Table Of Content

E-4 z ~ ~ :>o ~ > ~ 0 ;:J E-4 ~ z ~ ~ u < ril 0 :z: ::c: :~:c: zE-< z~ .... ~ 0 ~ rn ~ 0 ~ ~ ~ :~:c: :~:c: E-4 ~ ~ ::c: ~ ··~ > THE PHILOSOPHICAL p? L.l MOVEMENT ?;; .(:'." 'I\. ;::' 4. . IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY r by FERNAND VAN STEENBERGHEN Prqfossor at the University Q[ Louvain Lectures given under J:he auspices of the Department of Scholastic Philosophy The Queen's University, Belfast NELSON 1955 ~A! THOMAS NELSON AND SONS LTD Parkside Works Edinburgh 9 36 Park Street London WI 312 Flinders Street Melbourne Cr Preface 218 Grand Parade Centre Cape Town THOMAS NELSON AND SONS (CANADA) LTD 91-93 Wellington Street West Toronto 1 When the Department of Scholastic Philosophy, The THOMAS NELSON AND SONS Queen's University, Belfast, decided to invite a distinguished 19 East 47th Street New York 17 scholar to lecture in the University, the choice of Canon Van Socnhll FRAN~AISE D'EmnoNs NELSON Steenberghen came as no surprise. His work in the field 25 rue Henri Barbusse Paris V• of medieval philosophy has won universal recognition. It First published 1955 was ourfgreat privilege to assist, from 4 to 9 May 1953, at a series of lectures dealing with the philosophical movement in the thirteenth century. In these lectures recent con troversies about the history of the evolution of the thought of the thirteenth century were outlined and discussed by the central and dominating figure in these controversies in a IMPRIMATUR manner that captivated the attention of a large and distin Lovanii, die 15• lulii 1955 guished audience. Thanks to the great kindness of Professor H. VAN W AEYENBERGH, Rect. Univers., deleg. Van Steenberghen, we are enabled to publish the full text of these lectures. It is our duty to ·express our indebtedness to his generosity and our appreciation of his charm and courtesy. THEODORE CROWLEY, O.F.M. Head of the Department of Scholastic Philosophy The Queen's University, Belfast v • -.·,,, Contents Introductory I 1 The interpretation accepted about 1940 3 II The organisation of studies and its repercussions on the philosophical movement 19 m Eclectic foristotelianism ( 12 oo-1250) 38 IV Saint Bonaventure or Augustinian Aristotelianism 56 v Siger of Brabant or Radical Aristotelianism 75 VI Concerning the condemnation of 1277 94 ·' vii Note As these discourses represent a series of public lectures delivered at The Queen's University, Belfast, I have avoided burdening the text with footnotes. For the benefit of those readers who are desirous of further information or who wish to check some of the statements made in the course of the lectures, I have added, at the end of each conference, a bibliographical note. I have to thank Fr J. J. Gaine, who translated these lectures and helped to read the proofs. FERNAND VAN STEENBERGHEN lz - .Jt. Introductory In the course of these lectures we will examine the following problem : how are we to interpret the evolution of philosophy during the thirteenth century? More precisely : which doctrinal currents and schools are we to distinguish in the course of the thirteenth century ? ltow were these currents formed, and under what influences ? How did they react on each other ? Was there a real unity in the thought ofthe thirteenth century, or was it essentially manifold? If we must grant it a certain unity, what was the nature of that unity and how are we to explain it ? It is almost superfluous to emphasise the historical importance of these problems, since it is a matter of understanding the century which is the "great century" of scholasticism and, consequently, of understanding what this philosophy contributed to the evolution and progress of thought. In addition to this historical importance, it has an interest for the culture of our times : if the history of medieval philosophy is to teach us useful lessons, and if perhaps it is to bring us a message, to suggest solutions for some of the eternal problems which the human mind poses, it is above all from the thirteenth century that we can expect this guidance. Finally, for those who have chosen St Thomas Aquinas as the guide of their philo sophical studies, because they consider him an excep tionally sure and dependable master, the thirteenth century has still greater importance, since it is the century of St Thomas : it is evidently impossible to understand his work properly without grasping the I '$ ' ' . • historical circumstances in which it developed and the antecedents which explain the birth of Thomism as a philosophical system. I Thus it is understandable that since the beginnings of the historical movement dedicated to medieval The interpretation accepted studies, there has been a great effort to appreciate the evolution of thought during the thirteenth century. about 1940 In this first lecture we shall recall the main stages in the "discovery" of the thirteenth century, so as to show how, about 1940, the historians of medieval You already know that towards the end of the Middle philosophy had arrived at a generally accepted inter Ages scholastic philosophy, which was still taught in pretation ofthe thought ofthe thirteenth century. all the universities, became very decadent. From the In the later lectures, we can discuss this interpre fifteenth century onwards, all the new forces which tation and correct or complete it on certain points. arose in western Christendom reacted violently against the Middle Ages and against their culture, and in particular their thought, that is to say scholasticism. The humanists of the Renaissance upbraided it for its "barbarous" language ; the Reformers considered it a product of the medieval Papacy ; men of science rejected it along with the physics of Aristotle ; the Cartesians, as well as the English empiricists, thought it an outmoded philosophy. For all these men fas cinated by progress, "scholasticism" signified "Aristo telianism" and scholasticism was doomed to perish, chiefly because of its servility towards Aristotle. For three centuries medieval scholasticism interested neither the historians nor the philosophers ; even in ecclesiastical circles and in certain universities where scholastic philosophy and theology were still taught, no-one saw the need of applying the methods of historical research to the study of medieval thought. It was in the nineteenth century that historians began to be interested in medieval thought. ' Sur prisingly, this movement of historical study was not 2 3 j; • born under the influence of the Catholic Church, but work Averroes et l' averroisme. Wishing to trace the under the influence of the romantic movement, which history of the influence of the great Arab philosopher, aroused a sympathetic curiosity for the whole of Renan had no difficulty in discovering an A verroist medieval culture. Soon, however, the Thomist revival school at Paris in the fourteenth century (that ofjohn in Italy, and then in Germany and France, strength of Jandun), and an Averroist school in Italy, prin ened the desire to know medieval thought. And cipally at Padua, from the fourteenth century till after finally, in 1879, the Encyclical Aeterni Patris, in which the Renaissance. But what had happened after the Pope Leo XIII called insistently for a return to death of Averroes in IIg8 until the beginning of the St Thomas and to the great scholastic tradition, gave fourteenth century ? To answer this question, Renan the decisive impulse to medieval studies. endeavoured to establish the existence of a Latin The first historians of scholasticism considered the variety of Averroism throughout the thirteenth cen century of St Thomas as above all the century of the tury, an Averroism attacked by numerous scholastics triumph of Aristotle : thanks to the translations of his from William of Auvergne to Raymond Lull. writings, the Greek philosopher became the un The first works of the German Jesuit FRANZ challenged master in thethirteenth-centuryuniversities; EHRLE on the struggle between Augustinianism and Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas introduced Aristotelianism in the second half of the thirteenth him once and for all to the Christian world. No-one century, appeared in I 88g. Ehrle, who was one of doubted this. But while certain rationalist historians the most learned historians of scholasticism, showed sponsored the charge of servility towards Aristotle by direct study of the sources that there existed which had been levelled against the scholastics since towards I270 two rival schools· at the University of the sixteenth century, we find an Italian Thomist, Paris : the one, directed by John Peckham, claimed SALVATORE TALAMO, defending scholasticism in a the authority of St Augustine and the theological work entitled L' aristotelismo della scolastica nella storia tradition; the other, grouped around Thomas della filosofia, which was published in 873 ; in this Aquinas, was inspired by Aristotle. The struggle I work, which appeared in three Italian editions and in between these two schools broke out towards I270 French and German translations, Talamo shows that, and continued until the end of the century, first of all although the medieval doctors accepted the funda at Paris, then at Oxford. mental doctrines of the Stagirite as the basis of their Ten years later, in I8gg, PIERRE MANDONNET, a own philosophies, yet they did not hesitate to correct French Dominican, at that moment professor at the and complete Aristotelian doctrine when it seemed University of Fribourg in Switzerland and one of the necessary. most meritorious workers of his time in the field of The progress of historical studies was soon to show church history, published the first edition of his great that there was more than Aristotelianism in the work Siger de Brabant et l' averroisme latin au XIII siecle. philosophy of the thirteenth century. The second chapter is entitled : "The influence of In 1852, ERNEST RENAN had published his famous Aristotle on the formation of the doctrinal currents 4 5 of the thirteenth century"; utilising and completing at the present day, for Mandonnet~s interpretation has the works of his predecessors, Mandonnet shows that become classic. the attitude taken towards Aristotle determined the The first criticisms directed against Mandonnet orientation of the principal doctrinal currents of the · concerned the nature of Augustinianism. MAuRICE century. In the first place, an attitude of opposition DE WuLF, one of the first four collaborators of Mgr to Aristotle, among the Augustinians : according to Mercier at Louvain, published the first edition of his Mandonnet, the Augustinianism which came into Histoire de la philosophie medievale in 1900. The follow conflict with Aristotelianism towards 1270 was a tradi ing year he contributed an article entitled "Augus tional current which existed long before the thirteenth tinisme et aristotelisme au XIIIe siecle" to the Revue century and whose origins are traceable to St Augus Neoscolastique : in this study he shows that the term tine, and even to Plato ; this is then a "Platonic "Augustinianism" is not exact when referring to the Augustinian current", heir to the philosophical and scholasticism of the beginning of the thirteenth cen religious syncretism of Platonism and Neoplatonism, tury : besides specifically Augustinian doctrines, such the jealous guardian of the Christian synthesis as con as the divine illumination or the "rationes seminales" ceived by St Augustine; which explains why one of (these doctrines were not, however, accepted by all the characteristics of Augustinianism was the absence the scholastics of this period), one finds numerous of a clear distinction between philosophy and theology. doctrines, taught by these doctors, which are alto Towards 1240, according to Mandonnet, Albert the gether foreign to St Augustine ; among others, Aristo Great inaugurated a new school and created "Latin telian doctrines such as act and potency, matter and Aristotelianism"; his disciple Thomas Aquinas con form, substance and accidents; the categories, etc. ; tinued the work ; thus the Albertine-Thomist school and also important doctrines coming from the Jewish is characterised by its receptive attitude towards philosopher Avicebron, such as universal hylomor Aristotle, consequently by a certain reaction against phism (i.e. that all created beings, even the angels, the Augustinian tradition. Finally, towards 1250 or are composed of matter and form) and the plurality a little later, a third current appeared, Aristotelian of substantial forms in the same individual. In these like its predecessor, but while Albert and Thomas circumstances, De Wulf proposed to reserve the endeavoured to create a Christian Aristotelianism, expression "Augustinianism" for the period of doctrinal Siger of Brabant professed an unorthodox Aristotelian strife (when the term Augustinianism takes on a ism, for he interpreted Aristotle after the manner of polemical signification) and for the earlier period to Averroes, without due effort to respect the teachings speak rather of"the old scholasticism" or "pre-Thomist of Christian revelation and of the Church ; Siger is scholasticism". the founder of "Latin Averroism". This is the analysis About the same time we see certain historians proposed by Mandonnet in 1899 ; it can be said that endeavouring to show the influence of Platonism and his views were universally accepted, apart from some Neoplatonism on the Middle Ages, and especially on resistance, and that they still exercise a great influence the thirteenth century. FRAN90IS PICAVET in France 6 7 2 •j;i , was a rationalist historian who understood the cul In Germany medieval Platonism was studied above tural importance of medieval thought ; he protested all by CLEMENT BAE'QMKER, who was the friend of against the custom, very widespread at that time, of Ehrle, Denifle, von Herding, and later of Grabmann, simply omitting the Middle Ages from the history of and founded the great collection of medieval texts philosophy, and finally obtained the erection of a and studies, "Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie chair for the history of medieval philosophies at the des Mittelalters" (nowadays "der Philosophie und Sorbonne ; he was the first to hold this chair and Theologie des Mittelalters"). After several important Professor Gilson succeeded him in I921. In I905 monographs, Baeumker published during the First Picavet published an important work, Esquisse d'une World War two general studies on medieval Platon histoire generate et comparee des philosophies midievales. ism : Der Platonismus im Mittelalter in 9 6, and I I The title of one of the chapters of this volume is: Mittelalterlicher und Renaissance-Platonismus in I9I 7· "The real masters of the medieval philosophers". Later a brilliant Jewish historian, Professor RAY According to Picavet, the real masters were not MOND KLIBANSKY, whose career began in Germany, Aristotle and the Aristotelians, but Plotinus and the but who later became a professor at McGill University Neoplatonists. At first sight the thesis is paradoxical, in Montreal, took up the study of medieval Platonism. and it is certainly excessive, but it becomes less un In 1939 he published an important study, The Con acceptable when one sees exactly what Picavet meant tinuity of the Platonic Tradition during the Middle Ages. to assert : he did not at all deny Aristotle's great Outline of a "Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi". And since influence on the Middle Ages, but claimed that it was 1940 three volumes of this Cqrpus Platonicum have surpassed and dominated by the Neoplatonic influence, appeared. and that this explains to a great extent the religious We must now speak of the role played by Professor and often even mystic character of medieval specula ETIENNE GILSON in the interpretation of the thirteenth tion, since Plotinus was essentially a religious and century. The first point to be emphasised is that since mystic thinker. We must give Picavet the credit the beginning of his career as a medievalist, and for having attracted attention to a very important especially since 1924, the date of his famous work aspect of medieval philosophy, for later researches La Philosophic de S. Bonaventure, Professor Gilson has have shown more and more the large part played by strongly accentuated the opposition, or rather the Neoplatonism, beside Aristotelianism, in the philo irreducibility of Augustinianism and Aristotelianism ; sophical systems of the thirteenth century ; the according to him, St Bonaventure and St Thomas do scholastics did not know the writings of Plotinus ; not only represent two philosophies which propose but they knew certain writings of Proclus and, in different solutions for a certain number of problems, addition, the influence of the Greek Neoplatonists was but two dijferent conceptions of philosophy, so different as exercised indirectly through the most diverse authors, to be hardly comparable, certainly not open to such as St Augustine, the pseudo-Dionysius, John criticism in terms of each other; they are two forms Scotus Eriugena, Avicenna, Avicebron, etc. of Christian thought, each one rich and interesting ; 8 9 ·~ j .. {