The Art and Logic of Ramon Llull: A User's Guide (Studien Und Texte Zur Geistesgeschichte Des Mittelalters)

363 Pages·2007·3.28 MB·English

by  Anthony Bonner

The Art and Logic of Ramon Llull
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Studien und Texte
zur Geistesgeschichte
des Mittelalters
Begründet von
Josef Koch
Weitergeführt von
Paul Wilpert, Albert Zimmermann und
Jan A. Aertsen
Herausgegeben von
Andreas Speer
In Zusammenarbeit mit
Tzotcho Boiadjiev, Kent Emery, Jr.
und Wouter Goris
BAND XCV
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The Art and Logic
of Ramon Llull
A User’s Guide
by
Anthony Bonner
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2007
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISSN 0169–8028
ISBN 978 90 04 16325 6
© Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission
from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by
Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to
The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910,
Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
printed in the netherlands
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To the memory of
Robert Pring-Mill
and David Rosenblatt
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CONTENTS
Preface ......................................................................................... ix
Acknowledgments ....................................................................... xv
Abbreviations .............................................................................. xvii
List of Illustrations ...................................................................... xix
1. Introduction ............................................................................ 1
2. The quaternary phase ............................................................ 26
3. Changes in the Art during the quaternary phase, and
the transition to the ternary phase ........................................ 93
4. The ternary phase .................................................................. 121
5. The post-Art phase: logic ...................................................... 188
6. Overview ................................................................................ 256
Appendices .................................................................................. 301
The Martin Gardner Problem ............................................... 303
Chronological list of Llull’s works .......................................... 306
Bibliography ................................................................................ 311
Index of Lullian works ............................................................... 321
Index of names and subjects ...................................................... 325
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PREFACE
This is a book about method, not content; about the how, not the
what. This does not mean that the one is independent of the other,
that the form of Ramon Llull’s message did not deeply in(cid:2) uence its
matter, or, more importantly, that the matter and, above all, its goals,
were not primary in determining its form. We will, in fact, frequently
touch on such subjects, but only as they come up in connection with
the form. It is therefore a question of priorities; as Llull would have
put it, the (cid:3) rst intention of this book is the method, and the second
intention the content.
Even though, in the course of developing his method, Llull made
frequent and important programmatic statements presenting its founda-
tions, these should not be confused with the method itself, any more
than we should confuse the foundations of a building with the (cid:3) nished
edi(cid:3) ce. In both cases they can only provide a beginning for a future
exploration of the structure. Moreover, Llull was not a speculative
theologian, philosopher, or logician. His study of these subjects is never
an end in itself, but only the means to an end. For the purposes of this
book, it means that his interest in logic—and this applies to the Art
insofar as it constitutes a logical system—is not theoretical but practi-
cal. His is not a logica docens, speculativa, or theorica, but rather what the
Middle Ages called logica utens, one to be judged by its usefulness. Since
his logic was directed to producing what he called ‘necessary reasons’,
it is these arguments to which we must turn our attention, to see what
it was about them that he felt justi(cid:3) ed in considering ‘necessary’. This
is particularly urgent because in the past a great deal of research has
gone into these ‘necessary reasons’, but mostly from the perspective
of what they imply concerning the question of faith vs. reason. Even
more research has gone into the bases of the Art—the Dignities, the
components of (cid:3) gures such as S and T, the Nine Subjects, etc. Singularly
little effort, however, has gone into trying to bridge the gap between
the theoretical foundations of Llull’s Art and logic, or between its bases
and their (cid:3) nal expression in patterns of argument, and perhaps even
less in the actual study of these patterns, which in fact constituted his
‘necessary reasons’, the backbone of his entire endeavor.
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