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Psychology and the Other Disciplines
History of Science and Medicine Library VOLUME 33
Medieval and Early Modern Science Editors
J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Radboud University Nijmegen C.H. Lüthy, Radboud University Nijmegen Editorial Consultants
Joël Biard, University of Tours Simo Knuuttila, University of Helsinki Jürgen Renn, Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science Theo Verbeek, University of Utrecht
VOLUME 19
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hsml
Psychology and the Other Disciplines A Case of Cross-Disciplinary Interaction (1250–1750)
Edited by
Paul J.J.M. Bakker Sander W. de Boer Cees Leijenhorst
LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012
Cover illustration: Ms. London, Wellcome Library, 55, 93r. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Psychology and the other disciplines : a case of cross-disciplinary interaction (1250-1750) / edited by Paul J.J.M. Bakker, Sander W. de Boer, Cees Leijenhorst. p. cm. – (History of science and medicine library ; v. 33) (Medieval and early modern science ; v. 19) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-23953-1 (hbk. : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-23954-8 (e-book : alk. paper) 1. Aristotle. 2. Psychology. 3. Psychology and philosophy–History. 4. Psychology and religion–History. I. Bakker, Paul J. J. M. II. Leijenhorst, Cornelis Hendrik, 1967- III. Boer, Sander Wopke de. B491.P8P79 2012 150.1–dc23 2012035971
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1872-0684 ISBN 978-90-04-23953-1 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-23954-8 (e-book) Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 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 items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV 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. This book is printed on acid-free paper.
CONTENTS
List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paul J.J.M. Bakker, Sander W. de Boer and Cees Leijenhorst
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ARTS AND PHILOSOPHY Petrus Trapolinus on the Nature and Place of Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Paul J.J.M. Bakker From the Nature of the Soul to Practical Action in the Thought of Pietro Pomponazzi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Elisa Cuttini Juan Luis Vives and Early Modern Psychology: A Critical Reappraisal . . 81 Lorenzo Casini Time, Duration and the Soul in Late Aristotelian Natural Philosophy and Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Michael Edwards When the Mind Became Un-Natural: De la Forge and Psychology in the Cartesian Aftermath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Gideon Manning THEOLOGY The Powers of the Soul in the Anthropology of Hugh of St.-Cher . . . . . . . 157 Magdalena Bieniak The Souls after Vienne: Franciscan Theologians’ Views on the Plurality of Forms and the Plurality of Souls, ca. 1315–1330 . . . . . . . . . 171 William Duba MEDICINE A Medical Perspective on the Soul As Substantial Form of the Body: Peter of Abano on the Reconciliation of Aristotle and Galen . . . . . . . 275 Matthew Klemm
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Formative Power, Soul and Intellect in Nicolò Leoniceno between the Arabo-Latin Tradition and the Renaissance of the Greek Commentators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Hiro Hirai Psychology in Some Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century General Works on Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 Nancy G. Siraisi Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 Index codicum manuscriptorum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Index nominum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Paul J.J.M. Bakker (Ph.D. 1999) is professor of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy at Radboud University Nijmegen and Leiden University. His research focuses on the history of natural philosophy and metaphysics, with a special emphasis on philosophical psychology. He has co-edited Mind, Perception, and Cognition. The Commentary Tradition on Aristotle’s De anima (2007), and John Buridan, Quaestiones super libros De generatione et corruptione Aristotelis (2010). Magdalena Bieniak has received her Ph.D. in Philosophy (2008) at the University of Padua and the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne). She holds a research fellowship at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Padua and is affiliated with the University of Warsaw. Her recent publications include The Soul-Body Problem at Paris, ca. 1200-1250. Hugh of St-Cher and His Contemporaries (2010). Lorenzo Casini has received his Ph.D. in Philosophy (2006) at the University of Uppsala. His research, which deals mainly with philosophical psychology in Renaissance philosophy, has so far resulted in a number of papers published in anthologies and peer-reviewed journals, which discuss topics related to natural philosophy and moral psychology. Elisa Cuttini has received her Ph.D. in Philosophy (2005) from the University of Padua, where she continues her research activity. She has taught courses on moral philosophy and the history of medieval philosophy at the universities of Udine and Calabria. Her current research focuses on the development of ethics in medieval and Renaissance philosophy, mainly within the Aristotelian tradition. William Duba (Ph.D., The University of Iowa, 2006), conducts research at the Université de Fribourg (Switzerland), where he serves as the principle investigator of the Swiss National Science Foundation’s ‘Ambizione’ Project Francis of Marchia’s Philosophical Psychology. He has published extensively on the history of Franciscan thought after John Duns Scotus.
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Michael Edwards is Gurnee Hart Fellow and College Lecturer in History at Jesus College, Cambridge. His recent article publications include ‘Body, Soul and Anatomy in Late Aristotelian Psychology’ (2012) and ‘Marin Cureau de la Chambre and Pierre Chanet on Time and the Passions of the Soul’ (2012). His book Time and the Science of the Soul ca. 1550–1655 is forthcoming. Hiro Hirai, who holds a Ph.D. (1999) in the History of Science, is a Marie Curie Fellow at Radboud University Nijmegen. He has published widely in Renaissance philosophy, science and medicine, including Le concept de semence dans les théories de la matière à la Renaissance: de Marsile Ficin à Pierre Gassendi (2005) and Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy (2011). He is Vice Editor of Early Science and Medicine (Brill). Matthew Klemm is assistant professor of History at Ithaca College in Ithaca (NY). He specializes in the intellectual history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially medical thought and thought about animals and animal/human relationships. He is currently working on a book about Peter of Abano entitled Medical Anthropology in the Late Middle Ages: Body, Soul, and the Virtues according to Peter of Abano. Gideon Manning is assistant professor of Philosophy at the California Institute of Technology. His recent publications include the edited volume Matter and Form in Early Modern Science and Philosophy (2012), ‘Descartes’ Healthy Machines and the Human Exception’ (2012), ‘Analogies and Falsification in Descartes’ Physics’ (2012) and the forthcoming articles ‘Descartes and the Bologna Affair’ and ‘The History of “Hylomorphism”.’ Nancy G. Siraisi is professor emeritus, History, Hunter College, and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She received her B.A. from Oxford University and her Ph.D. from the City University of New York. Her publications include Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils (l98l); Avicenna in Renaissance Italy (l987); Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (1990); The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine (1997); and History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (2007).
INTRODUCTION
Paul J.J.M. Bakker, Sander W. de Boer and Cees Leijenhorst Given the wide range of problems it addresses, Aristotelian psychology1 has an intrinsically interdisciplinary character. As is well known, Aristotle’s books on the soul, most notably De anima and the so-called Parva naturalia, were part of the medieval Arts curriculum. But already within this curriculum itself, psychology involved several disciplines, notably natural philosophy and metaphysics. Since natural philosophy studies all things that are in motion, and the soul is not only the principle of life but also the principle of (animal) motion, psychology clearly belongs to the province of natural philosophy. On the other hand, the Christian doctrine of the continued existence of the soul after death and the resurrection of the body, seems to imply that at least part of the soul is immaterial. This would make the soul the subject for metaphysics, which among other things studies immaterial being. The example of the separate existence of the human soul also demonstrates that theology has its own relation to psychology. In fact, commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the standard textbook of theology in the medieval period, contain substantial psychological discussions. Finally, handbooks of medicine comprise extensive accounts of psychology, as part of the natural philosophy any medical doctor should be acquainted with. This book studies the development of Aristotelian psychology from the medieval to the early modern period along these inter- or transdisciplinary lines. What is the place of psychology in the diverse academic curricula? To what extent is psychology influenced by medicine and theology and vice-versa? Obviously, this book does not claim to be exhaustive on these matters. Nevertheless, it studies several important issues with respect to the cross-disciplinary relations between psychology and other disciplines as 1 We use the term ‘psychology’ here as an equivalent of what in the Aristotelian tradition itself was called the ‘science of the soul’ (scientia de anima). On the origin of the term ‘psychology,’ see F.H. Lapointe, ‘Who Originated the Term “Psychology”?,’ Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 8 (1972), 328–335; P. Mengal, ‘La consitution de la psychologie comme domaine du savoir aux XVIème et XVIIème siecles,’ Revue d’ histoire des sciences humaines, 1 (2000), 5–27; M. Lamanna, ‘On the early history of psychology,’ Revista Filosófica de Coimbra, 38 (2010), 291–314; and F. Vidal, The Sciences of the Soul: The Early Modern Origins of Psychology, transl. S. Brown, Chicago 2011, 35–47.
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they developed from the Middle Ages to the breakdown of Aristotelianism in the early modern period. This book is organized in three sections: 1. Arts and Philosophy; 2. Theology; 3. Medicine. 1. Arts and Philosophy The first section explores the relation between psychology and other philosophical disciplines, which in the medieval and Renaissance period were embedded in the Arts curriculum. Paul Bakker’s chapter discusses the De anima commentary of Petrus Trapolinus (1451–1509), professor at the University of Padua and one of the teachers of Pietro Pomponazzi. Trapolinus is an interesting transitional figure, whose views on psychology preceed the influx of the Greek Commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima. While the introductory, methodological questions on book I of the De anima were traditionally relatively uninteresting, Trapolinus is among the first to use these questions to develop a more detailed and conceptually interesting account of the disciplinary status of psychology. Building on John of Jandun’s views, Trapolinus investigates the relation between a natural philosophical account of the soul and a metaphysical discussion of the celestial intelligences, and raises the question of the demonstrability of the soul’s existence. The chapter by Elisa Cuttini investigates the psychology of Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525) and the relation it bears to his ethics. Cuttini shows that according to Pomponazzi, psychology exclusively belongs to natural philosophy, in which Aristotle is the main authority. On the basis of arguments drawn from Aristotelian natural philosophy, Pomponazzi teaches the mortality of the human soul, thus separating natural philosophy from theology. At the same time, he tries to avoid entering into a direct conflict with the church. Cuttini argues that Pomponazzi’s analysis of the nature of the human soul had direct consequences for his ethics. Man’s essentially mortal nature is reflected in the fact that man can only make worldly choices with immanent ends in mind. In a rather Stoic fashion, Pomponazzi states that the essential reward for virtuous acts should not come from a transcendent realm, but that virtue is its own reward. In the final analysis, the mortality of the human soul turns out to be better suited for true moral happiness than its immortality would be, precisely because of the lack of a perspective that transcends this life. Lorenzo Casini’s chapter critically re-examines the old claim that the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives (1493–1540) was the father of modern
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empirical psychology. Casini sets Vives’s psychology, as contained in his De anima et vita (1538), off against traditional scholastic psychology, concluding that in many respects Vives’s alleged ‘modern’ views are in fact a recasting of earlier theories. For instance, Casini argues that Vives’s focus on the functions of the soul, showing no interest in its essence, should not be seen as a shift from scholastic metaphysics to ‘modern’ empiricism. First, Vives’s views on the issue still presuppose the Aristotelian ontological framework of substances and accidents. Second, Vives’s cognitive pessimism is clearly inspired by the naturalism of Ockham and other late-medieval authors, and by the Galenic tradition. Another alleged ‘modern’ trait of Vives’s psychology, namely his views on the association of ideas and on memory, also turn out to be in line with a traditional approach of speculative psychophysiology. Casini demonstrates that the true innovation of Vives’s psychology is not its content, but the fundamental role that is given to psychological inquiry in his humanist programme of educational reform. Vives’s psychology investigates the human mind (ingenium) in order to improve instruction to the students. In that sense, Vives not only attaches an unprecedented relevance to psychology for all other disciplines but also redraws the disciplinary boundaries within the academic curriculum. Michael Edwards explores the relation between time and the soul in late Aristotelian commentaries on Arisotle’s Physics and De anima. The basis for any discussion of time in this period is Aristotle’s definition of time in Physics IV as the ‘number of former and latter in motion.’ Aristotle had famously argued that since the rational part of the soul alone is capable of numbering, the soul is central to the existence of time. Given this intimate connection between time and the soul in Aristotelianism, Edwards not only looks at commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics but focuses instead on the commentary tradition on Aristotle’s De anima. In other words, Edwards’s chapter does not study the ontology of time, as is customary, but tries to deepen our understanding of late Aristotelian psychology of time, as we find it in the De anima tradition. Taking into account works by the Italian Jesuit Hieronymus Dandinus (1554–1634), and many others, Edwards shows that there is a fundamental tension between temporality and rationality in the late Aristotelian tradition. On the one hand, to be rational means being able to number and hence to perceive time. On the other, to be rational involves the capacity to grasp atemporal, universal concepts. Against this background, Edwards explores the rich debate on the question of whether intellection itself is a temporal process and of whether there is such a thing as intellectual memory. Zabarella’s negative answer to both questions turns out to be highly influential, especially in the German lands. Edwards con-
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cludes that we do not find unified accounts of time in late Aristotelianism. Discussions of time in the Physics tradition substantially differ from the ones in the De anima tradition, despite some interesting overlaps. Given the fact that psychology was usually classified as a part of natural philosophy, Edwards’s chapter makes it clear that in late Aristotelianism differences of genre are in some respects still as important as disciplinary boundaries. Gideon Manning argues that it was Louis de La Forge (1632–1666), one of the first generation Cartesians, who first unequivocally stated that the mind is un-natural and that hence psychology is part of metaphysics, not of natural philosophy. According to Manning, La Forge thus disentangles an ambiguity that we find in Descartes’s works. On the one hand, there is clear evidence in Descartes’s work that he considers the mind to be un-natural. This entails that the study of the mind is part of metaphysics. On the other hand, not only in his early philosophy but also throughout his mature work, Descartes continues to include the mind in nature. Moreover, he evidently considers the study of the mind to be part of natural philosophy, in line with the Aristotelian tradition. Manning argues against the common view, which sees the exclusion argument as Descartes’s definitive position. Next, he demonstrates that, unlike other first generation Cartesians such as Régis and Le Grand, La Forge unequivocally claims that a study of the mind is part of metaphysics. La Forge, not Descartes himself, was the first to unnaturalize the mind and to give a clear disciplinary statute to Cartesian psychology. 2. Theology The section on psychology and theology starts off with a chapter by Magdalena Bieniak on the early phase of the assimilation of Aristotle’s psychology in academic curricula. More in particular, she studies the question of how the soul is related to its powers, as it is contained in the commentary on the Sentences by the Parisian theologian Hugh of St.-Cher (around 1190–1263) and some of his contemporaries. This chapter clearly shows the tension between the recently discovered Aristotelian psychology and Christian theology. On the one hand, Hugh of St.-Cher stresses the oneness, and substantial and immortal character of the soul, which is per se united with the body (Hugh speaks of ‘unibilitas’ here). On the other hand, he argues that the soul is only linked with the body by means of its inferior powers, which are corporeal and hence mortal, thus apparently contradicting the oneness of the soul. Hugh of St.-Cher is able to philosophically underpin the
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Christian doctrine of the separate existence of the soul after death, but has great trouble explaining the equally important doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The chapter by William Duba shows how, in a later phase, theologians tried to deal with the same tensions between Christian doctrine and Aristotelian scientia de anima. The chapter challenges the argument by Robert Pasnau and others that Church censure and doctrinal declarations stiffened original philosophizing. More in particular, Duba discusses Pasnau’s interpretation of the constitution Fidei catholicae, promulgated at the Council of Vienne in 1312. This constitution condemned the teaching of Peter John Olivi and ruled that the intellectual soul informs the body ‘per se and essentially.’ According to Pasnau, this decision meant that important thinkers had to give up their anti-Aristotelianism and had to accept an orthodox Aristotelian psychological doctrine of the relation between soul and body on the basis of faith alone. In other words, it is this kind of censure and doctrinal declarations that fossilized philosophy into the rigid Aristotelianism that was only challenged by the ‘moderni’ in the seventeenth century. Duba investigates these claims by giving a thorough and wide-ranging analysis of Franciscan theology at the University of Paris from ca. 1315 to 1330, especially with respect to the different views on the issue of the unity and plurality of souls. It is in fact this question that is the central controversy: do the different parts of the human soul (vegetative, sensitive and intellective) form one unique soul or do they constitute three different souls? The ruling of the Council that the intellective soul is essentially the form of the body is actually neutral to this issue. Duba shows that in fact, against Pasnau’s claim, the Council only had a minimal effect on Franciscan conceptions of the soul as form of the body. Far more important was the attempt by the Franciscan theologians to build and defend a common psychological doctrine. Against this background, the constitution Fidei catholicae was used to combat the unicist position and defend the doctrine of the plurality of forms. In other words, it was not Church censorship and doctrinal affirmation that prevented Franciscan theologians from questioning the philosophical foundations of Aristotelian psychology. In an appendix to Duba’s article, Russell L. Friedman and Christopher D. Schabel present an edition of a question by Gerald Odonis (ca. 1285/1290–1349) on the plurality of souls in man (Utrum in homine sint duae formae substantiales).
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The chapter by Matthew Klemm studies the Conciliator (1290) by the famous astrologer, philosopher and professor of medicine at Padua Peter of Abano (1257–1316). This work, authorative until at least the sixteenth century and going through many reprints, aims at reconciling the differences between philosophical and medical authorities, most notably Galen and Avicenna. In doing so, Peter’s book has a thoroughly naturalistic and anti-theological framework, which we do not find in contemporary philosophical discussions of psychology. Klemm shows that Peter does use the vocabulary of hylomorfism, but only with the purpose of stressing the strong tie between soul and body. According to Peter, this strong tie implies that psychology cannot do without physiology. In this context, Peter refers to the Galenic notion of ‘complexion,’ the balance of the four primary qualities, which according to Peter forms the material basis for the soul’s union with the body. Klemm argues that Peter does not reduce the soul to a mere bodily complexion. Nevertheless, Peter thinks that the psychological study of the soul should have a firm basis in medicine and physiology. Hiro Hirai’s chapter looks at the medical humanism of Nicolò Leoniceno (1428–1524), more in particular his notion of the ‘moulding power’ or virtus formativa. Leoniceno’s work on embryology represents both the continuity of the arabo-latin tradition and the new elements brought in by the philological orientation of Renaissance humanism. Leoniceno not only makes use of Galen, Averroes and Peter of Abano, but also integrates the recently translated Neoplatonic Greek commentators on Aristotle. Combining the (Neoplatonic version of) the Aristotelian scientia de anima with different medical sources, Leoniceno develops a concept that through Jean Fernel developed into Henry More’s famous ‘Plastic Nature,’ the spirit that moulds and preserves physical nature. Finally, the chapter by Nancy Siraisi looks at the interaction between early modern psychology and medicine from the standpoint of medical teaching and reading. The early modern period witnessed the production of new, large and general textbooks on medicine. Siraisi takes a close look at the Medicina by Jean Fernel (1497–1558), the Institutiones medicinae by Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566), the Medicina practica by Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606), and Praxeos medicae tomi tres by Felix Platter (1536–1614). Among these medical works, Fernel’s broad interest in soul and spirit really stands out. Fernel’s controversial endorsement of the astral body, his insistence on the role of the heavenly bodies in infusing spiritus, his Platonizing conception of the soul and other doctrines are unmatched by the other manuals of medicine.
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This book is the result of a conference, entitled Psychology and the Other Disciplines. A Case of Cross-Disciplinary Interaction (1250–1750), held at Radboud University Nijmegen from May 31 until June 2, 2007. This conference was part of the ESF A la carte programme From Natural Philosophy to Science (2003–2007). We thank Hans Thijssen, chairman of the ESF programme, for his interest and support. We would also like to thank the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), which generously subsidized the VIDI programme (led by Paul Bakker) Form of the Body or Ghost in the Machine? The Study of Soul, Mind and Body (1250–1700) (grant nr. 276– 20–004). Both the conference and this book were produced in the framework of this programme. Finally, we express our gratitude to Hans Thijssen and Christoph Lüthy for accepting this volume in the series Medieval and Early Modern Science. This book was produced in close collaboration with Johannes Rustenburg en Ivo Geradts from TAT Zetwerk (Utrecht) who, patient and forthcoming as always, have skillfully taken care of the typography.
ARTS AND PHILOSOPHY
PETRUS TRAPOLINUS ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF PSYCHOLOGY
Paul J.J.M. Bakker*
1. Introduction Latin commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima generally contain a series of introductory chapters or questions on the nature of the scientia de anima— the science of the soul or psychology—and its place in the framework of the philosophical disciplines. These chapters have to do with the possibility of psychology as a science, its nobility or honorability, its place among the (natural) philosophical disciplines, its high degree of difficulty and the certainty of its conclusions, and the precise nature of its subject matter. In medieval commentaries on De anima, these introductory chapters tend to be somewhat disappointing from a philosophical point of view. Most commentators basically agree on many issues (for example concerning the question of whether psychology belongs to natural philosophy) and where they disagree (for example concerning the question of whether psychology studies the soul itself or the ensouled body), it is clear that their divergence has few, if any serious philosophical implications.1 In sixteenth-century commentaries, this situation appears to have changed considerably. In particular, the question of whether psychology belongs to natural philosophy or to metaphysics, or whether it possesses an intermediary or an independent
* The writing of this paper was made possible through generous financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), grant nr. 276–20–004. I am grateful to the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) for providing me with the opportunity, as a Fellow-in-Residence, to complete this paper. 1 For an overview of the medieval ‘methodological’ discussions related to psychology, and their interpretation, see S.W. de Boer, Soul and Body in the Middle Ages. A Study of the Transformations of the scientia de anima, c. 1260– c. 1360, Ph.D. dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen, 2011, 43–117. The medieval discussion of the subject matter of psychology has been studied in detail by Th.W. Köhler, Grundlagen des philosophisch-anthropologischen Diskurses im dreizehnten Jahrhundert. Die Erkenntnisbemühung um den Menschen im zeitgenössischen Verständnis, Leiden 2000 (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 71), 352–383.
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status vis-à-vis natural philosophy and metaphysics, has become a hotly debated issue.2 This shift can to a large extent be explained by the influence of the new Latin translations of some of the Greek commentaries on De anima, especially the commentary by Simplicius.3 In this contribution, I want to focus on the introductory questions from the commentary on De anima by Petrus Trapolinus (1451–1509). Trapolinus composed his commentary during the last decade of the fifteenth century, shortly before the new translations of the Greek commentaries started to influence the Latin commentary tradition. His work is therefore part of the immediate background against which more famous authors such as Agostino Nifo and Pietro Pomponazzi wrote their commentaries. Moreover, Trapolinus was obviously considered an important commentator by his successors, given that authors such as Pietro Pomponazzi and Marcantonio Genua frequently referred to his opinions. In what follows, I shall concentrate on two introductory questions from Trapolinus’s commentary, namely
2 For this debate, see E. Kessler, ‘Metaphysics or Empirical Science? The Two Faces of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century,’ in: M. Pade (ed.), Renaissance readings of the Corpus aristotelicum. Proceedings of the conference held in Copenhagen 23–25 April 1998, København 2001 (Renæssancestudier, 9), 79–101; P.J.J.M. Bakker, ‘Natural Philosophy, Metaphysics, or Something in Between? Agostino Nifo, Pietro Pomponazzi, and Marcantonio Genua on the Nature and Place of the Science of the Soul,’ in: P.J.J.M. Bakker and J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), Mind, Cognition and Representation: The Tradition of Commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, Aldershot 2007 (Ashgate studies in medieval philosophy), 151–177; and T. Aho, ‘The Status of Psychology as Understood by Sixteenth-Century Scholastics,’ in: S. Heinämaa and M. Reuter (eds.), Psychology and Philosophy. Inquiries into the Soul From Late Scholasticism to Contemporary Thought, Dordrecht 2009 (Studies in the history of philosophy of mind, 8), 47–66. 3 For the influence of the Greek commentators on the sixteenth-century debate on the status of psychology, see P. Lautner, ‘Status and Method of Psychology according to the Late Neoplatonists and their Influence during the Sixteenth Century,’ in: C. Leijenhorst, C. Lüthy and J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), The Dynamics of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, Leiden 2002 (Medieval and early modern science, 5), 81–108. For a general overview of the influence of the Greek commentators in Renaissance commentaries on the works of Aristotle, see L. Bianchi, ‘Continuity and Change in the Aristotelian Tradition,’ in: J. Hankins (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge 2007, 49–71, esp. 59–61. On the influence of Simplicius’s commentary on De anima during the fifteenth and sixteenth century, see B. Nardi, Saggi sull’Aristotelismo Padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI, Firenze 1958 (Studi sulla tradizione aristotelica nel Veneto, 1), 365–442. In the case of the discussion about the place of psychology among the philosophical disciplines, the passage that changes the debate is Simplicius, On Aristotle On the Soul 1.1–2.4, transl. J.O. Urmson, London 1995 (The ancient commentators on Aristotle), 165–1722 (for the Latin: Simplicius, Commentaria in tres libros De anima Aristotelis, transl. Evangelista Lungus Asulanus, Venezia 1564, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1979 [Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Versiones Latinae, 16], 1–2).
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the question on whether psychology is a natural philosophical discipline and the question on the subject matter of psychology. My aim is to demonstrate that, prior to the reception of the Greek commentaries, Trapolinus’s introductory questions open new fields of inquiry that were the result of the intrinsic dynamics of the Latin commentary tradition on De anima. But before focussing on Trapolinus’s text, let me first say a few words about the author and his work. 2. Petrus Trapolinus and His Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima Petrus Trapolinus studied at Padua under Franciscus Securus de Nardò, OP, and Nicoletto Vernia, both of whom also taught Pietro Pomponazzi, Trapolinus’s much more famous younger contemporary and pupil. He graduated in the arts at the University of Padua in 1483 and in medicine at the same university in 1486. He taught at the University of Padua until his death on June 6, 1509.4 Trapolinus is the author of three still extant commentaries on Aristotle’s libri naturales (Physics books I–IV, De caelo and De anima) and of some works on medicine.5 Trapolinus’s commentary on De anima survives in two manuscripts: Ms. Perugia, Biblioteca Comunale Augusta, F 82 (henceforth: P), and Ms. Venezia, Biblioteca Marciana, lat. VI.301 (henceforth: V). The commentary in P is dated to the academic year 1491–1492.6 The commentary covers all
4 For these biographical dates, see Nardi, Saggi, 147–178, and C.H. Lohr, ‘Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries. Authors: Narcissus–Richardus’, Traditio, 28 (1972), 281–396, at 378– 379. See also O. Weijers and M. Brinzei-Calma, Le travail intellectuel à la Faculté des arts de Paris: textes et maîtres (ca. 1200–1500). 7: Répertoire des noms commençant par P, Turnhout 2007 (Studia artistarum, 15), 26. 5 The commentary on the Physics survives in Ms. Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Est. lat. 375. Inc.: ‘Librum Aristotelis qui de physico auditu inscribitur interpretaturi …’ The commentary on De caelo survives in Ms. Venezia, Biblioteca Marciana, lat. VI.301. Inc.: ‘Primo dominus Petrus in proemio suo multa dixit circa subiectum huius libri …’ In the manuscript, the commentary bears the following inscription [V 116r]: ‘Questiones ac notabilia recolecte per me Benedictum Tyriacam Mantuanum in libro Coeli legente domino Petro Trapolino doctore eminentissimo.’ Trapolinus’s medical works comprise (1) a set of Quaestiones super Hippocratis Aphorismi (Ms. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 6537); (2) a Quaestio de aequali ad pondus; and (3) a work entitled De restauratione humidi radicalis (the latter two works survive in Ms. Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, N. 336 Sup.). 6 At the beginning of book I, the incipit mentions the year 1491 (P 1r): ‘Adsit ad inceptum Sancta Maria meum. Incipiunt perpulcra recollecta in libro De anima Aristotelis exposita per excellentissimum artium et medicine doctorem dominum Petrum Trapolinum in studio Patavino ordinarie philosophiam legentem anno ab incarnatione domini nostri Ihsu Christi MoCCCCoLXXXXIo.’ At the beginning of book III, the date of 13 July, 1492 is mentioned
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three books of the De anima (I, 1r–30r; II, 30v–85r; III, 85v–118v). Each book is composed of an expositio textus (also called: recollecta) and a series of quaestiones. Book II is subdivided into three parts, each part containing an expositio textus and quaestiones. The composition of the commentary is as follows: P 1r–12r P 12r–30r P 30v–32r P 32r–46r P 46r–51v P 51v–67v P 67v–73r P 73r–85r P 85v–94r P 94v–118v
Expositio book I (402a1–402b16, comm. 1–10) Quaestiones book I Expositio book II (part 1: 412a6–414b14, comm. 2–28)7 Quaestiones book II Expositio book II (part 2: 417b16–421a26, comm. 59–94) Quaestiones book II Expositio book II (part 3: 422a8–424b9, comm. 101–125) Quaestiones book II Expositio book III (429a10–435b4, comm. 1–66) Quaestiones book III
The commentary in V mentions no date of composition, but only the name of the scribe, Benedictus Tyriaca.8 The work is incomplete: it covers only books I and (part of) II (I, 2r–47r; II, 47r–115v), several pages in the manuscripts are missing (notably 74r–85v and 96r–105v), and the text breaks off abruptly in the middle of a sentence.9 The commentary on book I is interrupted by a short fragment of an early De anima commentary by Pietro Pomponazzi (7r–9v).10 As in P, each book of Trapolinus’s commentary is composed (P 85v): ‘Incipiunt recollecta super tertio libro De anima Aristotelis et Averrois inchoato ab excellentissimo domino Petro Trapolino artium et medicine doctore die 13 julli 1492.’—For a description of P, see M.G. Bistoni Grilli Cicilioni, Catalogo dei manoscritti in scrittura latina datati o databili, 3, Padova 1994, 45. 7 On f. 32r, the expositio makes some references to later sections of book II: comm. 31, tex. 34, and comm. 46. 8 Cf. V 2r: ‘Questiones ac notabilia recollecta per me Benedictum Tyriacam super libris De anima Aristotelis legente domino Petro Trapolino preceptore.’—Benedictus Tyriaca is also mentioned as the scribe of the commentary on De caelo, preserved in the same Venice manuscript (see above, n. 6). He is mentioned among the professors in the arts at the University of Padua in J. Facciolati, Fasti Gymnasii Patavini, Padova 1757, 2, 115: ‘MCDXCIV Benedictus Tiriaca Mantuanus, cum adhuc inter scholares esset ad logicam profitendam electus est. Hoc ipso anno exeunte, probatus est in artibus; sub initium autem saeculi proximi ad astrologiam se contulit.’ 9 V 115v: ‘… quia mediante eadem parte perciperemus talia sensibilia ut si.’ 10 V 7r: ‘Recolecte magistri Petri de Mantua qui inceperat legere librum De anima, sed non potuit finire coactus legere Physicam.’ Inc.: ‘In Dei nomine etc. Declaraturus hoc anno libros Aristotelis qui De anima inscribuntur, insequens communem usum glossatorum secundum sententiam Averrois in prologo Physicorum …’ This fragment is edited by B. Nardi, Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi, Firenze 1965, 114–121. See also C.H. Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, II. Renaissance Authors, Firenze 1988 (Corpus philosophorum Medii Aevi, Subsidia, 6), 357, n. 32.
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of an expositio textus and a series of quaestiones. The composition of the work in V is as follows: V 2r–5r Preface V 5r–17v Expositio book I (402a1–403b19, comm. 1–18) V 17v–47r Quaestiones book I V 47r–64r Expositio book II (part 1: 412a3–416b31, comm. 1–50) V 64r–73v Quaestiones book II V 74r–85v Missing V 86r–94r Expositio book II (part 2: 419b4–422a7, comm. 77–100) V 94v–111r (96r–105v missing) Quaestiones book II V 111r–115v Expositio book II (part 3: 422a8–423a11, comm. 101–110)
In V, Trapolinus informs his audience that, for the sake of simplicity, his expositio does not follow Gaetano da Thiene (1387–1465)—whose commentary on De anima apparently served as a model at the University of Padua by the end of the fifteenth century—but Averroes’s Commentarium magnum instead: (V 5r) In lectionibus meis non intendo sequi Gaetanum, quia aggregat multa dicta et nimis esset laboriosum et superfluum, sed intendo sequi expositionem Commentatoris. Et ultra dicta Commentatoris adducam notata diversorum doctorum.11
Accordingly, the expositio is structured according to the commenta of Averroes’s commentary. On the other hand, the quaestiones discussed by Trapolinus, both in P and V, are virtually all taken from the commentary on De anima by the fourteenth-century ‘prince of the averroists’ John of Jandun (1285/1289–1328).12 Almost every question in Trapolinus’s commentary 11 On Gaetano da Thiene, see C.H. Lohr, ‘Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries. Authors A–F’, Traditio, 23 (1967), 313–413, at 390–392. Gaetano taught natural philosophy at Padua from 1430 to 1462. His commentary on De anima is known to survive in 18 manuscripts and was printed four times between 1475 and 1493. For Gaetano’s reputation as a master of philosophy at the University of Padua, see Nardi, Saggi, 117 and 124. Trapolinus mentions Gaetano’s name a couple of times in question I.1 (in V). 12 In V, Jandun’s name is mentioned at the beginning of the series of quaestiones in book I: [V 21v] ‘Circa questiones Ioannis de Ianduno et primo circa primam utrum de anima sit scientia.’—On Jandun and his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, see C.H. Lohr, ‘Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries. Authors: Jacobus–Johannes Juff,’ Traditio, 26 (1970), 135–216, at 208–215 (esp. 212–213); O. Weijers, Le travail intellectuel à la Faculté des arts de Paris: textes et maîtres (ca. 1200–1500). 5: Répertoire des noms commençant par J (suite: à partir de Johannes D.), Turnhout 2003 (Studia artistarum, 11), 87–104 (esp. 94–96); and J.-B. Brenet, ‘John of Jandun,’ in: H. Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Philosophy between 500 and 1500, Dordrecht 2011, 1, 626–629. All references to Jandun’s commentary are to the following edition: John of Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, Venezia 1587, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1966.
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contains a (more or less critical) discussion of Jandun’s arguments, even when Trapolinus basically agrees with Jandun’s conclusions. Trapolinus’s commentary as a whole can thus be characterized as a twofold ‘supercommentary’ (the expositio is a commentary on Averroes whereas the quaestiones constitute a commentary on Jandun’s questions) or a ‘supersuper-commentary’ (to the extent that Jandun’s commentary on De anima is itself a commentary on Averroes’s Commentarium magnum).13 The numbering of Trapolinus’s questions corresponds to that of the questions of Jandun’s commentary (occasionally leaving gaps in the numbering when Trapolinus passes over one or more questions of Jandun). As a rule, P only gives the number of the question, not the title (for example: ‘In prima questione … In questione secunda … In questione tertia …’), whereas V mentions both number and title (for example: ‘Questio secunda utrum scientia de anima sit naturalis … Tertia questio utrum anima sit subiectum istius libri’). Appendix 1 lists the titles of the questions of Jandun’s commentary and specifies, for P and V, which of Jandun’s questions Trapolinus comments upon. The commentary in V contains two questions that have no counterpart in the commentary by Jandun. The first question is on the nobility of psychology, the second on the principle of individuation. Both ‘added questions’ are incorporated in book I: 1. (V 17v) Prima questio est circa primum textum et commentum non declarata nec a Ioanne de Ianduno nec ab aliquo alio doctore et ero primus qui moverit questionem istam. Conclusum enim est illic quod scientia de anima excedit omnes alias scientias tam certitudine demonstrationis quam nobilitate subiecti. Dubitatur modo utrum hoc sit verum quod scientia que habet nobilius subiectum sit nobilior. 2. (V 39r) Questio de principio individuationis. Licet Ioannes nihil dicat de ista questione quam volo movere, tamen pro maiori intellectione predictorum breviter volo expedire materiam de principio individuationis.
The commentary in P contains ten questions that have no matching part in Jandun’s commentary. Here all ‘added questions’ occur in book II and four of them are concerned with the physiological (organic) basis of the various senses (particularly sight, hearing, touch, and the internal senses): 1. (P 37r) Queritur an forma sit dignior habere hoc nomen ‘ens’ quam compositum, ut dicit Averroes commento septimo.
13 On the relation between Jandun’s commentary on De anima and Averroes’s Commentarium magnum, see J.-B. Brenet, Transferts du sujet. La noétique d’Averroès selon Jean de Jandun, Paris 2003 (Sic et non), 13–26, and Id., ‘John of Jandun,’ 627.
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2. (P 45v) Queritur utrum hee tres potentie augmentative partis, scilicet nutritiva, augmentativa et generativa, distinguantur realiter. 3. (P 62r) Queritur deinde de organo visus quid sit. 4. (P 62r) Sed tunc dubitatur quid dicendum erit de organo auditus, cum sit manifestum quod sit due aures. 5. (P 62v) Ulterius queritur utrum visio fiat in instanti. 6. (P 74v) In questione 28 queritur utrum duo corpora dura immediate se possint tangere in aere vel in aqua.14 7. (P 77v) Postquam de medio tactus visum est, restat modo de organo videndum. Circa quod queritur quid sit organum tactus. 8. (P 78v) Consequenter queritur utrum dolor et delicia ab omni sensu percipiatur 9. (P 82r) Queruntur modo quinque per ordinem circa materiam de sensibus interioribus. Et primo de organo. Avicenna primo Canonis et sexto naturalium et etiam Galienus volunt quod organa harum virtutum sint in cerebro. 10. (P 83r) Secundo queritur principaliter quot sint iste virtutes interiores.
As regards the relation between the commentaries in P and V, Bruno Nardi hypothesizes that we have to do with two (quite different) recollectiones (or reportationes) written down by students who attended one and the same series of lectures given by Trapolinus, although he leaves open the possibility that the commentaries are based on different series of lectures held in different academic years.15 In my view, Nardi’s hypothesis is undermined by the dissimilarities in composition between the commentaries in P and V, especially by the fact that the two lists of ‘added questions’ in P and V are completely different. It seems quite unlikely to assume that the scribe of P would have completely ignored the extensive discussions of the nobility of psychology and the principle of individuation present in V (book I) and, conversely, that the scribe of V would have left no trace of the ‘added questions’ in P (book II). On the other hand, there seem to be no good reasons to doubt the authenticity of either P or V. First of all, both manuscripts mention Petrus Trapolinus as the author of the work. Moreover, a careful reading of some questions common to P and V clearly shows that, although P is usually somewhat more concise than V, the texts in both manuscripts are quite similar at the level of structure, content and vocabulary. Hence it seems reasonable to opt for the alternative solution suggested
14 Trapolinus refers to Jandun’s question II.28, but in reality the question of immediate contact between solid bodies does not occur in Jandun’s commentary. 15 Nardi, Studi, 108: ‘A mio avviso, potrebbe darsi che si tratasse di due recollectiones fatte da due diversi scolari dello stesso corso … Questa supposizione, per altro, non è sicura, e non si può escludere che si tratti di recollectiones di corsi sul De anima tenuti in anni diversi e, in questo caso, molto vicini.’
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by Nardi, namely that the commentaries in P and V are based on different series of lectures held by Trapolinus in different academic years. In what follows, I shall discuss questions I.2 (Utrum scientia de anima sit naturalis) and I.3 (Utrum anima sit subiectum in hac scientia vel corpus animatum) of Trapolinus’s commentary. I shall concentrate on the more extensive text in V while occasionally taking P into account. An edition of both questions (according to V) is given in Appendix 2. 3. Psychology As a Natural Philosophical Discipline In question I.2 of his commentary on De anima, Trapolinus assesses John of Jandun’s question on whether psychology is a natural philosophical discipline. According to Jandun, the study of all three human souls or parts of the soul (vegetative, sensitive and intellective) belongs to natural philosophy. His arguments are different in the case of the vegetative and sensitive souls, on the one hand, and the intellective soul, on the other. With respect to the vegetative and sensitive souls, Jandun argues that, as perfections of matter (perfectiones materiae), they fall under the domain of natural philosophy. Concerning the intellective soul, Jandun refers to Aristotle’s dictum according to which form is ‘what separates and distinguishes.’ Given that man is distinct from other (living) beings by virtue of his intellective soul, the latter must therefore be considered the form of man, more accurately the form of a human natural body (forma corporis naturalis). Hence the intellective soul too falls within the province of natural philosophy.16 Having thus
16 Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 10: ‘Ad evidentiam quaestionis est sciendum quod, sicut communiter dicitur, anima est triplex, scilicet ut vegativa (!), sensitiva et intellectiva, ita quod anima dividitur vel potest dividi in istas vel tanquam in partes subiectivas, ut scilicet si considerentur secundum quod sunt in diversis viventibus, vel tanquam in partes potentiales, si considerentur secundum quod sunt in uno individuo. Tunc dico ad quaestionem duo. Primo quod de anima vegetativa et sensitiva est scientia naturalis. Secundo etiam quod de anima intellectiva est scientia naturalis. Primum sic probatur quia: de forma quae est perfectio materiae est scientia naturalis; sed anima vegetativa et sensitiva est huiusmodi; quare etc. … Secundum etiam declaratur quia: de eo quod est forma corporis naturalis est scientia naturalis; sed anima intellectiva est huiusmodi; ergo etc. … Minor probatur quia: forma separat et distinguit, ut patet septimo Metaphysicae; sed per animam intellectivam differt homo ab aliis, ut dicit Commentator tertio huius; quare etc.’—For Aristotle’s dictum, see Aristotle, Metaphysica VII.13, 1039a7, translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka, ed. G. Vuillemin-Diem, Leiden 1995 (Aristoteles latinus, 25/3.2), 159 (‘Actus enim separat’), and Auctoritates Aristotelis, 1.187, ed. J. Hamesse, Les Auctoritates Aristotelis. Un florilège médiéval. Etude historique et édition critique, Leuven, Paris 1974 (Philosophes médiévaux, 17), 130 (‘Actus separat et distinguit’).
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formulated his position in general terms, Jandun focuses more specifically on the intellective soul, which constitutes the main difficulty in classifying psychology among the natural philosophical disciplines. Jandun first mentions an anonymous opinion according to which the intellective soul is studied both in metaphysics and in natural philosophy, but from different perspectives. According to the proponents of this opinion, the intellective soul can be conceived in two ways: in itself and absolutely (secundum se et absolute) and as the principle of motion and operations in a human body (ut principium motuum et operationum in corpore humano). Considered in itself and absolutely, the intellective soul possesses the status of a separate, spiritual intelligence to be studied in metaphysics, not in natural philosophy. On the other hand, considered as the principle of motion and operations in a human body, the intellective soul can be studied in natural philosophy. A similar distinction can be made with respect to the celestial intelligences: considered in themselves and absolutely, they are studied in metaphysics, but considered as movers of the heavenly bodies, they are part of the subject matter of natural philosophy.17 In his criticism of this view, Jandun refers to Metaphysics book XII, where the exact number of all existing separate intelligences is established. In that context, Aristotle does not mention the human intellective soul and, more importantly, he denies the existence of any separate intelligence that does not move a planet or a star. Hence, from an Aristotelian point of view, the human intellective soul cannot be considered a separate intelligence and therefore cannot be included in metaphysics. Furthermore, Jandun refers to Aristotle and
17 Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 10: ‘Sed est intelligendum secundum aliquos quod anima intellectiva potest accipi dupliciter. Uno modo secundum se et absolute, et quia ut sic est quaedam intelligentia, de ipsa ut sic non est scientia naturalis, sed magis spectat ad metaphysicam. Alio modo potest considerari ut est principium motuum et operationum in corpore humano, et isto modo de ipsa est scientia naturalis. Et simile est, sicut ipsi dicunt, de ipsa et motoribus corporum celestium, quia, si considerentur secundum se et absolute, pertinent ad metaphysicam, sed considerando ut motores pertinent ad naturalem, ut dicit Commentator secundum Physicorum.’—This view finds its origin in Avicenna’s twofold definition of the soul as a spiritual, immortal substance and as the first perfection of a natural body. For Avicenna’s definition and its influence, see De Boer, Soul and Body, 22–25. The distinction between a metaphysical and a natural philosophical study of the soul is mentioned, among others, by Peter of Spain, Sententia cum quaestionibus in libros De anima, I.5, ed. M. Alonso, Madrid 1944, 171–172; the anonymous author of the Quaestiones super librum De anima (I.3) edited by P. Bernardini, Firenze 2009 (Corpus philosophorum Medii Aevi. Testi e studi, 23), 22; and by the anonymous author of the Philosophica disciplina (c. 1254) edited by C. Lafleur, Quatre introductions à la philosophie au XIII e siècle. Textes critiques et étude historique, Montréal, Paris 1988, 255–293, at 264.
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Averroes who, in De anima book III, explicitly include the intellective soul among the natural beings (entia naturalia). As a natural being, capable of undergoing a change from potency to act, the intellective soul must be studied in natural philosophy.18 Having rejected the view according to which the intellective soul is studied both in metaphysics and in natural philosophy, Jandun formulates his own position: the intellective soul, not only as the principle of motion and operations in a human body, but also in itself and absolutely, is studied in natural philosophy alone. His argument differentiates strictly between the human intellective soul and the celestial intelligences. The latter are totally separate (totaliter separata), i.e. they do not need or use a body, neither in order to subsist nor to exercise their primary operations: knowing (intelligere) and willing (velle). The only reason why the celestial intelligences need a (heavenly) body is to perform their secondary operation: moving (movere). Unlike the celestial intelligences, the human intellective soul needs a body to perform its primary operation: knowing. It performs this operation by ‘appropriating’ (appropriare) itself to a body, which provides the intellective soul with sensible images or phantasms. This cognitive dependence of the intellective soul upon the human body explains the inclusion of the intellective soul in natural philosophy. In contrast, the celestial intelligences are studied by metaphysics, because of their ontological and cognitive independence of a body.19 18 Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 10–11: ‘Sed in veritate credo quod ista distinctio non sit bona, quia, si sic esset, sequeretur quod Aristoteles in Metaphysica fuisset insufficiens; consequens est falsum; ergo et antecedens. Falsitas consequentis patet per Commentatorem primo huius. Consequentia patet, quia in Metaphysica, ubi tractat de substantiis separatis, nullam mentionem facit de ipsa. Immo, quod plus est, ipse illic probat numerum intelligentiarum, et quod nulla est substantia separata quae non moveat aliquam stellam; et patet quod intellectus non est huiusmodi; quare etc. … Item considerare ens naturale secundum se et absolute pertinet ad naturalem; sed anima intellectiva est ens naturale; quare etc. Maior apparet de se. Minor patet per Commentatorem tertio huius super illo verbo “quoniam sicut in omni natura” (III.5, 430a10) dicentem quod anima est unum entium naturalium, et loquitur de intellectiva. Et patet etiam per Philosophum, quia aliter sua demonstratio de intellectu non valeret, cum dicit “quoniam sicut in omni natura”, nisi sub illa maiore sumeretur quod anima est ens naturale, sicut sumit Commentator. Et probatur minor quia: ens transmutabile de potentia ad actum est ens naturale secundum se; sed anima rationalis est huiusmodi; quare etc.’ In commenting on Aristotle’s De anima III.5, 430a10, Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, III, comm. 17, ed. F.S. Crawford, Cambridge (MA) 1953 (Corpus commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem. Versionum latinarum 6/1), 436, writes: ‘… consideratio de anima est consideratio naturalis, quia anima est unum entium naturalium.’ 19 Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 11: ‘Et ideo dico quod anima intellectiva secundum se et absolute et secundum quod est principium motuum et operationum in
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But here one might object that this argument seems to fail in the case of the agent intellect (intellectus agens), which does not seem to need a body, neither to subsist nor to perform its primary, cognitive operation. In order to counter this objection, and to maintain the distinction between the human intellective soul and the celestial intelligences as strictly and clearly as possible, Jandun argues that the agent intellect ‘appropriates’ itself to a human body both in its primary operation (knowing) and in its secondary operation (abstracting), albeit in different ways and at different moments during the cognitive process.20 With respect to its secondary operation, the agent intellect establishes a conjunction with the human (perceiving and cogitating) body in the beginning (in principio) of the cognitive process. With respect to the agent intellect’s primary operation, this conjunction occurs only at the end (in postremo) of the cognitive process, when the human (perceiving and cogitating) body is perfected by the possession of the speculative sciences. Hence, unlike the celestial intelligences, the agent intellect falls entirely within the province of natural philosophy, as it needs and uses a body to perform both its primary and secondary operations (albeit in different ways and at different moments).21
homine pertinet ad naturalem, et non ad metaphysicum, qui solum considerat totaliter separata. Totaliter vero separata sunt illa quae non indigent corpore, nec sibi appropriantur, nec quantum ad substantiam nec quantum ad operationes eorum primas, sicut substantiae separatae quae non indigent corpore celesti nec quantum ad suas substantias nec quantum ad suas operationes primas, quae sunt intelligere et velle, licet indigeant corpore celesti quantum ad suam operationem secundam, quae est movere. Anima autem intellectiva non est talis, quia licet quantum ad suam substantiam non indigeat corpore, tamen quantum ad suam operationem primam, quae est intelligere, indiget corpore, ut sibi approprietur, ut [ut] patet primo et tertio huius.’—For the broader philosophical context of Jandun’s argument (and its background in Averroes), see Brenet, Transferts du sujet, 72–84. 20 During the cognitive process, the agent intellect operates on the possible (or material) intellect. Jandun agrees with Averroes’s view that both intellects are ontologically separated from human bodies and unique to the entire human species. The intellect does not give being to the body (it is not the body’s substantial form), but it is nevertheless the body’s form in the sense of an intrinsic operating principle. In the course of the cognitive process, the agent intellect establishes a ‘conjunction’ (continuatio) with the body, the material substrate of the acts of perception and cogitation. For a detailed analysis of Jandun’s view of the mechanism of abstraction, and the transition from sense perception to knowledge, see Brenet, Transferts du sujet, 135–194. 21 Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 11: ‘Et si dicatur contra hoc de intellectu agente, qui nec quantum ad suam substantiam indiget corpore, cum sit separatus a corpore, nec quantum ad suam operationem primam, quae est intelligere, cum nihil intelligat eorum quae sunt hic, ut dicit Commentator tertio huius; quare etc.—possumus ad hoc dicere quod intellectus agens quantum ad operationem suam primam, quae est intelligere, et quantum ad secundam, quae est abstrahere, appropriatur corpori humano, sed differenter,
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Let us now turn to Trapolinus. His text contains an extensive discussion of Jandun’s arguments. The gist of Trapolinus’s criticism is that Jandun’s line of reasoning leads to the (unacceptable) conclusion that the natural philosopher not only studies the human intellective soul, but also the celestial intelligences. In other words, Trapolinus argues that Jandun fails to differentiate adequately between the human intellective soul and the celestial intelligences.22 He therefore develops an alternative way to explain why the intellective soul is studied quiditatively (quidditative) by the natural philosopher, but not the celestial intelligences.23 The main point in his analysis is that, while it is relatively unproblematic to argue that the possible intellect must be included in natural philosophy, the situation is much more delicate for the agent intellect. For the question is how to differentiate adequately between the active intellect and the celestial intelligences. In order to include the agent intellect in natural philosophy and to exclude the celestial intelligences, Trapolinus offers two alternative lines of reasoning. The first is based on Averroes’s assumption according to which the agent intellect gives being to the possible intellect as form gives being to matter. The second denies that assumption. Following Averroes’s assumption that the agent intellect gives being (dat esse) to the possible intellect, it is relatively easy to argue that natural philosophy has to study both the possible and the agent intellects whereas metaphysics has to study the celestial intelligences. Trapolinus’s argument consists of two elements. First, he argues that the celestial intelligences, on the one hand, and the possible intellect, on the other, are proven to exist in
quia quantum ad secundam operationem continuatur nobis in principio, sed quantum ad primam continuatur nobis in postremo, cum perfecti fuerimus per scientias speculativas, ut dicit Commentator tertio huius; quare etc.’—Jandun’s argument clearly draws on the following passage in Averroes’s Commentarium magnum, III, comm. 36, 495: ‘Dicamus igitur: quoniam autem intellectus existens in nobis habet duas actiones secundum quod attribuitur nobis, quarum una est de genere passionis (et est intelligere), et alia de genere actionis (et est extrahere formas et denudare eas a materiis, quod nichil est aliud nisi facere eas intellectas in actu postquam erant in potentia), manifestum est quoniam in voluntate nostra est, cum habuerimus intellectum qui est in habitu, intelligere quodcunque intellectum voluerimus et extrahere quancunque formam voluerimus. Et ista actio, scilicet creare intellecta et facere ea, est prior in nobis quam actio que est intelligere, sicut dicit Alexander.’ 22 For Trapolinus’s criticism, see infra, Appendix 2A, nrs. 2.1.–2.6. 23 See infra, Appendix 2A, nrs. 3. and 3.1.: ‘Propter igitur istas manifestas instantias contra Iohannem, tenendo tamen eandem opinionem, scilicet quod naturalis quidditative consideret animam intellectivam, aliter respondeo et solvo questionem. Pro quo nota quod in ista materia due reperiuntur opiniones. Una que asserit animam quidditative considerari a naturali, alia vero quod non. Ego autem sum cum prima. Et quod sit vera, quia rationes Iohannis non sunt multum efficaces ad illam probandam, ideo aliter probo.’
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different ways. The existence of the celestial intelligences is proven by an argument from the eternity of motion, such as given by Aristotle in Physics book VIII and Metaphysics book XII. The existence of the possible intellect is proven differently (as is clear from De anima book III), namely by arguing that the possible intellect continuously receives intelligible species and is therefore subject to motion. This difference between the ways of proving the existence of the celestial intelligences and the possible intellect suffices for Trapolinus to argue that the former must be assigned to metaphysics while the latter is included in natural philosophy. Second, Trapolinus argues that the study of matter cannot be separated from the study of form. Given that, according to Averroes’s assumption, the agent intellect gives being to the possible intellect as form gives being to matter, it follows that not only the possible intellect (matter) but also the agent intellect (form) must be assigned to natural philosophy.24 But if Averroes’s assumption concerning the (hylomorphic) relation between the possible and agent intellects is not accepted, it seems to be much more problematic to assign the agent intellect and the celestial intelligences to different philosophical disciplines.25 However, according to Trapolinus,
24 See infra, Appendix 2A, nrs. 4.1. and 4.2.—In P, the argument runs as follows (P 13r): ‘Ideo dicatur aliter et melius pro solutione huius quod substantie separate quedam probantur per eternitatem motus, ut in octavo Phisicorum et duodecimo Methaphisice, et sunt substantie abstracte moventes orbes celestes. Quedam vero sunt que non probantur per motum, scilicet esse abstractas, sed alia via, ut intellectus agens et possibilis. Intellectus enim possibilis probatur tertio huius, textu quarto, quod sit abstractus et immaterialis hoc modo: omne recipiens est denudatum a natura recepta; sed intellectus possibilis est omnia materialia recipiens; est ergo immaterialis et abstractus. Intellectus vero agens probatur ibidem, textu 19, eodem modo: illud est abstractum quod non est organicum et abstrahit a materia formas et species intelligibiles; intellectus agens est huiusmodi. Patet ergo quod intellectus possibilis et agens probantur esse abstracti, et non per viam motus, ut prime substantie. Hoc stante, dicitur quod prime substantie, que scilicet probantur per motum, considerantur a methaphisico quidditative, alie vero, scilicet intellectus agens et possibilis, a naturali, tenendo scilicet hoc quod credo esse verum quod naturalis considerat quidditates rerum in particulari. Probatur hoc nam: intellectus possibilis consideratur a naturali. Nulli enim hoc est dubium, quia dependet in sua operatione a corpore, scilicet fantasmate, et movetur motu improprie dicto, que quidem sufficiunt ad hoc quod aliquid a naturali consideretur, ut vult Commentator: intelligere consistit in quoddam pati et moveri. Probatur autem: illud quod consideratur a naturali illa talis forma consideratur (P 13v) a naturali, ut vult Philosophus secundo Phisicorum, textu 26; sed intellectus agens est forma et perfectio (perfecta P) intellectus possibilis, ut dicit Commentator: sic se habet intellectus agens ad possibilem sicut lux ad dyaphanum; naturalis ergo hconsiderati et agens similiter.’ 25 Trapolinus seems to have a somewhat ambiguous attitude vis-à-vis Averroes’s view of the human (possibile and active) intellect. On the one hand, he claims to hold Averroes’s view according to which the possible intellect and the agent intellect are united and that the
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even in that case it is possible to maintain that the natural philosopher studies both the agent and possibile intellects, but not the celestial intelligences. This alternative argument, qualified as ‘probable’ (probabiliter), takes its cue from a passage in Averroes’s commentary on the Metaphysics, where it is said that the metaphysician has to study being qua being and its causes and principles. From this statement, Trapolinus infers that the metaphysician has to study what is universal and common (universalia et communia). He distinguishes between universals in the order of causation (universalia in causando) and universals in the order of predication (universalia in praedicando). As examples of the first kind of universal (universal causes) he mentions God and the celestial intelligences. As examples of universals in the order of predication he mentions ‘being’ and ‘one,’ which are universally predicable. Given that the agent intellect is neither a universal cause (unlike the celestial intelligences) nor universally predicable, it has no place in metaphysics. For Trapolinus this seems to imply, as the only remaining (probable) conclusion, that the study of the agent intellect must be assigned to natural philosophy.26 To summarize his position (by combining elements from both alternative lines of reasoning), Trapolinus enumerates three requirements a thing must satisfy in order to be included in metaphysics: metaphysics studies substances that are (1) immaterial and (2) universal (either in the order of causation or in the order of predication), and (3) that are proven to exist by an argument from the eternity of motion. Hence the fact that active intellect is immaterial does not suffice to make it part of the subject matter of metaphysics. For the active intellect does not meet the second and
latter inheres in the former. See infra, Appendix 2A, nr. 4.2. On the other hand, Trapolinus explicitly contrasts Averroes’s view of the intellective soul and the agent intellect with the position of ‘faith, the truth and Thomas Aquinas.’ See infra, Appendix 2A, nr. 5.1. In another passage, Averroes’s view of the celestial intelligences is set against the view of faith. See infra, Appendix 2A, nr. 5.2. 26 See infra, Appendix 2A, nrs. 4.4.–4.6.—In P, the argument runs as follows (13v): ‘Si autem vellemus tenere quod intellectus agens non det esse intellectui possibili, esset nimis difficilis salvare quomodo intellectus agens consideretur a naturali. Probabiliter tamen possemus salvare concessu. Nam Commentator dicit duodecimo Methaphisice, commento primo, quod methaphisici est considerare causas universales et ens inquantum ens. Quo stante, patet quod non habent considerare de intellectu agente, quia non est causa universalis neque etiam in predicando. Et si sit similitudo inter intellectum agentem et intelligentiam, differunt tamen in hoc quia intelligentia est causa universalis, et ideo consideratur a primo philosophi. Qualis non est intellectus.’ In question I.3 of his commentary, Trapolinus argues that psychology can only be assigned to either natural philosophy or metaphysics. See infra, Appendix 2B, 3.4.1. (‘cum nullus alius artifex possit ipsam considerare’).
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the third requirement: it lacks universality (in either of the two senses) and it is not proven to exist by an argument from the eternity of motion.27 Finally, Trapolinus denies that whatever is studied in natural philosophy must inhere in a mobile being as in a subject (subiective). In his view, in order to be included in a natural philosophical inquiry, it suffices to have a certain relation (attributio) and to appropriate itself to some mobile being. Although this double requirement is admittedly also satisfied by the celestial intelligences, Trapolinus claims that the latter are excluded from natural philosophy for other reasons, namely the fact that they are universal causes and that their existence is proven by an argument from the eternity of motion.28 4. The Subject Matter of Psychology In question I.3 of his commentary, Trapolinus examines Jandun’s question on the subject matter of psychology. The title of the question mentions two possible candidates: the subject matter of psychology can either be the soul itself (anima) or the ensouled body (corpus animatum). Let us again turn to Jandun’s corresponding question in order to better understand Trapolinus’s position. Jandun first discusses a view ascribed to Albert the Great and his followers, who allegedly argue that the ensouled body (corpus animatum) constitutes the subject matter of psychology.29 Three arguments are given in
See infra, Appendix 2A, nr. 5.3. See infra, Appendix 2A, nr. 5.1.—The corresponding passage in P runs as follows (P 13v): ‘Rationes vero ante oppositum solvuntur a Ioanne quantum est de anima sensitiva, vegetativa et intellectu possibili. De intellectu autem agente nullam facit mentionem. Ideo dicitur aliter ad primum, quando dicitur “quod non est mobile non consideratur a naturali”, hoc negatur. Immo multa considerantur a naturali que non sunt mobilia, sed attribuuntur ad mobile. Et hec est sententia Commentatoris primo Phisicorum, commento 11, ubi dicit Philosophus “nobis autem subiciantur omnia aut quedam” etc., dicit Commentator: “et dixit ‘quedam’ perservando se ab anima et formis, que, licet non moveantur, sunt tamen naturales, quia sunt in mobili, scilicet in subiecto”. Et hoc etiam tenet Albertus Magnus primo eiusdem, capitulo tertio, dicens quod non omnia a naturali considerata sunt mobilia, sed habent attributionem ad mobile. Tenendo autem quod intellectus agens non det esse possibili, oportet adhuc amplius glosare, scilicet quod considerata a naturali vel sunt mobilia vel in mobili huti in subiecto vel in mobili appropriative, sicut est intellectus agens in intellectu possibili.’ 29 In fact, in his De anima Albert the Great defends the view that the soul constitutes the subject matter of psychology, not the ensouled body. See the following passage (De anima I.1.3, ed. C. Stroick, Münster 1968 [Opera omnia, 7/1], 5): ‘Ea autem quae de anima 27 28
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support of this view. First, all powers and operations discussed in Aristotle’s De anima are in fact powers and operations of the ensouled body, not of the soul itself. Second, given that psychology is part of natural philosophy, its subject matter must correspondingly be part of the subject matter of natural philosophy as a whole, mobile being (ens mobile). Since the ensouled body meets this requirement, but not the soul itself, it follows that the former must be considered the subject matter of psychology. Third, all items treated in Aristotle’s De anima—the powers and operations of the soul, and the nature of the soul itself—are studied in order to describe and explain the functioning of the ensouled body. Hence the latter must be the subject matter of the science contained in that book.30 Besides the view ascribed to Albert, Jandun mentions another opinion, according to which the science of psychology as contained in Aristotle’s De anima and the science contained in the so-called parva naturalia constitute
cognoscere per demonstrationem et considerare per signa inquirimus, sunt natura ipsius, qua ipsius animati corporis naturam constituit, et substantia ipsius, qua ipsa est secundum se. Et hoc quaerimus de anima primo et principaliter … Postea autem secundario etiam quaerimus cognoscere quaecumque accidunt circa ipsam animam per se et non secundum accidens.’ Albert is even more explicit in Physica I.1.4, ed. P. Hossfeld, Münster 1987 (Opera omnia, 4/1), 7: ‘Sed scientia de animatis habet duas partes. Cum enim anima sit principium animatorum et principium oporteat cognoscere ante principiatum, oportet haberi scientiam de anima antequam habeatur scientia de corporibus animatis. Scientia autem de anima duas necessario habet partitiones, quoniam aut est de ipsa anima et potentiis sive partibus eius aut scientia de operibus animae, quaecumque habet in corpore, et de passionibus eius, quas patitur in corpore. Et scientia quidem de anima secundum se et potentias eius habet tradi in libris De anima dictis.’—The view attributed by Jandun to Albert and his followers is defended, among others, by the anonymous author of Quaestiones super librum De anima (I.3) edited by B.C. Bazán, in: M. Giele, F. Van Steenberghen and B.C. Bazán (eds.), Trois commentaires anonymes sur le Traité de l’ âme d’ Aristote, Leuven, Paris 1971 (Philosophes médiévaux, 11), 389–514, at 392–394, and Radulphus Brito, Quaestiones super librum De anima (I.3), ed. by S.W. de Boer, in Id., Soul and Body in the Middle Ages. A Study of the Transformations of the scientia de anima, c. 1260– c. 1360, Ph.D. thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, 2011, 297–381, 305–308. 30 Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 13: ‘De quaestione ista sunt opiniones. Nam est una opinio fratris Alberti et suorum sequacium quod corpus animatum sit hic subiectum. Et videtur hoc significare tribus rationibus. Prima haec est: illud est hic subiectum cuius passiones sunt hic inquisitae; sed corpus animatum est huiusmodi; quare etc. Maior patet primo Posteriorum. Minor patet, quia passiones hic inquisitae sunt potentiae et operationes quae quidem sunt totius coniuncti, ut dicit Philosophus in proemium huius; quare etc. Item subiectum in ista scientia, quae est pars scientiae naturalis, debet esse pars entis mobilis; sed corpus animatum est huiusmodi, et non anima; quare etc. … Item illud est hic subiectum gratia cuius omnia hic tradita considerantur; sed corpus animatum est huiusmodi; quare etc. … Minor patet, quia omnia determinata sunt potentiae et operationes quae habent attributionem ad animam, et anima ad corpus, sicut pars ad [ad] suum totum, et non e converso; quare etc.’
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together one single discipline. The subject matter of this discipline as a whole is the ensouled body. But within this overall discipline, the De anima focuses specifically on the soul as the principle of the ensouled body and its operations whereas the books of the parva naturalia concentrate on the ensouled body as such.31 The anonymous proponents of this view draw an analogy between the science of the De anima and the parva naturalia, on the one hand, and the science contained in Aristotle’s Physics, on the other. The latter has mobile being (ens mobile) as its subject matter, even though in books I–V Aristotle does not speak of mobile being as such, but of its various principles, such as for example matter and form, time and place. Likewise the De anima studies the principles of the ensouled body, more specifically the soul, whereas the overall discipline to which psychology belongs examines the ensouled body.32
31
Peter of Spain holds a view that seems to come close to what Jandun has in mind. See the following passages (Sententia cum quaestionibus in libros De anima, I.13, 81): ‘Sexto modo appellatur subiectum in scientia illud ratione cuius formaliter aliquid est subiectum in scientia illa. Et sic anima est subiectum in scientia ista, non de quo est scientia, set ratione cuius de aliquo est ista scientia. Est enim de corpore animato non ratione corporis, set ratione qua comparatur ad animam. De corpore enim animato in Vegetalibus determinatur, set non inquantum refertur ad animam, set inquantum refertur ad partes suas et dispositiones suarum partium. Et in libro De animalibus determinatur de corpore animato non inquantum refertur ad animam, set inquantum refertur ad complexionem suam et dispositiones suarum partium. In hac autem scientia determinatur de corpore animato inquantum refertur ad animam et ad operationes anime … (I.14, 83–84) Ad secundam rationem dicendum est quod in corpore animato sunt tria, scilicet: complexio corporis et dispositio partium eius et ortus et occasio illarum, et sic determinatur de corpore animato in libro Animalium et Vegetabilium. Set in libro Animalium determinatur hoc modo de omni corpore sensibili tam bruti quam hominis. In libro autem Vegetabilium determinatur hoc modo de corpore vegetali secundum quod est in corpore animato. Et, secundum, operationes anime que egrediuntur ab anima et terminantur ad corpus, et sic determinatur in libro De anima de quolibet corpore animato; et ideo intitulatur ab anima, quia de ipso determinatur ratione anime et operationum eius. Tercium est operaciones que proveniunt corpori animato a parte corporis et habent ortum a corpore. Et sic determina[n]tur de corpore animato in minoribus libris, ut in libro De sompno et vigilia, De morte et vita, De inspiratione et respiratione, quia sompnus, vigilia, mors, vita, inspiratio, respiratio, incipiunt a corpore.’ The author of the anonymous Lectura in librum De anima a quodam discipulo reportata, I.1, ed. R.A. Gauthier, Grottaferrata 1985 (Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, 24), 4, argues that the sciences contained in the parva naturalia (including Costa Ben Luca’s Liber de differentia spiritus et animae) are subalternated to the science of the soul: ‘Alii sunt libri naturales parui, sicut liber De sensu et sensato et De differencia spiritus et anime et De sompno et uigilia. Et huiusmodi libri continentur sub sciencia de anima uel ei subalternantur, quoniam in illis determinatur de specialibus operationibus potenciarum anime uel differenciarum anime.’ 32 Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 13: ‘Alii autem sunt dicentes quod scientia de anima est una cum scientia parvorum naturalium et quod subiectum in tota ista scientia est corpus animatum, licet in hac parte non determinetur de corpore animato,
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Although Jandun rejects the idea that the De anima and the parva naturalia constitute together one single discipline, his own view of the subject matter of psychology looks like a modified version of the second, anonymous opinion. According to Jandun, the soul itself constitutes the subject matter of psychology. Following Aristotle, he formulates two general requirements that must be satisfied by any subject matter of a science: it must be the first thing known (primo notum) in that science and it must be that of which the parts (partes) and attributes (passiones) are studied in that science. In the case of psychology only the soul itself meets these requirements, not the ensouled body. Unfortunately, Jandun provides no evidence to support his claim except for the general observation that it is obvious when reading through the De anima that the soul constitutes its subject matter.33 But he immediately qualifies his view by arguing that a scientist (artifex) who studies the form of a given body to a certain extent also examines the body of which it is the form. Hence the psychologist primarily (principaliter) examines the soul and secondarily (ex consequenti) the ensouled body, although the latter is not exclusively studied in the De anima, but also in the books of the parva naturalia.34 Finally, Jandun recognizes that the attributes (passiones), powers (virtutes) and operationes (operationes) studied in the De anima strictly speaking (absolute) belong to the ensouled body. Nevertheless they are studied in the De anima insofar as
sed solum de anima, sed in parvis libris incipit determinare de ipso, quia, sicut in libro Physicorum subiectum est ens mobile et de ipso tamen non determinatur per totum, sed solum de ipso a sexto, [in] antea in quinque libris prioribus agit de principiis corporum, sicut materia et forma etc., sic in tota ista subiectum est corpus animatum, sed de ipso determinatur primo in libris parvis, in toto autem determinatur de principiis eius, sicut anima etc.’ 33 Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 14: ‘Et ideo dico ad quaestionem quod anima est hic subiectum, et non corpus animatum. Quod probatur dupliciter. Primo sic: illud quod est primo notum in scientia et de quo et cuius partibus et passionibus determinatur in scientia est subiectum in illa; sed anima est huiusmodi; quare etc. Maior apparet primo Posteriorum. Minor patet, discurrendo per librum; quare etc. Et per oppositum, cum hic non determinetur de partibus corporis animati, et eadem est scientia totius et primarum partium, ut (unde ed.) patet primo Posteriorum, igitur corpus animatum non potest esse hic subiectum; quare etc.’ As shown by De Boer, Soul and Body, 73–74, the first requirement is taken from Aristotle, Analytica posteriora I.1, 71a12–16, the second from Aristotle, Analytica posteriora I.28, 87a37–87b1. 34 Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 14: ‘Sed est intelligendum quod artifex considerans de forma alicuius corporis principaliter debet considerare de illa et ex consequenti de corpore et materia quae subiicitur tali formae, ut patet secundo Physicorum universaliter et in secundo huius specialiter, ubi Philosophus increpat antiquos adaptantes animam corpori nihil definientes in quo et in quali debet esse; quare etc.’
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they find their origin in the soul as in their primary causal principle. For that reason the soul itself, not the ensouled body, can be considered the subject matter of psychology.35 In his corresponding question, Trapolinus offers a set of refinements and (minor) criticisms of Jandun’s arguments.36 The main part of his text consists of a new question on the demonstrability of the soul’s existence: can it be demonstrated that the soul exists or is its existence self-evident (Utrum animam esse possit demonstrari vel sit per se notum)? This question apparently arises from Jandun’s (and Aristotle’s) requirement that the subject matter of a science must be the first thing known (primo notum) in that science.37 Trapolinus’s solution takes as its point of reference Avicenna’s view, summarized in two claims. First, according to Avicenna, the existence of the soul can be demonstrated. This demonstration takes as its point of departure the empirical observation of phenomena such as growth, local motion and perception, and concludes that the soul constitutes the primary causal principle of these phenomena. Second, Avicenna claims that the soul is not studied quiditatively (quidditative) in the De anima, but only as related to the body (in ordine ad corpus). He argues that Aristotle’s famous definition of the soul (‘the first actuality of a natural organic body having live
Jandun, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 14: ‘Ad aliam, cum dicitur “subiectum in scientia” etc., dicitur concedendo etc. Et cum dicitur “anima non est huiusmodi,” dico quod, licet passiones animae, ut sunt virtutes et operationes, absolute consideratae non appropriantur sibi, ut tamen consideratae sunt in ista scientia sibi appropriantur, quia [ista] in ista scientia considerantur ut habent ortum ab aliquo principio; et isto modo non appropriantur corpori animato, sed animae etc.’ See also the following passage (I.3, 14–15): ‘Cum dicitur “corpus etc.,” dico quod passiones inquisitae hic absolute consideratae sunt corporis animalis, consideratae tamen ut principaliter oriuntur ab aliquo sunt ipsius animae; quare etc.’ 36 See infra, Appendix 2, nrs. 2.–2.4.3. 37 See supra, n. 34. The question is also suggested by one of the arguments in the beginning of Jandun’s question (Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 12): ‘Item subiectum in scientia debet esse primo notum; sed anima non est huiusmodi; quare etc. Maior patet, quia subiectum comparatur ad scientiam sicut obiectum ad potentiam, et obiectum est primo notum inter omnia cognita a potentia; quare etc. Et quia subiectum inter omnia praecognita est maxime praecognitum, cum de ipso praecognoscitur quid est et quia est, ut patet primo Posteriorum; sed maximum in unoquoque genere est primum omnium aliorum, ut patet decimo Metaphysicae. Minor patet per Avicennam sexto Naturalium dicentem quod corpus animatum subiicitur sensui, anima vero rationi.’—The arguments given by Trapolinus in the beginning of the question make it clear what is at stake. On the one hand, the existence of the soul is obviously not self-evident, neither ‘ex terminis’ nor ‘per sensum’ (see infra, Appendix 2, nr. 3.1.1.). On the other hand, Aristotle argues in the Posterior Analytics that a science has to presuppose both the existence and the essence of its own subject matter (‘de subiecto precognoscitur quid et quia;’ see infra, Appendix 2B, nr. 3.2.). 35
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potentially’) is not quiditative, because it contains a reference to the body. Given that the body is external to the soul’s essence, it should not be included in a quiditative definition of the soul. According to Avicenna, a quiditative definition of the soul (which specifies nothing but the soul’s essence) is not to be found in the De anima. Therefore the soul is not studied quiditatively in the De anima, but in another, unspecified book.38 In his assessment of Avicenna’s view, Trapolinus first dismisses the claim according to which the soul is not studied quiditatively in the De anima. He denies the validity of Avicenna’s inference according to which the soul is not studied quiditatively in the De anima because Aristotle’s definition of the soul is not quiditative. To substantiate his position, he raises the question whether or not a purely quiditative definition of the soul should contain a reference to the body. In his view, this question can only be answered by making a distinction between the vegetative and sensitive souls, on the one hand, and the intellective soul, on the other. A quiditative definition of the vegetative and sensitive souls necessarily includes a reference to the body, even though the body does not belong to their quidities. For as material forms, their definitions should specify the matter of which they are the forms. Likewise, the definition of accidents necessarily includes a reference to a substance as to their cause. The case is different for the intellective soul, which does not depend on the body as on its (material) cause. Therefore the body should not be included in a quiditative definition of the intellective soul.39 Trapolinus thus accepts Avicenna’s claim that Aristotle’s definition of the soul is not quiditative insofar as it does not apply univocally to the vegetative, sensitive and intellective souls. Like Avicenna, he argues that a genuine, unambiguous quiditative definition of the soul cannot be found in the De anima, but that Aristotle’s definitions of the soul given in the first two chapters of book II must be read as different ways to ‘circumscribe’ (circumloquitur) the soul’s (unknown) quiditative definition.40 But for Trapolinus, as opposed to Avicenna, that does not alter
38 See infra, Appendix 2B, nr. 3.3. Avicenna’s way of demonstrating the existence of the soul is summarized by Trapolinus in nr. 3.1.2. 39 See infra, Appendix 2B, nr. 3.4.2. 40 See infra, Appendix 2B, nr. 3.4.3., where Trapolinus argues it is not surprising that we do not possess a purely quiditative definition of the soul, given that there are only few, if any things of which we have such a definition. Trapolinus agrees with Averroes that Aristotle’s definition of the soul as ‘first actuality of a natural body’ is not univocal, but that it applies analogously to the vegetative and sensitive souls and to the intellective soul. The same conclusion holds even more for Aristotle’s definition of the soul as the principle of life in its various manifestations (‘principium sentiendi, movendi etc.’).
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the fact that the soul is studied quiditatively in the De anima, and not in any other book. In his view, a quiditative study of the soul does neither require nor yield a quiditative definition of the soul.41 With respect to Avicenna’s claim according to which the soul’s existence can be demonstrated, Trapolinus makes a distinction between the soul considered as a quidity (or an essence) and the soul considered as the causal principle of a living organism’s vegetative and sensitive operations.42 He claims the existence of the soul as the causal principle of vegetative and sensitive operations to be self-evident. On the other hand, the existence of the soul as a quidity (or an essence) is not self-evident, and can therefore be demonstrated. The reason why the existence of the soul as a quidity is not self-evident is that the ultimate specific difference (ultima differentia) of the soul is not only unknown us, but even to Aristotle himself, who did not know the quiditative definition of the vegetative and sensitive souls and even less of the intellective soul.43 Trapolinus argues that the task of demonstrating the existence of the soul as a quidity belongs to the psychologist, not as such, but either in his more general capacity as natural philosopher or as adopting the point of view of the metaphysician. He leaves it to his audience to decide between these two alternatives, both of which seem to be problematic (quid ad istam dicendum sit iudiciis vestris relinquo).44 To sum up: Trapolinus argues that, although the psychologist does not possess a genuine, unambiguous quiditative definition of the soul, nevertheless his job is to study the (vegetative, sensitive and intellective) soul
41 See infra, Appendix 2B, nrs. 3.4.1. and 3.4.5. See also Appendix 2A, nrs. 3. and 3.1. (and supra, n. 31). As in question I.2, Trapolinus here too raises the question of how to differentiate between a quiditative study of the (intellective) soul and a quiditative study of the celestial intelligences. See infra, Appendix 2B, nrs. 3.4.4. The corresponding passage in P refers to Apollinaris Offredi Cremonensis (P 15r): ‘Et per hoc faciliter patet responsio ad argumenta Apollinaris, qui vult quod Philosophus non considerat animam quidditative, quia tunc eciam consideraret intelligentiam quidditative, quod est falsum. Et hoc patet, quia diffinitio de anima dicens quod est principium vegetandi etc., competit etiam intelligentie, que est principium movendi corpus celeste.—Respondetur quod verum esset, si consideraret Philosophus animam precise secundum istam diffinitionem. Sed si haberet diffinitionem quidditativam, secundum illam consideraret. Ista ergo ponitur loco illius. De intellectiva vero secus est, quia adhuc si Philosophus haberet quidditativam diffinitionem de ipsa, non consideraret eam inquantum philosophus naturalis quidditative.’ 42 I take the formulation ‘anima (pure) quidditative considerata’ (infra, Appendix 2B, nr. 3.4.6.) to mean ‘the soul considered (purely) as a quidity (or an essence)’ and, likewise, ‘animam esse quidditative sumptam’ (infra, Appendix 2B, nr. 3.4.7.) to mean ‘the existence of the soul as a quidity (or an essence)’. 43 See infra, Appendix 2B, nr. 3.4.6. 44 See infra, Appendix 2B, nr. 3.4.7.
32
paul j.j.m. bakker
quiditatively. He claims that the existence of the soul as the causal principle of a living being’s vegetative and sensitive operations is self-evident and therefore cannot be demonstrated. In this meaning of the concept of ‘soul’, the psychologist simply presupposes the soul to exist and proceeds by demonstrating its parts and attributes. On the other hand, the existence of the soul as a quidity (or an essence) in its own right is not self-evident, but has to be demonstrated. In order to avoid saying (against Aristotle) that the psychologist, whose job is to study the soul quiditatively, has to demonstrate the very existence of the soul as a quidity, Trapolinus argues that it belongs to the psychologist to demonstrate the existence of the soul as a quidity, not in his capacity as psychologist, but either as a representative of natural philosophy in general or as assuming the position of a metaphysician. The psychologist thus demonstrates, by way of prolegomena and not in his capacity as psychologist, the existence of the soul as a quidity before embarking, in his capacity as psychologist, on a quiditative study of it.45 5. Conclusion In the introductory questions of Trapolinus’s twofold super-commentary on De anima two fields of inquiry are given a prominent position: the question of how to differentiate between the human intellective soul and the celestial intelligences and the question of the demonstrability of the soul’s
45 Unfortunately, it remains unclear in V to what extent the existence of the (human) soul as a quidity (or essence) and the existence of the intellective soul (as opposed to the vegetative and sensitive souls) are one and the same thing. The corresponding passage in P clearly distinguishes between the existence of the intellective soul (which can be demonstrated by the natural philosopher in the same way as the existence of separate substances is demonstrated) and the existence of the vegetative and sensitive souls (which can be demonstrated by the natural philosopher through their operations). In P, Trapolinus does not claim that the existence of the soul as the causal principle of a living being’s vegetative and sensitive operations is self-evident. See the following passage (P 15r): ‘Sed est dubium: animam hessei principaliter quidditative consideratam potest demonstrari; a quo artifice, quero, possit demonstrari? Non a methaphisico, ex quo animam esse non possit nisi per operationes demonstrari, quas non considerat ipse methaphisicus. Nec a naturali, ex quo est prima pars dignitate sui subiecti.—Respondetur ut michi videtur quod possit demonstrari a philosopho naturali in ea parte philosophie et eodem modo quo probantur substantie abstracte. Et hoc de anima intellectiva. Nec est inconveniens artificem hoc modo subiectum hdemonstrarei. Vel potest dici quod in hoc opere per operationes eius potest anima sensitiva et vegetativa probari inquantum induit habitum philosophi naturalis. Obstat tamen Commentator, quia vult artificem neque subiectum neque partem posse probare inquantum ad esse.’
petrus trapolinus on the nature and place of psychology
33
existence. With respect to the first question, which was already raised in Jandun’s commentary, Trapolinus’s aim is to make it clear that the psychologist, as a natural philosopher, has to study both the possible and the agent intellects, whereas the metaphysician’s job is to study the celestial intelligences. To that effect, Trapolinus offers more refined and detailed descriptions than Jandun had given of how a natural philosophical study of the human intellective soul and a metaphysical inquiry of the celestial intelligences are supposed to proceed. Although Trapolinus presents his position in an overall averroistic framework, he also takes into account a non-averroistic approach. With respect to the question of the demonstrability of the soul’s existence, Trapolinus argues that the quidity (or essence) of the soul remains unknown and that a genuine, unambiguous quiditative definition of the soul remains unattainable for us, as it was also unattainable for Aristotle himself. Nevertheless, he maintains that the psychologist’s job is to study the soul quiditatively. Such a study of the soul thus neither requires nor produces knowledge of the soul’s quidity as expressed in a quiditative definition. Trapolinus not only argues that the quidity (or essence) of the soul remains unknown to us, but also that the soul’s existence as a quidity (or an essence) is not self-evident, but must be demonstrated. In his view, it is the psychologist’s job to demonstrate the existence of the soul as a quidity. But he cannot do that precisely in his capacity as psychologist, for in that case a scientist would have to prove the subject matter of his own scientific discipline to exist. Therefore Trapolinus attributes to either natural philosophy or metaphysics the status of a ‘foundational discipline’ vis-à-vis psychology: the psychologist is required to lay the groundwork for his own psychological inquiry either in his more general capacity of natural philosopher or as taking on the position of a metaphysician. In the end, Trapolinus leaves it unclear which of the two branches of philosophy has to play this foundational role. By leaving this question unanswered, Trapolinus sets the agenda for his sixteenth-century successors to reexamine, with the help of the newly translated Greek commentators, the relation between psychology and the other philosophical disciplines.
appendix one TABLE OF QUESTIONS
I.1 I.2 I.3 I.4 I.5 I.6 I.7 I.8 I.9 I.10 I.11 I.12 I.13 II.1 II.2 II.3 II.4 II.5 II.6 II.7 II.8 II.9 II.10
Question from Jandun’s commentary
V
P
Utrum de anima possit esse scientia Utrum scientia de anima sit naturalis Utrum anima sit subiectum in hac scientia vel corpus animatum Utrum scientiae speculativae sint de numero bonorum honorabilium Utrum ista scientia sit utilis ad alias scientias Utrum histai scientia sit difficillima Utrum sit aliqua una communis methodus investigandi quod quid est omnium quorum est quod quid est Utrum universale sit prius aut posterius singulari Utrum universalia sint priora singularibus vel posteriora Utrum accidens conferat ad cognoscendum substantiam Utrum anima habeat aliquam operationem sibi propriam Utrum logicus definiat per formam Utrum naturalis definiat per materiam sensibilem Utrum anima sit substantia Utrum anima sit substantia quae est forma sive forma substantialis Utrum definitio animae sit bene assignata Utrum ex anima et corpore fiat unum per se Utrum omnis anima sit actus primus corporis Utrum in partibus animalis annulosi decisis remaneat anima Utrum tota anima sit in qualibet parte corporis animati Utrum potentiae animae distinguantur per actus suos Utrum potentiae animae sint idem essentialiter cum ipsa anima Utrum potentiae fluant ab essentia animae
21v 23r 25r
12r 12v 14r
27r
15r
– 30r 31v
16r 17r –
32r 36r 38r 42v 44v 44v 64r 65v
18r 22v 24r 27v 28r 28v 32r 33r
67r 67v 67v 69r
34v 35r 36v 37v
70r 71v 72v
37v 39r 40r
*1
41v2
1 Questions II.10 to II.13 may have been included in the part of the V that is currently missing (74r–85v). 2 This question contains four subquestions: [P 41v] ‘In questione decima Ioannes ponit conclusiones, in quibus causis vel a quibus causis anime potentie ab eius essentia fluant. Ideo querimus quattuor, scilicet an anima sit causa suarum potentiarum in unoquoque causarum
table of questions Question from Jandun’s commentary II.11 II.12 II.13 II.14 II.15 II.16
II.17 II.18 II.19 II.20 II.21 II.22 II.23 II.24
Utrum generare sibi simile sit opus naturalissimum viventibus Utrum generare sibi simile et nutriri et augeri sint ab anima Utrum potentia generativa et augmentativa sint diversae potentiae animae Utrum sensus sit virtus passiva Utrum sensibile reducat sensum de potentia ad actum Utrum praeter speciem rei sensibilis in sensu receptam et praeter sensum qui est subiectum sensationis sit aliqua alia virtus activa sensationis naturaliter existens in anima sensitiva Utrum sensus particularis possit decipi circa suum proprium sensibile Utrum sensibilia communia sint sensibilia per se
35 V
P
*
43r
*
–
*
44r3
94v 94v 95v4
– – 53r
*5
56r
*
51v and 58r 60r
Utrum lux conferat colori formam vel habitum per quam * vel per quem moveat medium et visum Utrum lumen sit corpus * Utrum color sit primum obiectum visus * Utrum sonus sit realiter in aere ut in subiecto * Utrum echon sit idem sonus cum primo sono, id est cum 106v sono praecedente ipsum Utrum odor sit in medio realiter 107v
– 61v 63v 64r 64v
genere. Et primo an sit causa materialis et subiectum … [P 42r] Queritur secundo an anima sit causa efficiens potentiarum eius. Et Ioannes Scotus arguit quod non … [P 42v] Tertio arguitur quod anima non sit finis passionum et eius potentiarum … [P 42v] Quarto dubitatur an potentie anime ad invicem sint cause, id est una alterius …’ 3 This question contains eight sub-questions: [P 44r] ‘Et primo in parte nutritiva querimus de eius obiecto utrum sit nutrimentum … [P 44r] Secundo queritur de questione huiusmodi virtutis nutritive utrum scilicet sit subiective in corpore animato … [P 44r] Tertio queritur utrum actus virtutis nutritive, scilicet nutricatio, sit naturalis vel violentus … [P 44v] Quarto queritur utrum hic actus, scilicet nutricatio, sit motus continuus, sicut vult Philosophus textu 48 quod tamdiu animal est quamdiu nutritur … [P 44v] Quinto queritur an virtus hec nutritiva sit organica … [P 45r] Sexto queritur utrum in unoquoque individuo animalium potentia nutritiva sit una specie vel plures … [P 45r] Septimo queritur utrum finis istius potentie, scilicet nutritive, sit conservatio individui in esse, ut dicit Aristoteles in textu 48 … [P 45r] Octavo queritur utrum materia que fuit in principio generationis in animali remaneat usque ad statum perfectum.’ 4 Title only: ‘Questio 16a De sensu agente.’ 5 Questions II.17 to II.22 may have been included in the part of the V that is currently missing (96r–105v).
36
appendix one Question from Jandun’s commentary
II.25 II.26 II.27 II.28 II.29 II.30 II.31 II.32 II.33 II.34 II.35 II.36 II.37 III.1 III.2 III.3
V
P v6
Utrum homo habeat peiorem odoratum ceteris animalibus Utrum animalia respirantia et non respirantia habeant eundem odoratum Utrum tactus sit unus sensus Utrum tactus indigeat medio intrinseco Utrum sensibile positum supra sensum faciat sensationem Utrum ista propositio sit vera ‘omnis sensus est receptivus specierum sine materia’ Utrum species rei sensibilis recepta in sensu sit idem essentialiter cum ipso sentire Utrum sensus sint quinque et non plures neque pauciores
108
65r7
–
–
– – –
73r 76v –
–
76r
–
–
–
Utrum sensus particularis cognoscat suam propriam operationem, ut visus visionem et sic de ceteris Utrum sensibile agat in sensum Utrum excellens sensibile corrumpat sensum Utrum sensus communis sit unus sensus Utrum phantasia sit idem cum sensu Utrum naturalis philosophus debeat considerare de intellectu Utrum intellectus sit virtus passiva ab intelligibili Utrum potentia animae intellectivae ad speciem intelligibilem vel ad intelligere sit idem essentialiter cum substantia animae
–
79r and 80r 80v
– – – – –
81r 81r 81v – –
– –
– –
6 This question contains six sub-questions: [V 108v] ‘Circa hanc questionem primum videndum utrum odoratus in homine sit perfectior aliis (!) brutis … [V 109r] Videamus iterum primo utrum odoratus in bruto percipiat aliquem odorem quem non possit percipi odoratus in homine … [V 109r] Secundo utrum aliquis sit species odoris que percipiatur ab homine et non a brutis … [V 109v] Tertio utrum odoratus sit perfectior in homine quam in brutis … [V 109r] Quarta questio: quid sit organum odoratus … [V 110r] Quinto utrum nimia humiditas et frigiditas habeat impedire odoratum … [V 111r] Sexta: utrum idem corpus possit esse odoriferum et saporosum.’ 7 This question contains five sub-questions: [P 65v] ‘Circa hanc questionem primo est videndum utrum sit verum quod homo habeat odoratum ceteris animalibus peiorem … [P 65v] In ista materia de odore plura queruntur per ordinem. Primo utrum brutum percipiat suo odoratu aliquem odorem quem homo non percipit … [P 66r] Secundo queritur e converso utrum scilicet homo percipiat aliquos odores quos non percipit brutum … [P 66r] Tertio queritur de organo odoratus … [P 67r] Quarto queritur utrum frigiditas et humiditas cerebri impediant odoratum … [P 67v] Quinto queritur utrum hec hsit verai: odor fit ex habundantia sicci super humido, ut vult Commentator commento 100.’
table of questions
III.4
III.5 III.6 III.7 III.8 III.9 III.10 III.11 III.12
III.13 III.14 III.15 III.16 III.17 III.18 III.19 III.20 III.21 III.22 III.23 III.24 III.25 III.26
37
Question from Jandun’s commentary
V
P
Utrum ad hoc quod intellectus intelligat aliquod intelligibile oporteat ipsum esse denudatum ab illo intelligibili Utrum anima intellectiva sit forma substantialis corporis humani Utrum intellectus possibilis sit aliquod ens actu de se aut sit ens in pura potentia receptiva Utrum intellectus sit unus numero in omnibus hominibus Utrum potentia intellectiva sit potentia organica Utrum cognitio intellectus possibilis sit necessaria ad intelligendum multitudinem in formis abstractis Utrum intellectiones quibus diversi homines intelligunt unum intelligibile sint diversae numero aut una numero Utrum ex intellectu possibili et specie intelligibili fiat magis unum quam ex materia et forma Utrum anima sensitiva et intellectiva sint una et eadem substantia in homine aut sint diversae formae substantiales Utrum intellectus possibilis possit intelligere suam intellectionem existentem in eo Utrum species intelligibilis differat realiter ab intellectione seu intelligere Utrum phantasma sit principium activum speciei intelligibilis in intellectu Utrum species intelligibilis remaneat in intellectu cessante omni intellectione Utrum species intelligibilis sit principium activum intellectionis Utrum scientia sit idem quod species intelligibilis rei scitae Utrum quidditas sit primum obiectum intellectus Utrum intellectus noster intelligat substantiam materialem per eius speciem propriam Utrum anima cogitativa possit cognoscere substantias materiales Utrum intellectus possit intelligere singulare seu individuum sensibile Utrum necessarium sit esse intellectum agentem Utrum intellectus agens sit principium activum speciei intelligibilis Utrum intellectus agens sit aliquid animae nostrae humanae Utrum intellectus possibilis humanus sit in qualibet intelligentia quae intelligit aliquid extra se
–
94v
–
96r
–
97v
–
99r
– –
– 100v
–
101r
–
102r
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
102v
–
–
–
104r
– –
– –
–
–
–
105v
– –
– 108v
–
111v
–
–
38
III.27 III.28 III.29 III.30 III.31 III.32 III.33 III.34 III.35 III.36
III.37 III.38 III.39 III.40
III.41 III.42
appendix one Question from Jandun’s commentary
V
P
Utrum intellectus possibilis possit intelligere se ipsum Utrum intellectus sit perpetuus Utrum intellectus intelligit post mortem Utrum intellectus possibilis semper intelligat intellectum agentem eadem intellectione numero Utrum veritas et falsitas sint in intellectu Utrum intellectus possit intelligere plura simul Utrum non ens possit intelligi Utrum anima humana possit intelligere sine phantasmate Utrum intellectus practicus et speculativus sint diversae potentiae animae Utrum intellectus humanus possit intelligere substantias abstractas a materia et magnitudine ut sunt illae substantiae quae dicuntur intelligentiae Utrum potentiae animae sint infinitae Utrum intellectus et appetitus sint diversae virtutes seu potentiae animae nostrae Utrum appetitus et intellectus practicus sint principia motus localis processivi Utrum voluntas vel homo per voluntatem possit non velle bonum quod ab intellectu iudicatur esse bonum simpliciter, cum intellectus habet tale iudicium secundum actum Utrum vivens aliquando sit in tempore status ita quod nec augeatur nec diminuatur Utrum gustus et tactus sint necessarii omnibus animalibus
– – – –
– – – –
– – – –
– 113v – –
–
–
–
–
– –
115v –
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
APPENDIX TWO
This appendix presents an edition of two questions from Petrus Trapolinus’s commentary on Aristotle’s De anima according to Ms. Venezia, Biblioteca Marciana, lat. VI.301 (V). The orthography of the manuscript has been retained. The following signs and abbreviations have been used: AA adn. marg. iter.
Auctoritates Aristotelis, ed. J. Hamesse, Les Auctoritates Aristotelis. Un florilège médiéval. Etude historique et édition critique, Leuven, Paris 1974 (Philosophes médiévaux, 17). adnotavit margo iteravit
A Petri Trapolini Quaestiones et notabilia recollecta super libris De anima Liber primus Quaestio secunda Utrum scientia de anima sit naturalis V 23r
5
. Questio secunda utrum scientia de anima sit naturalis. . Hec est pulcherrima questio, licet in ea multa falsa dicat Iohannes. .. Bene primo dubitat, sed pessime respondet. Adducit quinque motiva, que sunt clara1. Postea in secunda ratione quam facit ad probandum quod scientia de anima sit naturalis2, maior est falsa sic absolute prolata, scili-
Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 9–10. Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 10: ‘Item scientia de natura est naturalis; sed anima vegetativa et sensitiva est huiusmodi; quare etc. Maior apparet secundo Physicorum. Minor patet per Philosophum et Commentatorem secundo huius, quia natura dicitur de materia et forma; sed anima est forma; quare etc.’ 1
2
10
40
V 23v
paul j.j.m. bakker
cet quod scientia de natura sit naturalis, quia, si omnis natura quidditative consideretur a naturali, cum intelligentie sint natura, ut patet primo Celi commento 5a, sequeretur quod intelligentie quidditative considerarentur a naturali. Consequens falsum, ut hpateti secundo Physicorum commento 26b, ubi dicitur quod consideratio naturalis de forma terminatur ad formam humanam; ergo etc. Nam licet intelligentie et substantie separate quantum ad esse considerentur a naturali, non tamen quidditative. Ergo falsum est quod dicit Iohannes quod scientia de natura absolute sit naturalis. .. Item. ‘Eadem scientia que considerat de aliquo toto considerat etiam de partibus suis’1 etc. Ista ratio si esset vera, cum naturalis habeat considerare celum inquantum animatum est, ut patet secundo Celic, | sequeretur quod naturalis quidditative haberet considerare animam celi, que est intelligentia, cum per te qui totum considerat, et partes, et ex intelligentia et orbe verius fit unum quam ex materia et forma; et consequens falsum, ut supra; ergo etc.
5
10
15
.. Item alia ratio, scilicet ‘de eo quod est forma corporis naturalis’2 etc.,
nulla est, quia, si esset vera, concluderet etiam de intelligentiis. Patet, quia ille sunt forme corporum naturalium, ut puta celorum. Et si dices: iste intelligentie non sunt proprie actus, sed actus appropriati, et non dantes esse, ideo non considerantur a naturali – contra: eodem modo dicam de anima intellectiva, que secundum Commentatorem quem sequimur est tantum appropriata, non dans esse homini, et tamen consideratur a naturali. Ergo si ratio Iohannis valeret, etiam intelligentie considerarentur.
quidditative] quidditativa V
De caelo I 1, 268b13sqq.; Averroes, In De caelo I, comm. 5, Venezia 1562, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1962 (Opera omnia, 5), 5ra–vb. b Averroes, In Physicam II, comm. 26, Venezia 1562, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1962 (Opera omnia, 4), 59ra. c Locus non inventus. a Aristoteles,
1 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 10: ‘Item eadem est scientia quae considerat de aliquo toto et de partibus suis; sed scientia naturalis est de corpore animato cuius pars est anima vegetativa et sensitiva; quare etc. Maior patet primo Posteriorum. Minor patet per Commentatorem in principio istius secundi etc.’ 2 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 10: ‘De eo quod est forma corporis naturalis est scientia naturalis; sed anima intellectiva est huiusmodi; ergo etc. Maior apparet secundo Physicorum.’
20
25
appendix two
41
.. Preterea: illa auctoritas septimo Metaphysice, commento 491 non
est ad propositum, quam fere omnes adducunt. Dicit enim Philosophusa quod actus est ille qui separat, et non dicit ‘distinguit.’ Et loquitur ibi de partibus in continuo, que sunt in potentia, et non in actu, nisi quando sunt divise. Actus ergo facit illas diversas et separatas. Non ergo loquitur de forma etc.
5
.. Item. ‘De eo est scientia naturalis quod est principium motuum’2 etc.
Ista ratio, si esset vera, concluderet de intelligentia quod consideraretur quidditative a naturali, quia illa est principium motuum et operationum corporis naturalis, ut puta celi. Nec valet si diceres: est principium appropriatum, et non inherens. Hoc est nihil, quia etiam anima intellectiva est huiusmodi; ergo non consideraretur a naturali etc.
10
.. Preterea in responsione quam dat ad argumentum quod obicit con-
tra se, scilicet ‘et si dicatur de intellectu agente’3 etc., pessime dicit. Nam si illa responsio esset vera, scilicet quod ideo intellectus agens consideratur a naturali quia in postremo copulatur nobis cum perfecti fuerimus etc., sequeretur quod idem esset de intelligentiis, scilicet quod considerarentur a naturali quidditative, quia ille sunt intelligentes, ut patet duodecimo
auctoritas] septimo metaphysice commento 49 actus distinguit non forma adn. in marg. V illa] ille V a Aristoteles, Metaphysica VII 13, 1039a7 (AA 1: 187). 1 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 10: ‘Minor probatur quia: forma separat et distinguit, ut patet septimo Metaphysicae; sed per animam intellectivam differt homo ab aliis, ut dicit Commentator tertio huius; quare etc.’ 2 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 10: ‘Item de eo est scientia naturalis quod est principium motuum et operationum in corpore naturali; sed intellectus est huiusmodi; quare etc. Maior apparet per Philosophum primo Caeli et mundi. Minor (maior ed.) patet per tertium huius etc. 3 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 11: ‘Et si dicatur contra hoc de intellectu agente, qui nec quantum ad suam substantiam indiget corpore, cum sit separatus a corpore, nec quantum ad suam operationem primam, quae est intelligere, cum nihil intelligat eorum quae sunt hic, ut dicit Commentator tertio huius; quare etc.— Possumus ad hoc dicere quod intellectus agens quantum ad operationem suam primam, quae est intelligere, et quantum ad secundam, quae est abstrahere, appropriatur corpori humano, sed differenter, quia quantum ad secundam operationem continuatur nobis in principio, sed quantum ad primam continuatur nobis in postremo, cum perfecti fuerimus per scientias speculativas, ut dicit Commentator tertio huius; quare etc.’
15
42
paul j.j.m. bakker
Metaphysice, commento 36a, ubi dicitur quod intelligentie non habent de virtutibus anime nisi duas, intelligere scilicet et movere, et quod totum aggregatum ex celo et intelligentia est intelligens eo modo et melius quam tunc erit intellectus agens in illa copulatione, ut patet etiam duodecimo Metaphysice, commento 17b, quod ita est de intelligentia sicut de intellectu agente, scilicet quod illa appropriatur et copulatur corpori celesti, et intelligit sicut intellectus noster nobis in foelicitate etc., et copulatio corporum celestium cum intelligentia non est in fine, imo eterna. Sequitur ergo quod consideratio talis erit naturalis. Quod est falsum etc.
5
. Propter igitur istas manifestas instantias contra Iohannem, tenendo
10
tamen eandem opinionem, scilicet quod naturalis quidditative consideret animam intellectivam etc., aliter respondeo et solvo questionem. .. Pro quo nota quod in ista materia due reperiuntur opiniones. Una que
asserit animam quidditative considerari a naturali, alia vero quod non. Ego autem sum cum prima. Et quod sit vera, quia rationes Iohannis non sunt multum efficaces ad illam probandam, ideo aliter probo.
15
.. Et primo adduco unam distinctionem, qua mediante multa pote-
ris solvere argumenta. Cum igitur queratur a te utrum naturalis habeat considerare substantias separatas a materia, distingue quod substantie abstracte a materia sunt duplices: quedam que probantur esse via motus, quedam que non probantur esse via motus. Prime sunt intelligentie et substantie abstracte, que non considerantur quidditative a naturali, sed a metaphysico. Secunde vero sunt intellectus possibilis et intellectus agens, qui tertio huius probantur esse non per viam motus; sed commento 18c et 19d tertii huius sic probantur esse: intellectus possibilis potest recipere omnes formas materiales; omne autem recipiens debet esse denudatum a natura rei recepte; ergo talis intellectus erit denudatus a materia. Eodem modo probatur intellectum agentem esse quia: aliquid est quod abstrahit omnes formas materiales a materia et illa que sunt intelligibilia in poten dicitur] intelligentie non habent de virtutibus anime nisi intelligere et movere adn. in marg. V respondeo] responsio trapolini adn. in marg. V opiniones] due opiniones adn. in marg. V una] pro prima adn. in marg. V duplices] substantie separate a materia sunt duobus modis adn. in marg. V a Aristoteles, Metaphysica XII 7, 1072a25–30; Averroes, In Metaphysicam XII, comm. 36, b Averroes, In Venezia 1562, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1962 (Opera omnia, 8), 318va. c Averroes, Commentarium magnum, III, Metaphysicam XII, comm. 17, 302vb–303ra. d Averroes, Commentarium magnum, III, comm. 18, 437–440; III, comm. 4, 385–387. comm. 19, 440–443; III, comm. 5, 390.
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43
tia facit intelligibilia in actu; et tale non potest esse nisi intellectus agens; ergo etc. Sed de hoc diffusius dicemus in tertio huius. Sufficiat pro nunc quod illi intellectus non probantur via | eternitatis motus. . Qua divisione stante, pono duas conclusiones. .. Prima est quod ille substantie abstracte que probantur esse via motus
5
quidditative a metaphysico considerantur. .. Secunda conclusio quod ille substantie abstracte que non probantur
esse via motus quidditative considerantur a naturali. Et hanc secundam conclusionem probo sic. Intellectus possibilis quidditative consideratur a naturali; sed intellectus agens est forma et perfectio intellectus possibilis; et quicumque considerat materiam, considerat etiam eius formam; ergo naturalis etiam considerabit quidditative intellectum agentem. Discursus notus cum maiori, quia quecumque substantia movetur, sive motu proprie dicto sive improprie dicto, consideratur a naturali; sed intellectus possibilis movetur, proprie vel improprie non curo; ergo etc. Quod movetur patet, quia continue recipit species intelligibiles et actuales succedentes etc. Minor etiam probatur auctoritate Commentatoris tertio huius, commento quintoa, ubi habet quod intellectus agens se habet ad intellectum possibilem sicut lumen se habet ad diaphanum; sed certum est quod lumen est perfectio diaphani; ergo etiam intellectus agens erit perfectio intellectus possibilis. Unde teneo hic secundum Commentatorem quod intellectus agens non sit separatus ab intellectu possibili, et maxime innitor huic fundamento ad probandum quod quidditative a naturali consideretur. Aliter si esset separatus et non inhereret intellectui possibili, eodem modo haberemus dicere quod naturalis consideraret substantias abstractas; quod est falsum. Et quod ista sit intentio Philosophi, scilicet quod intellectus agens det esse intellectui possibili, patet secundo Physicorum, commento 26b, ubi habetur quod ad eundem artificem ad quem pertinet considerare de materia pertinet etiam considerare de forma; et loquitur ibi de forma que dat esse, et non de forma que assistit; et etiam loquitur de materia que est in potentia ad esse, et non ad ubi, ut ibi
conclusiones] due conclusiones adn. in marg. V sic] probatio secunde adn. in marg. V sed] intellectus agens est forma intellectus possibilis adn. in marg. V teneo]
opinio trapolini quod intellectus agens sit unitus intellectui possibili adn. in marg. V Commentarium magnum, III, comm. 5, 410–411. comm. 26, 58vb.
a Averroes,
b Averroes,
In Physicam II,
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patet. Vult igitur Philosophus quod forma appropriata non consideratur a naturali. Si autem intelligentie et substantie abstracte darent esse corpori, utique tunc considerarentur a naturali. Eodem modo dico de intellectu agente quod, quia inheret intellectui possibili, ideo quidditative consideratur a naturali. Et ita teneo istam conclusionem sic. Conclusio est satis manifesta, scilicet quod intellectus possibilis et agens considerentur a naturali, quia ille est ens in pura potentia, iste vero actus et dat illi esse.
5
.. Et si dices: isti intellectus sunt substantie abstracte a materia;
ergo considerantur a metaphysico, non a naturali – respondeo et ut supra distingo de substantiis abstractis. Et etiam magis intellectus agens consideratur a naturali quam intelligentie, quia ille dat esse intellectui possibili, intelligentie vero non dant esse, sed assistunt corporibus celestibus.
10
.. Sed tunc aliquis posset dicere: si teneremus opinionem nonnullorum
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quod intellectus agens non daret esse possibili, haberemus ne viam ad probandum quare magis ille quam intelligentie quidditative consideretur a naturali? – Probabiliter tenendo istam opinionem, dico quod sic. Et fundo rationem meam duodecimo Metaphysice commento primo ad principiuma, ubi dicit Commentator de intentione Alexandri quod metaphysici est considerare de ente in eo quod ens et de causis et principiis eius. Ex quibus patet quod metaphysici est considerare universalia et communia.
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.. Pro quo nota quod universalia sunt duplicia: in causando et in predi-
cando. Universale in causando sunt Deus et intelligentie. Universale vero in predicando est ens, unum etc. Quo stante, dico quod intellectus agens consideratur a naturali, non autem intelligentie, quia illas habet considerare metaphysicus, qui considerat res universales illis duobus modis. Intellectus vero agens non est universale aliquo modo istorum. Non enim predicatur de omnibus, nec omnia causat, sed solum species intelligibiles.
intellectui] intellectu V dicere] utrum si intellectus agens non daret esse possibili quidditative consideraretur a naturali adn. in marg. V duplicia] universale in
causando – in predicando adn. in marg. V a Averroes, In Metaphysicam XII, comm. 1, 290va.
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.. Et si diceretur, ut supra: metaphysicus habet considerare substantias
abstractas; intellectus agens est huiusmodi; ergo etc. – dico quod metaphysicus habet considerare substantias abstractas que sunt universales in causando; modo intellectus agens non est huiusmodi. Nec solum ista est ratio quod aliqua substantia sit considerationis metaphysice, quia videlicet sit abstracta a materia, sed oportet addere istam, scilicet quia est universalis in causando. Et sic patet ad rationem etc.
5
. Deinde Iohannes respondet ad argumenta ante oppositum1, et pessime. .. Et pro intellectione prime responsionis2 nota quod ‘motus’ potest V 24v
dupliciter sumi. Uno modo proprie, et sic accipitur a Philosopho tertio Physicoruma | et diffinitur: ‘motus est actus entis in potentia’ etc. et est actus imperfecti. Alio modo sumitur ‘motus’ improprie, ut patet secundo huius,b et est actus perfecti. Sed ista responsio nulla est, quia non facimus difficultatem de anima sensitiva et vegetativa, utrum moveantur vel non. Sed argumentum habet difficultatem de anima intellectiva et intellectu agente, et maxime in via Commentatoris, licet secundum fidem et veritatem et sanctum Thomam argumentum nullam habet difficultatem, quia anima est multiplicata ad multiplicationem individuorum et movetur per accidens, quia est pars corporis quod per se movetur. Ideo secundum Commentatorem respondeo aliter ad argumentum. Et dico quod non est verum quod omne consideratum a naturali sit mobile, licet subiectum naturalis philosophie sit corpus vel ens mobile. Et quod ista sit intentio Commentatoris patet primo Physicorum, commento 11c, super illo textu ‘nobis autem subiciantur’ etc., ubi habet ipse Commentator: ‘dixit “quedam” preservando se ab anima et formis’. Est enim dubium utrum sint mobiles aut non. Sed licet non moveantur, tamen sunt naturales dico] quid requiretur ut aliqua substantia consideretur quidditative a naturali adn. in marg. V modo] motus proprie – improprie adn. in marg. V quia] contra iohannem adn. in marg. V ideo] (?)V dico] responsio trapolini ad primum argumentum adn. in marg. V verum] non omne consideratum a naturali est mobile
adn. in marg. V Physica III 1, 201a10–11 (AA 2: 99). Physicam I, comm. 11, 11vb.
a Aristoteles,
b Locus
non inventus.
c Averroes,
In
Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 11–12. Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 11: ‘Ad rationes. Ad primam, cum dicitur “scientia naturalis” etc., dico quod verum est. Et cum dicitur “anima” etc., dico quod verum est per se loquendo de motu proprie dicto, qui est motus imperfecti; tamen per accidens est mobilis ad motum corporis.’ 1
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secundum quod sunt in mobili, ita quod vult habere Commentator, quia illud quod consideratur hai naturali oportet quod sit mobile vel subiective sit in aliquo mobili. Et licet anima non sit mobilis, est tamen subiective in aliquo mobili. Hoc autem mihi facit difficultatem de intellectu agente, cum in via Commentatoris non sit subiective in aliquo mobili etc. Et secundum hoc difficile esset salvare illam aliam opinionem quam probabiliter posui, scilicet tenendo quod intellectus agens non det esse intellectui possibili. Que positio in rei veritate habet contra se multas instantias, quarum ista est una. Tamen adhuc probabiliter tenendo illam, dico quod ad hoc quod aliquid sit de consideratione naturalis non oportet quod sit subiective in aliquo mobili, sed sufficit quod habeat attributionem ad aliquod mobile et approprietur ipsi. Sed tunc statim dices: ergo intelligentie considerabuntur a naturali, ut patet. Dico quod ille habent unam aliam conditionem merito cuius excluduntur a naturali scientia, quia ille sunt universales in causando, sed intellectus agens non est universalis. Quod etiam ista responsio ad argumentum principale sit verum patet per Albertum primo Physicorum capitulo tertioa, ubi tractat de subiecto naturalis philosophie et dicit quod non oportet omne consideratum a naturali esse mobile, sed sufficit quod habeat attributionem ad aliquod mobile et quod subiectum hphilosophiei naturalis, scilicet corpus mobile, non predicatur de omnibus in naturali philosophia consideratis, sed de pluribus, et illis que habent attributionem ad mobile etc. .. Secunda responsio1 etiam nulla est, quia secundum illam quid dice-
mus de intellectu agente qui movet et non movetur, nec motu proprie una] instantia contra illam opinionem ubi adn. in marg. V – albertum] albertus confirmat illam propositionem adn. in marg. V a Albertus Magnus, Physica I.1.3, 6. 1 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 11–12: ‘Ad aliam (“scientia naturalis” etc.) solvunt aliqui secundum distinctionem praehabitam quod est verum secundum se quantum ad suas quidditates, sed secundum quod sunt principia motuum et operationum in re naturali bene potest. Sed solvo aliter, cum dicitur “scientia naturalis” etc., dico quod verum est si nullo modo moveantur, nec per se nec per accidens, nec motu proprie dicto nec improprie dicto, sicut est de intelligentiis quae moventes non moventur, nec per se nec per accidens, quia tunc motus non esset eternus, ut probat Philosophus octavo Physicorum; nec etiam moventur motu improprie dicto, cum idem semper intelligant et appetant, ut patet per Commentatorem duodecimo Metaphysicae. Et cum dicitur “anima” etc., dico quod falsum est, quia anima vegetativa et sensitiva movetur per accidens ad motum corporis, anima etiam intellectiva movetur, ut dicit Philosophus in hoc primo, capitulo de movente, licet forte non moveatur motu proprie dicto, qui est actus imperfecti, movetur tamen motu qui est actus perfecti; quare etc.’
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dicto nec improprie dicto? Ideo aliter respondeo. Et gloso illam auctoritatem Philosophi secundo Physicorum, commento 71a, scilicet ‘quecumque non mota movent non amplius sunt physice considerationis’, quia illa intelligitur sic: quecumque non mota movent motu physico et reali non sunt amplius physice considerationis; modo intellectus agens, si movet, non movet motu physico et reali, sed solum motu spirituali. Patet, quia causat solum species intelligibiles. Ideo licet non moveatur in movendo, consideratur tamen a naturali. Bene verum est quod ab ipso non consideraretur si moveret motu physico et reali et non moveretur, ut sunt intelligentie. Nota hic unum quod secundum fidem habemus tenere quod intelligentie quicquid intelligunt non semper intelligunt, sed habent quandam successionem in sua intellectione. Secundum autem Commentatorem habemus tenere oppositum, licet sit falsum. Ipse enim vult quod in intelligere intelligentie assimilantur Deo, qui semper intelligit. Et ideo dicit quod, quando nos erimus foelices, erimus tunc sicut dii, quia semper intelligemus et sine discursu etc.
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.. Tertia responsio1 etiam minime tenet. Quid enim dicemus de intel-
V 25r
lectu agente, qui et secundum esse et secundum primam operationem est separatus? Nec valet si diceretur: licet ita sit, tamen, quia in fine copulatur nobis etc., ideo consideratur a naturali. Nam eodem modo dicam etiam de intelligentiis quod propter hoc habent a naturali considerari, ut supra dicebatur. Et ideo aliter respondeo. Et dico quod illa propositio ‘illa scientia que considerat de abstractis a materia secundum esse et operationes primas non est naturalis’ habet sic intelligi quod consideratio de abstractis a materia que sunt cause universales in predicando vel in causando et que probantur esse per viam motus | eternitatis, quidditative pertinet ad metaphysicum et non ad naturalem. Sed consideratio
gloso] quomodo intelligitur illa propositio que non mota movent etc. adn. in marg. V est] esse V nota] nota de intelligentiis secundum fidem adn. in marg. V ipse enim vult] iter. V respondeo] quomodo intelligitur illa propositio abracta a materia
non considerantur a naturali adn. in marg. V a Aristoteles, Physica II 7, 198a27–28 (AA 2: 87). 1 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 12: ‘Ad aliam solvunt aliqui sicut prius. Sed solvo aliter, cum dicitur “scientia naturalis non est” etc., dico quod verum est de separatis a materia secundum substantias et operationes primas, quia talia dicuntur simpliciter separata, sicut Deus et intelligentiae. Sed de aliis non est verum. Et cum dicitur “anima” etc., dico quod anima intellectiva, licet sit separata quantum ad suam substantiam, non tamen quantum ad suam operationem primam; quare etc.’
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de abstractis a materia que nec sunt cause universales nec probantur esse per viam eternitatis motus, cuiusmodi est intellectus agens, bene est consideratio naturalis. .. Quarta responsio1 etiam non valet, ut supra. Nam Iohannes sem-
per ad illud de quo nulla est difficultas respondet, scilicet de anima vegetativa et sensitiva. Sed quid dicemus de intellectiva, maxime quoad illam partem de intellectu agente, qui non est mobilis, nec motu proprie dicto nec improprie dicto? Ideo aliter respondeo ad argumentum. Et dico quod non oportet quod omne quod consideratur a naturali sit mobile, sed oportet quod habeat attributionem ad aliquod mobile vel sit in aliquo mobili subiective. Nec oportet consideratum a naturali omne recipere predicatum subiecti, sed sufficit quod habeat attributionem ad mobile; cuiusmodi est ipse intellectus agens, qui habet attributionem ad corpus mobile; ideo consideratur a naturali. Et si dices: eodem modo dicam de intelligentiis, scilicet quod a naturali considerantur, quia habent attributionem etc. – dico ut supra quod non, quia habent aliquid aliud merito cuius excluduntur a naturali consideratione, scilicet quia sunt cause universales et probantur esse per viam eternitatis motus, cuiusmodi non est intellectus agens etc.
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.. Quinta responsio2 non tenet ut supra. Ideo dico ut supra quod ad
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metaphysicum solum pertinet considerare substantias que sunt universales cause et que probantur via motus etc. Et quod hoc sit verum patet duodecimo Metaphysice, commento 48a, ubi Philosophus probat numerum intelligentiarum abstractarum que considerantur a metaphysico esse eundem cum numero orbium ab ipsis motorum, et probat orbes esse tot
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a Aristoteles,
Metaphysica XII 8, 1074a15–30; Averroes, In Metaphysicam XII, comm. 48,
332va–333ra. 1 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 12: ‘Ad aliam, cum dicitur “pars scientiae” etc., dico quod verum est aliquo modo, vel subiectiva vel essentialis. Et cum dicitur “anima non est huiusmodi”, verum est subiectiva quantum ad vegetativam et sensitivam, sed bene est pars essentialis. Sed anima intellectiva licet non sit pars essentialis secundum intentionem Commentatoris, est tamen pars subiectiva, accpiendo “ens mobile” in communi, scilicet ad mobile motu proprie dicto, quia est actus imperfecti, et ad mobile motu improprie dicto, qui est actus perfecti; quare etc.’ 2 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.2, 12: ‘Ad aliam, cum dicitur “de eo quod pertinet” etc., concedo. Et cum dicitur quod anima est huiusmodi, dico quod est falsum in propria forma, licet forte, si consideretur secundum quod est substantia, ad ipsum pertineat sicut aliae substantiae naturales. Aliqui tamen solvunt secundum distinctionem praedictam; quare etc.’
appendix two
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quot sunt motus. Cum ergo intellectus agens non causet aliquem motum sempiternum, ideo non consideratur a metaphysico etc. Et sic patet ad questionem etc. B Liber primus Quaestio tertia Utrum anima sit subiectum libri De anima V 25r
5
. Tertia questio utrum anima sit subiectum istius libri. . Querit deinde Iohannes utrum anima sit hic subiectum. Et adducit
quatuor argumenta probando quod non1.
10
.. Et nota, cum Avicenna dixit2 corpus animatum subiici sensui animam
vero rationi, quod non fuit tam rudis quod intelligeret corpus per se sentiri, quia sensus non se profundat usque ad substantiam, sed intellexit illud subiici sensui, quia est subiectum accidentium per se sensibilium, que non sentirentur nisi fundarentur in corpore de genere substantie, ita quod illud per accidens sentitur quod est subiectum sensui. Anima vero non est huiusmodi.
15
.. Nota etiam contra illam opinionem quam adducit Iohannes3, scili-
cet quod scientia de anima est una cum scientia Parvorum naturalium, non possunt adduci rationes demonstrative, quamvis ipse adducat nonnullas, que sunt debiles. Sed contra illam positionem potest argui per locum ab auctoritatibus, et maxime Commentatoris primo Metaphysice
quot] quod V contra] contra tenentes animam esse subiectum hic et in libro parvorum naturalium adn. in marg. V
Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 12. Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 12: ‘Item subiectum in scientia debet esse primo notum; sed anima non est huiusmodi; quare etc. Maior patet, quia subiectum comparatur ad scientiam sicut obiectum ad potentiam, et obiectum est primo notum inter omnia cognita a potentia; quare etc. Et quia subiectum inter omnia praecognita est maxime praecognitum, cum de ipso praecognoscitur quid est et quia est, ut patet primo Posteriorum; sed maximum in unoquoque genere est primum omnium aliorum, ut patet decimo Metaphysicae. Minor patet per Avicennam sexto Naturalium dicentem quod corpus animatum subiicitur sensui, anima vero rationi.’ 3 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 13. 1
2
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in principioa, ubi ponit scientiam Parvorum naturalium distinctam esse a scientia libri De anima, et per consequens quod aliud est ibi subiectum aliud vero hic. .. Deinde Iohannes1 respondet ad argumenta, et bene. ... Et in prima responsione2 nota quod illud est de intentione Com-
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mentatoris quarti Metaphysice in principiob, scilicet quod subiectum in scientia non debet esse univocum, sed analogum. Et idem vult sanctus Thomasc, licet Scotusd tenuerit oppositum. ... Ad tertium respondet Iohannes3, sed responsio manifestam patitur
instantiam, quia operationes, obiecta et potentie ipsius anime considerantur in isto libro, ut patet; et tamen ille sunt notiores ipsa anima, ut patet secundo huius,e ubi Philosophus volendo determinare de ipsa anima prius incipit ab obiectis ad operationes, deveniendo postea ad potentias ipsius anime, ultimo ad ipsam animam. Erit ne igitur anima notior omnibus istis? Certum est quod non, et maxime loquendo de notitia quoad nos. Et si dices: anima est hic subiectum, et subiectum debet esse notissimum in scientia, ergo etc. – dico quod ista propositio absolute prolata est falsa, scilicet ‘subiectum debet esse notissimum in scientia’, nec hec scilicet] subiectum in scientia analogum adn. in marg. V a Averroes, In Meteorologicam I,
Summa secunda, cap. 1, Venezia 1562, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1962 (Opera omnia, 5), 404ra–rb. b Averroes, In Metaphysicam IV, comm. 2, 65rb–66rb. c Thomas de Aquino, Expositio in libros Metaphysicorum, IV, l. 1, ed. M.-R. Cathala, Torino 1950, 152, n. 544. d Ioannes Duns Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 3, pars 1, q. 3, Città del Vaticano 1954 (Opera omnia, 3), 94 sqq. e Aristoteles, De anima II 4, 415a16–21 (AA 6: 56). Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 14. Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 14: ‘Ad rationes factas in oppositum. Ad primam, cum dicitur “subiectum” etc., dico quod verum est vel unius rationis univoce vel analogice. Et cum dicitur “anima” etc., dico quod verum est univoce, tamen bene est unius analogice, cum per prius dicatur de rationali quam de aliis; quare etc.’ 3 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 14: ‘Ad aliam (“subiectum debet esse” etc.) dico quod verum est inter appropriata scientiae et non simpliciter, quia tunc ens esset subiectum in omni scientia, cum sit primo notum simpliciter, quod est falsum. Et cum dicitur “anima non est huiusmodi, sed corpus animatum,” dico quod corpus animatum non appropriatur isti scientiae, sed consideratur etiam in scientia parvorum naturalium. Et ideo non valet. Et est simile de hoc sicut de secundis intentionibus consideratis in logica et rebus eis subiectis, quia res sunt notiores nobis quam intentiones, cum notitia intentionum sumatur a rebus, ut dicit Simplicius in Praedicamentis. Quia tamen res non appropriantur logicae, ideo non dicuntur subiectum in logica, sed magis intentiones; quare etc.’ 1
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invenitur ab aliquo, nec a Philosopho nec Commentatore. Et quod hoc sit verum | demonstro, et maxime in scientiis cuius subiectum sit substantia, quia, cum tale subiectum habeat operationes, proprietates et passiones, nonne ista omnia erunt nobis notiora quam ipsum subiectum? Certe sic, ut patet tertio huius:a non possumus cognoscere substantiam, quia sensus non se profundat usque ad illam; sed bene passiones et operationes eius per sensum possumus percipere; ergo talia erunt nobis notiora. Cum autem anima sit hic subiectum, ut patet, et habeat passiones, operationes etc., que prius sunt nobis note, patet quod illa non erit notior, nec etiam inter appropriata huic scientie, quia ut sic ille passiones sunt nobis notiores, ut probatum est. Ideo respondendo ad argumentum duobus modis gloso illam propositionem, scilicet ‘subiectum in scientia debet esse primo notum’. Primo: quod si in scientia comparemus subiectum ad passiones et proprietates suas, tunc dico quod subiectum est notissimum in scientia et notior illis notitia propter quid et quoad naturam, non autem quia et quoad nos. Secundo modo gloso illam quod subiectum debet esse primo notum in scientia: verum est de subiecto adequato, comparando illud ad eius partes subiectivas, est notius sicut universaliter magis universale est notius minus universali, ut anima notior est anima sensitiva vel intellectiva etc.
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... Ad quartum argumentum respondet Iohannes1. Contra quam res-
ponsionem instatur sic: una et eadem passio non potest demonstrari de duobus subiectis realiter distinctis; ideo si aliqua passio demonstrabitur de corpore animato, non poterit demonstrari de anima. Ut capio ‘sensibile’: vel demonstratur de anima vel de corpore animato. Si de corpore animato, ergo non de anima. Si de anima, ergo aliqua passio duobus subiectis erit propria; quod est falsum. Si dices: licet absolute probetur de corpore animato, potest tamen inter appropriata scientie demonstrari de anima ipsa – sed contra quero utrum illa passio absolute possit demonstrari de gloso] quomodo intelligitur propositio subiectum in scientia debet esse primo notum adn. in marg. V sic] contra iohannem quod passio non potest de duobus subiectis demonstrari adn. in marg. V a Locus non inventus. 1 Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 14: ‘Ad aliam, cum dicitur “subiectum in scientia” etc., dicitur concedendo etc. Et cum dicitur “anima non est huiusmodi,” dico quod, licet passiones animae, ut sunt virtutes et operationes absolute consideratae, non appropriantur sibi, ut tamen consideratae sunt in ista scientia sibi appropriantur, quia ista in ista scientia considerantur ut habent ortum ab aliquo principio, et isto modo non appropriantur corpori animato, sed animae etc.’
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anima vel non. Si non: ergo non habebit passionem de ipsa demonstrabilem; et ita sequitur quod de anima non erit scientia que habetur per demonstrationem in qua absolute probatur passio de subiecto. Si autem dices quod poterit demonstrari, contra: tunc sequeretur quod una passio haberet diversa subiecta. Et ita, si aliqua passio demonstratur de toto composito, impossibile est quod demonstretur de ipsa anima. Propter hoc argumentum concludunt nonnulli, et maxime Scotusa, quod ipsa anima non potest esse hic subiectum. Respondeo tamen et dico quod anima est hic subiectum et quod passiones possunt demonstrari de ipsa. Sed nota quod passiones possunt dupliciter considerari: simpliciter et ut sunt a principio formali. Ut in exemplo: si vegetativum vel sensitivum accipiatur simpliciter, ut sic demonstratur de toto composito; si autem demonstrantur ut sunt a quodam principio formali vegetationis vel sensationis, quod est ipsa anima, sic dico quod sunt proprietates ipsius anime et de ipsa demonstrantur. Nec inconvenit eandem passionem diversimode consideratam de diversis subiectis demonstrari. Et ita esse sensitivum vel vegetativum potest demonstrari de toto animato tanquam de subiecto adequato istius sensationis vel vegetationis, de anima vero inquantum est principium formale illarum etc.
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.. Deinde Iohannes respondet1 ad rationes Albertutii, et iam patet res-
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ponsio per dicta. ... Ad primum negatur minor, quia ille demonstrantur de anima tan-
quam de subiecto formali etc. ... Ad secundum respondet Iohannes, et bene.
V 26r
... Ad tertium Iohannes non respondet in forma, sed dicit quod pos-
25
set negare maiorem pro tanto, quia hic loquimur de subiecto principali non adequato, quod est ipsa anima, que hic principaliter consideratur, ad quam omnia alia attribuuntur; et per consequens corpus animatum ad illam habet attributionem. Sed concessa illa, dico quod totum non est nobilius parte, imo forma est nobilior composito, | ut hpateti secundo
30
concludunt] argumentum propter quod tenet scotus anima non esse hic subiectum adn. in marg. V respondeo] responsio trapolini adn. in marg. V nota] passiones
dupliciter possunt considerari adn. in marg. V a Locus non inventus. 1
Cf. Ioannes de Ianduno, Quaestiones super libros De anima, I.3, 14–15.
appendix two
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Physicorum, commento 4a, et secundo huius, commento 7b, et septimo Metaphysice, commento 7c. Et ita, si hic consideratur de corpore animato, non est nisi inquantum habet attributionem ad ipsam animam etc. hUtrum animam esse possit demonstrari vel sit per se notumi
5
. Questio quam movet hic Trapolinus, ex cuius intellectu patebit clarius
questio precedens de subiecto istius libri, nec hanc movet Iohannes: queritur igitur utrum animam esse possit demonstrari vel sit per se notum. .. Quod non sit per se notum quod anima sit probatur quia: ... Omnis propositio per se nota vel est nota ex terminis, ut sunt digni-
tates, vel nota per sensum, ut ista ‘nix est alba’; sed ista propositio ‘anima est’ nullo [modo] istorum modorum est per se nota; ergo animam esse non est per se notum. Igitur poterit demonstrari. Non enim est nota illa propositio ex terminis, quia intellectus non immediate assentit illi. Nec etiam per sensum, quia non videmus animam nec etiam aliquis unquam vidit. Cum igitur illa propositio sit dubia, et per consequens possit fieri questio, et questiones sunt equales numero etc., ergo ipsa poterit demonstrari. Et confirmatur: omnis causa que habet effectum se notiorem ex quo sequitur necessario esse illius cause, potest per talem effectum demonstrari. Sed anima est huiusmodi. Habet enim effectus, ut movere localiter, nutrire, sentire, qui omnes subiiciuntur sensui, et ad istos effectus sequitur necessario animam esse. Nam valet: ‘vegetare et movere est; ergo anima est’. Ergo sequitur quod anima poterit demonstrari.
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... Item arguitur auctoritate Avicenne, qui habet sexto Naturalium,
capitulo 1d expresse quod in primis artifex huius scientie habet probare animam esse isto modo: videmus enim augmentum, motum localem, sensus; que omnia non insequuntur corpus inquantum corpus, quia, si sic esset, sequeretur quod omne corpus moveretur localiter, sentiret etc.,
questio] questio trapolini utrum animam esse possit demonstrari vel sit per se notum adn. in marg. V modo] avicenna adn. in marg. V a Aristoteles, Physica I 1, 192b33–35; Averroes, In Physicam II, comm. 4, 50ra. b Aristoteles, De anima II 1, 412b4–9; Averroes, Commentarium magnum, II, comm. 7, 139. c Aristoteles, Metaphysica VII 3, 1028b34–1029a9; Averroes, In Metaphysicam VII, comm. 7, 158ra. d Avicenna, Liber de anima seu sextus de naturalibus, I 1, ed. S. Van Riet, Leuven, Leiden 1972 (Avicenna latinus, 1), 14–16.
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quod tamen est falsum; ergo isti effectus habent reduci in aliam causam quam in corpus; ergo in animam; ergo etc. .. Ad oppositum tamen est Philosophus et Commentator et omnes
moderni. Dicit enim Philosophus primo Posterioruma ‘de subiecto precognoscitur quid et quia’. Auctoritates Commentatoris: primo Physicorum, commento ultimob, secundo Physicorum, commento 22c et 26d, quod subiectum in scientia nullo modo potest probari etc.
5
.. Habemus tamen, ut dictum est, Avicennam in contrarium. Cuius opi-
nio stat in his duabus conclusionibus. Prima est quod animam esse potest demonstrari modo quo dictum est. Secunda quod anima non consideratur hic quidditative, nec hoc nomen ‘anima’ significat simplicem naturam anime, sed significat illam in ordine ad corpus. Et quod hic non quidditative consideretur anima patet, dicit ipse, quia in eius diffinitione ponitur corpus, ut videbitur secundo huius;e si autem quidditative consideraretur, utique in eius diffinitione non poneretur corpus, quia non est de eius essentia; sed consideratio de ea quidditative pertinet ad alium librum, nec dicit quem.
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.. Sed licet Avicenna fuerit vir doctissimus, multum tamen peccavit in
hac materia. ... Et primo quoad secundam conclusionem, scilicet quod anima non
consideretur hic quidditative. Hoc est falsum, quia quero: vel metaphysicus considerat ipsam vel non quidditative? Non potest dici quod sic, quia in nullo libro Metaphysice Philosophus facit mentionem de anima. Si autem non consideratur ab illo, et consideratur ab aliquo, ut tu concedis, ergo considerabitur a naturali, cum nullus alius artifex possit ipsam considerare. Si ergo consideretur a naturali, cum partes philosophie naturalis sint octo, in qua parte erit huiusmodi consideratio? Non in prima, quia in illa agitur de principiis totius hphilosophiei naturalis. Nec in secunda, et sic de ceteris, ut patet in ordine istorum librorum quem in principio istius adduximus. Ergo consideratio de anima erit in sexta parte, quia tu, Avicenne, ponis istum librum sextum in ordine. Non enim considerabitur in corpus] corr. ex animam V animam] corr. ex corpus V – opinio] opinio avicenne in duabus conclusionibus adn. in marg. V significat] scilicet V sed] contra
avicennam adn. in marg. V a Aristoteles, Analytica posteriora I 1, 71a11–12 (AA 35: 4). b Averroes, In Physicam I, comm.
83, 47va. c Averroes, In Physicam II, comm. 22, 56vb. 59ra–rb. e Aristoteles, De anima II 1, 412a1–413a10.
d Averroes, In Physicam II, comm. 26,
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appendix two
V 26v
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libro De vegetabilibus et plantis nec in libro De animalibus. Ergo de primo ad ultimum: quidditative in hoc | libro considerabitur. Et sic patet quod iste sibi ipsi contradicit. Nisi vellemus dicere Aristotelem fuisse insufficientem, quia non composuit librum in quo habetur tractari de anima quidditative; quod est falsum, ut patet tertio huius, commento 14a etc.
5
... Nota: si queratur a te utrum in diffinitione anime pure quidditativa
debet poni corpus vel non, respondetur distinguendo de anima, que est triplex: vegetativa, sensitiva et intellectiva. Dico quod vegetativa et sensitiva non possunt quidditative diffiniri nisi per corpus, quia sunt forme materiales et in diffinitione formarum materialium debet poni de necessitate materia, ut patet octavo Physicorum, commento 52b circa medium commenti. Et ita in diffinitione illarum animarum debet poni corpus, quod est extra quidditatem ipsarum, ut etiam ponitur hsubstantiai in diffinitione accidentium. Si vero loquimur de diffinitione anime intellective, et de perfecta et quidditativa, dico quod in eius diffinitione nullo modo debet poni corpus. Nam si in diffinitione alicuius anime debet poni corpus, hoc est pro tanto, quia illa dependet a corpore tanquam a causa. Omne enim quod ponitur in alicuius diffinitione debet habere rationem cause, ut patet septimo Metaphysice, commento 7c. Et ideo in diffinitione accidentium ponitur substantia, quia est causa ipsorum. Si ergo corpus non erit causa anime, non ponetur in diffinitione anime, dico pure quidditativa. Modo patet quod corpus non est causa anime intellective.
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... Sed statim dices: hoc est contra Philosophum secundo huius,d qui
diffinit animam sic: ‘anima est actus corporis physici organici’ etc. Ubi patet quod in eius diffinitione ponitur corpus. Ergo etc. Respondeo et dico quod illa diffinitio non est pure quidditativa, sed est quedam diffinitio universalissima, que se extendit ad omnes animas. Et ibideme dicit Commentator quod illa diffinitio est analoga, non univoca, quia alio modo dicitur ‘actus’ de anima sensitiva et vegetativa, que dant esse animato, et alio modo de intellectiva, que tantum assistit; et alio modo ponitur corpus in queratur] utrum in diffinitione anime pure quidditativa debet poni corpus adn. in marg. V omne] omne quod ponitur in diffinitione habet rationem cause adn. in marg. V respondeo] diffinitio anime secundo huius non est pure quidditativa et est analoga
adn. in marg. V a Averroes, Commentarium magnum, III, comm. 14, 433. b Averroes, In Physicam c Aristoteles, Metaphysica VII 3, 1028b34–1029a9; Averroes, In VIII, comm. 52, 393ra. d Aristoteles, De anima II 1, 412a1–413a10. Metaphysicam VII, comm. 7, 159vb–158ra. e Averroes, Commentarium magnum, II, comm. 7, 138–139.
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diffinitione illarum, quia tanquam causa, alio modo in diffinitione istius, quia tanquam quid posterius. Et si ista diffinitio anime, scilicet ‘anima est actus corporis’ etc., non est pure quidditativa, multo minus alia diffinitio data in eodem secundoa, scilicet ‘anima est principium sentiendi, movendi’ etc., nam omnia illa sunt passiones anime et non ultime differentie. Sed vera puraque diffinitio quidditativa non datur nisi per verum genus et ultimam differentiam, quam paucarum rerum vel potius nullius habemus. Ideo non est mirum si anime quidditativam diffinitionem non habemus. Etiam ipse Aristoteles ignoravit illam, sed per diffinitiones illas dictas circumloquimur diffinitionem eius quidditativam.
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... Sed tunc aliquis posset obiicere per hoc quod non minus intelligen-
tie considerantur a naturali quidditative quam anima intellectiva; consequens falsum, scilicet quod intelligentie quidditative a naturali considerentur; ergo etc. Quod autem sequitur patet, quia diffinitiones anime date secundo huius ita bene competunt intelligentiis, ut patet, sicut et anime; modo si per illas diffinitiones datur intelligi diffinitio pure quidditativa ipsius anime, que pertinet ad naturalem, a pari datur intelligi diffinitio pure quidditativa ipsarum intelligentiarum, et sic illa pertinebit ad naturalem. Et si ista intelligentiarum non pertinet ad naturalem, a pari nec illa anime pertinebit ad naturalem. – Respondetur negando consequens et consequentiam, quia diffinitiones ille secundo huius, licet dent intelligere diffinitionem quidditativam ipsius anime, non tamen intelligentiarum. Et ratio diversitatis est quia consideratio quidditativa naturalis de forma terminatur ad formam humanam, ut patet secundo Physicorum commento 26b, nec ulterius se extendit. Sed dato adhuc quod etiam ille diffinitiones darent intelligere diffinitionem quidditativam ipsarum intelligentiarum, non tamen haberemus dicere quod consideratio quidditativa ipsarum intelligentiarum pertineret ad naturalem, quia naturalis non considerat illas inquantum dant intelligere talem ipsarum intelligentiarum quidditativam diffinitionem, sed solum inquantum sunt tales diffinitiones date per quedam communia et accidentia. Imo si ipsarum intelligentiarum haberemus diffinitiones pure quidditativas, adhuc non diffiniremus inquantum philosophi naturales.
habemus] diffinitio quidditativa pura non invenitur sed circumloquitur adn. in marg. V obiicere] obiectio adn. in marg. V respondetur] responsio adn. in marg. V a Aristoteles, De anima II 2, 413a11–414a25. b Averroes, In Physicam II, comm. 26, 59ra.
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appendix two
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... Et ita patet contra Avicennam quoad secundam conclusionem,
scilicet quod anima quidditative consideretur a naturali, licet Philosophus non dederit diffinitionem eius pure quidditativam, quia non habuit, ex quo ultimas rerum differentias ignoramus, sed dedit illas duas, per quas dedit intelligere diffinitionem quidditativam. V 27r
... Quantum autem ad primam conclusionem Avicenne, qui dicit quod animam esse potest demonstrari, nota. Cum queratur utrum animam esse potest demonstrari, respondeo distinguendo de anima, quia vel sumimus ‘animam’ pure quidditative consideratam vel consideratam secundum diffinitiones datas a Philosopho secundo huius, et etiam maxime secundum secundam. Si secundum secundam, dico quod animam esse est per se notum, nec potest demonstrari, quia sumere ‘animam’ isto modo est sumere ipsam secundum quod est causa omnium istarum operationum sensibilium et vegetabilium, scilicet vegetare, sentire etc. Et isto modo est notissimum. Et hinc est quod multi dicunt quod anima est notior omnibus que hic traduntur, et hoc secundum rationem eius formalem secundum quam includit vegetationem, sensationem etc., que omnia, licet sint notiora ipsa anima, quia tamen continentur in illa, ideo est notior. Et ita pono illam primam conclusionem quod loquendo de anima ut est principium vegetandi, sentiendi etc., anima est notissima, nec potest demonstrari; et sic concedo subiectum esse per se notum hic. Sed si sumatur ‘anima’ primo modo, scilicet quidditative, dico quod anima non est per se nota, imo hucusque ab aliquo non est nota, nec ipse Aristoteles vegetativam sensitivamque [non] cognovit nedum intellectivam, et hoc quia non habemus rerum ultimas differentias. Et tunc pono istam secundam conclusionem quod animam isto modo acceptam esse non est per se notum; et sic subiectum isto modo non est per se notum, licet dicatur primo Posterioruma quod de subiecto presupponitur etc. Et quod sit verum quod animam esse uno modo debeat demonstrari, alio modo non, declaro. Habemus secundo Physicorumb quod naturam esse est per se notum, et commento 6 eiusdemc quod ridiculum est tentare demonstrare naturam esse; et natura est materia et forma, ut ibi patet; et tamen materiam esse pro-
avicenne] contra primam conclusionem avicenne adn. in marg. V queratur] utrum animam esse possit demonstrari adn. in marg. V conclusionem] prima conclusio adn. in marg. V – conclusionem] secunda conclusio adn. in marg. V declaro]
similitudo de natura adn. in marg. V a Aristoteles,
Analytica posteriora I 1, 71a11–12 (AA 35: 4).
c Averroes, In Physicam II, comm. 6, 50rb–va.
b Aristoteles,
Physica I 1, 193a1–5.
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batur et demonstratur per totum primum Physicorum. Et hoc non inconvenit, quia natura inquantum est principium motus et quietis est per se nota; tamen si volo cognoscere naturam que est materia, oportet demonstrare, ut patet ibidem etc. ... Sed tunc est difficultas: si animam esse quidditative sumptam po-
test demonstrari, in quo libro hoc debeat demonstrari? Et videtur quod non in alio libro ab isto philosophie naturalis, ut supra dictum est. Ergo habet demonstrari hic. Et hic est subiectum, ut visum est. Ergo subiectum poterit probari in scientia cuius est subiectum. Quod est falsum. – Respondeo quod habet demonstrari ab artifice huius libri, sed non inquantum artifex huius libri, sed vel inquantum induit habitum totius naturalis philosophie vel inquantum induit habitum metaphysici. Sed quod nec sic nec sic possit probari arguitur. Et primo quod non inquantum naturalis, quia, ut habet Commentator secundo Physicorum, commento 26a, nullus artifex potest probare suum subiectum nec partes sui subiecti, id est nec subiectum primum primitate adequationis nec subiectum primum primitate principationis; sed anima est subiectum primum primitate principationis in tota naturali hphilosophiai, ut patet in hoc commento primo primi De anima,b ubi dicitur ‘propter utraque hec utraque’ etc.; ergo non poterit probari a naturali induente habitum totius naturalis philosophie. Deinde probo secundum quod artifex ille inquantum induens habitum metaphysicum non potest probare animam esse, quia metaphysicus non potest probare aliquid ab aliquo artifice se inferiore consideratum nisi accipiendo aliquid universalius quod non consideretur a tali artifice inferiori; sed metaphysicus nihil potest assumere ad probandum animam esse quin illud a naturali consideretur; ergo non poterit probare illam esse. Quid ad istam dicendum sit iudiciis vestris relinquo.
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. Et per hoc respondeo ad argumenta ante oppositum. Et dico illa con-
cludere de anima sumpta pure quidditative, scilicet quod possit demonstrari. Sed si non sumatur pure quidditative, imo secundum diffinitiones secundo huius datas, dico quod tunc hnoni potest demonstrari.
difficultas] in quo libro possit demonstrari animam quidditative sumptam esse adn. in marg. V respondeo] ad argumenta ante oppositum adn. in marg. V a Averroes,
comm. 1, 4.
In Physicam II, comm. 26, 59ra–rb.
b Averroes,
Commentarium magnum, 1,
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appendix two
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Et ad auctoritatem Avicennea, qui voluit etiam quod illa possit probari inquantum principium sentiendi, vegetandi et aliarum operationum, nego illam auctoritatem et dico quod male dixit.
a Avicenna, Liber de anima I 1, 14–16.
FROM THE NATURE OF THE SOUL TO PRACTICAL ACTION IN THE THOUGHT OF PIETRO POMPONAZZI
Elisa Cuttini
1. Introduction The question of the nature of the soul, a major issue in the thought of Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525), leads to a reflection on the practical action of man. As stated in the epilogue to De fato, if the human soul were mortal, man would act considering only the sphere of his life on earth, whereas if the soul were immortal, he would also consider the consequences in the afterlife.1 The aim of the present chapter is to argue that Pomponazzi, following the alternative that he considered philosophically inevitable, proposed a secular ethics based on the rediscovery and radicalisation of what he thought to be the original Aristotelian anthropology, thus asserting the existence of a practical truth independent of Christian doctrine. Many Pomponazzi scholars, while not specifically focusing their research on ethics, occasionally considered his moral philosophy within the wider context of different fields of study. According to J.H. Randall Jr., Pomponazzi maintained a ‘secular’ and ‘human’ morality, based on ideas similar to humanist values. A. Poppi points out that, as man is destined to die, he has no other choice than to live according to immanent moral values. And P.O. Kristeller traces back Pomponazzi’s concept of ‘virtue’ to Stoic philosophy.2 More recently, some scholars concentrated their investigation on Pomponazzi’s ethics. V. Perrone Compagni, referring to the De immortalitate animae, showed that virtue is not the fruit of a subject’s free choice, but
1 P. Pomponazzi, Libri quinque de fato, de libero arbitrio et de praedestinatione, V, Epilogus, ed. R. Lemay, Lugano 1957 (Thesaurus mundi, 8), 451–452. 2 J.H. Randall Jr., The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science, Padova 1961 (Saggi e testi, 1), 95; A. Poppi, Introduzione all’aristotelismo padovano, Padova 21991 (Saggi e testi, 10), 107; P.O. Kristeller, Aristotelismo e sincretismo nel pensiero di Pietro Pomponazzi. Lezione conclusiva nel 25. Anno Academico del Centro, Padova 1983 (Saggi e testi, 19), 10–11; Id., La tradizione Aristotelica nel Rinascimento, Padova 1962 (Saggi e testi, 2), 30–31.
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a response to the human need to contribute to the wellbeing of others. J.L. Treloar and R. Ramberti described the possibility of human free choice in a deterministic universe. Treloar argued that by focusing on human freedom rather than on divine omnipotence, Pomponazzi went beyond the dominant medieval approach. Ramberti argued that, according to Pomponazzi, man’s freedom consists in the opportunity to decide whether or not to contribute to maintaining the original order created by God, since the main end of men is to contribute to the preservation and prosperity of social community.3 In contrast with previous scholarship, the aim of the present chapter is to investigate the psychological foundation of Pomponazzi’s ethics. My purpose is to show that, for Pomponazzi, the scientia de anima not only has a theoretical relevance, but also forms the basis of his anthropology, which in turn, underpins his view of ethics. For this purpose, I shall take as my point of departure Pomponazzi’s thoughts on the nature of the soul. Second I shall focus on Pomponazzi’s problematic description of the ambivalent nature of the soul of man, and his position in between mortal and immortal being. This description can be understood from the perspective of the Aristotelian division between corruptible and incorruptible parts of the cosmos. Third, I shall examine Pomponazzi’s views of man’s distinctive goal and his comparison of humankind with a living organism. Fourth, I shall investigate Pomponazzi’s view of the practical intellect as characteristic of humankind. The final two paragraphs focus on Pomponazzi’s conception of moral virtue.
3 V. Perrone Compagni, ‘Introduzione,’ in: P. Pomponazzi, Trattato sull’immortalità del anima, ed. V. Perrone Compagni, Firenze 1999 (Immagini della ragione, 1), V–XCVI, esp. LXXIV–LXXXV; J.L. Treloar, ‘Pomponazzi: Moral Virtue in a Deterministic Universe,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 26 (2002), 44–55, esp. 54–55; R. Ramberti, Il problema del libero arbitrio nel pensiero di Pietro Pomponazzi. La dottrina etica del De fato: spunti di critica filosofica e teologica nel Cinquecento, Firenze 2007 (Pansophia, 7), 25–30; and Ead., ‘La fondation de l’autonomie morale dans le De immortalitate animae et dans le De fato de Pietro Pomponazzi,’ in: J. Biard and T. Gontier (eds.), Pietro Pomponazzi entre traditions et innovations, Amsterdam 2009 (Bochumer Studien zur Philosophie, 48), 135–152, esp. 152. On moral aspects of Pomponazzi’s thought, see also: E. Cuttini, Unità e pluralità nella tradizione europea della filosofia pratica di Aristotele. Girolamo Savonarola, Pietro Pomponazzi e Filippo Melantone, Soveria Mannelli 2005 (Saggi e testi, N.S., 2 [28]), 95–130; D.A. Iorio, The Aristotelians of Renaissance Italy. A Philosophical Exposition, Lewiston (NY) 1991, 133–135; and A.H. Douglas, The Philosophy and Psychology of Pietro Pomponazzi, Cambridge 1910, repr. Hildesheim 1962, 249–269.
from the nature of the soul to practical action
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2. The Problem of the Nature of the Soul In his De immortalitate animae, Pomponazzi maintains that, from a rational point of view, the soul of man, although essentially mortal, has a complex (non simplex, sed multiplex), ambivalent (anceps) nature.4 Man’s intellect is conceived as ‘vere et simpliciter mortale, secundum quid vero et improprie immortale’.5 Therefore, the intellect is placed ‘in an absolute sense’ among the material forms, and is ‘infra immaterialia’. In spite of his position, man participates ‘in a certain way’ in immortality.6
4 P. Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 1, ed. G. Gentile, Firenze 1925 (Opuscoli filosofici, 1), 6. The term anceps does not simply mean ‘twofold’, but rather ‘not univocal’ or ‘ambivalent’. See Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 5, 7. See also P.J.J.M. Bakker, ‘Natural Philosophy, Metaphysics, or Something in Between? Agostino Nifo, Pietro Pomponazzi, and Marcantonio Genua on the Nature and Place of the Science of the Soul,’ in: P.J.J.M. Bakker and J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), Mind, Cognition and Representation: The Tradition of Commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, Aldershot 2007 (Ashgate studies in medieval philosophy), 151–177, esp. 166–167. 5 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 9, 43. This statement has been interpreted in many different ways. For example, E. Garin maintains that the immortality of the soul is due to man being on the border between two worlds, and indicates his aspiration to exceed his own limitations (E. Garin, ‘Pietro Pomponazzi e l’aristotelismo del Cinquecento,’ Nuova Antologia, 431 [1944], 29–45, esp. 38–40; and Id., L’Umanesimo italiano: filosofia e vita civile nel Rinascimento, Roma, Bari 1993 [Biblioteca universale Laterza, 35], 159–160). A. Poppi, Saggi sul pensiero inedito di Pietro Pomponazzi, Padova 1970 (Saggi e testi, 8), 65, argues that in the position of Pomponazzi, relative immateriality has no definite meaning, while substantial materiality makes universal knowledge unattainable. Kristeller, Aristotelismo e sincretismo, 13, considers the reference to a ‘certain immortality’ as a permanence of metaphysical elements typical of the Platonic tradition. According to Perrone Compagni, ‘Introduzione,’ LIII–LIV: ‘As a sum of the material forms, the soul (in itself a material and mortal form), expresses a partially autonomous activity from the body; it is therefore immaterial at least secundum quid, that is with reference to this capability and for as long as it can carry out the intellectual function, which makes it similar to the immaterial forms—in other words, temporarily immortal.’ Although Pomponazzi was aware of the potential ambiguity of this text, he obviously believed that no inconvenience would be caused by it, given its agreement with reason and experience. See Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 9, 55: ‘Ad hanc itaque positionem nullum sequi videtur inconveniens: omnia rationi et experimentis consonare, nihil fabulosum, nihil creditum poni.’ 6 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 9, 54: ‘Humanum intellectum ponemus immediate supra cogitativam, et infra immaterialia, utroque participantem, ut scilicet non indigeat corpore ut subiecto ad modum prius expositum, et indigeat ut obiecto; qui modus est essentialis et inseparabilis. Quare inter materiales formas absolute reponendus est’ (italics mine). On the position of man in the centre of the universe, see P.O. Kristeller, ‘Ficino and Pomponazzi on the Place of Man in the Universe,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 5 (1944), 220–226, repr. in: Id., Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, Roma 1969 (Storia e letteratura, 54), 279–286. Numerous studies have, in various ways, attempted to determine Pomponazzi’s real position about the nature of the soul. In Kristeller’s and Gilson’s view, Pomponazzi sincerely
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By affirming the multiple, ambivalent nature—mainly mortal and only in a certain sense immortal—of man’s soul, Pomponazzi links his thought to the tradition according to which man occupies an intermediate position between mortality and immortality. According to Pomponazzi, almost all thinkers, from the ancients to those he generically refers to as ‘modern’, placed the human intellect as ‘medius’ in the universe, in the sense that it is below the intelligences and above the level of sensitive beings.7 However, the characteristics of this intermediate intellectual soul were understood in different ways. Averroes affirmed that the possible or material intellect— which is a supra-individual entity every man has to make reference to when thinking—is ‘ultimus intellectus abstractorum’.8 Even though it was considered to be the lowest among the separate intelligences, the possible intellect was conceived as belonging to the eternal forms, and thus as devoid of any contact with bodily reality. Thus, in Averroes’s view, the intellect can receive the intelligible forms, being unhampered by the sensitive field. Pomponazzi, on the other hand, speaks of an intermediate place for the
welcomes the Christian doctrine on the immortality of the soul. A. Ghisalberti, by contrast, acknowledges that Pomponazzi came to highly likely—but not absolutely incontestable— conclusions by the mere means of reason. But according to him, Pomponazzi also left room for recourse to revelation as the sole source of certainty on the matter of immortality; thus a sort of continuity between faith and religion may overcome the apparent dualism. A totally different interpretation, proposed by C. Giacon—and later embraced by G. Di Napoli, G. Saitta and M.L. Pine—, is that Pomponazzi considered the soul to be merely mortal and used expressions showing respect for religious faith and the Church in order to avoid judicial procedures. E. Garin, lastly, deliberately leaves the question open. See P.O. Kristeller, ‘Pomponazzi,’ in: Id. (ed.), Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, Stanford (CA) 1964, 72–90, esp. 84–87; E. Gilson, ‘Autour de Pomponazzi. Problématique de l’immortalité de l’ âme en Italie au début du XVIe siécle,’ Archives d’ histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, 36 (1961), 163–279, esp. 192–195; A. Ghisalberti, ‘Fede e ragione nel De immortalitate animae di Pietro Pomponazzi,’ Studi Umanistici Piceni, 22 (2002), 195–206; C. Giacon, La seconda Scolastica, 1: I grandi commentatori di San Tommaso, Milano 1944 (Archivum philosophicum Aloisianum, Serie II, 3), 77–78; G. Di Napoli, L’immortalità dell’anima nel Rinascimento, Torino 1963 (Studi superiori), 265; G. Saitta, ‘La scienza della natura come scienza dell’uomo: Pietro Pomponazzi,’ in: Id., Il pensiero italiano nell’Umanesimo e nel Rinascimento, 3 vols., Firenze 1961 (La civiltà europea), 2: 259–338; M.L. Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi: Radical Philosopher of the Renaissance, Padova 1986 (Saggi e testi, 21), 123; and Garin, L’Umanesimo italiano, 162. 7 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 9, 45: ‘Hoc autem est intellectus humanus, qui per omnes antiquos et modernos vel quasi per omnes ponitur medius inter abstracta e non abstracta, scilicet intelligentias et gradum sensitivum, infra quidem intelligentias et supra sensitive’ (italics mine). 8 Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, III, comm. 19, ed. F.S. Crawford, Cambridge (MA) 1953 (Corpus commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem. Versionum latinarum 6/1), 44263–64. See Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 9, 45.
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intellectual soul, which is completely mortal, but in touch with immaterial realities, and therefore capable of understanding universal concepts.9 To analyse Pomponazzi’s discussion of the soul’s position, we should bear in mind the Aristotelian division of the cosmos into two parts: the eternal (not generated and incorruptible) and the mortal (subject to coming into being and to transformation).10 From this perspective, a third ontological status is not possible, and so only one of these two natures can be ascribed to the soul of man. Accordingly, in his De fato, Pomponazzi affirms that only two natures can exist in the universe: the necessary and the contingent. Although there are three kinds of human being, the most perfect (perfectissima) creature, the most imperfect (imperfectissima), and the intermediate being, all three belong either to the sphere of necessity or to that of contingency.11 Therefore, in defining the place of the soul, Pomponazzi maintains that man’s soul is a material and mortal form, although he adds that it is ‘noble’; it is located on the border of the immaterial realities, in a particularly elevated position—as high as its own mortal nature will allow. Because of its placement in this sphere, the soul comes into direct contact with the superior sphere of immortal realities, and it can therefore be said that it ‘has the smell of something immaterial’ (aliquid immaterialitatis odorat).12 3. The Human Soul between Mortality and Immortality The concept of the soul as being situated on the line of demarcation between immortal and mortal beings had already been proposed in the Liber de causis, where (according to the Arabic-Latin version) it is stated that the
9 On Pomponazzi’s attitude vis-à-vis Averroes’s view of the human possible and agent intellects, see M.L. Abram and P.J.J.M. Bakker, ‘Der reale Unterschied zwischen dem aktiven und möglichen intellekt. Pietro Pomponazzis Quaestio Utrum intellectus agens et possibilis sint duae res realiter distinctae et quid sint,’ in: J.-M. Counet and R.L. Friedman (eds.), Medieval Perspectives on Aristotle’s De anima, forthcoming. 10 Aristotle, De caelo, I.2–3, 268b12–270b30. 11 Pomponazzi, De fato, V, 7, 429–430: ‘In universo sunt et perfectissima creatura secundum actum, et imperfectissima, et media; sunt et necessarium et contingens; sunt liberum et non liberum. Unde ex natura perfectionis universi est ut aliqua non sint domini suorum actuum, aliqua vero sint quae suorum actuum habeant dominum; nisi enim essent hae duae naturae in universo, aut certe non esset universum, aut si esset, esset mancum et truncatum.’ 12 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 9, 53: ‘cum ipsa (sc. anima humana EC) sit materialium nobilissima in confinioque immaterialium, aliquid immaterialitatis odorat.’ Garin refers to a ‘fragrance of immortality’ which descends to the soul, see Garin, ‘Pietro Pomponazzi,’ 38–40; and Id., L’Umanesimo italiano, 159–160.
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soul ‘est in horizonte aeternitatis’.13 In order to better understand Pomponazzi’s interpretation of this phrase, it will be helpful to compare it to the reading given by Thomas Aquinas, who explained that the term horizon indicates the ‘circulus terminans visum’, i.e. the furthest part of a sphere of reality which is, at the same time, the beginning of another.14 In this sense, the soul represents the line where the eternal and temporal realities appear to meet. Thomas, however, unlike Pomponazzi, did not consider the formula of the Liber de causis to refer to the human soul, but rather to the soul of heavenly bodies. When applied to human beings, this description leaves the very nature of the soul ambiguously defined, as Thomas maintains that the soul simultaneously belongs to two spheres, lying ‘beneath eternity’ in that it was created, so it has an origin, but also being ‘above time’, in the sense that it is part of the sphere of spiritual beings.15 The term ‘confinium’, chosen by Pomponazzi to show the intermediate position of the human soul in all its complexity and richness, is from a structural point of view equivalent to Thomas’s term ‘horizon’. Both terms lack univocity, since they indicate that which is common to the parts they actually divide. Yet in spite of this equivalence of the two terms—‘confinium’ and ‘horizon’—from a structural point of view, Aquinas and Pomponazzi use them in different ways. Whereas Thomas Aquinas considers the soul as positioned just above mortality, Pomponazzi holds the view that it lies just beneath immortality. The latter view implies that the soul does not escape mortality, although it can perceive and reflect in itself something of the immaterial realities.16 Therefore, although at times man is called immortal, the true meaning of this statement must be clarified. As Pomponazzi explains it, when the colour grey is near to black, it appears white, even if it is far from being white.17 In the same way, man appears immortal only when compared to a mortal being, not because he is absolutely immortal.18
13 Liber de causis, prop. 2, ed. A. Pattin, Le Liber de causis. Edition établie à l’aide de 90 manuscrits avec introduction et notes, Leuven 1966, 5081–82. 14 Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de causis expositio, prop. 2, ed. H.D. Saffrey, Paris 22002 (Textes philosophiques du Moyen Age, 21), 1612–13. 15 Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de causis, prop. 9, 619–10: ‘Anima est in horizonte aeternitatis et temporis, existens infra aeternitatem et supra tempus.’ 16 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 9, 53. 17 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 116. The example is taken from Aristotle, Physics V.1, 224b32–35. 18 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 9, 58: ‘Sicut palidum comparatum nigro dicitur album, sic homo comparatus bestiis dici potest deus et immortalis; sed non vere et simpliciter … sed solus Deus ipse proprie immortalis dicitur.’
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As for the characteristic of man that he is truly mortal, even though he has a connection with immortality, which distinguishes him from other beings, Pomponazzi supports this by referring to Aristotle, who stated that of all mortal beings, only man has something in common with the gods, or rather has more in common with them than other mortal beings.19 Man shares some of the characteristics of the immaterial intelligences and some of those of material beings, and through his actions he is drawn nearer to the ones or to the others.20 Pomponazzi points out that man holds within himself (continere) the characteristics of animals and plants, while participating in immaterial being (proprie dicitur immateriale participare).21 He clearly distinguishes the terms ‘participare’ and ‘continere’. The latter indicates that the containing entity surpasses what is contained in perfection and excellence. The term ‘participare’, however, indicates the opposite: what is participatus is comparable to a cause and is superior with respect to what is particeps, which is similar to an effect.22 In this sense, Pomponazzi argues that, according to Aristotle, man only participates in divinity and immortality, but does not contain them.23 Thus the concept of man’s
Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 9, 58: ‘Si homo quandoque immortalis nuncupatur, intelligitur secundum quid: quoniam et secundo De partibus, capite 10, dicitur: Solus homo inter mortalia maxime divinitatis est particeps.’ See Aristotle, De partibus animalium II.10, 656a7–8. 20 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 117: ‘Humana anima habet de proprietatibus intelligentiarum et habet de proprietatibus omnium materialium: quo fit ut, quando exercet opera cum quibus convenit cum intelligentiis, dicatur divina et transmutari in Deos; quando vero exercet opera bestiarum, dicitur transmutari in bestias.’ 21 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 117–118: ‘Scire tamen oportet quod quantumcumque homo sic de materiali et immateriali participet, tamen proprie dicitur immateriale participare, quia multum deficit ab immaterialitate; sed non proprie dicitur brutis et vegetabilibus participare, verum ea continere, nam infra immaterialia est, et est supra materialia.’ 22 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 12, 73: ‘Ad primam igitur dubitationem (sc. anima humana vere esse mortale, secundum quid autem immortale EC) dicitur, longe distare continere a participare. Continere namque se habet per modum formae, et contineri per modum materiae. Quare continens est perfectum et superexcellens, ipsum autem contentum est imperfectum et excessum. Verum e contrario est de participante et participato. Participatum namque se habet magis per modum causae et excedentis, participans vero per modum effectus et excessi.’ 23 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 12, 73–74: ‘Quare non convenienter dicimus intellectum humanum continere divina et immortalitatem; verum et contra. Sed recte dicimus intellectum humanum participare de divinitate et immortalitate, et non contra.’ Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 12, 74: ‘Aristoteles, capite 10 primi De partibus, non dixit: Solus homo divinitatem et immortalitatem continet; sed dixit: Solus homo divinitatis et immortalitatis est particeps, vel maxime.’ See Aristotle, De partibus animalium II.10, 656a7–8. 19
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participation in the divine is the expression of a proximity, which is nevertheless characterised by a substantial and insuperable difference due to the mortality of the human soul. Man can choose whether to behave in a way that will liken him to divinity or to beasts, since he is able to resemble each one of the extremes. However, man cannot change his nature: the nearness to God acquired through the exercise of virtue involves neither identification with Him nor the transformation of man’s mortality. As will be shown in the next paragraph, the end that man can aspire to, in accordance with his anthropological condition, is always compatible with his own constitutive mortality. 4. Man’s Distinctive Goal Pomponazzi points out that each type of being has a goal of its own, which does not necessarily coincide with the highest good, but rather with what is proportionate to its nature.24 For instance, even though perception is better than non-perception, the lack of this faculty in a stone should not be understood as an imperfection, since it does not pertain to the nature of a stone to be able to perceive.25 When considering human nature, Pomponazzi explains that man cannot go beyond death and that he cannot
Whereas, according to Aristotle, we find something divine in all living beings, in that they all derive from divinity (see De partibus animalium I.5, 645a15–23), man is the only one to have a nature which is in some way divine, thanks to the presence of thought and intelligence (IV.10, 686a26–30). 24 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 13, 87: ‘Non tamen quod est magis bonum debet unicuique rei pro fine assignari, sed solum secundum quod convenit illi naturae, et ei proportionatur.’ The same idea is put forward by Boethius of Dacia in the opening lines of his De summo bono, ed. N.G. Green-Pedersen, København 1976 (Corpus philosophorum Danicorum Medii Aevi, 6/2), 369–377, 369: ‘Cum in omni specie entis sit aliquod summum bonum possibile, et homo quaedam est species entis, oportet quod aliquod summum bonum sit homini possibile. Non dico summum bonum absolute, sed summum sibi, bona enim possibilia homini finem habent nec procedunt in infinitum. Quid autem sit hoc summum bonum, quod est homini possibile, per rationem investigemus. Summum bonum quod est homini possibile debetur sibi secundum optimam suam virtutem. Non enim secundum animam vegetativam, quae plantarum est, nec secundum animam sensitivam, quae bestiarum est, unde et delectationes sensibiles bestiarum sunt. Optima autem virtutis hominis ratio et intellectus est; est enim summum regimen vitae humanae tam in speculando quam in operando. Ergo summum bonum quod est homini possibile debetur sibi secundum intellectum.’ 25 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 87: ‘Etsi sentire melius est quam non sentire, non tamen lapidi convenit sentire neque esset bonum lapidi; sic namque amplius non esset lapis.’
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be conceived as an isolated individual, but only in relation to others. The community dimension of man is characteristic of Aristotelian anthropology: man’s own nature makes him primarily a social being who needs other men, above all friends, to be happy in the present life.26 Those who do not belong to a community, either because they lack the requirements for entering it or because they are so self-sufficient that they do not need it, are beasts or gods, respectively.27 Pomponazzi draws on these elements, but rather than considering man within the limited state community—understood as a group of many villages—of which Aristotle spoke, he widens the perspective to include the entire class of human beings (totum genus humanum), with respect to which each individual’s goal takes on a precise meaning.28 In order to analyse the goal of man, Pomponazzi starts from the aim of humankind as a whole, comparing the latter to the complexity of the human body. According to Aristotle, the different parts of the body have their own role and the body considered as a whole has a single common function.29 Pomponazzi underlines that each individual has different limbs, which have different functions and different immediate purposes, but all of them have to operate and be coordinated to achieve a common goal.30 He refers to a ‘proportionate diversity’ (commensurata diversitas) to explain that the difference between the parts is necessary for all organs to make up a harmonious totality and to serve the entire body.31 Humankind is like a single body, and individuals constitute its various limbs, each of which has a different purpose, but operates in reciprocal correlation with the others and is ordered to the benefit of the whole.32 As a consequence, there can be no equality between men, but—as Pomponazzi also stated with respect to the body organs—only a harmonically proportioned differentiation (commensurata diversitas), which allows humankind
Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia IX.9, 1169b18–19; Politica I.2, 1253a3. Aristotle, Politica I.2, 1253a29. 28 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 87. For Aristotle’s limited view of the state community as a group of villages, see Politica I.2, 1252b28. 29 Aristotle, De partibus animalium I.5, 645b15–18. 30 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 87: ‘Omnia vero membra ordinantur in communem utilitatem ipsius hominis; et aut unum est necessarium alteri et e contra, aut saltem utile, licet aliquando et illud magis, illud vero minus.’ 31 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 88. 32 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 89: ‘Universum … humanum genus est sicut corpus ex diversis membris constitutum, quae et diversa habent officia in communem tamen utilitatem generis humani ordinata, unumque tribuit alteri, et ab eodem cui tribuit, recipit, reciprocaque habent opera.’ 26
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to prosper and improve.33 Just as any part of the body shares its blood, a lifegiving element, with all the other parts,34 all men possess each of the three intellects: speculative (speculativus), practical (practicus seu operativus), and productive (factivus).35 As for the presence of the speculative intellect, all men can speculate, and recognise the principle of non-contradiction, which is necessary to accomplish any demonstration, as well as concepts such as ‘God’, ‘being’, ‘one’, ‘true’, and those pertaining to natural philosophy, mathematics and rhetoric.36 After explaining the natural presence of the speculative intellect (intellectus speculativus) in man, Pomponazzi believes he can affirm the same for the other two intellects. The practical intellect (intellectus practicus seu operativus) has to do with behaviour, politics and family; it is therefore possessed by every man, since everyone distinguishes between good and bad, and belongs to a community and a family.37 Finally, man cannot survive without the productive intellect (intellectus factivus), which provides for the material things man needs every day.38 5. The Practical Intellect Although man cannot be devoid of any of the three intellects, not everyone possesses each of them in the same proportion, as Pomponazzi demonstrates using a different passage taken from Aristotle. In book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, it is affirmed that the theoretical activity is proper to God, and belongs to men only temporarily and partially.39 Pomponazzi makes it
33 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 89: ‘Neque inaequalitas inter homines, commensurata tamen, debet discordiam parere: immo, sicut in symphonia vocum commensurata diversitas concentum delectabilem facit, sic commensurata diversitas inter homines perfectum, pulcrum, decorum et delectabile generat; incommensurata vero, contrarium’ (italics mine). 34 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 87; See Aristotle, Historia animalium III.19, 520b10–12. 35 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 89–90. 36 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 90. 37 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 90: ‘De intellectu autem operativo, qui est circa mores, res publicas et res domesticas, illud quidem apertissimum est, cum unicuique datum sit bonum et malum cognoscere, esse partem civitatis et familiae. Etenim huiusmodi intellectus vere et proprie humanus nuncupatur.’ 38 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 90–91. 39 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 91: ‘Verum scire oportet quod, tametsi unusquisque homo de tribus enumeratis intellectibus ex toto non privetur, non tamen homo aequaliter se habet ad hos. Speculativus namque intellectus non est hominis, verum est Deorum, ut Aristotles Ethicorum decimo tradit.’ Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia X.8, 1178b21–23.
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clear that men do share in the speculative intellect, but only a very small number of them possess it in a complete and perfect way.40 Such men, the wise, are so rare that, with respect to the rest of mankind, they can be compared to the heart of man. The productive intellect (intellectus factivus), by contrast, is very common, because it is involved in all manual professions, which most men carry out, but—as Aristotle explains in De animalibus—it is not characteristically human, since this faculty is also found in animals.41 The practical intellect (intellectus practicus seu operativus) is exclusively human, and can be brought to perfection by anyone without disabilities.42 Aristotle states that man distinguishes himself from other animals by his capacity to discern good from evil.43 He is therefore the only animal that chooses between a virtuous or vicious life.44 According to Pomponazzi, man is considered good in an absolute sense if he behaves according to ethical virtues, and absolutely evil if he lives in vice, while a man who is acute when speculating is not described as unconditionally good, but as a good metaphysician; likewise, a man who builds a house well is called a good carpenter.45 Since it is entirely up to each man to follow either virtue or vice, men are angered on being called a thief, intemperate or unjust, thus being accused of vicious behaviour.46 Pomponazzi gives precise indications: 40 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 91: ‘Omnes homines aliquid huius (sc. speculativus intellectus EC) habent, exacte tamen et perfecte paucissimi et habent et habere possunt.’ To point out the complexity of this topic, it can be shown that in another passage Pomponazzi emphasizes the difference between man’s nature and that of divinity, saying that if we were to attribute to man the same goal attributed to God and the intelligences, man would no longer be man. This means that it is impossible for man to attain theoretical happiness, which thus remains exclusively divine. See Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 87: ‘In assignando finem homini, si talem qualem Deo et intelligentis assignaremus, non conveniens foret assignatio; quandoquidem non esset homo.’ 41 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 91. See Aristotle, Historia animalium IX.7, 612b18–31. 42 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 90–92: ‘Intellectus (sc. practicus seu operativus EC) vere et proprie humanus nuncupatur … Operativus … intellectus vere convenit homini. Et unusquisque homo non orbatus perfecte eum consequi potest.’ 43 Aristotle, Politica I.2, 1253a16–18. 44 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia III.7, 1113b3–14; Magna moralia I.9, 1187a18–19, and I.11, 1187b19–20. 45 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 92: ‘Secundum namque virtutes et vitia homo dicitur bonus homo et malus homo; at bonus metaphysicus non bonus homo dicitur, sed bonus metaphysicus; bono domificator; non bonus absolute, sed bonus domificator nuncupatur.’ Cf. Ethica Nicomacheia III.1, 1109b30–31, where Aristotle affirms that only voluntary actions can be praised or reproved. See also Magna moralia I.9, 1187a19–23. 46 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 92: ‘Homo non indigne fert si non metaphysicus, philosophus vel faber appelatur; at si fur, intemperatus, iniustus, imprudens vel aliquot huiusmodi vitiosum dicatur, maxime indignatur et excandescit.’
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all men can and must be morally blameless (bene morigerati).47 Everyone is expected to avoid vice, and is considered responsible for his actions, whether in a condition of poverty or wealth.48 Pomponazzi states that the universal goal of mankind is to participate in all three intellects, which are useful, or even necessary, to one another.49 However, while everyone has to participate only partially in the speculative and productive intellects, all human beings must participate in the practical intellect perfectly, since this activity is typical of man.50 The universe would remain intact if all men were virtuous and morally irreprehensible, but the same could not be said if all men were philosophers or carpenters.51 A philosopher, a mathematician or an architect has a specific goal, the importance of which is limited with respect to the moral roles common to all mankind that everyone can attain. Since being a philosopher or a carpenter does not imply a moral choice, it does not bring man to his accomplishment, and therefore is not necessary to him.52 Aristotle affirms that life lived according to ethical virtues represents the true form of human happiness.53 As Pomponazzi underlines, a virtuous man understands how much pleasure is derived from virtue, and how much unhappiness is derived from vice.54 Therefore, by the practice of virtues, the good man can achieve moral happiness (felicitas moralis). The analysis of happiness given by Pomponazzi can be seen as a continuation of the Aristotelian perspective, whereby man has the dual aim of conducting the theoretical activity and living a virtuous life. Pomponazzi, however,
47 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 92: ‘omnes homines possint et debent esse bene morigerati’. 48 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 93: ‘Ut genus humanum recte conservetur, quilibet homo debet esse virtuosus moraliter, et quantum possibile est, carere vitio; sibique imputatum est vitium tanquam suum, in quocumque statu reperiatur, sive egenus, sive pauper, sive dives, sive mediocris, sive opulentus.’ 49 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 92–93: ‘Finis generis humani in universali est participare de illis tribus intellectibus, secundum quos etiam homines inter se communicant et vivunt; et unus alteri aut est utilis aut est necessarius, sicut omnia membra in uno homine communicant in spiritu vitali et habent operationes multas inter se.’ 50 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 93. 51 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 93: ‘Universum enim perfectissime conservaretur, si omnes homines essent studiosi et optimi, sed non si omnes essent philosophi vel fabri vel domificatores.’ 52 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 92: ‘Esse philosophum vel domificatorem non nostrum est, neque homini necessarium.’ 53 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia X.8, 1178a9–14. 54 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 95.
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places particular emphasis on the virtuous life as the way to perfection and, therefore, the key to happiness for mankind. That which Aristotle defines as happiness in the second sense, because it is specifically human, not divine, is considered happiness in the true sense of the word by Pomponazzi. In De fato, he clearly confirms the superiority of moral virtues for man, claiming that man is above all perfected by the moral virtues.55 At the end of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that the most excellent part of the wise man—the intellect—is able to render him, to some extent, similar to the gods, thus making the wise man happier than other men.56 Pomponazzi acknowledges that theoretical happiness might be considered higher, but stresses that this state is not essential for man, whereas moral happiness is, thus committing himself to a radicalisation of Aristotelian ethics. 6. Virtue As a Reward in Itself As seen above, in Pomponazzi’s view the theoretical happiness is not necessary for man, whereas the ethical finality assumes a more important role and value. The problem inherent to this is that the limitation of man’s goal may involve a reduction in the value of his actions. As Pomponazzi reports, it is a commonly held view that, if the soul is mortal, man is likely to surrender himself to his passions and to commit any crime for his own advantage.57 Furthermore, without any possible afterlife, it seems that no man would prefer death, whether for his country, for the common good, for friendship or to avoid committing any crime.58 Moreover, without the prospect of life after death, it is impossible to conceive of a reward for virtuous acts in an afterlife or, vice versa, punishment for a life full of vice. Pomponazzi affirms that
55 Pomponazzi, De fato, V, 8, 439: ‘Homo maxime est perfectus secundum virtutes morales; vel si extrema perfectio non consistit in virtutibus moralibus, sunt tamen maxime necessariae ad felicitatem humanam.’ 56 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia X.9, 1179a29–32. 57 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 115: ‘Nam, quod communiter dicitur, si anima est mortalis, homo deberet totum se tradere voluptatibus corporalibus, omnia mala committere ad sui utilitatem.’ 58 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 13, 82–83: ‘Stante animi humani mortalitate, homo in nullo casu, quantumcumque urgentissimo, debet eligere mortem: et sic removeretur fortitudo, quae praecipit contemnere mortem, et quod pro patria et bono publico debemus mortem eligere; neque pro amico deberemus exponere animam nostram; immo quodcumque scelus et nefas perpetrare magis quam mortem subire. Quod est contra Aristotelem, tertio Ethicorum et nono eiusdem; et contra naturam.’
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the reward for virtue or the punishment for vice may be either ‘essential and inseparable’ or ‘accidental and separable’. But according to Pomponazzi the essential reward for virtue is virtue itself, which makes man happy.59 He also makes the Aristotelian connection between ethical virtues and happiness, emphasizing the pleasant nature of ethical virtues, which leads to a form of gratification.60 Therefore, reward for virtue does not come from the outside, but consists of virtue itself, which makes man happy. Moreover, he who acts virtuously, without expecting a reward, behaves in a much better way than he who acts morally with the idea of gratification in mind. Likewise, he who avoids vice, finding it repugnant, is worthier than he who avoids vice for fear of punishment.61 Also, the hope of receiving a reward and the fear of punishment in a future life bring enslavement of virtue to an ulterior motive. Hence Pomponazzi concludes that the conception of the mortality of the soul is better able to safeguard virtue as an end in itself—since it gives rise to no ulterior prospects.62 While maintaining that virtue admits no retribution beyond virtue itself, Pomponazzi implicitly affirms the importance of Stoic ethics.63 Based on the assumption that the soul is ‘imprisoned’ in the body, the Stoics recognised man’s limitations and, consequently, the impossibility of fulfilling the desire for immortality.64 This explains the heroic effort made by the Stoics to bear adversity, which is not contingent on, but intrinsic to, human nature and cannot therefore be modified.65 This type of effort, typical of 59 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 100: ‘Praemium essentiale virtutis est ipsamet virtus, quae hominem felicem facit.’ 60 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 99: ‘Quantam delectationem generant virtutes et quantam miseriam ignorantia et vitia.’ 61 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 115–116: ‘Et animadvertas quod studiose operans, non expectans praemium aliud a virtute, longe virtuosius et magis ingenue videtur operari quam ille, qui ultra virtutem praemium aliquod expectat; quique fugit vitium ob turpitudinem vitii, non propter timorem poenae debitae pro vitio, magis laudandus videtur quam qui evitat vitium propter timorem poenae.’ 62 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 116: ‘Quare perfectius asserentes animam mortalem melius videntur salvare rationem virtutis quam asserentes ipsam immortalem. Spes namque praemii et poenae timor videntur servilitatem quandam importare, quae rationi virtutis contrariatur etc.’ 63 Seneca, De vita beata, IX, 1–4, ed. A. Bourgery and R. Waltz, Darmstadt 1999 (Philosophische Schriften, 2), 1–77, at 22–24; Id., De beneficiis, IV, 1, ed. F. Préchac, Darmstadt 1999 (Philosophische Schriften, 5), 95–593, at 288–290. 64 Seneca, De beneficiis, III, 20, 248–250; Id., Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, VII, 65, 16, ed. F. Préchac, Darmstadt 1999 (Philosophische Schriften, 3), 546. 65 Epictetus, Enchiridion, ed. I. Schweighäuser, in: Epicteti Dissertationes ab Arriani digestae, ed. H. Schenkl, Leipzig 1916, repr. Stuttgart 1965 (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), 8, 10*.
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the Stoics and absent in Aristotle, hinges upon the conviction of the intrinsic value of virtuous actions which, as Pomponazzi explains, can prevent man from disturbances.66 Here Pomponazzi hints at the ataraxy of the Stoics when faced with adversity, but first of all he confirms his proximity to the Nicomachean Ethics, especially to the first book, in which Aristotle considers the capacity of the wise man to calmly tolerate mishaps.67 Apart from the specific reference to ataraxy, Pomponazzi’s apparent aim is to reaffirm his own affinity with Aristotelian anthropology according to which, given man’s rational and sensitive multiple nature, it cannot be suggested that man could ever become absolutely imperturbable. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Pomponazzi takes from Stoic ethics the idea of virtue as a reward in itself, even though his moral conception is fundamentally inspired by the Aristotelian one, the fruit of the process being a heightened awareness of the difficulties associated with man’s most intimate aspirations. 7. Virtue in the Political Sphere Virtues are of value in themselves, but beyond this they may yield an ‘accidental and separable’ reward: the gratification that man receives from the external world. As the latter type of reward is of an ‘accidental’ nature, it is less perfect and is of less value than the so-called ‘essential’ reward,
66 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 100: ‘Nihil enim maius natura humana habere potest ipsa virtute, quandoquidem ipsa sola hominem securum facit et remotum ab omni perturbatione. Omnia namque in studioso consonat: nihil timens, nihil sperans, sed in prosperis et adversis uniformiter se habens, sicut dicit in fine primi Ethicorum’ (italics mine). As C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love. A Study in Medieval Tradition, Oxford 1958, 59–60, affirms, the presence of an interior conflict in any moral choice was understood only in late antiquity—with the Stoics, such as Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and Christians, such as Saint Paul, Tertullian and Augustine—and this eroded the Aristotelian certainty according to which a good man would do good deeds without any effort, without being exposed to temptation. 67 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia I.10, 1100b30–1101a8. By referring to the Nicomachean Ethics, Pomponazzi appears to affirm his affinity with Aristotelian ethics. Scholars do not agree as to how much Pomponazzi owed to Stoic ethics and how much to Aristotelian ethics. According to Kristeller, Pomponazzi’s conception of virtue and vice does not correspond to that stated in the Nicomachean Ethics, but is fundamentally Stoic (Kristeller, Aristotelismo e sincretismo, 10), whereas Perrone Compagni, in line with Nardi, does not consider the presence of Stoicism as important as the Aristotelian elements (Perrone Compagni, ‘Introduzione,’ LXXIX–LXXX; B. Nardi ‘Di una nuova edizione del De immortalitate animae del Pomponazzi,’ Rassegna di filosofia, 4 [1955], 149–174).
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because, according to Pomponazzi, gold (i.e. material gratification) is inferior to virtue.68 Nevertheless, in the social order, an ‘accidental’ reward and its counterpart, punishment for the vice, are instruments of particular utility to politicians in achieving their aim. The exercise of virtue is, in fact, spontaneously achieved by an honest man, who senses the noble quality of virtuous actions.69 However, such men are few, and, according to Aristotle, politicians should promote virtue in all citizens.70 In establishing and maintaining a balance within a community, the exercise of ethical virtues by its members plays a major role, one that is even more important than that of the theoretical virtues. In order to ensure that all subjects practise ethical virtues, the politician must find the appropriate way of persuading each and every citizen.71 As a matter of fact, some men do not consider that there is nobility in virtue or, likewise, cowardice in vice. Therefore, if they practise the former it is merely for the rewards, such as praise and honour, whereas if they renounce the latter it is only to avoid punishment, such as shame and dishonour. Men of an inferior level become virtuous in order to accumulate wealth and avoid corporal punishment. With these categories in mind, politicians establish honour and material recompense as an incentive for virtuous men. Alternatively, to discourage vice, they implement measures to dishonour a subject or to sentence him to pecuniary or corporal punishment.72 However, notwithstanding the incentives or deterrents, evil men persist. Aware of this, politicians speak of rewards and/or eternal punishment in another life. By doing so, they affirm the immortality of the soul, without worrying themselves unduly about the fact that this does not correspond to either the truth or to Aristotle’s genuine thought.73 The behaviour of the politicians is not reprehensible as they act for the sake of the common good, pushing men towards virtue. In this way, the immortality of the soul and the prospect of reward or punishment in another life are assimilated by
68 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 101: ‘Accidentale praemium longe imperfectius est essentiali praemio; aurum namque imperfectius est virtute. Poenaque accidentalis longe minor est poena essentiali.’ 69 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 103: ‘Aliqui enim sunt homines ingenui et bene institutae naturae a Deo, qui ad virtutes inducuntur ex sola virtutum nobilitate, et a vitiis retrahuntur ex sola eorum foeditate. Et hi optime dispositi sunt, licet perpauci sint.’ 70 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia I.13, 1102a9–10. 71 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 102–103. 72 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 103. 73 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 8, 41.
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Pomponazzi to ‘apologi’ and furthermore to ‘figmenta’: inventions that lack any foundation but aim to encourage all citizens towards the path of virtue, just like the physician’s expedients bring health to the sick and the nurse’s recommendations encourage children to do what is good for them.74 Although they may consciously distort the truth, politicians can be justified because, thanks to the strategies they devise, men of all temperaments are encouraged to follow the path of virtue. This, according to Pomponazzi, is not just important for the individual alone, but for the entire community, leading to a collective benefit to which all members of society can contribute by performing virtuous actions.75 By sacrificing the truth for the sake of the common good, the politicians represent a further testimony to the superiority of the ethical aim with respect to the theoretical finality. The moral perspective is therefore indispensable for man to distinguish himself from both animals and gods, and virtuous actions take on a special value because, thanks to them, man can safeguard his own dignity and distinctiveness. Virtuous action, furthermore, should be seen within the collective dimension. Its function is of particular significance, since it contributes to the good of the community, which, according to Aristotelian principles, is conceived as superior to the good of the individual.76 8. Conclusion The analysis of the nature of the soul can contribute to the clarification of a controversial aspect of Pomponazzi’s thought. When affirming that the immortality of the soul is extraneous to Aristotle’s thought,77 Pomponazzi means that it is a tenet of Christian dogma. Concerning this, Pomponazzi has a dual stance in De immortalitate animae: in the final chapter, he professes an unconditional attachment to immortality, whereas in the rest of his work, he makes a distinction between his philosophical statements and
74 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 103–104: ‘Sicut medicus multa fingit ut aegro sanitatem restituat, sic politicus apologos format ut cives rectificet. … Sic etiam nutrices inducunt alumnos suos ad ea quae pueris prodesse cognoscunt. Quod si vir sanus esset vel compos mentis, talibus figmentis neque medicus neque nutrix indigeret’ (italics mine). 75 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 103: ‘Respiciens legislator pronitatem virorum ad malum, intendens communi bono, sanxit animam esse immortalem, non curans de veritate, sed tantum de probitate, ut inducat homines ad virtutem’. 76 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia I.1, 1094a28–1095a10. 77 Pomponazzi, De immortalitate animae, 14, 113. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia I.11, 1101b1– 9.
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theology, with which he nevertheless appears to be very familiar. Without ever being antireligious, the philosopher repeatedly reaffirms that his own research is intended to throw light upon the genuine thinking of Aristotle. Therefore, it is possible to state that Pomponazzi did not intend to enter into an open conflict with the religious sphere, but wanted to keep it separate from natural philosophy, in which Aristotle is the most important authority.78 In Pomponazzi’s thought, the definition of the nature of the soul is not only relevant from a theoretical point of view, but it also has specific ethical consequences. As shown in the epilogue of the De fato, the sublunary world is characterised by corruption. In this sense, the dualism of body and soul is inconceivable, and so is life after death. In fact, the anthropology that Pomponazzi embraces, and which he understands as being Aristotle’s own, considers man to be essentially worldly, making moral choices with a necessarily immanent end in mind. Pomponazzi maintains that, as man occupies an intermediate position in the ontological hierarchy, he can resemble either God or beast. But man must always act within the confines of his own nature, which is essentially mortal. Man’s intermediate character is therefore a sign of centrality, but also represents a limit which is ontological, gnoseological and anthropological. The ontological limit becomes clear when considering that it is impossible for man to attain immortality in any way, not even thanks to his intellect. The gnoseological limit lies in the fact that knowledge cannot be gained by a man devoid of sensitivity, as this lack precludes any thorough understanding of intelligible realities. The limit is also anthropological because man receives no recompense in another world as a reward for his virtuous actions. Therefore it requires a heroic effort for a man to convince himself of the value intrinsic to virtue. The statement that the essential reward of being virtuous is virtue itself, must be understood in relation to Pomponazzi’s intention to radicalise the ethics of Aristotle, by incorporating an essential property of Stoic ethics, namely that good actions based on the promise of a reward are less deserving than actions based on pure love of virtue in itself. The Stoics were, in fact, the first to conceive of virtue as being a reward in its own right, whereas Aristotle had maintained that happiness followed virtue, including the sensory element of pleasure.79
78 79
See supra, n. 5. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia I.9, 1098b30–1199a25; IX.9, 1170a4–11.
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The political consequences of man’s goal, in its essentially ethical character, are evident. Beyond fulfilling his own nature and achieving dignity, the virtuous man acquires his most authentic significance when he acts in relation to others and has a direct impact on the community. Although Pomponazzi is closely linked to the Aristotelian tradition, he, unlike Aristotle, did not consider which type of government was preferable. Therefore, it can be argued that in Pomponazzi there is a connection between psychology and ethics, but not between ethics and politics, which he only occasionally mentions. He considers the consequences of the mortality of the soul for the moral life of a single man, but not for the political sphere. Finally, the thesis of the soul’s mortality—considered to be specifically Aristotelian—leads to an immanent ethical perspective. The theoretical finality, as Pomponazzi shows, is not consistent with the Aristotelian conception of man seen as the fusion of inseparable rational and sensitive elements. Pomponazzi thus uses a strict interpretation of Aristotle, who had taken into account the possibility of theoretical activity, albeit inconstant and limited to a few wise men, considering it the highest goal of men. By refusing to admit that the human intellect is free from sensitive aspects, Pomponazzi expresses the view that only the ethical finality has true sense and value for man. It is also reasonable to maintain that the ethical issues examined by Pomponazzi are not essentially intended to answer questions about how to act, but rather to regain the original sense that they have in Aristotle: they directly concern man’s final goal. In Pomponazzi, the exegesis of Aristotle thus represents the first step toward the development of a personal ethics, in which the double goal (practical and theoretical) characteristic of Aristotle, leaves space for an immanent moral perspective fully practicable by man during his life on earth.
JUAN LUIS VIVES AND EARLY MODERN PSYCHOLOGY: A CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL
Lorenzo Casini*
1. Introduction On account of his insights into human nature and conduct, the Renaissance humanist Juan Luis Vives (1493–1540) has occasionally been called ‘the father of modern psychology’.1 An important source behind this view is the German philosopher Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–1875), one of the originators of neo-Kantianism and a significant figure in the founding of the Marburg school. In his most important philosophical work, the impressive Geschichte des Materialismus, which was printed in 1866 and remained a standard introduction to the history of philosophy well into the twentieth century, Lange describes Vives as the most important reformer of philosophy of his time, and a precursor of Francis Bacon and René Descartes. With regard to his psychology, however, he maintains that, although Vives’s account of emotions is rich in original insights, in his reflections on the human soul the Valentian humanist rarely allows himself to report personal observations or experiments of other scholars.2 It is instead in a long article on Vives, published in the Encyklopädie des gesammten Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens in 1873, that Lange provides a much more generous appreciation of Vives’s endeavours, calling him ‘the father of the new empirical psychology’.3 This positive assessment
* Research for the completion of this article was made possible through generous financial support of Anders Karitz Stiftelse. Earlier drafts were presented in Helsinki, Nijmegen and Uppsala. I wish to thank the participants in these discussions for their helpful questions and comments. 1 For a general study of Vives’s thought, see C.G. Noreña, Juan Luis Vives, Den Haag 1970 (International archives of the history of ideas, 34); as well as the articles in C. Fantazzi (ed.), A Companion to Juan Luis Vives, Leiden 2008. 2 F.A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Iserlohn 1866, 106–107. 3 F.A. Lange, ‘Vives,’ in: K.A. Schmid (ed.), Encyklopädie des gesammten Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens, 9, Gotha 1859–1878, 737–814, at 770.
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concerning Vives’s originality within the field of psychology has thereafter often been restated by scholars of many different nationalities.4 The cornerstone of this line of interpretation is a remark that Vives makes in his discussion of the general notion of the soul in his treatise De anima et vita (1538).5 In what is probably the most frequently quoted passage from the treatise, he asserts: We are not interested in knowing what the soul is, but rather how it is and what its operations are. Neither did he, who exhorted us to know ourselves, refer to the essence of the soul, but to the actions that mould our morals.6
Adolfo Faggi in a short article, first published in 1927, provided a much more balanced assessment of Vives’s importance and originality.7 He argued, for example, that this frequently quoted passage is to a large extent nothing more than an empty slogan, since significant portions of De anima et vita deal with methaphysical issues. The longest chapter of the treatise is, for example, devoted to a defence of the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul.8 In a similar vein, G.S. Brett wrote: ‘For this flash of insight
4 See for example F. Watson, ‘The Father of Modern Psychology,’ Psychological Review, 22 (1915), 333–353; M. Menéndez y Pelayo, ‘De los orígenes del criticismo y del esceptismo y especialmente de los precursors españoles de Kant,’ in: Id., Ensayos de crítica filosófica, Madrid 1918, 121–221; E. Rivari, La sapienza psicologica e pedagogica di Giovanni Lodovico Vives da Valenza, Bologna 1922; and H.J. de Vleeschauwer, ‘L’Espagne du XVIe Siècle et l’Origine de la Psychologie empirique,’ Mousaion, 27 (1958), 20–30. Menéndez y Pelayo (1856–1912) also translated Lange’s article on Vives into Spanish. See F.A. Lange, Luis Vives, Madrid 1894. 5 There is still no critical edition of Vives’s De anima et vita. The most commonly used text is the one included in J.L. Vives, Opera omnia, ed. G. Mayans y Siscár, 8 vols., Valencia 1782– 1790, repr. London 1964. References to this edition are preceded by the letter M. For an edition which can be called critical in the limited sense that it compares Mayans’s text with the first edition of 1538, see J.L. Vives, De anima et vita, ed. M. Sancipriano, Padova 1974 (Pensatori religiosi, 9). References to this edition are preceded by the letter S. All quotations from De anima et vita are taken from Sancipriano’s edition. On the lack of critical editions of Vives’s works, see J. IJsewijn, ‘Zu einer kritischen Edition der Werke des J.L. Vives,’ in: A. Buck (ed.), Juan Luis Vives. Arbeitsgespräch in der Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel vom 6. bis 8. November 1980, Hamburg 1981 (Wolfenbütteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, 3), 23–34. 6 S, 188; M, III, 332: ‘Anima quid sit, nihil interest nostra scire: qualis autem et quae eius opera, permultum; nec qui iussit ut ipsi nos nossemus, de essentia animae sensit, sed de actionibus ad compositionem morum.’ 7 A. Faggi, ‘Giovanni Ludovico Vives e la psicologia,’ in: Id., Studi filosofici e letterari, Torino 1938, 210–223. 8 Vives has even been regarded as ‘one of the best examiners of the problem’. See D.C. Allen, Doubt’s Boundless Sea: Skepticism and Faith in the Renaissance, Baltimore 1964, 155. On this issue, see also R.D. Clements, ‘A Sixteenth-Century Psychologist on the Immortality of the Soul: Juan Luis Vives,’ Bibliothèque d’ Humanisme et Renaissance, 28 (1966), 78–88.
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Vives has been called the father of empirical psychology: he was, however, a neglectful parent, for he spent the balance of his time on metaphysical productions, trying to prove that mind and body are related as light and air’.9 Moreover, in spite of his proclaimed disinterest in the essence of the soul, Vives provides a definition of the soul, in which he maintains that ‘the soul is the principal agent that inhabits a body apt to live.’10 These objections, however, did not have any impact on later scholarship and the interpretation going back to Lange has persisted. In A History of Medical Psychology (1941), for example, Gregory Zilboorg maintains that ‘Vives was not only the father of modern, empirical psychology, but the true forerunner of the dynamic psychology of the twentieth century.’11 More recently, Valerio Del Nero has reaffirmed the peculiarity of Vives’s ‘antimetaphysical, empirico-descriptive’ approach, represented in his view by ‘the progressive elimination of the analysis of metaphysical aspects of the structure of the soul in favour of its phenomenological manifestations.’12 The aim of the present article is to critically re-examine the alleged novelty of Vives’s psychology, focusing on the main features that are said to set his approach apart from traditional philosophical psychology.13 According to Raymond Clements, who has studied Vives’s role in the development
G.S. Brett, History of Psychology, London 1953, 314–315. Cf. S, 192; M, III, 334: ‘Nec aliter anima corpori investitur quam lux aëri: in quo complexu fit aër lucidus, utrumque vero, et lux et aër integrum manet; non enim miscentur ut elementa, in misto naturali, vel ut herbae pulveres, ac oleum in pharmaco.’ The description of the relation of the soul to the body as the presence of light in the air goes back to Platonic texts of late Antiquity. See E.L. Fortin, Christianisme et culture philosophique au cinquième siècle: la querelle de l’âme humaine en Occident, Paris 1959, 114–115. 10 S, 196; M, III, 335: ‘Liquet igitur ex his, animam esse agens praecipuum, habitans in corpore apto ad vitam.’ For a discussion of this specification in relation to Aristotle’s definition of the soul in De anima II, see M. Sancipriano, ‘La pensée anthropologique de J.L. Vivès: l’ entéléchie,’ in: A. Buck (ed.), Juan Luis Vives. Arbeitsgespräch in der HerzogAugust-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel vom 6. bis 8. November 1980, Hamburg 1981 (Wolfenbütteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, 3), 63–70. 11 G. Zilboorg, A History of Medical Psychology, New York 1941, 194. 12 V. Del Nero, ‘Pedagogia e psicologia nel pensiero di Vives,’ in: J.L. Vives, Opera omnia, 1: Volumen Introductorio, ed. A. Mestre, Valencia 1992, 179–216, at 179 and 211. 13 It must be emphasized that what is under discussion is an alleged shift from metaphysical psychology, i.e., rationalistic or speculative psychology, to modern empirical psychology, i.e., psychology based on observation and experiments. This issue should not be confused with the scholastic debates regarding the question of whether the study of the soul belongs to natural philosophy or metaphysics. On the latter subject, see C.H. Lohr, ‘The SixteenthCentury Transformation of the Aristotelian Natural Philosophy,’ in: E. Kessler, C.H. Lohr and W. Sparn (eds.), Aristotelismus und Renaissance. In memoriam Charles B. Schmitt. Vorträge gehalten anläßlich eines Arbeitsgespräches vom 23. bis 25. Oktober 1986 in der Herzog 9
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of modern medical science, these features are: (1) ‘his emphasis on the physiological-medical characteristics of the human body and mind apart from those of an abstract concept of soul;’ (2) ‘his distinct contribution to the area of psychological study known as the association of ideas;’ and (3) ‘his emphasis on human impulses, drives, emotions and affects which underlie the motivations determining man’s … behavior,’ an aspect which is considered to be fundamental for empirical, observational psychology, as contrasted to earlier moral or philosophical psychology.14 On the received view, Vives’s originality is therefore often characterized in terms of the importance attached to observation and experience. In order to emphasize the complexities of our mental life, he is said to have avoided the systematic rigidity of scholastic philosophy, preferring a looser descriptive approach, which, in the opinion of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), marks the transition from metaphysical to descriptive and analytic psychology.15 2. Metaphysical and Empirical Psychology In his discussion of the study of the human soul in The Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon writes: For Human Knowledge which concerns the Mind, it hath two parts; the one that inquireth of the substance or nature of the soul or mind, the other that inquireth of the faculties or functions thereof. Unto the first of these, the
August Bibliothek, Wiesbaden 1988 (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, 40), 89–99; E. Kessler, ‘Metaphysics or Empirical Science? The Two Faces of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century,’ in: M. Pade (ed.), Renaissance readings of the Corpus aristotelicum. Proceedings of the conference held in Copenhagen 23–25 April 1998, København 2001 (Renæssancestudier, 9), 79–101; and P.J.J.M. Bakker, ‘Natural Philosophy, Metaphysics, or Something in Between? Agostino Nifo, Pietro Pomponazzi, and Marcantonio Genua on the Nature and Place of the Science of the Soul,’ in: P.J.J.M. Bakker and J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), Mind, Cognition and Representation: The Tradition of Commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, Aldershot 2007 (Ashgate studies in medieval philosophy), 151–177. See also Gideon Manning’s contribution to the present volume. For a discussion of the role of observation and experience in scholastic natural philosophy, see E. Grant, ‘Medieval Natural Philosophy: Empiricism without Observation,’ in: C. Leijenhorst, C. Lüthy and J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), The Dynamics of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, Leiden 2002 (Medieval and early modern science, 5), 141–168. 14 R.D. Clements, ‘Physiological-Psychological Thought in Juan Luis Vives,’ Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 3 (1967), 219–235, at 223. 15 W. Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation, in: Id., Gesammelte Schriften, 2, Leipzig 1914, 423. On Vives’s descriptive approach, see also M. Sancipriano, ‘G.L. Vives e la descrizione delle passioni,’ Atti e memorie della Accademia Petrarca di lettere, arti e scienze, 44 (1981), 131–137.
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considerations of the original of the soul, whether it be native or adventive, and how far it is exempted from laws of matter, and of the immortality thereof, and many other points, do appertain: which have been not more laboriously inquired than variously reported; so as the travail therein taken seemeth to have been rather in a maze than in a way. But although I am of opinion that this knowledge may be more really and soundly inquired, even in nature, than it hath been; yet I hold that in the end it must be bounded by religion, or else it will be subject to deceit and delusion: for as the substance of the soul in the creation was not extracted out of the mass of heaven and earth by the benediction of a producat, but was immediately inspired from God: so it is not possible that it should be (otherwise than by accident) subject to the laws of heaven and earth, which are the subject of philosophy; and therefore the true knowledge of the nature and substance of the soul must come by the same inspiration that gave the substance.16
This passage from The Advancement of Learning has been regarded as a section ‘that is of greatest importance for the history of psychology,’ and one in which Bacon ‘invents the disciplines of theoretical and experimental psychology without naming them.’17 It is therefore not particularly surprising that those commentators who saw in Bacon almost a disciple of Vives, from whom the Lord Chancellor allegedly learned the principles of empirical science, were inclined to interpret Vives’s remark concerning the essence and the operations of the soul as an anticipation of Bacon’s distinction.18 The question is, however, whether these interpretations of Vives’s and Bacon’s ideas are not tremendously anachronistic. The growth of psychology as a scientific discipline in the second half of the nineteenth century is
16 F. Bacon, Works, ed. J. Spedding et al., 14 vols., London 1857–1874, 3: 379. Bacon maintained that each human being has two entirely separate souls: the rational and the sensitive soul. The remark quoted above is confined to the first of these two. For Bacon’s views on the sensitive soul, which we share with animals, and is described as material and identified with ‘spiritus’, i.e., the ‘pneuma’ of the medical theory, see K.R. Wallace, Francis Bacon on the Nature of Man. The Faculties of man’s Soul: Understanding, Reason, Imagination, Memory, Will, and Appetite, Urbana (IL) 1967, 23–39; D.P. Walker, ‘Francis Bacon and Spiritus,’ in: A.G. Debus (ed.), Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance. Essays to honor Walter Pagel, 2 vols., London 1972, 2: 121–130; and the articles by G. Rees (‘Francis Bacon and spiritus vitalis’) and M. Fattori (‘Spiritus dans l’Historia vitae et mortis de Bacon’) in: M. Fattori and M. Bianchi (eds.), Spiritus. 4. Colloquio Internazionale del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, Roma, 7–9 gennaio 1983, Roma 1984, 265–281 and 283–323. 17 D.N. Robinson, An Intellectual History of Psychology, New York 21981, 210. 18 For some different assessments of Vives’s influence on Bacon’s thought, see F. Watson, Vives on Education. A translation the De Tradendis Disciplinis of Juan Luis Vives, Cambridge 1913, repr. Totowa (NJ) 1971, ciii–cxi; P. Rossi, Francesco Bacone: dalla magia alla scienza, Bari 1957 (Biblioteca di cultura moderna, 517), 114–205; and Noreña, Juan Luis Vives, 240–242.
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generally described in terms of the application of quantitative experimental methods based on observation and experimentation to subject matters about which natural philosophers and metaphysicians only talked and speculated. On this view, it is principally the approach taken and the techniques employed that mark the emergence of psychology as a scientific field of study and distinguish it from the older discipline of philosophical psychology.19 But to project these criteria on two Renaissance authors, without further ado, seems deeply problematic. If Vives’s attitude toward the study of the essence of the soul is considered in its proper historical context, it should become clear that it is not as innovative as many commentators tend to think. On the contrary, rather than anticipating later developments it could perhaps even be regarded, to a large extent, a recasting of earlier theories.20 It might, for example, be worthwhile to ask whether Vives’s disinterest in the essence of the soul is not better interpreted in light of his pessimistic views with regard to our cognitive powers.21 In his epistemology, Vives subscribes, on the one hand, to the Aristotelian principle that all of our knowledge has its origin in sense perception. In his view, we cannot learn anything except through the senses.22 But he also adds a Platonic dimension when he maintains that the human mind 19 See for example E.G. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology, New York, 21950 (The century psychology series); Robinson, An Intellectual History; and D.P. Schultz and S.E. Schultz, A History of Modern Psychology, San Diego (CA) 1987. The thesis that natural scientific psychology arose only in the second half of the nineteenth century has not remained unchallenged. For a different perspective on the early history of psychology, see G. Hatfield, ‘Remaking the Science of Mind: Psychology as Natural Science,’ in: C. Fox, R. Porter and R. Wokler (eds.), Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth-Century Domains, Berkeley (CA) 1995, 184–231. 20 On this issue, see L. Casini, ‘ “Quid sit anima”: Juan Luis Vives on the Soul and Its Relation to the Body,’ Renaissance Studies, 24 (2010), 496–517. 21 For a further discussion of Vives’s epistemology and its relation to different currents of scepticism, see L. Casini, ‘Self-Knowledge, Scepticism and the Quest for a New Method: Juan Luis Vives on Cognition and the Impossibility of Perfect Knowledge,’ in: G. Paganini and J.R. Maia Neto (eds.), Renaissance Scepticisms, Dordrecht 2009 (International archives of the history of ideas, 199), 33–60. Vives’s epistemological pessimism is also connected to his attitude to the so-called maker’s knowledge tradition, which regards knowledge as a kind of making or as a capacity to make. He often insists on the significance of the practical nature of knowledge (see for example M, VI, 350 and 374), pointing out that ‘man knows as far as he can make’ (M, IV, 63). A central tenet of the maker’s knowledge tradition is that man can gain no access into nature’s works, since these, as ‘opera divina’, are only known to their maker. On the maker’s knowledge tradition, see A. Pérez-Ramos, Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition, Oxford 1988. 22 S, 328; M, III, 378: ‘Prima ergo cognitio est illa sensuum simplicissima, hinc reliquae nascuntur omnes;’ De prima philosophia, M, III, 193: ‘Ingredimur ad cognitionem rerum januis sensuum, nec alias habemus clausi hoc corpore.’
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Must realise that, since it is locked up in a dark prison and surrounded by obscurity, it is prevented from understanding several things and cannot clearly observe or know what it wants: neither the concealed essence of material things, nor the quality and character of immaterial things, nor can it because of the gloom of the body use its acuity and swiftness.23
In other words, since that which is incorporeal or hidden cannot be grasped by the senses, sense perception does not yield any knowledge of the essence of things, but only of their accidents. ‘The true and genuine essences of all things,’ Vives writes, ‘are not known by us in themselves. They hide concealed in the innermost part of each thing where our mind, enclosed by the bulk of the body and the darkness of life, cannot penetrate.’24 This epistemological pessimism can also be discerned in matters pertaining to psychological studies. ‘Nothing,’ Vives writes, ‘is more concealed than the soul, which is most obscure and ignored by all.’25 Therefore, as Marcia Colish has pointed out, the ‘distinction drawn by Vives between man’s essence and his activity springs from his conception of man’s intellectual limitations. The essences of things may be objects of wonder; they are not, however, legitimate objects of knowledge.’26 On this account, Vives’s disinterest in the essence or nature of the soul— which some commentators tend to regard as a departure from the metaphysical analysis of the soul, and pointing to the empirical and observational methods of modern psychology—was rather a result of his epistemology, which is based on the metaphysical doctrine that things have two different layers: one external, consisting in the sensible accidents of the thing, and another, internal, and therefore hidden, which is the essence of the thing.27 In this sense, Vives is still working within the framework of the traditional Aristotelian categories. 23 S, 176; M, III, 329: ‘Et assequitur, se clausam obscuro carcere, obseptamque tenebris, eoque a rerum plurimarum intellectu arceri, nec posse planius intueri ac cognoscere, quae vellet: sive essentiam rerum materia contectarum, sive qualitatem ingeniumque immaterialium, nec posse per hanc corporis caliginem acumine ac celeritate sua uti.’ 24 S, 416; M, III, 406–407: ‘Principio rerum omnium verae germanaeque essentiae ipsae per se non cognoscuntur a nobis, abditae latent in penitissimis cuiusque rei, quo mens nostra in huius corporis mole et tenebris vitae non penetrat.’ 25 S, 86; M, III, 299: ‘Nam ut nihil est magis quam anima reconditum, magisque ad omnes obscurum atque ignoratum.’ 26 M.L. Colish, ‘The Mime of God: Vives on the Nature of Man,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 23 (1962), 3–21, at 11. 27 De prima philosophia, M, III, 197: ‘Id quod sensili est tectum et quasi convestitum, quod appellemus sane sensatum, ut ab armis armatum, in eo est sensile, et moles illa exterior, quam sensile operit, tum quiddam intimum esse necessum est, quod nec oculis, nec ulli sensui est pervium.’
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In De anima, Aristotle maintains that ‘the knowledge of the essential nature of a substance is largely promoted by an acquaintance with its properties: for, when we are able to give an account conformable to experience of all or most of the properties of a substance, we shall be in the most favourable position to say something worth saying about the essential nature of that subject.’28 This remark was heavily debated among scholastic philosophers, not least with regard to the possibility of making the real nature of the soul intelligible by reasoning demonstratively from its operations. Referring to these debates in De prima philosophia (1531), Vives asserts that the question of how substances can be separated from their accidents Is discussed within several schools, urged by passion and not knowledge, which cannot exist on this matter, because substance and accidents are so closely bound together that they cannot be told apart in any way either by sense or thought. The reason is that whichever image we consider, it is obtained by our mind, a great creator of images, but since it is locked up in the body, it cannot grasp the image of naked substance stripped of its accidents.29
Vives’s disinterest in the essence of the soul is connected to these scholastic debates on the question of how the essence of a thing can be known from its accidents, and motivated by his pessimistic views with regard to our cognitive powers. Vives could, moreover, find inspiration and support for this attitude towards the study of the soul in ancient and medieval sources. Ignorance of the substance or essence of the soul is a common theme in Antiquity, as, for example, in the philosophical psychology of Galen.30 In De placitis
28 Aristotle, De anima I.1, 402b21–25 transl. J.A. Smith, in: J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle, Princeton (NJ) 1984 (Bollingen series, 71/2), 1: 642. 29 M, III, 201: ‘Ita res in varias sectas est discissa, et agitata affectibus, non scientia quae in ea re nulla esse potest, nam substantia et adhaerens adeo sunt complicata, ut non modo sensu explicari non queant, sed nec cogitatione, ut imago utriusque capi separata possit ab animo nostro, tanto artifice imaginum; quippe mens nostra, clausa hoc corpore, subsistentiae imaginem non assequitur nudam adjectis.’ 30 Galen’s writings played a crucial role in the medical renaissance that occurred during the sixteenth century. For a discussion of Vives’s De anima et vita in relation to the resurgence of Galenism in the Renaissance, see S. de Angelis, ‘Zur Galen-Rezeption in der Renaissance mit Blick auf die Anthropologie von Juan Luis Vives. Überlegungen zu der konfiguration einer “Wissenschaft vom Menschen” in der Frühen Neuzeit,’ in M. Baumbach (ed.), Tradita et inventa: Beiträge zur Rezeption der Antike, Heidelberg 2000 (Bibliothek der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften. Neue Folge, 2. Reihe, 106), 91–109. A general account of Galen’s views and their afterlife can be found in O. Temkin, Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy, Ithaca (NY) 1973 (Cornell publications in the history of science). For Galen’s
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Hippocratis et Platonis, which is one of Vives’s sources, Galen repeatedly maintains that the existence of the soul and the location of its parts are known from its activities, but that the question of the soul’s substance at best admits of plausibility, and not certainty.31 As Phillip De Lacy has pointed out, according to Galen We know that the soul exists because we can distinguish its parts and its powers; and this knowledge is useful both for medicine and for ethical and political philosophy. But we do not know the substance (ousía) of … the soul, and such knowledge, even if we had it, would be of no help either for the promotion of ethical and political virtue, or for the cure of the soul’s afflictions.32
Also in the scholastic tradition, which both Vives and Bacon criticized for its sterility and lack of proper method, one can find examples of similar approaches to the study of the soul. It has, for instance, recently been argued that in late medieval psychology one can discern a development from the demonstration of the real nature of the soul on the basis of its evident operations to the simple explanation of the disparate functions of those operations. In this process, the philosophical study of the soul became gradually separated from metaphysics, and the question of the real nature of the soul, which was viewed as beyond the mandate of natural philosophy, was eventually abandoned.33 This development, which had its
influence in the Renaissance, see also N. Mani, ‘Die Editio Princeps des Galen und die anatomisch-physiologische Forschung im 16. Jahrhundert,’ in: F. Krafft and D. Wuttke (eds.), Das Verhältnis der Humanisten zum Buch, Boppard 1977 (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Kommission für Humanismusforschung, Mitteilung 4), 209–226; A. Wear, ‘Galen in the Renaissance,’ in: V. Nutton (ed.), Galen: Problems and Prospects, London 1981, 229–262; and V. Nutton, ‘The Anatomy of the Soul in Early Renaissance Medicine,’ in: G.R. Dunstan (ed.), The Human Embryo: Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions, Exeter 1990, 136–157. For a comprehensive account of editions and translations of Galenic texts in the Renaissance, see R.J. Durling, ‘A Chronological Census of Renaissance Editions and Translations of Galen,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 24 (1961), 230–305. 31 See for example Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, IX, 9.1–6, ed. Ph. De Lacy, Galen: On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, 3 vols., Berlin 1978–1984 (Corpus medicorum Graecorum, 5/4, 1, 2), 2: 597–599. On this issue, see also M. Frede, ‘On Galen’s Epistemology,’ in Id., Essays in Ancient Philosophy, Oxford 1987, 279–298. 32 Ph. De Lacy, ‘Galen’s Platonism,’ American Journal of Philology, 93 (1972), 27–39, at 36. 33 See K. Park, ‘Albert’s Influence on Late Medieval Psychology,’ in: J.A. Weisheipl (ed.), Albertus Magnus and the Sciences. Commemorative Essays, 1980, Toronto 1980 (Studies and texts, 49), 510–522; J. Zupko, ‘What is the Science of the Soul? A Case Study in the Evolution of Late Medieval Natural Philosophy,’ Synthese, 110 (1997), 297–334; Id., ‘Substance and Soul: The Late Medieval Origins of Early Modern Psychology,’ in: S.F. Brown, (ed.), Meeting of the Minds: the Relations between Medieval and Classical Modern European Philosophy. Acts
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roots in the naturalistic approach initiated by Ockham and was carried on by Buridan and several of his followers, is perhaps best exemplified by Pierre d’Ailly’s (c. 1350–1420) Tractatus de anima.34 The organizing principle of this treatise is indebted to the approach of faculty psychology, in which the soul is described as being composed of a number of different faculties or powers, each directed towards a different object and responsible for a distinct operation. However, as Jack Zupko has pointed out, the concept of the soul in d’Ailly’s account is merely ‘an empty placeholder, whose real nature is not even relevant to psychology.’35 3. Psychophysiology, Memory and the Association of Ideas Two other aspects that, according to several modern commentators, set Vives’s approach apart from traditional philosophical psychology are his emphasis on physiology and his contribution to the area of psychological study known as the association of ideas. In Raymond Clements’s view: In the field of psychology, Vives shows a stronger reliance on the humoral physiology rather than on the more traditional scholastic arguments centering on the essence and nature of the soul and its various faculties … That humoral and animal spirits concepts are outmoded by present scientific standards does not detract from his efforts to establish a physiological basis for his psychology rather than a purely rational and moral foundation.36
With regard to the association of ideas, already Sir William Hamilton (1788– 1856) praised Vives’s insights on memory and the laws of association. In his ‘Contributions Towards a History of the Doctrine of Mental Suggestion or Association,’ he quotes extensive portions of Vives’s account of memory and maintains that the observations of ‘the Spanish Aristotelian’ comprise
of the International Colloquium held at Boston College, June 14–16, 1996, organized by the Société Internationale pour l’ Etude de la Philosophie Médiévale, Turnhout 1998 (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 7), 121–139; and S.W. de Boer, Soul and Body in the Middle Ages. A Study of the Transformations of the scientia de anima, c. 1260– c. 1360, Ph.D. thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, 2011. 34 This treatise, which is one of the most important systematic works on philosophical psychology written in the fourteenth century, was widely read well into the sixteenth century and printed ten times between 1490 and 1518. For a recent study of this work, with a critical edition, see O. Pluta, Die philosophische Psychologie des Peter von Ailly. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie des späten Mittelalters, Amsterdam 1987 (Bochumer Studien zur Philosophie, 6). 35 Zupko, ‘Substance and Soul,’ 137. 36 Clements, ‘Physiological-Psychological Thought,’ 234 and 224.
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‘nearly all of principal moment that has been said upon this subject, either before or since.’37 Gregory Zilboorg, in commenting on Vives’s contribution to the field of medical psychology, claims that ‘Vives, almost a century before Hobbes, not only had a clear conception of associations but fully understood their relation to remembering and forgetting and fully understood as well the intimate relationship between emotions and the process of remembering and forgetting.’38 He also maintains that Hamilton’s ‘words could in many respects still be accepted without qualification.’39 Although Vives was interested in the medical thought of his day, he was not a medical doctor and had no independent knowledge of anatomy and physiology. He never performed an autopsy, nor are there any records that he ever witnessed a dissection. In De tradendis disciplinis (1531), he even disclaims personal knowledge of medical books or practical medicine.40 Clements describes him as an ‘influential and intelligent layman with a distinct interest in the latest medical and psychological thought.’41 Moreover, to treat mental phenomena both from moral-psychological and medicophysiological perspective at the same time was not unusual. Philosophical analyses of the emotions, which were traditionally associated with bodily conditions, were often brought under the purview of medicine and physiology.42 In this respect, Vives’s acquaintance with general medical practice and his interest in physiological aspects of psychological processes does not differ in any major respect from that of contemporary authors such as Gregor Reisch (c. 1467–1525) and Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560).43 On the
37 W. Hamilton, ‘Contributions Towards a History of the Doctrine of Mental Suggestion or Association,’ in: Id., The Works of Thomas Reid, 2 vols., Edinburgh 1863, repr. Bristol 1994, 2: 889–910, esp. 892–893, 896, 898, 902 and 908. 38 Zilboorg, A History, 192. 39 Zilboorg, A History, 194. 40 M, VI, 381: ‘De hoc professorum ordine nihil equidem pronuntiabo, quòd non sunt a me ea cura atque attentione lecti, nec ita in medicorum illa velut adyta penetravi, judicium de eis facere ut possim; hoc vero illorum esto, qui feliciter sunt in ea disciplina versati.’ 41 Clements, ‘Physiological-Psychological Thought,’ 219. 42 See for example Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IaIIae, q. 28, a. 5 and q. 44, a.1, Roma 1891 (Opera omnia, 6), 201 and 283–284. For an account of Aquinas’s view on the emotions, see P. King, ‘Aquinas on the Passions,’ in: S. MacDonald and E. Stump (eds.), Aquinas’s Moral Theory. Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, Ithaca (NY) 1999, 101–132. 43 Gregor Reisch’s Margarita philosophica (1503) was one of the most influential textbooks published during Vives’s lifetime. Books X and XI, which to a large extent correspond to the first two books of De anima et vita, present a whole system of faculty psychology ranging from the lowest faculty of nutrition to the highest faculty of intellect. On this work and its author, see K. Park, ‘The Organic Soul,’ in: C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler and J. Kraye (eds.),
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contrary, as Clements points out, Vives’s ‘knowledge of medicine, physiology, and psychology was that of a sixteenth-century layman educated in the classics. Most, if not all, of his ideas can be found in Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Plotinus, Seneca, Cicero, Pliny, the poets, the church fathers and similar writers.’44 Vives, following the Galenic tradition, maintains that our rational capacities depend on the temperament of the body. He discusses this psychophysical relation in the chapter on ‘ingenium’. During the Renaissance, this term was employed in many different ways. In its most basic sense it indicated what is natural to a given individual in opposition to others.45 In Vives’s writings, the term ‘ingenium’ is used, as Carlos Noreña has pointed out, ‘in a complex thought not always well-defined manner’.46 In De anima et vita, ‘ingenium’ is described as ‘the whole power of our mind as it comes forth
The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge 1988, 464–473, L. Andreini, Gregor Reisch e la sua Margarita Philosophica, Salzburg 1997 (Analecta Cartusiana, 138); and A. Cunningham and S. Kusukawa, ‘Introduction’, in: Id. and Ead. (transl. and eds.), Natural Philosophy Epitomised: Books 8–11 of Gregor Reisch’s Philosophical pearl (1503), Farnham 2010, ix–lxxiv. Vives was familiar with Reisch’s work and recommends the section on mathematics in De tradendis disciplinis (1531). See M, VI, 372. For Melanchthon’s views on human anatomy and the ‘scientia de anima’, see S. Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: the Case of Philipp Melanchthon, Cambridge 1995 (Ideas in context, 34), 75–123; and J. Helm, ‘Die “spiritus” in der medizinischen Tradition und in Melanchthons Liber de anima,’ in: G. Frank and S. Rhein (eds.), Melanchthon und die Nuturwissenschaften seiner Zeit, Sigmaringen 1998 (Melanchthon-Schriften der Stadt Bretten, 4), 219–237. Melanchthon was familiar with Vives’s De anima et vita and recommends it, along with the writings of Johannes Bernardi Velcurio (d. 1534) and Jodocus Trutfetter (d. 1519), in the prefatory letter to his Commentarius de anima (1540). For a survey of anatomical theory in the sixteenth century, see also A. Cunningham, The Anatomical Renaissance: the Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients, Aldershot 1997. 44 Clements, ‘Physiological-Psychological Thought,’ 234. 45 For a brief discussion of ‘ingenium’ in premodern and early modern thought, see D.L. Sepper, Descartes’s Imagination: Proportion, Images, and the Activity of Thinking, Berkeley (CA) 1996, 87–91. 46 C.G. Noreña, Juan Luis Vives and the Emotions, Carbondale 1989 (Philosophical explorations), 108. In De causis corruptarum artium (1531), Vives describes ‘ingenium’ as a set of creative powers (M, VI, 8–17). In De tradendis disciplinis (1531), he lists sharpness in observing, capacity for comprehending, and ability to compare in order to judge, as its main operations (M, VI, 286). For Vives’s views on ‘ingenium’, see also E. Hidalgo-Serna, ‘“Ingenium” and Rhetoric in the Work of Vives,’ Philosophy and Rhetoric, 16 (1983), 228–241; V. Del Nero, ‘Memoria, ingegno e volontà nel De anima et vita di Juan Luis Vives,’ in: D. Bigalli (ed.), Ragione e ‘civilitas’: figure del vivere associato nella cultura del ’500 europeo. Atti del convegno di studio di Diamante (7–9 novembre 1984), Milano 1986 (Filosofia e Scienza nel Cinquecento e nel Seicento. Serie 1, Studi, 28), 237–252; and E. Hidalgo-Serna, ‘Metaphorical Language, Rhetoric, and “Comprehensio”: J.L. Vives and M. Nizolio,’ Philosophy & Rhetoric, 23 (1990), 1–11.
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and reveals itself in the exercise of its instruments.’47 Vives often stresses that, as long as the soul is united to the body, the mind is dependent on some bodily instrument and cannot comprehend anything other than in corporeal terms, which means that physiological features are of the utmost importance in regulating our intellectual faculties.48 According to Vives, the organs of our rational functions are in the brain and consist of some thin and bright spirits exhaled from the pericardial blood. When the spirits are cold due to the evaporation of cold blood around the heart, mental operations are feeble and dull.49 When the spirits are hot, on the other hand, these operations are swift and excited.50 Although the source and origin of all the operations of the rational soul is in the heart, their workshop is in the head. In fact, the mind neither apprehends nor does it become affected unless the spirits reach the brain.51 One of the best examples of Vives’s psychophysical approach is his account of memory, which is generally considered to be one of the most interesting sections of De anima et vita. Noreña, for example, describes it as ‘strikingly original and characteristic.’52 According to Vives, memory, which is localized in the posterior ventricle of the brain, is ‘the faculty by whose means the soul retains in the mind what it has come to know through the external or internal senses.’53 It involves different kinds of cognitive acts: the
47 S, 286; M, III, 364: ‘Universam mentis nostrae vim, de qua sumus hactenus locuti, ingenium nominari placuit, quod se instrumentorum ministerio exerit et patefacit.’ 48 S, 288; M, III, 365: ‘Hæc est mentis nostræ abductio a materia, quod supra materiam, supraque ea omnia quæ sunt materiæ atque imaginationis, se sustollit; non quod sine instrumento materiali aliquid hic possit, dum inter concreta et corporalia versatur, uti iam diximus;’ and S, 440; M, III, 416: ‘Anima enim in hoc corpore non potest nisi corporaliter omnia intelligere, hoc est per corporea instrumenta, quæ exteriora sunt, sensus: interior autem imaginatio, non aliter quam qui per vitrum aliquid intuentur, non possunt aliter cernere quam ut illud sinit vitrum.’ 49 S, 288; M, III, 365: ‘Sed functionis rationalis organa sunt in cerebro, spiritus quidam tenuissimi et lucidissimi, quos illuc exhalat sanguis cordis; ij sunt organa intima cognitionum omnium. Qui cum frigidi sunt a sanguine frigido circa cor evaporati, segnes existunt actiones mentis, et languidae.’ 50 S, 290; M, III, 365: ‘Rursum quum calidi sunt spiritus, celeres et concitatae sunt actiones.’ 51 S, 290; M, III, 365–366: ‘Et quanquam fons atque origo omnium actionum animi fixa sit in corde, officina tamen est in capite, nec enim intelliget mens, aut irascetur, metuet, mœrebit, pudefiet, priusquam spiritus illi a corde exilientes ad cerebrum pervenerint.’ 52 Noreña, Juan Luis Vives and the Emotions, 96. See also G. Hoppe, Die Psychologie des Juan Luis Vives nach den beiden ersten Büchern seiner Schrift De anima et vita dargestellt und beurteilt. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Psychologie, Berlin 1901, 51. 53 S, 228; M, III, 345: ‘Memoria est facultas animi, qua quis ea, quae senso aliquo externo aut interno cognovit, in mente continet;’ and S, 230; M, III, 346: ‘Memoriae sedes ac velut fabrica in occipitio est a Natura collocata, admirabili sapientia, quod praeterita cernat.’
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process of enquiry and scrutiny is called consideration (‘consideratio’), and the attainment of what was sought after is called recollection (‘recordatio’). Drawing on Aristotle’s De memoria et reminiscentia, Vives also distinguishes between recollection, which is achieved through simple intuition, and what the philosophers call reminiscence (‘reminiscentia’), which proceeds gradually and involves discursive reason. The former we share with animals, while the latter is to be found only in human beings.54 In a passage that seems partly indebted to Lorenzo Valla’s Dialecticae disputationes, Vives maintains that memory, just like the human hands, has two different capacities: to grasp and to retain. These powers are dependent on the humidity of the brain. Those whose brain is moist grasp more easily. But if the brain is too moist, they might have difficulties in retaining: a seal impinges easily in a fluid humour, but it does not stick very long, unless it is in a dry matter. Bilious people are therefore more apt to retain, provided that they have once apprehended.55 Referring, as also Valla does, to Quintilian’s discussion of the relation between natural capacity (‘ingenium’) and memory, Vives maintains that our natural capacity (‘ingenium’), which he conceives—as we have seen—as the efficiency of our mental functions in relation to the quality of their physical organs, is helped by memory to perceive more easily whatever it wants and to report it more promptly and faithfully. Readiness and accuracy in representation are two different
54 S, 228 and 230; M, III, 345–346: ‘Itaque actio huius tota est introrsum conversa; est enim memoria velut picta tabula, quae ut aspectu oculorum efficit actum notitiae, sic illa intuitu animi intelligentis, aut cognoscentis: quae notitia non est simplex, nam consideratio est, quum inquirit et scrutatur: recordatio vero quum ad id perventum est, quod volumus. Est et in recordatione recultus, quum animus insistit in recordatione rei alicuius, multum eam retractans cogitatione, et revolvens, quod recolere nominatur. Quae recordatio simplici gignitur intuitu animi in memoria, ea communis est nobis cum beluis: quae autem fit per gradus quosdam et discursum a rebus, quae ante animum observantur, ad ea quae subterfugerant, hominis est propria, qui solus discursu utitur: reminisci a philosophis nuncupatur.’ Cf. Aristotle, De memoria et reminiscentia, 453a6–13. For a discussion of Aristotle’s views on memory and recollection, see R. Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory, London 1972; H.S. Lang, ‘On Memory: Aristotle’s Corrections of Plato,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy, 18 (1980), 379–393; J. Annas, ‘Aristotle on Memory and the Self,’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 4 (1986), 99–117; and D. Bloch, Aristotle on Memory and Recollection: Text, Translation, Interpretation, and Reception in Western Scholasticism, Leiden 2007 (Philosophia antiqua, 110). 55 S, 230; M, III, 346: ‘Memoriae, sicuti et manus, duae sunt vires, apprehendere et retinere; apprehendunt facile, qui humido sunt cerebro. Est quidem cerebrum omne humidum, sed supra modum intelligi convenit; ut sigillum celeriter in humore fluido imprimitur, sed non diu haeret, nisi in arefacta materia: ita biliosi ad retinendum sunt aptiores, ubi semel apprehenderunt.’ Cf. L. Valla, Dialecticae disputationes, in: Id., Opera omnia, ed. E. Garin, 2 vols., Torino 1962, 1: 643–761, at 662.
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aspects of the retentive capacity of memory. There are people who can retain things very well, but when the time comes to recount them, either have difficulties in finding what they are looking for, or report it only partially or in a confused manner, because of their perverted and unfortunate natural capacity (‘ingenium’).56 Young people, because of the heat and purity of their spirits, have better memory than old people.57 Drawing on Aristotle’s account, Vives maintains that, just as a seal does not impinge on running water, nothing is retained in memory if the brain is vehemently agitated. This can be seen in small children due to the continuous growth of their body, and in drunk and sick people when the heat sweeps away all the spirits. Those who in the occiput have cold and therefore hard spirits, on the other hand, such as old and slowwitted people, are like stones and receive impressions with great difficulty.58 Those who are healthy and whole, but have quick spirits, as for example bilious people, apprehend rapidly but do not retain equally well. Quoting Aristotle, Vives holds that slow people have better memory, as when a seal is imprinted in stone or iron, whereas those who are quick-witted are better at recollecting.59 Memory is helped by a good natural constitution of the
56 S, 230 and 232; M, III, 346: ‘Temperamentum autem ad utrumque est idoneum: quod in quibus est pueris, bonitatem ingenij arguit, ut Quintilianus annotavit; adiuvatur enim ingenium a memoria, ut et percipias facile, quae velis: et celeriter ac fideliter reddas, quum sit opus; quae duae partes, ilico, et bona fide repraesentare, illius sunt quod retinere nominavi. Nam sunt qui continent quidem, sed in reddendo quasi deposito, vel tardi sunt et diu laborant quaerendo, vel reddunt mala fide: nempe aut non integre, aut confuse, et perturbate; quod qui faciunt, ingenia habent inversa atque infelicia.’ Cf. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, transl. H.E. Butler, 4 vols., Cambridge (MA) 1920–1922 (The Loeb classical library, 124–127), I.3.1; I: 55. For some remarks on Quintilian’s influence on Vives’s psychology, see L.J. Swift, and S.L. Block, ‘Classical Rhetoric in Vives’ Psychology,’ Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 10 (1974), 74–83; and M. Conde Salazar, ‘Presencia de Quintiliano en las “teorias psicológicas” de Juan Luis Vives,’ in: T. Albaladejo, E. del Río and J.A. Caballero (eds.), Quintiliano: historia y actualidad de la retórica. Actas del congreso internacional, 3 vols., Logroño 1998 (Colección Quintiliano de retórica y comunicación), 3: 1209–1218. 57 S, 232; M, III, 346: ‘Iuvenes propter calorem, et humores puriores, plus pollent memoria, quam senes.’ 58 S, 234; M, III, 347–348: ‘Et quemadmodum non imprimitur in aqua fluenti signum annuli, ita neque in memoria res cognitae, cerebro vehementer agitato; quale est in pueris infantibus propter continua incrementa corpusculi: tum in ebrijs et aegrotis, quum valida vis ardoris spiritus omnes rapit secum, convolvitque. Difficile item recipiunt, qui in occipitio frigidos habent humores, ac proinde duros, quorum est natura ad impressionem saxea: tales sunt senes, et tardi, et torpentes.’ Cf. Aristotle, De memoria et reminiscentia, 450b1–10. 59 S, 236; M, III, 348: ‘Qui vero sani sunt et integri, sed celeres habent spiritus, apprehendunt quidem cito, sed non adeo continent: cuius sunt generis biliosi. “Lenta ingenia, inquit Aristoteles, recordationis fide valent, acuta autem reminiscentia.” Tenacior est memoria in
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body and a regimen consisting in a wholesome diet, physical exercise, rest and sleep, which are moderate and suitable for the instruments of this faculty, i.e., the spirits in the posterior ventricle of the brain.60 Memory is also strengthened by frequent exercise and meditation, becoming quick in reception, more capacious and stronger in retention.61 In Vives’s view, there are different senses in which something can be forgotten. Genuine oblivion occurs when the image stored in memory has been completely erased or destroyed, and the image has to be learned anew. If the image is concealed because of sickness or strong emotion, as if a veil covered it, then the image needs to be unveiled through the recovering of mental and bodily health. Only if the image is scattered and hindered, or escapes the enquirer, is it possible to recover it gradually through the process of recollection that Vives calls consideration.62 These different types of forgetfullness extend to all kinds of subjects and go from cause to effect, from effect to instrument, from part to whole, from whole to place, from place to person, from person to its ancestors and descendants, to something contrary, similar, and so on.63 In this connection, another source for Vives’s account emerges, namely, the anonymous textbook Rhetorica ad Herennium, which, until the end of the fifteenth century, was attributed to Cicero.64 At the beginning of the
tardo, sicut diuturnius sigillum in saxo aut ferro: redeunt tamen celeres facilius in recordationem.’ Cf. Aristotle, De memoria et reminiscentia, 449b7–9. 60 S, 234; M, III, 347: ‘Memoriae plurimum confert naturalis contemperatio corporis, quali fuisse praeditos illos credibile est, quorum magnitudo memoriae monumentis literarum celebratur: Themistocles, Cyrus, Cyneas, Hortensius. Adiuvatur tota ratione victus, cibis, potionibus, exercitamentis, quiete, somno, moderatis, et ad facultatis illius instrumenta accomodis.’ 61 S, 236; M, III, 348: ‘Exercitatione et meditatione crebra magnum memoria sumit robur; fit enim et ad accipiendum prompta, et ad plura capienda latior, et tenacior ad continendum.’ 62 S, 236 and 238; M, III, 348–349: ‘Oblivisci autem quadruplici ratione dicimur; vel quum imago illa in memoria depicta eraditur prorsum ac deletur, vel quum interlita est atque interrupta, vel quum quaerentem subterfugit; vel quum obruta est, et quasi velo quodam contecta, ut in morbo, vel affectu concitato; prima est vera, et maxime propria oblivio, secunda est obscuritas, seu litura; tertia et quarta, occultatio … Prima oblivio nova prorsum cognitione indiget, quarta detectione, ut sanitate corporis aut animi: reliquae duae instauratione, ut vestigatione et quasi gradibus ad id veniatur, quod quaerimus.’ 63 S, 238; M, III, 349: ‘Gradus hi per omnia argumentorum genera late sese diffundunt; a causa ad effectum, ab hoc ad instrumentum, a parte ad totum, ab isto ad locum, a loco ad personam, a persona ad priora eius et posteriora, ad contraria, similia: in quo discursu non est finis.’ 64 Vives lectured on book IV in Paris sometime between March 1513 and the summer of 1514. See J.L. Vives, Praelectio in quartum Rhetoricorum ad Herennium, in: Id., Early Writings, 2, ed. J. IJsewijn, A. Fritsen and C. Fantazzi, Leiden 1991 (Selected works of J.L. Vives, 5), 126–137.
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section devoted to memory, the anonymous author distinguishes between two different kinds of memory: natural and artificial.65 A similar distinction is found in Vives’s account, when he points out that the reminiscence attained by a chain of associations is called natural when our thoughts go from one thing to the other spontaneously, and voluntary or imposed, when the mind makes an effort to reach the recollection of something.66 The Rhetorica ad Herennium also contains the first known description of mnemonic techniques and is, along with Cicero’s De oratore and Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, a most likely source for Vives’s account of how orderly arrangement is essential to good memory.67 In his view, those who wish to remember something must observe with attention the order in which they keep things in memory. This is what is done in mnemonics, which is a technique for storing those things which one wishes to remember in a number of selected ‘places’ (‘loci’). As soon as these things have to be recollected, all these places are revisited in order to pick up the various memories from the place in which they had been stored.68 Vives maintains that the procedure of going from a place to its content is possible because ‘of these things that fantasy comprehends at the same time, if one of them is present, the other is generally also evoked.’69 In his analysis, Vives also stresses the emotional character of the association of ideas. He observes that if something is experienced together with a strong emotion, its recollection will be easier, and more immediate and durable, as is proved by those
65 Anonymous, Rhetorica ad Herennium, ed. and transl. H. Caplan, Cambridge (MA) 1954 (The Loeb classical library, 403), III.16.28, 205–207. 66 S, 240; M, III, 349: ‘Reminiscentia haec vel naturalis est, cogitatione ultro ab alijs ad alia transeunte; vel voluntaria, seu iussa, quum animus in recordationem rei alicuius conatur pervenire.’ 67 See Rhetorica ad Herennium, III.16.28–24.40, 205–225; Cicero, De oratore I–II, transl. E.W. Sutton, Cambridge (MA) 1942 (The Loeb classical library, 348), II.86.351–88.360, 465– 473; and Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, XI.2.1–51; 4: 211–243. For a comprehensive treatment of classical mnemonics and its later development, see F.A. Yates, The Art of Memory, London 1966; P. Rossi, Clavis universalis: arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz, Bologna 21983 (Saggi, 244); M.J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge 1990 (Cambridge studies in medieval literature, 10); and J. Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past, Cambridge 1992. 68 S, 240; M, III, 349: ‘Quocirca et qui recordari aliqua cupiunt, diligenter attenteque ordinem eorum animadvertunt quae mandant memoriae: et artis huius magistri loca quaedam discipulis suis ediscenda exhibent.’ 69 S, 240; M, III, 349: ‘Nam quae simul sunt a phantasia comprehensa, si alterutrum occurrat, solet secum alterum repraesentare.’ Cf. Aristotle, De memoria et reminiscentia, 452a8–16.
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things that are experienced with great joy or pain.70 Vives recalls, for example, a time when, as a boy in Valencia, he was ill with a fever. While his taste was deranged, he ate cherries, and for many years afterwards, whenever he tasted cherries, he not only recalled the fever, but also seemed to experience it.71 It is difficult, however, to see what the supposed novelty of Vives’s approach consists in. It is certainly not based on any experimental or observational research, but seems rather to represent a quite traditional approach of speculative psychophysiology. His account of memory, as we have seen, does not constitute an important departure from Aristotle’s approach, perhaps with the exception of the humoral physiology which, on the other hand, stems from traditional authorities such as Galen and Nemesius of Emesa.72 Moreover, the concept of association of ideas also goes back to Aristotle, and discussions involving an emphasis on the role of emotions can be found in the rhetorical treatises which Vives repeatedly uses in his account.73
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S, 236; M, III, 348: ‘Si se adfectus aliquis concitatus, primae rei cuiusque memoriae admiscuit, recordatio est deinceps facilior, promptior, diuturnior: ut quae cum maxima laetitia vel dolore sunt in animum ingressa, horum longissima est memoria.’ 71 S, 242; M, III, 350: ‘Puer quum Valentiae febri laborarem, et depravato gustu cerasa edissem, multis post annis quoties id pomum gustabam, toties non solum de febri memineram, sed habere mihi illam videbar.’ 72 Nemesius of Emesa’s (fl. c. 390–400) De natura hominis is the first work by a Christian thinker dedicated to articulating a comprehensive philosophical anthropology, and provides detailed accounts of the physiological structure and function of the faculties of the soul based on extensive medical knowledge. Before the mid-sixteenth century, it was usually attributed to Gregory of Nyssa. It was translated twice during the Middle Ages, first by Alfanus of Salerno (d. 1085), and later by Burgundio of Pisa (d. 1193), who confused Nemesius with Gregory of Nyssa. Vives, however, might have known the work in a later version, edited by the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547) and printed in Strasbourg in 1512 and in Paris in 1513. It consisted in a revised version of Burgundio’s translation made by Johannes Cuno (1463– 1513), who also divided the forty-two chapters into eight books, which resulted in a new title: Libri octo de homine. For a general treatment of Nemesius’s anthropology, see A. Kallis, Der Mensch im Kosmos: das Weltbild Nemesios’ von Emesa, Münster 1978 (Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie, 43), and A. Siclari, L’antropologia di Nemesio di Emesa, Padova 1974 (Filosofia e religione, 9). On the medieval and Renaissance reception of De natura hominis, see H. Brown Wicher, ‘Nemesius Emesenus,’ in: F.E. Cranz and V. Brown (eds.), Catalogus translationum et commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, 6, Washington (DC) 1986, 31–68, and E.F. Rice, ‘The Humanist Idea of Christian Antiquity: Lefèvre d’ Etaples and his Circle,’ Studies in the Renaissance, 9 (1962), 126–160. 73 The idea of helping memory by arousing emotions through striking and unusual images (‘imagines agentes’) is, for example, clearly formulated in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, III.22.35–37, 219–221.
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For example, Vives mentions a house close to the Royal Palace in Brussels where his friend Alonso de Idiáquez used to live and where he often spent hours of pleasant conversation with him. He observes that every time he sees this house the memory of Idiáquez comes vividly to his mind. When he thinks of Idiáquez, on the other hand, he does not always remember his house. This occurs, according to him, because ‘in the process of remembering, it frequently happens that the lesser thing reminds us of the greater, but not the contrary.’74 This observation, however, is not the result of ‘marvelous introspection’, as Noreña keeping the same old beaten track would have it, but was probably inspired by treatments of ‘comparatio’ in rhetorical treatises, as Faggi suggested.75 Moreover, an analysis that requires that memories have an emotional component, acquired during the process of their formation, can be found already in Aristotle.76 A similar view pervades the whole scholastic tradition. As Mary Carruthers points out in her study of memory in the Middle Ages, ‘since each phantasm is a combination not only of the neutral form of the perception but of our response to it (‘intentio’) concerning whether it is helpful or hurtful, the phantasm by its very nature evokes emotion.’77 It is, however, more likely that Vives’s mention of the importance of emotions for memory was inspired by the rhetorical tradition. The idea that something experienced together with a strong emotion is recollected more easily and remembered for a longer time could, for example, be derived from the Rhetorica ad Herennium: When we see in everyday life things that are petty, ordinary, and banal, we generally fail to remember them, because the mind is not being stirred by anything novel or marvellous. But if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable, or laughable, that we are likely to remember for a long time. Accordingly, things immediate to our eye or ear we commonly forget; incidents of our childhood we often remember best.78 74 S, 242; M, III, 350: ‘Qua in recordatione gemina illud usu evenit, ut ex re minore veniat nobis de maiore in mentem saepius, non e contrario. Maius voco melius, praestabilius, rarius, preciosius, charius, denique quod nos pluris facimus; ut quoties aspicio domum, quae Brussellae est e conspectus regiae, venit mihi in mentem Idiaqueus, cuius illud erat hospitium, et in qua nos saepissime, quantumque per illius negocia licebat diutissime sumus collocuti de rebus utrique iucundissimis: non tamen quotiescunque Idiaqueus obversatur animo, de aedibus illis cogito; notabilior est scilicet animo meo Idiaquei recordatio, quam illarum aedium.’ 75 See Noreña, Juan Luis Vives, 261, and Faggi, ‘Giovanni Ludovico Vives,’ 215–216. 76 See for example Aristotle, De memoria et reminiscentia, 453a14–31. 77 Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 68. 78 Rhetorica ad Herennium, III.22.35, 219.
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It was perhaps this last observation that inspired Vives to illustrate this point with the anecdote of how, as a child, he ate cherries while his taste was deranged and for many years afterwards, whenever he tasted the same fruit, vividly recalled his feverish condition. Vives even suggests that the importance of emotions for memory is a widely acknowledged phenomenon, when he points out that ‘in establishing the limits of domains, it is customary among some people to severely beat the children who are present, so that they should remember those limits more firmly and for a longer time.’79 4. Conclusion In order to understand the distinctive features of Vives’s psychology we have to look elsewhere. Faggi suggested that Vives, on account of his predilection for introspection and his tendency to psychological analysis, should perhaps be thought of, not so much as the initiator of modern empirical psychology, but rather as the first in a series of early modern interpretations of subjective life and individual conscience, which include such illustrious moralists as Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), François de la Rochefoucauld (1616– 1680), Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), and Jean de la Bruyère (1645–1696). This could at first glance seem a promising route, but should not be exaggerated, as Faggi readily conceded.80 The De anima et vita appears to bear a strong personal character. As we have seen, the treatise contains references to personal anecdotes, such as the long delightful conversations with Idiáquez or the feverish feeling evoked by the taste of cherries. According to Carlos Noreña, ‘these and similar passages reveal the vivid contrast between Aristotle’s speculative inquisitiveness and Vives’s penchant toward introspective analysis.’81 But this tendency among critics to interpret Vives’s views in light of his personal experience is problematic. Sizeable portions of Noreña’s study of De anima et vita are, for example, explicitly devoted to the dubious enterprise to connect Vives’s comments on particular emotions to events in his own life.82 The
79 S, 236; M, III, 348: ‘Eaque de causa mos est quarundam gentium, in statuendis agrorum limitibus acriter caedere pueros qui adsunt, ut firmius et diutius recordentur illorum finium.’ 80 Faggi, ‘Giovanni Ludovico Vives,’ 219–220. 81 Noreña, Juan Luis Vives and the Emotions, 99. 82 On this point, see also J. Kraye, Review of Carlos G. Noreña, Juan Luis Vives and the Emotions, Carbondale 1989, Renaissance Quarterly, 45 (1992), 846–848.
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tendency to ascribe to him an idiosyncratic genius or an introspective personality on account of his arthritic condition and renal calculus, is perhaps even more disputable.83 It should also be remembered that Vives often stresses how problematic it is to pay close attention to the phenomena of introspective consciousness: ‘Nothing,’ he writes, ‘is more concealed than the soul, which is most obscure and ignored by all.’84 In his view, It is very arduous, difficult and full of intricacies and obscurity to investigate what, how many and how the operations of the faculties of the mind are, as well as what their origin, beginning, increasing, decreasing and end are, since we, above our mind, have not another one which can behold and judge the one below.85
Moreover, the examples of introspection and psychological analysis provided by Faggi, are far from original. These remarks are all taken from the third book of the De anima et vita, which deals with the emotions and is generally considered to be the most vivid and sophisticated part of the treatise. Faggi highlights, for example, Vives’s observation that ‘distant evils disturb us less: as an uncertain death, which even elderly people hope is still far off.’86 This remark, however, is taken from the Rhetoric, where Aristotle writes that ‘we do not fear things that are a very long way off; for instance, we all know we shall die, but we are not troubled thereby, because death is not close at hand.’87 The same could be said for Vives’s view that ‘those who suffer extreme evils, or are at great risk to suffer them, do not feel pity for anybody, since they do not fear that a greater evil can befall them than the
83 See for example G. Marañón, ‘Luis Vives: un Español fuera de España,’ in: Id., Obras completas, 7, Madrid 1971, 251–296. For a discussion of Vives’s medical history in connection to his opinions on medicine and psychology, see also A.A. Travill, ‘Juan Luis Vives: A Humanistic Medical Educator,’ Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 4 (1987), 53–76. 84 S, 86; M, III, 299: ‘Nam ut nihil est magis quam anima reconditum, magisque ad omnes obscurum atque ignoratum.’ 85 S, 216; M, III, 342: ‘Quae sint harum facultatum actiones, quot, quales, qui earum ortus, progressus, incrementa, decrementa, occasus, perscrutari longe arduissimum ac difficillimum, plenissimumque intricatae obscuritatis; propterea quod supra mentem hanc non habemus aliam, quae inferiorem possit spectare ac censere.’ Cf. also Seneca’s epistle CXXI, where he maintains: ‘We also know that we possess souls, but we do not know the essence, the place, the quality, or the source, of the soul’ (Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, III transl. R.M. Gummere, Cambridge [MA] 1925 [The Loeb classical library, 77], 403). 86 Faggi, ‘Giovanni Ludovico Vives,’ 221. Cf. S, 676; M, III, 502: ‘Mala etiam longinqua minus nos perturbant: ut mors incerta, quam etiam senes homines procul adhuc abesse sperant.’ 87 Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1382a25–27, transl. W. Rhys Roberts, in: J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle, Princeton (NJ) 1984 (Bollingen series, 71/2), 2: 2152–2269, at 2202.
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one they are already suffering from.’88 Although Faggi regards this remark as one of the most noteworthy examples of Vives’s psychological analysis, it reflects nonetheless Aristotle’s view that pity is ‘not felt by those completely ruined, who suppose that no further evil can befall them, since the worst has befallen them already.’89 Let me suggest by way of conclusion that the most distinctive features of Vives’s study of the human soul should perhaps not be looked for on a methodological or doctrinal level, but rather in the style of its presentation, and in the fundamental role that psychological inquiry came to play in his reformational program.90 The De anima et vita might be characterised as a prolegomenon to moral philosophy and, like most of the moral literature of the Renaissance, it is addressed to an audience of lay readers.91 Although the conventional element outweights the original insights, the way in which Vives presents his material is certainly interesting. He frequently rejects with rhetorical flair the pedantic conventions of scholastic discourse and in his account we often encounter an eagerness to avoid getting enmeshed in the kind of futile quibbling that he associated with the scholastic tradition. However, one must not fail to notice that his criti-
88 S, 556; M, III, 460: ‘Qui in extremis quoque malorum versantur, aut in eorum malorum magno discrimine, nullorum eos miseret. Non enim timent se peius habituros.’ 89 Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1385b19–21, 2208. See Faggi, ‘Giovanni Ludovico Vives,’ 221. For a further discussion of the Peripatetic tradition as one of the most important sources of inspiration for Vives’s view of emotions, see L. Casini, ‘Aristotelianism and Anti-Stoicism in Juan Luis Vives’s Conception of the Emotions,’ in: J. Kraye and R. Saarinen (eds.), Moral Philosophy on the Threshold of Modernity, Dordrecht 2005 (The new synthese historical library, 57), 283–305. 90 Vives aspired at replacing the scholastic tradition in all fields of learning with a humanist curriculum inspired by education in the classics. The ethical purpose of this reorientation of the entire course of studies was the teaching of practical wisdom (‘prudentia’), i.e., knowledge of the necessities of life, as opposed to philosophy in the technical scholastic sense. This reformational program begins with the publication of In Pseudodialecticos (1519), a satirical diatribe against scholastic logic in which he voices his opposition on several counts, and is elaborated at great length in the encyclopaedic treatise De disciplinis (1531). On this latter work, see V. Del Nero, Linguaggio e filosofia in Vives: l’organizzazione del sapere nel De disciplinis (1531), Bologna 1991 (Quaderni di schede umanistische). For a discussion of Vives’s role in the debate between humanists and scholastics, see also V. Muñoz Delgado, ‘Nominalismo, logica y humanismo,’ in: M. Revuelta Sañudo and C. Morón Arroyo (eds.), El Erasmismo en España. Ponencias del coloquio celebrado en la Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo del 10 al 14 de junio de 1985, Santander 1986, 109–174, and E. Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation, Cambridge (MA) 1995 (Harvard historical studies, 120), 153–192. 91 Cf. H. Carpintero, ‘Luis Vives, psicólogo funcionalista,’ Revista de Filosofía, 6 (1993), 311– 327, at 320, who describes Vives’s psychology as a series of ‘preambula moralis’.
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cism is often mainly directed against the form in which much of scholastic psychology was presented, rather than against the ideas thus articulated.92 In this sense, those traits which are generally interpreted as tokens of a leap from metaphysical to empirical psychology, rather represent a genre shift. The De anima et vita also provides the psychological underpinning for many of Vives’s educational ideas.93 According to William H. Woodward, Vives ‘was the first humanist to submit to systematic analysis the Aristotelian psychology, and to regard the results of his study in their bearing upon instruction.’94 In his view, Vives’s ‘interests were those of a humanist and practical teacher, and his study of psychology was rather the product and accompaniment of his educational activity than its originating impulse.’95 Relying on Quintilian, Vives maintains that ‘in determining the instruction to be given to each person, the natural capacity (‘ingenium’) is to be regarded. The close consideration of this subject belongs to psychological inquiry.’96 Accordingly, an important function of psychology is to discover the individual aptitude of pupils, and thus to be able to educate people effectively. In this respect, Vives’s influence on the naturalistic pedagogy of his countryman Juan Huarte de San Juan (c. 1529–1588)—who owes his entire reputation to his El examen de ingenios para la ciencias (1575)—is undeniable.97 92 For an analysis of Vives’s views on the human will that underscores doctrinal similarities with scholastic theories of free choice, see L. Casini, ‘Juan Luis Vives’ Conception of Freedom of the Will and Its Scholastic Background,’ Vivarium, 44 (2006), 396–417. 93 Although the De anima et vita was published as late as 1538, only two years before its author’s death, it was written long before that. According to William Sinz, it ‘derives from an unsuccessful set of lectures of 1521–1522’ (W. Sinz, ‘The Elaboration of Vives’s Treatises on the Arts,’ Studies in the Renaissance, 10 [1963], 68–90, at 90). 94 W.H. Woodward, Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance, 1400–1600, Cambridge 1906, repr. New York 1967, 180. 95 Woodward, Studies in Education, 184. 96 M, VI, 286: ‘In unoquoque, ad tradendam ei eruditionem, spectandum est ingenium, cujus contemplatio ad inquisitionem pertinet de anima.’ Cf. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, I.3.1; I: 55. 97 Huarte’s work enjoyed considerable success and went through dozens of printings. It was translated into French in 1580, into Italian in 1586, and into English in 1594. See M. de Iriarte, Dr. Juan Huarte de San Juan und sein Examen de ingenios: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der differentiellen Psychologie, Münster 1938 (Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft. 2. Reihe, 4); C.G. Noreña, ‘Juan Huarte’s Naturalistic Philosophy of Man,’ in: Id., Studies in Spanish Renaissance Thought, Den Haag 1975 (International archives of the history of ideas, 82), 210–263; and M.K. Read, Juan Huarte de San Juan, Boston 1981 (Twayne’s world authors series, 619).
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But Vives was, of course, not alone in calling attention to the fact that each person is particular, with different inclinations and propensities that defy generalization. The same emphasis on the ‘natura specialis’ of the individual is to be found in the educational theories of many earlier and contemporary humanists.98 In Vives’s writings, however, the application of psychological principles surpasses the effort of previous authors in scope and detail. It is, for example, not confined to individual conduct and education, but extends also to professional practice, social reform and practical affairs in general.99 According to Vives, psychology is relevant for as good as all disciplines: ‘The study of man’s soul,’ he writes, ‘exercises a most helpful influence on all kinds of knowledge, because our knowledge is determined by the intelligence and grasp of our minds, not by the things themselves.’100 Vives’s reflections on the human soul have far too often been interpreted as anticipations of positions that, in fact, were the result of quite different intellectual developments. Reaching a better understanding of his philosophical study of the soul and avoiding misguided readings that contribute to misconstrue his relative originality, require a more precise contextualisation of his views, as well as an examination of theories and concepts
98 For some studies of humanist educational theory and practice, see E. Garin, Il pensiero pedagogico dello umanesimo, Firenze 1958 (I classici della pedagogia italiana, 2); A. Grafton, and L. Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenthand Sixteenth-Century Europe, Cambridge (MA) 1986; P. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600, Baltimore 1989 (The Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science, 107th series, 1); R.W. Bushnell, A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice, Ithaca (NY) 1996; and R. Black, Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century, Cambridge 2001. 99 The application of psychological principles can, for example, be discerned in De subventione pauperum (1526), a program for the organization of public relief which Vives dedicated to the magistrates of Bruges. See for example the provisions for the mentally ill in J.L. Vives, De subventione pauperum sive de humanis necessitatibus libri II, ed. C. Matheeussen and C. Fantazzi, Leiden 2002 (Selected works of J.L. Vives, 4), 104 and 106. On this work, see M. Bataillon, ‘J.L. Vivès, réformateur de la bienfaisance,’ Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 14 (1952), 141–158; R. Stupperich, ‘Das Problem der Armenfürsorge bei Juan Luis Vives,’ in: A. Buck (ed.), Juan Luis Vives. Arbeitsgespräch in der Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel vom 6. bis 8. November 1980, Hamburg 1981 (Wolfenbütteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, 3), 49–62; C. Matheeussen, ‘Quelques remarques sur le De subventione pauperum,’ in: J. IJsewijn and A. Losada (eds.), Erasmus in Hispania—Vives in Belgio. Acta colloquii Brugensis 23–26 IX 1985, Leuven 1986 (Colloquia Europalia, 1), 87–97; and A.A. Travill, ‘Juan Luis Vives: The De Subventione Pauperum,’ Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 4 (1987), 165–181. 100 M, VI, 375: ‘Contra vero speculatio de hominis anima, maxima disciplinis omnibus adfert adjumenta, propterea quod ex animae intelligentia et captu de omnibus fere statuimus, non ex rebus ipsis.’
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that were influential in the formation of his account. As Katharine Park and Eckhard Kessler have pointed out, during the first decades of the sixteenth century, late medieval psychology lost much of its prestige and new approaches became increasingly popular. Modern attempts to reconstruct these developments remain, however, tentative and incomplete.101 In other words, much more work remains to be done to improve our knowledge of the intellectual background out of which Vives’s views developed.
101 See K. Park, and E. Kessler, ‘The Concept of Psychology,’ in: C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler and J. Kraye (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge 1988, 455–463.
TIME, DURATION AND THE SOUL IN LATE ARISTOTELIAN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY
Michael Edwards
1. Introduction Thinking about time in the early modern scholastic and Aristotelian traditions was an activity often undertaken in a cautious, even tentative, frame of mind. Time, it was commonly agreed, was a particularly spiny philosophical problem, and even one whose very nature was built on uncertainty. It was frequently suggested that we cannot be sure what time is, or how we should best investigate it. For the English Aristotelian John Case, writing in 1599, the ‘existence of time’ was ‘a very uncertain thing indeed’.1 This formula was echoed across a range of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophical textbooks and commentaries. Thus the late sixteenth-century Lutheran philosopher Johannes Magirus argued that the problem of ‘how we in some way perceive the nature of time, requires profound meditation, since it is a profound thing’.2 Similarly, the French Minim friar Jean Lalemandet noted pessimistically in his 1656 Cursus philosophicus that ‘although nothing is more common and familiar to us than time, nevertheless nothing is more unknown’.3 Such concerns had a long and impeccable intellectual pedigree. They were first, and most famously, articulated in Book XI of Augustine’s Confessions. ‘What is time?’ Augustine had asked. ‘If no-one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain to an enquirer, I know not.’ The concerns of early modern scholastic authors consciously echoed those of Augustine, and in doing so they acknowledged that a rhetorical voice of uncertainty was a traditional and necessary part of discussing time. In a sense, time was a topic perennially conjugated in the subjunctive mood, the mood of uncertainty and possibility. 1 J. Case, Ancilla philosophiae, seu epitome in octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis, Oxford 1599, 62: ‘Existentia temporis res quidem valde incerta est.’ 2 J. Magirus, Physiologiae peripateticae libri sex, Wittenberg 1609, 102: ‘Ut autem temporis naturam aliquo modo percipiamus, profunda opus est meditatione, sicuti profunda res est.’ 3 J. Lalemandet, Cursus philosophicus, Lyon 1656, 766: ‘Quamvis nihil ita sit nobis familiare & commune, quam tempus, nihil tamen est nobis magis ignotum.’
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Amongst all this uncertainty, one topic was singled out as the source of particular anxiety: the connection between time and the soul. The German metaphysician and theologian Bartholomaeus Keckermann summed up the feelings of many early modern commentators when he ruefully stated in his Systema physicum (1610) that considering the relationship between time and the soul ‘produces the most complex questions of all on this subject.’4 The claim that time and the soul were connected was a very familiar one in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century commentaries and textbooks. It was derived ultimately from Aristotle’s foundational definition of time in Physics IV as the ‘number of former and latter in motion’: since time is a number, Aristotle argued, the rational part of the soul, which is alone capable of numbering, must be central to its existence. Physics IV.14 emphasized the relationship between time and the intellect or the faculty of reason; it stated not simply that understanding time required ingenuity and, as Magirus put it, ‘profound meditation’, but that the human rational soul was both a prerequisite for apprehending or perceiving time and a key part of time’s very existence. In Physics IV.14, Aristotle speculated: Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be some one to count there cannot be anything that can be counted either, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted. But if nothing but soul, or in soul reason, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if movement can exist without soul.5
This enigmatic passage, which was the immediate cause of Keckermann’s bemusement, provoked much debate amongst later commentators, since Aristotle seemed to argue both that time cannot exist without the soul, and that at least one aspect of time might exist separately. In many respects, the connection between time and the human soul was the paradigm case of the mood of anxiety and difficulty that often surrounded time in early modern Aristotelianism. The uncertainty expressed by many early modern authors also reflected a broader problem with dis-
4 B. Keckermann, Operum omnium quae extant tomus primus, Genève 1614, 1379: ‘Necque vero omittemus istam adhuc difficultatem, quae est in textu Aristotelis, & quae intricatissimas omnium circa hanc materiam quaestiones genuit, cum nempe Philosophus text. 131 dicit, quia nihil aptum est numerare quam anima rationalis: idcirco impossibile est tempus esse, si non sit anima …’ 5 Aristotle, Physics IV.14, 223a21–27, transl. J. Barnes, in: J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle, Princeton (NJ) 1984 (Bollingen series, 71/2), 1: 315–446, at 377.
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cussing time in the late scholastic and Aristotelian tradition: we are unsure about it, they believed, not just because its essential nature is ‘uncertain’, but also because it was somehow hard to locate. For, as well as being a spiny philosophical problem, time spanned a number of disciplines. This fact had a significant impact on the efforts of all early modern scholastics to present convincing and coherent accounts of time. One source of the complexity lamented by Keckermann and others was the fact that the Aristotelian corpus and its scholastic superstructure offered a number of ways of thinking about time and duration. Both the discipline of metaphysics and the tradition of commentaries on the Categories discussed time, whether in terms of the category quando, or ‘when’, or as part of the broader category of duration, or the remaining in existence of a being. Seen in this context, time, or tempus, was the finite form of duration (duratio) that related to the motion of created beings, which had a beginning and an end; other forms of duration were aevum, the duration of intellectual beings, angels, and the rational soul, which had a beginning but no end, and eternity, the duration of God, which had neither beginning nor end. Time itself, insofar as it related both to motion and to the soul was also treated as part of natural philosophy, since Aristotle had discussed it in these terms in book IV of the Physics. These different perspectives on the phenomenon of time were not mutually exclusive, but rather formed part of an intricate composite picture recognised by most Aristotelian and scholastic authors: what they had in common was a tendency to consider time outside, rather than within, the soul—to think of it as an accident or as a property of bodies or beings. One discipline is of course absent from this list—that of scientia de anima, the science of the soul, or psychology. Psychology was, for many late Aristotelian authors, properly part of natural philosophy, yet its unique subject matter (the soul) meant that disciplines such as metaphysics, theology and medicine might also lay claim to parts of its territory.6 Given that its connection with the soul was a significant, if ambiguous, commonplace in discussions of time and duration in contemporary natural philosophy, it is worth asking how the two were connected within accounts of the nature and functions of the soul itself. In this paper I want to offer a sketch of some of the roles played by concepts of time and duration in
6 See P.J.J.M. Bakker, ‘Natural Philosophy, Metaphysics, or Something in Between? Agostino Nifo, Pietro Pomponazzi, and Marcantonio Genua on the Nature and Place of the Science of the Soul,’ in: P.J.J.M. Bakker and J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), Mind, Cognition and Representation: The Tradition of Commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, Aldershot 2007 (Ashgate studies in medieval philosophy), 151–177.
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late Aristotelian psychology—focusing on whether the strong connection established between time and the intellect or rational soul in early modern commentaries on the Physics (and in the philosophical textbook tradition) was reciprocated or transformed in the De anima tradition. In a sense, I want to look at a familiar Aristotelian problem from a new angle—to ask not what the soul contributed to time, but what time contributed to the science of the soul, and to move from the ontology of time to what might be termed its psychology. An exhaustive contextual reading of the positions adopted by individual authors is impossible within the confines of this chapter, so I offer instead a synoptic account of approaches to the problem within the late Aristotelian tradition. I examine treatments of time and the soul in the De anima commentaries and natural philosophy textbooks of late Aristotelian authors writing from the 1570s to the 1650s, including the Collegium Conimbricense, Franciscus Toletus, Iacopo Zabarella and Johannes Magirus. In doing so, I hope to draw some conclusions about the extent and coherence of the connections between time as an object of knowledge in the scientia de anima and in other areas of natural philosophy in this period. In this second section of the paper, I examine three different cases in which time was connected to the rational soul in the scientia de anima: connections between intellection, time and self-knowledge, and debates over intellectual memory. 2. Time and the Soul in Natural Philosophy and the Tradition of Commentaries on the Physics Thinking about the relationship between time and the soul in the terms set out in Physics IV, an approach followed in the majority of sixteenthand seventeenth-century natural philosophy textbooks and commentaries, focused the attention of commentators in two particular directions. Firstly, and most obviously, it directed attention towards the intellect as the key mental faculty connected to time. Secondly, it led commentators towards issues concerning the ontology of time—that is, it led them to consider chiefly what contribution the soul might make to the being or existence of time. To think about time and the soul in the tradition of commentaries on the Physics, and in the natural philosophy textbooks that drew upon it, was essentially to examine the implications of their enigmatic connection for attempts to characterize time as a kind of being.7 7 See for example J.B. Rubeus, Commentaria dilucida in octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis, Venezia 1598, 124.
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Discussions of this question therefore typically began with the idea that time depended for its existence on the soul, just as it depended on motion. Most late Aristotelian Physics commentaries considered three possible models of how time might depend on the soul. This tripartite framework is found, for example, in both the Coimbra and Complutense commentaries on the Physics, and in more obscure commentaries such as that of the Dominican Michaele Zanardi.8 The first possibility given was that time is a wholly mind-dependent, or ‘rational’, being (ens rationis), a position these authors associated with certain ancient philosophers, namely Galen, and particularly with Augustine. Rational or fictional beings are those which exist in the mind with no real external correlate, such as chimeras, mathematical entities, or figments of the imagination. Francisco Suárez, for example, echoed the common opinion when he defined rational being as ‘that thing that has being only objectively in the intellect, or which is thought of as a being by reason, since it nevertheless does not have being in itself’.9 Locating time among the rational or fictional beings acknowledged the contribution made by the human intellect in its role as ‘numberer’ to time’s existence, but it also raised a number of theological difficulties. In particular, reconciling aspects of the Genesis narrative with the mind-dependence of time was deeply problematic. As the Jesuit Benedictus Pererius argued, denying the reality of time effectively risks denying the existence of God, by whom time was created and in whose power it remains, and this was a step none were willing to take.10 Consequently, only the last two positions of the tripartite framework were widely accepted in this period. These held that, secondly, time was a wholly real being (ens reale), which owed no part of its being to the soul; and, thirdly, that time was a mixed being, partly real and partly rational. Although authors such as Franciscus Toletus and the conservative Complutense commentary argued that time was an ens reale,11 most
8 Collegium Conimbricense, Commentarii in octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis, prima pars, Köln 1625, 131; Collegium Complutense, Disputationes in octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis, Paris 1636, 442; and M. Zanardi, Commentaria cum quaestionibus et dubiis in octo libros De physico auditu Aristotelis, Köln 1622, 143. 9 F. Suárez, Metaphysicarum disputationum tomi duo, Köln 1614, 503: ‘Et ideo recte definiri solet, ens rationis esse illud, quod habet esse obiective tantum in intellectu, seu esse id, quod a ratione cogitatur ut ens, cum tamen in se entitatem non habeat.’ 10 B. Pererius, De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principus & affectionibus, libri quindecim, Roma 1576, 383. 11 F. Toletus, Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in octo libros Aristotelis De physica auscultatione, Venezia 1616, 145v, and Collegium Complutense, Disputationes in octo libros Physicorum, 442–443.
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late scholastic authors supported the second, ‘mixed’ view of time as a kind of amphibious being, partly real and partly rational. In all of these accounts, the intellect is significant only insofar as it contributes to the existence of time. Although, as I have noted, the connection between time and the rational soul inherited from Physics IV led most authors to identify the intellect as the key mental faculty connected to time, this connection was not universally accepted. Indeed, it is possible at the turn of the seventeenth century to identify a tendency to complicate the intellect’s relationship to time in the natural philosophy textbook tradition. This process of complication occurred in a number of ways, most of which were directed at the Aristotelian assumption that the intellect is a numbering faculty that allows us to apprehend time. It became more common in this period to entertain the idea that other mental powers, particularly the powers of the sensitive soul, might also be connected to time. These moves coincided to a large degree with a trend away from commentary-based expositions of Aristotle towards an expansion of the textbook genre, in which more eclectic positions thrived.12 For instance, authors such as the Spanish scholastic Juan de Guevara, also considered the possibility that the temporal category quando might be apprehended through sense-perception.13 The possibility that nonrational animals might in some way apprehend time through the operation of the sensitive soul, which, unlike the intellect, cannot number, was also discussed, although commonly rejected, by a number of late Aristotelian authors. This claim was in fact most comprehensively treated by two French authors influenced by Aristotelian arguments, but from outside the scholastic mainstream, Pierre Chanet and Marin Cureau de la Chambre.14 In their extended mid-seventeenth-century polemic on animal intelligence, Cureau
12 C.B. Schmitt, ‘The Rise of the Philosophical Textbook,’ in: C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler and J. Kraye (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge 1988, 792–804. 13 For a full discussion, see M. Edwards, ‘Time and Perception in Late Renaissance Aristotelianism,’ in: S. Knuuttila and P. Kärkkäinen (eds.), Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, Dordrecht 2008 (Studies in the history of philosophy of mind, 6), 225–243, esp. 231–234. 14 P. Chanet, Considerations sur la sagesse de Charron, en deux parties par M. P. G. D en M, Paris 1643; M. Cureau de la Chambre, Les charactères des passions, volume ii, où il est traité de la nature et des effets des passions courageuses, Paris 1660; P. Chanet, De l’instinct et de la connoissance des animaux, avec l’ examen de ce que Monsieur de la Chambre a escrit sur cette matiere, La Rochelle 1646; and M. Cureau de la Chambre, Traité de la connoissance des animaux, Paris 1989 (Corpus des œuvres de philosophie en langue française).
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de la Chambre, Physician to Louis XIV, drew on arguments from the Aristotelian textbook tradition to suggest that brute animals might achieve an awareness of time through their passions, without the need for reason, a position Chanet fiercely opposed. However, such eclectic perspectives must be set in context. Few authors, either in the Aristotelian and scholastic traditions or in their wider penumbra, went as far as denying outright that the chief faculty of the soul by which we become aware of time is the intellect. 3. Time, Duration and Psychology Despite the anxieties expressed by many commentators, in some respects discussions of time and the soul in Aristotelian natural philosophy and the Physics tradition posited a straightforward relationship between the two. Aristotle’s text was admittedly obscure, but most early modern commentators agreed that the rational soul contributed something to the being of time: debate revolved around the precise nature of this contribution. But since they were chiefly concerned with the ontology of time, these commentaries had little to say about the roles time might play within the soul, or in explanations of how the soul engages with the external world. Consequently, some of the assumptions about time and duration familiar from natural philosophy seemed to sit uneasily with aspects of the science of the soul. The connection between time and the intellect was a case in point here. It was rarely true that the model of time and duration developed in natural philosophy could be applied directly to discussions of the soul. There were, as ever, some exceptions. Indeed, one commentator who made the connection between natural philosophical treatments of time and duration and psychology particularly explicit was the Italian Jesuit Hieronymus Dandinus (1554–1634), who inserted a long digression on ‘the duration of things’ into his commentary on book II of Aristotle’s De anima. Dandinus’s digression used material on time and duration and their connection to existence from Francisco Suárez’s Disputationes metaphysicae (1594) in a slightly eccentric attempt to claim that understanding these metaphysical issues was required background material for an account of the temperaments of the soul and the concept of life.15 However, Dandinus’s
15 See M. Edwards, ‘Digressing with Aristotle: Hieronymus Dandinus’ De corpore animato (1610) and the expansion of late Aristotelian philosophy,’ Early Science and Medicine, 13 (2008), 127–170.
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commentary was quite unusual in its determination to map these concepts across to psychology directly, ignoring any potential conflict between these two approaches to time and duration. A more typical approach was to think about time in terms of temporality, that is, to consider the soul’s relationship to changing temporal objects. Indeed, the dichotomy between temporality and atemporality, both inside and outside the soul, emphasized by almost all of these authors, was one of the best-known distinctions in late Aristotelian psychology. Most early modern De anima commentaries oriented the soul within a matrix constructed from well-known theological and metaphysical commitments, in which the soul related to the world of changing, material objects that endure in time, but, by virtue of its immortality, its rational part also engaged with the realm of eternal duration. The soul was, in a sense, the demarcating line between the corporeal and the spiritual, and thus also the horizon between the temporal and the eternal.16 The temporal functions of the soul, however, were those that both existed in time and engaged with objects in time— that is, with objects that have a beginning and an end and are subject to change. They were functions of the vegetative and sensitive souls, and particularly of the internal and external senses. The atemporal aspect of the soul, which was eternal and abstracted from temporal things, was the intellect. The intellect represented a special case in Aristotelian psychology, because the rational faculties were the only parts of the soul that were unique to man or, as Keckermann argued, ‘one of the properties of man, insofar as he is man.’17 The human intellect was incorporeal, eternal, enduring in a different manner to the soul’s other, corporeal powers, and survived after the death of the body. As the intellect was eternal, it was divorced from the temporal duration of the corporeal body and of the sensitive and vegetative souls, and was concerned with atemporal universals, rather than with the particulars of lived experience: as Aquinas had argued, whilst sense knows beings according to ‘the here and now,’ the intellect ‘apprehends
16 This formulation, from Toletus’s De anima commentary, is found in D. Des Chene, Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul, Ithaca (NY) 2000, 19. Its source is most probably the anonymous Liber de causis, ed. A. Pattin, Le Liber de causis. Edition établie à l’ aide de 90 manuscrits avec introduction et notes, Leuven 1966, 5080–82. 17 Keckermann, Operum, 1525: ‘Distinguenda est memoria sensualis, de qua hoc loco agitur, a memoria intellectuali, de qua agetur suo loco circa proprietates hominis, quatenus homo est.’ The formula recalls Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 79, a. 6, Roma 1889 (Opera omnia, 5), 271.
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being absolutely, and according to all time.’18 Johannes Magirus, who studied under Zabarella at Padua and served as professor of natural philosophy and physiology at Marburg university from 1591, argued that the rational soul is the measure of time, and not measured by time. For this reason, ‘it is above time, and does not sense the injuries of it.’19 In the Coimbra commentary, this distinction was reflected in the structure of the intellect itself, which is circular, and contrasts with the linear, temporal form of the senses.20 The intellect’s concern with universals made it atemporal, and this orientation was achieved by abstracting all material conditions from the phantasmata with which it is presented. As Magirus argued, ‘universals are known … through abstraction of time, place and of other circumstances’; the intellect abstracts the species of material things from ‘the externalities of place, time, figure, colour and other accidents, which do not concern the essence of the thing.’21 Similarly, the Jesuit author Franciscus Toletus noted that ‘the intellect acts by abstracting an object from place, time and present objects.’22 Time for these purposes was numbered among the non-essential accidents of singular entities; it was an attribute of particular bodies that revealed little about their essential form. The connection established by these authors between time, particularity, and singularity meant that man, as a rational animal who engages with objects that endure in time, must in a sense detach himself from time in order to exercise his rationality. To an extent, then, an
18 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 75, a. 6, 204: ‘Sensus autem non cognoscit esse nisi sub hic et nunc, sed intellectus apprehendit esse absolute, et secundum omne tempus.’ 19 Magirus, Physiologiae, 390: ‘Ad haec, ea sola sunt caduca, quae sunt in tempore: ea autem dicuntur esse in tempore, quae tempus mensurat: atqui animus est mensura temporis, non tempus animi, ideoque est supra tempus, neque illius sentit injurias.’ 20 Collegium Conimbricense, Commentarii in tres libros De anima Aristotelis, Köln 1629, 409–410: ‘Docet vero animam humanam cognoscere quidem rem singularem, eamque sensibilem sensitiva potentia: universalem vero vel potentia seperabili, id est diversa realiter, vel re quidem una, sed secundum rationem diversa: & quae se habeat ad seipsam ut linea inflexa ad semetipsam rectam. Sicut enim cum inflexa magnitudo in rectum porrigitur, eademet linea, quae antea flexa, seu curva erat, sit recta, neque tamen a se realiter, sed ratione tantum differt: ita fortassis (nec enim hic propositam controversiam ex toto dirimit) sese haberet facultas, qua universale, & qua singulare sensibile cognoscitur.’ 21 Magirus, Physiologiae, 590: ‘[Intellectus] … species rerum materiatas abstrahat, educat, purificet & tegumenta loci, temporis, figurae, quantitatis, coloris, aliorumque accidentium, quae nec rei concernunt essentiam …’ 22 F. Toletus, Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in Aristotelis libros De anima, Köln 1594, 166v: ‘Primo, Intellectus utitur abstractione obiecti a loco, & tempore, & praesentia obiecti: non autem sensus.’
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inherent tension between temporality and rationality was at the heart of all late Aristotelian accounts of the intellect. To be rational was to be able to perceive and number time, but also to rise above temporal things in exercising that rationality. These authors were thus at risk of committing themselves to two potentially contradictory positions. Treatments of time and the soul in natural philosophy textbooks and the tradition of commentaries on the Physics overwhelmingly argued that the intellect was a prerequisite for perceiving or understanding time, but, according to the scientia de anima tradition the intellect was itself distinct from time and the world of the temporal. This tension also informed accounts of the structure of the soul itself, because the temporal sensitive and vegetative powers of the soul were contrasted with the intellect. This contrast meant that the powers of the sensitive soul, such as perception, imagination and sensitive memory, were distinguished from intellection not only by their nature and operation, but also by time. The distinction that separated the highest functions of the soul from temporality might therefore be seen as diminishing the role of time in Aristotelian accounts of the soul. As I have suggested, it might also seem at odds with the argument in Physics IV that the intellect is central to the being of time. However, the association between the intellect and atemporality was less straightforward than it might seem from this cursory account, and some late Aristotelian authors explored the relationship between time and the intellect in a series of related discussions. Indeed, Ian Maclean has suggested that in fact one of the strengths of late Aristotelian psychology is the attention that it paid to time in relation to thought.23 I wish to develop this insight by considering some aspects of the account of the relationship between time and the intellect given by these authors. This relationship between time and the intellect was developed through discussions of several related issues: the question of time, knowledge and self-knowledge, and the phenomenon of intellectual memory (as opposed to sensitive memory). Although these issues were discussed separately by most authors, they can be seen as part of a broader approach to the question of how the ‘atemporal’ intellect related to time and duration.
23 I. Maclean, ‘Language in the Mind: Reflexive Thinking in the Late Renaissance,’ in: C. Blackwell and S. Kusukawa (eds.), Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Conversations with Aristotle, Aldershot 1999, 296–321, esp. 299, 320.
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4. Time, Intellection and Self-Understanding I have suggested that one could view late Aristotelian philosophy as having inherited two conflicting models of the relationship between time and the soul: one in which the intellect is central to time, and another in which it is distinguished from the temporal world. However, whilst almost all De anima commentaries agreed that the intellect dealt with universals abstracted from the material conditions of time and place, it was not atemporal in the sense of having no relation whatsoever to time. Many late Aristotelian authors argued that, although the intellect does not directly know objects existing in time, it must operate within time—that is, it must understand and position itself within a temporal world. The question of whether intellection is a temporal process that produces universal concepts which exist in time and endure was thus a significant one in late Aristotelian psychology. Aristotle’s text suggested several ways in which intellection involved time, but the most commonly discussed was the passage at De anima III.6, 430b6–20, where he considered the distinction between thinking about indivisible and divisible objects.24 Indivisible objects are understood in cases where there is no question of truth or falsity, because truth and falsehood involve compounding thoughts into a unity; as the Coimbra commentator pointed out, in these cases, the notion of time might also taken into account, in that a statement may be true or false in time: it might be accurate to connect the terms ‘Socrates’ and ‘sick’ whilst he is unwell, but not at other times, for example.25 Aristotle’s enigmatic passage produced an interest in the concept of understanding in time amongst later commentators. The Coimbra commentator, for example, paraphrased De anima III.6, 430b6–20 in arguing that the intellect understands magnitude in a twofold way: One way, as it is potentially divisible, and thus it understands a line, by numbering one part after another: and thus in time, or successively. In the other way, as it is actually individual; and thus it perceives it as one thing that is composed of many parts and thus all at once. And therefore it connects time and longitude, understanding it similarly to be divided and not divided.
24 Aristotle, De anima, transl. J.A. Smith, in: J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle, Princeton (NJ) 1984 (Bollingen series, 71/2), 1: 641–692, at 684. 25 Collegium Conimbricense, De anima, 459–460: ‘Nam, verbi gratia, morbus & Socrates cohaerent inter se, dum Socrates aegrotat; si quis tamen pronuntiet Socratem aegrotasse, mutato praesenti tempore in praeteritum, falsum dixerit.’
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michael edwards Whence it cannot be said, that when that which is understood lacks parts, that half of it is understood in half the time, but all at once: just as if it were to have parts, the different parts would correspond to different parts of time.26
Similarly, Zanardi argued in his account of the passive intellect that its operations are twofold, one indivisible, ‘by which a thing is simply apprehended’, and the other ‘is called composition and division, by which a thing is apprehended incommensurably with another.’27 The two operations differ not only because simple understanding does not allow a distinction between truth and falsehood, but also because ‘the first is prior to the second, since we first understand a thing simply, before we compare it through reason with another.’28 The notion of indivisibility in an object that we understand, Zanardi argued, can be understood in three ways: Firstly, as it is a whole, not dividing it into parts, and thus it has a principle of indivisibility according to perception, and according to time, since it is also understood in indivisible time. Secondly, as the whole is divided into parts, understanding then the whole and the parts, and thus it is also divided according to time, as every part of the object corresponds to a part of time. Thirdly, as all the parts are understood together at once, and thus time corresponds proportionally to them. The second indivisibility is called according to form, as it is a simple thing, such as man, air, or water, etc. These things are understood as indivisibles in indivisible time, and if they are understood as divisible things, in divisible time, that is per accidens, because in themselves, that is, as forms, they are not divisible.29
26 Collegium Conimbricense, De anima, 461–462: ‘Potest nimirum intellectus magnitudinem dupliciter intelligere; Uno modo, ut est divisibilis potentia, sicque intelligit lineam, numerando partem post partem: atque adeo in tempore, sive successive. Altero, ut est individua actu: & ita percipit eam, ut unum quid ex multis partibus constitutum, atque adeo simul. Ideoque subiungit tempus, & longitudinem similiter dividi, & non dividi intelligendo, Unde dici non potest, cum id, quod intelligitur, partibus caret, dimidium eius intelligi medietate temporis, sed simul: quemadmodum si partes habeat, diversis partibus respondere poterunt diversae partes temporis.’ 27 M. Zanardi, Commentaria cum quaestionibus in tres libros De anima Aristotelis, Köln 1622, 141. 28 Zanardi, De anima, 141: ‘Secundo, quia primo est secunda prior, cum rem prius simpliciter intelligamus, antequam cum alterius ratione eam comparemus.’ 29 Zanardi, De anima, 142: ‘Primo ut totum, non dividendo ipsum in partes, & sic habet rationem indivisibilis secundum appraehensionem, & tempus, cum etiam intelligatur in tempore indivisibili. Secundo ut totum divisum in partes, intelligendo tunc totum, & partes, & sic dividitur etiam secundum tempus, quis cuilibet parti pars temporis correspondet. Tertio ut simul cum intelliguntur omnes partes, & sic ei proportionaliter correspondet tempus. Secundum indivisibile dicitur secundum formam quia est res simplex, ut homo, aer, & aqua &c haec intelliguntur, ut indivisibilia in tempore indivisibili, & si intelligantur in tempore divisibile, ut divisibilia, hoc est per accidens, quia secundum se, scilicet ut formae, non habent, quod sint divisibiles.’
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These arguments about intellection in divisible and indivisible time suggest that late Aristotelian authors developed notions present in De anima to consider time as a kind of medium in which thought occurred—either as an indivisible instant, or now, or as a continuum, both concepts recognisable from discussions of time in natural philosophy. These discussions concerned the intellection of objects and concepts outside the soul. However, another strand of argument concerned the intellect’s reflexive understanding of itself, which for some authors also involved questions of time. Unlike the external senses, which cannot sense their own operation, in Aristotelian psychology the intellect has the capacity to become aware both of its operation, and of itself more generally. This notion of reflexive thought produced a complex and sophisticated debate amongst late Renaissance Aristotelians, centred on the exposition of the passage from De anima III.4, 429b9–11, that in Latin usually read ‘intellectus ipse autem seipsum tunc potest intelligere’.30 Time played a significant role within this discourse for authors such as Dandinus, who argued that the question of whether the intellect understands itself necessarily involves time, at least in part because of the role of temporal sequence within the soul. In a sense, Dandinus cashed out the broad connection between time in natural philosophy and psychology first established in his digression ‘On the duration of things’ by integrating time into his discussion of this topic. Firstly, he suggested, the distinction in reflexivity between the active and the possible intellect (which he characterized as different modes of the same intellectual power), in which the passive intellect may know itself but the active cannot, is predicated upon time; he seems to have believed that a temporal distinction between active and passive intellects is also what separates them in relation to reflexivity.31 Most scholastic authors discussing time and the intellect considered Aristotle’s statement that in the individual potential knowledge is prior in time to actual knowledge, which they transformed into the argument that the 30 See Maclean, ‘Language in the Mind.’ In William of Moerbeke’s translation, the passage runs as follows: ‘Est quidem igitur et tunc potencia quodam modo, non tamen similiter et ante addiscere aut inuenire. Et ipse autem se ipsum tunc potest intelligere’ (Aristotle, De anima, Translatio nova, ed. R.-A. Gauthier, in: Thomas Aquinas, Sentencia libri de anima, Roma, Paris 1984 [Opera omnia, 45/1], 208). 31 H. Dandinus, De corpore animato libri VII, luculentus in Aristotelis tres De anima libros commentarius peripateticus, Paris 1610, 1885: ‘Particula vero illa (tunc) duo mihi significat. Primum est; eandem esse intellectum substantiam, quae potestate dicitur, & habitu; & antea quidem, cum in sola potestate versaretur, cognoscere seipsum nequit, post vero aliorum intellectilium habitibus perfectus potest. Non enim diversam vox illa facultatem & substantiam cognoscentem, sed cognoscendi tempus significat.’
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possible intellect precedes the active, suggesting that a form of temporal sequence may exist within the process of intellection.32 Dandinus focused particularly on the temporal implications of the word ‘tunc’ (‘then’) in De anima III.4, 429b9–11. He argued that the crucial points in this passage are the ‘time and manner’ of the intellect’s reflexivity. Thus, ‘By these words (“Et ipse tunc seipsum potest intelligere”) Aristotle does not intend so much to affirm that the intellect understands itself, as to show the time and manner of this understanding.’33 Consequently: The time and manner of understanding have great obscurity. The time, because from its first origin and by the condition of its nature it does not lack only this, but every end of cognition. The manner, since although it is an immaterial abstract substance, like other intellects, nevertheless it does not exist in the same manner as them, but is the form of the body.34
The intellect cannot know itself in the same way as it knows other things, through sense and phantasms, because it is immaterial and incorporeal. The time at which the intellect knows itself is therefore ‘when it has become the singular things and has been perfected by the dispositions of the other cognitions’.35 The active intellect cannot know itself until it has been perfected by all other cognitions; that is, only when it has knowledge of all other singulars and, in a sense, becomes those things. Only then (‘tunc’) will it understand itself. Time in this sense is a kind of turning point about which reflexive thought is balanced. This fragmentary discussion of the intellect’s reflexivity in time, which was echoed by some other late Aristotelian authors, in some respects parallels Zanardi’s and the Coimbra commentator’s discussions of intellection in its insistence that the intellect, for all its atemporality, may in fact operate in time in some, complex, circumstances.
32 See for example F. Liceti, De intellectu agente libri V, Passau 1627, 290; J.B. Rubeus, Commentaria dilucida in tres libros Aristotelis De anima, Venezia 1602, 71; and Dandinus, De corpore animato, 2000. 33 Dandinus, De corpore animato, 1885: ‘Alterum; Aristotelem verbis hisce non tam asserere intellectum seipsum cognoscere, quam tempus & modum cognitionis ostendere.’ 34 Dandinus, De corpore animato, 1885: ‘Tempus autem & modus cognoscendi obscuritatem habebant plurimam. Tempus; quoniam a primo ortu & naturae suae conditione non hac modo, sed omni prorsus cognitione caret. Modus vero; quoniam etsi immaterialis & abstracta substantia sit, ut intellectus caeteri; non eodem tamen modo se habet, quo illi; sed corporis forma est.’ 35 Dandinus, De corpore animato, 1885: ‘Tempus igitur illud est, cum singula factus & aliarum cognitionum habitibus perfectus fuerit. Modum autem hunc indicat, qui ex caeterum rerum cognitione deducitur. Cum enim eum scribit seipsum tunc intelligere, cum fuerit singula factus resque alias cognoverit: Profecto cognitionem eam significat antecedere oportere, veluti necessariam ad illum in sui ipsius cognitionem inducendum.’
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5. Intellectual Memory Discussions of intellectual memory raised questions of whether, and for how long, intelligible species and mental concepts endure. They also represented some of the most sustained discussions of the connection between time and the intellect in late Aristotelian psychology. The phenomenon of intellectual memory was understood to parallel sensitive memory, in that it conserved intelligible species and mental concepts after the process of intellection was complete. It had two features that particularly interested late Aristotelian authors: its ability to conserve past mental concepts, and its role in the separated soul. Intellectual memory as a means of preserving thoughts after death had important theological implications that these authors developed in different ways. Disagreements between Scotist and Thomist authors were also fundamental to this debate. Scotist authors such as Hugo Cavellus (c. 1571–1626), Bartholomaeus Mastrius (1602–1673) and Bonaventura Belluti (1600–1676) supported the notion of intellectual memory. Cavellus, who was professor of theology in Louvain and Rome and later bishop of Armagh, argued in his questions on De anima that experience shows ‘we must recall our acts, otherwise we could not delight or despair of the past: and it cannot be said that this is done through sensitive memory, because we do penance for evil spiritual acts, which sense does not know.’36 He dismissed the objection that the intellect only knows universals, which ‘are abstracted from past and future,’ by arguing that although the intellect does not know singulars in themselves (‘sub ratione singularitatis’), it does know them in some respects.37 Arguments for the intellection of singulars were characteristic of the Scotist position on intellectual memory. However, although intellectual
36 H. Cavellus, Doctoris Subtilis Ioannis Duns Scoti quaestiones super libris Aristotelis De anima … & commentario, seu annotationibus longioribus illustratae atque discussae, Lyon 1625, 333: ‘Dico primo datur intellectiva memoria. Patet experientia, quia recordamur actuum nostrorum, alioquin de praeteritis nec gaudere, nec dolere possemus: nec dici potest hoc fieri per memoriam sensitivam, quia poenitentiam agimus de malis actibus spiritualibus, quos sensus non novit.’ On Cavellus, see C.H. Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, II. Renaissance Authors, Firenze 1988 (Corpus philosophorum Medii Aevi, Subsidia, 6), 87. 37 Cavellus, De anima, 333: ‘Obiicies primo, obiectum intellectus est universale, 1 phys. & 2 de anim. & hoc abstrahit a fuisse, & fore; ergo non datur memoria intellectiva, quia haec respicit necessaria fuisse. Respondetur antecedens verum esse, quoad intellectionem scientificarum tantum, qualis est sola abstractiva: ostensum enim est supra q22 singulare intelligi posse a nobis: Dices, sed intellectus pro nunc non cognoscit singulare qua tale; ergo non recordatur. Respondetur sufficere quod cognoscat singulare, esto non sub ratione singularitatis.’
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memory preserves thoughts even after death, it is not formally distinct from the intellect itself. Cavellus argued that ‘intellectual memory is really the intellect itself.’38 The identification of intellectual memory with the intellect itself depended on Cavellus’s concept of the twofold structure of memory. Memory, he suggested, can be seen as the conservation of species, And in this sense, it is nothing other than the intellect itself, insofar as it conserves them; by which it is given the ability to produce these intellections, and thus it is called ‘productive memory’ (memoria foecunda).39
The second aspect of memory is ‘the conservation of past things as such, and it is called ‘recall’ (recordatio)—that is, the cognition of a past act as such.’40 This second aspect takes two forms, remote and proximate, depending on whether the past act occurred to the being that remembers, or was performed by it.41 The first form of memory involves the possible intellect as it is informed by intelligible species; as this process elicits an action, the intellect knows or understands, and as it conserves the species, it exhibits the second form of memory.42 Cavellus’s discussion of intellectual memory was informed by its theological significance, and his disputation on the separated soul considered whether the intellect can recall the acts that it performed whilst conjoined with the body. His account also demonstrated a key characteristic of contemporary discussions of intellectual memory: a concern with the rational human subject acting in time. If the intellect makes us human, then intellectual memory preserves our actions, thoughts and, to an extent, our identity as a subject in and through time. Mastrius and Belluti’s treatment of intellectual memory in their comprehensive Scotist course was less sophisticated than that of Cavellus. It simply treated intellectual memory as ‘the power of conserving past species insofar as they are past, which is consequently called “recall” (recordativa)’.43 38
Cavellus, De anima, 333–334. Cavellus, De anima, 332: ‘Nota primo duplicter sumi memoria. Primo prout dicit conservationem specierum, & hoc sensu, nihil aliud est, quam ipse intellectus, ut eas conservat, quibus efficitur potens producere intellectiones, & sic, vocatur memoria foecunda.’ 40 Cavellus, De anima, 333: ‘Secundo modo, ut est conservativa praeteritorum qua talia, & dicitur recordatio, quae est cognitio actus praeteriti, qua talis.’ 41 Cavellus, De anima, 333. 42 Cavellus, De anima, 333–334: ‘Intellectus ergo ut specie informatus, est memoria foecunda; ut actum eliciens, intellectus vel intelligentia; ut conservans species ad recognoscenda obiecta eam cognita, & ipsas cognitiones, memoria recordativa.’ 43 B. Mastrius and B. Belluti, Philosophiae ad mentem Scoti cursus integer, Venezia 1727, 154: ‘Sed nunquid concedenda est etiam in parte intellectiva memoria sumpta pro potentia, conservativa specierum praeteritorum, quatenus praeterita sunt, quae proinde recordativa dicitur …’ 39
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Mastrius and Belluti opposed this position to what they called the Thomist argument that ‘because the object of the intellect is universal, that abstracts from past and future, therefore intellectual memory, which is recollection, cannot exist, only sensitive memory.’44 This position amounted to a denial that the intellect operates in time. This was opposed both by Scotus and by common experience, they suggested, because ‘we experience that we recall our past concepts of things that are not only universal, which we have known once and cannot be related to sensitive memory, but also of singular things.’45 Scotus argued that ‘we remember our evil spiritual actions, that are not attributed to sense, and do penance for them by recognizing them with their circumstances of place and time.’46 Like Cavellus, Mastrius and Belluti concluded with a discussion of the role of intellectual memory in the separated soul.47 Intellectual memory was not an exclusively Scotist phenomenon. The Thomist commentary of the Collegium Complutense, for example, cited Aquinas and argued that intellectual memory is ‘the ability to conserve intelligible species, and also the power of handling an intelligible object, as it was formerly known.’48 Intelligible species must be preserved for some time in the possible intellect, because they were received there for a period of time.49 Like the Scotists, the Alcalá commentator did not distinguish intellectual memory from the possible intellect.50 This was because the possible
44 Mastrius and Belluti, Cursus, 154: ‘Negat D Thom ppq 79 art. 4 & 1 contra gentes c. 74 fundamentum eius est, quia objectum intellectus est universale, quod abstrahit a fuisse, & fore, ergo non datur memoria intellectiva, quae sit recordativa, sed tantum sensitiva.’ 45 Mastrius and Belluti, Cursus, 154: ‘& patet experientia, experimur enim nos recordari praeteritorum conceptuum rerum non tantum universalium, quas semel cognovimus, nec potest attingere memoria sensitiva, sed etiam singularium …’ 46 Mastrius and Belluti, Cursus, 154: ‘… imo & nos de praeteritis actibus spiritualibus malis, quos sensus non attingit, poenitentiam agimus, illos recognitando cum suis circumstantiis loci, & temporis …’ 47 Mastrius and Belluti, Cursus, 154. 48 Collegium Complutense, Disputationes in tres libros Aristotelis De anima, Paris 1633, 492: ‘Dicendum est primo, si memoria sumatur pro potentia spirituali habente: tum virtutem conservativam specierum intelligibilium, tum etiam vim attingendum obiectum intelligibile, ut antea cognitum; revera in parte intellectiva dandam esse memoriam.’ 49 Collegium Complutense, De anima, 493: ‘Quoniam necesse est, ut species intelligibiles receptae in intellectu possibili saltem per aliquod tempus, ibidem conserventur.’ 50 Collegium Complutense, De anima, 497: ‘Nam propterea idem visus potest percipere quodlibet visibile, qua quodlibet continenter sub suo obiecto, scilicet visibile: ergo cum ens in esse intellecti contineatur sub ratione entis: consequens est, ut intellectus possibilis, qui versatur circa ens in communi, possit etiam versari circa illud in esse intellecti, quod, ut modo dicebamus, est proprium officium memoriae intellectivae.’
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intellect can receive and conserve intelligible species, and therefore it can also ‘understand its own object as formerly understood,’ that is, understand that it is past.51 The Coimbra commentary on the Parva naturalia adopted a similar position. The Coimbra commentator cited Aquinas’s opinion on whether the conservation of intellectual species is properly memory.52 Aquinas had argued that, although sensitive memory necessarily involves an awareness of the condition of past time, which is bound up with the singular conditions of being, this does not automatically rule out the existence of a distinct intellectual memory conceived of as an operation of the possible intellect that conserves intelligible species abstracted from material conditions.53 The Coimbra commentator’s discussion of the relationship between intellectual memory and the intellect itself followed a similar pattern to that of the Alcalá commentary. He also cited the mental triad of memory, intellect and will found in Augustine’s De Trinitate as evidence against the identification of intellectual memory and the possible intellect.54 Nevertheless, he argued for a real identification between the two powers, because the possible intellect, as the ‘place or storehouse of species’, performs the function of memory in conserving those species.55 Also, the principle of economy
51 Collegium Complutense, De anima, 497: ‘Nam intellectus possibilis potest recipere, & conservare species intelligibiles, ut in priori assertione diximus: ergo potest intelligere suum obiectum antea intellectum; atque adeo poterit habere rationem memoriae intellectivae.’ 52 Collegium Conimbricense, Commentarii in libros Aristotelis qui Parva naturalia appellantur, Köln 1631, 3–4. 53 Collegium Conimbricense, Parva naturalia, 3. The relevant passage is Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, II, c. 74, Roma 1918 (Opera omnia, 13), 470b: ‘Memoria vero in parte sensitiva ponitur, quia est alicuius prout cadit sub determinato tempore: non est enim nisi praeteriti. Et ideo, cum non abstrahatur a singularibus conditionibus, non pertinet ad partem intellectivam, quae est universalium. Sed per hoc non excluditur quin intellectus possibilis sit conservativus intelligibilium, quae abstrahuntur ab omnibus conditionibus particularibus.’ 54 Collegium Conimbricense, Parva naturalia, 4: ‘Accedit testimonium D. Augustini 10. de Trinit. c11. ubi tria in mente constituit, memoriam, intelligentiam & voluntatem: additque horum unum, nempe intelligentiam, oriri ex memoria. Cum igitur nihil ex se ipso oriatur, patet, memoriam & intellectum non eandem esse animi facultatem, sed aut re, aut saltem essentia inter se distingui.’ 55 Collegium Conimbricense, Parva naturalia, 4–5: ‘Asserendum tamen est; intellectum & memoriam intellectivam, unam eandemque esse animi facultatem, nec re, nec specie diversam. Primum, quia eiusdem est, servare habitus & iit uti: at intellectus servat habitus memorandi, id est, species intelligibiles; ut docet Aristoteles lib. 3. de anima cap. 4. tex. 7. ubi intellectum patientem appellat locum, seu thesaurum specierum. Quare idem intellectus eademq; facultas erit, quae iis utitur intelligendo & memorando.’
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dictated that needlessly multiplying mental faculties is unnecessary.56 Identifying the ability to record the past with the intellect itself gave the rational soul a temporal aspect and connected it to questions of identity and the persistence of the subject in time. Thomist and Jesuit commentators followed Aquinas’s treatment of intellectual memory closely, and were also frequently influenced by Augustine’s trinitarian model of memory and the intellect. However, although Aquinas’s discussion was always influential, Protestant authors typically adhered less strictly to the Thomist or Scotist reading, and often produced more eclectic accounts of intellectual memory. Bartholomaeus Keckermann argued that intellectual memory concerns man insofar as he is human, and depends on sensitive memory just as the intellect depends on sense.57 The intellect itself has two powers or capacities, ‘the power of knowing’ and ‘the power of conserving,’ which is intellectual memory.58 Intellectual memory consists of ‘the power of conserving images of objects known by the intellect’.59 It is divided into primary and secondary aspects. Primary intellectual memory is ‘that by which images formed and judged by the intellect are strengthened, sustained and confirmed so that they might not vanish.’60 This power of conservation depends on the process of intellection that preceded it, and can therefore be distinguished according to the divisions that Keckermann applied to the intellect itself: Therefore just as the intellect is either more perfect, or more imperfect, without being either simple or composite, thus memory is clearly either more perfect or more imperfect.61
56 Collegium Conimbricense, Parva naturalia, 5: ‘Tertio, quia frustra ponitur facultatum multitudo, ubi satis est una eademq; potentia: sat est autem una potentia ad intelligendum & recordandum, non minus quam ad apprehendum & judicandum.’ 57 Keckermann, Operum, 1525: ‘I. Distinguenda est memoria sensualis, de qua hoc loco agitur, a memoria intellectuali, de qua agetur suo loco circa proprietates hominis, quatenus homo est. II. Interim tamen sicut intellectus pendet a sensu: ita quoque memoria intellectualis pendet a memoria sensuali.’ 58 Keckermann, Operum, 1618–1619: ‘Intellectus hominis duplicem in se vim habet, atque ita etiam dupliciter distinguitur; nempe in vim cognoscendi, de qua hactenus, & in vim cognita conservandi, de qua nunc agendum est.’ 59 Keckermann, Operum, 1619: ‘Intellectualis vero memoria est vis conservandi imagines obiectorum intellectu cognitorum.’ 60 Keckermann, Operum, 1619: ‘Est autem memoria intellectualis vel prima, vel orta. Prima memoria est, qua imagines ab intellectu formatae & diiudicatae firmantur, sistuntur & confirmantur ne evanescant.’ 61 Keckermann, Operum, 1619: ‘Sicut ergo intellectio est vel perfectior, vel imperfectior, sine vel simplex, vel composita; ita plane memoria est vel perfectior, vel imperfectior.’
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Perfect memory, ‘by which images of simple objects are conserved’, equates to the simple intellect.62 As the simple intellect and its memory relate to things themselves, they can be termed ‘principal’; as they relate to words describing those things, they are called ‘less principal’.63 The knowledge of words depends on the knowledge of things, and is consequently less perfect; according to Keckermann, the same argument applies to our memory of these things. The principle that the understanding and memory of imperfect entities depends on that of perfect entities is also extended to the level of being itself, for Keckermann argued that our memory of imperfect or fictitious beings depends on our memory of real beings.64 Composite memory, on the other hand, relates to objects and concepts that the simple intellect has composed or constructed through words: ‘Imperfect or composite memory is that through which we conserve things, as much as words, which have been conjoined or composed.’65 This form of verbal intellectual memory concerns propositions and syllogisms, but depends on the memory of simple words. Keckermann’s account of intellectual memory explored the secondary functions of the Aristotelian intellect to a greater extent than that of many other commentators. Consequently, he offered a sophisticated model of how particular past mental operations are recorded and processed. However, although discussions of the role of intellectual memory were widespread in the late Renaissance Aristotelian tradition, not all authors accepted that the intellect possessed a temporal dimension in this way. Indeed, the opposite position—that thoughts and mental concepts have only a momentary existence in the mind—which is associated with Avicenna was adopted by several authors. The most influential of these was Iacopo Zabarella, who argued in his treatment of intelligible species in the De rerum naturalibus and in his commentary on De anima that ‘impressed species (species impressae) neither precede intellection in time, nor can
Keckermann, Operum, 1619. Keckermann, Operum, 1620: ‘Sicut etiam intellectus simplex est vel principalis, nempe ipsarum rerum; vel minus principalis, nempe verborum: ita etiam memoria simplex principaliter est rerum memoria, minus principaliter autem verborum.’ 64 Keckermann, Operum, 1620: ‘Denique intellectio improprie dicta, quae est non entium, pendet ab intellectione proprie dicta sive verorum entium; ita quoque memoria entium fictorum per omnia dependet a memoria entium verorum.’ 65 Keckermann, Operum, 1620: ‘Memoria imperfectior sive composita est per quam conservamus tam res, quam verba coniuncta sive composita.’ 62 63
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remain after it.’66 Zabarella based his argument on the works of Avicenna and Averroes, arguing that there can be no intelligible species in the intellect except when intellection actually occurs.67 He noted that ‘if species were imprinted in the intellect in the manner of a habit, then the intellect would necessarily always understand them’: however, he argues, this is manifestly false.68 Species cannot be imprinted on the possible intellect unless they are abstracted from matter ‘and denuded of material conditions.’ But this process of abstraction constitutes an act of the intellect, and to locate species in the intellect without an act of intellection implies a contradiction.69 According to Zabarella, for intelligible species or mental concepts to remain in the possible intellect would mean that the intellect always thinks, which is impossible. This position, which was supported by Descartes but famously ridiculed by Locke in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, almost amounted to attributing eternal duration to the process of intellection.70 Whilst many late Aristotelian authors agreed that intellection occurs in time, few made it eternal. Zabarella’s position rested on the notion that cognition and conservation are two formally distinct mental powers that cannot be combined in the same organ or faculty.71 It is also impossible for one faculty to perform
J. Zabarella, De rebus naturalibus libri XXX, Frankfurt 1607, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1966, 899: ‘Species impressae nec praecedere intellectionem tempore, nec post eam servari possint …’ 67 Zabarella, De rebus naturalibus, 899: ‘Ad hoc demonstrandum nullum est efficacius argumentum illo, quod a D. Thoma refertur, tanquam argumentum Avicennae in I. part. Summae, quaest. 79. artic. 6.’ 68 Zabarella, De rebus naturalibus, 899: ‘Si species ad modum habitus imprimetur in intellectu, intellectus necessario eam semper intelligeret: consequens manifeste falsum est.’ 69 Zabarella, De rebus naturalibus, 899–900: ‘Species non potest imprimi in intellectu, nisi abiuncta a materia, & nudata conditionibus materialibus; at secundum Aristotelem in contextu 15. & 16. lib. 3 de Anima, omne abiunctum a materia est actu intelligibile, immo est actu intellectum, immo est idem quod intellectio, & quod intellectus ipse; ergo species in intellectu impressa intellectio ipsa est, idque asserit expresse Aristoteles in contex. 15.20.27.37. libri 3 de Anima; igitur ponere in intellectu speciem sine intellectione est pugnantia dicere, & implicare contradictionem, quia tantum abest ut species in intellectu esse posse sine intellectione, ut potius sit ipsamet intellectio.’ 70 The relevant passage is J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, I, 10, ed. P.H. Nidditch, Oxford 1979, 108–109. 71 Zabarella, De rebus naturalibus, 900: ‘Ad huius autem veritatis confirmationem notandum est artificium naturae in facultatibus animae sentientis: quum enim oportuerit duas in hac animae parte inesse vires, unam cognoscendi, altera retinendi, ac conservandi imagines rerum, natura non tribuit eidem facultati, neq; eidem organo utramq; vim simul, sed voluit memoria, quae conservativa est, non esse cognoscitiva, & imaginativa, quae est cognoscitiva, non esse conservativam.’ 66
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several functions at the same time, ‘just as it is impossible for matter to have several specific forms.’72 Zabarella also cited Averroes, who argued that intelligible species, like their sensible counterparts, remain only as long as the object from which they are derived. Therefore, just as the species of colour remains whilst the real colour is present, intelligible species remain only whilst the phantasm from which they are abstracted is present.73 In this section, Zabarella attacked the role of time in intellection in several ways. Firstly, he denied that mental concepts endure, and that the intellect has a specifically temporal component. Secondly, he denied that temporal sequence plays a role in the intellect by denying that intelligible species precede or remain ‘in time’ after intellection. These arguments were also found to an extent in his treatment of sense.74 Zabarella’s denial of intellectual memory may be related to his Averroist position on the immortality of the soul, but it also represented a broader rejection of the notion that the intellect has a temporal component. In this respect, it was directed against both the Scotist and Thomist positions, and also against a more general current in late Renaissance Aristotelianism.75 Zabarella’s position was influential amongst many later Aristotelian authors, particularly in northern Europe. Certainly, echoes of his position on time and the intellect are evident in the textbooks of Magirus. Like Zabarella, Magirus questioned whether the continued duration of intelligible species in the intellect means that it must continually understand, and argued that ‘species impressae neither precede intellection, nor remain in the intellect after intellection.’76 However, Magirus did not deny intellectual memory, but instead suggested that intellection as a process of imprinting
72 Zabarella, De rebus naturalibus, 900: ‘Quare si phantasia, quae cognoscitiva est, conservaret etiam phantasmata recepta, & memoria, quae est conservativa, cognosceret etiam imagines in ea servatas, cognosceret multa simul eodem momento, quod penitus impossibile est; quoniam contemplari, vel imaginari eodem tempore plura ita est impossibile, ut est impossibile materiam simul habere plures formas specificas.’ 73 Zabarella, De rebus naturalibus, 902: ‘Cognovit Averroes formas intelligibiles ita esse in intellectu, ut sunt res sensiles in organo sensus, nimirum praesente solum obiecto; tandiu enim inest species coloris in oculo, quandiu praesens est realis color; ab hoc enim pendet in fieri, & in conservari: sic tandiu est in intellectu species intelligibilis, quandiu est in phantasia phantasma actu, & cessante phantasmate cessat intellectio, & species intelligibilis evanescit, quoniam a phantasmate pendet in esse, & in conservari: quo sit ut intellectio formaliter sit praesentia speciei in intellectu, causaliter vero sit praesentia phantasmatis actu in phantasia.’ 74 See Edwards, ‘Time and Perception,’ 236–237. 75 Zabarella, De rebus naturalibus, 901, 902–903. 76 Magirus, Physiologiae, 603.
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intelligible species cannot be temporal. This was a reduced version of the argument found in Zabarella and Avicenna. Magirus did not have any apparent theological objection to the concept of intellectual memory, nor did he develop arguments against the temporality of the intellect itself. Instead, he followed Zabarella only in his objection to conceiving of mental processes such as sense and intellection as temporal sequences. This reading, from an author who in other respects was strongly influenced by Zabarella, indicates the limited weight given to arguments against the role of time in the intellect in the early seventeenth century. Criticisms of Avicenna’s argument appeared in a range of texts from this period, and late Aristotelian authors were more likely to reject the idea that intellection involves temporal sequence than to deny intellectual memory. 5. Conclusion: Time and the Soul, in between Disciplines I began by highlighting the uncertain voice in which so many sixteenthand seventeenth-century Aristotelian and scholastic authors discussed the question of time, and particularly the connection between time and the intellect. The reasons that they most commonly gave for this apparent anxiety were in part textual, and it was indeed difficult for even charitable readers to unpack some of Aristotle’s claims in Physics IV. However, it is also true that some of this uncertainty must have stemmed from the difficulty of negotiating the place of time within the distinct discourses of the Physics commentary tradition and the De anima tradition. Concepts of time drawn from other areas of natural philosophy could be drawn directly into psychology, as in Dandinus’s eclectic commentary, but such an approach was untypical. A pessimistic interpretation of the dialogue between time in psychology and natural philosophy might emphasize the inherent discontinuity and inconsistencies produced by this approach, and the extent to which it fuelled the ambiguity and uncertainty to which most early modern Aristotelians confessed when faced by the problem of time. The authors discussed in this paper were not always able, given the textual and intellectual resources available to them, to give a unified account of this problem: in particular, the distinction between the ontology of time offered in Physics commentaries, and the vision both of time within the soul and of the intellect positioning itself within time in the De anima tradition, was never entirely bridged in this period. It is also possible, however, to see the willingness of these authors to think through the problem of time in a variety of contexts, if not exactly as a positive feature of their
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philosophy, at least as evidence of a readiness to conceptualize the problem in broader terms than those possible in the language of their opponents and critics. It is perhaps worth remembering that the self-confident alternatives proposed by critics of the scholastic philosophy of time such as Patrizi, Gassendi, Barrow, or Newton,77 which ultimately moved time firmly within the domain of a natural philosophy that held little place for the soul, had no anxiety about explaining the phenomenon of time, but also few insights into its connection with psychology.
77 See, inter alia K. Schuhmann, ‘Zur Entstehung des neuzeitlichen Zeitbegriffs: Telesio, Patrizi, Gassendi,’ Philosophia Naturalis, 25 (1988), 35–64, and S. Hutton, ‘Some Renaissance Critiques of Aristotle’s Theory of Time,’ Annals of Science, 34 (1977), 354–363.
WHEN THE MIND BECAME UN-NATURAL: DE LA FORGE AND PSYCHOLOGY IN THE CARTESIAN AFTERMATH
Gideon Manning*
1. Introduction Descartes’s notorious conclusion that mind and body can exist independently of one another seems to imply that psychology, which studies the mind, and physics, which studies the body, must be similarly independent.1 In the Principia philosophiae, for example, Descartes describes his efforts in physics to ‘accept, or require’ only the principles ‘of geometry and pure mathematics; these principles explain all natural phenomena, and enable us to provide quite certain demonstrations.’2 Psychology, by contrast, only exploits the techniques of practiced introspection to discover innate ideas, *
It is a pleasure to thank Lilli Alanen for sharing her work with me, but especially Paul Bakker, Sander de Boer and Cees Leijenhorst for their helpful suggestions. I also wish to acknowledge an award from the Reeve’s Center for International Studies at the College of William and Mary, which provided me with research support in the summer of 2007. 1 ‘Physica’ is a much older word than ‘psychologia’, which appears for the first time in Germany in the sixteenth century, in J.T. Freigius’s Catalogus Locorum Communium of 1575, or possibly earlier in the lectures of Phillip Melanchthon. ‘Psychologia’ seems to have entered into boarder use, however, only after R. Goclenius used the term in the title of his Disputatio philosophica quadrupartita of 1596. But interestingly, Goclenius does not include ‘psychologia’ in his Lexicon philosophicum of 1613 and neither does its Greek equivalent appear in his Greek lexicon of 1615. ‘Psychologia’ does appear in J. Micraelius’s Lexicon philosophicum of 1653, where it is defined as the ‘doctrina de anima.’ See F.H. Lapointe, ‘Who Originated the Term “Psychology”?,’ Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 8 (1972), 328–335, and, especially, F. Vidal, The Sciences of the Soul: The Early Modern Origins of Psychology, transl. S. Brown, Chicago 2011. Provocative reflections on the history of psychology can also be found in G. Canguilhem, ‘Qu’ est-ce que la psychologie?,’ Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 63 (1958), 12–25. To my knowledge, Descartes never uses ‘pyschologia’ or its derivatives. 2 R. Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, in: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 1, transl. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch, Cambridge 1985, 179–291, at 247. For the original Latin, see C. Adam and P. Tannery (eds.), Oeuvres de Descartes, Paris 1996 (henceforth: AT), VIIIA, 78. The three volumes of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes will henceforth be cited as CSM 1 (transl. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch, Cambridge 1985), CSM 2 (transl. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch, Cambridge 1984), and CSMK (transl. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch and A. Kenny, Cambridge 1991).
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as taught in the Meditationes de Prima Philosophia. In Meditation Two, in particular, we each learn ‘I am … a thing that thinks; that is, I am a mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason—words whose meaning I have been ignorant of’ precisely because practiced introspection had yet to be exploited by psychologists.3 For Descartes, it looks as though psychology and physics are as independent as mind is from body. The full implications of Descartes’s dualism between mind and body can easily be seen if we accept two less controversial claims: (1) the natural world is identical with the physical world, as defined by the subject matter of physics or natural science, and (2) psychology—the study of the mind— qualifies as a science. Adding (1) and (2) to Descartes’s dualism, we can infer that (3) psychology is not a natural science but an un-natural science. It also follows that (4) the mind is not part of the natural world and therefore must be un-natural.4 There can be little doubt that (3) and (4) are rejected by psychologists and the majority of philosophers today, even if (1)–(4) are thought to accurately convey Descartes’s position. In this paper I will argue that Descartes does not unambiguously embrace (4). Rather, he blocks the chain of inferences from (1) to (4) by hesitating about psychology’s independence from physics. Interestingly, Descartes does this in a way that parallels a common Peripatetic hesitance on display in the commentary tradition on Aristotle’s De anima. More interestingly still, Descartes’s hesitance does not appear to trouble the majority of first generation Cartesians who, contrary to the current interpretive trend, allow physicists or natural scientists to study the mind. The exception, and the Cartesian who explicitly takes psychology out of the hands of the physicist and gives it to the metaphysician, is Louis de la Forge (1632–1666). This is the major claim defended in this paper: that it was De la Forge, and not Descartes, who first made the mind un-natural. To substantiate these claims, I begin in the next section by showing that the mind was considered part of the natural world by Aristotle and a number of Renaissance De anima commentators. In sections three and four, I turn
3 AT VII, 27; CSM 2, 18. Besides the idea of the mind, the other prominent innate ideas delivered by Descartes’s practiced introspection in the Meditationes are the ideas of God in Meditation Three and geometrical extension in Meditation Five. Significantly, one of the themes in the Meditationes is that the senses and sensory ideas are the obstacles to discovering innate ideas and the Meditationes is tasked with equipping us to distance ourselves from the senses in the pursuit of knowledge (see, e.g., AT VII, 162). By contrast, physics cannot proceed without relying on the senses (see, e.g., AT VI, 64–65). 4 AT III, 233, and again on 234.
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to Descartes and argue that we must resist efforts to portray him as rejecting the natural scientific study of the mind. Specifically, I identify the presence of two types of arguments in Descartes, one of which supports what I will call a ‘natural psychology’—‘the inclusion argument’—and one of which supports what I will call an ‘un-natural psychology’—‘the exclusion argument’. In section four, I trace these arguments into Louis de la Forge’s work and contrast his position with that of Antoine Le Grand, another prominent early Cartesian. I argue that unlike Le Grand, De la Forge shows no sensitivity to the inclusion arguments Descartes inherited from the De anima commentaries. As a result, De la Forge does not entertain the possibility of a natural psychology. I conclude, in section five, with two related suggestions about why De la Forge put psychology in the hands of the metaphysician: first, Descartes’s physics convinced De la Forge that the soul played no role in physiological explanation and, second, the occasionalism De la Forge found in Descartes prompted De la Forge to argue that the mind was causally unaffected by the body. Together these two beliefs severed the connection between the mind and the natural world, rendering the mind wholly un-natural. 2. Is the Soul Natural for Aristotle? Aristotle was admirably clear in the opening chapter of De anima that the soul, the rational part of which is the mind, is not only open to scientific study but that the science of the soul—‘scientia de anima’—was part of physics and therefore natural science. Aristotle went on to specify in De anima I.1 what the methods of the physicist imply for ‘scientia de anima’, including in particular that all four causes—material, formal, efficient and final—have a role in psychological demonstrations.5 The possible exception, referred to many times throughout De anima before being ruled out in book III, is thinking or intellection. It is ‘the most probable exception’ because intellection does not obviously require a body or a material cause as does, ‘e.g. anger, courage, appetite, and sensation generally.’6 For Aristotle, what hinges on the requirement that there exist a material cause of the 5 R. Bolton, ‘Perception Naturalized in Aristotle’s De anima,’ in: R. Salles (ed.), Metaphysics, Soul and Ethics in Ancient Thought. Themes from the Work of Richard Sorabji, Oxford 2005, 209–244, argues persuasively that Aristotle was attempting to do physics or natural science in De anima. 6 Aristotle, De anima I.1, 403a7–8, transl. J.A. Smith, in: J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle, Princeton (NJ) 1984 (Bollingen series, 71/2), 1: 641–692, at 642.
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soul and its operations is nothing less than the naturalness of our mental lives and the possibility of ‘scientia de anima’ conforming to the standards and principles of physics or natural science. Were De anima Aristotle’s final word on the study of the soul, he would have bequeathed a fairly clear picture of the nature and methodology of ‘scientia de anima’, notwithstanding the cryptic passages in book III. Just like the early commentators, however, we have to contend with De partibus animalium. Mirroring the definition of the soul from De anima II, Aristotle reasons in De partibus animalium I.1 that if ‘the form of a living thing is the soul, or part of the soul, or something that without the soul cannot exist … then it will come within the province of the natural scientist.’ Yet, the question remains: Whether it is the whole soul or only some part of it, the consideration of which comes within the province of natural science. Now if it be of the whole soul that this should treat, then there is no place for any other philosophy beside it [i.e. beside physics or natural science]. For as it belongs in all cases to one and the same science to deal with correlated subjects—one and the same science, for instance, deals with sensation and with the objects of sense—and as therefore the intelligent souls and the objects of intellect, being correlated, must belong to one and the same science, it follows that natural science will have to include everything in its province. But perhaps it is not the whole soul, nor all its parts collectively, that constitutes the source of motion [in a living being] … Thus then it is plain that it is not the whole soul that we have to treat [in natural science]. For it is not the whole soul that constitutes the animal nature, but only some part or parts of it.7
Charged with studying living beings, the physicist is required to consider the soul because the soul is the form to the matter of the living body. It is in this sense that the soul is a ‘part’ of what ‘constitutes’ the animal. Yet, the soul can be the form of the living body not because it exists separate from the living body but precisely because the soul itself depends on the body as its material cause. What Aristotle is adding in De partibus animalium is that the soul has parts unrelated to its role as the form of a living body; indeed, it is the ‘intellectual part’ or the mind that does not play a role in ‘animal nature’. Contrary to the impression given in De anima then, the soul is not, in its entirety, meant to be studied by the natural scientist. For Aristotle, the ‘intellectual part’ of the soul is un-natural.
7 Aristotle, De partibus animalium I.1, 641a18–b10, transl. W. Ogle, in J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle, Princeton (NJ) 1984 (Bollingen series, 71/2), 1: 994–1086, at 997– 998.
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In the Ethica Nicomachea X.7, we also find Aristotle committing himself to two distinct views of our soul and its place in nature. There the question is what kind of life is best for us. What will make us the happiest? Aristotle answers that the intellect is the best part of us. It is divine, supernatural even, and so a life of intellection or ‘contemplation’ is our route to happiness and immortality.8 Aristotle is telling us that we should not be overly fixated on our bodily existence, for being so fixated we will think that: such a life would be too high for man; for it is not in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as something divine is present in him; and by so much as this is superior to our composite nature [of matter and form] is its activity superior to that which is the exercise of the other kind of excellence. If intellect is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life according to it is divine in comparison with human life. But we much not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything … For man, therefore, the life according to intellect is best and pleasantest, since intellect more than anything else is man. This life therefore is also the happiest.9
We aspire to immortalize ourselves, to transcend our natural composite state of soul (form) and matter. It is this uniquely human capacity and aspiration that places us at the pinnacle of Aristotle’s ‘scala naturae’. While our composite nature limits us to the natural world of living things, our intellect or mind, because of its independence from the body and material causes, connects us to the supernatural and divine. For clarity’s sake, and to summarize the difficulty we face in reconciling Aristotle’s stated positions, it will help to identify a distinctive study of intellection or the intellectual part of the soul. I will henceforth call this distinctive study ‘un-natural psychology’ because it stands apart from natural science. Contrast this with ‘natural psychology’, which either treats the other parts of the soul besides the intellect—i.e., those requiring a
8 Immortality is also the topic in De anima III.5, 430a17–18, 22–23, where the ‘active intellect’ is introduced as the part of the soul that is immortal and therefore acts without a bodily organ. 9 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomacheia X.7, 1177b26–1178a8, transl. W.D. Ross, rev. J.O. Urmson, in J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle, Princeton (NJ) 1984 (Bollingen series, 71/2), 2: 1729–1867, at 1861–1862. This passage and many others are discussed in Ph.J. van der Eijk, ‘Aristotle’s Psycho-physiological Account of the Soul-Body Relationship,’ in: J.P. Wright and P. Potter (eds.), Psyche and Soma. Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment, Oxford 2000, 57–77.
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material cause—or blind to un-natural psychology takes a unified view of the study of the soul making no exception for the intellect. In Aristotle’s case the texts noted above imply that there is either an un-natural psychology and a natural psychology complementing one another or there is just natural-psychology. Nowhere does Aristotle contemplate that there is only an un-natural psychology.10 The evidence for this conclusion is: first, from De anima I, that the majority of our emotional and cognitive states require a body or material cause. This suggests that the study of the soul belongs to natural psychology. Second, there is the likely exception of intellection or thinking, which for a time in De Anima Aristotle allows us to believe does not have a material cause. This possibility suggests the existence of an un-natural psychology complementing Aristotle’s natural psychology. Third, there is the definition of the soul as the form of living beings in De anima II and the claim that human beings are composite beings like other natural bodies in the Ethica Nicomachea. This, again, suggests the study of the soul falls within natural psychology. Fourth, there is the claim from De partibus animalium that the intellect is not a principle of motion in the living body, apparently defying the definition of the soul from De anima II. And relatedly, fifth, there is the claim that the intellect is divine and potentially immortal from the Ethica Nicomachea. These last two claims suggest that the study of the soul is distinct from natural science and therefore imply that Aristotle accepts the existence of an un-natural psychology in addition to a natural psychology.11
10 Applying this terminology to Descartes, contemporary readers tend to present him as Aristotle’s opposite and as only willing to accept an un-natural psychology. Showing that this view of Descartes is incorrect is the goal of the next section. 11 These five claims were all recognized by the early commentators, who took sides on the presence or absence of a material cause for the intellect and intellection, effectively trying to arrive at a consistent Aristotelian position. See H.J. Blumenthal, Aristotle and Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity: Interpretations of the De anima, London 1996, 77ff. Most prominently, Alexander and later Avicenna and Averroes emphasized that the soul and even intellection were subjects for the natural sciences. For these Peripatetics, there is only a ‘scientia de anima’ and no psychology. Themistius and Simplicius, on the other hand, excluded the intellect from natural scientific study. They endorsed psychology as a distinctive science. What kind of science psychology was supposed to be if not a natural science was a further problem but, regardless, even for Themistius and Simplicius the ‘scientia de anima’ remained part of natural science; it was, again, only the intellect that was exceptional. For (Ps.?)Simplicius’s description of Aristotle’s position, and its importance in Renaissance commentaries on De anima, see P.J.J.M. Bakker, ‘Natural Philosophy, Metaphysics, or Something in Between? Agostino Nifo, Pietro Pomponazzi, and Marcantonio Genua on the Nature and Place of the Science of the Soul,’ in: P.J.J.M. Bakker and J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), Mind, Cognition and Representation: The Tradition of Commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, Aldershot
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When the De anima commentary tradition was revitalized in the sixteenth century, the ontological status of the soul and its operations led to elaborate disputes about the nature and methods of ‘scientia de anima’, many of which hinged on the evidence just presented. For the Christian Aristotelians, our immaterial and immortal lives favored treating the study of the soul as a kind of theological or metaphysical study (un-natural psychology). Our embodied mortal lives, however, favored treating the study of the soul as part of physics or natural science (natural psychology). In these disputes, what counted as science, not just natural science, and what counted as the human soul and its distinctive operations were also debated.12 What was the subject of De anima—soul or composite—and what kind of a science did it purport to be? Was it part of metaphysics, natural science, or theology? Was it some combination of the three? Did the soul afford the prospect of a unified science? How did the human soul’s immortality affect answers to these questions? What of its immateriality? What should be said about the soul’s dependence on matter? Was the whole soul a principle of motion? Whose prerogative it was to study the soul and whether the soul was wholly natural were live questions at the beginning of the seventeenth century. They were still being asked when Descartes was formally exposed to scholastic commentaries at the collège de plein exercise at La Fleche in the 1610s. He would later recount a memory of having read ‘some of the Conimbricenses, Toletus and Rubius’ in his school days, and even in this Jesuit sampling there was disagreement about the study of the soul.13
2007 (Ashgate studies in medieval philosophy), 151–177. For the relevant passage, see Simplicius, Commentaria in tres libros De anima Aristotelis, transl. Evangelista Lungus Asulanus, Venezia 1564, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1979 (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Versiones Latinae, 16), 1–2. 12 The decree from the Laterian Council of 1513 that the soul does not die along with the body and therefore is not wholly natural was an important intervention in these debates. For recent discussions, see L. Casini, ‘The Renaissance Debate on the Immortality of the Soul. Pietro Pomponazzi and the Plurality of Substantial forms,’ in: P.J.J.M. Bakker and J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), Mind, Cognition and Representation: The Tradition of Commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, Aldershot 2007 (Ashgate studies in medieval philosophy), 127– 150, and E. Michael, ‘Renaissance Theories of Body, Soul, and Mind,’ in: J.P. Wright and P. Potter (eds), Psyche and Soma. Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment, Oxford 2000, 147–172. 13 AT III, 185. For more of the details of the Jesuit curriculum at the time, Descartes’s education and details about education in early modern France, see J. Sirven, Les années d’apprentissage de Descartes (1596–1628), New York 1987 (The philosophy of Descartes, 20). See also L.W.B. Brockliss, ‘Aristotle, Descartes, and the New Science: Natural Philosophy at the university of Paris, 1600–1740,’ Annals of Science, 38 (1981), 33–69; Id., ‘The Scientific
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Franciscus Toletus took the position that the soul, including intellection, fell within the purview of the natural scientist.14 For Toletus therefore, there was no un-natural psychology. For him the soul was natural. Toletus’s student Antonius Rubius and the Coimbria commentary on De anima were more open to un-natural psychology, however, explicitly accepting that the soul’s existence apart from the body, as well as its operations in such a state, were subjects for metaphysics or first philosophy and not natural science.15 For them, the study of the soul did not necessarily require natural science; the soul, at least in part, was un-natural.16 3. Is the Mind Natural for Descartes? Descartes’s dualism between mind and body answers many of the questions driving the debates in the De anima commentaries. Nevertheless, there is more ambiguity in Descartes’s position than is often recognized, and it is an ambiguity with striking similarities to the one we just encountered in
Revolution in France,’ in: R. Porter and M. Teich (eds.), The Scientific Revolution in National Context, Cambridge 1992, 55–89; and W.R. Shea, The Magic of Numbers and Motion: The Scientific Career of René Descartes, Canton (MA) 1992. Officially the Ratio studiorum of 1599 provided guidance on how Jesuit educators introduced students to this part of the ‘corpus aristotelicum’, but it would be quite remarkable if students were not exposed to differences among prominent commentators. At the very least, it is more than likely that Descartes knew about the delicate and unresolved nature of the study of the soul in the Conimbricenses, Toletus and Rubius. Gary Hatfield has looked at these and other scholastics in his ‘The Cognitive Faculties,’ in: D. Garber and M. Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of SeventeenthCentury Philosophy, Cambridge 1998, 2: 953–1022. See also T. Aho, ‘The Status of Psychology as Understood by Sixteenth-Century Scholastics,’ in: S. Heinämaa and M. Reuter (eds.), Psychology and Philosophy. Inquiries into the Soul From Late Scholasticism to Contemporary Thought, Dordrecht 2009 (Studies in the history of philosophy of mind, 8), 47–66. 14 F. Toletus, Commentaria in tres libros Aristotelis De anima, I, q. 2, in: Id., Opera omnia philosophica, Köln 1615–1616, repr. Hildesheim 1985, 2va–4vb. 15 A. Rubius, Commentarii in libros Aristotelis De anima, proemium, q. 1, Lyon 1613, URL: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k65590k, 13–15, and Collegium Conimbricense, Commentarii in tres libros De anima Aristotelis, proemium, q. 1, a. 2, Köln 1609, repr. Hildesheim 2006, 8–10. 16 These two interpretative traditions are also discussed in Vidal, The Sciences, 58–74. Vidal identifies Francisco Suárez as being on the side of Toletus, arguing that the mind is wholly natural and studied by the physicist. Joining with Rubius and the Coimbria commentators, Vidal cites the work of Scipion Dupleix, whose Aristotelian textbooks written in the vernacular ran through many editions in the first half of the seventeenth century. The extent of Descartes’s knowledge of Suárez’s work is a contentious issue among specialists and he likely did not read Suárez until after writing the Meditationes. There is no evidence that Descartes read Dupleix.
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Aristotle. Accommodation will have to be made for Descartes’s assimilation of the soul to the mind—i.e. his elimination of the soul’s function as the form of the living body—and his denial of the need for phantasms or species originating in bodies in each and every thought. The point remains, however, that the mind appears natural in some passages and un-natural in others. It is specifically not obvious whether Descartes thinks of the mind as part of the subject matter of metaphysics, physics, or something in between.17 The ambiguity in Descartes’s position can be brought out by two very short arguments, each of which attends to the subject matter of physics or natural science as Descartes explicitly describes it. On the one hand, Descartes appears to exclude the study of the mind from physics. When he began to work in the late 1620s on what has come to us as Le monde, he tells us that by ‘“nature” I do not mean some goddess or any other sort of imaginary power. Rather, I am using the word to signify matter itself.’18 Add to this Descartes’s reference to Le monde as ‘his physics’ and it looks as though the subject matter of physics or natural science is body to the exclusion of everything else.19 This short argument is relevant to us here because it supports (1)—the claim that the natural world is the physical world as defined by
17
I have co-opted this phrasing from Bakker, ‘Natural Philosophy.’ It is worth noting that in speaking of the disciplines of physics or natural science and metaphysics as they relate to Descartes, we want to avoid misleading implications about the historical antecedent of the disciplinary questions I am exploring here. In the case of physics, Descartes’s repeated statements that it is nothing but mechanics or geometry imply that for him physics is more a mixed-mathematical science than a speculative or theoretical science, as it was characterized by, among others, Franciscus Toletus in his Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in octo libros Aristotelis De physica auscultatione. For an account of Toletus’s views, see W. Wallace, ‘Traditional Natural Philosophy,’ in: C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler and J. Kraye (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge 1988, 201–235. Metaphysics, in the way Descartes seems to understand it, is also not simply a mirror of the discipline as conceived by his scholastic predecessors. What Descartes considered metaphysics was, for the scholastic textbook writers, the metaphysical aspects of physics, i.e. general metaphysics, commonly taught in a course of physics and not metaphysics proper, i.e. particular metaphysics. Nowhere does Descartes offer anything that could stand as a work of particular metaphysics addressing the issue of being qua being. It is true that the Meditationes contains proofs for the existence of God and the real distinction between mind and body, but contrast the metaphysics of the Meditationes with the one in Spinoza’s explication and expansion of Descartes’s Principia or with Clauberg’s Ontosophia and the metaphysical lacuna in Descartes will be apparent. For more on this point, see R. Ariew, ‘Descartes, the First Cartesians, and Logic,’ in: D. Garber and S. Nadler (eds.), Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Oxford 2006, 3: 241–259. 18 AT XI, 36–37; CSM 1, 92. 19 AT I, 70 and 194; CSMK, 7 and 29, respectively.
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physics or natural science—which, when coupled with Descartes dualism, rules out the possibility of a natural psychology. I will call this argument, which cites matter as the subject of physics, the ‘exclusion argument’. There is another equally short argument to consider that suggests Descartes did imagine the physicist or natural scientist studies the mind. Returning again to Le monde, it was not long after he began the work that Descartes announced he had experienced a change of heart. Instead of ‘explaining just one phenomenon (presumably light GM) I have decided to explain all the phenomena of nature, that is to say, the whole of physics.’20 What would be published in 1664 as Le monde de M. Descartes ou le traitté de la lumière was only the first part of Descartes’s revised project. Not included, but published separately that same year, was L’ homme de Rene Descartes. Yet, not even the combined contents of the Traitté de la lumière and L’homme indicate the planned content of Descartes’s Le monde. For, in Discourse Five we learn that this early ‘physics’ included a final section dedicated to the human ‘rational soul’ or mind, followed by a discussion of the union of mind and body.21 Thus, it would seem that the mind, according to Descartes’s own description, is an object of study for the physicist or natural scientist. Descartes, in other words, has a natural psychology, which means that for him the mind is natural.22 This is not what we would expect to find given Descartes’s exclusion argument. To give this alternative argument for the naturalness of the mental a name, I will call this second short argument the ‘inclusion argument’.23
20 AT I, 70; CSMK, 7. Three years later, Descartes expanded Le monde even more: ‘My discussion of man in The World will be a little fuller than I had intended, for I have undertaken to explain all the main functions of man’ (AT I, 262–263; CSMK, 40). 21 AT VI, 59–60; CSM 1, 141. 22 The different significations of ‘nature’ were an important part of texts on logic and natural philosophy in the Renaissance and before, on which see I. Maclean, Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance: the Case of Learned Medicine, Cambridge 2002 (Ideas in context, 62), and D. Des Chene, Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought, Ithaca (NY) 1996. For more on this point as it relates to Descartes, see G. Manning, ‘Naturalism and Un-Naturalism among the Cartesian Physicians,’ Inquiry, 51 (2008), 441– 463. 23 Another version of what I am calling the ‘inclusion argument’ is presented in G. Hatfield, ‘Descartes’ Naturalism about the Mental,’ in: S. Gaukroger, S. Schuster and J. Sutton (eds.), Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, London 2000 (Routledge studies in seventeenthcentury philosophy, 3), 630–659. Lilli Alanen has explicitly challenged the significance of the ‘inclusion argument’. See L. Alanen, ‘Descartes’ Mind-Body Composites, Psychology and Naturalism,’ Inquiry, 51 (2008), 464–484, and Ead., ‘Cartesian Scientia and the Human Soul,’ Vivarium, 46 (2008), 418–442. I respond to some of Alanen’s concerns below in note 27.
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Between these two short arguments, it is the exclusion argument that is most often taken as Descartes’s considered position. It is, after all, the one representing his most original contribution to psychology and the disciplines, paralleling his real distinction between mind and body. In the next section, however, I want to elaborate on these two arguments and the ontological and methodological assumptions underlying each. To balance out our picture of Descartes I will be emphasizing the persistence of the inclusion argument throughout his mature period (1629–1650). I will suggest that for Descartes it remained the case, as Simplicius wrote of Aristotle, that ‘the study of the soul is neither simply natural nor simply metaphysical, but belongs to both.’24 4. Beyond Descartes’s Short Arguments Descartes’s forays into metaphysics—queen of the un-natural sciences— began just before he started to work out the details of his mature physics in 1629. In his correspondence, again with Mersenne, Descartes explains that he sought and in fact found ‘the foundations of physics’ in knowledge of God and himself, by which he appears to mean knowledge of himself as a mind or thinking thing.25 The fact that God and the mind appear together is important because it suggests that physics cannot include the study of the mind unless God is a subject for the physicist too. But this is obviously not the case. God is not studied by the natural scientist but by the metaphysician or theologian. Descartes associates God and the mind in at least two additional places. First, the announcement in the subtitle of the Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, that the work would include a discussion of God and our immortal souls, indicates that together God and the mind are subjects for first philosophy or metaphysics, not natural science. Second, in the time between his letter of 1629 and the Meditationes appearing in print in 1641, Descartes published the Discours de la méthode. Here too, metaphysical truths about God and the mind set the foundations for all other knowledge, including knowledge in physics.26 All together then, the picture of Descartes’s metaphysics
24
Cited in Bakker, ‘Natural Philosophy,’ 153. AT I, 144. 26 Recall as well the tree of philosophy described by Descartes in the French letter preface to the 1647 French edition of the Principia, which identifies metaphysics as the roots out of which grows the trunk of physics (AT IXB, 14). 25
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that takes shape in 1629 and runs through 1641 indicates that the mind is not studied by the physicist or natural scientist. This is a protracted instance of the exclusion argument.27 Also lending support to the exclusion argument are portions of Descartes’s correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, which began after the publication of the Meditationes. Specifically, as part of his effort to answer Elisabeth’s queries about how to conceive of mind-body interaction, Descartes wanted to distinguish … three kinds of primitive ideas or notions, each of which is known in its own proper manner and not by comparison [comparaison] with any of the others: the notions we have of the soul, of body and of the union between the soul and the body … Metaphysical thoughts, which exercise the pure intellect, help to familiarize us with the notion of the soul; and the study of mathematics, which exercises mainly the imagination in the consideration of shapes and motions, accustoms us to form very distinct notions of body. But it is the ordinary course of life … that teaches us how to conceive the union of the soul and the body.28
These three notions are meant to be independent of one another, and nonreducible. To this extent they are reminiscent of first principles as Aristotle defines them in Physics I, but in Descartes’s case any effort to bring the notions together, even for ‘comparison,’ will only confuse them.
27 Lilli Alanen emphasizes Descartes’s manifest interest in avoiding substantial forms and real qualities in his physics, as well as what she sees as the expectation that ‘science’ only applies to domains of knowledge where clear and distinct ideas are to be had, to make the following claim in support of the exclusion argument: ‘To meet Descartes’s requirements of clearness and distinctness, scientific explanations should be in strictly mathematical and mechanistic terms. Sense qualities and related notions cannot be translated into quantitative notions—they cannot be expressed, unambiguously, in mathematical terms … [As a result] there is no room … for a scientific … rational psychology accounting for the laws of our mental life as embodied, human persons … There is only a science of the human body on the one hand and a metaphysical knowledge of the rational mind or soul on the other. Important aspects of human nature … are … outside the scope of scientific explanations’ (L. Alanen, ‘Reconsidering Descartes’s Notion of the Mind-Body Union,’ Synthese, 106 [1996], 3–20, at 6). If Alanen were right in her conclusion, this would entail either that the mind has no place in physics or, if it does, that some aspects of physics are not scientific in Descartes’s sense. Later in this section I show that Descartes studies the mind while he acts as a physicist. I do not pursue the question of whether or not this means physics is not a science, but I do not believe the scientific status of physics is threatened by the inclusion of the mind. If it were, then Descartes does not have a scientific physics because his physical explanations depend on God as a cause and sustainer of motion via the laws of nature. Neither of the latter are intelligible in wholly quantitative terms according to Descartes (AT V, 347). 28 AT III, 691–692; CSMK, 226–227.
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As I understand the position Descartes takes with Elisabeth, neither the mind by itself nor anything resulting from the mind-body union, such as the sensations produced by the body, are explicable using the primitive notion of body. Yet, of these three notions of mind, body and union, the physicist is surely meant to use the primitive notion of body. Doing otherwise will only confuse the physicist and the notions alike. In fact, this seems to be precisely what Descartes thinks Elisabeth and Aristotelian physicists have done—they have mixed up our primitive notions by effectively putting little minds into every body. Keeping strictly to the correct primitive notions, the mind is not capable of being explained or accounted for by the physicist or natural scientist using the primitive notion of body, and the same applies, for the same reason, to the union between mind and body. Thus, given the doctrine of the three primitive notions, there would seem to be no other conclusion to draw than this: if the natural world is the physical world as defined by the primitive notion of body, then the mind is unnatural. However persuasive these texts are—and they are certainly persuasive— the exclusion argument is not consistent with Descartes’s actual scientific practice. Leaving aside the fact that Descartes’s appeal to the three primitive notions is limited to the correspondence with Elisabeth and hardly seems to enter into his published work, it is because of what we actually find in the published work, in Le monde, Meditationes, Principia and Les passions de l’ âme, that the exclusion argument should be resisted as the whole truth. For Descartes’s natural scientific explanations actually accomplish more with respect to the union than independent primitive notions would allow. The textual support for the inclusion argument will be presented in a moment, but the point in the background that needs to be emphasized is that we should not be so quick to assume that the ontology Descartes introduces to support his physics sets the limits of his actual natural scientific practice, or to what counts as natural.29 In fact, while the mind is an immaterial substance and the ‘opposite’ of matter, and the union of mind and body, because of its inclusion of the mind, is similarly not material, the physicist nevertheless appeals to the union and the mind whenever discussing sensory perception.30
29 On a number of occasions Descartes described his physics as just geometry or mechanics (e.g. AT VIIIA, 78), but such descriptions are only part of the story. The other part of the story being advanced here has already been presented in a slightly different version by Hatfield, ‘Descartes’ Naturalism.’ 30 AT VII, 13; CSM 2, 10.
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This may sound like a simple reassertion of the inclusion argument, but it is not. We are now considering the union and the consistent and identifiable, even lawful, interaction of mind and body. Whereas for Aristotle and his followers the rational soul’s independence from matter made the classification of the ‘scientia de anima’ difficult, in Descartes it is the mind’s union with matter that makes the classification difficult. I already mentioned that the full plan of Le monde came to include discussions of the mind and its union with the body. This early work was abandoned, so let us consider three of the later works: Meditationes from 1641, Principia from 1644, and Les passions de l’âme from 1649. In the Meditationes, a particularly revealing passage occurs in Meditation Six. At this point in the text, Descartes is attempting to give a general account of internal and external sensory errors consistent with God’s goodness that would also vindicate the general reliability of sensory experience. Among the cited examples of sensory error is the then recently documented phenomenon of the phantom limb. ‘When I feel a pain in my foot,’ writes Descartes, ‘physics tells me that this happens by means of nerves distributed throughout the foot, and that these nerves are like cords which go from the foot right up to the brain.’31 The knowledge of the nerves and bodily conditions that produce or effect phantom limb sensations comes from ‘physics’. Descartes will go on to indicate that the ‘cords’ can be pulled at any point between the foot and the brain. Even if a leg is missing, the nerve-cord could be affected short of the brain but beyond the limb and still produce a sensation in the mind felt as though in the foot, where the other end of the nerve-cord formerly terminated. This brief and schematic sentence from Meditation Six shows Descartes explaining the causal origin of a mental state; a feeling of pain is caused by a pulling of the nerve-cord. The full scope of physics takes into account not just the beginning of the story of phantom limb sensations, it follows the story to its conclusion in the mind. Or, to put it in a slightly different way, the fact that ‘I feel a pain in my foot’ is a fact that the physicist seeks to explain, even though it is a fact about the mind and not just the body. This is not to suggest that Descartes believed everything about the mind could be explained by a bodily process but, rather, that some facts about the mind, facts about sensory experience, could only be explained by a
31
AT VII, 87; CSM 2, 60 (slightly modified).
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physicist. Specifically, the material and efficient causes of sensory states are studied by the natural scientist, and it is this study of the causes of the mind’s sensations that constitutes Descartes’s natural psychology. Two years later, in the Principia, Descartes similarly included the study of the mind within natural science, thereby endorsing a natural psychology. The French letter preface to the Principia stipulates that the second part of the ‘true philosophy’ is ‘physics’, where we ‘examine the general composition of the entire universe’ as well as ‘the nature of plants, of animals and, above all, of man.’32 In all likelihood, this characterization of physics was written by Descartes in 1647, the year it appeared as the preface to the French edition of the Principia. Nevertheless, it accurately presents the plan of the Latin Principia as Descartes tried to execute it in 1644. Just as with Le monde, however, the section on the union between mind and body is not available. Instead, in the Principia Descartes apologizes for ‘not being clear about all the matters’ required to complete his project. What would have been Part VI—the part dedicated to man—is instead plundered in Part IV for the sake of adding ‘a few observations concerning the objects of the senses … namely colours, smells, sounds and such-like.’33 In effect, Descartes discusses the ways in which physics can explain our sensory experiences in Part IV even though he had originally hoped to do so more thoroughly in Part VI. The subsequent discussion in Part IV includes an account of phantom limb sensations, familiar from Meditation Six, and yet again indicates that the full scope of Descartes’s physics or natural science takes into account not just the details of the nerves but follows the nerves to the brain and then to the mind.34 Descartes’s image of physics does not change in Les passions. In the letter attached to the beginning of the work, Descartes indicates that the novelty in the last book he saw to press stems from his efforts to write about the passions not as ‘a moral philosopher,’ but ‘as a physicist (en physicien)’.35 If we look to the actual content of Les passions we find, just in Part One, discussions of the relation between mind and body, including the mind’s place in the body. This is precisely the kind of discussion that the exclusion argument should rule out for Descartes. Yet, neither in Le monde, Meditationes, Principia nor Les passions does Descartes reject natural psychology. Like the
32 33 34 35
AT IXB, 14; CSM 1, 186. AT VIIIA, 315; CSM 1, 279. AT VIIIA, 320; CSM 1, 283–284. AT XI, 326.
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body, the mind is studied by the natural scientist. Judging on the basis of his explicit reflections on the content of physics and his actual practice from the 1630s up through his last publication in 1649, the only conclusion to draw is that the study of the mind remains, in part, a natural science. If the inclusion argument is favored by Descartes’s statements about the content of physics and his practice as a natural scientist, the exclusion argument cannot simply be ignored: the soul, when not in union with a body, cannot be studied by the physicist. This is hardly a surprising or controversial claim, however, even if it raises questions of its own. In fact, in the De anima commentary tradition the question of whether the mind exists or operates outside of its role as the form of the living body was pivotal to granting metaphysics—un-natural psychology—a part in studying the soul. Descartes of course thought the mind does exist and operate without matter when not united to the body, as did Aristotle in some passages, but this does not threaten the naturalness of the mental for either Descartes or Aristotle. In other words, both endorsed naturalpsychology. Descartes’s account of living phenomena might be thought to support a more robust defense of the un-naturalness of the mental and the exclusion argument. If we recall that one of the implications of Descartes’s real distinction between mind and body is his monistic account of life, an account that makes no appeal to the soul as the form of the living body and so a cause of life, as it had been defined in De anima II, then the whole spirit of the Aristotelian ‘scientia de anima’ seems to be undermined. As we saw earlier, the Aristotelians preceding Descartes did not allow the claims in De anima to exhaust what could be said about the study of the soul. Yet, for the Aristotelians the extent to which the study of the soul is a part of physics, as opposed to metaphysics or theology, hinges on the soul being the principle or cause of life.36 The final passage of L’homme, where Descartes lists the functions a machine can perform without a soul, makes it clear that for him the soul is not his principle of life: I should like you to consider, after this, all the functions I have ascribed to this machine—such as the digestion of food, the beating of the heart and arteries, the nourishment and growth of the limbs, respiration, waking and sleeping, the reception by the external sense organs of light, sounds, smells,
36 Recall here the early sentences of the passage from De partibus animalium cited in the previous section.
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tastes, heat and other such qualities … I should like you to consider that these functions follow from the mere arrangement of the machine’s organs every bit as naturally as the movements of a clock or other automaton follow from the arrangement of its counter-weights and wheels. In order to explain these functions, then, it is not necessary to conceive of this machine as having any vegetative or sensitive soul or other principle of movement and life, apart from its blood and its spirits, which are agitated by the heat of the fire burning continuously in its heart—a fire which has the same nature as all the fires that occur in inanimate bodies.37
L’ homme contains Descartes’s physiology, and to this extent overlaps with Aristotle’s De anima. But, by denying the soul a part to play in physiology and therefore natural science, Descartes offers Aristotle a serious rebuke. At the same time, however, it needs to be acknowledged that denying the soul a part in physiology does not logically entail denying physiology a part in the study of the soul. The natural scientist can still give the material and efficient causes of sensations and passions. As I have tried to show in this section, Descartes clearly preserves this connection whenever he ties mental states to states of our nervous system and whenever he purports to show that mind and body interact in consistent and reliable ways.38 Thus, a natural psychology remains in Descartes, at least along this route from physical causes to the mind’s sensations and passions. 5. De la Forge and the Un-Naturalness of the Mental At a minimum, sections 3 and 4 show that Descartes’s texts provide conflicting evidence about the naturalness of the mental and the viability of natural psychology. In light of this conclusion, it is worth asking what those Cartesians working immediately after Descartes’s death, who sought to offer popular and systematic presentations of his views, made of the conflicting evidence. What do they do with psychology? By and large the
AT XI, 202; CSM 1, 108. See also Part One of the Passions, especially AT XI, 329–333. In Meditation Six Descartes claims that ‘the best system that could be devised is that it (the body GM) should produce the one sensation which, of all possible sensations, is most especially and most frequently conducive to the preservation of the healthy man (humanis sani). And experience shows that the sensations which nature has given us are all of this kind’ (AT VII, 87; CSM 2, 60). The last sentence is significant because experience of our body affecting our mind vindicates the claim that the two interact in the most ‘conducive’ way for our ‘preservation’. For this, the interaction must be consistent and reliable, even law-like. 37
38
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answer is the same as the one I have reconstructed for Descartes. Cartesians such as Jacques Rohault, Pierre-Sylvain Régis and Antoine Le Grand followed Descartes in keeping aspects of our mental lives within nature and open to natural scientific study.39 I will cite some evidence for this claim in a moment, focusing specifically on Le Grand, but I want to note that each of these authors wrote rather long synthetic accounts, sometimes dialogues, attempting to synthesize Cartesianism into a textbook philosophy. As a result, a good deal of their editorial work involved them in deciding what aspect of Descartes’s thought they wanted to present and in what order. Utilizing familiar disciplinary distinctions, such as the one that placed the study of the soul within physics, was surely one way to spread the word of the master. Even if this is not an adequate explanation for the repeated appearance of the inclusion argument in Descartes, it may be an adequate explanation for its appearance among these Cartesians. Whether their editorial work played a part in their having endorsed the inclusion argument, however, these early Cartesians embrace that argument with little, if any, qualification. Take the case of Le Grand, who had a major hand in defending Cartesianism in England in the latter half of the seventeenth century. An Entire Body of Philosophy, According to the Principles of the Famous Renate des Cartes, the 1694 English translation of Le Grand’s earlier Institutio philosophiae secundum Principia D. Renati Descartes: Novo methodo adornata & explicata, cumque indice locupletissimo aucta, saves all discussion of the human mind for part nine, titled ‘of the mind and soul of man’.40 Of the ten parts into which Le Grand’s work is divided, the first three contain logic and ‘metaphysics or natural theology’, and part ten contains the ‘moral philosophy or ethics’. As you would expect, parts four through nine are ‘physiology or natural philosophy’, which means for Le Grand that psychology, in part nine, is a branch of what Descartes called physics and what I have called natural psychology. In other words, the mind remained natural for Le Grand.
39 For a brief summary of the positions taken by these three Cartesians, see Hatfield, ‘Descartes’ Naturalism,’ 646–649. For additional discussion of Régis, see Vidal, The Sciences, 77–78. Although not a Cartesian, one figure who also accepts the inclusion argument is John Locke. He held that physics or natural philosophy should be characterized as ‘the Knowledge of Things … whereby I mean not only Matter, and Body, but Spirits also’ (J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, XXI, 2, ed. P.H. Nidditch, Oxford 1979, 720). 40 I have consulted the reprint of the original edition in A. Le Grand, An Entire Body of Philosophy, According to the Principles of the Famous Renate des Cartes, transl. R. Blome, London 1694, repr. New York 1972.
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Unlike the other Cartesians I have mentioned, Louis de la Forge did not write a long synthetic treatment of Descartes’s philosophy.41 Born in La Fleche in 1632, De la Forge pursued a medical degree and was a practicing physician in his adopted home of Saumur by the age of twenty-one. During this time he made the acquaintance of Jacques Gousset, who would later write about De la Forge’s brilliance and novelty in introducing a systematic defense of occasionalism in keeping with Descartes’s philosophy. While De la Forge’s occasionalism has garnered him the most attention, he has also been recognized for the diagrams and commentary he provided to the French edition of Descartes’s L’homme, published in 1664. The following year, however, De la Forge’s Traitté de l’esprit de l’ homme appeared. This was the first self-standing monograph to appear in France discussing any aspect of Descartes’s philosophy. I would now like to add to this list of De la Forge’s accomplishments the rejection of the inclusion argument and the first full Cartesian embrace of the exclusion argument. In the course of preparing his commentary to Descartes’s L’ homme, De la Forge realized that Descartes’s physics was meant to include a discussion of the human mind. So much could have been gleaned from the incomplete sections of the Principia in addition to the Discours passages describing the plan for Le monde. De la Forge also realized that none of Descartes’s existing texts made up for the incomplete parts of Le monde and Principia. As De la Forge puts it in chapter one of his Traitté, readers will ‘have great regret that death prevented Descartes from giving us what he still needed to demonstrate in order to fully inform us about human nature.’42 De la Forge’s Traitté is self-consciously an attempt to fill this lacuna in Descartes’s corpus, but De la Forge is quick to say, still in chapter one, that he would have never undertaken the task ‘if I had not believed that I could find sufficient
41 Arguably his commentary to L’ homme, when combined with the long introduction by Clerselier and the translation of Florentius Schuyl’s preface from the Latin edition two years earlier counts as a synthetic presentation of Descartes’s philosophy. Nevertheless, De la Forge’s contribution was limited and insufficient on its own to count as an effort at synthesis. 42 I have consulted the Amsterdam 1670 (?) edition of De la Forge’s Traitté de l’esprit de l’homme, de ses facultez & fonctions, & de son union avec le corps, suivant les principes de René Descartes, Amsterdam [1670], URL: hhttp://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k57384c.r=La+Forge %2C+Louis+de.langEN#i. The original edition appeared in 1665 and was published in France by Theodore Girard (with a title page date of 1666). The present reference is De la Forge, Traitté de l’ esprit de l’ homme, 1: ‘… n’ ayent beaucoup de regret que la Mort l’ait empesché de nous donner ce qui luy restoit à demonstrer, pour nous faire entierement connoistre la Nature de l’ Homme.’
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material to write this whole work from the books which Descartes himself had published and from the two volumes of letters provided by one of his friends.’43 The plan De la Forge outlines looks to be an attempt to satisfy the unfulfilled promises of the inclusion argument by completing Descartes’s physics with a treatment of the mind. This is, however, not what the Traitté turns out to be. The Traitté is a work of metaphysics, but before elaborating on this claim it is worth noting what the Traitté tells us about the state of Cartesianism in the decades after Descartes’s death. First, it is, as I already mentioned, a work of limited scope without any pretense to being a broadly synthetic account of Descartes’s philosophy. The human mind and human nature alone are its primary subjects. This tells us that not all first generation Cartesians were attempting to write synthetic treatments of Descartes’s philosophy. Second, De la Forge begins the Traitté with a lengthy preface attempting to show Descartes’s religious orthodoxy. This had become a pressing need after the publication of Descartes’s correspondence and the threats perceived from Descartes having doubted the existence of a beneficent God in Meditation One. In his preface, De la Forge cites Augustine no less than 51 times. This practice is a continuation of a trend begun by Marin Mersenne when defending Descartes against Voetius during the troubles at Utrecht and taken up more systematically by Abraham Heidanus in 1645.44 Third, the Traitté documents the need to offer clarifications of Descartes’s views. For example, De la Forge explicitly claims that ‘idée’ should refer only to incorporeal modes of the mind, that ‘consciousness’ is the mark of the mental, and that when we die and the union is extinguished we lose the power of sensing altogether. Even if De la Forge is not commonly remembered for these clarifications of Descartes’s position, they are a testament to his influence or, at least, his status as one of the earliest perceptive readers of Des-
43 De la Forge, Traitté de l’esprit de l’ homme, 2: ‘… si je n’avois crû pouvoir tirer des Livres qu’ il a luymesme fait imprimer, & des deux volumes de Lettres qu’un de ses Amis nous a donnez, des materiaux suffisans pour la construction de tout cet Ouvrage.’ 44 Heidanus’s role in the Dutch reception and defense of Descartes is briefly discussed in H. van Ruler, ‘Substituting Aristotle: Platonic Themes in Dutch Cartesianism,’ in: R.D. Hedley and S. Hutton (eds.), Platonism at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy, Dordrecht 2008 (International archives of the history of ideas, 196), 159– 177. Descartes’s Augustianism is obvious in a number of places, especially in the case of the ‘cogito’, as Arnauld pointed out in the Objections and Replies. Descartes claimed his similarity to Augustine was accidental and, at the least, it can be said that Descartes showed no interest in reading the most sophisticated Augustinianism of his time, the work of Cornelius Jansenius and his Jansenist followers.
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cartes. And, more to the point, De la Forge’s innovations suggest that Descartes’s earliest readers recognized the need to clarify Descartes’s position. Returning us to the topic of the mind and its study, De la Forge’s Traitté is the first Cartesian work focused entirely on the mind. It is therefore of special interest how De la Forge characterizes psychology. Is it natural or is it un-natural? Remarkably, he nowhere makes reference to physics as the discipline that studies the mind. The Traitté contains ample material relevant to physics, and significant reference is made to Descartes’s physics, but the work itself does not contain a distinct section dedicated to physics or natural science, as had been the case with Le Grand’s An Entire Body of Philosophy. What kind of scientific work is the Traitté then? De la Forge’s answer comes in a plea to his readers: I ask the same indulgence from those who want a complete purity in our language and I ask them to forgive me if, in a metaphysical treatise (Traitté Metaphysique), I use some words which are specific to this science … which might offend the sensitivity of their ears.45
The first Cartesian psychology is a work of metaphysics. It is a work of unnatural psychology. Even though De la Forge describes himself as completing the unfinished portions of Le monde which, as we learned in the previous section, was, according to Descartes, a work of physics, De la Forge saw himself as writing a treatise on metaphysics. Now, perhaps De la Forge thought it obvious that Descartes’s treatment of psychology must be metaphysical, just as so many recent commentators now believe. As we have seen, however, this is by no means obvious. It is certainly not obvious to Descartes. Still, De la Forge appears unmoved by the inclusion argument. If this is right, then what might otherwise have seemed a dilemma about what to do with psychology disappears. Psychology belongs to the metaphysician. This is De la Forge’s view in 1665 and from all the evidence I have found De le Forge is the first Cartesian to unequivocally claim that the mind is not an object of natural scientific study. How influential his view proved to be—who read him and adopted his brand of Cartesianism—is a question I cannot purse here. Nevertheless, the point remains that De la Forge is the first in a long line of subsequent readers who see in Descartes nothing but an un-natural psychology. 45 De la Forge, Traitté de l’ esprit de l’ homme, Preface, 7: ‘Je demande la mesme grace à ceux qui veulent qu’ on observe une pureté entiere dans nostre langue, & les prie de m’excuser, si dan un Traitté Metaphysique, je me suis servy de certains mots consacrez à cette Science, comme de ceux de concept, d’ identité, de quelques autres, qui pouront peut-estre blesser la delicatesse de leurs oreilles’ (emphasis added).
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If De la Forge deserves credit for disambiguating Descartes’s un-natural psychology, it is worth asking what, if anything, De la Forge saw that Descartes and the other early Cartesians missed. Here I can only offer two related speculations: First, De la Forge, like a great number of early Cartesians, was a physician who saw Descartes’s physics as a major contribution to physiology. As I noted earlier, De la Forge even assumed responsibility for writing an extensive commentary explaining and defending Descartes’s views from L’Homme, the major achievement of which was its mechancial account of life—its mechanical physiology. My first suggestion is that De la Forge was so impressed by and so engaged in defending Descartes’s mechanical physiology he recognized that a monistic account of life in terms of matter alone has no use for the soul or the mind. This would have pushed him toward the exclusion argument. But unlike Descartes, who would continue to trace the causal connection between body and mind in the production of sensations, De la Forge’s occasionalism prevented De la Forge from following Descartes’s route to the inclusion argument. It is true that De la Forge believed the mind remains an active substance, an idea he took over from Descartes’s Notae in Programma quoddam.46 Yet, at the same time, like the later occasionalists, such as Malebranche, De la Forge did not believe that bodies can cause ideas in the mind: While it can be said that the bodies that surround our own, and generally everything that can compel us to think of bodies … are in some manner the cause of the ideas that we then have … nonetheless, because these are material substances, whose action does not extend as far as the mind, in so far as it is simply a thing that thinks; but in so far as it (the mind GM) is united to a body … they can at most be only the … occasional cause of the (the ideas GM) that, by means of the union of the mind and the body, compels our faculty of thinking and determines it to produce those ideas of which it is the principle and efficient cause.47
46 Here I am persuaded by Steven Nadler’s characterization of De la Forge’s occasionalism. See in particular S. Nadler, ‘The Occasionalism of Louis de la Forge,’ in: Id. (ed.), Causation in Early Modern Philosophy: Cartesianism, Occasionalism, and Preestablished Harmony, University Park (PA) 1993, 57–75, and Id., ‘Louis de La Forge and the Development of Occasionalism: Continuous Creation and the Activity of the Soul,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy, 36 (1998), 215–231. 47 De la Forge, Traitté de l’ esprit de l’ homme, 133–134: ‘Or bien que l’on puisse dire que les Corps qui environnent le nostre, & generalement tout ce qui peut nous obliger à penser à des Corps, ou mesme à des Esprits, quand cela ne vient pas de nostre volonté, sont en quelque façon la cause des Idées que nous avons pour lors, parce que nous ne les aurions pas dans
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In this passage, De la Forge insists that in the production of ideas our souls are active.48 In the more technical terminology of substances and their modes, each of our minds is the efficient cause of its own modes, whether those modes be ideas or volitions. Because of the mind’s self-contained activity, the physicist can no longer explain the production of ideas by appeal to material and efficient causes, not even in the case of sensory ideas like the experience of a pain in my foot. The occasionalist physicist can cite occasional causes, to be sure, and in this limited sense perhaps the physicist still has something to add to the study of the mind, but the physicist’s role is greatly diminished. To put this all a slightly different way, and to tie it back to psychology, the main rationale behind the inclusion argument in Descartes was the link between physiology and psychology. This link is broken by De la Forge’s occasionalism. All that is left now is the exclusion argument, with a view of the mind as un-natural and psychology as an un-natural science.
toutes les circonstances que nous les avons s’ ils n’ auroient agi sur nostre Corps; Toutesfois parce que ce sont des substances materielles, dont l’ action ne s’estend pas jusqu’à l’Ame, en tant qu’ elle est simplement une chose qui pense: mais en tant qu’elle est unie à un Corps de la manière que nous décrirons cy apres, ils n’ en peuvent estre tout au plus que la cause éloignée & occasionelle, laquelle par le moyen de l’ union de l’Esprit & du Corps oblige la faculté que nous avons de penser, & la determine à la production de ces idées dont elle est la cause principale & effective’. Here I am using Steven Nadler’s translation of De la Forge’s Traitté in Nadler, ‘The Occasionalism,’ 65, except that I have changed ‘soul’ to ‘mind’ as a translation of ‘esprit’. The original sentiment can be found in Descartes at AT VIIIB, 360. 48 It must be acknowledged that De la Forge appears to backpeddle 130 pages later in the Traitté, where he writes (Traitté de l’ esprit de l’ homme, 264): ‘Si le Corps n’avoit eu un tel movement, jamais l’ Esprit n’ auroit eu un telle pensée.’
THEOLOGY
THE POWERS OF THE SOUL IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HUGH OF ST.-CHER
Magdalena Bieniak* The scientia de anima in Paris in the second quart of the thirteenth century was characterized by a gradual assimilation of Aristotelian philosophy.1 This process implied several difficulties. On the one hand, the masters were looking for a way to harmonize the new teaching with the traditional doctrines, which were principally inspired by Augustinian texts. On the
*
This chapter was written while preparing my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Padua and Université de Paris Sorbonne—Paris IV. The dissertation has been published in M. Bieniak, The Soul-Body Problem at Paris, ca. 1200–1250. Hugh of St-Cher and His Contemporaries, Leuven 2010 (Ancient and medieval philosophy, 42). The present chapter offers an overview of the most important issues discussed mainly in the second part of the book (91– 176). 1 As to the reception of the ‘new’ Aristotelian texts, see above all M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die Lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 17/5–6), 19–27; Id., I divieti ecclesiastici di Aristotele sotto Innocenzo III e Gregorio IX, Roma 1941 (Miscellanea historiae pontificiae, Collectio 7, 5); L. Minio-Paluello, ‘Le texte du De anima d’ Aristote: la tradition latine avant 1500,’ in: Id., Opuscula. The Latin Aristotle, Amsterdam 1972, 250–276; Id., ‘Nuovi impulsi allo studio della logica: la seconda fase della riscoperta di Aristotele e di Boezio,’ in: E. Sestan (ed.), La scuola nell’Occidente latino dell’alto Medioevo: 15–21 aprile 1971, Spoleto 1972 (Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 19), 2: 743–766; B.G. Dod, ‘Aristoteles Latinus,’ in: N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny and J. Pinborg (eds.), The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600, Cambridge 1982, 45–79; R.-A. Gauthier, ‘Préface,’ in: Thomas Aquinas, Sentencia libri de anima, Roma, Paris 1984 (Opera omnia, 45/1), 1*-294*; and L. Bianchi, La filosofia nelle università: secoli XIII–XIV, Firenze 1997 (Biblioteca di cultura, 216), 11–14. For some recent works on the anthropology of the early thirteenth century, see E.H. Wéber, La personne humaine au XIII e siècle. L’ avènement chez les maîtres parisiens de l’acception moderne de l’ homme, Paris 1991 (Bibliothèque thomiste, 46); R.C. Dales, The Problem of the Rational Soul in the Thirteenth Century, Leiden, New York, Köln 1995 (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 65); C. Casagrande and S. Vecchio (eds.), Anima e corpo nella cultura medievale. Atti del V Convegno di studi della Società Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale, Venezia, 25–28 settembre 1995, Firenze 1999 (Millennio medievale, 15); Th.W. Köhler, Grundlagen des philosophisch-anthropologischen Diskurses im dreizehnten Jahrhundert. Die Erkenntnisbemühung um den Menschen im zeitgenössischen Verständnis, Leiden 2000 (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 71); and M. Lenzi, Anima, forma e sostanza: filosofia e teologia nel dibatto antropologico del XIII secolo, Spoleto 2011 (Uomini e mondi medievali, 28).
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other hand, the growing interest in a unitary vision of human being, offered by Aristotle’s De anima, had to be harmonized with the unquestionable idea of the immortality of the soul. This set of requirements not only prompted a discussion about new problems, but also favored eclectic solutions. In fact, the debate developed in the period often lacked a genuine comprehension of the metaphysical foundations of Aristotelian psychology. As a result, even though the definition of the soul, as it is formulated in Aristotle’s main psychological work, the De anima, can be found in many writings of the first half of the thirteenth century,2 yet a careful analysis of these works is necessary in order to understand the real signification that the masters of the period attributed to this definition. Undoubtedly, the debate on the potencies of the soul is one of the most interesting subjects from this point of view. In fact, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, the various doctrines of the powers of the soul reflected the general ontological vision concerning the nature of human being. Consequently, the discussion on the soul’s potencies often revealed the difficulties and inconsistencies of the anthropology of that period. The present article concentrates on the problem of the soul’s faculties principally in the commentary on the Sentences and in two quaestiones disputatae of a French Dominican, Hugh of St.-Cher.3 Hugh’s anthropology
2 A group of authors quotes the Arabic version of Aristotle’s definition of the soul, for example Dominicus Gundissalinus, Tractatus de anima, ed. J.T. Muckle, ‘The Treatise De anima of Dominicus Gundissalinus,’ Mediaeval Studies, 2 (1940), 23–102, at 4013–15: ‘Aristoteles autem sic definivit animam dicens: “Anima est prima perfectio corporis naturalis, instrumentalis, viventis potentialiter” ’; and John Blund, Tractatus de anima, 25, 2, ed. D.A. Callus and R.W. Hunt, London 1970 (Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 2), 9824-995. In the 1230s and 1240s, the masters of theology rather quote the translation of Jacob of Venice, for example Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, ed. M. Bieniak, ‘Una questione disputata di Ugo di St.-Cher sull’anima. Edizione e studio dottrinale,’ Studia antyczne i mediewistyczne, 2 [37] (2004), 127– 184, at 16943–46; Roland of Cremona, Summa, Ms. Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, 795, 34va; John of La Rochelle, Summa de anima, I, 2, ed. J.-G. Bougerol, Paris 1995 (Textes philosophiques du Moyen Age, 19), 5321–22. 3 Hugh was born around 1190. In 1224 or 1225 he became a Dominican in Paris, where he taught theology from 1230 to 1235. For many years he performed important duties inside his order, until he became the first Dominican cardinal in 1244. He died in Orvieto, in 1263. Hugh is known above all for his prominent exegetical works, the Postillae in Bibliam, the Concordantiae, and the Correctorium Bibliae. He also authored an important commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences (written probably in 1229–1231) and at least 36 quaestiones disputatae composed in Paris between 1230 and 1235. For more details about Hugh’s life and works, see J. Fisher, ‘Hugh of St. Cher and the Development of Medieval Theology,’ Speculum, 31 (1956), 57–69; Th. Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, 2, Roma 1975, 269–281; W.H. Principe, Hugh of Saint-Cher’s Theology of the Hypostatic Union, Toronto 1970 (The Theology of the Hypostatic Union in the Early Thirteenth Century, 3),
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merits a particular interest: it seems, in fact, that the Dominican master presents in his disputed question 263 a vision of the human soul, that is very similar to the doctrine exposed in Aristotle’s De anima. According to Hugh, the soul has an intrinsic capacity to give perfection to the body. This aptitude, called ‘unibilitas’,4 belongs naturally to the substance of the soul: ‘Hec autem unibilitas inest anime naturaliter et substantialiter.’5 Hugh clearly states that being a ‘perfectio’ is something more than moving the body and giving sensibility to the organs; in other words, it is not limited to some of the soul’s functions.6 Accordingly, being united with the body is not merely an accidental property of the soul: Hugh affirms, in fact, that the ‘unibilitas’ causes a substantial difference between the human soul and the angel.7 What is more, this aptitude persists in our soul even
14–21; A. Paravicini Bagliani, Cardinali di curia e ‘familiae’ cardinalizie dal 1227 al 1254, 2 vols., Padova 1972 (Italia Sacra, 18), 1: 257–259; A.M. Landgraf, Introduction à l’histoire de la littérature théologique de la scolastique naissante, Montréal 1973 (Publications de l’Institut d’études médiévales, Université de Montréal, 22), 175–177; J.-P. Torrell, Théorie de la prophétie et philosophie de la connaissance aux environs de 1230. La contribution d’Hugues de SaintCher (Ms. Douai 434, Question 481), Leuven 1977 (Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense, 40), 88– 90; A. Ghisalberti, ‘L’esegesi della scuola domenicana del sec. XIII,’ in: G. Cremascoli and C. Leonardi (eds.), La Bibbia nel Medioevo, Bologna 1996 (Collana La Bibbia nella storia, 16), 291–304, esp. 293–294; L.-J. Bataillon, G. Dahan and P.-M. Gy (eds.), Hugues de Saint-Cher (†1263): bibliste et théologien, Turnhout 2004 (Bibliothèque d’histoire culturelle du MoyenAge, 1), passim; and J. Bartkó, Un prédicateur français au Moyen Age: les Sermons modèles de Hugues de Saint-Cher (1263), Veszprém 2006 (Etudes françaises, 3), passim. 4 On the concept of ‘unibilitas’ see Th.M. Osborne, ‘Unibilitas: The Key to Bonaventure’s Understanding of Human Nature,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy, 37/2 (1999), 227–250, and Bieniak, The Soul-Body Problem, 24–27. 5 Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 1, 16944–45. 6 Cf. Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 1, 17076–81: ‘Ad primum ergo dico quod diffinitio Remigii conuenit angelo, sed duplex est regimen corporis: intrinsecus quod attenditur secundum perfectionem et motum et sensum, aliud extrinsecus quod attenditur secundum motum solum. Primo modo anima est regitiua corporis, mouet enim et perficit et sensificat illud. Secundo modo angelus: non enim angelus perfectio est corporis quod assumit, sed motor eius, et quod dicunt aliqui angelos habere corpora aeria, non est uerum, sed est contra sanctos.’ 7 Cf. Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 1, 16815–17; 16938–46: ‘Item. Per hoc quod est substantia incorporea non differt ab angelo; reliquum autem accidit anime, quod patet quia potest esse sine illo; ergo anima solo accidente differt ab angelo … Solutio. Dico ad primum quod anima et angelus differunt substantialiter non numero tantum sicut duo homines, ut quidam uoluerunt, sed specie, ut homo et asinus. Conueniunt autem in genere remoto quod est substantia et in genere propinquo quod est spiritus. Sed anima est spiritus unibilis, angelus uero spiritus omnino non unibilis, unde angelus ita est substantia quod non perfectio, anima uero ita substantia quod perfectio alterius, scilicet corporis organici, ut dicit Philosophus quod est endelichia corporis organici potentia uitam habentis. Hec autem
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after the death of the body: for this reason, the human soul alone can never be called ‘a person’.8 The importance of this theory is particularly clear if we compare it to the anthropological doctrine of Avicenna. The latter maintains, in fact, that the capacity to give life to the body is only a ‘spiritual accident’ of the human soul.9 Avicenna’s doctrine had a very strong influence on the Latin masters in the beginning of the thirteenth century.10 In particular, Philipp the Chancellor, whose Summa de bono is the principal source of Hugh’s question De anima, embraced the theory of an accidental union between unibilitas inest anime naturaliter et substantialiter per quam differt ab angelo et hec est prima differentia anime et angeli.’ This theory, according to which the substantial difference between the human soul and the angel is caused by the soul’s capacity to join the body, can already be found in the second redaction of William of Auxerre’s Summa aurea. Cf. William of Auxerre, Summa aurea, II, appendix 19, ed. J. Ribaillier, Paris, Grottaferrata 1982 (Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, 17), 75148-75253: ‘Substantialiter autem differt anima ab angelo eo quod apta est nata vivificare corpus et ei misceri. Angeli autem differentia ab anima rationali est impermissibilitas sive abstractio absoluta a corporea substantia, qua aptus est angelus stare in se et per se sine aliqua dependentia ab aliqua inferiori substantia. Homo vero dicitur factus ad ymaginem et similitudinem Dei, quia hec est eius dignitas extrema super omnia bruta animalia.’ 8 Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 1, 17082–85: ‘Ad secundum, quod anima et angelus differunt accidente solo etc., dicendum quod “regens” non dicit actum sed aptitudinem secundum quam anima apta est naturaliter regere corpus illo triplici regimine quod diximus, et hanc aptitudinem habet anima etiam separata. Hec enim est illa unibilitas de qua supra diximus.’ Cf. Hugh of St.-Cher, Commentarium in tertium Sententiarum, d. 2, in: W. Breuning, Die hypostatische Union in der Theologie Wilhelms von Auxerre, Hugos von St. Cher und Rolands von Cremona, Trier 1962 (Trierer theologische Studien, 11), 338–400, esp. 34079–82, and d. 5, 342–352, esp. 351353-352386. 9 Cf. Avicenna, Liber de anima seu sextus de naturalibus, I, 1, ed. S. Van Riet, Leuven, Leiden 1972 (Avicenna latinus, 1), 1577-1684: ‘Et id a quo emanant istae affectiones dicitur anima, et omnino quicquid est principium emanandi a se affectiones quae non sunt unius modi et sunt voluntarie, imponimus ei nomen “anima”. Et hoc nomen est nomen huius rei non ex eius essentia, nec ex praedicamento … in quo continebitur postea; nunc autem non affirmamus nisi esse rei quae est principium eius quod praediximus, et affirmamus esse rei ex hoc quod habet aliquod accidens. Oportet autem ut, per hoc accidens quod habet, accedamus ad certificandum eius essentiam et ad cognoscendum quid sit.’ Similar statements are made in 2627-2730; V, 3, 10649–53; 11119–27; V, 4, 14454–56; V, 7, 16036-16139; and 16257-16364. Avicenna’s view has been studied by M. Sebti, Avicenne: l’âme humaine, Paris 2000 (Philosophies, 129), 18–19 and 25–33, and G. Verbeke, ‘Le De anima d’Avicenne. Une conception spiritualiste de l’ homme,’ in: Avicenna, Liber de anima seu sextus de naturalibus, IV–V, ed. S. Van Riet, Leuven, Leiden 1968 (Avicenna latinus, 2), 1*-73*, esp. 11*. 10 Cf. for example John Blund, Tractatus de anima, 2, 1, 532-63, and the anonymous Summa Duacensis, 5, ed. P. Glorieux, in: La Summa Duacensis (Douai 434), Paris 1955 (Textes philosophiques du Moyen Age, 2), 40. See also Lenzi, Anima, forma e sostanza, 92–158, and P. Bernardini, ‘La dottrina dell’anima separata nella prima metà del XIII secolo e i suoi influssi sulla teoria della conoscenza (1240–1260 ca.),’ in: I. Zavattero (ed.), Etica e conoscenza nel XIII e XIV secolo, Arezzo 2006 (Lavori in corso, 6), 27–38, esp. 29–30.
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human soul and body.11 Hugh in his disputed questions usually follows the Summa de bono very closely.12 Nevertheless, he rejects Philipp’s conception of the psychophysical union and affirms that the aptitude to join the body belongs to the soul essentially or substantially (substantialiter). However, how should one understand the word ‘substantialiter’ in the context of Hugh’s question De anima? In fact, if an aptitude belongs to a substance and it is not an accident, what is it then? To find an answer to this question, a glance on Hugh’s Commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences might be helpful. In his commentary on the third distinction of book I, where Peter Lombard presents human memory, intellect and will as an image of the divine Trinity, Hugh asks if the three rational potencies are identical with the essence of the human soul. The response is that, indeed, they are: ‘memoria, intelligentia et uoluntas substantialiter siue essentialiter sunt in anima.’ The human soul cannot be conceived without these faculties; as a consequence, it is the soul itself that remembers, understands and loves.13 A similar point of view is exposed by Philipp the Chancellor, Hugh’s elder colleague, in his question De ymagine et similitudine nostra. According to Philipp, the three rational potencies are essential or substantial to the human soul, which means that they are identical with it in the same way as the aptitude to receive the substantial form is identical with the matter.14
11 Cf. Philipp the Chancellor, Summa de bono, I, ed. N. Wicki, Bern 1985 (Corpus philosophorum Medii Aevi, 2), 28140–41 and 287185–193. 12 See O. Lottin, ‘Un petit traité sur l’ âme de Hugues de Saint-Cher,’ Revue néoscolastique de philosophie, 34 (1932), 468–475; Torrell, Théorie de la prophétie, 73–87; and M. Bieniak, ‘Una questione disputata di Ugo di St.-Cher sull’anima. Edizione e studio dottrinale,’ Studia antyczne i mediewistyczne, 2 [37] (2004), 127–184, esp. 135–147. 13 Hugh of St.-Cher, In I Sententiarum, d. 3, ed. M. Bieniak, The Soul-Body Problem at Paris, ca. 1200–1250. Hugh of St-Cher and His Contemporaries, Leuven 2010 (Ancient and medieval philosophy, 42), 187–199, at 18976-19080, 195228-196266: ‘Preterea. Memoria etc. aut sunt in anima accidentaliter, aut essentialiter. Si accidentaliter, ergo anima potest intelligi esse preter hec. Set idem est ratio quod intelligentia et uoluntas et memoria, ergo anima potest intelligi sine rationali, et hoc falsum. Si essentialiter, ergo sunt idem in essentia quod anima, ergo et idem erunt in essentia, non ergo diuersa … Set obicitur quod dicit quod memoria, intelligentia et uoluntas substantialiter siue essentialiter sunt in anima, ergo uel sicut superius in inferiori, et patet quod hoc falsum; uel tanquam partes integrales in toto; uel tanquam partes essentiales, ut forme essentiales insunt … Set istis obicitur: hoc quod hic dicitur “quia substantialiter insunt anime” sic exponunt, idest “naturaliter” uel “inseparabiliter per modum substantialis”, quia immediate post creationem anime insunt ei potentie, et sunt naturales anime.’ 14 Philipp the Chancellor, De ymagine et similitudine nostra, ed. N. Wicki in: Die Philosophie Philipps des Kanzlers: ein philosophierender Theologe des frühen 13. Jahrhunderts, Fribourg 2005 (Dokimion, 29), 171–178, esp. 175200-176239: ‘Item, hec tria sunt in anima aut ut essentia aut ut proprium aut ut accidens. Si ut proprium vel accidens, tunc preter hec potest
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As a result, if the expression ‘substantialiter’ is used in the question De anima in the same sense as in Hugh’s commentary on the Sentences and in Philipp’s De ymagine, we are urged to maintain that, according to Hugh, ‘unibilitas’ is simply identical with the essence of the human soul. Such a statement would imply that the human soul is united with the body per se, by means of its very essence. However, it would be wrong to conclude that Hugh fully accepts the view of the soul as ‘entelechy’ and that he considers the soul to be a pure form, which, only when united with the body, constitutes a substance. First of all, the human soul is, according to Hugh, a spiritual substance of its own species. He repeats this statement many times in the same text where he speaks of the substantial ‘unibilitas’ of the soul.15 Indeed, this double identity of the human ‘psyche’ is, in his opinion, perfectly coherent with Aristotle’s intentions. It seems, in fact, that Hugh interprets the ‘forma substantialis’ of a human being as ‘a form, which is a substance’. In fact, in the third article of the same question, he quotes Aristotle in order to assert that a form is also a kind of substance.16 This does not mean, however, that he believes the soul to be composed of its own matter and form: Hugh admits that in the soul there is only a ‘logical’ or ‘rational’ composition of two metaphysical principles, ‘quo est’ and ‘quod est’.17 Nevertheless, the human soul is a substance. Hugh
intelligi anima esse. Ergo preter esse animam, et si non memoret vel intelligat vel diligat. Non ergo est nobilior creatura corpore. Si sunt in anima illa tria substantialiter, vel ut partes integrales, et hoc improbatum, vel ut ipsa essentia anime … Notandum quod triplex est potentia: accidentalis, ut potentia recipiendi colores; naturalis, ut potentia calefaciendi in igne; essentialis, ut potentia recipiendi formam substantialem, et hoc idem est essentiale cum eo cuius est potentia. Verbi gratia: prima materia est sua potentia, quia potens est recipere formam substantialem. Hoc ultimo modo dico sine preiudicio quod potentie anime sunt ipsa anima; sed inquantum ad alium et alium actum referuntur, diverse dicuntur potentie. Inquantum enim potens est memorari, dicitur potentia memorandi et sic de aliis potentiis.’ 15 Cf. Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 1, 16938–41: ‘Anima et angelus … conveniunt autem in genere remoto quod est substantia et in genere propinquo quod est spiritus.’ 16 Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 3, 176302-177304: ‘Item. Substantia non dicitur uniuoce de materia et forma et composito, quia materia est substantia ex qua aliquid est, forma est substantia per quam aliquid est, compositum est substantia ens per se.’ Cf. Aristotle, De anima, II.1, 412a6–10, Translatio vetus, ed. K. White, in: Anonymi magistri artium (c. 1246–1247), Sententia super II et III De anima, ed. B.C. Bazán, Louvain-la-Neuve, Leuven, Paris 1998 (Philosophes médiévaux, 37), 2: ‘Dicamus ergo genus quoddam eorum que sunt substantiam / huius autem aliud quidem sicut materia, quod secundum se non est hoc / aliquid, alterum autem formam et speciem secundum quam iam dicitur hoc/aliquid, et tertium quod est ex hiis.’ Cf. the corresponding passage in the Translatio nova, ed. R.A. Gauthier, in: Thomas Aquinas, Sentencia libri de anima, Roma, Paris 1984 (Opera omnia, 45/1), 67. 17 Cf. Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 3, 181463–471.
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maintains this view, as well as virtually all his contemporaries, in order to guarantee an independent subsistence of our ‘psyche’ after its separation from the body. Accordingly, even if we consider only the first article of the question De anima, we might expect that Hugh, like other masters of the period, professes the same eclectic Aristotelianism which will be criticized by Thomas Aquinas in his questions On the soul.18 Nevertheless, the only way to reach a complete understanding of Hugh’s psychology is to examine the consequences of his basic statements. In other words, we should consider the solutions that he gives to the typical anthropological problems of his time. Among these problems, we find, first of all, the question of the ontological status of the sensitive and vegetative potencies. Hugh dedicates two texts to this subject, namely the second article of his question De anima, entitled Utrum anima rationalis et sensibilis et vegetabilis sint idem in eadem, and the disputed question 285 conserved in Ms. Douai 434, entitled Quomodo anima uniatur corpori. Both texts are strongly influenced by Philipp the Chancellor’s Summa de bono. For instance, Hugh accepts Philipp’s view that the union of soul and body is not direct, but needs the mediation of the sensitive and vegetative potencies.19 These potencies or faculties play the role of ‘dispositiones materiales’ for the rational soul. This mediation does not refer to the soul’s operations—in fact, our intellect can work without the help of sensitive cognition. The presence of sensitive and vegetative potencies is necessary for the psychophysical union from an ontological point of view: without these potencies, our soul cannot be the body’s perfection.20
18 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de anima, ed. B.C. Bazán, Roma, Paris 1996 (Opera omnia, 24/1), 7–11. For a detailed analysis, see B.C. Bazán, ‘The Human Soul: Form and Substance? Thomas Aquinas’ Critique of Eclectic Aristotelianism,’ Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, 64 (1997), 95–126. 19 Philipp the Chancellor, Summa de bono, I, 28489–102. Cf. O. Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XII e et XII e siècles, 1: Problèmes de psychologie, Gembloux 1942, 467; 478–479; R. Zavalloni, Richard de Mediavilla et la controverse sur la pluralité des formes, Leuven 1951 (Philosophes médiévaux, 2), 397–398 and 407–409; and N. Wicki, Die Philosophie Philipps des Kanzlers: ein philosophierender Theologe des frühen 13. Jahrhunderts, Fribourg 2005 (Dokimion, 29), 129– 130. 20 Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 2, 175246–250: ‘Ad primum quo dicitur quod nihil est medium et perfectio eiusdem respectu eiusdem, uerum est secundum idem quod ante dicitur, quod sensibilis est materialis dispositio per quam inest anima rationalis corpori. Falsum est hoc, scilicet ideo dicitur medium quia prius est operatio eius in quantum sensitiua quam operatio eiusdem in quantum est intellectiua et preexigitur ut principium quia a sensu incipit opera intellectus.’
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Looking at these statements, we are entitled to ask if it is possible to reconcile the doctrine of material dispositions with the idea of a substantial ‘unibilitas’. The answer to this question largely depends on the ontological status, which Hugh grants to both kinds of potencies. On the one hand, the main source of Hugh’s questions, namely Philipp’s Summa de bono, presents a theory according to which each type of faculty has its own spiritual substance.21 This doctrine will often be quoted and criticized in the following decades.22 It is very difficult to say whether Philipp himself embraces this point of view.23 Whatever the case may be, Hugh clearly states that all the soul’s potencies belong to only one substance.24 Consequently, there are no intermediate substances between the rational soul and the material body according to the Dominican master. On the other hand, we observed that Hugh in his commentary on the Sentences professes the identity of the rational potencies with the essence of the soul.25 Is it possible that, in his opinion, the same rational soul is the immediate principle, not only of rational operations, but also of sensitive and vegetative operations? In this case, in fact, the human soul would be united with the body by its substance, and the role of the material dispositions according to Hugh would certainly be very different from what is argued for in Philipp’s Summa de bono. This kind of conclusion, however, would be inappropriate. First of all, we must observe that the problem of the rational potencies was always treated separately from that of the inferior faculties. The classical questions on the soul as the image of God hardly concerned the sensitive and vegetative potencies at all. In fact, according to a long tradition, which began with the
Cf. Philipp the Chancellor, Summa de bono, I, 23379-234112. Cf. for example the anonymous Summa Duacensis, 7, 2, 60–63; John of La Rochelle, Summa de anima, I, 37–40, 115–130; and E. Bertola, ‘Alano di Lilla, Filippo il Cancelliere e una inedita “quaestio” sull’immortalità dell’anima umana,’ Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica, 62 (1970), 245–271. 23 Odon Lottin and Nicolaus Wicki claim that according to Philipp there is only one substance in the human soul. Cf. Lottin, Psychologie et morale, I, 467 and 478–479, and Wicki, Die Philosophie, 123. On the other hand, Roberto Zavalloni argues that the secular master prefers the alternative solution, according to which the soul is composed of three spiritual substances. Cf. Zavalloni, Richard de Mediavilla, 397–398 and 407–409. 24 Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 2, 175242–244: ‘Alli dicunt, quibus magis consentio, quod una tantum substantia incorporea est in homine et una anima tantum cuius tres sunt potentiae, scilicet vegetabilis, sensibilis et rationalis, in una substantia fundatae, idest in anima rationali.’ 25 Cf. supra, n. 14. 21
22
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writings of Philo of Alexandria and continued with Hilary and Augustine, only the superior part of the soul, namely the mind (mens), could be considered to be an image of the Holy Trinity.26 The proper function of the human mind was, in fact, the comprehension and love of God; therefore memory, intelligence and will did not refer to the material world. As a result, the problems concerning the sensitive and vegetative potencies were discussed in a different context. If we want to find an answer to the question of the ontological status of the inferior potencies of the soul, we must not look for it in the writings on the identity of the rational soul with its faculties, but rather in the disputed questions influenced by Aristotelian philosophy. For example, in this context we will find treatises concerning the question whether the sensitive and vegetative potencies survive the death of the human composite. Hugh of St.-Cher did not compose a disputed question on this topic, but in the second article of his question De anima he presents his opinion on this matter. According to the Dominican master, the inferior faculties belong to the substance of the rational soul; however, their existence is strictly connected with their function in the human body.27 The arguments given by Hugh can be also found in Philipp’s Summa de bono28 and reflect, to some extent, the Aristotelian anthropology. Indeed, according to Aristotle, when the organism dies, the potencies that operate through the corporal organs
26 Philo of Alexandria, Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat, ed. I. Feuer, Paris 1965 (Les œuvres de Philon d’ Alexandrie, 5), 70. Cf. R. Javelet, Image et ressemblance au douzième siècle. De Saint Anselme à Alain de Lille, Paris 1967, I, 21–22 and II, 5.—Hilarius of Poitiers, Tractatus super Psalmos: in Psalmum CXVIII, 10, 6–7, ed. J. Doignon, Turnhout 2002 (Corpus Christianorum, Series latina, 61a), 92. Cf. Javelet, Image et ressemblance, I, 53–54 and II, 27, and M.J. Rondeau, ‘Remarques sur l’ anthropologie de saint Hilaire,’ Studia Patristica, 6 (1962), 197–210.—Augustine, De Trinitate, IX, 11, 16, ed. W.J. Mountain, Turnhout 1968 (Corpus Christianorum, Series latina, 50), 307; XIV, 3, 6, 427–428. Cf. Alcuin of York, De ratione animae, 5, in: J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina, 101, Paris 1845, 639–649, 639– 649, at 641A. Cf. Javelet, Image et ressemblance, I, 58–60 and II, 31. 27 Cf. Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 2, 175254–263: ‘Ad id quod secundo obicitur, scilicet quod substantie separabilis non est potentia inseparabilis, dico uerum est per se, idest substantie separabilis in quantum separabilis non enim est potentia inseparabilis in quantum huiusmodi, sed substantie separabilis, in quantum est coniuncta, potest esse potentia non separabilis ratione coniunctionis. Tres enim sunt substantie: una omnino separabilis et inconiuncta, ut angelus cuius est potentia pure rationalis; alia pure inseparabilis, scilicet anima sensibilis, cuius est potentia inseparabilis; tertia que est separabilis sed coniuncta, cuius est utraque potentia: una separabilis que sequitur eam cum separatur, alia inseparabilis que destruitur in separatione, ut est potentia sensitiua in quantum huiusmodi, et intellectiua que sequitur eam separatam.’ 28 Philipp the Chancellor, Summa de bono, I, 235128–138.
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must perish. However, Hugh, contrarily to Aristotle, does not consider the sensitive and vegetative potencies to be accidents of the human composite.29 He asserts several times, in fact, that their proper subject is identical with the rational soul and not with the human person in its composite nature.30 Consequently, even if Hugh does not state it explicitly, it seems that in his opinion the vegetative and sensitive potencies are accidents of the soul’s substance. If they were not accidents, it would be difficult to explain how they can perish without the soul itself being corrupted. This theory has important consequences for the unity of the human being in Hugh’s anthropology. In fact, our soul is united with the body not by its essence, that is to say as a form, but through the mediation of its inferior potencies, which are mere accidents. It seems that this conclusion is coherent with Hugh’s theory of the essential identity between the soul and its rational faculties, memory, intelligence and will. The rational potencies can operate, in fact, without the help of corporal organs. As a result, the soul’s essence is independent from the body, because it—that is to say, the soul’s essence—does not consist in the ‘unibilitas’, or, in other words, it does not consist in the fact of being united and giving life to the body, but in the spiritual comprehension of God. Therefore, the sensitive and vegetative potencies can exist in the human soul only as its accidents. But if the soul-body union depends only on these faculties, this kind of conjunction is necessarily accidental, not substantial. Hugh’s doctrine concerning the inferior potencies of the soul has also other consequences. In fact, if these faculties are mortal, it seems difficult to understand how the ‘unibilitas’ of the human soul can persist after the soul’s separation from the body. Looking at these difficulties, one might ask if it was really necessary for Hugh to affirm the mortality of the inferior potencies. Indeed, considering the theological context of the period, it was not. Among the psychological writings of the second quarter of the thirteenth century, we can find at least
29 It is worth noting that in his commentary on the Sentences, Hugh lays down the familiar principle that actions do not come from the form, but from the subject acting through the form: ‘Gratia enim, proprie loquendo, non agit in forma aliqua proprie sed aliquid vel aliquis per formam, sicut ignis per igneitatem sive per caliditatem, et Deus per gratiam’ (Hugh of St.-Cher, In IV Sententiarum, d. 16, in: Principe, Hugh of Saint-Cher’s Theology, 43). 30 Cf. Hugh of St.-Cher, Quaestio de anima, 2, 176284–288: ‘Dico ad hoc quod re uera sensitiua potentia eiusdem speciei est in brutis et in hominibus, sed subiectum sensitiue potentie hinc et inde diuersum est. Hinc enim subiectum eius est anima rationalis, inde uero anima sensibilis, et ideo cum subiectum eius in homine sit incorruptibile et ipsa secundum substantiam quidem incorruptibilis, tamen secundum rationem corruptibilis.’
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four works of four different authors where the immortality of all potencies of the human soul is affirmed. The most explicit of them is a disputed question by Alexander of Hales.31 His views on this point have strongly influenced John of La Rochelle’s Summa de anima.32 Furthermore, one of Hugh’s colleagues at the University of Paris, Peter of Bar, wrote a similar question.33 These three texts are based on the Aristotelian classification of the powers of the soul. However, the arguments employed to prove the permanence of the vegetative and sensitive potencies are mostly theological: the Bible and Saint Augustine are the most frequently quoted ‘auctoritates’. First, the presence of all the potencies is necessary because of the excellence of the resurrected body: the soul, in fact, has to give life to all bodily organs. What is more, if our body will resurrect undamaged in all its parts, undoubtedly our soul will be complete as well. Indeed, the vegetative and sensitive potencies acquire merits in this life as well as our body; as a result, it would be unjust if they had to perish. The immortality of the soul’s inferior potencies is therefore necessary because of God’s justice.34 The faith in the resurrection of the body seems to be the main reason for the Parisian masters to affirm the permanence of infra-rational faculties. However, next to the theological explanations we can also find an ontological argument. According to Alexander of Hales, the sensitive and vegetative
31 Alexander of Hales, Quaestiones disputatae ‘antequam esset frater’, q. 32, membr. 3, ed. PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, Quaracchi, Firenze 1960 (Bibliotheca franciscana scholastica Medii Aevi, 19), 5657–23. 32 Cf. John of La Rochelle, Summa de anima, I, 45, 14235–40 and 14356–66. 33 Peter of Bar, De hiis que ex parte anime manebunt, ed. M. Bieniak, The Soul-Body Problem at Paris, ca. 1200–1250. Hugh of St-Cher and His Contemporaries, Leuven 2010 (Ancient and medieval philosophy, 42), 206–209, at 20624-20858: ‘Item. In eodem susceptibili erit premium suo modo, sicut fuit et meritum. Set meritum fuit in generatiua uel abstinendo, uel agendo, ergo et in ea erit premium, ergo manebit; similiter et nutritiua. Item. Scientie manebunt ad decorem, non ad usum, ergo pari ratione uires anime … Dicimus igitur quod licet actus generandi et nutriendi cessent, tamen generatiua et nutritiua manebunt quia meruerunt … Solutio. Re uera sensus omnes manebunt, set quia erunt corporis spiritualis habebunt spirituales actus, nec fiet gustus, aut odoratus, aut etiam uisus, ut dicuntur, sicut nunc.’ 34 Cf. for example Alexander of Hales, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 32, membr. 3, 5657–19: ‘Postea quaeritur utrum sit immortalis secundum omnem vim. Quod non secundum omnem, videtur, quia quaedam vires non sunt agentes nisi per corpus; ergo, facta separatione a corpore, supervacuae essent; ergo deficiunt vegetabilis et sensibilis, et intellectualis apprehendens per phantasias. Contra: anima rationalis demeretur vel meretur in his, vel secundum ordinem ad has potentias. Ergo, si demeretur vel meretur per se secundum has potentias, vel coniunctione ad has, erit praemiabilis in his vel punibilis. Item, anima non erit imperfecta in patria; non ergo deficient ibi hae potentiae; ergo separantur cum ea, cum non creabuntur ibi novae.’
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potencies have a different disposition in the human being and in animals that lack intelligence.35 The position and role of all the human powers are determined, in fact, by their relation to the rational faculty, while the potencies of the animal soul are limited to corporal functions. Alexander does not explain how the immortality of the rational soul preserves the inferior potencies from death. Nonetheless, another psychological work of the first half of the thirties, namely the treatise De anima of William of Auvergne, contains a clear justification of this theory. According to William, the rational soul is a complete and independently existing substance, which uses the body in the same way as a musician uses his instrument. Consequently, the potencies exercised through the bodily organs belong neither to the body, nor to the human person in its composite nature: in fact, they have their only foundation in the soul. As a result, the immortal substance of the human soul guarantees immortality to all its potencies.36 The doctrine of the permanence of the vegetative and sensitive potencies seems to be perfectly coherent with the traditional anthropological dualism. What is more, in a sense, this theory makes the resurrection of the body easier to conceive: in fact, the separate soul will have all capacities necessary to ensoul a new organism. On the contrary, the resurrection is more difficult to think within the framework of Hugh of St.-Cher’s anthropology. In fact, according to Hugh, the inferior potencies, on the one hand, are the only connection between soul and body and, on the other hand, they are defined as perishable accidents of the immortal soul. In this way, the human soul in its separate state not only will not need the body, but, what is more, it will not be able to regain control over it. Consequently, the resurrection becomes completely inexplicable from a philosophical perspective.
35 Alexander of Hales, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 32, membr. 3, 56520–23: ‘Respondeo: Separantur cum ea potentiae ad sentiendum et ad vegetandum, quia ordinem habent in homine ad rationem; sed in brutis et in plantis ordinem habent ad corpus. Unde in iis corrumpuntur, sed in homine separantur nec supervacuae sunt.’ 36 William of Auvergne, De anima, 23, in: Id., Opera omnia, Paris 1674, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1963, 2: 65–228, 149–150: ‘Quod si quid dixerit, quia quantum ad vires inferiores ex quibus sunt operationes hujusmodi necesse est animam humanam indigere corpore et membris corporalibus, verum utique dicit, si ista indigentia est solummodo quantum ad operationes hujusmodi peragendas: quemadmodum cytharaedus indiget cythara quantum ad operationem cytharizandi exercendam, non autem quantum ad esse vel existere suum, et carpentarius eodem modo indiget dolabra, vel securi … Vires omnes hujusmodi vires animarum dixerunt esse, non autem corporum vel membrorum … Quapropter sicut pereunte oculo, non perit virtus visiva, sic pereunte toto corpore, non perit anima humana vel in parte, vel in toto.’
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From the point of view of Aristotelian anthropology, however, Hugh’s theory concerning the mortality of the vegetative and sensitive potencies seems compatible, to some extent, with that of the Greek philosopher. For, according to Aristotle, the human soul can survive only if it has a faculty which can be exercised independently from the body. In contrast, all potencies that operate through the body or, in other words, that are the act of a bodily organ, have to perish with the corruption of the organ itself. Indeed, according to Aristotle, only the complete being, composed of form and matter, can be defined as the proper subject of potencies and their acts. As a result, if a potency cannot operate because of the lack of an organ, we cannot say that the soul itself has this faculty.37 Certainly, Aristotle was not troubled by the lack of inferior potencies in the separate soul. In fact, neither the Greek philosopher nor Avicenna expected the resurrection of the body. In any case, we must observe that this problem would never have been relevant to the anthropology exposed in Aristotle’s Peri psych¯es. According to Aristotle, in fact, the psychophysical union is not realized due to the mediation of the soul’s potencies. On the contrary, it is a consequence of the nature of the soul itself. In other words, this conjunction is not based on the functions that a soul accomplishes in its body, but it has its foundation in the ontological interdependence of both principles, conceived as form and matter. Consequently, the soul can never loose its capacity to give life to the body, because this ability does not depend on its potencies: on the contrary, the powers of the soul spring from its very nature.38 Hugh of St.-Cher, like his contemporaries, is not able to understand and to accept this vision with all its consequences. This is why he embraces Philipp the Chancellor’s theory of the intermediate principles between soul and body, even though this doctrine contradicts his own assertions concerning the substantial and immortal ‘unibilitas’ of the soul. If we consider the coherence of Hugh’s psychology, especially in its relation to Christian faith, his doctrine is not free from difficulties. On the one hand, the theory of the indirect union between soul and body makes it easy to understand how the human soul can subsist apart from the body. But on the other hand, it does not facilitate at all the philosophical understanding of the possibility of a resurrection. We must admit, however,
37 38
Cf. Aristotle, De anima II.1, 413a (Translatio vetus, 19). Cf. Aristotle, De anima II.1, 412b–413a (Translatio vetus, 18–19).
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that Hugh made a serious and interesting attempt to overcome the dualist anthropology and to reject a vision in which the relation between the human soul and body was purely accidental. This attempt makes Hugh’s psychology worth of attention.
THE SOULS AFTER VIENNE: FRANCISCAN THEOLOGIANS’ VIEWS ON THE PLURALITY OF FORMS AND THE PLURALITY OF SOULS, CA. 1315–1330
William Duba*
1. Introduction In a recent book, Robert Pasnau uses the Council of Vienne to demonstrate the pernicious influence of doctrinal declarations on the practice and vitality of medieval philosophy: The censures of 1270–1347 demarcate the outer limits of debate for the duration of the scholastic era. In general, as time wore on, these limits came to be so entrenched as to be internalized in the minds of scholars, their basis in Church doctrine no longer needed to be mentioned. Consider the Council of Vienne. In 1278, Peter John Olivi thought himself free to question whether the soul is the form of the body. This was, after all, a doctrine that had been dominant in the Latin West for only a few decades. In general, remarks Olivi of Aristotle, “his authority, like that of any infidel and idolater, is nothing to me” (Summa II.16; I:337). Yet after Olivi’s views on the soul were condemned at Vienne in 1312, it became impossible to follow his lead in this matter. Accordingly, when in subsequent years authors such as Henry of Harclay, John of Jandun, and Peter Auriol take up the question of how the soul stands to the body, they go along with the standard hylomorphic analysis, but make it clear that they are doing so purely on the basis of faith, and stress that they do not think the doctrine can be proved. Eventually, however, the Aristotelian analysis came to be taken for granted, as beyond dispute, and in this and other domains scholastic thought took on the rigid, dogmatic aspect for which it would be so scorned in the seventeenth century.1
* This chapter had its beginning in the paper given by Russell L. Friedman at the 2007 conference Psychology and the Other Disciplines that is the source for many of the chapters in this volume. I am deeply grateful to Russell Friedman for allowing me to build upon his work, especially his treatments of Peter John Olivi, Peter Auriol, and Gerald Odonis. I would further like to thank Russell Friedman, Chris Schabel and Monica Brinzei-Calma for their helpful comments and corrections. 1 R. Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671, Oxford 2011, 434–435.
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On Pasnau’s account, Peter John Olivi challenged the authority of Aristotle; in condemning his view, the Council of Vienne supported that of Aristotle; as a result, those who would otherwise have challenged Aristotelian doctrine in the years following the Council of Vienne instead resorted to fideism. Later authors internalized the Aristotelianism promoted by the Council, and their silence is proof that the condemnation prevented them from challenging, or even recognizing, the underlying metaphysical assumptions. The glorious scholastic enterprise of the thirteenth century, repeatedly beaten and broken by condemnation and censure, died and became a sterile body, separated from the very principles that once vivified it. In this separate state, it lied unchanged in the tomb of the universities for three centuries, running through the long-exhausted permutations sic et non of Aristotle’s system. While variants on this reading of the history of philosophy have been popular for some time, the proof adduced here is particularly thoughtprovoking: the Council of Vienne’s declaration that the intellective soul must be of itself and essentially the form of the body. In the accompanying note, Pasnau provides his proof that Henry of Harclay, John of Jandun and Peter Auriol were anti-Aristotelians, suppressed by the Council: Harclay remarks of the Averroist line on intellect that “nulla ratio probat oppositum. Unde solum propter fidem teneo quod intellectiva est forma hominis” (Quaest. ord. 9 n. 59). Jandun recites the stock Aristotelian line and then remarks: “omnia talia quae dicunt fideles catholici ego dico simpliciter esse vera sine omni dubitatione, sed demonstrare nescio. Gaudeant qui hoc sciunt; sed sola fide teneo et confiteor” (In De an. III.12, col. 291). Auriol expressly invokes the Council of Vienne: “licet demonstrari non possit animam esse formam corporis modo aliarum formarum, tamen tenendum est, secundum quod mihi videtur, quod sicut figura est forma et pura perfectio cerae, sic anima est pura actuatio et formatio corporis eo modo quo se habent caeterae formae … Illam autem conclusionem teneo specialiter propter determinationem Concilii, quae ex verborum apparentia videtur ad intentionem illam” (Sent. II.16.1.2 II:224b).2
Henry of Harclay does seem to favor “the Averroist line on intellect”; indeed, the paragraph Pasnau cites begins, “For this reason I believe that the Commentator [= Averroes] has Aristotle’s meaning in III De anima.”3 Likewise,
Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 435, n. 10. Henry of Harclay, Quaestiones ordinariae, q. 9, n. 59, ed. M. Henninger, Henry of Harclay. Ordinary Questions, 1: I–XIV, Oxford 2008 (Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 17), 430: ‘Unde credo Commentatorem habere intentionem Aristotelis 3 De anima, quia intellectus nichil de novo recipit sicud nec Deus, quia contradictoria sunt simul in anima eodem modo, sicud 2 3
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John of Jandun, “The Prince of the Averroists”, is well known for his strong support of Averroes’s interpretation of Aristotle; in this case, moreover, he is copying from another supporter of Averroes, Thomas Wylton.4 Finally, Peter Auriol’s doctrine of matter and form, and of the human soul, began life as an explicit attempt to adhere to the doctrine of Averroes and Aristotle.5 All three thinkers were influenced by Averroes, and they understood themselves as working out a doctrine that conformed to Aristotle. Unlike Olivi, these men did not challenge Aristotle’s authority; if anything, they felt that their colleagues were not Aristotelian enough. If Pasnau’s point is that the Council of Vienne’s determination played a role in preventing authors from questioning the fundamental Aristotelian metaphysical assumptions that characterized later Scholastic philosophy, the evidence he adduces is irrelevant. Pasnau’s statements and the evidence he brings up do demonstrate that the Council of Vienne had a significant impact, and by bringing to the surface the dissonance between what should be the case and what superficially appears to have happened, he shows where investigation is needed: before we can assess the impact of the Council of Vienne on the practice of philosophy clear through to the seventeenth century, we need to grasp how it was understood by contemporaries. Just how did the confessed supporters of Averroes end up seeing in the condemnation of Peter John Olivi’s teaching on the soul the rejection of their own position? What effect did the decree of the Council actually have on the debate in the decades following its publication? To propose an answer to these questions, this paper restricts itself to what should be a case of primary importance: the reception of the
ad Deum apud quem non est transmutatio nec vicissitudinis obumbratio. Unde nova intentio in nobis non est nisi nova fantasma copulata cum intellectu separato. Et nulla ratio probat oppositum. Unde solum propter fidem teneo quod intellectiva est forma hominis.’ 4 Thomas Wylton, Quaestio de anima intellectiva, ed. L.O. Nielsen and C. Trifogli, Thomas Wylton. On the Intellectual Soul, Oxford 2010 (Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 19), 108: ‘Si autem per intellectivam non solum intelligatur forma per quam intelligimus quidditates rerum abstractas, sed cum hoc comprehendamus conditiones eius alias quas catholici ei attribuunt … nescio si istam veritatem per rationem naturalem convincebant vel convincere potuerunt. Quantum tamen ad philosophos nescio aliquem qui per rationem naturalem convincit nec etiam ponit. Quantum autem ad me, dico quod licet illam opinionem absque aliqua dubitatione credam veram esse, ipsam tamen per rationem naturalem convincere nescio—gaudeant illi qui convincere eam sciunt—sed sola fide teneo.’ On John of Jandun as ‘Prince of the Averroists,’ see, for example, J.-B. Brenet, ‘John of Jandun,’ in: H. Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Philosophy between 500 and 1500, Dordrecht 2011, 1, 626–629. 5 See the section on Peter Auriol, below.
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constitution Fidei catholicae among Franciscan theologians teaching and studying at the University of Paris. Fidei catholicae is the constitution that condemns doctrines associated with Peter John Olivi, and the Franciscans who taught at Paris in the early fourteenth century were reputed to have the finest theological minds in the order, and they expressed their understanding above all in their commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard.6 How they understood and used the constitution reveals the impact it had on medieval doctrines of the soul as form of the body. These doctrines appear to have been shaped less by external constraints of orthodoxy than by internal efforts among groups of university thinkers to produce a common teaching, a school of thought. The decree of the Council of Vienne appears as a weapon used against numerous positions: not only those of the Averroists, but also against the unicists and other pluralists. The first generation of Franciscan theologians at Paris after the Council argued for a range of positions, from postulating that humans have only an intellective soul to arguing for the real presence in human beings of distinct intellective, sensory, and vegetative souls. This soul or these souls inhered as form in the body, which could itself be anything from a single substantial form inhering in prime matter, to a form of corporeity constituted by the partial substantial forms of the organs and tissues, each having a distinct form of a mixture, to a mass of contiguous forms of organs and tissues united by their inherence in a common matter. The constitution Fidei catholicae came from a specific context, and included far more than a few lines stating that one must hold that the soul is per se and essentially the form of the body. Beginning on 16 October 1311, some 150 of the Catholic Church’s highest members, led by Pope Clement V, met in Vienne in modern-day France.7 This General Church Council of Vienne took up some of the most pressing issues of the day, issues like the fate of the Templar order and the possibility of renewed military assaults in
6 S.W. de Boer, Soul and Body in the Middle Ages. A Study of the Transformations of the scientia de anima, c. 1260– c. 1360, Ph.D. dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen, 2011, provides an excellent survey of philosophical psychology in contemporary commentaries on the De anima. Since, however, there are very few such commentaries by Franciscans, the range of Minorite positions falls outside of the scope of his work. 7 On the Council see most elaborately E. Müller, Das Konzil von Vienne, 1311–1312. Seine Quellen und seine Geschichte, Münster 1934 (Vorreformationsgeschichtliche Forschungen, 12); J. Lecler, Vienne, Paris 1964 (Histoire des conciles œcuméniques, 8); S. Menache, Clement V, Cambridge 1998 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth series, 36), 279–305.
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Spain and the Holy Land. In comparison to these momentous decisions with far-reaching social and economic consequences, the Council’s declarations on the relationship between the rational soul and the human body seem trivial. Nevertheless, in condemning Peter John Olivi’s (d. 1298) view, the Council of Vienne showed that the Church considered this topic as important, if not more so, as the other matters on the agenda. When John XXII published the acts of the Council of Vienne, the first constitution was the one that condemned Peter John Olivi’s view of the rational soul. This constitution, Fidei catholicae states, in its entirety: Firmly adhering to the Catholic Faith’s foundation, except for which, as the Apostle witnesses, no one can lay another, we openly profess with the Holy Mother Church that the only begotten Son of God, subsisting eternally as one with the Father in all these things in which God the Father is, assumed in time in the womb of a virgin the parts of our nature united together, from which He, being in Himself true God, became true man: namely, the human, passible body and the intellectual or rational soul truly, per se and essentially informing that body, to the unity of his hypostasis and person. And that in this assumed nature that very Word of God, to achieve the salvation of everyone, not only willed to be affixed to the Cross and to die upon it, but also, having already given up His spirit, He suffered having His side pierced with a lance so that, by the waves of water and blood flowing forth from there, would be formed the single and immaculate and virgin Holy Mother Church, the bride of Christ, just as from the side of the sleeping first man Eve was formed in wedlock to him, so that to the certain figure of the first and old Adam, who according to the Apostle is the form of the future, the truth corresponds in our newest Adam, that is Christ. I say that this is the truth that is fortified by the witness of that enormous eagle that the Prophet Ezechiel saw flying over all the other evangelical animals, namely the witness of Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, who, telling the story and the order of this sacrament, in his gospel said: “But after they had come to Jesus, when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers opened his side with a lance, and immediately there came out blood and water. And he that saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. And he knows that he speaks truths, that you may also believe.” We therefore, turning the attention of Apostolic consideration (to which alone it belongs to declare these things) to such limpid testimony, and to the common determination of the Holy Fathers and the doctors, with the approval of the sacred Council, declare that the aforesaid Apostle and Evangelist John held the correct order of events in the aforesaid, in relating that Christ was already dead when one of the soldiers opened His side. Moreover, with the approval of the said Council, we reject as erroneous and contrary to the truth of the Catholic Faith every doctrine or position rashly asserting that the substance of the rational or intellectual soul is not truly and per se the form of the human body, or casting doubt on this matter. In order
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william duba that all may know the truth of the faith in its purity and that the path leading to error may be blocked off to all, so that they do not sneak into it, we define that anyone who presumes henceforth to assert, defend, or hold stubbornly that the rational or intellectual soul is not the form of the human body per se and essentially is to be considered a heretic. With respect to that single baptism that restores all those baptized in Christ (just as there is one God and a single faith), it is to be faithfully professed by all that when it is celebrated in water in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we believe that it is the perfect remedy for salvation both for adults and children. Yet, with respect to the effect of baptism in children, some doctors of theology are found to have held contrary opinions, with some of them saying that sin is remitted in children by the power of baptism, but grace is not conferred, and others asserting to the contrary that both sin is remitted in baptism and the virtues and informing grace are infused with respect to the habit, even if at that time not with respect to their use. Therefore, considering the general efficacy of Christ’s death, which is applied through baptism equally to all that are baptized, we, with the approval of the sacred Council, have deemed that the second opinion, which says that in both adults and children informing grace and the virtues are conferred in baptism, should be chosen as more likely, and more consistent and concordant with the sayings of the Saints and the theology of modern doctors.8
Corpus iuris canonici, ed. A.L. Richter and A. Friedberg, Graz 1959, 2: 1133–1134: ‘Fidei catholicae fundamento, praeter quod teste Apostolo nemo potest aliud ponere, firmiter inhaerentes, aperte cum sancta matre ecclesia confitemur, unigenitum Dei Filium in his omnibus, in quibus Deus Pater exsistit, una cum Patre aeternaliter subsistentem, partes nostrae naturae simul unitas, (ex quibus ipse in se verus Deus exsistens fieret verus homo,) humanum videlicet corpus passibile, et animam intellectivam seu rationalem, ipsum corpus vere et per se et essentialiter informantem, assumpsisse ex tempore in virginali thalamo, ad unitatem suae hypostasis et personae. Et quod in hac assumpta natura ipsum Dei verbum pro omnium operanda salute non solum affigi cruci et in ea mori voluit, sed etiam, emisso iam spiritu, perforari lancea sustinuit latus suum, ut, exinde profluentibus undis aquae et sanguinis, formaretur unica et immaculata ac virgo sancta mater ecclesia, coniux Christi, sicut de latere primi hominis soporati Eva sibi in coniugium est formata, ut sic certae figurae primi et veteris Adae, qui secundum Apostolum est forma futuri, in nostro novissimo Adam, id est Christo, veritas responderet. Haec est, inquam, veritas, illius praegrandis aquilae vallata testimonio, quam Propheta vidit Ezechiel animalibus ceteris evangelicis transvolantem, beati Ioannis videlicet Apostoli et Evangelistae, qui, sacramenti huius rem gestam narrans et ordinem, in evangelio suo dixit: “Ad Iesum autem quum venissent, ut viderunt eum iam mortuum, non fregerunt eius crura, sed unus militum lancea latus eius aperuit, et continuo exivit sanguis et aqua. Et qui vidit, testimonium perhibuit, et verum est testimonium eius, et ille scit, quia vera dicit, ut et vos credatis.” Nos igitur, ad tam praeclarum testimonium ac sanctorum Patrum et doctorum communem sententiam apostolicae considerationis, (ad quam duntaxat haec declarare pertinet,) aciem convertentes, sacro approbante concilio declaramus, praedictum Apostolum et Evangelistam Ioannem rectum in praemissis factae rei ordinem tenuisse, narrando, quod Christo iam mortuo unus militum lancea latus 8
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The constitution makes two positive professions—that Christ was already dead when the centurion pierced His side and that baptism in children as well as adults confers the virtues and informing grace—and one condemnation, namely of the opinion that the intellectual soul is not truly and per se the form of the body. The text never mentions Peter John Olivi by name, although there can be no doubt whatsoever that the text means to condemn his views.9 Moreover, the professions and the condemnation are done in the name of Pope Clement V with the approval of the Council (“sacro approbante Concilio” “With the approval of the sacred Council”). Pope John XXII gave further authority to the decrees of the Council in 1317, when he codified them as the Constitutiones Clementinae; they were endorsed again in just this form in 1513 by the Fifth Lateran Council.10 The crux of the psychological issue here is the repeated statement that the rational or intellectual soul is per se and essentially the form of the human body. Thus, the Council is making an assertion about the way the rational soul relates to the human body: the rational soul must inform the body in an unmediated and essential fashion, per se et essentialiter. The maverick Franciscan theologian Peter John Olivi was in fact censured by his own
eius aperuit.—Porro doctrinam omnem seu positionem, temere asserentem aut vertentem in dubium, quod substantia animae rationalis seu intellectivae vere ac per se humani corporis non sit forma, velut erroneam ac veritati catholicae fidei inimicam praedicto sacro approbante concilio reprobamus, definientes, ut cunctis nota sit fidei sincerae veritas, ac praecludatur universis erroribus aditus, ne subintrent, quod quisquis deinceps asserere, defendere seu tenere pertinaciter praesumpserit, quod anima rationalis seu intellectiva non sit forma corporis humani per se et essentialiter, tanquam haereticus sit censendus.—Ad hoc baptisma unicum baptizatos omnes in Christo regenerans est, (sicut unus Deus ac fides unica,) ab omnibus fideliter confitendum, quod celebratum in aqua in nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus sancti, credimus esse tam adultis quam parvulis communiter perfectum remedium ad salutem.—Verum, quia, quantum ad effectum baptismi in parvulis, reperiuntur doctores quidam theologi opiniones contrarias habuisse, quibusdam ex ipsis dicentibus, per virtutem baptismi parvulis quidem culpam remitti, sed gratiam non conferri, aliis e contra asserentibus, quod et culpa eisdem in baptismo remittitur, et virtutes ac informans gratia infunduntur quoad habitum, etsi non pro illo tempore quoad usum: nos autem, attendentes generalem efficaciam mortis Christi, (quae per baptisma applicatur pariter omnibus baptizatis,) opinionem secundam, (quae dicit, tam parvulis quam adultis conferri in baptismo informantem gratiam et virtutes,) tanquam probabiliorem, et dictis sanctorum ac doctorum modernorum theologiae magis consonam et concordem, sacro approbante concilio duximus eligendam.’ 9 D. Burr, The Persecution of Peter Olivi, Philadelphia 1976 (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 66/5), 73–80. 10 H. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer, Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, Roma 351967, nr. 738.
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order during his lifetime on this precise point. Olivi’s view and its relation to the Council of Vienne have been dealt with at some length in the past, most recently by Robert Pasnau;11 it can therefore be distilled to five points: 1. Human beings have one soul that has three parts to it, and these parts are “consubstantial” while nevertheless being distinct as forms; the three parts are, of course, the vegetative or nutritive part, the sensory part, and the rational or intellectual part (e.g. II Sent., q. 51 app., ed. Jansen (1924), vol. 2, p. 184; q. 59; ed. cit., p. 539). 2. The three parts of any one soul are united by informing the same spiritual matter (universal hylomorphism); it is precisely because they are all united in the same spiritual matter that the three parts of the soul are one soul (II Sent., q. 51 app., ed. cit, p. 184; q. 59, ed. cit., p. 540).12 3. The rational part of the soul, however, cannot be the form of the body; the nature of the intellectual and voluntary powers is such that the intellect must be free of any direct link with matter (e.g. II Sent., q. 51, ed. cit., pp. 111–112; q. 51 app., ed. cit., pp. 167–176). 4. The sensory part of the soul is directly the form of the material body. 5. The rational part of the soul is therefore linked to the body in virtue of the sensory part of the soul—the rational part of the soul and the sensory part of the soul are united in spiritual matter; the sensory part of the soul and the body are united as form to matter; by a type of transitivity, therefore, the rational part is united to the body through the sensory part. The sensory part of the soul, then, is the hinge that holds the rational part of the soul, on the one hand, and the body, on the other, together, and there is no other more direct link between them. Olivi is explicit about this, saying: “… by the very fact that the intellective part [of the soul] and the body are said to be united with and inclined towards the sensory part [of the soul], they are also held to be inclined towards and united with one another … and in
11 See on Olivi’s theory and the Council of Vienne, for example, R. Pasnau, ‘Olivi on the Metaphysics of the Soul,’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology, 6 (1997), 109–132; B. Jansen, ‘Die Seelenlehre Olivis und ihre Verurteilung auf dem Vienner Konzil,’ Franziskanische Studien, 21 (1934), 297–314; Th. Schneider, Die Einheit des Menschen. Die anthropologische Formel ‘anima forma corporis’ im sogenannten Korrektorienstreit und bei Petrus Johannis Olivi. Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des Konzils von Vienne, Münster 1973 (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, NF, 8). 12 On spiritual matter in the Franciscan school, see now M. Sullivan, The Debate over Spiritual Matter in the Late Thirteenth Century: Gonsalvus Hispanus and the Franciscan Tradition from Bonaventure to Scotus, Ph.D. Dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 2010.
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this way it is true that their [i.e. the intellective part and the body] union is intimate; nevertheless it is not immediate, since it is with the sensitive part mediating that they are inclined towards each other and are united with each other.”13 Against this, the Council of Vienne asserted it is a matter of faith that the rational soul informs the body per se and essentially, with no mediation of any kind. The Council offers no clues to explain how an immortal rational soul can be the immediate form of a mortal body—that is a task for the theologians. Moreover, the Council was not condemning the position that a human being has several substantial forms. That is to say, the Council neither explicitly endorses nor rejects the view that Thomas Aquinas held: that a human being is a hylomorphic composition of one and only one substantial form, the rational soul, which directly informs its attendant prime matter to make a single hylomorphic compound, i.e. one human being. Aquinas’s view on the “unicity” of substantial form had been hotly contested already in the thirteenth century primarily by Franciscan authors who argued that there is a plurality of substantial forms in the human soul/body compound, with at least a corporeal form in addition to the rational form/soul. The Council states only that the rational soul informs the body “per se and essentially”, a statement that is neutral on the debate over the plurality or unicity of substantial forms. In medieval discussions of the intellective soul as form of the body, two relations are involved: the intellective soul’s relation to the sensory and vegetative souls, on the one hand, and the soul’s, or some part of the soul’s, relation to the body. What exactly is a soul and in what sense is it a substantial form? Thomas Aquinas argues that an intellective soul is “virtually” the sensory and vegetative souls, and it expresses the entirety of the substantial form, such that with prime matter it constitutes a human being. That is to say, the rational soul has all the functionality of the sensory and vegetative souls (i.e., the ability to sense and move, and the ability to grow, reproduce, and take nourishment, respectively) without there being any distinct ontological existence for the sensory or vegetative (parts of
13 Peter John Olivi, Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum, q. 59, ed. B. Jansen, 2, Quaracchi 1924 (Bibliotheca franciscana scholastica Medii Aevi, 5), 541: ‘Et ideo eo ipso quo intellectiva et corpus dicuntur unita et inclinita sensitivae tali, eo ipso ponuntur sibi invicem inclinata et unita … Et sic verum est quod unio eorum est intima, non tamen immediata, quoniam mediante sensitiva ad se invicem inclinantur et sibi invicem uniuntur.’
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the) soul.14 Unlike the souls of animals, the soul of humans is created, eternal, and capable of existing with or without a body; yet human beings perform a series of actions that are fundamentally the same as other animals. What exactly is the body? Souls of all sorts do not seem to inhere in just any matter, but rather matter that has been pre-arranged (proximate matter), hence requiring at least a corporeal form giving the body the proper arrangement to “host” the soul in question. Does this prior form persist after with the soul or souls? Thomas Aquinas does not think so; a living body is merely the expression of the form in prime matter. For others, particularly for the Franciscans, however, there are good reasons to posit a form or forms of the body distinct from the soul. With regard to the rational soul, for example, the existence of Christ’s body in the tomb for three days (that is, in the triduum) and its miraculous disappearance, point to the human body being more than prime matter organized by the rational soul: otherwise the body in the tomb (without the rational soul to form it) would be specifically different from Christ’s body, and therefore numerically different as well. Stating that the body of Christ has no natural determination beyond His human soul renders problematic core Christian doctrines such as the Crucifixion, the resurrection and the Eucharist. 2. John Duns Scotus Dico quod corpus Christi per se includit materiam, et ad minus formam unam mixti priorem intellectiva.
Franciscans in particular attempted several solutions to this conundrum. In the period after the Council of Vienne, Franciscan theologians looked to John Duns Scotus for the formulation of theological problems, the vocabulary to use and often the doctrines to be defended. They explicitly credited him with shifts in Franciscan doctrine.15 Unfortunately, Scotus does not ded-
14 See for this theory in Aquinas, for example, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 76, aa. 3–4, Roma 1889 (Opera omnia, 5), 220–224. On Aquinas’ doctrine of the soul, see R. Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa theologiae Ia, 75–89, Cambridge 2002, 25–99; F. Amerini, Thomas Aquinas: the Beginning and End of Human Life, transl. M. Henninger, forthcoming, chapters 1–2. 15 For example, see Francis of Meyronnes’s comments on the change in the Franciscan view on spiritual matter in his 1322 commentary on the De divinis nominibus, punctus 63 (Ms. Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 900, 45va): ‘Sed remanet dubium:
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icate much space to the problem of the soul as form of the body; indeed, most assessments of Scotus’s understanding go back to a single question: Ordinatio IV, d. 11, pars 1, art. 2, q. 1, “In the Eucharist, is bread converted into the body of Christ, and is bread annihilated in this conversion?”16 The reason that this issue often surfaced in discussions of the Eucharist is that after transsubstantiation the wafer and wine are the body and the blood of Christ and yet they are not informed by Christ’s rational soul, and this prompts the question: what soul or what form is it that makes the consecrated host and wine precisely Christ’s body and blood? In Scotus’s treatment of this issue, the second article begins with the observation that there is something in transubstantiation that has matter and form both before and after the conversion, and Scotus asks what the post-conversion form is (“Quid est ergo formale in termino ‘ad quem’”).17 Scotus frames his solution as a middle way between the unicist view of Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome, and that of Henry of Ghent.18 His main objection to the unicists is that they cannot adequately explain the Eucharist.19 Scotus follows with a line of authorities, most notably Augustine
quare schola minor negat nunc communiter materiam quam angelis affirmare solebat? Dicitur autem quia, postquam Doctor Subtilis ipsam illustravit, immateriali modo cognovit.— Dicitur autem quod quidam de schola maiori dixit cuidam de minori ‘multum vobis compatior, quia animae nostrae (= vestrae) in patria habebunt materiam. Et ille respondit: ‘et ego vobis, quia in accidentibus solis vestris habebitis totam vestram beatitudinem propter accidentalitatem potentiarium, substantia per se misera remanente’. Nunc autem primum opproprium sublatum est, remanente secundo.’ (‘But a doubt remains: why does the schola minor now in general deny the matter that it used to affirm in the angels? It is said, because after the Subtle Doctor enlightened the school, it understood in an immaterial way.—But it is told that someone from the schola maior said to someone of the schola minor: “I feel very sorry for you, because [your] souls in heaven will have matter.” And he replied: “And I feel sorry for you, because you will have all your beatitude in your accidents, on account of the accidentality of powers, and your substance will remain essentially wretched.” But now the first taunt has been put to rest, and only the second remains.’) 16 For the most recent analysis of this question, see M. McCord Adams, Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham, Oxford 2010, 10–12, 138–151; T. Suarez-Nani, ‘Une anthropologie dans l’horizon scotiste: François de la Marche,’ in: A. Speer (ed.), 1308. Eine Topographie historischer Gleichzeitigkeit, Berlin, New York 2010 (Miscellanea mediaevalia, 35), 388–401, esp. 390–392; R. Cross, The Physics of Duns Scotus. The Scientific Context of a Theological Vision, Oxford, 1998, esp. 47–76. 17 Iohannes Duns Scotus, Ordinatio IV, d. 11, pars 1, art. 2, q. 1, Città del Vaticano 2010 (Opera omnia, 12), 232–270. 18 On Henry’s view, see below, nn. 39–43. 19 Scotus, Ordinatio IV, d. 11, pars 1, art. 2, q. 1, 238: ‘Sic ergo neuter modus—hanc negativam conclusionem tenens, quod ‘in corpore Christi non est alia forma quam intellectiva’—
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and Ambrose, who insist on the identity between Christ’s body in the tomb and in the womb of the Virgin. He also brings in the piercing of Christ’s side: This is confirmed by [Pope] Innocent [III], in Extra, De celebratione Missarum, chapter “In quadam”: “From the side of the Savior poured out blood and water, on which are established the two principal sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist.” Therefore, the Eucharist, as is implied there, has both the signification of that blood that poured from the side, and its efficacy in virtue of that blood; but it only signifies the blood that is the part of the body, and it only has efficacy in virtue of the blood that poured from the body of Christ; therefore, that body, from which that blood poured, was the body of Christ. But this blood poured from a dead body, because in John 19[:33] it is said, that it was because he was already dead: one of the soldiers opened his side since they saw that Jesus was already dead. Therefore that already-dead body was the same as the body of Christ when He was living.20
On Scotus’s rendering, the unicists fail to explain the same points that would become central to Fidei catholicae: the continuity of the body from womb to tomb, the significance of the piercing of Christ’s side with a lance, and the identity between Christ’s material body in the triduum and the Eucharist. From Scotus’s criticisms of the unicist positions, one can extract a series of propositions about compound being: 1. Esse, like ens, can be per se without being simple; that is, a whole esse, such as a hylomorphic compound, can be composed of several partial esse. 2. These constituent partial beings can be said to have forms, or more properly ‘partial forms’. 3. The ultimate form specifies and requires the preceding partial forms.
salvat sufficienter veritatem eucharistae; sed nec salvat sufficienter unitatem (veritatem ed.) rei contentae in eucharistia, scilicet unitatem (veritatem ed.) corporis Christi, quia sicut in exsistentia naturalia, ita et in eucharistia erat idem corpus vivum et mortuum.’ 20 Scotus, Ordinatio IV, d. 11, pars 1, art. 2, q. 1, 239: ‘Hoc etiam confirmatur per Innocentium Extra, De celebratione missarum, “In quadam”: “De latere Salvatoris fluxit sanguis et aqua, in quibus instituta sunt duo principalia sacramenta, baptismus et eucharistia.” Ergo eucharistia, ut ibi innuitur, et habet significationem illius sanguinis fusi de latere, et habet efficaciam virtute illius sanguinis; sed non significat sanguinem, nisi qui est pars corporis, nec habet efficaciam nisi in virtute effusi sanguinis de corpore Christi; ergo illud corpus, de quo fusus fuit sanguis ille, fuit corpus Christi. Sed de mortuo corpore fusus fuit iste sanguis, quia Ioan. 19 dicitur quod eo iam mortuo unus militum latus eius aperuit: cum viderent Iesum iam mortuum; ergo illud corpus iam mortuum fuit idem cum corpore Christi viventis.’
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4. The ultimate form constitutes the active principle of the whole being, and provides its unity; the preceding forms, together with prime matter, constitute the passive principle that is actualized by the ultimate form.21 In a strict sense, Scotus says, any given material substance is constituted by a single substantial form in (proximate) matter. One can, however, speak of the constitution of that proximate matter in terms of (partial) forms; as such, Scotus defends multiple substantial forms as necessary. Yet his position is not Henry of Ghent’s. Henry posits that human beings, and only human beings, have two forms: an intellective soul, which subsumes the operations of the sensory and vegetative souls, and a form of the body, a forma corporeitatis. On Scotus’s view, Henry errs in suggesting that only humans have two forms; for Scotus, the fact that all living creatures with souls and bodies seem to have bodies in the same way means that all living beings must observe the same rules for the relation between soul and body. When the form of the soul does not remain, the body does remain, and therefore universally in any animate being whatsoever, one must necessarily posit another form than that by which it is animate, namely that form by
21 Scotus, Ordinatio IV, d. 11, pars 1, art. 2, q. 1, 254–255: ‘Ad rationes ergo pro opinione. Ad primam concedo primam propositionem, quod “unius entis est unum ‘esse’”; sed secunda, quod “unum ‘esse’ requirit tantum unam formam”, neganda est, accipiendo “esse” uniformiter in maiore et in minore: sicut enim ens et unum dividuntur in simplex et compositum, ita “esse” et “unum esse” distinguntur in “esse” tale et tale; ergo “esse” per se unum non determinat sibi “esse” simpliciter, sicut nec aliquod divisum determinat sibi praecise alterum dividentium.—Isto modo totius compositi est unum “esse” et tamen includit multa “esse” partialia, sicut “totum” est unum ens et tamen multas partiales entitates habet: nescio enim istam fictionem quod “esse” est quid superveniens essentiae, non compositum sicut essentia est composita; hoc modo ‘esse’ totius compositi includit ‘esse’ omnium partium, et includit multa ‘esse’ partialia multarum partium vel formarum, sicut totum ens ex multis formis includit omnes illas entitates partiales.—Si tamen omnino fiat vis in verbis, concedo quod totale ‘esse’ totius compositi est principaliter per formam unam, et illa est forma, qua totum compositum est ‘hoc ens’; illa autem est ultima, adveniens omnibus praecedentibus; et hoc modo totum compositum dividitur in duas partes essentiales: in actum proprium, scilicet in ultimam formam, qua est illud quod est,—et in propriam potentiam illius actus, quae includit materiam primam cum omnibus formis praecedentibus.—Et isto modo concedo quod ‘esse’ istud totale est completive ab una forma, quae dat toti illud quod est; sed ex hoc non sequitur quod in toto includatur praecise una forma vel quin in toto includantur plures formae non tanquam specifice constituentes illud compositum, sed tanquam quaedam inclusa in potentiali illius compositi.—Exemplum huius est in composito ex partibus integralibus: quanto enim animatum est perfectius, tanto requirit plura organa (et probabile est quod distincta specie per formas substantiales); et tamen ipsum est verius unum; verius—inquam— id est perfectius, licet non verius ‘unum’ id est indivisibilius. In compositis enim frequentius invenitur cum maiore compositione verior unitas et entitas quam in partibus.’
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william duba which the body is a body; but I am not talking about the form by which it is a body, that is, an individual of the genus ‘body’, for, by a form of this sort, any individual whatsoever is a body both in the sense that ‘body’ is a genus and something that has corporeity. Rather, I am talking about body as it is the other part of a compound. For by this body it is not an individual nor a species in the genus of ‘body’, nor even in the genus of ‘substance’, which is higher, but only by reduction. Therefore the body, which is the other part, as remaining in its proper being without the soul, consequently has a form by which it is a body in this way, and does not have a soul, and so that form is necessarily different from the soul; but it is not some individual under the genus of ‘body’, except only by reduction, as a part, just as the separate soul is not per se under the category of substance, but only by reduction.22
All living beings must have some form other than the soul by which their body is a body. The clarification that follows is opaque, but Scotus means that a form can be said to describe a body in two ways: 1) as an ultimate form (the form by which something is an instance of the genus body and has corporeity) and 2) as a form that, with matter, makes up the proximate matter of some composite. For all living beings, the soul provides the ultimate form, actualizing the proximate matter, including the form that describes the body. Therefore, when the form and matter are separated, both can continue to exist (at least they can in the case of the human rational soul as form), but both are only members of the category of substance by reduction, that is, by reference to the now-dissolved hylomorphic composite.
22 Scotus, Ordinatio IV, d. 11, pars 1, art. 2, q. 1, 265: ‘Ad quartum dico quod habet evidentiam bonam contra secundam opinionem improbatam: frustra enim poneretur corporeitas alia ab intellectiva, si ipsa includat vegetativam et sensitivam, et sensitiva et vegetativa includant corporeitatem.—Sed secundum aliam viam est facilis responsio: hic enim est necessitas ponendi plura. Et quae? Illa quae est ratio universaliter distinguendi hoc ab illo, scilicet contradictio, quae est ratio immediata distinguendi plura sub ente, utpote si hoc et illud recipiant contradictionem in essendo, quia si hoc est et illud non est, non sunt idem in essendo.—Sic in proposito, forma animae non manente, corpus manet. Et ideo universaliter in quolibet animato, necesse est ponere formam illam—qua corpus est corpus—aliam ab illa qua est animatum; non loquor de illa qua [corpus] est corpus, hoc est individuum corporis quod est ‘genus’, nam quodcumque individuum sua forma tali est corpus, ut corpus est genus, et est habens corporeitatem, sed loquor de corpore ut est altera pars compositi: per hoc enim non est individuum nec species in genere corporis, immo nec in genere substantiae (quod est superius), sed tantummodo per reductionem. Unde corpus, quod est altera pars, manens quidem in suo ‘esse’ proprio sine anima, habet per consequens formam, qua est corpus isto modo, et non habet animam—et ita illa forma necessario est alia ab anima; sed non est aliquod individuum sub genere corporis, nisi tantum per reductionem, ut pars, sicut nec anima separata est per se inferius ad substantiam, sed tantum per reductionem.’
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This interpretation is confirmed by Scotus’s repeated use of the expression per reductionem in his explanation. Scotus explains what he means by per reductionem in a hylomorphic context in the solutio to Questions on the Categories, q. 15, “Whether the parts of substance are substances”: To the question it can be said that there are two types of parts, namely essential parts, as matter and form, which constitute the essence of the substance; the other parts are quantitative, which are not substances insofar as substance exists, but insofar as it is quantified and physically extended. But one can say of both types that they are not per se substances, that is, the category of substance is not predicated of them per se, nor in the abstract, because of the first two arguments for that part of the question [namely, as substances, they would first be particulars different from the particular they compose, and second, they would be substantially different from the particular substance they are a part of]. Indeed, ‘substance’ is an equivocal term: in one sense it is predicated of per se being, and in this way it is a category, and, in another sense, as it is predicated of the principles of per se being, and in this way, the parts of substance can be called substance. Likewise, in the genus of substance, as it is a category, the parts are not there as species, but by reduction to the per se principles of species, and genus does not have to be truly predicated in the abstract of those things that are in genus by reduction.23
In other words, when Scotus speaks of substance as a category, he means explicitly a hylomorphic composite. The constituent matter and form, as essential parts, are said to be substances per reductionem, that is, by leading back to the hylomorphic composite. When Scotus says in book IV of the Sentences that the body, as the other part of a hylomorphic composite, has a form by which it is a body and only falls under the genus ‘body’ by reduction, just as the soul without a body only falls under the category
23 Iohannes Duns Scotus, Quaestiones super Praedicamenta Aristotelis, q. 15, ed. R. Andrews, G. Etzkorn, G. Gál, R. Green, T. Noone and R. Wood, St. Bonaventure (NY) 1999 (Opera philosophica, 1), 385–386: ‘Ad quaestionem potest dici quod duplices sunt partes, scilicet essentiales, ut materia et forma, quae essentiam substantiae constituunt; aliae partes quantitativae, quae non sunt substantiae in quantum substantia est, sed in quantum est quanta et extensa. Sed tam de his quam de illis potest dici quod non sunt substantiae per se, id est generalissimum substantiae non praedicatur de eis per se, neque vere in abstracto, propter primam rationem et secundam prius positas ad illam partem quaestionis. Verumtamen substantia est aequivocum: ut dicitur ens per se, et isto modo est generalissimum; et ut dicitur de principiis entis per se, et isto modo possunt partes substantiae dici substantia. Similiter, in genere substantiae ut est generalissimum sunt non ut species, sed per reductionem in per se principia specierum; et de illis quae sunt in genere per reductionem non oportet genus in abstracto vere praedicari.’
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‘substance’ by reduction, what he means is that the body and its form constitute the material part of the composite ‘human being’.24 Scotus summarizes his view: I say that the body of Christ per se includes matter and at least one form of a mixture prior to the intellective soul, and by that form it is in partial actuality, and it is what is proximately receptive of the intellective soul, although it is not by that form in the genus of ‘body’, in the sense that ‘body’ is a genus, except by reduction. And I further say that into this compound, which however per se is a part of man, the conversion of bread comes about per se, that is, from a whole into a whole, and from parts into parts, and consequently, this form is the formal end-point of conversion, or the form of the end-point of conversion. But this form remains the same, whether the soul is united to it or not united to it, because this form is naturally prior to this soul, at least in informing, and it remained in the triduum, when the soul did not remain there; and so in the triduum the reality of this sacrament would have been the same, if the sacrament had then remained, because in the triduum the form of corporeity (forma corporeitatis) was not separated from its matter in Christ, and consequently nor as it is in the Eucharist is it separated from its matter.25
The Eucharist comes to be this compound. However, this compound is, properly speaking, the proximate matter of the man Christ. It is not a cadaver (the body with a non-living ultimate form), nor prime matter. Unlike a final form, this form is only in partial actuality. And yet, after Christ died on the Cross, under this form His body persisted for three days.
24 Incidentally, Thomas Aquinas makes a similar observation exclusively concerning the human soul: in separation from the body, it is only a substance per reductionem. On this see Amerini, Thomas Aquinas, chapter 2, n. 7. 25 Scotus, Ordinatio IV, d. 11, pars 1, art. 2, q. 1, 267–268: ‘Quantum igitur ad istud dubium secundum huius secundi articuli, dico quod corpus Christi per se includit materiam, et ad minus formam unam mixti priorem intellectiva, et per illam formam est in actu partiali, et proximum receptivum animae intellectivae, licet non sit per eam in genere corporis, ut corpus est genus, nisi per reductionem; et in istud compositum, quod tamen per se est pars hominis, fit per se conversio panis, id est totius in totum et partium in partes—et per consequens haec forma est formalis terminus conversionis seu forma termini conversionis.— Haec autem manet eadem, sive anima uniatur illi, sive non uniatur illi, quia haec prior est naturaliter—saltem in informando—ipsa anima, et in triduo mansit, anima non manente ibi; et ita in triduo fuisset eadem res huius sacramenti, si sacramentum tunc mansisset, quia in illo triduo forma corporeitatis non fuit separata a materia sua in Christo, et per consequens nec separata a materia sua, ut est in eucharistia. Sicut enim idem numero fuit res ista secundum se in exsistentia naturali, ita etiam idem compositum numero, quod est primus terminus conversionis, mansisset semper in eucharistia.—Non igitur valet—in ista identitate salvanda—fugere ad identitatem materiae seu hypostasis, quia contraria possunt inesse eidem identitate materiae, quando succedunt sibi invicem; si etiam Verbum assumpsisset lapidem, fuisset lapis idem naturae humanae identitate hypostasis.’
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Scotus’s position is pluralist in the sense that he speaks of many constituent substantial forms; on the other hand, only one form, the intellective soul, is per se and essentially the form of the human being. On the authority of the passages cited above, he has been called a dimorphist: “the body of Christ per se includes matter and at least one form of a mixture prior to the intellective soul.” Therefore, Scotus sees humans as composed of at least prime matter, a forma corporeitatis, and an intellective soul. However, his dimorphism includes a fundamental equivocation concerning the term forma, an equivocation that Scotus makes repeated and explicit efforts to underscore: the form of the body of the Eucharist, qua form of the body, is not a complete substantial form. Scotus’s presentation leaves the body ambiguous, and one must pay close attention to arrive at what is likely Scotus’s position, namely that the body is a compound of a single form of corporeity and matter, itself a collection of substantial forms of the organs. The passage cited above, for example, is the only time in the question that Scotus argues that the human body has a forma corporeitatis.26 Everywhere else, he defends the minimal pluralist position that refutes his adversary: the presence of a forma mixti or forma mixtionis in humans alongside the rational soul. A mixture is a compound made of more than one of the four elements, and in this way, in addition to an intellective soul, humans have at least the simplest compound material form. When Scotus begins his conclusion by saying that “the body of Christ per se includes matter and at least one form of a mixture”, he implies that there are several substantial forms in the Christ, and this emphasis overshadows the unitary forma corporeitatis he mentions later. Combined with his remarks in the same question concerning the unity of substantial forms, specifically that, the more perfect the animal, the more organs it has, each one of which is distinct by its own substantial form, Scotus’s argument for a single form of the body is secondary to his insistence that living things are complex unities.27 As we will see, subsequent Franciscan thinkers take 26 Scotus rarely discusses the forma corporeitatis in his works, but in a passage in the edited Paris Reportatio to book III, he is unambiguous, speaking how to solve the problem of the growth of Christ’s human body. See Iohannes Duns Scotus, Reportatio III, d. 16, q. 1– 2, Lyon 1639, repr. Hildesheim 1969 (Opera omnia, 11/1), 481–482: ‘Sed si ponatur quod cum intellectiva sit forma corporeitatis (quod verius credo), per se terminus nutritionis non est nisi compositum ex materia et forma corporeitatis, et iste terminus non excedit agens, et tunc concomitanter est illa pars animata, quia pars totius, et tunc simile est in proposito, quod per se terminus esset ibi compositum, et forma corporeitatis. Et concomitanter assumitur illa pars a Verbo, et sibi unitur, quia pars totius; non autem est per se terminus illius nutritionis caro unita Verbo.’ 27 See above, n. 22.
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this Scotistic inspiration in two directions, with some (Landulph Caracciolo, Francis of Marchia, Gerald Odonis) emphasizing the unity of the forma corporeitatis and others (Hugh of Novocastro, Francis of Meyronnes, Himbert of Garda) the distinction of the organic parts. In summation, Scotus would agree wholeheartedly with the Council of Vienne that the intellective soul is per se and essentially the form of the body; indeed, the wording of the constitution seems to reflect his position, namely that the intellective soul is the substantial form that inheres in the proximate matter of the body and is the only per se and essential form in humans.28 What impact did the Council of Vienne have on Franciscan conceptions of human beings? 3. Hugh of Novocastro Unde ut sit vere mortuus oportet ponere tres formas, ut videtur, et istam opinionem teneo tamquam veram.
Hugh of Novocastro began his lectures on the Sentences in the autumn of 1314, three years after the opening of the Council of Vienne and three years before John XXII published their acts as the Clementine Constitutions. Hugh’s teaching at Paris held primary importance for Parisian Scotism:
28 The early Scotist James of Ascoli was one of the participants at the Council of Vienne; while his extant theological works do not include an explicit discussion of the plurality of forms, one question from his Quodlibet (from Lent 1311, or before), Utrum Deus possit facere aliquod compositum ex elementis et aliqua forma intellectiva differens specie ab homine nobilior ipso homine assumes already in the title that human beings are compounds of an intellective form and the elements, that is, pre-existing material substances. James confirms this assumption in his solution to the question, in article 2 (Ms. Assisi, Biblioteca comunale 136 [= A], 116va; Ms. Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1012 [= V], 49rb): ‘Videtur ergo esse dicendum quod, licet de facto non sit aliqua species composita ex elementis et aliqua forma intellectiva nobilior homine, quia de solo homine legitur in principio canonis Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram, si autem esset talis species rationalis seu intellectualis sive nobilior homine sive ignobilior, esset facta ad imaginem et similitudinem Dei, et ideo, licet talis species non sit de facto in universo, quia, sicut iam dictum est, de solo homine legitur quod factus est ad imaginem et similitudinem Dei, tamen videtur probabiliter posse dici nunc ad praesens quod Deus posset de potentia absoluta, licet non de ordinata, talem speciem facere. Et ad hanc conclusionem probandam adduco aliquas rationes.’ On James of Ascoli, see W. Duba, ‘Continental Franciscan Quodlibeta after Scotus,’ in: C. Schabel (ed.), Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages, 2: The Fourteenth Century, Leiden 2007 (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 7), 569–650, at pp. 591–594, and the literature cited there.
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many of his successors adapted his formulations of doctrine, finding in Hugh the expression of the common teaching of the Franciscan school.29 In his Sentences Commentary, Hugh defends the multiplicity of substantial forms and includes Olivi’s solution to the unity of the soul as among the list of viable ways to reconcile multiple souls with the unity of human beings, and it appears that this is the view he defends. He also criticizes an opinion holding the unicity of substantial form that solves the problem of Christ’s body during the triduum by stating that the man did not technically die, a position unequivocally condemned by the Council of Vienne. Book II, d. 16, q. 3 of Hugh’s Sentences commentary asks: “Whether there is some other form in man besides the intellective principle?” He considers two positions, the first being “the common opinion that it is impossible for a substantial form other than the “substance of the intellect” (substantia intellectus—Hugh’s term for the intellective soul) to be in man, and that it is impossible for multiple forms to be in any compound whatsoever.”30 The arguments Hugh presents in favor of this Thomistic view all turn on the need for man to be a radical hylomorphic unity. The second opinion states that “if the intellect is the form of the human body, and is united to it as form, one must necessarily posit multiple substantial forms,” and Hugh holds this position as his own.31 The intellective soul can exist in separation from the body, as an incorporeal, unextended and simple substance. Therefore, it cannot be what provides extension or what makes other things be quantified. Moreover, the human body is composed of organs, which do not appear all to have the same mixture of elements; therefore a soul without extension cannot give form to all these diverse
29 On Hugh of Novocastro see V. Heynck, ‘Der Skotist Hugo de Novo Castro OFM. Ein Bericht über den Stand der Forschung zu seinem Leben und zu seinem Schrifttum,’ Franziskanische Studien, 43 (1961), 244–270; and R. Lerner, ‘Antichrist Goes to the University: The De victoria Christi contra Antichristum of Hugo de Novo Castro, OFM (1315/1319),’ in: S.E. Young (ed.), Crossing Boundaries at Medieval Universities, Leiden 2011 (Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 36), 277–313. Cf. also W.J. Courtenay, ‘Early Scotists at Paris: A Reconsideration,’ Franciscan Studies, 69 (2011), 175–229, at 207–209. 30 Hugh of Novocastro, In secundum librum Sententiarum, d. 16, q. 3, Ms. Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Sopp. A.III.641, 117rb: ‘Quantum ad primum est haec opinio communis quod impossibile est esse in homine aliam formam substantialem a substantia intellectus et quod impossibile est esse plures formas in quocumque composito.’ In this manuscript, the beginning of q. 3 was skipped on f. 71rb, and added at the end of the book (ff. 117rb–va). 31 Hugh of Novocastro, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 3, 71rb: ‘Alius autem modus dicendi est quod, si intellectus sit forma corporis humani et uniatur sibi ut forma, oportet ponere necessario in homine plures formas substantiales et unam aliam a forma quae est substantia intellectus.’
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bits and chunks. Hugh, like Scotus before him, suggests that each of these organs has its own substantial form, and he claims that this is the case not only for human beings, but for all animals.32 Hugh goes on to say that the sensory soul is a form really distinct from the intellect: the intellective soul is separate from the body and the body needs a perfection that is bound to it. Human beings seem to have sensory capacities like other animals; therefore, they should sense in the same way, i.e. through a sensory soul. Along the same lines, the generation of human beings appears to occur in the same way as other mammals, at least up to the point that the intellective soul is infused.33 Hugh concludes, “In man therefore there are many forms.”34 If there are many forms in man, how are they one? Hugh has not one answer but three. The first corresponds to a position held by Peter John Olivi: those forms constitute one substance because they all perfect the same material potency, and they exist in a relative order.35 The second solution could be an interpretation of Scotus: at each layer of complexity, there is a hylomorphic composite that in itself is a per se unity, but can serve as the proximate matter for the next ontological layer.36 The third
32 Hugh of Novocastro, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 3, 71rb: ‘Item, non videtur rationale quod partes diversae corporis humani, puta caro, os et sic de aliis et homogeneis eandem formam mixtionis habeant; sed necessario videtur quod habeant aliam et aliam formam specie differentem, cum habeant diversas dispositiones et contrarias complexiones et proprietates, sicut patet intuenti de osse et carne et nervo et sic de aliis. Impossibile est etiam quod una simplex forma in se contineat plures formas ipsorum membrorum tales perfectionaliter seu formaliter et unitive, cum differant ab invicem specie et non sint ad invicem ordinatae, sed totaliter disparatae. Una enim forma simpliciter non potest continere in se perfectionaliter rationes plurium distinctorum secundum speciem non habentium ordinem inter se ad invicem; ergo sunt in homine plures formae, ita in quolibet alio animali.’ For a translation of part of this passage, see below at n. 46. 33 Hugh of Novocastro, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 3, 71va. 34 Hugh of Novocastro, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 3, 71va: ‘In homine ergo sunt plures formae, nec obstat dictum Eustachii De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus qui dicit “In homine duas animas esse non dicimus,” etc.’ 35 Hugh of Novocastro, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 3, 71vb: ‘Primus enim modus salvandi hoc est quia illae plures formae perficiunt unicam potentiam realem ipsius materiae et sunt quasi unus totalis actus respectu unius per se potentiae et unus illorum non potest eam sine alio complete* perficere. Et hoc est possibile, quia sunt actus ordinate se habentes ad invicem et respectu unius tertii, puta respectu ipsius potentiae vel materiae.’ 36 Hugh of Novocastro, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 3, 71vb: ‘Secundus modus salvandi est quod, sicut genus et differentia et sicut plures differentiae differunt et distinguuntur ratione et dicerentur plures formas reales, si esset eas ponere, et tamen constituunt unam per se speciem specialissimam et unam per se definitionem, et tamen sunt plures differentiae rationis ac si essent plures formae rationis, sic non videtur impossibile quin illae formae
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answer claims that the intellect unites to the body in a manner midway between that of the other substantial forms and that of accidental forms: for, like accidental forms, it unites with beings in actuality, and like substantial forms, it cannot inhere in the manner of an accident, nor be imposed upon a completely actualized being.37 Hugh defers further discussion of the unity problem to his commentary on the third book of the Sentences. The question that Hugh is perhaps referring to is “Whether Christ was truly and univocally dead like other men.”38 The same constitution from the Council of Vienne that declared that the soul is per se and essentially the form of the body also decreed that Christ was already dead on the Cross when the centurion pierced Him with a lance, and that the universal working of baptism comes from the general efficacy of Christ’s death. In the
plures et reales faciant unum per se realiter et quod compositum ex eis sit unum per se. Et iste modus videtur imaginari quod una illarum formarum habet rationem formalis et informalis respectu posterioris formae, vel saltem totum compositum ex materia et forma prima.’ 37 Hugh of Novocastro, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 3, 71vb: ‘Alius modus dicendi de hoc est quod substantia intellectus medio modo unitur corpori inter modum unionis aliarum formarum substantialium et etiam formarum accidentalium. Unitur enim enti in actu primo et substantiali, et in hoc convenit cum accidentibus et differt ab aliis formis substantialibus; sed quia est perfectio substantialis et spiritualis non potest subsistere nec inhaerere accidentaliter, sicut aliae formae substantiales quae naturaliter subsistere per se non possunt nec advenit enti in actu substantiali totaliter completo sicut accidens, quia ipsa* est perfectio substantialis, ut dictum est.’ We have not yet identified the author of this opinion. Hugh’s predecessor as Franciscan regent master at Paris, James of Ascoli, argues (in the question, n. 29 above, on whether there can be an intellective form more noble than man) that the intellective soul is a mixture between two extremes, namely of material and immaterial forms; one could imagine a position holding that the intellectual soul, as a mixture between material and separate forms, inheres in a manner between substantial and accidental forms. Cf. James of Ascoli, Quodlibet I, q. 3, A 116va; V 49rb–va: ‘Medium positum inter aliqua semper videtur esse pluris rationis, vel saltem non videtur esse paucioris rationis quam sint extrema, sicut apparet inductive in omnibus mediis. Color enim medius inter album et nigrum est pluris rationis quam sit album vel nigrum, quia quodlibet istorum extremorum est unius rationis secundum speciem; color autem medius habet multas species sub se contentas. Similiter soni extremi sunt unius rationis secundum speciem; soni autem medii sunt in multiplici differentia. Hoc idem est de saporibus. Similiter etiam corpus mixtum, quod est quasi medium inter elementa, est pluris rationis secundum speciem quam sint elementa. Sic igitur patet ista maior. Sed intellectus coniunctus tenet medium inter substantias separatas et formas omnino materiales, quia est perfectior substantiis materialibus et imperfectior substantiis separatis. Unde et Gregorius dicit in omelia De ascensione quod homo est quoddammodo omnia quia ‘habet esse cum lapidibus, vivere cum plantis, sentire cum brutis, intelligere cum angelis.’ Ergo intellectus unibilis non est paucioris rationis secundum speciem quam sit quodlibet istorum; quodlibet autem istorum est plurificabile secundum speciem, ut communiter tenetur; ergo similiter intellectus unibilis est plurificabilis secundum speciem.’ 38 Hugh of Novocastro, In tertium librum Sententiarium, d. 19, q. 3, Ms. Lüneburg, Ratsbücherei, Theol. 2 21, 16rb–va: Utrum Christus fuit vere et univoce mortuus sicut alii homines.
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years between the Council and John XXII’s publication of the Clementine Constitutions, Hugh of Novocastro appears to accuse some contemporaries of holding that Christ was not truly dead and he believes that they made this error as a result of their attempt to argue that the intellective soul is the one and only substantial form in humans. Hugh argues that humans have three forms, and he arrives at his position by analyzing Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent’s treatments of death.39 Hugh presents Thomas as equating death with a two-part process: first the resolution of the being down to prime matter, followed by the generation of the form of the cadaver. In Christ, on the other hand, what happened was that the soul was separated from the body, and by divine power, the form of corporeity was preserved.40 After presenting and refuting Aquinas’s view to his own satisfaction, Hugh turns to a second opinion: “Others say that those who posit one form, or only two—namely the intellective soul and the form of corporeity—cannot save that Christ was truly dead.” In fact, the second position matches that of Henry of Ghent in his Quodlibet I, q. 4. There, Henry summarizes the unicist theory as
39
On this topic, see J.-L. Solère, ‘Was the Eye in the Tomb? On the Metaphysical and Historical Interest of Some Strange Quodlibetal Questions,’ in: C. Schabel (ed.), Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages, 1: The Thirteenth Century, Leiden 2005 (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 1), 507–558; and A. Boureau, Théologie, Science et Censure au XIII e siècle. Le cas de Jean Peckham, Paris 1999 (L’ âne d’ or). 40 Hugh of Novocastro, Sent. III, d. 19, q. 3, 16rb: ‘Dicunt quidem tria per ordinem.— Primum est quod ponentes aliquam formam remanere hnoni possunt salvare Christum vere fuisse mortuum, primo quia vera mors est resolutio usque ad materiam primam immediate. Patet per oppositum, quia vera generatio non est ex prima materia immediatorum. Si aliqua forma remansit in Christo, non fuit resolutio usque ad materiam primam; ergo cum negent veram resolutionem usque ad materiam primam, negant etiam veram corruptionem substantialem.—Item, in vera corruptione vel morte est generatio alicuius minus nobilis, I De generatione; sed si aliqua forma remaneat et nulla fuerit introducta, est corruptio sine generatione formae minus nobilis*; ergo non est vera corruptio.—Item, vera corruptio et mors in aliis est introductio formae cadaveris quae continue tendit ad corruptionem et putrefactionem; sed secundum ponentes unam formam remanere et nullam induci non fuit introducta forma cadaveris; ergo non fuit vere mortuus sicut alii homines. Ex quo patet secundum quod dicunt quod secundum ponentes † (spat. vac.) res formas eos †Christus non fuit univoce mortuus cum aliis hominibus.—Et ideo dicunt tertio quod non fuit mortuus, quia in Christo non erat nisi una forma, quae vere fuit separata anima a corpore in Christo, quod non est vera mors secundum declaratum (lege declarationem?) quaestionis, scilicet non fuerit univoce mortuus sicut alii homines, quia in aliis hominibus fit resolutio usque ad materiam primam et introducitur forma cadaveris; sed in Christo forma[e] corporeitatis fuit praeservata virtute divina, et forma cadaveris non fuit introducta, et quantum ad hoc concederent quod tres rationes concludunt, quia non fuit univoca mors, non tamen probant quin fuerit mors vera mors.’
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relying on two assumptions (fundamenta): First, matter cannot subsist without form; second, a single, simple substantial form inheres in a single matter.41 From these premises, one can only conclude that, when Christ’s soul is separated, some other substantial form has to take its place, and therefore Christ’s body in the tomb is not the same body as that of the living Christ. In order to maintain the unity of Christ’s body, Henry argues, one must do away with one of the two premises: either quantified matter can exist without a form, or humans are composed of two forms.42 Even so, Henry observes that the body of Christ in the tomb could not rot; moreover, if the body were to receive some other form at the moment of death, it would be a form that had the capacity for rotting, that is, the form of the cadaver.43 Hugh rejects Henry’s position, on the grounds that death requires some form to be corrupted. On Henry’s view (according to Hugh), in Christ, neither the soul nor the body was corrupted; therefore, Hugh concludes that Henry holds Christ was not dead in the same way as other humans are dead. Thus, while Henry of Ghent had argued that Thomas’s unicist position failed because it could not guarantee the identity of Christ’s body, living and dead, Hugh of Novocastro rejects Henry’s position on the grounds that Christ’s dead body was not a dead body in the same way as that of other humans:
41 Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet I, q. 4, ed. R. Macken, Leuven 1979 (Opera omnia, 5), 14–15: ‘Dicendum ad hoc quod ponentes aliam formam substantialem in corpore Christi succedere animae separatae necesse habebant hoc ponere ex duobus fundamentis suis quae verissima esse supponebant et non poterant, illis suppositis, aliter ponere. Primum fundamentum erat quod materia non posset subsistere in actu sine aliqua forma substantiali qua informatur. Secundum erat quod una est forma substantialis simplex in una materia et non plures. Quae si separetur ab ea, tota separatur et quantum in se est, omnino denudat materiam a forma, ita quod maneat nuda et pura ab omni forma, nisi aliqua forma substantialis succedat formae a qua informabatur prius.’ 42 Cf. Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet I, q. 4, 16: ‘Nec restat de dubio, nisi an mansit aliqua forma substantialitatis et corporeitatis, mediante qua anima perficiebat primam materiam contra secundum fundamentum illorum h = “una est forma substantialis simplex in una materia et non plures” i, an ipsa materia nuda ab omni forma substantiali stetit, habens partes substantiales suas extensas sub partibus quantitatis extensis contra primum fundamentum praedictorum.’ 43 Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet I, q. 4, 17: ‘Constat autem quod, si aliqua forma substantialis nova naturali generatione successisset animam Christi in eius corpus mortuum, illa non fuisset nisi forma putredinis … Multo siquidem magis decet Christi maiestatem quod corpus eius nudum reservetur ab omni forma nova succedente animam separatam, quousque revertatur in ipsum, quam quod ipsum corpus unitum divinae naturae in unitate personae Filii Dei informetur tam vili forma putredinis.’
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william duba I say, therefore, concerning this article that it does not seem possible to save how Christ was truly dead, while holding the first opinion, which says that there is only one form, or while holding what the second opinion says. Therefore, I say that He was dead, and this is clear by positing that the sensitive soul is brought out of the potency of matter. Secondly, I say that this death was brought about by His wounds. Third, I say that He was dead in a univocal sense as other men, because the resolution first stops at the fabric of the body (fabrica corporis), and this fabric is further corrupted and resolved into the elements, unless it is preserved. Therefore, in order that Christ be truly dead, one must posit three forms, as it seems, and I hold this view as true.44
Hugh of Novocastro’s solution posits three forms: an intellective soul, a sensitive soul, and what with matter composes the fabrica corporis. On his account, when Christ died, the sensory soul was corrupted, but the other two forms persisted.45 This solution, moreover, appears to privilege only one of the three ways in which he said multiple forms can inhere in the body. By positing three forms, he implicitly argues against the intellective soul serving as a mediator between immaterial and material forms, and by arguing that the fabrica corporis rots into the elements, he seems to place a limit on successive forms serving as proximate matter for the next form. The only view that is left, then, is that of the forms having an ordered inherence in matter; along these lines, Peter John Olivi argued that the intellective, sensory and vegetative souls shared an ordered inherence in spiritual matter; here Hugh seems to support something similar, only with two souls and a body, and in sensible matter.
44 Hugh of Novocastro, Sent. III, d. 19, q. 3, 16rb–va: ‘Dico igitur quantum ad istum articulum quod non videtur quod possit salvari qualiter Christus fuit vere mortuus sustinendo primam opinionem, quae dicit quod non est nisi una forma, vel sustinendo quod dicit secunda.—Ideo dico quod fuit mortuus, et hoc patet ponendo sensitivam eductam de potentia materiae; secundo dico istam fuisse causatam virtute vulnerum. Tertio dico quod fuit univoce mortuus cum aliis hominibus, quia resolutio prima stat ad fabricam corporis, quae fabrica ulterius corrumpitur et resolvitur in elementa nisi praeservetur. Unde ut sit vere mortuus oportet ponere tres formas, ut videtur, et istam opinionem teneo tamquam veram.’ 45 Hugh of Novocastro, Sent. III, d. 19, q. 3, 16va: ‘Est tunc hic una difficultas, quia Damascenus dicit quod illud quod Christus assumpsit numquam reliquit; sed hoc esset si talis sensitiva corrumperetur. Dicendum quod suppositio, hsii generaliter seu universaliter accipitur, non est vera, quia certum est quod corpus Christi et caro Christi fuit nutrita ita quod aliquae partes in illa nutritione fuerunt divinitati unitae et tamen aliquando defluxisse, quia tales partes fluunt et refluunt. Sic a parte ista dicendum quod Damascenus intellexit quod numquam dimisit corpus et animam, quando tamen talis sensitiva dimissa fuerit, quia corda non intellexit.’
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There is a slight problem, however: is the fabrica corporis a compound of a single substantial form, or is it composed of several partial forms that make up the individual organs of the body? Hugh does not say, but at the end of the preceding article, he argued in favor of multiple forms: It does not seem reasonable that the different parts of the human body, say flesh, blood, and so on for the other homogeneous ones, have the same form of the mixture, but it seems necessary that they have specifically different forms, since they have different arrangements and contrary complexions and properties, as is clear to someone who considers blood, and flesh, and muscles, and so on. For it is even impossible that one simple form contain in itself many forms of those members as being their perfection, that is formally and in a unifying manner, since they differ specifically from each other, and are not arranged with respect to each other, but are completely disparate. For one form without qualification cannot contain in itself as being their perfection (perfectionaliter) the natures (rationes) of several specifically distinct things not having a mutual order among themselves. Therefore, there are many forms in the human being, and so too in any other animal.46
From this statement, and the note above that the fabrica corporis rots into the elements, it appears that for Hugh of Novocastro, the fabrica corporis does not have one form only, but many that do not have a relation among themselves.47 Whatever his solution might be, Hugh of Novocastro does not appear particularly interested in explaining how the intellective soul serves as form of the body, just that it is a form of the body. If he is influenced by John Duns Scotus, it is in the ambiguity he gives to the body: while appearing to argue that it has one form, Hugh never says there is a single form of corporeity. Moreover, his view coincides with that of Olivi insofar as he assigns to matter the role of unifying the different forms. Defending these views in the period between the Council of Vienne and the publication of its acts, Hugh shows that at the highest levels of Franciscan thought there were those who held a multiplicity of souls, and maintained that parts of Olivi’s position were at least legitimate. Hugh of Novocastro, however, never states that the intellective soul informs the body through the mediation of the sensitive soul.
46
See the text above, n. 32. On this admittedly speculative reading, the body of Christ is one per reductionem insofar as it serves as the proximate matter for the soul(s), and therefore the unity of the Eucharist would not be threatened. 47
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william duba 4. Peter Auriol Contra: decretalis nova … determinat quod est forma corporis sicut aliae.
The publication of the Clementine Constitutions changed the terms of the debate. Henceforth all theologians had to concede that the intellective soul was per se and essentially the form of the body. Peter Auriol’s commentary on book II, d. 16 of the Sentences reflects the change by separating the question of what should be held from what can be demonstrated. So, to the question “Whether according to the truth of faith one must hold that the soul is the form of the body univocally, just as other forms are form of their matter,”48 the preliminary argument (and ultimately, the sole decisive one) in favor of the position is the Council of Vienne: On the other hand, there is the decretal newly established in the holy Council of Vienne, where it is said that the soul is the form of the body univocally, just as other forms or souls are, and that decretal is set out in Extra, De summa Trinitate et fide catholica.49
In fact, the constitution requires that the soul be held to be the form of the body per se and essentially. It does not say, as Auriol claims it does, that it is a form univocally in the manner of every other form in matter. This bending of the constitution’s meaning reflects the fact that Auriol changed his position
48 Peter Auriol, In secundum librum Sententiarum, d. 16, Roma 1605 (= X), 218a; Ms. Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr. A.3.120 (= Fb), 80vb-81ra: ‘In ista distinctione XVI postquam Magister in superioribus egit de natura pure spirituali et pure corporali, agit nunc de natura composita et substantia corporali et spirituali, ostendens qualiter creatus est homo, quia ad Dei imaginem. Et ad evidentiam istius distinctionis (quaestionis codd.) circa fundamentum imaginis in homine, quod est anima rationalis sive intellectiva, quaero duas quaestiones. Prima est utrum possit probari demonstrative quod anima intellectiva est forma corporis, et secundo utrum secundum veritatem fidei oportet tenere quod anima sit forma corporis univoce sicut aliae formae sunt forma suae materiae.’ 49 Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 2, X 223b, Fb 83ra: ‘Quantum ad secundam quaestionem arguo primo quod secundum fidei veritatem et sanctorum testimonia non oportet dicere quod anima sit forma corporis univoce cum aliis, sic: quia in symbolo Athanasii dicit quod, sicut ex anima et corpore fit unus homo, ita Deus et homo est unus Christus; igitur, cum divinitas et humanitas in Christo neutrum insit alteri per modum formae, sequitur quod anima et corpus in homine sic se habebunt quod neutrum inhaerit alteri ut forma informans; igitur anima non est univoce forma corporis cum aliis formis informantibus suas materias.— In oppositum est decretalis nova condita in sacro concilio Viennensi, ubi dicitur quod anima est forma corporis univoce sicut formae aliae sive animae aliae, et ponitur illa decretalis Extra, De summa Trinitate et fide catholica.’
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as a result of the publication of the Clementines. While lecturing at Bologna in 1312, he argued that the intellective soul was only a substantial form in an equivocal sense; that is, that it was not at all the same type of form as other material substantial forms. Because his position also argues that the intellective soul gives life to the body only by means of the sensory soul, he understood that his position ran afoul of the Council of Vienne. Yet Auriol was reluctant to concede any philosophical point, and he certainly was not going to change his ontology in any significant way. Consequently, by saying that the constitution declares the soul is univocally a substantial form, like other substantial forms, he presents the Council of Vienne as invalidating his position, that it is equivocally a substantial form, different from other substantial forms. On Auriol’s scheme, the only opinion left is that the soul is a form that, with prime matter, constitutes directly the human being. Previously he had argued that this position is incomprehensible, and here he states as much, conceding that, because of the determination of the Council of Vienne, one must hold it as true. In 1312, Peter Auriol was lector in the Bologna studium of the Franciscan Order, where he produced the incomplete Tractatus de principiis physicis, on matter and form.50 The incipit makes an explicit appeal to the philosophers, and implicitly reveals the dominant influence of Averroes: The Philosopher, in book I of the Physics, teaches how effective and necessary a knowledge of the principles is in investigating the truth, when he says that “the disposition of certain scientific knowledge in all those that have principles is only acquired from the cognition of those principles.” For this reason, the Commentator, in III De anima, approving the words of Plato says that “the greatest discussion should be on the principles”, just as Plato says; “for a tiny error at the start (in principio) is the cause of a great error at the end”, as Aristotle says. And so we will treat the constituent principles of things, namely matter and form, in which today there is “great error”, as Aristotle says of form in VII Metaphysics.
After dividing the text, Auriol concludes:
50 This discussion of Auriol’s position before and after the Council of Vienne derives partially from W. Duba, ‘The Legacy of the Bologna studium in Peter Auriol’s Hylomorphism,’ in: K. Emery, Jr., W.J. Courtenay and S.M. Metzger (eds.), Philosophy and Theology in the Studia of the Religious Orders and at Papal and Royal Courts, Turnhout 2012 (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 15), 277–302. Special thanks go to Martin Bauer for making available his transcription of the copy of the Tractatus de principiis physicis contained in Ms. Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 3063, 1ra-16ra. My access to Auriol’s text is based on this transcription (= B), together with consultation of the copy in Ms. Madrid, Biblioteca nacional, 517, 71ra-100rb (= D).
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william duba In all matters, I intend to show the agreement between the opinion of Aristotle and philosophical doctrine with the truth of faith, since the former are dissonant and discordant with the latter in very few matters, as will be clear in what follows.51
Auriol cites the words of Plato, Aristotle, and Averroes, in a sequence of nested reports. His citations of Plato and Aristotle come from the ArabicLatin translation made by Michael Scot of Averroes’s text and commentary, and Averroes’s citation of Plato comes filtered through Aristotle.52 In the Tractatus de principiis physicis, Auriol sets out to correct the errors of his contemporaries on matter and form, and recall them to the hylomorphism of Aristotle, as filtered through Averroes. Concerning matter and form, how their entity is in the compound, there are and have been four opinions, and, as it appears, they all disagree with the meaning of Aristotle and his Commentator. First, the opinion of some
51 Peter Auriol, Tractatus de principiis physicis, prologus, B 1ra, D, 71ra: ‘Principiorum notitia quantum sit efficax et necessaria in perscrutatione veritatis docet Philosophus in I Physicorum, cum ait quod “dispositio certae scientiae in omnibus habentibus principia non acquiritur nisi ex cognitione ipsorum.” Hinc est quod Commentator in III De anima verba Platonis approbans dicit quod “maximus sermo debet esse in principiis”, quemadmodum Plato ait; “minimus enim error in principio est causa maximi erroris in fine”, ut Aristoteles dicit. Tractaturi itaque de constitutivis rerum principiis, materia scilicet et forma, in quibus hodie est “maximus error”, prout de forma VII Metaphysicae dicit Philosophus. Praesens tractatum in quattuor partes distinguamus ut in prima parte de principiis rerum, forma videlicet et materia, in generali tractetur. In secunda vero de principiis formarum abstractarum, quae angeli vel intelligentiae nuncupatur et de principis caelestium corporum in speciali tractetur. In tertia vero de principiis elementarium corporum et mixtorum. In quarta vero de principiis animalium et cunctorum viventium, et de materiis et formis eorum, ac tandem in homine totus tractatus terminetur. In omnibus autem intendo opinionem Aristotelis et philosophicam doctrinam et veritatem fidei concordare, quoniam in paucis dissonant et discordant ab ea, prout in sequentibus apparebit. Vocetur autem tractatus iste Tractatus de principiis physicis, cuius decursus sub 24 capitulis continetur.’ 52 In addition to the passage taken from Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, III, comm. 4, ed. F.S. Crawford, Cambridge (MA) 1953 (Corpus commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem. Versionum latinarum 6/1), 384, compare the citations in the passage above with those in the Juntina (Arabic-Latin) edition of Aristotle’s text and Averroes’s commentary. So, for Physics I, 184a10–12, the translation of James of Venice (ed. F. Bossier and J. Brams, Leiden 1990 [Aristoteles latinus, 7/1], 7) reads: ‘Quoniam quidem intelligere et scire contingit circa omnes scientias, quarum sunt principia aut cause aut elementa, ex horum cognitione,’ while that of Michael Scot renders (tex. 1, Venezia 1562, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1962 [Opera omnia, 4], 5vaI): ‘Quoniam dispositio certitudinis et scientiae in omnibus viis, habentibus principia, aut causas, aut elementa, non acquiritur nisi ex cognitione istorum,’ as does Auriol’s text. Likewise, Metaphysics VII.3, 1029a30–33, has in the Moerbeke translation (ed. G. Vuillemin-Diem, Leiden 1995 [Aristoteles latinus, 25/3.2], 135): ‘maxime dubitabilis,’ while Michael Scot (tex. 9, Venezia 1562, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1962 [Opera omnia, 8], 159vaI) has, like Auriol, ‘maximus error.’
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is that form and matter are not really distinguished. The second opinion, held by others, is that matter does not indicate a thing that is a particular or in actuality, but is pure potentiality; but form indicates a thing that is a particular and in actuality. This opinion arises above all from the condition of the rational soul, which they posit to be united to prime matter. The third opinion, held by others, is completely the contrary, namely that matter indicates the entire entity of the compound, but the form is only a certain degree and a certain sublimation of matter, such that air and fire, according to this way, only differ by the sublimation of matter, and because the matter in fire is under a higher degree than it is in air. Fourthly, the opinion of others, and the common position is, in the compound, matter and form each indicate some isolable (praescindibilis) and absolute demonstrable thing, but that they bring about a composition because one is in potency to receive the other, although they really differ by a precise reality. None of these four opinions seems to have the meaning of Aristotle on matter and form. For this reason I say: first, that matter and form are really distinguished, against the first position; second, that the form does not indicate a demonstrable or isolable thing that is a particular, against the second opinion; third, that matter does not indicate a thing that is a particular and demonstrable, nor does it indicate the entire entity of the compound such that form is only a degree or a sublimation of matter, against the third position. Fourth, that form and matter are not really distinct such that each of them indicates a demonstrable and isolable thing, but they are so mutally distinguished that they cannot be isolated from one another and they constitute one demonstrated thing, against the fourth opinion.53
53 Peter Auriol, Tractatus de principiis physicis, prologus, B 1rb, D 71ra–rb: ‘De materia ergo et forma, qualis sit earum entitas in composito, quattuor opiniones et sunt et fuerunt, et omnes ab intentione Aristotelis et Commentatoris sui discrepant, ut videtur. Est enim primo quorundam opinio quod forma et materia realiter non distinguuntur. Est alia opinio secunda quod materia non dicit aliquam rem quae sit hoc vel in actu, sed est pura potentia; forma vero dicit rem quae est hoc et in actu. Quae opinio maxime oritur ex conditione animae rationalis, quam ponunt uniri primae materiae. Est aliorum tertia opinio per omnia contraria, quod materia dicit totam entitatem compositi, forma vero non est nisi quidam gradus et quaedam materiae sublimatio, ita quod aer et ignis secundum istum modum ponendi non differunt nisi per sublimationem materiae; et quia materia in igne est sub altiori gradu quam sit in aere. Est quarto aliorum opinio et communis positio quod materia et forma in composito quaelibet dicit rem aliquam demonstrabilem praescindibilem et absolutam, constituunt tamen compositionem pro eo quod unum est in potentia ad aliud recipiendum, licet differant realiter realitate praecisa.—Nulla istarum opinionum quattuor videtur habere intentionem Aristotelis de materia et forma. Propter quod dico: primo, quod materia et forma realiter distinguuntur, contra primam positionem; secundo, quod forma non dicit rem demonstrabilem vel praescindibilem quae sit hoc, contra secundam opinionem; tertio, quod materia non dicit rem quae sit hoc et demonstrabilis nec praescindibilis, nec totam entitatem compositi sic quod forma sit solus gradus vel sublimatio materiae, contra positionem tertiam; quarto, quod forma et materia non sic realiter distinguuntur quod earum
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The key opinions are the second and the fourth. The fourth opinion is the pluralist position of Auriol’s confrères, and holds that form and matter are distinct realities. The second opinion corresponds to those of Auriol’s contemporary unicists, and hinges on the requirement that forms be particulars by themselves. As Auriol notes, the second opinion makes this concession to accommodate the case of the rational soul. In rejecting all four views, Peter Auriol takes a different strategy: first determine what form and matter is, then decide how the intellective soul fits the scheme, if at all. Auriol argues that while the intellective soul is a substantial form, it is not a substantial form in the same way as the forms of other material substances. For Auriol, a substantial form is by definition the actuation and termination of matter; a substantial form is just the kind of thing that actuates matter, making the matter be something in a substantial way.54 Matter and form for Auriol are two incomplete realities that complement each other in such a way that one can never exist without the other. There are three reasons why the form and matter relate in this way: 1) the form gives being to
quaelibet dicat rem demonstrabilem aut praescindibilem, sed sic distinguuntur adinvicem, quod sunt abinvicem impraescindibilia et constituunt unam rem demonstratam, contra opinionem quartam.’ 54 Auriol incorporates into his Sentences commentary much of his discussion from the Tractatus de principiis physicis. Cf. Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 12, a. 2, q. 1, X 174b-175a, Fb 64rb–va: ‘Primo igitur pono conclusionem istam, videlicet quod forma dicit puram actuationem materiae, et non dicit rem aliquam demonstratam actu. Unde imaginor sic quod omnis entitas generabilis et corruptibilis est entitas habens in se realitates duas, quae nullam dicunt rationem actu determinatam, sed ambae sunt realitates impraecisae rationis unius determinatae. Et ex hoc ipsa nata sunt facere rationem unam determinatam. Imaginor igitur primo realitatem, quae est omne generabile et corruptibile in potentia et confuse, haec realitas est realitas omnis generabilis et corruptibilis amoto complemento. Ideo est realitas incompleta inchoativa rei completae. Imaginor secundo quod huic realitati adveniat actuatio, et complementum alicuius unius determinatae rationis. Tale complementum, et actuatio non est realitas in se praecise, ita quod in sua ratione sit ratio determinata in actu, est tamen complementum rationis determinatae in actu. Unde sicut prima realitas erat natura incompleta et truncata, quia inchoativa tantummodo rationis determinatae et completae in actu, sic realitas haec est truncata ac incompleta, quia tantummodo est complementum rationis determinatae et completae in eo quod est actuatio quaedam realitatis illius quae dicebatur inchoativa. Tertio imaginor compositum ex inchoativo et suo complemento, et illud est res et ratio determinata demonstrata in actu completo, alia autem duo tantummodo sunt realitates impraecisae istius, altera ut inchoatio, altera vero ut complementum.’ For ‘pure termination,’ see Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 1, X 219a, Fb 81ra: ‘Ideo sciendum quod Commentator non negavit absolute quin anima intellectiva sit forma hominis ut sic in homine sint duae naturae ex quibus integratur homo, quarum altera est anima; bene tamen videtur negasse quod anima sit pura actuatio et pura terminatio materiae, sicut dicitur de aliis formis naturalibus, et per istam distinctionem salvantur multae auctoritates eius, quae videntur sibi invicem repugnare.’
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matter, participates in it, and denominates it, 2) the composite is quidditative and a numeric unity, and 3) if form were demonstrable and separable from matter, then it would necessarily be created. In the Tractatus de principiis physicis, Auriol says that it is for precisely these three reasons that the rational soul is not a substantial form in this sense: (1) the rational soul is not the mere actuation and termination of matter; the “mere formation” is the life of the body (vita corporis), which the rational soul causes formally, (2) since souls persist after death, they do not form a fundamental unity with the body, and (3) for just this reason, the soul is, in fact, created. Elsewhere, Auriol states that the ‘life of the body’ is the sensory and vegetative soul, and in this sense, the form of the body. Auriol concludes: The following should be gathered from the aforesaid: first, that man is constituted from two natures having their own descriptions (rationes), which is never true of fire or a lion. Secondly, that the rational soul is united to the body not as the mover of the body, as some have said, nor as what gives it life in the manner of an efficient cause, as others fantasize, but as a most true form, causing life by the causality of the form. Thirdly, that the rational soul, in informing, is a form of a different type from other natural forms only in one condition that posits an imperfection, and because of this condition it is to be excluded from the laws governing other natural forms.55
So while the Tractatus is incomplete, and lacks the promised fourth and final book, which was to be dedicated to the human soul, it appears that Auriol argues that the form of the body is the sensory soul, and that the intellective soul is the formal cause of the sensory soul. On the authority of the philosophers, understood through Averroes, he supported a relatively strong form of dimorphism. On 1 November, 1317, Pope John XXII published the Clementine Constitutions. In the introductory bull (Quoniam nulla), John addressed the “doctors and scholars” of the major European centers of study (in Bologna, Avignon, Toulouse, and Paris): “Now, having seized the opportunity, we transmit these [constitutions] to you under our bull, ordering your entirety by
55 Peter Auriol, Tractatus de principiis physicis, I, c. 4, B 10ra, D 77vb-78ra: ‘Ex praedictis ergo colligenda sunt ista: primo, quod homo est constitutus ex duabus naturis habentibus proprias rationes, quod nequaquam verum est de igne aut leone; secundo, quod anima rationalis unitur corpori non ut motor corporis, ut aliqui dixerunt, nec ut vivificans per modum efficientis, ut aliqui fantasiantur, sed ut verissima forma, vitam causando causalitate formae; tertio, quod anima rationalis est forma alterius rationis in informando ab aliis naturalibus formis solum in una condicione quae ponit imperfectionem, et in illa est a lege aliarum naturalium formarum excludenda.’
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Apostolic writings that you receive them with a ready will and eager study, and, when they are thus clear and known to you, that you henceforth use them in judgments and in the schools.”56 At the time, Peter Auriol was reading book II of the Sentences at Paris, and he heeded the pope’s exhortation. Since the Council, in declaring that the rational soul was per se and essentially the form of the body, implicitly targeted Olivi’s position that the soul was the form of the body by means of the sensory soul, it also rendered Peter Auriol’s view untenable, and Peter knew it. Auriol built his explanation of the rational soul on the premise that it was fundamentally different from other forms, because, inter alia, it did not inform matter in the same way. Since the Council required that the rational soul be per se and essentially the form of the body, the soul must inform matter in the same way as other forms. Therefore, Auriol reads the constitution as stating that the rational soul is a form like other forms, and, in his lectures on book II of the Sentences, he states that this view must be held, but can only be held on the authority of the Council of Vienne. In Auriol’s eyes, all philosophical and even all other theological authorities and arguments point to the rational soul being a unique type of form. Auriol’s larger hylomorphic doctrine remains unchanged. In his Paris lectures on the Sentences, Auriol presents the rational soul as unextended and immaterial, having nothing essentially to do with matter and, because the rational soul is able to be generated and destroyed only by God (3),57 it survives the death of the body and hence it can exist without matter (2).58 Auriol admits outright that the rational soul, although a form of the body and an essential part of us,59 is not the actuation and perfection of 56 Corpus iuris canonici, 2, 1132: ‘Nunc igitur opportunitate captata illas vobis sub bulla nostra transmittimus, universitati vestrae per apostolica scripta mandantes, quatenus eas prompto affectu suscipiatis et studio alacri, eis, sic vobis manifestatis et cognitis, usuri de cetero in iudiciis et in scholis. Data Avinione VIII. Kal. Novembris Pontificatus nostri anno secundo.’ On the dating to Kal. Novembris instead of VIII. Kal., see S. Kuttner, ‘The Date of the Constitution “Saepe,” the Vatican Manuscripts and the Roman Edition of the Clementines,’ in: Mélanges Eugène Tisserant, 4, Città del Vaticano 1964 (Studi e testi, 234), 427–452, at 433– 434. 57 Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 2, X 226a, Fb 84rb: ‘Ideo anima, licet sit pura perfectio materiae, non tamen corrumpitur ad corruptionem materiae naturaliter, cum non possit attingi ab agente naturali et quanto, licet aliae animae, puta sensitiva, eo quod extensa est, possit attingi ab agente quanto et naturali. Sola igitur anima intellectiva est corruptibilis et generabilis a solo Deo, ideo a corpore tenetur anima separata virtute divina.’ 58 See the text in n. 62 below. 59 Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 1, X 223a, Fb 83ra: ‘Dico igitur ad quaestionem quod potest demonstrari quod anima est forma corporis, et pars essentialis nostra, licet non sit actuatio et perfectio pura corporis, sicut sunt aliae animae.’
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the body (1) in the way that other forms are, and indeed in the way that other souls are, repeating not only the Tractatus de Principiis’ claim that the word ‘form’ is used equivocally, but also the arguments used to support that claim, even, in some places, verbatim.60 Thus, the vegetative soul of a plant is a substantial form in a way equivocal with that which the rational soul of a human being is one, i.e. simply because the vegetative soul of a plant is the actuation of the plant’s matter in a way totally different from the way a rational soul relates to the human being’s body. At this point, the Council of Vienne intervenes. Auriol now resorts to fideism: although we have no way of proving that the rational soul is the form of the body, nevertheless we accept it on faith because of the Council of Vienne.61 The only link Auriol sees between the rational soul and the body is the act of understanding: I say that soul and body come to a certain indivision [i.e., undividedness] in a single special final perfection that is understanding, and this results from the imagination and the intellect, which both concur in an undivided way to that operation.62
Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 2, X 223b, Fb 83ra: ‘Quantum ad primum pono distinctionem istam, quod univocatio intellectus et aliarum animarum potest attendi penes duo, uno modo penes condiciones quasdam extrinsecas, cuius sunt extensio, et materialitas, et separatio post corpus, et huiusmodi. Et clarum est quod in huiusmodi condicionibus anima rationalis et animae aliae se habent omnino aequivoce; anima enim rationalis est inextensa, immaterialis, et manet post corpus; oppositae autem condiciones sunt in aliis animabus. Alio modo potest accipi univocatio quoad condicionem istam intrinsecam formae quae est actuare sive esse actuationem et terminationem materiae, et tunc est sensus: utrum anima sit formaliter pura actuatio materiae et pura perfectio sicut sunt formae aliae ut sic homo sit unum ens in actu unitate indivisionis simpliciter, licet sit multa in potentia, sicut est de quocumque alio composito naturali. Et in hoc sensu responderent philosophi peripatetici quod omnino anima intellectiva est aequivoce forma in hoc cum aliis animabus.’ The close textual relationship between Auriol’s Paris lectures, his revised Reportatio and the Tractatus de Principiis on this topic is analyzed in Duba, ‘The Legacy of the Bologna studium.’ 61 Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 2, X 223b, Fb 83ra–rb: ‘Secundo pono propositiones duas. Prima est quod non est de veritate et sinceritate fidei credere posse demonstrari quod anima ita sit perfectio corporis, sicut figura est forma cerae. Ideo est mirabile quod dicunt quidam quod necesse est quod possit demonstrari, ita quod animam esse sic formam corporis, non est tantum creditum et per fidem habitum, sed tanquam aliquid evidenter demonstrabile. Hanc conclusionem probo, quia magis pertinet ad necessitatem fidei articulus Trinitatis, quam animam esse sic formam corporis, quia forte non est articulus, nec inclusum in articulo; sed non est de necessitate fidei credere quod fideli articulus de Trinitate possit demonstrari, immo communiter articuli fidei sunt indemonstrabiles fideli; ergo.’ 62 Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 1, X 221b, Fb 82rb: ‘Dico quod corpus et anima veniunt ad quandam indivisionem in una speciali postrema perfectione quae est intelligere, quod resultat ex imaginatione et intellectu, quae ambo concurrunt indivise ad illam operationem, et 60
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For Auriol, in order to understand, human beings in this life must always make use of phantasms, which are the very last material representation formed by the imagination, itself the last material cognitive faculty that we possess (the intellect is, of course, immaterial, and understands in an immaterial way). Auriol makes this claim several times throughout his works,63 and this is the basis of his argument that the intellect, and the rational soul more generally, is joined together “existentially” or “metaphysically” to the body through that act of understanding—in our present state here on earth, intellectual cognition requires the imagination and phantasms (for example, I cannot think of ‘line’ in general, without simultaneously imagining some specific line of, say, three or four centimeters), and the necessity for this cognitive unity in this life entails an existential unity of body and intellect: A spiritual form that concurs with a corporeal form in one operation such that they are individuated in operation, just as that abstract form and that corporeal form are undivided in the operation, so [they are also undivided] in existence, because they are not united in any way other than through the operation. But the intellect and the body are undivided in one operation, i.e. understanding; therefore they are undivided in some way in existence. I prove the minor [premise of the syllogism]: because the potential intellect never actually understands unless the understood intention is objectively anchored in an imagined intention, for whoever understands a universal, necessarily understands it in some particular …. Intellect and imagination (phantasia) are undivided by a certain special indivision, which is their connecting (colligatio).64
sic non venit ad unionem per modum efficientis, nec ad unionem praesentiae et simultatis, nec ad indivisionem formae actuantis et terminantis, nec etiam formae proportionatae naturaliter et determinantis ad extremas perfectiones simpliciter, sed secundum perfectionem aliquam, puta intelligere, quod ad illam concurrit intellectus et imaginatio per indivisionem. Et hoc est quod Commentator dicit, III De anima, quod intellectio habet duplex subiectum; in quantum enim est unum de numero entium, eius subiectum est intellectus, sed in quantum est ens verum, subiectum eius est intentio imaginata.’ 63 For example Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 11, a. 3, q. 3, X 139b, Fb 51va: ‘Ex hoc apparet quod intellectus noster non potest plura simul intelligere, non ex natura intellectus in se, sed ex ratione qua coniunctus est in operatione et ligatus cum potentia corporali, videlicet cum phantasmate. Nihil enim intelligimus quod actu non phantasiemur; repugnat autem phantasmati phantasiari simul plura, tum quia utitur corporeo organo ac spiritibus quos contingit debilitari, cum fuerint circa plura; talis etiam potentia fatigabilis est et corrumpi potest, non solum ab excellenti sensibili, sed a multiplicata operatione. Ista autem locum non habent in angelo. Quare, etc.’ On this material in Auriol, see R.L. Friedman, ‘Act, Species, and Appearance: Peter Auriol on Intellectual Cognition and Consciousness,’ in: G. Klima (ed.), Intentionality, Cognition and Representation in the Middle Ages, forthcoming. 64 Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 1, X 221b-222a, Fb 82rb–va: ‘Tunc formo rationem sic: forma
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Soul and body form an existential unit on the basis of the fact that understanding cannot take place without sense data, and hence the intellect must always make use of phantasms in order to understand. The metaphysical link between rational soul and body is based on their cognitive link. Such a tenuous connection shows why Auriol doubted that the rational soul was the form of the human body in any way that we would normally understand the term ‘form’. Peter Auriol therefore changes his position concerning the rational soul purely on the authority of the Council of Vienne. He had previously held a dualist view, namely that the intellective soul was the form of the body only in the sense that it was what provided the sensory soul, which is what actuates matter and thus informs the body. When the Council of Vienne invalidated this position, he professed that the Council’s determination overrode any other consideration, but that, nevertheless, reason and previous authoritative arguments of the Church pointed to the rational soul being a different kind of form. As the Council required the rational soul to be per se and essentially the form of the body, it effectively required the rational soul to be like other substantial forms. In this way, Auriol’s stated position shifted from saying that the rational soul is a form in an equivocal sense to stating that one must hold that it is a form like all other substantial forms, although one cannot demonstrate this view, since all demonstrations argue against it.
spiritualis quae concurrit cum forma corporea in una operatione ita quod individuuntur in operatione illa, ita forma abstracta et illa corporalis, sicut individuntur in operatione, sic in existentia, quia alio modo non uniuntur quam per operationem; sed intellectus et corpus individuuntur in una operatione, quae est intelligere; igitur aliquo modo in existentia. Minorem probo, quia nunquam intellectus possibilis actu intelligit nisi intentio intellecta obiective fundetur in intentione imaginata; qui enim intelligit universale, necessario intelligit illud in particulari aliquo, sicut lineam simpliciter intelligo in hac linea, puta pedali vel aliqua alia particulari linea, ut Philosophus dicit in De memoria et reminiscentia. Tunc arguo: sicut se habet obiectum intellectus, quod est intentio intellecta, ad obiectum phantasiae, quod est intentio phantasiata, sic principium ad principium, intellectus videlicet ad phantasiam, et similiter actus ad actum; sed obiecta illa sunt naturaliter colligata; igitur similiter actus et principia. Et per hoc intellectus et phantasia sunt indivisa quadam speciali indivisione, quae est colligatio consimilis colligationi obiectorum.’ This quotation and its use of the term colligatio further shows that Auriol’s view is heavily influenced by Averroes and his theory of intellectual cognition: while Auriol rejects monopsychism, he nevertheless adopts from the theory of Averroes the notion of a necessary ‘conjunction’ between intellect and imagination.
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william duba 5. Landulph Caracciolo Vel ergo iste sanguis et illa aqua fuerunt materia nuda, quod est truffa, vel fuit ibi forma.
Peter Auriol’s teaching disrupted the theological and philosophical discourse at Paris. Immediately, and in the decades that followed, theologians from all schools criticized numerous aspects of his doctrine. Auriol himself provided a systematic evaluation and, for the most part, refutation of Scotus’s philosophical and theological teaching. For Franciscan thinkers defending a system of thought inspired by Scotus, Auriol’s analysis needed refutation. Therefore the Neapolitan Scotist Landulph Caracciolo had a clear adversary when he lectured on the Sentences at Paris in 1318–1319.65 In Caracciolo’s commentary, the defenders of the unicist theory are also the ones who argue that the soul cannot be demonstrated to be the form of the body. Against these, Landulph uses the determination of the Council of Vienne as a statement of fact, proving that the soul and the body each have separate realities, and therefore have substantial forms. Caracciolo also takes further the arguments from Christ’s side being opened on the Cross; where Hugh of Novocastro argued against an opinion that tried to preserve the single-form theory by claiming that Christ was not truly dead, Landulph uses the determination of the Council to argue that, not only was Christ truly dead, but the blood and water, the foundation of the Church and of the sacraments of the Eucharist and baptism, had to have a form, which would not be the case if they sprung from unformed prime matter. Caracciolo defends the presence of a forma corporeitatis, but at least in the passages examined here, he does not discuss the relationship between the various parts of the soul and body. Landulph Caracciolo’s doctrines often appear as reactions to Auriol’s challenge to Duns Scotus. In discussing hylomorphic theory, Caracciolo holds that matter has some distinct entity and actuality over and against form by summarizing Scotus and replying to Auriol. In this context, supporting, against Auriol, the thesis that matter and form are two distinct realities (realitates), he uses the separability of the soul from the body along with
65 On Landulph Caracciolo, see now C. Schabel, ‘The Commentary on the Sentences by Landulphus Caracciolo, OFM,’ Bulletin de philosophie médiévale, 51 (2009), 145–219, and the literature cited there.
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the Council of Vienne’s statement on the soul as form of the body to confirm that matter and form are separate entities in actuality: The rational soul is the most true form of the body, as was determined in Extra, De summa Trinitate et fide catholica, in the Liber septimus, and yet it is really separated from the body and the matter that it informs.66
If the soul can be separated from the body, then both soul and body must have distinct realities. What Auriol understands as an exception, showing (or appearing to show) that the intellective soul cannot be a substantial form like other forms, Caracciolo uses as evidence for the rule of how substantial forms relate to the matter they inform. Like Auriol, Caracciolo addresses the question of the soul as form of the body head-on in his commentary on book II, distinction 16 of the Sentences. The second part of the distinction explicitly refers to Auriol’s commentary, even in the formulation of the questions.67 In his discussion there, Landulph focuses exclusively on proving Auriol wrong. First, implicitly attacking Auriol’s conviction that his hylomorphic doctrine is the opinion of Aristotle as explained by Averroes, Landulph argues that Aristotle held that the intellective soul made a more perfect unity with the body than the form of fire does with its matter, that it is by far easier to prove that the intellective soul is the form of the body than not, and that Averroes is simply wrong on these matters and is not a faithful interpreter of Aristotle.68
66 Landulph Caracciolo, In secundum librum Sententiarum, d. 12, q. 1, ed. W. Duba, ‘Landolfo Caracciolo on Objective Potency and Hylomorphic Unity,’ in: F. Fiorentino (ed.), Lo scotismo nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia. Atti del Congresso Internazionale (Bitonto 25–28, marzo 2008), in occasione del VII Centenario della morte di Giovanni Duns Scoto, Porto 2010 (Textes et études du Moyen Age, 52), 269–301, at 295: ‘Confirmatur ista, quia anima rationalis est verissima corporis forma, sicut determinatum est Extra, De summa Trinitate et fide catholica, in libro VII, et tamen realiter separatur a corpore et materia quam informat.’ 67 Peter Auriol, Sent. II, d. 16, q. 1: Utrum possit probari demonstrative quod anima intellectiva est forma corporis; q. 2: Utrum secundum veritatem fidei oportet tenere quod anima sit forma corporis univoce sicut aliae formae sunt formae suae materiae. Landulph Caracciolo, Sent. II, d. 16, pars 2, q. 1 (Schabel, ‘The Commentary,’ 197): Utrum secundum Philosophum anima intellectiva sit forma corporis; q. 2: Utrum secundum veritatem anima intellectiva sit forma corporis. 68 Landulph Caracciolo, In secundum librum Sententiarum, d. 16, pars 2, q. 1, ed. Venezia, s.d. (= V), iiIIIva–iiIIIIra; Ms. Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr. A.3.641 (= F), 222va–vb: ‘Secunda conclusio: Teneo oppositum, dicendo tres propositiones. Prima quod de mente Aristotelis fuit secundum eius verba quod esset anima intellectiva forma corporis faciens unum perfectius quam forma ignis cum materia sua … Secunda propositio: quod demonstrative potest probari longe magis quod anima intellectiva est forma corporis quam eius contradictoria … Tertia propositio quod Commentator, qui in istammet materiam sibi contradixit, erravit nec mentem Aristotelis habuit.’
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Concerning what is actually the case, Landulph is categorical: It must be held without qualification that the intellective soul is the most true form of the body. Proof: because this is the explicit text of Extra, De summa Trinitate et fide catholica; at the beginning of the Liber septimus of the Decretals this is determined.69
Landulph presents and refutes Auriol’s arguments that this cannot be demonstrated from theological authority. Caracciolo’s main thrust against Auriol is that it pertains to the truth of faith to demonstrate that the soul is the form of the body, because it has to be demonstrable. Otherwise, humans in general, Catholics specifically, and Christ in particular would be merely sensory animals.70 Likewise: It pertains to the truth of the faith to be able to demonstrate a plurality of souls; but there would not be a plurality if they did not inform the body; therefore etc. The major premise is clear, because, if faith were so feeble that it could not defeat the Commentator in that which philosophy defeated him, hthati when a human dies, it is not the case that the whole person dies except for that abstract intelligence, then faith is extremely weak. The minor premise is clear, because pretend that it is not the form of the body, but an abstract intelligence: you would not be able to multiply those souls by a necessary reason.71
69 Landulph Caracciolo, Sent. II, d. 16, pars 2, q. 2, V iiIIIIra, F 222ra: ‘Ad secundam quaestionem dico tres conclusiones. Prima quod simpliciter tenendum est animam intellectivam esse verissimam formam corporis. Probatio, quia expressus textus est Extra, De summa Trinitate et fide catholica; in principio VII decretalium hoc determinatur.’ 70 Landulph Caracciolo, Sent. II, d. 16, pars 2, q. 2, V iiIIIIrb, F 222ra: ‘Tertio conclusio: teneo oppositum, dicendo duas propositiones oppositas. Prima: de veritate fidei est posse demonstrari animam esse proprissimam corporis formam. Probatio: De virtute fidei est posse demonstrari quod homo non sit purum animal sensitivum; sed hoc necessario requirit intellectum esse propriam formam hominis; ergo etc. Maior patet, quia multa esset infirma fides nostra, si teneretur non posse convinci per rationem illum qui negaret Christum habere aliquid intellectualitatis proprie, sed diceret eum fuisse unum animal sensitivum, et similiter dicentem omnes cultores Dei et catholicae fidei sunt animalia sensitiva. Minor patet, quia, si intellectus non esset forma corporis, sed uniretur sibi solum in actu intelligendi, sequeretur quod quando Christus dormiebat, vel fideles dormiunt, si non habuissent actum visionis essentiae divinae clare, solum fuissent animalia sensitiva. Et ulterius, quamvis in operari essent animalia intellectiva, non tamen in esse.’ 71 Landulph Caracciolo, Sent. II, d. 16, pars 2, q. 2, V iiIIIIva, F 222ra: ‘Praeterea, de veritate fidei est posse demonstrare animarum pluralitatem; sed non esset nisi corpus informarent; ergo etc. Maior patet, quia, si fides sit ita infirma quod non possit convincere Commentatorem de eo quod convincit eum philosophia, et mortuo homine non perit totum excepta illa intelligentia abstracta, debilissima est fides. Minor patet, quia tene quod non sit forma corporis, sed intelligentia abstracta: non poteris eas multiplicare necessaria ratione.’
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In addition to reasoning that the faith that could not demonstrate the soul to be the form of the body would be a weak one indeed, Landulph adduces arguments that the Saints themselves held that the soul was the form of the body. For Landulph’s view of how exactly the soul relates to the body, one must turn to his discussion of the Eucharist, where he appears to support a dimorphist view, and he uses the Council of Vienne’s declaration that Christ really died before the lance pierced His side in order to defend the plurality of substantial forms. At the end of the question “Whether bread is converted by transubstantiation into the body of Christ” (book IV, d. 11, part 2, q. 1, of his Sentences commentary), Landulph tacks on a conclusio asking “what is the terminus ad quem of this transubstantiation?” He provides three opinions, each in a propositio. The first asserts that the intellective soul is the only form in humans, and so the Eucharist is a compound of prime matter and the intellective soul, insofar as the intellective soul provides the matter with a corporeal shape.72 Landulph uses the triduum against this position: when Christ died upon the Cross and lay in the tomb, His intellective soul was necessarily separated from the body. Moreover, the declaration of the Clementine Constitutions makes the efficacy of the sacraments depend on a pluralist position: In Extra, De celebratione missarum, in a gloss: from the side of the Savior flowed blood and water, in which were established two sacraments, namely baptism and the Eucharist; it is certain that Christ was then dead, Extra, De summa Trinitate, in the Liber septimus; therefore the rational soul was not there. Therefore, either this blood and that water were naked matter, which is a sham, or there was form there.73
72 Landulph Caracciolo, In quartum librum Sententiarum, d. 11, pars 2, q. 1, Ms. Padova, Museo Civico, CM 619 (= C), 37vb; Ms. Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr. B.7.642 (= G), 31va; Ms. Padova, Biblioteca Antoniana, 155 Scaff. VIII (= P), 26va: ‘Sexta conclusio: quis sit terminus ad quem istius transubstantionis. Et hic nota tres propositiones. Prima, quod una opinio quae ponit in uno homine non esse nisi unam formam, scilicet animam intellectivam, dicit quod terminus istius conversionis est compositum ex materia et anima rationali, non in quantum est intellectiva, sed in quantum dat esse corporeum, quia ipsa eadem dat esse intellectivum, sensitivum, vegetativum, corporeum; terminat ergo in quantum dat esse corporeum.’ 73 Landulph Caracciolo, Sent. IV, d. 11, pars 2, q. 1, C 37vb, G 31va–vb, P 26va: ‘Contra istud est demonstratio talis: in triduo, si Petrus celebrasset, fuisset iste panis vere conversus in corpus Christi, et tamen non fuisset anima, nec secundum esse corporeum, nec secundum aliud esse. Ergo vel non fuisset conversio, vel fuisset ibi alia forma.—Praeterea secunda demonstratio: Extra, De celebratione missarum, ‘in quadam’: [glossa] “de latere Salvatoris fluxit sanguis et aqua, in quibus instituta sunt duo sacramenta, scilicet baptismus et eucharistia.” Certum est quod Christus tunc fuit mortuus, Extra, De summa Trinitate, libro 7; ergo tunc
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We saw this argument in Scotus. Landulph now bolsters it with the authority of the Clementine, and argues that Christ was truly dead. The second propositio consists in the opinion that the body of Christ in the Eucharist is matter with quantitative extension. Since, however, it holds that the body of Christ is matter, it can be reduced to the first (formin-prime-matter) position, and suffers the same problems with regard to the triduum.74 Finally, the third and last proposition contains Landulph’s position: The term of this conversion is the matter of the body with some substantial form that gives it the being of corporeity, which form is not the rational soul. Thus the soul is not there as the per se end-point of the conversion, but is only there concomitantly. Proof: the per se end-point in this conversion is what is per se and precisely acquired at whatever instant transubstantiation is achieved; but this is only matter with this form of corporeity; therefore this is the only term. The major premise is clear, because the only end-point of a change is what is precisely acquired when the entire change has occurred. The minor is clear, because, as I said, if transubstantiation were done during the triduum, what would be acquired would not be the rational soul (which was separated), nor pure matter (because, according to my adversaries, God cannot make matter without form), and therefore [it would be] matter with a form; not with a form other than what now exists or existed beforehand, because then it would be numerically the same body; therefore [it would be] matter with the form of corporeity that existed beforehand, and is there now. And transubstantiation now ends at that form, just as then.75 non erat anima rationalis ibi, vel ergo iste sanguis et illa aqua fuerunt materia nuda, quod est truffa, vel fuit ibi forma.—Praeterea, Augustinus De fide ad Petrum idem homo in utero matris, pependebat in cruce, iacuit in sepulcro, resurrexit. Hoc non potest intelligi de anima rationali, quae non fuit in sepulcro cum corpore; ergo vel intelligitur de materia nuda, quod est falsum, vel quod fuit ibi alia forma, quod est propositum.’ 74 Landulph Caracciolo, Sent. IV, d. 11, pars 2, q. 1, C 37vb-38ra, G 31vb, P 26va: ‘Secunda propositio, quod per easdem rationes falsa est alia opinio quae dicit quod materia habens modum quantitativum est huiusmodi conversionis terminus; imaginatur enim quod quantitas derelinquit quandam extensionem in materia et materia hoc modo potest dici corpus in quod fit conversio.—Contra: iste modus quantitativus est realiter idem cum materia secundum eos, ergo conversio in materiam sub modo quantitativo est conversio in materiam. Et tunc secuntur omnia inconvenientia inducta contra primam opinionem.’ 75 Landulph Caracciolo, Sent. IV, d. 11, pars 2, q. 1, C 38ra, G 31vb, P 26va–vb: ‘Tertia propositio, quod terminus huius conversionis est materia corporis Christi cum aliqua forma substantiali dante sibi esse corporeitatis, quae forma non est anima rationalis. Unde anima non est ibi ut terminus per se conversionis, sed tantum concomitanter.—Probatio: illud est per se terminus in hac conversione quod per se et praecise acquiretur in quocumque instanti fieret perfecta transubstantiatio; sed hoc est tantum materia cum ista forma corporeitatis; ergo istud est tantum terminus. Maior patet, quia illud est tantum terminus mutationis quod praecise adquiritur posita integra mutatione. Minor patet, quia, ut dixi, si in triduo fuisset
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The triduum, clarified in the Council of Vienne, determines Caracciolo’s answer: in the tomb, Christ’s body existed in separation from any life-giving principle, and yet must be considered a substance. If one celebrated the Eucharist during the triduum, the host would not be connected to the soul of Christ, and yet would be a substance. The body must therefore be a hylomorphic compound, and its form is the form of corporeity. Consequently, the form of the substance of the Eucharist is the forma corporeitatis. Combined with his rejection of the opinion holding the intellective soul to be the only human form, this amounts to arguing for at least two forms in human beings. In the passages examined, however, Landulph Caracciolo does not go any further than that. He does not say (as does Hugh of Novocastro) whether the sensitive soul is a third, distinct form; nor does he explain how the various forms relate to each other within the same compound. 6. Francis of Marchia Ista opinio est contra rationem, contra sensum, contra Scripturam, et etiam contra Philosophum.
Next in succession after Landulph Caracciolo as Franciscan bachelor of the Sentences at Paris in 1319–1320, Francis of Marchia defends a singlesoul, two-form theory in his Sentences commentary.76 His focus, however, is the complete opposite of Caracciolo: while Caracciolo addresses Peter Auriol’s argument that the soul cannot be demonstrated to be the form of the body and then defends the forma corporeitatis on the grounds of the body of Christ during the triduum, Francis of Marchia develops John Duns Scotus’s requirement that what holds for humans must also be true for other animals, by applying it to the argument (seen in practically all the authors examined here, and going back at least to Henry of Ghent) that the
transubstantatio facta, non fuisset acquisita anima rationalis, quae fuit separata, nec materia pura, quia secundum adversarios, Deus non posset eam facere sine forma, ergo materia cum forma; non cum alia forma quam modo sit, vel ante fuerit, quia tunc non esset idem corpus numero; ergo materia cum forma corporeitatis quae ante fuit et modo est ibi. Et ad illam terminatur modo transubstantiatio, sicut et tunc.—Confirmatur, quia eiusdem rationis est transubstantiatio modo quae fuisset in triduo; sed tunc fuisset ad materiam sub illa forma corporeitatis; ergo et nunc.’ 76 For a detailed study of Marchia’s doctrine as it appears in his commentary on book II of the Sentences, see Suarez-Nani, ‘Une anthropologie’ (n. 17, above).
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intellective soul cannot have extension: for Marchia, the souls of all living beings cannot have extension. On Francis of Marchia’s doctrine, a human being is a compound of intellective soul and body, the two of them relating as form and matter, and the intellective soul differs from all the preceding forms in that it is an ultimate form. Francis of Marchia certainly was aware of the decrees of the Council of Vienne: when discussing the function of the created soul of Christ, he cites the Council’s determination that the beatific vision must occur in the Light of Glory.77 In considering the soul as form of the body, however, he mentions neither Council nor constitution, passing directly to whether the proposition can be demonstrated, and, in this, probably reacting to Auriol. Francis addresses the issue as the first of five propositions about the human soul which must be both true and demonstrable for the resurrection to be demonstrable. Book IV, q. 60 of Francis of Marchia’s Sentences commentary asks “Whether the resurrection of man is demonstrable”, understood in particular about whether the future resurrection of the bodies can be proven by reason (not about whether resurrection is merely possible). He understands that there are four ways of demonstrating resurrection, a priori, from the description of the genus animal or from the definition of human beings, and a posteriori, from the conditions proper to human beings or from their parts, namely from the body and soul.78 In a brief first article, Francis argues
77 Francis of Marchia, In tertium librum Sententiarum, q. 13, ed. W. Duba, ‘Francesco di Marchia sulla conoscenza intuitiva mediata e immediata (III Sent., q. 13),’ Picenum Seraphicum, 22–23 (2003–2004), 121–157, 156–157: ‘Sed quid de lumine glorie? Dico quod ego pono lumen non solum prout lumen se extendit ad speciem ab actu distinctam, sed etiam ad ipsum actum. Nam et actus potest dici lumen et magis sibi convenit ratio luminis quam speciei, quia omne quod habet rationem manifestam potest dici lumen. Actus autem habet maxime rationem manifestam. Ideo, etc. Unde, si lumen accipiatur isto modo large, scilicet pro isto actu, dico quod sic intelligo illam Clementinam.’ 78 Francis of Marchia, In quartum librum Sententiarum, q. 60, Ms. Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, Chigi lat. B VII 113 (= C), 227va; Ms. Praha, Knihovna Metropolitní Kapituli, 531 (C 99) (= P), 250ra–rb: ‘Respondeo. Ubi sciendum primo quod ista quaestio non quaerit de resurrectione in generali, utrum sit possibilis, quia de hoc visum est superius quod sic, sed quaeritur in speciali de resurrectione hominis de inesse, utrum videlicet ipsam esse futuram sit demonstrabile naturaliter. Secundo est sciendum quod resurrectionem demonstrari de homine potest esse dupliciter: uno modo a priori, alio modo a posteriori, et hoc dupliciter, quia vel a posteriori directe per condiciones proprias hominis, vel indirecte per condiciones partium eius, puta animae et corporis. Demonstrari etiam resurrectionem a priori de homine potest similiter intelligi dupliciter, quia vel directe quod demonstraretur per rationem propriam generis hominis, puta animalis, vel per rationem propriam et definiti-
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that no demonstration can be had of the resurrection a priori. The second article then focuses immediately on a posteriori demonstration from the conditions of the soul: I say that this conclusion, namely that the resurrection can be demonstrated of man a posteriori from some of the conditions of the soul, depends on five propositions, of which if any is not proved demonstratively or is not known in itself (per se nota), this conclusion cannot be demonstrated. The first proposition is that the soul is the form of the human body. The second, that the intellective soul is immortal. The third, that the intellective soul is numbered according to the number of the body or of men. The fourth, that any intellective soul that is one in number is determined by its own nature to this particular body, or, rather, that it cannot perfect or inform some other body. The fifth, that no substantial form having the nature to last forever (because it is immortal and incorruptible) can forever be deprived of its proper perfectible, or has the nature to be deprived of it. Do away with any of these propositions, and this conclusion cannot be demonstrated. Therefore, one should see whether each of these propositions is known in itself or is demonstrable.79
The rest of q. 60 addresses the demonstrability of the soul as form of the body, concluding that it can be demonstrated. This question exists in a complex philological relationship with four other questions in Francis of Marchia’s Sentences commentaries, two on the immortality of the soul and two against the unicity of the agent intellect. In each case, Francis
vam hominis. Tunc est sic procedendum in ista quaestione. Primo enim est videndum utrum resurrectio possit demonstrari de homine demonstratione sumpta a priori. Secundo, utrum demonstratione a posteriori.’ 79 Francis of Marchia, Sent. IV, q. 60, C 227va, P 250rb–va: ‘Dico quod ista conclusio, puta quod resurrectio potest demonstrari de homine a posteriori ex aliquibus condicionibus animae, dependet ex quinque propositionibus, quarum aliqua non probata demonstrative vel per se nota non potest huius conclusio demonstrari.—Prima propositio est ista quod anima est forma corporis humani.—Secundo, quod anima intellectiva est immortalis.— Tertia, quod anima intellectiva numeratur secundum numerum corporis sive hominum.— Quarta, quod quaelibet anima intellectiva una numero ex natura sua determinatur ad hoc corpus numero aut quod non potest perficere sive informare aliud corpus.—Quinta, quod nulla forma substantialis nata manere perpetuo quia immortalis et incorruptibilis potest perpetuo privari suo proprio perfectibili, sive nata est privari ipso.—Qualibet istarum propositionum interempta, non potest ista conclusio demonstrari. Est ergo videndum de istis quinque propositionibus utrum quaelibet sit per se nota vel demonstrabilis.’
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first argues for the proposition (through authority and through rational argument), and then he assesses whether it can in fact be demonstrated.80 Yet for the soul as form of the body, he skips the first step. Instead of bringing out a list of authorities, including the Council of Vienne, Francis silently passes to whether the thesis can be demonstrated. Francis’s demonstration of the soul as form of the body and his evaluation of why other demonstrations do not work depend on a hylomorphic theory that posits that the union of matter and form produces a composite that is something additional, over and above these components. This theory, going back at least to Avicenna, is at the heart of Auriol’s criticism of Scotus, and underlies the doctrines of all the Franciscans treated here save Auriol (who denies that matter and form are anything, strictly speaking, outside the composite).81 Marchia draws two sets of conclusions on the basis of this theory. First, the soul cannot be demonstrated to be the form of the body by any operation particular to the soul alone. Second, the human composite that results from the soul-body union has operations that can demonstrate that the soul is the form of the body.82
80 On the immortality of the soul, see Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IV, qq. 61a–61b; Reportatio IIA, qq. 18–19; Reportatio IIB, qq. 50–51. On the unicity of the intellect: Reportatio IIA, qq. 39–40; Reportatio IIB, qq. 52–53. For the textual difficulties involved, see T. Suarez-Nani. and W. Duba, ‘Introduction,’ in: Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA (Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum), qq. 13–27, ed. T. Suarez-Nani, W. Duba, E. Babey and G. Etzkorn, Leuven 2010 (Ancient and medieval philosophy, Series 3, 2/2), vii–xcix, at lxxxix–xci. See also E. Katsoura, C. Papamarkou and C. Schabel, ‘Francis of Marchia’s Commentary on Book IV of the Sentences. Traditions and Redactions, with Questions on Projectile Motion, Polygamy, and the Immortality of the Soul,’ Picenum Seraphicum, 25–26 (2006–2008), 101–166. For further discussion, see T. Suarez-Nani, ‘Peut-on prouver l’immortalité de l’âme? Démonstration et certitude selon François de Marchia,’ Picenum Seraphicum, 25–26 (2006–2008), 167– 195. 81 On the debate between Auriol and Scotus on the unity of the composite with respect to the constituent matter and form, see W. Duba, ‘Aristotelian Traditions in Franciscan Thought: Matter and Potency According to Scotus and Auriol,’ in: I. Taifacos (ed.), The Origins of European Scholarship, Stuttgart 2006, 147–161. 82 Francis of Marchia, Sent. IV, q. 60, C 227vb, P 250vb: ‘Tunc ex hoc ad propositum dico quod animam esse formam corporis demonstrari a posteriori potest esse dupliciter, quia vel directe et immediate, probando ipsam esse formam corporis per aliquam eius operationem, vel mediate et indirecte, per rationem videlicet vel condicionem totius hominis, probando quod homo sit quoddam ens per se unum, habens vel includens in se animam et corpus unum ut materiam et aliud ut formam, et sic ex hoc indirecte probando animam esse formam eius, non materiam.—Tunc pono duas conclusiones. Prima conclusio est quod impossibile est demonstrare animam esse formam corporis a posteriori immediate et directe per aliquam operationem animae. Secunda conclusio est quod possibile est demonstrari ipsam esse formam corporis a posteriori, et hoc mediate et indirecte per rationem totius hominis resultantis.’
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Both conclusions issue from the same argument. A substantial form, in uniting with matter, establishes two relationships (habitudines), one (as formal cause) to matter, and one to the compound that comes about, and in so doing gives an actuality (first actuality) to the matter it informs, and another (first) actuality to the compound that it, along with the matter, constitutes.83 The human soul, as form, gives to the body the actuality of being animated (esse animatum) and to the compound the actuality of being a man (esse hominem).84 An a posteriori demonstration that something is the substantial form reasons from the form’s function, its operation (second actuality) back to the primary actuality. The intellective soul’s operation consists in understanding and willing. A human body neither understands nor wills, and therefore, one cannot demonstrate directly that the soul is the form of the body.85 On the other hand, a human composite, a man, most certainly understands and wills.86 Moreover, Francis believes that one can
Francis of Marchia, Sent. IV, q. 60, C 227vb, P 250va: ‘Dico quod anima habet duplicem habitudinem, hoc est habet habitudinem ad corpus quod perficit et aliam ad hominem quem constituit. Prima enim habitudo quae est ad corpus est habitudo causae formalis ad illud quod perficit; secunda autem est sic habitudo causae ad causatum; et prima posset divina virtute a se absolvi, ut videlicet anima informaret corpus et tamen non esset aliquod tertium resultans, nec per consequens esset homo.’ 84 Francis of Marchia, Sent. IV, q. 60, C 227vb, P 250va–vb: ‘Tunc ad propositum, sicut anima habet praedictam duplicem habitudinem, ita communicat actum suum primum tam corpori quam toti, licet differenter; corpori enim communicat extrinsece, informando materiam, toti autem communicat intrinsece, constituendo ipsum. Prius etiam communicat actum corpori ipsum informando quam communicet toti ipsum constituendo. Prius enim est unio quarumcumque causarum quam sequatur tertium causatum earum, et ita prius anima dat corpori esse animatum quam det homini esse hominem.’ 85 Francis of Marchia, Sent. IV, q. 60, C 227vb, P 250vb: ‘Primam probo sic: nullus actus primus formae est directe et immediate demonstrabilis de aliquo subiecto per aliquem actum secundum illius formae qui non est per se notus de illo subiecto nec potest probari de ipso. Sed actus secundus animae, puta actus intelligendi et volendi qui sunt proprie operationes animae, non sunt per se noti de corpore immediate, nec possunt demonstrari de ipso; nec enim corpus intelligit nec vult. Ergo actus primus animae quem ipsa dat corpori non potest immediate demonstrari per aliquam operationum animae; ergo etc.’ 86 Francis of Marchia, Sent. IV, q. 60, C 227vb-228ra, P 250vb-251ra: ‘Secundam conclusionem probo per oppositum sic: actus primus cuiuscumque formae habentis actum secundum est demonstrabilis de subiecto per actum secundum proprium eius per se notum de illo subiecto vel possibilem evidenter probari de ipso; sed actus intelligendi et volendi sunt per se noti de homine, vel saltem possunt demonstrari de homine ipso; ergo actus primus quem anima dat homini potest de homini probari per huiusmodi actus secundos; ergo potest probari animam esse partem hominis essentialem, et sic per consequens per hoc potest probari indirecte ipsam esse formam corporis; ergo etc. Maior est evidens, sed probo minorem, puta quod actus intelligendi et volendi sint per se noti vel saltem possint evidenter probari et de homine.—Ubi est advertendum quod hic sunt tres propositiones, quarum duae primae 83
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demonstrate that the human composite understands and wills on its own account. Humans understand that they sense, and they understand this in a ‘unified way’: they do not understand someone else to sense, but they themselves. But human beings need a body to sense. Hence, the unified way in which humans understand their own sensing indicates that the human composite as a whole understands, senses, and has a body, and the intellective soul is a part of the human composite.87 Similarly, virtuous human beings can commit acts of self-sacrifice, willing themselves to be killed for the greater good. The soul cannot sacrifice itself, for the soul is immortal; likewise, the body does not will its own end. Therefore, from the human being as a whole, one can demonstrate that the soul is the form of the body.88 Francis’s demonstrations that the human soul is the form of the body play the role the determination by faith does in Caracciolo, freeing the theologian up to use the conditions of the human soul as normative for substantial
sunt per se note; tertia autem non est per se nota, sed est evidenter demonstrabilis.—Prima propositio per se nota est quod anima intellectiva per se intelligit.—Secunda est quod in homine est aliquid quod intelligit.—Tertia est quod homo per se intelligit.’ 87 Francis of Marchia, Sent. IV, q. 60, C 228ra, P 251ra–rb: ‘Dico tamen quod, licet ista propositio ‘homo per se intelligit’ non sit per se nota, accipiendo ‘hominem’ illo modo, est tamen probabilis evidenter. Unde probo eam, probando illam ex qua dependet, videlicet quod homo sit aliquod ens per se unum, distinctum ab anima et corpore, et ex eis resultans. Hoc autem probo dupliciter, et primo sic: omne individuum immediate et per se reflexivum sui ipsius super se est essentialiter unum; ista patet, quoniam nulla relatio est per se reflexiva sui super se. Unitas autem ordinis sive solius unionis est unitas relativa. Ergo omne individuum sui supra se reflexivum est unum non unitate ordinis sive unionis, sed unitate absoluta essentiali; sed quicumque scit se sentire reflectit se super se et directe; ergo illud tale individuum quod scit se sentire est essentialiter et per se unum unitate absoluta. Sed illud individuum includit essentialiter corpus, intellectum et sensum. Huiusmodi est homo; ergo etc. Probatio minoris, puta quod tale individuum includit essentialiter corpus, intellectum et sensum, quoniam nullum sciens est sciens nisi per intellectum; sentiens etiam non est sentiens nisi per sensum; nichil etiam sentit aliquid nisi mediante corpore; ergo omne illud quod scit se sentire includit essentialiter intellectum, corpus et sensum; ergo homo includens essentialiter ista tria est individuum sive ens essentialiter et per se unum; ergo homo ut est unum ens per se constitutum includit animam intellectivam partem sui.’ 88 Francis of Marchia, Sent. IV, q. 60, C 228ra, P 251rb: ‘Praeterea secundo arguo sic: omne individuum immediate reflexivum sui supra se vel super suam propriam operationem est essentialiter unum; sed quicumque volens exponere se morti sicut fortis reflectit se super se, quia vult se exponere morti; ergo etc. Sed illud quod exponit se sive vult se exponere morti non est anima, quia anima non est mortalis, vel saltem non constat ipsam esse mortalem; ei autem qui se vult exponere morti constat se quem exponit esse mortalem; ergo etc. Nec est etiam corpus, quia non est in potestate corporis se exponere vel non exponere morti; sed ipsum corpus exponitur ab anima vel ab homine. Ergo illud tale quod vult se exponere morti est quoddam ens per se unum aliud ab anima et corpore ex eis essentialiter constitutum. Ergo aliquid istorum est in eo forma et aliquid materia; corpus non est forma; ergo anima est forma.’
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forms. Therefore, in addressing the immortality of the intellective soul in Reportatio IIA, q. 18 (the second proposition delineated in book IV, q. 60; in many manuscripts, this very question also appears in Francis’s commentary as a continuation of that question), Francis considers the argument that the soul is mortal: That which is moved when something else is moved is corrupted when that other thing is corrupted. But when the body is moved, the soul is necessarily moved.89
He counters: In order that something be moved when something else is moved, all that is required is the connection of one to the other. But since the soul is the form of the body, it is conjoined and connected to it as long as it is informing the body. But for one thing to be corrupted when the other is corrupted, this is not sufficient, but rather it is required that one must depend on the other; but the soul does not depend on the body, therefore, etc.90
Whereas for Auriol, the soul’s independence with respect to the body was a sign that the soul was not a substantial form like the others, for Marchia, the soul demonstrates that something can inform something else without a relation of dependence. Marchia develops the argument that intellective souls are not spatially extended to apply to all souls. In doing so, he builds off of Scotus’s critism of Henry of Ghent. Henry of Ghent argued that humans were compounds of a forma corporeitatis and an intellectual soul because, among other reasons, the rational soul lacks spatial extension; therefore, humans need a form that is extended in space. Scotus argues that this reason is insufficient, for intellective souls contain the function of sensory and vegetative souls, which, on Henry’s reading, are spatially extended and therefore do not need
89 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA (Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum), q. 18, ed. T. Suarez-Nani, W. Duba, E. Babey and G. Etzkorn, Leuven 2010 (Ancient and medieval philosophy, Series 3, 2/2), 116: ‘Utrum intellectus sive anima intellectiva sit immortalis.—Videtur quod non, quia illud quod movetur alio moto, corrumpitur illo corrupto. Sed moto corpore movetur necessario anima; motis enim nobis, moventur omnia quae sunt in nobis, secundum Philosophum II Topicorum. Ergo, etc.’ 90 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 18, 117: ‘Ad primam rationem in contrarium: ‘illud quod movetur’, etc., nego istam, quia ad hoc quod aliquid moveatur alio moto, non requiritur nisi sola colligatio unius cum alio. Anima autem, cum sit forma corporis, est cum eo coniuncta et colligata quamdiu est informans ipsum. Hoc autem non sufficit ad hoc quod aliquid corrumpatur ad corruptionem alterius, sed requiritur quod dependeat ab ipso; anima autem non dependet a corpore; quare etc.’
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a forma corporeitatis. Hence, Scotus postulates that animals and plants, whose souls have spatial extension, also unite with a body defined by a forma corporeitatis.91 Francis of Marchia expands the claim from applying exclusively to intellective souls to applying to all souls whatsoever; on these grounds, he argues that all animals have two forms: an unextended soul and a form of corporeity. Francis first argues that neither the intellective soul nor the other types of soul have dimensional extension. To the typical arguments for the intellective soul not being extended, forms of which also appear in Hugh of Novocastro, Francis adds some reasons for the sensory soul’s non-extension. Where Hugh had argued that the organic nature of living bodies makes them unlikely to have a single substantial form, Francis claims that this organic division points to sensory souls lacking dimensional extension as well. That is, since the various parts of the body (blood, flesh, bones, muscles, and so on) are specifically different, the sensory soul is the same substantial form in many specifically different subjects. It cannot therefore be extended, because extended substantial forms determine and distinguish their matter, not the other way around.92 Further, the operation of the sensory powers seems to be linked in an inversely proportional way— one who concentrates on seeing, for example, does not hear as well, and vice versa; if, on the other hand, the sensory soul were extended, what happens to a power located in one part would not have an effect on what happens elsewhere.93 Finally, extended forms, such as elemental forms, do not specify 91 Scotus, Ordinatio IV, d. 11, pars 1, art. 2, q. 1, 267: ‘Contra: aut sensitivae et vegetativae modus inextensibilis repugnat, aut modus extensibilis, aut neque sic neque sic. Si primo modo, ergo non continentur in intellectiva. Si secundo modo, ergo non continent formam corporeitatis. Si vero detur tertium membrum, scilicet quod neque sic neque sic, tunc indifferenter poterunt continere formam corporeitatis ut sunt in se vel ut contentae in intellectiva: tunc enim continent corporeitatem propter ordinem perfectionis formae ad formam, non autem propter modum exsistendi talem vel talem,—sed ordo perfectionis semper est idem.’ 92 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA (Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum), q. 37, ed. T. Suarez-Nani, W. Duba, D. Carron and G. Etzkorn, Leuven 2012 (Ancient and medieval philosophy, Series 3, 2/3), 102–103: ‘Et primo sic: omnis forma substantialis eiusdem rationis educta de potentia subiectorum diversarum rationum est inextensa. Licet enim forma accidentalis eiusdem speciei possit esse in diversis subiectis specie, tamen forma substantialis quae dividitur ad divisionem materiae distinguitur specie ad distinctionem specificam ipsius materiae; materia enim distinguitur per distinctionem formarum, non e converso. Forma autem substantialis quae est eiusdem speciei in diversis subiectis specie non dividitur ad divisionem subiecti. Sed anima sensitiva eiusdem rationis educitur de potentia diversorum subiectorum et diversarum rationum, puta de potentia sanguinis, carnis, ossium, nervorum et talium, quae sunt alterius rationis, cum habeant a tota natura diversas operationes et diversa accidentia. Ergo anima sensitiva est inextensa.’ 93 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 37, 103: ‘Praeterea, nulla operatio cuiuscumque
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a substance of a given quantity, but a soul inheres in something of specific dimensions. For if a soul were extended, there would be no reason why, say, an elephant’s soul could not have a body the size of a fly, or vice versa; the soul’s extension would simply scale to the size of the body.94 Francis concludes: I say therefore that, with respect to these three souls, namely the intellective, the sensory and the vegetative, that the intellective soul is not extended; concerning the sensory soul of perfect animals, which do not live after being cut in half, it is probable that it is not extended, nor even the sensory soul of imperfect animals, which do live after being cut in half, nor even consequently the vegetative soul of plants. For many of the arguments made above to prove that the sensory soul is indivisible demonstrate the same thing concerning the vegetative soul: for its operation in one part of its body impedes another operation in another part; it also determines for itself a determinate body, as was said above concerning the sensory soul. Therefore, etc. From this it also appears that it is not necessary to posit that any sensory soul is [dimensionally] extended. This is confirmed, because nothing other than quantity is extended, if not by quantity … But the sensory soul is neither the subject of quantity, nor, conversely, is quantity its subject, since that soul is united to its body without the mediation of any accident. Therefore, etc. For the soul is not united to its matter in the manner of an accident to a subject, nor, consequently, by means of any quantity. Therefore, etc.95
formae extensae in aliqua parte subiecti remittit aliam operationem eiusdem formae in alia parte, sicut patet de operatione ignis; calefactio enim ignis secundum unam partem eius non remittit calefactionem secundum aliam partem eius. Sed quaecumque una operatio animae sensitivae in aliqua parte corporis remittit aliam operationem in alia parte corporis; operatio enim visus remittit operationem auditus et e converso. Ergo etc. Minor patet ad sensum; quanto enim magis quis est intentus circa operationem unius potentiae, tanto magis remittitur operatio alterius potentiae; ergo etc.’ 94 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 37, 103: ‘Praeterea quarto, nulla forma extensa determinat sibi determinatam quantitatem ratione formae, sicut forma ignis non determinat sibi ratione formae aliquam quantitatem, et ideo potest in infinitum comburere, materia non sibi deficiente. Sed anima sensitiva determinat sibi determinatam quantitatem corporis quod informat ratione qua forma; ita enim corpus posset esse magnum quod anima non posset regere ipsum. Ergo ipsa non est extensa, quoniam, si esset extensa ad extensionem corporis, cresceret crescente corpore, et per consequens posset ita regere magnum corpus sicut et parvum; ergo etc.’ 95 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 37, 105–106: ‘Dico ergo quantum ad istas tres animas, puta intellectivam, sensitivam et vegetativam, quod anima intellectiva non est extensa; de anima sensitiva animalium perfectorum, quae decisa non vivunt, probabile est quod non sit extensa, nec etiam anima sensitiva animalium imperfectorum, quae decisa vivunt, nec etiam per consequens anima vegetativa plantarum. Multae enim rationes factae superius ad probandum animam sensitivam esse indivisibilem probant idem de anima vegetativa: operatio enim eius in una parte sui corporis impedit aliam operationem in
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In spite of this endorsement of all souls being non-extended forms, Francis of Marchia provides counter-arguments to his position, for “someone” who “wanted to hold that the sensitive soul (and, similarly, the vegetative soul) was extended according to the extension of the subject.” The first such counter-argument reveals his ambiguity on whether there is a single substantial form of the body. While rejecting immediately the notion that the different bodily organs are merely accidentally different and not substantially, Francis does accept that one could argue that bones, flesh, blood, and so on are partial forms and the body is a whole form.96 The remaining replies emphasize the distinction between the intentional operation of the soul (that is, which result in intentions such as delight and sadness) and the real operation of other substantial forms (which produce real effects, such as heat). This divide between real and intentional is the core reason Francis defends the non-extension of animal souls as probabile and rationabilius.97 Francis goes beyond the view seen above in Hugh of Novocastro, and hesitantly endorses the non-extension of animal souls as well. Francis then turns to how the soul is the form of the body. The next question (q. 38): “Whether in man there is some other form besides the intellective soul, and in a beast besides the sensitive soul, and in plants
alia parte eius; ipsa etiam determinat sibi determinatum corpus, sicut superius dictum est de anima sensitiva. Quare etc.—Ex hoc etiam videtur quod non oporteat ponere aliquam animam sensitivam esse extensam. Confirmatur, quia nihil aliud a quantitate extenditur nisi per quantitatem; omne autem per quantitatem extensum vel est extensum per quantitatem quia est eius subiectum, sicut extenditur corpus quod est de genere substantiae, vel quia ipsa quantitas est eius subiectum, sicut extenditur color vel alia quaecumque qualitas in quantitate fundata. | Sed anima sensitiva nec est subiectum quantitatis, nec e converso etiam quantitas est eius subiectum, cum ipsa, nullo accidente mediante, suo corpori uniatur. Ergo etc. Anima enim non unitur suae materiae sicut accidens subiecto, nec per consequens mediante aliqua quantitate; ergo etc.’ 96 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 37, 110–111: ‘Si quis autem vellet tenere animam sensitivam esse extensam, et vegetativam similiter, ad extensionem subiecti, posset ad rationes alias respondere. Ad primam, quando dicitur: ‘omnis forma substantialis eiusdem rationis’, etc., posset dici uno modo quod huiusmodi partes corporis animalis, puta caro, sanguis et ossa, non differunt substantialiter, sed tantum accidentaliter per diversa accidentia. Sed hoc non videtur verum. Ideo dico aliter quod materia de cuius potentia educitur forma est duplex: quaedam totalis, sicut totum corpus organicum est materia animae; alia partialis, sicut quaelibet pars corporis. Tunc concedo quod forma eiusdem rationis educta de potentia subiectorum totalium diversarum rationum est inextensa; de potentia enim diversorum subiectorum totalium non educuntur nisi diversae formae substantiales. Loquendo autem de subiectis partialibus, cuiusmodi sunt partes corporis respectu animae sensitivae vel vegetativae, non oportet quod forma ipsa dividatur specie per materias partiales, sed tantum per totales.’ 97 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 37, 111–112.
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besides the vegetative soul” explicitly uses the requirement that the soul be the form of the body to destroy the single-form theory, to defend a doctrine of the forma corporeitatis, and to underscore the unity of the compound as the result of a series of form-matter pairs. Already, the preliminary arguments frame the question as a conflict between the unity of human beings, on the one hand, and the separation of body and soul, on the other. In favor of the single-form theory is the argument that a single entity essentially exists by a single form; opposed is the requirement that the body be a hylomorphic unity of its own: “for then no animate being would be composed of body and soul, since every body whatsoever is a compound of prime matter and some substantial form.”98 Implicit here is the thesis of the Council of Vienne: for Marchia, stating that the soul is the form of the body equals stating that the soul and body constitute a human being. Francis of Marchia rejects the unicist opinion primarily on two grounds. First, as he argued in the previous question, souls are not extended in space, but bodies are. Therefore, souls require a body that itself has a form specifying its spatial extension and differentiation into organs, as well as undergoing accidental changes such as growth.99 Moreover, the body decays and resolves itself into the elements, while (on Marchia’s philosophy) both the intellective soul and prime matter are essentially incorruptible.100 Therefore, it so appears from the aforesaid that this opinion [i.e., soul-inprime-matter] is contrary to reason, contrary to sense, contrary to Scripture, and even contrary to the Philosopher. For the Philosopher, defining the soul in De anima II, says that it is the “actuality of a naturally organized body [having life in potency].” I then ask: the body that occurs in the definition of the soul, through what is it constituted? Not through the intellective soul, because then the same thing would be defined through itself; therefore through some other substantial form, which is my point. Therefore, I then say that in man there is some substantial form besides the intellective soul, namely the form of corporeity, and in any animal whatsoever there is some substantial form besides the sensory soul; and in plants besides the vegetative soul. For the arguments made above to prove that in man there
98 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 38, 114: ‘Contra: quia tunc nullum animatum esset compositum ex corpore et anima, cum corpus quodcumque sit compositum ex materia prima et aliqua substantiali forma; sed hoc est inconveniens; ergo etc.’ 99 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 38, 118–121. 100 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 38, 122–123.
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Francis’s conclusion states that 1) the single-form solution does not work, since everything points to a soul-in-body model; 2) humans, animals and plants alike are composed of a soul inhering in a body that itself is a compound of matter and form; 3) this soul-body composition is one of substantial form and subject of inherence. Since the subject of inherence has a substantial form, Francis investigates the ways multiple substantial forms can make up a compound. He reports the view (passed on by Hugh of Novocastro and perhaps deriving from Olivi) that these forms can all inhere directly in the same prime matter, according however to an order of disposition among them. He rejects that opinion, however, in favor of a system of nested compounds (which Hugh also reports, and which Scotus endorses), where the prior compound serves as the matter for the posterior form. Francis bases his choice explicitly on the grounds that it provides greater formal unity than the unity of the same prime matter would provide the compound.102 The forms are ordered among themselves:
101 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 38, 123–124: ‘Sic ergo patet ex praedictis quod ista opinio est contra rationem, contra sensum, contra Scripturam, et etiam contra Philosophum. Philosophus enim, II De anima, definiens animam, dicit quod est “actus corporis organici physici.” Quaero tunc: corpus quod in definitione animae ponitur, per quid constituitur? Non per animam intellectivam, quia tunc idem definiretur per se ipsum; ergo per aliquam aliam substantialem formam, quod est propositum.—Tunc ergo dico quod in homine est aliqua forma substantialis praeter animam intellectivam, puta forma corporeitatis, et in quolibet animali praeter animam sensitivam, et in plantis praeter animam vegetativam. Rationes enim factae superius ad probandum in homine esse aliam formam ab ipsa anima intellectiva probant universaliter de quolibet animali et de plantis. Unde concedo quod in quocumque animato quacumque anima est alia forma substantialis ab ipsa anima; in quocumque enim est anima per modum formae, in eo est aliqua substantialis forma prior per modum subiecti respectu animae, ab ipsa essentialiter distincta.’ 102 For example Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 38, 134: ‘Confirmatur, quia ille modus est convenientior secundum quem magis compositum est per se unum et magis salvatur unitas per se eius. Sed ponendo compositum ex materia prima et forma praecedenti informari et perfici per formam sequentem magis salvatur unitas per se compositi quam ponendo formam illam sequentem sive ultimam informare immediate materiam sicut praecedens informat; tunc enim istae formae substantiales non sunt unum nisi tantum ratione subiecti tertii, puta materiae quam omnes informant; ergo etc.’
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Therefore I say that these forms have two types of ordering, namely of disposition and the term, and of what is perfectible and the perfection. For the first form is ordered to the last both as a disposition to the term, and as what is perfectible or as the nature (ratio) of a perfectible subject to its perfection. Thus the form of the body orders (disponit) prime matter to the soul, and at the same time has the nature of being the form’s first and immediate subject, perfectible by it. Thus this soul perfects or informs the substantial form of the body even more than it does prime matter. I say likewise concerning any other ultimate form with respect to a prior form.103
Each intermediate form produces a substance with a (formal) disposition to receiving another form, and the (material) capacity to serve as a subject for a (more perfect) ultimate form. As a consequence of this position, Francis’s metaphysics envisions not just prime and proximate matter, but also ultimate and intermediate forms. As proximate matter entails some formal determination, and therefore some degree of actuality, so too an intermediate form entails potency: I say that every substantial form short of the final form is absolutely in potency (in potentia simpliciter), but not universally. But prime matter alone is in potency absolutely in this latter way, that is, universally with respect to every form or substantial actuality, because of itself it has no form. Yet an other-than-ultimate substantial form is only in potency to some determinate substantial form.104
Francis of Marchia, in discussing the soul as form of the body, avoids citing the Council of Vienne or the Clementine Constitutions, although he was well aware of them in other contexts. Against Auriol, Marchia uses the doctrine that the compound is something over and above its constituent matter and form to demonstrate that the soul is form of the body. In turn, that
103 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 38, 135: ‘Et ideo dico quod istae formae habent duplicem ordinem, videlicet dispositionis et termini, perfectibilis et perfectionis. Prima enim ordinatur ad ultimam et sicut dispositio ad terminum, et etiam sicut perfectibile sive sicut ratio subiecti perfectibilis ad suam perfectionem. Unde forma corporis disponit materiam primam ad animam, et etiam cum hoc est ratio primi et immediati subiecti eius, perfectibilis per ipsam. Unde magis etiam ipsa anima perficit seu informat formam substantialem corporis quam materiam primam. Consimiliter dico de quacumque alia forma ultima respectu formae prioris.’ 104 Francis of Marchia, Reportatio IIA, q. 38, 136: ‘Ad secundam, quando arguitur quod tunc forma substantialis esset in potentia simpliciter, dico quod omnis forma substantialis citra ultimam est in potentia simpliciter, non tamen universaliter. Sed isto modo sola prima materia est in potentia simpliciter, hoc est universaliter ad omnem formam sive actum substantialem, quia de se nullam habet. Forma autem substantialis alia ab ultima non est in potentia, nisi tantum ad aliquam substantialem formam determinatam.’
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the soul is form of the body means that there must be other forms as well. But where Hugh of Novocastro appears to argue for multiple forms sharing in some way in the same matter, Francis appears to support a dimorphist solution applied to all living beings, so that the soul—intellective, sensory or vegetative that it may be—lacks dimensional extension and thus is a form of a different sort than the form of the body. Like Landulph Caracciolo, Marchia affirms the presence of a forma corporeitatis and that all souls relate to each other in a chain of dependency. Underlying the position, however, is Scotus’s doctrine of intermediate and ultimate forms. 7. Francis of Meyronnes Quod est difficile ad credendum vel ad tenendum.
Francis of Meyronnes followed Francis of Marchia as Sententiarius at Paris, lecturing in the academic year 1320–1321. In his numerous works, he defends a common view of the Franciscan school, the schola minorum, incorporating the thought of his colleagues and predecessors and inspired by the works of Duns Scotus.105 He achieves the fullest expression of the line of thinking developed by Hugh of Novocastro and Landulph Caracciolo, incorporating their arguments and concerns into a comprehensive system, and resolving the issues left open in their accounts. Francis of Meyronnes holds that the various souls exist in a relation of nested compounds, which form a collective whole and relate to the body, which itself is a mass of contiguous forms inhering in a shared continuous matter. Heribert Roßmann first noted in passing that, while commenting on book IV, d. 20 of the Sentences, Francis of Meyronnes supports the plurality of forms.106 Meyronnes dedicates the first article of the question “whether death is the greatest penalty” to investigating “what is death.” The investigation begins with a favorite source, (Ps.-)Dionysius the Areopagite, and a passage that Francis cites repeatedly in his works, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chapter 2:
105 On Francis of Meyronnes, see W. Duba, ‘Francis of Meyronnes,’ in: H. Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Philosophy between 500 and 1500, Dordrecht 2011, 1, 364–366; and B. Roth, Franz von Mayronis OFM. Sein Leben, seine Werke, seine Lehre vom Formalunterschied in Gott, Werl-in-Westfalen 1936 (Franziskanische Forschungen, 3). 106 H. Roßmann, ‘Die Sentenzenkommentare des Franz von Meyronnes OFM,’ Franziskanische Studien, 53 (1971), 129–227, at 188, n. 46.
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Whence it should be known that Dionysius, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, defining death, says that “Death is not the consumption of some thing, but the separation of things that are conjoined.”107
This auctoritas surfaces repeatedly in Meyronnes’s discussions.108 In fact, the Dionysian passage Meyronnes has in mind reads (in the twelfth-century Latin translation of John Sarrazin): For since death in us is not the consumption of substance (as it seems to some), but rather it is the separation of things united, making them hidden from us—the soul indeed is made invisible through the deprivation of the body and the body, as covered in the earth or hidden from human sight by some other corporeal change—, the complete covering of water is properly an image of death and of the invisible tomb. And so the doctrine concerning holy baptism teaches that by three plungings-in and raisings-from water it imitates the thearchic death of the author of life, Jesus, for three days and nights in the tomb, insofar as it is possible for humans to imitate God, in Whom (according to the mystical and hidden tradition of the Word) the Prince of the World found nothing.109
Dionysius focuses on death as the separation of body and soul, relates it to the body of Christ in the triduum, and then relates both death and the triduum to the sacrament of baptism. In his commentary, Francis of Meyronnes points out the doctrinal problems this causes for his position,
107 Francis of Meyronnes, In quartum librum Sententiarum, d. 20, q. 1, a. 1, Venezia 1520 (= V), 207va; Ms. Troyes, Bibliothèque de l’ Agglomeration Troyenne, 995 (= T), 118vb: ‘Hic primo videndum est quid est mors. Ubi sciendum est quod Dionysius, De ecclesiastica hierarchia, definiens mortem dicit quod mors non est alicuius rei consumptio, sed coniunctorum separatio.’ 108 In addition to the citation above (Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. IV, d. 20, q. 1, a. 1), see also the use of the same Dionysian passage in Sent. IV, d. 43, q. 1, a. 1, V 216vb; Sent. II, d. 16, q. un., a. 7 (‘Principium et finis redactio,’ Ms. Erlangen, Universitätsbibliothek, 255 [= E], 151rb); Sent. IV, q. 5 (‘Verbum caro factum redactio,’ T 59ra). 109 (Ps.-)Dionysius the Areopagite, De ecclesiastica hierarchia, c. 2, translatio Ioannis Sarrazini, in: Ph. Chevallier (ed.), Dionysiaca, Brugge 1937, 2, 1071–1476, at 1155–1158: ‘Et mihi prudenter intende cum quanta familiaritate habent se sancta signa; etenim quoniam mors est in nobis non substantiae consumptio (secundum quod videtur aliis) sed unitorum discretio, ad nobis occultum agens animam quidem, sicut in privatione corporis invisibilem factam, corpus vero sicut in terra coopertum aut secundum aliam quamdam corporalium variationum ex visione secundum hominem occultatum, proprie per aquam totalis coopertio ad mortis et sepulchri invisibilis imaginem accepta est. Igitur sancte baptizatum significativa doctrina docet tribus in aqua depositionibus et elevationibus thearchicam trium dierum et noctium sepulchri Jesu vitae datoris imitari mortem sicut est possibile hominibus Dei imitativum in quo (secundum verbi mysticam et occultam traditionem) nihil invenit mundi princeps.’
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namely because the passage clearly states that death is not destruction or corruption, but separation. By saying that death is not the consumption of substance, Dionysius seems to deny that death involves corruption and to state that there is only a separation of the (incorruptible) intellective soul; since the individual sensory soul is corruptible, this statement implies that there is no such soul in a human being, but rather that humans have just one form, the intellective soul. Furthermore, this passage implies that the union of soul and body does not result in a third entity that is itself dissolved upon death. If this were the case, Francis argues, then the human soul would be identical with humanity and there would be no metaphysical basis for more than one soul. Furthermore, humanitas is a substance, and if no substance is corrupted in death, then Christ was truly a man in the triduum.110 All of these points seem to follow from the Dionysian passage and all will need to be explained in any satisfactory account of death and human hylomorphic constitution. To resolve this passage, Meyronnes sets out two premises: that there are four degrees of ceasing-to-be, in descending order of severity (cessatio, destructio, corruptio and mors, which can be understood as separatio), and that there are three degrees of the soul (vegetativa, sensitiva and intellectiva).111 To the question of how death can be a separation of soul from body, Francis replies: “as man lives a three-fold life, so he dies a corresponding three-fold death, although simultaneously.” One must distinguish between the dispositions that precede death, the separation that accompanies death, and the dissolution of the compound that follows it. Therefore, “a man’s death as such is the corruption of nothing, because as such it is only the
110 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. IV, q. 20, a. 1, V 207va, T 119ra: ‘Modo Dionysius vult ostendere quod mors vegetativae est destructio et similiter sensitivae, sed mors hominis ut homo est non est destructio sed separatio animae a materia. Ex qua definitione data de morte eliciuntur quattuor conclusiones quae contra nos adversantur.—Prima, quod in homine non est nisi una forma, quia nihil de substantia hominis corrumpitur; nihil autem est de substantia hominis incorruptibile nisi anima.—Secunda conclusio: quod anima intellectiva est idem sensitivae, quia si differrent, concorrumperentur.—Tertia conclusio: quod in homine non est dare tertiam entitatem differentem realiter a partibus, quia illa destrueretur in morte.— Quarta conclusio: quod Christus fuit homo in triduo secundum Magistrum, quia esse hominis non perdidit.’ 111 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. IV, d. 20, q. 1, V 207va, T 119ra: ‘Ubi sciendum est quod ista per ordinem se habent: primo cessatio qua res desinit esse ex sua natura sicut instans raptim transit; secundo destructio qua aliqua ex sua natura non cessant, sed quia inducitur ab agente forma incompossibilis illis; tertio corruptio qua illa quae sunt de genere substantie deficiunt; quarto mors quae separat unita.—Et est intelligendum quod sunt tres gradus animae, scilicet vegetativae, sensitivae et intellectivae.’
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separation of the soul; but it is not absurd that other privations ensue, that is privations of other forms.” Dionysius’s dictum only applies to the separation of the intellective soul, which accompanies death, and not to the privations of the other souls, nor to the consequent dissolution of the composite. Like Hugh of Novocastro, Meyronnes supports more than one soul in humans.112 In his discussion of the problems posed by Dionysius’s definition of death, Francis of Meyronnes hints several times at the ontological issue that informs the debate; at the very end of his commentary on book IV, d. 46, q. 3. of the Sentences, in the fourth and last difficultas, Francis makes the issue explicit: The fourth difficulty: whether it is the same to say ‘the form of the whole’ (forma totius) and ‘the form of the part’ (forma partis). I say that it is not, because the form of the whole is the whole resulting entity, while the form of the part is what informs the matter.113
The terms forma totius (specific form) and forma partis (substantial form) entered Scholastic metaphysical discussions via a debate between Averroes and Avicenna. Averroes and his followers argued that the same form can be understood as a forma partis when referring to its act of perfecting matter, and as the forma totius when referring to positing an instance of its species in being. Thomas Aquinas rejects this view, in favor of that of Avicenna, according to which the two types of forms are really distinguished, as a whole is distinct from its part.114 On the common scholastic usage, then,
112 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. IV, d. 20, q. 1, V 207va, T 119ra: ‘Sciendum est autem propter solutionem istorum, quod, sicut homo vivit triplici vita praedicta, ita moritur triplici morte correspondente, licet simul. Numerus enim privationum oportet esse secundum numerum affirmationum. Similiter, aliqua praecedunt mortem sicut dispositio; concomitatur autem mortem separatio, quae est aliquid positivum, et ex hoc sequitur dissolutio compositi.— Ad primum itaque inconveniens dicendum quod mors hominis ut sic nullius est corruptio, quia ut sic non est nisi separatio animae; sed non est inconveniens quod sequantur aliae privationes, scilicet aliarum formarum.—Ad secundum dicendum quod corruptio animae sensitivae non est mors hominis ut homo est, sed ut animal.—Ad tertium dicendum quod, licet mortem sequatur destructio entitatis tertiae, tamen quia illa non est vita hominis, ideo nec formaliter est mors, nec destructio.—Ad aliud, eodem modo non fuit mors formaliter destructio illius, licet fuerit destructa. Quando ergo dicitur quod mors est separatio, ista definitio est per concomitans, quod est principium vitae formaliter quam concomitatur separatio.’ 113 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. IV, d. 46, q. 3, V 221va–vb, T 144ra: ‘Quarta difficultas: si idem est dictu, forma totius et partis. Dico quod non: quia forma totius est tota entitas resultans, forma partis est materiam informans.’ 114 See, for example, Thomas Aquinas, Expositio in libros Metaphysicorum, VII, 10, ed. M.R. Cathala, Torino 1950, 438b-439a.
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forma partis refers to the substantial form that combines with matter to constitute a compound; forma totius, on the other hand, corresponds to a definition of what a thing is, including its matter (a quiddity). According to the classic example, the soul is the forma partis and humanity, the composite considered in abstraction from this or that individual, is the forma totius. Meyronnes’s statement that the two forms are not identical bolsters the thesis that matter and form are distinct entities that combine to form a third entity. Therefore, this question ends by pointing to the ontological basis of Meyronnes’s doctrine of the soul: matter, substantial form (forma partis), and the composite (described by the forma totius) comprise three entities. The question begins, however, by attacking Auriol head on. “Some say”, Meyronnes says, “that the soul’s being the form of the body is believed, and not demonstrable.” He refutes Auriol’s arguments and then equates Auriol’s position with that of the unicity of substantial form, raising an argument he believes requires one to assent to the soul being a different form than that of the body: But here there is a problem: if the soul is immediately in prime matter, either sensible accidents are immediately in prime matter—and this cannot be the case, because prime matter is neither white nor black—or they are in the soul itself—but this cannot be the case either, because the soul is neither white nor black—, or in both [the soul and prime matter]—but this cannot be held either, since then two contraries would exist at the same time, for each would be white and black. Nor can they be in a third entity, since you do not posit its existence. So I do not see how those who posit one form in man can respond to this.115
Those who posit the soul to be the one and only form of the body have a problem with the subject of inherence of accidents: an immaterial soul cannot have material accidents, and prime matter cannot have any accidental determinations. Meyronnes, like Marchia, takes the other side of Auriol’s coin: the intellective soul is form of the body, and therefore substantial forms must behave like the intellective soul does. For this reason there
115 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. IV, d. 46, q. 3, V 221va, T 143va–vb: ‘Sed hic occurrit difficultas: si anima sit immediate in prima materia, [per] accidentia sensibilia vel sihnit immediate in prima materia—et hoc non, quia non est alba neque nigra—, vel in ipsa anima—sed nec hoc similiter, quia non est alba neque nigra—, aut in utroque—sed nec hoc similiter potest dari, quia tunc duo contraria essent simul, nam utrumque esset album et nigrum. Nec in tertia entitate, quia illam non ponis. Unde non video quomodo ponentes unam formam in homine possunt ad hoc respondere.’
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must be more than one substantial form. Moreover, Francis of Meyronnes defends the demonstrability of the rational soul being the form of the body, and his demonstration takes its point of departure in the characteristics of the intellect and the will. The argument from the intellect is extremely similar to Francis of Marchia’s proof based on the experience of understanding our own sensing. Meyronnes’s formulation runs: I experience myself seeing the Sun; this experience of my sensations cannot itself be sensation, and therefore it is intellection, which is an immanent act. As intellection is an immanent act, it is formally in us, and so too is the power that gives rise to the act, that is the possible intellect, which is part of the soul. Whatever is in us is either matter, form or the compound, and of these the form is the only possibility for the soul. Therefore, the soul is form of the body. Meyronnes uses a similar chain of consequences for the will, starting from the desire for knowledge.116 For Francis of Meyronnes (as for Marchia), the soul, as forma partis, is first compared to the matter, the body, as what the soul informs, before it is compared to what follows, the resulting human. For someone holding the distinction between the form of the whole and of the part in this way, informing has to be the function that the form performs with respect to the (proximate) matter in constituting the composite. From this perspective, where ‘man’ is the form of the whole, saying the ‘soul is the form of the body’ must mean that the body is the proximate matter of man:
116 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. IV, d. 46, q. 3, V 221va, T 143vb: ‘Nunc videndum est si possit propositum evidenter demonstrari. Et primo videamus ex parte actus intelligendi, et arguo sic: nos experimur aliquam intellectionem, ergo intelligimus. Antecedens patet intuitive sic: experior me videre solem. Probatio consequentiae: istud experiri aut est actus sentiendi, et hoc non, quia per nullum actum sentiendi potest hoc experiri, cum sit res insensibilis; ergo istud experiri est intelligere.—Secunda consequentia: nos intelligimus, ergo intellectio est formaliter in nobis, quia intellectio est actus immanens.—Tertia consequentia: intellectio est formaliter in nobis, ergo potentia intellectiva, quia actus intelligendi est formaliter perfectio intellectus possibilis.—Quarta consequentia: intellectus possibilis est in nobis; ergo et anima. Quicquid autem est in nobis vel est materia, vel forma, vel compositum; nullum istorum est nisi forma; ergo demonstrative patet quod anima intellectiva est forma corporis.— Secundo deduco hoc in actu volendi. Nos appetimus scientiam, ergo nos appetimus actu appetitus intellecthivius. Antecedens patet experimentaliter; consequens patet, quia appetitus ille non est sensitivus, quia scientia non est res sensibilis.—Secunda consequentia: nos appetimus appetitu intellectivo; ergo ille est formaliter in nobis, quia actus immanens est.— Tertia consequentia: actus appetitus est in nobis; ergo appetitus intellectivus.—Quarta consequentia: appetitus intellectivus est in nobis; ergo et anima rationalis.—Confirmatur: quia nos sumus domini actuum nostrorum; hoc autem non potest esse per aliquid extrinsecum, nec per aliquid intrinsecum, nisi per animam rationalem, quia bruta habent sensitivam, et non habent dominium supra suos actus.’
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william duba Since the soul immediately informs matter, how can it be the form of the body? I say that those who suppose that the soul is immediately joined to prime matter cannot save this, because then it is impossible that the soul be form of the body in the sense of informing it [i.e., since it informs prime matter]; but if the soul is immediately united to prime matter, then it is compared to body as to something that is consequent (ut ad posterius), and as what constitutes the body; therefore it cannot be said, according to those people, that the soul is the form of the body in the sense of what informs it.117
Unicists, Meyronnes says, are left with the soul informing prime matter and constituting the body; for the soul to inform the body and to constitute humanity, another form is needed. This distinction between forma partis and forma totius explains Meyronnes’s position on the soul’s role as form of the body: since the forma totius adds something over and above the forma partis and the constituent matter, and in humans the intellective soul is the substantial form as forma partis, then the body must be the constituent matter. In this way, Meyronnes defends the decree of the Council of Vienne: the soul is per se and essentially the forma partis with respect to the body, and the two together constitute a human being, expressed by the forma totius ‘humanity’. For Meyronnes, as for the other Scotists, the problem of presenting the soul as form of the body is one that Auriol and the unicists have, not the pluralists. Francis of Meyronnes also confronts a question left ambiguous by Scotus, and which Hugh of Novocastro seems to leave open: does the body, as constituent matter, have a single form? At least in one redaction of his Sentences commentary, Francis states that the human body is continuous matter existing under different, contiguous specific forms, and it appears that his motivation might be related to his specific interpretation of the blood and water spilled from Christ’s side. In the last question of his
117 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. IV, d. 46, q. 3, V 221va, T 143vb-144ra: ‘Sed hic sunt difficultates.—Prima est, quia bene habes ex dictis quod est forma hominis, sed non corporis. Dico quod quando duae causae concurrunt ad unum effectum, prior est habitudo earum inter se; ergo anima prius comparatur ad corpus ut informans ipsum quam utrumque ad constitutum.—Secunda difficultas: si alia est habitudo animae ad corpus et ad hominem. Dico quod sic, quia respectu corporis habet rationem informantis et non respectu hominis, sed rationem constituentis essentialiter et integrantis.—Tertia difficultas: cum anima immediate informat materiam, quomodo est forma corporis? Dico quod hoc non possunt salvare qui ponunt quod anima est immediate coniuncta materiae primae, quia impossibile est quod sit forma illius ut informans illud, sed si immediate unitur primae materiae, tunc comparatur ad corpus ut ad posterius, et ut constituens ipsum; ergo non potest dici quod sit forma corporis informans ipsum secundum illos.’
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Principium et finis redaction of his commentary on book II (d. 16),118 Francis asks ‘Whether in man there is some third entity pertaining to the essence or substance of man, really different from the rational soul and the body,’ and, for the arguments quod non and contra, refers to two of Meyronnes’s frequently used sources, the Athanasian Creed and the above-cited comment by (Ps.-)Dionysius that death is separation.119 Meyronnes first establishes the metaphysical point that the human body is composed of a soul other than the rational soul. Asking “if the human body is composed of matter and form”, he considers three opinions that try to save the unicity of substantial form. The first two are familiar: respectively, the position holding that the body is prime matter affected (affectata) with quantity, in which are rooted the sensible qualities (which, on Meyronnes’s judgment, does not save the unity of the body), and the opinion maintaining that the body is the composite of soul and prime matter (in which case, since the soul is the form of the body, the same thing would be informed by itself). The third opinion tries to resolve the single-form position’s difficulties by claiming that the soul is the form of the body not insofar as it constitutes the body (although it can be considered in this way), but insofar as it is something separate coming to the body in being (and so, according to Meyronnes, one would have to say that one and the same soul was really constituting the body and not really constituting it).120
118 On the Principium et finis redaction, see Roßmann, ‘Die Sentenzenkommentare,’ 180– 183. The question is the last surviving one of the commentary, and it appears to have only been partially revised. Therefore, the divisio textus announces three parts, corresponding to investigations into the body of man, man himself, and the third entity that comes about. In fact, there is no trace of the second part, and the first and third parts have heterogeneous structures: the first part is divided into seven articles, each with (usually) quadripartite subdivisions; the third part has twenty rationes, six objections and thirteen difficultates. Finally, the question concludes with six difficultates (with two separate problems announced as the quarta difficultas) pertaining to the first part (now called the articulus corporis humani), and specifically pertaining to the growth of the body. 119 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. II (‘Principium et finis redactio’), d. 16, q. un., E 149vb: ‘Utrum in homine sit aliqua tertia entitas differens realiter ab anima rationali et corpore pertinens ad essentiam sive ad substantiam eius.—Quod non, quia secundum Athanasium in symbolo: ‘sicut hanima rationalis et caro unus est homo itai Deus et homo hunus est Christusi’ ibi quod non est [nisi] aliquid tertium.—Contra: quia ‘mors non est corruptio animae vel corporis’, sicut scribit beatus Dyonisius De ecclesiastica hierarchia, sed tantum eorum separatio et cum ipsis manentibus separatis sicut non manet humanitas.’ 120 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. II (‘Principium et finis redactio’), d. 16, q. un., a. 1, E 149vb150ra: ‘Circa primum, primus articulus: si corpus hominis est compositum ex materia et forma. Dicunt aliqui quod est materia prima affectata quantitate in qua fundantur immediate omnes qualitates sensibiles, quia omnia constituunt unum corpus naturale.—Contra: quia corpus hominis est unum per se, illa autem faciunt unum per accidens.—Item est in
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Francis concludes: “Therefore, I say that [the body] is composed of matter and some form other than the rational soul.” For Meyronnes, this other form is not a form of corporeity, nor (as Marchia seems to argue) a subalternated series of forms, but rather a collection of disparate forms in the same matter. Central to this position is the observation that bodies are heterogeneous, with bones and organs that seem to be more different from each other than many elemental mixtures are.121
praedicamento substantiae et non quantitatis vel qualitatis.—Item est per se generationis terminus quod repugnat quantitati vel qualitati.—Item est de essentia hominis, quod non convenit quantitati nec qualitati.—Ideo dicunt alii quod est compositum substantialiter ex materia prima et anima rationali, quia ipsa continet virtualiter omnes formas corporeas.— Contra: quia corpus hominis non est totus homo; tota autem substantia hominis secundum ipsos est anima et prima materia.—Item, anima est forma corporis humani; idem autem a se ipso informari non potest.—Item, corpus organicum hominis est potentia vitam habens animae; nihil autem est in potentia ad illud quod est de sua quidditate.—Item, anima non est de essentia corporis humani, alioquin ipsum corpus quod est altera pars compositi esset per se rationale; omne autem quod constituit aliud est de quidditate ipsius.—Solvuntur omnia ista a dicentibus quod anima potest dupliciter considerari: aut prout inclinatur ad corpus—et sic constituit corpus—aut prout elevatur tamquam non indigens corpore organico—et sic est forma corporis non constituens sed adveniens isti constituto in esse.—Contra: quia impossibile est idem secundum idem esse principium constitutivum alicuius et non constitutivum ex natura rei; anima autem secundum quod elevatur, ut ponunt, non constituit corpus, sed secundum quod inclinatur; igitur ut elevata dicitur ex natura rei ab inclinata.—Item, repugnat animae secundum quod constituit corpus dare rationalem et non repugat ei secundum quod constituit hominem.—Iterum, idem secundum idem non potest esse organo alligatum et non alligatum; principium autem constitutivum corporis est organo alligatum sive coniunctum, et non constitutivum hominis ultimum et formale, igitur differunt.—Item, anima ut constituit corpus est de quidditate eius et non ut advenit ei tamquam forma materiae, igitur distinctum est ex natura rei inter formam quae constituit corpus et totum hominem.’ 121 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. II (‘Principium et finis redactio’), d. 16, q. un., a. 3, E 150ra–rb: ‘Tertius articulus, si in eo sunt plures formae disparatae.—Videtur quod non, quia quaelibet (primum cod.) sunt in uno per se composito sunt essentialiter ordinata; disparata autem non habent ordinem essentialem invicem.—Contra: quia omne heterogeneum habet partes specie differentes, alioquin, si eiusdem speciei, esset homogeneum; corpus autem organicum est heterogeneum. Et si dicatur quod accidentia faciunt illam heterogeneitatem, non valet, quia caliditas (causalitas cod.) in una parte aquae et frigiditas in alia non faciunt heterogeneitatem in ea.—Item, de diversis coloribus in eadem facie sive superficie.—Item, de figuris vitae.—Item, ex accidentibus sensibilibus investigamus distinctionem specificam substantiarum; magis autem diversa ossa et carnis quam ligni et lapidis.—Item, alius est ordo elementorum sive ponantur in actu, sive in potentia in uno membro et alius in alio membro, secundum medicos; virtus autem essentialis ordinis arguit distinctionem specificam.—Item, ubicumque est eadem substantia specie, ibi sunt eaedem proprietates, cum naturam eiusdem rationis sequantur per se passiones rationes eiusdem; humores autem in corpore hominis non habent easdem proprietates, immo contrarias.—Item, anima sensitiva perficit suam materiam et non mediantibus accidentibus; perficit autem mediantibus organis quarum specifica distinctio arguitur ex hoc quod per se repugnat uni quod non alteri.—Item, si dif-
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Therefore, I say that there are many specifically different forms in man that are disparate. Against this, it is objected: 1. Here is posited the greatest multitude of forms without necessity. 2. Since there are there so many things that are specifically distinct, the human body would not be one, except perhaps in the sense of a heap. 3. Multiple specific forms are not posited in the same composite. 4. Such things that are distinct in species in this way could not be informed by numerically the same individual sensitive or intellective soul. To 1. [I say] that rather, because of the aforesaid reasons, there is necessity, since, if all the members [of the body] had the same nature (ratio) or species, there would be no reason why a heterogeneous member could be restored just as well as a homogeneous part of flesh.122 To 2, [I say] that some do not suppose that the body of man is per se one thing, although it goes together with the soul to make per se one man. To 3, [I say] that it is true of total forms, but not of partial forms. To 4, [I say] that perhaps from all these forms with their matter there arises a single third total entity that is informed by the intellective soul, and then it would be one per se, which is difficult to believe or to hold.123
ferunt solis accidentibus, tunc per solam alterationem oculus posset fieri auris.—Item, substantia oculi immediate recipit actum videndi aut accidens eius: si substantia oculi eadem ratione et substantia auris quae est eiusdem rationis; si accidens, tunc illud accidens separatum videre possit.—Item caro et os videntur de essentia hominis, cum ponantur in eius naturali definitione; tunc autem essent accidentia tantum.’ 122 This argument appears to distinguish between the healing of flesh and the non-healing of entire body parts. If there were one specific form, then all parts of the body could just as easily heal. 123 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. II (‘Principium et finis redactio’), d. 16, q. un., a. 3, E 150rb: ‘Ideo (item cod.) dico quod sunt plures formae in homine specie differentes quae sunt disparatae.—Instatur quia maxima multitudo formarum hic ponitur sine necessitate, tum quia corpus hominis non erit unum cum sint ibi tot distincta specie nisi forte per aggregationem; tum quia plures formae specificae non ponuntur in eodem composito; tum quia talia sic distincta specie non poterunt informari eadem numero forma sensitiva vel intellectiva.— Ad primum, quod immo est necessitas propter praemissas rationes, quia, si omnia membra essent eiusdem rationis sive speciei, non esset ratio qualiter ita bene non posset non reparare unum membrum heterogeneum sicut unam partem carnis homogeneam.—Ad secundum, quod aliqui non ponunt corpus hominis esse unum per se, licet cum anima concurrat ad faciendum unum per se hominem.—Ad tertium (secundum cod.), quod verum est de totalibus, sed non de partialibus.—Ad quartum, quod forsitan ex omnibus istis formis cum sua materia resultat tertia entitas una totalis* quae informatur ab anima intellectiva, et tunc esset unum per se, quod est difficile ad credendum vel ad tenendum.’
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While Francis by his own admission cannot resolve all the objections to his satisfaction, he defends the body being composed of a multiplicity of disparate substantial forms. These partial forms collectively make up the body, which, together with the soul that informs it, constitutes a unified human being. He further specifies that the matter of the body is continuous to different contiguous specific forms, that is, that the body is one material whole comprising several things that are in constant contact.124 In such a heap, there can be multiple forms of the same species in the same body (for example, two forms of eye).125 If one asked Francis of Meyronnes, at least at the stage of his career when he composed the Principium et finis redaction, whether a human being had some real form of corporeity, he probably would reply in the negative. Yet, he would argue that the intellective soul is the final of a series of successive souls, and that this soul, taken as a whole, functions as a constituent part together with the body, which, in physical terms, is a disparate collection of substantial forms in a contiguous matter. Meyronnes’s position, with multiple souls and an aggregate body, has evident roots in Hugh of Novocastro’s two souls inhering in a fabrica corporis and in Scotus’s statement that humans have, in addition to the intellective soul, at least one form of mixture. Yet, Meyronnes makes explicit the ontological background, specifcally the underlying doctrine concerning the degree of entity accorded to matter, form and the composite. Francis of Meyronnes’s position on the differentiation of the body probably informs his innovative position on the Eucharist. Working from the printed Sentences commentary and a few sermons, Nicholas Vincent has recently pointed out that Meyronnes builds on the Council of Vienne’s declaration that Christ was already dead when he was pierced with the lance. Meyronnes argues that, if the Eucharist were celebrated in the triduum, it would not contain the blood of Christ, since He had already bled out.126 Meyronnes implies, against
124 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. II (‘Principium et finis redactio’), d. 16, q. un., a. 5, E 150va: ‘Ideo dico quod potest esse materia corporis humani continua existentibus formis contiguis eius specificis.’ 125 Francis of Meyronnes, Sent. II (‘Principium et finis redactio’), d. 16, q. un., a. 6, E 150va: ‘Ideo dico quod sunt ibi plures formae numero differentes, sicut partes eiusdem rationis numero differentes.’ 126 N. Vincent, The Holy Blood. King Henry III and the Westminster Blood Relic, Cambridge 2001, 104–110. Perhaps the clearest expression of Francis’s position is in his 1322 commentary on the (Gregory IX) decretal De summa Trinitate et fide catholica (Ms. Sankt-Florian, Stiftsbibliothek, XI-138, 68va): ‘Secundo notatur quod caro et sanguis Christi sub speciebus panis et
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Scotus and Caracciolo, that the blood of Christ, once it left his side, no longer had the form of His body. Material continuity makes the body, and so once blood or flesh is separated from the body, it can no longer be said to be the body. 8. Gerald Odonis Antecedens probatur per septem testimonia, scilicet duorum summorum pontificum, duorum episcoporum, duorum presbyterorum, et domini nostri Iesu Christi.
When Peter Auriol was lector in the Toulouse studium of the Franciscan Order, Gerald Odonis was bachelor there. When Odonis read the Sentences at Paris, probably in 1326, his philosophical and theological doctrines were already being discussed.127 While inspired by the same metaphysical doctrines underlying the Scotist school, Gerald’s thought, like that of Francis of Marchia, often departs from what the author acknowledges as the opinion of Scotus. On the unicity or plurality of substantial forms in humans, Gerald, like Marchia, defends a dimorphist position against not only the doctrine of a single substantial form, but also against those who posit a greater multiplicity. His discussion gives pride of authority to the decree of the Council of Vienne, and, more precisely, the authority given to that Council by the popes who held it and published its constitutions. By declaring that the soul is the form of the body, the constitution stated that the body is, in itself, a separate being; therefore it has to have a form.
vini in sacramento altaris veraciter continentur. Istud autem non sic est intelligendum quod sub speciebus panis ita corpus sic quod non sanguis, sub speciebus vini ita sanguis quod non caro, quia post Christi resurrectionem ista duo non fuerunt ab invicem separata. Unde Ambrosius in libro De sacramentis ponit hic ea quae fuerunt in utero virginis, ubi numquam fuit corpus sine sanguine nec sanguis sine corpore, et ideo sanguis qui est in calice est infra corporis Christi venas, sicut noster. Intelligendum tamen quod, si illud sacramentum fuisset in triduo mortis Christi consecratum, tunc in calice non fuisset corpus, nec in hostia sanguis, quia tunc sanguis non erat infra corpus, ut habetur Io. 19.’ 127 On Odonis’s life see W. Duba, and C. Schabel, ‘Introduction,’ Vivarium, 47 (2009), 1– 17. On the intellectual atmosphere in the Franciscan studium in Toulouse and elsewhere, see now S. Piron, ‘Les studia franciscains de Provence de d’Aquitaine,’ in: K. Emery, Jr., W.J. Courtenay and S.M. Metzger (eds.), Philosophy and Theology in the Studia of the Religious Orders and at Papal and Royal Courts, Turnhout 2012 (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 15), 303–358.
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In d. 18 of book II of his commentary on the Sentences, Odonis takes up the question, “whether in human beings there are two substantial forms?” (Utrum in homine sint duae formae substantiales).128 Gerald begins with the unicist theory, and gives some of Aquinas’s most prominent arguments for the unicity of substantial form. For example, Aquinas had argued that, since form is what gives being to something, a single act of being comes from a single form; but a human being has a single act of being and is one single thing; thus, a human being has a single form.129 Gerald Odonis rejects the unicity of substantial form outright, using mainly tried and true theological arguments—that we could not explain why Christ’s body was Christ’s during its three days in the tomb if there were no overlap of substantial form between the living Christ and the dead, that the transmission of original sin could not be explained without a plurality of substantial forms—arguments that had been standard in Franciscan literature since William de la Mare’s Correctorium and even before.130 In giving the case for his own view, on the other hand, Gerald becomes more philosophical, defending a type of “duality” of substantial form: every human being has two substantial forms, a corporeal form that is the organizing principle of the body, and a rational soul that contains within it all nutritive, sensory, and intellectual functions. The human body and the rational soul are two parts of a human being, therefore in the human being, besides the intellective soul, there is another substantial form. The consequence is valid because the opposite of the antecedent follows from the opposite of the consequent. For let the opposite of the consequent be given, i.e. ‘the only substantial form in the human being is the rational soul’, then the human body is not a part of the human being but is the whole human being or the whole, since it includes soul and prime matter out of which two [the whole] is composed, according to you. But that is opposed to the antecedent, where it was said that the human body and the rational soul are two parts of the human being, for [on your view] in the human being only prime matter and the last form are included. But if it were to be said rather that some middle form, then the point would be mine.131
The final two sentences point to Gerald’s ultimate conclusion: the human being is composed of three principal elements: 1) prime matter, 2) a “form of matter”, i.e. a corporeal form, that organizes the prime matter into this
128 All references to Odo’s question are to the edition from the three surviving manuscripts found in the appendix to this article. 129 See infra, Appendix, 2517–8. 130 See infra, Appendix, 2717–22. 131 See infra, Appendix, 25122–2529.
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human body, and 3) the rational soul, which together with the body makes up a human being. The major premise in the argument is that a human being is composed of two parts: human body and rational soul. Given this premise, says Gerald, a human being must include a substantial form other than the rational soul on the basis of a type of reductio ad absurdum: if you hold that the only substantial form in the human being is the rational soul—i.e. if you adhere to the unicity of substantial form—, then instead of being a part of the human being, the human body is the entire human being; but this goes against the original premise that human body is just a part of the human being; therefore the unicity of substantial form must be wrong and there must be a duality of substantial forms: a corporeal form and the rational soul. Gerald’s argument rests on the inference that positing the human body to be merely a part of the human being requires some degree of distinction between human body and human being. The doctrine that a human being has a single substantial form cannot account for this distinction, and so seems to equate the body with the human being in its entirety. Thus, Gerald maintains, if there were just one substantial form in the human being, then the human body as such would not exist—or at least it would not exist such that the human body was one part of the human being in contradistinction to the rational soul or the human being as a whole. In short, the human body must have some identifiable existence of its own, an identifiable existence that requires it to be a hylomorphic unity, and hence the human body must be a substantial form of corporeity informing prime matter directly. For this reason, Gerald writes that if there were only one substantial form in the human being, then: “Body and soul would not be two parts of the human being, because the body would include essentially the rational soul.”132 Gerald clearly thinks that if the rational soul were the only substantial form of the human being, then the body would be the soul in some strict, essential fashion, the one could not be without the other, and hence they could not be two parts of one greater whole. For Gerald Odonis, if there is only one substantial form in the human being, then the body as such “vanishes”, and cannot be a genuine part of the human being, as the original premise of the argument called for. Thus, the human body needs its own corporeal form, directly informing prime matter, and giving the body the requisite hylomorphic unity, and hence there is a duality of substantial forms: a corporeal form of the body and a rational soul of the human being.
132
See infra, Appendix, 25210–12.
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It is obvious that Gerald is assuming a metaphysics of parts and wholes similar to those spelled out by his Scotist predecessors, and his theory thus evokes similar criticisms: is it really true that, if the human body did not have the kind of unity and distinction that comes from having its own substantial form, we would nevertheless be unable to count it as a ‘part’ of a human being, ‘part’ understood in some suitable fashion? Most striking, Gerald’s entire argument is premised on the statement “the human body and the rational soul are two parts of a human being”, and the first pillar of support to which Gerald turns in order to undergird this claim is “… the testimony of … the lord Pope Clement V, who at the Council of Vienne declared there to be two parts to the human being, namely the body and the rational soul, and claimed anyone asserting the opposite to be a heretic …. [the same] is had through Pope John XXII, who approved and made canonical the decretal made by lord Clement, according to what was determined at the Council of Vienne.”133 Gerald then quotes extensively from the decretal Fidei catholicae, reproducing in his Sentences commentary much of the text pertaining to the requirement that the soul be form of the body. Gerald has made the determination of the Council of Vienne the cornerstone of his argument in support of the duality of substantial forms. He clearly has in mind that, if the pope said that as a matter of faith the rational soul per se and essentially informs the human body, then the human body and the rational soul are two parts of the human being.134 And that, indeed, is the major premise of Gerald’s argument. To make things even more clear, Gerald intimates that those who do not hold there to be two substantial forms in the human being, one for the human body, the other the rational soul, are, according to the decree of the Council, heretics. Odonis considers an objection based on the Council of Vienne’s declaration, taking its point of departure in the conclusion of Odonis’s argument quoted above: if one argues that the soul and the body are two parts of a human being, related as form and matter, then what is the form of something is a part of it. Since there is a “form of the body” (forma corporis), then it follows from that the body is constituted of a form and matter, and what is the ‘form of the body’ is the part of the body. But Fidei catholicae states that the rational soul is the form of the body; therefore, the rational soul is a part of the body, which is absurd.135
133 134 135
See infra, Appendix, 25214–25310. See infra, Appendix, 25413–16. See infra, Appendix, 25522–26.
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Odonis’s reply to this objection distinguishes between the ways a form can be said to be a form of something: I say that the form of something can be understood in two ways, in one way as it is the form of something as of a subject, and in another way as the form of something that is constituted. In the first way, it is a form in the sense of informing an informed thing. In the second way, such a form is related to that of which it is a form in the sense of what constitutes to what is constituted. And so the form is the form of matter in the sense of the form of something informed, not as of something constituted, because matter is not constituted in material being by the form … For corporeity is the form of the body as constituted, not as it is informed. The rational soul, however, is the form of man as constituted, not as informed, but it is the form of the body not as constituted, but as informed. For otherwise, the body would be the whole man constituted from soul and prime matter or from the subject of the soul, and so the body would not be a part. And Lord Clement had this understanding at the Council of Vienne.136
For Gerald Odonis (as for Francis of Marchia, among others), a form is a form of two different things: the matter it informs, and the composite that it constitutes. Therefore the body of a human relates to two forms: it relates to corporeity as the form that, along with prime matter, constitutes it, and it relates to the soul as the form that informs it in constituting a human being. The rational soul likewise informs the body in constituting the human being, and can be said to be both the form of the body and of the human, but in different senses of ‘being the form of’. Odonis gives several other arguments for his view. To take just one: the rational soul is necessarily non-extensional, since it exists in its entirety in all the parts of the body. This is something all his contemporaries agree on. But, in addition to this non-extended soul, there has to be an extended form. Why? Gerald takes us through a process of elimination. That the body is extended we know empirically. There must be a recipient of the feature of extension, i.e. of the accident of quantity, and this recipient will be either prime matter directly or a composite of prime matter and some substantial form. It cannot be prime matter directly, because then prime matter would receive accidents, extension and quantity, before it had received a substantial form, which according to Gerald is absurd. But if the recipient of the extension is a composite of prime matter and a substantial form, then that substantial form is either the rational soul or
136
See infra, Appendix, 2567–19.
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some other substantial form. But in order for a form to give extension, according to Gerald, it must itself have an extended nature. Thus, given the rational soul’s non-extended nature, in every human being there must be a further substantial corporeal form that gives extensional being to the body it constitutes.137 Gerald, in fact, postulates three different types of forms and their relation to bodies: the entire rational soul is in its entirety in each and every part of the animated human body; the sensory soul of brute animals (and presumably, the vegetative soul of plants) is entire in the entire body and is in each and every part of that body, but it is not in its entirety in each and every part of the body; finally, there are forms that are not in the whole nor in each and every part of the whole, like the form of a bone or of flesh or of brain.138 Odonis thus held that there are two separate substantial forms in each and every human being: a corporeal substantial form that along with prime matter makes up the human body; and a rational soul that informs the body, making up the human being. Odonis is absolutely unrepentant about the relative messiness that this type of view of human metaphysical composition entails, replying to one objection: “About what is objected that [if Gerald’s view were the case] human beings would be substance twice over, I do not consider it to be problematic for a human being to be composed out of two substances, namely a corporeal one and a spiritual one, rather I think it necessary.”139 Further, in reply to Thomas Aquinas’s most powerful argument for the unicity of substantial forms—that one form gives one being, and hence makes one thing, and hylomorphic compounds are one thing with one being—Gerald flatly contradicts it: “When also it is said that a human being is one thing, it is true, [but it is one thing] composed from many things.”140 Odonis has thus proven to his own satisfaction that in every human being there are two substantial forms: a corporeal form and a rational soul, and, as noted above, he appears to open up for there being partial forms of body parts. Yet Odonis excludes the view held by, among others, Hugh of Novocastro and Francis of Meyronnes, that in every human being there are two souls, a rational and a sensory one, focusing on the decree of the Council of Vienne:
137 138 139 140
See infra, Appendix, 25417–2556. See infra, Appendix, 26117–27. See infra, Appendix, 2673–5. See infra, Appendix, 2727–8.
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If the sensory and intellectual soul were two souls in the human being, either the intellectual soul would per se inform the body or it would inform the body with the sensory [soul] mediating; each of these ways is impossible; therefore [the antecedent is also impossible]. Indeed the first way is not possible, because then the power of the intellectual soul would be organic, because every operative power that is the perfection of matter works together with matter, just as a surface is visible because its perfection, namely color, is visible. But the intellectual soul, in contradistinction to the sensory soul, is not a means of the body, because it does not have an organ. Nor is the second way possible, because in that case the intellectual soul would not be essentially (per essentiam) the form of the body, but through the sensory soul, but the sensory soul [would be the form of the body] essentially, and this is heresy, as is had in Extra, De summa Trinitate, cap. Fidei catholicae.141
Postulating an intellectual and a sensory soul in humans means dividing human activities into those that require the body and those that do not have a direct connection to the body. The corporeal activities would be governed by the sensory soul, making use of the organs of the body. The incorporeal activities would be the domain of the intellective soul. If this were the case, the intellective soul could not inform the body per se, because none of its activities would use organs, and so it would not in itself perfect any element of the body. But saying that the intellective soul perfects the body by means of the mediating sensitive soul runs counter to the Council of Vienne. In effect, Gerald explains exactly why Peter Auriol resorts to fideism: if understanding is the only activity that links the intellective soul to the human compound, there can be no direct link to the body. Gerald Odonis supports an account of the metaphysical composition of human beings according to which the soul is a substantial form that composes a hylomorphic unity with the body, which in turn is prime matter informed by the form of corporeity; altogether this constitutes a human being. On the authority of the popes who presided over and published the Council of Vienne,142 Gerald condemns both the single-soul position of Thomas and Giles and the multiple-soul interpretation of many of his
141 See infra, Appendix, 26816–30. Incidentally, the position Odonis attacks here is also that identified with William of Ockham; on this, see M. McCord Adams, William Ockham, Notre Dame (IN) 1987, 2, 633–668. 142 In the question in the appendix, Gerald Odonis consistently refers not to the Council, but to Popes Clement and John as granting the Clementine Constitutions their authority. On this see W. Duba, ‘Destroying the Text: Contemporary Interpretations of John XXII’s Constitutiones,’ in: Papst Iohannes XXII: Bedingungen und Konsequenzen seines Pontifikats, forthcoming.
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Franciscan colleagues. Odonis does not simply state that his colleagues will have trouble accommodating their theories to the strictures of the Council of Vienne; he suggests that the current pope considers their opinions heretical. 9. Himbert of Garda Certum est quod in eadem virga erunt distinctae formae, scilicet forma ignis et forma ligni, sed non in eadem parte virgae.
Himbert of Garda likely studied at Paris around 1320 as Francis of Meyronnes’s secretary. He was later active in the provincial studia of the Franciscan Order, probably at Lyon. While his Sentences commentary is not particularly original (based largely on Francis of Meyronnes’s commentaries), nor particularly widespread, with only 3 manuscripts of it in existence (and only one witnesses the discussion of the soul as form as body), Himbert’s candid presentation, associating arguments with the names of their defenders, makes it an extremely useful witness to the reception of Franciscan thought within the order.143 In the second redaction of his Sentences commentary, produced around 1330 at the earliest, Himbert considers the question of the plurality of souls, providing a synthesis of the doctrines discussed above. He makes clear that the phrase anima forma corporis comprises at least three related issues: whether the body has a form apart from the soul, whether the rational soul is the only soul in humans, and how the body can constitute a unity of such disparate parts. Himbert therefore divides his treatment into three parts: first, the question “whether in human beings there are many substantial forms” focuses on the metaphysical issue: whether one must posit humans to be souls-inprime-matter or to have as forms the intellective soul and a form of corporeity. Second, he addresses whether the sensory and rational souls are really different. Third, he pursues these positions to their logical physical conclusions, defending what we can call a “maximalist account” of the plurality of substantial forms.
143 See W. Duba and C. Schabel, ‘Ni chose, ni non-chose: the Sentences Commentary of Himbertus de Garda, O.F.M.,’ Bulletin de philosophie médiévale, 53 (2011), 149–232.
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For the first question, on the plurality of forms in general, Himbert introduces the arguments of “Thomas and his followers” as well as one from Giles of Rome in favor of the single-form theory.144 “But against this opinion G[erald] argues that if there were not [many substantial forms], then the rational soul and human body would not be two parts of the human being”,145 and Himbert adduces Odonis’s first argument against the position, the one that cites the authority of the Council of Vienne, implying that the opinion involves heresy. “The other opinion”, Himbert continues, “is the one commonly held by our doctors, that in man there are many forms, where first I posit two arguments of the ancient doctors, second, one made by Hugh, and third, four made by Francis of Marchia.”146 On Himbert’s portrayal, the modern Franciscan masters stand together with the antiqui, the thirteenth-century doctors, to confute the followers of Thomas and to demonstrate the multiplicity of substantial forms. The second question, on the plurality of souls, reveals that Himbert understood Gerald Odonis’s comments as directed against the position that he, Francis of Meyronnes and Hugh of Novocastro hold. Himbert summarizes Gerald’s three arguments against a real distinction between the sensory and rational souls. Then he replies that, if the sensory soul were really the same as the intellective soul, then the sensory soul would lack extension (which he thinks is false, since one can have contrary sensations, say, heat and cold, in different parts of the body), and, moreover, the sensory soul would not depend on matter.147 To Odonis’s claim that this view goes
144 Himbert of Garda, In secundum librum Sententiarum, d. 15, q. un., a. 1, Ms. Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1091 (= V), 106v: ‘Quantum ad primum est duplex modus dicendi. Primus est Thomae et sequacium suorum quod non. Et quantum ad istum modum sic procedam, quoniam primo adducam septem rationes Thomae et sequacium suorum, secundo rationem Aegidii, tertio rationem quae fuit facta in principio in arguendo ad quaestionem, quarto solvo rationes.’ 145 Himbert of Garda, Sent. II, d. 15, q. un., a. 1, V 107r: ‘Sed contra istam opinionem arguit Gheraldusi sic: quia, si non, anima rationalis et corpus hominis non essent duae partes hominis.’ 146 Himbert of Garda, Sent. II, d. 15, q. un., a. 2, V 108r: ‘Alia opinio doctorum nostrorum communiter est quod in homine sunt plures formae, ubi primo ponam duas rationes antiquorum, secundo unam Hugonis, tertio quattuor Marchiani.’ 147 Himbert of Garda, Sent. II, d. 15, q. un., a. 2, V 108v: ‘Sed contra, quia, si essent idem realiter, tunc sensitiva esset inhexitensa. Patet, quia intellectiva est inhexitensa. Sed hoc est falsum, ut supra patuit, quia tunc duo contraria essent in eodem inextenso, puta calor et frigus, quia possum calefieri in pede et frigefieri in manu, quod est per sensitivam. Ideo teneo quod realiter distinguuntur, quia aliter intellectiva esset organica, quia sensitiva est organica. Secundo, quia tunc sensitiva non dependeret a materia, quia nec intellectiva; sed sensitiva dependet, ut patet in visu et huiusmodi.’
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against the determination of the Council of Vienne, Himbert replies that the intellect essentially informs matter, and flat out denies that the intellect involves organs, because it is indivisible.148 Finally, Himbert concludes with a maximalist vision of the plurality of substantial forms. Vegetative and sensitive souls are really distinct: for bones and hair grow but do not feel. Flesh and bones have distinct substantial forms. The sense organs have distinct substantial forms.149 This line of argumentation leads to disparate forms in inanimate substances: The fourth doubt: if so many forms were posited, it follows that in the same matter there would be different forms at the same time. [I say that there would be,] but not in the same part of matter. For example: if a single branch is placed so that one angle is in fire and another is not, it is certain that in the same branch there will be distinct forms, namely the form of fire and the form of wood, but not in the same part of the branch. So too it is in the case at hand.150
Himbert’s account ends by extending Meyronnes’s account of contiguous substantial forms in continuous matter down to inanimate beings as well. Himbert of Garda puts clearly into perspective part of the story of the soul as form of the body after the Council of Vienne: Franciscan thought was pluralist, but beyond the general agreement that soul and body were distinct entities, each with distinct form(s), the Franciscans differed. Himbert portrays Odonis, Marchia and Hugh of Novocastro as forming a common front against the unicist position, giving particular attention to Gerald Odonis’s usage of Fidei catholicae in this context. Within this common movement,
148 Himbert of Garda, Sent. II, d. 15, q. un., a. 2, V 108v: ‘Ad secundum dico quod per essentiam. Ad probationem dico quod non, quia (sup. lin.) est indivisibilis.’ 149 Himbert of Garda, Sent. II, d. 15, q. un., a. 3, V 108v: ‘Quantum ad tertium est primum dubium utrum vegetativa et sensitiva distinguantur (essentialiter exp.) realiter. Dico quod sic, quia possunt separari, ut patet, quia ossa non sentiunt et tamen vegetantur et crescunt, et capilli.—Secundum, si ossa et caro habent distinctas formas substantiales. Dico quod sic, quia Aristoteles dicit II De anima quod accidentia magnam partem conferunt ad cognoscendum quod quid est; ossa autem et caro distincta habet accidentia et operationes distinctas.— Tertium dubium est si sensus organici habent distinctas formas substantiales. Dico quod sic, quia distinctas habent operationes, quia ex hoc quod ignis habet distinctam operationem ab aqua, scilicet ignire, dicimus quod ignis et aqua habent distinctas formas substantiales, et similiter de sensibus organicis, ut visu et auditu.’ 150 Himbert of Garda, Sent. II, d. 15, q. un., a. 2, V 108v-109r: ‘Quartum: quod, si ponantur tot formae, sequitur quod in eadem materia erunt distinctae formae simul. h Dico quod sic, i sed non in eadem parte materiae. Exemplum: sicut, si eadem virga ponantur in igne quantum ad unum anguli et non quantum ad alium, certum est quod in eadem virga erunt distinctae formae, scilicet forma ignis et forma ligni, sed non in eadem parte virgae, sic in proposito.’
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there were competing opinions, especially concerning the number of really different souls in a human, and Himbert goes for the maximum imaginable number of forms and souls in one compound, while brushing off Gerald’s use of the same decretal Fidei catholicae in this context. 10. Conclusion In recounting the debate on the plurality of forms, Pasnau observes that Thomas Aquinas successfully shifted the discussion: After Aquinas, the main debate was not over whether to postulate a substantial form for each essential attribute, but whether to postulate one, or two, or three, and only in certain special cases (in human beings, or in living things). Yet although this represents the main line of debate, the full contours of the discussion are far more complex. Substantial forms played so many and various roles that there was conceptual space for dozens of different positions, running from the unqualified unitarianism of the Thomists to the promiscuous pluralism of Zabarella, who remarked that “if two forms at once are not contrary to reason, then neither will it be contrary for there to be four or a hundred at once in the same substance.”151
Leaving aside whether living things constitute a “special case”, Pasnau’s large-scale observation applies to the micro-analysis here. In the decade following the publication of the acts of the Council of Vienne, the Franciscan convent at the University of Paris housed supporters of the whole range of positions, running from the reluctantly unqualified unitarianism of Peter Auriol to the promiscuous pluralism of Himbert of Garda. On the whole, however, three lines of development can be seen. The first (Group 1), characterized by Hugh of Novocastro, Francis of Meyronnes and Himbert of Garda, supports a plurality of souls inhering in a matter that itself is composed of several partial substantial forms. The second (Group 2), followed by Landulph Caracciolo, Francis of Marchia and Gerald Odonis, argues for a single intellective soul inhering in a body that itself is a compound of a forma corporeitatis and matter. These two groups both take their influence from Scotus; the first focuses on the Subtle Doctor’s comments concerning multiple partial forms, and the second on his doctrine of successive substantial forms. In a sense, the different formulations of the two groups depend on whether they use the doctrine of the soul to enter into debates touching
151
Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 577.
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on metaphysical issues, such as relation between matter, form and the compound, or physical ones, such as the relation between sensible parts and the concrete operations of the soul. The third line is traced by the short intellectual career of Peter Auriol, who started with a doctrine of substantial form that required the intellective soul to be a special type, and ended by maintaining his hylomorphism at the cost of fideism. Yet an impressive homogeneity underlies this wide range of opinions. Peter Auriol would have classified all of his Franciscan confrères as holding the ‘common’ opinion on matter and form: they all hold that matter and form are separate realities that combine to form a third reality, the compound. This fundamental view can give rise to a superficially vast range of ways to accounts for the composition of human beings. At the level of the core doctrines, in fact, we find the members of the first two groups sharing most of the same metaphysical assumptions and even arguments. They present their contributions as incremental, incorporating the work of their predecessors, developing new arguments, and defending old ones. These Franciscans explicitly saw themselves as part of a team, a school. In the early fourteenth century, Franciscan philosophical psychology suffered three shocks in a row: John Duns Scotus, the Council of Vienne, and Peter Auriol. Scotus’s teaching provided later Franciscan thinkers with the terminology and many of the goals in their discussion. In particular, the main Franciscan school attributed to Scotus their ontology, where matter and form are separate realities and entities, leading to a system of multiple substantial forms. They also owed to Scotus the goal of avoiding human exceptionalism: human souls had to relate to their bodies in the same way as animal souls did. The Council of Vienne’s determinations in Fidei catholicae changed the tone of the discourse. Its specific focus on the Crucifixion, the triduum, and the sacraments of the Eucharist and Baptism echo the concerns of the Franciscans. The Council’s declaration that Christ was already dead when pierced with the lance gives Caracciolo an unbeatable authority with which to support one of Scotus’s criticisms of the single-form theory; it also works its way into Meyronnes’s treatment of the status of the Eucharist in the triduum. Most obviously, though, by declaring that the soul is per se and essentially the form of the body, the decretal provided a powerful argument against the unicist position. If one assumes that matter is a separate entity from form, then this decretal and the unicist view are incompatible, and some Franciscan theologians were quick to mention that. Gerald Odonis provides the strongest formulation of this, appealing directly to the author-
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ity of the popes to intimate that not only are those who posit a single substantial form in humans heretics, but so are those in Group 2, who posit more than one type of soul in human beings. The Franciscan whose thought was most directly and most severely affected by the Council of Vienne was Peter Auriol, and this overview shows just how much his thought differs from that of contemporary Franciscan theologians at Paris. Auriol had developed an Aristotelian metaphysics heavily influenced by Averroes’s commentaries, and, on this basis, he had argued that human souls were radically different from other substantial forms. The decree that the rational soul must be per se and essentially the form of the body forced him to abandon this conclusion, and as a result, he supported the decree but maintained that it could not be demonstrated by reason. Peter Auriol not only made himself a target for later Franciscans, nearly all of whose discussions of the demonstrability of the Clementine decree were directed at Auriol.152 but he also made unavoidably clear to his interlocutors that this major issue in philosophical psychology hinged on hylomorphic theory. The one person missing in this story is Peter John Olivi. As mentioned at the outset, there is no question whether Olivi was targeted by Fidei catholicae. After the Council of Vienne, however, some members of Group 1 continued to support a multiplicity of souls united through matter—not, admittedly, the unity of spiritual matter defended by Olivi, as they followed Scotus in doing away with spiritual matter,153 but matter all the same. On 152 So, in addition to Landulph Caracciolo and Francis of Marchia, we find discussions on the demonstrability of the soul as form of the body in the 1330–1331 Paris Sentences commenˇ tary of William of Brienne, O.F.M. (Sent. II, d. 16–18, q. 2, Ms. Praha, Národní Knihovna Ceské Republiky, VIII.F.14, 131r: ‘Ad secundam quaestionem utrum anima rationalis sit forma hominis, videndum est primo quid sit dicendum secundum Philosophum, secundo quid secundum veritatem et fidem.—Quantum ad primum dicit unus doctor [= Petrus Aureoli] …’) and the anonymous 1320s Franciscan commentary on book II of the Sentences (Ms. Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 4826, 113ra-158vb), d. 16 (135rb: ‘Circa distinctionem 16 utrum possit probari secundum viam philosophorum animam intellectivam esse veram formam coporis’). A possible exception to this pattern is William of Alnwick’s determinationes 5–7. Echoing the structure specified by Francis of Marchia in q. 60 of his commentary on book IV of the Sentences, Alnwick considers in these questions the rational soul as form of the body, the immortality of the rational soul, and the unicity or multiplicity of intellects; in q. 5, on the soul as the form of the body, William of Alnwick’s criticism seems to be directed against another thinker with a Bolognese pedigree and a penchant for Averroes, John of Jandun, or his source, Thomas Wylton (see above, n. 4). See A. Maier, ‘Wilhelm von Alnwicks Bologneser Quaestionen gegen den Averroismus,’ in: Ead., Ausgehendes Mittelalter. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte des 14. Jahrhunderts, 1, Roma 1964 (Storia e letteratura, 97), 1– 40, 459–460. 153 See above, n. 15.
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the other hand, Peter Auriol not only saw his original doctrine of the soul targeted by Fidei catholicae, he found his adversaries using Fidei catholicae to attack his modified teaching. For example, Landulph Caracciolo accuses Auriol of going against all three doctrinal points of Fidei catholicae. As we have seen, he argues that the fact that side wound was opened after Christ’s death shows that the Eucharist has to have some form that is not the intellective soul, and the requirement that the soul be the form of the body must be, as a truth of faith, demonstrable. In addition to these cases, in the same commentary Landulph argues against Auriol that the constitution’s statements about infant baptism prove that moral virtues are infused at baptism.154 With one notable exception, the constitution Fidei catholicae had a minimal effect on Franciscan doctrines of the soul as form of the body in the period following its promulgation. That exception is Peter Auriol, yet even he defended what he thought the philosophical answer was before simply acknowledging the decree. Nor did later authors universally read Aristotle and Averroes through the perspective of faith: later in the fourteenth century, Pierre d’Ailly argued that, circumscripta fide, the more likely opinion is that of Alexander of Aphrodisias (as reported by Averroes), that the human soul is inseparable from matter and corruptible, like all other forms. In the next century, Gabriel Biel applied William of Ockham’s statements from his Quodlibet to show that one could not demonstrate that the soul was immaterial and incorruptible, so one had to rely on the decree of the Council of Vienne.155 So, at least at first glance, the Council’s decree did not prevent some Aristotelians from arguing a philosophical position before acknowledging the truth of faith. For the bulk of Franciscan thinkers, however, Fidei catholicae was not neutral to their views; they used the constitution to support their position, attacking Peter Auriol and the unicists. For them, the obligation that the
154 Landulph Caracciolo, Sent. II, d. 28, q. 1, V IIIra–rb, F 235vb: ‘Secunda conclusio: pono quid sentio sub quattuor propositionibus. Prima quod parvulis et adultis in baptismo de facto dantur virtutes morales infusae. Probatio, quia ecclesia hoc determinat, Extra, De summa Trinitate et fide catholica in libro VII decretalium, ubi dominus papa dicit quod in baptismo quoad habitus infunduntur gratia et virtutes. Non potest intelligi per “virtutes” fides et spes, quia in hoc quod dicit “gratia” presupponuntur fides et spes; ergo intelligendae sunt infundi virtutes morales.’ 155 W. Duba and O. Ribordy, ‘The Human Soul: Definitions and Differentiae in LateMedieval Sentences Commentaries,’ in: P.J.J.M. Bakker, M. Brinzei-Calma, and R.L. Friedman (eds.), Philosophical Psychology in Late-Medieval Commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, forthcoming.
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soul be form of the body combined with their doctrines of matter and form to become a requirement that the body have a separate substantial form. An obstacle to questioning the foundations of their philosophy far greater than any Church council was what they saw as their purpose at Paris: to elaborate and to defend a common doctrine of Franciscan theology.
APPENDIX
Russell L. Friedman and Christopher D. Schabel In his commentary on book II of the Sentences, Gerald Odonis discusses the soul as form of the body in questions pertaining to distinction 17 (Utrum possit naturaliter demonstrari animam rationalem esse formam corporis humani) and distinction 18 (Utrum in homine sint duae formae substantiales). We present here the edition of the latter question, based on all three extant manuscript witnesses: K= S= W=
Klosterneuburg, Stiftsbibliothek, CCl 291. Geraldus Odonis, Quaestiones in II et I Sententiarum, 107ra–161vb, 231ra-271ra Sarnano, Biblioteca Comunale, Ms. E.98. Geraldus Odonis, In I et II Sententiarum, 1ra–120rb (I Sent.), 122ra-201va (II Sent.) Valencia, Biblioteca de la Catedral, Ms. 200 (olim 63). Geraldus Odonis, In II et III Sententiarum, 2ra–104vb (II Sent.), 108ra–175ra (III Sent.)
All three manuscripts date from the fourteenth century. K presents numerous accidents of binding, missing folios, and cases where the copyist omitted some questions. S and W contain the entire text of the Sentences commentaries they witness.1 In preparing the edition, it became clear that SW often share accidents against K. The edition generally follows the reading of K, but frequently calls upon SW to correct for sense. When possible, the orthography has been classicized. The following signs and abbreviations have been used: a.c. AA add. codd. exp. hom. inv. iter. om. s.l.
ante correctionem Auctoritates Aristotelis, ed. J. Hamesse, Les Auctoritates Aristotelis. Un florilège médiéval. Etude historique et édition critique, Leuven, Paris 1974 (Philosophes médiévaux, 17). addidit codices expunxit homoeoteleuton invertit iteravit omisit supra lineam
1 For a complete description of these manuscripts and a question list, see C. Schabel, ‘The Sentences Commentary of Gerardus Odonis, OFM,’ Bulletin de philosophie médiévale, 46 (2004), 115–161, esp. 128–131.
Geraldi Odonis In secundum librum Sententiarum Distinctio 18 Quaestio unica Utrum in homine sint duae formae substantiales K 125ra S 177ra W 74ra
S 177rb
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Quaeritur utrum in homine sint duae formae substantiales. [1] Et videtur quod non, quia unicum esse est ab una forma. Sed homo habet unicum esse et est una res. Ergo habet unicam formam, non plures. [2] In oppositum. In quocumque est forma substantialis habita ex traduce per generationem et forma substantialis non habita ex traduce, in eo sunt duae formae substantiales. Sed in homine est forma substantialis habita ex traduce per generationem et forma substantialis non habita ex traduce sed per immediatam creationem, scilicet anima rationalis. | Ergo in homine sunt duae formae substantiales. [3] Pro solutione quaestionis pono quinque conclusiones: prima quod in homine sunt duae formae substantiales; secunda quod in omni animali sunt duae formae substantiales; tertia quod in omni corpore animato sunt duae formae substantiales; quarta quod in homine non sunt duae animae; quinta quod, si sola anima intellectiva esset forma hominis, non esset traductio peccati originalis in homine generato a generante. hPrima conclusio: in homine sunt duae formae substantialesi
[4] Primam conclusionem probo tripliciter. Primo sic: corpus humanum et anima rationalis sunt duae partes hominis; ergo in homine praeter animam intellectivam est aliqua alia forma substantialis. Consequentia
quaeritur] quaeritur circa istam distinctionem SW utrum iter. S est una res] unica res est K unicam formam] unam formam et W oppositum] quia add. SW est] unica add. K per … substantialis] et SW forma substantialis om. SW substantiales] substantialis W quaestionis] omnia add. K duae om. K omni om. SW – tertia … substantiales om. per hom. K animae] formae K anima om. K generato] generata K praeter] propter SW intellectivam
est aliqua] rationalem est SW
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tenet, quia ex opposito consequentis sequitur oppositum antecedentis. Detur enim oppositum consequentis, quod est illud, scilicet quod ‘in homine nulla est forma substantialis nisi anima rationalis’, ergo corpus humanum non est pars hominis, sed est totus homo vel totum, cum includat animam et materiam primam, ex quibus duobus componitur, secundum te. Istud autem opponitur antecedenti, in quo dicebatur quod corpus humanum et anima rationalis sunt duae partes hominis. In homine enim nihil aliud includitur nisi materia prima et forma ultima. Si autem diceretur quod immo includitur forma aliqua media, tunc haberem propositum.
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[5] Item, tunc corpus non poneret in numerum cum anima, nec econverso corpus et anima essent duae partes hominis, quia corpus includeret essentialiter animam rationalem. Antecedens probatur per septem testimonia, scilicet duorum summorum pontificum, duorum episcoporum, duorum presbyterorum, et domini nostri Ihesu Christi. Et primo induco testimonium summorum pontificum, scilicet domini Clementis papae quinti, qui in concilio | Viennensi determinavit duas esse partes hominis, corpus scilicet et animam rationalem, et omnem asserentem oppositum haereticum asseruit esse censendum. Et ponitur Extra, De summa Trinitate et fide catholica, VII decretalium, capitulo ‘Fidei Catholicae’: ‘Aperte cum sancta matre Ecclesia confitemur unigenitum Dei Filium in his omnibus in quibus Deus Pater existit una cum Patre aeternaliter subsistentem, partes nostrae naturae simul unitas, ex quibus in se verus Deus existens fieret verus homo, humanum videlicet corpus passibile et animam intellectivam vel rationalem, ipsum corpus vere per se | et essentialiter informantem, assumpsisse ex tempore in virginali thalamo, ad unitatem suae hypostasis et personae.’ Et sequitur in eodem capitulo:a ‘Porro doctrinam seu positionem temere asserentem aut vertentem in dubium quod sub sequitur] tenet K illud scilicet quod] istud SW non … hominis] hominis non est pars SW et] in K in quo] ubi SW enim om. SW autem] enim SW quod immo inv. SW forma aliqua inv. SW media] materiae SW item] cum add. K in om. K anima] non add. codd. septem om. SW duorum summorum] primorum duorum K duorum2 om. SE duorum presbyterorum] philosophorum SW testimonium] testimonia K determinavit] declaravit SW et2 om. K asseruit] sensuit K esse censendum] esse consendum K; om. SW et fide catholica om. SW 7] quaestione K capitulo] casus K confitemur] confitetur codd. deus om. K existit] extitit codd. naturae] vere W passibile] possibile K – intellectivam vel om. SW vere] naturae K; et add. SW unitatem] veritatem K in om. SW positionem] portionem SW in dubium] individuum K quod] quia SW a Clementinarum liber I, tit. I, Corpus iuris canonici, 2, 1133–1134.
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stantia animae rationalis seu intellectivae vere ac per se humani corporis non sit forma velut erroneam ac veritati catholicae inimicam fidei, dicto sacro approbante Concilio, reprobamus, definientes ut cunctis nota sit fidei sincerae veritas ac praecludatur universis erroribus aditus ne subintrent quod qui deinceps asserere, defendere, seu tenere pertinaciter praesumpserit quod anima rationalis seu intellectiva non sit forma corporis humani per se et essentialiter tamquam haereticus sit censendus.’ [6] Item, habetur per Iohannem papam XXII, qui decretalem factam per dominum Clementem approbavit et canonizavit, secundum quod determinatum fuerat in concilio Viennensi.
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[7] Tertio induco beatum Augustinum in libro De ecclesiasticis dogmatibusa sic dicentem: ‘Natus est ergo Dei Filius ex virgine verum corpus trahens, verus Deus ex divinitate et verus homo ex carne intus in divinitate Verbum Patris et Deus in homine, anima et caro.’
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[8] Quarto induco Eustratium episcopum super libro Ethicorum: ‘Quatuor,’ inquit, ‘sunt omnes urbanitatis partes legis: positiva, indicativa, excitativa, et medicinalis. Quia enim ex anima et corpore consistit homo, ens civium unusquisque oportet et methodos esse ab ambo | per quas utraque partium quod secundum naturam et melius, vel praesens conservetur vel absens revocetur.’b [9] Quinto induco auctoritates duorum venerabilium presbyterorum, scilicet Damasceni et Athanasii. Damascenus II Sententiarum, capitulo 12,c velut erroneam] valde erronea SW inimicam fidei dicto] fidei K sincerae] sincera SW veritas om. K praecludatur] praeclaudatur K; praecluditur SW qui] autem K seu intellectiva om. SW sit om. SW iohannem papam] dominum iohannem SW et om. SW tertio induco beatum augustinum] item augustinus SW sic dicentem] sicut dicentem K; dicens SW verus] homo ex carne et verus add. SW (sed cf. l. 53) divinitate1] deitate SW et verus … carne om. SW (sed cf. l. 52) – divinitate2] deitate SW urbanitatis] b’abai’cis SW positiva] positivae K – positiva indicativa excitativa] indicativa positiva exercitativa W enim] est add. K oportet] horum W methodos] methodus K utraque] uterque SW – quinto … athanasii om. SW damascenus] scilicet add. K a Recte Gennadius de Massilia, De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus, c. 2, in: J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina, 42, Paris 1845, 1213–1222, 1214. b Eustratius, In De anima I, prologus, ed. H.P.F. Mercken, The Greek Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle in the Latin translation of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (†1253), Leiden 1973 (Corpus Latinum commentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum, 6/1), 3–475–76. c Iohannes Damascenus, De fide orthodoxa, c. 26, ed. E.M. Buytaert, St. Bonaventure (NY) 1955 (Franciscan Institute Publications. Text series, 8), 11319–22.
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dicit quod ‘Deus ex visibili et invisibili natura condidit hominem, ex terra quidem corpus plasmans, animam autem rationalem et intelligibilem per familiarem et propriam insufflationem dans ei.’ [10] Sexto per Athanasium in Symboloa suo quem cantat Ecclesia, ubi sic una secum sancta confitetur Ecclesia: ‘Perfectus Deus, perfectus homo, ex anima rationali et humana carne subsistens,’ et sequitur: ‘Nam sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo, ita Deus et homo unus est Christus.’ [11] Septimo induco dominum nostrum Ihesum Christum dicentem Matthaei 10:b ‘Nolite timere eos qui occidunt corpus, animam autem non possunt occidere, sed potius eum timete qui potest animam et corpus perdere in gehennam.’ Et iterum:c ‘Nonne anima plus est quam corpus.’ S 177va
[12] Apparet ergo quod necessario, si volumus | quod corpus est pars hominis, habemus considerare in homine aliquam formam aliam ab anima rationali; aliter enim corpus esset totus homo, non pars, nec per consequens anima esset pars, cum poneret in numerum cum corpore. [13] Secundo arguo principaliter sic: in homine est aliqua forma substantialis essentialiter extensa et aliqua forma substantialis non-extensa essentialiter; ergo in homine sunt duae formae substantiales. Consequentia est de se manifesta, sed antecedens probo quantum ad ambas partes. Quod scilicet in homine sit forma substantialis non-extensa patet de anima rationali, quae, cum sit tota in qualibet parte corporis, necessario est inextensa – et hoc concedunt omnes. Secundum, quod sit aliqua extensa, probatur, quia ad sensum videmus corpus humanum esse extensum. Tunc arguo: illud quod est primo susceptivum extensionis, quae est quantitas, vel est materia prima vel aliquod compositum. Non materia prima, quia sic in materia prima prius reciperentur accidentia, puta
insufflationem] sufflationem K sexto per athanasium] item athanasius SW quem … sic] et SW sancta] facta K septimo … dicentem] item matthaei 10 salvator dicit SW iterum] sequitur K necessario] necesse est K volumus] concedere add. SW considerare] concedere SW formam aliam inv. SW homo] et add. SW cum1] non add. SW sic] sicut K essentialiter … substantialis om. per hom. SW probo] probatur SW cum] tam K inextensa] et extensa K secundum] secundo SW primo] primum S; om. W est2 om. K aliquod om. K non] quidem ex add. K prima2 om. SW reciperentur] recipientur K; reciperetur S a Symbolum
‘quicunque,’ in: Denzinger—Schönmetzer, Enchiridion symbolorum, no. 40.
b Mt 10.28 c Mt 6.25
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extensio, quantitas, et rarefactio, quam forma substantialis, quod est contra omnem rationem et contra totam philosophiam. Si aliquod compositum ex materia et ex forma substantiali, tunc ista forma vel est anima rationalis vel aliqua alia. Non anima, quia | tunc essentialiter esset extensa. Nihil enim est dictum | quod anima sit ratio extensiva nisi quod ratio animae est habere partem extra partem. Si alia, habetur propositum. [14] Tertio arguitur sic: in homine est aliqua forma dans esse corporeum et aliqua non dans esse corporeum; ergo in homine sunt duae formae. Antecedens patet quantum ad primam partem, quia homo est corpus de genere substantiae, materia autem non dat esse corporeum, sed recipit. Quod autem sit aliqua forma in homine non dans esse corporeum probatur sic: omnis forma dans esse corporeum est corpus vel corporeitas. Anima rationalis non est corpus nec corporeitas. Ergo anima rationalis non dat esse corporeum. Maior est Augustini, VII De trinitate, capitulo 1, ubi dicit: ‘Sicut se habet potentia ad posse, iustitia ad iustum esse, sic se habet essentia ad esse’; ergo eodem modo corporeitas ad corporeum esse seu ad corpus esse. Sed illud quod est iustum est iustum per aliquid quod est formaliter iustitia, et sic de aliis. Ergo illud quod est corporeum est corporeum per aliquid quod est formaliter corporeitas. Quod autem anima non sit corpus nec corporeitas patet, quia est spiritus a corpore separabilis. [15: -4] Contra istam conclusionem arguitur tripliciter. Primo sic contra primam rationem: quod est forma corporis est pars corporis, cum forma sit pars compositi. Sed anima est forma corporis, ut probatum est supra per dominum Clementem et per dominum Iohannem. Ergo anima rationalis est pars corporis. Hoc est falsum, ergo etc. [16: -13] Contra secundam rationem arguitur sic: omnis forma rei extensae est extensa per se vel per accidens. Sed anima est forma rei extensae, subiectum enim animae est extensum. Ergo anima est extensa per se vel per accidens.
forma om. K omnem om. K sit] gh-it K habere] habetur S primam partem inv. SW autem] etiam SW anima1 … corporeitas om. per hom. SW sicut] sic S; sic add. W ad1] a K sic] sicut S essentia] esse K – corporeum … ad om. per hom. SW est] erit SW; corporeum erit add. W quia] quod K – separabilis] separabili SW – cum … corporis om. per hom. SW forma2] est pars add. K supra om. K per dominum om. SW pars] forma W hoc … etc. om. SW etc.] contra K forma] formae SW
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[17: -14] Contra tertiam rationem arguitur sic: ‘frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora.’ Sed per ultimam formam quae est in homine potest fieri quicquid posset per plures, si ponerentur. Ergo frustra ponerentur plures. Minor probatur, quia in formis ordinatis forma perfectior continet gradum imperfectioris. Sed anima intellectiva est perfectissima in ordine formarum. Ergo continet gradus omnium aliarum. K 126ra
[18: -15] Ad ista dico per ordinem. Ad primum, quod formam esse alicuius potest | esse dupliciter vel intelligi dupliciter, uno modo quod sit forma eius tamquam subiecti, alio modo tamquam constituti. Primo modo est forma sicut informans rei informatae. Secundo modo talis forma se habet ad illud cuius est forma ut constituens ad constitutum. Forma etiam est forma materiae ut informatae, non ut constitutae, quia materia non constituitur in esse materiali per formam. Corporeitas enim est forma corporis ut constituti, non ut informati. Anima autem rationalis est forma hominis [non] constituti, non ut informati, sed est forma corporis non ut constituti sed ut informati. Aliter enim corpus esset totus homo constitutus ex anima et materia prima vel ex subiecto animae, et ita corpus non esset pars. Et istum intellectum habuit dominus Clemens in Concilio Viennensi. [19: -16] Ad secundum, cum dicitur quod ‘omnis forma rei extensae est extensa per se vel per accidens,’ per istam regulam omne quod recipitur in aliquo recipitur per modum recipientis, non per modum rei receptae. Dicendum quod aliquando recipiens trahit ad modum suum receptum, sicut dolium trahit vinum ad formam quam habet; aliquando receptum trahit recipiens, sicut si lapis poneretur in aqua traheret aquam ad formam suam; aliquando neutrum trahit aliud, quando sic habent modos oppositos quod neutrum potest trahere aliud, sicut est in pro-
tertiam] secundam K ultimam] ultimatam SW potest] possunt SW – ergo frustra ponerentur om. per hom. SW minor probatur inv. SW gradus omnium] omnium gradum et K ista] alia K primum] primam K esse dupliciter vel om. SW quod sit forma iter. K tamquam2] totius add. SW sicut] sic de S talis] talia K forma ut] sicut K etiam] enim SW ut1] non SW constitutae] constituente SW formam] et forma est forma compositi ut constituti
per formam et materiam, quia materia non constituitur in esse materiali per formam add. K enim] autem K constituti … corporis non om. per hom. K – corpus … constitutus] esset corpus totum constitutum K in] cum SW aliquo] alio SW recipientis … modum2 om. per hom. SW aliquando om. K 128 quam] quod K – poneretur … suam] ponatur in aqua trahit ad formam suam aquam SW aliud] alium KW – sic … quod] scilicet habet modos oppositos et K trahere] habere K aliud] alium SW
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posito. Anima enim est intensibilis | et corpus extensibile. Item, anima est | essentialiter incorporea, corpus vero est essentialiter corporeum. Item, anima incorruptibilis, corpus corruptibile. Isti modi sic opponuntur quod unus non potest trahi ad alium. Maior ergo illius rationis fuit falsa et illa regula vulgata habet tantum veritatem in his quae possunt ad invicem trahi, unum ad modum alterius, et non aliter. [20: -17] Ad tertium, cum dicitur ‘frustra’ etc., concedo maiorem, nego tamen minorem. Et cum probatur, quia ‘forma perfectior continet gradum imperfectioris,’ | dico quod quaedam sunt formae ordinatae secundum rationem perfecti et imperfecti in eodem ordine non-repugnantes, sicut tepidum et calidum; quaedam autem sunt ordinatae habentes modos oppositos et repugnantes, sicut in proposito anima rationalis et forma corporis habent triplicem modum oppositionis, opponitur enim relative, contrarie, et privative. [21] Primo habent modum oppositionis relative, quia concernunt se relative ut susceptivum et susceptibile, ut superficies et color. Superficies enim est susceptiva et color susceptibilis; ideo impossibile est quod superficies det esse coloratum vel color esse superficiatum, quia sunt oppositi relative et repugnantes. Sic est de anima et de forma corporis, quia unum est susceptivum et reliquum susceptibile, et idcirco est incompossibilitas et repugnantia. [22] Secunda repugnantia est contrarietas, quia anima est spiritualis et simplex, et ita includit essentialiter esse incorporeum, forma autem corporis totum contrarium; quare quod dat corporeitas non potest dare anima rationalis. Si autem obiciatur quod habitus et privatio sunt incompossibilia in eodem, et tamen ego pono quod corpus et anima sunt simul, dicendum quod impossibile hesti in eodem susceptivo primo recipi
intensibilis] intensa SW corpus] tinus* K anima2] autem K anima] est add. SW incorruptibilis] incorporalis KW corpus] vero add. W corruptibile] corporale codd. non om. K regula] ratio SW habet tantum inv. SW – ad invicem trahi] trahi ad invicem SW et om. SW tertium] aliud SW etc.] contra K – nego tamen] et nego SW et … quia] ad probationem cum dicitur quod SW gradum] graduum K imperfectioris] imperfectionis codd. ordinatae] inordinatae K – relative contrarie inv. W modum oppositionis om. SW se om. K color] susceptiva add. K est om. K det] debet K esse2 om. SW oppositi] opposita SW incompossibilitas] impossibilitas K secunda] contra K est contrarietas] contrarietatis est SW – contrarium … rationalis om. W anima rationalis] alia anima rationis nec modo K obiciatur quod] obicitur quia SW quod … sunt] corpus et animam SW recipi] recepi K; suscipi SW
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habitum et privationem, sed non in eodem primo est possibile, sicut materia prima est susceptiva corporis primo, et ita impossibile est quod recipiat primo incorporeitatem. Impossibile enim est quod forma fundans incorporeitatem recipiatur immediate in ea. Sed susceptivum proprium animae est compositum ex materia et forma. Unde possibile est formam recipi in aliquo quae formaliter includit privationem subiecti sui. Exemplum de lacte: dulcedo enim lactis est invisibilis, et tamen suscipitur in subiecto visibili, scilicet in lacte. In nullo autem potest recipi habitus quod includit privationem. [23] Tertia incompossibilitas est quia anima est per naturam incorruptibilis, omnis autem corporeitas elementaris est per naturam corruptibilis; ista sunt repugnantia; quare non possunt concurrere.
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hSecunda conclusio: in omni animali sunt duae formae substantialesi
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[24] Secunda conclusio principalis, scilicet quod in omni animali sunt duae formae substantiales, probatur, quia in omni animali est forma substantialis manens post mortem animalis | et alia quae non manet post mortem animalis; ergo in omni animali sunt duae formae substantiales. Consequentia tenet, quia impossibile est idem manere et non manere. Quod autem sit aliqua forma quae manet post mortem animalis probo, quia ponatur quod moriatur equus; tunc illa forma quam videmus post mortem equi vel est ista quae praefuit, et sic habeo propositum. Vel est noviter introducta; sed hoc est impossibile, quia vel esset introducta ab agente corrumpente, vel ab aliquo alio, vel a nullo. Ultimum non, quia non est possibile quod forma sit introducta et quod a nullo sit introducta. [25] Nec ab alio, probo, quia in omni transmutatione in qua concurrit generatio et corruptio est aliquod agens corrumpens et generans, quia translatio a termino in terminum est ab uno transmutare. | Sed haec est
non in] in vero K primo om. SW corporis primo] corporeitas prima K est2 om. K incorporeitatem] corporeitatem K proprium] proximum SW est compositum] conceptum K formaliter] forma K lacte] et add. SW recipi om. SW – incorruptibilis] incorporalis SW corruptibilis] corporalis S; corporis W secunda] tertia K scilicet] est K animali] aliter K animalis] animalia K manet] manent K omni om. K duae om. K quia] quod K idem] eidem K sit … manet] sint aliqua quae manent K animalis om. K praefuit] praefuerat K sed … introducta2 om. per hom. SW ab om. SW 176 aliquod] aliud SW et2] alia add. K; aliud add. SW quia] et K translatio] transmutatio SW transmutare] transmute K est2 om. K
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transmutatio a forma vivi ad mortem. Ergo hoc est agens. Ergo non potest dici quod ab alio agente. [26] Item, impossibile est unam materiam quae est in diversis regionibus sub diversis constellationibus recipere eandem formam. Sed quocumque tempore anni sub quacumque constellatione in quacumque regione, semper sequitur post corruptionem eadem forma. Ergo etc. [27] Nec ab eodem agente. Ponatur enim quod funis in collo equi interficiat equum; funis non generat equum. Probatio: quia omne quod fit tale in actu ex tali in potentia fit per aliquid quod est actu tale virtualiter vel formaliter, ut dicitur IX Metaphysicae.a Sed funis non est tale cadaver formaliter nec virtualiter, cum non habeat carnes, nec nervos, nec ossa in esse formali vel virtuali. Ergo etc.
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[28] Secundo arguo sic: in animali est aliqua forma quae est in unica parte et aliqua quae est in toto animali; ergo in animali sunt duae formae. Consequentia tenet, quia nulla forma potest esse in toto animali et non esse in toto animali. Probo antecedens, quia in omni parte viva est anima vivens et tribuens vitam. Sed quaelibet pars animalis est viva. Ergo in qualibet parte est vita, quae est quaedam forma substantialis, et sic patet prima pars antecedentis. Secunda pars, scilicet quod est aliqua forma quae non est in qualibet | parte animalis, probatur. Accipio enim formam ossis, carnis, et cerebri; probo ergo quod forma ossis sit forma substantialis, quae non est in carne. Secundum enim Philosophum, I De generatione,b motus augmenti | et nutritionis est eadem mutatio, sed differunt, quia in quantum terminatur ad substantiam est nutritio, in quantum vero terminatur ad quantitatem, seu in quantum auget, vocatur augmentum. Ergo primo per nutritionem dignoscitur forma substantialis. Tunc
vivi] in vi K est] vivum SW materiam] necessariam K post] prius K; potius W eadem forma] eandem formam K ergo] quare SW ponatur] ponitur SW – funis … equum1 om. per hom. SW fit om. SW funis] finis K nec2 om. SW nec3] et SW vel] et SW ergo etc. om. SW secundo] tertio K arguo] arguitur SW – unica parte inv. K quae om. K tenet] quod add. K animali om. SW vivens et om. SW vita] una SW qualibet parte animalis] quolibet animali K cerebri] terivi* K probo] probatur SW philosophum om. K nutritionis] nutrimenti K – differunt] differenter S vero] autem SW seu in] sed K primo om. K nutritionem] mutationem K
Metaphysica IX.8, 1049b24–27, translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka, 188265–267. De generatione et corruptione I.5, 322a17–34, Translatio vetus, ed. J. Judycka, Leiden 1986 (Aristoteles latinus, 9/1), 325–23. a Aristoteles,
b Aristoteles,
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arguo: omnis forma substantialis amiscibilis per fluxum et refluxum est alia a forma quae non est amiscibilis per fluxum et refluxum. Sed forma carnis est amiscibilis, forma vero ossis non. Ergo est alia ab illa. [29] Item, I De anima:a ‘accidentia maximam partem conferunt ad cognoscendum quod quid est’; ergo per formas accidentales probamus differentias formarum substantialium. Sed per multa accidentia videmus differentiam inter formam carnis et formam ossis. Ergo etc. [30] Item, in omni masculo est forma substantialis quae non est eiusdem speciei cum forma substantiali femellae et aliqua eiusdem speciei; ergo plures. Consequentia tenet ex se. Antecedens probatur, primo quod est aliqua forma eiusdem speciei, quia masculus et femella non diversificant speciem, IX Metaphysicae.b Quod aliqua forma sit in masculo quae non est eiusdem speciei cum forma femellae patet, quia in masculo sunt formae et partes aliquae quae non sunt in femella. Ergo formae substantiales illorum membrorum et partium differunt specie. Ergo sunt duae formae substantiales. [31: -24] Contra dicta tria arguitur. Primo contra primam rationem, quia, si anima equi haberet subiectum compositum ex materia et forma, esset separabilis sicut anima hominis; hoc est falsum; ergo etc. Probatur consequentia, quia, si subiectum esset separabile, ergo et forma. Sed subiectum est separabile, per te, quia ponis eandem formam in vivo et in mortuo. Igitur etc. [32: -28] Contra secundam rationem, quia, si in animali sit aliqua forma substantialis quae sit in qualibet parte animalis, ergo illa erit inextensa, quod est inconveniens, quia nulla forma inextensa est in animali.
forma om. SW fluxum] influxum K – est … refluxum om. per hom. K vero om. K accidentia … conferunt] accorh-ia mix’am partem consumant K quod quid] quicquid K; quod quia W formas accidentales] formam accidentalem K – differentiam] differentiarum K formam1 om. K substantiali om. SW ix] ex 7 K aliqua forma sit] autem sit aliqua forma SW substantiales] eorum vel add. K differunt] dicuntur SW ergo] quae K arguitur] obicitur SW contra2] in K sicut] sic K etc.] et illud SW esset] est SW ergo om. SW sed] secundum SW separabile] separabilis SW in2 om. K qualibet] aliqua K a Aristoteles, De anima I.1, 402b21–22 (AA 6: 7). b Aristoteles, Metaphysica X.9, 1058a29–32,
translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka, 215478–481.
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[33: -30] Contra tertiam, quaero utrum anima masculi et femellae differant sicut corpora, sic scilicet quod, sicut corpus masculi non potest esse corpus femellae nec econverso, sic anima masculi | non posset informare corpus femellae nec econverso. Et videtur quod sic differant, quia animositates animalium sequuntur corpora. Sed in masculo et femella sunt diversae animositates. Ergo et diversae animae. [34: -31] Ad ista respondeo. Ad primum, dico quod anima equi non est separabilis a corpore. Pro cuius evidentia est sciendum quod triplex est habitudo animae | ad suum susceptivum. Prima est perficere et informare, et ista est communis omni formae, naturali et non-naturali, separabili et non-separabili. Secunda est inclinari ad corpus, et istud est commune omni formae naturali, separabili vel non. Tertia est dependentia essentialis a subiecto, et ista est communis omni formae non-separabili. Forma autem hominis, licet informet corpus et naturaliter inclinetur ad corpus, non tamen dependet essentialiter a corpore. Ideo non potest separari, licet possit corrumpi. [35: -32] Ad secundum, dico quod formarum quae sunt in corpore est triplex differentia. Quaedam enim sunt in toto et ex consequenti in qualibet parte, et in isto ordine est anima rationalis, et causa huius est impartibilitas. Quaedam vero est forma quae est tota in toto et in qualibet parte totius, sed non tota in qualibet parte, sicut forma equi non est tota in qualibet parte, licet sit in ‘toto’ categorematice sumpto et accepto, non syncategorematice accepto. Quaedam autem est forma quae non est in toto nec in qualibet parte totius, sicut est forma partis, puta ossis, carnis, et cerebri. Non ergo sequitur quod, si in animali est aliqua forma quae sit in qualibet parte, quod ex hoc sit extensa, nisi esset tota in qualibet parte, sicut est anima rationalis. [36: -33] Ad tertium, possem dicere sine praeiudicio melioris sententiae quod aliter est sentiendum de anima brutorum et aliter de anima
scilicet quod sicut] quod sit K – potest … non om. per hom. K sequuntur] non add. K et om. K ista respondeo ad om. (per hom.?) SW est2 om. K et2] vel SW et1] vel SW secunda] tertia K naturali om. SW est om. SW omni om. K dependet essentialiter inv. SW possit] posset K – triplex] duplex W sunt] primo add. SW isto] toto SW ordine] corpore W – impartibilitas] partibilitas SW non est tota] quae non est SW parte] equi add. SW sumpto et om. SW accepto om. SW – carnis et] vel carnis vel SW animali] non add. SW quod … parte2 om. per hom. SW nisi] ubi K possem dicere] dubium posset dici SW – sententiae om. SW aliter2 om. SW
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rationali. Anima enim bruti, puta asini, trahit condicionem et dispositionem ex eo quod educitur de potentia materiae sic dispositae. Quare anima masculi habet aliam dispositionem quam femellae, quia anima femellae non posset informare corpus masculi nec econverso. De anima vero viri et mulieris, dico quod mutuo possunt informare – anima viri, corpus mulieris, et econverso – quia anima viri et mulieris sunt eiusdem speciei. Non enim educuntur de potentia materiae, quare nec trahunt talem vel talem dispositionem. Prius enim sunt in se quam in corpore, quare ex natura corporis non trahunt diversitatem, | nisi diceretur quod Deus in praescientia haberet viriles et femellas animas, et hoc nihil est quia non nubent neque nubentur. |
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[37: -33] Ad illud vero quod dicitur, scilicet quod animositas sequitur animam, dico quod immo, potest sequi complexionem corporis. hTertia conclusio: in omni corpore animato sunt duae formae substantialesi
[38] Tertiam conclusionem, scilicet quod in omni corpore animato sunt duae formae substantiales, probo sic: in omni corpore animato est corpus habens vitam in potentia; ergo in omni animato sunt duae formae substantiales. Antecedens patet II De anima,a ubi Philosophus definit animam sic: ‘Anima est actus corporis organici physici potentia vitam habentis,’ et est definitio quae convenit omni animae. Unde Philosophus assignat plantis organa, scilicet radices similes ori, etc. Consequentia probatur, quia habere vitam in potentia contingit dupliciter. Uno modo in potentia excludente actum, verbi gratia carnes putrefactae et semen dicuntur habere potentiam vitae potentia excludente actum, quia sunt in potentia ut recipiant formam vitae. Subiectum autem vitae habet vitam in
bruti] brutorum SW dispositae] disponente K anima] s exp. S; scilicet add. W aliam dispositionem inv. SW quia] quare SW dico quod mutuo] quod dico quod immo W informare] ormari S; informari W enim om. K trahunt] contrahunt K neque] nec W vero om. SW tertiam] contra SW scilicet om. SW sunt] sint SW – sunt … animato om. per hom. K ii] 3 K – animam sic inv. W organici physici inv. W potentia] potentiam K etc.] contra K consequentia probatur] probare consequentiam K contingit] configit K – in potentia om. K – verbi … actum om. per hom. W putrefactae] putrefacere K recipiant] recipiat K a Aristoteles, De anima II.1, 412a19–22, 27–28, b5–6 (AA 6: 41).
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potentia quae non abicit nec excludit actum vitae, quia tale habet potentiam ut sit subiectum vitae. Tunc probo consequentiam, quia corpus cuius anima est actus | vel habet vitam pro parte essentiali vel non. Si non, ergo habet aliam formam essentialem, quod est propositum nostrum. Si sic, contra: quia nullum essentialiter vivum est vivum in potentia, sed in actu essentiali. Sed corpus est habens vitam in potentia, ut dicebat primum antecedens. Relinquitur ergo quod corpus habeat aliquam aliam formam praecedentem formam vitae. [39] Et confirmatur, quia Aristoteles definit animam per subiectum animae, non per totum constitutum, quia comparat corpus et animam sicut cuprum et formam cupri, et propter hoc dicit quod corpus sit quasi materia, anima autem quasi species. Sed cuprum et forma cupri sunt duae res. Ergo anima et corpus sunt duae res. [40] Contra tertiam conclusionem arguitur ex triplici via. Prima via sumitur ex differentia quae accipitur inter formam substantialem et accidentalem, quae est quadruplex. Prima, quia forma substantialis dat esse simpliciter, accidentalis vero secundum quid. Secunda differentia, quia subiectum formae substantialis est ens simpliciter, subiectum vero accidentalis est ens secundum quid. Tertia differentia, quia acquisitio formae substantialis est generatio simpliciter, acquisitio vero formae accidentalis est generatio secundum quid. Quarta differentia est quod ex subiecto et ex forma substantiali fit per se et simpliciter unum, ex subiecto vero formae accidentalis et ex ipsa fit unum per accidens et secundum quid.
K 127va
[41] Ex prima differentia sic arguitur: nulla forma dans esse simpliciter praesupponit in illo cui dat esse simpliciter esse. Sed anima, cum sit forma substantialis, | dat corpori esse simpliciter. Ergo non praesupponit in corpore esse simpliciter. Ergo, si praesupponeret in corpore cui dat esse aliquam aliam formam substantialem, praesupponeret esse simpliciter, quia illa forma, cum esset forma substantialis, daret esse simpliciter.
excludit] includit K ut sit] sive K si non om. per hom. K vivum1] vivens SW vivum2] vivens est S; om. (per hom.) W formam] substantialem add. SW et confirmatur] tunc conformatur K; et cum dicitur W aristoteles definit inv. K comparat] temperat K ergo … res om. per hom. K tertiam] istam SW accipitur] assignatur SW secunda] contra K quia] est quod SW tertia] contra K – quia … differentia om. per hom. SW ex2] materia et add. K vero] autem SW et2 om. K – simpliciter praesupponit] praesupponitur W in illo] in ille S; ille W esse2 om. SW – in corpore om. W ergo si inv. SW in corpore om. SW forma2 om. SW
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Ergo anima adveniens corpori non praesupponit aliquam aliam formam substantialem in esse corpori. [42] Ex secunda differentia arguitur sic: quod est ens in actu simpliciter non est in potentia ad esse simpliciter. Sed subiectum formae substantialis est in potentia ad esse simpliciter ex secunda differentia. Ergo non est ens in actu simpliciter, et sic non habet formam aliam substantialem a forma animae.
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[43] Ex tertia differentia arguitur sic: subiectum generationis simpliciter est non-ens, V Physicorum.a Sed corpus non est non-ens, secundum te qui ponis ipsum habere formam substantialem. Ergo non potest esse subiectum generationis simpliciter nec acquisitionis formae substantialis, puta animae, quia non poterit esse subiectum animae.
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[44] Ex quarta differentia, quia ex duobus existentibus in actu impossibile est fieri unum simpliciter. Sed ex anima, quae est actu, et ex corpore fit per se unum. Ergo corpus non est in actu, et sic non habet formam substantialem. [45] Secunda via sumitur ex praedicatione, quia tunc superius non praedicaretur de inferiori per se, quia sicut ista est per accidens: ‘homo albus est animal’, quia albedo dicit aliam formam a forma importata nomine praedicati, sic illa: ‘animal est corpus’ erit per accidens, cum animalitas dicat formam aliam a corporeitate. [46] Tertia via sumitur ex parte praedicationis, quia tunc sequeretur quod genus per se praedicaretur de differentia et quod una substantia esset plures substantiae. Probatio: accipio substantiam, quae dividitur in corpoream et incorpoream. Tunc in quocumque includuntur differentiae dividentes substantiam includitur substantia per se, sicut in quocumque includitur rationale vel irrationale includitur animal per se. Sed in homine est] ens add. W potentia] simpliciter add. K est1 om. K est2 om. K in om. SW formam aliam inv. W non-ens1] ens SW non-ens2] ens SW esse] habere K quia] qua S; quae W poterit] ponit K ex1] item ex SW quia] sicut K existentibus in actu] actu existentibus SW est fieri om. S; fieri W actu] actus SW per se unum] unum per te K in om. SW se] te K dicat formam aliam] praedicat aliam formam K sumitur] etiam add. S esset] essent K probatio] probo K et incorpoream om. per hom. K; et in incorpoream W a Aristoteles, Physica V.1, 225a16–17, Translatio vaticana, ed. A. Mansion, Brugge 1957 (Aris-
toteles latinus, 7/2), 1956–7: ‘que vero ex non esse simpliciter in substantiam est generatio simpliciter est’ (AA 2: 152).
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includitur corporeum ratione corporis et incorporeum ratione animae. Ergo in homine includitur bis substantia, et per consequens est homo bis substantia, et ita etiam sequitur quod genus praedicatur de differentia. W 75vb S 178va K 127vb
[47: -41] Ad ista per ordinem respondeo. Ad primum, dico quod prima differentia sumitur ex parte dantium esse, non ex parte recipientium. | Forma enim substantialis dat esse simpliciter, | quia dat se ipsam quae est entitas simpliciter. Sed quia accidentalis forma est entitas secundum quid, ideo dat esse secundum quid. Non igitur est differentia ex parte | suscipientium, sed ex parte datorum. Cum ergo arguitur quod ‘nulla forma dans esse simpliciter praesupponit in illo cui dat’ etc., dico quod falsum est. Quia enim ista differentia non sumitur ex parte recipientis, sed ex parte dantis, non est differentia utrum recipiens sit ens simpliciter vel non. [48: -42] Ad secundum, dico quod potentia dividitur per secundum quid et simpliciter dupliciter: uno modo fundamentaliter ex parte sui vel ex parte subiecti, alio modo obiectaliter ex parte obiecti seu termini. Semen vel sperma est in potentia animalis secundum quid et fundamentaliter, quia est in potentia remota ad recipiendum animam. Corpus autem organicum physicum, antequam recipit animam, est in potentia obiectaliter et simpliciter animal, quia est in potentia proxima ad recipiendum animam, et isto modo lapis est in potentia secundum quid homo, quia per multas transmutationes posset suscipere formam hominis. Esse autem in potentia obiectaliter simpliciter est esse in potentia ad actum simpliciter, sed esse in potentia secundum quid est esse in potentia ad esse secundum quid. Adhuc ergo, qualitercumque se habeant fundamenta, salvatur differentia obiectaliter. Nego ergo maiorem rationis. Illud enim quod est ens actu simpliciter potest esse in potentia ad recipiendum formam substantialem, quae est ens simpliciter – dato etiam quod ipsum sit terminus simpliciter, non tamen illud ad quod dicitur in potentia.
in homine om. K – per … substantia et om. per hom. SW praedicatur] dicitur K; pater W respondeo] respondetur SW forma om. SW dans] dat SW non est] ideo non SW differentia] differt W dico] dicendum SW dividitur] dicitur K dupliciter] etiam K subiecti] sibi K seu] vel SW animalis] est add. K fundamentaliter] simpliciter K animam] et add. K recipit] receperit SW animam om. SW obiectaliter] substantialiter SW proxima] propinqua SW per] semper SW suscipere] recipere SW ad esse om. SW ens om. K terminus] ens K
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[49: -43] Ad tertium, dico quod generatio dicitur secundum quid et simpliciter dupliciter. Uno modo sicut per completum et incompletum, sic quod generatio completa dicatur generatio simpliciter, sed incompleta generatio secundum quid, sicut aedificatio consummata est simpliciter aedificatio, non consummata vero aedificatio est secundum quid. Alio modo per terminos genitos, quia termini geniti sunt ens simpliciter vel secundum quid. Compositum enim ex subiecto et accidente est ens secundum quid, et ita generatio eius est ens secundum quid. Sed compositum ex forma substantiali et ex subiecto est ens per se et simpliciter, et ideo eius generatio est generatio simpliciter. Ad rationem ergo, cum dicebatur quod ‘subiectum generationis est non-ens simpliciter,’ dico quod non est illud ens simpliciter quod debet esse terminus generationis simpliciter. Sed quando subiectum generationis possit esse in se ens, licet non illud quod debet esse terminus generationis, hoc non conceditur. Quare ratio non concludit. |
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[50: -44] Ad aliud, cum dicitur quod ex corpore et anima non fiet unum, quia ex duobus actu existentibus non potest etc., verum est ubi unum illorum sit in potentia ad aliud, dato etiam quod in se sit ens actu. [51: -45] Ad aliud, dico quod tria sunt genera praedicationum. Quaedam enim sunt praedicationes per se non-essentiales, scilicet quando probatur propria passio de subiecto, ut ‘homo est risibilis’, per se quia subiectum est per se causa praedicati. Aliae sunt praedicationes essentiales et per se, scilicet quando subiectum est per se ens includens essentialiter praedicatum, ut ‘homo est animal’, ‘homo est corpus’. Quaedam sunt praedicationes essentiales non per se, scilicet quando subiectum non est ens per se sed per accidens, tamen includit essentialiter praedicatum, ut haec: ‘homo albus est animal’ vel ‘homo albus est corpus’; ista praedicatio: ‘homo albus est animal’ non est per se, licet sit essentialis, sed illa: ‘homo est animal’ est per se et essentialis. Praedicatum enim includitur in subiecto et subiectum est ens et unum per se. Sed cum dicitur ‘homo
dicitur om. SW et] est SW sicut] sit K aedificatio est inv. SW ens] oris K accidente] et add. SW ita] ideo SW sed compositum] suppositum vero SW substantiali om. K est non-ens] non est ens KW generationis] et add. K possit] potuit K non om. K aliud] illud K – fiet unum quia] fieret unum et SW existentibus non potest om. K ubi] nisi K – enim … quaedam om. per hom. K essentiales] essentialis K scilicet quando inv. SW ens om. SW tamen] cum* S essentialiter] inessentialiter SW praedicatum] praedicamentum K haec] hic W essentialis] essentialiter SW et2 om. SW
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albus est animal’, ‘homo albus’ | nec est per se ens nec per se unum, quare praedicatio non potest esse per se. [52: -46] De hoc vero quod obiciebatur, quod tunc homo esset bis substantia, non reputo inconveniens quod homo componitur ex duabus substantiis, corporali scilicet et spirituali, immo reputo necessarium. Ad intellectum, dico quod Aristoteles, III Metaphysicae,a quaerit quae sunt magis principia rei, an illa ex quibus res componitur et in quae resolvitur, vel illa quae praedicantur. Et dicit quod magis sunt principia illa ex quibus res componitur et in quae resolvitur quam illa quae praedicantur. Dico ergo quod non sequitur, ‘si genus praedicatur de anima, ergo de differentia’, quia Philosophus distinguit inter ista.
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hQuarta conclusio: in homine non sunt duae animaei
S 178vb
[53] Quartam conclusionem, scilicet quod in homine non sunt duae animae, probo, quia vel ambae animae essent in eodem susceptivo primo, vel in alio et alio susceptivo, vel sic quod anima intellectiva esset in corpore tamquam in primo susceptivo et anima hsensitiva mediante intellectivai vel sic quod anima sensitiva esset in corpore tamquam in primo susceptivo et anima intellectiva mediante sensitiva. Nullo illorum quatuor modorum est possibile. Ergo etc. Maior patet per sufficientem divisionem. Minor probatur discurrendo per singula. Primo quia ambae non possunt esse in eodem susceptivo primo, quia nullae duae formae reales, non-intentionales, absolutae, non-relatae, et eiusdem generis | propinqui non-dispositae possunt esse in eodem susceptivo primo, sicut nec duo contraria, nec alterum cum medio. Sed anima intellectiva et sensitiva sunt huiusmodi. Quare etc. Probatur minor: sunt enim ambae reales,
est2 om. SW ens.. unum] unum nec per se ens SW vero] nota K tunc] cum K esset] esse S reputo] reputatur K componitur] componatur SW duabus] duobus S scilicet] videlicet SW immo] sed K – intellectum] ultimum SW aristoteles] arguitur K quae om. K praedicantur] producuntur K illa om. K quae1] quibus SW quod om. SW si] quod K de2 om. SW quia] quod SW non sunt inv. K; non sint SW animae om. SW sic] sicut K quod] quaedam SW – intellectiva … quod anima om. per hom. SW – sensitiva … et anima om. per hom. K sensitiva] vel econverso add. SW – quatuor modorum inv. K – per sufficientem divisionem] quia per sufficientem dicerem K quia] quod SW duae formae inv. K et om. K non-dispositae] non disparatio K possunt … susceptivo om. K cum] nec K quare etc.] et quare contra K a Aristoteles,
58.205–274.
Metaphysica III.3, 998a20–999a23, translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka, 55–
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non-intentionales, absolutae, non-relatae, et eiusdem generis propinqui, quia vitales ambae. | Nec secundo modo est possibile, scilicet quod essent in alio et alio susceptivo, quia tunc homo posset mori secundum unam animam, scilicet secundum intellectivam, et manere secundum sensitivam, vel econverso, cum informarent diversas potentias et nullum inter se haberent ordinem. Nec tertio modo est possibile, quia in processu formarum substantialium ultima perfectior est quam prima. Sed sensitiva non est perfectior quam intellectiva, immo econverso. Quare sensitiva non est ultima. Item, etiam quia tunc intellectiva esset magis immersa materiae et organo quam sensitiva. Nec etiam quarto modo, quia tunc anima intellectiva posset separari sine sensitiva, quia non dependet ab ea. Item, etiam quia omnis potentia passiva est susceptiva speciei sensibilis vel sequelae speciei sensibilis. Sed anima intellectiva non est species sensibilis nec sequela speciei sensibilis. Ergo anima sensitiva non est susceptiva intellectivae. [54] Secundo arguo sic ad principale: si anima intellectiva et sensitiva essent duae animae in homine, vel anima intellectiva per se informaret corpus vel mediante sensitiva. Utrumque istorum modorum est impossibile. Ergo et illud. Primus quidem modus non est possibilis, quia tunc virtus animae intellectivae esset organica, quia omnis virtus operativa quae est perfectio materiae est cooperativa illi materiae, sicut superficies est visibilis, quia eius perfectio, scilicet color, est visibilis. Sed anima intellectiva, ut divisa contra sensitivam, non est quo corporis, quia non habet organum. Ergo etc. Nec secundus modus est possibilis, quia tunc intellectiva non esset per essentiam forma corporis, sed per sensitivam, sensitiva autem per essentiam, quod est haeresis, ut habetur Extra, De summa Trinitate, capitulo ‘Fidei catholicae’: ‘Qui deinceps asserere, defendere, seu tenere pertinaciter praesumpserit quod anima rationalis seu intellectiva non sit forma corporis humani per se et essentialiter tamquam haereticus sit censendus.’
scilicet] secundum K tunc … mori] homo tunc posset K informarent] secundum add. K substantialium] sub aliarum K est om. K quare] quia K posset om. S dependet] dependent S – etiam quia om. K passiva] partih-iva vel K est om. SW species sensibilis inv. W sic om. K intellectiva et sensitiva inv. SW utrumque] utrum S et om. K modus om. K intellectivae] intelligentiae K esset] g (!) S quia omnis inv. K perfectio] perfectior K cooperativa] quo operativum K; (q exp. S) cooperativum SW ergo etc. om. SW nec] non K quod] quam S et essentialiter om. K
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[55] Tertio arguo sic: si in homine essent duae animae, ergo et in Christo. | Consequens est inconveniens, ergo et antecedens. Consequentia patet. Sed probo quod consequens sit falsum, quia quando Christus fuit mortuus, anima sensitiva fuisset corrupta vel remansisset separata et derelicta. Sed neutrum potest dici sine praeiudicio fidei. Quod non corrupta patet, quia secundum Damascenum, Augustinum, et omnes doctores, | quod semel assumpsit, numquam dimisit. Item, in Psalmo,a ‘non dabis sanctum tuum videre corruptionem.’ Nec potest dici quod remanserit post mortem Christi separata, quia vel dimisisset eam quando descendit ad inferos, et tunc nihil intellexisset de his quae vidit sensitiva, vel dimisisset eam post se sicut carnem, quod est quasi contra Concilium. Dicit enim quod ‘descendit ad inferos’ ‘in anima,’ ut dicit ‘unam animam habet.’b Quare patet quod in homine non sunt duae animae. [56] Contra illam conclusionem arguitur tripliciter. Primo sic: anima prior non est anima posterior, nec eadem cum ipsa. Sed anima sensitiva est prior, intellectiva posterior. Ergo anima sensitiva non est anima intellectiva, nec eadem cum ipsa. Minor patet, quia embryo primo vivit vita plantae, postea vita animalis, ultimo vita intellectiva, secundum Philosophum, II De anima.c [57] Item, secundo sic: anima educta de potentia materiae non est eadem cum anima non-educta. Sed anima sensitiva est educta de potentia materiae, intellectiva non. Ergo non sunt eadem anima. Quod autem sensitiva educatur de potentia materiae patet, quia sicut est in bestiis, ita est in nobis. Quod autem anima intellectiva non educatur de potentia materiae patet, quia per creationem.
et om. SW – derelicta] derelictus K damascenum] et add. SW numquam] nun S; non W in psalmo om. K dabis] dabit SW sanctum] secundum* S tuum] suum SW videre om. K remanserit] remansit K dimisisset] duxisset SW se iter. S carnem] canem K quasi om. SW enim om. SW – ut … habet] non do* in animandum K; ut dicit in anima habet SW primo sic om. SW anima2 om. K nec … ipsa iter. S minor patet] probatur minor K vita2 om. SW secundo] tertio K non-educta] educta K; nec educta S anima2 om. SW est om. W sunt] est K anima om. SW materiae om. K est1 … est2] in (om. S) bestiis est ita et SW a Ps 15.10 b Scilicet Lateranense IV, c. 1, in: Denzinger—Schönmetzer, Enchiridion symbolorum, no. 439. c Aristoteles, De generatione animalium II, 736a35–5.
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[58] Item, homo, cum sit nobilissimum animalium, non privatur sua perfectione, quae est posse generare sibi simile, quia ad hoc potest attingere homo ad quod equus. Sed equus sine speciali creatione potest generare equum cum generali influentia. Ergo homo, dato quod non esset creatio animae intellectivae, posset generare aliquod animal, et licet non esset rationale, tamen esset animal. Et ita videtur quod in homine sint duae animae, intellectiva scilicet et sensitiva.
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[59] Item, anima separabilis et non-separabilis non sunt una anima. Sed intellectiva est separabilis, sensitiva non, cum sit organica. Ergo etc. S 179ra
K 128vb
[60: -56] Ad ista per ordinem. Ad primum, nego | minorem. Et cum probatur quod ‘embryo primo vivit vita plantae,’ dico quod illa vita non est forma embryonis, nec per modum formae, immo est vita quae est a vita matris per modum artificii. Ante enim infusionem animae, embryo continuatur matri et anima matris operatur in | embryone ad distinctionem membrorum per modum artificii. [61: -57] Ad aliud, dico quod anima sensitiva in nobis non educitur de potentia materiae, nec est simile in nobis et in brutis, quia sensitiva est ultima perfectio et ultima forma in brutis. Unde, quamvis non repugnet sensitivae in quantum sensitiva educitur de potentia materiae, forte repugnat tamen sibi in quantum est eadem cum intellectiva.
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[62: -58] Ad aliud, cum dicitur quod ‘ad hoc potest attingere homo ad quod equus,’ dico, sicut dicitur communiter, quod per operationem orbis planetarum producuntur mixta, per operationem orbis stellati vegetabilia, per operationem primi mobilis anima sensitiva. Sicut ergo planta non potest generare plantam nisi per operationem orbis stellati, nec mixtum potest generare mixtum nisi concurrente operatione orbis planetarum, nec animal potest producere animam sensitivam nisi concurrente operatione primi mobilis, sic non concurrente operatione Dei creantis homo non posset generare animal | vel aliquod sibi simile in specie.
non privatur sua] sua non privatur K ad … attingere] aliquid potest statim generare K homo] hoc K tamen] non a.c. s.l. K; cum SW ita] vel S sint] sunt K intellectiva scilicet] anima intellectiva SW – probatur om. S; dicitur W quae] quod K ante] aut K animae] intellectivae SW forma in brutis] in brutis forma K forte om. SW quod om. SW mixta om. SW potest generare plantam] possunt generare planta K animam] formam SW – operatione om. K primi om. SW sic] sicut K animal] hominem K
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[63: -59] Ad aliud de separabili et inseparabili, dico quod sensitiva in homine est separabilis, quia secundum Augustinuma anima separata trahit secum sensus. Et illa est sententia doctoris magni magistri Alexandri de Hales in secunda parte Summaeb suae, tractatu de anima hominis. hQuinta conclusio: si sola anima intellectiva esset forma hominis, non esset traductio peccati originalis in homine generato a generantei
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[64] Quinta conclusio: quod si sola intellectiva esset forma hominis, non esset traductio peccati originalis in homine generato a generante. Probatur, quia peccatum originale traducitur per propagationem vel per libidinem. Sed, posito quod in homine non sit nisi una sola forma, scilicet intellectiva, non est propagatio causa, quia tunc homo non esset propagatus. Quod probo, quia illud compositum non est propagatum cuius nulla pars habetur per propagationem, hsciliceti cuius nulla pars est terminus formalis vel intrinsecus propagationis. Sed si sola intellectiva est forma hominis et nulla alia forma est in homine, nulla pars hominis est propagata vel terminus intrinsecus propagationis, quia tunc in homine nihil esset nisi materia prima, quae est ingenita et incorruptibilis, et intellectiva, quae non est terminus intrinsecus propagationis, | sed terminus intrinsecus creationis. Nec libido potest esse causa, quia libido non inficit nisi carnem. Sed infectio carnis non est infectio hominis, quia introductione vel infusione animae intellectivae fit resolutio usque ad materiam primam, secundum quod dicunt illi qui tenent oppositam opinionem.c Quare etc.
de hales om. SW tractatu om. W intellectiva] intellectio SW in homine om. K sola om. K propagatum] propagatio K est om. SW esset] erit SW creationis] generationis K potest] posset SW quia] in add. W vel] in add. W materiam primam inv. SW opinionem] oppositionem K a (Ps.-)Augustinus, De spiritu et anima, c. 15, in: J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina, 40, Paris 1845, 779–832, 791. b Alexander de Hales, Summa theologiae II, Inq. IV, tract. 1, sect. 1, q. 3, tit. 1, cap. 2, ed. PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, Quaracchi, Firenze 1928, 404b; cf. Inq. IV, tract. 1, sect. 2, q. 3, tit. 1, cap. 3, 462b. c E.g., Thomas de Aquino, Summa contra gentiles, II, c. 89, Roma 1918 (Opera omnia, 13), 542a: ‘Quanto igitur aliqua forma est nobilior et magis distans a forma elementi, tanto oportet esse plures formas intermedias, quibus gradatim ad formam ultimam veniatur, et per consequens plures generationes medias. Et ideo in generatione animalis et hominis in quibus est forma perfectissima, sunt plurimae formae et generationes intermediae, et per consequens corruptiones, quia generatio unius est corruptio alterius. Anima igitur vegetabilis, quae primo inest, cum embryo vivit vita plantae, corrumpitur, et succedit anima perfectior, quae est nutritiva et sensitiva simul, et tunc embryo vivit vita animalis; hac autem corrupta, succedit anima rationalis ab extrinseco immissa, licet praecedentes fuerint virtute seminis.’
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[65: -1] Ad argumentum principale, cum dicitur ‘unius rei unicum est esse’, dico quod Aristoteles negat istam in multis passibus in philosophia, quare ego secum nego eam. In multis enim passibus et de multis rebus dicit ‘res quidem una, esse autem non unum’. Dicit enim IV Physicorum hoc de instanti, V Ethicorum dicit idem de iustitia, III Physicorum de actione et de passione.a Cum etiam dicitur quod homo est una res, verum est: composita ex multis rebus.
in2] et K enim om. K esse] essentia S dicit … physicorum] iv enim physicorum dicit SW de om. SW
Physica VI.5–6, 235b6–237b22, Translatio vetus, 2336–24210; Ethica V, 1129a3– 1138b14; Physica III.3, 202a14–b29, Translatio vetus, 1051–10813.
a Aristoteles,
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MEDICINE
A MEDICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE SOUL AS SUBSTANTIAL FORM OF THE BODY: PETER OF ABANO ON THE RECONCILIATION OF ARISTOTLE AND GALEN
Matthew Klemm*
1. Introduction Among the thirteenth-century debates concerning the nature of the soul, some of the greatest controversies involved the use of Aristotle to understand the relation of the soul to the body. Although most scholars accepted the Aristotelian terminology that the soul is the substantial form of the body, there was considerable difference of opinion about what this meant.1 In the midst of this disagreement, one objective shared by almost all scholastics was to loosen the hylomorphic bond that tightly united the body and soul in Aristotelian psychology. This goal was necessitated by the theological commitment to the soul’s immortality and by philosophical convictions that connected immateriality with free choice and intellectual activity. With any position suspect that bound the soul too closely to the body, scholars employed a variety of strategies to separate certain capacities of the soul from their material basis, including its very existence. The doctrines of the plurality of substantial forms and universal hylomorphism made use of Aristotelian concepts while underlining the soul’s independence from matter.2 Those scholars who, like Aquinas and his followers, adopted the
*
I am grateful to Craig Martin for his helpful suggestions and corrections to an earlier
draft. 1 Technically, ‘substantial form’ is not Aristotle’s terminology in the De anima, but this was the medieval understanding following the interpretation of Averroes. See H. Lagerlund, ‘Introduction: The Mind/Body Problem and Late Medieval Conceptions of the Soul,’ in: Id., (ed.), Forming the Mind. Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to the Medical Enlightenment, Dordrecht 2007 (Studies in the history of philosophy of mind, 5), 1–16. 2 On the variety of positions about the soul in the thirteenth century, see R.C. Dales, The Problem of the Rational Soul in the Thirteenth Century, Leiden, New York, Köln 1995 (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 65).
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more thoroughly Aristotelian position that soul was the body’s single form, strained to demonstrate that the soul’s immateriality and immortality were compatible with this view.3 In such an intellectual context, materialist positions had little chance of serious consideration by the theologians and philosophers whose doctrines make up typical accounts of the history of psychology in this period.4 The two most wide-spread materialist theories were those of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Galen. While considerable effort was devoted to the refutation of Alexander’s arguments for the soul’s mortality,5 less attention was paid to Galen’s doctrines, probably because as a physician he was considered less relevant to philosophical psychology.6 Few outside of the medical faculties knew Galen’s work directly, but it was widely reported that he had identified the soul with the body’s ‘complexion’ (the medieval translation of Galen’s ‘krasis’) the balance of four primary qualities of hot, cold, wet, and dry.7 Additionally, according to Averroes, Galen made the mistake of equating the immaterial intellective power with the cognitive faculty, an organic
3 See R. Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa theologiae Ia, 75–89, Cambridge 2002, 45–57, and B.C. Bazán, ‘The Human Soul: Form and Substance? Thomas Aquinas’ Critique of Eclectic Aristotelianism,’ Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, 64 (1997), 95–126. 4 O. Pluta, ‘How Matter Becomes Mind: Late-Medieval Theories of Emergence,’ in: H. Lagerlund (ed.), Forming the Mind. Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to the Medical Enlightenment, Dordrecht 2007 (Studies in the history of philosophy of mind, 5), 149–168, proposes that there were at least some more materialist positions developing after 1300 and suggests that more might be found. 5 See O. Pluta, ‘Der Alexandrismus an den Universitäten im späten Mittelalter,’ Bochumer philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter, 1 (1996), 81–109. 6 According to D. Des Chene, Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul, Ithaca (NY) 2000, 67–76, later Aristotelians interpreted the Galenic doctrine of soul as entirely opposed to Aristotle and were more serious about refuting it. 7 For example, see Avicenna, Liber de anima seu sextus de naturalibus, I.2, ed. S. Van Riet, Leuven, Leiden 1972 (Avicenna latinus, 1), 4324–25: ‘Quidam dixerunt quod anima est complexio.’ Peter of Abano quotes Avicenna’s text in differentia 17 of his Conciliator and assumes that it refers to Galen (see below). It is reported by Thomas Aquinas in his Quaestiones disputatae de anima, q. 1, ed. B.C. Bazán, Roma, Paris 1996 (Opera omnia, 24/1), 8209–223: ‘Quidam utrumque anime humane abstulerunt, dicentes animam esse armoniam, ut Empedocles, aut complexionem, ut Galienus, aut aliquid huiusmodi. Sic enim anima neque per se subsistere poterit, neque erit aliquid completum in aliqua specie vel in aliquo genere substantie, set erit forma tantum, similis aliis materialibus formis … ut probatur in II De anima; complexio autem et armonia qualitates elementares non trascendunt.’ M.R. McVaugh, ‘Moments of Inflection: The Careers of Arnau de Vilanova,’ in: P. Biller and J. Ziegler (eds.), Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge 2001 (York studies in medieval theology, 3), 47–67, notes that Arnold of Villanova also takes this to be Galen’s opinion.
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power based in the brain.8 These reports were sufficient for most scholars to dismiss Galenic psychology as incompatible with the aim of reconciling Aristotle with Christian doctrine.9 A very different perspective on the value of Galenic doctrine is provided by the eclectic naturalist Peter of Abano, who witnessed the ongoing debates about the soul during his time in Paris in the 1290s.10 There he probably began work on his largest and most influential work, the Conciliator (completed in 1310 in Padua), which aims to ‘reconcile’ differences between medical and philosophical authorities—primarily represented by Galen and Aristotle—within its largely medical structure.11 In this text and others, he exhibits unusually strong interests in philosophical matters for a physician.12 His wide-ranging interests did not, however, extend to theology. In fact, he is quite adamant about the independence of his naturalistic investigations from theological doctrines, taking his inspiration from the dictum ‘de naturalibus naturaliter’ associated with Albertus Magnus, asserting that when inquiring into natural matters, we must leave out the divine and miraculous, and seek the truth in the words of the astrologers, philosophers, and ‘medici’.13 He is often derogatory to his colleagues in theology,
8 See Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, III, comm. 6, ed. F.S. Crawford, Cambridge (MA) 1953 (Corpus commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem. Versionum latinarum 6/1), 41684–89. 9 At the end of the thirteenth century, Galen had only recently become established as the foremost medical authority in European universities. On the reception of Galen’s Tegni, the summary of his system, see P.-G. Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy. A Study of Commentaries on Galen’s Tegni (ca. 1300–1450), Napoli 1984. For Galen’s reception in the French universities, see M.R. McVaugh, ‘Niccolò da Reggio’s Translations of Galen and their Reception in France,’ Early Science and Medicine, 11 (2006), 275–301. 10 For Peter’s biography, see L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 2, New York 1923, 874–939, and E. Paschetto, Pietro d’Abano: medico e filosofo, Firenze 1984, 19– 34. For a list of editions and studies of Peter’s work, see my bibliography in P. De Leemans, and M. Goyens (eds.), Aristotle’s Problemata in Different Times and Tongues, Leuven 2006 (Mediaevalia Lovaniensia. Series 1, Studia, 39), 307–310. 11 For a description of Peter’s works see Paschetto, Pietro d’Abano, 34–48. Paschetto includes a list of surviving manuscripts of Peter’s works. 12 Peter’s philosophical interests are probably what led him to Paris from his native Italy. N.G. Siraisi, ‘Two Models of Medical Culture, Pietro d’Abano and Taddeo Alderotti,’ in: Ead., Medicine and the Italian Universities, 1250–1600, Leiden 2001 (Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 12), 79–99, also stresses Peter’s interest in philosophy compared to other physicians. 13 See Pietro d’Abano, Conciliator, diff. 9, Venezia 1565, repr. Padova 1985 (I filosofi Veneti, 1), 14vbG–H: ‘Propter tertium vero sciendum quod, cum de naturalibus differatur secundum Albertum in primo De Generatione, nihil ad nos de miraculis divinis, nec etiam legum persuasionibus magis obsequentes, quod multoties apparet, quam quae causarum causa
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referring to them as ‘theologizantes’ and ‘divini hypocriti’,14 and exhibits a general lack of caution concerning doctrines that had been condemned in 1277 as well as other potentially sensitive topics.15 No doubt this attitude contributed to his trouble in Paris with the Dominican inquisitors at St. Jacques, who accused him of teaching, along with fifty-four other errors, that the intellective soul emerges from the potency of matter, a thesis associated with Alexander and condemned in 1277.16 As the content of the above accusation suggests, the Conciliator contains significant psychological material—sometimes a surprising amount of psychological material, as it is often found in unexpected places, integrated into various physiological and anatomical discussions.17 The centrality of psychology is evident from early in this work as he explains that, ‘even if the “medicus” may not consider the soul directly, nevertheless it is his true object.’18 In what follows, I examine one important facet of Peter’s psychol-
voluntate quadam produxit antecedente, nil ad praesens de miraculis ipsius et voluntate scrutandum consequenti, cum leges vim solam obtineant persuadendi (Poli 2). Inquiratur igitur veritas quaesiti ex dictis astrologorum, philosophorum, et medicorum deinceps.’ 14 On Peter’s criticism of theologians, see M.-Th. d’Alverny, ‘Pietro d’Abano et les “Naturalistes” à l’ epoque de Dante,’ in: V. Branca and G. Padoan (eds.), Dante e la cultura veneta. Atti del Convegno di studi organizzato dalla Fondazione Giorgio Cini, in collaborazione con l’Istituto universitario di Venezia, l’Universita di Padova, il Centro scaligero di studi danteschi e i Comuni di Venezia, Padova, Verona, 30 marzo–5 aprile 1966, Firenze 1966, 207–219, and G. Federici Vescovini, ‘Peter of Abano and Astrology,’ in: P. Curry (ed.), Astrology, Science and Society: Historical Essays, Woodbridge 1987, 19–39. 15 J. Cadden discusses his naturalistic treatment of homosexuality in ‘Nothing Natural is Shameful: Vestiges of a Debate about Sex and Science in a Group of Late Medieval Manuscripts,’ Speculum, 76 (2001), 66–89, and D. Jacquart mentions a few of these items from 1277 in ‘Moses, Galen and Jacques Despars: Religious Orthodoxy as a Path to Unorthodox Medical Views,’ in: P. Biller and J. Ziegler (eds.), Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages, York 2001 (York studies in medieval theology, 3), 33–46, at 39–41. 16 Peter tells us that he was also accused of fifty-four other ‘errors,’ but this is the only one he reports. No doubt some of the others concerned astrology. See Conciliator, diff. 48, 71vbG: ‘Et ideo apparet hic erroneus intellectus Iacobitarum me persequentium tanquam posuerim animam intellectivam de potentia educi materiae, differentia 9, cum aliis mihi 54 ascriptis erroribus. A quorum manibus gratia Dei et apostolica mediante laudabiliter evasi.’ For the charges against him, besides Paschetto, Pietro d’Abano, and Thorndike, A History, see P. Marengon, ‘Per una revisione dell’interpretatione di Pietro d’Abano,’ in: Id., Il pensiero ereticale nella Marca Trevigiana e a Venezia dal 1200 al 1350, Abano Terme, 1984, 67–104. 17 This is not to suggest that psychology was an unusual topic in medicine, but that philosophical psychology was. For medical psychology around Peter’s time, see N.G. Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and his Pupils: two Generations of Italian Medical Learning, Princeton (NJ) 1981, 203–236. 18 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 5, 9vbF: ‘Et si medicus animam non consideret directe, verum eius amplius subiectum.’ Recent literature on Peter’s psychology includes: H. Lagerlund, ‘Pietro d’Abano and the Anatomy of Perception,’ in: S. Knuuttila and P. Kärkkäinen
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ogy in the Conciliator, namely his interpretation of the doctrine that the soul is the substantial form of the body. To do this, I look first at his discussion of the development of the embryo prior to the generation of the soul, before turning to Peter’s interpretation of the Galenic notion of ‘complexion’ and its relationship to substantial form. In these discussions and throughout the Conciliator, the doctrine that the soul is related to the body as form to matter is taken as a thesis that needs no formal proof. However, Peter’s contribution to the history of psychology is not in the formal definition of the soul, per se. Rather, what is notable is his emphasis on the material component of the animate body. Unlike most of his contemporaries, his focus is firmly on the matter to which the soul is united and the extent to which this matter—the anatomy and physiology of the living body—necessarily coincides with the characteristics of the soul. In the hylomorphic union of body and soul, Peter finds as much to wonder about in the material aspect of this union as the formal. The human body is uniquely suited to its divine form; it is composed of marvellous matter, shaped by celestial forms, and unlike any other body possible in the world. At the same time, he holds that direct knowledge of the soul is impossible for us. He argues that Galenic complexion theory, far from competing with Aristotle, provides us with the best evidence possible about the nature of the soul. As a whole, Peter’s reconciliation of Galen and Aristotle offers a more materialistic perspective on psychology than was typical among his contemporaries, providing insight into the introduction of physiological reasoning into late-medieval discourse on the soul. 2. Marvelous Matter According to Aristotle, soul is a substance in the sense that it is the form or actuality of ‘a natural body which potentially has life’ (De anima, II.1). He further specifies that a body of this type must be a ‘body that has organs’. The requirement that an ensouled body have an appropriate structure can
(eds.), Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, Dordrecht 2008 (Studies in the history of philosophy of mind, 6), 117–130; M. Klemm, ‘Medicine and Moral Virtue in the Exposito Problematum Aristotelis of Peter of Abano,’ Early Science and Medicine, 11 (2006), 302–335; and D.N. Hasse, ‘Pietro d’Abano’s Conciliator and the Theory of the Soul in Paris,’ in: J.A. Aertsen, K. Emery Jr. & A. Speer (eds.), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277. Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Texte, Berlin, New York 2001 (Miscellanea mediaevalia, 28), 635–653.
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be understood in a way that prioritizes matter—that is, what is most special about soul as a kind of form, is not some special ability of the soul itself, but rather it is the special kind of body to which it is united. After all, as Aristotle continues, the study of the soul must be done ‘in connection with the parts of the body’. Peter addresses this topic of what kind of body meets the requirements to ‘potentially have life’ in ‘differentia’ 48 of the Conciliator, which asks whether the sperm settled in the womb is ‘animate’. Does it have soul immediately after conception?19 In other words, because a substantial form provides a thing with its identity, the question considers the difficult issue of exactly when the new entity in the womb becomes a human being. To answer these questions, Peter offers a detailed account of the development of the embryo from the moment of conception until it has the structure and qualities to meet the material requirements.20 Ultimately the soul will be infused directly by God; however, even divine action needs suitable matter. The starting point for Peter’s response is the moment after conception when the combination of sperm and menstrual blood in the womb acquires an identity independent of the parents, even if it requires nourishment from the mother. This new organism possesses its own ‘spirits’ and is directed by its ‘informative virtue’.21 It is an independent thing with its own form, but is it a human being? The short answer is that it is not; it is only potentially so.22 At this early stage, it is like the seed of a plant in the ground. With the right conditions for development and with no interference, it will eventually become a plant and shed its old identity as a seed. Thus, the embryo, like the
19 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 71ra-72vb: ‘Whether the sperm separated [from the body] is animated or not (Utrum sperma decisum sit animatum, necne).’ For Peter’s reconciliation of the theories of conception in Galen and Aristotle with regard to seed, see R. Martorelli Vico, ‘Tra medicina e filosofia: il Conciliator di Pietro d’Abano sulla dottrina aristotelica della generazione,’ in: C. Crisciani and R. Lamb (eds.), Parva naturalia: saperi medievali, natura e vita (Atti dell’XI convegno della Società italiana per lo studio del pensiero medievale), Pisa 2004, 73–81. 20 For the first few days after conception, the entity is technically a ‘zygote’, but I will refer to it as an ‘embryo’ throughout. 21 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 71rbB: ‘Decisum autem dicitur sperma, cum separatum fuerit a coeunte, in loco convenienti susceptum, spiritibus principalium fulcitum, ab informativa virtute possessum.’ 22 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 71rbC: ‘Adhuc illud est potentia, quod in actum deducitur, nisi aliquid impediat. Tale quidem est sperma. Potentia nanque in actum naturaliter inclinatur, velut imperfectum ad perfectum. Quod si dicatur omnem potentiam in actum simpliciter duci, eo quod ociosa foret nisi perveniret in ipsum; nihil autem frustratur in rerum natura proprio fine.’
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seed, exists in a state of distant potentiality with respect to its final state, not in possession of soul, nor lacking the potential to acquire one.23 The more complete answer describes in great detail the transformation of the material from the initial mixture of the ‘vaporous foaminess’ of the mother’s blood with the heat in the sperm to the creation of the heart, liver, brain and umbilical cord, ultimately resulting in a body able to receive a soul as its new form. This pre-animate development is directed by a principle called the ‘informative virtue’, a power collected in the sperm from both the soul of the father and from celestial bodies at the moment of ejaculation, which supplies the embryo with its early form.24 Peter’s usual insistence on the principle that a form needs to be united to suitable matter leads him to wonder at the activities of this ‘divine’ virtue, which seems to defy this principle. The mixture of fluids to which it is united seems to lack appropriate instruments, yet it accomplishes so much: This divine power [the informative virtue] is nobler than all other powers of generation, because it is simple and almost immaterial. Not directly in contact with matter, it lacks a more distinct subject conveying it to give the appropriate shapes and forms of the organs. However, what it does have is spirit; for this subtle body is a conveyor of power. It also lacks an instrument, as it simple like the other powers of mixtures.25
The informative virtue does not have an ‘instrument’ in the sense of a part of the body intended for its purpose. Rather, it is united to ‘spirit’, a body so subtle that Peter says that it is barely material, which acts as an instrument of the soul.26 Like the capacities of all uniform mixtures, the powers of the spirit can be sufficiently described by the spirit’s complexion, or balance of the four primary qualities, hot, cold, wet, and dry. In this case, heat is spirit’s defining characteristic, but the elemental heat of the
23 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 71rbD: ‘Nec enim animam habet actu, ut animal perfectum, nec est privatum ea, sicut mortuum, sed eam habet in virtute, longius tamen.’ 24 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 71vbG: ‘Rector autem huius tam divini operis virtus est dicta informativa ab anima parentis decisa in actum per impulsionem coeuntis incitata.’ 25 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72raA–B: ‘Haec autem virtus divina praetacta (practica ed.) prae aliis nobilitata generationis virtutibus, cum ipsa sit simplex et immaterialis fere. Non immediate materiam attingens, indiguit subiecto magis distincto eam vehiculante ad membrorum figurationes et formas dandas convenientes. Hoc autem fuit spiritus; est enim corpus subtile vehiculum virtutis. Eguit etiam instrumento, cum sit simplex sicut aliae mistorum virtutes.’ 26 On spirits and the soul in the Middle Ages, see J.J. Bono, ‘Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life,’ Traditio, 40 (1984), 91–130.
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terrestrial sphere is not adequate for its creative activities. In addition to the elemental heat, the spirit carries the ‘continually vivifying’ celestial heat which it gathered from the heavens: The ‘instrument’ of this power is twofold. One is celestial heat, which is continually vivifying, never completely used up, making animate creatures accept some conformity with the heavens. It works to bring together and sustain these things [animate beings] especially; that is the whole power of the heavens works to constitute and sustain the being of generated substances. This is the more worthy of the instruments … There is another secondary instrument, namely elemental heat.27
With this extraordinary complexion, the informative virtue is able to properly organize substances. As wonderful as this virtue is, even it needs appropriate material—sperm is the only material body with the potential to receive this celestial form.28 The informative virtue immediately goes to work on the material it finds in the womb, acting also as a nutritive soul to direct the growth of the organism: The matter in which the informative virtue operates with these two powers [two kinds of heat] is the menstrual blood, drawn from the womb in the place of generation, which receives the due forms of the organs, and [the informative virtue] cares for it with nutrition and growth.29
To impose the proper structure on this mass of blood and semen, the informative power and its heat have four immediate tasks, presented in vivid detail by Peter. The first is ‘to dissolve and extend the wetness of the semen with the power of its heat, so that it may become a receptacle of forms’. Next, is ‘to strike and forcefully beat’ throughout the whole humid mass, so that ‘many apertures and spaces are created, so that the heart and arteries may be constituted’. Third, the informative power pauses to ‘inform’ the parts of the body with their distinct identities and functions ‘because 27 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72raB: ‘Huius autem virtutis duplex existit instrumentum. Unum quidem est calidum coeleste, quod est vivificativum continue, nunquam vero peremptivum, faciens animata ad aliquam caeli conformitatem accedere. Agit enim ad consistentiam et continentiam eorum maxime, ceu omnis virtus coelestis facit constitui et in esse contineri substantias generatas. Et id dignius est instrumentorum … Est etiam ipsi aliud instrumentum secundarium, scilicit calidum elementare.’ 28 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72ra–rbD: ‘In spermate est substantia prima potens recipere hanc virtutem, puta vitalem, et spiritus primus deferens hunc calorem est causa omnium partium spermatis, hunc autem dico coelestem.’ 29 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72raC: ‘Materia vero, in qua virtus informativa operatur his instrumentis, sanguis est menstruus attractus a matrice in generationis locum, qui formas recipit membrorum debitas et ea demum nutricatione cum augmento custodit.’
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this is the function of spirit’. Finally, the spirit ‘separates its own paths [nerves], from more humid paths [arteries and veins]’ used by the blood and grosser fluids, because the spirit ‘needs to irradiate quickly through the whole body, illuminating its home like a candle’.30 After these four steps, we are close to having an organic body suited to becoming endowed with a substantial form. At this point, the earlier powers in the informative virtue and the menstrual blood act together with the heat in the newly created heart to produce their own ‘flowing spirits’, which ‘are not the cause of the formation of the heart, but rather are formed by it’.31 This new flowing spirit ‘confers vital power through the whole body and gives it the actual potential for living’.32 In other words, once the embryo has the organs to produce its own spirits, it has finally developed to the point that it is a natural body which potentially has life. Once this state of development is reached, the informative virtue is corrupted and the body receives its single new form: the intellective soul, which takes on all the lower functions of the soul as well.33 The whole process takes about 35 days for males and 45 days for females.34
30 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72rbA: ‘Qui siquidem videtur quatuor actus circa principium generationis exercere. Quorum primus est dissolvere ac extendere humidum seminis virtute calidi sibi adiuncti, ut receptabile fiat formarum. Secundus est ferire et pulsare fortiter per totum humidum, quo plura causat foramina et concavitates constituuntur, ut cor et arteriae ipsius vasa constituantur. Tertius est informativam virtutem huius operis praesidem ad omnes membrorum informationes deferre; hoc namque dictum est spiritus officium esse. Quartus quoque est separare vias suas a viis humidi; non enim propter grossitiem ipsius et compactionem posset spiritus per vias illius velociter transire, cum oporteat ipsum celeriter totum corpus irradiare, ut illuminans domum velut candela.’ 31 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72rbB–C: ‘Quo peracto, vigore informativae cum aliis eius principiis ex materia menstruali, virtute prioris spiritus et calidi vehementer cordi inhaerentis, spiritus praetactus fluens generantur secundus per motum cordis et arteriarum … Sic igitur videtur iste spiritus duo facere in materia menstruali et differe a praedicto in eo, quod non est causa formationis cordis, sed potius formatur ab eo, corpore deinde iam organizato.’ 32 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72rbC: ‘Hic siquidem spiritus solum videtur virtutem vitalem deferre per corpus universum et dare illi potentiam vivendi actualem et nutriendi ampliorem.’ 33 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72rb–vaD–E: ‘Dicendum quod virtus corrumpitur informativa, cum embryonem plasmaverit, sicut et nutritiva veterascens ex patre, ut dictum prius. Una nanque esset eius permanentia, postquam eius perfecerit actum, ut apparet etiam in augmentiva … Cuius quidem igitur corruptio erit, ut dicatur, circa 35 dies in mare, in foemellis vero circa 45 (et inde differentia 49); embrya enim circa haec formantur tempora. Quidam vero dixerunt ipsam corrumpi, quando anima introducitur intellectiva, ita ut omnes embryonis operationes sint ipsius.’ 34 Somewhat similar accounts of generation can be found in Dino del Garbo and Turisanus. See Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti, 172–175.
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Peter’s explanation for why the informative virtue cannot continue to exist as a formal principle is indicative of his interpretation of hylomorphism. He notes that not everyone shares his view that it must cease to exist. Because the informative virtue directs the early development of the embryo, some other natural philosophers say that it is the same as the soul.35 Why should the same principle not continue to guide the later growth of the fetus? However, Peter argues forcefully that the informative virtue and the soul must be different forms. The informative virtue cannot be the soul because the embryo has changed to the point that it is now a different entity. This necessitates a different substantial form: the soul, the form of a body with organs, as Aristotle maintained. The informative power is simply not this kind of form—one of its essential characteristics is that it has no organs: According to Aristotle, in some sense something divine can be apprehended in a thing existing separate from matter. [Informative virtue] is like this, because it does not have (as I said earlier) some organ assigned to it as an instrument and therefore it is similar to the celestial powers. This could not be if it were to remain in the now organized body, for then it would be joined to an organ and it would simply be a natural virtue. For this reason, it is abolished when the body is formed.36
This clear distinction between the human soul and the informative virtue preserves the definition of soul as the actuality of a particular kind of organic body. At the same time, the corruption of the informative virtue also preserves the singularity of the soul as the body’s only form. Using Peter’s discussion here in ‘differentia’ 48, Bruno Nardi argues that Peter’s position on the soul is essentially identical with that of Thomas Aquinas.37 Indeed, Peter maintains the most distinctive Thomistic thesis 35 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72rbB: ‘Cum igitur videamus principia generationis materialia maxime moveri transmutando se ad debitas formas animatorum et figuras recipiendas, oportet motorem adesse. Hic autem non potest esse nisi virtus informativa. Et ideo vocatur quandoque a physicis “anima”. Sed quia huiusmodi virtus cum sit formalis et simplex per se non potens informare diversa, eguit instrumento, quod quidem diversificatum figurarum inducat diversitatem. Sic enim indiguit eam vehiculantem subiecto, quod et aliquo modo etiam rationem assumpsit instrumenti.’ 36 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72rb–vaD–E: ‘Quod ostenditur, quia ipsa, iuxta Aristotelem, est quid separabile existens a corpore in quibuscumque apprehenditur quid divinum. Hoc autem est, quia non habet (ut tactum est) membrum aliquod velut instrumentum sibi deputatum, et ideo virtutibus fuit assimilata coelestibus. Quod non esset, si corpore perduraret iam organizato. Tunc enim coniungeretur organo et virtus esset simpliciter naturalis. Propter quod aboletur, corpore formato.’ 37 B. Nardi, Saggi sull’Aristotelismo Padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI, Firenze 1958 (Studi sulla tradizione aristotelica nel Veneto, 1), 1–17 (‘La teoria dell’anima e la generazione delle forme secondo Pietro d’Abano’).
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of the unicity of substantial form in man, arguing that all previous forms are corrupted and their powers are subsumed within the new soul. Peter also reinforces his account of the corruption of the informative virtue with arguments borrowed from Aquinas, arguing that, if previous forms did not cease to exist, there would be multiple actualities in the same person and the unity of the human being would be destroyed.38 However, in the context of his entire response, his use of Aquinas is actually rather limited. For the vast majority of this mini-treatise on the animation of the embryo, Peter has only been concerned with the actions of the informative virtue, which acts as the nutritive soul in the early embryo. He barely mentions the single human soul, which is introduced at the end of the process. Only once he has completed his own account does he restate arguments that can be attributed to Thomas. ‘Some people’ say that there is first a nutritive soul and then a sensitive soul before the intellective soul supersedes them. He explains that, according to that account, the nutritive soul is corrupted and the body is reduced to prime matter for an instant before the sensitive soul comes about; in turn, the sensitive soul corrupts and the intellective soul supplies the body with its one form, containing all the powers of the two prior souls.39 Peter then supplies an abridged version of a few common Thomistic arguments in support of this theory and against the idea of the plurality of forms. For example, he explains that the apparent discontinuity involved in the momentary reduction of the embryo to prime matter can be accounted for by general principles of generation and corruption and, at the same time, that the alternative doctrine of the plurality of forms is absurd because it would entail the existence of multiple entities, rather than a unified human being.40 He concludes by noting that
Nardi, Saggi, 5–7. Cf. Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72va. Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72vaE: ‘Quidam vero dixerunt ipsam (sc. virtutem informativam MK) corrumpi quando anima introducitur intellectiva, ita ut omnes embryonis operationes sint ipsius. Quod conantur ex Aristotelis 2 De generatione animalium persuadere … Propter quod communiores dixerunt quod, existente informativa, iam adest etiam nutritiva, sicut ostensum ex Aristotele. Qua quidem recedente, et embryone usque ad materiam primam deducto, sensitiva anima priori supervenit corrupta, virtutem habens vegitandi et nutriendi. Hac denique ut priori ad materiam deducta primam propter alterationes ad hoc praecedentes anima introducitur priori abolita intellectiva, duabus potentiis praedictis et intellectiva fulcita.’ Cf. F. Amerini, Tommaso d’Aquino. Origine e fine della vita humana, Pisa 2009 (Philosophica, 58). 40 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72vaH: ‘Ad aliud dicendum, quod quia id evenit in instanti, non percipitur, cum mutatione introducitur et non motu (Physica 5). Quod et sentire apparet Aristoteles, volens (De generatione et corruptione 1) ipsam fieri, cum hoc totum transmutatur in hoc totum, quod non esset, nisi ad materiam primam perveniretur. Alioquin 38
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this theory, briefly summarized at the end of this differentia, can be found more completely elsewhere.41 All of this is a supplement to Peter’s much lengthier treatment of the material formation of the organism, but he clearly regards Aquinas’s arguments as being in basic accord with his conviction in the essential unity of body and soul and his emphasis on the bodily component of human nature. However, if Peter’s position is identical with Aquinas’s, this is not the way the Dominicans at St. Jacques (Jacobites) saw it when they accused him of materialism. If we assume that the Jacobites adhered to Thomas’s teachings (or at least some version of them), they obviously did not appreciate Peter’s use of this doctrine here. It is not difficult to imagine why. It is possible that they had a particular reading of Thomas that insisted on a specific interpretation of his doctrines. It is also probable that, as the Dominican order struggled to defend the thesis of the unicity of substantial form, they wanted to distance this thesis from its use by a physician who defended Galenic psychology and seemed to veer toward materialism. This accusation by the Jacobites reminds us that the true focus in this ‘differentia’ and elsewhere is not the soon to be introduced rational soul, but the body and the informative virtue that organizes it. It is impossible to read far into his discussion without getting the sense that Peter is far more impressed by the informative virtue than he is with the soul itself. He repeatedly interrupts his narrative of embryonic development with encomia to the divine and celestial powers borne by the informative virtue.42 Galen, he says, calls it the ‘highest art, the ruler, an intellect or mind’.43 Peter identi-
siquidem non esset generatio, verum potius alteratio, subiecto permanente. Adhuc, nisi prima corrumperetur forma, altera enti eveniret existenti in actu. Quod autem sic occurit, est accidens. Similiter et cum esse sit a forma substantiali, habenti quidem plures formas, et plura esse haberet, ut et nihil hic vere unum existeret.’ On Aquinas’s development of these arguments, see Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas, 120–130. 41 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 72vbE: ‘Nosce quoque quod plura in hac differentia collecta sparsim in aliis sunt conscripta.’ 42 The influence of the heavens on the human body is a constant theme in Peter’s work. See D. Jacquart, ‘L’ influence des astres sur le corps humain chez Pietro d’Abano,’ in: B. Ribémont (ed.), Le corps et ses énigmes au Moyen Age. Actes du colloque Orléans 15–16 mai 1992, Caen 1993 (Collection medievalia), 73–86, and G. Federici Vescovini, ‘L’antropologia naturale di Pietro d’Abano,’ Paradigmi, 45 (1997), 525–541. 43 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 71vbG: ‘Rector autem huius tam divini operis virtus est dicta informativa ab anima parentis decisa in actum per impulsionem coeuntis incitata, quam Galenus, De naturalibus secundo, appellat “summam artem”, “praesidem”, et “intellectivam” sive “mentem” (sine mente ed.).’
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fies it with the ‘intellectus vocatus’ of Aristotle’s De generatione animalium, II.3, which enters the body from without and was typically understood as the rational soul itself.44 It is such a marvelous thing because it defies the physics of the terrestrial world, organizing the embryo in a way that would otherwise not be possible. The soul actually seems to be more explicable than the informative virtue; at least the soul has an appropriate body, while the informative virtue does not. The arrival of the soul itself—which is after all the topic of this ‘differentia’—is treated almost in passing as the predictable end of the accomplishments of the informative power.45 We have to turn to ‘differentia’ 71 for a more complete account of the arrival of the soul. But even there, as Peter celebrates the gift of the soul from God, he is most attentive to the marvelous body. In a long passage, somewhat confused because it incorporates passages from so many authorities, Peter extols the body able to receive the soul: God gives man a more temperate complexion than can be found in this world ([Avicenna, Canon], Book 1, fen 1). The sense of touch indicates its most temperate nature, as does the rectitude of the body. For the elements, when they come to the mixture, are more purified and removed from filth or the stain of contrariety …46 When the mixture of the elements is more beautiful and more perfectly equal, so that nothing more subtle and beautiful can be found, as in the sperm of man, then it becomes apt to receive from the giver of forms, the most beautiful form of [all] forms, which is the human soul.47
44 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 71vbG: ‘Aristoteles autem appellat “intellectum vocatum” sive “intellectivam divinam” … Nominavit autem eam Aristoteles “intellectum vocatum” ad differentiam intellectus potentionalis et agentis pars existentium animae intellectivae, ut tertio De anima inquit.’ 45 The introduction of the soul is listed among the four tasks of the new ‘spiritus fluens’ (Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72rbD). 46 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 71, 108vaF: ‘Donavit nanque Deus homini temperatiorem complexionem quam (quae ed.) in hoc mundo sit possibilis inveniri (prima primi). Quod et eius temperatissimus indicat tactus, et eiusdem corporis rectitudo. Elementa nanque, quando ad mistionem eius perveniunt, sunt magis depurata et a sorde seu labe contrarietatis sequestrata.’ 47 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 71, 108vaG: ‘Quando mistio elementorum fuerit pulchrioris et perfectioris aequalitatis, qua nihil possit inveniri subtilius et pulchrius, sicut est sperma hominis, tunc fiet apta ad recipiendum a datore formarum formam formis pulchriorem, quae anima extat humana.’ Note that this passage does not seem to be entirely consistent with ‘differentia’ 48. Here he indicates that the soul enters when the elemental complexion is apt, but does not mention organs.
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If such passages seem to push the limits of physiological explanation for the introduction of soul, this is mitigated by the fact that the informative virtue is itself ‘divine’ and that ultimately the soul comes directly from God. However, it remains that the beautiful complexion and disposition of the body created by the informative virtue coincides with status of the soul in the strongest manner implied by hylomorphism. The soul may arrive from outside, but it is not united to the body accidentally; it occurs per se in matter.48 The relation of the informative virtue to the initial combination of blood and sperm does not seem so strong. Even if Peter’s doctrine is technically orthodox, it is not difficult to see why the Jacobites did not approve his emphasis. 3. Complexion and Substantial Form The notion of ‘complexion’ stands out as a prominent theme in the above account of the disposition and qualities suited to the introduction of the soul and complexion continues to be closely tied to the functioning and development of the animate organism in Peter’s psychology. As we saw, the only instrument available to the informative virtue is its complexion, in particular its celestial heat, and it is the particular complexions in the sperm and the embryo that make possible the reception first of the informative virtue and then of the soul. Again, the first action of the heart is to circulate its complexion through the body by means of its own spirits, an action which also signals the arrival of the soul in the embryo. Complexion also appears in another significant psychological discussion in ‘differentia’ 57 of the Conciliator, where Peter offers an exhaustive taxonomy of the soul’s powers. In a list that otherwise closely adheres to Avicenna’s faculty psychology, he makes the unusual addition of the four qualities of hot, cold, wet, and dry, as powers in their own right.49 It seems almost inevitable that theologians would find this focus on complexion suspicious. Yet, true to his task of reconciliation, Peter concludes that the theories of Aristotle and Galen are not reducible to contradictory terms, but rather represent complimentary perspectives on the soul as substantial form.
48 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 38, 59vbH: ‘Non tamen in his audio animam corpori aliquo mediante vinculo alligari, cum forma per se occurrat materiae (2 De anima et 8 Metaphysicae).’ 49 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 57, 83rb-85ra: ‘Whether the vital power is distinct (from the other powers) or not (Utrum virtus vitalis sit altera, necne).’
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Eleven questions, spanning more than sixty-seven columns in the early editions, are devoted to complexion theory in the Conciliator, reflecting its importance for Peter’s entire project. The first one, and the one of most concern here, asks ‘Whether complexion is a substance or an accident?’50 In this question, his goal is first to refute the claim that Galen had ever taught that complexion can be identified with the soul, next to determine Galen’s actual doctrine about the relation between complexion and soul and other substantial forms, and then to explain his own position. Throughout this discussion, Peter uses ‘substance’ interchangeably with ‘substantial form.’ Peter is perfectly aware of Galen’s reputation, acknowledging that ‘some modern authors claim that Galen maintained the soul to be a complexion’.51 Peter cites several examples of suspect passages from Galen, such as ‘nature, and soul, is nothing other than heat,’ from the De tremore, iectigatione, et spasmo.52 Elsewhere he says Galen speaks with less conviction saying that ‘either the complexion of the effective qualities is the soul, or the soul is altered by their complexion’.53 More frequently (and less problematically) Galen claims that ‘through following the complexions of the body, I demonstrated the virtues of the soul’.54 Taken together, Peter admits that ‘these passages from Galen appear to sound as if complexion is a substance, and even as if it is the substantial form of the human body, namely the human soul’.55 However, he argues that this appearance is deceiving; Galen never intended to formulate a doctrine of the soul as an independent entity.56 Rather, Galen’s investigation of the soul does not advance beyond a
Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 26ra-27va: ‘Utrum complexio sit substantia, necne.’ Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27raA: ‘Quidam etiam modernorum imposuerunt Galeno velle ipsum animam fore crasim.’ 52 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 26vbH: ‘Ut De tremore, iectigatione et spasmo libro: “natura et anima non est aliud praeter calorem”.’ Peter cites additional passages from Galen in the list of initial objections (26ra–rbD–A). 53 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27raA: ‘Aut crasis est anima effectivarum qualitatum, aut crasi earum alteratur.’ 54 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27raB: ‘Concessum est ab optimis medicis et philosophis et a me per unum monimentum monstratum est, quod per crases corporis sequentes demonstravi animae virtutes.’ 55 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27vbH: ‘Propter secundum vero sciendum quod sermones Galeni praetacti apparenter sonare videntur quod complexio sit substantia, et tanquam corporis forma substantialis etiam hominis, ut anima humana.’ 56 There continues to be disagreement about the extent to which Galen intended to create a doctrine of the ontology of the soul. Peter’s interpretation of Galen’s psychology 50
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discussion of the soul’s operations and powers and the effect of complexion on these, which were relatively non-controversial subjects. In fact, Peter claims that Galen ‘plainly stipulates that complexion is something other than soul, saying that the humors and, more generally, the complexion alter the acts of the soul.’57 He relates Galen’s story of a confrontation with a philosopher who was proposing ‘many opinions about the soul’. Clearly dismissive of these ‘opinions’ and perhaps the whole enterprise, Galen concludes that on matters concerning the soul, ‘I leave this to those who judge of themselves, that they know this truly’.58 If this conclusion settles the matter of whether complexion can be simply identified with the human soul, the issue was complicated by the fact that Galen often seemed to identify complexions with the substantial forms of other natural bodies, including individual organs, an apparent inconsistency. ‘It appears’, Peter says, ‘that the meaning of Galen is that complexion is the creator of the substances of the parts of an animal and that therefore it is the substance and nature of a body’.59 Further, he tells us that many of his colleagues in the medical studia accepted this interpretation of Galen and followed a similar usage.60 These scholars write that, if the
is generally in agreement with that of L. Garcia-Ballester: ‘Galen … was not interested in formulating a doctrine on the soul-body relationship. Thus in the writings conserved to us—from the earliest to the latest—he went no further than affirm that there was some connection between the soul and body, but left the answer as what kind of connection existed between them rather vague.’ See L. Garcia-Ballester, ‘Soul and Body. Disease of the Soul and Disease of the Body in Galen’s Medical Thought,’ in: P.E. Manuli and M. Vegetti (eds.), Le opere psicologiche di Galeno. Atti del terzo colloquio Galenico internazionale, Pavia 10–12 settembre 1986, Napoli 1988 (Elenchos, 13), 117–152, at 119. 57 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27raB: ‘Tertio tamen praefato videtur expresse velle complexionem aliud ab anima fore, dicens quod humores et universaliter crasis corporis alterant actus animae.’ 58 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27raB: ‘(Philosophus) plures recitat de anima opiniones, post quas ait inquirere de anima, an eius substantia sit corporea. Neque cessat, quando corpus accidit alicuius rei animalis descendere in eam. Aut est aliquid corpori continuum, quod cum corpore decidit; aut spermatis est virtus, et positio aliqua. Et (recitat) cur conveniant cum creatione corporis accidentia animae. Relinquo hoc illis, qui de se aestimant, quod id sciunt veraciter.’ 59 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 26rbB: ‘Propter primum vero sciendum, ut apparuit secundum sensum Galeni, quod complexio est factor substantiae cuiuscumque membrorum animalis. Complexio igitur est substantia corporis et natura eius.’ 60 Peter probably has the teaching of the influential Bolognese physician Taddeo Alderotti in mind with this criticism. This is exactly the same distinction and argument made by Taddeo in his Isagoge commentary in response to the question: ‘Whether complexion is the substantial form of the members’. In this question, Taddeo refers to the passages cited from Galen above as evidence that Galen thought ‘complexion is the substance of the organs’ in
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organ is understood as an ‘instrument of operation … they say complexion is the substantial form [of the organ]. For through [complexion] the organ operates and is brought into existence (esse) as an instrument; through this it is ordered towards act’.61 For physicians less willing than Peter to apply complexion to psychological theory, this interpretation was probably less fraught with potential controversy. Peter however, is eager to qualify this reading of Galen and distance himself from those who held it, calling it inconsistent and philosophically unsophisticated.62 Peter argues that the identification of complexion with the forms of the organs is also a misinterpretation of Galen stemming from a lack of firsthand knowledge of his work and poor translations of what texts were available. Where Galen seems to say that the complexions of the body’s organs are substances or substantial forms, it is because he often uses ‘substance’ in a non-technical way. He further maintains that the works in which Galen most fully clarifies the relation of complexion to substantial form have not yet been translated into Latin. These include Galen’s De utilitate partium, which was only available in abbreviated form, and the De optima compositione. Peter claims to have read the Greek texts and to have made his own translations.63 He offers a sample from the De optima compositione that he thinks will clarify Galen’s intent: Those things that exist first, are especially complexions, for they complete the proper substance of particular things, because bodies have this quality (hot, cold, dry and wet) and [bodies have their] nature on account of this [complexion]. It is in such a way that the ‘being’ (esse) of flesh, nerves, and any other [organ] is made from the four aforesaid [qualities] of complexions. In as much as they are ‘natural bodies’, I mean they are ‘complexioned’ and not ‘substances’ or ‘bodies’ simpliciter. And Galen adds: Thus, [complexions] exist in [natural bodies] secundum rationem of a substance.64
contradiction to other authorities, notably Avicenna. See Taddeo Alderotti, Expositiones in arduum aphorismorum Ippocrates volumen, Venezia 1527, 346. Taddeo does not seem to share Peter’s concern with the relationship between complexion and soul. 61 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27raD: ‘Et sic dicunt complexionem formam substantialem fore. Per eam namque operatur membrum et in esse traducitur instrumenti; per ipsam namque ita ordinatur ad actum.’ 62 Peter may have had an interest in carefully distinguishing his own much more complex (and opaque) theories from those of Taddeo. Taddeo had unambigously stated that the intellect belonged to the ‘animal’ powers and was thus material. See Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti, 210–213. 63 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27raC. 64 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27raC–D: ‘Est autem ipsa talis: “Existunt quidem primae ac maximae complexiones. Hae namque substantiam particularum complent propriam,
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Peter hopes this passage will demonstrate that Galen clearly distinguishes the concept of ‘complexion’ from substantial form. Although Galen typically avoids Aristotelian language (despite the influence of Aristotle on his thought), Peter takes Galen’s ‘substance’ (ousia) in this passage to be equivalent to (substantial) form, which is a reasonable interpretation. For both, the organ’s substance or form identifies its function.65 Just as we saw in the development of the embryo, in this passage from Galen the complexion that exists prior to the formation of an organ determines its substance, as it simultaneously organizes the matter, and then accounts for its continued ability to fulfill its function. More to the point, however closely connected substance and complexion are, they are not identical concepts. In a ‘natural body’, any union of matter and form, complexion cannot be identical solely with either aspect. In such a body, complexion exists ‘secundum substantiae rationem’: it corresponds directly with the ‘ratio’, the essential features of the substance. When we turn to Peter’s own account of the complexions of organs, we find that he draws heavily on this interpretation of Galen, simultaneously maintaining that complexion is different from substantial form while asserting their intrinsic relationship. Complexion, Peter says, can be considered either as a thing or as a ‘mode’.66 It is clearly not a substance in the sense of an independently existing ‘thing’; but as a mode—the means by which the functionality and essence of the organ is preserved—complexion can be understood improperly as substance:
quoniam hinc qualitatem habent caliditatem, frigiditatem, siccitatem et humiditatem corpora propter hoc et naturam. Est enim tale esse carni, et nervo, et aliorum unicuique hic, quod propter talem ex quatuor dictis complexionum factum est, prout sunt corpora naturalia, complexionata dico, et non substantiae simpliciter, aut corpora”. Et [Galenus] subdit: “Haec igitur ipsis secundum substantiae rationem existunt.”’ 65 On Galen’s doctrines about the soul’s operations in the organs, see R.J. Hankinson, ‘Galen’s Anatomy of the Soul,’ Phronesis, 36 (1991), 197–233. 66 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27rbA: ‘Propter tertium vero sciendum quod complexio potest dupliciter considerari: uno quidem quantum ad rem; aliter vero quantum ad modum. Siquidem primum dicendum impossibile omnino complexionem fore substantiam propter inconvenientia praetacta (differentia 13). Simpliciter eam dicendum accidens, quod est qualitas, existere, quia complexio ex elementis educitur, sive ex eorum substantiis aut qualitatibus. Cum enim in elemento sint duo, substantia et qualitas, proportionabiliter et in elementato debent duo existere. Non quidem ex substantiis elementorum consurgit complexio, quia id quod educitur ex eis, per compositionem elicitur, et talis secundum Avicennam est forma misti. Igitur ex qualitatibus educitur, quod alternatione perficitur.’
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Improperly, however, complexion is a substance. For, according to how something is maintained in its complete essence by substance, or substantial form, so too, in its own way, by complexion is an organ preserved in its essence and its operation.67
It is likely that Peter’s explanation of the exact nature of the relationship between complexion and substantial form did not completely satisfy his readers, then or now. He appears to lack the vocabulary to formulate a more precise description—indeed, it would probably have been unwise for him to offer a more unequivocal statement, given his trouble with the authorities. Instead he offers the rather imprecise formulae we have seen or other vague suggestions of the immediacy of the bond between complexion and soul;68 when it comes to the soul per se, he expresses approval of Galen’s protestations of ignorance. Whatever his explanation lacks, it is apparent that he hopes to underline the point that complexion provides the natural philosopher with the most direct access to form; as such, it is an indispensible tool for psychology. If one objects that Peter is only speaking about the complexions of individual organs here, this is belied by the examples he uses in this ‘differentia’ and his use of the concept throughout the rest of his work. We should also keep in mind his insistence that the soul must be the form of a body with suitable organs. In the living body, the soul is seated in the organs and the soul can only be present to the extent that complexion maintains the functionality and disposition of the organic body. The bond between complexion and the soul would be mitigated if Peter were to stress the existence of immaterial powers of the soul, namely the rational powers, and draw a sharp distinction between organic and inorganic powers.69 As Aquinas notes in his 67 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27rbB: ‘Si vero complexio non rem substantiae importet, verum modum: sic utcunque potest tolerari, improprie tamen, complexionem substantiam fore. Secundum enim quod per substantiam, sive formam substantialem, aliquid sustentatur in esse perfecto, ita suo modo membrum per complexionem in esse ipsius sustentatur et permanet operatio.’ The text continues: ‘Unde, quia illud a quo immediatius videtur actio provenire, manifestius est nobis, sicut instrumentum, ut complexio, quam illud a quo mediate, puta agente principali, ut substantia, cum per operationem in cognitionem alicuius perveniamus.’ 68 As he puts it at the end of this differentia, Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 17, 27vaF: ‘Quando risibilitas aufertur, aufertur homo; sed non primo, sed ablatione rationalis. Ita et complexio aufertur, secundo forma substantiali sublata, ut anima.’ ‘When the ability to laugh is gone, the human is also gone, not primarily, but because the rational capacity has been removed. In the same way, when substantial form, that is the soul, is gone, secondarily complexion is removed’. 69 Such a distinction is, of course, typical among Peter’s contemporaries, who also found the support of Aristotle in the famous passage from De anima II.1, 413a5–7.
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criticism of Galen (note 8), the concept of complexion does not transcend matter—thus the usefulness of complexion would be limited to the organic soul. Peter, however, does not do this. Instead, whenever possible he emphasizes the dependence of the rational powers on the organs. Thus, in his list of the soul’s virtues in ‘differentia’ 57, he calls the virtus rationalis a ‘perfection of the organic body.’70 Similarly, in his commentary to some questions about complexion in the Aristotelian Problemata, he explains that the intellect must have an organ in the body or it would be unaffacted by complexion, which is obviously not the case.71 The dependence of all the soul’s operations on organs, and thus complexion, is clear. 4. Conclusion Like most of his contemporaries in the arts and theology, Peter adopts the ‘Aristotelian’ terminology that the soul is a substantial form, even enlisting the support of Aquinas. His focus however, is quite different from his colleagues, betraying his medical allegiance. With his commitment to the strongest possible hylomorphic bond between body and soul, he argues that it is necessary to study the physiology and anatomy of the body to gain knowledge of the status of the soul. For this, Galenic complexion theory, with its heterodox associations, was indispensible. To make his ambitious use of complexion acceptable, Peter’s strategy is to argue that Galen has been misinterpreted and that complexion cannot be the same as the soul or any other substantial form. Meanwhile, he simultaneously grants the greatest possible importance to complexion for diagnosing the capacities and disposition of any hylomorphic compound, including the human organism. Before we regard Peter as a materialist, we should remember that he states at various places in his work that the soul is divinely created and infused into the body from without. And throughout his discourse on complexion, Peter reminds his readers that many of the soul’s powers which appear to us to be caused by qualities, are actually the work of the soul.72 There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of such statements. However, he
70 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 57, 83vbF: ‘Sic virtus rationalis, vel humana … est perfectio praetacti organici corporis.’ 71 Peter of Abano, Expositio Problematum Aristotelis, prob. 14.1, Mantova 1475, 178va–vb: ‘Et si nullus intellectus passibilis, nullum habet organum in corpore.’ 72 See for example Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 14, resp. 4, 23raC; diff. 16, resp. 1, 24vaE.
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differs from Aquinas and other ‘Aristotelians’, in that he makes no effort to provide a rational defense of the immateriality or immortality of the soul. It is likely that for him, these were issues that could neither be demonstrated or refuted, and thus remained beyond the scope of the natural philosopher. Looking at Peter’s work as a whole, his emphasis on the bond between complexion and the soul helps to justify many of his other initiatives, such as his interests in physiognomy and moral psychology.73 As a quality, he insists that complexion is mutable within a certain range.74 We can improve ourselves, physically, mentally, and morally by improving our complexion or the complexions of our organs. And from a professional perspective, the ‘medicus’, rather than the theologian or philosopher, can be the mediator of this change.
73 Peter wrote his own treatise on physiognomy, Compilatio Physionomiae (1295), the study of the association between parts of the body and psychic capacities or tendencies. On his interest in moral psychology, see Klemm, ‘Medicine and Moral Virtue.’ 74 Peter distinguishes between an innate complexion, which is stable according to many scholars, and a fluid complexion, which clearly changes. Even the most root complexion can be altered according to Peter. See Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 22, 35rbB.
FORMATIVE POWER, SOUL AND INTELLECT IN NICOLÒ LEONICENO BETWEEN THE ARABO-LATIN TRADITION AND THE RENAISSANCE OF THE GREEK COMMENTATORS
Hiro Hirai*
1. Introduction The concept of ‘plastic nature’, advanced by the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), is well known in the history of philosophy. It drew considerable attention from such great minds of the time as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). By contrast, the notion of ‘plastic force’, the germ of Cudworth’s idea, remains scarcely studied by historians. In its Latin form, the term ‘formative power’ (virtus formativa) was frequently used in embryological discussions among medieval scholastics. Its origin can be traced back to Galen (129–ca. 216). Using terms such as ‘mould’ (διαπλάττειν) and ‘moulding’ (διάπλασις) in his embryology, the Greek physician formulated the expression ‘moulding faculty’ (δύναµις διαπλαστική). For him, this faculty or force, which cannot be reduced to the qualities of the four traditional elements (fire, air, water and earth), is responsible for a series of highly complex actions in the formation of living beings.1 It also holds a key to grasping the origin of the soul of these beings, that is, the mechanism of their animation or ensoulment. Although Galen’s conception itself has not come
* I acknowledge the generous support of the Marie Curie Fellowship of European Union in the preparation of the present chapter, an earlier version of which appeared as ‘Semence, vertu formatrice et intellect agent chez Nicolò Leoniceno entre la tradition arabo-latine et la renaissance des commentateurs grecs,’ Early Science and Medicine, 12 (2007), 134–165. My thanks also go to Nancy Siraisi, Paul Bakker, Sander de Boer, Kuni Sakamoto and Clare Felton Hirai. 1 On the molding faculty, see Galen, De semine, 2.2, 2.5, ed. C.G. Kühn, Leipzig 1822, repr. Hildesheim 1964 (Opera omnia, 4), 512–651, at 611, 642 (and Ph. De Lacy, Galen: On Semen, Berlin 1992 [Corpus medicorum Graecorum, 5/3/1], 162, 196); Id., De temperamentis, 2.6, ed. C.G. Kühn, Leipzig 1821, repr. Hildesheim 1964 (Opera omnia, 1), 509–694, at 635–636 (and G. Helmreich, Galeni De temperamentis libri III, Leipzig 1904, repr. Stuttgart 1969 [Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana], 79–80); Id., De facultatibus naturalibus, 1.6, 2.3, 2.6, ed. C.G. Kühn, Leipzig 1821, repr. Hildesheim 1964 (Opera omnia, 2), 1–214, at 15, 86, 101.
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under the scrutiny of specialists, it is reasonable to say that his theory stimulated the later development of similar ideas in the Western intellectual tradition. The Galenic concept of moulding faculty was transmitted to the Latin world especially through the work of the Persian physician Avicenna (980– 1037).2 He mentioned ‘formative power’ (quwwa musawwira), principally in ˙ three chapters of his extremely successful medical summa, the Canon. These chapters deal, respectively, with the dominant natural faculties, the formation of seeds, and the generation of the foetus.3 To this list must be added the treatise On Animals, the eighth book of the natural philosophical part of Avicenna’s masterpiece, the Shif¯a. This treatise, which mainly consists of a paraphrase of Aristotle’s biological works, was translated into Latin by Michael Scot (ca. 1175–ca. 1234).4 Besides Galen and Avicenna, it is also necessary to refer to the role played by Averroes (1126–1198), the Commentator. He mentioned the formative power discussed by ‘physicians’ not only in his medical work, the Colliget (Kulliyyât), translated into Latin in 1285, but also in his philosophical writings such as the Commentary on Aristotle’s On Animals and the Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics.5 Under the authority of these writers, the Latin scholastics naturally adopted the idea of a moulding force by the name of ‘formative power’ (virtus formativa) or ‘informative power’ (virtus informativa). The distinction between these two was not always clear due to the obscure word choice
2 On Avicenna’s embryology and the Arabic tradition, see U. Weisser, Zeugung, Vererbung und pränatale Entwicklung in der Medizin des arabisch-islamischen Mittelalters, Erlangen 1983, and B. Musallam, ‘Biology and Medicine,’ in the article ‘Avicenna,’ Encyclopaedia iranica, 3 (1989), 66–110, at 94–99. 3 See respectively Avicenna, Liber canonis, 1.1.6.2, 3.20.1.3, 3.21.1.2, Venezia 1507, repr. Hildesheim 1964, 23rb-vb, 352rb-353va, 360vb-362va. 4 Avicenna, De animalibus, 9.3, 15.2, 16.1, ed. Venezia 1508, repr. Leuven 1961, 29ra-64rb, at 42rb–va, 60va, 61va. 5 See Averroes, Colliget, 2.10, Venezia 1562, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1962 (Opera omnia, suppl. 1), 22G–23M (and M.C. Vázquez de Benito and C. Álvarez Morales, Abû-l-Walîd Ibn Rusd [Averroes]: El libro de las generalidades de la medicina [Kitâb al-Kulliyyât fîl-tibb], Madrid 2003, 92–93); Id., In De animalibus, XVI.3, Venezia 1562, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1962 (Opera omnia, 6), 75B–77C; Id., In Metaphysicam, VII.31 and XII.18, Venezia 1562, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1962 (Opera omnia, 8), 180E–181L and 303D–305I. Besides Galen and Avicenna, one of the main sources of Averroes’s theoretical elaboration seems to be the discussion of Avempace (?–1139) in his Paraphrase of Aristotle’s De anima. See Avempace, Ibn Bâjja Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn As-Sâi" ch (d. 533/1139): Kitâb al-Nafs (Treatise on the Soul), transl. Muhammad Saghîr Hasan Masûmî, Karachi 1961, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1999 (Islamic Philosophy, 75), 29–42.
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 299 in the Latin translation of Avicenna’s Canon. Among the scholastics, Albert the Great (ca. 1193–1280) is known for his extensive use of the notion of ‘formative power’. He generalised this notion to apply it not only to biological issues but also to physics in general, including the formation of minerals and fossils. After Albert, frequent references to this power can be observed in scholastic discussions on the generation of natural things.6 This is the broad historical context in which the treatise entitled On Formative Power (De virtute formativa) must be integrated. This small work of six leaves in-folio was written by the emblematic figure of Ferrara’s medical humanism, Nicolò Leoniceno (1428–1524).7 It was first published in Venice in 1506 and was reedited there in 1524 with some works of Galen in Latin translation. Then it was included in Leoniceno’s collected works (Basel 1532), assuring a wider transalpine diffusion. As one of the first embryological monographs of the Renaissance, On Formative Power presents both the continuity of the medieval Arabo-Latin tradition and the new elements furnished by Renaissance humanism with a philological orientation.8 It thus stands at the crossroad of these two currents. In a previous study, I have shown that Jean Fernel (1497–1558), the very influential French physician of the Renaissance, was inspired by Leoniceno’s work to compose his own medico-philosophical masterpiece, De abditis rerum causis (Paris 1548).9 Fernel’s text, widely read until the
6 See G.M. Nardi, Problemi d’embriologia umana antica e medioevale, Firenze 1938 (Biblioteca italiana, 10); B. Nardi, Studi di filosofia medievale, Roma 1960 (Storia e letteratura, 78); R. Martorelli Vico, Medicina e filosofia: per una storia dell’embriologia medievale nel XIII e XIV secolo, Milano 2002 (Hippocratica civitas, 4); M. van der Lugt, Le ver, le démon et la vierge. Les théories médiévales de la génération extraordinaire. Une étude sur les rapports entre théologie, philosophie naturelle et médecine, Paris 2004 (L’âne d’or); and A. Takahashi, ‘Nature, Formative Power and Intellect in the Natural Philosophy of Albert the Great,’ Early Science and Medicine, 13 (2008), 451–481. 7 On Leoniceno, see J.J. Bylebyl, ‘Leoniceno, Nicòlo,’ Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 8, New York 1973, 248–250; D. Mugnai Carrara, ‘Profilo di Nicolò Leoniceno,’ Interpres, 2 (1979), 169–212; Ead., ‘Una polémica umanistico-scolastica circa l’interpretazione delle tre dottrine ordinate di Galeno,’ Annali dell’Istituto e museo di storia della scienza di Firenze, 8 (1983), 31– 57; V. Nutton, ‘The Rise of Medical Humanism: Ferrara, 1464–1555,’ Renaissance Studies, 11 (1997), 2–19. 8 On this treatise, see V. Nutton, ‘The Anatomy of the Soul in Early Renaissance Medicine,’ in: G.R. Dunstan (ed.), The Human Embryo: Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions, Exeter 1990, 136–157, esp. 138–140, 152–153. I have used the edition of Venice (1506) and that of the Opuscula (Basel 1532), 83v-93r. Reference will be given as follows: VF ed. 1506 = ed. 1532. 9 H. Hirai, ‘Alter Galenus: Jean Fernel et son interprétation platonico-chrétienne de Galien,’ Early Science and Medicine, 10 (2005), 1–35, esp. 25–26, 32–33. Cf. H. Hirai, Le concept
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mid-seventeenth century, enabled themes discussed by Leoniceno to exert a hitherto unsuspected impact on embryological speculations as well as on medical and philosophical debates related to the origin of the soul in the early modern period. The present study aims to analyse the range of Leoniceno’s discussions and to determine his sources. It will bring to light an early phase in the evolution of the concept of formative power, which was to culminate in the theory of ‘plastic nature’ at the heart of the Scientific Revolution.10 2. Galen: The Vegetative Soul and Innate Heat In his On Formative Power, Leoniceno first explains the motive for its publication. In a letter from a friend, he was asked to teach the views of Galen and Aristotle on the true nature of the formative power. On this occasion, a printer proposed him to publish his translation of Galen’s works. Leoniceno did not want to make his friend wait, so he decided to put his small work into press separately in the guise of an open letter. He warns his readers that this question contains ‘numerous and almost inexplicable ambiguities’ because Aristotle and Galen did not give a clear-cut answer on the issue. Leoniceno also admits to focusing on the opinions of Averroes and the Conciliator, Peter of Abano (1257–ca. 1315), rather than accumulating testimonies from multiple authors. In his view, these two men enjoy considerable fame among philosophers and physicians.11 After this general introduction, Leoniceno reconstructs Galen’s view. Then he examines Aristotle’s opinion by criticising Peter’s interpretation of it. After that, he provides his own inter-
de semence dans les théories de la matière à la Renaissance: de Marsile Ficin à Pierre Gassendi, Turnhout 2005 (Collection de travaux de l’ Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences, 72 [N.S., 35]), 83–103. 10 See H. Hirai, ‘The Invisible Hand of God in Seeds: Jacob Schegk’s Theory of Plastic Faculty,’ Early Science and Medicine, 12 (2007), 377–404; Id., ‘Atomes vivants, origine de l’âme et génération spontanée chez Daniel Sennert,’ Bruniana & Campanelliana, 13 (2007), 477– 495; and Id., ‘Interprétation chymique de la création et origine corpusculaire de la vie chez Athanasius Kircher,’ Annals of Science, 64 (2007), 217–234. 11 On Peter of Abano, see S. Ferrari, I tempi, la vita, le dottrine di Pietro d’Abano, Genova 1900 (Atti della R. Università di Genova, 14); B. Nardi, Saggi sull’Aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI, Firenze 1958 (Studi sulla tradizione aristotelica nel Veneto, 1), 1–74; N.G. Siraisi, Arts and Sciences at Padua: the Studium of Padua before 1350, Toronto 1973 (Studies and texts, 25); E. Paschetto, Pietro d’Abano: medico e filosofo, Firenze 1984; and L. Olivieri, Pietro d’Abano e il pensiero neolatino: filosofia, scienza e ricerca dell’Aristotele greco tra i secoli XIII e XIV, Padova 1988 (Saggi e testi, 23).
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 301 pretation. He closes the treatise by refuting Averroes. In the following four sections, I will adhere to this sequence. Leoniceno starts his examination with Galen’s view expounded in the treatise On the Formation of the Foetus, which was all but unknown to the medieval scholastics. Leoniceno was the first to use this treatise in the context of Renaissance humanism. Here he quotes at length the words of Galen, who confesses to be ignorant of the formative cause of the foetus. Indeed this passage is taken from the concluding part of On the Formation of the Foetus, which is highly important in understanding Galen’s own philosophy.12 Let us summarise Galen’s argument. Recognising the presence of supreme intelligence or force in foetal formation, Galen asks if the soul residing in the seed is responsible for this formation. According to him, the Aristotelians call this soul ‘vegetative’ and the Platonists ‘appetitive’, while the Stoics do not call it ‘soul’ at all but ‘nature’. Galen himself thinks that the seed’s inner soul is devoid of intelligence and totally ‘irrational’ (ἄλογος). Although his Platonic master taught him to identify the formative cause of the foetus as the World-Soul, he considers it almost blasphemous to imagine that dreadful beasts like scorpions are formed by the soul of the universe. All that he can accept for certain is the presence of supreme intelligence in foetal formation. The quoted passage of Galen suggests that he was not sure of the identity of the formative power. But Leoniceno argues that the Greek physician opted for the vegetative soul. Indeed, he knows that in On Semen, Galen presents this solution as Hippocrates’ idea.13 Comparing the formation of the foetus to that of plants, Galen there blames Aristotle for having explained the works of nature differently for plants and for animals. According to him, the foetus must possess above all a vegetative principle which fashions its bodily parts from the seed. Leoniceno deduces that Galen follows Hippocrates faithfully by conceiving the formative power as a ‘faculty’ (δύναµις) of the seed’s inner vegetative soul.
12 Galen, De foetuum formatione libellus, 6, ed. C.G. Kühn, Leipzig 1822, repr. Hildesheim 1964 (Opera omnia, 4), 652–702, at 700–702 (and D. Nickel, Galen: Über die Ausformung der Keimlinge, Berlin 2001 [Corpus medicorum Graecorum, 5/3/3], 104–106). See P. Moraux, ‘Galien comme philosophe: la philosophie de la nature,’ in: V. Nutton (ed.), Galen: Problems and Prospects, London 1981, 87–116, esp. 114–116; and Hirai, ‘Alter Galenus,’ 6–7. On the appetitive soul, see Plato, Republic, 4, 439D–E; 8, 550B; Timaeus, 70D; 77B. 13 Galen, De semine, 1.9–10, 542–547 (and De Lacy, Galen: On Semen, 93–99). On this work, see Hirai, ‘Alter Galenus,’ 7, n. 12.
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Besides this solution, Galen argues in his commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms that the animal’s natural heat forms, nourishes and augments its body.14 There are thus two apparently divergent ideas. Yet Leoniceno insists upon Galen’s coherence: Nobody should think that [Galen] disagrees with himself or with Hippocrates because of the [following fact]: He attributes the formation of an animal, on the one hand, to the vegetative soul which is in the seed as [is said] in the book On Semen and, on the other hand, to natural heat as [is described] in the first part of Aphorisms. For, the idea that the soul is nothing but the body’s natural heat or constitution, which is called ‘complexion’, is also a teaching of Hippocrates.15
For Leoniceno, although Galen avows to be ignorant of the soul’s substance and the formative cause of animals in On the Formation of the Foetus, he elsewhere presents either as Hippocrates’ view or as his own the idea that what forms the foetus is some ‘temperament’ (temperamentum), that is, a mixture of the four elemental qualities (hot, dry, wet and cold).16 As proof, Leoniceno calls upon a passage from Galen’s On Tremor. In this passage essential to grasping his physiological system, Galen calls ‘nature’ and ‘soul’ the natural heat of the animal. For him, this heat is not of external origin nor coming after the animal’s birth, but congenital to it.17 Here we observe the origin of the famous Galenic theory of ‘native heat’ (calor nativus) or ‘innate heat’ (calor innatus).18 So Leoniceno concludes that, if the heat given
14 Galen, Commentarius in Aphorismos Hippocratis, 1.15, ed. C.G. Kühn, Leipzig 1829, repr. Hildesheim 1965 (Opera omnia, 17-B), 345–887, at 420. On the soul as heat, see Hippocrates, On Regimen, 1.10, ed. E. Littré, Paris 1849 (Œuvres complètes, 6), 466–662, at 486. See also Hirai, ‘Alter Galenus,’ 7, n. 13. 15 VF, ed. 1506, 2v = ed. 1532, 84v: ‘Quem nemo putet ob id a seipso, aut ab Hippocrate dissentire, quod aliquando animalis formationem animae tribuit vegetali, quae in semine existit, veluti in libro De semine: aliquando calori naturali, ut in prima particula Aphorismorum. Nam hoc quoque Hippocratis est dogma, eandem rem esse animam et calorem naturalem, sive corporis temperaturam quam complexionem vocant.’ 16 On the notion of ‘temperamentum’, see Hirai, ‘Alter Galenus,’ 7, n. 14. 17 Galen, De tremore, 6, ed. C.G. Kühn, Leipzig 1824, repr. Hildesheim 1964 (Opera omnia, 7), 584–642, 616 (and D. Sider and M.R. McVaugh, ‘Galen On Tremor, Palpitation, Spasm, and Rigor: Galeni De tremore, palpitatione, convulsione, et rigore,’ Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 5th series, 1 (1979), 183–210, esp. 199–200). 18 On native heat, see E. Mendelsohn, Heat and Life: The Development of the Theory of Animal Heat, Cambridge (MA) 1964; T.S. Hall, ‘Life, Death and the Radical Moisture: A Study of Thematic Pattern in Medieval Medical Theory,’ Clio Medica, 6 (1971), 3–23; P.H. Niebyl, ‘Old Age, Fever, and the Lamp Metaphor,’ Journal of the History of Medicine, 26 (1971), 351–368; and M.R. McVaugh, ‘The humidum radicale in Thirteenth-Century Medicine,’ Traditio, 30 (1974), 259–283.
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 303 to the seed at the beginning is the soul which begets the animal, Galen agrees with Hippocrates. Thus, for him, Galen’s formative power is a faculty of the vegetative soul which is, in turn, identified with innate heat or some temperament. 3. Aristotle and Peter of Abano: Celestial Heat, the Intellect and the Soul’s Vehicle Next Leoniceno examines the opinion of Aristotle. He warns his readers that the Stagirite often deals with difficult questions in the manner of a cuttlefish blackening water to escape danger.19 Thus he proposes to seek help from the writings of Aristotle’s commentators. First Leoniceno quotes the testimony of Galen, who reports in his On Temperaments Aristotle’s doubts on the nature of the formative power. In this passage, Galen criticises those who do not recognise as the cause of animal formation the formative power which skilfully produces bodily parts in accordance with the soul. Then Galen argues that Aristotle wonders whether this power should be attributed to a more divine principle than the elemental qualities.20 But he does not indicate where Aristotle expresses this doubt. Leoniceno, in his turn, locates it at the end of the Meteorology. There Aristotle attributes the cause of the formation of homogeneous parts to active elemental qualities (hot and cold), while evoking ‘nature’ or ‘another cause’ for the organization of heterogeneous parts (organs such as head and foot), made from homogeneous parts.21 According to Leoniceno, Galen follows this distinction by establishing two kinds of generative powers in a famous passage from On the Natural Faculties: ‘mutative’ (alterativa) and ‘formative’ (formativa).22 The former is the primal altering power and acts through heat, while the latter has the supreme art and acts through the order of its Creator.23 For Leoniceno, it is evidently concerning the second type of generative power that Galen reports Aristotle’s doubt.
19 Cf. C.B. Schmitt, ‘Aristotle as a Cuttlefish: The Origin and Development of a Renaissance Image,’ Studies in the Renaissance, 12 (1965), 60–72. 20 Galen, De temperamentis, 2.6, 635–636 (and Helmreich, Galeni De temperamentis, 79). Cf. De temperamentis, 1.9, 567 (and Helmreich, Galeni De temperamentis, 36). 21 Aristotle, Meteorologicorum libri, IV.12, 390b3–15. 22 Galen, De facultatibus naturalibus, 1.6, 12 (and C. Daremberg, Œuvres anatomiques, physiologiques et médicales de Galien, 1, Paris 1854, 219–220). 23 Here Leoniceno actually follows the interpretation of Avicenna, Liber canonis, 1.1.6.2, 23va. The expression ‘through the order of its Creator’ (praecepto sui Creatoris) in the Latin
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After this explanation, Leoniceno regrets that many philosophers and physicians blindly follow the Arabs in making recourse to another passage from Aristotle to explain the formative power. This is the famous enigmatic lines from Generation of Animals, which bear a particular cosmological dimension: In every seed there is that which causes it to be fertile, that is, what is called ‘heat’. This heat is neither fire nor any such faculty but the pneuma which is enclosed in the seed and a foam-like body. Nature in this pneuma is analogous to the element of the stars. That is why fire does not generate any animal, and we find no animal taking shape in either fluids or solids under the influence of fire; whereas the heat of the sun and that of animals generate them. Not only [it is true of] the heat which resides in the seed, but also whatever other natural residue there may be, this also has in itself a vital principle. Considerations of this sort clearly show us that the heat contained in animals neither is fire nor draws its origin from fire.24
Relying on this passage, Avicenna and Averroes explained the concept of formative power and, among their Latin followers, Peter of Abano developed his particular interpretation.25 Leoniceno, in his turn, remarks that, in speaking of celestial heat, Aristotle does not express the doubt described by Galen, so he makes no allusion to the formative power here. Comparing spontaneous generation caused by celestial heat with normal generation effected by the seed’s internal heat, Leoniceno explains the nature of the latter:
translation seems to stem from a common Koranic invocation, ‘with the permission of God.’ Here Galen himself was not referring to the intervention of the Creator God. 24 Aristotle, De generatione animalium, II.3, 736b33–737a7 (my translation). Cf. P. Moraux, ‘A propos du νοῦς θύραθεν chez Aristote,’ in: Autour d’ Aristote. Recueil d’ études de philosophie ancienne et médiévale offert à Monseigneur Augustin Mansion, Leuven 1955 (Bibliothèque philosophique de Louvain, 16), 255–295; D.M. Balme, Aristotle’s De partibus animalium I and De generatione animalium I (with Passages from II. 1–3), Oxford 1972 (Clarendon Aristotle series), 161–164; G. Freudenthal, Aristotle’s Theory of Material Substance: Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul, Oxford 1995, 116–119; and H. Hirai, ‘Il calore cosmico in Telesio fra il De generatione animalium di Aristotele e il De carnibus di Ippocrate,’ in: Emilio Sergio (ed.), Thylesius Redivivus: Bernardino Telesio tra naturalismo rinascimentale e scienza moderna, forthcoming. 25 Avicenna, De animalibus, 16.1, 61va; Averroes, In De animalibus, XVI.3, 75B–77C; Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, Venezia 1565, repr. Padova 1985 (I filosofi Veneti, 1), 72. Cf. G. Freudenthal, ‘The Medieval Astrologization of Aristotle’s Biology: Averroes on the Role of the Celestial Bodies in the Generation of Animate Beings,’ Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 12 (2002), 111–137.
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 305 Indeed, Aristotle does not deny that these qualities, i.e., wet and dry, contribute as passive principles to the constitution of animals, when the vivifying heat, which he affirms to be analogous to the heat of the stars, acts in these [qualities]. Such is the [heat] contained in the seed. For, just as celestial heat acts on mud from which it begets animals, the heat of the seed also does the same thing in a matter proper to it. That is why Aristotle does not call this heat introduced into the seed ‘celestial’, as some people think, but ‘analogous’ to celestial heat.26
Noticing that the seed’s heat is only ‘analogous’ to the celestial one for Aristotle, Leoniceno denies the identification Peter makes between them. According to him, heat is classified into two kinds, one of which is used by nature as its instrument for animal generation, while the other is employed by art for the perfection of its works. Following the words of Aristotle, Leoniceno allows that the first type, residing in the seed, contains a vital principle. He adds that this vivifying heat is also enclosed in sordid residues according to Aristotle. For Leoniceno, no sane man can see that which is contained in such base things as ‘celestial’ or ‘divine’. He thus accuses Averroes and Peter of concluding that Aristotle associates the formative power with a divine principle by calling it ‘divine thing’ (res divina) or ‘intellect’ (intellectus) and estimating it ‘separable from the body’. From here on, Leoniceno concentrates on criticising Peter’s differentia 48, an important chapter in the Conciliator’s embryology. To his eyes, Peter completely distorts Aristotle’s teaching. Let us summarise the passage quoted at length by Leoniceno.27 According to Peter, since the formative power has no instrument shaped in the seed’s mass, Aristotle regards this
26 VF, ed. 1506, 3r = ed. 1532, 86r: ‘Has enim qualitates, scilicet humiditatem et siccitatem tamquam principia passiva conferre ad constitutionem animalium, non negat Aristoteles: quum calor vivificus agit in ipsas, quem ait esse proportionalem calori stellarum, qualis est qui in semine continetur. Sicuti enim calor cœlestis agens in lutum, ex eo generat animalia, ita et calor seminis in materiam sibi convenientem idem operatur. Quare hic calor semini inditus non calor cœlestis, ut quidam opinantur, sed calori cœlesti poportionalis ab Aristotele dicitur.’ 27 Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 72raA–C. Cf. Nardi, Saggi, 3–8. See also Paschetto, Pietro d’Abano, 199–202; D. Jacquart, ‘Médecine et astrologie à Paris dans la première moitié du XIV e siècle,’ in: G. Federici Vescovini and F. Barocelli (eds.), Filosofia, scienza e astrologia nel Trecento europeo: Biagio Pelacani Parmense. Atti del Ciclo di lezioni ‘Astrologia, scienza, filosofia e società nel Trecento europeo’, Parma, 5–6 ottobre 1990, Padova 1992 (Percorsi della scienza: storia, testi, problemi, 2), 121–134; and Ead., ‘L’influence des astres sur le corps humain chez Pietro d’Abano,’ in: B. Ribémont (ed.), Le corps et ses énigmes au Moyen Age. Actes du colloque Orléans 15–16 mai 1992, Caen 1993 (Collection medievalia), 73– 86.
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power to be ‘separable’ from the body. Its ‘separability’ is, however, much weaker than that of the intellect totally separated from matter. For Peter, the formative power is divine, active and superior to any other generative power since it is simple and almost immaterial. As it cannot directly act on matter, it needs a distinct vehicle which carries it for the generation of animals. This is a subtle body, called ‘spiritus’. The formative power also needs two other instruments. One is celestial heat, always vivifying and never destructive. As it brings the beings produced by this power to some conformity with heaven, it is an extraordinary instrument. By its mediation, the formative power performs its noble actions which determine the species of beings. The other instrument is elemental heat, which can vivify and preserve natural things only with the help of celestial heat. Although he recognises Peter’s considerable fame, Leoniceno dares to contradict him. He first criticises the Conciliator’s idea of the double instrument (celestial and elemental heats). For Leoniceno, this idea contradicts Aristotle’s teaching. Indeed, even in the medieval translation Peter uses, Aristotle does not regard celestial heat as the instrument of the formative power nor any other power commanding it. Leoniceno stresses in particular that the Stagirite places the heat rendering the seed fertile not outside the seed like celestial heat, but inside the seed. He also notices that the phrase ‘the heat contained in animals neither is fire nor draws its origin from fire’ is added so that nobody might wrongly identify it with fiery heat, which is not generative but destructive. Thus the seed’s heat is neither celestial nor fiery. That is why Aristotle estimates that the generative nature of this heat, enclosed in the seed or in its ‘spiritus’, is only ‘analogous’ to the element of the stars. What is analogous is not identical. After this clarification, Leoniceno proceeds to explain how to understand the seed’s heat correctly. For him, there exists a third kind of heat which, though resulting from elemental fire, is proper to beget living beings and, for this reason, is considered to be analogous to celestial heat. He also warns his readers to avoid regarding celestial heat as the cause of animal generation by wrongly following the famous axiom from Aristotle’s Physics: ‘Both the human being and the sun beget the human being’.28 What Leoniceno refuses in particular is to take external celestial heat as the seed’s internal instrument by identifying it with the formative power.
28 Aristotle, Physica, II.2, 194b14 (my translation). Cf. Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione, II.10, 336a31.
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 307 Next Leoniceno asks whether Aristotle really calls the formative power ‘intellect’ or ‘divine thing’ and whether he considers it ‘separable from the body’. For him, the three phrases: ‘it alone comes from without’, ‘it alone is divine’ and ‘its action has nothing to do with that of the body’, suggest that Aristotle has only the ‘intellect’ (mens or intellectus) in mind.29 If these phrases concern the intellect alone, how can they all apply to the formative power at the same time? Judging the new translation by Theodore of Gaza (1400–1476) clearer and more accurate, Leoniceno argues that these phrases have nothing to do with the formative power, but only with the intellect.30 To reinforce this interpretation, he adds another crucial passage of Aristotle, which also speaks of the intellect: The body of the sperm [is that] which encloses the seed of a soul-principle, partly separable from the body (in those beings which contain a divine part, such as that which is called ‘intellect’), partly inseparable …31
If all four statements concerned the formative power as Peter expected, features such as identity with the intellect, separability, divinity, external origin and immanence to the seed, would also be attributed to this power. However, for Leoniceno, this is totally false and, he argues, Peter himself would have noticed it. But due to the obscurity of the medieval ‘barbaric’ translation of Aristotle’s text, Peter ended up, says Leoniceno,
29 Aristotle, De generatione animalium, II.3, 736b27–29. Leoniceno synonymously uses two terms, ‘mens’ and ‘intellectus’. On the notion of the intellect in the Arabo-Latin tradition, see E. Gilson, ‘Les sources gréco-arabes de l’ augustinisme avicennisant,’ Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, 4 (1929–1930), 5–149, and H.A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect, Oxford 1992. 30 On Theodore of Gaza, see J. Monfasani, George of Trebizond: A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and Logic, Leiden 1976 (Columbia studies in the classical tradition, 1), passim; and Id., ‘The Pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata and Aristotle’s De Animalibus in the Renaissance,’ in: A.T. Grafton and N.G. Siraisi Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe, Cambridge (MA) 1999 (Dibner Institute Studies in the History of Science and Technology), 205–247. 31 VF, ed. 1506, 3v = ed. 1532, 87r: ‘Corpus autem geniturae in quo semen animalis principii contentum una provenit, partim separabile a corpore in quibus divina pars comprehenditur, qualis est quae mens appellatur: partim inseparabile …’ Cf. Aristotle, De generatione animalium, II.3, 737a7–12. See the medieval version Peter of Abano gives in Conciliator, diff. 48, 72raA: ‘Geniturae corpus, in quod egreditur, quod animalis principii. Et hoc quidem separabile existens a corpore in quibuscumque apprehenditur quid divinum. Talis autem quod vocatus [sic] intellectus.’ Cf. H.J. Drossaart Lulofs (ed.), Aristoteles Latinus, 17.2–5: De generatione animalium, translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka, Brugge 1966, 54: ‘Geniture autem corpus in quo coegreditur quod animalis principii. Hoc quidem separabile existens a corpore in quibuscumque apprehenditur quid divinum. Talis autem est [quod] vocatus intellectus.’
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inventing a surprising term that Aristotle would never have dreamed of. For, Peter not only identified the formative power as the intellect, but also named it ‘evoked intellect’ (intellectus vocatus) besides the passive and active intellects. Where precisely in Aristotle’s text, Leoniceno ironically wonders, could Peter find the term ‘vocatus’ designating the intellect’s property like ‘passive’ and ‘active’?32 To Leoniceno, it is absurd. He concludes that Theodore’s version, which adopts the phrase ‘a divine part such as that which is called “intellect” is included’ (‘divina pars comprehenditur, qualis est quae mens appellatur’), totally demolishes Peter’s erroneous identification because it suggests only the analogy with the intellect. Then Leoniceno turns to the first part of Peter’s argument which asserts that the formative power is separable because it has no ‘shaped’ (figuratum) instrument in the seed. For Leoniceno, if this power is estimated ‘separable from the body’, it is not because it has no literal shaped instrument, but because it does not have any corporeal instrument or, to follow Aristotle’s words, because its action has nothing to do with that of the body. Such an action comes only from the intellect’s power. No other powers of the soul can act without the body since they are inseparable from it and their actions are bodily. As proof, Leoniceno relies on Themistius’s (ca. 317–ca. 388) paraphrase of Aristotle’s De anima. Themistius argues there that the soul cannot exist separately since its actions always require the body, whether it is corporeal or something more intimate and hidden such as Plato imagined.33
32 VF, ed. 1506, 3v = ed. 1532, 87r: ‘Ait enim vitutem formativam, non mentem vel intellectum simpliciter ab Aristotele nominari, sed intellectum vocatum ad differentiam intellectus potentionalis et agentis. Sed velim scire a Conciliatore aut Conciliatoris sectatoribus, ubi umquam legerint apud Aristotelem, vocatum esse intellectus proprietatem sicuti potentionale et agens. Nonne hoc quoddam est nugamentum, si ita dicatur, quod virtus formativa ab Aristotele intellectus vocatus vocetur.’ Cf. Peter of Abano, Conciliator, diff. 48, 71vbG: ‘Nominavit autem eam Aristoteles intellectum vocatum ad differentiam intellectus potentialis et agentis pars existentium animae intellectivae’. 33 Themistius, Paraphrasis in libros Aristotelis De anima, I.1, ed. R. Heinze, Themistii in libros Aristotelis De anima paraphrasis, Berlin 1899 (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, 5/3), 6 (cf. the Latin translation by E. Barbaro: Themistius, Libri paraphraseos, Venezia 1499, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1978 [Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Versiones Latinae, 18], 69r, and the English translation by R. Todd: Themistius, On Aristotle’s On the Soul, London 1996 [The ancient commentators on Aristotle], 20). The phrase ‘such as Plato imagined’ seems to be an interpolation of Ermolao Barbaro (1454–1493). His Latin translation appeared in Treviso in 1481, then several times in Venice. Cf. V. Branca, ‘Ermolao Barbaro and Late Quattrocento Venetian Humanism,’ in: J.R. Hale (ed.), Renaissance Venice, London 1973, 213–243. On Themistius in the Renaissance, see R. Todd, ‘Themistius,’ in: V. Brown (ed.), Catalogus translationum et commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, 8, Washington (DC) 2003, 59–102.
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 309 Leoniceno adds that the formative power cannot be separable from the body because, according to Peter, it needs a subtle body as its instrument. The divinity of the formative power is also rejected on the same grounds. For Leoniceno, by the ‘divine thing’ Aristotle means only the intellect’s power which cannot come from within the seed but from without.34 As a conclusion, Leoniceno denies the identification of the intellect’s power with the formative one. For him, the intellect stands so far away from the body that it cannot even use a body of the least degree of corporeity like ‘spiritus’. Leoniceno closes his refutation of Peter in this way. To clarify further the passages in question from Generation of Animals, he makes use of two other texts, one of which is the only existing Greek commentary on the same treatise. It was once attributed to John Philoponus (ca. 490–ca. 570), but its real author was Michael of Ephesus (fl. ca. 1138) who wrote it to fill a lacuna in the Greek commentaries on Aristotle’s works.35 To show that the fourth passage (De generatione animalium, 737a7–12) mentioned above concerns the intellect alone, Leoniceno quotes Michael’s commentary which, according to him, renders the passage more harmonious by adding a Latin relative pronoun ‘cujus’: But the body of the sperm [is that] which encloses the seed of a soul-principle. One [part] of the soul is separated just like that intellect coming from without, while the other, that is, its irrational part, is inseparable.36
34 VF, ed. 1506, 3v = ed. 1532, 87v: ‘Ex his satis arbitror esse ostendum non posse virtutem formativam, quae ut etiam concludit Conciliator, habet corpus subtile pro instrumento, aliquo modo separabilem nominari secundum Aristotelis opinionem. Quod autem neque res divina ab ipso vocetur, illa ratione probatur, quia cum corpore advenit, semine scilicet, quod est excrementum alimenti. Absurdum autem videtur ut alicui excremento res quaepiam divina tribuatur natura. Et ob similem rationem negavit Aristoteles virtutem intellectualem, quae res divina sit, cum semine provenire, quod sit excrementum alimenti, unde eam extrinsecus accedere pronunciavit.’ 35 See A. Preus, Aristotle and Michael of Ephesus on the Movement and Progression of Animals, Hildesheim 1981 (Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie, 22), and R. Browning, ‘An Unpublished Funeral Oration on Anna Comnena,’ in: R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their Influence, London 1990 (The ancient commentators on Aristotle), 393–406, esp. 399–401. 36 VF, ed. 1506, 4r = ed. 1532, 87v: ‘Geniturae autem corpus, in quo una provenit semen principii animae, cujus scilicet animae hoc quidem est separatum, veluti qui deforis intellectus: hoc vero inseparabile, scilicet pars irrationalis’ (italics mine). Cf. Michael of Ephesus, In libros De generatione animalium, II.3, ed. M. Hayduck, Joannis Philoponi (Michaelis Ephesii) in libros De generatione animalium commentaria, Berlin 1903 (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, 14/3), 87.
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For Leoniceno, this interpretation clearly shows that here Aristotle speaks of the division of the soul into two parts (intellectual and irrational) without alluding to the formative power. The second text Leoniceno calls upon is In calumniatorem Platonis (1469) by Cardinal Bessarion (1403/1408–1472).37 There Bessarion explains the meaning of the enigmatic passages from Generation of Animals to prove the agreement of Aristotle and Plato as to the union between soul and body. This union is realised by some intermediate body of excellent nature, described by the Platonists as the soul’s ‘vehicle’ (ὄχηµα), resulting from the luminous and ethereal body of heaven.38 Leoniceno informs his readers that the idea of the soul’s vehicle was ridiculed by a false accuser of Plato, George of Trebizond (1395–1472/1473).39 For Bessarion, who argues against George, Aristotle teaches the following points: 1. A medium is required for the union of two extremities (soul and body); 2. This medium is a body which is distinct and separate from matter and more divine than the four elements; 3. Its nature varies according to the nobility of each soul. According to Bessarion, Aristotle identifies this vehicle with the seed’s inner ‘spiritus’, estimating its nature analogous to the celestial element. This vehicle is partly separated from the seed and partly bound to it. Its inseparable part is a thick material liquid which spreads throughout the seed. Thus Bessarion concludes that there is no reason to mock Plato for believing that in generation the soul comes from within such an intermediate vehicle. Leoniceno, in his turn, evaluates the cardinal’s interpretation as follows: 37 Cf. L. Mohler, Kardinal Bessarion als Theologe, Humanist und Staatsmann, 3 vols., Paderborn 1923–1942; J. Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, Leiden 1990 (Columbia studies in the classical tradition, 17), 208–263; and J. Monfasani, Byzantine Scholars in Renaissance Italy: Cardinal Bessarion and Other Emigrés, Aldershot 1995 (Variorum Collected Studies Series, 485). 38 Bessarion, In calumniatorem Platonis, 3.22.3 (in: Mohler, Kardinal Bessarion, 2: 369). On the soul’s vehicle, see E.R. Dodds, Proclus: The Elements of Theology, Oxford 21963, 315–321; D.P. Walker, ‘The Astral Body in Renaissance Medicine,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21 (1958), 119–133; D. De Bellis, ‘I veicoli dell’anima nell’analisi di Niccolò Leonico Tomeo,’ Annali dell’Istituto di filosofia (Università di Firenze), 3 (1981), 1–21; J.F. Finamore, Iamblichus and the Theory of the Vehicle of the Soul, Chico (CA) 1985 (American Classical Studies, 14); H.J. Blumenthal, ‘Soul Vehicles in Simplicius,’ in: S. Gersh and C. Kannengiesser (eds.), Platonism in Late Antiquity, Notre Dame (IN) 1992 (Christianity and Judaism in antiquity, 8), 173–188; and Hirai, ‘The Invisible Hand of God,’ 390–396. 39 George of Trebizond, Comparationes phylosophorum Aristotelis et Platonis, Venezia 1523, repr. Frankfurt am Main 1965, sig. [Ivr–viv]. This work first appeared in 1458. On George, see Monfasani, George of Trebizond.
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But this explanation of Aristotle’s words differs from the first one quoted from Michael of Ephesus only on the [following point]: the latter attributes separable and inseparable differences to the soul’s parts, that is, the intellectual one and the irrational one; the former [attributes them] to the body which is the soul’s vehicle. Aristotle says that it is ‘separable’ ‘in those beings which contain a divine part’, as if the other [part], that is, the irrational and appetitive one, had a thicker vehicle and substrate, and [were] inseparable from this corruptible body.40
Facing this Neoplatonic theory of the soul’s vehicle, Leoniceno does not forget to mention a crucial passage which Themistius formulates in his paraphrase of De anima, aiming to show Aristotle’s agreement with Plato.41 According to Themistius, these two men remove from the soul all that is material while assigning to it a certain divine and celestial body which produces the soul and the intellect. Themistius clearly connects the Neoplatonic theory to Aristotle’s idea of the ethereal nature of the seed’s inner ‘pneuma’ (spiritus). Using this connection, Leoniceno interprets: Indeed [Themistius] shows that this rarefied and splendid vehicle [is] for Plato nothing but a genius from which the thinking soul results. For Aristotle too, there is some nature attributed to the soul, which corresponds by analogy to the fifth body and which he estimates to belong to the souls of all living beings. Thus, those who are familiar with both the Aristotelian school and the Platonic one see that, in this passage of the second book of Generation of Animals … Aristotle does not speak of the formative power but of the soul’s vehicle which is partly separable and partly inseparable.42
This development is particularly interesting not only for the understanding of Leoniceno’s idea, but also for the interpretation of Themistius’s philosophy itself because some specialists do not acknowledge the impact of 40 VF, ed. 1506, 4r = ed. 1532, 88r: ‘Non differt autem haec expositio verborum Aristotelis a prima Michaelis Ephesii recitata, nisi in eo quod separabiles atque inseparabiles differentias altera partibus animae tribuit, scilicet intellectuali et irrationali, altera corpori quod est vehiculum animae, quod Aristoteles esse separabile dicit, in quibus pars divina comprehenditur, quasi altera, scilicet irrationalis et appetitiva vehiculum habeat, atque subjectum crassius, et a corpore hoc corruptibili inseparabile.’ 41 Themistius, In De anima, I.3, ed. Heinze, 19 (cf. transl. Barbaro, 72v and Todd, 35). Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 41E, 44E, 69C. Here also the Latin translation of Barbaro deviates from the Greek original. 42 VF, ed. 1506, 4r = ed. 1532, 88r: ‘Nam apud Platonem vehiculum illud rarum ac splendidum nihil aliud, quam ingenium e quo animus constet, ostendit. Apud Aristotelem quoque naturam quandam animae tributam invenias quae quinto corpori proportione respondeat, quam ad omnium animalium animas pertinere censuit. Videtur ergo Aristoteles secundum istos viros, non minus Aristotelicae quam etiam Platonicae sectae familiares, loco illo libri secundum De generatione animalium … non de virtute loqui formativa, sed de vehiculo animae, quod partim sit separabile, et partim inseparabile.’
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Neoplatonism on this Greek commentator.43 In any event, the corresponding passage of Themistius offers Leoniceno a beautiful pretext to develop the Neoplatonic reading of Generation of Animals. It should be noted that in On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Galen also associates the soul’s vehicle with Aristotle’s fifth body.44 But Leoniceno, who certainly knows this treatise well, does not mention it. He simply wonders whether the luminous and ethereal vehicle of this kind, which is intimately connected to the birth of the rational soul according to Themistius, can actually be contained in the seed. Leoniceno does not go further but only suggests leaving this issue to those who study both Plato and Aristotle. Judging it sufficient to point out the elements that help clarify the difficult passages of Generation of Animals, he concludes that these passages do not concern the formative power, contrary to what Peter of Abano sought to establish. 4. Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius: The Seed’s Inner Nature Having demolished Peter’s interpretation, Leoniceno tries to reconstruct the notion of the formative power from an Aristotelian perspective. He starts with a passage from the beginning of the sixth and last chapter of On the Formation of the Foetus, where Galen speaks of some ‘nature’ residing in the seed.45 According to Galen, philosophers concur that foetal formation is organised by what they call ‘nature’ although its substance is unknown. Galen acknowledges the supreme intelligence of a craftsman in the generation of living beings, and exhorts these philosophers to disclose
43 See for example H.J. Blumenthal, ‘Themistius: The Last Peripatetic Commentator on Aristotle?,’ in: R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their Influence, London 1990 (The ancient commentators on Aristotle), 113–123, and Id., Aristotle and Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity: Interpretations of the De anima, London 1996. On Themistius’s Neoplatonism, see E.P. Mahoney, ‘Themistius and the Agent Intellect in James of Viterbo and Other Thirteenth Century Philosophers (Saint Thomas, Siger of Brabant and Henry Bate),’ Augustiniana, 23 (1973), 422–467; Id., ‘Neoplatonism, the Greek Commentators and Renaissance Aristotelianism,’ in: D.J. O’Meara (ed.), Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, Albany (NY) 1982 (Studies in Neoplatonism, 3), 169–177, 264–283; O. Ballériaux, ‘Thémistius et le néoplatonisme: le νοῦς παθητικός et l’ immortalité de l’âme,’ Revue de philosophie ancienne, 12 (1994), 171–200; Id., ‘Eugénios, père de Thémistios et philosophe néoplatonicien,’ L’ antiquité classique, 65 (1996), 135–160. 44 Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 7.7, ed. C.G. Kühn, Leipzig 1823, repr. Hildesheim 1964 (Opera omnia, 5), 211–805, at 643 (and Ph. De Lacy, Galen: On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, 3 vols., Berlin 1978–1984 (Corpus medicorum Graecorum, 5/4, 1, 2), 2: 474). On this treatise, see Hirai, ‘Alter Galenus,’ 11, n. 25. 45 Galen, De foetuum formatione, 6, 687–689 (and Nickel, Galen, 90–94).
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 313 the real identity of this craftsman. At the same time, he knows that they refuse to attribute this kind of supreme intelligence to the seed’s inner nature. As he also rejects Epicurus’s idea that all is made without providence, there remain only two options, according to Galen, so that foetal formation can attain the best goal: 1) by a movement devoid of reason and art; 2) by a mechanism analogous to that of automatic puppets or marionettes. Galen judges that only the second option is worth examining in detail. On the basis of this argument, Leoniceno places the ‘nature’ (natura) contained in the seed at the heart of his discussions. Speaking of the seed’s inner ‘irrational nature’, Galen is in reality making an allusion to a Stoic theory.46 However, according to Leoniceno, Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. ca. 200) are designated here by the name of ‘philosophers’. To his eyes, Galen thinks that these men attribute the cause of animal generation to an irrational power, called ‘nature’, and compare its movements to those of marionettes.47 It should be noted that, for Aristotle, the father introduces into seeds a force that moves matter, i.e., the menstrual blood furnished by the mother. The first movement puts into action the second one, the second movement the third one, and so forth until the end of the generation of a complete animal. It is precisely in this explanation that Aristotle adopts the model of marionettes.48 According to Leoniceno, Galen builds his argument on this very development although Alexander deems the seed’s inner nature to be an irrational power. Unfortunately, it is not possible to study the latter’s view firsthand because his commentaries on Aristotle’s Generation of Animals and Physics are lost. Leoniceno thus relies upon Simplicius’s (fl. 529–?) commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, which contains some fragments of Alexander’s lost commentary, especially on the theory of natural generation.49 46 Galen, De foetuum formatione, 6, 700 (and Nickel, Galen, 104). Cf. Plutarch, Moralia, 1052F (cf. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. J. von Arnim, Leipzig 1903–1924, repr. Stuttgart 1968, 2: 806); Galen, De foetuum formatione, 3, 665 (and Nickel, Galen, 68 = Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, 2: 712). 47 On Galen’s relationship with Alexander, see P.L. Donini, ‘L’anima e gli elementi nel De anima di Alessandro di Afrodisia,’ Atti della accademia di Torino (Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche), 105 (1971), 61–107, esp. 98–107; V. Nutton, ‘Galen in the Eyes of his Contemporaries,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 58 (1984), 315–324; Id., ‘Galen’s Philosophical Testament: On My Own Opinions,’ in: J. Wiesner (ed.), Aristoteles: Werk und Wirkung, 2: Kommentierung, Überlieferung, Nachleben, Berlin 1987, 27–51, esp. 45–51. 48 Aristotle, De generatione animalium, II.1, 734b10. 49 On Simplicius, see I. Hadot, Le problème du néoplatonisme alexandrin: Hiéroclès et Sim-
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Leoniceno first quotes an extract attributed to Alexander.50 It explains that a goal and a model are not found in the same manner in all beings. For those produced through choice, art or reason, the goal of their production is preconceived in the mind of their agent and is furnished as a model. This is not the case for beings produced by nature, which does not work through choice or reason. That is why Alexander qualifies it as an irrational power while conceiving it as a determined principle inserted into matter. This power makes a product which, in its turn, becomes the agent of what follows, and so forth until a definite end. Exactly like Aristotle and Galen, Alexander then introduces the example of marionettes. That is the principal reason why Leoniceno believes Galen’s criticism to be directed towards Alexander. In any event, the latter thinks that the movement of marionettes is not caused by reason or choice given to their pieces. For him, the same logic applies to the seed’s inner nature. Directly after citing Alexander’s opinion, Leoniceno provides Simplicius’s answer.51 Simplicius asks, if generation occurs in the manner described by Alexander, how imperfect things can produce perfect things; for example, a whole tree from its seed. According to Simplicius, two rules apply here: 1) a general cause must precede particular causes; 2) what is in potentiality is brought into actuality by another cause which is also in actuality. Then he adds that the ‘reason-principle’ or rational principle (logos) of a child is preconceived in the parents, and thanks to it, the child is generated. The father initiates the first movements through his seed in the fashion
plicius, Paris 1978; Ead. (ed.), Simplicius: sa vie, son œuvre, sa survie. Actes du colloque international de Paris (28 sept.–1er oct. 1985) organisé par le Centre de Recherche sur les œuvres et la pensée de Simplicius (RCP 739—CNRS), Berlin 1987 (Peripatoi, 15). On the reception of Simplicius in the Renaissance, see Nardi, Saggi, 365–442, and C.H. Lohr, ‘Renaissance Latin Translations of the Greek Commentaries on Aristotle,’ in: J. Kraye and M.W.F. Stone (eds.), Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy, London 2000 (London studies in the history of philosophy, 1), 24–40. 50 Simplicius, In Physicam, II.3, ed. H. Diels, Simplicii in Aristotelis Physicorum libros quattuor priores commentaria, Berlin 1882 (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, 9), 310–311 (cf. the English translation by B. Fleet: Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics 2, Ithaca [NY] 1997 [The ancient commentators on Aristotle], 67–68). Hereafter I refer to Fleet’s translation, slightly modifying it according to Leoniceno’s Latin version. On this fragment, see C. Genequand, ‘Quelques aspects de l’ idée de nature d’ Aristote à al-Ghazâlî,’ Revue de théologie et de philosophie, 116 (1984), 105–129, esp. 116–117; P. Accattino, ‘Alessandro di Afrodisia e la trasmissione della forma nella riproduzione animale,’ Atti della Accademia delle scienze di Torino (Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche), 122 (1988), 79–94, esp. 82–84; and R.W. Sharples, ‘On Body, Soul and Generation in Alexander of Aphrodisias,’ Apeiron, 27 (1994), 163–170. 51 Simplicius, In Physicam, II.3, 312–314 (cf. transl. Fleet, 69–71). The passage is related to Aristotle, Physica, II.3, 194b26–29. Cf. Genequand, ‘Quelques aspects,’ 118–120.
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 315 of marionettes. Following this argument, Leoniceno draws a passage from Simplicius who rectifies Alexander’s view: But why does [Aristotle according to Alexander] say that nature is an irrational power although it acts for the sake of some end, and proceeds in an ordered way according to stages and determined measures? The answer is that the productive reason-principle is twofold, one producing in a cognisant manner (which the interpreter [Alexander] sees as reason alone), the other without cognition and self-contemplation, but still producing in an ordered and determined manner for the sake of some prior goal. Just as the non-cognisant [one] is irrational in contrast to cognisant reason, anything that produces in a random and disorderly manner is irrational, unlike that which produces in an ordered and determined manner for the sake of something.52
Simplicius distinguishes two kinds of reason-principle. The first one produces with cognition or knowledge of its product. Only for this type, Alexander accepts the title of ‘reason’. It is, so to speak, the cognisant rational principle. The second one, by contrast, produces without cognition, but in an orderly and determined way. The agent that does not have any cognition of products, even if it produces them in an orderly manner for the sake of some end, is called ‘irrational’ by Alexander. For both Alexander and Simplicius, the second way applies to the generation of living beings since nature makes its product like itself, not by choosing but by being, just as a signetring makes its impression. However, Simplicius rejects Alexander’s refusal of the title of ‘reason’ to nature. That is why he insists that Aristotle qualifies nature as a ‘rational principle’ in On Generation and Corruption.53 But how can an agent devoid of cognition achieve a determined order and a definite end in the act of production? Simplicius answers that natural things exist in a way that allows them to preserve order and consistency simply by being without cognition and to reach a definite end like the movement of marionettes. If natural things are not produced by chance, it is sensible to think that they draw their existence from themselves or from another cause. Here comes the conclusion of Simplicius, which Leoniceno presents to his readers: Therefore it is reasonable to say rather that nature is a ‘concause’ and that the immediate causes of things that are generated and corrupted are the movements of celestial bodies according to which beings on this earth are modified, while higher up are the reason-principles of these movements,
52 53
Simplicius, In Physicam, II.3, 313 (cf. transl. Fleet, 70–71). Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione, II.6, 333b11.
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hiro hirai placed in the soul [of the world], and even higher than these [causes] are the intellectual forms from which in the first instance the formal light is produced in all things according to the suitability of the recipients.54
Instead of calling nature ‘reason-principle’, Simplicius prefers to give it the name of ‘co-responsible’ (συναιτίος) which is rendered as ‘concause’ (concausa) in Leoniceno’s Latin translation. Simplicius conceives it as an auxiliary to celestial and intellectual causes. This passage is remarkable because it shows a particularly Neoplatonic dimension of Simplicius’s philosophy. What is more pertinent to the present study is the fact that Leoniceno places it at the heart of his philosophical reflections on the formative power. He argues that Simplicius, like Galen, finds it absurd to attribute the cause of animal generation to the seed’s inner nature alone which is for Alexander an irrational power. For Leoniceno, Simplicius prefers to call it ‘concause’ or ‘instrumental cause’ by positing at the same time the intervention of higher and more powerful causes (soul, intellect and intellectual forms or Ideas). However, it should be stressed here that Leoniceno’s aim remains the same: to refute those who believe that Aristotle identifies the formative power with the intellect. Indeed, in the Physics the Stagirite himself carefully distinguishes things produced by nature from those made by the intellect. Thus Leoniceno says: However, dealing with natural generation in the natural realm, Aristotle makes no mention of [a separated agent]. But rather, wishing to avoid any cause separated [from the body] in the second book of the Physics, for fear of mixing up the theological and physical doctrine, he denied that nature acts by will and reason, and spoke of it as an irrational power. Alexander also followed this meaning of the words in his interpretation, while Simplicius wished to bring Aristotle into the closest possible accordance with Plato. To avoid the idea that the works of nature are made without any cognition or by chance, he gave them as causes not only nature and heaven but also the soul and the intellectual forms. It is in this way that he addressed Galen’s doubt.55
Simplicius, In Physicam, II.3, 314 (cf. transl. Fleet, 71). VF, ed. 1506, 5r = ed. 1532, 90r–v: ‘De quo tamen Aristoteles generationem naturalem naturaliter tractans, nullam facit mentionem: quin potius secundo libro De naturali auscultatione nolens causam separatam attingere, ne doctrinam theologicam cum physica confunderet, naturam negavit consilio agere ac ratione, et de ea tamquam de potentia irrationali locutus est. Quem verborum sensum etiam in sua expositione secutus est Alexander. Simplicius vero, qui quantum potuit Platoni Aristotelem studuit facere consentientem, ne naturae opera sine cognitione aliqua et veluti casu facta viderentur, illis non modo naturam ac cœlum, sed praeterea animam et formas intellectuales pro causis arrogavit, atque ita Galeni dubitationi satisfecit.’ 54 55
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 317 Leoniceno goes further to argue that nature remains the cause of animal generation although it is called ‘concause’ by Simplicius. For him, even though diverse names such as ‘soul’, ‘psychic power’ and ‘irrational natural power’ are accorded to it, what brings one less perfect thing into a more perfect state is the cause of generation. He also claims that ‘the efficient cause in the generation of natural things’ is the best definition of nature for Simplicius.56 But nature conceived in this way, stresses Leoniceno, differs from the soul since the latter is the active principle of the bodies’ movement, while the former is the passive one. Indeed Simplicius himself clearly distinguishes nature from the soul. As a conclusion, Leoniceno quotes the following words by Simplicius: But since bodies are far removed from indivisible and incorporeal nature as well as from the life that subsists in absolute being, and are lifeless and do not breathe at all in themselves, too chilled for any kind of life, they have within themselves the last sort of life, which relates that which we call ‘nature’ to power and aptitude. Because of it, even lifeless things can be moved and changed, and it is even said that they are born and act passively on each other.57
Relying on this passage of a particularly Neoplatonic flavour, Leoniceno argues that the seed’s inner nature is the principle of movements for animal generation. This nature is neither the soul itself nor any power coming from it, but a natural productive power. Being different from the soul and inferior to it, the nature given to matter as its first principle is a power that helps the introduction of the soul into matter for living beings. To Leoniceno, this is the definition of Aristotle’s formative power, which emerges through Simplicius’s interpretation. 5. Averroes and Themistius: Ideas, the Intellect and the Soul Leoniceno turns to the refutation of Averroes’s argument expounded in his Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The passage quoted by Leoniceno aims to explain the famous axiom of the Stagirite: ‘The human being is begotten by the human being’.58 Let us first give the main line Simplicius, In Physicam, II.2, 284 (cf. transl. Fleet, 39). Cf. Hadot, Le problème, 177. Simplicius, In Physicam, II.2, 287 (cf. transl. Fleet, 42). On the difference between nature and the vegetative soul in Simplicius, see Hadot, Le problème, 175–178, 196–198. 58 Aristotle, Metaphysica, VII.9, 1034b2 (my translation). Cf. D.M. Balme, ‘Human is Generated by Human,’ in: G.R. Dunstan (ed.), The Human Embryo: Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions, Exeter 1990, 20–31. 56
57
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of Averroes’s argument.59 According to the Commentator, in the case of beings reproduced through the seed, the father introduces his form into the seed which produces the offspring’s form. In the case of beings that are born spontaneously without the seed, celestial bodies provide them something that plays the role of the seed and powers residing in it. For Averroes, these powers are divine and generate mutually similar beings, just as arts produce their products. These powers are compared to the intellect since they perform intellectual actions which do not need any corporeal instrument. Averroes adds that these generative powers, called ‘formative’ by physicians, differ from the other natural powers of animal bodies, which act only through definite instruments. Quoting the famous words of Galen: ‘I do not know whether this power is the Creator or not’, Averroes makes it clear that this power, acting with the help of the seed’s heat, lies in the seed as a form. He compares this form not to the soul in the innate heat of animals but to the soul in celestial bodies.60 That is why, he concludes, Aristotle celebrates the formative power by placing it among the divine principles. Leoniceno is surprised to see Averroes also attribute this kind of intellectual feature to the formative power under the authority of Alexander. As we have seen, for Leoniceno, Alexander conceives the seed’s inner nature as an irrational power. It is thus impossible to identify this power with the intellect in the name of Alexander. Moreover, adds Leoniceno, if Galen compares the formative power to the Creator, it is not because this power acts without any instrument, but because it performs its actions with a skilfulness that seems to transcend all natural forces. Thus Leoniceno reproaches Averroes for reconciling Galen with Aristotle and Alexander on this erroneous basis. For him, Galen stands apart from these men who consider the seed’s inner nature an irrational power, and Averroes misunderstands Alexander’s position by wrongly using his words as though Alexander holds the same view as Galen.
59 Averroes, In Metaphysicam, VII.31, 181D–G (and M. Bouyges, Averroès: Tafsîr mâ ba" d at-tabî" at, Beirut 1938–1948 [Bibliotheca Arabica Scholasticorum, Série arabe, 4], 883–884; A. Elsakhawi, Étude du livre Zây [Dzêta] de la Métaphysique d’Aristote dans sa version arabe et son commentaire par Averroès, Lille 1994, 116–117). On the impact of this argument in the Middle Ages, see C. Touati, ‘Les problèmes de la génération et le rôle de l’intellect agent,’ in: J. Jolivet (ed.), Multiple Averroès. Actes du Colloque international organisé à l’occasion du 850e anniversaire de la naissance d’ Averroès, Paris 20–23 septembre 1976, Paris 1978, 157–164, and Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, 242–245. 60 Galen’s words come from his De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 9.8, 789 (and De Lacy, Galen: On the Doctrines, 597). Cf. Galen, De sententiis, 2, 11, ed. V. Nutton, Galen: On My Own Opinions, Berlin 1999 (Corpus medicorum Graecorum, 5/3/2), 62, 90.
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 319 Leoniceno also criticizes Averroes on another point. According to him, the Commentator erroneously deduces the agreement of Themistius and Avicenna from the famous theory of the ‘Giver of Forms’ (dator formarum).61 To show Averroes’s error, Leoniceno turns to Themistius’s paraphrase of Aristotle’s De anima.62 For him, Themistius’s theory does not demand the existence of a higher agent separated from the body like the Giver of Forms: In reality, Themistius clearly introduces the idea that not a separated agent but the soul forms for itself a body which it then enters. Thus, he seems to have estimated that the father’s seed, which builds and fabricates [its body], is animate according to Aristotle since the [seed’s] soul is that which fashions a house for itself from the matter furnished by the mother. Indeed, it is neither the father’s soul (otherwise it would migrate from one body to another) nor, for the same reason, another separated soul which, according to Themistius, must procreate, form and animate those which are born from a putrefied nature.63
Leoniceno argues that, although Themistius supposes a separated agent for the spontaneous generation of inferior living beings from putrefied matter, he does not posit such an agent for those beings that are reproduced through the seed. According to Themistius, the soul residing in the seed is sufficient to form matter. But Leoniceno warns his readers that this seed’s inner soul
61 Averroes, In Metaphysicam, VII.31, 181B (and Bouyges, Averroès, 882–883; Elsakhawi, Étude du livre Zây, 115). Cf. Averroes, In Metaphysicam, XII.18, 304B, 304G (and Bouyges, Averroès, 1496, 1498, 1503; A. Martin, Averroès: Grand commentaire de la Métaphysique d’Aristote [Tafsîr mâ ba" d at-tabî" at], livre lam-lambda, Paris 1984 [Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’ Université de Liège, 234] 131, 135, 139). On the ‘Giver of Forms’ (wâhib al-suwar), see A.-M. Goichon, La distinction de l’ essence et de l’existence d’après Ibn S¯ın¯a (Avicenne), Paris 1937, 301–303, 473; Ead., Lexique de la langue philosophique d’Ibn S¯ın¯a, Paris 1938, 440–441; H.T. Goldstein, ‘Dator Formarum: Ibn Rushd, Levi ben Gerson, and Moses ben Joshua of Narbonne,’ in: I.R. al-Faruqi (ed.), Islamic Thought and Culture, Washington (DC) 1982, 107–121; Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, passim; and J.L. Janssens, ‘The Notions of Wahib al-Suwar (Giver of Forms) and Wahib al-Aql (Bestower of Intelligence) in Ibn Sînâ,’ in: M.C. Pacheco and J.F. Meirinhos (eds.), Intellect et Imagination dans la philosophie médiévale. Actes du XIe Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l’ Etude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, 3 vols., Turnhout 2006 (Rencontres de philosophie médiévale, 11), 1: 531–562. 62 Themistius, In De anima, I.3, ed. Heinze, 23 (cf. transl. Barbaro, 74r and Todd, 40). 63 VF, ed. 1506, 5v = ed. 1532, 91v: ‘Themistius vero non agens separatum, sed animam ipsam formare sibi corpus quod subit, liquido insinuat. Unde videtur sensisse semen maris, quod architectatur et fabricat secundum Aristotelem esse animatum, quando ejus anima est illa quae ex materia, quam fœmina praebet, suum sibi facit domicilium. Neque enim est anima patris generantis, alioquin migraret a corpore in corpus, neque ob eandem rationem anima abstracta, quam secundum Themistium oportet his quae ex putrida natura generantur, dare creationem, lineationem, et animam.’
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remains in potentiality like a geometer at rest.64 He thus concludes that Themistius does not assign the formative power to the soul separated from the body as Averroes believes in error, but to the father’s seed animated in potentiality. This probably means that Themistius identifies the formative power with the soul in potentiality residing in the seed. From here on, Leoniceno exhorts his readers to gather the views of Aristotle’s ancient commentators on the formative power, whether it is a natural (irrational or concausal) power, as in Alexander and Simplicius, or the seed’s inner soul, as in Themistius. It should be noted that Averroes reports the opinions of some Arabic writers in his Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Among them, Leoniceno especially criticises the view that Averroes advances as his own and Aristotle’s because he finds it profoundly contaminated with Platonic teachings: Indeed, [Averroes] writes many things, expounded, he says, in the books of [Aristotle’s] On Animals, about the heat of the sun and the stars as well as about the heats which, resulting from these celestial heats, generate the species of animals. Then he argues that these heats have the proper capacity [coming] from the divine intellectual art which is similar to the single form of the single and commanding art to which various arts are subordinated. Therefore it should be understood, he says, that nature produces something perfectly and regularly without itself being intelligent as if it were inspired by active and nobler powers, called ‘intelligences’. Then he adds: ‘These proportions and powers, which are produced in the elements by the motions of the sun and of the other stars, are what Plato calls “the [superior] forms”…’ This is what Averroes says. Being himself Platonising, as I have said, he condemns Plato.65
Leoniceno clearly remarks the self-contradiction of Averroes who, at the same time, is inspired by Platonic theories and condemns them. But is the appeal to Platonism itself rejected? Leoniceno says that if ‘nature’ means
Cf. Aristotle, De generatione animalium, II.1, 735a10–11. VF, ed. 1506, 6r = ed. 1532, 92r–v: ‘Nam quum multa scripsisset, quae ait esse in libris De animalibus declarata, de calore solis atque stellarum, et caloribus generantibus species animalium ex caloribus cœlestibus derivatis, ait postmodum eosdem calores propriam habere mensuram ab arte divina intellectuali, quae est similis uni formae unius artis principalis sub qua sunt artes plures. Secundum hoc igitur ait esse intelligentum, quod natura facit aliquid perfecte et ordinate, quamvis non intelligat, quasi esset rememorata ex virtutibus agentibus nobilioribus, quae dicuntur intelligentiae. Postmodum subjungit: Istae autem proportiones et virtutes quae fiunt in elementis a motibus solis, et aliarum stellarum sunt hae, quas reputat Plato esse formas … Haec quidem Averrois, qui platonizans, ut dixi, Platonem damnat.’ Cf. Averroes, In Metaphysicam, XII.18, 305D–E (and Bouyges, Averroès, 1502–1503; Martin, Averroès, 138–139). 64 65
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 321 the universal nature of all natural things, it must first receive the reasonprinciples of all these beings before it begets them and makes them similar to the principles contained in it. He understands that these reasonprinciples are well and truly Plato’s Ideas, although Averroes pretends to prefer Aristotle’s view. However, for Leoniceno, the difference between these two views is slight, and it is again Simplicius who proposes the best solution: These two opinions, however, will not seem very different if besides heaven and nature those superior causes, that is, the supreme intellect and the intellectual forms, are also taken into account. Against Alexander, Simplicius also resolves in a Platonic and Aristotelian manner the doubt concerning natural generation and nature as an irrational power.66
Leoniceno adds that, for Themistius, spontaneous generation is brought about by the World-Soul which is carried by universal nature, and that Averroes too accepts this idea since it does not disagree with Aristotle’s theory in Generation of Animals: ‘There is water in earth, and pneuma in water, and in all pneuma is soul-heat, so that in a sense all things are full of soul’.67 Thus, Leoniceno does not reject the appeal to Platonism itself. What he does not accept is the identification of the formative power with the intellect. VF, ed. 1506, 6r = ed. 1532, 92v: ‘Quae tamen duae opiniones non multum videbuntur discrepare, si praeter cœlum atque naturam causae etiam illae superiores, mens scilicet eximia et formae intellectuales, adhibeantur: Quando et Simplicius tactam contra Alexandrum de generatione naturali, et natura, potentia irrationali dubitationem, non magis Platonice, quam etiam Aristotelice solvit.’ 67 Aristotle, De generatione animalium, III.11, 762a18–21. On spontaneous generation, see H. Hirai, ‘Earth’s Soul and Spontaneous Generation: Fortunio Liceti’s Criticism against Ficino’s Ideas on the Origin of Life,’ in: S. Clucas, P.J. Forshaw and V. Rees (eds.) Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and His Influence, Leiden 2011 (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 198), 273–299, and Id., ‘Ame de la terre, génération spontanée et origine de la vie: Fortunio Liceti critique de Marsile Ficin,’ Bruniana & Campanelliana, 12 (2006), 451–469. On the World-Soul, see Themistius, In De anima, I.3, I.4, ed. Heinze, 20, 26 (cf. transl. Barbaro, 73r, 74v, and Todd, 36, 42–43); Paraphrasis in Metaphysicam, XII.3, ed. S. Landauer, Themistii in Aristotelis Metaphysicorum librum lambda paraphrasis, Berlin 1903 (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, 5/5), 9 (and R. Brague, Thémistius: Paraphrase de la Métaphysique d’Aristote [Livre Lambda], Paris 1999, 64). On the latter treatise, see S. Pinès, ‘Some Distinctive Metaphysical Conceptions in Themistius’s Commentary on Book Lambda and their Place in the History of Philosophy,’ in: J. Wiesner (ed.), Aristoteles: Werk und Wirkung, 2: Kommentierung, Überlieferung, Nachleben, Berlin 1987, 177–204, and Brague, Thémistius, 9–39. On the notion of the World-Soul in the Renaissance, see H. Hirai, ‘Concepts of Seeds and Nature in the Work of Marsilio Ficino,’ in: M.J.B. Allen and V. Rees (eds.), Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, Leiden 2002 (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 108), 257–284; and Id., ‘L’ âme du monde chez Juste Lipse entre théologie cosmique romaine et prisca theologia renaissante,’ Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 93 (2009), 251–273. 66
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Lastly Leoniceno finds an important repercussion of Averroes’s interpretation in Gentile da Foligno (?–1348), the emblematic commentator of Avicenna’s Canon.68 Indeed, following Averroes faithfully, Gentile demands to posit in natural beings something that acts through its intellect to introduce forms into matter. Leoniceno quotes Gentile’s words: But there seems to be in art some agent which limits, treats and prepares matter through its intellect, as is evident, for example, in the craftsman’s art … There will be also in nature some agent which limits, treats and prepares matter through its intellect. The whole heaven, composed of all [celestial bodies], executes this [production] as an instrument through its movement and light, principally through its intellectual [powers] which lie in it and in which the [productive] art has been received internally. This productive art belongs to every inferior form or any existence here below. Whence Averroes said in the twelfth book of the Metaphysics that nature acts only when it is inspired by superior and more divine causes.69
Leoniceno criticises Gentile’s argument that all the disciples of Aristotle agree with each other. But, as we have seen, Alexander has a different view. Leoniceno thus concludes that, instead of attributing to Aristotle ideas which actually come from Plato, Simplicius gave more rightly what the Stagirite should have said in accordance with Plato and the truth! 6. Conclusion I have analysed the major line of Leoniceno’s discussions on the formative power and have shown their principal sources. He criticised medieval authors such as Averroes and Peter of Abano, relying on newer humanist translations (including his own) of Aristotle and of the ancient Greek commentators, especially Alexander, Themistius and Simplicius. He also
68 On Gentile, see R. French, Canonical Medicine: Gentile da Foligno and Scholasticism, Leiden 2001, and J. Chandelier, ‘Gentile da Foligno et le mouvement du cœur,’ Micrologus, 11 (2003), 97–122. 69 VF, ed. 1506, 6r = ed. 1532, 92v-93r: ‘Sed in arte videmus, quod est ibi aliquod agens per intellectum limitans, agens, praeparans materiam: sicuti verbi gratia in arte fabrili apparet … Sic igitur etiam erit in natura, scilicet agens aliquod per intellectum limitans, agens, paraeparans materiam. Et totum corpus cœleste compositum ex omnibus, quod quidem hoc efficit instrumentaliter per motum et lumen principaliter per intellectivas, quae in eo sunt in quibus recepta est ars quae intro. Quae quidem ars factiva est omnis formae inferioris vel inferius existentis. Unde dicebat Averrois duodecimo Metaphysices, quod natura non operatur nisi reminiscens ex superioribus causis divinioribus.’ Averroes, In Metaphysicam, XII.18, 305D–E (and Bouyges, Averroès, 1502–1503; Martin, Averroès, 139).
formative power, soul and intellect in nicolò leoniceno 323 employed some texts hitherto unknown and non-translated into Latin such as those of Galen and Michael of Ephesus. Leoniceno’s use of these ancient Greek commentators is worth stressing since he was one of the first Renaissance humanists to make use of them in medical and scientific debates. He furnished to Western readers some important elements of reflection, previously unknown to the Arabo-Latin tradition of embryology. It can thus be said that his On Formative Power stands at the crossroad of the medieval tradition and the new humanist trend unique to the Renaissance. What animated Leoniceno’s mind were a strong anti-Arabism and a steadfast love for the Greek sources. This twofold motivation is expressed through his philological meticulousness.70 On the true identity of the formative power, Leoniceno simply remained an interpreter of each author. Instead of building his own synthesis, he preferred to explain as a philologist the correct meaning of terms and phrases, and the contradictions and coherences proper to the argumentation of each writer or of his commentator. My analysis, however, has shown that he favoured Simplicius’s Neoplatonic interpretation. What Leoniceno refused constantly was the identification of the formative power with the intellect. This identification, which he thought false, was frequently introduced due to confusion based on the analogy between artificial production and natural generation, as is seen in Averroes, Peter and Gentile.71 The present analysis has also witnessed how conscious Leoniceno was of Neoplatonic elements in the writings of the ancient Greek commentators such as Simplicius and Themistius. In this regard, his knowledge of Platonic doctrines in Bessarion is noteworthy. His argument related to the soul’s vehicle, a theme venerated by Florentine Platonists such as Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), has revealed his familiarity with the ongoing debates of his humanist contemporaries. Although the primary motif of Leoniceno’s treatise was embryology, his discussions also covered important philosophical issues on the soul and the intellect. They coincided with the development of a new Aristotelian study of soul and intellect among his contemporaries at Padua such as Agostino Nifo (1473–ca. 1538) and Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525), who also
70 On Renaissance anti-Arabism, see G. Baader, ‘Medizinisches Reformdenken und Arabismus im Deutschland des 16. Jahrhunderts,’ Sudhoffs Archiv, 63 (1979), 261–296, esp. 270– 273, and N.G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500, Princeton (NJ) 1987, 66–77. 71 This confusion can be traced back to Aristotle himself, see Takahashi, ‘Nature, Formative Power and Intellect’, 474–475.
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amply used the writings of the ancient Greek commentators of Aristotle.72 It is thus reasonable to ask if there were eventual exchanges of ideas between them and Leoniceno. This issue would not be without merit for a better comprehension of some crucial aspects of Renaissance Aristotelianism.
72 Cf. Nardi, Saggi, passim; Id., Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi, Firenze 1965; M.L. Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi: Radical Philosopher of the Renaissance, Padova 1986 (Saggi e testi, 21); E.P. Mahoney, Two Aristotelians of the Italian Renaissance: Nicoletto Vernia and Agostino Nifo, Aldershot 2000 (Variorum Collected Studies Series, 697); and P.J.J.M. Bakker, ‘Natural Philosophy, Metaphysics, or Something in Between? Agostino Nifo, Pietro Pomponazzi, and Marcantonio Genua on the Nature and Place of the Science of the Soul,’ in: P.J.J.M. Bakker and J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), Mind, Cognition and Representation: The Tradition of Commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, Aldershot 2007 (Ashgate studies in medieval philosophy), 151–177. Leoniceno was close to the intellectual circle of Alberto Pio of Carpi (1475–1531), which Pomponazzi frequented in the years 1496–1499. See C. Vasoli, La cultura delle corti, Bologna 1980 (Universale il Portolano, 3), 94, 98, 100–101; Id., ‘Alberto Pio e la cultura del suo tempo,’ in: Società, politica e cultura a Carpi ai tempi di Alberto III Pio. Atti del convegno internazionale (Carpi, 19–21 maggio 1978), Padova 1981 (Medioevo e umanesimo, 46–47), 3–42; C.B. Schmitt, ‘Alberto Pio and the Aristotelian Studies of his Time,’ in: Id., The Aristotelian Tradition and Renaissance Universities, London 1984 (Variorum Collected Studies Series, 203); and S. Perfetti, Aristotle’s Zoology and its Renaissance Commentators (1521–1601), Leuven 2000 (Ancient and medieval philosophy, Series 1, 27), 35, 49–50.
PSYCHOLOGY IN SOME SIXTEENTH- AND EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY GENERAL WORKS ON MEDICINE
Nancy G. Siraisi*
1. Introduction The intersection of psychology and medicine in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century is hardly a neglected topic. Rather, since the midtwentieth century the subject has been studied from such different standpoints as to produce a body of literature that is both copious and highly, sometimes bewilderingly, diverse. Intellectual historians and historians of philosophy have examined the ideas of philosophically inclined early modern medical writers about the soul, their efforts to harmonize the teaching of Aristotle, Plato, and Galen on soul, mind, and sense, and their presentation of faculty psychology—the rich and still growing literature on Fernel being only one example.1 Particularly in the last twenty years, social and cultural historians, including social historians of medicine, have turned their attention to concepts of madness and mental disturbance or defect, often * I am grateful to Anthony Grafton and Hiro Hirai for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. 1 I make no attempt to provide comprehensive bibliography regarding Renaissance and early modern psychology and medicine. On psychology in relation to natural philosophy and physiology in general, see K. Park and E. Kessler, ‘The Concept of Psychology,’ in: C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler and J. Kraye (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge 1988, 455–463; K. Park, ‘The Organic Soul,’ in: C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler and J. Kraye (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge 1988, 464–473; and P. Lautner, ‘Status and Method of Psychology according to the Late Neoplatonists and their Influence during the Sixteenth Century,’ in: C. Leijenhorst, C. Lüthy and J.M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.), The Dynamics of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, Leiden 2002 (Medieval and early modern science, 5), 81–108. On Galen’s psychological doctrine and its medieval and Renaissance interpretations, see P.E. Manuli and M. Vegetti (eds.), Le opere psicologiche di Galeno. Atti del terzo colloquio Galenico internazionale, Pavia 10–12 settembre 1986, Napoli 1988 (Elenchos, 13); A. González de Pablo, ‘The Medicine of the Soul. The Origin and Development of Thought on the Soul, Diseases of the Soul and their Treatment, in Medieval and Renaissance Medicine,’ History of Psychiatry, 5 (1994), 483–516. On Fernel see further below. On the term and meanings of ‘psychologia’ more generally in the early modern period, see also F. Vidal, The Sciences of the Soul: The Early Modern Origins of Psychology, transl. S. Brown, Chicago 2011.
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in connection with studies of the legal, medical, and social treatment of the mad, and/or the social, legal, and intellectual history of demonology and witchcraft. As example I will mention here only Erik Midelfort’s fine study A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, which although mainly a social and cultural history includes a substantial chapter on academic psychology.2 Furthermore, the scholarship on melancholia, long a topic of interest to early modern intellectual, cultural, and literary historians in its own right, has recently received a notable addition in the shape of a massive critical edition of a major text, Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, while a new interpretive study of that work devotes extensive attention to a detailed analysis of Burton’s medical sources and use of medical concepts (as well as to his political and religious ideas and milieu).3 And historians of the modern disciplines of psychology and psychiatry have sometimes sought for antecedents in early modern medical writings, though not always with complete success. The present paper approaches the subject of early modern psychology in its interaction with medicine from a somewhat different, and more restricted, standpoint, that of medical teaching and reading. In particular, my focus is on the role of a certain type of widely disseminated medical book in conveying information about psychology to a professional readership (whether teachers, students, or practitioners of medicine, and whether read privately or in an academic setting). Innovations of many kinds multiplied in fifteenth- to early seventeenth-century medical learning—among the best known are developments in such areas as medical humanism and hellenism, anatomy, botany, and scientific illustration. Another was the emergence of new, or newly important, genres of medical writing. Notwithstanding increased attention to experience and autopsia, early modern medicine remained in many ways and many contexts a bookish discipline in which much knowledge was acquired by reading. The history of the early modern medical book and of its changes in form as well as content thus mer-
2 H.C.E. Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, Stanford (CA) 1999 (Chapter 3). 3 Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. T.C. Faulkner, N.K. Kiessling and R.L. Blair, with an introduction by J.B. Bamborough, 6 vols., Oxford 1989–2000 (vols. 4–6, containing commentary, are by J.B. Bamborough with M. Dodsworth). A. Gowland, The Worlds of Renaissance Melancholy: Robert Burton in Context, Cambridge 2006 (Ideas in context, 78). For an account of the general debate over melancholy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe and some comments on twentieth-century scholarship concerning it, see A. Gowland, ‘The Problem of Early Modern Melancholy,’ Past & Present, 191/1 (2006), 77–120 (with bibliography of secondary works in notes 9 and 10).
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its attention as a significant part of the development of medicine in this period. For example, widening interest in different forms of brief medical narrative ensured the multiplication in the sixteenth century of published collections of epistolae medicinales, of observationes, of variae lectiones, and of consultationes, all of which in various ways all turned toward the occasional, the particular, and the empirical.4 But other, equally characteristic, major contributions to the medical literature of the period took the form of newly composed comprehensive surveys of the whole of Galenic medicine or of one of its major branches. If much of the content of these comprehensive works presented standard medical teaching, their authors nonetheless introduced innovations of their own in emphasis, organization, or pedagogy, or all three. The full scope of the actual use of these ‘new’ overviews of medicine, in or outside academic settings, is far from clear, but there is no doubt that some of them served as standard tools of reference, and in some contexts of teaching and study, for several generations of medical students, professors, and Latinate practitioners. In what follows I shall briefly compare the treatment of soul and mind in some of these large, comprehensive, general books on medicine, as regards both the handling of the subject and the prominence accorded to it. The sample is necessarily small and thus to some extent arbitrarily selected. Nevertheless all the books I shall discuss were the work of famous and influential professors of medicine at important universities, and all went into multiple editions. Fernel’s Medicina (in later editions Universa medicina) was probably the most widely disseminated of all sixteenth-century general books on the whole of medicine (and is certainly the most studied by historians), appearing in over thirty Latin editions and in French translation between the mid-sixteenth and the late seventeenth century.5 The
4 For summary and further bibliography regarding narratives about cases in late medieval and Renaissance medicine before the sixteenth century, see N.G. Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine, Princeton (NJ) 1997, 201–204. On the development of case history, collections of observationes, and similar productions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see G. Pomata, ‘ “Observatio” ovvero “Historia”. Note su empirismo e storia in età moderna,’ Quaderni storici, 31/91 (1996), 173–198, and B. Nance, Turquet de Mayerne as Baroque Physician: the Art of Medical Portraiture, Amsterdam 2001 (Clio medica, 65) (especially Chapter 2). 5 A bibliography of editions of Fernel’s De naturali parte medicinae libri septem (subsequently revised to form the Physiologia section of Medicina and later of Universa medicina) and of Medicina and Universa medicina is provided in C.S. Sherrington, The Endeavour of Jean Fernel, Cambridge 1946, 189–190, 194–200; the same work contains an account of the biography of Fernel (1497–1558) and his career at Paris. For this paper I have used The Physiologia
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Tübingen professor Leonhart Fuchs’s Institutiones medicinae was an expansion and revision of his earlier work entitled Methodus; taken together, the two were printed at least twenty times between 1540 and 1618, and a version also appeared twice in French translation.6 The Medicina practica, or Praelectiones patavinae, of Girolamo Mercuriale, was printed eight times between first publication in 1601 and 1627.7 Finally, Felix Platter’s Praxeos
of Jean Fernel (1567), transl. J.M. Forrester, Philadelphia 2003 (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, N.S., 93/1), which includes the Latin text of the Physiologia section of J. Fernel, Universa medicina tribus et viginti libris absoluta, Paris 1567. For the Pathologia section, I have consulted J. Fernel, Universa medicina tribus et viginti libris absoluta, Lyon 1586, an edition that also includes Fernel’s De abditis rerum causis libri duo, at 529– 657. 6 According to the editions listed in Worldcat. The (partial) French translation is Le tresor de medicine, tant theorique, que pratique / le tout composé par M. Leon Fus. & Ieh. Goy, Poitiers 1560 (with a second edition published in 1578), which I have not seen and cite from the online catalogue of the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland. The Methodus is itself an expansion of Fuchs’s Compendiaria ac succincta admodum in medendi artem eisagoge, Hagenau 1531, reissued with variant title Strasbourg 1535. For this paper I have consulted L. Fuchs, Methodus seu ratio compendiaria perveniendi ad culmen medicinae, nunc denuo omni cura recognita, Lyon 1556, and Id., Institutionum medicinae, sive methodi ad Hippocratis, Galeni, aliorumque veterum scripta recte intelligenda mire utiles libri quinque, Lyon 1560. Fuchs (1501–1566) explained the relation among, and progressive expansion of, the Compendiaria, Methodus, and Institutiones in the Epistola nuncupatoria of the Institutiones (Institutiones, +2v–+3r). For Fuchs’s biography, see the contemporary life by Georg Hizler, most readily available in English translation in F.G. Meyer, E.E. Trueblood and J.L. Heller (eds.), The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs: De historia stirpium commentarii insignes, 1542 (Notable Commentaries on the History of Plants), 2 vols., Stanford (CA) 1999, 1: 263–280. 7 G. Mercuriale, Medicina practica, seu De cognoscendis, discernendis, et curandis, omnibus humani corporis affectibus, earumque causis indagandis, libri V. In Patavino Gymnasio, olim ab ipso publice praelecti, & thesauri instar à quibusdam hactenus reconditi, plurimorumque votis & desiderio summe expetiti nunc autem post obitum autoris … in lucem editi, studio & opera, Petri de Spina … Frankfurt 1601. Id., Praelectiones Patavinae. De cognoscendis, et curandis humani corporis affectibus. In quibus praeter alia, quae ad praxim exercendam plurimum conferunt, et praeter variam eruditionem, gravissimae quoque theoriae difficultates enodantur. Nuper inscio, et tanquam mortuo authore editae, nunc vero, tum ex diversis exemplaribus, eodem permittente ac annuente, tum ex ipsiusmet ore praemonstrante atque dictante, recognitae, emendatae, & tertia parte auctae, Venezia 1603; the Junta press in Venice subsequently reissued this edition three times (1606, 1617, 1627). Id., Medicina practica, seu De cognoscendis, discernendis, et curandis omnibus humani corporis affectibus, earumque causis indagandis, libri V. In Patavino Gymnasio, olim ab ipso publice praelecti, et post obitum authoris publici boni causa. in lucem editi, studio et opera, Petri de Spina … Lyon 1617; the Pillehotte press in Lyon reissued the work twice (1618 and 1623). For this chapter I have used G. Mercuriale, Praelectiones Patavinae, Venezia 1606. For biographical information on Mercuriale (1530–1606), see I. Paoletti, Gerolamo Mercuriale e il suo tempo. Studio eseguito su 62 lettere e un consulto inediti del medico forlivese giacenti presso l’Archivio di Stato di Parma, Lanciano 1963.
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medicae tomi tres, appeared in a dozen editions between 1602 and 1736, including an English translation in 1662.8 My goal is to get some comparative idea of what kind of material on the subject of soul and mind, how much of it, and how arranged, readers of these works might encounter. In particular, Fernel’s profound and in some respects idiosyncratic engagement with psychology is well known and has been much studied. By comparison, what kind of engagement with topics related to psychology did the other authors bring to their general overviews of medicine? But before turning to the individual works, two important caveats are in order. The first, of course, is that these books are very unlikely ever to have been the sole source of information on soul and mind in relation to medicine for any of their readers. At the very least, university educated physicians in the age of humanism would have been directly exposed to the relevant views of Aristotle and Galen via lectures on texts of those authors.9 Secondly, although it is clear that the general works on medicine were widely read, it is less obvious what sections of them were most valued. Practitioners may, for example, have turned to these volumes chiefly as reference works on pathology or therapy, rather than for any explicit discussion or implicit considerations regarding soul. 2. Jean Fernel and Leonhart Fuchs As is well known, in Medicina/Universa medicina Fernel’s treatment of topics related to psychology is concentrated in Physiologia, the first and most theoretical of the three sections of the work (the other two being
8 With the exception of the English translation, all editions of the Praxeos appear to have been published at Basel, where Felix Platter (1536–1614), spent his professional career. The English translation is F. Platter, A golden practice of physick. In five books, and three tomes … Full of proper observations and remedies both of ancient and modern physitians, London 1662. For this chapter I have consulted F. Platter, Praxeos medicae tomi tres, Basel 1625. For his career, see P.E. Pilet, ‘Platter, Felix,’ Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 16 vols., New York 1970–1980, 11: 33. 9 On the importance of De anima in the academic curriculum, see Park and Kessler, ‘The Concept of Psychology;’ Park, ‘The Organic Soul;’ and Lautner, ‘Status and Method.’ Galen addressed issues regarding soul, mind, and sense in a number of different treatises and contexts: see the articles published in Manuli and Vegetti, Le opere psicologiche di Galeno (especially L. Garcia-Ballester, ‘Soul and Body. Disease of the Soul and Disease of the Body in Galen’s Medical Thought,’ 117–152; J. Pigeaud, ‘La Psychopathologie de Galien,’ 153–183; and J. Kollesch, ‘Anschauungen von den Archai in der Ars medica und die Seelenlehre Galens,’ 215–229); and P.N. Singer, ‘Levels of Explanation in Galen,’ Classical Quarterly, 47 (1997), 525– 542.
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Pathologia and Therapeutica). Fernel devoted two of the seven internal books of Physiologia to the faculties of the soul and the closely related concepts of natural, vital, and animal spirits and innate heat; in addition, book 6 on functions and humors, includes a series of chapters on functiones animales.10 By contrast, Pathologia devotes only three chapters to conditions related to psychology (though Fernel was in general no less concerned with pathology and therapy than with physiological and psychological theory).11 Recent scholarship has analyzed in detail the distinctive features of Fernel’s complex and by no means wholly clear views of soul and related topics as he presented them both in Physiologia and, more fully, in the companion treatise De abditis rerum causis libri duo. Originally published separately, De abditis was subsequently printed with many editions of the enlarged Universa medicina, so that readers of these editions presumably encountered the full range of Fernel’s ideas relating to soul. Prominent among them were his insistence on the role of the heavenly bodies in infusing spiritus and vital heat; his endorsement of the concept of the astral body; his Platonizing and Ficinian interpretation of Galen’s often ambiguous remarks about soul and its faculties; his elaborate schemes and division of faculties; his repudiation of traditional ideas espoused by Avicenna and other medieval authors about the localization of faculties in the brain.12 These positions, together with Fernel’s arguments about occult causes of disease, all gave rise to controversy at Paris and elsewhere both in his lifetime and thereafter.13
10 Fernel, Physiologia, Book 4, De spiritibus et innato calido, 256–301; Book 5, De animae facultatibus, 302–401; Book 6, De functionibus et humoribus, chapters 10–15, 466–507. 11 Fernel, Universa medicina, Pathologia 1.18, 191–192, ‘Animi perturbationes morborum causas fieri’; Pathologia 5.2, 254–256, ‘Principis facultatis symptomata’; Pathologia 5.3, 256– 260, ‘Motus sensusque symptomata.’ 12 V. Aucante, ‘La théorie de l’ âme de Jean Fernel,’ Corpus: revue de philosophie, 41 (2002), 9–42; J. Céard, ‘La physiologie de la mémoire selon le médecin Jean Fernel,’ Corpus: revue de philosophie, 41 (2002), 119–133; J.J. Bono, The Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine, Madison (WI) 1995 (Science and literature), 97–103; H. Hirai, Le concept de semence dans les théories de la matière à la Renaissance: de Marsile Ficin à Pierre Gassendi, Turnhout 2005 (Collection de travaux de l’ Académie Internationale d’ Histoire des Sciences, 72 [N.S., 35]), 83–103; Id., ‘Alter Galenus: Jean Fernel et son interprétation platonico-chrétienne de Galien,’ Early Science and Medicine, 10 (2005), 1–35; and D.P. Walker, ‘The Astral Body in Renaissance Medicine,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21 (1958), 119–133. Fernel’s De abditis rerum causis libri duo was first published in Paris 1548; for its inclusion in editions of Universa Medicina, see the bibliography in Sherrington, The Endeavour, 191–194. 13 Fernel’s ideas on occult causes of disease are mostly contained in De abditis rerum causis. On the controversies over his theories, see L.W.B. Brockliss, ‘Seeing and Believing:
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Fernel perhaps had as his goal to write a comprehensive work on medicine that could be used as the basis of academic teaching. He lectured on his own Physiologia; and, as Danielle Jacquart has pointed out, the Canon of Avicenna, sections of which were in Fernel’s day still widely used as a fundamental teaching text, was in some sense his model as well as the object of his sharpest criticism. There is also evidence that later in the century his work was in some instances officially assigned for university study, as was the case at Montpellier.14 Leonhart Fuchs was much more explicit in his pedagogical objectives. Fuchs’s own labors as editor and translator of Galen leave no doubt as to his conviction of the importance of the direct study of Galen’s texts.15 But he also insisted on the need for a clear, relatively brief, introductory manual of medicine. In a comparison of pedagogical practice in the three higher disciplines theology, law, and medicine, he rated theologians worst. In his view, they never set out the main points of Christian doctrine, but piled up a mass of commentaries filled with their own inept ideas (a portrayal clearly inspired by Fuchs’s Lutheranism as well as his humanism). In medicine, he noted that some physicians still claimed that the Canon of Avicenna fulfilled the need for an overview, but according to Fuchs it was too big, too confused, and too often wrong. Some jurists, too, remained tied up in immense commentaries and ‘labyrinths of questions.’ But jurists alone, Fuchs claimed, had the benefit of the clear and simple explanation of method and principles found in Justinian’s Institutes. Fuchs thus drew inspiration for his own work from legal humanism and, explicitly, from Viglius Zuichemus ab Aytta’s edition of the Greek paraphrase of the
Contrasting Attitudes Towards Observational Autonomy Among French Galenists in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century,’ in: W.F. Bynum and R.S. Porter (eds.), Medicine and the Five Senses, Cambridge 1993, 69–84; L.W.B. Brockliss and C. Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France, Oxford 1997, 128–138; L. Deer Richardson, ‘The Generation of Disease: Occult Causes and Diseases of the Total Substance,’ in: A. Wear, R.K. French and I.M. Lonie (eds.), The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge 1985, 175– 194. 14 On Fernel as a textbook author and his teaching practice, see G. Plancy, Vita Fernelii, in: Jean Fernel, Universa medicina, Leiden 1645, *3r–**4v, at *5v; in English translation in Sherrington, The Endeavour of Jean Fernel, 155. For the official assignment of Fernel’s work at the University of Montpellier in 1574, see L. Dulieu, La médecine à Montpellier, 2: La Renaissance, Avignon 1975, 141–142, 145. On Fernel and Avicenna, see D. Jacquart, ‘La Physiologie de Jean Fernel et le Canon d’ Avicenne,’ Corpus: revue de philosophie, 41 (2002), 71–85. 15 Fuchs was one of the scholarly editors of Galenou hapanta. Galeni … opera omnia, ad fidem complurium & perquam vetustorum exemplariorum … emendata atque restituta, 5 vols. in 4, Basel 1538, and the translator of Galen, Aliquot opera, a Leonharto Fuchsio … Latinitate donata, & commentariis illustrata, 4 vols. in 1, Paris 1550–1555.
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Institutes, published in 1534.16 Just as the title Methodus for early editions of Fuchs’s work suggests the various endeavors to establish method in medicine (and other disciplines) characteristic of the middle years of the sixteenth century, Institutiones medicinae, the title he chose for the enlarged
16 Fuchs, Methodus, Epistola nuncupatoria (dated 1540), a3v-a5r: ‘Quis est enim qui nesciat paucis ante annis sophisticis nugis sic obscuratas et contaminatas fuisse disciplinas omnes, ut ne eruditi quidem summas rerum excerpere possent? Nam ut a theologis ordiar, quis inter eos etiam qui caeteris eruditione antecellere videbantur, repertus est, qui Christianae doctrinae capita teneret? Neque enim fieri potuit, ut tanta commentariorum mole, quae quisque pro suis ineptis, ne dicam phanaticis magna ex parte cogitationibus cudebat prolixissima, obruti illorum animi, certam doctrinae Christianae summam cognitam perspectamque haberent. Quapropter in tanta prodigiosissimarum opinionem, quas tum monachi et magistri illi nostri quotidie pepererunt, multitudine fieri non potuit ut quispiam theologae studiosus sana doctrina scopum attingeret … Quod si ad iureconsultos respicias, non minus commentariorum apud eos quam theologos fuisse deprehendes: quorum tamen usus aliqua ratione tolerabilis fuisset, utpote rebus humanis in singulas propemodum horas mutatis, nisi hoc accessisset mali, ut illorum autores idipsum quod a maioribus bene et perspicue traditum praeceptumque fuit, confudissent, et quod ab uno constructum erat, alter diruere voluisset. Proinde qui in scholis publicis et academiis tum regnabant, plerumque sine ullo fructu docebant, quod quidam illorum statim initio in ipsis difficillimarum questionum labyrinthos irrumperent, unde nec ipsi quidem sese explicare possent, tantum abest ut quicquam emolumenti ab illis ad auditores pervenerit … Quod si ad methodum suam, quam salvam tamen in scholis suis retinuerant hoc est, Institutiones respicere voluissent, facile et celeriter sese explicare, et cur his verbis titulum praefixerint Iureconsulti dilucide et breviter exponere potuissent. Verum cladem desertae methodi, a defectionem hanc ad immensos illos commentarios, nemo unquam copiosius, maiorique prudentia et verborum ornatu explicuit Viglio ipso, Iureconsultorum omnium doctissimo et eloquentissimo, atque adeo Germaniae nostrae unico ornamento in epistola ad augustissimum invictissimumque Imperatorem Carolem scripta, et Institutionibus Graecis praefixa. Quare eo amandatis Iureconsultis, ne sutor ultra crepidam sapere videar, ad nostrum divertemus professionem, quae sic etiam misere afflicta est, ut prorsus nullam, quae summam artis recte et ordine traderet, retinerit epitomen. Etsi enim Galenus multas, easque optimas posteritati reliquerit tamen nulla fere praeter eam quam de pulsibus edidit superstes fuit. Proinde Galeni methodis seu Isagogis amissis, alias quaerere coacti sunt eius temporis medici. Utcunque autem diligenter circumspicerent, nihil tamen quod eorum iudicio methodi nomen mereretur, praeter Avicennae Canonem inveniebant. Hunc enim huiusmodi esse putarunt, qui breviter et ordine quicquid ad universae artis cognitionem esset necessarium complecteretur. Idcirco repudiatis aliis pene omnibus, unus in scholis publicis, et privatim etiam singulis, ut inde artis praecepta disceretur, enarratus et propositus est. Et certe non desunt qui hodie etiam eadem in opinione haerent, commoranturque, ut arbitrantur Avicennam breviter et ordine totam medicinam perstrinxisserat qui si rem rectius et penitius expenderint, multo aliter de illis scriptis iudicabunt. Si enim molem consideras, vastum et prolixum, non pertenuem et brevem hunc canonem dicas necesse est. Sin ordinem quo ille usus est perpendas committere certe non poteris quin hoc nomine optimum esse fatearis, quod a simplicibus ac elementis ad magis composite feratur. Verum si ea quae specie optimi ordinis tradit accurate diligentia excutias cum partim sint obscura, partim etiam innummeris erratis reserta, non ordinem et lucem, sed Cimmerias plane tenebras et confusam esse chaos senties.’
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version, reflects his admiration of the legal model. Fuchs thus pioneered what would become a long and influential tradition of medical textbooks entitled Institutes of Medicine or some variant thereof.17 Fuchs devoted three sections of the first, physiological, book of the Institutiones to faculties, actions, and spirits, but his discussion of these subjects occupied a considerably smaller proportion of his ‘physiologia’ than of Fernel’s, and he paid little or no attention to the subject of the celestial or astral origin of spirits. Always concerned to distinguish authentic Galenic teaching from other concepts, Fuchs began his account of faculties by insisting that all Galen meant by ‘faculty’ was the cause of an effect and a property of temperament. Those who referred to faculties as powers of the soul were using the language of philosophy, not medicine—although almost immediately thereafter he also pointed out that Galen as well as Plato had referred to the natural, vital, and animal faculties as souls.18 Similarly, Fuchs noted the difference between Galenic and Aristotelian accounts of, and vocabulary for, the hierarchy of mental faculties governed by the facultas animalis residing in the brain: he asserted that Aristotelians had been responsible for adding the in his view superfluous, sensus communis to the Galenic triad which he named as imaginatrix, rationatrix, and memoratrix. The rational or cogitative faculty is, according to Fuchs, what Hippocrates called ‘mind’ (mens), Galen ‘reason’ (ratio), and the philosophers ‘understanding’ (intelligentia).19 Like Fernel, Fuchs insisted that the three faculties all inhered in the brain as a whole, dismissing the standard medieval account, found in the
17 See N.W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method, New York 1960; J.J. Bylebyl, ‘Teaching “Methodus mendendi” in the Renaissance,’ in: F. Kudlien and R.J. Durling (eds.), Galen’s Method of Healing. Proceedings of the 1982 Galen Symposium, Leiden 1991 (Studies in ancient medicine, 1), 157–189. 18 Fuchs, Institutiones, 1.6.1, 165–166, at 166: ‘Denique in libro de plenitudine, manifestis verbis, facultatum gubernantium corpus essentiam temperamenti proprietatem existere [Galenus] asserit. Atque haec plane de facultate loquendi ratio medicis est acommmodatissima … Quod monendum esse putavimus, propter eos, qui facultatem esse vim illam, et potestatem dicunt, quam anima ex se profert, et tanquam de sinu suo promit, actionesque edit. Quorum certe sententia, facultas non est nisi insita et ingenita animae proprietas, quae ipsa quidem est accidens, et nulla essentiae portio, sed intimum quiddam et ingenitum. Verum hic loquendi modus Philosopho magis, quam medico convenit, ideoque Galeno neglectus.’ But at 1.6.2, 166–167: ‘Sunt autem efficientium causarum tres differentiae: igitur tres quoque animal gubernantes facultates erunt diversi inter se generis, et sedibus disclusae, totique corpori ex suo quodam veluti fonte quaeque distributa, naturalis scilicet, vitalis, et animalis. Plato in quarto de Republica Galenus etiam lib. ix Therapeutica Methodo attestante, animas nominat.’ 19 Fuchs, Institutiones, 1.6.3, 170–171.
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Canon of Avicenna and many other sources, of a separate cerebral location for each faculty as a rash and baseless ‘Arab’ invention.20 By contrast, Fuchs’s discussion of mental illness or defects and of emotional disturbance in some respects differed quite markedly from Fernel’s. To be sure, both writers preserved a generally Galenist account and both retained the standard practice of discussing mental illness or defect among diseases of the head, and of placing excesses of emotion in the separate category of accidentiae or perturbationes of the soul (a division reflecting the association of the passions with the vital faculty and with the heart). But there the resemblance ended. As already noted, Fernel placed both topics in his Pathologia. In Book 1, on the causes of disease, he included a brief chapter on the physiological effects of the movements of innate heat and spiritus brought about by excess of emotion. In Book 5, on diseases and symptoms of the parts, he devoted an entire long, carefully constructed, chapter exclusively to various forms of alienation of the mind. In it, he distinguished not only among the standard categories frenzy, mania, and melancholia, but also between lifelong mental defect and the effects of traumatic brain injury.21 Fuchs, too, handled mental alienation in his pathology section—but in the context of a single chapter also made to cover headache, baldness, and head
20 Fuchs, Institutiones, 1.6.3, 171–172, at 171: ‘Caeterum principes facultates totius sunt cerebri, in cuius toto corpore fusae sunt, ideoque suas actiones non certis ac diversis cerebri locis exercent, sed in toto potius cerebro. Unde palam sit, iuniores ab antiqua et cerebri Philosophia, atque medicina prorsus defecisse, qui imaginatricem facultatem priore cerebri parte, ratiocinatricem media, memoratricem posteriore collocarunt: vel, ut ipsi loquuntur, imaginationem in anterioribus cerebri ventriculis, cogitationem in medio, memoriam in postremo ventriculo haerere putant. Haec enim opinio ex Arabum factione primum nata, nullis rationibus stabilita, partim ficta pueriliter, partim effutita temere, ita demum iactationem habuit in populo.’ Compare Fernel, Physiologia, 5.8, 340–341: ‘Haec omnia in sensu primario insunt, neque alterius partis animae aut cerebri est effictio, alterius vero memoria, sed in subiecto eodem insunt et eiusdem partis animae functiones. Unde intelligitur eos ab antiqua celebrique [sic] philosophia defecisse, qui vim illam ad fingendam aptam cerebri parte priore, memoriam posteriore collocarunt. Nam utraque totius est cerebri, in cuius toto corpore fusa est princeps sentiendi anima.’ On the role of Avicenna’s Canon in shaping the theory of the localization of the faculties or inner senses in ventricles in the brain, see G. Strohmaier, ‘Avicenna’s Lehre von den “inneren Sinnen”,’ in: P.E. Manuli and M. Vegetti (eds.), Le opere psicologiche di Galeno. Atti del terzo colloquio Galenico internazionale, Pavia 10–12 settembre 1986, Napoli 1988 (Elenchos, 13), 231–242. On sixteenth-century debates over localization, see M.-L. Demonet, ‘Le lieu où l’ on pense, ou le désordre des facultés,’ in: G.A. Pérouse and F. Goyet (eds.), Ordre et désordre dans la civilisation de la Renaissance. Actes du Colloque Renaissance, Humanisme, Réforme, Nice, septembre 1993, Saint-Etienne 1996, 25–45. 21 See note 11 above.
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lice, as well as coma, epilepsy, and apoplexy.22 In contrast to this cursory treatment he devoted a long discussion to illnesses and even death brought on by excess of emotion. Unlike Fernel, he did not include this under pathology, but placed it in a separate section of his work on the set of the res non naturales, or environmental conditions or states of the body, of which the accidentiae animae were one. As concept and organizing framework, the non-naturals were a highly traditional category long employed by medieval physicians, but the content of Fuchs’s chapter on the emotions was much less so. It reflected both the changing culture of medicine which increasingly turned to individual cases, whether as instructive example or recorded observation, and the broader humanist fascination with history of all kinds. Fuchs supplied his readers with a colorful series of examples of people who died of joy or sorrow drawn neither from previous medical writers nor from his own experience as a practitioner, but from Pliny, Aulus Gellius, and Valerius Maximus.23 3. Girolamo Mercuriale and Felix Platter Fernel’s Medicina and Fuchs’s Institutiones were explicitly presented by their authors as comprehensive and newly organized overviews of the whole of medicine. The two works of authors of the next generation, Girolamo Mercuriale and Felix Platter, to which I now turn are new, and greatly enlarged, versions of a genre of Latin medical book standard since the Middle Ages. They are Practicae, that is to say books on diseases and treatment arranged according to regions of the body. Mercuriale’s Medicina practica is the fruit of his lectures at Padua in the 1570s or 1580s on the branch of the university medical curriculum known as practica—i.e. teaching about disease and therapy—for which the assigned text was a work of the medieval Arabic physician ar-Razi, although Mercuriale simply followed the sequence of the subject matter of that text, effectively abandoning the commentary format.24 As is usual with practicae, the work contains not only descriptions of disease conditions and general recommendations for treatment, but also long lists of remedies. However, the title of some editions
Fuchs, Institutiones, 3.11, 410–414, ‘Vitiorum capitis brevis enarratio.’ Fuchs, Institutiones, 2.6, 349–352. 24 For the assigned texts in medicina practica at Padua in this period, see B. Bertolaso, ‘Ricerche d’archivio su alcuni aspetti dell’insegnamento medico presso la università di Padova nel cinque- e seicento,’ Acta Medicae Historiae Patavina, 6 (1959–1960), 17–37. 22 23
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of Mercuriale’s work promises the reader not only ‘many things useful for practice,’ but also both ‘varied erudition’ and the solution of ‘very serious theoretical problems.’25 The theoretical component is especially substantial as regards psychology. Book 1, on conditions of the head, includes a lengthy chapter on the principal faculties of the soul. Mercuriale justified the presence of this material in his practica by declaring that it was impossible to discuss injuries to the operations of the brain without first clearing up the ‘completely confused’ state of teaching on the operations and location of the three faculties.26 Mercuriale devoted most of the chapter on the faculties to vigorous polemic against recent and revisionist opinions regarding the location of the faculties he termed imaginatio, discursus, and memoria. As noted earlier, Fernel, Fuchs, and other mid-sixteenth century authors had rejected the traditional assignment of each of the three to a specific region of the brain and claimed instead that they collectively inhered in the substance of the brain as a whole. Against this position, Mercuriale argued for the traditional view, modified only by the assertion that each faculty was present in the brain substance of its respective region, rather than—as medieval opinion had held—in a ventricle.27 In a display of humanistic erudition, both philosophical and medical, he cited or alluded to opinions on the nature and location of the soul not only of Plato, Aristotle, and Galen, but also various preSocratics, the Stoics, Plotinus, Herophilus, Erasistratus, and Tertullian. But in striking contrast to Fernel and Fuchs he also cited respectfully an array of medieval Arabic and a few Latin scholastic authors.28 He combined some
25
See note 7 above. Mercuriale, Praelectiones Patavinae, 1.6, 17–20, ‘De principibus animae facultatibus,’ at 17: ‘Sed quia doctrina omnis confusa est, nisi prius notitia habeatur eius re, de qua tractatur, ante caetera haec duo docebo, scilicet, quid sit unaquaeque operatio princeps, et quae sint sedes, sive quae sint organa, in quibus huiusmodi operations eduntur.’ 27 Mercuriale, Praelectiones Patavinae, 1.6, 18: ‘Mea itaque est opinio, propterea naturam fabricasse cerebri substantiam variam, et diversam, ut secundum hanc varietatem varias operationes in ipso cerebro perficere possit, ita, ut imaginatio, quae eadem est cum sensu communi perficiatur in anteriori parte cerebri; discursus fiat in media parte; memoria autem efficiatur in parte postrema. Dico autem in his partibus fieri has operationes, quoniam sum huius sententiae, non solum in ventriculis cerebri fieri huiusmodi operationes, verumetiam in universo corpore ipsius cerebri; adeo ut quando anteriorem partem dico, intelligam eam omnem partem, quam amplectitur simul, et anteriores ventriculos, et reliquam cerebri substantiam.’ 28 For example, Mercuriale, Praelectiones Patavinae, 1.6, 19: ‘Et quoniam rationes omnes eo firmiores putantur, quando a gravissimis scriptoribus confirmantur, superest, ut postremo loco videamus, qui authores hanc sententiam fuerint amplexi, scilicet quod imaginatio fiat in anteriori cerebri parte, discursus in media, et memoria in postrema … Inter Arabes princeps 26
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purely teleological arguments (for example, ‘the actions of noble forms are always more numerous and therefore they have more instruments’),29 with others somewhat more empirical. Thus, he asserted that if all the operations of the rational soul were carried out through a single instrument—the brain as a whole—injury to one operation would damage the others too; but experience showed that memory might be lost and imaginatio and discursus remain unaffected. Mercuriale’s strong views on localization of the faculties provide the framework for his discussion of varieties of mental alienation or defect, which he categorized according to the faculty supposedly affected. As might be expected, he classified phrenesis, mania, fatuitas and amentia as defects of reason, but it required prolonged argument (against Fernel and the Neapolitan physician Donato Antonio Altomare) to establish that melancholia was primarily—though not in Mercuriale’s view exclusively— a defect of injured imaginatio. At the same time, Mercuriale placed loss of memory in a separate category of defects (vitia) of memoria, even though he acknowledged that physicians usually associated memory loss with imaginatio.30 In Medicina practica Mercuriale’s lengthy discussions of these conditions involved mostly the round up and reconciliation of the diversity of ancient opinion and discussion of causes related both to imbalance of temperament and humors and to external factors—though it may be noted that he considered the ‘art of memory,’ widely espoused in his own day, to be ‘mere trifles’ (merae nugae). He pointed out that to follow the prescriptions of writers on artificial memory one needed to have an excellent memory to begin with. (Mercuriale was not alone among humanists in his distaste for the art of memory; Erasmus had held similar views.)31
huius sententiae fuit Avicenna … praeter Avicennam Aharunius, et Haliabbas, et magnus Averroes hanc sectati sunt.’ 29 Mercuriale, Praelectiones Patavinae, 1.6, 18: ‘Secunda ratio est, quod nobilium formarum semper sunt plures actiones, et consequenter plura instrumenta.’ 30 Mercuriale, Praelectiones Patavinae, 1.10, 31–46, ‘De melancholia,’ with the arguments against Fernel and Altomare at 32–33. The work of Altomare referred to is presumably his Trium quaesitorum nondum in Galeni doctrina dilucidatorum compendium, in which the first item is ‘Quod functiones principes iuxta Galeni decreta, anima non in cerebri sinibus, sed in ipsius corpore exerceat,’ in his Omnia, quae hucusque in lucem prodierunt opera, Venezia 1574, 31v–37v. According to Mercuriale, other defects of imaginatio, are vertigo (1.11, 46–54) and lycanthropia (1.12, 54–55). Injuries to reason (‘ratiocinationis laesae’), namely fatuitas et amentia, phrenesis, and mania are the subject of 1.13–16, 55–71, injuries to memory (‘vitia ad memoriam pertinentibus’), namely lethargo and lost memory, of 1.17–18, 71–80. See esp. 71: ‘Nec obstat, quod nullus medicus mentionem fecerit depravatae memoriae; quoniam depravata memoria est fere eadem cum imaginatione depravata.’ 31 Mercuriale, Praelectiones Patavinae, 1.18, 78: ‘Et quanquam antiquo tempore Simonides medicus, et Hermodorus Septius, Raymundus Lullius, et Arnoldus Villanovanus nostris
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Apart from occasional references to cases mentioned by the Hippocratic author or Galen, Mercuriale did not provide examples of individual cases in Medicina practica. But he was also the author of a large body of Consultationes, or consilia, records of advice given to individual patients that include a number of cases relating to mental conditions, especially melancholia.32 Edited by a student of Mercuriale’s the first set of his Consultationes appeared in print several years before the first edition of the Paduan lectures on medicina practica.33 Collections of consilia by distinguished physicians had emerged as a genre of medical literature in the later Middle Ages; by the fifteenth century it had become a standard practice for compilers of such collections to organize the contents according to either regions of the body or disease categories, or some combination of the two, presumably with the goal of facilitating their comparison with standard works on medicina practica (for example, Books 3 and 4 of Avicenna’s Canon) and hence use for study or reference.34 But, apparently inspired by humanist miscellanies, Mercuriale’s editor and student Michele Colombo decided to depart from this practice. He explained to his readers that he had not arranged Mercuriale’s Consultationes in any particular order, but left them as a miscellany, because the individual items had no relation to one another, and in any case to read a series of consilia on the same subject would be a bore, whereas variety gave delight—a striking example of the humanist taste for, and pleasure in, miscellanies.35 After 1601 when both Mercuriale’s practica and
temporibus, artem fecerint memoriam recuperandi, et acquirendi: nihilominus merae nugae sunt. Quoniam, qui hanc artem docebant, praesupposuerunt optimam memoriam.’ For Erasmus’s view of the art of memory, see F.A. Yates, The Art of Memory, London 1966, 126–127, 236–237 (my thanks to Anthony Grafton for drawing my attention to Erasmus’s opinion). 32 Some of these cases are discussed, chiefly in terms of gender, in M. Calabritto, ‘Medicina practica, consilia and the Illness of the Head in Girolamo Mercuriale and Giulio Cesare Claudini. Similarities and Differences of the Sexes,’ Medicina & Storia, 6 (2006), 63–83. 33 G. Mercuriale, Responsorum, et consultationum medicinalium … nunc primum a Michaele Columbo collectus, et in lucem editus, 4 vols. in 1, Venezia 1587–1604. The volumes in this edition were originally published 1587, 1589, 1597, and 1604. Michele Colombo edited only vols. 1 and 2 (vol. 3 was edited by Hieronymus Augustinus Forliviensis, vol. 4 by Gulielmus Athenius). According to a note added to the New York Academy of Medicine copy, some individual consultationes in vol. 1 bear dates ranging from 1563–1586; those in vol. 2 are undated; those in vol. 3 include dates from 1593–1597; and those in vol. 4 dates from 1592– 1603. The four volumes were reprinted with a variant title in 1620–1624. 34 J. Agrimi, and C. Crisciani, Les consilia médicaux, Turnhout 1994 (Typologie des sources du Moyen Age occidental, 69), 69–79. 35 Mercuriale, Responsae et consultationes, 1 (1587): iiir: ‘Michael Columbus medicinae studiosis … Iam causam, obsecro, accipite cur quod forsan optassetis, unamquamque Consultationem ad suam veluti classem, pro partium corporis ordine, sciens volensque minime
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his Consultationes were in print, comparison of his accounts of cases with his theoretical teaching would certainly have been possible, but Colombo’s editing efforts—carried out with Mercuriale’s knowledge and approval— clearly reduced the possibility of doing so in a systematic way.36 Felix Platter, too, was the author of records of his own cases assembled into a collection as well as of a large general book on practica. Yet Platter saw the relation between record and precept very differently both from the humanist Mercuriale and from the earlier compilers of consilia who had arranged their collections following the order of part of Avicenna’s Canon or another standard medieval Arabo-Latin text. The title page of Platter’s Observationes announces prominently that the collection is specifically designed as a companion to the author’s own recently composed overview of practical medicine, Praxeos medicae tomi tres. Platter further spelled out the relation between the two works in the dedicatory epistle to the Observationes, in which he explained that he himself had assembled and arranged the collection of his cases to provide specific, individual examples of the general statements in Praxeos.37 Moreover, whereas many of Mercuriale’s consultationes resemble traditional consilia in giving more weight to recommendations for treatment than to details of the case, Platter’s
retulerim. Sunt enim haec veluti miscellanea quaedam, in quibus hoc ipsum quodammodo decere videtur, ut nulla habeatur prioris posteriorisve ratio, praesertim quod hic unius cognitio ex alterius cognitione non pendet, cuiusmodi in rebus nullam ordinis adesse necessitatem, ita ut hae praecedant, subsequantur illa, proditum a Galeno est. Praeterea Consultationes eiusdem argumenti pleraeque deinceps subtexendae erant, ex quo verabar fore, ut aliquid nobis taedi suboritur … Contra vero, solet, animum oblectare varietas, et grata voluptate perfundere.’ On humanists and miscellanies, see A. Grafton, ‘The Scholarship of Politian and Its Context,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 40 (1977), 150–188. 36 For Mercuriale’s approval of Colombo as editor, see my ‘Mercuriale’s Letters to Zwinger and Humanist Medicine,’ in: A. Arcangeli and V. Nutton (eds.), Girolamo Mercuriale: medicina e cultura nell’Europa del Cinquecento. Atti del convegno ‘Girolamo Mercuriale e lo spazio scientifico e culturale del Cinquecento’ (Forlì, 8–11 novembre 2006), Firenze 2008 (Bibliothèque d’ histoire des sciences, 10), 77–95. 37 F. Platter, Observationum, in hominis affectibus plerisque, corpori et animo, functionum laesione, dolore, aliave molestia et vitio incommodantibus, libri tres. Ad Praxeos illius Tractatus tres, quorum primus functionum laesiones, secundus dolores, tertius vitia continent, accommodati, Basel 1614, Epistola dedicatoria, ):( 4r–v: ‘Observationes, in affectibus homini incommodantibus, quorum affectuum descriptionem prius generatim in Praxi mea complexus fueram, nunc etiam particulatim, in certis hominibus quo pacto haec evenerunt, atque a me observata tractataque fuerunt, historice descripta, publici iuris facere volui.’ In this edition, cases of mental dysfunction occupy the first 87 pages. There are several subsequent seventeenth-century editions and a modern German translation of Book 1, namely F. Platter, Observationes: Krankheitsbeobachtungen, transl. G. Goldschmidt and ed. H. Buess, Bern 1963 (Hubers Klassiker der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, 1).
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Observationes—that is, accounts of and comments on case histories that he viewed as of particular interest—are exceptionally rich in descriptive detail. Felix Platter’s careful attention to paralleling precept with clinical example is one of several features of these two books that have deservedly earned him a reputation among medical historians as an attentive practitioner and to some degree a medical innovator. In the wider context of early modern social history, Platter and his family are also suggestive of innovation and modernization, with their remarkable social rise, travels, and personal writings (especially Felix’s famous diary, with its engaging account of his student days at Montpellier).38 But the area in which the broadest claims have been made for Platter as medical pioneer is, in the words of two historians of psychiatry writing in 1965, ‘the clinical organization of psychiatric illnesses.’39 As a recent study has shown, some of these claims, at least in their most sweeping versions, are highly anachronistic.40 But to what extent did Platter’s accounts of mental functions and disorders significantly either depart from or draw on Renaissance Galenist accounts of mental function such as those found, in variant forms, in the works of Fernel, Fuchs, and Mercuriale? It is certainly true both that Platter had a particular interest in mental conditions, that this interest was strongly grounded in his own clinical experience, and that he organized his treatment of the topic very differently from Fernel, Fuchs, or Mercuriale, and other recent predecessors. Both the Praxeos and the Observationes are divided into three main sections, the first of which is devoted to ‘lesions of function.’ Platter devoted almost a quarter of
38 F. Platter, Tagebuch (Lebensbeschreibung) 1536–1567, ed. V. Lötscher, Basel 1976 (Basler Chroniken, 10). The portion of the diary relating to Platter’s student days is available in English translation as Beloved Son Felix: the Journal of Felix Platter, a Medical Student in Montpellier in the Sixteenth Century, transl. S. Jennett, London 1961. On the Platter family, see E. Le Roy Ladurie, The Beggar and the Professor: a Sixteenth-Century Family Saga, Chicago (IL) 1997. 39 O. Diethelm and T.F. Heffernan, ‘Felix Platter and Psychiatry,’ Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1 (1965), 10–23, with a passage quoted at 17. I make no attempt to provide a full bibliography of the medical historical literature on Platter and psychology or psychiatry, but mention should be made of K. Huber, Felix Platters Observationes: Studien zum frühneuzeitlichen Gesundheitswesen in Basel, Basel 2003 (Basler Beiträge zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 177), 43–80; R. Battegay, ‘Felix Platter und die Psychiatrie,’ in: U. Tröhler (ed.), Felix Platter (1536–1614) in seiner Zeit, Basel 1991 (Basler Veröffentlichungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Biologie, N.F., 3), 35–43; F.E. James, ‘Some Observations on the Writings of Felix Platter (1539–1614) in Relation to Mental Handicap,’ History of Psychiatry, 2 (1991), 103–108. The remarks on Platter in Midelfort, A History of Madness, 174–179, are perceptive. 40 C.F. Goodey, ‘ “Foolishness” in Early Modern Medicine and the Concept of Intellectual Disability,’ Medical History, 48 (2004), 289–310.
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this part of the Praxeos and more than a third of the parallel section of the Observationes to mental conditions. As is well known, in a striking departure from previous convention, he introduced novel terms for a novel fourfold classification for mental disorders, dividing them into imbecillitas, consternatio, alienatio, and defatigatio of the mind.41 Nor is this the only respect in which Platter’s Praxeos reads very differently from Mercuriale’s contemporary Medicina practica. The Praxeos contains no extended account of, or polemic about, the faculties of soul. Moreover, unlike Mercuriale—and indeed unlike most sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century learned physicians, whatever the subject of their work—in the Praxeos Platter seldom expounded the views of, or even explicitly cited, ancient authorities. Nevertheless, a number of Platter’s descriptions—notably ‘folly’ as he presents it under imbecillitas mentis—hardly correspond to any modern categories of mental illness or defect; and, as is well known, he also allowed considerable room for demonic activity.42 But how much of the traditional descriptive and conceptual vocabulary he retained has perhaps been less noted. The organization of the section on lesions of function in both the Praxeos and the Observationes continues to place disturbances of mind among diseases of the head. Phrenitis, melancholia, and mania re-emerge as forms of alienatio mentis, a category that also includes emotional disturbance—now unmoored from the set of the non-naturals—and lovesickness.43 Moreover, even Platter’s very brief allusions to psychological/physiological concepts make clear the ideas underlying his presentation of mind, brain, and mental illness or defect. According to Platter, the internal senses imaginatio, reason (ratio) and memory collectively constitute the mind, their organ is the brain, and they inhere in its entire substance, not in ventricles. Nevertheless, injury or disease might affect either more or fewer of the internal senses, and either more or less seriously, depending on the part of the brain injured or on the nature of the disease—a formulation that could be read as allowing some space for traditional ideas regarding localization within the brain substance.44 However drastically Platter abbreviated the
41 Platter, Praxeos, 1.1.1, ‘De mentis imbecillitate,’ 1–11; 1.1.2, ‘De mentis consternatione,’ 11–79; 1.1.3, ‘De mentis alienatione,’ 80–143; 1.1.4, ‘De mentis defatigatione,’ 143–151. 42 See especially Goodey, ‘ “Foolishness”,’ and Midelfort, A History of Madness, 174–179. 43 For the accidentia animae and amor hereos, see Platter, Praxeos, 1.1.3, ‘De mentis alienatione,’ 82–83, 93–95. 44 Platter, Praxeos, table of contents, Book 1: ‘Interni sensus tres sunt: imaginatio, ratio et memoria, quos simul comprehensos mentis nomine appellabimus. Hi cum laeduntur, vel simul omnes, vel sigillatim aliqui deficient vel depravantur.’ See also 1.1.1, 1–2: ‘Cere-
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long debates on faculty psychology that preoccupied the other authors I have discussed, he belonged to the same world of thought. And even though in the Praxeos he relatively seldom cited authorities and even more rarely engaged in exposition or critique of their views, it is not difficult to identify allusions to both ancient and recent medical discussions relating to faculties of soul, the internal senses, or mental disturbance. 4. Conclusion The longevity and multiple editions of the works discussed in this paper are testimony to the effectiveness with which all of them succeeded in presenting early modern readers (most of them no doubt either practitioners or students of medicine) with a satisfactory general overview of standard medical teaching that was still mainly Galenic. Yet the scientia de anima plays a very different part in each of these books. The extent of Fernel’s philosophical interest in soul and spirit was not matched by the authors, a generation later, of the two works on practica—but neither was it by Fernel’s contemporary Fuchs, who also, like Fernel, sought to present theoretical as well as practical teaching. Mercuriale, among the most celebrated and broadly erudite of humanist physicians, emerges as relatively conservative as regards medieval traditions of brain localization, Platter as in some respects less scientifically revolutionary than he is sometimes credited with being. Fernel, Fuchs, and Mercuriale all in different ways expressed the interest in experience, narrative, and observation, in renewed philosophy, and in reformed teaching characteristic of their age. But other characteristics—Fernel’s Platonizing philosophy of the soul, Fuchs’s historical anecdotes, and Mercuriale’s philosophical erudition and endorsement of the presentation of consilia in the guise of a humanist miscellany—were all also equally characteristic of the open and eclectic world of Renaissance medical learning. By contrast, Platter’s combination of particular focus on mental conditions; exclusion of lengthy theoretical discussion regarding soul and faculties; detailed analysis
brum autem hic, quod sensuum horum est organum, afficitur: quod tamen non adeo vehementer est laesum, ut hi sensus interni penitus, vel una cum illis externi quoque sensus et motus aboleantur, sicuti hoc in gravioribus cerebri laesionibus accidit. Quod vero plures paucioresve sensus, illique plus minusve labefactentur; id prout substantia cerebri universa, vel ex parte tantum affecta est, non prout ventriculi anteriores, medii, posterioresve, uti voluerunt afficiuntur, accidit: dein et pro ratione morbi, quo cerebrum impeditur, sicut dicetur, haec variant.’
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and somewhat novel classification of examples drawn from personal clinical experience; and their deployment for systematic study in conjunction with a companion general work does indeed suggest a changing world of medicine and a new approach to useful organization in medical textbooks or works of reference.
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INDEX CODICUM MANUSCRIPTORUM
Assisi Biblioteca comunale 136
188n28
Città del Vaticano Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana Chigi lat. B VII 113 212n78 Vat. lat. 1012 188n28 Vat. lat. 1091 243n144 Vat. lat. 3063 197n50 Vat. lat. 900 180n15 Douai Bibliothèque Municipale 434 163 Erlangen Universitätsbibliothek 255
225n108
Firenze Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Conv. Soppr. A.3.120 196n48 Conv. Soppr. A.3.641 189n30, 207n68 Conv. Soppr. B.7.642 209n72 Lüneburg Ratsbücherei Theol. 2 21 Klosterneuburg Stiftsbibliothek CCl 291 Madrid Biblioteca nacional 517
Milano Biblioteca Ambrosiana N. 336 Sup.
13n5
Modena Biblioteca Estense Est. lat. 375
13n5
Padova Biblioteca Antoniana 155 Scaff. VIII Museo Civico CM 619
209n72 209n72
Paris Bibliothèque Mazarine 795 158n2 Bibliothèque nationale de France Lat. 6537 13n5 Perugia Biblioteca Comunale Augusta F 82 13 Praha Knihovna Metropolitní Kapituli 531 (C 99) 212n78 ˇ Národní Knihovna Ceské Republiky VIII.F.14 247n152
191n38 Sankt-Florian Stiftsbibliothek XI-138
234n126
Sarnano Biblioteca Comunale E.98
250
250
197n50
376
index codicum manuscriptorum
Troyes Bibliothèque de l’Agglomeration Troyenne 995 225n107 Valencia Biblioteca de la Catedral 200 (olim 63) 250
Venezia Biblioteca Marciana Lat. VI.301
13, 13n5, 39
Wien Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 4826 247n152
INDEX NOMINUM
All names mentioned in the book are included in the index. Ancient and medieval authors (before ca. 1500) are alphabetically listed according to their first names, modern authors according to their last names. Medieval authors are generally mentioned under their English names, except for lesser known authors and authors whose foreign names are currently used in English scholarly literature. Page ranges printed in italics refer to sections dealing specifically with the person in question. Abram, M.L., 65n9 Accattino, P., 314n50 Adam, C., 131n2 Aertsen, J.A., 279n18 Agrimi, J., 338n34 Aharunius [az-Zahrawi?], 337n28 Aho, T., 12n2, 138n13 al-Faruqi, I.R., 319n61 Alanen, L., 131n1, 140n23, 142n27 Albaladejo, T., 95n56 Albert the Great, 25, 25n28, 25n29, 26, 26n29, 26n30, 46, 52, 277, 277n13, 299 Alberto III Pio (Prince of Carpi), 324n72 Alcuin of York, 165n26 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 22n21, 136n11, 248, 276, 278, 312–317, 318, 320, 321, 321n66, 322 Alexander of Hales, 167, 167n31, 167n34, 168, 168n35, 271 Alfanus of Salerno, 98n72 Allen, D.C., 82n8 Allen, M.J.B., 321n67 Alonso, M., 19n17 Alonso de Idiáquez, 99, 99n74, 100 Altomare, D.A., 337, 337n30 Álvarez Morales, C., 298n5 Alverny, M.-Th., 278n14 Ambrose, 182, 235n126 Amerini, F., 180n14, 186n24, 285n39
Andreini, L., 92n43 Andrews, R., 185n23 Angelis, S. de, 88n30 Annas, J., 94n54 Apollinaris Offredi Cremonensis, 31n41 Arcangeli, A., 339n36 Ariew, R., 139n17 Aristotle, passim Arnauld, A., 150n44 Arnim, J. von, 313n46 Arnold of Villanova, 276n7, 337n31 Athanasius of Alexandria, 196n49, 231n119, 253, 254 Athenius, G., 338n33 Aucante, V., 330n12 Augustine, 75n66, 107, 111, 124, 124n54, 125, 150, 150n44, 165, 165n26, 167, 181, 210n73, 253, 255, 269, 271 Aulus Gellius, 335 Avempace, 298n5 Averroes, 6, 14n6, 14n10, 15, 16, 16n13, 20, 20n18, 21n19, 21n20, 22, 22n21, 23, 23n25, 24, 24n25, 30n40, 40, 42–45, 48, 50, 53–58, 64, 64n8, 65n9, 127, 128, 128n73, 136n11, 172, 173, 197, 198, 198n52, 201, 205n64, 207, 227, 247, 247n152, 248, 275n1, 276, 277n8, 298, 298n5, 300, 301, 304, 304n25, 305, 317–322, 322, 323, 337n28
378
index nominum
Avicenna, 6, 17, 19n17, 29, 29n37, 30, 30n38, 31, 49, 53, 54, 57, 59, 126, 127, 127n67, 129, 136n11, 160, 160n9, 169, 214, 227, 276n7, 287, 288, 291n60, 292n66, 298, 298n2–5, 299, 303n23, 304, 304n25, 319, 322, 330, 331, 331n14, 332n16, 334, 334n20, 337n28, 338, 339 Ayers, M., 138n13 Baader, G., 323n70 Babey, E., 214n80, 217n89 Bacon, F., 81, 84, 85, 85n16, 85n18, 89 Bakker, P.J.J.M., 2, 7, 12n2, 63n4, 65n9, 84n13, 109n6, 131n1, 136n11, 137n12, 139n17, 141n24, 248n155, 297n1, 324n72 Ballériaux, O., 312n43 Balme, D.M., 304n24, 317n58 Bamborough, J.B., 326n3 Barbaro, E., 308n33, 311n41, 319n62, 321n67 Barnes, J., 88n28, 101n87, 108n5, 117n24, 133n6, 134n7, 135n9 Barocelli, F., 305n27 Barrow, I., 130 Bartkó, J., 159n3 Bataillon, L.-J., 159n3 Bataillon, M., 104n99 Battegay, R., 340n39 Bauer, M., 197n50 Baumbach, M., 88n30 Bazán, B.C., 26n29, 162n16, 163n18, 276n3, 276n7 Beatus Rhenanus, 98n72 Bellis, D. De, 310n38 Belluti, B., 121, 122, 122n43, 123, 123n44– 47 Benedictus Tyriaca, 13n5, 14, 14n8 Bernardini, P., 19n17, 160n10 Bertola, E., 164n22 Bertolaso, B., 335n24 Bessarion (Cardinal), 310, 310n38, 323 Bianchi, L., 12n3, 157n1 Bianchi, M., 85n16 Biard, J., 62n3
Bieniak, M., 4, 157n1, 158n2, 159n4, 161n12, 161n13, 167n33 Bigalli, D., 92n46 Biller, P., 276n7, 278n15 Bistoni Grilli Cicilioni, M.G., 14n6 Black, R., 104n98 Blackwell, C., 116n23 Blair, R.L., 326n3 Bloch, D., 94n54 Block, S.L., 95n56 Blome, R., 148n40 Blumenthal, H.J., 136n11, 310n38, 312n43 Boer, S.W. de, 11n1, 19n17, 26n29, 28n33, 90n33, 131n1, 174n6, 297n1 Boethius of Dacia, 68n24 Bolton, R., 133n5 Bono, J.J., 281n26, 330n12 Boring, E.G., 86n19 Bossier, F., 198n52 Bougerol, J.-G., 158n2 Boureau, A., 192n39 Bourgery, A., 74n63 Bouyges, M., 318n59, 319n61, 320n65, 322n69 Brague, R., 321n67 Brams, J., 198n52 Branca, V., 278n14, 308n33 Brenet, J.-B., 15n12, 16n13, 21n19, 21n20, 173n4 Brett, G.S., 82, 83n9 Breuning, W., 160n8 Brinzei-Calma, M., 13n4, 171n1, 248n155 Brockliss, L.W.B., 137n13, 330n13, 331n13 Brown Wicher, H., 98n72 Brown, S., 1n1, 131n1, 325n1 Brown, S.F., 89n33 Brown, V., 98n72, 308n33 Browning, R., 309n35 Buck, A., 82n5, 83n10, 104n99 Buess, H., 339n37 Burgundio of Pisa, 98n72 Burr, D., 177n9 Burton, R., 326, 326n3 Bushnell, R.W., 104n98 Butler, H.E., 95n56
index nominum Buytaert, E.M., 253 Bylebyl, J.J., 299n7, 333n17 Bynum, W.F., 331n13 Caballero, J.A., 95n56 Cadden, J., 278n15 Calabritto, M., 338n32 Callus, D.A., 158n2 Canguilhem, G., 131n1 Caplan, H., 97n65 Carpintero, H., 102n91 Carron, D., 218n92 Carruthers, M.J., 97n67, 99, 99n77 Casagrande, C., 157n1 Case, J., 107, 107n1 Casini, L., 2, 3, 86n20, 86n21, 102n89, 103n92, 137n12 Cathala, M.-R., 50, 227n114 Cavellus, H., 121, 121n36, 121n37, 122, 122n38–42, 123 Céard, J., 330n12 Chandelier, J., 322n68 Chanet, P., 112, 112n14, 113 Chevallier, Ph., 225n109 Cicero, 92, 96, 97, 97n67 Clauberg, J., 139n17 Clement V (Pope), 174, 174n7, 177, 238, 239, 241n142, 252, 253, 255, 256 Clements, R.D., 82n8, 83, 84n14, 90, 90n36, 91, 91n41, 92, 92n44 Clerselier, C., 149n41 Clucas, S., 321n67 Coleman, J., 97n67 Colish, M.L., 87, 87n26 Colombo, M., 338, 338n33, 338n35, 339, 339n36 Conde Salazar, M., 95n56 Costa Ben Luca, 27n31 Cottingham, J., 131n2 Counet, J.-M., 65n9 Courtenay, W.J., 189n29, 197n50, 235n127 Cranz, F.E., 98n72 Crawford, F.S., 20n18, 64n8, 198n52, 277n8 Cremascoli, G., 159n3 Crisciani, C., 280n19, 338n34
379
Cross, R., 181n16 Cudworth, R., 297 Cunningham, A., 92n43 Cuno, J., 98n72 Cureau de la Chambre, M., 112, 112n14, 113 Curry, P., 278n14 Cuttini, E., 2, 62n3 Cyneas, 96n60 Cyrus, 96n60 Dahan, G., 159n3 Dales, R.C., 157n1, 275n2 Dandinus, H., 3, 113, 119, 119n31, 120, 120n32–35, 129 Daremberg, C., 303n22 Davidson, H.A., 307n29, 318n59, 319n61 Debus, A.G., 85n16 Deer Richardson, L., 331n13 Demonet, M.-L., 334n20 Denzinger, H., 177n10, 254, 269 Des Chene, D., 114n16, 140n22, 276n6 Descartes, R., 4, 81, 127, 131, 131n1, 131n2, 132, 132n3, 133, 136n10, 137, 137n13, 138–141, 141–147, 147– 149, 149n41, 150, 150n44, 151–153, 153n47 Diels, H., 314n50 Diethelm, O., 340n39 Dilthey, W., 84, 84n15 Dino del Garbo, 283n34 Dod, B.G., 157n1 Dodds, E.R., 310n38 Dodsworth, M., 326n3 Doignon, J., 165n26 Dominicus Gundissalinus, 158n2 Donini, P.L., 313n47 Douglas, A.H., 62n3 Drossaart Lulofs, H.J., 307n31 Duba, W., 5, 188n28, 197n50, 203n60, 207n66, 212n77, 214n80, 214n81, 217n89, 218n92, 224n105, 235n127, 241n142, 242n143, 248n155 Dulieu, L., 331n14 Dunstan, G.R., 89n30, 299n8, 317n58 Dupleix, S., 138n16 Durling, R.J., 89n30, 333n17
380
index nominum
Edwards, M., 3, 4, 112n13, 113n15, 128n74 Eijk, Ph.J. van der, 135n9 Elisabeth of Bohemia, 142, 143 Elsakhawi, A., 318n59, 319n61 Emery, K., Jr., 197n50, 235n127, 279n18 Empedocles, 276n7 Epictetus, 74n65, 75n66 Epicurus, 313 Erasistratus, 336 Erasmus, D., 337, 338n31 Etzkorn, G., 185n23, 214n80, 217n89, 218n92 Eustachius, 190n34 Eustratius, 253 Facciolati, J., 14n8 Faggi, A., 82, 82n7, 99, 99n75, 100, 100n80, 101, 101n86, 102, 102n89 Fantazzi, C., 81n1, 96n64, 104n99 Fattori, M., 85n16 Faulkner, T.C., 326n3 Federici Vescovini, G., 278n14, 286n42, 305n27 Felton Hirai, C., 297n1 Fernel, J., 6, 299, 325, 325n1, 327, 327n5, 328n5, 329, 329–335, 335–337, 337n30, 340, 342 Ferrari, S., 300n11 Feuer, I., 165n26 Ficino, M., 321n67, 323 Finamore, J.F., 310n38 Fiorentino, F., 207n66 Fisher, J., 158n3 Fleet, B., 314n50, 314n51, 315n52, 316n54, 317n56, 317n57 Forge, L. De La, 4, 131–153 Forrester, J.M., 328n5 Forshaw, P.J., 321n67 Fortin, E.L., 83n9 Fox, C., 86n19 Francis of Marchia, 188, 211–224, 224, 228, 229, 232, 235, 239, 243, 243n146, 244, 245, 247n152 Francis of Meyronnes, 180n15, 188, 224–235, 240, 242–246 Franciscus Securus de Nardò, 13 Frank, G., 92n43
Frede, M., 89n31 Freigius, J.T., 131n1 French, R., 322n68, 331n13 Freudenthal, G., 304n24, 304n25 Friedberg, A., 176n8 Friedman, R.L., 5, 65n9, 171n1, 204n63, 248n155, 250 Fritsen, A., 96n64 Fuchs, L., 6, 328, 328n6, 329–335, 335, 336, 340, 342 Gabriel Biel, 248 Gaetano da Thiene, 15, 15n11 Gál, G., 185n23 Galen, 6, 17, 88, 88n30, 89, 89n31, 98, 111, 275–295, 297, 297n1, 298, 298n5, 299, 300–303, 303, 303n20, 303n22, 304, 304n23, 312, 312n44, 312n45, 313, 313n46, 313n47, 314, 316, 316n55, 318, 318n60, 332n16, 323, 325, 325n1, 329, 329n9, 330, 331, 331n15, 333, 333n18, 336, 338, 339n35 Garber, D., 138n13, 139n17 Garcia-Ballester, L., 290n56, 329n9 Garin, E., 63n5, 64n6, 65n12, 94n55, 104n98 Gassendi, P., 130 Gaukroger, S., 140n23 Gauthier, R.A., 27n31, 119n30, 157n1, 162n16 Genequand, C., 314n50, 314n51 Gennadius of Massilia, 253 Gentile, G., 63n4 Gentile da Foligno, 322, 322n68, 323 Genua, M.A., 12 George of Trebizond, 310, 310n39 Gerald Odonis, 5, 171n1, 188, 235–242, 243–246, 250, 251 Gersh, S., 310n38 Ghisalberti, A., 64n6, 159n3 Giacon, C., 64n6 Giele, M., 26n29 Gilbert, N.W., 333n17 Giles of Rome, 181, 241, 243, 243n144 Gilson, E., 63n6, 64n6, 307n29 Girard, Th., 149n42
index nominum Glorieux, P., 160n10 Goclenius, R., 131n1 Goichon, A.-M., 319n61 Goldschmidt, G., 339n37 Goldstein, H.T., 319n61 Gontier, T., 62n3 González de Pablo, A., 325n1 Goodey, C.F., 340n40, 341n42 Gousset, J., 149 Gowland, A., 326n3 Goyens, M., 277n10 Goyet, F., 334n20 Grabmann, M., 157n1 Grafton, A.T., 104n98, 307n30, 325n1, 338n31, 339n35 Grant, E., 84n13 Green, R., 185n23 Green-Pedersen, N.G., 68n24 Gregory I (Pope), 191n37 Gregory IX (Pope), 234n126 Gregory of Nyssa, 98n72 Grendler, P., 104n98 Gummere, R.M., 101n85 Gy, P.-M., 159n3 Hadot, I., 313n49, 317n56, 317n57 Hale, J.R., 308n33 Hall, T.S., 302n18 Haly Abbas, 337n28 Hamesse, J., 18n16, 39, 250 Hamilton, W., 90, 91, 91n37 Hankins, J., 12n3, 310n37 Hankinson, R.J., 292n65 Hasse, D.N., 279n18 Hatfield, G., 86n19, 138n13, 140n23, 143n29, 148n39 Hayduck, M., 309n36 Hedley, R.D., 150n44 Heffernan, T.F., 340n39 Heidanus, A., 150, 150n44 Heinämaa, S., 12n2, 138n13 Heinze, R., 308n33, 311n41, 319n62, 321n67 Heller, J.L., 328n6 Helm, J., 92n43 Helmreich, G., 297n1, 303n20 Henninger, M., 172n3, 180n14
381
Henry of Ghent, 181, 181n18, 183, 192, 193, 193n41–43, 211, 217, 242– 244 Henry of Harclay, 171, 172, 172n3 Hermodorus, 337n31 Herophilus, 336 Heynck, V., 189n29 Hidalgo-Serna, E., 92n46 Hieronymus Augustinus Forliviensis, 338n33 Hilary of Poitiers, 165n26 Himbert of Garda, 188, 242–245, 245 Hippocrates, 301, 302, 302n14, 302n15, 303, 333 Hirai, H., 6, 299n9, 300n10, 301n12, 301n13, 302n14, 302n16, 304n24, 310n38, 312n44, 321n67, 325n1, 330n12 Hizler, G., 328n6 Hobbes, Th., 91 Hoppe, G., 93n52 Hossfeld, P., 26n29 Huber, K., 340n39 Hugh of Novocastro, 188–195, 206, 211, 218, 220, 222, 224, 227, 230, 234, 240, 243, 243n146, 244, 245 Hugh of St.-Cher, 4, 157–170 Hunt, R.W., 158n2 Hutton, S., 130n77, 150n44 IJsewijn, J., 82n5, 96n64, 104n99 Innocent III (Pope), 182 Iorio, D.A., 62n3 Iriarte, M. de, 103n97 Jacquart, D., 278n15, 286n42, 305n27, 331, 331n14 James, F.E., 340n39 James of Ascoli, 188n28, 191n37 James of Venice, 198n52 Jansen, B., 178, 178n11, 179n13 Jansenius, C., 150n44 Janssens, J.L., 319n61 Jardine, L., 104n98 Javelet, R., 165n26 Jean de la Bruyère, 100 Jennett, S., 340n38
382
index nominum
John XXII (Pope), 175, 177, 188, 192, 201, 238, 241n142, 253, 255 John (Apostle), 176n8 John Blund, 158n2, 160n10 John Buridan, 90 John Duns Scotus, 35n2, 50, 52, 123, 180–188, 190, 195, 206, 210, 211, 214, 214n81, 217, 218, 218n91, 222, 224, 230, 234, 235, 245–247 John of Damascus, 194n45, 253, 269 John of Jandun, 2, 15, 15n12, 16, 16n13, 17n14, 18, 18n16, 19, 19n17, 20, 20n18, 20n19, 21, 21n19–21, 22, 22n21, 22n23, 25, 25n28, 26, 26n29, 26n30, 27n31, 27n32, 28, 28n33, 28n34, 29, 29n35, 29n37, 33, 34, 34n2, 35–42, 45–53, 171–173, 173n4, 247n152 John of La Rochelle, 158n2, 164n22, 167, 167n32 John Philoponus, 309 John Sarrazin, 225 Jolivet, J., 318n59 Jones, C., 331n13 Juan de Guevara, 112 Juan Huarte de San Juan, 103, 103n97 Judycka, J., 259 Justinian I (Emperor), 331 Kaeppeli, Th., 158n3 Kärkkäinen, P., 112n13, 278n18 Kallis, A., 98n72 Kannengiesser, C., 310n38 Katsoura, E., 214n80 Keckermann, B., 108, 108n4, 109, 114, 114n17, 125, 125n57–61, 126, 126n62–65 Kenny, A., 131n2, 157n1 Kessler, E., 12n2, 83n13, 84n13, 91n43, 105, 105n101, 112n12, 139n17, 325n1, 329n9 Kiessling, N.K., 326n3 King, P., 91n42 Klemm, M., 6, 279n18, 295n73 Klima, G., 204n63 Knuuttila, S., 112n13, 278n18 Köhler, Th.W., 11n1, 157n1 Kollesch, J., 329n9 Krafft, F., 89n30
Kraye, J., 91n43, 100n82, 102n89, 105n101, 112n12, 139n17, 314n49, 325n1 Kretzmann, N., 91n42, 157n1 Kristeller, P.O., 61, 61n2, 63n5, 63n6, 64n6, 75n67 Kudlien, F., 333n17 Kühn, C.G., 297n1, 301n12, 302n14, 302n17, 312n44 Kusukawa, S., 92n43, 116n23 Kuttner, S., 202n56 Lacy, Ph. De, 89, 89n31, 89n32, 297n1, 301n13, 312n44, 318n60 Lafleur, C., 19n17 Lagerlund, H., 15n12, 173n4, 224n105, 275n1, 276n4, 278n18 Lalemandet, J., 107, 107n3 Lamanna, M., 1n1 Lamb, R., 280n19 Landauer, S., 321n67 Landgraf, A.M., 159n3 Landulph Caracciolo, 188, 206–211, 211, 216, 224, 235, 245, 246, 247n152, 248, 248n154 Lang, H.S., 94n54 Lange, F.A., 81, 81n2, 81n3, 82n4, 83 Lapointe, F.H., 1n1, 131n1 Lautner, P., 12n3, 325n1, 329n9 Le Grand, A., 4, 133, 148, 148n40, 151 Lecler, J., 174n7 Leemans, P. De, 277n10 Leibniz, G.W., 297 Leijenhorst, C., 12n3, 84n13, 131n1, 325n1 Lemay, R., 61n1 Lenzi, M., 157n1, 160n10 Leonardi, C., 159n3 Leoniceno, N., 6, 297–324 Lerner, R., 189n29 Lewis, C.S., 75n66 Liceti, F., 120n32 Littré, E., 302n14 Locke, J., 127, 127n70, 148n39 Lötscher, V., 340n38 Lohr, C.H., 13n4, 14n10, 15n11, 15n12, 83n13, 121n36, 314n49
index nominum Lonie, I.M., 331n13 Losada, A., 104n99 Lottin, O., 161n12, 163n19, 164n23 Louis XIV (King), 113 Lüthy, C., 7, 12n3, 84n13, 325n1 Lugt, M. van der, 299n6 MacDonald, S., 91n42 Macken, R., 193n41 Maclean, I., 116, 116n23, 119n30, 140n22 Magirus, J., 107, 107n2, 108, 110, 115, 115n19, 115n21, 128, 128n76, 129 Mahoney, E.P., 312n43, 324n72 Maia Neto, J.R., 86n21 Maier, A., 247n152 Malebranche, N., 152 Mani, N., 89n30 Manning, G., 4, 84n13, 140n22 Mansion, A., 264 Manuli, P.E., 290n56, 325n1, 329n9, 334n20 Marcus Aurelius (Emperor), 75n66 Marengon, P., 278n16 Martin, A., 319n61, 320n65, 322n69 Martin, C., 275n1 Martorelli Vico, R., 280n19, 299n6 Mastrius, B., 121, 122, 122n43, 123, 123n44–47 Masûmî, M.S.H., 298n5 Matheeussen, C., 104n99 Mayans y Siscár, G., 82n5 McCord Adams, M., 181n16, 241n141 McVaugh, M.R., 276n7, 277n9, 302n17, 302n18 Meirinhos, J.F., 319n61 Melanchthon, Ph., 91, 92n43, 131n1 Menache, S., 174n7 Mendelsohn, E., 302n18 Menéndez y Pelayo, M., 82n4 Mengal, P., 1n1 Mercken, H.P.F., 253 Mercuriale, G., 6, 328, 328n7, 335–342, 342 Mersenne, M., 141, 150 Mestre, A., 83n12 Metzger, S.M., 197n50, 235n127 Meyer, F.G., 328n6
383
Michael, E., 137n12 Michael of Ephesus, 309, 309n36, 311, 311n40, 323 Michael Scot, 198, 198n52, 298 Micraelius, J., 131n1 Midelfort, H.C.E., 326, 326n2, 340n39, 341n42 Migne, J.P., 165n26, 253, 271 Minio-Paluello, L., 157n1 Mohler, L., 310n37, 310n38 Monfasani, J., 307n30, 310n37, 310n39 Montaigne, M. de, 100 Moraux, P., 301n12, 304n24 More, H., 6 Morón Arroyo, C., 102n90 Mountain, W.J., 165n26 Muckle, J.T., 158n2 Müller, E., 174n7 Mugnai Carrara, D., 299n7 Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi, 335 Muñoz Delgado, V., 102n90 Murdoch, D., 131n2 Musallam, B., 298n2 Nadler, S., 139n17, 152n46, 153n47 Nance, B., 327n4 Napoli, G. Di, 64n6 Nardi, B., 12n3, 13n4, 14n10, 15n11, 17, 17n15, 18, 75n67, 284, 284n37, 299n6, 300n11, 305n27, 314n49, 324n72 Nardi, G.M., 299n6 Nemesius of Emesa, 98, 98n72 Nero, V. Del, 83, 83n12, 92n46, 102n90 Newton, I., 130 Nickel, D., 301n12, 312n45, 313n46 Nidditch, P.H., 127n70, 148n39 Niebyl, P.H., 302n18 Nielsen, L.O., 173n4 Nifo, A., 12, 323 Nizolio, M., 92n46 Noone, T., 185n23 Noreña, C.G., 81n1, 85n18, 92, 92n46, 93, 93n52, 99, 99n75, 100, 100n81, 100n82, 103n97 Nutton, V., 89n30, 299n7, 299n8, 301n12, 313n47, 318n60, 339n36
384
index nominum
Ogle, W., 134n7 Olivieri, L., 300n11 O’Meara, D.J., 312n43 Osborne, Th.M., 159n4 Ottosson, P.-G., 277n9 Pacheco, M.C., 319n61 Pade, M., 12n2, 84n13 Padoan, G., 278n14 Paganini, G., 86n21 Paoletti, I., 328n7 Papamarkou, C., 214n80 Paravicini Bagliani, A., 159n3 Park, K., 89n33, 91n43, 105, 105n101, 325n1, 329n9 Pascal, B., 100 Paschetto, E., 277n10, 277n11, 278n16, 300n11, 305n27 Pasnau, R., 5, 171, 171n1, 172, 172n2, 173, 178, 178n11, 180n14, 245, 245n151, 276n3, 286n40 Patrizi, F., 130 Pattin, A., 66n13, 114n16 Pereira, B., 111, 111n10 Pérez-Ramos, A., 86n21 Perfetti, S., 324n72 Pérouse, G.A., 334n20 Perrone Compagni, V., 61, 62n3, 63n5, 75n67 Peter Auriol, 171, 171n1, 172, 173, 173n5, 196–205, 206, 207, 207n67, 208, 211, 212, 214, 214n81, 217, 223, 228, 230, 235, 241, 245–247, 247n152, 248 Peter John Olivi, 5, 171, 171n1, 172–175, 177, 178, 178n11, 179n13, 189, 190, 194, 195, 202, 222, 247 Peter Lombard, 1, 158n3, 161, 174 Peter of Abano, 6, 275–295, 300, 300n11, 303–312, 312, 322, 323 Peter of Bar, 167, 167n33 Peter of Mantua, 14n10 Peter of Spain, 19n17, 27n31 Petrus (Apostle), 209n73 Philipp the Chancellor, 160, 161, 161n11, 161n14, 162, 163, 163n19, 164, 164n21, 164n23, 165, 165n28, 169
Philo of Alexandria, 165, 165n26 Pierre d’Ailly, 90, 248 Pigeaud, J., 329n9 Pilet, P.E., 329n8 Pinborg, J., 157n1 Pine, M.L., 64n6, 324n72 Pinès, S., 321n67 Piron, S., 235n127 Plancy, G., 331n14 Plato, 92, 197, 198, 198n51, 301n12, 308, 308n33, 310, 311, 311n41, 311n42, 312, 316, 316n55, 320, 320n65, 321, 322, 325, 333, 333n18, 336 Platter, F., 6, 328, 329n8, 335–342, 342 Pliny, 92, 335 Plotinus, 92, 336 Pluta, O., 90n34, 276n4, 276n5 Pomata, G., 327n4 Pomponazzi, P., 2, 12–14, 61–79, 137n12, 323, 324n72 Poppi, A., 61, 61n2, 63n5 Porter, R., 86n19, 138n13, 331n13 Potter, P., 135n9, 137n12 Préchac, F., 74n63, 74n64 Preus, A., 309n35 Principe, W.H., 158n3, 166n29 Ps.-Augustine, 271 Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, 224, 225, 225n107, 225n109, 226, 226n110, 227, 231, 231n119 Quintilian, 94, 95n56, 97, 97n67, 103, 103n96 Quintus Hortensius, 96n60 Radulphus Brito, 26n29 Ramberti, R., 62, 62n3 Randall Jr., J.H., 61, 61n2 Raymond Lull, 337n31 Read, M.K., 103n97 Rees, G., 85n16 Rees, V., 321n67 Régis, P.-S., 4, 148, 148n39 Reisch, G., 91, 91n43, 92n43 Reuter, M., 12n2, 138n13 Revuelta Sañudo, M., 102n90 Rhein, S., 92n43
index nominum Rhys Roberts, W., 101n87 Ribaillier, J., 160n7 Ribémont, B., 286n42, 305n27 Ribordy, O., 248n155 Rice, E.F., 98n72 Richter, A.L., 176n8 Riet, S. Van, 53, 160n9, 276n7 Río, E. del, 95n56 Rivari, E., 82n4 Robinson, D.N., 85n17, 86n19 Rochefoucauld, F. de la, 100 Rohault, J., 148 Roland of Cremona, 158n2 Rondeau, M.J., 165n26 Ross, W.D., 135n9 Rossi, P., 85n18, 97n67 Roßmann, H., 224, 224n106, 231n118 Roth, B., 224n105 Roy Ladurie, E. Le, 340n38 Rubeus, J.B., 110n7, 120n32 Rubius, A., 137, 138, 138n13, 138n15, 138n16 Ruler, H. van, 150n44 Rummel, E., 102n90 Saarinen, R., 102n89 Saffrey, H.D., 66n14 Saitta, G., 64n6 Sakamoto, K., 297n1 Salles, R., 133n5 Sancipriano, M., 82n5, 83n10, 84n15 Schabel, C.D., 5, 171n1, 188n28, 192n39, 206n65, 207n67, 214n80, 235n127, 242n143, 250, 250n1 Schenkl, H., 74n65 Schmid, K.A., 81n3 Schmitt, C.B., 83n13, 91n43, 105n101, 112n12, 139n17, 303n19, 324n72, 325n1 Schneider, Th., 178n11 Schönmetzer, A., 177n10 Schuhmann, K., 130n77 Schultz, D.P., 86n19 Schultz, S.E., 86n19 Schuster, S., 140n23 Schuyl, F., 149n41 Schweighäuser, I., 74n65
385
Sebti, M., 160n9 Seneca, 74n63, 74n64, 75n66, 92, 101n85 Sepper, D.L., 92n45 Sergio, E., 304n24 Sestan, E., 157n1 Sharples, R.W., 314n50 Shea, W.R., 138n13 Sherrington, C.S., 327n5, 330n12, 331n14 Siclari, A., 98n72 Sider, D., 302n17 Simonides, 337n31 Simplicius, 12, 12n3, 50, 136n11, 137n11, 141, 312–317, 320, 321, 321n66, 322, 323 Singer, P.N., 329n9 Sinz, W., 103n93 Siraisi, N.G., 6, 277n12, 278n17, 283n34, 291n62, 297n1, 300n11, 307n30, 323n70, 327n4 Sirven, J., 137n13 Skinner, Q., 91n43, 105n101, 112n12, 139n17, 325n1 Smith, J.A., 88n28, 117n24, 133n6 Socrates, 117, 117n25 Solère, J.-L., 192n39 Sorabji, R., 94n54, 133n5, 309n35, 312n43 Sparn, W., 83n13 Spedding, J., 85n16 Speer, A., 181n16, 279n18 Spinoza, B. de, 139n17 Steenberghen, F. Van, 26n29 Stone, M.W.F., 314n49 Stoothoff, R., 131n2 Strohmaier, G., 334n20 Stroick, C., 25n29 Stump, E., 91n42 Stupperich, R., 104n99 Suárez, F., 111, 111n9, 113, 138n16 Suarez-Nani, T., 181n16, 211n76, 214n80, 217n89, 218n92 Sullivan, M., 178n12 Sutton, E.W., 97n67 Sutton, J., 140n23 Swift, L.J., 95n56
386
index nominum
Taddeo Alderotti, 290n60, 291n60, 291n62 Taifacos, I., 214n81 Takahashi, A., 299n6, 323n71 Tannery, P., 131n2 Teich, M., 138n13 Temkin, O., 88n30 Tertullian, 75n66, 336 Themistius, 136n11, 308, 308n33, 311, 311n41, 312, 312n43, 317–322, 322, 323 Themistocles, 96n60 Theodore of Gaza, 307, 307n30, 308 Theophrastus, 92 Thijssen, J.M.M.H., 7, 12n2, 12n3, 63n4, 84n13, 109n6, 136n11, 137n12, 324n72, 325n1 Thomas Aquinas, 24n25, 45, 50, 66, 66n14, 66n15, 91n42, 114n17, 115n18, 119n30, 123, 124, 124n53, 125, 127n67, 157n1, 162n16, 163, 163n18, 179, 180, 180n14, 181, 186n24, 192, 193, 227, 227n114, 236, 240, 241, 243, 243n144, 245, 271, 275, 276n7, 284–286, 286n40, 293–295 Thomas Wylton, 173, 173n4, 247n152 Thorndike, L., 277n10, 278n16 Todd, R., 308n33, 311n41, 319n62, 321n67 Toletus, F., 110, 111, 111n11, 114n16, 115, 115n22, 137, 138, 138n13, 138n14, 138n16, 139n17 Torrell, J.-P., 159n3, 161n12 Touati, C., 318n59 Trapolinus, P., 2, 11–33, 39, 53 Travill, A.A., 101n83, 104n99 Treloar, J.L., 62, 62n3 Trifogli, C., 173n4 Tröhler, U., 340n39 Trueblood, E.E., 328n6 Trutfetter, J., 92n43 Turisanus de Turisanis, 283n34 Urmson, J.O., 135n9 Valerius Maximus, 335 Valla, L., 94, 94n55 Vasoli, C., 324n72
Vázquez de Benito, M.C., 298n5 Vecchio, S., 157n1 Vegetti, M., 290n56, 325n1, 329n9, 334n20 Velcurio, J.B., 92n43 Verbeke, G., 160n9 Vernia, N., 13 Vidal, F., 1n1, 131n1, 138n16, 148n39, 325n1 Viglius Zuichemus ab Aytta, 331, 332n16 Vincent, N., 234, 234n126 Vives, J.L., 2, 3, 81–105 Vleeschauwer, H.J. de, 82n4 Voetius, G., 150 Vuillemin-Diem, G., 18n16, 198n52 Walker, D.P., 85n16, 310n38, 330n12 Wallace, K.R., 85n16 Wallace, W., 139n17 Waltz, R., 74n63 Watson, F., 82n4, 85n18 Wear, A., 89n30, 331n13 Wéber, E.H., 157n1 Weijers, O., 13n4, 15n12 Weisheipl, J.A., 89n33 Weisser, U., 298n2 White, K., 162n16 Wicki, N., 161n11, 161n14, 163n19, 164n23 Wiesner, J., 313n47, 321n67 William de la Mare, 236 William of Alnwick, 247n152 William of Auvergne, 168, 168n36 William of Auxerre, 160n7 William of Brienne, 247n152 William of Moerbeke, 18n16, 119n30, 198n52, 259, 260, 267, 307n31 William of Ockham, 3, 90, 241n141, 248 Wokler, R., 86n19 Wood, R., 185n23 Woodward, W.H., 103, 103n94, 103n95 Wright, J.P., 135n9, 137n12 Wuttke, D., 89n30 Yates, F.A., 97n67, 338n31 Young, S.E., 189n29
index nominum Zabarella, J., 3, 110, 115, 126, 127, 127n66–69, 127n71, 128, 128n72, 128n73, 128n75, 129, 245 Zanardi, M., 111, 111n8, 118, 118n27–29, 120
387
Zavalloni, R., 163n19, 164n23 Zavattero, I., 160n10 Ziegler, J., 276n7, 278n15 Zilboorg, G., 83, 83n11, 91, 91n38, 91n39 Zupko, J., 89n33, 90, 90n35