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Aristotle, Augustine and the Identity of Philosophy in Late Thirteenth-Century Paris: The Case of Some Theologians

STEVEN P. M A R R O N E (Boston)

In the third volume of „Études sur Léonard de Vinci", Pierre Duhem pro-posed the thesis that modern science found its origins in the Middle Ages1. Since the days of Francis Bacon it had been commonplace to assume that au-thentically scientific thought was incompatible with Aristotelian philosophy. And because for at least as long Aristode had been considered the ideological pace-setter in the schools established in what gradually came to be referred to as the Middle Ages, it had become equally orthodox to believe that medieval traditions of thought, loosely referred to as Scholasticism, had had to be superseded for real science to emerge. Of course, for Duhem, as is still the case for most people in Anglo-American spheres of discourse, real „science" was synonymous with „natural science", so that he understood the standard account as running to the effect that natural science was exclusively a product of the modern world. It was precisely this assumption he wanted to challenge with his thesis about medieval beginnings.

Naturally, many of Duhem's historiographical efforts were devoted to laying out evidence that authentically „scientific" theories and methods could be found in the work of European thinkers well before the canonical beginnings of „mod-ern science" in the „Scientific Revolution" of the seventeenth century, but what is of interest here is the particular way he accounted for science's presence before modern times. For Duhem accepted the view that Aristotelian patterns of thinking stood in the way of progress towards real science. Moreover, he felt that Aristotle's hold on the medieval mind was so strong, or perhaps the power of his philosophical synthesis so mesmerizing, that it could hardly be broken by reasoning alone or the accumulating counterweight of empirical evidence, even experiment itself, which from Duhem's perspective would of course have ulti-mately to prove incompatible with Aristotelian ideas. In short, Aristode's grip could be loosened only by a command emanating from a source higher than nature, human mind included. Divine authority alone would suffice to break the spell, and since only the church spoke with divine authority among the educated

1 John Murdoch, in his fascinating Pierre Duhem and the History of Late Medieval Science and Philosophy in the Latin West, in: Gli studi di filosofia medievale fra otto e novecento, Roma 1991, 253, n. 1, draws attention to the succinct statement from the preface, P. Duhem, Etudes sur Léonard de Vinci, vol. 3, Paris 1913, ν - v i .

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Aristotle, Augustine and the Identity of Philosophy 277

in the medieval West, it was the church that would have to intervene. Ironically, superrational causes would have to lead the way to rational, „scientific" truth.

Duhem thought he could locate the relevant authoritative dictate in a theolog-ical censure already attracting attention among historians in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This was, of course, the famous Condemnation of 1277, which through Duhem's efforts entered the history of science as a pivotal event. As the account goes, Tempier's censure was directed primarily against Aristode and his influence, made it inexpedient if not dangerous to follow Aristotelian orthodoxy in theorizing about the nature of reality, especially concerning such critical natural-scientific issues as motion, place, time, matter and cosmogony, and opened the door to perspectives free of Aristode's distorting lens, among which were those generative of modern science. Already in the fourteenth cen-tury, therefore, ideas were afloat that would feed direcdy into the natural philos-ophy of Leonardo and Galileo, thence to the classical science of the seventeenth century.

Few today dare to embrace Duhem's thesis openly, surely not in its entirety but rarely even partially in anything like the spirit in which it was put forth2. Indeed, among historians of science his vision of the relation between Middle Ages and modernity has with every decade fallen further out of favor. While most modernists opposed him from the start, insisting that the decisive steps leading to „true science" were, as traditionally reputed, first taken by Copernicus and Galileo, medievalists have drawn upon work excavating the textual reliquiae of scholastic natural philosophy increasingly to corroborate an appreciation of intellectual currents in the Middle Ages as generative of a science understandable in its own terms, authentic if different from modern science and not to be viewed as merely tributary to „more respectable" efforts from the seventeenth century on3. Still, for all its unfashionableness, much of the characteristic physi-ognomy of the Duhemian model persists in the discourse of historians of medi-eval philosophy and theology, where questions of natural philosophy or natural science play only a secondary role.

2 Edward Grant marks a significant exception. For one of the most forceful expositions of his views, see E. Grant, The Condemnation of 1277, God's Absolute Power, and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages, in: Viator 10 (1979), 211-44 .

3 Alexandre Koyré mounted a counterattack on behalf of modernists against Duhem as soon as his ideas were published, but the sharpest criticism can be found in his „Le vide et l'espace infinie au XlVe siècle", in: Archives d'Hist. Doct. et Litt, au Moyen Âge 17 (1949), 45 -91 . As for medievalists, after the fundamentally sympathetic work of such as A. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 1100-1700, Oxford 1953, the tide of opinion has generally flowed in the opposite direction. Even those like Murdoch, who once described fourteenth-century philosophy, particularly its mathematicizing, in terms resonant of Duhem's sense of medieval precursors to the seventeenth century, have recently emphasized the radical difference and autonomy of medieval ways both of thinking about nature and under-taking rational analysis in general; see the article cited above, η. 1, and his The Analytic Character of Late Medieval Learning: Natural Philosophy without Nature, in: L. Roberts (ed.), Approaches to Nature in the Middle Ages, Binghamton, Ν. Y. 1982, 171 -213 .



278 Steven P. Marrone

This fact is particularly evident in current debates over the significance of the Condemnation of 1277, the animating impulse for the scholarly project which the present volume represents. Though there no longer exists a standard inter-pretation of 1277, not even a prevailing understanding of the course or character of scholastic thought in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Duhem's ghost haunts contemporary discussion of these issues just as it has haunted each ses-sion in the Notre Dame-University of Cologne collaborative project. Polemics about the significance of 1277, as heated today as any time since Duhem, while revealing considerable disagreement about exactly what was condemned, who the targets were and who stood to benefit from their silencing, and precisely what the effect in the scholastic world, still revolve around many of the same points of debate and often betray structural presuppositions largely consonant with Duhem's4. To name only three, the direction of medieval philosophy and theology is often perceived, as it was by Duhem, as taking at that moment a decisive turn, Aristotle and Aristotelian sympathies are generally thought to have hung in the balance, and theologians' alarms about an immoderate naturalism emergent in the Faculty of Arts but threatening to infect the Faculty of Theology commonly considered to be the driving force.

Surely the TransCoop project and the present volume of essays will be viewed by many as driving a stake into the heart of this resurrected Duhemian beast. Convincing and resounding calls are made here not to see any of the Condemna-tion of the 1270s as explicitly anti-Aristotelian, even as adopting a determinate posture, whether positive or negative, towards the place of authentically Aristo-telian ideas in medieval thought. Several essays suggest there is little evidence the debates of late-thirteenth-century theologians had much effect on the sub-stance of philosophy, particularly as it was carried out by scholars in the Faculty of Arts5. And many reinforce the growing chorus among scholars raising serious doubt either that the lines between scholastic Aristotelianizers and anti-Aristote-lianizers, or in traditional historiographical terms Augustinianizers, can be easily drawn or that medieval philosophy and theology can be characterized as having taken a dramatic turn at any moment, 1277 or whenever6.

4 There is an enormous recent literature on the subject, but the reader must begin with R. His-sette, Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277 (Philosophes Médiévaux 22), Louvain - Paris 1977.

5 S. Donati's contribution to the present volume, for example, would appear to demonstrate con-clusively that on the specific issue of accidents existing without a subject artists kept tabs on developments among theologians but felt unconstrained to tailor their own views to meet the demands of theological concerns.

6 On the thirteenth century, see, for instance, the work of B. Kent, Virtues of the Will. The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century, Washington, D. C. 1995, and A. Speer, Bonaventure and the Question of a Medieval Philosophy, in: Medieval Philosophy and Theol-ogy 6 (1997), 2 5 - 4 6 , both TransCoop participants, and on fourteenth and fifteenth century schools and conceptual shifts, the body of revisionist work inspired by TransCoop participant W. Courtenay (for whom, see, for example: Was there an Ockhamist School?, in: M. Hoenen/ J. Schneider/G. Wieland [eds.], Philosophy and Learning. Universities in the Middle Ages, Leiden 1995, 2 6 3 - 9 2 ) and by Z. Kaluza (see Les querelles doctrinales à Paris. Nominalistes et réalistes aux confins du XlVe et du XVe siècles, Bergamo 1988).




The present essay is generally supportive of these arguments, indeed should be read in the context of the new efforts to free medieval historiography from the constrictions imposed by the often philosophically partisan categories and conceptual schemes of intellectual historians of the first half of the twentieth century. But the point here is, perhaps perversely, to salvage at least some struc-tural elements from the interpretative scheme erected by Duhem so long ago. First of all, while agreeing that the Condemnation, either singly of 1277 or collectively of the 1270s, ought not be seen as either cause for or sign of a fundamental shift in direction for thirteenth-century Scholasticism, the analysis that follows clings to the position that substantial questions of ideological direc-tion or commitment were at stake in the decades from 1265 to 1285. Second, it offers continued support for the view that Aristotle or Aristotelianizing tend-encies were in those years greatly under scrutiny, with a feeling among many, perhaps most strongly theologians, that too great a devotion to Aristotelian purism, perhaps any authentic Aristotelian systematization, posed a threat to the search for truth. Of the three Duhemian presuppositions mentioned before, only the third is entirely shunned. The causal supremacy of theological over philosophical considerations, whether the distinction be drawn in line with the differing faculties of medieval universities or according to modern biases and concerns, is taken as unsupported by the evidence, probably contrary to what we know to be the case.

What is proposed here is that broad currents of change, of which the Con-demnations constituted only a part, were at play in the scholastic world of the late thirteenth century. Moreover, the ideological transformations involved were neither expressly theological nor philosophical, in the sense of arising exclusively from one or the other set of disciplinary concerns, but instead evident in only loosely coordinated modulations in common stances on specific issues in all fields of inquiry. What seems to be the case, however, is that across the board appeared signs of resistance to, or perhaps impatience with, what was thought of as Aristotelian orthodoxy. Hence much of the polemic surrounding the Con-demnations and apparent in the alarmist rhetoric of numerous theologians7.

The argument has already begun to be advanced for a broad phenomenon of intellectual metamorphosis in the later thirteenth century, though there is little consensus among proponents on how to characterize it8. But the refrain

7 See most plainly in John Pecham's letters of 1285, as edited in: C. Martin (ed.), Registrum epistolarum fratris Johannis Peckham, London 1885, III, 8 7 0 - 7 2 and 8 9 6 - 9 0 2 , or F. Ehrle, John Peckham über den Kampf des Augustinismus und Aristotelismus in der zweiten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts, in: Zeitschrift für kath. Theol. 13 (1889), 1 8 0 - 8 6 .

8 John Murdoch has consistently been the most forceful voice pressing for consideration of this broad transformation, picking up where Ernest Moody left off (Empiricism and Metaphysics in Medieval Philosophy, in: The Phil. Review 67 [1958], 145 — 63) by characterizing it as analydcal and mathematically oriented - see Murdoch, From Social into Intellectual Factors: An Aspect of the Unitary Character of Late Medieval Learning, in: J. Murdoch / E. Sylla (eds.), The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, Boston 1975, 2 7 1 - 3 4 8 .




will be taken up here with what is perhaps a distinctive tone. For many of the new approaches emergent at century's end would appear, upon closer examina-tion, to be not so novel after all, instead highly reminiscent of positions taken by scholastics, masters at the rapidly expanding universities, early in the 1300s. From this perspective, the change of which the Condemnations formed a part must be seen as less a departure into unexplored territory than a return to paths temporarily abandoned in the decades of mid-century. Indeed, if this assessment is valid, then the anomaly in thirteenth-century Scholasticism, the phenomenon begging explanation, may not be the later-decades spirit often manifested in opposition to presumed Aristotelian orthodoxy but rather the curious inclination towards a reputed Aristotelian purism from the 1240s to the 1270s.

For now it must suffice to look at a few cases exemplifying the pattern proposed. That means temporarily forgoing any effort to cover the full range of issues of interest to current scholars of medieval philosophy and theology, focusing merely on a handful of questions, though arguably important ones and not unrelated to points of controversy raised specifically in the Condemnations. No attempt will be made here, however, either to explore the Condemnations themselves, even any of the specific articles of 1277, or address the dramatic events at Paris and Oxford in the 1270s.

Three interconnected issues of metaphysics and epistemology will be exam-ined. For each, evidence will be drawn from among the works of four scholas-tics, all of whom have been associated with the outlook habitually labeled by historians of the period as „Augustinian" or „Neo-Augustinian" and taken as characteristic of „conservatives" resistant to the inroads of Aristotle and, by the 1270s, orchestrating the censure of opposing views. In other words, the sampling will be limited to figures whose ideas have been seen as expressive of the ideol-ogy „behind" the Condemnation. They are particularly instructive to consider because a chronological comparison of their views reveals the very dynamic laid out above, even to the point of a sequential shift towards and then away from alleged Aristotelian purity, and this despite their falling outside the camp of the purported „Aristotelianizers" whose ideology is supposed to have triggered the Condemnations and the direction of whose thought was presumably „corrected" by the imposed hegemony of previously existing but heretofore philosophically quiescent conservatism of thinkers of just their sort.

The first issue concerns individuation of essence — that is to say, the way essential natures, such as species, which in normal predication are thought of as universal, are rendered individual in their instantiations in the real world. The second has to do with human knowledge of individuals, or in other words how human mind, suited by Aristotelian and even Neoplatonic report to busy itself with general natures combined into propositions of universal significance, can know objects in their individuality. The third poses the question of the constitu-tion of intellect, again more particularly whether a fundamentally Aristotelian configuration, the functional division of human mind into agent and possible




intellects, is appropriate or whether it undermines a presupposed unadulterated agency of human understanding.

With each issue three different soundings will be made at, so to speak, three different moments in the course of thirteenth-century Scholasticism, each, as indicated, from the works of a presumed „Augustinian". William of Auvergne, master of theology at Paris from sometime in the 1220s and bishop of the city, thereby overseer of its university, from 1228 to 1249, will be taken to represent concerns of the first half of the century9. His very eclecticism suits the diversity, perhaps disorder, of the intellectual spirit in his day, making him as appropriate an example as can be found for a time of hard-to-define ideological attach-ments10. Second will come the works, for convenience's sake only the early writings, of the mid-century Franciscan, Bonaventure, active as master of theol-ogy and then intellectual spokesperson for his fellow friars from the 1250s until his death in 1274 and habitually taken in the twentieth century as setting forth in purest form the Augustinian point of view11. Last will be either of two Franciscans, John Duns Scotus, bachelor of theology at Oxford 1298 to 1300, then master of theology at Paris between 1305 and 1307, ending his life tragically young in 1308 as lecturer in the Franciscan convent at Cologne, or William of Ockham, bachelor of theology at Oxford before 1320, inceptor but not yet master when called to Avignon for examination in 1324, who spent his last twenty years engaged not with the sort of philosophical and theological matters considered here but rather in political theorizing and polemic triggered by the controversy within his order and between it and the papacy over apostolic pov-erty12. Both have been associated, though in radically different ways, with the allegedly new directions of Scholasticism from the late thirteenth through the fourteenth centuries. Investigation of each issue will yield the same pattern, first a movement towards greater fidelity to Aristotle in the passage from first to second moment and then a turn away, back to earlier ideas and attitudes, with the third and final stage.

Individuation of essence was a matter specifically addressed in the Condem-nation of 1277. Article 116 in the numeration assigned by Mandonnet con-

9 For bibliography on William's life, consult S. Marrone, William of Auvergne and Robert Grosset-este. New Ideas of Truth in the Early Thirteenth Century, Princeton 1983, 2 7 - 2 8 , nn. 1 and 4.

10 F. Van Steenberghen has given the classic description of what he saw as a philosophical eclecti-cism in the early thirteenth century, nowhere more lucidly than in La philosophie au XlIIe siècle, Louvain-Paris 1966, 1 8 1 - 8 9 .

11 For bibliography on Bonaventure's life and works, begin with B. Distelbrink, Bonaventurae scripta authentica dubia vel spuria critice recensita, Rome 1975; J. Quinn, Chronology of St. Bonaventure (1217-1257) , in: Franciscan Stud. 32 (1972), 1 6 8 - 8 6 ; and J. Bougerol, Introduc-tion a l'étude de Saint Bonaventure, Tournai 1961.

1 2 For bibliography on Scotus's life, consult the introduction to John Duns Scotus, God and Creatures. The Quodlibetal Questions, edd. F. Alluntis / Α. Wolter, Princeton 1975, xvii-xxxiv; for Ockham, start with the note in M. Adams, William Ockham, Notre Dame 1987, I, xv-xvi i , and consult her bibliography.




demned the proposition that „individuals of the same species differ only by virtue of possessing different matter {sola positione materiae)"u. In this form the issue was framed expressly with regard to Aristotle's stance in the „Metaphys-ics", where he claimed that individuals „are different in virtue of their matter . . . but the same in form"14 . But the topic had arisen earlier in the century in the work of William of Auvergne with reference more narrowly to a peculiar take on Aristotle, associated in the Latin world with the authoritative sixth-century figure, Boethius. It was in „De Trinitate" that the latter had coined the well-worn phrase that „variety of accidents accounts for distinction in number"15 .

In his „De universo" William took aim at exacdy this Boethian construction, maintaining with characteristic hyperbole that it promoted a position to be fought with fire and sword. Reluctant to disparage so eminent a personage as Boethius, however, he went on to explain that the great author's alarming words belied a more benign intention, either to make clear that numerical distinction was completely unconnected to specific or any other substantial difference or, more likely, to recall the way human intellect took note of numerical distinction in the world of sin16. For according to William, and by his reckoning in line with the real opinion of Boethius, since to wayfarer's mind not the instantiated species in the real object, nor the substantial difference, nor indeed any essential trait or element designated an individual as numerically distinct from any other instance of the same specific type, it was left for accidental variation in non-essential attributes and qualities to serve as cognitive vehicle for individuality and marker of each thing's numerical uniqueness. In the world of sin, the species, whether instantiated, apprehended or verbalized in predication, was that by which intellect in contrast assimilated individuals of the same type or kind, overlooking the numerical distinction that set them apart17.

Yet having cast himself as in agreement with Boethius on knowledge of in-dividuals in the sinful world, William immediately revealed that he was vasdy at

13 Hissette, op. cit. (nt. 4 above), 188. 14 Aristotle, Metaphysics Ζ (vii), 8 ( 1034a5 -8 ) , as translated by J. Barnes, The Complete Works

of Aristotle, Princeton 1984, II, 1632. 15 Boethius, De Trinitate I: „Sed numero differentiam accidentium varietas fadt. Nam tres homines neque

genere neque specie sed suis acädentibus distant", quoted from H. F. Stewart / E .K . Rand / S. J. Tester (eds.), Boethius, The Theological Tractates, Cambridge, Ma. 1978, 6.

16 William of Auvergne, De universo I, 3, 29, in: Opera Omnia, Orleans 1674 / repr. Frankfurt a. M. 1963, I, 802 aE: „In destructione autem hujus errons non rationibus aut probationibus utendum est, sed igne et gladio omnique poenali genere exterminii. Nec te conturbet sermo cujusdam ex Italicis philosophis, qui dixit, quia sola accidentium varietas fadt differentiam numero, quoniam intentio ejus non fuit in hoc, nisi vel excludere differentiam spedficam, vel alias substantiales differentias, vel retulit intellectum sermonis sui ad nos, intelligens differentiam ipsam distinctionem nostram".

17 William, De universo I, 3, 29, in: Opera Omnia, I, 802 aF: „Fuit igitur intentio ejus [i. e. Boethius] in hoc sermone, quod sola acddentium varietas, id est, non spedes aut differentia substantialis aut aliquid communium omnium essentialium, facit differentiam numero, hoc est, diversificat ipsa individua velfadt distincti-onem numeralem nobis individuorum. Non enim in specie distinguimus individua, sed magis unimus similitudine essentiali omnímoda quae est in spede... ".




odds with what today must surely be taken as Boethius's view on the metaphysi-cal foundation for the individuality in question. Boethius, after all, had followed up on his famous comment about variety of accident by emphasizing the bare fact that neither „genus" nor „species" explained numerical distinction but just „accidents" alone18. It was precisely this Boethian use of the term „species" that William dared to violate when he continued his own analysis by proposing that human intellect, if reinforced by the light of glory, would be able numerically to distinguish individuals „in their very species"19. From a Boethian standpoint, it is hard to imagine what this phrase could mean, but at minimum it conveyed the idea, totally foreign to Boethius, that somehow the instantiated specific na-ture itself contained the marks of individuality.

To see what William had in mind it is necessary to turn to another passage from „De universo". For later in that work he asserted that human intellect was capable — by nature, so to speak, or as he put it, when not buried in a body corrupted by the Fall but instead glorified and released — to penetrate beyond the accidental covering to the substantial heart of things, indeed to substances themselves20. And as he had already made clear, substance and species, at least instantiated species, were for him convertible, so that there was nothing in the substance of a thing that was not in its species21. Moreover, every actual sub-stance was in its substanceness different from every other substance, not only, as was sometimes the case, in type or kind but also in number22. Thus, when freed from conditions of sin, human mind had access to a level of reality that could, completely shorn of accident and other nonsubstantial variation, reveal individuals in their individuality, and this level was properly designated as species itself23.

William realized that his words might appear odd, for it was after all species that picked out, at least in predication, the similarities of things of the same type. Was not „species", therefore, doing double duty for him, designating both similarity and difference, and did this not entail a contradiction in language if not in thought? Not surprisingly, William's answer was that it did not, but to make his case he was forced to draw an exceedingly fine philosophical line. Each species intellect perceived — and again one is inclined to render this more

18 See the second sentence in the quotation given above, nt. IS. 15 William, De universo I, 3, 29, in: Opera Omnia, I, 802a[F-G] : „Nec dubites quin si intellects

noster illuminatus esset hic illuminatione gloriae suae ultimae, distinguerei et numeraret in ipsa specie sua 20 William, De universo II, 2, 15, in: Opera Omnia, I, 858b[G-H] : „Intellects igitur videt interiora

omnia, hoc est, ipsa substantialia rerum ipsasque substantias earum ... Hoc autem non putes me dicere de intellectu in corpore quodammodo demerso atque sepulto et originali nostra corruptione obscurato fantasiisque depresso, sed de intellectu (ut Christianorum utar sermone) glorificato".

21 See William, De universo I, 3, 29, in: Opera Omnia, I, 802 aF: „Et debes intelligere quod dixi, substantialis, hoc est, secundum totam substantiam; praeter enim rationem speciei nihil habet substantiale indivi-duum".

22 Consult nt. 23. 23 The first part of the quotation given in nt. 20 above continues as follows: „ . . . et propter hoc,

quoniam in substantias suis differunt omnia creata, sive sint sensibilia sive intelligibilia, omniaque singularia, videt [intellectus] dijferentias earum es sentíale s per quas nulla earum est alia".




precisely as „instantiated species" — was numerically different from every other perceived species not necessarily by any dissimilitude (dissimil i tude), for all things of the same type were entirely similar in specific traits, but by a diversity (diversi-tas) constituting its numerical uniqueness, so that intellect successfully grasping species alone had access to all it needed to distinguish one individual from another24.

In short, the numerical difference between two individuals of even the same type was an essential difference, attaching to the substance, thus by William's terminology to the species in the real instance, and not linked to anything extrin-sic and separable like the accidents of Boethius's famous formula25. Numerical difference was substantial difference, which was in some strange and highly qualified way „specific difference", too, though William himself never employed that actual expression. Here was a position not only non-Boethian but also, taken literally, practically incomprehensible in Aristotelian terms, where species and individual were carefully kept separate. How „species" could be the key to both similarity and to diversity at the same time William never bothered to explain. More than likely he never even noticed a problem.

By Bonaventure's day, however, such indifference to Aristotelian sensibilities, or at least Aristotelian language, was impossible. Where William had begun with an idea of intrinsic, substantial and essential individuality and then worked to vitiate a likely interpretation of Boethius which indicated otherwise, only to run up coincidentally against the terms of Aristotelian analysis, Bonaventure began with Aristotelian language and tried to accommodate his own sense of what constituted the individual, where he may in fact have shared many of William's predilections. In the second book of his Commentary on the Sentences, Bona-venture introduced his authorial determination on the matter of individuation with a plainly Aristotelianizing assertion that it was due to the joining of matter to form26 . Especially prominent here, and surely intentionally so, are the very two terms Aristotle deployed in his own examination of the issue: „matter" and „form"27 .

Bonaventure was, to be sure, hardly a slavish follower of Aristotle. Though perhaps abject Aristotelianism was characteristic of no theologian in thirteenth-century Paris, Bonaventure's contemporary, Thomas Aquinas, had articulated a theory of individuation by relying like him on the Aristotelian pair, matter and

24 Look to the continuation of the quotation given above, nt. 19: „ . . . distinguerei et numerarci in ipsa specie sua, non quidem dissimilitudine, quia nulla est eis in ipsa spede, sed diversitate, qua videret hoc non esse illud et econverso et verissime numeraret diceretque unum et aliud et tertium".

25 William, De universo II, 2, 15, in: Opera Omnia, I, 858b[G-H] : „Sicut enim hoc non est hoc nisi per hoc quod est, hoc est dicere non a Joris ñeque ab aliquo quod sit post esse ipsius et supra id adveniens, sicut, quod hoc non est illud non est a forinsecis neque accidentialis differentia, sed diversitas et differentia essentialis".

26 Bonaventure, Commentarius in II. librum Sententiarum, d. 3, p. 1, a. 2, q. 3, in: Opera Omnia, Quaracchi 1885, II, 109b: „Ideo est tertia positio satis planior, quod individuatio consurgit ex actuali coniunctione materiae cum forma... ".

27 Consult nt. 14 above.




form, taking care however to adhere closely to Aristotle's prescription by which the similarity associated with type was attributable to form, the distinctiveness of individuality to matter28. In contrast, Bonventure attempted to divide the individuating function between the two. As he put it, „individuation in creatures [arose] from a twofold principle", in which form was made multiple by impres-sion into matter but matter rendered discrete and countable by the reception of form29 .

But despite his attempt to avoid laying the burden of individuation exclusively on matter, and for all his efforts to insist that both matter and form, as con-joined and instantiated in an actual thing, bore in themselves the mark of indi-viduality, Bonaventure could not escape an almost inevitable Aristotelianizing tendency to emphasize the role of the material component. Recognizing form as the basis for specific similarity, and therefore the effective principle of universal predication, he implicitly conceded that such predication would be vacuous, or at least equivocal, were one to demand that form as universal and therefore representative of the species in general should be reduced to particularity by addition of any further formal element30. To a degree he thereby resurrected William's sense that the very essentialness by which something belonged to a specific set was also that which made it individual. Yet the same concession also meant that the introduction of matter alone made the difference between form as universal and form as real part of an instantiated thing, and no amount of talk about the mutuality of form's effect on matter and matter's on form could dispel the impression that matter was what counted in the end31.

Indeed, when Bonaventure ventured to describe the precise role of both form and matter in individuation, he could not help but associate matter more with „thisness", mark of individuality, and form with „whatness", mark of specific similarity. And here, most revealingly, in characterizing the „thisness" of matter's contribution he reached for the accidents of time and place32. From Aristotle

28 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, 85, 3 (ad 4): „ . . . nam singulare est propter materiam, ratio autem spedei sumitur ex forma".

29 Shordy after the quotation given above, nt. 26, Bonaventure continued: „ . . . sicut patet, cum im-presilo vel expressio fit multorum sigillorum in cera, quae prius erat una, nec sigilla plurificari possunt since cera, nec cera numeratur, nisi quia fiunt in ea diversa sigilla ... Individuatio igitur in creaturis consurgit ex duplid principio".

30 Bonaventure, Commentarius in II. librum Sent., d. 18, p. 1, q. 3, in: Opera Omnia, II, 441 b: „Forma autem, in qua plura assimilantur, non potest esse nisi forma universalis; quae vero essentialiter praedica-tur de illis, non potest esse nisi forma totum complectens. Forma igitur universalis non est aliud quam forma totius, quae, cum de se nata sit esse in multis, universalis est; particulari^atur autem non per additionem ulterioris formae ...".

31 The quotation given above, nt. 30, ends as follows: „ . . . particulari%atur autem non per additionem ulterioris formae, sed per coniunctionem sui cum materia, ex qua coniunctione materia appropriai sibiformam, et forma materiam, sicut dictum est supra".

32 Bonaventure, Commentarius in II. librum Sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 2, q. 3, in: Opera Omnia, II, 109 b — 110 a: „Si tamen quaeras, a quo veniat [individuatio]prindpaliter; dicendum, quod individuum est hoc aliquid. Quod sit hoc, prindpalius habet a materia, ratione cuius forma habet positionem in loco et tempore. Quod sit aliquid, habet a forma".




to matter, and from matter to variety of accident, the path would seem inexora-bly to lead. Of course, stricdy speaking, it would be unwarranted to pronounce Bonaventure's position absolutely incompatible with William's, which unambigu-ously opposed individuation by accident. But it would be equally misleading to suggest that it breathed with the same spirit. And the difference between the two would seem to have much to do with a newfound desire to approximate Aristode's diagnosis.

By the time of John Duns Scotus, the tide had turned again. As earlier, the focus was directed once more away from matter, and a source for a thing's individuality sought which fully implicated, though perhaps now in tandem with matter, the formal aspects making the object what it was. So much is clear from a passage in the second book of Duns's „Ordinatio" dealing with the express character of the individuating principle. Right after making the point that to each real thing belonged both a unity attaching to its nature as bearer of the general similarity to others of the same type (natura ut natura) and a consequent but closely related unity attaching to its nature as individual instantiated object (natura ut haec natura), he commented that though the former was in some way a lesser unity than the latter, each was real and each could be thought of as corresponding to its own kind of „entitas" or ontological presence ultimately identifiable with the thing itself33. Detectable in this account are the peculiarities of Scotus's metaphysics, which borrowed from Henry of Ghent the practice of locating differing levels of entity in each thing to account for different aspects of its fundamental constitution34. More important for present concerns, how-ever, is the inevitable implication that since both unities were properly attribut-able to the same real thing, compounded of matter and form, both would have to be equally formal and material. Which is exactly what Duns immediately confirmed by adding the gloss that each thing — that is, each real instantiated object — which necessarily possessed the unity of a nature insofar as it was a determinate type, was also of itself formally individual (formaliter de se unum) by its numerical or individual unity, which was already indissolubly bound to the unity of type35.

Of course all this mimics precisely William of Auvergne's view of the ontolog-ical anatomy of things, whereby the formal component of reality — in his case manifested in the term „species" — did service in accounting for both an ob-ject's identity as member of a type and its identity as an individual, and it con-

33 Consult the passage partially quoted below, nt. 35. 34 On this parallel between Duns and Henry, consult S. Marrone, Henry of Ghent and Duns

Scotus on the Knowledge of Being, in: Speculum 63 (1988), 40 — 42; and the relevant chapters in my forthcoming book, The Light of Thy Countenance.

35 J. Duns Scotus, Ordinatio II, d. 3, n. 172, in: Opera Omnia, Vatican City 1973, VII, 476: „Sicut dictum est... natura prius est naturaliter quam haec natura, et unitas propria - consequens naturam ut natura — est prior naturaliter unitate eius ut haec natura ... In eodem igitur quod est unum numero, est altqua entitas, quam consequitur minor unitas quam sit unitas numeralis, et est realis; et illud cuius est talis unitas, formaliter est ,de se unum' unitate numerali".




trasts with Bonaventura by at least to that degree dispensing with a role for matter. But Duns was not William redivivus, and where William satisfied himself with the general proviso, not bothering to investigate the technicalities of „how", Duns insisted on pressing on to concrete analysis of the mechanics of the individuation process. He recognized that key to the procedure must be the passage from entity connected to the unity of a nature as a type, which he now labeled specifically „quidditative entity", to entity connected to the unity of a nature as an individual, or „individual entity". And he conceded that there must be some special additive, which he appropriately called an „individual differ-ence", associated with the latter and accounting for the restriction of the type to a particular instantiation. The question was, was this additive, or the „indivi-dual entity" with which it was effectively to be identified, something from the thing's material component or something from its formal component or some-thing composed out of both36?

Duns's answer was that the individuating additive was not expressly formal nor expressly material nor expressly composite. After all, since the quidditative entity associated with a thing's unity as member of a type was a real mode of being of the actual object, it was manifest throughout all the object's real compo-nents: form, matter and compound of the two. Thus the form, viewed as expres-sive of a type, and the matter, viewed as necessary for a type's real presence, and the composite, viewed as the only way a type could actually be, should each be said to possess its own quidditative entity philosophically prior to and dif-ferent from whatever entity attached to the object marking it as individual37. And each would require an individuating additive to account for the progression from general to particular. In no way could one of the real components or the composite serve as the additive for any of the others.

To explain what the additive was, Duns had recourse to his theory of formal distinction. The individual entity found in the form, in the matter and in the composite and marking all of them as components of a unique individual was simply the ultimate real mode of being or presence (ultima realitas entis) of the object itself. As such it was not in any real way different from any other mode of being or presence of the object — for instance, its quidditative entity — but only formally distinct38. Whether such an „addition" not really „additional" to

36 Duns, Ordinario II, d. 3, n. 175, in: Opera Omnia, VII, 477: „Et si quaeras a me quae est ista ,entitas individualis' a qua sumitur differentia individualis, estne materia vel forma vel compositumm, — respondeo ...".

37 The passage quoted above, n. 36, continues as follows: „ . . . respondeo: Omnis entitas quiditativa — sive partialis sive totalis — alicuius generis, est de se indifferens ,ut entitas quiditativa' ad banc entitatem et illam, ita quod,ut entitas quiditativa' est naturaliter prior ista entitate ut haec est, — et ut prior est naturaliter, sicut non convenit sibi esse banc, ita non répugnât sibi ex ratione sua suum oppositum; et sicut compositum non includit suam entitatem (qua formaliter est ,hoc') in quantum natura, ita nec materia ,in quantum natura' includit suam entitatem (qua est ,baec materia'), nec forma ,in quantum natura' includit suam".

38 Duns, Ordinatio II, d. 3, n. 187-88, in: Opera Omnia, VII, 483-84 : „Non est igitur,ista entitas' [individualis] materia vel forma vel compositum, in quantum quodlibet istorum est ¡natura', — sed est ultima realitas entis quod est materia vel quod est forma vel quod est compositum; ita quod quodcumque commune, et tarnen determinabile, adhucpotest distingui (quantumcumque sit una res) in plures realitates formaliter distinctas,




what it was added to but only formally distinguishable makes sense depends on what one thinks about the philosophical soundness of Duns's formal distinction. But it did represent a stab at showing precisely how a thing could be at once formally, as well as materially, similar to something else and distinct. Thus it constituted an attempt to shore up an alternative to Aristotelianizing approaches to individuation.

It requires little effort to pass from the metaphysics of types and individuals to the noetics of human apprehension of either, and when one does so in the case of the three thinkers examined so far, one discovers an ideological dynamic strikingly similar to that just observed. For anyone beginning from an Aristoteli-anizing perspective, the main problem to be solved in the new philosophical arena was how to account for cognition of individuals. Genuine knowledge in Aristotelian epistemology consisted, after all, in apprehension of universale, to which mind was, so to speak, constitutionally suited by its immateriality. Hard to understand was how, or to what degree, intellect could be said additionally to have access to the individuals in which universale were instantiated. For Wil-liam of Auvergne, however, the tables were turned. As shown above, he viewed human mind as by nature, putting aside the restrictions imposed by original sin, capable of apprehending individuals immediately and in entirely intelligible fashion. This made sense, since intellect possessed the power to seize its cogni-tive objects in their full substance, and substances were in themselves essentially — in William's strangely discordant phrase, in their very species (in ipsa specie sua) — individual39. Ultimate manifestation of reality, particulars were the most obviously intelligible of all possible objects of mind.

In fact since for William substances, as in his words „species", were equally indicative of type and individual, human mind was by virtue of its uncorrupted intellective capacity to apprehend substance able to cognize universale as well, knowing them by the same noetic means and just as directly as it knew individ-uals40. The problem for William was therefore explaining how the wayfarer's intellect, deprived by sin of its natural potency and dependent on whatever cognitive evidence it could borrow from the senses, was capable of knowing anything at all. Only here was he in the end reduced to something like the Aristotelian predicament. For William had a vague theory of abstraction to ac-count for knowledge of universale, suggesting perhaps a logical process of strip-ping away or analysis by which intellect deduced the character of universal na-tures from the sensible experience confronting it41. But since this would hardly

quarum haec formaliter non ist illa: et haec est formaliter entitas singularitatis, et ilia est entitas naturae formaliter".

39 Consult nn. 19, 20, 23 and 25, above. 4 0 William, De anima VII, 1, in: Opera Omnia, II, Supplement, 203 a: „Dico igitur imprimis quod

intellectus est virtus apprehensiva spiritualium et abstractorum, sive spoliatorum et invisibilium, sive singularia sint sive universalia, et jam removi tibi atque destruxi errorem eorum qui dixerunt intellectum virtutem esse apprehensivam universalium tantum ...".

41 For a glance at this aspect of William's theory of knowledge, see S. Marrone, William of Auver-gne and Robert Grosseteste, 71 —73.




do for individuals, which had to be encountered in the full but unique substanti-ality of their real presence, he was compelled to content himself with an imper-fect explanation, falling back as has already been suggested on Boethius's „vari-ety of accidents", confessing that in sin mind never fully grasped the particular42. Coincidentally, then, William covered some familiar Aristotelianizing noetic ground, but not because he shared much of the Aristotelian vision or sympa-thized greatly with Aristotle's to-his-mind narrow epistemic project.

Again, upon turning to Bonaventure one senses that the atmosphere has been transformed. The question of knowledge of individuals did not much engage Bonaventure in his Commentaries on the Sentences, but in sharp contrast to William of Auvergne he made it clear that he started from, and was satisfied with, Aristotle's conception of intellectual capacity. Just one example from among many: while examining powers of mind in the Commentary on the Se-cond Book, he drew his reader's attention without comment, as if knowing it would be accepted as standard fare, to a typically Aristotelianizing account, de-pendent on the notion of a sensible species making its way inward in the human brain to the imaginative power and always retaining its semantic value as repre-sentative of a particular. But then equally casually, as if still in expectation of his reader's uncritical assent, he observed that at the level of intellect a new semantic constellation would have to arise. Intellect „demanded" a cognitive species of universal reference, or as Bonaventure said, a „whole new level of abstraction"43. Apparently, in accordance with Aristode, intellection was for Bonaventure simply equivalent to apprehending a universal. Only had he wanted to explain knowledge of individuals would he have been obliged to reinforce his noetics with serious philosophical argumentation.

With Scotus the atmospherics were once more reconfigured. Duns reserved a central place in his epistemology for the standard Aristotelian version of knowledge of universale, apprehended by means of an intelligible species afford-ing intellect actual knowledge of the universal object whether or not any real instantiation lay before it in the external world. Indeed, because Duns put such value on extending the epistemic project of Aristotelianizing science into as many fields of knowledge as possible, it would have been practically unthinkable for him to do anything less than embrace the Aristotelian point of view on abstractive knowledge, though it must be remembered that his own preferred use of the word „abstractive" for noetics was not to indicate the universality of

42 William, De universo II, 2, 15, in: Opera Omnia, I, 859 aB: „Intellectus igitur noster in his tenebns et in hac depressione in qua sumus hic, non distinguit ad nudum Socratem a Platone in hac speríe, ,homo', quoniam nec ad nudum et darum pénétrât apprehensio ejus nec intrat in illam". For recourse to the Boethian view, see above, nn. 16 — 17.

43 Bonaventure, Commentarius in II. librum Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4 (ad 2), in: Opera Omnia, II, 570 b: „[C]um species defertur a sensu usque ad imaginationem, non exit genus abstractionis, quae quidem

fuit in sensu particulari; sed cum species pervenit ad intellectum, novum genus abstractionis ibi exigitur ...".




the designateci act of cognition but rather to signal when no information was conveyed about the actual existence or presence of the object44.

Yet Duns retained as well William's sense that it was perfectly natural for human intellect to apprehend individuals in what he similarly conceived of as their fully substantial individuality. Hence the famous, and again recently contro-versial, Scotistic theory of intuition45. By intuition intellect was put in direct touch with an actual substance to which its attention had been drawn, with the result that it was necessarily cognizant of the object's presence and existence46. Of course, it thereby knew the object's particularity. And though it is possible to disagree about whether Duns believed human intellect in the world of sin had intellectual intuition available to it, there can be no doubt he thought intu-ition was naturally compatible with human mind in absolute terms47 . Interest-ingly enough, he made this point with precisely the same end in mind as had animated William's fervent defense of human knowledge of individuals. For both of them, upon the naturalness of this type of cognition depended the possibility of the beatific vision48. Again, here was a world in which Aristotelian-ism seemed foreign indeed.

As one might predict in light of the foregoing survey of positions on the numerical status of the intelligible object and on human mind's native capacity to apprehend particulars, a chronological variation of similar complexion with

4 4 Duns Scotus, Quaestiones quodlibetales 6, n. 7, in: Opera Omnia (Vivès), Paris 1895, XXV, 243 b: „ Unus [actus intellectus] indifferenter potest esse respecta objecti existentis et non existentis, et indiffer-enter etiam respectu objecti non realiter praesentis sicut et realiter praesentis. Isturn actum frequenter experimur in nobis, quia universalia sive quidditates rerum intelligimus aeque sive habeant ex natura rei esse extra in aliquo supposito sive non, et ita de praesentia et absentia ... Iste actus intelligendi, qui scientificus did potest, quia praevius et requisitus ad scire consclusionis et ad intelligere prindpii, potest satis proprie dici abstractivus, quia abstrahlt objectum ab existentia et non existentia, praesentia et absentis".

45 The classic study of Scotus's theory of intuition is S. Day, Intuitive Cognition. A Key to the Significance of the Later Scholastics, St. Bonaventure, N. Y. 1947. Recendy the subject has been readdressed, and doubts raised about Day's conviction that Duns had made up his mind about intuition, in works by A. Wolter, Duns Scotus on Intuition, Memory and Our Knowledge of Individuals, in: L. Thro (ed.), History of Philosophy in the Making. A Symposium of Essays to Honor Professor James D. Collins, Washington, D. C. 1982, 81 - 1 0 4 ; and S. Dumont, Theology as a Science and Duns Scotus's Distinction between Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition, in: Speculum 64 (1989), 5 7 9 - 9 9 .

46 Duns Scotus, Quaestiones quodlibetales 6, n. 7, in: Opera Omnia (Vivès), XXV, 243 b - 4 4 a : „ Alius autem actus intelligendi est quem tarnen non ita certitudinaliter experimur in nobis; possibilis tamen est talis, qui sdlicet praedse sit objecti praesentis ut praesentis et existentis ut existentis".

47 See Duns's expression of hesitation in the passage quoted above, n. 46, and for scholarly discus-sion refer back to the last two works cited in nt. 45.

48 Duns, Quaestiones quodlibetales 6, n. 8, in: Opera Omnia (Vivès) XXV, 244 b (continuing the line of thought begun in the passage quoted above, n. 46): „Erg o ista intellectio possibilis angelo est possibilis simplidter intellectivae nostrae, quia promittitur nobis quod erimus aequales angelis; ista, inquam, intellectio potest proprie dici intuitiva, quia ipsa est intuido rei ut existentis et praesentis". With regard to William, note his continuation of the passage quoted above in n. 40: „ . . . feci te scire quod erronei isti auferunt intellectui operationem propter quam potissimum creatus est. Haec autem est visto luddissima et immediata creatoris".




regard to Aristotle can be detected over the course of the century among scho-lastic approaches to intellect's functional composition. Already by William of Auvergne's time debate had arisen over what to make of the Aristotelian pair, agent and possible intellect. For William, of greatest moment was taking a stand on the agent, the requirement of which for human understanding he found threatening to his notion of the autonomy and industry of mind. By „agent intellect" he meant in the first instance either a power or part of human soul or a natural or acquired habit which would act as irradiating light shining on a passive, receptive part of soul, which latter he said was commonly labeled „mate-rial intellect", in order to draw out intelligible forms and lift them from potency into act49. If interpreted after this fashion, he insisted, „agent intellect" could play no conceivable role in the processes of human understanding50.

Of course it is understandable that he would react this way, since viewing agent intellect as performing so essentially abstractive a task, working on re-ceived forms in order raise them to intelligibility, would render it superfluous on his intellective landscape, where instantiated substances were in themselves comprehensible to mind, at least when it acted in accord with its original nature, and could be directly grasped in either their individuality or universality51. Nev-ertheless, his principal argument against agent intellect had to do with complex understanding and the passage from knowledge of principles to knowledge of conclusions, defining type of scientific cognition. William considered it obvious to anyone who knew anything about the ways of science that once intellect had grasped the propositions laying out the principles of any particular field of science, it would automatically recognize the truth of whatever conclusions could be drawn from them, no other cause intervening. So far as scientific knowledge was concerned, therefore, no special agent was needed to explain

49 R. A. Gauthier has shown that this is the position on agent and possible intellect that masters of arts at Paris in William's day attributed to Averroes, whose name was associated with a separate agent only after the corrective intervention of Albert the Great - see Gauthier, Le traité De anima et de potennis eius d'un maître ès arts (vers 1225), in: Revue des Sciences Phil, et Théol. 66 (1982), 1 7 - 1 9 ; Notes sur les débuts (1225-1240) du premier ,averroïsme', ibid. 66 (1982), 335; and Notes sur Siger de Brabant, ibid. 67 (1983), 2 2 7 - 3 2 . William's understanding of the authentic Aristotelian agent, described below, follows Avicenna, who was almost surely his source and whom William plainly took as a reliable guide to the Stagirite.

50 William, De anima VII, 5, in: Opera Omnia, II, Suppl., 210 a: „ l am igitur sdre te feci per hoc intellectum agentem non esse apud animam humanam pel vim vel partem animae ipsius vel ipsam essentiam ejus vel habitum naturalem aut acquisitum in ea, secundum intentionem eorum, videlicet, qui sit lux irradians intellectum materialem et educens formas intelligibiks irradiatione sua etpotentia in actum".

51 Consult above, nn. 20, 22, 23 and 40. It must be remembered that, as indicated above, William conceded human intellect had lost this ability directly to perceive substances in the world of sin. For the wayfarer, therefore, some kind of abstractive process was necessary for intellection. Still, William conceived of this process, which he also called a spoliation, more along the lines of an operation of inference from sensory data than an illuminative drawing out or rarefication of a cognitive vehicle such as a species or form. On this process, see above, n. 41.




the move from initial insight to final understanding, meaning again that the mental receptor was sufficient on its own to bring knowledge to fruition52.

Though William realized that already by his day scholars promoting the posi-tion on agent intellect he had just opposed were defending it in the name of Aristotle, by his own understanding such a vision of an abstractive power as part of human soul could not be found in Aristotle's works. Instead he identified the authentic Aristotelian agent as a separate intelligence, tenth of the spiritual beings hierarchically ordered from the heavenly heights to just above the sphere of the earth, and its action he conceived of as not an abstractive operation educing intelligibles from a receptive potency here below but rather an impress-ing irradiation, delivering mental forms to the intellect from up above53. All the same, he rejected this version of the agent as well, and for precisely the reason he had discredited agent as part of mind. He nonetheless recognized how dif-ferent were the functional dynamics of such a view of agent from those of that gaining ground in the schools of his own university.

In the end, however, it was not the superfluity of a special abstractor or irradiating impressor that bothered William most about the theory of agent intellect but rather its implications for the nature of mind itself. As he saw it, even if one were to accept the notion of a material intellect purely receptive of the forms of things mind was to know, such bare reception would not constitute knowledge. To go from material intellect to real cognition demanded a power worthy of the agency he associated with mind54. If one acknowledged as such an agent the separate intelligence he attributed to Aristotle, a sort of intellective sun illuminating mind and generating understanding in it, then one would be left with an entirely passive kind of understanding, far from what humans actually experience with all the study and inquiry that go into learning55. But more

52 William, De anima VII, 4, in: Opera Omnia, II, Suppl., 209 b: „[Q]uia igiturpositis scientiisprindpi-orum absque ullo alio ponuntur sdentine conclusionum, ex sdentiis igitur prindpiorum per se absque ullo alio sunt sdentiae conclusionum. Supervacue igitur et frustra ponitur, quantum ad sdentias, intellectus agens. Amplius, non est possibile scire aliquem prinripia ordinata, ut praedixi\ quin necesse sit ipsum sdre conclusiones illarum, sublata etiam omni alia causa, sive sit intellectus agens sive alia. Quare neque adjuvans ullo modorum sit intellectus agens ad bujusmodi sdentias acquirendas".

53 William, De anima VII, 5, in: Opera Omnia, II, Suppl., 210 a: „Nec Aristoteles, quem sequi se credunt in errore isto, hoc unquam posuit vel cogitavit, verum intelligentiam agentem separatam et spolìatam posuit tanquam solem quemdam intelligibilem, cujus irradiatione sdentiae fiunt in intellectu nostro materiali, et eam posuit dedmam ac novissimam infimamque intelligentiarum separatarum, propter quod, videlicet per infidelitatem suam, posuit eam posse creare animas nostras...".

54 William, De anima V, 7, in: Opera Omnia, II, Supplement, 122 a: „Si vero dixerit, quia ipsum sdre sive sdentia aliud est quam ipsae Jormae receptae in speculo mentis, quod vocant intellectum materialem, quaero igitur unde est. Manifestum igitur est, quìa sdentia in anima humana gignitur et fit naturaliter, sicut et naturaliter desiderai < ur> et quaeritur ab eadem, quia igitur a rebus exterioribus sensibilibus non est possibile ipsam gigni vel fieri in anima humana, cum ultra formas nihil gignatur vel fiat in illa ab eisdem, necesse est ab alio agenti illam fieri in eadem".

55 The passage quoted in nt. 54 continues: „Quod si dixerit illam fieri ab intelligentia agente, quae est illuminatrix, ut ponunt, animarum nostrarum, et sol intelligibilis earumdem, tunc necesse habent concedere illam esse passionem quae imprimatur ab intelligentia hujusmodi, quapropter neque Studium neque inventio aliquid erit".




generally than that, whether one imagine the agent as a separate impressor of forms or an illuminative, abstracting part of the soul, how could the mind upon which such an agent acted be considered intelligent when all it did was passively submit to the activity of something else? Mind was supposed to be the founda-tion or principle of understanding, but if any theory of agent intellect held true, this foundation would be reduced to a mere vessel for holding knowledge, the way a vase holds liquid56. That could hardly be what it really meant to know.

For William, appeal to an agent intellect simply could not account for what he understood to be the power of human mind. Knowing was in his eyes a fully active endeavor, whereby the knowing subject worked by means of its own inherent agency to generate within itself the formal basis for awareness of intelli-gible objects outside. Far from being a passive receiver or a ground upon which some other actor operated, intellect was more like what Aristotle meant by quick wit (solertia), actively engaged in producing the knowledge it was seeking57. Here was a far more Augustinian vision of mind — an indivisible force reaching out to the objective world as opposed to receiving from it — than anything William identified with the language of agent intellect. Under whatever guise, the latter was a notion for which William had no philosophical use.

To Bonaventure, on the other hand, Aristotelian patterns of analysis were, as discovered twice before, more welcome. Indeed, they again served as starting point for his exploration of mind and its object. When faced with the question of what to make of the notion of agent and possible intellect, he responded quite unlike William by offering suggestions for how to assimilate it to his own conception of human understanding.

One possibility was to see the two sorts of intellect as two differences, in the technical sense of variants on a type or kind, of the power to understand, in which case they would belong to a single intellective substance compounded of them as a whole made up of parts. The composition would resemble that of form and matter in material objects. After the fashion of matter, possible intel-lect would be directed to receiving the content of understanding, while like some sorts of formal principle agent intellect would have the job of abstracting that content from the sensory data with which mind was confronted58. In short,

56 William, De anima V, 7, in: Opera Omnia, II, Suppl., 122 b: „Amplius, qualiter intelligunt quia intellectus est in nobis principiar» säentiae, si enim non est nisi instrumentum recipiendi säentias ipsas? Non rede diriturprinripium earum, cum receptio ñeque receptibilitas fadt debere, ut vas sive aliquid receptibile dicatur principium liquorum vel cujuscumque alterius recepti".

57 William, De anima V, 7, in: Opera Omnia, II, Suppl., 122 b: „Quapropter manifestum est intelkctum nostrum, vel habitum vel dispositionem qui solertia diritur, potentem esse formare apud semetipsum vel in semetipso formas intelligibiles ... Quare manifestum est apud nos et in nobis intellectum esse non solum materia-lem receptibilem formarum intelligibilium, sed etiam effectivum et generativum earum apud semetipsum vel in semetipso".

58 Bonaventure, Commentarius in II. librum Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4, in: Opera Omnia, II, 568 b-69 a: „Alius vero modus intelligendi est, ut dicatur, quod intellectus agens et possibilis sint duae intellectus differentiae, datae uni substantiae, quae respiciunt totum compositum. Appropriatur autem intellectus agens formae et possibilis materiae, quia intellectus possibilis ordinatur ad susripiendum, intellectus agens ordinatur ad abstrahendum... ".




here was a vision of agent intellect as authentically abstractive, a rarefying opera-tor working upon material not yet suitable for intellection. Of course it was precisely this idea William had wanted to avoid. As if to make the contrast complete, Bonaventure even remarked that this way of explaining intellection, which he found perfectly valid, was drawn from Aristotle and ensured an agency in intellection comparable to that provided by visible light in sensory vision59. In letter, if not in spirit, the approach could hardly be farther from William's twenty years previously.

Another possiblity, which Bonaventure judged equally plausible, was to dif-ferentiate agent from possible intellect as a habitus set against a potency capable of receiving it. Not that the agent could be taken as pure habit, for it was a power of mind, but rather as a kind of habitual force relating to the pure potentiality of the possible60. This interpretation, too, was consonant with tradi-tional philosophical understanding and entirely compatible with Christian faith. And like the alternative laid out just before, it approximated the agent to a light, enabling intellect to perfect its activity61. Though Bonaventure drew here upon the language of Pseudo-Dionysius, again the approach was specifically tailored to suit Aristotle as well, even down to specifying that the light of the agent was responsible for drawing out a mental species, formal vehicle for understanding62.

To round out the philosophical triad it will not do this time to return to Duns Scotus, for on the functional components of mind he, like Bonaventure, kept close to the Aristotelian model of extraction of mental species from sensory data by a fully abstractive agent. In this case, therefore, it is more edifying to look later to William of Ockham, where the pattern of a return to earlier habits of analysis is once again evident. To be sure, Ockham tackled the problem of explaining mental activity as one of accounting for abstraction, thus just like Bonaventure beginning with terms originally set by Aristotle, but he quickly came around to resolving the question more in line with William's approach to mind than anything authentically Aristotelian or even Bonaventuran.

59 Shortly after the passage quoted above, nt. 58, Bonaventure continued: „Et iste modus dicendi verus est et super verba Philosophi fundatus. Diät enim, agentem et possibilem esse duas differentias intellectus; unde sicut duo intelligimus necessario in medio, ad hoc quod abstrahatur species ab obiecto, videlicet lucem et diapha-neitatem, ita quod per unum abstrahlt et per aliud defort et susrípit, sic et in proposito conformiter potest intelligi... ".

6U Bonaventure, Commentarius in II. librum Sent., d. 24, p. 1, a. 2, q. 4, in: Opera Omnia, II, 569 a — b: „Alius modus dicendi est, ut dicatur intellectus agens differre a possibili, sicut habitus a potentia; non quia agens sit pure habitus, sed quia est potentia habitualis".

61 The passage quoted in η. 60 continues: „Et iste modus dicendi probabilis est et verus et super verba philosophica et catholica fundatus. Verum enim est secundum Dionysium, quod substanüae intellectuales, eo ipso quod intellectuales substantiae, ,lumina sunt': ergo perfectio et complementum substantiae intellectualis lux est spintualis; ergo illa potentia, quae consequitur animam ex parte intellectus sui, quoddam lumen est in ipsa ... Et hoc lumen videtur Philosophus intellexisse esse intellectum agentem".

62 See above, nt. 61, and what follows shortly after: „ Huius autem simile potest poni in oculo cati, qui non solum habet potentiam suscipiendi per naturam perspìcui, sicut alii oculi, sed etiam potentiam faäendi in se speciem per naturam luminis sibi inditi ".




In order to set his views on the issue into relief, Ockham started with Av-erroes's observation that if the essences mind encountered in its search for knowledge had already in themselves been abstracted from matter, along the lines of Plato's forms, then there would be no need for agent intellect in human understanding. The necessary implication was, of course, that agent's sole func-tion was by abstraction to work on mind's objects and render them intelligible63. To Ockham, however, not only was such a presumption unfounded; it also totally misconstrued the nature of intellect.

As he confessed, all intellection was abstracted in the sense of occurring entirely unfettered by material foundation. But to admit this was not to say that a literal process of abstraction was necessary for intellective act. For instance, one could imagine two sorts of cognitive activity attributable to something called agent intellect. The first was simply to work in tandem with the cognitive object as partial cause of the act of intellection in the human subject. The second was to produce a universal concept out of ungeneralized objective data so as to present mind with something to know64. Of these two, only the first represented a function Ockham would grant a legitimate place in primary operations of intellectual apperception as he understood them, for no matter what the state of intellect's object, material or immaterial, universal or particular, an active mental power was necessary for cognition to arise. To this active power, inherent to mind itself, Ockham was willing to allocate the name „agent intellect"65. But when it came to abstraction as a kind of removal from materiality and lifting into universality, this was not a function attached to any special power of mind but rather simply a description of what it was to know an object as general. There was therefore no mental power assigned the duty of working on phan-tasms and stripping them of particularity, no intellectual agent that operated as if by shining on a potential mental object to raise it to intelligibility, thus, strictly speaking, no agent intellect in the second sense of the term66 . Abstraction in

63 William of Ockham, Quaestiones in librum secundum Sententiarum (Reportatio), qq. 12-13 , in Opera Theologica, V, St. Bonaventure, N. Y. 1981, 306-307: „Et quando dicit Commentator quod si quidditates rerum essent abstractae a materia, sicut posuit Plato, tunc non indigeremus intellectu agente, igiturintellectus agens abstrahit...". Ockham's reference was to Averroes, Comm. magnum in Arist. De anima, III, 18 (ed. F. Crawford), Cambridge, Ma. 1953, 440.

64 The passage quoted above, nt. 63, continues: „ . . . respondeo quod duplex est abstractio intellectus agentis. Una est causare intellectionem intuitivam vel abstractivam partialiter cum obiedo vel habitu, modo praedicto, quae intellectio est omnino abstracta a materia, quia immaterialis est in se et habet esse subiective in immateriali. Alia est abstractio per quam producit universale sive conceptum rei universalem in esse obiectivo, sicut alias dictum est".

65 The passage in nt. 64, above, continues as follows: „Quantum adprimam abstractionem, si quidditates rerum essent abstractae a materia, sicut posuit Plato, adbuc indigeremus intellectu agente si debeant intelligi, quia non passent intuitive intelligi nec abstractive sine intellectu causante intellectionem. Huiusmodi autem est intellectus agens".

66 William of Ockham, Quaestiones in librum secundum Sent. (Reportatio), qq. 12-13 , in: Opera Theologica, V, 308: „Et ex hocpatetfalsitas illius opinionis quaeponit quod intellectus agens habet actionem circa phantasmata et intellectum possibilem per modum depurationis, illustrationis, irradiationis, remotionis, abstractionis, sequestrationis ' '.




the manner that Averroes, and presumably Aristotle, conceived of it was simply not a necessary function of mind.

In the end, then, Ockham, for all his willingness to use the language in which Aristotle had analyzed intellection, was back where William had left off. Intel-lect's objects were inherendy intelligible and mind itself sufficiendy in agency simply to seize them in the kind of act it was by nature suited to perform: intellection. Here was a dynamic notion of intellection and an activist conception of mind to which the Aristotelian categories o f act and passivity had little to contribute.

Three times, in short, the same progression has emerged. Early in the thir-teenth century, while the universities and scholastic culture were rising to their high-medieval prominence, philosophical inquiry was open, flexible, eclectic, and philosophers — that is, anyone doing philosophy, including masters of theology — anxious to draw creatively upon their personal intellectual commitments when mounting arguments and analyzing issues. It was a time, as Van Steenberghen once noted and Alain De Libera has recendy reminded us, when boundaries between philosophy and theology were only hazily recognized and when, as Van Steenberghen emphasized, theologians drew, for their explications o f Christian truth, upon a fund of philosophical wisdom of varied provenance and loose cohesion67. For modern scholars, it constitutes a period where scholarly posi-tions are hard to correlate with the traditional ideological categories associated with Antiquity or Arab philosophy, though references to antique and Arab philo-sophers and familiarity with a broad array of their works were coming to be widespread. Hence the idiosyncratic but inventive metaphysics and noetics of William of Auvergne.

By the 1240s, after several decades of gestation in the schools of arts, the complete corpus of Aristotle's works had become well-known to masters o f theology, and an Aristotelian vision of fully apodictic science was beginning to hold sway among intellectuals from all faculties as the ideal to which learning should aspire. In the following decades an urge to make use of Aristotle, in particular to employ his philosophical categories and patterns o f analysis, swept the field, yielding radical attempts at an independent, Aristotelianizing philo-sophy in Arts but equally curious, if less deferential efforts to recover an Aristo-telian purism and make what use o f it one could in Theology as well. Even an eventual „conservative" like Bonaventure, who in the 1270s would inveigh against Aristode's excessive influence, started his career in the habit o f approach-ing issues at least initially from an Aristotelianizing perspective, anxious to bring his metaphysics and his theory of mind as near to Aristode as he felt possible.

Yet once Aristode had been digested, or after the intellectual habits Aristode had promoted in the search for apodictic truth became second nature, scholas-tics returned to freer, surely more comfortable and doubdess more inventive

6 7 See the reference to Van Steenberghen, nt. 10 above, and for A. de Libera, Penser au Moyen Âge, Paris 1991.



Aristotle, Augustine and the Identity o f Philosophy 297

approaches to intellectualizing, where fidelity to any particular philosophical authority was not so highly prized, appeals to common sense and conventional wisdom more persuasive in debate. From the mid-1270s on scholastic argument gave the appearance o f having returned to the eclecticism and openness of early century. Indeed, in areas like the metaphysics and noetics examined above, many of the doctrinal stances of the early years, submerged under the Aristotelianizing polish o f the 1250s and 1260s, arose again among some of the most vital circles o f thought. They did so now, however, at a level of theoretical precision and with a degree of analytical sophistication that owed much to the decades o f Aristotelianizing exploration, indeed continued to make nods to Aristotle as the most wide-ranging and coherent authority from the past.

I f this description o f the patterns o f thought is valid, and generalizable be-yond the areas o f inquiry investigated here, that would of course work to con-firm the presumption laid out at the outset that neither the Condemnation of 1277, nor in fact any of the Condemnations of the 1270s, was causal of the shifts within Scholasticism in the late thirteenth century. A configuration of return to earlier inclinations suggests instead a more complicated mechanism of change. Indeed, that very configuration indicates more broadly that the dy-namics of transformation were not at all as they have usually been described. First of all, it is probably not the case that the impetus for change began in theology, reacting against an overweening effort among artists to shape the intellectual world after their own image, and then spread as if by osmosis to philosophy. Instead the transmutation would appear to be so ideologically far-flung as to be impossible to characterize as primarily, or initially, either theologi-cal or philosophical, having more to do with depth of awareness or sophistica-tion of analysis than with a narrow concern to reaffirm the truths o f Christian faith. Second, even where Aristotelian perspectives or Aristotle's positions were at stake, and the desire to be free of Aristotelian orthodoxy seemingly at work, it would seem that the willingness to transcend Aristotle, often just the inclina-tion to set off in an entirely different direction, had always been present, at least latent in scholastic circles from the start. To understand the deviance from Aristotelian orthodoxy characteristic o f late medieval thought one must there-fore look more widely throughout learned culture than just to debates over doctrinal correctness in the schools of theology or even attitudes about argu-mentation within all faculties at the universities. Deeper predilections, embedded already in the world view of high-medieval scholars and almost surely connected to practices and mentality in the culture at large must have been in play.

But the same configuration of ideological modulations would also imply, fi-nally, that for all the signs that late-thirteenth-century concerns returned to perspectives already held decades before, there was something profoundly new about the directions taken up at century's end. The theorizing characterized here by Duns Scotus and William of Ockham possesses a philosophical crispness and a mindfulness of ideological divisions and boundaries not seen in the philos-ophizing o f early in the century. It is as if the experience of the 1250s and




1260s, intent on drawing upon Aristotle as model for practice and doctrine, had altered the very expectations for acceptable philosophical discourse. To this extent, the story told here continues to echo with Duhem's conviction that the late thirteenth century brought a dramatic step, onto a new path, in medieval thought. And this step, confident, innovative and self-consciously critical of Aristode, would lead along a course continuing over the next two centuries and carrying on, at ever-increasing velocity, into the modern world.



marrone (2001) "aristotle, augustine and the identity of philosophy in late thirteenth-century...

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