In defense of common sense: Lorenzo Valla's humanist critique of scholastic philosophy 9780674032699

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Preface (page ix)
Introduction (page 1)
PART ONE The Attack on Aristotelian-Scholastic Metaphysics
1 The Analysis of Things: Substance, Quality, and the Tree of Porphyry (page 13)
2 Thing and Word: A Critique of Transcendental Terms (page 48)
3 From a Grammatical Point of View: The Reduction of the Categories (page 82)
PART TWO Soul, Nature, Morality, and God
4 Soul and Nature: A Critique of Aristotelian Psychology and Natural Philosophy (page 129)
5 The Virtues and the Road to Heavenly Pleasure (page 152)
6 Speaking about the Ineffable: The Trinity (page 191)
PART THREE Toward a Humanistic Dialectic
7 Dialectic I: Propositions, the Square of Contraries, Proof and Argument (page 211)
8 Dialectic II: Forms of Argumentation (page 239)
Conclusion: Valla and "Ordinary Language Philosophy" (page 269)
List of Abbreviations (page 293)
Notes (page 295)
Bibliography (page 375)
Index (page 397)

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I TATTI STUDIES IN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE HISTORY

Sponsored by Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Florence, Italy

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IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE Lorenzo Vallas Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy

Lodi Nauta

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2009

Copyright © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nauta, Lodi. In defense of common sense : Lorenzo Valla’s humanist critique of scholastic philosophy / Lodi Nauta. p. cm.—(I Tatti studies in Italian renaissance history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-03269-9 (alk. paper)

1. Valla, Lorenzo, 1407-1457. 2. Humanism. 3. Scholasticism. I. Title. B785.V1144N38 2009

189—dc22 2008035603

To the memory of John North (1934-2008)

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Contents

Preface ix Introduction I PART ONE

The Attack on Aristotelian-Scholastic Metaphysics 1 The Analysis of Things: Substance, Quality, and the

Tree of Porphyry 3 2 Thing and Word: A Critique of Transcendental Terms 48 3 From a Grammatical Point of View: The Reduction

of the Categories 82

Vill CONTENTS PART TWO

Soul, Nature, Morality, and God 4 Soul and Nature: A Critique of Aristotelian Psychology

and Natural Philosophy 129 5 The Virtues and the Road to Heavenly Pleasure 152

6 Speaking about the Ineftable: The Trinity I9I PART THREE

Toward a Humanist Dialectic 7 Dialectic I: Propositions, the Square of Contraries,

Proof and Argument 211 8 Dialectic II: Forms of Argumentation 239 Conclusion: Valla and “Ordinary Language Philosophy” 269

List of Abbreviations 293

Notes 295 Bibliography 375

Index 397

Pretace

The subject of this book will likely be viewed with suspicion by not a few of my colleagues in medieval philosophy. According to a widely held view in these circles, Renaissance humanists were men of letters, textual scholars, per-

haps orators, but certainly not philosophers who “know a good argument (and a bad one) when they see one.” They would regard Lorenzo Valla’s assault

on scholastic-Aristotelian thought as an attack on the very features we have come to see as the hallmarks of good philosophy: rigorous argumentation, conceptual clarification, and rational analysis. To be sure, the scholastics sometimes were a little too enthusiastic in making distinctions and creating new terminology. But they at least—so these historians of philosophy think, not without some justice—pursued an agenda not unlike their own, ie., to clarify and analyze the concepts and terms we use in thinking and speaking about the world, ourselves, and our systems of beliefs. The scholastics constructed theories of the world, the mind, knowledge, the good life, language, and argumentation, just as we do today. Hence, a book devoted to one of the sharpest critics of that style of philosophy can be at best of merely historical interest: from a philosophical point of view, the humanists’ critique was superficial, unfair, and misdirected.

x PREFACE Many of my colleagues in the field of Renaissance humanism will take the opposite view. For them, humanism was an important starting point on the road to modernity. Inventors of an empirical study of man, the humanists—so it is often argued—secularized thought, rhetoricized theology, and historicized the study of language. These scholars believe that the humanists rightly dismissed the scholastic theories as castles in the air. True, some humanists might have gone a little too far in their polemics, but basically their position was correct. A book that puts one of the founding fathers of this humanist approach on the philosophical rack—as the present study might seem to do from time to time—is therefore likely to be viewed with suspicion from this side as well. Was not the whole point of Valla’s critique to finish once and for all that style of philosophy? It would therefore be ill-advised to judge Valla by the very standards he himself had rejected as one-sided, perverse, and even absurd.

No doubt I have exaggerated these possible reactions, but the underlying assumptions from which they proceed are very much alive in today’s scholarship. In this book I have tried to go beyond these assumptions, and thus beyond the disciplinary boundaries that still exist between the study of medieval philosophy and theology on the one hand and that of Renaissance humanism on the other. If there is one humanist who demands such an approach, it is Valla, as he was the most vehement critic of the Aristotelian-scholastic paradigm, yet also, arguably, the most philosophically minded one. It has, of course, not been my intention either to debunk or to uncritically praise him. What I have tried to do is place his program in its historical setting by looking closely at his handling of his sources, both the ones he targets and the ones from which he derives his inspiration and motivation. But I have also tried to analyze and evaluate his arguments and program from a wider historical perspective, going back and forward in history. This requires careful adjustment of focus and criteria of judgment in order to avoid anachronistic readings and the pitfalls just mentioned, such as the application of concepts and criteria that he explicitly rejected. Yet what my overall interpretation has driven, I think, is the conviction that Valla’s humanist critique of scholastic thought exemplifies a fundamental, perennial issue about the strength avd limitations of philosophical analysis. Much philosophy—and this is true no less for scholasticism than for analytical and continental trends (if I may use this worn-out distinction) within modern philosophy—is characterized by painstaking analysis, by abstraction

PREFACE XI and dissection, and by the introduction of a technical vocabulary. This, one can argue, is what gives philosophy its importance and vitality, and I think there is no denying that it has brought significant results. But philosophy can also easily become, because of the very same features, a game of its own—an abstract and theoretical affair that leaves the world it purports to analyze and explain far behind, using a language that can be understood only by its own practitioners. Some philosophers, therefore, have developed a healthy (or unhealthy, according to others) skepticism about philosophical theories and abstract speculation. Some have even become downright hostile toward this craving for theorizing. Throughout the history of philosophy this skeptical, cautionary note can be heard, and I believe it is a vitally important voice. The conflict between these two positions (sketched here, admittedly, as ideal types) may well be irresolvable, because it goes to the heart of philosophy itself. But

it is possible, I think, to feel sympathy for both of them and to consider this dialectical tension as something fruitful and creative. Applied to the theme of this book, I suggest that we need not give up our admiration for the theoretical, technical, and specialized way of philosophizing by the scholastics to appreciate Valla’s conviction that this style of philosophy can easily become an inward-looking game that mystifies rather than enlightens the things it sets out to explain.

The writing of this book has been an intellectual adventure, and I am indebted to several friends for encouragement, support, critical comments, and stimulating conversations en route. Jim Hankins showed an early interest in my work and over the years has offered me good advice, even better wine, and the best of possible suggestions concerning a place for publication. He carefully read the book in typescript and offered valuable suggestions. John Monfasani was obviously my first port of call in 2002 when I began to work on Valla, and he has been helpful ever since. He also read the book in typescript and gave me some very useful suggestions. The anonymous reader for Harvard University Press turned out to be Chris Celenza, with whom, incidentally, I had founded some years earlier a “fan club” of a well-known American politician, of which we remained the only two members. I am thankful to him for his suggestions and critical feedback. I am most grateful to Brian Copenhaver for many exchanges on matters concerning Valla and Renaissance philosophy, as well as for his kind invitation to collaborate on an edition of

XI PREFACE Valla’s dialectics for the I Tatti Renaissance Library. I owe a special debt to Robert Black for all his help and encouragement, which date back to my preValla period, when one of Valla’s bétes noires, Boethius, was my great love. It gives me also deep pleasure to thank the following friends for support and many stimulating conversations over the years: Peter Mack, Jill Kraye, Eckhard Kessler, Michael Allen, David Lines, Gian Mario Cao, Jan Papy, and Job van Eck. Parts of this book have been read as papers at conferences, and a few of them have been turned into articles. I am grateful to the organizers and participants of these conferences as well as to a number of friends and colleagues for comments, discussion, or information. They include Ann Moss, Onno Kneepkens, Detlev Patzold, Dominik Perler, Henrik Lagerlund, Cees Leijenhorst, Christoph Liithy, Paul Bakker, Hans Thijssen, Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Arjo Vanderjagt, Sara Galletti, Maaike van der Lugt, Andrea Robiglio, Letizia Panizza, Mariangela Regoliosi, Dag Hasse, Fosca Mariani Zini, Stefano Pagliaroli, John North, Marissa Bass, Carlos Steel, Calvin Normore, Kees Meerhoff, Jan Aertsen, and Ruurd Nauta. I would also like to thank all my col-

leagues in the Department of the History of Philosophy of the Faculty of Philosophy in Groningen, in particular its dean as well as a great friend, Michel ter Hark. My research has been funded by a major grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), which is gratefully acknowledged here. I received further financial and academic support from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), to which I am also most grateful for having me elected to a KNAW chair. To my own faculty I owe a great debt, and I would like to thank all its members for making it such an excellent and friendly place to work. I am writing these words in the gorgeous hills around Villa I Tatti, Florence. I am immensely grateful to its director, Joseph Connors, for his kind invitation to come as visiting professor in the second semester of 2007—2008, after I sadly had to decline an I Tatti Fellowship some years earlier. All Fellows, visiting professors, and staff at I Tatti—not to mention the hoopoes, green woodpeckers, tawny owls, and all the other birds (and animals) that warm the heart of a bird watcher—have made my stay here unforgettable. Many thanks to all of them. I am also grateful to Jennifer Snodgrass of Harvard University Press, my copyeditor, Susan Zorn, and my production manager, Liz Duvall, for their efficient and expert handling of the manuscript.

PREFACE XU There is no way to begin to thank all my friends and family. Fortunately, the list is too long, but I must mention here my beloved mother, while I hold in loving memory my father, who died in 2005. What I owe to Simone, Julia, and Roeland I cannot express in words. Finally, my teacher, supervisor, men-

tor, and friend, John North, died in October 2008 at his home in Oxford, having retired from the University of Groningen in 1999. In deep gratitude for all that he has meant to me, I dedicate this book to his memory. Villa I Tatti, Florence May 2008

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Introduction

This book offers an analysis and interpretation of the critique of Aristotelianscholastic thought by one of the leading humanists of his time, Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457). While primarily known for his studies of the Latin language, the Greek text of the New Testament, and the Donation of Constantine (which he famously showed to be a forgery), Valla is also the author of a highly interesting but difficult and poorly understood work on philosophy and dialectic.

This work, which Valla continued to revise throughout his life, has come down to us in three versions with different titles. It is often referred to as the Dialectical Disputations (a title invented by a sixteenth-century editor), or simply the Dialectics, but also, after the first version from 1439, the Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie (the “replowing,” “cutting back,” or “weeding out” of the old ground of dialectic and philosophy).! In this comprehensive work,

Valla first attempts to demolish the foundations of Aristotelian-scholastic metaphysics, ethics, and natural philosophy and then to transform the formal study of Aristotelian logic by the scholastics into a rhetorical-grammatical dia-

lectic tailored to the practical needs of public debate, communication, and argumentation. Although the Repastinatio never acquired a wide Renaissance readership—only the first version enjoyed a limited circulation among his contem-

2 INTRODUCTION poraries*—modern scholars have generally considered it an extremely impor-

tant and original contribution to the critique and ultimate dissolution of medieval scholasticism. For many scholars, humanism finds no better expression than in the personality and work of Valla. The history of modern scholarship on him is a barometer of the historiographical debates on humanism and its relationship to scholasticism.? But while the Repastinatio has almost universally been recognized as the heart of Valla’s attempt at reforming medieval thought, it has hardly been the subject of sustained commentary, nor has it been studied in its entirety. Several reasons may be given for this surprising

fact. It is a long, difficult work that so far has not been translated into any modern language.‘ It treats a host of technical issues that, even though Valla usually stays clear of scholastic terminology and distinctions, require familiarity with the works he attacks, especially those of Aristotle, Porphyry, Boethius, Peter of Spain, and Paul of Venice. And though it is generally assumed that late-medieval logic is his target or, in the case of Ockham’s nominalism, a

source of inspiration, in the absence of direct quotations this is difficult to prove.

It is therefore not surprising that modern scholars have tried to measure Valla’s originality by comparing him with both earlier and later thinkers rather than by evaluating his arguments against the immediate background of the Aristotelian Organon. Thus his critique of Aristotelian-scholastic thought on the relationship between language and the world has been described as basically “nominalistic” in spirit, and his name has often been bracketed with that of William of Ockham.’ Other aspects of Valla’s thought, too, such as his treatment of the soul and his moral philosophy, have been linked to latemedieval nominalism, in particular that of Ockham.° Some scholars, focusing on Valla’s rejection of Aristotelian natural philosophy, have given him a place in the traditions of dissidents within the dominant natural philosophy of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, foreshadowing the empiricism of a Bernardino Telesio or a Francis Bacon and the rise of the new philosophy in the seventeenth century.’ For other scholars Valla is not so much a searcher after empirical truths as a skeptic who considers the pursuit of truth and indubitable knowledge to be impossible. According to these scholars, Valla’s reform of dialectic reflects an endorsement of Academic skepticism, as it shows an interest in forms of argumentation that rely on verisimilitude rather than certainty.® Furthermore, because he insists on taking common usage (consuetudo or the usus loquendi) as a criterion for our speaking and writing about the

INTRODUCTION 3 world, Valla’s approach has been linked to the ordinary language philosophy of the twentieth century, in particular to the so-called anti-essentialist philosophy of the later Wittgenstein.° For these scholars Valla was a radical reformer of semantics who rejected the correspondence theory of truth and the referential theory of meaning in order to replace it by a Wittgensteinian “relational semantics’: language does not represent but rather “constitutes” reality. To this sampling may be added interpretations of Valla’s rhetorical approach to the Christian faith in terms of “Heidegger’s Diltheyan approach” in the philosophy of religion." The existence of fashions in historiography is a good sign that the past has still something to say to us, and there is a priori nothing wrong with drawing parallels between authors from different intellectual traditions and cultural milieus. But one may doubt whether these particular suggestions have always been helpful in understanding Valla’s project of transforming the Aristotelian-scholastic paradigm. One problem is that they are often founded on a small selection of passages, and sometimes these passages have been patently misunderstood or deliberately “misread.”!! Another problem has already been touched upon: one must be familiar with the scholastic tradition to evaluate Valla’s program, and this understandably is not the forte of neo-Latinists and literary historians. It is therefore not surprising to find—as this study will show—-several misinterpretations of Valla’s arguments, especially with regard to some of the more technical issues, such as the categories, the transcendental terms, the square of opposition, the modal syllogism, and the figures of the syllogism. The only scholastic author who turns up in virtually every modern study of Valla’s critique of scholasticism is William of Ockham, but references to Ockham are often too vague to substantiate the supposed links between Valla and Ockham. Nor does the stereotypical picture of scholasticism, which one still frequently encounters in modern scholarship on humanism, invite students to improve on this nodding acquaintance with scholasticism. It is still common to find historians using the same pejorative terms as the humanists did in characterizing scholasticism: theoretical, systematic, abstract, sterile, dogmatic, orthodox, rigid, futile, pettifogging, quarrelsome.'’* Humanism is then taken to stand for the opposite of all this: practical, pragmatic, flexible, eclectic, concrete, free, empirical, unorthodox, skeptical, etc. Though this contrast has

been subject to criticisms from various quarters, it is still an important strand in the historiographical debate on the nature and significance of humanism vis-a-vis scholasticism, and Valla scholarship is obviously influenced by it. But

4 INTRODUCTION historical analysis and evaluation should of course not be guided by such stereotypes. Valla is rightly praised for his contributions to classical scholarship, but this does not mean that he was equally original in other intellectual fields, such as philosophy and theology. He may well have been, but this can be decided only after a close analysis of his work and the immediate philosophical context in which it should be placed.

The first aim of this book, therefore, is to offer a comprehensive discussion of Valla’s reform of Aristotelian-scholastic philosophy—his motives, ideas, rhetorical techniques, arguments—based on a philosophically informed analysis of the entire text of the Repastinatio in its several versions, taking into consideration, when appropriate, his other works as well, especially his dialogue on the highest good, the De vero bono. His arguments will be compared to the principal positions they are meant to refute. The outcome of this analysis and evaluation is not always flattering for Valla: his arguments against Aristotle, Boethius, and the scholastics are often poor, inconsistent, and unfair.

It may be objected from the outset that these criteria of philosophical rigor and consistency should not be applied to Valla, who after all is a man of letters, a textual scholar, and a humanist with a rhetorical-polemical agenda rather than a philosopher, let alone a philosopher of an analytical stamp, keen on adding to the armory of conceptual distinctions and theories. Such an ob-

jection, however, would have been rejected by his contemporaries, and it would surely underestimate the argumentative nature of Valla’s project: not only does he attempt to refute his opponents through argument, but he also supports his own case with arguments of various types.'? Refutation and transformation of the Aristotelian paradigm are two sides of the same coin of his critique, and we would miss the opportunity to recognize and analyze this dual character if we were to treat Valla solely as a man of letters. This approach would also prevent us from explaining (and perhaps pardoning) the tension within his position on various issues. As defender of an alternative approach, he presents himself as an outsider with respect to the dominant Aristotelianscholastic paradigm, yet he also wants to erode that paradigm from the inside,

showing that it leads to distortions of our common picture of the world, in that its practitioners are misled by their ungrammatical and “barbarous” Latin. To evaluate Valla’s strategies, we have to consider both the original scho-

lastic position—or what Valla thinks is the original position—and the final result that, with the aid of rhetoric and grammar, he achieves. This raises the question of how to characterize his program. Valla him-

INTRODUCTION ») self speaks of a renewal, a replowing, a refabrication, a repair or restructuring, and modern historians have followed suit, speaking of a transformation or a reform. But what exactly do we mean by such a term? Does the transformation of a whole paradigm not require a more thorough acquaintance with the scholastic tradition than Valla displays? What is it that he transforms: /atemedieval scholasticism?

This brings us to a second and related aim of this book, namely, to critically evaluate some existing interpretations of Valla, though not by pursuing a polemical agenda. For example, we have already mentioned a dominant line of interpretation according to which Valla’s project was inspired by Ockham’s interpretation of the Aristotelian Organon. At first glance there seems to be some justification for calling Valla a “nominalist” or an “Ockhamist.” Valla seems to follow Ockham in reducing the ten Aristotelian categories, the six transcendental terms, the number of intermediaries in the process of sensation and cognition, the types of the syllogism, etc. However, as will be argued particularly in Part I of this study, a close comparison shows that Valla’s program differs significantly in aim, approach, and argument from Ockham’s nominalism.

Of course, it can be instructive to compare thinkers from different cultural and philosophical backgrounds. After all, “tracking influence is only one job for the history of philosophical ideas; another is to find patterns of conceptual similarity and difference that may have analytical use quite apart from any considerations of narrative or personality.”' But in the case of Valla’s alleged Ockhamism, one may doubt whether these two tasks have been sufhciently distinguished. A historical claim (“Ockham is a source of inspiration

for Valla,” “Valla follows in the footsteps of Ockham”) differs from a philosophical claim (“Valla’s project shows similarities with Ockham’s from a philosophical point of view”). To substantiate the first claim one needs to show that Valla actually read Ockham’s writings, a claim that is difficult to prove in the absence of textual evidence.!° For the second claim to be convincing, one should be clear about the criteria of what counts as “similar” before

one applies the same label to two thinkers. Is it enough that they raise the “same” questions? Should their arguments or argumentative techniques be the “same”? Is it enough that some outcomes in specific issues (e.g., a reduction of the Aristotelian categories) are “similar,” even if arrived at by very different routes? Io mention a point that will be developed in the course of this study, Ockham’s program is explicitly developed as an answer to the question of how

6 INTRODUCTION a nominalist, who accepts only singular entities, can explain generality in thought and language without having recourse to universals. His solution is to ground spoken and written language on the mental language of our concepts,

that is, singular entities in the mind that stand for their singular referents. Valla, on the other hand, does not refer to mental concepts as the primary language on which to ground the meanings of spoken and written language. He does not deal with the philosophical problem of generality, and what he does write against abstract terms and concepts is motivated by his aversion to ungrammatical Latin. Given these fundamental differences, one may ask whether it still makes sense to speak of Valla’s Ockhamism simply because, for instance, he reduces the number of Aristotelian categories. This is not a rhetorical question, as if to suggest that a priori the attempt does not make sense. But it is to suggest that the onus falls on the historian to justify the choice of labels or at least to delve a bit more deeply into the terms of comparison be-

fore making that comparison. Another example of the need to distinguish between aim, method, techniques, and outcome (or result) pertains to Valla’s alleged skepticism. Is the use of argumentative strategies that clearly betray the influence of Cicero’s Academic skepticism sufficient to label Valla a skeptic, or is something stron-

ger required—tor instance, an endorsement of the main tenets of ancient skepticism: equipollence of beliefs, suspension of judgment, and tranquility of mind—in order to call him a skeptic? While the overall effect of the study of classical antiquity in all its aspects, including, of course, the study of the classical languages, brought about a widening of perspectives that could easily lead to a form of skepticism (or perhaps relativism), to feelings of doubt and uncertainty, this does not mean that the propagation of skepticism was the intention of the historical actor in question. The semantic ambiguity of “skepticism” (as indeed of many “isms”) has given rise to conflicting interpretations. A third example that would have benefited from such clarification is the controversy about Valla and ordinary language philosophy. Valla’s insistence

that the “common linguistic usage” should be the alpha and omega in all our intellectual pursuits has been linked to ordinary language philosophy, in vogue in some quarters of twentieth-century analytical philosophy. The suggestion is less bizarre than it might seem. Even Kristeller, who despised anachronistic interpretations, conceded that “one is reminded of present-day attempts to base philosophy and especially logic on ordinary language.”'’” But,

INTRODUCTION 7 as other scholars have pointed out, Valla’s “ordinary language” was hardly ordinary; it was the classical Latin of the great authors, not the Roman volgare of Valla’s own time.!* This may be true, but the fact that we (or at least some of us) are “reminded of” present-day developments may as well be accepted as an invitation to look more carefully into the terms of comparison. As long as we realize what it is that we are comparing (intentions, aims, arguments, techniques, etc.), a comparison or contrast draws our attention to aspects that we would otherwise perhaps have missed; even a negative result may be informative. Needless to say, it is important to proceed carefully here and to avoid

anachronistic interpretations that ascribe positions to Valla that he did not hold or could not hold, but a categorical prohibition against making such comparisons, within set limits, would greatly impoverish the study of the history of philosophy. This brings us to another, third aim of this book. Just as the assessment of the historical significance of Valla’s program depends on one’s wider views on the relationship between scholasticism and humanism, so an evaluation of its philosophical significance depends of one’s view of philosophy. Even though

Valla presented himself as an antiphilosopher and his work as an antidote to philosophical speculation, his critique is still philosophically significant.” Even though it comes from a self-acclaimed outsider, this critique itself is shot through with philosophical assumptions, e.g., that language can present a reliable picture of reality, that only classical Latin can properly fulfill this role, that ordinary linguistic practice establishes the meaning of words, that the use of ancient classical style is not just a matter of aesthetic preference but the only way to present things in their truest style, etc. These assumptions are part and parcel of the rhetorical tradition from which Valla borrows so much, but they are anything but philosophically neutral, nor is what can be derived from them relevant only to the rhetorical tradition. Valla argues, for instance, that words and arguments should not be taken out of context, since this invariably brings with it a change in meaning and consequently gives rise to philosophical problems where none existed. Valla is often speaking about classical Latin here, and his perspective is oratorical, but set free from these historical conditions, a philosophically interesting position may be distilled that may “remind us” of views developed elsewhere, in wholly different contexts, perhaps for wholly different purposes. Such comparisons often tell us more about the background and interests of the historian than about the historical agent, but

as long as they are not presented in terms of the intentions or aims of the

8 INTRODUCTION latter, they may be useful in mapping conceptual patterns in the history of thought.”°

In pursuing these aims, it is inevitable that other aspects do not feature prominently in this book. First of all, this is not a study of Valla’s thought and scholarship in general, though it will certainly pay attention to developments in Valla’s thought where documentable. There are some notable examples of studies of Valla’s entire oeuvre, but as a popular Dutch saying has it, “every advantage has its disadvantage,” and their wide scope limits the possibility of detailed analysis of entire works or long stretches of argumentation.”! It has rightly been said that “as Valla’s most comprehensive work, touching on grammar, rhetoric, classical philology, moral philosophy, physics, metaphysics, theology, and even biology in addition to logic, the Dialectica aimed at nothing less than a total reformation of the contemporary scientific culture of scholasticism.””* Such a pivotal work clearly requires a study of its own in order to do justice to its richness, complexity and bold conception. Second, detailed discussion of the historical circumstances of Valla’s life

is not an aim of this study. The literature on Valla is vast, and it would have doubled or trebled the size of this book (and the time needed to complete it) if an attempt had been made to incorporate all these valuable textual and historical studies. This again would have led to a different kind of work than is attempted here. How Valla came to formulate his position is relevant, of course, for our evaluation of it—and we shall certainly draw attention to historical circumstances that led Valla to modify his tone or argument—but at the level of arguments we should not confuse the two questions. When and where Valla became acquainted with, e.g., a text of Boethius does not necessarily tell us much about his interpretation of it. Valla’s position, as we shall see in due course, did not radically change over the years, even though his personal situation did change considerably. We know that Valla found a stimulating environment in Pavia in the early 1430s for commencing with his attack on the scholastics. It is also highly likely that some changes to the text were occasioned by historical events such as the Church Council in Florence in 1439 and by personal experiences such as the inquisitorial process against him in 1444. Of course, new arguments, new quotations and new examples entered the later versions of his work as his reading deepened. But the core of his argument did not undergo drastic changes from the time of its first conception in Pavia, through the second revision (ca. 1444-1449) at the Aragonese court in Naples, to the final stages of revision in Rome, cut short by Valla’s

INTRODUCTION 9 death in 1457. The focus of this book thus is on the contents of his work—the substance of his arguments, his techniques and aims. Rather than being an

intellectual biography it is an interpretation and evaluation based on a detailed explanation of the historical text and its place in the philosophical tradition that it seeks to transform and the rhetorical and grammatical traditions from which it derives its inspiration and motivation.”

Such results as emerge from the approach attempted here must be accepted with these limitations in mind. There always remains a multiplicity of ways in which one can expand the circle of context around a particular text, and what counts as context depends to a large degree on the interests, the expertise and background of the historian. Paul Valéry’s bon mot that “a poem is never finished, only abandoned,” is true for a scholarly work as well.*4 This book then is presented as an invitation to further study and discussion.

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PART ONE

The Attack on Aristotelian-Scholastic Metaphysics

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l The Analysis of Things: Substance, Quality, and the Tree of Porphyry

In Book 1 of the Repastinatio Valla aims to cut at the roots of Aristotelianscholastic metaphysics by criticizing some of its fundamental notions, such as the ten categories (substance and the nine accidental ones such as quality, quantity, and relation); the six transcendental terms such as “good,” “one,” and “true”; concepts such as genus and species (the predicables) by which we can define a thing and allot it a place in the so-called tree of Porphyry; form and matter; and act and potency. According to Valla, these terms, concepts, and distinctions, often couched in an ungrammatical or even rebarbative Latin, complicate and confuse rather than enlighten and clarify our picture of the world—a picture that should be based on common sense and expressed in good Latin. The principal task he has therefore imposed on himself is to cut back this useless superstructure of technical jargon and empty concepts by reducing them to what he considers the basic elements of a common-sense worldview. These basic elements are things we perceive either physically or mentally and that may be analyzed as qualified substances. Thus “thing” (ves) is the central term in Valla’s account, transcending the three categories of substance, quality, and action, which are the only three from the Aristotelian ten he accepts. Before considering his discussion of “thing,” however, we shall first have to clarify what Valla’s general approach toward the categories is, and in

14 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS particular what his views are of the ontological status of substance and quality.

This we shall do in this chapter. The transcendental terms and their reduction to “thing” will be the subject of Chapter 2. His treatment of the individual Aristotelian categories and how he reduces them to his own triad will be treated in Chapter 3. Because this reduction results in a lean ontology similar to that of nominalists such as William of Ockham, modern scholars have often bracketed Valla’s name with Ockham’s, arguing that Valla’s program was

a sort of humanist transformation of a late-medieval development. In these chapters we shall therefore also pay considerable attention to the nature of this ontological reduction, suggesting that Valla’s program has much less in common with Ockham’s philosophy than most scholars have suggested.

Aristotle's Categories Aristotle’s Categories and Porphyry’s introduction to it, both translated and commented upon by Boethius, formed the starting point of medieval thinking on the simple but fundamental question of what sorts of things exist. Valla, too, used Boethius’s works, and there are no signs that he takes on board the extensive commentary tradition that these little tracts had spawned in the

Middle Ages.' For an understanding of Valla’s position, a simple and rough outline of Aristotelian metaphysics will suffice. It is not certain how Aristotle came to his inventory of the basic categories of things that exist, but presumably he catalogued the range of questions that can be asked about an individual man.’ Thus we may ask about a certain

man what color he is, how tall he is, where he is, and so forth, giving nine types of answers appropriate to different questions. The result is the ten categories—substance and nine types of accident—which Aristotle regarded as the supreme and irreducible genera of things that are. In the Categories Aristotle pays particular attention to the categories of quality, quantity, and relation, explaining that an accident is in a substance (“is predicated of a substance”),

when it is in it “not as a part, and it is impossible that it is without that in which it is” (1a22).

Alternatively, we may ask about a particular thing what it is, and what sort of thing it is, i.e., in what species it is. Asked what Socrates is, and the answer is that he is a man, which means that he is in the species Man. The same question “what is it?” may next be asked of Man, and the answer is the genus Animal. Continuing thus by asking, “what is it?,” we finally reach substance as

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 15 the most supreme, most general category to which Socrates belongs. The same series of questions may be asked about a particular color, which leads ultimately to the category of quality. Thus each category is reached by ascending the categorical ladder based on a genus-species classification. Fundamental to Aristotle’s account is that these categories are supreme genera that cannot be reduced to each other. Each thing that exists belongs to one category only. The ontological status of the genera and species such as Animal and Man

within a categorical ladder (in this case substance) turned out to be highly problematic. Aristotle calls them “secondary substances,” a rather unfortunate term because it is suggests that these secondary substances, which are universal because they can be predicated of many individuals, are on the same ontological footing as primary, particular substances. These universals would then come close to the Platonic Forms, an association Aristotle wants to avoid at all

cost. So he emphasizes that the primary substances are the building blocks of reality: “if they did not exist, it should be impossible that there should be anything else” (2b3-6; AL 49:21-5), but this does not mean that universal substances such as Man and Animal are not things that are. Together with the individual substances and the particular and universal accidents, they form the four classes of things that are. The Categories raised a number of issues that were hotly debated in the schools and universities of medieval Europe and long thereafter. Apart from Aristotle’s treatment of the individual categories and their exact number, two general issues stood out: What is Aristotle talking about in the Categories: words or things? And what is the ontological status of genera and species?‘ The second issue was explicitly mentioned by Porphyry at the beginning of his /sagoge, where he listed three questions: (1) Do they exist in themselves or in mere concepts alone? (2) If they do exist, are they corporeal or incorporeal? (3) If incorporeal, do they exist apart or in sensible objects and in connection with them?? Porphyry deemed a discussion of these questions to be inappropriate in an introductory treatise, but what he did offer was a treatment of five predicables: genus (as in “Man is an animal”), species (“Socrates is a man’), differentia (“Man is rational”), proprium (“Man is capable of laughter”), and accident (“Socrates is white”). He showed how one can proceed from the most specific species (species specialissimae) through a hierarchy of genera, species, and differentia to the highest genus. We shall come back to his tree of genera and species later on in this chapter. The first issue centered on the precise nature of the categories. While it

16 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS seems clear that Aristotle aims at classifying things, some of his arguments and terminology of “to predicate/say A of B” suggest that the treatise was after all about words, at least about “words in so far as they signify things” (de vocibus res significantibus),® and this is how Porphyry and Boethius, and in their wake, numerous medieval commentators, interpreted him. In late scholastic usage,

for instance, predication was primarily seen as a feature of words or terms (the term “white” is predicated of a thing), and only of things in a derivative way (the quality white is predicated of a thing). These were generally called praedicatio formalis and praedicatio materialis.’ Such an approach, with all its modifications, continued into the twentieth century, e.g., in E. Benveniste’s Problemes de linguistique générale.’ \n his influential commentary from 1963, J. L. Ackrill argued, however, that in spite of occasional lapses, Aristotle clearly distinguishes between things and names that signify those things. To predicate

A of B (as in “Man is an animal”) is to express the relation between species and genus rather than to state a linguistic fact about terms “A” and “B,” even though Aristotle as a shrewd observer of language use recognizes that linguistic facts help us enormously in discovering truths about nonlinguistic items. Nonetheless, given the terminology of predication and the ambiguities that the text presents, it is easy to see why so many scholars have interpreted the Categories as primarily an exploration of the language we use to refer to things rather than an examination of the world of things.

Categories of Things or Terms? We may expect that Valla, as a humanist with a keen eye to fine linguistic discriminations, would have taken the categories in a linguistic sense, and indeed this is how modern scholars have usually interpreted him, linking his discussion of the ten categories to Ockham’s nominalism.°? But it is doubtful, as we shall see, that Valla is addressing the issue at all. For him the world consists of things, and these things are substances characterized by their qualities and actions.'° These categories, therefore, are said to comprise all things (363:24); each of these categories is itself a thing (15:28).'! This suggests a realist interpretation of the categories, in the sense that these three categories refer to really existing things or aspects of things. They signify aspects of things rather than words. Valla talks, for instance, about qualities as “being present in substances” and “discerned by the senses,” and actions proceeding from substances or qualities (365:3-21)—a terminology that cannot be applied to

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 17 names; the quality white is present to Socrates, not the word “white.” In contrast to Ockham, who tries to interpret this terminology in linguistic terms so that “to be absent” becomes “to be denied” and “to be present” becomes “to be affirmed,”!* Valla treats qualities here in a nonlinguistic sense. Indeed, Valla’s rejection of the other Aristotelian categories confirms such a realist interpretation of the categories. As we shall study in detail in Chapter 3, Valla reduces all other accidental categories—quantity, relation, place, time, habit, passion, having—to his triad. For him, such qualifications as size, relationship (e.g., fatherhood), position, time, and place are in no way different from those traditionally associated with the category of quality such as color and shape. From a grammatical point of view, all these terms are essentially qualitative terms, providing us with information about a substance, viz., how it is qualified or how it acts. Because Valla’s basic idea is that his three categories reflect things (substances, qualified by qualities and actions), he has no need for the other categories. While this reduction results in a simple ontology, according to which only qualified substances exist, and so may be compared to Ockham’s equally lean ontology, his approach is different in nature from Ockham’s reductive program. Unlike Valla, Ockham does not want to get rid of the categorical system. As long as one realizes, Ockham says, that categories do not describe things in the world but categorize the terms by which we signify in different ways real substances or real inhering qualities, the categories can be maintained and the specific features of, for example, relational or quantitative terms explored.'* The distinction between categories, Ockham says (following Aristotle), is taken from “the different questions which can be asked about a substance,” giving categories of simple terms as answers to these questions (“What is it?,” “Of what quality?,” “How much?,” and so forth).'4 Thus Ockham’s rejection of a realist interpretation of the categories is accompanied by a wish to defend them as distinct groups of terms, groups that should not become blurred.!° Such an obliteration of the distinction between the categories would precisely be the effect of philosophical realism, he argues,

since by believing that, say, “similarity” signifies an independently existing quality in things, relation is reduced to quality; that is, there is no way to distinguish relational terms from quality terms with respect to the mode of signification. His own terminist interpretation is therefore aimed at saving rather than destroying the categorical system, and this he takes to be the correct interpretation of Aristotle’s words: “Aristotle does not mean that there are as

18 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS many things as there are significant terms,” for the “teaching of the Peripatetics holds that the ten genera are ten terms designating the same things in different ways ...; despite their distinction there is an identity among the things they designate.”'® There is no fatherhood besides fathers and children, no similarity besides similar things, no doubleness besides doubles. But this does not

mean that we can identify, for instance, all relative terms with qualitative terms. (We shall discuss Ockham’s position in more detail in Chapter 3 when we come to the individual categories.) Valla’s position, therefore, seems to be at odds with Ockhamist nominalism on at least two important scores. (1) For him the categories classify things or aspects of things rather than terms; hence, for Valla action is not reducible to the other accidental categories.'” (2) Apart from action, which is a third, separate category, there is just one big category of accidental terms, referring to different aspects of how a thing is qualified. There is no need to put, for instance, relational or quantitative terms in categories different from that of quality. Nonetheless, some statements in Valla’s work square oddly with this “realist” view. In the first chapter of the later versions, for instance, Valla writes that the categories are “principal appellations for signifying things” (appellationes principales in significando, 8:21), which has been taken as evidence for Valla’s endorsement of a terminist interpretation of the categories.'® However, this seems to be too philosophical an interpretation of what is essentially a philological gloss on the word “katnywpia,” only added in the third version. Boethius had translated the Greek term with “predicamenta’—an unusual and rather improper term according to Valla, which he accepts only grudgingly, for it corresponds to Greek “zpoonywpia,” that is, “appellatio,” rather than

to “katnywpia,” This is confirmed, he adds, by the use of “predicare” for ‘dicere” (to say) in writers of comedy such as Plautus and Terence. Given this meaning of “predicare,” it is not surprising that predicaments (categories) can be defined as “principal appellations for signifying things.” Valla, however, does not even begin to develop this into a philosophical position. However, more importantly, to take the categories as modes of predica-

tion does not entail a nominalist understanding of the categories at all, as the case of Thomas Aquinas shows. Central to Aquinas’s account is the idea that the categories as diverse modes of predication follow from, reflect, and correspond to the diverse modes of being, even though in the order of discovery we may start with modes of predication to arrive at the modes of being. When we predicate something of something else, we assert that the latter zs

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 19 the former, which accounts for the fact that the categories as highest genera of being are called “predicaments.” Thus when we say, “Man is animal,” the verb “is” signifies substance. When we say, “A man is white,” the verb “is” signifies

quality, and so with the rest.'? Because of his conviction that the modes of predication are dependent on the modes of being (the categories), Aquinas “can agree with Aristotle that in whatever ways being is predicated, in so many ways is esse signified, that is, in so many ways is something signified to be.”?° Valla’s interpretation of predicaments as “principal appellations for signifying things,” then, does not necessarily imply a nominalist outlook.

Another possible indication of some kind of linguistic interpretation of the categories is Valla’s reference, in the same opening chapter of the Repastinatio, to Quintilian’s rhetorical use of the categories. Quintilian had linked the Aristotelian categories with types of basic questions (status) as distinguished in rhetorical theory: Aristotle “drew up a list of ten elements [e/ementa| on which every Question seems to turn. These are: (1) Ousia (substance) which Plautus calls essentia, and indeed there is no other Latin word for it; the Question it asks is whether something exists.””! After having listed the ten categories, he suggests that “the first four of these seem relevant to Issues [status], the remainder to various topics of Argument,” though at the end of his discussion he expresses doubt whether status are sufficiently covered by the categories.”” However, Valla does not follow this suggestion of linking status-theory with the metaphysical categories, and merely glosses Quintilian’s

word “elementa” as being the principal genera to which the meanings of all other terms can be brought back or referred to as if to their principles or elements (10:8—15). Later, when reducing quantity to quality, Valla is happy to make use of Quintilian’s division of status into three kinds—conjecture (does it exist?), definition (what is it?), and quality (what is this like?)—and also to accept Quintilian’s suggestion that in speaking of quality we also include questions of size and number (136:19-28, quoting /nstitutio oratoria 7.2.6 and 7.4.1). But again, it is a rather opportunistic quotation that is not developed into an interpretation of the categories in terms of rhetorical status.” More telling evidence for a linguistic interpretation is Valla’s occasional description of the categories as names, when, for instance, he writes that “there is no other term [zomen] which reveals substance better than this term quality” (401:18; see also 403:11). Moreover, there is a notorious passage on the transcendental term “ves” (thing) in which Valla clearly distinguishes between language and reality, holding that the meaning of the word rather than

20 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS the thing that is signified by that word comes under the category: “the word ‘man’ is under the category, but the man himself is under the roof, or under heaven, not under the category” (124:20). This formulation is indeed difficult to reconcile with his usual talk of categories as comprising things. Discussion of this difficult passage will be postponed till the next chapter on transcendental terms.” Yet these passages do not warrant crediting Valla with a terminist interpretation of the categories. Of course, he approaches the categories through language, as he is well aware of doing—we must necessarily have recourse to language, he says, and that includes terms such as “substance,” “quality,” and “category” by which we speak about things (123:16)—but this does not mean that the categories do not stand for really existing aspects of things. Valla is very explicit about this (see, e.g., 401:29-34). One of his main concerns throughout the first book is to discern to which category a term refers, for not all terms reveal their link to what they signify equally clearly. Some words, for instance, seem to suggest an action when they in fact refer to quality or substance. When he writes, for instance, that “there are many terms in which it is difficult to discern the category” (443:17), “category” is meant in the sense of “aspect of thing” (res).”°

A safer conclusion then is that Valla—just like Aristotle himself and Aquinas—easily slips from the ontological to the linguistic level, understandably enough given the fact that the former can only be approached through the latter. While substances, qualities, and actions are really existing things, “qualities” and “substances” are also terms referring to those things or aspects of them, but without the tool of inverted commas in order to distinguish linguistic expressions from their ontological referents, the distinction is easily blurred. Valla’s eclectic approach does not allow us to categorize his position as “nominalist”/"terminist” or “realist” in any significantly philosophical sense.

This will be fully discussed when we come to “thing” (Chapter 2) and the terms used to describe God (Chapter 6).

The Categories: Substance and Quality In the first version of the Repastinatio Valla starts his discussion of the catego-

ries with a concise statement about the three categories that he admits: substance, quality, and action (363-366). The word “substance” is so called from “to stand under,” something that does not need any support. Hence substance

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 21 is not a thing that lies beneath accidents but contains them (contineat). Valla cannot give an example of substance, he says, because it never becomes visible, unlike quality and action (364:3; see also 392:18-20). When we say “man,” this does not refer to bare substance, but to a thing consisting of substance, quality, and action; a stone is a substance with at least quality.”° Quality is defined as what is present to the substance (wisdom of a person), to action (velocity of walking), or to another quality (brightness of a color, variety of painting, extent of tiredness).*” His third category, action, is defined as a “thing which comes to be either from substance or from quality” (365:21). As has been noted, such an idiom clearly applies to things rather than to terms. Valla himself recognizes its metaphorical nature, suggesting that language does not always reflect a state of affairs adequately: to say that the quality of wisdom “Is present to a substance” (adest qualitas substantie) is a metaphorical, figurative way of speaking (improprium), but “we cannot speak otherwise” (365:9). What he fears is that talking about substances and their qualities may wrongly suggest that the former can exist without the latter, whereas there is no such thing as “mere substance.” A thing is always a combination of substance and its qualities, and, in a brief chapter later on in the first version, he proposes to use for it the term “consubstantialia” (402:5)—-a term used by theologians to speak about the Persons of the Trinity. Consubstance is constituted of substance and quality. In the later versions Valla, perhaps stimulated by heated debates between Theodore Gaza and George of Trebizond on terms such as “substance” and “essence,” makes a terminological shift and uses the term “substance” (now said to consist of quality and essence) rather than “consubstance,” but the basic idea of an indefinable entity that becomes visible and knowable only through its qualities and actions remains the same.”® It is not surprising to see Valla here struggling with the category of substance, which has always been a difficult concept for philosophers. Aristotle had already attempted to get to substance by stripping away all characteristics but decided that this is impossible.?? Boethius too had said that man is “not substance after all” but that what he is he owes to qualities.*° We are also reminded of John Locke's characterization of substance as “something I know not what,” as “the supposed, but unknown, support of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist sine re substante, without something to support them.”*! But what is surprising perhaps is Valla’s willingness to admit an entity to his ontology that cannot be seen and of which not even one example can be given. The traditional distinction between substance and non-

22 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS

substance accidents makes it impossible to identify a thing (ves) with substance, because thing, on Valla’s understanding of it, is defined as substance plus quality. Valla would perhaps have preferred to do entirely without the problematic and mysterious notion of substance, as George Berkeley would do at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but this was obviously too bold and unprecedented a step. Even Valla needed a basic source of identity, a foothold, so to speak, for the qualities, to give them unity and existence. But it is quality that makes all the difference: qualities can be seen or felt, known and

spoken about. To talk about a substance is to talk about its qualities and, if any, its actions (401-402; 110-111). This holds true for the two kinds of substance that Valla recognizes: spiritual and corporeal substance. Thus soul too, being a spiritual substance, consists of an underlying structure with its qualities.

If substance is identified by its qualities, the question arises how qualities inhere in a substance. The very terminology of substance and inhering qualities seems to imply that not only substance but also quality can have some kind of autonomous existence independent from the former. As we have seen, Valla strongly opposes the idea of bare substance as the most fundamental category, and in his most uncompromising moments he even goes so far as to deny the possibility of abstracting quality from substance mentally: Before all one should mock their belief that quality can exist without any subject or at least can be imagined in thought [cogitatione fingi]. They call “abstract” words like “whiteness,” “blackness” and the like. I do not remember ever having imagined [/zmxisse] things like these even when I was burning with a fever. For whoever imagines these things must imagine them together with some subject or substance: either snow, or a cloud, or a wall, or a piece of clothing, if he thinks of whiteness. . . . But these people want to imagine [fzmgi] man, horse, lion, animal without any individual instance. Not even angels could grasp this with their imaginations [zmaginatione]. But let us pass over these inanities (373:21-374:8).”

But on Valla’s own account, qualities come and go, thereby changing the substance (401:19—25; 110:18—111:2), and his own talk of “qualities being present in

a substance” implies that he too cannot do without the mental operation of distinguishing, at least at a conceptual level, substance from quality and qualities among themselves. He even insists on this distinction:

Also, in what I have said to be present, there is no difference between whether it is always present or whether it is able to be absent sometimes, as

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 23 in the case of fire where light and heat are qualities that can never be absent from the substance of fire. But it does not follow, as many think, that because these things cannot be absent from the substance, all of them together should be called by the name of “substance.” Heat, brightness and flickering which are three qualities of fire are different from each other. If they differ among themselves, how much more do they differ from the subject in which they inhere, which if it is anything at all (as it certainly is), what can it be but substance? Therefore this substance will be a single thing, not a group [una res, non universal (365:10—-20).*°

A critical reader may think that Valla here bites the hand that feeds him. Like the Aristotelian-Boethian tradition with which he takes issue, Valla too can-

not but speak about the categories of substance and quality coming together to form an individual thing. For in spite of his emphasis on the oneness of an individual thing, which is Aristotelian enough, he too speaks of qualities that are temporarily or always present in a subject. The difference between accidents that cannot and those that can be absent from substance is discussed more fully in the chapter on the reduction of the nine accidental categories to quality and action. Here Valla tries to answer the question which qualities make a thing the particular thing it is, which qualities belong to the thing essentially and which inhere in it only contingently. Valla formulates the difference in terms of “natural” and “non-natural qualities.” The first “cannot be absent from the essence, such as flickering, light and heat in the sun, lightness in air, heaviness in earth and water” (113:8). An example of a non-natural quality is heat in an iron bar. Valla then continues to explain this notion of “natural quality”: However, it is more true to call color and shape and touch and weight “natural qualities.” It is false to say, as some do, that these can be absent, as

though in the apple of which I have just been speaking, greenness and roundness and sharpness and weight can be taken away. It can change in color, form, touch and weight but they cannot be taken away from it. Such a quality cannot be changed into another quality, but into itself [sezpsam]:

this color into that, this shape into that, this touch into that, this weight into that (113:24-114:4).

And after a digression on “privation,”* he concludes: For this reason qualities should be called “perpetual” which are qualities at the genus-level [generales] and, in certain cases, as I have said of fire, also the species-level [speciales] (115:21-23).

24 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS

Here Valla tries to come to terms with an important theme in Aristotelian metaphysics. Aristotle had distinguished between accidents and differentiae. Accidents are things that are in a subject and cannot exist separately from it: color, for instance, cannot float around unowned by a body. A differentia, however, is something that distinguishes a given species from other species belonging to the same genus. Thus vatzonal distinguishes man from horse, both being species of the genus Avimal. Aristotle thought that each species has one ultimate differentia that gives it its specific place in the hierarchy of species

and genus. But while the ontological status of accidents is straightforward, differentiae have no fence on which to sit in the Aristotelian scheme. Aristotle refuses to classify them as accidents, nor are they substances.*° In the commentary tradition, most prominently in Porphyry’s /sagoge and Boethius’s commentaries, differentiae were usually treated as kinds of accidents. According to Porphyry, for instance, a differentia, in its strictest meaning, distinguishes species from other species, “as a man differs from a horse because of a specific difference, the quality rational.”*” Boethius also associates the two closely: while a differentia, he says, is made (conficitur) from substance and quality, it sometimes is a differentia, sometimes a quality: heat is an accident of water but a differentia of fire, because heat makes fire the substance it is.°° Thus differentiae play a crucial role in defining a particular species: from them the divisions of genera into species arise; definitions consist of genus and differences. These differentiae, which are per se present in the substance, are inseparable from it. Apart from these inseparable differentiae, there are inseparable differentiae that are present accidentally, such as snub-nosed and hooknosed in a man, or having a scar. These of course “are not comprehended in the definition [7atione] of the substance and do not make another essence but

only a qualitative difference.” The same criterion of inseparability recurs in Porphyry’s account of accidents. The accident is defined as “that which comes and goes without the destruction of its subject.”*! Some accidents can exist separately from their subject, such as sleeping, while others exist inseparably in it, such as being black in the crow and in the Ethiopian, but Porphyry adds that it is possible “to conceive of a white crow and of an Ethiopian who has lost his color apart from the destruction of the substratum” (49). In this way he tries to do justice to Aristotle’s rather strong claim that accidents cannot exist separately from their subject. But it is doubtful whether Aristotle is saying anything about the coming and going of particular groups of accidents. Perhaps he is simply making the point that any accident must inhere in a subject, which does not entail

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 25 that an accident must always continue to be present in it. Socrates’ whiteness cannot exist separately from Socrates, though it is perfectly possible that Socrates could become black. In his commentary on the Categories, Boethius reads Aristotle in this way, but he then goes on to formulate weaker versions of Aristotle’s claim, arguing that an accident “cannot be disjoined from that in which it is.”“’ Socrates’ whiteness does not necessarily inhere in Socrates, although, once it inheres in him, it cannot leave him. Boethius proceeds to formulate an even weaker version of the condition, suggesting that an accident can pass from one subject to another, though it cannot exist without some subject or other. This last interpretation suggests an independent existence of qualities: though they have to exist in a subject, they can leave it and enter another freely.

This is, in a nutshell, the doctrine to which Valla alludes and which he attacks in his characteristically vehement style: They say that an accident is what can be present or absent without causing the destruction of the subject. What? Heat can be absent from fire without it ceasing to be fire? They say “heat in fire is an ousial form.” What? Is not form itself of such a kind that it is ousia? They say “it is ousial with respect to the composed unity, as form is called substantial which differs from accidental form, such as heat in a bar.” I have distinguished “substance” from ‘ousia so that the thing might be more easily understood. I prefer now to work with familiar words rather than disputed words and to use “quality” rather than “form,” so that one will be “natural quality,” the other “nonnatural” (112:19—113:7).“4

He then proceeds to present the distinction between natural and non-natural qualities in the passage we have cited above. In spite of his superior tone, Valla’s position does not bring much enlightenment to the Porphyrian-Boethian account, which indeed shows fuzzy bor-

ders between the various types of accidents.* Valla too formulates a kind of inseparability requirement for sorting out essential from accidental qualities, resulting in his distinction between “natural” and “non-natural” qualities. “Natural qualities’ comprise both differentiae in their strict sense of distinguishing a species from other species in the same genus, and universal accidents such as color, shape, touch, and weight; for his idea is that each thing must have some color and shape, and hence be inseparable from the subject, just as heat is in fire. But this coupling of different types of “natural qualities” is not unproblematic, for, unlike heat in fire, the existence of color does not

26 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS distinguish a species from other species: whiteness does not distinguish man from horse.“ For Valla, however, it does not seem problematic to pick out the essential ones: “flickering, light and heat in the sun, lightness in air, heaviness in earth and water, the power of perceiving, understanding and willing in the mind, eternity, wisdom and goodness in God” (113:9). Another problem is the individuation of qualities: how is a quality individuated from other qualities? Are they individuated by the substance in which they inhere, or are they individual without being individuated by something else? If Valla had been a thoroughgoing nominalist, he would have opted for this last position, supporting the claim that everything that exists, including qualities, is particular. But he does not argue the case, even though he stakes everything on qualities to avoid talking too much about the notion of substance.*” Moreover, such a strong nominalist position is not easy to square with the idea that each thing belongs to its natural kind and that these natural kinds have their fixed place in the order of things, described in terms of species, genus, and differentiae. For if things can be categorized as belonging to one species, one usually assumes that they have an underlying structure in common, and this assumption easily leads—though not necessarily so—to the acceptance of essences, natural kinds, or universal entities. It would, however, be rather fruitless to try to categorize Valla’s position in terms of modern metaphysical theories of individuation. In fact, the problem of individuation is a highly complex one, consisting of several issues such as the intension and extension of individuality, the ontological status of individuality, and the principle of individuation.* Various theories have been developed that show a wide range of approaches, and obviously one cannot expect Valla, who loathes metaphysical speculation, to address these issues, let alone solve them. At one place he explicitly writes that “it is superfluous to ask how individuals are distinguished, as it is superfluous to ask how the categories are distinguished” (169:26). The most one can say is that some of his formulations point in the direction of the so-called “bundle theory of substance, according to which a bundle of particular qualities (differentiae and accidents) is attached to a body, producing a corporeal substance.” Valla’s dilemma, however, remains the same: he wants to safeguard the unity of each thing—“nothing could be more simple” (110:23)—by rejecting the Aristotelian notion of a composite thing (compositum)” and the traditional distinctions such as form and matter and substance and quality (a thing is una res), although he too has to use similar distinctions (e.g., in the case of “animal,” to

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 27 which we shall come at present). His reshuffling of terms such as “form” and “quality,” and “substance,” “consubstance,” and “essence,” in the successive versions of the Repastinatio indicates how difficult it is to free oneself entirely from traditional distinctions and concepts.

Reconsidering the Tree of Porphyry Another example of this difficulty is Valla’s criticism of the AristotelianPorphyrian scheme of things as schematically set out by Porphyry in his famous tree. Valla devotes a separate chapter to it, replacing it by his own classification (chapter 9 in the first version, chapter 7 in the later versions). According to the traditional picture, differentia limits the genus in its meaning (detrahit de sensu), thereby giving the species. The most general genus has the widest meaning as substance in this example (48:12-14). Figure 1 shows how Valla summarizes it in the first version.>! Valla has several problems with Porphyry’s tree, though apparently more with some of its results than with the idea of classifying things according to a genus/species scheme. According to Valla, Porphyry’s tree does not reflect reality well (390:2; 48:23). He offers several points of criticism. His first point we have already met: it is “thing” (ves) rather than “substance” that should be placed at the top of the tree. Bare substance does not exist; a thing is always substance plus qualities. This is a good point, and other thinkers too had

worried about substance, isolated in its own category.’ On the other hand, there is prima facie nothing wrong in analyzing things in terms of substance, qualities, and the other categories by way of predicables such as genus and differentia. After all, Porphyry too would certainly deny the possibility of qualities floating around without being in a substance. As we have seen, Valla also uses the same categories of substance and quality that are said to constitute a thing.

His next point is that the soul is found twice in the diagram, at two different levels: as incorporeal substance and, on a level below that, as something “subject to corporeal substance,” i.e., body (48:28). One could argue, however, that there is a difference between the species “soul” and the differentia “having

a soul.” Substance is divided into corporeal substance (body) and incorporeal substance (soul), but at the next level, it is not the substance “soul” but the differentia “having a soul” (or “animate”) that specifies what comes next, viz., the species “living thing” (i.e., animate body); “not having a soul” is the

28 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS differentia of the nonliving things.*? This, however, would not impress Valla, who points to the difficulty of locating man as a combination of incorporeal

soul and corporeal body in the Porphyrian tree, which makes a basic division between corporeal and incorporeal. One way to solve this problem is to deny soul the status of substance, arguing with Aristotle (and Porphyry) that it is the form of the body, but this is of course unacceptable to Valla, who is a convinced dualist: man consists of two kinds of substances. Moreover, the Aristotelian position is that all living things, including plants and trees, have

differentia species/genus differentia

a mupsrane’ NN

corporeal NN incorporeal

animate inanimate NN animate

a onyInsensible NN sensible > sume NN rational irrational NN rational

a animal NN mortal Immortal Socrates Plato FIGURE I

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 29 souls—a position Valla will refute in his chapter on the soul (see Chapter 4). If plants and trees have souls, it is impossible, Valla seems to suggest, that the soul functions at a higher level, viz., as a differentia of animals. But of course, this objection does not upset an Aristotelian, for whom all living things have a soul.

Valla’s own initial division between body (corpus) and spirit or soul (spiritus) immediately reveals its deeper, religious motivation. Porphyry’s tree covers both the divine and the created order, but this leads to inappropriate descriptions of God and spiritual beings such as angels.°* The term “animal” should not be applied to angels and God, since they do not have a body (49:13; 390:5). Valla’s scheme therefore consists of two schemes: one of incorporeal substance and one of corporeal substance (Figure 2). The tree of zncorporeal substance is then as shown in Figure 3.

“res” (substantia)

corporeal incorporeal substance substance FIGURE 2

incorporeal substance (spiritus)

creating (creata) created (creans) god angelic nonangelic lestial a | human YO NN beast ce la in | (ad imaginem Dei) (non ad imaginem Dei)

Michael Satan my spirit Spiritus

Gabriel Leviathan your spirit of individual animals FIGURE 3

30 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS The basic tree of corporeal substance is shown in Figure 4 (according to the second version, 49:23). In the first version Valla gives further divisions and subdivisions in his chapter on body. Thus “vegetable” is divided into “tree” and “non-tree,” tree into “fruit” and “non-fruit,” and so forth. “Non-vegetable” is divided into terrestrial, aquatic, airy, and fiery things, and terrestrial things into stony, copper bronze, claylike, and other species, and each can be further divided till one reaches the individual piece of gold or silver, this house, and so forth. This category is virtually without limits, including species such as house, mountain, field, clothing, sword, and “innumerable other species” (421:30). “Watery’ is divided into “salty” and “non-salty,” with further species, and “perhaps” fire and air can also be further divided, even though Valla does not accept the scholastics’ division into earthly and heavenly fire.» There are several interesting observations to be made about Valla’s revision of Porphyry’s tree. First of all, since Valla wants to separate the spiritual from the corporeal order, he needs a third tree for those creatures such as human beings and animals that consist of both body and soul. For this class he has reserved the term “animal,” which, according to Valla, occupies such a problematic place in the Porphyrian tree. To Valla, this class forms a “genus by itself,” “a third part” alongside body and spirit (422:15, 21), which suggests that the three classes are mutually exclusive: those things subsumed under body do not have a spiritus, those things subsumed under spiritus do not have a body, and those that have body as well as spiritus are subsumed under “animal.” (This may seem to come close to the scholastic notion of conjunction,

a

corporeal substance (corpus)

vegetable (vegetabilis) nonvegetable

diverse species gold nongold (laurel, olive, etc.)

individuals this golden ring this silver ring (this laurel) FIGURE 4

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 31 the body-soul composite of Aristotle, Aquinas, and the scholastic tradition, but Valla does not use the notion as the scholastics do, viz., to argue that some powers such as imagination and sensation inhere in the body-soul composite while others such as intellection inhere in the soul only.)*° In the first version Valla therefore proceeds to divide “animal” into human and nonhuman. The first does not have further subdivisions but contains individual human beings (Socrates, Xanthippe), except for Christ, because “he is not only a human being but also God” (422:23). “Non-human’” is divided into animals living in the air, on earth, or in water. Flying animals are divided into birds and other flying beasts such as bees, wasps, and flies; birds into good-natured and ferocious ones. Divisions of the earthly beasts are: quadrupeds, reptiles, and “multipeds” and others; quadrupeds into cattle and wild animals; wild animals into goodnatured ones such as hare and deer and ferocious ones such as lion and wolf.

Aquatic animals are divided into squamous and nonsquamous or, alternatively, into oviparous and nonoviparous. All these animals possess body and soul and are therefore to be subsumed under “animal.” At first sight, we get the quite satisfactory picture shown in Table r. Valla claims that “animal” is “a separate class,” a third part (tertia pars), to be treated on the same footing as the other two, which are two kinds of substances. Thus Valla has solved the problem of the location of man in the Porphyrian tree at the price of dividing one tree into two, indeed, three trees. And what is the individual man (or bee or any other animal, for that matter) in the “animal”-tree other than a combination of soul and body, each of which has its own tree? “Animal,” however, cannot have the status of an overarching genus of which body and spirit are the main species, for the simple reason that

Table r Classes of Body, Soul, and “Animal”

Corpus Spiritus “Animal” (corpus + spiritus) God Angels

Human and animal body Human soul Human being, Animals Animal soul (animate beings) Trees, plants, etc.

Inanimate things (house, stone)

32 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS neither corporeal nor incorporeal substances are “animals.” Thus one cannot have the diagram shown in Figure 5. At least part of the problem here is the ambiguous status of “thing.” In the tree (Figure 2) that divides into incorporeal and corporeal substance (thus getting two trees), the concrete thing (“res”) stands at the top as a deliberate replacement of the abstract bare substance of the Porphyrian tree (Figure 1). But in the “animal” tree, too, the same term “res” (as well as its equivalents “consubstance” of the first version and “substance” of the later versions) is used (423:29).°” But the two concepts cannot be the same: for in the first tree “res” is divided into incorporeal and corporeal substances, which are not the same as the ves in the animal-tree, which by definition is a res consisting of incorporeal and corporeal substance. That the two senses of res cannot be the same can be seen in Figure 6. In the later versions Valla reduces his chapter on “animal” to a single paragraph at the end of his chapter on Porphyry’s tree, which may be a sign that he realizes that the relationship between his trees was far from obvious. Nevertheless, his point remains the same: “animal” is a separate genus that “does not relate to either body or to soul even though it is composed of both.” The reason behind this lack of clarity may be that Valla, without realizing it, tries to combine a metaphysical with a biological-physical division of all there is. He wants to present an alternative to the Porphyrian tree, which is essentially a metaphysical exercise in analyzing the nature of reality with the aid of genera, species, and other predicables. But he also wants to provide a tree of animate and inanimate things, that is, a tree of a biological-physical nature.” In any case, it is striking to see that Valla hardly pays attention to a crucial element in the Porphyrian tree, the differentiae, those specific attributes that make a species what it essentially is, even though he must have had principles of categorization in mind when making his divisions. Not all of them are straightforward: thus one may question the status of the quality of

“animal” (animate)

incorporeal substance a ~ corporeal substance

(spirit) (body) FIGURE 5

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 33 meekness as a true differentiating principle—a criterion that is used thrice within the “animal”-tree (birds, quadrupeds, wild animals). It is clearly of a different order than Porphyrian differentiae such as sensible, rational, and mortal—a difference of which Valla elsewhere shows himself to be aware (170:9; see the next section). There are more difficulties with a separate tree for “animal”: the “animal”tree divides humans from nonhumans, but the difference is described in terms

of a difference in the soul: human souls are made in the image of God and therefore are much more noble than animal souls, which lack this privilege. This differentia, then, belongs to a different tree, viz., the tree of incorporeal substance, where indeed it features as such. Further, Christ is excluded from the “animal”-tree, since he is not only human but also divine. But Valla could not place Christ in the tree of incorporeal substance either, even though incorporeal substance is there divided into “creating” and “created” (“creans” and “creata’), with the implication that Christ, insofar as he is God, belongs to the divine “creans.” And in fact God too can hardly be said to belong to the tree of incorporeal substance, as Valla has to concede, for He is of a different kind of substance altogether. It is of course not surprising that Valla has difhculties with the exceptional case of Christ, but what he gains over Porphyry by disentangling the supernatural from the natural order, he loses by having to concede that the divine is not easily placed at all, even in his own trees. A last aspect that is worth noticing is Valla’s frequent assertion that the dividing of species stops when there are no longer names available: “and of these there would be species, if there would be names for them”; some kinds of trees “cannot be divided further because there are no names.” This can be

interpreted in a nominalist way, as if Valla is categorizing terms rather than things after all, but a single glance at Valla’s trees suffices to see that this is not

his aim. Of course, we can only approach the world of things and animals through language, and language sets limits to what we categorize, but Valla

J \ a. +

thing (res) x thing (res)

incorporeal corporeal human nonhuman FIGURE 6

34 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS explicitly recognizes the possibility that there are species even though they are not yet named: ““vegetabile” has its species, but generally they are not named” (420:3).°! On the other hand, there are names for animals that, on Valla’s account, do not form a genus by themselves: insects (“insecta’), for instance, are “minute animals” living on land or in the air, thus going beyond the division between terrestrial and flying animals. The divisions are guided by the availability of terms, but this need not be a one-to-one relationship. More generally, the observation that there are limits to our linguistic resources is a traditional topos and was already formulated by Aristotle: “names are finite... , while things are infinite in number.”

Definition and the Predicables The basic assumption behind the Aristotelian-Porphyrian classification system is the idea that individual substances belong to natural kinds and that we do not as a rule have any serious problems in knowing to which natural kind a particular substance belongs. In asking “What is this man?,” we recognize him as substance and mention the things in direct line above him in the familytree: the species Man and the genus Animal, and differentiae such as rational. True knowledge is then conveyed in definitions that show the place of the substance in question. This is made plain at the very beginning of the /sagoge: knowledge of the predicables is “useful for giving definitions and in general for what pertains to division and demonstration.” Not surprisingly, Valla continues his discussion of Porphyry’s tree with a chapter on definition, including the predicables that are involved in defining a thing. In the later versions this chapter is transferred to the very end of Book 1, where Valla writes that all the things that he has discussed—the categories as well as the things that they subsume (predicamentis subiecta; 163:14)—are expressed most accurately by way of definition, which is “the royal judge and official of the treasury,” and which “considers nothing other than that royal word ‘what?,’ that is, Which thing?” (quid, idest, que res?). His criticisms of the notion of bare substance, considered apart from its qualities and actions, are supported here by a grammatical consideration of the interrogative “quid?, ” for this interrogative does not inquire, Valla holds, into just one aspect of a thing but into all aspects, that is, into its substance, quality, and action. This “what question” does not ask for the substance only, as Boethius and Porphyry think, but also for its qualities and actions: “Genus, species and difference often play also a

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 35 role in [defining] those things which are not substances [that is, qualities and actions], but nonetheless they are not removed from ‘what,’” as Valla not entirely felicitously puts it (165:10).

What Valla has in mind here, however, is not so much the taxonomy of Aristotelian-Porphyrian metaphysics, but rather the rhetorical-grammatical art of composing definitions. In the words of Quintilian, a definition gives the statement of the thing in “accurate, lucid, and brief verbal expression,” comprising normally genus, species, differentia, and property.© Definition is of course an important tool for the orator in defending or attacking an action, a state of affairs, or a character trait. Someone who wants to deny, for instance, that he has committed adultery will question the definition of the term as used by the accusing party. At the beginning of De inventione, Cicero has an important discussion of the use and manipulation of definitions in oratory, and most later Roman authors on eloquence, including Quintilian, followed Cicero in their analysis. Valla duly cites these authorities in his treatment of the predicables as listed by Quintilian.® In this rhetorical-juridical context, definition is used to answer one of the three basic questions asked about any thing: what it is, whether it is, and of what kind it is (/mstitutio oratoria 3.6.80). Uhis why Valla insists on taking the what-question as about the entire thing, not just about the substance.*” Accordingly, he emends the traditional descriptions of the predicables. In the standard Porphyrian definition of differentia as that which “distinguishes a species from other species within the same genus ‘qualitatively”” (in eo quod quale sit), the phrase “in eo quod quale sit” is superfluous, since every such difference is a quality (169:13)—a clear indication that for Valla the differentiae are qualities just like other accidents. Likewise, the phrase “essentially” (22 eo quod quid) can be omitted from the Porphyrian definition of genus and species.® In the definition of individual as that which cannot be predicated of others, Valla objects to the phrase that individuals “differ in number” (numero), as if Paul and Peter are not both one in

number. This is an obvious point, and it had not escaped Boethius, who used the phrase, however, in a different way, viz., as different in counting.” The last predicable is property (proprium), which Porphyry had found difficult to distinguish adequately from differentia and accidents. Porphyry gives four meanings of proprium, siding with his predecessors in choosing the fourth—what occurs in the entire species, in it only, and always, as the capacity to laugh in man—as the “proper” sense of proprium.’° Each sense is criticized by Valla (170:4-171:11). Thus Porphyry’s first meaning of property is

36 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS what occurs in one species only, although not in every member of it, such as being a doctor or a mathematician in man. According to Valla, however, these activities are the product of man’s ratio, and hence they are no less a differentia than being rational or worshiping God. Porphyry’s second meaning is what occurs in all members of the species but also in members of another species, such as being two-footed in man, but this too, Valla suggests on the basis of Quintilian’s testimony, can better be considered as a differentia: “It is also said to be a Differentia when the Genus is divided into Species and the Species itself is characterized. ‘Animal’ is the Genus, ‘mortal’ the Species, ‘terrestrial’ or ‘biped’ the Differentia.””! We have observed that Valla indeed uses these kinds of properties as differentiae in his own tree. The third meaning is what occurs in the entire species, in it only, and at some time, as becoming gray in old age occurs in every man. But this property, Valla objects, is in no way different from the property of having the capacity to laugh, which Porphyry thinks is an example of the fourth and “proper” meaning of property, viz., “what occurs in only one species, to every member and always”; for what has the capacity to laugh belongs to a man naturally and is convertible with man. For Valla, there is no substantial difference between an “occasional” proprium such as graying in men and a “permanent” one such as the capacity to laugh. In babies who have died within a couple of days of their birth, there has been no develop-

ment of the capacity to laugh, and at the other end of life, there are people who have not turned gray because of a premature death. Thus though it seems perfectly possible to define nature in terms of having certain dispositional traits that are widespread but need not be universal among the members of that class, Valla thinks that a trait should be universally present in all members of a class in order to count as a property.” Depriving the fourth description from its status as the “proper” meaning of property, Valla suggests further that convertibility can be applied to the other meanings of property as well, but this seems to be incorrect: what is calculating is a man, but also vice versa? (What Valla means is that a being who displays rationality must be a man and vice versa.) And graying and man are only convertible, one can argue, because the verb “to gray” (canescere) is applied primarily (only?) to men. In Porphyry’s Jsagoge it is left unclear how the “proper” meaning of property differs from differentia and also from nonseparable qualities such as an Ethiopian’s blackness, mentioned by Porphyry in his chapter on accidents.

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 37 Some of Valla’s points may be intended to alert us to the overlap between these types of accidents (or qualities or forms or whatever term we want to use). He hints at least at a possible distinction between a proprium (in its “proper” meaning) and a differentia: the former is an attribute belonging to members of a given class (hence, Valla’s checking whether all individual members in Porphyry’s examples really have the attribute in question), whereas the latter can be considered as a qualification applying to classes. Valla prefers Quintilian’s “briefer, truer and more accurate” description of

property:” A Property ts either (a) that which belongs to one object alone (as speech or laughter to man) or (b) that which necessarily belongs to something, but not to this alone (as heat to fire). The same thing may have several Properties, as fire itself has those of light and heat. Consequently, the absence of any Property will destroy a Definition; but its presence, whatever it is, will not necessarily confirm it.

It is doubtful, however, whether this is a more economical and truer way of putting the difference to be considered between propria such as laughter and speech and differentiae such as earthly (terrenum) and two-tooted (bipes). Men share two-footedness and their earthly dwelling with some other animals, so that these differentiae can be considered at most to be nonessential differentiae.

(And they are thus not convertible: a man is two-footed, but what is twofooted is not necessarily a man.) The ability to laugh and speech, on the other hand, seem to be no less marks of the class of man, restricting membership to it, than rationality. Yet they are here classified as propria rather than differentia. Moreover, what Quintilian understands by proprium is not very different from Valla’s description of “natural qualities” as things that cannot be absent from the essence, such as heating in fire. All in all, Valla’s attempt to emend the definitions of the Porphyrian predicables does not solve the problems and ambiguities of the latter account.

The Ontological Status of the Predicables: The Problem of Universals Concerning the predicables, a last important point must be raised: their ontological status. There is plenty of textual support in the /sagoge and Boethius’s

38 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS commentaries for the view that propria, differentia, and accidents are qualities,

and indeed this is also how Valla takes them. For him there are only things; thus it is only natural to consider “rational,” “white,” and “two-footed” ontologically on the same footing, being somehow qualities of individual substances. In his chapter on the qualities, Valla distinguishes between qualities observed by the senses and those perceived by the soul alone, but this does not seem to entail a difference in ontological status. (We shall come back to this in Chapter 3 on the qualities.) But what about the predicables of genus and spe-

cies? In other words, what is Valla’s approach to the notorious question of universals? The striking answer is that Valla does not address the question at all, even though he must have come across the issues as listed by Porphyry at the beginning of his /sagoge and Boethius’s influential account of universals, especially in the latter's second commentary on Porphyry. Boethius had tried to answer Porphyry’s unanswered queries by arguing that “genus and species subsist in one way, they are grasped by the intellect in another way, and they are incorporeal, but they are joined to sensible things and subsist in sensible things. But they are grasped by the intellect as subsisting in themselves and not having their being in anything else.””* Boethius had developed his point by first construing an argument against the idea that genus and species really exist. They cannot really exist, since they are common to many at the same time, which contradicts the common principle that

Boethius did not want to give up, viz., that everything that really exists is one in number. The conclusion should be, then, that genera and species are formed by the intellect, in thought alone. They may be viewed as being the result of a process of abstraction: we see the likeness between things (say, hu-

manity from singular men), and this likeness is then associated with the thought in the mind, that is, a species or—in the case of likeness of diverse species—a genus. But for Boethius this does not mean that these thoughts are mere products of our mind without a claim to a real existence. In fact, he proceeds to argue that they do exist, but in a double way. As Marenbon puts it, referring to Boethius’s analogy between lines considered in separation from any body, and universals: “He seems to be suggesting that incorporeal lines and universals do really exist, but that lines are, as a matter of fact, always tied to bodies and universals to particulars, so that it is only by abstraction, which sets them apart from these accompaniments, that they are properly grasped.”

Universals seem to have a double status: particular as sensed in particular

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 39 things (perhaps they are what are called “the likenesses” between things), universal as grasped in thought. Obviously, this position is not a clear-cut answer to Porphyry’s dilemma whether universals really exist or are formed by the intellect alone, but it was precisely this indecisive character that gave medieval philosophers room to give their own interpretation of the text.

In view of Valla’s aversion to abstract entities and even the process of abstraction itself, it is not difficult to realize that a Boethian interpretation of universals in terms of mental abstractions—whether as mere convenient thoughts or as really existing abstractions in the complicated double way just sketched—would not have been a viable option for him. Even though in the later versions of the Repastinatio he weakens his extreme rejection of any kind of abstraction (possibly because he realizes that his own talk of substance and qualities also makes use of the very same process of seeing things “in abstraction”), he never talks explicitly of similitudes between things, sensed by the senses and grasped by the intellect. What he does hint at is a linguistic interpretation of the universals: universals are terms or predications. The differentia “corporeal,” for instance, limits the genus in its meaning (detrahit de sensu), thereby giving the species, since “substance” has a wider signification (plus enim significat) than “corporeal substance” (48:10-14). This is more explicitly expressed in his chapter on qualities perceived by the soul alone: genus and species are to be treated as relative terms, yet they signify nothing other than qualities, viz., qualities of sub- and super-ordination of names according to their scope: “‘man is a species’ [homo est species] means nothing more than that ‘this substance man has this quality of inferiority” (hec substantia homo habet hanc qualitatem inferioritatis).’° These terms tell us something about the scope of signified objects, wide in the case of genus and less wide in the case of species (125:16—23).

These hints at a linguistic interpretation of the predicables seem to take us in the direction of a nominalist position, and indeed this is how some scholars have interpreted it.”” As is well known, Ockham develops a fully linguistic interpretation of the predicables, arguing consistently that “genus,” “species,” and other universals are nothing but terms of second intention, that is, logical terms that cannot mean things or parts of things really existing outside the mind but that mean only kinds of terms or concepts. The predicamental order consists not of things but of our mental concepts, which are ordered according to the scope of their predication.’* Thus

40 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS genus is not something outside the mind belonging to the essence of those things of which it is predicated. It is rather a certain intention of the mind predicable of many, standing not for itself, but for the thing which it signifies... Therefore when a genus is predicated of a species, it is not asserted that the subject is the predicate, nor that the predicate belongs to the subject in real existence. It is asserted, rather, that what is designated by the subject is the very thing that is designated by the predicate. But the intention genus is not predicated of things outside the mind. Such things cannot be subjects for that intention. On the contrary it is predicated of the signs of such things.”

As a generic term that stands for individuals of which it is a natural sign, genus signifies the whole individual nature of individual things. Consequently, Porphyry’s language by which the relationship between the predicables is described—that species is “a part” of the genus (or vice versa) or that the genus “contains” the species or that genus sometimes designates the matter and not the form—ought to be rephrased in order to fit a consequently terminist interpretation or—as he more tactically (and in typically medieval fashion) puts it—to fit Porphyry’s intention and that of “philosophical authorities” more generally.®° These cannot be but metaphorical expressions (metaphorice loquendo): the term “man,” for instance, is not a part of the term “animal”; still less is an individual such as Socrates part of the thing signified by “animal.”®! Ockham clearly wants us not to take the predicamental order for the metaphysical order of things. By the standards of Ockham’s terminism, Valla can hardly be considered an Ockhamist. His talk of “wider and lesser scope in signification” is less nominalistic than it sounds. An important strand in Porphyry’s tract is the idea that predicables are classifications of terms: an example of genus is the term “animal”; an example of species is the term “man”; a term is predicated or said of many things; and so forth. In Boethius’s translation of Porphyry’s text the terms “praedicare” and “dicere” abound: genera, for instance, are terms that are said of many things (de pluribus dicuntur; PL 64:94D).” Valla did not need to look any further than Boethius, who wrote that they were “in a certain fashion names of names” (sunt quodammodo nominum nomina; PL 64:167D), or the /sagoge, translated and commented on by Boethius, for mak-

ing his point, and there is no sign that he develops it in the direction of an Ockhamist interpretation.” The crucial terminist term “sign” (signum) is not even used in his discussion of the predicables. But more significantly,

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 41 a close reading of the passages makes it clear that he seems to go in quite the opposite direction, since he repeatedly talks of species and genera in terms of “qualities of inferiority and superiority,” and their relationship is said to be “nothing else than that between a whole and its part”: just as species are parts of proximate genus, “so are head and trunk parts of the human body”

(48:18).54 This is precisely the sort of quasi-physical interpretation that Ockham utterly rejects: genus and species are not terms standing for things outside the mind, such as qualities inhering in bodies. They are not to be treated as parts, let alone physical parts of these bodies, but as signs standing for the whole of the individual. Valla, however, seems to treat them as qualities inhering in things, even though they are qualities discerned by the mind alone.** Qualities perceived by the mind alone, however, are not treated in a different way from those perceived by the senses, and Valla explicitly

denies a different ontological level when he repudiates the notion of “secondary substances” (as genus, species, and the other predicables were called by Aristotle and his commentators) (159:26—160:5). Valla does not tell us what

the precise, ontological nature of these qualities of inferiority and superiority is nor how they are formed. But ironically enough, it would be possible to give a Boethian twist to his words by interpreting these qualities as likenesses, somehow present in the things as particulars, yet grasped by the mind as universals, since they are qualities only sensed by the soul.®° Aristotle himself gave the impression that secondary substances belong to the category of quality when he wrote that they signify “a certain qualification,” even though

this was obviously not what he meant.*”? But in whatever direction one develops Valla’s words, one would certainly have to use considerable hermeneutic force to coordinate his ambiguous statements with an Ockhamist reading.

“More,” “Less,” and “Intermediate” Applied to Substance and Quality Valla pays considerable attention to some other qualifications of substance that Aristotle and his commentators had made: the idea that substance does not admit of more or less. According to Aristotle, a man, for instance, “will not be more a man or less a man either than itself or than another man. For one man is not more a man than another, as one pale thing is more pale than another.”** Nor will it be more man now than before. Aristotle continues to distinguish substance from quality by arguing that “it seems most distinctive

42 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS of substance that what is numerically one and the same is able to receive contraries’: whereas a quality such as a color, which is numerically one and the same, will not be black and white (an individual instance of color cannot admit contraries while retaining its identity), a substance such as a man becomes pale at one time and dark at another while retaining its identity. Valla’s attack on these doctrines is based on grammatical considerations (156-161 and 383-386). First of all, “more,” as grammar teaches us, is not used with substantive nouns but only with adjectives or terms having adjectival force, thus forming a comparative: “more learned” (magis doctus = doctior), “more wise” (magis sapiens = sapientior), while from “homo” (man) we do not derive “hominior.” This simple grammatical fact alone would suffice to show what even an uninstructed person knows, viz., that we do not say “more man.” The second and “graver vice” (157:23) is that Aristotle thinks that only substance does not admit of more and less.*° But in a sense qualities and the other categories too do not admit of more and less. We do not say, for instance, that color is “more quality” than sound, or that longitude is “more quantity” than latitude. Nor do we say that a particular color is “more color” than another, that Rome is “more place” (magis locus) than Athens, that day is “more time” (magis tempus) than night (384:21; 158:6). On the other hand, grammar shows that, pace Aristotle, we can apply “more” and “less” to substances when we use adjectives formed from nouns that signify a substance: thus from “stone” (/apis) and “water” (aqua) we get “stony” (lapideus) and “watery” (aqueus), which admit of more and less: a house is “more stony” (magis lapidea) than another, this blood is “less watery” than that blood. “More marble” (magis marmorea) means “having more of the substance of marble” (plus de substantia marmoris), just as “more white” (smagis album, or comparative albius) means “having more of the quality of whiteness.”

From a grammatical point of view, Valla argues, it is clear what goes wrong here. Aristotle suggests a parallel between substance and qualities, but he compares different types of words: in the case of substance he uses a noun

(“man”), concluding that more/less cannot be applied to substance. In the case of quality he uses an adjective (“white” rather than “whiteness”), concluding that more/less can be applied to quality. But to make his point, Aristotle should have used either two nouns (“whiteness” and “man”) or two adjectives

(“white” and a form derived from “man’—“homineus’—just as we derive “stony” from “stone”). He would then see that both options result in non-

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 43 sense: we do not use the term “homineus” nor do we speak of “more whiteness.”! Apparently Valla’s criticisms proceed from the premise that substantives reflect in some way substances. Hence if the former admit of more or less, the latter must also—and Aristotle's point is thus refuted. Not only do substantives with a certain adjectival force receive more and less (more or less a master, an enemy, a citizen, a relative, a Scipio), but even those that are mere substantives. For example, “well-baked brick is more stone (magis lapis) than one that is badly baked,” “this is more vinegar than wine,” “this is more lead than silver,” “Achilles is more human than Chyron,” and so forth. Aristotle himself, as Valla reminds him, spoke of “primary substances” as “more substance” than “secondary ones” (e.g., genus, species). Moreover, it is not true that all adjectives always admit of more or less, Valla says. “For if we want to speak according to the most demanding and Stoical law of truth” (ad exactissimam veritatis legem ac stoicam; 160:15), we should perhaps not use words such as “fuller,” “rounder,” or “more triple,” which nonetheless are in common use.” As a relentless advocate of common

or ordinary usage, it is striking to see Valla here admitting that language may not always adequately reflect the nature and truth of a state of affairs, but so much the worse for reality, Valla seems to say when he continues: “it is one thing to speak according to the very standard of truth, it is a another thing to speak according to popular custom, common to virtually the whole human race.”*? And he quotes Cicero’s image of the balance: the orator should not weigh his words in the goldsmith’s balance, but rather in a sort of popular scale. Valla signals a similar discrepancy between common usage, found among all the great authors, and truthful and (as we may put it) scientifically correct language in the use of superlatives.°4 These points are developed much further in the Elegantiae.” Because Valla has left the metaphysical level and launches his attack on this aspect of the Aristotelian concept of substance from an entirely grammatical point of view, speaking about the grammatical substantive noun rather than about the metaphysical concept of substance, one may be inclined to say that his criticisms miss their target. (Nor are they always internally consistent, for at the beginning of the discussion the combination of magis with a substantive noun such as homo is judged grammatically inept but is later accepted, as in “Achilles is more man [magis homo] than Chyron.”) Aristotle

A4 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS would certainly agree that color is not more or less a quality than sound, and that green is not more or less a color than red, but then he is making an ontological claim: the basic building blocks of the world are natural kinds such as men and horses, which do not admit of more or less: Plato is no more or less a man than Socrates. Naturally, Aristotle is the first to admit that we have to approach these matters through a consideration of language—indeed, it can be argued that in Aristotle the line between linguistic and ontological questions is often blurred—but the point here seems clearly metaphysical. Valla’s point then can perhaps be taken as a critique of the supposedly fixed boundaries of natural kinds: we can say, “this is more vinegar than wine” or “this brick is more a stone than that,” or even “he is more a man than that creature,” which

suggests that a substance does not always have a fixed nature but admits of some flexibility in its constitution. And if Aristotle thinks that his point also applies to non-natural kinds—one cobbler or magistrate is not more a cobbler or magistrate than another®°—then Valla may find even more reason to question Aristotle’s claim. On the other hand, Valla’s examples are not unproblematic: the fact that we can say that “this is more like vinegar than wine” or that “this is more lead than silver” is not enough to refute Aristotle’s point, which is that if this substance is lead, it will not be more or less lead either than itself

or than other lead. Moreover, that a well-baked brick is more a stone (magis lapis) than one that is badly baked points to a certain quality rather than to the substance as reason for why we speak of “more and less stone.” Though Valla is talking about words and how they are used, his observations betray a clearly ontological slant. This is also apparent in Valla’s next chapter, which discusses the concept of the medium or intermediate, taking its cue from Aristotle’s remarks on types of contraries in chapter 10 of the Categories. If substance does not admit of more and less and is, unlike qualities, able to receive contraries, it may seem natural to inquire into the status of what lies between these contraries, even though Aristotle himself does not connect his discussion of contraries with his account of substance, presented much earlier in chapter 5 of the Categories. His basic distinction is between contraries such as odd and even (a number must be either the one or the other, there being no intermediate) and black and white (it is not necessary for something to be either white or black because there are “gray, yellow, and all the other colors” as intermediates). In some cases, Aristotle adds, “there exist names for the intermediates, as with gray and yellow between white and black; in some, however, it is not easy to

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 45 find a name for the intermediate, but it is by the negation of each of the extremes that the intermediate is marked off, as with the neither good nor bad and neither just nor unjust” (11b38—12a26). In his commentary on the Categories, Boethius merely paraphrases the passage, but he adds that in some cases there is only one intermediate (e.g., lukewarm between cold and hot), and in other cases a number of intermediates (e.g., several colors between black and white; PL 64:268). As Aristotle and Boethius speak about the availability of names, this is obviously right up Valla’s street. A proper intermediate should have something in common with the two extremes, he says. Thus “dark” (fus-

cus), rather than the color-names mentioned by Boethius, is the intermediate between black and white, “lukewarm” (tepidus) between hot and cold (already in Boethius), “semisomnus’ between sleeping and waking, and “dusk” between night and day (though it is closer to night, Valla admits). When we apply “strict standards of truth” (162:11; 387:3; see also 221:8) to the concept of the intermediate, Valla proceeds, we should perhaps not speak of an intermediate between, for instance, day and night, sleeping and waking, living and dead, healthy and sick, illiterate and learned, or sober and drunken,

but such an injunction would go against our common understanding of the matter (ad communem intellectum). This is a valuable point, reminding us that the extent of required precision may be different in ordinary life and common language from what we need in science. Be that as it may, it shows that he discusses contrary things as much as adjectives of contrariety. It is black and white that stand in opposition to each other, not just “black” and “white,” and “darkness” (fuscus) is “made up” of black and white.®” And when he asks whether there is some state (aliquis status; 162:8) between sleeping and waking or whether there is some time between day and night, Valla is not primarily asking for the availability of terms. For even though he almost invariably approaches his topics through a consideration of terms, his discussion, as has already been said, has a clearly ontological slant: what lies in the middle is always a quality, as he writes in the first version (387:22).

Conclusion For Valla, then, the grammatical and semantical features of classical Latin of-

fer the best guideline we have for describing the inventory of the world— that is, things or qualified substances—but Valla at various points himself sig-

46 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS nals that there is no perfect match between things and our common linguistic characterization of them, that is (to use grander terms), between the ontological and linguistic level. Thus when we say that qualities are things that “are present to the substance,” this wrongly suggests that they can exist apart from each other—“however, we cannot speak otherwise” (365:9). Related to this is Valla’s acknowledgment that there is a difference between speaking according to “the standard of truth” and “our common way of speaking.” For example, words like “rounder” and “fuller” are, strictly speaking, not correct—one circle is not “rounder” than another—but linguistic practice of the great authors sanctions such a usage.”® The way Valla phrases this distinction—“the most demanding and Stoical law of truth” (exactissima veritatis lex ac stoica) versus “popular custom” (consuetudo popularis), and “the

nature and truth of the thing” (natura et veritas rei) versus “spoken usage” (usus loquendi)—seems to imply that he admits that the popular or ordinary usage does not always adequately reflect the nature and truth of a state of affairs.” For Valla, however, the common way of speaking has primacy over a possibly more correct way of describing things: “it is one thing to speak according to the very standard of truth, it is another thing to speak according to popular custom, common to virtually the whole human race.”! Truth and custom, in other words, are not always identical. This distinction is derived from the age-old debate between the grammarians on the one hand and the orators on the other hand, for whom speaking refined Latin is more important than speaking it in accordance with a rigid set of grammatical rules. But Valla broadens the distinction and hence the concept of truth to include other types of instances where one phrase matches the facts better than another. The distinction is not limited to the contrast between grammatically true versus approved linguistic custom, but also applies to speaking in accordance with the way a thing or state of affairs is versus speaking in accordance with linguistic custom, though it is doubtful whether Valla would accept the implication that the truth does not always lie on the side of custom and linguistic usage. This at least suggests that his basic picture of things is not completely determined by language but at some points resists a perfect match in verbal expression or does not (yet) find expression in language (e.g., some species of savor and odor, and species of plants and animals). Of course, language is the only vehicle we have for describing the world (see also 123:15—16), and implicit in all

Valla’s arguments is the presupposition that in general Latin is the most valuable legacy from classical antiquity. Nonetheless, it can be argued that Valla’s

SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND THE TREE OF PORPHYRY 47 point of departure is a common-sense picture of the world, which is then shown to be reflected—adequately most of the time—in this language. Much of his discussion of quality and substance is about the world of things, naturally approached and considered from a grammatical point of view. In the next chapter we shall see that these two levels—the linguistic and the ontological—are naturally closely interwoven in Valla’s account, and that the immediate context of the discussion determines whether language is presented as following the facts of the world or whether ontology is (tacitly) adapted to fit the linguistic “facts.” But from whatever angle the matter is approached, Latin is shown to be an adequate tool for describing the common-sense view of the world. As such it is not purely a matter of convention or linguistic convenience but something worth fighting for against the Aristotelian-scholastic edifice of terms and distinctions that in his view distort this picture of the world.

2 Thing and Word: A Critique of Transcendental Terms

ln this chapter we shall be looking in more detail at the notion of thing (res), which plays such a crucial role in Valla’s thought. As we have seen in the previ-

ous chapter, Vallas world is inhabited by things, which he characterizes as substances qualified by qualities and actions. The notion of thing, transcending these three categories, is therefore the most general concept in his “metaphysics” (a term he would, of course, never use to describe his own account), and in some tantalizing and controversial passages, discussed in this chapter, Valla tries to explicate the semantic relationship between things and words. In reducing the traditional set of transcendentals—“being,” “thing,” “something,” “one,” “good,” and “true”’—to “thing,” Valla has a good deal to say about these terms, and we shall pay particular attention to his notion of truth. However, he treats the transcendental terms as a subclass of a much larger group of adjectives used as substantives. His discussion takes up an old

distinction between abstract and concrete terms (“white’/“whiteness,” “father’/“fatherhood”). The precise relationship between abstract and con-

crete terms was an important point of contention in scholastic thought, as abstract terms could easily lead to the positing of abstract entities. We shall therefore also look at Valla’s account of the distinction between abstract

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 49 and concrete terms that he discusses in close connection with the transcendentals.'

Transcendentals Aristotle thought that there are ten supreme and irreducibly different genera of being—substance, quality, quantity, and so forth—under one of which falls each thing that there is. But what is this notion of being that these categories have in common? Many different things are said to be, but what is being as such or, to use another traditional expression, being-gua-being? The categories are clearly of no help here, since the notion of being is common to all of them: substances and all kinds of accidents alike are said to be. Hence, being itself is not an eleventh Aristotelian category, nor does it constitute a separate realm of being beyond the categories; it rather runs right through all of them. So, while a particular being such as Socrates may be classified with the aid of the usual types of attributes (predicabilia)—species (a human being), genus (an animal), differentia (rational), property (capable of laughing), and accident (snub-nosed)—the general notion of being-gua-being obviously resists such a subdivision, since it is not to be identified with any particular being or particular type of being. This of course raises the question whether we can say anything at all about such a general notion, which does not seem to be any type of being and consequently lacks the usual attributes we can apply to particular beings or types of beings. The scholastics, however, did think that we may sensibly investigate the

notion of being as such, and they distinguished various attributes of it, such as good, one, and true. Developing ideas from Aristotle himself and from discussions on notions such as unity, truth, and goodness by the church Fathers, Boethius, and the Arabic philosophers Avicenna and Averroes, they began to explore these transcendental notions in great detail, discussing their number and order and their relationship with being and with each other, to mention a few important issues. One (unum), true (verum), and good (bonum) were widely accepted as determinations of being, to which others were added. In De veritate 1.1 Aquinas formulated for the first time the six that were often listed by subsequent authors and that we also find in Valla’s discussion: being, thing, something, one, true, and good. The last five are aspects of the first, being convertible with it: whatever is a being, is also one, true, good,

50 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS

a thing, a something; whatever is one, is also a being, true, good, a thing, a something; and so forth (“All that is, insofar as it is, is good”).” Being is the primary notion that may be explicated according to its quiddity (thing), its indivisibility (one), its division from others (something), its knowability (true), and appetibility (good).° This does not necessarily entail a neo-Platonic identification of the One and the Good. Most scholastics opted for something weaker—whatever is, is good, one, true, and so forth. But to be expresses a different concept from to be good or to be one, according to the formula: “the same in subject or reality, different in concept or intension” (idem in subiecto or secundum rem, differunt ratione)—a formula, it is true, that received various interpretations.‘ Without elucidating the philosophical function and meaning of the doctrine of the transcendentals, Valla rejects this proliferation of transcendentals as useless. Having correctly noted that they are not genera (that is, categories) themselves but are above them “in dignity and power,” being “primorida atque principia,” he criticizes them from a mainly grammatical point of view.’ First of all, they are nothing else but things, since “something” is nothing but a certain thing (aliqua res), “one” can be reduced to one thing, “true” to a true thing or truth, “good” to a good thing, and “being” to that thing which is (ea res que est). Valla’s analysis of ens is then as follows: though ens is a participle of every gender, it is solely neuter when used as a substantive noun, which corresponds in Greek with the neuter plus article: to Ov. But its meaning only becomes clear when we look at the participle, something philosophers work-

ing solely with evs as a noun are not inclined to do. The participle has the force of a relative pronoun plus verb: “walking” means “he who walks,” and likewise with “being” (ens): a man “being rich” is just a man “who is rich.”° Valla proceeds to explicate the meaning of the participle: just as amans uxoris means ille vir, gui amat (the man who loves his wife), so “being” (ens) means “that which is” (id quod est), the pronoun id being always understood even when it is not stated. This substantive use of pronouns, that is, its function in referring to things, is further illustrated by Aic and its cognates (13:21-7): cerne hoclistud (look at this/that) means cerne hec res/ista res (look at this/that thing). Likewise, aliquid means aliqua res (some thing, something), aliud means alia res (another thing), zdem means eadem res (the same thing), and nihil means nulla res (no thing, nothing). This analysis leads to what Valla was aiming at from the start: es can be resolved into zd quod est, and with zd being resolved into ea res (this/that thing), we get the final result: evs is to be resolved into ea

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 51 res que est (that thing that is). But then it becomes clear that we do not need the laborious formula “that which is” (ea que est): lapis est ens (stone is a being) or its analyzed equivalent /apis est res que est (stone is a thing that is) is an un-

clear, laborious, and absurd way of just saying that /apis est res (a stone is a thing). It would only be appropriate to apply the phrase “the thing that is” to God, as we read in the Bible: Dominus Deus, qui est (6 wv) (14:20). Only God truly zs, while all other things, when compared to God, do not exist properly and truly (or really) (proprie et vere non sunt). Valla does not shrink from concluding that God is “thing” (ves)—“as all theologians have conceded” (14:25).”? The Greeks rightly call him ovtws (being), as if to say, God really and unqualifiedly exists. This restriction in its application is the reason, Valla

maintains, that evs has so rarely been used by the best Latin authors. Valla then criticizes the Aristotelian phrase “being qua being”: as if that which is can also not be. The second “being” in the phrase is not a noun but a participle, something that people who argue that “stone or man exists, thus evs exists” do not realize (15:6—10).

Because ens and aliquid can be resolved into res, the latter is more widely applicable and has of course the further advantage that it is an everyday term. Valla briefly but brilliantly reviews the different domains in which res is used by the classical authors or in everyday speech (15:11—-18:4): as a general term (res

uxoria, things about marriage; res rustica, things about farming; “I come to the point’), as a term standing for status (issue) and conditio (condition), dispute, business, (historical) acts, cause, sexual acts, powers, utility, etc., and also in distinctions such as res and verba (things and words) and res and personae (things and persons) as used in rhetoric. “We should not be surprised,” Valla concludes, “that one term can have so many specialized significates [szgnificata specialia], since it contains all significates in general” (cum omnia significata generaliter contineat, 17:13).

Before proceeding to discuss the crucial passage on “thing” and “signification,” we must briefly pause and comment on Valla’s transcendental use of the term “thing.” 1. In presenting “ves” as a transcendental term, Valla uses “transcendental” in the traditional sense of transcending the categories: he explicitly writes that the question “which thing?” or “what is it” (quid?) “pertains to all the categories, each of which is a thing” (15:28; see also 369:18). The word “thing” then is

applied to the unified thing but also to its constituent elements—substance, quality, and action—for these are also called “thing” by Valla.®

52 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS

2. In saying that everything, including God, is a thing, Valla seems to subscribe to what in scholastic parlance would be called a univocal concept of being. The univocity of being was most famously defended by Duns Scotus, who said there is a single unified notion of being that applies equally to all the Aristotelian categories, to God and creatures.’ But, as we have seen, Valla immediately qualifies the univocity of thing by saying that only God is properly thing, whereas all other things are not properly and truly things. Valla does

not explain this statement, but for someone who has set his stakes so high on the everyday word “res,” it must have felt awkward to have to admit that ordinary things—the cornerstone of his metaphysics—are not real things after all.

3. Peter Mack has argued that Valla’s position implies the following: “if everything which can be named is a thing, then there is a thing which corresponds to every name.”!° This, however, does not seem to reflect Valla’s intention, even though some of his formulations lend themselves to such an interpretation. Valla would certainly not subscribe to a one-to-one correspondence of name and thing. A cat, a house, or a chair is a thing, but clearly centaurs and other mythological creatures do not belong to this category of things, even though they have names. Thus whatever has a name is not necessarily a thing, unless under the notion of thing Valla wants to include mythological and poetical fictions as well as the scholastics’ abstract concepts, which is highly unlikely. Nor is the reverse always true, viz., that whatever is a thing has a name. As we have seen in his account of the tree of Porphyry, Valla frequently points to the fact that things often lack names, and he also suggests that the number of qualities is almost limitless, that is, that we do not have enough names to describe the limitless array of things and qualities, even if we group them into classes or kinds. What we can say, however, is that whatever there zs can be called a thing, but this is not the same—as Macks interpretation seems to suggest—as that whatever there is has a name; for in Mack’s phrase “if everything which can be named is a thing, then there is a thing which corresponds to every name,” the first act of naming (naming something a “res”) is not the same as the second one (the naming of individual things: house, cat, tree). Mack adduces some reasons why Valla would not be able to uphold the idea that he ascribes to him, viz., that everything that can be named is a thing: Valla admits noncorporeal things such as angels and abstract concepts such as genus and species in his ontology, and he “introduces the idea that in par-

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 53 ticular instances meanings of words might belong to different orders of reality from the things the words usually refer to.” But once this idea is accepted, “it is no longer sufficient to say that everything nameable is a thing, without further qualification.”'! The first point may not upset Valla’s ontology, for, as we have seen, Valla has a strong tendency to interpret genus and species in terms of qualities, which can be considered as things after all. And as his reference to God as being thing shows, he does not limit the applicability of the term to corporeal things only. Mack’s second point assumes that Valla’s basic position is that meanings are the same as the things they signify (the meaning of the term “stone” is the stone), from which Valla then is said to depart by setting meanings apart from things. To examine this claim is to enter into a protracted and heated debate on Valla’s semantics. Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that Valla here develops a “relational semantics,” which defines meaning in terms of use rather than in terms of reference to the named thing, stressing thereby the social and cultural context of language.'? According to them, Valla’s position implies—perhaps implicitly but nonetheless with revolutionary consequences—a relativization of truth and meaning, as they become the object of contingent cultural and historical developments. The slogan “the meaning of a word is its use” brings to mind Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and it is not surprising that these interpreters have bracketed Valla’s name with that of Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy. These scholars, however, have read Valla’s passage in isolation without paying atten-

tion to the wider context of his views on definition and description. What follows, therefore, is an attempt to offer a comprehensive account of Valla’s position.'? Discussion of Valla and ordinary language philosophy will be reserved for the general conclusion of this study.

The Origin of Language In his chapter devoted to qualities cognized by the senses, Valla discusses the

individual senses and their objects: taste and touch, smell, sight, and hearing (115-124). Under hearing comes sound, which, Valla claims against other opinions, is a quality (122:11-21; 431:20). He then suggests that the sound of

the human voice is natural but that its meaning comes “ab institutione, ” which may be translated as “from education,” though it had a technical sense in medieval debates (see below). The meaning of a word is a product of custom or convention, being also a quality, just like “vox.”'4 Sounds are like col-

54 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS ors used by painters: we can use colors to represent anything we like, but in themselves (per se) they do not mean anything—a comparison that Valla only makes in the first version (434:2-5). The account of the development of language that follows is a familiar one: “men, once they knew things, invented sounds, which they adapted in order to stand for things”; hence, these sounds were called “signs,” and Adam was the first of these name-givers. They taught these sounds with their meanings to later generations, “so that although the sounds [soni] are from nature, the significant sounds [voces] or the signs and their meanings, come from an artifex [creator]” (123:7—-8). The use of artificially instituted sounds distinguishes men from animals; animals utter mere sounds without meaning. “And so it happens,” Valla writes in a phrase reminiscent of Augustine’s,’’ “that the ear perceives the sounds [sonos], the mind the meanings [szgnificationes|, while both [1.e., ear and mind] perceive the significant sounds [voces]” (123:11-12). Valla seems to suggest that the mind in some way extracts the meaning (significatio) from the significant sound (vox), while the ear hears or receives the sound both as a mere sound (sonus) and as a significant sound (vox), without, however, hearing its meaning (significatio). One can hear a significant word without knowing what it means. At a later stage letters were invented as “signs of these signs, silent sounds as it were, or pictures of sound (just as the sounds themselves are almost pictures of meaning), which are now properly called ‘words’ [vocabula]” (123:12-15). And whatever we say are words: even “substance” itself, “quality,” “action,” and what is more, “thing.” For just as wood has the name [nomen] “wood,” and stone “stone” and iron “iron,” the same goes for incorporeal things, just as knowledge has the name “knowledge,” virtue “virtue,” genus “genus,” species “species,” so substance has the name “substance,” quality “quality,” action “action, and lastly thing “thing.”

The most difficult passage is still to come, but it may be useful to pause briefly and consider Valla’s words so far. First, the basic distinction between natural

sounds and the human use of these sounds as carriers of stipulated meanings is a highly traditional one that can be found in numerous classical, medieval, and Renaissance authors, ultimately going back to Aristotle’s De interpretatione.'® Aristotle’s account was the predominant model throughout the ages. While our thoughts arise naturally when we experience things, so that they are said to be likenesses of things, the words we use to express these thoughts

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 55 are conventional. There is no natural connection between a word and what it stands for. So when Valla insists on the artificial nature of language, a product of ars, not of nature (which only provides the raw material, viz., sounds), he stands in an age-old tradition of essentially Aristotelian provenance. The emphasis on the man-made, “artificial” character of meaning versus the naturalness of sounds seems to imply that for Valla language users were free to agree on or to choose a particular sound. How exactly we should envisage this process of name-giving he does not explain, but since he suggests that early users

taught later generations the use of a term,'” we probably have to think of a slow and gradual process by which a particular sound is being used by an increasing number of people as a sign of a (type of) object. A closer look at the passage reveals another element that also had an ageold tradition behind it. For when he refers to Adam as the first name-giver, Valla alludes to the idea that Adam had a perfect knowledge of the intimate essences of all things and gave them names that perfectly represented their essences.'§ Such a naturalist or essentialist view of language became popular especially in the Renaissance after the discovery of Plato’s Cratylus and the rise of Hermeticism and natural magic, though we find medieval scholars already interpreting the biblical story in this way.'? On this naturalist view, names reveal the inner natures or essences of things, but after the episode of the Tower of Babel the naturally significative language was dispersed into several different languages, in which the “Adamic” or even divine origin of words was obscured and covered by successive uses of new words, based on convention. Another indication that Valla may have thought that language was not purely conventional but reflected the essence of things in a natural way may be his use of the term “image.” He speaks of sounds as “somehow pictures of meanings” (quasi imagines significationum), and if we interpret meanings as things (they are qualities, after all), he is in effect saying that words are images of things, which seems to come close to some sort of essentialist view of lan-

guage. Further, he writes that men invented sounds to stand for or refer to things, “once they knew things” (rebus cognitis). Vhis too may seem to imply that names in some way express (or must express) the essences of things, that there is a natural connection between names and things. Such a natural, essentialist view of language, however, would be an extremely odd position for Valla to take as defender of common and ordinary language use and as a proponent of social convention and custom as criteria

56 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS for the correct use of language. “No art,” he says in his famous Oratio in principio studi, delivered at Rome in 1455, “can be established by a single man, nor indeed by a few men; it needs many, very many men.””° It is doubtful, however, whether Valla was consciously taking a stance in this debate. While he seems to base a definitively conventionalist account of language on the biblical story of Adam, thereby giving an evolutionary twist to his remarks—“Adam,” “early” generations, first oral and then written language—it is the conventionalist account of how language had developed from early times onward that informs his rather casual remark about the earliest stage of language in paradise. The conventionalist view of language seems to determine Valla’s view of the origin of language, rather than vice versa. A clear indication of this is that he begins by speaking about men in general, who, “once they knew things, invented sounds, which they adapted in order to stand for things, and the first [primus] of them was Adam” (123:3). Thus Adam stands at the beginning of a long, continuous process of name-giving and language acquisition, but there is no suggestion of a fundamental difterence in the nature of Adam’s name-giving and that of later generations, between naturalist versus conventionalist name-giving. Nor does Valla refer to an “Adamic,” universal language containing names of every single thing and expressing their essences. Adam just started the process. Moreover, the reference to the Tower of Babel—a story that was often used to support the claim that the Adamitic language was naturally significative—is only inserted as an afterthought, as a parenthetical remark, as if Valla realizes that his own account of a steady growth of words, newly invented by successive generations, in some ways contradicts the biblical account. Perhaps not accidentally, the Tower of Babel is no longer mentioned in the later versions of the Repastinatio.”'

We may further observe that his use of the term “tmago” can hardly count as evidence for a naturalistic view of language, since it is fully in line with one of the fundamental tenets of Aristotelian semantics (De interpretatione, ch. 1), viz., that our thoughts are “kenesses of things: our thought of a dog is some-

how an image or a picture of the dog, not necessarily in the sense that our thought of the dog resembles the dog but in the sense that the mental picture is a means to present it before the mind, which can be done in more or less accurate ways. Consequently, the term “image” or “picture” was frequently used to state this relationship.” In fact, the debate over conventionalism versus naturalism (or essentialism) did not concern the axis thought-thing: see-

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 57 ing a cat naturally gives rise to the thought “cat” in all human beings. It rather concerned the axis word-thing or word-thought: one and the same word may name different things, and one and the same thing may be named by many different words—the standard argument against the idea that words have a

natural meaning.*? How people name things, “once they knew them,” is a matter of convention, as Valla frequently points out. And this phrase “once they knew things” simply means “once they observed things,” “once things came to their attention,” “once they have found out things” (vepertis rebus, as the first version has it; 433:25), without implying that they knew the essence of the thing to be mirrored by a natural sound, perhaps not even implying that they should name things that really exist out there (e.g., “centaur”). What we thus do not see here is a conscious attempt to integrate an essentialist, anticonventionalist position within an Aristotelian framework of conventionalism, but it is interesting to notice that such an attempt was fre-

quently undertaken in the Renaissance by neo-Platonists and Aristotelians alike. Conventionalism remained the dominant position, but an exception was often made for the “Adamic” language. Some suggested that, even though language is conventional, this does not mean that “anything goes”: our wise

forebears tried to choose names that were in conformity with the nature of things, so that at least parts of our languages still reveal a natural connection to the things they name. On the other hand, many neo-Platonists with inclinations to an essentialist view of language subscribed in large part to Aristotelian conventionalism.”4

What makes this integration possible but often remains implicit in these debates (as well as in modern scholarly discussion) is the crucial distinction between the introduction of a word and its subsequent use.”? The introduction of a term establishes rules for its use, whether that introduction is done by mutual agreement or fiat, by stipulation, by looking at the things it names, or in any other way. The question whether a word is correctly used becomes an issue only later when people, having become habituated to its usage, use it correctly if they do so in accordance with those rules. The term “conventional” is principally applied to the initial introduction of a word, meaning that there are no natural constraints on what rules may be established when the word is introduced. But Valla’s so-called conventionalism (or relativism) is usually applied to the later stage, when words get their meaning as a result of social practices, dependent on conventions and customs. In spite of the terminology of the “impositio” or “institutio” of words initially introduced into a

58 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS language, Valla’s point is rather about the correct use of words in a language and the social, cultural, and linguistic circumstances that condition this use.*° A last point worth noticing is that when Valla gives his examples of significant sounds, he introduces the term “‘vzomen”: the name of wood is “wood,”

that of substance “substance.” Names are treated roughly as labels, and it is apparently of no great importance in which language they are written and whether they are heard or seen; hence, it is not surprising that Valla, unlike Dante—for instance, in his De vulgari eloquentia—does not broach the question of transmission and translation of individual languages (though the relationship between the Italian vernacular and forms of Latin became a subject of heated debate among Valla, Poggio, and others).”” As examples he only gives nouns, referring to concrete things and to general concepts such as wood, stone, iron, and knowledge, probably because these are easily associated with things. But of course he would also have to include adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and indeed any kind of word (a preposition such as “inside” is no less a vox with a meaning than “wood” is), even though not all types of words easily fit the idea that “significant sounds are like pictures of meanings.””*®

“Thing” One of Valla’s examples of a name is “res,” which will take us to the most dif-

ficult part of the passage on the relationship between names and things, between language and the world. First, Valla addresses the following question (123:23-12.4:8):

So “thing” signifies thing: the latter is signified, the former is its sign or mark; the one is not a word, the other is a word which can then be defined as follows: “‘thing’”? is a sound or word, embracing the significations of all words in its own.” You may say: “Thus word is above [more general than] thing, because thing too is a word.” But the signification of “thing” is above [more general than] the signification of “word,” that is, of “sign”: and that is

why word or sign is a thing, and merely one thing. The word [“thing”] however refers to all things, just as this word “God” is below many others, since “spirit” transcends it, “substance” transcends it, “essence” transcends it, and “something” and “thing” transcend it; however, in dignity of its sig-

nification it transcends all others, because He is the author of all other things.*°

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 59 The Latin of the first sentence has puzzled commentators and has given rise to some rather far-fetched interpretations.*' Valla’s meaning, however, is perfectly clear, and the Latin is not really ambiguous: “thing” signifies, being a word or sign or mark, whereas thing is not a word but that which is signified by the sign. For someone, however, who does not distinguish between “thing” and thing—understandably so, given the absence of inverted commas or other such markers**—it is easy to construe the following objection to the generality of “thing”: Word is more general than thing, because “thing” too is a word, one among thousands of other words.** But, as Valla attempts to show, this is not true if we make the necessary distinction (or use inverted commas, as we do now): “word” is zot more general than “thing,” even though “thing” too is just a word, since “thing” refers to all things (including words, which as sounds are physical things after all), while “word” refers solely to words (a subclass of things). This is in effect what Valla replies to his interlocutor. Valla’s reply is good enough, but he still seems to accept the interlocutor’s inference, viz., that since “thing” is a word (among many other words), word is more general than “thing.” However, instead of replying that we should compare the signification of the word “thing” and that of the word “word” (by which we realize that “thing” is more general than “word”), Valla should have pointed out that the interlocutor’s inference itself is problematic, since “thing” in the antecedent is different from “thing” in the consequent. In the antecedent (i.e., “thing” is a word), the word “thing”’—to use the terms of modern analytical philosophers—is mentioned, not used, or—to use medieval scholastic terms—‘thing” has material supposition: it stands for itself as a determinate kind of sign, and it does not stand for individual things; e.g., “‘dog’ is a word of three letters,” in which “dog” does not stand for Bello or any other individual dog but for the sign “dog.” In the consequent (i.e., word is more general than “thing”), however, “thing” is used, not mentioned, or, again, in scholastic parlance: it has personal supposition: it stands for individual things (in this case for just one thing, namely, the word “thing,” while there are many other words). The interlocutor wants to conclude that word has a wider extension than “thing,” but this is an invalid conclusion from an antecedent in which “thing” does not stand for individual things. It would perhaps be too much to expect Valla to have come up with such an analysis.** It would have saved him from saying that a similar problem arises with the word “God” (quemadmodum hec vox “Deus’). Vallas reasoning

60 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS seems to be that while the word “God” has just one referent (and is therefore transcended by words with a much wider range of referents, such as “spirit” and “thing”), it transcends all other words in terms of the dignity of what it signifies.*> But this is different from the previous case, where it was concluded that “thing” in signification is more general than “word” because it signifies all things, while “word” signifies only words (a subclass of things). Such reasoning, however, cannot be applied to the case of “God,” because “God” is not a transcendental word, at least not in the sense in which “thing” is: (a) “thing” zs more general than “word” (even though it is just one word among many others), because “thing” signifies (in an unusual way) all things, including words as spoken or written things; (b) “God” zs more general than (e.g.) “spirit”: not because “God” signifies all things (including spirits), but because its (one and only) signification is the most noble being. Like the word “thing,” the word “God” too is just a word among many other words, but the problem is different: “God” signifies just one thing, namely, God, which seems to detract from His dignity, while “thing”—as the only transcendental term that Valla admits —cannot be said to signify at all, at least not in the usual way other words signify.

The unique position of “thing” is underscored in what follows (124:8-17):

Therefore, it does not matter whether we say “what is wood?,” “what is stone’, “what is tron?,” “what is man?” or “what does [the word] ‘wood,’ ‘iron, ‘stone,’ ‘man’ signify?”°° However, with “res” it is not possible to ask “what is res?” and “what does [the word] ‘ves’ signify?,” because “what” is resolved into “which thing.” They speak foolishly, therefore, who say “what”

about thing. But if I were to ask “which word is 7es’?,” you would reply correctly: “it is a word signifying the meaning or sense [zntellectum sive sensum] of all other words,” but here “which” [que]°’ means almost the same as “what kind of” [gualis].

And he closes off with the following passage that was added only in the third version (which hardly circulated in the Renaissance): Lastly, the signification of a word is what comes under the categories, because category”® is the same as what the word signifies universally. The signified thing does not come under the category; for instance, the signification of the word “man” is under the category, but man himself, who is signified [by the sign “man”],”’ is under the roof or under the sky, not under the category, nor when you say “man is an animal” do you mean anything

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 61 other than that “animal” is understood in this name “man” or that the signification of “animal”“° is understood.

This last passage has proven to be especially controversial. Is it Ockhamist in spirit? Does it announce a revolution in Renaissance semantics? Does Valla undermine his own position as expounded in the earlier versions? Taken in isolation, as commentators have usually done, this passage is bound to puzzle, but when read in conjunction with Valla’s statements on definition in his chapter on that theme, it becomes less baffling, even though it certainly does not solve all problems. For clarity’s sake, the two main themes—signification and the transcendental term “thing”—will be discussed separately. Thing/Word: Signification and Definition Why does it not matter whether we say “What is man?” or “What does ‘man’ signify?” Most likely because the answer will be the same. When we ask “What is man?,” we ask for a definition, using the predicables genus and differentiae (man is a substance, qualified by corporeal, animal, sensible, rational, mortal, as Valla writes in his chapter on definition, pp. 163-165; 391-393). The definition captures the essence of the thing, its defining characteristics, or, as Valla prefers to say in the first version, the wis (force, nature, power) of the thing (392:30). Such a what-question embraces (complectitur; 164:29—-165:3), he says

in that same chapter, the substance, quality, and action of the thing.*' In the passage on “thing,” just analyzed, Valla speaks about signification rather than definition, but this is immaterial, since for Valla, just as for the entire tradition on which he stands, definition is a phrase signifying a thing’s essence (see, e.g., Topics 101b39, Posterior Analytics passim). Aristotle’s account was basically ac-

cepted by Cicero and Quintilian, and Valla duly quotes these authors in his chapter on definition.” It is therefore not at all surprising that for Valla the question “What is x?” gives the same answer as the question “What does ‘x’ signify?” That is, the signification of a word that names a thing is expressed by

the definition of that thing. Of course, a modern reader may wonder what exactly it is to define a thing. Do we not rather define words, that is, on one interpretation of definition, giving rules for the application of the word? The age-old discussion about definitions (e.g., real versus nominal ones) shows that the dividing line is not a sharp one: to define a term is giving the essence or, as an Aristotelian may want to say, a causal explanation of what that term signifies.

62 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS In any case, Valla’s formulations show that for him definitions are explica-

tions of things; they give us “the vis of the thing”: to ask what something is is “to ask for the definition of that thing” (ezus rei diffinitionem; 169:3). This what-question “embraces the substance, quality, and action” of the thing (not, of course, the word “x”).* But whenever we say something, we use words, as Valla had said earlier (123:1s—16), so definitions are verbal explications, and particularly in the third version of the Repastinatio, Valla seems to emphasize more strongly than before the linguistic character of our definitions and the tools by which we categorize, describe, and define things: names and their significations are human creations and not part of the world of things; they, and not the things signified, come under the categories.“* For example, when he writes that “animal” or its signification is understood in the name “man,” the implication is clearly that to know the meaning of “x” is to know its verbal definition. Other small additions to the third version underscore such a linguistic reading.” It is less clear, however, how to read his statement that “the signification of a word is what comes under the categories, because category is the same as what the word signifies universally.” Elsewhere Valla had added to the third version a gloss on the word “category” as meaning “the principal appellation for signifying things” (8:21), and he also frequently writes that there are many words of which it is difficult to find the category (443:17). He seems to mean, then, that the categories—substance, quality, and action—are general terms that refer to universal aspects of things (since all things can be said to consist of these three categories). For this reason the signification of, e.g., “stone” comes under the categories, because a stone—just like any other thing—is a substance qualified by qualities and actions; hence “stone” signifies these categories.

At any rate Valla seems to emphasize more strongly than before the linguistic character of our definitions. Does this emphasis constitute a break with his earlier position? For the separation between signified things and significations as enunciated in these last paragraphs seems to contradict his other claim that what a word signifies zs the same as the thing.” If the signification of “wood” zs wood, how can the one but not the other come under the category? However, this may be less puzzling than it seems. While the signification of a word may be said to be the thing signified by that word, we should not be misled by this use of the verb “to be”: it would be very odd to say that signification or meaning 7s or is identical with the thing. Being a sign of the

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 63 thing, the name signifies that thing, refers to it, or, more correctly, makes the thing known and stands for it in discourse, since the concept of significare generally meant “to make known,” “to reveal,” “to manifest,” “to express,” “to bring something to mind”—all expressions that do not exactly correspond to the modern concepts of reference and meaning.*’ Thus the significations of a word and a thing are not precisely identical; rather, the one brings the other to mind, reveals it, makes it known. Valla’s statement that what a word signifies is the same as the thing should not be taken as an identification of the two.*® Another point that may qualify the alleged shift in Valla’s position is the following. Of course, definitions and categorizations are made up of words “substance,” “quality,” “genus,” etc.), which are our sole instrument in speaking about or analyzing things, but this does not mean that they do not reflect things and their aspects. Indeed, much of Valla’s account of the predicables, the categories, and the trees of substances remains basically unaltered from the first to the third version as it continues to speak about qualities and substances as really existing things.

The Transcendental Term “Thing”: Definition and Description Valla’s primary aim in the passage under discussion is to show the special nature of the term “thing,” and his observations about signification in general are partly meant to contrast this term with ordinary words such as “wood”

and “stone.” For while it does not matter whether we ask “What is x?” or “What does ‘x’ signify?,” we cannot ask these questions about “thing” because it is a transcendental term. What Valla in effect tries to argue is that there is no separate class of things signified by the sign “thing” besides stones, trees, and

other objects.” They are all things; that is, we can always apply the word “thing” to them. It is a category mistake to treat the word “thing” as signifying things in the same way as “wood” signifies wood, though Valla himself

expresses this point, quite characteristically, in grammatical terms: because “what?” (quid) is equivalent to “What kind of thing?” (que res), to ask “What is a thing?” or “What does ‘thing’ signify?” leads to the absurd question “What

kind of thing is a thing?” or “What kind of thing does the word ‘thing’ signify?” But though it is impossible to give the signification of “thing,” we can give a description of this word, viz., that “it is a word signifying the meaning or sense [intellectum sive sensum; 124:16] of all other words.”

Valla does not use the word “description” here, but his addition, viz., that

64 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS

in the case of “thing” the question “which” (que) means almost the same as “what kind” (qualis; 124:16-17), picks up a distinction between description and definition he had already made in the first version (392-394). Read against this background, it becomes clear that Valla would consider his definition of “thing” a description rather than a definition in the strict sense.” Definition answers the question “What is it?” (quid), while description answers the question “Of what kind?” (qualis). In the first version, description is called “descriptio,” “interpretatio,” or “explicatio” (392:29; 394:35); in the later versions only the first term “descriptio” is used, but the idea behind it is the same: description gives an explication of how a thing is qualified by enumerating differentiae, qualities, and actions. Valla uses the distinction between description

and definition to argue that although the categories cannot be described— one cannot describe, for instance, quality itself (per se ipsam) by enumerating its differences, qualities, and actions—it is nonetheless possible to define them, since the transcendental word “thing” can be applied to them. It is not always easy to follow Valla’s argumentation here, but his idea seems to be roughly this: because everything that exists is a thing, “thing” always enters into the definition of whatever thing we are talking about (tllud “res” venit in complexum formande diffinitionis).’' As a transcendental term, it is therefore available to define the categories as well, which Aristotle had thought to be indefinable.” Thus, we may, for instance, define “substance” as “a thing [ves] which underlies all other things, but which does not appear itself.”*? Because it transcends the categories, “thing” itself cannot be defined. But what cannot be defined may well admit of an explication (interpretatio), that is, a description. To the question “What kind (qualis) of word is ‘thing’?” one may give a description (that is, an explication or interpretation) of that word: it “embraces everything in its signification.” Individual human beings too, who cannot be defined, can be described (“Who is Quirinus? Answer: The founder of the city of Rome”; 392:26). This is not very different from the Aristotelian idea that the difference between individual members falling under the same species infima (lowest species) eludes verbal definition. In the first version Valla explicitly adds that the definition concerns the thing itself, while the description is an interpretation of the word.™ In the later versions the difference between the two becomes less clear-cut, definition being sometimes presented as a kind of shortened description.” But though the clarity of Valla’s discussion leaves much to be desired, his basic idea is clear and remains the same: catego-

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 65 ries themselves cannot be described, but they can be defined by use of the word “thing” (“substantia est res . . .”; “accidens est res. . .”).

“One” Oddly enough, the passage just extensively discussed was not inserted by Valla in his chapter on the transcendentals but added to his remarks on sound as a

physical thing that acquired meaning when taken as a sign to stand for an object. We shall therefore now turn to his chapter on the transcendentals to see how he rejects the other ones—“one,” “true,” and “good”—all to be replaced by “thing.”*°

“One” cannot be a transcendental term, Valla argues in the first version (380:31-381:21), because one is a number, and number falls under the category of quality.°’” One may object that each category is one, so that “one” transcends the categories, but Valla is not impressed: a category is not the one itself or a unity, but there is something that is one; that is, “something” or “a certain thing” is understood, as when we say “unum vos peto,” that is, | ask you one, that is, one thing (381:12-18). Thing is therefore more basic than one, and only thing is truly transcendental.” In the later versions the question of the transcendental status of “one” is no longer explicitly addressed, but Valla’s critique of the Aristotelian idea that

one is not a number but the principle of number can only be understood against this background (18:22—19:16). For if one is vot a number, it would be possible to argue that one is a transcendental after all. Thus, Valla targets this notion. He pours scorn on Aristotle and his followers, who deviate from the

natural sense and common use. Common custom shows that the beginning of something is reckoned to be part of the whole thing: “whoever reads the beginning of the book, reads the book; whoever touches the head of a man,

touches the man; whoever sees the beginning of a pond sees the pond” (18:25-27). We speak of things as one or plural in number—Aristotle often speaks in the same manner, Valla observes—and in everyday practice “one” is counted as an uneven number. Valla provocatively gives the example of house-

wives dividing eggs and taking “one” as the first (uneven) number: “they sometimes have a better sense of the meaning of words than the best philosophers” (19:8-9): the former employ words for a purpose (ad usum), the latter just for a game (ad lusum).”

66 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS Valla also rejects Aristotle's notion of number as numbered or counted. Number itself is not counted, measure not measured, and weight not weighed. They are standards by which we count, measure, and weigh things. It is possible to criticize Valla for taking some tags from Aristotle (or perhaps from a secondary source) in order to poke fun at them without considering the arguments and their context. But, of course, Valla’s aim here zs to poke fun and to provoke, not to give a balanced account of Aristotle’s discussion of number. It hardly needs pointing out that Valla’s counter-examples miss their target because they equate a principle (or origin or basis) with a beginning in a physical sense (beginning of a book, a pond, or a body). Aristotle does not deny that we often use the number one,” but his interests are in developing a theory of number. In Metaphysics X and XII and Physics TV, from which Valla’s

tags derive, Aristotle addresses problems in the philosophy of mathematics, developing a distinctly realist and anti-Platonist conception of mathematics and mathematical entities. In demystifying the Platonic notion of number as a really existing abstract object, he develops an account of number that stresses the relative status of numbers, “number” being a relative term. Aristotle distinguishes between number as that which is counted (the four sheep as a numbered totality) and that by which we count (the number 4). As in measurement, where we first have to determine a unit of measurement (an inch, a meter, etc.), in counting too we first have to pick out something that we count as our unit-measure. (Valla’s “own” point that number, measure, and weight are standards by which we count, measure, and weigh things is fully in line with Aristotle.)®! This means that one in the sense of unit—the Greek word ev means both “unit” and “one’—is not a number but the measure of

number, which, as Annas writes, “is not just a consequence of the ordinary Greek concept of number . . . but a conscious stipulation to produce a general theory,” a theory that is even “suggestive of Frege (though the comparison cannot be pressed).”® Applied to time, discussed in Physics 1V.10—-14, the dis-

tinction plays an important role in Aristotle’s reductive program of defining time in terms of change: time is nothing else than change-qua-numbered, that is, the number of change. Valla, however, would not have been impressed by such a contextualization of the challenged notions. His response would be that as soon as a theory leads to statements such as “One is not a number,” we should seriously question and give up the very notion of theorizing. For in spite of the light and mocking tone of his attack, it carries a serious message, viz., that we cannot

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 67 deviate from common custom with impunity. Number one is simply the first integer as used in daily life, and for him this may count as sufficient answer to the question, though not explicitly addressed by him in the later versions, whether “one” is a transcendental term. Yet the question of the transcendental status of “one” is not irrelevant for Valla’s own ontological picture. Because his world is populated by individual things, the question arises what the cause or principle is of individuation. For Valla this may have been a bogus question (“it is superfluous to ask how individual things differ,” 169:26), but if whatever is (or: is a thing) is one in number—a thesis that seems to be a basic assumption of Valla’s metaphysics, which insists on the unity of thing—“one” seems to be a good candidate for being a transcendental term. As we have seen, Valla’s short answer is that “one” always presupposes a thing: what is one is first and foremost a thing of which we say that it is one. Since Valla did not deal properly with “one” as a transcendental term, there is no ground for linking his criticisms with Ockham’s account of “one” in his Summa logicae (from about 1323). According to Ockham, “one” is a transcendental term that is convertible with “being,” together with the other four terms of absolute universality. He distinguishes between several senses of “one,” showing (among other things) that we can say that two things are numerically one, that two things are one in species, or that two things are one in genus. From an analysis of such sentences he argues against the existence of universals: “it is impossible that there be a nature that is specifically one and neither numerically one nor many.” Things are either numerically many or they are one (in one of the senses distinguished). Taking Aristotle's account in the Metaphysics as a point of departure, Ockham’s analysis, which will not be discussed here, cannot be properly linked to Valla’s polemical gibes at the two notions of one as the principle of number and number as numbered or countable; he merely mentions them as illustrations of the pernicious mistreatment of words by philosophers.

“True” Next in line is “true,” another extraordinary word, which certainly is not comparable to adjectives like “bold” and “brown.” Probably to suppress unwanted metaphysical speculation, Valla starts by saying that “truth” is the same as “true” (378:8; 18:18-20), by which he means to say, as he makes clear elsewhere (26:25—-27:7), that substantive nouns like “falsity” and “truth” do not have a

68 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS different signification from their corresponding adjectives: they signify qualities only rather than substance plus quality. Thus, truth is regarded as a qual-

ity of the mind, that is, “knowledge or cognition of whatever thing.” This notion of truth as a quality of the mind is traditional, going back to Aristotle and developed at length by, for instance, Thomas Aquinas.® But Valla devel-

ops it in a different direction, comparing truth with “the light of the mind extending itself to the senses” (19:17—19).°° This light of the mind comes from

within, not from without like solar light, though the sun, in making vision possible, is like God, who makes intellectual vision possible: “Yet as the sun shows and exhibits the colors of bodies to the eyes, so too God shows and ex-

hibits the qualities of things to the mind. Plato proposed this theory somewhat differently [wonnihil diverse] in the Republic, when he said that truth is like the sun, knowledge and cognition like authentic vision” (stmcerum aspectum, 19:25, referring to Republic 6.19, 508C-so09B).° Perhaps Valla feels compelled to add the qualification “somewhat differently,” since Plato’s comparison of truth with the sun implies that truth is not in us, whereas for Valla it is obvious that falsity zs in us, which entails that truth should also reside in us.°* Valla therefore holds that God is not identical with truth or knowledge (“truth is science or knowledge,” veritas est scientia sive notitia), but that he is the source (fons) of the truths in our minds, just as the source of our physi-

cal light is in the sun: “Certainly when we affirm that something is true or false, this refers to the mind of the speaker, so that truth and falsity are in us” (19:26—20:1). Thus, false bread is by no means bread, while true bread is nothing else but bread according to our belief (ut nos sentimus). To avoid the impression that God is the source of falsity in us, Valla adds in the third version: “The source of falsity, however, is in the obstruction of the divine source, just as the source of obscurity is in the removal of the sun, as God properly is truth just as the sun is light, which is what Plato also held” (20:8—10). Valla has apparently not coordinated this addition with the preceding sentences, where he insists on God being the source of truth rather than truth itself, which resides in us.

So far Valla has defined truth in terms of knowledge or cognition, that is, a quality of the mind, rather than in the verbal expression of that belief. But because we have to express these beliefs, falsity and truth can also derivatively be applied to spoken words, and that in two ways, says Valla: a verbal expression is false when “someone, while his mind is not erring, speaks differently from what he thinks” (falsity out of wickedness) or “when someone, while

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 69 his mind is erring, misleads himself rather than another” (falsity out of ignorance).° The predicates “true” and “false” can also be applied to acts (“Does he sleep truly or does he simulate sleep?”), to animals (“Does the wolf limp truly or does he simulate?”),”° and to things: “I have found the truth of the thing,” which means that I have got knowledge or cognition of the thing (ad rei notitiam; 20:17); “The truth of the matter is this,” means that we know how the thing is. A similar statement can be found in the chapter on the virtues, where Valla writes that “to know, or to be wise, or to understand is nothing else than to believe and have an opinion about how things are, and this is called truth.””! Again, the emphasis is on us who apply these predicates according to our experience or opinions. It would be far from Valla’s mind to develop a philosophical theory of truth, and it would be fruitless to try to elicit one from his brief remarks. Indeed, the passage seems to contain seeds of different notions of truth. For it is not clear, at least not without further elucidation, that truth as a quality of the mind is the same as truth as a relation between one’s beliefs and the expression of those beliefs, which, in turn, is different from the relation between one’s understanding and reality. Valla alludes to the Augustinian doctrine of divine illumination, but he nowhere explains its mechanism. Other passages on the soul and the process of cognition in his work employ the same comparison of the soul with the sun, but they do not refer to God and eternal exemplars, and hence cannot help us in explicating Valla’s allusion to this doctrine.” The other notion of truth as a conformity between what we think and what we say has a much more subjectivistic and relativistic ring to it, emphasizing the human-orientated basis of knowledge and truth. Essentially, Valla distinguishes between the question whether what we say is true to our beliefs and the question whether what we say in accordance with our beliefs is true.”’ The latter resembles—though perhaps no more than that—the traditional scholastic formulation, canonized by Thomas Aquinas, that truth is the conformity of the understanding with reality (adaequatio intellectus et rei), whereas the former is a moral rather than an epistemological idea of truth, involving notions such as dissimulation and pretending, although it is difhcult to separate moral from epistemological issues here. Valla does not develop these characterizations any further, but one can appreciate his sensitivity to the polymorphousness of the concept of truth; “true” can indeed be said of many different things. In this he may have been influenced by Thomistic

70 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS thinking, which distinguishes between at least three levels to which the concept of truth pertains: mental judgment, things (since they make our state-

ments true or false), and spoken and written propositions.“ The first and third are clearly present in Valla (truth being a quality of the mind, but also a predicate of a proposition when we speak truly), the second apparently in a different sense (“truth of the thing”). In the absence of clear borrowings or direct quotations, it is hard to tell whether Valla was consciously indebted

to some scholastic source, but it is interesting to notice that he seems to be closer to Thomistic thinking than to nominalism, which generally defined truth solely in terms of true propositions.

“Good” Valla’s strategy in denying “good” the status of transcendental term is more overtly grammatical than in the case of “one” and “true,” if we can speak of a strategy at all, for Valla hardly links his grammatical discussion of such expressions as “doing good” and “doing the good well” with the general issue of transcendentals. In the first version, he starts his chapter on the transcendentals by saying that bonum (good) and verum (true) are qualities that do not differ from their abstract equivalents bonitas (goodness) and veritas (truth) (377:28-29)—a central point in the chapter on abstract and concrete terms that precedes it. Since Valla expands this chapter in the later versions and places it after the chapter on the transcendentals, we will postpone discussion of it till later. The implication is that, since “one” and “true” refer to qualities, they cannot be transcendental terms. This point, however, is not developed for “bonum.” Instead, Valla criticizes those who discern a difference between “doing the good” (bonum facere) and “doing well” (bene facere), between “speaking the truth” (verum loqui) and “speaking truly” (vere logui), between two Latin terms (volle and non velle) for “not wishing/not wanting.” The context of this remark is not made clear, but since bonum facere and bene facere are frequently rephrased as “doing the right thing” (facere bonam rem, 379:133 21:11; see also 380:16), the argument may be interpreted as a further confirmation of

his point that “thing” is the only and true transcendental term. (What he says is that we usually employ an adverb to qualify an action: bene facere; 379:16.) Because Valla thinks there is no difference between “doing the good ” (bonum facere) and “doing well” (bene facere), except that the former is hardly used and should be avoided, he says it is ridiculous to say things

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 71 like “doing the good badly,” “doing the just thing unjustly,” and “as if some-

one could speak the truth untruly or do the good thing wrongly (badly)” (379:6—7). Hence, the rest of the section on “good” is principally devoted to criticizing this distinction, which he thinks is the typical product of the so-

phistical and overzealous mind of the philosopher (and particularly of the Philosopher), who neglects the grammar of his language.” To this effect, a biblical quotation that seems to imply the possibility to do wickedness well is explained away by referring to the fact that divine scripture has its own way of saying things (suus mos loquendi; 379:32) and to the difference between Greek and Latin. And so-called conjugate arguments that make use of such expressions as “they who do the right thing act rightly” are said to be rejected by Quintilian as virtually meaningless and absurd (380:13—-30).”°

In the later versions, which offer a more condensed version of the argument, Valla presents a counter-example that seems to allow for the possibility of doing the right thing badly, as when I spitefully and reproachfully give alms to a needy person.” Do I do the right thing (giving alms) wrongly? No, Valla replies, for there are two actions here: (a) giving alms to a needy person and (b) spitefully treating someone under reproach, by which Valla thinks he has made his case: (a) I have done the good thing and done it well (et bene feci et bonum), and (b) I have done the wrong thing and wrongly (reproaching him under threat) (nec bene, nec bonum). The example, however, does not prove Valla’s point. In fact, his own wording—doing the right thing and doing it well—leaves room for arguing that one can do the right thing unjustly, and this contradicts the very point he wants to make. Moreover, Valla himself had said that what springs from a good mind is good and that it is therefore impossible to say, for instance, that a just deed is done unjustly. But what is then the point of giving t/is example, which clearly suggests that the man gives alms unwillingly, reproaching and shouting at the needy? If he had given alms out of good intentions, it would be irrelevant to mention other acts such as shouting and menacing, which, though carried out at the same time, are not relevant in judging this act of giving alms. For Valla it seems to be a question of definition, an analytical truth, that whoever does the good thing does well (and also vice versa, that whoever does well does the good thing?), but it all depends on how we take the phrase “doing well”: someone who does the good (e.g., keep his promise) may do so from bad motives or bad intentions or may have been compelled to do it or may have done so only accidentally, not knowing that he did the good thing. Perhaps Valla would reply that in this

72 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS case too we have two actions, viz., doing well (keeping one’s promise) and doing badly (say, having wicked intentions), but this will not do, since here the keeping of one’s promise is done from bad intentions. Valla seems to have been misled by his focus on a highly selective number

of phrases such as “doing the just unjustly” (zustum iniuste) and “doing the good not well” (bonum non bene). This may indeed seem odd at first sight. But a moment’ reflection should have rendered him suspicious of equating the qualification of an action (by using an adverb) and what is done. Aristotle makes the necessary distinctions in his Nicomachean Ethics, arguing, for instance, that only an act that is done intentionally, knowingly, and in an unforced way can be regarded properly as an act,’* and Valla too, in his chapter on the virtues and in his De vero bono, tries to specify what a good action consists of. Here, however, the grammatical focus apparently prevents him from

pondering these questions and from realizing that even a correctly phrased Latin expression can be ambiguous.”

Abstract and Concrete Terms While a modern philosopher may at times have difficulty in discerning the relevance of several of Valla’s grammatical points for the discussion of the transcendental terms, for Valla himself the link is quite obvious. One of his basic strategies in denying terms such as “unum,” “verum,” and “bonum” the status of transcendentals is to show that these adjectives, when used as substantives, refer to qualities and hence cannot transcend the categories: “true” is the same as “truth” and signifies a quality of the mind; “one” is a number and, as such, since all accidental categories are to be reduced to quality, falls under quality; “good” and “goodness” are qualities of the mind that make our actions good. But these terms are only a subclass of a much larger group of adjectives used as substantives, and consequently Valla devotes the next chapter to these adjectives, which are traditionally called “concrete” as opposed to their “abstract” counterparts: “white” versus “whiteness,” “good” versus “goodness,” “brave” versus “bravery.” Valla’s criticism of this distinction between abstract and concrete terms is of considerable interest, and even though it has never been discussed in any detail, some scholars have detected affinities with Ockham’s re-

ductive program, characterized by a nominalist attack on the reification of abstract entities. We will therefore address this question after having discussed Valla’s account.

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 73 The distinction has its roots in Peripatetic logic and ontology, going back to Aristotle’s remarks on so-called denominatives, that is, “when things get their name from something, with a difference of ending”; thus, for example, “the grammarian gets his name from grammar, the brave get theirs from brav-

ery. °° One of the problems with these concrete accidental terms such as “grammarian, “brave,” and “white” is how and what exactly they signify. “Whiteness,” and not “white,” signifies the quality whiteness, so to what category does “white” belong? One answer is that it is denominated from whiteness, which is in the category of quality. This answer enabled logicians to analyze sentences such as “Socrates is white” in which an accidental attribute is predicated of its subject, even though the adjective “white” itself is not a word for an accident. The problematic status of these adjectives was heightened by their treatment in the grammatical tradition. In his /nstitutiones grammaticae, Priscian pays considerable attention to the denominatives, that is, “words derived from nouns, and discusses, for instance, how abstract nouns could be transformed into adjectives: “prudence” (prudentia) into “prudent” (prudens), “piety” (pietas) into “pious” (pius), and so forth (book IV).*! Priscian’s interests were not specifically philosophical, but in the eleventh and twelfth centuries his work stimulated profound discussions of concrete and abstract terms and their possible referents. According to Priscian, adjectives that were traditionally classed

as a type of noun had the property of nouns, viz., to signify substance as well as quality.** Thus the question arose how such a word as “grammaticus” (literate) —a stock example, having been used by Aristotle himself—could simultaneously signify both the substance man and the quality of being literate. In the late eleventh century, Anselm answered this question by distinguishing between signification per se (the quality) and signification per aliud (the substance man): “literate” signifies the quality of being literate but signifies indirectly the substance, viz., the literate individual. With the increasing study of Priscian’s text and the cross-fertilizations of logic and grammar, especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, various solutions and theories were developed, the history of which need not concern us here. Rejecting the metaphysical interpretation of the above distinction, which he compares to a nasty wine blended from “Greek” and “Latin” grapes, Valla approaches the issue from a grammatical point of view. On the basis of a wideranging survey of the relevant aspects of the Latin language, he aims at repudiating what he presents as the central notion of his adversaries, that abstract

74 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS terms always refer to quality only, while concrete terms refer to substance and quality; thus “whiteness” always refer to the quality, and “white” to the white substance and to the quality whiteness that inheres in it. In the first version he starts with an attack of the process of abstraction that leads to abstract entities such as whiteness and blackness, as if a quality such as whiteness can exist apart from a subject or can be invented merely by the mind.* Vallas main point, however, is to show that many substantive adjectives signify the quality only, but instead of proposing a general rule, he insists on a careful consideration of case and gender. Apart from some specific cases, as in the “white of the eye” (album oculi), where the quality as well as the substance is meant, terms in the neuter singular almost always signify the quality only and never a substance. Valla gives countless examples, often taken from the great Latin authors, to show that abstract terms like “whiteness” have the same meaning (“are the same,” 27:6—-10 and 375:28) as their concrete counterparts (“white”); similarly with “honestum/honestas,” “utile/utilitas,” “commodum/commoditas,” “falsum/falsitas,” “verum/veritas,” and so forth, even

though the one cannot always be replaced by the other (we do not say, e.g., “the great eternal,” magnum eternum, “unless metaphorically”; 376:8—11). The

reason that terms in the neuter singular almost always signify only the quality is grammatical: such terms are always connected to verbs that suggest a quality, as in “The white delights the eyes” (album quidem delectat oculos).™ “White” (album) cannot sensibly be linked to verbs such as “to run,” “to sit,” “to throw,” and so forth; such verbs need a corporeal subject such as “men,” “horses,” or “birds” (as in “A horse runs,” “A man sits”). Typically scholastic examples such as “The white flies” (album volat) and “The black sits” (nigrum sedet) are repudiated for that reason. Whereas in the singular only a quality is signified, in the plural there is more variation (376:30-377:25; 23:24-25:4). In some cases only the quality is signified, as in “through the dark things” (per opaca), which is the same as “through the darknesses” (per opacitates) (though in the later versions Valla seems to suggest that these examples, referring to places, signify both substance and quality, 24:13-16). In other cases the subject plus the quality is signified, as in “The cold will fight the warm” (frigida pugnabunt calidis), in which “the cold” (frigida) stands for “cold things” (res frigide), or “The fat are more beautiful than the lean” (pinguia sunt pulchriora macris), in which “the fat” (pinguia) stands for “fat things” (res pingues). Likewise substantive adjectives such as “iron” (ferrea), “silver” (argentea), and “stony” (lapidea), which

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 75 are derived from corporeal things, refer to substance plus quality (“iron things,” res ferree). We never find these terms in the singular, except when used for the quality itself “stony,” /apideum, refers then to the quality only). Therefore, only plural terms can be called “concreta” (in the sense of referring to substance plus quality). Unlike singular adjectives of neuter gender, singular substantive adjectives of masculine and feminine gender do refer to substance plus quality, and may for that reason be called “concreta” (27:21-24; 377:19-25). In these cases the implicit reference is always to human beings, e.g., “pinguis” for “homo preditus pinguedine” (a man fat-ridden) and “multi sunt egroti” (many are the ill; 28:1). The same is true for pronouns “someone” (alzquis), “a certain” (quidam), “anyone” (quispiam), “if any” (siquis), “another” (alius), “not any” (nullus),” “this” (hic), and “that” (ile) (and their feminine cases), which always refer to human beings, in line with Priscian’s definitions of the pronoun;* and the same is true for the interrogative “who/which?” (quis/que). “Whol which/what” (quid) asks for all the three categories at the same time (164:29), while guod never “concretizes” (29:2-3)*’ but is always an adjective (“which animal,” guod animal, “which beast,” quod brutum).'These and other remarks with which Valla ends this chapter may look like digressions, but we must remember that pronouns, as Priscian had already observed, generally function as substitutes for proper nouns and refer to persons. Elsewhere Priscian had stated that the specific property of pronouns is to indicate substance without quality (13.6.29, following Apollonius Dyscolus),** but in his attempt to see the three categories as ultimate referents of words and word classes, Valla takes pronouns as words that stand for persons, that is, substance and quality and, in the case of possessive pronouns, even for action as well (as in “Lying is not my habit,” mentiri non est meum, in which “‘meum” refers to all three categories). The same applies to substantive participles “running,” currens, being the same as “a running thing,” ves currens). Thus Valla’s attack on the medieval distinction between abstract and concrete soon becomes a grammatical exposé of Latin words and word classes, stimulated in particular by Priscian’s discussion of denominatives (adjectives derived from abstract nouns). In spite of the attempt by some scholars to link Valla’s account of the distinction between abstract and concrete terms with Ockham’s ontological project,® it should be obvious that the two approaches

are different in style, motivation, and argument, though some of the outcomes may be similar. Ockham’s principal concern is to give abstract terms a

76 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS

place in his nominalist philosophy without falling into the trap of reifying them. In his Summa logicae he points out that we are tempted to reify abstract terms because the syntactical differences between abstract and concrete terms wrongly suggest a uniform semantic difference.°® Abstract and concrete terms often have the same stem (“bravery/brave,” “wisdom/wise’), the abstract term often has more syllables than the concrete, and the abstract often is a noun and the concrete an adjective. But these regularities, Ockham warns us, should not be taken as reflecting a semantic difference, so that abstract terms signify abstract entities such as bravery and wisdom, and concrete terms the individuals that exhibit those abstract entities, signifying in addi-

tion that abstract entity itself. In the case of “redness/red,” this account is valid, since redness in Ockham’s ontology is a thing in itself, a quality that is separate from red things. Thus the abstract term “redness” signifies the quality redness, and the concrete term “red” signifies red things and in addition redness itself. But the account does not hold true for a host of other terms. To see why, a crucial distinction that Ockham makes between absolute and connotative terms must briefly be introduced. An absolute term signifies each of its referents in exactly the same way. Thus “animal” signifies cattle, donkeys, men, and other animals; it does not

signify one thing primarily and another thing secondarily.°! Connotative terms, on the other hand, signify something primarily and another thing secondarily. Thus the term “black” signifies black things and also signifies (or connotes) blackness, for which it normally will not stand in propositions. Ockham maintains that absolute terms are only to be found in the categories of substance and quality. In the category of quality, they are represented by abstract terms such as “whiteness,” “blackness,” “heat,” “sweetness,” “odor,” and “flavor,” since for Ockham these terms signify nothing else but the qualities in question. Their corresponding concrete terms (“white,” etc.) in the category of quality are connotative terms, and so are all the terms in the remaining categories (quantity, relation, time, place, etc.): the class of connotative terms, therefore, is a large one, comprising all concrete qualitative terms such as “red” (but not its abstract counterpart, “redness,” which refers to the real inhering quality), all relative terms (e.g., “similar”), quantitative and dimensional terms (“figure,” “length,” “height,” etc.), and various kinds of other terms such as “true,” “good,” “one,” “potency,” “act,” “intellect,” and “will.” All these terms do not signify things distinct from individual substances and inhering qualities.

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 7/ In his critique of his realist opponents (most prominently Duns Scotus and Walter Burley), Ockham uses connotation to argue that many abstract terms are synonymous with their concrete counterparts, thus obviating the need to look for abstract entities that are the referents of those abstract terms.” Many abstract terms stand for nothing other than their concrete forms: “divinity’ (deitas) is synonymous with its concrete counterpart “divine,” “fatherhood” with “father,” “humanity” with “man.” In other words, we should not take those abstract terms as absolute terms (that is, terms signifying substances or inhering qualities), for there are no such things as fatherhood and humanity. Such abstract terms are connotative terms. They are, therefore, different from the pair “whiteness/white”: these terms are not synonymous, for “whiteness” is an absolute term signifying only the real inhering quality whiteness and nothing else. Even with this cursory sketch of Ockham’s treatment of the abstract/concrete distinction, the differences between his and Valla’s account are obvious.

First, there are two points of detail. According to Ockham, concrete terms such as “white” refer to qualities as well as to substance, while Valla maintains that they, at least the neuter singular ones, refer to qualities only (“nec unquam substantiam innuunt’; 374:27). And because Valla does not seem to have any specifically realist opponents in mind, it is not surprising that for him, unlike for Ockham, abstract terms are unproblematic.**? Moreover, whereas Valla treats “whiteness/white” and “fatherhood/father” along the same lines (from his grammatical point of view they are not different), for Ockham

they represent different cases: whiteness makes Plato white, but fatherhood does not make Plato a father, for while there is a quality whiteness, there is no such thing as fatherhood. These points of detail may seem trivial, but they reflect entirely different interests and approaches. Ockham’s interest is semantic, but the driving force is ontological.** More generally, Ockham is not interested in the grammatical features of Latin, let alone a particular form of Latin such as classical Latin, since for him the primary language is the mental language, which provides our spoken and written language with meaning. As a recent Ockham commentator explains it: The theory of signification and other semantical properties such as connotation or supposition thus turn out to be essential, in Ockham’s framework, to understanding the intellectual working of the mind. They are expected

78 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS to provide a detailed account of how concepts, as natural signs, can be legitimately assembled into mental propositions describing the world, which are the direct objects of belief and knowledge and the basic units of human reasoning.”

Ockham’s conclusions about abstract and concrete terms must be seen against the background of his entire semantic apparatus, including the notions of signification, supposition, absolute and connotative terms, and exponibles—a machinery that was aimed to analyze and, ideally, reduce all sorts of complex linguistic expressions to the language of thought, that is, mental concepts. This logical machinery is necessary because conventional language often misleads us.*° Important and widely used terms such as “time” (tempus), “movement” (motus), “change” (mutatio), “rest” (quies), “instant” (instans),

and “point” (punctus) look like ordinary nouns; hence people are tempted to search for things behind these nouns, as if they were absolute terms signifying some one thing totally distinct from individual things. In Ockham’s view, however, they are connotative terms, always signifying singular beings. They can be considered as abbreviations of longer expressions, in which the pseudo-name has to be analyzed in terms of singular beings (substances and their inhering qualities). For instance, “Change is sudden” becomes “What is changed acquires or loses its whole form simultaneously and not part after part’; the noun “change” does not occur anymore, and we are therefore not tempted to look for an entity behind it. We can hardly do without these terms in philosophy, Ockham admits, but like all figurative expressions, we should take care not to interpret them in a literal way.” Valla’s principal concern, on the other hand, is classical Latin, which he views as a natural reflection of what there is (substances, qualities, and actions). Grammatical categories such as case, gender, and the ruling of words by particular classes of verbs are crucial in determining whether a term refers to quality only or to substance as well. Because it would be far from Valla’s mind to aim at reducing ordinary language to a more transparent language reflecting mental concepts, he does not develop his aversion to abstract terms along Ockham’s line. Hence, his discussion of terms such as “motus” (movement) and “mutatio” (change) is not carried out under the umbrella of problematic, abstract terms. When Valla talks about these terms, he makes only a grammatical point, saying that there is no difference between “motus” and “motio” (movement), just as there is no difference between “cultio” and “cul-

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 79 tus’ (adoration), “usio” and “usus” (use), “agressio” and “agressus” (aggression), and a host of other terms, because linguistic practice does not show a difference in use. There is no inclination to view terms such as “motus” and “mutatio’ as abbreviations that ideally should be reduced to other, more transparent expressions.

Further Criticisms of Abstract Terms Valla continues his critique of abstract terms by considering a class that figures prominently in scholastic discourse: terms such as “entitas,” “hecceitas,” “identitas,” “quiditas,” “reitas,” and “perseitas” (30-36; 370—-373).°° These terms are not found in Aristotle, Valla wryly comments against his scholastic followers (31:1), and moreover, they are incorrectly formed.” They cannot be formed from substantives such as “ens” and from pronouns such as “quid,” nor from adjectives except for some ending in “-us” of the second declination (“sanus” > “sanitas,” “bonus” > “bonitas”), in “-er” also from the second declination (“dexter” > “dexteritas”), in “-is” of the third (“levis” > “levitas,” “levitudo”),!°° and some others ending in different letters (“felix” > “felicitas”). But from “currens” or “comedens” and such participles we do not derive substantives ending in “-itas,” and likewise “entitas” cannot be formed out of “ens.” More generally, words ending in “n’” and “s” do not admit of such substantives, although Valla immediately recognizes an exception, “civitas” (city) from “civis” (citizen). This he explains away by saying that, because “civis” does not signify a quality, “civitas” is unlike “sanitas” and “bonitas,” since the latter do signify a quality, deriving from “sanus” and “bonus” (32:8—33:20; see also 372).

A special case is “divinity” (dettas, 31:27) and its Greek equivalent “deorns.” “Deus” does not signify a quality; hence we cannot form “deitas” from it. And there is no reason to invent the term “deitas,” since we have a good alternative: “divinitas,” derived correctly from “divinus” (compare Greek

“fetos” > “fevorns”), this in spite of Augustine’s words that we should not be ashamed of the word “deitas” and in spite of a unique, and hence dubious, occurrence of the Greek word “@eudtnTos” in St. Paul. There is therefore no reason to hold with Aquinas in his commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans that the signification of “deitas” (signifying God’s essence) differs from “divinitas” (signifying the participation). Valla goes on to discuss some more examples of similar cases. Cicero, for

80 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS instance, once coined “appietas” (from the adjective “appius” as in Via Appia) and “lentulitas” (“a diminutive from ‘slow,’ /entus, like “Crassulus’ and “Barbatulus’ from ‘stout,’ crassus, and ‘bearded,’ barbatus’; 34:6). But this, Valla rightly believes, was only in a letter to make fun of the arrogance of the nobility. Another example is Boethius’s use of “platonitas,” which, if it were acceptable to form such a term (which Boethius clearly thinks not), could be used to refer to a singular quality unique to one substance, Plato, just as “humanitas”

refers to a quality common to all men. While duly agreeing with Boethius on the absurdity of the term, Valla criticizes Boethius for incorrectly applying the rules of word formation; for if “homo” gives “humanitas,” then it would be inconsistent to object to the derivation of “platonitas” from “Plato.” However, “humanitas” is derived from “humanus,” which in its turn derives from “homo.” By analogy, “Plato” gives “platonicus” (or “platonius” or “platonianus”), which gives “platonicitas” (or “platoniitas” or “platonianitas”), but not “platonitas,” and it is hard to see how it can signify a quality like the others, since it does not derive from an adjective of quality (34:15-35:10). That substantives can only be formed from adjectives of guality is an im-

portant criterion for Valla, but it also introduces a problem regarding adjectives ending in “-eus” such as “ligneus,” “marmoreus,” or “ferreus,” for while they clearly seem to be adjectives of quality, their corresponding nouns “ligneitas,’ “marmoreitas,” and “ferreitas” are not in use. Valla has to deny, therefore, that they are adjectives of quality (36:8) and says that these adjectives signify the matter (“materiam significantibus’), apparently implying that here matter is equivalent to substance.'®! Nonetheless, Valla’s point about these adjectives signifying the matter rather than the quality is metaphysically problematic, and not only because in Valla’s own scheme matter is distinguished

from substance; for how can a term such as “iron” signify the matter (substance?) only? What is an iron bar other than matter with the quality (or form) iron? Perhaps Valla means to say that these adjectives signify the informed matter (substance plus quality) as a whole rather than the quality only, but this would square oddly with his explicit denial that they are adjectives of quality. Moreover, he makes a similar point regarding personal pronouns: “meus, “tuus,” and “suus” do not give “meitas,” “tuitas,” and “suitas”; hence Valla would have to deny that they are words of quality. However, these words signify, when used substantively, not just quality or substance, let alone corpo-

real body, but all the three categories at once, as in “Lying is not my habit” (mentiri non est meum) (36:9—15 and 25:10—14).

A CRITIQUE OF TRANSCENDENTAL TERMS 81 Thus Valla’s aversion to abstract terms has a primarily grammatical background. He dislikes these typically scholastic terms because they do not conform to the rules of word formation, rules that can be gleaned from a detailed study of the Latin language. But it is interesting, though hardly surprising in view of the grammatical tradition on which Valla builds, to see him arguing for the acceptance of these rules by applying semantic criteria that purport-

edly transcend the historical boundaries of the canonized form of Latin of classical antiquity. Thus when he rejects “woodhood” (ligneitas) and similar terms, he uses a semantic and nonhistorical argument, viz., that “wooden” (ligneus) is not an adjective of quality and hence cannot give rise to a form such as “ligneitas” or, vice versa, that “platonitas” is unacceptable because it is not formed from an adjective of quality. Similarly, when he rejects outland-

ish terms such as “reitas” and “queitas,” he writes that we do not find such things as thinghood in nature (“queitas nec reitas in rerum natura invenitur’). Therefore, it seems that the world puts constraints on language—that what there is in a way determines the availability of terms.' But this may be just the way Valla presents the case, for it is clear that he is willing to adapt his ontology to the linguistic facts when, e.g., he denies that “wood” is an adjective of quality. Of course, the world has ontological priority, but Valla’s grammatical discussion shows how—to borrow a medieval expression—reality has a “waxen nose” to be bent in accordance with the requirements of language. This is clearly a major issue to which we will return in the course of this book.

3 From a Grammatical Point of View:

The Reduction of the Categories

Since for Valla only things can be characterized as qualified substances, he does not have any use for accidental categories other than quality and action. Categories such as quantity, relation, time, and place qualify a thing the same way qualities do, so that all terms that are traditionally subsumed under these headings (quantity, relation, time, place, and the other categories) are to be viewed as qualitative terms. In this chapter we will study the various ways in which Valla reduces the individual categories to his triad of substance, quality, and action. This reductive program has frequently been associated with Ockhamist nominalism, but, as with his treatment of abstract and concrete terms, discussed in the previous chapter, here too the reduction will be shown to be of a rather different kind. But even though Valla rejects categories such as quantity, relation, time, and place, he has a number of interesting things to say about them, as a detailed consideration of his arguments will show.

Quality Quality plays a pivotal role in Valla’s scheme of things: it is the means by which we come to observe, know, and characterize things. Whereas substance remains a shady category that eludes the senses and is difficult to speak about,

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 83 qualities are the things we can sensibly observe or intellectually know, as well

as the focus point of our speaking: things differ by having a specific set of qualities, and the semantically rich language of classical Latin offers a perfect guide to characterize and talk about these qualities.! As we have seen in Chapter 1, Valla distinguishes between natural and non-natural qualities, a reworking of the traditional distinction between the substantial and accidental forms of Aristotelian-scholastic thought. Natural qualities are those general ones without which no object can exist—an object may change color, weight, temperature, or form but must have some color, weight, temperature, form; hence Valla calls these “generic qualities.” Non-natural qualities are the specific qualities of objects: the (accidental) warmth of iron, this (specific) color of an apple, and so forth. Valla then distinguishes between those qualities that are perceived by the outer, corporeal senses (sensibus) and those that are perceived by the soul only (senszs, a term borrowed from Quintilian).” Before looking more closely at Valla’s discussion of qualities as objects of sensory perception to which are reduced quantity, relation, time, place, and the other accidental categories, it is worth noticing that in the later versions Valla has changed the order of discussion. In the first version he starts enumerating the qualities, perceived by the soul alone (chapter 17), and then in subsequent chapters discusses the objects of vision (color and form), includ-

ing a discussion of quantities and mathematical entities such as lines and points (chapter 18); the object of hearing (sound), including a discussion about the conventional nature of language (chapter 19); the object of taste and smell (chapter 20); touch (chapter 21); various concepts related to touch (hard-

ness, strength, coition, and sleep) (22); motion (23); place (24); time (25); measure, number, and weight (26); other qualities (27); some nouns coming under two categories (28); and passion (“undergoing,” “being done to”) (29). In the later versions he discusses the qualities perceived by the corporeal senses in one long chapter (14), followed by a chapter on the qualities perceived by the soul alone (15) and a long and apparently heterogeneous chapter (16) primarily devoted to action, motion, and related concepts. This chapter, which further deals with some verbs and their signification (do they signify quality? action? both?), corresponds roughly to chapter 28 of the first version. Then Valla brings together the accidental categories such as relation, quantity (developed at great length), place, and time in one long, difficult but highly interesting chapter (17), arguing for their reduction to quality. It is not immediately clear what Valla has gained by rearranging his material in this way, but

84 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS one of his aims may have been to separate more clearly his discussion of the objects of the corporal senses from his reduction of the accidental categories to quality. Thus, whereas in the first version his discussion of quantity and mathematical notions such as surface, line, and point, all to be reduced ultimately to quality, is conducted in his chapter on the objects of vision, in the later versions these separate (though related) issues are dealt with in separate chapters. Having brought all the accidental categories into one single chapter, Valla’s reductive program comes out more starkly.

Qualities Perceived by the Senses Apparently, there is no central argument to be discerned in Valla’s chapter on the qualities perceived by the senses alone.’ There is a long discussion of sound, which leads to the crucial passage on “thing” (res) and “sound/word” (vox), analyzed in the previous chapter. It also contains a typically grammatical digression on the word “amaror” (bitter taste), as it occurred in a Vergilian verse; and there is a motley assortment of other observations, often exhibiting Valla’s grammatical approach. It is therefore not surprising that Valla focuses on the way we speak about qualities rather than to treat the physiological aspects of sensation, though his formulation that “the qualities of touch are soft, hard, smooth, sharp, warm, cold, moist, dry” and so forth suggests that his principal objects are qualities rather than words.‘ Moreover, the listing of various species of the senses is traditional and can already be found in Aristotle’s brief but influential account of the senses in De sensu (Sense and Sensibilia). It is also important to realize that Valla’s focus on terms by which we qualify things is fully consistent with the Aristotelian approach. As an Aristotle scholar observes: “When he [Aristotle] says that in virtue of a quality we are ‘said to be qualified’ (9a32, b23, 27, etc.) he does not mean that we are described as ‘qualified’ but that we are described by a qualification-word, by a word (‘generous,’ ‘pale’) which is a proper answer to the question ‘how qualified?’ If an adjective is a proper answer to the question ‘guale?,’ the corresponding noun names a ‘qualitas.”””

Valla begins with touch, which is an exceptional case in that its object lacks a name, in contrast to objects of the other senses, which have clear names like “color” and “form” in the case of vision and “sound” in the case of hearing (116:4—5; 435:19). Uherefore, we often use the name of the sense of touch for

the object touched, saying, for instance, “tactus durus” or “tactus lenis” (hard

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 85 or soft touch), though it is not the sense that is hard or soft but the object of touch.® (He later points out that it is sometimes the other way around with odor and savor; we speak of “food with a bitter taste”—amaro gustu—using “gustus rather than its object “sapor’; 118:13—-16.)

Touching objects outside us is a clear, paradigmatic case of this sense, but

Valla doubts whether we may apply it to inner feelings. Does feeling that something is light, heavy, weak, strong, solid, and so forth belong to touch or to “power or strength” (robur sive vires)? In the first version he thinks that these feelings indeed belong to the latter, but he also suggests that touch makes a judgment of our power, when, for instance, we can assess the heaviness of something without actually touching it (436:9-14). Linked to these experiences in which we perceive a quality, Valla mentions “natural actions” such as having sexual intercourse and sleeping. (Valla means the quality of “sweetness’ of sleep; 436:15—22; 117:7—9.) In fact, in all human actions and in all movement, whether internal or external, we commonly perceive, Valla holds, a feeling of pleasure or disagreeableness spreading throughout our body—that is, we perceive such a quality. In the later versions, Valla still doubts whether

lightness, heaviness, strength, and weakness belong either to touch or to “power or strength” (ad robur sive ad vires, 116:18). After all, we do not fee/ the

lightness of the air (“I do not feel the entire air or the entire heaven resting on me,” 116:21). Yet we do speak of a “light weight or heavy weight,” and so Valla concludes that “this corporeal sense, whatever name we give it, feels such lightness as its object” (116:22—26). He explicitly appeals to “the common usage of speaking” (communis loquendi consuetudo), which takes precedence here

over his principle that we should not transcend the limits of the senses—a principle that becomes very important in his critique of Aristotelian natural philosophy. In the later versions Valla subsumes the feelings of pleasure and its

contrary under touch, and he explicitly writes that the sense of touch is diffused throughout the body, and serious damage to this indispensable sense can be lethal (117:4—7)—a fully Aristotelian observation.’

Thus Valla suggests that touch is the perception of a quality, namely, a feeling of pleasure or displeasure, even though he does not go so far as to say that pleasure and its contrary are names of the objects of touch. But since he also suggests that this quality is “always the same” (117:11; see also 436:15: only one quality is involved), by which he seems to mean that touching amounts to getting a feeling of pleasure or displeasure, it is not immediately clear how this squares with his other claim that the object of touch has several species (weak-

86 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS ness, hardness, sharpness, coldness, and so forth). Perhaps he means that while

the qualities perceived by touch are different in kind, the feeling—or rather the type of feeling—is always the same. But he does not carefully distinguish between the two.’ Such a blurring or even identification of feelings with qualities is typical of Valla; we will meet a similar kind of identification in his account of the virtues as affections of the soul (Chapter 5). On taste and odor Valla has less to say. Taste has many species, that is, many savors (434:7; 117:11), in fact many more, Valla writes, than the seven that Aristotle derives from sweet and bitter, even if we do not have names for them all.° He criticizes Aristotle for subsuming taste under touch, for while it is true that tasting takes place through touch, the two senses are not the same. (Aristotle had called taste a “modification of touch,” Parts of Animals II, 10; 657a1); thus the palate is differently stimulated when it tastes something sour than, when as an organ of sense, it touches something sharp. Odor does not have species, or perhaps a few, like “odor” and “smell” (fragrantia and fetor, 118:14—15).!°

Next Valla turns to vision. In the first version he distinguishes two species of visible things: color and form, both having an infinite number of species— Valla uses the term “species” at both levels—and goes on to discuss species of forms, including “mathematical” entities such as line, point, and so forth. In the later versions, color is the principal object of vision, and then (ex conseguenti) figure, quantity, movement, and rest (118:17-19). Of these last four, only figure is called a quality; for, as Valla will explain later, quantity is to be

reduced to quality, and both movement and rest to action. Touch perceives these four as well, while hearing may perceive movement and rest. Valla then briefly turns to brilliancy (splendor) and asks whether it is a color or some other quality. His answer is that it is a quality; he calls it a power (vigor) or the effervescence (vivacitas) of the flery color (118:21-119:12). For brilliancy can have its whiteness only from the sun or from fire, in spite of Aristotle’s claim, taken out of context by Valla, that the sun and fire are reddish (rutilos).'! Thus

Valla is prepared to have qualities inhering in qualities or in actions, and he gives examples such as the beauty of a corporeal form, the sweetness of a color, the softness of a voice, and the slowness of a stroll. Similarly, brilliancy or luminosity (fu/gor) illuminates a color and renders it more vigorous (vehementiorem).

The longest discussion concerns the object of hearing, sound (119:13— 122:29; 430:26—433:12). Valla mentions the basic distinction between “sonus”

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 87 (sound) and “vox” (sound made by living animals and men), the former being more general than the latter and serving as its genus. After some remarks on vowel sounds and consonants and their different terminology in Greek and Latin, Valla reviews a number of theories on the nature of sound. A /ocus classicus for medieval discussions was the opening of Priscian’s /nmstitutiones grammaticae: “Philosophers define vox as very fine air” (aerem tenuissimum), also cited by Valla. One of the questions often addressed was the ontological status of sound: if sound is air, then it is body, but how can that parcel of air exist in

different ears when different people hear one and the same sound?” Valla refutes a number of theories: sound is neither struck or percussed air, nor wind, nor spirit, nor motion of the air nor the collision of two bodies, since these theories make sound into either a corporeal thing (namely, air) or an action (motion or collision). Nor is the atomist theory of sound true (sound as arising out of individual bodies). For Valla sound, as the object of hearing, is a quality that arises out of collision, in support of which he quotes Quintilian (“sound is not collision but arises out of collision,” /nstitutio oratoria 3.6.6, which, however, is not further discussed). The terminology of air “striking” the ears is misleading, Valla seems to suggest, for we do not speak of colors striking the eyes either.'? Sound and the other qualities such as brilliancy and color, perceived by the senses, are not dimensional bodies. But the comparison between sound and brilliancy does not imply, Valla says, that we can accept Aristotle’s statement that just as colors cannot be made visible without light, so the sharp and flat can be without sound (De anima II.8, 420a27-29). Sharp and flat are species or differentiae of sound, whereas colors are not species of light; we say a “green color” (color viridis), not “green light” (lumen viride).\4

If sound is a quality, it requires explanation how it apparently can exist without inhering in a substance, but Valla hardly addresses this question. He suggests that sound arises in solid material (earth, water, solid bodies) but only becomes hearable when “it comes forward in air.”!° Sound can be heard

even when the action that produces the sound has ceased, which implies a propagation of sound through the air and into the air ventricles of the ear, but Valla says only that the quality of sound can be “present or absent beyond the destruction of the subject.”!° This gives the impression that qualities are inde-

pendent entities that do not need to inhere in a subject (not even in the air particles that propagate the form of the object perceived toward the ear), but for Valla they are not entities in the sense of corporeal bodies, even though he

88 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS calls them “things” (ves)—a rather awkward result perhaps: nondimensional things. And in the first version—more than in the later ones—he stresses their dependency on the sense organ, sound being the senszbile or obiectum of the ear, just as color and form are the senszbile of the eyes, that is, what the eyes perceive.’ Though in another text Valla states that color that is seen by the eye is in the object, here it is not entirely clear where the qualities that are perceived by the senses are located: they are qualities of things or—as we have seen above— of other qualities (a sharp sound) or of actions (a sweet sleep). But the hearing and seeing take place in us; it is the soul that perceives. How the sensible qualities are transformed into sense perceptions is left unclear, but of course this transformation from a mechanistic to a mental process has always been a notoriously difficult problem in the history of philosophy, and it was far from Valla’s intention to develop his own remarks about sensible qualities into a coherent theory of perception. (As we will see later in Chapter 4, this holds true for cognition as well.) For Valla—and this point should always be borne in mind—qualities are things, that is, whatever we feel, perceive, and, consequently, can talk about. This may have encouraged him to blur the line between the quality perceived and the sensation of that quality.'® Finally, Valla discusses sound and hearing. This discussion includes his remarks on words, sounds, and meaning, discussed in detail in the previous chapter: the natural, sensible quality receives a stgnificatio (which is also a quality) by human imposition. This distinction, which is quite traditional, seems to imply that the natural quality is a parcel of air after all, but since he had naturally denied that qualities are three-dimensional, corporeal bodies and opposes here bodies to qualities (120:16—-18; 431:20-22), one wonders how a quality can inhere in another (nondimensional) quality. Even though he clearly intends to talk about qualities such as sounds and colors in these chapters, not just about the words we use in referring to them, it is our common way of talking about, for instance, “a sweet voice” and “a beautiful color” that seems to have guided Valla in making these ontologically tinted remarks.

Qualities Perceived by the Soul Next to the sensible qualities, there is also a group of qualities that are only perceived by the soul.'? In the first version Valla notices that these “nonsensible” qualities (if we may characterize them so) are usually noticed from “bodily actions,” though mentally cognized.”® Valla mentions in particular

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 89 those “drawn from person,” such as family ties, sex, education and training, occupation, and moral qualifications (father, husband, master, pupil, alumnus, guest, captain, soldier, glorious, ill-willing, friend—to mention just a few), and some qualities that are also found in things, such as places (holy, private, public, desert, and so forth). We are reminded of the enumeration of accidents of persons given by Quintilian in his /nstctutio oratoria (5.10.23¢f.), but Valla’s list is much shorter and the context is not a rhetorical-juridical one. Because they are all qualities, Valla refuses to subsume relational ones such as father and son, male and female, rich and poor, and the like under a separate category of “relation” as Aristotle had done, and he adds that we often find genus/species distinctions among relative terms (425:10-14). Take, for instance, the series “cleric” (clericus), “dean” (levita), “priest” (sacerdos), and “pope” (pontifex), in which “cleric” is the most general name and “pope” the most specific. Thus “dean” is the genus of “priest” and “pope” but a species of “cleric.” (The example is perhaps not chosen at random.) These terms refer to substances (that is, persons), but this does not mean, Valla seems to imply, that they form a separate category of relations. These relations reside in the qualities of being a clergyman (clericatus), being a dean (diaconium), being a father (paternitas), and so forth—a point to which we will return when dealing with his remarks on relation itself. Much later, in chapter 27, Valla mentions some other qualities, apparently also perceived by the soul only. In the later versions these scattered remarks are brought together in one chapter (chapter 15). More clearly than before, Valla divides the qualities perceived by the soul alone according to what they belong to: to the soul, to the composite of body and soul, or to all things (124:28—125:18).7! Thus Valla distinguishes between (1) qualities that are in the

soul, such as virtue, vice, knowledge, and emotions, (2) qualities that pertain to the composite (body and soul, i.e., “animal”), including glory, honor, dig-

nity, power, fatherhood, priesthood,” (3) qualities that can be said of all things, such as number, order, series, difference, similarity, fortune, necessity, and cause, and (4) significations of terms and terms such as “genus” and “species’ and “part” and “whole,” which describe relationships between things in terms of their signification.”> Even though the latter are clearly relativa, they are qualities, that is, qualities of inferiority and superiority; being a genus or a species is having a quality by which a thing is related to other things in such and such a way. Species are parts of the proximate genus, “just as are head and trunk parts of the human body” (48:17—18; 125:23-29; see above Chapter 1). Language does not always reveal clearly the fact that these are all qualities,

90 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS for even though fatherhood is a quality, in some sentences the term “father” signifies the substance when the emphasis is on the man rather than on his being a father. Thus in “My father is coming,” the term “father” signifies the man, that is, the substance, while in “This one is my father,” the same term signifies the quality, because the substance is already understood by “this one” (hic).”4 Which expression I use is dependent on whether I want to emphasize his being my father. When I want to refer to that man who is threatening his wife, I may say, “The husband threatens,” without focusing on his being a husband, but when I say, “Socrates is Xanthippe’s husband,” the same term “husband” is now used to signify the quality only, for the substance is already signified by “Socrates the man” (Socrates homo). Valla gives several similar ex-

amples that must show that we should not be misled—not Valla’s term—by the particular occurrence of words: being part, species, father, husband, colleague, and so forth are qualities, but it depends on the construction of the sentence whether the term signifies the substance or the quality only. That they are qualities is also shown by the fact that I can stop being a father, brother, king, or husband (126:8-15) and also by the fact that what is a genus in one case (animal as genus of lower species) becomes a species of a higher genus (animal as species of substance) (126:15—17—a traditional point, of course).”* But would Valla deny the term “father” to a man whose children have died? That seems to go against common usage. It seems that here common usage is sacrificed to Valla’s ontological picture. Valla’s category of quality is thus extremely wide, comprising color, sound,

fatherhood, genus and species, and an endless number of others. Not all of them seem to be on the same par: my membership in a society is a quality that does not seem to inhere in me in the same way as my color white. But by dividing all qualities into two classes—those perceived by the soul and those perceived by the corporeal senses—Valla’s account emphasizes the role of the perceiver, while conveniently neglecting the ontological questions. This is not to say that Valla’s account does not have an ontological dimension as well. In fact, the multifarious ways in which we speak about things, with our (inner and outer) sensations as guide, result in an abundant ontology of qualities. What Valla may have gained in ontological economy by reducing the accidental categories to quality (and sometimes to action) he seems to have lost in giving the heterogeneous feelings, experiences, and perceptions by which we perceive, describe, and classify things the status of quality. Valla, however, had a respectable predecessor on this score (though hardly

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES D1 respectable in Valla’s eyes). On Aristotle’s account, too—which Valla is following in Boethius’s translation of the Categories—quality is a wide and heterogeneous category that not always receives consistent treatment. Aristotle defines quality as “that in virtue of which things are said to be qualified somehow. But

quality is one of the things spoken of in a number of ways,” and he proceeds

to distinguish four kinds, without connecting them on any principle: (z) states and conditions such as knowledge and the virtues, (2) natural capacities and incapacities, (3) affective qualities and affections, such as sweetness, bitterness, hotness, coldness, paleness, and darkness, and (4) shape and the external form of things. The distinction is far from watertight. It is not clear why type I, for instance, is qualities, or why 3 is different from 1. Hotness and coldness are included in 3, but he had already classified them as conditions (8b36-39). Moreover, openness of texture and roughness (and the like) are denied the status of qualifications, indicating rather the position of the parts of the thing. But why is it not possible to answer the question “How is x qualified?” by stating the way in which its parts are composed? Aristotle's “mapping of this territory,” as one commentator has said, “is not very thorough,””” and it is therefore hardly surprising that Valla’s discussion of quality shows similar weaknesses.

Position, Having, and Relation With his account of quality in place, Valla is now ready to argue for a reduction of all accidental categories to substance, quality, and action, since in his view they are the only really existing elements (res) out of which things (ves again) in the world exist. Some categories, such as having and position, receive scant attention, while others, such as place, time, passion, and in particular quantity, are treated at length. It is vitally important for our understanding of Valla’s program to look in detail at each of them. Valla begins with a few remarks on the categories of position and having. Position such as lying and sitting is either action because we always act (even while sitting or sleeping) or quality because it tells us something about the figure of a body (134:16—-135:11; 438:14-18). The category of having (armed,

clothed, having shoes on) should be reduced to quality, too, for “although weapons, clothes and shoes are corporeal things, nevertheless they introduce quality into a person,” since this is the “language of all” (omnium sermo, 134:26)—one of the many examples where the notion of common language is

92 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS broader than the classical Latin of the great classical authors. There is no principal difference between things coming from the outside and things that are parts of the body, so that terms such as “armed” and “clothed” (and their contraries) in no way differ in their signifying a quality of persons or things from terms such as “plump,” “fat,” “solid,” “lean,” and an endless number of terms describing how they are qualified. Valla’s remarks on relation pick up his discussion of qualities perceived by the soul alone (see above). Being father, son, master, pupil, and so forth is nothing other than a quality (136:1—4), and, as we have seen, genus and species too are said to be qualities. Of course, they are re/ativa, in the sense that being a father implies having children and being a child implies having a father, but the relationship is established, Valla holds, on the basis of quality: the rela-

tionship with my son is not founded on my being a man (in the category of substance) but on my being a father, which is a quality. Hence, “father,” “son,” “master,” and “disciple” are relativa of quality, 1.e., relative terms belonging to quality. Valla finds further confirmation of the subsumption of relation under quality in Quintilian, who had listed as qualities the following: “being famous or obscure, a magistrate or a private citizen, father or son, citizen or foreigner, freeman or slave, married man or bachelor, parent or childless” (5.10.26).78

Two aspects of Valla’s brief treatment of relation call for comment. First,

in spite of his grammatical approach, which treats terms of description as terms of quality, Valla seems here to distinguish between qualities such as “being a father” and qualities such as “good” and “beautiful.” The former are said to be velativa, but this is denied of the latter: “what is an adjective is not a relative” (relativum)—e.g., “good” and “bad,” “beautiful” and “ugly,” “healthy” and “ill,” “big” and “small”—since there are no “relatives of substance,” that is, no relative terms belonging to substance.*? Valla may have the Aristotelian tenet in mind that “no primary substance is spoken of as relative” —Socrates is not said to be of something (Categories 8a13 with Boethius’s commentary on it). Elsewhere, however, Valla criticizes this view, as we have seen in Chapter 1.

In any case, he does not seem to have thought the ontological implications through of his definitely ontological assumptions. The second remark concerns Valla’s reduction of relation to quality and its possible link to Ockham’s nominalist program.*° There are some superficial similarities. They both repeat Aristotle’s simple point that relative terms “reciprocate,” i.e., imply each other (“father” implies “child” and vice versa), but

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES D3 this was standard doctrine. Both think that relation is not an independent thing over and above individual things and individual qualities (though Valla does not state this explicitly). For instance, the relation of similarity between two white things is established on the basis of the quality of being white that they have in common (they are not similar on the basis of a further entity, viz., similarity). However, Valla’s brief remarks on relation cannot be usefully compared to Ockham’s extensive discussions of this category. Apart from the many scholastic issues that Ockham discusses and that are understandably absent from Valla’s account (for instance, whether the term “relation” itself is a term of first intention), Ockham’s treatment takes on a different character because his leitmotif is to criticize realist conceptions of the categories, without thereby wanting to destroy the categorical system.*! As we have seen in Chapter 1, his elimination of entities such as fatherhood and similarity is inspired by his wish to defend the categories as separate classes, as long as we realize to take them to be classes of terms. For if we were to admit that there are relations over and above particular things and particular qualities, they would be real accidental forms, so that different kinds of relation would be just so many species of quality. The distinction between the categories of relation and quality would thereby be obliterated, since relation would be reduced to quality, and this, according to Ockham, cannot be Aristotle’s intention in having distinguished the ten categories in the first place. We should therefore interpret relation as a term expressing a relation between things. As such the category should be distinguished from the category of quality as well as from the other categories, for relative terms have their own distinctive properties, which Ockham then proceeds to examine in some detail within the general framework of Aristotle's Categories.** Although for Ockham the referents of relative terms can be only individual substances and qualities, this does not mean that relative terms can be identified with qualitative terms. From Valla’s grammatical point of view, however, they all refer to qualities; hence he has no use for a separate category of relation.

Quantity The longest discussion is devoted to quantity, which is not surprising, since it is this category, discussed by Aristotle before relation and quality, that seems to present a particular challenge to Valla’s reductive program.*? Quantitative aspects of things seem clearly different from qualitative ones, since we usually

94 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS consider the three dimensions of a thing to be different from qualities such as red and good. Lines, surfaces and bodies (which Aristotle had called continu-

ous quantities), and number (called discrete quantity) seem to constitute a separate class of entities, not easily to be reduced to quality, and it is in particular Valla’s section on line and point that shows his resolve to reduce quantity to quality and the difficulties he faces. The claim that quantity is not a separate category but should at best be regarded as a subcategory of quality is defended by Valla with an appeal to authorities, common linguistic usage, and reason (137:22). As usual, his main

authorities are Cicero and Quintilian. The latter, for instance, could easily be interpreted as a defender of such a reduction. Distinguishing between his three kinds of status—conjecture, definition, and quality—he suggests that quantity is an aspect of quality: There is another sort of Quality, concerned with things in general, and a complex one at that, since we can ask about both the nature and the form of a thing—whether the soul is immortal, whether god has a human appearance—and also about its size and number. . . . All these problems are argued by Conjecture, but the Question they contain is one of a thing’s Quality.**

And elsewhere Quintilian explicitly writes that “with Quantity, Number, Relation, and (as some have thought) Comparison, the situation is different. . . . They should therefore always be regarded as coming under Conjecture or

Quality, for example when we ask questions about intention or time or place.” As noted earlier, it is a point of debate whether Valla’s concept of quality derives from Quintilian’s rhetorical concept of quality. But from our analysis of quality in Chapter 1, it has become clear that Valla’s main sources (and targets) are Aristotle and Boethius. Unlike Quintilian, Valla does not show a tendency to mix up the Aristotelian categories with rhetorical status, even though he is enough of an opportunist to quote Quintilian as support. Linguistic usage (loquendi consuetudo), Valla continues, also teaches us that quality is the overarching category.*° To questions “of what kind” (qualis), we often give answers containing quantitative expressions (136:29—137:8; 426:24—427:12); for instance, to the question what sort of horse I should buy, the answer can be: erect, tall, with a broad chest, etc. Thus quantitative expressions may be part of answers to the question how a thing is qualified. The same lesson can be drawn from a consideration of the terms “guoti-

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 95 tas” and “quantitas,” which correspond to “discrete quantity” (e.g., number) and “continuous quantity” (e.g., line, surface, body), a distinction Aristotle makes in the Categories (ch. 6, 4620). Both are to be subsumed under the genus of quality, which is confirmed by “the best authors and by reason.” Words expressing how big (“quantum”) or how many (“quotum”) are for Valla on the same footing as other qualitative descriptions: “big,” “small,” “fat,” “old,” “young,” and “of not many years” are all qualitative descriptions of a person. The third version contains a long addition (138:9—139:24) in which Valla gives a host of other examples that show, he believes, the dependence of quantitative expressions on qualities. We speak of a “a great heat” (magnus calor), “short coldness” (parvum frigus), “long sound” (longus sonus), and “brief sorrow (brevis dolor)—a type of example already discussed by Aristotle, who had drawn a different conclusion from it.*” Because of the primacy of quality, some qualitative terms may be employed for denoting quantitative aspects of things, e.g., “right/equitable” (equus, as in “an equal portion has to be given to all, which is equitable”) and “good” and “bad” (as in “a good deal,” meaning “a big deal”).3* Another illustration is offered by adverbs such as “very, decidedly” (sane) and “extraordinarily, lavishly” (¢mpense), which indicate a certain quantity (“decidedly learned,” sane doctus) but are derived from adjectives of quality “healthy,” sanus). And “equitable, equal” (equalis), in spite of generally being classed as a quantitative term, is often found to be subsumed under “similarity,” which is considered solely a qualitative term.” Valla derives further evidence for the conjunction of quantity and quality and for the primacy of the latter from the classical authors,“ as well as from what the common people (“vulgus”, 141:15) say: “What sort [gualem] of voice did Stentor have?” The range of possible answers include quantitative terms such as “big” (magnus), “great” (grandis), “immense” (vastus), “the equal of the voice of fifty men,” and their contraries. What Valla actually does, perhaps even without fully realizing it, is to question one of the fundamental assumptions behind the Aristotelian categorical system (as expounded in the Categories), namely, that we can distinguish the categories by posing different questions about a thing, each with its own unique range of answers that does not overlap with the others. For if the question “of-what-quality?” may receive answers (“three feet long”) in which a quantitative property is being introduced, we do not have any guarantee that

the thing introduced in answer to this type of question will fall under the genus of quality. This at least seems to be the upshot of Valla’s reduction of

96 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS quantitative properties to qualitative ones. Valla carefully examines the multifarious ways in which we employ terms, but though this is certainly a highly distinctive feature of Valla’s approach, we should not forget that it is one that is entirely congenial to Aristotle himself. Moreover, like Aristotle, Valla is using these linguistic findings to make statements about things, even though he severely reduces the number of types of things. So far Valla has been talking about quantitative predicates that qualify things (“. . . is big,” “. . . is two years old”). Next he speaks about some owners of quantitative properties: body, surface, line, point. Though his arguments

and conclusions here are not always easy to understand, his overall aim is clearly to criticize the Aristotelian-Boethian account, which, Valla seems to suggest, suffers from a lack of clarity about the exact status of these entities: are they physical things with dimensions (however small), or are they abstractions, imaginary constructs used for measuring? In the Categories Aristotle writes that a line is a continuous quantity, “for it is possible to find a common boundary at which its parts join together, a point. And for a surface, a line; for the parts of a place join together at some common boundary. Similarly in the case of a body one could find a common boundary—a line or a surface—at which the parts of the body join together” (sat). This is explained by Boethius in the following way: when a line, which is length without breadth, is divided into two parts, at the place of division two points “appear” (apparent) as boundaries where previously they were understood as one. The point itself is the boundary of a line, and being extremely tiny cannot be divided and cut into parts.*! In the same way, a surface, when

divided, will result in two parts, each with a line as boundary; and when a solid body is divided, we get two parts each with a surface, which, when joined

together again, are one again. Hence, a point is not a part of a line, but the common boundary of its parts, and we should therefore not speak of a line consisting of points (or of a surface consisting of lines or a body consisting of

surfaces). Another criterion supplied by Aristotle is whether quantities are composed of parts that have position or that do not have position in relation to one another: “for example, the parts of a line have position in relation to one another; each of them is situated somewhere, and you could distinguish them and say where each is situated in the plane and which one of the other parts it joins on to” (Categories 5a16). Boethius paraphrases this by writing that parts should be somewhere, that they do not perish (unlike parts of time, which do

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 97 not endure), and that they join together in a proper order. This enables us to distinguish parts, for instance, of a line, where it starts and where it ends, and which part joins onto which part. Following Aristotle, Boethius applies the same account to planes, solid bodies, and, perhaps surprisingly, the place in which these quantities are. In taking the world of corporeal things we see and touch as a point of departure, Valla’s strategy is to refute the idea that there are such entities as lines and points apart from individual substances. He explicitly rejects the (Euclidean) views that lines are longitudes without width and that points are indivisible quantities that occupy no space. It is ridiculous, he believes, to hold that a multiplication of lines does not result in something wider than the original line, and that multiplication of a point does not lead to something bigger. Points are parts of a line and not, as Aristotle and his medieval followers thought, the terminations of a line, for how can terminations be without a place? In all this, Valla’s critique—as expected—shows a polemical slant, reducing the positions and arguments of his shadowy adversaries to a few definitions and maxims, without taking into account (understandably so, given his aims), for example, Aristotle’s more advanced thinking on these matters in the Metaphysics.

This (quasi)-physical interpretation of points and lines is part of his general thesis that quantity is not a separate category but belongs to quality. The form or figure of a thing is a quality and can take various shapes: it can be long, broad, high, deep, curved, and round, as well as rough, soft, and so forth (141:28-143:28; 427:24-428:26). Apparently refusing to take the dimensions length, breadth, and height*® as the three coordinates of space, Valla believes that there is no difference between them except direction:“ breadth is length taken breadthwise, height is length upward, and so forth, and it depends on our position but also on linguistic conventions whether we speak of something as long, broad, high, curved, round, etc. (the side of a table can be called its “length” but also its “width”). By taking “dimension” in this wide, nontechnical sense, Valla has no trouble in criticizing the scholastic notion of body according to which it is subsumed under quantity. As Boethius argues: whatever is body consists of three dimensions—or rather, each body, in order to exist, must consist of three dimensions—and since these dimensions are “quantities both in number and in the continuity of space,” body is to be subsumed under quantity.* Body, however, Valla insists, zs not quantity but /as quantity, and it does not consist of dimensions but /as them, just as it has

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qualities inhering in the essence, without which it cannot be (“sine essentia nequit esse,” 143:1). This last formulation, however, is problematic, since elsewhere in the third version (46:12) Valla had equated essence with matter, so

that he is basically saying that body cannot exist without matter. But since matter and quality are the two ingredients of any substance, Valla’s formulation would allow room for the Boethian position that each body, in order to exist, must consist of three dimensions, something that Valla wants to replace by Aaving three dimensions. Moreover, it is perhaps not fair to interpret Boethius as saying that body zs quantity. Rather, it is subsumed under quantity because it is a spatial thing, which means it has length, breadth, and height. So far, Valla’s critique seems to sprout from an aversion to considering and defining dimensional aspects of a thing in abstraction. Thus the definition of surface (superficies) as “consisting of length and breadth” is criticized for similar reasons. The surface is rather the “outer part of the body,” implying depth (or height) no less than length and breadth: “whoever touches the surface of a body, touches the body; body without surface is not a something, nor surface without body” (143:5).4° But when he comes to consider the (Euclidean) definition of a line as length without breadth, his position becomes less clear. Let us therefore consider his arguments in some detail. In the first version, he objects to the definition by maintaining that the addition “without breadth” is superfluous, “as if breadth would be understood unless it is excluded” (428:33-429:2). But Valla says that not the length of a body has breadth, but body itself. Hence it would be sufficient to define a line as mere length, but this would not be sufficient either, since length does not comprise roundness and similar other forms that are measured with the aid of a line. Since a line can be taken into many different directions, Valla concludes, it cannot be defined solely in terms of length. However, it is all too obvious that he is misinterpreting the definition, for of course the definition does not take length as something besides breadth, height, curved, round, etc. The addition “without breadth” does not imply that a line is here defined in terms of one particular direction to the exclusion of all the others. It does not say anything about the direction or “form” of the line at all. Valla, however, is determined to ridicule the definition whenever he can, deducing from it what he considers to be sheer absurdities. He cites as the opinion of his adversaries that the multiplication of a line—length without breadth—shall never result in anything wider, which to Valla seems an absur-

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES D9 dity. For Valla a line is what encloses a particular space, indicating the form and size of something, just as a profile, an outline, or a sketch shows us somebody’s face. Indeed, this concrete employment of a line in drawing out the outlines of things—rather than any abstract or “mathematical” interpretation —seems indeed the perspective from which Valla views the line. This explains his remark on “lineamenta” (profile, outline, sketch) and the distinction he draws between an imaginary line and a “real” one, drawn by pen, pencil, or something else. This is how he expresses his definition of a line: A line is the space itself of a place but, for the sake of understanding, by means of a line drawn in black, imagined in the mind or in the corporeal thing itself as sketched out by pen or pencil, by which we might more easily measure the thing we are concerned with. Nor is there any color or width in it but only space by means of which we may examine what is extended from

the place where it begins to the place where it ends, although it is not so much a space as a figure surrounding and indicating the space.‘

Obviously, this statement calls for some comments. First, we may note some incertitude on Valla’s part about how exactly to define a line, for he begins by calling it “the space... of a place” but ends by saying that “it is not so much a space as a figure surrounding and indicating the space,” viz., that which is enclosed by the line (which was called “place,” however, in the first sentence). Further, it seems odd to say that a line surrounds a “space”; one would expect “area” or “surface” rather than a three-dimensional entity. The basic idea, however, is fairly clear: a line is an instrument in outlining something, and this we may do by actually drawing the line, but also by imagining it in our mind or projecting it on the thing itself. (The idea that a line aids us in examining “what is extended from the place where it begins to the place where it ends” may be derived from Boethius, who expresses the same idea in similar terms; and Valla’s use of place and space rather than body reminds one of Boethius’s Aristotelian account.)*® From this Charles Trinkaus concludes that for Valla measurement or diagramming “is a kind of language by which mankind may discover meanings of understanding of the spatial qualities of things.”* Valla may indeed want to distinguish between the actual dimension and our use of lines as an aid in measuring and outlining that dimension, yet he does not state it that neatly. Later, he distinguishes between line as “space of a place” (Irinkaus’s “imaginary” line) and a line as sketched on paper or “imagined in the mind,” so that we seem to end up with two imaginary lines:

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one that encompasses a certain space and one that is a mental aid in imagining the former. A similar distinction is drawn in his statement about the point, which immediately follows the passage just quoted. Here too Valla distinguishes between an imaginary point and the point we draw on paper as an aid to draw a line, a circle, or whatever (429:17—28):°°

A similar explanation applies to the point which is so called from the point formed by the impression of the pen or pencil, as it is the common practice for a line to be formed by the trace of the pen and pencil. That is also why we speak of outlines [/ineamenta] of a face and of a living body, because those outlines consist of lines by which images of human beings are being

drawn. Thus the point will be space as small as the point formed by the pencil, especially because those who measure something by means of a line

need the formation of the point,’! yet in such a way that it occupies no space and marks out more space than there is. Sometimes, as in the middle itself of some circle, nothing of space is marked out but the middle itself of the circle is indicated there.

If Valla indeed aims at drawing a distinction between a visible point as formed by the pencil and an imaginary point as formed by some space, his remark

that the latter “will be as small” as the former is confusing. Nor is it clear, without further elucidation, how we must understand the idea that one and the same point “occupies no space and marks out more space than there is.” Does it also apply to the center of a circle? Of course, the center is an “imaginary” point that is usually not drawn, but does it “mark out more space than there is”?

His last remark on the point focuses on the notion of “indivisible quantity,” which he finds ambiguous (429:28—430:2): if a point is not a quantity, why call it thus? But if it is a quantity, why is it not possible to divide it, if it can be seen and imagined? After all, tiny animals, no more than a point to us, consist of many smaller parts. And so, Valla concludes, many such points together form a line, not only with a certain length but also with a certain breadth. Much the same critique recurs in the later versions. Valla often makes the same points, gives the same type of definition of line and point, and attacks what he sees as a conflation of real lines, having breadth, color, and so forth, with imaginary lines.** The definitions of point and lines make use of

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 101 concepts that are really at home in the world of visible things. Take the deflnition of line as length without breadth. The words “without breadth” are added only because one wrongly believes a real line (vera linea) is reterred to, drawn by pen or pencil and visible to the eyes, which consequently has some breadth; hence, one feels compelled to add the phrase “without breadth.” However, in doing so one ignores the metaphorical use of “line,”*’ so that one has to define it differently to bring out its function as an aid in measuring and assaying things. Valla’s own definition is aimed at dissolving this confusion of “real lines” (having breadth, color, and so forth) with imaginary lines: “a line is the longitude of a certain space, which, for the sake of understanding, is drawn in the form of a real line” (144:9). And concerning the definition of a point, too, one is misled by thinking of something real, for instance, a dot on paper, that always has some size and is divisible; therefore, one has felt the need to add the term “indivisible” to distinguish the imaginary point from a “real” one. But believing firmly that whatever can be seen or felt (“sub oculos tactumque’) can be divided, Valla thinks this is a nonsense concept. Either it is so small that it cannot be divided but will become a divisible quantity when another point is added to it (something that his adversaries deny), or it is divisible but then “they think, in their arrogance, that they can know or imagine something which is smaller than what God has made or what the nature of things presents” (146:8). And what about the place of a point? Is it a part of the line, or is it somewhere else? If the first, then it surely will occupy some part of the line. If the second, it will occupy some place there. But what occupies some place is a certain part. Hence, Aristotle is mistaken when he argues that a point is a boundary of a line rather than a part of it. For how can a boundary or termination be without a place? Thus Valla refutes the Boethian

account of vanishing and appearing points when a line is cut into two or made one again. It is all part of their mistaken idea, Valla holds, that, since a line is by definition length, it can never be reduced to points and, vice versa, that points multiplied can never give rise to a line. But why deny the impossibility of this? As so often, Valla uses the limits of our imagination to add force to his position: we cannot imagine a point that is not part of a line, nor can we imagine a line that cannot be reduced to points. Only God knows whether these things are possible (147:13). The appeal to our imagination is not a subsidiary strategy for Valla, but an important criterion for refuting claims of his (straw man—like) opponents.”4 What we cannot see or imagine can hardly be credited with a normal type of

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existence; to speculate about things that fall outside the scope of our senses and imagination is fruitless, vain, arrogant, and even dangerous. (Valla’s own rhetorical use of imagination in depicting the rewards in heaven in his De vero bono is apparently of a different order.) According to Valla, such speculation is typically the activity of the “peripatetica natio ” (11:13), inviting us to imagine

something that cannot be imagined: prime matter without any form or form without matter. We can only imagine something that has an image, and then we cannot but imagine something as having a corporeal body (111:2—-20).*° The same attitude informs Valla’s remarks on lines and points. Lines and

points, as defined by his opponents, do not belong to the ordinary world of bodies. They are quantities, they say, and yet of a particular kind: lines are said

to be lengths without breadth, a point a quantity that nonetheless cannot be divided. But defined in this way, they seem to escape the status of ordinary things, that is, things that can be seen, imagined, divided, and so forth, even though concepts of quantity and (in)divisibility are applied to them. These concepts, however, are properly at home in the world of ordinary things only. This is why Valla refuses to recognize the existence of such shadowy entities. For him there is only the world of bodies with actual shapes and dimensions; lines and points are parts of these things but only, Valla’s account seems to imply, in a derivative sense, viz., as places or spaces that are filled by the body or parts of that body. As soon as we want to measure or sketch a (part of a) body, we may pick out two spots on a body and measure the length between these two points by drawing points and lines on paper or in our mind, a process through which they themselves become visible and divisible parts of our world. But it would be wrong to abstract from this diagramming function and infer a world of entities with their own peculiar quantity. They are only aids to measuring or outlining bodies. In modern parlance, Valla seems to be saying that ontological questions about these entities—do they exist? how do they exist?—-amount to category mistakes, equivalent to asking the color of virtue.

Yet in spite of his criticism, one wonders whether Valla himself does not still oscillate between a quasi-empirical or physical interpretation of lines and points and a more abstract view when he writes that they are spaces without color and size. It is therefore not surprising to find scholars emphasizing different aspects of that account, though without a reconstruction and critical

examination of his arguments as attempted above. Thus Mack thinks that Valla “prefers a ‘common-sense’ view that points and lines are two dimen-

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 103 sional marks on pieces of paper,” denying “existence to purely mental concepts.”** On the other hand, Trinkaus, as we have seen, has argued that for Valla “measurement or diagramming ... is a kind of language by which man-

kind may discover meanings or understanding of the spatial qualities of things’ and that Valla distinguishes between “actual dimension and imaginary use of lines and diagram to aid in measurement, regarding points, lines and surfaces as ‘theoretical signs.’”*” He praises Valla for having realized that “de-

vices for numeration were being sought” and for criticizing “the Aristotelians for failing to recognize or clearly distinguish between the instruments of knowledge and the things that were being examined themselves.” Valla’s approach “may well have been preparatory of a more systematically effective mode of dealing with nature.”** Since Trinkaus himself does not explain which of “the Aristotelians” he has in mind or on whose study of nature Valla may have had such a benevolent influence, it remains a speculative suggestion. We will deal with Valla’s alleged contribution to natural philosophy in the following chapter, but Trinkaus makes another suggestion that calls for some com-

ment here, viz., that Valla’s reduction of quantity to quality is the same as Ockham’s position. Though Trinkaus carefully qualifies Zippel’s suggestion that Valla would have had access to Ockham’s writings and had adopted a number of Ockham’s positions as “no more than surmises,” he too believes their positions to be very similar, quoting Ockham’s words from the Summa logicae: “it was the intention of Aristotle and of many others that quantity is not something distinct from substance and quality, nor that point, line, surface and body are things that are totally distinct from each other according to themselves.” But a similar conclusion that quantity should be reduced to substance and quality does not tell us much about how this conclusion is reached, from which motivation it originates, and which arguments and terminology are employed; and those seem more reliable criteria for judging the affinity or closeness between two thinkers. Indeed, on closer inspection the similarities turn out to be superficial and are overshadowed by principal differences in outlook and argumentation. In his Summa logicae (as well as in his other works) ,°? Ockham presents his position partly through his characteristically creative reinterpretation of Aristotle’s “intention” and partly by developing a position he ascribes to “many theologians in the past and now,” to which he does not “commit” himself but which is certainly his own as well. For Ockham, quantity is not an accident really distinct from both substance and qual-

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ity; it is not an accident at all, but an intention of the mind, that is, a concept subsuming other intentions ordered according to greater and lesser universality. Thus a point is not an accident existing in a subject; a line is not an accident that is indivisible in breadth and really distinct from the surface; a surface is not an accident that is indivisible as regards depth and really distinct from the solid. If a point, for instance, were such an accident, it would be either in a substance—quod non—or it would be subject or part of the line—quod non (for the line is divisible and cannot be the subject of an indivisible accident). Several arguments are presented to support this position and to attack the idea that quantity is an entity standing between a substance and its qualities. Thus, God could conserve the substance while destroying the quantity, or He could conserve the line while destroying the points. Other arguments are based on the Christian doctrine of the Sacrament of the Altar or turn on the need to quantify quantity itself (what looks like an argument of infinite regress). The general conclusion is that point, line, solid, and number are not objects completely and really distinct either from each other or from substance and quality: “Nevertheless, while they hold for the identity of the things designated by these terms, they want to claim that the terms themselves are different predicables constituting different species of quantity.”°! They are ways of signifying a substance as determinate with respect to length (“point”), as limited with respect to surface (“line”), and with respect to two or three ways of measuring it “surface” and “solid”). Aristotle’s statement that they are common boundaries of parts of a continuous quantity (e.g., a point as a common boundary of the parts of a line) should not be taken to mean that they are something positive and actual in themselves, distinct from the line, surface, or solid. Aristotle only means, Ockham holds, that one part of such quantities is extended to another part in such a way that nothing lies between those parts. Nothing in the world is indivisible, “except perhaps the indivisible intellective soul.” Thus quantitative terms are, in Ockham’s terminology, not absolute terms but connotative terms, signifying a substance and connoting that one part of a thing is spatially separated from another.® In another chapter Ockham discusses which items are subsumed under the genus of quantity, endorsing and explaining Aristotle's view that the answers to the question “how many?” and “how much?” are to be placed in this genus. Thus to the question “how many?” the answer tells us that a thing has parts that are spatially separated: it may express distance according to length (line), or distance according to breadth (surface), or distance according to depth (solid). Using Aristotle’s

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 105 definition of a quantum as something that is divisible into constituents, each of which is capable of being a one-something and a this-something,“ Ockham shows how this definition excludes all accidents, all forms and matter,

since none can be a this-something, and he also explains how it excludes “time,” “speech,” and “motion.” Next, he considers the three properties of quantity as distinguished by Aristotle—(i) nothing is contrary to quantity, (11) quantity does not admit of more and less, and (iii) quantities can be said to be equal or unequal to each other—interpreting them in a way that leaves intact the central claim that quantity is not something different from substance and quality. Since quantitative terms signify individual substances or qualities, the question arises how mathematical propositions are necessary and universal.© For Ockham these propositions, the subject of which are abstract forms (quantity as against the concrete quantum), are equivalent to hypothetical propositions (“Every triangle has internal angles equal to two right angles” is equiva-

lent to “If anything is a triangle, it has internal angles equal to two right angles”). In the words of Goddu:

The explaining propositions that render such terms are properly conditional, not assertoric in form. Euclid’s fifth postulate provides a good example. It should be rendered thus: “If two parallel lines were extended to infinity, they would never intersect.” In Ockham’s view, we need not assume the real existence of lines or suppose they can actually be extended to infinity. Mathematicians do not have to assume the real existence of lines to employ them usefully.°°

According to Goddu, Ockham argues that mathematical objects are fictive in the sense that mathematical terms can be regarded as a kind of theoretical formalism, a language or tool of analysis rather than a description of objects. As we have seen, a similar claim was made by Trinkaus about Valla (for whom measurement would be “a kind of language”). But in view of Ockham’s treatment of quantity, just briefly discussed, we are in a better position to expose the differences lying behind these seemingly similar positions.

It is true that for both thinkers there is nothing in the world but substances and qualities, leaving no room for the existence of guantity as an entity, distinct from individual substances and qualities. But it is far from obvious that they have a common motivation, viz., to refute realist ontologies, for it is difficult to discern a well-outlined realist position in Valla’s polemics.

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As we have seen in Chapter 1, Valla adds action, which shows that he wants the categories to reflect and refer directly to reality—a major difference from Ockham’s ontology. The outcome is also different. Ockham’s critique of realist ontologies does not imply that the category of quantity does no longer have any function to play and can be dismissed altogether. Unlike Valla, he accepts the Aristotelian account of quantity as the genus that subsumes answers to the question “how much?” and “how many?” And he thinks Aristotle’s discussion of the items that are subsumed under this genus, and the account of its distinctive properties, are useful and valid, as long as we realize, as Ockham never tires of reminding us, that point, line, surface, solid, and number are concepts, intentions of the mind, modes of signification rather than passions or accidents of things. It is highly doubtful whether Valla makes this crucial move—indeed, there is no evidence at all that he does so. Of course, we cannot expect him to use scholastic distinctions such as connotative and absolute terms and per sel per accidens, which Ockham frequently employs to interpret what he sees as Aristotle’s true intention; but at least one should expect Valla to focus on the logico-semantical character of terms such as “point,” “line,” “surface,” and “number,” if the affinity is to count as more than fortuitous. There is, however, no structural tendency in Valla to treat these entities from such a terminist point of view or to interpret them as different predicables, constituting different species of quantity. Rather, his attack aims at bringing lines and points back into the world of physical things, arguing, for instance, that a point zs a part of a line, that a point does occupy place (“partem occupabunt,” 146:24), that points do not vanish or appear mysteriously when two lines are joined or separated but are really there, truly occupying space at the end of the lines (146:24 and 147:1-6), that a line does necessarily have width, that lines are parts of a surface, and in general that points, lines, and surfaces are in no way different from bodies but are parts of bodies (143). Whereas for Ockham mathematicians do not have to assume the real ex-

istence of lines to employ them usefully, it is the very assumption that lines and points really exist that seems to prevent Valla from replacing his “commonsense” perspective with an interpretation in terms of “intentions” or concepts of the mind that signify the substance as determinate in such and such a way.

As we have already observed, this assumption leads him to reject the accidental categories altogether, since in his view the categories should reflect the world, that is, refer to really existing things, which leaves him with his triad substance, quality, and action. Ockham, on the other hand, does not need

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 107 to reject the categories, since for him they are classes of types of predicables; terms such as “point” and “line” are predicables in the category of quantity, and hence ought not to be reduced to qualitative terms. His logico-semantical approach is therefore foreign to Valla’s approach. Central to Valla are common sense, the limits of which are marked out by our senses and imagination, and linguistic usage: together they must demonstrate the artificiality of the boundaries between the so-called categories.”

Place A similar but much briefer treatment is given of the category “where” (uz), that is, of place: “What is place other than substance, quality or action?” (147:23). Place itself is a body, a thing, as Aristotle’s own examples of this category confirm: “in the market-place, in the Lyceum” (Categories ch. 4), and these, indeed, says Valla, are corporeal things, corporeal places (“in loco cor-

poreo’).°* But the scholastics, he writes, deny that place is a body and define it—how ineptly—in terms of surface. It seems that Valla distinguishes here between Aristotle and his scholastic followers, not realizing that Aristotle himself had defined place as “the boundary [or inner surface or limit] of the containing body at which it is in contact with the contained body” (Physics 212a5—6). Valla does not quote this famous definition here, nor does he refer to an earlier passage from the Categories (5a6—14) where Aristotle had formulated a different position on place, arguing that place, like body, is a continuous quantity, having the same properties of tridimensionality and divisibility. For medieval scholars this discrepancy between the two texts presented a major hermeneutical problem that was resolved by a suggestion of Averroes, developed by many medieval thinkers, to the effect that in the Categories Aristotle was believed to have merely presented common opinions without establishing their truths, while in other, more specialized works such as the Physics and Metaphysics he had formulated his own opinions.® Thus a distinction was made between the common or vulgar view of place as a self-subsisting entity occupied by all bodies, referred to in the Categories but refuted in the Physics, and Aristotle’s own definition of place as surface or boundary, which followed on his critique of other theories of place. Since Valla does not explicitly ascribe the view of place as boundary to Aristotle himself (though it is difficult to assume that he did not know of its provenance, since he refers to “the Philosopher” later on, 148:18), he is not concerned by this hermeneutical problem and

108 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS points to what he feels are absurd consequences of this definition. For if place is a surface, then “wine is not in the wooden container,” nor are such contain-

ers (or other containers such as jars, vessels, buckets, and so forth) “bodies” (147:28-148:8). Such consequences, Valla argues, run against our ordinary linguistic practice. His point, however, is not very clearly expressed and lumps together several distinct issues (148:1): Since we generally use “place” for the actual emptiness of the vessel and also the room in it, who has ever claimed that the “filled place of the vessel” as well as the empty one are not the vessel itself? This is what we mean by saying “there is no place in the jar” or “in the bedroom’ or “on the bench”; and “no place is empty,” “there is much place empty in this house” (that is, there is no empty space). But what am I saying, who just said “the emptiness of the vessel” and that “the space is empty,” when they deny that a vacuum exists in nature?

Contrasting two forms of speech (loqguendi formula) about place—that of the common people (populus) and that of the philosophers—Valla naturally chooses the first as the most proper and correct one, since to the populus belongs “the mastery [or judgment] of language and a rule” (arbitrium et norma loquendi).’” We say, for instance, that a jar is empty when it lacks liquid and that the market is empty when there are no people, while philosophers deny that a jar or a market can ever be empty since they are full of air, which will depart on the entrance of another body.’”! We never, however, call something “full” when it contains nothing but air, except when the air performs a clear function: sails full of wind (air) or a ball full of air (148:12—31). Valla thinks that the philosophers’ rejection of vacuum would entail a rejection of there being fullness, “just as there is nothing hard unless there would be soft” (and so with light/heavy, sweet/bitter, etc., 148:31-149:2). Hence, if they say that “There is no vacuum given in nature,” this would amount to saying that “There is no air given in nature because it is nothing.” Valla then cites Vergil, Quintilian (i.e., Pseudo-Quintilian), and Cicero in support of the people’s way of speaking. “For they call the ‘middle air’ now ‘empty’ now ‘void’ [nunc vacuum,’ nunc ‘inane).” Cicero, for instance, speaks about the atomists’ cosmos as an infinite, dimensionless void (in infinito inant), to which Valla replies, “if there exists such an empty and void place at all.”” Valla’s account of the category of place takes the form of a string of suggestions about place, space, vacuum, and air rather than a well-informed ar-

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 109 gument. Of course, Valla’s aim is precisely not to approach these concepts from a philosophical point of view but to offer the common-sense view (what we may term a “folk” approach), based on a prephilosophical understanding of these concepts as reflected and revealed by the way we commonly use them in language. (Valla, of course, would never call it a “prephilosophical” approach, as if it were an amateurish, primitive understanding of things that would need a philosophical approach for refinement, completion, and perfection.) But even taking into account this antiphilosophical agenda, the discussion is all too brief and sketchy to be very enlightening. First of all, in line with his reductive program, place should be reduced (recidere) to substance, to quality, or to action, but though this is Valla’s initial point (place being called “a corporeal thing”), he does not develop it, focusing instead on the way we use “place” as illustrated by expressions such as “There is no place in the jar,” “There is no place in the bedroom,” and “There is place on the bench; it is empty.” Following the criterion of ordinary language, Valla seems to claim, though he could have expressed it more clearly, that we do not say that the place of the vessel is full or empty but rather that the vessel itself is full or empty, its emptiness or space being called “place.” (At least, this is what seems to be implied in the first sentence of the quotation given above.)

This suggests that he now thinks of place in terms of a three-dimensional space, something that may be filled by things such as liquids and people, but also as something that may be characterized in terms of complete emptiness and even the “nothingness” of the atomists’ void, as testified by his quotation from Cicero, which is adduced to confirm that air is often called “nothing.” From a historical point of view, such an oscillation between viewing space as a magnitude with properties such as divisibility and tridimensionality, on the one hand, and as a pure, dimensionless emptiness, a void, “a nothing,” on the other hand, is hardly surprising. One would like, however, to know how Valla

thinks his reduction of place to “corporeal body,” that is, to substance and quality, can be squared with this notion of place as a void, a container that can be filled by bodies but does not seem to be body itself, let alone a corporeal body. This is not to say, of course, that Valla should have presented us with a satisfactory account of these terribly difficult concepts, which had continued to vex scholars through the ages. It is to say that even Valla’s “vulgar” (tritum et vulgare), customary (consuetum), or prephilosophical notion is not free from philosophical assumptions. For Valla, however, the wisdom of the common people outweighs any

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profit that may be gained from philosophical analyses—and this brings us to a second point of consideration. In drawing a contrast between a philosophical and common-sense conception of place and space, he turns these positions into rivals. Philosophical analysis is doomed to failure because it aims at refining “folk” notions by making speculative arguments, empty theories, and unwarranted claims that transcend the boundaries of sense experience and common sense. As polemical strategy and rhetorical tool, such a contrast is effective, and Valla often makes good use of it, as did Petrarch and others before him.”? However, we may question its validity. Of course, philosophers would not deny that in ordinary life we say a bottle is empty when there is no wine in it, nor would they consider such a statement irrelevant or out of place. Their concerns and questions are simply different; they aim at an elucidation and analysis of concepts hidden in these colloquial expressions, an elucidation that may (but need not) culminate in a full-fledged theory of the concepts involved. Thus for those following the Aristotelian dialectical method, common opinions, common-sense intuitions, and some daily observations are important, but only as a starting point for rational criticism, reflection, and generalization, in order to arrive at a correct account of the phenomenon.” Valla, however, would retort that this later stage of rational criticism and reflection has generated into a language game that hardly bears any relationship to the world it allegedly attempts to analyze. Philosophical speculation, with its technical, abstruse, vague, and esoteric vocabulary and its tendency to disregard the grammatical rules and conventions of the Latin language, soon takes on a life of its own. Leaving the world of common experience far behind, the philosopher employs a terminology that can only be handled and understood by other philosophers. Such a type of criticism became standard among humanists, but whatever its plausibility—and scholars are bound to disagree, since it all depends on one’s own background, schooling, and interests—Aristotle’s dialectical method shows a sensitivity to everyday concepts and language that should be congenial to Valla’s own stance. Thirdly, Valla’s discussion of the category of place is another illustration of the dissimilarity between his approach to the categories and Ockham’s nominalist position. According to Ockham’s consequently terminist account, the category of “where” subsumes all expressions by which one can appropriately answer the question posed by the adverb “where.” His arguments, which will not be expounded here, are principally directed against the realist view of place or whereness as an actual entity distinct from substance and quality. His

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 111 conclusion is that “for a body to be in a place is nothing other than for it not to be separated from the body or surrounding medium that is said to be its place—i.e. so that no other body is between it and that which is its place.”” Valla, on the other hand, does not approach the category as a genus of answers to the question “where?”; nor does he seem to have specific realist positions in mind. Rather, he focuses on place as empty space fillable with bodies, attacking the definition of place as boundary and rejecting the scholastics’ horror vacui, issues that do not directly bear on the debate between realists and nominalists.

Time Deliberately putting aside the “pettifoggeries” (cavillationes) and the “trivial questions” (questiunculas) of the scholastics (149:17—19), Valla also briskly re-

duces time to one of his three categories. It cannot be substance, since it is neither body nor soul; nor can it be quality, since it does not inhere in something but flows without interruption and never stops (“sine intermissione transcurrit,” 440:3). For this reason people have called it “motion,” and though Valla will attack this identification of time with motion, nonetheless it points, he suggests, to the right solution: time is action. It is the “life of things”: time

is “an action which is perceived by the mind rather than by the corporeal senses; it is “a certain course of being (or essence, which is the same),” “the course of life of things.”’”° As long as things exist, they may be said “to live a kind of life,” and when that life stops, they “die a certain kind of death” (e.g., “quandam obeunt mortem,” 440:5-7, 13, 20; 149:20-24). Since Valla applies the terminology of living and dying also to nonliving things such as winds, fires, warmth, and coldness, he must take it in a metaphorical way, which is confirmed by his throwing in qualifications such as “quasi” (as if) and “quodammodo” (somehow). Yet Valla takes the association of time with life and

action quite seriously, even though he does not develop the idea much further.’”

Other notions of time are rejected by Valla as well, e.g., time as the motion of the heavens. There could have been time even if there were no heaven

at all or even if nothing were moving (438:24). “For there is time at a fixed earth no less than in a moving heaven.” At the beginning of time, when there was primordial chaos—“granted that there was such a thing” (439:1)—there were no heavens to be moved, and yet there would have been some sort of

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time. The independence of time from the motion of the heavens is confirmed by the sun and moon standing still during Joshua’s battle at Gibeon against the Amorites (Joshua 10:13) and Jerome’s statement that there had been a “paradise of pleasure” (paradisum voluptatis) before heaven and earth were created.’® After some rather obscure remarks against the notion of time as the number of motion,” Valla makes some other points that are meant to support his claim that time is independent from motion: (1) we perceive motion with eyes and touch, but time is only mentally perceived, and (2) since time does not accelerate in a quick motion or slow down in a slow one, it cannot be the number or measure of motion (439:28—32).

In the later versions the rejection of these notions of time is limited to remarks such as that there is time in rest (hence time is not motion) and that time itself admits of measure and number (hence cannot be measure or number): “For measure is a quantity, and there is no other quantity than measure, and measure itself receives number, as when we say ‘a long time,’ ‘a short time,’ and ‘many or a few days’” (150:4-10). From this it follows, in Valla’s account,

that the Aristotelian distinction between the number by which we count and the number that is counted is nonsense: we do not count the number itself, but other things.*° In the later versions he also adds a critique of the notion of “the before and the after,” which plays an important role in the Aristotelian definition of time as “a number of change in respect of the before and after” (150:13-8). It is a superfluous notion, Valla maintains, because even if being before or being after is a quality of time, still time is in itself “before” and in itself “after,” just as there is “present time per se,” giving past, future, and present.°' Moreover, “before” and “after,” like “present,” can only be in time, so the additional phrase in the definition is really doing no work. For if “they’—

the scholastics—meant to apply this “before and after” to something else rather than to time, why did they not use different terms? Valla’s point leads to a digression on the terminology of “prius” and “prior,” which Valla thinks is applied wrongly in numerous expressions, such as “The whole is prior to the

part,” “Genus is prior to species,” “Species is prior to the individual,” “The city is prior to the house,” and “The good is prior to the bad.” Taking “prior” in its literal, temporal sense, these expressions are incorrect, since the part is often “prior” to, that is, comes before, the whole of it: a person comes before a family, a family before a city, and Adam before the species of men. If we want to say things like “The whole is ‘prior’ to the part,” it would be better to use terms such as “worthier,” “greater,” “bigger,” “superior,” “more excellent,” etc.

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 113 rather than “prior,” which is a temporal notion (151:3-152:4). Though interest-

ing and impressive in itself, this digression does not deal with the issue at hand, which is about the before and after in time as part of the Aristotelian definition.

Valla continues on the same grammatical note, surveying a whole range of terms we use to refer to “a quantity of time”:®’ “year,” “month,” “week,” “day,” “hour,” “half an hour,” and “moment,” but also “today,” “yesterday,” “tomorrow,” “recently,” and so forth, just as we have a number of terms at our disposal to refer to “the quantities of body, of weight and of number.” Valla seems to distinguish between terms that refer to natural qualities (naturalia, 441:3; see also 152:28), such as “natural day of 24 hours,” and terms whose function is to signify an aspect of the world rather than to indicate a quantity of time; “day” (from morning to evening), “noon,” “morning,” and “dusk” — thought to be parts of a natural day—“signify the state [Aabitus] of the world known by sight and to a certain extent by touch” (152:32). Likewise the names of the seasons indicate a part of the year and an aspect of the world. Other expressions, such as “the snowy winter” and “the windy autumn,” do not refer to time at all—they refer to bodies (corpora) such as waters and air rather than to qualities of time. Or, in the case of the “appropriateness” (commoditas) of time, they refer to our aptitude to do things at a certain time.® It is easy to lose sight of Valla’s main point in this grammatical survey, and he himself does not spell out it out in explicit terms. But the explorations demonstrate the richness of language that is lost in the philosopher’s notion of time as a “point” (152:23). If time were a point, all these terms we use in daily life would lose their meaning: “all these qualities to which they refer would cease to exist” (441:1). Language serves as a vehicle to express our perceptions and categorizations of the world. Valla’s discussion of time thus aims at rescuing from the hands of philosophers what we may call with a grand term “the phenomenology of time.” Hence, he closely links time to action, to the life of things. From a philosophical point of view, therefore, his account may not be very satisfactory because it does not even begin to address a number of issues that any serious account of time has to deal with. Valla, however, consciously presents his account as an alternative to that of the philosophers. Yet, since he mentions some of their distinctions and notions, albeit in order to reject them, it is interesting to approach his statements from a more philosophical point of view. To begin with, the identification of time with action or the life of a thing

114 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS raises the question of the relationship between individual times and the apparently omnipresent time, which “flows without interruption” (440:3). What exactly is the relationship between time and the individual life, being, or essence (Valla’s uses all these terms here)? In the Aristotelian account, the uniform motion of the heavens constitutes a cosmic universal clock that enables

us to measure all other changes (Physics 233b12-19), but Valla is adamant in rejecting any identification of time with motion, perhaps not fully realizing that Aristotle and his followers did not identify time with motion but held that time somehow “follows” or “is dependent on” motion. Valla therefore also rejects the notion of time as the motion of the heavens, which leaves him deprived of a universal measure of the durations of individual actions. In order to account for simultaneity (action a may be simultaneous with action 9), however, Valla too needs a more abstract notion of time, and indeed such a notion, as already has been noted, briefly surfaces in his account when he writes that time flows “without interruption” (a phrase that does not recur in the later versions).*4

A similar problem arises with his categorical rejection of the Aristotelian distinction between the number by which we count and the number counted. The background of this distinction is Aristotle’s abstractionist theory of mathematics, according to which we should distinguish between the number counted (“seven sheep considered as a numbered totality”) and the abstract number by which we count (“7”). Likewise, the time of a change lasting (say) for two hours is the “number counted,” that is, the change itself considered as a temporally measurable thing. As Hussey writes:*° Aristotle's position seems to be that, in order to be able to count, one must have already mentally abstracted a series of abstract numbers: 1,2,3,4, .. . from the instances of oneness, twoness, etc., in experience. Since time is the “number of change,” it follows that one can abstract time from particular totalities of things, or lengths from particular space-occupiers. So abstract time-lengths such as “a year” (not being any particular year) may be formed, and used in measuring particular changes. In this sense “we measure the change of time” and “the time” figures in the role of “the number by which we count”—a derivative and yet indispensable tool.

There are certainly some problems with this distinction—for instance, how can time be one and the same (which the notion of simultaneity seems to require) while time is also called “the number counted,” that is, the change of an individual thing?—but we are concerned here solely with Valla’s rejection

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 115 of this distinction. As already noted, he argues that time cannot be the number of motion, since “time itself receives measure or number. For measure is quantity, and there is no other quantity than measure; measure itself receives number, as when we say ‘a long time,’ ‘a short time’ and ‘many or a few days’” (150:7-10). This is obscure and internally inconsistent (time admits of measure and number, but measure is also said to “receive” number). Valla must be thinking of time as an action (but can we call this a quantity?) that lasts (say) for two days, so that time may be said “to receive number,” but this is far from clear.

From what has been said so far, it is clear that Valla had a very limited understanding of the Aristotelian account of time, which is not surprising given the extreme difficulty of Aristotle's own discussion in the Physics. There is no sign that Valla had studied the Physics itself; he probably derived his information from a scholastic source such as Paul of Venice, and even from such

a source he apparently took over no more than a few catch phrases. In briskly

rejecting the Aristotelian “definition” of time and the notion of the before and after, as well as the notion of time as the movement of the heavens, Valla

seems to move far away from the Aristotelian account. Yet the spirit of that account could not have been uncongenial to Valla, at least in giving ontological priority to things. Aristotle attempts to reduce time to change and ultimately to magnitudes that undergo change, refusing to identify time and change, for “the alteration and change of anything is only in the thing that is altering... , but time is equally everywhere and with everything. Again, alteration may be faster or slower, but not time” (218bro—14). Nor is time apart from change: but whenever a thing is in motion, we measure that motion by a before and an after, and time is what comes in between these two moments. In Aristotle’s view there is no place for an independent, self-subsisting Time, apart from the things: “For it is by the moving thing that we become acquainted with the before and after in change, and the before and after, considered as countable, is the now. Here too, then, whatever it is that makes it the now is the same—it is the before and after in change” (219b24—-27).*° We notice things at first, and seeing them changing we become acquainted with change, and then, by marking that change with a before and an after, that is,

by marking its beginning and end, we become acquainted with time as the measure of that change. If time measures rest as well as change, one may raise the question whether there could be time without soul, that is, without a counting agency. Aristotle’s answer is negative because he thinks that the abstract numbers by which

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we count are the result of a mental operation of abstraction. According to Hussey,

Aristotle’s point is more than just a banal one that, in a world where nothing can count, nothing can ever get to be counted. It is, rather, that such a world would lack the primary objects of counting, viz. the abstract numbers [rather than the other kind of “countables,” viz., the concrete totalities that are counted—LN]. The effect is to cast doubt on the independent existence of numbers and quantities, not just time-measurements.*

Again, Valla should have welcomed such an attitude. He may even have found confirmation of his own notion of time as the life of things where Aristotle speaks about the effects of time: things “are acted upon in some respect by time, just as we are in the habit of saying ‘time wears things away’ and ‘everything grows old through time’ and ‘forgets because of time’-—but not ‘learns because of time’ or ‘becomes young’ or “becomes beautiful” (221a30—221br). This asymmetry with respect to the direction of time recurs in a later explanation: “It is in time that everything comes to be and ceases to be. . . . It is clear, then, that it is, in itself, responsible for ceasing-to-be rather than for comingto-be” (22b16—b20). While issues such as the asymmetry with respect to the direction of time and the reality of becoming are clearly not on Valla’s agenda, it is interesting to notice that his conception of time as the life of things—seen at least from a suitably general level—is not wholly foreign to Aristotle’s. For Aristotle, however, more than for Valla, this terminology of the action of time and its effects on things (ageing and dying, for instance) can only be metaphorical, as Aristotle utterly rejects the notion of time as a self-subsistent entity. Obviously, Valla’s limited knowledge of the Aristotelian account makes it hardly fruitful to press such a comparison much further. Purther, Valla’s description of time as the action or life of a thing does not

fit in exactly with the terminist account of Ockham. For Ockham, temporal terms constitute a particular mode of signifying individual substances and qualities. In arguing against the notion of time as a distinct entity inhering in substances, Ockham has specific realist positions in mind, held by Duns Scotus and his followers. The context of his discussion therefore does not resemble Valla’s. For Ockham, “time,” just like a host of other terms used in natural philosophy, is not an absolute term signifying a thing distinct from individual substances and inhering qualities but a connotative term, “signifying im recto motion and in obliquo the soul and its act,”** that is, signifying two really ex-

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 117 isting entities: the moving body and the soul that measures that motion according to the succession of the before and the after. Hence, propositions such as “Time is an entity” or “Time exists” should be resolved into propositions that signify things that change, “whence the soul measures how much another thing is moved.”®? Without entering into Ockham’s account of time, it is clear that his interpretation of Aristotle’s account has a wholly different focus from Valla’s.”°

That Valla’s discussion of time is difficult to place within the medieval debates of this category is also illustrated by his insertion in the third version of a typically medieval question: whether God can undo the past: “This alone Aristotle denies that God can do: that what has been done may be what has not been done, as if He can cause what must be done to have been done or to be done, and cannot cause the future to be the past or the present, and the present to be the past or what is yet to be” (153:19—23).°' Without further argument Valla simply asserts that God can undo the past as easily as

he can transform sweetness into bitterness and color into sound: “God must not be said to be incapable of these things. Should he not be able to rescind, as bad, those things which in holiness and wisdom He wished to happen or to exist in such and such a way? For certainly God can do those things which belong to his very wisdom and goodness.””? Medieval authors were divided over this question: Jerome, Augustine, and Aquinas had denied that God could undo the past, and most late-medieval authors, including Ockham, agreed with this position, often using the distinction between God’s potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata. Other authors, such as Peter Damiani, Anselm of Canterbury, Gilbert of Poitiers, Thomas Bradwardine, Gregory of Rimini, and Pierre d’Ailly, believed that God could undo the past. Because Valla’s contention is merely in the form of an obiter dictum, it is difficult to place him in any camp, and one can but agree with Monfasani that “Valla’s approach to this issue was, therefore, closer to the eleventh-century Damiani and the conservative fourteenth-century Bradwardine than it was to Ockhamists, Scotists or Thomists. Valla believed it to be ordinarily possible that God altered the past in accordance with his wisdom and goodness.”

“Pati” (Passion or Being Affected) We now turn to the category of passion or—to use a more precise translation—being affected or being done to, of which Aristotle gives the examples

118 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS “being cut” and “being burned” (Categories 2a3). Valla holds that this category is nothing other than feeling a passio, that is, acting in a certain way (154:2-3, 14-17). Valla warns us that the passive mood of a verb does not mean that it signifies passive things. More generally, grammatical terms such as “passive” and “active,” but also “accusative,” “ablative,” “dative,” “imperative,” “sub-

junctive,” and “supine,” should not be taken literally: the “accusative” has nothing to do with accusation, “supine” nothing with “lying supine,” etc. Thus to be acted upon is action “because to feel passzo from it is an action” (e.g., to understand danger), “or it is the passzo itself, and then it is a quality.” “Passion” should be said of animate beings only, Valla adds, since in insensible things such as stone, wood, or fire “there is no passion because nothing is suffered but they act according to their own natures.” Nature is their “efficient cause, or the cause of acting” (causa efficiens, sive causa agendi). They do not have “a final cause, because they lack the purpose of mind.”” Another point of criticism concerns the expression “being acted upon by an object,” which, according to Valla, is an abuse of words. We should rather say that the senses “receive” (or “get into contact with”) objects when feeling or looking at them. The use of the phrase “being acted upon by the object” should be restricted to those cases in which we suffer a painful sensation (too

loud a noise, too bright a vision, too much heat). When they exercise their normal functions, the senses must be said to act rather than to be acted upon. Valla’s equation of the category of being acted upon with action has been linked to Ockham’s statement that “action and passion signify the same act.” It will therefore be expedient to compare the two in more detail. Ockham’s treatment is on a par with that of the other accidental categories. As long as we take the category as one of terms rather than of things, we can employ this category as the one “which contains all such verbs as signify that something has been acted upon.””° As he writes in the Summa logicae: “T think that Aristotle holds that all mental verbs in the active voice belong to the category of action and that all mental verbs in the passive voice belong to the category of passio.”*’ He then lists the various uses of the verb pati.” In one sense it is used in the case where something receives something from something else. In this sense a subject suffers as does the matter receiving a form. In another sense the term is used more broadly to cover the first case as well as the case where something is moved without receiving something,

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 119 as in local motion. In a third sense the term is common to the first two cases as well as the case where something is caused or produced. In the third sense the verb marks a category.

For our purpose it is relevant to notice that Ockham does not have any problem with the philosophical use of the term “pati” and its derivatives. In his commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, he lists several features of the categories action and passion, explaining why Aristotle had designated these categories by verbs rather than nouns.” Moreover, Aristotle did not mean to speak about pati and actio as things distinct from absolute, individual things, but only as modes of predication. This is explained more fully in Ockham’s natural philosophical works. As long as we keep Aristotle's true intention in mind (at least on Ockham’s interpretation of it), we can accept statements such as “actio est in patiente” or “actio est passio.” The verb “to be” (esse) in such phrases should not be taken in the literal, strict sense (de virtute sermonis); it rather means praedicari (to be predicated).' The sentence “actio est passio” is literally false, but what Aristot-

le means by it is that “actio” and “passio” signify or cosignify the same thing; and likewise with other relative terms. Elsewhere Ockham writes that the terms “actio and “passio” signify the same act, but “actio” signifies that the act comes from the agent, while “passio ” signifies that it is in the patient:'°! Actio signifies the agent, although it signifies the act, and passzo signifies the

patient, although it signifies the same act, and thus they signify the same thing, although they signify at the same time distinct things. Hence calefacere and calefieri (to heat) are distinct terms and not synonymous, even though they signify the same thing, viz. warmth. But the first signifies that the warmth comes from the agent [calefiens], and the other that it is in the patient.

There are several other places where Ockham discusses these categories, but enough has been said to indicate the similarities and differences with Valla’s account. Both deny the existence of a final cause (causa finalis) in inanimate beings,'°* and both deny an independent existence of the category of passion; but while for Valla this implies a total lack of function for such a category, for Ockham it is a mode of signification and as such can be accepted. Because the categories do not reflect distinctions in the real world, the category of action does not have a different ontological status than passion: like the other acci-

120 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS dental categories, action and passion categorize terms by which we talk about individual things and their inhering qualities. In contrast, Valla accepts the category of action—together with substance and quality—because it refers to a really existing thing in the world. Furthermore, while Valla rejects the philosophical use of “pati” and “passio,” Ockham does not see any serious problem in using such terms in a nonordinary, philosophical sense (e.g., concepts such as “passions” or “passions” of time).'”

Action With passion being nothing else but action, we come to action at last, one of the three categories of Valla’s metaphysical picture of the world. In the first version it is defined as “a thing [7es] which comes to be either from substance or from quality,” such as to walk or to heat (365:21). Some verbs, such as to love, to feel sorrow, to lie, or to stand, seem to signify a quality such as being at rest.' This, however, is deceptive. As Valla writes, the apparent absence of an action does not make sleeping or lying less of an action; hence these verbs signify actions after all. In the later versions this brief account has been developed into a separate chapter that also deals with “motion and the substantive verb” (127-134). Valla begins by saying that he doubts whether “accidens” is a proper term to characterize action, since action does not “happen” (accidat) to something but “emanates from spirit, body, ‘animal’ [ex animali], quality.”'™ Writing does not “happen” to my fingers but is an action proceeding from them. After a long philological digression on words equivalent to or related to “action” (actus, opera, operatio, the Aristotelian terms evTedéyeta, Evepyeca, and dévvaps) and after criticizing the Aristotelian doctrine of potency and act, Valla returns to the question of what a particular word signifies: an action or a quality? While verbs, for instance, seem to signify an action, they often “indicate” (indicare) a quality, as “he writes well” indicates the quality of being a fine writer (130:18—21). Some verbs always signify a quality: “to be cold,” “to be warm,” “to redden,” etc. signify “I am cold,” “Iam warm,” “I am red,” etc. This is even “more true” (verius) of verbs such as “feeling happy,” “hop-

ing,” and “loving.” In some cases the signification may change from action into quality, as when a discourse (oratio), which is an action when spoken, becomes a quality when read. Valla reviews a number of words, e.g., “life,” “death” (dying being an action, death itself being a quality), “standing,” and “lying” (which, while being actions, signify a quality), and “rest” (a quality

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 121 rather than an action).'°° He then concludes that “in no thing there is rest or standstill” (nulla est in rebus cessatio et quies, 132:13). Since his examples involve

flames, stones, and water, action is almost equivalent to the life of a thing, its typical course. Hence, action not only is an individual act, carried out at one particular time, but also stands for the course of life that a thing leads, dependent on its nature (sua natura, 132:13). As such, action comes close to time, which Valla characterizes in much the same terms, and both concepts— time and action—seem to refer at once to something local and to something more general. Thus, whereas Valla’s rejection of the existence of final causes seems to imply a rejection of a teleological picture of the world, the emphasis he puts on the action of a thing—its “life” and “acts” in accordance with its “nature’—qualifies that rejection.

Conclusion: The Reductive Programs of Valla and Ockham We have now examined in considerable detail Valla’s attempt to reduce the ten Aristotelian categories to substance, quality, and action. He consistently tries

to show that terms ultimately refer to concrete, individual things, which we come to know by observing or mentally perceiving their qualities and actions. This common-sense picture of the world is hidden from view, Valla thinks, by the elaborate conceptual framework of the ten Aristotelian categories, and his first aim, therefore, is to dismantle this useless “superstruction” (to use a Hobbesian phrase),'°’ which complicates and confuses rather than enlightens and clarifies our understanding of the world. Yet Valla cannot completely free himself of the distinctions and terminology philosophers have introduced and employed, and this is hardly surprising given the fact that philosophy and grammar, as well as rhetoric, always had close ties with one another. Moreover, even an archcritic such as Valla cannot put into doubt everything simultaneously and has to start from some unquestioned assumptions: to place oneself entirely outside current traditions and paradigms is to ask for the impossible. Valla too maintains the terminology of categories and predicables, just as he attempts to transform the Porphyrian tree rather than give up entirely any attempt at classifying things according to a genus/species scheme.'” He does, however, go a long way in distancing himself from the current paradigms of school philosophy. This is, of course, what one would expect of a humanist, but Valla transcends the usual humanist polemics against the rebarbative and ungrammatical Latin of the scholastics. His critique, while being

122 THE ATTACK ON ARISTOTELIAN-SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS

that of an outsider, reviews the common assumptions and basic positions of his adversaries. But he refuses to meet them on common ground. As we have frequently observed, he usually resists arguing against specific doctrines, positions, and arguments advanced by the scholastics, limiting his attacks to the tags and obiter dicta culled from Aristotle, Boethius, Porphyry, and some unspecified scholastic sources.

It is therefore hazardous to link his approach with Ockhamist nominalism, as has often been done. We have had frequent occasion to compare Valla with Ockham in our discussion of the categories and the distinction between abstract and concrete terms, and we now may sum up and generalize these findings by way of conclusion. To begin with, we should remind ourselves of their different approaches toward the categories in general. Valla has no use for the categorical system, since for him the categories, which are said “to comprise all things,” refer to really existing things or aspects of things (substances, qualities, and actions). Ockham draws an entirely different conclusion from a similarly lean ontology. For him it is the realist position that in the end blurs the distinction between the categories and destroys the possibility of affirmative predication. As Moody explains:'® For if the accidental categories signified distinct things zm re, there would be no difference between them and qualitative terms with respect to mode of signification, and thus the different genera of accidental categories would differ only as one qualitative term differs from another—sci/. through indi-

cating a different quality. In that case there would be no more reason for putting “quantity” and “relation” in different categories, than for putting “color” and “heat” in different categories.

This would lead to “the destruction of the very idea of the categories.” But as long as we realize that the categories categorize terms by which we signify real substances or real inhering qualities in different ways, the categories can be maintained and used. It is therefore hardly surprising that the way Ockham develops his terministic interpretation of the categories differs significantly from Valla’s grammatical approach. As a logician Ockham is interested in the logic of natural language rather than in the grammatical features of one specific type of language, such as classical Latin. The primary language for Ockham is the mental language of our concepts, from which spoken and written language derive their meanings. As a nominalist who admits of only singular entities, Ockham

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 123 has to explain generality in thought and language without having recourse to universals, and he intended “to achieve just that by founding external language on mental language and then by explaining the representational capacities of the latter exclusively in terms of various meaning relations linking certain singular entities in the mind—the concepts—with their singular referents.”''!? Ockham has to approach the mental language by considering the features of external (i.e., spoken and written) language, in order to select those features that suffice to signify reality. It has been argued that Ockham transfers “more grammatical accidents from Latin to mental language than would be necessary to signify the way things are.”''' But even though in the final analysis mental language may bear close resemblance to natural language, it is clear that Ockham’s approach is vastly different from Valla’s. Indeed, conspicuously absent from Valla’s discussion is an explicit acknowledgment of the fundamental role that these natural conceptual signs play in Ockhamist semantics, nor does he take up the question, which was a standard issue in scholastic literature from the late thirteenth to the seventeenth century, whether words signify things or concepts.!! This leads also to another important difference between the two thinkers. Valla insists on the common linguistic usage—a notion that has been interpreted as referring to the classical Latin of the best authors. (We will come back to this notion in the general conclusion.) At many places in the Repastinatio, however, his appeal to common, natural language serves a broader aim than just making a grammatical point about classical Latin: to establish what “we usually say” (dicere solemus). Hence, he often bases his arguments on Quintilian’s triad of reason, linguistic usage, and authority (ratio, usus, auctoritas), with the clear implication that the three are not identical, even if they ideally coincide. As we have seen, he defends his reduction of the ten Aristotelian categories to substance, quality, and action by appealing to the “great authors” and then adds: “and this is also confirmed by linguistic usage (loquendi consuetudo) and by reason.” Valla did not uphold the classical Latin of the best authors as the only truly authoritative consuetudo. His arguments naturally make use of classical Latin and often depend on it, but they are not always about classical Latin. Even when he makes a point about classical Latin, he treats it as the common language. Hence, he rejects not only the abstractions and abstract terms of the philosophers but also any kind of discourse (e.g., mathematical and juridical language) that goes beyond common linguistic usage.'!°

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Working in the scholastic traditions and commenting on the Aristotelian corpus, Ockham has to develop a completely different attitude toward the auctoritates when faced with problematic, abstract terms. He is worried not so much about possible violations of the rules of classical Latin, but about the ontological commitments of his realist opponents when they deal with terms such as “lines,” “points,” “motion,” “succession,” and “instant” in the Aristotelian texts. The introduction of abstract terms can easily lead to the postulation of abstract entities: “some lean too much on the peculiarities of speech found in philosophy books. This is a source of error for many”; “such a production of abstract nouns from adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, verbs, and syncategorematic terms creates many difficulties and leads many into errors.”'!4 Ockham ascribes these errors to the distance that separates modern readers from the original context in which the terms were used and understood: ancient writers and their audience were well aware that terms such as

“instant,” “point,” “motion,” and “change” should not be taken literally (de virtute sermonis), but readers in later periods no longer realized this.''* He also

points to the common habit among ancient thinkers of adapting themselves to common ways of speaking: “So if you find in the works of Aristotle or the doctors that ‘scientia est de rebus’ [science is about things], you must say that they are using the significate for the sign according to their common way of conforming themselves to other people’s ways of speaking.”''® Further, Ockham mentions incorrect translations and the difficulty of translating Greek expressions into Latin as sources of misinterpretations.''” In order to avoid realist ontologies caused by mistaken semantic assumptions (viz., that any distinct noun corresponds to a distinct thing corresponding to it), he suggests that in modern times because of the errors which have arisen from the use of such abstract names it would be better for the sake of the unskilled if we did not use such abstract nouns in philosophy but only the verbs, adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions as they were originally instituted; and it would also be better if we did not make up such abstract terms and use them. Indeed, if the use of such abstract terms as “motus,” “mutatio,” “mutabilitas,” “simultas,” “successio,” “quies” and such expressions were cut out there would be relatively little difficulty with motion, change, time, instant and such issues.''®

Of course, he realizes that this solution is not feasible. Even Ockham cannot do without such terms (for instance, “time”): “because I must speak as do the

THE REDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES 125 many, I choose to use their language, never intending, however, that time is some one thing totally distinct from all permanent things.”'!? Technical language or technical uses of common words are therefore permitted provided that one interprets them in the correct way, and for this correct understanding knowledge of logic is crucial, for “those who are ignorant of logic uselessly fill innumerable volumes on these issues, inventing difficulties where none exist.” !7°

Ockham’s hermeneutic approach is thus entirely different from Valla’s. Ockham’s suggestion that we should stick to words as they were originally instituted is not motivated by aesthetic sensibilities or normative preferences for a particular form of Latin, but is a consequence of his campaign against realist interpretations of Aristotle. One of the results of these differences is that, whereas Valla would have no problems with perfectly classical Latin words such as “motus,” “successio,” “quies,” and “mutatio,” Ockham would have preferred to abolish these terms for philosophical reasons. The conclusion must be that there is no structural similarity between the thinking of Ockham and Valla. They may seem to reach a similar diagnosis of the patient, but in Ockham’s case the patient is a particular type of philosopher—the realist—while for Valla it is scholastic philosophy tout court that is sick. The remedies they offer differ widely: Ockham appeals to logic and the mental language of our concepts, Valla to linguistic usage and conventions in Latin. To what fundamental differences this led we have studied in the first part of this book.

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PART TWO

Soul, Nature, Morality, and God

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4 Soul and Nature: A Critique of Aristotelian Psychology and Natural Philosophy

One of Valla’s main objections against the tree of Porphyry is, as we have seen, that bare substance does not exist and hence cannot come at the top of the tree. A thing is always already substance qualified by qualities and actions.

Another serious problem with the tree is the place of man, who consists of incorporeal and corporeal substance, whereas the tree strictly separates the two. Valla therefore adds a third class of “animate things’—a “genus by itself.”

Nevertheless, it is their constituent parts to which Valla devotes most attention, starting with incorporeal substances—God, the human soul, and the souls of animals—and then corporeal body. In this chapter we will study Valla’s account of incorporeal substance, focusing on the human and animal soul, postponing the study of the divine substance to the next chapter. Not surprisingly, Valla takes issue with the Aristotelian account of the human soul as the form of the body, preferring an Augustinian view of the soul as a substance by itself that consists of memory, reason, and will. The Augustinian view characterizes late-scholastic Franciscan voluntarism, and it is not surprising that on this score, too, Valla’s name has been bracketed with that of Ockham. This claim will obviously be a point of concern in this chapter.' Valla is considered to be not only a follower of Ockham but also a precursor of Renaissance naturalistic philosophy.’ It may come as a surprise to see

130 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD the champion of a transformation of the trivial arts include a lengthy chapter—indeed, one of the longest chapters in the book—on natural philosophy (“On body”). But Valla himself had signaled that his reformation of Aristotelian metaphysics and dialectics would have to include moral and natural philosophy (7:29), and, because of his growing acquaintance with Aristotle's texts, he was able to add substantially to this chapter in the last revision, at which he

was still working by the time of his death.’ Since the scientia de anima was part of natural philosophy, it is appropriate to include a discussion of Valla’s critique of Aristotelian natural philosophy in this chapter.‘ The structure of Valla’s treatment of the soul underwent some changes. In the first version of the Repastinatio, the chapter on the soul (chapter 14) includes a long section on the virtues, which in the later versions becomes a separate chapter (10) coming after that of the soul (9). In the later versions, Valla quotes extensively from Aristotle's works, which he had studied in more detail in the intervening years. The third recension testifies to his deepened knowledge of Greek with digressions on terms such as C@ov, KTiC@, and Ndéyos.° Moreover, the second and especially the third recension treat some new issues. Valla’s basic positions, however, remain unaltered. In what follows, an attempt has been made to distill these basic positions by reorganizing Valla’s often untidy discussion.

Souls of Plants, Animals, and Man Valla’s basic conviction is that the soul is a much more noble thing than the hylomorphic account of Aristotle implies, at least as Valla understands that account. He stresses, therefore, on various occasions the soul’s dignified nature, its immortality, unity, autonomy, and superior position vis-a-vis the body and vis-a-vis animal soul (59-73), comparing it to the sun’s central place in the cosmos (71:28). However, this does not mean that the animal soul lacks dignity. In fact, one of his main criticisms of Aristotle is that the latter believed that animals lack a rational soul.° According to Valla, animals too have a soul, though a mortal one, for they too possess memory, reason, and will. (We will come to the soul’s faculties below.) But if the difference between the human soul and the soul of animals is one of degrees, why does the human soul survive death, while the souls of animals, which have the same capacities, do not? Valla’s answer is simply that God created immortal souls for men, as the biblical account of God’s infusing spirit in man shows (68:20—69:8). In an

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 131 earlier passage, however, he had claimed that the souls of animals are substances that are created out of nothing, with divine aid, rather than educed “from the potency of matter” (ex potentia materie) as philosophers claimed (65:13-G6). Valla therefore still needs a criterion for distinguishing animal from human souls.

Why does Valla insist on this point of animals having a soul too? Presumably it is not out of love for animals, but rather because it enables him to contradict Aristotle and to set him against his favorite authorities, Cicero and Quintilian. Quintilian, for instance, considered speech as the main difterence between man and animals, arguing that animals had “some degree of understanding and thought.” Valla quotes Quintilian and adds that the various meanings of the term “logos”’—speech or language and reason—have been confused by later “captious philosophers” who thought that “adoya” meant “without reason” while it initially only meant “without speech”—as we can see, Valla adds, from the etymology of Aéyos from N€ya (I speak, I say) (70:22—71:19).8 And he goes on to try to establish a similar connection for the Latin equivalent ratio, this time not with “speaking” or “saying” (as in Greek), but with “opining” or “deeming,” suggesting that vatzo comes from the supine of the verb veor, which means “to opine firmly”; hence something is called a rata res when it is “firm and stable,” and we speak of “the stable courses (rati

cursus) of the planets and stars” and “ratum habeo” (I hold it for sure). The verb “to deem” may perhaps come from the noun es, Valla speculates, because we draw our opinion both from the thing itself and from truth. But now we do not talk about reason as a deemed opinion (even if Cicero in his De natura deorum simply says that opinion is the same as reason, stating that ‘every opinion is a ratio, and a good reason when it is true and a bad one when it is false’) but as the mind’s power to think up such an opinion.’

The suggestion seems to be that a direct consideration of a thing leads to reason in terms of a well-deemed opinion, and that reason in the sense of merely thinking up opinions, without the direct acquaintance of the thing, is a derivative or secondary sense of the term. It has been argued that the etymological excursion shows how innovative Valla was in replacing ratio by oratio: truth is considered a property of language rather than a metaphysical relationship between concepts and objects, or, to paraphrase Camporeale’s interpretation, without words, there are no things (“non si da ves senza sermo’ ): whatever is, is

what we speak about. Things come into existence only when spoken about,

132 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD and these etymological excursions, implausible as they may be from a modern point of view, show that for Valla the capacity to speak (sermocinalis) distinguishes men from brute animals rather than the predicate “rational” (rationalis).'°

It is debatable whether we can take this interpretation that far. Truth, as we have seen in Chapter 2, is defined by Valla, traditionally enough, as knowledge of the thing; it is “a quality of the mind.” Moreover, in the etymological argument developed here, vatio is connected with opining, which is not primarily a linguistic activity; one can have opinions and beliefs without expressing them, and only after one has expressed one’s view does truth in the sense of saying what one truly believes come into play. This is indeed what Valla himself states in his remarks on truth. Moreover, even though he stresses, in line with the rhetorical tradition from Isocrates to Quintilian, that the possession of language is what distinguishes man from animals, in his discussion of the predicables and definition he is content to give the usual definition of man as a rational animal. What is perhaps more innovative is Valla’s rejection of the concept of instinct that Aquinas and other scholastics had used to characterize the difference between animals and human beings. To distinguish reason from instinct, Valla writes, is “to take shelter under tricks of terminology” (67:19; 409:19 —20).!! Instinct is nothing more than a sort of impulse (zmpetus), which also

men possess when they are excited; hence they are called “instincti.” This impulse arises from the wi/Z and hence it would be of no help to those who argue that the presence of instinct entails a lack of reason (67:22-24). Aristotle was wrong, therefore, continues Valla, to argue that animals and young children lack the power to choose (e/ectio) because they lack reason. Valla’s critique is unfair, however, since Aristotle clearly thought that reason develops as children grow older, appetite being the primary faculty in the early years of their life. Elsewhere Valla himself gives a quotation from Aristotle's Politics to that effect. ! Valla also argues for a rational soul in animals because he wants to get rid

of the idea of three or four different souls in creatures—one of the central doctrines of Aristotelian psychology. Among scholastics there was an extensive debate on whether the expressions “vegetative,” “sensitive,” and “rational soul” did not jeopardize the soul’s unity. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, held that in human beings there is only one soul substantially, a soul that is rational, sensitive, and nutritive.'? Others were “pluralists”; that is, they believed

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 133 that a substance can have more than one substantial form. Ockham, for instance, believed that the rational soul is only the principle of intellectual activity and volition, and that there is a separate, distinct principle of sensation: the sensitive soul.'* Valla’s criticism, however, does not seem to aim at any particular doctrine, nor does he seem to consider a defense along Thomist lines. He rejects out of hand, without much discussion, the existence of “vegetative,

sensitive, imaginative and rational souls” (409:3-5).'° For him there is only one soul, which has three capacities—memory, reason, and will. Its noble and autonomous nature ensures its independence from material bodies: it cannot arise out of matter; hence it must have a divine origin. Valla’s position has two important consequences: animals are upgraded and plants downgraded. The animal soul has the same constitution as the human soul; hence, it is said to be a substance that is created, with divine aid, out of nothing rather than out of preexisting material. Valla claims that all schools of philosophers have denied this (65:7). By excluding the vegetative aspect, he denies—against Aristotle—that plants and trees have souls. But perhaps, one may object, Aristotle called them C@ov (living), from C@y (life) rather than from “soul”? This will not do, says Valla; they should not be called “living” because they are not living things, “and no one to my mind has called them thus before” (60:6). Here Valla is too sweeping, since Plato applied the

word C@ov to plants in describing them as animate and sensitive (Timaeus 77A-B). Aristotle’s innovation was to deny plants sensitive life, but he allotted them a soul on account of the life-giving capacities they exhibit: they feed, grow into and maintain an organic structure, and reproduce that structure. The word C@a was his standard word for animals.'® Valla is correct, however, in stating that Stoics and Epicureans generally denied an “ensouled” principle to plants because they do not have appetite, soul, and reason (60:25),!” but the question remains how plants live if not by the presence of a soul. Valla’s argument drives him almost as far as to accept the conclusion that they actually do

not live, but he seems to hesitate, perhaps because this would contradict the ordinary usage of the word “live,” for it could not have escaped him that we certainly do speak of plants as “living.” Hence, if they must be said to live at all, it can only be said “metaphorically” (metaphorice, 60:7), just as we use “living” (vivus) in other metaphorical expressions, such as “eau de vie” (aqua viva) and “glowing sulfur” (sulphur vivum). References to plants as “living” in the Bible and in Gregory of Nyssa (“they do live but they do not sense”) lead him

to conclude that plants may be said to live not by having a soul but by their

134 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD viriditas (liveliness or power to grow). In support he quotes St. Paul’s words

“[Thou] fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die,” by which St. Paul, however, means something else. If by viriditas Valla means the power to grow, as the quotation purportedly suggests, his position comes close to Aristotle’s after all, who had assigned souls to plants because of their capacity to feed and reproduce their organic structure.'® Valla, however, has a completely different view of soul, to which we now turn.

The Three Capacities of the Soul: Memory, Reason, and Will In Valla’s Augustinian view, the soul consists of memory, reason, and will." The capacities are closely connected to each other—one of the reasons that animals too possess reason, for no one would deny that they have memory and will (68:17). Memory comprehends and retains things, reason (which is “identical to the intellect,” 410:22) examines and judges them, and will desires or rejects them (66:19—67:19; 410:20—33). Valla simply speaks of “things” (ves)

that memory perceives and retains and that reason judges. There is no mentioning of phantasms or species or other kinds of intermediaries, though of course it would be difficult to hold that the various capacities of the soul— memory and reason, for instance—can work without any kind of intermediary. (We will come back to this issue.) Memory is fundamental, being the “mother” of reason or “the soul’s life” (73:20—21; 410: 21-23). Wisdom is therefore called the daughter of experience (usus) and memory. These are ancient topoi,”’ though arguably the typically humanist orientation on human experience and practice may have given them

a new coloring. More importantly, Valla describes the capacities (which he also calls powers, vires) in physiological terms, taking over, without much discussion, some traditional points. The body receives its powers and hence its movement from memory (which includes sense perception) (72:26—73:3); the region of the heart constitutes the sensory center.”! From reason the body has

“its ingenious arrangement of humors and attendant items” (solertam illam humorum ac ceterorum distributionem, 71:23); from the will the body gets its heat. Valla is particularly fond of the analogy between the soul and the sun. Just as the sun has three qualities—vibration, light, and ardor—so the soul has memory, reason, and will. The soul’s activities are compared to those of the vibrating and radiant beams of the sun by which things are grasped, illuminated, and heated (71:25—30; 410:14-30).”” There are some echoes of Lac-

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 135 tantius’s De opificio Dei, which is quoted a few times elsewhere in the Repastinatto.”°

Though memory is called the soul’s life and mother of the intellect, in his chapter on the virtues Valla stresses that there is no functional hierarchy between the capacities. One and the same soul comprehends and retains, investigates and judges, and desires or hates, and no capacity rules over the other (75:8-19). Valla’s point is explicitly addressed to those who place the intellect above the will. However, he continues to talk about the faculties as autono-

mous functions when he states that it is the will, with the aid of memory, that teaches the intellect rather than the other way around.” The intellect can even be hindered by the body, that is, by bodily affections such as drunkenness, headache, or tired limbs. The argument would not upset scholastic philosophers, who of course acknowledged this obvious, physiological fact, but for

whom the question then became important what that dependency tells us about the ontological category in which we have to place the soul.” A related question pertains to the relationship between the faculties or powers of the soul and the soul itself: is the soul to be equated with its powers, or are the powers different among themselves and different from the soul? Augustinians had argued that the difference is merely a verbal one, the soul being identical with its powers, which are only different names for its diverse actions. Following Avicenna and Averroes, many scholastic authors accepted a real distinction between the soul and its powers. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas described the relationship in terms of substance and its qualities or essence and its accidents. Aquinas, e.g., speaks about the soul’s powers as its properties (proprietates): there are real differences among the soul’s several

powers as well as between any such power and the soul. Duns Scotus also thinks that the soul differs from its faculties in reality, using his principle of formal distinction to argue that the faculties are formally distinct yet make up a unity. By contrast, Ockham argues that there is no real difference between the powers of the soul and the soul itself, but this was a minority position not even followed by the archnominalist John Buridan.” Valla does not explicitly pose the question, but he clearly speaks of the relationship between the soul

and its three capacities in terms of substance and its qualities (65:8—10; 65:25-303 365:13—-7; 410:20). Although the qualities cannot be absent from the substance, they are not identical with it. Thus though Valla’s general approach to the soul is more Augustinian than Aristotelian, on this point he seems closer to Thomas Aquinas, although he would probably find it difficult to accept the

136 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD latter’s argument that the faculties or powers of the soul are nonessential features in the soul, since he himself had called the powers of the soul “natural” qualities, by which he seems to mean “essential” as opposed to “non-natural” (i.e., “accidental”) qualities (113:8-11). As Aquinas had argued: “It is clear that the soul’s powers, whether active or passive, are not said directly in respect of anything substantial but rather something accidental: to be actually understanding and to be actually sensing are not substantial being but accidental. . . . Hence it is clear that the essence of the soul is not the immediate principle of its operations, but it operates mediately through accidental principles. Accordingly, the soul’s powers are not the very essence of the soul, but properties of it.”’” But it is unlikely that Valla took a conscious stand in the medieval debate, as he does not attempt to reconcile his view that the qualities of the

soul are different from the soul with his other statement that one and the same soul perceives, judges, and wills.”8

Immortality and Self-movement In the later versions of the Repastinatio, having studied the works of Aristotle in more detail, Valla gives some long quotations from De anima, the Politics, and the De generatione animalium (62:9-64:19 is a concatenation of quotations, virtually all from Aristotle). Aristotle had said that “the soul of man is divided into two parts, one of which has a rational principle in itself, and the other, not having a rational principle in itself, is able to obey such a principle,”

that is, reason and appetite. The latter is prior to the former, as we can see from young children: “anger and wishing and desire are implanted in children

from their very birth, but reason and understanding are developed as they grow older.”? Reason survives death, but appetite dies with the body. Valla also gives some long quotations from De anima, including the crucial statement that “the soul is inseparable from its body, or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has parts)” (413a4-5), and the definition of a soul as the substance (ousia) in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentially within it (“necessarium animam usiam esse, ut speciem corporis naturalis potentia vitam habentis’”)—each word of which, as one recent scholar has said, became in scholasticism “a site of contention, a ‘point of heresy’ dividing one school from another.”*° Valla obviously does not want to deal with such “sites of contention.” For him it suffices to dismiss Aristotle’s statement that the soul has parts—a ratio-

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 137 nal eternal part and an irrational corruptible one (De anima I.1-2)—as if the soul is a composite thing of which one part functions as a vessel (vas) of the other.*! Aristotle’s dictum that what comes into being in time must also perish in time is attacked because it leads to the following dilemma: either the soul perishes with the body, or it is not generated and thus existed before its embodiment. Both positions are false, for the soul is both generated and eternal (64:30—65:2; 65:29). Valla here points to a serious problem that all commentators on Aristotle had to face. If the soul (or at least its rational part) is eternal, why does it not lack a beginning in time as well? In scholastic terms: if the soul is said to be eternal, why only a parte post (1.e., with a beginning but no end) and not also a parte ante, having no beginning either? Medieval scholars used one of their standard devices, the distinction between proprie and improprie, to circumvent the dilemma: the human intellect is generated, but not in the ordinary way (i.e., out of previous matter); it is generated zmproprie—that is, created—and hence may be said to have a beginning in time but no end. In addition, they often admitted that both positions—the soul’s mortality and its immortality—can be supported by texts from Aristotle.” Valla occasionally seems to admit this too (65:30—66:18), but the double nature of the Aristotelian soul, as if the two parts are glued together (conglutinat, 61:19), forming almost a bianima (62:6), constitutes a hermeneutic obstacle that Valla is happy not to solve in order to bring home his critical point. As so often, Valla’s pars destruens is better developed than the pars construens, and it is not easy to gauge his position. If the soul is a unified substance, it survives death as a whole, including its capacities. He explicitly maintains that souls of the deceased can have their affects or emotions (nec carere affectibus, 64:25). But then, it is not easy to see why only men are endowed with an immortal soul, since Valla also says—as we have seen—that the souls of animals are substances that are not created out of the potency of matter (potentia materie) but out of nothing, with divine aid. Further, the capacities are closely connected to the body, but Valla does not say anything about the condition of the separated soul after death, except that such a condition zs possible, as we learn from “Homer and all the magicians [magos]” (64:23).

The soul’s divine origin leads Valla to reject the Aristotelian notion of the soul as a tabula rasa. The soul is not blank but is already inscribed or painted

(picta) at birth, namely, in the image of God, as testified by the “inborn” knowledge of Adam and Eve and also by that of young children who died be-

138 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD fore their soul could receive marks, yet “who know and understand [sapiunt et intelligunt].”*? Apparently this kind of wisdom or inborn knowledge is different from the knowledge we gradually acquire in life, since this latter knowledge is, as Valla stresses, the product of memory and experience. Yet, since the

immediate context of his remark on the tabula rasa is the recognition that knowledge is acquired only gradually—in contrast to virtues and vices, which

can be acquired and lost in a moment's time—it is not clear whether Valla himself draws a distinction between different kinds of knowledge.*4 In the third version Valla discusses the soul’s movement (72:2—26). He

follows Aristotle in saying that the heart is the soul’s location. The heart receives its vibration, perception, and heat from the soul; hence the heart is moved more than any other part of the body and is responsible for the diftusion of heat throughout the body, causing bodily effects. This does not mean, however, that the soul itself moves; Valla immediately rejects Plato’s view that it does so and is even more critical of Aristotle’s view that it does not move at all. Valla’s point is that we should not apply terms such as “rest” and “movement’ to spirits or souls and God at all, except perhaps metaphorically. Only sensible things can be said to move or rest.*? Accordingly, the Aristotelian conception of God as the First Mover is also rejected (72:15).

Valla points here to what we now would call a category mistake. Of course, he was not the first to draw attention to the metaphorical nature of some philosophical concepts. Aristotle subjected Plato’s theory of Forms to this kind of criticism; indeed, Plato himself—in the person of the aged Parmenides—had already done so in the Parmenides; Thomas Aquinas and later Aristotelians knew that matter cannot be literally said to desire anything; and Ockham noticed that the terminology of goals can only be applied metaphorically to inanimate objects.*° Highly sensitive to the proper use of words, Valla made several similar points, e.g., that the vocabulary of desire should not be applied to form and matter, that there is no “passio” and there are no goals in inanimate things, that the senses are not being acted upon (pati) by objects, while, on the other hand, he was not averse to ascribing life and death to inanimate things. Valla’s criticism notwithstanding, Aristotle certainly was aware of the danger of treating the soul as a thing. Before presenting his own theory of the soul in book II of the De anima, Aristotle had raised a number of pertinent questions in book I, criticizing Plato for taking the soul to be a magnitude—not unlike the kind of criticism offered by Valla. Aristotle, however, realized how difficult it is to think without images; we usually think of non-

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 139 quantitative or indefinite things in terms of quantitative or definite ones.*” Ironically, Valla accuses Aristotle and the entire peripatetica natio of asking us to imagine things of which we cannot form an image, such as prime matter or a form without matter, a line without breadth, and other mathematical ficta.*® In spite of his warning not to apply terms such as “rest” and “motion” to the spiritual soul, Valla’s own discussion of the soul reveals how difficult it is not to speak about the soul in “earthly,” material terms. On his account the soul can become angry, is at rest, resides in the senses, and diffuses its power throughout the body.

Sensation Since Valla rejects a plurality of souls (vegetative, sensitive, and rational) with

their various faculties and powers, it is not surprising that he does not show much interest in the complicated process of sensation. For him it suffices to say that one and the same soul perceives, judges, and wills. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Valla distinguishes between those qualities that are perceived by the outer senses and those that are perceived by the soul only, but how we should understand this process of mental or corporeal perception remains vague. What we are told elsewhere is that the qualities of extramental objects are perceived by the corporeal senses, which function as the “seat of

the soul” or, rather, as the seat of its powers or potencies (potencie).*® It is memory, as the first capacity of the soul, that sees, hears, tastes, smells, and touches outer objects (72:26—73:3), but Valla does not explain how this happens.

Even if he were acquainted with the details of the scholastic scientia de anima, it is unlikely—given his aversion to the reification of scholastic entities and processes—that Valla would have wanted to offer an alternative explanation of sensation and cognition. Thomas Aquinas, for example, had enumerated five kinds of powers: vegetative, sensitive, appetitive, locomotive, and intellectual.*° The vegetative powers of the soul include nutrition, growth, and reproduction; the sensitive include the functions of the five exterior senses as well as the four or five inner senses (common sense, imagination, the estimative or cogitative power, and memory, all of which are located in the brain). Intellectual knowledge is the result of a process of abstraction that starts with sense perception, giving rise to images or phantasms. These phantasms, in their turn, are grasped by the active intellect, which abstracts the form from

140 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD the image, producing in the possible intellect a form (intelligible species) by means of which intellectual knowledge is achieved. The details of this process and the roles of the various powers were intensely debated in the universities. Because of its middle function between the lower process of sensation and the higher process of intellectual cognition, the imagination had an important role in providing the intellect with images.*! Not surprisingly, Valla has no truck with all these faculties or functions, and returns, as we have seen, to the Augustinian picture of the soul as a wholly spiritual and immaterial substance made in the image of God and consisting of memory, intellect, and will. Of course, the Augustinian view remained influential in the later Middle Ages, especially among Franciscans, but then it was combined with Aristotelian concepts and distinctions such as the active and the passive intellect. Valla does not show that he was familiar with these late-medieval scholastic debates on the soul, and his simplification of the processes of sensation and cognition is mainly achieved by neglecting them. As already noted, he rejects without much discussion the various functions of the soul (vegetative, sensitive, imaginative, intellectual), which would entail, he thinks, a plurality of souls. He briefly discusses the five exterior senses but is not at all inclined to treat the physiological aspects of sensation. The term “species” (whether sensible or intelligible) does not occur at all. The Aristotelian sensus communis—which the medieval commentary tradition on the De anima had viewed as one of the internal senses, alongside imagination (sometimes distinguished from phantasia), memory, and the vis aestimativa (foresight and prudence)—is mentioned in order to be rejected without further argument (73:3—4).“ Imagination and the vis aestimativa are not mentioned at all, while memory, as the principal capacity of the soul, now seems to have absorbed all the functions that scholastics had divided among separate faculties of the sensitive soul. What may have provoked Valla’s anger about the traditional picture is the seemingly passive role allotted to the soul in perception and knowledge: the soul seems to come only at the very end of a long chain of transmission that starts with outer objects and ends with a passive and receptive tabula rasa. For Valla the soul is an autonomous, self-governing principle that actively reaches out to outer objects rather than passively receiving them. Already in antiquity,

philosophers had differed on the question whether it was the power of the senses that actively go out to meet the objects (a position known as extramission) or, vice versa, whether the objects send forth their images to the (passive) senses. In another passage Valla explicitly takes a position in this age-old de-

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 141 bate (154:29-156:22; 446:1-27). In the first version of the Repastinatio, he says that, given the presence of the soul in the senses, it is much easier for it to extend, by way of the rays of the eye, to colors of objects than for colors to come

to the eyes. Valla admits that many things can be said in favor of the other, intramissionist view—the concave structure of the ear or the spzritus in the nostrils by which odor is attracted—but he says he will not discuss the matter in more detail. In the later versions he clearly favors extramission because otherwise a person with sharp vision would not see [aliter non cerneret] better from a distance than someone with poor eyesight when there was little difference in discerning between the two when close up... . Nor are colors and shapes carried [feruntur] to the vision [vzsus] by help of brightness, but come to the eye as though to a mirror. For thereby those images [zmagines] are perceived in the eye which the eye itself does not see in itself but it sees what it discerns not in the air (for in which part of the air?) but in its own place, better or worse according to its own powers of projecting its glance, and not without the help of the brightness. Something similar can be said

about sound.*

In spite of some obscurity of phrasing, Valla seems to suggest that the soul emits its rays through the eyes, and the rays are then reflected by an object and return to the eye. Being part of the soul, the eye functions as a kind of mirror. The soul then does not see the rays or images carried through the medium, but sees the object in its own place, and the sharper and brighter the rays, the better the object is seen.““ As supporters of this extramissionist view, Valla

mentions Lactantius and Macrobius. The former had stated that God had covered the eyes with a transparent membrane, “so that the images of objects placed before them, being reflected as in a mirror, might penetrate to interior perception.“ Arguing against the Epicurean position, Lactantius holds that we do not have to wait till the images of the objects fall upon our eyes, but “we see at the very same moment,” since the power of sight of the eyes rests upon the “intention of the mind.” Macrobius has a more extensive discussion of sense perception in his Saturnalia: “The pupil of the eye, whichever way you turn it, sends out its own innate ray of light in a straight line; if that emanation, which belongs to the eyes from which it flows, finds light in the air that surrounds us, it passes straight through that light until it meets an object.“ When the ray of light proceeding from the eye has met an object, the “task of ‘seeing’ is complete [zmpletur officium videndi|, but, in order that the object seen may be identified, the eyesight reports the visible appearance to

142 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD reason, and reason, by calling in the help of memory, recognizes the object.”*” This suggests that Macrobius does not envisage a reflection of the outgoing ray back to the eye, nor does he compare the eye with a mirror.

It is clear that Valla’s remarks must be seen against the background of this debate, and his own account is much indebted to these sources, which he mentions by name. Ignoring Macrobius’s statement that the theory of extramission applies only to the sense of vision, Valla writes that a similar account is true of sound, even though he realizes that many things argue against it. But he does not pause to reflect on it. If he had done so, he would have quickly seen that it runs counter to much of what he had said in his chapter on sound and the sense of hearing, for example, that loud noises such as thunder can split stones and kill animals; that sound is a quality that arises out of collision; that sound arises in solid material (earth, water, solid bodies) but only becomes hearable when “it comes forward into the air’; that sound can be heard even when the action that produces the sound has ceased, which seems to suggest a propagation of sound through the air and into the air ventricles of the ear, and so forth. The direct context of Valla’s remarks, then, is the classical debate on intromission versus extramission rather than, as scholars have suggested, the scholastic controversy about the existence and nature of sensible species.” Valla does not discuss the Aristotelian faculty psychology and provides us with

a much simpler account of direct perception by the soul (or rather by one of its potencies: the senses). Nor is there is any mention of “sensible species” or “phantasmata’—crucial terms in the medieval debates on the nature and function of these qualities. Indeed, the scholastic debate about the existence and nature of sensible species is not to be identified with the discussion about the direction of sense perception: even Ockham, who rejects sensible species, does not question the fact that objects act on the senses with efficient causation to produce cognition (that is, intuitive cognition according to Ockham’s theory).*° To see more clearly the differences between Valla and the scholastic debate, let us look at Ockham’s position, because it is this position that has been linked to Valla’s.

Valla and Ockham on Sensation Ockham is quite explicit about the immediacy of sense perception: “a thing itself is seen or apprehended immediately, without any intermediary between

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 143 itself and the [cognitive] act.”*' Ockham’s rejection of intermediaries seems to have been motivated by epistemological reasons. The postulation of intermediaries—be it the species of scholastics, the “ideas” of seventeenth-century philosophers, or the “sense data’ of twentieth-century analytical philosophers —always gives rise to skeptical rejoinders: How do we know whether the intermediary species, quality, or idea is an adequate representation of its object? Ockham may have wanted to circumvent these skeptical rejoinders by distinguishing between intuitive cognition, which gives us direct and correct information about the existence of an object, and abstract cognition, which abstracts from judgments of existence or nonexistence.” This leaves the processes that yield intuitive knowledge, however, unexplained, but, as Stump writes: “Proponents of the distinction seem to want to claim that for a certain sort of cognition . .. there are 70 mechanisms or processes. There is just direct epistemic contact between the cognizer and the thing cognized.”** Direct cognition cannot be explained precisely because it is direct and defies further analysis. Valla would have agreed with this last claim, but it is important to realize that, unlike Ockham, he does not seem to be motivated by epistemological considerations: it is the soul’s noble and autonomous nature that, he feels, is jeopardized by an intromission theory of perception. Moreover, Ockham’s theory is not so simple as his rejection of intermediaries suggests. What he has gained by his rejection of species he loses by having to introduce different kinds of intuitive and abstract cognitive acts as well as distinct kinds of qualities imposed on the sense organs. Thus sensory intuitive cognition in the sensitive soul causes an intellective intuitive cognition of the same object—even though we are not aware of apprehending the same object twice over. The rational soul makes abstract cognitive judgments by which the intellect apprehends a universal; the sensitive soul is not capable of such acts of judgment. The apprehending of the universal thus ultimately derives, on Ockham’s account, from the cognized thing that acts on the senses, occasioning a complicated process of acts. As Stump summarizes:» If an abstractive judgment is formed at all, the first one formed is caused in its turn by the intuitive cognition. In this way, the states of the intellect are determined, ultimately, by something outside the cognizer. . . . For Ockham, the intellect does not actively extract anything in perception. Rather, in perceiving, the intellect is acted upon, and its acts are caused to be what they are by the way reality is because some real extramental object or quality causes it to be in a certain state.

144 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD Valla has a much simpler picture: it is one and the same soul—not two as in Ockham—that perceives, judges, and wills. He does not introduce a distinction equivalent to Ockham’s intuitive and abstract cognition, let alone a multiplicity of acts. Nor does Valla tell us how universals are formed out of sense data. In short, there is no evidence that he was “undoubtedly referring” to the scholastic debates about sensation and cognition.” Valla’s simplification of the Aristotelian-scholastic account of the soul may superficially remind us of some aspects of Ockham’s, but it is in fact entirely different in character and inspiration.

Valla’s Critique of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy Simplification is also a feature of Valla’s critique of Aristotelian natural philos-

ophy—a critique presented as a necessary preparation for the study of language and argumentation in the second and third books of the Repastinatio.*/ Even though its direct influence was limited, it has nevertheless been suggested that Valla’s critique may be regarded as a significant contribution to the ultimate demise of the Aristotelian paradigm. Trinkaus, for example, has stressed Valla’s empiricism, his appeal to common sense and observation, assigning to Valla a position in the tradition of dissident thinkers within “the dominant natural philosophy of his own age, the late middle ages and the Renaissance.”*® According to the editor of the Repastinatio, Gianni Zippel, Valla foreshadows and anticipates Renaissance naturalist thinkers such as Bernardino Telesio and Francis Bacon in that “his interest in natural philosophy is based on a very precise inductive and experimental approach in science.”” While admitting that its direct influence in the Renaissance was limited, Riccardo Fubini too places the Repastinatio in the tradition of “the road of modern rationalist empiricism, which only much later in the age of Bacon and Descartes, would become the ambitious foundation of the New Science of

knowledge.” If we mean by empiricism that the senses are the only source of knowledge, as the first declared empiricist Epicurus maintained, then Valla was cer-

tainly not an empiricist.°’ He would rather have sided with Leibniz, who commented dryly on the empiricist’s traditional credo that “nothing is in the intellect which was not previously in the senses” by adding “except reason.” As we have seen, Valla endorses an Augustinian picture of the soul, according to which the soul has a power of its own that takes precedence over things in the

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 145 outside world. In fact, speculation about things that we cannot see and feel is called “vain” because it leads to fictions, abstractions, and empty concepts. Here Valla comes close to the prejudice against natural philosophy that we find, e.g., in Petrarch, Salutati, and Bruni, on grounds that it is “useless.” Valla’s injunction not to transcend the limits of the senses and the imagination— since whatever we cannot imagine does not exist, and whatever exists should be imaginable—aftects the job of natural philosophers in two ways. They should not posit things that cannot even be imagined, such as forms without matter or matter without form, nor should they speculate about things that do exist but about which it is impossible to know anything, at least in this life, such as the substance of the stars and the heavens: “Who is so mad that he dares to say what the heavens are, since there is nothing the like among us, nor are we able to discern it by touch or any other sense?” (98:6). In the first version Valla gives a list of traditional notions that he rejects without further ado, much in the line of Lactantius’s attack on “pagan” science: the Ptolemaic system of spheres and epicycles,” the fiery element, the five zones of the earth, that the sea is higher than the land, the sphericity of the earth, the transformation of the elements into one another, and the art of astrology (422:6-13). By the time Valla revised his text, he had a much better, though still highly selective, acquaintance with the Aristotelian corpus and tried to give some arguments for his positions. One of the leading principles that govern Valla’s discussion is that daily

observation should guide our explanations of natural phenomena, for how can we ever confirm or refute an opinion about things that transcend the boundary of sense? (98:17). Frequently appealing to daily experience and observations, Valla rejects or qualifies a number of fundamental tenets of Aristotelian natural philosophy, for instance, that movement is the cause of warmth, that a movement is always caused by another movement, that elements can be transformed into one another, that each has its own proper qualities (fire has heat and dryness, air has heat and humidity, etc.), that there are pure ele-

ments, that the combination of heat and humidity is a sufficient condition for the generation of life.® Valla often uses reductio ad absurdum: if Aristotle's

theory is true, one would expect to observe phenomena quite different from the ones we do observe. In arguing, for instance, for the existence of a fiery sphere below the moon, Aristotle had claimed that “leaden missiles shot out by force liquefy in the air” (De caelo II.7, 289a26—28). Valla rejects this claim

by appealing to common experience: we never see balls—whether leaden,

146 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD iron, or stone shot out of a sling or a cannon—heat up in the air; likewise with arrows, the feathers of which do not catch fire (98:23-99:24).™% If movement would suffice to produce heat, the spheres would indeed set the underlying air in motion, but this no one has ever observed (100:1). Motion causes

cooling off rather than warming up, as can be seen in the chilling effect of ventilation in the bathroom or the respiration of the heart (99:20—a claim that medieval scholastics would have found odd).® What causes heat is the collision or friction between two things, as in an axle tree and wheels. Compression too may generate heat; no motion is required. An example is the generation of heat by mixing lime and water: “if you take the powder from the marble pavements of temples in winter and make a large heap of it and pour water into it when compressed and thrown into a wooden trough, you will cause it to become hot and good for generating plants, water which otherwise never would become heated unless perhaps by extreme compression” (ro1:15).°° Along the same lines, Valla rejects the Aristotelian theory of the formation of a cold body of middle air from the cold fleeing from the fiery sphere and the cold fleeing from the heat of the earth. Valla has a quite different idea: “that place above the clouds is frozen because vapor of the earth does not as-

cend all the way to it, and it freezes the smallest particles of water coming to it, and on account of this keeps it from ascending further, and condenses, just as we sometimes see happen at dusk in winter when it is serene in the smoke around the peak of houses” (1o1:2). Even though Valla’s explanation leaves much to be desired—his analogy, for instance, between the forming of rain and the process of condensation around chimneys is not entirely clear— he is right, of course, to deny that the air above the clouds is fiery. Another important issue is the transformation of the elements into one another based on the traditional qualities assigned to them. Fire, for instance, is not dry, but effects dryness in objects; since dryness means absence of moisture, earth too can be dry, but not because of a positive quality of dryness— rather, because of the lack of moisture. Air is not warm and moist (for then

it would be heavy), but cold and dry (though it may be called “moist” if it contains moisture) (104:6). Unlike heat, moisture is not a quality but a body; hence it would be absurd to say that air zs moist. Further, water does not have moisture but zs moist.°”

It is interesting to notice that while moisture is a body (and dryness the absence of moisture) rather than a quality, being warm and cold are qualities.°° For when we say that this cloth is wet or dry, we indicate its quality,

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 147 even though moisture is a corporeal thing, just as when we say this man is bearded or hairy or fat, by which we indicate his qualities, even though hair and flesh are corporeal things (107:4-14). As we have seen, Valla uses the same argument in his treatment of the Aristotelian category of having: to have shoes on or to be armed is a quality, even though shoes and arms are corporeal things (134:25). This suggests a distinction between a linguistic and an ontological use of “quality.” In “This cloth is moist,” we refer to a quality of the cloth, but, since moisture is not a quality but a substance, it must be a quality in the grammatical sense: the cloth is qualified by moisture, by which is meant: it contains moisture. In “This cloth is warm” we refer to its quality which is, ontologically speaking, a quality. Yet, whereas Valla’s account here suggests that similarity in grammar does not necessarily entail similarity in ontology, his reduction of all the accidental categories to quality (and action) is based on the premise that from a grammatical point of view there is no difference between “Jim is six feet tall,” “Jim is a father,” “Jim has shoes on,” “Jim is wet,” or “Jim is warm’—they all qualify the subject. Ontological questions, however, are not Valla’s main concern in this chapter. His aim is to discredit the Aristotelian picture of elements and their trans-

formations due to common properties (earth and water, for instance, share coldness; air and water share humidity). If, as the Aristotelians think, tenfold the volume of air comes from water, and tenfold water from earth, we would notice an expansion of the heavens when water is rarefied into air, and contraction when water is condensed into air (105:14-19), and also a burning of the air when fire is converted into air (103:1-10)—-quod non, so that the whole Aristotelian mechanism becomes a bogus explanation. Air and earth are not

contrary because of their qualities, but only because of their difference in weight (solo pondere, 108:23). Water cannot result from earth or vice versa, for

this would presuppose that the moisture of water is withdrawn from water; however, water zs moisture itself, and one cannot withdraw something from one’s own body (109:1-8).

Valla’s remarks are too brief and sketchy to offer a serious alternative to Aristotle’s description of the various processes of change and transformation (with a single quality or more than one quality changing). But this, of course, was not his intention. What he likes to convey is the impression that Aristotelian science is against both common experience and biblical faith. If we can speak of an empirical attitude at all, his empiricism at any rate does not function as a spur to immerse oneself in the book of nature, let alone to conduct

148 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD (scientific) experiments; the term experimentum sometimes takes commentators or translators unawares.” The appeal to the senses rather has a polemi-

cal aim of showing that Aristotelian natural philosophy makes, as he believes, gratuitous assumptions about things that transcend the boundary of sense and introduces terms and concepts that are far removed from our daily, ordinary picture of the natural world.”? His “empiricism” is not an invitation to collect as much data as possible and investigate the workings of nature, but rather serves as a curb on speculation, as an antidote to what he sees as the presumptions and pretensions of the philosophers, who are too inquisitive about God's artistry (artificium). For Valla it should be enough to know that God made the stars, the heavens, and the elements at the beginning of time: we will learn about his artistry in the next life (98:11). God did not need the spinning of the spheres in order to create the elements and give them their

place (100:6). He is not bound by the principle that nothing can arise out of nothing, as is shown by the nature of fire (102:30). But Valla was smart enough to use the Bible as a source of positive knowledge about nature when it suited him: the biblical account of the creation of man from mud, which is soil soaked in water, is presented as evidence against the view that the human body consists of all the four elements (109:27). Valla’s fideism therefore should not be identified with skepticism in any philosophically significant sense. Moreover, it is qualified by his own praise of the human power “to understand eternal and celestial things, since we were born to eternity” (69:12, perhaps echoing Cicero's De finibus II, 113).’! Far

from balancing opinions and suspending judgment in order to reach inner tranquillity, Valla adduces the evidence of the senses in ways that a Pyrrhonian could only consider dogmatic. Valla’s message is broadcast in a style that is utterly alien to the skeptical probing of diverse positions.” For these reasons it is difficult to see in Valla’s work an adumbration of

“Renaissance naturalism” or “early modern rationalism and an experimentalinductive approach in science.” There is no collecting and comparing of data, let alone a search for common patterns or laws behind the phenomena. Nor is there any close or structural affinity with later thinkers such as Fracastoro (1470-1533), Patrizi (1529-1597), or Telesio (Is09—1588). For all their differences, these thinkers share some basic assumptions in their attempt to explain physical nature. They generally favor naturalistic and mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena, and they consider human beings and their mental faculties as integral parts of nature, explaining higher mental faculties

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 149 in terms of sensation.” Valla’s account of the soul, which has been discussed above, shows the distance between him and these later thinkers. He does not define the higher mental faculties in terms of sensation but returns to an Augustinian picture of the soul as a wholly spiritual and immaterial substance, made in the image of God. This thorough simplification of the naturalistic account of sensation and cognition of Aristotle and his medieval and Renaissance followers may have hindered Valla from upholding an experiential approach in any deliberate or self-conscious way. As Katherine Park has rightly observed, the medieval kind of psychology was more than an abstract system; it had in addition a strong observational component. Nonetheless, it remained experiential rather than experimental in character, relying on common experience to suggest and confirm rather than to test proffered explanations. The physical model it assumed was a simple hydraulic one, based on a clear localisation of psychological function by organ or system of organs.”

By replacing such a faculty psychology with a strong observational basis with a simplified Augustinian account according to which one and the same soul perceives, judges, and wills, Valla is clearly not foreshadowing early modern “rationalistic empiricism.” To take one example: his view that animals have a rational soul is not inspired by a consistently naturalist approach toward man as a biological being or as a part of the natural world. He still adheres to an Augustinian account of the creation of the human soul as a reflection of the Trinity, and rather inconsistently ascribes to animals a soul that is also created by divine aid. As we have seen, a theory of cognition is conspicuously (though not surprisingly)

absent from Valla’s work, while this was of central concern to scholastics and to those early modern philosophers such as ‘Telesio and Hobbes who attempted in various ways to transform it in the direction of a mechanisticnaturalist philosophy. Hobbes, for instance, reduced sense perception to local motions in the body, caused by external objects. According to him, the understanding is nothing but a special form of imagination, which man has in common with animals.”° Telesio had already argued that the intellect is a continuation of the senses and that the difference between man and animals is only one of degree, “human spirit being more fine and copious than that of other animals.”’” Since Valla does not present any serious alternative to scholastic and naturalist accounts of sensation and cognition, it is difficult to secure for

150 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD him “a place as part of the internal dissidence within the dominant natural philosophy” of his own age.”

But even though his attitude and position on natural philosophical themes usually do not bear any structural likeness with those of later naturalist philosophers, it can be argued that Valla gave vent to a sentiment that ultimately eroded faith in the Aristotelian system. Valla rightly saw that Aristotle’s conclusions could not be made to square with everyday observations. Moreover, with hindsight we can see that amy undermining of faith in the scholastic-Aristotelian worldview contributed to its demise and finally to its replacement by a different, mechanistic one. Valla surely contributed to this necessary preparatory stage of doubting Aristotle’s authority. Though he does not mention Valla, Menn’s judgment on humanist anti-Aristotelianism may be applied to Valla too: “though their first steps toward a new philosophy were

stumbling and may be compared unfavorably with the accomplishments of late scholasticism, we may see with hindsight that their bold experiments prepared the way for the emergence of mechanical philosophy and science.”” We should, however, resist the temptation to go further and project the naturalistic, physiological, and mechanistic motives of later philosophers onto the early attacks on the Aristotelian paradigms (plural).®° Valla was not developing a non-Aristotelian natural philosophy. His rejection of Aristotelian natural philosophy was motivated primarily by religious and linguistic consider-

ations. He rejected it not only because, according to him, it went beyond the limits of our common-sense perception, but also because it detracted from God’s power. In his chapter on God, which we will discuss in Chapter 6, Valla attacked Aristotle for his “polytheistic” ideas and for what Valla sees as Aristotle's equation of God with nature. Valla wanted to reinstate God as the sole creator of heaven and earth. To think of the cosmos in terms of a living animal or the heavens in terms of celestial orbs moved by intelligences was anathema for Valla: “as Pythagoras and the Stoics held, the world was made by God and for the benefit of men [propter homines], and hence is not animated” (57:14-22).°! Valla found many a medieval thinker at his side here. Indeed, it was the subject of no less than five articles on Bishop Tempier’s list of 219 errors that were condemned in 1277.

Por Valla, reading the book of nature required appropriate linguistic skills, which meant mastery of classical Latin, since our common-sense view of the world—and this included the natural world—had found its perfect expression in this language and its literature, even though Valla admitted that

ARISTOTELIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 151 new things demand new words (such as “bombarda”). But it also required a sound religious view on the relationship of the book of nature and its author, though Valla does not seem to accept the implication, usually derived from the metaphor, that reading it brings us closer to its author or increases our knowledge of him.® In his view, the description of the world (human and natural) and the authentic expression of faith were closely connected with each other, and both had, of course, everything to do with knowledge of classical Latin. Indeed, Valla explicitly said that Latin and the Christian faith are two sides of the same coin: their bond is so strong that “where the one is lacking, the other cannot be present either.”*®’ Because they followed in the footsteps of a pagan master, scholastics could only fail in their exploration of the natural world: they had the wrong language and, partly as a result, the wrong ideas. There was all the more reason to include, as Valla had announced at the beginning of the Repastinatio (7:29), a discussion of the moral and natural philosophical views of the Peripatetic scholastics. Valla’s insistence on common linguistic usage, combined with his appeal

to common sense and his religious fervor, fostered a fideism that is at odds with an exploratory attitude toward the natural world, or with a scientific mentality. Science is not limited to what the senses register, what the imagination can conceive and a particular language can express. To say this is not to criticize Valla’s approach, let alone resuscitate the outdated historiographical claim that humanism was opposite to science and did nothing but retard its development. Scholarship of the last few decades has shown the multiple ways in which humanists contributed to a whole spectrum of natural philosophical and medicinal disciplines.** The tapestry of natural knowledge woven between 1200 and 1700 contains many strands, not all perfectly in harmony with each other.® Valla’s undoing of some old strands may be considered—only from a suitably general point of view and with all the caveats entered above—as an important contribution to this tapestry, detestable as he would probably have judged its final outcome.

) The Virtues and the Road to Heavenly Pleasure

If there is one theme that ties Valla’s works together, it is his attempt to answer that crucial question that so many humanists from Petrarch onward had to face: how to combine Christian faith with the rich culture and thought of pagan antiquity. It is not surprising that this theme, perhaps more than any other aspect of his work, has dominated modern scholarship on Valla, with his De vero bono as centerpiece.' In this dialogue, published as De voluptate in 1431 (when Valla was still in his mid-twenties) and revised two years later under the title De vero bono, Valla presents a discussion between an “Epicurean,”

a “Stoic,” and a “Christian” on the age-old question: What is the highest ethical good? The result of this confrontation between pagan and Christian moral thought is a combination of Pauline fideism and Epicurean hedonism, in which the Christian concepts of charity and beatitude are identified with hedonist pleasure and the philosopher's concept of virtue is rejected. The least one could say is that Valla had a keen eye for publicity in taking Epicureanism (used in a rhetorical rather than a historical sense, as we will see later) as a steppingstone for the development of a Christian morality based on the concept of pleasure, while repudiating the traditional synthesis between Stoicism and Christianity, popular among scholastics and humanists alike.” But Valla’s move was of course much more than a publicity stunt; it testified to a

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 153 deeply felt concern for rescuing Christianity out of the hands of theologians and philosophers, who in his view had contaminated religion and morality by dogmatically imposing their “abstractions” and theories on human experience and understanding. Scholars have long been divided over the question how to read De vero bono. Much depends on which interlocutor one accepts as Valla’s mouthpiece (and this, in turn, often largely depends on the scholarly background and personal beliefs of the critic). Did Valla embrace a Christian Epicureanism or— should we say—an Epicurean Christianity?? Was Valla seriously advocating a form of hedonism, or is the position of the Epicurean spokesman only a ploy in a literary game, a guise under which Valla brings home his own peculiar interpretation of the Christian faith? Does Augustine stand behind his vision of beatitude, or is he subtly transforming the teachings of the church Father to suit his own point? Much nineteenth-century scholarship, which often stressed the pagan and secular side of Renaissance humanism, associated Valla’s position with the hedonistic, naturalistic Epicureanism as advocated in Book 2, while later scholars, emphasizing Valla’s devout Christianity (albeit of a somewhat unorthodox nature), regarded the position of the “Christian” in Book 3 as the expression of Valla’s own view, pointing to some comments made by Valla himself. More recent commentators have argued that Valla’s essentially Christian vision allows room for “Epicureanism” of some sort, but it is a moot point whether he has successfully combined into one vision the Pauline, otherworldly perspective with the hedonism of Epicureanism. The De vero bono has understandably been regarded as the principal source of Valla’s moral and religious views, but it should not be forgotten that the Repastinatio contains an extensive discussion of the same themes. It is true that the treatment in the latter work is based on De vero bono, and because Valla himself refers the reader to this work for “fuller treatment,’ scholars have been led to think that Valla did no more than extract and distill some

salient points from the De vero bono in the Repastinatio. Yet the chapter in the Repastinatio (i.e., Book 1, chapter 10, in the later versions) deserves a full consideration of its own. Not only does its sheer length—in the later versions it is the longest chapter in the entire work (together with Book 2, chapter 22, which, however, is a long extract from Quintilian)—indicate that Valla deemed such an incorporation necessary as an essential part of his campaign against philosophy and rationalist theology, but it also can help us analyze the tensions within Valla’s discussion and how he tried to resolve them, since the

154 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD Repastinatio ofters fewer hermeneutical problems than the highly rhetorical dialogue of the De vero bono. Of course, the Repastinatio is a rhetorical work too, but its style and genre clearly present fewer problems in extracting Valla’s own position than the dialogue between the three interlocutors in De vero bono. Here Valla speaks in his own voice. A close examination of Valla’s chapter from the Repastinatio reveals tensions that have hardly been discerned, let alone analyzed by modern scholars.

They concern the identification of the virtues with feelings; the vacillation on the question whether virtue resides in action, motive, or the underlying reason; the ambiguous relationship between will and reason; the conflicting statements about virtues as momentary passions rather than habits; the ambivalence of the terminology of cause and end in the description of charity; the semantically different terms that, on Valla’s account, are identical (“pleasure, “charity,” and “fortitude”; voluptas, charitas, fortitudo); and the arguments he offers as a critique of Aristotle's notion of virtue as a mean between extremes. This chapter will present a detailed and critical discussion of his moral thought, without suggesting that we should expect Valla to have come up with a consistent theory. Far from being a sign of weakness, tensions within someone's position often reveal interesting points where intellectual traditions

meet and come into conflict. To praise Valla as a highly consistent thinker whose opinions express a “unified logic,” an “argumentative rigor,” and “an extraordinary inner consistency in his conception of man and his religious vision’ is to miss the chance to see and analyze these tensions and points of conflicts.» On the other hand, to insist that Valla should be approached as a man of letters rather than a philosopher may be valid for the De vero bono but fails to do justice to the account in the Repastinatio. The context of Valla’s discussion is conventional enough. It is part of his chapter on the soul. Ethics, of course, was not an autonomous subdiscipline of an academic subject—as it is now—but had firm roots in ideas on the human soul and human physiology, and moral questions pertained not only to ethics but also to what we would now call philosophical anthropology, psychology, pedagogy, and theology and religion.° Moreover, as one of the subjects of the studia humanitatis, moral philosophy was an integral part of the study of the classics, as the latter was generally believed to give moral guidance in life.’ Thus it is only natural that Valla’s treatment of the virtues and related

moral issues is set within the context of his discussion on the soul. In the first version of the Repastinatio, the ethical questions are intermingled with his

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 155 treatment of the soul in a chapter entitled: “What is the soul of man and of animal?” (Quid sit anima hominis et bruti?). Revising the text in the 1440s, Valla gave the virtues their own chapter and greatly expanded it by developing his critique of the Aristotelian notion of virtue as a mean between extremes and by incorporating his own idea that we should love God not on account of himself but as efficient cause. He adds further semantic and grammatical observations on Latin and Greek terms, which also testify to his wider reading of the Aristotelian corpus and of the Greek New Testament, and he devotes two pages to Lactantius’s criticism of the equation of the highest good with pleasure. By the time of the second revision in the 1450s, the chapter has grown from eight pages in the first version to twenty-four pages in the modern critical edition.

The additions and digressions sometimes obscure the drift of the argument. In the first version there is still a recognizable order of discussion. Valla starts with the four cardinal virtues—prudence, justice, fortitude, and modesty. One virtue, fortitudo, is singled out as the only true virtue, which is then equated with several other concepts: delight, love, pleasure, and, finally, charity. This account cuts through the traditional distinction between the four cardinal virtues and the triad of theological virtues faith, hope, and love. After a brief discussion of love, Valla touches on the love of God, who should not be

loved propter se, but Valla decides to refer the reader to the De vero bono for further treatment. In the last paragraphs Valla criticizes the Aristotelian notion of virtue as a disposition or /abitus and rounds off his discussion by emphasizing the soul’s noble status, which should be compared with fire rather than with a “blank tablet” (tabula rasa). The same ideas are presented in the later versions, but the order is less tight: the section on virtues and habits has been moved forward; the critique of virtue as a mean between extremes is now inserted before the treatment of love; the four cardinal virtues are discussed in a less clearly consecutive order; and there are many minor alterations and additions. The following discussion adheres to the order of the first version as much as possible but draws on arguments from all the versions.

The Virtues The introductory paragraphs make some programmatic claims about the virtues (411:I-11; 73:13—-17) that betray Valla’s Augustinian view (even though Au-

gustine is hardly cited or explicitly drawn upon in this chapter).® First, virtues

156 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD are nothing else but affects, that is, feelings of love, delight, and desire or their opposites hatred, unpleasantness, and fear, and it is these feelings rather than anything else that are to be judged as virtuous or vicious. Second, while it is traditionally held that there are four virtues, there is really only one, which may be “divided into three,” since feelings may relate to the past, present, or future (e.g., fear of what is to come, joy about something past).? This turns out to be a programmatic statement, for even though Valla continues to discuss the traditional four as well as some of the Aristotelian moral virtues, here he already prepares the ground for his central claim that there is basically one, Christian virtue. The third claim is that virtues as affects are located in the

rear part of the soul, the will, while the domains of knowledge, truth, and opinion reside in the other two faculties, memory and reason. This is not to say that the will is independent from the intellectual capacities. The affects need reason as their guide, and the lack of such a guidance result in vice. As Valla writes in the first version: “If I rejoice in and take sorrow from the things

which I ought to rejoice in and take sorrow from, and desire and fear the things which I ought to desire and fear, it is virtue; if otherwise, vice,” and what I ought to desire and fear is suggested by reason and prudence (411:9)."° Valla is no more specific than this about the relationship between mem-

ory, reason, and will. As we have seen in the previous chapter, he presents an Augustinian picture of the soul, stressing its unity: one and the same soul grasps and holds, explores and judges, and loves or hates things, and no part dominates over the other. While his formulations sometimes suggest the primacy of reason, whose dictates the will ought to follow, in general Valla stresses the will-based origin of our moral behavior, as is clear from his treatment of the first of the four cardinal virtues, prudence.

Prudence Prudence is relegated to reason and memory, since it not a virtue but rather the science of virtue. “What should be praised or blamed is action, proceeding from cognition and understanding through good will.”'! (This suggests that true virtue resides in doing good deeds, but, as we will see later, this is not exactly the view Valla endorses.) In categorizing prudence as an intellectual rather than a moral virtue, Valla is not far removed from his archenemy Aristotle, who had said that prudence or practical wisdom (cwbpoovvy) belongs to the rational faculty, or from Quintilian, who does not regard wis-

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 157 dom as a virtue.'* The intellectual nature of prudence, Valla says, can also be gathered from a consideration of malice (malitia), which is often believed to be its opposite. For Valla prudential malitia should not be considered in terms of virtue and vice because both terms refer to the knowledge of good and evil rather than to good or wicked actions (411:23-31). In fact, Valla even seems to regret the existence of two terms, since this may have led people to use them for characterizing good and evil actions, whereas the terms essentially refer to one and the same thing, that is, knowledge of good and evil (411:28). By saying that malice does not differ from prudence, Valla knew that he was presenting an opinio extraordinaria, as he himself calls it in a letter to Tortelli from 1441.’ Traditionally, “malice” (malitia) referred to wicked behavior. Aquinas, for instance, had used it as a generic term for individual vices.’ It should have been no surprise, therefore, to find this opinion on the list of articles that his enemies had composed in the inquisitorial process against him in Naples in 1444.!° In the years after this process, Valla worked on the second version of the Repastinatio and began rereading and glossing Quintilian’s /nstitutio oratoria. In these works we see him grappling with the term, but it is a deepened knowledge of the classics rather than an attempt to answer his enemies that provoked its reconsideration. As he now admits, Latin authors such as Plautus, Sallustius, Livy, Cicero, Seneca, Quintilian, “and many others” (76:4) use the terms “malice” and “prudence” for “evil will” and “good will,” a statement that is difficult to square with his own insistence on their being intellectual notions.'® His solution is that these terms, when applied to actions, refer to the definitively moral virtue of the justice or injustice of those actions. For it is the way we use our knowledge of good and evil that makes an act virtuous or evil, and this use is praised or blamed. In other words, prudence, insofar as it refers to the quality of the will, is nothing else but justice. Just as injustice belongs to malice, which makes a man evil, so prudence, insofar as it belongs to justice, makes a man virtuous (76:26—77:10). But in itself, prudence as practical wisdom and deliberation is neutral with regards to acts. In support of his interpretation, Valla gives a list of terms, partly derived from

Aulus Gellius, that can be put to good or evil use but are neutral in themselves, such as a ruse (dolus) in law and a potion (venenum) in medicine or health (valitudo). More importantly, Valla gives some biblical examples that he thinks show that prudence is a neutral term that stands for knowledge of good and evil rather than for good and evil deeds: the serpent is said to be “more prudent than all the animals,” “The wise are those who do evil,” “The

158 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD sons of darkness are more prudent than the sons of light,” and “The wicked bailiff acted prudently.” And he adds that Plato too holds that evil men can be prudent or wise (sophous).'’ In all this, prudence comes close to wisdom (sapientia): both belong to the domain of knowledge and are by no means moral “virtues. ”

This separation of prudence (and sapientia) from the sphere of moral action has frequently been described as “anti-intellectual.”'® However, an emphasis on the will as the seat of morality does not necessarily entail a depreciation of reason, and Valla, as already has been noted, frequently refers to reason and prudence as the will’s guide. He also writes that virtue is to live by the precepts of wisdom (ex preceptis sapientie vivere, 74:20), which too suggests a close connection between reason or wisdom and the actions of the will. Further, the claim that virtue is nothing more than feelings of pain and pleasure is not particularly anti-intellectual either, for already Aristotle had argued that “moral excellence is concerned with feelings of pleasure and pain,” though, as we will see below, he did not sdenztzfy virtues with feelings or affects. In equating wisdom with prudence, Valla seems to have been inspired by Cicero, who in his De officiis had coupled the terms at the beginning of

book I. After having listed the four virtues as four different aspects of the nature and power of that which is honorable, Cicero says that the four “are bound together and interwoven,” but that “certain kinds of duties have their origin in each individually.”*° Thus the peculiar function of the first virtue, “in which we placed wisdom [sapientia] and good sense [prudentia],” is to investigate and discover what is true [cognitio veri|.*! This may take the form of “either taking counsel about honorable matters, that pertain to living well and blessedly, or in the pursuit of knowledge and learning.””? One should, however, not become so totally engrossed in one’s studies that one no longer considers practical achievements, for “all the praise that belongs to virtue lies in action.” Knowledge and learning must serve the public good. At the end of book I, however, Cicero defines the terms differently, now distinguishing between prudence and wisdom. Wisdom is called “the knowledge of all things human and divine,” including “the sociability and fellowship of gods and men with each other” (that is, the virtue of justice), while prudence is defined as “the knowledge of things that one should pursue and avoid.”*> Nevertheless,

his lesson remains the same: “learning about and reflecting upon nature is somewhat truncated and incomplete if it results in no action.” But in spite of Cicero’s general tendency to subordinate pure inquiry to practical action (pro-

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 159 ceeding from inquiry and knowledge), he is willing to admit that a life dedicated to learning can also greatly “contribute to the benefits and advantages of mankind” through teaching and education.” This last qualification is lost on Valla, who strongly opposes the allegedly Aristotelian subordination of the practical to the contemplative life and of moral to intellectual virtues. Even though Valla holds that prudence is the guide of the will, he wants to reverse the order of priority, especially when wisdom is interpreted as the wisdom of the philosophers, as this, in Valla’s view, amounts to no more than vain and empty theorizing about abstract matters.

Justice After prudence comes justice (zusticia), which Valla distinguishes from right in the legal sense (tus) (412:20-21; 74:18). Right is the science of doing rightly and the art of the equal and the good, while justice is doing rightly; that is, it is an action, right, good, and equitable (actio bona, recta et equa). Belonging to prudence, right is the domain of lawyers and judges, “whence one speaks of the prudence of the legal experts.” It concerns knowledge “that emanates from the truth” (by which Valla probably means that as science, based on reason and prudence, it concerns matters of truth and falsity). On the other hand, justice is action “that emanates from the will,” and it takes its name “from adhering to right and doing what right orders” (zubet ius) (412:27). Valla is thus again at pains to set the sphere of knowledge apart from that of action. Because reason or prudence guides the will in its actions, as Valla has repeatedly said, it is a logical step for him to conclude that zus as the science of doing rightly takes the lead, and zusticia as action follows.’ He finds confirmation in etymology: “iusticia” stems from “ius” rather than vice versa. “Iusticia’ is derived from “iustus,” which in turn comes from “ius,” like “onustus” stemming from “onus,” “vetustus” from “vetus.” Because the power to choose is essential to moral behavior, morality and laws apply only to the human world. For this reason Valla rejects the jurists’ notion of natural law (ius naturale), which they had defined as “that which nature has taught all animals.” It is ridiculous, he writes, to call animal behavior such as copulating and fighting for food and mates a “law.” Morality and law are essentially human affairs. This brief passage, which is even further reduced in the later versions, should be read against the background of Valla’s earlier work, De vero bono, as

160 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD well as the Elegantiae. This will bring into focus Valla’s interesting ideas on law and justice, but it will also reveal some tensions. First of all, Valla’s statement that “zus as science precedes, iusticia as action follows’—while reflecting his general notion that prudence guides the will—fits uneasily with his emphasis

on the will as locus of moral behavior. Moreover, it may seem strange that Valla gives prominence to zus, which is traditionally the domain of the jurists with whom he was engaged in an ongoing battle, rather than to the sphere of just action (justice), which constitutes the basis of morality. What may be relevant to this brief passage, however, is the utilitarian-hedonist views of law and morality that are developed by the Epicurean spokesman Vegio in the De vero bono, composed just a few years earlier.”” As is well known, in this work an attack is launched on the concept of Aonestas (virtue or the virtuous). As Vegio argues, utility and personal interest (utilitas) are the dominating forces of human behavior, and they are also the rationale of laws: to reward the good and punish the bad has no connection with the virtuous (honestum), but is done with an eye to furthering the advantages of the state or the ruler: “The legislators themselves, which is to say the kings or chief persons of the state, promulgated the laws so as not to forfeit any of the greatness, stability, and tranquillity of their rule (not to mention their fame): on the one hand, they gave rewards to encourage what was to the country’s profit; on the other, they discouraged with punishments the introduction of anything harmful.”?* The promulgator of laws is therefore not interested in morality or virtue as internal codes of behavior: “he does not demand that men should rid themselves of the will to harm others, but simply that they should not commit such harm. He does not punish evil intentions; he punishes evil actions; that is, he is not providing for virtue or morality but for the convenience of men” (69/185). Our behavior is motivated by self-interest: we refrain from evildoing not because it is a vice but because we do not want to get hurt, and we act rightly not because we want to be virtuous but because the law promises rewards like crowns, statues, and honors for acting in accordance with the law. Utilitas rather than /onestas motivates us and rules our behavior, and this truth is reflected in lawmaking.” The consequence of this view is that the law, issued by the state or its rulers, determines what is just. In this sense too, then, zus may be said to take precedence over usticia, and those who promulgate and present the laws to the people are considered to be superior to those who interpret them. In the Elegantiae, begun at about the same time as the Repastinatio, this theme of the

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 161 opposition between orators and the medieval jurists becomes a basso continuo.

Adding further fuel to the fire, Valla describes their profession in polemical terms: the lawyer is nothing more than the secretary, assistant, or emissary (or perhaps “messenger boy”) of the orator, who is his headmaster and leader: the jurists merely codify what the orator dictates.*° Valla’s target are medieval jurists such as Baldus degli Ubaldi and Bartolo da Sessoferrato, not the classical jurists on whom he heaps praises for the correct and elegant Latin in which they had laid down the laws of Roman society. He greatly admires the writers

of the Digest, even though they wrote long after the pristine age of ancient Roman law and, hence, were not without their own faults. (Valla critically reviews some of the concepts from the Digest in the sixth book of his Flegantiae.) For him, classical jurisprudence and oratory are twin brothers. Following Quintilian, he holds that legal science centers on the correct use and interpretation of words. Without these linguistic qualities, he suggests in the Elegantiae, it is impossible to write about any art or discipline and certainly impossible to write about civil law, which hinges on fine distinctions: “In my judgment, one can neither add to nor subtract from, not so much their eloquence (to which their subject does not greatly lend itself) as their Latinity and refinement, without which all learning is blind and illiberal, especially in civil law.”?! Lawyers of his own time, on the other hand, are criticized for their hairsplitting and caviling, for their barbarous Latin and total lack of eloquence. It would be absurd to think that these barbarians could decide what makes an act rightful. The jurists’ attempts to find a foundation for the law in nature is met with scorn—as if there were an objective order in nature that could be used as a yardstick to judge moral acts. The De vero bono, of which a first sketch was probably conceived and written before the outbreak of hostilities between Valla and the jurists, is still free from the vehement attacks on the profession of the lawyers, and the concept of natural law is not mentioned. Soon thereafter, however, Valla makes short shrift with that notion (though he omits it in the later versions, for unclear reasons) in much the same way as he does in the Elegantiae. Later he repeats this critique in his glosses on Quintilian’s /nstitutio oratoria, entered between 1444 and his death in 1457 in his own copy of the

text.” Morality and justice, he says, pertain to human beings only, for only they possess free will. (Valla does not confront this statement with his position on reason and will ascribed to animalia—‘ut nos animalia.” Perhaps he would have wanted to distinguish human free will from natural will common to all

162 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD animals.) Valla admits that we may speak of “natural law” to designate what all human beings have in common, the ius gentium (law of the nations) becoming in that case the legal system of a single nation, but he explicitly rejects the idea that we can find sanction and legitimacy of our moral actions by an appeal to nature. For example, when Ulpian in the Digest argues that everyone is born as a free person by natural law and only becomes slave by the law of the nations (ius gentium), Valla replies: if that were the case, we should call slavery not a law of nations but an unlawful practice (iniuria), for it apparently goes against another law, the law of nature, which is impossible, since laws cannot contradict each other.** In other words, if something goes against natural law or if natural law proves to be erroneous, it ceases to be a law. A more detailed discussion of this interesting passage—‘la ‘perla del commento,” as it is called by one of its editors**—would be out of place here because Valla does not discuss law in the Repastinatio, nor is it necessary to contrast Valla’s empirical-synthetic approach to the law with the analyticaldeductive one of the medieval jurists.*° It must suffice to notice that Valla’s basic criticism of natural law has remained unaltered: there is no such thing as natural law, and our morality and legal system cannot be derived from animal life or nature in general: “iure an iniuria id fiat, ad solos homines pertinet.” Such is the argumentative context of Valla’s observations on justice in the Repastinatio. As has become clear, his criticisms of the notion of natural law are on a par with his conviction that what is good and right is determined by the law, rather than by a law-independent and abstract ideal such as the traditional virtue of justice. His approach may seem to come close to a conventionalist interpretation of law, and indeed, he is often portrayed as a relativist and conventionalist.*° This view, however, should be qualified in an important sense: Valla insists that all human beings have the innate quality or power to choose what is right and act in accordance with it: “all nations discern that which is just, following the lead of nature [natura duce].”*’ This “natural reason’ (naturalis ratio) is an essential part of man, which can and should be developed by education. Such an attitude may have been influenced by Quintilian’s belief in the “perfectibility” of our natural gifts. The entire project in the [nstitutio oratoria may be said to center on the education of the ideal person, the vir bonus.*® Yet there remains, it seems, a tension between the view that natural reason or nature is our guide and leader and the suggestion that the will is the locus of our moral actions vis-a-vis reason.” The hedonist-utilitarian interpretation of law and morality does not fea-

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 163 ture in the section on justice in the Repastinatio, but it becomes an important framework for the discussion of Valla’s master virtue, fortitude.

Fortitude In the later versions Valla interrupts his discussion of the four cardinal virtues and inserts a long critique of the Aristotelian notion of virtue as a mean between two extremes. It is best to follow the order of the first version and deal

with fortitude first, also taking into account what Valla says about it in the later versions, and then look at Valla’s critique of virtue as a mean. For Valla, fortitude is the essential virtue because it shows that someone

does not let himself be conquered by the wrong emotions, but acts for the good. As a true virtue of action it is closely connected to justice—in fact, it is the genus of which justice is the species—being defined as “a certain resistance against the harsh and pleasant things which prudence has declared to be evils” (413:26; 86:24). It is the power to tolerate and suffer adversity and bad luck, but also the power to resist the blandishments of fortune, which—when everything is too good—weakens and numbs the spirit. This tolerance and patience are the same as the excellence or magnanimity of the mind.“ In Valla’s portrayal of the strong man, the Stoic overtones are unmistakable, which is not surprising given his debt to Cicero’s De officiis—a debt that is greater than the few quotations given by Valla suggest. In his discussion of the four cardinal virtues and the obligations that are derived from them, Cicero gives a portrait of the wise, just, and courageous man, a picture that in its essentials is taken over by Valla. It is a portrait of a man who faces all matters of life without fear and resists being afflicted and conquered by seductive pleasures or arduous hardship: “Both life and death, both riches and poverty, powerfully perturb all men. But as for those who look down with a great and lofty spirit upon prosperity and adversity alike... , who then will fail to admire the splendour and beauty of virtue? . . . For no man can be just if he fears death, or pain, or exile, or need; or if he prefers their opposites to fairness.”4! Cicero’s admonitions are clearly embedded in Stoic psychology when he writes that our soul has two aspects, reason that commands and impulse that obeys:* All action should be free from rashness and carelessness; nor should anyone do anything for which he cannot give a persuasive justification: that is prac-

tically a definition of duty. One must ensure, therefore, that the impulses

164 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD obey reason, and neither run ahead of it, nor through laziness or cowardice abandon it, and that they are calm and free from every agitation of spirit.

As a result both constancy and moderation will shine forth in their fullness.

Valla accepts this picture, stressing the need for self-restraint and steadfastness, and explicitly loathing a slothful and petty mind, which he holds to be the cause of injustice. His analysis of injustice also closely follows that of Cicero in distinguishing two types of injustice: to inflict injury on others and to fail to deflect injury done to others. As Cicero argues: Those injustices that are purposely inflicted for the sake of harming another

often stem from fear; in such cases the one who is thinking of harming someone else is afraid that if he does not do so, he himself will be affected by some disadvantage. In most cases, however, men set about committing injustice in order to secure something that they desire.*

While Cicero discusses these forms of positive and negative injustice as part of his treatment of the second cardinal virtue, justice, Valla links them to forti-

tude, for both the infliction of injustice on others and the failure to deflect injustice done to others are the result of a petty, mean mind that lets itself be conquered by the wrong emotions. Imprudence and ignorance can hardly be an excuse for misbehavior. We may temporarily be blinded by too strong a passion (“that is why we speak of ‘blind love,’ “blind avarice’”), but it lies in our own will to dispel those passions and be guided by reason: The same qualities which I have called love, hatred and the others, when they are unjust are not only opposed to just love and just hatred, but they also press against the eyes of the soul and do not allow it either to remember the best precepts or if it remembers to distinguish between what is right and what is wicked. Therefore then he will be accused and chastized for imprudence, but nevertheless it is ultimately because the mind was weak (imbecilla).

In other words, though we may be tempted to blame our lack of prudence, our ignorance, or our strong passions for making us temporarily blind, these can never form a good excuse; for in that case, we have not listened to reason, which tells us which passion of love, hatred, or desire is morally right and which wrong.”

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 165 In view of Valla’s professed hostility toward “Stoic” philosophy, particularly in ethics (to which we will return at the end of this chapter), it may be surprising to see Valla taking over some essentially Stoic notions from Cicero’s De officiis, which is largely based on the work On Duty (140/139 BC) by the Stoic philosopher Panaetius. Quintilian was also influenced by the Stoics, as when he expressed his conviction that the bad man and the orator can never be identical. The true orator is the wise and just man, devoid of lust and lux-

ury. This does not mean that the orator should be free from emotions tout court, but he should clearly not be troubled by passions that keep him from devoting his time and energy to the advancement of the good.“ In line with Stoic teaching, Valla regards unjust acts as caused by a lack of knowledge, that is, a lack of judgment about what is desirable.*” Virtuous behavior is, in an important sense, a matter of knowledge, as the wise man is not ruled by the emotions. Valla, as we have seen, cannot ignore the role of prudence and reason in directing our will. The fourth virtue, propriety, or what is fitting (7modestia or decorum), underscores the mingling of the volitional and intellectual spheres. Valla notices that Panaetius, Cicero, Ambrose, and others

did not know how to distinguish modestia from the other three virtues and confessed that it is easier to grasp this virtue intellectually than to verbally express its differences from the others. According to Valla, it is partly prudence and partly justice or fortitude, 1.e., a combination of foresight and act-

ing upon it. We are now in a better position to recognize the programmatic character of Valla’s assertion that the four cardinal virtues, as traditionally distinguished, are really one. Fortitude is the only true virtue, because virtue resides in the will from which our actions, to which we assign moral qualifications, proceed.” It is all the same for Valla whether we call it justice or fortitude or modesty, as long as we realize that, as an affect, virtue is one, subject only to a division into affects or emotions related to past, present, or future. Valla’s reductive strategy has a clear aim: to equate this essential virtue of action, viz., fortitude, with the biblical concept of love and charity. This step requires some hermeneutic force, but the Stoic overtones of Cicero's account have prepared —ironically, perhaps, in view of Valla’s professed hostility toward Stoicism— the way for it, since the Stoic patience to endure hardship is easily linked to the Pauline message that we become strong by being tested. To this crucial step in his argument we may now turn.

166 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD Fortitude as Love and Charity Though Valla is always extremely sensitive to the fine semantic nuances of words, he has no qualms in equating terms that obviously have a different range of connotations when it serves his philosophical message. As an affect, fortitude is said to be nothing else than love, delectation, pleasure, and, in the final analysis, happiness, beatitude, and charity. In loving someone or something vehemently, we show fortitude in attacking those who want to deprive us of that someone or something. To love (amare) is in fact the only real virtue (e.g., 417:15). Though Valla had ridiculed the idea of natural law, he now associates or even equates fortitude with the parental feelings of love for their offspring, which can render peaceful animals and birds wild and savage, attacking even stronger animals.*” He may have been prompted by Cicero, who had said that we often impute courage to animals such as horses or lions, though “we do not impute to them justice, fairness or goodness. For they have no share in reason and speech.”*' In his discussion of the soul, Valla had indeed suggested that animals resemble humans in possessing (though at a lower level) memory, reason, and will, and he had rejected the distinction between instinct and reason as merely verbal. When Valla now identifies fortitude with this strong feeling of love that humans have in common with animals, he lies open to the same kind of criticism he had expressed against the “natural law jurists,” even though he may merely seek confirmation in nature for his view rather than using it as a foundation. He daringly suggests that it is the same kind of love that made the Apostles strong, having received the Holy Spirit, for preaching the Word of God (414:25; 85:23). Out of love we are able to do virtuous acts. Indeed, this passionate loving act is virtue; love and fortitude are not two but one thing, which encompasses all affects: “For whoever loves, desires what he loves, and he hates and fears whatever is contrary to this; likewise with the other affects” (415:2). But, as the examples of peaceful animals and the Apostles illustrate, it is a kind of love that only comes to life when it is truly tested, that is, when we are put to trial and have to exercise self-denial by not giving in to sensual delights and wrong impulses. Virtue becomes visible only in struggle; indeed, there is no virtue without struggle.** Valla describes this struggle in military terms, almost per-

sonifying the emotions: when we desire a woman we see, this love tries to drive other desires (such as longing for fame, wisdom, financial advantage, or even God) “out of the house,” but the other desire may mobilize its armies

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 167 and enters into combat, pursuing the fleeing enemy.™ As with the reference to the Apostles who share fortitudo with animals, Valla’s bracketing of a religious motive with earthly, biological desires is a well-calculated move, without losing its characteristically polemical pointe. It is meant to prepare readers for the idea that the same psychological emotion is at work here on earth and in the hereafter. The direct lesson, however, to be drawn from the example of combating emotions is that love is an arduous, strenuous affair. And here the Pau-

line message that the path to a virtuous life is full of labor, care, sweat, and blood is brought home by quotations from St. Paul’s letters. Virtue is perfected in weakness, as Paul himself knows so well: “Virtus in infirmitate perficitur.”*°

In spite of Valla’s aversion to any kind of synthesis of classical and Chris-

tian thought, the Stoic account of fortitude, borrowed mainly from Cicero's De officiis, served him well in developing his Pauline concept of fortitude as love: “Cum enim infirmior, tunc fortior sum” (II Cor. 12:10). For these labors and hardships are undertaken out of love for the ultimate goal, that is, the beatitude in the life to come, when we enjoy the fruits of our victory: peace, rest, affluence, honor, glory, and “everything we grasp by that one name of delectation or pleasure.”** The labor, sweat, and trouble we have to endure, though bad in themselves, “are called good because they lead to that victory.””” Virtue, then, is not something to be sought for its own sake, being full of labor and hardship, but because it brings us to our goal. This is one of Valla’s

major claims against the Stoics and Peripatetics, who regarded—at least in Valla’s interpretation—virtue as the end of life, that is, the aim to be sought after for its own sake. Because virtuous behavior is difficult, involving harsh and bitter things, no one naturally and voluntarily seeks virtue as an end in itself. What we seek is pleasure or delectation, both in this life and in the life to come, the difference being that the latter is much more important, enduring, and carefree than the former. At this point, a critical reader may raise the question whether Valla has not confused two senses of his central term “love.” On the one hand, it is identified with the virtue of fortitude (and charity) and, on the other hand, with the goal to which that virtue leads. Valla’s idea is that we have to suffer before we get what we want: this love for something can be strenuous and painful, and we have to endure hardship. But the love or fortitude by which we are able to endure these hardships is, of course, not the same as the glorious feeling we have when that love is fulfilled. Valla, however, blurs the dis-

168 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD tinction, equating both kinds of love with charity, apparently thinking of one and the same love.*®

As a consequence, Valla’s discussion of charity in terms of causes and ends is unclear when put under the microscope. In the first version Valla writes that in this life our love for God can only be fragile and imperfect because of the “bodily fetters” (corporis habitaculum), but that this love, being nothing else than charity, “will be true beatitude, true felicity, true pleasure or delectation” (416:1; 85:3-25; 90:9—-91:2). Charity suffices in the afterlife, but in this life on

earth it is accompanied by faith and hope, “as if the end of these other two” (416:13). This is traditional enough, and Valla duly quotes Paul’s words that “nunc manent fides, spes et caritas: tria hec, maior horum est caritas.” But he develops this into an unorthodox argument (“hec est nostra sententia,” 416:16), locating faith and hope—with science, wisdom, and truth—in the anterior parts of the soul and charity in the ulterior part: “For to know, or to be wise, or to understand is nothing else than to believe and have an opinion about how things are, and this is called truth” (416:19). This seems to be an extremely subjective and relativist interpretation of knowledge and truth, but to define truth in terms of belief does not mean that one automatically endorses a subjectivist relativism—vValla may simply have been led by his idea of a tripartite division of the soul, reserving the ultimate part for the noncognitive function of the will from which love proceeds. Moreover, Valla’s examples show that he thinks particularly about theological beliefs such as that God is almighty, all wise, and so forth, which indeed may be considered as belonging to “the domain of knowledge.”

Valla must admit that hope and faith are “perhaps mixed with a bit of fortitude” (417:2), and he gives some biblical quotations to illustrate this point. He firmly believes, however, that charity (fortitude, love, pleasure, etc.) is the end to which these two—together with reason, prudence, arts, and all

the other disciplines—tead. It is love or pleasure that is our ultimate end, which entails the striking notion that God is not loved for his sake, but for love’s sake: “For nothing is loved for its own sake or for the sake of something else as another end, but the love itself is the end” (417:28). Valla’s point that we love God as an efficient cause is theologically a daring move, to say the least. Traditionally, God was said to be loved for his own

sake, not for gaining something else. Many thinkers agreed with Augustine that concupiscent love is to be distinguished from friendship, and, with respect to the beatitude of heaven, use is to be distinguished from fruition. We

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 169 can love something as a means to an end (use), and we can love something for its own sake (fruition). But because Valla has called pleasure our highest good, God can only be loved as a means to that end. Monfasani makes the point quite clearly: “to rescue his enterprise, Valla argued that even though God is our ultimate good and even though what we ultimately love is God, nonetheless, we love God not propter se as our final cause, but rather as the almighty provider of the pleasure of heaven, 1.e., as an efficient cause.” It may be argued that Valla fails to grasp what to many Christians belongs to the heart of the Christian faith. Valla does not treat the issue here, and he refers the reader to his De vero bono for a more extensive treatment. We will look at De vero bono further on, but we can also look at the second version of the Repastinatio for further elaboration on this theme. Valla repeats his point that virtue cannot be without reward, rejecting the Stoic notion of virtue as its own reward. Love itself does not have a goal to which it strives; rather, it has a cause from which it proceeds. When we say that we love God for his own sake, we say in effect that we love him for the sake of a goal, that is, that we love him as an end, viz., our beatitude. Yet we love him as an efficient rather than as a final cause, for he is like a fountain from whence proceeds the cause of our loving (tanquam fons unde emanat causa diligendi).© He is loved because he is the creator or because he is good and wise, etc., not because of the remuneration we hope to receive, just as we love a monarch or prince because of a particular virtue in him rather

than the profits we hope to get from him. We seek his company, but we do not /ove him for those profits.” Again, it is possible to discern here a lack of terminological and analytical rigor, owing to Valla’s decision to cut through a number of terms and bring them all under one concept. Thus charity is described both as final end and as cause. It comes at the end of our life, when we will receive our reward of victory for having conquered hardship and the blandishment of a sensual life. As such it is clearly our goal and end, which we seek for its own sake. On the other hand, charity also comes at the start, for it is called the love that enables us to suffer hardship and courageously undertake things, and as such it is a source or cause rather than an effect. This love is the same as fortitude, but precisely this fortitude, while being a virtue, is not pursued for its own sake, as Valla explicitly holds against the “Stoics.” In positing pleasure as the overarching concept, Valla tries—not for the first time in the history of moral thought—to link earthly and heavenly plea-

170 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD sure. But it is not easy to apply the same model to both kinds of pleasureseeking behavior, which is what Valla constantly suggests and what his examples and terminology are meant to bear out. As we have seen, for Valla true virtue cannot exist without the endurance of hardship; otherwise, there is no

ground for rewarding people, and the promise of rewards for our virtuous behavior is an essential argument against the Stoics’ notion that virtue is its own reward. But many earthly pleasures are not accompanied by struggle and hardship: Valla’s own example of the enjoyment of wine, for instance, does not fit this picture, and likewise with so many other pleasures we seek and come to enjoy without pain or trouble. Valla, however, could reply that this is only further confirmation of his central contention that pleasure rather than virtue is the summum bonum. Traditional virtues may be the road to pleasure but need not be so, for the question whether acts of enjoyment are virtuous often does not even arise in daily life. If human beings naturally seek pleasure rather than virtue—which may seem a more realistic view of the matter—we obviously need criteria for deciding which pleasures ought to be pursued and which not. An Epicurean will answer: those pleasures that contribute to the ideal of tranquillity and a peaceful mind, which implies that we should exercise self-restraint and modesty, and this indeed is what Valla suggests. But how can this self-restraint be reconciled with the pursuit of pleasure? In the last paragraphs of his De officiis, Cicero attacked the Epicureans on this very point: “How can a man praise restraint when he places the highest good in pleasure? For restraint is hostile to the passions; but the passions are pleasure’s adherents.” Cicero had no sympathy for Epicurus and his philosophy and was unwilling to consider the subtler aspects of its doctrines, but this particular question is surely a pertinent one.? Although De officits looms large in Valla’s discussion, Valla does not address Cicero’s question. His almost tacit assumption is that natural reason tells us which are illicit and bad passions and which good and virtuous ones, but since the criterion on which we base our choice is formulated in terms of achievement of the enjoyment of pleasure, it is still unclear which are the passions to be avoided and which to be pursued. Moreover, passions in themselves, Valla holds, are not bad or good; it is the choice (e/ectio) of acting on these passions that is to be blamed or praised. This, however, is inconsistent with Valla’s claim that virtues themselves are feelings or passions.“ (We will come back to this.) The tension surfaces most clearly in a passage added only to the third version, in which Valla suggests, against Plato and other “philoso-

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 171 phers,” that there are no evil pleasures. No pleasure can be evil in itself, because we naturally pursue and enjoy it. Only our choice (electio) can be wrong in preferring short-term satisfaction over long-term pleasures, as in a feverish man who drinks cold water, which does not serve his health: When we pursue worldly pleasures, we should not blame these pleasures but our choice which makes us prefer these uncertain pleasures over certain ones, earthly over celestial, transitory over eternal. This is what Plato seems to say when he says that the other pleasures are eidola, that is, simulacra of the true pleasure, shadowy and spurious.” Such a characterization of earthly pleasure as shadowy and fake, however, goes against the hedonist position of the Epicurean, which Valla also propagates. In short, he tries to fuse a hedonist pursuit of pleasure, an almost Stoic exercise in self-restraint that serves that goal of pleasure, and a Christian otherworldly perspective on human nature—a combination that is almost immune to criticism (at least from our perspective): we naturally seek pleasures, but if some pleasures do not serve the ultimate goal of the True Pleasure, we simply decide to call them shadowy and fake. Valla would perhaps reply that in preferring true, eternal, and certain pleasures over false, transient, and insecure ones, we follow our “true nature,” transforming the pursuit of earthly pleasure into that of heavenly beatitude with the aid of divine grace.

Virtues as Affects versus Habits Valla does not spell out the criteria by which we know which pleasures are true and which are false, but without doubt our decisions (the electiones wrought by the will) should give preference to those actions that are conducive for attaining pleasures and, ultimately, the true pleasure, that is, beatitude in the life to come. This is consistent with an earlier remark that virtue resides in the will rather than in action or in habit (habitus) (77:11-14; 418:9), though it leaves unexplained the role of reason as the will’s guide. For Valla it is quite clear that virtue is not a habit but an affect that can be infused and effused,

that is, acquired and lost in a moment’s time, unlike sciences, arts, and other domains of knowledge, which we acquire (and lose) slowly. Since virtue belongs to the domain of the will and its decisions, the will, being an autonomous and spontaneous faculty, would be compromised if virtue were a habit or disposition, which Valla apparently interprets as a kind of permanent, in-

172 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD variable state. The Aristotelian terminology of disposition and habits, with its implication of a gradual process of becoming acquainted with something, may be valid for the domain of knowledge, but not for morality. But even in the acquisition of knowledge, Valla holds, it is better to speak of grades of a ladder that one ascends (or descends) rather than of dispositions or habits. To speak of grades would make it unnecessary to ask when a disposition or habit begins or ends or which is the first and which the last—deplorable questions of a scholastic kind (418:15; 79:6; see also 330:31). In the first version of the Repastinatio, Valla subsumes knowledge under the categories action and quality: the process of acquiring knowledge is an action, and once we have attained that knowledge, that is, have reached a particular step of the ladder, it is a quality (of the soul). Only then may we speak of a habit or disposition.” In the later versions Valla adds a sneering reference to Boethius, who in his commentary on Aristotle's Categories argues that a single act of (in)justice does not

make someone (un)just but only when he perseveres in this behavior. Only repeated and willful behavior establishes a pattern of virtue (or vice); hence, virtues, being habits, can only be changed with difficulty. Ignoring the context of Boethius’s remark, which is aimed at clarifying Aristotle’s statement that habit and affect belong to one and the same species and that virtues are like sciences in terms of permanent habits,” Valla ironically exclaims: “What a brilliant promulgator of laws—as if the law does not punish someone who has

committed adultery or murdered only once!” For Valla, virtues are not like habits and hence should not be linked to sciences and arts, for the greatest virtue or vice may arise out of one single act. And because virtue is painful and vice tempting, one may easily fall down at once from the one into the other, unlike knowledge, which does not turn into ignorance all of a sudden.

But if the path of virtue is a stony one, full of allurements and temptations, and one that requires fortitude to reach our true goal at last, does this not presuppose a virtuous character exhibiting a constant and firm mind? Valla himself describes virtue in terms of having a firm, stable, and calm mind that keeps its mental eye fixed on its goal.”? One may wonder how this fits in with the great fluctuations that Valla allows to occur in our moral behavior, in which virtues and vices, being affects, come and go “impetuously, as in flight” (impetu quodam et... “volatu’).”' Valla’s target here is Aristotle, who had well recognized the importance of a conscious and well-reasoned choice as a basis for our behavior, arguing that “acts done on the spur of the moment we describe as voluntary but not as chosen,””” but, then, he had not identified virtues as affects, as Valla does. For Aristotle, virtues are inner states or attitudes

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 173 (hexeis), developed by habit and experience, “in virtue of which we stand well or badly with reference to the passions, e.g. with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we feel it moderately.”” Hence, it is not the passions or affects we call good or bad, but these inner states, manifested in our acts:”4 Neither the excellences nor the vices are passions, because we are not called good or bad on the ground of our passions, but are so called on the ground

of our excellences and our vices, and because we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions (for the man who feels fear or anger is not praised, nor is the man who simply feels anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain way), but for our excellences and our vices we are praised or blamed.

Another important argument is then given why virtues and vices are not passions: “in respect of the passions we are said to be moved, but in respect of the excellences and the vices we are said not to be moved but to be disposed in a particular way.””? This is also why deliberation and choice are so important, for these enable us to resist impulses and strong emotions. Valla consciously distances himself from Aristotle in identifying virtues directly with the affects (passions) rather than with habits or dispositions. However, the rejection of such a useful distinction between passions (which move us) and virtues (which dispose us to act in a certain way) has a price. Valla’s point is weakened considerably, and we now see even better why. His basic idea is plausible enough and bespeaks a common-sense attitude. We often feel a strong desire for something and, once in possession of it, derive pleasure from it. (In case we hate something, we will try to avoid it lest it cause us pain.) Now the question arises: to what element should we assign the moral qualification “good” or “bad”? What exactly is virtue? We may distinguish between the following elements, which Valla does not list as such but which feature in his discussion. (a) the affect or emotion (affectus) (b) the will (voluntas) or the choice it makes (electio)

(c) reason, which supervises the will (ato as the voluntatis dux, the will’s guide) (d) the action (actio), by which we attempt to secure the good, that is, pleasure (411:7)

(e) the final result, pleasure (voluptas)

174 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD On the one hand, Valla is resolute in identifying virtues with affects (position a), which is confirmed by the statement that only the affects merit praise or blame.’¢ On the other hand, he also writes that affects—as feelings of love and

hatred, which indeed may arise or disappear in us on the spur of the moment—cannot be called good or bad in themselves, but only the will, that is, the will’s choice (b). This is underscored by Valla’s remark that virtue resides in the will rather than in the action (77:11-14). In his discussion of the soul, however, he frequently calls reason the will’s guide, and he also says that the affects should follow reason, so that reason too may be considered a candidate (c), even though he also explicitly denies that the will is determined by reason.’”” Finally, pleasure, delectation, or beatitude is also called virtue by the equation of virtue with love and with charity (85:3-25). This indecision or—to use a stronger word—inconsistency is caused by Valla’s eclecticism, which tries to bring into one picture Aristotelian ethics, the Stoic virtues of Cicero, the biblical concepts of charity and beatitude, and the Epicurean notion of hedonist pleasure—with their different terminology, definitions, and philosophical context. In his urge to simplify the rich terminology derived from these traditions, Valla’s idea of pleasure as the reward for our virtuous behavior is linked with notions that are difficult—at least prima facie—to reconcile. For example, fortitude as true virtue is not easy to combine with the notion that virtues come and go, “as in flight.” In spite of his strong aversion to virtues as habits, his own sketch of the strong person (fortis), enduring hardship and resisting the wrong emotions, requires something of the stable and resolute character that Aristotle had defined as an “inner state or attitude” (exis), being the condition of making choices and deliberation and developed by habit and experience. As Aristotle sums up: “Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.””® Choice, reason, and a constancy and firmness of mind are elements in Valla’s account as well, but their precise interrelationships remain somewhat obscure.

Virtue as Mean between Two Vices (Repastinatio and De Vero Bono) There remain two major points to be discussed on which Valla vehemently criticizes Aristotle: the soul as tabula rasa and the notion of virtue as a mean

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 175 between two vices.” On the first point, since it has been discussed in the previous chapter, we can be brief. In the first version of the Repastinatio, Valla’s remarks on the soul as tabula rasa directly follow his discussion of the virtues as affects that are infused and effused, in contrast to scientific knowledge, which is acquired only gradually (418:3—-419:29). Valla repudiates the Aristotelian idea that the soul begins morally and cognitively from zero as contrary to

Christian faith. The soul is already “painted” (picta) by birth, in the image of God, as is shown by Adam and Eve, “to whom knowledge was immediately present.”®° Convinced that the soul, rather than any external cause, should be held responsible for its choices, he emphasizes the soul’s autonomy vis-a-vis the body and the external world on which it actively works.*! In the later versions this belief also dominates the discussion, but Valla does not explicitly refer to Aristotle’s notion of the soul as tabula rasa. Rather, he devotes his energy to criticizing the idea of virtue as a mean between two vices. In the first version Valla had still omitted this topic from incorporation, referring the reader to his De vero bono for discussion, but now that his section on the virtues has grown into a full-blown chapter in the second version, he can no longer leave out his critique on virtue as a mean between two vices. As usual, Valla’s critique is a combination of semantic and conceptual remarks, fuelled by a polemical stance that at times weakens rather than strengthens his point. He starts with a consideration of the terms “medium,” “parum’” (little), and “nimium” (too much), which Aristotle had used for defining a virtue as the medium (medium) between two extremes (79:18ff.). The terms “parum” and “nimium,” Valla objects, are not suited to indicate “measures” because they have negative connotations; hence Aristotle should have used terms such as “summum” (greatest) or “plurimum” (very many) and “paulum” (little), which do indicate measures on a scale (79:25). The term “medium” for virtue is ill-chosen as well, because “medium” participates in the two extremes, just

as tepid in hot and cold, unlike virtue, which does not participate in two vices. In other words, the union of two extremes results in a medium, but that of two contrary vices such as avarice and prodigality does not result in the virtue of liberality. Thus “medium” should be placed between “plurimum” and “minimum,” not between “nimium” and “parum.” Moreover, this “model” of one virtue opposed by two vices is too simple, as if there were only three possibilities in our moral behavior. One should rather think of a scale from one

extreme to the other—a point that Valla develops at greater length later on.

176 SOUL, NATURE, MORALITY, AND GOD He also objects to the idea that the middle is always good and the extremes always bad. In the Bible the tepid man is rejected by God, and Valla’s own aesthetic and culinary preferences are introduced to show that extremes are often better than means (highly blond Germans and pitch-black Ethiopians rather than brown Egyptians; very pure rather than turbid wine and oil, very fat rather than lean fish and veal, and so on). Rejecting Aristotle’s account as a rigid scheme imposed externally as a measuring rod on our behavior, Valla stresses the central role of our intellect and good will: to act generously or prodigally does not depend on a too little or a too much, that is, on the amount of money that is given away, but on our will. One can act virtuously in giving away little, very much, or something in between, and it is not the amount of the gift that counts, but the way in which it is given. Valla’s discussion is far from clear here, and we need the fuller treatment in De vero bono to fully appreciate his point. One of the central claims of De vero bono is that each virtue is opposed by one rather than two vices. Valla distinguishes, for instance, between two different meanings of the virtue of courage: fighting bravely and exercising caution, and both meanings have their own opposite vice (rashness and cowardice): “Thus it needs to be understood that to every virtue is assigned its proper vice, not its excess and deficiency” (101/249). In the Repastinatio he hardly develops the point, making only some disconnected remarks about the dual aspect of caution, refer-

ring both to prudence (which is not a virtue) and good will (which makes caution a virtue after all), and about the alleged inconsistency in Aristotle’s position about the place of the vices vis-a-vis the medium (e.g., cowardice being a greater vice than rashness). At this point it is therefore useful to consider the more extensive discussion of virtue as a mean between two extremes in the

third book of De vero bono, in which the Christian spokesman Antonio da Rho offers the same kind of criticism (95—102/237—251).

The central claim is that each individual vice is opposite to an individual virtue rather than that a virtue is the mean between two extremes. Valla’s strategy is to distinguish between two different senses within one virtue, showing that they have different opposites: “Separate these two words and their meanings, because they are separated by nature” (97/241). Thus, whereas Aristotle regards fortitude as a medium between the vices rashness and cowardice, Valla argues that there are two aspects to fortitude: fighting bravely and being cautious (e.g., in yielding to the victorious enemy), with cowardice and rashness as their opposites. Likewise, generosity is not the mean between avarice and

THE VIRTUES AND THE ROAD TO HEAVENLY PLEASURE 177 prodigality, but has two aspects: giving and not giving. Prodigality is the opposite of the first aspect, avarice the opposite of the second, for which we should use the term “frugality” or “thrift” rather than “generosity”: “If you give, you are either generous or prodigal; if you dont, you are either miserly or thrifty. You can give or not give, in both cases either with or without virtue” (97/241). In the last example: “I am a miser in respect to what I do not give, not to what I do give, and am not blamed for giving; on the contrary, for the latter I am praised.” (See Table 2.) Other examples are not completed by Valla but may be construed along the same lines.** Thus prudence does not have two enemies, malice and folly, for folly is opposed to ingenuousness and candor. And courtesy, or aftability, which may also be called “urbanity, now humor, now gaiety, and now by other names,” is not opposed to both buffoonery and rusticity: courtesy is opposed to buffoonery, and rusticity to probity (98/243). “And similarly with the rest of the virtues.”*?

The Christian interlocutor Antonio da Rho makes the same points as Valla does in the Repastinatio, and hence may be regarded as Valla’s spokesman

on this issue, though the precise wording of Antonio's argument is without

Table 2 Valla versus Aristotle on the Virtues

Aristotle Avarice Generosity © Prodigality

Valla Generosity (giving) © Prodigality Avarice © Thrift (not giving)

Aristotle Cowardice