-13, 531, 544-45, 547 Indetermination 234, 324, 526-27; two types of 313-14, 495, 527 Induction 69-70, 73, 426, 421, 432 Inference 157, 189, 232, 428, 434 Influence: general 275, 416, 559; special 88, 135-37, 139, 142, 144-46, 182-84, 190, 193, 200n, 207-8, 214, 220n, 224, 239-42, 291, 296, 411, 414-16, 451, 550 Glory 97, 103, 107, 231, 234, 245, 302, 541 Innate knowledge 78, 152-53, Goat-stag 340 147-59, 168, 202-3, 209, 210-12, 219, 221, 223-25, 227-28, 232, Gold 204-5 308n, 314, 329, 332-33, 360, Golden mountain 340, 523 386-87, 426-27 Grace 70, 100, 103-4, 106, 143, 147, 220n, 230, 298; saving 107, 141, Innatism, virtual 528n 147, 183n, 244, 270, 289; special Intellect: adeptus 221; agent (intellectus 208n, 289 agens) 29-30, 66-69, 74-75, 115, 150, 169-81, 208, 239, 292n, 373n, Habit: innate 387; of mind 69, 137, 374-77, 385, 415, 417-18, 425, 239-40, 541; of science 72-73, 451-55, 549-50, 552, 559; possible 159, 453; virtual 425n (intellectus possibilis) 29, 170, 175-76, 178, 374-77, 425, 451, 453-56; Hand 160 speculative 376 Herbal healing 432-33 Intelligence, separate (intelligentia) 55n, Hidden knowledge 382, 387 Humanism, medieval 4n 64-66, 68, 74, 98, 171, 179, 373, 387 Hypothesis (suppositio) 96, 192, 431-32 Intuition 219, 221, 229, 420-21, Idea: created 64; divine 39-41, 46, 457-58, 568 Invention 254, 567-68 61-62, 65, 86, 126, 129, 131, 152, 155, 163, 188-90, 196-200, 225, ludicatorium naturale 153-54, 158, 176, 283, 289, 341, 348, 352-53, 381, 209, 212, 332-33 383-85, 403, 445-46, 489, 558n (see also Exemplar, divine; Reasons, Judgment, intellectual 38-39, 43, 45, 50, 58, 70, 82, 129-30, 133, 150, eternal) 154, 168-69, 174, 176, 178, 180, Identity, principle of 57 Ideogenesis 21, 33, 60, 69-70, 122, 187, 205-6, 209, 232, 274, 278-79, 127, 154, 158-59, 178, 181-82, 361n, 402, 406, 419-20 262-63, 272, 299, 338, 444-45 Knowledge, perfect 101, 30In, 309, Image of God 22, 143, 147-48, 187, 189, 207-8, 210, 224, 386n 338, 493n Knowledge of God, a posteriori vs. a Imagination (imaginativa) 156, 368 priori 303-5, 337, 491, 521, Immutability: absolute 192-93, 487; cognitive'73, 84-85, 91-96, 154, 530-31 187-93, 196-98, 357-58, 485-88; conditional or hypothetical 192-93, Liber de causis 215-17, 233, 302 487, 577n Light: divine 19-23, 33-34, 38, 42, Impression, intelligible 78, 80, 138, 47, 61, 64-65, 67, 74-75, 88, 97, 202-3, 208, 210-14, 221, 223-24, 101, 105, 107, 127-28, 131-32, 135-36, 138, 143, 148-50, 154, 158, 227, 231-32, 329, 333, 386-87, 457 163, 167-71, 176, 178-83, 186-89, (see also Damascene, John; Species, 305-7, 331, 494, 505, 540. See also Transcendentals Forces of mind 175, 177, 374, 377n. See also Powers of mind Form: immanent 63, 65; intelligible 73-75 (see also Species, intelligible); Platonic 61, 63, 68, 74, 350, 445 Fountain of knowledge 72 Franciscan Order 19, 25, 29-31, 114-16, 119-20, 127, 259, 261, 264, 391-93, 401 n, 570
608
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
204-7, 209-10, 229, 241, 252-53, 262-63, 274, 291-92, 297, 299-300, 333, 337, 360-61, 365, 372, 382, 393, 408-11, 414, 416-18, 444, 451-52, 552-61, 569, 571; image of 21, 23, 42, 46, 52, 54, 56^ 97, 299, 305, 314, 571; of eye 169-70, 375; of mind 48-49, 51, 56, 167-68, 170, 176, 178, 182, 239, 275, 285n, 375, 410, 415-19, 425-26; of principles 52-54; of sun 42, 46-48, 52, 136, 169-70 (see also Light, visible); of stars 66; of truth 20, 33, 47, 50-52, 107, 128, 131, 264, 299, 314, 327, 410; sui generis 285-86, 416; visible 42, 142, 205, 217, 290, 327, 375 (see also Light, of sun) Logic 84, 111, 476, 486, 503-5 Logical object 74, 191 Lumen medium 437, 532~36, 544 Manifestive, truth as 131, 404, 405n Material conditions 45. See also Accidents, sensible Material objects 111, 156, 159, 162, 165, 539-40, 543, 545, 548 Mathematics 56, 84-85, 93, 190 Matter 155-56, 161, 184, 294. See also Means, material Matthew, Gospel of 127, 128n Means (ratio}: formal 155, 156n, 182-83, 184n (see also Cause, formal); material 182 (see also Matter); motive (motivd) 140-41, 144-45, 155, 182 (see also Object, motive); of knowing 132-33, 141-45, 150, 152, 154-55, 186, 188, 190-91, 231, 237, 270-73, 283, 289-90, 299-302, 313, 327-28, 365, 393, 409, 414, 446, 455, 495 Melancholy 101 Memory 73, 155; intellective 164, 177, 189, 224; sensitive 449n Metaphysics 53, 56, 93, 305, 500, 503-5, 528, 530, 541 Mirror 145, 220-21, 271, 296, 301; of forms 74-75 Mode: intrinsic 325n, 507; of existence 525 Motion 146, 184, 241 Mysticism. See Contemplation and contemplative life
Natural cause 427, 551, 555n, 559 Natural knowledge of God 204-8, 209-21, 225-29, 232-43, 300, 302-5, 307-9, 311-12, 315-16, 326, 333, 359-61, 393, 495, 520-27, 531 Natural philosophy or science 55, 93, 94-96, 111-12, 428-33, 503, 504-5 Naturalism 11-12, 365-66, 537 Naturalness 78, 103, 107, 143, 147-48, 297-98, 311-12, 317, 332-33, 376, 411-14, 422, 427, 446, 450, 491-92, 537, 544-45 Nature 11-12, 340, 342, 344, 462, 486; common 453 Necessity 427, 435-38, 487. See also Natural cause Neo-Augustinianism 7, 113, 116n Neoplatonism 2-3, 7-8. 11, 19, 33n, 66n, 70, 111-12, 114,' 152, 198, 216, 233, 247-48, 252, 259, 261, 348, 353, 391, 450, 489-90, 556n Nominal knowledge 223, 230-31, 277n, 278, 330, 370, 440-41, 479 Nominalism 14n Noncontradiction, principle of 78, 87, 331, 424, 478, 489 Nothing (non-ens, non-esse] 195-96, 340, 343-44, 356n, 461, 465-66, 474, 479-80, 482-83 Object: imaginary 343; motive (obiectum motivum} 144-47, 152, 187, 190, 193, 209, 241, 559 (see also Means, motive); terminating 152, 193 Object of intellect: first 204-6, 208, 219, 226, 228, 235-36, 302, 306-9, 312-14, 316-17, 326, 331, 339, 354-55, 359, 361, 493-94, 508, 526-28 (see also Object of intellect, first adequate); first adequate 413n, 513n, 518-20, 537-48 Occasion 159, 161, 166, 377, 420, 426, 448 Ockhamism 14n Parsimony, principle of 456 Particular knowledge 308, 314-15, 308, 367, 368, 493, 497, 525 Participation 80, 235-38, 309-10, 348, 358 Perpetuity 93, 95-96. See also Immutability, cognitive Phantasm 73, 149, 164, 167, 169,
609
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
176, 189, 190n, 286, 366, 375, 439, 448-55, 457n, 510, 560 Physics 56 Platonism 3, 8, 29n, 152, 353n, 40In, 470 Possibility 195, 341-42, 356, 463-64, 469-70, 474-84, 554; logical 464-65, 476-80, 483; metaphysical 464-66, 476-80; objective 476 Potency 450-52, 455-56, 464 Powers of mind 173, 175, 177, 374. See also Forces of mind Premises of demonstration 142-43 Primacy of commonness or virtuality 507-8, 542 Principle, as God 163 Principles of science 48-49, 52-54, 64, 73-76, 79, 84, 93, 191, 209, 281, 287, 327-28, 331-34, 422-24, 433, 440, 487, 531; common 54-55, 57-58, 77-79, 81, 87, 164, 167-68, 198, 202, 331-32, 424 (see also Axiom; Common conceptions of mind; First impressions; Principles of science, first); first 54, 78, 153, 157, 173, 188, 229, 287, 311, 332-34, 420, 423, 425-27, 428, 430, 431, 434; proper 55, 79, 93, 424, 427-33 Privation 90, 215 Production 483. See also Creation Professionalism 18n Prophecy 106n Prophets 210, 535 Proposition 50-51, 54-55, 57-58, 72, 84-91, 95, 149-51, 178, 188-90, 191-93, 306, 363-64, 378, 403, 406-7, 421. 424-25, 427, 455, 478. See also Enuntiabile; Logical object Providence 141, 147, 275, 287, 417 Psalm 4, 7 22, 115, 116n, 173, 207n, 208-9, 212, 214n, 415 Psychology 56 Pure truth (sincera veritas] 132, 185, 288, 294, 297, 362, 365, 379, 382-84, 408-10, 41 On, 412, 414, 416n, 417-19, 549-50, 560 Quantum mechanics 566 Quidditative knowledge 276-78, 281, 305-6, 308, 329-30, 336-38, 366-68, 370, 442, 443n, 490-92, 498, 500, 508, 532, 534, 537, 560
Quiddity 44, 311, 339-41, 353-54, 363-65, 382, 446, 458-59, 469n, 475, 481, 539-41, 543, 544-45, 548 (see also Essence; Quod quid est); absolute 194, 199, 356 (see also Essence, absolute) Quod quid erat esse
440
Quod quid est 122, 194, 281, 366-67, 371, 380, 440, 459-60 Rapture 45, 210, 244-45, 308, 328, 532, 534 Rational knowledge of God 219, 311-12, 314-16, 333, 495 Rationalism 4-5, 8, 9n, 566 Ratum quid or ens ratum 341, 355-56, 463, 467-69, 48In, 498 Reasons: causal 64, 95; eternal 40, 49, 61, 64, 127, 130-31, 137, 139, 142, 147. 149, 154, 156-57, 188-91, 193, 198-99, 209, 224, 273, 282, 341, 348, 383, 439, 445, 555, 558n (see also Exemplar, divine; Idea, divine); seminal 159-60 Rectitude 39, 44, 60, 127, 130, 149, 403 Reflexive act 364, 406 Relative orientation (respectus] 349-50, 355n, 381, 403n, 467 Relation 354-56, 498-99; conceptual 196; passive 85-86, 89-91; real 196 Relativity, theory of 566 Reminiscence, theory of 68, 416n, 447 Resurrection 107 Revelation 101, 112, 148, 316, 412, 416n, 544, 548, 562 Rose 477n, 48In Roots, flavor of 336-37, 530, 546 Rules of truth 75-76, 164. See also Principles of science, common; first Sapientia. See Wisdom
Scepticism 411, 566 Science: apodictic 12, 17-18, 53-54, 64, 111, 114, 128-29, 130, 133, 187-88, 247-48, 251, 281, 360, 369, 378, 380-82, 422, 433-34, 439-43, 561, 565-67; beyond apodictic 423n, 434-38; "perfect" 287, 372, 525 Scientific Revolution of 17th century 10, 13, 17n, 565-66
610
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Theology 18n, 111, 196-97, 304, 360n, 399, 435-38, 438n, 500, 510-11, 516-17, 532-35, 540-41, 548, 551, 561-62; natural 528-31, 533; positive 528-31, 533 "Thing" ("res"} 339, 460 Thomism 3 Transcendental 77, 79, 151, 202, 208, 227n, 305-6, 338, 494, 505, 507, 530. See also First intentions Triangle 96, 547 Truly being (verum esse) 471-72, 474, 484 Truth: as correspondence 40-41, 44-45, 57, 61, 85-86, 89-91, 124-26, 273-74, 280, 283, 289, 362-65, 368, 383, 403-4, 406-7, 550, 556 (see also Adaequatio}; definition of 39-41, 43-45, 76, 81-82, 89, 122-26, 194, 273, 275-82, 363-72, 402-8, 560; eternal 84-93 (see also Immutability, cognitive); First 88, 102, 128, 131, 210; imaginary 383; logical 94; of sign 363-64; phantastic 362, 383-84 Two-species theory of truth 61, 66-67, 151, 167, 185, 190-91, 292-93, 384, 410-11
Scoticism 3 Seal in wax 138, 294 Seasons 94 Sensation 69-72, 98, 100, 133, 153, 155, 159-63, 165-67, 177, 211, 232, 234, 294, 304, 317, 325, 359, 374-78, 419-20, 422n, 426, 427n, 447-51, 491, 510, 520, 546 Si est knowledge 370, 463, 479n Simple understanding (simplex intelligentid) 276, 279-80, 364, 367-69, 371, 374, 376, 403, 405, 439 Simplicity absolute 325-26, 405, 477, 495-97, 506, 512n, 521, 526-27 Sin 56, 100, 105, 143 Sincera veritas. See Pure truth Singulars, knowledge of 71-72, 100, 373n, 435 Source of knowledge: formal 326-28 (see also Means, formal); material 326-27, 336 (see also Means, material) Species 290-92, 327-28, 410-11; expressiva (see Word, mental); impressed 163n, 164, 230-31, 239, 328-29; innate 164, 212-14, 241-42, 386; intelligible 145, 149-51, 153-54, 155-56, 159-61, 163-65, 167-70, 174-77, 180, 182-85, 189-91, 207, 211, 225, 242, 271, 282-84, 291, 293-94, 365-66, 368, 374, 377-78, 419n, 443, 455-57, 486-87, 535, 544 (see also Form, intelligible); sensible 42, 142-43, 145, 155-56, 169, 182, 184, 271 Sphere: celestial 64; tenth 68, 171, 373 Subalternation of sciences 442n Subject of science 424 Subjectivity 8 Substance 62, 71, 513n Sun: spiritual 127, 134 (see also Light, divine); visible (see Light, of sun) Sun of Justice 67 Suppositio. See Hypothesis Syllogism 58, 99, 144-45, 378, 434, 436; perfect 58 Symbolism 11
Vision: beatific 104, 106, 133, 147, 219-20, 230-32, 234, 301, 308, 328, 458, 532, 534, 540-41; mental 52, 102 (see also Aspectus mentis}] prophetic 387; sensory 42, 46-47 Voluntarism 148
Teacher 48-49, 127-28, 187 Teaching (doctrind] 48, 72
Whole and parts, principle of 84, 157, 189, 331, 424, 426
Uniformity, principle of 429-31, 433 Unity, nominal 317-18, 320, 322, 503 Universal 63-64, 69-71, 74, 92-94, 197-98, 308, 309n, 310, 366, 368, 373-76, 422, 425, 453n, 459-60, 493 Univocity 81, 206, 217, 227, 235, 238, 317-19, 321. 323, 325, 502-5, 523-24, 542-43; of "being" 322n, 500-521, 523-24, 537, 543n, 546-47, 548, 568
INDEX OF SUBJECTS Will: divine 147, 297, 347, 450, 550-52, 546; human 100 Wisdom (sapientia) 98, 141, 312, 438; natural 103-4, 106-7
61 1
Word (verbum): mental 124, 163n, 284, 290, 294-96, 365-67, 366, 369, 374, 376, 406, 443, 455; of God 86, 124, 167
Studies in the History of Christian Thought EDITED BY HEIKO A. OBERMAN 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 36. 37. 39. 40. 41. 42.
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