Medieval Philosophy and the Classical Tradition 0203988752, 9780203988756

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MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE CLASSICAL TRADITION

MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE CLASSICAL TRADITION In Islam, Judaism and Christianity Edited by

John Inglis

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First Published in 2002 by Curzon Press Transferred to Digital Printing 2003 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Editorial Matter © 2002 John Inglis RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-98875-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-7007-1469-3 (Print Edition)

Contents Notes on Contributors

vii

Acknowledgments

x

Introduction: Towards a Balanced Historiography of Medieval Philosophy John Inglis

1

Section One: Historical Context 1 Medieval Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition Michael E.Marmura Section Two: Philosophy

16 17 29

2 A Philosophical Odyssey: Ghazzâlî’s Intentions of the Philosophers Gabriel Said Reynolds

30

3 The Relationship between Averroes and al-Ghazālī: as it presents itself in Averroes’ Early Writings, especially in his Commentary on al-

42

Ghazālī’s Frank Griffel 4 Al-Ghazali and Halevi on Philosophy and the Philosophers Barry S.Kogan Section Three: Neoplatonism 5 Projection and Time in Proclus D.Gregory MacIsaac 6 Forms of Knowledge in the Arabic Plotinus Peter Adamson 7 Secundum rei vim vel secundum cognoscentium facultatem: Knower and Known in the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius and the Proslogion of Anselm Wayne J.Hankey

54 69 70 90 107

8 Proclean ‘Remaining’ and Avicenna on Existence as Accident: Neoplatonic Methodology and a Defense of ‘Pre-Existing’ Essences Sarah Pessin 9 Augustine vs Plotinus: The Uniqueness of the Vision at Ostia Thomas Williams Section Four: Creation 10 Infinite Power and Plenitude: Two Traditions on the Necessity of the Eternal Taneli Kukkonen 11 The Challenge to Medieval Christian Philosophy: Relating Creator to Creatures David B.Burrell, C.S.C. Section Five: Virtue

128 143 153 154 170

181

182 12 Three Kinds of Objectivity Jonathan Jacobs 194 13 On Defining Maimonides’ Aristotelianism Daniel H.Frank 14 Porphyry, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas: A Neoplatonic Hierarchy 206 of Virtues and Two Christian Appropriations Joshua P.Hochschild Section Six: The Latin Reception 15 William of Auvergne and the Aristotelians: The Nature of a Servant Michael Miller 16 Is God a “What”? Avicenna, William of Auvergne, and Aquinas on the Divine Essence John P.Rosheger 17 Maimonides and Roger Bacon: Did Roger Bacon Read Maimonides? Jeremiah Hackett Index

220 221 233 250

261

Notes on Contributors

Peter Adamson (King’s College London) works on ancient and medieval philosophy with a focus on early Arabic Philosophy. His publications include “Aristotelianism and the Soul in the Arabic Plotinus” and “Two Early Arabic Doxographies on the Soul: al-Kindi and the Arabic Plotinus.” His book on the Arabic Plotinus will appear in 2002. David B.Burrell, C.S.C. (University of Notre Dame) works mainly on comparative issues in philosophical theology in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. His publications include Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (1986) and Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (1993), and two translations of al-Ghazali: Al-Ghazali on the Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God (1993) and Al-Ghazali on Faith in Divine Unity and Trust in Divine Providence [Book 35 of his Ihya Ulum adDin] (2001). With Elena Malits he co-authored Original Peace (1998). Daniel H.Frank (University of Kentucky) focuses in his research on Greek philosophy and medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy. Recent and forthcoming publications include History of Jewish Philosophy (1997), The Jewish Philosophy Reader (2000), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (forthcoming), Moses Maimonides (forthcoming), and Plato: Metaphysical Moralist (forthcoming). Frank Griffel (Yale University) works on the relationship between Muslim theology and the peripatetic tradition in Islam. His publications include Apostasie und Toleranz im Islam. Die Entwicklung zu

Urteil gegen die Philosophic und die

Reaktionen der Philosophen (2000) and a German translation of al-Ghazālī’s al-tafriqa bayna l-Islam wa-z-zandaqa (1998). Jeremiah Hackett (University of South Carolina) works on medieval Latin philosophy and in particular on Roger Bacon. His publications include numerous articles and the volumes: Roger Bacon and the sciences: commemorative essays (1997), Medieval philosophers (1992), and A Straight path: studies in medieval philosophy and culture: essays in honor of Arthur Hyman (1988). Wayne Hankey (King’s College and Dalhousie University, Halifax) is a specialist on the history of Neoplatonism. Working especially on the meeting of Augustine and the Pseudo-Dionysius in the Latin tradition, he has published extensively on ancient, medieval, early modern and contemporary Neoplatonism. His books include God in Himself: Aquinas’ doctrine of God as expounded in the Summa theologiae (1987). At

present he is working on two books which sum up most of his recent research: French Neoplatonism in the Twentieth Century and From Augustine to Descartes: Steps in the Formation of Western Subjectivity. Joshua P.Hochschild (Wheaton College) works on ancient and medieval philosophy, with a special interest in medieval logic and metaphysics. His current project is the semantics of analogy according to Thomas de Vio. John Inglis (University of Dayton) works on the historiography of medieval philosophy and the Dominican thought of the 13th century with a focus on Aquinas. His publications include Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy (1998), On Aquinas (2002), and On Medieval Philosophy (forthcoming). Jonathan Jacobs (Colgate University) writes on ethics, moral psychology, and metaphysics. His most recent books are A Philosopher’s Compass (2001), Practical Realism and Moral Psychology (1995), and Choosing Character: Responsibility for Virtue and Vice (2001). Barry S.Kogan (Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati) has published widely on medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy. He is the author of Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation (1985) “Averroes and the Theory of Emanation,” and “Eternity and Origination: Averroes’ Discourse on the Manner of the World’s Existence,” and editor of Spinoza: A Tercentenary Perspective (1979). He is preparing a new English translation of Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, begun by the late Lawrence V.Berman. Taneli Kukkonen (University of Helsinki) specializes in Averroes’ systematization of Aristotelian natural philosophy. His publications in English include “Proclus on Plenitude,” “Possible Worlds in the Tahâfut al-falâsifa. Al-Ghazâlî on Creation and Contingency,” “Possible Worlds in the Tahâfut al-tahâfut. Averroes on Plenitude and Possibility,” and “Plenitude, Possibility and the Limits of Reason. An Arabic Debate on the Metaphysics of Nature,” as well as a Finnish translation of al-Gazâlî’s alMunqidh min al-dalâl (2001). D.Gregory MacIsaac (Carleton University, Ottawa) works mainly on Neoplatonic epistemology. His publications include a translation of the final part of Proclus’ Commentary on the Parmenides from a reconstructed Greek version. Michael E.Marmura (University of Toronto) works on Islamic philosophy. He has published medieval Arabic philosophical texts and translations, and numerous articles on Islamic philosophy. His publications include a parallel Arabic text and an annotated translation of Al-Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers (1997) and a similar edition of Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing (forthcoming). Michael Miller (Trinity College, Washington, D.C.) works on freedom and casuality with a focus on Avicenna, William of Auvergne, and Aquinas. His publications include “Willam of Auvergne on Primary and Secondary Causality” and “Transcendence and Divine Causality.” Sarah Pessin (University of Chicago/American Academy for Jewish Research) works primarily on medieval Neoplatonism and in particular on Solomon ibn Gabirol’s Fons Vitae. Her publications include “Hebdomads: Boethius Meets the Neoplatonists” (1999) and “Jewish Neoplatonism” for The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (forthcoming).

Gabriel Said Reynolds (Yale University) specializes in his research on the medieval interaction and polemic between Muslims and Christians. His publications include “The Ends of al-Radd al-Jamîl and Its Portrayal of Christian Sects,” “The Sufi Meal: A Case Study of Adab,” (with Suleiman Mourad) “The Islamic Threat: Thoughts from a Muslim and a Christian,” and “Where Islam and Christianity Meet.” John P.Rosheger (Hope College) works on Neoplatonism and the philosophical theology of Islam and Christianity. His publications include “Augustine and Divine Simplicity” and “A Note on Avicenna and the Divine Attributes.” Thomas Williams (University of Iowa) works on Latin medieval philosophy. He has published articles on John Duns Scotus and translations of Augustine’s On Free Choice of the Will (1994) and Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion (1996). He is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus and The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts: Volume 5—Philosophical Theology.

Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank the contributors for carrying through a project in rethinking what it means to talk about a balanced historiography of medieval philosophy. I would especially like to thank Daniel Frank, Michael Marmura, and David Burrell for discussions and ideas over a number of years on how to gather a group of senior and junior scholars—and some in between—in order to trace philosophical continuities and discontinuities across the three great monotheistic traditions. Traditionally it has been rare for scholars to be interested in each of these traditions and their relations, even though this is what is needed if we are to arrive at a more balanced history. The encouragement and assistance of Jonathan Price, the Chief Editor at Curzon Press, has been most appreciated, as has the advice on specific computer issues of David McCarthy at LaserScript Limited. I also thank the Department of Philosophy of the University of Dayton, and especially the Chair, Patricia Johnson, together with the whole university, for hosting a gathering of the contributors to shape this work at the 26th Richard R.Baker Philosophy Colloquium in April 1999.

Introduction Towards a Balanced Historiography of Medieval Philosophy John Inglis The goal of the present volume is to serve as a prolegomenon to the writing of a balanced history of medieval philosophy, one that more accurately represents the philosophy of this period. This introduction supplies a historiographical treatment of the limited role that Islamic and Jewish philosophy have come to play in the standard academic histories written over the last two centuries. In short, my claim is that what we call the standard histories of medieval philosophy are in fact little more than histories of Christian philosophy. I will argue for a balanced type of historiography, one which is fair to each of the three great monotheistic traditions. The fact that members of each of the three great monotheistic traditions studied and made use of the Classical philosophical heritage will serve as the focal point. Often the members of one tradition studied the same Classical texts, worked on similar issues, and read the works of members of other traditions. This is one reason why an adequate history of medieval philosophy should cover each of these three traditions together with their intellectual relations. This history has not yet been written, yet needs to be written. Neglect in the Standard Histories From the nineteenth century to the present important histories of philosophy when treating the Middle Ages focus on the history of Christian philosophy. Detailed accounts have been offered of significant Christian thinkers and issues in order to sketch the history of the philosophy in the West that existed after the Classical philosophy of the ancients and before modern philosophy. Within this context, historians have discussed Islamic and Jewish philosophy in the standard histories almost solely for the purpose of giving the Christian intellectual background. As I will indicate, this is the case both in standard academic histories of philosophy and in the classic histories devoted to the philosophy of the Middle Ages, including works by Hegel, Ritter, Stöckl, de Wulf, Geyer, Gilson, Kretzmann, and Marenbon. The approach to medieval philosophy common since the nineteenth century has its own history and raison d’etre. Martin Bernal’s point in the first volume of Black Athena concerning the narrow, parochial approach taken to the study of the Classics since the nineteenth century, can be extended to the study of Islamic and Jewish philosophy during the same period. In the eighteenth century scholars provided a more balanced coverage of diverse philosophical traditions in the standard histories than we have become accustomed to. For example, Jacob Brucker discussed many of the great Islamic and Jewish philosophers in his vast history of philosophy, his Historia Critica Philosophiae

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(1742–1744).1 He does this in a work where he attempts to cover the history of the significant philosophical traditions that have existed throughout the world. The breadth of this history is astounding when considered from the standpoint of present-day historiography. For example, Brucker includes lengthy treatises on Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian, North American, Ethiopian, and Druid philosophical traditions, all traditions that do not appear for the most part in the classic histories of philosophy written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Therefore, when Brucker covers Jewish and Islamic philosophy, he merely grants the type of attention that he thinks is due to any of the major philosophical traditions. For this reason, he devotes over 400 pages to Jewish philosophy and 238 pages to Islamic philosophy. He treats the former at the end of his treatment of Classical Roman philosophy and the latter just before treating Latin scholastic philosophy (Brucker 1766– 1767, 2:653–1072, 3:3–240, respectively). What is interesting about these treatments is that Brucker attempts to do justice to thinkers like Rāzī, Ghazali, and Gersonides who did not have a major direct influence on the philosophy of the Latin scholastics (Brucker 1766–1767, 3:76–80, 93–95, 2:853–855, respectively). In doing so, he discusses many individuals who would be omitted from the standard histories of philosophy written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I do not mean to suggest that Brucker is not interested in those who would influence the Latins. For example, he singles Maimonides out for special consideration at the end of his treatment of Jewish philosophy and devotes a lengthy section to Averroes and his followers (Brucker 1766–1767, 2:857–861, 3:97– 113, respectively). But this is not the sole guiding principle behind the construction of this part of his history. Of course, Brucker’s history would not pass muster as an academic history today. One reason for this is that he follows the practice of constructing a précis of the philosophy of an individual person or tradition, that is, he states the conclusions in summary fashion of specific positions point by point. For instance, after discussing the philosophy of individual Islamic thinkers, Brucker summarizes the metaphysics, physics, and moral philosophy of the Islamic philosophical tradition in hundreds of theses (Brucker 1766– 1767, 3:156–199, 211–239). What is striking about this method is the lack of attention paid to the philosophical argumentation that supports the conclusions. Brucker does not take his reader through the logic of significant philosophical positions. He also does not cite the primary texts that support the theses that he offers. Given what Brucker has supplied, the reader is unable to compare his reconstruction of the philosophical tradition with the philosophical texts themselves. Yet when considered in light of the historiography since his day, what Brucker has achieved is a balanced history of medieval philosophy. He has managed to devote substantial attention to the philosophy of each of the three great monotheistic traditions within a single history of philosophy. This is no mean achievement. One might criticize this part of his project by arguing that three separate treatises do not amount to a history of philosophy. But Brucker has done more than supply separate treatises of different philosophical traditions. For example, the accounts of Classical Greek and Roman philosophy prepare the reader for the treatment of Jewish Hellenistic philosophy. Certainly, Brucker does not have the level of technical skill or knowledge of original texts evident in David Winston’s article on early Jewish philosophy in the recent Routledge History of Jewish Philosophy, but he does discuss many of the same issues

Introduction

3

(Frank and Leaman 1997, 38–61). For example, when considering in what way it is fair to speak of Jewish philosophy after the Babylonian captivity, Brucker explains that Jewish intellectuals adapted Classical philosophical concepts in order to clarify Scripture and carry out the Jewish wisdom tradition (Brucker 1766–1767, 2:653–661, 685–697). From this perspective, it makes sense first to discuss Classical philosophy and then to consider Jewish philosophy. The treatment of Classical philosophy prepares the reader for the discussion of Jewish Hellenistic thought and provides helpful background for the treatment of Islamic philosophy in the following volume. I noted that Brucker does more than merely prepare readers for Latin Scholasticism in his treatment of Islamic and Jewish philosophy. For example, he does not discuss Jewish philosophy only in order to prepare his reader to grasp Bonaventure and Aquinas. What is important for the historiography of philosophy is that he presents the history of Jewish and Islamic philosophy for their own sakes. In this philosophical project, these traditions deserve fair and balanced treatment like any other significant philosophical traditions. For this reason, Brucker treats the major figures and themes deemed important within the tradition. He wrote the history of the philosophy of the three great monothesistic traditions within a general history of philosophy, a type of historiography that would not continue into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, because he believed that we can and ought to be clear about philosophical traditions apart from our own. Representing the Enlightenment ideal of rationality, Brucker believed that rationality is not culture bound. Through painstaking effort, we can and should clarify the history of the many philosophical traditions that have flourished around the globe.2 In contrast, Hegel can be held to represent all those historians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who limit discussion of Islamic and Jewish philosophy during the Latin Middle Ages to those figures who influenced the Latin scholastics. For example, in his Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie (1833–1836), Hegel limits his consideration of medieval Jewish philosophy to twelve pages(!) on the philosophy of Philo and the Kabbalah and less than a page on Maimonides (Hegel 1965, 19:18–29, 131–132, respectively). The footnotes to Brucker indicate Hegel’s dependence on that work, yet the contrast is striking. An incredible number of thinkers are omitted who were formerly thought to have played a significant role in the history of philosophy. Hegel singles out those Jewish philosophers for consideration whom he considers important on account of the influence that they had on European philosophy and jettisons the remainder from the history of philosophy. In other words, Philo and Maimonides remain part of the canon because of the influence they had on Latin medieval philosophy. Furthermore, the Kabbalah remains significant because of the history of its influence on the European philosophy of the Renaissance and modern period. Hegel devotes ten and a half pages to Islamic philosophy. He includes a number of quotations from Maimonides in order to present this philosophical tradition. For example, a passage from the Guide of the Perplexed is used to sketch the role played by Syrian Christians in the transmission of Classical philosophy to Muslim intellectuals (Hegel 1965, 19:122–123). Hegel is intrigued that Islamic thinkers borrowed a range of Classical philosophical terms and issues from Christians. One conclusion that he draws tells us something about the place that he grants Islamic philosophy within the history of philosophy. He concludes that Islamic philosophy does not mark a real step in the development of philosophy.3 Whatever philosophical success the Muslims achieved was

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due to the philosophical labor of the Classical authors that they read. For this reason Hegel singles out as worthy of mention the commentaries on the works of Aristotle written by Muslims. Islamic thinkers achieved a certain level of philosophical skill to the degree that they made sense of the philosophy of Aristotle and the Neoplatonists (Hegel 1965, 19:129–131). In order to indicate this achievement, Hegel notes in a single paragraph that Kindī, Farabi, Avicenna, Ghazali, and Averroes wrote such commentaries. That is the extent of his discussion of this topic. The reason for this list is given in the following paragraph, which is the last paragraph in this treatment of Islamic philosophy. Hegel states that this philosophy is of historical interest because it was through these individuals that the West learned about Aristotle. Therefore it is not necessary to clarify the thought of the Islamic philosophers, they are only important because they were a conduit of Classical philosophy to the West. Islamic philosophy is no longer of interest for its own sake. Hegel gets much of the blame for limiting the history of philosophy to that of Europe, but he was not alone. A more ambitious history was written by Heinrich Ritter in twelve substantial volumes, his Geschichte der Philosophie (1829–1853). Ritter more accurately describes his approach to the philosophy of the Middle Ages as Christian philosophy. Christian philosophy here refers to the European philosophy of the Middle Ages and is included within the title of the volumes that cover this period, Geschichte der christlichen Philosophie. Therefore when Ritter treats Islamic philosophy within a section of a work on Christian philosophy, he makes no claim to offer a balanced history of the philosophy of this period. He is honest about devoting attention to the major Islamic thinkers who were influential on the Latins.4 Furthermore, by devoting over two hundred pages to this topic, Ritter goes into considerable more detail than Hegel. He discusses many of the actual arguments. This is the picture that would appear in the first detailed comprehensive history of medieval philosophy published in three thick volumes by Albert Stöckl, his Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters (1864–1866).5 In almost three hundred pages on Islamic and Jewish philosophy, he supplied readers with the intellectual background needed in order to understand Bonaventure, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham (Stöckl 1864–1866, 2:13–305). Like Ritter and unlike Hegel, Stöckl has studied many of these texts. If one wants to consider key Islamic and Jewish intellectuals in this light, Ritter and Stöckl are helpful guides. Both devoted more attention to these individuals than would those writing similar standard histories in the twentieth century. For example, Stöckl devotes thirty-five pages to Avicenna, fifty-seven pages to Averroes, and thirty-four pages to Maimonides (Stöckl 1864–1866, 2:23–58, 67–124, 265–299, respectively). He carefully explains many arguments and supplies long quotations from the primary works. Yet Stöckl’s perspective limits the value of his history for understanding Islamic and Jewish philosophy. First, like the author’s of other standard histories of the period, he does not present the full range of significant Islamic or Jewish authors and texts. Since he is interested only in the influence that Islamic and Jewish intellectuals had on Latin medievals, he limits his discussion to those authors and texts read in the Latin West. Secondly, he bases his presentations on the Latin translations of these authors. While these translations are necessary for understanding the Latin reception, they are less helpful for understanding the views of the authors’ studied from within their own historical context. At times the nuance of original texts is lost, a tendency that is

Introduction

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increased by relying on Latin medieval interpretations. Therefore, in writing the history of the Latin medieval reception of Islamic and Jewish philosophy, Stöckl does not write a balanced history of Islamic or Jewish philosophy. When Stöckl explains that Christians in the Middle Ages participated in a spiritual crusade to recapture Classical philosophy from the Muslims, it becomes clear why he does not devote serious attention to other Islamic and Jewish thinkers (Stöckl 1864–1866, 2:135). Once he has supplied the philosophical context for the Latin scholastics, there is no further reason to discuss Islamic and Jewish philosophy.6 In other words, once the Latin’s have recaptured Classical philosophy, any history of Islamic and Jewish philosophy beyond this point does not belong to the history of medieval philosophy. This view of medieval philosophy limits the philosophy of the Middle Ages to that of the Christian West. If Stöckl, and other historians active since his day, are to be more accurate, they, like Ritter, should title their works “History of Christian philosophy in the Middle Ages.” The twentieth century is no different. The first edition of de Wulf’s history of medieval philosophy appeared in 1900 under the title Histoire de la Philosophie Médiévale. This work which would appear in six editions was one of the most important histories of medieval philosophy published in the twentieth century. In the first edition, Wulf treats Islamic and Jewish philosophy under the heading “La philosophic asiatique” just before considering the philosophy of the thirteenth century as the golden age of medieval thought (Wulf 1900, 228–234). In the sixth edition published in three volumes between 1934–1947, Wulf places this discussion as an appendix at the end of the first volume. In each case Islamic and Jewish philosophy are tangential to de Wulf’s story. The second important history of medieval philosophy in the twentieth century was a volume of the important Ueberweg history of philosophy. This history has been one of the most important academic histories of philosophy. The medieval volume by Bernhard Geyer more accurately displays its content in its title, Die Patristische und Scholastische Philosophie (1928). He writes the history of the philosophy of the church fathers and Latin scholastics. The heading that appears on the first page of the text covers both types of philosophy: “The philosophy of the Christian time.” This faithfully indicates the focus of the work as a whole. Like the historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Geyer considers Islamic and Jewish philosophy in order to sketch the context of Latin philosophy, but at least he is honest about not writing a balanced history of medieval philosophy (Geyer 1928). He devotes fifty-five pages to Islamic and Jewish philosophy with the emphasis on those figures who would influence Latin scholasticism (Geyer 1928, 287–342). The third great history of the twentieth century is Gilson’s History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955). Again, Gilson indicates by his title that his history is limited to medieval Latin philosophy. He devotes fifty pages to Islamic and Jewish philosophy, again in order to sketch the context of the Latin scholastics (Gilson 1955, 181–231). It is important to note that a new direction in the historiography of medieval philosophy is represented by the Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (1967) edited by A.H.Armstrong. The remarkable feature of this history is the care that is taken in order to show how members of each of the three great monotheistic traditions put Classical philosophy to use in their philosophical and theological projects.

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For the most part, the Jewish and Islamic intellectuals included are those who have appeared in the standard histories of the last two centuries, but something is different about this history. For example, Henry Chadwick treats Philo and early Christian thought in order to establish the Jewish and Christian use of Neoplatonism (Armstrong 1967, 137–157). Philo is not treated only to prepare the way for the presentation of Christian thought. This difference becomes most apparent in the last section of the book, Richard Walzer’s treatment of early Islamic philosophy. The introduction to this section makes it clear that he is concerned to introduce Islamic philosophy out of an interest in this tradition—without ignoring the point that it would influence Latin philosophy. His focus is on the history of the development of philosophy under Islam. One reason that Walzer gives for why this study is important is for students of Islam. If a person is going to devote serious attention to Islam, then he or she needs to understand Islamic philosophy (Armstrong 1967, 644). This is a new goal in a standard history of philosophy and it marks an important precedent in relation to the earlier histories considered. It represents an important attempt to rethink what it means to write the history of medieval philosophy. Another reason that Walzer gives for this study is that Islamic philosophy represents the continuation of the Classical philosophical tradition. It makes sense to study the Islamic use of Classical philosophy on account of the enormous philological, exegetical, and philosophical labor spent on this philosophy. Walzer notes that translations of philosophical, mathematical, and scientific texts had never been carried out before on such a grand scale.7 This is a period of exceptional intellectual activity. Walzer offers clear statements of the philosophy of Kindī, Rāzī, and Farabi, the sort that one finds in substantial histories of Islamic philosophy, but not normally in histories of medieval philosophy. Since this volume is a history of early medieval philosophy, Walzer only provides a sketch of later Islamic philosophy, but, since this work appeared as a sequel to W.K.C. Guthrie’s excellent six volume history of ancient philosophy, the implication is that Cambridge would publish a fuller picture of later Islamic and Jewish philosophy in a further sequel in what was becoming the most detailed history of philosophy in the English language. The next installment of the Cambridge history appeared in 1982, The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg. The editors chose not to include Islamic and Jewish philosophy in this history. Concerning this omission, Kretzmann notes Walzer’s comment in the introduction to his treatment of Islamic philosophy that the time was not yet right for a history of Islamic philosophy in the Middle Ages (Kretzmann 1982, 2). It is interesting that Kretzmann uses Walzer as an authority for not discussing Islamic philosophy in a book published fifteen years later. Had research not been carried out on Islamic philosophy during those years? Was this the consensus of historians in the early 1980s? Furthermore, Walzer did write the history of early Islamic philosophy and he includes six clear and cogent reasons for why we should both study and write this history. One of the reasons that he gives is the traditional one, to understand the conceptual history of European philosophy (Armstrong 1967, 645–646). Omitting Jewish and Islamic philosophy from the Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, which is the period when this influence was most striking, misrepresents the history of this

Introduction

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philosophy. More than any other standard history of medieval philosophy, this Cambridge volume is not a history of medieval thought, but a history of Christian philosophy. At least Hegel, Ritter, and the other historians discussed above discussed Jewish and Muslim authors in order to clarify the philosophy of the Latins. The Cambridge volume marks a low point in this regard in the historiography of Western philosophy. Furthermore, the argument given in defense of this approach is weak. If we were to take Walzer’s reservation seriously, we should be cautious about writing a history of Latin medieval philosophy itself. Large numbers of Latin medieval manuscripts of philosophical significance have never appeared in printed editions and fewer still have appeared in translation.8 But no scholar argues that we should refrain from writing the history of Latin medieval philosophy until these texts have been published and examined. The long-standing pattern of viewing Islamic and Jewish philosophy almost solely as background for the study of the philosophy of the Latins, a pattern that places limits on the authors, versions, and texts commonly studied, is no longer serviceable for the history of medieval philosophy even though it continues to be used. For example, this pattern appears in John Marenbon’s otherwise excellent Routledge History of Medieval Philosophy, published in 1998. While articles are included on Islamic and Jewish philosophy, the chief purpose is to provide the context of Latin medieval thought (Marenbon 1998, 29–95). But there is something different here that needs to be recognized. Jean Jolivet and Colette Sirat discuss figures and themes left out of the standard histories of the past (Marenbon 1998, 29–48, 65–95). Within a few pages in what is otherwise a standard history of Latin philosophy, Jolivet and Sirat sketch more faithful accounts of the philosophy of each tradition. But there is little that they can do in the short space allotted to these two traditions. The Case for a Balanced History In recent decades, an enormous amount of work has been carried out on the history of Islamic and Jewish philosophy. While little of the fruits of this research found its way into the ten volume Routledge History of Philosophy, Routledge has published two weighty works on these philosophical traditions in the Routledge History of World Philosophies series. The History of Islamic Philosophy, edited by Seyyed Nasr and Oliver Leaman, was published in 1996 and The History of Jewish Philosophy, edited by Daniel H.Frank and Oliver Leaman, appeared in 1997. For a long time, those with an interest in learning more about the history of Islamic and Jewish philosophy during the Middle Ages have had to turn to one of the standard histories of the individual tradition. The Routledge histories of these traditions stand as useful surveys of much that has been learned in recent years, with substantial attention given over to the Middle Ages. These histories pay considerable attention to the history of single philosophical traditions. In order to study the philosophical reflection of many significant Muslims and Jews we must look beyond the academic histories of medieval philosophy that are themselves products of the scholarship of recent centuries. What is especially surprising at the end of the twentieth century, is that there is still no history of medieval philosophy that does justice to the philosophy of the three great monotheistic traditions. Considering that we possess recent histories of each tradition, the time is right to move in this

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direction. A balanced history is needed if we are to give a more accurate picture of the history of this important period of philosophical discourse. One difficulty with highlighting only the Islamic and Jewish texts upon which the Latins depend is that much of the complexity and richness of these philosophical traditions is lost. To understand the Latin uses of Islamic and Jewish philosophy apart from the issues and contexts of these philosophies is to have a very unhistorical view of philosophy. Not only were the numbers of texts that reached the Latins limited, but nuances of original texts were lost in translation. It would be as if we were to discuss ancient Greek and Roman thinkers only from the viewpoint of the Latin scholastics— interpretations that historians of philosophy, have rightly taken pains to expose. On the other hand, the Latin reception is important. Being clear about the intellectual exchanges that took place within and across continents during this vibrant period places into question the boundaries of what is often meant by “Western” philosophy. The arrival in Europe of texts and commentaries which represented the Muslim and Jewish philosophical labor of centuries rejuvenated and drastically altered Latin philosophy and theology. The intellectual map of the Europeans widened to include the Middle East, North Africa, and Muslim Spain. Clearly, the Europeans were on the receiving end in this exchange. The time is right to begin to write a more balanced history of medieval philosophy, except that there is no recent model for writing this history. The best step in this direction is David Burrell and Bernard McGinn’s excellent collection of philosophical and theological articles, God and Creation (1990), now over ten years old, which focuses on a single theme, namely that of the relation of God to creation. Our volume treats six philosophical topics including creation. Our goal is more historiographical, to widen and enrich the common picture of medieval philosophy that appears in the standard histories. A link does exist with the earlier volume, namely Burrell’s continued focus on the relation of God to creation. His article, together with those by Kukkonen and Miller, serves to complement the earlier volume by providing further reflection on this topic. Much research is needed in order to clarify both continuities and differences between the three great monotheistic traditions within the historical context. In order to begin to write this history, Medieval Philosophy and the Classical Tradition: In Islam, Judaism, and Christianity focuses on the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian use of—and reaction to— Classical philosophy in the period before the modern period. This book is a first step in this direction, an attempt to motivate specialists and general readers alike to rethink the boundaries of the historiography of medieval philosophy. Detailed discussions of the uses to which philosophy has been put in each of these traditions are supplied in order to be clear about influences, continuities, and differences between these traditions. This work is not intended to be a history of medieval philosophy, but a prolegomenon to a revisionary history of medieval philosophy. So little integrative work has been done in this area that a first step is in order to identify starting points for the future of the history of medieval philosophy. Scholars who work on the medieval thought of each of the three great monotheistic traditions often have such limited knowledge of the other traditions. A volume is needed, indeed volumes are needed, that begin to identify important philosophical issues within and across these traditions. Only then will we be in a position to write a balanced and integrated history of medieval philosophy.

Introduction

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At least in the Middle Ages, Latin universities required the study of Islamic texts. Educated Europeans had some knowledge of Islamic medieval thought. As Walzer points out, the study of Islamic philosophy is difficult today because reading lists at universities no longer include Islamic texts (Armstrong 1967, 643). But as I have indicated, one of the difficulties with the Christian understanding of Jewish and Islamic philosophy during the Middle Ages is that they were only familiar with a portion of the texts. If we limit ourselves only to those works which influenced the Latins, we get a very distorted view of Jewish and Islamic philosophy. In attempting to reflect on the history of the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian philosophy in the Middle Ages it is important to remember that the reading lists of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian authors were not the same. There was no single set of common texts across each of the three traditions. This is the reason why the section of the book, entitled “The Latin Reception of Islamic and Jewish Philosophy,” brings out the specific Latin use of the other traditions. Indeed, a unified historical account from a single perspective is not possible. That is precisely why it is important to include articles written by specialists on the different traditions that focus on specific concerns both across and within traditions. On the other hand, Classical philosophy did provide a reading list that was to a large degree common across the three traditions. The focus of the present volume is on how each of these traditions used the ancient philosophers, that is, on the common philosophical ground. We are singling out a shared philosophical background, even if members of different traditions interpreted it in different ways. I do not mean to imply that individuals understood or accepted the other religious traditions. Certainly Aquinas did not have even a basic understanding of Islam and his knowledge of Judaism is questionable, but he did read Averroes and Maimonides very carefully and adopted much of what they have to say about Classical philosophy. Maimonides, along with other important Jewish thinkers, borrowed much from Islamic thinkers. In fact, significant Islamic thinkers helped to motivate and shape both the Jewish and the Christian philosophical traditions and it is this that has been left out of the standard histories. Being aware of this continuity can change the way we conceive of medieval philosophy and the way we read a single tradition. There are good reasons for why we should aim at a more balanced perspective when writing the history of medieval philosophy. For example, this understanding can supply a wider perspective than scholars normally possess and lead to a rethinking of accepted interpretations within single traditions. Writing on issues that cut across traditions introduces scholars to interpretations, approaches, and methodologies that they would not normally encounter if left to one tradition. I have learned from Daniel Frank’s work on Maimonides, which I applied to an interpretation of Aquinas’s discussion of human understanding. Aquinas treats human understanding within a moral context, a point overlooked in the literature. Reading Frank on a similar point in Maimonides helped me to clarify this argument (Inglis 1998, 258–259). Reading Leo Strauss and Howard Kreisel on Maimonides also helped me to formulate the conclusion that historians of Christian philosophy often posit a false dichotomy between reason and revelation. In these and other points I began to understand Latin authors in a manner that has not been pursued by scholars who work within the Latin tradition (Inglis 1998, 279). One might argue that research on Maimonides is needed in order to aid the understanding of Aquinas since the latter did indeed read the former. But, to remain only

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at this level of historiography is to reside within the standard approach of reading only those Islamic and Jewish intellectuals who influenced the Latins. It is also instructive to read different writers on topics when they did not directly influence one another. For example, reading Aquinas and Ghazali on similar topics can be instructive. When Aquinas says that each thing acts according to its own nature, he can sound like a Deist, that is, as if holding that God created the world to run on its own. Brian Davies could be taken to imply this when presenting Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of God in his contribution to the Routledge History of Philosophy. I focus on this because Davies captures many of Aquinas’s concerns. For example, he explains that God is both the beginning and the goal of creation, that is, God both created the universe and is its end or purpose. Yet the reader can forget this point and misunderstand Aquinas. For example, Davis explains the first argument for the existence of God noting that things in motion have been moved by another. This leads to the Aristotlian conclusion that an unmoved mover must be responsible for all such motion (Marenbon 1998, 245). A reader might imply from this history that the world operates according to its nature apart from God— that by reflecting on the motion and change of the world itself, we can intellectually come to understand that creation relates to a first mover. From this understanding one might read Ghazali as philosophically at odds with Aquinas. For example, Ghazali states in Incoherence of the Philosophers that causation is not necessary. He argues that what appear to be causal connections between things are due to the prior decree of God and are not in themselves necessary (Ghazali 1997, 170; Discussion 17). While some philosophers hold that necessary causation operates in the world around us, Ghazali holds that this view goes against attributing all power to God— it seems to place limits on God’s power. In order to avoid this conclusion, Ghazali argues that God must stand behind each “cause” that occurs. Ghazali offers as an example that God causes the one who eats a meal to feel satisfied. Food does not cause satiety, God does. Aquinas is often presented as holding the (contrary) view that created things operate according to nature, that is, that things operate necessarily according to their own natures. But paying closer attention to Aquinas’s text indicates that the picture is more complex. For example, when Aquinas considers whether God imposes necessity on creation in his Summa theologiae (ST), he states that God does impose necessity on some things.9 This sounds as if it is opposed to a view like that of Ghazali. But immediately Aquinas qualifies this view by pointing out that causal connections are only necessary to the degree that God wills them as such (ST 1.19.8.ad1–3). He does not view causation as necessary apart from God and is in fact closer to Ghazali than one might think. Neither is a Deist or views creation apart from God. Because these authors often read the same ancient and medieval texts and had similar concerns, a close reading of one can help when reading another. Profit can be gained even when writers like Ghazali and Aquinas did not read each other on a similar point. For this reason, a balanced history of medieval philosophy needs to be more than the history of a single tradition. Even though we have good histories of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian medieval philosophy, these histories do not represent a balanced history of medieval philosophy. Autonomous histories are unable to devote the detail needed in order to clarify relations and parallels between traditions. A wider framework is needed than a separate history can supply.

Introduction

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The Volume The claim here is that we need more cross-pollination in the study of medieval thought than occurs at present and especially in the histories that do so much to establish and maintain the boundaries of the discipline. The present work is an attempt to move in this direction. As the Islamic philosophical tradition was the privileged site for the study and continuation of the Classical philosophical tradition in the Middle Ages, due attention is given to this tradition. An initial chapter on the history of Islamic philosophy sets the stage for sixteen articles on issues across the three traditions. The goal is to see the Islamic tradition in its own richness and complexity as the context of much Jewish intellectual work. Taken together, these two traditions provide the wider context for Christian intellectuals. The articles are grouped under six topics relevant both to the period and to current philosophical interest-topics that would need covering in a future history of medieval philosophy: the Islamic philosophical context, the nature of philosophy in the Middle Ages, Neoplatonism and the activity of the soul, creation, virtue, and the Latin reception. Furthermore, one of the excellent features about the volume is the attention paid to the influence of Neoplatonism on the three traditions. This is an important topic in its own right and provides unity to a volume that includes, as it should, a wide-ranging number of discussions of the use of Classical philosophy. In the first section of the book, Marmura offers an historical overview of Islamic philosophy before the Modern period that serves as a framework for the book as a whole. This framework is left out of the standard histories, but is necessary in order to orient general readers and scholars not versed in Islamic philosophy to a more balanced picture of medieval philosophy. Ghazali provides the touchstone for the second section of the book on the nature of philosophy. Reynolds clarifies why Ghazali’s Intentions of the Philosophers has confused both Jews and Christians, Griffel offers a revised view of Averroes’s interpretation of Ghazali, and Kogan indicates similarities and differences between Ghazali and Halevi on the usefulness of philosophy. Since much recent and current work focuses on medieval Neoplatonism and the history of its reception, the third section is devoted to medieval Neoplatonism and its brand of cognitive activity. Beginning with a Neoplatonic notion of being, MacIsaac provides the pagan Neoplatonic background on human cognition through a discussion of Proclus, a treatment which Adamson completes in a careful analysis of the view of knowledge in the Arabic Plotinus. At this point in the text, Hankey unravels the Latin reception of a Neoplatonic understanding of knowledge in Boethius, Anselm, and Bonaventure. Then Pessin brings us back to Proclus with the argument that Avicenna adopted a Proclean methodology. This section closes with Williams’s caution that there are limits on the degree to which we should describe an author like Augustine as a Neoplatonist. The fourth section concerns the relation between the creator and creation, a topic where Classical philosophy was put to extensive use in the Middle Ages. Kukkonen builds on MacIsaac and Adamson in arguing that there is not much of a difference between medieval Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism when it comes to the relation between infinite power and finite creation. In principle, levels of necessity and determinism are compatible with creation. Yet, he also argues that the tension between

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necessity and creation served to motivate Avicenna to break with the Classical tradition in his modal formulation of this relation. Burrell goes beyond the standard influences on Christian thinkers by suggesting Ghazali as the closest parallel to Aquinas on the relation between God and creation in texts that Aquinas did not read. His point is that a shared network of conceptual tools and issues led writers in different traditions to similar conclusions. The next section treats virtue, with Jacobs arguing for continuities and differences between Aristotle, Maimonides, and Aquinas. His point is to clarify what it means to say that one is an Aristotelian. Frank continues this focus by reflecting on Maimonides as an Aristotelian, and in doing so, helps to counter the current tendency to interpret medievals as Neoplatonists. Hochschild responds to this challenge in relation to Aquinas by directing attention to the Neoplatonic character of his often presumed Aristotelian account of virtue. The sixth section is given over to the Latin reception of Islamic and Jewish Philosophy. Except for a writer like Aquinas, little work has been done on the Latin reception. In order to make progress, attention needs to be devoted to the reception of individual authors. Three case studies are included in order to make this point. On the theme of creation, Miller fills out Burrell’s picture by treating William of Auvergne, one of the first Latins to make a close study of Islamic philosophy. He clarifies William’s use and criticisms of Avicenna in formulating a view of natural causality. In the second case study, Rosheger clarifies Aquinas’s response to both Avicenna and William of Auvergne on whether God has an essence and the implications that this has for naming. Aquinas is shown to oppose a Neoplatonic view shared by Avicenna and William, a view with roots in Plotinus. Rosheger argues convincingly that other texts in Avicenna and William disavow this interpretation, and furthermore, that Aquinas sounds in places close to the view he attributes to Avicenna and William. This case study serves to indicate the complexity of labeling medievals as Aristotelians or Neoplatonists. In the third case study, Hackett offers the first study of the influence that Maimonides had on the important Franciscan Roger Bacon in regard to his views on analogy, astrology, and the virtue humility. In sum, fairness and accuracy demand that we move beyond writing histories of medieval philosophy that focus on the Latin tradition. A true history of medieval philosophy must cover Islamic and Jewish as well as Christian thought. The time is right to present the philosophy of the period as one of cross-pollination between traditions. A balanced history needs to do justice to the orbit of continuities and discontinuities. Being clear about this will allow for even greater fairness and accuracy when discussing the internal dynamics of a single tradition. As a step towards the writing of this history, the present volume examines the study and use of Classical philosophy during the Middle Ages by members of the three great monotheistic traditions. Notes 1 I will refer to the second edition of Brucker’s history published from 1766 to 1767. 2 Brucker is not writing this history as if he were a member of one of these religions. When I say that Brucker writes these histories for their own sake, I mean that he is attempting to do justice to these philosophical traditions. He is not only discussing them in order to prepare to discuss the philosophy of another tradition. For a clear statement of the argument that a

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member of one tradition can understand the philosophy of another tradition, see Oliver Leaman’s article “Orientalism and Islamic Philosophy” (Nasr and Leaman 1996, 2:1143– 1148). 3 (Hegel 1965 19:125) While Hegel will also argue that the Latin thinkers did not make any significant philosophical strides, he will devote more attention to that project and discuss many of the significant figures in some detail (Hegel 1965, 19:198–199). 4 (Ritter 1829–1853, 7:665–703, 8:3–173) They include Farabi, Avicenna, Ghazali, Avempace, Avicebron, Ibn Tufayl, and Averroes. 5 I argue elsewhere that we should not consider Hauréau’s history of Scholastic philosophy as a full blown history of medieval philosophy, since it focuses on epistemological and metaphysical issues (Inglis 1998, 56). Hauréau devotes thirty pages to Islamic and Jewish philosophy with references to Albert the Great, Aquinas, and Scotus (Hauréau 1850, 1:359– 390). 6 I do not mean to imply that Stöckl only discusses those Islamic and Jewish intellectuals who had a strong influence on the Latin Scholastics. For example he discusses Ghazali and the Kabbalah (Stöckl 1864–1866, 2:186–214, 232–251, respectively). Yet the Latins were familiar with Ghazali’s Maqāsid al-Falāsifah. Understanding him does help to flesh out the context of Christian thought. The Kabbalah would become so influential in Europe, that its inclusion does not indicate that Stöckl is writing a history of Jewish philosophy for its own sake. 7 (Armstrong 1967, 645) For a clear presentation of the translation movement, see Gutas 1998. 8 It is significant that the neglect of the history of Islamic and Jewish philosophy in these histories often reflects the boundaries of the disciplines that promote these studies. Often historians of the history of Latin medieval philosophy are employed in philosophy departments while historians of Islamic and Jewish philosophy are affiliated with departments which study Semitic languages, the culture of the Middle East, or religious studies. The institutional divisions that separate these faculties appear to be reflected in the histories that they write, especially in the standard histories of medieval philosophy. 9 (ST 1.19.8) In citing Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, the first number indicates the part of the work, the second number the question, and the third the article. When necessary, I will use ad in order to refer to the replies to the objections.

References Armstrong, A.H., ed. 1967. The Cambridge History of Later Greek & Early Medieval Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aquinas, Thomas. 1941–1945. Summa theologiae. Edited by Members of the Institute of Medieval Studies of Ottawa. 5 Vols. Ottawa: Harpell’s Press. Bernal, Martin. 1987. Black Athena. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Brucker, Jacob. 1766–1767. Historia Critica Philosophiae, 2nd ed. 6 Vols. Leipzig: Weidemann. Burrell, David and McGinn, Bernard, eds. 1990. God and Creation. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. Frank, Daniel H. and Leaman, Oliver, eds. 1997. History of Jewish Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge. Geyer, Bernhard. 1928. Die patristische und scholastische Philosophic, 11th ed. Berlin: E.S.Mittler und Sohn. al-Ghazali. 1997. The Incoherence of the Philosophers, translated by Michael E. Marmura. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press. Gilson, Etienne. 1955. History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. New York: Random House.

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Gutas, Dimitri. 1998. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Guthrie, W.K.C. 1962–1981. A History of Greek Philosophy, 6 Vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hauréau, Barthélemy. 1850. De la philosophie scolastique, 2 Vols. Paris: Pagnerre. Hegel, Georg Friedrich. 1833–1836. Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophic. Edition used: 1965. Ed. Ludwig Michelet. In 1956–1965, Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe in zwanzig Bänden. 4th ed. 20 Vols. Edited by Hermann Glockner. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: F.Frommann, Vols. 18–19. Inglis, John. 1998. Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy. Leidon, Boston, and Cologne: Brill. Kretzmann, Norman; Kenny, Anthony; and Pinborg, Jan; eds. 1982. Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marenbon, John, ed. 1998. Medieval Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein and Leaman, Oliver, eds. 1996. History of Islamic Philosophy, 2 Vols. London and New York: Routledge. Ritter, Heinrich. 1829–1853. Geschichte der Philosophic, 12 Vols. Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes. Stöckl, Albert. 1864–1866. Geschichte der Philosophic des Mittelalters, 3 Vols. Mainz: Franz Kircheim. Wulf, Maurice de. 1900. Histoire de la Philosophic Médiévale. Louvain: Institut superieur de philosophic; Paris: F.Alcan; and Brussels: Schepens. ——. 1934–1947. Histoire de la Philosophic Médiévale, 3 Vols. Louvain: Institut superieur de philosophic.

SECTION ONE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

CHAPTER ONE Medieval Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition Michael E.Marmura 1 When preparing myself to write about medieval Islamic philosophy and the classical tradition, I felt a touch of anxiety—a fear that I would be belaboring the obvious.1 For medieval Islamic philosophy, as we know it, was a direct result of the translations of Greek philosophy and science to Arabic. It is rooted in Greek philosophy. I also felt some discomfort with the term medieval, a chronological and cultural term commonly applied to European history. To what extent and in what sense can it apply to Islamic history? This is a question which should at least be asked, even though it is beyond my scope to go into it here. For my purposes, when writing about the medieval Islamic philosophers I will confine myself to those philosophers who flourished between the 9th and 12th centuries. They include such major figures as Kindi (al-Kindi) (d. ca. 870), Alfarabi (alFarabi) (d. 950), Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (d. 1037) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (d. 1198). These are also the main philosophers who influenced the development of Jewish and medieval Latin scholastic thought. At this point, however, we should remind ourselves that creative Islamic philosophy did not cease in the centuries that followed the death of Averroes. The world of Islam saw a multitude of post-Averroes philosophers. These included some of the most original Islamic thinkers as, for example, the Tunisian philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun who died in 1406 and the great Persian metaphysician Mulla Sadra who died in 1641. Mulla Sadra represents a rich tradition of post-Avicennan Iranian philosophy that continues unabated to the present day. This is a philosophy that has its own native genius and originality. Nonetheless, it remains rooted in what we have termed medieval Islamic philosophy that in turn rests on the Arabic translations of Greek thought. The translators of Greek philosophy and science to Arabic were Syriac speaking scholars, mostly Nestorian and Jacobite Christians, but also Sabians from the city of Harran whose religion which included star worship had a Greek philosophical base. Some translations were made during the Umayyad caliphate (661–750), but most of them were undertaken, within approximately a period of two centuries, during the caliphate of the Abbasids who came to power in 750. There were phases in the history of these translations: translations were revised, new translations of works already translated and of works hitherto untranslated were made. The achievement of these translators was quite remarkable, not only for the volume of philosophical and scientific works translated, but also, as in the case of the most famous of the translators, Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (d. 871) and

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his team of translators, for the high standards of scholarship they strove to maintain. Most of the translations were made from the Syriac, but sometimes directly from the Greek. These translators, many of them physicians, scientists and philosophers in their own right, were the teachers of the Islamic philosophers, whether directly as in the case of Alfarabi, or through their translations and treatises. More than anything else, It was their translations of Platonic, Aristotelian and Neoplatonic works that gave rise to Islamic philosophy. Plato’s thought seems for the most part to have been known indirectly, although we are in the realm of uncertainty here. Medieval Arabic histories mention such works as The Republic, The Laws, the Parmenides, the Timaeus, other dialogues and even The Letters as having been translated. These, however, seem to have been translations of paraphrases and summaries, Galen’s Synopsis of the Platonic Dialogues being a most likely major source. Alfarabi gives a summary of the Laws, but without Bk.10 and in his Philosophy of Plato, he gives a summary of the Dialogues. Averroes wrote a middle commentary on Plato’s Republic, that is, a lengthy paraphrase, not a commentary that reproduces the original text and comments on it section by section. It is not entirely clear, however, whether Averroes based his commentary on an Arabic translation of Plato’s original text or only on a translation of a prosaic summary that concentrates on the substance of some of its main political themes. Plato’s theory of ideas was well known to the Islamic philosophers, partly through Aristotle’s account and criticism of it. Most of the medieval Islamic philosophers accepted Aristotle’s interpretation of the theory and some, like Avicenna, gave parallel arguments in refuting it. The philosopher alSuhrawardi (d. 1191) was a notable exception: he defended it and adapted it to his philosophy. The ideas of the Timaeus left their impact on the cosmology of the physicianphilosopher Razes (al-Razi) (d. ca. 925) who argued for the world’s creation at a finite moment in time, but not out of nothing. Creation for him was the imposing of order on pre-existing atoms. The main influence of Plato on Islamic philosophy, however, was on the development of medieval Islamic political philosophy. Aristotle’s thought was known more directly. Most of Aristotle’s major works were translated, excepting the Politics and Bk.K of the Metaphysics. The earliest Arabic version of the Metaphysics was made probably in the first half of the 9th century by a certain Astat (Eustathius), about whom little is known. Translations of Aristotle’s Organon together with elements of Stoic logic formed the basis of Arabic logic. In this connection, it should be remarked that Aristotle’s very influential Posterior Analytics was a relatively late comer to the Islamic world. A partial Syriac translation first made by Hunayn Ibn Ishaq was followed by a complete translation by his son Ishaq, which in turn was translated into Arabic by Abu Bishr Ibn Matta (d.940). Aristotle’s works embodied his scientific writings which together with translations of Greek medical, astronomical and mathematical works formed the basis of Islamic science. In addition to the works of Aristotle, a body of Greek commentary on Aristotle was also translated. Neoplatonism, which had its impact on such main stream Islamic philosophers as Alfarabi and Avicenna, also influenced sectarian philosophies, notably Ismaili philosophy. Neoplatonic thought was known mainly through two works. The first was the apocryphal The Theology of Aristotle, a paraphrase of Books IV, V and VI of Plotinus’ Enneads, translated in the 9th century for Kindi by Ibn Naima al-Himsi. The second was a work that seems to have been derived largely from Proclus’ Elements of Theology,

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known in Arabic as Fi Mahd al-Khayr, On the Pure Good, and in its Latin translation as the Liber de Causis. As already suggested, it was these translations, philosophical and scientific, that gave rise to both medieval Islamic philosophy and Islamic science. But they also had a determining effect on the development of other Islamic disciplines. This is particularly true of Islamic dialectical theology,2 defend and explain revelation. It differed from Islamic philosophy, falsafa, kalam. Kalam used reason—excessively according to some of its critics—to in that its starting-point was an implicit acceptance of the revealed word. The starting-point and concern of falsafa, on the other hand, is perhaps best entailed by a definition of philosophy enunciated, as we shall see, by some of the Islamic philosophers, namely, as knowledge of things in their true nature to the extent of man’s capability. True enough, the theologians used premises that seemed independent of revelation, but as Maimonides (d. 1204) in his adverse criticism of the kalam noted, each school of the kalam (and there were many schools) chose those premises that suited their doctrine.3 Nonetheless, one must not underestimate the Islamic theologians’ acumen and perceptiveness. The theories they developed, though in the service of religious doctrine, did not lack originality, intense probing, subtlety, and the systematic building of a world view. Kalam also differed from falsafa in its historical origins. It had as its background seventh century religious sectarian concerns. It preceded the translation movement proper. But with time it became influenced by it, changing and adapting to itself Greek philosophical ideas, as for example, atomism. It interacted with falsafa and came into conflict with it. But it was also influenced by it. It reinterpreted philosophical theories, adapting them to its own theological views. The interaction between kalam and falsafa is at the heart of medieval Islamic intellectual history. But this is a topic all unto itself, beyond the scope of this lecture. In what follows our concern will be with Islamic philosophy proper, with falsafa, more specifically with certain metaphysical outlooks engendered by the translation of Greek philosophical works. We will be confining ourselves to the thought of three representative medieval Islamic philosophers. 2 The translation of Greek philosophical works into Arabic fell on fertile ground—on receptive, keen minds. This is immediately seen in the first Islamic philosopher Kindi, who was involved with the translation movement, encouraging the translators in their work. He alights on the philosophical scene unexpectedly—not as the hesitant novice, but with full confidence, energy, considerable knowledge and skill in argument. The range of his writings, many of them lost, but known by their titles, is wide and include an abundance of scientific treatises. His extant philosophical works include a treatise on definitions that represents an important step in the development of an Arabic philosophical vocabulary. They also include the first Islamic metaphysical treatise. This, the most important and longest of his extant philosophical treatises, entitled On First Philosophy,4 consists of four parts.

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In the short introductory part, he defines philosophy as knowledge of things in their true nature to the extent of man’s capability, a definition which Avicenna much later on repeats. First philosophy or metaphysics, Kindi then declares, is knowledge of the First Truth who is the cause of every truth. He exhorts his Islamic readers not to be ashamed of acquiring truth “from whatever source it comes, even if it comes from distant races and different people.” He also refers to Aristotle as the philosopher who excels all others. The second part offers a detailed argument to prove the world’s creation ex nihilo at a finite moment of time in the past from the present. Body, he argues must be finite. For if one supposes it infinite, then theoretically speaking one can remove from it a finite part. What is left would still be infinite but less than the infinite from which the finite is removed. This meant for the medievals that we have unequal infinities, a contradiction. Body, he argues, cannot exist without being in motion. Motion and time, he continues, must also be finite. The two are coextensive, time being the measure of motion. Accordingly, motion and time are created with the world which is created out of nothing. Kindi’s position on the world’s origin is atypical in terms of medieval Islamic philosophy. The main position on this issue is represented by his successors Alfarabi and Avicenna. Both upheld the doctrine of the world’s pre-eternity. The Islamic theologian (lawyer and mystic) Ghazali (al-Ghazali) (d. 1111) pronounced the latter philosophers as infidels for upholding this doctrine, as well as two other doctrines: the doctrine that only souls are immortal—there is no bodily resurrection—and the doctrine (properly associated with Avicenna) that God knows terrestrial particulars only “in a universal way,” not in their particularity. On the first two points Kindi’s position is consistent with traditional Islamic belief. Not only did he argue philosophically for the doctrine of creation ex nihilo—a notable departure from Aristotle whom he revered—but supported his position with quotes from the Qur’an. He also explicitly upheld the doctrine of bodily resurrection. (A later medieval Arabic source reported that Kindi also believed that God knows all particulars in their particularity, but there is nothing in his extant writings showing that he discussed such a question). It is clear, however, that his philosophical position was in harmony with traditional Islamic beliefs and offered a defense of it. In this sense, his philosophical perspective is Islamic. To return to his treatise, the third and fourth parts consist of a sustained argument for the existence of God and a probing into of the nature of His unity.5 Kindi argues from the existence of plurality in this world for the existence of a creator who is utterly one. The unities in the created world, from which pluralities are formed, are accidental, not essential unities. Whatever belongs accidentally to one thing, he then argues, derives its existence from another thing wherein it exists essentially. The accidental unities in the world must ultimately derive their existence from an existent who is essentially one, God, the True One. The treatise is largely a synthesis of selected Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic concepts. These are integrated and welded to form a distinctive world view that is other than the sum of its parts. It is a distinctively “Kindian” world view. It is as though the Greek ideas embodied in it and that pervade it now acquire a new philosophical personality. This phenomenon of forming new syntheses substantially based on Greek concepts is encountered in subsequent more highly developed Islamic philosophical systems. This is certainly the case with the philosophy of Avicenna, the most detailed and developed medieval Islamic metaphysical system. Again, the conceptual building blocks, so to

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speak, of Avicenna’s system also derive mainly from Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. These concepts, however, are subjected to critical analyses: some are rejected, some are accepted in their original form; others are modified, rethought and expanded on.6 They are integrated to form a cosmic view that has a character all its own. To give some idea of its characteristic features, we will begin with the distinction so basic to Avicenna’s entire metaphysical system. This is the distinction he draws between quiddity or essence and existence which, he holds, applies to all existents, potential or actual, other than God. The basic idea of this distinction is not difficult to grasp. From knowing what a thing is, one cannot infer that it exists. To use an example suggested by Avicenna in a related discussion, I can have a concept of a heptagonal building. From my conception of such a building I cannot infer that it exists. It is true that if I conceive it, it exists as a concept in my mind. But its mental existence is not part of its definition as heptagonal. To be sure, any such quiddity or essence can exist either in the mind, outside the mind, or in both. But considered strictly in itself, that is, simply in terms of what it is, it includes neither existence, nor the concomitants of existence, unity and plurality. The quiddity horseness, considered in itself, he tells us, is simply horseness. In itself it is neither one nor many, exists neither externally, nor in the soul, existing in none of these things either in potency or in act. This distinction has a number of ramifications which Avicenna discusses as he builds up his system. The quiddity considered in itself and by itself, though at one point referred to by Avicenna in a general way as a universal, is not strictly speaking a universal. It is, however, he maintains, a component of the universal concept. It becomes a universal when universality, that quality that renders it predicable of many instances, is added to it. Again, quiddities exist outside the mind, in external reality, in particular instances. This, Avicenna explains, does not render a quiddity many quiddities. To take animality as an example, it exists associated with many individuals, but this does not render it many animalities. In itself, it is neither one nor many. Its being particularized does not prevent it from being considered in itself. For as Avicenna expresses it, animality itself with another is still itself. But if quiddities do not include existence, what is their relation to existence? Since quiddities exist either in the mind, externally, or both mentally and externally, they are existents. But although existence is not a constituent of what they are, it is their necessary concomitant. Otherwise quiddities would exist neither mentally nor externally. What about existence itself? Here there are two ways of looking at it encountered in Avicenna’s writings. One pertains to the existence of one’s immaterial self. In his psychological writings, Avicenna maintains that the human rational soul, an immaterial self, has a direct awareness of its own existence. But, he also speaks of the existent, the thing, and the necessary, as primary concepts, similar to the self-evident truths of logic. These primary concepts underlie all our thinking.7 It is through an examination of the concept of the existent that we arrive at the existence of God. (Implicit in this argument is that the concept of the existent has a referent outside the mind). Avicenna does not exclude the causal argument based on our experience of the external natural world as a proof for God’s existence. But the argument through the examination of existence he regards as the superior argument. “It is the mode that is more reliable and noble, that is, when we consider the state of existence, we find that existence inasmuch as it is existence bears

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witness to God while He thereafter bears witness to all that comes after Him in existence.”8 The proof is based on the distinction between essence and existence, though not with respect to God. If a quiddity or essence exists, then it is either necessary in itself or only possible. The impossible cannot exist. If necessary in itself, Avicenna then argues, it has to be one, unique, uncaused and the ultimate cause of all other existents. This would be God. If on the other hand it is not necessary in itself, and this applies to existents other than God, and if the quiddity in itself does not include existence, then it must derive its existence externally. As a being in itself only possible, it can exist or not exist. It needs a preponderant to bring it into existence, a necessitating cause. If this cause is also only possible in itself, it needs another external cause and so on. But such a chain of causes— Avicenna here is speaking of essential causes that coexist with their effects—cannot be infinite. They must terminate in a being whose quiddity does not require an external existence. This is God, whose quiddity is existence. But Avicenna does not stop at this point. He proceeds to infer the existence of the world in a triadic series of emanations from the existence of God. (We will be discussing this emanative system when discussing his religious philosophy) This emanative scheme is certainly vulnerable to the serious logical criticisms Ghazali leveled against it in the Third Discussion of his The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Whatever its shortcomings, however, it offered a synthesis between the astronomical view to which Avicenna subscribed and the emanative scheme which he developed. In this he conveyed a cosmic vision that was very influential in subsequent Islamic thought. But is this all that there is to this cosmological view? The basic element in Avicenna’s system about which thus far we have said nothing is what is distinctively Islamic. Avicenna expands on a cosmological emanative scheme whose foundations were laid down by his predecessor Alfarabi. Both Alfarabi and Avicenna identified (to their own satisfaction) their Neoplatonic conception of the first cause of all existents (other than God) with the Qur’anic God. Both developed a theory of prophecy and revelation where the prophet becomes the link between the celestial and terrestrial worlds. Islamic institutions are interpreted in terms of what in essence is a Platonic theory of an ideal state. To see more clearly how this is accomplished we will be turning to the architect of this philosophical interpretation of Islam, to Alfarabi. We will also be returning briefly to Avicenna to see how his expansion on Alfarabi fills certain gaps in the interpretation of his predecessor. First, however, it should be remarked that it is primarily in the endeavor of these two philosophers to give a philosophical interpretation of Islamic beliefs and institutions that we are referring to them as Islamic. They are, to be sure Islamic in the broad sense that they belonged and participated in that complex civilization we term Islamic. This is a civilization which though multicultural and varied remained in its ethos Islamic in the religious sense. At the same time this was a civilization that accommodated other religions. Thus, for example, the medieval Muslim historian of Islamic sectarian thought, al-Shahrastani (d. 1153), referred to Yayha Ibn Adiyy (d. 974), a noted Christian philosopher as Islamic in this broad cultural sense. Yahya wrote in Arabic and was part of this civilization. But as just stated, he was a Christian, not a Muslim. Alfarabi and Avicenna, on the other hand, regarded themselves as Muslims. And there is no reason for

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doubting their sincerity in believing that their philosophical interpretation of Islam was concordant with Islamic belief. Sincerity, however, is one thing and the validity of what one is sincere about is another. The more traditional religious Islamic thinkers rejected their philosophical interpretation of Islam. They argued, in effect, that this interpretation was based on a concept of God as an intellectual principle far removed from the Qur’anic concept of a creator God directly involved in human history. It is thus that the theologian Ghazali condemned these two philosophers as infidels. He did not condemn them because they did not believe in one God and in revelation, but because, as he saw it, they had an erroneous conception of the one God and a wrong interpretation of what constitutes revelation. But whether or not one agrees with Ghazali, the philosophy of these two individuals represents a form of synthesis between aspects of two cultural traditions, the classical and the Islamic. But, perhaps more to the point, their interpretation of Islam was central to their philosophical enterprise. 3 To turn then to Alfarabi, he was the founder of a political and religious philosophy which in essence was adopted by his medieval Islamic philosopher successors. Sadly, however, we know so little about his personal life and his attitudes towards the then existing political situation. Born around 870 in Transoxania, of Turkish ancestry, he came (at an unknown date) to Baghdad, the cosmopolitan capital of the Abbasid caliphate, and lived there until 941. In Baghdad he was associated with the circle of Nestorian commentators and logicians. The Nestorian logician, Yuhanna Ibn Haylan (d.910) was his teacher and according to one medieval Arabic source, also the logician and translator Abu Bishr Matta (d. 940). In addition to his being the initiator of an Islamic Platonic political philosophy, Alfarabi was a leading Aristotelian commentator, the foremost logician of his day, a metaphysician of note, and medieval Islam’s leading musical theorist and musicologist. The Baghdad in which Alfarabi lived was undergoing a very dark period of its history, though ironically, in cultural matters a very creative one. After an initial period of recuperation and relative strength at the turn of the 10th century, the caliphate rapidly declined as power fell into the hands of military adventurers. In 941, the troops of some of these adventurers (the Baridi brothers) looted Baghdad. This is the year when Alfarabi left Baghdad for Syria. But it is not known whether he left it before or after the event and, if after the event, because of it. In Syria, sometime after 942, he was given a subsidy by Sayf al-Dawla, the Arab King of Aleppo, noted for both his wars with Byzantium and for his patronage of the arts. Alfarabi died in Damascus in 950. Alfarabi’s religious and political philosophy tends to be highly theoretical. He makes no references to contemporary events. This seems to be a characteristic of his writings as he seeks the Aristotelian demonstrative ideal of attaining knowledge that is universal. At the same time, it does not seem likely that he was formulating a political philosophy for purely theoretical reasons. The Islamic concern is evident if not always explicit. Although his political thought is inspired by Plato, the Islamic ideal of the umma, of a community of believers governed by divine law, is conceivably a guiding idea implicit in his thought. One cannot prove this, but the influence of Islam manifests itself in other aspects of his

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thinking. For example, he uses Qur’anic terms to characterize the Active Intellect, the last of a series of intellects that emanate from God, and he discusses the function of Islamic law, fiqh and of dialectical theology, kalam, in the state. There is also a universalism in his political thinking, very much in tune with Islam’s universalism. Thus, although the model of Alfarabi’s ideal state is a city, the virtuous city, of which Plato’s Republic is the ancestor, we meet in his political thought an extension of the desirable ideal political state of affairs beyond the one city. Thus Alfarabi suggests that while the virtuous city is good, a nation consisting of virtuous cities is better; still better is a world made up of virtuous nations. Again, as we shall see, he maintains that religious language is an expression of philosophical truth in symbolic terms. As such, he argues that since languages and symbols differ, it may well be the case that there are different virtuous religions where the differences between them reflect only differences in symbolization, not in what is being symbolized. This tendency towards ecumenism is suggestive of a cultural aspect of medieval Islam—a cosmopolitan universalism encountered in some circles. Still, when turning to his philosophical interpretation of Islam, what one becomes conscious of at first is not so much its Islamic milieu, as its cosmological setting. This is because his interpretation manifests itself primarily in his political theory where, for example, the model of the ideal state is the cosmos as Alfarabi conceives it. This cosmos is hierarchical, rational, orderly, harmonious. What Alfarabi conceives to be the ideal state is likewise hierarchical, rational, orderly, harmonious. While the metaphysical framework of his cosmology is Neoplatonic, his concept of the ideal state is essentially Platonic. Plato’s philosopher-king acquires an Islamic garb as he becomes the law-giving prophet-philosopher. Society is hierarchically organized, where each class under its leader performs a special function, acting harmoniously with every other class. The world, according to Alfarabi, proceeds from God as a series of emanations. An eternal divine overflow brings about the existence of an eternal first intelligence. This intelligence is eternally engaged in two acts of cognition, knowledge of God and knowledge of itself. These two eternal cognitive acts necessitate respectively the existence of two other beings, a second intelligence and a body, the body of the outermost sphere of the world. The second intelligence is also eternally engaged in two similar acts of cognition, knowledge of God and knowledge of itself, producing a third intelligence and the sphere of the fixed stars. The process is repeated by the third and successive intelligences, giving rise to the existence of the planets, the sun and the moon. How our terrestrial world, the world of generation and corruption, comes into existence is not too clear in Alfarabi. It seems in some way to have been created by the heavenly bodies. Whatever the case, it is a world governed by the last of the celestial intelligences, the Active Intellect. In this terrestrial world, humans being endowed with reason, stand highest in the scale of value. But there are degrees of rationality. The majority of mankind are incapable of abstract thought, of philosophy. With individuals capable of philosophy, their rational souls, initially material dispositions, become immaterial souls when the material forms they attain through the senses are transformed by the illuminary action of the Active Intellect and rendered abstract. The rational soul thus becomes actualized, becoming “the actual intellect.” Having attained an immaterial status, this soul with the death of the body separates to live a life of eternal bliss or misery, depending on its performance in this life.

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With some rational souls a higher form of abstraction is attained when the actual intellect becomes the object of its own cognition. The soul then becomes the acquired intellect. A yet higher stage is reached with very exceptional individuals, namely the prophet-philosophers, when their rational soul, through the mediation of the acquired intellect, “receives” the Active Intellect. The result is a composite in which the prophetic rational soul plays the role of matter, the Active Intellect the role of form. Alfarabi also expresses this union by referring to the prophet as “the human in which the Active Intellect indwells.” He also uses Qur’anic language in referring to the Active Intellect. He refers to it as the faithful spirit (al-ruh al-amin) and the holy spirit (al-ruh al-qudus). But while this union of the prophetic acquired intellect with the Active Intellect, is a necessary condition for prophethood, it is not sufficient. The prophet must also be endowed with an exceptional powerful imaginative faculty. The prophetic role of the imaginative faculty has to be understood in terms of Alfarabi’s Aristotelian division of the rational soul into the theoretical and practical. The function of the theoretical faculty is the acquisition of abstract knowledge, while the function of the practical faculty is deliberation for the sake of action—this latter function involves ethical principles in terms of which moral actions are undertaken. The imaginative faculty holds an intermediate position between the senses and the rational soul. One of its functions, according to Alfarabi is imitation. As a non-intellectual faculty, it can neither acquire purely abstract knowledge, nor the practical principles in terms of which deliberation for practical action takes place. Hence when imitating both these types of knowledge, it can do so only in terms of particular images. These images either symbolize rational knowledge or gives particular instances of it. The prophet’s imaginative faculty, no less than his rational faculty, must be very powerful to enable it to form imitations of the intelligibles that overflow from the Active Intellect onto the prophet’s rational faculty. Now, the imports of these images that imitate theoretical knowledge, are expressed in declarative statements about God and His creation. Images imitating practical knowledge are expressed in prescriptive language—the particular commands, prohibitions, and recommendations. These constitute the divine law. Put in another way, the prophet’s imaginative faculty translates, so to speak, demonstrative knowledge into the language of imagery, of the particular example and the symbols which the non-philosopher can understand. Hence the central Farabian definition of religion as the imitation of philosophy, where imitation is not to be used in any derogatory sense. For this imitation is the revealed religion, the revealed law, without which society cannot survive. What we have here is not a theory of double truth, but of one truth understood on different levels. At the same time, we also encounter here the elitism of this Islamic brand of Platonic political philosophy where only the philosophical few are entrusted with interpreting the revealed word on the philosophical, demonstrative level. Alfarabi’s definition of religion as the imitation of philosophy, which is at the heart of his political and religious philosophy, was adopted by such of his successors as Avicenna, Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185) and Averroes. Averroes’s political philosophy, though often couched in legal Islamic terms and buttressed by Qur’anic quotations, cannot be properly understood without cognizance of this Farabian definition. Averroes, it is true, elaborates and expands on it, but it remains at the core of his political and religious thought.

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There are aspects of Alfarabi’s theory of prophecy, however, that are not entirely clear. Uncertainties arise regarding his position on two other miraculous functions of prophets, functions depicted in the Qur’an. One of them is the causing of an event that is a complete departure from the normal course of natural events—what is generally referred to as a miracle. There is nothing in the extant writings of Alfarabi that offers a philosophical explanation for this type of miracle. The other miraculous function is that of the prophet’s prediction of future events. Alfarabi says something about this, but his discussion raises questions of interpretation. For he tells us that the Active Intellect conveys knowledge of future contingents to the imaginative faculty through the mediation of the practical rational faculty. How this takes place is not clear. Is it that the Active Intellect, a pure intelligence, whose knowledge is universal and abstract knows particulars? Or, is it that particular notions already present in the prophet’s practical faculty are illumined by the Active Intellect so that future consequences of these notions are unconsciously inferred by the prophet and conveyed to his imaginative faculty? Given this latter interpretation, the Active Intellect itself would not know future contingents but activates the prophetic soul to attain such knowledge. But Alfarabi in his Commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione asserts that God, who is pure intellect, has knowledge of future particular events.9 If this is the case, then the Active Intellect, also a pure intellect, an emanation from God, would also have such knowledge. But Alfarabi does not explain how a pure intellect has knowledge of particulars. It is here that we must return to Avicenna whose triadic emanative system (as distinct from Alfarabi’s dyadic scheme) gives a fuller explanation of such prophetic miracles. As with Alfarabi, in Avicenna’s scheme a first intelligence emanates from God. It emanates, however, as a necessary consequence of divine self-knowledge. This intelligence encounters and contemplates three facts of existence: God as the existent necessary in Himself, its own existence as necessitated by God, and it own existence as in itself only possible. From these three contemplative acts, three existents necessarily proceed— another intelligence, a soul and a body, the outermost body of the world. This contemplative activity is repeated by the second and successive intelligences, forming a succession of triads. In these triads, the celestial soul desires the celestial intelligence. Its act of desire moves the sphere. The celestial intelligence has universal knowledge and universal will. But this universal will by itself does not produce a particular motion. The celestial soul, akin to the practical soul in us, has a particular will and wills each part of the movement of the sphere. And while God and the celestial intelligences know only the universal aspects of terrestrial particulars, the celestial souls know the terrestrial particulars in their particularity. For the terrestrial events are caused by the movements of the spheres. The celestial souls that cause these movements, and know each of them, know all their effects in the terrestrial realm. This includes knowledge of future terrestrial events. This knowledge is conveyed to the prophet’s imaginative faculty. In addition to this, Avicenna holds that the prophetic soul can influence external events. Just as the ordinary human soul can influence the human body with which it is associated, in the case of exceptionally strong souls, those of prophets, this influence can transcend the human body to affect the external world.10 Avicenna’s interpretation of Islam includes philosophical exegesis of Qur’anic verses. Although essentially Farabian, his interpretation offers a fuller account of prophecy and is also more explicit in accommodating Islamic institutions within his emanative

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philosophy. But perhaps above all else, it completes his metaphysical system. It is no accident that Bk. X, the concluding book of the Metaphysics of the Shifa, (Healing), which is the final volume of this voluminous work, is devoted to the theory of prophecy and to a discussion of Islamic institutions within his emanative cosmic scheme.

Philosophy in the Islamic medieval period we are discussing can be regarded in part as a continuation of Greek philosophy. Greek philosophical ideas were alive, thriving and developing creatively in a new cultural environment. One of their developments was their interpretation—at the hand of Islam’s philosophers—of the religion which conditioned the cultural life of their new abode. Parallels to this are encountered in both medieval Jewish and Christian philosophical thinking. Notes 1 [This chapter was a keynote address at the 26th Richard R.Baker Philosophy Colloquium held at the University of Dayton (April 11–13, 1999).—ed.]. 2 It is also referred to as speculative theology, and dogmatic theology. The Islamic philosophers in their conflict with kalam refer to the theologians as dialecticians largely because the latter (according to the philosophers) rest their doctrinal arguments on widely accepted statements, al-mashhurat, not statements that are necessarily true—hence their arguments are dialectical, not demonstrative. 3 Ibn Maymun (Maimonides), Dalalat [The Guide of the Perplexed], 185. al-Kindi al-Falsafiyya, 123–162. For an English annotated translation with 4 Al-Kindi, commentary, see A.L.Ivry. 5 For a discussion of the argument of this part and its Greek background, see M.E.Marmura and J.M.Rist. 6 In introducing his major philosophical work, al-Shifa (Healing), Avicenna writes: “There is nothing reliable in the books of the ancients but we’ve included in this our book. If something is not found in a place where it is customarily found, it would be found in another place where I judged it more fit to be in. I have added to this what I have apprehended with my thought and attained through my reflection, particularly in physics, metaphysics and logic. Ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Shifa (Healing), al-Madkhal (Isagoge), 9–10. 7 In his Commentary on the Metaphysics of the Al-Naraqi (d. 1764) argues that these primary concepts have precedence over the self-evident logical truths and that existence as a primary concept has precedence over the direct awareness of the existence of one’s rational soul. Al-Naraqi, 214–15. For a discussion of Avicenna’s notion of self-awareness, see the author’s, “Avicenna’s ‘Flying Man’ in Context.” 8 Avicenna (Ibn Sina), al-Isharat wa al-Tanbihat, 146. 98. 9 Al-Farabi, Sharh al-Farabi li Kitab Aristotalis fī 10 This type of miracle is explicable in terms of Avicenna’s causal theory that includes the idea of necessary causal connection. Scriptural accounts of miracles that violate this causal theory would have to be understood philosophically as metaphor, not as literary true.

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References Al-Farabi. 1985. Al-Farabi on the Perfect State. Abu Nasr Ahl alMadina al-Fadila [The principles of the Opinions of the Virtuous City]. Edited and Translated by R.Walzer. Oxford. The Clarendon Press. ——. 1969. Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Translated by M.Mahdi. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. ——. 1964. Kitab al-Siyasa al-Madaniyya [The Political Regime]. Edited by F.Najjar. Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique. Translated partially by F.Najjar. 1963. In Medieval Political Philosophy: A Source book. Edited by R.Lerner and M.Mahdi. Ithaca, New York.: Cornell University Press. ——. 1968. Kitab al-Milla wa Nusus Ukhra [The Book of Religion and other Texts]. Edited by M.Mahdi. Beirut: Dar al-Mashriq. [Treatise on the Intellect]. Edited by M.Bouyges. Beirut: Imprimerie ——. 1948. Risala fi Catholique. ——. 1960. Sharh al-Farabi li-Kitab Aristotutalis fī [Al-Farabi’s Commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione]. Edited by W.Kutsh and S.Marrow. Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique. Annotated translation by F.W. Zimmermannn. 1981. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Al-Ghazali, 1997. The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Translated by M.E. Marmura, Provo, Uta Bringham Young University Press. Ibn Maymun (Maimonides). 1976 Dalalat al-Ha’irin, [The Guide of the Perplexed]. Edited by H.Atay, Ankara. Ibn Sina (Avicenna). 1882. Al-Isharat wa al-Tanbihat. Edited by. J.Forget Leiden, Brill. ——. 1960

(Healing): al-Ilahiyyat (Metaphysics). Edited by G.C.Anawati, S.Dunya,

M.Y.Musa and S.Zayid, 2 Vols. Cairo:

al-Misriyya

li al-Kitab.

——. 1953 (Healing): al-Madkhal (Isagoge). Edited by. M.Khudayri, G.C.Anawati and li al-Kitab. F.Ahwani. Cairo: al-Hay’a al-Misriyya Al-Kindi. 1950. Fi al-Falsafa al-Ula [On First Philosophy], in al-Kindi al-Falsafiyya, [Kindi’s Philosophical Treatises], edited by M.A.Abu Rida, Vol. I, Cairo 123–162. English annotated translation with commentary by A.L.Ivry. 1974. The metaphysics of al-Kindi. Albany, N.Y.SUNY Press, 1974. Marmura, M.E.1986. “Avicennna’s ‘Flying Man’ in Context,” The Mom’s, Vol. 69, No. 3, 383–95. Marmura. M.E. and J.M.Rist. 1963. “Al-Kindi’s Discussion of Divine Existence and Oneness,” Mediaeval Studies, XXV (1963), 238–354. Al-Naraqi. 1986. Sharh al-ilahiyyat min Kitab Dansshakad.

edited by M.Muhaqqiq. Tehran,

SECTION TWO PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER TWO A Philosophical Odyssey Ghazzâlî’s Intentions of the Philosophers1 Gabriel Said Reynolds Our shaykh Abû Hâmid penetrated into the body of philosophy; then he wanted to come out of it but could not.2

Introduction and Biography Over the past century, western scholars have paid more attention to Abû Hâmid Muhammad al-Ghazzâlî (d. 505 AH/AD 1111) than to any other Muslim thinker of his age. Despite this, we remain divided and confused over the precise nature of his religious thought. Our confusion stems primarily from the great and eclectic literary production of Ghazzâlî (and those who wrote in his name). While Ghazzâlî is most known as a Sufi writer, he also contributed to theology, jurisprudence and philosophy. Muslim and western scholars alike have sought to organize this writing according to the traditional account of his intellectual career: a philosopher turned skeptic turned mystic. Ghazzâlî himself helped paint this picture in his autobiography, Munqidh min aldalâl (Deliverance from Error).3 According to this account, philosophy was merely a stage in the spiritual journey of Ghazzâlî, left behind and forgotten. The present paper will challenge this view, which has already come under increased scrutiny. By looking at the textual history of one of Ghazzâlî’s philosophical works, The Intentions of the Philosophers (Maqâsid al-falâsifa), I will argue that Ghazzâlî never left the philosopher’s path. What is more, we will see that the Intentions is an excellent case study of the problematic transmission of classical philosophy. Ghazzâlî inherited a Hellenistic philosophical system from earlier Muslim philosophers and passed that system on to medieval Europe. Yet through this process the system was altered and the identity of Ghazzâlî was confused. Was Ghazzâlî a friend or enemy to philosophy? The issue has been contested for eight centuries. Ghazzâlî was born in 450/1058 in Tûs, modern day Iran. At an early age he began philosophical studies in Nîshâpur with the well-respected theologian, al-Juwaynî. After Juwaynî’s death in 478/1085, he went to work in the court of the powerful Seljuk Vizier, Nizâm al-Mulk. The vizier was so impressed with Ghazzâlî’s abilities that he appointed him to the premier Sunni institution of the time, the Nizâmiyya college of Baghdad. Ghazzâlî went on to distinguish himself through his teaching and his renown as a scholar spread throughout the Islamic world. Yet after several years Ghazzâlî suffered a deep

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ideological and spiritual crisis. This crisis, he tells us, was fueled by a growing distrust of philosophy and a sweeping doubt of all learning. In the year 488/1095, he left his position in Baghdad, swearing to never return to academia. During the next 11 years, Ghazzâlî traveled through the Islamic world, making stops in Jerusalem and Damascus and a pilgrimage to Mecca. It was during this time that he had a conversion experience and embarked on the Sufi path. In mysticism, Ghazzâlî discovered something truly knowable: the reality of the divine for the individual mystic. Meanwhile, he wrote prolifically, including his magnum opus Ihyâ al-dîn (The Revivification of the Religious Sciences), a work that stands at the center of Islamic intellectual tradition. Despite his pledge, Ghazzâlî returned to the academy in 499/1106, spending the next 5 years of his life teaching at the Nizâmiyya college in Nîshâpur. Thereafter he returned briefly to his hometown of Tûs, until his death on December 18, 1111 (14 Jumâdâ II, 505). History of Understanding: The Intentions of the Philosophers It was just before his departure from Baghdad that Ghazzâlî began the Intentions of the Philosophers,4 a book apparently composed at the request of his students. In it, Ghazzâlî provides a systematic exposition of the philosophical sciences with a distinctly Aristotelian angle. The Intentions, an expression of his two years of personal study,5 is a clear and careful work, reflecting the philosophical tradition of al-Fârâbî (d. 339/950) and Ibn Sînâ (Avicenna) (428/1037), whom Ghazzâlî considered the most accurate representatives of Aristotle. In fact, the Intentions added little to that tradition. With the exception of the Prologue and Conclusion of the work, the Maqâsid is essentially a reformulation of a Persian work on philosophy by Ibn Sînâ, the Dânesh nâmeh (Book of Wisdom).6 In fact, the majority of our work is virtually a translation of the Dânesh Nameh, an insight lost on scholars with a penchant for unmitigated praise for Ghazzâlî. Ghazzâlî (as is his habit) makes no mention of his source, which must have provided him with a useful reference work on philosophy. His facility with Persian must have allowed him to painlessly adapt an Arabic version. Yet according to Ghazzâlî, the Intentions is meant to be a clarification of the suppositions of philosophers, so that such suppositions might be more effectively deconstructed later: You have desired from me a doubt-removing discourse, uncovering the falling to pieces (tahâfut) of the philosophers and the mutual contradictions in their views and how they hide their suppressions and their deceits. But to help you thus is not at all desirable except after first teaching you their position (madhhab) and making you know their dogmatic structure.7 Thus the Intentions of the Philosophers describes itself as merely an introduction to the subsequent “doubt removing discourse.” Ghazzâlî later wrote that discourse, naming it the Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahâfut al-falâsifa).

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The Incoherence became better known and more influential in the Islamic world than its predecessor. In fact, it is a watershed in Islamic intellectual history. The Incoherence’s great popularity led to a greater awareness of philosophy and, simultaneously, an increased suspicion of its claims. Its impact was threatening enough to Islamic philosophy that the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (d. 594/1198) was prompted to pen a refutation of the work, the Tahâfut al-tahâfut (Incoherence of the Incoherence), in which he quoted Ghazzâlî’s work from beginning to end.8 The Intentions of the Philosophers, then, was superseded by its successor in the Islamic world and never became particularly influential. This is, apparently, what Ghazzâlî intended. The story of the Intentions might have been this simple if it had never reached Medieval Europe. Yet in the twelfth century the Archbishop John of Toledo became aware of the work and commissioned its translation. The well-known translator Dominicus Gundissalinus, with the help of a certain Johannes Magister, carried out the commission.9 They gave their translation the title Liber Algazelis de summa theoricae philosophae.10 The translation was a popular work and was duplicated several times in the thirteenth century and most likely revised in the process.11 Such popularity is not surprising. Being no more than a summary of philosophical views, the Intentions (and hence the Summa theoricae philosophae) is short and clear, while still representing the advanced Islamic philosophical tradition from which medieval Christians were eager to borrow. Indeed, that it was translated into Latin within a century of the author’s death reflects the Scholastics’ desire for such a work.12 The Liber Algazelis de summa theoricae philosophae became a textbook for Scholastics seeking to understand the classical tradition of philosophy. Unwittingly, the Scholastics were learning philosophy from one whom Muslims considered an antagonist of the philosophers. Gundissalinus had translated the Intentions alone, without the Incoherence, which did not appear in Europe until a couple of centuries later.13 Moreover, he translated the work with neither the explanatory preface (quoted above) nor the similar note that appears at the end of the work. And nowhere in the body of the text does Ghazzâlî make it clear that he is simply paraphrasing the views of the philosophers. These absences led medieval Christians to understand Ghazzâlî in profoundly different fashion than their Muslim contemporaries, for the Scholastics quite naturally took the views expressed in the Intentions as Ghazzâlî’s own. Accordingly, Ghazzâlî came to be almost universally understood in medieval Europe not as an opponent of the philosophical tradition represented by Avicenna, but rather as a sequax Avicennae.14 I say “almost,” because it seems that at least one manuscript tradition circulated among the Scholastics with the explanatory notes about the book’s introductory nature. The Franciscan Roger Bacon and Raymond Martin were both aware of this tradition.15 It seems that we can even trace the point at which Roger Bacon changed his mind about Ghazzâlî’s position towards philosophy.16 So it is that the opponent of philosophy in the Islamic world became one of its representatives in the Christian one. The modern observer can’t help but smile to see that Giles of Rome, in his own “Tahâfut al-falâsifa,” that is, the Errores philosophorum, condemns the Liber Algazelis de summa theoricae philosophae.17 Ironically, Giles attacks Ghazzâlî for his faith in philosophy, writing against his “errores praecipui,” thus performing the same act which Ghazzâlî himself was later engaged in! Giles’ list of the

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eighteen Errores Algazelis was later entered into the Directorium Inquisitorum of Nicholar Eymerich.18 The confusion regarding the Intentions has perdured in the modern period. A.Schmoelders, who wrote the Essai sur les écoles philosophiques chez les Arabes et notamment sur la doctrine d’Algazzel in 1842, was not aware of the Islamic world’s understanding of the Intentions of the Philosophers.19 And as D.B.MacDonald pointed out (MacDonald 1937, 9–10), even the editor of the Latin version of the Intentions (published in 1933), J.T.Muckle, did not seem to correctly grasp the history of the text. Muckle, a Latinist, entitled his edition “Algazel’s Metaphysics,” misleading not only because it is an edition of the Metaphysics and the Physics, but even more so, MacDonald argues, because it is certainly not Algazel’s metaphysics, but rather those of his opponents. In putting together his work, Muckle looked at six different manuscripts and one printed book. In the preface, he defends his choice of manuscript Vat. Lat. 4481 as the principle source, arguing that it is the oldest and most reliable. Yet he unwittingly passed over another manuscript, Paris B.N. 16096, that contains the crucial explanatory preface. This was quickly pointed out by the Latinist D.Salman in his article “Algazel et les Latins” (Salman 1935–6), who knew that Roger Bacon and other Scholastics were aware of the real nature of the work. What is particularly unfortunate about Muckle’s mistake is that other western scholars had already dealt with the same conundrum. In 1857 the Arabist S.Munk wrote in his Mélanges de philosophic juive et arabe (Munk 1857, 369–72) that the Intentions was not originally intended as an introduction to the Incoherence. He did so by referring to the very manuscript that contains the preface and conclusion, which Muckle would pass over as unreliable. Muckle’s error was the unfortunate result of miscommunication (or a simple lack of communication) between Latinists and Orientalists. MacDonald, writing in 1937 after a career of dealing with such miscommunication, responded to Muckle’s mistake (and Salman’s correction) by thumbing his nose at the intellectual snobbery of the Latinists: “Will the perfectly conclusive article by Fr. Salman, one of themselves, in one of their own journals, make any impression on them? May it even lead some of them to learn some Arabic!” (MacDonald 1937, 10). The Intentions was also translated into Hebrew in medieval Europe, but in quite a different context. Isak ibn Albaleg began the project around the end of the thirteenth century, but he did not finish it.20 He completed only the first two sections of the work (the Logic and the Metaphysics) and the beginning of the third (the Physics). The last section was completed by a certain Isak ibn Polgar. A number of Jewish philosophers read the Intentions, such as Hasdai Crescas, who took it as a textbook of Ibn Sînâ’s thought.21 It was commentated on many times, most notably by Moses Narbonmensis. Ghazzâlî’s presence among Jewish scholars was significant enough that he was later thought by certain Latins to be himself a Jew.22 Yet allow me to return briefly to Albaleg’s work, for the nature of it is to this day misunderstood, or at least under-emphasized. Scholars have been much too hasty in referring to it as a translation.23 Albaleg’s work was not a translation, but rather a reediting, directed towards his own aim of defending Aristotelian philosophy against Ghazzâlî.24 Unlikethe Latins, Albalag was fully aware of the relation of Ghazzâlî’s work

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to its sequel, the Incoherence. In his re-interpretation of the Intentions of the Philosophers, he seeks to follow the example of Ibn Rushd and combat Ghazzâlî’s attacks on philosophy.25 Accordingly, Albaleg did not entitle his work the “Intentions of the Philosophers” but rather the “Adjustment of the Philosophers” (Steinschneider 1893, 299). The “adjustment” is the misportrayal that Ghazzâlî gives in the Intentions in his attempt to invalidate their views.26 Thus, while Giles of Rome was attacking Ghazzâlî for embracing philosophy, Albalag was attacking him for betraying it. Ghazzâlî and the Tripartite Scheme Both Muslim and western historians have aptly described Ghazzâlî’s life as a journey. It was a physical journey, from Nîshâpûr to Baghdad to Damascus and Mecca and eventually back to Nîshâpûr. Yet it was also a spiritual journey, from philosophy to skepticism to mysticism. The Intentions was the starting point of this journey.27 Ghazzâlî himself contributed to this understanding: “I realized that to refute a system before understanding it and becoming acquainted with its depths is to act blindly. I therefore set out in all earnestness to acquire a knowledge of philosophy from books, by private study without the help of an instructor.”28 The Intentions was the fruit of this study. However, Muslims and westerners alike have maintained that the Intentions was thoroughly superseded by the Incoherence. Yet that left them with a problem. In the Intentions of the Philosophers, Ghazzâlî builds up a philosophical system. In the Incoherence, he tears this system apart. If that is the entirety of his project, then we are left with nothing but ruins. In other words, the first step in Ghazzâlî’s conversion was universal doubt: doubt of philosophy, of theology, of authority and of the material world. Because of this, Orientalists have understood Ghazzâlî as a thinker in the vein of Descartes, Hume or the Greek skeptics.29 Yet as with Descartes, doubt was a beginning for Ghazzâlî, not a conclusion. Ghazzâlî describes how he overcame doubt in the Munqidh min al-dalâl. After uncovering the fruitlessness of intellectual proofs for the existence of God, Ghazzâlî discovered the reality of the divine through spiritual experience. In his writings, Ghazzâlî does not promote skepticism or disbelief, but rather right belief. It seems logical, then, that the project which Ghazzâlî embarked on with the Intentions would not end with ruins, but rather with a new and impregnable fortress built on top of them. Scholars have located that fortress in two different places. In the Incoherence, Ghazzâlî gives reference to a third book that he will write to provide a alternative intellectual system to that of the philosophers: the (The Principles of Belief).30 In fact, Ghazzâlî wrote no book by that name. However, he did later write a chapter with that title as part of the in which he describes his spiritual system. Recognizing this, MacDonald suggested that we can understand these three works—the Intentions of the Philosophers, the Incoherence of the Philosophers and the Incoherence,

argues

—together.31 Michael Marmura, in his recent translation of the that the third element should actually be considered

(Moderation in Belief), despite its different title.32 For in the Iqtisâd, Ghazzâlî both refers directly to the Incoherence and explains his purpose as

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laying out the “the principles of belief.”33 Either way, scholars have maintained that this final work completes the tripartite scheme of Ghazzâlî’s intellectual career: construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. The Intentions and the Problem with the Tripartite Scheme This symmetrical interpretation of Ghazzâlî’s spiritual career is tempting. It provides a meaningful arc to Ghazzâlî’s career, assigning him a forethought that seems appropriate for a scholar and mystic of his stature. It also would provide a clear hermeneutic for our reading of the Intentions of the Philosophers, whereby we could see each word of the work as an ingenious and conscious paraphrase. By this reading Ghazzâlî is like a great trial lawyer, cunningly undermining his opponents, the philosophers, by gradually revealing his mastery of their own arguments. Unfortunately, it may not be that simple. Since his death until the present day, Ghazzâlî has been claimed by mystics, theologians and philosophers as one of their own. Traditionally he has been accounted a cardinal figure of orthodoxy, praised for his attack against heterodox philosophers in the Incoherence. Yet some thinkers, including late medieval Jewish philosophers,34 maintained that the Intentions actually contains Ghazzâlî’s genuine views. They assert that Ghazzâlî was only forced into a recantation of those views in the Incoherence through political pressure. While few today would find such a theory credible, certain scholars have begun to re-evaluate the traditional tripartite scheme of Ghazzâlî’s career.35 Discerning the true nature of the Intentions is of fundamental importance in that reevaluation. For if the Intentions is something more than an introduction to the Incoherence, then it becomes more difficult to maintain that Ghazzâlî ever fully abandoned philosophy. Our work contains three sections in the following order: the Logic (mantiqiyyât), the 36 Metaphysics (ilâhiyyât), and the Physics Yet while this order is consistent in the Arabic manuscript tradition, it is anything but that among the Latin manuscripts. Very often only portions of certain treatises appear; elsewhere treatises are conflated together or their order is reversed.37 This seems to reflect a fairly complicated redaction process and the possibility that the Intentions reached the Latin West before that redaction process was complete in the East. Beyond this, there are three additional problems, which suggest that we need to alter our assumptions about the Intentions of the Philosophers. First, why is there no allusion to the “ultimate” purpose of the treatise, that is, preparing to attack the philosophers, in the body of the text? With the exception of the preface and the conclusion, the Intentions reads as a systematic and faithful exposition of philosophy. The preface and conclusion read as somewhat awkward appendices. Could they be the work of a later redactor who sought to set the Intentions within the greater context of Ghazzâlî’s career? Proof for this perhaps lies with the Latin manuscripts, which by and large do not contain these appendices, most likely because the Intentions was translated before they were added. Secondly, as MacDonald noticed,38 Ghazzâlî seldom referred to the Intentions by

name. In fact, three books of his, the Munqidh min al-dalâl, the and the Mihakk al-nazar, all make mention of the Incoherence without mentioning the

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Intentions of the Philosophers. This is problematic, as Ghazzâlî was supposed to have completed the Intentions early in his career—certainly before the Incoherence. Finally, we find another peculiarity in the conclusion to the Intentions of the Philosophers. In the introduction to the Physics, Ghazzâlî states that there will be four subjects in the section: (1) bodies, form, matter, motion and place; (2) the simple body; (3) compounded and mixed bodies; and (4) the soul (nafs) of plants, animals and humans. Despite this, at the conclusion of the fourth discussion a fifth one begins,39 entitled “What pours forth onto souls from the Active Intellect.” This gap between what Ghazzâlî says he will do and what he actually does is clearly there in both the Arabic and Latin traditions.40 It was only with the 1506 publishing of the Logica et Philosophia in Venice that the incongruence was noticed and corrected.41 To what are we to attribute this incongruence? MacDonald believed that the change occurred with the consolidation of Ghazzâlî’s notes. He suggests that Ghazzâlî could not complete the process himself since he was in a disturbed and hurried state in his haste to quit Baghdad. “That would mean that he had not, in the confusion of his departure from Baghdad, finally revised the book and the book may have gone into circulation in an unrevised form” (MacDonald 1936, 12). This is a bit of conjecture on MacDonald’s part, but it seems clear at least that the fifth article was added at some later time. This prospect seems more likely still when we look at the article’s contents. In the fifth article, Ghazzâlî interrupts his adumbration of physical topics and seeks to make a logical connection between the Physics and the Metaphysics. There, Ghazzâlî laid out the cosmology of the philosophers, describing the procession of the Ten Intellects (and the nine spheres) from the First. The tenth Intellect is the Active Intellect, which is the link between the world and the outer Intellects. Here, the description of the Active Intellect is taken up again. Yet Ghazzâlî’s focus in the fifth article is no longer cosmological, but rather psychological and spiritual. By addressing “On what pours forth into souls from the Active Intellect,” he inquires into the divine action upon the human soul and describes the human involvement with the divine. In the fifth article, the universe is the macrocosm and the soul is a microcosm; they are intimately connected with one another. Through the intercession of the Active Intellect, the soul may be caught up in the dynamism of the universe. Thus it may be oriented away from the body and upwards towards immaterial reality and spiritual truths. And not only spiritual truths, but religious truths. MacDonald describes the fifth article as “a philosophical psychology, an attempt to bring the phenomena of the intellectual and religious life, as experienced in Islam, under the Neoplatonic-Aristotelian scheme of Intellects, Souls and Spheres” (Wensinck 1940, 13). Indeed, the fifth article seems to better reflect Ghazzâlî’s fully developed thought. It seems quite possible that he later returned and added this article to the Physics, without editing the list of contents in the beginning of the Physics. These three peculiarities—the appended preface and conclusion, the dearth of references to the Intentions in Ghazzâlî’s other works and the inconsistency regarding the fifth article of the Physics—should help us to understand the confusion of all those who received the work. For the Intentions is not a simple introduction to the Incoherence,42 but rather an independent adaptation of Ibn Sîna’s Dânesh Nâmeh. It was later edited, most likely in two stages: First, when Ghazzâlî was still working on the treatise, to add the fifth article of the Physics; second, when Ghazzâlî (or his later disciples) sought to

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portray him as an opponent of philosophy, to add the introduction and conclusion. The Intentions still bears salient traces of this redaction process. We can draw several conclusions hence about our work and its author. First, Ghazzâlî began the Intentions during his days of philosophical studies and teaching; he did not write it as part of a greater project to attack philosophers. Second, Ghazzâlî did not complete the Intentions (at least the fifth article of the Physics) until later in his career. Thus, it is unlikely that he intended it to be abrogated by the Incoherence, which he wrote early in his career. These two points lead to the final and most important conclusion: that we cannot understand Ghazzâlî simply as an opponent of philosophy. We must appreciate him also as an important transmitter of the classical philosophical tradition. Notes 1 I have used the English translations to refer to those two works repeatedly mentioned: The Intentions of the Philosophers (Maqâsid al-falâsifa) and the Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahâfut al-falâsifa). Elsewhere I have stayed with Arabic titles. 2 From commentary on Istanbul AH 1299, II:509. Reference taken from I.Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, Trans. A. and R.Hamori, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981, 159, n. 138. 3 See Watt 1953. 4 In his 1927 edition, Bouyges dated the completion of the Incoherence to 11 Muharram, 488 AH, or January 22, 1095, based on a note in a manuscript. MacDonald agreed with this estimation, based on his chronology of Ghazzâlî’s life. This led some to date the completion of the Intentions to a slightly earlier time, since it describes itself as an introduction to the Incoherence. Accordingly, C.Lohr dates the completion of the Intentions to 487/1094. There is, however, no direct evidence for such a dating. See MacDonald 1936, 10 and C.Lohr 1965, 226. 5 Ghazzâlî tells us that he left Baghdad in 488/1095, having completed two years individual philosophical studies. For a general overview of his life in Ghazzâlî’s own words, see Watt 1953. For a more critical and topical look at Ghazzâlî see Lazarus Yafeh 1975. 6 The Dânesh nâmeh is Ibn Sînâ’s comprehensive work on Aristotelian philosophy, although it is not a direct translation of any Hellenistic work. The correspondance of this work and the Intentions is striking, including with the enigmatic fifth article of the Physics of the Intentions (see below). See Ibn Sînâ, Dânesh nâmeh, ed. Ahmed Khorâsânî, Tehran 1315/1937. See also Avicenne, Le Livre de science, trans. Mohammad Achena and Henri Massé, Paris 1955 and J.Janssens, “Le Dânesh nâmeh d’Ibn Sînâ: un texte à revoir?” Bulletin de philosophic médiévale, 28 (1986), 163–177. 7 Quoted from the translation of the prologue of the Intentions in MacDonald 1936, 11. 8 Ibn Rushd’s quotation of Ghazzâlî was in fact the route by which the Tahâfut al-falâsifa reached medieval Europe. For the textual tradition of the Tahâfut al-falâsifa, see Steinschneider 1893, 326–327. 9 Gundissalinus was the same scholar who translated Ibn Sînâ’s De Anima, and many another works (Steinschneider 1893, 299). He seems to have worked usually with an Arabic speaking Jewish scholar, Avendauth, or others that could translate the Arabic into Castilian. He would then translate the Castilian into Latin. See C.Lohr 1965, 228–9. 10 According to C.Lohr, three manuscripts contain both of their names, while one manuscript and the Venice printed edition contain only the name of Dominicus (p. 229). Algazel is the Latinized form of Al-Ghazzâlî. 11 See Lohr 1965, 229.

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12 The influences of it are evident in the works of Roger Bacon, Ramon Lull, Raymond Martin, Ockham, and others. See Lohr 1965, 231. 13 The Tahâfut was not translated into Latin until the fifteenth century and then only in conjunction with the Tahâfut al-tahâfut of Ibn Rushd, who quoted the former in its entirety. See C.Lohr 1969 and Wilms 1966, 20. 14 Among others, Alexander Neckam, Willhelm von Auvergne, Bartholomeus Anglicus, Dietrich von Freiburg, Berthold von Mosburg and M.Grabmann all dealt with al-Ghazzâlî as a philosopher. Giles of Romes includes him in the following list of heretical philosophers: Aristotelis, Averrois, Avicennae, Algazelis, Alkindi and Rabbi Moysis. See Wilms 1966, 20. 15 For Martin, See A.Bertheir, “Un maître orientaliste du xiiie siècle: Raymond Martin O.P.,” Archivum Fratrum Paedicatorum, 6 (1936), 267–311. Most important is his Pugio fidei. 16 See for example the comparisons that D.Salman makes between Bacon’s use of Ghazzâlî earlier in Quaestiones supra undecimum Primae Philosophiae Aristotelis and later in his Communia naturalium. See Salman 1935–36, 115, 111. 17 That Giles of Rome was attacking the Intentions was convincingly proven by M.Bouyges, who showed how the order of refutations in the Errores philosophorum matches the order of propositions in the Intentions of the Philosophers. See Bouyges 1921, 404–406. 18 See Lohr 1965, 231. 19 Paris 1842, See p. 220. 20 See Steinschneider 1893, 299. 21 See I.Husik, A History of Medieaval Jewish Philosophy. Philadelphia 1946, 152ff. 22 See Lohr 1965, 231. 23 See for example Lohr 1965, 228. For a longer look at the nature of Albaleg’s version, see Auerbach 1906. 24 “An manchen Stellen, je nach der Wichtigkeit des Gegenstandes, breiten sich die Noten aus oder losen sich vom Text ab, so dass sie selbstandige Excurse werden.” (Steinschneider 1893, 302). 25 “Ibn Roschd hat auf diese Angriffe geantwortet, und die Stellen der Irrtümer und Sophismen hervorgehoben; Alb. will an einigen Stellen ein Gleiches thun [sic].” Ibid. 26 Albalag accuses Ghazzâlî of misrepresenting philosophers, for “in Wahrheit habe er nicht ihre Ansichten, sondern die seinigen gegeben” (Steinschneider 1893, 303). 27 As Ghazzâlî would later explain in the Tahâfut, he admired both (and only) al-Fârâbî and Ibn Sînâ for their correct rendering of classical philosophical arguments, even when he considered such arguments mistaken. With this reflection we can better appreciate the thread of this tradition, which began with Aristotle, continued with Ibn Sînâ and then stretched to Albalag, Roger Bacon and others, with many twists and knots along the way. 28 From the Munqidh min al-dalâl in Watt 1953, 29–30. 29 See for example, D.B.MacDonald 1899, 103. 30 p. 21 of the Cairo 1303 edition, as referenced by MacDonald. 31 MacDonald 1899, 98. 32 M.Marmura, Introduction to Ghazzâlî, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Provo, Utah 1997, xxiii. 33 Marmura’s argument is not overwhelmingly convincing. In fact, both the Iqtisâd and the are engaged in the same task of building up a theological system (specifically, an system). 34 Among them is Moshe Narboni. See M.Narboni, Commentary on the Guide to the Perplexed, ed. M.Hayoun, Tübingen 1986. See L.E.Goodman’s review of the work in the Jewish Quarterly Review 81(1990), 161–5. 35 See for example, the article on “Gazzâlî” by G.Böwering to be published in Encyclopaedia Iranica.

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36 In placing the Metaphysics before the Physics, Ghazzâlî is conspicuously diverging from the vast majority of philosophical treatises, where the Physics is a logical antecedent to the Metaphysics. The Physics is usually a space to establish those theses that will be useful in the Metaphysics, the ultimate focus of the work. Ghazzâlî agrees with the focus on metaphysics, calling it the object (maqsid) of science. Yet, he sees no need to postpone its treatment, suggesting that the philosophers only did so because of its “abstruseness” (MacDonald 1936, 12). MacDonald theorizes that Ghazzâlî approached the work as he learned the topics, for a theologian “would naturally look first into theology and, then, hark back for explanations to physics” (Ibid.). A simple look at the Dânesh Nâmeh, however, would avert the need for such speculation. Ghazzâlî is simply following the method of Ibn Sînâ, as he does throughout the work, as the Dânesh nâmeh proceeds in the same unusual order, with the addition of a section on mathematics at the end. 37 Lohr provides a listing of all Latin manuscripts of the Intentions of the Philosophers. He lists the sections that are included in each one and the order in which they are included. See Lohr 1965, 232–236. 38 MacDonald, Isis 25, 14. 39 Maqâsid al-falâsifa, ed. S.Dunya, Cairo 1961, 371. 40 See MacDonald 1936, 12. 41 Logica et Philosophia (Venedig 1506), Introduction by C.Lohr, Frankfurt 1969. 42 E.Gräf, in a short and hardly noticed book review (Gräf 1960), was one of the few to detect an inconsistency with the traditional understanding of the Intentions. He brings out as evidence: one, the contrast between the prologue/ conclusion and the body of the text; two, that the introduction to the Incoherence is more properly found in Ghazzâlî’s three, that Ghazzâlî mentions other works in his autobiographical Munqidh min al-dalâl, such as the same yet he does not mention the Intentions; four (and most interesting), that Ibn Rushd rightly states in his Tahâfut al-tahâfut that Ghazzâlî quoted Ibn Sîna correctly in the Intentions but incorrectly in the Incoherence. Gräf remarks, “Wäre ein solcher Lapsus denkbar, wenn die beiden Werke so eng zusammengehorten, wie Einleitung und Schluß der Maqâsid vorgeben?” (163). Gräf suggests that the Intentions was actually completed earlier than traditionally assumed, during Ghazzâlî’s philosophical studies. Thanks to Dr. Frank Griffell for pointing out this reference.

Appendix: Manuscripts, Editions and Translations of the Maqâsid alfalâsifa Manuscripts: Brockelmann, C. Geschichte der arabischen Literature. 2nd edition. Vol. I. Leiden 1943, 535–546.

In Arabic: ed. S.Dunya. Cairo 1961. ed. Mouhyi al-Dîn Sabrî al-Kourdî. Cairo 1331/1913 and again 1936 Beer, Ghazzâlî. Al-Gazzâlî’s Makâsid al-Falâsifat, I-Teil—die Logik. Leiden 1888.

The Dunya addition is clearer than Kourdî’s. However, the text of the two is virtually identical, and neither is a critical edition. Beer edited and translated the Logic for his dissertation. In Latin: Lohr, C. “Logica Algazelis Introduction and Critical Text.” Traditio. XXI (1965), 239–288.

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Algazel’s Metaphysics, ed. Muckle, J. Toronto 1933. Logica et Philosophia (Venedig 1506). Introduction by C.Lohr. Frankfurt 1969.

Lohr’s is a careful critical edition which covers the Logic, the one section that Muckle did not. Despite the weaknesses of the Muckle edition discussed above, it is a useful work. The Latin is remarkably close to the Arabic, which pays tribute to Muckle’s choice and use of manuscripts. The Logica et Philosophia is simply a reprinting of the 1506 edition of Peter Liechtenstein. Despite the name, it also includes the Physics. It differs in some important respects from Muckle’s critical edition, e.g. in the beginning of the Physics it correctly states that five articles will be presented, whereas the main manuscript tradition states only four. Logica et Philosophia Algazelis Arabis. Olms 1997.

In Hebrew: Auerbach, H. Albalag und seine Übersetzung des Maqâsid, I Teil. Breslau 1906. The Logical Part of al-Ghazzâlî’s Maqâsid al-falâsifa. ed. Chertoff, Gershan. Columbia University Thesis 1952.

In German: Beer, G. Al-Gazzâlî’s Makâsid al-Falâsifat, I-Teil—die Logik. Leiden 1888.

In Spanish: Alonso, M. Algazel: Maqâsid al-Falâsifa: o Intenciones de los filósofos. Barcelona 1963.

References Works on the Intentions of the Philosophers: Auerbach, H. 1906. Albalag und seine Übersetzung des Maqâsid, I Teil. Breslau: Fleischmann. Bouyges, M. 1921. “Notes sur les philosophes arabes connus des latins au moyen âge.” Mélanges de la Faculté Orientale, Université St. Joseph Beirut, 7, pp. 397–406. Graf, E. 1960. Review of M.Türker, Üç Tehâfüt bakîmîndan felsefe ve din münasebeti. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländeschen Gesellschaft, 110, pp. 161–163. Lohr, Charles H. 1965. “Logica Algazelis Introduction and Critical Text.” Traditio, 21, pp. 223– 238. Lohr, Charles H. 1969. Introduction to Al-Ghazzâlî. Logica et Philosophia (Venedig 1506). Frankfurt: Minerva. MacDonald, D.B. 1936. “The Meanings of the Philosophers by al-Ghazzâlî.” Isis, 25, pp. 9–15. MacDonald, D.B. 1937. “The Meanings of the Philosophers by al-Ghazzâlî.” Isis, 27, pp. 9–10. Munk, S. 1857. Mélanges de philosophic juive et arabe, pp. 369–372. Paris: Franck. Ritter, H. 1829–1853. Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. 8, pp. 59ff. Hamburg: Schade. Salman, D. 1935–36. “Algazel et les latins.” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen âge, 10, pp. 103–127. Steinschneider, M. 1893. Die hebräischen Übersetzung des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher, pp. 296–326. Berlin: Bibliographischen Bureaus.

Selected Works on Ghazzâlî: Abu-Sway, M. 1996. “Ghazâlî’s spiritual crisis reconsidered.” Al-Shajarah, 1 i–ii, pp. 77–94.

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Bouyges, M. 1959. Essai de chronologic des Oeuvres de al-Ghazâlî. Edited by M.Allard. Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique. Finnegan, J. 1967–. “Algazel.” In The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1, pp. 313–314. New York: McGraw-Hill. Böwering, Gerhard. Forthcoming. “Gazzâlî.” To be published in Encyclopaedia Iranica. Frank, Richard. 1992. Creation and the Cosmic System: Al-Ghazâlî and Avicenna. Heidelberg: Winter. Hourani, G. 1959. “The chronology of Ghazâlî’s writings.” journal of the American Oriental Society, 79, pp. 225–233. later updated by: ——. 1984. “A Revised Chronology of Ghazâlî’s Writings.” journal of the American Oriental Society, 104, 289–302. Jabre, Farid. 1970. Essai sur le lexique de Ghazâlî. Beirut: Université Libanaise. Lazarus Yafeh, H. 1975. Studies in Al-Ghazzali. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. Macdonald, D.B. 1899. “The life of al-Ghazzâlî, with especial reference to his religious experiences and opinions.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 20, pp. 71–132. Watt, W.M. 1953. The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazâlî. London: G.Allen and Unwin. ——. 1954-Present. “al-Ghazâlî.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd edition, 2, pp. 1038–1041, Leiden: E.J.Brill. Wensinck, A.J. 1940. La Pensée de Ghazzâlî. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve.

CHAPTER THREE The Relationship between Averroes and alGhazālī As it presents itself in Averroes’ Early Writings, especially in his Commentary on al-Ghazālī’s Frank Griffel Averroes’ attitude towards al-Ghazālī has always been a central issue for scholars studying the Arabic tradition of this philosopher. Up until quite recently the common opinion on this subject held that Averroes was to a considerable degree hostile towards al-Ghazālī and his works. The origins of this view lie in Averroes’ Tahāfut al-tahāfut which was directed against al-Ghazālī’s Tahāfut al-falāsifa. Marcus Joseph Müller’s discovery of further works containing a number of critical comments directed against alGhazālī in 1859, i.e. the al-maqāl and al-Kashf manāhij supported this view. This opinion was further strengthened by an interpretation of the incompatibility of in Islam which saw in al-Ghazālī a vigorous philosophy and religious law champion of the latter and a destroyer of philosophy. As early as 1844 Salomon Munk wrote that al-Ghazālī ‘struck a blow against philosophy after which it never recovered in the Orient.’1 In his prominent book on Averroes and his European followers Ernest Renan continued this approach in 1852 and called al-Ghazālī ‘an enemy of philosophy’ (Renan 1852, 133, 135f). Renan drew the dark picture of a ‘war’ against philosophy which was waged in all countries of the Islamic world in the 12th century. He considered Averroes and the Andalusian philosophers of his century in the crosshair of a persecution by the Almohads, which he believed was a theological movement, inspired directly by alGhazālī’s attacks on philosophy (Ibid., 22, 24). Although this view of the relationship between al-Ghazālī and Averroes was perpetuated for a considerably long period—far into the 20th century—we now know that nearly all the details contributing to this view are not true. Averroes was not persecuted by the Almohads, he was in fact a high ranking figure in this political and religious movement and had great influence on the formation of Almohad politics and ideology. What Renan interpreted as the persecution of Averroes in the year 592/1195 was a mere falling into disgrace, which was in fact to some extent due to anti-philosophical tensions within the circles of religious scholars in al-Andalus. Al-Ghazālī did inspire the

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movement of the Almohads, but his attitude towards philosophy was far from being hostile. Al-Ghazālī should more accurately be called a champion of the philosophical method. Although he rejected a number of philosophical propositions he never rejected philosophy as a whole. His own teachings are deeply influenced by the ontology of Avicenna (Frank 1992, 52–62), and al-Ghazālī unreservedly employed philosophical concepts where it was appropriate.2 Ibn Tūmart, the founder of the Almohad movement was inspired by this attitude towards philosophy, which he probably got to know in the al-Harrāsī (Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī 400), a successor of seminar of al-Ghazālī at the Nizāmīya-school in Bagdad and a colleague of al-Ghazālī from his student days in Nishapur. The writings of Ibn Tūmart reveal a considerable influence from the side of philosophical literature especially from Avicenna (Ibn Tūmart, Le Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert 229–242), and the Almohad movement at least until the year 592/1195 should not be regarded as anti-philosophical but as the exact opposite. This reappraisal of the fundamental facts underlying the relationship between Averroes and al-Ghazālī has not yet been entirely acknowledged with all its consequences. A new chapter in the study of this relationship was opened by the late Jamāl al-din who,in the mid-eighties, wrote two articles on the formation of Averroes’ philosophical approach in which he emphasised the predominant role alGhazālī played very early on in Averroes’ attitude towards the study of philosophy ( 1987 and 1986). distinguished two main stages in Averroes’ relationship to al-Ghazālī. In the early stage Averroes starts to write on philosophy and here he considers himself more or less a follower in al-Ghazālī’s footprints, since both sought to establish accurate scientific methods in the religious sciences. The second stage was according to the ‘Ghazalian period’ (al-fatra al-ghazāliyya) in Averroes’ writings, and here he tried to correct al-Ghazālī’s views on the permissibility of

i.e. the harmonisation of reason and revelation by allegorical al-

interpretation. This Ghazalian period is marked by the three works

all written around 575/1179. It is striking that in both maqāl and al-Kashf periods Averroes agreed with al-Ghazālī in all of the major and minor issues of religious law and philosophy save one. The point where Averroes disagrees with al-Ghazālī and where he tries to correct his theory of was the ability of philosophy to be an apodictical science which comes to demonstrative conclusion. This dispute between the two sages is held in the Tahāfut al-tahāfut which is the cornerstone in this Ghazalian period and whose outcome determines the other two books. In the following paper I will and I will try to restrict myself to the first of the two periods, distinguished by examine, what Averroes’ attitude towards al-Ghazālī in the years between 552/1157 and 565/1169 was, soon after Averroes started to write on philosophy and religious law. The main source for this study is the paraphrase or epitome by Averroes of alGhazālī’s main work on the principles of Islamic jurisprudence, which al-Ghazālī wrote at the end of his life around 504/1110.

Averroes’

paraphrase

has

the

title

arūrī

fī

al-fiqh, ‘The Necessary Knowledge in the Field of the Fundaments of u Jurisprudence’ and its declared aim is to sum up what al-Ghazālī wrote in his quite

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voluminous work. The text by Averroes was not discovered until 1986 in the library of the Escurial by a Moroccan scholar. It was brought to the attention of Jamāl al-dīn whose edition of the text was published posthumously in 1994. at the very beginning of his Averroes wrote his epitome to al-Ghazālī’s career. He informs us via one of his pupils that he was introduced to the court of Abū Yūsuf by Ibn

(al-Marrākushī,

akhbār al-Maghrib

314f). This event may have occurred around 550/1155, when Abū was still governor of Sevilla and Averroes was 30 years old. Via the same source we are informed that soon after his introduction at the court, Abū

asked Averroes to write

commentaries or short explanations to the works of Aristotle. Abū himself had difficulty in reading these texts. But since he wanted to spread their wisdom amongst the scholars of al-Andalus, he asked Averroes ‘to make the procedure in these texts accessible for the people’ (Ibid., 315.12f). This gave rise to the books we know as on Aristotle’s Averroes’ short and middle commentaries works. If one takes a closer look at these books it is not only Aristotle on whom Averroes is commentating. The very first book in the cycle, and probably the very first book Averroes wrote anyhow, is the synopsis or short commentary on the Organon which has cautiously been dated to 552/1157, two years after Averroes first met Abū Yūsuf ( 1986, 49–59). This summary of the logical tools in philosophy is actually not a commentary on any of Aristotle’s works but it has the logical works of al-Fārābī as its basis.3 At the beginning of his career, Averroes did not focus on Aristotle as the only author of pure philosophy. His interest lay rather in the method of philosophy as an apodictical science. The aim of the young Averroes and his mentor Abū Yūsuf was to spread the demonstrative method amongst the scholars of al-Andalus. Averroes’ short commentaries were part of a whole program aimed at rationalising the sciences in al-Andalus (Urvoy 1991, 41–48). We know from the book ‘The Introduction Into the Art a pupil of Averroes, that al-Fārābī’s works on logic were of Logic’ by Ibn regarded as the most accurate introduction into logic combined with an easy access into Madkhal ilā 14f). In his very early writings the matter (Ibn Averroes did not yet attempt to spread Aristotelism but he aimed at a general improvement of the sciences by the spread of the demonstrative method of philosophy. This project embraced the religious sciences as well, and in this task al-Ghazālī was Averroes’ predecessor. Al-Ghazālī too, had endeavoured to establish the use of a more accurate and logical method in the religious sciences. The logic al-Ghazālī chose was the and in the one developed by Avicenna mainly in his writings on logic in Danishnāmah-i Al-Ghazālī developed several techniques to conceal the origin of his logical method. He thought this was necessary since the religious scholars of his period were quite reluctant to accept anything which bore the label of being philosophical. Therefore al-Ghazālī changed the terminology of the Avicennean logic, and employed words instead which had been used in the religious sciences for centuries,

The relationship between averroes and al-ghazali

45

but which he gave a new and very philosophical meaning. Scholars familiar with the writes in his works of the philosophers saw through this veil and Ibn introduction to the art of logic that although al-Ghazālī’s books on logic are quite well written and clear, they lack some accuracy, because of the often ambiguous terminology he uses (Ibidem, 13). The restraint and adaptability employed by al-Ghazālī to achieve his aim of rationalising the religious sciences was regarded as a weakness amongst the philosophers of al-Andalus. The fact that al-Ghazālī somehow fell short in his attempt to spread a more rational approach in the sciences was noted be the young Averroes as well. In the first paraphrase Averroes wrote on one of Aristotle’s works, the epitome on Physics, Averroes makes clear to what extent his scientific program coincides with that of al-Ghazālī. In the introduction to this work Averroes explains his own method of paraphrasing all apodictical passages in the work of Aristotle while leaving out all passages which cover non-apodictical or dialectical arguments. This technique should serve to safeguard the acceptance of Aristotle’s teaching, since most people do not understand what the inner core of Aristotle’s wisdom is and reject him out of prejudice. After this methodological explanation Averroes pre-empts the possible accusation that such a book had already been written in al-Ghazālī’s al-falāsifa and that Averroes’ book would therefore be superfluous. Averroes acknowledges that al-Ghazālī wrote a book similar to the one he was writing. He explains that al-Ghazālī had aimed at convincing his contemporaries that they could only benefit once they adopted the teachings of Aristotle. But this aim—according to Averroes—was never achieved by al-Ghazālī (Averreos, fī l-falsafa 7f). In the same year 552/1157, in which Averroes presumably wrote his summary of the logical works of al-Fārābī, he also completed the paraphrase of al-Ghazālī’s main work 146). The works of al-Ghazālī on the principles of jurisprudence (Averroes, did not need an explanatory introduction as Aristotle’s did. Al-Ghazālī was regarded as the most important author of religious texts at that time, and at least his less voluminous works were well known. The spread of his teachings in al-Andalus is most prominently connected with Abū Bakr ibn (d. 543/1148) who met al-Ghazālī in Damascus in 488/1095 and who later became one of his pupils in Bagdad. After he returned to alAndalus, Ibn al-‘Arabī had to fight against a rigorous opposition amongst the Māliki scholars. The conservative Māliki school in the West had been somehow out of touch with theological developments in the East and its members condemned al-Ghazālī’s writings for their opposition to a key issue in Mālikī jurisprudence, namely the repetition of previous legal reasoning (taqlīd) and for al-Ghazālī’s Sufi tendencies, a phenomenon then unfamiliar to the West. Although Abū Bakr ibn was a Mālikī scholar himself, he understood the novelty of al-Ghazālī’s thinking and his methods in the and became fascinated by it. He wrote a number of science of theology books in which he re-phrased al-Ghazālī’s teaching in order to make it more accessible to his colleagues in the Mālikī school. One of his books, the may be regarded as a simplified version of al-Ghazālī‘s Tahāfut al-falāsifa. Abū Bakr ibn

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lively interest in philosophy was noted in the remarkable monography on ( 1974; 1:89–275). him written by After the Almohads came to power in al-Andalus in 540/1145 they favoured alGhazālī’s new approach and supported the younger generation of religious scholars who were students of Abū Bakr ibn By now, Abū Bakr was 70 years old and for reasons we can only speculate upon fell into disgrace. Abū Bakr ibn was such an important figure at that time that he cannot be disregarded in the formation of the young Averroes. All the numerous biographies on the life of Averroes mention only one single teacher of philosophy, Abū Takmila li-kitāb

ibn Hārūn al-Turjālī (Ibn

Kitāb al-

1:269). This Ibn Hārūn al-Turjālī was a pupil of Abū Bakr ibn

in Sevilla (Ibn Abī 2:75f). This however, is not the only connection to Abū Bakr: In one of his writings Averroes mentions a colleague of his who reportedly had a similar interest in philosophy and who was a student of Abū (Averroes, al-athār 116f). Averroes may have Bakr ibn made the personal acquaintance of the aged Abū Bakr ibn before the latter left Sevilla in 542/1147 when Averroes was 21 years old. All of this shows that the young Averroes belonged to the new generation of religious scholars who had a vivid interest in the philosophical methods and the teachings of the philosophers. This new brand of religious scholars all emerged from the critical examination of philosophy by the kalām, which began with al-Juwaynī at the in Nishapur and followed al-Ghazālī to Bagdad. Several other names of this new brand of religious scholars emerging from the same tradition as Averroes include al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153), Ibn Ghaylān al-Balkhī (d. after .580/1184), Fakhraddīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209) al-Turjālī and Abū and in fact Ibn Tūmart (d. 524/1130). Averroes was—via Abū Bakr ibn —a pupil of al-Ghazālī in the third generation. Since Ibn Tūmart and the Almohad movement sprang from the same tradition, it is not at all astonishing that Averroes associated himself with the Almohads once they came to power in al-Andalus. His successful career as a judge in Cordoba and Sevilla, and after 578/1182 as the principal judge of al-Andalus with his seat in Cordoba, was not only a result of the tradition of his family holding these offices, but was also due to the fact that he was an indirect pupil of Abū Bakr ibn and al-Ghazālī and hence had a thorough knowledge of both philosophy and religious law. Averroes came from an archetypal Almohad background. He could be regarded as the personification of what the Almohads had aimed for: the tradition of Mālikī scholarship, which Averroes had inherited from his family, fused with an expertise in the latest developments of Muslim theology. When Averroes wrote his paraphrase of al-Ghazālī’s his career as a judge and political adviser still lay ahead of him. In 552/1157 Averroes was a young and promising scholar of 31 years of age who was well aware of the shortcomings within traditional Mālikī scholarship. He chose al-Ghazālī’s work as a foundation for his introduction into the principles of jurisprudence because al-Ghazālī’s situation at the beginning of the 6th/12th century resembled his own. When al-Ghazālī wrote his book

The relationship between averroes and al-ghazali

47

the Sunni caliphate and the Seljuq sultanate in the East were threatened by the propaganda of the which shortly later developed into a number of very successful local uprisings. The intellectual tool of propaganda was a radical scepticism that cast doubts on the results in all of the sciences (van Ess 1968). According true knowledge could only come from the prophetic insight of the Imām. Al-Ghazālī realised that the religious sciences could only survive the seceptic attacks of propaganda, if they adopted a proper method that lead to conclusions which were as close to indubitability as possible. The scepticists— or rather the Sunni Muslims who were tempted by their teachings—should be convinced by the force of reason that Sunni theology was not a science for which they could have scant respect. It was for this reason that the beginning of al-Ghazālī’s main work on the to the

principles of jurisprudence covers a long explanation of logic (al-Ghazālī, min 1:10–55). The opposition Averroes faced two generations later was not the radical scepticism of failed to have an impact on al-Andalus and by the time the Averroes wrote his paraphrase it had past its zenith in any event. Averroes was confronted with a different sort of scepticism in reasoning which had been well established in Andalusian Muslim society from its very beginning. Traditional Mālikism has always been extremely reluctant to accept any form of rational approach. The main line of argument in Māliki scholarship was to return to the judgements of the founding fathers of that school and to apply their decisions. The early Māliki scholars were opponents of the translation movement from Greek into Arabic which led to the beginning of Muslim philosophy in the 2nd/8th century (Gutas 1998, 156f). The method of Māliki jurisprudence was perpetuated by the majority of Māliki scholars in their hostile attitude towards the Greek sciences up until the days of Averroes. But there was a second reason which prompted Averroes and his mentor Abū Yūsuf to apply a more rationalistic method in all branches of scientific research. AlGhazālī’s attack against philosophy implied that philosophy was not a demonstrative science but one that was ruled by dialectic arguments whose premises rely on common acceptance (al-Ghazālī, Tahāfut al-falāsifa 73–85). His critique places philosophy on the same level as revelation, which relies on common acceptance as well. In this point Averroes did not agree. He was convinced that there is a science, which is superior to and which can in fact illuminate the meaning behind all of what is written in the the verses in the sacred text. Al-Ghazālī’s attempt to lower the status of the demonstrative sciences to mere dialectical ones could only be answered by employing a rigorously demonstrative method. Thus, as far as jurisprudence is concerned the attempts of both alGhazālī and Averroes to rationalise converge even though they had rather different motives. This different background of the two sages is the main cause of their disagreement in matters of Muslim jurisprudence. Al-Ghazālī and Averroes agreed that well founded knowledge in jurisprudence relies upon the application of set rules (qawānīn) and arrangements (Averroes, 35). But Averroes disagreed with his predecessor on how these rules should be presented. He dismissed al-Ghazālī’s attempt to

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disregard the terminology of philosophy and to create a new language of logic based on the words used in the religious sciences. In his paraphrase Averroes leaves out the long methodological introduction at the beginning of al-Ghazālī’s book, since he himself wrote an introduction into the logic of al-Fārābī in the same year. In cases where alGhazālī employed his new terminology, Averroes used the original philosophical term and in this way re-philosophied al-Ghazālī’s language, for example by re-employing ‘definition’ whereal-Ghazālī used the word which has the original meaning of ‘core’ or ‘thruth of a matter’ but was sometimes used by al-Ghazālī as meaning ‘definition’. Al-Ghazālī’s juridical work contains a strong opposition to some kinds of taqlīd, such as the belief that one should follow in the footprints of former generations. Al-Ghazālī taught that only lay-men and minor jurists should practice taqlīd, a qualified jurist should be capable of casting his own judgement on the basis of independent reasoning (alGhazālī, 2:387–392). In his paraphrase, Averroes takes up this line of argument and stresses that every scholar should have the ambition to achieve the qualified stage of a mujtahid. But since not everybody is blessed with the time and the means to achieve this education there should be three groups of Muslims. First the ordinary Muslims, who are excluded from any sort of judgements in religious matters and who should form their religious convictions by adopting those of the more superior and learned people. The second group are the inferior jurists whose task it is to spread the decisions and the teachings of the third group, the mujtahidūn (Averroes, 137f., 143f). Here we have an early version of the three way division in the people of rhetoric, the people of dialectic, and the people of demonstration which will be so important in Averroes later works and which is clearly drawn from the writings of alGhazālī (Frank 1991/92, 215–218). The sources of law are again a case in which there is total agreement between Averroes and al-Ghazālī. Both were quite reluctant to accept the consensus of the doctors of law as an infallible source of law. Both Averroes and al-Ghazālī argued that there is neither a single individual nor a group of people which is save from error. If is accepted by both Averroes and al-Ghazālī as a source of law then only because the Muslim revelation states that the community of Muslims will not by united in an error 1:173; Averroes, 91). (al-Ghazālī, Ironically, this agreement is the source of a misunderstanding between al-Ghazālī and Averroes which puzzled many readers of the al-maqāl (cf. Bello 1989, 43f). In this later work Averroes writes that al-Ghazālī held the opinion that nobody should be of the Muslim community charged with unbelief if he disagreed with the (Averroes, al-maqāl 16f). Without getting into the details of this rather tricky problem it may be said that Averroes was ill-informed in this matter. His false conviction that al-Ghazālī did not allow a judgement of unbelief if someone opposes the consensus, can be traced down to one of Averroes’ early writings, namely to his short commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. This book was written in the same period as the paraphrase of alGhazālī’s

Here again Averroes writes that al-Ghazālī held the opinion that

any Muslim, who left the

was not an unbeliever (Averroes, Three Short

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49

Commentaries 76, 195). This misjudgement may be the consequence of al-Ghazālī’s which is in fact quite ambiguous. presentation in his The last point to be examined is the disagreement between al-Ghazālī and the young Averroes over the application of Again this a topic which will gain much importance in the later writings of Averroes. Here in his paraphrase to al-Ghazālī’s juridical work, his opposition to al-Ghazālī is carefully concealed. On careful reading of both works, however, quite significant differences between al-Ghazālī and Averroes al-tafriqa, written only shortly before the become evident. In his al-Ghazālī puts forward a maxim which allows a less literal reading of the Muslim revelation. This maxim is called the ‘rule of interpretation’ (qānūn ). In simple terms this rule allows a deviation from the wording of the revelation only in cases where an argument founded on reason contradicts the wording of revelation (al-Ghazālī, al-tafriqa 187–194). In his here is put into the single sentence:

al-Ghazālī reiterates this rule which

‘One can only deviate, if there is proof.’ ‘lā yatruk illā bi-dalīl.’ (Ibidem 1:92) In his paraphrase of this book, Averroes totally misrepresents this element in al-Ghazālī’s teachings. He does not raise his opposition openly but instead, through his misrepresentation of al-Ghazālī’s message, leaves his readers with the opinion that his summary represents al-Ghazālī’s rule. The way in which the question of the applicability of is raised is quite minor in either book by al-Ghazālī or Averroes. But since this minor point sheds some light on a fundamental disagreement between the two it shall be examined here. Al-Ghazālī argued against some Muslims who claimed that they cannot fulfil the duty to pray five times a day because they were often dirty and therefore not in the proper state to fulfil this duties. These rather lazy people argued that a Muslim is not obliged to fulfil his religious duty as long as he is not in a state to fulfil it. Consequently, if someone never cleans his body, he would never be under the obligation of performing the prayer (al-Ghazālī, 1:95). Al-Ghazālī dismissed this rather weak where it says: argument by referring to a verse of the ‘What has brought you into hell? They will reply: “We did not perform the prayer (…).”’ ( 74.42f) This group of people then argues that the words ‘we did not perform the prayer’ in the revelation are not to be understood literally, but these words mean: ‘we were unbelievers’. The quintessence of this argument is that only the unbelievers will go to hell and this should be understood and read unanimously in all of the verses of the Al-Ghazālī dismisses this line of thinking because, as he puts it, there is not the passage. God slightest trace of a rational argument which might contradict this condemns to hellfire whomever he wants, and there can be no rational proof in favor of an indemnity for any group of Muslims.

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In contrast, Averroes in his paraphrase accepts the interpretation of this group of Muslims who are in opposition to al-Ghazālī. Averroes holds that the proposed is correct. And he turns al-Ghazālī’s interpretation of the quoted verse in the objection into its opposite when he writes: ‘In these or similar cases he (scil. al-Ghazālī) did not turn down any attempt to change the understanding of the wording of the by means of reason. He employed as it is common (even) in the case of a wording which is not improbable.’ (Averroes, 55) This can only mean that the young Averroes did not accept the ‘rule of interpretation’ as verses were it was put down by al-Ghazālī. For the young Averroes all of the open to allegorical interpretation. For him there was no condition that the passage in the must be contradicted by an argument based on reason. If reason just provided a better explanation than the wording of the then the interpretation proposed by reason should be accepted. Al-Ghazālī was much more strict in this matter. In his could only be altered if a number teachings, the understanding of any word in the of conditions were fulfilled. The most common condition was that a passage in the was contradicted by another, more important passage (al-Ghazālī, fā 1:392). Averroes paraphrases this rule much more liberally, when he says that one has to stick to the wording of the verse unless reason suggests a different understanding 107). In only one case does Averroes demand an argument (Averroes, founded on reason in order to justify a proposed interpretation: that is, if a verse in the revelation is to be read metaphorically and this unterstanding is inferior to the wording of According to the rules as set out by al-Ghazālī such an interpretation would the be far-fetched and hence not allowed. In conclusion it may be said that al-Ghazālī’s book on the principles of jurisprudence fitted into the program of rationalising the sciences which was pursued by Averroes and by his mentor Abū Yūsuf, because amongst all jurists al-Ghazālī’s approach to jurisprudence was the most rational at that time. To propagate the views of al-Ghazālī was one of the main aims of Almohadism as a whole, and there are no significant discrepancies between the young Almohad scholar Averroes and the great scholar from Khorasan who gave the inspiration for the Almohad movement. The issues where there was disagreement between al-Ghazālī and Averroes were not openly adressed by Averroes and by no means did he criticise al-Ghazālī or accuse him of any misdemeanour. The existing disagreement between al-Ghazālī and Averroes can be traced down to their contrasting assessment of the relationship between revelation and reason. This point is fundamental in the thinking ot both scholars, but again Averroes did not address this directly. This difference in his attitude to revelation is not evident in his very early writings. One has to proceed to Averroes’ most important work on the principles of jurisprudence, his ‘Introduction Into the Technique of Reaching Independent Verdicts’

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(Bidāyat al-mujtahid). This book was written around 563/1168—mid-way between his earliest works on logic and jurisprudence and his ‘Ghazalian period’ 575/1179 1986, 66f). This book displays a stage in Averroes’ thinking where he is ( more conscious about the nature of the revelation, and here the issue over which he disagrees with al-Ghazālī fundamentally, becomes clear. For al-Ghazālī the Muslim revelation was the source of a supererogatory knowledge to reason revealed to the Muslim community purely out of God’s grace. This revelation contains branches of knowledge which cannot be obtained by any other means of insight. The knowledge of the afterlife, for example, cannot be achieved by reason or by any sort of meditation. The only source for man’s knowledge of what will happen after his death is revelation. It would be futile for man to speculate on what will happen at the day of judgement in any form that disgresses from the text of the We know that in this point Averroes disagreed. From the works of his ‘Ghazalian period’ it becomes clear that for Averroes the Muslim revelation is just a simplified rephrasing of a knowledge which can be attained more precisely by demonstrative science. From these works we also know that Averroes held the opinion that there is a way to attain knowledge of the afterlife, because man can determine the underlying principles of the word, and is justified in assuming that these principles must be valid even under circumstances which he has not yet witnessed, such as the afterlife (Averroes, al-Kashf manāhij 162, 233). This opinion cannot yet be found in his early writings. But there is an early stage to this conception of revelation, which he makes clear in his Bidāyat al-mujtahid. In this text he claims, that a good jurist will not just end his investigation by finding out what the imperative of the revealed law is. A good jurist carries on and asks why the law contains this imperative and why it is advisable to follow it. Al-Ghazālī would not allow any jurist to consider such a question. For al-Ghazālī man cannot understand the wisdom of God and therefore it would be futile to ask why God wants us to do this or that. For al-Ghazālī such an investigation would constitute a disrespect for the revealed law, which is sent to us for no reason understandable to man. Averroes on the contrary teaches in his book on the principles of jurisprudence that every imperative in the revealed law has a twofold nature. There is on the one hand a ritual nature which in itself contains the necessity to obey this order of God. But apart from this there is in every revealed imperative something which is for the good of the society and this is its useful nature Averroes explains the two natures by choosing the example of the ritual ablution. The ritual nature of the ablution is to purify the soul before one approaches to God. The useful nature of ablution is to maintain public health since dirt is a major factor for diseases. The ordinary jurist understands only the ritual nature and judges accordingly in his verdicts. But the good jurist also investigates the usefulness of the religious imperative and tries to inflict an increase of this usefulness into his verdict (Averroes, Bidāyat 1:39, 165). This approach can even be followed in the case of the religious law as a whole. According to the jurist Averroes there is even an answer to the question, why God has revealed the religious law as a whole. This answer is not very different from the one Averroes the philosopher gives in his later writings. At the very end of his work on the principles of Muslim law Averroes writes that a good judge should always keep in mind that all religious directions and instructions discussed in this book follow just one aim: the establishment and maintenance of four cardinal virtues in

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society, these being modesty, justice, courage and generosity ( ) (Averroes, Bidāyat 4:1795).

and

Notes 1 Cf. Franck (Ed.) 1844–52; 2:512 and the reprint of the quoted passage in Munk 1857–59, 382f. 2 Cf. my introduction to al-Ghazālī, Über Rechtgläubigkeit und religiöse Toleranz 34–42. 3 Averroes,

1:51.8 and idem,

fī l-falsafa. Kitāb

7.

References , Jamāl al-din. 1987.“al-Ghazālī wa-tashkīl al-falsafī li-bni Rushd.” In: Ghazzali: la raison et le miracle: table ronde UNESCO. 9–10 decembre 1985, pp. 135–160. Paris: Islam d’hier et d’aujour’hui; 30 ——. 1986. “ al-burhān wa-dalālatiha fī al-falsafī li-bni Rushd.” In: Un trait d’union entre l’orient et l’occident. al-Ghazzali et Ibn Maimoun. Agadir 27–29 Nov. 1985, pp. 43–105. Agadir: Academie Royale du Maroc; 12. ——. 1986, al-Matn al-rushdī. Madkhal ilā Averroes, i.e.

ibn

jadīda, Casablanca: Dār Tūbqāl li-l-Nashr

ibn Rushd:

al-fiqh.

Edited by. J. , preface by M.-A.Sinaceur, Beirut 1994: Silsila al-matn ar-Rushdī/Séries des textes averroistes; 1. ——. Paraphrase de la logique d’Aristote (Texte arabe inedit). Edited by G.Jéhamy, 3 vols, Beirut 1982: Publications de l’Université Libanaise. Sections des etudes philosophiques et sociales; 12. ——. fī l-falsafa. Kitāb in Physicorum Libros. Edited by J.Puig, Madrid 1983: Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem. ——. Three Short Commentaries on Aristotle’s ‘Topics’, ‘Rhetorics’ and ‘Poetics’. Edition and engl. translation by C.E.Butterworth, Albany (New York) 1977: SUNY Press. ——. Bidayāt al-mujtahid wa-nihāyat 1416/1995: Dār Ibn

Edited by M.al-Hamawī, 4 vols., Beirut

——. al-athār Edited by , preface by M.-A.Sinaceur, Beirut 1994: Silsila al-matn ar-Rushdī/Séries des textes averroistes; 2. ——. manāhij al-adilla fī al-milla.” In:——, Manāhij al-adilla fī milla. Edited by M.Qāsim, pp. 131–252, Cairo 31969: Silsilat al-Dirāsāt al-Falsafiyya ——. Kitāb

al-maqāl with its Appendix

and an Extract from Kitāb al-Kashf

al-adilla, Arabic text, edited by G.F.Hourani, Leiden 1959: Brill. Bello, lysa A. 1989. The Medieval Islamic Controversy Between Philosophy and Orthodoxy. and in the Conflict Between al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd, Leiden (Islamic Philosophy and Theology. Texts and Studies; 3)

al-

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van Ess, Josef. 1968. “Skepticism in Islamic Religious Thought.” In: (Beirut), vol. 21.1, pp. 1–18. Frank, Richard M. 1992. Creation and the Cosmic System: Al-Ghazâlî & Avicenna. Heidelberg: Abhandl. der Heidelbg. Akademie d.Wiss., phil. hist. Klasse (1992.1). ——. 1991/92. “Al-Ghazālī on Taqlīd. Scholars, Theologians and Philosophers.”, in: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften, vol. 7, pp. 207–252. Franck, Adolphe (Ed.) 1844–52. Dictionaire des sciences philosophique. Par une société des professeurs de philosophic, 6 voll., Paris: Librairie A.Franck al-Ghazālī, 6 1392/1972: Dār

ibn

. Tahāfut al-falāsifa. Edited by S.Dunyā, Cairo .

——.

al al-tafriqa bayna l-islām wa l-zandaqa. Edited, by S.Dunyā, Cairo 1381/1961: Dār . ——. Über Rechtgläubigkeit und religiöse Toleranz. Eine Übersetzung der Schrift Das Kriterium in der Unterscheidung zwischen Islam und Gottlosigkeit ( at-tafriqa bayn al-Islām wa-zzandaqa), eingl., ubers. u. mit Erläut. v.F.Griffel, Zürich 1998: Spur Verlag. ——. min 2 vols, Būlāq 1322–24 (1904–06): alAmīriyya. Gutas, Dimitri. 1998. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. The Greaco-Arabic Translation Movement in Society (2nd–4th/ 8th–10th centuries), London/New York: Baghdad and Early Routledge. Ibn Abī

ibn al-Qāsim.

Edited by

A.Müller, 2 vols, Cairo 1299/1882: al-Maktabat Ibn

, ibn Kitāb al-Takmila li-kitāb Complementum libri Assilah (Dictionarium Biographicum) ab Aben al-Abbar. Edited by F.Codera y Zaydin, 2 vols, Madrid 1887–89: Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispano; 5+6.

Ibn

,

ibn

min

Edited by

Cairo 1994: Maktabat Dār al-Turāth Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī quod perfectissimus inscribitur (…). Edited by C.J.ibrnberg, 13 vols, Leiden und Uppsala 1851–76: Brill Ibn Tūmart, ibn . Le Livre de Mohammed ibn Toumert, Mahdi des Almohades. Texte arabe, accompagné de notices biographiques et d’une introduction par I.Goldziher. Algier 1903: Gouvernement Général d’Algerie Ibn

Yūsuf b. Madkhal ilā I.e. Introducción al arte de la lógica por Abentomlús de Alcira. Texto árabe y traducción español por M.Asín, Madrid 1916: Centro de Estudio Históricos.

al-Marrākushī, akhbār al-Maghrib. Edited by . Cairo 1383/1963: al-Majlis al-Islāmiyya M. Munk, Salomon. 1857–59. Mélanges de philosophic juive et arabe. Paris: Librairie A.Franck Renan, Ernest. 1852. Averroès et l’averroïsme. Essai historique, Paris: Librairie Auguste Durand 1974.

Arā’ Abī Bakr ibn

al-kalāmiyya, 2 vols, Algier w.d.

(1974): al-Sharika Urvoy, Dominique. 1991. Ibn Rushd (Averroes), trans, by O.Stewart, London/New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER FOUR Al-Ghazali and Halevi on Philosophy and the Philosophers1 Barry S.Kogan In the course of clarifying the relationship between philosophy and Divine revelation in his essay, “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” Leo Strauss observed that it is impossible for the philosopher to assume a merely defensive stance vis à vis the claims of the intelligent believer. Rather, the philosopher’s ignorance of the religious experiences that the believer appeals to as Divine revelation is actually an expression of principled ignorance and profound distrust. In short, he must go on the offensive and deny the very possibility of Divine revelation as the believer understands it by means of a conclusive refutation. The believer, in turn, acting in defense of religion, will attempt to refute this refutation by showing what is fallacious about it. In doing so, both take sides in a dispute that is ultimately joined on the level of human wisdom. It is this dispute between philosophy and revelation, or between Athens and Jerusalem, that Strauss came to see as “the most important fact about the whole past” (Strauss, 1952, 107). To underscore its centrality, he cited Goethe’s claim that, “The characteristic, sole, and deepest theme of world and human history, to which everything else is subordinated, remains the conflict of belief and unbelief” (Strauss, 1952, 107 n. 35. Cf. Goethe, 1949, 2:208). However, as Werner Dannhauser has recently pointed out,2 Strauss does not quote the great poet in full, at least not his concluding remarks on the human significance of his observation. What Goethe goes on to say is this: All those epochs in which belief prevails, whatever form it might wish to take, are splendid, heart-stirring, and fruitful for contemporaries and for posterity. By contrast, all those epochs in which unbelief, whatever its form, wins a miserable victory—even if it should boast of a moment accompanied by apparent splendor—disappear before posterity, because no one willingly chooses to put forth great effort to gain knowledge of what is sterile. (Goethe, 1949, 2:208) Whether Strauss agreed with Goethe’s generalization that ages of belief are ages of splendor and that ages of unbelief are ages of misery whose splendor is momentary at best, and counterfeit even then, is unclear. But he certainly did recognize that for men like al-Ghazali and Halevi, the confrontation with philosophy could be as corrosive as it was tempting precisely because of its power to create “a spiritual hell” for the one who engages in it (Strauss, 1952, 109). In what follows, I would like to examine briefly the

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evidence indicating that each thinker experienced just such a crisis in his confrontation with philosophy and then argue that each one recovered from that crisis by selectively appropriating a part of his philosophical inheritance to reestablish a basis for religious belief and action. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111), the great lawyer, theologian, and mystic of medieval Islam, tells us in his autobiography, Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (Deliverance from Error), that once he had concluded that genuine knowledge must be immune from doubt, error, and deception, he soon found himself devoid of any knowledge capable of meeting this standard, with the possible exception of sense-data and self-evident truths. But further scrutiny made it clear that these sources were also suspect. Even the most familiar cases of sense experience, like seeing a shadow standing still, turn out to be misleading, when only an hour later the shadow appears in a different place with a different shape. Sense experience suggests that it is motionless, whereas reason refutes this and argues that it actually moves all the time, but only gradually and imperceptibly. Similarly, skeptical questions can also be raised against the conclusions of reason. He specifically mentions the possibility that his wakeful exercise of reason might actually be comparable to dreaming in relation to a higher and even more wakeful state of mind, regardless of the confidence he previously placed in the judgments of reason. As he puts it, “…there may be beyond the perception of reason, another judge. And if the latter [i.e., that judge] revealed itself, it would give the lie to the judgments of reason, just as the reason-judge revealed itself and gave the lie to the judgments of sense” (McCarthy, 1980, 65, sec. 12). Repeated efforts to refute such objections by constructing some form of proof failed, because every form of proof likewise involved an appeal to equally primary cognitions. Al-Ghazali thus found himself mired within a profoundly disturbing skepticism for two months, which he pointedly refers to as a sickness and a mysterious malady. In the end, he indicates that he was restored to health and equilibrium, not by his own efforts at putting together the desired arguments, but by “a light which God Most High cast into my breast” (McCarthy, 1980, 66, sec. 15; 122 n. 44). From this episode, he seems to have drawn two conclusions which help to explain his subsequent views on both the philosophers and philosophy. The first is that “whoever thinks that the unveiling of truth depends on precisely formulated proofs has indeed straitened the broad mercy of God” (McCarthy, 1980, 66, sec. 16). In essence, this amounts to a moral claim on behalf of non-discursive ways of knowing. It proposes that there really are more things between heaven and earth and more ways to know them than are recognized by philosophy, and that one ought not to turn his back on them, lest he treat divine mercy as something less generous than it is. The second conclusion is that “one should be most diligent in seeking the truth until he comes to seeking [what is] unseekable. For primary truths [al-awwaliyyat, ‘first things’] are unseekable, because they are present in the mind; and when what is present is sought, it is lost and hides itself.”3 In seeking the truth, then, one must ultimately recognize some limit to inquiry, lest the truth of what is given or already present be lost. One need only recall that for him, experience was one of those givens or first things that disclose what is already present, and experience, at least for some—and certainly for al-Ghazali in this context—attests to illumination by God not only as a real possibility, but as a factual and veridical occurrence.

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Unlike al-Ghazali, Judah ben Samuel Halevi (ca. 1075–1141), medieval Judaism’s most gifted poet and first great critic of Aristotelian thought, left behind no autobiography to record his personal confrontation with philosophy or the crisis it may have generated.4 One can turn only to several of his poems or to his remarkable theological dialogue, The Kuzari or The Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion, for reverberations of the experience; and even these are expressed in an artful, idealized form, like the Platonic dialogues on which they are modeled (Strauss, 1952, 104 n. 27 and Motzkin, 1980, 111–124). Nevertheless, in the final discourse of the Kuzari, the King of the Khazars, a former pagan who had searched for the one way of life that is pleasing to God and ultimately found it in Judaism (after first examining and then rejecting the proposals of a philosopher, a Christian, and a Moslem in response to his inquiry), asks the rabbinic sage who has been his guide and chief interlocutor for a clear and accessible account of the “roots” and the articles of faith following the methods of the dialectical theologians. He explains the request in a revealing way. He admits that the sublime level of pure belief without recourse to investigation is simply beyond him because he has already been exposed to doubts and opinions put forth by philosophers and representatives of the various religious communities. “Tradition,” he concludes, “is beautiful only in connection with a willing soul, but when it is in a faulty condition, investigation is more appropriate, especially when investigation leads to confirmation of that tradition.”5 To this the rabbinic sage replies in a poignant and equally revealing way: Who among us has [the kind of] steadfast soul that is not misled by the opinions that pass through it, like those of people who study the natural sciences, as well as astrologers, experts in talismans, sorcerers, materialists, students of philosophy, and others? One arrives at faith only after having come through many ranks of unbelievers. But “life is short, and art is long.” Only unique individuals have faith by nature. All of these [faulty] opinions are repugnant to them, and the points where they are mistaken occur to them immediately.6 Whether it is the king or the sage who speaks for Halevi here, the striking thing is that both acknowledge having been exposed to serious doubts and opinions that misled them and left them unable to approach the ideals of “pure belief” and “faith” that they respectively articulate. By the Khazar king’s standard, both he and the sage seem to have lacked the kind of soul that is willing to accept tradition, which protects one from descending into a spiritual hell. By the sage’s standard, neither one has faith by nature. Still, the rabbinic sage is clearly in the better position to lead his companion through the process that will take them beyond the various ranks of unbelievers. What qualifies him to do so, broadly speaking, is his mastery of tradition. Tradition is thus assigned the task of making up for what is either entirely lacking or not fully provided by nature, except for the fortunate few—a good, i.e., willing, soul or faith. Here tradition seems to be a substitute for something else which would presumably be decisive even for the philosopher, were it available, and that something is experience of what tradition reports.7 If such experience is available at all, nothing else is as evident and near at hand; what is more, nothing else is as capable of gripping the heart as it is.8 It is therefore no surprise to find the sage asserting close to the beginning of the dialogue and

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again near the end that “[reliable] tradition is like [i.e., as valid as] what is personally experienced,”9 thereby implying that one can rely on it with equal confidence. The question of whether this claim is at all tenable lies very close to the heart of the controversy between philosophy and revelation. It is clearly related to the question of whether one should place one’s confidence chiefly in oneself or in others when it comes to determining the truth of any claim or what the standards of right and wrong really are. To al-Ghazali, the philosophers were the principal exemplars of the first option—placing confidence in oneself. Thus, he describes them in the introduction to the Tahafut alFalasifah (Incoherence of the Philosophers) (1095) as people who believe themselves to be without peer because of their superior intelligence, who belittle and reject the religious duties mandated by Islam, particularly those associated with worship, and in general cast off the restraints of religion.10 When he later tries to account for this in his autobiography, he records what he regards as a characteristic response by those who have studied the works of “theistic philosophers,” such as Ibn Sina and al-Farabi: I do not do this out of servile conformity. Rather, I have studied the science of philosophy and I have grasped the real meaning of prophecy. I know that it [ultimately] comes down to what is wise and beneficial and that the aim of religious prescriptions is to control the masses and to curb them from internecine strife and contention and from unrestrained indulgence of their passions. [But then,] I am not one of the ignorant masses and therefore subject to being commanded [as they are]. Rather, I am one of the wise…and in my wisdom I can get along without servile conformity! (McCarthy, 1980,104, sec. 130) The philosopher’s rejection of servile conformity or placing his confidence in tradition [taqlid] could hardly be more emphatic, and we must suppose that he would be equally emphatic in rejecting any alleged equivalence between tradition and personal experience as well. Interestingly, al-Ghazali indicates that his own natural disposition from youth on was to seek out the truth about things for himself, with the result that the fetters of servile conformity as well as inherited beliefs lost their hold on him relatively early (McCarthy, 1980, 62–63, sec. 5–6; Cf. 61, sec. 2). This remarkable intellectual vigor and independence continued to be one of his most distinctive personal traits, and it indicates that for al-Ghazali, in contrast to Halevi’s rabbinic sage, tradition cannot be truly on a par with personal experience or individual understanding. Nevertheless, al-Ghazali also recognized that freeing oneself from conformity to received tradition in favor of knowing for oneself may all too easily result in substituting one form of conformity or conventional imitation for another. Thus, in his first preface to the Tahafut al-Falasifah, he argues that the real basis for the philosophers’ unbelief is simply another form of conventional imitation, much like that of Jews and Christians, only in this case resulting from speculative inquiry born of sophistical doubts. He then explains precisely how this came to be. The source of their unbelief is their hearing high sounding names such as “Socrates,” “Hippocrates,” “Plato,” “Aristotle,” and their likes, and the

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exaggeration and misguidedness of their followers in describing their minds, the excellence of their principles, the exactitude of their geometrical, logical, natural, and metaphysical sciences, and in [describing these as] being alone—by reason of excessive intelligence and acumen—[capable] of extracting these hidden things; [also hearing] what [these followers] say about [their masters, namely] that concurrent with the sobriety of their intellect and the abundance of their merit is their denial of revealed laws and religious confessions and their rejection of the details of religious and sectarian [teaching], believing them to be manmade laws and embellished tricks. …When this struck their hearing, that which was reported of [the philosophers’] beliefs finding agreement with their own nature, they adorned themselves with the embrace of unbelief, siding with the throng of the virtuous, as they claim, affiliating with them, exalting themselves above aiding the masses and the commonality, and disdaining to be content with the religious beliefs of their forbears. [They have done this,] thinking that the show of cleverness in abandoning the [traditional] imitation of what is true by embarking on the imitation of the false is a beauteous thing, being unaware that moving from one [type] of imitation to another is folly and confusedness.11 By conducting his own inquiry, al-Ghazali concluded, first of all, that the ancient philosophers, unlike their modern epigones, were not entirely guilty of denying the validity of religious laws.12 Those whom he regards as significant among them, the theistic philosophers who include Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, are even commended for having refuted the materialists and the naturalists in their respective denials that the universe has a Creator or Ruler and that the soul survives the death of the body for purposes of reward and punishment. Aristotle, in particular, is singled out for his systematization of logic and for refining the various philosophical sciences by his careful formulations and analyses of earlier theories. But even here, in his final assessment, he notes that “…Aristotle refuted Plato and Socrates and the Theists who had preceded him in such a thorough fashion that he dissociated himself from them all. Yet he too retained remnants of their vicious unbelief and innovation which he was unsuccessful in avoiding. So they all must be taxed with unbelief as must their partisans among the Muslim philosophers” (McCarthy, 1980, 72, sec. 34). Second, al-Ghazali goes to considerable lengths to show that it is both groundless and pernicious to claim that the works of the philosophers in mathematics, logic, the natural sciences, and metaphysics, are all equally rigorous and cogent. It is groundless because their findings in mathematics and logic are plainly demonstrative, whereas only some of their findings in the natural sciences would deserve this status (e.g. their theory of eclipses), in contrast to others which would not (e.g. their theory of necessary causal connections in nature). Worse still, their views on metaphysical questions directly related to religion are conjectural at best, and typically lack logical rigor,13 as his devastating critique of the Avicennian theory of emanation amply shows.14 “Had their metaphysical sciences been perfect in demonstration, free from conjecture, as their mathematical [work], they would not have disagreed among themselves regarding [the former], just as

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they have not disagreed in [regard to] their mathematical sciences.”15 What was pernicious about this popular supposition of equivalent cogency was the fact that it tended to generate either wholesale rejection of the teachings of the philosophers by ignorant partisans of Islam, or uncritical admiration of everything they claimed. AlGhazali saw himself as pursuing the more judicious course of engaging the philosophers on their own ground by mastering the entire range of philosophic disciplines and assessing their epistemic and religious status alike. This procedure enabled him to recognize the solid accomplishments embodied in Aristotelian logic and empirical science, and even to appropriate them within the framework of Ash‘arite theology. At the same time, the claim of equivalent cogency provided a focus for his philosophical skepticism and dialectical skill. For he directed both against those claims of the metaphysicians that he considered either unsupportable or inimical to Islam. Finally, the privileged status he accords to divine revelation ultimately depends upon an appeal to a special category of sense experience, to the perceptual faculty that makes it possible, and to its corresponding range of objects. He associates all of these with Sufi mysticism and classical prophecy. In the case of Sufism, he has in mind the experience of dhawq, which is variously translated as “tasting,” “savoring,” and “fruitional experience.”16 Its essential connotation is one of enjoying the most intimate kind of association with the Godhead and seems to imply that knowing here becomes a way of being. This is why al-Ghazali contrasts it with intellectual understanding, when he says, “How great a difference there is between your knowing the definitions, causes, and conditions of health and satiety, and your [actually] being healthy and sated” (McCarthy, 1980, 90, sec. 82)! When he speaks of this special category of experience in terms of prophecy, he typically characterizes it in visual terms, postulating a hierarchy of perceptual faculties that culminate in the eye of prophecy. Beyond the stage of intellect there is another stage. In this, another eye is opened, by which man sees what is hidden and what will take place in the future, and other things from which the intellect is as far removed as the power of discernment is from perception of the intelligibles and the power of sensation is from things perceived by discernment. And just as someone with the power of discernment, if presented with things perceptible to the intellect, would reject them and consider them outlandish, so some men endowed with intellect have rejected the things perceptible to the prophetic faculty and considered them wildly improbable. That is the very essence of ignorance!17 Ignorance of this kind, of course, is actually invincible ignorance, and it represents for alGhazali more of a moral fault than an intellectual deficiency; it is an unwillingness to be guided by the full range of what experience has to show. Merely because one has not attained a certain stage of experience does not mean that it does not exist and cannot be veridical. The proof of its possibility consists in the very fact that it does exist, as the historical prophets and contemporary Sufis attest, while the proof of its actual existence consists in all those examples of intuition and discovery that cannot be adequately explained in terms of intellectual understanding alone. Here, what he has in mind are discoveries in astronomy, medicine, and divination through dreams.18

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For al-Ghazali, in sum, if philosophical reason is not to be judged guilty of injustice by claiming for itself more than it is entitled to claim (e.g. demonstrative status for its controversial metaphysical claims) and claiming less for experience than what actually belongs to it (e.g. the possibility of veridical religious experience), its proper task will be, as he puts it, “to bear witness to prophecy by giving assent to its reality” and “to certify its own blindness with respect to perceiving what the eye of prophecy perceives” (McCarthy, 1980, 102, sec. 123). Perhaps, then, by following the way of life of the prophets and the way of the Sufis, philosophers will perceive something of what prophets and Sufis have experienced by direct vision of their own.19 When one turns to Judah Halevi’s treatment of philosophy and the philosophers, it quickly becomes evident that he is quite familiar with al-Ghazali’s views and draws heavily upon them. Nevertheless, he adapts them to his own purposes which are often quite different from those of al-Ghazali. What is more, he also draws upon the views of the philosophers themselves in unexpected ways. As the original title of the Kuzari suggests, Halevi wished to develop as cogent a defense of his ancestral faith as possible against its cultured despisers. Towards that end, he builds the dialogue upon a solid factual basis, the actual conversion of the Khazar royal house to Judaism in the middle of the eighth century C.E. (Dunlop, 1954). But the various exchanges that make up the dialogue are certainly Halevi’s own creation, leaving it very much to the reader to determine which of them the author might have found cogent. The story opens when the Khazar king repeatedly has the same dream. Halevi indicates it was as though an angel told the king that his intention (comprising all mental activity that is ordered to an end) was pleasing to God but that his behavior was not.20 The king’s initial response was to perform the rites of his pagan religion with even greater diligence than before, but the recurrence of the dream convinced him that he must embark on a thorough-going inquiry to determine which way of life is truly pleasing to God. He turns first to a philosopher presumably because he expects him, as an expert on how thought should be directed towards ultimate ends, to clarify what his alreadyacceptable intentions require him to do. But the philosopher responds by flatly denying the presuppositions of the king’s dream. God, as the perfect and changeless First Cause, cannot feel either satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the king’s behavior or anyone else’s. Indeed, the Deity has no knowledge of it at all, since knowledge of this kind and affective reactions like those mentioned in the dream would introduce both mutability and imperfection into God. In short, the First Mover is by nature unmoved. For the same reason, God is not to be regarded as the Creator of either the universe or the individuals in it except in a metaphorical way, as the ultimate cause of everything that arises in the world by emanation and natural causation. But the world itself is eternal, and men have always come into being from those who came before them, just as Aristotle claimed. It turns out that the interplay of such factors as natural disposition, traits deriving from one’s parents and relatives, as well as the influence of climate, geography, food, water, and even the celestial bodies, and, of course, education and training, is crucial in determining what level of perfection one can attain. Not surprisingly, we are told that it is the philosopher who is favored with the best combination of these factors. After instruction and training, he emerges as the one best equipped to perfect himself. He does so by extending his knowledge of the eternal system of necessary causes and effects emanating from God, and ultimately by attaining union with the Active Intellect, the

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source of everything knowable in the sublunar world. Actually, the philosopher first suggests this possibility in a qualified and tentative way, but concludes in a far more confident tone: Accordingly, a light from the divine order [of being], called Active Intellect, will attach itself to the perfect individual, [and] his passive intellect will attach itself to that light [with such] accord [literally, “attachment-union”] that the individual will think that he is that Active Intellect, with there being no difference between the two of them… The limbs of that individual will come to be used only in [performing] the most perfect actions, at the most appropriate times, and in accordance with the very best conditions, as though they were the organs of the Active Intellect itself… This degree is the ultimate end for which the perfect individual hopes after his soul has been purified of doubts and acquired mastery of the sciences according to their true character… Thus, the soul of the perfect individual and that [Active] Intellect become one [and the same thing].21 (emphasis added) If the outcome of such union is to live the most rational and self-sufficient life possible, the main prerequisite is to purify one’s soul so as to cultivate the moral virtues and knowledge of the sciences. Those who have already achieved this goal—like Hermes, Aesclepios, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—look for nothing further from life and never fear death. What is more, as objective perceivers of the truth, they are all of one mind about it, quite literally. They share the same truth-content because they and the Active Intellect, which encompasses that content, are one and the same. The practical consequence of this intellectual achievement is that it makes no rational difference whatever what particular regimen of worship and action one adopts to lead one’s life. Accordingly, the philosopher advises the king either to accept one of the rational nomoi, that is, one of the humanly constructed regimens of the philosophers, or simply to create one of his own. The traditional religions, to all intents and purposes, are omitted. In effect, while there must be one and only one truth, where theoretical knowledge is concerned, in matters of morals, political practice and worship, pluralism reigns. Here, it seems, one may choose whatever he likes. In the end, the king is told to concentrate on achieving union with the Active Intellect and thereby to acquire knowledge of the whole. Only in this way and through whatever prudential acts support this goal can he ever hope to acquire knowledge of hidden things, even if it comes through the kinds of veridical dreams the king associates with prophecy and paranormal experiences.22 The philosopher’s speech clearly implies that the king’s dream is not a divine revelation, since the king thoroughly misunderstands both the nature of the divine and what is required for revelation to occur. His reaction to the dream anticipates Hobbes’ observation that if a man comes to you claiming that God spoke to him in a dream or vision, all that we may safely conclude is that he dreamed that God spoke to him, since he may either be in error or lying (Hobbes, 1960, 3:32; 243–244). Thus, he rejects, much as we would expect, both claims to a privileged kind of experience and reliance on reports or traditions that attest to it. For, at the end of the day, the angel reports only what

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God supposedly finds pleasing and displeasing, while the king reports only what he is told as well. Perhaps the first observation Halevi makes about the king’s claim to have had a revelatory dream and the philosopher’s claim to know for certain what is and is not possible in such matters, is not a statement in reply to each, but rather the way in which he describes them as making their respective claims. In the king’s case, we are first told that “a dream came to him repeatedly as though an angel were addressing him…” Several lines later there is an almost imperceptible change; we are told that “…each time he exerted himself in [performing] those acts [prescribed by his ancestral religion] the angel came to him at night…”23 Similarly, in the philosopher’s speech, the philosopher first says that the perfect individual “will think that he is that Active Intellect.” But later, he tells us that “the soul of the perfect individual and that [Active Intellect] become one [and the same thing].”24 In both cases, we first find a careful and qualified statement about how each figure interprets his actual or anticipated experiences. These statements underscore the apparently subjective character of the interpretation. Subsequently, these statements are followed by a re-description of the two experiences without qualification, a. re-description that confidently portrays each one as objective and veridical. In effect, we move from opinion about what happened and happens to a confident claim of knowledge about such transformative events and their ultimate significance. But neither knowledge claim follows necessarily from the initial description. Neither one is known conclusively to be the case, although each one is a possible interpretation, perhaps indeed a plausible one, for the experience described, given the speaker’s aims and assumptions. Each claim is obviously believed, but neither is known to be true. Still, there seems to be no good reason to suppose that Halevi is neutral about the two accounts. The king, after all, was a flesh-and-blood ruler, who repeatedly dreamed the same dream and whose personal history lends weight to what the recurrent dream said. But the perfect man is only an abstraction or an ideal whose actual experience is unknown. He is someone whom one might at best only approximate, but whom one might also altogether fail to become. Ultimately, one must decide between them, and the very necessity of making the choice—of deciding on a course of action with practical consequences for one’s life— seems to tip the scales against the philosopher and in favor of the practical life. The king indicates this clearly by telling the philosopher that while his account may be persuasive on its own terms, it fails to address the issue that launched the inquiry; namely, to identify, in all its particulars, the kind of life that is pleasing in itself. In effect, philosophy proves to be “thin” and incomplete when it comes to praxis; it cannot provide any “thick description” of what goes into the best life. What is more, when it assumes that the perfection of one’s intentions through purifying the soul or polishing the mirror of the mind is sufficient for living such a life, we find that, contrary to its claims, people are not of one mind about how to live it. That is why the king describes both the Christians and Muslims of his day as having pure intentions. Nevertheless, they have divided up the whole world between themselves and have gone off determined to kill one another in the belief that doing so brings one closer to God. Obviously, good intentions are not enough; both sides cannot be right. If the philosophers cannot fill in the blanks on the particulars of praxis, people with both pure and less than pure intentions will do it for themselves, often with devastating results. All the more reason, then, to search for the kind of behavior in all its particularity that actually pleases God.25

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Later in the dialogue, the rabbinic sage goes on to acknowledge the personal virtues of the philosophers in their renunciation of wealth, honor, pleasure, and even children; but he also underscores the fact that such virtues are actually needed by those who believe that human happiness ultimately consists in attaining theoretical knowledge about reality. For one cannot expend one’s entire life in inquiry and continuous reflection with the added burdens of family and a worldly occupation. In effect, even exemplary philosophic morality reduces to a kind of prudence; but this prudential view of morality implies that under certain circumstances, moral principles or the accepted norms may be suspended, if that is deemed necessary. As the rabbinic sage puts it, …They have commanded [people to do] what is beneficial and have forbidden [them to do] what is blameworthy in the most excellent and appropriate way, and [they have also commanded them] to imitate the Creator, who established things in the best way. Accordingly, they produced the nomoi, namely, political regimens [which are] not legally binding. Exceptions may be made with respect to them if there is not some [overriding] necessity [to preclude this]. But the Law is not like that except in its political parts, [and] it has already been explained in the science of jurisprudence just what is subject to exception and what is not subject to it.26 In philosophic morality it turns out that exceptions are not necessarily rare. For one actually needs an overriding necessity not to treat some unique set of circumstances as exceptional and therefore worthy of a new norm or new response. What the rabbi seems to envisage here is a succession of ever newer moralities to deal with each new set of “exceptional” circumstances. Accordingly, the possibilities for moral adaptation and accommodation appear to be virtually limitless.27 By contrast, the religious Law embraces a science that can distinguish, at least in principle, between what is genuinely exceptional and what is not. Here, the norm is clearly not identified with or made dependent upon what is exceptional. Moral principles or moral rules will remain both recognizable and capable of enduring, while exceptions will be treated as the rare occurrences they are, to be dealt with in ways that do not undermine the Law itself, as the nomoi of the philosophers—so conspicuously plural in name and number—inevitably would. When we turn finally to Halevi’s appraisal of the philosophers’ theoretical claims, we find both appreciation for their achievements and disparagement of philosophical speculation as such. Soon after the rabbinic sage makes his initial statement to the king, he points out that the king will not find them agreeing on either a single action or belief because whatever they have to say on matters of behavior and belief amounts to little more than claims Some of them they can demonstrate. Others they can show to be persuasive only on dialectical grounds. But others are not even up to this level, let alone established by demonstration.28 He says nothing further at this point to indicate which subjects or kinds of claims should be assigned to each of these three categories. But after an extensive review of the teachings of the philosophers on natural science, epistemology, and metaphysics in the fifth and final part of the dialogue, he indicates that

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they actually provide demonstration only in the purely formal disciplines of mathematics and logic. Indeed, he expresses this in characteristically Ghazalian fashion. When the king indicates that he finds the sage’s summary of philosophy superior to other accounts in terms of both precision and verifiability, the sage replies that he was by allowing himself to be afraid the king would respond to their opinions misled by them. For “after [their] demonstrations in mathematics and logic turned out to be sound—according to them—people were happy [to believe] everything they said about physics and metaphysics, [since] it was thought that everything they said was a demonstration.”29 Subsequently, he launches into a detailed and very perceptive critique of their views in other fields. In physics, for example, the philosopher’s account of the four elements goes far beyond what the empirical evidence warrants and is sometimes directly at odds with it, for experience supports only the existence of the four primary qualities of hotness, coldness, wetness, and dryness, and not the elementary bodies themselves. In psychology and epistemology, the theory of the actualized human intellect as being itself a separate substance is beset by numerous unresolvable problems concerning personal identity, the effects of material variables on thought, and the actual pre-requisites for attachment to the Active Intellect. In metaphysics, where he draws explicitly on Ghazali’s Tahafut, he shows that philosophic accounts of the causes of celestial motion are hopelessly weak and riddled with doubts, so that there is little wonder that no two philosophers would agree on such questions.30 The force of this critique amounts to a reversal of Hobbes’ proposal: if a man comes to you and claims that he has conclusively understood the nature of reality as a whole, all you may conclude with certainty is that he has finally understood his most recent conception of it, for he is assuredly either in error or deceiving himself. Still, even if the philosophers possess neither conclusive demonstrations nor shared intuitions about these subjects, so remote from the realm of immediate experience, Halevi is nonetheless remarkably generous in his estimate of them. After reminding his reader of what they have not and probably cannot accomplish, he then underscores what they have accomplished and—in noticeable contrast to al-Ghazali—expresses this with a palpable sense of appreciation. To be sure, they have excelled in human wisdom, as Socrates used to say to the people of Athens, “O, people! I do not deny your divine wisdom; I say, rather, that I am not conversant with it. On the other hand, I am wise in terms of human wisdom.” (Cf. Apology 20d-e and Halevi, supra 4:13) Actually, they should be excused because they took refuge in their reasonings due to the absence of prophecy and the divine light among them. [Even so,] they brought the demonstrative sciences to a [level of] perfection that cannot be surpassed, and they were unique in that respect. There is no difference [of opinion] between any two individuals about those sciences; but there is almost no agreement between any two individuals about what they undertook [to explain] beyond that with respect to [their divergent] opinions concerning metaphysics and, yes, concerning many things in physics as well. Even if you did find a group [of philosophers] agreeing on a single opinion, that is not because of an

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investigation [they conducted] and a conclusion at which their [collective] opinion arrived. On the contrary, the fact is that they are followers of some individual who engaged in such discussions, whom they follow without question, like the followers of Pythagoras, the followers of Empedocles, the followers of Aristotle, the followers of Plato, and others, as well as the Stoics, and the Peripatetics, namely, those who belong to the followers of Aristotle. They have opinions about the principles [of things] that weaken the intellect and which the intellect considers weak… There are doubts about all of that [speculation] and no agreement between one philosopher and another. But, they should be excused in any case and also thanked for what they were able to conclude from nothing more than their own reasonings. They meant well, fulfilled the intellectual nomoi, and lead pious, ascetic lives in this world. In any case, they should be regarded as virtuous, since it is not incumbent on them to accept what we have [i.e., a revealed Law and reliable tradition]. But we ourselves must accept what has been witnessed [by our ancestors] as well as the continuous tradition [that reports it], which is as valid as what has been witnessed personally.31 In all of this, we find familiar Ghazalian themes, and we are now in a position to sum up both the similarities and the differences between the two men on philosophy and the philosophers. Both knew philosophy well but rejected it as a way of life for themselves on moral and epistemological grounds. Both turned the skepticism originally directed by philosophers against their respective religious traditions against the claims of philosophy itself. In doing so, they both made an important contribution to philosophy. In conflicts between argument and experience, both men accorded primacy to experience, even though they recognized the interpretative problems that inevitably attend the effort to make sense of experience. Both underscored the fact that philosophers, no less than men of faith, think and write within distinctive traditions whose fundamental assumptions presuppose a kind of faith or trust as long as one remains within that tradition. However, al-Ghazali’s critique of philosophy and the philosophers is far more comprehensive and harsh than anything Halevi has to say on the subject. Indeed, his Tahafut al-Falasifah ends with a legal finding that three of the philosophers’ principal beliefs constitute expressions of outright infidelity, punishable by death, while seventeen others represent heretical innovations. The consequences of that finding for the study of science and philosophy in medieval Islam were in many ways chilling and momentous, and they can still be felt today. Significantly, even what al-Ghazali appropriated from Aristotelian logic and natural science was adapted to the canons of theology, so that even his accommodations to philosophy and the philosophers proved to be limited indeed. By contrast, Halevi seems to reject only the more metaphysical claims of the philosophers and those scientific views that stray from the empirical data. But instead of condemnation, he actually expresses praise and appreciation, albeit within limits, for their behavior and their intellectual accomplishments. What is even more intriguing is that his defense of Judaism does not reject but in fact implicitly accepts many of the philosophers’ general criteria concerning what kinds of causes and conditions ultimately perfect human life. While he differs with them about the particulars, he nonetheless

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remains unusually open-minded about what they have to say. For a conservative defender of the despised religion and its adherents, that is a remarkable but little recognized achievement. But what went into that achievement must remain the topic for another inquiry. Notes 1 This essay owes much to David Zvi Baneth’s landmark study, “Judah Halevi and al-Ghazali” which first appeared in German in the Korrespondenzblatt des Vereins zur Gruendung und Erhaltung einer Akademie fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums 5 (1924) 27–45. A Hebrew version of the same work appeared as “Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Levi Ve-Algazali” in Knesset: Divrei Soferim Le-Zeikher H.N.Bialik, Vol. 7, Tel Aviv: Devir, 1941–42, 311–329. An English translation of the original, but without the accompanying footnotes, was published as “Judah Halevi and Al-Ghazali” in Studies in Jewish Thought: An Anthology of German Jewish Scholarship. Selected, edited, and introduced by Alfred Jospe. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981, 181–199. My own inquiry restricts itself to only one of the many topics discussed by Baneth, but examines it in greater depth and in terms of its fundamental presuppositions and implications. For Baneth’s basic view of Halevi and al-Ghazali on philosophy and the philosophers, see especially the English version of his article, pp. 182– 184. I would like to thank Profs. Stephen F.Brown, Seymour Feldman, and Alfred Ivry for their helpful comments, criticisms, and suggestions in response to earlier versions of this discussion. 2 Dannhauser, “Athens and Jerusalem or Jerusalem and Athens?” in Novak, 1996, 159. Prof. Dannhauser called attention to the conclusion of Goethe’s observation in oral remarks accompanying the presentation of this paper at the University of Virginia on October 11, 1993. They do not appear in the published version of the paper. 3 McCarthy, 1980, 67, sec. 17; 123 n. 48. Al-Ghazali concludes the passage with this qualification: “But one who seeks the unseekable cannot subsequently be accused of negligence in seeking what is seekable.” Since he plainly attributed his skeptical difficulties to seeking the unseekable, this remark seems to be offered as a reply to the anticipated philosophical objection that by giving credence to divine illuminations, or revelation, he was negligent in seeking what is seekable, i.e. natural, philosophically admissible solutions to the problem of skepticism. His reply would be that he had already pursued that option and discovered that it does not work unless one grants certain first principles on faith by simply “seeing” their plausibility. 4 Ground-breaking studies on the biography of Judah Halevi can be found in Kaufmann, 1877 (Heb., 1965), 166–207; Baron, 1941, 243–272, and Schirmann, 1979, 1:247–341. The most up-to-date outline of such a biography is provided in the fifth and final volume of S.D.Goitein’s magisterial work, A Mediterranean Society: The Individual. See Goitein, 1988, 5:448–468 and passim. See index, s.v.Judah ha-Levi, poet, 651. 5 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd Din al-Dhalil (al-Kitab al-Khazari), 5:1; 191, Baneth with Ben-Shammai. Hereinafter, this work, also known in Hebrew as Sefer HaKuzari will be abbreviated as Kitab al-Radd 6 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd 5:2; 191, Baneth with Ben-Shammai. The translation here and in subsequent passages from the Kuzari is my own. 7 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd 1980, 111, sec. 149.

4:3, 157, Baneth with Ben-Shammai. Cf. McCarthy,

8 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

1:5, 8, Baneth with Ben-Shammai.

9 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

1:25, 5:14; 12, 213, Baneth with Ben-Shammai.

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10 Al-Ghazali, Incoherence, Religious Preface; 1–2. Cf. Tahafot al-Falasifat, [First] Introduction; 4, Bouyges. I would like to thank my teacher, Prof. Michael E. Marmura, for making a draft of his new translation of the preface and introduction to al-Ghazali’s Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) available to me while I was preparing an earlier version of this chapter. 11 Al-Ghazali, Incoherence, Religious Preface; 2, Marmura. Cf. Al-Ghazali, Tahafot, Preface; 5, Bouyges. 12 Al-Ghazali, Incoherence, Religious Preface; 3, Marmura. Cf. Al-Ghazali, Tahafot, Preface; 4, Bouyges. 13 McCarthy, 1980, 73, sec. 39; 75, sec. 44. Cf. the passage cited from Halevi’s Kuzari in nn. 28 and 29 below. 14 Al-Ghazali, Incoherence 3; 65–78, Marmura. Cf. Al-Ghazali, Tahafot 3; 110–132, Bouyges. 15 Al-Ghazali, Incoherence, [First] Introduction; 4, Marmura. Cf. Al-Ghazali, Tahafot, Preface; 9. 16 See McCarthy, 1980, 90, sec. 82; 133 n. 162; and entries in Dozy, Lane, and Wehr, s.v.dhawq. 17 McCarthy, 1980, 96–97, sec. 102–108, especially sec. 108. 18 McCarthy, 1980, 98–100, sec. 112–120. Cf. pp. 108–109, sec. 140–141. 19 McCarthy, 1980, 99, sec. 115. Cf. 111, sec. 149, end. The passage cited here from sec. 115 of al-Ghazali’s Deliverance from Error expresses a prospect for achieving genuine visionary experience that is similar in language and ironic tone to the conclusion of the philosopher’s speech in Halevi’s Kuzari, although the means al-Ghazali stipulates for attaining it are diametrically opposed to the means proposed by the Halevi’s philosopher. See below n. 21 and cf. Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

1:1; 4, and 5, Baneth with Ben-Shammai.

20 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

1:1; 3, Baneth with Ben-Shammai.

21 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

1:1; 4, Baneth with Ben-Shammai.

22 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd 1980, 102, sec. 123.

1:1; 5, Baneth with Ben Shammai. Cf. McCarthy,

23 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

1:1; 3, Baneth with Ben Shammai.

24 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

1:1; 5, Baneth with Ben-Shammai.

25 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

1:2; 6, Baneth with Ben-Shammai.

26 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd 4:19; 170, Baneth with Ben-Shammai. 27 One is reminded here of a citation from al-Farabi’s introduction to his lost Commentary on Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics that appears in Maimonides’ discussion of providence. “Those who have the capacity for making their soul pass from one moral quality to another are those whom Plato has said that God’s providence watches over them to a greater degree.” Maimonides, Guide. 3:18; 476, Pines. 28 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd 1:13; 10, Baneth with Ben-Shammai. Cf. the passages cited from al-Ghazali in nn. 13, 14, and 15 above. 29 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

5:13–14; 208–209, Baneth with Ben-Shammai.

30 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

5:14; 209–212, Baneth with Ben-Shammai.

31 Ha-Levi, Kitab al-Radd

5:14; 212–213, Baneth with Ben Shammai.

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References Al-Ghazali. 1927. Tahafot al-Falasifat. Edited by M.Bouyges. Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique. ——. 1997. The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Translated by M.Marmura. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press. Baron, S. 1941. “Yehudah Halevi: An Answer to an Historic Challenge.” Jewish Social Studies 3:3 , pp. 243–272. ——. 1952–83. A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 16 Vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Dannhauser, W.J. 1996. “Athens and Jerusalem or Jerusalem and Athens?” in Leo Strauss and Judaism: Jerusalem and Athens Critically Revisited, edited by D.Novak, pp. 155–171. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Dunlop, D.M. 1954. The History of the Jewish Khazars. New York: Schocken Books. Goethe, J.W.v. 1949. Noten und Abhandlungen zum besseren Verstdädnis des West-Ostlischen Divans in Goethe’s Werke, Vol. 2. Edited by Erich Trunz. Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag. Goitein, S.D. 1988. A Mediterranean Society: Volume 5, The Individual. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Hobbes, T. 1960. Leviathan. Edited by Michael Oakeshott. Oxford: Clarendon Press. al-Dalil: Al-Kitab al-Khazari. Edited by Ha-Levi. 1977. Kitab al-Radd David H.Baneth with H.Ben-Shammai. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. Halevi, J. 1905. Kitab al-Khazari: Book of Kuzari. Translated by H.Hirschfeld. London: Routledge. Kaufmann, D. “Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Levi,” in David Kaufmann: Studies in the Hebrew Literature of the Middle Ages. Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 1965. Maimonides, 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by S.Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McCarthy, R.J. 1980. freedom and fulfillment: An Annotated Translation of Al-Ghazali’s alMunqidh min al-Dalal and Other Relevant Works by Al-Ghazali. Boston: Twayne Publishers. Motzkin, A.L. 1980. “On Halevi’s Kuzari as a Platonic Dialogue,” Interpretation 9:1; 111–124. Novak, D. 1996. Leo Strauss and Judaism: Jerusalem and Athens Critically Revisted. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Schirmann, H. 1979. Studies in the History of Hebrew Poetry and Drama. (Heb.) Vol. 1. Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik. Strauss, Leo. 1952. “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.

SECTION THREE NEOPLATONISM

CHAPTER FIVE Projection and Time in Proclus D.Gregory MacIsaac Introduction This chapter is an examination of certain parts of the philosophy of Proclus. Its aim is to clarify in what manner Proclus is a systematic thinker. The notion of philosophical system which comes to mind from a contemporary standpoint is not the notion which Proclus had, and any interpretation of Proclus from a later standpoint is bound to fail. Proclus’ notion of philosophical system, moreover, is important for the interpretation of all medieval philosophy, because the Greek Neoplatonic tradition of which he is a part contributed to the self-understanding of Medieval Jewish, Islamic, and Christian thinkers.1 His notion of philosophical system helps to clarify such medieval principles as the distinction between kataphatic and apophatic theology, the difference between human and divine knowing, and the analogy of Being. If we investigate Medieval philosophy with a conception of philosophical system drawn from a later period, these aspects of Medieval thought will remain closed to us. The philosophy of Proclus is philosophy as system.2 The whole of Being, as well as what lies above and below Being, is articulated in determinate rational categories in his various works. The Cosmos which springs from the One, and unfolds into Nous (Intellect), Soul, and Material World is discussed in human terms in his commentaries on Plato’s Cratylus, Alcibiades, Republic, Timaeus and Parmenides. Mathematical and physical being is discussed in his commentary on Euclid and his Elements of Physics. Providence, fate and evil are treated in three short works. And finally, we have two explicitly systematic works, the Elements of Theology and the Platonic Theology, the former of which lays out the structure of the cosmos from the One to the Soul, and the latter of which lays out the structure of the divine orders. The breadth of this corpus suggests that according to Proclus there is nothing which is not open to human thought. We should find this systematic character of Proclus’ thought puzzling. He thinks that a philosophical text is logos. It is the written expression of a human thinking which itself is also logos. And according to Proclus human thinking belongs in a middle register. It is dianoia, and dwells in the in-between. Although it is neither the infinite multiplicity of sensation, nor the pregnant unity of intellect, it is somehow still able to think both.3 And it does this without leaving aside the sort of thought which is specifically human. The soul comprehends the unity of intellect through its own dividing activity, and comprehends sensibles without entering into their sort of division (Proclus, In Euclidem 16). Consequently, if we are to understand Proclus’ philosophy as a system which comprehends the entire cosmos, we must understand this comprehension in a manner

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which does not do away with the real otherness of the being and knowing which lies above and below the soul. This is the puzzle which we will investigate in this chapter. James Lowry, in The Logical Principles of Proclus’ Stoicheiôsis Theologikê as Systematic Ground of the Cosmos, leads us to believe that all is contained in principle in this one work of Proclus. The Elements of Theology, he tells us, seeks “to give a complete account of the ground and nature of phenomena and of the cause of those phenomena or of the nature of that ground” (Lowry 1980, 37). As a logic of remaining, proceeding, and returning, “its formal structure seeks to be a totality, to be self complete, to be fully comprehensive of all phenomenal possibility as effect and of all ground of phenomena as cause” (Lowry 1980, 38). Unfortunately, according to Lowry, the Procline system in the Elements of Theology succumbs to an inner tension. Proclus’ quantitative logic of unity and multiplicity is not adequate to its content as that which grounds the qualitative determinations of Being. Consequently, what is needed is a logic more adequate to its content; a first principle which is not beyond thought; indeed a first principle which is thought itself.4 Lowry’s reading of Proclus is Hegelian. The Hegelian reading of Proclus seizes on the Elements of Theology and declares Proclus to be a systematic thinker in this sense, that he would consider his philosophy successful if it were able to give in a work like the Elements of Theology a complete account of the principles of the cosmos. But this focus on completion, even formal completion, is a misreading of Proclus. It ignores the fact that for Proclus philosophical system is expressed in dianoetic terms. Thus while Proclus is a systematic thinker, the terms in which his system is written themselves fall short of the reality which they seek to express. Moreover, because dianoia is a thinking which never has a complete grasp on its object, the Procline system must be considered to be in principle incomplete. I will argue for this account of philosophical system in Proclus in the rest of this chapter, through an examination of Eternity and Time in his philosophy. However, as a preliminary taste of my conclusion, I ask the reader to reflect on the Procline corpus as I listed it above. If Proclus’ philosophy were system as complete, why are there two systematic works? When in possession of the Elements of Theology, what need have we for the Platonic Theology, or vice versa? Lowry admits that the Platonic Theology complements the Elements of Theology, but says that “the Elements of Theology works out most fully the principles of the cosmos, while the Platonic Theology works out their elaboration in the fullest way. Together they give a complete exposition of the Procline philosophy. In fact, it should be said, in my opinion, that together they are the Procline philosophy” (Lowry 1980, 105). But there are discrepancies between the two works, and Lowry’s account rests on his characterisation of the henads as the genera of Being.5 This is not only contrary to Proclus’ explicit doctrine, it does not work as a reinterpretation of Proclus (Lowry 1980, 77). Further, why comment on Plato? With the embarrassing superabundance of riches embodied in not one, but two, ‘complete’ systems, the other works would have to be written off as merely opportunities for extended digression. Moreover, what is to be made of the tension between the accounts of human reason given in the Euclid commentary and the Parmenides commentary? If not in open conflict, there is certainly a marked difference in emphasis between the mathematical reason of the one, and the ultimate apophasis of the other. Proclus is not an exploratory thinker like Plotinus, who seems to have been torn between various accounts of the same phenomenon. Proclus’ various works do not represent conflicting and

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competing attempts to articulate a system which would complete in the manner in which Lowry wants it to be. Rather, they are an embodiment of his conception of dianoia itself. Dianoia does know the truth of what exists, and it knows it through its own divided categories. But as dianoia is a dividing activity, its knowledge is itself divided. It is also partial, and this partiality arises because its circling activity around its unified object, which is Nous itself, is never complete. Consequently, we can think of the various works of Proclus as articulations of Nous from the various different but complementary perspectives which the soul assumes as it circles around the centre which is Nous. As the regions of Being can be infinitely plumbed by such a dividing thinking, we should expect works which have as their aim to plumb a particular region, such as the Alcibiades or Cratylus commentaries. As this circling, dividing, thinking activity is never complete on the psychic level, we should not attribute the sort of completion to it which Lowry seems to desire. Eternity In the Timaeus Plato tells us that the model (paradeigma) after which the Demiurge made the all (tode to pan) is an Eternal Living Creature (zôon aïdion on), and that he made this all more similar (homoion) to its model through the fabrication of Time: And as the nature of the Living Creature was to be eternal, it was impossible to bind this nature in its entirety to becoming (tôi gennêtôi). So he planned to make a certain moving image of Eternity (eikô…kinêton tina aiônos), and then in setting the Heavens in order, he made of that Eternity which remains in a One an eternal image, which proceeds according to number. And it is this image which we call Time (chronon). (Plato, Timaeus 37d) Proclus comments on this passage at length in the In Timaeum (Proclus, In Timaeum III.8.18–34.14). Proclus gives an account in which Eternity is the principle which unifies the intelligible genera, while Time as its image is the intellectual principle which unifies the dividing activity of Soul, as well as all else which shares in becoming. Eternity dwells in the intelligible. But where in the intelligible does it reside? Proclus asks in what order (taxis) of the intelligibles (noêta) it exists (Proclus, In Timaeum III. 10.02–07). In order to understand this question, we must examine briefly the structure of Proclus’ spiritual hierarchy. In Proclus the divisions which emerged in the Plotinian Nous have been systematically related to each other through a logic of unity and multiplicity. Plotinus speaks about a division between subject and object in Nous, and about a multiplicity of genera of Being in Nous, while also asserting the unity of Nous. Proclus also holds to the unity of Nous, but he subjects the reality which is Nous to a dividing analysis, in order to distinguish more clearly its moments. It is crucial to remember about this analysis that the terms through which we understand Nous are not themselves noetic. Our thought is dianoetic, and as such the simultaneous division and unity which is Nous cannot be expressed by us adequately. We can hold only to one side or the other, and we finally fall back on a mode of expression by which we say Nous is a thinking which is

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both completely unified and divided, even though this is not something we experience in our own thinking. Proclus refers to the distinction between object and subject in Nous as a division between intelligible (noêta) and intellectual (noera) orders of Nous. Further, between the intelligible and the intellectual is an intermediate order which is referred to as intelligibleand-intellectual (noêta kai noera). This distinction between orders is at first misleading, because it gives one the impression that the intelligible orders are merely object of thought without the activity of thinking, while the intellectual orders are merely activity which looks up to the intelligible for its object. This is not the case. Nous is an hypostasis, which means for Proclus that it is a mind that is a unity in plurality, in which the total structure is mirrored in each part (Gersh 1973, 19ff; 51–58). Similarly, Nous is one mind, but at the same time each of its parts is a reflection of the whole and thus are also individual minds. Thus all of the orders have these three moments in them in some manner, and their hierarchical arrangement is a matter of emphasis. The intelligible has more the character of cause, and thus Proclus distinguishes out three intelligible triads which stand above and give rise to the other orders. Next there come to be three intelligible-and-intellectual triads,6 and after these comes an intellectual hebdomad.7 So while Nous as a whole is a unity, its various moments as intelligible, intelligible-andintellectual, and intellectual are to be thought of both as an articulation of the interior nature of the thought of Nous as a whole, and as an articulation of the noes (intellects) which make up the different orders of Nous, all without losing the unity which Nous has as the unity of a thinking mind. So Proclus’ question about the place of Eternity is important. If Eternity is in Nous, and in one of the three intelligible orders of Nous rather than in the lower orders, then it is important to specify exactly which intelligible triad it is. In other words, asking about the place of Eternity in the intelligible is asking what role Eternity plays in the unfolding of the One into the multiplicity of intelligible eidê which found the subsequent diversity of the cosmos. Proclus thinks that the three intelligible triads in Nous are, in order, the OneBeing, Eternity, and the Eternal Living Being, or autozôon. The final intelligible triad, the autozôon, is the paradigm to which the Demiurge (who is in the intellectual hebdomad) looks when he orders the cosmos. As such, it contains all of the genera of Being, but in a manner best described by Plotinus, where all is in each and each in all, without any mixture or confusion (Plotinus, Ennead V 8.4). One may be tempted to think of this multiplicity of intelligible genera as a static set of categories. Perhaps they are the five Greatest Kinds (megista genê) of Plato’s Sophist. Proclus does speak of them at times in these terms.8 Yet it is not the case that a static set of intelligible categories can easily be thought of as all in each and each in all. The dynamism of the Plotinian Nous seems to rule out a conception of the first multiplicity of Being along Aristotelian or Kantian lines, from the Categories or the Critique of Pure Reason. The Plotinian eidê are alive. It is as proper to speak of them as gods as it is to speak of them as t1he primary division of Being. And they are Being as thought, and thought as the activity (energeia) of thought. They are Being as thinking activity. If this is the case then the intelligible order of Nous cannot merely contain the autozôon. Proclus has analysed the thinking of Nous into its moments, one of which is the multiplicity of intelligible genera which is the autozôon. But just as there is more to the description of Nous in Plotinus than its multiplicity, so in Proclus this multiplicity must

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be embraced by and be an expression of a prior unity. The unity here is Eternity as the second intelligible triad. As such Eternity is not a genus of Being, because the genera of Being only make their appearance with the autozôon. Proclus remarks that the genera of Being imply their opposites, but Eternity is not opposed to any of the genera in the way in which Rest, for example, is opposed to Motion. All of these are equally eternal: Same, Different, Rest, Motion. This would not be the case if Eternity were one [genus of Being] among them. For Rest is not equally Rest and Motion, but all of the intelligibles are equally always in existence and eternal. So Eternity is opposed to none of these, nor to anything which comes after it. (Proclus, In Timaeum III.11.23–28) If this is the case, then neither is Time opposed to Eternity. Rather than being the opposite of Eternity, Time is its image. This is important for Proclus’ conception of the structure of the whole of things. Being does not fall into two different genera: that which is eternal and that which is temporal. If this were the case, then the eternal and the temporal would be related to each other in the same manner as any other two genera into which Being falls, such as Rest and Motion, or Sameness and Rest. Instead, in Proclus, we find that the temporal is related to the eternal not as simply other than it, but rather as its image. As we will see below, this means that Time is the unifying principle of the temporal, and is not ranked itself as being in Time, in the way that Eternity is the unifying principle of the intelligible genera without itself being one of these genera. Further, eternal things and temporal things are not related as simply belonging to different genera of Being. Rather, temporal things are an image of the eternal genera of Being itself. So Eternity cannot be a genus of Being, and if it is not a genus of Being it cannot be in the autozôon, the third intelligible triad. Rather, it is the comprehensive principle of the intelligible genera in the autozôon. It is Eternity which brings them to birth and is the cause of their unchanging permanence. …and [Eternity is] the cause of the unchanging permanence of all [the intelligible genera], a cause which is neither among the many intelligible [genera] themselves, nor comes from them by [a sort of] collection, but is raised above them and present to them, and by itself arranges them and as it were gives them shape, and it does this by making them to be as a whole all at once. For the manifold Form of the intelligibles (hê pantodapê tôn noêtôn idea) is not brought forth immediately after the Good, which is without any trace of multiplicity. Rather, there are certain natures in between, more unified than the multiplicity of the All-Complete [i.e. the autozôon], and shewing forth in themselves the pangs of childbirth and the signs of the generation of the Wholes and the unifying bond. (Proclus, In Timaeum III.12.18–27) Eternity is one of these natures that are “in between,” as the principle immediately prior to the autozôon. The term “pangs of childbirth” (ôdina) is an interesting term for Proclus

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to use with regard to the emergence of the intelligible genera from Eternity. Throughout Proclus we find that multiplicity is brought forth from unity. Hence Eternity, as the principle of bringing forth, is not ranked with the intelligible genera, precisely because it is a prior unity which brings them forth. Proclus quotes the Chaldaean Oracles, and takes up their motif of the “Paternal Nous” (patrikos nous) and the “Flower of Nous” (noou anthos). [Eternity] is saturated (diakorê) with Paternal Divinity, which [the Oracles] call “the Flower of Nous.” It shines down on all things, as the source of their nous and their eternally unchanging knowing, and their erotic turning towards (strephesthai) and activity around the cause of all. (Proclus, In Timaeum III.14.11–14) Eternity is not only the source of the bringing to birth of the intelligible genera, it also is the source of their nous and hence of their circular movement back towards the source of their birth. These two motifs, of paternity and of a turning towards or return (epistrophê) indicate what is really going on in Proclus’ conception of Nous. The multiplicity of intelligible genera in the autozôon are not merely a static set of categories, because they themselves are living eidê which have been brought to birth. And in their being brought to birth they look back to their source, they strive towards it erotically, and they attain its unity and perfection in the only way they can, i.e. through their own multiplicity. Nous as a whole has the unity of a mind whose thought is of itself. Nous as intellectual, or as act of thinking, has a unity afforded through its orientation back towards the intelligible genera. But these genera themselves also have the unity afforded by their erotic orientation towards their own source. This unity afforded by being oriented towards a prior unity will also be the sort of unity which Time affords the multiplicity inherent in dianoia. So in Proclus’ system, even at the highest levels of Nous, Being is a dynamic coming forth into multiplicity of that which is hidden in a prior unity.9 So that which emerges into multiplicity has a certain unity about it, as having sprung from a single source and as returning to the same source. Such a multiplicity may be thought of as vectoral, i.e. as pointing the way back towards its own origin. Or it may be thought of as the circumference of a circle, whose infinity of points are all made into one figure by their orientation towards the centre, i.e. by their equidistance from the centre. Nous as a dynamic coming forth of a prior unity into multiplicity is not so much like the common sense which gives unity to the proper senses, in Aristotle, or the transcendental unity of apperception which allows us to add the ‘I think’ to all of our thoughts, in Kant. Rather, it is in fact closer to the self-articulation of Geist in Hegel, or the revealing of itself of Being in Heidegger. In both these thinkers we have a coming forth into multiplicity, but both differ from Proclus’ conception of a unity which is prior to and aloof from the unity it engenders, and which also does emerge into this multiplicity. Nous gives rise to a multiplicity of intelligible genera, but it is a primal unity before actualising itself in these multiple ways. Being is itself a power, a unity, which expresses itself in the multiplicity which it brings to birth, yet all that multiplicity of thought which is brought to birth seeks the unity which Being in itself is.10 Thus besides the third intelligible triad, the autozôon which is the multiplicity of intelligible genera,

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there must be a prior principle which brings this multiplicity to birth. And this is Eternity, the second intelligible triad. Let us concede that there must be a principle before the autozôon. Why is it Eternity, and why is there also another intelligible triad before Eternity? Briefly stated, Proclus tells us that from Plato we know that the autozôon is eternal. But to be eternal means to participate in Eternity, not to be Eternity itself. So we know that Eternity is distinct from, and higher than, the autozôon. Further, by analogy with Time and the World, we know that Eternity is the next thing above the autozôon. Proclus tells us that the World is the first thing to participate in Time, because Time did not exist before the creation of the World (Proclus, In Timaeum III. 12.31ff). In other words, genesis as a whole participates in Time as a whole, and is its primary participant. Likewise, the totality of intelligible genera participate in Eternity as a whole, and is its primary participant, because it is the primary locus of eternal beings. Hence Eternity is the second intelligible triad, which brings to birth the autozôon as the third intelligible triad. What is before Eternity? Eternity is not itself the primal unity of Being, but rather, it is the principle of giving birth. It is the second moment; the power (dunamis) in the triad pater/dunamis/nous; the life (zôê) in the triad on/zôê/ wows; the procession (proodos) in the triad monê/proodos/epistrophê.11 As power, life, and procession, Eternity is the principle of emergence, and what emerges is before it. Remember also that not all which is is eternal. Therefore Being must be a principle which is more comprehensive than Eternity, and in Procline metaphysics the higher principle is more comprehensive than the lower. Thus the unity to which Eternity looks is Being itself, and it is Being which Eternity causes to be expressed and brought to birth in multiplicity in the autozôon. Being is the first intelligible triad, called by Proclus the One-Being. Proclus interprets the phrase “Eternity which remains in a One” from Plato’s Timaeus to refer to this. The One in which Eternity remains is not the One itself, but rather the unity of the One-Being. If Eternity manifests a duality, even if we are often silent about this in our haste—for the “always” is bound to “being” (tôi onti) in one unity (kata tauton) and “Eternity” (aiôn) is “that which always is” (ho aei ôn)—it seems that that before Eternity there is the monad of Being, the OneBeing, and remaining in this One [i.e. in the One-Being]. (Proclus, In Timaeum III.15.11–15) The monad of Being is the One-Being, so that it is in this that Eternity remains. Eternity manifests the duality of “being” and “eternal.” But the Being which lies before it also manifests a duality: that of “One” and “Being.” The One itself as absolute simplicity does not admit of any duality, and so cannot be said to be. But the unity which Eternity makes manifest is a unity of Being, and is therefore the One-Being, not the One itself. So we see that Being does not fall into eternal and temporal as genera of itself. Rather, Being gives forth through the productive power of Eternity the eternal genera in the autozôon, which themselves give rise to a temporal image. Because Time is an image of Eternity, rather than simply a different mode of existence for beings, we should expect that Time will also be a principle of bringing to birth and of unification. In summary, the three moments of the intelligible in Nous are the simple source which remains in itself, the One-Being; Eternity as the principle which brings to birth the intelligible genera and

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unifies and comprehends them; and the autozôon which is a living multiplicity of intelligible genera, erotically turned towards the unity which is their source. Time as a Moving Image of Eternity In what manner is Time a moving image of Eternity? Proclus tells us that Eternity measures the intelligible, as a unity, while Time measures the things which are in becoming, as numbered. Eternity is a measure in the sense that the multiplicity of intelligibles in the autozôon are all beings, and as such they are all expressions of the unity which is the One-Being. Eternity is the principle which brings them forth into a permanent existence, and leads them back beyond itself to the One-Being, specifically because they manifest in a multiple form the unity which is the One-Being. It is a measure because the eternal multiplicity of intelligible genera strive towards the unity which it reveals while manifesting it in their own multiple way. Beings which come to be and pass away, on the other hand, do not partake of the permanence of Eternity. They have only an image of that permanence, which we know as duration. Thus the principle which is their measure, the unity which they strive towards and manifest, is not Eternity, but Time. So in the same manner as the cosmos is said to be an image (eikôn) of the intelligible, so the cosmic measure is named an “image” of the measure of the intelligible. But Eternity is a measure because it is a unity (hôs to hen), while Time is a measure because it is a number. Both of them measure, but Eternity measures what is unified, while Time measures what is numbered; Eternity measures the permanence of beings (diamonên tôn ontôn), while Time measures the duration of things which become (paratasin tôn ginomenôn). The supposed opposition between them [Eternity and Time] does not indicate dissimilarity between the measures, but rather indicates the derivation of the secondary realities from the older ones. For procession (proodos) derives from remaining (monês) and number derives from unity (tou henos). (Proclus, In Timaeum III. 17.25–18.02) Plato tells us that Time “proceeds according to number” (Plato, Timaeus 37d), and measures things which become as numbered. Proclus contrasts this with Eternity which “remains in a One” and measures things as a unity. Eternity measures things as a unity because that which it measures is an unchanging multiplicity, or rather, a singular multiple reflection of the One-Being. Time, on the other hand, measures things as numbered, because things which come to be and pass away exhibit a diversity of periods, or cyclical activities, which makes up for them their duration. More importantly, their duration is numbered because they do not exist as a whole all at once, and if they are not to be completely without order their duration must be numbered. We should understand “number” here both in the common sense manner, as the number assigned to the periodic orbit of a planet, and in a sense more akin to logos or eidos. In this second sense, Time is

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the measure of encosmic beings because it is the number or order of their unfolding into multiplicity. Hence it contains the plan both of their unfolding and of their perfection. Perhaps also Time is an image of Eternity because it is that which brings encosmic beings to perfection, just as Eternity does for [eternal] beings, as “that which holds them together” (sunocheus) and “guardian” (phrouros).12 So that things which are unable to live according to nous are brought under the order of Fate (hupo tên tês heimarmenês agetai taxin), lest they flee the divine completely and come to be without order. Thus even that which has departed from Eternity and is unable to partake wholly in the perfection of Rest by remaining always all at once the same (hama kai aei tauta) is perfected through the sovereignty of Time. [Temporal things] are roused by Time into activities (energeias) which are profitable for them, and through certain recurrent periods are able to enjoy the perfection which is appropriate to them. (Proclus, In Timaeum III.18.02–12). Each thing which is in becoming has its own period, and thus its own numbering of its period, which sets its boundaries and its circuit. In his characterisation of temporal things as periodic, Proclus has in mind primarily the periodic activity of Soul. However, he also has in mind the circular orbits of the planets, whose periodic return to their starting points is an image of the activity of Soul; and the periodic return of things to their point of origin in Nature, such as the seasons, and the procreation of animal species. The circuit of the species oak tree from acorn to maturity and then back to acorn again illustrates how Proclus thinks about this. The oak species has a period in the sense that there is a return to the beginning point, in the offspring. This period is numbered because it usually takes a certain number of years. However, it is also numbered in the sense that this period progresses along a certain bound circuit—acorns don’t mature into elm trees, for example—and this boundary to the circuit of the life of this species is set according to Proclus by the monad of Time and the species’ participation of the Forms in the monad of Time. While this characterisation of Time applies to all encosmic things, we will speak here only of the participation of the Soul in Time.13 Time is not only an image of Eternity, it is a moving image of Eternity. However, Proclus points out that nothing can move with regard to the whole of itself, as there must be a subject for movement which remains the same and undergoes the motion. Otherwise there would be a substantial change, and in moving with regard to the whole of itself Time would cease to be Time. Thus the monad of Time is in itself unmoving, and only moves in its participants. So indeed the monad of Time remains (menei), because it is suspended from the Demiurge, but being filled with measuring power, and wishing to measure the motions of the soul’s essence (ousia), and the activities (energeiai) and passions (pathêmata) of the physical and bodily, it proceeded according to number. Time, remaining in its own partlessness and internal energeia, with regard to its external [energeia], that which is contained by what is measured by it, proceeds according to number, that

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is according to certain intellectual eidê, or rather according to the first number itself, which presides over the intellectuals (ta noera), in a manner analogous to the One Being, as Parmenides says, which presides over the intelligibles. Time proceeds then according to that number, on account of which it provides the appropriate measure to each of the species (eidê) of encosmic beings. (Proclus, In Timaeum III. 19.02–14) The monad of Time itself stands above that which it measures, as Eternity stands above the intelligible genera. Notice that in order to be analogous to the intellectual orders, Proclus has distinguished the “first number itself” (auton ton prôtiston arithmon) from the monad of Time. This number is a higher unity than Time, just as the One-Being is a higher unity than Eternity. We can take this as an example of Proclus’ idea of the analogous structures which hold between different levels of the universe. As there are higher unities than Time, Time itself not only measures, it is itself measured. Time itself is also measured, but not by anything extended (for it would be ridiculous to say that that which possesses the elder nature and worthiness is measured by that which comes after it). Rather, Time is measured by the single monad of Time, which its procession (proodos) is said to unfold (anelittein), and much more primarily by the Demiurge and by Eternity itself, of which we say it is an image, and with regard to which it is rendered mobile. (Proclus, In Timaeum III.31.04–10) In other words, just as the intelligible genera unfold Eternity and the One-Being, that which partakes of Time unfolds the monad of Time, and the Demiurge, and Eternity. The term unfold (anelittein) has a technical meaning in Proclus. It refers to the unfolding or unrolling of the higher principle by the lower, by which the higher unity is manifest in the lower multiplicity. All unfoldings are multiple reflections not only of their immediate superiors, but of every analogous order above them. As that which measures, Time is a number. But it is a number in the sense of an intellectual eidos, so it measures its participants because it is an intellectual eidos which its participants unfold. So Time has various levels, i) It is number as “what is numbered” or measured by itself, i.e. its presence in what participates in Time, ii) It is number as the measure of its participants, i.e. through itself as the monad which is the unmoving moment of Time itself, iii) Finally, Time as a whole is measured by what stands above it: the Demiurge, and Eternity. So Time as number exists in its participants as that which is measured by itself, as itself the measure of its participants, and as itself being measured by higher principles. Proclus tells us that Time proceeds according to a number which is the intelligible number, referring either to the autozôon, Eternity, or the intelligible as a whole. However, when Timaeus says that Time proceeds according to number, he is referring primarily to Time itself as the intellectual number which numbers or measures the simple procession of Time and the complex procession of things in Time.14 So Time does proceed according to the intelligible number, and also in that it itself numbers its participants, and also again it proceeds according

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to the number in its participants by which they are numbered. This [last] is [Time as] numbered, and possesses only a sort of image (eidôlon ti) of essential Time (ousiôdous chronou), by which everything is numbered through the larger or smaller numbers of their own life, so that a cow lives for a certain time, a man for a certain time, and the sun, the moon, Saturn, and the other planets have their return and make their periodic revolutions by this or that measure. (Proclus, In Timaeum III. 19.24–32) It is this middle sort of measure, Time as the measure of its participants, which is important for us here. Time measures the duration of the life of its participants. More importantly, Time measures their circular activity, most prominently the orbits of the planets, and the circular activity of the soul of the cosmos and partial souls.15 Time brings itself to imitate Eternity, because as Eternity is comprehensive of the intelligible genera, Time is comprehensive of its participants. But it also brings temporal things themselves into a closer imitation of the intelligibles. Things in Time do not share in the permanence and unchanging identity of the intelligibles, but through their circular revolutions and periodic returns to their beginning points they imitate this intelligible immobile permanence (Proclus, In Timaeum III.20.00–21.05). Circular motion is in one sense motion, but in another sense it is a being at rest, because what is in motion always returns to its point of origin. In a certain sense, moreover, circular motion has no beginning point. One might think of a planet as desiring the rest of the centre of the circle which is its orbit, but being unable to attain that rest, it imitates it by its unbroken circling motion. By contrast, rectilinear motion leaves its point of departure never to approach it again. However, Time also embraces rectilinear motion, because even that which is below things which move in a circle are measured by their duration. For this reason Proclus says that Time is said to move in a spiral (helikoeidê), because the spiral embraces in one single Form both the circular and the rectilinear (Proclus, In Timaeum III.21.02–05). This measurement of the periodic energeiai of things is the primary sense of Time for Proclus. Time perfects things, and brings them to imitate the intelligible paradigms by measuring their periodic revolution around itself. Proclus does concede that we have another sort of measurement of Time, in our marking of the passage of Time. But the sort of measuring which we do, and which we normally consider to be Time in the primary sense, is performed with a certain notion (ennoia) which is only “about” Time and is not Time itself (touta gar hê ennoia drâi hê peri chronou kai ouk autos ho chronos) (Proclus, In Timaeum III.20.02–03). If Time is to be the measure of our motion, it certainly could not be an ennoia which is in us. Even the motions of the heavenly bodies, which we think of as marking Time, are not the primary measure, because they themselves are also measured. They have determinate periods to their circular energeiai. The primary measure must be the monad of Time itself, which is a moving image of Eternity. “Image” because it embraces its participants with its number in the way Eternity embraces the intelligibles with its unity, and “moving” because its participants are in motion, although it itself is at rest.

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Time as Nous What is the monad of Time itself and how does it measure the circular activity of the Soul? According to Proclus, it is a nous which is unfolded and unrolled by the activity of things in Time, but primarily by the dianoetic activity of the Soul. For as Nous is to the Soul, so is Eternity to Time, and inversely, so that Time is before the Soul, just as Eternity is before Nous. And Time should be participated by the Soul, and does not participate in the Soul, just as Nous does not participate in Eternity, but the inverse. So Time possesses a certain intellectual nature (noeran…tina phusin) which moves in a circle everything which participates in it, and particularly souls. (Proclus, In Timaeum III.27.20–26) Time is an intellectual nous (nous noeros), i.e. a nous in the intellectual hebdomad of Nous as a whole situated below the Demiurge. According to Proclus the essence (ousia) of the soul is a fullness of logoi (plêroma tôn ousiôdôn logôn) which are the soul’s participation in Nous. However, the soul is not immediately conscious of its own essential logoi, and possesses them as if breathing, or like a heartbeat.16 In order to make this hidden content of its own ousia explicit to itself, the soul must draw them forth through what Proclus calls projection (probolê). But because the soul is not able to grasp the entire intelligible world in one simple act, it cannot draw forth all of its logoi at once. Rather, it draws them forth one at a time in the divided motion which is discursive thinking (dianoia). Thus the divided motion of dianoia is what is measured by the monad of Time. Because the logoi which constitute the Soul’s ousia are its own participation in Nous, the dianoetic activity of Soul as an unfolding of its own ousia is also an unfolding of Nous itself. And because the particular Nous which the Soul unfolds is the monad of Time, this is the sense in which Time is a measure of the Soul’s activity. The Soul unfolds and unrolls the nous which is the monad of Time, through a thinking activity which may be understood metaphorically as a circle, circuit, or period which has Time as its centre. And so, Time is eternal, and a monad, and a centre by its essence and its activity which has remained at rest in itself; and at the same time it is continuous, and is a number, and a circle by its procession and what participates in it. [Time] then is a certain proceeding nous, since it could not bring to perfection the resemblance of encosmic beings to their paradigms unless it itself were first suspended from [these paradigms], but it also proceeds and flows en masse towards the things (ta pragmata) over which it keeps guard. (Proclus, In Timaeum III.26.30–27.08) The Soul partakes of Time, but not in its ousia. Rather, it is the changing energeia of Soul which participates in Time. The Soul unfolds its own unchanging ousia, but this

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ousia participates in Nous atemporally. It is only in the activity of unrolling and unfolding its own ousia, through the projection of the logoi which are its ousia (probolê tôn ousdiôdôn logôn), that the Soul participates in Time. Why not identify the monad of Time with the ousia of the Soul? This is a complex issue, and amounts to the question “why is the ousia of the Soul not itself Nous?” The answer is likely that the Soul’s ousia is not identical to Nous, but rather is a remaining in Nous, because Nous is the Soul’s point of departure and that towards which its energeia strives in its return. We must resist thinking of ousia, dunamis, and energeia as three absolutely separate things. They are moments of the unfolding of Soul as a whole. So the ousia of the Soul is not identical to Nous in the same manner in which the point of departure is not identical to the first leg of a journey. Time is at rest both in its ousia and its energeia while the Soul is at rest only in its ousia, and in motion in its energeia. However, Time proceeds in its participants, so the description of Time as at rest has to be understood in such a way that in itself Time is at rest, both in its ousia and its internal energeia, but is also in motion in its participants, or in its external energeia.17 Being at rest and being eternal are identified in Proclus, so both Time and the ousia of the Soul are eternal. As well, Time’s presence in its participants and its external energeia must be identified. If we take the three terms—ousia, internal energeia, and external energeia—we are able to rank Eternity, Time, and the Soul with regard to a greater and greater share in motion. Eternity is at rest in its ousia, internal energeia, and external energeia. Time as Nous is at rest in its ousia, and its internal energeia, but it is in motion in its external energeia, i.e. in its participants. The Soul, on the other hand, remains in Nous, and so is said to have an ousia which is at rest and eternal. Yet neither its internal nor external energeia is at rest (Proclus, In Timaeum III.24.02ff; 25.11ff). Proclus describes the energeia of the Soul as a circle, circuit, or period around the centre which is Time. The circle metaphor is extremely important for Proclus, because it is his primary metaphor for describing the relation between dianoia and Nous. It may be thought of in two complementary ways. In one way of thinking, Nous is a point in which the Soul remains, and from which its activity begins. This activity circles forth, unrolls the concentrated content of Nous, and returns back to its beginning point in Nous at the end of its period. This point of view is used by Proclus when speaking about the generation of a lower spiritual entity by a higher, because it emphasises the aspect of remaining in, proceeding from, but returning to a given cause. However, in the context of the Soul’s circuit around the monad of Time the complementary point of view is more important. Rather than an original point on the circumference of the circle which is the Soul’s activity, Nous, as Time, is the centre of the circle, and the Soul’s activity is the circumference. The distance of the circumference from the centre indicates that the Soul has proceeded from Nous. And the orientation of the circumference around the centre indicates the circling return by which the Soul tries to attain the unity of Nous, but makes itself many in its own thinking. The Soul circles around Nous, viewing it from different sides, and it is the various points of view which constitute the divided logoi which are the conceptions of the Soul’s dianoia. And so the procession of Time is a dividing and unfolding motion [kinêsis] which makes appear part by part the power which remains

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partless, like a sort of number which receives in a divided manner all of the eidê of the monad and which returns back towards itself and begins the circle anew. (Proclus, In Timaeum III.30.26–30) The motion of Time, i.e. this dividing energeia of Soul which participates in Time, is measured by the Monad of Time, and even higher, by the Demiurge, and by Eternity. The sense of measure becomes clear here. These higher unities are a measure in the sense that they are the paradigm which the divided image in the thought of Soul seeks to reflect. They measure, because the term of the Soul’s period, its metaphorical circuit or circumference, is oriented back towards an explication of the centre which is Nous. They measure, because they are the comprehensive source, and the originary touchstone for the divided energeia which is the activity of Soul. Proclus states that the monad of Time and the dianoetic activity of the Soul which unfolds it is an image of Eternity and the intelligible genera in the autozôon. It is extremely important to take this statement seriously. Just like Eternity, Time is a principle of bringing to birth, or dynamic coming forth. It is a principle which divides up the unity of Nous and gives rise to the dynamic energeia which is the periodic motion of the Soul. Eternity gives rise to multiplicity as simultaneous presence. Time, on the other hand, gives rise to serial motion. We as souls do not have the entirety of the intelligible eidê present to our minds. Rather, we strive erotically towards them through a divided thinking which sees them dimly, part by part. So while Eternity and Time are both principles of bringing forth multiplicity, of giving birth to a multiple image of a prior unity, they themselves differ from each other as paradigm and image. The whole of Eternity is present to the intelligibles, and so is the whole of Time present to its participants, but while Eternity is present to the autozôon all at once, Time is broken up in its participants into what Proclus calls the eidê of Time: was, is, and will be (Proclus, In Timaeum III.37.01; 50.22–51.22). This difference is expressed in a lovely way even in the names for Eternity and Time, according to Proclus. Eternity (Aiôna) is to aei einai, i.e. the being which always is; while Time (chronos) is choronous, i.e. the Nous which dances in a circle like the chorus (Proclus, In Timaeum III.9.16–18; 28.00). Moreover, both Eternity and Time are principles not only of bringing to birth, but of unification. The intelligible genera in the autozôon are not simply a random collection of Forms. Rather, they are a complete totality of living Forms which are unified as a single reflection of the unity of the One-Being. The logoi which the Soul projects, as long as its self-motion (autokinêsis) is not infected with the motion-from-without (heterokinêsis) that arises from body, are not simply random thoughts about this or that. They are multiple, and in that sense are a descent from the unity of Nous. However, they are each of them vectors back towards the Nous which is the centre of their life. Hence the unfolding of logoi in dianoia allows the Soul eventually to leave behind dianoia by making more and more clear the Soul itself as image, and in doing so point more clearly the way towards Nous as the paradigm. But as long as our thinking remains dianoia without passing over into Nous it will seek wholeness without achieving it. Jean Trouillard speaks of the philosophy of Plotinus, but his characterisation is equally true of the Procline conception of dianoia.

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Nous does not infuse Soul with Ideas, but rather, through the irradiation of the intelligible and the sight which the soul directs towards Nous, we beget notions and logoi [raisons].18 The birth of these logoi will not cease until we leave behind dianoia altogether. Conclusion The consequences of this conception of dianoia for Proclus’ systematic philosophy cannot be ignored. Being and thought for Proclus are dynamic, from the highest to the lowest levels of Being. His system traces the motion of a single power which begins from absolute unity and divides itself in a dynamic remaining, procession, and return. In this process Being itself is articulated, and brought to birth. Each successive level is the same as its prior insofar as it is similar and an image, but it must be admitted that as image it is also different from and other than that of which it is an image. This puts into question the status of the divided logoi which dianoia employs to construct a systematic philosophy that strives to embrace all levels of reality. Proclus is quite explicit that like is known by like. Sense knows the sensible, opinion the opinable, dianoia the dianoetic object, Nous the intelligible object, and it is by a one that we unify with the One (Proclus, Theologia Platonica I.15.17–21). In many of his writings Proclus indicates that he thinks the partial soul can leave behind its divided activity and rise to the level of Nous, and even the One.19 Even if this is true, that which is known by dianoia is known in a divided manner. Further, any transcendent experience of Nous, if it is to be expressed to others or to oneself in a philosophical system, must be expressed in the language of dianoia—in one’s own thinking, in speech, or in writing.20 So when we assess the writings of Proclus as philosophical system, we must not forget that they are a record of a thinking which is dianoia. As we have seen from this study, Proclus thinks that dianoia is a circling around a centre which is its own participation in Nous. Thus it seems to have a number of characteristics which affect its status as systematic philosophy. The first is the fact that at any given time it is incomplete. The unity of the One-Being is present to the autozôon through the mediation of Eternity in a simple presence. But dianoia is always still on the way. The intelligible is present to it only through its own dividing circuit of Nous, and this circuit in fact is never finished on the level of dianoia. This circuit is never finished for dianoia because dianoia is a circumference which never touches the centre which it explicates. In like manner, the One-Being stands aloof from the intelligible multiplicity of the autozôon which reflects it. As long as the Soul persists in an activity which divides the unity of its participation in Nous, it produces for itself dianoetic logoi instead of intelligible eidê. Thus the period of the Soul’s activity will never be finished until the Soul leaves behind the dividing activity of dianoia, and flees multiplicity for the quiet unity of Nous. But then such a Soul would have ceased to engage at all in philosophy. Moreover, the dividing activity which is dianoia brings into existence a level of being which actually differs from its paradigm, even if it is an image of it. All that is in Time exists because of the declension in being to which the divided activity of Soul gives rise. So in a certain sense, dianoia is a discourse which in speaking brings the terms which it

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uses into being. This should make us wary of the status of systematic philosophy’s claim to comprehend all of reality, as the terms in which it must necessarily deal exist only on the psychic level, and refer to what lies above them only as images refer to their paradigms.21 Thus any claim such as Lowry’s, that Proclus’ system seeks to be complete, comprehensive, or a totality, is a misreading of Proclus’ system. Systematic philosophy, for Proclus, is in principle incomplete, because the logoi in which it is expressed will in principle never finish their explication of Nous. The articulation of points around the centre of a circle may never end, because there are a potential infinity of perspectives on the circumference from which to view the centre. Because systematic philosophy is in principle incomplete, each philosophical work must be thought of as a partial explication of Nous. Finally, the divided language in which systematic philosophy expresses itself is brought into existence by dianoia itself, so any set of principles or propositions which constitute a philosophical system must be thought of as a divided image of undivided Being, rather than a comprehensive account of the articulations of Being itself. Let us take it as established, then, that Proclus thinks systematic philosophy speaks its own dianoetic language. He also thinks that this is not the only language in which one may speak of the gods. One may speak like the priests, who under divine inspiration name the gods according to the fashion of their sect; or one may speak symbolically or mythologically, naming the gods by their Greek mythological names; or one may use mathematical images of the gods, as do the Pythagoreans (Proclus, In Parmenidem 646– 647; Theologia Platonica I.17.9–23.11). It must be granted that Proclus describes the dianoetic mode of exposition in certain places very much in the manner that Lowry puts forth (Proclus, Theologia Platonica I.20.19–25). But it remains the case that dianoia divides its object and so in understanding what lies above it, dianoia makes it what in a certain sense it is not. If this were not the case, then there would be no need for the symbolic, enthusiastic, or mathematical modes of divine exposition. Further, the end of dianoia would be dianoia itself. And from Proclus it is fairly clear that the end of dianoia is Nous and unification with the One. So it seems to be the case that Lowry is misreading Proclus. It remains possible that Proclus should take Lowry’s advice by discarding the One and Nous, and embraced the All as dianoetic. Proclus would likely respond to this suggestion in the following manner. Dianoia is a dividing activity, which has as its end a comprehensive grasp of what it divides. But if there is no original unity from which dianoia takes its birth, then what is dianoia dividing? Dianoia cannot divide itself, as a dividing activity cannot itself be divided; it requires something other than itself on which to work. Further, dianoia is erotic. It is drawn towards its object. If its object is itself, is it not then already in possession of what it seeks? And if so, would not erôs disappear? Finally, if dianoia makes its own world in thinking, upon what model is it basing its images? What measures its motion, and keeps it within the boundaries of the true, even if that truth is dianoetic truth? I began with a preliminary taste of the extant Procline corpus. What should we make of its two systems, five Platonic commentaries, mathematical, physical, and moral works? I suggest that the corpus of Proclus is a projection which is underway. If we were to consider it complete, either in one of its parts or in toto, we would have to hold that Proclus himself was able to complete his periodic revolution around Nous, and moreover,

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that he was able to express this secret noetic content in dianoetic terms. Instead, the Procline characterisation of dianoia should make us realise that his philosophical corpus is a series of divided approaches to intelligible unity. Moreover, in bringing these works into being, the dividing thought which is dianoia simultaneously brings into being the philosophical terms which it employs. But this dividing activity can never exhaust its source. Philosophical reason in principle cannot cease to articulate anew the unity around which it circles. So the aim is not completion, if completion means finality. Rather, for Proclus philosophy as system should be thought of as a series of vectors, which point the dividing mind back towards the unity which it divides. I finish with Jean Trouillard once again, on Plotinus. We will always be stuck if we want to understand the Platonic or Plotinian Ideas as structures which we posit outside of us. Thrown before us in this way, they will lose the character of concrete presence which we can not deny them. They will be categories, postulates or myths. They can not be constructed, or given. It remains that they are norms which are “seen” and achieved, and are identical to the activity of Nous, which the whole life of the soul makes use of but never equals. This is why you could extend the list of the Ideas without end, but miss the essential point. Plato himself only gave examples. Those who today have wished to attempt it have produced a deceptive and empty result.22

Notes 1 For two glimpses of this contribution see Gersh 1978; Hankey 1980. 2 There has come to be an extensive literature on Proclus, most of it in the form of articles rather than monographs. The main bibliography for this literature is Muth 1993. The three most important monographs on Proclus are Trouillard 1972, Beierwaltes 1965, and Gersh 1973. 3 See for example Proclus, In Euclidem 3–5. 4 Lowry 1980, 85. The disagreement between a Procline and an Hegelian philosophy over whether the first principle should be self-thinking thought or the One is related to the disagreement about the nature of philosophical system itself. In Proclus the multiplicity of system is an expression of a prior unity which cannot be grasped on its own terms. Thinking creates its own categories in an attempt to explicate its source which both succeeds and fails. Hence the most proper name for the first principle of all is the One, because this name is the best symbol for the hidden and unspeakable unity that is the pole around which the multiple articulates itself. This is different from a philosophy in which the movement is the selfarticulation of the first principle itself, as in Hegel. 5 Lowry is in fact referring to the henades huperousioi, not the henades which are the intelligibles in the autozôon and which are the genera of Being. His reading is again an Hegelianising reading, in which it would be natural to think of the first unities as beings. But for Proclus that which is multiple in principle comes before that which is multiple as determined. And so between the One and the intelligible genera come the first Limit, the first Unlimited, and the henads. 6 He speaks of triads because each is a triad of remaining, proceeding, and returning moments, which are the ubiquitous structuring principles of the Procline cosmos. 7 That there is a seven-fold division of the intellectual order indicates that Proclus is not following only the inner logic of dianoia. He most often does follow this logic, and his

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system usually unfolds in triads. But the intellectual hebdomad is likely drawn from the Chaldaean Oracles, which Proclus considers to be a higher revelation of the hidden secrets of divinity than dianoia. See Lewy 1978, and Festugière 1971. 8 See the discussion of the mixture of Forms at Proclus, In Parmenidem 768ff. 9 This dynamic coming forth of a multiplicity from a previous unity is forceably stated by J.Trouillard. See Trouillard 1960, 86: “Le genre n’est pas seulement la raison efficace des ressemblances, mais aussi de l’infinie diversification des espèces et des individus. Car par l’apeiron qu’il contient uni à son peras it peut alimenter dans une ligne donnée les antithèses mutuelles des termes subordonnés. Et cette synthèse d’autre et de même forme la série appropriée ou le nombre connatural à chaque unité qualifiée… Cela ne signifie nullement que le genre soit ce qu’il produit en ce sense qu’il enfermerait d’avance l’idée distincte de ses participations. Celles-ci peuvent lui ressembler sans que lui leur ressemble. II faudrait plutôt dire qu’il les fonde selon tout leur être, parce qu’il a en lui beaucoup plus qu’il ne faut pour justifier leur apparition…” See also Gersh 1973, 120–121. 10 Richard Sorabji, in Sorabji 1983, 137–156 makes a case for the position that the thought of Nous in Plotinus is prepositional. His argument is that where there is complexity of thought, there is predication. I do not find this convincing, for the following reasons. First, in the contemporary analytical context out of which Sorabji writes, propositional thought connotes more than complexity. It is usually understood, whether tacitly or explicitly, to involve a synthesis of terms. As I am arguing, in Neoplatonism thinking is not a synthesis, but rather a division of a prior unity. Hence the Kantian demand for a justification of a priori synthetic propositions is mistaken. Rather, it is the implicit grasp of the prior unity which alows the division which produces the multiplicity of terms in the first place. Further, for the position that the thought of Nous is propositional as a whole, including the intellectual moment, to have any real content it is necessary that there be a real difference between subject and predicate. Thus Nous would think a Form by thinking that it is something, and this something must be something else than the original Form if all of Nous’ thoughts are not to be analytic. But what would Nous think the Forms are other than themselves? Why is the conception that all of Nous’ thoughts are of the form “X is X” more attractive than the conception that Nous’ thought is a non-propositional resting in itself. Finally, a proposition implies logical motion from the subject to the predicate, mediated by being. The mind moves from the concept of the subject, through the concept of being, to the concept of the predicate. The motion in Nous seems much more to be a unified splintering of Being itself which produces its own determinations, which then can stand as subjects and predicates for discursive thinking. Propositional thought is not such as to give rise to the original genera of Being, but the thought of Nous does in fact do this, according to Plotinus and Proclus. For this reason I think Sorabji is mistaken in calling the thought of Nous in Plotinus propositional. 11 Proclus, In Timaeum III.10.30; 15.11–15. These three triads are: father/power/ intellect; being/life/intellect; remaining/procession/return. Each triad is each of these three sets of moments. However, the structure is repeated on a higher level, so that the three intelligible triads themselves may be thought to follow these sets of moments. 12 For these two Chaldaean terms Festugière refers us to Lewy 1978, 129–131. 13 See Beierwaltes 1965, 196–200. 14 The procession of Time considered as a whole is a simple, undifferentiated, and regular motion, even if the procession of its participants is complex, differentiated and irregular motion. See Proclus, In Timaeum III.30.1 1ff. 15 The partial soul is the soul which animates a human body. It is called partial (merikê) because although on the one hand it can be considered an individual and a soul in its own right, on the other hand it is a part of and an image of the hypostasis of Soul as a whole. Both Nous and Soul as hypostases are such unified multiplicities in which the structure of the whole is mirrored in each part.

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16 Proclus, In Alcibiadem 189.6–11; 192.2–5. See also C. Steel 1997. 17 Proclus, In Timaeum III.27.26–32. For a discussion of internal and external energeia in Plotinus, see Gerson 1993, 566ff. 18 Trouillard 1956, 70: “L’esprit n’infuse à l’âme aucune idée, mais, par l’irradiation de l’intelligible et la visée que l’âme dirige vers lui, nous engendrons notions et raisons.” 19 See Proclus, In Parmenidem 74K in the edition of Steel, Rumbach, MacIsaac 1997, lines 687–698. 20 The status of speech and writing are of course controversial. For Proclus, they would be a divided image of dianoetic thought, analogous to the manner in which dianoia is a divided image of Nous. 21 See the discussion of analogia in Gersh 1973, 83–90. 22 Trouillard 1956, 71: “On échouera toujours tant qu’on voudra réaliser les idées platoniciennes ou plotiniennes come des structures que l’on pose devant soi. Ainsi projetées, elles perderont le caractère de présence concrete qu’on ne peut leur refuser. Elles seront des catégories, postulats ou des mythes. Elles ne peuvent etre ni construites ni données. Reste qu’elles soient des normes apercevantes et réalisantes, identiques à l’activité de l’esprit, que toute la vie de l’âme emploie sans jamais les égaler. C’est pourquoi les lstes d’idées peuvent d’étendre sans fin en laissant échapper l’essentiel. Plato n’en a donné que des exemples. Et, de nos jours, ceux qui ont voulu s’y essayer ont fait un travail caduc at décevant.”

References Beierwaltes, W. 1965. Proklos, Grundzüge seiner Metaphysik. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann. Festugière, A.J. 1971. “Contemplation philosophique et art théurgique chez Proclus.” Êtudes de philosophie Grecque. Paris: Vrin, pp. 585–596. Gersh, S. 1973. KINÊSIS AKINÊTOS, a study of spiritual motion in the philosophy of Proclus. Leiden: E.J.Brill. ——. 1978. From lamblichus to Eriugena, and investigation of the prehistory and evolution of the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition. Leiden: E.J.Brill. Gerson, L. 1993. “Plotinus’s metaphysics: emanation or creation?” Review of Metaphysics 46, pp. 559–574. Hankey, W.J. 1980. “Aquinas’ first principle: Being or Unity?” Dionysius 4, pp. 133–172. Lewy, H. 1978. Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy, Mysticism, Magic and Platonism in the Later Roman Empire. Cairo (New edition with a contribution by P.Hadot, “Bilan et perspectives sur les Oracles Chaldaïques et une bibliographic de H.Lewy.” Paris, 1978). Lowry, J. 1980. The Logical Principles of Proclus’ Stoicheiôsis Theologikê as Systematic Ground of the Cosmos. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Muth, N.S. 1993. Proclo, negli ultimi quarant’ anni, Bibliografia ragionata delle letteratura primaria e secondaria riguardante il pensiero procliano e i suoi influssi storici (anni 1949– 1992). Milano: Gemelli. Plato. 1972. Timaeus. Edited by I.Burnet. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Plotinus. 1984. Ennead V. Translated by A.H.Armstrong. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library). Proclus. 1864. In Platonis Parmenidem. Edited by V.Cousin, in Procli philosophi Platonici opera inedita. Paris: Durand (repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961). ——. 1873. Procli Diadochi in primum Euclidis elementorum librum commentarii. Edited by G.Friedlein. Leipzig: Teubner. . 1903–1906. Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timaeum commentaria. Edited by E.Diehl, Vol. 1–3. Leipzig: Teubner (repr. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1965). ——. 1966–1968. Commentaire sur le Timée. Translated by A.J.Festugière, Vol. 1–5. Paris: Vrin.

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——. 1968–1997. Théologie platonicienne. Edited and translated by H.D.Saffrey and L.G.Westerink, Vols. 1–6. Paris: Belles Lettres. ——. 1985–1986. Sur le premier Alcibiade de Platon. Edited and translated by A.Segonds, Vol. 1– 2. Paris: Belles Lettres. ——. 1987. Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. Translated by Glenn R. Morrow and John M.Dillon. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——. 1992. A Commentary on the first book of Euclid’s Elements. Translated by Glenn R.Morrow. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Siorvanes, Lucas. Proclus. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1995. Sorabji, R. 1983. Time, creation and the continuum, theories in antiquity and the early middle ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Steel, C. 1997. “Breathing thought: Proclus on the innate knowledge of the soul,” in The perennial tradition of Neoplatonism, edited by J.Cleary. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 293–309. Steel, C., Rumbach, F., and MacIsaac, G. 1997. “The Final Section of Proclus’ Commentary on the Parmenides. A Greek Retroversion of the Latin Translation,” Documenti e Studi Sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 8, pp. 211–267. Trouillard, J. 1956. “La médiation du verbe selon Plotin,” Revue Philosophique 146, pp. 65–73. ——. 1960. “L’Intelligibilité Proclusienne,” in La Philosophic et ses Problemes, Recueil d’études de doctrine de d’histoire. Paris: Emmanuel Vitte, pp. 83–97. ——. 1972. L’Un et l’âme selon Proclos. Paris: Belles Lettres.

CHAPTER SIX Forms of Knowledge in the Arabic Plotinus Peter Adamson The theme of docta ignorantia, a “learned ignorance” or an ignorance that transcends knowledge, is a familiar one to students of Neoplatonism. It is perhaps most closely associated with the 15th century philosopher Nicholas of Cusa, but of course appears much earlier in the Neoplatonic tradition. Among these earlier appearances is the discussion of a “knowledge beyond knowledge and ignorance” (gnōsin exō gnōseōs kai agnoias) in a fragment of the Commentary on the Parmenides attributed to Porphyry (Hadot 1968, 2:78, ln.10–11). In the Arabic tradition, a doctrine of learned ignorance appears for the first time in a text known as the Theology of Aristotle. Mistakenly attributed to Aristotle, the Theology is in fact part of a paraphrase of passages from Plotinus’ Enneads, apparently produced by a member of al-Kindī’s circle of translators in 9th century Baghdad.1 We no longer have this paraphrase in its entirety, but it has been preserved for us in three texts. The first, the most well-known and by far the longest of the three is the so-called Theology of Aristotle (hereafter Th.A). The second, and shortest, is the Letter on Divine Science (hereafter DS). The third and final “text” actually consists of a number of fragments attributed to “the Greek Sage (al-shaykh al-yūnānī),” and which are collectively referred to as the Sayings of the Greek Sage (hereafter GS). The three texts together represent the Arabic Plotinus corpus (hereafter AP).2 Since I cannot here provide arguments as to the actual identity of the author of this paraphrase, I will refer to him simply as the Adaptor. To understand some of the historical importance of the theme of learned ignorance in AP, we should note a few more aspects of Th.A. It is itself composed of three parts. The first is a prologue which says, among other things, that it represents a “commentary” by Porphyry. The second is a series of “heads” or “headings” that parallel Enn IV.4. Finally, there is the body of the text, which is split into ten chapters, each called a mīmar (meaning “chapter” in Syriac). All this has led many to propose that AP is an Arabic translation of something written by Porphyry. The reference to a commentary and the presence of headings in the text could correspond to the “commentaries and headings” (hypnomnēmata, kephalaia) that Porphyry said he produced in his Life of Plotinus. Furthermore, there are philosophical parallels between Porphyry and AP, including of course the doctrine of learned ignorance. In AP this doctrine appears specifically in two 16 and a lengthy departure from the Greek text found in the second passages: mīmar of Th.A. This parallel between the Parmenides commentary and AP has been cited in favor of Porphyrian influence on AP (See below, section III). This provides a philological motive for close inspection of the doctrine as found in AP. Moreover, the notion of an “ignorance more noble than every knowledge” is among the most striking additions made by the Adaptor in his paraphrase of Plotinus: it shows the Adaptor at his most independent, either as an original thinker or as a transmitter of non-Plotinian Greek

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philosophy. In this chapter I will give an analysis of learned ignorance in AP, compare the doctrine to a related theme, that of a “potency higher than knowledge,” and finally discuss the possibility that the doctrine has its source in the thought of Porphyry. The Doctrine of Mīmar II A long passage in the second mīmar, almost completely independent from the Greek text, provides a developed discussion of the theme of learned ignorance. I quote the passage here in its entirety: Th.A II.46–52 [Badawī 36–7]: Someone may say: if the soul has imagined this [lower] world before it reaches it, then there is no doubt that it also imagines [the lower world] after it has left it, and reached the higher world. If it has imagined it, then there is no doubt that it remembers it. But you have said that, when [the soul] is in the intellectual world, it does not remember anything from this world at all. We say that, even if the soul has imagined this world before it came to it, nevertheless it imagined it intellectually, and this act is ignorance (jahl), not knowledge But this ignorance is more noble than every knowledge, and this is because the intellect is ignorant of what is above it through an ignorance which is more noble than knowledge If it remembers the things which are there, it does not descend to here, because the memory of those noble things prevents it from coming down to here. If it remembers the lower world, it descends from the noble world, but that may be in various ways, and this is because the intellect is ignorant of its cause above it, namely the First, Ultimate Cause. It does not know [its cause] completely, because if it knew it completely, it would be above [that cause] and a cause for it. It is absurd that anything be above its own cause and a cause for its cause, because then the effect would be the cause for its own cause, and the cause would be the effect of its own effect, and this is very repugnant. The intellect is ignorant of the things that are under it, as we have said before, because it does not need knowledge of them, because they are in it, and it is their cause. The ignorance of the intellect is not a privation of knowledge, but rather it is the ultimate knowledge, and this is because it knows the things not as with the knowledge the things have of themselves, but rather [with a knowledge] above this, and more excellent and higher, because it is their cause. The knowledge that things have of themselves is, for the intellect, ignorance, because it is not proper or complete knowledge. Therefore we say that the intellect is ignorant of the things which are under it, [and] we mean by this that it knows the things which are beneath it completely, not like the knowledge they have of themselves. It does not need knowledge of them, because it is a cause [for them] and in it are all

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its effects. If [all the effects] are in it, then it does not need knowledge of them. Likewise, the soul is ignorant of its effects in the way which we have mentioned above, and does not need knowledge of anything except for knowledge of the intellect and the First Cause, because these two are above it. The first thing to notice about this passage is that it is not completely independent from the Greek text, for it seems to be based on the following remark in Plotinus: Enn IV.4.4: For it could happen, even while one is not conscious (mē parakolouthounta) that one has [something], that one holds [that thing] to oneself more strongly than if one did know. This text is far from an endorsement of any “learned ignorance.” Rather, here Plotinus makes a characteristically subtle distinction between knowing something and being aware that one knows something. Perhaps the distinction was lost on the Adaptor; at any rate, his paraphrase introduces the wholly different distinction of ignorance and knowledge (II.47). Certainly, then, the Adaptor did not take the notion of learned ignorance from Plotinus. Rather, one has the sense that he came to the text with this doctrine in hand, and saw this passage as an opportunity for a digression on the subject. This should encourage us to think that the Adaptor has another source in mind here, and is not just providing an unusually original interpretation of something in the Enneads. A second thing to notice about the passage is that it is not the only reference to learned ignorance in Th.A. As mentioned above, one of the “headings” refers to the doctrine as well: Th.A On the intellect, and that knowledge there is below ignorance (jahl), and ignorance is the glory of the intellect there. This heading is in fact a paraphrase of the very same text in Enn IV.4.4 quoted above. This is significant for the relationship of the “headings” to the main text of Th.A. It seems that one of two interpretations is open to us. The first is that the Adaptor wrote both paraphrases himself, and both times the passage reminded him of the notion of learned ignorance. The second is that the Adaptor found the remark on learned ignorance already before him in a set of “headings” in his source text, and translated more or less verbatim. The long passage in the second mīmar would then be a sort of commentary on this earlier heading. This would be consistent with the idea that the “heads” are just an Arabic translation of Porphyry’s Greek kephalaia, and that Porphyry is thus the direct source of the doctrine of learned ignorance. We will have occasion to return to this point below, when we discuss the possible relation of this discussion of ignorance to that of Porphyry. But given that our current purpose is to analyze the theory as it appears in the text, the heading is of little value, if only because of its brevity. It affirms only that at the level of intellect, ignorance is superior to knowledge, without explaining why or in what sense this might be so.

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Let us move, then, to a careful analysis of the passage in mīmar II. A key element of the passage is the fact that not one, but two sorts of ignorance are described here by the Adaptor. In both cases, despite the fact that the digression is introduced regarding the soul and its knowledge of this world, the ignorance is in fact associated with “the intellect.” (The sudden transition from soul to intellect can be explained by the fact that the Adaptor does not always distinguish carefully between these two hypostases. Encouraged, perhaps, by Aristotle’s use of the term nous in the De Anima as the highest faculty of the soul, the Adaptor is prone to collapsing these two parts of the Plotinian cosmos together.) One sort of ignorance described by the Adaptor is ignorance of “what is above it,” namely “the First, Ultimate Cause.” The other sort of ignorance is “of the things that are under it,” that is, objects in the sensory world. I will call these respectively “ignorance of the higher” and “ignorance of the lower.” The Adaptor himself does not seem to be keeping this distinction clearly in view: in II.47, he shifts from describing the ignorance of soul as an intellectual imagination of things in “this world,” that is, ignorance of the lower, to the ignorance of the higher that is attributed to intellect. A similar shift occurs in 11.49. Despite these shifts, the Adaptor does give two clearly distinct arguments for the two varieties of learned ignorance. The argument for ignorance of the higher is as follows: “the intellect is ignorant of its cause above it, namely the First, Ultimate Cause, and it does not know [its cause] completely, because if it knew it completely, it would be above [that cause] and a cause for it” (11.49). Here, “ignorance” refers to an actual lack of knowledge on the part of the intellect: it fails to have an exhaustive grasp of its cause, and necessarily so. For, according to this passage, there is an intimate link between the causal hierarchy and knowledge. In general, a cause can know its effect completely, but not vice-versa. This has the important immediate consequence that there can be no perfect knowledge of God by anything else, since God is the highest cause.3 One can hardly recognize this without thinking of the scholastic distinction between knowledge through causes, or propter quid, and knowledge quia, that is, knowledge of causes through effects. A common source for both doctrines readily suggests itself: Aristotle’s theory of demonstrative knowledge. As Aristotle puts it, “We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing…when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other than it is” (Posterior Analytics, 71b10ff). The same doctrine can be found in other Aristotelian works, notably the Metaphysics (see, for instance, 981b: “the master workers in each craft are more honorable and know in a truer sense…because they know the causes of the things that are done”). The assumption behind our passage, that knowledge of a thing can only be through a perfect grasp of the cause of that thing, is certainly an Aristotelian one. And there is good evidence that the Adaptor knew the Aristotelian corpus.4 This seems a likely source, then, for at least part of the Adaptor’s reasoning about the intellect’s ignorance of the One. A related line of reasoning is developed with regard to “ignorance of the lower.” At II.51, the Adaptor argues that the intellect “does not need” to know things in the sensory world, “because they are in it, and it is their cause.” Thus the intellect is ignorant in this sense as well. But in this case, the ignorance in question is no longer a deficiency of knowledge, but rather a transcending of knowledge:

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Th.A II.51: The ignorance of the intellect is not a privation of knowledge, but rather it is the ultimate knowledge, and this is because it knows the things not as with the knowledge the things have of themselves, but rather [with a knowledge] above this, and more excellent and higher, because it is their cause. The knowledge that things have of themselves is, for the intellect, ignorance, because it is not proper or complete knowledge. Again, the Adaptor is relying here on the notion that the intellect can “know” the lower things by knowing their cause, namely itself. In this sense, it does know these lower things. But in another sense, it does not: if by “knowledge” we mean the sort of knowledge that the lower things have of themselves and of each other, then the intellect “fails” to have this sort of knowledge, for it is above such knowledge. This lower knowledge is not described here, except that we may infer that it is not knowledge that proceeds from a complete grasp of causes. In Aristotelian terms, it is knowledge that falls short of complete scientific demonstration, which the Adaptor calls “proper and complete.” Again, this doctrine of ignorance of the lower would have a significant corollary regarding God: if the argument is extended to the level of the divine, God will be revealed to know His creation only by knowing Himself. This, of course, would later be the position of Ibn Sīnā on the question of providence. We will briefly return later to the consequences of the doctrine for God’s knowledge in AP. Though one must acknowledge the Aristotelian premise employed by the Adaptor in these two arguments, one must also acknowledge that simple familiarity with Aristotelian demonstration would not be sufficient to inspire the doctrine. For, consider some of the un-Aristotelian aspects of the arguments just presented. First, though Aristotle says that complete knowledge requires knowledge of causes, this does not imply that if x has complete knowledge of y, then x is itself the cause of y. But this is exactly what the Adaptor seems to hold in his argument for ignorance of the higher: he says that if the intellect knew the First completely, it itself would be “a cause” for the First.5 This is a crucial premise, for without this premise one need not conclude that effects can never know their causes completely. Second, a corresponding premise in the argument for ignorance of the lower seems manifestly contrary to Aristotle’s intent. The Adaptor argues that if the intellect knows itself as the cause of lower things, it does not need to know the lower things. But on Aristotle’s account, to know the cause of a thing just is to have the best sort of knowledge of that thing. The Adaptor, then, concludes that the intellect is in a sense “ignorant” when a straightforward Aristotelian would have presumably inferred that we can only speak of knowledge in the case of the intellect, if intellect is the cause of what is known. Finally, and most significantly, there is nothing in Aristotle to suggest that one might call a certain type of knowledge “ignorance” because it is more complete than a more familiar, or lower, sort of knowledge. This terminological choice, almost rhetorical in its force, seems more at home in the Neoplatonic dialectic of affirmative and negative predication which is employed with regard to transcendent causes. None of this is to take away from the Aristotelian overtones of the Adaptor’s thought process in this passage. Rather, what I want to suggest is that the arguments in II.46–52 could only be the work of someone who is trying to write an Aristotelian gloss on a notion of learned ignorance which he has from somewhere else. No text of Aristotle states that there is a form of

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ignorance superior to knowledge. But it is quite plausible that a reader of Aristotle might read somewhere else that the intellect is ignorant in the sense of having a transcendent knowledge, and conclude that this is because it is a transcendent cause. We are left in the following predicament: we know that the Adaptor brought an Aristotelian sensibility to his interpretation of the ignorance of the intellect. But we do not know what motivates him to explain the intellect’s cognition precisely in terms of ignorance, either with regard to his other philosophical views or his sources. To move towards an answer to the first part of this dilemma, a consideration of some further context from AP will be helpful. A Potency Higher than Act One of the few original passages in AP that can be compared to Th.A II.46–52 in terms of its complexity and length is Th.A VIII.52–68, a discussion of potency in the intellectual world. Although these two passages are far separated in the text of Th.A, a closer inspection of the text shows that they may be closely related. For the long section in mīmar VIII is not, in fact, entirely independent from the Greek. Rather, it is a sort of commentary on a section of Enn IV.4, in fact on the section immediately following that paraphrased in the passage from mīmar II. In other words, these two long “independent” passages would together represent an uninterrupted commentary on Enn IV.4.4–5. (I call them a “commentary” because their relation to the Greek is too loose to really make them a “paraphrase.”) We may add into consideration the fact that Th.A VIII.52ff is without doubt a loose fragment from the original Arabic Plotinus source, since it begins in several manuscripts with the heading “This is a chapter (bāb) for which no heading was found in the copy.”6 Further, as I will show below, the philosophical themes pursued in the two original passages have certain important affinities. All of this suggests that this portion of mīmar VIII may well have been originally attached to the material found in mīmar II. Just as the passage we have examined above argued that, in the intellect, there is an ignorance superior to knowledge, the passage in mīmar VIII contends that the intellect has a potency superior to act. This notion seems to have been inspired by the parallel text in Greek: Enn IV.4.4–5: But if [the soul], when it goes away from the [higher] place, recovers its memories, somehow it had them there. Indeed: in potency (dunamei). But the actuality (energeia) of those [intellectual things] obscured the memory. For [the memories] were not as present images (keimenoi tupoi), such as would perhaps lead to an absurd consequence, but rather there was the potency which was later set free into actuality. Thus, with the actuality in the noetic ceasing to be active, the soul saw that which it had formerly been seeing, before it came to be there. Well then? Now does this potency, through which there is remembering, bring [the things of the higher world] into actuality? Indeed, if we did not see these things, then by memory, but if [we did see] them, then we saw by what was there. For this is awakened by what awakens it, and this is the seeing of what we have mentioned. For, when describing

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[the higher world], one must not use an image or a syllogism taking its principles from somewhere else; but, regarding noetic things, even here one speaks by the same power (dunamin) which can contemplate them there. Here Plotinus is trying to explain how the soul could have had “memories” in the noetic world without actually remembering the way it does when it has fallen into bodies. He suggests that, when it is in contact with nous, the soul only has these memories in potency, but they are released into act when the soul falls. This in itself suggests a sense in which act could be worse than potency, insofar as the actualization of memory is an actualizing that only occurs with the fall of the soul. There may also have been some confusion on the Adaptor’s part owing to the double meaning of dunamis, which can mean both “power” and “potency.” (Indeed, the corresponding Arabic term quwa has precisely the same double meaning.) Though clearly the first use of dunamis here means potency as opposed to actuality, the second use in the last sentence refers only to a power or capacity which the soul always has and can use to know the intelligibles. This could also have suggested to the Adaptor that the soul’s task is to recover or use the “potency”—the dunamis—which it had in the upper world. All of this was the occasion for the Adaptor to provide us with a systematic discussion of potency and act. He begins the passage by remarking: Th.A VIII.52–3 [B 99–100]: We say: act is more excellent than potency (quwa) in this world. But in the higher world, potency is more excellent than act, and this is because the potency which is in the intellectual substances is that which has no need for act [going] from one thing to another thing other than itself. For they are complete and perfect, perceiving (tudriku) the spiritual things as vision is aware of the sensible things. Potency there is like vision here, but in the sensible world, [potency] needs to come into act and to perceive the sensible things. The cause of that is the shells of the substances, which they put on in this world. This is because they cannot achieve the substances and powers (quwan) of the things except by piercing the shells, and for this they need act. When the substances are stripped and the powers are revealed, then potency is sufficient in itself, and does not need act to perceive the substances. Here the Adaptor distinguishes between two ways of understanding potency. In the “higher” world, perception occurs without moving “from one thing to another,” that is, perception is completed all at once without any discursivity. Thus he compares it to vision, which can take in its entire object all at once. Because there is no change from potency to act, the Adaptor holds that perception occurs without any actualization: potency just is perception.7 Of course this description of intellection is completely Plotinian, including the comparison of noesis to vision; the Adaptor is merely describing Plotinus’ theory of intellection in a new way, by calling it a sort of potency. In this lower world, perception does require going through steps or stages, and it is this motion or

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discursivity that requires an actualization of potency. These same points are underscored in the passage as it continues: Th.AVIII.54 [B 100]: If this is the case, we return and say that the soul, when it is in the intellectual place, only sees itself and the thing which are there through its potency, because the things which are there are simple, and the simple is perceived only by what is simple like it. But when it is in this sensible place, it does not attain what is there except through severe exertion, due to the multiplicity of the shells which it has put on. And exertion is act, and act is composite (murakkab), and the composite does not truly perceive the simple things. The same reasoning is expressed somewhat differently here, as the Adaptor emphasizes the “simplicity” of what perceives through potency, and the “composite” nature of anything that needs to go from potency to act. The tacit argument for this would seem to be as follows: whatever needs to go from potency to act has multiplicity, because the very process of actualization is a change from one thing to another. But what can perceive through potency undergoes no process or change at all in its perception, because its initial and permanent state is one of complete perception. Again, this seems to be a doctrine Plotinus could agree to, especially with its emphasis on bodies, or “shells,” as inextricably linked to multiplicity in perception. As the passage continues, the Adaptor introduces further distinctions between potency in its higher manifestation, which grasps all at once, and the lower potency which requires act. At VIII.55, he underscores the point that it is only actualization that accounts for this difference: “the act fills the potency in the sensible world, and prevents it from perceiving what it had perceived.” And in the next sentence, he explains why a potency which receives act is different from one that does not: Th.A VIII.56 [B 100]: If someone says that when the perceiver perceives something through potency and then perceives it through act, this [latter form of perception] is more fixed and powerful, because act is completion (tamām)—we say, indeed, if the perception has perceived the thing through receiving its impression. [In that case] the potency is as if it receives and inscribes the impression of the thing, and the act completes this impression. Then the act is the completion of the potency. Here, the Adaptor presents a possible objection to his own theory: act is the perfection or “completion” of potency, and a potency will thus be superior when it does receive act. Note that this is an objection posed in Aristotelian terms, with its emphasis on the perfective role of actuality. The language used to describe this, tamām, also echoes this sensibility, since the same word is used in Arabic translations of Aristotle in al-Kindī’s circle to describe actualization.8 In answering the objection, the Adaptor is careful to show that, in a sense, Aristotle’s analysis of potency and act is correct. For a “lower” potency is indeed actualized by receiving an “impression” (athar) from what it perceives.9 But the “higher” potency does not need to receive such an impression, for reasons detailed above, so that there is a sort of potency not described by Aristotle’s

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analysis. While this passage, and the way I have just described it, might suggest that these two different potencies are simply different phenomena, the Adaptor is clear throughout this long independent section that he is talking about one potency which works differently in the two worlds. Thus, at VIII.66 he says that “the soul comes to see what is here through the potency through which it saw them there.” In VIII.64–66, he also describes our coming to know the noetic world as a “raising” of our potency to the higher plane, where it need no longer receive actualization or impressions. The relevance of all this for the theme of learned ignorance becomes more clear when we examine another element of the Adaptor’s theory of potency. He says: Th.A VIII.59–60 [B 100–1]: When the soul refrains from using act in the intellectual things and does not need thought in [its] perception of that world, that potency returns to it, or rather awakens, because it was not separate from the soul, and the soul sees the things which it saw before it came to this world without needing reflection or thought. If [the soul] does not need reflection, it does not need act… This is because the act either is in the thing reflecting or in the natural thing. As for the fixed potency, it is in the substances which become aware of the things properly, without reflection or thought, and this is because they view the things visually. Here, the Adaptor specifies the sort of discursivity which is lacking in the higher manifestation of potency. At this level, perception can occur without “reflection or thought.” This redundant phrase, rawiyya wa fikr, occurs many times in AP, usually in contexts where the Adaptor is denying that God thinks. But in this passage the point is, again, a Plotinian one: the soul can rise above discursive thought if it ascends to the level of intellect, and attain a sort of intellection which is comparable to immediate vision. Here we have, then, another description of a transcendent form of perception, one which is described negatively (potency, instead of ignorance) because it lacks what is required in lower perception (act, instead of “knowledge”). Yet there remains something surprising about the Adaptor’s use of the terminology of act and potency to describe this fundamentally Plotinian conception of an intellection which lacks discursivity. For in fact, Plotinus himself is apt to describe the same phenomenon as a pure actuality, as in another treatise on nous: “for the noetic is some actuality (energeia), since it is manifestly not a potency (dunamis)” (Enn V.3.5). This is of course connected to Plotinus’ view that the God described by Aristotle, the pure actuality of thought thinking itself, can only be the second principle because of its duality as thought and thinker. While we may not have expected that the Adaptor would grasp this historical dimension of Plotinus’ thought, it should have been abundantly clear to him that, for the author of his source text, the intellect is associated primarily with act, and not potency. The puzzle deepens when we turn away from the passage from mīmar VIII we have been studying, and look at other passages in which the Adaptor seems to follow a more traditionally Plotinian line of thought about potency and act. For example, compare: Th.A VIII. 106–7 [B 109]: If [the soul] is intellectual, its intellect is only through thought and reflection, because it is an acquired intellect… The

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intellect is that which completes the soul, because it is that which procreated it. We say that the person of the soul is from 10 intellect, and the reasoning existing in act belongs only to the intellect, not to the thing falling under vision. Enn V.1.3: Being, then, from intellect, [the soul] is noetic (noera), and its intellect is in reasonings (logismois), and again, its perfection (teleiōsis) is from [intellect], as the father raises [a son] he procreated, who is imperfect (ou teleion) in comparison to himself. Then the hypostasis [of the soul] is from intellect, and its reason (logos) is in actuality by its seeing intellect. For when it looks into intellect, it has within and belonging to it that which it thinks and acts. Here the Adaptor follows Plotinus in saying that the intellect is in act, and also by saying that the intellect is what “completes” the soul; recall that we previously saw that completion was associated with the actualization that takes place in the lower world. How can we reconcile such passages with the doctrine of a potency higher than act?11 One possible answer is to focus on the fact that, as mentioned above, the word quwa we have translated throughout as “potency” can also mean “power.” This makes possible passages like the following, which exploits the double meaning of quwa: DS 147–8 [B 177]: We must know that the First Cause originates the things without division, that is, it does not originate them one after another, but it originates them all at once, as if they were one thing. The reason for this is that the second cause is an act, and the first cause is a capacity (qudra). The actuality does not happen except in a divided way, that is, it only performs a divided act. As for the capacity (al-qudra), it is the power (al-quwa) which is able (taqwayu) to originate all the things at once, as if they were one thing.12 Enn V.3.15: But [The One] had [all things] such that they were not divided. They are divided in the second, in the logos. For this is already actuality, but the [One] is the potency (dunamis) of all things. This passage has an important implication, namely that the Adaptor may sometimes use the words “potency” and “act” relatively. By this I mean that he may call the source of any “actuality” a “potency,” as here the One is described as a power or potency because it produces the “act” that is intellect. The same terminology is elsewhere applied the same way to intellect and soul, and their respective effects: DS 12 [B 168]: The intellect is the form for soul, and is that which informs [soul] through the various forms, just as the soul informs the bodies with various forms. Likewise for the intellect: God has put the potency of the totality of the forms in it. DS 17: Therefore, it is impossible, if one thing is in another thing in potency, that the principles for living things are in the soul. This is

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because the things which go out from [the soul] are in it first in potency, and therefore they manifest in actuality. All this suggests that the Adaptor’s apparently technical use of the words “potency” and “act” is actually rather fluid and contextual. He will describe intellect variously as in potency or in act, because with respect to something below it, it is in potency in the sense that it is the “power” which produces that thing. Thus his insistence that intellection is a form of potency is primarily intended to point out that it is different from lower perception: it is simple, immediate, and involves no discursive thought. This use of terminology is exactly parallel to the use of the term “ignorance” to describe the knowledge of the intellect. One could loosely say that both cases fall under the description of a via negativa: the Adaptor attributes some lack or deprivation to the intellect (ignorance, potency) to illustrate that it transcends the things we normally associate with the respective positive term (knowledge, act). In neither case does he mean that the intellect lacks these positive terms in the sense of a defect; rather, it possesses knowledge and act in a higher way, a way so transcendent that we can describe, for example, the knowledge of intellect as a sort of ignorance. This strategy is most important when it is applied to the highest, most transcendent principle: God. The close connection between the issues we have discussed in this section and those to be pursued in relation to the First are underscored in the following paraphrase: DS 123–5 [B 175]: If someone asks: if you make it so that the First Knower does not know, you make Him such that He does not sense either, and from this follows what is repugnant. We say: we only say that He does not know, not because He is ignorant, which is the opposite of knowledge, but [instead] we mean that He is above knowledge This is because there is no knowing except when there is a knowledge and an object of knowledge, and there is no intellecting except when there is an intellect and an object of intellect, so there is multiplicity with respect to this. But we have said that He does not receive multiplicity in any respect. Enn V.3.14: For we make it many by making it known and knowing (gnōston kai gnōsin), and giving intellection (noein) to it, we make it have need of the intellection. This is one of two passages in AP which explicitly says that God “does not know” because His knowledge is higher than knowledge.13 Though the doctrine is here applied to God instead of intellect, it is applied with the same logic: the Adaptor does not mean that God lacks knowledge, but that His knowledge is of a different, higher sort than that of the intellect. In this case, God does “not know” if this is taken to imply some sort of multiplicity, such as that between the knower and known. Of course, Plotinus makes the same argument but draws the more radical conclusion, in the parallel passage, that the One does not have any knowledge or intellection of any sort. The Adaptor has supplied us with a hint as to why he did not follow Plotinus’ doctrine fully, but instead resorted to

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the notion of learned ignorance. For he says that if the First does not think or perceive what is below Him, “from this follows what is repugnant.” Quite likely the repugnant result he has in mind is that Providence would be impossible, which is unacceptable given the religious context of AP (either Syriac Christian or Muslim). Of course, the same problem would exercise later writers in Islamic philosophy. This passage is then a foreshadowing of Ibn Sīnā’s attempts to explain how Providence is possible if God does not know particulars, and of al-Ghazālī’s attack on these attempts in the eleventh discussion of his Tahāfut al-Falāsifa.14 Porphyry and Learned Ignorance in AP We have now seen the philosophical motivation for the doctrine of learned ignorance in AP. It falls into a general pattern of thought on the Adaptor’s part in which he uses terms implying deprivation in order to express transcendence. Let us, then, turn to the question of the sources of the doctrine of ignorance as used by the Adaptor. I argued above that a major source for his defense of the doctrine was Aristotelian, but that Aristotle was not the entire inspiration for the passage in the second mīmar. As previously mentioned, many commentators have seen in this passage a reflection of Porphyrian influence. In particular, an article by Pierre Thillet which appeared in 1971, and which remains among the most forceful presentations of the thesis that Porphyry was the author of AP, takes as a major point of interpretation the use of the doctrine of docta ignorantia by the Adaptor (Thillet 1971, 297–301). He cites Th.A II.46–52, 16, and DS 123ff (all cited above) as the appearances of the doctrine in AP, and compares these texts to a line from the Sentences of Porphyry: “One often speaks of what is beyond intellect (nou) according to intellection (kata tēn noēsin), but one contemplates it with a non-intellection better than intellection (theōreitai anoēsia kreittoni noēseōs), just as one often speaks of someone sleeping as if they were awake” (Sentences 25). One might raise here the question of whether the terms noēsis and anoēsia, which I have translated quite literally as “intellection” and “non-intellection,” should be understood as knowledge and ignorance, respectively (as in Thillet’s translation). But any hesitance on this score may be forestalled by turning to another Porphyrian text, a set of fragments from his commentary on the Parmenides.15 In this text, Porphyry does speak literally of ignorance (agnoia) and opposes this, not to noēsis, but to gnōsis: In Parm. V.10–15: I say that there is a knowledge beyond knowledge and ignorance (gnōsin exō gnōseōs kai agnoias), from which there is knowledge. And how, if knowing, does [God] not know, or how, knowing, is He not in ignorance? Because He does not know, not as having come to be in ignorance, but as transcending (huperechōn) every knowledge. Just as, in the passage from the Sentences, Porphyry spoke of a “non-intellection better than intellection,” so here he recognizes a “knowledge beyond knowledge and ignorance.” As Thillet points out, these are paralleled nicely in AP by the phrase “an

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ignorance which is more noble than every knowledge” (Th.A II.47), and the statement: “we only say that He does not know, not because He is ignorant, which is the opposite of knowledge, but [instead] we mean that He is above knowledge” (DS 124). Note that these passages actually speak of ignorance in two different senses. In the text from the Sentences cited by Thillet, Porphyry is speaking of an ignorance on the part of the intellect which tries to grasp the One—in this case, ignorance is higher than knowledge because it does not do violence to the nature of the One through the multiplicity of intellection. This doctrine is, of course, quite compatible with Plotinus. In the passage from the Parmenides commentary, on the other hand, Porphyry undertakes a dialectical discussion of the knowledge of God (ho theos). He first broaches the topic by remarking that God is never in ignorance (IV.34), but then qualifies this by saying that God is neither in a state of knowledge nor in a state of ignorance, in the passage quoted above. If God is not knowing, this is only because He transcends knowledge in the sense of a knowledge that is multiple. This is underscored in what follows: In Parm. V.19–31: This is the knowledge of God, appearing (emphainousa) without any otherness or dyad, and with no difference in thought (epinoian) between knowledge and object of knowledge, but, as being inseparable from Himself, even though He is not in ignorance, He does not know. He is not ignorant, even if He does not know…ruly, if it is granted that in some way there is ignorance in Him, this is not according to contrariety (antiōsin) and deprivation (sterēsin)… Wherefore, if He is not ignorant then He knows, and in this way He is found to be superior (kreittōn) to knowledge and ignorance, and knows all things, but not in the way the other knowers do.16 This too, is Plotinian insofar as it emphasizes the lack of duality on the part of the One. It strays from Plotinus somewhat more in its willingness to attribute knowledge of a more transcendent kind to God, yet there are of course passages in the Enneads that would countenance such a doctrine. Indeed, as Hadot shows in his study of the commentary fragments, this section is based on Enneads VI.9.6, in which Plotinus similarly argues that God transcends both knowledge and ignorance (Hadot 1968, 1:123). Porphyry departs from Plotinus only by arguing that this transcendence may be termed a type of knowledge, whereas Plotinus concludes that “What is thought [i.e. the One] does not think (noēsis ou noei), but is the cause of thinking for something else…the cause of all things is none of them.” Insofar as the Adaptor makes the same departure from his source, this may argue in favor of Porphyrian influence on AP. Further evidence for such influence might be seen in the following passage in Porphyry: In Parm. VI.4–10: There is also a knowledge which knows an object, going from ignorance to knowledge of the object of knowledge, and again there is another, absolute, knowledge, which is not knowing an object nor of an object of knowledge.

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Compare this to part of the text in DS quoted previously: DS 125 [B 175]: This is because there is no knowing except when there is a knowledge and an object of knowledge, and there is no intellecting except when there is an intellect and an object of intellect, so there is multiplicity with respect to this. These two texts show both Porphyry and the Adaptor thinking along Plotinian lines, and arguing that knowledge or intellection (at least, the non-transcendent variety) inescapably involves multiplicity. Porphyry’s argument for this is particularly interesting: he says that knowledge of an object must necessarily move from ignorance to knowledge. This is reminiscent of the argument we studied above, in which the Adaptor argued that purely noetic intellection does not go from potency to act (i.e. from ignorance to knowledge), but knows all things through a higher potency. All these points make the hypothesis of Porphyrian influence on AP seem rather plausible. I think, however, that a closer look at these parallels reduces the temptation to put much weight on such a hypothesis. Let us begin by returning to the fact that Porphyry’s text on ignorance in the Parmenides commentary was based on Enn. VI.9.6. This is significant because one of the key texts in AP dealing with God as a knower transcending intellection also comes from the same Plotinian source: GS I.25 [B 187]: [The First Principle] has no motion, because He is before motion, before thought, and before knowledge, and there is nothing in Him which He would want to know, as the knower knows, but rather He is the knowledge which does not need to know by any other knowledge, because He is the pure, ultimate knowledge containing all knowledge, and [is] the cause of the sciences.17 Enn. VI.9.6: There is no thinking (noēsis) [in the One], because there is no otherness, and there is no motion, for it is before motion and before thought. For what would it think? Itself? Then before thinking it would be ignorant (agnoōn). The passage in Plotinus is followed by the brief meditation on the problem of ignorance, which was the inspiration for Porphyry in his commentary. Unfortunately no paraphrase of this following passage remains in AP, if it ever even existed. But it is clear from GS I.25 that the Adaptor would have read Plotinus’ comments on ignorance. These could have been a source for his own doctrine, just as they were a source for Porphyry. It might be argued that the Adaptor makes the same departure from Plotinus as Porphyry, by reversing the sense of the passage and insisting that the First does have knowledge in some higher sense. But such a transformation was well within the bounds of the Adaptor’s own strategy of introducing original ideas into the paraphrase. There are similar transformations, for instance, regarding whether the One thinks.18 And we saw above that there is a motivation for the Adaptor to make such a change, even without Porphyrian influence: if the First does not know, there can be no Providence. Thus it seems superfluous to suppose that the doctrine in AP represents, somehow, Porphyry’s

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doctrines from the Parmenides commentary; the same ideas that Porphyry altered in his commentary were also available to the Adaptor from Plotinus, and their transformation along similar lines falls into a pattern easily explicable without reference to Porphyry. This leaves us with the problem of the passage in mīmar II, by far the most developed text in AP dealing with ignorance. This passage does seem strikingly independent from Plotinus. Its doctrine seems unrelated to that found in the Parmenides commentary, since there Porphyry is describing the status of the One’s knowledge, not the knowledge that the intellect has of the One. A more fruitful parallel is provided by the passage in the Sentences, which speaks of an anoēsia kreittoni noēseōs, a “non-intellection better than intellection.” Certainly, like the Adaptor, Porphyry is committed to the notion that the First Principle cannot be perfectly known, so that we remain ignorant of it. But again, this is an idea which is found in Plotinus, even if he does not use the language of docta ignorantia. More robust parallels would be needed to suggest Porphyrian influence on mīmar II. Not only are such parallels lacking, but none of the details of the Adaptor’s argument in this mīmar seem to be explained at all by referring to Porphyry. The linking of knowledge and causality, as argued above, seems Aristotelian. The second notion of ignorance, namely that the intellect is ignorant of its own effects, is not explained by the Porphyrian hypothesis. Indeed, it seems that the only thing the Porphyrian hypothesis might explain is the use of the term “ignorance” to describe such a higher form of knowledge. But, as D’Ancona Costa has pointed out, there are other possible sources for this terminology, like the Pseudo-Dionysius. I myself would argue that, if all we are trying to explain is the appearance of the term “ignorance” in this context, that is too little information to reliably choose any one source as the one used by the Adaptor. It seems likely that he took the notion of a transcendent ignorance from somewhere, though it is not impossible that it was suggested to him by Plotinus (for example, by VI.9.6). But what is much more important is how he developed that notion, especially in mīmar II. And this development seems to be best explained by a creative application of the Aristotelian doctrine of knowledge through causality. I would argue, then, that the theme of learned ignorance shows the Adaptor not as a slavish transmitter of views from other Greek sources, but as an independently minded philosopher combining the idea of learned ignorance (whatever its origin) with views taken from Plotinus and Aristotle to produce a largely novel doctrine. Other motivations peculiar to the Adaptor’s situation may also have played a role; for example, we have noted that religious commitments could have led him to reverse Plotinus’ doctrine on God’s knowledge or intellection. All of this is consistent with the idea that the Adaptor was a member of al-Kindī’s circle, and that he was using sources we know would have been available to such a translator. If anything is surprising in the interpretation given here, it is the extent to which the Adaptor’s own view on learned ignorance does not depend on prior sources. Notes 1 For an argument to this effect, see Zimmerman 1986, especially 115–135. 2 An Arabic edition of almost all this material was published as Badawī 1955. This is the Arabic text which I use here. Geoffrey Lewis has provided us with an English translation of all three texts, which is available in Henry and Schwyzer 1959. I will cite all three texts by the section

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numbers in Lewis’ translation along with page citations from Badawī. All translations are my own. 3 As Cristina D’Ancona Costa has pointed out, the same doctrine can be found in the Liber de Causis, Prop. 5: “And thus it happens that the First is the one for which description fails. And this is only like this because there is above it no cause through which it is known. And each thing is only known and described from its cause. And when the thing is only a cause and not an effect, it is not known by a prior cause, and is not described because it is higher than description, and speech does not reach it.” See D’Ancona Costa 1993, 18. 4 For example, on the assumption that AP was produced in al-Kindī’s circle, the Adaptor would have known Ustāth’s translation of the Metaphysics. See Zimmermann, appendix III (p. 136). See also my article “Aristotelianism and the Soul in the Arabic Plotinus,” forthcoming in The Journal of the History of Ideas. 5 Richard Taylor has suggested to me that this conclusion could be reached from Aristotelian premises as follows. If (a) the intellect is identical to its intelligible object, and (b) the intellect could only have demonstrative propter quid knowledge of God by knowing the cause of God, then it follows (c) that the intellect would have to be the cause of God to know God demonstratively. (For the use Averroes makes of this line of reasoning, see Taylor 1998.) Even though point (b) is Aristotelian, as I argued above, point (a) is Plotinian as well as Aristotelian. See, for example, Th.A 11.21, which follows Plotinus closely in asserting that the intellect takes on the form it knows. The Adaptor seems to recognize the Aristotelian heritage of this view, since he adds that the mind becomes like its object “in act.” However, even if we are to admit that the intellect’s knowledge of God can be reached by Aristotelian principles, the intellect’s knowledge of its own effects is harder to explain without assuming some source other than Aristotle: see the next two points presented in the main text. 6 See Badawī 1955, 99 footnote 9. 7 This is partially based on Aristotle’s discussion of the grades of actuality in De Anima II.5: when a sighted person sees, or when someone with knowledge uses that knowledge, this is not a change in the person doing the seeing or knowing. As Aristotle puts it, the transition from potency to act here is “either not a being altered…or is some other type of alteration” (417b). See also the Arabic paraphrase of the De Anima: Arnzen 1998, 245. which translates energeia both in Plotinus 8 See Arnzen 1998, 215, ln.5, 217 ln.4 ff. Unlike and Aristotle, tamām is a piece of technical terminology taken from readings of Aristotle. 9 Again, the language has parallels in the De Anima paraphrase: see for example Arnzen 1998, 255 ln.15 and 17, which use the verb athara to describe the influence of a sensible on the sense organ. 10 Here I read with Lewis, which seems a better reading given the parallel Greek text. 11 For other passages which associate actuality with the intellect, see Th.A X.51–2, GS II.15. The first of these is especially emphatic: “it is repugnant that there be anything sensitive in potency [in the intellect], and that it then be in this world sensitive in act.” But this may not clash directly with Th.A VIII.52–68, since it has to do only with sensation, not perception generally. 12 The verb taqwayu is the same root as quwa, and more or less forces us to read the quwa as a reference to an ability or power. 13 The other passage is GS I.25 [B 187]: “[The First Principle] has no motion, because He is before motion, before thought (fikr), and before knowledge and there is nothing in Him which He would want to know, as the knower knows, but rather He is the knowledge which does not need to know by any other knowledge, because He is the pure, ultimate knowledge containing all knowledge, and [is] the cause of the sciences ( literally ‘the knowledges’).” See below, section III for further discussion of this text. 14 See Ibn Sīnā, 1960, VI.8. French translation: Ibn Sīnā, 1978; al-Ghazālī, 1997, 128–133.

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15 Here I will simply assume that this text has in fact been attributed correctly to Porphyry, which some have disputed. For a defense of its authenticity, see Hadot, 1968, 1:102 ff. I will cite the passage by section and line number from volume 2 of the same work; the fragments can be found in their entirety in that volume, 64–113, with an accompanying French translation. 16 It should be noted here that the text in this section is largely corrupted, and I am often following Thillet’s conclusions as to the proper reading of the remaining Greek. The ellipses in my translation mark completely corrupted sections of the text. 17 For this passage see also above, footnote 13. 18 See D’Ancona Costa 1997.

References Arnzen, R. 1998. De Anima: Aristoteles’ de anima: eine verlorene spätantike Paraphrase in arabischer und persischer Überlieferung. Leiden: Brill. Badawī, A. 1955. Plotinus apud Arabes. Cairo: Islamica 20. D’Ancona Costa, C. 1993. “Il tema della ‘docta ignorantia’ nel neoplatonismo arabo. Un contribute ail’analisi delle fonti di Teologia di Aristotele,’ mīmar II.” In Concordia Discors: Studi offerti a Giovanni Santinello (Medioevo e Umanismo 84), pp. 3–22. Padua: Editrice Antenore. ——. 1997. “Divine and Human Knowledge in the Plotiniana Arabica.” In The Perennial Tradition of Neoplatonism. Edited by John L.Cleary, pp. 419–42. Leuven: Leuven University Press. al-Ghazālī. 1997. The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Translated by M.Marmura. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press. Hadot, P. 1968. Porphyre et Victorinus. Paris: Études Augustiniennes. al-Ilāhiyyāt. Edited by G.Anawati. Cairo: Organisation générale des Ibn Sīnā. 1970. imprimeries gouvernmentales. Ibn Sīnā. 1978. La Métaphysique du Translated by G.Anawati. Paris: J.Vrin. Plotinus. 1959. Plotini Opera II. Edited by P.Henry and H.-R.Schwyzer. Paris-Brussels: Desclée de Brouwer. Taylor, R. 1998. “Averroes on Psychology and the Principles of Metaphysics.” In Journal of the History of Philosophy XXVI, 4, 507–523. Thillet, P. 1971. “Indices Porphyriens dans la Théologie d’Aristote.” In Le Néoplatonisme, Colloques internationaux du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Sciences humaines, Royaumont 9–13 Juin 1969. Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique. Zimmermann, F.W. 1986. “The Origins of the So-Called Theology of Aristotle.” In Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts XI: Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages, edited by J.Kraye et al., pp. 110–240. London: Warburg Institute.

CHAPTER SEVEN Secundum rei vim vel secundum cognoscentium facultatem Knower and Known in the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius and the Proslogion of Anselm Wayne J.Hankey Introduction The character of subjectivity in pre-modern Christian theological and philosophical writings has been and remains a question.1 Partly this is owed to the anti-modern purposes of the nineteenth century revival of scholasticism in the Roman Church. In that campaign a shift from being to the subject was associated with modernity (Hankey 1998a, 141–152; Hankey 1998b, 157–188; Inglis 1998). At present we have a postmodern retrieval of the Platonic traditions which also wishes to get back beyond what it depicts as closed and totalizing modern subjectivity to a human identity which is open, living, incomplete; a human self on a journey beyond itself (Hanby 1999, 109–26; Marion, 1998, 265; Pickstock 1997:95, 199, 114, 118, 192, 211–12, 214). In general, these revivals and rereadings set strong walls of difference between the modern and premodern, between Platonism and Aristotelianism and between philosophy (and thus Hellenism) and Christian theology (Hankey 1999b, 387–397; Hankey 1998a). Accounts of the relation between the knower and the object of knowledge are at the heart of these divisions and oppositions. I will engage none of these recent enterprises here, but judge that the anti-modern and post-modern representations of the history of Western subjectivity show the need to rewrite the history of philosophy and theology in the Patristic and Mediaeval periods. We need a history freed from both anti-modern and post-modern manipulations.2 An account of the ways in which the subject and the object of knowing are constituted relative to each other in that history will be essential.3 The twentieth century recovery of Neoplatonism within the Catholic Church in reaction against Neoscholasticism has helped to move us a great distance toward that new history (Hankey 1998a; 143–161; Hankey 1998b; 182–186; Hankey 1997b, 405–416; Hankey 1999c; Hankey 2000 and Crouse 2000). A positive appreciation of the role of Neoplatonism in Patristic and Mediaeval Christianity allows us to understand how the human self in quest of salvation is the point of departure of philosophical theology in these periods, a starting point which determined how the goal was represented. This in turn enables a fuller understanding of the unity between philosophy and theology (Hankey 1999b, 407–408; Hankey 1998a; 168–173; Hankey 1997a), between the Greek and Latin Christian traditions,4 as well as

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between the Classical tradition and Islam, Judaism and Christianity both in the Hellenistic period and among the mediaevals. As part of this drawing back together what has been polemically opposed, I examine in what follows two opposed structures of subjectivity in two itineraria: Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and Anselm’s Proslogion, and point toward the problematic of their meeting in the twelfth century and beyond. Within these itineraria subjectivity may be understood, provisionally, as the substance or essence which knows and wills and which may move. A moving human subject is essential to all three, though subjectivity is not confined to the human. I will try to show something of how the subject and the object of knowing are constituted relative to one another on these journeys and something of how the object of knowledge is created by the knower. For one of the two structures we shall consider, the ultimate subject—defined now as that which founds the human self and is source and origin—is above and before being, substance, knowing, choice, selfreflection and alteration. Subjectivity, as it is constructed in the Latin West by the synthesis of two opposed traditions found in but developed beyond Plotinus, holds selfreflexive knowledge and will within a prior simplicity, or, put differently and in Christian terms, contains Augustine within the pseudo-Dionysius.5 The fundamental structures of Christian spirituality as it is developed in the Latin West in mediaeval times are established within the Hellenic tradition. Creative Contemplation The fifth and last book of the Consolation of Philosophy refutes a divine determinism to which the argument of the work as a whole seemed to lead. By a formula about the relation of the subject and object of knowing, Boethius dissolves a necessity which had threatened to deconstruct his Consolation. Lady Philosophy declares: it is not true that all things are known “by the power and nature of the objects known. Totally the contrary, for all which is known is comprehended not according to the power of the thing itself but rather according to the capability of those who know it.” (Boethius 1973, 5.4; pp. 408– 10, lines 72–77:…omnia quae quisque novit ex ipsorum tantum vi atque natura cognosci aestimat quae sciuntur, quod totum contra est. Omne enim quod cognoscitur non secundum sui vim sed secundum cognoscentium potius comprehenditur facultatem). This formula by which subjectivity is centralized, and by which the proper differentiation of its forms becomes essential, had a two hundred year history before Boethius (c. 480–525) used it. Its likely source is the commentary of Ammonius (died c. 526) on the De Interpretatione of Aristotle, a book on which Boethius also commented twice. There, Ammonius, like Boethius in his second Commentary and in the Consolation, is attempting to argue against the notion that divine foreknowledge abolishes the contingent.6 By protecting contingency both authors aim to maintain the efficacy of prayer. Ammonius solves the problem by a position which he ascribes to lamblichus (died c. 330): “knowledge is intermediate between the knower and the known, since it is the activity of the knower concerning the known” (Ammonius 1998 9 135.14; p. 98). Despite ascribing it to lamblichus, Ammonius would also certainly have known the doctrine from his teacher, Proclus (410–85), in whose works it occurs in several contexts.

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In common with Ammonius and Boethius, in those contexts where Proclus is treating Providence, the doctrine serves to dissolve a determinism seemingly required by divine knowledge of the future; contingency is saved for the sake of human freedom (E.g. Proclus 1977–1982, 1:61–65 and 2:80–84). The ultimate source for both Ammonius and Proclus may be Porphyry (died c. 303), Sententiae 10, where we are told that everything is in the intellect according to the mode of intellectual substance.7 From Proclus the doctrine is picked up by the Arabic Liber de causis, supposed in the Latin West to be a work of Aristotle until its Proclean origins were understood in the second half of the thirteenth century by William of Moerbeke and, through him, by Thomas Aquinas near the very end of his writing. For Aquinas, the doctrine is hugely important (Henle 1956, 328–333; Aquinas 1996, xxvi). It has for most of his life, the authority of Aristotle, and Aristotle is understood in such a way as to accommodate the teaching. After Aquinas knows its Proclean origins, he continues to use it with the same, if not even greater enthusiasm (See Hankey 1997a, 87–90). In the Liber, its context is the wider question of the knowledge by intelligences of what is above and below them and takes the form of a general assertion that, because it is a substance, every intelligence knows according to the mode of its own substance (Proposition 8 of the Liber and see the translation in Aquinas 1996, 60). The source for the Liber is the Elements of Theology, proposition 173, which proposition 8 of the Liber more or less reproduces (See Proclus 1963, p. 150, line 22-p. 152, line 7). In the Consolation, “all is understood according to the power of the knower” is an assertion made as the total contrary of an error: the supposition that all knowledge derives only from the nature and power of what is known (Boethius 1973, 5.4; pp. 408–10). Boethius gives no hint here of the source of this error. In Plato and Aristotle, the emphasis is on the object of knowledge which defines and determines the powers of knowing,8 but it is not likely that Boethius would have been criticising either of them. In fact, the poem preceding the second rendition of the formula is explicit that he has the Stoics in mind (Boethius 1973, 5.4; pp. 412–14 and 5.6; p. 422, lines 1–5) and the deterministic destiny which rules their cosmos (Laycock 1999:32–33). Boethius shifts from the objective to the subjective side in order to prevent confusions between diverse forms of knowing and being. Employed more radically, the doctrine has enormous consequences for the creation of the cosmos, for its structure, and for the activity by which its various intelligences are related. Noting this more radical and positive development requires us to consider also what underlies the doctrine of Boethius and Ammonius, and, indeed, what was before Porphyry, namely, the creativity of contemplation in Plotinus. In Ennead 3.8.7: “On Nature and Contemplation and the One,” Plotinus brings out two contrasting sides of contemplation. Both depend upon differences in the modes of being of the subject and the object of knowledge. The first considers the object as accommodated to a knower below it, the other considers the assimilation of the knower to what is above. Both are productive but we shall attend only to the first kind of productivity. Plato’s Demiurge in the Timaeus creates by looking to the ideas above him.9 In this Ennead Plotinus considers the making which occurs when what is higher and thus more simple is contemplated by a lower and thus less unified being. He writes: “All things come from contemplation and are contemplation…some by sense-perception and some

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by knowledge or opinion.”10 Contemplation of the One is the origin of everything beneath it; but everything else differs from the One. In itself the One neither thinks nor has being. Being is beneath the One and everything exists there by a reflection upon a cause which has a higher mode. In the movement downward from the One, eternal thinking and perceiving literally bring the One into being as Mind and Soul. This model of creation depends upon the difference between the simplicity of what is known and the knower. The higher simplicity of the known prevents its being known as it is in itself; in consequence, contemplating it brings something new into existence. Ultimately this model is a result of the exclusive simplicity of the One. The other side of Plotinian contemplation is an upward movement, where, to quote Plotinus: “contemplation ascends from nature to soul, and from soul to intellect, and the contemplations become always more intimate and united to the contemplators, and in the soul of the good and wise man the objects known tend to become identical with the knowing subject… [because in intellect] “thinking and being are the same.” (Ennead 3.8.8; 3:384, lines 1–8 Armstrong). When this intellectual assimilation of thinking to being (here Plotinus is quoting Parmenides), and of subject to object is considered, we arrive at another way of uniting knower and known, opposed to that articulated by Boethius. This way, which is in Plotinus the life of NOUS, subordinate to the One because it remains with thought’s duality of subject and object, is the way taken by Augustine (354–430) and by Anselm (1033–1109). Those like Edward Booth who see in Augustine and his followers a continuation of Aristotle’s noetic divinity are not mistaken (Booth 1977–1979; Booth 1985; Booth 1989; Doull 1988, 61; Doull 1997, notes 9, 58 & 62; Hankey 1998c, 44–49; Hankey 1999a, 116). If, as with Aristotle, Augustine and Anselm we take this way where creativity is primarily the conception of a word within the thinker, the highest will have a unity which includes multiplicity. We return, however, to the first kind of creative contemplation when we consider the pseudo-Dionysius and his heirs. The hierarchical logic and activity of spiritual reality, as described in the Dionysian corpus, would be impossible without the contemplation which creates by a conformity of the higher more simple objects of thought to the different, ever diminishing, levels of spiritual knowing. These gradually diminishing contemplations both constitute the angelic hierarchy and enable the purposes it serves (Hankey 1997a, 74–89). Eriugena was the first successful translator of the pseudo-Dionysius and was also the first of his heirs in the Latin West to develop the ontological consequences of his doctrine in order to construct a complete cosmic system. Eriugena grasped the crucial point. Creative contemplation in the lamblichan/Proclean tradition with its strong elevation of the One above being, enables the single absolute source to remain unmoved, and even beyond being, and thus both ineffable and unknown in itself, while it is multiplied as it comes into being in the diverse forms of what is other. Diverse forms of being and non-being correspond to diverse forms of knowledge and ignorance. Different perceptions will transform one and the same ultimate object into all the different, hierarchically graduated and interconnected forms of reality. To this Proclean structure, Eriugena added the Christian recentering of the cosmos around humanity understood prominently but not exclusively through Augustine. In the Periphyseon, human apprehension in its diverse modes actually causes the varied forms of being. Ineffable non-being, before all definition, being and multiplicity, comes into definite, varied, and perceptible being by passing dialectically, or “running through,”

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intellect, reason, imagination and sense, faculties all contained in the human mens. Human mens, at the middle of what is and of what is not, unites all the created kinds as diverse forms of unity and division. What knows all makes all.11 So, “in the human everything is created” (“in homine…universaliter creatae sunt” Eriugena 1865, 4. 8, PL 774A). The doctrine that a thing is known according to the mode of the knower is found, then, in the most authoritative Latin, Arabic and Greek sources of mediaeval thought. No Latin mediaeval will follow Eriugena into everything which such a total dialectic between subject and object allows for the construction of reality. But none of the Latin disciples of Dionysius, who endure to the 17th century and beyond, will refuse some at least of its possibilities (Hankey 1998d). However, Eriugena, first, and every Latin after him also encountered the opposed principle for relating the divine and the human associated with the pre-eminent Latin authority, Augustine. The itinerarium shaped by Augustinian subjectivity is clearly displayed in the Proslogion of Anselm. The Structure of Subjectivity in the Boethian Itinerarium Eriugena’s Periphyseon is a cosmogony before it is, and in order that it might be, the saving itinerarium of the soul. The homo in which all is created is universal. In order to see how creative subjectivity works in the journey of an individual to salvation, and in order to establish one of the elements of our comparison, we must return to the Consolation. In Boethius philosophy is a way of life which brings repose and freedom (Boethius 1973, 1.4, p. 144, lines 1–4: Quisquis composite serenus aevo/ Fatum sub pedibus egit superbum/Fortunamque tuens utramque rectus/ Invictum potuit tenere vultum. See Hankey, 1998c, 34–35). In an explicit reiteration of the Platonic conversion of the soul, the prisoner in his cell, like the prisoner in Plato’s cave, by sitting up, turning around, moving and standing erect, represents his passage through ever higher modes of knowing (Hankey 1997c, 245–47). As in the mediaeval itineraria which follow it, the passages from one form of cognition to another are explicitly stages in the pilgrimage of human beings on their way towards or away from God (Inglis 1998, 12, see also 241, 242, 252, and 258). The conversion takes place by a recovery of true self-knowledge and freedom. The initial books of the Consolation are devoted to stripping the self and restoring its poise at its center so that it is able to turn (Hankey 1997c, 245–46). In the third and fourth books, what had been placed outside the simplified self become aspects of its interior complexity, i.e. its different and mutually related aspects. The reward and punishment of humans are in the choices they make. These choices lie within them and within their power because, in truth, they are choices between selves (Boethius 1973, 2.5, p. 204, lines 75–89). Humans choose to live in accord either with their lower or their higher aspects. Reason, the power of mind to which choice belongs, may conform to the intellectual above it or to the sensual below it. Turning to intellect, and to the unity of the Good, which intellect knows, results in power and self-sufficiency. Turning to sense leads to subservience to the multiple objects beneath us, themselves governed by an order beyond them, and so results in fatal weakness (Boethius 1973, 2.5–7, 3 and 4, passim).

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Saving the freedom which belongs to human reason is essential both to the whole theodicy of the Consolation and to preserving prayer, without which there is no human access to the simple First Principle. The conclusion of the Consolation is an exhortation to prayer, already discovered to be necessary and already invoked. Unless the human, defined by ratio (Boethius 1973, 1.6, p. 168, lines 35–6) which divides the One when knowing,12 can reach beyond itself by the prayer which also fulfills it, there would be no consolation. It is by this reaching, which must be at once within and beyond the human, that the human can be carried to the intellectus which understands the simple Good. Ultimately, the prisoner’s consolation is an itinerarium to the changeless center, the still point of secure repose and simple intellection around which all else moves. This intellection is the perspective of Providence (Boethius 1973, 3.9, pp. 264–70; see Hankey 1997c, 246–47). By the end of Book Four the consoling itinerarium has twice carried the prayerful prisoner to the Providential view by which all things are seen in the unity of the Good. First, in Book Three, having made a positive beginning from the prisoner’s dream of happiness, the argument moves until all is seen in the light of the simple Good (Boethius 1973, 3.1, p. 230, lines 17–18: He will be led “Ad veram…felicitatem, quam tuus quoque somniat animus. …”). In the penultimate Book, all is looked at from the same perspective but this time, the beginning is negative: the prisoner’s unforgotten grief, the apparent existence and the apparent triumph of evil.13 But this twice secured result creates a problem: the vision of all things from the perspective of the Good seems to destroy the subjective freedom by which the prisoner reached his journey’s end. Unless the problem is solved, the argument would deconstruct itself; the ladder marked on the dress of Lady Philosophy, of which the prisoner is finally reaching the top, would collapse.14 The perspective of Providence which consoles the prisoner is that of a simple, pure and stable intelligence which governs and disposes all things. This position is beyond the alteration of choice. Since the intellect which infallibly governs all is changeless, it would seem that the order it knows and determines must be equally changeless and so totally necessitated.15 There is a solution: in the final Book, the argument according to which the certainty of the divine knowledge of future events would depend upon their being necessitated by Providence, is overcome by the distinction between reason’s knowing, on the one hand, which is temporal, and an eternal intellectual knowing, on the other hand. The apparent destruction of human freedom of choice occurred because human reason had imposed its mode upon the realm of Providence which can only, in fact, properly be understood intellectually. Thus, Boethius finally introduces the fundamental principle which has in fact governed the entire argument. As Aquinas, will put it, “an intelligence understands according to the mode of its own substance.”16 Evidently, for this principle to solve the problem, it is not enough that there should be different modes of knowledge and that they not be confused. If freedom is actually to exist in a sphere of substantial existences with their own inherent principles of motion, different kinds of reality must conform to the different modes of knowing. So, our principle about the conformity of what is known to the knower has ontological consequences. Indeed, it has two kinds of consequences and its operation has two sides. Because a knower existing in one mode of substance conforms to a thing in a different substantial mode to the knower’s mode, there is a transformation of the object in the

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subject. The effects of this transformation can be epistemological only or also (as most notoriously in Eriugena) the effects can be both ontological and epistemological. In the latter case, conforming something in one mode to a different mode actually causes its being in the new mode. When being in intellectu and in re are more sharply separated and truth alone is at issue, this principle requires the knower to recognise and respect the difference between the mode of the knower and the mode of the object. The determinism in the Consolation was produced by confusion. Reason reduced the object known properly by the divine simple intellection to its own mode. Reason pictured eternity as if it were at the beginning of a temporal process, a process it had to determine infallibly in order to ensure the certainty of its knowing. The solution is to distinguish the modes of knowing, to purge the structures which belong to reason and imagination from our understanding of eternity, and to recognise that, as the forms of knowing differ, so also do the realities themselves. Thus, Boethius saves his book by saving ratio and its reality, the reality of individual substances with their own motions. The realm of reason and of individual substances with inherent self-motion is no more to be collapsed into intellectus and its unity than intellectus is to be destroyed by being conceived according to the divided and dividing structures of ratio. Ultimately, the Boethian solution requires system: system in which all the possible differences, both subjective and ontological, are developed and known. All the forms of knowing, and thus of reality, must be known and all the relations between them must pass into knowledge. Self-sufficient enjoyment of the simple Good is human happiness, but the simple Good cannot be understood adequately and possessed in itself by us. Rather the simple Good is known in what is other than it, in its difference from these lower modes of existence, in the relations by which everything from top to bottom is connected, and in the human movement between the different modes. This system the Consolation suggests in its portrait of Lady Philosophy. Its best image is the diverse concentric motions by which the kinds of reality and their correlative modes of apprehension are related (Boethius 1973, 1.1, p. 132, lines 8–22; 3.9 (meter), pp. 270–272; 4.6, pp. 360ff; 5.4 & 5.5, pp. 410ff). But if this complex of inter-related and different spiritual motions brings to mind Plotinus, as developed in the line of lamblichus, Proclus, Dionysius and Eriugena,17 Anselm’s dialectic is rather that of Plotinus and Augustine. All else is concentrated in the knowledge of God and the soul (Hankey 1999a, 117–122). Anselm’s Quest and an Opposed Subjectivity Anselm tells us that the Proslogion was undertaken because he wanted an argument for the existence and nature of God which conformed to the divine nature. He was dissatisfied with the form of the Monologion which he characterized as a concatenation of many arguments woven together. He wanted, instead, unum argumentum which by its own simplicity and self-sufficiency imaged the divine self-sufficient unity (Anselm 1946, Prooemium, p. 93, lines 5–7). The quest for a thinking which conforms in this way to its divine object led him to his famous proof and constitutes an itinerarium mentis in deum. Anselm’s quest derives from what in Augustine most distinguishes him from his pagan Neoplatonic sources and even more from his contemporaries, but has good grounds in

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Aristotle, namely a conformity of thought’s ultimate object and the human mens because the first principle is self-reflective (Hankey 1999a, 116–123; Crouse 2000, 42). Anselm’s quest for one argument in which his reasoning about God has the same form as its object brings him to a state of fatigue and despair because he is able neither to reach what he desires nor to give up the search. The object of his quest seems to belong to him and to be easily reachable, but it slips away each time he tries to grasp it. In the depth of his helpless misery, what he sought is given. Because it was sought, when given it is recognised and “eagerly embraced” (Anselm 1946, Prooemium, p. 93, lines 15–16). The search which led to despair, and in despair received what it sought, involved a comparison carried out by human reason between itself and its divine goal. Reason is not of itself able to pass over immediately by its own power into the divine thinking, but reason is able to know the character of the difference and to compare itself to what is thus for it and beyond it. The difference is bridgeable because the ultimate simplicity contains difference. The God at whom Anselm arrives is more trinitarian in the Augustinian sense than is the simple Good of Boethius. The human and divine trinities mirror each other.18 The trinitarian unum necessarium which is the satisfaction of Anselm’s quest is able to give its very essence to the human, and the human is able finally to remain with and to be satisfied with the divine Goodness (Anselm 1946, 23–26, pp. 117–22). The end of Anselm’s quest is union of the human with the absolutely First, a unity in which human reason is preserved and in which every good is found and enjoyed. Anselm’s God includes in itself the divided activity and the quest which belong to reason. In consequence, the ultimate result is not a systematic development of the forms of knowledge and reality. The satisfaction of Anselm’s desire does not require the production and maintenance of the differentiated cosmos. Rather, a direct dialogue between the human and the divine dominates from beginning to end. So, when Anselm was forced to give the work a title, he called it Proslogion, id est alloquium (Anselm 1946, Prooemium, p. 94, lines 8–13). Throughout the Proslogion, Anselm’s address, or exhortation, is alternatively to himself and to God. To make this evident, the first address to himself and to God in Chapter One begins with the same word, Eia, “Go” (Anselm 1946, 1, pp. 97–98: “Eia nunc, homuncio…Eia nunc ergo tu, domine deus meus…”). Significantly, when the goal of the quest is reached, there is no division between the seeker’s address to himself and to God. In the last Chapter, God is asked affirm that the seeker has reached what the Lord counseled him to demand and Anselm asserts that he will go on seeking and receiving in accord with the Lord’s command (Anselm 1946, 26, p. 120, lines 23–25 and p. 121, lines 19–21. The first address (Chapter 1) is by the one who seeks to himself as other and in his otherness. He seeks rest and joy in an inner place of peace but is “exiled a long way off”, weighed down by occupations, tumultuous thoughts, cares, and labours. This externalized self is identified in the first Chapter as belonging to the fallen Adam who lost and remembers bitterly a former fullness. In the next Chapter (2), he reappears as the Fool who has said “There is no God”. In his various identities, this is someone who can say what neither he nor anyone can think, because of the externality of words to their meanings.19

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Such a one must be exhorted to turn inward toward God. God is addressed with the demand that he reveal his face hidden “in inaccessible light,” (Anselm 1946, 1, p. 98, line 4) a place where he ought to be known because it is light, but where, in fact, he is inaccessible because, as we discover later, God is greater than what is able to be conceived (Anselm 1946, 15, p. 112, line 15).20 The work depends upon the self-division such addresses and demands, such a quest and comparison of the states of the self, such a difference between ought and is reveals, requires and intensifies. Though Anselm begins with an exhortation to search, the fundamental problem is that he must search. But search is inescapable for the believer. Faith by its nature, distinguished as it is from vision, intellectus, and possession compels search. Continuing the quest, which requires acknowledged loss, involves both the intensification of the selfdivision, and also the intensification of its accompanying sense of loss. Both intensifications are essential for attaining the object of the quest and thus healing the divided self. To resolve the dilemma which the search entails, the questing, reasoning and choosing self must be embraced, what is negative in desire must be overcome. So the seeker prays that God will accept his labours and strivings, will reveal Himself to seeking (Anselm 1946, 1, p. 100, lines 8–12). Intensified quest leads again and again to the despair whose structure is exhibited in the Prooemium. In Chapter One the kinds of self-alienation are elaborated. There are the problems implied by search and desire themselves and those involved in not being able to see what is everywhere. Problems arise also from the incapacity to know the Cause for and by which we are made and from the willful loss of what was fully possessed. The human will which seeks seems itself to be evil. “I reached out for God and I fell upon my own self” (Anselm 1946, 1, p. 99, lines 11–12). The problems have, however, correlative solutions. While the inadequacy of faith to its object compels the search for vision, understanding and possession, faith is also the way beyond the loss it both makes evident and creates. The self can remember what it lost and who it was because it remains an image of the Creator even if a darkened one: “You have created me in your own image so that I remember you I know you and I love you” (Anselm 1946, 1, p. 100, lines 12–13). The trinitarian soul is itself the basis for union with its trinitarian source and contains the means of recognizing what it seeks and willing what it has lost. The unknown Cause can remake what it has made and the remaking and renovation are in and through the one who suffered the loss. The solution is in the relation between two selves, or more correctly between two aspects of the self which reason compares. Comparison is the very heart of this work. Its famous proof of God’s existence, the name of God on which the proof depends and the demonstration of the divine nature and attributes, all make this clear. The proof depends upon comparing two ways of existing: what is in intellect only and what is both in intellect and in reality (Anselm 1946, 2, p. 101, lines 13–18). The name reaches to what is mains. The demonstration depends on a comparison which attributes to God whatever it is better to be than not to be (Anselm 1946, 5, p. 104, line 9). It is in the course of showing what God is (Anselm 1946, 5, p. 104, line 11: “Quid igitur es, domine deus, quo nil maius valet cogitari” that both the intensification of the self-division, and also the intensification of its accompanying sense of loss occur so as to lead to solution. These intensifications result from comparisons, comparisons consequent upon the quest to know God’s existence by a single argument depending on no other.

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These are comparisons consequent upon the quest to know God’s nature by the same formula through which God’s existence has just been demonstrated. The formula requires comparing thoughts with one another. But these are thoughts about a being in which thought and existence cannot be separated. Further, being is hierarchically graded. Objects of knowledge are more or less true in virtue of their degree of being, and are more or less knowable or beyond knowledge because of their degree of being. Finally, and crucially, the knower ought to know the divine and would if he had not forsaken his true self. On this account, and because knowledge is equivalent to enjoyment, and because the knower acquires its being and its well being from the divine object of knowledge, there is a direct correlation between the state of the knower and the degree to which the divine is grasped or lost. Failure or success in the knowledge of God determines the knower’s ontological status and moral worth. What kind of human subject do we have here? Anselm’s human subject is inherited by him from Augustine. We may call it concrete, in comparison with the stripped down Plotinian subject founded in the One, a subject so abstract as to cause the post-Iamblichan reaction against it.21 In contrast for Anselm the whole human self demands satisfaction. In Chapter One, the lost fullness ructabat saturatite.22 Anselm never surrenders his demand that even the sensual in the human be satisfied in the single Good. All goods must somehow be found in that Good, just as even the divided, questing, varying activity of reason must take us there. This concreteness adds to what is at stake in the quest. Everything is at stake. In coming to know, and thus to enjoy the divine object of the quest, we are either fully satisfied and fully ourselves, or utterly lost and empty. In consequence each experienced failure to know and enjoy what God is produces a crisis, and each crisis is worse, until we finally come to a principle by which the ever growing distance between knower and known can be bridged. The first of these crises, reiterating in form the crisis described in the Prooemium is in the middle of the work at Chapter Fifteen, showing that God is greater than can be conceived. Chapter Five began the demonstration of God’s nature and attributes: “That than which nothing greater can be conceived” is the greater or better which lacks no good. Attributes are ascribed to God so understood in the chapters from Six to Fourteen so that God has perception without being a body, omnipotence without being able to do everything. God has compassion and is also passionlessness, just and merciful, and all these contradictory things without self-contradiction. But, in every case, God is discovered to have all these qualities in a way opposite to the way in which humans have them: “according to your nature, not according to ours” (Anselm, 1946, 10, p. 109, line 2). Because of the difference between our mode of being and God’s, the more God is known, the more distant he becomes and the less he is knowable by us. This contradiction between our way of being and God’s is developed more intensely when, first, the difference between the way in which God has qualities and the way creatures have them is brought out. Unlike creatures: “Whatever you are, you are through nothing other than yourself” (Anselm 1946, 12, p. 110, line 6). Next, the divine spiritual substance is located relative to other spiritual beings: God alone “is, as a whole, at the same time, everywhere” (Anselm 1946, 13, p. 110, line 22). Since Anselm supposes that he knows God best as imaged in his own soul, these reflections bring him

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to ask “How and Why God is seen and not seen by those seeking him” (Anselm 1946, 14, p. 111, line 7). There, midway in his itinerarium, Anselm asks himself the same questions he asked at the beginning, i.e. whether he has found what he sought and why he does not perceive what is in its entirety everywhere. God has become yet more distant and is still not perceived (Anselm 1946, 14, p. 111, line 14: non te sentit.). Increased light has brought increased darkness. Because God’s illuminating light is the principle of human reason, the knowledge that God is hid in inaccessible light undermines the basis of human knowing (Anselm 1946, 14, p. 112, lines 5–6ff). Attending to that basis, the knower is pushed deeper into ignorance and from his consciousness of this ignorance he is moved to a mixture of despairing questions and urgent addresses to God. Learned ignorance brings him to discover another consequence of the name of God graciously given to the faithful seeker: God is “a being greater than can be conceived.” From this discovery we return to the initial paradoxes: what is everywhere is not seen.23 God dwells in light, but humans are incapable of seeing in it. We know just enough to grasp what is hidden and has been lost.24 No contradiction could be worse, yet the following chapters only increase the pain. Every delight is in God: harmonia, odor, sapor, lenitas, pulchritudo (the stress on the sensible here is crucial), but in a manner unique to himself and beyond us. We are tossed about in darkness and misery (Anselm 1946, 17, p. 113, line 9). In Chapter Eighteen the despair has become wild: “And behold, again confusion. Behold, again grief and mourning meet him who seeks joy and gladness” (Anselm 1946, 18, p. 113, lines 18–19). This depth is, however, the point at which the argument turns. Chapters Eighteen to Twenty-one, which consider how God contains everything, are the decisive turning. Out of this deepest despair, enfolded in darkness where he does not find what he sought but rather what he did not seek, Anselm prays.25 In the words of the Psalmist used at the very beginning of the work he demands to see God’s face. But this time Anselm asks as well for what Boethius decisively prayed in the Consolation. There the prisoner sought to pass from ratiocination to intellection, from a form of knowing appropriate to the temporal, moving and divided to another which grasps the eternal, simple point around which all else moves.26 Like the prisoner, Anselm also wants to pass over to another way of thinking: Anselm prays to be lifted beyond himself: Releva me de me ad te and to have his eyes illumined “so as to intuit you” (Anselm 1946,18, p. 114, lines 10–12). He wants God to reach across the infinite distance between them and bring him over. Nonetheless, he recognizes that he cannot know the many aspects of the divine goodness as God conceives them: in one simultaneous intuition (Ibid., line 17). The Proslogion, like the Consolation, goes on as if the prayer has been answered, but the answer given Anselm is different from that given Boethius in the same way in which Augustine differs from Proclus. The divine simplicity includes rather than excludes multiplicity. In the Prooemium, Anselm indicated that the Proslogion was the result of his dissatisfaction with his own earlier argument. The move from the one kind of argument to its opposite requires that the seeker who is through another and whose reason is a passage from one thought to another should not only pass over to the simple selfsufficient fullness which is through itself, but also that he should know this simplicity by a form of thinking appropriate to it. What the Proslogion has reached so far is, instead,

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the knowledge of a greater and greater difference between the human being and knowing, on the one side, and the divine being and knowing, on the other side. Thus, everything now depends on whether what is other than God, yet existing through God, as through another, is, in fact, contained in God. Is the other (especially the human in the questing otherness which is both the cause and the continuing sign of its Fall, which quest now defines it) excluded from God’s ever more recognized difference from us? Or, on the contrary, does God’s self-sufficient being include what is in principle divided, and divided from it? The answer emerges. God is simplicity itself: “you are unity itself which no understanding can divide” (Ibid., line 24). But although God is without parts, understanding his relation to the spatial and temporal is the key: “You are not in place or time but all things exist in thee.” “You fill and embrace all things.”27 The divine eternity has been separated from the temporal so completely that the temporal can be restored to it. The divine eternity contains (continet) all times, just as God is in all things but is not divided into parts in the way that spatial things are (Anselm 1946, 20, p. 115, lines 9–10: omnia sint te plena et sint in te, sic tamen es sine omni spatio). This notion of a simplicity which embraces and contains is so powerful that by Chapter Twenty-two, Anselm has completed the programme set out in the Prooemium. He has shown that: “Thou art nothing except the one and supreme good; thou art all-sufficient to thyself, and needest nothing; and art he whom all things need for their existence and well-being” (Anselm 1946, 22, p. 117, lines 1–2: non es nisi unum et summum bonum, tu tibi omnia sufficient, nullo indigent, quo omnia indigent ut sint, et ut bene sint). This unique good can be the unum necessarium, because God contains rather than excludes all else in his perfection. In Chapter Twenty-three the Trinity is introduced as this totally inclusive unum necessarium. As Trinity God is goodness multiplied as three equal substances. And, this does not break but rather shows the strength of the divine simplicity. “You are simple in such a way that from you nothing is able to be born of you which is other than what you are.”28 Anselm exhorts himself to rise to the contemplation of this one thing needful. This simplicity is the all inclusive good which satisfies all desire: “This is that one thing necessary, in which is every good, indeed, which is every good, and a single entire good and the only good” (Anselm 1946, 23, p. 117, lines 20–22: Porro hoc est illud unum necessarium, in quo est omne bonum, immo quod est omne et unum et totum et solum bonum; see Luke 10.42). Not multiplied, God includes otherness in his very simplicity, every good in his simple goodness, and thus, the quest of reason in the knowledge of his simplicity. Contemplation of this inclusive simplicity is a union which confers on the knower a mode of knowledge like that of the object known. In consequence, the last chapters return to the quest for the enjoyment of God but with confidence because God is now known as simple but inclusive goodness. Nonetheless, because we still do not possess all our good directly in this good, it is not evident that the Trinity satisfies the quest as it was defined at the beginning. What is the character of Anselm’s final solution? Anselm makes clear that the complete enjoyment of all the good in the Divine simplicity, though in principle possible and indeed required from both the divine and the human sides, will necessitate a change in our mode of being.29 For the proper knowledge and enjoyment of God in himself we must pass from time to eternity. Nonetheless, and this essential is repeated in several forms, we are included in that other which is the only

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good and our good. For example, knowledge will satisfy every desire which the senses have. Further, our love for ourselves and our neighbour will be included in our love of God: “for they love him, and themselves, and one another, through him, and he, himself and them, through himself” (Anselm 1946, 25, p. 119, lines 6–7: quia illi ilium et se et invicem per ilium, et ille se et illos per seipsum [diligent]). In virtue of having the divine will, humans shall have the omnipotence which formerly divided the human and the divine (Anselm 1946, 7; and c. 25, p. 119, lines 8–9). Indeed, time itself and its process are included in our possession of that truly infinite good. Though we cannot possess it now, in virtue of being directed toward that good, we can make progress from day to day until we come to the fullness (Anselm 1946, 26, p. 121, lines 14–16: Et si non possum in hac vita ad plenum, vel proficiam in dies usque dum venial illud ad plenum). Fruitless quest has become growth. Desire, quest, reason’s activity have become activities toward the divine. Anselm now has confidence in and can accept the divine counsel to ask in order to receive the fullness of joy which the one who asks is promised (Anselm 1946, 26, p. 121, lines 18–22). This is the subject of the concluding Chapter as a whole. What is positive in faith has emerged. The quest for God, in despair of our own efforts, is known as the activity of the divine in us. We are in God because otherness and what is through another are in God. All this is contained in “that than which nothing greater can be thought” because in this formula what is known and grasped has essential relation to what is not and cannot be thought. Reason and intellect are held together in a comparing thought which must thus be both. Augustine within Dionysius: Their Meeting in the Itinerarium of Bonaventure Both the Augustinian/Anselmian and the Dionysian/Boethian logics have crucial places in the Itinerarium of Bonaventure. But the Dionysian or Boethian contains the Augustinian. Within a threefold ascent up the wings of a Dionysian Seraph, who finally draws us to a union described in terms taken from The Mystical Theology (Bonaventure 1956, 7.5), the first step is, in large measure, derived from the De Anima of Aristotle modified by Augustinian Illuminationism. The middle step depends upon a purely Augustinian imaging of God through the mind’s remembering, knowing and loving of itself.30 The last stage before mystical union involves another Dionysian image, the contemplative Cherubim. For our purposes the Cherubic vision is most important. It makes clear that the Augustinian knowledge of God through self-reflexive reason is only an intermediate stage for Bonaventure and that Bonaventure’s understanding of intellect is Plotinian at the point where Augustine and Anselm divide from Plotinus and his successors.31 Mind directed above itself so as to describe God is imaged in two Cherubim gazing towards each other across the Mercy Seat. When they look upward across it, the one who follows Augustine names God as being and sees the unity of essence. The other follows Dionysius, names God as goodness and sees the trinity of persons. When they gaze down at the Mercy Seat, they see a paradoxical union of opposites, for which the incomprehensible union of the one and the triad in God has prepared them, namely, the union of the two natures in the one Person of the Son.

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Together, the two Cherubim and the irreducible duality of their visions manifest the inescapable duality which Plotinus and his successors found to be necessary to NOUS, before the self passes over into the union with the One accessible only to “Intellect in love,” nous erôn.32 Thefinal Sabbath rest requires that the duality of intellect be surpassed. There mind will transcend its very self; it participates in the Crucifixion and “dies.”33 The itinerarium returns from Cherubic intellect to Seraphic love, and passes by means of a unitiative or loving power34 to a “most mystical and most secret” state (Bonaventure 1956, 7.4–5), described in a quotation from Dionysius, where teaching is silence, light is darkness, manifestation is hiddenness. Linking this simplicity above intellect to the Boethian principle from which we began requires a further consideration of the Cherubic visions. The opposed Cherubic visions of the divine essence lead to the unification of an even greater opposition, that of the two natures in the incarnate Divine Word (Bonaventure 1956, 6.4–7). This consideration is from each of the Cherubic visions taken separately but our interest is with the vision of the Cherub who contemplates the unity of the divine being. This Cherub looks first at the deductive interconnection of the attributes of the essence, e.g., primary being, simplicity, eternity, perfection (Bonaventure 1956, 5.6). He passes to what is yet more admirable, the fact that in each of these attributes there is a unity of opposites: the first being is also the last, the eternal is also the present, the actual is also the immutable. Vision is carried beyond this to something worthy of even higher admiration. The thought of either of these pairs leads to the knowledge of the other. Thus, since the first does all propter se ipsum, it is end to itself and also last (Bonaventure 1956, 5.7). Moreover, beyond this, there are yet further considerations. A higher contemplation looks at the unity of the two opposed sides as held together within each of the essential attributes. So, for example, Bonaventure, like Anselm, understands God’s esse as what is both eternal and as also most present through the notion of what both encompasses everything and enters everything. But Bonaventure goes further than Anselm, he holds the two sides together in an image of what is at the same time center and circumference (Bonaventure 1956, 5.8, p. 86: ambit et intrat, quasi simul existens earum centrum et circumferentia). Considering how the most simple is also the greatest, another image comes to mind: What is wholly inside and also wholly outside all things “is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere” (Bonaventure 1956, 5.8, p.86: totum intra omnia et totum extra ac per hoc “est sphaera intelligiblis, cuius centrum est ubique et circumferentia nusquam.”). Again, gazing at the most actual which is also the most immutable, Bonaventure invokes an image through the words of the Consolation: what “remaining unmoved itself, gives movement to all things” (Bonaventure 1956, 5.8, p. 86: “Stabile manens moveri dat universa” see Boethius 1973, 3.9, p. 270, line 3). These coincidences of opposites within the attributes of the divine essence lead the vision of the first Cherub to contemplate the greater coincidence of opposites in the incarnate Son. Significantly, all three of the examples in which the unity of two opposites is seen through an image require that God be understood through the Boethian picture of a center and its circles. Even if the image is transmuted according to the opposites it unites, a cosmos of moving circles with a common center is required as basic. Further, knowing these attributes is never a consideration of God apart from the created universe but rather in relation to it. Finally, beyond the endless and multiform opposing dualities, dualities

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both in the perspective of the knower and in what is contemplated, there remains a repose which transcends intellect. As with Nicholas of Cusa, there must be something beyond and prior to the coincidence of opposites.35 Bonaventure is a long way from being satisfied with Anselm’s knowledge of a divine simplicity including unity and the triad of subsistences, essence and the multiple attributes. Boethius and the pseudo-Dionysius lie between them. So, in Bonaventure, different modes of seeing one and the same transcendent deity produce different objects. The Itinerarium is a progressus through three states of mind. That progressus ends in our passage into the final union—the rest of the Sabbath Day. We arrive at rest and enjoyment in virtue of what we become both by taking these steps and by union with God in each of them. God is loved both in each of them and also by the movement upwards through the steps. They are compared to the six days of the work of creation. In contrast to the final Sabbath rest, the stages of knowledge and love require human and divine work (Bonaventure 1956, 7.1, p. 96: exercitum mentis nostrae). Bonaventure’s doctrine of grace here is the one general to pre-Reformation Augustinianism. In this movement and in each step, God’s grace and human exertion operate together. Indeed, grace and work are also graduatim. For each of the three stages in which the knower knows God through a different kind of object, there is also a different kind of co-operation between divine grace and human knowledge and will.36 The three states are, first, the relation of mind to external bodies below it. Its power for this is animalitas or sensualitas which knows the vestigia (traces) of God. The second state is mind at its own level: intra se et in se. This is spiritus which knows the image of God. The third state is mind’s relation to what is supra se. Mind considered as this power is called mens which knows the likeness of God (Bonaventure 1956, 1.4). The three kinds of reality: traces, images and likenesses are hierarchically graded manifestations of the one and the same divine Trinity, ultimately beyond intellect, as the Trinity is reflected, represented and written (relucet, repraesentatur et legitur) by mind (Bonventure 1882– 1902d, 2.12.1, p. 230: creatura mundi est quasi quidam liber, in quo relucet, repraesentatur et legitur Trinitas fabricatrix secundum triplicem gradum expressions, scilicet per modum vestigii, imaginis et similitudinis…). The Trinity is “reflected” when known sensually as trace.37 When mind uses its spiritual power to regard itself, the Trinity is “represented”, because this power more adequately approximates the divine self-sufficiency. The Trinity is “written” when mind is reformed by what is above it to look above itself and by participation in the dual vision of Cherubic intellect actually become a likeness of the Trinity. The cosmic structure here and its subjective constitution is best understood through the Boethian principle from which we began. The Augustinian and Anselmian intellectual objectivity has become a stage in a larger Neoplatonic logic developed by lamblichus, Proclus and their successors, Christian and pagan, which contains and modifies it. This absorption is characteristic of the systems of what we call the High Middle Ages. The assimilation is compelled by the nature and limits of the two logics (See Hankey 1987, 47–54; Hankey 1992:133–42; Hankey 1995:236–39; Hankey 1997a, 74–93; Hankey 1997b, 435–38; Hankey 1997d, 252–53; Hankey 1998a, 164–72; Hankey 1998d, 159– 60). If the analysis of Bonaventure (and later of Cusanus) be accepted, we may say that Augustinian intellectus, or Plotinian NOUS, is a duality which needs and seeks a higher

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stability. Western Christian subjectivity needs a more complete priority to difference than Augustine provides. Paradoxically, the larger Neoplatonic framework which founds human subjectivity in the Li Non Aliud of Cusanus permits and requires a recognition of the poiesis which human knowledge of its principle involves. Finally, thinking within that Neoplatonic framework also permits and requires a knowledge of human subjectivity and its principle in a complete and systematic relation to the whole cosmos whose coming into being is involved in human subjectivity. If modernity involves a Cartesian return to the Augustinian and Anselmian primacy of self-reflexive reason and ontology, the self of Bonaventure and Cusanus founded beyond these may reappear in Kant. We have at present what claim to be post-modern reassertions of Augustine and of the pseudoDionysius. They may or may not be genuine retrievals, but in any case, both the Latin and the Greek Patristic and Neoplatonic traditions are required for Western Christian subjectivity to understand its structure adequately. Notes 1 For literature see Hankey 1999a; Charles-Saget 1998; Putallaz 1991a; Putallaz 1991b are examples. 2 Hankey 1998a, Hankey 1999a and Hankey 1999b are endeavours to expose the problems and to begin the necessary corrections. 3 Hankey 1998c attempts part of this work. 4 Fouilloux 1998, 182–187. 5 For a fuller consideration of how these structures meet in Latin Christianity see Hankey 1998d. 6 Boethius 1998, 9 225.10ff, where the question of prayer is not raised. 7 Porphyry 1975 c.10: All things are in all things, but everything is accommodated to the ousia of each knower: in the intellect according to noeros, in the soul rationally (logismos), etc. I owe this reference to Dr. Cristina D’Ancona-Costa whom I thank. 8 Plato, Republica 477b5ff.; on Plato, see Nicholson 1998, 15–16, 21–23; Aristotle, De Anima 415a20. 9 Plato, Timaeus 28a6ff; on the role of the will of the Demiurge, see Reydams-Schils 1999, 23. 10 Plotinus Ennead 3.8.7; 3:381 Armstrong, but compare 4.4.13. See Armstrong 1990, 160–63 and Gatti 1997, 32–34. 11 “For the understanding of things is what things really are.” Eriugena 1865, 2.8, 535C. 12 Boethius 1973, 3.9, p. 264, lines 10–11: Quod enim simplex est indivisumque natura, id error humanus separat…; Ibid., 3.9, p. 266, lines 45–46: quod est unum simplexque natura, pravitas humana dispertit. That this dividing is a fundamental human problem is hinted from the beginning and is indicated throughout, see the description of Philosophy’s dress at Ibid., 1.1, p. 134, lines 22–24. 13 Boethius 1973, 4.1, p. 312, lines 4 and 10–12: “ego nondum penitus insiti maeroris oblitus…maxima nostri causa maeroris…vel esse omnino mala possint vel impunita praetereant….” 14 Boethius 1973, 1.1, p. 132, lines 19–20: “…inter utrasque litteras in scalarum modum gradus quidam insigniti”. 15 Boethius 1973, 4.6, pp. 356–58, lines 23–33: quidquid aliquo movetur modo, causas, ordinem, formas ex divinae mentis stabilitate sortitur. Haec in suae simplicitatis arce composita multiplicem rebus regendis modum statuit. Qui modus cum in ipsa divinae intellegentiae puritate conspicitur, providentia nominatur…providentia est ipsa ilia divina ratio in summo omnium principe constituta quae cuncta disponit.

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16 ST 1.58.1, obj.3: “In libro De Causis dicitur quod ‘intelligentia intelligit secundum modum suae substantiae’.” See Aquinas. 1996, Prop. 8 and Appendix 2, p. 175. The position of Boethius he understands as requiring attention both to the object and the subject of knowing; see Aquinas 1992, Expositio Capituli Secundi (p. 133, lines 25–29): duo quia modus quo aliqua discutiuntur debet congruere et rebus et nobis: nisi enim rebus congrueret, res intelligi non possent, nisi uero congrueret nobis, nos capere non possemus and ibid., q. 6, a. 1, resp. 3, p. 162, lines 327ff. where he follows the doctrine of Boethius in the Consolatio, a doctrine which he assimilates to those of Augustine and the pseudo-Dionysius, a following he reproduced in ST 1.79.8. Thomas’ own position, and the one he adopts in ST, is near to the one he ascribes to Boethius; e.g. see Aquinas, 1954, prop. 8, p. 56, lines 9ff. where Thomas explains in what sense knowledge must be regarded both ex parte cognoscentis and ex parte rei cognitae. 17 See Gersh 1978, 75, 252 and e.g., Plotinus, Enneads, 6.8.18; 6.9.8; Aquinas 1992, q. 6, a. 1, resp. 3, p. 162, lines 327ff. There is also the related idea in which modes of cognition and spiritual action correspond with different geometrical figures and shapes: see Shaw 1996, 189–198. 18 The Monologion details the likeness and difference between the two. The hope for the satisfaction of the Proslogion’s quest is “quia creasti in me hanc imaginem tuam, ut tui memor te cognitem, te amen” Anselm 1946, 1, p. 100, lines 12–13. It must be noted, however, that the trinity reached is that of love: Anselm 1946, 23, pp. 117, lines 12–16 and see Hankey 1997d 256–7. 19 Anselm 1946, 4, p. 104, lines 1–2: aut sine ulla aut cum aliqua extranea significatione. On forms of externality see von Balthasar 1984, 124. Bonaventure 1882–1902a, q. 1, art. 1, ad 4, p. 50 has a useful distinction between cogitatione nuda and cogitatione cum ascensu. The first is coextensive with speech (sermo). 20 That the unknown to the human seeker is the one who is properly most knowable because he dwells in light is a point very significantly elaborated in Chapter xvi (Quod haec sit “lux inaccessibilis, quam inhabitat”) which immediately follows Chapter xv (Quod maior sit quam cogitari possit). 21 Shaw 1996, 65ff. & 108–9: “The “one person” that lamblichus knew himself to be…was the completely descended soul identified with its particular mortal body. Indeed, the selfconsciousness of any soul was rooted in this identification.” And see Hankey 1998c, 53–57. 22 Anselm 1946, 1, p. 98, line 22. What I mean by concrete is close to what leads von Balthasar 1984, 213ff., to call this “aesthetic reason.” See also Moss 1999, 132. 23 Anselm 1946, 1, p. 98, line 3: Si autem ubique es, cur non video praesentem? Ibid., 16, p. 113, lines 2–3: Ubique es tota praesens, et non te video. 24 Anselm 1946, 16, p. 112, lines 21–24: non est aliud quod bane penetret, ut ibi te pervideat. Vere ideo bane non video, quia nimia mihi est…Non potest intellectus meus ad illam. 25 Anselm 1946, 18, p. 114, lines 4 and 8: sentio me involutum in eis and quaerimus non invenimus…invenimus non est quod quaerimus. 26 Boethius 1973, 4.6, p. 362, line 79; “ad intellectum ratiocinatio”; see 3.11, p. 306, lines 107– 108, and 4.6, p. 362, lines 78–82: “Igitur uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio, ad id quod est id quod gignitur, ad aeternitatem tempus, ad punctum medium circulus, ita est fati series mobilis ad providentiae stabilem simplicitatem” and Hankey 1997c, 246–47. 27 Anselm 1946, 19, p. 115, lines 14–15: non es tamen in loco aut tempore, sed omnia sunt in te. Anselm 1946, 20, p. 115, line 18: Tu ergo imples et complecteris omnia. 28 Anselm 1946, 23, p. 117, line 10: sic es tu simplex, ut de te non possit nasci aliud quam quod tu es. On this incomprehensibly simple plurality, see von Balthasar 1984, 218. 29 Despite this, my interpretation does not conform to that of de Lubac and his followers like von Balthasar and Moss (Moss 1999, 138–39), who find the argument of the Proslogion “deeply broken: the intellectual satisfaction at the discovery of the proof of God’s existence is not at all the joy in God promised by Christ” (von Balthasar 1984, 235). The crucifixion

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and grace lie within the search for the unum argumentum and the consequences of thinking in accord with it, not outside. 30 However, both Anselm and Bonaventure may separate mind’s self-knowledge from its knowledge of what is below it more completely than Augustine does, see Hankey 1995, 55– 56; Hankey 1997d, 256. On the complex, unresolved, unsystematic “dualisme” of Bonaventure as compared to Aquinas, see Wéber 1974, 140–142; Wéber 1991, 90–108 and de Libera 1993. 31 For my fullest exploration of this problematic see Hankey 1999a. 32 Plotinus Ennead 6.7.35; 7:196 lines 19–25 Armstrong; see Perczel 1997; Hankey 1999a, 115 and Bonaventure 1956, Prologus 4 and 7.4. 33 Bonaventure 1956, Prologus 2–3; 7.1, p. 96: verum etiam semetipsam; 7.2; 7.4, p. 98: oportet quod relinquantur omnes intellectuals operationes; 7.7, p. 100: Moriamur. The elements of Augustinian love and of participation in the death of Christ are added by Latin theologians in the tradition to which Bonaventure belongs but are not found in the Pseudo-Dionysius, see Rorem 1993, 216–222. 34 Bonaventure 1882–1902b, V.24, p. 358: operatio vel potentia divina duplex est, una quae se convertit ad contuenda divina spectacula; alia quae se convertit ad degustanda divina solatio. Primum fit per intelligentiam, secundum per vim unitivam sive amativam, quae secreta est, et de qua parum vel nihil noverunt. 35 Cusa 1983, 4.12, p. 40: istud est [li non aliud] quod per oppositorum coincidentiam annis multis quaesivi. On the coincidence of opposites in Bonaventure, see Cousins 1978, passim, on his relation to Cusa, 224–26. Though Cousin’s analysis is excellent, I place Bonaventure closer to Cusa than he does because I understand the coincidence above intellect in terms of the Neoplatonic One in its Dionysian form. 36 Bonaventure 1956, 1.6–8 shows this union of grace and the human exercise of its powers well. In 1882–1902c, q. IV, p. 24, he teaches that “secundum istum triplicem gradum comparationis triplex est gradus divinae cooperationis.” Deus cooperatur: per modum vestigii in the mode of prindpii creativi, per modum imaginis in the mode of rationis moventis, and per modum similitudinis in the mode of doni infusi. 37 Bonaventure 1956, 7.1, p. 96: “mens nostra contuita est Deum extra se per vestigia et in vestigiis…” Ibid., 1.10, p. 44: “Relucet autem Creatoris summa potentia et sapientia et benevolentia in rebus creatis secundum quod hoc tripliciter nuntiat sensus carnis sensui interiori.” And so with the other powers.

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Balthasar, Hans Urs von. 1984. The Glory of the Lord, Vol. II: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles. Edinburgh: T. & T.Clark. Boethius. 1973. Consolatio Philosophiae. Edited by H.Stewart and E.Rand. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. ——. 1998. On Aristotle’s On Interpretation 9. Translated by Norman Kretzmann. In Ammonius, On Aristotle’s On Interpretation 9. Translated by David Blank. With Boethius. On Aristotle’s On Interpretation 9, Translated by Norman Kretzmann. With essays by Richard Sorabji, Norman Kretzmann, and Mario Mignucci. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Bonaventure. 1882–1902a. Quaestiones Disputatae de Mysterio Trinitatis. Opera Omnia V.Quarrachi: Collegium S.Bonaventurae. ——. 1882–1902b. Collationes in Hexaëmaeron. Opera Omnia V.Quarrachi: Collegium S.Bonaventurae. ——. 1882–1902c. Quaestiones Disputatae de Scientia Christi. Opera Omnia V.Quarrachi: Collegium S.Bonaventurae. ——. 1882–1902d. Breviloquium, Opera Omnia V.Quarrachi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae. ——. 1956. Itinerarium mentis in Deum. Text and translation by Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M. Franciscan Institute. Booth, E. 1977–1979. “St. Augustine’s ‘notitia sui’ related to Aristotle and the early neoPlatonists,” Augustiniana, 27 (1977):70–132 & 364–401, 28 (1978): 183–221, 29 (1979):97– 124. ——. 1985. “St. Augustine’s de Trinitate and Aristotelian and neo-Platonist Noetic.” Studia Patristica, XVI, pt. II, ed. E.A.Livingstone, Text und Untersuchungen 129 (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1985), 487–490. ——. 1986. Saint Augustine and the Western Tradition of Self-Knowing. The Saint Augustine Lecture 1986. Villanova: Augustinian Institute, Villanova University. Charles-Saget, A. (éd.) 1998. Retour, repentir et constitution de soi. Problèmes et contoverses. Paris: Vrin. Cousins, E. 1978. Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press. Crouse, R.D. 2000. “Paucis mutatis verbis: St. Augustine’s Platonism.” In Augustine and his critics, edited R.J.Dodaro and G.P.Lawless, pp. 37–50. London and New York: Routledge. Cusa, Nicholas of. 1983. On God as Not-Other. Translated by Jasper Hopkins, 2nd. ed. Minneapolis: Authur J.Banning Press. Doull, J. 1988. “What is Augustinian Sapientia?” Dionysius 12:61–67. ——. 1997. “Neoplatonism and the Origin of the Older Modern Philosophy.” In The Perennial Tradition of Neoplatonism, edited J.J.Cleary, pp. 486–516. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Eriugena, John Scot. 1865. De Divisione Naturae. Edited H.J.Floss. Patrologia Latina 122. Fouilloux, É. 1998. Une Église en quête de liberté. La pensée catholique française entre modernisme et Vatican II (1914–1962). “Anthropologiques”. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. Gatti, Maria Luisa. 1997. “Plotinus: the Platonic tradition and the foundation of Neoplatonism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. Edited by Lloyd Gerson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 10–37. Gersh, Stephen. 1978. From lamblichus to Eriugena. An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution of the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition. Studien zur Problemgeschichte der Antiken und Mittelalterlichen Philosophic viii. Leiden: Brill. Hanby, M. 1999. “Desire. Augustine beyond Western subjectivity.” In Radical Orthodoxy, A New Theology, edited by John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward, pp. 109–126. London and New York: Routledge. Hankey, W. 1987. God in Himself, Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae. Oxford Theological Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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CHAPTER EIGHT Proclean ‘Remaining’ and Avicenna on Existence as Accident Neoplatonic Methodology and a Defense of ‘PreExisting’ Essences1 Sarah Pessin Introduction Avicenna is subject to a variety of well-known criticisms, perhaps most famously that he made of existence an accident.2 Rahman and others have, I think convincingly, argued that in fact, Avicenna does not literally treat existence as an accident.3 However, there seems to remain in both Avicenna and Aquinas scholarship the residual sense that—even if he did not literally mean to make of existence an accident—Avicenna does resort to invoking a misleading ‘essence+existence’ image, if you will.4 As such, the critic points to, if not an actual philosophical error, then at the very least Avicenna’s misleading invocation of existence ‘happening to’ or ‘being added to’ essence as reflecting something crude, or flawed, in his thinking. Avicenna’s analysis, then, is regarded as somewhat clumsy, and is seen as revealing a struggle on his part with the complex issues of ontology. This struggle, we are told by this version of the history of philosophy, is surmounted only once we reach Aquinas’ much subtler ‘essence/existence’ analysis which, in more accurately treating esse in terms of existing substances—and not ‘preexisting’ essences—better expresses the ontology of esse as the act of substance.5,6 In the current chapter, I seek primarily to challenge this version of the history of philosophy not by arguing (as Rahman and others have already done) that Avicenna is not guilty of philosophical error in adverting, as he does, to his ‘essence+esse’ account, but by arguing further that in fact Avicenna’s analysis—in invoking the imagery of existence ‘happening’ to essence—does not represent unfortunate clumsiness on his behalf, (representing, as seems to be the implication in much of the literature, a failure on his part to align his ideas with the more ‘elegant’ ontological framework of Aquinas), but represents, instead, a decided attempt on his part to best satisfy what I will call the “Neoplatonic Methodology.” The Neoplatonic Methodology, as we will see, views the goal of all endeavors—and, in this case, ontology—as ultimately aiming to facilitate a reorientation of the practitioner’s soul, itself in way of effecting a Neoplatonic ‘Return’ for that practitioner. As such, my intent is to go a step further than Rahman’s defense of Avicenna. As I will argue, it is not only that Avicenna does not commit himself to anything philosophically suspect (as Rahman has shown), but that, furthermore, his ontological approach—in its very invocation of ‘pre-existent essences’ having esse ‘added’ to them—is an invocation on Avicenna’s behalf of figurative language and its

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consequent imagery in a way best suited—as we will see—to effect a certain altered state in the analyst himself, as a first step towards his own Neoplatonic Return. To explicate the Neoplatonic Methodology, I will call upon ideas in Plotinus, Plato and Proclus in which the goals of engaging in dialectic, +astronomy and arithmetic are this very ‘re-orientation’—or Return—of the practitioner’s own soul. To ground the likelihood of such a methodology in Avicenna in general, I turn briefly to both his theory of prophecy and poetics (as part of his “Western” analytic treatment of Return), as well as his employment of the ‘visionary recital’ (as part of his more “Eastern” treatment of Return), and, showing in these cases the importance which is given to Imagination, I thus ground in Avicenna both the importance of Return, as well as the specific tactic of using language to evoke those images which will best effect that Return. I then suggest that Avicenna’s ontology in particular be treated along these lines as aiming to effect Return by using ‘essentialist’ language. Furthermore, to help make clear why the ‘essence+ esse’ language is so well suited to effect that Return, I employ Proclus’ own tripartite analysis ‘according to cause,’ ‘according to subsistence’ and ‘according to participation,’ showing, in effect, how both Avicenna’s and Proclus’ language may—in the invocation of hierarchical imagery of Remaining, Procession and Reversion—be seen as aiming to best impress upon the soul the truth of ‘self as effect.’ In effect, I propose that we understand the extent to which Avicenna’s analysis invokes existence ‘added to’ essences as the extent to which he is best seen not as thinking ‘inelegantly,’ but as consciously submitting to, and enacting, this Neoplatonic Methodology. Towards the end of the chapter, I will also briefly suggest why, on this account, Avicenna’s ‘essentialist’ language is better suited to his purposes than Aquinas’ own ontological terms. Pre-existence and the Aristotelian ‘Defense’ of Avicennian Ontology Without spending too much time rehearsing Rahman’s defense of Avicenna against the reading of those who take Avicenna to have made of ‘existence’ an accident, it should be noted that it is a very Aristotelian defense of Avicenna. In brief, this defense has the effect of reducing Avicenna’s claims about essences and existences to claims about Aristotelian ousiai—the substantial existents of Aristotle’s ontology.7 In effect, Rahman and others argue that Avicenna does not mean by ‘existence’ an Aristotelian accident, and his notion of Being instead follows along what might be described as properly Aristotelian, categorical lines on which substances—and not ‘essences’ ‘pre-existing’ those substances—are the loci of ‘existence.’ As such, we might say that Avicenna is not guilty of error on this defense, to the extent that he is, in fact, struggling to engage in a purely Aristotelian method of analysis. In effect, we might put the Aristotelian defense of Avicenna in the matter of ‘existence’ as an accident as follows: Avicenna is defended by showing that his is not, in fact, guilty of committing himself to ‘pre-existent’ essences, a basic philosophical error which would result from the confused assumption that ‘existence’ were actually an Aristotelian accident. Succinctly stated, since an Aristotelian ‘accident’ is precisely ‘said of substances, if ‘existence’ were construed as an ‘accident,’ that would entail the philosophically confused claim that there is—exists, presumably—some substance to

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which ‘existence’ may be added. In effect, this would speak circularly of an existent which is the subject of existence! Or, put in other words, such a view would commit one to the philosophically confused notion of a ‘pre-existent’ essence—something which, as the subject for existence, must not yet exist, but which must already exist if it is to be able to play the role of subject to start with! The suggestion of a ‘pre-existent essence,’ then, goes hand in hand with the erroneous suggestion that existence is an Aristotelian accident, and as such, the defense of Avicenna by Rahman and others who point out that Avicenna did not literally mean to make of existence an accident is a defense which denies the presence in Avicenna of a crude—and philosophically flawed—commitment to ‘pre-existent essences.’8 Given this defense, it might seem to follow that ‘pre-existent’ essences can play no role in Avicenna if we are to save him from philosophical error. For, as a true Aristotelian, how could such a notion possibly occupy a home in his thought? Yet while I agree that existence is not for Avicenna an Aristotelian accident, I do not think that ‘preexistence’ falls by the wayside in a proper exposition of Avicenna’s treatment of ontology. For, once we become sensitive to his employment of Neoplatonic Methodology, we will find an important function to the invocation of the seemingly crude image of ‘pre-existing essences.’ Consider first, along these lines, Ivry’s suggestion of such ‘pre-existing essences’ in Avicenna. In developing a suggestion that Avicenna (as well as Maimonides), can be interpreted as having held more Neoplatonic ontologies than such scholars as Rahman and Altmann have granted them, Ivry suggests that: …[Avicenna’s] assertion that “quiddity before existence has no existence,” may be no more than a tautology concerning existence as normally construed, repeating the distinction to which attention has been drawn between quiddity, or essence, and existence. Of course quiddities do not exist before they exist. Yet this does not preclude the possibility that quiddities may have some sort of subsistence, or reality, apart from their actual “existence,” and beyond the mere potential which Aristotle allows. If possible existents cannot receive anything from God but actual existence, their essential natures remain unaccounted for. They cannot come from nothing on their own, haphazardly, and the Necessary Existent [i.e., God] cannot create them in their particular natures. Rather, on this reading, the possible existents would be real in their own way, independently of the Necessary Existent, although dependent existentially upon it (Ivry 1992, 148). The ‘pre-existence’ of essences is here suggested to be a kind of subsistence which is ‘fainter’ or ‘weaker’ than regular substantial existence. However, as I hope will become clear, the approach I advocate is significantly different. In finding a home for ‘preexisting’ essences in Avicenna’s thought, I do not mean to saddle him with ‘faintly’ subsisting essences. For, if something ‘subsists’ as a ‘thing’ in its own right (which presumably is the case for the essences in Ivry’s above account), then it is quite unclear, philosophically speaking, how that ‘subsistence’ differs from ‘existence’: Presumably, if a ‘thing’ subsists, then it also exists (as opposed, to say, an Aristotelian accident which

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might be said to ‘exist’ in a different way from substantial existents). In the analysis which I provide, I hope, rather, to address ‘pre-existence’ in such a way that does not commit Avicenna to a new ontological grade of subsistence, but that, invoking a Neoplatonic moment of analysis ‘according to cause,’ represents instead a method of analysis which helps the analyst focus on the analysandum in a particularly useful way for his ultimately Neoplatonic goal of ‘Return.’ The Neoplatonic Methodology and the Aim of ‘Return’ In order to best arrive at an understanding of what I mean by ‘Neoplatonic Methodology,’ I offer the following initial considerations: 1. Return. I will use the term ‘Return’ quite broadly, and will not worry here about whether the intention is a ‘mystical’ union with the Godhead, or a subtler notion of self-perfection resulting in purified capacity for reflection, or prophecy or some other purified state of the human soul. Speaking quite generally, I will use the notion to refer to a ‘perfected state,’ a state the attaining of which every Neoplatonist (though of course, not the Neoplatonist exclusively) strives. 2. Self as Effect. Going further, we might note that for thinkers interested in Return, the first step to effecting that Return is a personal recognition of being an ‘effect,’ and, as such, standing in some sort of dependence relation to a higher cause. It is this recognition of ‘self as effect’ that is required for Return, for, without the sense that there is a higher cause, there is, it seems, no sense to be made of even the notion of reverting: Underlying the hope for Return, there must be some higher cause to—or, at least toward—which the philosopher hopes to revert. This, then, essentially amounts to recognition of ‘self as effect.’ 3. Neoplatonic Methodology. Given their pressing interest in Return, then, we might note that in addition to addressing the schema of Return in their writings, there is, additionally, an attempt to (a) use the very engagement in even those sciences which are not overtly about Return, and even to (b) use the very act of reading their writings which address those more general sciences (where we will be interested in the sciences of cosmology and ontology—but the point could just as easily be extended to the sciences of music geometry, astronomy, etc.) as means to effecting Return. As such, we find two cases. In the first case, we find such thinkers as Plotinus, Plato and Proclus suggesting ways in which we might use our engagement in astronomy and arithmetic as means of effecting Return. In the second case, we might point to even a sensitivity to choosing with care the very words—and subsequent images—employed in writing in general, if the reading and study of that writing is to itself help effect Return in the reader’s soul. We maintain that the criterion for a bit of language’s being effective in the requisite way is that it specifically succeed in imprinting upon the reader’s soul the awareness of ‘self as effect’ (as per above). As such, ontologies and cosmologies which involve the reader in contemplating ‘causal hierarchies’ are especially effective in this regard, since a greater and greater awareness of and sensitivity to ‘self as effect’ emerges in the reader from a reflection upon a series of higher and higher causes—an increasing number of causes, the reflection upon which brings a greater and greater sense on the reader’s part of the distance between himself

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as effect and the ultimate source (i.e., God or the One). As we will argue, both the Proclean tripartite schemas as well as Avicenna’s own employment of ‘essence+esse’—when taken in this Proclean way—are best seen as in this way enacting the Neoplatonic Methodology and its sensitivity to the importance of the language used—and images evoked—in writing about anything (in this case, ontology and cosmology). Turning first to the Neoplatonic Methodology which sees in the very engagement in a science the possibility for effecting Return, consider Plotinus. In his account of the aims and goals of dialectic, he makes clear that—in addition to merely telling us something about a given analysandum—the very act of dialectic itself can re-orient the practitioner’s soul; this is evidenced, e.g., in Plotinus’ choosing to begin his discussion of dialectic with the cry, “What art is there, what method or practice, which will take us up there where we must go?” (Plotinus, Enneads 1.3.1; 153 Armstrong). Other cases in point of the Neoplatonic Methodology at work in this way—where the very act of analysis is itself integral to effecting key changes in the practitioner’s state— can be found in Plato’s Timaeus and in Proclus’ commentary on Euclid’s Elements. In this regard, consider the suggestion in the Timaeus that it is by engaging in astronomy—by charting the motions of the heavens, and most of all, of the Sun—that we help return our souls to their most perfectly ordered states.9 In effect, according to the Timaeus, the Demiurge ensures that the Sun is the brightest light in the sky so as to orient all living things to the principle of Sameness (as opposed to Difference), which is manifest most clearly in its daily motions. While in the immediate context of the notion of Time in the cosmos, the Demiurge’s purpose in so appointing the Sun is to help mankind learn to count and engage in mathematics,10 the ultimate aim of such numerical reflection is clearly, in the context of the Timaeus’ overall discussion of Sameness and Difference, itself to strengthen—and re-orient—the soul. Similarly, turning to Proclus’ own account of arithmetic, we find the suggestion that it is in reflecting upon the nature of numbers that we can best re-orient our souls, best preparing ourselves ultimately for acquaintance with Unity itself. In discussing ‘The Utility of Mathematics,’ Proclus tells us, among other things, that …mathematics makes ready our understanding and our mental vision for turning towards that upper world,”11 and, referring us to Socrates’ remarks in Plato’s Republic, (i.e., Republic 527e ff.), that: …when ‘the eye of the soul’ is blinded and corrupted by other concerns, mathematics alone can revive and awaken the soul again to the vision of being, can turn her from images to realities and from darkness to the light of intellect, can (in short) release her from the cave, where she is held prisoner by matter and by the concerns incident to generation, so that she may aspire to bodiless and partless being.12 Turning then to what we might call the ‘more extreme’ sense of Neoplatonic Methodology—the suggestion that it is even the very words (and consequent images)

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employed in a science which can effect a Return—we arrive at our treatment of Avicenna’s ‘essence+esse’ ontology, and its effectiveness in this regard (recalling our earlier remarks about the effectiveness of images of ‘causal hierarchies’)—an effectiveness which is especially clear when taken on analogy with Proclus’ own cosmological/ ontological schema. Before we suggest how we might use Proclus’ tripartite analyses to best reveal Avicenna’s ontology in this light, we must first consider independent evidence in Avicenna for his interest in the Neoplatonic Methodology in this ‘more extreme’ sense. That Avicenna is sensitive to the importance of words (and their consequent images) may be seen by looking even briefly at (a) his ideas on language (especially, on poetics and metaphor), (b) his account of prophecy and (c) his ‘visionary recitals.’ In his writings on imaginative, emotive language, Avicenna—drawing on al-Farabi’s discussion of the importance of symbolic and metaphorical representations in “imaginative syllogism”— states in his Danesh Nameh that: These are premises that stimulate the soul to a lively desire or loathing of some thing. One might be well aware that these premises are false, but if someone says, “What you are eating puts the bile in motion,” even when it is honey and you know perfectly well that it is false, it is only natural to be disgusted and want no more. Thus both true and seemingly true opinions can form the givens of imagination. (Avicenna, Danesh Nameh, 1.116; as cited in Goodman 1992, 221) In light of this, and drawing additionally on further remarks in Avicenna’s Poetics regarding the immediate grasp one’s soul has of imagery, Goodman states that, The logic of metaphor, in other words, speaks directly to the heart—or, as Ibn Sina put it, it works directly on the imagination. (Goodman 1992, 222) Turning to Avicenna’s theory of prophecy, we additionally find the importance of images and soul’s imaginative capacity. For, unlike the philosopher who enjoys only intellectual rewards, the prophet is characterized not only as enjoying connection (ittisal) with the Active Intellect, but as experiencing an overflow of information from the Active Intellect into his conjoined soul’s properly developed imaginative faculty—a faculty, which in its well-honed state, is able to receive that information in the form of those images and words—or the ‘sensible and audible speech’—best suited to encapsulating and representing that received influx of information.13 In effect, it is this added imaginative capacity which allows the prophet to outrank the philosopher for Avicenna. In addition to the role of images and imagination in prophecy in general, Avicenna also demarcates a special variety of prophecy which is unique to the imaginative faculty alone—a variety of prophecy which sidesteps any involvement of the rational faculty, and which—consisting in both visions of the future, as well as in figurative representations of intelligible truths—is traced not to the Active Intellect, but to the souls of the spheres.14 Similarly, turning to Avicenna’s ‘visionary recitals,’ it is the souls of the spheres—the Angel-Souls of the Separate Intellects or Archangels—constituting, as they do, a realm of pure Imagination, which emerge as the “place,” as it were, of the recitals

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themselves; for, it is only by entering this Imaginative realm—i.e., by reciting narratives whose symbolic language fills us with the most effective images—that the individual’s soul is able to effect Return (or, the ) (Corbin 1954/1960, 35). In his analysis of the visionary recitals, Corbin is hence led to the dual conclusion that (1) the symbolic text of the recital is that imagistic representation of the soul’s own experience of truths during its wiladat-e ruchani (spiritual birth), and that, simultaneously, (2) the process of reciting this symbolic text, and of working to understand its imagery is itself to enact a ‘return’ of the text’s symbols to what they signify (Corbin 1954/1960, 32). In this regard, we might add that—as in the cases of engaging in astronomy and arithmetic in the cases of Plato and Proclus earlier—it is ultimately the Return of the practitioner’s own soul which is the goal of thus engaging in the recital. This evidence in Avicenna for the importance of Imagination in Return, taken together with our earlier evidence regarding the appropriateness of imagery—and the figurative language used to evoke it—for speaking, as it were, directly to the soul, lead to the conclusion that figurative language—and its consequent images—are key to effecting Return in Avicenna’s world-view. It is in this light, then—within the context of effecting Return by evoking effective images—that we suggest we take Avicenna’s use of the language of ‘essence+esse.’ For, as we now turn to illustrating, this ontological analysis indeed—on analogy with Proclus’ own tripartite schema of analysis—evokes a hierarchical imagery effective in imprinting upon the practitioner’s soul the ‘self as effect’ theme, whose importance in Return we have already seen. The Neoplatonic Methodology, Remaining, and the Ontology of PreExistence In what may be roughly called Neoplatonic cosmology, we find three hypostases—the Plotinian hypostases, One, Intellect and Soul, and we find—especially in later Neoplatonism—the tripartite causal theory of Remaining, Procession and Reversion as describing the relationships between these hypostases (and between other hypostases which later Neoplatonists add to the Plotinian schema). However, in addition to describing the relationship of the cosmological hypostases, the Neoplatonic tripartite cyclic theory of causation (viz., the doctrine of Remaining, Procession and Reversion), may, much more broadly, be seen as a metaphysical approach to analyzing any thing, let us say ‘Socrates.’15 It is precisely in viewing Neoplatonic causal theory not simply as revealing a cosmological concern with the three (or more) hypostases, but as revealing a more general metaphysical apparatus for analyzing any analysandum that will be effective in explaining Avicenna’s own decision to talk of existence as something ‘added’ to ‘pre-existent’ essences. The more general metaphysical apparatus—an ontological methodology, if you will— revealed by the Neoplatonic tripartite analysis may be seen in Proclus, where it is manifest in his three-part analysis of a thing—let us say the man, Socrates—according to cause, subsistence and participation.16 Leaving aside a full explication of this metaphysical apparatus, let it suffice for the present purposes to suggest that what we have here is essentially a method for ontological analysis in which every existent is analyzed first and foremost as an ‘effect.’ This is achieved by making manifest in the

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case of every analysandum the cosmological relation between God (or, the One) and the cosmos: Since God as cause bestows existence on the cosmos (the ‘effect’), we therefore analyze each existent first in way of revealing this; as such, we analyze it first and foremost as Remaining in—or, having its ultimate subsistence in—its vertically proximate cause which itself has its subsistence in an even higher vertical cause, and so on, until we arrive at Gold Himself. In the recourse to ‘vertical causes’ in this ontological method of analysis, we find that the cosmological imagery—of ‘vertically’ intermediary cosmic causes between God and sublunar existents—becomes part of the ontological analysis of Socrates himself as cosmic effect—and ultimately as an effect of God. As such, we find, with respect to the Neoplatonic Methodology, that the greater the number of vertically intermediate causes placed between God and Socrates, the greater the impact of ‘self as effect’ on the philosopher engaging in this ontological analysis. Through its employment of the cosmology of ‘hierarchical causal intermediaries,’ the ontological analysis of Socrates ‘remaining’ in his vertically proximate cause—and of that cause’s (and hence, of Socrates himself) ‘remaining’ in an even higher vertical cause, and so on—is uniquely able to imprint the reality of ‘self as effect’ upon the soul of the analyst himself. For, in enlisting this ‘cosmic imagery’ in our ontological analysis, we begin every analysis of every analysandum (except for God) with a focus on its essential status as ‘effect,’ thus engaging ourselves—as analysts—in an exercise which—by impressing us with the requisite awareness of ‘our own cosmic contingency’—is preparatory for our own Return. The ontology is in this way the groundwork for enabling Return. With respect to ‘essence+esse’ in particular, it is this very exercise which is at play. For, within the context of Neoplatonic tripartite theory, we have found that it is the stage of Remaining—picked out by Proclus’ analysis of a thing ‘according to [its] cause’— which demarcates the analysandum in its essential contingency—in its essential nature as ‘effect.’ To emphasize this result, we may simply speak of this first moment of the ontological analysis revealing the analysandum as ‘essence’ (which is to say, in terms of its essential origin in its cause). Let us turn, then, to an employment of each of Proclus’ three stages of analysis to better see Avicenna’s ‘essence+esse’ ontology in its capacity to enliven within our souls the experience of ‘self as effect’ by invoking the hierarchical cosmic imagery of Remaining, Procession and Reversion: 1. The analysis of Socrates as ‘Remaining,’ is the analysis of him ‘according to cause.’ At this stage, the analysis reveals Socrates in his essential relation to a hierarchy of causes in the cosmos. As such, he emerges as an ‘essence,’ and as such, we might view him as if he were primarily a transcendent form, ‘Man,’ which, existing only within the cosmic causes, still lacks any ‘existence’ of its own to speak of. As it relates to our understanding of Avicennian pre-existence, this moment in the analysis of our analysandum, Socrates, reveals him in a ‘pre-existent’ mode, revealed, at this moment in the ontological analysis, to exist only ‘in his cause.’17 Turning to Avicenna, we may identify this ‘transcendent’ moment of Socrates as ‘essence’ with his ‘existence in the Active Intellect’ (the proximate portion of the cosmos which is, in his system the causal origin of sublunar existents), and hence, we might speak of the existence of Socrates ‘in’ his cause in terms of the essential existence of Socrates (viz., as Man) in the Active Intellect.18 Revealed upon analysis in his essential existence, then, Socrates is said to ‘pre-exist’ not in a crude sense, but (as we have already rehearsed above), in the sense that he ultimately—and first-most—exists as ‘effect,’ having his grounding

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ultimately in the Cause of all causes, God. It is to focus on this aspect of any analysandum that we treat it—or, speak of it—as an essence. Seen in this way as essence, Socrates is understood in his most general sense as Man, since, with respect to his relationship to the cosmos (and ultimately to the Godhead), Socrates is identical to all other humans; all humans in their essential rootedness as cosmic (and ultimately, divine) products, share an identical causal story: All are first and foremost, effects—or essences. 2. The analysis of Socrates as ‘Proceeding’ is the analysis of him ‘according to subsistence.’ At this stage in the analysis, Socrates may be said to ‘be’ not qua his essential subsistence (i.e., his subsistence ‘as essence’) in the cosmos (or, in the Active Intellect and ultimately in God) which he shares with all humans, (viz., ‘subsistence as effect’), but rather, Socrates is here focused on in a way designed to manifest Socrates’ essence as it exists in its own right; viz., this mode of analysis focuses on Socrates’ substantial existence. This may be seen as an analysis of Socrates ‘according to subsistence’ inasmuch as this moment in our analysis heralds the first moment of Socrates’ existence qua a particular man (as opposed to as ‘man in general’). However, since the overall goal is to enforce the ‘contingent’ nature of our analysandum as effect (or, essence), we speak even at this second stage of our analysis in a way best reflective of that goal; as such, we speak of the analysandum’s existence as ‘added to’ his ‘essence’—hearkening back, even at this second stage, to the first stage of the analysis. While, together with the above first stage, this second stage of analysis is really enough to make the point about Avicenna’s ‘essence+esse’ ontology, I will suggest a few further points which might help us see in Avicenna’s analysis even a sensitivity to the existing substance’s Reversion as well. As such, consider this second stage of the analysis as revealing Socrates’ substantial existence as a state in which his soul is most perfectly actualized. As such, we turn finally to: 3. The analysis of Socrates as ‘Reverting,’ is the analysis of him ‘according to participation.’ At this stage, the analysis of Socrates reveals him in a way which most closely corresponds to the embodied Socrates, as we experience him via the senses. Socrates, as such, may be said to ‘be’ in the sense of ‘be Man in a way which falls short of fully actualized Man.’ We might correlate this with ‘reversion,’ in that it is in this view of Socrates ‘as effect’ that we enforce the realization that, as ‘effects,’ existents—and certainly corporeal existents, including of course, the analyst himself— relinquish any claims on unmitigated ‘perfection.’ As such, even more so than merely reflecting (as was done in the first stage of the analysis) on the analysandum as effect (itself preparatory of the soul for Return), we here further focus on the ‘participatory’ status of effects, enforcing, as it were, the chasm between all effects and their causes.19 And, as we have already discussed in our analysis of ‘self as effect,’ it is this very presence of imperfection which entails the need for Reversion, or Return. As such, we might suggest that while Remaining and Procession respectively turn our attention to a ‘pre-existence’ and ‘existence’ on the part of the analysandum, this last moment of the analysis, Reversion, highlights the nature of that analysandum as a diminished existent—though, in light of the first two moments of the analysis—an existent who is ultimately linked to—and hence, may Return to—a more exalted existence.20

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In the above, then, we have offered a treatment of Proclean tripartite causal analysis of even ordinary, every-day analysanda which, in accordance with the Neoplatonic Methodology, uses the very terms of the analysis to evoke those images—in this case, the imagery of cosmological hierarchies of causes—to best re-orient the analyst’s own soul by awakening an awareness of ‘self as effect.’ It is in this way that self emerges as a contingent, diminished existent in need of striving towards a higher perfection—a higher perfection contained precisely in its higher causes (in the case of Avicenna, the Active Intellect and, ultimately, God). Furthermore, we have suggested that Avicenna’s own ontology of ‘essence +esse’ be taken in precisely this same regard. In conclusion, then, while we may well take Avicenna’s substantive ontological view as inherently Aristotelian—as Rahman’s defense of Avicenna reveals—we have here shown how, far from merely avoiding philosophical error, Avicenna, in his recourse to the language of ‘essence+ esse’ is able to use the terms of the analysis itself to enliven the Imagination, itself in the service of effecting a Return. Far from revealing a crudity in his thought, the presentation of ontology in ‘essentialist’ terms reflects the operation of the Neoplatonic Methodology. Aquinas Considered We promised at the chapter’s outset that we would suggest why, in fact, Avicenna’s ‘essentialist’ language is better suited to his purposes than Aquinas’ more overtly ‘existentialist’ approach which, after all, does prima facie also seem to engender a sense of ‘self as effect’ in focusing our attention, as it does, on the dependence of all existents directly upon God! In fact, it is Avicenna’s failure to have existents rely upon God directly for their existence (being said in his system to rely, as it were, upon the cosmic causal intermediaries for their existence), that is itself often invoked as an additional way in which Avicenna’s system is faulty and inferior to Aquinas’ own ‘direct’ existential analysis.21 As such, it looks like Aquinas’ ontological system is not only as capable as Avicenna’s of engendering a sense of ‘self as effect,’ but that, in its ‘direct’ crediting of God—and not cosmic intermediaries—for Socrates’ existence, it is more favorable from both the point of view of religious sensibilities as well as ontological parsimony! Let me suggest, then, two ways in which, in the end, Avicenna’s system is better suited to his needs than Aquinas’; as we will see, both reasons arise from taking seriously the importance of Imagination in Avicenna’s view of Return: 1. Where the goal is to enliven the imagination to the realization of ‘self as effect,’ that ontology which employs images capable of more extensively reiterating the theme of ‘analysandum as effect’ will be more successful in this regard; for, as in all meditative practices designed to affect the soul, repetition is key. As such, Aquinas’ ontological account of Socrates’ existence which treats God and Socrates as the only relevant relata will pale in its ability to impress the idea of ‘self as effect’ upon the analyst’s soul when compared with that ontological analysis which reflects on Socrates’ existence in its relation not only to Active Intellect, but in its relation to the many Intellects which precede that Intellect. Avicenna’s ontological analysis, then, affords a reiterative enforcement of ‘analysandum as effect,’ and hence better engenders an experience of ‘self as effect’ on the analyst’s part.

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2. Leaving aside the issue of reiteration, Aquinas’ analysis, in its directly invoking God as cause of Socrates’ existence, fails to offer much ‘food for thought,’ if you will, to the Imagination. For, God Himself—being invoked as one of the two relevant relata— is essentially indescribable, and—while even coming to know of Him via purely intellectual means is a tricky matter—He is certainly not accessible to the Imagination. And while one might suggest the same is true of the Active Intellect—or of any nonmaterial substance, for that matter—at least there is some truth which is revealed in imagining the Intellects in even grossly material ways, for, these beings, though not really material, at least share an essential contingency with those material existents in whose images we imagine them. Encouraging the imagining of God, though, is more problematic since, in this case, we are not only dealing with an immaterial entity, but, we are dealing with the one immaterial entity whose essence is entirely noncontingent, and which is, in effect, Necessary Existence itself. Since God alone lacks, in this way, any similarity to material existents, to ‘imagine’ God becomes far more problematic than to imagine the immaterial cosmological hierarchy of causal intermediaries.

Conclusion In the end, a proper understanding of Avicenna’s ontology reveals an important sense in which, after all, esse is best described as ‘happening to essence.’ Not in the Aristotelian sense of an ‘accident’ (which should come as no surprise, since we are not operating in a purely Aristotelian setting), and not as a merely clumsy locution invoked by Avicenna for lack of more elegant thinking on his part; but, rather, as invoking the images of cosmic Remaining, Procession and Reversion as an especially effective means to impress upon the analyst’s own soul (as well as on the part of the reader’s soul) an awareness of ‘self as effect.’ As in the above cases of the philosopher’s viewing the motions of the Sun and of considering the nature of numbers, the Neoplatonic Methodology is here at play as well, though in this case, the very terms of an ontological analysis evoking images of analysanda first and foremost as contingent essences (or effects)—are the conduits used to prepare the analyst’s soul for its own revertive act. If this reconstruction of Avicenna’s ontological sensitivities as extensions of his commitment to the Neoplatonic Methodology is right, it would seem that there is good reason to expect that the two main criticisms against Avicenna—both the charge of ‘clumsy thinking’ and the related charge of relying unduly upon cosmological intermediaries—will be off the mark. Ironically, it is precisely the attempts to defend Avicenna’s ontology in purely Aristotelian terms—popular in the scholarship—which leave him open to these sorts of problems, problems which, once we accept the legitimacy of seeing in Avicenna a truly Neoplatonic Methodology, would fall by the wayside. For, in coming to more charitably and favorably view the import of invoking effective images—in this case, the images of cosmic Remaining, Procession and Reversion which are invoked by the language of existence’s being ‘added’ to ‘preexisting essences’—we may render these two criticisms against his system as irrelevant and misguided, talking, as it were, past his Neoplatonic project. As such, ‘essentialism’ as a description of this ‘essence+esse’ approach need no longer have the force of a

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‘charge’ against Avicenna, and may rather be viewed as a viable alternative to Aquinas’ more direct ‘existentialist’ analysis. Notes 1 I would like to thank the many conference participants who made useful comments and suggestions on the earlier presented version of this chapter. 2 We will treat Aquinas’ dissatisfaction with Avicenna’s emanationist approach somewhat more specifically towards the end of the chapter. 3 Rahman in this regard challenges not only the view of Averroes and Aquinas, but of such contemporary writers as Goichon and Gilson. For Rahman’s view (and further references), see (Rahman 1958), as well as (Rahman 1981). See also (Morewedge 1972), (Rescher [1967]), (Goichon 1956), (Husain 1976), (Gilson 1956/1994), (see esp. ca. pp. 37ff. where he talks of the “radical opposition” between Aquinas and Avicenna); (Anawati 1978), esp. in his introduction where—on p. 78, note 10—he describes the superiority of Aquinas’ existential approach to Avicenna’s essentialist method. See also (Burrell 1986a/b) for excellent summaries and discussions of this issue. 4 For a clear employment of this language by Avicenna, see, e.g. (Avicenna, Al-Isharat, 202– 203). A translation of the relevant portion may be found in (Nasr 1980/1996, 80). 5 For this sentiment, see, e.g. (Anawati 1978, 78), (Burrell 1986a, 60), (Burrell 1986b, 33–34) and (Gilson 1956, 37ff.). 6 We might say that whereas for Aquinas, God’s single act of creating an essence in and of itself yields a single substance with an inherent essence/existence distinction, for Avicenna, both essence and existence emerge in various ways as either a substance and its accident, or as two separate substrates; both of these can be seen in his emanationist cosmology in which God does not directly create an existing essence; rather, in the case of all but the first created Intellect, the said essence receives its existence from a Separate Intellect. As such, Avicenna’s is described as an inescapably ‘essentialist’ account on which the ‘essence+esse’ claim is quite different from Aquinas’ analysis of things into essence and existence. 7 For problems with Rahman’s translation of ‘ousia’ as ‘existence,’ see (Morewedge 1972). 8 It might be noted in this regard that Avicenna himself voices a slightly different—but related—recognition of the error which would ensue if one were literally to take existence as a regular accident; in his statement, the focus is not so much on the absurdity of a ‘preexisting essence,’ but on the absurdity of treating existence as an accident of the same ontological sort as any other accident; for, as he argues, existence is an accident of a substance tantamount to that substance’s own existence, whereas ‘whiteness,’ e.g., is an accident of a substance which is most certainly not tantamount to that substance’s own existence; rather, whiteness’ existence in the substance is tantamount only to that very whiteness’ own existence. See (Nasr 1980/1996, 81–82). 9 See (Plato, Timaeus 39b3-c1). 10 See (Cornford 1935, 115). 11 See (Proclus, In Prim. Eucl Element., Prologus 1, p. 20, lines 15–17; p. 17 Morrow). 12 See (Proclus, In Prim. Eucl. Element., Prologus 1, p. 20, lines 18ff.; p. 17 Morrow). 13 For further discussion and references, see (Heath 1992, esp. p. 90, with fn. 45), and (Walzer 1962). 14 For a discussion, references and ways in which this differs from other Arabic theories of prophecy, see (Davidson 1972, 177–178). 15 For excellent background and extended explication of the Neoplatonic causal theory, see (Gersh 1978), especially pages 27–82. 16 See (Proclus, Elements of Theology, propositions 23, 65 and 67–9; pp. 27–28, 63–67 Dodds), together with Dodds’ commentary (Proclus 1963, 210–211, 235 ff.). Note in this regard that

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this more general ontological manifestation of the tripartite cyclic theory can also be seen in the three varieties of universals embraced in many Neoplatonic texts. See (Lloyd 1990, esp. 67) and Dodds in (Proclus 1963), ibid. 17 With respect to my earlier reference to Ivry’s remarks about ‘pre-existent subsistence,’ it is here that the difference of my treatment should be clear: Within the context as I am presenting it, we might just as easily speak of Socrates—as essence—‘subsisting in’ or ‘existing in’ his vertically proximate cause; for, in either case, on my approach, this reflects a moment of analysis—and not any ‘real’ state of Socrates. However, my account also suggests more than merely the ‘logical’ analysis of Socrates in the analysis of him as ‘essence’ found in Rahman and others; for, given the goal of Return, we might only call this a ‘logical’ analysis if by ‘logical’ is understood not an end—as it is often thought of in contemporary treatments of Avicenna as an ontologist/logician—but as a mode of analysis which, in invoking the imagery of cosmic hierarchies and the nature of all things as effects, is a means to impressing truths upon the soul. 18 Note, an understanding of Neoplatonic ontology as I am presenting it can also be of assistance in understanding how, on the one hand, Avicenna denies ontological reality to essences, but yet, also speaks of essences existing in the Active Intellect. This latter claim is often treated in isolation from a general, programmatic treatment of his ontology, regarded, as it is, as the ‘Neoplatonic dimension’—and hence inexplicable?—aspect of his work; see, e.g. (Marmura 1982, p.76, bottom of first column). While Marmura does not make any overtly negative claims about this ‘Neoplatonic dimension’—aside from not integrating it fully into his treatment of Avicenna’s ontology—there is no shortage of scholars who bemoan Avicenna’s Neoplatonic elements as throwing a wrench into an otherwise nice (i.e., Aristotelian) set of ideas; see, e.g., J.Finnegan describes Avicenna’s Neoplatonically realist construal of the Active Intellect as “his unfortunate theory of the separate Active Intellect,” (Finnegan 1956, 201), and A.-M.Goichon’s description of Avicenna’s involvement in various modes of Neoplatonic thought as something which “proved a great handicap to him,” (Goichon 1956, 107). I see the above subtle approach to an ontology of ‘pre-existence’ encompassing a distinctive methodology as at least in part responding to these negative—or frustrated—estimations of the more cosmological side of Avicenna’s project. It seems that the above understanding of Neoplatonic ontological analysis allows us a less crude (i.e., because not merely cosmological) possibility for what Avicenna could mean by ‘essences existing in the active intellect.’ In general, this approach can be used to better solder the seeming chasm between Avicenna’s ontology, and his admittedly Neoplatonic cosmology, by showing how the cosmology claims—together with certain ‘clumsy’ sounding ontological claims—are all put forth in the service of a distinctive Neoplatonic methodology. 19 While the precise nature of the ‘according to participation’ moment in Proclus’ own analysis might best be taken as referring to the analysandum’s being participated in, and not—as I am here using it—as referring to the analysandum as a participant, I think it at least plausible to take it in this latter way. The case of Proclus aside, this treatment of an analysandum as a participant—and hence, as ‘less than perfect’ even with respect to its own nature—is one that seems to correspond to the ‘process’ analysis of Avicenna (see next note), and is a treatment which, hence, works well within an account of Avicenna. I am thankful to Gregory MacIsaac for raising this point about the ‘according to participation’ moment in Proclus’ own account. 20 In support of this suggestion that Socrates be somewhat paradoxically viewed at once as his perfected soul (the association of Socrates with his pure essence in the 2nd moment of our above analysis), and as his soul trapped in matter, (the association of Socrates as an imperfect ‘participant’ which emerges from the 3rd moment of our above analysis), we might point to Plotinus, who describes the soul of man as at once embodied, but as also

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existing on high in the intelligible realm (Plotinus, Enn. 4.7.13). We might also point to the ‘process’ view of humanity in the Avicennian scholarship as precisely revealing this tension between the ‘true’ self attained with human perfection, and the current self which is individuated, as it were, in terms of that ‘true’ self as its limit (even though it has not yet converged, as it were, on that limit). For a discussion of this ‘process’ view in Avicenna, and how the existence of Socrates is best seen as the process of essential actualization or perfection, see, e.g. (Rahman 1958), and (Morewedge 1982). 21 See in this regard: (Aquinas, De Substantiis Separatis, 9.46; 56, Lescoe); and Aquinas’ remarks on the third and fourth propositions of the Liber de Causis, cf. (Guagliardo, et. al., 1996, p.24 ff.), (and see also Guagliardo’s introduction to that volume, including p. xxviii, note 65); and finally, Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, Part 1, Q. 45, a. 5 and Part 1, Q. 47, a. 1, where Avicenna is specifically addressed. In effect, Aquinas sees one of Avicenna’s main problems to be his allowing causal intermediaries (viz., the cosmic Intellects) to act as bestowers of existence—a job which should, according to Aquinas, be reserved for God alone. As Aquinas points out, even the author of the Liber de Causis understands that God alone is the bestower of esse on things; as such, the author of the Liber is in this regard, only guilty of the lesser error of suggesting that these causal intermediaries are bestowers of Life and other attributes.

References Aquinas. 1941–1945. Summa Theologiae. Edited by Members of the Institute of Medieval Studies of Ottawa. 5 Vols. Ottawa: Harpell’s Press. ——. 1959. Treatise on Separate Substances. Translated by Francis J.Lescoe. St. Joseph College. ——. 1996. Commentary on the Book of Causes. Translated and annotated by Vincent A.Guagliardo, O.P., Charles R.Hess, O.P., and Richard C.Taylor. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. Avicenna. 1960. Al-Isharat [The Book of Remarks and Admonitions] Cairo. ——. 1974. Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle. Translated with commentary by Ismail Dahiyat. Leiden: Brill. ——. 1978. La Métaphysique du Shifa; Livres I à V. Translated by Georges C. Anawati. Paris: J.Vrin. ——. 1985. La Métaphysique du Shifa, Livres VI à X. Translated by Georges C.Anawati. Paris: J.Vrin. ——. 1986. Danesh Nameh. Achena and Massé. Le Livre de Science 1. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Burrell, David. 1986a. “Essence and Existence: Avicenna and Greek Philosophy,” Mélanges de l’Institut Dominicain d’Etudes Orientales 17, pp. 53–66. ——. 1986b. Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Corbin, Henry. 1954/1960. Avicenna and the Visual Recital. Translated from French by Willard R.Trask. New York: Pantheon Books. Cornford, Francis M. 1935. Plato’s Cosmology. Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. Davidson, Herbert A. 1972. “Alfarabi and Avicenna on the Active Intellect,” Viator, Vol. 3, pp. 109–178. Finnegan, J. 1956. “Avicenna’s Refutation of Porphyrius.” In Avicenna Commemoration Volume. Calcutta: Iran Society. Gersh, Stephen. 1978. From lamblichus to Eriugena. Leiden: E.J.Brill.

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Gilson, Etienne. 1956/1994. The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Goichon, A.-M. 1956. “The Philosopher of Being.” In Avicenna Commemoration Volume. Calcutta: Iran Society. Goodman, Lenn E. 1992. Avicenna. London; New York: Routledge. Heath, Peter. 1992. Allegory and Philosophy in Avicenna (Ibn Sina). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Husain, Martha. 1976. “The Question ‘What is Being’ and its Aristotelian Answer,” The New Scholasticism, Vol. I., No. 3, Summer, pp. 293–309. Ivry, Alfred. 1992. “Maimonides and Neoplatonism: Challenge and Response.” In Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, edited by Lenn E.Goodman. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 137–156. Leaman, Oliver. 1988. “Maimonides, Imagination an the Objectivity of Prophecy,” Religion, Vol. 18, pp. 69–80. Lloyd, A.C. 1990. The Anatomy of Neoplatonism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Marmura, Michael. 1982. ‘Avicenna, Metaphysics.’ In Encyclopaedia Iranica, V. 3. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Morewedge, Parviz. 1972. “Philosophical Analysis and Ibn Sina’s ‘Essence– Existence’ Distinction,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Volume 92, Number 3, July–September, pp. 425–435. ——. 1982. “Greek Sources of Some Near Eastern Philosophies of Being and Existence.” In Philosophies of Existence, Ancient and Medieval, edited by Parviz Morewedge, pp. 285–336. New York: Fordham University Press. Nasr, S.H. 1980/1996. “Ibn Sina’s Prophetic Philosophy.” Reprinted in The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, edited by Mehdi Amin Razavi. London: Curzon Press. Pines, S. 1963. “Translator’s Introduction; Avicenna.” In The Guide of the Perplexed, Vol. I, edited by S.Pines, pp. xciii–ciii. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press. Plato. 1913. Timaeus. Edited by T.E.Page, E.Capps and W.H.D.Rouse. Loeb Classical Library, Plato, Volume 7. London: William Heinemann Ltd; New York: G.P.Putnam’s Sons. Plotinus. 1966. Ennead I. In Plotinus, Porphyry on Plotinus Ennead I, translated with notes by A.H.Armstrong. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Proclus. 1873. In Primum Euclidis Elementorum Librum Commentarii. Edited by G.Friedlein. Leipzig: Teubner. ——. 1963. Elements of Theology. Translated with notes by E.R.Dodds. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ——. 1970. Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements. Translated with introduction and notes by Glenn R.Morrow. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rahman, Fazlur. 1958. “Essence and Existence in Avicenna.” In Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, Volume IV, edited by R.Hunt, et al. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London. ——. 1981. “Essence and Existence in Ibn Sina; The Myth and the Reality,” Hamdard Islamicus, Volume IV, Number 1, pp. 3–14. Rescher, Nicholas. [1967]. “The Concept of Existence in Arabic Logic and Philosophy.” In Studies in Arabic Philosophy, edited by Nicholas Rescher, chapter 6. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Walzer, Richard. 1962. “Al-Farabi’s Theory of Prophecy and Divination.” In Greek Into Arabic, Essays on Islamic Philosophy, edited by Richard Walzer. (Vol. I in Oriental Studies, edited by S.M.Stern and R.Walzer). Oxford: Bruno Cassirer Ltd.

CHAPTER NINE Augustine vs Plotinus The Uniqueness of the Vision at Ostia Thomas Williams Every reader creates a personal version of what is read…. This is often the very opposite of what might at first blush be expected: but on consideration it is exactly the way in which a writer of genius should—we perhaps suddenly realise—respond. It is, in short, creative rather than passively parallel, and a matter of unobtrusive decisive omissions followed by the flow of new matter, of demarcation rather than of imitation. Gard 1992, 27

Introduction Although there are disagreements about the details, commentators on the Confessions seem to agree that Augustine had various mystical experiences of a roughly Plotinian sort before his conversion to Christianity, and that his vision at Ostia was the same sort of experience, although considerably changed by his Christianity. Mandouze, for example, says that “there was no difference in nature at all” between the Milan ascent of 7.17.23 and the Ostia ascent of 9.10.24–25 (Mandouze 1968, 697). And although O’Donnell rejects this position as “extreme” and dismisses Mandouze’s arguments for it as “wrongheaded,”1 his own account is not, in the end, so different. The ascent at Ostia, he says, “was better than what [Augustine] had found through the Platonic books: not different, not uniquely better, not a denial of the excellence of Platonic mysticism, but better. This is high flattery for Platonism, combined with a final regretful suspension of allegiance and transfer of that allegiance to Christianity” (O’Donnell 1992, 3:128). For my own part, I can’t say that I would be terribly flattered if I were Plotinus. Augustine takes great care to describe the vision at Ostia in such a way as to deflate the pretensions of the Platonists; his aim is precisely to effect “a denial of the excellence of Platonic mysticism,” and I find no regret in his “transfer of allegiance.” I would go further, in fact, and insist that Augustine recounts only one mystical experience in the Confessions: the vision at Ostia. To insist on describing his reflections at Milan as “ascents,” with all the overtones of Plotinian mysticism conjured up by that word, is to be false to the way in which Augustine describes what happened in Milan, false to his sober estimate of the limitations of Platonic philosophy, false to his very different description of the vision at Ostia, and false, above all, to his beliefs about the indispensable importance of Christ as Mediator. To state my thesis boldly: in Milan Augustine was doing natural theology; at Ostia he was hanging out with Jesus.

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The Context of the Milan “Ascent” Although commentators have largely overlooked the fact, Augustine plays fair with us from the outset. He warns us that the story of his reflections in Milan will be the story of a failure, not of a success: And first, because you desired to show me how you resist the proud but give grace to the humble, and how much your mercy has been shown to men by the path of humility, because your Word was made flesh and dwelt among men, you procured for me…certain books of the Platonists.2 (7.9.13) God resists the proud: and what is the characteristic moral failure of the “mere” Platonists, if not pride? God gives grace to the humble, where humility shines forth above all in the Incarnation: and what is the characteristic intellectual failure of the “mere” Platonists, if not their blindness to the God-Man? After he has learned everything he can from the Platonists, he is still proud, and still ignorant of the Incarnation. So of course God resists him; his reflections in Milan leave him feeling empty, hungry, and vaguely wistful. Perhaps O’Donnell is right to insist that the “ascent” of 7.17.23 was “successful—on Plotinian terms as Augustine understood them” (O’Donnell 1992, 2:435, emphasis in original); but if so, we are bound to believe that Augustine regarded Plotinian success as being an elaborate and impressive form of failure. There are a number of reasons why commentators overlook Augustine’s caveat. In O’Donnell’s case (which I choose as the most useful for structuring my own argument), I suspect it comes from an over-enthusiasm for the three-temptations structure he so brilliantly exploits in his commentary. The narrative books of the Confessions, he explains, are structured according to the three temptations of 1 John 2:16. In the story of his moral decay, Augustine falls first into the lust of the flesh (concupiscentia carnis, Book 2), next into undisciplined curiosity or “lust of the eyes” (concupiscentia oculorum, Book 3), and finally into secular ambition (ambitio saeculi, Book 4). Mirroring this moral degeneration in the first half of the narrative books is a moral regeneration in the second half, where Augustine overcomes the three temptations in reverse order. With this reading in mind, we expect Book 7 to narrate an intellectual accomplishment in which the undisciplined curiosity of Book 3—where Augustine’s restless questioning led him to the Manichees—is overcome. To some extent, that is precisely what we find. By the end of Book 7 the three questions of Book 3 have been given satisfactory answers; Augustine has taken full advantage of the intellectual resources provided by the Platonists. Nonetheless, we can’t really say that he has overcome concupiscentia oculorum. And we surely shouldn’t be expecting him to—in Book 6, after all, he doesn’t actually overcome ambitio saeculi. He becomes disillusioned, to be sure; but he doesn’t actually quit his job until Book 9. No sin is fully overcome until his conversion. So on a properly nuanced account of the structure of the narrative books, we should look in Book 7 for an intellectual accomplishment that is merely an intellectual accomplishment, not a moral one. Moral regeneration comes through faith in the Incarnate Word; it is the fruit of a humble heart, not of an exalted mind. The Platonists will exalt his mind; but God, who resists the proud, will throw him right back down. No

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sooner has he reached this intellectual height than he is pulled back down by his own weight—‘weight’ being a standard Augustinian conceit for the will. Intellectual achievement is barren without the humble will that alone invites divine grace. The Starting-points and Destinations of the Two Ascents Let us look closely at the details of the two experiences.3 In both 7.17.23 and 9.10.24 the experience is provoked by a question. But how different the questions are! In Milan Augustine asks how he makes certain intellectual judgments, and he discovers the intellectual standard by which he makes them: For in asking how I came to appraise the beauty of bodies, whether heavenly or earthly, and what was wholly present to me when I passed judgment on mutable things and said: “This is as it ought to be; that is not”—in asking, that is, how I came to make such judgments when I did make them, I discovered the unchangeable and true eternity of Truth above my changeable mind. (7.17.23) Here, as throughout Book 7, the emphasis is on the immutability of the Truth that Augustine discovers above his mind. Perhaps because the immutability of Truth makes it seem alien to our changeable minds, Augustine seems to have no sense of how Truth might be related to his mind other than as providing a standard for judgment. He finds, in fact, that he is exiled from Truth in “the land of unlikeness,” and he hears Truth speaking to him “from on high” and “from far away.” When he comes to the end of the Milan “ascent,” he reaches “that which is.” Note that what he finds is abstract and impersonal. This is not the “I am who am” of Exodus, but the “that which is” of the Platonists. There is a jarring, almost comical shift in language in the words that conclude this section: You called from far away, “Indeed, I am who am.” And I heard, as one hears in the heart, and there was no longer any room for me to doubt; I could more easily have doubted that I was alive than I could doubt the existence of that Truth which is perceived to be understood through the things that have been made. (7.10.16) The God of Moses calls out to him, but he hears only the bloodless, featureless God of the philosophers. Both the starting-point and the destination of the Ostia experience could hardly be more different. Consider the question that provokes the vision at Ostia: In the presence of that Truth, which you yourself are, we were asking each other what the eternal life of your saints would be like, that life which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man. (9.10.23)

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The emphasis in the discussion that follows is again on the immutability of Truth—not, however, as an alien standard of intellectual judgment set over against our changeable minds, but as a place of rest. Eternity is our home, Truth our food, Wisdom our life: And we entered into our minds and passed beyond them so as to reach that land of never-failing plenty where you feed Israel for ever with the food of Truth, where life is that Wisdom through whom all these things were made. (9.10.24) Thus at the end he arrives at the eternal food that satisfies, the heavenly banquet of which the Eucharist—which as a baptized Christian Augustine now shares—is a foretaste and a pledge. The “ascent” at Milan, by contrast, left him hungry; being as yet unconverted, he could not eat that food: I lacked the power to fix my gaze there. My weakness was rebuffed, and I returned to my accustomed ways, taking nothing back with me but a loving memory and the desire for a food that I had smelled but could not yet eat. And I was seeking some way of gathering a strength that would fit me to enjoy you, but I was not to find it until I embraced the Mediator of God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is God above all, blessed for ever, calling out and saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and mingling with flesh the food that I was too weak to eat. (7.17.23–18.24) The images of homecoming and banqueting that crown the Ostia narrative emphasize another important divergence from the Milan experience. These are images of fellowship and community. We are no longer dealing with “the flight of the alone to the Alone” (Enneads 6.9.11); here is an ascent of the together to the Together. At Milan Augustine begins in solitude, gets just close enough to Truth that he can hear it calling to him “from afar,” and quickly falls back into solitude. At Ostia, however, when he sets out he is already “in the presence of the Truth,” not to mention the presence of his mother. Moreover, Monnica is no mere adjunct to the experience; nor do Augustine and Monnica have independent experiences while (coincidentally but irrelevantly) side by side. It is a shared experience arising out of their conversation about the life of their heavenly homeland. Together they “come to a great city that has expected [their] return for years.”4 And at the center of the vision is not some abstract truth, imperturbably Alone, but a Master of the Revels, who is the life of the party precisely because it was through him that all these things were made. Sight vs Hearing, Knowledge vs Faith O’Donnell has drawn our attention to an important difference in the language used to report the two experiences. Vision is the predominant image in Milan, but hearing is predominant at Ostia (O’Donnell 1992, 3:128, 133). Now vision means understanding and hearing means faith; for “faith comes by hearing,” knowledge by sight. But vision also means lust of the eyes. In Book 3, where Augustine describes his encounter with the

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Hortensius and his subsequent reading of Scripture, the repeated use of words associated with vision suggests that Augustine’s reading of Scripture failed because it was tainted by concupiscentia oculorum (O’Donnell 1992, 2:170). We have to wonder whether the same is true in Book 7. This is, after all, not merely the Book of intellectual accomplishment, and thus of “vision” in the best sense. It is also the Book in which intellectual accomplishment is shown to be impotent apart from faith in the Mediator: But then, having read those books of the Platonists, which enjoined me to seek after incorporeal truth, I beheld your invisible attributes understood through what has been made. But because of the darkness of my mind I was not allowed to contemplate what I had grasped. I was certain that you exist and are infinite, but not by being dispersed through places, whether finite or infinite; that you truly exist, you who are always the same, never differing or changing in any part or by any motion; that all other things are from you—as the mere fact that they are at all proves most unmistakably. I was indeed certain of all this, but I was too weak to enjoy you. (7.20.26) Augustine’s vision is still a matter of lust of the eyes, of vain curiosity driven by the pride that God resists. And as always when Augustine is puffed up with his latest “discovery,” he babbles on about it endlessly.5 After the passage just cited, he immediately continues: I went on prattling as if I knew what I was talking about; but unless I were to seek your way in Christ our Savior, I would not be deeply informed but deathly ill. For I had already begun to wish to appear wise. I was full of my punishment, but I did not weep—no, I was puffed up with knowledge. (7.20.26) Note: “I was puffed up with knowledge.” Augustine does not for a moment deny that he had actually attained some knowledge. But what he had sought in pride filled him with still greater pride. His disease was of the will, not the intellect; and his cure likewise must be a moral, not an intellectual transformation: For where was that charity building on the foundation of humility that is Christ Jesus? And when would those books have taught it to me? (7.20.26) The Milan vision, then, is an uneasy mixture of intellectual success and moral failure. The moral success must come in an altogether different way. It must be, as I have already suggested, a matter of will rather than intellect, faith rather than knowledge, hearing the Word rather than seeing the Truth, forging a personal relationship rather than discovering an impersonal standard of judgment. Hence, in contrast to 7.10.16–20.26, we find no active form of ‘video’ except in one quotation from Scripture. The imagery is all of hearing—and, significantly, of silence. If only we could silence the clamor of all changeable things, we could “lift up our ears” to hear that Word that sounds eternally, without beginning or end, which remains endlessly fresh and makes all things new.

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Augustine’s babbling is finally stilled, replaced by the divine eloquence of Scripture. One must be silent to hear the Word—as Augustine should have learned from Ambrose long ago; but the lesson was long in sinking in. Notice that at Milan the only Scriptural language is imposed on the experience later, as commentary; at Ostia, the Scriptural language is what motivates the experience in the first place and is the language of the experience itself.6 Knowledge vs Love, Intellect vs Heart The faith that comes by hearing depends crucially on the will: the will must be humble to encounter the divine humility of the Incarnation, and through that encounter the will is cleansed of its sin. Now recall the structural principle I discussed earlier: the three temptations of 1 John 2:16. These sins are a devilish counterfeit of the Trinity. Ambitio saeculi (the subject of Books 4 and 6) distorts God the Father as Power; concupiscentia oculorum (Books 3 and 7) distorts God the Son as Wisdom; concupiscentia carnis (Books 2 and 8) distorts God the Holy Spirit as Love. This structure undergirds a confluence of themes and images that serve to differentiate the two experiences all the more sharply. Book 7 is the Book of God the Son. Augustine discovers the discarnate Word as timeless, immaterial Truth, but not the Incarnate Word as friend, food, and fatherland. Why not? Because his will, his love, has not yet been transformed by the Holy Spirit, active through faith, which comes by hearing. That encounter of course comes only in Book 8. In the absence of the Holy Spirit—God as Love—there is, not surprisingly, very little affective engagement in the Book 7 “ascent.” What love there is comes in not as cause but as effect. It comes first at the top of the “ascent,” as Augustine is falling back from the heights; and it is, moreover, painfully unrequited. Thus in 7.10.16: You beat back the weakness of my gaze, beaming upon me with intensity, and I trembled with love and horror. And in 7.17.23: I lacked the power to fix my gaze there. My weakness was rebuffed, and I returned to my accustomed ways, taking nothing back with me but a loving memory and the desire for a food that I had smelled but could not yet eat. This is not the active love of charity but a feeble and inert wistfulness. Augustine does say “I was amazed that I now loved you,” but the stress goes not on ‘loved’ but on ‘you’: I was amazed that what I loved was you, not some phantasm in your stead. It is not the love, such as it was, that amazed Augustine; it was the wonderful relief of finally getting his natural theology right. At Ostia, love is not a tenuous, inert, and half-frightening effect of the intellectual ascent. It is the impetus for the ascent, which is no longer intellectual at its core. The first stage of the Milan experience is reached when “I saw with the eye of my mind”

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(7.10.16); whereas the vision at Ostia began as “we were panting with the mouth of our heart after the heavenly streams of your fount” (9.10.23). ‘Heart’ (cor) for Augustine means the whole person, with the emphasis on the conative, affective side, since it is that “side” of us that is truly “the indivisible, authentic centre of human life” (O’Donnell 1992, 2:13)—for Augustine, after all, we are what we love. The vocabulary of love permeates the ascent: carnalium sensuum delectatio, prae illius vitae iucunditate, erigentes nos ardentiore affectu, to stick with just one sentence. And at the peak of the ascent, attingimus earn modice toto ictu cordis. One is reminded, of course, of a similar phrase from the height of the Milan ascent: pervenit ad id quod est in ictu trepidantis aspectus (7.17.23); and that in turn evokes Paul’s description of the general resurrection, which will happen in ictu oculi (1 Corinthians 15:52). Augustine’s transformation of the image is masterful. For Paul, “in ictu oculi” is just a vivid way of expressing swiftness.7 “In ictu trepidantis aspectus” hints not only at the instantaneous nature of his intellectual grasp—for although comingto-know takes time, knowing is, in its way, timeless; it is our nearest approach in this life to the eternity of Truth itself—but also at its transience; Augustine loses the vision in the very next sentence. ‘Aspectus’ is not surprising, given all the visual imagery here, but ‘trepidantis’ invites a double-take. This is not an effortless blink, but an unsettled and agitated glance. (We should not forget that ‘trepido’ implies bustle as well as alarm. Augustine is neither at rest nor at ease yet: cor nostrum inquietum est…) How different is “toto ictu cordis.” Bustle, fear, transience: all are gone. And it is no longer a matter for the eyes alone, whether the body’s or the mind’s; here Augustine and Monnica summon all the energy of their deepest selves, their cordes. Conclusion To take the intellectual accomplishment of Milan to be at all the same sort of thing as the mystical experience at Ostia would manifest the pride that is so typical of the Platonists, the pride that confuses knowledge with love, information with transformation. If we learn anything at all from the end of Book 7 (post-“ascent”) and the evaluation of Platonism in City of God 8–10, we learn that Platonism cannot save because it does not have Christ. To be sure, all knowledge of intelligible reality depends on the discarnate Word—that’s the significance of the theory of illumination. But transformation of the “heart” (a word hardly seen in Book 7 but frequent in Book 9) depends on the Incarnate Word. In Book 7 we have the action of the discarnate Word on the mind; in Book 9 we have the action of the Incarnate Word on the heart. Commentators say blithely that Augustine found in Platonism everything he found in Christianity, except for the Incarnation. But knowledge of the Incarnation is precisely what does all the work, according to Augustine. His complaint is not merely that the Platonists overlooked an important point, even an essential point; it is that they overlooked the one point apart from which all their other insights could not do them any earthly (or heavenly) good: For you have been made through the Word, but it is incumbent upon you to be remade through the Word; and yet if your belief about the Word is

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amiss, you cannot be remade through the Word. Although it has fallen to your lot to be made through the Word, so that through him you have been made, it is through yourself that you are unmade. If through yourself you are unmade, he who made you will remake you; if through yourself you have been made worse, he who created you will recreate you. But how will he recreate you through the Word if your belief about the Word is somehow amiss? (In lohannis Evangelium Tractatus 1. 12) Platonist knowledge is impotent—which is why such high-minded Platonists could fall into theurgy, seeking through magical arts to put themselves in touch with a reality that they glimpsed but could not find a way to enter. So Augustine couldn’t have had anything like the Ostia experience in Book 7 because he didn’t have the Christology right. What he gets in Milan is the god of the philosophers, and that god is a powerless, bloodless abstraction. Augustine is not brought into relation with anything, because there’s nothing to be in relation to. After the Christology is righted there’s something to be in relation to, but something holding him back from the relationship. At the garden he embraces the relationship. Then, however, the “ascent” becomes superfluous, since you get the relationship sacramentally and morally rather than intellectually and mystically. This is why, even though the Ostia ascent proves as fleeting as the Milan experience, Augustine does not show himself dissatisfied at the end of Book 9 as he did at the end of Book 7. At both Milan and Ostia Augustine follows a familiar pattern: he ascends in his mind above the realm of change and chance, he reaches the very height of reality, and then he falls back down into his normal state. When this happens at Milan he is left dissatisfied and uneasy, for he has not been able to rest in the enjoyment of that supreme Truth whom he has come to know but not, as yet, to love: And I was seeking some way of gathering a strength that would fit me to enjoy you, but I was not to find it until I embraced the Mediator of God and man. (7.20.26) I was indeed certain of all this, but I was too weak to enjoy you. (Ibid.) At Ostia, however, he has that enjoyment—not only, or even primarily, in any mystical experience, but in the sacramental life of the church. The Eucharist is theurgy that actually works, because it is not the pride of human beings seeking to raise themselves up to the divine, but the humility of the divine stooping to dwell among human beings.8 Notes 1 O’Donnell 1992, 3:124. 2 Translations throughout the chapter are my own. I have followed O’Donnell’s text. 3 Agreeing as I do with Du Roy’s view that 7.17.23 merely redescribes the experience of 7.10.16, I do not scruple to jump back and forth between the two passages in making my case for the difference between what happened at Milan and what happened at Ostia. My case is complicated somewhat if you take 7.10.16 to narrate an unsuccessful Plotinian “ascent” and 7.17.23 a successful one, but not much: the essential point—that Augustine

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regards the vision at Ostia as utterly different from anything he could have got from the Platonists—remains unaffected. 4 Auden 1945, 466. A number of writers have commented on the way in which Augustine in the Confessions links his sinfulness with alienation from human community and his moral regeneration with his restoration to a proper relationship not only with God but with his fellow human beings. See in particular Crosson 1999. 5 On this see O’Donnell 1992, 2:473. 6 This account of the Ostia vision provides a sharp contrast not only with the Milan ascent as it is narrated in Confessions 7 but with the ascents prescribed in De quantitate animae and De Genesi contra Manichaeos, both dated around 388, about ten years earlier than the Confessions. As Martha Nussbaum notes, “Even the receptivity of faith—not mentioned at all in De quantitate animae—figures in De Genesi contra Manichaeos only as the early precondition for the beginning of intellectual activity, in stage one. Once intellect takes over, it no longer plays a role” (Nussbaum 1999, 86, n. 10). So the emphasis on hearing and faith in Confessions 9 has to be taken as a repudiation not only of the sheer intellectualism of the Plotinian ascent of Milan, before his conversion, but also of his own uncritical appropriation of neo-Platonism earlier in his career as a Christian. 7 So Augustine comments in Sermon 362, “What is ‘ictus oculi’? It is not the time in which we open or close our eyelids; ictus means the sending forth of rays in order to see something. For no sooner do you direct your gaze than the ray that is sent forth reaches to the heavens.” And in Sermon 227, “Ictus oculi is not in the opening and closing of the eyelids; for it takes longer to do that than it does to see. You raise your eyelids more slowly than you direct the ray; your ray reaches the heavens faster than your eyelid rises toward the eyebrow. You see, then, what ictus oculi is; you see what quickness the Apostle has ascribed to the resurrection.” 8 I am grateful to participants in the Richard A.Baker Colloquium in Philosophy at the University of Dayton, and in particular to Marcia L.Colish, for their helpful comments.

References Auden, W.H. 1945. For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio. In The Collected Poetry of W.H.Auden. New York: Random House. Augustine. 1992. Confessions. Edited by J.J.O’Donnell. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Crosson, F. 1999. “Structure and Meaning in St. Augustine’s Confessions.” In The Augustinian Tradition, edited by G.Matthews, pp. 27–38. Berkeley: University of California Press. Du Roy, Olivier. 1966. L’Intelligence de la foi en la Trinité selon saint Augustin, genèse de sa théologie trinitaire. Paris, Études augustiniennes. Gard, R. 1992. Jane Austen’s Novels: The Art of Clarity. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mandouze, A. 1968. Saint Augustin: L’Aventure de la raison et de la grâce. Paris: Études augustiniennes. Nussbaum, M. 1999. “Augustine and Dante on the Ascent of Love.” In The Augustinian Tradition, edited by G.Matthews, pp. 61–90. Berkeley: University of California Press. O’Donnell, J.J. 1992. Augustine: Confessions. 3 Vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

SECTION FOUR CREATION

CHAPTER TEN Infinite Power and Plenitude Two Traditions on the Necessity of the Eternal Taneli Kukkonen Principles of Plenitude Some 60 years ago, Arthur O. Lovejoy in his famous work The Great Chain of Being proposed to sketch the history of an idea, one he saw as permeating Western thought. The idea Lovejoy dubbed “the principle of Plenitude”; he gave to it the single, deceptively simple formulation that “no genuine possibility will remain forever unrealized”. The idea is as classical as any that can be imagined. Lovejoy himself proposed to trace the principle’s origins in Plato’s cosmology; he went on to point out its workings in Neoplatonist theodicy, in medieval Christian thought and in seventeenth- and eighteenth century metaphysics, to name but a few examples. And subsequent studies have expanded on Lovejoy’s insights.1 Though Lovejoy took the principle of Plenitude to be a “unit idea”, he distinguished between two basic forms. One involves a maximality of possible kinds of beings, a kind of continuous ontological scale; the other is the temporalized notion of all particular possibilities being realized within the whole of (infinite) time. What Lovejoy took to be two sides of the same coin in fact incorporates a whole range of approaches towards the relation of the possible to the actual.2 A Plenitude of species has, first of all, the dimension of all possible Forms being realized in the divine mind, and then of them all having at least one instantiation in the visible world. The next more specific level comes with the question about whether all possible beings, and possibly all their possible qualities, are maximally realized at any one moment. An affirmative answer provides a further theme in the idea of a Plenitude in creation, one much used in theodicy. Finally, there is the strict temporalized notion according to which the very meaning of something’s being possible is equivalent to its sometime being realized. Whereas all the other variations of Plenitude I have mentioned here are Platonic in origin this last one has different, largely Aristotelian origins. It finds its most clear explication in certain early medieval interpretations of Aristotelian modal theory that might be termed “statistical” or “frequential”. These different shades of Plenitude are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but neither are they mutually implicative (contrary to what Lovejoy thought). This becomes clear when one examines the history of a popular notion closely related to statistical Plenitude, that of the eternal being in some sense necessary. What I am attempting to trace is the gradual deterioration of this idea. The introduction of contingency into the eternal was, I will argue, the product of new kinds of modal theoretical ideas being injected into the

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Aristotelian framework, ideas which paradoxically had their roots in another variant of Plenitude—the Platonic one of a maximal creation. There was, to be sure, at first no felt conflict between the views: only gradually did it become apparent that frequential necessity and emanationist necessitation do not necessarily gel. In the process, a heightened awareness was brought to bear on the theological problems inherent in the idea of an eternal and unqualifiedly necessary world. Belief in a strictly finite creation in time and/or in an ontologically depicted dependency relation then emerged as the most viable options. All this is brought out nicely when we examine the evolving interpretation of Aristotle’s so-called infinite power argument. Infinite power, in Aristotle ostensibly a purely kinetical notion, came to be understood as a divine attribute with far more wide reaching implications. This made the notion a particularly useful tool in arguing for a specific view of divine creation; Aristotle’s proof for a First Mover could then be interpreted in temporal or atemporal, finitist or eternalist, naturalist or emanationist fashion. A look at Averroes’ (1126–1198) struggles with the interpretation of the infinite power argument helps point out several key stages in the argument’s remarkable history; it also spotlights the argument’s ties with the different variants of Plenitude and conceptions of creation involved.3 Averroes’ Account of the Infinite Power Problem A particularly succinct presentation is found in Averroes’ Long Commentary on the Metaphysics, book Lambda (or Lâm), comment 41.4 Averroes here summarizes his understanding of the original infinite power argument, the seal in Aristotle’s proof for the existence of an incorporeal First Mover in syllogistic form. Because creation forms part of the subject of our enquiry, we may take note of an unspoken assumption of Averroes’ which lies at the heart of his whole train of thought: that (0) the world is eternal, without beginning or end. From here all this follows: (1) The First Mover, moving as He does the outermost heaven for an infinite time, possesses an infinite potency or power (quwwa, corresponding to the Greek dynamis). But as (2) Every body or power (again quwwa) residing in a body is finite, it follows that (3) Therefore the First Mover is not a body, nor does it [the moving power] reside in a body.5 (The spelling out of the real conclusion of the argument—(4) that there exists a separate incorporeal First Mover, ie. God—is again in Averroes’ estimation not even needed.) Averroes then brings up the difficulty he sees as central to the problem. John the Grammarian raised a grave doubt against the Peripatetics concerning this problem, and this by saying: “If all bodies and the potencies pertaining to them are finite, and the heaven is a body and possesses finite potency, and [if] everything finite is perishable, [then] necessarily the heaven is perishable. And if it is said that [its] acquiring the absence of [ever] perishing [comes] from of an eternal, separate potency, it follows that there exists something possibly perishing (mumkin al-fasâd) and eternal: and this is something whose impossibility has been demonstrated in the first book of De caelo et mundo.”6

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There is more, but even this short passage takes some unpacking. If this is indeed John Philoponus’ (c. 490–574), or “the Grammarian’s” own infinite power argument, then its main point and first phase reads like a straightforward reversal of Aristotle’s original.7 If all potencies in bodies are finite, and if moving for an infinite time requires infinite potency, then the conclusion to draw may just as well be that the heavens’ movements are in fact finite in duration, with a definite beginning as well as an end, after all.8 This runs counter to Aristotle’s base eternalism, of course, as well as to the initial findings of Physics 8.9 As a proponent for the possibility of an absolute creation in time as well as for a finitist interpretation of Aristotle Philoponus could probably not care less. Potency and Perishability: Philoponus Why, though, should everything finite [in power] be perishable? And why should everything perishable perish? It is here that the temporalized notion of Plenitude enters into play, and here also that Averroes’ allusion to De caelo as the textual grounds for Philoponus’ argumentation becomes of interest. In De caelo 1, ch. 12 Aristotle presents what seems a rather curious argument for the impossibility of the world’s ever not existing. Aristotle has already previously argued for his view that the kosmos, the rationally ordered universe is eternal: it has always existed and it will always exist (De caelo 1, chs. 9–11). Given this, Aristotle now claims, even conceiving of the world as possibly not existing is self-defeating, if not self-contradictory: for …if anything which exists for an infinite time is perishable, it will have the capacity (dynamis) of not being. Now if it exists for infinite time let this capacity be actualized; and it will be in actuality at once existent and non-existent.10 The conclusion is manifestly impossible: Aristotle promptly concludes that, contrary to the initial assumption, “anything which always exists is imperishable without qualification”.11 Clearly flawed as the argument may be in our eyes,12 it is important to recognize that its theoretical background somehow includes the idea of all possibilities being realized within a single universal history.13 This is tantamount to temporalized Plenitude in its strictest, most particularized form. The possibility of some thing’s perishing equals its sometime perishing, which again precludes predicating eternity of that thing. And this is just what Averroes points out in the Metaphysics commentary passage we have quoted. Unqualified temporalized Plenitude as applied to singular limited beings is such an absurd proposition that even Aristotle went out of his way to avoid it and its manifestly deterministic conclusions. But he did apparently believe in the principle’s validity with regard to eternal beings and attributes proper to them; as the matter is put in the Physics, “in the case of eternal things what may be is”.14 Interpreters of Aristotle ranging from Alexander of Aphrodisias in Antiquity to Thomas Aquinas in high scholasticism tried to account for the fact in some way.15 The theory of potentiality and actuality expounded in the Metaphysics came in handy here, as it serves to bridge the gap between finitude and infinity, on the one hand, and perishability and imperishability on the other. Change in

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mature Aristotelian theory is analyzable in terms of interchanging states of potentiality and actuality. Whenever something becomes something, it both exercises (actualizes) a certain natural capacity in the very act of changing so and in the end result brings about another actualization, that of the capacity for becoming so. For contraries and contradictories, the periods of being actual and potential complement each other: whenever something is actually sitting, it is potentially standing and vice versa. Rest comes to complement any period of limited actual motion; so also, when the actuality of a thing’s existence ceases, the privation of this existence, until then lying dormant, is in a sense “activated”. Now, an infinite time frame exceeds any finite time that a finite potency can actualize some particular activity; it seems natural to posit an opposite capacity that is actualized in the time “left over”. And this, it seems, is precisely what Philoponus suggests will happen to the heavens, once their finite powers have run their course. Shrewdly equivocating between the dynameis of De caelo and those of the Physics and of the Metaphysics, Philoponus takes it that the potencies inhering in the heavens can only be active for a finite time. Once this is granted, an appeal to temporal Plenitude is enough to ensure that the complementary possibility for rest (or destruction, should the De Caelo context also be taken into account) cannot go infinitely unheeded—not even if the First Mover is brought in. In a quotation from Simplicius, we find Philoponus insisting that there exists in the heavens a possibility (in Simplicius’ Greek account, we read logos) for destruction to complement their now-actual potentiality for existence. Philoponus urges the Aristotelian exegete to acknowledge that, divine clauses aside, the world should be viewed as naturally finite in extension, both a parte ante and a parte post: For our question at the moment is this: What is the natural definition of each thing? and not: What is added to something by the transcendent cause? In consequence, although one might agree that the heavens do not perish because they are held together by the will of God, it is emphatically not the case as well that in virtue of their own nature they will not accept the formal character (logos) of destruction. But what is of the formal character to be destroyed is not infinite in capacity.16 For how could it be that this formal character of destruction which is comprehended by our mind will not at some time become actual?17 The last question is purely rhetorical: Philoponus imagines the naturalist Aristotelian to reply with him that there is really no way the actualization of any genuine possibility can be avoided, given infinite time. Philoponus’ argument requires the acceptance of temporal Plenitude for it to even begin to make sense:18 but once granted, the argument reads in effect like an inversion of Aristotle’s in De caelo. Philoponus’ first premise is that the heaven on account of its own finitude is perishable (mutatis mutandis, this is the only element taken over from Aristotle’s own infinite power argument). Next, let it be assumed that an infinite power were to be supernaturally meted out (by God, as was the Neoplatonist explanation from Proclus onwards) to counter this destruction, so that the heavens de facto become eternal. But then, assuming that the potentiality for the heavens’ perishing must needs be actualized, the heavens at some point in infinite time both exist and do not exist: which is impossible. The assumption of an infinite prolongation cannot

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be countenanced as long as the original premise about the natural finitude of all bodies is retained; ergo, the heavens perish in actuality; ergo, they have been generated.19 Act and Eternity: Averroes If my analysis of the argument from Philoponus found in Simplicius’ paraphrase is correct, then Averroes seems to have managed to pinpoint the real drive behind Philoponus’ argumentation. If it is possible at all for the heavens to perish or to come to a halt, then this possibility will necessarily be realized, merely on account of the inevitability of nature itself.20 As beginning follows from end, Philoponus tries to prove Biblical creation to be a natural necessity for the naturalist Aristotelian—in fact, one that not even the theological considerations brought in by the Neoplatonists can alter. Not even belief in a supremely benevolent Demiurge can justify the supposition of a corporeal existent infinite in duration, for physical existents must follow physical laws. So what can be done, from an Aristotelian point of view? The range of application for the principle of finitude (of powers in bodies) can be limited to its barest minimum. This is precisely what we see Averroes do, in the Metaphysics commentary as elsewhere, right after quoting Philoponus’ argument. He does so with some considerable success. First, it may be immediately noted that the infinite power argument we have before us has expanded in its scope of application from being a consideration of the finitude of motion to encompass also finitude of existence. This was a Neoplatonist innovation having its roots in Proclus (c. 410–485):21 but even if the transformation is of significant inherent interest,22 it is at base an un-Aristotelian one. Averroes is quick to point this out. The concept of potency is not to be applied indiscriminately, but with a respect to the subject matter at hand. Potency is spoken of in several senses: of these there is the potency that is in substance, and that which is in transformation, and that which is in space. And it has been shown that the body of the heavens does not have these potencies, except potency in place only (Tafsîr 3:1629.2–4, Bouyges). Aristotelian matter is everywhere the substrate for change between opposites: so also between potentiality and actuality, and between existence and non-existence. A basic tenet of Aristotelian cosmology, meanwhile, is that the heavenly substrate has no contrary: it is of a separate, ethereal nature, not mixing with the other elements, and this makes the heavenly spheres simple, not complex entities.23 Because the heavens are forever actual both in their existence and in their activity, they have no need of, nor do they even allow for, matter in the sense of hyle phtarthê.24 They do not consequently have potency for destruction (or for that matter for “transformation”, ie. for the attainment of contrary qualities or for diminution and growth). Aristotle’s infinite power argument in Averroes’ estimation has nothing to do with existence and non-existence: a valid judgment both historically and analytically. So much for limited and unlimited existence. What can be made of Philoponus’ argument in the context of celestial motion? As noted before, change is the actualization

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of a potentiality, either from potency to actuality or from actuality back into a potential state. Change, meanwhile, kinêsis in its most general sense, is itself defined as the actuality of a potentiality qua potentiality (Aristotle, Physics 201a27–29, 201b4–5). What this means for an analysis of eternal motion is that such a motion cannot have its actualization at any specific end-point (goal of motion): rather, such a motion is its own end and actuality. The twelfth book of the Metaphysics explains this in terms of celestial motion being desiderative by nature. It is a byproduct of the heavenly intellects’ continuous contemplative desire; a happy byproduct, to be sure, since the continuous circular movement of their actual bodies is at the same time the most perfect form of existence and activity any corporeal creature might have.25 Now, although Aristotle’s remarks are rather sketchy on this point, the actuality of a change on the basis of Metaphysics 9 results from coinciding active and passive potencies.26 For there to be an eternal motion, both active and passive potencies have to be forever in place. A mover must have and eternally exercise its infinite active capacity for moving and it must have its counterpart in an unceasing passive potency for being moved (in a corporeal object, to wit, the outermost sphere). Here we reach the final frontier for Philoponus’ argument. The heavens’ primary, in fact their only potency is their capacity for being moved, as we have seen Averroes proclaim. If their continuous circular motion is something constitutive of them, then this heightens the importance of this feature.27 Can it not be said at least that the heavens’ passive potency to be moved is finite by definition, by virtue of the fact that they are finite corporeal bodies? Alas, there is no reason to say anything of the kind on the basis of Physics 8. What Aristotle wants to state is only that an infinite active moving force cannot inhere in a body (lest it be released instantaneously, and result in—paradoxically—no motion at all, since all motion takes time). There is no reason why the heavens could not be moved for an infinite time, just so long as this motion is not imparted on them in one infinitely intense move, but rather in a finite continuum.28 Averroes can explain the same idea by distinguishing between power infinite in intensity (which any active infinite potency must be) and power infinite in duration (which any passive potency can be, even such as is housed within a body).29 It seems that on the exegetical front Philoponus’ argument fails, if one is willing to accept the many elaborations and distinctions posited by Averroes in defense of the Philosopher’s doctrine. However, on the philosophical side Philoponus’ inquiries again gain more gravity when we begin to inquire into the nature of such unfailing potencies as are assigned to the heavens in the Metaphysics. Aristotle repeatedly emphasizes that in such eternal activities, there can be absolutely no potentiality.30 Such actualities are accordingly not really actualizations of potencies in the conventional sense at all. Rather, they are some kind of “hyper-actualities”, to borrow a label given by R.M.Dancy.31 But if there is in the heavens absolutely no potentiality for perishing, nor even for halting, and if such a potentiality is required for them to be able to perish or even to stop, then does this not mean that they are in both respects absolutely necessary—of their own accord and nature and “without qualification”, as the De caelo states? The only remaining dependency in the heavens would be their need for a transcendent mover, and even this requirement would be only of a purely logical nature; in the current scheme, the heaven “requires an eternal mover only in so far as every motion must have a mover”, as Averroes is forced to admit in one late work (Questions in Physics 9; 35, Goldstein). The

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necessitarian implications of temporal Plenitude loom so large here that it is no wonder we find Averroes attempting to back away from such an extreme position even in the Metaphysics commentary. In the present text Averroes claims that “it is possible that motion be necessary by something else and contingent by its essence, the reason being that its existence comes from something else, this being its mover: for if its [the movement’s] existence is perpetual, then this must be from the side of the mover” (Tafsîr 3:1632.7–9, Bouyges). Quite clearly, Averroes commits to an inconsistency here. Just as clearly, he draws on a distinction not readily available in any naturalistic explanation of modalities, such as the statistical or potency interpretations on which he usually relied.32 Causatedness and Contingency: Avicenna Averroes in fact admits to following Avicenna on this point, albeit that he cannot bring himself to accept the latter’s unique modal metaphysics to any greater extent (Tafsîr 3:1632.1–3, Bouyges). Averroes’ repudiation of Avicenna’s whole modal scheme is largely based on the felt incomprehensibility of the very concept of something “possible in itself, necessary through another”. Because Averroes tends to think of the modal terms as a kind of shorthand for describing non-modal, natural and/or statistical facts set in one and the same timeline,33 he cannot even begin to make sense of such an expression.34 This makes it difficult to understand why he should now be tempted to give it even qualified approval.35 But it does give some insight into what is at stake here. When Avicenna speaks of the heavens’ contingency, he means their continued contingency even during their existence.36 The eternity of certain beings does nothing to dispel this profound contingency; it is and remains an essential feature of every existent save one (actually, the One) alone. This contingency derives from the causatedness of all except the One, from the fact that, considered in isolation from its place in the causal chain, everything save the Necessary Existent must be deemed in itself non-existent: it cannot have brought itself to existence. On the other hand, when this placing is taken into account, the same causatedness renders everything necessary in the strictest sense of the word. Everything necessarily comes to be exactly what it is, and to hold the place that it does. In contrast to the horizontal modal judgments envisioned over infinite time in any modal model involving temporalized Plenitude (like the statistical model of Averroes) the necessity envisioned by Avicenna is constructed vertically, so to speak. At each moment, or even better in what is a truly continuous reality, everything hangs and depends on a golden chain of existence emanating from the First: for if …this necessity is not from the side of its mover [but from itself], then the motion exists with no bond to its mover. But in truth motion, its existence, the necessity of its existence while it exists, and the perpetuity of its existence, all depend on the causes of motion. And God is too exalted that we should make Him only the cause of motion, when in truth he gives existence to every substance for which it is possible to be moved, by means of the motion of the heavens.37

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It is as if Avicenna could catch a glimpse of Averroes’ later quandaries: if being eternally moved makes this fact in itself a natural necessity, then no true dependency can be posited and God’s status as God is vitiated. Instead, the imparting of motion must be described as something given, that is to say completely one-sidedly established (the same figure of speech, of motion coming “from the side of the mover”, features in both Avicenna and Averroes). In the same way, of course, existence, too is constantly granted by the First Cause by way of the intermediate causes, of which the eternal heavens are most vital to us. Plenitude and the World of Becoming: Proclus, Simplicius The question arises why this suspended, constant and eternal outflow from God—or, in truth, from the One, for the God of Avicenna is the God of the Neoplatonists. The answer, in short, is “Providence”. The One is good by nature, and so its self-realization necessarily lies in the overflowing of being to its greatest possible extent. In Plotinus and in Neoplatonist thought ever onwards we find the idea of maximal creation revitalized: the principle of Plenitude in the sense Lovejoy deemed most central.38 Here we find the “great chain of being” which does not allow for a breach in its ever-established continuity: here also we find a view of necessitation established independently from any temporal considerations. This we can see from a brief look at Proclus’ take on the infinite power problem. In Proclus’ view, a maximal creation must include the perishable but ever-persisting heavens. Paradoxical creatures, to say the least, on any statistical interpretation of perishability; but for Proclus this paradox is nothing reprehensible, but instead invites wonderment and reverence in the observer. What the heavens are is forever created, Proclus says: this makes them the most elevated of temporal existents, even as their existence never quite qualifies as true (immutable) Being. In consequence, the heavens can act as intermediaries between the ontologically fundamental Platonic domains of Being and Becoming. The heavens’ perpetually receiving existence and motion is a show of supreme Divine liberality, as it is the perpetual rotations of the heavens that give rise to the infinite variegation of temporal existents, the penultimate manifestation of the infinite nature and power of the One.39 Why does the Demiurgical Cause create these lowly “beings” (to put the expression in the scare quotes it obviously deserves); why does it not content itself with the creation of true immutable Being and leave well enough alone? The answer again is “Providence”, that is, divine Plenitude. The Demiurge would not and could not grudge even the lowliest creature that grade of realization which it is possible for it to attain: and so it reaches from true eternal Being into perpetual becoming, and from here on over into the shadowy realm of sometime existence and finally even to matter, which is nearest to pure nonexistence. At every stage both the finitude and infinity of the ultimate reality are made manifest (as definite nature and indefinite potentiality, respectively):40 and if the resulting picture is still riddled with paradoxes, then these seem more a source of delight than bemusement for Proclus. After all, this is a mixed world, in which every conceivable mixture must be realized. Strict statistical Plenitude regarding the capabilities of natural existents is here undercut by a belief in a Plenitude of created creatures.

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This is also apparent from how the notion of power is reworked in the Neoplatonic system.41 The constant outpouring of being into what is not as well as the contrasting of active powers with passive receptables are both cast in the Aristotelian language of interacting dynameis and energeiai even in the Plotinian original. In contradistinction to Aristotle, however, (divine infinite) potency now holds primacy over (limited created) actuality.42 All that exists relies constantly on the creative overflow of the Demiurge for its having existence as a unified whole. For Simplicius, Philoponus’ 6th century opponent and defendant of Proclus’ overall “Athenian” position this approach makes it possible to neatly sidestep Philoponus’ whole problem. Contrary to the heavens’ powers sometime running out, they can hardly be said to ever possess them in the first place. The heavens’, and thereby the world’s powers are indeed by definition finite, but this means only that they are made receptible to forever receive further existential force. The means as well as the justification for the gradation of the everywhere-reaching procession lies in the “adaptability” and “suitability” of each existent to receive its due measure of existence and all its goods.43 A broadening of the definition of “nature” provides Simplicius’ defense of the Proclean interpretation against those (here, Alexander of Aphrodisias) who would claim that any natural perishability in the heavens must inevitably be realized: Just as [the world] is created and finite in itself, so it is at the same time suited to receive eternity and perpetual motion. So it is not true without qualification even to say that it is perishable by its own nature. For its nature in its entirety is conceived together with its suitability (epitêdeiotês) in its relation to the Creator, through whom it shares in eternal benefits.44 Although the quotation is from a commentary on the De Caelo we are a long way from Aristotle: witness the subtle shift from “imperishable without qualification” to “not perishable without qualification”. The heavenly spheres’ being perishable in potentia no longer equals their being sometime perishable in actu; instead, the modal status of an existent is determined by its place in the emanative chain. An eternal existent (in fact, every existent) has a twofold nature: taken in itself, it is non-existent, but seen as caused and created it is necessarily existent, when it is existent. There are enough similarities with Avicenna to suggest a deeper connection; I will not go into the matter here. At any rate, the way Simplicius puts the alternatives comes astonishingly close to the way Averroes saw the problem much later. The formal judging of a thing’s nature (fysis) envisioned and repudiated here corresponds to the Arabs’ judging of things in their essence (dhât); and the way Simplicius protests against Alexander’s simple naturalism mirrors the concerns of Averroes when the latter is confronted with Philoponus’ argumentation from inevitable natures. Averroes could not bring himself to wholeheartedly endorse the emanative view of necessitation; for that, he was too deeply steeped in the statistical interpretative tradition. Thus in the Metaphysics commentary he reproduces faithfully Philoponus’ denial of the eternal’s being in any way possibly perishable. But Avicenna did endorse this possibility, and the way he did it introduced an until then unheard-of contingency into the eternal, a contingency which was to have farreaching consequences in the interpretation of the modalities in later medieval philosophy.

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The close affinities between Simplicius’ and Averroes’ reports lead us, finally, to a reassessment of Averroes’ take on the infinite power argument. Averroes has generally received very poor marks for his treatment of Avicenna’ modal philosophy, and with good reason. But even if Averroes did not do Avicenna’s modal metaphysics adequate justice, he in his confusion took even better heed of the lessons to be gained from the infinite power argument’s interpretation. No thinker was more obsessed with the interconnectedness of infinite power, necessity and eternity than Averroes was: and even if this lasting obsession did get the Commentator ever more tangled in a web largely of his own making,45 it also provided later medieval theory with ample materials for reflecting on the natures of natural and divine power, on createdness and contingency. Two Traditions on the Necessity of the Eternal An inquiry into the history of the infinite power argument demonstrates how late Greek scholasticism provided medieval philosophy with not one, but two models of Plenitude to work from. The Platonic notion of a maximal creation was sometimes complemented by, but sometimes pitted against a naturalistic modal model that included a temporalized version of Plenitude among its theoretical preconceptions. The evolving interpretation of the infinite power argument runs on two curiously parallel lines. Both the Neoplatonist and the Aristotelian traditions employ the notion of infinite power as well as the idea of all possibilities being realized in the one and only universe. But whereas Aristotelian theory treats infinite power solely within the framework of an everlasting physical world, the Neoplatonist view sees it primarily in terms of the Demiurge’s timeless reality. The difference is mirrored in the way Plenitude and infinite power are projected on the level of corporeal reality. For those working from Aristotelian natural theory, both infinite and finite powers are viewed as natural capacities having definite extensions in natural subjects. This leads Philoponus to stark creationism and Averroes into a descending necessitarian spiral. In the Neoplatonist worldview, by contrast, infinite divine power is conceived of as reaching though all levels of existence simultaneously, with the temporal dimension at times all but disregarded. This allows the inclusion of a certain amount of contingency into the eternal, although it could be argued that this conception is still insufficient for an accurate philosophical depiction of the Biblical Creator God. This is because both approaches in fact mirror classical Greek attitudes to natural theology. Neoplatonist theology presents its conclusions as being just as binding logically for the form of the world as does Aristotelian naturalism. The Aristotelians in our survey ponder the natural powers of natural entities and take the conclusions they reach to be on a par with the dictates of natural laws; the Neoplatonists, beginning their inquiry from the nature of God, present their conclusions as theological prescriptions. Again, the difference results in different conceptions regarding the way Plenitude works: but it is noteworthy that both conceptions are in principle amenable with both eternalism and creationism, and that both share a distinct necessitarian streak. The eternity of the world is testimony to its necessity on both accounts, even if in Aristotelian natural philosophy this indicates the presence and immovability of omnitemporal natural potencies, whereas in Neoplatonism it primarily testifies to the timeless presence of a divine chain of being.

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Only from between the two could something wholly different begin to emerge, as hinted at for the first time in mainstream Aristotelianism by Avicenna’s metaphysics of contingency and realized fully in its later inspired reworking by John Duns Scotus. Notes 1 Even as Lovejoy’s ideas have stimulated a great amount of subsequent studies and inquiries in the history of ideas, Lovejoy’s general approach to the problem, as well as many of his original findings, have come under heavy criticism. For materials and studies collected under a representative title see Knuuttila (ed.) 1981. 2 For Lovejoy’s original formulations, cf. Lovejoy 1936, 52–55. For an adequate assessment of Lovejoy’s approach and the shortcomings inherent in the notion of a “unit idea”, cf. J.Hintikka, “Gaps in the Great Chain of Being”, in Knuuttila (ed.) 1981, 1–17. 3 Excellent accounts of the infinite power argument’s history are offered in Davidson 1987 (a résumé with references on pp. 409–411) and Sorabji 1988 (ch. 15, 249–285, and cf. also ch. 13). Book Lâm, c. 41; 3:1628.10– 4 For the Arabic original see Averroes, Tafsîr mâ 1638.8, Bouyges. (In this instance, Charles Genequand’s English translation cannot be recommended, because of inconsistencies in the translation of key terms; those wishing to consult the Latin will find the passage in Aristotelis Opera cum Averrois Cordubensis in eius Commentariis [henceforth abbr. AOACC] 8:324B–325M.) Averroes discusses the infinite power problem in so many of his works that it would be impractical to try and cover all the ground here. I will content myself with mentioning a few vital points in connection with the Metaphysics commentary text. For other original passages see the Long Commentary on the Physics 8, c. 79 (in AOACC 4:425H–427I); the Long Commentary on De Caelo, 2, c. 71 (AOACC 5:145H–146H); the Middle Commentary on De Caelo ( 178.10–183.17, and also AOACC 5:293G– 295B); De substantia orbis, chs. 1, 3, 5, 6 (in Hyman’s Hebrew-English edition of 1986 and in AOACC 9) & 7 (only in AOACC 9:13H–14M, and in a Hebrew manuscript, for which see Davidson 1987, 329–331); Averroes’ Questions in Physics, q. 7 (27–28, Goldstein) & 9 (33– 36, Goldstein). Sorabji (1988, 265) and Davidson (1987, 322) also mention a passage in the Middle Commentary on the Metaphysics which I have not had the opportunity to consult. 5 Tafsîr 3:1627.10–12, Bouyges (cf. Aristotle’s summary of the proof in Metaphysics 1071b6– 12, continued at 1073a3–12). In character, Averroes presents the argument as a “syllogism” (1627.10, Bouyges), even pointing out that it is “of the second figure” (1627.12, Bouyges). It is important to note that this is Averroes’ interpretation. If one examines closely Aristotle’s own argument in Physics 8, ch. 10, it quickly becomes apparent that something quite different may in fact be going on from what most of the interpretative tradition would have us believe. As this is a study of that interpretative history and not of Aristotle, I shall not pursue the matter further here; but cf. Ross’ commentary in Physics; 452–455, Ross. 6 Tafsîr 3:1628.10–15, Bouyges. The intended length of the quotation is debatable, as Philoponus never puts the latter point in exactly these words in his preserved writings. I have chosen to end the quotation where I have because the text then continues with the juxtapository: “and we say…” (1629.1, Bouyges; added emphasis). Part of the point made in this chapter is that Philoponus utilized the conceptual framework of De caelo 1, ch.12 to its fullest, even if he did not explicitly allude to the work itself. 7 See the still excellent reconstruction by H.A. Wolfson in Wolfson 1976, 374–382 (cf. also Davidson 1987, 89–93; Sorabji 1988, 254–257). 8 In the subsequent discussion it may be assumed in orthodox Aristotelian fashion that whenever perishability (end or possibility of ending) is mentioned generability (creation or

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possibility of beginning) follows, and vice versa. Aristotle took perishability and generability, and correspondingly imperishability and ungenerability, to be mutually implicative: the point forms the main focus of De Caelo 1, ch.12 and was widely accepted in both its modal and non-modal (factitive) forms. Proclus (412–485), referring to the Phaedrus (245D) and the Republic (546A), made the influential claim that already Plato had held the same opinion (In Tim 1:295.27–296.6, Diehl): still, on the question of the correct interpretation of Plato’s cosmology opinion remained divided. (Ostensibly the Timaeus describes a generated, perishable, but never-perishing universe: but cf. e.g. Proclus’ remarks in favor of an allegorical interpretation, op. cit. 1:286.20–21, 296.6–12, Diehl.) 9 For Philoponus’ criticism of the eternalist arguments in Physics 8 see C. Wildberg’s reconstruction, Philoponus 1987. Simplicius reprimands Philoponus for assigning these and other inconsistencies to Aristotelian doctrine: but of course, the post-529 Philoponus is interested only in preserving and presenting those parts of Aristotle he finds congenial to his own evolving creationist philosophical worldview. 10 Aristotle, De caelo 281b20–23; English translation based on J.L.Stocks’s (1:466–467, Barnes’s ed.). 11 De caelo 281b23–25 (the last clause reading haplôs in the original Greek). The approach, which is to verify the hypothetical possibility of the world’s destruction by way of searching for any incongruities arising from its assumption, markedly resembles Aristotle’s famous “test” for possibility in the Prior Analytics (32a18–20), as noted by Averroes in De substantia orbis 6 (Hebrew 11. 20–23/English pp. 125–126, Hyman). Its application here seems to indicate that this compossibility is tested only across a single world history, without a notion of possibilities as synchronous alternatives. 12 Of the various attempts at articulating what exactly is wrong with Aristotle’s argument see Van Rijen 1989, 73–87; cf. also Knuuttila 1993, 9–10. 13 The notion is clearly presupposed in Aristotle’s argument from necessary coincidence, De Caelo 281bl8–20: “But if a thing has for an infinite time more than one capacity, another time is impossible and the times must coincide.” (Stocks’s translation, my italics.) On the significance of the infinity of time in the argumentation of De caelo see Waterlow 1982, 65– 78. 14 Physics 203b30; cf. also De generatione et corruptione 338al-3; Metaphysics 1050b6–34. Aristotle seems to have held that the temporal-frequency model also applies in the case of generic possibilities: if something is genuinely possible for a given species, then it will be instantiated at least once. For an overview of the debate regarding Aristotle’s adherence to a statistical modal theory (with extensive bibliographical references) see Knuuttila 1993, 1–18. 15 On Alexander of Aphrodisias’ views on the modal status of the heavens see Staples 1983a and b; on Aquinas and Buridan and the same De caelo passage, Williams 1965. Both articles point to the complexity of the question about the role of temporalized Plenitude in ancient and medieval philosophy: even if many thinkers took the principle to apply to Aristotle’s thought in some way, few were willing to interpret the idea as literally as Averroes did and most attempted to qualify it in some way. For the history of the idea in the Latin West see Knuuttila 1993, passim. 16 Some have taken Philoponus to argue backwards here, from perishability to finite capacity (cf. e.g. Davidson 1987, 93), but I do not believe this to be the case. What Philoponus does is rather refer to his more general argument from finite power. 17 Philoponus, quoted by Simplicius, In Phys. 1333.24–30, Diels (English translation taken from 121, Wildberg). 18 Christian Wildberg (in Simplicius 1991; 121, n. 43 Wildberg) expresses his dismay at how only a possibility of perishing seems to be argued for in the passage: but this of course is enough if and only if something like temporal Plenitude is already presupposed. Simplicius, meanwhile, quite intentionally plays down the point made in the argument: he accuses Philoponus of believing that the limits of his imagination are the limits of possibility. (In

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Phys. 1334.26–39, Diels.) This, too, misses the point, because for Philoponus the envisioned logos of destruction is no fanciful exercise in imagination, but an objective feature of physical reality. 19 The last point curiously highlights the parallels between Philoponus’ and Aristotle’s argumentation. Aristotle’s argument in De caelo 1, ch. 12 was directed squarely against the Timaeus account of a generated and perishable but never-perishing world. So Aristotle maintains that an eternal world cannot be destructible even in potentia, while Philoponus claims that a destructible world cannot ever be eternal in actu; and both continue by extrapolating from end to beginning. Both utilize a statistical interpretation of Plenitude to reach their conclusions, and both foreclose any divine overriding of the naturally appointed and mutually exclusive categories of generable-destructible and ungenerable-indestructible. 20 R.M.Dancy offers an interesting piece of “fuzzy logic” for this on the lines of “nature doing nothing in vain”: the explanation involves the utter super-fluousness of both such a potentiality and the eternal hindering factors. Cf. R.M.Dancy, “Aristotle and the Priority of Actuality”, in Knuuttila (ed.) 1981, 79–80; and for an almost exact parallel, Averroes, Long Commentary on the Physics 2, c. 48; AOACC 4:66M–67A. 21 Aristotle’s proof from motion was in late Antiquity in subsequent stages moulded into a proof from the varying levels of existential power on a Neoplatonist ontological model. Proclus (cf. also below) argued that Aristotle’s infinite power argument should be extended to cover the fact of the heavenly spheres’ very existence; while Proclus’ pupil Ammonius, who was also teacher to Philoponus, claimed that Aristotle’s argument was actually meant in this way. For an overview of the history, cf. Davidson 1987, 281–282; Sorabji 1988, 249– 254. 22 There runs a curious parallel between Proclus’ (in late Antiquity) and Waterlow’s and Van Rijen’s (in our time) analyses of the role of matter in Aristotle’s modal metaphysics, one that seems to me to merit further investigation. 23 Averroes’ most complete exposition on the subject is the first chapter of De substantia orbis, which serves as an almost point-by-point refutation of Philoponus’ first five books against Aristotle. (Averroes ostensibly targets Avicenna rather than Philoponus: but cp. with Philoponus 1987, passim.) Cf. also e.g. Tahâfut al-tahâfut 4; 270–271, Bouyges. 24 See Aristotle, Metaphysics 1069b24–27; and for Averroes’ comments, Tafsîr, book Lâm, c. 10; 3:1447, Bouyges. The point is argued already in Aristotle’s early anti-Platonic De caelo 1, chs. 2–4, and is enough to make short shrift of the Platonist scare of the heavens ever dissolving (which was purportedly due to their inherent instability as material and composite entities). 25 Cf. Metaphysics 12, chs. 6–7; also Physics 8, chs. 8–9 and De Caelo 1, ch. 4. On one interpretation the heavenly motion, because it is at root an intellectual activity, is of the energeia rather than the kinêsis type; that is, it has no outside goal but has perfection in its own execution. Cf. Metaphysics 1048bl8–35 and the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics (esp. 1073a29–33, 1074b9–13, 1177a20–27) for the roots of the distinction in Aristotle; and cf. Kogan 1985, 50–51, 211–212, 232–233 for Averroes’ take on this. (Cf. Kogan 1985, 277, n. 64 for references to the literature on Aristotle.) 26 See e.g. Metaphysics 1046a19–26. Given the presence of both complementary potencies, and the absence of any relevant external hindrances, the change takes place out of necessity: cf. Metaphysics 1048a5–7, 1048a13–21, 1048b37–1049a14. 27 If it can be said that the heavens’ motion is essential to them (even more so, to the sublunar world), then perhaps celestial rest can amount to the same as celestial dissolution. Cf. Averroes, De substantia orbis 4 (ll. 34–38 Hebrew/ p.117 English, Hyman; Latin in AOACC 9:10I); also Tahâfut al-tahâfut 1 (46–47, Bouyges), 3 (172, Bouyges). 28 On the breakthrough of the “kinetical” explanation of Aristotle’s infinite power argument cf. the now indispensable Lettinck 1994, 661–664; cf. also Sorabji 1988, 281–285. Averroes in one treatise asserts that “rest is only privation and not a potentiality”: depriving the heavens

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of rest does not then offset any genuine potentiality and represents no breach with nature. Cf. De substantia orbis 5 (l 21 Hebrew/p. 122 English, Hyman; Latin in AOACC 9:11B). The solution is as far as I know unique to the passage; it could be another, and possibly a complementary way around the difficulty posed by the heavens’ possibility of resting. 29 Cf. Averroes, Long Commentary on the Physics 8, c. 79 (AOACC 4:427D–G); Long Commentary on De caelo 2, c. 71 (AOACC 5:146C–F); Questions in Physics 7 (27–28, Goldstein), 9 (35, Goldstein); De substantia orbis 3 (ll. 63–94 Hebrew/107–110 English, Hyman; Latin in AOACC 9:9F–10A). The Physics commentary professes to return to the words of Aristotle on the question (AOACC 4:427G), and this seems indeed to be correct. 30 The reason repeatedly cited for the impossibility of this is that such a potentiality might fail, with the apparent gap in Aristotle’s reasoning again implying one conclusion: might in this context equals will, sooner or later. The notion of temporal Plenitude is again discernible. 31 See the excellent “Aristotle and the Priority of Actuality”, in Knuuttila (ed.) 1981, 74–80. 32 The necessitarian view, however inadmissible from a Theist viewpoint, would be wholly in line with the general tenor of Aristotle’s inquiries into the matter. What Aristotle wanted to do was preclude any possibility of a cataclysm ever occurring. The lack of a beginning for the world was in this context more a happy side-effect (witness e.g. the structure of De caelo 1, chs. 9–12), though in the Physics admittedly the eternity of motion is considered equally both from the side of its being necessary a parte ante and a parte post. At any rate, postulating any contingency in the world’s perpetual superstructure would have been far from Aristotle’s mind. On the statistical interpretation in Averroes’ modal theory see the brief remarks in Knuuttila 1977, 79–87 (a proper study on the subject remains to be done). 33 For statistical explanations of the modal terms in Averroes see e.g. the short logical treatise edited in Dunlop 1962 (translated into English in Rescher 1963, 91–105), and The Long Commentary on De caelo 1, c. 123 (AOACC 5:84A–E). The latter is significant for our purposes for its context alone: Aristotle’s reasoning in De caelo 1, ch. 12 is explained by aid of a diagram, in which “being eternal” equals “being necessary”, while the contradictory “that for which it is possible not to be” equals “not eternal”. 34 I tend to concur with Helen Tunik Goldstein in that this was not necessarily due to ignorance. Averroes does not strictly speaking aim at reproducing Avicenna’s thought, as many have seen him to do and fail: “what Averroes does do is to continue to use terms, such as possibility and necessity, in the sense he thought was truly Aristotelian, rather than in the sense Avicenna intended” (in Goldstein’s notes to Averroes’ Questions in Physics; 150, Goldstein). 35 On the basis of the Metaphysics commentary text it seems that Averroes may have held hopes for the Aristotelian definition of kinêsis as the actuality of a potentiality qua potentiality to be a way out of the problem of determinism—as Aristotle himself apparently did. (On the latter point, and on why the solution would not ultimately have worked, see Hintikka et al. 1977, 59–77.) Cf. also Tahafut al-tahâfut 3 (172, Bouyges), where the world is said to be describable as created on account of its mobile nature. 36 Several presentations of Avicenna’s modal metaphysics have been made recently available: see e.g. Goodman 1992, 49–122, whose notes offer an overview to the literature. For a study of Avicenna’s remarks on modal logic, cf. Bäck 1992. 37 Avicenna, commenting on Metaphysics, Book Lâm, in Badawî 1947, 26.8–12. Sorabji (1988, 260–263) is to my knowledge the first to discuss this passage in the context of infinite power. 38 For Plotinus see e.g. the Enneads, II.3.18, II.9.3, II.9.6, II.9.8, II.9.17, III.2.14–7, III.8.8, VI.7.12; for the origins of the idea of Plenitude in Plato, Timaeus 29e–30a, 39e, 41b–c. 39 See Proclus, In Tim. 1:437.11–24; 1:438.13–15; 1:443.5–8; 3:90.15–27; 3:93.5–14; 3:175.15–176.10; 3:224.17–22, Diehl (Plotinus, Enneads III.7.11 partially foreshadows the idea on “Proclus on Plenitude” cf. further Kukkonen 2000). 40 See Siorvanes 1996, 175–179.

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41 It is noteworthy (and indicative of the continued pressures exerted by the naturalistic model) that Proclus feels it necessary to point out that the heavens are not potentially perishable (dynamei phthartori), all appearances to the contrary, nor are they adapted for destruction (epitêdeios eis phthoran). What is meant by their having limited potency is only that they are of themselves incapable of forever sustaining their existence (In Tim. 1:293.14–294.8, Diehl). Proclus’ assurances would seem superfluous, were there not still a place in his scheme for the supposition that every potentiality is sometime realized: so even as he takes steps to counter just that kind of approach, Proclus in fact confirms the continued tenacity of a naturalist interpretation of the potencies of bodies. 42 On the interplay of dynamis and energeia in Plotinus’ modal metaphysics see Buchner 1970. Peter Adamson in this volume has adduced fascinating examples about potencies higher than acts garnering a mention in the Arabic Plotinian tradition; in the light of what has been said, it is quite understandable that these ideas were apt to produce confusion, insofar as they were culled from something which was ostensibly the “Theology of Aristotle”. 43 For the roots of the idea see Timaeus 29e–30a. 44 Simplicius, In Aristotelis De caelo commentaria (361.10–15, Heiberg): English translation taken from Sorabji 1988, 259. 45 As detailed by Davidson 1987, 311–335.

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Hintikka, J.K.K. & Remes, U. & Knuuttila, S. 1977. Aristotle on Modality and Determinism. Dordrecht: Acta Philosophica Fennica. Knuuttila, S. 1977. “The Statistical Interpretation of Modality in Averroes and Thomas Aquinas.” Ajatus 37, pp. 79–98. ——(ed.). 1981. Reforming the Great Chain of Being. The Synthese Historical Library 20. Dordrecht: Reidel. ——. 1993. Modalities in Medieval Philosophy. London: Routledge. Kogan, B.S. 1985. Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation. Albany NY: State University of New York Press. Kukkonen, T. 2000. “Proclus on Plenitude.” Dionysius 18 (2000), pp. 103–128. Lettinck, P. 1994. Aristotle’s Physics and its Reception in the Arabic World. With an Edition of the Unpublished Parts of Ibn Bâjja’s Commentary on the Physics. Aristoteles Semitico-Latinus 7. Leiden: Brill. Lovejoy, A.O. 1936. The Great Chain of Being. Harvard MA: Harvard University Press. Philoponus, John. 1987. Philoponus Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World. Reconstructed from the extant sources and translated by C.Wildberg. London: Duckworth and Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Plato. 1954. Platonis opera. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Plotinus. 1966–1988. Plotinus in Seven Volumes. Edited and translated by A.H. Armstrong. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press and London: William Heinemann Ltd. Proclus. 1903–1906. Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timaeum commentaria. Edited by E.Diehl Leipzig: B.G.Teubner. Rescher, N. 1963. Studies in the History of Arabic Logic. Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Simplicius. 1892–1895. In Aristotelis libros Physicorum commentaria. Edited by H.Diels. Berlin: Reimer. ——. 1894. In Aristotelis De caelo commentaria. Edited by I.L.Heiberg. Berlin: Reimer. ——. 1991. Philoponus: Corollaries on Place and Void with Simplicius: Against Philoponus on the Eternity of the World. Translated by D.Furley and C.Wildberg. London: Duckworth and Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Siorvanes, L. 1996. Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science. Edinburgh: Yale University Press. Sorabji, R. 1988. Matter, Space and Motion. Theories in Antiquity and their Sequel. London: Duckworth. Staples, R.W. 1983a. “Alexander of Aphrodisias: problems about possibility 2.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 30, pp. 99–110. ——. 1983b. “The unmoved mover and the motion of the heavens in Alexander of Aphrodisias.” Apeiron 17, pp. 62–66. Van Rijen, J. 1989. Aspects of Aristotle’s Logic of Modalities. The Synthese Historical Library 35. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Waterlow, S. 1982. Passage and Possibility. A Study of Aristotle’s Modal Concepts. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Williams, C.J.F. 1965. “Aristotle and Corruptibility. A Discussion of Aristotle, De Caelo I.xii.” Religious Studies 1, pp. 95–107, 203–215. Wolfson, H.A. 1976. The Philosophy of the Kalam. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER ELEVEN The Challenge to Medieval Christian Philosophy Relating Creator to Creatures David B.Burrell, C.S.C. “Moses” as Protagonist in the Dramatic Shift from Ancient to Medieval Philosophy In leading students into the vortex of the debate which the Hebrew scriptures were to engender in philosophical circles, it has proven beneficial to pursue closely Aristotle’s inquiry in the Metaphysics, showing how his attempt to respond to a legacy of questions, notably from Plato, virtually set the agenda for subsequent philosophical reflection on these comprehensive issues. Yet the encounter with Moses (as the putative author of Genesis) displays a lacuna which earnest students of Aristotle might well miss: how effectively he steers clear of the issue of the origin of the universe. Edward Booth (1985) has traced the effects of this lacuna through the subsequent commentaries, notably as it was displayed in a lingering aporia which bedeviled that tradition: does Aristotle give primacy to the individual existing thing, as his critique of Plato leads us to believe he will, or rather to essence as its intelligible component. It remains a nice question whether the inner dynamic of the inquiry called “metaphysics” would have insisted on addressing the issue of origins without encountering Genesis. Plotinus makes one believe that it would, yet might his resolute orientation to the One not be an assertive answer to the advent of revelation? However we may assess that, it is clear that Moses’ joining the conversation puts the issue of origins firmly on the table. Yet once there, the issue is joined in the precise manner in which Plotinus poses it: must the origin of the universe be construed as a necessary consequence of the One in its inner fecundity, or does the universe come forth freely from that One (Gerson 1994)? What is at stake, as we shall see, is at once the conception we might be able to have of the One, as well as of the universe itself. When I began tracing the interaction among the Abrahamic traditions regarding this question, I allowed the classical problematic of necessary vs. free to set the agenda for exposition and for inquiry. In retrospect, however, I now see that each of these terms functions ambiguously in these reaches, so the issue cannot simply be one of stark opposition.1 For the necessity operative in the prevailing necessary emanation scheme was that of logical deduction, on which the scheme was modeled. That sort of necessity is perforce impersonal, of course, so hardly befits a free creator. Yet the One who creates without any presuppositions whatsoever (i.e., ex nihilo) cannot be said coherently to choose among alternatives, for such a One is quite literally faced with nothing at all from which to choose. So the freedom associated with creating will have to be a freedom closer to accepting the determinations of divine wisdom than choosing among alternatives. The radical alternative not to create anything at all would always remain, of course, yet that freedom is better described as consenting to the inherent tendency of

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good to overflow and diffuse itself than it is a “free choice.” In Plotinus’ scheme, of course, refusing that consent would be impossible to “the One” (in the measure that this One is also “the Good”), so even that radical freedom would be counter-factual, in the sense of running counter to the very nature of the One as the Good. So the precise sense in which the one God is free to create must indeed escape us, as Aquinas implicitly affirms in insisting—employing another sense of ‘necessary’—that knowledge of divine triunity is “‘necessary’ for us to have the right idea of creation, to wit, that God did not produce things of necessity, [for] when we say that in God there is a procession of love, we show that God produced creatures not out of need, nor for any other extrinsic reason, but on account of the love of God’s own goodness” (ST 1.32.1.3). Not even for the intrinsic reason of “God’s own goodness,” but out of God’s love for that very goodness, where the reduplication gestures at an “interpersonal” life within the One which philosophy could never have conceived. So “the right idea of creation” will elude reason operating unilluminated by revelation—indeed, by the Christian revelation—since reason itself could never conclude to the divine triunity which we need to direct our thinking about intentional origination. And by a similar reasoning, the precise sense in which God’s creating can be said to be free will escape us as well. For if we would be unable confidently to affirm it without having been informed of the divine triunity, which itself escapes our comprehension, then so will the freedom which that triunity announces and protects.2 We have, of course, moved well beyond logical necessity here, yet the generation of the Son (Word) and the procession of the Holy Spirit (Love) in God, which in Aquinas’ thought alone secures the freedom of creation, cannot itself be a free act of God, but is presented as God’s own revelation displaying for creatures the inner life (or complete “nature”) of the creator.3 Once that life is revealed, then, it will be necessary that such a One act freely, out of love, yet the manner whereby that loving free consent to the divine goodness allows it to overflow into creation will utterly escape us. So just how God is free in creating is not for us to know. Once we are invited by a revelatory tradition, however, to assert that the universe is freely created, we will be constrained to find a metaphysical way of expressing this relation of the universe to its source. If the model of logical deduction failed to distinguish the One adequately from the universe by having all-that-is emanate from the One as premises from a single axiom, what possible connection can there be to this One who now freely speaks it? For free origination does not answer to any explanatory mode, yet whatever exists does exist by being freely spoken.4 So we are pressed to ask: what is it that God speaks? What is the proper effect of creation in the universe? The response natural to those traditions which insist on God’s creating by speaking would be the one found in the wisdom literature of the Hebrew scriptures and elaborated by Philo: the trace of the creator in creation is God’s ordering wisdom. Continuing his insistence on the appositeness of the Christian revelation of God’s triunity, Aquinas will identify that wisdom with the Word “through whom the universe is made,” yet locate its operation in the act of bestowing things’ very existence: “the proper effect of the first and most universal cause, which is God, is existing itself [ipsum esse]” (ST 1.45.5). Beholden to Avicenna’s celebrated distinction of essence from existing, Aquinas will nonetheless transform it by rendering esse as an act rather than an accident, thereby removing any suspicion that there might already be “things” which then receive their existence, as well as any hint of the creator being essentially related to the universe. Indeed, the role which

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esse plays will allow the creator to constitute the universe yet more intimately. It is that drama which we need now to allow to unfold. The Primacy of Esse What the revelatory traditions of Bible and Qur’an alike insist upon is “the distinction” of creator from creation: nothing uncreated can be “associated with” the creator, as Islam prefers to put it in celebrating the radical oneness of God [tawhîd]. The rabbis were equally insistent, of course, in distinguishing God’s revelation to Israel from the surrounding polytheisms, for the revelation of there being but one God cannot simply mean that one out of the current pantheon wins out. Once this one God is identified as the One from whom all-that-is comes forth, such a One cannot be part of the universe God originates, nor have any rivals. That is the simple logic of asserting the oneness of the creator. Robert Sokolowski has detailed the implications of this logic, introducing it by a philosophical conceit which he calls “the distinction.”5 He insists, of course, that it cannot be a distinction like the ones we routinely make, for creator and creatures do not share a common domain; indeed, this distinction is utterly unique in that “one of the terms of the distinction, God, is more fundamental than the distinction itself [once it] is appreciated as a distinction that did not have to be, even though it in fact is.” For in this distinction “God is understood as ‘being’ God entirely apart from any relation of otherness to the world or to the whole. God could and would be God even if there were no world, [since] God is understood not only to have created the world, but to have permitted the distinction between himself and world to occur” (32–33). As the metaphysician Aquinas will identify existing [esse] with Aristotle’s premier analytic category of act, thereby transforming Aristotle’s meta-physics to meet the demands of a universe revealed to be created; so the phenomenologist Sokolowski (1979) will exploit what he has already identified as the premier activity of philosophers—making distinctions—to show how a central feature of the faith-life of Christians carries profound philosophical implications. The first of these is the way in which “Christian belief in creation makes the world or the whole explicitly thematic because it urges a special kind of negation of the world or the whole; it urges a distinction between the whole and God” (46). Yet a distinction of a unique sort, for “one danger in this is that the world might lose its character as a matrix and ultimate setting and begin to look like a large thing, a global object, instead of being taken as a setting for things and objects; this would occur if the distinction between God and the world is misread as one of the distinctions we make naturally and spontaneously between things within the world. This misunderstanding of both the world and God, this taking of both of them as new kinds of objects, can be prevented by a proper emphasis on the philosophical inquiry into the whole and its necessities; by an awareness of the special sense of God as ipsum esse subsistens and the special transformation of language that occurs when we begin to speak, religiously and theologically about God; and by an explicit study of the unusual character of the distinction between the whole and God” (46). A challenging agenda, any one of whose demands has often been neglected in much that passes for “philosophy of religion,” yet the focus of our exposition will be the way in which Aquinas’ ability to characterize the creator as ipsum esse subsistens allows him to offer a way of articulating the singularity of the relation of creator to creation.6 And since

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the relation in question only emerges with the revelation of a free creator, one could hardly expect the philosophical tools needed to articulate it to be found ready to hand in Greek philosophy. Like “the distinction,” this relation will be unlike any that we can know between items in the universe. How then does Aquinas’ strategic use of esse [existing] as act serve to transform the metaphysical matrix which he had inherited, and had determined to make available to Christian theology, thereby allowing him to set at the center of his work something they had managed to overlook? And what does the ensuing relation look like? To characterize creation in a manner faithful to the whole of the scriptures, creator and creatures must be related by a “non-reciprocal relation of dependence.”7 Aquinas’ reasoning to this special status for the creator/creature relation coheres neatly with the uniqueness of Sokolowski’s “distinction”: …since God is altogether outside the order of creatures, since they are ordered to him but not he to them, it is clear that being related to God is a reality in creatures, but being related to creatures is not a reality in God; we say it about him because of the real relation in creatures (ST 1.13.7). Those untutored in “the distinction” have misread this passage as stating that the creator is “unrelated to the world” in the sense of being indifferent to it. But what Aquinas means by the “real relation” which he is careful to deny of the creator is a reciprocal one which obtains between two items in the universe, so denying reciprocity is but another way of calling our attention to the fact that creatures have their very being from the One who is, while that One’s being in no way depends on creating. Yet were one to think of God and creatures simply as two things, quite naturally presuming them both to be items in the universe, to deny any real relation between them would indeed be to separate one radically from the other. In the light of “the distinction,” however, we shall see how denying that sort of reciprocal relation amounts rather to affirming an inexpressible intimacy of creature to creator which Sara Grant suggests is best expressed by Sankara’s term “nonduality.” Yet the metaphysical device needed to bridge the ostensible gap (or “infinite qualitative difference”) between creator and creature will be esse as the “act of being” proper to each existing thing, with creatures participating in the esse which God is.8 Both esse and participation, however, are ways of attempting to express the inexpressible, for just as “the distinction” must be unlike any one we know, so a “nonreciprocal relation of dependence” cannot obtain between items within the universe. Metaphysics is being stretched to serve a revelation whose affirmations exceed its proper reach. As Sokolowski puts it: “the distinction is glimpsed on the margin of reason, [indeed] at the intersection of reason and faith” (39). This fact brings out better than any other a characteristic peculiar to thirteenth-century thought, notably that of Aquinas, and helps to account for the fragility of his synthesis. For reason and revelation need to function together as interlocking criteria, and do so in the face of conventional ways of distinguishing them which tend to separate their respective contributions, with reason ideally leading to knowledge in such a way that once something is known it need no longer be believed. Aquinas’ deft recasting of Avicenna’s distinction between essence [mahiyya] and existence [wujûd] to make esse to be act rather than accident already

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gestured towards an ineffable aspect of esse, since Aristotle had already remarked that we cannot define act so much as discover its presence by a string of examples marking the difference of waking from sleeping, seeing from looking, understanding from thinking. Since there is no potentiality at all (like that of thinking prior to understanding) to lead one into ipsum esse subsistens, however, it will utterly defy conceptualization; and the participated esse which creatures enjoy will share in that ineffability, given the fact that essences are what we can understand and classify. That something we have thought of in fact exists can hardly follow from our thinking about it, nor can it be simply a “fact,” in our sense of the term, either. There is an irruption to existing, signaled by Aquinas’ using Aristotle’s energeia to identify it, yet recognizing this singularity may well require prior attention to the originating activity of the creator.9 To bracket the origination of the universe, as modernity felt impelled to do, has the effect of dulling our sensibilities to the novelty of existing, inclining us to regard it a mere given rather than an undeserved gift, thereby allowing philosophers to move in accustomed conceptual paths which quite naturally privilege essence.10 Esse Freely Bestowed That existing is “undeserved” is a logical (or “grammatical”) point, of course, reminding us that there is nothing there to claim or even be given existence. So any talk of “possible worlds” being “actualized” can be nothing more than a façon de parler, and to my mind a grossly misleading one (Ross 1996). For as Aquinas had to remind Avicenna, the only possibility there can be prior to creation ex nihilo lies not “in the passive potentiality of matter, but [in] the active power of God” to create without presupposing anything at all (ST 1. 46.1.1). What we can feel of that gratuity is the irruption, the utter novelty of something’s existing. From the side of the agent, however, the action will have to be thoroughly intentional, both that the creator be a full-blooded agent, and that creation itself be pure gift. That is the key to understanding the metaphysical challenge to Muslim, Jewish, and Christian thinkers: how to conceive the One from whom all-that-is freely emanates. Indeed, emanation remains the best corrective to the master metaphor of artisan in our attempt to capture the sui generis activity of creating (Burrell 1986). Hence Aquinas will not hesitate to characterize creation as the “emanation of all of being from the universal principle of all being” (ST 1.45.1), even after he has taken pains to follow Moses Maimonides’ lead in eviscerating any hint of logical necessity associated with emanation. In fact, by following the scriptures to rehabilitate the master metaphor of artisan, he prepared the way for depicting the act of creation as a free act of practical reason, so implicitly upsetting the predilection for speculative reason endemic to Hellenic thought.11 But how can we possible understand the freedom peculiar to the One who creates without having to do so? Our temptation, of course, will be to model it after a decision, or what is even more banal, a choice among “possible worlds.” Decisions are normally more weighty than mere choices; it may even trivialize crucial decisions, like those involving a spouse or a vocation in life, to speak of them as “choices.” Can we honestly say that we choose our spouse, out of a field of contenders; or that we reached out to grasp a vocation in life?

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Indeed, for the latter as well as the former, Jesus’ words in the gospel of John sound far more fitting: “You did not choose me; I chose you” (John 15:16). There is a fittingness to our accepting our spouse or our vocation in life that moves the action closer to a kind of “necessity,” to recognizing the truth of the path which opens before us. It is this experience which should lead us to question the current proclivity to identify human freedom with choosing, which “libertarians” simply presume, and then proceed to develop the intellectual apparatus to endorse.12 As Aquinas implied, in his pithy resume of the trinitarian structure inherent in creation properly conceived, the gracious move to creating a universe in the absence of any need whatsoever is best conceived as the One’s acquiescing to the One’s own inner constitution. What constitutes free creation, then, would be that gratuitous act of acquiescing, much as we consent to what we discern to be the good held out before us—whether it be spouse or vocation—in an act which is the very source of freedom without itself being a choice at all.13 Our freedom, of course, includes the possibility of refusing to acknowledge and to pursue that discerned good, and to that extent answers to a “libertarian” paradigm. But to refuse is to fail, and it should count decisively against a libertarian account of freedom that it would propose a failure as the very paradigm of a free act. Again, what Aquinas’ cryptic reference to the creator’s inner trinitarian life suggests is that creating is a fully gratuitous act, operating out of a fullness that needs no further completion. But of course, our experience could at best intimate such a state, since we are always in need of being fulfilled, even by what appear to be gracious acts of kindness. Only at our best, it seems, and then only in ecstatic moments, can we even imagine, must less execute, purely gratuitous acts. So an adequate account of God’s freedom in creating will escape us in principle; hence Aquinas’ prescient reference to a dimension of divinity which we could never reason to ourselves, but could only be revealed to us. What proves significant here is the way in which this presumption is shared by Jewish and Muslim thinkers as well. Without the benefit of an explicitly trinitarian revelation, both Moses Maimonides and al-Ghazali perceive clearly how the issue of free creation implies and is implied by the unanticipated and undeserved bestowal of the Torah and of the Qur’an, respectively. Indeed, it belongs to the ethos of Islam to insist that humankind needs to be alerted to the traces [ayât] of divine wisdom in the world by pondering the verses [ayât] of the Qur’an. One might indeed reason to the universe’s origination, after the fashion of the Muslim falâsifa and in the spirit of Plotinus, but to see all that is as the “best possible” effect of divine wisdom requires God’s revelatory initiative (Ormsby 1984, 1990). Yet once averred, the word of divine creative wisdom assumes center stage in creation. Here the testimony of revelation, as in the Qur’an’s repeated avowal: “God said ‘be’ and it is” (6.73), confirms the inference from metaphysics that creation involves no change at all (Aquinas, ST 1.45.2). In literary terms shared by both Bible and Qur’an, everything is accomplished by God’s merely speaking the creative word, the Word which is made Arabic in the Qur’an and human in Jesus. And that same Word, “by whom the universe is made” (John 1:10), structures the very order of the universe, which discloses traces of divine wisdom to those attuned to it. Here is where the metaphysical theorem enunciating creation by identifying created esse as a participation in the esse subsistens of God joins the intentional discourse of word and wisdom to remind us just how elusive is the relation of creation to its creator. Kathryn Tanner (1988) has elaborated a set of semantic rules to articulate properly what

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she calls a “non-contrastive” relation of creatures to their intentional creator. The effort dovetails with Sokolowski’s “distinction,” as each reminds us that the creator cannot be “other than” creatures in the way in which one creature is other than another. Sara Grant (1991) carries this mode of thought a step further to make a highly suggestive connection with Sankara’s advaita, proposing that we read Aquinas’ determination that creation consists in a “non-reciprocal relation of dependence” in creatures as a western attempt to articulate what Sankara calls “non-duality.” For is that not what the “non-contrastive” relation between creator and creatures comes to, in our terms: not other, yet not the same either? What has long been regarded as sharply differentiating western from eastern thought turns out to be a conceptual illusion on our part: we did think that we could adequately distinguish God from creatures and readily accused Hindu thought of failing to do so. Charges of “monism” used to abound; can they be sustained? We must also revise, as I have suggested, any sharp difference between emanation properly understood (that is, no longer identified with its model of logical inference) and free creation, perhaps coming to regard these two schemes as complementary ways of articulating what defies proper conceptualization. Here a study of Aquinas’ dicta would have to be complemented by an examination of Meister Eckhart’s assertions regarding these matters, allowing for a signal difference in the genre of their writings as well as the goal of their respective inquiries.14 Aquinas’ goal was to show how and in what respect theologia could be a scientia (where both terms become ambiguous for modern readers when translated), while Eckhart, presuming that work had been accomplished, could focus on plumbing the implications of the teaching itself. Whatever may be the results of such an inquiry, which I shall do little more than sketch here, it would reveal a dimension of Christian philosophical theology in the creative medieval period that is closer in spirit to the mode of inquiry which Pierre Hadot finds in ancient philosophy, one replete with “spiritual exercises,” than to the “scholasticism” which emerged from the fourteenth century.15 I have repeatedl y tri ed to s how reading Aquinas in this way can open us to some crucial turns in his thought which a merely prepositional assimilation can easily overlook (Burrell 1974, 1979). Our reflections on the difficulty of articulating the relation of creatures to their creator may help us identify the point here: something must show the inadequacy of discourse, especially when the aim of the writer—in this case, Aquinas—is to articulate the realities of theologia as adequately as is humanly possible by showing how the study of “God and the things of God” can be fashioned into a kind of scientia.16 Yet like Eckhart, once we have apprenticed ourselves to that inquiry, we are brought to regard the differences between this inquiry and scientia as even more relevant than the ways in which one can be assimilated to the other; or better still, we become aware of the multiple ways in which Aquinas himself stretched and even transformed the shape of scientia as well as many of its key categories, to make his point. It is worth noting how this recognition differs from that of many Thomists in the early twentieth century, who were intent on showing how adequately Aquinas rendered Christian thought as a coherent philosophy, that is, as the modern analogue of scientia. Current reflections on Aquinas as theologian, albeit as philosophical theologian, point in the other direction: towards reason and faith as mutually normative in any profound human inquiry into the origins or goals of existence (Burrell 1999).

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Faith as a Mode of Knowing Even to suggest that faith and reason might complement one another in executing human inquiry is to move beyond the thought categories of modernism, where speaking of faith as a mode of knowing would have displayed a severe breach of etiquette, if not constituted an oxymoron. Alasdair MacIntyre’s trenchant argumentation designed to show how any human inquiry must be tradition-directed recalls John Henry Newman’s Grammar of Assent, composed to counter a set of Cartesian presumptions regarding paradigmatic rational inquiry in the heyday of modernity, the latter half of the nineteenth century (Lash 1983). The relevance of his reflective study today aptly confirms his observation that ideas have their time. Yet if the mutual normativity of faith and reason exemplifies the thirteenth century, while cleanly separating (if not opposing) them characterizes modernity, the move to post-modernity—however that protean term be construed—is intent (in its constructive mode) on seeking proper contexts for the exercise of reason. Indeed, the mood has shifted so palpably that we need to remind ourselves just how self-sufficient rationalist reason claimed to be, as it would have found the current cliche—that we have lost our faith in reason—a clear oxymoron. Nor should we be surprised to find affinities between medieval and contemporary thought; only the inevitably Hegelian overtones of the expression “pre-modern” make it paradoxical to link pre- with post-modern. Overtones of the Hegel, that is, who taught us to think in terms of linear development, yet if, as I am suggesting, the relationship between the thought forms at issue here is more properly dialectical, another Hegel will remain our guide. If we can succeed in bracketing, or better yet, excoriating the model of progressive development, the connection between medieval and some forms of postmodern discourse will emerge more clearly. We might think of it in the following dialectical manner. Modernity was fairly constituted by a quite specific opposition to medieval thought, as we have noted, so could be called “post-” or even “anti-medieval.” I have noted how this mode of thinking proceeded by avoiding, if not aggressively removing, any reference to creation and the creator/creature relation. It would follow from that characterization that some forms of “post-modern,” in the sense of “anti-modern,” discourse would display affinities with medieval inquiry, since post-modern” could be translated as “anti-antimedieval.” These observations operate at a level of excessive generality, of course, and the overlap will always be imperfect, since it is never the same things that are denied, nor in the same way; yet displaying the dialectics of the matter in this way should allow us to expect the affinities which have in fact emerged. John Paul II’s recent encyclical, Fides et Ratio [Faith and Reason], illustrates this dynamic, as does a friend’s remark that the Pope’s offering faith as the fruitful context within which reason can flourish would have left Voltaire speechless. Yet the fact remains that we have “lost our faith in reason,” and that the mode of reflection characteristic of Aquinas and other medieval luminaries may well be poised to show us a way in which these two—faith and reason—are inextricably in need of one another. For that conviction suffuses their writings, while many realities conspire to bring us to it in the wake of the failure of modernism to sustain itself. One further dimension, especially relevant to this book, will display affinities between our period and the medievals which historical scholarship mostly managed to avoid until recently; that is the interfaith dimension. It is significant that Aquinas turned to “Rabbi Moses” as a key interlocutor in developing his project of enlisting reason to elucidate

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faith, and that Avicenna’s distinction of esse from essence, suitably transformed, offered Aquinas just the tool he needed to appropriate Hellenic philosophy to his purposes. In that sense, the classical Christian synthesis wrought largely at the hands of Aquinas can be seen to have already been an intercultural, interfaith achievement. The relationship is more inherent and dialectical than it is one of traceable “influence,” though Aquinas did read Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed as soon as it was translated into Latin, and we can easily trace at least five central strategies which Aquinas adopted from him (Burrell, 1989). In the endeavor which Maimonides and Aquinas shared, al-Ghazali would have been a more relevant Islamic interlocutor than Ibn-Sina, but the only work of his which Aquinas knew was the Aims of the Philosophers, which is little more than a recasting of Avicenna’s summary of “philosophy” composed in Persian, the Danesh Nameh.17 So Aquinas never encountered his Islamic counterpart struggling with faith/reason issues as Maimonides had, yet we can do so, and with great profit. In sum, the capacity to find analogies in the ways that thinkers from other faiths utilize reason to illuminate and critically appropriate their tradition can offer us a strategy for comparative understanding whose results are not unlike those claimed for “natural law”-type inquiries, with the decided advantage that we need not claim anything more for “natural law” than the fact that the key notions in such questions prove to be intertranslatable in the minimal sense of providing fruitful comparisons. Notes 1 It was Bernard McGinn, in the course of our conference published as God and Creation (Burrell and McGinn 1990), who first raised this possibility with me; given how long it has lingered, this exploration is dedicated in gratitude to him and his work. Most recently, Louis Dupré made a similar observation, and I realized how much the issue needed to be nuanced. 2 Norman Kretzmann’s struggles with this issue (1991; 1997, pp. 218–20) offer oblique testimony to Aquinas’ point, while James Ross’s attempts (1996) to offer a positive characterization help to confirm ours. 3 For a constructive treatment, see Gilles Emery’s (1995) magisterial study of Aquinas’ commentary on Lombard’s Sentences. 4 See Nicholas Lash’s (1982) contribution to the McKinnon festschrift: both the Bible and the Qur’an offer the model of speech to underscore the creator’s free involvement. 5 While Sokolowski (1982, 1995) gives cogent reasons for further identifying it as “the Christian distinction,” I have argued (in the Sokolowski festschrift) that Jewish and Islamic thought regard the creator in an analogous fashion (Burrell 1996). 6 Kathryn Tanner’s (1988) way of articulating the relation as “non-contrastive” will also prove useful in identifying its unique features. 7 The phrase is Sara Grant’s, in her Teape lectures (1991, 35). 8 “Infinite qualitative difference” is Kierkegaard’s phrase, invoked simply to show how “the distinction” keeps re-appearing in different keys. For participation, see Rudi teVelde 1996. 9 David Braine 1988 remarks on the novelty characteristic of existing, while Emilie Zum Brunn notes the intertwined character of revelation and reason in discovering the singularity of esse in two relevant essays (1978, 1986). 10 For a characteristic “modern” take on Aquinas, which misses the primacy of esse even in his work, see Christopher Hughes 1989; for substantive reflections on overlooking origination, see George Steiner 1989. 11 See my contribution to Lenn Evan Goodman: Burrell 1992, 207–16. 12 See Freddoso 1988, 1–81; and Flint 1998.

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13 A clear rendition of this apparently paradoxical account can be found in Yves Simon 1969. 14 I am indebted to a conversation with Stacey Wendlinder, currently a doctoral candidate at Notre Dame working on Eckhart, for proposing this way of suggesting the difference between them. 15 Pierre Hadot’s original work, Exercises spirituels et philosophic antique (2nd ed. 1987) is now out of print, but for an excellent summary of his thought see Hadot 1995a, and a superb collection of his articles has been translated and presented by Arnold Davidson: Hadot 1995b. 16 The title of M-D Chenu’s masterpiece, Théologie comme science dans la trezième siècle, says it all with that delicate ‘comme’. 17 See J.Janssens 1986, 173–77: a more extensive study of “Al-Ghazzâlî, and his use of Avicennian texts” will be published in the acts of the 1996 Budapest symposium on “Problems in Arabic Philosophy.”

References Booth, E. 1985. Aristotelian Aporetic Ontology in Islamic and Christian Writers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Braine, David. 1988. Reality of Time and the Existence of God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burrell, David. 1974. Exercises in Religious Understanding. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press. ——. 1979. Aquinas: God and Action. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press. ——. 1986. Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press. ——. 1989. “Aquinas’ Debt to Maimonides.” In A Straight Path: Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture, edited by Ruth Link-Salinger et al., pp. 37–48. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of American Press. ——. 1992. “Why not Pursue the Metaphor of Artisan and View God’s Knowledge as Practical?” In Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, edited by Lenn Evan Goodman, pp. 207–16. Albany: State University of New York Press. ——. 1996. “The Christian Distinction Celebrated and Expanded.” In The Truthful and the Good, edited by John Drummond and James Hart, pp. 191–206. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ——. 1999. “Theology and Philosophy.” In Blackwell Companion to Theology. Oxford: Blackwell. Burrell, David and McGinn, Bernard. 1990. God and Creation. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Emery, Gilles. 1995. La Trinité Créatrice. Paris: J.Vrin. Flint, Thomas P. 1998. Divine Providence: The Molinist Account. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Freddoso, Alfred J. 1988. Introduction to Luis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the “Concordia”), translated, with an introduction and notes, by Alfred J.Freddoso, pp. 1–81. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Gerson, Lloyd. 1994. Plotinus. New York: Routledge. Grant, Sara. 1991. Towards an Alternative Theology: Confessions of a Non-dualist Christian. Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation. Hadot, Pierre. 1995a. Qu’est-ce que al philosophic antique? Paris: Gallimard. ——. 1995b. Philosophy as a Way of Life, translated and presented by Arnold Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell. Hughes, Christopher 1989. On a Complex Theory of a Simple God. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.

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Janssens, J. 1986. “Le Dânesh-Nâmeh d’Ibn Sina: un texte a revoirf” Bulletin de philosophic medievale 28, 173–77. Kretzmann, Norman. 1991. “A General Problem of Creation: Why Would God Create Anything at All?” In Scott MacDonald, ed., Being and Goodness. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. ——. 1997. Metaphysics of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lash, Nicholas. 1982. “Ideology, metaphor and analogy.” In The Philosophical frontiers of Christian Theology, edited by Brian Hebblethwaite and Stewart Sutherland, pp. 68–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. 1983. Introduction John Henry Newman, Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Miller, Barry. 1998. A Most Unlikely God. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Ormsby, Eric. 1984. Theodicy in Islamic Thought: The Dispute over al-Ghazâlî’s “Best of all Possible Worlds”. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. ——.1990. “Creation in Time in Islamic Thought with Special Reference to al-Ghazâlî.” In God and Creation, edited by David Burrell and Bernard McGinn, pp. 246–64. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Ross, James 1996. “Real Freedom.” In Faith, Freedom and Rationality: Philosophy of Religion Today, edited by Jeff Jordan and Daniel Howard-Snyder, pp. 89–117. New York: Rowan and Littlefield. Simon, Yves. 1969. Freedom of Choice. New York: Fordham University Press. Sokolowski, Robert. 1982/1995. God of Faith and Reason. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press/Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press. ——. 1979. “Making Distinctions,” Review of Metaphysics 32 (1979) 3–28. Steiner, George. 1989. Real Presences. London: Faber and Faber. Tanner, Kathryn. 1988. God and the Doctrine of Creation. Oxford: Blackwell. te Velde, Rudi. 1996. Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas. Leiden: Brill. Zum Brunn, Emilie. 1978. Dieu et l’Etre (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes. Zum Brunn, Emilie and de Libera, Alain 1986. Celui qui est (Exodus 3:14). Paris: Cerf.

SECTION FIVE VIRTUE

CHAPTER TWELVE Three Kinds of Objectivity Jonathan Jacobs The ethical works of Maimonides and Aquinas owe a great deal to Aristotle. In their overall moral psychologies, in their conceptions of the significance of the virtues and how virtues are acquired, in their common endorsement of virtue as lying in a mean, and in their perfectionist interpretations of human nature, the Aristotelian influence is evident and substantial. Still, there are some crucial differences between their ethical views. Here I shall try to bring into view the difference it makes that Aristotle’s ethics is an ethic of practical wisdom, Maimonides’ is an ethic of revealed law, and Aquinas’ is an ethic of natural law. These are not just variants of what is ultimately a common or shared view; these are three different interpretations of objectivity, and there are significant differences in moral psychology affiliated with them. There are significant differences in the conceptions of the moral agent, the nature of volition, and the accessibility of ethical requirements. For Maimonides and Aquinas, theism is not an accessory to a basically Aristotelian conception; rather, Aristotelian idiom is used to articulate some quite unAristotelian conceptions of virtue and moral epistemology. 1 It is true that Aristotle, Maimonides, and Aquinas share quite a lot, and in some important ways they can be grouped together in contrast to other key figures in moral philosophy. Their interpretations of objectivity stand apart from the objectivity of Kantian pure practical reason, the objectivity of Mill’s empiricist naturalism, the objectivity of Moore’s non-naturalistic realism, and Plato’s quite different non-naturalistic realism, among others. Moreover, all three thinkers are perfectionists in the sense that each holds that given the constitution of a common human nature, there is a condition of perfection of that nature, a telos for a human being that is its final and complete good. In that respect we might say that all three are optimists. This is because the metaphysics of human nature underwrites a genuine and complete good for a human being. However, the actualization of this, the movement to perfection, is not something that just happens “anyway,” naturally, all on its own unless something impedes it. There is a great deal the agent must do, and in particular, the agent must acquire and cultivate the virtues through his or her own voluntary activity. They agree that ethically significant states of character are acquired, and that we are responsible for the acquisition of them. Aristotle writes:

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We have found, then, that we wish for the end, and deliberate and decide about what promotes it; hence the actions concerned with what promotes the end will express a decision and will be voluntary. Now the activities of the virtues are concerned with [what promotes the end]; hence virtue is also up to us, and so is vice. (NE, 1113b 3–7) And: Now the virtues, as we say, are voluntary, since in fact we are ourselves in a way jointly responsible for our states of character, and by having the sort of character we have we lay down the sort of end we do. Hence the vices will also be voluntary, since the same is true of them. (NE, 1114b 23–25) Maimonides writes: It is not possible for a man to possess virtue or vice by nature, from the beginning of his life, just as it is not possible for man to possess one of the practical arts by nature.1 And: Know that these moral virtues and vices are acquired and firmly established in the soul by frequently repeating the actions pertaining to a particular moral habit over a long period of time and by our becoming accustomed to them. (Ibid., p. 68) Aquinas says of the intellectual and moral virtues that they: are in us naturally, namely, according to an inchoateness which consists in our ability to acquire them. But their completion is not present naturally, since nature is determined to one course of action, while the completion of these virtues does not depend on one particular mode of action;2 and “human virtue, directed to the good which is defined according to the rule of human reason, can be caused by human acts” (Ibid., S.T., Q. 63. Art. 2; p. 600), and the rational powers “are determined to acts by means of habits,… Therefore human virtues are habits” (Ibid., S.T., Q. 55. Art. 1; p. 561). Voluntary action and habituation (much of which is a matter of our habituating ourselves as we mature and are more capable of deliberation and judgment of what is good) account for our virtues and vices. There is pre-rational habituation, directed by others, followed by the more mature process of habituating ourselves through acting on our own conceptions of what is worth doing and why. The ethically relevant states of character are not present in us by nature, though the capacity for them is. These are all substantial points of contact among these thinkers. Each holds that there are objective ethical considerations that a person with sound character rightly apprehends,

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and each holds that the virtues and vices are voluntary. Here, though, is where a crucial difference begins to emerge. What sort of access to ethical considerations is there? That is, how is an agent able to engage with a right conception of good such that that agent’s perfection is a real practical possibility? It is with respect to this issue of the accessibility of ethical considerations that Maimonides and Aquinas (and many other more modern theorists such as Kant and Mill, as well) depart from Aristotle, and this departure counts in a number of ways. 2 For Aristotle, there is no fundamental rule or criterion of good action which is actionguiding in a specific way. There is the completely general principle that human beings aim at what they take to be good, and so the agent’s action is an attempt (successful or unsuccessful) to perfect his or her nature. But this is not a criterion of what to do, it is a theoretical claim about human nature and human action. There is, for Aristotle, no counterpart to the Categorical Imperative, or the Principle of Utility, or for that matter, The Golden Rule. There are important ethical generalizations concerning being just, courageous, temperate, and so forth, and there is the meta-notion that virtues lie in the mean. But Aristotle’s ethics lacks a criterion or a code. There are objective ethical considerations, but in a fundamental way, the norm in his ethics is literally a living norm, the excellent person. Virtue, then, is (a) a state that decides, (b) [consisting] in a mean, (c) the mean relative to us, (d) which is defined by reference to reason, (e) i.e., to the reason by reference to which the intelligent person would define it. (NE, 1107a 1–3) In Bk VI he writes “And this [best good] is apparent only to the good person; for vice perverts us and produces false views about the origins of actions” (NE, 1144a 35). This is not a strategy of subjectivizing good. The phronimos appreciates what in fact is genuinely good, (his judgment does not constitute it to be good) but is only able to perceive it and appreciate it because he has excellent character. In Bk. X, in his concluding discussion of pleasure and the naturally pleasing, Aristotle writes: But in all such cases it seems that what is really so is what appears so to the excellent person. If this is correct, as it seems to be, and virtue, i.e. the good person in so far as he is good, is the measure of each thing, then what appear pleasures to him will also be pleasures, and what is pleasant will be what he enjoys. (NE, 1176a 16–19) What does Maimonides say about how we can know our good? He writes, “As [the Psalmist] who knew it testified about it: The Law of the Lord is Perfect, making wise the simple, restoring the soul. Indeed, its goal is for man to be natural by following the middle way” (Maimonides, “Eight Chapters,” p. 70). Also, “the Law forbids what it forbids and commands what it commands only for this reason, i.e., that we move away

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from one side as a means of discipline” (Ibid., p. 71). What is ethically required, what enables us to effectively strive to perfect ourselves, is given in the Law. Moreover, it also includes prescriptions for repentance, and thereby, reform of character. It prescribes for both the direction of activity and the restoration of the soul.3 There is, on the Maimonidean view, a source of moral guidance and a strategy of ethical retrieval that is not found in Aristotle’s view.4 On more purely Aristotelian lines, an agent’s judgment could be so disordered that the agent does not recognize what virtue requires. He might not know how to proceed to make the change in his character should he become motivated to do so. Or, he may be so fixed in vice that he is unmotivated to change in the direction of virtue. If the agent is fortunate in respect of the people who surrounded him, that can be a great aid in disposing him toward virtue. Aristotle’s agent is not utterly alone, abandoned to only his own judgment. The role that Aristotle assigns to social relations generally, and to friendship and to cooperative under-takings, in coming to know and love human good makes that clear. Still, there is no codified set of prescriptions for ethical perfection or for the acquisition of the virtues. While the agent fixed in vice can be said to be pursuing his conception of good, his judgment may be so disordered that while he remains a voluntary, responsible agent, it may be practically impossible for him to alter his habits (of judgment, motivation, and decision) in the direction of virtue. There is also the chance that he is unaware that there is a need to, if the prevailing norms of his social world are also morally disordered. There is no Aristotelian counterpart to the Law as a constant, sound normative authority directing the agent’s aspiration to perfection. That there is the Law and its authority to refer to may help explain why in Maimonides’ moral psychology there is more weight put on self-examination and selfconsciousness than in Aristotle’s moral psychology. To be sure, Aristotle does give a place to self-monitoring. He writes: We must also examine what we ourselves drift into easily. For different people have different natural tendencies toward different goals, and we shall come to know our own tendencies from the pleasure or pain that arises in us. We must drag ourselves off in the contrary direction; for if we pull far away from error, as they do in straightening bent wood, we shall reach the intermediate condition. (NE, 1109b1–6) It is important to him that we should be aware of what our actions and practices might lead to with regard to our characteristics. Our mature habits and dispositions are voluntary, and we must be on guard against falling into bad habits because we cannot tell at just what point the practice of acting in a certain way will become a fixed disposition (See, e.g. NE, 1114b 30–1115a 4). Once a habit is acquired, it may be practically impossible to change it, and even though we cannot now change it, the acts that flow from it are voluntary and we are responsible for them. “[Only] a totally insensible person would not know that each type of activity is the source of the corresponding state; hence if someone does what he knows will make him unjust, he is willingly unjust” (NE, 1114a 10–13). But, compare Maimonides: “Similarly, the perfect man needs to inspect his moral habits continually, weigh his actions, and reflect upon the state of his soul every single day” (Maimonides, “Eight Chapters,” p. 73). And “Similarly, those with sick souls

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need to seek out the wise men, who are the physicians of the soul” (Ibid., p. 66). 11 It is the Law which is the measure of who is a physician of the soul. Maimonides, like Aristotle, regards actual exemplars of virtue to be extremely important. He says “…a person ought constantly to associate with the righteous and frequent the company of the wise, so as to learn from their practices, and shun the wicked who are benighted, so as not to be corrupted by their example” (Maimonides, “Laws Concerning Character Traits,” Ch. 6, sec. 1). Both philosophers stress the importance of the character of one’s associates, mentors, and friends. Still, there is a crucial difference between the case in which there is a codified Law by which to ascertain who are the righteous, and the case in which one’s judgment is more fully constrained by one’s character and prevailing norms. There is, for Maimonides, a measure for, and a guide, to excellence that is accessible in a way that Aristotle does not recognize. It is crucial that not only are the prescriptions for ethical perfection accessible, but that we have the volitional capacity to dispose ourselves toward virtue at any time. In Maimonidean moral psychology, dispositions are not so fixed that the vicious agent cannot repent and reorient himself toward virtue. He says that “whoever is bad is so by his own choice. If he wishes to be virtuous, he can be so; there is nothing preventing him” (Maimonides, “Eight Chapters,” p. 89). And a man “should not say that he has already attained a condition that cannot possibly change, since every condition can change from good to bad and from bad to good; the choice is his” (Ibid., p. 88). The agent who examines himself and attends to the requirements of the Law need not be disabled for perfection. Maimonides does not mean that making the change from vicious to virtuous dispositions is easy. After all, it is a matter of partially reconstituting one’s second nature. However, the requirements of virtue and the strategy of moral discipline to bring one into a virtuous condition are knowable through the Law. A couple of points are worthy of note here. First, there is more plasticity to character in Maimonides’ view. Unlike Aristotle, he does not maintain that the long-establishment of a disposition fixes it in such a way that revision of the agent’s judgments and motives is practically impossible. They would agree that as virtue becomes more perfect it becomes more of a “firm and unchanging state” (NE, 1105a 35) but there is more scope for change in character, for better and for worse in Maimonides’ view. Second, this difference of moral psychology is related to a difference in the metaphysics of morals. “If man’s actions were done under compulsion, the commandments and prohibitions of the Law would be nullified and they would all be absolutely in vain, since man would have no choice in what he does” (Ibid., p. 84). This enlarged interpretation of freedom is explained by the relation of human beings to God and the Law. It is always in our power to learn and to love the Law or to flout or ignore it, and the freedom of the will which is an enabling condition for our perfection also makes it possible for us to ethically deteriorate at any point in our lives. So, while the interpretation of freedom is enlarged, so too is our responsibility, since it is always possible to relax or abandon our aspiration to ethical perfection, and good habits must be strenuously sustained. As I have noted, Aristotle’s agent may be so firmly established in vice as to be both judgmentally and motivationally alienated from sound ethical considerations, and there may be no practical possibility of the agent being reoriented to the good.5 Or, if the agent does acknowledge his vice, he may not have the capacity to overcome it, and may be condemned to a life of regret. He may recognize the character of his habits but not be

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able to change it. Aristotle says of vicious agents; “For they are at odds with themselves, and, like incontinent people, have an appetite for one thing and a wish for another” (NE, 1166b 7). “These people have nothing lovable about them, and so have no friendly feelings for themselves” (NE, 1166b 18). For Maimonides, the Law and the will enable genuine repentance which is not just painful acknowledgment of vice, but change of ethical disposition. Even long established bad states of character need not be insurmountable obstacles to perfection. “What is Repentance? It consists in this, that the sinner abandon his sin, remove it from his thoughts, and resolve in his heart never to repeat it,…” (Maimonides, “Laws of Repentance,” Ch. II, 2, in Book of Knowledge).” This exercise can be efficacious to the extent that the agent is a really changed individual. A different condition of the soul is brought about by repentance; this is not just a change in behavior. Indeed, that there should be this change is the point of the discipline of behavior. He writes, ‘Great is repentance, for it brings men near to the Divine Presence, as it is said, “return, O Israel, unto the Lord, thy God” (Hos. 14:2)’ (Ibid., Ch. VII, 6) and: Repentance atones for all transgression. Even if a man was wicked all the days of his life and repented at the end, nothing of his wickedness is recalled to him, as it is said ‘And as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not stumble thereby in the day that he turns from his wickedness’ (Ezek. 33:12). (Ibid., Ch. I, 3) Maimonides is aware of the difference between acknowledgment of sin and changing one’s ethical disposition, and he also knows how difficult is the latter. Just as a man needs to repent of these sins involving acts, so he needs to investigate and repent of any evil dispositions that he may have, such as hot temper, hatred, jealousy, quarrelling, scoffing, eager pursuit of wealth or honours, greediness in eating, and so on. Of all these faults one should repent. They are graver than sinful acts; for, when one is addicted to them it is difficult to give them up. (Ibid., Ch. VII, 3) Yet, he does maintain that even a character that is stabilized in vice can be changed by the practice of repentance. This is not just ceasing a practice and conforming to different rules; it is a reorientation of the soul. This agent can know what to do in order to alter his dispositions, because of the guidance of the Law. In that respect, Maimonidean moral psychology is importantly different from Aristotelian moral psychology. The Maimonidean agent need never be completely alienated from sound ethical considerations, need never be abandoned to his own ignorance about how to repair his disordered soul, and need never be abandoned to the fixity of vicious dispositions. 3 We find a different but no less striking contrast between Aristotle and Aquinas. Aquinas writes of synderesis that, “the common principles, the natural law, in its universal

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meaning, cannot in any way be blotted out from men’s hearts” (Aquinas, S.T., Q. 94, Art. 6; p. 645). For Aquinas, synderesis and conscience equip the agent with resources for moral guidance and self-evaluation that do not have counterparts in Aristotle’s theory. This is yet another approach to the accessibility of ethical considerations. Aquinas writes: Accordingly, we conclude that, just as in the speculative reason, from naturally known indemonstrable principles we draw the conclusions of the various sciences, the knowledge of which is not imparted to us by nature, but acquired by the efforts of reason, so too it is that from the precepts of the natural law, as from common and indemonstrable principles, the human reason needs to proceed to the more particular determination of certain matters. (Aquinas, S.T., Q. 91, Art. 3; p.620) He adds that as to “the secondary precepts, the natural law can be blotted out from the human heart, either by evil persuasions,…or by vicious customs and corrupt habits…” (Aquinas, S.T., Q. 94, Art. 6; p. 645) but the first principles are accessible to all, known by all, and cannot be blotted out. The act of conscience is needed in order to make specific determinations of what is to be done in actual situations, but any agents who have not lost their reason have a grasp of basic practical principles. This is a resource of ethical capability we do not find in Aristotle’s view, and correspondingly, we do not find anything quite like conscience in it either. The Thomistic view is, in some ways, more like many more modern views in that it maintains that fundamental principles of right action are accessible to an agent as long as the agent has not lost his reason. Among the great diversity of modern moral theories, many of them share the notion that it is the agent’s rationality that identifies and engages the agent to moral rules. There is of course, the significant difference that Aquinas embeds the agent’s practical rationality in an objective teleology. Aristotle and Aquinas do agree that in any undertaking which is a human act the agent aims at what he or she takes to be some good. But there are built into Aquinas’ moral psychology more substantial resources in the constitution of the rational agent to enable him to recognize what is good. To be sure, the virtues of character are, for Aquinas, very important. Also, there is no guarantee that the agent will regularly choose to pursue genuine goods. But there is a basic type of moral cognition that is possible independently of how the agent perceives things on account of his character. Our grasp of natural law, though it must be elaborated and made determinate in specific judgments, supplies an awareness of basic principles of human good. This is a respect in which Aquinas’ moral psychology and account of moral cognition differ from Aristotle’s. Moreover, law, to count as law, must be in some way promulgated, and in Aquinas’ theory it is promulgated in part by the provision to each agent of an innate disposition to grasp fundamental practical principles. This is not the grasp of a code; again, reasoning must be undertaken in order to make the specific determination of just what is to be done in a particular situation. Moreover, even the principles of natural law themselves are arrived at by reflection (on goods to which we are naturally inclined). The inclinations are innate, but the principles that we recognize as principles of natural law are articulated as a result of consideration. They are not simply self-evident or given in a fixed body of law. There is though, a key difference between the Thomistic moral philosophy and the

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Aristotelian. On Aquinas’ view every rational agent is an active, responsible participant in a moral order through the capacity to recognize norms supplied as natural law for the governance of action. Synderesis is not a straightforward counterpart to the innate disposition to good that Aristotle ascribes to human nature. It is true that on Aristotle’s view, “Some concern for a conative final good is a necessary feature of a rational agent” (Irwin 1992, 367); but this does not guarantee that the agent is rightly oriented to the good, or that the agent will recognize principles governing the actualization of human good. As Paul Sigmund has pointed out: …Aquinas has combined quite disparate elements in Aristotle—the phronesis of the Nicomachean Ethics, the description of final causality in the Physics, the discussion of the natural basis of government, slavery, property, etc., in Book I of the Politics, the ambiguous treatment of natural justice (not natural law) in Book V of the Ethics, and the description of law as reason in Book III of the Politics—into a new synthesis that makes the determination of natural ends (based on natural inclinations) a central consideration in the development of a workable theory of natural law. (Sigmund 1993, 224–225) Now, not only are these various elements combined (which would not in itself signal a substantial departure from Aristotle) but they are combined through the theistic metaphysic which underwrites them and their interrelations. Aristotle and Aquinas do share a teleological, dispositional interpretation of human nature. And Aristotle does say that “Law, however, has the power that compels; and law is reason that proceeds from a sort of intelligence and understanding” (NE, 1180a 21–22). Still, this is quite different from the view that “Law is nothing else than an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by him who has the care of the community” (Aquinas, S.T., Q. 90, Art. 4; p. 615). Thomistic natural law has a ground or origin that explains its promulgation (and authority) in ways in which are not parts of Aristotle’s notion of practical wisdom. If one wishes to argue that Aquinas completes Aristotle’s ethical philosophy, it is certainly not completion merely by addition. The way in which Aquinas completes it makes a significant difference both to the accessibility of rules of practical reason and to the obligatoriness of them. It would be a misleading (if not simply inaccurate) simplification to say that Aquinas attaches Aristotle’s moral psychology and notion of practical wisdom to a metaphysics that also involves theistic commitments. Those latter make crucial differences to moral psychology and to moral epistemology. 4 For Maimonides and Aquinas theism is not an accessory added to an Aristotelian naturalism; it is a distinct metaphysic with corresponding differences in the conceptions of virtue and moral psychology. Even the possibility of what we might call “plain old” natural perfection is underwritten by God, in their understanding. For Aquinas, the underwriting is (in part) via natural law (our participation in eternal law); for Maimonides

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it is via revealed law.6 They depart from Aristotle on the issue of whether agents can be irretrievably incapacitated for perfection, in terms of both judgmental and motivational capacity. (This suggests an avenue of exploration. If Aristotle’s moral psychology and account of moral cognition are basically correct as a fully naturalistic conception of human nature and ethical value, then this might suggest that the possibility of moral retrieval and deep and substantial changes in character may need to be underwritten by theism.) On Aristotle’s view, if the agent’s character is both ethically disordered and fixed in its disorder, then the agent may neither comprehend, nor be moved by correct ethical considerations. Neither Maimonides nor Aquinas thought that the accessibility of norms also guaranteed motivational engagement with them. But that does not dilute the contrast with Aristotle. If it is through one’s character that one recognizes and appreciates ethical considerations, then if there is no ‘compass’ besides practical wisdom to orient character, an agent can be profoundly alienated from sound ethical considerations. In acting wrongly, the agent who is firmly established in vice may not see himself as flouting or violating what he in some sense knows to be true values; he thinks of himself as succeeding in acting on what he really (but mistakenly) takes to be true values. It is not so much that on the Maimonidean or Thomistic view it is easier to be good; rather, it is that there are different and enlarged resources for ethical direction and redemption. The diagnosis of these differences may help explain why Maimonides does not regard practical wisdom as a virtue.7 For Aristotle, it is the master virtue, the one that orients and guides the virtues of character. Maimonides does, of course, take ethical virtue to be a human perfection. Yet, as Weiss points out, “The Law specifies what actions are obligatory regarding all sorts of matters that for the Aristotelian gentleman would be subject to the deliberation of practical wisdom.”8 Certainly reason must be employed in interpreting and elaborating the Law. But there is, for Maimonides, no distinct excellence of the practical intellect. Ethical virtue fully subserves intellectual perfection. The practical understanding needed for ethical action is acquired by study of the Law and obedience to it. Aquinas, like Aristotle, does hold that prudence is a virtue, and his account of it is very much like Aristotle’s; he says it is “right reason about things to be done” (Aquinas, S.T., Q. 57, Art. 5; p.576), and that prudence is needed “to perfect the reason and make it suitably affected towards means ordained to the end;” (Aquinas, S.T., Q. 57, Art. 5; p.576). Still, Aquinas departs from Aristotle in the crucial respect that the will can be guided by the infused virtue, charity. It is that, and not prudence, which is the master virtue. In the order of perfection charity precedes faith and hope, because both faith and hope are quickened by charity, and receive from charity their full complement as virtues. For thus charity is the mother and the root of all the virtues, inasmuch as it is the form of them all,… (Aquinas, S.T., Q. 62, Art. 4; p. 596) For both Maimonides and Aquinas, what enables a human being to achieve perfection is something non-natural, and its mode of accessibility is non-natural, either as revealed law or reason’s participation in eternal law. For Maimonides, there is the Law to guide an

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individual; for Aquinas, synderesis, conscience, and infused virtue make possible activity that is ordered to perfection. 5 The different interpretations of objectivity exemplify different kinds of optimism. Aristotle is optimistic in the sense that there is a mode of human activity which fulfills or completes human nature and which is naturally pleasing. A human being can lead a life that is found by that person to be desirable for its own sake and worthwhile, and if the agent is a virtuous agent, that finding is true. Another dimension of Aristotle’s optimism is the notion that unaided human reason is competent to make the judgments of what makes for an excellent life and what perfects human nature. Again, this is not to say that unaided or natural human reason of course succeeds in this unless something impedes it: Aristotle’s optimism is not naive. Maimonidean and Thomistic optimism are different from this, and different from each other. For each of them, Aristotle’s conception of perfection or happiness would be regarded as incomplete, as perfection of us as merely natural beings. To some extent, Aristotle himself seems to suggest the limitation of natural human perfection. For example, in developing his conception of happiness in Bk. I of the Ethics, Aristotle says that “a living person who has, and will keep, the goods we mentioned is blessed, but blessed as a human being is” (NE, 1101a 20). Later in Bk. X he indicates that the most perfect happiness is that consequent upon the activity of the divine element in man. Whether he is interpreted as settling on practical activity or intellectual activity as the best life, he is still at a distance from the two medievals. For both Maimonides and Aquinas perfection requires the activity of a supernatural being, God. Indeed, even the incomplete, natural perfection of human beings has no standing on its own, independent of the activity of God. They are claiming to show that even the acquired, natural excellences of human beings have to be understood on the basis of a theological metaphysic. For Maimonides, this crucially involves revelation of the Law. For Aquinas, this is a metaphysic in which human reason, through its apprehension of natural law, participates in divine reason. Maimonides and Aquinas are less optimistic regarding human natural capacities, but more optimistic regarding the overall metaphysical prospects for human beings. We are helped. The Aristotelian man, through misfortune in habituation and ill-ordered exercise of capacities for voluntary action, may come to be fixed in bad policies of both judgment and motivation, and there may be no effective help for him. These really are three different conceptions of objectivity, and associated with them are different interpretations of virtue and the enabling conditions of perfection. Notes 1 Maimonides, “Eight Chapters,” in Ethical Writings of Maimonides, ed. by Raymond L.Weiss and Charles Butterworth, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 83–84. 2 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, excerpted in Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. by Anton C.Pegis, The Modern Library, New York, 1948, Q. 63. Art. 1 (p. 599). 3 See, for example, “The Laws of Repentance” in the Book of Knowledge, (This is the first of the fourteen books of his Mishneh Torah (Moses Hyamson 1981). There is in that text a

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discussion of what sort of discipline is needed for altering one’s dispositions in such a way that repentance is more than apology and remorse, but a change in the character of the individual. 4 I should note here that Maimonides distinguishes between wisdom and piety. In “Eight Chapters” there is a very Aristotelian sounding commitment to the mean. In “Laws Concerning Character Traits” (in the Book of Knowledge) the standard of piety is distinguished from the standard of wisdom. He writes, “In the case of some character traits, a man is forbidden to accustom himself to the mean. Rather, he shall move to the other [i.e., far] extreme” (Maimonides, “Laws Concerning Character Traits” Ch. II, 3; Weiss and Butterworth). Maimonides refers here to humility and anger. In the aspiration to be holy, the pious man has a task different from the task of the wise man. The latter seeks to have dispositions in the mean; the former seeks to be as like God as he can be, freeing himself from certain passions (such as anger and pride) even if sometimes he shall need to feign anger, as when admonishing his children. In this text he says both “…the middle way that we are obliged to follow, this way is called the way of the Lord” (Maimonides, “Laws Concerning Character Traits” Ch. I, 7; Weiss and Butterworth) and “Whoever is exceedingly scrupulous with himself and moves a little toward one side or the other, away from the character trait in the mean, is called a pious man.”…“This is the meaning of ‘inside the line of the law”’ (Maimonides, “Laws Concerning Character Traits” Ch. I, 5; Weiss and Butterworth).

The distinction that Aquinas makes between the rule of reason and the divine rule is, in some ways, a counterpart to this. (See S.T., Q. 63. Art 4, e.g., “Now it is evident that the mean that is appointed, in such concupiscences, according to the rule of human reason is of a different nature than the mean which is fixed according to the divine rule.”) (p. 604 in Pegis) 5 See my “Taking Ethical Disability Seriously” for a fuller discussion of this issue. I argue that on a basically Aristotelian view, while ethical considerations are objective, they may not be equally accessible to all agents. The accessibility of them to an agent depends upon the agent’s character. Thus, an agent who is firmly established in vice is still a voluntary, responsible agent, but there may not be any real practical possibility of that agent coming to a sound appreciation of ethical considerations. The fact that the agent cannot correctly appreciate ethical considerations may not be a reason for diminished responsibility, if the failure is due to states of character which are voluntary in substantial respects (Jacobs 1998). 6 Aquinas writes, “the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the divine light. It is therefore evident that the natural law is nothing else than the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law” (S. T., Q. 91. Art. 2). And according to Maimonides, it is the Law that perfects us, and our knowledge of it is needed in order to find the mean. In his Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction, Anthony Lisska has argued that theism is not essential to the Thomistic conception of natural law. He argues that “the existence of God is, in a structural sense, neither a relevant concept nor a necessary condition for Aquinas’s account of natural law” (Lisska 1996, 120). And, “what Aquinas needs for his theory of natural law is a dispositional theory of natural kinds, not a divine being” (Lisska 1996, 125). Right here I will not rehearse my reasons for skepticism about this claim, except to say that I believe that an argument could be made that theism may be essential for the promulgation of natural law and for its bindingness, in order to preserve some of the main features of the Thomistic conception of natural law. See Lisska 1996.

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7 Maimonides does regard ethical virtue as a human perfection, but he does not take practical wisdom or prudence to be a regulative virtue in the way that either Aristotle or Aquinas does. The role of it is, as it were, taken over by the Law. See, for example Bk. III, ch. 54 of the Guide. Writing of ethical virtue, he says

Most religious prescriptions are designed for the attainment of this kind of perfection. This kind of perfection is, however, merely a prerequisite to something else, not a purpose in itself, because all ethical qualities refer to relations between a person and others. In a way this perfection in his ethical qualities is nothing but a prerequisite for the benefit of society. (Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed 3.54; 199 Rabin) 8 Weiss 1991, p.30. Weiss discusses why Maimonides does not recognize practical wisdom as a virtue on pp. 30–31 and 187–188.

References Aquinas. 1948. Summa Theologica, excerpted in Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas. Edited by Anton C.Pegis. New York: The Modern Library. Irwin, T. 1992. Aristotle’s first Principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jacobs, J. 1998. “Taking Ethical Disability Seriously”. In RATIO. September 1998, pp. 141–158. Blackwell Publishers. Lisska, A. 1996. Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytical Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press. Maimonides. 1975. “Eight Chapters” in Ethical Writings of Maimonides. Edited by R.Weiss and C.Butterworth. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. ——. 1975. “Laws Concerning Character Traits” in Ethical Writings of Maimonides. Edited by R.Weiss and C.Butterworth. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. ——. 1995. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by C.Rabin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. ——. 1981. “The Laws of Repentance” in Book of Knowledge. Translated by M.Hyamson. Jerusalem: Feldheim Publishers. Sigmund, P. 1993. “Law and Politics” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas. Edited by N.Kretzmann and Eleanor Stump. New York: Cambridge University Press. Weiss, R. 1991. Maimonides’ Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN On Defining Maimonides’ Aristotelianism Daniel H.Frank In the history of medieval Jewish philosophy one usually sees Maimonides described as an Aristotelian, and Julius Guttmann speaks for the traditional historiography of Jewish philosophy when he writes, “In the middle of the twelfth century Aristotelianism displaced Neoplatonism as the dominating influence in Jewish philosophy of religion” (Guttmann 1973, 152). Of late, however, Alfred Ivry has suggested that “It is not the least of the paradoxes of the Guide that Maimonides’ underlying philosophical base is one he was loath to acknowledge” (Ivry 1991, 138), and the “philosophical base” Ivry is referring to is Neoplatonism. We should straightaway note the rather rigid dichotomization presupposed by both positions—Aristotelianism vs. Neoplatonism. But such dichotomization is manifestly unhistorical, as both Guttmann and Ivry are aware. Much Neoplatonic doctrine went under Aristotle’s name in the late antique attempt to harmonize Plato and Aristotle; further, as Porphyry tells us straight-forwardly in his Vita Plotini, his teacher’s writings include both Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines and that in particular Aristotle’s Metaphysics is to be found condensed (somehow) in them;1 and finally, we might note that the brilliant (and generally respectful) commentators on Aristotle of the early centuries of the common era were almost all Neoplatonists, developing their own positions within manifestly Aristotelian categories, even as they sometimes foisted their own views upon Aristotle. And within Islamic and Jewish philosophical circles, as Guttmann notes, “Islamic and Jewish Neoplatonism had absorbed many Aristotelian elements in addition to those already present in the original Neoplatonic system; conversely, Aristotelianism had undergone a Neoplatonic transformation in the hands of its Islamic adherents” (Guttmann 1973, 152). Indeed, it is no easy task to disentangle Aristotelian from Neoplatonic strands in Maimonides, or in other medieval thinkers. Too often we gloss as “unAristotelian,” alternatively as “Neoplatonic,” Maimonides’ anti-materialist remarks in the Guide, but a close inspection of some of those passages, particularly ones dealing with prophecy, reveals that Maimonides is grounding his remarks with explicit reference to passages in Aristotle’s Ethics denigrating the sense of touch.2 Quellenforschung is a tricky business, and I want to steer clear of it in this chapter.3 But there is another reason I wish to try to explicate Maimonides’ Aristotelianism without engaging in the kind of archeology that is the hallmark of the genetic approach. The genetic approach, which attempts to explain and understand an author’s views by reference to the views of previous thinkers, is to my mind philosophically pretty uninteresting as well as being reductionist and even determinist in its manifest intent. The explanatory model invoked is itself modelled on Aristotle’s notion of efficient causality, with the positions of earlier thinkers explaining, seemingly without remainder, those of

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later ones. But efficient causes are not by themselves sufficient to explain anything, and Maimonides’ views are not reducible to those of his predecessors. In place of the genetic approach I offer a different explanatory model, a more dialogical, comparative one that tries to explicate and explain Maimonides’ Aristotelianism by bringing Aristotle and Maimonides into direct contact with each other in the context of a specific philosophical issue. The specific issue and illustration of the method will occupy us in the final part of the chapter, but for the moment it should simply be noted that the goal of the endeavor, shared with the geneticist, is the elaboration of Maimonides’ Aristotelianism. As I shall argue, Maimonides’ Aristotelianism is best to be understood as a critical reworking of Aristotelian categories for purposes all his own, and this I believe is best revealed by a direct confrontation between the two philosophers.4 The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and the success of the general claim awaits confirmation by the edification produced by the confrontation. The method runs the risk of anachronism, but only if one willfully steps outside the bounds of the debate. More troubling is the risk of irrelevance, the worry that the confrontation itself is a demonstration of two thinkers talking past each other. I see no way of predicting in advance, in principle, that this will eventuate. Once again, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So, even if, as Ivry claims, Maimonides’ Aristotelianism is (merely) his exoteric position and there are Plotinian aspects to his epistemology and metaphysics, just grant the first part of the claim and I can be on my way in trying to clarify the traditional epithet. That there are advantages, philosophical advantages, in retaining it is the burden of this chapter, something I hope shall become clear in due course. What, then, does it mean to describe Maimonides as an Aristotelian and in what manner is it a clarifying epithet? The answer to these questions must, however, be deferred until we have raised a few others. Aristotle’s Platonism In surely one of the seminal essays in Greek philosophy of the last fifty years, “The Platonism of Aristotle” (1966), G.E.L.Owen set out to counter Werner Jaeger’s influential story of Aristotle’s philosophical development.5 For Jaeger, Aristotle began his philosophical career as a Platonist, and by this he meant a Platonist wedded to the canonical theory of Forms and deeply anti-empiricist epistemology familiar to us from the Phaedo, Symposium, and Republic. Over time, again according to Jaeger, Aristotle moved away from Plato, and from the latter’s anti-empiricism, to what we today think of as canonical Aristotelianism, a strong commitment to the reality and knowability of the empirical realm. Aristotle’s philosophical development, thus, was understood by Jaeger as a gradual weaning from canonical Platonism. Owen would have none of this, especially Jaeger’s understanding of the earliest portion of Aristotle’s career, his purported Platonism. In his less kind moments Owen was dismissive of Jaeger’s story, for he thought it redolent of the Prussian educational system in which students were expected to accept without demur the views of their teachers. From this angle, Aristotle was a Platonist (and had to be) from the time of his entrance into the Academy until Plato’s death some twenty years later. But when he got more serious Owen pointed to two important, indeed he took them to be fatal,

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shortcomings in Jaeger’s story, one an unwarranted assumption, the other an unwarranted omission. Jaeger assumed that Platonism was monolithic, that Plato’s metaphysical views in particular were unchanging. More specifically, Jaeger presumed that the canonical theory of Forms, familiar to us from the Phaedo, Symposium, and Republic, was never forsaken. For Jaeger, the commitment to this theory by the young Aristotle was proven by finding the very theory at least hinted at in the Protrepticus. Never mind for present purposes that Owen proved, at least to his own satisfaction, that the theory of Forms is not so hinted at in the Protrepticus. Rather more to the point is Owen’s strong argument that “Platonism” is a slippery term. By this formulation Owen invoked recent work, his own as well as Vlastos’s inter alios (Owen 1953, 79–95; Vlastos 1954, 319–49), on the development of Plato’s thought, which called into question the unitarian hypothesis, the hypothesis that denied any substantive development in Plato’s metaphysics—the very view to which Jaeger himself cleaved. The developmental story that Owen told is that Plato came to have second thoughts about his own earlier metaphysical views. The Parmenides played a major role in the revision, and whatever the precise outcome of its reflections, the important point is that it ushered in a critical attitude that showed Plato willing to question his earlier metaphysical commitments. As Owen noted, it was just at this time of critical reflection that Aristotle entered Plato’s Academy. He thus enters an Academy in which in a very real sense Plato himself is no longer a Platonist, committed to the canonical theory of Forms without hesitation. A critical spirit pervades the philosophical seminar, and it just this same spirit that shines forth in such early Aristotelian works as the Peri Ideon and the Categories, both works omitted from any serious consideration by Jaeger in the developmental story he presented. It is not difficult to see why Jaeger would not focus upon these, unarguably, early works, for they are manifestly anti-Platonic—and by this I mean that they are diametrically opposed to the ontology and metaphysics of the “middle-period” in Plato’s career. The Peri Ideon presents for refutation a whole battery of Platonic arguments for the existence of Forms, some of which are precisely those that Plato himself uses in the Parmenides. And the Categories is as strong a statement as one would hope to find for the foundational nature of spatio-temporal particulars in the inventory of reality. Particulars, not universals (Forms or otherwise), ground reality, a stark reversal of the Platonic ontology of the middle-period. In sum, Owen proved that Aristotle did not begin his philosophical life as a Platonist. For that matter, we can even see that there is a non-contradictory sense in which Plato himself was after a time no longer a Platonist. “Platonism” is indeed a slippery term, and can isolate a host of metaphysical positions, some even at odds with one another. Maimonides’ Aristotelianism I offer the foregoing for purposes of a contextual introduction to the explicit subject of this chapter, Maimonides’ Aristotelianism. Let me be quite clear at the outset that I think there is a good sense to be given to the designation. I think we should continue to consider Maimonides an Aristotelian, whatever else he may be;6 nevertheless it behooves us to reflect upon what precisely we mean when we so describe him.

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First of all, and most importantly, it is not on account of any of the specific conclusions Maimonides reaches that we should consider him an Aristotelian.7 Contra Aristotle, Maimonides doesn’t think the world is beginningless (Guide 2.25), nor does he think that the summum bonum resides in contemplative activity (alone),8 nor does he think that the mean is normative in moral matters in quite as general a way as does Aristotle.9 Further, Maimonides accepts the distinction that Aristotle draws between the moral and intellectual virtues,10 but unlike Aristotle, Maimonides is clear that the former are necessary, even if not sufficient, conditions for attainment of the most exalted of the latter (Guide 2.32; 3.54:635). At one stage of his career Maimonides’ view of the human psyche is opposed to Aristotle’s in understanding it as constituted of parts utterly idiosyncratic to the human species.11 He has (as Jonathan Jacobs has recently pointed out) a considerably more libertarian view of human freedom than does Aristotle, who believes that after a certain point in human development character is fate (Shemonah Peraqim, chapter 8; Jacobs 1997, 443–54). He believes that the prophet, paradigmatic for Maimonides in both character and intellectual attainment, is insulated from contingency, a view seemingly opposed to the ineliminability of luck in the Aristotelian moral scheme.12 Perhaps most startlingly, Maimonides, an empiricist like Aristotle, believes that human knowledge is severely limited on account of our finite nature. The most important matters are beyond our ken and linguistic capacities, and a yawning chasm separates human from divine wisdom (Guide 1.52, 54, 58). I don’t think it can be reasonably maintained that Aristotle was an epistemological finitist. Nor is humility an Aristotelian virtue. Given all these unAristotelianisms in Maimonides’ thought, in what way does it make sense to consider him an Aristotelian? In opposing Plato, Aristotle is not thereby a Platonist, even though we have seen that in opposing Plato, Aristotle is following Plato’s own lead. In this latter sense, then, Aristotle is a Platonist like Plato himself in the latter’s own revisionist spirit. Can we perhaps understand Maimonides’ Aristotelianism in this way? Let me explain. We have seen that Aristotle is a Platonist in a revisionist sort of way. Aristotle is a Platonist in the sense that he agrees with Plato (and vice-versa) that the latter’s own earlier views are in need of revision. Aristotle’s Platonism, thus, depends upon a theory of Platonic development. Can we appeal to something similar in Aristotle himself? Is Maimonides’ Aristotelianism the Aristotelianism of an Aristotle revising his own earlier views? The answer to this is No. There is development in Aristotle’s philosophical career—Owen and Jaeger agree on this—but there is little, precious little revision, fundamental change in position. Aristotle’s ontology and metaphysics are not fundamentally at odds with one another, pace Graham (Graham 1988), but address rather different questions. Presupposing the reality of spatio-temporal objects, primary substance of the Categories, Aristotle asks in the Metaphysics: What makes substances what they are? With the discovery of matter in the Physics Aristotle can now account for spatio-temporal change, and this in turn brings to the fore causal questions previously unaddressed. But though form comes to the fore— a modest “rapprochement” with Plato, as Owen put it—there is no wavering on Aristotle’s part to a commitment to the reality of particulars, hylomorphic entities, even if ontological primacy is now accorded to form. Again, there is development in Aristotle’s thought, but little revision. Aristotle’s theology is not at odds with his metaphysics as he

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tries to show in Metaphysics E1, or with his physics as he tries to show in Metaphysics L6–7. Even the oft-noted dichotomy between the best lives in the Ethics, the moral life devoted to socio-political activity and the theoretical life devoted to contemplative activity, is not I think best understood as manifesting a revision in Aristotle’s thought, perhaps mediated, as Cooper once suggested (Cooper 1975, 175–6), by the discussion of the active and passive intellect in De Anima, but rather can be understood as a diachronic development, as time-slices of a single life, one set of characteristic activities and priorities giving way to another. I will admit that each of the above claims is controversial, but I think it cannot be denied that the development of Aristotle’s thought is of a different order than Plato’s. Aristotle commits no parricide. Given this, Maimonides’ Aristotelianism is not, cannot be, of a piece with Aristotle’s Platonism, and is not grounded in a revisionist spirit. Put slightly differently, Aristotle is a systematic, even monolithic, thinker in ways Plato is not. His very dialectical methodology is systemic, and a few favored sets of principles do much work over and over again in the corpus: form/matter, potentiality/actuality, means/end, etc. And it is precisely because of Maimonides’ own adherence to such systematicity—the very order of the Guide replicates (pays homage to?) the Aristotelian corpus in presenting seriatim logic and language, then physics and metaphysics, and finally practical sciences such as law and politics13—and because of his own commitment to and application of a similar, limited set of principles and concepts over and over again, that I would argue that Maimonides can be considered an Aristotelian, even though he disagrees with Aristotle on such substantive issues as we have presented earlier. In sum, Maimonides is not an Aristotelian on account of any agreement with Aristotle on substantive issues, but rather on account of his creative use of Aristotelian categories and argument forms for his own purposes,14 the main purpose being of course the explication of his own tradition. Maimonides is thus not a Jewish Averroist, even though some, such as Joseph Caspi in medieval times, wished to make him out to be one and even though Maimonides, like Averroes, understands philosophy to be obligatory for those capable of philosophizing.15 Averroism is not the only way to be a medieval Aristotelian. One need not, for example, believe in the eternity of the world to be an Aristotelian. (One could even be a neoPlatonic Aristotelian, adapting Aristotelian categories to certain nonAristotelian ends, something Maimonides undoubtedly does on occasion, especially in the Guide.16) One can be an Aristotelian simply by taking the question of whether the world is eternal or not seriously, something Maimonides certainly does in the second part of the Guide, as he argues against Aristotle (especially 2.25). Again, one need not believe in the specific hierarchy of human activities that Aristotle argues for in the Ethics to be an Aristotelian. Simply to distinguish between the intellectual and the moral virtues, and political and apolitical, contemplative activity is sufficient to remind one of Aristotle and to construe Maimonides’ discussion as Aristotelian. In brief, Maimonides’ philosophical starting point is Aristotle, and it is from Aristotle that he develops his own philosophical positions.17 The foregoing has been at a rather general, abstract level, and so for the remainder of this chapter I should like to illustrate Maimonides’ Aristotelianism, his creative use of Aristotle for his own philosophical purposes. We should not expect Maimonides’ Aristotelianism to reveal itself in specific conclusions reached, but rather in an adaptation

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of Aristotelian categories. My illustration is Maimonides’ discussion of Job in the third part of the Guide. Prophecy and Invulnerability Consider Job. “Poor Job,” we say. Why? It is on account of his unmerited suffering. He did nothing to deserve what he got. Implicit in this thought is the idea that one gets, and ought to get, (only) what one deserves. Maimonides does not disagree with the implicit idea, but vigorously denies that Job is blameless in his suffering—indeed, this is Eliphaz’s (traditional) view, the view “in keeping with the opinion of our Law,” according to Maimonides (Guide 3.23:494). We read the trial of Job as an exercise in theodicy, divine justice: How are divine knowledge, power, and goodness compatible with evil and misfortune, for the latter seem to offend against the former? But Maimonides doesn’t read the parable of Job that way; he doesn’t emphasize the divine wager. For him, as for the young Elihu, Job is not so much about God and divine justice, but rather about Job himself and human finitude, human arrogance, and the insufficiency of moral virtue to secure happiness and beatitude. To be sure, Maimonides takes himself to be illustrating his own view about divine providence—divine knowledge of human affairs—by the story of Job. But the role of God in the story is quite secondary. The real ‘culprit’ in the story, at least for awhile, is he who suffers, Job himself. Indeed, I shall argue on Maimonides’ behalf that it is Job himself who is the (real) cause of his own undoing. His “innocence,” understood aright, is far from exculpatory. Further, consonant with the general theme of this chapter, Maimonides’ discussion of the trial of Job has everything to do with Aristotle, for, as I shall attempt to clarify, Maimonides’ discussion of the parable of Job is grounded in Aristotle’s discussion of the nature of moral virtue, and its relative insufficiency to secure permanent happiness. And though I wouldn’t press the point too far, I think we might understand Job himself along the lines of Aristotle’s phronimos, the morally virtuous individual, and Maimonides’ exegesis as an implied critique of Aristotle’s moral paradigm. As Maimonides says early in his discussion of Job, “the most marvelous and extraordinary thing about this story is the fact that knowledge is not attributed in it to Job. He is not said to be a wise or comprehending or an intelligent man. Only moral virtue and righteousness in action are ascribed to him. For if he had been wise, his situation would not have been obscure for him, as will become clear” (Guide 3.22:487). For Maimonides, Job is good, but not wise. As a result, he suffers. He suffers on account of his innocence, i.e. lack, of wisdom. What sort of wisdom does Job lack? On a grand level, he lacks the kind of wisdom vouchsafed someone like the Stoic sage, knowledge of the rational order of the universe, that everything is in its place and as it ought to be. It is presumably the beginning of an insight such as this that God offers Job from the whirlwind. But we don’t have to abstract to this rather grand level for purposes now. More locally, Job is bereft of the wisdom that would clarify and explain his predicament. Job follows common sense in imagining that his material possessions, health, wealth, and family, are constitutive of true happiness and that they are a sure sign of his goodness; this latter we might denominate Job’s “Calvinism.” Further, Job imagines that (his) moral virtue guarantees happiness—otherwise, why is he so utterly confused and embittered, imagining that “the

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righteous man and the wicked are regarded as equal by God” (Guide 3.23:491)? In following common sense Job shows himself both presumptuous and innocent of any understanding of what brings about true happiness and completely lacking in any sense of the real link between righteousness and its (purported) reward. For Maimonides, Job suffers precisely because he has no (real) understanding of what is truly valuable and because he cannot fathom what is happening to him, and why. Of course, these two are linked and an understanding of the former is key to unlocking the latter. But let us take the two separately for the moment. Recall Aristotle. In outlining the human good Aristotle canvasses a variety of candidates for what constitutes human well-being. Pleasure, honor and esteem, and wealth are discussed and rather quickly dismissed from contention, being either too base, too instrumental, or too dependent on an external source to merit serious consideration (Nicomachean Ethics (NE) 1.5). Even moral virtue itself is called into question as being the summum bonum, for it is compatible “with the greatest sufferings and misfortunes; but a man who was living so no one would call happy, unless he were maintaining a thesis at all costs” (NE 1.5, 1096a1–2). (Indeed, this latter comment reminds one immediately of Job, morally virtuous, but subject to misfortune.) Nevertheless, for Aristotle, each of the rejected candidates has a role to play in happiness, even though, by itself, none is sufficient to guarantee it. Each is a necessary condition of happiness, so much so that Aristotle can appeal to common sense to establish the point that happiness requires external goods such as wealth, good birth, physical beauty, etc. (NE 1.8, 1099a31–b8). Without these, the final goal is impossible of attainment and one is rendered an outcast. Interestingly, the very external goods that Aristotle deems so necessary are precisely the ones Socrates—poor, ugly, base-born—lacked, an indication of Aristotle’s anti-Socraticism, his anti-anti-conventionalism. Aristotle’s position drives him to the following dilemma, a conflict between his (and our) deepest intuitions: either happiness (like moral virtue) is something in our control and not easily snatched from us, in which case external goods and moral luck play no role, or happiness is, at least in part, outside of our control, dependent on luck and good fortune.18 Aristotle does not resolve the dilemma. Nor I think does he want to, wishing thereby to indicate that happiness and the human condition hover between stability and fragility. On the one hand, happiness is attainable and sustainable by our own efforts and is (wholly) consequent upon actions chosen by the agent. On the other hand, as a student of tragedy Aristotle could hardly overlook the extent to which a life can be wrecked through no fault attributable to the agent. King Priam of Troy is his explicit example (NE 1.9 fin). For Aristotle, then, contingency is woven into the fabric of human happiness and the human condition. Indeed, he even suggests that the virtue of the virtuous individual shines forth in adversity, in “bearing with resignation many great misfortunes” (NE 1.10, 1100b30–33). Again, one is reminded of Job and his misfortunes. But in being so reminded one must signal an important difference here between Aristotle and Maimonides. In pointing out the importance of external goods in the achievement of happiness, and in the very doing of morally virtuous deeds, Aristotle imports contingency into the very notion of happiness, and in so doing shows a deep sensitivity to the ultimately tragic condition of humankind. Misfortune can snatch happiness from us, and moral luck counts

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for much. But Aristotle’s tragic sense is matched by no parallel in Maimonides. Maimonides does not view the suffering Job, the righteous and morally virtuous man, as a tragic figure. Instead, he views him as a fool (Guide 3.22:487), one who, though morally upright, has no idea of what is truly valuable and who is perplexed and utterly uncomprehending of the meaning of his misfortune. For Maimonides, Job represents common sense in holding material goods to be of ultimate value and, further, in imagining that righteousness and virtue do not go unrewarded and are themselves sufficient for happiness. In holding these beliefs, Job had, according to Maimonides, “no true knowledge and knew the deity only because of his acceptance of authority, just as the multitude adhering to a law know it” (Guide 3.23:492). Job is, from Maimonides’ point of view, like those who, at a later stage of the Guide, countenance traditional authority, “but do not engage in speculation concerning the fundamental principles of religion and make no inquiry whatever regarding the rectification of belief” (Guide 3.51:619; cf. 3.23:492–3). Such individuals merit no praise from Maimonides, and Job and his friends are no exception. So long as one follows and lives in accord with traditional authority, the analogue to unreflective common sense, one shall be ensnared in contingency, and one’s felicity shall be held captive to forces beyond one’s control. Note that for Maimonides misfortune is a function of ignorance, perhaps even culpable ignorance, and, contra Aristotle, not an ineliminable part of the world, a function of the human condition. Let me stress this point. For Aristotle, as we have seen, happiness requires external goods and is consequent upon good fortune, with the result that to a degree happiness is beyond our control. The human condition is at root tragic. For Maimonides, true human happiness, the insight into which comes through philosophical speculation, does not require external goods for its fulfillment. Job’s suffering depends upon himself, not upon forces outside him. If there is a tragic element inherent in Maimonides’ view, it is that not all human beings can be philosophers, and hence must live a life mixed with contingency and suffering. But this latter point is not one that Maimonides stresses. For Maimonides, the antidote to human suffering is knowledge, specifically knowledge of God. We need not worry now about precisely what such knowledge amounts to, save to be clear that such knowledge has the effect of putting everything into perspective, of clarifying what is truly of value and what is not. Heretofore, Job took happiness to consist in things such as health, wealth, and offspring—commonly-held goods—with the result that when these were taken away, suffering ensued. But with God’s pronouncements from the whirlwind, and Job’s (gradual) realization that his prior perplexity and suffering were grounded in a profound ignorance of the nature and (relative) value of things and a naive presumption about reward and desert, Job commences to understand that not even virtue guarantees felicity, only knowledge does. Only knowledge of God can guarantee that one possesses a sense of the relative value of things. Maimonides is clear that if Job had been wise, “his situation would not have been obscure to him,” and that “…when he knew God with a certain knowledge, he admitted that true happiness, which is knowledge of the deity, is guaranteed to all who know Him and that a human being cannot be troubled in it by any of all the misfortunes in question” (Guide 3.23:492–3). Clarity and knowledge bring with them invulnerability to fortune. This is a very strong claim. I suspect we think it palpably false. But why? Precisely

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because we have a view of the self that entails that the self is without remainder part of the material world. But Maimonides doesn’t hold this view (Guide 3.54:635). Nor, finally, did Aristotle, with what effect this had upon his appreciation of moral luck we may speculate.19 Both link ultimate felicity with an activity akin to divine activity, a cognitive attainment (Aristotle: NE 10.7–8; Maimonides: Guide 3.54:635–6). It is enough for present purposes to underscore that for both thinkers, the true self is the immortal and divine part of “ourselves,” and correlative to this metaphysical claim, we may understand their choice of philosophical understanding as the human good. For Maimonides, this entails that prophecy is the highest good and the prophet, paradigmatically Moses, the human ideal. Divine providential care is a function of intellectual apprehension of the divine. As Maimonides puts it, “providence watches over everyone endowed with intellect proportionately to the measure of his intellect…. Providence always watches over an individual endowed with perfect apprehension, whose intellect never ceases from being occupied with God. On the other hand, an individual endowed with perfect apprehension, whose thought sometimes for a certain time is emptied of God, is watched over by providence only during the time when he thinks of God; providence withdraws from him during the time when he is occupied with something else…and becomes in consequence of this a target for every evil that may happen to befall him” (Guide 3.51:624–5). Indeed, with God’s appearance to Job from the whirlwind, Job’s education commences: “I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself and repent of dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6). Maimonides understands this latter to mean not merely that Job is humbled by the divine presence, but also that he comes to abhor what he used to desire, material goods, now evaluated as no more than “dust and ashes.” Job has begun to see that true human happiness does not consist in material possessions, and with this realization, he begins to distance himself from the material, natural world, the realm of contingency. In this regard, Job will also come to understand that even moral virtue, ensnared as it is with external goods, is sullied with contingency, and hence cannot be the final good. Presumably, Job’s arguments for this latter conclusion would parallel Aristotle’s against moral virtue’s candidacy as the summum bonum at the conclusion of the Ethics (10.7–8). In sum, both Aristotle and Maimonides have a keen sense of the precariousness of the human condition. But they draw instructively different conclusions. Aristotle takes the human condition as ineliminably tragic, admitting of no exit from contingency. Maimonides does not draw this conclusion, because, as we see from Job’s misfortunes, Job’s suffering is his very own doing, a function of his ignorance, his lack of wisdom. For Maimonides, we are much more in control of our destiny than Aristotle imagined. Though prophecy, the summum bonum, is for Maimonides not wholly a natural occurrence, the first step is very much in our power. Knowledge has the power to vanquish the vagaries of fortune. My bet is that if God tested Job a second time, He would have lost the wager.

What I hope to have shown by my illustration of the story of Job is how Maimonides creatively works for purposes all his own against the backdrop of Greek wisdom, specifically Aristotle. As I have tried to show, Maimonides counters Aristotle on virtually every point. But more important, much more important than their disagreement, is the

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fact that we can construct a philosophically rich dialogue between the two. There is, I think, no better reason than this to consider Maimonides an Aristotelian. Notes 1 Porphyry, Vita Plotini, chapter 14. 2 See the references to Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics 3.10) at Guide 2.36:371 (Pines); 2.40:384. 3 I have further discussed historiographical issues in “The Historiography of Jewish Philosophy” (forthcoming a). 4 My gloss on Maimonides’ Aristotelianism parallels that of McInerny’s on Aquinas. He writes, “…we find many references to Aristotle in Thomas, we find the invocation of doctrines, the quoting of phrases. Confronted with these, we should not consult Aristotle for guidance on what Thomas is saying. Far better to see what Thomas means, how he is using the doctrines or language of Aristotle for his own purposes. It is almost as if Aristotle were a language Thomas used to make independent points of his own” (McInerny 1998, xxxi; my emphases). 5 Owen 1966, 125–50. Owen’s article is directed against Jaeger’s major work (Jaeger 1948), in which the latter presents his version of Aristotle’s philosophical development. 6 “…whatever else he may be”: Maimonides is lots of things (a philosopher, a Jew, a legal scholar), but my claim is that as a philosopher his starting point is invariably Aristotle (in some form or other); contra Ivry (1991), I don’t believe that there is an esoteric Neoplatonic base to Maimonides’ philosophical speculations. Once again, this is not to suggest that Maimonides adopts Aristotelian positions on the eternity of the world, the summum bonum, etc. Rather, my view is that Maimonides is best understood philosophically as engaged in critical dialogue with Aristotle, almost invariably disagreeing with him, but (importantly) indebted to him for his mode of discourse, argument forms, and philosophical vocabulary. In this latter sense, and in this sense only, is Maimonides to be characterized as an Aristotelian. 7 See notes 4 and 6 supra. 8 Guide 3.54 fin; see my “The End of the Guide: Maimonides on the Best Life for Man” (1985). 9 Hilkhot De‘ot, chapters 1–2; see my “Humility as a Virtue: A Maimonidean Critique of Aristotle’s Ethics” (1989) and “Anger as a Vice: A Maimonidean Critique of Aristotle’s Ethics” (1990). 10 Shemonah Peraqim, chapter 2; Guide 1.1–2; 3.54 (in effect, the entire Guide, Maimonides’ philosophical magnum opus, is framed by the Aristotelian distinction between the intellectual and the moral virtues—his discussions of prophecy, providence, politics, law, and the goal of human life are all motivated and shaped by this Aristotelian distinction.) 11 Shemonah Peraqim, chapter 1; see further my “The Development of Maimonides’ Moral Psychology” (forthcoming b). 12 See the third part of this chapter. 13 See further my “Moses Maimonides” (1999). 14 See notes 4 and 6 supra. 15 Averroes, Fasl al-Maqal, init.; see also my “The Duty to Philosophize: Socrates and Maimonides” (1993). 16 A splendid Neoplatonic (Plotinian) passage is Guide 3.51:623 (Pines), where Maimonides describes the prophet thus: “And there may be a human individual who, through his apprehension of the true realities and his joy in what he has apprehended, achieves a state in which he talks with people and is occupied with his bodily necessities while his intellect is wholly turned toward Him, may He be exalted, so that in his heart he is always in His presence, may He be exalted, while outwardly he is with people…” With this ‘somnambulistic’ state, compare Porphyry’s Vita Plotini, chapter 8: “Even if he [Plotinus] was talking to someone, engaged in continuous conversation, he kept to his train of thought.

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He could take his necessary part in the conversation to the full, and at the same time keep his mind fixed without a break on what he was considering…” 17 On behalf of Maimonides, we might even agree with McInerny (1998), who says of Aquinas: “There is an old maxim, passed on by Pico della Mirandola: Sine Thoma, Aristoteles mutus esset: without Thomas, Aristotle would be silent. The phrase is a signal tribute to the [Thomistic] commentaries [on Aristotle]. But the reverse of the claim is also true, and true throughout Thomas’s career: Sine Aristotele, Thomas non esset.” (p. xxxiv) It is indeed hard to imagine Maimonides without Aristotle. This is precisely why Maimonides may be characterized as an Aristotelian. 18 See Annas 1988/89, 7–22. 19 We don’t have to speculate too much, for Aristotle links the ‘true’ self with the theoretical and immaterial part of the psyche and the summum bonum with contemplative activity (NE 1177b26–78a8). And he is clear that the activity of contemplation is the most self-sufficient (autarkestatos) of activities (1177a27ff.), rendering the practitioner (relatively) independent from others and, in general, from the realm of contingency and luck.

I have addressed this issue at some length in “The Development of Maimonides’ Moral Psychology” (forthcoming b). References Annas, J. 1988/89. “Aristotle on Virtue and Happiness.” The University of Dayton Review 19, No. 3, pp. 7–22. (Reprinted in N.Sherman (ed.). Aristotle’s Ethics: Critical Essays. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, pp. 35–55). Cooper, J. 1975. Reason and Human Good in Aristotle. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Frank, D.H. 1985. “The End of the Guide: Maimonides on the Best Life for Man.” Judaism 34, pp. 485–95. ——. 1989. “Humility as a Virtue: A Maimonidean Critique of Aristotle’s Ethics.” In E.Ormsby (ed.), Maimonides and His Time. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, pp. 89–99. ——. 1990. “Anger as a Vice: A Maimonidean Critique of Aristotle’s Ethics.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 7, pp. 269–81. ——. 1993. “The Duty to Philosophize: Socrates and Maimonides.” Judaism 42, pp. 289–97. ——. 1999. “Moses Maimonides.” In R.Popkin (ed.), The Columbia History of Western Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 188–96.

—— . forthcoming a. “The Historiography of Jewish Philosophy.” In L.E.Goodman (ed.), Appropriating and Re-Appropriating the Past: History and Historiography in Islamic and Judaic Traditions.

—— . forthcoming b. “The Development of Maimonides’ Moral Psychology.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: special Maimonides issue (ed. D.H.Frank). Graham, D. 1988. Aristotle’s Two Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Guttmann, J. 1973. Philosophies of Judaism. New York: Schocken Books. Ivry, A. 1991. “Neoplatonic Currents in Maimonides’ Thought.” In J.Kraemer (ed.), Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies. Oxford: The Littman Library, pp. 115– 40. Jacobs, J. 1997. “Plasticity and Perfection: Maimonides and Aristotle on Character.” Religious Studies 33, pp. 443–54.

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Jaeger, W. 1948. Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McInerny, R. (ed. and tr.). 1998. Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings. Harmonds-worth: Penguin Books. Owen, G.E.L. 1953. “The Place of the Timaeus in Plato’s Dialogues.” Classical Quarterly NS 3, pp. 79–95. ——. 1966. “The Platonism of Aristotle.” Proceedings of the British Academy 51, pp. 125–50. Vlastos, G. 1954. “The Third Man Argument in Plato’s Parmenides.” Philosophical Review 63, pp. 319–49.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Porphyry, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas A Neoplatonic Hierarchy of Virtues and Two Christian Appropriations Joshua P.Hochschild Introduction Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas each refer to a Neoplatonic theory of ethics according to which, above the two familiar levels of human virtue—the political and contemplative—there are two further levels of virtue for immaterial substances. Furthermore, according to this theory, the four cardinal virtues which are usually considered as political (or moral) are in fact manifested in each of these four levels. Both Bonaventure and Aquinas cite Macrobius as the authority for this theory. Though Macrobius’s “Commentary on the Dream of Scipio” claims that Plotinus is the source of the theory, Macrobius appears to rely instead on some writings by Porphyry.1 These writings, which we have come to call the Sententiae ad intelligibility ducentes (APHORMAI PROS TA NOETA),2 are a collection of philosophical reflections which may have been intended as supplemental to Plotinus’s Enneads. It is in the 34th of Porphyry’s “Sentences” that we see the theory of a four-fold hierarchy of the cardinal virtues explained in greatest detail. In this chapter, I will first consider this theory as articulated by Porphyry, and then turn to examine the appropriations of this theory by Bonaventure and Aquinas respectively. Finally, I will consider the implications that these two appropriations of the Neoplatonic theory have for Bonaventure and Aquinas’s understanding of the relationship between ethics, philosophy, and theology. Porphyry’s Hierarchy of Virtues Porphyry’s Sentences are a collection of forty-four loosely related philosophical discourses, mostly about neo-Platonic metaphysics and psychology. Some of the “Sentences” are just single propositions, while others consist of longer expositions and arguments. By far the longest of all the “sentences,” the thirty-second, gives an account of virtue.3

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Porphyry begins his account of virtue with the familiar distinction between political and contemplative virtue. Virtues are divided into two sets, “one set of virtues belongs to the citizen, another to the man who ascends to contemplation….”4 The former, explains Porphyry, consist in “moderation of passion” and “are to follow and to conform to the conclusions based upon a calculation of what is proper or expedient in actions.” Thus they derive their name as “political” virtues from the fact that “they have in view a social organization which shall not inflict injury upon its members.”5 Porphyry distinguishes four virtues, the “cardinal” Greek virtues which had been appropriated already in the theories of Plato and Aristotle. Porphyry’s description of the set of political cardinal virtues is consistent with this Greek tradition: …prudence is conversant with that which is reasoned; courage with the passionate; temperance lies in the agreement and harmony of the desires and affections with rational calculation, while justice is the simultaneous limiting of each of these to its own sphere of action, in respect to ruling and being ruled.6 Porphyry continues by describing how these four cardinal virtues are manifested in the contemplative life. He begins by distinguishing generally between the political and contemplative spheres: “The disposition…which is based upon the political virtues may be stated as consisting in moderation of passion, having for its aim to enable man to live as a man according to nature. [But] the disposition based upon the contemplative virtues consists in apathy, the end whereof is assimilation to God.”7 From this, it follows that the contemplative virtues “lie in withdrawal from things here [below]” and are considered “purifications.” The political virtues prepare the soul for this purification, but are not themselves purificative, because they necessarily involve the body.8 Porphyry describes the four virtues as purifications thus: Hence, in purifications, not to opine with the body, but to energize, alone constitutes prudence. Again, freedom from sympathies [with the body] constitutes temperance. […] Not to fear, when withdrawing from the body, as if it were into something empty and non-being, constitutes courage. […] And when reason and intellect lead and nothing opposes, this is justice.9 Porphyry goes on to argue that there needs to be further levels of virtue even after the contemplative or purificatory virtues. Purification alone does not make the soul partake of the good, but only rids it of certain evils; further virtues are required for the soul to reach its ultimate end. As Porphyry explains it, “the nature of the soul is not a good, but capable of partaking of the good, and having the form of the good. But the good for it is to be united with that which produced it.”10 Thus, according to Porphyry, there is “a third class of virtues besides the purificative and political, those, namely, which belong to the soul energizing intellectually.”11 This class of virtues is difficult to understand, for they are not available to us in this life12; nonetheless, Porphyry explains, even on this level can be found the four virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage:

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Wisdom and prudence lie in contemplation of the things which nous13 has, whereas justice is proper action14 in the progress toward nous, and the energizing toward nous. Temperance again is the turning inward toward nous. Courage is absence of passion, in assimilation to that toward which it looks, and which is by nature passionless.15 These are the virtues of “the soul already looking inward toward nous, and filled from it,”16 and they are higher than those (the contemplative virtues) “which belong to the soul of a man purifying itself, and purified from the body and irrational passions,”17 which are in turn higher than those (the practical virtues) “belonging to the soul of man which adorns the man, by setting limits to irrationality and inculcating moderation of the passions.”18 But these intellectual virtues19 are not themselves the highest, for above them are the paradigm, or “pattern,” virtues. These are “in nous,” and are “superior to those of the soul, and are the patterns of those to which the similitudes of the soul belong.” Thus, the three lower levels of virtues are exemplifications of this highest level of virtue, “for nous is that in which all things are as patterns.”20 So the four virtues, which are manifested on the three lower levels, have their pattern here: wisdom is nous cognizing; self-attention,21 temperance; peculiar function [justice], proper action. Courage is sameness, and a remaining pure of self-dependence, through abundance of power.22 These pattern or exemplar virtues, the highest level, are, like the virtues of the purified soul, unavailable to man in this life, but they are available to certain higher orders of being: Hence he who energizes according to the practical virtues is an earnest man; he who energizes according to the purificative ones, is a demonic man or even a good demon. He who energizes according to those alone which relate to nous is a god. He who energizes according to the pattern virtues is the father of the gods.23 Men, therefore, should strive to attain the lower two levels, but a man may not have the higher without the lower. He must, then, ascend from the lower level of virtue to the higher. He who has the greater, has, of necessity, the less; but by no means vice versâ. Moreover, from the fact of having the less, he who has the greater will no longer energize according to the less by predilection, but only in consequence of the circumstance of birth.24 The human soul cannot properly exhibit the highest, exemplar virtues; nonetheless, because the lower levels of virtues are analogically related to the higher levels,25 the human soul can share in them according to its own mode, namely by striving toward them through the political and contemplative virtues.

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Bonaventure on the Neoplatonic Hierarchy of Virtues Bonaventure is among those medieval Christian philosophers who specifically address this Neoplatonic theory of a hierarchy of virtues. He discusses it at length in Collationes in Hexaemeron 6, where he attributes the theory to Plotinus, apparently on the authority of Macrobius; Collation 6 ends with a long excerpt from Macrobius’s Dream of Scipio.26 Bonaventure begins the sixth Collation as a discussion of the passage at Genesis 1:4: “God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness.” He uses this text as an occasion to discuss God as an exemplar cause, the source, and “illuminating light,” of all truth—“the truth of things, the truth of words, and the truth of morals.” Bonaventure believes this to be a central Christian teaching, but it is one which some non-Christians have grasped: “the most noble and ancient philosophers have come to see this, that there is a principle, and an end, and an exemplar reason.”27 The noble philosophers which Bonaventure has in mind are Plato and his followers, representing a tradition more or less defined by its willingness to countenance “exemplar” causes. This tradition is to be contrasted with that of Aristotle and his followers, for Aristotle repeatedly criticized the notion of an exemplar cause and Plato’s doctrine of “ideas,” especially, as Bonaventure points out, in the Metaphysics and in the Nichomachean Ethics. For Bonaventure, this distinction between the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions is so important that it separates philosophers as God separated the light from the dark. Indeed, Bonaventure explains in detail how the failure to acknowledge exemplars led Aristotle into a “threefold blindness,” believing that the world is eternal, that there is only one intellect, and that there is no punishment or glory after death. So that we do not misunderstand him about the cause of these mistakes, Bonaventure asks, “Why did some,” namely the Aristotelians, “follow the darkness?” The answer is that while acknowledging a first principle and final end of all, they denied that there were exemplars of things.28 The specific Neoplatonic doctrine of the hierarchy of virtues is thus introduced by Bonaventure because of its articulation of the exemplar virtues. After discussing the fundamental errors which follow from a denial of the existence of exemplar causes, Bonaventure says that “the eternal light is the exemplar of all,” and that “in it the first to appear to the soul are the exemplars of the virtues.”29 Emphasizing the necessity of considering the exemplars of the virtues, Bonaventure quotes Plotinus, who said that it would be absurd for the exemplars of all things to be in God, and not the exemplars of the virtues. This is Bonaventure’s opportunity to begin to offer descriptions of the individual cardinal exemplar virtues (“virtutes exemplares sive exemplaria virtutum” Collationes 6.7), considered as the first features revealed by eternal light: “the height of purity, the beauty of clarity, the strength of power, and the straightness of diffusion.30 Bonaventure associates each of these features of divine light with one of the traditional cardinal virtues, for each one is the cause of a cardinal virtue manifested on a lower level. Specifically, the cardinal virtues are impressed in the soul by that exemplar light and descend into the cognitive, affective, and operative realms. By the height of purity is impressed the sincerity of temperance; by the beauty of clarity is

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impressed the serenity of prudence; by the strength of power is impressed the stability of constancy [or fortitude]; by the straightness of diffusion is impressed the sweetness of justice.31 Immediately after this summary of the exemplar virtues, Bonaventure again emphasizes their importance by saying that “these are the four exemplar virtues with which the whole of Sacred Scripture is concerned.” And immediately after that, he again returns to the observation that only some philosophers were aware of them: “Aristotle sensed nothing of them,” in contrast to “the ancient and noble philosophers” who did.32 Though he is most concerned to concentrate on the exemplar virtues, and to remind his readers of the limitations of those philosophers who did not acknowledge them or exemplars in general, Bonaventure does discuss the entire four-fold hierarchy of virtues. The other three levels of virtues, according to Bonaventure, are designed to lead men back to the origin of virtue in the exemplars: These virtues flow from the eternal light into the hemisphere of our minds and retrace the soul to its origin, as a perpendicular or direct ray returns by the same path by which it went out. And this is beatitude. Whence the first [level of virtues] are political, the second are purificative, and the third for the soul already purified. The political [virtues] consist in action, the purificative [virtues] in contemplation, and those of the soul already purified in the vision of the [divine] light.33 Bonaventure proceeds to quote at length Macrobius describing this hierarchy of virtues, in details that are to be found in Porphyry’s discussion considered above. But before he does so, Bonaventure is careful to establish that his concern with these levels of virtues is not based strictly on pagan sources. He cites a Christian authority for this hierarchy of virtues, Origen. Origen, according to Bonaventure, wrote that Solomon was concerned with the three lower levels of virtue at different points in the Old Testament: he was concerned “with the political in Proverbs, with the purificative in Ecclesiastes, and with those of the soul already purified in the Song of Songs.”34 Following his long quotation of Macrobius, which ends Collation 6, Bonaventure recapitulates his discussion of the hierarchy of cardinal virtues at the beginning of Collation 7. He states again that “some philosophers attacked the ideas,” thus being separated from other philosophers as darkness from light.35 As evidence of this, he again describes the “threefold blindness” which is caused by a failure to recognize the ideas or exemplar causes. Then he notes that other “enlightened philosophers…posited exemplar virtues, from which the cardinal virtues flowed, first into the cognitive power and then through that into the affective, and then into the operative.”36 These are the cardinal virtues, of which the first are called political, insofar as they pertain to worldly relations; the second are purificatory insofar as they pertain to solitary contemplation; the third for the purified soul, as they make the soul to be at rest in the exemplars…. [T]hrough these virtues the soul is modified, purified, and reformed.37

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Though crediting the “enlightened philosophers” with grasping this theory, Bonaventure’s emphasis here is much different than in Collation 6, when he drew attention to the difference between the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions, criticizing only the latter. For in Collation 7, Bonaventure insists that the “enlightened” Platonists are still in some degree of darkness,38 for they lack the light of faith. So after complimenting the Platonists for seeing truths that Aristotle did not see, he proceeds with his specifically Christian goal of articulating the necessity of faith. Of course Bonaventure must believe that Christ only can bring the soul back to God, not the pagan virtues—even if the virtues are grasped in a hierarchy presided over by the exemplars. “The philosophers,” he says, “had the wings of ostriches, because their affective powers could not be healed, nor ordered, nor rectified; for this is done only by faith.”39 Thomas Aquinas on the Neoplatonic Hierarchy of Virtues Like Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas directly addresses the Neoplatonic theory of a hierarchy of virtues. The theory makes an appearance in the Summa Theologiae, where Aquinas, like Bonaventure in the Collations, does not attribute the theory to Porphyry but to Macrobius.40 The fifth article of question 61 (IaIIae) asks: “Are the cardinal virtues appropriately divided into political, purifying, purified, and exemplar virtues?”41 After citing some Aristotelian (and one Ciceronian) objections that seem to arise from Macrobius’s account of virtue, Aquinas allows Macrobius to cite his own authority, whom Aquinas has no reason to doubt is “Plotinus, along with Plato.” To mediate this dispute, Aquinas appeals to Augustine, who says, “the soul must follow something so that virtue can be born in it; and this something is God, and if we follow Him we shall live a moral life.”42 From this, Aquinas concludes: the exemplar of human virtue must pre-exist in God, just as the exemplars of all things pre-exist in Him. In this way, therefore, virtue can be considered as existing in its highest exemplification in God, and in this fashion we speak of exemplar virtues. Thus the divine mind in God can be called prudence, while temperance is the turning of the divine attention to Himself…. The fortitude of God is His immutability, while God’s justice is the observance of the eternal law in His works.43 Aquinas’s discussion here recalls the words of Porphyry, cited above, concerning the exemplar virtues: “wisdom is nous cognizing; self-attention, temperance; peculiar function [justice], proper action. Valor is sameness, and a remaining pure of selfdependence, through abundance of power.” Aquinas’s words are surprising because up until this point in the Summa, he has been speaking of virtue primarily in the political sense; “man is a political animal by nature,” and “manz comports himself rightly in human affairs by these [political] virtues.”44 But Aquinas acknowledges the philosophical necessity of understanding the political virtues as having their origin in higher virtues. Thus, in answer to the objection that Aristotle says it is inappropriate to attribute the virtues to God (NE, X, 8, 1178b10), Aquinas answers that Aristotle must be speaking of the political virtues45—for surely we would

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not want to deny to God any excellence of activity. And again, to the objection that the virtues concern the regulation of passions, and so could not exist if the soul was completely purified of passions, Aquinas says this is only true of the political virtues. Beatified souls, however, are without the passions of wayfaring souls; it is these souls which achieve the purer virtues.46 To the objection that the purifying virtues cannot be virtues since they involve “flight from human affairs,” Aquinas agrees that “to neglect human affairs when they require attending to is wrong.” But otherwise such flight is virtuous.47 Here, Aquinas appeals to Augustine, who says: “The love of truth needs a sacred leisure; the force of love demands just deeds. If no one places a burden upon us, then we are free to know and contemplate truth; but if such a burden is put upon us, we must accept it because of the demands of charity.”48 The purifying virtues, commonly called the contemplative virtues, are the virtues of “those who are on the way and tending toward a likeness of what is divine.” In agreement with Porphyry’s description of these virtues is Aquinas’: Thus prudence, by contemplating divine things, counts all worldly things as nothing and directs all thought of the soul only to what is divine; temperance puts aside the customary needs of the body so far as nature permits; fortitude prevents the soul from being afraid of withdrawing from bodily needs and rising to heavenly things; and justice brings the whole soul’s accord to such a way of life.49 Above these are the “purified” virtues. Porphyry would attribute them only to the gods (all those other than the “father of the gods”), that is, to immaterial souls; Aquinas, in keeping with this, attributes these virtues to the souls of men who have been beatified— and even, it seems, to saints in this life: …prudence now sees only divine things, temperance knows no earthly desires, fortitude is oblivious to the passions, and justice is united with the divine mind in an everlasting bond, by imitating it.50

Conclusion In comparing Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’s appropriations of the Neoplatonic hierarchy of virtues, we note first that both Christian writers affirm the theory without hesitation. Even though they confront it in specifically theological contexts, both authors eagerly adopt from a pagan authority a theory bearing on the end of man. Indeed, both of them give specifically Christian emphasis to the ethical theory. Bonaventure insists that “the whole of Sacred Scripture” is concerned with the exemplar virtues. Aquinas too makes significant theological use of the theory, choosing to introduce it at a crucial point in the dialectic of the Summa. The article of the Summa considered above is the last article of the last question on cardinal virtue; as such it helps form a transition between Aquinas’s discussions of moral and theological virtue.

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At first glance, Aquinas’s appropriation of the Neoplatonic theory may seem more surprising than Bonaventure’s. Bonaventure rather predictably uses the Neoplatonic theory to criticize Aristotle and to articulate a Christian conception of the soul’s journey to God. Gilson, in discussing this appropriation, notices an appropriate parallel between Bonaventure’s understanding of a divine illumination in human knowledge, and a divine illumination of human virtue.51 But this is precisely the Bonaventure that we expect, and one which we are used to contrasting with Aquinas. Gilson uses this very “doctrine of moral illumination” to contrast Bonaventure’s “Christian Platonism” with Aquinas’s “Christian Aristotelianism” (Gilson 1938, 428–430). Yet, as we have seen, Aquinas assents to the same Neoplatonic theory of a hierarchy of virtues which characterizes the Platonist “doctrine of moral illumination.” This makes it tempting to try to bring Aquinas’s appropriation of the Neoplatonic theory to bear on some of the persistent questions in the interpretation of Aquinas’s thought: Is Aquinas’s Aristotelianism more important than his Neoplatonism? Is Aquinas’s ethics really Aristotelian? Does Aquinas have a properly philosophical ethics? Of course the evidence of ST 1–2.61.5 does not determine answers to any of these questions. In fact, there is good reason to think that such questions cannot be answered by unqualified affirmations or negations,52 and ST 1–2.61.5 helps to illustrate this. For one thing, it is clear that in the mind of Aquinas, the Neoplatonic theory of the cardinal virtues does not compete with, but complements, the Aristotelian account. Mark Jordan has said that Aquinas’s appropriation of the Neoplatonic hierarchy of virtues “stretches the analogy of [Aristotelian] virtue almost to breaking” (Jordan 1993, 239). Yet as we have seen from the discussion above, in Aquinas’s mind the analogy does not “break”; the Neoplatonic “stretch” is, for Aquinas, compatible with Aristotle’s ethics. This is all the more evident when Aquinas’s treatment is contrasted with Bonaventure. Bonaventure uses the Neoplatonic theory as an occasion to criticize Aristotle. Aristotle, for Bonaventure, follows a way of “darkness,” making philosophical mistakes for which the Neoplatonic theory offers a corrective. As Aquinas presents it, the Neoplatonic theory does not so much correct as supplement the Aristotelian account of virtue. For Aquinas, the Neoplatonic theory provides a way of understanding the relationship between the political and contemplative lives which, on the one hand, seems to address philosophical questions raised by Aristotle’s ethics, but which, on the other hand, is not at odds with Aristotle’s ethics. We may note two such complementary aspects of the Neoplatonic analysis of the political and contemplative lives. First, it preserves a strong—and certainly Aristotelian—connection between being, the object of metaphysics, and goodness, the object of ethics; virtue is a reflection of divine virtue, and is pursued as part of a creature’s proper end, (re-) union with the creator, who is the ultimate good, and the complete being. Second, and because of this strong connection between being and goodness, it allows us to understand how human “lives” that can be differentiated can still be necessarily related: the political man and the contemplative man are engaged in different activities, but both are engaged in human activities, and so the same virtues are actualized in them according to different modes. The contemplative life is superior to the political life just insofar as the virtues manifested in the contemplative life are closer to the exemplar virtues, and preparative of the purified virtues appropriate to separate substances.

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While disagreeing over whether the Neoplatonic theory is a philosophical corrective or a philosophical complement to Aristotle, Aquinas and Bonaventure seem to agree that the theory addresses what we would think of as properly theological issues. Aristotle is famous for avoiding questions about the separability of the human intellect from the body, and the survival of the soul after death.53 Bonaventure and Aquinas, equipped as they are with confidence in the Christian faith, do not avoid these questions: the human soul can survive the death of the body, and can then achieve the higher virtues, and union with God. As we have seen, the Neoplatonic account of the hierarchy of cardinal virtue helps them to introduce and articulate this theological position. Of course this does not mean that for either Bonaventure or Aquinas the Neoplatonic theory is itself a sufficient Christian theology of virtue. Here we must notice that for both of them, not only does the Neoplatonic theory correct or complement Aristotle, but faith complements the Neoplatonic theory. Bonaventure makes this clear in an extended discussion of the limitations of pagan virtue, and the necessity of Christ and His grace. Less explicitly indicated, Aquinas’s agreement is suggested in the citation of Augustine on charity. While the theory of the hierarchy of cardinal virtues gives an account of the relations between the active and contemplative lives, and accounts for the superiority of the latter, in doing so it may seem to recommend the philosophical life unconditionally. Aquinas is careful to consider the possibility of a motive to sacrifice contemplation for action. The appeal to Augustine on this matter implies that, for Aquinas, such a motive is best understood by supplementing the pagan philosophical ethics, referring beyond the cardinal virtues to the specifically Christian virtue of charity. Notes 1 In crediting the theory to Plotinus, Macrobius refers to the treatise “On the Virtues” (Enneads I.ii). But the extensive details of the theory that Macrobius relates cannot be found in Plotinus’s text, while they can be found in Porphyry. The question of Macrobius’s use of Porphyry on this particular issue is bound up with more general questions about Porphyry and Plotinus as sources for Macrobius, about which there is some controversy. For summaries and references, see Macrobius 1952, 28–29; 121, n. 5, and Gersh 1986, 2:508– 509, n. 91. 2 The critical edition is by Lamberz (Porphyry 1975). In this chapter I use an English translation by Thomas Davidson (Porphyry 1869), standardizing the names of the four virtues— courage, temperance, prudence, and justice—which Davidson translates inconsistently. Davidson’s translation is based on the edition of the Greek text edited by Creuzer (in Plotinus 1855). In the notes I give the Greek text of Lamberz, citing by page and line numbers (e.g. 22:14–15). 3 Manuscript variations in the ordering of the “sentences” mean that Creuzer, and thus Davidson, arrange them in a different order than the critical edition of Lamberz; the Lamberz “sentence” number 32, which takes up 139 lines, is Creuzer’s number 34 (146 lines). The next longest of the “sentences” is number 40, with 78 lines (Creuzer’s number 41, at 81 lines), which is concerned with ethics in terms of the achievement of divine knowledge and the soul’s union with God. 4 “Allai hai aretai tou politikou, kai allai hai ton pros theorian aniontos” (Porphyry, Sententiae 32; 22:14–15, Lamberz). 5 “Hai men tou politikou en metriopatheia keimenai to hepesthai kai akolouthein to logismo tou kathekontos kata tas praxeis: dio pros koinonian blepousai ten ablabe ton plesion ek tou sunagelasmou kai tes koinonias politikai legontai” (Ibid.; 23:3–8).

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6 “kai esti phronesis men peri to logizomenon, andria de peri to thumoumenon, sophrosune de en homologia kai sumphonia epithumetikou pros logismon, dikaiosune de he ekastou touton homou oikeiopragia arkes peri kai tou archesthai” (Ibid.; 23:8–12). 7 “he men oun kata tas politikas aretas diathesis en metriopatheia theoreitai, telos ekousa to zen hos anthropon kata phusin, he de kata tas theoretikas en apatheia, hes telos he pros theon omoiosis” (Ibid.; 25:6–9). 8 “kai prodromaoi ge hai politikai ton katharseon” (Ibid.; 24:6–7). 9 “dio en tais katharsesi to men me sundoxazein to somati, alia monen energein huphistesi to phronein, ho dia tou katharos noein teleioutai, to de ge me homopathein sunistesi to sophronein, to de me phobeisthai aphistamenen tou somatos hos eis kenon ti kai me on ten andrian, hegoumenou de logou kai nou kai medenos antiteinontos he dikaiosune” (Ibid.; 24:9–25:1). 10 “all he psuches ouk en agathon, all agathou metechein dunamenon kai agathoeides…to oun agathon aute en to suneinai to gennesanti…” (Ibid.; 26:9–12). 11 “allo oun genos triton areton meta tas kathartikas kai politikas, noeros tes psuches energouses…” (Ibid.; 27:7–9). 12 Ibid.; 31:10. 13 Here and elsewhere I replace Davidson’s use of “intellect” with “nous.” 14 Here and elsewhere “proper action” replaces Davidson’s rather too Hegelian translation of “oikeiopragia” as “self-related action.” 15 “sophia men kai phronesis en theoria hon nous echei, dikaiosune de oikeiopragia en te pros ton noun akolouthia kai to pros noun energein, sophrosune de he eiso pros noun strophe, he de andria apatheia kath homoiosin tou pros ho blepei apathes o ten phusin” (Ibid.; 27:9– 28:4). 16 “hai de psuches pros noun enoroses ede kai pleroumenes ap autou” (Ibid.; 29:10–11). 17 “hai de psuches anthropou kathairomenes te kai kathartheises apo somatos kai ton alogon pathon” (Ibid.; 29:11–12). 18 “hai de psuches anthropou katakosmouses ton anthropon dia to metra te alogia aphorizein kai metriopatheian energazesthai” (Ibid.; 29:12–30:1). 19 This use of “intellectual virtues” should not be confused with the sense of “intellectual virtues” that is contrasted with “moral virtues” by Aquinas (e.g. ST 1–2.53) and Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics 1103a14ff); the Aristotelian contrast between the intellectual and moral virtues is much closer to Porphyry’s distinction between the purificative (contemplative) and political (practical) virtues—but even here the parallel is not perfect. 20 “Tetarton de eidos areton to ton paradeigmatikon, haiper esan en to no, kreittous ousai ton psuchikon kai touton paradeigmata, hon hai tes psuches esan homoiomata: nous men en ho hama ta hosper paradeigmata” (Porphyry, Sententiae 32; 28:6–29:3, Lamberz). 21 Davidson has “self-relatedness.” 22 “sophia de ginoskon ho nous, to de pros auton he sophrosune, to de oikeion ergon he oikeiopragia, he de andria he tautotes kai to eph heautou menein katharon dia dunameos periousian” (Ibid.; 29:4–7). 23 “dio kai ho men kata tas praktikas energon spoudais en anthropos, ho de kata tas kathartikas daimonios anthropos e kai daimon agathos, ho de kata monas tas pros ton noun theos, ho de kata tas paradeigmatikas theon pater” (Ibid.; 31:4–8). 24 “ouketi mentoi to echein kai tas elattous ho echon tas meizous energesei kata tas elattous proegoumenos, alia monon kata peristasin tes geneseos” (Ibid.; 30:2–5). 25 One manuscript variation actually gives: ton de loipon analogos tois eirhmenois, “the scope of the others [the pattern virtues] is in a manner analogous to those mentioned [the political, contemplative, and intellectual virtues],” (Ibid., 31:3–4); but even without this explicit statement, the causal dependence and hierarchical ordering of the levels of virtue establish the analogical relationship.

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26 The text of Bonaventure, Collationes 6:25–32, is taken from Macrobius’s In Somnium Scipionis, chapter 8, from paragraph 3 (all but the first line) to the first line of paragraph 11. On Plotinus and Porphyry as sources for Macrobius, see note 1, supra. 27 Bonaventure, Collationes 6.1: “Propter primam visionem intelligentiae per naturam inditae sumtum est verbum illud: Vidit Deus lucem, id est videre fecit radiat lux ut veritas rerum, ut veritas vocum, ut veritas morum…. Et ad hoc venerunt philosophi et nobiles eorum et antiqui, quod esset principium et finis et ratio exemplaris.” 28 Ibid., 6.2: “Divisit tamen Deus lucem a tenebris, ut, sicut dictum est de Angelis, sic dicatur de philosophis. Sed unde aliqui tenebras secuti sum? Ex hoc, quod licet omnes viderint primam causam omnium principium, omnium finem, in medio tamen diversificati sunt. Nam aliqui negaverunt, in ipsa esse exemplaria rerum; quorum princeps videtur fuisse Aristoteles, qui…exsecratur ideas Platonis.” 29 Ibid., 6.6: “Dico ergo, quod ilia lux aeterna est exemplar omnium, et quod mens elevata, ut mens aliorum nobilium philosophorum antiquorum, ad hoc pervenit. In ilia ergo promo occurrunt animae exemplaria virtutum.” 30 Ibid., 6.7: “Apparent ergo primo in luce aeterna virtutes exemplares sive exemplaria virtutum, scilicet celsitudo puritatis, pulcritudo claritatis, fortitude virtutis, rectitudo diffusionis.” 31 Ibid., 6.10: “Haec imprimuntur in anima per illam lucem exemplarem et descendunt in cognitivam, in affectivam, in operativam. Ex celsitudine puritatis imprimatur sinceritas temperentiae; ex pulcritudine claritatis serenitas prudentiae; ex fortitudine virtutis stabilitas constantiae; ex rectitudine diffusionis suavitas iustitiae.” 32 Ibid.: “Hae sunt quatuor virtutes exemplares, de quibus tota sacra Scriptura agit; et Aristoteles nihil de his sensit, sed antiqui et nobiles philosophi.” 33 Ibid., 6.24: “Hae virtutes fluunt a luce aeterna in hemisphaerium nostrae mentis et reducunt animam in suam originem, sicut radius perpendicularis sive directus eadem via revertitur, qua incessit. Et haec est beatitude. Unde primo sunt politicae, secundo purgatoriae, tertio animi iam purgati. Politicae sunt in actione, purgatoriae in contemplatione, animi iam purgati in lucis visione.” 34 Ibid., 6.25: “Et de his agit Salamon, ut dicit Origenes, de politicis in Proverbiis, de purgatoriis in Ecclesiaste, de animi iam purgati in Cantico canticorum.” In fact Bonaventure’s attribution to Origen of this insight is a stretch. In his prologue to the Song of Songs Origen discusses not a Greek hierarchy of virtues but the traditional Greek division of disciplines into moral, physical and theoretical; it is this division that Origen says Solomon understood before the Greeks and treated in turn in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. 35 Ibid., 7.1. 36 Ibid., 7.3: “…alii philosophi illuminati…posuerunt virtutes exemplares, a quibus fluunt virtutes cardinales, primo in vim cognitivam et per illam in affectivam, deinde in operativam….” 37 Ibid., 7.4: “Illi autem praecipui philosophi posuerunt, sic etiam illuminati, tamen sine fide, per defluxum in nostram cognitionem virtutes cardinales. Quae primo dicuntur politicae, in quantum docent conversationem in mundo; secundo, purgatoriae quantum ad solitariam contemplationem; tertio, purgati animi, ut animam quietari faciant in exemplari. Dixerunt ergo, per has virtutes animam modificari, purgari et reformari.” 38 Ibid., 7.3: “Sed adhuc isti in tenebris fuerunt, quia non habuerunt lumen fidei. …” Cf. Ibid., 7.5: “Sed adhuc in tenebris sunt…” 39 Ibid., 7.12: “Isti philosophi habuerunt pennas struthionum, quia affectus non erant sanati nee ordinati nee rectificati; quod non fit nisi per fidem.” 40 Albertus Magnus also mentions this Neoplatonic theory, attributing it to Plotinus (Albertus Magnus, Super Ethica Commentum et Quaestiones 2.2; 4:12; 5.3; 7.11).

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41 ST 1–2.61.5: “Utrum virtutes cardinales convenienter dividantur in virtutes politicas, purgatorias, purgati animi, et exemplares.” 42 Ibid., corpus: “Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut Augustinus dicit in libro de Moribus Eccles., oportet quod anima aliquid sequatur, ad hoc quod ei possit virtus innasci: et hoc Deus est, quern si sequimur, bene vivimus.” The citation of Augustine is from De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae 1.6. 43 ST 1–2.61.5, corpus: “…exemplar humanae virtutis in Deo praeexistat, sicut et in eo praeexistunt omnium rerum rationes. Sic igitur virtus potest considerari vel prout est exemplariter in Deo, et sic dicuntur virtutes ‘exemplares’. Ita scilicet quod ipsa divina mens in Deo dicatur prudentia; temperantia vero, conversio divinae intentionis ad seipsum…; fortitude autem Dei est eius immutabilitas; iustitia vero Dei est observatio legis aeternae in suis operibus, sicut Plotinus dixit.” Cf. Quaestiones de Virtutibus Cardinalibus 1.4 (“Utrum virtutes cardinales maneant in patria”): “…fortitude divina est eius immobilitas; temperentia erit conversio mentis divinae ad seipsam; prudentia autem est ipsa mens divina; iustitia autem Dei ipsa lex eius perennis.” 44 ST 1–2.61.5, corpus: “Et quia homo secundum suam naturam est animal politicum, virtutes huiusmodi, prout in homine existunt secundum conditionem suae naturae, politicae vocantur: prout scilicet homo secundum has virtutes recte se habet in rebus humanis gerendis. Secundum quern modum hactenus de his virtutibus locuti sumus.” Cf. 1–2.61.1, corpus: “…dicendum quod, cum simpliciter de virtute loquimur, intelligimur loqui de virtute humana.” 45 ST 1–2.61.5, ad. 1: “…dicendum quod Philosophus loquitur de his virtutibus secundum quod sunt circa res humanas: puta iustitia circa emptiones et venditiones, fortitude circa timores, temperantia circa concupiscentias. Sic enim ridiculum est eas Deo attribuere.” 46 Ibid., ad. 2: “dicendum quod virtutes humanae sunt circa passiones, scilicet virtutes hominum in hoc mundo conversantium. Sed virtutes eorum qui plenam beatitudenem assequuntur, sunt absque passionibus.” Cf. Quaestiones de Virtutibus Cardinalibus 1.4: “Dicendum, quod in patria manent virtutes cardinales, et habebunt ibi alios actus quam hie.” 47 ST 1–2.61.5, ad 3: “…dicendum quod deserere res humanas ubi necessitas imponitur, vitiosum est: alias est virtuosum.” 48 Augustine’s words are from De Civitate Dei 19.19. 49 ST 1–2.61.5, corpus: “…quaedam sunt virtutes transeuntium et in divinam similitudinem tendentium: et hae vocantur virtutes purgatoriae. Ita scilicet quod prudentia omnia mundana divinorum contemplatione despiciat, omnemque animae cogitationem in divina sola diregat; temperantia vero relinquat, inquantum natura patitur, quae corporis usus requirit; fortitudinis autem est ut anima non terreatur propter excessum a corpore, et accessum ad superna; iustitia vero est ut tota anima consentiat ad huius propositi viam.” 50 Ibid.: “Quaedam vero sunt virtutes iam assequentium divinam similitudinem: quae vocantur virtutes iam purgati animi. Ita scilicet quod prudentia sola divina intueatur; temperantia terrenas cupiditates nesciat; fortitude passiones ignoret; iustitia cum divina mente perpetua foedere societur, earn scilicet imitando. Quas quidem virtutes dicimus esse beatorum vel aliquorum in hac vita perfectissimorum.” Cf. De Virtutibus Cardinalibus 1.4, ad. 7: “dicendum, quod virtutes purgati animi, quas Plotinus definiebat, possunt convenire beads nam prudentiae ibi est sola divina intueri; temperantiae, cupiditates oblivisci fortitudinis, passiones ignorare; iustitiae, perpetuum foedus cum Deo habere.’ Mark Jordan has suggested that in ST 1–2.67.1, Aquinas says that both the purifying and the purified virtues remain in patria (Jordan 1993, 239). In fact, in that question Aquinas says that in patria the “formal” element of the moral virtues remains without the “material” element, and Aquinas’ description of what these virtues are like is consistent with the position articulated in ST 1– 2.61.5, that only purified virtues are had in patria. 51 Gilson 1938, 422: “…should we hold…that there is a divine illumination of the virtues corresponding to the divine illumination of the ways of knowing? That is the key problem of

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morality for Bonaventure, and his solution makes morality exactly parallel with knowledge and binds both of them to their common origin in illumination from above.” 52 John Inglis offers a more detailed historiographical discussion of why such questions themselves need to be called into question (Inglis 1998). Inglis discusses the question of the character and relation of Aquinas’s philosophy and theology, with special attention to ethics, in the final chapter, “The False Dichotomy of Reason and Revelation.” 53 See De Anima, 429b22, 430al7–27, 431bl7–19; see also Nichomachean Ethics 1178a22–24.

References Albertus Magnus. 1987. Super Ethica Commentum et Quaestiones. Edited by W.Kübel. In Opera Omnia, Vols.13 and 14. Minister: Aschendorff. Aquinas, Thomas. 1965. Quaestiones de Virtutibus Cardinalibus. In Quaestiones Disputate, Vol. 2. Turin: Marietti. ——. 1952. Summa Theologiae. Leonine Edition. 4 Vols. Turin: Marietti. Bonaventure. 1947. Collationes in Hexaemeron. In Obras de San Buenaventura, Vol. 3. Edited by L.Amoros, B.Aperribay and M.Oromi. Madrid: Biblioteca de auctores Christianos. Gersh, S. 1986. Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition. 2 Vols. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Gilson, E. 1938. The Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure. Translated by D.I. Trethowan and F.J.Sheed. New York: Sheed and Ward. Inglis, J. 1998. Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy. Leiden: E.J.Brill. Jordan, M. 1993. “Theology and Philosophy.” In The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas. Edited by N.Kretzmann and E.Stump. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Macrobius. 1952. Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. Translated by W.H.Stahl. New York: Columbia University Press. Plotinus. 1961. The Enneads. Translated by S.MacKenna. 3rd ed. rev. B.S. Page. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd. ——. 1855. Plotini Enneades cum Marsilii Ficini Interpretation Castigata. Edited by F.Creuzer and G.H.Moser. Paris: A.F.Didot. Porphyry. 1869. “The Sentences of Porphyry the Philosopher.” Translated by Thomas Davidson. In Journal of Speculative Philosophy 3:46–73. ——. 1975. Sententiae ad intelligibilia ducentes. Edited by E.Lamberz. Leipzig: Teubner.

SECTION SIX THE LATIN RECEPTION

CHAPTER FIFTEEN William of Auvergne and the Aristotelians The Nature of a Servant Michael Miller Introduction William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, was one of the first theologian-philosophers of the thirteenth century to be profoundly influenced by the Greek and Arabic texts entering the Latin West during the latter part of the twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth centuries.1 William’s familiarity with these texts, however, should not imply that he was either especially accepting or critical of the new ideas contained within. Rather, like many in the generation following his, William, as a Christian theologian and Bishop, was quick to correct the ‘Aristotelians’—as he referred to Aristotle and his followers, notably Avicenna—when they contradicted Christian doctrine. Yet, as a philosopher and commentator, William was also quick to recognize when their arguments were valid or their reasoning sound. For example, William writes in his De anima that, “Although in many matters we have to contradict Aristotle, as is truly right and proper, and this holds for all the statements in which he contradicts the truth, still he should be accepted, that is, upheld, in all those statements in which he is found to have held the correct position.”2 This chapter has two major sections. First, I make clear what William has in mind when he insists that ‘nature operates in the manner of a servant.’ This important and often repeated maxim which clarifies for William the relationship between the creator as cause and nature as cause is taken from Avicenna’s principle that “A natural [cause] does not act through choice, but in the manner of one who serves” (Avicenna, Metaphysics 448). William’s careful response concerning rational creatures will be briefly discussed. Second, I illustrate how William repeatedly and ironically employs Avicenna’s nature/servant principle against Avicenna, pointing out where and why Avicenna made erroneous statements. In particular, two areas William believed needed correction are examined: several of Avicenna’s claims about rational souls, especially the ten intelligences, and Avicenna’s support for necessary creation. William’s Definition of Nature As already stated, William believed that nature operates “by necessity, not by freedom, in the manner of a servant who cannot do anything else than he is commanded.”3 First and foremost, this means that according to William a natural cause acts without choice. William argues that natural causes always work in the same manner because they “do not

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have power over their action or freedom or choice for both alternatives.” As an example, William notes that fire, by its very nature, always burns what is combustible, for “it does not have power over heating and not heating, nor freedom to choose both of them; in fact, it must heat the material that comes into contact with it and is receptive of its action.” So it is with all natural causes; they cannot choose to act or not to act (William of Auvergne, Universe IIa-Iae.9;126, Teske). Somewhat surprisingly, Scripture’s account of the burning bush (Exodus 3:2ff) is not a unique example for William of a situation where fire does not do what its nature demands, but rather serves as further proof for William that fire is “by its nature sufficient for burning something combustible presented to it.”4 William claims that fire must actually have the power to burn the bush or Scripture is lying when it claims the burning bush is a miracle. If God changed the potency of the fire in some way and the fire no longer had the power to burn, then the miracle of the burning bush would not be a miracle at all, but simply an illusion which duped Moses (William of Auvergne, Trinity 11; 113, Teske). Since the miracle cannot be an illusion if Scripture is to be believed, the fire must be real fire and naturally have the power to burn. Although William agrees with the Aristotelians that natural causes like fire do indeed have the power to burn, he is very clear that when considered in themselves there is no natural necessity for natural things to act (William of Auvergne, Trinity 11; 114 Teske). In sharp contrast to God’s full freedom and power, natural causes “are able to do nothing against his [God’s] will or beyond it or other than it” (William of Auvergne, Trinity 11; 113 Teske) for all that they “either can do or are is the good pleasure of the creator” (William of Auvergne, Trinity 12; 115 Teske). Just as the work done by a servant does not properly belong to the servant, but to his or her master who ordained the work and gave the servant sufficient power to complete it, the actions resulting from natural causation properly belong only to God’s creative power and will, and not to any natural object itself. William believes that all natural causation is ultimately traced back to God’s power, which “is the cause of nature and of natural dispositions” (William of Auvergne, Trinity 12; 117 Teske). Although William clearly recognizes that living creatures generate other living creatures, he notes that such activity cannot originate with any creature since the creature cannot share esse out of itself or out of what is its own. Hence, generation “is a path for other things to get being (esse), not as a giver, but as a messenger in some way conveying being (esse), especially if it received it in order to give it. For that is the definition of one who gives as a servant, that is, bearing the gift of another” (William of Auvergne, Trinity 12; 116 Teske). Thus, since only God is the source of all natural causation as its creator, all “other things are merely messengers and bearers of the last things received as if sent from the creator” (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-Iae.26; 92, Teske). Just as the strength of the sun forces rays to illumine objects near it, and one wave impels another to flow further, William argues that God, as the source of all being (esse), is also the source of all activity. Therefore, natural objects do not have the power to act, “except to the extent that possibility is filled to overflowing by the influx of the first source” (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-Iae.11; 114, Teske). The analogy of gift-giver and messenger further clarifies for William the difference between God’s causality and that of his creation. William believes that when any creature acts it is bearing God’s gift to others and not acting on its power alone, just as the

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messenger does not truly give the gift but the one who hired the messenger to deliver the gift, regardless of who actually places the gift in the hands of the recipient. William emphasizes this point, stressing that: …a servant in the manner of a servant can do nothing in an operation by himself: I mean in an operation which he does in this way. Nor can he stop doing it by himself or speed it up or add or lessen anything in it. Such an operation, then, in terms of its being and non-being, totally consists in the good pleasure of the one who commands—both with regard to its being and its non-being, with regard to its acceleration and it retardation, and with regard to everything else that belongs to it. It should be attributed and credited to him alone, and in our conduct we preserve this very thing, as if interpreting the servitude of nature and the command of the creator over nature. To him alone we offer thanks for the service of his servants, for by his good pleasure and command alone they are offered to us. So too, we return thanks to those who send us gifts, not to those who bear them, and we consider ourselves in debt and obligated to them alone in return for such gifts or services. (William of Auvergne, Universe IaIIae.30; 197, Teske) For these reasons William notes that it is wrong for the Aristotelians to talk “as if God left these natures to themselves and does not restrain, control and order them by the care of his governance and as if they could do something by themselves.”5 Their failure to recognize that “nature’s total power is completely subject to divine choice” (William of Auvergne, Universe IIa-Iae.11; 113, Teske) illustrates most clearly that they “have forgotten what they rightly said, namely that nature does not operate according to choice and will, but in the manner of a servant” (William of Auvergne, Universe IIa-Iae.11; 112, Teske). Thus, William concludes that strictly speaking, all actions and accomplishments of natural causes are completely subject to God’s command and generosity; if God does not give the natural cause the means and reason to act, then the natural cause cannot act. Although William is certain that his conclusion is sound, he is obviously aware that many might disagree. However, William believes that the error belongs to his critics, for they mistakenly believe secondary causes are primary causes. For example: Someone might perhaps say that the lighting of a house is due to the window, but one should not say this even though the lighting of a house needs a window. Rather one should say that illumination is due to the sun which is comparable to what is first, just as it is due to the window which is comparable to what is second. For intermediate natures are certain paths and windows of all the outflowings descending from the first, but not causes, unless we use the name of cause somewhat improperly. (William of Auvergne, Universe IIa-Iae.11; 114–15, Teske) With this image in mind, William concludes that God alone is truly worthy of the title ‘cause,’ and all other things called causes, even by the philosophers, are simply causes in terms of sense knowledge.6

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William’s arguments for the total dependence of nature upon God made many others in the Thirteenth and Twentieth centuries imagine that William doubted that created things were even secondary causes.7 I grant that William’s strong language and forceful examples could easily lead many to reach this conclusion. However, I think that such criticism is unfounded. Although I do not have the time to address this point in detail,8 I believe that William’s arguments against Avicenna’s doctrine of necessary emanation overshadowed William’s explanation of how created things can be causes in a world dominated by God’s will. In fact, it is clear that William believed that created things are real causes. For example, in addition to William’s claim already discussed about the miracle of the burning bush, in which the fire “with its nature completely intact” actually ensures the miracle (William of Auvergne, Trinity 11; 74, Teske), William provides in his De universo some wonderful examples of the remarkable powers which belong to natural creatures: sting rays numb the hand of those who touch them, sucking fish force ships to remain stationary, and basilisks kill by their look alone (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-IIae.32; 199, Teske). William believes that these remarkable effects—numbing, holding back, and killing—do indeed belong to these creatures, and not solely to God. Natural causes are causes, but ultimately they are not free causes which can act differently than they naturally act, which is due to God’s creative power. Rational Creatures as Servants With great care, William discusses in what manner one part of God’s creation—that is, rational souls—act and do not act as servants. Without a doubt, William walks a very fine line here. He repeatedly claims that rational souls, unlike natural causes, are free to act or not to act. Yet, he also repeatedly states that those same free beings remain God’s servants, which he earlier defined as those who cannot act other than as commanded by God to act. One appropriately may ask, can William rightly maintain both that God alone is cause of all things and that rational creatures act freely? It should be noted that William clearly believes that rational beings, unlike nonrational natural causes, have the ability to make choices, and hence, do not operate with the necessity common to nature. Along with both ancient and Christian authors William argues that if human beings “were not free, but carried along by servile necessity, like the concupiscible power and the irascible power of the other animals,” then each person would live with the moral accountability commonly attributed to animals (William of Auvergne, Trinity 3.7; 24, Teske). As a result no blame or merit could be assigned to any human action. Likewise, laws would not be made or followed, for no one could do other than what they are naturally able to do. William soundly rejects such conclusions because they contradict common experience and Scripture. Therefore, for William, rational souls must be truly free beings. This does not mean, however, that William believes that rational souls do not also operate in some manner as servants. Indeed, he goes to great lengths to clarify that although rational beings are free, no creature—not even rational souls—are able to act with the full freedom of the creator. Lacking this freedom, all creation is dependent upon God as a servant to his or her master. Borrowing heavily from the Fons vitae,9 William argues that since created beings “have nothing which they have not received from the

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creator” their very ability to act is due to the fact that “they are vessels of the outpouring and overflowing of the first font”—who is God (William of Auvergne, Universe IaIae.26; 92, Teske). William believes that God, as the source of being, not only creates each thing by filling it with his being, like water filling a bucket, but that the overflowing of being, which is his goodness, allows created things to be causes. Just as a riverbed filled by springs overflows into valleys, so too “in that way all these things which are called causes, having been filled by the outpouring of the first and universal springs, carry or pass on what is beyond their capacity to other things” (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-Iae.26; 93, Teske). Thus, for William, even free beings never completely act independently from God. Therefore, they ultimately remain his servants. And yet, the causation of rational creatures is different from that done by non-rational creatures, for the former are “not activities of the creator which he does through himself, as operations of nature which are servile and in the manner of a servant, as you have often heard. Rather, they are according to his good pleasure and from the ultimate degree of freedom.”10 Therefore, William argues that God’s generous creativity alone establishes what each created being, including free, rational beings, can and cannot do. William goes on to explain how this creative act allows rational souls to act voluntarily, yet in the manner of a servant. He writes: Every intellective power is illuminated by its most noble and greatest intelligible object and is set afire with love for it, and these two are the first outpourings of the object upon the intellective power. From these two outpourings there flow from it, as a result, the operations of servitude, and services by which it knows that it pleases such an object of knowledge and love or with regard to which it considers itself in debt to such an object of knowledge and love. And this has no opposition except where some evil perverts an intelligent substance of this sort. It is, then, evident to you that as a result of such love and knowledge there proceed praises and acts of thanksgiving and chosen services toward such an object of knowledge and love. (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-IIae.29; 196, Teske) Therefore, rational souls are God’s free servants because rational souls recognize their debt and dependence upon God and freely choose to serve the most knowable and most lovable object, who is God. For this reason, Fr. Roland Teske notes, “there is every reason to read William as saying that the being of each thing is not a created act of being, but the very essence or being of God, by which each thing is. If one may sum up his view in a Berkeleian sort of tag, Creaturis esse est adhaerere Deo: For creatures to be is to adhere to God” (William of Auvergne, Trinity 25). Against the libertarian notion of freedom, William suggests that rational creatures do not prove their freedom from God when they choose not to serve God, but rather their ignorance and the enslavement of their lower appetites. No longer acting as rational creatures, the human that rejects God does not become more free, but less human. In fact, William infers that a sinner acting through his or her attraction to sin acts in the manner more appropriate of a natural cause—that is more like a servant to his or her sinful nature—than in the manner of a real free being which can choose to serve God.

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William’s Correction of Avicenna The great irony of William’s use of Avicenna’s principle that ‘nature operates in the manner of a servant’ is that William so often uses this expression in his De trinitate, De universo, and De anima to correct Avicenna. His corrections cover a wide variety of topics, including the free will of rational creatures, and arguments against necessary emanation and the eternality of the world. William repeatedly uses Avicenna’s nature/servant principle in De universo to correct several errors in Avicenna’s description of the ten intelligences. For instance, although William praises the Aristotelians for teaching much of what is true about the intelligences, he wants to prove that the intelligences are not only prefect in their knowledge, as Avicenna knew, but that they also possess a perfect love. This perfection, however, is not absolute like God’s perfection, but one which is “perfect in relation to the appropriateness of their level and rank” (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-IIae.2; 141, Teske). William argues that either an intelligence loves its act of knowing or it does not. If it does, the intelligence receives delight in knowing and loves the one who gives it what it has received. Thus, William’s point is proven, for if it is shown that an intelligence loves God, it would do so according to its natural perfection. However, if the intelligence does not love its own act of understanding then a contradiction follows, for it would then not make use of its knowledge for its own good, but would use its own thinking no differently than the sun sheds it rays or fire its heat, that is, “necessarily in the manner of a servant” (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-IIae.2; 143, Teske). Yet, such a use of understanding is impossible, for as William notes one who understands does so for no one but himself.11 Since one disjunct is rejected, the other must remain: the intelligences must have a perfect knowledge and love. William goes on to attack Avicenna’s claim that each intelligence only knows and loves the intellect which is properly its beloved. William knows that Avicenna must be wrong about this, because if an intelligence did not look to its creator, but focused its attention only upon its beloved, such a love would be perverse and give great offense to God. But a natural love cannot be perverse since what is natural is what God commands. Therefore, each intelligence must know more than just its beloved. William defeats an objection to this conclusion by again referring to Avicenna’s nature/servant principle. He writes that Avicenna’s position is not helped by saying “the love of such souls for their own intelligences is natural and that the desire to become like them is likewise natural,…if he understands ‘natural’ as necessary or servile, as I explained to you in the preceding parts” (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-IIae.4; 149, Teske). Finally, William refers to Avicenna’s nature/servant principle in his De anima to prove the proper relationship between the powers of the soul, especially the intellect and the will. William is very concerned that this relationship be explored, because he believed that his predecessors mistakenly focused only upon the intellect, and did not properly concern themselves with the will. Concerning this oversight, William writes: It is the source of no small wonder that Aristotle and his followers, the Greek and Arab philosophers, have investigated with marvelous interest and care the intellective power which is far less noble. But they seem not only to have neglected this present power, but also to have not cared about

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it at all, since they did not consider that they should mention it, except perhaps in those books which they are said to have written on morals and the virtues. But in their books which they wrote on the soul and its powers and operations, they left to posterity all but nothing on this power, though they were able to have knowledge of it, since in its rectitude and perfection lies the beauty and dignity of human life. For this reason they should have pursued it with more interest and more care than the others to the extent that they could think it higher and more noble. (William of Auvergne, De anima 3.7.95a: 27, Teske) William defines the relationship between the intellect and the will in the human soul in reference to a law of nature—that the one that rules is greater than the one ruled, as a master rules a servant. William explains that the will: …has command and holds the position of emperor and king in the whole human being and in the human soul. Hence, just as an emperor or king is more excellent and loftier in his whole kingdom in power, dignity, and office, so both in the human being and in the human soul this power bears the clear likeness of a kingdom or empire, as you have heard. Hence, this power is necessarily the most noble and most excellent both in the human being and in the human soul, I mean, by the right and law of nature. After all, just as, when it [the will] is trod down in shameful servitude by vices and passions, nothing is more vile than it, so when, free from them and upright, it properly rules in its kingdom and empire, and nothing is more excellent in that kingdom and empire, nothing more worthy of glory and honor, nothing more acceptable to the creator. (William of Auvergne, De anima 3.8.95a–95b; 28, Teske) Therefore, the intellective power “is subject to it [the will] by the law and right of nature, and for this reason [the will] does as its command everything it can” (William of Auvergne, De anima 3.8.95b; 28, Teske). Just as a counselor cannot refuse to assist his king because of the law of the kingdom, so too the intellect must serve the will as its handmaid.12 William concludes: Hence, the former power [the will] is more excellent and more noble and higher than the latter. Hence, the knowledge of the latter, that is, of the intellective power or reason, should be less prized. And for this reason knowledge of this noble power of command should be preferred to the knowledge of the intellective power to the extent that it is clearly better and more noble that the handmaid. (William of Auvergne, De anima 3.8.95b; 28, Teske) Thanks to William’s understanding of the Avicennian nature/servant principle William attempts to prove to Avicenna what Avicenna failed to fully understand about his own principle, namely, that the intellective power, which is so praised by Aristotle and

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Avicenna, is actually less noble than the will and therefore must serve the will as a servant serves his master. William also used the nature/servant principle to correct several points associated with Avicenna’s understanding of creation. He was especially critical of Avicenna’s belief in necessary emanation,13 for according to William such a doctrine suggests that God must have necessarily created the first intelligence, and that each of the ten intelligences must have the power within themselves to create another. William is firmly opposed to any suggestion that God necessarily created. In fact, William believes such a conclusion reveals a serious misunderstanding about the true relationship between God and nature, that which is created. William comments that those who hold such a position “detract much from the glory and magnificence of the creator and attribute more than is fitting of might and power to the previously mentioned substances” (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-Iae.26; 84, Teske). William refers back to Avicenna’s master/ servant distinction in one of his many arguments against this error, and, once again, reminds Avicenna of the meaning of his own principle. William writes: if he [God] did not operate in creation by his choice and supereminent freedom, but in accord with the order which these people suppose, he would undoubtedly have operated in the manner of nature. But this manner, as you have learned, is the manner of a servant and of one not choosing with ultimate freedom both the manner of operation and his operation. (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-Iae.26; 86, Teske) By contrasting operating in ‘the manner of a servant’ with ‘choosing with ultimate freedom’ William further clarifies how God and his creation differ; whereas all creatures, including the ten intelligences, are completely subject to God’s will and thereby act without freedom or choice, there is no necessity in God’s willing. William’s point is not just that God cannot be forced to create, for that would involve simply freedom from coercion, but that it is up to God to choose to create or not to create. Unlike all of nature, God is (1) not coerced by something else, and (2) is not necessitated by his nature, but (3) freely chooses to act or not to act, to do this or to do that. Avicenna’s distinction is also used to defeat one of the three Avicennian arguments for an eternal universe discussed by William.14 In brief, the argument runs as follows: if a voluntary agent is not to be different in will, knowledge or power before or after he acts, and if the agent has the same obstacles or helps in both situations, it is necessary that the agent either never begins to act or was acting before.15 Otherwise, Avicenna asks, what reason or cause could there be to explain why the agent acts now rather than later. Yet, since God is uniquely immutable in every respect and since there was nothing before he created the universe to help or impede his creation, God must be the same in every respect from eternity as when he created the world. The argument concludes, “Hence, it is necessary that the creator created the world as soon as he existed, that is to say, from eternity.16 Although William provides several different arguments against Avicenna’s view that the universe is co-eternal with God, I will limit my comments to those based upon what William has learned about God and nature from Avicenna. Namely, that whereas natural causes change when they act—either in themselves or in their relationship to the objects

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they acted upon—the creator “acts through a will that is most free and most dominant and immutable in every respect, and on this account his effects are joined to him when he wills and are separated from him when he wills” (William of Auvergne, Universe IIaIae.9; 127, Teske). Because God, unlike his creation, is absolutely free, William argues that: …it is not necessary that he act or begin to act, except when he wills. And notice that it is possible that the creator now will something, but he could have not willed it without any change of his will. In us, however, just the opposite is necessarily the case, and you learned this elsewhere. On account of this Avicenna was mistaken on this point, and so too was Aristotle, for they did not see that the creator could will something and could not will it without any change of his will.17 Thus, by noting that the creator is not necessarily tied to his effects by his relationship to them, William rejected Avicenna’s argument for an eternal universe by using Avicenna’s own principle against him. Conclusion Even a reading of three books of William’s massive Magisterium divinale et sapientiale makes it clear that William knew well the teaching of Aristotle and Avicenna, and that he often relied upon their arguments to prove his points. From the first chapters of De trinitate throughout De universo and De anima William’s most philosophical arguments depend in large part upon Avicennian metaphysics. Such a dependence is well illustrated by the importance William placed upon Avicenna’s maxim that nature operates in the manner of a servant. William proceeded, however, to use this same principle against his teacher Avicenna, pointing out in a variety of circumstances when Avicenna and the other Aristotelians’ failed to correctly apply the nature/servant principle to their own philosophy. Interestingly enough, although the principle provides William with the essential attribute of nature, that nature acts without choice, William often uses the principle to prove both the freedom and power of God, as evident in his creative act, and that rational creatures are free servants of his will.18 Notes 1 For a history of William and his works see Roland Teske’s Introduction to his translation of William of Auvergne’s, The Universe of Creatures, 1998. 2 William of Auvergne 1995, De anima 2.12.82b. Divisions refer to chapter, part, and line number. 3 William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-Iae.9; 56. Divisions refer to part, chapter, and page number in translation. 4 William of Auvergne, Trinity 11; 112, Teske. Divisions refer to chapter, and page number in translation. 5 William of Auvergne, Universe II-Iae.11; 113, Teske; cf. Avicenna 1983 9.2.43–48; 462, S.van Reit.

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6 William explains that “in the strict meaning and in truth, he [God] alone is a cause, the intermediate things, and what [the philosophers] have called cause, are causes for sense knowledge. For these things which flow out of the first source do seem to operate, though its outpouring and beginning are not noticed. Thus following their sense knowledge, they call these things causes. Because, then, the creator alone is the source in himself, alone abundant in himself, and alone giving out of himself and out of what is his, it is manifest that he alone is a cause worthy of the name” (William of Auvergne, Trinity 12; 117, Teske). 7 Amato Masnovo believed that Thomas Aquinas had William in mind as his opponent when he asked, “Ultrum aliquid aliud a Deo effeciat aliquam rem?” (Masnovo 1934). James Reilly also makes an argument that Thomas of York believed that William held the position that “even in every natural activity the only efficient agent is God. The creature is but an occasion for the first cause to induce forms into matter” (Reilly 1953, 277). Gilson also believed that William held a subtle form of occasionalism, and wrote that according to William, “In the universal distribution of divine efficacy, God alone is really Cause; creatures are only the channels through which it circulates, when God so wills, and as he wills, until he is pleased to stay its course” (Gilson 1955, 255). Likewise, Fr. Maurer reports that William “considers created being so empty and deficient that it cannot exercise true causality. As God is the sole true being, so is he alone truly a cause” (Maurer 1962, 115). 8 See my “William of Auvergne on Primary and Secondary Causality” (Miller 1998). 9 Written by Solomon Ibn Gabirol (also known in the Latin West as Avicebron, Avencebrol, or Avicembrom), William was heavily influenced by this work and it’s Jewish writer, who William praised as “the most noble of all philosophers” (William of Auvergne, Trinity 12; 77–78, Teske). For more on William and Ibn Gabirol, see Caster 1996, 31–42. 10 William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-Iae.8; 155, Teske. In addition to the above argument, William provides additional evidence to illustrate this fact. First, William argues that even in free beings some necessity remains in what they choose to do. For instance, he argues that just as in natural causes which must act if they are the sufficient cause for an effect, so too beings which act voluntarily, for “it is not in their power that they begin to act once the power, knowing, and willing and other dispositions concur” (William of Auvergne, Universe IIa-Iae.9; 127, Teske). Thus, all of creation, including both natural and free causes, must act when the conditions are ready for them to act. Therefore, both natural and free causes act necessarily, that is, as servants. Second, William often repeats that no created thing, even a free being, can be responsible for creation, for all give to another only what they have received from God. For example, after William describes the remarkable powers of sting rays, sucking fish, basilisks and other such creatures, he quickly adds that none of these creatures “generate or creates a substance like itself either in itself or outside itself” (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-IIae.32; 199, Teske). Although servants may be thought by some to be acting according to their own will and power, William believes that the wise will recognize that servants’ actions are not properly their own, but rather belong to the master. Just as a servant’s actions truly belong to the master, so too if one creature generates a second the first does not give any part of its own being to the second, but only passes on being (esse) which it received from God. Therefore, William makes clear that even free causes, like human beings, cannot give esse to another without acting through God’s power and as God’s servant. 11 William recognizes that it is possible to understand for someone else, as a teacher understands for her student, but such a motivation requires the intention and the will to teach, thereby proving his point. 12 For further uses of how William uses the metaphor of the king see Teske 1994. 13 William held that Aristotle and his followers “maintained that the first creature was of necessity single and said that it was the first most noble intelligence and that from it there came…the first heaven and its movement” (William of Auvergne, Universe Ia-Iae.24; Teske, 60).

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14 For a complete study of William’s argument see Teske 1990. 15 William actually works hard to strengthen Avicenna’s argument. Before addressing voluntary agents, William provides the argument in terms of natural causes. He argues:

A pure and true intellect, he [Avicenna] says, bears witness that, if the one essence shall be in all its respects as it was previously when there was not anything from it, that is, when it was not doing anything and making anything and then it does something or makes something, then it of necessity was producing and making it before. Otherwise, he says, how would it now be producing rather than before? Hence, if it was not producing anything before, he is not producing anything now (William of Auvergne, Universe IIa-Iae.8; 119, Teske).

After providing several examples of how natural causes change when they act, William then goes on to prove that the same principle must also relate to any voluntary agent. He writes: For if an artisan who builds a house is exactly as he was before in every respect as when he was not building the house, if he was first not building the house, he is not building it now either, or if he is now building it, he was building it before too. But it is necessary that he receives a new disposition in himself such as the power of acting or the will, knowledge, and art of building, or that he is externally different in some respect than he was. That is to say, he has acquired new resources which he previously did not have, or workers or material without which the house could not be built, or some other impediment was removed, or new help was offered (William of Auvergne, Universe IIa-Iae.8; 119, Teske). 16 William of Auvergne, Universe IIa-Iae.8; 120–1, Teske. The relevant passage reads: “Because the blessed creator was in every respect the same before he created the world or before the world came from him as he was in the moment of time in which he created it, since he did not create it before, he did not create it then, or if he created it then, he necessarily created it before. It is evident that the creator was from eternity in every respect just as when he created the world, since he is in the ultimate degree of immutability in every respect, and he has no external help or impediment in any way, since there was nothing before the creation of the universe that could either help or impede him. And in general, since there was nothing at all apart from it, it is impossible that the universe itself or the world be understood as either helping or impeding its own creation. Hence, it is necessary that the creator created the world as soon as he existed, that is to say, from eternity.” 17 William of Auvergne, Universe IIa-Iae.9; 127, Teske. William continues to argue: “For the creator knows that something will be, though it is possible that it will not be. But if it turned out that it will not be, then the creator in truth now would not know that it will be. Hence, the creator knows something, though it is possible that he not know it now, and this happens without any change which is produced in him or in his knowledge, and this is what they did not notice in the blessed creator.” 18 Special thanks to Fr. Roland Teske, S.J., Marquette University, for his assistance and comments on an early draft of this chapter, as well as participants at the Baker Colloquium on Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Medieval Philosophy, hosted at the University of Dayton

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(April, 1999), and the Thirty-Fourth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI (May, 1999), where parts of this chapter were initially read.

References Avicenna. 1983. Metaphysics 9, in Avicenna Latinus: Liber de Philosophia Prima sive Scientia Divina II. Edited by S.van Reit. Louvain-La-Neuve: Leiden. Caster, Kevin. 1996. “William of Auvergne’s Adaptation of Ibn Gabirol’s Doctrine of the Divine Will.” In Modern Schoolman, 74(1), 31–42. Gilson, Etienne. 1955. History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. New York: Random House. Masnovo, Amato. 1934. Da Guglieluo D’Anvergne a San Tommaso D’Aquino. Milan: Societa Editrice “Vita e Pensiero.” Maurer, Armand. 1962. Medieval Philosophy. New York: Random House. Miller, Michael. 1998. “William of Auvergne on Primary and Secondary Causality.” In Modern Schoolman, 75(4), 265–277. Reilly, James. 1953. “Thomas of York on the Efficacy of Secondary Causes.” In Mediaeval Studies 15, 225–232. Teske, Roland, S.J. 1990. “William of Auvergne on the Eternity of the World,” The Modern Schoolman 67, 187–205. ——. 1994. “The Will as King over the Powers of the Soul: Uses and Sources of an Image in the Thirteenth Century,” Vivarium 32(1), 62–71. William of Auvergne. 1989. The Trinity, or The First Principle (De trinitate). Translated by Roland Teske, S.J. and Francis Wade, S.J.Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. ——. 1995. De anima. Translated by Roland Teske, S.J. (Unpublished manuscript on file with translator.) Milwaukee. ——. 1998. The Universe of Creatures (De universo). Translated by Roland Teske, S.J.Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Is God a “What”? Avicenna, william of Auvergne, and Aquinas on the Divine Essence1 John P.Rosheger In the De ente et essentia, Aquinas refers to certain philosophers who say that God does not have a quiddity or essence, because his essence is not other than his being (esse) (Aquinas, DEE 5.1; 378, Leonine). And in his commentary on Lombard’s Sentences, Aquinas singles out Avicenna and Maimonides as holding to the notion that divine being (esse) is without essence (Aquinas, Sent. 1.2.1.3; 1:67, Mandonnet).2 Apparently for Avicenna and Maimonides, at least in Aquinas’ estimation, the denial of any real composition with the Godhead has led to the conclusion that God is without an essence or quiddity. Ultimately, God is regarded as being itself (ipsum esse), pure and unalloyed. Moreover, in that William of Auvergne so closely parallels Avicenna on the issue of a divine “whatness,”3 as he was one of the first Schoolmen in the Latin West to appropriate the work of Avicenna, he is sometimes included in Aquinas’ indictment by modern commentators.4 In Aquinas, on the other hand, the formulation for God’s absolute simpleness is particularly significant in that rather than merely deny one part of the metaphysical distinction of esse (to-be) and essence, he affirms both aspects, yet retains, nonetheless, the notion of simplicity by equating them in God (Aquinas, DEE 4–5; 375–79, Leonine).5 Even when God is regarded as being itself (ipsum esse per se subsistens) (Aquinas, ST 1.4.2; 1:22, Marietti), Aquinas never says that God has no essence or “whatness,” but that his being is his essence, or that his essence is simply to-be. Such concern over a divine “whatness” is no small matter. For the denial of a divine essence threatens to reduce the ultimate being to a “blank idea,” to some great-I-knownot-what, or perhaps to some primeval, cosmic force. If God cannot be identified, is there any room for upholding the individual or unique character of such a reality? Moreover, does such talk eliminate a referent? If there is no “what,” then what could one possibly be referring to in speaking of the divine? At issue here is nothing other than the very possibility of traditional theism, maintaining as it does, a personal deity, which manifests various attributes or properties. With no divine referent in place, it can be argued that all that remains is no-theism, a kind of radical theological agnosticism, having the practical effects of a-theism. Or, to look at the issue in another way, if God is found to be

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indistinguishable from the rest of reality, we would inevitably be left with some form of pantheism. In dealing with the above conundrum, both Avicenna and William of Auvergne were confronted by the Neoplatonic tendency to “de-essentialize” the ultimate principle.6 Since at least the time of Plotinus, there has been the struggle of preserving the transcendent character of deity against language or terminology, namely that of essence or form, that would delimit or circumscribe God. How could the ultimate principle be described in “essentialist” terms, when essence or form serves to demarcate the nature or “whatness” of one type of being or entity over another, thereby imposing definition and limitation?7 Evidence Against a Divine “Whatness” Aquinas’ claim that God ultimately is said not to have essence according to Avicenna has textual warrant. In the medieval Latin adaptation of Avicenna’s al-Ilahiyyat (Divine Science) of the Kitab al-Shifa’ (Book of Healing), namely the Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina, Avicenna states, “The first therefore, does not have a quiddity, rather being (esse) flows from it onto those things having quiddity. He himself is denuded being (esse exspoliatum/mujarrad al-wujud), in a condition that negates privations and other properties from him” (PP 8.4 [2:402/A347]).8 In the present context, Avicenna speaks of quiddity (quidditas/mahiyya) as being distinct or aside (praeter) from anity (anitas/“whetherness”) (PP 8.4 [2:401/A347]).9 Here, the term “anity” has to do with being. As such, Avicenna views the being (esse/wujud) of something that is created as extrinsic to its quiddity. Avicenna explains, “Therefore, everything having quiddity is caused. Other things, with the exception of necessary being, have quiddities which are through themselves possible beings (mumkinat al-wujud), to which being does not happen except extrinsically” (PP 8.4 [2:402/A347]). Being (esse), then, is not part of the quiddity of a composite thing. Rather, it is derived from the first existent and is added to the “whatness” of that thing. Accordingly, quiddity can be understood independently of whether it exists.10 Yet, quiddity (mahiyya), insofar as it is understood as distinct from anity (anniyya) or being (esse/wujud), cannot be applied to the divine. As Avicenna states, “For I say that the necessary being is not able to have a quiddity that accompanies (comitetur) the necessity of being (necessitas essendi)” (PP 8.4 [2:399/A344]). Avicenna supplies a number of reasons for why a quiddity that is other than being (esse) cannot pertain to the necessary being. As suggested above, a quiddity which stands aside (praeter) from being (esse) would imply a reality that has a cause for its being. Yet, Avicenna had argued earlier that the necessary being is without cause (PP 1.6 [1:44/A38]). Furthermore, inasmuch as the distinction of quiddity from being entails composition, it cannot relate to the utterly simple character of the divine (PP 8.4 [2:399/A345]; cf. 8.4 [2:402/A3471). There is additional evidence for Avicenna’s denial of a divine “whatness.” In reasoning that God is without a genus, Avicenna again states in the Liber de philosophia prima that primary being is without quiddity, “Also, the first does not have a genus. For the first does not have a quiddity, and as it does not have a quiddity, it does not have a genus. For a genus answers to the question: What is it?” (PP 8.4 [2:402/A347]). Avicenna goes on to note that the first existent cannot be defined for the simple reason that a

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definition requires a genus and differentia (PP 8.4 [2:403/A348]). The difficulty in attributing a genus to the necessary being is that it possesses no likeness to anything else with which it could share a genus. To define the necessary being would be to subjugate it to some common or shared property, thereby forfeiting its unique status (PP 8.5 [2:411/A354]). In a later chapter, Avicenna explicitly rejects the possibility of comparing the finite realm with primary being, “It is therefore now clear that the first does not have a genus nor a quiddity nor a quality nor a quantity nor a time nor a place nor a comparison to it nor a contrary,…” (PP 8.5 [2:411/A354; cf. 9.1 [2:434/A354]). Given the absence of a shared domain between the first existent and the rest of reality, Avicenna, then, very much in the manner of Plotinus, recognizes that the divine cannot be captured quidditatively. For these reasons, Avicenna limits all of our so-called divine attributes to privations and relations (PP 8.5 [2:411/A354]; cf. 8.4 [2:398/A344]). In the Liber de philosophia prima, he comments, “Moreover, when his (the first’s) reality (certitudolhaqiqa) is established, it is established only according to being (anitatem), by the negation of similarities from it and by the affirmation of relations to it, since everything that is, is from it, and what is from it does not have anything in common with it” (PP 8.5 [2:411/A354]; cf. 8.4 [2:398/A344]; 8.7 [2:430/A367]). As Ian R.Netton explains, “… God is basically unknowable and should only be described in negative terms, and that any ‘positive’ attributes are attributed relatively and reflect an idea or thought in the mind of the thinker, rather than the reality of the essence of God” (Netton 1989, 155).11 Avicenna also reflects the inclination by Neoplatonists to view the ultimate principle in non-substantial terms. In the al-Ilahiyyat (Divine Science) of the Danish nama-i alai (Scientific Knowledge), Avicenna contends that the necessary being is not a substance (jawhar/ousia) (Avicenna, Metaphysica 25; 56–57, Morewedge).12 In the Liber de Avicenna notes that even if one were to define substance philosophia prima (substantia/jawhar) as what is “not in a subject” (non in subjecto), necessary being would still not be considered a substance. For whatever is “not in a subject” minimally presupposes a “whatness,” quiddity, or genus, if we are going to talk about or refer to it as “not being in a subject.” However, the “whatness” of necessary being (wajib al-wujud/ necesse esse) is “being” (esse) itself. Yet, Avicenna holds that being (esse) cannot be contained in a genus. Therefore, the first cannot be considered a substance (jawhar). Moreover, the phrase “not in a subject” serves only to eliminate the possibility for accidental being. In only indicating what something is not, the phrase says nothing positively about what a divine substance would involve (PP 8.4 [2:403–4/A348]; cf. 8.7 [2:430/A367]).13 What is happening here? Does Avicenna’s philosophical theology really discount a divine “whatness”?14 Will Avicenna’s necessary being (wajib al-wujud), in all of its existential purity, exist, but not be a “what”? Before responding to these questions, I would like to set forth William of Auvergne’s position in some detail, so as to both demonstrate how closely the bishop of Paris follows his Arabic source and to review how the problem was developed by a Christian thinker in the Latin milieu. William of Auvergne echoes Avicenna’s denial of a divine quiddity. In his De trinitate, William writes, “Also, it (God) has no quiddity and no definition. For everything definable and explicable in any way is in some sense resolvable and covered” (DT 4.17 [33/79]).15 Instructively, though, this text does not say that God has no essence,

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but rather that he is without quiddity (quidditas) and definition (definitionem). But, perhaps we should look to an earlier, yet related passage which deals with the kind of being evident in God. William explains, “Also it is already clear to you from what went before, that this being (esse) and this being (ens) is most bare, since it has no essential clothing whatsoever. For such clothing is composition, and we have excluded from it all composition and essential causation. I mean clothing such as there is in a species which contains the essence of its genus cloaked with the differences” (DT 3.3 [26/73]). In his typical utilization of imagery, William maintains that God is without essential clothing (circumvestitio essentialis). In other words, divine being cannot be contained in the definitional sphere involving genus, species, and difference, since this would introduce complexity into the ultimo simplicitatis (the ultimate degree of simplicity) which is spoliatissimum ab omni circumvestitione esssentiali (denuded of all essential clothing) (DT 4.1 [27/74]). In addition, William holds that this being (esse) cannot be common, “Hence, it ought to be evident that this being (esse) is in no sense common. It cannot be common and essential because then it would be either a genus or a species or a difference. Each of these can be broken down and is cloaked with essential clothing and is composed; each of these is definable or in some other way explicable” (DT 4.1 [27/74]). Inasmuch as God cannot be defined or made common, he cannot be portrayed as essential. Such an understanding for essentia is corroborated by an earlier passage, where William describes a second determination for the first intention of being (esse). William writes, “In another determination it signifies only that which is signified by a defining expression or by the name of a species. This, then, is what is called the substance (substantia) of a thing, its being (esse) and its quiddity, and this is the being (esse) the definition signifies and expresses. This is called the essence of a thing” (DT 2.1 [20–21/69]).16 For William, then, the essence of a thing (rei essentia) is equated not only with the defining expression (definitiva oratione), but also with quiddity (quidditas). So that when modern commentators read the statement that “God has no quiddity and no definition” (non habet quidditatem nee definitionem), it is somewhat understandable why they would exchange the term “definition” for that of “essence,” and thereby conclude for William that God does not have an essence, particularly when in the very same text William employs the imagery of being covered (vestitum), presumably the covering of circumvestitio essentialis and all the definitional content that such vestments imply. Evidence For a Divine “Whatness” With respect to Avicenna’s discussion of God’s “whatness,” matters are seriously complicated. For in the very same chapter of the (or Liber de philosophia prima) where a divine quiddity (mahiyya) is disallowed, Avicenna suggests that we do not so much deny a quiddity to the first as identify that quiddity with “anitas” (anniyya/“whetherness”), very much in the way that Aquinas would. In other words, God would have no quiddity or essence except his being (esse). As Avicenna writes, “Therefore, the necessary being (esse) has no quiddity (quidditas) except that it is necessary being, and this is anitas” (PP 8.4 [2:401/A346]).17

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The identification of God’s quiddity (mahiyya) with his being (wujud/ anniyya) is consistently maintained throughout the Avicennian corpus. For example, in the al-Risala Avicenna states, “So, if it is established that He has no efficient cause, this leads us to think that His quiddity [mahiyya] is His individual nature [anniyya],… Thus it has been established that the individual nature [anniyya] of Him who is necessary of existence is His quiddity [mahiyya], that He has no efficient cause, and that necessity of existence is for Him what quiddity [mahiyya] is for other things” (Hourani 1972, 78). Elsewhere, Avicenna holds that it would be impossible for the anniyya of the necessary being (wajib al-wujud) to be different from its mahiyya (Avicenna, Metaphysices compendium; 88, Carame). Avicenna, then, does in fact, maintain a divine quiddity (mahiyya), albeit a quiddity that is identified with its anitas. In addition to the identity thesis of mahiyya with anniyya in relation to necessary being (wajib al-wujud), Avicenna links the divine with a quiddity (mahiyya) on other occasions as well. For example, in dealing with various divine attributes, Avicenna conjoins the necessary being to mahiyya (PP 8.7 (2:431/A368).18 However, if there is puzzlement surrounding Avicenna’s use of the term “quiddity” (mahiyya) with respect to the ultimate being, there can be no doubt that the Islamic sage employs other words to designate a divine “whatness.” Avicenna repeatedly applies the terms “dhat” (essentia/essence or self) and “haqiqa” (essentia/nature or reality) to necessary being (wajib al-wujud/necesse esse) (PP 1.7 [1:49/A43]; 8.4 [2:398/A343– 44]).19 In the case of William of Auvergne, there is evidence of a divine “whatness” as well, if not with the designation “quidditas” then with the word “essentia.” Notwithstanding the definitional sense for “essence,” which clearly cannot be applied to divine being, William suggests, in no uncertain terms, that God does have an essence. From the very outset of his metaphysical treatment of the first principle (primo principio), William speaks of a being (ens) whose essence (essentia) is being (esse).20 He comments, “In this way there is also the being whose essence is for it being (esse) and whose essence we predicate, when we say, ‘It is,’ so that it itself and its being (esse), which we assert when we say, ‘It is,’ are one thing in every way” (DT 1.2 [17/65]). William later makes it clear that this description refers to the God of Scriptures (DT 4.16 [33/78]). Evidently, then, there is some sense in which the term “essence” (essentia) can be applied to divine being. At no point in the De trinitate do we find William assuming that God is without an essence simply because his essence and his being are res una per omnem modum (one thing in every way). To the contrary, in Chapter Two of the De trinitate, William reiterates his position that God has an essence, “To this there is one sole exception, where being (esse) is said essentially, because its essence cannot be understood except through being itself (ipsum esse) since the essence and its being (esse) are in every way one thing” (DT 2.2 [21/69]). The exceptional case, of course, is divine being. Its essence (eius essentia) is identified with being itself (ipsum esse). For all other beings, esse is not included in a thing’s essence. But with God, esse is said essentially; so much so, that being (esse) is said to be the proper name of his essence (DT 2.8 [23/71]).21 Indeed, that William depicts God as having an essence finds a thematic representation in the frequently stated formula ens per essentiam (a being through [its] essence).22 An ens per essentiam is indivisible and inseparable in every way (indivisibile et impartibile per omnem modum) (DT 4.2 [27/74]). It is formulaic for the doctrine of absolute

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simplicity. In unpacking this principle, William, who fully acknowledges his dependence on Boethius, contrasts substantial or essential being from that which merely participates in it (DT 1.1 [16–17/65–66]). When predicates are applied to created entities, they express divided being; whereas in God, they indicate a united being. While the term “man” is predicated of human beings, the particular subject cannot be confused with the universal, common predicate of humanity. Man is said to participate in humanity; he possesses the quality of “humanness.” God, on the other hand, is to be identified with whatever attribute is predicated of him.23 For instance, when predicating the quality “good” of man, it becomes apparent that a man is one thing, and a good man another thing. But when attributing the same predicate to God, there is no distinction between subject and predicate; God is goodness itself. Whereas God is good essentially, man is only good by participation. Such a position, then, holds that there is not any real ontological distinction between God’s substance and his attributes or qualities.24 What is more, God does not participate in esse; it is of his very nature or essence to-be (esse). While the being (esse) of something created is from the things of which it is composed, divine being is not indebted to or determined by anything outside itself. Consequently, God is a being (ens) by way of his essence (ens per essentiam). There can be no denial, then, that essentia is properly applicable to divine being. Far from not having an essence, it is clear that God’s essence is being itself (ipsum esse), an ens per essentiam. The Paradoxical Mode of Discourse The preceding texts of William, then, leave us with a particular interpretive quandary. For on the one hand, there is little doubt that essentia bears a definitional sense, which is entirely inadmissible with respect to divine being, given the delimiting character of definitions. On the other hand, notwithstanding the fact that God is said to be absolutely simple in his being, it is just as certain that he has an essence, as captured in the pithy formula ens per essentiam. At this juncture, what can be said? Resolution to the above conflict is found in recognizing that there are at least two distinct senses for the term “essence” operating in the De trinitate. William himself states, “[Such being], then, cannot be common and essential, though it is essential. Since in this intention being (ens) is said ‘through its essence’ as singular,…” (DT 4.5 [28/75]). In moving beyond a mere surface contradiction, wherein William posits some reality, namely God, as having being (esse) both as an essential feature, and in another sense not, it becomes apparent that there are two rather different ways for understanding essentia. While God cannot be common (and thereby essential in the definitional sense), it is necessary that he be a hoc aliquid (literally a “this something”) (DT 4.3 [27/74]). Such an expression gives a decidedly entitative outlook with respect to divine being. In some sense, God is considered a substance. When William speaks of the two kinds of determination for the first intention of being (esse), a twofold sense for essentia is witnessed. On the one hand, there is the definitional usage for the term as indicated above. But, William also associates the first determination of the first intention for being with the terms “substance” and “essence.” William states, “You should know that being (esse) has two intentions. One of them is what is left from the variety of accidents that clothe it. This is what is properly called the essence or substance, and in this intention

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there is grasped along with this sort of determination the intention that is all being (esse)” (DT 2.1 [20/68]). Apparently, then, the term “essence” can also refer to that aspect of being (esse) which is stripped of all clothing (circumvestitione). In a passage from his De universe, William utilizes the terminology of entitas (entity) in describing what is left after all accidental and substantial forms have been abstracted or removed (William of Auvergne, De universo 1.30; 1:625, Hotot). It is not entirely clear what William has in mind with this “bare” character of esse, to which he appends the designation “essence” and “substance.” On this point, Roland J.Teske conjectures: I suspect that he means the essence or substance stripped of all the forms that come to it; these forms include in Socrates, for example, the form by which he is an individual, as well as those by which he is rational, animal, and body; thus one is left with substance and “his being or entity…with which the Creator first clothed him.” This intimate and bare entitas may be what William means by “all being (omne esse),” namely, the least formal determination of whatever is not nothing (Teske and Wade 1989, 10). In any case, we have for William a sense of “essence” where it is not determined by the delimiting complexion of definitions and quidditative concerns. In William’s own words, “His [God’s] essence in the order of essences is the highest and first, fixed and remaining in itself, in repose and most undisturbed by the tumult of changes” (DT 4.16 [33/78]). It is an essence not subject to the qualifications of accidental and substantial forms which function at the definitional level. In the case of Avicenna, it is difficult to envisage how the conflicting data over a divine “whatness” may be reconciled. A number of strategies have been proposed. One possible tactic would be to minimize certain aspects of the evidence. Judy, for example, takes the view that quiddity (mahiyya) can in no way be applied to the divine. He writes, “Avicenna does not admit that in God, the necessary being, there is any quiddity which could be identified with his existence. The notion of quiddity, for him, has no place in the first principle” (Judy 1975b, 561). As demonstrated above, however, the term “quiddity” (mahiyya) is applied to the first existent on too many occasions to justify Judy’s assertion.25 Judy, though, does go on to note that for Avicenna there are a number of other Arabic terms that express God’s essence. Hence, if there is a complete denial of a divine quiddity (mahiyya) for Avicenna, this negation does not imply that there is not a divine “whatness.” Such terms as “dhat” (essentia) and “haqiqa” (nature) would more than adequately serve to convey a divine essence. It is only the designation “mahiyya” a term which in Judy’s mind invariably implies a distinction between the being (esse) of an entity and its quiddity, that cannot be applied to the divine. Hence, Judy points out that “it is an oversimplification to claim on the basis of his rejection of quiddity in God, that Avicenna held a doctrine of ‘esse sine essentia’” (Judy 1975b, 562).26 As the Latin West did not insist on this type of precision, Aquinas would employ the expressions “essentia” and “quidditas” interchangeably (Judy 1975b, 562). For Judy, then, the issue is not so much over a fundamental disagreement in doctrine between Aquinas and Avicenna, as it is over a different conception of what the technical term “quiddity” entails. For Aquinas,

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the term can have broader connotations. It can be identified with God’s being (esse) without necessitating composition. Quiddity does not have to be understood simply as that which is distinct from or other than being. As such, the word legitimately can be predicated of the divine (Judy 1975b, 572). Another conceivable interpretation is for us to admit that there is evidence for a divine quiddity in Avicenna, insofar as that quiddity is identified with the being of God, yet go on and maintain that Avicenna, albeit in a puzzling manner, uses that very thesis of identity as the basis for ultimately rejecting God’s quiddity. Both Macierwoski and Gilson take this viewpoint. As such, Aquinas’ allegation against Avicenna is regarded, in the final analysis, as textually warranted (Macierowski 1988, 84–85; Gilson 1963, 138– 40). Unfortunately, however, Macierowski declines to bring out the fact that Aquinas’ objection against Avicenna is that the Islamic philosopher denies the necessary being an essence (essentia). Yet, no text in Avicenna expresses a denial of essentia (dhat), only quidditas (mahiyya). Even so, it is not clear why the interpreter of Avicenna would rush to such an unfavorable reading for the term “quiddity.” Rather than view the juxtaposition of the premise, namely that God’s quiddity is being itself, and the conclusion, namely that God therefore has no quiddity, as self-effacing, is it not possible to interpret the designation “quiddity” (mahiyya) in a twofold sense? The identification of two different understandings for Avicenna’s mahiyya is precisely the path taken by Goichon and Flynn (Goichon 1937, 344; Flynn 1973–74, 54–55). Certainly, the term “mahiyya,” to the extent that it involves the composition of quiddity and being, cannot refer to the first existent. Yet, insofar as the quiddity of God is recognized as identical to being itself, a maneuver that removes any semblance of multiplicity or dependency from the divine, mahiyya can apply to the necessary being. All the “non habet quidditatem” statements of the Liber de philosophia prima occur in the context of where quiddity is considered distinct and aside (praeter) from being (esse) or anity (anitas/ anniyya). For Avicenna, though, a divine “whatness” must be affirmed in explicit terms; hence the designation “mahiyya,” but only on condition that such nomenclature not introduce any traits that are at odds with the makeup of the necessary being. Quiddity as applied to God remains unique. A quiddity that is identical with being itself demarcates a reality that is not shared or made common with anything else. So, when it comes to the divine, Avicenna has chosen not to back away from the expression “quiddity.” Yet, given how the term is generally understood with respect to composite beings, this persistence on the part of Avicenna obviously generates a great deal of tension. But, that uneasiness must be maintained, otherwise the philosophical theologian runs the risk of trivializing the “whatness” of God. In comparing the respective viewpoints of Avicenna and William of Auvergne on the question of a divine “whatness,” a number of similarities are evident. For both individuals, the way in which quiddity is applied to creatures cannot be predicated of the divine—hence, the phrase “none habet quidditatem.” The quiddity of a created thing, which stands apart (praeter) from its being (esse), implies causal dependency, composition, and a shared or definable reality, none of which can pertain to divine being. In corroborating this outlook, William follows Avicenna in denying the substantiality of God, inasmuch as the divine cannot be made common by a genus. Furthermore, in both thinkers, the divine being is “stripped” of all common features. Unlike every other entity, the “whatness” of God cannot be isolated from his being and defined separately. In a

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most unique and “supra-conceptual” manner, the very being of God is viewed as identical to his “whatness.” To the extent, then, that quiddity is associated with the particularizing sphere of the definitional, it cannot refer to God. Avicenna and William would agree with Aquinas that in a certain sense it is improper to say that God has no “whatness” or essence. For to maintain that there is no “what,” thing, substance, or essence is to take away the possibility of referring altogether.27 A reference to no-thing is self-referentially incoherent. To say of something that “it is nothing, or no-thing” invariably locks us into an ontological or entitative framework. Since the pronoun “it” implies a previous name as an antecedent, we cannot even call it, “it.” As Michael Sells comments: In the very act of asserting the nothingness (no-thingness) of the subject of discourse, apophasis cannot help but posit it as a ‘thing’ or ‘being,’ a being it must unsay, while positing yet more entities that must be unsaid in turn. The result is an open-ended dynamic that strains against its own reifications and ontologies—a language of disontology” (Sells 1994, 7). The attempts at removing all ontological considerations from discourse ends up turning back on itself and falling into its own critique. Referring to a “what” is inescapable. The point is that any act of denominating or referring necessarily delimits, including a reference to the unlimited. Paradoxically, then, when it comes to the divine, we talk of what is not a “what.” In some imperfect sense, then, we must speak of the absolute as something. Furthermore, even for Aquinas the expression “essence” must be applied to God differently than to finite beings. While the being of a creature is received and limited by its essence, the divine essence is neither caused nor composed because it is in no way received into something else (nullo modo receptum in aliquo) (Aquinas, Sent. 1.43.1.1–2; 1:1002–6, Mandonnet). However, there is a significant divergence with respect to how the term “quiddity” (quidditas) is applied to divine being by William and Aquinas, from which some of the confusion regarding William’s actual view of God’s essence likely stems. We recall that William does categorically deny that God has a quiddity (non habet quidditatem). We also remember that Aquinas faulted the “philosophers” for their denial that God is without a quiddity or essence. For Aquinas, the terms “quiddity” and “essence” are practically synonymous. Both words answer the question: Quid sit (What is it)? (Aquinas, DEE 1.3; 369–70, Leonine). They both contain a definitional sense, even as with William. But unlike William, they are both extended to divine considerations as interchangeable designations. Not only is God his essence, he is his quiddity (quidditas) as well (Aquinas, SCG 1.21.1; 13:63, Leonine). The differences among Avicenna, William of Auvergne, and Aquinas, though, are only in terminology. For none of them want to place any limitation on or introduce any composition into the being of God. While for William the word “quiddity” retains only definitional connotations, with all of its limiting characteristics, Avicenna and Aquinas give it a double signification in very much the same way that William does for the term “essence.” They are all struggling with the same philosophical difficulty of how the being of God can be referred to, yet somehow remain beyond the parameters of definitional categories and finite modes of conceptualization.28 The motivation for maintaining a

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divine essence (and in the case of Avicenna and Aquinas, a divine quiddity as well) is to avoid reducing primary being to an empty reality devoid of reference and meaning.29 God is in fact a “what.” But his “whatness” need not suppose the complexity, plurality, and limitations of human reason. Given that there are definite limitations when speaking of absolute being, it is difficult, indeed, rather impossible, to fully comprehend what sense essence takes on in the divine. The illimitable abyss separating primary being from the created order dictates a spirit of humility when delineating a doctrine that concerns the transcendent. It should cause us to realize that human categories of thought operate in a radically different way from that of divinity. It is quite understandable, then, that essence or “whatness” is not said of God in the same way as with finite creatures. And while God cannot be conceptually grasped, we may nevertheless be obligated to maintain for ontological reasons a divine essence that stretches beyond the constructs of a finite mind. Even though our knowledge of God is deficient, wherein divine being would stand unintelligible to us, this lack of intellection does not necessarily eliminate a referent. For even an “I know not what” constitutes a “whatness” or referent. Notes 1 Sincere thanks to Fr. Roland J.Teske, S.J., and especially to Prof. Richard C. Taylor for their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter. 2 The references to Avicenna and Maimonides provided in the Latin edition are inaccurate. An older Latin edition ascribes the so-called De intelligentiis to Avicenna. However, as Albert Judy notes, the work is in fact a late twelfth or early thirteenth-century compilation of Christian derivation, originally entitled Liber de causis pritnis et secundis et de fluxu qui consequitur eas. It was assembled from the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena, Avicenna, and the other Liber de causis (Judy 1975a, 361). Notwithstanding its apocryphal character, I find no denial of a divine essence in this work. For the Latin text, see De Vaux 1934, 83–140. The same holds true for the Maimonidean citation (Maimonides, Guide 57–58; 132–37, Pines). At no point does Maimonides deny God an essence, although he does discount the possibility of predicating affirmative attributes to God. 3 Judy remarks, “What is perhaps more striking is the fact that William of Auvergne’s sequence of divine attributes pertaining to God’s simplicity corresponds exactly to a similar sequence in Avicenna’s Metaphysics, VIII, 4. That God is uncaused while everything else is caused, that he is entirely ‘stripped’ of all particularizing differences or accidents, that nevertheless he is not common being, and that he thus had no quiddity or definition are conclusions common to both expositions” (Judy 1975a, 364). 4 Armand A.Maurer, e.g., in a note accompanying his translation of Aquinas’ De ente et essentia, places William of Auvergne, along with Avicenna, in the company of those who deny that God has quiddity or essence (Aquinas, On Being and Essence; 60, Maurer). Elsewhere, Maurer maintains that for William “there is no distinction in God between his essence and his existence: he is existence itself in all purity, so that he has no essence or definition” (Maurer 1982, 114). 5 With Aquinas we can speak of God having essence only if not too much weight is placed on the verb “to have.” For God, properly speaking, does not have various perfections or attributes, but rather is identical to them (Aquinas ST 1.3.4; 1:17, Marietti; SCG 1.21.2; 13:63–64, Leonine). For a helpful account of Aquinas’ views on this matter, see Thomas 1986, 394–408.

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6 Avicenna composed a series of notes on the so-called Theologia Aristotelis, a pseudoAristotelian work which actually represents a paraphrase of Plotinus’ Enneads 4–6. The text (Badawi 1947). For a French translation of this work is published in Aristu of the Arabic text, see Vajda 1951, 346–406. With respect to Avicenna’s use of the Theologia Aristotelis, see Gardet 1951, 333–45; Zimmermann 1986, 183–84; D’AnconaCosta 1996, 139–41. For a general overview of Avicenna’s relationship to Neoplatonism, see Fakhry 1983, 19–31, 107–62. The Plotiniana Arabica, consisting of the apocryphal Theologia Aristotelis, as well as the Dicta sapientis graeci and the pseudo-Farabian Epistola de scientia divina, contains a number of statements attesting to the completely transcendent character of the One. E.g., the first cause is depicted as “only being” (anniyya faqat), without any attribute (sifa) attached to it. It has no shape (hilya) and no form (sura) belonging to it (Dicta sapientis graeci 1.11) (Badawi 1977, 185). For an English translation, see Lewis 1959, 2:281. For a more detailed discussion of this dimension to the Plotiniana Arabica, see Taylor 1998, 223–26; D’Ancona-Costa 1995, 144–46. 7 For example, Plotinus, as the architect of the Neoplatonic system, states, “…the One must be without form [aneideon]. But if it is without form [aneideon] it is not a substance [ousia]; for a substance [ousia] must be some one particular thing, something, that is, defined and limited; but it is impossible to apprehend the One as a particular thing: for then it would not be the principle, but only that particular thing which you said it was” (Plotinus, Ennead 5.5.6.4–8; 5:173, Armstrong). In sharp contrast to Aristotle, Plotinus points to the ultimate principle as “beyond being” (epekeina ousias), and as standing outside of any conceptual framework or claim to knowledge (Plotinus, Ennead 5.4.1.9–10; 2:234, Henry and Schwyzer). 8 Since I am particularly interested in how Avicenna relates to the Latin West, especially with respect to Aquinas’ critique, I will emphasize the Avicenna latintts. I will, however, also incorporate the other Avicennian materials in order to remain faithful to Avicenna’s actual doctrines. For those works of Avicenna that were available to the Latin West, see D’Alverny 1993. With respect to the Arabic text for the above Avicennian citation, see al-Shifa’, alIlahiyyat; Anawati and Zayed. For the non-Arabist, a French translation is available (Avicenna, La métaphysique du Shifa’; Anawati). The numbers in the brackets following the abbreviation “A” refer to the pagination of the Arabic text. References to the Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina will be abbreviated “PP.” Unless otherwise noted, all translations of the Latin are mine. 9 The Arabic term anniyya stands behind the Latin anitas (D’Alverny 1959, 59–91; Frank 1956, 181–201). Without presently involving the reader in a detailed discussion of the etymology for the term “anniyya,” it is enough to note that the word does possesses a close conceptual relationship to the usual Arabic term for being (or existence), namely wujud, although at times it has a more “essential” connotation. For an interesting discussion of the term’s etymology, see Judy 1975b, 572–78. Judy suggests that the term is probably derived from (that), which corresponds to the Greek word “hoti.” Even as the Arabic conjunction with Aristotle’s distinction between to hoti (that something is) and to ti estin (what something is) (Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 89b23–35), so in Arabic anniyya (“whetherness”) is set off from mahiyya (“whatness”). Judy holds that the best rendering for anniyya is “the individual essence, considered an existent” (Judy 1975b, 578). Judy also notes that some scholars have traced the origin of anniyya to the Arabic personal pronoun of the first person, namely, ana (I). “By the addition of the abstract suffix -iyya there would result meaning ‘I-ness.’ Most reject this etymology on grammatical grounds, but there are examples of the use of this word which demand that its meaning tend in this direction. Avicenna’s famous thought-experiment of the suspended man in the De Anima concludes at one point with the remark that, under the given conditions, a man would know ‘the existence of his

as one something” (Judy 1975b, 575). In the passage before

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us, the term anniyya “carries existential overtones in contrast with mahiyya, although it is not precisely equivalent to existence (wujud)” (Judy 1975b, 578). 10 When considering the adventitious character of being (esse/wujud) in Avicenna’s metaphysical program, it is difficult to determine whether its “accidental” nature merely reflects a logical distinction in a finite entity, or whether it is an external property that is really or ontologically other than a thing’s quiddity. Averroes certainly took the latter interpretation; (Averroes, Tahafut al-tahafut 5; 1:179–80, Van Den Berg). Averroes’ reading has been the overwhelming viewpoint of Western scholarship (Goichon 1937; Gilson 1952; De Raeymaeker 1956; Mondin 1975; Elders 1993). However, recent studies have argued that Avicenna regards being (wujud) as a necessary and internal constituent of substances (Rahman 1958, 1–16; 1981, 3–14; Morewedge 1972, 425–35; Cunningham 1974, 185–218; Shehadi 1982; Burrell 1986a, 53–66). Yet, notwithstanding the strong evidence for a logical distinction, such an assessment may be incomplete. Beatrice H.Zedler and Oliver Leaman maintain that Avicenna’s doctrine of emanation ultimately pushes the logical distinction into the ontological realm (Zedler 1976, 504–21; Leaman 1988, 115). Avicenna’s discussion does seem to suggest that an outside factor, taken at the metaphysical level, is a vital aspect in the explanation of the existence of objects in the world. 11 Cf. Flynn 1973–74, 60–62; Avicenna, Metaphysices compendium; 130–31, Carame. Carame’s Latin translation is of the metaphysical section of Avicenna’s Kitab al-Najat. For a later Arabic edition, compare Avicenna, al-Najat; al-Kirdi. is 12 Parviz Morewedge claims that the above passage, besides what is stated in the the only place in the Avicennian corpus where the necessary being (wajib al-wujud) is denied a substance (jawhar) (Avicenna, Metaphysics 125, Morewedge). Such, however, is not the case. Avicenna, e.g., states, “…and He [the necessary being] is neither a substance nor an accident” (Avicenna, 78, Hourani 1972). 13 For a more detailed analysis of the argument, see Judy 1976, 201–8. For some of the paradoxes that arise on account of Avicenna’s denial of a divine substance (jawhar), see Morewedge 1973, 51–54. Avicenna’s denial of substance (jawhar/ ousia) to the first existent would not have alarmed Aquinas. For the Angelic doctor himself closely follows Avicenna in making such a move (Aquinas, SCG 1.25.9–10; 13:77, Leonine). For an in depth look at this feature of Aquinas’ thought in relation to Avicenna, see Judy 1976, 185–208; Gilson 1974, 111–29. Even though the terms substantia and essentia are often used interchangeably in the Latin West, Aquinas is willing to single out the former, never the latter, as not being applicable to the divine in some important sense. Aquinas’ complaint against the Avicennian view of God’s “whatness,” then, cannot be over the non-substantiality of the divine. Interestingly enough, when it comes to the divine, Augustine also reflects a preference for essentia over substantia (Augustine, De trinitate 7.5.16–19; 50:261, Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina). Cf. Teske 1985, 147–63. 14 Some commentators think so. Maurer, e.g., states, “Indeed, Avicenna denies to God an essence, properly speaking, for an essence is communicable to many, whereas God is unique. He alone exists necessarily through himself; he alone is pure existence” (Maurer 1982, 97–98). No doubt with Avicenna in mind, Al-Ghazali argues against the philosophers who hold that because the first is simple, that is, pure being, there is no quiddity or reality to which being is related (Al-Ghazali, Incoherence 8; 118–20, Marmura). Yet, even here AlGhazali acknowledges a position that does not so much deny the divine a quiddity as identify that quiddity with being itself. In other words, God’s quiddity consists in his being necessary. In any case, Averroes later chastises Al-Ghazali for misrepresenting the viewpoint of the philosophers, namely that the first is without a quiddity. The philosophers only deny God the type of quiddity that pertains to other existents. In point of fact, they do not assume an existent absolutely without a quiddity (A399); (Averroes, Tahafut al-tahafut

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8; 1:240, Van Den Bergh). For a profitable discussion of the various Arabic thinkers on the question of a divine “whatness,” see Shehadi 1982, 56–57, 83–85, 111–13. 15 The Latin text of William of Auvergne’s De trinitate is that of Switalski. Translations of the De trinitate are taken from Teske and Wade 1989. References to the De trinitate are abbreviated “DT.” The numbers in the bracket refer to the pages of the Latin and English publications respectively. 16 Here the term substance (substantia) is used synonymously with essence and quiddity. Accordingly, when William denies a divine quiddity, in some sense he entertains the nonsubstantiality of God, corresponding to Avicenna’s own discussion. Both show definite similarities to the epekeina ousias (beyond substance or being) orientation of Plotinus. 17 Earlier in the chapter, there appears a similar statement (PP 8.4 [398–99/A344]); but unfortunately it is rather garbled in the Latin. Edward M.Macierowski, in appealing to the Arabic text, has offered helpful comments for extricating the confusing lines (Macierowski 1988, 81–82). 18 For another instance, see PP 6.1 [2:297–98/A261–62]. This passage has been translated into English by Hyman and Walsh 1973, 250. 19 For the differences in terminology, see Goichon 1938, 82–84, 134–36, 386–87. 20 William attributes this principle to Boethius, “Concerning this matter you read in the book, The Hebdomads of Boethius that ‘every simple has its being (esse) and what it is as one’” (DT 1.3 [17/66]). For further comments on this aspect of William’s thought, see Caster 1995, 108–52; 1996, 320–30. 21 William finds Scriptural justification for this orientation, “Thus it is not without reason that he gave his name to Moses in Exodus III as ‘He Who Is’ (Ex. 3:14), and this testimony of the faith surely suffices for certitude about what we have said” (DT 4.15 [32/78]). 22 The expression “ens per essentiam” occurs at least a dozen times in the fourth chapter of the De trinitate alone. 23 It must be admitted here that for William there are only a few properties that have their true and proper signification in God (William of Auvergne, De universo 2–1.33–34; 1:834–35, Hotot). As Steven P.Marrone explains, “No sooner had William introduced the idea of God as the truth of creation than he began to qualify what he meant. Strictly speaking, God did not represent the truth of all things in the universe but rather of a modest number of objects of the mind. Certain words used to speak about things in the world more properly signified qualities belonging to the Creator Himself, and they found their fullest meaning when applied to Him. Whenever they were used to describe something in creation, they could not be said to have this full meaning, since their referents would then be mere shadows of what they were designed to denominate” (Marrone 1983, 47–48). Cf. Teske 1998, 127–30. 24 In this regard, William stands, of course, in a long theological tradition. Boethius, e.g., takes up this same line of reasoning in his first theological treatise or opuscula sacra, namely the De trinitate, especially in the second and fourth chapters. Cf. Boethius, De trinitate 2, 4; 10, 18–20, Stewart and Rand. For Augustine’s treatment of this theme in the context of God’s simpleness, see Rosheger 1996, 72–83. Augustine’s doctrine rallies around the claim that God is what he has (hoc est quod habet) (Augustine, De civitate Dei 11.10.23; 48:330, Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina). 25 Judy’s interpretation is based largely on a questionable translation of the Latin text. For a review of this difficulty, see Macierowski 1988, 80–82. For Maurer’s denial of a divine “whatness” in Avicenna, see notes 4 and 14. The overwhelming majority of the secondary literature interprets Avicenna as speaking of a divine quiddity (mahiyya). See, e.g., Goichon 1937, 344–46; Gilson 1963, 139; Flynn 1973–74, 54–55; Shehadi 1982, 112–13; Burrell 1986b, 26–27, 29–40; Macierowski 1988, 81. 26 David B.Burrell summarizes the situation as follows: “So asked whether God has a nature, Ibn-Sina was inclined to answer no: there is no quiddity in God, For that is what the form of the question presupposes: what is that basic feature (distinct from existing) whereby God is

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divine? Yet not wishing to rule the question: what is God? out of court, he qualified the no: there is no quiddity other than its to-be. And since that response is expressly paradoxical, in his own terms, a just summary statement of his position would say: for Ibn-Sina, God has no quiddity. But God’s essence (dhat) is existing—and this is intended as a formulation of necessary existence” (Burrell 1986b, 40). While acknowledging that Avicenna views the quiddity of God as identical with his being, Burrell’s position has Avicenna retreating from the expression “mahiyya” (quiddity), emphasizing instead the term “dhat,” which also answers to the question, what is it? 27 In addition, Aquinas argues that to deny essence of God would be to deprive him of what in this world is a perfection. To the extent that all perfections subsist in God in a preeminent manner, essence must necessarily apply to divine being (Aquinas, DEE 5.3; 378, Leonine). As Leo J.Elders states, “God is not, of course, marked by the imperfections of essence (such as its limiting function and potentiality) but possesses in an eminent way the positive contents of essence. The philosophers who unilaterally stress God’s esse to the exclusion of what constitutes the perfection of essence, risk reducing their concept of God to pure spontaneity” (Elders 1990, 154). 28 Even Plotinus, with all the emphasis that he places on the “beyond being” (epekeina ousias) aspects of the One, at times must speak of the first principle in substantial and ontological terms, not unlike the later developments of Neoplatonism as detected in the thought of Avicenna and William of Auvergne. For evidence of Plotinus’ ontological understanding of the ultimate principle, cf. Enneads 6.8.20.9–15; 3:267; 6.8.12.6–16; 3:255; 6.8.7.47–54; 3:249, Henry and Schwyzer. In this respect, I would have to agree with Netton’s assessment that Avicenna’s necessary being is closely related to the One of Plotinus (Netton 1989, 160). It seems that what Plotinus understands by ousia and wishes to deny of the One is precisely what Avicenna and William also wish to eliminate from the first existent. Plotinus himself has other terms to designate the existence of the One, such as hypostasis (Ennead 6.8.20.9– 11; 3:267, Henry and Schwyzer) or esti (Enneads 6.8.11.25–26; 3:254; 5.5.6.23–25; 2:246, Henry and Schwyzer). Morewedge does not sufficiently appreciate the differences of terminology in Plotinus’ metaphysics, and thereby sets up a faulty comparison between Avicenna and Plotinus (Morewedge 1973a, 238). For some studies that accentuate the ontological character that underpins Plotinus’ discussion of the One, see Rist 1973, 75–87; 1967, 21–37; 1962, 169–80; Bussanich 1988; O’Meara 1975, 98–99. Lloyd P.Gerson claims that when Plotinus speaks of the One as being “beyond being” it does not mean that it has no nature or essence, rather its essence is identical with its existence and therefore is unqualifiedly simple (Gerson 1994, 6). 29 For Aquinas, essence serves as the principle of knowledge (Aquinas, DEE 2.1; 370, Leonine). Now granted, we cannot know what God is, only what he is not (Aquinas, SCG 1.14.2; 13:40, Leonine). However, the fact that God transcends finite categories of thought does not necessarily indicate that he is irrational and devoid of understanding to himself. Aquinas would maintain that the nature of God is perfectly intelligible, clear, and rational in itself. Of course, with respect to a person’s limited intellectual capacity, an entirely different situation presents itself. To us (quoad nos) God’s essence is beyond human comprehension. However, in himself (in se), God is self-evident and as such is intelligible (Aquinas, ST 1.2.1; 1:10–11, Marietti). In the context of discussing the docta ignorantia, Avicenna makes the same distinction, “De la chose supérieure le point extrême peut être ignoré, à raison de l’impuissance de l’inférieur, non parce que ce point est inconnaissable [en lui-meme]; [inversement,] le point extreme de la chose inférieure peut être ignoré, en tant que ce point extrême particulier est inconnaissable en soi” (Vajda 1951, 374–75).

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——. 1996. La casa delta sapienza. La trasmissione della metafisica greca e la formazione della filosofia araba. Milan: Guerini e Associati. De Raeymaeker, Louis. 1956. “L’Être selon Avicenne et selon S.Thomas d’Aquin.” In Avicenna Commemoration Volume. Calcutta: Iran Society. Elders, Leo J. 1990. The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. New York: E.J.Brill. ——. 1993. The Metaphysics of Being of St. Thomas Aquinas. Leiden: E.J.Brill. Fakhry, Majid. 1983. A History of Islamic Philosophy. 2d ed. New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press. Flynn, J.G. 1973–74. “St. Thomas and Avicenna on the Nature of God.” Abr-Nahrain 14:53–65. Frank, R.M. 1956. “The Origin of the Philosophical Term Anniya.” Cahiers de Byrsa 6:181–201. Gardet, Louis. 1951. “En l’honneur du millenaire d’Avicenne. L’importance d’un texte nouvellement traduit: les gloses d’Avicenne sur la pseudo Théologie d’Aristotle.” Revue Thomiste 51:333–45. Gerson, Lloyd P. 1994. Plotinus. New York, N.Y.: Routledge. Gilson, Etienne. 1952. Being and Some Philosophers. 2d ed. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. ——. 1963. The Elements of Christian Philosophy. New York: Mentor-Omega. ——. 1974. “Quasi Definitio Substantiae.” In St. Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Goichon, Amélie-Marie. 1937. La distinction de l’essence et de l’existence d’après Ibn Sina. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. ——. 1938. Lexique de la langue philosophique d’Ibn Sina (Avicenne). Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. Hourani, George F. 1972. “Ibn Sina on Necessary and Possible Existence.” Philosophical Forum 4:74–86. Judy, Albert. 1975a. “Avicenna’s ‘Metaphysics’ in the Summa contra Gentiles.” Angelicum 52:341–84. ——. 1975b. “Avicenna’s ‘Metaphysics’ in the Summa contra Gentiles (II).” Angelicum 52:541– 86. ——. 1976. “Avicenna’s ‘Metaphysics’ in the Summa contra Gentiles (III).” Angelicum 53:185– 226. Leaman, Oliver. 1988. Averroes and His Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lewis, Geoffrey. 1959. “Plotiniana Arabica ad fidem codicum anglice vertit.” In Plotini Opera, edited by P.Henry and H.-R.Schwyzer, 2:37–488. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. Macierowski, E.M. 1988. “Does God Have a Quiddity according to Avicenna?” Thomist 52:79–87. Maimonides, Moses. 1963. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marrone, Steven P. 1983. William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste: New Ideas of Truth in the Early Thirteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Maurer, Armand A. 1982. Medieval Philosophy. 2d ed. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Mondin, Battista. 1975. St. Thomas Aquinas’ Philosophy in the Commentary to the Sentences. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Morewedge, Parviz. 1972. “Philosophical Analysis and Ibn Sina’s ‘Essence-Existence’ Distinction.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 92:425–35. ——. 1973. “Ibn Sina’s Concept of the Self.” The Philosophical Forum 4:49–73. Netton, Ian R. 1989. Allah Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology. New York, N.Y.: Routledge. O’Meara, Dominic J. 1975. Structures hiérarchiques dans la pensee de Plotin. Leiden: E.J.Brill. Plotinus. 1964–82. Plotini Opera. Edited by P.Henry and H.-R.Schwyzer. 3 Vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ——. Enneads. Translated by A.H.Armstrong. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.

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Rahman, Fazlur. 1958. “Essence and Existence in Avicenna.” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4:1–16. ——. 1981. “Essence and Existence in Ibn Sina: The Myth and the Reality.” Hamdard Islamicus 4:3–14. Rist, John M. 1962. “Theos and the One in Some Texts of Plotinus.” Mediaeval Studies 24:169–80. ——. Plotinus: Road to Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. 1973. “The One of Plotinus and the God of Aristotle.” Review of Metaphysics 27:75–87. Rosheger, John P. 1996. “Augustine and Divine Simplicity.” New Blackfriars 77:72–83. Sells, Michael A. 1994. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shehadi, Fadlou. 1982. Metaphysics in Islamic Philosophy. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Books. Taylor, Richard C. 1998. “Aquinas, the Plotiniana Arabica, and the Metaphysics of Being and Actuality.” Journal of the History of Ideas 59:217–39. Teske, Roland J. 1985. “Augustine’s Use of ‘Substantia’ in Speaking about God.” Modern Schoolman 62:147–63. ——. 1998. “William of Auvergne and Plato’s World of Ideas.” Traditio 53:117–30. Thomas, J.L.H. 1986. “The Identity of Being and Essence in God.” Heythrop Journal 27:394–408. Vajda, Georges. 1951. “Les notes d’Avicenne sur la ‘Théologie d’Aristote’.” Revue Thomiste 51:346–406. William, of Auvergne. 1963. Opera omnia. 2 Vols. Edited by F.Hotot with Supplementum, edited by Blaise Le Feron. Orléans-Paris, 1674. Reprint, Frankfurt am Main: Minerva. ——. 1976. De trinitate: An Edition of the Latin Text with an Introduction. Edited by Bruno Switalski. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. ——. 1989. William of Auvergne: The Trinity, or The First Principle (De trinitate). Translated by Roland J.Teske and Francis C.Wade. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. Zedler, Beatrice H. 1976. “Another Look at Avicenna.” New Scholasticism 50:504–21. Zimmermann, F.W. 1986. “The Origins of the So-called Theology of Aristotle.” In Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts, edited by W.F.Ryan, Jill Kraye, and C.B.Schmitt, 110–240. London: The Warburg Institute.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Maimonides and Roger Bacon Did Roger Bacon Read Maimonides? Jeremiah Hackett The reception of the Guide of the Perplexed (Dux neutrorum) into the Latin West in the 13th c. followed on the translation of that work into Latin in the 1240’s.1 Master Peter of Ireland, Rabbi Moses ben Solomon of Salerno and Friar Niccolo’ da Giovinazzo OP (Nicholas Paglia) read the Latin version together around 1250 (Peter of Ireland, Expositio et Quaestiones in Aristotelis Librum De Longtitudine et Brevitate Vitae, 7–9). Those who taught philosophy or indeed theology at European Universities would not have been acquainted with this text before the 1250’s. Thus, Roger Bacon, who seems to have been a Magister actu regens in artibus at the University of Paris, perhaps between 1240 and 1247, could not have known the Guide of the Perplexed. Indeed, there are no references to this work in Bacon’s Parisian Commentaries from the 1240’s (Hackett, 1997, 9–23). It has long been the view of Bacon scholarship that sometime after 1247, the Doctor Mirabilis dedicated his energy and financial resources to an investigation of languages, sciences and experimental books, topics which were not always covered in the University Curriculum at Paris (Hackett, 2000, 69–110). The most prominent of these books for Bacon is the Secretum secretorum (Bacon, Secretum secretorum; Williams, 1994). The question naturally arises: Did Roger Bacon, who quite clearly was a great bibliophile, read the Guide of the Perplexed in the period 1250–1278? The reader of the modern editions of Roger Bacon’s works comes up against a major problem: there are no explicit references to The Guide in the indices of the modern editions of Bacon’s works. This is, indeed, surprising, in that by the 1260’s it was quite common for major philosophers and theologians to make explicit reference to this work, especially in regard to theories on the knowledge and attributes of God (DobbsWeinstein, 1995; Burrell, 1988, 1986, 1984; Dienstag, 1975; Buijs, 1988). In fact, Roger Bacon provides us with a short account of this philosophical problem, but Maimonides’s great work is not explicitly cited (Bacon, Moralis philosophiae, part I, Massa). Thus, a preliminary review of Bacon’s texts come up with a negative result. It would appear in fact that Roger Bacon did not know and did not use the text of The Guide. This is indeed a most unusual situation for a Scholastic Philosopher in the second half of the 13th century. And it is especially so for Roger Bacon. For he is the one who had composed a Hebrew Grammar, a fragment of which still exists. Yet, there is no reference to Maimonides in this work (Nolan & Hirsch, 1902). Also in the Moralis philosophiae, part four, where Bacon provides references to the Secta Iudei, there is no reference to Maimonides (Ed. cit., Part IV). In this account, the Jews are presented as a people who hope for both temporal and spiritual goods. The wise ones of Israel searched spiritually in the power of the Law, and sought not only bodily

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goods but also those of the soul. And they did so by virtue of the authority of God and the Law. They overcame the Nations by right and by right they were given the promised land. Indeed, the Patriarchs and Prophets of Israel truly and spiritually looked forward to the Messiah. Indeed, both the Jews and the Christians received the one revelation from God. One might expect a thinker with such a positive attitude to have known The Guide in the 1260’s. Not only was it available; it was frequently cited by the new generation of theologians (1250–70). And since there are a number of philosophical issues where one might expect Bacon and Maimonides to be in agreement, one could suppose that he had consulted this work. In an effort to discover any heretofore unnoticed correspondences in both thinkers, I will examine the following five problems: (1) Language about God and Analogy, (2) Astrology, (3) Humility as a Virtue and the Crux of Magnanimity, (4) Moral Philosophy as the Finis (Completion) of Philosophical Studies, (5) The distinction of the Wise and the Vulgar, and (6) Philosophical style. Language about God and Analogy It is quite noticeable that Roger Bacon, unlike Thomas Aquinas, does not accept a doctrine of the “Analogy of Being.” Instead, he presents analogy as a species of equivocation.2 Bacon is very explicit in his criticism of essential being (esse essentiae) a doctrine which he associates with Richard Rufus of Cornwall, and a doctrine which he claimed was introduced into Oxford by the latter (Raedts, 1987; Wood, 1998). In Bacon’s approach, Aristotle did not provide a complete doctrine of Analogy. Bacon attempts a sketch of a doctrine. Yet, his sketch is quite different from any of the doctrine’s of Analogy of Being found in the 13th c. and later in the Renaissance. It is an account of meaning and predication. Bacon classifies analogy as a species of equivocation/homonomy. This presupposes a pure univocity of meaning. Analogy therefore is the parallel found among equivocal terms all of which presuppose a strict univocity at a basic level. The preferred method in handling this kind of analogy, then, is the analysis of language. This approach to the understanding of Being with its identification of Being with ‘actually existing things’ cuts off an approach to God by means of an Analogy of being (analogia entis), although it allows the interpreter to apply the full use of language analysis to both literal and metaphorical expressions. Bacon’s approach to language about God, then, with it’s negative judgment on “essential being” and on “analogy of Being” might be seen as having more in common with Maimonides’ views on a negative approach to knowledge of God than to the more positive approach found among those such as Thomas Aquinas who are committed to the doctrine of “analogy of being.” Astrology Both Maimonides and Bacon offer critiques of the “stupid” or “false” Astrologers.3 On the surface, it would appear that Bacon’s position is a polar opposite to that of Maimonides in that he utilizes Abu Mashar’s Grand Conjunctions and The Introduction

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to Astronomy in order to devise a sociology of religious societies of the kind mentioned above in reference to Ancient Judaism.4 Yet, Bacon is very careful in making qualifications to Abu’ Mashar’s account, and these precisions may in fact echo the concerns of Maimonides. In keeping with Maimonides, he offers a thorough criticism of the necessitarianism of judicial astrology. Likewise, he attacks the “stupid” or “false” astrologers. Both authors defend a notion of Divine Creativity, the importance of the singular person and they stress the role of choice in freedom of action. Further, both authors hold that the Stars do not compel “this individual” to be necessitated to one form of life. Bacon’s use of medical phenomena and the important role of experience and reason in medicine to limit the influence of the Stars may exhibit the influence of Maimonides (Bacon, Opus mains, part VI, Bridges 1897). Humility as a Virtue and the Crux of Magnanimity In his paper on Anger as a Vice: A Maimonidean Critique of Aristotle’s Ethics, Daniel Frank argues for Maimonides’ interpretation of Aristotelian Virtue in the light of the fundamental Old Testament virtue of Humility before God (Frank, 1990). He notes that “Maimonides’ praise of in-irascibility betokens an un-Aristotelian conception of the self and, likewise an un-Aristotelian notion of what constitutes self-esteem” (Frank, 1990, 277) and “Contradiction notwithstanding, Maimonides’ final word on the matter is that total lack of anger, total inirascibility is normative. No one aspiring to virtue may accustom himself to the mean in the sphere of anger. In adopting this position Maimonides sets himself in direct opposition to Aristotle” (Frank, 1990, 275). Roger Bacon in Moralis philosophiae (=Opus mains, pt. seven) provides his account of Virtue and Virtues (Bacon, Moralis philosophiae, Massa, pt. three). He takes up Aristotle’s theory of the virtues, including Magnanimity, but very quickly trumps Aristotle by making the argument that where true Virtue reigns there is no room for Vice, especially the chief vice, anger. He is totally opposed to the notion of a reasonable anger, that is, of a mean with reference to anger such as one finds in both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Bacon takes his material from Seneca’s Stoic inspired criticism of Aristotle on Anger (Hackett, 1995, 367–77). As he proceeds, he subordinates the Aristotelian virtues not only to this Stoic doctrine but also to the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope and Love. These latter presuppose the notion of humility before God. The result is that Bacon, making use of Ancient Latin Stoic sources, comes to the same conclusion as Maimonides concerning the place of Anger in relation to Virtue. And although Bacon does emphasize the importance of both Aristotelian and Stoic Magnanimity, he too subordinates them to the properly theological virtues and to humility before God as the true path of Christian righteousness. My argument here is simply that there is a complete match between Maimonides and Bacon on this topic. I am not arguing that Bacon got this doctrine in Maimonides. Still, this does not rule out the possibility that he may have been influenced by Maimonides’ Guide in his interpretation of Pagan Virtue within the context of a Christian theology with its great debt to Judaism. He could have used Maimonides’s remarks on anger, virtue and humility as a guide for his thinking.

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Moral Philosophy as the Finis (Completion) of Philosophical Studies One interesting development in Roger Bacon, which he shares with the Poet, Dante Alighieri, is his explicit subordination of theoretical philosophy to practical philosophy.5 The extent to which both Bacon and Dante differ from other Medieval Philosophers has been recognized by the late Etienne Gilson. In the Opus maius and elsewhere, Bacon explicitly follows a conception of the goal or completion of Philosophia which is clearly set out by Maimonides in The Guide. The question naturally arises as to what extent Bacon was influenced by this theme in Maimonides. The Wise and the Vulgar One of the chief stylistic features of Bacon’s Opus maius, especially part one (Bacon, Opus maius, pt. one, ed. Bridges), is the explicit distinction following on Al-Farabi and Maimonides in holding that true Wisdom should be concealed from the Vulgus, including the Vulgus philosophantium. Did he, perhaps, find this doctrine, not only in Al-Farabi, but also in Maimonides? Philosophical Style One notices a peculiar personal style of presentation in the post-1250 writings of Roger Bacon. Bacon’s manner of presentation in the personal mode, although not unique to him (it is also found in other English authors such as Richard Rufus), does differ from the more impersonal form of many scholastic philosophers. And that includes Roger Bacon himself in his “scholastic” mode of presentation in the Parisian Commentaries of the 1240’s. Was this more personal approach suggested by a reading of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed?

Thus far, we have seen certain possible correspondences of common interest, but we have no firm proof of explicit textual borrowing. And without actual textual evidence, one might be inclined to dismiss this correspondence of interest as simply part of the common knowledge of the time. Thus, the following questions must be asked: Did Roger Bacon, for whatever reason, simply ignore a central source which was in common use among Dominican and Franciscan authors in the 1260’s? How then is one to account for the absence of explicit references to the Dux neutrorum in the published works of Roger Bacon? Or, could it be that the correspondence of common interest show that such interests can be backed up by some kind of indirect reference? Or could it be that Roger Bacon in the 1260’s, a retired Professor and now Franciscan Friar had duties which prevented him from the writing of a Summa theologiae, and therefore had to rely on the original work of younger scholars? I will argue in what follows that Bacon explicitly tells the reader that he did not have the time to write a Summa, and thus he did have to rely on auctoritates for his general references in philosophy and theology.6

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Bacon as a Possible Reader of the Dux Neutrorum: a Consideration of the Evidence Throughout his later works, the Opus maius, Opus minus, Opus tertium and others, Bacon tells the reader that he was not able to write an Opus principale. Due to the necessities of his duties as a Franciscan friar, he had to opt for work of rhetorical introduction (an Opus preambulatum). Still, Roger Bacon makes many references to some of the major Summae and Sententiae of his contemporaries. On the negative side, he condemns the Summa fratris Alexandri and the works of Richard Rufus (Bacon, Opus minus, Brewer, p. 326; Compendium studii theologiae, Maloney). On the positive side, he makes reference to one Summa, which he evidently cites with approbation. In his Communia naturalium, part two, distinction five on causation, Bacon refers explicitly to one such Summa.7 This anonymous reference to a Summa is to the Summa sapientiale of the English Franciscan Master, Thomas of York. In the Communia naturalium, Bacon explicitly ‘lifts’ his general metaphysics from this great Summa. And indeed, by implication and in opposition to Richard Rufus (OFM), he presents himself as a follower of Thomas of York. Thomas of York was a younger contemporary of Roger Bacon.8 He incepted in theology at Oxford on 14 March 1253, and was highly regarded as a great representative of the Oxford tradition. In 1256, he became the sixth Regent of the Franciscan Studium in Cambridge. And was succeeded in Oxford by Richard Rufus, who had returned from Paris. There is no certainty about his life after this time. One thing is certain. Roger Bacon, writing in Paris in the mid-1260’s did know and use the Summa sapientiale of Thomas of York, which is sometimes called the Libri metaphysici fratris thomae de Eboraco. How influential was this text on the Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics of Roger Bacon, as presented for example, in the Communia naturalium, Opus maius and related works? On the basis of the traditional scholarship and on actual evidence, one has to admit that Roger Bacon takes over Thomas of York’s style and content almost totally and completely. It is as though Bacon in Paris in the 1260’s is the mouthpiece for Thomas of York. The following philosophical topics can serve as examples: (1) The doctrine of Matter and Privation, (2) The Doctrine of Form (static and dynamic), (3) The doctrine of universals and individuation, (4) The doctrine of causation, (5) The doctrine of the soul. In regard to all of these topics, the judgment of the late Dorothy Sharp is correct. In reference to Matter, Form and Privation, she remarks: “In the Communia naturalium Bacon countenances the view of Thomas of York that these principles are three secundum rationem but two secundum rem” (Sharp, 1930, 122). Again, she notes, “Besides creation, Bacon’s theory of which adds nothing to that of Grosseteste or Thomas of York, generation confers existence on things” (Sharp, 1930, 127). And in reference to Matter, she adds: “In this consideration Bacon has much that agrees with Thomas of York. Matter secundum essentiam is ingenerable and uncorruptible, being generable only per accidens or per suam privationem (1 Phys. p.49:28); matter comes into being through creation (C.N. 67:13) [Here, one notices an agreement with Maimonides]; matter is the subject of contraries desiring always the new and therefore indirectly desiring the corruption of its present form (C.N. 113:0); matter seeks its own good (C.N. 81:6); matter is knowable only by analogy with form (Quaest. Met. xi, p. 2:8); matter, like form, may be equivocally called substance, since both are parts of the

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substantial composite (C.N. 50:26); matter, though never existing without form, has its own true nature and essence, and therefore contributes to the composite (Comp. Stud. Theol. pp. 50, 66; Sharp, 1930, 131). “Again, Bacon like Thomas of York, rejects the theory of the numerical unity of matter in all things, a theory he refers to in the Opus tertium (p. 121) as the worst in philosophy” (Sharp, 1930, 132). Again, “His more general remarks about form add little to what has been said by Thomas of York: thus he holds that form is prior to matter in the sense that it is the term of generation and that to which the diversity of composites is chiefly due (C.N. 267:11 and 53:31); form is that which perfects the material principle (C.N. 122:11); form is the end that moves the efficient cause (C.N. 123:3); form is that through which the composite acts (C.N. 120:26)” (Sharp, 1930, 142–43). In brief, Bacon’s agreement with Thomas is summed up in the statement that form is that which gives being, that which is the principle of operation and that which is the principle of knowledge (I Phy. p. 78:35). Further, in the judgment of Dorothy Sharp, Bacon’s treatment of Individuation is inferior to that of Thomas of York. Yet, there is a line of dependence. Again, in the doctrine of causation and in the doctrine of the soul, Bacon’s positions are much influenced by Thomas of York. What has all of this evidence of philosophical dependence to do with Moses Maimonides and Roger Bacon? In the Summa sapientiale of Thomas of York, the references to The Guide of the Perplexed by Moses ben Maimon are constant and ubiquituous. Indeed, Dorothy Sharp correctly notes that “Maimonides or Rabbi Moses (as he is called) is a great favourite with Thomas, and it is not improbable that Thomas’s strong personal tone, e.g. ‘Volui manifestare tibi’ and ‘oportet te scire,’ was suggested by the writings of the Jewish Philosopher” (Sharp, 1930, 51, n.2). On each of these topics mentioned above from Thomas of York, Maimonides is quoted (positively and negatively) in company with Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes and Avicebron (Ibn Gabirol). It would not be wrong to state that the two Jewish Philosophers, Maimonides and Ibn Gabirol, influence the interpretation of the above topics from both Thomas of York and Roger Bacon. And yet, there is a major anomaly in all of this. The anomaly here is that in the Communia naturalium and in other works written in Paris in difficult circumstances in the mid-1260’s, Roger Bacon constantly refers to Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes, and yet there are no explicit references to Maimonides. And this is so notwithstanding the fact that the material from Thomas of York from which his own doctrines are taken is filled with explicit references to The Guide of the Perplexed. That is indeed a puzzle. But the puzzle makes sense when one notices that Bacon tells us that he had to cloak and conceal great truths from the Vulgus philosophantium at the University of Paris. This was especially the case with the issues of astrology, alchemy and scientia experimentalis. But it would also seem to have been the case with some issues in Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics which relate to Maimonides. That there were strong debates about the impact and role of the philosophy of Maimonides can be seen from the writings of Giles of Rome, one of the up-coming of the Vulgus philosophantium at Paris in the mid-1260’s, who became an important theologian in the 1270’s. For example, the student of Thomas Aquinas, the able Giles of Rome makes clear reference in his Errores philosophorum to the errors of Maimonides (Giles of Rome [Aegidius Romanus], Errores philosophorum). We have at least now established one fact: Roger Bacon did definitely read the many citations from The Guide of the Perplexed as these are presented in philosophical form in

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the Summa sapientiale of Thomas of York. Indeed, Bacon, writing in the 1260’s takes over completely the Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy of Thomas of York as influenced by his philosophical auctoritates, including and especially, Moses Maimonides. There are evidently two lines of influence from Jewish Philosophy on the philosophy of Roger Bacon. The first is that of Avicebron (Solomon ibn Gabirol), an influence which has been recognized in the scholarship for some time. The second is the indirect influence of Maimonides through Thomas of York. Yet, what can one say of a more direct influence? Is it the case that a bibliophile of Roger Bacon’s stature simply ignored The Guide of the Perplexed, a text which had received intense examination from 1250 to the 1270’s? The following argument, which is tentative and brief is offered as further evidence that Roger Bacon may have indeed absorbed much from the great work by Maimonides. The argument is based on remarks in the section of the Communia naturalium entitled De coelestibus (Bacon, Communia naturalium, II, pt.5, 414–56, Steele, 1913). In Book II, ch. 24 of the Guide, Maimonides addresses the issue of Ptolemy’s epicycles and eccentrics (Maimonides, Guide, II, 24, 322–27). He argues on the basis of the Aristotelian thesis that in Natural Philosophy, there must be an immobile being around which circular motion takes place. Further, Thebit ben Chora is cited as proof that there must be the body of a sphere between every two spheres. Following Ptolemy, Maimonides notes that human matters should not be compared to those that are divine. He then addresses the evident difficulty: if Aristotle’s position is correct, then there are no epicycles and eccentric circles, and everything revolves around the center of the earth. Yet, the calculations of Ptolemy are correct. Indeed, one cannot account for the retrograde motion of a heavenly body and other motions without assuming the existence of epicycles. And yet how can one account for the rolling motion around a center which is not immobile? This perplexity, of course, for Maimonides, does not affect the Astronomer, whose purpose is not to tell us definitively about the true reality of the spheres. That is the task of the Physicist or the Metaphysician. The job of the astronomer is to posit an astronomical system and then to attempt to save the appearances. Things beneath the moon are known by reasoning by means of causes and effects. Of all that is above the moon, “man grasps nothing but a small measure of what is mathematical; and you know what is in it… I mean thereby that the deity alone fully knows the true reality, the nature, the substance, the form, the motions, and the causes of the heavens” (Maimonides, Guide, II, 24, 326–27). When one turns to Roger Bacon’s De coelestibus (C.N. Bk. II, pt. 5), one finds an extended confrontation of the positions of Ptolemy and Aristotle (Bacon, Communia naturalium, II, pt. 5, 418 ff, 428 ff). These positions or theses are developed in a formal Scholastic manner with additional items from Al-Fraganus and Al-Betruji. Chapters 13– 17 set out a formal comparison of the arguments from Ptolemy and the Natural Philosophers (Aristotelians) in regard to the epicycles and eccentrics. Bacon reviews all of the Aristotelian arguments, and then in Ch. 16 he remarks that although they seem to destroy the position of Ptolemy, there are genuine experimental reasons which seem to confirm Ptolemy’s calculations and positions. In Ch. 17, he reviews once more the objections against the position of the Natural Philosophers. And once again, Bacon takes the position of the Natural Philosophers seriously and acknowledges the strength of their

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objections. He notes in passing that the arguments of the Natural Philosophers had been neglected up to the time of Averroes and Al-Betruji. Bacon, in true Scholastic manner, attempts a reconciliation of the conflicting positions. He notes that although the mathematicians and the natural philosophers are diverse in the manner in which they attempt to solve the appearances in the heavens, all of them have one and the same goal. Yet, they approach that goal by the use of different means. He ends his account with a short note on Ptolemy. We can see that Bacon deals with exactly the same problem which confronted Maimonides, and that he does so in exactly the same frame of reference which one finds in The Guide. Thus, it would be natural to think that he must have known, and may have used the relevant section of The Guide. Yet, Bacon uses other sources, and his method of approach is that of the formal Scholastic philosopher. Unlike Maimonides, he does not avail himself of the distinction between the upper and lower realms in regard to the moon. And he does not do so because in using the De aspectibus of Ibn al-Haytham, he believes that instruments will enable us to see further into the heavens. Still, like Aristotle, he is not willing to jettison the arguments based on Natural Philosophy, and like Ptolemy, he wishes to acknowledge the validity of the astronomical calculations. Thus, he attempts a formal unification of both positions. Conclusion Although modern editions of Roger Bacon’s works do not explicitly cite the text of The Guide, Bacon knew and used this work in the context of his discussion of the many philosophical themes mentioned above. The fact is that he frames his discussion of Aristotle and Ptolemy’s positions in the manner in which Maimonides placed it. And since he knew about the importance of The Guide for Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics from the Summa sapientiale of Thomas of York, it would be most unlikely that he never consulted it for his own work in Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics in the Communia naturalium. In fact, it would be most reasonable to conclude that he did use it. A further external piece of evidence points in the direction of his having used Maimonides’ Guide as one of his auctoritates. The significant Summa philosophiae of the Pseudo-Grosseteste contains a history of philosophy and a list of authorities in Book one which matches to a great extent Bacon’s Opus maius (Pseudo-Grosseteste, Summa philosophiae, Baur, 1912).9 There has been a scholarly consensus that the Summa philosophiae has a connection with the interests of Roger Bacon. Further, it makes much more explicit the broad range of the auctoritates which Bacon cites throughout the Opus maius and related works. Indeed, the reader of Bacon’s works cannot miss the fact that Bacon is very careful to hide and conceal some of his sources. He is evidently worried about what he calls the Violence’ of the Vulgus philosophantium and of the theologians at Paris. The fact that he does not cite Maimonides is interesting in itself, and merits further study. But from the present study, it should be clear that there is strong evidence for his knowledge and use of Maimonides’ Guide. It is clear from the initial section of this chapter that a number of significant themes from Maimonides recur in the later works of Roger Bacon. They are (1) a somewhat

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similar criticism of the analogy of Being, and a treatment of Analogy as a species of equivocation. (2) A common concern with the importance of and limitations of Astrology. This shows up too with an almost similar criticism of the “false” astrologers. Further, the correction of the false astrologers by means of experiential medicine is found in both authors, and the role of freedom of choice in human action is acknowledged. (3) There is an identical criticism of the Aristotelian doctrine of the notion of reasonable anger. The Wise Person is the Virtuous person who has expunged anger. And while Bacon draws on Seneca’s De ira as his source for the anti-Aristotelian arguments, he takes this up into a Christian doctrine of the theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Love, with its evident roots in Old Testament notions of the place of the humble human before God. The parallels here between Bacon and Maimonides are strong, even-though Bacon’s praise of Aristotelian magnanimity does not fit too well with Christian humility. (4) Both authors in common with Dante Alighieri believe in the subordination of Metaphysics to Moral Philosophy. Thus, Moralis philosophiae, with its implication of the “Care of the Self” is the queen of the philosophical sciences, the finis philosophiae. (5) The broad application of the distinction between the Wise and the Vulgar may draw on Maimonides as well as on Al-Farabi. (6) Bacon’s own personal style of writing echoes that style found in Thomas of York which Dorothy Sharp saw as an imitation of Maimonides’ style of philosophical discourse. One thing is clear: Roger Bacon knew and used the texts from THE GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED as found in the SUMMA SAPIENTIALE of Thomas of York. Indeed, he takes over the arguments of Thomas of York, an ardent admirer of Rabbi Moses, as his own, specifically on the topics of Matter, Form, Cause, Universal and Individuation. And in Thomas of York, the arguments are justified by reference to the text of The Guide. Again, the fact that Bacon reproduces the terms of reference for the debate between Aristotle and Ptolemy concerning epicycles and eccentrics as set out by Maimonides suggests strongly that he had read and used Book II, Ch. 24 of the Dux neutrorum. Roger Bacon has commonly been defined by modern historians of philosophy as a follower of Aristotle who is a representative of an Augustinianisme Avicennisant. And that is of course the case. Yet, labels can hide other influences. And it should be clear from this chapter that it certainly concealed the role which Maimonides does play in the philosophy of Roger Bacon. There is a real and effective influence by Maimonides on the ‘later philosophy’ of Roger Bacon, that is the philosophy from 1250–1292. And once again, one recognizes just how complex are the influences which go into the philosophical/theological synthesis which is usually named Neo-Augustinianism. The results of the research in this chapter are preliminary. They need to be supplemented, and will be in the near future with a study of the role of Maimonides in Thomas of York, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon and Giles of Rome. A more intense and prolonged study may yield some explicit but unacknowledged textual citation. That is another project. Notes 1 The Guide had been translated into Hebrew in 1204 by Samuel Ibn Thibbon. In this paper, all references to The Guide are to the translation in English by Shlomo Pines 1963. 2 “La theorie baconienne de l’analogie (DS, # 100–133; CST, # 129–142) ne ressemble a aucune des theoreis “scholastiques” forgees dans la seconde moitie du XIIIe siecle. Et pour cause: ce n’est pas, contrairement a celle dite “aristotelicothomiste”, une theorie de

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l’analogie de l’etre”, Alain de Libera. “Roger Bacon et La Logique,” Jeremiah Hackett, 1997; Thomas S.Maloney 1984. 3 Maimonides/Pines 1963, II, 37 on Magic; Maimonides/Lerner-Mahdi, 1963, 227–236 (Letter on Astrology). The positions of Grosseteste and Thomas Aquinas are clearly in agreement with the position of Maimonides on Judicial Astrology. And while Bacon does defend some uses of judicial astrology in political matters, he makes some precisions which clearly take into account the criticisms of the implied necessitarianism of the astrologers. See Hackett, 1997. 4 Maimonides, Guide 1963; Maimonides/Lerner, 1963– On Bacon’s use of and dependence on Abu for his understanding of the role of Astrology in his general philosophy, see Hackett, 1997, 175–98. 5 For Dante, see Gilson, 1948; For Bacon on moral philosophy as the completion of philosophy, see Hackett, 1986, 55–109. 6 That he is only capable, due to limited time and resources, of writing an Opus preambulatum and not an Opus principale or a Summa is repeated at length by Bacon in his works and in his Letter to Pope Clement IV. 7 Bacon, Communia naturalium, I, (Steele), 124: Et finis est nobilior causarum, quia omnia ordinantur in finem, et efficiens est nobilius forma et materia, quia dat eis esse, transmutat enim materiam in esse specificum quod vocatur forma, et forma est nobiliius materia in tribus modis predictis, Summa, Pars la Co 4to, qui sunt superius primi modi. 8 Thomas of York: see A.G.Little, 1897; 37–9; Ibid., 1926, 881; Fr. E.Longpre, 1926; M.Grabmann, 1913; F.Treserra, 1929.

References Bacon, Roger. 1859. Opus minus. Edited by J.S.Brewer, London. ——. 1897–1900. Opus maius, Edited by J.H.Bridges, Oxford/Edinburgh. ——. 1902. The Greek Grammar/Fragment of Hebrew Grammar, Edited by Edmond Nolan and S.A.Hirsch, Cambridge. ——. 1906–1913. Communia naturalium, Edited by Robert Steele, Oxford. ——. 1920. Secretum secretorum, Edited by Robert Steele, Oxford. ——. 1953. Moralis philosophiae, Edited by Eugenic Massa, Turin. ——. 1988. Compendium studii theologiae, Edited by Thomas S.Maloney, (STGM, 20) LeidenNew York-Kobenhaven-Koln: E.J.Brill. Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit 1995. Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason, Albany: SUNY. Engen Van, John. 2000. Learning Institutionalized: Teaching in the Medieval University, (Notre Dame Conferences in Medieval Studies, Number IX) Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Frank, Daniel K. 1990. “Anger as a Vice: A Maimonidean Critique of Aristotle’s Ethics,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 7, 3 (July). Giles of Rome. 1944. (Aegidius Romanus). Errores philosophorum: Critical Text with Notes and Introduction. Edited by John O.Reidl, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. Gilson, Etienne. 1948. Dante the Philosopher, London. Grabmann, M. 1913. Die Metaphysik des Thomas von York. Munster in W. Hackett, Jeremiah. 1986. “Practical Wisdom and Happiness in the Moral Philosophy of Roger Bacon,” Medioevo 12:55–109. ——. 1995. “Roger Bacon on Magnanimity and Virtue,” in Moral and Political Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Vol. I, Edited by B.Carlos Bazan, Eduardo Adujar, Leonard G.Sbrocchi, 367–77, Ottawa-New York.

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——. 1997. Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, Leiden-New York-Koln: E.J.Brill. ——. 2000. “Aristotle, Astrologia, and Controversy at the University of Paris,” In Engen, 2000, 69–110. Little, A.G. 1892. The Grey Friars at Oxford, (BSFS). ——. 1926. “The Franciscan School at Oxford,” in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 881. Longpre, Fr. E. 1926. “Thomas d’York, OFM., la premiere somme metaphysique du XIIIe Siecle,” in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 19, 875–920. Peter of Ireland. 1993. Magistri Petri de Ybernia: Expositio et Questiones in Aristotelis Librum De Lingitudine et Brevitate Vitae, Edited by Michael Dunne, Louvain-La-Neuve/Paris: Editions de L’Institut/Editions Peeters. Pseudo-Grosseteste, 1912. Summa philosophiae, Edited by Ludwig Baur, (BGPM. IX). Peter Raedts, 1987. Richard Rufus of Cornwall and the Tradition of Oxford Theology, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sharp, D.E. 1930. Franciscan Philosophy at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century, Oxford & London. Treserra, F. 1929. “De doctrinis metaphysicis Fratris Thomae de Eboraco OFM (Oxoniae Magister an. 1253),” in Analecta sacra Tarraconensia Barcelona, 5, 33–102. Williams, Steven J., 1994. “Roger Bacon and his Edition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum sectetorum,” Speculum 69 (1994): 57–73. Wood, Rega. 1998. “Richard Rufus of Cornwall (d. after 1259),” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Gen. Ed. Edward Craig, Vol. 8, 314–18.

Index

Abbasids 22, 28–29 Abrahamic 202 Abu Bakr ibn al-‘Arabi 55, 56 Abu Bishr Matta 28 Abu Ja’far al-Turjali 55, 56 Abu Mashar 299, 308 Abu Ya’qub Yusuf 53, 56, 60 Accident 151–153, 204, 280, 284 Acquired intellect 30, 116 Acquisition of virtue 220, 227–228 Act 192, 193, 199, 203, 207, 265–266 Active intellect 30, 44–45, 72–73, 76, 157–158, 160, 162–163, 165 Actuality 114–117, 183, 186, 188, 189, 192 Adamson, Peter 14, 164, 199 Adiyy, Yayha Ibn 28 Advaita 209 Aesclepios 72 Affective 175 Agent 218–224 al-‘Alawi, Jamal al-din 52–53 Albert the Great 16, 257 Alexander of Aphrodisias 186, 192, 193, 196 Alfarabi, see Farabi Almohad 51–52, 55–56, 60 Ammonius 128–129, 197 Analogy of being 298–299 Anger 228, 299–300 Anitas 281, 289 Anniyya 281, 289 Anselm and Anselmian 14, 127, 130, 134–141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146 Apathy 246 Aquinas, Thomas 3, 5, 11–13, 14, 15, 16, 128, 132–133, 145, 151, 162–164, 166, 186, 196, 203– 213, 217–219, 223–229, 242, 245, 250–254, 255, 298–299, 304, 308 Arabic Plotinus 14, 106–125, 199 Aristotelian 14, 22, 25, 29, 38, 41, 53–54, 77, 87, 111–112, 119, 122, 123, 126, 153, 161, 163, 183– 199, 217–229, 231–244, 251, 253, 263, 269, 304, 305, 306

Index

262

Aristotle 4–5, 14, 22, 23, 25, 38, 46, 47, 53, 68, 69, 72, 77, 89, 106, 110–111, 116, 119, 122, 123, 128, 130, 134, 141, 185–199, 202, 206–207, 217–230, 231–244, 248, 253, 255, 263, 271, 272, 289, 303, 305–307 Arithmetic 155, 156, 158 Armstrong, A.H 2, 7 Ascent 169–173, 175–176, 178, 247–248 Ash‘arite kalam 55–60, 70 Astrology 299, 308 Astronomy 155, 156, 158, 304–305 Attributes 71–72, 106–125, 136–138, 142, 186, 278–279, 281–288 Augustine 14, 127, 130, 134, 139, 141, 143, 144, 145, 169–179, 251, 291 Avempace 15 Avendauth 46 Averroes 2, 4, 5, 11, 14, 15, 21, 22, 46, 51–63, 51–63, 123, 164, 184–190, 191, 193–194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 236, 303, 305, also see Ibn Rushd Avicebron 15, 273, 303 Avicenna 4, 5, 14, 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25–28, 32–33, 38, 40, 46, 52, 54, 69, 151–168, 190–191, 198, 204, 206, 207, 211–212, 263–264, 269–273, 277–296, 303, also see Ibn Sīnā Bacon, Roger 15, 40–41, 46, 47, 297–309 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 146 Baneth, David Zvi 78 Bartholomeus Anglicus 46 Becoming 186, 191–192 Being(s) 83–105, 129, 136–137, 183, 186, 191–192, 205, 267–268, 277–288 Belief 66, 205, 264 Berkeleian 268 Bernal, Martin 2 Berthold von Mosburg 46 Betruji 305 Bible 204 Birth 88–901, 158 Blame 267 Boethius and Boethian 14, 127–134, 138, 139, 141, 142, 145, 146, 282, 291 Bonaventure 3, 5, 14, 141–144, 145, 146, 147, 245, 248–250, 252–254 Booth, Edward 130, 202 Bouyges, M. 46 Braine, David 212 Brucker, Jacob 2–4, 15 Buridan, John 196 Burrell, David 10, 14, 15, 164, 292 Capacity 186, 189, 219 Cardinal virtues 246–252 Cartesian 210 Caspi, Joseph 236 Catagories 87–88, 205 Categorical Imperative 219 Causal connections 12, 34

Index

263

Cause(s) 152, 159, 160, 193, 264, 266, 274 Center 100–101, 131–132, 142 Change 186–188 Changeless 132 Character, plasticity of 222 Character, States of 218–222, 226, 228–229 Charity 227 Choice 131, 203, 208, 221–222, 264–268 Christ, Jesus 172, 174–177, 208–209 Ciceronian 251 Circular 95–98, 100–101, 189 Classical philosophy 1, 4, 7, 11, 13–14, 21, 37, 45, 83 Coincidences of opposites 142–143 Common 283 Common good 225 Common sense 238–240 Community 58 Conscience 223 Consensus 58 Consent 208 Contemplation 129, 140, 189, 243 Contemplative virtue 245–246, 249–252, 253 Contingency 160–161, 184, 190, 192, 194, 198, 239, 241 Contradiction 60 Convention 68 Conversion 171 Cooper, J. 236 Corbin, Henry 158 Corporeal 188–189, 194 Cosmos 27, 29–30, 32, 44, 83–105, 129–134, 155, 156, 158–163, 183–201, 304–305 Courage 246–247, 249 Cousins, E. 146 Creation 12, 14, 22, 25, 31, 183–214, 263–273 Creator 202–214, 264–269, 272 Crescas, Chasdai 41 Criterion 219 Cusa, Nicholas of 143–144, 146 D’Ancona Costa, C. 122, 123 Dancy, R.M. 189, 197 Dannhauser, Werner 64, 78 Dante Alighieri 300, 307 Davies, Brian 12 Decision 208 Definition 57, 187, 278–280, 287 Demiurge 85–87, 93–94, 156, 187–188, 192, 194 Demonstration 57–58, 76, 110–111 Descartes, Rene 42, 144 Desire 140, 189 Destruction 186–188, 196, 199 Dhat 282, 284–285

Index

264

Dialectic 57–58 66, 155, 156 Dianoetic 84–91, 95–105 Dietrich von Freiburg 46 Difference 156 Dionysius 122, 127, 130–131, 134, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 288 Discursive 117 Disordered 220, 223 Disposition 222–223, 225, 274 Distinction 204–205, 209 Divided self 132–141 Divinity 87, 208 Double truth 31 Doubt 42, 66, 172 Dreams 71–73 Duns Scotus 5, 16 Eastern 209 Eckhart, Meister 209–210 Ecstatic 208 Elders, Leo 292 Emanation 27, 29, 30, 32, 72, 83–105, 151–168, 184, 191–192, 193, 203–204, 207–209, 265–268, 271 Empedocles 77 Enlightenment 4 Eriugena, John Scotus 130–131, 134, 144, 288 Erotic 89–91, 140 Error 58 Esse 204–210, 265, 280–283 Essence 26–27, 151–168, 193, 202, 204, 277–296 Eternal 84, 90–105, 132–133, 139–140, 183–201, 272 Ethical 217–230, 245 Euclid 83, 156 Ex nihilo 203, 207 Exemplar virtues 247, 249–252, 256 Existence 26–27, 151–168, 186–188, 190–192, 194, 199, 204–213, 280 Experience 70–71, 73 External goods 238–241 Eymerich, Nicholar 40 Faith 67, 71, 140, 174, 205, 210, 250 Fakhraddīn al-Razi 55 Falsafa 23–24, 209 Farabi 4, 7, 15, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27–32, 38, 47, 53, 67, 300–301, 307 Fi Mahd al-Khayr 23 Finite 24, 184, 186–187, 189, 192, 194 Finnegan, J. 165 Fire 264, 266 First cause 27, 84, 110, 118, 191, 266 First mover 184–186, 189 First philosophy 24 First principle(s) 224, 282

Index

265

Flynn, J.G. 285 Fons vitae 267 Form(s) 98–103, 183, 233–234, 302–303 Fortitude 251, 252 Fraganus 305 Frank, Daniel H. 9, 11, 14 Freedom 130–131, 133, 202–208, 222, 264, 267–274 Freely created 203–204 Frequential 184, 196 Galen 22 Gard, R. 169 Genequand, Charles 195 Generation 203 Genesis 202 Genetic approach 232 Gerson, Lloyd 292 Gersonides 2 Geyer, Bernard 2, 6 Ghazālī, al- 2, 4, 12–13, 14, 15, 16, 25, 28, 37–80, 118, 208, 212, 290–291 Ghazzālī, see Ghazālī Gift 207, 265–266 Giles of Rome 40, 41, 46, 304 Gilson, Etienne 2, 7, 164, 258, 273, 285, 300 Giovinazzo, Niccolo’ da 297 God 12, 25, 26–27, 42, 61, 73–74, 116, 118, 134–141, 159–160, 162–163, 172, 191, 194, 204, 264, 277–296, 298–299 Goethe 64–65 Goichon, A.-M. 164, 166, 285 Golden Rule 219 Goldstein, Helen 198 Good 132, 139–140, 191, 203, 208, 217–228, 237–241, 248, 283 Goodman, Lenn 157 Grabmann, Martin 46 Grace 171 Gräf, E. 48 Grant, Sara 206, 209 Gratuitous 208 Griffel, Frank 14, 48 Grosseteste, Robert 308 Gundissalinus, Dominicus 39–40, 46 Guthrie, W.K.C. 7 Guttmann, Julius 231 Habituation 219–221, 224, 228 Hackett, Jeremiah 15 Hadot, Pierre 120, 210 Halevi, Judah 14, 66–67, 71–80 Hankey, Wayne 14 Happiness 227–228, 238–241 Haqiqa 282, 285

Index

266

Hauréau, Barthélemy 16 Haylan, Yuhanna Ibn 28 Heart 175 Heavens 187–189, 191–193, 198, 199 Hebrew scriptures 202, 204 Hegel 2, 4–5, 15, 84, 89, 211 Hegelian 102, 211 Heidegger 89 Hermes 72 Highest Good 139, 217–218, 227–228, 240–241, 243, 246 Himsi, Ibn Naima 23 Hindu 209 Hippocrates 68 Historiography 1–17 Hobbes 73, 76 Hochschild, Joshua 14 Holy Spirit 203 Hughes, Christopher 213 Human nature 217, 219 Hume, David 42 Humility 228, 287, 299–300 Iamblichus and Iamblichan 128, 130, 134, 143, 145 Ibn Albaleg, Isak 41, 47 Ibn al-Haytham 305 Ibn Gabirol, Solomon 267, 273, also see Avicebron Ibn Ghaylan al-Balkhi 55 Ibn Ishaq, Hunayn 22, 23 Ibn Khaldun 21 Ibn Polgar, Isak 41 Ibn Rushd 39, 41, 46, 47, 48, See also Averroes Ibn Sīnā 38, 41, 46, 47, 48, 67, 111, 118, 212, See also Avicenna Ibn Thibbon, Samuel 307 Ibn Tufayl 15, 53 Ibn Tumart 52, 55, 56 Ibn Tumlus 53 Identification 277–278 Ignorance 70, 198, 237–241 Image(s) 88, 91–105, 155–158, 163 Imagination 30–31, 130, 152, 157–158, 162–163 Imitation 31, 69 Immutable 171, 192, 272 Individual 202, 284 Infallibility 58 Infinite 184–185, 186–189, 193–194, 195 Infused virtue 227–228 Inglis, John 258 Intellect(s) 84, 108–125, 130, 162–163, 166, 174, 189, 270–271

Index

267

Intellectual virtues 247, 255 Intelligence(s) 30, 32, 44, 269, 271 Intelligible triads 87–105 Intentions 284 Interfaith 211–212 Interpersonal 203 Interpretation, rule of 58–62 Invulnerability 237–241 Isma‘ili Shi‘ites 56 Ismaili philosophy 23 Ivry, Alfred 153–154, 165, 231–232 Jacobs, Jonathan 14, 234 Jaeger, Werner 233, 242 Job, Book of 237–241 Johannes Magister 39 John of Toledo 39 John the Grammarian 185 John, Gospel of 208, 209 Jolivet, Jean 8 Jordan, Mark 253, 258 Judy, Albert 284–285, 288, 289, 292 Jurisprudence 57–61 Justice 246–247, 249, 251, 252 Juwayni, al- 38, 55 Kabbalah 4, 16 Kalam 23–24, 29 Kant and Kantian 87, 89, 103, 144, 217, 218 Kazar 71 Kenny, Anthony 8 Kierkegaard 212 Kindī 4, 7, 21, 23, 24–25, 46, 106, 122, 123 Kinds 183 Knower 126–150 Knowledge 30–32, 38, 65–68, 72–74, 106–150, 174, 240–241 Kogan, Barry 14 Kreisel, Howard 11–12 Kretzmann, Norman 2, 8, 212 Kukkonen, Taneli 10, 14 Lash, Nicholas 212 Law 29–30, 31, 51–63, 68, 69, 75, 77, 217–229, 267 Law of nature 270 Laws, physical 188 Leaman, Oliver 9, 290 Learned Ignorance 106–125, 130, 138 140–142, 293 Lewis, Geoffry 123 Liber de Causis 23, 128, 166 Libertarian 208, 268 Light 65, 138, 141, 248–249

Index

268

Logic 23, 26, 43–45, 47, 53, 56–57, 204 Logical deduction 203–204, 209 Logical Necessity 203, 207 Logos 84 Lohr, C. 46, 47 Love 141–143, 175–176, 203, 269 Lovejoy, Arthur 183–184, 194, 195 Lowry, James 84–85, 100–102 Luck 238–240 Lull, Ramon 46 MacDonald, D.B. 40–41, 42, 44, 45 Macierwoski, E.M. 285, 291 MacIntyre, Alasdair 210 MacIsaac, Gregory 14, 166 Macrobius 245, 248, 250, 251, 254 Magnanimity 299–300 Mahiyya 282, 284, 285–286 Maimonides, Moses 2, 4, 5, 11, 12, 14, 15, 23, 46, 207, 208, 211–212, 217–223, 226–229, 231– 244, 277, 288, 297–309 Maliki school 55, 56–57 Man 283 Mandouze, A. 169 Manichees 171 Marenbon, John 2, 8–9 Marmura, Michael 13, 42, 47, 164, 165 Marrone, Steven 291 Martin, Raymond 40, 46 Masnovo, Amato 273 Matter 188, 192, 197, 198, 302–303 Maurer, Armand 273, 288, 290 McGinn, Bernard 10, 212 McInerny, Ralph 242–243 Mean 219–220 Measure 91–95 Medieval 21, 211 Memory 112–113 Merit 267 Metaphysics 23, 24, 25–28, 43–45, 47, 69, 76, 90, 204, 205, 218 Metaphysics of morals 222 Methodology 155–162 Mill, John Stuart 217, 218 Miller, Michael 10, 15 Mind 143, 183 Miracles 31–32, 34, 264 Mixture 192 Modal 184, 190–191, 193, 195, 198, 209 Modernity 210–211 Monism 209 Moore, G.E. 217 Moral 66, 70–75, 170–171, 174, 178, 245

Index

269

Moral discipline 222 Moral psychology 217, 221–226 Morewedge, Parvis 290, 292 Moses 202, 241 Moses of Salerno 297 Motion 188–190, 192, 197 Muckle, J.T. 40–41 Mulla Sadra 21 Müller, Marcus Joseph 51 Multiplicity 84–105, 131–132 Munk, Salmon 41, 51 Naming 15 Narboni, Moses 41, 47 Nasr, Seyyed 9 Natural law 212, 217, 224–228 Nature 192–193, 198, 219, 263–273 Necessary 27, 34, 189–190, 193, 194, 196, 198, 203, 208, 264, 271, 274, 278–281, 290, 299 Necessary/Free 202–203, 264, 274 Neoplatonism 4, 14, 15, 22, 23, 25, 27, 29–30, 83–201, 231, 245–259, 278–279 Netton, Ian 279, 292 Newman, John Henry 210–211 Non-existence 188 Nothingness 286–287 Nous 85–91, 95–105, 130, 141, 247, 251 Number 156 Nussbaum, Martha 178 O’Donnell, J.J. 169, 170–171, 173 Object(s) 127, 130, 133, 205 Objective ethical considerations 217–230 One 129–130, 191, 202–208, 289 Opposites 142–143, 188, 203 Optimism 227–228 Origin 202–203, 207, 209, 250, 256–257, 264–267 Other 209 Ousiai 153 Overflow 203–204 Owen, G.E.L. 233, 242 Parmenides 129 Participation 152, 159, 161, 166, 206 Particular(s) 183, 186, 234–235 Passion(s) 246, 251 Passive 192, 207 Pattern virtues, see exemplar virtues Perception 114–115 Perfection 72–74, 95, 116, 139, 154–155, 161, 166, 197, 217–222, 226–229, 240–241, 269 Perish 186–187, 189, 191–192, 193, 195, 196, 199 Permanence 88, 91 Perpetual 190, 192

Index

270

Personal style 302–303 Pessin, Sarah 14 Peter of Ireland 297 Peter the Lombard 277 Philo 4, 204 Philoponus, John 185–187, 188–189, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197 Philosophical theology 209–210 Philosophy 30–31, 37–80, 245 Philosophy of Religion 205 Physics 43–45, 47, 54, 76 Pinborg, Jan 8 Plato 22, 25, 29, 68, 69, 72, 77, 83, 85, 87, 90, 92, 129, 131, 152, 155–156, 158, 183, 195, 196, 197, 202, 231, 233–236, 248, 251 Platonism 22, 25, 27, 29–31, 126, 131, 169–179, 233–234 Plenitude 183–201 Plotinian 86, 87, 101, 107, 109, 116, 120, 121, 123, 129, 137, 141, 144, 158, 169, 170, 178, 192 Plotinus 15, 23, 25, 85, 87, 101, 103, 106–123, 127, 129, 130, 134, 141, 152, 155–158, 166, 169, 191, 199, 202–203, 209, 243, 245, 248, 251, 254, 257, 278, 279, 289, 291, 292 Political philosophy 23, 28–32, 75 Political virtue 245–246, 249, 250, 251, 253 Porphyry 106–107, 118–122, 124, 128–129, 144, 231, 243, 245–259 Possible 27, 183, 186, 190, 196, 198, 207–208 Post-modern 211 Potentiality 112–116, 121, 186, 188–189, 193, 197, 199 Power 14, 113, 116–117, 192, 207, 264 Practical 30–31, 74, 207, 224–226 Pre-existent 151–154, 158–165, 166 Pre-modern 211 Presence 207 Pride 170–171, 174, 176 Primary being 287–288 Primary causes 266 Principle of finitude 188 Principle of Utility 219 Privation 186, 198, 302 Proceeding 159, 160–161, 163, 166 Proclus and Proclean 14, 83–105, 128, 130, 134, 139, 143, 152, 155–166, 188, 192, 195, 196, 197, 199 Progress 211 Projection 96–105 Proof 59–61, 65, 71, 184 Prophecy and prophet 30–32, 56, 68, 70–71, 73, 76, 152, 157–158, 232, 235, 237–243 Providence 132, 191–192, 237–241 Prudence 227, 229, 246–247, 249, 251, 252 Pseudo-Dionysius, see Dionysius Pseudo-Grosseteste 306 Ptolemy 304–305, 306, 307 Purification 61–62, 72, 156, 246 Purified virtues 249–250, 252 Purifying virtues 246, 249–252 Pythagoras 77 Pythagoreans 101

Index

271

Quiddity 26–27, 154, 277–296 Qur’an and Qur’anic 25, 29–33, 57, 59–62, 204, 208–209 Rabbis 204 Radical 203, 204 Rahman, Fazlur 151–153, 162, 164, 165 Rāzī, al- 2, 7, 22 Reason and Revelation 29–31, 51–80, 210–212 Receive 192 Reciprocity 206, 209 Reference 277–278, 286–287 Reilly, James 273 Relation 204–212, 222, 279 Religion 31, 56–57, 72–73 Religious duty 59 Religious experience 70–74, 174 Remaining 158–160, 163 Renan, Ernest 51–52 Reorientation of the soul 223 Repentance 220, 223 Repetition 162 Responsibility 222 Rest 186, 198 Resurrection 25 Return 152, 154–164, 165 Revelation 23, 57–62, 73, 187, 194, 203–209 Reversion 161, 163 Reynolds, Gabriel 14 Rhetoric 58, 155, 157–158 Richard Rufus of Cornwall 298, 301–302 Ritter, Heinrich 2, 5 Rosheger, John 15 Sabians 22 Salman, D. 40–41, 46 Same 156, 209 Sankara 206, 209 Schmoelders, A. 40 Scientia 209–210 Scriptures 204, 207, 282, 291 Secondary causes 266 Self 166 Self-knowledge 26, 32, 33, 44–45, 83–91, 96–105, 126–168, 221, 240–241, 269 Self-realization 191 Seljuq 56 Sells, Michael 286 Sense experience 31, 65, 70, 76, 130, 140, 173–174, 178 Separate substances 76, 158 Servant 265–274 Shahrastani, al- 28, 55

Index

272

Sharp, Dorothy 302–303, 307 Sigmund, Paul 225 Silence 174 Simplicity 139–140, 277, 282, 283 Simplicius 186–187, 192, 193, 196 Sirat, Colette 8 Skepticism 37, 42, 56, 65, 68, 76–77 Social relations 220–221 Socrates 68, 69, 72, 76, 156, 284 Sokolowski, Robert 204–206, 212 Son 203 Sorabji, Richard 103 Soul 25, 26, 30–32, 44, 83–91, 95–150, 155–158, 221–223, 267–270 Space 139, 188 Species 183, 196, 281 Speculative 208 Spheres 158, 188–189, 193 Spiritual exercises 210 State 27, 29–33, 222 Statistical model 184, 190, 192, 196, 198 Stöckl, Albert 2, 5–6, 16 Stoics 77, 129 Strauss, Leo 11–12, 64–65 Subjectivity 126–150 Subsistence 152, 159, 160–161 Substance 280, 283–284, 290, 291 Substantia 291 Suffering 237–241 Sufi 37, 38, 55, 70–71 Suhrawardi, al- 22 Summa fratris Alexandri 301 Sunni 38, 56 Synderesis 223–225 Syriac 4, 22 System 83–105, 133–134, 236 Talibi, ‘Ammar 55 Tanner, Kathryn 209, 212 Taylor, Richard 123 Telelogy 217–218, 224, 238, 246–248 Temperance 246–247, 249, 251, 252 Temporalized 183–201 Temptations 170–171, 174–175 Teske, Roland 268 Thebit ben Chora 304 Theodicy 183 Theological 184, 187–188, 205 Theological virtues 227, 300 Theology 23–24, 33, 47, 56, 83, 209–210, 245 Theology of Aristotle, Theologia Aristotelis 23, 288 Theoretical knowledge 30–31, 74

Index

273

Thillet, Pierre 119 Thinking 84–105 Thomas of York 273, 302–304, 306, 307 Time 83–105, 132–133, 139–140, 156, 183–201 Toroh 208–209 Traces 209 Tradition 67–68 Tragic 238–241 Translation 4, 5–6, 7, 9, 21–25, 38, 43–44, 57, 106–107, 297 Trinity 134, 139–140, 143, 203, 208 Trouillard, Jean 99, 103–104 Truth(s) 24, 65–66, 72, 85, 158, 171–174, 263 Unbelief 25, 58–59, 68–69, 77 Uncreated 204 Unfolding 94–105 Union 141–143, 246 Unity 25, 26, 84–105, 130, 142 Universal 25, 26, 32 Universalism 24, 29 Universe 202, 204, 206 Usefulness 61–62 Van Rijen, J. 197 Via negativa 117, 136–138 Vice 219–229, 300–301 Virtue 14, 29, 62, 72, 74–75, 77, 217–259, 299–301 Visionary recitals 152, 157–158 Vlastos, G. 233 Voltaire 211 Voluntary 218–221, 228, 268, 272, 274 Walzer, Richard 7, 8, 10–11 Waterlow, S. 197 Weiss, R. 226 Wendlinder, Stacey 213 Western 209 Whatness 277–296 Whole 205 Wildberg, Christian 196–197 Will 174–175, 270–272 William of Auvergne 15, 46, 263–296 William of Moerbeke 128 William of Ockham 5, 46 Williams, Thomas 14 Winston, David 3 Wisdom 64, 76, 172, 203–204, 209, 225–226, 229, 237–238, 300–301 Word 203, 209 Wujud 289, 290 Wulf, Maurice de 2, 6

Index

Zedler, Beatrice 290 Zum Brunn, Emilie 212

274